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Will was not supposed to be here.
Mike wasn’t supposed to be here either, but Will especially wasn’t supposed to be here. Here being the Upside Down, where Vecna/Henry/One lurked somewhere, making plans to devastate Hawkins more than he already had. Mike had never actually been here before, had only heard vague descriptions of what it was like from Will (who never said too much, because he didn’t want to burden anyone) and Nancy (who insisted that there were bigger issues than Mike’s lack of context for just how awful it was). Eternally dark, but not in the way nighttime was. Air heavy and thick with the spores that had been spreading slowly over Hawkins, puffing up from the fissures splitting it into four. Never silent, constantly humming with noise from gates opening and closing at random or the chitters and growls of monsters lurking in the shadows.
No, they were not supposed to be here. But Mike was pretty angry that Will had followed him recklessly in.
“You’re an idiot,” Mike whispered for the fourth time in twenty minutes, but he wasn’t sure anymore if it was directed at himself or at Will. Himself, for ever believing that Will wouldn’t jump into the gate that swallowed Mike without warning, and Will for being the self-sacrificing dumbass that he was.
“So you’ve made perfectly clear,” Will shot back, annoyed, “but which one of us survived down here for a week without help?”
“Oh, you mean the same person who One has made more than clear he wants to join him in his mission to destroy the world? That person?” Mike kept his voice low, still walking in front of Will, carefully avoiding vines and scanning the creepy mirror of Hawkins in front of him. “Who has told both me and you that he’ll do anything to get to you?”
“Jesus Christ, Mike, what the fuck was I supposed to do? Not come after you?”
“Yes!” Mike burst out, just a little too loudly. They both froze, Will just a half step behind Mike, close enough for Mike to feel the warmth radiating off of him and Will’s breath on the back of his neck. He tried not to think about that too hard, just listened intently. When he was sure that nothing was about to attack them, he kept walking, nail bat in hand. At least they’d fallen in prepared, even though it was supposed to be a simple trip to the military base to pick up that week’s rations. “You were supposed to follow protocol and radio for help, like Hopper told us to do.”
“So you’re saying,” Will argued, because of course he did, “that if it was the other way around, you wouldn’t have come in after me?”
“Obviously I would have, but that’s different,” Mike retorted. “You’re his prime target!” Also I’m in love with you, he thought guiltily.
“And you’ve already been possessed by him twice!” Will grabbed him by the arm and swung him around so that they were facing each other for the first time since they’d fallen in here. “The second time, we almost didn’t get you out! Maybe I am the end goal, but evidently he wants you too. He hasn’t come after anyone else since Max!”
That, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it), was true. It had been a little over a year since Max, just long enough for both of them to turn sixteen and make the argument to Hopper and Joyce that this was the age that Jonathan and Nancy had started fighting and not been questioned about it. Hopper was reluctant, Joyce more so, and Jonathan and Nancy were staunchly against any of the original Party doing more than volunteering at the donation center or helping El try to locate Max or One.
(Max, actually, had been found several months before by sticking Lucas and El both into a makeshift isolation tank big enough for them both. It was a shot in the dark, a desperate attempt to bring her back into her body, because her mother had abandoned her and the state of Indiana was not known for its foster care system, particularly to kids who were presumed braindead.)
Mike had hoped that losing Max’s life force, or whatever One was feeding off of, would give them more time before he struck again. But then Will had that dream, the night before his sixteenth birthday, and woken up to find Mike next to him in Mike’s bed with just the whites of his eyes showing. By the time Nancy and Jonathan had rushed into the room, alerted to the problem by Will’s desperate sobs, Mike was hovering a few inches over the floor with Bronski Beat playing loudly in his ears. He'd come out of it a minute later, collapsing into Will’s arms.
(Of course, Mike didn’t remember any of what it had looked like on the outside. Nancy had told him in a low voice, focusing on how beside himself Will had been, like she was trying to tell him something important. Mike ignored her, not because he didn’t want to hear it, but because Will didn’t want Mike like that, at least not anymore. Maybe they’d slowly fixed their friendship over the past year, but Mike was pretty sure that if Will ever had feelings for him, he didn’t now. Mike was too late, as always. He didn’t need Nancy giving him hope that would just lead to heartbreak.)
It happened again a couple weeks later, the night before Mike’s sixteenth birthday. Obviously, One had something against birthdays, Mike had joked. No one found it particularly funny.
He and Will weren’t even supposed to be out alone today. They hadn’t started off that way; Dustin and Lucas were with them, the former driving Eddie’s old van for the sake of more room for rations. The two of them were still talking to the military guys they’d become somewhat friendly with over the last several months while Mike and Will did the heavy lifting. The next thing Mike knew, Will’s hand had come up to cover the back of his own neck and he was opening his mouth in a too-late warning. The ground beneath Mike’s feet had opened up and he’d fallen, gravity changing sickeningly. He was still lying on his back on the asphalt, gasping for breath and staring up (down?) at the gray-black sky when Will almost landed on top of him.
Now, here they were, making the trek towards their nearest base of operations to alert someone to the fact that they were still, in fact, alive: Mike’s house. Once his mom had been mostly clued in to the goings-on of Hawkins for the last several years and why, it seemed, Mike and Nancy had too-often ended up on the backs of ambulances or hanging out at hospitals, she’d offered up her home without a second thought. Ted Wheeler had taken Holly and left for his brother’s in Ohio. Mike wasn’t completely sure how mutual of a decision that had been between his parents, and he never asked. He missed Holly, but she was safer away from this. He was pretty indifferent about his dad’s absence.
