Chapter Text
Manhattan, New York
Friday, December 22, 1989
10:32 PM
”Stand clear of the closing doors. Next stop, 116th Street — Lexington Avenue. Please hold onto the handrails and mind the gap.”
Mike grips his straps of his bookbag so tight his knuckles must be ghost-white under the subway’s glow. There’s a thin sheen of sweat covering his face and the rain has stretched out his thick curls, letting them stick all across his forehead in a mess of tangly, wet chunks.
This subway car smells fucking disgusting.
Look, if Max still wants to dog on Mike about how bad his basement used to smell, she’s got to come to New York City and ride a subway car first.
Thankfully at this time of night, the Manhattan-bound carriage Mike is riding isn’t too full. There’s a tipsy couple sitting across from where Mike’s standing; she’s got her hands up under his shirt and he sort of looks like a vampire trying to feast from her jugular. There’s a group of a half-dozen drunk, loudmouth college kids hollering from the front of the car, probably on the way home from a bar. There’s a passed out homeless man without shoes two rows ahead of where Mike’s standing, slumped up against the dark, blurry window.
There’s a little old lady with brown skin, shimmery white hair under the obnoxiously fluorescent subway lights, and a wistful twist to her face sitting parallel to Mike, purse clutched tight in her arms and an umbrella hanging off her wrist.
As the subway car starts to move, Mike stumbles a couple feet, which catches grandma’s attention. “You ain’t gonna sit down, boy?”
With all due respect to grandma over here, this carriage looks almost as as fucking disgusting as it smells — even worse than the bus Mike took from the airport down. There’s grime and dirt caked into the grooves of the seats, litter all over the floor underneath the seats, graffiti lines every last inch of open space on every panel in this thing, and Mike’s not sure how many fucking diseases must be harboring on the handrails and straps across the ceiling, but he’s not sure today’s the day, of all days, to find out.
A man toward the front carriage sneezes into open air. God, gross.
“Um, no, ma’am.”
From Will’s rather… eclectic tales about the subway system down here, Mike’s also pretty fucking sure people don’t just go around talking to each other in here. Over the phone the last four months, Will has near-endlessly talked about riding the subway around the city like it’s stepping foot into another universe — keep your eyes down, mind your own, and don’t speak to a soul unless you have every reason to, and even then, don’t.
“You just look like you could use a rest, is all, tourist.”
“Oh, no, I’m not—”
“You tellin’ me that soakin’ map out your pocket ain’t yours?”
Mike glances down at his hoodie pocket. His sweater is soaked nearly all the way through — he didn’t know it’d be freezing rain here today. When he woke up this morning, exactly thirteen minutes before his last final of the semester began, he didn’t know he was going to be in New York City by the end of the day at all.
There’s a corner of a crumpled, waterlogged, ink-smudged map poking out indeed, one he pocketed from a stand at the airport and ran off with when the attendant wasn’t looking. “Um—”
“Sit down,” she offers, tucking her purse into her side, “where are you headed?”
Mike finally ungrips his backpack straps, opting instead to stuff his hands deep into his wet sweater pocket, uncomfortably sitting a full seat away from the woman talking to him. “Um, I… I just have an address.”
“Well, where is she?”
“East Village,” Mike’s shifty. “Um, I think, at least. Their address is… well, 206 East tenth street, um, that’s where all of his letters to me are always addressed from. My — my best friend, that is. He lives… here. Somewhere. He moved away for college this year, so I’m visiting… um, just visiting him, um, for Christmas. Yeah.”
“With no luggage?”
Mike shrugs in response. “It was kind of… um, a last minute decision?”
“By God,” the woman’s bushy eyebrows nearly hit her greying hairline. “Well, you must have a knack for maps, son. You’re on the right track. You know where you’re gettin’ off?”
I play D&D, Mike wants to supply, how he’s so good with maps, with finding his way, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t play anymore, and he doesn’t open his mouth.
“I reckon you get off around fourteenth street and Union Square,” she supplies, nodding down at Mike’s hoodie pocket. “So you’ve still got a few stops to go.”
Mike slumps over, tearing his eyes away from the old woman a seat beside him. His eyes catch, lingering on the drunk couple all over each other across the carriage — God, there should really be mandates. Or security cameras. They’d probably be stripped down right here on the disease-ridden carriage if it was up to them.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Mike nods, tearing his eyes away to the ground. The train car hums and he stabilizes his feet firm on the rocking floor. “I was kind of hoping I’d just… get there on my own, but my map doesn’t have any of the subway lines.”
“You ever been to the city?”
