Chapter Text
Graduation
Mike Wheeler does not intend to cry when he returns his binder to the dusty old shelf.
In fact, he makes it through Max returning hers, even though he catches a glimpse of her face and knows she’s already done for. He makes it through Dustin and Lucas putting their binders away, too, even though all he can see in his mind is their eight, ten, twelve year old selves jamming much younger binders onto the same shelf, overflowing with crazed notes and character sheets with dozens of changes in different pen colors.
He even makes it, mostly, through Will placing his binder gingerly in its spot, although Mike's body has some awful physical reaction when he hears a muffled sob.
Then he’s alone in the basement, staring at Will’s binder on the shelf. It still hasn’t really processed, everything they’ve been through. Is he even allowed to break down anymore? Are there time limits on these things? The El-shaped hole in his life is gaping, and he thought it would be for everyone else, too, but they don’t talk about it like that, so maybe it’s just him. And his parents - they’re upstairs, and they’re fine, but they almost weren’t and he didn’t get to be the scared child he felt like when it happened. His dad barely acknowledges anything happened at all, even though the claw mark scars on his mothers neck are clearly visible above her v-neck blouses.
It just feels like they went through absolute hell and left without patting out all the flames on their clothes. And Mike is on fire.
He slides his binder next to Will’s, and he breaks. He feels so alone and so, so overwhelmed, and he doesn’t mean to but his thumb runs down the length of where their binders touch. That’s another thing left undiscussed, and he’s never going to be the one to bring it up.
His body is shaking with a repressed sob, like it wants so badly to break down and actually cry, like there are itching, heaving tears just under his skin. But he’s nothing if not able to hold back his emotions, so he forces himself to inhale through his nose, makes his fingers leave the shelf, and lets himself have one last look before leaving the remains of their campaign behind.
✨
Winter Break #001
Mike is staring at his typewriter.
He’s had a clean sheet of paper in it for nearly an hour, and he keeps moving his fingers over the keys like he'll start typing, but then they’ll fall away. He knows he has stories he wants to get out - there are hastily scribbled notes for half a dozen new ideas on the scraps of paper all over his desk, and he had a burst of inspiration at four in the morning on a particular scene for the one with the imps.
But as he’d sat down to map out a new world for it, his eyes had caught the painting hung just to the left of his workspace, and his inspiration had almost visibly jumped out the window.
Will had written a few times since he’d left for college, and they’d traded calls, but - Mike’s almost certain the gaps between each has grown larger and larger, and a dark part of him wonders if this is how adult friendships just go. One day they’re so firmly in your life that it’s hard to tell where their life ends and yours begins, and then they’re just going weeks without writing or calling, like maybe you weren’t as entwined as you thought.
It’s the same with Dustin and Lucas, too. The positive thing is they all seem to stagger themselves well, so it’s a rare week that Mike hears from no one. But something about Will’s distancing is different.
Mike blamed it on the holidays, knowing very well that Will had been stressed about exams and papers and passing. Mike half wishes he’d attended college too, just to experience the same chaos.
Off to the upper right corner of his desk, just beside his framed photo of El, is Will’s latest letter, received this morning. The trifold is still crisp, though Mike’s opened and folded it about thirty times already. The messy writing on it confirms Will’s been busy with the end of the semester, and that he’ll be back in town for the holidays at the end of next week. He mentions that a few of his new friends are interested in D&D, and that maybe he’ll take another whack at being a DM for a short campaign next year.
The part that Mike has read and reread mentions that he found this bar near campus where the bouncer lets adults under twenty-one come in with a neon hand stamp, and it’s for people like Will. That’s how it’s phrased - a place for people who are like me.
Mike knows he doesn’t mean nerds or artists. Will found a bar for… for people who are different, and he’s made a few new friends, and he’s -
Well. There’s a guy. Not anything serious, yet, but.
Mike doesn’t know what to feel about it. How is he so happy for Lucas and Max, so thrilled Dustin is dating someone new, but when it comes to Will -
He wishes El was here. He’s sure he’d feel less like something was wrong wrong wrong if he had her back. At the very least, his focus would be on her, and not on the uncomfortable way he feels like he missed out on something big.
He hadn’t reacted horribly to Will coming out, he thinks. He could’ve - could’ve been disgusted, okay, could’ve called him names like the bullies in school had for years. He could’ve stopped being his friend. Instead, he said no to friendship, and yes to Best Friends.
Mike feels sick. He slaps a hand down on his typewriter, clanking the keys together and leading to a blob of letter salad on his previously clean paper. Groaning in frustration, he rips it out and smacks it onto his desk, to be used for scrap notes. The blob of inky letters on it stares up at him, judging.
“Fuck you,” he tells it.
He gives up on getting out his story for the evening, instead jotting out the main points from his earlier thoughts on the scrap paper just under the blurb of letters.
✨
Lucas returns to town first. He and Max are only staying a few days, but he makes a point to visit Mike right off the bat, which - he won’t admit, but Mike is so grateful. He doesn’t realize how alone he’s felt until he’s sandwiched between his favorite couple in a hug so tight it’s probably cutting off circulation.
“How’s writing going?” Lucas asks, once they’re all in the basement, drinks in hand and a bowl of pretzels on the couch next to Max.
I have a hundred ideas but every time I try to get them out, I think about El or Will and suddenly my fingers don’t function, he thinks. “Y’know, same as before. Got a couple of short stories that are going to be published in the paper next month.” He doesn’t mention that they, too, are just outlines so far. “How’s life in the real world?”
Lucas gives him a funny look, cracking open his soda. “You could live in the real world too, man. But it’s good - we’re both still working, hoping to save up more so we could visit California.”
“We’d save up faster if someone didn’t keep buying tiny figurines,” Max chimes in, but she’s smiling.
“Miniatures,” Mike and Lucas correct in sync.
“Oh man, you’ve got to come visit sometime,” Lucas says, excited. “There’s this guy who sells so much stuff for D&D, it’s crazy! He paints his own miniatures, but he also builds, like, entire settings. He’s working on a custom dungeon one right now, it’s insane. Could really do a cool campaign with it,” he adds, looking to Mike hopefully.
They haven’t talked about a new campaign yet. He knows Lucas and Max still play around with some premade ones, and Dustin is keeping Hellfire going at his college, and Will is -
Well. Apparently recruiting other people like him to play. Mike can’t think about it too hard, or his mind whips up an image of Will playing a two-player campaign with some mysterious boyfriend. He can’t think about it, or he’ll imagine them celebrating small victories with hugs, or hand holding, or -
He can’t think about it, or he’ll picture a guy taller than Will, probably with darker features, maybe paler skin -
He can’t think about it. “I haven’t written anything for one,” he says instead. “I mean - I’ve helped Holly out a few times, but they stopped needing me pretty quickly.” It’s said as a joke, but it falls flat. No one needs him feels a little too real, a little too sharp.
“We could do an easy one,” Lucas offers. “Each time we all get back together, I mean. It could be our new thing for breaks.”
It’s a great idea, in principle, though Mike knows he’ll feel the gaps between sessions worse than the others. Still, it’s better than nothing. “Yeah, maybe. We’ll have to see when Dustin and Will come.”
Max and Lucas exchange a glance, and Mike’s hackles immediately rise as she nods slightly, then stands up. “I’m gonna go get another drink. Wheeler, you want anything?”
Shit. He can see it coming a mile away, but he doesn’t know how to stop it. “No, I’m - fine.” She nods once and then heads upstairs, quietly closing the basement door behind her.
Lucas is already looking at him when his gaze darts over. “So.”
“You guys are as subtle as a piece of shit,” he comments airily, sinking into the plastic folding chair he’s occupying. “What.”
Instead of laughing it off like he’d expected, Mike’s stomach sinks as Lucas leans forward in his own folding chair, hands clasped and face serious. “Mike.”
“Lucas.”
“I’m going to ask you how you’re doing, and I know you’re going to lie and say you’re fine, but then we’re actually going to talk, okay?” Goddamn it. “So, Mike. How are you?”
“Do we really have to -”
“Michael.”
“I just think, at this point, it’s -”
“Mike.”