His mom, and likely Joyce, would be at his house on the flipside. He and Will could send their S.O.S. through the lights and indicate what gate they would be making their way towards in order to get back to the Rightside Up, as everyone had taken to calling it, and they would deal with the inevitable scoldings they would receive later.
If they made it out alive, that was. Will probably wasn’t wrong about One having plans for Mike as well as Will, even if those plans were most likely just bait. He should have taken Jonathan instead, Mike thought, even though the proof of his own kidnapping being enough for Will to step back into hell without a second thought was right in front of him.
Mike told him so, ignoring how, even through his sleeve, he could feel the warmth of Will’s hand around his wrist. “All you’ve done is given him exactly what he wants if he finds us before we can get out of here,” Mike said. “Besides, better he has me than you anyway.”
“Excuse me?” He could see Will gearing up for a fight. Maybe he’d even punch Mike.
Mike would deserve it. After all, being in love with your best friend was not a good enough excuse to say horrible things to him and then not talk to him for six months. (Will insisted that they were over that; Mike didn’t think he would ever stop feeling guilty for it.)
“All he can do to me is kill me,” Mike said calmly, forcing himself to stay relaxed. “He wants you to join him. You think he won’t go to any lengths to get you to do that?”
“He already has!” Will released Mike’s wrist so that he could shove Mike’s shoulder instead. Mike probably, definitely, should not have been pleased by those words. He was though, and he scanned Will’s expression for something, anything, that would tell him that they meant what he wanted them to mean. He must have been silent for a beat too long though, because Will sighed. “Let’s just…let’s get to yours, okay? We’re almost there, and then we can head to Water Gate.”
“You’ll ruin your gun if we use that one,” Mike pointed out, falling into step next to Will as the latter decided to continue their trek. It was his turn to hover close enough that their sleeves brushed with every step, but that wasn’t unusual. Once El broke up with him and Mike no longer had any feeble excuses not to, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from invading Will’s personal space at every turn. It was embarrassing how fast Nancy had caught onto his feelings after that, not to mention Lucas, who had apparently put the pieces together years ago when Mike hugged Will in the hospital and put his head solidly on his chest to hear his heartbeat.
Will rolled his eyes. “Nancy can get me another,” he said dismissively, “or Hop. Besides, this one’s still my dad’s. The only reason I haven’t gotten rid of it yet is because family trauma isn’t a good enough reason to dump a perfectly good gun in times like these.”
“It is if that trauma is directly tied to Lonnie being a rat bastard,” Mike muttered. He’d never liked Lonnie, not when he and Will were tiny children who rarely spent time at the Byers’ house because of him, and not when they got older and Lonnie left without a thought for his sons. Something about the man had rubbed Mike the wrong way, even if he couldn’t put his finger on it as a highly distractable five year old. Will never told him where the mysterious bruises on his wrists would come from, but Mike wasn’t stupid. After the third time Will had come to kindergarten like that, Mike had doubled down on getting his mom to let Will come over more often. They’d really only talked about it years later, long after Lonnie was gone and Will was able to admit that he was relieved for it.
Then the Upside Down happened and brought even more trauma and trouble. Mike still couldn’t quite decide who he hated more: Lonnie or One.
Will flashed him a reluctant smile, like he was still trying to be mad at Mike. They were just turning onto the cul-de-sac. Another couple of minutes and they could alert their mothers to their continued survival.
No one ever intended to go into the Upside Down, but Hopper’s first order of business upon coming back from the Soviet Union was to insist that everyone involved learn Morse code. Just in case, he’d said, and no one questioned or argued with him. Admittedly, it had been pretty funny (and frustrating), teaching Steve Harrington how to communicate via the dots and dashes. Who knew that dyslexia translated to Morse code? At first, Mike felt bad, and a little horrified at how Robin was making fun of Steve for it. But Steve was quick to remind her of her complete inability to speak to her crush coherently until the actual end of the world, Robin, we all have our flaws, and besides, he seemed to take her teasing in stride. Their friendship was confusing as hell, but he had to admit, Robin was a pretty good bridge between Mike and Steve.
Steve got his revenge on Mike for laughing along with her when it took him several hours longer than it should have to teach Mike how to properly swing a bat.
Their trek had been relatively quick, but if Mike’s sense of time was correct (and who knew if it was), then it would be getting close to sunset on the Rightside Up. He had been annoyed at the late start he, Will, Dustin, and Lucas had gotten for rations, but he was grateful now. It meant that his mom would have turned on most of the lights in the house. Most likely, if they hadn’t already been told what had happened, she and Joyce would be figuring out dinner for the Byers-Wheeler household, as it had become. The cabin, even repaired, was too cramped for anyone except Hopper and El to live there comfortably, and usually Joyce when night came. As a result, Jonathan and Will had been living full-time at the Wheeler house ever since coming back from California.
Mike pondered over this as he made his way into the creepy, darkened mirror of his house. The inside was, thankfully, pretty void of vines. He made his way straight to the kitchen, figuring that was his best chance at getting his mom’s attention. Will followed on his heels, warily scanning the house for any danger.
Sure enough, the muffled, worried tones of both of their mothers were echoing in the dank kitchen. “Found them,” Mike said quietly. Will shuffled further in, letting the rifle hang on his back for the time being. “God, we’re going to be in so much trouble when we get back. They’ll never let us leave again.”
“Given that they didn’t want us to go today in the first place, can you blame them?” Will teased.
“I guess not,” Mike sighed, and let his hand drift into the odd flare of light above him. It was…warm. Tingly. It felt nice after the persistent chill of the Upside Down that seemed to have seeped into his bones over the last hour or so. The voices stopped abruptly, and Mike began to open and close his fingers in stops and starts.
S
O
S
And then,
W
A
T
E
R
G
A
T
E
He repeated it two, three, four times, until Joyce’s voice rang louder and clearer than before, “Are you both safe? Together?”