Mike shakes his head, eyes still downcast. “I just landed, I don’t know, an hour or so ago, maybe.”
“Well, you’re makin’ good time,” the woman nods. “This friend couldn’t get you home from the airport?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Mike chokes.
Grandma’s face twists up again; she scans his face, all-knowing as if Mike’s see-through, like an almost-ancient derivative of Vecna. It sends a chill down Mike’s spine. Or maybe the chill is just the freezing rain he got caught in outside, seeping through his skin to the bone. “Christmas miracle?”
“Something like that,” Mike shrugs.
“Can I tell you a story?” She asks. “Humor an old lady?”
Mike gnaws on his lip. Surely this woman knows rule number one of subway travelling, so Mike has come to learn, of course through Will — don’t bother talking to anybody. “I guess, yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Mike.”
“Well, Mike, this is about to be my first Christmas alone,” she confesses. “I lost my lover back in the summertime.”
This catches Mike off guard. “Oh, shit, ma’am, I’m sorry,” he frowns.
“Well, we had plenty of good years together,” she nods. “We both moved to the city together, well, maybe about your age, a little older, we were both right out of school. We lived in a place together in the West Village for decades. And you know what?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d give anything at all to have even one more year with her,” she says simply, like she’s at peace with something Mike can’t quite seem to grasp. “Fifty-seven Christmasses we had together, plus thirteen more as kids, and Lord, it still wasn’t enough.”
Mike can hear his heartbeat, thready and wild, thrumming in his ears. With her. With her, with her, with her. He can feel his airplane peanuts and apple juice lurching in his stomach. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright, dear,” she nods. “He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”
Mike swallows. “Yeah, he does,” he admits. His voice catches ugly in his throat. Finally he catches the elder’s eyes to his, dark and wild and so, so sad. “He really does.”
“Cherish him this Christmas,” she reaches across the empty seat, laying a warm hand on his knee. “Please.”
There’s something in the old mage’s eyes that Mike knows all too well, something in her pained expression telling Mike to be careful. Hold onto what he has.
To stop being so goddamn scared.
Mike’s chest constricts and it feels like his lungs are too small for his heaving breaths as the subway car pulls out from its last stop, announcing that they’ll be on the way to the next, Grand Central Station. The woman pulls a tight smile his way, pats his knee, and begins to gather up her belongings. “This is nearly my stop already, honey,” she nods. “You wait a few more, get off right at fourteenth and Union, walk the rest of the way, got it?”
“Wait, ma’am, um, sorry, how’d you—”
The old woman gets up, slings her purse over her shoulder, and pauses a moment in thought. Finally she unwraps the wristband of her yellow umbrella from her wrist, handing it down to Mike and gripping the rail. “You’ll need this more than I will. You’re soaked to the bone, boy. There’s plenty of nice deli’s around your boy’s neighbourhood this late,” she informs. “Get him to feed you ‘fore you get sick from the rain, alright?”
Mike takes the umbrella, thumbing over the tag. There’s something engraved in the metal handle, but it’s too dim to tell what it reads through his blurry vision. “How did you —”
“Oh, Mike, I’m old,” she waves him off, but she gives him the briefest wink as the subway car pulls to a stop. “When you’re old like me, you’ll see all the signals, too. Give yourself some grace, baby.”
And with that, the woman sends Mike a final tip of the head as she and most of the rest of the carriage pours out the sliding doors, letting a light stream of new passengers on. He thumbs over the engravement on the umbrella she lent — gave — him and balls up a fist, pressing it against his eye to will his blurry vision to go away.
With her. With her. When he’s old, he’ll see the signs — the signs he somehow tipped her off to without meaning it. Did she see it written on him all along? Was it something clear in his hunched shoulders and sopping-wet curls and sunken eyes the moment he stepped into the carriage?
Did she sense it like some primal hunter?
Maybe she was magic.
Not the kind in books, and certainly not the kind Mike writes about, but maybe the rather kind that simmers just under the surface of everything, something inside everyone, that bends the world just enough to make it feel like the impossible isn’t so after all.
Mike clutches the umbrella tight against his lap, wrapped up in his shaking arms, as the carriage begins to pull away. Fourteenth and Union, she said, like an omen. Like a sign.
The coughs and sneezes and smells reeking nothing short of death and rotten food and jolly Christmas music playing through the headphones of somebody’s Walkman two seats away from Mike keep him on high enough alert that he doesn’t miss his stop, maybe ten minutes later. Mike’s really wishing right about now that he’d brought a goddamn watch on this trip.
”Stand clear of the closing doors. Next stop, fourteenth street — Union Square. Please hold onto the handrails and mind the gap.”
