Chapter Text
Denver, Colorado. August, 1991.
The sun is starting to set over the Rocky Mountains when Will sees Lucas Sinclair for the first time since leaving Hawkins, jogging towards him in the distance.
It’s not the first time he’s run into someone he knows from his past. The world is smaller than people think, and Denver is even smaller—especially for kids closer to the West than from it. The past few times, he’d just given the person a wave, or made polite small talk. Once, he’d even promised to grab lunch with a girl he had known in Lenora, giving her his phone number on the back of a napkin he had stolen from a diner near the university. She had never called, and he had never seen her again, but he hadn’t expected to, anyway. He wasn’t someone that people called. Especially not to catch up about the “good old days.”
The people he’s run into have never been one of his best friends, though. A best friend who hasn’t called in over a year, and who he hasn’t called either. A best friend he thought was halfway across the country, sheltered away from Will’s guilt.
Will’s first instinct is to duck for cover, but the street is empty, and all the trees are spindly ashes that were just recently planted by the city to promote “wellbeing,” or something like that. Standing there, hair unwashed, a coffee cup in his hand and bags under his eyes, Will just has to hope and pray to a gracious, loving God he doesn’t believe in that Lucas doesn’t see him.
Of course, he’s not that lucky. He’s never been one to be lucky.
“Will?”
Lucas’ voice is deeper than the last time he saw him. Breathless, too, from his run—a long one, if the sweat making a vee down the front of his t-shirt is anything to go by. Will runs a nervous hand through his hair, making it stick up every which way, a habit he picked up when he finally got his mom to set down the damn bowl and his hair actually had texture for the first time in his life.
“Hey, Lucas.”
Lucas slows to a halt right in front of Will, sloughing his headphones off in one smooth motion and settling them around his neck. His eyebrows are furrowed, confused, the tip of his tongue worrying the back of his teeth, a tic Will recognizes from when they were younger.
“What are you doing here?” Lucas asks him.
“I—I live here.”
“Here? In Denver?”
“Yep.” The word sounds too casual. Stupid.
“Since when?”
“Since—since a while. I go to school here.”
“Oh,” Lucas says, frowning. “I didn’t know that.”
You don’t know a lot of things, Will thinks. He pushes that down. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” Lucas says, the echo of a smile on the corner of his lips.
“I thought you were in Indianapolis?”
“I was. I transferred. DU. I thought you were in New York?”
“Oh,” Will says, slightly startled. “I—me too. I mean, I took a year. I was going to go to NYU, with Jonathan, but I—“
Needed something new, Will thinks, needed something that was mine.
“I wanted to see what it was like, out here,” Will finishes lamely. “I’m at DU, too.”
Lucas looks surprised at that and slightly…Will can’t place the emotion. Angry, maybe. Frustrated, most likely. He’s not sure. He’s forgotten how to read Lucas, after all this time.
“Huh. Small world.” Lucas smiles, but it looks forced. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around, then. We can get some lunch, catch up.”
“Sure,” Will says, matching Lucas’ smile. Another lunch that will never come. Will’s getting too good at arranging these ghost reunions.
There’s an awkward pause, then Lucas, hesitatingly, reaches out and pats Will on the shoulder, and Will has to repress a shiver. It’s been a long time since he’s been touched.
“Well, uh—see you.” Lucas says, patting him again, before he pulls his hand back, seemingly unknowing what to do with it.
Will nods. “Yep. See you.”
Lucas nods again, then puts his headphones back on and runs away. Will pretends that he doesn’t watch him go.
It’s not like Will had never heard from Lucas—or any of his friends—once they had all gone their separate ways. The summer before they had all gone to college—or in Will’s case, started his gap year in New York—they hung out practically everyday, catching up on all the shit they hadn’t been able to do for most of high school. It felt different, with El gone, but they managed. The grief had settled into a harsh blanket, something they all wore and hid beneath their clothes. Will pretended, sometimes, that she was there with them, watching, smiling along as they played their D&D, and rode their bikes down the hill, or haunted the Squawk and bugged Steve and Robin. It made him feel less guilty.
Hopper and his mom sold the house shortly after graduation, moving to their cabin in Montauk, but Will had stayed behind, once again claiming Mike’s basement like he had for nearly two years while they had waited for Vecna to return and the military to leave. He had clung on to that summer so desperately, never wanting it to end, knowing that come September nothing would ever be the same again. He was old enough to know that, no matter how many promises they made to keep in touch, to meet up in each others’ cities, to remain a Party.
