Chapter Text
The night brings a sadness that Will is way too much used by now.
He feels raw, naked, vulnerable, as if all it remains of him are his skin and bones, and the weight he got finally rid from deep within him doesn't make him feel good, on the contrary – it feels like everything is crumbling at his feet.
Not that he had hopes from the start, any kind of hope, but seeing how the aftermath of his confession is worse day by day, meeting after meeting, Will feels like carving his eyes off his skull so he won't ever have to look at how Mike avoids him; at how he just steps farther away from him, maybe unconsciously, every time they find themselves sitting side by side; or how he just stops listening, staring straight ahead, whenever Will as much as tries to talk to him – or talk in general. He really seems he can't stand to hear Will's voice at all, can't bear to be in close vicinity to him.
It's hell. Will hadn't expected anything more than a rejection, all he wanted was to just... say it. That he loves him, nothing else, nothing spectacular. Will just blurted it out like it pained him to still keep the words bottled up inside, while they were alone in Mike's basement, eating the leftover pizza they eat at dinner with the Party. Will thought it was perfect, no one else was there, and he was convinced that Mike would laugh it off, or maybe pity him at worse. But if he knew then that the result of expressing his feelings for his best friends – with no expectation at all, and he knows that he'd been very clear about that – was this, this indifference, this distaste, he wishes to just go back in time so he could shut the fuck up.
As Will lies in his bed now, in the middle of the night, wide awake as it happens way too often lately, he thinks, It's not fair. It's not fair. Its not fair.
Nothing in his life has been fair, that much he knows. Since he was a child and his father beat him and spit at him and called him names; since he got lost in the woods; since he couldn't have any type of freedom in his hands; since his body and his mind weren't his anymore; since he couldn't even love like anybody else. Life is not fair to Will – it never was and, at this point, Will thinks that it'll never be.
Will suddenly feels a tug, right in the center of his chest. A call, a warning. It doesn't feel malicious, not like Vecna, but it pulls at him like a rope around his ribs, and there's no pain, it isn't suffocating. Turning his head, Will looks outside the window. It's cold, humid, the air smells like rain. He has left it open, he doesn't know why: he hates the cold. He hates the goosebumps, the chill he feels right down his spine, the white noise of the rain. As he stands up to close it, hugging his arms so he can protect himself from the frigid air, his eyes rise up to the sky – in the air there's rain, but the sky is clear. Free of clouds, a starry night that he hasn't seen for a long time. The moon shines brightly, full and pearly white, and Will almost sees two pair of dark eyes looking back at him from there.
He laughs at himself. The moon is so close and so big tonight it shadows a big slice of the sky, behind it other thousands of worlds just out of reach. Nothing like the bleak, cold, starved upside down, no. A whole new universe, brand new, shaped like his most wanted fantasies. No monsters, no unfairness, no shame. Maybe, he thinks, desperately, breathing deeply the cold air into his lungs, maybe there's somebody, he chokes in his own thoughts, as a Mike-shaped hole is cut through his chest, who loves me back out there.
I wish they were here, he pathetically desires, wiping away the tears he hasn't notices are running down his face, burning against his cold cheeks. Somebody, his thoughts scream, the Mike-shaped hole pulsing like an infected wound.
I wish somebody was here to love me.
His palms itch, as he draws.
They decides to go have a picnic up on the hills behind Will's new house, where the sun is shining warm and comfortable on their heads. The grass under his thighs is wet from the morning dew, but Will doesn't care. He's the only one without a picnic blanket under him, even if Eleven tries to give him hers, saying that she'll just share Max's, that Lucas's going be too busy talking with Mike and Dustin about the last campaign to mind it. Even Max says that she doesn't really care if Lucas wets his pants, actually it would be very funny – but Will refuses it, telling them that it's too late and at this point it's his pants that are already damp.
Will rarely draws portraits. He's usually stuck in painting fantasy worlds, and scenes not really loosely inspired by their campaigns. More times than not, he just draws papers and papers of their adventures, and Dustin always cries when he sees them, flipping though the drawings like a comics. Man, he always says, you could be an illustrator!
Like Stan Lee, Lucas added one time, in awe as he watched the drawings next to Dustin, but Dustin immediately swatted behind his head, saying: Like Jack Kirby, maybe you mean! Stan Lee is a writer.
Oh, yeah, right, Lucas said, scratching the spot Dustin had hit, Like Mike. Mike! You could be our Stan Lee and Will could be our Jack Kirby. We will be famous in no time. At that, Mike just answered Lucas with a cool, half-hidden behind his DM screen. Will remembers that Mike threw him a wink, but maybe he is just making it up, too loitered in the nostalgia of those memories.
Now, Will doesn't have much creativity for that. He's not sick of it, but their sessions are awkward lately, and Will notices that Mike is not very much into it every time Will is present, so. Will chooses not to go every single session – so Mike can actually enjoy it. He doesn't want to be the one who ruins this for Mike. But overall, it doesn't make him in a good mood to keep drawing D&D scenarios, even if he always loved that. That's okay. It'll pass. Hopefully.
That's why he's now drawing portraits. There are hundreds of Mike's drafts back at home that he doesn't ever dare to bring out with him, so he sticks to draw Eleven's oval face, her perfect lips, the stunning shape of her nose. He draws her as she laughs with Max, fiery hair clouding her head, mischief bright behind her eyes. He draws Dustin as he plays with the walkies, the start of a stubble under his chin, the thin scar he has at the side of the mouth, his lips pulled in a half-laugh at whatever Lucas was saying. And Lucas just sat on his knees next to him, motioning with his hands and arms, shirt tight around his muscles, the red headband he is so fond of around his forehead.
