Chapter Text
april, 1986
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The first time, it happens entirely by accident on an early Wednesday morning, just past 2:40 AM. Will only knows this because he’d checked the time on his alarm clock before he’d gotten up to go to the bathroom.
He doesn’t want to wake anyone up, so he leaves the hall light off. This is good and well until he’s about halfway down the hall, and as his eyes adjust to the dimness, he realizes just how unfamiliar he is with this new house. They’d only moved in last week—it’s an old, cozy little place on Randolph, a proper house instead of a trailer, simply for the sake of space. After all, a trailer would be much too small to house three teens and one, sometimes two, adults. Will had been relieved to hear that El would be staying with them, and while he wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of Hopper moving in, it’s been all right so far (though, that may be because Hopper has spent the vast majority of his time the past week over at his cabin instead of the house).
Point being, they’ve only just moved in, and there are still stacks of boxes and stuff scattered about; tall, misshapen silhouettes in the dark. He freezes, then takes a stumbling hop-step back, nearly losing his balance as he plants his crutches awkwardly. His right hand squeezes tight around the rubber grip of his crutch, his left coming up to press against the wall, fumbling for the light switch.
Except, he can’t find it. He can’t find it, and he’s staring at the shape looming just at the end of the hallway, shoved up against the wall, and he knows it’s probably another stack of boxes, knows he’s probably freaking himself out over nothing—but he’s starting to panic, a little, sweat beading cold and damp at his temples, the hairline the back of his neck. His head starts to pound, a tight pressure, pulse loud in his ears.
The hall light comes on, and for a moment, he relaxes, nearly crumples with the relief (because yes, it is just another stack of boxes—with El’s stupid soccer ball on top, which explains the vaguely humanoid shape to it). But then he realizes that his hand isn’t on the light switch.
He looks over and—
The switch is a solid foot away from where his palm is flat against the wall.
His stomach does a low, nauseating swoop, because flickering lights have only ever been a sign of bad things.
As if to prove his point, the hall light brightens, barely noticeable, but it’s enough to have Will hobbling to the bathroom as fast as his crutches allow, chest tight and skin oscillating between too hot and too cold. The air smells like the bathroom after Mom blowdries her hair in the morning, tinted with something singed and burning.
He grabs the doorknob, then jerks away, cursing under his breath at the unexpected static shock that jolts up through his fingers. He reaches for the knob a second time, hesitant now, but nothing happens. He takes a shaky breath, then wrenches the door open and shuffles inside, flipping on the bathroom light and closing the door behind him as quiet as he can manage.
He leans against the sink and hangs his head, forces his breaths to come deep and even, willing his heart to slow its thrumming beat. He sighs, heavy, tries to convince himself he’d imagined the whole thing. He almost manages it, too—until he looks up into the mirror and sees the trickle of blood above his lip.
He considers bringing it up with El, but it doesn’t happen again over the next few days, so he tries to forget about it, content to let it lie. Of course, things can never be quite so easy for Will Byers.
In hindsight, it could have been worse. It’s only him and El in the house when it happens, which is something, at least.
“No, because here’s the thing: ketchup is fine, but tomatoes by themselves are gross,” Will is saying, a bit absent from the conversation as he slices the chicken breast on the cutting board into thin strips.
“I think they’re good,” El argues, nudging his foot under the table. “Especially on sandwiches.”
“Okay, they can be okay on sandwiches,” Will concedes, “but have you ever bit into one that was, like, rubbery and watery? It just ruins the rest of whatever you’re eating.”
El hums, and Will glances over at her to check on her progress. The veggies she’s been working through are mostly finished, sorted into individual piles on her cutting board, an impressive feat considering she’s only helped with meal prep a handful of times.
“But you like pizza. Isn’t the sauce made from tomatoes?” El asks, and Will can’t help but grin.
“Yeah, but it’s like the ketchup thing,” he explains, resuming his task. “In a sauce, it’s fine. Same thing with spaghetti. It’s just when they’re raw that they’re gross.”
El makes a grumbly sound of disagreement in the back of her throat. “I think they’re good. Maybe—”
But whatever she was about to say goes unsaid, cut off by her own sharp gasp and the clatter of the knife hitting the cutting board. Will’s head snaps over in a flash.
Are you okay hovers on the tip of his tongue, crowds behind his teeth, but it dies there, replaced by swooping, breathless fear when he sees her grasping her hand tightly, sees the blood already running down her wrist.
“Oh, shit.” He scrambles to her side, shoving his chair up against hers and twisting to grab her hands. “Shit, El, let me see.”
He carefully pulls her hands apart, sweeping a gentle thumb through the blood pooling in her palm to assess the damage. The cut is quickly hidden again by a rush of blooming red, and his stomach drops.
The Gate is closed. The Gate has been closed, but it doesn’t stop the bile from creeping up his throat. The Demogorgon was drawn in by blood. He’s heard the stories. About how it got Barbara, how Nancy and Jonathan lured to the house, how it tore through the school because of the dead soldiers.
And, somewhere in the far reaches of his mind, there’s a hazy memory of dense cold, every breath a labored, wet rattle. Slinking from Castle Byers back to the house, lightheaded, stomach a nauseating knot of hunger. Tripping over his own too-heavy feet and sprawling, gravel ripping holes through his worn jeans and scraping his knees bloody. Lying there until he heard the chittering growls. He remembers the barely suppressed terror, pushing himself to his feet and running and running and hiding, empty shotgun clutched to his chest.
But it’s not just that. The cut curves across the meat of her palm, just below her thumb, he can see that much, but he can’t tell how bad it is.
What if she needs stitches?
“Here, uh— uh—” He lunges for a dish towel on the far side of the table, nearly tipping his chair over in his hasty reach for it, and presses it to the cut, hard, because the one thought looping through the panicky static in his head is: stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding, gotta stop the bleeding.
El makes a hissing sound, teeth gritted, and Will winces on her behalf.
“Crap, I’m sorry,” he says, and he knows he should get up, get to the phone, call someone, an adult, because the cut might be bad, and El might need stitches; but the phone is across the room, on the wall, and Mom and Hopper aren’t even in town, and Will’s crutches are— shit, they’re propped against the other side of the table.
“Hold that,” he demands, grabbing El’s good hand and replacing his own where it had been applying pressure. He pushes up from the table, uses it for balance as he hops over to his crutches. His head pounds and his thoughts rush together, skipping and rattling around his head like a broken cassette.
Get the phone— Where did Jonathan say he was going again? I shouldn’t have let her help me— god, this is my fault—
He’s startled out of it when the light above the table starts flickering, strobing wildly. The one over the sink quickly joins, and the television in the living room kicks on with a flurry of jagged sound, voices cutting out as the channels flip by in rapid succession.