Y
E
S
To Mike’s surprise, Hopper’s gruff tone came through. “If you two can manage, give me an hour to alert the military there before you come through. The last thing anyone needs is for you to get shot on sight.”
Mike indicated an affirmative before dropping his hand and sighing. “Guess we’ve got a few minutes,” he said to Will. “What do you want to do?”
Will tilted his head in thought, rubbing the back of his neck absently. Mike stepped forward immediately, reaching out before he could think better of it to cover Will’s hand on his neck with his own. “Can you feel him?” he asked urgently. “What’s he saying?”
“Sorry,” Will said immediately. His fingers flexed, slid away from Mike’s, but Mike kept holding the back of his neck. “Sorry, no, he isn’t doing anything. At least, I don’t think so. Being down here…it’s just constant. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be able to tell you even if a Demogorgon was going to bust through the window.”
“But he knows we’re here,” Mike persisted. He squeezed Will’s neck involuntarily, fingers drifting into the strands of hair there. It only occurred to him what he was doing when Will’s mouth dropped open with…surprise? Discomfort? Mike didn’t know, and that was what made him take a step back. He couldn’t quite read the expression that flashed across Will’s face when he moved away.
He hated that.
“I think he has to,” Will finally responded, seemingly getting his voice back. “There’s no way the gate that we came through opened and closed that fast at random, especially not right under your feet.”
Mike didn’t like that. “Then by all logic, we should be swarmed right now,” he muttered, turning to gaze out of the vine-covered kitchen window. “So why aren’t we?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Will said, but he didn’t sound offended by Mike’s question. “C’mon, let’s just…I don’t know. You said we’ve got a few minutes before we have to go, right? Don’t you want to see how your room used to look?”
Honestly, Mike wasn’t sure that he did. It was one thing to see his house from the outside, to stand in the middle of his kitchen that hadn’t changed once since he had been born. His room though, well. That had changed significantly over the years. It, more than anything, was a painful reminder that he wasn’t who he used to be. Most days, he was pretty sure that was a bad thing.
Will didn’t seem to notice his inner turmoil, moving towards the staircase with purpose. Whether that purpose was as innocent as wanting a peek at their childhood, or as guilty as just wanting some space from Mike, well. Mike couldn’t be sure. Will didn’t often put physical distance between the two of them anymore, but then again, Mike didn’t usually do something as intimate as placing a hand directly over the space on Will’s skin where he could always feel the Upside Down. Stupid, he thought angrily to himself, and followed Will up the stairs.
They skipped over his parents’ room; Mike had never really gone in there much as a child anyway (Ted Wheeler was a firm believer in children sleeping in their own beds, no matter how bad the nightmares were). They did stop in Holly’s very briefly, more out of curiosity than anything. Aside from the missing dollhouse that she had gotten as a gift when she turned five, the only difference was the missing blue teddy bear that usually stood front and center on the stuffed animal collection near her pillows. Mike had won that at the arcade sometime in the year following Will’s disappearance in a fit of nostalgia for the claw machine, and promptly given it carelessly to his baby sister upon arriving home. He then firmly pretended that it did not warm his heart with pride when it became the only stuffed animal she slept with every night.
She’d taken it with her when their dad swept her off to Ohio. Mike hoped it was bringing her comfort in her older siblings’ absence.
He was stalling now, he knew, but he still stopped in the doorway to Nancy’s bedroom too. It, too, did not look all that different from the present day, bar some little odds and ends like an old diary and chemistry notecards scattered on her bedside table. Mike had read the diary once, or some of it. Her loopy handwriting waxing poetic about Steve’s hair had gotten old pretty quickly.
“Oh wow,” he heard Will say. Reluctantly, Mike turned towards his own childhood bedroom, stopping a hairsbreadth away from being able to lean down and hook his chin over Will’s shoulder. It took more willpower than he cared to admit, but thankfully he was distracted, taking in his twelve-year-old self’s sense of identity.
The first thing that was abundantly clear to Mike was that, even back then, he’d been hopelessly in love with his best friend. The walls were positively adorned with drawings he’d gotten from Will over the years. Sure, there were other posters and pictures, but it was very evident what – or rather, who – his priority had been back then. Guiltily, he thought of the binder in the basement that contained even more drawings, practically filled to the brim with them. At least his bedroom didn’t have any of the stolen ones, the ones Will didn’t know he had. Small blessings.
But Will was moving inside now, smiling fondly at the sight of the old bunk bed. The top bunk had rarely been used anyway, at least when it was just him and Will. Even when they got too big for it, Mike had usually squeezed Will in next to him on the bottom bunk so that they could whisper late into the night without waking anyone else up. Mike wondered suddenly if, when (if) things went back to normal, Will would continue sharing his bed for sleepovers. Providing that Joyce didn’t whisk them all back to California. Would Will want to? He didn’t complain about it now, but maybe that was because Mike had kind of bullied him into it a little bit, insisting that his now queen-sized bed was more than big enough for the both of them, and there was no use in taking turns waking up with achy backs and stiff necks from sleeping on the floor.
God, he missed this room, a stark representation of simpler times and being young enough to not know that the rest of the world frowned upon two boys huddled up close.
“I forgot how many of my drawings you had pinned up,” Will was saying, running his fingers over one of them. “I mean, you still do, a few I mean. I’m not sure what you did with the rest of them.”
“I still have them,” Mike admitted without thinking about it. “I can show you when we get back.” They’d have to make a quick stop on the way back from Lover’s Lake, of course, to the new and improved fort he, Lucas, and Dustin had spent most of Christmas break of ’85 building. Provided that Hopper didn’t simply whisk them up in his army-issued Jeep and take them straight back to the Wheelers’ house, never to see the light of day again.