“That's beautiful, Will.” Max says, dropping next to him not before bringing the yellow picnic blanket with her, Eleven just behind her. She has three wrapped sandwiches in one hand, and gives one to Max and one to Will. Her hair is loosely wrapped in a lower bun, strands of it waving around her face by the soft wind. She has a trace of make-up reddening her cheeks, just like Max. “No Mike?”
Will's pencil stops, the tight curls of Lucas' hair half-finished. He dares to look up to where Mike is sitting in front of Lucas and Dustin, and when he hears Max say his name he turns his face towards them – but when he meets Will's stare, he immediately lowered his head, starting to play with the blades of grass under his blue picnic blanket.
It hurts. Yeah, no Mike then.
“I'll get to him, eventually.” Will just says, returning to shade Lucas' hair with the side of the graphite.
“No Mike is good.” Eleven hums, as she leans her head over Will's shoulder. He doesn't tell her to get off, or move, even if now it's a bit more difficult to draw. “See?” she points at the portraits, “We all smile and laugh. If you draw Mike, you ruin the mood.”
“He is moody.” Max huffs, “Watch his face. He looks constipated.”
Mike turns to Max with an annoyed frown, clearly having heard her, “Shut up, Max.”
As they bicker and stick their tongues out at each other, Will lowered his pencil and sketchbook to the ground, turning to look right at Eleven. She raises her head from his shoulder, staring at him puzzled. She looks young, light and free. She didn't look like this when they were in Lenora. Saving the world and finally get her freedom has made her even more beautiful than she ever was. Max says that being single is what made me more beautiful, she once said, when they were in Will's room a couple of days after Eleven broke up with Mike. It was mutual, the break up. We both wanted that! Mike had told him just that morning, and the same evening Max had shaken her head and said, No. El dumped his fucking ass. Again.
“It's my fault he's being like this.” Will said, somberly, almost in a murmur.
Eleven looks at him with her eyes bright but serious, of a color so warm that Will always feels comforted by it. She knows, what Will has done. She doesn't approve of Mike's answer – or no-answer, that is – and that it's another reason she's grown colder towards Mike. Will feels guilty. It's not fair that Mike has to lose Eleven also as a friend because of him, but – nothing is ever fair. It's not fair. It's not fair. Its not fair.
She shrugs, as if what Will said isn't relevant. “Fuck Mike, then.” she simply stated, her voice slightly more loud.
Mike hears her and groans, “Hey!” he taps the tip of his foot on the ground, irritatingly. Will doesn't dare to look at his face, he feels like he has lost the privilege. Mike doesn't want him to, after all. “What did I do, now? There's a conspiracy against me, I tell you!”
Suddenly, as Dustin and Lucas laugh their asses off and Max keeps telling Mike that he's a baby, Will feels a tug. It's a familiar tug, he already felt it before, but never so strong, so forceful. It doesn't hurt, nor it leaves a dull pain, it just... is. And it's calling him, harder, stronger.
Eleven, next to him, stiffens. “Do you feel it too?” she asks him, eyes wide. She's not scared, never scared. Being afraid is a Will prerogative, but now– he isn't, too. “It's... strange.”
Will turned around, staring down the hill, towards the edge of the wood, “Is it...?”
“No.” Eleven says, confident. “It's different. Not from the upside down.”
Will stands, grabbing his sandwich, his pencils and sketchbook scattered around and pushing everything inside his backpack in a haste. Part of him is afraid, but another part, small and fragile, is more afraid of losing it, whatever it is – so he just starts to walk down the hill, following the tug like a compass. Like a rope around his ribs. “What's happening?” he hears Mike shouting behind him, but for maybe the first time ever, Will ignores him. “Will! Will!”
He also hears Eleven and Max and Dustin and Lucas call his name, and steps running behind him. He doesn't notice how fast he's also running until he reaches the foothill and he's out of breath. The tug is stronger and needy, it pulls and it's not painful but Will can't seem to resist. It's Eleven who stops his tracks, “Will!” she pursues her lips, her fingers wrapped around his arm in order to stop him in case he starts to run again. The others, breathless just like Will, hovered behind Eleven, confused and slightly panicking. “What are you doing? It's not like you to just–”
“Can you two just fucking talk to us?!” Mike snaps, throwing his hands around, irritated. “What's happening? What's wrong?!”
Will and Eleven both ignore him, staring at each others. “I don't know, El, I feel– this pull. It wants me there, it's calling me. Is it not the same for you?”
Eleven shakes her head, “No. I feel no pull. And I just felt something open.”
“A gate?” Dustin asks, taking out of his pocket his compass.
“Yes. Maybe. Not the usual.” Eleven looks behind at Dustin, and in doing that, she softened the grip she has on Will's arm, until her hand fell at her side as she explains, “It may be a gate, but not from the upside down. And,” Eleven stiffens again, and Will feels strange. He turns to face the woods. “It just closed.”
“Oh. Well, that solves the problem, no?” asks Lucas, voice relieved. Will isn't looking at him, still staring at the woods, still feeling the tug around his ribs, “Maybe we need to check, just in case?”