Dustin had gone to Texas. Max had gone to Seattle, while Lucas had gone to Indianapolis on a basketball scholarship. Mike and Will had ferried off to New York, a dorm key in Mike’s hand and a spare key to Jonathan’s apartment in Will’s. They kept up the calls and letters for a while, but they all faded, one by one. First Dustin. Then Max. Then Lucas. Then Mike.
He wonders, sometimes, if any of them ever believed any of their promises. Something tells him they didn’t.
Even before the semester properly starts, Will knows it’s going to be a difficult one.
His freshman year had been hell. Will had learnt very quickly that art students could be mean—really mean. He spent more time ripping out pages in his sketchbook than he did actually drawing in it. Not to mention he had had to try and pass Gen Chem (by the skin of his teeth).
Contrary to popular belief—otherwise known as his mom and Mike’s mom—Will had never been good at school. He had never really liked it, to begin with—school was the place where kids called him fairy, and fag, and Zombie Boy, where he was trapped for eight hours with people who hated everything about him, from his hand-me-down clothes to the way he walked. Plus, he didn’t really care about a lot of the stuff being taught. He doodled around equations instead of solving them, and his love for engineering and AV stuff had faded once he began to associate it with the Upside Down. He liked to read, but it was hard to care about the things that his English teachers wanted him to care about. Why should he write an essay about the meaning of Piggy’s glasses when Simon was dead, and the boys had killed him? What was the point when he, too, had once been a dead, quiet, gentle little boy, and no plot had tried to save him?
He spent most of his senior year of high school barely scraping by, drawing whenever he could and hanging out with Mike whenever he couldn’t. When he had graduated it had been a relief, knowing that he was leaving behind the walls that had felt torturous for so long. That he had survived them, when at one point he thought he never would.
He knew he had to go back to school. He knew that’s where his future needed him to go. He didn’t want to be trapped in a small town like his mom or even his dad, no way out and no options. He wanted options. But why those options had to include General Chemistry, Will had no freaking idea.
The first day of classes comes up on him quickly. Summer in Denver was nothing like it was in Hawkins, and he had found himself lost in it, unaware that time was passing. There was always noise, all around him—not New York noise, but a softer, gentler noise. The constant thrum of the cicadas, or the distant blare of train horns from Union Station across town, or the coo of the morning dove in the early hours, beating his alarm. His shifts at the small movie theatre near campus ran deep into the night, and when he left he walked through the sodium-lit streets, never completely in the dark, and listened to the roar of the cars on the nearby highway and the barely-there, forbidden notes emanating from the music building in its brick and marble glory. It was comforting, the noise. It made him feel less alone.
He had expected difficulty, moving to Denver. Expected more moments trapped in that old van, fighting their way cross country. More visions of Mike’s dumb blue shirt with the triangle over the heart and the prickles on the back of his neck. He had been scared for the winter, for the cold, refusing to leave his dorm when the first snow hit out of fear that he would shut down, that the trees would fade into one another faster than he would be able to control it. But the cold here was different. The elevation made it different, so high into the air, a city a mile in the sky. The cold in Hawkins and New York was damp, invasive, everlasting—no number of sweaters or blankets could rid him of it. But here, in the valley between the mountains and the plains, the cold never hit his bones. Will felt cold, of course, but it never went any deeper than his skin. The lack of air and humidity made his face dry and his hair flat, but it protected him, in a small way. He could layer his clothes and the movement of his body would heat him up; he could dive under his covers and feel like he had a temperature in less than an hour. The cold remained, but it was a softer cold. Everything about Denver was softer. And despite the bad days remaining, Will is grateful for that softness. Grateful for the mountains constantly at his side, reminding him of where he is and, more importantly, where he no longer is, where he had left.
Will makes his way through his first day of classes as easily as he can. He rides his bike from his studio apartment down University Boulevard, gesturing to wayward cars in apology as he hugs the shoulder. His history class is boring, and he tries not to fall asleep, barely successful. He walks his bike through the throngs of students, curly-haired and denim clad, and meets with a friend from his art major for a quick lunch at the café on campus. Then he goes to his painting class. He hasn’t picked up a paintbrush since New York. He’s grateful that the professor only runs through the syllabus, and sends a silent thank you to whoever decided that they wouldn’t be painting for almost two months, instead starting with color theory and canvas stretching. He can do color theory. He loves color theory.