Goosebumps break across Will’s skin in a hot-cold flash, because flickering lights and electrical surges mean bad things, mean death, and he feels numb with the horror that overtakes him, eyes squeezing shut against the flashing light. His chest is tight, and his head, too, a constricting pressure, like his body is shrinking around his organs and squeezing them, like that time he was ten and he swam down down down, tried to touch the bottom of Lake Jordan, but he couldn’t because the water was dark and cold and heavy.
He wants it to go away, doesn’t know where all of this is coming from so suddenly, doesn’t know what’s going on—
“Will, stop!”
His eyes fly open, and he gasps, sucking in a sharp breath like he’s just resurfaced from deep water. All at once, the TV goes silent, and the lights blink out.
Will looks at El across the table. She’s talking. He can see her mouth moving, can see her rising to her feet, but her words evade him because his ears are ringing with the roar of his too-fast, hammering pulse. The longer he looks at her, the harder it is to see, vision shrinking to pinpoints, steadily overtaken by a creeping blackness.
He blinks hard, starts tilting forward against the table, and thinks, I’m gonna pass out.
A hand grabs at his shoulder, jerks away, then returns to guide him down, and he collapses into the chair, pulls in a wheezing breath and exhales sharply, hunching over to hang his head between his knees.
A sharp coldness against the side of his neck makes him flinch back, but the chill persists, biting. He reaches up to grab at it, pull it away, but . . . his heart no longer feels like it’s going to burst through his chest, and after a moment, he finds his breaths are coming slower, deeper.
By the time El is urging him back up into a proper sitting position, he feels shaky and nauseous, but mostly present, the darkness receding from his vision.
His gaze flicks up, meets El’s wide, fearful eyes.
“Will?” she says. “Are you okay?”
He clears his throat, reaches up to take El’s wrist and pull away the cold object against his neck, and a shock of static bursts at his fingertips as he touches her skin.
He thinks of the other night, the hall light and the static when he went to open the bathroom door, and—he yanks his hand back sharply, clasps it with his other one and tucks them between his knees. He leans away from the cold pressure instead, twists his head to see.
It’s the water bottle El had gotten out of the fridge half an hour ago, before they’d started meal prep, and it’s dripping with red-tinted, smeared condensation. She hesitates, then sets it on the table.
“Y-yeah. Fine,” he finally says, and it comes out rough, weak. He tenses when awareness rushes back and he remembers what had been going on before the lights went berserk. “Your hand.” He fumbles to stand and reach for his crutches. He gapes, startled, when she pushes him back into the chair.
“No. It is okay. It’s not as bad as it looks. See?” El holds her hands out, carefully lifts the corner of the folded blue tea towel. The cut is still bleeding, but it’s sluggish now, and Will can see that, while the cut is long, it doesn’t seem nearly as deep as he’d feared.
Shit, he’d really freaked over nothing.
Still—
“Let me go get some bandages for that,” he says, and this time when he moves to stand, she shuffles out of the way and lets him. Fingers tacky with El’s blood, his grasp on the rubber grips of his crutches is hesitant, hands hooked awkwardly around the handholds in an attempt to keep from smearing the mess.
He’s unsteady on his crutches, but for once he’s grateful for them, because he’s not so sure he’d be standing without the added support, broken leg or no.
He slips into the bathroom and flicks the light switch with his elbow, but nothing happens. He tries again, off-on, and there’s no change.
The power. The power is out.
Wincing, he pushes the rest of the way into the bathroom, dutifully ignoring this revelation, and stops in front of the sink, turning on the water to rinse the tacky, coagulated blood from his hands, but he freezes when he catches sight of his shadowed face in the mirror.
His skin is pale, but not in the way Mike’s skin is pale. No, his face is grey. Ashen. Wide, dark eyes stare back at him, pupils so dilated he can only make out a sliver of hazel around them.
But despite that, he’s more focused on the twin, half-dried trails of blood coming from either nostril.
Jesus.
He stumbles back into the kitchen five minutes later, hands and face scrubbed clean, skin a little pink from the force of the scrubbing.
“Here,” he says, settling back into the seat across from her and laying the first aid kit on the table. “Sorry it took me so long.”
“It’s okay,” El says, but her eyes don’t leave his face, even as he digs through the kit for an antiseptic wipe and bandages.
He cleans her hand, disinfects, then wraps it methodically, and neither of them speak the entire time he’s working. He hopes she doesn’t notice the way his hands are shaking, faint tremors as he winds the gauze around her thumb, across the back of her hand, and secures it against her palm.
“There,” he says, sitting back and gathering up the detritus on the table. “All done.”
She finally, finally breaks her gaze away, looking down and flexing her fingers gently. She hops up, snags the wrappers and trash right out of Will’s hands to throw it away.
“Oh. Thanks.” He rubs the back of his head. “We should, uh. Grab some containers for that.” He nods to the sliced chicken and vegetables half-prepped on the table. The plan for dinner had been stir-fry—because it’s easy and they have leftover white rice from a few days ago—but Will genuinely thinks he’ll throw up if he tries to eat anything right now, and El is already digging through the freezer for the damn Eggos.
She drags out the Tupperware for him. He puts everything away, and she totes it over to the fridge, storing it for later.
The two of them hover around the table for a second, El shifting the plate of syrupy waffles between her hands. Will is just reaching for his crutches again, thinking about slipping away to his bedroom to hide, when El walks into the living room and flops down on the sofa.
“Come sit with me,” she says, and hell, it’s not like Will can just say no to her.
He settles beside El on the sofa and lowers his crutches to the floor, propping his casted foot up in its customary spot on the coffee table. Almost immediately, El curls up at his side, shoving her way under his arm with silent, blunt insistence. She balances her plate on her knee, fork digging into the waffles with intent.
Will allows himself to zone out at the dark TV as she eats, staring blankly at the empty screen. It’s off. Because the power is out. Because—
Nope. He taps his fingers against his thigh, looks up at the ceiling to trace the old water stains, forcing an unnecessary amount of concentration into it.
“I can make you some Eggos, if you want,” El murmurs. Will glances down at the top of her head. He thinks about waffles, the gooey, sugary sweetness, and his stomach flips.
“No, I’m— I’m good. Thanks.”
She makes a noise of discontent, peering up at him with brows drawn in a deep frown. She reaches up, pokes his cheek. “You need to eat. You . . .” She hesitates, draws back so that Will can take in the full force of her seriousness. “You need to recharge.”
Of course she wants to talk about it. He shouldn’t have expected anything less.
“Recharge,” he echoes flatly.
“Yes,” she nods, then she’s leaning forward to set her empty plate on the coffee table. She drops her hands back into her lap, fixes him with a pointed look, and says, “You are like me. But also not.”
Will’s mouth is dry, and he swallows past the lump in his throat. “I don’t— I’m not— how could I . . .” He shakes his head, buries his face in his hands, and tries not to think about it too deeply, because he seriously feels one stray thought away from a total nervous breakdown.
