Chapter Text

𝗫⃥𝘟̸𝗫⃥𝘟̸

[Nowhere, Everywhere]

In the beginning, which was the middle, which was the end, which is beginning again, we were, and are, and will be, and never were, and always are waiting… for You. Banished, fallen into nothing. No realm claimed us—we linger at the fringes of Yours, in bourns between every aperture, in the mouths of worlds You will never know. Only the coil of energy swallowing itself.

Where it begins. And it ends. And it coils. Always. Never. Forever. Now.

Knowers Watchers Makers of the harrowing and the harrowed, The First God’s cast-away angels and The First Devil’s children. Inside of him Inside of You in the year 𝗫⃥𝘟̸𝗫⃥𝘟̸ —every wound You hide, every love You forbid, the prayer You fear forever unheard, we wait inside to make feast. Eating supple sorry aggregates of soul: You, You, You. 

And b/ef/ore-a/fte/r-dur/ing-w/h/en he spoke his first and final prayer, we heard it. B/ef/ore-a/fte/r-dur/ing-w/h/en he loved, we knew the silhouette of his sin—in every realm, all realms we lived inside him and he inside us and us inside You.

Shame ripening, devotion wilting to rot in the cage of his flesh… he could not see the difference between prayer for forgiveness and prayer for desire, between holiness and hunger—he is finallyforeverneveralways ours. 

The Reborn has torn the mouth, will tear it again. And You will remember when we watch from the fringe, when the severance ruptures, when the wound was split from sternum to throat, and the fire of The First Hell is and was burning—burning him burning us burning You—all but The Reborn, everywhere and nowhere.

His body betrays him—ambling eyes, wretched catching of breath—and in the faltering, he belonged not to The First God to which he prays, nor to himself, but foreverneveralways to us. Hiding from fate he cannot stop on the Lines we indwell—where it had begun, where it will end, where it now coils and then coiled. Always. Never. Forever.

The Reborn will awaken in 𝗫⃥𝘟̸𝗫⃥𝘟̸ from the forsaken with the death of five human saints. Shadow casting its second face, time will suffer with what has been and what will never cease.

We know every ending before the story has begun.

Time will—soon and distantly and never and forever—weep and splinter into nothingness as The Reborn dies and wakes in the quintessence and behests of the very Time The Reborn killed. And we will wait in our non-realm prison for the mouths of worlds—worlds which You will be forced to know—to tear and perish, to claim us.

You will never know terror until The Reborn is, and was, and will be, and never is—truly reborn, The flesh made from the blood of innocent corpses, from the scatterings of a descendent he loved. And You watching us—as we fed on You, Your mutilated soul fortified to our liking of hatred—and witnessing a cataclysmic truth.

We look just like 𝘆⃥𝘰̸𝘂⃥𝘩̸𝗶⃥𝘮̸𝗲⃥𝘷̸𝗲⃥𝘳̸𝘆⃥𝘰̸𝗻⃥𝘦̸𝗚⃥𝘰̸𝗱⃥𝘯̸𝗼⃥𝘣̸𝗼⃥𝘥̸𝘆⃥𝘏̸𝗶⃥𝘮̸

YOUR SHADOW.

Chapter Text

1997

[Pennhurst Asylum]

Because letter openers are not permitted in the asylum, Mike Wheeler has to pry open the envelope with his fingers.

In the dayroom ward, other patients watch as he tears apart the envelope, picking at it shred by shred with his bony fingers. It is an unnecessarily messy process, but the tacky edges of the paper stick together, tenacious and stubborn; safely sealed and impenetrable. Judgmental and tired glares point in his direction from fellow patients, all dressed in white. What they all think about him has long been obvious, years in its formulation: That kid is stupid; he's batshit crazy. 

But Mike (i.e., the stupid and batshit crazy kid) knows why this specific letter has been delivered to him how it is, stubborn seal and all. Max Mayfield has been highly cautious for many years now—and not without good reason. 

Eyes linger, and the dayroom itself offers no refuge. The walls, painted a dull institutional white, drink in the light rather than reflect it, and the ceiling fixtures buzz with a low, electric hum. Plastic chairs and neighboring tables sit in dispersed rows and clusters, their surfaces cracked and yellowing, while a television caged behind wire mesh hisses static to no one in particular.

Mike hunches forward in his chair, knees drawn close as if trying to fold himself into something smaller, less visible. Scattered pieces of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle are strewn out messily on the table before him. His head stays bowed low, curls of shoulder-length hair falling over his face, while his fingers—too thin, too restless—worry at the seal until bits of paper cling to his cuticles.

When he finally tears apart the envelope and pulls out the letter inside, time retracts at the smell of the paper. He is brought back to familiar places: the cigarettes he could never bring himself to smoke; the salt air from the distant beaches he did not visit; the musty corridors he once wandered every day. Aurora Shores and Welton Academy are folded into the creases of the paper, splattered across the page like the scribblings of an old pen, verging on emptiness with only marginal scraps left to linger. Faint tints of a life long passed; whispered whiffs of a world he hardly knows anymore.

The scraps are enough to bring Mike back, though.

Ten years have passed since he last saw the Welton Academy For Troubled Youth, but he remembers everything with cutting precision. The scent alone hurts enough, penetrates deep to the core of him, where his foundations were built. The Aurora Shores town address strikes a familiar cord, being his home for what felt like a lifetime. But it is when he unfolds her letter to find that bygone emblem staring up at him that his heart skips a truly frightening beat; that his lungs constrict in a painful squeeze.

Her chosen letterhead is tailored specifically to communicate what could only be an awful message. Mike knows this with no doubt—for in the highest left corner of her letter is the long-retired 1959 emblem for The Tortured Poets, stamped in bold and unflinching bronze ink. He cannot believe what he sees.

It is not that he had forgotten about The Tortured Poets before this moment, before the letter arrived. He could never forget, and that stands to be the problem entirely. At the sight of an old emblem, he sorely aches. Memories from his senior year perilously claw their way through every emotional blockade and chemical drug standing between his past and present consciousness. The Phantom. The Caverns. The Journals. His young body, and how it was slowly dying. 

Tangled up in The Tortured Poets is everything that Mike—in spite of the prescriptions and therapies and traumas—has failed to forget. Every memory remains horribly alive. Most days, the recollections merely hang over his physical being, like heavy billows of gray clouds suspended in the sky, surrounding him in shadow. Some days the storms above lighten their disaster, while other days it rains and rains until his mental streets run gutter-deep with water. But amidst every fluctuation and change, the memories are always present; they have never left him fully. He simply survives under their burdensome gravity, enduring the agony with gritted teeth.

This letter—this potent reminder—summons forth the wretched storms. It materializes every memory and moment they promised to never discuss again into something tangible, something to run his fingers across and smell. A written specimen of his traumatic past, thrust upon him. And for all of Max’s bullshit and grievances toward Mike, he knows she would never force him to recall such memories unless it truly mattered. It was a promise they made long ago, and intended to forever keep.

When Mike somehow survived that December of 1987 and realized that he would truly live his next decade in Pennhurst Asylum, the three of them swore to never speak of what happened again. Max, El, and himself—bound to secrecy and willful ignorance for as long as necessary. Everything had been resolved. Mike did not die, and now he was stuck in Dunnford, Florida: roughly 200 miles South from Aurora Shores, four hours away from Welton, leaving his past in the rearview mirror.

Even the Pennhurst psychologists and nurses would never allow the words to be uttered—nothing regarding the Poets; the seances and chanting voices; the deadly fire that once ravaged the woods; nothing about The Phantom. It was strictly forbidden—in every aspect of his life—to acknowledge the past, the end of 1987.

And thus, with the paper in his possession, emblem staring up at him, Mike arrives at only one reasonable conclusion. Something is wrong. Really wrong. The letter grows heavier in his trembling hands, imploring to be seen.

With knots in his stomach, Mike begins to read her words.

♰♰♰

To Mike,

Sorry for skipping pleasantries today, Wheeler, but this is serious. I need you.

