Chapter Text
Will Byers was born different.
Not the kind of different that got you snide whispers and hushed giggles in the hallway at school – though he did get his fair share of those, too – but the kind that carried a physical weight. The kind that felt like roadkill strapped to his back, aching and rotting and real, the fog of stench hanging over him and choking the air from his lungs.
It wasn't enough that he was born a softhearted, gentle child, more interested in creative pursuits like drawing and reading rather than athletics or hunting. His father insisted upon teaching him to shoot a gun and throw a ball in a thinly veiled attempt at molding his “spineless sissy” of a son into something vaguely man-shaped. It wasn't enough that he preferred art and books and games to playing catch in the yard or taking interest in the girls in his class. It wasn't enough that his mother would smooth his hair back from his forehead after a particularly bad day at school, soothing his sobs with hushed murmurs of, “Will honey, it's okay, you're just different than all those kids.”
No, none of that was enough.
The morning Will knew they'd grown in was the first moment he really felt like something was deeply, seriously wrong.
He awoke from a half-remembered nightmare, dizzy and disoriented. He felt feverish, almost clammy and drenched in sweat. The most notable thing, though –
The agonizing, burning ache that lanced along his spine, the most awful pain he'd ever recalled feeling, and the sounds of his shuddering sobs drew his brother to his door, knocking softly and asking if he was alright.
Jonathan barely waited for a response – not that Will could have given him one anyway, curled in on himself and inhaling on a visceral, quaking sob – before opening the door.
Will could just barely see his brother's face out of the corner of his eye, but he saw enough to see the way his complexion went pallid and his hand slipped from the doorknob as he rushed to his side.
“Will, what happened? Are you hurt?”
Will didn't know, only knew his whole body hurt, feeling like he was splitting open at the seams, and he imagined bursting into a pile of fabric and fluff like one of his old stuffies.
The rest was a blur, Jonathan tugging at his shirt with gentle urgency, helping him out of it, apologizing softly when Will cried out in pain.
“Hey, hey, it's okay, just let me see where it hurts, alright?” Will didn't know how Jonathan could know it was his back, wondered if maybe the delicate places he was stitched together had begun to unravel after all, gaping and obvious, and wouldn't that be almost comical?
“Will,” Jonathan's voice sounded strained. Will rubbed at his eyes, damp tears still clinging to his lashes. The sharp, white-hot pain had dulled to a throb, each breath a little less agonizing than before. He met Jonathan's stricken gaze over his shoulder in the reflection of the mirror hung on his wall. His shirt was balled up in one of Jonathan's shaking fists.
“What? What is it?” His voice sounded scratchy and hoarse, and he swallowed thickly.
Jonathan's expresion twisted, and his brother was wearing a face Will had never seen on him before, not even after a rough day at school or a long shift, not even after their father laid into him.
A warm, slightly calloused hand settled on his shoulder.
“Will,” Jonathan said, a strangled whisper. “Will, I think you grew wings.”
🪶
It wasn't completely unheard of, according to the doctor his mother dragged him to. It was rare, but not impossible.
“Avian Syndrome,” The doctor said as she slid his x-rays onto the illuminator, turning the backlight on. “Normally this sort of thing is genetic, but you said you don't have a family history?”
“No, not at all,” His mom said, arms folded over her stomach, hands clasped over her elbows. “I don't even – are you sure? Because one day he was fine, he was normal,” Will flinched a little at the word, normal, “and the next day he's… he's growing wings?”
Everyone's gazes trailed to the x-rays.
Clear as day, bones where there weren't bones before.
“It presents a little later in some patients. Sometimes closer to puberty.”
The doctor pointed to one of the x-rays, the little arch of bone.
“It looks like they're growing in healthy, despite the initial trauma. Have you had any more pain since the other day?” She asked Will, not unkindly.
“No,” He said, through numb lips.
The doctor nodded, glancing down at her clipboard.
