Chapter Text
“Will! Over here!”
Lucas’ voice carries over the crowd, drawing Will’s attention to his raised hand waving in the air. It’s a relieving sight – the concert venue they’re in is crowded, loud, and full of drunk people. Not exactly Will’s favorite combination. Not when he’s sober, at least. In college he would cope with the parties and bars his friends dragged him to by either getting high beforehand or bringing his sketchbook. Sometimes both. Robin made fun of him, sure, but it was how he had the most fun. Maybe it was a bit of armor, too. The sketchbook let him put up a wall between him and the rest of the human race. It positioned him as an observer, not a participant. Will never had a lot of luck as a participant.
“Hey,” he greets once he’s wormed his way through enough writhing sweaty bodies to reach Lucas and Dustin. Lucas grins at him and throws his arms out, pulling Will into a firm hug and patting his back. Will stumbles forward with the force of it and wonders how drunk Lucas could already be. Maybe not at all. Some people are just easily friendly in a way Will’s awkward self could never understand.
“So glad you made it, man!”
He leaves Will with one last friendly shoulder whack before receding entirely from his personal space. Will manages a little genuine smile. Lucas is nice – Lucas is more than nice, actually, seeing as he invited Will to this concert after only knowing him what, a month? Time is hard to keep track of in Chicago. Will had moved to the city about a month and half ago, after graduating and spending the summer in Lenora with his family. He’d gotten a job as an illustrator at a publishing house downtown. A real job that he just had to take, hesitant as he’d been to move back to the Midwest.
Lucas had found him at a board game store one evening after work, when he’d been wistfully wandering the aisle of DnD miniatures and feeling rather lonely and sorry for himself. It had been a rare stroke of good luck for Will. A friendly nerd and fellow small-town boy in the big city. Plus, Lucas had other friends for him to meet. Dustin, for one. And apparently a girlfriend and two other friends in a band. Hence the concert.
“Thanks for inviting me,” he remembers to say, then gives Dustin a nod of greeting. Dustin nods back at him.
“Aren’t you hot?”
Will glances down at his blue and yellow winter coat, still zipped up to his chin, and shrugs. “It’s cold outside.”
Dustin laughs at him, but not in a way that makes him feel made fun of. It’s a kind, good-natured laugh. The laugh of a friend. “Okay, California.”
“I think it’s a cool look,” Lucas adds.
“Thanks, Lucas. I thought so too.” Will unzips the jacket but doesn’t take it off entirely, because he really is still cold – and there are very few things he hates more than being cold. He’s really not looking forward to the coming months, seeing as October is already frigid enough.
Lucas opens his mouth to respond or start some other conversation but is promptly drowned out by a roar of cheers triggered by the dimming of the house lights. They all turn their attention to the stage. It’s a medium-size stage in a medium-size venue, for what Will gathers to be a medium-famous band – though to hear Lucas talk about it you’d think his girlfriend played bass in the most popular rock group in the world.
The medium-sized stage stays dark and the medium-sized venue stays filled with drunken, frenzied cheers as three shadowy figures step out and take their places. One at drums, two in the front at the mics with guitar-shaped shadows hanging at their hips. They stand there long enough for an anticipatory hush to fall over the crowd.
The frontman, still shrouded in darkness, starts to pluck at the strings of his electric guitar. The riff is deep and watery, filling up the space and making Will inhale with soft surprise. It repeats twice before the drummer comes in, matching the beat and adding a tinge of cymbals.
A hauntingly familiar scratchy voice croons into the mic as the lights burst to life, bringing about another ruckus of cheers.
“Come, as you are,” the frontman sings, his voice raspy and his eyes squeezed shut, “as you were, as I waaaant you to be.”
Holy shit, Will thinks. Holy shit, that’s Mike Wheeler.
Dead center stage, his long fingers plucking expertly at a deep blue electric guitar, is a living ghost of Will’s desperately buried past. The central figure of his best childhood memories and worst adolescent shames, the boy he thought he’d left behind for good, the first and only person he’d ever really been in love with. Michael Wheeler.