Will’s last class of the day is his elementary French class. The university requires at least two semesters of a language, and while Will knows that taking Spanish would be more useful, given that half the city speaks Spanish, there’s something about French that draws him in. Maybe it was just because he had had to take Spanish in high school, and he wants something different. Maybe it’s because French felt like something far away. He doesn’t know, but he had chosen it, and now he is stuck with it for two semesters.
Maybe he could convince his mom to take him to Montréal, next summer. Jonathan would, if she wouldn’t. They could walk around the city, drink in bars, pop in and out of places on St. Catherine—have a good time.
He misses Jonathan. He would call him, tonight. It had only been a few days, but he never minded. He always picked up the phone for Will.
For some reason or another, his class is in the Theology building. Lack of classrooms, most likely, or a scheduling issue. It isn’t Will’s first time in the Theology building—he had explored as much of the campus as he could, when he first arrived—but he gets lost regardless, going up about four different stairwells before he finds his classroom, tucked into the back of a corridor. The sun is starting to drop lower in the sky, and the light through the slanted window above makes the door in front of him burn a blazing, dazzling red.
Like a door to Hell, his mind supplies him.
Shut up, he tells himself, and opens the door.
It’s a small classroom, only a handful of desks facing a green chalkboard. He’s about five minutes early, but seems to be the last to arrive—all that time in the stairwells has left only a few seats available to him. There’s one at the very front of the class, which Will immediately rules out, and one between two girls who are currently looking him up and down, smiling. Will fiddles with his earring and looks away, glancing to the last available desk, at the very back.
Right next to Lucas.
Hawkins, Indiana. Sometime in the 80s.
“Dude, why would you want to learn French? French is for girls.”
“Shut up, Mike,” Lucas says, throwing a fry at him. Mike dodges it, and it glances off the red vinyl limply before dropping to the seat next to Will. He gently shoves it to the floor, watching a trail of grease follow it before looking up again at his friends, who are still all looking at Lucas.
“I agree with Mike, Lucas,” Dustin says, through a mouthful of burger.
“Dude, chew your food,” Lucas says, disgusted. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Dustin takes his time chewing, then swallows loudly. Lucas makes a face and mimes gagging behind his hand.
“I said, I agree with Mike. French is all, you know—“ Dustin makes a gesture with his hand, limp and flowing, and says, with a horrible accent— “Voolay voo coochay aveck moi, and all that.”
Will rolls his eyes, as does Lucas, while Mike laughs.
“You suck at accents,” Lucas tells him, shoving his arm. “Real French sounds way better than that.”
“How would you know what real French sounds like?”
“My grandmother was from the Côte d’Ivoire, dumbass. She spoke French when I was little. I want to—I don’t know. Continue it for her, I guess.”
It’s silent, after that, then Mike just scoffs. It doesn’t sound like he means it, though.
“Yeah, well,” he says, “I’m gonna learn Sindarin.”
“How the hell is Sindarin gonna be useful, Michael?” Dustin asks him, pointing a fry at his face.
“It’s useful!” Mike says back, pouting.
“Name one time being able to speak Sindarin would help you with any job prospect, ever.”
While Dustin and Mike argue back and forth about the benefits of different Elvish languages in the modern job market, Will leans across the table towards Lucas, who is looking at his burger, disinterested.
“I think French is cool,” Will tells him. Lucas looks up at him, and Will smiles. “When you learn it, you should teach me some.”
Lucas smiles. It’s grateful. “Thanks, Will.”
“Of course,” Will says. He glances at Mike, then back at Lucas, and lowers his voice. “Don’t listen to Mike. He’s an idiot.”
“Ha. Tell me about it,” Lucas says, scoffing. He picks up his burger and turns back towards the argument, which has somehow devolved into something about hobbits, and takes a big bite.
“Will?”
Will shakes his head. He instantly becomes aware of Lucas in front of him, saying his name. By his tone, it seems like it isn’t the first time.
“Um,” Will says, slightly dazed. Snap out of it, Byers. “Um, can I sit here?”
Lucas stares at him for a long moment, brown eyes boring through Will. He feels himself flush and tries to swallow it down, suddenly nervous under Lucas’ gaze.
“Of course,” Lucas says, slowly. His face relaxes. “You don’t have to ask.”
“Thanks,” Will says, swinging his backpack off his shoulder. It makes a sound as it crashes to the floor and he winces, looking around to see if anybody heard. Nobody did. Something Will has learned, since being in college, is that people care a lot less than he thinks they do. About everything. About nothing. They’re all too focused on themselves to worry about him.