“There are some other symptoms,” She continued. “Bone density loss is normal. If he's losing weight, don't be too concerned, so long as he seems healthy and is eating normally. Blood work came back clear. William is a healthy young man. Just bring him back in for regular checkups so we can make sure everything is growing in as it should."
“Growing in,” His mom echoed. “How… how big will they get?”
The doctor hummed, flipping the front page closed on her clipboard and tucking it under her arm.
“That depends,” She said. “On a fully grown adult man? The largest I've ever heard of is a wingspan of about twenty, twenty five feet. But every case is different, Mrs. Byers. We won't know more until William is a little older. There is still a lot about this condition we just don't know. All I can recommend is regular visits to ensure William is healthy.”
“Can we…?” His mom spared but a brief glance at Will, gesturing to the door.
“Of course,” The doctor said.
The two of them stepped into the hallway.
Anxious, Will waited until the door had just barely caught in the latch before he was down from the exam table on quiet feet, peering through the crack in the door as his fingers prized it open. He could see the doctor's back, her cropped blonde hair, and the drawn look on his mom's face.
“What about… surgery? Is that… is that an option?” His mom asked, hands gripping her elbows so tightly that Will could see the whites of her knuckles.
His stomach plummeted at the thought of surgery.
“We wouldn't recommend that, Mrs. Byers,” The doctor said slowly. “Now that he's begun presenting symptoms of Avian Syndrome, it means his internal biology is permanently altered as well. We have no way of knowing at this point what kind of harm attempting to amputate these appendages could cause. There are just too many unknowns about this condition.”
“Okay,” His mother said, her voice very nearly a rasp, a whisper. Her face may as well have been carved from stone.
When they began to turn around, Will scrambled inside the exam room, sitting back on the table with his heart hammering in his chest.
He knew his mom meant well, he knew she loved him and only wanted what was best for him. He knew she was just afraid for him.
The strange thing was, Will thought, as he looked at the x-rays again – projections of spindly curves of bone that he traced with his eyes on the flickeringly lit image at the same time he did with his fingers beneath the hospital gown, warm protrusion beneath gauze, shifting and breathing with him –
Wings.
I have wings.
He thought of blue, blue, blue, skies and puffy white clouds, watching the birds from so far away, wondering just how they made it look so easy when everyone else was stuck to earth, gravity like lead stones in their shoes.
Maybe he could learn to fly, too.
🪶
He had regular checkups with the doctor from that point forward, monitoring the growth of his wings, the healing of his initial wounds. After a couple weeks they could finally remove the gauze, Jonathan helping to slowly unwrap them, Will impatiently bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“If you keep wiggling around this is gonna take longer,” Jonathan said, voice sounding like he was biting back a laugh.
“I wanna see them,” Will said insistently, maybe even a little petulantly. He'd waited long enough for them to heal, trying to peek under the gauze in the bathroom mirror over the last few days to no avail.
“You will,” Jonathan promised, halting Will's movements with a hand on his side. “But you need to hold still.”
Will reluctantly stopped his bouncing, even as he thrummed with energy. He knew they couldn't be very big yet, he looked at them every night before bed, but the thought of having actual wings was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. Something brand new growing from him, something brand new and possibly wondrous.
Jonathan's fingers made quick work of the bandages, his brother's touch deft and sure as always.
“Okay,” He said softly, after a moment, taking a step back.
Wil turned from the left, to the right, trying to see them. He could move them, sort of, but it felt weird, like an appendage that wasn't supposed to be there, like an extra set of arms on his back that he had only just become aware he had.
He made a beeline from the kitchen to his bedroom, trying to twist around to see them in the mirror.
“Will, hang on,” Jonathan's voice followed him, and he pushed open the door, handing him a hand mirror. “Try this.”
Will held the mirror in a trembling hand as he turned around, holding it up higher, high enough to see, until his breath caught in his throat.
There they were.
They were tiny, flesh-colored, skin pink and new like after a scab, curled flat over his shoulder blades.
They looked – they were –
“They look like chicken wings,” Will said with a frown, and Jonathan choked on a laugh.
