Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Michael Wheeler was five years old when he first learnt what a soulmate was. Predictably enough it was Nancy who told him, because his older sister knew everything. Last week she’d gotten upset because he’d called her a know-it-all, which didn’t make any sense to Mike at all – Nancy did know it all, so why was she crying? Eventually, she explained that being a know-it-all was a bad thing, which made Mike say he was sorry, but that he was right – she must know it all because she knew what a know-it-all was. Nancy stopped crying then and rolled her eyes instead, and agreed to play dinosaurs with him.

It was a grey Sunday morning when Nancy walked down the stairs into the basement with that look her face that meant that she was about to teach Mike something new. He put Roary down and looked up at her, eager for the lesson to begin.

“Mike, do you know what a soulmate is?” Nancy asked. Mike shook his head no.

“A soulmate is your very special person,” she continued confidently. “The person who means more to you than anyone else and someone you want to be around them like, all the time.”

Mike nodded to show he understood and thought for a moment. “So…are you my soulmate?” Mike asked hesitantly.

“No silly!” Nancy laughed. “A soulmate can’t be someone in your family!”

That threw Mike off, as he struggled to think of someone who wasn’t a Wheeler who he wanted to be around all the time. The only one he could think of was that man with the grey hair who worked at the candy shop and always gave Mike extra sherbet, maybe he would want to be his soulmate if he asked nicely.

“You don’t have any friends yet do you?” Nancy asked in a quiet voice.

Mike looked at the floor and scuffed his feet together. It wasn’t that he didn’t want friends, he really did, but whenever he met another kid he didn’t know what to do to get them to like him. Kids didn’t come up with instruction manual or a little diagram like Lego did, and Mike thought he was afloat without one. Every time he saw two other children meet each other they just played with each other straight away without their mommies even telling them to do it or anything, and Mike just couldn’t do that, not in a million years. Sometimes he thought every other kid in the world thought he was weird.

“It’s okay,” Nancy assures him. “You’ll have friends soon. When you start school I bet you’ll make lots of friends!”

“So a soulmate is a friend?” Mike asks confused what the difference is, and bristling a little. Just because he doesn’t have a friend doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what one is.

“Better. A soulmate is like your best best best friend ever!”

“Does that mean Barb is your soulmate?” Mike liked Barb, she could make Mike laugh and she knew almost as much as Nancy did.

“Yep!” Nancy answered happily. “She’s my favourite person, apart from you of course, and I’m her favourite.”

“But…how do you know for sure?” Mike asked. Being a soulmate sounded like an awfully big job and he didn’t want to pick the wrong person. What if the candy shop man stopped giving him samples when he got older? Having a sherbet-less friend would be a disaster of terrible proportions.

“I’ll show you” Nancy replies with a smirk, before turning around and flipping her hair forward, revealing something on the back of her neck. Mike stands up on tippy-toes so he can get a better look.

“Are those Barb’s glasses?” he asks, because sure enough there they are. Mike thought Barb’s glasses were cool, they were so big they made her look like a bug, and when he borrowed them and gave them a try the made the word look all silly and wibbly. It was odd seeing them in miniature and jet black, perched there on his sister’s neck, looking like they’ve always supposed to have been there rather than on Barb’s face.

“Is it a tattoo?” Mike asks. “Because mummy said you aren’t allowed one of them.”

Nancy laughs. “Nope. It’s a soulmark. You get one when you find your soulmate.”

“Did she draw it on you?” Mike thinks it must be hard to draw on someone’s neck.

Nancy shakes her head and turns back around to face him. “When we realised we were soulmates it just appeared. Pop! Just like that!”

“Did it hurt?” Mike asks worried, thinking of that time he dropped the Stegosaurus on his foot (spikes-down) and was inconsolable for a little over three hours.

“No. It tingled a little I guess. But yeah whenever you realise, you get this mark appear somewhere on your body. I don’t like that it’s on the back of my neck where I can’t see it. But it’s nice to know that it’s there, like a little stamp saying that Barb is my special person.”

Mike nods. He’s pretty sure he understands.

Nancy smiles slyly. “Do you know what the best part is?”

Mike’s eyes widen. Having a best best best friend and a not-tattoo tattoo that mom lets you have already sounds pretty cool.

“I can feel what she’s feeling” Nancy says proudly.

“You know what she’s thinking? Like a brain reader?” Mike exclaims in amazement.

“No I can’t see what she’s thinking. But I can feel what she’s feeling - like her emotions. When she’s happy I can feel her happiness, and when she’s angry I can feel that she’s angry. We don’t have to be in the same room or anything. Even when her family took that trip to Utah I could feel how she felt, despite us being so far apart!”

“What’s she feeling now?” Mike asks quickly, eager for a demonstration.

Nancy thinks for a moment before answering “Boredom. She’s bored.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “See – it’s ten o’clock.” Mike would have to believe her about that, he hadn’t learnt how clocks worked yet.

“She must be at church. Her family take her there this time every Sunday.”

“What do they do in church?” Mike asks.

Nancy shrugs. “Barb says a crusty man reads an old book and then talks and talks forever. It’s really boring and nothing happens and then they drink blood or something.”

“Urgh!” Mike cries out.

“Yeah it’s supposed to be super gross.” She pauses for a moment before laughing. “I think they just did it! I just felt her disgust.”

Mom calls them upstairs to help her bake cookies then, so Mike doesn’t get to ask any more questions, but as he lies in bed that night he thinks about how this must be the coolest thing ever. To have not just a friend, not just a best friend, but a best best best friend all to himself sounds incredible. Mike will finally have someone to play with and talk with all the time. His favourite play fantasies have always involved him and someone imaginary going on a quest together, riding horses, fighting monsters and casting spells together. He really wants to have someone to play the role of the wizard for real, rather than just imagining a companion like he does now. And if this friend could feel what Mike feels then he really would be a wizard. Mike cannot wait to meet this soulmate, wherever he may be. He makes a solemn vow right then, alone in his bed and wrapped in his t-rex sheets – he will find this soulmate.

No matter what.

***

It takes a whole month, aka The Longest Month Ever, all the way until the first day of school before Mike finally gets his wish. To say that he is terrified that day is an understatement, his mother had to practically shove him out of the car after twenty solid minutes of coaxing and candy bribes got her nowhere. He’d gotten through the morning just about okay, the classroom was warm and colourful, the teacher seemed like she’d probably be nice enough and she’d told them a bunch of stuff about the alphabet that he already knew.

But then at recess, the teacher had ushered him outside and told him to play with the other kids, and every fear immediately tripled in size, like a thousand evil Popeyes had just swallowed a thousand unholy cans of spinach. The playground was huge and swarming with kids – big kids, small kids, loud kids, hyperactive kids, all of them laughing and playing together in pairs and groups like it was the easiest thing in the world. Mike knew that he should try and join in with some of them, but it was just so hard. Every time he built up the nerve to approach a group, he’d peel off at the last second, convinced that they’d be mean to him as soon as he opened his dumb mouth to say hello. The more time went on, the more Mike knew that the other kids were noticing how alone he was, and chalking up his loneliness in their minds. He knew that soon he’d be alone with no friends forever and the thought made him want to sit down and cry but he tried not to because that would only make everything even worse than it already was.

Mike had been walking around the playground, alone in his plight for what must have been at least four centuries when he saw him.

There on the swings was another boy who was all by himself. At first Mike just stood there and looked at him for a little while because this other boy was so pretty. Mike could tell the boy looked a little funny really, with his small body in his too-big clothes and his weird round hair, but the main thing Mike could think of when watching this boy was the word pretty. And besides, Mike knew he looked a little funny as well with his frog face, but that didn’t matter because frogs were cool, because they could jump and had long tongues and were am-phib-e-ous. He wondered if pretty swing boy would like frogs as well.

The more Mike looked at this boy, the sadder he thought he was. Pretty swing boy’s eyes kept darting around the playground before reverting to staring at his feet, swaying gently in the sand. And as scared as Mike was of what would happen if he tried to talk to another kid, no matter how many visions of being laughed at and shoved in the dirt ran through his mind, none of that mattered right now. There was no way that Mike was going to stand there and do nothing while a boy that pretty looked that sad.

So Mike took a deep breath and marched determinedly over the boy on the swings. “Hello,” he says politely, holding out his hand the way his dad taught him to do. “My name’s Michael Wheeler, but you can call me Mike.”

Pretty swing boy’s head shoots up, eyes wide and for a horrible moment Mike thinks he’s going to tell him and his frog-face to go away, but then the boy says quietly “Hello. My name’s William Byers, but you can call me Will.” Then he shakes Mike’s hand briefly, before dropping his own hand back into his lap where he resumes fiddling with it.

Mike’s fingers tingle where Will touched them.

The taller boy is moderately pleased at how this has gone so far, but the other boy still looks sad, so Mike thinks for a bit before taking a seat on the swing next to him. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to, but Will doesn’t say anything or glare at him angrily, so he sits there and swings gently next to him (careful not to swing too high, because then he’d probably fall off like he normally does and embarrass himself in front of Will).

“Do you have any friends?” Mike asks, and Will shakes his head, lowers his gaze even further to the floor and says “No” in a voice that is almost a whisper, and Mike calls himself a poopyhead in his mind because he clearly said the wrong thing.

“That’s okay,” Mike says, hoping that this will undo his mistake. “I don’t either.” He takes another deep breath here, his hands shaking as they wrap around the ropes and he turns to look at Will directly. “Would you like to be my friend?”.

Will’s head snaps up again, his eyes huge and quivering as they stare at Mike and the world freezes right then and there. But then the biggest smile appears on Will’s face and his mouth says a single word - “Yes.”

Mike’s whole body tingles.

“Cool” Mike giggles. Will giggles back. They break eye contact and return to swinging. Mike’s heart makes thump-thump sounds as he tries to think of something to say to impress his first friend.

“I want to be a knight when I grow up,” is what he eventually decides would sound best. “What do you want to be?”

“A wizard” Will replies.

“That’s amazing! You’ll be a really good wizard I bet.”

“Do you think we could go on adventures together?” Will asks.

“Of course! That would be so fun! Hey, do you know any spells yet?”

“No,” Will shakes his head.

“That’s okay,” Mike says confidently. “I don’t know how to ride a horse yet. Maybe we can learn together.”

Will’s smile grows even bigger. “Do you know how to sword fight?” the brown-haired boy asks.

“Yeah, well sort of…” Mike starts. “Wait, have you seen Star Wars?”

“I love Star Wars!” Will squeals.

“Me too!”

“So do you know how to lightsaber?” Will asks eagerly.

“Yeah, look!” Mike pulls an imaginary lightsaber off his belt, and Will does the same and they launch into a furious duel. Mike feels like he’s floating when Will tells him that he makes the best lightsaber sounds, but he feels like’s he’s going to burst when he sees the look on Will’s face when Mike tells him that Will makes the best dying-because-you-got-stabbed-with-a-lightsaber sounds.

Invariably they spend the rest of the school day attached to one another, and it’s only when their respective moms arrive to pick them do they finally stop holding hands and promise to see each other again as soon as possible. Karen is rather flummoxed by the fact the terrified little boy she dropped off this morning has been snatched away and replaced by a bouncy doppelganger who won’t stop chattering about how Mr William Byers is the best kid in the school bar none, and also the only kid he spoke to, but also the best. Mike doesn’t notice her confusion though, he’s too busy trying to shove a slip of paper with a phone number scrawled on it in neat blue crayon into her hands and telling her that she needs to call it as soon as they get home and arrange a playdate with Will and isn’t Will clever because he knows his whole telephone number and he wants to be a wizard and why hasn’t she called yet.

Sure enough, a playdate is arranged and Mike is dropped off at the Byers house only a couple of days later. He meets Mrs Byers, whose name is Callmejoycehoney, which is a funny name but she seems really nice, and Will’s brother Jonathan, who is quiet. It’s not long though before Will is taking him by the hand and pulling Mike to his room, which is smaller than Mike’ and has fewer toys, but that’s okay because Will lets him play with all of them and helps Mike come up stories for each of them. But the best thing about Will’s room, apart from the fact that it has Will in it, is the stuff all over the walls that Mike keeps stopping to look at curiously. Because he thought he owned like all the Star Wars pictures, but here there are ones that Mike’s never even seen before.

“Where did you get that?” he asks, pointing to one picture of Obi Wan fighting Darth Vader.

Will looks a little confused and gestures to the other side of the room. “Over there.”

Mike glances over. “You got it…at a table?” he queries, his turn to be confused.

“Oh. I mean I drew it at that table.”

“Whoah! Really?”

“Um, yeah. I guess.”

“Can you show me?” Mike pleads.

“Erm, okay” Will responds, sounding a little unsure. But after a moment’s hesitation he totters over to the table, grabs a piece of paper and some chewed-on crayons, peers at his friend’s face for a few seconds, before hunching over and moving the crayon assuredly over the paper. Slowly but surely, Mike can see his very own face appear on the paper in front of him.

“Wow!” he screams. “How do you do that?”

Will shrugs and keeps his eyes focused on the paper. “It’s just drawing.”

“Yeah but when I draw it comes out all…” Mike waves his hands around wildly and sticks his tongue out, which makes Will giggle. “But when you draw something it looks like the thing you’re trying to draw!” he continues, his voice laced with awe.

Mike meets Will’s gaze and says with all the sincerity he can “You really are a wizard Will.”

Will’s skin turns a little pink, and he looks back down at the paper but this little smile on his face appears and Mike knows that he managed to make Will happy, and then a thunderbolt detonates in Mike’s brain and he knows what he has to do.

“William,” he says, trying to make his voice sound serious and clever like Nancy’s does when she tells him things. “Do you know what a soulmate is?”

Will’s eyes grow huge, but he nods his head.

“Do you want to…” Mike trails off, scared to say anymore. He knows he wants to complete the sentence, he knows for a fact that Will is the best person he will ever meet and he wants to be linked with him for the rest of his life even more than he wants his own X-Wing. And he thinks of how sad the shorter boy looked all alone on his swing and how happy he seems now, playing with Mike, and the taller boy is sure now that he can help Will. But still, the yawning, terrible possibility that Will might say no, looms over him, huger and more imposing than anything he has ever faced in his life before. The words stick in Mike’s throat.

“Michael, do you want to be my soulmate?” Will asks. Mike nods his head, fervently and silently.

“Me too” the brunette says, and he wraps his arms lightly around Mike’s middle. Half a second later, Mike’s own arms grab Will’s shoulders and joins in him in a bone-crushing hug. It last only another couple of moments though before both boys suddenly jump apart.

“Mikey, I feel tingly! What’s going on? Did I do something?”

“No Will, I think that –“ the taller boy assured his friend, while scanning his own body for – “look! Right there!”

Proudly, Mike lifts up his right arm showing Will his inner forearm, and the jet black symbol that has just appeared there.

“Is that a soulmark?” Will asks, staring enchanted at the new appearance.

“Yep!” Mike giggles happily.

Will looks at his own forearm with a sad pout. “I don’t have one.”

“You probably have it somewhere else” Mike says, trying to reassure both his friend and himself. “Let’s look.” But after checking the left and right arms, and right and left legs, and his neck and inside both ears, the boys are getting a little frantic. It’s only when Will lifts up his shirt to peer at his belly that Mike sees it.

A swing-set.

Both of them whoop in delight at their discovery, hug some more, then run off to show Callmejoycehoney and Jonathan, then run back so Will can draw two copies of the swing-set, one for each of them. When Mike is eventually forced to go home that night, he pins the drawing up by his bed. As he falls asleep that night he keeps his eyes open as long as possible, flicking his gaze from the swing set on his arm to the one on the wall and back again.

