Chapter Text
Mike
Will’s apartment was on the first floor, which made it almost impossible for Mike to change his mind.
Mike stood there, fidgeting, his hands tracing small circles on the cold fabric of his jeans. Coming out here was a mistake. New York was cold in the winter. He could be in Hawkins, working on his manuscript that his agent kept bugging him about, with a cup of coffee and an old vinyl on. Not standing in ten degree weather in front of Will Byers’s apartment complex.
He watched as his breath spewed clouds around his mouth. If he walked in right now, would Will even be home? If he wasn’t, Mike would have to go back to his hotel, and the idea itself was embarrassing. But if Will was home, would he accept Mike with open arms? Or would he shut the door and never speak to him again?
And he was right to do that. Mike was a dick. Was still a dick.
Ever since the last battle in Hawkins, the party had gone their separate ways. Lucas and Max bought a house together, Dustin was still studying, and Will was in New York. Mike stayed in Hawkins to publish his book. Stranger Things. Which had become a nationwide bestseller, topping the charts and winning him book signings all across the country.
And despite all that, Mike was the unhappiest out of all of them.
He lived as a recluse. He shut himself off from the world in his parents’ old basement, rotting through his days like some Ted-Wheeler-Zombie. He was, quite frankly, a loser.
Adding onto that, Will had sent him letters from New York. Dozens of them. They piled up in his mail for months. He wrote things like “how’s writing going for you?” and “I’m seeing someone nice now”, and “I hope Hawkins is nice,” and a bunch of accounts of his own life as he navigated through it.
But Mike never responded. As the letters grew shorter and more dispersed, Will stopped talking about his life and stopped asking about Mike’s.
And there was no reason to not respond.
Literally no reason.
But Mike never responded. He just… stopped caring about people.
Mike was everything he hated. Everything he never wanted to be.
On December twentieth, 1992, three years after he officially became a loser, Mike had been writing a chapter in the basement. He was writing mindlessly, like he always did. The ideas came to him easily. He thought it was a trauma thing, after everything happened with the Upside Down and El. He couldn’t remember most of those years—everything was hazy, but when he wrote the words down on paper, everything came back to him. Everything he chose not to remember.
That was when he caught a glimpse of his reflection, in the small circular mirror hung on the wall in front of him. He caught the curve of his hair, the black-rimmed glasses hung low on his nose, the tiredness in his eyes, the dark circles under them.
He looked—tired.
He looked like his father.
The idea was enough to make him sick. It was like he was metamorphosing into his greasy nobody of a father, who had not given two shits about him or his family.
It was enough for him to get up out of his chair and schedule a flight to New York City. To ask Mrs. Byers where Will lived, because now Mike Wheeler didn’t even know where his best friend was.
Because it was nearly Christmas. And Mike was not going to spend it in boxers and a t-shirt getting drunk in his parents’ basement.
It is nearly Christmas.
Mike stepped up to the dark green door, the numbers reading 4667 in tattered black paint.
I would be a coward if I turned back right now.
He knocked thrice on the door.
Anticipating the response was like a clock was ticking in his throat. What if this wasn’t Will’s house at all, and Joyce had gotten the numbers mixed up? Or Mike had heard it wrong, and some lady was going to walk out and Mike would have to explain how he thought his childhood best friend lived in her house? Or—
The door swung open, and Will Byers stood in the doorway.
He looked different, to say the least. His mouth was parted, his eyes wide as he stared at Mike. His hair was flattened to one side like he had just woken up from a nap. He wore gold necklaces and bracelets, and a stretched out burgundy v-neck that hugged his arms. He wore jeans that were tattered around the hems, and mismatched blue-and-yellow socks.
He looked tired, then shocked, then glad, then confused.
“Mike…”
Mike swallowed. He felt like a coward. Like his mother had dumped him outside his friend’s house to apologize for stealing a toy.
He held up a hand and shuffled his feet. Holy shit, this is embarrassing. “Hey. I.. um…”
He should have said, “Oh, Will, I’m so sorry for never responding to your letters and never acknowledging the fact that you literally confessed to my face. I hope you can forgive me and not send me back home because that’s embarrassing.”
But unfortunately, nothing seemed to come out of his mouth.
“Mike,” Will started again. He looked… sorry. He looked sorry for Mike. Mike’s stomach churned. “You should come inside.”
“O-okay,” Mike managed. He walked inside as Will stepped to the side, then closed the door behind them.
The gap between them felt smaller now. Will’s apartment was tiny, and cluttered with random art materials and boxes, and smelled faintly of burnt pizza.
It smelled faintly of Will.
That gave Mike’s heart a little pang, for no real reason.
“You came,” Will said awkwardly. “To visit.”
Mike shuffled. “Yeah. I just, I… I wanted to see you.”
God, this was humiliating.
He felt Will’s eyes boring into the side of his face as he shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “Y’know, it’s almost Christmas, and… um.”
I don’t have anyone to spend it with.
Will shifted his weight onto one leg and scratched the back of his head. Oh, God, this is awkward. “Yeah. Thanks for coming over. Um, I was just about to make dinner. You should… eat with us.”
Mike perked his head up.
“Us?” He repeated, at the same time as a male voice from down the hall called, “Babe, who is that?”
Mike froze. Who the hell was that?
Will’s expression shifted into something that resembled uncomfortableness. “Mike, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Will led him to the living room. It was pretty simple, save for the clothes strewn all over the floor and a few empty pizza boxes.