🪶
He was warned about how the process of his feathers growing in may cause discomfort – pain and itchiness, sometimes bleeding if a feather grew in wrong or broke at the shaft. He was given supplements to support feather growth and bone density; technicolor pills of varying shapes and sizes and colors half of whose names he couldn't pronounce. They almost looked like candy, if not for the disgustingly chalky texture or acrid aftertaste at the back of his throat after swallowing them.
Growing pains, of a sort. An atypical puberty before his normal, human one.
Will, for his part, eagerly anticipated what color his feathers would be. The doctor didn't seem to know, and she also did not seem particularly interested in the answer.
He wondered if they'd be tawny brown, like his hair.
White like angel wings?
Or maybe black, like a crow.
He doodled in his notebook in class, visions of wings and feathers of different shapes and styles. He'd even checked out a couple of books on birds from the library surreptitiously, just to admire the photographs and drawings of them in flight.
At first, all that had really grown in were down feathers, soft and pale and greyish, sometimes shedding a dusting of them on the inside of his shirts and jackets. It itched a little but didn't hurt, and Will sometimes caught himself scratching at them absently.
When his actual feathers came in, that was a different sensation. He itched constantly, more than he ever had before, tiny, raised bumps beneath the down on his wings, still yet scrawny and atrophied and a little patchy looking but there was finally something coming in. Will could deal with the discomfort, but waiting to see what color they would be when they grew in left him impatient.
His first feather came in just a few days shy of his twelfth birthday. It wasn't very long, not like the detailed drawings he'd seen in his books. It was covered by a thin sheath, almost waxy in texture. The doctor had mentioned these could be gently removed once the feather had grown out enough, and it would encourage feather growth.
Luckily this one was closer to his shoulder so Will could pick the sheath off the feather himself in the bathroom mirror, crumbling bits of milky white from the ragged little feather, meticulous in his work.
And when all was said and done, well –
It wasn't much. It looked a little bedraggled, but it was a feather. Not like the down at all. He ran a finger along the little plume of it wonderingly.
Tawny brown, like his hair.
He stretched his wings behind him, gaze in the bathroom mirror locked on them, just barely able to see them crest over his shoulders.
He imagined them big, bigger than himself, too big to fit in their tiny, cluttered bathroom, knocking over toothbrushes and bottles of soap, warm brown feathers as far as the eye could see.
🪶
Will hadn't told the party about his wings yet.
They were small enough that if he pressed them flat to his back they weren't visible beneath clothes and backpacks, but they were growing. Where once they'd been just scrawny little chicken wings they now… well, they didn't really look like real wings, not completely, but he was growing in actual feathers, and he did all the exercises and took all the supplements he was supposed to.
Eventually, they would be too big to hide. His mom would have to cut holes in the backs of all of his shirts. Then everyone would know, and something about the wings no longer being his own little secret felt too revealing, exposing.
He'd never known anyone else in Hawkins with wings. Yet another thing to alienate him, mark him as strange.
But if anyone in the world would accept him for who he was, then why not his best friends?
He balked at the thought of sitting them all down as a group and announcing,”So, um, I have wings now.”
It ate at him, keeping him up at night, tossing and turning in bed. He didn't want to keep things from his friends, but the fear persisted – what if they started treating him differently? What if they thought he was too much of a freak, even for them? What if – what if Mike –
No. He couldn't stand that. Not even the thought.
He picked at his still-growing feathers, a nervous fidget, until a lance of pain throbbed through his skin, sudden and sharp, and when he pulled his hand back, there was a small smear of blood clinging to the pads of his fingers.
He pulled the broken shaft of the feather from his wing, gritting his teeth against the shuddering cry that wanted so badly to spill forth, until it was in the shaky palm of his hand, bent and muddied red.
🪶
Will couldn't sleep.
He tossed and turned, but his mind was racing, thinking about his wings and his friends and feathers, bent and bloodied. The sneering looks of the kids at school, the words dripping like rotten sap and clinging to him, viscous and sticky.
