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The quickest the party ever came upstairs was for lasagna. There were no excuses yelled into the stairwell light, even in the most intense of campaigns. The figures froze, fireballs faltered, and the rumpus stomped north.
This time, everyone was sniffling as they shelved the binders and went upstairs.
Mike was last, and could feel Will’s concern radiating beyond the door, as if it could've made the knob too warm to touch.
“You okay?” he asked when Mike finally reached the landing.
“Yeah.”
“The Mage’s story…” His sigh framed Mike’s face. “Is everything to me. To all of us.”
“Cool.” He suddenly felt very exposed outside of his sanctuary, folding in on himself.
“Don’t think I’ll be able to taste the lasagna the same, though,” he sniffed, wiping his nose and bumping their shoulders together.
Mike nudged him back lightly as they moved on to the dining room. His hair was breaking loose of all the gel he’d put in it, and falling towards his eyes. “Dustin already disproved that the last time he had a cold. The flavor breaks through the mucus barrier.”
Max shook her head. “Don’t major in advertising, Mikey.” She pulled out a chair, looking over the bounty on heart shaped potholders. “You made it in the crockpot this time, Mrs. W?”
“Mr. Wheeler won’t turn on the air conditioning if we use the stove in the summer," she sighed.
“They cancel each other out!” Ted called from the other room.
A few seconds of his parents was always enough to tempt Mike back into a fantastical world. “Mike the Brave has been known to steep grains and wild boar in this very cauldron.”
Will shared a drained look with Max. “Macaroni with little hot dogs,” he nodded.
Ted came to the table after he’d finished making his collect phone calls from “Mike McGraduated," which their out of state family proudly refused. Karen called out for Holly for the third time. "Oh no. She must be getting ready again.”
“To eat us all under the table?” Dustin asked. Max elbowed him. “What? That kid can put it away!”
Karen shrugged, looking wistful. “Getting primped up, I mean. She’s at that age. It’s making me feel so old.”
Lucas asked, “Primped up for what, exactly?”
“Well, things change. You know—older brother’s friends, it’s a whole thing. And you boys have really blossomed. Little crushes happen.”
Lucas, Dustin and Will all looked at each other with fingers drawn. “On one of us?” Dustin cringed. “Have you consulted a psychiatrist?”
“I’m open to it,” Karen winked, “but my lips are sealed, and not a word about this to her.”
Max looked offended. “I think I should have a word with her? I mean, what’s mine is mine.“ She gestured at her horrified boyfriend.
“Oh, so you just assume the crush is Lucas?” Dustin scoffed.
Will threw up his hands in defeat. “Let’s face it, it probably is.”
“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear any of this,” Lucas winced. “I’m still back on the page where ‘baby sister trying to look fly' does not compute.”
Mike’s eyebrows took on a life of their own. “I agree that the discomfort factor diminishes any curiosity about his identity.”
Ted had only been listening to fragments of the conversation. It was a pure miracle he even knew the culprit's name--from a stray drawing on the floor--and he spilled it with tactless flair. “Don’t let your head get too big, Will.”
Karen’s reproach of “Ted—”
Will’s quiet “Oh.”
Mike swallowed a small, but brain-freeze-inducing chip of ice from his water glass. “Can’t anyone get a compliment around here without getting knocked down a few pegs?” He looked at his dad, then to Karen. “And why do you say people blossom, Ma, you make it sound like they were ugly before.”
“Honey, I did not mean it like that.”
“Michael, you take offense to the most harmless things. You’ll fit right in at college. Clam up everybody, here comes Hol.”
Holly waltzed into the dining room in jelly shoes with a heel, tripping slightly. Her hair was apparently burned into a zig zag pattern. She flashed a metal smile at Will, who gave a kind-hearted wave. She looked down and fidgeted with her silverware.
Yeah, great makeover, Hol, Mike grumbled to himself. What’s that heinous perfume—eau de barking up the wrong tree?
He felt instantly guilty for that.
Will rubbed his hands over his plate when the lasagna and seven layer salad was dealt. “Abbondanza,” he crooned.
Holly let out a tiny sigh.
“Remember that ridiculously long essay about lasagna in like 3rd grade, Mike?” Dustin asked.
It was a welcome distraction from crushgate. Mike and Will blurted out “The Saucerer!”
Max crunched on her ice water. “I take it this was a team project, Milli Vanilli?”
Will smirked, turning red far into the collar of his striped shirt. “I might’ve had a few suggestions. Mostly just a fan.”
“Sadly, I got a ‘C’ because it was supposed to be a book report,” Mike admitted.
“Hey, it deserved way more than that, regardless of deviation from the assignment. The way you described the—experience of it, you know, just…how it made you feel loved.”