Will deserved to see it though. Even if it was basically Mike’s heart on a silver platter.
God, Will deserved the entire world, Mike thought now, always had. Will deserved to know that he was loved, loved so much that it tore Mike to shreds inside. Maybe Mike didn’t deserve to be loved back, or even loved by Will in the first place, if that’s what the painting had meant back then. Mike had wanted it to. He’d wanted the words Will had told him to be from Will, not from El. He wanted to be Will’s heart, at least some small part of it. For a blissful, shining moment, he thought he was. But Will had told him that El needed Mike to tell her he loved her, and he didn’t, and in the end, him saying so didn’t matter. Hawkins split in two, Max was almost lost forever, and El broke up with him less than two weeks after returning to their broken town. She’d never known about the painting, as Mike had suspected, but by then, he was pretty sure that if Will had meant what he said in the van, he didn’t anymore.
But Mike was tired, standing in his doorway, watching Will take in a frozen moment from a simpler time. He was tired of the what-ifs, tired of hiding his feelings behind a lack of personal space and best friendship. He was tired of One cropping up in his head and using that secret against him, the one that Nancy and Lucas seemed to have figured out but no one else had. It was almost literally killing him at this point. It probably would, if One decided to attack him again. And Will had already proven that he would dive into danger and risk everything to bring Mike back, even if it didn’t mean what Mike wanted it to mean.
Mike’s love for Will was a weakness they couldn’t afford anymore.
He was thinking this as they left his old room, descended the staircase, flashed their intention to leave through the kitchen light and received confirmation from Joyce and his mom. He was thinking this as they stepped back out into his garage, where he finally opened his mouth and said, “Am I too late?”
Will, a few steps in front of him underneath the lone garage light, turned. “What?”
It wasn’t what Mike had intended to say. He didn’t quite know what he had intended, but he had gotten started, and nothing except maybe a Demogorgon or One himself could stop him. “I just…ever since all of this happened,” and he gestured with wide arms at the Upside Down’s darkness surrounding them, “I feel like we’ve been out of step, you and me. Like, there are moments where we’re back on the same page, but it doesn’t last. And it’s my fault, usually, pretty much exclusively actually, but I’ve been trying to fix it. I know I can’t take some of it back – I tried to call you, in California, every day, but when I kept getting the busy signal I should have sent you the letters. They just, they didn’t seem like enough, or maybe they seemed like too much, I don’t know—”
“Wait,” Will interrupted, “you wrote me?”
“And I didn’t think you wanted me to,” Mike continued in a rush, taking an aborted step forward to where Will appeared rooted to the spot, eyes wide with shock and…anger, maybe? “I fucked up so badly before you left. I pushed you away, and I shouldn’t have, but I was terrified, okay? And I didn’t even know why I was so scared until you were driving away. El told me she loved me and I just stared at her like a fucking idiot because I realized I didn’t want her like that, I wanted you, and I was too late. I thought that when I visited you, in California, that I could fix it, that I could straighten things out with her and fix things with you and me, but she told me in a letter that you were painting something for someone you liked, and you brought it to the airport and I thought it was for me, I wanted it to be for me. I wanted you to want me too, but then you said it was nothing, and I thought I was wrong, and it hurt, so I kept hurting you—”
“Want you too?” Will’s voice was a little shrill, a little too loud for where they were standing.
But Mike wasn’t still finished, was rambling pointlessly by now, but he couldn’t stop. “And El got taken away, and I told myself that I could be okay with just being best friends with you again, because part of you is better than none of you, but you gave me the painting in the van and you said what you said and I swear to God, Will, if Jonathan and Argyle hadn’t been there, I would have told you everything. But they were, and I kept telling myself you deserved better than me telling you I was in love with you in the back of some weed-soaked pizza van—”
“What?!”
“But there wasn’t time, and El was dying, and you told me to save her and I thought I was wrong about all of it. And when we got back, everything was so broken, between me and El and me and you, and by the time we’d gotten some semblance of normal back, I’d convinced myself that even if you felt that way too, surely you didn’t anymore, because I broke it. I broke us, and maybe we fixed it, but…” Mike finally stopped to breathe, to really look at Will, a few feet in front of him.
Will looked heartbroken.
Mike swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Will,” he whispered, just loud enough for Will to hear. “I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m sorry.”
They stood in silence for one, two, three moments, and when Will spoke, his voice was flat. “That’s not fair, Mike. That’s—you can’t just say that to me.”
Mike deflated. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He’d broken it again. Broken them, because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. Probably permanently this time. With that thought in mind, thinking that there was no way to crack their crumbling foundation any further, he took the last steps forward. Close enough to Will’s frozen figure to feel his breath hitting his chin, feel the warmth radiating off of his body. Close enough to touch Will’s cheek with his fingertips and duck his head down to kiss him. Just once, because if he was never going to have this, he might as well be selfish about it now.
It wasn’t more than a few seconds, a dry press of lips that Will didn’t pull away from, but didn’t really move into either. So Mike gave himself those few seconds, and then he stepped away. “I just…needed to do that once,” he murmured, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “I can’t make any promises as to when we get back now, but…when all of this is over, well. I’ll leave you alone, okay?”
He didn’t wait to hear Will’s response, not when Will was still staring up at him, looking completely gobsmacked and like he wanted to bolt, as far away from Mike as he could get. Mike just took the spiked bat back out of his backpack and led the way out of the garage, trusting that Will would, at least, keep following him now.
He did, and Mike still didn’t deserve it.
