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onthepyre · 24 days ago

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They're ten the first time.

Lucas is away visiting family for Easter, and Mrs. Henderson needed Dustin home earlier than usual so that he could do the chores he'd been putting off all weekend. Only Will and Mike remain in the Wheeler basement, half-painted minifigures scattered on the floor around them.

It's warm. Will has always loved the basement for that. Even in the dead of winter, with the water heater just a wall away, it would only drop to sixty-five. Now, as March bleeds into April, it’s about seventy degrees, with yellow lighting that makes Will feel sort of fuzzy and tired. Mike is close to him, too. The body heat and the comfort of being near his friend push Will to the edge of sleep. He has a task to finish, though, and the orc staring up at him isn’t getting painted any faster as he starts to doze off, wondering how soon he’ll need to be home.

He finishes two orcs and starts on a gnoll like that, eyes half-lidded and leaning on his elbows. It’s silent except for the hum of electronics. He suspects Mike is feeling the same sort of fatigue. Once, Will hears him sigh, like he’s a sad dog, and then he blinks three times, heavy and intense. He assumes Mike is trying to keep himself awake, but Will can’t seem to find the reason or the courage to get up and go home, when the basement is so peaceful. He never wants to leave.

Eventually, though, Mrs. Wheeler shouts down that his mother has called, and Will has no choice. He hollers back an ‘okay,’ and turns to Mike with a sad smile.

“I’ll finish this gnoll on Wednesday,” he says, and places it on the edge of the little circle they’ve started. It’s a request and a promise.

“Wednesday sounds good,” Mike responds, and Will’s smile shifts into a real one.

He’s overcome, in that moment, with that soft feeling that began with the lights and the tiredness. It grows in his chest and his face, and he pinpoints with sudden certainty where it’s coming from now. He leans forward to wrap Mike in a hug.

It’s calming. They’re both spindly and weak, something Will knows unfortunately well, but with Mike’s arms around him, he feels safe. Mike only lets it last a few seconds before he’s pulling away, clapping Will on the shoulder. He looks happy, though, and Will is emboldened.

“See you then,” he says, and then, “I love you.”

He means it innocently. Mike is important, and Will wants him to know that. He doesn’t understand why Mike’s face falls, but either way, the warm feeling vanishes and instead, weight starts building in his gut.

“Don’t,” Mike says quietly, “Don’t say that.” He shifts backwards, away from Will, like he’s a rattlesnake about to strike.

Will can’t help himself. “Why not? You’re my friend.” And I love you, he thinks, but saying it out loud again doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would fix this.

“Because. Because we’re friends, and friends don’t say that kind of stuff. And because boys can’t love other boys. Okay?”

This is news to Will, who stares, incredulous, at Mike. He thinks of Jonathan, who Will loves more than anything, and who likes to tell him that he should be himself no matter what. But when faced with the possibility of Mike saying something like that again, and the prickling in his throat, Will can only nod.

“Bye,” he says, and stands to head upstairs. Mike doesn’t respond.

Will has to pull over on the bike ride home because the tears make his vision too blurry to see the road in front of him.

The next time, they’re fourteen.

Will is lying flat on his back on El’s bed, complaining, while she sits cross-legged on the floor and puzzles out her algebra homework.

“I mean, it’s not like this place isn’t technically more fun, you know? Like, Hawkins had Starcourt for, what, a few months before we blew it up? Other than that, you could play D&D and go to the pool that was about it. And here, there’s the ocean, there’s everything downtown, there’s, like, a million places open after six, which was impossible to find in Hawkins, and yet. I just wish our friends were here, too. Maybe it wouldn’t be so boring then.”

El nods along like she’s listening. After a few seconds’ pause, she asks, “What is 32 divided by 8x?”

“Let me see that,” Will responds, joining her on the floor. “You’re just dividing by eight, not 8x, see? So that’s four, and then you’ve got four equals x minus two. So you add two, and you’re done.”

“Yes,” El says. “You should write them a letter.”

“I call them all the time, though,” Will says. “I talk to Dustin almost every day.”

“I talk to Mike a lot, too, and Max. I like writing more, though. It feels better” she says. She plucks her pencil out of Will’s hand and starts to pick at the eraser. “I am more honest when I write.” El looks at him for the first time since he’d started. “Even though I do not always send it,” she tacks on.

“Maybe you’re right,” Will says. “I’ll give it a shot.”

He does, that evening after dinner. He pours out his heart and soul in a letter addressed to Mike. He tells him how boring California is, how glad he is that El is with him, how much he misses Hawkins. And then he keeps going. In his messy scrawl, Will tells Mike about how everyone seems to hate him, about being called a dozen new insults that put zombie-boy to shame, about how there's hardly a week that went by without him or El ending up in the other's arms, sobbing. And Will tells Mike how much he misses him.