Mike suddenly didn’t remember as many words as he did in 3rd grade. He tried to say something that just came out like "Def."
“To the love spell of lasagna night.” Dustin raised his glass.
“Whoever makes me cry again today is doing all the dishes,” Karen sniffed.
Mike was still studying the bow in Will’s lip after he’d finished, as if there were a whole universe contained in it. He wanted to find the essay, touch his old handwriting. It wasn’t just about lasagna, not really—Will was ingrained in the smell of the paper, the snap of the graphite in the exclamation points.
In a few months, he would lose him all over again, to New York.
Of course his little sister felt drawn to him. She was born into a world with Will in it, and had known nothing else. At least he wasn’t a piece of shit. Mike began shoveling the lasagna into his mouth. He felt like the stuffed Garfield at one of Holly’s tea parties, face down in its empty plate.
Holly could stare all day if she wanted, and no one would even notice.
Will had always had powers in a way, hadn’t he?
Mike had never felt buried six layers deep by his childhood lasagna, the way Will remembered what he’d written about it in 3rd grade. It felt like he was trying to eat with his plastic fangs in. There was a wad of ricotta and noodles in his mouth that was turning from a snowball into an avalanche. Holly was wearing a ton of perfume, and one rogue throat tickle got everything lodged where the air was supposed to be.
It was just like the choking posters in the school cafeteria. His hand flew to his throat and he bore an incredible likeness to the illustration, like this was the role he was born to play.
Of course, Will was the first to do a double take at the frantic gesture. “Oh shit—?”
“Langua—“
“TED?–Mike is choking—!”
“Ope, somebody do the Heineken—”
Will had already bounded out of his chair and dragged Mike against his chest, feeling like he could wrap his arms around his frame twice. “Oh my god oh my god–”
Everyone was out of their chairs like they were watching a horribly tense game.
“Fisticuffs, Will, level one bludgeon!” Lucas coached.
Will said something, but the crack in his voice made it unintelligible. With his own hand in hand, he struck Mike with controlled upward blows to his abdomen. Will’s face strained as if he could draw it out with his mind. Mike was just..squeaking. “C’mon, Mike, c'mon--breathe--“
Didn’t he know that was all Mike wanted? That Will was the only bridge to it now?
This was how it was going to end, after everything. In the whirling roundabout of chaos—the party’s freakout, his mother’s pleas, Holly’s cries—Will’s face was the only one he couldn’t see. Mike was turning blue and his body started to go limp in Will’s arms. “No no no no, Miike?” he thrust, “We have to see Ghost Busters 2—!!!“
They fell backwards against the hutch and the lasagna ball shot out of Mike’s mouth. Will’s elbow cracked the glass, but he was oblivious to anything but Mike as he coughed, hacked and sobbed for breaths that burned his throat.
Will was chanting something that Mike couldn’t make out. He was rubbing his back and gasping almost as much as he was.
Dustin and Lucas were whooping with joy, and Max’s eyebrows were sticking straight up from her death grip on her forehead. “I’m gonna kill you, Wheeler.”
“Boys, thank God!” His mother embraced them. He was at eye level with the scar across her throat. “Haven’t I always told you not to swallow things whole so you can get back to your games?”
Will was still holding on to Mike as he sputtered in shame, predictably trying to talk. To explain. “Will I—“ He considered this weirdly intimate, domestic crisis. It didn’t matter if you’d braved other dimensions, saved the children, walked across the graduation stage—you would still always be a stupid, embarrassed dorknoid at your own table. A Garbage Pail Kid named Chokin' Paladin. “I’m sorry—why do I ruin everything?”
“Stop,” Will said, never letting up on his embrace. “Nothing is ruined. Just the opposite, okay?”
Everyone else helped with the dishes in silence. They saved the Tupperware sealing for the middle Wheeler, who was an expert at burping the lids at all of Karen's demonstrations.
In the bathroom, Mike was boosted on the long counter, legs dangling as Will held ice to the battered space under his ribs. The Wheelers had kept the same checkered ice bag for as long as he could remember, and Mike had usually been the one holding it to Will’s mishaps.
“Will, you’re bleeding. We should be fixing your elbow. I never clean the hutch like I’m supposed to, you could have—super evolved dust mites in your skin. Can you stop fussing already?”
“It’s grody-looking but superficial, okay, forget it. I-I can’t believe I bruised you up this badly–that was not my intention.”
“Will. That’s like if you apologized for the demo drooling on me when you froze him in mid-air.”
Will snickered. Their hands brushed on the ice bag and Will frowned at how cold Mike’s fingers were. He scanned his face and watched for any signs of him acting disoriented from oxygen loss, although being this close, he wasn’t sure his own level was great either.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Will asked, rising on his toes slightly.
