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Living alongside seven other people at the Wheeler’s house might not have been the most relaxing, but at the very least Will Byers is able to learn new things about Mike Wheeler every day.
For example, the fact that he once cut half his hair off with craft scissors as a daycare student, and Karen Wheeler had to take him to a barber shop at the ripe age of 3 to get it evened out. The image of toddler Mike sitting in a proper barber, surrounded by men with big boisterous beards, is stuck in Will’s head for the rest of the day after he finds out.
Or, the fact that Mike absolutely hated macaroni -- as in, got utterly nauseous at the sight of it -- and refused to make those little Macaroni ornaments at school Christmas assemblies for the first five years of his life because of it.
“I only ever made them in kindergarten because you wanted to,” Mike grumbles to Will one foggy afternoon, slouched low on the beanbag chair in his basement.
“Oh, that must’ve been really hard,” Will deadpans from the bed, which earns him a pillow in the face. “Hey!”
“Yeah, well, making all those ornaments fucking sucked.” Mike glares at Will, but apparently can’t hide the little grin that splits his face. “I nearly threw up every day for a week during Christmas for, like, seven years. Seven years, Will!”
Will just rolls his eyes, and smacks the pillow back across the room into Mike’s chest, laughing when he’s rewarded with an oomph.
The most fascinating discovery, though, is realizing that the great Michael Wheeler could play piano. Will finds out by accident, really, stumbling in on Mike messing around on an old keyboard in the Wheeler attic after being sent to find Christmas decorations.
Will kicks up the trapdoor with a grunt, and pokes his head up just as Mike whips around and clears his throat. “Oh! Will! Hi, um, what are you doing here?”
“I’m getting Christmas decorations.” Will narrows his eyes. “What’re you doing here?”
Mike shifts a little bit, as if to hide something from Will’s view. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. What’s behind you?”
“Nothing! It’s nothing.” But Mike’s a horrible liar, and when Will cranes his neck he can spot the familiar black-and-white, fake ivory keys of an old electric keyboard.
“Is that a piano?” Will gapes at Mike, who has guilt written across every crease of his sheepish smile. “You can play piano? Since when?”
“Yeah, I uh…I’ve been in classes since I was, like, twelve.” Mike says, seemingly giving up on lying to Will. He tugs the keyboard out from behind him and places it on his lap, cheeks flushing.
“Oh, really?” Will muses, a grin splitting his face. “I think I would’ve remembered that. Or did you forget to mention it?” Will gasps. “Did it happen when I was missing?”
“What! No!” Mike looks even more flustered now, and refuses to meet Will’s eyes. “No, it happened after.”
“Well, how come I never knew?” He blinks, and his stomach falls briefly at the thought that Mike would hide anything from him, and he immediately pushes the feeling away. Don’t be stupid.
Mike rolls his eyes. “I didn’t tell anyone, obviously. Can you imagine what Dustin and Lucas would say?“
Will perks up, laughing. “Oh my god—“
“Don’t tell them.” Mike glares at Will. “I’m serious. My life would be over.”
“Come on, they’re not that mean.”
“Says you!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Will teases.
“Y’know, you’re...” Mike seems to shrink where he sits on the attic floor. He glances at Will, then back down at the piano keys, then back up at Will. “You’re you. Nobody likes to make fun of you.”
Will snorts. “Who have you been talking to for the past five years? Will “Zombie Boy” Byers?”
Mike slams out a few frustrated, out-of-tune notes on the piano. “Those don’t--”
“I’m pretty sure they do count, actually.”
“You know what I mean,” Mike says loudly. “Those are stupid insults.” He glances at Will, eyes hooded in the low light of the attic, and Will’s stomach flips. “Nobody could find anything to insult you about seriously.”
Oh.
Will coughs. “I-- thank you.”
Mike opens his mouth for a moment, as if about to say something further, but then shakes his head. He changes the subject. “Do you wanna hear a song?”
“Is it even a question?”
Mike grins as Will wiggles to sit across from him in the attic -- which is quite small, Will realizes -- and he plays out a few wonky notes on the keyboard. He winces. “This thing is really old.”
“It’s fine, keep going,” Will encourages.
Mike does -- even though Will can admit that he’s right, it is old, and Mike’s playing sounds similar to a dying cat for a few moments before the piano seems to warm up to being played.
But then he gets the hang of it, and...well. Will is glad that the darkness of the attic can hide his blush, because Mike playing the piano is apparently an entirely otherworldly sight to behold.
“Do you know this song?” Mike murmurs, humming to himself as his foot taps the attic floor in beat. His slender fingers slide across the keys, nearly like magic, Will thinks. He’s staring too hard at the tendons in Mike’s hand, at the way they stretch and bend to form illicit melodies that fill the space between them, at the way Mike’s lips part as he mouths the words run away, turn away, run away--
“Will?”
Will blinks. “What?”
