Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mike dreams of Starcourt Mall.

Distantly, he knows that it’s not real, that he’s not there.

He goes through the motions anyway, trying to focus on the feeling of El’s bloody fingers between his, the weight of her arm slung around his shoulder, the shape of her shadow limping across the tile. He tries to focus on the sound of her voice, velvet, however strained, but it’s lost to the rumbling snarl of the Mind Flayer. 

He goes through the motions: three sets of rushed footfalls, pants and whimpers. Flickering lights and the faint smell of the food court. Dripping flesh, outstretched claws, screeching and chittering.

He doesn’t wake up until after Billy Hargrove grabs a fistful of his shirt and slams his face into a metal pole.

“Mike?” Max’s voice warps, flicking around his head as he blinks between stages of consciousness. “Mike. Mike, get up. Can you hear me?”

He’s blinded by sterile, white light, and then he’s gasping, flexing against his shitty mattress and straining his eyes in an attempt to focus the blurry image of his dorm ceiling.

“Hey,” someone is gently saying.

Mike can’t focus on it. His head hurts. His sinuses feel tight and vindictive. There’s a stab of pain behind his eyes and a ringing in his ears. He has to reach up and touch the bridge of his nose to make sure the gash from his nightmare hasn’t bled into real life, certain he can still feel the blood dripping down his throat.

That same someone is pulling his hand away from his face. His fingers are dry and trembling.

“Mike, hey.” 

He blinks at the someone. No, not someone—Will, Mike’s roommate and best friend.

His hair is messy, sticking up in odd places, and his skin is plump and pink with remnants of sleep. Mike’s gaze falls to where his leg is hooked over the bed. The sweatpants he’s wearing are a far cry from the tiny denim shorts he had on a second ago.

“What was it?” he asks. 

“Starcourt,” Mike replies robotically.

Will hums.

When he releases Mike’s arm to trace that same diagonal over his nose, his path is much more precise. Their faces are close enough for Mike to feel Will’s soft exhale against his cheek, so probably also close enough for Will to make out the faded, white scar there. He follows it with his pointer finger like a dotted line on a map.

Mike shivers. Will’s hands are always cold, his touch feather-light—which is especially nice now.

“Are you feeling okay?”

Vecna is long gone and super dead, but, sometimes, Mike is unconvinced that Will’s powers met that same fate. Surely, he’s still got some mind-entering abilities left over.

“I feel like—” he admits, gesturing vaguely around the center of his face. “—it hurts. But I know that’s impossible.” 

“Not impossible,” Will corrects, thumb swiping playfully over the side of Mike’s nostril. “I just don’t think it’s related. You feel a little warm.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Will chuckles. His voice lowers to a cautious whisper, like he’s afraid to break the news. “And… you were snoring.”

“Shit,” Mike grumbles, partly because Will is onto something—he only snores when he’s sick—and partly because he feels like his fucking mouth-breather dad. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he assures, brows tilting upwards. “I’m glad I was up, since—you know—”

You had a bad dream and needed me to console you?

Mike groans, which makes Will cock his head in a disgustingly adorable way, which makes Mike groan again. 

He knows he’s being unfair. Will has nightmares all the time. They never make each other feel bad about them.

That’s kind of the whole perk of being roommates: Mike doesn’t have to explain why he sometimes wakes up screaming his ex-girlfriend’s name in the middle of the night with the intensity of someone being skinned alive, and Will doesn’t have to explain why he sometimes wakes up dry heaving and clawing at his throat, trying to expel the memory of one Dart-D’Artagnan from his stomach. Will doesn’t ask who El is—obviously—or try to get Mike sent to an asylum, and Mike doesn’t complain about having to hold a bucket under Will’s chin on particularly rough nights. He doesn’t even complain about having to wash it out in the communal bathroom afterward.

Still, he’s embarrassed. 

Mike doesn’t get to slip into the background the way he used to here. There are no sisters to hog Will’s attention. No interdimensional monsters, either—and even if there were, Mike struggles to imagine Will would be any less thoughtful, considerate, and attuned to him.

He doesn’t baby him; he never has, but he does watch. Carefully.

A balmy feeling flutters in Mike’s abdomen, something halfway between butterflies and nausea.

“Yeah,” he mumbles when he remembers he’s supposed to say something. Will’s head straightens back out. “Thank you.” 

Will waves that off, still looking at Mike like he’s a problem to solve.

“I’m fine,” he says, maybe too quickly. If he thinks about it, his throat is a little sore. If he really thinks about it, his whole body is a little sore, but he’s not. So. He sticks to what he’s already admitted to. “Just a headache. How much longer ‘til class?”

Without so much as a glance toward the clock on Mike’s nightstand, Will informs him, “You have Film & Lit in a few hours.”

“Will?”

“Yeah, Mike?”

Mike is reminded, again, how close their faces are. He’s not sure when he even sat up. Will must’ve had a hand in that. 

“Kill me,” he says dryly. 

Will’s response is immediate.

“No,” he murmurs, cheeks rounded with his soft smile. Mike doesn’t miss the pained twitch at the corner of his eye, like he’s remembering all the other times Mike has begged someone to do that—all the times he’s meant it. As if in response, his thumb caresses Mike’s jaw. “I don’t think you should go.” 