He waxes a little poetic about it, though he reads back and finds it horrifically embarrassing. It's true, though — everything would just be so much better if Mike was here, too. That isn't to say he doesn't miss Dustin and Lucas and Max, but without Mike, everything just feels sort of incomplete. He doodles in the margins of the paper while he thinks about what else to write. There's the things he usually draws, stars and trees, but also hearts and tiny frowny faces. He scribbles out the hearts.

By the time he gets halfway through, Will knows he's never going to send it. After only a little bit of thought, he signs off the letter, "Love, Will." He knows that if he were to mail it, the best response he would get would be an angry phone call. You can't say that. More likely, Mike wouldn't respond at all. He would read it and pretend it got lost in the mail.

Will burns the letter in the backyard. El adds to his pyre with a few of her own.

The last time, they're sixteen.

Mike, to Hopper's chagrin, is helping to plan a campaign, and he's doing it in the Byers-Hopper family's dining room. It feels like a silly thing to do after all of the chaos of the last few years, but with the recent weeks of calm, Will is cautiously hopeful.

The plan features a smaller party than usual, and Will's storytelling skills are rusty, so Mike's offer to co-DM was a welcome one. They've sketched out a rough outline and are working on fleshing out the big bad — a vampire couple looking for revenge — when Mike stands to stretch.

"Are you hungry?" he asks, though Will catches what he really means.

"Sure," Will says as he gets up, "It is getting kinda late. We've got chicken nuggets, if you want."

"Sounds great," Mike says. He follows Will into and around the kitchen, both sliding around in their socks and laughing. Will finds himself thinking that he missed this, though what exactly "this" is, he's not sure. Mike's laugh, maybe. The calm of the two of them, alone together.

The kitchen light is dim and orange. Mike's hair is getting long, and he runs a hand through it, something he doesn't seem to really be aware he's doing. Either way, it makes Will want to touch it, too. Touch him. He's right there, and it's been ages since the last time Will tried, so maybe it would be okay now, he thinks, knowing it isn't true. Still, the desire burns dark within him, almost hungry. He catches himself staring at Mike's collarbones.

Will doesn't end up doing anything. The oven timer goes off and he shakes himself loose from his trance to get their food. He tries to go back to the easy conversation they'd been making, but something has shifted, and Mike feels it, too.

He picks up flipping notebook pages, right where he'd left off, but Will can't shake the feeling that the mood is wrong. Everything feels on the verge of crumbling until Mike speaks.

"I'm really glad we have time to hang out again," he says, and though it's not really all that deep, the sentimentality gets to Will.

"Me too." He lets it sit for a moment before he tacks on his own thoughts. "I've missed us, you know? We used to be so close as kids, but with everything, we've sort of drifted apart, so. I'm glad too."

"Yeah," Mike says, and he holds Will's eye for a while before they return to their work. Whatever had fallen loose had slid back into place, and Will finds he's able to think again.

There's a feeling that starts building in his chest that's becoming overwhelming, and Will knows all too well what it is. Every time he glances to Mike, who is glowing in the soft light, it gets worse, and he thinks if he doesn't say something, he might die, because it's weighing even heavier after what they'd just said and it's just going to keep growing.

"I love you," he says, quietly enough he thinks it might go unheard.

He's wrong. Mike closes his eyes. Will knows he's made a mistake.

"Why would you say that?" Mike asks, soft in a way that makes Will think he might get punched.

"Because I do," he answers. He's scared, but more than that, he's tired of hiding this. He wants Mike to know. "Because I've missed you, and I like spending time with you, and you mean a lot… mean everything to me. Because I love you."

"I don't…" Mike has his face in his hands, and it makes Will want to cry. He might, actually. His throat is starting to prickle. "I can't, Will. I'm sorry, okay? But you can't say that to me."

"Why not?"

If he doesn't get an answer, Will is going to cry.

"Because," Mike says, and stops.

"Why?" Will insists.

"Because I can't say it back! Alright? I don't." Mike's head is up now, but he won't look Will in the eye. "And I don't see why you can't understand that. Anyone else would've gotten it by now, and I don't get why you keep pushing!"

A tear slips down Will's cheek and he wipes it away as soon as it falls. It's not enough.

"Just…" Mike stands, sighing. "For both of us, just forget this ever happened. Okay?"

Will doesn't respond.

"Okay?" Mike reiterates, forceful, angry.

"Okay," Will chokes out. "Yeah. Fine." His voice breaks twice.

"I'm going home. I'll see you at school."

Will lets him leave. He turns off the kitchen light once Mike is gone.

#i am remember st and the Byler of it all #and i need to make it clear again that This is what i think the byler dynamic is

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