“Yes.” Will answered him, stepping forward, “I can still feel the pull. It's still calling me.”
“What it does even mean it's calling you?!” Mike asks, voice slightly high-pitched, but Will doesn't turn, doesn't talk to him. He feels every nerve too busy searching and following to give Mike the attention he for so long has given and rejected, but really, he's not doing it on purpose. He would never, for the likes of him, not turn onto Mike like a sunflower on an August morning, but the pull, the tug, the call is too strong to resist. Sorry, I'm so sorry, he distractedly thinks, as he starts to walk faster and faster towards the woods, the whole Party following him. But maybe he shouldn't feel sorry after all. Isn't this what Mike has done for the past couple of weeks? It was nothing more than their ordinary life.
This was the first time he enters inside the woods alone since he was twelve. Not that he is really alone, considering that after no more than a minute Will hears the Party's steps crush the same dry leaves he crushed on the ground, but he doesn't feel scared– he doesn't feel in danger, as he did years ago. He feels in trepidation, he's close, close, closer.
When he finally reaches a clearing, he sees a silver figure lying on the grass.
The figure is immobile, and looks like a person. As Will steps closer, he watches in awe the figure dressed in a shiny armor, chest to toe, an elm abandoned a few inches next to his head, a black fur coat around his shoulders. Will couldn't see the face, he just sees a mop of black, long curly hair, but for the looks of it he seems like a man. Under his body, a shredded blue cape cradled him. He looks familiar, but Will can't quite pinpoint where does he has already seen him. He's breathing, shallowly. A bloody hand rest on his trembling chest, the other lies at his side.
When Will is close enough to look better at him, he sees blood pooling under his body, staining the green grass around his middle. “He's wounded.” he murmurs first to himself, then he turns and locks eyes with Max, “He's wounded! He's bleeding!”
Max nods with determination, stepping up next to him, grabbing her backpack from her shoulder. Will knows that Max always has a first-aid kit with her since they were children, she patched up all of them more than he could count at this point. Will kneels next to the man, hands hovering around a wound he can't see under the armor– or is it at the side? On his back? He can't tell, but surely he has to move him in order to find out.
When he touched the armored chest, trying to examine if the chain mail is teared and if so, the wound is there or on the back, the man suddenly shifts, and grabs Will's wrist with a bloody hand. He twists his face to look at Will and Will inhales sharply, staring hard at the man's face, a face he could draw with his eyes closed, in the dark of the night, alone in his room. The man's eyes are familiar and lovely, dark and bloodshot, a cut over his eyebrow pouring blood over them, and even if he seems so much in agony, his features relaxes when realization glitters in his eyes at the sight of Will.
The man tries to speak, but he has no strength left. Max, at the other side of the man, coughs in shock when she recognizes the pale skin, the slightly crooked long nose, the plump lips, the dark freckles littered only under the bag of his puffy eyes. “Mike?!” she chokes out the name Will's not been strong enough to even think as he stared in disbelief at the man – at Mike – bleeding out on the grass, no matter if the Mike he's known all his life is just standing still as a statue behind him. It's still a shock, and Will feels like hyperventilating, like at the edge of a breakdown, overwhelmed and now stained with Mike's blood.
“M–My liege,” the man grits through his teeth, pain clearly written in his expression, but looking in peace at the same time. He stares up at Will with a devotion Will is unfamiliar, as if he's looking right at the sun after years living in the dark. Like a week living in the upside down, staring up at his mother and Jonathan and Mike like he could finally breathe again. “You m–must have come for me– at last. I am so grateful. I awaited for so– so long.”
His bloody hand softens around his wrist just to raise up enough to give Will a caress on his cheek, delicate, like he would do to a flower. Will barely feels the touch, but it sends a shiver down his spine all the same, and his eyes wells. Behind him, a chorus of gasps.
After that, the man with Mike's face loses consciousness, hand falling down on Will's lap.
“Will!” someone is shouting behind him, but he can't hear over the whistle inside his ears, a white noise deafening him, “We have to take him to a safe place, we have to move!” he thinks he hears, but he can't really be certain. Somebody – he bets he's Lucas, but deep inside he wishes to be Mike – Mike that's bleeding on the grass and there's so much blood he's dying he's dying and he's dying while hating him – hauls him up and takes him away from the man's wearing Mike's face.
He sees Eleven and Max wrapping some clothes around the man's torso, immediately stained with red. If he's still bleeding, it means he's still alive, right? The heart must still be beating, right? Mike, Mike, Mike, dying and hating Will until his last breath.
“We can't take him to my house, my family will freak the fuck out! He has my damn face!” Mike is shouting somewhere – close – behind Will, “We're not twelve anymore, I can't hide him under a table, can I?”
“Let's take him to your house,” Max says to Eleven, as Dustin frantically shouts Steve, do you copy? It's a code red, I repeat, a code red! “Hopper's going to freak out seeing double, especially if it's Mike of all people, but better than Mike's parents, I guess.”
“Right.” Eleven nods, giving space to Lucas and Dustin to try and pass the man's arms around each shoulder. He's heavy, Will can guess as he sees strain in Dustin's face in particular, but he can't move. He feels rooted to the spot. He feels useless, and his hands are red. “Will? It's okay for you? To bring him home?” Eleven asks him, gently. Even her eyes, usually so severe under stress, are soft as she looked back at him, as if he's going to break if only she speaks louder. And maybe it's true, he doesn't know.