“I have to go,” Mike sighs. Then, like an idiot, he doubles down. “I’m not getting out of that class unless you kill me, Will, please.”

The joke doesn’t land the first time, and it really doesn’t land the second time. 

Will slips off the bed, and the only thing stopping Mike from scrambling after him—from falling to his knees and clutching the fabric around Will’s thighs so he can’t leave—is how heavy his limbs feel.

“Guess you’re going, then,” Will says, not unkindly. His face is closed-off, though, wounded, the corners of his mouth dragged into a jaded frown. The kind that says, I’m not playing this game with you today.

Mike gets a sick twinge of satisfaction from this, barbed wire around his ribcage. He doesn’t deserve to be indulged, no matter how badly he wants it.

“Go back to bed. I’ll be gone when you wake up,” Will reminds him, which means it’s Thursday. Will has an 8 a.m. Film & Lit is at 9:15. He clicks off Mike’s bedside lamp with a quick, sharp movement. “Get some rest, okay? Don’t sleep through your alarm.”

“Okay,” Mike chokes. He thinks he could punch Will square in the face right now, and it wouldn’t stop him from being this caring—this full of truly unconditional love Mike doesn’t even remotely deserve. “I’ll try.”

By some miracle, or a cruel twist of fate, Mike does not sleep through his alarm.

The shrill sound of it slices his head right down the middle, and when he flops over to slam his hand into the offending plastic, he finds that he’s moving in slow motion, limbs laden with the same dense and syrupy something that’s sliding down the walls of his skull and drowning his brain.

Eventually, the side of his palm lands on the correct button.

The silence is almost worse.

With nothing else to focus on, Mike is hyper-aware of how small his bed is, the way the wooden frame feels against his bare feet. The buzz of the mini fridge, the throb of his eardrums. The absence of Will.

“Uh—” Mike says to no one. His throat feels slimy and narrow. “Fuck.”

He throws himself off the bed in one clumsy movement, like ripping off a bandaid. His comforter tries to kill him—baby blue polyester twisting around his ankles—but he survives by pulling it clean off the mattress and stomping over it. Will’s side of the room tilts, walls stretching and curving over Mike’s head.

He blinks at what he knows is a poster of The Clash, even though the words aren’t registering, then remembers he doesn’t have his glasses on.

He spots them while he’s pulling the nearest article of clean clothing—something of Will’s—over his head. They’re dropped into a mug on his desk. Mike settles the warm, striped fabric over his midriff and doesn’t bother changing his pants.

He pockets the glasses, deciding he’ll wait until the absolute last possible second to amplify his headache, and then catches a glimpse of something else. There’s a piece of paper draped over his typewriter, thick and textured with one frayed edge.

Will left behind a drawing for him. Mike feels instantly lighter as he reaches for it.

He does this sometimes, doodles of Mike’s side profile or random objects around the room. Goofy caricatures of Dustin, Max, and Lucas—sometimes wildly offensive ones of Hopper. Characters and scenes from Mike’s stories.

This one’s a portrait—a lighting study, if he had to guess. It’s not fully rendered, he doesn’t think, but it’s much more detailed than most of the stuff Will lets him keep.

There’s a certain softness to the subject’s facial features, a certain youth. It doesn’t feel uncanny at all, which is a common criticism Will has about his own art. It feels honest, raw, devoted. Love seeps into the paper with indigo ink.

His name isn’t on it, but the tender care in each pen stroke is signature enough of a Will Byers original. Today’s date is scribbled at the top. Then, below, in much neater writing, as if Mike wouldn’t be able to recognize the loud print on her shirt from a mile away: Jane (1985).

A few inches below the sketch, he’s also written, Feel better, Mike, punctuated by something he scribbled over and a haphazard smiley face.

Mike flips the page over. The outline of a tiny heart bleeds through.

Fresh air helps a little with the stuffiness and the sweating, but the walk to the humanities building feels endless, like Mike is trudging along with a Mack Truck chained to his ankles.

By the time he slumps into his usual chair in the back of the room, he’s one too-long blink away from sleep and one ill-timed sneeze away from his face exploding.

It’s a small class, and Professor Wilson is a colossal asshole, embarrassing Mike with a grumbly “Michael,” or “Eyes up here,” or “Am I boring you, Mr. Wheeler?” every time he so much as rests his chin in his palm.

Distantly, he thinks that anyone who calls him Mr. Wheeler should die, so he offers one small, ingenuine, “Sorry, sir,” and then spends the rest of the hour-long lecture trying to snap his wrinkly old neck with his mind and counting down the seconds until his next class: some bullshit Gen Ed called American Quests that starts fifteen minutes after this one.

It sounded much more interesting during registration than it actually is. Mike sort of hates it, actually, but that’s not what’s important.

The sight of Will puts a little pep in Mike’s step—pep being the bare minimum amount of energy required to walk over the threshold and out into the hallway.

Will is waiting outside Mike’s class, like he is every week, fidgeting with his backpack strap and looking incredibly interested in his own shoes. He looks up when Mike clears his throat, eyes alight, a shy smile tugging at his lips.

The difference between today and every other Thursday is that Will’s face instantly drops when he gets a real, honest-to-God look at him.

“Woah,” he says lowly. “You actually made it to class.”

