Chapter Text
New York buzzed with its usual night life; the sounds of car engines revving, sirens wailing in the distance, the low buzz of chatter and music filtering out of bars and streets throughout the city.
An apartment block lay sleeping and calm, but a light started flickering in one of the windows around halfway up. The flickering intensified and built up until a jarring flash of light shone out of one of the windows, disappearing just as quickly.
Two worlds connected – only for a second, but it was long enough.
***
Mike felt himself come to and was instantly flooded with unfamiliar sensations.
His armour plates pressing into his body were familiar enough, what was unusual about it was that he had just woken up, and he never slept in his armour. What else was strange was how comfortable the surface which he was lying on was.
He peeled open his eyes and took in his surroundings; a white boxy room with a table pushed against one wall, a cupboard across from it. There were several strange articles of clothing strewn across the floor – like the type he was familiar with but at the same time, not quite.
He shifted himself upright, putting his clad feet onto the bizarrely soft floor and picking his way to a door that was made of some white not-quite-wood which was entirely too smooth to the touch. He fumbled for a little while with the funny shaped handle before opening the door to another very brightly lit, and also boxy, room.
There was a large brown pillow-chair-thing in the middle of the space and it had somebody sitting on it. That someone looked awfully like his . . . “Will?”
The person in the chair replies. “Oh hey Mi-”
He cuts off as he sets eyes on Mike, his mouth falling open slightly.
***
“What the hell are you playing at?!” Will exclaimed, a mirthful tone to his voice.
Will approached Mike, smirking, and started lifting and inspecting different parts of his silvery armour which glinted in the living room lights. So many questions filled his head.
“Where on earth did you get this? And how did you get it? You know we’re always tight on budget.” He thought to the lack of money in their joint living account
“What are you talking about William?”
Will froze.
His smile dropped. Mike didn’t call him that; it was always ‘Will’ or something eccentric like ‘Will the Wise’ or ‘My Savior Cleric’ when Mike ended up hurt and Will happened to be armed with a plaster.
“Who are you? And where is Mike?" Slight fear edged into his voice.
“I am Mike,” he replied, looking both earnest and concerned.
“No, no you aren’t. Mike doesn't ever call me ‘William’”
Mike entirely ignored Will’s response and instead asked a question as if Will had never even spoken. “Where are we?”
“What the- where are we?!” Will exclaimed. “We’re in our apartment, Mike, if that’s even your name.”
“I am Mike and you are my Will, are you not?”
“I’m sorry, your Will?”
“Yes.”
The answer was so simple and sure that it hit Will hard. He sat down on the arm of the couch to process – all the turmoil he had felt for Mike for so many years easily swirling back into its old place deep in his gut. Hearing someone in Mike’s skin, with Mike’s voice – although laced with some kind of accent – tell him that he was theirs was . . . . something else.
One thing at a time.
“Why are you wearing armour?”
“I’m not sure. I usually take it off before sleeping.” Mike replied monotone.
Usually!?
“What do you mean ‘usually’?”
“Normally. After we get back home from wherever we have been that day, if it has been necessary for our task, that is.” Mike said all this so casually that Will began to worry he was going insane.
“Okay, so what you’re telling me is that we regularly go gallivanting through the streets of New York with you in a full su-”
“What is “New York”?” he interrupted
“Wha- What do you mean!? It’s where we live, Mike. It’s where we have lived for the last two years.” Will’s hands were in his hair now, scraping at his scalp mercilessly.
“I think you are mistaken, I have never heard of a “new york” before.” Saying the words in a way that made it obvious they were unfamiliar.
“You’ve never heard of a- . . . . okay.” Will took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay . . . . are you . . . . are you a paladin?”
“Yes. And you are our cleric and parttime sorcerer.”
Just like in their dungeons and dragons campaign.
“Who else is in this group?” Will asked cautiously, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
“Well, we have our ranger, Lucas, our bard, Dustin, our zoomer, max, and Jane ou-”
“Your mage” Will finished for him. His sister’s name punched the air out of his lungs, a sharp pain stabbing at his chest. Her death had hurt so much and it still did – only recently had Mike and Will started talking through it together, properly grieving the loss at last.
It all began to click together; somehow, this was the Mike from their DnD campaign and, somehow, he was here, right here.
He had seen weirder things, considering the hell they had dealt with because of Vecna and the upside down just a few years ago but this was . . . . interesting.
“Okay, so . . . . if you’re here, that likely means . . ." Oh no. “That means that this world’s Mike is in your world.” Will paused to process. “Great.”
***
I’m in a different world? So that was new.
