Chapter Text
If you asked me to tell you a secret, I would probably say something stupid. Something about how I had clandestinely listened to “I Want The One I Can’t Have” all summer. Though it wasn’t entirely disclosed because I had folded to Mike almost immediately after he asked what was playing through my headphones.
And that’s where it goes. Always. All roads lead to Mike Wheeler. Every paved pathway feels like a brutal stab and the act of gutting me out.
Because of the number of times that I have wandered and tried to turn back and take a different avenue, the trajectory has always chuted me back out into being in close proximity with Mike. Always.
I won’t dare speak it out loud, because then I would have resigned myself to external grief, after keeping it inside of me for so long. Even if I vow to never utter a word, it rotates and replays around intricate lanes in my mind like a record. The simple and plain fact that I, Will Byers, am in love with Mike Wheeler.
And in the scenario where said Mike Wheeler asked me to tell him a secret, I would tell him that I think I am the most rotten, malicious, depraved soul that has ever abided in this world. That what I think and feel and want and dream are only factors of malevolence. That when I close my eyes, and I am taunted with the image that in some alternate world, Mike Wheeler loves me back, and that love for me is so deeply rooted. That when I wake up, there is a half of me that declares that I am a sinner and that I am being haunted in the hours of stillness. That when I decide such, the other half of me wishes I could inhabit and indulge in that dreamlike trance for a few moments longer, and have a taste of what the life that has been constructed by all evil could be like.
But Mike Wheeler never asks me to tell him secrets, because he coexists with the distance between us and doesn’t let the boundaries falter.
Mike might hate me now. I’m not so sure, but considering the fact that he’s called maybe once since I moved to Lenora, that he hasn’t responded to any of my letters, and maybe the entire scene at the airport where he didn’t even want to touch me when giving me a hug, it’s pretty reasonable to assume so.
I have to give up on loving him. The only real problem is that in the years I have spent being so emotionally infatuated with him, I have built myself a fortress. A fortress whose architecture is solely dependent on the exchange of dialogue, the days spent in silence yet by each other's sides, and the lingering moments in the past, present, and unmistakable future.
So here I am, in my room once again. Listening to The Clash’s “The Guns of Brixton”, and painting. I’ve tried to ease my nerves about the total blow-up at the rink today.
This very day, March 22nd, is my fifteenth birthday. A day which nearly everyone has forgotten. I mean, before his head got so bloated on weed, Jonathan had wished me happy birthday this morning. He had made a mixtape for me, like tradition. At least something is normal still, I thought.
We went to Rink-o-mania after we picked Mike up from the airport, and that’s when it was sort of discovered that El lied about being okay in Lenora. She might hate me too, but I sincerely hope she doesn’t.
I don’t know where Mom is, where Jonathan is, or where El and Mike are. El had gone off somewhere at the rink, and Mike found out. We had an awkward standoff; he had sounded mad at me, which, part of me truly ached when accepting that. It hurt to acknowledge that I am not exempt from Mike's struggle with handling his emotions– something I have understood about him for quite some time.
So, I left. I had the right, hadn’t I? It was my birthday and I didn’t want to spend it there. I wanted to spend it with Mike. But that’s not an option, I had consistently reminded myself of that. I resigned myself to my room, flowing through my new mixtape and glossing over a canvas to make another new caricature. So much for a happy birthday.
The song changed now, to the final track. I kind of thought the order of songs was a bit chaotic, but hey, maybe he was out of his wits when he made it. “Silver Springs” began to eerily echo through the chambers of my mind.
Now, what was it that I painted? A door. For some unfathomable reason.
I tried to deeply contemplate why that item of imagery was my default muse, but I had no conclusion. Just like everything else. So whatever.
I wasn’t stupid. I know that door. That door is the same door I grew up with. That damned door. It wasn’t always a cursed thing; it was once sacred. But things that bear the weight of fragility are just as breakable and worthless as the things they carry. And the weight that the ajar wooden panel had upheld was my love and devotion for Mike. So, yeah. That checks out.
I just about perfected the polished doorframe, and the rusted handle, when it occurred to me I had missed a central detail. What was behind the door? What has always been behind that door? What has stayed closeted and closed away, what was cherished, what was sacred and extant. What we had raised in that house and the next, what drove me to inhale and exhale each day.
I carefully studied the axis and breathlessly drew a delicate line of off-white along the impersonation of floorboards. Then another line, simulating a twin. Lines and strokes and shadows and creases and a knack for reminiscence and yearning and fragility.
And lastly, there were four lines missing. They were closely bunched together, two yellow, two blue. Ruffed and jagged, but unmistakably its own.
The socks.
The matching ones. The ones we ran around in and traipsed through filth in, and tossed off and tugged back on. My yellow striped sock. Mike's blue striped sock.
And it was done. It had to be.
I set my brushes down after swiping them in their own bath of water, and looked past the easel.
My door. A traitor.
A stupid thought. Obsolete, redundant, and worthless. But it is still an epiphany.