“Why are you here if you thought I didn’t?” Mike asks because he’s a dick. One of his classmates takes an exaggerated side step around him, like she’s afraid to breathe his air after the hour she just endured.

He supposes she probably should be, but he glares at her back all the same.

Will is unfazed. “I mean, I wasn’t sure.”

“Well, ta-da,” Mike does jazz hands. The movement looks and feels delayed, like he’s a walking long-exposure photograph. “I’m here.”

He tries to force a smile onto his face so the sarcasm and bite in his tone aren’t overkill, but—judging by the unimpressed look Will is giving him—it doesn’t work.

Quickly, because he’s not in as much of a self-sabotaging mood as he was this morning, Mike tacks on, “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m being a jerk.”

The attempt at communication makes Will glow with pride, which makes Mike feel pathetic and lightheaded.

“That’s okay,” he says, too honestly. “You don’t feel well.”

“I feel—” Mike stutters around his constricting throat. One step forward, two steps back. He needs to wipe that look off Will’s face, lest he do something crazy like kiss him full on the lips right here in front of everyone. “I’m fine.”

Will raises an eyebrow.

Please don’t be a mind-reader, Mike thinks. Please don’t be a mind-reader—

“Mike.”

“Will, please,” he finds himself blubbering. Sounding far from fine, suddenly bordering hysteria, he says, “I’m fine. I just want to have a normal day, please—please, can we just go to class? I don’t want to fight about this.”

Will flinches—like, physically recoils. His eyes are wide, brows furrowed and mouth tilted. He’s searching Mike’s face for answers, scrutinizing green.

He looks fourteen.

“I—” he stammers. “We weren’t going to fight. I just—are you sure?”

Mike nods, no longer trusting himself to speak. His lips are shut tight and wobbling. His teeth ache. 

“Quests isn’t a big deal,” Will assures. “I don’t mind playing hooky with you.”

And Mike wants that, almost more than anything. He wants it so bad that he’s choking on it, desire clogging his lungs like Upside Down spores.

“Or, I can just walk you home, if you want to be alone. I’d only be a few minutes late—”

Mike shakes his head vehemently. Will takes this as confirmation that he wants to go to class, and Mike doesn’t correct him. That is what he said, after all.

“Okay, fine,” Will says reluctantly, blissfully cool fingers closing around Mike’s wrist. “Let’s go.”

No more than ten minutes in, Will is punishing him.

He leans over, despite the fact that they’re already sitting next to each other, borderline bumping knees, and whispers, “Is that my sweater, by the way?”

Mike, who has the collar of said sweater pulled over the bottom half of his face—to combat the frostbite he’s certain he’s developing and hide the way his mouth now needs to be held open in order for him to breathe—blinks languidly. The tip of his nose is tingly and numb, but his cheeks are warm and only getting warmer.

“Um,” he tries, shivering as Will’s breath ghosts his ear. “No.”

“Oh,” Will reaches for the hem of the too-short sleeve riding up Mike’s right forearm. “That’s weird. I could’ve sworn I left one just like this draped over my desk chair this morning.”

“Super weird,” Mike agrees. His voice sounds snotty to his own ears. For a second, he wonders if Will has picked up on it—but then, of course he has. “The Will Byers I know doesn’t leave clothes lying around.”

“There was a method to the madness,” Will defends, as if Mike’s half of the room doesn’t look like a tornado ran through it on the best days. “I was planning on wearing it tonight.”

“Oh, shit,” Mike deflates a little. “Sorry, Will, I—I just grabbed the first thing I saw—”

“That’s three.”

Mike has to hold his breath until the suffocating urge to cough subsides. Then, “What?”

“Three ‘sorry’s today,” he clarifies. He seems to have settled back in his seat while Mike was trying not to go into respiratory arrest. “That’s how I know you’re sick.”

“I—”

“It’s fine, though,” Will smiles reassuringly at him before turning back towards the front of the classroom, where their professor is jotting something down, chalk screeching. “I’ll just wear something else—wait—can you see?”

Mike remembers that his glasses are still in his pocket and not on his face. There’s something else he’s forgetting, though. Something actually important.

“Mike?”

He squints at the board. His left eye threatens to stage a revolt and plop right out onto the desk. “It’s cute that you think I’m paying attention either way.”

His gaze is pulled contentedly back towards Will, who he can see. He's staring blankly ahead. Mike studies the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips, the bright pink skin over his ears. Huh.

“Why are we here, then?” Will argues after a moment, but the question is lost to Mike’s sudden realization. 

“Fuck,” he accidentally verbalizes. “You have a date tonight.”

Will does look at him, then. He has the audacity to seem startled, that blush making quick work of the rest of his face. “No—we’re—I mean—we’re just hanging out.”

“You pre-picked an outfit,” Mike accuses, voice pitching out of whisper territory. Fortunately for him, this is a much larger classroom, and they’re hiding out in the last row, closest to the door. A handful of students turn their nose up at him, but their professor is none the wiser.

“Yeah, which you’re now infecting.”

Mike frowns. Sweat is starting to pool along his sides and the back of his neck, like the sweater is fighting back against its kidnapping. He pulls the fabric off his face, trying not to stretch the collar beyond repair as he puts some suddenly necessary distance between the wool and his throat. His chest is heaving. The thought of that guy—Carl or Colten or Carsen or something—from Will’s study group makes his stomach lurch.