He almost wants to laugh. He almost wants to cry. Of course. Of course he comes back to the godforsaken Midwest for the first time since he was fourteen and finds Mike, right where he’d left him.
Well, not exactly. He certainly hadn’t left Mike in the middle of an adoring crowd, lips pressed to a microphone. He’d left him on the gravel driveway of his childhood home. How Mike had gotten from point A to point B was something he doesn’t know a thing about.
What he does know is that Mike’s voice is so raw it hurts. It’s hoarse and full at the same time, bloody and stripped bare like a skinned knee after a bike crash on the mean streets of Hawkins, Indiana. Will is immediately entranced, fully and completely – like he’d never left.
“Come, doused in mud, soaked in bleach, as I want you to be,” Mike sings, “As a trend, as a friend, as I know memoriiiiiia.”
When the song reaches an instrumental Mike breaks away from the mic and turns to the redhead at his side – Lucas’ girlfriend, Will realizes belatedly – his fingers sliding up and down the neck of his guitar to crank out a moody, crackling interlude against her steady bass riff. The drums crash and Mike’s body sways to the music, his shaggy curls falling in front of his face as he practically folds himself in half around his guitar. He’s grinning. Will can barely see it from where he’s standing, but it’s unmistakable. Mike looks like he’s having the time of his life.
The song ends before Will is ready. Ready for what, he doesn’t know. He just wants it to keep going. He wants to keep watching Mike move like he’s moving, sing like he’s singing, smile like he’s smiling. But the song ends regardless of what Will wants, and the crowd erupts into even louder cheers. It should hurt his ears but Will feels electric, feels like he wants to get even closer to the speakers.
Mike backs away from the microphone with that same big grin plastered across his face, his chest rising and falling as he combs those deft fingers through his hair. He steps forward and leans into the mic. “Hello, everyone, thanks for coming out.”
Another roar of cheers. Mike huffs a little laugh into the mic. He seems remarkably comfortable for someone who once had a rageful meltdown over having to perform in the third-grade class play. But Mike had always had a certain confident charm to him, despite his tendencies towards anger and haughty disdain. And he’d certainly always been theatrical.
“My name,” he says, pressing a splayed hand to his chest, “is Mike.” He stretches an arm out in the redhead’s direction. “On the bass over here is Mad Max herself.” Right, that’s her name. Lucas’ amazing woman. “Then we’ve got the ever-talented El behind me on the drums!”
The brunette seated behind the drum kit waves sweetly, sticks in hand. The audience is excited to hear all three names, and Will pulls himself together enough to clap along. Lucas jostles his shoulder and points towards Max with a gigantic that’s-my-girl grin. It makes Will like him even more.
“Okay, that’s all I had to say,” Mike continues. “Let’s play some music!”
The broad stage lights abruptly switch to a stark red spotlight, singularly illuminating Mike for a moment as his voice drops into that same dark tone.
“The world is a vampire…”
A shiver shoots up Will’s body and he almost draws his coat closed before realizing how truly pathetic he’s being. It’s Mike. It’s just Mike.
That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? It’s Mike. And Mike could never be ‘just Mike’ because he was always going to be everything. Even after nearly a decade of separation, just seeing him from a distance of thirty feet is enough to make Will fall apart.
That’s how he feels for the rest of the show – spellbound and ready to collapse at any moment. Absolutely floored by Mike’s voice and his ability to make his guitar sing, yell, cry. Stunned by the way he moves so easily across a stage, swinging his instrument around like a dance partner, running around in his black high-tops, coaxing his bandmates into it. Every time they pause the set to drink water or switch instruments, he has some kind of banter at the ready. His voice – God, his voice. Will missed that voice.
“Thank you!” Mike yells into the mic at the end of the final song, throwing his hands in the air and laughing breathlessly. “Thank you all so much for being here with us tonight in the best city in the world. Fuck New York. I said it.”
The crowd roars approvingly back at him and Will can’t help but snort.
“Good way to end tour,” Max adds, leaning into her own mic. Her eyes search the crowd and land somewhere near Will – about where Lucas is standing. “Love you, Chicago.”
