Chapter Text
May 29th, 1989
Hawkins, IN
Maple St, 1029 — Wheeler Residence
The air down in the basement has grown heavy and stale quickly over the last hour. Everything feels too musty and too warm — a telltale sign that May's nearly over and summer's right around the corner.
All six of them being packed in there doesn't help. Will can hear the collective rustling and breathing of his friends, all of them in various states of unconscious. He was given the couch, initially a prime deal that came packaged with the fact that his body ran colder than everyone else; but by now, the leather has gone clammy against the backs of his knees, his calves and any other patch of skin it can find. His sheets are bunched somewhere around his ankles, a futile attempt to seek for some kind of thermal comfort.
It also doesn't help that Mike claimed the mattress right next to the couch. Warmth radiates off of him in waves, and it makes Will feel even hotter, even with the considerable distance between them. Of course, that's all due to Mike naturally running hotter than most people.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Will has been able to do little but linger to the rhythmic, stuttered pattern of his breathing.
Breathe in. Stutter. Breathe out.
He fights against the impulse of visualizing the way Mike's probably spread across the mattress, not a care in the world. His mouth slightly open, his head sunken comfortably on the pillow.
Breathe in.
Will turns onto his side, facing away from the where Mike lies beneath him. He presses his face to the couch for a second, before realizing the leather makes him feel even more yucky with sweat. He turns to lie on his back again and stares up at the low ceiling.
Breathe out.
He expected to feel some sense of finality when he made up his mind. He's been thinking about it for the better part of three months and it still feels like a ticking time bomb, constantly threatening to blow up. He knows what he has to do. He has known for a while. Before they go to college, before they pack up and move into the same too-small dorm room and officially begin a new chapter in their lives, he has to say it out loud.
I had feelings for you. I don't think I do anymore, but I wanted to say it. I didn't want to let that hang over our heads. I'm sorry. I hope you know nothing has to change. I hope we can still be friends.
It took him a while to get there, and he's been turning it over in his head again and again, and the feeling itself has been haunting him for way longer than the speech. But he finally made the decision when they all settled on a plan to go to community college together for a year — just so that they can have each other for a little bit more before moving on with their lives.
When Mike had looked at him, lopsided smile and hopeful eyes, and had said "Well, guess that means we'll be roomies, huh?" (and Will said yes — he could never not say yes), it was then that he knew: he had to come clean. There was no way it would be healthy, carrying this secret with him for God-knows-how long, not when he had finally been able to say, "I'm gay" out loud just a year before. He had to confess to Mike, had to rip off the band aid, had to listen to the boy he loved say he didn't love him back. It was the only way to have some sort of closure — the only way to finally, truly, feel at peace with where he stands in Mike Wheeler's life.
Hope had come in different shapes and sizes over the years. He hoped through all the years Mike took care of him and protected him, his paladin in shiny armor. He hoped when Mike, after months of silence and avoidance, said they should be a team again. He hoped when Mike called him magic and he hoped when Mike called him a Sorcerer, voice seeping with awe. He hoped (and hated himself for it) when Mike and El broke up, their differences too irreconcilable.
He hoped when Mike was back to being glued at his side, but just when he thought hope could be something more, there was radio silence when Will came out, and there was "Friends? No thanks. Best friends", and there was Mike, all throughout 1988, being his usual, dorky, concerned, unquestionably platonic self.
So, Will had stopped hoping and started moving through the motions of their lives post-Upside Down, like he was supposed to. He survived his nightmares, he survived high school, he was there for his friends and family. And he stopped hoping for Mike Wheeler to love him.
He just needs to say it out loud, say it to the one who needs to hear it. And he will. He's given himself until the end of June — one month of blissful ignorance, one month of pretending — and he intends to keep that deadline.
It's fine. It'll be fine. Will exhales through his nose, closes his eyes, and decidedly does not sleep.
Time passes, and although he is not aware of how much time exactly, it feels like forever with how wired his mind is. All he wants is a sign from the universe. One inevitable cosmic message that settles the raging anxiety that plagues his every thought.
In hindsight, someone who went through all the supernatural bullshit he went through should've known better.