He slides into the desk, awkwardly extending his feet out in front of him. He’s grown more comfortable in his body, his looks, himself, over the past couple years, gaining a confidence that makes him proud. But now, sitting next to Lucas in all the memories of who he was and who he has been, he feels like an alien in his own body. He’s forgotten how to be Will. The real Will.
But then Lucas turns to him, teeth gnawing at his lower lip, and says, “So. French?”
Will’s shoulders drop. It’s just Lucas. Lucas has never asked Will to be anything but who he is, ever. Not even when everything started. He let him be lost and tried to find him. He let him be Zombie Boy and protected him. He let him be a Sorcerer and stood by him.
Maybe, Will can just be Will, and Lucas will accept that. And even if he doesn’t—well. Will’s survived a year without him. He can survive another.
“Yep,” Will says, with a small smile. “French.”
“I’m gonna start thinking you’re copying me. First DU, now French?” The joke is awkward, and it shows on Lucas’ face—the way he doesn’t know how to act, how to navigate this situation—but Will doesn’t mind. He just smiles a little wider.
It’s fine. I’m fine.
“I’m planning on joining basketball next,” Will says. “Think I’d make a great point guard.”
That forces a laugh out of Lucas’ throat. “Since when do you know what a point guard is?”
“Hop’s been teaching me all sorts of stuff,” Will says, crossing his arms. He leans back in his chair. “Basketball, football…we even watched the Iowa 500 together.”
“You mean…the Indy 500?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Dude,” Lucas says, shaking his head and smiling. It’s a real smile. “How are you from Indiana and you don’t know what the Indy 500 is?”
“I know what it is. The cars go around in circles.”
“The cars go around in—first of all, it’s an oval. Second of all, that’s a huge simplification.”
“Oval, circle, same thing.”
“That’s like calling a rectangle a square.”
“Since when are you so into math?”
“I’m a math major. I kind of have to be into math.”
Will stares at him, unable to disguise the horror on his face. “You’re—why?”
Lucas raises an eyebrow. “Why what?”
“Why are you a math major? Math is evil. I think it’s out to get me.”
“I was a business major, but that was boring, and everyone was so…ugh. But I liked the numbers part, you know, liked the patterns and stuff. So I’m a math major.” Lucas shrugs, slightly tense. “I don’t know. I like it.”
Will stares at him. “You’re amazing,” he says, then quickly stumbles when Lucas’ head snaps up at him. “I mean—I suck at math. Like, suck at it. I barely passed my Intro to Modern Mathematics class last semester that I was required to take, and it was, like, basic algebra. You’re choosing to do math. That’s incredible. I’m very impressed.”
Lucas flushes crimson. In the low light of the classroom, it makes him seem like he’s glowing. Will’s fingers itch for a paintbrush, and he has to clench his fist to ward the feeling away.
“Thanks,” he says, a slight hum of pride emanating off of him.
“Of course,” Will says.
Lucas opens his mouth to say something else, but then the professor walks in, and the conversation comes to a halt.
Hawkins, Indiana. March, 1989.
“Dude, this is, like, basic math. You just solve for x.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do, Mike?” Will says, shoving his worksheet away and dropping his head into his arms, groaning.
Mike laughs. “You’re such a drama queen.”
Will groans again. “Whoever decided to put letters in math should die,” he mutters, pushing his face further into Mike’s carpet. It smells freshly vacuumed, probably Mrs. Wheeler’s doing. Will inhales a long breath, trying to force enough oxygen into his brain to be able to do these stupid equations.
Mike’s hand traces the back of his shoulder blades, rubbing soothing circles into his flannel. Will lets out a small sigh, turning his head to look at Mike. His hair is short but curly, falling just above his eyes as he looks at Will, a gentle smile covering his face.
“Come on,” Mike says, patting Will’s back. “Finish the worksheet and then you can chose the movie. Whatever you want.”
Will raises an eyebrow. “Whatever I want?”
“I obviously get to veto,” Mike says, instantly backtracking. His hand stays firm against Will’s back. “But, yes. Whatever you want.”
“With your veto,” Will says.
“With my veto,” Mike confirms.
“Ugh. Fine,” Will says, propping himself up on his elbows again. He pulls his worksheet closer and picks up his pencil, scanning the equations for something that he might be able to solve.
