Archive of Our Own ^beta

The pencil drums against the desk in a repetitive, constant hum of noise, seemingly echoing around the room, despite the sound itself being quiet and not audible to anyone other than the writer themselves. Eventually, it settled into a movement too quick for his fingers to keep up with, the pencil clattering to the desk before coming to a final stop. He hadn’t been up for very long, and he was already struggling with writing and the use of his joints, it spelled out an interesting day for him.

Mike flexed his fingers and wrists, attempting to get the ache to ease from within his joints, the familiar pain making his bones feel like they were hollow.

The pain provided a good distraction from his inability to write anything new or of quality, even though that was supposed to be a distraction from the constant racket screeching in his head.

The easy cracks of his joints provided a shock of pain before the release of tension, which was short lived as the hollow feeling was sure to come back, it always came back.

He frowned as the ache today seemed more intense than usual, it was like it was creeping up his arms, into his elbows and crawling towards his shoulders, so that it would have a good vantage point to attack the rest of his body.

Just by reaching up to move his curtains and take a look out of his window had him scowling, the feeling of biting coldness seeping through the glass accompanied the downpour outside, providing him with all the answers he needed. Well, all the answers regarding that problem of his life.

Some day, he would really have to question why he can tune out of everything except his own mind. The rain, eh, no problem, we can silence that right away, but his mind? Oh no, that’s going to be put on at full volume so that even the crickets can hear him thinking.

Opening the closet to grab a sweater, he caught a glimpse of gloves which would help ease the pressure in his joints, by providing them with a warm layer against the cold. They were fingerless gloves, purely there to shelter the joints in his hands, which left everything from about the middle joint to his fingertips vulnerable. Despite knowing that they’d help even just a little bit, he just couldn’t bring himself to actually put them on, annoyance flooding through his body, as he slammed the closet door shut, and returned to his desk chair.

Why couldn’t he just be like everyone else? Nobody else had to be constantly wary of their own body, hearing their fathers hushed voice stirring that shame in their head with a simple, “Oh Michael, do stop contorting your fingers like that, it’s unnatural and is disturbing your sister.”

It was honestly impressive that his father could spend so long ignoring him, to the point where Mike almost genuinely considered the possibility of his father forgetting his existence, only to come back with a statement like that. The man deserved an award, after all, Mike had never seen someone break silence so quickly and unbothered. It was almost laughable that the simple overextension of a joint required that level of response, for instance, if the man actually took the time of day to look a little closer at his son, he would see all of the things that made him unnatural, a freak, a fucking disease-

Mike groaned out loud as his mind went back to the thoughts he was trying to avoid dealing with, letting his entire body crumple forward until his forehead was flat on the desk.

He stared at the grain of the wood making up his desk for a moment, as if that would have the answers for him - whether those answers were regarding his inability to be distracted or about his other problem, was to be decided. In any case, his writing plan was no longer working, so it was time to move onto his reluctant Plan B; cleaning.

Now it was a known fact about one Michael Wheeler that he was not a person who enjoyed cleaning. However, it could prove to be a good distraction, if not by awakening his heartfelt hatred for the activity, then by engrossing him into some long lost item that had been a victim of the basement cupboards for years now. One of the main reasons why the basement had gone so long without being organised, is due to the lack of good time to clean it.

The whole ‘spring cleaning’ notion seemed like a good idea as a label, but their basement was prone to flooding when it snowed, so as long as boxes were piled up onto elevated surfaces, no further movement occurred regarding the belongings.

Besides, the summer was a time to relax. No one wanted to be cleaning during their summer break, least of all a teenager who spent their past few summers trying to save their town from almost certain destruction; you know, average teenager problems.

Now in fall, there is absolutely no time to do something as mind-numbingly boring as cleaning. There were houses to knock on to beg for candy, D&D games to play as they fit the dark atmosphere of the halloween season, and yes, whilst those things hadn’t been done in a…long time, it was always the best excuse to give his Mom, who when reflecting on it, had never looked impressed at his rationalising.

This leaves winter, the festive season, the heartwarming effect felt by spending time with family. Emphasis on heartwarming effect, a metaphorical heat, not a physically felt warmth. Mike can say from first hand experience that all that ‘family time’ that his own family definitely partake in, does nothing to heat the basement. That fucker gets colder than some of the comments left on the gym section of his report card. Like sorry it’s not his fault that his limbs don’t listen to his brain, besides, he’d argue that he does enough gym trying to save the world, give a guy a break.

The lack of family time does provide a nice window to complete tasks that were previously put off throughout the year though, especially with the other members of the Party being too busy with their own families to hang out. His joints are just going to have to learn that the cold is not an enemy they have to personally fight with every time they come into contact with one another.

Raising his head from the desk, and hoping that there aren't any marks left behind on his forehead, he makes his way over to his bedroom door, opening it and getting one foot over the perimeter before practically feeling the, ironically, burning glare of his winterwear, especially those goddamn gloves. He goes to ignore this feeling before thinking of the fit-for-penguins environment waiting for him down two flights of stairs, and letting out an exasperated sound, spinning around to return to once again yank open the closet door.

Snatching the extra layers one by one with more aggression than was probably necessary, he tugs a beanie onto his head, squashing the curls that are finally being revived after years of being straightened by his Mom. Thicker socks are donned over the top of his current pair, comfortable ones as well, that had apparently been shoved to the back of his closet, almost as if the past version of himself wanted to hide them in there out of shame.

Finally, the only thing left on that specific shelf of his closet lay the dreaded gloves. Mike could imagine that if he were in a cartoon, then little sparkles and sun rays would be bouncing off of them, taunting him just with their mere presence. He shoves his hands into the gloves, muttering and cursing at them, practically wanting them to disintegrate when he accidentally gets the location of the openings for the fingers wrong, and gets multiple fingers stuck in one segment, instead of their allocated ones.

For his own sake, he hopes Holly either can’t hear him or is out shopping with their mother, because he is not in the mood to deal with an argument with his father about ‘setting an example’ for his younger sister. Although, being reprimanded would give him something to think about…it could be worth it…actually no, no it wouldn’t, it would just lead to a grounding which means way too much time to get stuck in his own head with his thoughts.

Finally making his way down the stairs, avoiding the creaky step, he finds that the only presence he was threatening to disturb was his own, the lack of noise loud in the air, the distinct feeling of missing people in the air. The caution around this weighs heavy on his shoulders, one that may not have been there should he have experienced a childhood different from his own. Sudden disappearances without reason have never boded well for the Party, especially ones of this size. The alarm rising in his chest is caught and compressed into a smaller matter, a problem to deal with at a later time if no explanation is found.

The picture perfect house is still…perfect, at a quick glance around by leaning over the stair rail. A peek into the downstairs closet highlights the absence of people, empty wooden hangers swinging gently now with the force used to open the door. A further examination into the downstairs setting allows him to find the sticky note left on the counter in the kitchen, bright pink, a stark contrast to the more neutral tones of the interior design.

There in Will’s scratchy handwriting - it only ever looks like that if he has been writing in a hurry, Mike’s brain supplies helpfully - states what Mike should have remembered when he woke up earlier; his mother and younger sister had gone shopping for clothing suitable for 1st grade, his father had just ‘gone out’ without any further explanation.

“Sounds about right,” Mike snorts in a stifled, bitter manner.

The remaining three had gone to visit Joyce and El - and Hopper by association - which left Mike the one holding down the fort until any of them returned, Will’s words, not his own.

Wait. Will’s words. Not his Mom, or Nancy, Will. The pieces that Mike didn’t even know were missing finally slid back into place, reminding him that Jonathan and Will had been sleeping in their basement for roughly half a year (seriously how the hell did he forget that bit of information out of all things?). That certainly put a hold on his plan of distraction, because surely cleaning that space would be like an invasion of privacy for the two brothers? Whilst it was still the Wheeler’s house, the basement had gained a new meaning within the previous months.

He’d like to know at what point he switched realities from the basement just being a base of operation for D&D games, to instead being a home to his best friend and his brother, because surely as long as he only goes through the stuff that had been there long before the Byers boys resided there, it would be fine, right? He would actively avoid going near any of their things, it would be fine, he’s sure.

Despite the positive mental reinforcement, Mike still opens the basement door hesitantly, like he is expecting the military to be waiting on the other side.

Rather than guns being pointed at him, or Jonathan’s newly adopted glare - seriously, when did he start looking at him like that, he swears they always used to be on good terms - waiting for him on the other side of the door, a cold blast of air greeted him instead. It would have been comical, the way Mike’s hair fluttered minimally in the practically antarctic breeze, but the ache in his bones returned with a vengeance.

Grumbling the whole way down the stairs, Mike shook out his hands and wrists, in hope of the movement generating some heat to preserve the function of his joints. It probably wouldn’t work, but at least this way he could say that he tried.

It seemed like the cold was trying to seep its way through his socks, which should be impossible, because it felt like he was walking on a cloud due to how thick the layer of his socks were.

But this cold was different, it had it out for him, in an apparent personal way, determined to have him retreat back up to warmth upstairs. It was a tempting idea, but upstairs would only lead back to his thoughts, and that is exactly what he was trying to avoid, so he would have to put up with the cold.

He flicked on the light and took a moment to take in the look of the basement; he hadn’t really been down here since Will and Jonathan took up residence in the room. It felt wrong to intrude on their space, like he was pushing the boundaries of their strained friendship.

At what point did that start becoming a concern though, what happened to the days of hanging out at the Byers just by showing up unannounced? What happened to them…

‘No, no these are thoughts that should be left upstairs’ Mike stopped himself, alarm bells blaring as if to warn him that he was straying in dangerous territory.
‘Tidy, yep, lets tidy, we love to tidy’ was the mantra he tried to start playing in his head, but there is only so far one can kid themselves before it starts to sound ridiculous. Claiming to love tidying was way past that point.

Even so, Mike made his way over to the bookcases and storage bins, grateful for the carpet placed in front of it, as it acted as a further barrier between Mike and the icy floor.

Overfilled boxes spilled out into the small crevices of the shelves, books with miscellaneous pieces of paper shoved into them stretching at the seams as the shelf practically bent under the weight.
Gazing at his colossal task, he was reminded that it was normally this point that he would call it quits on tidying, the task seeming too horrific to take on.

The boxes stared up at him mockingly, daring him to even attempt to touch them. Mike glared back at the box, feeling challenged by its presence, how dare a box mock him, he was trying to do it a favour by easing the pressure put on the cardboard.

