Chapter Text
Love is an ugly thing. Mike grew up with that idea. His parents would come home from date nights worse off, his mother would be wine drunk and crying, his father wouldn’t help. Then, when they woke in the morning, the house would be silent and cold. Mike knew when to make little trips into the family room, when to avoid the spot on the stairs that creaked. Nancy wrote the unspoken rules before him, Holly adapted to them when she was old enough. Love between his two parents was ugly, and that was why Mike hid from it.
But Mike knew that wasn’t the only type of love, but he knew it was everyone else's favorite. Every movie Mike had ever seen drew a heavy importance on love between a man and a woman, like that was the only kind Mike was supposed to want. There wasn’t an abundance of media telling Mike how much he was supposed to cherish his mother’s kiss on his forehead as he walked out the door, or how Nancy would push him on the swings. When his family told him they loved him, he’d say it back and it felt real. His parents rarely said they loved each other and when they did, it sounded like obligation instead of adoration.
Mike Wheeler wouldn’t know much of platonic love until he met Will Byers. He was a small boy on a swingset. It was an early autumn afternoon, wind sweeping leaves from the ground and leading them in a dance. Mike had crossed the playground four times over before he saw someone alone on the swings. They looked sad, they were hunched over themselves, kicking their feet in the dirt. When Mike approached and, in a rare stroke of genius, asked the boy to be his friend, Will lit up like a fire. He’d thrashed around on the swings in pure happiness, as the boys giggled and laughed over nothing. Mike was sure that this, whatever it was, was beautiful.
Love in the Byers house was not unlike Mike’s own. Mr. and Mrs. Byers fought, Will would tell him during secret sleepovers when Dustin and Lucas were busy. Lonnie Byers had a sharp tongue, he said awful things to Joyce, to Jonathan, to Will. Lonnie liked to hurt people in a way Mike’s own father never would. Where Ted was silent and checked out, Lonnie raged and beat down. Mike couldn’t wrap his head around how Joyce had ever loved Lonnie. He sometimes thought that about his own parents, but he was taught by TV that every man hated his wife after a while.
But like Mike’s house, love showed up in different ways. Mike knew Jonathan treated Will a bit kinder than Nancy treated her own brother, but everyone treated Will differently. Even Mike, admittedly. Lucas joined them later, and Dustin even more so. They’ve had time to call out Mike’s favoritism of Will, no matter how much Mike protests that they’re all his best friends. Mike wasn’t sure what in his bones made him treat Will this way, it came almost naturally. Maybe it came naturally for Mrs. Byers and Jonathan too.
A long time ago, back when Joyce let Will bike home with the other boys, they’d all huddled in Mike’s basement to watch The Emperor Strikes Back for maybe the 70th time since its release the year prior. Mike’s basement was always a safe space, since his parents took over the kitchen and living room, and Nancy’s babbling about boys to Barb was way too loud at way too late with their walls that were way too thin. Mike and Will took the couch, while Dustin and Lucas shared a popcorn bowl on the floor below them. Those two were already nodding off in their sleeping bags, and the radiating warmth coming from the vents had been soothing them nearly to sleep since they’d escaped the winter chill.
And when their snores traveled up to Mike and Will’s ears, they giggled and huddled closer, subconsciously. Will had been quieter recently, his hands were shaking on their handle bikes earlier, even though Mike’s mother got him really thick gloves this last Christmas. They shook less now, but hadn’t stopped. Mike had taken Will’s hand in his own, somewhere between Han Solo and the Princess escaping the Empire and Luke training to be a Jedi. Mike could see a sadness in Will’s eyes, a sadness that often followed the morning after a Joyce and Lonnie fight. Mike sometimes beat himself up over not being able to help enough, to fix what was making Will so glum. If he could fight Lonnie, he would.
Mike squeezed Will’s tiny hand harder than he probably should. His head knocked against Will’s as he scrambled to sit up. It’d been dark for hours, all of them were full of pizza and pop and Mom’s cookies. He rubbed his left eye with his free hand and turned to Will.
“They took all the sleeping bags.” Mike darted his eyes down at the pile of two boys on the floor.
“Yeah…” Will sheepishly smiled, “do you want me to take the chair?”
Mike’s back hurt just thinking about it. He shook his head violently. Will would thank him for saving him from lower back pain when they were all old and gray. He grabbed a throw pillow that had fallen on the floor and tossed it on the other end of the couch.
“If we put our feet together we can both fit here,” Mike reasoned, directing Will with his hands to line up his legs with Mike’s so that they wouldn’t fall off the couch.
Mike laid back on the other end, he watched Will turn on his side with a soft sigh, squirming into the pillow to get comfortable. He hadn’t looked this calm in a while. Will and his ankles bumped together. Mike kicked him, playfully, of course. Will made a noise of alarm before a mischievous smile spread across his face and he kicked back, hard. Mike caught Will’s next attack with his foot and pushed back as Will pushed forward. Somehow, this turned into a fun game called ‘Who Can Get Kicked Off The Couch First’ and Mike may or may not have accidentally bashed Lucas in the head.
“OW!” A pre-pubescent screech erupted from him. “Go to sleep, assholes!”
Mike looked at Will with a guilty expression, which Will returned almost exactly, before they erupted into feisty giggles. Somewhere below them, Lucas let out a huff of annoyance before going back to sleep. Mike and Will held their own stomachs as they laughed themselves to sleep.
As the high wore down, Mike thought that this was what love was supposed to be. Like a fairy tale. The bond between him and Will was all encompassing and warm, surely this was what so many people longed for and wrote flowery poems about. Something that grew past than the love he felt for Lucas and Dustin, not more important, but different. But Mike knew, somewhere in his soul, that this could not be love, because it was beautiful. Love was something between a man and a woman, a tie between two people that meant you had to stay, no matter how sad it made you. No, this just had to be something different, something nice, something happy and innocent.