A wet cough startles out of him, and the students from before fix him with a chorus of grimaces. Then, Will’s hand is on his back, rocking with the force of Mike’s convulsions.

“Hey,” he attempts to soothe, after the fit has gone on for longer than what is socially acceptable. This is probably gentle Will-speak for, Shut the fuck up, Mike. “Are you okay?”

Mike splutters into his fist. He has to screw his eyes shut against the prickle of tears and the way his vision is doubling.

“Yeah,” he croaks, breathless. Will is looking at him like he’s afraid he might start breaking apart, limb by limb, like an old car.

Before apologizing, he weakly warns, “Here comes number four.”

“You’re such an idiot, Mike,” Will tells him, needlessly.

“Mmhm,” Mike grunts.

He doesn’t make it to his third and final class of the day. He doesn’t even try, the need for normalcy and control outweighed by the need to be horizontal—like, now.

Will is tucked into his side, shouldering his limp arm and half-dragging him along the sidewalk.

“Can you—” he tugs on Mike’s hand. “—Help me out a little, please? You’re, like, noodle-y.”

Mike’s eyes roll back into his head as he blinks. His ears feel like they’re stuffed full of cotton. At Will’s request, he perks up a little, focusing on placing one foot in front of the other and not braining himself on the cement.

“Thanks,” Will smiles audibly, squeezing the soft curve of Mike’s waist where his hand is settled. “Almost there.”

Mike thinks he might be lying, but he doesn’t bother to check. This whole campus is a dizzying blur of trees and concrete. His sneakers are the only thing in focus, his head lolling, bony chin to his chest.

“Will.”

He stops walking, turning his head at the sound of Mike’s voice and pulling him to a halt, too. Will’s name is the closest thing to a full sentence that’s come out of his mouth for at least half an hour.

Mike registers the movement of Will’s neck in his periphery, the proximity of his nose to Mike’s unbrushed hair and the tip of his ear—his cheek, his mouth. He stares at an undecipherable drawing on the toe of his shoe, Sharpie ink faded into a deep blue Hawkins souvenir (thanks, Robin).

“You okay?” Will asks resiliently. “Or just need a minute?”

Mike nods. The world flips, sweltering air around his face, and Will’s grip on him tightens. “That one.”

“A real minute, or should I hobble you over to that bench over there? Or—uh—the trash can? You really don’t look too hot—”

Except that’s exactly what Mike is: too hot. A vaguely dissatisfied noise escapes from between his clenched teeth, and he hopes it suffices. The fever inside him is feeding something monstrous, selfish and insatiable. “Just… a minute.”

“Okay,” Will agrees, snaking his arm impossibly tighter around him. His palm slips beneath their shared sweater, fingers grazing the warm, taut skin over Mike’s stomach.

The monster burgeons.

Mike’s and Will’s fingertips brush as a lukewarm bowl is passed between them.

The dish sits heavy in Mike’s lap, cool plastic beneath his palm.

“It's the best I can do right now,” Will’s teeth sink apologetically into his bottom lip. Then, trying for humor, “How come nobody ever told us we needed to buy, like, actual food for this place?”

Joyce, Karen, and Nancy all did, actually, but that’s neither here nor there.

They have keepsakes—art and books and photographs and letters—piled up on every flat surface and littered on every square inch of the wall, but that’s about it. Things like medicine and tissues and thermometers were never very high on the moving list. Later problems, for sure, only later is now. 

“It’s—” Mike swallows. He likes Chef Boyardee, usually, but all he can think about now is what the reddish-brown slop is going to look like in a few hours, splattered on the inside of Will’s nightmare vomit bucket. Only, Mike will be the one puking up microwaved ravioli, all alone, while some douchebag has his tongue down Will’s throat. “It’s—fine, Will. It’s—it’s—great.”

“Real convincing, Mike,” he says lightly. “That didn’t sound like it hurt to get out at all.”

“Mm,” Mike saws through a piece with the side of his fork, wincing as the grayish meat spills out. He feels antsy, skin buzzing under Will’s vigilant gaze. He picks up a glob of sauce, watching it seep between the cracks in the prongs, and kicks his heels into the laundry basket beneath his bed.

After a couple minutes of Mike refusing to actually lift the fork to his mouth, Will starts to search the room for something better. They already decided against the dining hall; Mike is too tired and he doesn't want Will to leave, which he made very clear with a distinguished grunt when Will first brought it up. 

“Okay, we have… peanuts? Those are—I mean, they’re bland—that’s good, I think. There might be a Kudos box around here somewhere, but I don’t—oh.”

When Mike looks up from his mush, Will is standing in front of his desk, one hand absently twisting Mike’s Rubik’s Cube, the other trailing over typewriter keys. “You saw the, uh—”

“Yeah,” Mike manages. He’s thinking about how lovely El's likeness had looked—how carefree—and then there’s a lump in his throat that’s difficult to talk around. “It was—it is—beautiful, Will. Thank you.”

“I was just thinking about your dream,” Will shrugs. “Trying to remember it.”

“Trying to remember my dream?” Mike teases, suddenly re-interested in his ‘Will still has powers’ theory.