He just nods. He can't feel his voice.
“Can we just, I don't know, take him somewhere else? I don't feel good knowing that he's inside the house of one of us. It could be anything, really, an– an hallucination, or–”
“We can all see him, Mike.” Max sighs, petulantly, stepping next to Lucas and trying to help him walk with all that metal up his shoulder, seeing as he wobbles. Eleven does the same with Dustin.
“Mass hallucinations do exist, Max.” Mike tells her with her same tone, crossing his arms against his chest. “I feel kinda hysteric right now. Does it means it's mass hysteria? He has my face.”
Max snorts, “Not your body, if it makes you feel better. He's fit.”
Mike grumbles, “It doesn't.”
Will feels still out of it, mind full and empty at the same time, stomach lurching every time he so much as glance down at his hand, or feels the sticky feeling against his cheek, but he can't help but notice how Mike walks slightly close to him, closer than he ever did for the past couple of weeks.
It's almost midday when they finally enter in Will's house. It's empty: his mother has returned to her old workplace at Melvald's and she's in turn now; Hopper is at the police station surely. Steve brings Max some gauze and antiseptics for the wound, that Will finally sees is at the side of his torso, just under the last rib, while Max starts to undress the man to assert the gravity of the cut – blatantly ignoring both Lucas and Mike's cries of outrage. The wound isn't deep, but the man with Mike's face must have bleed for a long time before they found him, and it's red and pulsing, clearly infected.
“We let him rest,” Steve says as he and Max finish patching him up on the couch in Will's living room. The place is now a mess of blood stains, metal plates scattered all around, cloths imbued with antiseptic that leaves an unpleasant strong smell in the air. “And when he wakes up, we'll just tie him to a chair or some shit until he answers all of our questions.”
“We aren't in some stupid cop movie, Steve.” Dustin giggles, sitting next to where Steve is sprawled on a chair by the table, “Have you ever watched one at least?”
“Nah. Robin's a little descriptive, though. Once she retold me the whole plot of Beverly Hills Cop with so much details that I don't think I need to really watch it, man.” Steve's eyes turn distant, “I feel like I did, though. She talked for an hour and a half.”
Will tunes out the conversation as Dustin gasps horrified and demands that Steve has to watch Beverly Hills Cop at least once in his miserable life and no matter how good Robin is in retelling plots it can never be enough. He walks towards the bathroom door, opening in an automatic gesture and immediately leaned against the sink, breathing deeply. He feels calmer now, the last of his breakdown just a distant echo in the back of his mind, even if he still feels it in his bones, and the stains on his skin.
He opens the tap, letting the water run hot until he sees the steam clouding his sight. Only then he rolls up his sleeves and starts to wipe away any trace of blood, getting to the point of scratching away with so much force that he leaves bright livid marks. The water is scalding but Will doesn't seem to notice, staring numbly at the water becoming red. Mike's blood.
If he thinks hard enough, he's going to crumble. Seeing Mike's pained expression under his hovering hands, and sensing Mike's leaning above him to see, the air around nervous and heavy. Will doesn't believe he'd survive with one Mike walking around his house, full of hate and indifference, let alone with two. He doesn't matter if the injured Mike had looked at him with relief and devotion, of all things – he won't take it that gentleness for granted ever again.
He doesn't know how long he's been there under the boiling water even when there's no more stains to scratch away, but he suddenly hears knocking at the door, and he jumps, rising his head as it opens and Mike – his Mike – walks in, awkwardly. He frowns when his eyes fall on Will, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” he says, and it doesn't come out right. He clears his throat and repeats, “Yes, I'm fine. Why? Something happened?”
“No, no.” Mike has the top of his lips slightly tugged up, as he does when he's confused or when he bites at the inside of his mouth. He can't quite look at Will in the eyes, just as always. Will can't understand why he's here at all, if he wants to go to the bathroom he could have just sent someone else to him, considering he hates so much to be in his sole presence. “You were just... taking a while, that's all.”
“Do you need the bathroom?” Will asks, closing the tap.
“No! I was just–” Mike passes a hand through his hair, irritated. It hurts, it still hurts being treated like this, but for a second, Will just stared at Mike without overthinking. He's fine, he's not the one unconscious on the couch in his living room. It's not his blood that he just washed away from his hands. He's not the one who talked to him through painful breath. He's not the one who looked at him with softness in his bloodshot eyes. “Just making sure. If you were okay, I mean.”
“I'm fine.” Will repeats. He stares at Mike and Mike, for the first time in a while, doesn't avert his eyes. “Um. Are Jonathan and Nancy already here? I guess Jonathan sent you here, sorry, I'll tell him not to do that again.”
Mike grimaced, narrowing his eyes, “What? No! Will, nobody sent me–” he huffs, passing again a hand through his hair, and Will can feel himself staring at it with longing. “It's just– I meant to say–” then he stopped, pursues his lips and gestures around Will's face, “You have... a bloodstain. Still. On your cheek.”
“Oh.” Will starts to raise his hand to wipe at it, then he remembers how that smudge is there and feels like vomit. He turns to the mirror above the sink, and looks at his splotched face, at his lucid eyes, and at the shape of that Mike's caress on his cheek. He opens the tap again and starts to wash his face with force, scratching at his cheek just as he did with his hands and wrists before, and his face burns and sickly reddens and boiling water enters in his eyes and he doesn't even notice.
