Chapter Text
December 24, 1983
It was on Christmas Eve in 1983 when Mike saw Will for the first time since he had died.
Usually, there would’ve been Christmas lights hung across the ceiling of the Wheelers’ basement, making it feel like their own cozy Christmas fortress. The delicious smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns would’ve filled the entire house, and there would’ve been so much laughter. They would’ve played D&D together until Mike’s mom would’ve said that it was way past bedtime already. Everything would’ve been so much different if it hadn’t been for November 6.
Mike still remembered that day, and every single day that came after, as if it had been yesterday, and the worst was that even though he had spent weeks wondering how all of this could have possibly happened, he still felt as if they had never found out the truth.
The official version of the events was that Will had had an accident, had fallen off his bike, panicked and run home, but it had been so dark that he must’ve got lost in the woods and possibly had fallen off the cliff straight into the Sattler Quarry.
It was a simple story. Reasonable. Something that technically could’ve happened in Hawkins, because nothing had ever happened in Hawkins. It was a simple town. Reasonable. A simple story for a simple town.
Mike, however, never believed in that story. He couldn’t believe that Will could have vanished just like that. It shouldn’t have been that simple to die. Most importantly, Mike believed that he could’ve done something, that perhaps he could’ve saved Will somehow. He could’ve kept him company and walked him home. He could’ve suggested that Will sleep over. He could’ve kept talking until Will would’ve eventually gotten bored of him, but at least they could’ve saved some time. Maybe all of this could’ve been avoided.
But now everything was about the could’ve, the should’ve, and the would’ve, and nothing could be done anymore to bring Will back.
“Mike, I think we should get going,” Lucas stood up from the couch and looked at Dustin. “It’s getting kind of late”.
Mike was sitting at the table, with the D&D board laid out neatly in front of him, as if it were patiently waiting for its players. But they never played anymore. Mike would always set up the game and then stare at the board, at the manual, at the figurine of the cleric, and at the empty chair next to his. Sometimes Lucas and Dustin would join him, too and they just all stared because they couldn’t possibly play without him.
Dustin stood up as well, came up to Mike, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Take care. We’ll let you know when we get home.”
And Mike just nodded because there was nothing left to be said. He could’ve said “Merry Christmas,” but instead he just looked at them as they climbed up the stairs and disappeared behind the door. There was nothing to celebrate anymore, and they all knew that, because Christmas would never be the same again without Will.
When Dustin and Lucas left, Mike was alone again, and whenever that aloneness came, he felt as if someone started physically drilling a hole into his chest. In that aloneness, Mike cried, because it had replaced his dearest friend, the person he had cared about the most, and he could do nothing about it. He had just to accept it, accept the truth – that Will was dead. But he didn’t want to accept it now, so he just chose to sit alone again, hoping that one day it would just hurt a little bit less.
Mike wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but the tears kept coming. He looked at the empty chair next to him once again. He could almost see the ghost of the boy who should have been sitting there – he could imagine the way Will would lean forward when he was nervous about a roll, the way his hair would catch the light of the lamp, the way he would giggle at something stupid that Mike had said.
He covered his face with his hands – it was too much. He missed him so much.
And suddenly, the chair moved.
It was a small sound, a soft scrape of wood against the concrete floor.
Mike didn’t dare to look up. He figured this was simply the next stage of grief – the part where his mind started creating its own scenarios. He expected to turn his head and find the chair empty, because it was just a figment of his imagination, right?
But when he finally looked, Will was there.
He didn’t look like a shadow or a memory or a ghost. He was sitting in the chair, his hands resting on the edge of the table. He looked exactly like the Will whom Mike had lost. He had the same wide, gentle Bambi-brown eyes and a genuine smile plastered across his face. But there was something off about the way he looked, as if he were a photograph that had been saturated with too much colour, glowing slightly against the grey, dusty basement.
“Hi,” Will said.
Mike’s heart did a strange, painful flip. His voice sounded so real. “I’m dreaming,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m dreaming, or I’ve gone crazy.”
Will looked down at the table, his fingers hovering just a fraction of an inch above the d20. He didn’t say anything, and Mike thought he would disappear any second, but he didn’t. He tried to blink once and twice, but Will was still there.