“No, dork,” he scoffs knowingly. “I mean, Starcourt. That summer… I wish El had gotten to hang out with us there. Before the fight. Movies, and ice cream, and annoying the shit out of Steve Harrington—that kinda stuff.”

Mike doesn’t think the old Will would agree with that sentiment, even if it’s genuine now. He also doubts that Will actually looks back on the summer of ‘85 with any sort of real fondness, but maybe he’s just clinging to the wrong things. Maybe Will had actually managed to have some fun while Mike was busy sucking El’s face.

“She got to go,” he says evenly, willing the ferocious thing inside him down. “Once, with Max. I think they had a lot of fun, and I’d be willing to bet money they did annoy the shit out of Steve—or Robin, at least.”

“Right,” Will acknowledges, in a tone that suggests he was already thinking exactly that. “I’m just missing her, I guess.”

Sharing grief with Will is an interesting thing. It should make it easier—if they have to fall apart, at least they can do it together—but it really only makes it more complicated. Will is good with it, thoughtful and communicative and the perfect amount of optimistic. Mike is not good with it. He shuts down. He lashes out. His attempts at optimism border on delusion.

Lately, they operate around it like miserable, divorced parents. Will’s got Grief now, so Mike’s off the hook. At least, that’s what he forces himself to believe in order to be a semi-functional supportive figure to his best friend with a dead sister (as opposed to the usual anchor around his leg). 

“I just kinda assumed the drawing was for me,” he admits. “But it’s in the binder, if you wanted—if you want—I mean, it’s yours. You drew it. You should keep it.”

Will’s attention flicks to the dusty old thing, sitting at the top of the mini fridge clutter pile and overflowing with every single piece of paper Will has handed him since they were five.

Mike didn’t plan on bringing it to college, exactly, but when he thought about leaving it in the basement, he thought about his mom accidentally tossing it out, and then he thought about how he would have to kill her, and well—he’s not Henry Creel.

“It was for you,” Will confirms distractedly. His attention has shifted from the binder to the wall above it, where the painting he made for Mike all those years ago is hung with thumbtacks. 

It’s not the first time Mike has caught him glaring at it, lips torn and eyes narrowed. At first, he thought it was just Will being his own toughest critic, regretting the art style or getting caught up on mistakes nobody else would ever notice.

Now, he’s not so sure.

Will’s distaste for it has shifted in the months they’ve been living here. Mike has seen it twist his face into something bitter, taint his tone with something venomous. He even straight-up asked Mike to take it down once.

“Will?”

He’s pale as a sheet and stone cold, his left hand trembling against his thigh. Under his breath, he mutters, “Dammit.” 

“Mike.” The Rubik’s Cube clatters to the ground. A sharp pain sparks behind Mike’s eye. Will turns to face him. Then, all in one breath, words stumbling over and into each other, he says, “I need to tell you something.”

They’re cross-legged on Mike’s bed.

The comforter has returned to its rightful place on the mattress, Will’s sweater has been swapped for a thin t-shirt, and Mike can smell pasta sauce through his stuffed nose. 

He feels vaguely nauseous about it, gangly limbs sporadically twitching with fever chills and adrenaline.

Will is looking about the same; only, Mike’s hands are flat against his knees, and Will is fiddling with his between his legs.

“You can tell me anything,” Mike says, in case he’s waiting for a cue. 

He must have been, because his head jerks upwards, eyes wide and pupils blown. He looks so nervous that Mike briefly wonders if he forgot that he already knows he doesn't like girls.

“Will,” he frowns. He reaches out one of his hands, closing it over both of Will’s, the way he wanted to at the radio station two years ago. His voice is rough. “Seriously.” 

Surprisingly, Will doesn’t stutter around it. He doesn’t draw it out any longer, either. Maybe his voice wavers a little, but other than that, it’s clear, to the point—rehearsed.

“El didn’t commission the painting.”

Mike blinks. Slowly, he retracts his hand, and then the rest of it comes pouring out.

“I’m sorry. And I know that—I know that doesn’t cut it—I know it’s been too long, and you hate when I lie, but I can’t—I—I couldn’t tell you at first, and you know why. And then, after—” He sucks in a strangled breath. “After. I can’t—I couldn’t stand the thought of ruining that memory for you.”

There’s a response on Mike’s tongue that he swallows, pushes down, feeds to the monster. “Then why are you now?”

Will pales.

“It’s—it’s a false memory, Mike. It’s not real,” he says, and it sounds loaded. “I get that it’s cruel of me, maybe, to take it away from you now, but it was crueler of me to let you believe it in the first place—and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, and I’m selfish, because really, it’s fucking haunting me. Every day, I wake up, and it’s staring at me, and I feel sick—” 

The way he says that word, spit flying from his mouth, reminds Mike of his least favorite person—and then he hates that person double because Will is his favorite person, and it feels like sacrilege to ever have to compare them (eat shit and die, Lonnie Byers).

“—because it’s a lie, and the only person who hates—hated—lies more than you is El—”

Mike’s breath catches. Will is crying, a quiet sob stifled into the hand that flies up to his mouth.

“Will—”

“I think,” he continues with a thick sniffle, words muffled by his palm. “I think if El had gotten the chance to know, she would’ve hated me for this. I think—I thought—you would—”

“Will.”

