Chapter Text
In 1996, my life finally felt… organized.
Not perfect—just organized. And that difference mattered.
I’d been living in New York long enough not to feel like a visitor, but not long enough to truly belong. I’d graduated from NYU, shared a tiny, outrageously expensive apartment, and still managed to pay the rent on time. That felt like a quiet victory. Most of my days were spent drawing: illustrations for indie comics, concept art for projects that had yet to exist, alternate covers that might never see the light of day. Nothing exploded overnight, but everything grew slowly—carefully, as if I were afraid of startling my own luck.
I told myself I was happy.
Most days, I almost believed it.
Jaiden fit neatly into this orderly narrative. Loud, easy, brimming with energy. He loved blaring music, cramped spaces, sweat, cheap beer, and bands no one had heard of yet. Indie rock, underground, messy—the sort of thing that thrived on exposed nerves. I smiled, nodded, followed along. I kept my own boundaries sharply drawn, like pencil lines I refused to smudge. The Clash was still my stopping point. Anything beyond that seemed dangerously close to memories I pretended I no longer carried.
Maybe that’s why I hesitated when he suggested the Mercury Lounge.
“Gonna be great, Will,” he said, far too animated, eyes shining like he’d just stumbled upon something precious. “This band’s about to blow up. Everyone’s talking about them.”
I should have said no.
I should have listened to that strange twinge in my chest, that silent warning that always flickered whenever the past stirred.
But I went anyway.
The venue was too crowded, too hot, too loud. The kind of place where the air felt borrowed, shared between bodies pressed against each other. The lights were low, red, almost suffocating, casting everything in a slightly unreal glow. The opening band—a female underground group called Medusas—played something technically competent. Yet it unsettled me. The bass throbbed directly against my chest, like a second, off-kilter heart. I couldn’t tell if it was the music or the creeping sensation that I didn’t belong here.
As Jaiden chatted with friends, I pretended to pay attention. I nodded, smiled at the right moments, gripped my drink too tightly. And then my eyes wandered—and I saw them.
Familiar faces, far too close to the stage to be coincidence.
My stomach sank.
Lucas and Max held hands, leaning toward each other as if sharing a language only they understood. Jane leaned on Dustin, laughing at something he exaggerated with his hands. All of Hawkins, condensed in New York, laid out before me without warning.
For a moment, I considered leaving.
“I… I’m gonna go say hi,” I murmured to Jaiden before I could back out.
The hugs were too easy. As if no time had passed. As if we hadn’t learned to live apart.
“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, trying to fold this scene into my reality.
Lucas arched an eyebrow, a half-smile forming.
“Thought you were here for the same reason we were.”
“What reason?”
Dustin looked at me a beat too long, as if measuring something. Then he smiled. Small. Cautious.
“Mike. His band’s playing tonight.”
Fuck.
The name hit me like a physical blow. My chest tightened, my throat closed. Ridiculous—years without talking, years pretending it stayed back in Hawkins—and yet one name was enough to unravel everything I thought I’d built.
Before I could ask anything, the lights dimmed further. The crowd’s murmur swelled into a tense, electric hum. The headliner was announced.
“Ladies and assholes! your idol… The Wheeler.”
My body froze.
The musicians climbed first. The drums struck, dry and firm. The guitar hissed, complaining. And then he appeared.
Mike Wheeler.
Dressed in black from head to toe, as if he’d stopped running from his own darkness and decided instead to wear it like armor. The tight black t-shirt hugged his body in an almost indecent way. The leather jacket, short and adorned with silver spikes along the shoulders and collar, caught the red stage lights in fleeting flashes. Worn boots planted firmly on the floor, as if he knew exactly where he belonged.
He looked different.
Older. Sharper. Dangerous.
Black eyeliner, deliberately smudged, deepened his gaze in a way that made my stomach clench. Stray strands of hair fell across his face, tossed back impulsively at times. A single silver earring glinted discreetly in one ear—a small, devastating detail.
Vulnerable and provocative at once.
Like someone who had learned to survive by turning pain into noise.
My heart didn’t ask before it started racing.
When he began to sing, it got worse. His voice carried something raw, broken, painfully familiar. Every word seemed torn from a place I knew intimately—a place I’d tried to bury back in Hawkins, along with unsent letters and unnamed feelings.
I should have looked anywhere else.
I couldn’t.
Mike saw me.
It wasn’t immediate. But it happened. His gaze swept the crowd, paused when it found mine. One long, impossible second. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, almost imperceptibly.
Is he… flirting with me?
Oh.
Oh.
My chest tightened painfully.