The corners of Mike’s lips quirk up, and Will has to try very hard not to let his gaze linger on them. “I said, do you know this song? Bronski Beat?”
Will thinks for a moment as Mike plays out a few more seconds of the melody. It’s sweet, and oddly sad. “It’s familiar.”
“Smalltown Boy is my favorite,” Mike says quietly. He looks like some renaissance statue, head bowed over his keyboard, deft fingers still moving across the not-ebony. I’d like to paint him, Will thinks.
When Mike speaks again it’s almost like an afterthought, not meant to be articulated. “I should have you listen to The Age of Consent.”
“Maybe I will.” Will smiles a little, tilts his head to one side. “Did you ever listen to The Cure? I gave you my ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ CD and everything.”
"I have, actually.”
“Oh really? What’s your favorite song?”
“I don’t mind 10:15 Saturday Night,” Mike muses. “Or Boys Don’t Cry. But that’s on the--”
“--on the deluxe edition.” Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “Which I don’t own. Where the hell did you listen to it?”
Mike—is Mike blushing? “I saw that poster you had on your wall, in California, and I asked Jonathon about it, and, well.” Mike shrugs. “He found an old deluxe edition cassette at your old house, and let me borrow it. I guess it’s how you listened to it to begin with, right?”
Will gapes at him. “That’s my favorite song, Mike, why on earth didn’t you tell me?”
If it’s possible, Mike seems to turn an even darker shade of pink. “Well, I was— I was going to—“
“Oh, right, you just forgot somehow—“
“I was going to, but I wanted to learn how to play it first,” Mike finishes. “For you to hear.”
“Oh,” Will says.
“Asshole,” Mike says, but he’s smiling.
They sit in silence for a moment. Will leans back on his hands, and watches as Mike experimentally presses out a few more melodies. The moment is comfortable, and Will finds himself observing Mike again -- his eyes follow the sharp sweep of his cheekbones, the softness of his newly-cut hair, the satisfying slouch of his posture as his hands flex to ring out notes on the keyboard, fingers calloused and perfect for playing, for touching--
Christ. I really need to stop doing that, Will thinks. Thankfully, Mike pipes up again, breaking him from his thoughts.
“Y’know, I, ah, had a bunch of nightmares? After you went missing?” The tremor in Mike’s voice is slight when he says it, but it still makes Will straighten his back. Mike glances up at him. “That’s why I started piano lessons.”
“I...huh?”
“Piano lessons,” Mike repeats, “My mom put me in them that summer after, ‘cause all the nightmares were so bad. Was s'posed to help with the stress, in theory.” Mike snorts. "Load of bullshit."
Will wrinkles his brow. “Is that why you didn’t want to tell us about them?” He asks. “ I wouldn’t’ve judged you, you know I had nightmares too.”
“No, I -- they were about you.” Mike doesn't meet his eyes. "The nightmares."
“Oh,” Will says, for what feels like the hundredth time in the past five minutes. “Well...I still wouldn’t have judged you.”
Mike smiles, and Will’s stomach can’t tell the small flash of dimples apart from hurling himself out of a seven story building. “I didn’t want you to worry, though. Or feel bad about it, you always find a way to blame yourself somehow--”
“I do not,” Will protests.
“Yeah, you do.”
Will scoffs, disagreeing, but there’s a little warmth spreading throughout his chest, as if he were being held over an open flame. “I’m glad you told me anyway.”
“Me too,” Mike says softly. Their eyes meet, and Will can feel the exchange that happens between them -- silent, but reassuring in the way that their wordless interactions always have been.
I’m sorry that I didn’t say it.
You don’t have to hide it from me at all.
Mike breaks his gaze away first. He plays out the beginning notes to Boys Don’t Cry, impossibly wonky on the out-of-tune keys, brows wiggling. “At least I can play your favorite song now, though.”
“I almost wish you couldn’t,” Will winces, knocking their feet playfully.
Mike slaps a hand over his chest, feigning offence. “You wound me, dear cleric!”
Will just blows a raspberry at him, which earns him a playful nudge that he somehow manages to dodge, despite being only a few feet away from Mike. Will tsks. “Sloppy work, Wheeler.”
Mike opts for yet another eyeroll instead of taking up his jab, and they descend into a final silence that Mike, once again, is the first to break. Will nearly expects him to at this point -- it’s been steady, like the ebb and flow of a tide. Mike’s been steady.
“I’m still gonna do it, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Learn songs you like.” Mike bites his lip, ever so slightly, deep in thought. “Maybe I’ll get Jonathon to help again...if I could get a proper keyboard...”
Will laughs, again, bright in the confined space of the attic, and smiles warmly. “I know you will, Mike.”
It’s true -- he does know. He can see it now: Mike excitedly running over some Journey or Billy Joel album of his, picking out the best tunes, reworking them to fit the busted old piano and sound as perfect as they could.
And over and over again, Will knows he would listen -- off-key notes and all.