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Sunday, December 28th, 1986
Mike and Will were lying on the ground, facing opposite directions so their heads were ear-to-ear. It was winter break of sophomore year, and they were using that as an excuse to sleep over at each others’ houses as much as possible. They’d started a game of truth or dare at about 10:30, but it was now after midnight. The radio was still playing quietly, The Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” spiraling upwards above their heads. They’d fallen mostly silent, but every few minutes one of them would say something. Neither was able to fall asleep, and there was snow drifting down silently outside the window.
Their dynamic hadn’t changed a ton since they started dating, but they were definitely a lot more open with each other and more comfortable with each other’s presence. It almost felt like how they’d been before the summer of ‘85. Inseparable. Of course, there were the fun new additions of kissing and flirting, even if they had to wait until they were alone. Mike loved tying Will into knots. Just by teasing him about the smallest thing, like mispronouncing a word, or by fixing Will’s hair and letting the eye contact linger just a bit longer than he would’ve a year ago, he could make the blush in Will’s cheeks rise until there was nothing he could do but kiss him. And those eyes. His beautiful eyes, which seemed like they could contain entire universes, with his eyelashes fluttering, sending shadows dancing across his cheekbones. Those eyes were all Mike’s, just as his were Will’s. He didn’t know how he got so lucky.
Will jolted him out of his daydream, his voice quiet like a songbird’s wings flitting through the forest. “What did you do while I was gone?”
Mike was surprised at the question, considering it was something they’d gone over time and again. “You know what I did. Went to school, sat with Eddie at lunch—“
“No, not then. When I was gone… the first time.”
Mike turned his head to look at Will, who was resolutely studying the ceiling. Will’s disappearance wasn’t something they talked about often, even though it hung over both of them like a dark cloud of demobats. “I looked for you. You know that.”
“That can’t be all you did,” Will said. “I was gone for a whole week.”
“I mean… I dunno.” Mike looked back at the ceiling. “We went to school. Troy was a dickhead, as per usual. There was that assembly thing where El made him pee himself,” Mike said, laughing.
“I can’t believe he just left us alone after that,” Will said. “I would’ve thought it’d only make him angrier.”
“Well, it did. For a bit,” Mike said, immediately regretting it. Hopefully Will's curiosity wouldn’t latch onto that.
Unfortunately, Will always knew when Mike was hiding something. “Yeah?”
Mike just lay there, not wanting to talk about that day, about what happened. About the quarry. About how tall the cliff was. About how small he’d felt. About that millisecond right after he’d stepped off the edge, how weightless he’d felt.
“Mike,” Will said, sitting up to look him in the eyes. His voice was soft, but still sounded like he was reeling in a fishing line. “No more secrets, remember?”
Mike sighed, remembering the pact they’d made once they’d realized just how much time they’d lost hiding from each other. “No more secrets.”
Mike sat up to face Will, but the cuff of his pants was suddenly much easier to look at than Will’s hazel eyes. “We were in the woods, looking for El. I’d said something stupid, like usual, and she’d run away. It was just Dustin and I. We were shouting her name, walking along with our bikes, when we ran into Troy and James. Troy had a knife. They— they chased us to the quarry.” Mike paused here, not wanting to go on. “Troy grabbed Dustin, and threatened to cut out his teeth.” Now he really did stop.
“Holy shit, Mike. That’s awful.” The way Will was looking at him made Mike uncomfortable. Despite the fact that both of them, especially Will, had been through countless horrific events, Will was looking at Mike with… sympathy? Pity? He wasn’t sure, but it was definitely new, and it definitely made him uncomfortable.
“Will Byers, you spent that week hiding from a deadly monster in an alternate dimension that’s basically Hell, and you feel bad that I got chased by some mouthbreather with a knife?” Mike expected that familiar flush to rise in Will’s face, for him to bashfully roll his eyes and look away.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, Will kept looking at him, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. “Mike.” He didn’t say anything else, just his name. But it was still like he’d said a thousand words.
Words Mike had no response to. After a minute, Will prompted, “But… then what? I mean, he did mostly leave us alone after I got back. Something must’ve scared him. Not to mention Dustin’s teeth are still intact.”