It took a moment before Mike reflected on his actions and internally declared that he was going crazy. ‘If Mom or dad saw me right now, they’d be considering Pennhurst as a future option for me.’

He laughed a little at his own joke, before swiftly cutting himself off. Sometimes laughing at your own jokes just makes it a bit sad.

Pushing all thoughts of Pennhurst and judgmental boxes out of his head - why was that so much easier than pushing other thoughts away? - Mike decided the best plan of action was to get all of the boxes out of the shelves so that he could wipe away any dust residue on the shelf.

Oh if only his mother could see him right now, she really would be sending him to Pennhurst if she caught him cleaning voluntarily.

Motivation and energy flooded through his body, he was going to get this done if it killed him, he determined. It seemed a bit dramatic, reflecting on himself, but he was past the point of caring.

Sliding the first box towards him, he grabbed it from underneath and almost immediately dropped it again when he took on the full weight of the box. Maybe he should have done this sooner, rather than seeing how much stuff he could just slide on top when he was younger, but it was too late for that now.

The second box was easy to slide towards him as well, but this box came with handles on the side, a helpful addition, rather than having to scramble for a hold on it when it inevitably attempted to yank his shoulders out of their respective sockets.

It should have been easy. Emphasis on should have been.

Step 1: Grab the box by the handles.
Step 2: Slide the box to the edge of the shelf
Step 3: Pick up the box with awareness to the sudden weight difference
Step 4: Watch as the bottom of the box splits open, spilling its contents out everywhere, rolling across the floor, hiding under the bookshelf, sliding beneath the makeshift beds for the Byers boys, towards the backdoor - seriously how much shit could these boxes hold?

Mike couldn’t remember step 4 being there the last time he did a tidying like this. Whilst yes, the last few times had been a while ago - once when he was 13 and his parents were making him throw away toys, and again when he was helping the Byers family pack for California - he was positive that this step had not been a part of those occasions.

He was left standing there, frozen, holding the ripped remains of this traitorous cardboard box, not knowing what problem to deal with first. Go hunting under the bookshelf, sift through his friends’ belongings to decipher what was a runaway item, go towards the back door which he swears is allowing the cold air to leak in, throw the cardboard box away, or just simply leave everything how it is, call it a day and go back to bed.

The last option was truly very tempting, but he no longer has his previous energy, meaning that he really was not in the mood to deal with his mothers lectures, or give Jonathan a reason to glare at him (another reason? He really wasn’t sure what was going on with their relationship lately) because of the mess he turned the room into.

But he knew above anything, that it would be Will’s reaction that would break him. He couldn’t give his best friend another reason to think that he didn’t care about him.

Mike felt a twinge in his chest at the thought, instead brushing it off as the cold getting to him through his many layers of clothing.

The only positive to all of this happening, is that he could put his brain to work by thinking about how he was going to fix this mess that he had inadvertently caused.

He decided that he could only face one fear, if you will, at a time, figuring that between the cold backdoor and sorting through Will’s very few earthly possessions he has with him since California, the backdoor was truly the lesser of two evils.

Even with this thought in mind, Mike still moved reluctantly over to the backdoor, feeling the temperature drop considerably the nearer he got - realistically he knew he was being dramatic, there was a minor temperature drop, but he didn’t care, he was cold and his joints hated him.

He hurried to pick everything up as quickly as his body allowed, the only items he took note of being a Magic 8-Ball (he was wondering where that had gotten to over the years, it was a miracle it hadn’t broken on the floor after the fall) a heavy egg timer, and various pieces of stationary that had probably been shoved into the box throughout the years. Mike shuffled at speed back over to the safety, no, the comfort of the carpet and dumped the items onto an open bit of counter space.

His next task was to reclaim the items lost under the bookshelf; easy, right?

Wrong.

His knees had a personal vendetta against him, striking him when he least expected it. It’s like they take joy in seeing a teenage boy fall victim to his own body, but that really is crazy, his knees can’t have their own thoughts and feelings, they’re just his own thoughts after all. But then wouldn’t that make it him that’s happy when his knees attack-

Mike decided to put a pin in that thought for later. Rabbit hole spirals, like that one was bound to be, were properly suited for when one is staring up at the ceiling at an obscure time in the morning with nothing better to do. Here, he had a job to do; tidy. He sighed at the thought.

Gingerly crouching down as if to lessen the effect it would have on his knees, he found himself surprised at the lack of noise or pain radiating through his lower half. It was joyful, he felt youthful again…at the grand old age of 15…but youthful nonetheless.

Oh how this was amazing, so brilliant, just so-

Crack.

Pain exploded through an explosive crack emitting from his knees, the bone itself feeling like it was about to shatter right through his skin. He winced, allowing his body to just fall to the side, not caring that his elbow knocked roughly against the bookshelf - okay maybe he cared a little, it hurt like a bitch - as he tried to gather his bearings.

Mike, admittedly, rather pathetically, rolled onto his front so that he could get a decent visual as to what was hiding underneath the bookshelf. From here, he could spy what looked like half a rainforest worth of stacked paper, held together by the world's strongest elastic band. How the hell that managed to move after falling is a mystery to him, but hell literally does know that he has seen far stranger things, say for example, various interdimensional creatures, but hey, who’s keeping track.

Reaching out and snagging his finger through the elastic band and bringing it out into the light of the basement, allowed him to see that the documents belonged to Nancy - old school essays that his Mom apparently didn’t have the heart to throw out, thinking the basement would be the perfect home for them.

A little further back is what looks like a kite that Mike had from his much younger years. The ribbon was bright red, and still is due to the lack of sunlight exposure it ever got. Mike almost hesitantly brings it out into the light, sitting up as old memories flooding back.

Ted shouting about the colour of it and how ‘A young boy should not be associating with this sort of stuff, he is a boy, I don’t want my son growing up to be-’

Mike never knew how the end of that sentence went, a nine year old Nancy tugging him into her room and shutting the door behind them, with her almost instantly talking to him at a rapid pace and at a much louder volume than usual, as if to distract him from the argument occurring downstairs.

At the time, he didn’t understand all that well what was going on, just thinking that his older sister wanted to know about his most recent comic read. But he knew now what his father was implying, no amount of distractions could erase that from his mind.

His chest ached again as he traced the rainbow pattern side-to-side on the kites fabric, once again trying to excuse it as just being the muscles tightening due to the cold. Even he could admit that this excuse would run dry at some point though, and it was evaporating quicker than he wanted to accept.

Mike shook his head as if to scare away the memory, practically slamming the kite down into the pile of belongings that he’d retrieved, eyes stinging with unshed tears that he refused to let fall. He wasn’t going to cry over something his father said all those years ago, because if he did then it would be admitting that it hurt, and why would it hurt if it wasn’t true?

He shook his head so hard that he felt the beanie shift ever so slightly atop his hair, and he tugged it back down with more force than it probably required.

Taking a moment - not to compose himself, that’s not what it was at all - to prepare himself for the next wave of item retrieval, he took a deep breath and reached up to use the counter as leverage to get back up on his feet. Mike ignored the way his joints screamed in protest at the multiple cases of sudden movement in this temperature, knees and ankles giving out clicks and cracks as he straightened his posture.

The only sound in the room is Mike’s breathing as he takes in where he needs to venture to next; over by Will’s bed and bag.

It should be fine, it’s going to be just like he thought earlier, where it’s not like he’s going to be searching through Will’s stuff, he is simply gathering up the runaway items.

Mike internally groaned, ‘When did it start being so awkward to just be near each other’s things, let alone each other?’

As much as the Party liked to make jokes about Mike’s obliviousness, he did have some level of awareness, and he was more than aware as to the changes that had fractured his relationship with Will. What he didn’t know was what those changes were, and how he could fix them.

Everything had been fine before Lenora, in fact, their relationship had never been stronger, there had been none of this confusion as to what state their friendship was in. So if he was going to put a name to the problem, he would have to say California, because that was apparently the massive canyon that one of them had fallen into, to make them so distant from one another.

Mike shuffles closer to the bed, in a way that an outsider would think that it was radioactive, or that he was deathly allergic to it, if they happened to see him and how he was acting.

Just behind where Will’s blanket was grazing the floor, was a toy truck, the paint faded and it was one that Mike could recall having when he was about six years old.

If he was remembering properly, then it was a toy that had almost made it into one of those dreaded donation boxes his parents forced him to do every few months when he got into trouble. It was only after he’d shown his parents what was in the donation box and he was taking one last look at this particular truck that he realised it carried a lot more sentimentality than he’d expected it would, finding himself unable to continue with the plan of throwing it away. Instead, the space it filled in the box was replaced with a boring old library book about baseball that his dad had forced him to get - neither of his parents bothered to double check what was in the bottom of the box, so long as the top layer was clearly toys.

He really hoped Marissa at the local library wasn’t still looking for that book, because it was long gone by this point, and he was kind of sick of having to avoid going into the library when she was on shift there.

This toy truck, though, had ended up in the basement as a last minute hiding spot, and had apparently never seen the light of day since, as Mike was too scared to play with it out in the open in case his parents recognised it as that one toy that was supposed to have been donated.

Placing one hand atop the bed for support, he was able to bend down in a way that didn’t require having to bend his knees a whole lot - a win if he ever saw one in this weather - and scoop up the truck, admiring it slightly before getting distracted by something catching a fragment of the light from its place underneath the bed. Figuring that it was another belonging from the broken box, Mike sighed and resigned himself to having to sit down on the numbingly cold floor to reach whatever it was.

He placed the truck down near the edge of the bed, on top of the blanket and slowly got himself down to the floor, seeing if he could reach whatever it was from his current position. Luck was not on his side as it seemed, as he was just out of reach of it, meaning that he would have to get lower down so that he could reach further.

Grumbling the whole time, he got himself down until he was almost completely against the floor, the biting cold trying furiously to get to his skin beneath his clothes. He wanted to get off of this floor as soon as possible, knowing that he would have to get this done quickly to do so.

Mike strained his arm forwards, using his other elbow to gain leverage on the ground, not realising that the corner of the blanket that was trailing on the floor had become lodged underneath that elbow, meaning the fabric was tugged harshly. The truck that had once been secure up on the bed came rolling towards the edge and fell, a target lock on Mike’s head as it came crashing down, unfortunately sliding his hat off of his head in the process as well.