If Will isn’t mistaken, Mike rolls his eyes, but he stays smiling. Then he pops his mic off its stand and hops on the drum platform, leaning over towards the third member – El, Will thinks. His stomach twists a little at the way Mike looks at her. “Anything to add, El?”
El leans towards the mic a little awkwardly, her lips twitched up in a smile of her own. “Love you, Chicago!”
“Woooooo!” Mike screams into the microphone, making the speakers crackle as he turns around and bounds back to center stage. What a dork. “Love you, Chicago. See you next time.”
The crowd erupts into raucous applause for the final time as Mike bows deeply, his hands splayed above his head in a theatrical way that makes Will’s face spasm with the effort not to smile like a lovestruck idiot. Max bows, too, then she and Mike both sweep their hands towards El in the back. The crowd goes wild.
“Alright!” Lucas exclaims, once the band has finally disappeared backstage. He claps Will on the shoulder. “What did you think?”
“Awesome,” Will responds. “Really awesome.”
“Aw, yes!” Lucas pumps his fist. “I knew I could count on you.”
“We love our rockstars,” Dustin says, patting his chest then wiping away an invisible tear. “First tour ever – they grow up so fast.”
Lucas laughs and nods. “I can’t believe it, honestly.” He raises his eyebrows at Will. “We’re gonna go meet them backstage, you should come!”
Will stiffens, closing his shoulders in as people stream past him on their way to the exit. Meeting the band backstage means meeting Mike backstage. Meeting Mike for the first time in nine years. His stomach roils with sudden, violent anxiety. Would Mike even remember him? Who’s to say that friendship mattered as much to him as it did to Will? It isn’t exactly normal to spend nearly a decade nursing a hopeless crush on your kindergarten best friend.
“Yeah, come on!” Dustin says, oblivious to his turmoil. They start off in the opposite direction of the exit, shuffling Will along with them in the crowd as he considers pleading illness or needing to get work done. Maybe he’s running behind on a piece for a new book. Maybe he’s caught something deadly. Maybe he’s about to pass out.
In the time he takes to consider all these lies, Dustin and Lucas get him to the backstage door and past the security guards. And if he’s gotten that far, maybe he should just go for it?
A peel of familiar laughter echoes from around the next corner. Will’s heart drops to his stomach and flops around like a suffocating fish.
He resolves, as they turn to the corner, to just assume that Mike doesn’t remember him. It’ll hurt less, that way, if he really doesn’t. That’s what he tells himself, at least. It’ll hurt less.
---
“Wheeler, you’re pissing me off.”
“When am I not?”
Mike’s got his legs splayed across Max’s lap on the musty backstage couch, his head resting on the arm of it. He’s very sweaty and his shoes are covered in sticky god-knows-what from the stage, which is why Max is glaring at him. She shoves his legs off and he drops them right back where they came from.
“Play nice,” El teases, her hand deep in a bag of jerky. “Are Lucas and Dustin coming?”
“They should be,” Max answers. “I saw them in the crowd.”
“We noticed,” Mike says dryly. He puckers his lips and makes his voice as nasally as he can. “Love you, Chicago.”
Max punches his thigh. “Shut up.”
As much as Mike loves to tease, he can’t help but get a little wistful about Max and Lucas’ relationship. He hadn’t been able to start a single relationship of his own since El dumped him in the ninth grade – the same year they’d met in the first place. There had been dates and drunken encounters at parties, sure, but no one he actually felt strongly about. He’d gone to senior prom with his ex-girlfriend-turned-lesbian-best-friend, for fuck’s sake. What kind of love life was that?
“I can’t believe the tour is already over,” El says, perching on the couch arm next to Max. Max immediately leans over to rest her head against El’s ribs. El’s hand finds its way to her hair. Sickly sweet. Why does Max get all the love?
“I’m so glad it is,” Max groans. The tour had been a three-month cross-country affair that Mike never really stopped doubting the reality of. Every time they showed up to a new venue in a new city, he braced himself to be laughed at or turned away. It never happened. All the venues that their agent had scheduled for them were actually scheduled for them. All the tickets their agent said they’d sold turned into people in a crowd. Singing their songs. In real life.
Mike cranes his neck to better look at his bandmates. “Tired of seeing me win everyone over?”