The train pulls to a stop and Mike stands up on shaky legs, nearly collapsing off the train to the landing as he tries to find his footing again. Mike’s heart kicks into overdrive as he looks around at the bustling underground tunnel. Somebody nearly shoves him a foot past the platform’s edge once the subway pulls away without him on it, so Mike puts his head down and follows the crowd through the tunnel and up the stairs.
Seven and a half hours of travelling has lead him here — driving an hour to the airport back home, waiting for the first flight NYC-bound he could get on, no matter the price, boarding, flying, landing, figuring out a goddamn way to get from the airport to… wherever the hell he is now. Fourteenth street and Union Square, he supposes, as he looks out around the landing. Buildings taller than he’s ever seen, dozens of passerby’s bustling around, trees and lights and rails and horns honking.
And New York City is big — he knew that in the back of his head, of course, mostly from Will — but holy shit, this city is big.
He’s never seen anything like this, not even underneath the stormclouds hanging low on the horizon line, the glistening snow, the freezing rain, the blindingly bright billboards that look miles high from all the way down here. The buildings in Hawkins, not even in Bloomington, don’t look like these.
There’s centuries worth of history in every square inch of this city. Every window in every building is a little snapshot of a different life, of a different story, every graffiti painting, every person has their own life, their own story, their own bits of magic tucked away that no one else gets to see. All their own wishes and secrets and troubles and regrets and missed loves and try-again’s.
And nobody’s looked at Mike twice here, even though he’s soaked to the bone in dragging, baggy jeans and beat-up old sneakers and a smelly pull-over and his school bookbag without so much as a change of clothes inside and dampened, wild curls stuck to his forehead like glue.
And a blinding, yellow umbrella popped open above his head, shielding him if only marginally from the sheets of rain pouring down on him and a million other people.
Mike can already tell why Will likes it here so much. There’s something addictive in the way he doesn’t have to be Mike Wheeler from Shithole, Indiana anymore. He can just sink into the crowds and pray he’s walking the right way.
According to Mike’s damp, ink-smudged map crumpled up in his pocket from the airport, he needs to continue down fourteenth street to tenth and head down a couple blocks to Will’s. 206 East tenth street is what’s been written up in the return address on every single letter from Will, of the dozens upon dozens that Mike’s received the last four months.
Mike can see Will’s loopy handwriting every time he closes his eyes. Misses remembering Will’s eyes, all melty and sticky soft like a fly in honey, though — misses the sharp slope of the bridge of his nose, his soft cheeks, those sharp, painted lips, each mole and freckle and spot. Mike was never one to draw, to memorize, not like Will can, so he hasn’t ever quite been able to get Will as beautiful as the real thing in his mind’s eye, but it’s been four months since he’s seen his best friend face to face and the hollow ache of missing him has consumed Mike whole.
This morning, Mike wrote his last final of the semester with one objective in mind — see Will by midnight.
He can’t remember a word he wrote on that test. He can’t even remember what class it was for, what subject it was on. He doesn’t care — none of that shit matters anymore.
Not when he woke up seven hundred miles away from Will this morning and is now maybe half a block, tops.
Mike recognizes the glow of the apartment building well — it was one of the first polaroid pictures Will sent Mike in their long back-and-forth exchange of letters over the last semester. That picture, though, Mike has definitely memorized. Jonathan took it — Will’s standing underneath the overhang of the main entrance beneath the big fire escapes, pointing up with a grand smile on his face, something proud and hopeful and blossoming.
In that polaroid photo, the one Mike has every millimetre memorized, the sun is shining on Will like the solar nebula created it exclusively for him — like New York City is where he was always meant to be.
Will was never meant to be from Hawkins. Mike knows it all too well — Will being born in the same city as him wasn’t some divine intervention, wasn’t a miracle at all, it was Will’s curse. One that Mike so, so selfishly wishes for Will to never, ever be born without, not in any other parallel universe or Upside Down or Abyss out there.
As Mike approaches the big, white apartment building — the very same one he has memorized by heart — he quickly shuffles himself under the awning to close his umbrella, and then finds himself face-to-face with a graffiti-filled door propped open by a wooden doorstop. He shrugs his backpack off his shoulders, stuffs the yellow umbrella into his bag with his already-wet textbooks and wallet, and shoves the door open. It’s cold, goddamn it, and the door was propped open if not just for him.
Mike is then face-to-face with a buzzer system with twenty seven names on a list, and his heart sinks to his stomach when he sees the number seven and the Byers’ brothers name written in Sharpie in bold, capital letters, right next to a keypad and a button to get buzzed in past the main doorway.
Fuck.