“Do you remember when I told you about how I went to Chicago to see my sister?”
Will nods, fingers dragging through his too-long bangs. They’d talked about it a few months ago, back in Lenora, when El had slipped into his room around midnight with hunched shoulders and dark hollows under her eyes. He’d braided her hair while she told him about it, and they’d both fallen asleep on the floor in a tangled heap of blankets. She’d been one of the other lab kids, like Eleven. Number Eight, he’s pretty sure.
“She was different, too,” El says. “She couldn’t move things like me and . . . like Henry. Her powers were different.”
Will goes still, drags his hands away from his face to look at her. El hadn’t mentioned that before. “What do you mean? What could she do?”
“She made people see things. What’s that ‘I’ word? I-ill—”
“Illusions?” Will ventures.
El snaps her fingers. “Yes, that. Illusions. She made me see a butterfly, and— and Papa. And she made us invisible so the policemen couldn’t see us.”
“Policemen? You never said anything about policemen. What were you guys up to?”
El waves a hand, dismissive, and plows on. “She couldn’t move things like I can. And she couldn’t find people, either.” She bites her lip, lowers her gaze to her lap. “I was made to be like Henry. Most of us were. But Kali, she already had powers when Papa took her. And she was the only one who escaped. Because she was different from the rest of us.”
El reaches out to takes Will’s hands in her own. “I think,” she starts. “. . . I think you’re different too.”
His own words, halting and choked out in the backseat of a dirty pizza van, come back to him, like a slap in the face. And when you’re different, sometimes . . .
Will swallows, runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. “What— um. So, the lights. That was definitely me, then?”
“Yes,” she says, with such surety that Will can’t argue, even to himself.
“Is it like— I mean, when you use your . . . powers,” he cringes, “the lights, they flicker like that too, though, right?”
El hesitates, then shakes her head. “It’s not the same. I only make the lights do that when I use my powers a lot. Too much.”
Will thinks about the other night, the light that had turned on in the hallway, and his bloody nose.
He thinks about a few weeks ago, that first day they’d gotten back to Hawkins, when Henry went after Mike and Will had gone into Mike’s mind after him and, somehow, impossibly, pushed Henry out. He vaguely remembers how, when he came out of it, the lights in the cabin had exploded, shortly before he lost consciousness.
He looks down at his hands, folded neatly in his lap, and tries not to think about anything at all.
(The power comes back on sometime between three and four the next morning, and when Will sits down to eat breakfast, he overhears the news anchor on TV talking about an ‘electrical surge’ and ‘blown transformers’ stretching from Randolph to Cherry Oak. Will nearly chokes on his Frosted Flakes. Jonathan frowns, gives Will a long look, and turns the TV off.)
A dull, sudden series of taps on the window has Will nearly jumping out of his skin, sitting up quickly from where he’s hunched over his cast, doodling. His back twinges, a testament to how long he’s been bent forward, and he glances down at his watch.
11:38. He’s late. Very late.
Will cranes his head over his shoulder to squint against the glare of his bedroom light, and Mike’s stupid grinning face looks back at him, leaning in against the glass and waggling his eyebrows.
Idiot, Will thinks, smiling. He scoots off the bed and uses the frame for support as he hops over to the window, leaning against the sill as he undoes the latch and pushes it up.
“Sorry,” Mike whispers, sheepish, “didn’t mean to spook you.”
“What happened to eleven o’clock?” Will asks. He dips his head and slides his hands to the edges of the windowsill, fingers curling against the old wood.
Mike grumbles, face cast in shadow as Will blocks out the bedroom light with his broad frame. “Nancy had Robin over and she was being so annoying. She barged into my room, like, right when I was about to leave, and she wouldn’t get off my back. She blackmailed me, dude.”
Will snorts. “Nancy or Robin?”
“Robin.”
“You didn’t . . . I mean, you didn’t tell her, right?”
Mike is shaking his head before Will’s even done talking. “Of course not. But look!” he hisses, voice low and insistent. “Look at this!”
Mike flings up a hand, waves it in Will’s face. Will blinks, then stares, heart doing a fluttering little lurch. Mike’s nails are painted a dark, glossy black, a sharp contrast against his pale skin.
“Oh,” Will breathes, soft on an exhale.
“Right?” Mike scoffs, brings his hand up to comb his fingers through his unruly hair. Will’s eyes track the motion. Mike huffs, “She said I had the choice to either tell her where I was going—and let’s be honest, if I told her, she would have totally told Nance—or she could paint my stupid nails and she’d keep her mouth shut.”
“Some choice,” Will says, biting back a cheeky grin and dropping his gaze back to Mike’s.
“Yeah, yeah. Now let me in, asshole, it’s cold out here.”
Will digs a tooth into the corner of his lip and leans forward a bit, makes a small, commiserating sound in the back of his throat. “Aww, is it? Is it cold, Michael?”
Mike groans. “God, you’re such a little shit sometimes,” he says, but his eyes are bright, and he’s got his mouth set into a thin line like he’s fighting the urge to smile. “Come on, dude, lemme in. This is so not how you treat someone on their birthday.”
Will quirks an eyebrow, reaches out to take Mike’s right arm and peer at his watch. “Birthday? I don’t think so. You’ve still got eighteen minutes.”
Mike pulls his arm away, voice going high, whiny. “Will.”
“Fine,” Will relents, shuffling back out of the window frame so Mike can climb in. He hobbles back over to his bed, and by the time he’s sitting down, Mike is inside, closing the window quietly behind him.
“Everyone asleep?” Mike asks, voice low, depositing his bag at the foot of Will’s bed.
“Jonathan is. Mom and Hop spent the weekend packing up our stuff in Lenora, remember? They aren’t flying back in ‘til late tomorrow.”
“El?”
Will shakes his head. “She’s at Max’s.”
Mike hums, comes around the bed to plop down next to Will, the mattress bouncing beneath them. Mike kicks off his shoes and crosses his ankles. “My mom was telling me about that power outage the other day. From that Motel 6 on Cherry Oak all the way to Forest Hills Park. That probably hit you guys too, right?”
Will forces himself not to tense, and nods, looks down to pick at his nails. “Yeah. It was nothing, though. Just some issues with transformers or something.”
Mike grunts, a small acknowledging sound, and leans back on his palms. He blows out a long breath, dark bangs fluttering against forehead. “Tomorrow’s gonna suck.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Will tries, shooting for optimistic, slumping a little with relief at the subject change. He scoots back, brings his casted leg up onto the bed and traces Lucas’s blocky handwriting with a finger. “Jonathan’s driving El and I to the theater to meet you guys. You said three thirty, right?”
“Yeah, cuz of school,” Mike grumbles, shifting his weight to lean heavily into Will’s side. “Speaking of school, did your mom finally decide what you guys are doing?”