***

The next few years are the best of Mike’s life. He does everything he can with Will, they play together, do homework together, teach one other how to ride bikes and they tell each other everything. Each day they get to hang out together and every drawing that Will gives him only makes Mike feel prouder and prouder to have the best soulmate in the whole world. Sometimes, Mike feels a little guilty for taking the best person crown off Nancy’s head and putting it on top of Will’s bowl cut, but she seems happy with Barb. The two siblings never do to spend as much time together anymore, which Mike feels bad about, until he thinks of another joke he can tell his soulmate at school together and he forgets all about his sister.

When Lucas, and then Dustin arrive, Mike thinks they’re both super-cool as well, and great fun to play with. As they start to spend more and more time together as a foursome though Mike gets angry at them for stealing his WillandMike time away, till one day he has a huge blow-up argument with Lucas and storms away in one of his trademarked pouty huffs. It’s only when Will comes round the next day and tells him sternly that he’s always going to be his soulmate no matter what, and that he has no excuse to behave that way, does he finally trudge across the street and offer a shamefaced apology to his friend. But Lucas gives him a firm handshake, and together the four of them write the Party rules to be sure nothing like that happens again.

To go from no friends to two best friends and a soulmate in a few short years is pretty great, and Mike resolves to keep his jealousy over Will in check from then on so he doesn’t ruin everything he’s gained.

He thinks his favourite thing about having a soulmate, the thing he tries not to boast too much about to Dustin and Lucas, neither of whom have marks, is being able to feel Will’s emotions at any time. On the day he slips a new comic book into Will’s backpack at school, the sudden burst of surprised delight he feels while working on his math homework that evening tells him that Will has found it. Within thirty seconds of him getting the news that his favourite grandma is sick, Will is calling him on the Supercom to ask him what’s wrong. Dustin even complains that it helps them cheat at Dungeons and Dragons, because when one of them proposes a plan that their Dungeon Master secretly knows will spell doom for the adventurers, the Cleric is the one to sense this and suggest better courses of action until he can tell that they’ve hit a good one, even when Mike hides his face behind the screen.

As the years plod inevitably on though, the emotions being broadcast out of the Byers house take a more downwards direction. Will tries to hide it from everyone with his smile, but Mike can feel what aches behind his face. After a few minutes of spending time with the Party Mike can sense the needle flicking back into the positive zone for real, but as soon as Will peels off on his bicycle in the direction of his house, Mike’s heart drops like someone strapped it to a roller coaster. It’s sadness for the most part that gets beamed from his soulmate’s brain to his own, interrupted occasionally by brief flashes of anger and pervaded throughout by an endless, tugging guilt. Even without the ability to read Will’s brain, Mike knows the cause of all these feelings.

Lonnie Byers.

The great unspoken truth amongst the Party is apparent to them all, but not one that any of them has the faintest idea how to fix. Thinking about it, Lucas is maybe the only one of them that has ever had an A-grade father, but the Byers boy definitely got the worst luck of the draw in the dad department. All of them have spotted the way their friend behaves around him – the quiet, rushed voice whenever he’s spoken to, the skittish gaze and the rapid, shuffling steps whenever he senses he’s in visual range of his father – but none of them know everything that happens when they leave for the day. Mike the empath comes closest, but even he can’t persuade his soulmate to tell him all the details of what Lonnie is like.

Mike fills notebooks and notebooks, not just with stories of wizards slaying their evil, oafish fathers, but with increasingly desperate schemes to get his friend away from Mr Byers, none of which ever bear fruit.

It’s one evening, a little after both soulmates’ ninth birthdays, when Mike is at home wrestling with the logistical challenges of hiding a man-eating shark in the Byers’ bathroom, when he feels a bomb go off in his chest. It’s the same basic signal he’s been feeling from his friend for the past few months, but amplified by a million gazillion. He glances at the Supercom, but knows this won’t be enough for such an emotional cratering, so he slips on his trainers, creeps to the top of the stairs, listens for a moment for the sound of Ted’s snores from the sitting room, before sneaking out of the house and onto his bike.

He reaches the Byers property in record time.

Creeping with his trademark-stealth round the side of the house, he knocks on Will’s window, and the small boy opens it within seconds, as if he’s been expecting his soulmate to come round. When Mike tumbles gracefully through the window he can see immediately from Will’s eyes that he’s been crying. Normally Will hates anyone seeing him like this, he even tried to hide it that time he fell out of the tree and the snapping sound made all of their eyes watery. But it doesn’t look there’s any disguising it this time.

As soon as the window is closed, Will turns back around and sits on the end of his bed. Mike hesitates for a moment before plopping down next to him. They sit in silence for an eon.

“Dad’s gone” Will says finally, his voice surprisingly level.

“He left?”

“No,” Will shakes his head. “Mom kicked him out.” Mike can feel the slightest trickle of pride prickling in his soulmate’s heart.

“Good.” Mike nods with an air of finality.

Will turns to look at him for the first time since Mike arrived. “You think so?” he asks.

“For sure Will. Your dad…he was a shithead.” Will inhales sharply, but Mike continues. “You’re going to be better off without him here, I know it.”

Will’s eyes return to the floor.

“It’s just…” he starts. “Look, I know he could be a…butthead, but still. Sometimes I just think….”

The feelings tell Mike what his soulmate is about to say before he can finish his sentence.

“No Will! It’s not your fault! I mean that.”

“Yeah, but, y’know…the things he said some of the time” Will shrugs lamely.

“So what?” Mike demands angrily. “He was a shithead Will. If you have shit for a head, the only thing you’re going to be able to say is shit right? Like that’s what happened when he opened his mouth, all this poop came out like bluuuurgh.” And he mimes someone pooping out of their mouth, and finally, finally he manages to coax a slight giggle out of his soulmate. When he mimes wiping his mouth with butt-paper he upgrades this to a chuckle, and earns a full on belly-laugh for tugging his ear down like it’s the flush handle.

The sound draws Joyce to them, and she knocks on the door and asks Will how he’s feeling. Mike hides himself convincingly under Will’s duvet.

Their conversation gives Mike a thought, and once Joyce leaves the room he pops his head out from under the covers and, seeing and sensing that Will is feeling a bit better now, asks the question he’s dying to ask. “How does your mom feel about it?”

Will thinks for a moment, weighing up his thoughts before answering. “Relieved mostly. I think. Mostly.”

“Doesn’t she feel bad about, y’know, losing her soulmate? Even if he was shithead.”

A shake of the head. “He wasn’t.”

“He was a shithead Will.”

“No, I mean he wasn’t her soulmate.”

“Don’t girls normally marry their soulmates if they’re a boy?” Mike asks confusedly. It always sounded gross to him, but grown-ups we’re weird. The Party would make much better grown-ups when they were older, he was sure of it.

“Apparently they used to be though” Will responds.

A puzzled frown appears on Mike’s face. “What do you mean?”

Will is confused at Mike’s confusion. “They used to be soulmates, but now they’re not.”

“That can happen?” Mike yelps.

“Yeah. So mom told me anyway.” Will shrugs. “Jonathan says he can even remember a mark on the back of mom’s knee when he was really little, so faded he couldn’t even tell what it was supposed to be.”

Mike hesitates before asking. “Do you know…what happened?”

“A little bit. A little while after Jonathan was born he hit head and that made him change a bit. Then he lost his job and he started…” Will mimes lifting a bottle to his mouth. “Bit by bit mom stopped being able to feel him, until one day she knew she couldn’t feel a thing from him anymore.”

Mike nods, trying to show he wants to understand even if doesn’t entirely get it. “So can she have another soulmate?” he asks.

“Yeah I guess. What she told me is, ‘Sometimes the world deals you a bad hand. Or sometimes it deals you a good hand, but as the game goes on the hand turns bad. You can always drop a bad card if you have to. If you think your soulmate isn’t right for you – drop them and don’t look back.’ That’s what she said anyway.”

“That’s good” Mike smiles. He likes Joyce, and he’s happy she doesn’t get stuck with a poopy soulmate, and that Will doesn’t get stuck with a butt for a dad.

“Yeah. I suppose so” Will mumbles and Mike can feel the sadness radiating out of him. He stalls for a moment, trying to figure out what has upset the other boy before it clicks.

“Hey that’s not going to happen to us I promise” he says, wrapping an arm over Will’s shoulders.

He can feel the sadness stop growing as Will asks “Really?”

“I promise” Mike says sincerely. “There isn’t anything that could happen that would ever stop you being my soulmate. Not a thing.”

Will grins infectiously. “Soulmates for ever.”

“Soulmates for ever” Mike agrees.

Mike and Will are nine years old and between them they know basically everything. There isn’t anything that could ever threaten their bond.

After all, this is Hawkins, the most boring town in America. Nothing happens here.

Right?

Chapter Text

That night they spend another thirty minutes or so talking about casual stuff and lightsabers before snuggling down in Will’s bed and going to sleep. Mike slips out early so he has time to cycle back home and not get caught, but he pauses for a moment at the window, so he can watch Will’s face, smiling peacefully in his sleep.

Mike tells himself that the idea of changing soulmates never takes root, and that he would never even consider the idea of anyone other than William Byers being the one for him, not even for the most fleeting of passing moments. And for the most part that’s true. The only times that seed buried deep, deep in his brain, way below the water line, even begins to show the slightest signs of threatening to germinate is when Troy is feeling in a particularly vindictive mood.

The party had hoped the switch to middle school would mature the mouthbreather a little bit, but their dreams were in vain, because puberty only made him meaner and more determined. Even then, most of the time it doesn’t affect Mike’s unshakeable loyalty to his soulmate, but on the days when the cusses don’t stop flying, and the shoves and the slurs graffitied on his notebooks won’t stop piling up, Mike does catch himself wondering, just for a sliver of split-second, what it might be like to have someone else for a soulmate. The worst of it is when the bullies’ energies aren’t even directing their energies at Mike directly. Because when Mike sees the look in Will’s eyes when he gets called a fairy one too many times, he finds himself thinking that the shorter boy might have an easier time of it if everyone in the changing room couldn’t see another boy’s soulmark on his stomach.

Mike gets a shovel and buries the thoughts deep every time they appear.

The first time the seed gets a proper watering is late one night when Mike is eleven years old. He’s snuck out of bed for a midnight snack, and is creeping past his parent’s room when he hears the telltale sounds of them arguing behind the door. Normally, this wouldn’t be cause for him to stop his hunt for PopTarts, because late-night rows go hand-in-hand with his parent’s bedroom. In fact, considering that Ted normally spent most of the night-time asleep in the lounger in the sitting room, Mike had taken to referring to the room with the big bed in it as his parent’s ‘rowroom’ in his head. So he planned on just ignoring their barely-hushed bickering, and slipping on right by to snaffle some midnight breakfast treats, but hearing his name gives him cause to slow to a halt.

“It’s not right for Michael to still have that mark. You need to do something about it Karen.”

“Why exactly do I need to do something about it Ted?” he hears his mother bite back. “You’re the one who has a problem with it. And I don’t see why anyway, Will is a sweet boy.”

“You know damn well why I have a problem with that kid!” Ted almost shouts back and Mike’s hands curl into fists at the sound of his father berating his soulmate.

His mother scoffs. “I don’t remember you complaining about it before.”

“It was fine when he was little, lots of kids have a friend as a soulmate at that age. But he’s getting older now and you know perfectly well that it’s not right for him to still be thinking that way.”

“Please Ted, that is such bull. I had my best friend as my soulmate till junior year of high school. And I don’t see you whining about Nancy still having Barbara’s mark!”

“It’s different for girls!” Ted snaps. “Anyway, Nancy’s going to be dating soon and she won’t have that girl as her soulmate then, I’ll guarantee you that. But Michael’s of the age where he ought to be noticing girls by now. Not still hanging around with Joyce Byers’ boy and thinking they’re soulmates. It’s not right. It makes him look like a…”

“Like a what Ted? Like a what?” she hisses.

“A queer” Ted says with an acidic finality.

Mike doesn’t stick around for the rest of the argument, the sound of that word alone makes his feet turn around and he bolts back to his room. It’s not until he’s under the covers and struggling to hold back tears that his brain starts catching up to what he just heard. Because it’s not as if he’s never encountered that slur before, he’s heard it a dozen times, but the sound of it coming out of his father’s mouth makes the word seem huge, like some momentous great weight that has just come crashing down on him, and by extension, his soulmate.

A number of feelings and instincts are competing inside of him, like turbulent weather fronts clashing together in his chest. Part of him wants to run back, burst through the door and shout at Ted that he’s not a queer and scream at him for saying such a thing, for acting no better than a middle-school mouthbreather. Another storm front wants to pretend the whole thing never happened, and a third wants him to still march back to the rowroom and tell his father ‘So what?’ Mike doesn’t know much about queers, but he can’t see what the problem people have with them is all about. So what if they want to date other boys instead of girls? It’s not as if girls talked to anyone in the Party anyway, it would probably make sense for them to date boys if they had to. Queers being bad was probably just another dumb grown-up rule, like broccoli.

The coldest and most insidious front inside him though is the fearful one, the one that tells him how scared he should be that his own father thinks that about him. Mike has to put up with enough of this at school, to come home and find the same thing makes him huddle under the cover, curl his legs up and hug them to his chest. He thinks about Lonnie calling Will a queer before either of the boys even knew what the word meant, and Mike knows that he will never be as strong as his soulmate is. If Ted began acting like Lonnie, Mike couldn’t weather it like Will did, he’d fold and crumple like a dry leaf underfoot. And every time Ted would act that way, Will would feel all the pain all over again through their connection anyway.

After many hours of tearful wrestling, the feeling that Mike eventually ends up favouring is the urge to dismiss the whole thing. So what if Ted thought they were queer? What was he going to do about it? Bitch about it over dinner and then fall asleep while watching Jeopardy? And since when has Ted been right about anything anyway? He and Will are going to remain soulmates forever, and he bets that Nancy and Barb are going to be the same as well. Nancy’s never dated and she talks to Barb for hours on the phone, despite Ted’s whinging about the bill.

So screw it. Soulmates forever.

The next day at school Will doesn’t say anything so Mike thinks he probably slept through Mike’s whole emotional panic. He doesn’t tell him about the q-word. Will’s dealt with enough.

Mike’s angry defiance of Ted-based bullshit would all work well and good if it were not for the fact that, eighteen months later, his father sort of turns out to be right. About one thing at least.

***

Barb stops being Nancy’s soulmate.

Not that it’s either of their faults of course. But still, the link is severed permanently. Mike doesn’t see this happen to his sister directly, but he’s learnt about the symptoms in school – the way the soulmark turns a weak, hollow shade of grey before gradually wrinkling and peeling off the skin, ending up as nothing different than a curled-up piece of dry sunburn dropping off your body. What does surprise Mike is when, a few weeks after the Demogorgon is banished, he gets a clear look at the back of his sister’s neck for the first time since Barb died, and he sees a brand new mark, etched out in full. The spiked bat looks like it was always supposed to be there, as if the glasses he’d been seeing for years had never existed.

Mike doesn’t ask Nancy about it. It feels too awkward to bring it up, to ask how she could abandon the memory of her best friend for a jock with good hair, or to enquire if having a new soulmate helps her survive the pain of losing the previous one. He curses himself for letting his relationship with his sister decay to the point where he can’t talk to her anymore, when they used to tell each other everything. Maybe he spent too much time focused on Will and the Party, and he should have made more time for her rather than shunting her aside in favour of spending all his time with his own soulmate. At the same time he drowns his guilt in the justification of being distracted with everything that’s happened. He’s not without justification. The disappearance of Will, the appearance of a lab subject with psychic powers and the invasion of soldiers and a monster they previously thought was pure imagination into their lives certainly seems like the sort of thing that might force someone to cut back on their brother-sister bonding time.