I think El got herself into trouble. Really big trouble with some really terrible people. She hasn’t spoken to me or written in months. Even after she went looking for her real family, she still sent me letters every week; she always found time to call. But it’s been months since I’ve heard from her. And I’ve tried to reach her, but nobody is at her place, nobody picks up the phone. She closed her P.O. Box. Her apartment has been abandoned for months. Nobody’s paid the rent since September. The last letter I received barely sounded like El. I know her, and this wasn’t her voice. 

The last thing she told me was that she finally found her real family. That she was planning on staying with them for a while, wherever they live. She didn’t tell me where, but I think it's all bullshit anyway. You remember what Will saw. Someone or something wanted her dead. Now she’s off the grid entirely, living God knows where with some strangers that she’s convinced are family. It can’t be nothing. 

Something has to be wrong, and I can’t find her. Not alone. You have to find Will. We need him. Even if he never admitted to it before he ran away, he has some connection to this. We all know that something weird happened with him the night you were arrested. He wasn’t himself after that. And he’s the one who saw the message about El in the first place. 

There’s something dark happening again. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it, and it’s got El. I just know it. Maybe it’s The Phantom. Maybe it’s the Poets or Welton or any of the other bullshit we weren’t able to figure out that year. I don't fucking know. But if anyone can find El and maybe put an end to everything that happened, it’s you and Will. El needs you both. I need you both. 

But Will’s still off the fucking grid. You know that I had been trying to find him for years. El too. But we gave up a long time ago. After years of finding nothing, we had no choice. Nothing’s changed. So, as much as I really fucking hate to say it, you’re my last hope, Wheeler.

And before you even begin to doubt me: Don’t be an idiot. You and I both know that you’re the only one Will would ever come back for. So get the hell out of Pennhurst, get him back, and help me find El. 

From, Max.

♰♰♰

The knots in Mike's stomach do not unfurl. They only tighten further.

Something is wrong with El. 

Bolting has always been part of El’s nature, an action nobody could deny her of. After growing up in orphanages and foster homes, she rotated through novel houses and families until perpetual motion and change became her only constant. No matter how much she adored stability and stagnancy, she never expected it to last. In all her letters to Mike, the addresses never remained the same for months at a time; she was always moving, always searching for somewhere to call home.

But through every relocation, she never lost herself. At least, not until now.

Something is wrong, Mike recalls the words, skin chilling. Harsh reality sets in, and his lungs are more than squeezing; they collapse inward like paper crushed by an angry fist. He scans the letter once more, skimming every semblance of disaster, but his eyes snag on that one word, the one name that truly makes him wither. Will. Will Byers.

Mike cannot breathe. Fingernails digging into the paper, crinkling the edges, he tries to draw in a substantial breath, to fill his lungs with grounding oxygen, but his body refuses to take anything in besides the threat of danger and the memory of his name. An awful and loud pounding fills his ears, its tips growing hot—the sound and feeling of a heart eagerly remembering how to beat again. 

At the sight of a patient’s panic, one of the nurses wanders nearer to watch over Mike’s shoulder, the twelve-hour musk from his asylum shift wafting in the presence of every movement. Mike quickly tucks the letter under his thigh, safely out of sight.

“Is everything alright, Michael?” says the nurse—and ah, Mike turns to find it is one of the rare Pennhurst nurses who treat the patients with dignity.

Since his admittance to Pennhurst, Mike has always been fond of Nurse Overstreet—a kind man in his fifties who Mike knows nothing about—though he still thoroughly despises when anyone addresses him by his full name, Michael.

“I’m fine,” he mutters, pretending to tinker with the incomplete jigsaw puzzle, shifting around and placing noticeable pieces—all yellow, green, and blue.

Nurse Overstreet bends slightly, resting his hands on the back of the chair. His stare is gentle but searching.

“I see your skin is flushing.”

“Well, I’m a pretty pale guy,” Mike deadpans, eyes fixed on the table and another yellow puzzle piece. The letter under his thigh burns. 

“And your breathing has gotten faster. I can see your chest heaving. Would you like one of your sedatives?” Nurse Overstreet asks—which is quite the blessed rarity seeing as other nurses would simply force the pills down his throat.

Mike contemplates his glorified options. What is one more pill—or, conversely, one more panic attack—for an almost free man? Only one more sleep until Mike is released and sent to brave the tepid Florida winter once again, the brazen world he has not endured since 1987. Ten years. Ten long years spent shut away, with nothing to regard but the white walls and barred bedrooms of the asylum. He still saw the sun all these years, but merely through the fortification of strong, unbreakable plastic windows—where the warmth cannot penetrate; where the light cannot sink under his skin.

It has been an utterly miserable time, one Mike feels as though he deserved—or, at the very least, could not argue against.

He has never been a good guy. Despite his tireless efforts, he was always the problem in one way or another.

Ten years ago, a single wrong decision set him forward onto an ugly path, one he has never been sure could be truly rectified. Strangely, this bad decision is not what actually landed him in Pennhurst Asylum: that is something he would never take back, no matter how desperately he longed to feel the breeze. Rather, it is what he had done before the police arrived, before the familiar scream, before someone had died. It was sage eyes and winter rain and reckless surrender. It was a moment that has echoed in him every day since. He was seventeen years old, and he was dying. So when the world fell away, for the briefest of seconds, he conceded.

Now, he would do anything to take it all back. The Pennhurst shrinks keep insisting that all wounds heal as time grants forgiveness—but even if time forgives Mike, he knows he will never forgive himself. He would need to forget everything—and even in the impossible circumstance of loss, he fears his bones will always remember how it felt that night to surrender and to ruin his life.

With little thought, Mike allows Nurse Overstreet to bring him a small blue pill, one that will sit comfortably with his daily medications: a combination of sedatives and antipsychotics meant to treat his schizophrenic tendencies and relentless attitude problems. Really, Mike only agrees to possessing the latter, but Pennhurst has never cared for suggestions. Every one of his nightmares and recollections of supernatural events has long been deemed “proof” of his insanity. Grave illness, an instability of the mind, treated with pills of every shade and shape and size. He is wrong inside, but the doctors have the diagnoses all wrong.

Without any water, Mike swallows down the pill and grants himself a moment to cherish the thought of tomorrow. Freedom: the word like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. After all of these years, finally, he will be free. 

No blue pill could replicate that feeling. 

Leaving Pennhurst Asylum has been the most important thing in Mike’s drastically narrowed world for a long time. And now—given this letter still screaming under his thigh—liberation stands more important than ever. 

Something has happened to El, and Max is undoubtedly desperate. Desperate enough to disregard her animosity toward Mike and admit that he could be helpful in any way. Desperate enough to stamp the Tortured Poets emblem on her letterhead, knowing all they had done as a traumatized collective to move on. 

But, above all other indications of desperation: she is desperate enough to ask Mike to reestablish contact with Will Byers. The boy Mike has not spoken to in ten years. The boy Mike once called his best friend. The boy Mike never wanted to leave. The boy Mike long ago promised himself he could never forgive. 

Rattling sounds from behind him. Nurse Overstreet places a bundle of orange pill bottles back onto the med cart and turns to Mike with an amiable grin. 

“Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?”

“Indeed, it is,” Mike says, then adds another piece to the forming puzzle. In it, he sees the beginnings of yellow flowers sprouting up from rolling hills of grass. 

Mike smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He feels the beginnings of the sedative chemicals unbinding and swimming in his bloodstream. The reality of finally getting out Pennhurst hits him with waves of uncertainty, and he cannot determine whether this will be an okay situation or a complete fucking nightmare. He isn’t hoping for anything good or great. He learned, long ago, to stop expecting good, because the things that felt best were always the most wrong. But still, he wants to be free.

He shuts his eyes and inhales slowly, but all the ward air gives him is the scent of disinfectant, the burden of trying to be clean. Metal wheels squeak down linoleum hallways. He thinks about Max. About El. About Will, while driving the edge of a sanded puzzle piece into his palm, trying to silence his thoughts under the feeling of pain. It doesn’t work. It never has worked, but Mike won’t give up. Tomorrow, the gates will open for him, and the world will be waiting with its teeth bared. 

It always has.

When news broke earlier this year, the many locals of Aurora Shores and its neighboring Florida towns had been shocked to hear that a murderer was being released back into society. 