As soon as the thought leaves his mind, the air crackles all around, it gets heavier, as if charged with electricity. It rings enough bells in his head that he instinctively perks up on his elbows — the feeling is alarmingly close to the chills he felt whenever anything Mind-Flayer-related happened.
His hand flies to the back of his neck on instinct, but this is different: Will feels it everywhere. There's a tingling feeling coursing through him and pressure's building up all around him. He looks around, alert, assessing for threats; but everything's still in place. Dustin's still peacefully snoring, Lucas is lying mostly on the floor, Max and El are still bundled up together as they've been all night. Everything's normal, except for the charged air and the odd feeling all over his body.
He looks down at Mike, panic starting to surge. He opens his mouth to call for him and manages to voice out one half of his name when suddenly, everything is bathed in a blindingly white light, a deafening whooshing sound overtaking all his senses.
Will's vaguely aware of the chaos that follows — bodies rustling as everyone awakes in a startle, his friends screaming, someone calling for him, a warm hand flying to grip at his wrist — when suddenly, a heavy weight is dropped on him from above.
"What the fuck?!"
"Will!"
"What was that?"
"Quick, turn on the lights!"
"WHAT THE FUCK?"
"Shut up, Dustin!"
Slowly, he comes back to his senses, blinking a few times to recover his vision and reacquaint it to the pitch black of the basement. He barely has time to do so, however, when light floods the room again — this time, at a normal level, as someone turns on the overhead lighting — and the very concerned face of one Mike Wheeler overtakes his field of vision.
"Will! Are you okay?" Mike says, voice drenched with sleep and confusion and one eye still closed as he tries to recover from his bumpy awakening. He scans for Will's face briefly, before fully sitting back on his heels and assessing the room. "Man, what the hell was…"
Mike stops mid sentence, his eye catching somewhere lower on the couch. Suddenly, he's ten times more awake, slack jawed and wide eyed. "What the…"
Will blinks, still dazed from the sensory assault he's been through. He follows Mike's line of sight, looking down at himself, and, in time with the various gasps and questioning noises the Party lets out, he registers it.
Right there, on the couch, half draped across Will's torso, half falling from the couch on top of Mike's mattress, is a child.
A dark-haired, small, and very unconscious child, cheek pressed to Will's sternum, one hand fisted loosely in the fabric of Will's shirt like he caught it on the way down to the floor and didn't let go. Will doesn't move. Will doesn't breathe. He's not sure he can.
"Um, what is happening?" Lucas asks, beyond confused.
"That's a child," Dustin supplies, "That is a real, actual child."
"Will," Mike says, barely above a whisper, breaking the trance Will had been into, "I think you should get up. El, is this… Do you feel something?"
El observes them for a moment, eyes shifting between Mike, Will and the kid before narrowing in concentration. Will holds his breath for a moment. Then her face goes back to a relaxed stance and she resolutely shakes her head.
"Nope. Nothing. Will?"
Will stares back at the boy. He's young — no older than ten. He looks peaceful, like he didn't just burst out of thin air. There's something about the kid — the curly black mop of hair that covers almost all of his face, the delicate, uneven pattern of his breathing. The way his tiny hand grips at Will's shirt for dear life.
There's something about him that's painfully familiar. Something that makes Will feel that same odd, all encompassing feeling he felt earlier, now less pressure and more… warmth.
One thing he's sure of? This kid has nothing to do with the Upside Down.
"No. He's safe."
"Well, great. So what are we working with here?" Max huffs, crossing her arms. She looks a bit insane, hair sticking out in every direction.
"I don't know. Aliens?"
"That's stupid."
"I'm sorry, do you have a better theory?"
The Party then bursts into argument, a thousand suggestions being thrown, raised voices overlapping. Will tunes it all off. He's fixated on this unexpected, magical arrival. He feels a scratch inside his mind, a worrying feeling he can't explain. Suddenly, it feels wrong that the kid is nearly falling off the couch. Absentmindedly, Will adjusts himself and tucks the boy closer.
The motion makes the boy shift positions slightly, head turning sideways, and that's when Will sees, for the first time, the face that had been tucked snugly against his chest. Pale skin, long nose, cute cheeks paired with an angular jaw he would know in any configuration, at any age, in any universe.