The selfish part of him also tells him that if he had kept a better relationship with his sister than he would have known earlier that Will was still alive, and wouldn’t have had to go through that horrifically painful period of thinking he was dead. Nancy probably would have been able to confirm that she had felt exactly what he had learned in health class about what a human went through when their soulmate died – a sudden severing of the emotional link, like someone had yanked the wire out with a crushing finality. Because that hadn’t been what Mike had gone through, even as he stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of his best friend’s pale body being dragged out of the quarry. He’d still felt him even as they’d loaded the waterlogged corpse into the back of the van, but nothing about those emotions felt like anything he’d encountered before in the past seven years of their connection.

The feelings were like a TV channel where the dish has fallen out of alignment, jagged and ethereal, warped and distorted as they twist around one another in bizarre, incomprehensible patterns. At times he even thinks Will might have been snatched by a UFO and replaced with an extraterrestial doppelganger, so odd and alien are the emotions that he is transmitting. The only consistency is the endless, parading chill that runs throughout them all, a deep cold that freezes part of him to the very core. It’s a weird sensation, having your body hot and flushed and sweating as you pedal your bike as fast as you can, but still feeling that one portion of your brain is gasping breathlessly at the uncompromising cold that infests it. It’s Dustin who suggests that it’s the Upside Down that’s causing him to feel like this, as he wraps his arms around Mike’s shoulders and tries to calm his sobs with his own passionate rationalisations.

The very moment Will is pulled back into this dimension, every feeling reverts back to normal as easy as twisting a dial. Mike falls to his knees and weeps with relief, until he is empty and dehydrated.

Maybe the biggest thing that had gotten him through the past few days of hell, was the new arrival in their lives. A person called Eleven. A small, shaven-haired, wide-eyed boy, who later turned out to be a girl. Mike wasn’t sure they’d ever met another person who wasn’t a member of the Party who seemed to fit in with them like this. It was odd having a girl talk to them like she didn’t think they were pathetic. Then again, she didn’t really look like a girl till Mike had dressed her up and done her make-up. She looked…pretty. It was only at the moment that he realised he’d been wrong all those years ago when he’d thought Will was pretty, because this girl sitting before him in her pink dress, and Swedish hair and clumsy make-up – she was what pretty looked like.

William Byers is beautiful.

Eleven is still an incredible figure though. Her powers, her fierceness, her loyalty to people she just met. She helps save Will from the Upside Down and saves Mike’s own life numerous times. She rescues both of them from the horror of feeling their soulbond sever and die. As he watches her sacrifice herself fighting the Demogorgon he cries for her fate and for the debt he owes her and will now never be able to repay.

She gets shoved out of his mind the moment Will wakes up in the hospital however. Mike is dozing in the waiting room when the sudden rush of additional feelings in his brain jerks him await, and within seconds he’s standing outside the door to Will’s room, bouncing on his feet like a toddler who needs to go potty. The moment Joyce finally lets him in, and he, Dustin and Lucas get to have their first all-Party hug since the night Will rolled a seven honestly feels like one of the best moments in Mike’s entire life, and he can feel the same delight being reflected back by his soulmate.

It’s a solid week before Joyce lets anyone visit Will once he gets home from the hospital, which Mike sort of gets to be honest, as much as he does hate it. In that agonising wait, in between periods of pondering of how to turn his shared soulmate feelings into a form of morse code, he finds El popping up in his brain quite a bit. He feels guilty towards her for not thinking or her more often, and he feels guilty towards Will for thinking of her at all.

When he finally does get to see his best friend for the first time by himself, he thinks he might just vibrate out of skin. He opens the door to his soulmate’s bedroom, and there he is sat propped up in bed. He still has deep rings beneath his eyes, but he’s been injected with a lot more colour since the last time Mike saw him. There’s a drawing lying on the sheets next to Will, like he was working on it before setting it down when he felt his soulmate’s anticipation.

Mike was right before. Will is beautiful.

He can’t stop himself from diving headfirst onto the bed and wrapping his arms around his soulmate, earning a surprised “Ooph!” from the other boy and a sharp admonishment from Joyce. The sound of Will’s laughter, and his giggled “Mooom! I’m fine!” placates her though, and she leave them alone with just a few muttered demands to be careful.

Mike knows he’s technically too old to be sharing a too-small bed with his twelve-year old male best friend but right now he doesn’t care. It’s one thing being able to feel your soulmate’s feelings from a distance, it’s quite another to be wrapped in their frail arms, surrounded by their scent, able to feel their emotions not just in your brain but in the beat of their heart against your chest and in the soft pulse in their neck where you’ve buried your nose. It’s like coming home and riding a rollercoaster at the same time.

He feels sorry for those who haven’t found their soulmate yet.

“I missed you Byers” he mumbles into his chest.

“I missed you too Wheeler” Will says back in his soft voice, the one he only uses around Mike.

They lay there in silence for a good while, Mike breathing in his soulmate and enjoying the feel of his of his fingers tracing lazy patterns on his back. He wonders what Will is drawing, as he lets his own palm rub up and down the side of Will’s torso, skirting just shy of touching the inch of skin that has been revealed where his t-shirt rode up. Eventually Mike starts talking, most of the words are lost as incoherent mumbling into Will’s chest, but he hopes the Byers boy can at least make out the word “Proud of you” and “I’m sorry” and “You were so brave”.

“You were brave too” Will says back, and Mike can feel the scratchy rumblings of his voice humming on his own face. “Mom told me some of the things you did.”

“Pshh” Mike dismisses his courage with a wave of his hand. “Most of that was El.”

“As in…Eleven? The girl you met?”

“Yeah!” Mike lifts his head from Will’s chest. “She was really cool, I bet you would have liked her.” And he launches into an exhaustively-detailed rendition of everything that happened while she was with the Party. It’s a solid ten minutes before he realises he’s on his feet doing a dramatic re-enactment of a van full of g-men being flipped through the air, and another five minutes before he notices the sudden downward plunge of emotions emanating from the bed.

“Hey Will, you okay?” he asks, dropping his stance of El with her hand out (that he totally hasn’t been practising in the mirror).

“Yeah, I’m fine. Please,” Will swallows heavily. “Carry on.”

“No you’re not.” Mike sits on the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing” Will mumbles, not meeting his eyes.

Mike takes his hand. “No it’s not. Please.”

No response.

“C’mon Will I want to help.”

“Do you want El to be your new soulmate?” the shorter boy blurts, his eyes wide and horrified like they can’t believe what their mouth just said.

“What? No, of course not!” Mike exclaims.

“It’s just, well, you know. She sounds cool, and has all these powers, and she saved your life and I’m just…” he gestures helplessly to himself.

“Will, listen to me. Look at me.” A pair of hazel, reproachful eyes meet his own. “No, wait! Close your eyes instead.” Will stares at him for a second before following his instruction.

“I don’t want El as my soulmate. You’re my soulmate. You have been since we met and you always will be. I promise.” Mike pauses for a moment and lets his words sink in. “You can feel how sincere I was can’t you?”

Will hesitates for a moment, considering. The second turns into an hour as Mike’s fingers clench the bedspread nervously, before Will finally nods and opens his eyes.

“I guess” Will says.

“You know why I was so keen for her to join us? Before I knew she had powers I mean? Because she looked so lonely.”

An odd flicker passes through Will then, but Mike isn’t sure what it means. He decides to press on anyway.

“You know what it reminded me of?” Will shakes his head.

“You remember when Lucas first came to our school and no one would play with him?” Mike continues. “They all ignored him, and called him names when he tried to talk to them, even though the mouthbreathers didn’t even know what those words meant. And we both thought he looked so sad, sitting there by himself, and he didn’t deserve any of it. But when you said we should play with him, I was the one who refused. It’s not because I had anything against Lucas, you know that right? It’s because I didn’t want to share you, not with anyone. But you said we should show him our robots, and I asked why should we? They were our robots, not anyone else’s. Do you remember what you said to me?”

Will says nothing, but Mike can feel the familiarity stir in him.

“You said ‘He needs them more than we do. We should help him.’ I knew that if you were there, you would help El. And I guess…I guess I just wanted to do something to make me feel like you were still with us.”

A single tear slides down Will’s face, and Mike looks respectfully away as Will tries to hide it. Mike can sense it anyway.

“You’re such a sap Wheeler” Will teases in a heavy voice.

“Yeah well, you’re stuck with me Byers” Mike says back, playfully socking Will on the shoulder.

“It’s why I asked her to the Snowball,” Mike plunges on, determined to get everything out in the open. “I wanted her to be included, and girls like dances right?”

“How should I know? I don’t know any girls! And you didn’t either!”

Mike blushes. “And…that’s why I kissed her. I wanted to show her what it was like.” Mike drops his gaze at this point, nervous that Will might take this the wrong way.

Thankfully, he giggles. “So what was it like?”

Mike shrugs. “Squishy.”

A great pearl of laughter bursts from the small boy then, and Mike can’t help but join in, chuckling at Will’s guffaws. When he manages to finally get some words out, Will gasps “So what, did you, heh heh, use your tongue?”

“No!” Mike shrieks. “I just…” he struggles for a moment, unsure how to put what he means into words, before using a pillow to mime pressing his lips quickly to El’s.

Will laughs again. “So what? You slammed your face into hers?”

“No!” Mike protests again, a little feebly. “I…sort of….” He tails off, realising that face slamming was a fair description of what he did.

“Oh, you’re such a stud Michael” Will says in a breathy voice. “Won’t you kiss me?” He closes his eyes and puckers his lips, before dissolving once more into laughter. And it’s a good thing he does, because the moment Mike looks at Will’s lips he feels a funny lurch in his stomach.

He’s trying to work out where it came from, and if Will has sensed it, when the other boys recovers from his giggle fit long enough to say “You know, I hope she does come back. And that she finds a soulmate. It would be cool to have a soulmate with superpowers.”

“What am I not good enough for you?” Mike exclaims with faux-indignance, thankful for the opportunity to stop thinking about the funny digestive gymnastics that just happened. “Would it be better if I had adamantium claws?”

“They weren’t Wolverine’s powers Mike, they were added in an experiment” Will says with a playfully withering tone.

“Yeah, whatever Byers. We don’t know where El’s powers came from either, they might be from an experiment so it still counts!”

“Technicality Wheeler. You look like more of a laser-eyes guy to me anyway.”

This sets off a thirty-minute argument about the practicalities of various superpowers and which one would be best in a soulmate, and when they can’t agree, the argument turns into another fifteen minutes of them duelling with their respective powers, Mike diving around the room, firing eye-beams at Will, who keeps blocking them with his psy-waves while staying stuck in his bed like Professor X. Neither of them realise how long they’ve been going until Joyce interrupts them and insists that Will really ought to be getting some rest, but that yes, they can carry this on tomorrow.

It’s only that night, when he’s at home wrapped up in bedsheets that he allows himself the chance to think about what that swishing in his stomach, that deep-seated lurch in his belly, had actually meant. Because the sight of William Byers, pursing his lips and batting his eyelashes playfully had told him something, a fact that seems like it should have been obvious as the colour of the sky, but also feels like he’s just solved the most complex mathematical formula in history – Mike Wheeler wants to kiss Will Byers.

On the mouth.

With his mouth.

He thinks he’d like it a lot. If Will wanted to of course, he wasn’t going to make him or anything, that would be mean. But he thinks Will would be a a good kisser. Not rushed, or placid, or squishy like El had been but….stronger. And softer. And more sincere. He bet it would be like kissing Superman.

This earthquake of a revelation sets off some more fault lines, and three more bombshells drop one after another, like Mike is sprinting headlong down a hospital corridor and bursting through a succession of doors.

The first set of doors slams aside to reveal that the fantasy future Mike had always envisioned had a rival. The one that he, and Will, had talked about for years, was them being the best soulmate friends ever, living and working together. They’d make comic books, with Mike doing the writing and Will doing the artwork. The house would be huge, with four games rooms (a private one each, one they would share, and one they would use when Dustin and Lucas came over), and they’d replace the dining room with a D+D room. Mike would cook and Will would decorate.

But now that painting sits beside another one, which is pretty similar but in it the two of them are something more. Not just best friends, but also being like...well, maybe Mike’s parents were a bad example. So were Will’s, and Dustin’s for that matter, but maybe they could be a bit like Lucas’ folks. Mr and Mrs Sinclair had always seemed happy together and there was something very appealing about that, now that Mike had turned his brain to thinking about it.

Comparing the two fantasies was like a spot-the-difference; they were both virtually identical, but in the second one you could see him and Will holding hands as they watched television together. When Mike bumped into Will on the way into his game room to see if he wanted to play in their shared game room (Will had been leaving his game room to ask the same thing), they shared a surprise kiss. The shot of Will hunched over his drawing table working on a new dragon picture still had Mike standing behind him praising it enthusiastically, but now Mike’s hand was idly twirling the hair at the back of Will’s head. When Dustin and Lucas had left at the end of the night, Mike and Will made their way back to their bedroom together as before, but in the fantasy the two beds had fused into one.

As Mike burst through the second set of double-doors, he is confronted with a set of huge, black letters, looming high in their truth – YOU WANT THE SECOND ONE.

Mike couldn’t just see that alternative future, he wanted it, he needed it to come true. He wanted it more than he wanted his own arcade, more than he wanted El to be okay, more than he wanted Will to get an Atari for Christmas. The old dream of living the rest of their lives alone against the world, just being geeky kids forever and acting crazy together wasn’t enough anymore.

Mike wanted them to go crazy together together.

The third set of doors swung open by themselves and behind them lay fear.

They already knew didn’t they? Troy. The other kids. All those teachers, who, apart from Mr Clarke, had been giving Mike dirty looks every time they saw his bare forearm since the moment he’d entered middle school. Ted.

All of them, who’d treated him like shit for having a boy as a soulmate, they knew that Mike didn’t want Will to be his best boy friend for ever, but to be his boyfriend forever. The were able to tell, years before Mike could, that he was a queer. Mike still didn’t know what was so wrong about that, and he knew Will didn’t either, and he didn’t think the rest of the party did either, and he was sure El wouldn’t – but everyone else outside the five of them loomed uncertain and terrifying. It seemed sometimes like all of them looked down on boys who were together-together. Mike didn’t know all the details, but he knew enough to understand what that dislike really meant.

And it scared him.

More than the bad men, more than the Demogorgon, it scared him. He knew he wasn’t hugely liked at home – his father treater him with growing disdain, his mother didn’t care about much of anything, Holly was too little and he hadn’t been getting along with Nancy for a few years now. But actual hate was something else. He thought about the night of the quarry, the way his mother had wrapped him in her arms as soon as he came to her, and he thought about what she would have done instead if she knew what sort of soulmate Mike wanted to be to Will.

The seed of fear was buried deep in Mike that night. For the next week he would lie in bed, thinking about a future of WillandMike together and about the terror that such a thing entailed. He fell asleep giggling and crying in equal measure.

***

Sometimes Mike wonders if Will could possibly want the same. He’s said that he never understood everyone’s problem with queers, and he’s never expressed any romantic interest in girls, unlike Dustin and Lucas have started doing lately, especially in relation to Dragon’s Quest. Sometimes he thinks Will would maybe be too shy to ever ask Mike if he wanted to kiss, other times he’s sure Will is the only one of the two of them brave enough to make that jump.