Startled and in pain, Mike went sprawling to the ground, any part of him that had been above the ground was now fully flat against the concrete, his arms flailing about for a few moments. Luck seemed to want to play a joke on him today, as his arm connected with Will’s bag during his moment of lessened control over his limbs. Minor pain radiated through the point of contact - his wrist - but the worst thing of all was watching in horror as the bag toppled over and the contents of it spilled out onto the floor.

Mike scrambled up off of the floor, knees digging into the hard surface as he sat up, joints be damned, as if there was anything he could do to stop the items from escaping the bag.

“Shit, shit, shit…” echoed around the room as he stared at the bag lying limply on the floor, blanket now laying in a heap from where it had been tugged to the ground.

Not much had left the bag weirdly enough, Mike didn’t realise just how few belongings Will had been able to take from Lenora, for all that had fallen out of the bag were a stack of papers and by the sound of things hitting the ground, a few other items.

Without looking at the contents, he placed the papers off to the side on the floor as he set about gathering up Will's keepsakes. This seemed to be a common occurrence with him at this point, something happening to a container that made everything fall out and then Mike had to pick it all up. Maybe it was the basement, maybe it was cursed.

He ducked back down to look under the bed, glaring at the truck that had started this predicament, making sure to get a proper hold of it this time and setting it harshly next to him.

The lack of the blanket hanging over the bed meant that more light was able to reach underneath the bed, highlighting the new additions hiding there.

Mike picked up a tin of what sounded like pencils when they were rattled in his hands, a small box with a clear plastic lid allowed him to see paints that were half used. Whether they were watercolours, acrylics or any other kinds of paints were beyond him, he never did have the same knack for art that Will did.

A little further away on the floor are a few small figurines, and at a closer glance, they are small versions of the Party’s D&D characters, the details on them familiar to him after years of playing.

Mike smiled sadly at them, memories rising from the box inside of his head that he’d tried to shut so many times over the past year and a half. D&D had never quite felt the same without Will, without his enthusiasm, the care that he put into ensuring that every character would have a good outcome to each of his actions. The lack of his creativity, how he used to help Mike when writers block would hit just a bit too hard, and rendered him stumped when attempting to write a new campaign.

How that one day Will excitedly turned up at the Wheeler’s house one evening, brimming with nerves but still eager to show Mike what he’d created; these little D&D figures. After that, the campaigns felt more engaging as they watched small versions of their heroic selves within the world's environment.

Mike slowly sunk back down on the balls of his feet, to the floor, resting his back against Will’s bed, delicately tracing the faces that must’ve been painstakingly painted on by a much younger Will Byers. Whilst there was no denying that the emotions Will brought to the campaigns were mesmerising and could instantly change the mood to a more upbeat, lively one, Mike had to admit that it wasn’t just Will’s excitement that he missed. He missed Will more than anything.

God he’d missed him so much.

Hawkins really hadn’t felt the same after he’d gone, it seemed devoid of its life and spirit. Mike still remembers the goodbye that destroyed him, not wanting to ever let go, willing himself to commit the feeling of hugging Will to memory. He’d set out that morning to go and help pack up their house, and he had told himself that he was going to be the strong one, the one that was going to hold it together in front of everyone so that he could break down in his room by himself later.

The second it got to actually saying the words goodbye, he broke like glass. The first tear fell, and admittedly, he didn’t think there would be anyone, it was just a one-off. But then he’d felt Will clinging to him desperately, fingers digging into his own shoulder blades like the cold did in the winter, and well, Will had always been his weakness.

He remembered resting his head on his best friend's shoulder, tears spilling down his face and soaking into Will’s shirt as if to hide the evidence.

Mike hadn’t known what to do when he watched the moving truck slowly make its way out of the driveway, Jonathan and Will in the car behind, the gravel crackling under the tyres. Breaking his hug from Will had taken a piece of him with it, and it was now driving 2,000 miles away, along with the best friendship he’d ever had.

One thing that he’d rather not remember is the pit in his stomach that ate away at him with the guilt from not feeling the same level of sadness for El who was moving away as well. For the record, he loved El and he always would, but he’d come to realise that it was more of a platonic love; she understood him in ways that he’d never experienced before, and he’d like to think that she thought the same about him.

The kiss they’d shared in the barren shell that used to be the Byers house only seemed to solidify that for him, and he’d never stopped feeling guilty that he let her go thinking that he also wanted their relationship. The conversation they’d shared once in Lenora healed something in him, with them both sharing basically the same thought; they would always care for each other, but not in the way they both used to think they did. Friends were better for them, healthier too.

As Mike continued to gaze at the D&D figurines, specifically the paladin and the cleric, he could also see how the unintended secrecy of his conversation with El had ripped open new tears in his relationship with Will.

He still didn’t understand how the guilt for not telling Will had felt so bad, even though he hadn’t told anyone at all. In all the chaos of returning to Hawkins, with Eddie being dead, Vecna evading death and Max getting cursed, there never seemed to be a right time to just go ‘Sorry that all this happened, everyone, but can we take a second to talk about my love life?’

And then after a few months of living together in the Wheeler’s house, they both recognised that they needed to properly talk, because god knows that they hadn’t been doing that very well recently. It seemed that their time apart had reduced the effectiveness of their conversations, with it ending in cut off sentences and unresolved tension. Will hitting him with his lack of communication on just about anything, about how he had barely spoken to him in Lenora, both in person and on the phone, or even a letter.

It hurt like a broken bone, that did, having his deepest regrets thrown right back in his face, but it’s not like he could just tell him. How was he supposed to tell Will about the dozens of unsent letters sitting in the bottom drawer of his desk, or the hundreds of phone calls that went unanswered. There may have only been 2,000 miles and a 3 hour time difference between them, but they may as well have been on different planes of existence for those 6 months apart, with how out of touch with one another they were.

The loneliness that he felt in those months was worse than when Will was presumed dead - and he used to think that nothing would ever feel worse than that. But just the knowledge that they were both still living in the same world but not in each other's lives just…stung.

It even started to affect his life at school as well, his friends asking him if El had sent something concerning in the mail, and every time he had to lie and say that it was just because he missed her so much; that always got them to stop asking. How was he supposed to explain that he missed his other friend just a bit too much for normal friends, after all, he was supposed to miss his girlfriend the most out of the group that had left, that was how it was supposed to work. He didn’t know why Will was so much different than everyone else for him, they were just friends, that’s all they were, so why was it so different?

He didn’t know what he’d do if his father ever heard him thinking like this, the first sign of pride that he’d shown towards Mike in years was when he heard that he was writing letters to a girl in California. Mike gripped the figurines a little tighter when he remembered the clap on his back that felt like it almost dislocated his shoulder.

The worst part about that, was how he could feel the little boy from his memories lighting up with glee at how happy his father was with him. Finally, all those instances in childhood where he was found sitting just a bit too close to Will when reading comics, quickly followed by a sharp reprimand and look from the older man, weren’t the only things his dad could form an opinion on him from. He had proof now that Mike had been talking to a girl, as regular boys should do, he could stop looking at him like there was something wrong with him. Maybe he would start treating him differently from then on, less speeches about how he ‘should be behaving as a teenager, outside of this constant attitude’.

Mike had the speech down to perfection, if asked to come up with a speech on the spot during class one day, he could simply plagiarise his father. Now, he would never do that, because Ted Wheeler notoriously only spat out spiteful, hurtful words, and he didn’t want his friends to think he was an asshole, but that just goes to show just how many times he had heard this same fucking speech.

Mike felt his hands begin to tighten their hold further on the figures at the memory of that day, electing to put them atop the stack of papers that had fallen from Will’s bag to remove the risk of the fragile items breaking. However, the words on the pages caught his eye, drawing him to them against his better judgement, instead placing the figures on the floor next to them.

His own name was there, right at the very top just like every other letter he’d ever received in his life. The difference though, was the dark lines scratched into the paper, as if to hide a secret that was never supposed to be there. Not all of it was blacked out, the bottom of the page left uncovered, as if the writer decided it wasn’t worth wasting ink on something that could just be redone. The words written there were generic, awkward, something you’d ask a neighbour you didn’t really like if you bumped into them on the street.

In the back of his mind, he remembered telling himself upstairs that he wasn’t going to go through any of Will’s belongings, they were his, not for Mike to pry into. But maybe he’d get some insight into why Will was acting so strangely around him, and that wasn’t to say that Mike wasn’t also acting weirdly, but maybe he was subconsciously copying Will-

No it didn’t make much sense at all, but having a look for clues might be of some assistance in figuring it all out.

Mike eased the rubber band off of the papers, taking care to not let it snag on any of the edges and rip them. He handled the paper like it would disintegrate if held with just a touch of roughness, placing the top sheet off to the side.

The second sheet had less scratchings on it, the writer obviously choosing to use that page as a practice sheet instead of the actual letter. Mike skimmed the page itself, rifling through a few others until he finally saw the signing of his friend's name at the very bottom.

Normally he would be able to recognise Will’s writing instantaneously, but he’d written differently to normal, as if these words couldn’t be linked back to him if someone saw them. But the way he’d written his name had been normal, the pointed W, joined up double l’s and the i that was dotted, not with a regular dot, but more of a short line, showing the hurried pace of writing.

It was like the sight of his childhood friend’s name was enough for a switch to click in Mike’s head, as he realised how invasive this was, going through somebody else’s property. The Mike from earlier had come back and retaken charge in his head - god what had the cold done to him, he sounded crazy.

He started regathering the paper, attempting to get them back into the order that they were in, when yet another word made him stop. Will had written about the painting, he was supposedly going to tell Mike about it, but why would he do that if it was supposed to be a surprise that El had wanted to give him?

Mike continued reading, he couldn’t stop because this really didn’t make any sense, his fingers gripping the page as he leant forward.

‘...I wish you could see the painting that I’m working on right now, it’s not finished but you’ve always had a way of seeing my vision before it's been put on paper, in a way that nobody else ever could. I just feel like it really encapsulates the feeling of the Party, how we all stick together no matter what comes our way. I suppose in some ways it is also a thank you for you sticking with me despite some things that definitely could have broken our friendship…’

Mike stopped reading to drop his head back against the bed frame, ignoring the dull ache that occurred as a result, as he recognised the supposed ‘friendship breaking things’ as a 14 year old Will nervously coming out to him.