Mike desperately spins on his heel in search of — well, he’s not quite sure what, but he awkwardly grins at a man in a backwards cap and shorts who comes down the stairs, pushing past him to the landing outside, huffing at a cigarette despite the weather outside before quickly turning away. Mike finally catches a glimpse at a clock hung up on the wall. It’s a little grimy, but it clearly reads 11:02.
Miraculously, he somehow actually made it to Will today — and with an hour to spare.
Mike leans up against the wall and catches his breath. The big, bold Byers name written out seems to taunt him — it’s right fucking there. He goes to buzz in, brings his finger right up to the button, and…
He can’t.
So he tries again. Brings his hand up, finger dances over the buzzer, but…
He can’t. Again.
After eight hours of travelling with almost nothing but the clothes on his back and a knapsack filled with useless homework in a downpour, he can’t fucking seem to do it.
“Yo, you know who you’re after, man?”
Fuck. Fuck, God. The cigarrette guy. Maybe Jonathan’s age, maybe a bit older. Furrowed eyebrows and thick, dark hair. He shoves himself back into the main door, just a handful of feet behind Mike. He reeks of cigarette smoke and ash.
“Um, yeah, sorry, I—”
“Need’a be buzzed in?”
“Yeah,” Mike breathes. “I’m here for — um, for Byers?”
“Ah, yeah,” the guy says, “Jonathan? Yeah, I know ‘im. Who’s you?”
“Um, yeah, Jonathan, but — um, I’m actually here for… for Will?”
“Huh,” the guy nods. Looks Mike up and down and up again. “Yeah, you do seem more his type than Jonny’s. Look, those boys, they’re real night owls, you won’t be wakin’ ‘em if that’s what you’re worryin’ about. Go ahead, man, buzz in,” he urges and spins on his heel, entering his passcode into the keypad and heading back in.
God, that was fucking weird.
The name still taunts him. Glares back like he’s stupid, like he’s weak.
Which is stupid, ‘cause it’s just some stupid Sharpie and tape. What does this stupid buzzer know about Mike Wheeler’s long, long list of failures and myriad of shortcomings?
So Mike buzzes the fucking buzzer.
And nobody answers.
Of fucking course the universe would let them be out tonight. Friday night right before Christmas, and Will’s openly talked about the bars Jonathan gets him into sometimes as a treat on the weekends, or Will’s new friend group he’s joined here, the art students who meet up every weekend for games and drinks and smokes and—
The tinny receiver buzzes. It’s so crackly, nearly inaudible ‘cause this building is probably, like, four-hundred years old, but Mike knows that voice clear as fucking day. “Hello? Look, we didn’t order anything, you probably have the wrong place, sorry.”
Something catches in Mike’s throat as he tries to open his mouth.
He’s come all this fucking way.
“Will?”
The line goes quiet — Will goes quiet — but the buzzer is still ringing, crackly and agitating.
Mike tries again, clears his throat, sniffles once. “Will?”
“...Mike?”
Mike chokes, “uh, yeah, I… yeah, hi.”
“What the — I’ll be right down.”
The buzzer goes silent and Mike’s ears are left ringing in the deafening silence of Will’s apartment complex landing.
He tries to push back his dampening hair in the dark glass of the door, shaking it out and taming it as best he can — Will hasn’t seen him in person for months, and he’s about to look like a drenched puppydog as a first impression. He didn’t think this far ahead, apparently.
The next minute and a half — Mike counts on the grimy clock — passes by like a fucking eternity. He swears it feels longer than the subway and bus and plane and highway combined — but then there Will is, fumbling down the staircase in a chopped-up The Cure band t-shirt and red and black checkered flannel pyjama pants that he nearly trips on the cuffs of near the last step and pink, fluffy slippers, and messy, obvious, beautiful bed head Mike remembers last from their final morning together and —
And Mike swears to God, his heart nearly stops.
The glass door swings open the second Will nearly trips right into it, collapsing into Mike’s arms in what’s most definitely the most bone-crushing hug Mike’s ever gotten from anybody ever.
Fuck.
God, Mike can feel tears forming in his eyes already. He buries his flushed face into Will’s shoulder and lets out the ugliest, most humiliating heave of a sob into Will’s neck he could’ve mustered. Will hair — longer than Mike remembers — smells faintly of new shampoo Mike doesn’t recognize, with the faintest hint of smoke in his clothes from weekend bar runs and probably Jonathan’s weed, and it’s all so Will, so familiar but so brand new, impossibly real, but Mike thinks this can’t possibly be.
He’s finally holding his best friend again.
“What in the absolute fuck are you doing here?”