It’s just them in the basement, and Lucas isn’t yelling, but it feels like the name echoes around the room until it circles back to strangle him. Mike looks around, trying to think of a way to wiggle out of this conversation, eyes darting from the table, to the couch, to the cabinets, to his D&D binder, propped up next to Will’s, to -
His eyes get stuck there, though. “Mike, please -”
“What exactly do you want me to say?” he blurts out, anger spiking. But under that anger is so much sadness, so much fear, so much self-loathing, and it’s all bubbling up like some sick stew in his bones. He glares at the abandoned binders as the words gurgle up from his gut against his will. “I’m stuck here in this stupid house, in this stupid town, probably forever just like my shit dad, and everyone else is getting out and getting away and being who they want. My friends are getting their own lives and mine still has a huge part that revolves around them caring about me. My - El is dead, probably, and how am I supposed to date another girl after losing someone like her?” He pauses his word vomit to inhale, and Lucas opens his mouth to reply, but Mike's not done. “And how is everyone so okay with her being gone? Hopper lost his daughter, and - and Will lost his sister, but it’s only me who’s fucking miserable about it -”
“Hey,” Lucas cuts in abruptly. “That’s not true at all. I know you lost your girlfriend, but we lost one of our best friends, too. We’re not all okay, alright? We’re… we’re sad, and probably traumatized, to be honest. And I know for a fact that Will is struggling with it.” He eyes Mike, and suddenly Mike is uncomfortable in his skin. “Have you guys actually talked about it? Like, at all?”
“We don’t talk about things.” It’s a reflexive reply, and it’s way too honest, and it’s pathetic now that he’s said it out loud. He hadn’t meant to say it, but Lucas doesn’t look surprised.
“That’s another thing.” Mike wonders how pissed off he’ll be if he just up and left. “I know you guys said you’re best friends still, or whatever, but have you actually talked about it?”
“About being best friends?” Mike asks, playing dumb. Why did he let himself get stuck down here with Lucas? He knew it would only be for A Serious Talk, and there are only two topics he avoids enough to warrant it. One of them has disappeared forever, and the other is apparently meeting strange men at bars.
Lucas is not impressed. “Mike. C’mon. I know he was talking about you, when he came out. That he liked you.”
Not only does Mike not want to discuss this (in fact, he may even prefer gauging his own eyeballs out, probably), but the past tense use of the word ‘liked’ is settling like a rotten apple in his stomach. “He was talking about Tammy.”
“Don’t be an asshole; we all know that was some weird reference none of us were in on. Will liked you, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t surprised by anything he said that day.”
That catches Mike off guard. “What - really? You knew?”
“That he didn’t like girls? Mike, I have objectively the hottest girlfriend in all of Hawkins -”
“That’s absolutely a biased opinion -”
“And he’s never looked at her the way I do. The way Dustin did.” He doesn’t add Mike to the list. It’s disconcerting. “And he’s had more girls flirt with him than all of us combined, but he never gave a shit about any of them. You know who he did look at like that?”
Mike lurches to his feet. “We're done here, Lucas.”
Lucas stands up, too, squaring his shoulders. He side steps so he’s between Mike and the stairs. Mike may be taller, but compared to Lucas he’s got about zero percent muscle and body fat, so he’s not sure how a fight would go. He contemplates launching at him to get past anyway. “He’s looked at Steve like that. He’s looked at Billy, before we knew he was kind of a dick. And he always, always looked at -”
Turns out he has just enough muscle, thank you very much, to elbow past Lucas and storm out of the basement. The stairs actually quiver with how aggressively he stomps up them. He’s unsurprised to find Max sitting right at the kitchen table, no drink in sight. She takes one look at him and rolls her eyes. “Knew that wouldn’t work,” she mumbles, but Mike ignores her and snatches his keys from the countertop, and leaves his house.
He feels a bit stupid, leaving his own home instead of kicking his friends out, but he knows they wouldn’t leave without a fight and Mike is not in a place to hear the rest of Lucas’s sentence.
As he jams the keys into the ignition and backs out of the driveway, he briefly wonders if it’s too dramatic to drive off to the first campground he can find and live in his car for the remainder of winter break.
✨
He avoids Lucas and Max for the two full days until Dustin’s arrival, and then when they seemingly recruit him into their Serious Talk, he avoids all three until that Friday. Which is, absolutely by coincidence, when Will is coming back.
He’s in his room, sitting at his quiet typewriter again, though this time his hands aren’t even near it. He doesn’t have the energy to pretend he’s in the writing mood. Instead, he mopes and ignores his crackling walkie and stares between the painting above his desk and the framed photo of El. He misses the old days so badly that he aches with it. What he wouldn’t give to go back to the years when they were all together, when life was only kind of fucking them over.
He doesn’t hear a car pull up to the house, which is annoying because that’s half the benefit of sitting in silence. He doesn’t hear the front door open, either, so the only warning that he’s being ambushed is the parade of footsteps clanking down the hall. He whirls around in his chair, startled, and then his bedroom door is slammed open to reveal the entire party (or what’s left of it). Dustin is holding two six packs, Mike has a huge bag of cheese puffs, and Max has a plastic-wrapped plate piled high with chocolate chip cookies.
And Will is behind them all, clearly just having arrived.
“Surprise hangout!” Dustin announces, making himself comfortable on the bed, separating the cans of beer.
“Can’t avoid us forever, Wheeler,” Max adds, which - is not a thing to say in front of everyone, he thinks. (By ‘everyone’ he means, of course, Will). She and Lucas unkindly shove him out of the way so they can scoot aside some of his stray notes and put their snacks down on the desk, though both are careful to avoid the expensive and well-kept typewriter.
Mike’s about to curse them out, tell them exactly how fucking much he’ll be avoiding them after this, but as if they have a sixth sense, they heave him in his wheely desk chair, sending him to the middle of the room. He would complain, but -
Now he’s real close to Will, and he gets his first proper look at him. And, well. Shit. He looks like a guy who’s been flourishing in college. His hair is decidedly less bowl-shaped and in fact a bit more stylized, like he’s betrayed years of his mother’s hair cutting and found an actual barber. He looks taller, but that can’t be right. Maybe broader? Like he’s taken up visiting a gym as well as bars. And he looks - confident, maybe. Comfortable.
Happy.
He looks happy, and Mike Wheeler is just a sad sack of depression living at home, stuck in a loop of missing El and missing the past and missing his friends and missing Will. But Will's right here, right in front of him, for the first time in months. “Hey,” Will says, and he doesn’t look unsure, but he doesn’t seem to know what else to do, either.
Mike realizes he’s just sitting there like an idiot, gaping up at him, and jerks to his feet. The chair goes skidding back towards the desk. “Hey, man, good to see you,” he says, almost scripted, and goes in for a hug. It’s a quick one, and there’s an odd space in it, like they’ve got a layer of bubble wrap between them and they can’t loop around each other closely like he’s done with Lucas and Dustin. Will steps back first, and Mike wonders if he noticed it, too.
Lucas clears his throat, and Mike’s stomach sinks as he wonders if his friends noticed, as well. It feels like more evidence against him, like another tally on the list of reasons for them to have A Serious Talk. Goddamn it. “So we were talking to the guys about that new campaign idea,” he starts, clambering after Max onto the bed, so the three of them are all squashed up by the pillows. Will takes a seat on one corner at the foot of the bed, and Mike knows there’s a spot left for him intentionally on the opposite corner. He sits back in the desk chair.
“What campaign?”
“The one we do on breaks,” Max replies, eyebrow quirking like she’s unimpressed by him forgetting what they’d spoken about only days ago. In fairness, she’s almost always unimpressed by him, so he shrugs it off. “Dustin thinks it could last us until they graduate. We can plan it out for spring break and Lucas will get some table pieces from that guy.”
“I’m in; I’ll definitely come back for spring break,” Dustin chimes in helpfully. Mike takes a moment to glare as he makes himself comfortable, putting his shoed feet up on the comforter. Mike’s about to tell him off, but -
“I - I’ll probably be back,” Will says, a little too quiet. He might as well have yelled it, though, with how quickly the room goes silent.
“Probably? You have other plans?” Max asks, leaning forward curiously. Mike barely registers how she and Lucas look intrigued, and Dustin is very much betrayed by the lack of commitment. Mike, on the other hand, feels like someone smacked him upside the head hard enough for his vision to blur. It never occurred to him that any of them - that Will wouldn’t be back every break.
Will looks very shy, suddenly, pulling down his sleeves over his hands so just his fingertips are sticking out. Mike tries not to think about how endearing that is. “It’s just… I’m part of this group, at my college, and it’s - there are other guys like me, and… there’s…”
“Oh my god, do you have a boyfriend?” Dustin blurts out, and Mike definitely must’ve been walloped upside the head with how dizzy he gets. He has to shake himself and remember that he knew there was someone, he’d read it in the letter, but it only seemed half real when it was words on paper.
“No! I mean, not really, it’s just… there’s this guy?” He looks terrified, sleeved hands scrabbling together like they’re trying to claw the anxiety out of him. Mike vaguely wonders if he’ll tear through the fabric.