“Your ego needs to be obliterated.”
Mike laughs, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Just admit you’re jealous, Max, it’s okay. I understand.”
Before Max can shoot back some fiery retort, Lucas’ voice bursts into the room. “Mad Max!”
Mike’s legs are once again shoved off Max’s lap and this time he surrenders to it, sitting up with a heavy sigh and rubbing at his eyes momentarily. He braces himself to see the two of them looking as wonderfully happy as they always do before glancing up.
And then Will Byers is there.
Mike freezes. Rubs his eyes again.
Will Byers is still there.
There is nothing in the world that could’ve emotionally prepared Mike for the sight of a 22-year-old William Byers. His honey brown hair, his strong nose, his smooth jaw and the little mole on the bend of his neck. Those pretty hazel eyes. He’d grown up, filled out, a little broader and taller than Mike remembers him but still so painfully the same. Will’s eyes are going anywhere but Mike, his hands fiddling anxiously where they slipped out of the sleeves of his deep blue winter jacket. Will had never been good with the cold. All those years in California couldn’t have helped.
Mike wants to say something, wants to get up and run to him, but it’s like he’s stuck in a vat of molasses. His head is underwater, everything in the room fading away until all of his senses are focused on just Will.
It’s all he can do to just stand on his own two feet.
He watches dumbly as Dustin and Lucas introduce Will to El and Max, physically unable to process those conversations at a higher level than oh my god, his voice dropped. Will shakes both the girls’ hands politely, a nervous little smile playing across his lips. Mike’s hands are itching. His palms are too sweaty.
“Mike, get over here!” Dustin yells, startling him enough to realize how horrifically creepy he’s being, just standing in the corner and staring. He forces his legs to move, to carry him across the room – to Will fucking Byers. Will looks at him. He looks at Will.
“Hi,” Will says first, sticking his hand out, “I’m Will.”
Mike inhales, his eyes widening in a sudden, heart wrenching panic. Does Will not remember him?
“I know,” he says without thinking. Maybe he should’ve just gone along with it, allowed himself the easy escape. But there is no way in hell he can pretend to not know Will. He’s never known anyone more. He’s never missed anyone more.
Every love song he’s ever written is about Will Byers.
Will blinks rapidly, his lashes fluttering as his lips part in soft surprise. Mike reads his thoughts immediately on his face and is absolutely elated that he still knows how to do so: Will remembers him. He just thought Mike didn’t.
“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t recognize you?” he teases gently, a flicker of confidence rising from the ashes of temporary heartbreak. “I mean, you’ve certainly grown up, but I’m not a total idiot.”
That makes Will smile, though he tries to dampen it by pursing his lips. “My bad.”
Something in his affectionate tone, the laugh hidden behind his voice, snaps the invisible force holding Mike back. He practically lunges forward to wrap Will in a full-bodied hug. Will stiffens and for half a second Mike thinks shit, I’ve gone too far, I’ve messed it all up, I’m disgusting and moves to let go. Then Will’s hands press flat against his back and Will’s fingers curl over his spine and Will’s nose buries in the crook of his neck. And Mike thinks he’s really here. Really, he’s here; the best friend he’s ever had, the wound that never heals, the sorcerer to his paladin. Will. Will, Will, Will.
They do have to break apart eventually, too aware of the four sets of eyes burning into their backs. At least, Mike is. He doubts any of his friends have ever seen him look as affected as he probably does now, unable to stop tracing every detail of Will’s face and shape. There’s still a faint scar on his chin from when he split it open on Mike’s driveway when they were twelve. He’s here. He’s Will.
“Mike,” says a voice, a voice which belongs to El and it only takes Mike a moment to drag himself out of Will-induced stupor to realize that, “is this…the Will? From kindergarten?”
El Hopper is a traitorous little snake. She’s also his closest friend of nine years, so of course she knows all about Will Byers. In high school, it had been impossible to tell her anything about his childhood without mentioning him. In college, if Mike ever got really drunk – like really, really drunk – he’d pull her aside and cry about him.
“From kindergarten?” Will echoes. He looks surprisingly pleased with the description, attention shifting from El back to Mike with a raised brow and a crooked smile.