“I—” Mike tries, but the words die in his throat. Will’s the first to pull away, but Mike wants to stay tucked into his warm, dry arms and neck and smell forever. “I missed you.”
“You — you missed me?”
Mike flushes crimson and tears his gaze away from Will — suddenly he’s feeling a little too seen, a little too looked through. “I — yeah.”
“You’re so—” Will stammers, pulling Mike back in again. Will’s shorter than Mike by a solid few inches, but Mike feels utterly cared for, so calmed in a matter of seconds, as if the last day and four months has all washed away the moment Will tucks him back into his shoulder for the first time in forever. “You’re so — I mean, how did you — you’re drenched.”
“Sorry,” Mike mumbles into Will’s shoulder. Will finally pulls away again, grips either side of Mike’s stained-red face with his hands, and examines him closely. Mike wishes he didn’t notice the way Will’s eyes flicker down and up and down again to his lips, or the way Will’s own subconsciously part just inches away.
But neither of them lean in. The seven-hundred mile gap might finally be closed, but there’s still so much standing between them — four months of voices without faces, of shameless words without consequences — and they don’t get to start there yet. Damn near a hundred letters sent back and forth, and phone calls for hours upon hours when all they needed was to hear each other’s voice, and countless nights spent staring at the ceiling, wishing they could just…
Will stares between Mike’s eyes, drops his forehead against Mike’s. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mike looks away. “I didn’t tell anybody.”
“What? You ran away?”
“I didn’t know I’d be here until… um, today, I guess?”
Will frowns. “I’m confused.”
“I finished my last final this afternoon,” Mike says slowly, like he’s testing the words out, “and then I… went to the airport?”
“You just — you just decided today? To travel to a state you’ve never been to? All alone? With no — did you even bring anything with you?”
“I’ve got my backpack,” Mike supplies unhelpfully.
Jesus. “You can’t be serious,” Will bows his head between the two of them. “I don’t — oh, Mike.”
And it’s just now sinking in that — that maybe Will doesn’t want Mike here. Maybe Will didn’t want to come home — come back to Hawkins — for Christmas because he doesn’t need to see Mike like Mike needs to see him.
Maybe he doesn’t have room, maybe he doesn’t want to share his space, maybe he doesn’t want to spend the holidays with Mike at all, maybe, maybe, maybe…
“I’m — right. Um. No, I’m sorry, this was — you know, out of all the stupid things I’ve ever done, this definitely — um, it ranks up there, for sure. Um, I’m just going to — look, I don’t have to, like, spend the night, I just wanted to — to see you. I…” feel like a colossal fucking idiot right now, is what he wants to finish up with.
“Mike, no, no, that’s not what I — um, do you think I’m not happy to see you?”
Yes. No. Maybe? “I don’t… no, I should’ve said something. Definitely should’ve — should’ve said…”
The tiniest smile ghosts at Will’s lips as Will leans in an inch closer to Mike’s flushed, stammering face. “Were you… were you going for romantic, Mike? Hop on a plane and show up at my door in the pouring rain?”
Mike’s stomach drops. Again. God. God.
He swallows, glancing down Will’s face once more. “I don’t know what the hell I thought I was going for,” he finally admits. “But I needed to see you, Will. I just — just missed you. A lot. And you weren’t coming home for Christmas, and I just — I needed —”
“Hey, no, look at me,” Will smoothens out a wet strand of Mike’s hair, tucking a couple long pieces behind his ear. “No, it wasn’t — that wasn’t about you. Look, I’ll — let’s get you upstairs and — well, I was going to say unpacked, but…”
“I’ll need… yeah, that sounds good, man,” Mike cringes. Man? “Um, maybe a shower first?”
“You smell super disgusting, yeah,” Will agrees, punching in his code and unlocking the door. “You took the subway, I assume?”
Mike squints at Will — Will who’s dragging his hand down Mike’s damp hoodie sleeve and grabbing Mike’s hand to bring him through the threshold. “How’d you know?”
“Subway has a certain, um, smell of death to it, you know?”
“I smell like death?”
“And wet dog, mostly,” Will brings Mike to the landing of the first staircase. “I’m apartment—”
“—seven?”
Will knocks Mike’s shoulder with his own. “Yeah, seven. Second floor. Jon’s still awake on the phone with — oh, shit,” Will gasps quietly. “Is Nancy allowed to know you’re here? Your family doesn’t know you came?”
Mike twists his mouth up. “I… yeah, I guess that’s okay. I don’t talk to her as much as I should anymore.”