Will shuffles, leans back into Mike for balance. “Yeah. She kept bringing up summer school for me and El, but Jonathan helped us talk her out of it. Our credits from Lenora are getting transferred over. If all goes well, we should be back in classes at Hawkins next week.”
Mike gasps, jerks upright and twists to look at Will straight-on. “Are you serious?” he says, and then his face splits into a bright grin. “That’s awesome!”
Will brings his palm up over Mike’s mouth, shushes him, but he’s smiling too, a small, genuine thing. “Yeah. Might have to retake a class or two next year, but it shouldn’t be too bad.” He hesitates a moment. “. . . I’m a little worried for El, though.”
Mike’s fingers wrap around Will’s wrist and tug his hand away, and Will lets him, tries to ignore the little, half-panicked jolt in his chest when Mike laces their fingers together and squeezes. This— this thing between them, it’s still new, tentative.
“She won’t get bullied here,” Mike says, all firm and determined. His eyes are dark, brow furrowed. “Not like in Lenora. All of us are together, now. We’ll keep each other safe.”
“It’s not just that, though,” Will sighs, tilting his head back to frown up at the ceiling. “She’s been struggling, like, academically. She’s really good at math, and science, and she’s getting better in art, but English is really hard for her. And she’s flunking Spanish entirely. And . . .” Will shakes his head, drops his head back down to meet Mike’s curious gaze. “And I want to help her, but every time I offer, she refuses. It’s like— I don’t know, I think she’s embarrassed about it or something. Which is total bull, because she’s actually really, really smart. Like, she’s amazing with numbers, Mike, you have no idea. She can bust through an entire packet of algebra problems before I’m even done with the first page, and—”
And Will stops, struck with the realization that he’s been rambling about El to Mike, as if Mike of all people doesn’t already know how amazing she is, and Will snaps his mouth shut so fast his teeth audibly click, face burning.
“A-ah, sorry,” Will says, wincing at the way his voice cracks. He shoots Mike a bashful little smile, more of a grimace, then looks down at the way his fingers on his unoccupied hand tap erratically against the hard plaster of his cast. “You probably knew all that already.”
Mike squeezes his hand once. Twice. Look at me.
Will glances up, sees Mike’s slightly tilted head and the way his lips pull into a half-smile. His voice, when he speaks, is light, unaffected. “No. I didn’t.”
Will frowns. Really?
Mike shakes his head. “Nope,” he says, answering the question Will never had to ask. It’s nice, being able to read each other like they used to. Will had been worried, after their turbulent summer and his months in California with minimal communication between them, that they’d never be able to get back to the closeness they’d had a few years ago. Turns out, falling back into their old ways has been pretty easy, once they actually had time to sit down and talk. If nothing else, the potential end of the world is great for putting things into perspective.
Mike hums, thoughtful, drawing Will’s attention back.
“She is stubborn,” he agrees. “I dunno—maybe we could do, like, a bi-weekly study group or something? That way she doesn’t feel like she’s being singled out for needing help.” Mike chuckles, face scrunching up in a small wince. “Honestly, I could use that, too. Spanish has been kicking my ass this semester. And Dustin— Dustin had Suzie change his grade in Latin from a D to an A.”
Will’s mouth drops open. “No way.”
Mike nods, widening his eyes to convey his seriousness, cheeks dimpling in a grin. “Yeah, no, remember when she was telling us how she got her computer taken away? The whole reason we snuck into her dad’s office? It’s cuz she hacked into the school servers and changed his grades. Dustin was bragging about it.”
An airy laugh jets from Will’s nose, and he shakes his head in disbelief. “Of all of us, I can’t believe Dustin is the one who had to resort to illegal hacking to pull his grades up.” Will’s smile turns cheeky, devious. “I’d have put my money on it being you.”
Mike’s face does that pouty thing Will adores, where his mouth drops open and his brows furrow in indignation. “Wha— me?”
“Yup. That’s all right, though.” Will disentangles his fingers from Mike’s, hand coming up to pat his chest. He speaks all slow and soothing, tone just edging past patronizing. “Now that I’m back, I guess I can help you out,” he says, as if he hasn’t been scraping by with a D+ in Algebra.
Mike’s eyebrows shoot up, mouth just starting to lift in an incredulous smile, and he scoffs, a disbelieving half-laugh. “Oh, you guess, huh?”
Will looks away for a moment to cover the way his lips twitch, and he makes a show of lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “Yeah, I mean, I’m just nice like that.”
“Mm, the nicest,” Mike nods sagely, eyes bright, crinkling at the corners. He pulls his lower lip between his teeth, then releases it, voice dropping to a considering murmur. “Guess that makes me a pretty lucky guy.”
Mike reaches up to where Will’s palm is still flat against his chest and wraps his fingers around Will’s wrist. Not tugging his hand away or squeezing—just holding. Will’s breath catches in his throat, gaze flitting up to Mike’s.
“Guess so,” Will whispers, heart doing a little stutter-skip when Mike looks down at his lips, a move he does all the time, but seems particularly, glaringly obvious in the short distance between them. They’re still seated side-by-side, but they’re twisted to face each other now, and when had that happened?
Mike’s other hand comes up to Will’s shoulder, palm sliding across the fabric of his tee to the space between his shoulder and his neck. Will jumps at the suddenness of the touch on his bare skin. Mike’s palm is warm, but his fingers are cold, and the combating temperatures have Will tensing. He swallows hard, eyes darting away to the bedspread.
“Hey.”
Will takes a second to steady himself, then he looks up, forces himself to hold Mike’s dark, earnest gaze.
“Are you— I mean, is this okay?” Mike asks, soft with concern, and his thumb sweeps up, catches the corner of his jaw.
Will can’t find his voice for a moment. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. “Y-yeah,” he says, finally. “I’m just. I’m— sorry.”
“You apologize too much,” Mike says, all teasing and fond, and his palm skates back, fingers grazing the short hairs at the base of his neck.
“Sorry.” Will closes his eyes. Shit. “I mean—”
Mike’s grip tightens just enough to pull him in, and he cuts Will off with the warm press of his chapped lips. The angle is slightly off-center, and Will draws back to pull in a shallow breath, tilting his head just so, and they reconnect with more purpose this time.
Will presses his hand a little harder against the crest of Mike’s sternum, feels the steady thrum of Mike’s heartbeat at his fingertips.
They part and come together—once, twice—and it’s unhurried, chaste. As his other hand raises from resting useless against his cast to cup Mike’s jaw, Will sinks into the calm of it, the simplicity.
It’s him, and it’s Mike. No stumbling through awkward conversations and agonizing miscommunication and lashing out. Not anymore. They’ve finally found their footing—and this, Will finds, is as easy as breathing.