The clock read 11:53 PM, and it had come to me that in six minutes, I would have been fifteen for a day. That my continued survival and suffering have endured again without recognition. Except I’m just being petty. I’m being self-absorbed and ignorant and malicious and corrupt and-
I’m fifteen. I know this. I’m still caught up on the past. On the name etched across my bone structure. The four-letter word carved into my lungs, his own breath being the only supply I will take. I shall only continue breathing if it’s the same air he breathes. I’m fifteen, and my periphery is limited to only the distance of what he chooses to see. What he decides to block out and to make the center of his world.
I’m fifteen, and I need to grow up. I am growing up. But I’m still acting like the me I was yesterday. No, I’m not.
Yesterday I was fourteen, naive, hopeful, and driven. Today I’m fifteen and still naive. But I am deprived of my hope, and I am secluded.
I am fifteen, and I should know how to act better than this. I need to not linger on the childhood I was tripping over while everyone was in love. While they all were okay and fine and normal, and annoyed with each other because that is how it was supposed to be.
11:54 PM.
If I am fifteen, I shouldn’t need to have someone tell me I’m fifteen. I don’t need someone to tell me happy birthday or acknowledge that I am alive. I have to be mature enough to accept that getting older is a given and of no value. I need to grow up.
I need to grow the hell up.
I have no goodness in me. There is nothing for Mike to want. Nothing for him to need. Nothing he could possibly depend on. He had a girlfriend he loves, and he is normal; he isn’t living vicariously through depravity. He has to erase me because I am tethering him from growing up and being who he needs to be.
But what of his casual cruelties? His adequate crimes of neglect? Leaving me behind? Or the person he was supposed to be?
No, Will, I interjected internally. He wasn’t supposed to be anything. You fell in love with him and the replacement image of what he could have been. Could, not would, not should. There is nothing to be seen in me, nothing of value or significance. There is no substance of worthiness that I can rightfully obtain to redeem that.
11:55 PM.
I will find something in my life. I will break free from this age-old curse, and in time, I will isolate myself from everyone so I won’t be stuck. I won’t trip over my own limbs or be in the way or cascade my emotions on canvases to be displayed in my room. I won’t trespass on your trajectory. I won’t take a new avenue; I’ll build it myself.
I will forget you in time, Mike Wheeler. But I pray to the God that will burn my heart– alongside any ounce of redemption– in the deepest, cruelest, and most obscene crevices of Hell, that I do not. I am repulsed by the thought of neglecting your livelihood. I would find it much more comfortable and suitable to be dead at the hands of the Upside Down's cruelties. There, I will truly drown.
The door. The damned door.
The one from which I was a child. Where I would leave it open. Even on days I knew he wouldn’t come over, on days when I was sick. It was always open out of fear that Mike would think he was being shut out.
I look up, and the retched gaze I emit across the room with my periphery, my eyes lock with the vertical board. The passageway.
I keep it open. I keep the door open; I always have, and I always will. But I shouldn’t.
Mike isn’t going to run to me. He isn’t going to reach for me at dusk and tighten his grip around me to reassure his presence. His standard of loyalty won’t be enforced on my behalf. He wouldn’t become my silver spring.
The door has always been open. But why?
El keeps her door open three inches. She keeps it open for Hopper.
Jonathan keeps the garage side door and his window open in case Argyle wants to crash or get high as a holy excerpt from the Bible.
Mom keeps her door open because her room blazes up if the AC’s flow is severed.
So why is my door open? I didn’t have a dad who was strict on exact measurements in regard to having a boyfriend. I don’t have friends who want to hang out and go ballistic off of wretched plants, and my room doesn’t feel like it is melting in on itself each time the door is closed.
My door is open because, as twisted and nauseous and undeniably wrong it is, I am still waiting for Mike Wheeler to love me.
11:56 PM.
I should clean up my shelves. Wipe off my desk and paint brushes again. I need to
The embodiment of my love, the personification of everything I have said in regard to Mike Wheeler. The symbolic metaphor of gut-wrenching, soul-extinguishing, organ-carving pain that boy has made me feel.
Each time I have looked for him, and he was gone and never gave in, it was all because I have fallen in love with the impersonation of my death. This will be the reason I die inside. And only one thing can come of this.
The thing I must do, which carries no significance whatsoever except for the funeral of my love. Erase it all because disguising it doesn’t work.
I just need to close this door.
I got up and began to make my way over the possessed object, the cursed thing.
I looked over to the clock, one last time. It had read 11:57 PM.
Of course, I should have known. It was a seven, after all.
And with a shrill, impending beat, it was all over. I had sealed my fate. I thought to myself, I’ve written my epitaph; you just went and closed this door.
But I didn’t.
The force of it was halted, and something had prevented the end of the metaphor.
I peered through the crevice, pulling it back hesitantly, and there he was. The four-letter word illustrated and published all over my organs. Mike.
“...Hi.”
I just need to close this door. I just need to close this door. I just need to close this door.
Who is it that I am consistently leaving it open for, leaving room to inhabit the depths of my heart and inherit my pain? There is only one answer that comes to mind.
Only you, my love.
“Hi.”