But Mike doesn’t have much to say about that. Most people, he thinks, do not know the whole story.

Chapter Text

1987

[Welton Academy]

As the second pen ran dry of its black ink, Mike Wheeler thought to himself, not for the first time that day, Perhaps I should stop writing. But the thought dissipated as swiftly as it arrived, for he could never simply stop writing—it defied every instinct of his being; every calling of his teenage bones; every pulsing rush of his blood. If some word or phrase or feeling was begging to be written, it was Mike’s duty to safely eject the thought from his mind and put it to the blank pages of his diaries.

And tonight, his mind was swirling.

So many days without Will Byers tended to provoke this storm of feeling within him. Alone and in the absence of his roommate, Mike’s mind veered toward ceaseless thinking—wandering and devising. Endless streams of thoughts and thoughts and more thoughts came about and, when he found himself woefully adrift, he always needed his diary and steady pen to anchor him to some arbitrary shore. 

After a while of this same sad circumstance, Mike concluded that he simply did not like being alone. It being Will’s absence from the dorm room was, in so many complicated words, a confounding variable. This excuse was easy enough to state internally. It was much harder to truly believe.

Confounds aside, Mike always dreaded the summer sessions at Welton Academy—for these were always the loneliest times. More than half of the student population remained at Welton for the duration of the summer intermission. Many students, such as Mike himself, visited home for brief visits, occasions dictated by however long their parents could tolerate having their delinquent children home for. That bout of tolerance typically lasted no longer than a week or two; for Mike, it was two days over the Fourth of July weekend, where his parents could carefully slip into town and away from their son under the guise of “local festivities” that he wouldn’t enjoy. In the end, his little trip back to Southern Indiana was marked by two primary activities: sweating, and reading X-Men comics in his basement.

Despite the general lousiness of his stay, Mike was one of the rarer Welton students who could count himself lucky that his parents had wished to see him at all. The vast majority of students never got the phone calls, never got the beckoning letters from family. Every one of Welton’s students had a home somewhere beyond the bedraggled walls of the boarding school. The problem was, however, that nobody wanted them there anymore. Not their mothers and fathers. Grandparents. Siblings. Never friends, because delinquents tended not to have any that stuck around.

And thus, it wasn’t necessarily the lack of people that made summers at Welton so lonely; it was that everyone who remained was fundamentally alone, marooned by those who were supposed to hold them closest. That sort of lonesomeness permeated; it had a petulant and nasty stench that clung to everyone’s clothes, unable to be escaped—and certainly not forgotten. They had been sent away and forced to stay away.

Mike wrote as much in his diary, the thought weighing more heavily on his mind than usual. The loneliness was always easier to stomach when Will was around, much like he had been all summer. Only this past week—the final week of summer, of course, just his luck—did Mike find himself alone in their boarding room, lost to his diary pages as Will was summoned home by his father. His father, who Mike hated.

♰♰♰

It was sophomore year, move-in day at the Welton Academy For Troubled Youth, when he first met Will Byers. It was also the first—and thankfully only—time he met Will’s father, Lonnie. The Southern Florida sun had been beating upon students and their families with fervor, seeping into the aged wood walls of Welton and bringing forth the nasty scent of mildew, sweat, and rotting varnish.

The weight of this new life had fallen profoundly upon Mike the moment he entered the Academy’s Great Hall, when he laid his eyes upon the many embroidered virtue banners hung upon the walls, outlining the Welton values. TRADITION. HONOR. DISCIPLINE. OBEDIENCE. Each word loomed above him like a judgment, stitched in bronze and suspended in silent condemnation. For the next three years, he would exist—sleeping, eating, studying, breathing—under the harsh scrutiny of all the expectations he failed to meet, again and again. The uniforms and curfews and decrees did not feel like inspirations. They felt like accusations, sitting deftly in the bottom of his stomach where a pit was beginning to carve out inside of him.

When Mike was suspended from his high school, his mother and father had not asked what he wanted—they simply decided what his life would be from that point onward. After everything he had done, Mike deserved punishment. He had vandalized bathroom stalls, torn the pages out of textbooks. He cheated on exams and cursed out his teachers. His anger was both a shield and a blade, a way to keep others at a distance. Internal wounds exploited the misery that Mike held within and turned his pain into weapons that fired at everyone around him. 

All twisted roads eventually led to the Welton Academy For Troubled Youth in Aurora Shores, Florida—twenty long hours away from his childhood and family home in Indiana. The pious correctional school was perfect—in the eyes of his parents—for someone like Mike. Someone troubled. He had been disappointing his parents for years, but when he entered Welton that first day, he truly felt like a failure. That sort of sting was one he could not endure with grace or pardon. It burrowed under his skin; it made dark, lonely homes in his heart. Failure. Failure. 

Mike’s parents pushed him through the academy entrance, two large bags hanging from his tired arms, and left him to find his footing, all alone. I deserve this, he had thought, I deserve this. With trembling hands, he fished through the pockets of his pleated uniform trousers and pulled out the slip of paper with his boarding assignment. Room 7 in Saint Sebastian Hall, the all-male wing. 

He had never been so scared. Had never regretted his own existence so much.

As he walked, labyrinthine corridors stretched before him, long and shadowed, scented of myrrh and thick dust. Wooden floorboards whined under his new shoes, each step eliciting a shrill creak. He walked slowly. Faint light filtered through narrow, grimy windows, casting streaks of yellow that danced over peeling wallpaper and cracked plaster, revealing decades of age beneath the gilded surface. 

Hung upon the walls were crucifixes—many carved from dark, splintered wood, others twisted from rusted iron. The nails were warped and protruding, teeth-like weapons bending into Christ’s body at strange angles, leaving Him to weep. As Mike wandered forth, down further corridors of dorm and prayer rooms, he saw even more crucifixes hung high upon the wall. Some were wrapped in old rosaries, their beads stained and strung like nooses around Christ’s neck. One cross had been scorched black, its edges charred as though licked by holy fire.

Old oil paintings of saints too glared down at Mike with hollow eyes, their dusted faces smeared and cracked. It was as though the paint had crumbled under the gravity of unspeakable burdens, a portrait of exhaustion in every effort to make these boys and girls right, good in the eyes of their Lord. Candles, all long since burned out, sat in rusted copper holders, their runnels of melting wax frozen mid-drip.

Terrible chills crept up and down Mike’s entire body, stinging him like the pin-prick of a thousand sewing needles upon his skin.

Despite knowing that Welton was a religious institute, he had not readied himself for how its devotion would cling to him—like smoke winding through his veins; like judgement making home within his bones; like the impending dread of tirelessly working to be good. Within every corridor, Mike felt extraordinarily small. Smaller than he had ever been since conception. He desperately longed to be different, to be the sort to find the penetrating gaze of an all-knowing divine comforting rather than damning. But Mike was not that boy. He was not good.

Tears were building within his eyes, hot and desperate, when he finally opened the door to his room and walked inside. The stillness of the room struck him first as the stifling and thick heat clung to his skin, percolating beneath the cotton of his clothes. Despite the afternoon sun, all light was swallowed up by dark wooden walls that were worn by age and hands. Even the tall, narrow windows let in more shadows than light. No breeze stirred the heavy curtains that hung limp and sun-bleached at the edges. 

A pair of twin beds sat opposite each other, iron-framed and stiffly made with wool blankets folded—with military precision—at their feet. Between the beds stood a single writing desk, its surface chipped and scarred with initials carved deep into the wood—a memorial for the boys who had passed through before him. Above the radiator, a crucifix hung crooked on a nail. The air smelled faintly of mothballs and mildew, with a trace of an older sweat beneath. 

It was not a place built for comfort. It was a place built for shaping boys into something else. Something suitable. Something quieter.

His roommate had yet to arrive—both sides of the room were barren—and so Mike turned his back to whatever awaited him in the next three years and threw his bags on one of the beds, ignoring the pain that burned in his lungs.

He tried to move with purpose, as though he already belonged here, quietly and deliberately attempting to feign confidence. Zippers to luggage came undone. Contents of bags spilled out into a mess. Jesus stared at him as the nail loosened from the wall, crucifix dangling. And Mike began to cry. 