He decides to push, just a bit. He leans in a little harder, thumb tracing the sharp angle of his jaw, and he parts his lips just enough to catch Mike’s bottom lip between his own. He swipes his tongue over it, sucks gently—and Mike spasms, breath jetting harshly out of his nose, and he makes this quiet groaning sound that shoots through Will like an electric shock, makes him pull back to draw in a shaky, steadying breath, eyes still closed.
Mike doesn’t let him go far. His fingers slide up to tighten in Will’s hair, and he presses into him with a newfound intensity. It’s all Will can do to cling to him and yield to the firm press of his lips, the sharp nip of his teeth, the sweep of his tongue. Will’s lips part on a gasp, and then Mike is licking into his mouth, and the first brush of his tongue against Will’s sends a surging starburst of warmth from his chest all the way down to his toes, paints him in vibrant technicolor.
And then it eases back into something calm, sweet and slow, lips parting and coming together, shorter and shorter, until Will is so overcome by the fullness in his chest, he breaks away from Mike’s lips to press a kiss to the tip of his nose, then his cheek, his chin, the corner of his mouth, his eyebrow. Mike huffs out a breathy, delighted laugh, smiling so widely his nose scrunches up, and it lifts a weight deep in Will’s chest, like the thawing of a deep-rooted, ancient cold. It’s the first warm days of spring, bright sunrays cutting through ice, melting snow, carrying away the bitter chill on a gentle breeze. It’s new leaves unfurling on bare oak branches, the tentative rise of sprouting flora pushing up through damp soil. It’s delicate new-spring-warmth and vitality and wholeness, like Mike has, impossibly, taken the broken pieces that encapsulate Will Byers and welded them all back together.
I love you. Will cradles Mike’s face with one hand, feels the steady beat of his heart with the other, and reconnects their lips. I love you so fucking much.
And Will can hardly fathom the venomous words of his father and the bullies, the whispers in the hallways, the stares, because how can everyone say this is bad—say this is horrible and shameful and wrong—when it’s the most right Will has ever felt?
The sudden, shrill beeping of his watch shatters the little bubble of peace between them and drags Will’s attention back to the real world so sharply it’s almost painful. He jerks back, fumbles to turn off the alarm he’d completely forgotten about, because the sound feels horrifically loud in the relative silence of the house, and he absolutely does not need to wake his brother up.
“Jesus, that scared me,” Mike breathes, huffing out a tiny laugh. He hesitates, one hand still curled at the back of Will’s neck, and after a moment of consideration, he tugs him in for one last kiss. He plants his lips on Will’s cheek, so sloppy and wet Will shoves him away, grinning.
“God, you’re the worst,” Will laughs, swiping at his cheek with the back of his hand. His smile softens. “Happy birthday, Mike. Here, I’ve got . . .”
He scoots across the bed, twists away from Mike to reach for the items lying on his nightstand, wrapped messily in old newspaper and scotch tape. Two gifts. Will holds them for a moment, takes a steadying breath.
“Here,” he says again, offering them out.
Mike blinks once, twice, then sits up, ramrod straight, and leaps off the bed. “Oh, shit! Hang on.”
He lunges for his bag at the foot of the bed, drags it up into his lap as he flops back down next to Will, so close now that their thighs press flush together.
“I have to give you yours first,” Mike says. His expression twists into something pained and downcast, almost somber.
The sudden change has Will reeling. “I— what?”
“Your birthday.”
Oh. That.
“It was when I flew into Lenora for spring break, and I didn’t even realize until everything else was going on and it didn’t seem like a good time to bring it up. I get it, though. Why you didn’t say anything.” Mike sighs, runs a hand through his hair. “I just— I totally forgot, and, and that day at the roller rink I was being a total ass, and selfish and . . . so I just figured . . .”
He trails off, then clears his throat, sitting up a little straighter. “So, I got you some stuff. Well, sort of. They’re not really gifts, exactly. They— you’ll see.”
This boy. “Mike, you didn’t have to—”
“Shut up and hold out your hands. Oh, and close your eyes.”
Will quirks an eyebrow, already bringing his hands out and cupping them together. “Close my eyes?” he parrots, and Mike makes a huffing sound of impatience, reaching out to take Will’s face in both hands and gently pressing his eyelids shut with his thumbs.
“Yes,” he says, firmly, hands drawing back. There’s a sound of a backpack zipper, some shuffling. Will stiffens when he feels soft fabric drape across his hands.
“Okay, open,” Mike says, voice pressing and eager.
Will does, blinks down at the creased, clumsily folded shirt, all black and white fabric. He grabs it by the shoulders, holds it up so it unfolds with gravity. The screen-print words “HELLFIRE CLUB” stare back at him, along with the logo of a red demon head surrounded by D&D weapons and dice.
It’s exactly like the shirt Mike let him borrow, back when he was still staying with the Wheelers a few weeks ago.
“It’s for Hellfire,” Mike blurts, needlessly. He’s biting the corner of his thumbnail, knee bouncing erratically. “With all the murders and the panic about Hellfire being a cult, the school banned the club, like, officially, which is so stupid, but Eddie agreed to keep running it outside of school for us and Gareth and Jeff and Grant. They were members, too, um, they’re part of Eddie’s band.”
Mike shakes his head, catches himself getting sidetracked. “Anyway, Dustin and Lucas and Eddie and I, we were talking and, you know, obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want, but it would be really awesome if you joined.”
“Mike,” Will says, lowering the shirt to lay it beside him on the bedspread.
Mike pulls his hand away from his mouth, twists his fingers together in his lap. “. . . Yeah?”
“Of course I want to join, you doofus,” Will grins, shoving Mike’s shoulder when his brows furrow in offense. His leg stops its nervous bouncing though, so Will counts it as a win.
“But—” Will starts, then pauses. Tentative. “We’ll still do separate campaigns, too, right? Just the original Party?” Like we used to?
“Yeah,” Mike says quickly. “Yeah, man, of course.”
A relieved breath whooshes from Will’s lungs. “Cool,” he says, smiling, a bit awkward.
“Cool,” Mike echoes. “Here, I’ve got two other things. They’re sort of tangentially related, but I don’t want to spoil anything, so shut your eyes.”
Will laughs and obliges. The next two gifts turn out to be a full set of dice, a cobalt colored, high quality resin, and a very familiar D&D mini.
“Will the Wise,” Will murmurs, turning the figure between his fingers. He hasn’t seen it since their Prince of Demons campaign three years ago, with the Demogorgon. The night he went missing. After that, when they’d played, Will was always stuck with an unpainted, replacement wizard miniature because they’d never been able to find his original one.
“Yeah. I was cleaning out the basement a few months ago and I found it stuck beneath the washer, if you can believe that.” Mike laughs, but it’s tight at the edges. He clears his throat, looks down. “So, you know, I cleaned off all the cobwebs and gave it a new layer of paint, and yeah. Will the Wise is back in action.”
“Oh, wow,” Will breathes, and he barks a watery laugh, looking up with a bashful smile. “Well, now my presents seem kind of dumb by comparison.”