“You’re dead,” Mike continued, the words feeling like shards of glass in his throat. He wanted to reach out, but he was terrified that his hand would pass right through his skin. “You died, Will. You’re not real. You’re in my head.”
Will smiled at him. It scared Mike seeing how everything about him looked so real.
“Even if I were just in your head,” he said slowly. “Does it make me any less real?”
Mike stared at him, watching the way Will’s chest rose and fell with a breath that technically shouldn’t have been there.
“I miss you so much, Will,” Mike said, a fresh wave of tears blurring his vision. “So much. I need you here, do you understand? I can’t do this alone.”
Will looked up, and for a fleeting moment, he reached across the table. He didn’t touch Mike’s hand, but he held his own just above it. Mike felt a sudden, sharp tingle of warmth, like a spark of static electricity on a cold winter day. It was the most real thing he had felt in weeks.
“You’re not alone, Mike. You’ll never be alone. I’m here.”
“But it’s… You can’t be real.”
Will held his breath and hesitated as if he were trying to find the right words to say.
“You never know,” he smiled yet again, and Mike couldn’t believe that he was crying his eyes out while his dead best friend was sitting right next to him, smiling so casually. The absurdity of all of it.
“If you’re real, then please, tell me, what happened to you?”
But Will didn’t answer this time, he grabbed the die, threw it – how? Mike didn’t know – and it landed on a thirteen.
“See, it’s a thirteen. Maybe if I had rolled a thirteen back then, the demogorgon wouldn’t have gotten me.”
Mike stared at the die. A thirteen. It sat there, a tiny, insignificant piece of plastic that suddenly held more weight than the entire world outside the basement walls.
“The Demogorgon,” Mike repeated. The way Will said it, with that soft, lingering fear, made it sound like the demogorgon was something that had breath and teeth. “What do you mean by the demogorgon?”
Will didn’t look up from the table. He looked tired, his image flickering for a split second before snapping back into focus.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Will whispered, and his voice sounded like it was being carried away by a gust of wind that Mike couldn’t feel. “The game is over, Mike.”
“It’s not over,” Mike said fiercely. He reached across the table, his fingers brushing through the space where Will’s hand was resting. He still couldn’t feel the warmth of skin, not fully, but he didn’t pull away. “If you’re here, if you’re actually here, it’s not over. We can figure this out. I can help you.”
Will looked like he wanted to stay, like he was fighting every law of time and space just to keep his seat at that table.
“You already are helping me,” Will said.
Slowly, the lights in the basement began to flicker. Will’s silhouette grew fainter, his edges blurring into the dark wood of the chair and walls.
“Will? Wait, don’t go. Please,” Mike pleaded, his voice rising in panic. He stood up so quickly his chair tipped over, the loud thud echoing against the silence, but Will didn’t flinch.
And then, he was gone.
The basement was plunged into a heavy, suffocating darkness for a heartbeat before the lights hummed back to life. Mike stood alone, breathing hard, his eyes darting to the chair.
It was empty.
He looked down at the table. The d20 was still there, sitting exactly where Will had dropped it. The number thirteen stared back at him – a silent witness to everything that had just happened.
Mike reached out and picked up the die. It was cold, just a piece of plastic, but he squeezed it until the edges bit into his palm. For the first time since that night in November, Mike’s heart had filled with hope. If Will was there – talking to him – that must’ve meant something, right?
Mike pulled the empty chair closer to the table, tucked the die into his pocket, and sat down in the quiet. He didn’t know what the government said, and he didn’t care what was found in the quarry.
Whatever it was, Mike chose to believe that it couldn’t have been his Will.
February 6, 1984
In February, the entirety of Hawkins was covered in snow. It was a winter that people hadn’t seen in a long time – a true winter, with temperatures reaching sub-zero, with frost painted on the windows. The days were still short, but the sun was shining every day, and it made the thick layer of frozen white fluff shimmer as if someone had sprinkled glitter all over it. Kids had built hundreds of snowmen across the town, coal-eyes and carrot-noses staring out at a world that looked, for all intents and purposes, as if it were happy again.
Even inside the Byers’ house, the atmosphere had shifted. For the first time in months – months of grief and dead silence – it was filled with chatter again.
“Joyce, that casserole is delicious,” Karen said, placing another portion onto her plate with a polite click of the spoon. “Thank you for having us, truly. It’s so nice for us all to be together.”