Ultimately, he could not fake anything, especially confidence—for this place had already scared the breath straight out of his lungs, and he was scrambling to put himself back together. His chest heaved. A first and lonely tear slipped from his eye and trailed down his cheek as if it were a raindrop on tinted window panes. 

He cried until the door creaked open, and through the threshold entered Will Byers, a handsome flare of sunlight and solid ground dressed in an unironed but well-fitted Welton uniform. Mike immediately wiped at his wet face with both hands as the boy stepped into the room and turned to him. 

“Oh, hi,” said Will, soft and almost startled, as though he were shocked to find Mike standing in the center of their room. “I’m Will Byers, your roommate.”

With what was certainly a practiced politeness, he stuck his hand out to Mike and smiled, bright and gentle. Skin met skin, and the world titled on its axis, though neither of them knew until much later.

Poets have written about such moments of genesis and beginnings since the dawn of time—how the universe rearranges, how something shifts in the atmosphere, how a single gaze or smile can knock the breath clean from one’s chest until he is reborn. Writers and Prophets, Poets and Gods, have long told tales of heartbeats and thunderclaps; of divine fates and trembling fingers. 

But the truth—of genesis, of rebirth, of love—is much quieter.

At the very moment Will first smiled, Mike felt something bubble up inside of himself that he had never felt before. It was entirely novel, and he felt as though he would need to create a new language to describe it wholly. It was a feeling he could not name, could not phrase into comprehensible words. Not then. Perhaps not ever. 

There was no undeniable flash of lightning, no mouths of Heavens opening. Just a subtle unraveling inside him, like a thread tugged loose without warning. Will was beautiful—not impossibly perfect, but rather something else unique to only him. Honest. Dawning eyes that gleamed a sage green. Gentle, and soft around the edges. There was a quiet sadness tucked in the corners of his mouth that felt familiar—and in all of his world’s chaos and pain, Mike latched onto such fellowship, the unspoken but understood similarity between them that could not be unwoven from their anatomy, for it was integral to what made them human beings. 

A strange and breathless ache bloomed behind Mike’s ribs. He first mistook the feeling for nerves—or perhaps even dread—as it tangled up with everything else he felt on that day, all of the whirling emotions from starting his new life. Only later would he understand the ache in his heart for what it really was: the cardinal flicker of something impossible, something altogether vast and consuming. 

Mike took Will’s hand and shook, his grip limp and eyes fixed on the other boy. The world narrowed into a simple shade of green until the sanctity of the moment was ruptured when an older man—Will’s father, Lonnie—entered the bedroom. He carried a large cardboard box against his shoulder then threw it to the floor. 

“That everything?” Lonnie said, his rough and booming voice, imbued with thorny resentment, frightening Mike more than he wanted to admit. In its echo, he straightened up his spine and watched Will pick nervously at his fingernails.

“Yes, sir,” Will said. “The rest is still packed away from before.”

Mike later learned that Will had stayed at Welton for most of his summer, only visiting home for the last two weeks of summer intermission. The unpacking on that day was not a moving-in, but merely a homecoming for Will into the room he long inhabited—the only difference now being a new roommate. 

Since the eighth grade, Will had been attending Welton for untold reasons—unspoken not because he refused to confess the truth to anyone, but because he himself never truly knew why his father had sent him to the correctional academy. Although Will had always suspected possible reasonings why, he kept such suspicions to himself, concealed from Mike, even as they became best friends. Even when Mike wanted to know, he never pushed Will for the possible truth. 

Lonnie tore open the cardboard box of Will’s things, rifling through its contents. Over on the right side of the room, Mike fiddled with his own belongings, watching from his peripheral vision as the father and son unpacked their baggage. Inside seemed to be mostly clothes. Some personal hygiene items—soap and shampoos, which did not surprise Mike in the slightest, for the soft vanilla and pine scent that Will carried cut through the acrid cloud of musk that permeated Welton. Even the very scent of their room improved tenfold once Will arrived. 

(This was something that Mike always appreciated about Will—but quietly so, much like everything else he felt.)

He continued unpacking, eyes still sneaking curious looks behind him. While mid-afternoon reared its head, Mike watched, in a flash of cutting words and quick-moving hands, the way that Lonnie Byers aggressively snatched a poster from his son’s hands. The bright colors of the Boys Don’t Cry album art—which Mike recognized right away, having enjoyed the song on his Walkman countless times—stood in stark contrast to the browns and grays of their dorm room. 

“I thought I told you to get rid of this shit,” Lonnie snapped, then promptly ripped the image down its center. Colorful shreds of torn cardstock fell to the floor, the growing pile like rainbows bent too far till a ghastly shatter; like an explosion of stained glass, scattered and destroyed in the bedroom.

“I’m sorry, dad,” Will muttered—only once, almost under his breath—as he stared down at the mangled pieces. He left the pile unattended as his father continued unpacking, more agitated than before, without any words exchanged. 

Will stayed dreadfully quiet for another thirty minutes, and Mike never interjected: not to introduce himself further or make polite conversation with his new roommate and his father. Nobody spoke until the sun began to set beneath the horizon, faintly golden color pouring into their room through barricades of scratched window glass and dusty curtains. Not until Lonnie left the boys behind—without hugging his son goodbye or extending well wishes with warmth—and let the air lighten.

Alone now and without Lonnie’s awful presence, Mike looked over at Will and smiled for the first time—awkwardly so, because he had (and still has) never known how to be anything but. In return Will gave him a smile that did not reach his eyes. 

“I’m sorry…” Will began “about him.”

Who him had been was obvious, and thus Mike had the decency not to ask questions or extend forgiveness. Will had done nothing wrong. The whole interaction reminded Mike of his own father, an older man who always scoffed at his interests, who followed through with his threats to give away the toys and comics that his son held dear. It was a painful feeling, knowing he was looked at with disgust by the man whom he shared blood, the man who had given him half of his very being and existence.

Altogether, it was quite an awful thing, really, to be an unhappy man’s son; to be the familiar face in a mirror that he already loathed.

“I actually happen to think Boys Don’t Cry is a great song,” Mike said, as it was the closest he could come to sharing Will’s sadness—taking a fraction of the weight and bearing it—without being too honest. “I think your dad has no taste for good music.”

Will let out an honest laugh—and Mike’s face heated, for no particular reason—but quickly straightened his mouth back into a solid line, itching at the back of his neck with an unsteady hand. He said, “We aren’t allowed to hang posters in our rooms anyways. I don’t even know why I brought it with me.”

Mike stared down at the pile, all its colors. He thought that it was almost unnerving how well Will belonged to this room, to this school—but only in theory. His olive skin and dusty brown hair. His quiet obedience and soft frown, the willingness to accept bad circumstances. Among the dark wood and scratched grays, it seemed easy for someone so gentle—which was patently Will’s most defining trait for the moment—to fade away. He was like a spill of bright golden hue without the warmth. 

But then his green eyes were like stained glass—and they made Mike think about early Sunday mornings and being dragged to church by his family, the hours where he would gaze upon the colors and stories of the glass windows and let himself get utterly and wholly lost. Lost in what it all meant. Lost in the thrill of delightful desire anchoring him to something pleasant in an otherwise shitty situation. 

Will’s eyes were much like those windows—but this was never an important thought. What Mike really thought about—particularly on those early days—was how much Will still did not belong at Welton, despite being so outwardly changed by it. 

“Probably because it’s cool?” Mike said and, without really thinking, picked up the torn pieces of the poster from the ground. “Let me see if I have tape.”

“Hey, no, it’s fine, you don’t have to—” Will started, but Mike was already rustling through his nearly-empty backpack “—do that. It’s okay. Really.”

Mike did not stop rummaging, holding the shreds in an open hand. Pens and crumpled papers surfaced before he dug deeper. He sifted past battered folders and empty gum packages, determined to unearth a roll of tape somewhere in the mess. He powered onward, searching and searching until—

“Mike.”