He sat up then, throwing the blankets off of himself, legs swinging over the side of his bed as he reached for the walkie-talkie that was present on his nightstand.
“Anyone awake? Over.”
The hum of static was familiar, soothing, not quite enough to fully ease his anxiety but just enough to bring his shoulders down from around his ears, ease the hunch of his spine, the tense way his wings were pressed flat to his spine.
There was a long silence, long enough that Will was about to push the antenna back down because of course they were asleep, what was he thinking –
A fresh burst of static, then, before he could.
“Will?”
His heart skipped, recognizing Mike's sleep-heavy murmur as well as he could the back of his hand.
“Is everything okay? Over.”
Though he sounded tired and out of it, there was no denying the concern lacing his words, warmth humming low in Will's chest, wings lifting from his back.
“Mike,” Will breathed. “Um. Yeah. Everything's fine, just couldn't sleep. Over.”
He waited dutifully for Mike to respond, finger-combing the down and budding feathers on his wings.
A rush of static, Mike's blurry exhale, before he replied, “Okay. Do you want to talk? Over.”
“Yeah,” Will replied, scooting back so he could sit against the headboard, letting his wings curve over the tops of his shoulders, just barely long enough now to do so. “I, um. This is – okay. This is kinda weird. Over.”
“Weird how? Over.”
Somehow, Will got the feeling Mike knew that Will didn't mean the late night call – that part wasn't unusual. Sometimes they'd talk like this late into the night, hushed whispers until the sun started to rise. Things felt special this time of night, Will's entire world narrowed down to the four walls of his bedroom and Mike's low, static-saturated murmur.
Sometimes, like this, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. Here, Will could whisper all of his worldly secrets into the darkness with no one to look at him like he was strange for it.
It was just Mike.
“If I… if I were keeping a secret from the party, would…” Will swallowed, mouth dry and tongue feeling thick in his mouth. Would you hate me for keeping it, or hate me for the secret? “Would you… be mad at me?”
There was another soft rush of static from the other end, Mike's soft breathing.
“‘Course not. You're my best friend. And don't forget to say ‘over’. Over.”
The laugh felt stuck in Will's throat, mouth too dry, coming out more like a quiet wheeze.
Yeah, that was… that was very Mike.
“Right, sorry. Over.”
“You can tell me about it if you want to. Over.”
That gave Will pause.
He wanted to. Jesus, he wanted to. He wanted to tell the whole party, he wanted to tell Mike, he just didn't know if –
That anxiety clogged up his words, mouth opening and closing, unable to get words out. His thoughts felt like a skipping record.
“Only if you wanna, Will. We can just talk about other stuff if you want. Over.”
And the record resumed playing, Will's exhale coming out stuttery as he lifted the walkie talkie again.
“I do. I do want to tell you. I just. Um, I just don't really know where to start. Over.”
“At the beginning is a good place,” Mike said, words soft and sleepy, but teasing.
“You forgot to say ‘over’.”
Mike's sigh blew through the receiver.
“Okay, whatever. Forget the ‘over’. I'm tired of saying it.”
Will bit his lip on a grin, not sure when he'd started smiling, but Mike always had a way of drawing Will out of himself, even as they were separated by miles and the late hour.
“I grew wings,” Will blurted out, sudden and without preamble. Regret immediately followed, but he clenched the walkie talkie, waiting on Mike's response.
“Wings?” He asked, sounding a bit more alert now and much more confused. “Like, actually?”
“Yeah, like, actually.”
“How?” That Mike didn't even question whether or not Will was messing with him made that warm thing in is chest rumble with satisfaction, his down feathers puffing where his wings were settled over his shoulders still. “How does that happen?”
“I don't really know,” Will said, and launched into his explanation.
He talked until his throat went raw, telling Mike everything – the day he'd woken up in agonizing pain, the trip to the doctor's, his feathers growing in.
