Chapter Text
They’re sprawled out on the floor of the Wheeler basement.
It’s the odd hour between too early and too late to sleep, and Will is staring up at the wooden beams of the ceiling, looking for patterns in the grain. Some watery and ambiguous synth filters through the radio, and the TV glows in the dim light.
Mike crinkles a potato chip bag in his fist and throws it towards the bin, huffing when he (unsurprisingly) misses.
The rest of the Party is out tonight, with Max and Lucas at the movies— a weekly event now, cashing in on the promises they made in the Creel house in ‘86— and Dustin on a long-winded radio call with Suzie. They’ve all fallen back into a rhythm, something that Will never thought would be possible.
And he likes the normalcy. But certain sounds and textures and tastes bring a jarring realization that, despite the ten months since Vecna’s defeat, he’ll never be normal.
The world will never be normal.
Sometimes, on his bad days, he looks at an old oak tree and wonders what it looks like in another dimension. If vines, slime-slick and curling, wind their way up the trunk.
Or he visits the library and can’t stomach the sight of the towering shelves— the backbone of Vecna’s prison, Will's morbid cocoon in the Upside Down.
But sometimes, on the good days— like tonight— it all fascinates him. The idea of the endless expanse of universes that they’d briefly traveled to. Dimensions, stretching like a Slinky and compressing like a vinyl record.
“Whatcha doing?” Mike asks, his voice slow with sleep. Or boredom. Will can never tell these days what he’s really thinking. He’s slipped into a monotonous tone again.
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
“Universes.”
Mike laughs, and Will’s chest tightens. It’s a rare moment, and one that he doesn’t take for granted.
“I’ve had enough of those for one lifetime.” He says, a bitter tinge to his voice. It breaks the monotony, but at a steep cost. Will knows that there’s one thing on his mind now.
Her.
“Yeah, but…” Will trails off. “Think about it. What if there are, like, different versions of us out there? In different timelines?”
Mike shifts, turning onto his side and facing Will. His eyebrows furrow. “Different versions? Like, a different Will?” He seems troubled by the idea, displeasure evident in the way he wrinkles his nose.
“Yeah, and a different Mike.” Will says, watching him carefully. It’s a sore subject— dimensions and all. The idea of different versions of /them/ meant that there could be different versions of her, and these are the kind of ideas that keep Mike up at night, pacing his room in the early hours.
Will can hear it every night from down here in the basement.
“But I like our universe. Our timeline,” Mike protests, that same irritated expression on his face.
“I know,” he says quietly, “but just imagine. What the other versions of us are doing right now.”
Mike’s silent for a moment. The air is heavy, like some great weight has phased into the room and is pressing down on the two of them.
“Maybe they’re here in the basement, just like us,” he finally says.
“Doing what?”
Will’s question hangs in the air. Mike shifts, propping his head up in his hand. His eyes wander to the ceiling.
“Watching a movie, maybe. Listening to The Cure. I wish we had it on tape,” he adds. “Doing stuff cooler than what we’re doing now.”
Will laughs softly. Mike scoffs. “What? We’re kind of just bums, dude.”
“We’re relaxing, Michael,” Will emphasizes, rolling onto his side and looking up at Mike, who looks away at the sound of his name.
Will swears there’s a blush creeping up his neck.
There have been a thousand moments like this since the final battle. Always the two of them, alone and talking in low voices, dancing around whatever it is that hangs in the air between them.
“I would be braver,” Will murmurs, more to himself than to Mike.
“What?” Mike asks, scrunching his eyebrows beneath his bangs.
And suddenly Will’s nervous, heat flushing his face. “I said,” he says breathlessly, “I would be braver. In another universe. Whichever one.”
Mike’s lips part incredulously, scoffing. “Will, you’re like… you’re the bravest person I know!”
He shakes his head, hair falling across his brow. “No, Mike. I’m not. Not… not in the ways I /want/ to be.”
Mike leans forward. “What do you mean? You defeated Vecna from inside his mind.” There’s a sort of reverence in his voice that makes Will’s stomach clench, his heart in his throat.