Lover’s Lake wasn’t far from the Wheeler house; a few miles of woods, and they’d be home free. Of course, it couldn’t be that simple, because Mike was an idiot who decided he had to declare his love for Will right there in the Upside Down and waste precious time. Time that the monsters took to find them.
They were still a good mile and a half away from their destination when Will stopped dead, hand drifting to the back of his neck with purpose this time. Mike had been avoiding Will’s steady gaze at the back of his head for the better part of half an hour, but he was always going to be attuned to Will’s every move, no matter how much he shouldn’t. So he turned, bat already raised, to face the direction Will was already looking.
“When I say run,” Will said lowly, “run like hell.”
“You’re not about to do some stupid self-sacrificial bullshit, are you?” Mike was ready to grab Will’s wrist and drag him along if he had to.
“If I die down here, it’s going to be by One’s hand himself, not a Demogorgon,” Will promised him.
“Fair,” Mike replied.
The Demogorgon chose that moment to leap out from the trees, maw gaping open in a screech that was loud enough to alert the entire town to their location. Will fired off one, two, three shots that rang in Mike’s ears so loudly that he barely heard the following, “RUN!” Will took advantage of the Demogorgon falling backwards from the force of the shots to grab Mike and haul him off, feet hitting the ground regardless of vines now. The goal was now to get to Lover’s Lake as fast as possible, no matter how much noise they made in the process.
The woods around them had come to life with the sounds of monsters, and high above the trees, bats were flitting about, evidently searching for an easy way down. It meant that they were going to have to book it to the Water Gate as fast as possible if they wanted to avoid Eddie’s fate, and if Mike was already out of breath, the swim to the surface might actually kill him. He kept running though, just keeping pace with Will, and by some miracle didn’t trip up and slow them down.
And then, a supreme stroke of luck. “Dead ahead!” Mike yelled, and thankfully Will saw it too: a gate on the side of a thick tree trunk, rapidly shrinking, but there. Big enough for them both to have time to slip through, and hopefully nothing else. “Go!”
For once, everything went exactly as it was supposed to. Will didn’t argue, didn’t try to make Mike go first, didn’t waste time. He just hurled himself through the gate head first, and Mike followed on his heels. He could feel something’s hot breath on the back of his neck, felt the gate closing around him, but his momentum pushed him through and he burst out the other side into near-darkness. But not the kind brought by the Upside Down; the real kind made by a mostly-set sun and a moon hidden behind a layer of red clouds. Without thinking, Mike grabbed Will and tugged him away from the gate, watching with wide eyes as the Demogorgon that had tried to follow was cut in half with a horrible squelching noise. It released one last cut-off screech before flopping uselessly down, bleeding dark brown blood all over the ground.
“Fuck,” Mike gasped, doubling over and clutching a stitch in his side. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Will said, only breathing a little easier than Mike. He stayed upright, but his hand landed on Mike’s shoulder like he needed the support. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike could see him staring at the dead half of the Demogorgon with a blank look on his face. Compartmentalizing, no doubt. He’d probably have a nightmare that Mike would have to wrestle him out of later.
Unless Mike had one first.
Except – Mike finally started to catch his breath, and with it, his head began to swirl with doubts. Will’s hand stayed on his shoulder as he straightened up, and Mike didn’t shake it off. Of course he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t, not when it might be the last time Will ever touched him again willingly. Because Mike had broken them, and Will was probably never going to share space with Mike again, let alone a bed. It brought a lump to his throat and his eyes began to sting with tears. Don’t cry, he instructed himself. Not yet. Once they got home, once Mike could lock himself in his room or the bathroom or the basement, he could break down. He would allow himself to, just this once.
But not yet.
He avoided Will’s gaze, which had turned from the Demogorgon to himself. For some reason, Will was still holding his shoulder, still looking at him. Probably trying to figure out how to tell Mike, in the nicest way possible (because it was Will), that even if he had had feelings for Mike at one point (a big if), he didn’t anymore. That Mike was selfish for saying all that he had said, selfish for pushing Will away, for hurting El, for putting the pieces back together over the last year only to destroy them again.
But Mike was given one more moment as a muffled static came from his backpack. Before he could reach for it, Will slid around to his back and reached inside for the Supercom. Dustin’s voice was frantically asking them if they copied, and Mike turned around as Will responded an affirmative. The movement brought them too close together, where Will hadn’t taken a step back after getting the Supercom, so Mike moved away. Or tried to – Will’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, firm and unrelenting. Mike’s head shot up, surprised, to find Will already looking at him.
“Thank God,” Dustin was saying. “Hop said you two were supposed to come out of Water Gate, how is the Supercom still working?”
“We got lucky,” Will told him. “A gate opened up in the woods. We’re…” He twisted to look around at their surroundings, trying to find a landmark. He still didn’t let go of Mike’s wrist.
Mike spoke up, leaning down enough for the Supercom to catch his voice. “We’re pretty close to the new Castle Byers,” he said to Dustin. He firmly ignored how Will’s head whipped back, hand tightening around Mike’s wrist.
“Oh good, that’s good!” Dustin said. He turned and said something to someone else, presumably Lucas or one of their moms. “Okay, cool. Your mom wants you to get there and wait for Nancy and Lucas to get you guys. She also wants you both to know that you’re on house arrest when you get home.”
“We figured as much,” Will answered, and he was still holding onto Mike. “Even though this really wasn’t our fault.”
“That’s what you guys get for letting Vecna target you,” Dustin crackled over the receiver.
“Letting—”
Will cut off Mike’s indignant squawk. “Okay cool, thanks Dustin. We’ll see you soon.”
“Over and out,” Dustin answered, and they were left in silence.