It’s the only thought actually processing, because the rest is swirling rapidly down into some sinkhole in his brain - like someone flushed a giant toilet in his skull. Which is fitting, actually, because his thoughts are literally going to shit. “You didn’t say that before!” Lucas exclaims, and his genuinely pleased interest seems to shake some of the nerves off of Will. Max shuffles on the bed to make herself more comfortable, propping her chin on her palms like they’re at a sleepover sharing secrets.
Well. It’s not a sleepover, but Mike supposes that’s exactly what they’re doing. He hates it.
“It’s nothing yet, it’s just. His name is Austin, and he’s – he mentioned staying on campus for spring break, and said if I didn’t have plans…”
“But you do,” Mike cuts in, ignoring that his tone is far less receptive than his friends’. “I mean - isn’t that why we’re meeting?” he adds on quickly, to hopefully sound less like an asshole. He’s not sure it works.
Based on the glare Lucas is sending him, it does not. “Yeah, but we can just wait until summer to do that session.”
“What’s the point of starting in December, then?”
“Mike, it’s - it’s fine, I haven’t told him I’d stay,” Will says, and Mike feels lower than dirt at the way Will crumples in on himself slightly. “I just - I didn’t -”
“You could do both,” Dustin chimes in helpfully. Mike could kill him. “We’ll plan the session for the end of spring break, so we can all get together on like the last day. You could stay on campus the first half of the week, and then come back here after.”
It takes all of Mike’s resolve not to shout down that idea, but he knows he can’t realistically argue against it. Besides, Max and Lucas immediately agree, and Will looks almost pleased. But he darts a glance over to Mike, and there’s a weird tension between them.
He knows he’s being a dick. He knows that. And he’s not trying to come off like he doesn’t accept Will, doesn’t support him finding a new life and a - a guy, or whatever. It’s just… he doesn’t want to support him finding a new life. Mike feels like he’s lost so much already; it’s like he keeps losing more, and he’s not handling it well.
So he finds it impossible to hide all his bitterness, and the rest of their hangout goes similarly. Everyone is acting normal except him. But that’s half the problem, isn’t it? Everyone finished grieving except him, everyone moved out of Hawkins except him, everyone is finding love except him.
Fuck.
They eventually decide to migrate to the basement, prompted mostly by Lucas wanting to use the bathroom and Max and Dustin looking to pick at the snacks (“No food on my bed, you assholes! Come on!”). Mike works on his breathing the entire way down, trying to force himself to be a better friend to Will. It shouldn’t be hard, for fuck’s sake, and he’d promised him they’d be best friends, so really it’s just him ruining his half of the deal.
He’s good until they start setting up and he fetches the binders. Will’s is still sitting right next to his, unmoved from their last session at graduation. His hand freezes midway to grabbing the stack of five binders, like it got caught on something partway up. Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry, he silently chants. It’s partly happy tears that he’s holding back, because six months ago he was so sure they’d put these back for the last time. But there’s a sourness to it, too. This is the highlight of his month, maybe even of the last three months, but to his friends it’s probably just a blip of fun in their schedule.
But Mike the Brave doesn’t get to cry over stupid shit, so he shrugs it off and grabs the binders, returning to the table without a single tear in his eye. With newly sharpened pencils, a fair amount of loose leaf paper, and plenty of hours to spare, they sit down and sketch out their next tabletop adventure.
✨
Spring Break #001
It’s Tuesday, and Mike has the approximate emotional regulation of a potato. He’s snapped at everyone in the house so far, minus his mother. Nancy got the worst of it, but that’s because she asked about Will. Holly got the least aggressive explosion, though he still called her campaign’s setting name ‘stupid as shit’. And his father -
Well. His father had been just as he always is, checked out and oblivious to most of his children’s interests, but the thing is -
The thing is, Mike had tried to comb his hair in a way that looked alright, but all he saw when he looked in the mirror was a young version of his dad. The glasses surely didn’t help, but they were the only frames available at the store that would fit his lenses, so here he is: freshly nineteen years old, and looking like his fifty-something year old father. Absolutely miserable, it is.
Well, it hadn’t helped that Will had called the day before, saying that he’d be running late; instead of Wednesday morning, he’d be over Wednesday night. Something about Austin wanted to get brunch at this new place. Who even gets brunch when they’re under seventy years old? Apparently, people like Austin.
People like Will.
(People definitely, absolutely not like Mike. Obviously. He doesn’t even see the fucking point of brunch. Get breakfast or get lunch. What do you even do after brunch, wait like ten hours for dinner? Absolute bullshit.)
So he’s in a shit mood, and he feels like he hasn’t accomplished enough since winter break. Which isn’t even fair - he’s had two short stories published in local papers, he’s outlined his first actual novel, and he’s put a good amount of work into this new campaign, getting about halfway through the story he wants to tell. And he knows that Max and Lucas haven’t been up to too much since he’d last seen them, and he knows Dustin’s just been attending classes and hosting Hellfire once a week.
So maybe he only feels really miniscule and behind compared to Will. Who - who isn’t even doing anything crazy, but. He’s acing classes. He’s building a really good art portfolio. He’s working on a ceramics sculpture that’ll count toward his final grade, though Mike has no idea what exactly he’s making. He’s got his little D&D group that meets biweekly, and he has about five good friends that he goes out with on the regular. He’s… he hasn’t said dating, but he’s hanging out with this Austin guy an awful lot.
It’s stupid, really, that Mike feels like such an outsider. He wonders if he’d feel different if he was doing exactly what he does now, but outside of Hawkins. Maybe it’s the town itself, the ground under the streets he knows so well, that’s poisoning him, seeping into his soul through the bottoms of his sneakers. But that thought is a little too on-the-nose when it comes to their past with the Upside Down, so he drops it immediately and doesn’t let himself think about leaving.
He couldn’t. What if El ever came back? The first home she got to live in was his, right in the very basement his friends will be crammed into tomorrow night. He can’t leave.
The thought gets less hopeful and more depressing every year. It’s been years since she vanished (not died not died not died) and he’s lost a lot of hope, but has stubbornly refused to work on moving on.
Anyway. He’s in a shit mood, and he doesn’t need a good, old-fashioned spiral right now, so he pushes the thoughts of El to the back of his mind, where he keeps all the achy feelings of missing Will.
Like some higher power realized he needed help getting pulled out of his own head, he hears a loud knock down at the front door, and then it clicks open without, he assumes, anyone actually letting the visitor in. “Good morning, Wheelers!” It’s Dustin. Mike’s father is in for another round of teenage adult snapping at him, he’s sure. Sighing, Mike drags himself from his room and down the stairs to greet his friend.
“What are you doing here already? Will doesn’t get in until -”
“Tomorrow, yes, I know, Michael. I came to visit my friend, is that so crazy?” It takes Mike all the way until Dustin’s dragged him back upstairs to his room to realize what’s happening. Why is he so garbage at avoiding these damn things? “Speaking of Will,” Dustin starts, shutting the door behind them and leaning against it, like Mike couldn’t shove him out of the way if he tried really hard.
“We weren’t really -”
“You need to be cool about Austin, man.”
That’s not quite what he expects to hear, and it actually makes him pause. “I - what? I am cool about him.”
“You’re absolutely not, and I will lose my shit if you ruin this campaign because you give Will the cold shoulder again over it.” Mike rolls his eyes so hard that, yes, actually, it does hurt, and turns to sit back at his desk. Maybe if he types really, really hard, it’ll tune his friend out. Maybe if he smacks the keys a bunch of times, Dustin will deem him a lost cause and leave. It was an expensive typewriter, though.
“I don’t give Will the cold shoulder. You’re being ridiculous.”
He expects an immediate comeback, per Dustin’s usual deal, but instead it’s silent. Mike makes it about eight seconds before it’s too eerie and he turns his chair around. Dustin’s standing there, eyeing him sharply and looking almost put off by him. “Are you, like. Actually homophobic?”
That’s not something he ever thought he’d be asked, and he sputters immediately. “What? No! Of course not! I have zero problem with Will, or - or any guy like that!” He thinks about Robin, the way she looks at his sister sometimes. “Or girl.”
“They’re called lesbians, Michael.”
“I’m aware of what they’re called, Dustin.” It’s less effective when a person doesn’t use a nickname. It makes it hard to sass off to Lucas, too, when he uses Mike’s full name. And Max would probably actually shank him if he dared to call her Maxine, so the only one he can really do it with is -
Well. He’s never been in a situation to call him William. He doesn’t even know how he’d get there.
“Then what the hell’s your problem? Ever since Will came out, you’ve been so weird about him. I thought you guys were best friends, still.”