He had dealt with some pretty crazy stuff with Will and the rest of the group through the years, but this took the cake.
Will led him back through to the room Mike had come from earlier and he could see traces of this world’s Mike’s personal life scattered all across the walls.
“You should probably change out of that armour.” Mike’s attention was drawn back to Will. “It does not look comfortable. You can borrow some of Mike’s clothes, I’m sure he won’t mind.”
Will went over to the bed and plonked himself down amongst the sheets Mike had emerged from mere minutes ago.
“Help yourself,” Will said with a wave of his arm.
He looked at some of the clothes lying on the floor and picked out a short, thick tunic with a hood. Since when did tunics have hoods? He considered a pair of the trousers lying over the back of a chair, but they felt far too solid and rough so he picked out a pair of softer flowy ones instead. He heard Will chuckle behind him as he recoiled from the course texture. He also picked a green tunic that Will kept calling a ‘tee-shurt’.
“That’s one of Mike's favourites” Will commented as Mike slung his selected clothing over the back of a chair.
Mike started to unbuckle the armour plates at his arms and legs and then the shoulder pouldrons, eventually coming to the chest plate. Usually his Will would help him with the back straps, but he was not here – his copy, however, was.
“Could you help me out with something?”
“Yeah sure.” There was still a waver of uncertainty in his voice
“Great, I can’t quite reach the buckles at the back. Could you undo them for me?”
Will seemed to flush a little but did as he was asked, stepping forward as Mike turned around to make his back accessible.
As he felt Will reach for the first strap, his eyes roamed the wall he was now facing. There were tiny little paintings of the Will and Mike from this world, as well other faces he recognised – Max, Lucas, Dustin, Nancy, Jonathan – but they were all dressed very differently.
He didn’t understand how they managed to get the painting so accurate and textureless.
“How do they do that? Get the paintings so realistic?”
“Oh, they’re photos.” Will replied without flinching.
“Pho-tos,” he repeated, the word feeling foreign on his tongue.
“Yes, taken with a camera”
“How does that work? And what is a ca-me-rah?” He could practically feel Will’s eyes burning into the back of his head so he turned to face him.
“Well there’s this film, and the camera lets light through in a certain way and then you have to dip the film in this liquid in a room with red light, because any other light damages it. I’m the wrong person to be asking though – my brother Jonathan has a much better knowledge and understanding of these things. After all, he does work at Mike's sister Nancy’s news firm as a photographer.”
“What is a ‘news firm’?”
“Uh . . . . you know what, I’ll explain this stuff to you later. Let’s get you into some practical clothes first.”
Mike turned back around as Will continued with the straps.
His eyes continued their wander across the wall and they snagged on a painting – a real painting this time, with brushstrokes and texture – and the painting was of him and the party.
“That’s me.” He stated bluntly.
“Yeah.”
“You made it?”
“Yeah.” A proud lilt to Will’s voice.
“And Mike liked it so much he put it on his wall?”
He turned back to Will to find his face had somewhat reddened and he did not answer the question. It seemed that, even though this version of Will and Mike were not a pair, that did not stop them from wishing they were. The reason why they did not just clear the air and get together was beyond Mike and he found it rather confusing so he turned his attention back to the task at hand.
Under his armour all he wore was a thin tunic and thin trousers. Will's face reddened when he realised that Mike was not, in fact, going to ask him to leave before he changed. Mike found this strange as it was perfectly normal for him, but maybe the rules were different in this world.
He shed and replaced his trousers first, smirking slightly at the way Will covered his eyes and turned slightly away, even though Mike was perfectly decent – he wore under-shorts beneath his clothes after all, who wouldn’t? He tugged his tunic over his head, dropping it to join his trousers on the floor. He picked up the tee-shurt and started trying to figure out how to put it on but was stopped in his tracks by a sharp intake of breath from Will.
“Are you alright?” Mike asked.
“Yeah . . . . your– how did– are you okay?”
Mike followed the trail of Will’s eyes to his torso. Ah.
His eyes trailed down the familiar trails of his criss-crossed scars – it was a sight he was used to by now, but it must be quite a shock to see for the first time.
His hand instinctually trailed the soft pale marks – they were all healed by now, but he still remembered how they looked when they were still bleeding angry red.
“Do they hurt?” Will’s voice had softened. “How did you get them?
“They’re from battle. They’re old, Will. I’m okay, they don’t hurt anymore.”
“Did your Will help them heal?”
“Yeah . . . . he’s always there for me.” He felt a painful tug in his gut; he missed his Will.
“You miss him? I miss my Mike.”
“Yeah…”