He remembered the guilt that he had felt when he recalled his own words about Will’s preference in partner, issuing apology after apology towards Will, interspersed with words of comfort as he assured his best friend that nothing he said was going to damage their friendship in any way.

He had felt so much terror in that moment, not because of his friend’s sexuality, but a fear of Will thinking that he didn’t accept him, that he was truly taking after his father in terms of his views on the world. He needed Will to understand more than anything that he would always be his best friend, and nothing could change that.

Back then, Mike had pushed down anything that resembled hope at Will’s words. Mike liked girls, so what was the hope for in that conversation about Will liking boys?

Mike would never have an issue with anybody else liking somebody of the same gender, it just wasn’t in his nature to have a scrap of hatred towards anyone else for that reason. It just seemed so wrong to have those thoughts himself, and maybe it’s just his fathers voice constantly ringing in his head, but he’s had this poison in there for years at this point.

When he started dating El, he thought that piece of him that had been haphazardly put back together was finally fixed, but along the way, it had shattered once more, leaving him hiding his broken form from his father.

If prompted, he wouldn’t be able to say at what point he felt the first shard drop, because from his perspective nothing had changed. His relationship with El was strong, his friendships were good as always, the strained situation with his parents - well more so his father - was…unfortunately the same as always. Even his sibling relationship with his sisters was the same, the one with Nancy perhaps stronger due to their shared experiences.

But as soon as he started thinking about who he would settle down with for the rest of his life, everything started falling apart without warning? Mike didn’t understand how that was fair.

His eyes dropped from their stare at the ceiling and slid down to look over at the D&D figures he’d placed there. Even in his haste to place them down, he’d subconsciously put the cleric and paladin next to one another just a bit closer than any of the others.

It was reflective of how they were in real life, him and Will stood closer than he would with either Dustin or Lucas per say. It’s how it had always been, that was just the kind of relationship he had with Will.

Like would he say that he felt stronger towards Will then he did any of the others, yes he would; would he say that he felt more at ease around Will, yes he would; would he say that he looked forward to seeing Will perhaps a little bit more than he did the rest of his friends, yes, maybe he would; would he say that he liked Will in a way that he can never seem to put into words, yes he-

Oh.

Oh.

Oh shit.

Mike jerked forwards, sitting up abruptly, eyes wide. This was not the realisation he needed to have in this moment.

Luck decided to get one more kick out of him, it seemed as the front door could then be heard opening and a familiar voice ringing out, “Hello? Mike, did you get up yet?”

Mike could’ve laughed in that moment; of course the person who comes home first is the source of his whole dilemma, but wait, wasn’t Will supposed to be with Nancy and Jonathan, where were they? No, there wasn’t time for all this thinking, he needed to move now. Will would probably go upstairs to look for him first before maybe venturing down into the basement to try to find him.

The basement which was still in an absolute state from the cardboard box splitting open and all of its things going everywhere, which led him over to Will’s camp bed, where he proceeded to cause yet another scene by knocking over Will’s bag- oh god his bag, he was going to see everything.

The speed at which these thoughts were going through his head could’ve been enough to generate energy for a very small country, however, there wasn’t time for that, he needed to move.

Predictably, he could hear Will going up the stairs, still periodically calling his name, teasing him half-heartedly for not having gotten up yet. Mike launched himself up off the floor, joints screaming in protest at the sudden movement, various cracks radiating through both the air and his body. He grabbed the stack of paper, hastily putting all the sheets back together and clumsily fitting the rubber band over them all once more.

Next, it was the pot of paints which he practically threw back into the bag on top of the papers, apologising in his head to Will for the somewhat careless nature he was treating his belongings with. The D&D figures lay discarded on the floor, having been launched into the air when the papers were moved. These were in fact treated with more care, being slid carefully back into the bag, in one of those separate interior pockets which Mike thinks they originally came out of.

Future Mike would be thinking about the order in which the items tumbled out and whether or not he put them back in in the same order, however, there was no time.

It was like his brain was malfunctioning, he was unable to move onto his next task because he’d magically forgotten everything else he needed to do due to overthinking it all. From an outsider’s perspective, he must have vaguely resembled one of Dustin’s homemade robots when they haven’t got a wire connected somewhere, and they just stand there, kind of feebly moving their limbs but not actually going anywhere.

Out of nowhere, Mike could hear Will’s voice a lot clearer than before, making him aware that the source of his panic was standing only a few feet away from the basement door. Any thoughts that remained in his head evaporated instantaneously.

“Mike? Are you in the basement?”

Now normally this would mark the end for many other people, but Mike was not like the other people, he fights monsters for a living - Nancy says that that’s not a job, but it sounds more lighthearted that way, makes it easier to cope with - therefore, he was going to do the brave thing.

That’s a lie, he’s going to run. His knees and ankles cracked and ached viciously as he broke out into a run towards the back door, snatching a pair of random shoes off of the floor, opening the door hurriedly, and attempting to slip outside whilst trying to close the door behind him as quietly as possible, so as to not alert Will to his whereabouts.

He allowed himself a moment to release the breath that he wasn’t even entirely aware that he was holding, before turning around to be faced with his next problem, the original issue that he had with going into the basement; the rain. This time he did grant himself a small self-pitying laugh as he felt the spatters of rain soak into his socks. The moment was short lived as he resigned himself to his fate of having to go in the rain, lest Will see a suspiciously Mike shaped figure in the basement's doors window.

Mike shoved his feet into the shoes that he’d dropped onto the floor, sacrificing the time it would take to tie the laces to instead brace himself against the rain and just start running. Icy water instantly splashed him in the face, rogue droplets attempting to land in his eye, but he focused on the ground as he ran. Well, it was an attempt at running, he almost slid over numerous times on the mud as he ducked for cover under the trees that lay at the bottom of his backyard.

Crouching down behind a tree and leaning his weight against it, Mike had to evaluate his situation, deciding that this definitely came in the top 10 of most pathetic moments. He was hiding in the woods from his best friend, of whom he just figured out that maybe he liked him a bit more than just friends. If you were to tell 12 year old Mike that this is what he’d be doing when he finally gets the chance to live with Will, he could practically hear him going “What is wrong with you? That’s Will.”

But 12 year old Mike hadn’t experienced all that 16 year old Mike had- wait, had it really only been four years. God he felt like he’d aged by about 20 years. Anyway, his point was that a lot had happened in those four years, enough to apparently change the dynamics of their friendship, even though he still didn’t know what it was that had made them start acting so weird around one another.

Twisting his hands together, he used it for both a distraction, and also an attempt at soothing the pain he could feel blossoming in his fingers, as the rain seeped through his gloves and into what felt like his joints themselves. It was almost comical how the original thing he’d sought after to distract himself from his thoughts, had turned into the thing that made him confront them. Life worked weirdly like that, he guessed.

Mike didn’t know how long he would be out there for, he hadn’t really thought this whole thing through when running through the door, but now that he did think about it, how would he be able to tell when the coast was clear? Was he just supposed to pretend that he’d been on a walk and waltz in through the front door when someone else got home, because if he did it before then, then he would just have the same problem that he literally just ran away from.

He could still feel the rain dripping from the branches of the tree and sliding from the top of his head, to down his forehead. Mike glared up at the trees like they were his enemies, unable to ignore the red-grey hue that the clouds had taken on, reflecting the faint glow of the Upside Down that was still leaking into their world.

Maybe that was why the rain and general climate of Hawkins seemed colder than it would around this time of year, because whilst it was winter, and Hawkins always without fail got cold, it had never seemed this bad before, this was creeping towards the unbearable mark. Even as he was thinking that, he knew that it probably didn’t help that he was now soaking wet, and would of course be feeling a lot colder than before, but his point stands about it getting colder ever since the world split open.

Mike started to weigh up how bad it could have possibly gone between him and Will if he’d just stayed inside, because compared to the winter bite he was feeling right now, surely their interactions couldn’t have been colder than this. A more naive part of him thinks that it would have been completely fine between them, and that they would be talking as if they were excitable middle schoolers all over again. He gave a small, sad smile to himself at the thought.

The longer strands of grass up near the trees swayed in the breeze, flinging small droplets of water in various directions. Mike lazily watched it, trying to entertain himself in this dreary environment as tried to regain feeling in the tips of his fingers. The sound of twigs snapping came from behind, which made him jump slightly from his crouch on the floor, but he chalked it up to being some birds bathing in the rain and forced himself to calm down.

He was trying to teach himself to unlearn the jumpiness that he’d gained over the past few years; it was embarrassing, it hurt physically sometimes on his joints, and it provided far too large an opportunity for his father to rant about his lack of bravery. If only the man knew all the things that Mike had had to be brave for. The only, and he means literally the only, positive is that Holly has fun with it. Whilst Mike himself is not overly fond of the sudden jumpscares that she will give him, he’d rather her keep her childish nature of finding fun in every situation, rather than her being serious and forced to grow up far too quickly like the rest of them were. There were the few occasions where she went too far with her scares, but she always apologised afterwards, besides, she was a little kid, she wasn’t supposed to know any better.

More snapping sounds rang through the air, almost being disguised by the rain hitting the ground, but it was clear that it was getting closer to where Mike was huddled behind the tree.

‘Just a bird, that’s all it is, calm the hell down’, he repeated to himself over and over again, ‘You’re outside, you should’ve expected this.’

There was silence apart from the rain for a couple of moments, before the illusion of solitude was shattered by a hand grazing his shoulder.

“Jesus- oh shit, what-” Mike yelped, thrashing in the air in an attempt to get away from whatever was touching him, falling onto his back in the process. God, he was like every action movie character that he hated; the ones where they try to run away but instantly fall over and just stay there screaming instead of moving.

“Woah, it’s just me Mike, it’s just me”

A shadow was cast over him, as none other than a certain William Byers stood above, a look of concern, guilt and very mild amusement stuck to his face, as he held an umbrella in one hand.

Mike gave himself a second to take a breath as he gazed up at Will before responding, “Right yeah, sorry,” he gave a breathy laugh, “You scared me, I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”

Will’s look of amusement grew, “Well, I can’t exactly say that I was expecting you to be here either. Did you want a hand getting up?”

Will stuck out his hand as he offered, and Mike stared at it, not knowing whether or not to take it. Not taking it would mean a really awkward moment of Will having to lower his hand and killing the meager conversation with one stone. However, taking the hand would mean being physically closer to Will than he’d been in over a year. There is also the secret third option where he is entirely overthinking this, and he should just take Will’s hand because it’s an offering of an olive branch.