He knows that he gets similar waves of giddiness from his soulmate, seemingly at random, when Will is, as far as Mike knows, alone by himself in his room. Will also gets comparable bouts of paralysing, insidious fear creeping inside of him as well that bring tears to Mike’s eyes every time they happen, but that might not the same terror that Mike faced when contemplating the future – Will might just be remembering his time in the Upside Down. Mike’s soulmate certainly has the most horrific nightmares, especially on the nights before his appointments. He always apologises for waking Mike up whenever the taller boy called him on the Supercom to check that he was alright after a nightmare, and they both know how to talk about something easy to bring the other one down after an especially bad dream. But Mike never tells Will that what woke him up in tears and screams was the memory of his soulmates body being hauled from the water, and Will never tells Mike if he was dreaming of being called a queer for the rest of his life or if he was back in the Upside Down again.

It’s about six months after Will was rescued before Mike finally gives in to the urge to think about his soulmate while he lies in bed and does…that. For all the times Mike wants desperately to get a glimpse into Will’s brain and see if he thinks the same things about their future that Mike does, he’s never been more glad that the soulbond doesn’t transmit thoughts than when he’s performing those particular….activities. Not that the first time isn’t as mortifying as it is bone-shaking. He’s lying in bed and thinking of Will, as usual, and trying to not let his hands stray as he thinks about Will’s lips, as usual. But then, all of a sudden, he gets this sudden spike in arousal blaring in his brain like a klaxon, a great hurricane of feeling that he can’t resist. It’s only after he’s….finished that the mortifying thought that Will might have been able to sense what he was doing occurs to him. Neither of them says anything at school the next day, but Mike is pretty sure Will blushes and they both get a surge of embarrassment from one another, before they both get absorbed in the latest Dustin v Lucas debate. It keeps happening though – either Mike will start doing what he can’t resist doing, and a few moments after he starts he picks up mirrored feelings coming from the Byers house; or Mike gets a pulse of arousal from the soulmate part of his brain, and he has to gobble down the rest of his dinner as quickly as possible and ask to be excused.

It’s perhaps to be expected that they don’t talk about it. The topic is kinda awkward. But it’s a shame that there’s another topic to add to the omerta list, considering they used to tell each other literally everything. It seems to Mike like he spends half his time thinking about his feelings for Will, and half thinking about his fear of his feelings for Will, but doesn’t tell his soulmate about either of them one jot. Sometimes, Mike wishes he did.

He doesn’t like the wall he builds, but he keeps on laying bricks regardless.

***

The construction of the wall kicks into overdrive however when, in the way it apparently does in Hawkins from time to time, everything turns into horrific shit. His body aches with fear and his brain trembles from the pain inflicted on his soulmate by the Mind Flayer. Will Byers never deserved a thousandth of the torture inflicted on him, but Mike is helpless to stop it happening anyway. And the selfish part of him tells him that the worst aspect of everything that happens was his own feebleness in preventing it. For as well as he thought he knew his best friend, as perfectly as he was convinced that he could read his soulmate’s emotions and use that bond to be there for him whenever he needed him – Mike wasn’t able to escape the fact that that Halloween he wasn’t there for Will.

When the Mindflayer took over Will’s brain – the brain Mike was supposed to know as well as his own – Mike didn’t even notice. He just thought it was the fucking anniversary effect.

Will had told him that he didn’t blame Mike in the slightest, and that in fact he had saved him from being a tool of the Mindlfayer forever. Joyce had hugged him and cried into his shoulder as she thanked him for being the first to detect that Will’s emotions were nothing more than frantic screams, when outwardly he was eerily detached. Mike grumbled that someone would have noticed, but she insisted it was that that had helped them realise that Will had been completely taken over by that point. Even Hooper had begrudgingly thanked him for sensing that Will was desperate to be noticed, which had led the sheriff to spot the morse code the boy was tapping out.

None of that meant anything to Michael the Failure, the boy who let his soulmate, the one person he was supposed to protect, get possessed while he stood around and did nothing. He retreated to his basement for the best part of two weeks, to lurk and glower at himself in the mirror. Of course he still kept in touch with his soulmate, in fact he never gave him or his mother a moment’s rest with constant phone calls he made, and crackled queries to check that Will was alright every two hours that he did on their private channel on the Supercom.

Nevertheless, it was a far cry from last time. Wrapping himself around Will in his soulmate’s bed seemed more like a decade ago, than the few months it actually was, but Mike couldn’t bring himself to break down the wall he had laboured on, preferring instead to skulk in the basement and dwell on the loneliness coming from his soulbond. It was that sadness that Will was sending him that told Mike what a terrible soulmate he was. He knew that the other boy must be regretting the choice he had made on the swing-set all those years ago, that perhaps if he had just swung a little longer a soulmate more capable of protecting him would have come along. Mike was sure of it.

The only thing that perks him up is a call from a gruff sheriff who tells him that El wants to see him, and that he should bring food because “she wants to learn how to cook.” The call ends with some frustrated muttering from Hopper, but Mike hangs up without listening to the older man’s grumbling, because he’s much too busy shouting up to his mom to give him some ingredients and he needs to go out and no it doesn’t matter where he’s going.

By the time he cycles all the way over to the cabin Hopper told him about, he’s exhausted but giddy. He wonders briefly what Will must think he’s doing right now, and resolves to tell him afterwards. He’s sure he would like El, and it’s a shame they haven’t properly met yet. The moment El opens the cabin door, his self-imposed silent hermitage comes to an end, and his mouth floods out a chain of enthusiasms about how glad he is that she’s safe, that he hopes living with Hopper has been okay, that it’s okay she didn’t talk to him all this time and that he doesn’t blame her, that he thanks her for saving Will’s and his and everyone’s lives again, that he doesn’t know much about fashion but that he likes her new bitchin’ look, and more and more. She watches his verbal spewage with a surprised smile, which gradually morphs into a deadpan stare before she finally interrupts him rambling with an abrupt wave of her hand.

“Mike. I’m happy to see you too” she says firmly.

Mike smiles. “Me too, it’s great that you’re okay, what happened to you after the classroom when…”

She cuts him off again. “I need you to teach me to cook.”

“To cook…?” Mike blanches. “Does Hopper, your dad, not teach you?”

“He knows how to cook TV dinners.”

“Oh, well yeah that’s not like…real food. C’mon, I’ll show you.” He digs in the bags his mom gave him and pulls out the boxes of mac n’ cheese. He shows her how to make the Mike Wheeler special, and she nods along to his detailed instructions while focusing on stirring the wooden spoon with her powers with a determined look on her face, but as time goes on the focus slides into a look of what Mike thinks is one of worry.

“Are you okay El?” he blurts out mid-instruction. “Is something wrong?”

She hesitates for a moment before giving a single nod. “I’m scared.”

“What is it?” Mike asks quickly, his chest tightening. “Is the Mindflayer back? Do we need to –“

“School.”

“….what?” Mike doesn’t know what to make of this interruption.

“I’m scared of school.”

“You’re going to be able to go to school with us?” he enthuses. “That’s great!”

El gives a nervous smile. “I’m excited. But scared” she confesses.

Mike smiles at her in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “If you’re worried about catching up, that’s okay, we can all help. I can help you with like books and reading if you like. Will can teach about drawing and art and everything, he’s really good. Dustin is like a mad scientist so he can do that,” Mike checks off on his fingers. “Lucas is a genius at maths. Like none of us are good at like sport or anything, but may be Dustin can get Steve to pitch in and –“

“It’s not just…” El interrupts before miming writing with a pen. “Work. It’s everything. I’m behind in all of it. I feel like a little kid” she frowns.

“You’ll catch up in no time! We can all help with for real. Like I can teach you this other recipe that I know really well,” he says nodding sagely (not telling her the recipe is toast). “And my mom is an even better cook, I can get her to teach me and I can then train you. And Joyce is…well she’s not the best cook, but she knows a ton of other stuff and –“

“No” El says firmly.

“…no?” Mike asks hesitantly.

“I need more than that. I need one person to be a…” she frowns, clearly annoyed she doesn’t know the right word. “A guide? Like the old man with the beard who teaches the young man to punch better.”

“Oh like a kung-fu master? Like a Jedi master?”

“What’s a Jedi?”

“Never mind. But Hopper can teach you how to punch if you want, but you’ve got your badass powers.”

“Not enough. Need someone to teach me….life” she finishes in a frustrated tone.

Mike thinks for a moment, struggling to find a way to help. “I mean if Hopper isn’t helping enough, then maybe Joyce? She really likes you you know and she’s always been like a second mom to me, so maybe that would be good?”

El shakes her head. “I need…” she looks down and her eyes widen like she’s found the buried treasure.

“I need this.” She taps the swingset on Mike’s arm.

“You need a….soulmate?” Mike asks. The question makes him feel funny. Not good funny either.

“Yes” she nods her head, beaming at having found the answer. “A proper teacher.”

“I mean…. El soulmates are great and everything but there not like teachers. They’re like best friends or a boy that you um….kiss.” He feels his face flush and he ducks his head avoiding the way her eyes narrow. “A soulmate is like an ally or, an, er, partner, not a teacher.” He can’t miss the way her eyebrow raises, even when’s avoiding direct eye contact.

“No. You’re wrong. They’re teachers.”

“Oh…” Mike pauses, flummoxed by the sudden confidence. “How do you, um, know?”

She points.

“The television?” he asks surprised.

El grabs his wrist, pulls him across the room, stopping in front of the tv and pointing to a stack of boxes beside it. “The videos?” he asks, thoroughly confused.

“Duh” El responds, with a strangely Californian accent.

Mike looks down at the tapes. He vaguely recognises some of the titles and the lurid cover art from the videos that his mom likes to watch. Until a few years ago Nancy had watched them with her, but Mike had never been persuaded to join them. Now Karen watches them alone with chardonnay, her husband asleep in the lounger beside her.

“Come on” El commands, flickering her head. A sudden force shoves him down onto the couch as El opens the first box and slides the tape into the machine with practised ease. He tries to ask what’s going, but El shushes him as soon the words Sixteen Candles appear on the screen. The movie is a cheesy story of a shy teenage girl, who has a crush on some senior heartthrob. Whenever she’s with him she comes out of her shell and he teaches her to be cool. In the last scene he realises she’s his soulmate, and a birthday cake appears on his tanned bicep and they kiss.

El has been watching the whole thing with rapt attention, but Mike’s thinks it’s dumb. Neither him or Will ever have, or ever will be, one of the cool kids, but it doesn’t stop them from being soulmates.

But as soon as the film ends, El swaps the tape for another one and they watch Valley Girl together. The plot is basically the same – an awkward preppy girl meets punk rebel who teaches her to be cool. In the finale she leaves her dull boyfriend for the cool mystery boy and they kiss and get matching soulmarks. The repetition makes Mike feel uneasy. While none of the Party had ever been hugely confident around outsiders, Will had always been the shyest of them. Was Mike, as his soulmate, supposed to be making him more sure of himself and outgoing? That’s what kept happening in these movies.

Valley Girl is immediately followed by Weird Science. The main characters are more relatable to Mike, being a pair of nerdy teenage boys. They’re best friends, and used to be soulmates when they were younger, but now that they’re teens they both want two pretty girls to be their new soulmates. After some weird magic shenanigans, the nerds fight some mutant bikers and the girls fall in love with them and they get marks. Mike sinks lower into the couch, while El watches obliviously beside him, smiling as they kiss. When monsters had come for his soulmate, Mike hadn’t saved him, El and Hopper and Joyce and Nancy and everyone else had done that. Every thought he’s had in the past week about failing Will multiples and cascades down on top of him, weighing him deeper and deeper into the couch.

By the time El puts on the final movie, Splash, Mike is feeling wretched. The one is about a little boy whose life is saved by a girl with magic powers, a mermaid to be precise. Years later he meets her again, and she turns into a person and he has to try and guide her around her new human life. She’s confused by everyday society and but the boy helps her learn everything. Bad men try and capture the girl, but together they escape. They kiss and are soulmates.

Mike struggles to keep his breathing steady as El watches with delight. They made a whole damn movie about her. She’s a girl with magic powers who saved a boy. Now she’s dumped in a world she knows nothing about and needs a soulmate to help through it. The boy repaid his debt to her and became her soulmate.

Mike exists as hastily as he can as soon as the movie ends with a shouted promise to come back soon. He cycles home slowly, his guts squirming as the seeds within them sprout, and tangle up his stomach in their knotted vines.

***

The next person to dump a load of fertiliser on those seeds is his sister, though to be fair, she probably didn’t intend to do so.

It’s been years now since he really stopped idolising Nancy, ever since William Byers took her spot as best-person-in-the world, but right now a little childish portion of him wants to tug on her skirt and let her explain to him how everything is going to be okay. So one afternoon he wanders into her room while she’s working on homework, ignoring the suspicious looks she gives him and starts a casual conversation. He rambles on about school, and television, and how Will is doing, and El, and what Will was like at the cabin, and popular romantic comedies, and Will’s artwork, and if Nancy went to the Snowball when she was in middle school, and if Will said anything about him after the exorcism and so on, but at no point does she take the damn hint and just psychically answer all of his problems already. She just nods and ‘mms’ her way through the whole thing, and Mike is a few moments away from tearing his hair out and throwing himself out of the window, before Nancy moves her head in such a way that her braids slip down her shoulder and he glimpses something on the back of her neck.

“What’s that?” he demands in an accusatory tone. He hadn’t intended to sound like that, but his eyes made his mouth betray him when they saw that unfamiliar…thing.

Nancy doesn’t look at him and wait an unusually long time before answering in a steady tone, “It’s trigonometry homework Michael.”

“Ugh, not that! What’s that on the back of your neck?” Mike asks quickly, in too much of a hurry to even roll his eyes.

Another delay followed by a neutral tone. “It’s my soulmark, you know that.”

“That’s not Steve’s though is it?” he asks in an indignant voice. “He never uses a camera.”

Delay. Nancy doesn’t turn around to face him.

“No.”

“Then who’s is it?”

Silence. Stillness. “Jonathan’s”

“What?!?” The fact that Mike had been expecting the answer doesn’t make his voice any quieter. “When the hell did this happen?”

“The night we were at Murray’s.”

“What on earth happened there?”

“We….. We spent the night on the pull-out.”

It’s Mike’s turn to pause here, but his silence is more down to confusion than avoidance, until he figures it out. “Ewww! That’s gross! He’s Will’s brother!”

Nancy spins around in her chair at last and shushes him. “Keep your voice down! Besides, Will isn’t my soulmate is he?”

“But…like…” Mike stammers, lost for words. “How did this happen?”

Nancy raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want me to answer that little brother?”

“Ewww! No! I just meant like….I know why Barb stopped being your soulmate.” He sees the muscles in Nancy’s jaw tighten and he wants to apologise but he doesn’t know how. “But how did Steve stop being your soulmate? Did…did he do something to you? Did he hurt you?!”

“No! No of course not! It’s just that,” Nancy’s eyes drop to the floor. “I guess I thought he was my soulmate at the time. We had fun together, I knew he lov- liked me – and he came back for me when he needed to.” She pauses. “Looking back, I think I just persuaded myself that he was my soulmate, I made the mark appear myself. It never really felt quite right. But it kinda made sense at the time…” she trails off.

Mike huffs. “And what? Now you ‘think’ Jonathan is your soulmate?”

“I guess so” she shrugs.

“But…isn’t a soulmark the universe’s way of telling you who you’re supposed to be with? That’s what everyone says isn’t it?”

“Are they though?” Nancy answers, meeting his gaze with hesitant determination. “I mean, look at Jonathan and Will’s parents. Or Hopper. Or –“ she jerks her head at the floor, where the muffled sound of the television can just be heard. “What was the universe telling them?”