Joyce smiled, though the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes, and the conversation drifted back into the shallow waters of small talk. To them, it must’ve been enough to pretend, at least for the time being, that everything was alright, but the more Mike listened to them, the more the anger began to simmer beneath his skin. They all seemed so normal – they sat there having dinner together as if they had completely forgotten that there should have been one more person sitting at the table with them.
When Jonathan started talking about the spring semester, Mike felt the drilling in his chest start up again. Even the thought of going back to school without Will made him physically sick. They had never been apart before, how was Mike supposed to just go back and sit in class without him?
And of course, Dustin and Lucas were great but it just wasn’t the same without Will. With Will, it had always been different – the bond that Mike and Will had, it was just different. Sometimes Mike thought Will had been like his lost brother – twin brother even – because there had always been something about them, something so inexplicable that Mike didn’t even know how to name it. It had seemed like their souls had found each other, had traversed through time and space to meet in the same world, there in Hawkins. It had been written like that in the stars. So when Mike had lost him, when Will had died, something in Mike had died too.
Mike pushed back his chair and made a vague excuse about needing air. The atmosphere of the dinner became too suffocating.
When he stepped outside, he felt as if the world stopped for a moment, perhaps just for him, just as if it knew that Mike wanted to escape it so badly.
The woods behind the Byers’ house were completely still and silent, peaceful under the pale moonlight. The moon was so bright that night that it reflected the white of the snow, making the outside so bright that Mike didn’t even need a flashlight to follow the path. Besides, he knew the woods like the back of his hand. Just the moonlight was enough – and maybe it was better that way. So poetic, he thought, just him and the moon.
Mike walked until the yellow glow from the kitchen window was just a pinprick behind him. Where was he going? He didn’t know, but the woods welcomed him with open arms, like an old friend. He hadn’t been into the forest since November, because he had been scared – scared that the forest would haunt him and remind him of Will in the worst ways possible. He missed the times when woods had been just woods.
There was one more place that Mike avoided visiting, but in that moment he decided it was time to face the memories. It was time to visit Castle Byers.
He started heading that way – he still remembered the way, he will always remember the way – but somehow he kept getting distracted. His steps were unbelievably slow and every time he lifted his feet, they felt so heavy. But it could have been the snow, right? He kept stopping randomly to look up at the sky as if he wanted to make sure that the moon was still there keeping him company.
Suddenly, he found himself on a small clearing. He tilted his head back, mesmerised by the way the moonlight caught the frost in the air. It looked like the world was covered in diamond dust.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Mike’s stomach dropped. He didn’t move. He didn’t dare to. For weeks, he had lived in the silence of his own head – he had told everyone about Will and no one, obviously, had believed him. “He was real, I swear,” he had explained to Lucas and Dustin, but even they had been reluctant. “So where is he now, Mike?” – that was all he had been met with. He had listened to the doctors and the therapists who had told him that it was just grief and his vivid imagination and, truth be told, he had started to believe them. It had been simpler to blame it on hallucinations, right? What else could that have been?
He slowly turned around, his breath hitching in a jagged puff of white, and in that short moment, Mike prayed for both – that Will is and isn’t there at the same time. He wanted to see him again, so badly, but he didn’t know whether he could handle seeing him again, knowing that he would disappear either way.
And Will was standing there, leaning against the trunk of a tree.
“Will,” Mike breathed out. “You’re here. I thought… I thought…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. What did he think, really? That Will had disappeared for good? Or that he had never been real in the first place? “You came back.”
“Of course I did,” Will said, stepping closer. The air around him began to hum, that sharp, electric tingle reaching out to Mike’s skin.
“Where were you? What happened?” Mike asked, his words tumbling out in a desperate rush. He needed the details.
Will didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem to hear the questions. Instead, a playful, mischievous spark glistened in his eyes – it was a look which Mike had missed so much.
Will tapped Mike’s shoulder and giggled “Tag, you’re it!”
Before Mike could even process the words, Will started darting through the trees. If it hadn’t been for the moonlight, Mike would’ve already lost sight of him.
“Will! Hey! That’s not fair!” Mike laughed, and the sound felt so foreign to his own ears that it almost startled him. He hadn’t laughed in so long.