“We are!”
“Then why do you avoid touching him like he’s diseased?” And - okay, yes, he’s been hesitant to be as grabby with Will as he was when they were kids, but - it’s not because of that. He knows what the news says about people like Will. About how you should keep your kids away, keep your hands off, keep them out of your life. Don’t want to catch that disease. “And you’ve been a dick about Austin, too. They’re not even really dating yet; what happens if he comes home and says they are? Are you going to be a huge asshole about that, too?”
“I’m - I’m not! And I don’t.” Dustin is incredibly unimpressed. Mike peers around him at the door. It’s so close, but he knows he wouldn’t even get to it without a fight. “I don’t avoid touching him! And it’s - it’s totally fine if they’re dating. What do I even care, he can date whoever he wants.”
There’s another silence, and it feels like it stretches on for ages. Mike picks at the armrest of his chair, unable to bring himself to look up and see how Dustin’s taking his excuses. “Oh, shit,” Dustin breathes out, and Mike’s head snaps up. The other man is staring at him, and he can practically hear the cogs in his brain turning. “Is this about him liking you?”
Mike’s heart does not launch itself out of his throat. It doesn’t. It only feels like it, because he’s pretty sure the nerves wracking his body are about to make him throw up. Which would be awful timing, and would cement Dustin’s stupid idea that Mike is - that he hates - “What? No. He doesn’t -”
“If you give me bullshit about him not referencing you during his coming out speech, I will punch you straight in the glasses. Have fun being a blind writer.”
He’s fairly certain there’s something wrong about saying stuff like that, but right now, Mike doesn’t really have a leg to stand on to point it out. “He - he could’ve meant anyone. And it doesn’t even matter now. He’s got a new boyfriend, or whatever. He doesn’t like me like that, not anymore. So. It doesn’t even matter.” He could’ve probably said it with less malice.
No, scratch that, he should have said it with less malice, because some awful dawning comes over Dustin’s face, and his crossed arms drop to his side. “Oh my god.”
“What? No. Whatever it is, no.”
“Mike.”
“I said no, Dustin.”
“You like him.”
No one’s ever flat out accused him, at least not out loud. Mike’s body has a visceral reaction, limbs tensing so hard they clank into parts of the chair, chest surging with the sudden panic flooding his nervous system. He definitely feels like he could throw up, now. “I do not.”
“Oh my god, it explains so much.”
“It doesn’t explain shit! There’s nothing to explain!” he half-shrieks, panicking properly. His blunt fingers are digging into his arm rests and he does his absolute best not to burst into angry tears, because he’s fairly sure they won’t help his case. Or his breathing. “I’m not like that, okay? It’s - it’s great for Will that he is, y’know - like that - and that he found other guys… like that, or whatever, but -”
“You can’t even say it, can you?”
“That I - that I like - no, I can’t, because it’s not true!”
“Say the word ‘gay’.”
“I’m not gonna -”
It takes a second for the command to sink in, and Mike finds his hands clenching the arm rests so hard that the leather is tearing a little where it’s pulled taut. His mouth opens and shuts stupidly like some sort of human-sized fish, but try as he might, no additional words come out. “You can’t, can you?” The pity in his voice is the worst part, Mike decides. Dustin sighs heavily, like the burden of Mike’s problems has fallen onto his shoulders. “Christ. I don’t even know how to start addressing that. And you specifically told him you’re just best friends? Goddamn it, Mike.” Mike is aware he’s fucked up multiple times in his life. He’s had trouble focusing on that particular instance, where Will had asked for friendship, and Mike said no thanks - and his entire body had gone up in flames of panic when he saw the spark of hope that caused. And then he had to go and be weird about it and say Best Friends. He made it a thing, and now he can’t even look it in the face. “Just - for the party’s sake, for Will’s sake, please try to be better at not acting like a homophobic asshole. Okay?”
Mike doesn’t respond. He can’t. There are no words coming up from his sandpaper dry throat, only threats of bile or screams. Maybe both. Could both happen at the same time? He wonders if he’ll panic enough to find out. Sighing again, Dustin turns and walks out of his bedroom, not sparing him another glance and leaving him to pick up the pieces of his sanity by himself. “I’ll be back tomorrow, get your shit together!” he shouts, without turning around. Mike hears him storm down the stairs and slam his way out the front door.
Fuck.
✨
Although he appreciates Lucas’s empathy, something about Dustin’s brash demand works, at least temporarily. He doesn’t go out of his way to ask about Austin, or any guy, really - but Mike focuses on giving Will a real hug when he comes by, on patting his shoulder or elbowing him or kicking at his feet under the basement table just as much as he does for the other three. He keeps the conversation going, asks about the portfolio, and upon finding out Will brought it with him for safe keeping, insists they get to see it. He even acts normal when Lucas and Max begin probing Will for details about his new social life, and in particular -
“Austin’s just a friend,” Will insists for the third time. “We just - we -”
Max leans over and, quicker than Will can duck away, hooks a finger into the collar of his t-shirt and yanks. Will goes furiously red and claps a hand to his exposed shoulder, but not before they all see what she noticed. “Is that a hickey?” Dustin asks manically, grinning at Will’s sudden floundering. Lucas cackles, slapping at the table with both hands like it’s a large bongo. Max sits back, satisfied at her discovery.
“So is that from Just-A-Friend Austin, or are you really having fun in college?” she teases, and Will glares daggers at her. His hand hasn’t moved from where it’s covering the purple-red bruise, patched on the skin of his shoulder like someone kissed it with purple watercolor lipstick. Funnily enough, Mike’s gaze hasn’t moved from it, either.
“It’s just - we haven’t - we haven’t talked about what we are, yet,” Will stammers out, looking more and more uncomfortable by the moment. Oddly enough, that irks Mike almost as much as seeing the hickey itself. Will goes and finds himself a guy, and it’s someone who won’t even commit? “We’re taking things slow,” he adds, but seems to realize how stupid that sounds when he’s covering evidence to the contrary.
“Have you guys… you know,” Max asks, eyebrows bobbing up and down suggestively. Mike’s stomach sours.
“Can we get to the campaign?” Will asks desperately. He’s impossibly red, now.
Lucas and Dustin both seem like they want to keep needling him, but they abruptly stop. Mike spares them a glance to find them both looking at him sympathetically, and it’s like he swallowed a rock with how awful he suddenly feels. He glares back, begging them silently to keep their stupid mouths shut. He’s doing his best to be normal, and he doesn’t need them staring him down while he pathetically tries. “So,” Mike says loudly, shuffling his papers to pull out his notes. “I have three ideas, and you guys have to vote on which one we go for.”
✨
They make it a fair amount into his story, considering it’s the first day, and considering they picked the trickiest choice - a post-apocalyptic wasteland that’s come under rule of a haphazard, self-appointed monarchy. The other two had been standard high fantasy, but this one is something really funky he’d thought of in the middle of the night, complete with toxic waste monsters and a lot of undead.
It’s almost midnight when they call it a successful first session, and he and Lucas shove the table to the far wall in order to pile blankets and pillows on the floor for them to crash. It’s not as comfortable, somehow, as when they were younger, but they make do and are all exhausted enough to pass out by two in the morning.
✨
After breakfast the next day, he walks everyone out to where their cars are parked. They’ll meet up again, probably not for D&D, but at least to hang out one more time before everyone (except Mike) goes back to their lives.
He hugs Lucas and Dustin, and even Max. He goes to hug Will, and is very proud of himself for keeping it normal and equivalent to the other hugs he gave. In fact, they even smile at each other normally. Everything’s grand. No problems here.
Until Mike stupidly claps Will on the shoulder, just like he’d done with Lucas, as a goodbye. But it’s that shoulder. The one he’d just seen just twelve hours ago, bruised with a bite mark from someone else’s mouth. Mike’s hand gets stuck there like Will’s shirt was made of fly paper.
Mike’s staring at it like a moron, but he can see from the peripherals of his vision that Will’s eyes go enormous. “Um,” Will offers, voice rough.
And Mike - come on, he had been so good all evening and all morning, they’d been the regular old Mike-and-Will. He’d been so close to acing it.
Instead, without a single brain cell pulling its weight in his skull, he presses his thumb into the spot he remembers seeing the mark. Will inhales sharply, and Mike’s tempted - so, so tempted - to rub at the area like it’ll erase any trace of discoloration.
Max clears her throat loudly, pointedly, and Mike jerks his hand back like she’d come over and slapped it. “Right, sorry. Uh. I’ll, um. Write you what we’ll need for the next session?” The question is directed to Lucas, who had brought over some new scenery pieces. He’d taken detailed notes on the new storyline so he could commission the guy in his town, and Mike was actually quite excited to see what he brought back next time. There were some finer details he wanted to work out before summer, though.