Mike didn’t know what to do. Will was standing too close, still looking at him with that unreadable expression on his face. His fingers loosened on Mike’s wrist, enough for his thumb to brush over Mike’s pulse point. Mike stared dumbly down at Will’s hand, feeling his heartbeat spike. He didn’t know what was happening. He’d broken everything.
Hadn’t he?
“So,” Will said, “what’s this about a new Castle Byers?”
Mike felt his face flush red. “I, uh,” he responded intelligently. He thought Will might be smiling a tiny bit, but he was too afraid to look him in the eye. “You’ll see,” Mike continued. “Um. We should—” He stopped talking again as Will’s hand slid down enough to twine their fingers together. They were officially holding hands. They were holding hands, what the hell?
“Lead the way,” Will said.
Mike dumbly started walking.
It was only a few minutes to their destination, but Mike spent it in turmoil, utterly confused and unsure what else to feel. Hope, maybe? But Will hadn’t kissed him back, had looked hurt by what Mike had said. It didn’t change the fact that Will was holding his hand, their fingers laced together, and wasn’t letting go, even when Mike slightly loosened his grip to give him the opportunity to, just in case Mike had somehow done this without meaning to. Maybe he was just trying to make sure they didn’t get separated? It was almost completely dark now, and they had heard the sounds of monsters out in the woods more than once before on patrols. That had to be it, Mike decided as the makeshift fort came into view between the trees. Will was just doing the responsible thing and keeping them close together. As soon as they returned to Mike’s house, he’d put distance between them, probably forever.
They came to a stop a few feet away from the relocated and rebuilt Castle Byers. “Ta-da,” Mike said weakly. His face was flaming red, he knew, but what did it matter? Will knew everything now anyway.
“Whoa,” Will breathed. Mike finally chanced a look at him, but in the dark, he couldn’t quite make out Will’s expression. Surprise, sure, but was he also disappointed? It didn’t look like the old Castle Byers had, the one Will had destroyed (and Mike knew, without needing confirmation, that that was exactly what happened. No storm could have torn those pictures so perfectly down the middle.) No, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin had built this one to be bigger, sturdier. Weatherproof too, a large, plastic tarp stretching over the roof. Mike had painstakingly repaired the original sign though, as well as the one stating, “All Friends Welcome.” Theoretically, all four of them could cram inside, though it wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable.
“You did this?” Will turned to look at him, eyes wide and glinting in the rare moonlight shining into the clearing.
Mike cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said, looking down and kicking one of his feet in the dirt. “Well, I mean, we all did. Me, Lucas, Dustin. We tried to repair the original one, but the people who bought your old house didn’t really appreciate us hanging around their property, even if technically it wasn’t on their property. No one really comes out here though, and it’s closer to my house, yeah, but we figured when you visited, that’s probably where you would stay anyway, so…”
“Why haven’t you shown me this before?” Will asked. He was trying to keep his tone calm, measured, but Mike could hear the slight strain in it. It made his heart sink a little; Will was mad. Rightfully so, but it still added to the hurt Mike had been feeling since they stood in his garage.
Mike shrugged, still looking at his feet and pointedly ignoring Will’s hand holding his. “Been kind of busy with the world ending, I guess,” he muttered. “And…I don’t know, I guess I figured you wouldn’t want it. After…after everything.”
“Wouldn’t—” Will cut himself off with a sharp inhale, like he was holding himself back. Mike sort of wished he would just yell at him, but Will was too kind for that. Instead, Will tugged Mike towards it, only letting go of his hand to pull the blanket curtaining the entrance and duck inside. Mike stayed outside, shuffling uncertainly, until Will’s voice said, “Well, get in here, you’re going to get eaten.”
“I’m not going to get eaten,” Mike grumbled, but he reluctantly crawled inside.
The interior was more like what the old Castle Byers had been. Mike had taped the photos back together, gathered what drawings hadn’t been ruined by the weather, and decorated it as close as he could get. A pallet of blankets and pillows covered about half of the floor, which was kept from the dirt with plywood boards. Some old milk cartons served as a desk or table of sorts, with a few pictures propped up and a battery-powered lantern that Will had already turned on. Mike had given up some of the drawings that he had kept in his own house, the ones Will didn’t necessarily know he had. The biggest difference was the unassuming shoebox sitting on the floor in the corner.
Now that he was in here, Mike was pretty certain that there was no way all four boys could ever fit in here without at least one of them sitting on top of another. Hell, he and Will were crammed in pretty close already, which was not doing any good for Mike’s still-stuttering heart every time their shoulders or knees brushed. Anxiety spiked at the sight of the box, especially when Will wasted no time in pulling it towards himself, settled comfortably on the blankets. Mike hovered awkwardly on his heels, at least until Will looked up, rolled his eyes, and yanked him bodily down to sit next to him. Mike flailed a little wildly, tried to put some inches between them, but Will was holding his wrist again and showing no signs of letting go.
Will opened the box.
“Shit,” he said quietly, sounding…awed? “You weren’t kidding.”
“I wouldn’t kid about that,” Mike responded, heart sinking to his toes. He didn’t think he could do this: watch Will read through the dozen or so letters that were in that box. He’d already poured his heart out once today, and those letters were basically just him doing it on paper too. It was too much. But Will was sorting through them, trying to figure out the order. Mike had dated the envelopes on the flaps, and he took a breath before grabbing one dated December 17, 1985. “Here,” he said lowly. “This one.”
Will looked sideways at him, but Mike was still avoiding his gaze, choosing instead to try and burn a hole through his own shoe with his eyes. This was the most incriminating one, or at least, the first one he outright admitted his feelings. The seventh letter he’d written, written at two-thirty in the morning after Mike had woken up with stifled sobs from a dream where Will was curled around his body with his head on his chest and Mike was happier than he could ever remember being. It had devastated him, waking up and remembering reality, and he hadn’t been able to stop the words flowing onto the page.