He took off after him, his boots thudding heavily against the frozen ground. The cold air burned in his lungs, and the wind whipped against his face, but he didn’t care. They raced through the silver forest, Mike’s heavy breathing the only sound beside the distant, melodic humming that followed Will. He chased him through the thickets and over the frozen creek bed, until they reached the edge of another clearing – wide and untouched, and it almost looked like a frozen lake under all that snow.
Will stopped abruptly at the edge of a massive, powdery snowdrift. He looked back at Mike, then, with a joyful shout, he reached out and grabbed Mike’s wrist.
He pulled him, somehow – because technically it shouldn’t have been possible, but Mike could swear that the pull was physical – a surge of energy that felt like being caught in a current. Will threw himself backwards, dragging Mike down with him. They tumbled into the deep snow together, the world spinning in a blur of white and silver.
The only sound was their laughter. It was loud and honest, echoing off the silent trees and rising toward the stars. Mike lay there, half-buried in the cold powder, feeling the frost seeping into his jeans and the impossible, electric warmth of Will right next to him.
They eventually settled, their laughter dying down into a comfortable, shared silence. They both lied on their backs, side by side, staring up at the vastness of the sky.
“Will, you didn’t answer my question,” Mike turned his head to look at him. “How are you here? If you want me to believe you that you’re real, I need to know the truth.”
Will opened his mouth, then closed it as if he couldn’t find the right words.
“You’re in my dreams,” he answered eventually. “When I fall asleep, you’re there.”
“What? What do you mean?” Mike frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I dream of you,” Will looked at Mike. “You’re my dream.”
“No, Will, I’m real. I’m not a dream.”
Silence fell between them again.
“The stars are beautiful tonight,” Will whispered. His voice was clear, so clear that it sounded almost too real. It felt like a secret shared between them, as they had done that so many times before in the past.
Mike kept looking at Will – for some reason he couldn’t look away. He wanted to memorise every single detail of his face, burn it into his brain, so that if it was Mike’s last time seeing him, he could at least keep this as a memory forever – till the day he himself dies. The moonlight made Will’s skin look like porcelain, smooth and perfect. He looked ethereal, like a beautiful ghost, a beautiful soul visiting this world.
“Remember that one summer night on your roof?” Will asked. “We stayed up until the sun started to come up because we were convinced we’d seen a UFO, but it was just a satellite.”
“And I dropped the flashlight,” Mike added, a soft chuckle vibrating in the air. “The big heavy one my dad loved. It shattered on the driveway, and we both had to hold our breath for ten minutes so he wouldn’t hear us through the window.”
“Oh my god, I remember,” Will said, laughing, but his smile faltered momentarily. “Wait… how do I even remember this?”
“Why wouldn’t you remember?” Mike asked, his eyes stinging from the cold.
But Will didn’t respond so Mike continued.
“I remember the way the air smelled like cut grass that night and how you pointed it out because it was your favourite smell. I remember how everything felt so… simple. I’d give anything to go back there.”
Will reached out, his hand hovering over Mike’s face. He didn’t touch him, but the static was so intense that Mike felt a phantom pressure against his skin.
Will’s gaze drifted, his focus shifting to Mike’s face. A small, sad smile tugged at his lips.
“You’re freezing, Mike. Your cheeks are all red,” he giggled. “You’ve been out here too long, you’re going to get sick.”
“I don’t care,” Mike argued, even as his toes started to go numb in his boots. “I’ll stay out here all night if it means you stay, too.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Will said, though his image was starting to blur at the edges, beginning to dissolve back into the moonlight. “But you need to go. Get warm. Eat that dessert your mom brought. Please, Mike.”
“No, Will. No, don’t do this,” Mike felt tears swelling up his eyes. It was embarrassing, he didn’t want to cry around Will again. “You have to promise me that you’ll come back.”
Will’s hand drifted down, the warmth of his presence brushing against Mike’s cheek.
“I’m always right here, Mike,” Will whispered, his voice fading into the rustle of the wind through the pines. “Even when you can’t see me, I’m right here.”
And even though Mike could swear that there weren’t any clouds in the sky before, suddenly one must’ve covered the moon – because what could’ve been a better explanation? – and the world went completely dark for a second.
“Will, don’t go,” Mike choked out. He couldn’t stop the tears from running down his face.