“I’ll sneak you in for now,” Will nods. “Try and tell him before he comes out and sees you, but he’s usually locked away for the night by this time. Um, the apartment’s kind of messy, sorry in advance.”
“I’m sure no worse than my folks’ basement.”
“We’ve got free reign away from our parents for the first time,” Will points out. “And finals just ended. It’s kind of really bad. I mean, dishes, food containers, clothes, paint, canvas, charcoal, film strips—”
“Will, it’s — it’s fine,” if Mike didn’t know Will so well, he’d almost think he’s nervous. Or maybe he doesn’t remember all of Will’s ticks and tells quite as well as he thought. That kind of breaks his heart. “I just — I don’t care about your place. I just…”
“Okay,” Will whispers as he drags Mike up to the door, kicking the door stopper out of the way. “Well, um, the bathroom is—”
“—Will, I know where the bathroom is.”
“Huh?”
“You gave me a whole — a whole tour of the place in polaroids and a letter when you moved,” Mike says, suddenly feeling rather small, like he’s embarrassed of the idea of remembering every little detail of every little letter they’ve exchanged over the last semester — he is. “First door to the left?”
Will kicks his slippers off at the door, closing it behind Mike. “Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, you got it. You hungry?”
“Um, yeah, actually,” Mike nods. “I could — look, I don’t want to put you out.”
“Nah, Jonathan and I go to the deli, like, every other day. We’ve got plenty of shit left over from the week. Go shower, I’ll fix you up something.”
Maybe Mike’s just imagining it, but it almost feels like… Will talks different than he remembers. He certainly holds himself differently — Will nearly matches Mike’s height now, and not ‘cause he’s grown, but because he actually has the courage here to hold himself like he’s proud of who he is. Shoulders back, no slouching, no hiding.
Mike nods and slinks off to the bathroom, dropping his backpack onto the ground next to Will’s and Jonathan’s sitting side-by-side near the door. He gives Will a little smile — just a ghost of one — before shutting the door behind him. God, he seriously has to strip himself down from these disgusting clothes, pee, cry, splash some water on his face, and shower now — and probably in that order.
Will knocks on the bathroom door no less than a minute later — Mike’s mid-strip-down and freezes trying to pull his soggy jeans off his legs. “Um, just — sorry, I don’t want to bother you, but — use my stuff, okay? Jon’s is… kind of gross — um, my shampoo and stuff is all on the lower rack, it’s yellow. You’ll see it. And, um, my towel is the purple one hanging… I’ll find you some dry clothes too, okay?”
All Mike can squeak out is a small, “okay, thanks, Will,” before he hears soft footsteps puttering away from the door again.
Tears fill his eyes the second he’s freed from the prison of soggy socks and damp denim. He feels so — so pathetic, having done all of this. Putting Will out of his own place — Will didn’t ask to babysit Mike like a stray puppy who can’t be away from his owner too long. He should’ve never come. God, Will even thought he was trying to be romantic.
Fuck. God. Stupid.
He promised Will four months ago that he wouldn’t fuck Will’s life up again, not again, and look what he’s gone and done — fucked Will’s Christmas up. Will’s just too nice to say otherwise, surely.
Mike sniffles back the pathetic sob that escapes his throat and slaps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. So stupid.
As far as showers go — well, by the time Mike gets himself together enough to actually take it — this one is rather uneventful, besides the fact that Mike nearly gets dizzy standing up from smelling Will’s new shampoo. He remembers Will smelling of coconut and almond for as long as he can remember, but this stuff — it’s citrusy and honey-like and sweet and Will. It’s addicting.
Mike steps out of the hot water and wraps himself in Will’s towel hung up on the bathroom door, shaking his hair off in the basin and cracking the door open. Will’s standing over the stove with a pan on low. He jumps when he hears the crack of the bathroom door. “Oh, hey. I left clothes just… down there,” he gestures to the ground, spatula still in hand. “Got the biggest stuff of mine I could find.”
Mike wordlessly crouches down and picks Will’s clothes up, closing the door behind and tries his very best not to think about any subtle implications of the fact that he’s going to be wearing all of Will’s clothes all night long in his apartment smelling like him with his shampoo and body wash tonight.
He towels off his hair and hangs the towel back up, cracking the door again. “Hey, um, can I leave my clothes…”
“There’s a dirty laundry pile in there, we can do a load tomorrow,” Will says softly. Mike steps out and closes the bathroom light behind him, shuffling across the absurdly small landing over to Will. “I’m makin’ us fried rice, we had a shit ton of leftovers from Chinese last night. That good for you?”
Mike’s stomach growls like it’s on cue, which he flushes a little about. “Sorry, God. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Will shrugs. “Figured,” he says, “why I’m cooking the rest. Lots for you to eat.”