Mike shifts his weight from foot to foot, trying to think how to rebut his sister. He knows he sounds like a little kid but he still says in a quiet voice. “But the universe…wants people to be happy right? It’s good isn’t it?”

Nancy meets his look with her own sad eyes. “After everything that happened over the past year, sometimes I think the universe is just bad men and monsters. Maybe…maybe soulmarks are just the body’s way of telling you what your brain has already decided. Maybe it’s all just us.”

Mike is silent for a long while. “You really think that?” he asks quietly.

Nancy matches his silence. “Maybe. I was wrong about Steve.”

She shrugs and turns back to her homework. Mike hovers wordless in the doorway for another minute before leaving.

***

All the doubts, all the guilt, every feeling of frustration and sadness just keeps on building up. Mike feels like he’s rolling helplessly down a hill, out of control and unable to stop himself from getting covered and stained with every bad thing he rolls over. It snowballs and snowballs until, ironically, it all comes to a sudden and shuddering stop on the night of the Snowball.

After several weeks brooding in the basement, months of thinking about his feelings for Will and literal years of knowing about soulmates, Mike feels like he should have it all figured out by now. But here he is, the deadline of the middle school dance lying right at his feet, with no idea what to do. He keeps telling himself that at any moment his heart is going to tell him what to do, but as he tries to duck his way out of his mother’s cringey photographs, it keeps determinedly silent. Sat in the car he hopes Will’s heart will beam him the answer, but all Mike is able to pick up from the other boy is a delighted, giggly awkwardness. Without warning, Mike is right there, next to Will in the school gymnasium, and the universe stay completely, maddeningly mute.

William Byers is beautiful, in his shiny shoes and cute vest.

Looking at him now, laughing with Lucas at the, er, experiment that is Dustin’s hair, no one could have guessed that a few short weeks ago he was screaming in agony as a Mind-Flaying monster from another dimension was exorcised with fire from his body. Even Mike, with his psychic link to him, can’t pick up on any pain inside of him. Maybe that means Will is fine. Maybe it means he can’t feel his hurt because Mike is a bad soulmate.

Lucas and Max pair off, and Dustin wanders away to test his hypothesis on some unsuspecting eighth-graders and before Mike and Will can get a second alone, two things happen, virtually simultaneously.

A girl appears before them and asks Will, or Zombie Boy, to dance with her. Will’s eyes bug out and his mouth stammers awkwardly, and he turns to look questioningly up at his friend. And just as he does so, Mike can see a door open behind Will, and a very nervous-looking El steps through it. She looks pretty.

And it’s that very moment, right there in a gymnasium surrounded by streamers and glitter and awkward couples, that Mike has a greater surge of confidence than he has felt all year. He can see, clearly now for the first time in months. It’s like in that second, Mike stopped being a player, stumbling unknowingly in the dark; and instead switched to being the Dungeon Master and can now see all the secrets hidden behind the screen, and he knows everything that is to come.

He can feel the hesitant confusion in Will, and Mike knows that it was he who caused it, and he can feel the magnitude of his guilt. He knows the shame of making Will think that he had to ask Mike’s permission to go dance with a pretty girl, like he was bound to Mike and needed authorisation to unbind himself.

Mike thought of Will’s parents, and of Hopper’s past life, and of Steve and his sister, and of every other person he’d ever known who’d fallen for their silly, adolescent fantasies about their first soulmate.

He could see the fate that invariably lay ahead if Mike insisted on dragging Will along on his delusion. He could see the past repeating itself, but endlessly and without remorse, a thousand Lonnies bearing down on Will, a boy who would battle against them for a century out of loyalty to Mike, no matter how deeply they scarred him. He could envision a similar fate for himself, living in a home of cold stares and folded arms.

He remembered the boy on the swing, all those years ago, small and scared. He remembered how the boy had needed help, and how Mike had been the only one who had given that aide. Mike saw the same boy in front him now, strong and brave. He had survived kidnap and hunting and possession and a hundred other unimaginable horrors, and he had done it all without Mike’s help.

Mike could see another person now who wanted help, a pretty girl, lost and confused and in need.

In that moment, Mike knew what he had to do.

He nodded to Will, and watched him walk off onto the dance floor. Mike turned away and approached the swing. He took the girl on it by the hand and he danced with her.

As the lights lowered around them he knew that he had done what he must.

He was confident of it when their lips touched.

When he saw the small, black walkie-talkie appear on her cheek, and he felt the familiar tingle on his forearm he was convinced.

As the music swelled he was sure.

Sure.

Every move you make

And every vow you break

Every smile you fake

Every claim you stake

I'll be watching you

Chapter Text

The Scientific Research Journal of Michael Wheeler

Hi future Mike! As I’m sure you remember, the purpose of this journal is the documentation of our experience being the soulmate of Subject A – Eleven, also known as El, also known as Jane.

It’s very important that this experience is studied accurately, to ensure that I perform my duties as soulmate correctly and that I am able to aide the subject as much as possible. While my time being Will’s soulmate was perfect satisfactory and understandable at the time, I clearly wasn’t soulbonded with the right subject.

Perhaps if I had soulbonded with El earlier then I wouldn’t have lost her.

While normally one’s emotions aren’t very scientific, bur considering this is a study of soulmate I shall note emotions that I experience in relation to the subject. At the beginning of this study the primary emotion that I experience is guilt for not keeping my soulmate safe. If all goes well, this project will result in me being a better soulmate to the subject and not letting bad men or interdimensional monsters take her away.

Now that the introduction is done, let us continue with our hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1
El and I are soulmates.

Hypothesis 2
El knows little about the world and needs support and education.

Hypothesis 3
Provided hypothesis 1 is true, then El and I will like the same things.

Hypothesis 4
This is a romantic soulbond, and therefore doing romantic things together will feel wonderful for both of us.

I shall collate results on a weekly basis and test the hypotheses against these.

Week 1
The research is proceeding very well. We are performing the experiment in the Hopper’s cabin, which Hopper has let us have free reign of, though we spend most of the time in El’s room. Hopper makes grumbling sounds about this, and sometimes mumbles things I can’t hear properly while staring at us, but I think he’s otherwise okay with everything.

On a personal note, I’m feeling very happy about El being back and safe. Spending time with her when we aren’t running away from something horrible is nice.

As for comparing the hypotheses against the data, I have drawn the following conclusions thus far.

Hypothesis 1 – Proven correct. El has a walkie-talkie on her cheek, and the swingset on my forearm has turned into the number 11, just like El’s tattoo. Ergo – we are soulmates. Duh.

I have noted the fact that mine and El’s soulmarks are different to one another’s, while mine and Will’s were identical. Although this was a potential concern I have conducted further research (read El’s latest copy of Cosmopolitan) and found out that this does not affect the soulbond. The marks are simply based on the most important visual association we have with our soulmate and them being different does not necessarily mean that the relationship is weak. After all, Lucas has a skateboard and Max has a slingshot, and Lucas has told me that Max said that he was a “radical soulmate, totally tubular” so that’s that.

Hypothesis 2 – Proven correct. El really doesn’t know much about anything, and the things she does know seem to come from Hopper and the television. I shall draw up an education programme focused on reading, writing, science, maths, cooking and how to survive at school. Maybe video games as well if I can sneak my Atari over there.

Hypothesis 3 – Proven incorrect. To be honest, I was thrown by this. With Will, we basically liked all of the same things – Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, D+D and Ghostbusters and so on. But when I told El about these things she just stared at me silently and expectantly without saying a word, like she’s waiting for me to get to the point. This is….weird. Surely, being soulmates means we like doing things together right? Being together, having fun together, that’s to be expected isn’t it? Maybe it’s because Will and I were friend-soulmates, while El and I are romantic-soulmates?

I don’t know how I feel about this.

Further research needed.

Hypothesis 4 – Inconclusive. El has said I’m her boyfriend and she wants to do romantic things together, so I figured kissing would be an obvious choice. And besides, I can’t afford to take her on a date. But the kissing has been…. disappointing. According to sources (Cosmopolitan) kissing a soulmate should feel magical with sensations including:
1. Sparks on the lips
2. Fluttering heart
3. Butterflies in stomach

The only sensations I have detected so far are:
1. The lips are slippery
2. El’s chapstick tastes of artificial cherry flavouring and it’s not a pleasant flavour
3. A slight twinge in the back of the neck after the first three minutes

It’s not very encouraging results so far. It’s all rather dull and a little uncomfortable.

I’m going to take the research material home with me and learn better kissing techniques and re-evaluate from there.

I’m sure that will make everything work better.

Week 3

The good news is that I’m finding more things to do with El. Reading magazines, listening to music, talking about TV she’s watched and giving her the gossip from school all seem to be top of her list. It’s pretty clear when she doesn’t care for something – that blank, disbelieving stare speaks volumes, and makes me want to skulk out an apology like a teacher just caught me graffitiing the bathroom stalls again. But watching her come alive when you find something she’s into is awesome.

It’s hard to find activities though. Obviously I can’t really take her anywhere outside the cabin, and the fact that Hopper stares at me like he wants to take a nightstick and jam it down my throat means we’re pretty much confined to her room.

But it’s also hard because

I guess with Will things were just easier. Because we liked the same things and everything. With El I’m always trying to find stuff for her to and most of them are kind of boring to be honest. For the sake of scientific accuracy that is.

But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be? When you have a proper romantic soulmate as opposed to a kid one? Don’t adults always say a marriage takes work and everything?

It’s cool watching El discover who she is outside of a lab bit by bit. So maybe we’re supposed to also find our relationship together bit by bit. And surely if one of us is happy with what we’re doing then that should be enough for the other one shouldn’t it?

It’s just

On the plus side the kissing is a lot better. I don’t know if El practiced, but I did and the results are very encouraging. We move our lips now, and vary the pace and everything. Yesterday El even used her tongue. It kind of just flopped around like a fish being slowly electrocuted but still, it’s a very positive indicator of an upward correlation in kissing pleasure. I think I can conclude now that all the stories about sparking butterfly fireworks are bullshit, but it’s certainly an enjoyable enough procedure. El’s lips are still weirdly soft and squidgy, so it’s a bit like kissing a slug. But in a not bad good way.

It’s a shame things aren’t easier. And more fun.

It will get there.

Week 9

New hypothesis – it is it weird that I’m keeping a scientific journal about my girlfriend?

Week 14

Still just kissing and reading magazines.

Think El is happy.

It’s kind of boring some of the time.

Like an okay good chore.

Week 21

I don’t think El is happy after all.

The only feelings I’ve gotten from our soulbond, pretty much from the night of the Snowball, are disappointment and frustration.

At least I think so.

Because the other problem is how unclear all these feelings are. With Will every emotion was crisp and immediate. I could have told you what he was feeling if I was in a hooded straightjacket in a coffin buried under fifteen feet of concrete. But with El it’s…fuzzy. Wavering. Like a radio that’s not tuned right. More of a background hum than a clear signal.

I can tell more of the disappointment is being converted into frustration day by day though.

I want to talk to El about it, but how do you ask your soulmate ‘Hey I know you’re secretly unhappy and lying to me about it. What’s up with that?’ And it’s not like El seems unhappy on the outside. Even if her emotions weren’t normally super easy to read, I’ve never met anyone who is more direct with telling you how they feel about something. Kind of the opposite of Will in that way. Which is odd considering they’ve both been bonded to me.

Tonight I finally got the stones to ask her if she always knew what I was feeling. She replied ‘Duh’.

So I asked her, trying to be tentative, how she did this. She looked at me like I was an idiot and started pantomiming how I look when I’m happy, sad, angry and so on. It honestly would have been funny if it didn’t make me feel so bad. I interrupted and asked if she could tell wat I was feeling when I wasn’t in front of her. Again, I got the look and she said that ‘You know I can.’ Then she asked if I could tell how she was feeling when I was somewhere else and I said that I could. What else was I supposed to say? The worst thing was that she looked surprised when I said that. I didn’t feel surprise from her though. Just more frustration.

Conclusion - I’m a bad soulmate.

I wish I wasn’t.

***

Mike was exhausted. He felt like a piece of beef jerky who had just been made to run a marathon before being rolled into paste and spread across a too-large piece of bread. He wasn’t sure if that analogy really made any sense, but his strung-out brain didn’t really care as it peered through blurry eyes into the contents of his locker. It was probably the fifth of sixth time he’d picked up his math textbook, turned it around and placed it back in the exact same spot, but right now he was grateful for the opportunity to put off his homework for a few more precious seconds.

It was probably bad to think of his girlfriend, the love of his life, as homework, but in its lower moments his frazzled mind couldn’t deny that the truth was she felt like that some of the time. Sometimes he enjoyed it, but the prospect of having to spend time with El after school each and every single day began to fill him with a sense of dread during last period. It was an increasing struggle to think of something else before El picked up on his feelings. True, Mike could do his actual homework over at the cabin, but it always took longer because he had to explain everything he was doing to the knowledge-hungry girl. Spending all day being a student, and then leaving to go be a teacher for the evening seemed especially unfair.

The biggest issue was that El was homework that actually mattered. He thought of all the long hours Ted worked, only to come home and ignore his wife in favour of meatloaf and a lounge chair, and Mike was determined for this trait to not pass down from father to son. He thought of how Joyce looked after work a lot of the time, and he wondered what she was like when she and Lonnie were still soulmates. He understood now why El’s magazines kept referring to a successful marriage as being hard work, because it certainly felt that way to Mike, even if a little tiny voice at the back of his head kept whispering the words ‘why does being with your soulmate feel like such a chore?’ over and over.

Mike sighed. He could sense fuzzy feelings of anticipation and trepidation coming through. What exactly was El nervous for? She knew he was coming over today, same as he did every day, so what was she emotionally hassling him for? Mike closed his eyes for a second and scolded himself for thinking like that. He opens his eyes, grudgingly shuts his locker and turns around to see Will Byers standing right behind him.

“Oh! Hey Will! You okay?”

“Sure” Will nods once, with an odd, tight smile. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, actually I’m already late, so I gotta get going” Mike replies, setting off with long, fast strides down the corridor, with Will having to hurry along beside him.

“How are you late? School’s just ended” Will asks, checking his calculator watch.

“Yeah well, she’s a bit of a stickler for this sort of thing. Sometimes I think I never should have taught her how to tell the time” Mike chuckles awkwardly, as they head outside and both start unlocking their bikes.

Will laughs, hesitant and fake. “You taught my mom how to tell time?”

Mike duly pays the laugh back, hoping this conversation is going to end soon so he can get going and cycle away rather than wheeling their bikes slowly along together. “Nah, I mean El.”

“I thought she couldn’t leave the cabin?”

“She can’t…?” Mike trails off. “That’s why I need to get going already.”

Will stops dead for a moment, and Mike bristles at the delay. “You’re going to El’s?” Will asks in a flat voice.

“Well, yeah. It’s after school so…” Mike shrugs in a ‘duh’ gesture.

“Last week you said we’d spend tonight at my house.”

It takes Mike a solid second to remember, but the memory hits heavy when it arrives. “Shit! I completely forgot, I’m sorry Will!”

The shorter boy doesn’t reply, and Mike feels a prickle of anger at the sight of Will’s stony face. “I promise we’ll do it next week, or the one after, for sure!” he says, already beginning to walk away. “Definitely. But right now, I really gotta go, I’m sorry Will.”

“So you’re ditching me for her?”

Mike’s anger intensifies at Will’s accusation, no matter how close to home the arrow hits. “No! Well, okay, yeah I am, but I don’t really have a choice do I?”