Mike had questions, of course, ever curious – could Will fly? No, not yet. How big were his wings? At that, Will had to scramble out of bed and fumble blindly in his desk drawer for a ruler, struggling to measure one wing by the dim moonlight. Maybe… a foot? And a half? He couldn't tell for sure. What color were his feathers? About the same color as his hair, Will said, cheeks warm.
“You'll be able to fly someday, though?”
“Maybe. I don't know. I… I'd want to. If I could.”
“Where would be the first place you'd fly to?”
To you, Will thought, unbidden, finding the words again stuck in his throat as soon as he thought them. That was an odd thing to say.
“Away from Hawkins, maybe. If it happens. If I can.”
“If you're going far, you should take me with you,” Mike said, words punctured by a staticky yawn. “Hawkins wouldn't be the same without you.”
And Will – didn't really know how to respond to that.
“We should sleep,” He said, for lack of any answer that might feel like enough of a response to that. There was the faintest trickle of sunlight through the curtains, and he knew they'd both be exhausted tomorrow.
Mike sighed.
“‘Kay. And Will?”
“Yeah?”
“You should tell Lucas and Dustin.” Another yawn, but this time Mike continued to speak through it. “You know they wouldn't care. Dustin would probably have a million questions.”
Will could picture it.
“I'll tell them,” Will said, voice small. He didn't know when he would, but he was surprised to find he did mean it.
“‘Night, Will.”
Will didn't respond, for long enough that Mike had probably already turned off the walkie and put it away, but he pressed the button and answered anyway.
“‘Night, Mike.”
🪶
Mike had been wrong that Lucas and Dustin wouldn't care.
No, they cared a lot.
“People just don't grow wings overnight,” Dustin said. “That's scientifically impossible!”
“Well, obviously it did happen, so it is possible!” Lucas said, gesturing to Will.
Dustin folded his arms over his chest, looking Will up and down. Will's cheeks felt warm.
Mike's shoulder bumped his, standing close, warm and solid.
“Knock it off,” Mike said. “It's Will, so obviously he's telling the truth.”
“I'm not saying he's lying,” Dustin said, huffing. “I'm just saying I don't understand it! Avian Syndrome sounds like something out of a comic book, like a superhero origin story. Will isn't one of the X-Men.”
“No, he's not, but we should at least hear him out –”
The four of them were in the Wheelers’ basement, the agreed upon meeting place for Will's grand reveal.
He didn't tell Dustin and Lucas right away after his late night conversation with Mike. A small part of him thought maybe he'd dreamt it, but when Mike nudged his arm that day at lunch, tired-eyed but with a small smile, he knew immediately it'd all been real.
It was Mike that had helped him come up with how to best tell Dustin and Lucas. In the end, despite all the ideas they tossed around, Mike suggested just telling them.
“They're Dustin and Lucas,” He'd reasoned with a shrug. “They're our friends. Our party. And friends don't lie, remember?”
Right. The cardinal rule. Will felt guilt twist his stomach. Had he been lying to them the entire time? He hadn't thought of it that way.
He started from his thoughts at Mike's hand on his shoulder.
“No, I meant it more like –” Mike sighed, sounding frustrated. Will peeked up at him through his bangs. “Friends don't lie. You don't lie. They'll believe you, Will,” He encouraged.
They'll believe you.
Will let those words bolster him even now, moreso with Mike sitting close to him.
“Do you guys want to… see them?”
Dustin and Lucas both froze mid-bickering, turning to look at Will.
Mike bumped Will's shoulder gently, gave him a look as if to ask, you sure? and Will gave him a tiny, near-imperceptible nod in return.
He stood, turning quickly away from his friends, not sure that he could do this while looking at them. His cheeks burned as he shed his jacket, the only layer of clothing he'd been using to conceal his wings.
His mom had started cutting careful holes in the backs of some of his shirts, though she never insisted he wear them. I just want you to be more comfortable, honey, she had said. He hadn't let her cut holes in all of them, but maybe this was a start.
“Whoa,” He heard Lucas pipe up first, and it took everything in Will not to let his wings press flat to his back out of sheer nerves, instead steeling himself and lifting them sharply above his shoulders. The movement caused the pages of their notebooks, still sprawled out over the table to rustle slightly where they sat.