“I’ll - I’ll see you guys later,” Will manages, stepping around Mike to get to his car. “Diner Sunday, right?” He doesn’t look back at them, but Dustin calls out an agreement anyway. They all wave him off, and Mike - goddamn it, how does he keep getting trapped - is met with three unimpressed stares the second Will’s car turns a corner.
“Really? You couldn’t be cool for two more seconds?” Dustin critiques, hands on his hips.
“I was cool! I was fine, we were - we were fine.”
“Touching his hickey is cool friend behavior?” Max asks sarcastically, using finger quotes for the last three words. Mike scowls at her. “You really are hopeless, Wheeler.”
Instead of arguing further, Mike turns and walks right back into his house, slamming the door and loudly turning the lock behind him.
✨
Summer Break #001
Mike is amazingly normal in the summer. He gets zero negative feedback from his friends, earns zero awkward silences with Will, and even asks about Will’s D&D campaign at college. He’s amazing. He’s perfect.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Max and Lucas have full-time jobs with overlapping schedules, Will picked up summer work on campus, and Dustin’s already working on an internship, therefore only allowing them four days the entire summer to get together. Two are spent on the campaign, and two are spent with other friends - Steve, mainly, since he’s local. Nancy, Robin, and Jonathan, for one of the days.
So he doesn’t have time to act like a dickhead, see, and he’ll take that for the win it definitely is.
(And if his mood by September is absolute hot garbage because he’s only seen his friends four days out of the three months they have off from classes, that’s his business.)
✨
Winter Break #002
“We broke up,” is the first thing Will blurts, once they all pile onto Mike’s bed like they’re still twelve and fit. “Austin and me, I mean.”
Mike goes completely still from his spot up against the headboard, but Lucas immediately launches into the empathetic friend role. “That sucks, man. Breakups are the worst.”
And then, just like that, they move on. Eventually, they migrate to the basement, but the time they spend on Mike’s bed feels nostalgic. Comforting, really. It’s a bubble of time he wishes he could live in for just a while longer.
The campaign is tougher than the one they completed last year. They’ve never done anything that wasn’t medieval fantasy, but it’s fun and challenging, and Max is actually really good at being a post-apocalyptic survivor. Will, however, is not.
“How is a sorcerer meant to deal with giant nuclear worms, then?” he demands, looking ready to smack aside the miniatures and lurch across the table to strangle Mike. It’s oddly comforting. “What do you mean they’re resistant to magic - they’re worms!”
“You’re just mad you never decided to steal a gun,” Lucas says, drawing little stars around the notes he took on all three of the weapons he’s stolen off dead bodies. “Get with the times, Gandalf.”
“For the last time, Gandalf is a wizard, not a sorcerer,” Dustin butts in, hand chopping the air in front of him angrily. It’s an ongoing feud. Everyone (minus Max? Mike isn’t sure) knows The Hobbit inside and out, but Lucas likes to misspeak about it just to rile Dustin up. Mike found it charming at first, but after the hundredth time since his friends arrived this morning, he’s ready to throw in a chemical explosion that astoundingly melts Sundar the Bold’s mouth shut.
“Can you just cast a healing spell already? You’re not helpful with most combat anyway,” Max says, glaring at Will. As the best in the setting, her patience for the other three to keep up and make smart choices has been dwindling for over an hour. Mike is both intrigued and dreading when it dies out completely.
Will turns to her, offended. “I can do combat just fine! It’s just his stupid rules don’t make any sense!” he snaps, gesturing to Mike.
“Guys, maybe we just -” Mike tries, beginning to regret straying from fantasy at all.
“You couldn’t do combat just fine even if we were storming a sandcastle!”
“You’re only good at this because he’s letting you shoot everything!”
“Guys -”
“Well, maybe if you had discussed your stats with him during the fall like the rest of us did, your character wouldn’t suck so badly!”
The table goes quiet, though Max doesn’t look like she’s about to take it back. And - well. She’s right. He’d traded long phone calls with Dustin, Lucas, and Max in October and November, prepping for this session specifically, making sure they knew what they were in for. Will had been too busy to do long calls, so the most they’d gotten through is the general premises of the next leg of adventure… but they hadn’t gotten into the nitty gritty. Like that worms are resistant to magic.
Will’s fingers are digging into the tabletop so hard, the tips have gone white. Then, all at once, he deflates like a popped balloon, hands falling to his lap. “I know. I know, okay. It was just…”
And just like that, Max is back to being his friend. Her hand goes to his forearm, and Mike watches as she gives it a gentle squeeze. He could do that, if he weren’t across the table. It wouldn’t be weird, he mentally notes. That’s a normal friend thing. “We know you were busy. It just sucked to hear from you through, like, three phone calls and a couple of letters.”
Mike doesn’t enlighten them with the fact that he’d had twice that many phone calls and almost the normal amount of letters. It does cause his hands to reflexively squeeze on his thighs, though.
Will groans, rubbing his eyes with the hand that’s not still pinned down by Max’s grip. “I tried really hard to make it work, you know? With - with me and Austin, I mean. I was so focused on making it work, and the whole time he was getting more and more distant anyway. It didn’t end badly, I guess, but. It still sucked to hear that we just weren’t working. We’d barely started dating.”
“Hey, you guys were together for, what six months? That’s a long time,” Dustin offers, like Will needs validation on how real it had been. Maybe he does. Mike is not feeling particularly inclined.
“Compared to you guys, it’s nothing.” There’s an awkward silence after that, and it takes Mike a minute to realize why. Max and Lucas have obviously been together for years, and Dustin was with Suzie for a fair amount, but - well. He and El had been together for most of the time they knew each other. And now, they’re…
“It’s still a long time,” Mike chokes out, voice only crackling a little. He would very much like to get back to the session, please. He’ll even let Will the Wise steal someone’s weapon. Or, hell, at this point, Mike’s willing to have Will the Wise learn a special worm killing spell that betrays the rules he laid out.
“I guess,” Will allows, fidgeting with the hem of his sweater. It’s blue and looks so, so soft. Mike watches his fingers flip the hem up, down, up, down. “I just - I know I was a bad friend to you guys. I thought he was going to be my college boyfriend. Like, we’d find an apartment together for junior and senior year, maybe get jobs in the same city and move together. I guess I got ahead of myself, though.” The thought of Will planning his future around the idea of being with some guy sits oddly in Mike’s ribs. It’s not a comfortable thought. Though he won’t admit it, he has a sneaking suspicion that he’d feel a lot worse if he’d heard this when they were still together.
“You’re here now, that’s all that matters. And you still have two more years to figure out what’s next, so. Don’t hurt yourself too much worrying, alright?” Lucas offers. Will smiles at him, teeth and all, and Mike is not jealous of Lucas. He doesn’t get to be jealous of Lucas.
“Can we kill these stupid worms, now?” Max complains, though her hand stays close to Will’s arm, pinky touching his sleeve. “I’ll even give you one of my rifles, if our storyteller is feeling nice enough.” And now she’s staring down Mike, like she can hear his thoughts. Rolling his eyes, Mike shrugs and watches as she pushes over a page of notes, jabbing her pencil at the details of one gun for Will to copy down.
✨
Spring Break #002
They get the whole week together, and Mike is happier than he’s been in months. Lucas and Max had requested the time off ages ago, checking with their bosses almost weekly to make sure they were still good for it. Dustin and Will made no on-campus plans, and Mike - well. He’s got a job as a junior editor for the local paper, just some minimum wage part-time thing, but it’s better than nothing. Plus, he gets to be around more experienced writers - and although none of them enjoy high fantasy the way he does, they’ve still done things. Made a name for themselves.
It almost gives him hope.
They don’t set days for D&D, but the general plan is to live in each other’s pockets until they have to separate again, so Mike doesn’t mind. On Tuesday, they’re at Will’s parents’ house.
“It’s so good to see you,” Mrs. Byers - wait, is it Mrs. Hopper now? Mike isn’t entirely sure he could ever see her as anyone except Joyce Byers - greets him, hugging him tightly. “Look at your glasses! Very sophisticated,” she adds with a kind smile, before releasing him and moving on to Lucas and Max. Will, who entered the house first, sends him an odd look.
“What?” Mike asks, feeling like he missed something. He didn’t actually call her Mrs. Byers out loud, did he? He hadn’t thought so, but now he’s paranoid he did and her name’s changed.
But Will glances around him at the rest of the gang, then leans in to speak quietly. “You got your glasses a year ago. Have you not seen my mom in over a year?” he hisses, looking baffled.