“Wait. I have to solve for y now? Are you serious?”
Mike’s laugh vibrates through his fingers, lighting up Will’s shoulders and spreading throughout his whole body, a tectonic plate colliding against his bones and creating a beautiful, beautiful earth.
It’s still light out when the professor dismisses class. Lucas and Will are two of the last to leave, taking their time to pack their bags and letting the throng of their classmates fill the halls before they leave, avoiding the clash of bodies that Will has grown used to, but still despises.
“What are you up to tonight?” Lucas asks Will as they make their way down the stairs and through the front doors. The sky has turned a wonderful watercolor of pinks and oranges, and Will has to catch his breath before he can answer. The sunsets in Denver seem to last forever, miraculous and heavenly.
“Probably just hang out at my apartment,” Will says, shrugging. He’s been reading a book that Jonathan had sent him, something that had come out earlier that year by a guy who was a friend of a friend of a girl Jonathan had worked with on one of his short films. Bret something. Will could never remember his name, despite reading it every time he picked up the book. It’s a good book—weird, but good.
“Got any dinner plans?”
Will thinks of the leftover Chinese takeout he has in his fridge, soggy and probably half-rotten by now. He grimaces inside. “Not really.”
“You want to get something to eat? With me?”
Will stares at him. “With—with you?”
“Yeah, with me.” Lucas’ eyes dart across Will’s face. “Why, something wrong with that?”
“No, not at all, I just—“ Will flushes. “I just thought that, when you said we should, you know, ‘catch up,’ that you were just being nice.”
Lucas frowns, seemingly trying to place what Will’s talking about. Will sees the instant that he does, and his frown deepens.
“When have you ever known me to be nice just to be nice?” Lucas asks.
Will ducks his head, away from Lucas’ gaze. “You’re always nice to me,” he says quietly.
“Well, yeah. That’s because you’re you,” Lucas says. Will doesn’t know what he means by that—-doesn’t know if he wants to know, if the indignation rising in his chest is justified or not—when Lucas continues, “You’re my friend. I’m nice to my friends.”
“I didn’t know we were still friends,” Will says, fidgeting with his backpack. He looks at Lucas—they’re almost the same height, now, and it’s disorienting, in a way, not to be small anymore, not to be weak. Will straightens his back, setting his jaw. “You haven’t called.”
“Neither have you,” Lucas replies. “Phone works both ways, you know.”
Will opens his mouth to argue, then shuts it again. He wants to fight him, but he knows Lucas is right. He hadn’t told anyone that he was leaving New York, and he certainly hadn’t given anyone his new phone number. Even if Lucas had wanted to call, could he have?
Lucas watches him flounder, slightly smug, then says, “Let’s go. I need Pete’s fries like I need oxygen, like, right now.”
Will exhales. “Fine,” he says.
Lucas smiles.
They make their way towards Pete’s Café in a comfortable silence, making intermittent remarks about the weather, or something on campus. Will has never been the most talkative person—some days he’ll ramble on for hours, while other days he’ll barely say two words. It’s one of the many things he’s had to accept about himself, over the past few years. One of the things he’s had to learn aren’t signs of weakness. He likes that Lucas accepts that without hesitation, easily molding into Will’s energy without it being a burden to him. He’s always been so sure of himself, so comfortable in his space and in others’, too. It used to make Will jealous. Now, it’s just comforting, if unfamiliar. Will has to keep biting down the urge to fill the silence, has to remind himself he doesn’t have to do that. Not with a friend.
It’s been a while since he’s had one. A real one, not a college acquaintance. It’s—weird. Will wants to tell Jonathan about it.
Pete’s is barely busy, the awkward time of their French class just missing the early bird special and the upcoming throng of science students leaving their late labs. A waitress guides them to a booth next to a window, and the two of them watch the cars commute down University Boulevard in a mass of red, white, and blue. How patriotic, Will thinks drily, as Lucas thanks the waitress for their water and puts in his order.
As they wait for the food to come out, Lucas is the first to break the silence.
“So,” he says, fiddling with the paper sleeve of his straw, “why Colorado? It doesn’t really seem like your style.”
Will tilts his head. “What do you mean by that, ‘not my style.’”
“I don’t know. I kind of always imagined you out East, you know. Being a big shot artist in SoHo or something.” Lucas twists the paper sleeve tightly, winding it around his finger. “Besides, Mike’s out there, and you two are kind of a package deal, so…yeah. Just didn’t expect it, I guess. Mike didn’t mention you had moved, so I kinda just figured you were still out there.”