I tried to convince myself I was imagining things. That it was just the lights, the volume, my memory warping everything. But then he sought me out again with his eyes—this time without hiding.
I knew.
Years without speaking. Years pretending it was over. And yet, here we were.
Me, frozen in the Mercury Lounge, struggling to remember how to breathe.
And Mike Wheeler, onstage, singing as if he were speaking directly to me.
For the first time in a long time, the life I thought was organized began to feel dangerously fragile.
But then something made him stop looking at me for a few minutes. Someone.
Jaiden had sidled up next to me, leaning in to say something I would have understood perfectly in any other situation. But the trance of Mike’s piercing gaze made my brain refuse every word. I just nodded automatically, trying to relearn how to exist in my own body.
When I returned my focus to the stage, Mike wasn’t looking at me anymore.
And that hurt more than I was prepared to admit.
The show went on, but I remember almost nothing of the songs that followed. Only fragments: the guitar slicing through the air, the quick glint of silver spikes as Mike moved, the way he closed his eyes during certain lines, as if confessing something no one there had the right to hear.
When the final song ended, the applause erupted—loud, immediate, swallowed by the low ceiling of the Mercury Lounge. Mike thanked them quickly, muttered a hoarse “good night,” and left the stage without looking back.
And I just stood there.
My body felt… strange. Too light. Too hot. Every nerve exposed. My hands trembled slightly, and I shoved them into my pockets in a futile attempt to seem normal.
“You okay?” Lucas asked, far too observant to miss it.
“I’m fine,” I replied too quickly.
I wasn’t.
Jaiden bounced back into my world, all energy and chatter about the band, the singer, the future they seemed destined for. He smiled as if he’d just lived the exact night he wanted. I smiled back—late, out of sync.
“We’re going backstage,” Dustin announced casually, making me swallow hard. “Gonna say hi to Mike.”
My stomach turned.
“Backstage?” I repeated, my voice faltering.
“He asked for us,” Max added. “Said he wanted to see us.”
Jaiden grew even more excited.
“This is amazing!” he nudged me lightly. “See? I told you it was worth coming.”
I nodded. Nodded because it was easier than explaining the quiet chaos inside me.
The hallway to the backstage felt too long for such a short corridor. Walls scrawled with names and dates, marks from bands that had come and gone. Each step heightened my awareness of my own body: the way my shirt clung to my back, my heart hammering too fast, the sense that I was about to be exposed in some irreversible way.
Gay panic didn’t even cover it.
It was like my brain was running behind my heart.
When we entered, Mike was already there.
No jacket now, black t-shirt sticking to his sweaty chest, hair even messier as if he’d run his hands through it one too many times. He was laughing with the drummer, relaxed, loose—until he saw us.
Until he saw me.
His smile shifted. Didn’t disappear, but became smaller, slower. His eyes found mine and stayed there an impossible second longer.
“Will,” he said.
My name sounded different on his lips. Lower. Intimate.
“Mike,” I replied, trying to seem normal. Trying to seem whole.
Greetings happened fast. Lucas, Dustin, Jane. By the time it was my turn, he hesitated—a microsecond, maybe less. The hug was brief, but too close. Too warm. The kind of contact that reignites memories never truly cooled.
I noticed the little habits. The way his jaw twitched when he was annoyed. How he pressed his thumb against his index finger when something irked him—tiny, imperceptible, but to me it screamed that he was working to hide something. And the subtle twitch of his left eyebrow when someone mentioned Jaiden. I had seen it before, a silent warning, a tiny spark of jealousy.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” he murmured.
“I… didn’t know you played here,” I answered.
He smiled sideways.
“Yeah. Life likes these little ironies.”
Jaiden cleared his throat beside me, completely unaware of the electricity in the air.
“Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Jaiden. Will’s boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend fell between us, solid, heavy.
Mike blinked once. Just once. But I saw it. His jaw tightened before settling into a polite, rehearsed smile. The flash of annoyance was quick, like lightning, but it was there.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking Jaiden’s hand. “Mike.”
“Great show,” Jaiden continued, all enthusiasm. “Seriously. You’re amazing.”
“Thanks,” Mike replied.
But his eyes returned to me. Always returned.
And that made me nervously ridiculous. Like I was doing something wrong just by being there. Like my body was betraying secrets I’d never voiced.
Mike shifted slightly closer, careful not to touch. His left shoulder twitched just a fraction when Jaiden mentioned music they could play together—a small tell I knew all too well.
“Long time,” he said quietly. “You disappeared.”
“You too,” I said before I could censor myself.