A shuddering breath passes between them.

“I—” Mike struggles, breaking off into a panicked cough that nearly snaps his vocal cords. He tucks his face into his shoulder, ignoring the rebellious squeeze of his chest. He has to stop this train of thought before it crashes into them both. He rasps, desperately, “Will, I know.”

Will’s hand ceases its movements on his back. Mike can feel it shaking, the bones in their knees touching. 

His skin is creased beneath his eyes, swollen and glistening. His mouth is open—bunny teeth, the pull of his dimples. His eyebrows are tilted, shielded by his hair.

He whispers, too timid, “What?”

“I mean,” Mike drags his wet lip down his shirt sleeve, sniffling. “I knew.”

“What?” he repeats, a residual tear rolling down the side of his face. “Since when?”

“I sorta—” Mike feels crass as he admits, “Figured…? After—you know—The Squawk.”

Will makes a soft sound, part shame, part recognition.

“El had said, in a letter, back when you were in Lenora, that she thought you were painting for a—for a—girl. A girl you liked. Obviously, she didn’t know you were—yeah—at the time. But then, you said—you talked about your crush. At The Squawk. Your boy crush.” 

With a wet laugh, Will parrots, “My… ‘boy crush’?”

Mike’s cheeks go hot—hotter. “Well, yeah.”

“So…” Will worries his lip again. Mike’s twitches at the sight of it tearing. “You just assumed the—uh—crush was you and not, like, Lucas?”

Mike raises an eyebrow at that, pretending his stomach didn’t just swoop. “Did you paint something for him that I don’t know about?”

“Yeah,” he deadpans. “A full-body nude portrait.”

The coughing makes a violent return. Between bouts of them, Mike gets out, “Of—him—or you?”

“Of Dustin.”

Mike doesn’t laugh. He can barely breathe, for one. For two, heat is creeping up his neck, and he can tell that he’s grimacing at the thought—not of a naked Dustin because that is not a thought he’s having, but at the thought of being wrong about this. 

“Okay, forget I ever brought up the crush thing,” he rushes, like a scared child with their hands raised in surrender. Please don’t hurt me. “It wasn’t just that.”

It’s Will’s turn to raise an eyebrow. He does so as he’s wiping the last of the tears off his face.

“I think a part of me knew the whole time,” he says carefully. “I was desperate to believe it—which, I guess, you knew, or else you wouldn’t have said it.” 

Will audibly winces.

“But the point is, I don’t think that El would have said any of that stuff about me. Not that she’s not capable of it, just—well—she hated when I talked about D&D, I think… and—maybe she was scared of losing me, like you said, but she definitely didn’t ‘need me,’ and she never would’ve—I don’t think I was—that—for her.” 

“What?”

“The heart.” 

“Mike,” Will’s voice cracks. “That’s not true. You were—are—the heart. For the whole party, a begrudging El included. I meant that.”

“I couldn’t even tell her I loved her,” Mike snaps, desperate to rip off Will's rose-colored glasses, to be hated like he deserves—resented. He feels sicker the second the words leave his mouth. His heart skips and speeds up. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. He shivers, spine convulsing against Will’s palm. “Not even at the end.”

“Mike, hey,” he calls out, softer. “Maybe we should table this until you’re feeling better.”

“That’s what she said, in the—in her mind—at the MAC-Z—” he shrugs uselessly. Will’s hand travels up the nape of his neck. He tugs lightly on the short hair there, his face inching closer.

Look at me, he’s saying. Focus on me.

Mike obliges, meeting Will’s eye. “‘I love you.’”

And she’d kissed him, rough and salty and final. He doesn’t say anything about that, even though he’s recalling it vividly: the clash of their teeth, the cool, damp material between his fingers, the firmness of her shoulder—she’d gotten strong.

“And I didn't say it back. But I do—I loved her,” he promises. “I love her so much, Will, just—and now it's too late—”

He’s breaking their custody agreement. Grief pummels him, knocking the air from his lungs. He coughs—anchor around Will’s leg—and splutters and sobs, and Will pulls his face into the warm crook of his neck, even though he’s sick.

“Just—” he fails to articulate. “Just not—not in the—”

Will noses his hair, arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. Mike has all but crawled into his lap, choking against his skin. He can feel Will’s pulse against his lips.

“‘M sorry,” he spits. To El, to Will, to anyone else who’s ever had the displeasure of loving him when he’s so hopelessly broken. “I’m—sorry.”

Mike wakes up with a lump still lodged in his throat, and it feels too soon.

He struggles for a minute. There’s no saliva in his mouth. His heartbeat is in his temples. He’s curled into himself, facing the wall, and it feels like, while he slept, someone stabbed a knife straight through his ear. 

He hears a whimper, and it sounds distorted, garbled, like the person making the sound is underwater. Or he’s underwater.

It takes a while for him to realize they’re one and the same.

“—ike—?” 

He makes another noise. There’s a streak of colorful light warping his vision, catching on his Pink Floyd tapestry and bending at the edge between two walls. 

“Mike,” someone is saying.

Fingers wrap around his bicep. He feels the pressure, the gentle squeeze—pins and needles.

He’s pulled softly toward the sound, rolled onto his back.