Will feels his stomach drop. He tries to pretend it doesn’t, and says, very evenly, “You saw Mike?”
“I mean, yeah?” Lucas says, “I was home this summer, and he was there for a few weeks. Saw him just a few times—not for a long time, you know how the Wheelers are. His haircut’s terrible.”
“Is it,” Will says, plainly.
“You haven’t seen it?”
Will clears his throat. “Mike and I…haven’t really spoken.”
Lucas looks surprised. “Really? He didn’t say anything, when I asked him about you.”
Surprise, surprise. “Really.”
“For how long?”
“A year. Almost two.”
“Seriously?” Lucas drops his paper sleeve, now mangled into bits, onto the table. He looks at Will in shock. “Almost two years?”
Will shrugs. He stirs his straw through his water, focusing on the ice knocking into the side of the glass. “Not since I left New York, so. Yeah. Getting there. Year and a half, I guess, technically.”
“Wow,” Lucas says, running a hand through his hair. “Wow. Okay. Um. What did he do?”
Will raises his eyebrow. “Why do you think he did something?”
“Because he’s Mike. He’s an asshole. Last time you guys stopped talking it was because he wouldn’t just put a stamp on a goddamn letter that whole year you were in Cali. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, but he’s a massive dickhead sometimes. So—what did he do?”
Will swirls his straw faster, creating a small vortex in the middle of his cup. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Bullshit.”
“He didn’t.”
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
“Lucas,” Will says, sighing. “Can we just…drop it? Please?”
Lucas stares at Will for a minute, making him shift under his gaze, before he finally seems to make up his mind. “Fine,” he says, shoving another fry in his face. He points at Will with an especially long potato. “But don’t think I won’t figure it out eventually. Even if I have to torture it out of you.”
You won’t figure it out, Will thinks, because you would never believe me if I told you.
“Well, if you’ve got any evil vines anywhere, you know those are always pretty useful on me,” Will says, lightly.
Lucas chokes on his fry, coughing into his sleeve. Will laughs as he watches Lucas’ eyes water and the rest of the patrons turn towards the commotion.
“You can’t say shit like that,” Lucas wheezes, gulping down half his water glass in one go. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Will says.
“No, it’s not.”
“Fine, it’s not,” Will concedes, picking up his hamburger. “So, how’s Erica?”
The rest of their dinner passes without incident. Lucas insists on paying—“Dude, it’s fine, I’m the one who invited you out, you’ll get the next one”—and by the time they leave the restaurant, it’s dark out, and the air has cooled. Will wraps his denim jacket tighter around himself, his earring making his entire ear go numb as the wind bites into the metal.
“Jesus, where did this wind come from?” Lucas asks, pulling the sleeves of his crewneck down over his knuckles. “Hope you don’t live too far.”
“My apartment is just a couple blocks that way,” Will says, pointing towards the highway in the distance.
“Oh sweet, me too. I’m living in a dorm, unfortunately, because of the transfer, and my roommate is so weird, dude. Like, diagnosable levels of weird.”
Will laughs. It feels good. “Define ‘weird.’”
“Like—Satan-worshipping weird. He has all these candles in the room and quotes Revelations or something to me whenever I enter the room. I came back from the corner store a couple nights ago and there was blood everywhere. I thought someone had died, but turns out he had just pierced is own nose with a fucking safety pin, of all things. I think he watches me when I sleep, too. It’s freaky.”
“Jesus, that is…freaky.”
“I keep wanting to tell him that alternate dimensions are actually real, just to see if his eyes roll back into his head, or something.”
Will snorts. “He wouldn’t last a day in the Upside Down.”
Lucas nods in agreement. “Seriously. He’s skinny as hell. The air would kill him.”
“Why aren’t you living with one of the other basketball guys?” Will asks. “Surely there’s, like, an athlete’s dorm building that is less, you know. Satan-y.”
Lucas doesn’t reply for a minute. He’s so quiet that Will thinks he’s left him behind, somehow—walked ahead of him and not noticed. He turns his head and catches Lucas running his hand through his hair. Nervous tic, it seems. Like him.
“I—lost my basketball scholarship. In Indiana. That’s why I’m out here.”
Will’s mouth drops open. “What? Why? You’re…you’re so good.”
“I had an injury, middle of last year. Had to get knee surgery.”