A man sat on the blue couch in front of the radio, which was currently blasting The Cure. He had dark curly hair and a broad smirk that reminded Mike of Jason. He wore a white tank top and a short-sleeved denim shirt, and was currently manspreading and smoking a cigarette. He looked at least a few years older than Will.
Will stepped between them and gestured to each of them. “Mike, this is… Carlton. Carlton, this is Mike. He’s my friend from Indiana. He’s visiting for dinner.”
Carlton stubbed his cigarette in a pink ashtray and spread his legs more. “Ah. So this is Mike.”
Mike blinked. How in hell did his guy know him?
Carlton heaved himself off of the couch and stepped towards Mike. He was tall, a few inches taller than Mike, and much taller than Will. He reeked of weed and something else that Mike couldn’t identify.
Carlton walked until he was all up in Mike’s face. He looked him up and down slowly. “Cute.” Then, he turned back to the couch. “Will’s my boyfriend. Don’t touch him.”
Mike felt Will stiffen beside him. What the hell is going on?
Will clasped his hands together and turned away to the small kitchen, grabbing something out of the pantry. “Okay. Time for dinner.”
If there was something Mike knew right away, it was that he did not like Carlton. At all.
He didn’t know Will had a boyfriend. He knew he had friends and was having fun in NYC, according to Jonathan. Will dating someone was past the point, however, because the person he was dating was a total fucking dick and Mike didn’t know how much longer he could be nice.
Making dinner was like a fever dream. Will worked like a robot housewife, cooking and cleaning like someone was going to die if he didn’t. He was rigid. Serious. Nothing like the Will that Mike knew.
Will was the sweetest person Mike knew. If he did have a boyfriend, which was still like a smack in the face to Mike, he deserved a person just like him.
Not Carlton. That dick.
Will was making pasta. Mike hovered near him like a bee to a flower. He felt helpless. Especially since Will kept silent the whole time and didn’t answer any of Mike’s requests to help.
Will wasn’t like this. The last time Mike had seen him, the party had been cracking jokes in Mike’s basement and crying over each other.
“Babe,” Will called. Mike tried not to notice how his eyes avoided him. “Dinner’s ready.”
Whatever the fuck this was, Will was acting like a maid. And Will was no maid. Will had helped kill Vecna. He was dragged in the Upside Down for a week as a twelve-year-old, and got possessed, and probably had rampant trauma. Not that it was addressed.
Mike was right to be pissed.
Carlton took about twenty million years to get to the table. He stank. After Jonathan, Will hated anything about drugs. How he could put up with it was a mystery.
“Fucking hell, I’m hungry,” Carlton scratched at the stubble on his chin. Still manspreading, holy shit. He dumped a heap of pasta onto his plate and turned to Mike.
“Will’s friend. Amigo,” He mumbled through his food. “What do you got with Will?”
Mike looked at his plate, trying not to notice Will staring at him from the corner of his eye. “We’re friends.”
“Y’all grew up together?”
“Yeah. In Hawkins.”
“Ya’ll were real close?”
“Um, yeah, we—”
A small sound escaped from Will beside him. His glass of milk spewed all over the table, splashing onto the pasta, now drenched.
Will bolted to his feet. “Shit.”
Mike followed suit and grabbed a napkin, wiping the drink. “Shit, man, it’s okay.”
Much to Mike’s dismay, Carlton dragged a hand over his face and groaned.
Will was like machinery. He made a pathetic effort to gather the milk with his hands frantically. “Shit—I’m sorry.” He bit his lip. “I didn’t mean to—I’ll clean it up, I promise. I’m sorry.”
Carlton inhaled sharply. Not a shout, or a degrading comment. Just a breath in.
Will went rigid.
“Jesus Christ, Byers,” Carlton muttered, pushing his chair back. “Watch what you're doing.”
Will flinched.
“I know, I know, Carl,” he said quickly. His hands shook as he wiped the table. “I should have been more careful. I’m sorry, I’ll get more towels…”
“God dammit, you’re always in your goddamn head. Be normal for once.”
Something in Mike’s chest pulled tight.
Always in your goddamn head. Be normal.
Mike had heard that before. About himself. About kids who were too sensitive, too different, too much.
He stared at Will, the way his eyes dimmed, his hands shaking, his shoulders shrugged.
“It was just milk,” he blurted. God.
Carlton looked at him. He might have looked surprised. Confused, even. “Well,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t live with him.”
Will’s shoulders shrugged more. As Mike looked closer, his eyes were watering. “I’m sorry, I really am.”
That’s when Mike knew. Not suspected. Knew.
Because no one asked for Will to apologize, but he did it anyway.
Mike took a step back. Two. Three, muttering, “sorry, bathroom,” under his breath before walking, his head hung low, to whatever room seemed like the bathroom.
There he stood, under the dim yellow light of Will Byers’s apartment bathroom, hunched over the sink.
Mike looked at his reflection solemnly.
After Vecna was killed, he had gotten therapy. His mother sent him there a week after the graduation, and Mike thought that it fixed him a little. Even if there was still a part of him that was scarred. Even if he dreamt about that day every single night without escape. He was different now. He looked different, he thought differently, he reacted differently.
But Will was not changed. At least from what Mike saw.
Mike squeezed his eyes shut.
This—this—was what happened when you left. When you didn’t cling on hard enough. When you were a coward.
Someone else had stepped in, and decided who Will was allowed to be.
Mike wasn’t doing that. Not again.
He wasn’t here because of an accident. He wasn’t here because he was lonely or because it was Christmas or because Hawkins had become a ghost town to him.
He was here because Will had once reached for him, and Mike had looked away.
He wasn’t abandoning him again.
Not this time.