The rainbow light follows the movement, flicking over the ceiling and then, when Mike cranes his aching neck, Will’s torso. The waistband of his jeans. The silver of his belt buckle. His outstretched arm.

“Hey,” he says breathily.

Mike’s attempt to respond ends in a congested snort, which is unfortunate, because drowning in his own mucus in front of Will sits pretty low on his list of preferred ways to die—but whatever. 

“Oh.” The hand not on Mike’s arm comes to rest at the base of his skull. Will hesitates. “Can I…?”

Mike nods, and Will lifts him into a seated position. Or, rather, a slumped over beneath his too-low bookshelf position. He’s upright, by any means, and he celebrates by taking a huge gulp of air.

“Better?” Will laughs, fingers in his hair.

Mike’s vision is sort of zigzagging, making it hard to see Will clearly, but he thinks he looks good.

His hair is styled differently, pulled back from his face, and he has his special occasion jacket on: a hand-me-down of Jonathan’s that he wears to parties sometimes. Because that’s a thing Will does now. He goes to parties, and not even lame frat house parties like the ones Lucas writes to them about. Eccentric, artsy ones, where they smoke pot and—Mike doesn’t know—lick paint off each other.

He glares at the baby blue fabric pooled around his waist and remembers two things at once: one, Will has a date tonight, and two, Will tucked him into bed after he cried himself to sleep against his chest.

Kill me. I’ll take death by mucus, just please—

“—ike. Mike!”

Something in Mike’s ear pops, and he jolts.

Will sounds exasperated. His thumb grazes Mike’s chin, his pointer finger tugging at his jaw until he’s facing him again. “Look at me.”

“Hi,” Mike squeaks, brows softening. Deliriously, he recalls, “Eyes’n me.”

“That’s right,” Will says, and it’s not exactly gentle.

Hot.

Mike is hot.

“Will,” he hears himself whine. The first thing that comes to mind is, I really don’t feel good. What he says is, “Need m’glasses. Can’t see you.”

Mike is so hot that he’s short-circuiting. That’s what’s happening. What is one hundred percent not happening is this: Will is not slipping his hand underneath the comforter. His skin is not on Mike’s skin, the jut of his hip. His fingers are not in the front pocket of Mike’s sweatpants.

He is not holding out a pair of large, thin-framed glasses—only, yes, he is doing that. He did all of those things. 

And now he’s pulling the temples open, smiling when the screws creak. And he’s slipping the glasses onto Mike’s face, careful around his ears and the bridge of his stuffy nose.

“There,” he says, uncaring that Mike has neither blinked nor breathed. Sunset is pouring in from the windows, painting Will’s face in shades of orange and red. Light catches on the high point of his cheek and the mole below his nose. “But you’re nearsighted, so. Not sure what that’s about.” 

“My head,” Mike explains weakly. It hurts, bad, and he’s seeing shapes that aren’t there, and the glasses aren’t helping—they’re actually making it worse. But none of that is as important as the fact that Will just had his hand in Mike’s pants.

Will disagrees, it seems.

“I have to head out soon if I wanna make it,” he says, lip between his teeth. Mike would like to try that. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I just—I just wanted to—are you gonna be okay?”

There are a lot of things Mike could say. 

Predominantly, and honestly: No.

But also: 

You're wrong about me. 

It meant more, anyway, coming from you.

Thank you. 

I’m sorry I ever dated your sister. 

I love you. 

I’m sorry that I killed her, too.

Don’t go.

Please go.

I’ll drag you down to the bottom of the ocean if you let me. 

I love you.

Am I too late?

The look Will gives him is a bit like his alarm in the morning: exigent and unrelenting. Says, Time’s up. You have to act now.

So Mike doesn’t say any of those things. 

Instead, he pushes himself up in a moment of terminal lucidity and hooks an arm around Will’s neck.

He stumbles, falling closer, all icy extremities and clean hair and the ghost of a fancy cologne Mike can’t smell but can see glistening on the sides of his neck. He exhales, sharp and startled, and Mike inhales, desperate, pulled between his teeth.

Then, he tilts his head and presses a soft kiss to the corner of Will’s mouth.

And he lets him go.

Mike doesn’t sleep for a second that Will’s gone.

He stays put, curled into a ball on his too-small bed in his too-big dorm, and he sweats. And he shivers. And he thinks about walkie-talkies and a special channel and static and blood and 353 days and how horrible it feels to survive. And he thinks about Will. 

He thinks about Vecna and the Mind Flayer and the demogorgon that almost killed him. And he thinks about electricity and blood and how horrible it feels to survive. And he thinks about Hawkins. 

And he thinks about home. 

The click of a key.

The turn of a knob. 

Will’s footsteps over the threshold. 

Grocery bags—no.

Grocery bags?

“I’m back,” Will breathes over the crinkle of plastic. The door slams carelessly shut. Something thuds in the general vicinity of his desk. The room is dark. Will’s cold, cold hands are on his cheeks. “Jesus, you’re hot.”

“I don’t—” Mike croaks. “I really don’t feel good.” 

“I know,” Will is saying, quickly. “I know. I got—I got stuff.”

“Where’d you go?”