Mike opens his mouth to object, but then closes it. He hasn’t, is the thing. He’s been getting very good at falling into the bad habit of not seeking out people. Aside from his friends during their breaks, he doesn’t really initiate get togethers with anyone - not Nancy, not Steve (god, not Steve), not Hopper. Not Mrs. Byers. He just… doesn’t. It’s easier to live in a shell in his home, he thinks, than to try to fight his way into a bigger life. So instead he shrugs, and Will… he doesn’t look angry, but he’s definitely judging Mike, based on the way his eyebrows furrow and his lips twist at one corner.
They don’t have time to hash it out (thank fuck) because Dustin and Lucas start shoving everyone, minus Mrs. Byers, out of the entryway. They all take the time to ooh and ahh the new house, which had been purchased but not moved into during their last break. It is a nice house.
It’s not the same as the old Byers house that Mike could probably navigate blindfolded and with both arms tied behind his back, but. There are framed photos of Jonathan and Will and their friends on the walls. There’s soft-looking furniture placed sensibly for larger gatherings, and there are a couple of beige candles lit, making the whole space smell like vanilla. It’s nice.
They cram into the living room, which has an enormous brown sofa that bends into the corner and extends to almost the full length of the two adjacent walls. It surprisingly fits them all with wiggle room, though Dustin snags the corner, and Max and Lucas take the half the couch to the right. That leaves the entire left side of it - probably enough to seat three large adults - to Mike and Will. If there’s an awkward pause before Will sits next to Dustin and Mike sits closer to the end of the couch than to Will’s free side, no one mentions it. He just wants to be able to reach the armrest, he reasons.
They watch Back to the Future and go through about a dozen sandwiches Mrs. Byers had left out for them. It’s another bubble of time where Mike wouldn’t mind living for a while… except for how he’s peculiarly focused on how Will tucks his legs up on the sofa, his toes pointing to Dustin and his back leaned a bit towards Mike. It’s just… if he and Mike were like Max and Lucas, Will could lean up against his shoulder and be in the same position, just more comfortable.
But they’re not, so Will settles for wedging a hideous decorative cushion behind his back. Mike can’t stop picturing it anyway.
Later that night, when they steal every spare blanket, sheet, and pillow from around the house, they make a fluffy pile of comforters on the carpet in front of the sofa, and then argue like ten year olds over the sleeping arrangement. In the end, it’s decided that Max and Lucas will get the floor, since they can fold the blankets in half to thicken their makeshift bed and cuddle on the smaller space. Dustin offers to take the corner of the couch again, which is probably the oddest spot, and Will automatically picks the left side of the sofa to set up his pillow and blanket.
“I’ll take the corner,” Mike blurts. Everyone looks at him in surprise - and he’s shocked, himself. He has no idea where that came from, except… “I mean, I - I like to sleep bent up like that anyway.” Which is a flat out lie, and everyone in this room knows it. Every sleepover has proved that Mike, for all his height, will sprawl out with his legs completely straight, usually on his stomach, arms looped up under his pillow. But. A really, really stupid part of him sees Will on one end of the couch, and doesn’t want to be all the way on the opposite side.
Dustin rolls his eyes, knowing very well he’s full of shit, but drags his pillow to the free end of the couch. Mike glares at Lucas and Max, who are staring at him openly from the floor, as he steps over them to set up his sleeping area. The threat of stomping their fingers if they say anything goes unspoken. And he can feel Will’s gaze on him, but maybe… maybe he doesn’t mind that, so much. Besides, it’s not like he demanded he and Will share the floor. That’s the area for couples, and the couch is for friends. That’s fine. This is normal.
In the end of it, Will’s feet are by his head, but Mike knows it’d be really weird to ask him to flip around so they’d be head to head. What would that even accomplish? They can’t whisper private conversations like they used to do as kids - the room is otherwise silent, everyone’s within kicking distance, and he knows the other three would try to tune into their words the second they came out of their mouths. So he bends his body to fit the corner, he lets himself glance up to Will’s stripey yellow socks poking from the edge of his blanket, and he lets it be enough.
✨
On Thursday, after another session where Will the Wise was the suckiest fighter in the party, Mike starts to shove aside furniture in his basement so they can set up blankets for their usual sleepover. But -
“We actually can’t stay,” Lucas says, which is news to Mike. “My parents want us to get breakfast with them in the morning, so they asked us to stay over tonight.”
“Your parents are letting Max stay over?” Dustin asks, baffled.
“In Erica’s room,” Max corrects, not looking entirely pleased by the setup. “I thought you told them earlier,” she adds to Lucas, who shrugs.
“Forgot.”
And then - and Mike could kill him for this - Lucas gives a pointed look to Dustin, who goes from setting up his pillow to standing and looking at his watch. “Y’know, I forgot, I have to go get groceries for my mom and help her prepare for my grandmother’s visit tomorrow.”
“Are you serious right now?” Mike asks flatly, silently strangling the pillow in his hands. “It’s ten at night. Who gets groceries at ten at night?”
“Overnight workers, for one,” Dustin replies easily, though it’s a really stupid answer. “See you guys for lunch tomorrow? You’re paying,” he says to Lucas, who flips him off. Within two minutes, his three traitorous friends have packed up their stuff and fled the basement, leaving him and Will alone.
Mike takes a deep breath. “You don’t have bullshit grocery or breakfast plans, do you?” He’s very proud of himself for making eye contact with Will, and for asking in a way that would hopefully keep him here. Will goes from looking alarmed to smiling, and the warmth in Mike’s chest from it is worth any awkwardness they encounter.
“I do not, but I’m sure I could think of something equally stupid if you’d like,” he offers, and Mike sees it for the out that it is. He breathes in, out, in, out, and he doesn’t take it.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’ve got a pizza in the freezer if you’re hungry?” Will nods, and Mike scuttles upstairs to throw it in the oven. And to breathe, and mentally smack himself so he’ll be normal and cool and just enjoy time with his best friend.
They end up reading comics until almost one in the morning, cheese and sauce flecked plates forgotten on the table and bed of blankets on the floor piled high. And - it’s nice. It’s like old times, where they’d just read next to each other and share the most interesting panels with each other. Will’s sleepy giggles bring him right back to being ten and hiding under blankets with flashlights so they could keep reading even after his mom had said lights out. As they lay there, on their stomachs and shoulder to shoulder, Mike could swear he feels a part of himself healing.
Obviously, his friends had intended for he and Will to actually talk, likely about El or about how Mike is really weird about Will. They don’t, but it still feels like a night that they needed. In the morning, Mike wakes up first, and rolls over to find Will fast asleep, lips parted slightly and hair splayed out on his pillow. He’s so… so…
Mike jolts up to his feet, panicking. Those thoughts can’t exist, they can’t slip to the front of his mind as easy as anything. He shoves them away, lets them join the thoughts of missing El, and shuffles around to clean up the plates. Maybe he clacks them together a little too sharply on purpose, just so Will wakes up. He hears the groan before he sees Will move. “Morning,” he greets. Will pushes up onto his elbow and rubs at his eyes before looking over at him.
“What time is it?”
“Uh, nearly eleven. We have to meet the party for lunch soon.”
Will sits up and stretches. Mike’s eyes dart right to where the hem of his shirt lifts, showing a sliver of tan skin. Goddamn it. Mike subconsciously runs his tongue over his lips. “How’s your friend group?” he asks on impulse, voice a little higher than normal.
Will blinks at him. “My what?”
“You know,” Mike tries, waving a hand like that explains it. “Your group. Of friends.” Will stares at him. “Like - like you.”
“Are you asking how my gay friends are?” Will asks dryly. Mike does not freeze up a little. It’s just, it’s the first time he’s heard the actual word from Will’s mouth, and it’s startling. “They’re fine, I guess.” Mike nods rapidly. He probably looks deranged. “I, um. There’s four of them, now that Austin and I - uh. Marlene is studying to be a marine biologist, which is really cool. And - and Debbie and Raj are in the art program with me. And -”
“Two lesbians,” Mike offers, somehow thinking he’s proving he can say these words without dying. He realizes a moment too late that he, in fact, just sounds like an idiot.
Will smiles, though. “One lesbian, actually. Two gay guys, and then Debbie is bisexual.”
“She’s - what?”
The smile vanishes, and Mike feels really stupid, now. “It means she likes men and women, Mike.”
The world doesn’t tilt. It can’t do that out of nowhere, right? But something - something tilts, something makes him dizzy and blacks out the perimeters of his vision and slides something big into place. Mike feels like his entire face has gone numb, like he can’t tell if his lips are touching or if he’s slack-jawed and drooling. “That’s - a thing?”