“It’s not Jonathan’s food?”
“I mean, it was half his,” Will shrugs again. “But I paid yesterday so it’s fine. And the Chinese place is just down the block. There’s deli’s everywhere. Trust me, we don’t starve.”
Mike thinks he feels his chin almost want to wobble again, but he bites hard on his lip as he leans against the low kitchen counter a couple feet away from Will. “I’m sorry again. Just showing up like this. It was stupid.”
“No, it was sweet,” Will smiles. “I’ve — I’ve missed you. You look better.”
Mike looks down at his chest adorned in a grey Bowie t-shirt. “‘Cause I showered and put on a David Bowie shirt?”
“Yeah,” Will grins. “Bowie’s hot.” Mike’s eyebrows shoot up. “No, I’m kidding. I mean — no, I’m not, he is hot, but — I just mean… you know. You look better. Than the last time I saw you, you know? Um. More healed, maybe.”
Not really, Mike wants to say, but he’s not the most proud of that night. He thinks about it all the damn time. He was utterly pathetic the last time he saw Will, so it’s sort of hard to beat in terms of looking worse.
“I feel better,” Mike shrugs. “Like, about… the El stuff. I mean, I still think about her, but it’s not, like, right at the forefront of my brain anymore like it was last year. And I did good on my courses.”
Will leans over the stove and turns the burner off, scraping down the fried rice and reheated pork and chicken onto two plates he had already set out for them. “That’s… I’m proud of you, dude.”
Except there’s a massive, gigantic, enormous, colossal, humongous Will-shaped elephant in the room.
And yet — after coming all this way — Mike still doesn’t want to poke it with a fucking ten foot pole. Not on an empty stomach and no sleep, at least.
“How have you…” Mike begins, but squeezes his eyes shut the way he does when he knows he’s said something stupid. “Sorry. God. I don’t know why I’m acting like we don’t talk on the phone for hours every day. I’m just…”
“It’s fine,” Will waves Mike off, picking up a plate and shoving it into Mike’s chest, gesturing him to sit down at the table. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”
Mike does — eat and feel better. They eat together in relative silence besides giggles from nudges and kicks underneath the two-person kitchen table, letting the weight of the last months melt away like they knew it would — Mike was expecting awkward, was expecting growing pains, and he’s glad to get back to normal with Will sooner rather than later.
Will cleans up their dishes and closes the light, leading Mike by the small of his back to his bedroom. It feels more like a shoebox sometimes — there’s dozens of canvases and sketchbook pages and notebooks littered all around his desk, nightstand, and floor, but it’s so achingly Will that Mike can’t do anything but smile like mad at the first glance around his bedroom. “I only have a little twin,” Will gestures across the small room, “but you can sleep here and I’ll take the loveseat, maybe? You’re bigger than me, you know, you need more room.”
“No, no, I — if you have, like, a sheet, I can just sleep on the floor—”
“Mike,” Will hounds. “Fuck, I’m not letting my best friend sleep on the nasty floor, surprise visit or not. You won’t fit on that tiny couch. You can have the—”
“You could, um…” Mike tries, but his voice trails off. His hands are wringing in his lap. “Sleep… here, too?”
Will furrows his eyebrows for a moment. “In bed with you?”
Mike feels his cheeks and ears go red-hot in humiliation. “I mean — if you, um, if we can’t fit, it’s—”
“—no, no, I sleep all scrunched anyway. It’s… yeah, yeah. We can make it work for a night or two. That’s… fine with you?”
Yes. Yes, Will, it’s more than fucking fine with me — I want to sleep here every night for the rest of my life, craned neck and sore back be damned, if it means I don’t have to say goodbye to you again..
But Mike doesn’t say that. Instead all he manages to choke out is a, “yeah, that’s perfect.”
“Okay,” Will nods, grinning a little. Let the tension fall away. He knocks Mike’s shoulder. “Stop acting like I’m, like, a weird cousin or something. You’re talking all weird.”
Mike stiffens up a little. “Sorry, I just—”
Softer, quieter, like it needs more gentleness, Will says, “it doesn’t all have to be awkward if we don’t let it be, Mike. We’re still best friends, right?” because… okay. Okay. They haven’t outright talked about Will’s last night in Hawkins yet, the… kissing, not about the last sleepover, and certainly about the… the phone calls, the really late night ones littered with quiet sighs and heavy breathing and wordless knowing, but it’s… all right there. It’s all lingering just beneath the surface with a lid on tight, ready to overheat and boil over at any moment.