“To get stuff,” he reiterates. “To help you feel better. I should’ve gone sooner. I’m so—well, it doesn’t matter. We have—”

“Will?” 

“Mike,” Will frowns, still holding his face. “What is it? Do you feel sick?”

“Your date…?” Mike manages to ask—and then, yeah, he sort of does.

For a long moment, Will just stares at him with wild eyes, pink on the apples of his cheeks and the tip of his nose. 

“It wasn’t a date,” he says. When Mike just blinks, slow and fluttering, he pulls his glasses off and sets them on the bedside table like he sometimes does when Mike falls asleep reading. “And I didn’t go. Obviously, I didn’t go.”

“Why?” Mike mumbles, lips against the meat of Will’s palm.

Will shrugs, then kisses Mike’s cheek, up by his ear. “I didn’t have an outfit.”

Mike lets Will lower him down to sleep, but his head doesn’t meet the pillow.

Rather, the back of his skull collides with wet ground, icy water sloshing over his shoulders—a gasp rips from his throat.

It’s cold and dark. Will is here, but not really. 

Mike can see, feel, and hear him. He’s kneeling beside him, just like he was a second ago, petting his hair and stroking his cheek and talking in his ear, but the words are faded and far away.

There’s a soft splash in the distance, then another. Splash, splash, splash—footsteps.

Mike’s hands drop into the water as he pushes himself up. Will’s stay glued to him.

“El?” Mike calls. It echoes, circling around his head. “Eleven?”

His first thought when he sees her is that she looks really pretty—lively and youthful, like Will’s drawing, but such a far cry from that girl.

“El,” Mike breathes. Her hair is long and messily pulled back. The strands that escape cascade over her face in gentle curls, lightened from the sun. “Are you really here?”

She says what she always says. “You know I can’t answer that.” 

“But, I’m si—ck,” he tries. Petulance and a poor attempt at humor crack the word in two. She falls to her knees opposite Will and cradles his cheek. He can feel her, just as he can feel him. “Can’t you make an exception?”

El laughs through her nose, lips curled into a tight-lipped smile. “I’m sorry you feel bad.” 

Mike sniffles. Will wipes the tear as it falls. Quietly, thoughtfully, he tells her, “Don’t be sorry.”

She must sense they’re talking about something else now, because she says, “I’m not.”

“El,” he pleads senselessly.

“Mike,” she tuts. “I am here.”

She whispers, like it’s a secret, but the information isn’t actually new. Her hand lands atop where Will’s has already settled, over his slowly thumping heart. Will doesn’t react, but Mike can feel the weight of her—the warmth.

“Why can't he feel you?”

She shrugs. “I’m not talking to him.” 

His lip wobbles precariously. “You should.”

“I’m not talking to him right now,” she amends. He makes a mental note to ask Will about that, even though he’s not really sure he wants to hear the answer. “I’m talking to you.” 

Mike’s smile is wet and wavering. “Hi.”

This time, she shows him her teeth. “Hi, Mike.”

He says what he always says. “I miss you.”

“I know.” 

“Asshole,” he grumbles. It only makes her smile wider.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Mike freezes. Will catches the hitch in his breath. El’s head tilts slightly.

“You’re getting upset,” she says warily.

“I’m not upset,” he rushes. “I’m not. I’m—I have a fever. I’m fever dreaming. It’s fine. Talk about what?”

“I know you.”

“What does that mean?”

Her eyes sharpen into a glare. When Will’s hand moves to the space above his knee with a certain urgency, she persists. “You’re getting upset.”

“I’m not,” he argues, but it tastes salty. He’s crying harder. “I’m not—just—talk to me.”

“I understand you, Mike. Maybe not ‘better than anyone…’” She glances toward Will, who’s fretting helplessly over him, as she says this. “But I do. I always have.”

“In some ways, sure. In others—” he huffs incredulously, relishing in the way it makes her laugh, loud and open this time. 

“Now who is being an ass?”

He laughs, too. Will relaxes a little.

“Mike?”

He scans her face, desperately trying to find something, anything—a detail he doesn’t remember, something that proves she’s really here and not a figment of his sick imagination—but it’s all committed to memory. All immortalized in the picture on his desk and every word he’ll ever write. “Yeah?”

“I love you.” 

That’s different.

Not the words; the way she says them. There’s a certain maturity, a certain undertone. Whatever it is, it settles into his warm skin, into his bones.

It makes it easy for him to say, “I love you, too.”

He only realizes that his body has been thrashing when it stops. Will takes a deep, quivering breath and pushes his forehead up against Mike’s. It’s only when El falls back that he understands what Will is whispering.

“I love you, too,” Mike repeats. 

She’s still there, waiting, when Will lets him go.

As if on cue, she reaches over and settles her hand behind his ear, pulling him in the opposite direction, toward her. Her lips are the same as he remembers when they press against his forehead. “Feel better, Mike.”

“Wait—” he splutters. Will’s head whips back towards him. “El, before you go—”

“Yes?”

He tries to remember everything Max has said about mindscapes. Is this El's? Or is it his?

“Can you take me somewhere else? Somewhere—” he gestures around the empty void, aiming for one last joke. “—nice? I’ve had a really shitty day, and this place fucking sucks.”

Her big brown eyes flit between his, searching, and then her lips pull upwards.

She takes him to the swings.