“Oh my God, Lucas. I’m—“ I’m sorry I didn’t know. I should have known.
Lucas waves a hand. “It’s fine. I didn’t tell many people. Didn’t want them to pity me, you know? But yeah. Coach benched me, obviously, and then he realized I wasn’t going to be able to play for at least a year. I’m just allowed to start running again now, and even then I’m not allowed to go for very long. Day I ran into you was the first day I had gone running in six months, fucking sucked. So yeah. Dropped my scholarship, brought in another Black kid, probably no one even noticed I was gone. We’re a dime a dozen, you know.”
He says this last part drily, almost cynically, and Will flinches. He doesn’t know what to say. He knows that it was tough for Lucas, in Hawkins, but he had figured that Indianapolis wouldn’t be like that. Big city, lots of different people, more people like you to find. Now, in retrospect, that was pretty naive.
In Hawkins, Will could hide, at least a little bit. People called him names, made fun of him, but he could pretend that, in the end, they didn’t really know, because he had never told anyone. Not except for his mom—and Mike, but that was by accident. He told Jonathan later, under the cover of New York, under the lights of belonging and openness and freedom, in a room where no one could hear him and no one would care. His secret might have leaked into his voice, his mannerisms, his desires, but it was still a secret for almost everyone that he had grown up with. The thing that hateful people hated about him he could conceal, carry it around like a wet cloth shoved in his mouth. The thing that hateful people hated about Lucas was the first thing people saw in him.
“Anyway,” Lucas says, crossing his arms. “I got offered a few bench spots. One in Seattle, which would have been nice, but I—I don’t know. I was kind of done with basketball, by the time I got my injury. Seems like my body was, too. I somehow got an academic scholarship here, so I decided to try it out.”
Will nods. He’s not surprised that Lucas didn’t choose Seattle. He and Max had broken up shortly before going to college, and being in the same city as her would probably have been tough. They were still friends, as far as Will knew, and had ended on good terms, also as far as he knew. He had never got all the details. Now, he wonders if he should have asked more questions when it had happened, but he had been too wrapped up in Mike and New York to give it much thought.
Maybe he’s a worse friend than he thought.
“And do you like it? So far?”
Lucas smiles. “Yeah. I do.”
“Good,” Will says. “I’m glad.” He means it.
“Yeah, me too,” Lucas says. He looks over his shoulder. “Well, this is me. Thanks for walking me home.”
Will chuckles. “Sure. Thanks for dinner.”
“Sure,” Lucas says. He looks at Will, shoving his hands in his pockets. “So…I’ll be seeing you?”
Will nods, cheeks scrunching. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to straighten the strands in the wind. “Yeah, you’ll be seeing me. I owe you a hamburger.”
“Cool,” Lucas says. “Oh! Before I forget…”
He swings his backpack off one shoulder and rummages around in the front pocket. His muscles strain slightly under his shirt. Will tries not to notice.
With a triumphant sound, Lucas pulls a small notebook and pencil out of his bag, letting his backpack drop back over his shoulder as he flips to find an empty page. He quickly shoves the notebook and pencil into Will’s hands.
“For your phone number,” Lucas says, when Will gives him a quizzical look. “And your address. I’m not letting you disappear again. You seem to be making a habit of it.”
Will rolls his eyes. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bit dramatic?”
“Only you,” Lucas says. He points at the page. “Phone number. And address.”
Will rolls his eyes again and writes down his new number, along with the address and door code to his studio apartment. He shoves the small notebook back at Lucas’ chest, and doesn’t focus on the warmth that it leaves behind on his fingertips.
“There you go,” Will says. “Happy?”
“As a clam,” Lucas replies. He gives Will a mock salute. “Later.”
Will watches him jog up the steps and wrench the door open. Before entering the building, Lucas turns around and says something to him, but he can’t hear it over the wind.
“What?” Will yells, hand cupping his ear.
Lucas folds his hands around his lips and shouts. “And call Mike! He misses you!”
Will doesn’t say anything, just gives Lucas a thumbs up that he knows he’ll never follow through on. Lucas mirrors it back at him then turns towards his dorm, disappearing into the yellow light.
There’s a lot of people that think Will and Mike hate each other. Lucas, now, for one. Jonathan, for another—but to be fair, Jonathan knows more than most, so maybe it’s the truth. Nancy definitely does, if her worried looks towards Will whenever she had visited Jonathan those last few months had been any indication. Hopper hasn’t said anything, but Will knows that he and his mom worry about him. Not that there’s anything to worry about. Will is fine. He’s always fine, in the end.