“I don’t know, Mike,” he sighs, flopping back against the pillows. “Not monster stuff or Upside Down stuff. Like…” he trails off. “Life stuff.”
“Life stuff?”
“Yeah. You know. Sharing my art… meeting new people… that kind of stuff.” Will says, his voice starting to shake. “Going out, maybe. On dates,” he adds.
“You don’t need to go out,” Mike counters, his voice rushed and breathless. “We… we have fun here.”
Will stares up at the rafters again. “Yeah. We do. But…” he trails off. The words he wants to say are on the tip of his tongue, held back by nearly a decade of shame and frustration and something else.
“Will,” Mike says, his voice softening like it always does, “did you… did you meet someone?”
Will practically shoots upright. “No!” He shouts. “No, Mike. I’ve never even been on a date. I’ve never even kissed anyone.”
That last part slips out unbidden, and the look of shock on Mike’s face makes Will want to crawl straight back into the Upside Down and forget this conversation ever occurred.
“Really?” Mike asks.
Will nods. “Are you surprised?” He asks, and it’s taking every ounce of energy for his words to come out evenly.
“I… I just thought… well, you’re nice, and funny, and pretty, so—“
Mike clamps his mouth shut so forcefully that Will hears his teeth clash together.
Now the thing that hangs in between them is even heavier, the both of them practically buzzing with nervous energy.
Pretty.
Mike opens his mouth, slowly, as if he can’t trust what will spill out this time. “I just mean—“
“Mike, it’s fine. I… I get what you mean,” Will says. “It just… it never works out. There aren’t a lot of people here,” he pauses, “like me.”
“Like you?” Mike asks, and then his eyes go wide. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah.”
Will wishes there was a way to magically change subjects. A spell that, when cast, would erase this moment. They’ve never really talked about it— that conversation at the Squawk last year. Anytime the Party conversation veered towards relationships, Mike was like a dog with its hackles raised, standoffish and tense. Will had always thought it had to do with El, but he was starting to realize that maybe it was him. The shadowy and unexplored part of him that he’d bared momentarily out of desperation, only to be shrouded again after Vecna’s defeat.
“I just…” Will feels tears welling up in his eyes, and shit, this is not how he wanted this conversation to go. “I guess I just hope there’s a version of me out there where someone /wants/ me.”
The last words come out nearly inaudible. God, he’s so pathetic. Whining about being wanted. Mike was wanted once. Twice, if Will counted himself. And look how that ended up.
“Will, hey,” Mike murmurs, his voice dropping into that lilt again— the one reserved just for moments like this. His voice was never colored with pity, but something more like understanding.
As if Mike could ever understand what clawed its way into Will’s heart all those years ago.
“You… you are wanted. I swear. i want you.” A pause. Will’s pulse jack-knifes. “Shit. That came out wrong. I mean… Here, I mean. I want you here. We all do.”
Will gives a little nod, willing his tears to dry before they slip down his cheeks.
“Thanks, Mike,” he breathes, letting out a shuddering breath that does nothing to chip away at the tension in his chest and shoulders. A little thought tugs at the back of his mind.
“I just want to be normal, you know? I guess I think about how… dating… would make everything more normal. After everything.”
But Will knows it wouldn’t. Not really. He could date, and kiss, and learn the pattern of someone’s body and mouth. Yet it would always lack what he had with his friends— chief among them Mike. Only Mike would ever understand his aversion to the winter cold. Only Mike would see his discomfort at the doctor’s office. Only Mike would understand his bone-deep grief.
“Kissing doesn’t just make you normal,” Mike scoffs. Will raises his eyebrows.
“I didn’t say anything about kissing,” he chides.
And now there really is a blush high on Mike’s cheeks, dusting his face with sunset pink. Will tilts his head, watching the raven-haired boy in front of him grow flustered.
“I just meant that,” Mike begins slowly, “that sort… of thing… doesn’t matter. It’s not really…” he pauses again, pursing his lips, “that fun.”
Will raises his eyebrows, thinking of the countless times that Lucas and Max sneak off to make out during campaigns or movie nights. Even after almost a year reunited, they can’t keep their hands off each other.