“Yeah. I don't think if I would’ve qualified for a memorial page in the ‘90 yearbook if I’d bought it on graduation day.”
“Mike!"
“Well? It’s a valid question. But listen, thanks….for saving my...sorry hide. Again.” Their eyes were locked softly together until Mike's shot away. “Fuck, shit. This is so tacky right now! I-I never even thanked you for the Mac-Z.”
“Hey. You didn’t have to. You never stopped talking about it. That should count for something.”
“No, it shouldn’t, man! And today, I mean, today on top of--pfff—you were so in control and you–? Didn’t falter.”
“Uh, yeah I did? That was the longest minute of my life,” Will trembled.
Mike made a pained face to jog his memory about a certain very long November week, but slumped. “I was so close to passing out. I don’t know what you could’ve done then.”
“Whatever it took, just like you always have. I guess it's my turn to look after you. And the only 'sorry hide' you have is this stupid, wrinkled polo shirt. What!” he answered Mike’s laugh. “It looks like something Murray would wear to a wedding and think he’s dressed up."
“At least it’s not as bad as Holly’s crush magnet outfit. Her hair looks like an escalator.”
“I’m politely flattered,” Will chuckled. “And disturbed, for obvious reasons…” He closed his eyes. “Shit, like I can even talk. That’s what it must’ve felt like when I made things awkward between us.”
Mike was completely still for a second. “…oh. No, c’mon, noo. That’s what you think? Because, it wasn’t like that at all. It was multi-layered. Lasagna-esque."
“Are you sure you want to be a writer?" The ice bag slipped out of Will’s hand. “We should, uh. Get back and help clean up. They’ll be wondering what’s taking so long—”
"No, just ?—I can elaborate. It was like…” He squeezed the bump of his nose. “It was like when they’re trying to think of a name for Frosty, right, and that kid says oatmeal!” he stressed in a tiny voice, “and what’s so wrong with that?”
“I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with anything.”
“Alright then, let’s pretend this–” He set down a tube of Sparkle Crest, “is me–”
“Mike, no. Anything but that. Step away from the visual aid.”
“Ok ok, I’m saying I—“ His throat was in high gear again. “I didn’t think you were acting like a stupid twelve year old, and I don’t believe in you having crushes.”
“You don’t believe in it?” Will’s eyes blinked so hard it felt like slow motion. “Do you think I could’ve hidden my real feelings from Vecna?”
“Yes,” Mike said brazenly. “I don’t think he could see shit in anybody’s heart. It takes having one to know one, or something.”
Will flinched. “Are we really having this conversation in the bathroom?”
“We should be able to talk about anything in the bathroom. We’ve taken baths together, for God’s sake!”
“OK, let’s not—that’s not helping whatever this—“ He motioned back and forth between them.
“Stop talking with your hands like a weird Italian guy.”
“I am Italian!”
“Look. I’m not leaving this room until we at least tend to your hutch wound.”
“Mike, it’s my elbow, it’s the roughest, deadest skin on my body.”
He ignored him, finding something in the poorly sliding cabinet to treat it with.
“SeaBreeze?” Will cringed.
“You’d put it on a bleeding zit? Astringent, disinfectant, they’re all the same.” He took Will gently by the wrist and went to work with the cotton on his elbow.
“Aaoww?! I knew that was gonna sting like hell!"
“Please hold still.”
Will sighed, the hushed bedside manner all too familiar. "...Maybe people will pull their sunglasses down to check out my pretty elbow complexion, like in the commercials.”
“Shhh.” He continued on with his work, gingerly bandaging and wrapping it with extra tape.
Will had a habit of watching his concentration face. It was a whole story in itself, never wavering in intensity.
When he was done, he paused, still holding onto Will’s arm. He felt the urge to do something that used to come naturally when they were little, to finalize that everything would be alright. He pressed his lips against Will’s elbow. "Better?"
Will didn’t tremble a bit, but the faint hair on his arms was standing up. “You haven’t done that in a...very long time.”
“Never should’ve stopped.”
Will’s gaze could’ve swallowed him up. “…then don’t.”
A knock on the bathroom door jolted them out of their skin. “Hey, boyos, everything okay? What’d you do, fall in?” Ted asked.
“Just finishing up Will’s cut from the hutch!” Mike called out, a heavy glance with him before he opened the door and squeezed past his father.
Ted walked right in, holding the rolled up newspaper. He tapped Will with it. “Hey, Scout. Thanks for uh, getting Mike out of a pickle."