“Yeah, thanks man,” he internally cringed at himself, as he carefully took Will's hand, “I think slipping over in the mud again might be too big a hit for my self esteem to take.”

‘Oh my god, please shut up.’ Mike’s thoughts rang.

“Well, I think you fell quite gracefully, if you ignore the flailing about and all.” Will laughed, neither making the move to get Mike off the floor just yet.

“I’m here to amuse, pulled out my best moves for you as well,” cheeks warming as he smiled, finally putting in the work to getting himself off of the floor, Will catching on, and pulling as well.

Unfortunately, traitorous joints do not wait for any conversations to finish before they make their grand re-entry. A resounding crack shattered the moment, sharp pain vibrating in his wrist, specifically the one that Will had just pulled. Mike let go, and let himself gracefully slide back towards the floor; this time nearer the tree and in a sitting position, so not as bad as previously.

They both winced at the noise, Will having no choice but to let go of Mike as he went down, otherwise risking himself falling to the floor as well.

“Just leave me here, I’ll become one with the ground eventually,” Mike muttered towards the floor, holding his throbbing wrist with his other hand.

Will lowered himself closer to the floor into a crouch, staring at him with pity, “That may take a while you know and I don’t think the process of becoming part of the literal floor would be very fun.”

Mike lifted his head slightly and saw the small smile on Will’s face contrasting with the pity in his eyes. He gave an attempt at a smile in return before shuffling to rest his back against the tree and let his body go limp against it.

“It could be alright, you know how I’ve always liked the outdoors with all that running and shit.”

The complete and utter lie stuck out like a sore thumb but he knew that he could always rely on Will to pick up on his jokes.

“Mike, we spent a great deal of our time playing D&D in a basement when we were younger, I don’t think the occasional bike ride and venture through the woods and junkyard are enough to counter that and turn it into a ‘love for the outdoors’.” Will reached out to give him a pat on the shoulder sympathetically, “That aside, I’ve seen you run, and it doesn’t exactly scream I love running.”

Mike looked at him with mock offense, putting on the dramatics heavily “How rude William, I’ll have you know I am the best runner in all of Hawkins, and, I never claimed to love the outdoors, you’ll find I said that I simply like it. There’s a difference.”

It was strange how easily they’d slid back into this kind of talk, after all, this was still the boy that Mike had literally ran away from his own house to avoid talking to, and now they were joking like nothing had ever been amiss about them.

“What a world that would be if Mike Wheeler was the best runner in all of Hawkins, the place would have to be empty,” Will huffed amusedly, moving to sit next to Mike against the tree, careful to not knock his umbrella against either of their heads.

Mike looked to his left in confusion, “What are you doing? The ground’s all wet, you’ll get soaked.”

“Well I can’t exactly let you become one with the ground by yourself, it would be pretty boring, having to sit out that wait alone.”

This was the closest that they had been to one another since their conversation a few months ago. It was like the words uttered had caused a canyon to appear in the previous cracks within their relationship. Mike moved to look straight forward, unknowing how to respond; he wasn’t really sure how to proceed from here, his whole plan had been to avoid this from ever happening - literally, the only reason why he was in the basement to begin with, was to distract himself from thinking about Will in the first place.

It was probably a good thing that he’d moved from his bedroom though, otherwise they’d be having this conversation in his room, with very limited escape options unless you count the window as a viable one. At least out here, he could run off into the woods if he really wanted to. Actually, scratch that, Will would just laugh at him instead for running.

Mike worried about how long this silence was going to stretch on for, beginning to think that maybe running off into the woods really was the best possible option, when Will decided to break it unexpectedly.

“I didn’t realise that you were still in pain.”

Mike looked back at him again, confused, “Hm?”

Will looked down at his wrist pointedly, vaguely gesturing to it with his free hand, “Your joints. I didn’t realise that they still hurt like that in the cold.”

Now that he did look down, Mike could see that he was in fact still cradling his right hand to his chest, in an attempt to generate some heat there. He let go of it, as if burned by the mere idea of showing weakness, perhaps a quality of his that he could attribute to his father.

“Oh this? Yeah, no it’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He tried to brush it off, but his chest twinged with the lie.

But he could always count on Will to see through his mistruths, “You…you don’t have to lie to me, okay?” Will gave a sad smile, a crack of defeat and disappointment highlighted in his eyes, reminiscent of their previous conversation that followed a similar pattern to the way this one was going, “It’s not shameful to admit that you’re in pain.”

Great. Now he felt like an asshole.

“I don’t mean to lie alright, I just…” he let out a few broken syllables as he struggled for a grasp on words, “There’s nothing anyone can do anyway to fix it, so what’s the point in complaining about it.”

Will shuffled to properly face Mike, shoulders knocking together, “We may not be able to fix it, but we’ll be able to help ease it for you. Clearly you recognised that yourself at some point, otherwise you wouldn’t be wearing those gloves that you’ve been complaining about for what feels like years.”

Mike could feel a flush growing on his cheeks, up towards his ears as he was practically backed into a corner with his friend’s statement. He tried to stretch his sweater sleeves over his wrists so that they could hide a bit more of the gloves, but Will stopped him with a loose grip on his arm and a quiet, “No, you’ll stretch the fabric.”

He stared down at the hand on his arm, fighting every reflex ingrained into his very being as his ears felt like they were on fire with how red they were going.

Apparently, Will wasn’t done though, and he came in with the final blow, “So, I’ll repeat what I said in the summer, just talk to me, and we can work through it together.”

It seemed that the summer hadn’t really allowed him to feel those words, the heat acting as a repellent to anything, the words curdling and turning into thorns that Mike used to argue back with. Here in the winter though, the words sunk into his skin, into his muscles, hell, into his damn bones. It felt a lot like the rain still falling onto him and soaking in through his sweater, except the words were coming from the warmth seeping from Will’s hand on his arm.

So just like that, Mike felt the ice inside him melting rapidly, and the deadly ache and longing for his best friend rushing back through his body. Words would only fail him here; it could have been comical, the way that a writer’s biggest weakness was in fact words.

Will didn’t make a sound as Mike shifted to gently lay his head upon his shoulder, just gazing out the corner of his eye. It put him on edge, not knowing what Will’s reaction was, not knowing if he really had pushed the boundary too far, after all, it really wasn’t too long ago that Mike thought that going into the basement would be too much.

He knew that it was too late to turn back though, he was stuck here on Will’s shoulder until he was either pushed off in disgust, or until he really did merge with the earth.

Instead, Will adjusted so that they could both be sitting comfortably, making it so that the umbrella was properly covering the both of them now.

“So,” Will spoke in a low tone, as if attempting to avoid breaking this fragile moment, “do I need to ask again?”

There was a small part of him that still wanted to be defiant, the part that was enshrouded by supposedly strengthening words. Words that were supposed to make him ‘more of a man’.

“Hm?” Will turned his head a little, so that he could look at him with warm, prompting eyes, awaiting his answer.

At the end of the day, Mike didn’t want to turn into the kind of man that had a reputation of disappointing Will Byers.

“Is this still about the gloves?”

He could feel Will inhaling deeply before responding, “It can, if you want it to be.”

With the support of Will’s hand still secure on his arm, he opened up by the smallest margin, “Joints never really stopped hurting really. All of the ‘remedies’…” he gave a lazy gesture to himself using the arm that Will wasn’t holding on to, “Don’t exactly do a whole lot.”

Will didn’t speak, allowing him to continue, “It feels like my entire body is just going to break a lot of the time, like my joints are just going to slip out of place and never go back in,” he gave a humourless laugh, “but hey, who would I be to complain, when people that we know literally have had their bodies break against their will and they might…” Mike had to cut himself off there, a lump forming in his throat at the thought of Max still laying unconscious in the hospital, “Mine isn’t even a problem, it’s just me complaining like a child about a few aches, about a life that is a hell of a lot better than what other people have.”

“Hey,” Will interjected, “just because other people have it worse, does not mean that the pain that you feel is any less. It’s not even like you’re in a situation where you’ve been given a solution to rectify everything but you’re choosing to complain rather than use it. I’ve seen you, Mike- no, let me say this,” Will gave Mike’s arm a squeeze as he tried to interrupt, “I’ve seen you over the past however many years I’ve known you, try and try to bury this when the doctor’s visits weren’t helping.”

Will switches to absently stroking his thumb over the top of Mike’s sweater, the touch vaguely distinguishable through his layers of clothing.

“Have you forgotten how I was there the first time your shoulder popped out? You refused to scream, basically refused to make any noise at all really, and I never understood why. You were always the one telling me as a kid that it was ‘okay to react to pain, don’t let others make you feel shame for it’, but I never felt that you took your own advice.” Will had taken to periodically scratching the fabric as he spoke, and now Mike was the one who didn’t understand; how could he say things like this whilst acting so nonchalant about it?

“It’s hard to take that kind of advice yourself when there’s someone else telling you to do the complete opposite.” Mike mumbled, staring at Will's hand.

Will appeared thoughtful for a moment before recognition dawned on his face and he nodded once, slowly, “I bet I can take a guess as to who that was?”

Dragging his gaze upwards to stare at a random tree instead, Mike gave a short laugh, “If your guess is the armchair's best friend, then you might just be correct.”

Will squeezed his arm again gently, and stated in a deadpan voice, “Well, here’s to shitty fathers then.”

It started out as Mike stifling his laughter, but it quickly devolved into both of them clinging to one another laughing into the silence of the woods, the only other noise accompanying them was the rain still falling. In that moment, it was just the two of them huddled together for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, and that was all that mattered.

As the laughter died down, Mike resettled against Will’s shoulder, deciding that if there was ever going to be a time to be vulnerable, it was going to be now.

“Do you remember back in kindergarten, the day I came in with that stupidly big band-aid on my arm, right about here?” Mike traced the finger of his spare hand onto Will’s upper arm.

“Was that the one I drew all over with flowers or something?” Will’s face was scrunched up in concentration.