“Really?”
Mike shakes his head. “It’s alright. With El, it was… well, we were young.” He finishes, with a tone of finality— like he’s making peace with it. The mediocrity of it all.
“Maybe in another universe you actually like kissing,” Will jokes in a wayward attempt to lighten the mood, flashing him a smile.
“Maybe in another universe there’s someone I’d like to kiss,” Mike fires back, and Will’s stomach drops as Mike’s eyes flick downwards.
Once again, it was always these moments. A shared look, the flicker of a glance this way or that. The moments that made Will painfully question anything and everything he’s ever said or done to Mike Wheeler. The moments that made him feel like he was back in Camazotz, where nothing was real and he had to snag his eyes on every tiny detail.
The wicked part of Will has always wanted to think that Mike does it on purpose, out of malice. Just to taunt him and remind him of what he can’t have— what he’s sick in the head for thinking about.
But the small, wounded, hopeful part of Will thinks that maybe this is something more.
When the silence between them is too much to bear, Mike speaks again. “What if,” he says, oddly breathless, “we pretend we’re in the other universe. Just for tonight. Just you and me.”
Will’s sorry heart thumps faster at the words. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So… you want to go on a date. What would Other Will say?”
“Other Will?” Will asks, a laugh hitching in his throat. “God, Mike. That’s so corny.”
“Ah-ah,” Mike tuts. “I’m Other Mike.”
Will rolls his eyes, but he can’t bring himself to be truly irritated. Instead, he balls his hands in his lap and squares his shoulders. “Fine. Uh…”
“Just pretend you’re asking me. That’s easy.”
Will’s mouth falls open, slack with shock. Mike is suggesting he… ask him out? The room seems to tilt and warp around Mike’s face, his expectant face marked by those unfortunately expressive eyebrows.
Unfurling his fingers and rubbing his sweaty palms on his thighs, he sighs and nods. “Okay. Um… would you want to go out with me?”
“Sure,” Mike quips. “Where?”
Will hadn’t considered this. Well— he hadn’t considered it here and now. He’s considered it countless times, daydreaming in class and soothing himself to sleep at the idea of being alone with Mike. Not like how they’re alone now. But how they could be, if the energy was charged and tense and exciting and wanting.
“Lovers Lake,” he blurts. He’s always wanted to paint the way the sunlight sparkles on the surface, white zaps of light in the dark blue. Like revealing a glimmer of love.
Mike considers this for a moment, leaning far too much into his character and stroking his chin with two fingers. “That…” he trails off, and Will holds his breath.
“That would be fun.”
“Okay,” Will says slowly. “Mike, this is so stupid.”
Mike leans backs and shakes his head, vehement. “It’s not! It’s not. It’s… I don’t know. A thought exercise.”
“A thought exercise,” Will repeats, breathlessly and with a short laugh. “Right.”
They lapse into silence again, Mike looking lost in thought and biting his lower lip. It’s like he’s debating something with himself, tilting his head to the side and narrowing his eyes. Will just watches, his gaze tracing the slope of Mike’s nose and the height of his cheekbones.
Gluttonous is a good word for Will. Just… taking as much of Mike as he wants, drinking him in, watching him with abandon in this moment.
“O-kay,” Mike begins again. “A date at Lovers Lake. See? You’re already being braver.” He says it softly, a hint of pride sparking in his throat.
“Thanks. What else?” Will rushes out, chasing after this newfound bravery.
“Well,” Mike says, his eyes flickering down, “maybe in this other universe…”
Will’s heart should have stopped by now with how hard it’s pounding. Surely Mike can hear it. Surely this is all some cruel joke, a trick of the light—
“You kiss someone.”
The words are less of an exciting prospect and more like a death knell, ringing in Will’s ears and drawing every fiber of shame and heat within him to the surface of his skin. He swallows, his mouth suddenly flooded with saliva. Traitorous and ready. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and Mike notices, his eyes widening in that way they always do when there’s new information.
A discovery.
“You kiss me.” Mike whispers.