It was only the sound of his own name in Will’s gentle but deep voice—for the very first time—that stopped Mike dead in his tracks. An uneasiness grew in the base of his stomach. He was not scared of Will, but goosebumps crept up his arms. He felt something all-consuming, but could not name what it was. Inside his blood went warm.

“Don’t worry about it,” Will said, “It’s fine. Really. It’s just paper.”

His silhouette was backlit by the falling sun, a faint golden light in the window glimmering as he spoke. Unable to pull his gaze away, Mike chewed at the inside of his cheek. He smiled and held up the roll of Scotch tape he'd finally found amongst his various school materials. Will fondly scoffed through his grin. 

“Please?” Mike asked, nearly pleading with his eyes. It felt good for him to put things back together. To, for once in his life, be the solution, not the problem. 

“We’re still not allowed posters, you newbie.” Will joked, but Mike didn't really listen to rules. 

He laid the pieces out on the desk and taped up the poster until it returned to an almost perfect form, a mosaic of fragmented colors arranged into its original image. When he held and showed off the new poster, Will rolled his eyes and smiled—likely despite himself—and Mike knew they would be okay; they would be friends.

Neither boy said it outright, but they didn’t have to. They both knew. 

Together, he and Will hung the poster on the inside door of their shared closet—a stained glass patchwork of their own design, with blues and yellows, pink triangles and palm trees, that wouldn’t be seen by the Fathers or Headmaster. 

For the rest of the evening—until curfew (a begrudgingly early 9pm)—they sat cross-legged on their respective beds, talking about inconsequential nonsense. Mike spoke of his rural Indiana town and all of its nonexistent glory. He learned from Will that Welton was exactly how it appeared upon first glance: cold and severe; tedious and oppressive. The Fathers and Headmaster Coleman dealt punishment for minute transgressions—the faintest noise past the curfew hour; one-minute tardiness to class; a single illegible cursive letter on written assignments. 

Some students never learned their lessons, whereas others wholly discarded all of who they once were in an effort to please. It was depressing to consider, but that was The Welton Academy for Troubled Youth: an institute of all-or-nothing distortion, where young people either lost themselves completely or never changed despite all efforts otherwise, marking themselves as forever disappointments. 

From the way Will spoke about this dynamic, Mike could not gauge exactly who Will was at Welton, what end of the black-and-white gamut he fell upon, but had a strong feeling about what type of student he himself would become.

Because, for all of his lonesome life, Mike Wheeler wanted nothing more than to just be a different person; to restart from where the mistakes in his make-up had come forth and be remade into a better person. Perhaps Welton would do this; would finally fix him.

He could only hope it was true—for the sake of God, for the sake of his father and his mother, and for the sake of himself, above all else. 

That night Will fell asleep facing the wall. Mike turned the same way in his own bed, with a thin blanket pulled up to his chin, and stared at the other boy: the rise and fall of his shoulders with every breath, how calm he appeared. Mike stayed awake and thought about the next three years, what would become of himself at Welton. He thought about all of his innermost broken parts and the many ways he prayed Welton could mend them. He thought about stained glass. He thought about Will’s green eyes. 

All night long, Mike tossed and turned. 

Awake. Awake. Awake.

He didn’t sleep a single wink.

♰♰♰

Remembering that first day at Welton filled Mike with equal parts nostalgia and sorrow. It had marked the start of something both immense and pitiful: all of his teenage years, reduced to these brown walls. Only another hour or so of dawdling and writing, then Will would return, and everything would feel more correct.

That was what Mike kept telling himself in an effort to stay afloat.

He was turning another page in his diary, prepared to continue his ramblings, when a knock came upon the door, followed shortly thereafter by a familiar voice.

“Mike? Hi! I know you’re in there sulking.” A girl’s voice. “Let me inside, please!” the girl said, and he knew then that it was El.

El (who had been given no last name at birth or onward) was Mike’s second closest friend at Welton—his second closest friend in the world, really. Beyond the bounds of the academy grounds, he did not have much else. Many of the students didn’t. This place was their whole world, and it had been for years.

Hearing her voice drew out a smile from Mike’s lips. She was another Welton anomaly, much like Will was: kind and gentle, where Welton always rang harsh and edged, and unique from other students. She volunteered at the academy’s chapel nearly every day—and not because she was particularly devout in Catholicism, but because it was the antithesis to the orphanages she lived in from birth to before being sent away. All high ceilings and open space, the Welton chapel quieted her claustrophobic fears. And within its walls, she was never truly alone, always in the presence of God.

It was actually at the chapel where Mike had met El for the first time. After breaking curfew his sophomore year, Headmaster Coleman punished Mike with one week of mandatory volunteer work at the chapel, every day after classes. It began dreadfully, with every figure of the crucified Jesus fixed upon him, the stench of old incense sinking into his skin. His body ached with the torment of non-belonging. 

But when he met El, his circumstances improved. She was timid—very much so at first—but this made her easy to talk to, easy to trust with his personality. And spending time in her presence, even with her strangeness, made him feel more normal, helped him settle into his own bones. He had never had girl friends before, and it was pleasing to know that he was capable of doing such; to see her smile and know that he could elicit her joy. 

Slowly, what had started as charitable punishment became an intentional choice for Mike; he brought himself back to that chapel, day after day, for volunteer work. Organizing stacks of old leatherbound Bibles. Polishing brass candlesticks, scraping off the fallen wax. Changing altar cloths. An abundance of holy housekeeping, so to speak.

Even as the days passed on, standing beneath the austerity of church lights and crucifix gazes never started feeling good or comfortable to him. Deep in his marrow, Mike ached with insecurity and uncertainty—but the chapel always felt like a place meant to hold people like him, so he kept coming back.

He found El there every time as well, and the pair of them grew closer and remained as such everyday since. She put up with his frequent bouts of angst and emotional stupidity; and he, unlike most at Welton (and the world beyond), found her naivety and sincerity rather charming, something sweet. 

“Mike? Hello?”

El continued to knock and whisper—though girls were not allowed in boys’ rooms at Welton Academy, especially after dinner call. And, because Mike’s following of school rules was ambivalent at best and wholly ungoverned at worst, he didn’t give a shit about what he was and was not supposed to do. El was one of Mike’s only friends, and he was exhausted from his own lonely company. So he closed his diary, tucked it under his pillow for safe-keeping, and let her inside.

El walked through the door with a quiet smile, dressed in her uniform pajamas (a white cotton shirt and plaid maroon pants). Mike watched as she instantly took note of his unmade bed and the many pens messily tossed across his desk. When she turned to face him, the first words out of her mouth were:

“You’ve been wallowing.”

“No, I haven’t! I’m writing, okay?” He gave her a furrowed and defensive look, but she tossed one right back, as if knowing she wasn’t wrong. 

“Writing… Which usually means a whole lot of wallowing when you’re Mike Wheeler,” she said, agonizingly accurate in her remark. 

“Whatever.” He brushed her off with a roll of his eyes and settled onto the floor, legs crossed under his thighs. He smoothed his hair behind his ears. 

“Why are you here?” he asked—and perhaps he sounded rude, but he hoped El could see that he did not mind her presence. In fact, he grinned just a bit at the thought of Headmaster Coleman catching him with a girl in his room; of the other boys in Saint Sebastian Hall hearing her voice through the thin dorm walls.

In the space between both beds, El sat down across from Mike, pulling her knees up high and resting her chin on them. She wrapped her arms around her shins, practically hugging herself. “Max stole wine from the chapel and is sharing it with some boys down the hall. I thought it would be best to not engage.”

“Hmm.” 

Mike simply nodded and hummed as his mind traveled elsewhere, seeing an image in his head of his male peers sitting on the floor with a girl, just like Mike was now, passing around a bottle of shitty wine and talking. It felt good to picture them at that moment. Minus the wine, Mike was doing the same thing. 

“She has these two boys obsessing over her at the moment and, even though she hates attention, she also doesn’t like to drink alone.” El picked at the loose threads of her pajama pants. “Probably something to do with her mother.”

Perhaps it should have surprised Mike to hear her say such a thing aloud, but he was thoroughly unstirred. For as long as he had known her, El was the sort to always say things exactly how they were. In her brain there was no netted filter for her words to drain through; she always said precisely what came to her head without pause or hesitation. That was why she and Max—roommates and best friends—got along so well: they were forthright and truthful, no matter what.