“Don’t you?” Will pushes back in a tone to match his expression, and this just sets Mike off further. The anger is growing large now, he feels like a thousand angry bees are trapped in a boiling kettle inside of him.

“Of course not!” Mike cries. “I’ve got responsibilities!”

Will snorts. “Responsibilities?” he asks, abandoning the stoniness for scorn, which infuriates Mike. Didn’t Will understand the pressure Mike was under? The duties he had to El now, all the things he had to do? Why couldn’t Will accept that?

“Yeah I do!” Mike shoots.

“Why, because you’re such a grown-up all of a sudden?”

“Maybe I am!” Mike growls. What was Will doing, behaving like this, like a baby crying for attention? Wasn’t it clear that Mike had a job to do? “I can’t spend all my time doing kid shit anymore okay? Is that a problem?”

Will shrugs aggressively. “Didn’t realise hanging out with your girlfriend was so important” he says, pouring acid over the word girlfriend.

“She’s not just my girlfriend!”

“No? Then what is she?”

“You know what!” And it’s not just anger inside Mike’s chest now, it’s betrayal. A great yawning chasm of it is opening inside of Mike’s chest, and all of the bees are furiously trying to escape the grasp of this treachery. How could Will abandon him like this? He was Mike’s best friend, he was supposed to support Mike’s relationship with his soulmate, it was his role to be there for him, to be the best man at his wedding wasn’t it? Isn’t that what everyone said?

Will flings his hands into the air. “Clearly I don’t understand it! I don’t even get what you do with her! It’s not as if you ever seem enthused about being with her anymore, you talk about it like it’s this heroic thing you’re doing, but you get all defensive anytime anyone brings it up! So what is it you two do all day – swap spit?”

“It’s not my fault you don’t understand!” Mike shouts.

“It’s not my fault you never explain it?”

“You wouldn’t understand even if I did! It’s not my fault you don’t get it! It’s not my fault you don’t have a soulmate!”

All of it disappears then. All the anger, all the spitefulness, all the energy in Will’s face disappears in that instant. It’s replaced by a still mask of nothing, of absence.

Will doesn’t say anything. He stares at Mike for what could be an instant or forever, before silently turning around and walking away without a word.

Mike stands there on the sidewalk, breathing heavily, wet and shivering in the rain. He hadn’t even noticed when it started falling.

Eventually he too wrenches his bike around and marches off in the direction of the cabin. His legs feel too wobbly right now to ride, so he stalks alongside his bike, feet on autopilot as everything courses through him. He doesn’t think he’s ever, in all his life, felt as much as he does right now. Anger at Will, at himself and El, sadness, guilt, all of them screaming inside of him, pushing each other to the forefront, roaring to be noticed and consumed, all of it huge and inescapable.

His stupid brain doesn’t even notice he’s arrived at the cabin before El is opening the door and pulling him inside, getting him a towel and warm clothes, pushing a plate of hot Eggos into his hands, hugging, kissing and doing everything she can think of to make him feel better. None of it works and all he wants is stand numbly in the rain and not feel a thing.

***
It’s odd, Mike reflects. The day before he had been so full of feelings, overwhelmed with kettled emotions bubbling over and threatening to burst through his skin, but when he wakes up in the morning, stiff and damp-cheeked, he feels so little. Almost nothing hovers within the vacuum of his body today, and the only emotion that ticks through him is a sensation that he eventually describes as hollow guilt.

Some of that may come from El, Mike isn’t entirely sure. After all this time, the soulbond still produces only fuzziness, nothing like the white-hot everything he felt the day before. A bitter part of him suspects El would be glad he and Will have had a falling-out, his girlfriend always having had a jealous streak about her. But then again, no-one values the importance of friends higher than El Hopper, so maybe she’s feeling hollow guilt as well for hogging Mike. Not that she should feel guilty though. Soulmates are supposed to hog one another. That’s what people say. Probably.

Mike leaves the house, earlier than he has in months, and heads to the Byers place to apologise. He knows that he was in the right, he must have been, he had to have been right in his argument, but he needn’t have been as rude about it as he was. Even though Will had insulted his soulmate, there was no need for Mike to have gone off about it the way he did. He drew first blood, and it was his duty to make amends. And if he was truthful to himself, that level of anger, and its suddenness, scared him a little.

But when he arrived, Joyce said Will wasn’t home.

Mike didn’t find him in Castle Byers either. Or the quarry. He combed the mall for two hours, and persuaded Steve to let him slip past the barrier and poke his head into every screen at the cinema, but there was no sign of the other boy.

When Mike eventually abandoned his mission and slouched home however, he found Will sitting on his front step, back straight and staring out. Mike hurries over, trying to gabble out some combination of an apology, Will’s name and some cobbled excuses for his behaviour, but the older boy stands up, proffers his hand and beats him to it.

“Mike, I’m sorry for how I acted yesterday. I was being childish.”

“What? Will, no it’s me who should be apolo-“

Will shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have insulted El like that. She’s actually great, and your girlfriend and your soulm-“ he glances down at the 11 on Mike’s arm and swallows. It occurs to Mike that this might be the first time Will has seen his new mark. “Your soulmate. I’m sorry Mike.” Will’s voice was strange and flat. It didn’t have the deadness he used yesterday. Instead it reminded Mike more of how he was when the Mind-Flayer possessed him, like something was trying to use a human voice for the first time.

Mike takes the hand and shakes it. Once, twice, then Will withdraws his hand before Mike can pull him into a hug.

“Thank you Will” Mike says quietly. “But I should apologise too, I-“ Will cuts him off with a dismissive shrug, before squaring his shoulders and starting to walk down the Wheeler’s drive.

“Wait, Will do you want to hang out? Like we were going to do yesterday?”

Will is already facing away from him as he strides steadily down to the pavement. “Sorry Mike I have to go. Mom wants me to help with something. Maybe some other time though!” There’s a cheeriness to his final words, but he doesn’t look back.

Mike shivers in the sunshine and feels the cavern within him grow deeper.

***

Mike can’t sleep. He spends his nights twisting and huffing, tangling himself in the sweaty sheets and staring balefully at the ceiling. He’s done everything he’s supposed to hasn’t he? He was there for his best friend growing up, then he met a girl who needed his help and he was there for whenever she needed him no matter what. So why then was his soulbond so blurry and staid? And why had his relationship with his best friend been consumed by a glacier, their friendship doomed to lie frozen and buried till archaeologists dig it up centuries from now and spend years debating what exactly made their discovery such a sad sack of failure in the first place?

He hoped that he didn’t keep El up at night with his insomniac turmoil. Then again, maybe she couldn’t sense that properly. She’d told him that she had nightmares, but he’d never felt them the same way he had when Will had come back from the Upside Down.

Michael Wheeler is self-aware enough to know that he has rather generous portion of pride inside himself (and by ‘self-aware’, he means that the Party have made this point very clear to him on multiple occasions). But even he has to admit that he’s somehow out of his depth. Embarrassing at this to accept, he needs to ask for help from the smartest person that he’s ever met.

He calls Dustin Henderson and asks for him to come over because he needs his assistance with something. He doesn’t tell him that he’s asking him because he’s the smartest person Mike knows. Dustin would never let him live it down if he did that.

The curly-haired boy entertains Mike’s pretence of chit-chat about comic books and douchebags at school for a few minutes, but it isn’t long before he’s clapping his hands together and asking “So. What have you screwed up now Mike?”

Mike’s withering glare doesn’t damage his shit-eating grin in the slightest, and he apparently interprets Mike’s dignified silence as his cue to question further. “Is it the fight you had with Will?”

Mike groans and covers his face with his hands. “No. I mean, I know that’s a complete shitshow, and I have no idea what I’m going to do to fix that, but…wait did he talk to you about it?”

Dustin shrugs. “Sort of. Not really.”

Mike inserts his face back into the pillow. “I’ll have to deal with that later. But the thing I need some help with, um, a little help with, is, well, you know a lot of science stuff. And what do you know, like, about, soulmates?” He peeks one eye out from the bedding to see his friend bobbing his head contemplatively.

“I mean, I’ve read a little bit about it. But surely you’re going to know more than me buddy.”

“Why is that?” Mike asks, muffled.

“Because you actually have a soulmate. Duh.”

“Wait, what?” Mike exclaims, launching himself up from his pillowy shelter. “What about you and Suzie?”

“She’s my girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean she’s my soulmate or anything.”

“But…what?”

“We don’t all find our soulmate as early as you did you know” Dustin chuckles.

“I know that!” Mike objects. “But you talk about how much you like her. Like all the damn time!”

“You’re one to talk” Dustin replies, good-naturedly. “Of course I talk about her all the time, she’s amazing. Did I tell you about the thing she did with the microscope?”

“No, but-“

“Okay so she used this transistor, this is so incredible, and then she got all this peanut butter, smooth of course, and-“

“Not right now Dustin!”

“Right, okay, sorry, existential crisis, I forgot” Dustin apologies, with smirking kindly. “Yeah, I like her a whole bunch, but I don’t think we’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives together or anything. She doesn’t either and she’s always right about, like, everything.”

“So…you don’t what she’s feeling?”

“Of course I know what she’s feeling Mike, I’m not an idiot.”

“How?”

“Same way I can tell you what you’re feeling.”

“You can?! But we’re not soulmates!”

“Michael.” Dustin fixes him with a stare. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, you’re not dressed, the curtains are closed and you were playing the same thirty-second Cure riff on repeat when I got here. It’s not exactly hard to figure out.”

Mike throws a pillow at him. “Whatever. Suzie isn’t here” he points out petulantly.

“So?”

“So! How can you tell what she’s feeling?”

“I ask her. I listen to what she says and how she says it” Dustin says in a deadpan voice, barely holding back his teasing laughter.

“I know that!” Mike says loudly, secretly thinking back over the past few months to see if he actually knew that. “Yeah, but you don’t know what she’s feeling right now do you?”

Dustin thinks for a moment. “No, I guess not” he says fairly. “So, what’s that like? I’ve always been curious. It was freaky the way you and Will could do that – is it the same now that you’re with El?”

“Of course it is!” Mike wiggles his arm at his friend, and Dustin glances at the 11 on his skin with an inscrutable look.

“Except,” Mike continues cautiously. “That’s kind of the problem. It’s not working properly. All the emotions coming through are…vague. Like how Cerebro sounded before you fixed it. Or those scrambled channels Lucas tried to access.”

“Hmmm” Dustin says with a frown and a gleam in his eyes, the way he always does whenever he comes across a puzzle he really wants to solve. “That is interesting, I’ve never heard of that before.” He drums his fingers for a few moments, while Mike hangs on agonising tenterhooks.

“You can still feel her emotions though right? Like they’re indistinct, but you can get the basics?” Dustin asks.

“Yeah” Mike says. Confidently.

“So, yesterday at like thirteen-hundred hours, what was she feeling?”

“You can just say one o’clock Dustin” Mike rolls his eyes. “And at the time she was feeling…well…sadness. I guess” he confesses quietly, waiting for Dustin to judge him for having failed to do his job and keep El happy.

Dustin doesn’t belittle him though, instead he just scrunches his face in confusion. “But she was happy at that time.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I went to see her. I got a bunch of leftover ice cream from Steve and bought them over to the cabin so we could test to see which was her favourite combination with Eggos. It had melted by the time I got there, but the experiment was still successful.”

Mike gapes at Dustin. “And?!”

“Oh, yeah. It was blueberry, with a dash of raspberry ripple.”

“Not that!” Mike shrieks. “I meant ‘and you’re sure she was happy’?”

“It was El and she had a ton of Eggos, ice cream and the chance to learn some science. Of course she was happy. Plus she told me I’m her favourite to have over. After you of course.”

Mike says nothing, he’s too absorbed with his reeling mind to manage actual words. He had been sure that all El had been feeling at the time had been the same indistinct moroseness as usual. How had Mike sensed it so wrong? Just how awful a soulmate was he?

Dustin seemed to sense his friend’s crisis however, because he leant forward and slugged him affectionately in the shoulder. “Don’t worry man. I’m sure we can figure it out. Let’s go.” And he takes his hand and starts tugging him out of bed.

“Are you dragging me to the library?”

“I’m taking you on a curiosity voyage!”

“Is this curiosity voyage taking place at the library?”

“…yes” Dustin grumbles. “Come on, we can find the answer there. Maybe put some pants on.”

But after spending the best part of a week reading through every book Hawkins Municipal Library has on the subject of soulmates, they are no nearer an answer than they were in the darkness of Mike’s room. There isn’t a single documented case of someone not being able to pick up on such basic soulmate emotions like sugar-fuelled happiness, nor any clear record of these feelings being on an unclear frequency. People who stop being soulmates, like Joyce and Lonnie, gradually pick up on fewer and fewer feelings, but they never come across like they haven’t been properly tuned. Even in event of brain injury, symptoms are different to what Mike is experiencing. People whose soulmates have fallen into comas, can still feel their subconscious emotions ticking over. Not being able to sense that anymore is often the biggest deciding point when deciding to pull the plug or not.

But they find nothing that matches Mike’s situation.

Dustin eventually concludes it must be something to do with the experiments that the lab did on El, and that he’s sure things will get better with time. He tries to sound confident. Mike tries to sound like he believes him.

The worst part is that none of the books tell him what to do when you burn your relationship with the most important person in your life to the ground just because you have a new girlfriend.

***

He tries Lucas next. He doesn’t tell him that Dustin was his first choice, no need to insult his pride. Nevertheless, he also makes the precaution of calling him, somehow the idea of confessing his inadequacy as a soulmate while standing in front of Lucas is too humiliating to contemplate.

After the usual five minute argument with Erica to persuade her to actually give the phone to her brother, and another six minutes of shooting the shit with Lucas, Mike plucks up the courage to get to the damn point.

“Lucas…you know that you and Max are soulmates for, um….for sure right?” he asks, aware of how sickly he sounds.

“….Yes. Why?” Lucas responds with prickly defensiveness.

“Nothing, I was just wondering, because, well…” Mike gabbles quickly before coming to a halt. “I guess things with me an El have bit iffy lately. That’s all. And I kinda wanted to….”

“Oh no worries man” Lucas says, sounding a lot more positive now. “I get it. I guess you were curious because we’ve broken up so many times right?”

“Yeah” Mike breathes a sigh of relief that his friend hasn’t reached down the phone line to punch him. “How many times has it been now anyway?”

“Shit, I lost count a while ago. I keep acting like a dumbass and doing something wrong” Lucas replies, before switching to a quieter voice. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Mike promises he won’t. “So, if it’s okay for me to ask, you’re sure you’re still soulmates after all of that?”

“Yeah” Lucas says confidently. “I get why you might not see that looking at us, but yeah I’m sure.”

“How…how do you know?”

“Well, I’ve got a skateboard on my thigh and I can feel her emotions that’s a pretty big clue. You should really know this Mike, don’t you have the same thing with El?”

“Of course I do!” Mike responds, having borrowed Lucas’s prickly defensive tone. “It’s just…I was curious if there’s anything else? That makes you sure? I was just thinking of, er, other couples that I know.”

“Hmm” Lucas hums, and Mike cannot tell if it is knowing or contemplative. “I guess I feel different when I’m with her than I do it when I’m with anyone else.”

“Like you need to protect her?” Mike says, jumping on the answer that he hopes his friend will give.

“I guess? I mean it is a man’s duty to protect his soulmate right?” Lucas delivers his answer with shaky confidence. “I guess maybe less so in my case. I mean Max has a lot of problems with her family and everything, but truth be told she can handle them a lot better than I could. I guess that’s the same with you and El right?” He correctly interprets Mike’s silence as him panicking at the realisation of his failure as a man, and adds on “But El’s kind of exceptional isn’t she? Most people don’t have superpowered girlfriends right?”