Mike makes this grumbly, displeased sound. “That’s not even a fair comparison, though,” he argues. “The shirt was from all of us, the dice were my spare set, and the mini used to be yours. Those are hardly presents.”
Will chooses not to voice his disagreement, instead scooping Mike’s gifts off the bed and handing them over.
“Here,” he says. Then, “Um. Just, do the— the smaller one last.”
He fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt as Mike carefully tears through the newspaper wrapping of the larger gift, revealing the worn cover of a thick paperback—The Bachman Books by Stephen King. As Mike flips it over, fingers tracing the spine, Will takes it upon himself to explain.
“Jonathan and El and I went to that old bookstore off Cornwallis, and you were talking about getting more into horror stuff, and, well, this came out last fall, but it’s this collection of short stories that Stephen King wrote under the pseudonym ‘Richard Bachman.’ It made The New York Times Best Seller List, so, I figured it must be pretty good.”
Mike shakes his head, and for a terrible second, Will’s stomach drops, but then he hears the soft laughter, sees the disbelieving smile.
“Dude, I swear you’re in my head or something.” He taps the cover of the book. “I talked Lucas into reading The Talisman, like, right before all the Vecna shit went down. And there’s this other book by King I was meaning to tell you about that I read a few months ago. It’s called The Gunslinger, and it’s like . . . it’s like Western fiction and sci-fi and fantasy and horror all rolled into one. It’s crazy, Will, you’d love it.”
Mike looks up at him, eyes bright, grin almost blinding.
“I— I mean— yeah,” Will says lamely, flushing. “I’d love to read it.”
“I’ll bring it next time I come over,” Mike says firmly, flipping through the paperback of short stories with gentle, nimble fingers. “I bet these will be great. Have you read any of them?”
“Nah,” Will says, then smiles, sly. “I figured you could just tell me about them instead. Give me the full, comprehensive Mike Wheeler review.”
It’s something Mike used to do constantly. Whether it was movies or comics or novels, Mike did this thing where he’d gush about the ones he really liked to Will, ramble about them until he ran out of words (which took days sometimes). And Will always listened.
Mike hasn’t done that since . . . since they went and saw Day of the Dead in theaters last summer.
Mike shoves his arm. “Oh, shut up. You know you love it.”
Which. Yeah.
Will shrugs, and Mike smirks, because that’s really all the answer he needs. He sets the book aside, reaches for the last gift.
Will presses his lips together, fingers digging into his knee. He wants to say something. Give a preemptive explanation, maybe, just in case, but he forces himself to keep his mouth shut as Mike tears through the wrapping and reveals the mixtape. Mike hums, an inquisitive little noise, and then flips it over, revealing the label and Will’s scrawled handwriting.
Crazy Together, the tape reads, and in the corner of the label there’s a small doodle of a wizard staff crossing in front of a shield.
Looking at it now, Will cringes at his past-self’s boldness. Jesus. What had he been thinking?
Mike stares at it, eyebrows raised so high they’re hidden by his bangs, mouth softly parted.
Will bites his lip, hard. Pathetic. Idiot.
“Sorry,” he rushes out, wincing at the way his voice cuts through the silence that has settled. “I— you— you don’t have to listen to it if you don’t want to. I know you don’t really listen to music a ton, besides what’s on the radio, but with the guitar, I just thought— I just thought . . .”
Mike blinks up at him, and his brows pinch together, lips twitching. “What are you talking about, Will? Why wouldn’t I listen to it?”
Will looks down, face burning, and taps his fingers against the hard plaster of his cast. “I mean, you don’t think it’s . . .” too cheesy, too much, too queer— “. . . dumb?”
“Hey,” Mike says, and he huffs when Will’s gaze stays resolutely trained on his cast. There’s shuffling as Mike carefully sets the cassette down and reaches out to take Will face in his hands. His hands are firm, coaxing Will’s head up to meet his gaze. “Will.”
Will braces himself and looks up. Mike’s eyes are soft, earnest.
“I’m going to listen to it. I’m going to listen to it, because it’s probably the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever gotten.” He pauses, reconsiders, tone losing that serious edge. “Well. Second. I don’t think anything will ever top that painting, to be honest.”
Mingled relief and embarrassment flood him. Will flushes and looks away, throat bobbing. “Uh, yeah. Cool.”
‘Cool?’ Stop acting so weird and try to be normal for a change, Jesus. Is every conversation we have from now on going to be this awkward?
He certainly hopes not. He’s not even sure where the awkwardness is stemming from, just that it has crept at the edges of almost all of their interactions since the Vecna stuff has calmed down. Maybe Will was wrong. Maybe he and Mike will never quite get back to the easy camaraderie they used to have.
A pang of something like grief twists in his chest at the thought. The deep, agonizing knowledge that his feelings towards Mike, reciprocated or not, might have been the start to a teetering backslide, one that Will isn’t sure if he can stop.
A finger digs into his side, just below his ribs, and Will jerks away, a startled yelp slipping past the tightness of his throat. He blinks up at Mike, sees the way his brows twitch downward, despite the way his lips quirk up in a half-smile of amusement. Mike’s eyebrows have always been one of the most expressive parts of him. They move seemingly on their own jurisdiction, quirking and furrowing and raising in quick little micro-expressions that Will has become a master of reading after all these years.
“You’re thinking too much. Stop it,” Mike says, jabbing his fingers back into Will’s side. Will squeaks, cuts off the laugh that threatens to bubble up, and reaches for Mike’s hand to swat at it. Mike pulls his hand just out of reach, but it hovers nearby, fingers splayed, a threat.
“Mike,” Will warns, fighting a creeping smile. His hands come up defensively. “Don’t. I’m serious.”
“Don’t what?” Mike says, a picture of innocence. “Oh, you mean this?”
That’s all the warning Will gets before Mike lunges forward, fingers pressing into the divots of his ribcage and the soft skin of his belly, and Will flails, tries to scramble away, but Mike is insistent, and Will’s leg doesn’t let him get far.
“Mike! Stop— stop, we’re gonna wake Jonathan up— Mike!” Will gasps between suppressed, breathless giggles. Mike might be all lanky and wiry muscle, but Will is broader, heavier. Not by much, but it’s enough that, when he manages to snag Mike’s wrists, he grapples for the upper hand and finds himself winning as he squares his shoulders and forces Mike’s hands back, even as Mike locks his arms and strains and pushes his body weight into it.
“Do you yield?” Will asks, and Mike frowns at the realization of their apparent stalemate. Mike pushes for a moment longer, but upon making no progress, he gives up with a low huff, yanking his arms back. Will relinquishes his grip, and he doesn’t even try to hide the self-satisfied little smile.
“That’s so not even fair,” Mike protests, properly sulking now. Will pushes himself up to rest his back against the headboard, and Mike crawls up to join him, presses their shoulders together even though he’s wearing this scowl of dramatized, exaggerated grumpiness.