Mike smiled faintly, “Yeah…yeah it was,” his smile faded, “Well, I’d gotten it by tripping and sliding on the sidewalk, managed to scrape my arm like it was on a cheese grater, hurt like a bitch as well. Of course, like a child, all I knew was the pain, so I cried, a lot. Turns out my dad wasn’t really the biggest fan of his only son sobbing in the middle of the street, and I remember him grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me inside.” Mike paused for a moment before continuing, “I thought he was going to help me or something like that, but apparently it’s more important to start yelling in your five-year old’s face about appearances and being ‘more of a man’ instead. By the time my mom had gotten home, I’d stopped crying and was trying to tend to my arm myself. I don’t remember much more after that, but oh boy, was she angry at my dad. It just sort of continued on like that, I guess. Whenever I got hurt to any degree, my dad, well, he wouldn’t yell like he did before, but he’d be sure to glare at me if I showed any sign of complaining. So, yeah…” he dragged out his final word, back to staring at Will’s hand.

Will himself had just been sitting there like a statue all throughout Mike’s retelling, gazing at him with something like a mixture of pity and understanding in his eyes.

Mike hadn’t really thought about this in a long time, he was trying to get better at the whole blaming other people for his wrongdoings. He knew that it was one of the major reasons why there were issues in his relationship with El; the dishonesty that came with it was damaging.

In this specific instance though, it did actually make logical sense to have these opinions tied to another person. He had never thought these things about other people, as Will had said, he would encourage his friends not to bottle up their worries and pain. But he’d also never thought about this when concerning himself either, at least not until that one day with his father - it’s like it had altered the chemicals in his head, but only the ones that tied to how he thought about himself.

Mike’s head was starting to hurt with all the lines he was trying to draw, connecting thoughts to people, and what applied to which set of people. The quiet that he’d left was giving him the perfect opportunity to spiral.

The silence was killing him. Should he not have said anything?

Just as his thoughts began to twist further, Will finally spoke up.

“I remember a few months after that, my da- Lonnie, took Jonathan out to go shooting, and he made him shoot a rabbit. He was so upset, I remember him hiding in his room and avoiding any space that he would have been in. But I mainly remember how Lonnie was so desperate for a son, for a manly son, that he started taking me out to play baseball with him,” Will broke off momentarily, “It painted a pretty picture at the time, you know? A father taking his son out to bond over a sport, it should have been the dream. But I was barely taller than the bat so I couldn’t hold it properly, which really pissed him off, even though it wasn’t my fault at all. Still, nothing was going to get that fact through his head, so clearly his only choice was to deliberately start throwing the balls at me, instead of towards me. In turn that caused the great Will Byers fashion dilemma of 1977, where I had the choice of wearing long sleeves and overheating, or, wearing shorts and t-shirts but raising unwanted questions..”

Will ducked his head slightly to meet Mike’s eyes from where he still lay on his shoulder, stating quietly, “A story for a story, you know.”

Mike exhaled deeply, “I’m sorry about Lonnie.”

Will put on a weak smile, “Yeah…I’m sorry about Ted.”

This time, Mike gave a sad smile as he met his gaze and repeated earlier words, “To shitty father’s…”

“Shitty indeed.”

Silence fell over them like a blanket this time, both just comfortable with each other’s presence. Mike watched as the water droplets fell off of individual strands of grass, reflecting the light as they dropped.

The quiet was never going to last long, not when there was still a blaring issue hanging over their heads, one in disguise.

Will fidgeted where he sat, pushing one leg out to lay flat against the ground, “So, are we going to acknowledge the other elephant in the room?”

Mike froze, his entire body going stiff at the words.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

‘Smooth Wheeler, because that’s convincing,’ is what his traitorous brain came back with.

“Mike..” Will began, sighing.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, alright?” Mike lifted his head from Will’s shoulder and used the tree to get up; his body for once not betraying him and cracking painfully, instead screaming out at the loss of the warming human contact.

He was exasperated, he’d already evaded this conversation once within the past 10 or so minutes, and now he felt like he’d been cornered. So, like an animal, he was going to lash out.

“I just want to know what happened to make us turn out like this. You’ve just been pulling away all this time and I don’t understand why.” Will stumbled to his feet hastily, not expecting the sudden change in tone, the umbrella being left discarded on the floor as he too felt the presence of the rain.

“You’re acting like it was all just me, like everything was because of what I did. But you’ve been pulling away just as much, so don’t try to pin everything on me.” Mike took a few steps away, his back turned to Will as his voice rose, only to break in the middle.

Because he’d seen how Will had also been distancing himself even more since their failed attempt at a conversation. It had made sense as to why he’d hide himself away after that, but it was unfair to assume that Mike wouldn’t want to do the same thing. At the end of the day, they were two sides to the same coin, both with similar faults but unable to turn around and recognise that fact.

“Mike this was happening long before that argument, you can’t blame this on that.” Of course Will could practically read his mind to see what he was thinking about, it was a trait they’d had since childhood, but it has been lost for the past year, until this moment apparently.

“Yeah, you’re right, it was. Doesn’t exactly give an explanation for before that though, does it?” He turned around to face Will, desperate for an answer to that question. It had been irritating him for months now, because whilst he had an explanation for why he had been pulling away, he didn’t have one for Will.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I could see you sub-consciously disappearing again as soon as you had El back with you? That maybe I didn’t want to be the one who got left behind again, so maybe, just maybe, it would be easier if I distanced myself first so that maybe it wouldn’t sting as much when you left again?” Will sounded angrier than he did before, face contorting into a frown, all semblances of their previously quiet and understanding moment destroyed by bitter words once more.

Mike was stunned for a moment, having to remind himself that nobody knew about his breakup with El. His own frustration quickly returned, making itself known, “Why didn’t you just talk to me about it, instead of just assuming you knew everything about the situation?”

“Because maybe I didn’t want to be that 14-year old kid anymore who was constantly pushed aside to make way for girlfriends.” Will’s own anger was deflating now, leaving just as quick as it had come, “Can you blame me for not exactly wanting to be around so that I could be a part of the sequel?”

“Will…” Mike began, before being cut off.

“No, because I knew that the dating scene was always going to be different between you and me, with our…separate interests,” Mike’s own recent realisations blared in his head like an alarm, his heart sinking at Will’s words, “And that it would be a lot easier for you to date a girl then it would be for me to date a boy, but I guess I never took into account how much friendships would change to accommodate relationships. And that’s not me saying that I have an issue with you and El dating, because I love her, she’s my sister, and I want you both to be happy. It would just be great if you could remember that you have a life outside of your relationship, instead of only remembering it when you’re having a relationship crisis or something like that.”

Will looked a lot lighter after saying that, the line in between his brows disappearing, as if he had been holding it in for years - which when thinking about it, he probably had been. Mike dreaded to think about how long he had felt like this.

On some level, he had been aware of how he was pushing aside his friendships, in an attempt to flaunt the fact that he, the boy who had been bullied all of his life and critiqued on his previous lack of interest in girls, had gotten a girlfriend. In reality, he knew that it was bad, how he was treating his friends and El, but god he was desperate for some resemblance of normality.

His mouth worked faster than his brain did, or maybe they were working together by not looping him in as they were desperate to clear the air of the one thing that Will had gotten wrong in his confession.

“We broke up.”

Will visibly froze, staring at Mike with slightly widened eyes, before shaking himself out of it and asking, “What, like recently?”

“No…” Mike began to fidget with the sleeves of his sweater, Will no longer close enough to get him to stop.

Will’s eyes were questioning, confusion shining in the deep depths of them, “How long ago?”

“Back in Lenora, we had a conversation about what the best thing to do was regarding our relationship.” Mike felt like he was hardly breathing whilst admitting this, Will being the first person he’d spoken to about it, the topic going untouched for nearly a year.

“Lenora? But that was like 8, maybe 9 months ago. Why am I only hearing about this now?” Will looked dumbstruck, his previous anger long gone, as he took in this new information.

“There was never exactly the right time to stop everyone and ask them to listen to me talk about my love life, was there.” Mike spoke shortly, before reigning in his attitude, “Besides, there was never the need to talk about it.”

Will just stood there for a few moments, not knowing fully what to do, settling on asking, “But why? I don’t understand, you were so happy to see one another at the airport.”

Wasn’t that just the star question of his life as of current? Why couldn’t he just have made it work, he could’ve learnt to have been a better boyfriend to a girl who definitely deserved better than him. Why couldn’t he just have been the son that Ted Wheeler always wanted?

“We are better off as friends. That space between us helped us both realise…many faults within our relationship.” Mike let his gaze bounce over a number of things in the woods, wanting to avoid the colossal crater of information that he was missing out for context.

Will narrowed his eyes in concentration, looking deep in thought. The sight unsettled Mike, his fragile lies were already fraying, if Will looked at them too closely, he was bound to see the hidden truth or at least part of it.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why was this time any different to the times from before? In the past you guys admitted there were things wrong in your relationship, but what made it different this time?” Will’s voice was slow, as if approaching a skittish animal.

Mike began to pace slightly, at a loss for any proper words, “I-I don’t know, it just was I guess.”

Will rubbed a hand over his face, “Look, I don’t mean to pry, and I know that it’s none of my business, but there’s been something off about you for months now, hell since last summer, and I’m worried, Mike. I just want to understand what’s going on with you.”

He continued to pace, completely avoiding looking at Will, scraping his hand through his hair and making a distant note that his hat had gone missing at some point.

What was he supposed to say to that? He’s not exactly known for his excellent ability to create lies on the spot, in fact, he’s known for being notoriously bad at it. Besides that, he didn’t want to lie to Will, well, he did because he sure as hell didn’t want to tell him anything about the mess inside his head, but he didn’t want to do the action of having to actually lie to him. It made him feel hollow inside each time he did it, like each lie was holding a part of him captive until whatever chaos it had caused had been rectified.

It was all too much, there was too much noise inside of his head, and he still didn’t know what to say to Will, and maybe running off to live in the woods and digging a hole would actually be a better life then whatever was happening right now.

It’s just, god, did he want to tell someone about it all, someone who would understand, not his sisters, where one is too young to understand that she has to keep quiet about it, and the other who doesn’t deserve to have to deal with anymore of his stupid shit. Not his Mom who was too vague and ambiguous with her opinions, with there being the added possibility of her telling his father, who he would most certainly not talk to about this kind of stuff, not even if he was the last goddamn person on the planet.

He could feel it pressing on him, constricting his heart and lungs, overwhelming his brain, running through his veins, the want, the need to tell someone before it drowned him.

“Mike…” Will began, taking a step towards him, a stick snapping in the process.