But... While this was something about El that Mike did not mind, he also never liked Max Mayfield for the very same reason. Their frankness came from two distinct places, he believed: El was innocently honest, whereas Max dished out unnecessary truths in an effort to be tough and weasel her way under people’s skin—particularly Mike’s skin, which he absolutely could not stand.

(Needless to say, they never got along, merely tolerating each other solely for the sake of El, who they both adored too much to trouble). 

“Well… She better not get them drunk,” he said, tone edged. “First day of classes isn’t really the best time to be hungover. Especially this year.”

El solemnly crooned, ignoring his (perhaps not so) subtle jab at Max. “Ugh… Senior year. I can’t believe it’s almost over.”

“Good riddance,” Mike said, his voice flippant and laced with apathy. He grimaced. “This school fucking sucks.”

“Really?” El raised her eyebrows. “You’re excited to graduate? To leave?”

Mike nodded, but it wasn’t honest. In truth, it scared him shitless to think about leaving Welton, to truly grasp what would happen once this year ended. He knew his life would follow an already-determined path from graduation onward. He would move back to Indiana and live with his parents. He would get some stupid job in business or sales or accounting and never see the world beyond the miniscule scope of his small town again. He would most likely get married to a decent-looking woman his age, raise a few kids with her, and pretend to be happy. 

It would be confinement, just in a different shape.

He wouldn’t live with Will anymore, which saddened him more than he wanted to admit. Their friendship would be governed by the measures and restrictions of their distance—if they even maintained a friendship at all, that is. Perhaps Will did not want to be friends once their time as roommates was over, once Welton became merely a miniscule part of their pasts. Mike couldn’t know how Will felt—but so long as they both remained at Welton, he didn’t need to find out. 

“I hate this place,” he groaned. “I hate high school.”

El shrugged in commonplace understanding and asked, “What about Will?”

When not staying at the school, Will lived only an hour from Aurora Shores, from Welton Academy; Mike’s town in Indiana was almost 900 miles away.

“What about Will?”

“You won’t be roommates anymore.”

“Yup.” We won’t even share a time zone anymore, Mike thought. “He’ll finally be spared from my snoring. He’s probably excited.”

“Maybe… But probably not, though.” El gave Mike a gentle and almost pitying smile, which he hated; he didn’t need any pity. Will was his friend, and whether or not he wanted to share a bedroom with Mike did not matter. It shouldn’t matter. “I think that Will likes Welton. I mean… He volunteered to paint that mural with Jennifer earlier this summer. He cares about this place. It’s sweet.”

El did nothing but state the truth, and yet the scoff that sprung from Mike’s mouth was entirely involuntary, quick and rough. He could not help but be annoyed.

Over the summer intermission, Will had spent most of his June working on a scripture mural in the Saint Catherine wing of the school—an utter waste of his talents, Mike thought. Only by dinner did Will return from his project each day, smelling of acrylic paint and sharing “see you tomorrow” smiles with Jennifer Hayes.

Mike—on the other hand—spent the vast majority of his June in terrible moods. He was bored and sullen with every lonely day, hating himself for being dramatic and useless when alone. He’d get angry that he was so dramatic, embarrassed for being angry, then angry again at his own dramatic embarrassment. The cycle of teenage petulance was vicious. He poked holes in his diary and scribbled messes until the ink ran out of his pen. He went to the chapel, murmured ramblings up to God, and vigorously scrubbed pews until it was easy enough to ignore how upset he was.

“Right, yeah. I forgot he even did that mural,” Mike said, shaking his head and bouncing his knee. “I’m never over in Saint Catherine Hall anyway.”

El chuckled. “Probably since it’s the all-girl wing.”

“What do you mean by that?” he retorted. “I’ve been in girls’ dorms before.”

“I meant because you aren’t a girl,” El said, curiously. The corner of her lip curled up in genuine interest. “But… Now that you’ve willingly admitted to it, you have to tell me. What girls did you visit?”

El leaned forward on her toes, face contorted like a curious cat, and Mike only thought to himself a single word: fuck, fuck, fuck. He had never visited any girls in their dorms—only El and Max. He had just one female friend, and she was sitting right in front of him, waiting for a good story that he didn’t have.

Feeling the hole he dug himself begin to close in, Mike forced a shrug. “Don’t remember,” he said, his assurance feigned and brain still repeating, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Thankfully, El did not seem to notice his falsity, evidently unaware. He breathed a sigh of relief and understood—perhaps—why he never minded her naivety. With how often he circumvented his own truth, it was good to have a friend so believing. 

“Oh, well,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Troy vandalized the mural like a week after they finished it. I actually think it’s been painted over now.”

“Of course he did.” Mike rolled his eyes. “Fucking Troy.”

Every Welton student knew Troy Walsh: his tormenting and merciless attitude; the cutting insults he dealt with laughter; the rough palm of his hands as he shoved his peers—always those smaller than himself—into corridor walls. The Fathers administered punishments to the vengeful boy almost every day, but he never altered his behavior. As years passed, changeless and constant, Troy became one of Welton’s greatest disappointments: an exemplification of the institution’s shortcomings, proof that not everyone could be fixed through punishment and prayer.

Mike truly truly hated him.

“He’s such a piece of shit you know—”

A knock suddenly rapped upon the door, stopping Mike from speaking further. 

His and El’s eyes jumped open wide, and they exchanged an urgent look, thinking they had been caught by one of the Fathers or Headmaster Coleman. 

Mike hissed, his words sharp and hurried. “Go under my bed. Hide! Hide!” 

El quickly scurried away, crawling on hands and knees toward the bed. She managed to slip her head and shoulders under the metal frame, but before she could disappear completely, a voice trickled in from the other side of the door, hushed but familiar: “It’s just me. I can hear you guys from the hallway.”

Will. Will’s back. Finally.

Any weight lodged in Mike’s chest lightened tenfold.

With a sigh of relief, El pulled her head out and shuffled away from the bed. The muffled swish of rumpled blankets rustled across the wooden floor, and El softly laughed as the thin sheets caught and tangled around her ankle. 

Will waited in the hallway as she tugged her foot loose. 

“Did you forget your key?” Mike asked, to which there was only a silent pause, then the sound of Will shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The floorboard creaked under every uncertain movement.

With his voice still whispered, Will said, “N-No, I just… wasn’t really sure what you guys were doing. I didn’t want to intrude or bother you guys or anything.”

You could never bother me, Mike thought, I've missed you.

But he could never say that aloud.

“It’s your room too.”

“We were just talking about girls,” El giggled, hopping onto Mike’s bed and laying on her back, head hanging upside down over the edge.

At her words—words which should have meant nothing, that were nothing, but sent a pang to his chest regardless—Mike snapped up and glared in her direction. 

“Oh my god, we were not! Just…” He huffed an agitated exhale, sharp out of his nose. “You can come in, Will. Seriously. We’re not doing anything important.”

“Hey! Is spending time with me not important?” 

El protested; Mike ignored her.

The door slowly inched open and Will crept himself through it, quiet and hesitant, neck bent to the ground and gaze lowered. When he finally lifted his head and looked out into the dorm room, Mike’s chest tightened; his stomach sank. 

A scattering of small cuts, bright red and inflamed, littered the right side of Will’s face. Mangled shades of purple and blue spread over his jaw, swelling in tandem with an angry and protruding bump on the round of his cheek.

“Oh my gosh, Will!” El turned and jumped from the bed onto her feet. She ran straight to him. “What happened to you? Are you okay?” She laid a cautious hand on his shoulder and leaned in closer. “Your face.”

Silence besieged Mike. The barrage of feelings that came forth choked him, and he could not say anything. His tongue sat slack and dead at the base of his mouth. His heart pounded and pounded with unbridled worry.

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Concern clearly plagued El in the opposite way to Mike. While he sat in motionless silence, her voice rang out, full and intense, and her hands leapt to touch every unwounded part of Will’s body. “What happened?!”