And maybe, from the outside, he can understand it. Why they would all think that. For years, basically since El returned, or maybe even before then, since Will disappeared, Mike and Will have been up and down. Mike was always leaving Will behind, and Will was always yelling at him about it, refusing to take it lying down. They would fight, they would make up, and then the cycle would repeat. Mike would lie, or Will would lie, even though friends don’t lie. They would tell the truth, and they would fall back into their orbit again, two twin planets in their own unique solar system. After everything that had happened—after the truth was out, after the demons were buried and life, in some ways, fell back towards being normal, towards an imitation of what it could have been, if the Upside Down had never existed, if Will had never gone missing—Will thought that maybe their orbit was permanent. That they were finally, finally, on the same gravitational pull, and their days circling around each other would end, and they would become one planet again, like they were long ago, in the good old days.
Will hates that he believed that, for even one second. But he did. Maybe, in a way, a small part of him still does.
Because it wasn’t all lies, or fighting, or years of silence mixed in with years of nostalgia. Sometimes, it was good. Really good.
Yeah, Will thinks, as he unlocks his apartment, slipping into the warmth of a space all his own. Of course it was. It was Mike.
Somewhere horrible. March, 1986.
“El? El? I don't know if you can hear this, but... but if you can, I want you to know I'm here, okay? I'm right here. And...I love you. El, do you hear me? I love you. I'm sorry I don't say it more. I...It's not because I'm scared of you. I'm not. I've never felt that way. Never. But I am scared that one day you'll realize you don't need me anymore. And I thought if I said how I felt, it would somehow make that day hurt more. But the truth is, El, I don't know how to live without you.
“I feel like…like my life started, that day we found you in the woods.”
Thirty minutes after Will gets home—after he’s changed into a pair of sweatpants, and got himself a glass of water, and settled onto his couch, a.k.a his pull-out bed, ready to mindlessly watch MTV—his phone rings. He groans, kicking off his thrifted blanket, and pads to the kitchenette, pulling the phone off the base on the fifth ring.
“Hello?”
“Will?”
“Lucas?” Will leans against the wall, twisting the yellow cord around his fingers. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course everything’s okay. You just saw me, like, an hour ago.”
“Half an hour ago,” Will retorts. “Any reason you’re calling?”
“Oh,” Lucas says, voice tinny through the receiver, “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t give me a fake number.”
Will frowns. “Why would I give you a fake number?”
Will can practically hear Lucas’ shrug through the phone. “To avoid me.”
“I’m not going to avoid you.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay, well, then, good,” Lucas says. “I’m glad.”
Will rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe you would think I would give you, Lucas, one of my oldest friends, a fake number. I’m offended.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen you do it before, when you don’t want to talk to someone and are too nice to say no.”
“When have I ever done that.”
“Summer after senior year. That girl from Oklahoma at the pool who asked for your number and you gave her the taxi service in Lenora.”
Will flushes. “I didn’t think you noticed that.”
“Well, I did. So. I had to check.”
“What, you trying to go on a date with me or something?” Will asks, and instantly regrets it. He’s never been one to make jokes like that, not with anyone except for Mike, and it had just slipped out, in the drowsiness of the summer night. He wonders if it means anything, that he’s made a joke like that to Lucas, and immediately shuts that train of thought down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—“
“Of course I am, sweetie,” Lucas says exaggeratedly, making fake kissing noises through the receiver. Will laughs, gagging at him over the line.
“Well. Um. Good night, Lucas.”
Lucas chuckles, then says, kindly, “Good night, Will.”
Will hears the line go dead on the other end. He doesn’t hang up the phone, standing with the receiver pressed into his jawline, cord circled around his elbow, until the church bell chimes down the street and wakes him from his reverie.
Somewhere even worse. March, 1986.
“You were wearing that yellow Benny's Burgers T-shirt. And it was so big it almost swallowed you whole. And I knew right then and there, in that moment, that I loved you. And I've loved you every day since. I love you on your good days. I love you on your bad days. I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers. I love you for exactly who you are.
“You're my superhero. And...I can't lose you. Okay? Do you hear me? I can't lose you. You can do anything. You can fly. You can move mountains. I believe that. I really do. But right now, you just have to fight. Okay? El. Do you hear me? You need to fight! You have to fight. Fight! Fight!"
Yeah. It wasn't all bad.