Beside him, Will read them now, eyes flitting across the pages. It was the first letter Mike had written where there weren’t words crossed out or written over, because he had known he wouldn’t send this one.
I don’t know how to put into words how fucking badly I miss you every day, he’d written.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost gone to the bus station and bought a ticket to come see you, he’d written.
I’m so tired of lying to you, Will.
I shouldn’t have pushed you away. I should have spent all of my time with you this last summer, not El.
And finally:
I think I’m in love with you. I’m sorry. You deserve better than me.
Mike wasn’t sure how long they sat there in silence, Will holding his wrist like a vice while he read through the letter once, twice, three times. Slowly, the letter was lowered to the floor, and Mike made himself look up. He would face this head on, he’d decided while Will was reading. Mike would look Will in the eyes while Will broke his heart, because Will deserved that. Will deserved the world, deserved everything he wanted, and if tearing Mike into pieces that couldn’t be put back together was what he wanted, then he would get it. Mike would let him.
Will didn’t do that.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Will rasped. His eyes were shining with unshed tears, but Mike didn’t get a chance to say or do anything about that. Will had already let go of his wrist and hauled Mike forward by his face instead, pressing their mouths together desperately.
It took Mike all of two seconds to get with the program and kiss Will back, nose smushed to his cheek before Mike pulled back just enough to tilt his head and come back in at a better angle. And – that was what had been missing, all the times he’d kissed El and wondered why the hell people liked doing this. Will’s hands were in his hair and he was breathing into Mike’s mouth, and Mike felt like electricity was sparking across his skin everywhere they touched. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was worried that this was too much, because as far as he knew, Will had never kissed anyone before and he deserved something gentler, softer than this.
Will, evidently, had no such qualms, because he decided that biting Mike’s lower lip and tugging his hair at the same time was a great idea. It was, Mike decided, a fantastic idea, especially when Will followed it up by licking into Mike’s open mouth. And Mike wasn’t sure who moved, if he’d pulled Will over with the hands he had on his waist or if Will had done it himself, but it didn’t matter, not when Will had swung a leg over Mike’s outstretched legs and settled down in his lap, still kissing him fervently. Like he wasn’t sure he would get an opportunity to do so again, or maybe just like he’d wanted to for so long that he wasn’t sure where to start and kind of just wanted to do everything all at once. Either way, Mike wasn’t complaining, just took Will’s weight happily and kept kissing him.
Time was moving strangely just then, the seconds flowing into minutes without regard for what might be happening outside. Mike didn’t care, not when the enclosed space was warm with heavy breaths and hushed, disbelieving laughter and his hands tucked up under Will’s shirt so he could run his fingertips over skin and listen to Will gasp. It was about as far as he was willing to go, just keeping his head enough to remember that, at some point, Lucas and Nancy would find them, and besides, he needed this to be different. They needed to actually talk, to go through the timeline between the two of them and figure out how long they’d actually been on the same page without knowing. Figure out how long they’d been hurting each other (how long Mike had been hurting Will) without realizing that the other already felt the same way.
Mike, unintentionally, found a ticklish spot over Will’s ribs, still touching with too-light fingers and making Will break away with a choked off yelp. “Sorry, sorry,” Mike apologized immediately, but he was smiling, unable to help himself. Will pulled his hair again in retaliation and Mike’s mouth dropped open on a completely embarrassing whine. He watched Will’s eyes, already wide and blown out, somehow get darker, and Jesus, Mike needed to put a stop to this, at least for the time being. He accepted Will’s next kiss, and the one after that, and the one after that, before he withdrew his hands from underneath Will’s shirt and wrapped them around his back instead so he could hug him. He felt Will’s hum of surprise vibrating against his nose where he’d buried his face in Will’s neck, but Will’s hand softened in his hair until he was just petting it soothingly. Embarrassingly, Mike felt a little like crying again. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled into Will’s skin, this time entirely more serious.
“I love you too,” Will breathed, and Mike pulled back so he could look him in the eye again. Will’s face was soft, open. He cupped Mike’s cheeks with both hands, running a thumb under one eye where a tear threatened to fall. “I love you so much, you have to know. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t,” Mike said, voice rough with the lump in his throat, “not until you gave me the painting. I meant what I said earlier, if Jonathan and Argyle hadn’t been there, I was going to call you out on your bullshit and tell you I loved you back. I wanted it to be better than that though, there just…wasn’t time. And then I thought I was wrong, and after we got back here, I was too scared to tell you anyway. I didn’t want to ruin things beyond what I already had.”
“Mike, you didn’t—you didn’t ruin anything—”
“I did though,” Mike interrupted him, and he was crying now, a little, but Will was wiping away every tear as they fell. “I wasted so much time, trying to be something I’m not. I was terrified, and that was completely unfair to you.”
“I thought…I thought you were avoiding me that summer because you knew how I felt about you,” Will muttered, looking ashamed. “And when you got to California…I thought I’d made you uncomfortable. Even before that, I—I was afraid to call you, I thought you wouldn’t want to talk to me. If I’d known you were trying to call me, I would have. Jesus, I did know, actually, because El told me that you’d mentioned in more than one of your letters that you hadn’t heard from me and that you wanted to, but I thought she was just trying to make me feel better.”
“I should have just sent one of these.” Mike gestured at the letter abandoned on the floor and the shoebox just beyond it. “Maybe not that one, because that would have been a lot, but…”
“Mike, I think if you had sent me that, I would have had a heart attack,” Will laughed. “Or done something insane like get on a plane and come to see you.”