Will sighed with all the air in his chest, which wasn't much. He hadn't managed a full breath since the knock split them in half. “It’s the least I could do, Mr. Wheeler.”
The rest of the party had collapsed in various places in the living room. Things were still a bit tense. Holly was trying to lighten the mood by telling a crazy Derek story, but her antics died down as Will came into the room. “—and that’s why neoexpressionism is...taking the art world by storm!” She flipped her hair off her shoulder.
Karen made a confused face until she caught on. “-- Ab-solutely. Speaking of which, Will, I’ve got a great opportunity for you to make some money this summer, if you’re not busy lifeguarding?”
Mike gave Will a questioning glance until he got what she meant, an embarrassed cough escaping. Karen went on. “You know my friend Jill?”
“Oh…” Will said as he and Mike sank into the last couch cushion. “With the…hair?” He honestly had no idea who she was talking about.
Karen nodded. “She’s looking for some very niche artwork: the Last Supper, but with Star Trek the Next Generation. So I said, ‘Jill, you have to meet Will.”
“Oh, I appreciate that, Mrs. Wheeler, but I don’t do commissions. I don’t even know what I’d charge, like? It seems so snobby. And frankly, if I wanted someone to tell me what to paint I’d just watch Bob Ross, right?”
Will said it all with a smile and not an ounce of realization.
Then, his ears started to sweat and his top teeth were just resting on his bottom lip, holding in a squeak. “Aand I’m? I’m kidding, totally kidding, I would be happy to do it for her–personal checks accepted–!””
“Think it over, ok, but she would go crazy.”
Max and Lucas were looking at each other worriedly, like Will was under some sort of psychic coercion again. Dustin was asleep with his head thrown back on the couch. Holly was looking at Will as if disappointed he was selling out.
Will couldn’t see anything different about Mike in his periphery. He just felt something in the air— a tremor that almost made him grasp his neck—but Will was unable to place the emotion. There was a lot of swallowing, tooth grinding, and nose whistling.
Shit.
Mike stood up abruptly, looking like a flailing banana peel-- “I uh—yeah. Yeah, that. Okay. That’s. Wow"-- and stormed out of the room.
“Mike, wait!”
Quiet chatter to the effect of “What in the world was that all about?” “Maybe he considers it uh, blasphemous,” “To Star Trek, probably” hung in the air behind them on their way to the garage.
The garage door was open to a driveway absent of rain slashing everything into gray lines. It was just a clear summer night with cicadas in the distance, stars splashing the sky. Mike slouched over the workbench, white-knuckled.
“Mike, please…”
He obeyed the unspoken request, turning around with stained freckles. He was crying without a sound. His expression could’ve knocked Will to the cement floor.
“So I...got Roxanne’d, is that it?" He almost breathed a laugh. "The Upside Down’s version, I guess, where nobody knows anything, it amounts to nothing and makes no sense.”
“Mike,” he sniffed, the one syllable filled with volumes. “I wanted to tell you. I’m so sorry. It’s a-a disgrace to El’s memory.” He covered his eyes, smearing his tears. “But you get why I did it, you have to, I mean?—I had no other choice. You would’ve tucked and rolled out of that van.”
“You don't know that, and you're not the only one who spit the truth with a bad ventriloquist act, okay?"
“What?”
“The stupid essay about lasagna wasn’t just about lasagna, Will. You make me feel that way. The painting made me feel that way—“ he drifted closer. “I think I knew on some level. Or knew what...I wanted to be true?”
“It doesn’t–” Will’s eyes sparkled through the saltwater in them. “It doesn’t change anything. It’s still destined to be tragic. Cyrano fucking dies. It can never happen.”
“In the Steve Martin one it does.”
They let the noisy summer silence move freely for a moment, pulsing and making their faces radiate heat.
“Mike…” Will rubbed his eyes. “…Are you saying…?”
“Yeah, Will. I’m saying.”
“Did I hit my head on the hutch?”
“Possibly. You did agree to do kitschy religious art with Picard as Christ.”
"I did," Will sighed. “Maybe Geordi’s eyesight can be restored or something.”
“He's fine the way he is."
Things fell silent again. He reached out and Will reached out too, testing their arm length. First they just looked like middle schoolers at a dance, until they pulled each other into a tight hug that almost threw them backwards from the force of its mutuality.
“Mike. What are we gonna do….?” Will shivered.
“I don't know. For now I'm just gonna savor you being up close and personal with this polo shirt you hate so much.”
“It's not too bad," Will said, laying his head against Mike's heart. "Maybe nobody has to know...about this. I mean, you’d have to get through Holly first, so…”
“Ah, I think I can take her down. Maybe."
It was addictive to laugh chest to chest, feeling each other expand. For now, it was enough.