“They're really real,” Dustin said, awe in his voice.
“See? Will wouldn't lie,” Mike said, sounding smug. It made the corner's of Will's lips twitch up in the faintest of smiles.
It was this that gave him courage to finally turn around, looking into the stunned faces of his friends.
Though Mike, he didn't look stunned. He looked –
Proud, almost, if Will had to put a word to it. His stomach suddenly felt like it was full of snakes, and he felt somehow more nervous than he had when he took off his jacket.
“Um, yeah, so. Wings.”
“Dude, that's so –”
“Holy shit, Will, you have wings, holy shit –”
A laugh bubbled out of Will at his friends’ reactions, and he couldn't help but smile now.
“Yeah, I do.” He said, flexing them, stretching them out. His feathers were still not yet fully grown in, but they were covered in enough down that you could barely see the skin underneath anymore. They really did look like the wings of a baby bird, like the ones he'd seen in science books, awkward and unready for flight or to face the world beyond their nest.
The spell was broken when Mrs. Wheeler called the boys up for dinner, and Will scrambled for his jacket, shoving his arms through the holes as quickly as possible as the basement door opened.
“Mike, dinner's going to be cold if you –”
“Yeah, yeah, we're coming, Mom! Jeez!” He stomped up the stairs, making a show of it, buying Will time to finish zipping up his jacket, wings flat against his back from fear.
He faintly heard Mrs. Wheeler saying something admonishing to Mike as the door slammed shut behind them.
“Well,” Lucas said, in the ensuing silence, getting up out of his chair with a stretch as he glanced at Dustin, and then Will. His gaze settled on Will, and he clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“They're cool, Will. The wings. If you can fly someday you better take me on a flight first.”
Dustin whirled on Lucas, mouth falling open.
“Hey, hold on a sec, that's not fair –”
That gentle, rumbling warmth lingered in Will's chest, even during dinner with the Wheeler's, and throughout Nancy and Mike's usual bickering and Ted Wheeler's usual grunting and grumbling under his breath. It didn't matter.
He had the best friends in the world.
🪶
Mike had wheedled Will into sleeping over that night, and Will of course always wanted any excuse to spend more time with him.
They stayed up watching movies and talking, about school, about the upcoming D&D campaign that Dustin had been working so hard on and promised would be a masterpiece, about nothing and everything and all the minutiae in between.
It was only when the last movie ended, the tape stopping and leaving them dimly illuminated by the blue light from the TV, that Mike rolled over where he was sprawled over his own sleeping bag (and partly onto Wills, too) to catch his eye.
“Hey, so. Uh.”
Will raised his eyebrows. If he didn't know better, he'd almost say Mike was nervous. He rarely saw Mike nervous, much less around him – the last time he remembered Mike looking so uncertain was –
“Do you want to be friends?”
“What?” Will asked.
Mike shifted so he was looking up at the ceiling instead, his brow furrowed. The light from the TV painted his face in streaks of shadow.
“Don't be such a space case, get a grip, Wheeler,” He muttered to himself, just barely audible to Will. Then, louder, “You can say no, but… could I… can I… canItouchyourwings?”
Will blinked. Recalibrated, as Mike's words sank in.
“Um –”
“Youcansayno! I know it's weird, right, but when you had them out earlier I just thought – it reminded me of, like, those ostriches at the zoo a little, all fluffy and soft, and I used to think those might be cool to pet, too, but you know, obviously you can't just go and pet an ostrich, I heard they're kind of mean, not that you're mean, but I've never pet a bird before – except for that time old man Harris’ chickens got out and we had to help catch them but that was a little different because I got pecked, and –”
“Mike,” Will said, a laugh in his voice. “Um. It's okay. You can, if you really want to.”
Mike stopped talking.
“Really?” He asked, hushed and surprised.
“‘Course,” Will said, suddenly feeling embarrassed, cheeks warm, grateful for the shield of the darkness. “I don't know if they're, uh, as soft as you're thinking they are but. You can touch them.”