Will, for the first time in his life, doesn’t seem to pick up on Mike’s emotional break, and just shrugs. “Yeah. Hey - can I use your shower before we head out? I didn’t get a chance to yesterday at Dustin’s.”
“Uh huh,” Mike breathes out, voice tinny and thin. Will looks at him a little funny, but grabs his backpack and heads upstairs. It takes Mike a full five minutes to collect himself and remember that he has to drag all five million pillows and blankets upstairs, plus their plates.
It takes him three trips to manage the bedding. He forgets the plates.
✨
On Sunday, Mike’s standing in front of three cars, and it feels like parts of his soul are packed into three mismatched rust buckets, about to roll down the street and away from him. This past week (minus a bit of a sexuality crisis and a bit of pining he’ll ignore) had been… everything. It had been everything to him, and he wishes so hard that he could stitch himself to their sides so they’d all be together forever. He hadn’t felt like a broken stick stuck in hardened mud that would be there until it fossilized. He hadn’t felt like his friends were miles ahead of him, and he was trying to catch up with two broken ankles and a ten minute delay. He hadn’t felt like he was alone, not once, and god it had been wonderful.
But they all have lives - even him, a little, with his job. So he hugs Lucas, he hugs Max, and he hugs Dustin. They’d given him the worst stink eye possible when they realized that, no, he and Will hadn’t talked about anything important, but they’d all let up after seeing them look a bit more comfortable around each other. Still, he knows they’ll be calling him once they got to their respective house and dormitory to chew him out.
He hugs Will last, and impulsively gives an extra tight squeeze where his arms are around Will’s waist. He’s rewarded (not that Will would know it’s a reward) with him pressing his face into Mike’s neck, just a little, but enough to make him wish they could stay like this longer without it being weird. When Will pulls back, he’s got an easy smile on his face, and Mike - Mike -
Fuck. Mike wants to kiss him.
But he doesn’t. Because Mike the Brave is not actually all that brave, and neither is Mike Wheeler. In fact, as soon as the feeling washes over him, he yanks his hands from where they had lingered on Will’s ribs, and stuffs them into his jean pockets, taking a hearty step back. To the back of his mind that feeling goes, then.
Will doesn’t seem affected by his sudden withdrawal, and waves his goodbye as he gets into his car. Mike stands there to watch all three vehicles head down the road, and stares after them even after they’ve turned and disappeared.
And if he stands there a little longer, like maybe if he does they’ll all come back, then no one is around to judge him for it.
✨
Summer Break #002
It’s a similar situation as last year, except Will and Dustin have a bit more free time than Max and Lucas. The five of them schedule three days total for the whole party. Dustin has an extra week at the beginning of the summer, though half of it is dedicated to his mom and some visiting family, and Mike only doesn’t have work for one of his available days. Will has an extra two days to spare, though they don’t line up with Dustin’s at all. (And Mike may or may not have used his only vacation days for them specifically, but what Dustin doesn’t know can’t hurt him).
He and Dustin spend most of the morning at the arcade, followed by leftover meatloaf at Mike’s house, and then a movie marathon consisting mostly of shitty horror flicks from Family Video.
Mike knows it’s coming, but he still wants to roll himself out of the living room and out the front door when Dustin says, “So.”
“So,” Mike parrots, just to be annoying.
“I really think you need to talk to Will about El.”
That’s not what he’d been expecting, actually, and Mike accidentally crushes a pretzel in his hand with how hard he clenches his fist. “What.”
“I know, I know, you hate talking about emotions and feelings and our shared childhood trauma, but last time I talked to him on the phone, he was having a really hard time with it. He misses her, you know? And obviously, Lucas and Max and I were her best friends, but you and Will were way closer to her. As much as Lucas and I have talked to him about it, I really think you guys need to have a nice little heart to heart.”
“A nice little heart to heart,” Mike repeats quietly. “About my dead girlfriend.”
“And his dead sister,” Dustin adds, unperturbed. “Mike, I know you’re suffering. Will knows you’re suffering. I know Will’s suffering. Ergo, you two should suffer together, and wah-lah! Emotional healing.”
Mike wants to throw up. Or cry. Or punch Dustin with his pretzel-fist and then cry. “I’m not discussing this,” he says instead, voice already cracking at the end a little. Dustin sighs.
“See, but then you’re just being selfish.”
Mike whips towards him so fast that his neck cracks. “Selfish? Because I don’t want to discuss how fucking miserable I am that El is gone?”
To his credit (and Mike’s absolute fury) Dustin doesn’t back down. “Yes, Mike. Selfish, because no one wants to discuss how fucking miserable they are, but that’s the only way to get un-miserable! And in case you haven’t noticed, which it really feels like you haven’t, Will is very, very miserable about El.”
“He seems fine to me,” Mike argues, which is probably a stupid thing to say. “He’s got new friends and a new D&D group and everything.”
“And that makes up for his sister dying in front of him?” Dustin demands, turning to square his shoulders at him. “God, you really haven’t noticed how sad he is about it, have you?”
And… no, Mike honestly hasn’t. They don’t talk about it as a group, and the only one-on-one time he’s had with Will was spent reading comics and eating pizza. Like they had no problems, no trauma at all. “I…”
Dustin seems to go lax all at once, leaning back into the couch and rubbing at his forehead. “Mike, I mean this with all my heart. You’re a fucking idiot sometimes.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It seems to be mostly where Will is involved, but that’s an entirely separate problem. This is a higher priority.” He sighs, looking over Mike’s entire form like he’s determining if he’s a lost cause. “I’m begging you, just - just talk to him. I know you guys have a couple of days together next month. Please. For El?” Mike doesn’t reply, too much anxiety building in his stomach to piece words together. “For Will?” Dustin tries, and. Shit. Why does that work more than the first one? (Mike knows very well why it works more than the first one.)
He nods, suddenly exhausted. Dustin nods back, like he’s not sure if he believes him, but he puts on Evil Dead II and lets them sit in silence.
✨
His first day with Will is a Saturday, and Mike has zero intention of bringing up anything that’ll ruin it. They get breakfast at the diner, and then Will drives them to a comic book store on the outskirts of Hawkins that Mike’s only been to once. Mike finds Will staring longingly at a 1979 Uncanny X-Men comic, and sneakily buys it once his back is turned.
They spend most of the day at the newly rebuilt mall, though they find nothing of true interest in the stores except milkshakes, which they sip as they walk around and criticise the newest fashion trends. It’s a good day.
They finish with dinner at Mike’s house, though Will isn’t staying over; he promised his mom he’d visit, but Mike gets him all to himself again in two days, and he’s meant to stay over that time.
After dinner, Will gets up and grabs his keys off the kitchen counter. “Wait,” Mike says suddenly, almost forgetting his impromptu gift. He gets up from the table and digs the little plastic packet out of where he’d hidden it in his backpack. Turning back to Will, he has a moment of intense nerves. Is this weird? It’s not, right? “I, uh. Here,” he says, forcing his hand to reach out with the comic before he chickens out.
Will stares down at the offering. “What - for me?”
“Yeah,” Mike says. This is weird, isn’t it. Goddamn it. “I just… you looked like you really wanted it, and - I mean, when’s the next time you’ll be able to visit that shop, you know?”
Will’s still staring at the comic, eyes wide. Mike takes the chance to look him over properly, since he’s distracted. His hair is fluffy and looks so, so soft. The cut really suits him so much better, although a deep part of Mike will always be endeared by that childish bowlcut from his past. His jaw is much squarer than when they were kids, and - he looks like a proper man, now. Not just some gangly teenager. There’s stubble on his jaw and his shoulders are broader than Mike’s, but it’s all balanced nicely with his full lips and wide green eyes.
Will gingerly takes the comic, staring down at it like it’s something precious. “Thank you,” he breathes out, and Mike feels both ridiculous for buying it and thrilled he did it anyway.
He misses Will pretty much as soon as he’s gone, wishes he could’ve slept over even though Mike has been awful at keeping his head on straight, but the memory of Will’s smile once he accepted the comic gets him through the dark loneliness of the night.
✨
On Monday, he fully intends to talk to Will about El. But he shows up to Mike's house still sleepy, hair mussed, eyes blinking heavily, and lips pink like he’d been biting back yawns all morning. Mike takes one look at him in the driver’s seat of his car and all thoughts of childhood trauma vanish.
Unfortunately, after a short breakfast at the diner, they come back to Mike’s and he finds out that Will was tired for a reason. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” he says quietly, staring down at his knees, which are drawn up to his chin. They’ve been on the basement couch for less than ten minutes, and Mike had only just put on Star Wars.