“Well then maybe I should have,” Mike joked, but it fell flat. He wasn’t joking, not really. All he’d wanted in those six months was to see Will, or hear his voice, or read his handwriting. He still had that first letter Will had sent, one of two, the one where Will had written I miss clouds, and then scratched out almost beyond recognition I miss you. (Mike had spent an embarrassing amount of time poring over those words, trying to figure out if they were what he thought they were.) “Will, I—I mean it. I love you. I love you so much that it was about ninety percent of what One kept saying to me both times he got into my head. How badly I fucked up, and hurt you, and that I should just give up now because I’d never be able to fix it anyway—”
“Fuck that guy,” Will said immediately. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t think there’s anything you could ever do to me that you wouldn’t be able to fix. God, I’m so gone on you that I was pretty much ready to be alone forever because no one else was ever going to be good enough.”
“That’s some pretty self-sacrificial bullshit.” But Mike was pretty certain that he was the same; if Will hadn’t returned his feelings, or if he ever decided that Mike wasn’t what he wanted, then Mike would probably resign himself to a lonely existence too.
Maybe they should be concerned about the depth of their feelings for one another when they were just barely sixteen. Then again, neither one of them had ever been the type to do anything at all by halves, starting with the first day of kindergarten when, hours after declaring their friendship, they had staunchly argued with their moms that Will should be allowed to come home with him.
Thankfully, they were saved from more potentially too-revealing confessions by Lucas’s voice ringing out, “Will! Mike!”
“We’re in here!” Will scrambled off of Mike’s lap and started shuffling the letters back into the shoebox before seemingly thinking better of it and shoving them into Mike’s backpack instead. Mike wanted to protest, but the blanket covering the entrance was already being pulled back and Lucas was peering in just as Will zipped the backpack up.
Mike suddenly became very aware of what they looked like: a little ragged and dirty from the Upside Down, sure, but Will’s shirt was also wrinkled where Mike had had his hands tucked up under it, and he was sure that if he looked in a mirror, his hair would be incriminatingly mussed up. And maybe that could be explained weakly away, but Will’s mouth was red and a little swollen from where Mike had been kissing him, and he was pretty sure he looked the same. Really sure, once Lucas’s face broke into a smug grin and he said, “Really guys? Now?”
Will went red so fast that Mike thought he might pass out. Mike just flipped Lucas off and shoved him back so that he could drag Will out of Castle Byers, turning off the lantern as they went. “I will happily remind you of the ridiculous number of hickeys Max had the week following her waking up,” he said, poking Lucas in the chest with one finger. “And I know that Steve caught you two multiple times—”
“Okay, okay!” Lucas raised both hands up in surrender, but he was still smirking at them. It softened a little when he clapped a hand down on Mike’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. “I’m just saying, it’s about damn time man.”
Will’s eyes were huge in the darkness. “You knew?”
“I knew about Mike,” Lucas said quickly, “not you. I mean, I kind of wondered, this past year, but you’re really good at keeping your emotions on lock, it’s kind of unsettling sometimes.”
Nancy had been scanning the clearing, gun raised, but she looked back now. “I take it you two sorted out your shit?” Her tone was casual, businesslike as usual, and Mike was slammed with affection for his sister. She’d been this way the whole time about his feelings for Will; it was her matter-of-fact manner regarding it all that had brought Mike the most comfort about his feelings in the last year, though Lucas’s good-natured ribbing had helped too.
Will looked a little overwhelmed, but Mike took a chance and reached out to squeeze his hand, just once. “Started to,” he answered, “but it’d be nice to not get eaten by monsters so we can finish the conversation. Home?”
Nancy barked out a laugh. “Oh, you’ll have time,” she teased. “Mom and Joyce are determined to keep you two in the house indefinitely. No more supply runs or volunteering, at least until we sort out a way to end all of this.”
“El has an idea about that, actually,” Lucas said as they started to walk, flashlights on and weapons drawn despite the fact that, for once, the woods were filled with the sound of normal wildlife and not the growls and chitters of monsters. “She thinks she found One, based on what Mike told everyone he saw during his last possession.” And seriously, what was their life that that was just a casual sentence to come out of Lucas’s mouth?
“Well, for now, you’re both on house arrest,” Nancy said. “Music mandatory at all times, so you two should probably be discussing if you’ll be sleeping to The Cure or Bronski Beat tonight. Personally, I’d prefer The Cure, because inevitably I’ll be able to hear it through the wall, but honestly, anything that might drown out any extracurricular activities will do.”
Will choked on air next to him when Mike shot back, “You would deserve it, the sheer number of times we’ve heard you and Jonathan at night—”
“Mike,” Will whined.
“Besides, you’re getting so ahead of things,” Mike changed avenues immediately in response to Will’s discomfort, “I haven’t even taken him out on a date yet—”
“That wasn’t a date?” Lucas asked, eyebrows raised.
“You mean falling through a gate into the Upside Down and then running for our lives? No, Lucas, that wasn’t a date,” Mike said, exasperated and a little giddy. He couldn’t quite believe this was happening still, especially the fact that Will was holding his hand again as they walked.
“Looked like a date,” Lucas muttered.
“Oh my God, can we please talk about anything else?” Will said, a little shrilly.
Lucas and Nancy cracked up, but Will held Mike’s hand all the way back to his house, so it was worth it. It was still worth it when both of their moms were berating them for letting their guard down and telling them that under no circumstances were they to leave the house again until there was a solid plan in place to defeat One. And later, when they were laying on Mike’s bed in the near-dark of his room with The Cure playing softly in the background and their hands twined between them while they talked in hushed voices, well. That was worth it too.
If Mike had his way, they’d be able to keep this for a long, long time.