“You’re kidding,” Lucas interjects. “Oh my god, you can’t be- this is Will as in Will?”
“Okay-” Mike says, his ears starting to burn. Max barrels forward with no regard for his shame.
“As in the beloved childhood best friend we could never hold a candle to?”
“OKAY!” Mike yells, shooting daggers at all of them. Dustin included, because even though he hasn’t said anything he’s got smug laughter written all over his face. Maybe Mike had been a little less subtle about the whole drunk-crying-to-El-about-Will thing than he’d previously let on. That didn’t mean these evil little shits had to come right out with it! “That’s enough, really.”
He turns to Will with an apology on his lips – for what, he’s not totally sure, he’s just ashamed enough for it to feel necessary – and finds Will on the verge of tears. His shoulders are up by his ears, his mouth a warbly line, his pretty hazel eyes wet. There’s a pit of panicked dread forming in Mike’s stomach because he hates when Will cries, he hates it more than anything because it means he failed at doing the most important job in the world: keeping Will Byers safe.
“Will,” he says, his voice far more desperate than the situation calls for but maybe it’s not desperate enough because Will is crying and he needs to fix it, “Will, what’s wrong?”
Will shakes his head and presses the butt of his palms into his eyes, exhaling sharply. “It’s okay, sorry- I just- sorry.”
“Will,” Mike repeats, his hand finding Will’s shoulder and squeezing.
“I’m alright!” Will assures him. He’s louder this time, dropping his hands from his face and giving Mike a small toothy smile. It’s like he’d been buried in a time capsule all these years and popped out exactly the same – his smile is exactly the same. “Just emotional. Sorry.”
Mike searches his face carefully for any lie but finds nothing. Will doesn’t lie to him. “Okay,” he surrenders. “Fair enough.”
“Should we give you two the room or something?” Dustin quips. El bats his shoulder, which Mike appreciates. “To catch up!” Dustin protests. “Jesus, just trying to be accommodating!”
“No, no,” Will insists before Mike can say yeah, maybe he does want them all to get the hell out. “I’m totally fine. This is just…unexpected.”
He seems to choose that word carefully, eyes shifting back to Mike’s. Mike’s hand is still wrapped comfortably around his shoulder, holding fast. He should let go. He doesn’t.
“Small world, I guess,” Lucas says. His arms are crossed and one eyebrow is quirked up ever so slightly. He definitely notices Mike’s hand.
“Let’s talk about it more over dinner?” Max suggests. “I’m about to starve to death.”
Lucas swings an arm over her shoulder and shoots her a grin. “Well, we can’t have that.”
Max rolls her eyes at him as El and Dustin excitably agree to the dinner plan and start discussing restaurants. Everyone shuffles around a bit to collect their stuff, and unfortunately Mike has to let go of Will to pack his guitar back in its case and lug it out to the alley where Max’s truck is parked. He slides it into the covered trunk on top of her bass and next to all their speakers and pedals and wires.
“Is this what you tour in?”
He nearly jumps at the pure closeness of Will’s voice at his side, his breath catching in his throat. He slams the trunk shut to give himself a moment to recuperate. “Yep. Not much, but it works for us.”
“Cool.”
Mike steels himself before turning to look at him, and he’s glad he does because Jesus Christ Will is beautiful. The warm light in the damp alleyway illuminates his face just barely, his lashes casting little shadows under his glinting eyes. He’s zipped his winter coat up all the way and tucked his chin into the collar, which is a heartwrenchingly cute thing to do. A little puff of hot air expels from his pink lips.
“Cool,” Mike repeats like an idiot. “That it is.”
“How long have you been doing all this?” Will nods his head at the truck, presumably towards the instruments and all they represent.
“Heading into our fifth year all three of us. But El and I used to play a little in high school. It wasn’t anything serious until we met Max in college.”
Will hums, shifting against the fabric of his jacket and letting out another little puff of warm air from his nose. “So, you and El have known each other for a while?”
“Since the ninth grade,” Mike confirms. “She and her dad moved to Hawkins, like, a month after you left.”