“Right” Mike acknowledges weakly.

“It’s more than though” Lucas continues. “When I’m with her I don’t only feel good about her. I feel good about myself as well, like I’m a better person just from being around her…that makes sense?”

Mike nods, feeling nostalgic for some reason.

“And the other thing is that now that I’ve got that picture of spending the rest of my life with her in my head, I can’t imagine anything else. I guess if we’re going to get married someday I should probably work on the whole breaking-up every fifteen minutes problem. But even if it’s still like that when we’re adults, I’d still be the luckiest guy in the world you know? That’s all I really want I suppose.”

Mike thinks about spending all of his life being with El, talking to her about her favourite subjects and teaching her anything she asks and he doesn’t inflate with the same spirit he can hear in Lucas’ voice. A greyness overtakes him instead, and a small spiteful part of him takes pleasure in the fact that it’s his turn to transmit those feelings to El for a change.

“It’s weird how me and Max can’t manage to stay dating for any period of time but are sure of our feelings, and you El are always together but you’ve got these doubts. It’s like a mirror world or something.”

Mike hums in glum acknowledgment.

Perhaps sensing his error, Lucas injects positivity in his voice. “Don’t worry Mike. You’re a smart guy and I know how much you care for her. You’ll figure this feeling shit for sure. Or if not ask Dustin, he’s the smartest. Don’t tell him I said that.”

Mike makes his excuses and hangs up. He resents the fact that no one told him that secret government agents and interdimensional monsters were nowhere near as scary as feelings were.

***

Michael Wheeler had failed to resolve his own problem. He had read dozens of books, sought advice from two friends and still hadn’t a clue what to do. There were a lot of failures pretending to be men in Hawkins but he never thought he would count himself amongst their shameful number. Here he was, hovering outside the kitchen, nervous of asking him mommy for help like he was a six-year old who didn’t know how to tie his shoes.

He huffed a breath and swallowed his shame, praying his face did not burn too strongly.

“Mom?” He asks, stepping into the kitchen on wobbly legs. “Are you busy right now?”

Karen looks up from her place by the kitchen island, surrounded by the ingredients to what will almost certainly be another pristine baking creation. “No honey, do you need something?”

Mike shifts his weight back and forth a couple of times before speaking. “It’s just things with me and my girlfriend lately…”

“Oh Eleanor! You really must bring her round sometime, I’d love to meet her. But you and the chief keep brushing me off whenever I bring it up.”

“It’s just things haven’t been great with her lately and -”

“I’m sorry about that Michael, can I help with anything?”

“And I had this big fight with Will, and-“

“Oh dear, I aways liked Will. Such a polite boy, and you two have always been so close.”

Mike continues through her interruptions. “And I was just thinking, about you and dad, and are you…are you two really soulmates?”

This time his mother is silent. She stands there for a moment with the same sympathetic smile sewn onto her face. Mike panics a little and begins gabbling. “I’m sorry! I don’t wanna like – intrude – or anything. It’s just like, well, you’ve never gone on like date nights or anything. You’re always reading those romance books while he sleeps in front of the tv. You don’t talk other than around the dinner table and it just seems like…you don’t really love each that much. Sorry.”

It’s only then Karen finally blinks, and to Mike’s dismay her eyes are glistening. “I knew Nancy figured this out a few years ago. But I always thought I might be able to keep you and Holly from knowing. Guess my children are much too smart for that.” She smiles wetly.

Mike doesn’t think he’s ever seen his mother look like this before, it’s as if a window on her face has just cracked open a little way. “So you two…aren’t soulmates?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, I’m not sure. Probably…not” she answers as she moves ingredients from one spot and then back to the same spot.

“Then, why did you get married?”

“Seemed like the right idea at the time” she answers enigmatically.

“But…” Mike trails off, unsure of how to finish his question.

But it seems his mother knows how to answer anyway. She struggles to match his gaze, but talks nevertheless. “I was never that popular in high school you know? Too much of a goody two-shoes I suppose. I worked hard, got good grades. Didn’t have a lot of fun. The only boys that did pay me attention were… pigs. To put it bluntly, they were vile. Ted was…nice. Always behaved like a gentleman, had gotten into a good college, his dad had given him great career prospects. Good family, better-off that mine. He never pushed for…anything.”

She lapses into silence and she looks at Mike with shaky contact.

“So, do you think he was the wrong choice” Mike asks after the quiet stretches on too long.

“He wasn’t the worst choice. Not by a long shot.” She paused. “And I guess that seemed like…enough.”

“Do you wish you had chosen something else?”

“No of course not! He’s always provided for us and without him I wouldn’t have had you or your sisters. There isn’t anything that could make me regret that.”

Mike huffs a little at the gooey display of motherly affection. “Yeah, but if you could have had us with a different father….would you?”

“Yes.” She answers without hesitation before barking out a laugh that turns into a wet sob and her face crumples. Mike steps forwards and pulls her into his chest. She cries for only a few seconds, but it’s long enough for Mike to notice just how small she feels between his arms. When did that happen?

“I’m sorry Michael, I’m being silly” she says in a wavy version of her normal voice, and she tries to pull back from the hug. But with only the slightest resistance from Mike’s arms she folds back in. “It’s okay mom.”

They stay like for a little while before Mike gathers the steadiness to continue. “So can you feel him? Like can you sense his emotions?”

“I don’t know” Karen replies. “You know you father’s never been a very emotional man. I don’t know if I don’t get what he’s feeling because we don’t have the bond or if because…”

“He’s Ted” Mike finishes for her and she chuckles.

“And…” Mike continues, knowing he’s pushing his luck, but now that he’s found a whole new mother he’s desperate to get everything from her while he has the chance. “What about the mark?”

She shifts her head and looks at her hand gripping his upper arm lightly. They both stare at the tiny little armchair on her ring finger for a moment.

“I don’t know about that either. I can’t remember if it appeared by itself or if I made it happen. I can’t remember if I even knew at the time. At this point, I don’t think I could get rid of it if I tried” she says in a small voice.

She lets out a single small shudder, before pulling herself back from Mike’s arms, more forcefully this time. Staring up at him with a proud-looking smile, she strokes his hair the way she did when he was little. “As for you and Eleanor, and Will, I don’t have the answers. But I know you’ll find it. You’ve always been so smart when you put your mind to something. I think all my children are cleverer than me.” She pushes up onto her toes and kisses his forehead.

She meets his gaze one more time and her lip trembles like she’s about to say something more.

But then she steps back, wipes her eyes and returns to kneading her dough with a small smile on her face, the perfect picture of wedded soulmate bliss.

***

Naturally, the very worse person to talk to about his soulmate problems is his soulmate. But by this point Mike has asked pretty much everyone else that he knows, except El. And Will. The two of them still aren’t really talking, aside from a smattering of small talk at school. That hurts, a lot. But the fuzzy feelings of sadness he’s getting transmitted hurt even more, and at the end of the day Mike has to man up and do his duty to his soulmate.

It still takes him a couple of weeks to build up the courage. He doesn’t want to upset El any further, for her sake. And, being honest, a little bit for his sake as well. El is scary when she’s angry, and he doesn’t want that fury turned onto him. Even when he does eventually decide to do it, during one of their weekly mall dates, it’s at least an hour of giving himself a furious pep talk in his head while trailing behind her through the clothes shops before the words finally fall, unbidden, out of his mouth.

Of course, considering the fact that that mouth is full of ice cream at the time, it comes out more like a soft serve spluttering than an actual plea for help.

“What did you say?” El asks, as Mike wipes rocky road from his chin and glances around to double-check that there’s no one else near their bench. Doing this in front of an audience of one is humiliating enough.

“Am I…am I a bad soulmate?” he says, and waits for the world to come crashing down on top of him.

El scrunches her nose up the way she does when she’s confused by something. “No?” she answers with a mix of hesitancy and certainty. Perhaps she picks up on the fact that this isn’t an entirely satisfactory answer, and she continues before Mike starts hyperventilating. “You’re here for me when I need you. You make me laugh. You help me and we have fun together. I would give you an A.”

Mike squirms uncomfortably. “But…you always feel so sad. And kinda angry.”

Her eyes switch from scrunched to wide-open and her eyebrows shoot up. “Um…no I’m not? Now I’m confused and before I was happy. See?” She points at her face. “Confused.” Then she smiles brightly and giggles and points again. “Happy.” Back to confused. “You should really know this. I can teach you what facial expressions mean if you want.”

“I know what they mean!” Mike protests, face glowing red. “But I can still feel your sadness.”

El stays silent and confused, so Mike ploughs on. He didn’t think persuading her he knew what she felt would be the difficult part of this. “You know, when we’re not around one another. I can feel it then.”

“Do you mean over the phone?”

“No! I mean through the soulbond. But the feelings are…” he swallows the heavy shame in his throat. “They’re indistinct. Out of focus. Fuzzy.”

None of those words seem to register with his girlfriend. “When we’re not together you can feel that I’m sad but it’s…fuzzy?”

Mike is torn between the desire to stare at the floor and to meet her gaze so she can see the sincerity in his eyes. “Yeah! And I’m so, so sorry El. I know I should be able to sense your emotions properly, that was how it was with…um, I mean how it is for everyone else. And –“

“You can sense my emotions when you can’t see me? Or hear me?” El interrupts.

“Not properly. And I want to be better, but I don’t know how, and-“

“How can you do that?”

“Do…what?”

“Sense my emotions when you can’t see me or hear me.”

“Through the soulbond?” Mike answers hesitantly.

El’s face does not suggest this is a good enough response.

“Well, you know how you can tell what I’m feeling?” he asks instead, amazed and horrified at how badly this is going.

“Yes. You are confused and frustrated.” She pokes his frown as evidence.

“And you know how you can do that when we’re not around one another.”

El blushes a little. “I only do that sometimes.”

“What do you mean sometimes?” Mike asks, thrown by what she said and the guilty look on her face.

“Max told me I shouldn’t do it a lot. And I knew not to do it when you were like in the shower or something! I just want to check you are okay. Sometimes” she says in a voice that sounds like a protest. Mike is too confused to say anything, but perhaps she mistakes his silence for embarrassment, because she changes tone and says “But it’s okay you can’t do that! I know I’m the only who can.”

“I should be able to do it properly too! But what do you mean sometimes? And…showers?” Mike asks, thoroughly bamboozled.

“I said I don’t do it when you’re in the shower!”

“Do what?”

“This.” And El cover her eyes with one hand, and uses the other to mime a trickle of blood coming from her nose.

“That’s not what I mean! And…wait have you been spying on me?”

“Not all the time! And just to check if you’re okay!”

“Well, that’s um…fine, I guess?” Mike answers slowly, trying to sort through how he feels about this revelation, before deciding to pack the sweetness and mortification away for now and worry about it later. “But that’s not what I was talking about.” He switches to his teacher voice. “The soulbond is where you can feel your soulmate’s emotions, the same way you can feel your own.” El’s face remains devoid of recognition. “You know, like in all those movies you like.”

“Shit!” El exclaims with a rare cuss. “That’s real?!”

“Er…yeah?”

“I thought it was one of those things the movies made up!” She spots the look of incredulity on Mike’s face and bristles a little. “I knew they weren’t all real! Like, I knew that you didn’t actually have to chase me through an airport or tell me you loved me in the rain. And I knew some of it was real, like girls needing boyfriends and boys needing girlfriends to be happy.”

“Um…actually that’s not true either. Like not necessarily” Mike interjects awkwardly, very uncomfortable with that particular topic.

“What?” El shouts out, rather too loudly for a public place in Mike’s opinion. “Is any of it real?”

“Well, yeah. Like love and romance and kissing and…stuff. That’s real.”

El sits there for a moment, looking extremely annoyed and Mike hopes none of that is aimed at him.

“You know those words they put on food packets?” she says suddenly. “Like ‘This product may contain nuts’.”

“Yeah? A disclaimer?” her boyfriend responds, still confused.

“They should do that for movies. ‘Warning. Stuff this movie says about love might be bullshit’.”

Mike chuckles awkwardly, and thinks this might actually be a good idea. “So did you not know about the shared emotions?” he asks. El shakes her head. “I’m sorry, I should have told you. I just thought you knew, you seemed to know so much about soulmates already…” he shrugs, helpless and guilty. “Did Hopper not tell you anything about it?”

“Dad just gets blushy and frustrated when I talk to him about soulmates or dating” she responds dismissively.

An uneasy silence descends over the pair. Mike assumes that both of them are thinking the same thing, but it should probably be him who vocalises it. “So if you can’t feel my emotions…” he trails off, hoping El will say that actually she can, she just thought he was talking about some other psychic link, but instead she shakes her head and seals his fate.

“And if all I can feel is vague sadness, and you’re not sad then,” he continues warily. “Do think that maybe…we’re not soulmates?”

El stays silent and Mike hangs onto her thoughtful expression. “Maybe not” she says and he reels.

How how could he have gotten it so wrong? He had the soulmark didn’t he? Everything had worked out the way it was supposed to wasn’t it? He’d had his best friend as a soulmate as a kid, maybe for a little too long, but then he’d met a girl, an amazing girl, who had saved his life and needed his help. He was fond of her and she said similar things about him. Wasn’t that enough? What the hell else was he supposed to have done? His manifested shame grows and devours. Not just a bad soulmate, he was a failed soulmate.

He doesn’t want to ask the second question, but his sense of duty and masochism tells him that he must. “Do you…want to be soulmates? With me?”

Again, his girlfriend falls silent, but this time Mike’s brain goes empty. A vacuous void inside of his head just waiting for her verdict.

“No” she says eventually, with a decisive shake of the head.

She seems to spot his crumbling spine though, because she immediately shoots her arm out and grabs his hand. “I meant it Mike. Friends don’t lie. You’ve been a good soulmate. Just not a soulmate.” A thoughtful look crosses her face. “You said girls don’t need boyfriends to be happy.”

Mike nods. “They could have…um, girlfriends instead. Girl soulmates. Or they might not need a boyfriend or a girlfriend I guess.”

She fixes him with a piercing look. “Did you think you were my soulmate because I said I needed one?”

“No!” he protests, quailing under her stare. “Well, like maybe a little bit, but it wasn’t just that! I really-“

El cuts him off with a wave of her hand. “I think I always thought I was weak. Even with my powers, papa made me…made me feel small. Dad doesn’t mean to, but he’s so protective I feel weak sometimes. I knew so much less than everyone else I thought I needed so much help. But I’m not weak. I don’t need a soulmate. I can be me just with me.” Her eyes blaze as she turns to him. “I’m sorry for making you think I needed you to be my soulmate.”

Mike nods, his throat heavy. “It’s okay.”

“Do you want to be soulmates? Friends don’t lie.” El asks with an unerringly knowing look in her eye.

The question surprises him, which is in itself surprising. His guilt has an answer prepared, as does his debt and his affection for El. But what did he want? Shouldn’t this be decided by duty and circumstance? Didn’t the universe have a plan for soulmates he was supposed to follow? Everything that had happened between them pointed to them falling in love, so shouldn’t he? He trusts his friend El, and sets all that aside, and thinks about what he, Michael Wheeler, wants. “No” he says, surprised at how easily the answer came to him.

El nods, just once. “Okay. We break up” she says in a mater-of-fact way.

Then she surges forward and drags him into a fierce hug. “I love you” she says and he understands.

“I love you too El.”

After a long embrace she pulls back and asks “You said your sister’s marks changed when her soulmate switched right?” Mike nods and she declares this affirmation “good.”