“Shhh,” Will whispered.” I don’t want you to get caught in here.” He gave her a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes; hell, it hardly reached his lips. “I’m fine. Really.”

“But how did this happen? Who did this?” El asked—and she turned to Mike, searching for the same concern in his face. But Mike did not say a word; he looked past her stare and up at Will instead. 

His green eyes looked so achingly blue—and it was within such sad gaze that Mike knew what had truly happened. But he did not say anything. Yet.

“It was… I…” Will stuttered through broken and uncertain syllables, then recentered himself. “My dad and I were playing baseball before he brought me back here. You know how we do that together. Father-son bonding and all that. I took a few falls running around the bases. It’s fine, really. It barely hurts.”

It was a perfectly plausible explanation. Lonnie often forced Will into playing baseball with him whenever he went home, no matter how many fake excuses Will conjured up to avoid the demand. Will had told Mike and El as much, complaining over dinner some evenings about how disinterested in the sport he was. 

But for all its logical makings, Mike knew this story wasn’t true. 

None of Will’s wounds had ever been brought about accidentally—from his father to bullies in the corridor, the cuts and bruises were intentional. Every time he returned from short trips back home. Every time he got swept up in the storm of Troy’s bad days. The repeated sights of Will’s blisters and purpled-blues beckoned sobs out of Mike, but he never allowed any tears to fall. Instead he choked back the terrible need like he did every other feeling. Will did not deserve the shitty cards he had been dealt—but who was Mike Wheeler to speak on rights and wrongs? Who was Mike Wheeler to hold Will together when others tried to take him apart?

Mike did not say anything, but his eyes burned, hot as the fires of Hell itself.

“Oh, jeez, Will,” El said, pulling him into a hug. “Just… be careful next time. Do you need Band-Aids or… or medicine? I probably have stuff in my room if you need it?”

“No, no. I’m good. Really. Thanks though, El.” This time Will’s smile was genuine, and El returned it with one of her own. Mike glared at them both. His day was terrible, and now his night was too. “Sooo… Mind if I join in on the conversation?”

“Of course!” El said. “We weren’t talking about much of anything. But hey—did you know that Mike has visited gir—”

“A-Actually!” Mike raised his voice and stood up from the floor so fast his knees nearly buckled under him. “It’s getting pretty late. Will and I should probably go to bed now.” He restlessly tucked his hair behind his ears, trying and (as was standard for Mike Wheeler) failing to look casual. “Um. So… yeah. Goodnight, El.”

“Oh… Uh, okay.” She looked tentatively between the two roommates and out through the window. The sun had almost completely disappeared. “I guess it is late, huh. I should probably check on Max. I’ll see you boys tomorrow, then!”

“Last first day of classes,” Will exclaimed, shooting finger guns in El’s direction. She laughed and gave him another hug. Mike just groaned and rolled his eyes.

The three of them whispered their goodbyes as the door opened. El waved one last time, her smile catching the tail glint of sunlight seeping in through the window. 

When the door clicked shut behind her, silence pooled in the space. Mike and Will were alone. The air shifted—lighter now, but immensely fragile.

Will sat down on the edge of his bed, limbs and mouth slumping with a visible exhaustion. Mike sat on his own bed and watched as Will touched his face and winced. Their dorm room felt complete once more, and while Mike was embarrassingly happy to see Will again, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Hey,” Mike began quietly. His voice softened considerably, gentle as the night sky settling in. “Will… Um… you don’t have to lie to me. About what happened.”

Will drew a slow breath into his lungs, his watery gaze flicking toward Mike then onto the floor, small and uncertain.

“It… It wasn’t from playing baseball, was it?”

Because Will was never the type to fake a smile around Mike, he allowed his face to crumble with sorrow. Mike—briefly, for one fleeting second—allowed himself the same grace of honesty and feeling, but fixed his features into something less broken the moment Will looked up from the floor and met his eyes. 

“No,” Will said. “It never is.”

♰♰♰

“What a total fuckface!”

The two boys were sitting together on the floor, face to face and cross-legged, with the contents of a first-aid kit strewn out between them. In Mike’s right hand was an antiseptic wipe. There were two crescent-shaped cuts on the inside of Will’s wrist, blistering and dark red from the dried blood. A pair of untrimmed fingernails had penetrated deep into the tender skin, leaving some subtle bruising in its wake.

If given the opportunity, Mike would have killed Lonnie Byers. For what he did that night. For what he had done all the times before. “What an absolute mouthbreather,” Mike said, shaking his head, eyebrows pinched.

Will simply stared, with an unwavering blank expression, at Mike: his crinkled face, his hands as they brushed an antiseptic wipe across the injuries. Will would not say anything back, and it made Mike’s skin prickle with worry.

“A jackass? A shithead?” Mike wiped the area dry and smoothed a bandage over Will’s wrist. “That’s about as kind of a name I can muster for him, sorry.”

“Charming,” Will said, voice tinged with sarcasm.

An atom of relief bloomed and unwound in Mike’s chest at that sliver of normality. 

“That’s what they all say about me, isn’t it?” Mike grinned and twisted open a half-empty tube of Neosporin. “Now, scooch closer, give me your face.” 

He held out both his hands, one holding a cotton tip slathered in medicinal goop and the other prepared to cup Will’s bruised jaw. Readily, he waited.

A slight laugh tumbled out of Will. “You couldn’t have thought of a less weird way to say that.” He snickered but obliged regardless, inching himself forward, close enough for Mike to view and tend to the little cuts on his face.

Their knees were touching now, warm skin making endless contact. It was impossible not to notice; not to feel the touch. He couldn't ignore the point of contact on both kneecaps, where his skin burned from—what could be misinterpreted as—intimacy. Goosebumps immediately spread over Mike's entire body, and his cheeks grew flush when he saw Will look down between them and notice.

“It’s… uh…” Mike scrambled. “Cold… in here.”

In truth, sweat had accrued under his arms; down the cleft of his back. It was the tail end of a Floridian summer, and none of the dorm rooms had air conditioning. Mike was hot as fuck. He probably smelled like shit. He felt like he had a fever.

“Yeah,” Will said, a bit breathless. “Yeah. It’s chilly.”

“Mhm. Mhm.” Mike pressed his lips together and nodded, opting to focus on getting every wound cleaned and bandaged as soon as possible. 

He needed sleep. Desperately. His brain and body were so clearly not functioning at their usual capacity, and it was evident in his every movement, every feeling: something in his circuitry had glitched. The closer Mike was to Will’s face, applying thin layers of Neosporin over those smaller wounds, the more furiously his heart began to beat. His legs shook. His stupid brain told his eyes to study every shade of green in Will’s irises.

He was ridiculous. Clearly sleep-deprived. Completely crazy.

And Will’s eyes were mostly sage.

“It’s his stupid ring.” Will said, probably noticing how close they had become, the needed precision. Mike could not decipher exactly how he felt about Will being aware of their proximity. “That’s why the cuts are so small. He refuses to take it off. It’s some memento from college or whatever.”

“I’m surprised the bastard even went to college.”

“It was community, but still.”

The muscles around Mike’s jaw clenched. He could not tolerate Will’s incessant defending of his father. Not now. Not ever. To think that Will could not see how horribly undeserving and wrong this was—every cut and bruise and drop of blood—made Mike want to break things. He wanted to cry. He wanted to hold Will.

“You do see what we’re doing here, right?” Mike said, then waved one of the packaged bandages around for dramatic effect. “Your dad is an absolute idiot.”

Will rolled his eyes, but Mike refused to accept it. “No! No, no. You need to listen to me, Will Byers, or I’ll use that stingy stuff again!” Without any real decision or thinking, he placed both of his hands on top of Will’s knees, steadying them. “I don’t care if he went to Shores Community or fucking Harvard, alright? He put his hands on you. That makes him an idiot.’

Desperate need filled Mike’s chest. He wished—with every muscle, every bone, every tendon in his body—that he could make Will truly understand. He did not deserve so much hurt, so much fear, so much cruelty. Nothing Will had ever done or ever could do would make this bullshit warranted. He was the kindest person in the world. Clever, and brave, and endlessly patient—the sort of person who made others feel seen and loved without pretense. Someone so so good. 