A quick smile crossed his face, but I caught the slight bite of his lip afterward—another habit, a way of masking when something hit him harder than he wanted anyone to see.
“Yeah. But it looks like you found me again.”
My face warmed. I looked away. Jaiden didn’t notice—or pretended not to—but I felt it. A strange, new discomfort settling in my chest. A jealousy that made no sense. A fear.
“We could… talk later,” Mike said. “More calmly.”
He looked at me when he said it. Only me.
I nodded, knowing that calm didn’t exist anymore. Not for us.
While Jaiden gushed about music, tours, and the underground scene, I could only think about how Mike Wheeler still had the power to dismantle me with a look. And how this night—supposed to be just another—had already changed everything.
The conversation backstage drifted oddly, misaligned. Lucas and Dustin talked about the band, Jane commented on the sound, the drummer laughed too loudly. Everything seemed normal—except I felt every move Mike made, even when I wasn’t looking.
He leaned on the table behind him, arms crossed, body too relaxed for someone claiming to be at ease. I noticed the way his thumb kept tracing the rim of a coffee cup absentmindedly, a nervous tic I’d memorized. And how he shifted his weight from foot to foot whenever Jaiden gestured too enthusiastically.
His eyes met mine at carefully calculated intervals. Not insistent enough to draw attention. Not casual enough to be innocent.
“You staying in New York long?” he asked the group, but his gaze found me.
“We live here,” Lucas replied. “For a while now.”
“Yeah,” Dustin added. “Some of us, at least.”
Mike nodded, distracted. Then returned to me.
“And you?”
My brain took an extra half-second to process.
“I… live here too.”
“Where?” he asked, simple.
I blinked.
“Lower East Side.”
“Really?” His smile widened slightly. “We rehearse nearby.”
Of course they did. Of course the world had to be that small.
“We’re playing again next week,” Mike continued, casual. “Same place.”
“Really?” Max asked. “Can we come?”
“Sure,” he said. “I can put some names on the list.”
He picked up a scrap of paper and a pen, resting them on the table. Started writing while talking, without lifting his eyes. I noticed the slight pause in his hand when he wrote my name—a hesitation I knew well, the kind that meant he was aware of the fluttering effect I had on him.
“Lucas. Max. Dustin. Jane.”
My stomach did a small flip when he paused.
“And you,” he said finally, looking at me. “If you want.”
I did.
Of course I did.
“I… can go,” I whispered.
He nodded, satisfied. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he twirled the pen between his fingers.
“Will, Give me your number.”
My heart skipped.
“The… number?”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Sometimes I prefer calling. Texts don’t say everything.”
It felt charged with something I couldn’t tell if it was real or just in my head. Still, I picked up the pen with slightly trembling fingers and wrote it down. When I handed it back, our fingers brushed—a second too quick to avoid, too slow to be accidental.
The air thickened.
“Great,” he said, tucking the paper into his pocket. “Then… you’re invited.”
Jaiden, still observing with a slightly lost grin, stepped closer.
“Awesome!” he said. “I’d love to go too.”
There was a pause. Short. Small. But enough.
Mike blinked once, clearly surprised, and looked at me—not Jaiden.
“You…” he began, then stopped.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. My chest tightened.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I said quickly, feeling heat rush to my face. “I mean… if there’s room.”
Mike held my gaze. Something dark flashed across his expression—quick, contained. Jealousy? Annoyance? I didn’t know. But I saw it. The slight clenching of his fists at his sides, the tightening of his shoulders, the tiny flare of his nostrils.
“Sure,” he finally said, turning back to the paper. “No problem.”
He wrote another name. Slightly bolder than the rest.
“All set,” Jaiden said, oblivious to the invisible tension. “Next week.”
“Next week,” Mike repeated.
But when he said it, he was looking at me.
The group began to drift away, chatting about where to go next, about food, about the corner bar. I lingered a beat longer, like my body hadn’t received the memo to leave.
Mike stepped closer.
“Hey,” he murmured.
I turned.
“Hey.”
He hesitated, ran a hand through his hair—a nervous gesture I knew all too well—and for a fraction of a second, his fingers lingered in the mess at the back, like he was trying to keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t.
“I’m glad you came.”
My chest tightened.
“Me too.”
Not a lie.
And that was the scariest part.
“See you,” he said, half-smiling.
“See you.”
I left the backstage with a clear sense that something had been set in motion. Something unstoppable. Jaiden held my hand, distracted, happy, and I let him.
But my mind stayed behind.
With Mike Wheeler.
And a phone number I knew he wasn’t going to ignore. Not for a second.