He could feel the words in his throat, suffocating him, “I-I’m…”

Mike tried to reign it back in, he could bring it back, they didn’t have to talk about this. Maybe now would be the time he’d unveil his incredible on-the-spot lying skills.

“Mike.” Will repeated, tilting his head to look Mike dead in his eyes, unknowingly signing away Mike’s ability to think.

“I don’t think I like girls.” he choked out, unable to look away from Will as his eyes burned. He felt like his whole nervous system was about to come up in a mixture of bile, nerves and the words that crawled out of the deep recesses of his soul.

Will looked back at him with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open as he visibly struggled to get a grasp on any words. The lack of response caused Mike’s eyes to burn further, the tell-tale sign of tears creeping into his dwindling senses.

The first tear fell, slowly sliding down his cheek, engraving itself on the skin of his cheek. He would have wiped it away quickly had he been in the right state of mind, but as of now, he felt like his body had been cracked open and his emotions were there on display for anyone to see.

“I’m sorry.” Mike’s voice was barely audible, nothing like how it usually was.

Those words seemed to snap Will out of whatever trance he’d been in, as he blinked rapidly and frowned slightly, moving forwards in strides towards Mike. He would have had fear, but it was Will, his body just wasn’t conditioned to react in any fearful way towards him.

Mike felt it before he fully registered what was happening as Will closed in and wrapped his arms around him. His own arms hung limp at his sides, as his chin knocked into Will’s shoulder.

Will’s hand had a grip on the back of his neck, a grounding feeling amidst the floatiness drifting through his own body. His other arm was looped round to settle on his back, drawing the two closer together.

If there was any way to forget what had just been said, and this moment just existed by itself, then it would have been the happiest that he’d felt in months - hell, maybe in nearly a year. But the words still hung in the air, weighing down on him as his once internal monsters took a physical form in the shape of spoken words.

He almost missed Will’s quiet, comforting words of, “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just me. There is nothing to be sorry for at all. Thank you for trusting me with this.”

Oh, how he wanted to believe that, he longed for it to be okay. But it was bad enough for his own demons to be real at all, but for them to be seen by someone else, well.

His father may as well disown him now.

Even still, he could feel the tears trickling down his face, picking up the pace minutely, as his body craved the comfort that he was unsure he’d receive anywhere else other than right here.

“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to say that, I didn’t want to say it like that.” was all he could manage to croak out.

“How did you imagine saying it then?” Will whispered, as if scared to shatter the fragile moment that they’d built.

“I didn’t want to say it at all. Saying it means that it’s real and I didn’t want it to be real. It just- it can’t be real, Will, I can’t give another reas- I can’t let him be right, I don’t wa-” he spluttered through tears, being vaguely muffled by his mouth pressing into Will’s shoulder.

“Okay, you’re okay, I get it, it’s alright.” Will hushed, scratching gently at the back of his neck with his hand.

“No but it’s not okay, nothing is okay, because I’ve treated you like shit these past few months and I don’t even know why, because all I wanted to do was have my best friend back but I messed it up.” he swallowed roughly, his voice wobbling the whole time, “And I don’t want you to think that I’m only telling you this so that you’ll feel sorry for me and forgive me, I just want to be normal and have things back the way they used to be.”

God, he was a mess right now, but by this point, almost all of the thoughts he normally had running through his head had gone silent, leaving him with nothing but bone-deep tenseness, and what was happening in front of him.

But despite his best explanations, Will was still the boy he always was, forgiving and understanding, doing his best to comfort him even when he was told he didn’t have to.

“I just need you to know,” Mike continued, deciding that if he was going to tell him things from the very depths of his soul, he may as well get everything off of his chest, “That I really didn’t mean to act so…different this past year, and that I especially didn’t want for it to affect our friendship.”

“It’s okay-” Will didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before being cut off by Mike, who was gripping the bottom of Will’s jacket tightly in his hands.

“No, please let me say this now or I don’t think I ever will.” he sniffed, tears still streaking down his face steadily, “Back in Lenora, I tried to phone you almost every single day, got to the point where Nancy was threatening to lock me in my room so that she could stop seeing me standing there at the wall,” he gave a wet huff of a laugh before quieting down again, “I don’t know why it never went through, though.”

Will pulled away momentarily, a jolt of panic running through Mike’s body at the action, so that he could look Mike directly in the eyes, his own widened and full of realisation.

“My moms job.” he breathed out, but at Mike’s blank expression he continued, “She was always on the phone tying up the lines, so much so that Jonathan got a separate phone so that he could call Nancy. Oh my god, how could I forget about that…”

They both just stared at one another, with equal looks of guilt and regret in their faces.

“I should’ve known something was wrong when I didn’t hear from you for weeks at a time. I should have asked to borrow Jonathan’s line or something, instead of just assuming that you didn’t want to speak to me anymore.” Will spoke with a clear note of self-hatred, his face visibly contorting with the regret.

This time, Mike would be the one to reach out, grabbing the front lapels of Will’s jacket to pull him into yet another hug; they were doing a lot of that currently, but Mike wasn’t going to be the one to complain, he’d gone far too long without having Will with him and being close.

“There we go with our miscommunication again I guess.” he sniffed, tears starting to dry up, the only water left steadily running down his face being the rain that still hadn’t stopped.

“It’s what we do best, didn’t you know?” Will responded wryly, holding Mike as if he were fragile.

“Personally, I preferred when we were good at coexisting with one another” Mike spoke quietly, no longer matching the humour they’d tried to make.

Will also allowed the humour to drop from his voice, settling for a gentle tone instead, “Well, I’m sure we’ll get back to that stage again. Just promise me that you won’t hide yourself away from me like that again, you should know that I’d never judge you - well, I would, but never in a serious way, y’know.”

He shook his head, the shorter strands brushing against Will’s face, “I promise.”

The movement allowed water to trickle right down the back of his neck, causing him to shudder against the cold, which in turn, sent a reminder to his brain about how stiff his joints were becoming as a response to the cold.

For certainly not the first time that day, Will read his mind and came up with a ready-made solution, “If you’re cold, maybe it’s time we headed back inside?”

Mike pulled away from their embrace, futilely wiping his face clear of water, before the rain hit it again, nodding, “Yeah, that would probably be for the best before we turn into drowned rats or something.”

Scrunching his face up into a thoughtful look, Will smirked, “Oh I don’t know about that, now that you’ve cut your hair shorter again and it’s been flattened because of the rain, you kind of remind me of your good old bowl cut days.”

“Oh now you’re one to talk, Mr King of Bowlcuts,” Mike laughed.

Will grinned with him, “Hey now, I’m trying to grow it out into something else, I’ll have you know.”

“Whatever you say man, whatever you say.”

This kind of territory felt better, safer. Not that it didn’t feel good to talk with Will again properly like how they used to, but the emotional stuff was always unpredictable and there was no way of knowing what was going to come out next. Jokes he could deal with, that way he could just pretend that he was 13 again and he hadn’t just told his best friend some secrets that he’d previously sworn to take to the grave.

They had both turned to start trekking out of the woods - Mike hadn’t realised just how far he’d gone when he had been pacing - when Will stopped to pick up his umbrella and shoving his spare hand into his pocket and coming up with a look of surprise in his eyes, and his mouth in a perfect ‘O’ shape.

In his hand he pulled out Mike’s hat, the one he barely registered he’d lost earlier in his haste to leave the basement.

“I meant to give you this earlier, to keep your hair somewhat dry from the rain.” Will stated, holding out the hat towards Mike.

That was the one thing that they hadn’t talked about at all, and the one thing that Mike had conveniently forgotten about; the state the basement must’ve been left in. Time to do what he did best - sorry Will - deflect, deny, defend. He was a little bit weaker on that last one, but hey he had practice with the others, so there was that.

“What makes you think it’s mine?” Deny was in full play; pretend it isn’t his.

“Because I found it near to some of my stuff and it definitely isn’t Jonathan’s”

Goddamit.
Next stage, he’s got this.

“Maybe Jonathan got it as a gift or something and he didn’t like it, so it’s only just re-emerged?” He’s already forgotten what the next stage was, but it’s too late to turn back now.

“Mike, it literally matches a sweater of yours, I’m pretty sure that it’s yours.”

He’d forgotten about that jumper, he thinks it might’ve been one that he outgrew so it was no longer wearable without sporting some serious fashion choices. His mom had told him that he may as well keep the hat, as it was still perfectly fine and fit well.

Mike reached out and took that hat with defeat running through his body, but he still mustered the ability to laugh a little, “Was sorta hoping that you wouldn’t remember that.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a while before I forget that colour bomb of a sweater. Don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear that many colours in one go before.” Will was laughing now, shoving his hands back into his pockets to keep them warm as they continued walking towards the basement door, having finally made it back onto the grass of Mike’s garden.

“It was a…choice, I’ll admit.” Mike shook his head, chuckling.

A part of him was surprised that Will hadn’t yet asked why he was down in the basement to begin with, but he wasn’t going to complain.

“How come you were back so early anyway? Did Nance and Jonathan come back as well?”

The idea of the two of them being back inside the house waiting for them was terribly daunting, because how was he supposed to explain his, what he can only assume to be, very red eyes from the amount of crying he’s done since being outside. That and the thought of having to talk and put on a front for other people seemed exhausting right now. All he wanted to do was crawl back into bed with some heat packs, fall asleep and forget that any of this ever happened, and that all of his thoughts had remained at just that; his thoughts.

“Oh…Jon snitched on me and told my mom about how we, um, hadn’t been talking properly with one another,” Will reached a hand to scratch at the back of his head, “She damn near chased me out of the house to come back here.”

Mike wasn’t surprised at that, in fact he was shocked that Joyce hadn’t found out sooner about their damaged relationship. There was one detail that did puzzle him though.

“Wait, so your mom made you walk back here in the rain by yourself?” It didn’t sound like something Joyce Byers would do at all, she was after all, the woman who had Jonathan basically babysit Will if he was doing anything that didn’t already have some form of adult (or teenage in Jonathan’s case) supervision - like the original plan for trick or treating when they were 13.

“No, no,” Will shook his head in disagreement, “Hopper needed some things-”

“Wait.” Mike hurriedly cut him off, stopping in his steps, “Hopper drove you here? The guy who actually kind of hates me, Hopper? The ‘would stop at nothing to stop me from messing with his family’ Hopper? The ex-chief of police, Hopper, who absolutely knows how to hide a body and get away with it, Hopper?”