“Will! God, Jesus. You're tearing your face off!” Mike says, almost shouts, and suddenly Will feels his long fingers – those are the same fingers that left the smudge on his face, aren't they? – wrapping around his forearms and putting pressure on them so he can stop Will's violent movements. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! The water is burning, shit.”
“I don't like it cold.” Will murmurs, but he stills. Mike's hands stay on him.
“I know that.” Mike says, and his voice turns almost soft, “But you'll hurt yourself like this.”
Will rises his eyes and he finds himself face to face with Mike, who doesn't take a step to put distance, doesn't move away like he did every time they found themselves as close as this. “It was your blood.” he breathes out, “It was the first time, wasn't it? No matter how many times we fought against demos and Vecna, you never got hurt. I never had your blood on my hands.”
“Yeah, welcome to the club, I guess. Now you know how I felt. Every. Single. Time.” one of Mike's hands leaves him and starts to count, “One time you disappear, then you get possessed, then you start to pour blood out of your eyes. Every time you were this close,” he gestures a very small distance with two fingertips almost touching, “to die.”
“That's not the same thing.” Will points out, and doesn't elaborate, but he knows from the awkward look Mike throws at him that he understands what he really means. Will has feelings, after all.
“What does it mean, it's– I still care for you, that's not– the point is,” Mike sighs and stops touching him. Will feels immediately the cold his touch leaves. God, he hates the cold. “The point is, that thing on Mrs. Byers' couch is an imposter. It has my face but it's not me, Will, oh my god.”
“Right. You'd never look at me like that.” Will whispers, and he can't help the bitterness to come out of his voice.
Mike throws his hands in the air, “Like what? Like a dying man?!”
Will gasps and opens his mouth, offended, to tell him something – he doesn't really know what, maybe something along the line of: no, idiot, like I was important; or maybe like: like somebody he– you– loved, but he's cut short by a ruckus coming from the living room, and at first they look at each other in panic, before sprinting out of the bathroom, through the hallway until Mike stops, in front of him. He lets Will stay behind him, for some reason.
The scene in front of them would be comical if Will doesn't feel like hyperventilating. There are Lucas and Dustin with their hands raised in a peace sign in front of the couch, Max is behind them with her arms crossed against her chest. Steve and Eleven are a bit farther away from them, and Steve has assumed the same position as Lucas and Dustin, as if he wants to be less threatening. Eleven seems unaffected, he just cocks her head toward them when they arrive, and she mostly just looks curious.
The strange man wearing Mike's face is awake, half-sitting on the couch, and he must have startled the others when he did, as Will stares at the broken vase behind Max. Oh. Mom loved that vase.
His face is still flushed, maybe he has a slight fever caused by the wound's infection, and his expression is pained. Will darts his eyes on the coffee table in the middle of the room, and stares at the painkillers they prepared for when the man would wake up. Like this, with his hair out of his face – it's slightly longer than Mike's –, Will can clearly see how he and Mike are the same. He has the same eye shape, the exact same position of his freckles, the same arched form of his eyebrows. He maybe just looks older than Mike. And now that his mind is a bit clearer than it was back in the clearing or when they arrived home and he was still thinking of Mike's blood on his hands, he finally registers how the man is dressed and what reminds him of.
“He looks like Mike the Brave.” he hums thoughtful, in the dead silence of the room, broken only by the man's labored breath. All eyes fall on Will as he says that.
Lucas bats his fist against his own palm, “You're right. Like in your drawings!”
“Who?” asks Steve, scratching the back of his head.
“Mike the Brave!” Dustin repeats, excited, “Mike's D&D character!”
Eleven nods, “Mike's walls are tattered with Will's drawings. Most of them are of this knight with Mike's face. I guess it's him?”
“A Paladin, actually.” Mike corrects her. He jitters awkwardly in front of Will, almost obscuring his view.
“A what?” asks Steve again, now almost exasperated, “I'm not getting a fucking thing, I'm so fucking lost, dude.”
Dustin shrugs at Steve, looking at him good-naturedly, “That's nothing new.”
“Guys,” Max claps her hands a couple of times to gather all the attention, shutting everyone up, “I think we're ignoring the big fucking elephant in the room: he's not once taken his eyes off Will.”
Will's noticed. While the others talk, he's kept looking at– Mike the Brave, and he's staring. In awe, actually. A bit in shock, tense lines crinkle around his eyes, his lips are softly open in disbelief. Will doesn't know if he's from another world, another universe, from his deepest fantasies, or if he's just a monsters wearing Mike's face to kill him the moment he lowers his guard, the look in his eyes is lost – not scared, just... lost. Maybe as much as Steve's. That's why he finds himself stepping around Mike – who splutters when he sees him walking towards the imposter, as Mike called him – and sitting in front of him, on the coffee table. “This must be a shock for you.” he says, tentatively.
He stares. And stares, stares and stares, as if he can't believe his eyes. “I was the most convinced my demise had finally come. Seeing you here– it brings me joy, but when I look around me I am not to believe I am in heaven, am I? Am I hallucinating? Has a curse hit me, or is it a fever dream?”
“He doesn't talk like you, even if he says the same things.” Max whispers silently behind him, probably at Mike. Mike doesn't answer her, but Will can imagine how he rolls his eyes or sends her a death glare.