And suddenly the woods were just woods again. Mike sat up, shivering violently as the reality of the sub-zero temperature finally crashed into him. He looked at the snow beside him. There was a deep indentation where he had fallen, but the space where Will had been lying was perfectly smooth, untouched by the weight of a body.
Mike was alone again.
March 22, 1984
By the end of March, Will had visited Mike plenty of times already. It had become their little routine. Mike would sit in the basement alone, doing homework or reading comics until Will would suddenly appear – on the couch, on the chair, sometimes even sitting on the floor.
Initially, Mike had tried to fight it. He had tried to come up with reasonable explanations to why and how exactly his dead friend could possibly visit him, in his own house, in this stupid world in which he shouldn’t have existed anymore. He had tried to cover every single theory – was Will a ghost? Or was he simply a creation of Mike’s sick head?
And whenever Mike had asked about it, and he had tried hundreds of times – Will couldn’t answer – or maybe he didn’t want to. So, eventually, Mike had dropped it.
“I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy,” Mike said one day when they were both looking through Will’s old drawings which Mike had stored carefully in one dedicated binder.
“Yeah, me too,” Will admitted, at the same time looking at Mike so intensely, so longingly, that it made Mike’s stomach flutter uncontrollably. “Sometimes I keep wondering whether it’s really just a dream or not.”
Mike nodded. “But, hey, if we’re both going crazy, we’ll go crazy together, right?”
Will giggled.
“Yeah, crazy together.”
And since that moment, Mike had accepted Will’s presence in his life. He didn’t question it anymore, he didn’t ponder on the impossibility of all of this. Instead, he was happy to have his friend back, at least partially – and the thought, the hope, that all of this was indeed real, that Will’s spirit had somehow found his way back, outweighed every single doubt that Mike had ever had.
On Will’s birthday they met in the woods again.
“Will! Willlll!” Mike started shouting as soon as he stepped into the forest. He knew Will would come. “Where are youuuuuu?”
This time the woods were different. Spring had come already, the snow had melted, the days were finally longer and everything was finally leading them to summer.
It was weird, because with spring came peace – at least that was how Mike saw it – and even though he had thought that it would never get better, it actually did. Did he finally accept the fact that Will had died? No, he didn’t, he never will – but the thought that he could still see him somehow made it more tolerable.
“Willll! Come on!”
And, as Mike expected, he appeared.
“BOO!” Will jumped on his back, and even though Mike couldn’t really feel the physical weight of his body, he immediately recognised the warmth.
“Will!” he giggled. “Happy Birthday!”
Mike spun a couple of times with Will still on his back. Their mixed laughter filled the air. That was the beauty of this situation, no matter how absurd it was – that they could still be kids together, they could laugh together as the world around them blurred and spun in the shades of grey and green. It was just them against the world.
Mike finally stopped, breathless, as Will slid off his back. He just stood there, his chest heaving, his eyes now locked on Will.
It was the first time he’d really looked at him in the bright, unforgiving clarity of the spring sun.
“I think you look... different,” Mike whispered, his brow furrowing.
He stepped closer, closing the gap between them until the air began to hum with that familiar, electric tingle. He raised a hand, his fingers hovering just inches from Will’s head. He didn’t touch him – he knew his hand would just meet that strange, resistant pressure of the static – but he used his fingers to trace Will’s hair.
It was longer. The bowl cut was losing its rigid shape, the brown strands shaggier now, curling slightly over the tops of his ears. And when Mike stood fully upright, he realised that he wasn’t looking down quite as far as he had back in November.
“You’re taller,” Mike said, his voice dropping an octave in awe. “Will, you’re actually taller.”
Will rolled his eyes, a playful, sassy spark igniting in his gaze that made Mike’s heart skip a beat. It was a look so undeniably Will.
“Of course I’m growing, dummy,” Will said, tilting his head with a smirk. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Mike laughed, but it was a wet, shaky sound. This was it. This was the final, undeniable proof that he hadn’t gone crazy – Will was changing, like actually changing and he was the realest he had ever been.
“I thought… I dunno,” Mike hesitated, his voice soft. “I thought you’d be stuck in time. I was afraid I’d get old and you’d always be the kid with a silly bowl cut.”
“Hey! Don’t make fun of my bowl cut, alright?” Will pretended to be offended but a small smile tugged at his lips. “I am letting it grow out, though.” He stepped into Mike’s personal space, the static between them reaching a fever pitch. “And you’re stuck with me, Wheeler. Whether you like it or not.”