“No, just, let me finish,” Will grinned, “Hopper, no Mike his name can’t hurt you, needed some things from Melvald’s, so mom drove me here. I think they, like, telepathically conspired together on that, because Hopper’s sudden desperate need for bread, milk and lightbulbs seemed just a little bit too coincidental.”

“Oh, right, yeah that does make more sense, especially with the y’know, whole town thinking Hopper’s dead thing.” Mike would deny until the day he died that hearing that Hopper was still far away in his cabin brought any kind of relief to him.

The two continued walking towards the door, Mike yanking it open and both of them going in as quickly as possible, the door slamming shut behind them, leaving them standing in the entranceway to the basement dripping water onto the floor.

Will peeled off his jacket and left it hanging on the door handle, however, Mike was not as lucky, having only been wearing his t-shirt and a sweater with no coat on top. Now that he was out of the rain, he was feeling the full force of the cold that had been bothering him earlier, freezing him a lot quicker than previously. His body shook, shoulders pulled up towards his ears to preserve the little body heat he had.

By this point, Will had grabbed a towel that had been folded on the counter and was rubbing it against his hair in an attempt to get it less wet. Mike’s own was making him have a distinct similarity to a cat that had been left out in the rain all night.

“Mike, you’re dripping all over the floor, why don’t you-”

The only thing that followed was Mike letting out a short “Oh!”, before he shook his head like a dog, water flickering everywhere through the air. Will let out a small scream of indignation at the water going in his face.

“If you’d waited like 5 seconds, I was about to offer you the towel,” He stood with his hands on his hips, towel now flung over his shoulder, bearing his own striking similarity to one Steve Harrington.

Mike gave a smaller, “Oh…” before adopting a sheepish expression, "At least your towel will take less time to dry now, with the lessened amount of water it’s absorbed.”

Will shook his head, laughing, “You’re ridiculous,” he turned away, “I’ll grab you another sweater so that you aren’t just sitting in that wet one. It’s so cold down here that you’ll just catch a cold instantly.”

The newfound silence allowed Mike time to take in his surroundings, unfortunately very familiar ones.

“I can uh, explain the mess by the bookshelf.”

It was still a mess from earlier, the ripped box left discarded on the counter and the previous contents shoved into multiple heaps on the floor and counter. Luckily all the mess over by Will’s bed had been cleared up by his hasty attempts of leaving, but he was likely to ask questions, especially with Mike’s beanie being found over there.

“Hm? What’s that then?” was the distracted response he got as Will dug through his pile of clean washing in a makeshift closet made out of an old bookcase with missing shelves and a singular railing that had been drilled through the sides.

“I needed to um, finally get on top of my spring cleaning before my mom starts nagging me about it, and well, the box broke and everything spilled out, so I got it all into one space but then I heard you were back and I panicked, so I uh…left.” he was still shaking as he was talking, his fingers locking up as he fidgeted with them. Mike decided it would be better to peel off his gloves as they were rendered to be more of a hindrance than a help at this point, dropping them onto the floor carefully.

Will drew himself back up to his full height, two sweaters and two pairs of sweatpants in hand, “Yeah the cold down here doesn’t exactly do wonders for the cardboard, it makes them damp sometimes which is why they rip. I’m surprised you’ve never noticed before.”

Mike rubbed at the back of his neck bashfully, “I’m really not on top of my spring cleaning, can’t really remember the last time I did it properly.”

“Clearly you’re not very good at it if you abandon ship mid-way through a job,” smiling, Will walked back over to him and handed him a sweater and one of the pairs of sweatpants, “Here, these should hopefully fit, but either way, it’ll be a lot better than what you’ve got on right now.”

Mike gratefully took them off of him, smiling and nodding in thanks. He began to move to take his current sweater off before pausing, “How did you know I was out there anyway?”

“Nothing more than a hunch really. I remember as kids, you once told me about how you’d hid in the woods for a bit with Nancy when your parents shouting got too loud. Don’t quite know what I would’ve done if you weren’t out there, I’d run out of ideas as to where you’d be.” Will took off his shoes as he spoke, shaking out the folded sweatpants so that they’d be at their full length.

Mike took off his shoes as well, quickly moving to stand on a bit of the floor that had a carpet on. They both turned around to give each other privacy as they changed into drier articles of clothing.

“Yeah,” Mike chuckled, “Can’t exactly claim to have been thinking very clearly with that decision.”

There was a pause in the sounds of fabric moving coming from Will as he spoke, clearly trying to speak his mind in a careful way, “Were you mad that I’d followed you?”

Mike didn’t need much time to think on his answer before responding, “No. I think that I needed to get that out into the world and just tell someone. I’m glad it was you that came outside.”

Silence followed between them, the only sounds being wet clothes hitting the floor and the occasional noise of the drawstring on the sweatpants being tightened. The rain continued to hit the windows of the basement, seemingly having picked up in intensity since they’d come inside. Mike thought of Will’s umbrella and how that would not have even been enough to keep even one of them dry against the downpour.

Will broke the quiet in asking, “When do you think you figured all that stuff out?” There was a small pause before, “Wait, don’t feel like you have to answer that, sorry.”

Mike only hesitated for a moment, thoughts leading back to his revelations that occurred in this very room not that long ago. Thoughts that could be linked back to years of history and how maybe he didn’t only realise it less than an hour ago, but maybe he’d only come to terms with it. The fact had been laying dormant in his head for years now, waiting for his subconscious to accept it as the truth.

Still facing away from one another, Mike started, “No, it’s okay. Probably started thinking along those lines at around 10 or 11, when I didn’t feel a thing for any of the girls in our grade. Only picked up those thoughts again around…last year or so. Figuring it out properly though? That was…recent.” Mike turned slowly to face Will, who was still turned away from him, so really, he was facing the back of his head, deciding that it really was now or never, and he had to do it now, because there would never be a better time. The Upside Down was unpredictable, and who knows when their last day would be; if he was going to potentially die within the next few years, he may as well do it without any of these regrets.

Mike continued, albeit a bit slower and more cautiously than before, “I think it had something to do with hearing how much I meant to somebody. About how I made him not feel like a mistake, so, if he isn’t a mistake for loving like this, then how could I be?”

Mike could see Will’s entire posture freeze at his words, his own speech coming back at him but this time in the way that he’d originally intended to phrase it; words to Mike coming from him not El.

He continued onwards, trying not to let anything stop him at this point, “And if there were ever someone that I would want to not be a mistake with, it would be him, because of course it’s him, why would it be anyone else?”

It was Will’s turn to spin around slowly, cautiously, a petrified expression upon his face as he took in Mike’s own anxious appearance, shoulders hunched inwards, making the normally tall teen look small and defenceless.

“Mike…” he let out in one of the smallest voices Mike’s ever heard him utter in.

“Because the painting that he’d originally given me as a placement for someone else's feelings were actually his, and I’ve never been so happy to be wrong about my initial interpretation before.” Mike whispered back at him.

Only the sound of their breathing could be heard in the room, the rain being drowned out by the thoughts running through their heads.

“So,” Mike continued at the same volume, taking a singular step forward before stopping, “Tell me if I’m reading this wrong, because after all these years of thinking that there was something wrong with me, I’ve never felt so right before, and it would really suck to have faith in something that was doomed from the beginning.”

Mike found that his feet were firmly planted to the floor, he was unable to either move closer or away from his best friend. It was unclear whether this was due to fear, he just knew that if he dared move right now, he’d crumble to the floor before his foot met the ground.

But it was Will who was stepping forwards, tentative steps around the various things littering the floor, proof of the two residents living down there.

He stood stock still in front of Mike, looking straight into his eyes, into his soul, finally opening his mouth to talk, “Did you mean it?”

His voice was full of emotion, the words sounding like they were choking him, as he verbally restrained himself. Mike looked down ever so slightly, the smallest smile ached at the corner of his mouth.

“I think I always have.”

Will tilted his head up marginally and shyly brushed his lips against Mike’s own. All he could feel was the hot air passing between their faces as they broke apart far too quickly, the kiss itself could have been misconstrued as not existing at all. But even though they were both sure that neither of them had telepathy, they'd always had their own version of it, and Will looked up at him again through hooded eyes before lifting a hand to the back of his neck, so as to pull Mike back into the kiss. Mike’s eyes slid closed as he relaxed into it, kissing back with just as much emotion.

The whole world turned into white noise, hell, the world could have ended for all Mike knew, but at least he’d be happy to have this memory become his last. This house had always represented a place lacking safety for Mike to accept or even look at who he was, but here with Will, he felt safe. Most other people would describe kisses as being hot bursts of fire or an overwhelming explosion of emotion, and maybe Mike just hadn’t gotten to that point yet to understand that, but right now, he felt safe, and that’s all he wanted or needed right now, and Will understood that.

Deep in his head, there came the sinister voice telling him that what he was doing was wrong, that he’d be going to hell for this, only bad things could happen now as a consequence of this. But Mike forced all of his energy and concentration into just this moment, the connection he shared with Will, refusing to let the stupid voices ruin this for him as well. Besides, how could love of all things, especially one that felt so right, be a sin?

Far too soon again, they broke apart, resting their foreheads against one another as they just took in the moment. Both of their eyes were closed, their senses limited to the feeling of their noses brushing, and Will’s hand stroking the hair at the base of Mike’s neck.

There was a lot that they needed to talk about, after all, Mike’s issues wouldn’t just disappear with a kiss - despite how much he wanted them to be gone - there was a lot he needed to work through in terms of his identity. He knew that their bond had reached a better state than what it was at previously, but they still needed to mend all that had been broken over the past year.

For now though, they were content in their own handcrafted bubble that had taken form in the basement, the sound of rain slowly creeping back into their ears. Everything else could wait, it was finally time to indulge in something as normal as love, instead of their usual survival plans. They knew that eventually they’d have to move, it would not be good if some other resident of the house were to burst in and catch them in the position they were in, but they had time. Time that they were always desperate to have.

Mike finally lifted his arms to loop them around Will’s neck, sighing heavily as he leaned into the touch and relaxed into the hold of Will’s body. He thought back to what he was doing less than two hours previous; writing mindless stories to take his mind off of what he now knew as repressed feelings. For not the first time in this basement, one of his stories was coming to life.

He smiled to himself, ‘Yeah,’ he thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll be okay.’