“We saved you, you're not dead. And no, none of us is hallucinating. We'll find a solution, don't worry.” Will tries to smile at him, and he still keeps staring, hard and insistent and in awe. “What's your name?” Will can't keep thinking about him as Mike the Brave or the one wearing Mike's face, can he?
“You do not remember my name, my liege?” he furrows his brows, pained. One of his hands darts to his flank, where the wound is now wrapped tight with gauze under the vest he was wearing under the armor and chain mail.
Will tries, “Mike?” he can hear Mike, behind him, groans loudly.
He smiles, melancholic somehow, “You only called me like this when we were alone.”
Will hears gasps behind him. He hears Mike breathe through his teeth. “Michael, then, I guess–”
“Are you really here?” Micheal interrupts him, “Are you not a– a specter?” he asks with a tremble in his voice, and then his palms cradle Will's face, and they are warm, so warm and so familiar that if only Will closed his eyes he could imagine Mike – his Mike – doing that. Having his face so close really doesn't help with his disillusions. “If this is not heaven and it is not hell, then where am I? You are here, with me, alive, this must not be my realm.” he says, and one of his palms, from Will's face, slides down until it stops on Will's chest, right where his heart is beating like crazy against his rib cage.
Will feels on fire. Michael is looking at him with longing, the same stare he sees whenever he glances at a mirror when he's with Mike – but Micheal's turning sad, a mist of what looks like melancholia clouding his dark eyes as they roam all over Will's face. Will feels on fire, and overwhelmed, and embarrassed. He surely has his face red as a plum, but he can't help it, really. He feels drawn. He feels as if Mike has finally, finally looked back into him.
“Hey. Hey.” Mike's voice – his Mike – wakes him up from his stupor, and Will finally notices how there's shuffling around him and how Dustin's clearing his throat. “Maybe don't touch him, uh?”
“Oh.” Michael says, breathing out. He slightly leans away from Will, his hands falling down, and Will immediately feels the loss of his contact, “My own self is also in this realm. A dull copy, indeed.”
Mike grits his teeth. Will can hear his displeasure, “What?”
“You have not bestowed a kiss upon his hand once. Such a disrespect. You do not know how fortunate you are to still have his presence near you. You oughtest to fill him with love in any moment of your dull life.” Michael says like it's the most normal thing to say, mostly ignoring Lucas and Dustin's coughs – louder this time – and Max and Eleven's snickers. Steve is strangely very silent.
Will gestures frankly around him, he can feel his fingers trembling and he really hopes no one would notice. He can't believe what is hearing, what is happening, filling him with love? “No, no!” he chokes, and coughs, “No, me and Mike are not– we're friends? He doesn't have to– to kiss– Oh, God, I mean, kiss my hands!” he doesn't dare to turn and look at Mike.
Michael frowns, and his expression darkens in confusion. It's then that Dustin decides to save Will from embarrassment and self-combustion as he sits next to Michael, and with a glint in his eyes says: “Well, tell me if I'm wrong but I'm actually never wrong ever, so. You aren't from here, you come from another world maybe? Another dimension? You look the same to our Mike, to our Paladin Mike actually, it's Mike's D&D character but I guess you don't know nothing about D&D, right?” he says, waiting for Michael to shake his head before continuing, “And, if there's a Will – a Cleric Will perhaps? – in your world I guess we all are in your world, you know who we are, correct?” Michael nods now but he starts to look lost again, “So, my theory is this: you live in a dimension where we are our D&D characters or something similar, like Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit – I guess it's possible, everything it's possible at this point – and you fell in a gate to our dimension from yours. That's why Will and El had sensed a gate open earlier.” Dustin nods to himself, smiling proudly as he pats his own shoulder, “Yeah, I know I'm a genius.”
“If you're a genius, you know how to take him back then?” Mike asks, and Will can sense him tapping his foot on the floor. “There's already a me in this world so we don't need another one.”
Lucas whoops, “So, there's a Ranger Lucas in your world? Damn, that's so cool. What's Max? I bet a Rogue.”
“Nerd.” Max elbows him, but she's laughing.
“There is a reason why I am here in this realm.” Michael says, and it's like nobody's here if not Will, because he's ignoring all of the others – even Dustin after a while, no matter if Dustin is sitting literally next to him – but he has eyes just for Will. All he's seeing is Will, and Will feels rooted on the spot, his viscera moving and twisting under that gaze. “I made a calling. And you must have answered.” he says to Will, grabbing his hands in his like a prayer, closing his eyes and placing his forehead on their joined hands. Will stops breathing at the sight of Michael – so similar, the same as Mike – touching him with so much reverence, as if he's the most precious thing for him. That's something taken from his deepest fantasies, so deep that Will has the nerve to think about just when it's the middle of the night, alone in his bed, with only his monsters and his shame to keep him company. “Finally the Gods have heard my prayers, and they must have granted me my most wanted wish.”
“Um.” Will looks around, and Dustin shrugs at him, also giving him a thumbs up. A wish? Will thinks, and there's something bugging at his memories. Meanwhile Eleven has wandered close, so much that he's feeling her warmth against his back, as Lucas and Max decide to take Steve out of the room for whatever reason – he thinks he heard something like We need Nancy and especially Jonathan here asap, where the hell are they, Steve?! but he can't be sure about that, too busy feeling Michael's nose caressing the skin of his palm, stopping the trembling of his fingers. “What... what wish?”