Will sat up slowly, and Mike followed, eyes wide and dark.
“Are you sure?” He asked.
“I'm sure,” Will said, turning so his back faced Mike, shifting his wings outward, above his shoulders. “I still have a lot of feathers growing in, so it's probably all prickly.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before he felt a tentative brush of fingertips against the arch of Will's wing, and his breath caught in his throat.
“Whoa,” Mike breathed.
His touch grew a little bolder, though no less gentle, fingers trailing through Will's feathers, through down and still-growing primaries and the waxy nubs of brand new feathers yet to be.
Will couldn't move, couldn't breathe.
Mike had always been a tactile person, often pressing their knees and shoulders and elbows together. Hands on shoulders, ruffled hair, an arm around his shoulder. It was something cherished and welcomed and something Will had grown accustomed to over the course of their friendship.
This, though. This brand new, fledgling part of Will? This was territory yet unexplored, and the writhing, twisting sensation in his gut returned with a vengeance.
“It is kind of prickly,” Mike affirmed Will's words from earlier, “but they're soft, too. Really soft.”
God, his face was on fire. His feathers puffed up without his permission, and he wanted to curl up into a ball.
Mike's fingers were still in his feathers, but his touch stilled.
“Sorry. Should I stop?” He asked in a whisper, voice very small, gentle touch already beginning a slow retreat.
“No! No, it's… it's fine.”
A pause.
“Okay,” Mike breathed, and Will could hear him shifting behind him, before he felt a hand settle on either wing, fingers splayed through his feathers.
“They're a lot bigger than my hands,” Mike said, sounding impressed by this fact. He moved his hands up and down, Will's wings moving with him, almost a cartoonish flapping motion, completely at his mercy. A surprised-sounding huff of a laugh escaped him at that, and Will smiled, too.
“They're gonna get even bigger. That's what the doctor said.”
“How big?”
Will shrugged.
“Dunno. Twenty feet, maybe? The doctor wasn't sure.”
“Twenty feet,” Mike echoed in an awed whisper. “If they get that big, you have to take me flying.”
Will bit his lip on a smile, face hurting from it.
“Okay,” He said, certain he wasn't keeping the smile out of his voice at all. “Just don't tell Lucas I said that.”
There were no possible words to describe the sheer relief that Will felt, knowing that Mike not only unflinchingly accepted this strange new part of Will, but that he liked it. Them. His wings.
There was a comfortable silence between them like this, Mike seemingly not bored of Will's wings just yet, continuing to run his fingers through the feathers. The repetitive motion unwound the last vestiges of tension coiled in Will's body, leaving him feeling sleepy, pliant, head dipping against his collarbone.
“Will?” He heard Mike's voice from behind him, as though a million miles away. Will was sure he'd recognize Mike's voice even if it were millions of miles away, even if he were asleep or half dead. He'd heard that voice for so many years, teasing him, laughing with him, arguing with him. He'd probably be able to pick Mike out from a lineup while blindfolded, if he had to.
Mike's fingers were gone from his feathers, then, and Will awoke from the dozing trance he'd been in, heavy eyelids blinking open from where he hadn't recalled closing them.
“Let's go to bed,” Mike said after a moment, his voice sounding close and far away all at once.
“Yeah,” Will said through a yawn, eyes half lidded. “Bed.”
They curled up in their respective sleeping bags, facing one another like a matching set of parentheses. Mirror images, matching opposites. A pair and a set. Will thought, sleepily, that he never went along with anyone else quite so well as he did Mike.
Will could tell from the sound of Mike's breathing he was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, sliver of a pale cheek and tufts of dark hair just barely visible over the top of his sleeping bag.
He watched him sleep, listened to him breathe, a strange sort of comfort making a home in his chest. Will may have changed, but this didn't, this couldn't.
It never would, he thought.
I won't let it.
🪶
November 6th, 1983.
Will was wrong.
Everything changed.
The Demogorgon. It got me.