He's staring at a carbon copy, ten-year old version of Mike Wheeler.
Inadvertently, his eyes snap to his right, to where he expects to see Mike immersed in conversation with the rest of their friends.
Instead, Mike's already looking back at him, wearing an undecipherable expression. Will sees in real time, the moment Mike's dark eyes shift from looking at him to looking at the kid — and see s in real time, the moment Mike notices the very same thing he just did.
Mike pales and his eyes widen with realization. He looks at Will again, then at the kid, then his hand flies forward in an aborted motion, hovering above the couch as if it moved on its own accord but he caught himself at last minute. Mike opens his mouth, closes it.
Before anyone else can notice it too, the kid shifts again. Will's eyes snap to him, eerily noting, once again, just how similar the boy is to Mike. The kid scrunches his nose, frowns, then his eyes move behind his eyelids — once, twice. And then they open.
Will stares, and hazel eyes identical to his stare back.
Mike has always been fond of the expression "calm before the storm"; so much so that he often utilized the concept for his campaigns or short stories. He was always captivated by how entire strategies unfolded and how the most desperate and creative solutions came to be in the face of a good old plot twist.
Right now, as he's staring into the sleepy, green eyes of a child who looks exactly like him, that expression is vaguely what passes through his mind, for some reason. Mike's vaguely aware that everyone has gone silent and still, anticipating for the kid's next move.
He watches as the kid takes in the environment around him, slowly assessing everything. The boy blinks once. Twice. Then, everything snaps into slow motion: his eyes widen, panic overtakes his features, he scrambles away from Will, falling to the ground. Then he opens his mouth and screams.
Suddenly, Mike hates the expression calm before the storm.
Everything quickly derails all around: everyone starts talking all at once, in different attempts to get the child to calm down. Will, looking almost as terrified, attempts to reach for him, but the kid grabs a pillow and starts swinging it, frenetically, all around, while scrambling backwards, still on the ground, blindly attempting an escape.
El is covering her ears. Will is shouting reassurances. Max is cackling, Lucas is frozen on the spot and for some reason, Dustin is also screaming. And Mike is so, so dead, because it's the middle of the night, and two floors above, his parents are blissfully asleep, and if this kid doesn't stop screaming, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.
Then, before Mike's instincts drive him to do something stupid out of sheer desperation, like tackling a ten year old to the ground, Will fixes everything. As usual.
He drops down to the ground, softly, throwing his hands up, lowering his voice but keeping it firm and low. "Hey! Hey. It's okay. Buddy, can you just listen to me? Please?"
Finally, the kid stops screaming. He's still hiding beneath a pillow, eyes wild, breathing ragged and frantic. He's looking at Will now. Mike looks at Will, too. Will, who is crouched down to the kid's level, carefully stepping closer, whispering reassurances so low that Mike barely catches what he's saying, though he catches the tone immediately: soft, steady and so, so, familiar.
Immediately, his brain is filled with images of a deadbeat father yelling at a scared little boy. And of that same scared little boy, tear-streaked face, being soothed by his brother, not that much older than him, but tasked with such immense, precious responsibility.
Not so long ago, Mike used to witness how Jonathan would protect and reassure a little Will Byers, a task that Mike would gladly share with him. Now, Will's doing the exact same thing for someone else — someone who looks just like…
Mike's heart lurches aggressively in his chest. Suddenly, he can't stop looking at Will.
Eventually, the child stops scrambling. His breathing stills in uneven little gulps. His eyes stay wide, but they stop darting as wildly around the basement. Will's now kneeling in front of him, with a warm smile and quiet whispers of, "There you go", and "thank you".
Mike approaches them and crouches beside Will before he really thinks better of it.
The kid’s gaze lifts at that, and for a second, he just looks. At Will first, then at Mike, then back again. His face slowly contorts from showing fear to confusion, then surprise. A part of Mike reacts in sync with the kid, and he feels a twinge of something restless and maybe a little feral, for some reason. It's like watching a puppy play in a puddle, but amplified tenfold.
Then the kid opens his mouth, and the basement falls into profound silence at the word that comes out.
“...Daddy?”