“This has to be a nightmare.” he hears Mike mumbling behind him, and Will feels cold. Right. This must be hell for Mike, seeing himself being so lovely with Will, especially after how things are awkward since Will's stupid confession.
“You are very awake, Mike.” Eleven says, brutally.
“Yes, El, I know.” Mike sighs, “So, Dustin? Can you send him back or not?”
As Dustin points a finger up and opens his mouth to speak, Michael suddenly rises his head to look at Mike, and his stare was fire, despair and anger in his bloodshot eyes. “I am meant to be here. I am never to be separated from my beloved ever again, for last time I did, he–” Michael sucks in a breath, but Will was too busy turning the words my beloved over and over in his head to fully notice, “Now that the Gods have bestowed me with a second chance to be true to my oath, I will not be stupid and break it ever again.” then, he looks back at Will, and his eyes impossibly soften. “Nothing awaits me in my realm. I will protect you, I will serve you, for that is the oath I made in front of the Gods, my liege, my beloved, my William.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Not your William, jackass, he's mine!” Mike jumps and screams, pointing a finger at Michael, who just looks at him unfazed. Will's heart skips a beat at those words: he's mine, he's mine, he's mine. Mike probably doesn't mean it like anything, but Will's gonna cherish those words ever if they're going to make him lose his fucking mind when he's inevitably alone. When he probably feels too many eyes watching him, Mike tumbles in his words and stutters, “Ours, I mean. He's ours, he's from our world and you don't. Why don't you just go back to your Will or something?!”
“Because–” Michael stands abruptly, taking Will with him and pushing him at his side, as if scared to let him go, as if he needs to have him near, to touch him, to feel him real. Will feels overwhelmed, but he's starting to also feel warm inside. Is this what it feels to be loved?
Oh, he blinks, staring at Michael's fingers around his hands, at his arms around his hips, at the closeness of his body, at how Will can stare at his face, study his minimal perfection, bathing in his protectiveness. Right, he thinks, and his thoughts wander at the night before, when he cried in his sleep, when he looked up at the sky and dreamed of a better place, a place where maybe he was loved, and cherished, and wanted. Now he feels his viscera twisting again.
The wish.
“Because,” Michael repeats, breath rugged, “Death has taken my William.”
Mike freezes, and his raised arm, the one he pointed at Michael probably to intimidate him, falls on his side. He stares at Michael, then his dark eyes waver towards Will – and when he does, all colors seems to be drained from his face, “W–What?”
“I have broken my oath. I was not there to protect him, to save him from–” Michael can't seem to finish the sentence, because his voice break, “And when I finally reached him, it was too late. He died in my embrace, and for days, for weeks, I prayed and prayed and prayed to the Gods for a second chance. Have you ever known how it feels? You cannot, for your William is still here, alive and sane. You cannot be worthy of him, for you have not been able to love him as he deserves. I will take your place, so why he answered my desperate calling, the second chance the Gods have granted me.”
Everything stills. Will doesn't hear a thing, not what Dustin or Eleven might be saying, if they're shocked, he doesn't care. He just stares at Michael with his heart full – full of what he doesn't know, but he feels fuzzy, and there are butterflies fluttering inside his stomach when Michael lowers his eyes to look back at him, and he's so close their noses almost touched. Will feels his face burning, a burn so different than the boiling water he splashed on himself merely half an hour ago.
His eyes roams all over Michael's face, stopping without meaning to his lips, and watches mesmerized as Michael slowly opens them. “My beloved,” he breaths, and Will shivers, “The other half of my soul. In my embrace at last.”
Will leaps when he hears the front door slam loudly in the silence of the room, and when he finally looks around, he can't see Mike anywhere. Oh, he curses internally, squeezing his eyes to bear the heartache, Mike's angry.
“El,” Will calls her and his voice breaks, he has to cough a couple of times before it turns to normal, “Could you–”
“No.” she says, shaking her head, an irritated frown between her eyebrows, “He's being stupid. He needs to get over it, Will.”
Will sighs and, reluctantly, he steps away from Michael, who whines lowly. He whines. It's all his wishes come true, really, but– “Oh.” he clears his throat again, looking towards the door, “Maybe I should go...”
Eleven shakes her head again, crossing her arms, “You really don't.”
“Dustin, could you please keep an eye on Michael?” he asks Dustin, and he feels bad to ignore Eleven, truly, but he feels he needs to go to Mike, because he's upset because of him, he's angry because of him and Will can't stand it. He really just can't. When Dustin nods, smiling toothy at him, Will smiles back gratefully – it means so much that his friends are not being weird around him, thank God. “While we wait for Jonathan or mom, maybe it would be best if we give him some clothes, you can take mine from my room. Could you help him?”
“Yep,” Dustin says, standing up and giving Will two thumbs up, now.
“He will not see reasons, my liege.” Michael says when Will starts to walk towards the door, “I should know this. He is my own self, indeed. He is not worthy of your kind heart. Nor am I, but I did have learned my lesson.”
Will tugs his lips into a forced smile, but he looks at Michael with gratefulness. He appreciates it, and he knows he means well – he likes to think that Mike would do the same – but it's really stronger than Will. He has to go after Mike, it's visceral. “We'll come back soon, don't worry.”
Will doesn't wait for Michael's response to that, he just turns and follows Mike outside the house.