“But I wouldn’t expect that to happen right away or anything El. It probably takes your brain a while to catch up with everything before the mark goes away.”

“That’s dumb” El rolls her eyes before closing them and pursing her lips in concentration. Mike isn’t really expecting anything to happen, but then he blinks and the walkie-talkie has vanished from his ex-girlfriend’s cheek. “How did you do that?” he yelps.

“Easy” El answers with a casual shrug. “I just thought about soulmates and what I wanted.”

Mike huffs, because he’s spent literal years thinking about soulmates and look where that got him. But even if he and El don’t share a soulbond it looks like she knows what he’s thinking anyway. “I don’t mean just think about it in general. Think about what you want.”

What he wanted? Why would he need to think about that? Surely the answer was obvious, he didn’t need to spend his time musing about something so instinctive?. But out of respect for the brains of his ex, he posed the question Who do I want as my soulmate? to his brain. The moment he did this, three things happened, virtually simultaneously.

He felt the same familiar tingle.

The 11 on his forearm vanished and was immediately replaced by the comforting sight of the swing-set.

But these first two events were almost entirely overshadowed by the third effect. It seemed the universe, who had kept all those transmitted emotions out-of-tune, decided to adjust the dial and quite abruptly everything – all the sadness, the anger, the loneliness, the loathing and the bitter resentment - everything came rushing back full-force in an unstoppable flood of feeling. The wind was knocked from his lungs, tears dropped from his eyes, and his knees buckled under the sheer magnitude of the hurt that he now felt, pure and uncorrupted.

The word “Will” fell from his lips.

He looked back up at the wide-eyed girl. “Sorry El, I’ve got to go.” He turned and ran away from her, skidded to a stop, turned back around, ran back to her, kissed her on the cheek with a hurried “Thank you”, before spinning on his heels and sprinting out of the mall as fast as his gangly legs would allow.

Cycling through the streets of Hawkins isn’t the same as running through an airport, Mike reflects as he pedals frantically, and there’s no pouring rain or inspiring soundtrack playing in the background, but there’s still something reminiscent of those movies El likes so much about this panicked journey he’s making. Even if he does have to stop a couple of times and catch his breath. Maybe it’s the clarity and desperation of his mission, because nothing has ever seemed more important to him right now than this. Get to Will. Apologise. Make things right. He’s going to fix this, no matter what.

He has to.

He hopes he can.

His head is swimming and he’s breathing hard when he finally reaches the Byers house. Jumping off his bike onto wobbly legs, he leaves it discarded in the dirt, as he scrabbles with shaking hands around the meagre collection of flower pots outside the front door for the spare key. Finding it under the usual pot, still with the same colour-bleached label identifying it as Michael’s key in faded marker, he jams it in the lock and stumbles through the front door into the empty living room. He jogs through the house calling Will’s name, as if that would somehow make the smaller boy materialise in front of him, before he bursts through the door to Will’s room to find his soulmate at his desk, pencil and sketchpad in hand, staring up at him with surprise on his face and being broadcast from his brain.

“Um…hi Mike” he says with uncertainty and trepidation.

He looks perfect. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt Mike vaguely recognises as old one of Jonathan’s, smudged fingers slackly gripping his pencil and hair slightly ruffled from what Mike is certain will be his habit of running his hand through it when he’s struggling over a drawing. He’s still the same boy Mike sees five days every week, but this is the first time in months that Mike has allowed himself the opportunity to really just look at Will. The boy is a little taller than before, his hair a little more grown-out, the arms a bit thicker, a whole catalogue of changes that Mike kicks himself for having missed. Those eyes though, they’re the same.

“Hi Will” Mike says. All the things he could have said, all the words he planned on his furious bike ride, have upped and walked straight out of his head.

They seem to have had some effect though, because Will shakes himself from his torpor of staring at the taller boy, and scrabbled to flip his sketchpad closed and shove it in an overstuffed drawer. “So, er, Mike what is that I can….what are you doing here?”

“I just, I was desperate, I really needed to, and because of everything that I did, I was kinda frantic and, um…” Mike says, words jumbled.

“I could feel that, I mean I could see that” Will says quickly, “but why…why were you so desperate to get here?”

Mike flounders for half a second before raising his hand and pointing at the other boy. “You.”

“I know I’m me,” Will responds, with just a hint of Byers cheek, “but why me?”

“Because you’re my soulmate” Mike says breathlessly. “I thought it was El, but I was wrong. All this time it should have been you, it has been you and I just didn’t realise, but I wanted it to you be, I probably always wanted it to be you I just never thought properly, and I’m sorry, but I know now for sure it’s….it’s you” he trails off lamely. And for a moment, one cruel endless moment, he feels nothing from Will, like the universe has had enough of his bullshit and turned the dial all the way to the off position; but then a sudden rush of emotions come through, one after the other and all so close to one another that Mike can’t properly distinguish what they all are. Joy, relief, excitement, hopefulness, delight and...something else? Disdain? Disappointment? What is it?

The same mix of somethings flicker behind Will’s eyes, before he schools his expression into a guarded look. “Cool” he says with a small smile and a small shrug.

This isn’t the reaction Mike had been hoping for. The movies had told him that by this point Will should be picking him up and spinning him around while the camera does a slow zoom in on their faces. Maybe a crowd starts clapping in the background.

“No really,” Will continues, perhaps spotting Mike’s crestfallen expression. “That’s cool. I’m glad that you want me as your soulmate. Again.”

“Oh shit,” Mike realised. “I just assumed that you didn’t already have another soulmate.”

“No, I don’t -” Will begins.

“But if you do that’s great. I’m sure they’re a really great person-“ Mike interjects.

“No –“

“I know it’s been so long, and I am sorry about that, so it’s no problem if you want someone else as a best friend, or even-“

“Mike –“

“Or if you don’t want a soulmate at all!”

“Would you-“

“Like it’s fine if this is just a one-sided thing or something, but I thought you deserved to know that –“

Wordlessly, Will swipes one hand through the air to cut him off and with the other he lifts up his t-shirt and Mike’s brain is wiped clean of gabbled words and frantic excuses, and replaced with just two thoughts.

The first thought is Holy shit, when did Will Byers get abs?

The second thought has everything to do with the black swing-set marked on his stomach, exactly the same as when Mike first saw it a decade ago.

“You still have this?” Mike asks in a low voice. For as much as he wanted it to be true, he still wasn’t entirely convinced that Will would ever take him back after everything he’s done.

Will nods and Mike struggles to comprehend. “All this time?” he asks.

“Ten years” Will says scratchily.

“You’ve been able to feel me the whole time?” is met with another nod and another flicker of those feelings from before, and this time Mike is pretty sure that they’re anger and resentment.

“God. Shit. I’m sorry Will. I’m so fucking sorry. I can’t believe I’ve treated you like this, and ignored you for so long. And god, everything I said during our fight, it was so wrong of me and I shouldn’t have done it and I didn’t mean it and please, please tell me how I can make it up to you.”

He can see and feel those emotions play out once more in the other boy, but then has to watch as Will swallows them down and smile casually. “It’s fine Mike” he says.

“What? No it’s not fine! I was a complete dick and I’m sorry.”

“It’s not, not a problem. Water under the bridge and everything.”

“Please Will, come on, tell me what I can do to fix this.”

“Nothing to fix.” Will shrugs and proffers his hand out. “Soulmates?”

Mike looks at the hand, and the offer of everything he wants that it supposedly represents. He looks at the stiffness of the muscles and feels the guarded emotions quietly transmitting and he recoils at the oblique, business-like nature of Will’s offer. This isn’t going to do it, it’s not enough to just shake hands and move on. He needs to fix this.

“No Will” he says firmly.

“No…?” Will asks, with only a slight quiver.

“We can’t be soulmates if you’re just going to wave it off every time I fuck up. I hurt you, I know I did. You need to be able to tell me that when it happens, I deserve it. I need it.”

“But I can’t…I don’t want for you…”

“I’m not going to leave you Will. I promise.” He takes Will’s hand, but not to shake it. He turns it upright, palm-to-palm and interlaces their fingers. His thumb runs softly over Will’s knuckles, cataloguing every familiar groove and every new callous.

Will stares at where their bodies interlink. “Are you sure?” he asks, sounding several years younger.

“I promise. Soulmates don’t lie” Mike says. “At least not anymore” he tacks on ruefully.

“It just really sucks what you did Mike.” Will starts slow, but builds speed slowly, like the driver has stoked the fire and jumped off the train. “I mean I get why we stopped talking as much at first. I know you were having the same sort of thoughts I was, and I was just as scared of them as you were. We weren’t little kids anymore and it was terrifying, I get that. But then after the Mind Flayer, when I needed you, you just…abandoned me. I needed you and I know you knew that. But you left me alone to deal with it by myself! And then at the dance you apparently just decided to what – replace me? With some girl you barely knew? I’m sorry about what I said before, I know El is cool and everything, but why does that mean so much more to you than everything we’ve been through? Everything you’ve done for me and every time I was there for you? Did El get you the way I did? But do you care about that? No of course not, because she’s got powers and because she’s a girl and apparently they’re the only things that matter to you! Do you have any idea what it feels to be thrown away like that? Like i don’t even matter, like I’m just some childhood toy that you’ve grown out of? You just shoved me in a box and forgot about me to go and shove your tongue down your new and better soulmate’s throat! All this time I had to sit there and feel your excitement turn to disappointment and confusion, but whenever I tried to talk to you about it you’d just throw me off and then you got so, so – cruel! And now that it didn’t work out with El you’re just going to what – revert to the back-up option? Open up the box and dust the toy off and hope that something better comes along soon? Because you know I wouldn’t be able to say no? Fuck you Michael Wheeler! Fuck you.”

Will is breathing heavily, angry tears stuck on his cheeks, and he looks around, as if surprised to find himself on his feet. He’s still a good few inches shorter than Mike, but right now it feels like the brunette boy towers over Mike, who quells under his furious gaze.

“I’m sorry Will. I’m so damn sorry. I was thinking about myself and I got everything so…so fucking wrong” Mike says to the floor.

“So?” Will demands and Mike wafts his hands around uselessly and says “So….?”

“So what’s your excuse, Michael? Why exactly did you do all that?”

Mike takes a deep breath, tries to meet Will’s eyes, fails, and stares at the wall behind him instead.

“I guess at first I was just scared. I know what happens when two boys are soulmates together. Even if you didn’t want us to be y’know, like that, or if you ever could be like that, if you just wanted to be like, friend soulmates, I knew what would happen to you and I didn’t want to put you through that. Or me, I was scared for me as well. And I thought maybe we were just being little kids together, everyone’s first friend is their first soulmate, that’s what they say isn’t it? And whenever I got my hopes up and thought maybe we could be well, ‘more’ than that, I couldn’t help but think of all the other people we know who thought the first person they dated was going to be their soulmate forever and how that worked out for them. I tried to stop you getting hurt when everything happened, both times, and I couldn’t protect you. How could I be the right soulmate when I couldn’t keep you safe?

Mike gulps down his sob, and keeps his eyes fixed before carrying on.

“Then this girl came along, she was so cool and she didn’t hate me, she liked me in fact. She needed my help and I thought that maybe I could help her? I failed to protect you but perhaps I was supposed to be helping her instead? And isn’t that how it’s supposed to work – you meet your first friend, and then you meet the girl you’re supposed to provide for? That’s what all the adults said.”

Another gulp, another hidden sob.

“But it wasn’t like that. She didn’t need me, not like that. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop her sadness or her anger, and I couldn’t even feel those properly! But it wasn’t her I could feel. I think it was you, the whole time. But because I’m so selfish I wasn’t letting myself feel you properly, that’s why everything was so damn fuzzy all of the time. When we had that fight I remember being so furious, but I’m pretty sure it was you that I was feeling. I don’t blame you. I spoke to everyone, and none of them, not Dustin, or Lucas or my mom or the books or the movies, none of them had the answer. Not till El asked me who I wanted as my soulmate. Not who I thought should be my soulmate, but who I wanted. And it was you.”

His words come to a shuddering stop.

He doesn’t properly acknowledge the emotions coming from Will for a few seconds, too buried in his own loathing to process them, so it’s the sound of the giggle that finally makes him look up at his soulmate’s face.

“My soulmate’s an idiot!” Will laughs and Mike is completely lost.

“You spent all this time, all these years, thinking about what a soulmate should be and you never once thought to just ask yourself what you wanted? Or what I wanted?”

“Well, I just…thought that…it’s important to get it right and I wanted to be sure!” Mike stammers feebly.

“You have a magic symbol on your arm and a psychic connection, that didn’t give you any clues?” Will teases in that way Mike has missed so dearly.

“Yeah, well, lots of people get it wrong!”

“I know, but I still thought my soulmate was going to be a bit smarter than that!” Will socks him affectionally on the shoulder and Mike takes a half-step back. Damn, Will really packed on the muscle in his absence.

“So…you still want me as your soulmate? Even after everything I did?”

“Mike you just said you could feel my emotions, even if they were ‘fuzzy’. What was I feeling?

“Sadness” Mike answers awkwardly.

“Exactly. I was miserable without you. You’re my favourite person Michael Wheeler. Even if you do behave like a horse’s ass some of the time.”

Mike giggles this time. “’Horse’s ass’? Did you get that from your mom?”

Will’s turn to blush. “Whatever. It’s still true.”

Mike takes a deep breath, dreading the answer to the question he knows he must ask. “Does that mean – you forgive me?”

“I’m still pretty pissed at you” Will frowns. “But I guess I get why you did it. You thought you couldn’t help me, but you could help El. So you sacrificed what you wanted, gave up even thinking about it, so you could help someone who you thought needed it. Sometimes you’re too much of a leader for your own good. Even if I do love that about you.”

Mike can feel the flush through his whole body. His brain is having a little trouble keeping up with everything, but did Will really just use the l-word the way he thought he did? “Does that mean, that you want to be, er, that kind of soulmate?” he eventually manages to ask.

The other boy grins at him, turns back to his desk, tugs open the drawer and starts flipping through the sketchbook. It’s filled with images of Mike, all of him, parts of him, his eyes and lips, his hands, even one where he’s not wearing a shirt that has the real him turning a deep shade of crimson.

“Oh” he says, eloquently.

“But what about everyone else? You know people are going to hate us?” he eventually adds on once he regains control of the language centres of his brain.

Will nods and Mike senses the determination. “I know. But we’ll get through it. The way soulmates are supposed to. Together” and Mike acknowledges the chastisement and the sage wisdom.

But before he can contemplate this any further, the wizard is stepping close to him. Very close in fact. Most of the air is sucked out of the room and the temperature increases by a hundred degrees.

“Do you want to…um…?” Mike asks, feeling the excited trepidation run through both of them.

“Yes” Will finishes his sentence, cups a hand around the back of his head and pulls him into a kiss. And oh. Oh. He’d thought the kissing with El was finally pretty good after some practice, had felt how it was supposed to feel. But kissing Will, no matter how inexperienced he was, what a whole different league altogether. Maybe there was something to those stories of sparking butterflies after all, because nothing in his life had ever felt more electric, more comforting, more right than this.

They separated, inhaled, pressed their foreheads together and giggled. But before they could say or do more, an identical sensational coursed through the pair. Mike felt that same tingle for the fourth, and final, time in his life. Reflexively his hand shot out to hike up Will’s shirt at the same time as Will grabbed his forearm and turned it over.

There it was, the same double swing-set as before. But now there was also the silhouette of two boys, one on each swing, their hands clasped in the space between them.

Those boys were etched on his skin. Forever.