Sometimes, when Mike is feeling particularly moody and self-reflective, he wonders if he thought of El as a replacement Will during that first year. She’d had short hair and a similar wide look to her soft dark eyes. She’d appeared right when Will disappeared. It had seemed like she needed him.
It was always at about this point in the thought process that Mike remembers that he started dating El almost the same moment he met her and decides to stop thinking altogether. Whatever El had been to him at fourteen doesn’t matter – she means a lot more to him now. As her own person, not a stand-in to numb a pain he couldn’t name or acknowledge.
“Then you both went to Northwestern?”
Mike nods. “How’d you know?”
“That’s where Lucas and Dustin went,” Will explains, “and they told me this band was all their college friends, so. Do the math.”
He snorts. Good to know that Will still has his sass. “I see. How did you meet Lucas and Dustin, anyways?”
“Lucas accosted me at a board game store.”
“Accosted?” Lucas echoes from in front of the truck, breaking the little bubble of peace that Mike had started to build around him and Will. “I thought you appreciated my friendliness!”
“I didn’t say I didn’t!” Will calls back. “You’re very kind, Lucas.”
Lucas holds a hand over his chest and nods solemnly. “Thank you, Will. I really try.”
“We play DnD together sometimes,” Will continues, turning back to Mike. A jolt of excitement shoots up Mike’s spine.
“In Hellfire?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m in Hellfire.”
Will blinks at him. Another puff of warm air. “Oh!”
“I haven’t been at the meetings lately because, well, tour-” He gestures at the truck as if he needs the evidence “-but I’ve been really looking forward to playing again. I can’t believe you still play!”
“I can believe you do,” Will tells him, tilting his head a little to the side with a smile.
Mike shrugs and looks away, glad that the cold is naturally suppressing his blush. “Yeah, well.”
“Biggest nerd I ever knew.”
“Never look in a mirror?”
Will laughs. It’s a sound that shuts Mike’s brain right off, fills his head until it’s all he can hear and think.
“Come on, slowpokes!” Max shouts down the alley. “Dinnertime!”
The six of them end up at a greasy diner a few blocks away from the venue, crowded into a booth for four. Mike is squished between Will and El, which feels like the start of a very strange and perverted dream. He quickly expels that thought from his mind. Tries to, at least. There’s a lot of chatter and menu passing, discussions over who wants to share what and which items are too expensive and who even wanted to go here anyways (El, because they serve waffles 24 hours a day).
“I assume you’ve been here before?” Will mutters at him. The hair on the back of his neck prickles at sound, so low and close to his ear.
“Yeah,” he manages. “I always just get a burger.”
“Good enough for me,” Will decides, dropping his menu and leaning back. He seems to be squishing himself more than is necessary, shoulders folded in like he’s trying to avoid touching Mike at any point on his body. Mike hates that. He and Will used to share a twin mattress on the floor of his basement, limbs unabashedly tangled in all their sweaty preteen glory.
“They’ve also got a pretty solid malt,” he says, going for a nostalgia angle to get Will to just relax. “We could split a PB double-C?”
Peanut Butter Chocolate Caramel. A sickly sweet, violently rich flavor combination he and Will had cooked up at Benny’s Burgers at the ripe age of eight and loved ever since. The malts at Benny’s were always stacked high with whipped cream and bright red maraschino cherries. They’d work their way through all that, dip their handfuls of French fries into the malt shake itself until there were no more fries to dip, then chugged the rest until they wanted to throw up.
Will smiles and remarkably, his shoulders lose a little of their tenseness. “As long as the burger comes with fries.”
Mike grins so wide it hurts his face. “You read my mind.”
The waitress finally comes back around to their table and Max makes a face at him when he orders the malt, but he doesn’t care to explain. He’s too busy reveling in the fact that Will is back in his life, hiding in these little shared memories like they were building a new blanket fort in his basement. Flashlights and giggling and DnD sourcebooks and playing pretend. Reading the Lord of the Rings out loud to each other until they fell asleep.
“Okay, so,” Mike says once everything is ordered and the waitress leaves, “how did you end up in Chicago?” What he really wants to ask is ‘how has every single day you’ve had in the past eight years been and could you describe them in such vivid detail that I forget we were ever apart?’, but that seems like a little much.