Words without faces. Words without consequences. Maybe that’s why Mike needed to — to come and see Will so fucking bad — he can’t take living a secret anymore, living in code.
He’s so tired of being this ashamed of himself.
“I just couldn’t take being away from you anymore,” Mike whispers.
“Yeah,” Will nods. He gets it — out of all of the hundreds of new people he’s met this year, every chance he’s had to move on, his mind has never wanted to move on from the one he wants most. “Yeah, I get it.”
“I’m sorry,” Mike twists his neck away. “I don’t know when I’m going home but — I’ll call tomorrow. I just…”
“Nah, we can figure that out in the morning, Mike. We don’t have to talk tonight. Get some sleep,” Will tightens his lips, bringing a hand up and pushing Mike’s damp curls back off of his forehead. “I’m just going to brush my teeth and shit. I’ll be right back. Get some rest, hey?”
“Okay,” Mike whispers, like he’s under some spell. Will’s always had him, easy. Will flips the light off and shuts the door behind, letting Mike collapse into his bed all alone.
Jonathan’s waiting outside his own bedroom door with some nauseating cross between a very suspicious, very confused, and very vindicated look on his face. Will shuffles across the short hall, right up to Jonathan — “dude, if you say a word—”
But Jonathan just raises his hands up next to his head like he’s been caught by the cops, eyes wide and teasing. “I didn’t say a word!”
“I didn’t know he was coming.”
“I didn’t say—”
“—but you’re thinking!”
Jonathan cocks his head to the side. “Do I do that?”
“Yes! Way too much!”
Jonathan finally drops his hands, extending an arm out to Will, pulling him into a brief side hug and kissing the top of his head.
“He didn’t even pack a bag, Jon,” Will says quieter, more solemn.
“For real?”
“I don’t think he knew he was coming until… he got here.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Jonathan cracks the slightest grin. “I will never understand the two of you,” he mutters, but pulls away from his embrace with Will. “You’re a good friend, dude.”
“Don’t—”
“—what, you’re not friends?”
“We’re…”
Jonathan cracks another all-knowing grin. “Oh, right, you’d rather—”
“—he’s still awake—” Will whispers through gritted teeth, “and if you didn’t already know, these walls are—”
“—oh, I know. I’ve heard your—”
“Oh my God,” Will tosses his head back, cheeks flushing under the moonlight streaming in through their window. He glances at the clock on the stove. It’s nearly midnight. “Remind me, please, why I still live with you?”
“Um, cheaper rent, I’m cool as fuck, I introduce you to cool music, I get you into bars, mom isn’t breathing down your neck, you—”
“—God, okay,” Will rolls his eyes, finally shoving past Jonathan to the bathroom, flipping the light on. It smells like his own shampoo and there’s still steam all over the mirror. His stomach twists up. “Can you just—”
“Hey, okay, I’ll be nice. You need the couch put together?”
“No,” Will shakes his head from the doorway. “He’s sleeping in my bed with me — don’t give me that face — and we’ll… go from there tomorrow. I don’t know. I’m just as surprised as you are.”
“Okay,” Jonathan finally nods. “Okay. I trust you. You want me up early tomorrow?”
“Um, maybe, yeah,” Will shrugs. “I’ll… yeah. We’ll see. I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, dude. It’s your house too. As long as you’re quiet and—”
“Good-night, Jonathan!”
“Night, Will,” Jonathan sing-songs, retreating back into his own bedroom. Will all but collapses against the bathroom sink. He tries not to think too hard about what tomorrow’s going to bring — or about what today brought.
He’s just glad to see Mike again.
God, the Mike-shaped ache in his chest has multiplied tenfold.
When Will finishes up in the bathroom, he’s half expecting to see Mike staring back at him from the corner of the bed, still wide awake, but he’s not. He’s snoring gently, curled up underneath Will’s blankets, in Will’s clothes, in Will’s twin bed, in Will’s apartment in New York fucking City.
Will curls himself up in his own bed, shuffling until he’s comfortable. It’s weird sleeping in a tiny bed like this with another person, but it’s not weird ‘cause it’s Mike, and Mike is probably the person he trusts most in the whole world. He misses Mike’s soft snores and the way his nose whistles on every inhale when he sleeps. He misses counting every little freckle along the hard slope of the bridge of Mike’s nose under pale moonlight.
Will snakes an arm around Mike’s waist and pulls him in closer. His eyes flutter shut as he buries his nose into Mike’s damp hair on his pillow. For all the bustling nightlife that endlessly rages in Manhattan outside Will’s new bedroom window, the boys sleep more soundly together than they have all year, Mike tucked tight in Will’s arms through the night and into morning.