Mike's is still in front of the house when Will finally reaches him. He's fighting with his bike, that he left abandoned on the grass when they all rushed inside with Michael bleeding all over Lucas and Dustin, but now Mike looks so flustered and irritated that he can't seem to rise the bike stand in the correct way, so he's just wobbling over there and muttering curses under his breath.
“Mike?” Will calls him, tentatively, “Hey, please. Can you just come back inside?”
“No. What do you want? Why you're here, anyway? You seemed very comfortable in that imposter's arms.” Mikes says, bitterly, and finally he stands on the bike more or less in a stable way, so he climbs over it and doesn't look once at Will. Nothing new, he knows, but it still hurts.
“It's– I–” Will stutters, embarrassed. He runs towards him, circling around the bike so he can finally see Mike's face, and flinches when he sees the angry expression twisting his features, the tense lines around his mouth, turning his lips in a disgusted grimace when he finally looks down at Will, “M–Mike, I'm– I'm sorry.” Will's voice trembles when he speaks, and he feels afraid, scared, dirty, disgusting. “It– God, you must feel like shit, you... seeing yourself acting like that with, with me of all people–”
“That's not the point, Will! How can you not understand?!” Mike snaps, and Will startles at that. No matter how much they fought even in the past, Mike has never raised so much his voice with Will, and he must have realized that because Will sees a worried glint shining in his eyes, before sighing and scrolling his shoulders, as if wanting to let the stress fall from them. “That's not the point, Will.” he repeats, calmly but still agitated, “That thing there, it's not from this world, it's like– the same as a demogorgon or, I don't know, like the thing from... well, The Thing, and it's messed up and it's dangerous, alright? And I hate seeing you so cozy with something that might kill us in any moment!”
“Mike–”
“No. Why can't you see it, too?” Mike keeps talking over him, now sounding almost desperate, hair falling in his eyes, hands flapping around in haste, and Will loves him, God, he loves him so much even mad like this, flustered and sweaty and red on his face, he loves him so much. “He said that he let the you in his world die and he came here to do what? Kill you here, too? No, absolutely, over my dead fucking body, I won't let him.”
“I was me.” Will blurts out, and he regrets it immediately. He doesn't think Mike's going to take it well, now.
He, in fact, narrows his eyes, “It was you, what?”
“Who called him. Not the other way around.” Will confesses, and saying it out loud makes it too real, and it feels like suffocating. Jesus, what has he done? What a stupid wish. “I was feeling... alone, so alone last night and I– I made a wish. I wished for someone to love me, to love me back, and of course, it was– there's you in my mind, it's always you, and I don't know how it works, I didn't even know how it's possible, but it kinda worked because I wanted it. I wanted this.”
Mike deflates, looking stunned, “What?” he breathes, and darts his eyes away from Will, staring far away. “Why?” he asks, at last. “Why would you wish for that?”
“Is it really so hard to believe?” Will says, laughing self-deprecating.
“Well, yes. Yes, it is, Will.” Mike huffs, looking down at him, “Considering that you have already me in this world I can't see why you have to wish for another one.”
“Mike.” Will says his name slowly, as if he's talking to a child that doesn't want to understand what his mother is telling him, “I wished for you to love me back.” Here, he has said it again, ad it's worse than the first time, because the first time Will probably had some kind of hope to let him go, but now there's only the humiliation. And the shame, oh the shame. Coming out for the very first time to your best friend who he's in love with and be rejected didn't do well to his psyche.
Mike splutters at that, “It's not– Will, that's not– It doesn't matter! It was still stupid to open a gate and let a D&D version of me through just to– wait. Can you open the gate again, if you've done it in the first place?”
Will stares at him, at how Mike's starting to smile at the prospective to open the gate again, at the prospective of making Will miserable in love and never loved back. At first, Will feels powerless, and tunes out whatever Mike is saying – of course, that's how we can fix it, you just have to wish him back or something – but then, anger flares. “Of all the things I said, you just registered what's important to you, yeah, Mike? Just as always. You don't even matter that it's what I wished for.” Will cuts him off whatever he was saying, “Forgive me if I was so stupid and wished for someone to love me, no wait, to wish for you to love me back.” he feels his throat constrict, and it's just a matter of time Will starts to cry, but he refuses to do that now, even if he can already see tears misting his sight, burning at the corner of his eyes. “You know how I feel about you, Mike, and I am okay with you not loving me back and rejecting me, really, I– I have to be okay about this, you know? But it's hard, Mike, it's hard and my heart is broken and it hurts knowing that the only person I ever loved all my life, since I didn't even know what love was and how to name what I was feeling, doesn't want me back. So really, Mike, I am sorry if you feel uncomfortable, I'm sorry for causing this mess and I'm going to fix this, alright? But you can't really blame me for wishing.”
Will pants when he finishes talking, and his fingers tremble with anxiety and he feels like vomit. He can't even see because the tears have already clouded his sight and he's really trying so much not to blink so they wouldn't fall, that's why he can't really see what face Mike is making right now. He can just tell that he's still as a statue, and that is more terrifying than any other reaction.
Before he starts to definitely cry in front of Mike, Will turns towards the house and starts walking back. All he wants, now, is to crawl in his bed even if it's the middle of the day, and fall completely apart alone under the covers, now afraid to even wish for something good in his life. It's not fair. It's not fair. Its not fair.
The worst part is, Mike doesn't call him, and he doesn't follow him inside.