Will finishes swallowing a sip of water and sets the glass down, ice clinking against the plastic edges. “I just started work at a publishing house here in the city, as an illustrator. Holloway & Clarke.”
“An illustrator?” Mike can’t help another grin. “Dude, that’s awesome. What do you get to draw?”
“There’s a lot of work with children’s book authors, but I also get to do some covers for adult fiction. It’s nice.”
“Has anything been published yet?” If there’s a real book out there with Will Byers’ art on or in it, Mike needs to own it. Absolutely needs to.
Unfortunately, Will shakes his head. “No, I’ve only been here since the end of August so nothing’s out yet. But they’re supposed to release this children’s book I worked on beginning of next year.”
Will is remarkably calm about all this, almost like he’s embarrassed, which just won’t do. Mike grabs him by the shoulder again and shakes him back and forth a little. “Will, I feel like you are not realizing how cool this job is. Your art is going to be published. In real live books that people will buy and read and cherish. That’s insane!”
That coaxes another smile and even a tiny chuckle out of him, and his eyes brighten. “Yeah, I guess it is.” He glances around then leans in a little, like he’s about to tell a secret. Mike mirrors the lean without hesitation. “The house is getting the rights to publish a newly illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings for its fortieth anniversary next year.”
“Holy shit,” Mike breathes, “and are you…?”
“I don’t know!” Will says, his voice raising an octave as he tries to keep quiet. “They’re considering a bunch of different people- like freelancers, too, and I just had to give them my portfolio and pray.”
“Will.” Mike is gravely serious, locking eyes with him and squeezing his shoulder, “I have never been a religious man. But I am going to get on my knees every fucking night for you.”
The noise that comes out of Will’s throat is not a noise Mike has ever heard before – something between a squeak, a garble, and a choking sound. His cheeks flush vibrant pink. It’s only then that Mike realizes what the hell he has just said. Oh, God.
“To pray!” he corrects in a panic. “To pray, oh my god, Will- don’t- for the job!”
“Yeah!” Will chokes out, his eyes wide as saucers before he squeezes them shut and shakes his head like that could erase whatever image Mike had just forced into his mind. Then, because Will Byers is a cruel and evil boy, he snorts. And snorts again. And starts to laugh.
“Noooooo,” Mike groans, covering his face with his hands. If only the stiff leather seats of this booth were a mimic that could open up and swallow him whole. He would like very much to die like that at this exact moment.
El jabs her elbow lightly into his side, because he’d started curling up into a ball of shame and accidentally pushing her sideways out of the booth. “Mike!”
He peeks his face out of his hands and droops his head towards her, listening to Will’s cackles behind him. “Please,” he whispers, “Please kill me right now.”
She gives him a very concerned look, eyes flitting between him and Will on his other side. “No.”
“Mike,” Will huffs through a laugh, “Mike, hold on, I’m sorry- I just-” His hand lands on Mike’s shoulder and it’s the first kind of physical contact that Mike himself hasn’t had to initiate. It sends little electric pulses up his neck and down his spine.
“I know you didn’t mean it like that,” Will finally manages to say, dropping his hand away but not all at once, so he ends up kinda trailing his fingers down the side of Mike’s arm. He uses the same hand to fan his red-tinged face.
“You’re a-” Mike almost says dick but reroutes at the last moment, no doubt saving himself from another round of laughter, “-jerk.”
“I’m sorrryyyy,” Will squeals, still fanning his face.
“I was trying to be supportive!”
“And I appreciate that, Mike, I truly do.” Will exhales and finally drops his hand back to the table. He meets Mike’s eyes with a smile so soft and genuine that it gives him whiplash. “Really, I do.”
“Mind if I ask what all that was about?” Dustin cuts in from across the table.
Mike slices his hand across the air in front of his neck. “Absolutely not.”
“Just talking about my job,” explains Will.
“Keep telling me more about your life,” Mike orders, desperate to push the conversation forward before Dustin keeps pressing the issue. “Where’d you go to college?”
“UC Davis,” Will answers. “It was the closest school with any kind of art program.”
“Did you like it?”