God, for a boy Mike loved, Will could sure be frustratingly determined. “El showed up, and used her powers to throw the knife over the cliff. That must’ve been what scared him off.” But Mike couldn’t bring himself to look Will in the eyes.
“Mike. You know I know you too well for you to lie to me,” Will said, softly guiding Mike to look at him. His eyes were still sympathetic, but had those glowing embers in them that always made Mike crumble.
Mike sighed, tugging at a loose thread on his pajama pants. “Troy said I had to jump. Off the cliff. ‘Join you in fairyland’ or some bullshit like that.”
“But you didn’t, obviously.”
Mike looked up at Will, trying to say with his eyes what was too excruciating to say with words, practically begging Will to not make him say it aloud.
“Mike, you didn’t. No. Mike.” It was like Mike could hear Will’s heart breaking. No matter how much Mike loved someone, bearing his deepest secrets—the ones that were just as painful to others as to himself—never got easier.
“I did.” Just two words. Why did they feel so heavy? “But El showed up and she saved Dustin and I so it was all really fine and—“
“Mike.” Will was looking right at him, his hand on Mike’s knee. “You jumped off a cliff. That’s not ‘fine.’ Are you okay? I know that was a long time ago, but we’re both still pretty…” he trailed off, lost at how to finish that sentence. “Are you okay?”
When Will said that, it was like a door opened somewhere deep inside Mike. A door that was hidden down long winding hallways, spiderwebs in the corners barely lit by flickering lightbulbs. A door which led to all the pain and repression he’d been holding in for so long. Not even Nancy or his mom, as nice as they were, had ever asked him that. Asked if he was okay. Not really. Certainly not in a way he'd felt safe to answer truthfully. The beginnings of tears started pricking behind his eyes. Was he okay? He'd thought he was. He had a wonderful boyfriend and a mom and sisters and friends who cared about him, so he should be okay. Right? But sometimes, when he was alone at night, he’d curl up in his bed and feel just like that 12 year old whose best friend had gone missing in the woods just because he hadn’t asked him to sleep over. And sometimes when he closed his eyes, he could still see those lights they’d surrounded Will with in that shed, seared into his memory. He could still see the Mind Flayer towering over El, Max frozen in fear behind her. He could still see Lucas with his new basketball friends at that school assembly. He could still see the darkness in Dustin’s eyes after Eddie died, rolling in like a late summer thunderstorm. He could still see Nancy’s graduation, Holly’s first day of Kindergarten.
“I don’t know.”
Now the tears began to fall from his eyes, one after the other. For a moment, he had an illogical thought that each of the tears contained a memory, and that now he was going to forget. Forget everything. That thought brought with it a torrent of both comfort and guilt, swirling around like a hurricane in the pit of his stomach. Will pulled him into a hug, and Mike’s tears began to form a pattern on the shoulder of his worn Clash t-shirt.
“It’s okay,” Will murmured into his ear. “It overwhelms me too, sometimes.”
“But I wasn’t even the one who was taken,” Mike said in between sobs that were now quaking through him. “That was you. You were the one who got possessed, the one who had to deal with Vecna in your head all the time. I just watched.”
Will pulled back from the hug, reaching for a tissue off the bedside table. “And sometimes that’s just as bad,” he said, holding Mike by the shoulders so he couldn’t avoid eye contact. “I don’t remember much of being possessed. You had to watch that. You had to watch your best friends almost die over and over again. That’s a lot for anybody, much less a 13 year old. We were just kids, Mike. You were just a kid.”
At these words, it was like a storm inside Mike had been calmed. It wasn’t gone, for sure. But it wasn’t tearing him apart anymore, either. He didn’t say anything, just wiped his face with the tissue.
After sitting in silence for a few minutes, Will holding Mike’s hand and running his thumb over his knuckles, Will tentatively asked, “Feel like going to sleep now? I’m pretty exhausted.”
Mike nodded, grateful for the distraction, knowing Will wasn't actually tired (because he never was) but just giving Mike an opportunity to rest from the emotions he hated so much. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”
They crawled into Mike’s bed, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but it seemed like Will was holding onto him a little tighter than usual.