Mike reached out again, his hand moving from the messy brown strands of Will’s hair down to the curve of his cheek. He didn’t pull back when the static bit at his skin – instead, he pushed through the electric tickle, which felt like a thousand tiny, buzzing bees, until he could feel the soft warmth radiating from Will.
And Will didn’t even flinch. He leaned into the touch, closing his eyes for a second as if he could actually feel Mike’s palm against his face. Mike’s ears turned a bright, hot pink, and his stomach felt like he had just swallowed a giant gulp of fizzy soda. What was that?
“I’m never going to stop looking for you,” Mike promised, his voice cracking just a little bit. “Even if we grow up to be old men with canes, I’ll still be right here.”
Will’s gaze dropped to Mike’s mouth for a fleeting, confused second – he didn’t quite know why he was looking there, or what it would mean if he didn’t stop, but it felt like the centre of a very important secret. He snapped his eyes back up to Mike’s, only to find that they had locked with his again.
“I know,” Will whispered, his voice sounding like a soft melody. “I told you, you’re stuck with me forever.”
Mike felt like his heart was too big for his ribs, that weird feeling bubbling up until he felt like he might float away if Will wasn’t holding him down with that intense, shimmering gaze.
“Wait,” Mike said, his voice breathless. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his folding pocketknife, one with the red casing that he had stolen from his dad. “I want to make it official. So the world knows.”
Will watched, his head tilted curiously “What are you doing?”
Mike stepped toward a sturdy, ancient oak tree just a few feet away. Its bark was deep and grooved, it must’ve probably witnessed hundreds of winters.
“You’ll see,” Mike muttered. He pressed the tip of the blade into the wood. The bark was stubborn, but he pushed until he felt it give way, revealing the pale, raw wood underneath. He carved a straight, jagged line. A capital “I”.
Will moved closer, his hand hovering just inches from Mike’s as he worked. “It’s going to take forever like that.”
“I don’t care,” Mike said, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth in concentration. “I have all the time in the world.”
He started on the next word, his hand shaking slightly from the effort. Will reached out, his hand settling over Mike’s on the handle of the knife. With him “helping,” the blade seemed to move easier, slicing through the wood as if they were sharing the same strength.
I WILL
The letters were messy and uneven, the work of thirteen-year-old boys whose hearts were beating much faster than their hands could move.
NEVER
By the time they reached the next word, Mike’s palm was sweaty against the knife, and the buzzing in his arm felt like a permanent part of him. He looked at Will, whose face was so close to his. Was Will blushing?
FORGET
The moment the last letter was finished, that “buzzy” feeling surged through Mike’s entire body, warm and dizzying. It felt like he’d stayed on a carnival ride for just a second too long, making his heart hammer a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
“Did you... do you feel that too?” Mike whispered, even though he didn’t have to. There was no one else around.
The sunset-pink on Will’s cheeks deepened suddenly, and he gave a tiny, shy nod.
Mike’s hand was still vibrating with that terrifying feeling as he moved to the final space. He pressed the blade down one last time, carving a large, shaky U right at the bottom.
I WILL NEVER FORGET U
Mike folded the knife shut and tucked it back into his pocket. He stepped back, his chest heaving as if he’d just run a marathon, and looked at the raw, pale letters standing out against the dark bark.
“It’s a promise,” Mike whispered, his own face heating up as he realised how much he’d just put out into the world. “Even if everyone else forgets, the tree won’t. And I won’t.”
Will stepped up beside him, his gaze fixed on the carving. He reached out, his fingers tracing the shape of the letter “U”. A small, shaky breath escaped him, and when he turned to look at Mike, the expression in his eyes was so full of that pure, heartbreaking devotion that Mike felt like he was seeing the sun for the first time.
“No one’s ever made me a promise like that,” Will said.
In the quiet of the woods, Mike reached out and caught Will’s hand – because it felt like the right thing to do. For a second, the buzzing stopped, replaced by a clear, solid connection.
“Well, I’m not no one,” Mike reminded him, his voice cracking just a little. “I’m Mike.”
Will giggled. “I know. You’re my Mike.”
They stood there for a long time – two boys and a tree that held the secret, the proof, of a love that they weren’t ready to understand yet.