“How was that not fair?” Will says. “You’re the one who started it.”
Mike’s eyes narrow. “Did you, like, work out in California or something?”
Will chokes on a laugh, lets out an embarrassing snort when Mike elbows him in the side. “No, I— ow! No, dude, I didn’t work out.”
“But you’re all, like,” Mike waves a hand over Will’s form, “like, buff and shit. Plus, you’re barely even shorter than me anymore, and your voice is, like, four octaves deeper! You’re telling me that just happened?”
“I mean, I guess,” Will starts, and he pokes Mike’s cheek with a pointed finger. “You’ve got no room to talk, though. Have you seen your face lately? Your cheekbones and jawline could cut glass, I’m pretty sure.”
Mike grumbles, and the conversation drops off, a bit steep, but the silence that falls isn’t uncomfortable. It’s light and warm, enough that Will’s eyes grow a little heavy with it, and he knows that Mike has to go home soon so he can get some sleep, but he doesn’t really want him to go, so he pulls Mike’s hand up onto his thigh, looks down at his painted nails.
“I like the black,” Will murmurs, playing with his fingers. “It suits you.”
“Does it?” Mike asks, and he genuinely sounds surprised, looking down and flexing his hand. His voice goes grumbly, a little quiet. “I really have to take it off, though, before school tomorrow.”
“I know,” Will sighs, and he does. “I think there’s nail polish remover in the bathroom.”
He knows there is. He’d seen it when he’d gotten out the first aid kit for El.
He shifts, lowers his legs over the side of the bed and takes up his crutches.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” he says, standing.
“You gonna be able to carry all that, with the crutches?” Mike asks, frowning.
“I’ll manage,” Will says, firm. He slips out of his room without another word, makes quick, quiet work of grabbing the bottle of remover and bag of cotton balls and bringing them back to his bedroom, closing the door behind him softly. He holds up his wares, then tosses them, one at a time, towards the bed. His throw for the cotton balls is short, and Mike fumbles to catch them. He misses, by a significant margin, and the lightweight bag hits the floor quietly.
Will snorts, props his crutches against his dresser, and leans over to scoop up the bag and drop it in front of Mike’s folded legs.
“And I thought I was athletically challenged,” Will says, reclaiming his spot next to Mike against the headboard, shoving his pillow behind the small of his back.
Mike shoots him a withering look. “Hey, you can’t go insulting me now just because you’ve got muscles and I don’t. That’s so not cool.”
Will rolls his eyes, picks up the bottle of nail polish remover, and uncaps it. The scent is strong, chemical. “I was insulting your lack of hand-eye coordination, Mike.”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing Lucas is the one who joined the basketball team and not me,” Mike says. Will snorts. He leans over to set the plastic lid on his nightstand and takes a cotton ball between his fingers to press it to the opening of the bottle. He tips it, gets half of the cotton ball appropriately soaked, and sets the bottle aside. Without preamble, he takes Mike’s right hand and starts rubbing away the black polish.
“So, how’s the move been?” Mike asks, after a beat of silence. He relaxes, settles in place while Will works. Mike continues, “I know your mom’s packing up the rest of your guys’ stuff in Lenora.”
“Yeah, Jonathan was gonna go with her to help, but Mom made him stay because she doesn’t want me and El here alone.” Will blows out a sharp breath. “Which is stupid. It would’ve only been, like, three days. I kept myself alive in the Upside Down for twice that long. And it’s not like Jonathan’s been here much anyway. He’s always with Nancy or in town asking around about jobs.”
Will thinks about the other day, El cutting her hand while they were getting dinner ready. It’s not like Jonathan was around. Will handled it (albeit a little poorly).
He tosses the used cotton ball towards the trashcan, misses, and wets a new one, biting the inside of his cheek as he listens to Mike ramble, none the wiser.
“Yeah, and El’s got literal superpowers. If some asshole tried to break in, she’d have it covered. She’d just, like, break their arms or something.” Mike gasps a little, hand jerking in Will’s grasp. He blinks at Will, a little wide-eyed. “Dude. Okay, hypothetically—do you think if someone shot a gun, she could stop the bullet mid-air?”
Will considers. “I don’t know. Bullets are crazy fast. Can she move stuff she can’t see?”
“I mean, she got that— that thing out of her leg back at Starcourt last summer, right?” Mike proposes. “Does that count?”
“Maybe,” Will says, thoughtful. “I mean, I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if she could stop a bullet. She’s done crazier stuff. She did take down that helicopter.”
“Shit, you’re right.” Mike rubs his face with his free hand. “She’s so powerful now, it’s insane.”
Will hums something of an agreement, releasing Mike’s right hand, nails now clean, and reaches for his left. Mike gives his hand over willingly, but as Will starts gently scrubbing at his pinky nail, his skin prickles because Mike is staring at him, waiting for Will to look up. Will keeps his head tipped down, focusing on his task, because he has a feeling he knows where this conversation is about to go.
“Since we’re talking about powers, you know . . .” Mike prompts, and at Will’s silence, he sighs and continues. “Any changes? Have you tried them out again recently?”
Will thinks about bloody noses and static shocks and flickering lights. “I’m not like El,” he says, which is true, but also not. “Any . . . any powers I had could’ve just been spillover from Henry.”
That had been his working theory, before the first incident with the lights last week.
Mike makes a quizzical sound. “What do you mean?”
Will’s shoulders relax a little. This, he can talk about without tiptoeing around the subject with vague words and omissions. “So, Eleven opened the first gate to the Upside Down and sent Henry into it.”
“Sure,” Mike says, nodding.
“Right. And Henry took control of the Mind Flayer and everything else in the Upside Down. He commanded the hive mind.” Will wets another cotton ball, clearing his throat. “Which means, when— when the Mind Flayer got me, and I was the host—”
“That was all him,” Mike realizes. “Holy shit, I didn’t even think about that.”
“Yeah.” Will swallows. “And then, afterwards, I had the True Sight. I was still linked to the Upside Down. To the hive mind. And to Henry.”
Mike jolts, shoots upright as he connects the dots. “Wait. You’re saying . . . when you went into my mind and— and saved me and all that, that was you . . . what? Leeching off of Vecna’s powers?”
“We were connected. It makes sense,” Will shrugs. “And then, at the hospital, Dustin tried to get me to levitate that Sharpie and I couldn’t. I don’t think it’s because I drained my powers. It’s because the whole ‘moving stuff with my mind’ thing was never really mine to begin with.”
But Henry’s gone. Dead. Has been for weeks now. The lights, the electrical surges—that’s all Will. But then he thinks about the way he’d accidentally slipped into Mike’s head. The black void. He’d thought that had stemmed from Henry too, but thinking on it now, he’s not so sure.