Will gives it a moment of thought. “Yeah, I did. My worst idea was making friends with upperclassmen in my first year, so the latter half was a little lonely. But thankfully one of my best friends just moved to San Francisco so I still got to see her and her-” He goes silent for an abrupt moment, eyes widening ever so slightly. “-roommate. Which was nice.”
Mike should be wondering what that ‘roommate’ slip-up meant, but he’s too busy noticing that Will’s college best friend is a girl. He didn’t know Will was friends with girls. Or really talked to them, like, ever.
“Who’s this friend?”
“Her name’s Robin. She’s great.”
From that point on, this Robin character refuses to stop popping up in Will’s anecdotes. Dustin wants to exchange stories about the drunkest they’d all ever been and there Robin is, taking Will out to his first club in the city and rubbing his back when he ended up puking in the street. Max brings up hearing their band’s song on the radio for the first time and suddenly Robin is a DJ over in San Francisco and Will can totally call her about them later. Robin, Robin, Robin. Mike starts to get a little sick of it.
El pinches his thigh under the table. He whirls around, about to snap at her until he sees the look in her eyes. It’s a knowing look that tells him silently to calm the hell down. His seething must not be as subtle as he’d thought.
“We should finish this before it melts,” Will says from his other side. He’s talking about the PB double-C malt monstrosity sitting between them. They’d already scooped out half of it on their fries, to the chagrin and disgust of their friends. It had been the highlight of the meal so far. Mike loves aligning himself with Will like that – them against the world. It hardly matters to his heartsick brain that ‘French fries are good dipped in milkshakes’ isn’t really a noble hill to die on. It’s a hill that Will is on, so die there he must.
He grabs the malt and dumps half of what’s left in his empty water cup. Then he offers the remaining malt to Will, who takes it with an expectant quirk of his brows.
“Race you?” he proposes, holding his cup out like he’s offering a toast.
“Oh, god, no,” Max objects from the other side of the table, but Will is smiling at him with a competitive little glint in his eye so Mike can’t even snap back.
“You’re on,” Will agrees, clinking the malt against Mike’s cup. And then they’re both tilting their heads back to consume as much soupy ice cream as they can in a matter of seconds. Dustin, Lucas, and El cheer them on.
Will slams his cup back on the table a damn half-second before Mike does.
“Will wins!” Lucas exclaims, throwing his arms up. Will laughs, grabbing a wad of napkins and wiping the chocolate off his upper lip. Then he pumps his fist a little bit.
“God damn it!” Mike cries, mostly for dramatic effect. Mostly to make Will laugh, actually, which he does.
“Better luck next time, Wheeler.”
While Mike is busy processing Will using his last name like that, a crumpled-up napkin is shoved over his mouth and dragged across it. Will again, with a mischievous little grin.
“You had a little something.”
“Oh, thanks,” Mike says sarcastically, batting the napkin away. “Anything left?”
“Yeah, actually.” Then Will’s fingers are pressed against Mike’s jaw, his thumb swiping across his bottom lip before he freezes suddenly, the tip of his thumb resting in the same spot. Mike very nearly parts his lips before realizing how absolutely awful that idea is. He stays stock-still instead, staring at Will’s face while Will is very noticeably staring at his mouth. The pad of Will’s thumb is warm. His fingernail pricks gently at his upper lip.
The moment drags on for a million years that add up into a single second, before Will yanks his hand back and returns his gaze to Mike’s actual eyes. “Got it.” His voice is strangely hoarse.
“Thanks,” Mike says. It’s the only appropriate thing that comes to mind.
“Well!” says Dustin, sudden and loud and startling Mike into a state of pure embarrassment. “Should we get out of here?”
Everyone else starts discussing how to best split the bill, while Mike stares blankly at the table and tries not to malfunction too obviously. There is something truly, deeply wrong with him.
He knows he’s not normal. He knows that because of Will – because of how he feels for Will. He knows that because, again, every love song he’s ever written is about Will. It took him a long time and an awkward conversation with El to realize that, but even then, he’d decided that Will had been an exception and this whole gay thing was not something he needed to worry about.
It might be something he needs to worry about now.