“Weird being at your mom’s?”
And then Will turns to look at him, unhappy and exhausted, and Mike realizes that, oh. They're doing this, then. “No, Mike. I couldn’t sleep because I still see her every time I close my eyes.”
Fuck. There it is, just like that. “Oh,” he croaks out.
“It’s better at our sleepovers, or when I was dating…” He trails off, and Mike is very glad he doesn’t finish that sentence. His guts are already tying themselves into complex knots, his lungs becoming solid rocks in his chest. Discussing Will’s ex will probably make his organs straight up implode. “But when it’s just me, I dream about her. About - about when she died.”
“Oh,” Mike says again, voice so, so small.
“And I know that Lucas and Dustin and Max - they miss her, too, but it’s not the same. I - I miss my sister,” he says, and then he’s crying. It’s not heaving sobs, but Mike feels his spine go cold as silent tears curve down Will’s cheekbones, down to his sharp jaw where they either cling or drop to his shirt.
Although Mike is absolutely not okay with this conversation, absolutely not handling it well at all, he instinctively launches across the couch and wraps his arms around Will, squeezing his shoulders tight. His hands tangle into the back of Will’s shirt and he gently pulls, trying to bring them as close together as possible.
Will doesn’t break down, which - Mike has to give him credit. If he’d started this conversation and Will hugged him, he’d be a messy puddle of snot and tears on the couch cushion by now. “I know,” he says roughly. It’s all he can manage. He holds Will a little tighter, hoping it makes up for his lack of words.
But Will pulls away, out of his grasp, and turns to look at him for a long moment. Arms empty, Mike feels lost and unsure on what to do next. “I know it’s been really hard for you, Mike. I - I know you won’t admit it, but I know it is.” Mike, predictably, does not admit it. “It’s hard for me, too, you know,” he adds, fingertips picking at a thread poking from the seam of his jeans. “And I know she was your girlfriend, but she was my sister. And my best friend, when we were in California. Losing her is the worst thing I’ve ever been through.” Including Vecna, including the Mindflayer, including the Upside Down, he doesn’t say. But it’s there anyway, and Mike knows that has weight to it. Will and El shared many traits, but one in particular was having an insane amount of trauma before even turning sixteen.
“I know it is,” Mike says hoarsely. “That it’s - it’s not just me who’s…”
“And - we’ll miss her forever. She will always be my sister, and she’ll always be your…” Will seems to realize the same moment Mike does that the sentence doesn’t quite work. She won’t ‘always be’ his girlfriend. That’s not how it works for him. Will quickly changes tactics. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” he admits, voice cracking.
Something about the depressing idea of that makes Mike blurt out, “I couldn’t tell her I loved her.”
Will sighs, like Mike’s drifting off topic. “I know. I was there, remember?” Will was definitely not. Mike stares dumbly at him. Unless - maybe he was, through their powers? Were he and El connected like that? Did his hive mind powers give him access to her mind? “But - then we talked, and you did it. And it’s okay that she was piggybacking when you did - it still meant everything to her, you know? It doesn’t matter that it took you longer; it just matters that you got there.”
Oh. He’s talking about the other times Mike failed to say it, back when they were separated by states and not just miles. Not at the end, there, not as El -
“No, I mean. When she was…” He swallows hard, throat tight. “When she was about to die, and she pulled me into her mind. She said she loved me, and I - I didn’t -”
It’s the heaviest burden on his conscience, topping the way he’s handled his friendship with Will through the years. Objectively, it’s probably the worst thing Mike's ever done. Or rather, not done.
He’s not entirely sure how he expects Will to react, but one of his top guesses definitely isn’t unbridled fury.
“Are you joking?” Will demands, voice low and dangerous. Before Mike can reply, he launches himself off the couch and whirls around to face him, and - Christ, Mike’s never seen him so angry. He’s actually shaking with it, fists clenched so tight they’re white, face flushing scarlet. “Are you actually fucking joking? Your girlfriend of like, three years is about to die, and she tells you she loves you, and you just - what, say nothing?”
“I -”
“She loved you so much, and she died for us, for you, and you couldn’t even give her that in her final moments?”
He’s so caught off guard with Will’s reaction, so dumbstruck, that the only thing he manages to get out is a garbled, “I thought you believed she survived.”
Will flips. His. Shit.
“And if she actually fucking died?” he shouts, and Mike hazily prays no one hears them upstairs. Or at the very least, that they’ll leave them be. “And if she’s been dead for years, and you couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted so, so badly?”
“I - why are you -”
“You weren’t there, you didn’t see how devastated she was every time one of your stupid letters said ‘from’! Each time she hung up the phone, so, so sad that you couldn’t say it. She spent her whole life with no real family, and she finally gets people who actually care about her, and the person who should’ve loved her the most - you - couldn’t even tell her that when she was about to die?”
Mike pushes himself off the couch, stepping around so he’s standing on the opposite side of the coffee table to Will. He doesn’t mean to have it between them, necessarily, but it does feel like an extra layer of protection. Part of him wonders, if Will got mad enough, if his old powers would resurface and he could actually kill Mike. “I know it’s bad, okay?”
“Bad? What the fuck, Mike. Did you even actually love her?”
He says, “Yes! Yeah, of course,” but there’s a thick pause before it, and Will’s scowl deepens. “I - I did, okay. I do! She was my best friend, but -” He sees Will flinch at that. Another tally on the reasons why Mike feels like a piece of shit. Grand. “I mean, obviously you are, too. All of you guys, but I just…”
“If you tell me you only loved her as a friend, I’m going to lose it,” Will warns darkly. And, shit, he really has every right to do that, doesn’t he? El and Will, two people Mike’s decided he loved as friends instead of more.
Only one of those decisions was a lie. It probably won’t get him out of this, though, so he keeps that nugget of truth where it belongs, wedged deep in the caverns of his gut, never to get a glimpse of daylight. “Will, I know I fucked up, okay. I hate me more than you ever could about it. I wish every day that I made things right with her, and I know I was a horrible boyfriend.” He feels stingy tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “And I can’t even fix it now. But I still miss her, and I still hope she’s out there.”
Will is silent for a long moment, glaring at him and fists still curled tight. He looks every bit the powerful sorcerer he portrays in campaigns. Mike tries his best not to be turned on by it. Just seems like it’d be in poor taste, given the fact that Will may never speak to him again. “I don’t hate you,” Will says finally, forced. “I could never hate you, Mike, as much as I wish I could. But you’ve done some awful shit to El, and I don’t know how to be okay with that.” He finally stops staring daggers at Mike to frown at the floor. “I gotta go. I just - I need to go.” He turns around and starts to leave.
“Will -”
Will whips around sharply, finger pointed at Mike accusingly. “Figure your shit out, Mike. Stop making people think they can have you and then slamming them out.” Mike’s heart sinks to his toes. People. Not just El. “And if she ever does come back, you better be honest with her. About me having to help you say you love her, and about why you were too much of a coward to say it again.”
With that, he snatches his overnight bag from the floor and leaves, slamming the basement door behind himself.
He tries so, so hard, but with a single, rib-wracking, shuddering inhale, Mike Wheeler breaks into sobs.
✨
He doesn’t hear from Will again for the rest of the summer. Lucas does him the favor of letting him know that Will had packed up and left for his apartment early. Their two D&D sessions of the summer are cancelled, and Mike, when asked, struggles to get the words out on why it happened.
But he doesn’t have to, apparently; Dustin, Max, and Lucas all seem to piece most of it together. Will lost his patience with Mike, and Mike did not succeed in keeping him here.
✨
He writes a total of four letters to Will over the course of that autumn, but he doesn’t get a single one back. He tries calling, after hours of amping himself up to do it, but Will doesn’t pick up any of the three times he tries.
He has no idea where Will’s apartment is, and Lucas and Dustin won’t admit that they do know the address, so he’s stuck wallowing in misery and wondering if he’ll ever see his best friend again, or if he fucked up that badly.
His biggest regret of it all is that he didn’t tell Will that he loves him. Whether Will would accept him saying it or not, it’s true and Mike has a desperate itch to tell him, even if it’s the last thing they ever say to each other. He’s been a coward about it for so, so long, but if he gets a chance again, he knows he has to actually be Mike the Brave and do it.
✨
He’s at his typewriter the day before Dustin comes in for winter break when he hears the crackle of a car pulling into the driveway. His parents are out and Nancy’s not visiting for a few more days, so he stands up and leans to peer out the window curiously.
Sitting in his driveway is a familiar shitty, rusty car. Staring up at him from the driver's seat, looking beautiful as always, is Will Byers.