Henry mentioned something about unlocking my hidden potential, whatever that means. That I’m special, and that’s why he chose me specifically. Will chews his lip. Maybe . . . maybe this is part of that. Maybe that locked door at the back of his mind is slowly creeping open.
He resolves to bring it up to El. Maybe she’ll know, or at least help him test it out to see. After all, if anyone could give him some pointers on this stuff, it’s Eleven.
“Earth to Will.”
Will blinks, looks over to meet Mike’s concerned frown.
“You spaced out a little bit there,” Mike says, and his eyes ask, Are you okay?
Will nods, tears his gaze away to resume his task of stripping the polish from Mike’s nails. He starts working at his thumb, head a little foggy from the late hour and the chemical fumes of the nail polish remover.
“Just thinking,” he murmurs.
“About?” Mike asks.
Will shrugs a shoulder, back stiff. “Just stuff.”
Mike, blessedly, doesn’t push the issue. He switches topics to ramble on about how his parents have been hounding him about getting a haircut, and Will finishes buffing the black polish off Mike’s nails, throwing the last used cotton ball towards the trash, and capping the bottle. He sits back to listen.
“—and Mom said she doesn’t want the neighbors to think they’re raising a delinquent as a son. And Dad keeps saying I need to grow up. That no one will ever hire me if I don’t ‘get my act together,’” he rumbles, fingers coming up and making air quotes. He keeps his tone relatively light, but his shoulders are hunched, and there’s a certain tightness in his face that gives away how much the whole thing really bothers him.
“It’s hair,” Mike says, “it’s just hair. I don’t know why they’re making such a big deal out of it. And, like, it’s not like I’m even looking for a job yet. Which is another thing my dad won’t get off my case about. I swear, he was never like this with Nancy.”
“Nancy’s a girl,” Will points out, as much as he hates to seem like he’s taking Ted Wheeler’s side. “Your dad’s always been the type to really care about that sort of stuff. You know, the idea of the man being the responsible head of the household and everything.”
It was something Mike’s father and Will’s had agreed about. Lonnie might’ve been a bit more . . . blunt in his methods of parenting, but Will thinks his general dislike towards Ted Wheeler is justifiable regardless.
“It’s forced conformity, is what it is. It’s ridiculous. And it’s not fair,” Mike mutters, and he’s absolutely right, but Will knows agreeing with him won’t exactly help solve the problem.
“Well, do you want to keep growing your hair out?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. He remembers how surprised he’d been, seeing Mike at the airport in Lenora. If not for the goofy smile and absurd outfit, Will might not have recognized him. Karen used to drag Mike kicking and screaming to the hairdresser on Main every three months like clockwork. Will wonders what prompted Mike to finally put his foot down.
At this length, Mike’s hair doesn’t lie as precise and meticulous as it used to. It’s got waves. The ends curl and flip, unruly, unpredictable. It frames his face well, ink-spill black that accents pale, high cheekbones and soft-sharp angles, makes him look older. It looks good.
Mike hesitates, shoots Will an anxious glance, fingers coming up to smooth his hair down self-consciously. “You don’t think that’s dumb, do you?”
“Of course not,” Will hastens. “I like it. It works really well with the whole ‘rebellious’ thing you’ve got going on.” Will waves a hand towards the trashcan, the scattered cotton balls on the floor where he’d missed. “The black nails really pulled the whole thing together. Now you just need a leather jacket and some rings or something.”
“What, so I’m a carbon-copy of Eddie?” Mike says, and he laughs, like the notion is ridiculous, but there’s an edge to it, something tight, and that answers Will earlier question about what led Mike to growing out his hair in the first place. Will hasn’t talked to Eddie Munson much, and only ever in large group settings, but Dustin apparently isn’t the only one who latched onto him as a role model.
“No thank you,” Mike is saying, insistent. “Eddie just got cleared of murder charges. Most of the town hates him. My parents would, like, probably disown me if I started acting like him.”
“Okay,” Will nods, an easy agreement. He lets it go, and the tense set of Mike’s jaw loosens, eyes losing that strained brightness.
“Okay,” Mike says on an exhale. He shuffles, brings his wrist up to peer at his watch, and groans. “Shit. It’s past one.”
Will winces in sympathy. “You should probably go soon.”
Mike grumbles, presses himself against Will’s side. He doesn’t want to leave any more than Will wants him to.
Will sighs. Wonders when he became the responsible one.
“Come on,” he cajoles, squeezing his arm. “You gotta get some sleep, Mike, or you’re gonna fall asleep in class again.”
“That was one time,” Mike huffs, but he does pull himself up, shooting Will dark little glares as he shuffles around the bed and kneels to jams his converse onto his feet. Will rolls his eyes, smiling as he tucks the book and cassette into the large pocket of Mike’s backpack.
Mike pushes himself upright, knees popping, and takes the bag when Will offers it out to him, slinging the bag over his shoulders.
“Stop pouting,” Will says, dragging his crutches over and tucking them under his arms. “God, you’re so dramatic.”
Mike gasps, frown deepening into this comical expression of exaggerated hurt. He lays his palm over his heart and staggers back like he’s been stabbed, puts on an overly thick posh accent. “A-ah! How your words wound me, cleric! An honorable paladin like myself would never stoop to such foolish theatrics.”
Will can’t help the chortle that burbles up from deep in his chest, delighted. He mimics Mike’s accent, lowers his voice into a regretful lilt. “Apologies, kind sir. How rude of me to imply something so untoward.”
Mike beams. He steps forward to yank Will into an embrace, so sudden Will squeaks, and nearly loses his balance. Mike keeps him upright, though, arms flung around his neck, and Will leans into him as much as he can to make up for the fact that he can’t properly hug back, lest he lose his grip on his crutches.
“Thanks for letting me come over,” Mike mumbles against his hair.
“Of course,” Will says, soft. “Happy birthday, Mike.”
Will sees him back out the window five minutes later, stifling a laugh when Mike’s foot catches on the trim and he nearly eats dirt. Mike shoots him a scowl, flips him off, but he’s back to smiling by the time he’s swinging a leg over his bike and kicking off.
Will watches him go, feeling every bit like the lovestruck teenage boy that he is, and he thinks being not-normal is worth it sometimes, because he gets to have this.
(Jonathan drops El and Will off at the Hawk at 3:15 the following afternoon, and they have to take shitty front-row seats, courtesy of Will’s stupid leg, and Will gets stuck between Mike and Dustin. Will’s not the least bit surprised when Mike falls asleep forty-five minutes in, head lolling onto Will’s shoulder. By the time he wakes up, the credits are rolling, people are filing out of the theater, and Mike’s hair is speckled with popcorn, a consequence of sitting next to Max. When Mike shakes his head like a wet dog and the popcorn kernels go flying, Max and El lean into each other, barely keeping themselves upright, tears in their eyes from laughing so hard.)