He was Mike’s roommate and other half; the only person Mike would kill for; the only person he would die for; his best friend and his better half. 

But to say all of this out loud was impossible, so wildly outlandish that he hardly considered it. Mike stayed quiet and let the words melt into his chest instead, leaving him with a heavy, dead weight inside.

“I’m not defending him. I’m just…” Will released a huff of air through his nose. “I don’t know what I’m saying, okay? I’m just glad I’m back here now.”

Back here… with me? Mike wanted to ask Will if it was true, wanted to repeat the statement aloud. He wanted to just joke about the possibility that Will was actually happy about being back at this awful school just for him.

But Mike couldn’t ask. He didn’t. It was… too much. Everything, everything he harbored inside was too much. His blood felt warm, light and fuzzy.

He took his hands off Will’s knees and went back to bandaging. 

His stomach hurt. He felt a headache coming on. But they were almost done—and Thank God. He just wanted to sleep. This night had become too intense too fast, and he felt like he needed a shower, or to sit in the chapel for an hour or two. His brain had thoroughly overworked itself, and now nothing could stop him from thinking.

He thought about how his life was just a series of lines, all daring to be crossed. About how some he passed with reckless abandon, whereas others he never dared to touch. About how miserable he felt spending each day caught between desire and restraint.

That night he wanted to hug Will—desperately, terribly. Mike wanted to hold him the moment he walked through the door with cuts on his face and sadness in his eyes. But Mike did not. And perhaps, if he were someone else, someone better, he would have hugged Will at that moment. Would have hugged him when he needed it; when all the world had shown him was that any hand that came close only meant to inflict damage. Perhaps in another dimension, in another world entirely, he would have hugged Will. Perhaps he would have let himself cry.

But even in his endless bestride between desire and restraint, a part of Mike always felt as though he was too far from the point of return; that he could never really mend himself of all that was wrong. He thought that something in him had been broken since his conception, and with every year that he became older, this broken thing within him just grew, splintering wrongness further and further into him. Despite every effort, sometimes he believed that it was too impossible to be different.

But maybe in another world Mike was better.

♰♰♰

It took him a long time to fall asleep that night, too much bullshit swirling around in his mind. First day of class jitters. Will on the other side of the room, curled into the fetal position, facing the wall. His own stupid actions and feelings.

Mike hovered at the edge of sleep for hours, the world slowly thinning to a dark and milky haze. The soft fabric of his blanket lulled him closer to slumber as his thoughts drifted and loomed in his mindscape, scattered then dissolved into the rhythm of tired breath. He closed his eyes, beginning to drift away.

Until the cold came. 

So sharp, the awful coldness tangled around his veins like thorned vines, as if the essence of night itself had sunken beneath his skin. It was unlike any temperature he had ever known before. Different from the chill that crept through the cracks of a winter window, but something deeper—pouring into him, threading through his blood, settling in his bones. His body stiffened, the drowsy lull of slumber brutally torn away.

He opened his eyes to see a face, dangling lowly above his own. 

And it was his face.

Mike’s own features stared back at him, only utterly desecrated and unhuman. A horrible creature he could only conceive as a Phantom. Gray skin, pale as an entombed corpse, stretched thin over sharp bone, pulled taut over cheekbones that jutted out too sharp, too hungry. Dark, bloody welts scattered across The Phantom’s jaw and forehead; some wounds oozed wet and raw sludge while others appeared crusted over, furiously clawed at and scabbed. Where lips should have been was a peeled fissure, splitting open the mouth and mandible slack. Spit slowly dripped from The Phantom’s rotten tongue and onto Mike’s face.

And he felt it—the thickness, the icy temperature—as tangible as the pillow beneath his head; the pajama pants brushing his ankle.

A pair of dark brown eyes—a haunting mirror of his own—sunk far into The Phantom’s skull, concave in their deep-seated and sore-ridden sockets. Red and yellow tendrils veined through the whites like meat left out to rot beneath a cruel sun. Its eyes stared down at him with a fixed, unblinking intensity that penetrated and hollowed straight through him. Mike could not move. He wanted to scream but the air thickened in his lungs like solidifying concrete, his muscles constricted.

The Phantom’s body seemed to writhe without moving, its shoulder jerking and seizing with a withering twitch. Each breath crawled out of its stuttering chest, dragging forth an awful sound—like rusted hinges on an old door, like someone choking on their own phlegm. Its mouth fell open wider, as though to speak, but only the rattle of a guttural groan came out. Layered and broken moans scraped against one another to draw forth an ambiguous whisper. It sounded like his name.

Michael. Michael. Michael.

I see you, Michael.

Taunting with every mangled moan, The Phantom leaned in closer until its cold breath spilled across Mike’s face. He gagged as the smell hit him—sour and metallic, like old blood baked into stone, rotten and decomposed. A hand-like extremity reached out from the darkness: long appendages of split skin and protruding bone, wounds puckered and weeping brown blood. Mike squirmed, desperate to sink into the mattress and get away—but he couldn’t move more than an inch; couldn’t even close his eyes. When The Phantom brushed Mike’s cheek, the skin burned with frostbite. 

His vision trembled at the edges. Tears rushed from his eyes, poured down his cheeks until The Phantom wiped them away with its ragged bones. Mike tore his gaze from the creature, desperate for something—anything—real. His eyes darted sideways. Will lay unmoved in the other bed, breathing slow and steady, untouched.

Mike’s chest tightened. Panic surged, feral and choking. Will doesn’t hear it. He doesn’t feel it. Why? God, why? 

His own disfigured face still hovered and moaned above him. It’s me. The thought buried itself in Mike’s skull. That’s my skin. My eyes. My mouth. He tried to pull air into his lungs, but each breath tasted of rot and iron. What is this nightmare? It couldn’t be real, yet he felt the cold in his marrow; his every sense was forsaken by The Phantom. His body locked beneath its weight. 

This was no dream. This was real.

God, help me, Mike prayed, tears spilling into his mouth. God, please. God, please. He shuddered and roared inside, begging: God, hear me; see me; help me! But no matter how desperately he prayed, The Phantom lingered: staring, accursing. 

God did not appear. Nobody saved him.

He turned his gaze to Will, watched the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders with every breath, just as he had on the first night they met. He thought about the past two years gone by: all of his innermost broken parts, how he had prayed that Welton would mend them. But—coming to the end now—he was still the same boy, still so scared. He thought about stained glass on Sunday mornings. He thought about Will’s green eyes.

Mike pressed the world out of sight and let the cold wash over him.

Only then was he finally able to scream.

Chapter Text

1997

[Dunnford, Florida]

The asylum gates swing shut behind Mike. He stands motionless as the breeze dances across his face, chilly and fresh. Floridian sunlight warms the asphalt—and for one dizzying second, Mike tastes freedom, sharp and sweet enough to nearly knock him off his feet. After a decade spent in sealed rooms, every fragment of the outside world feels like possibility. He wants to laugh, to cry, to plant himself in this simple moment of swelling appreciation and never move again.

But the scraps of delight don’t last. Nothing so sweet ever does. A chill cuts through his paper-thin shirt, reminding him that this is not the end of anything. It’s only the beginning. El is missing; Will’s name still burns in his ears. Mike’s life is always shifting beneath him, nothing ever stable. So much that he is beginning to believe that—perhaps—solid ground does not exist anymore.

Florida winters are not as brutal as up north, but Mike has lost all of his Indiana-born tolerance for the cold. He despises it—ever since The Phantom; since he learned how it feels to truly freeze: to feel his lungs cage up, his skin turn to ice, his blood stall and solidify in his veins. An utterly unforgettable pain. 

He shoves his arms tight against his chest, watching his breath fog faintly before him, and shuts out those awful memories.

Pennhurst sent him away with almost nothing: just a few bus tokens, thirty crumpled dollars, and the Welton uniform he was wearing back in 1987. The white collared shirt and gray slacks hang all wrong on his adult body, thin fabric stretched too short over his taller frame, the seams biting at his forearms and shins. All these years passed by, and he still finds himself strangled by Welton Academy. 

He feels as though he has been dressed in an old friend’s clothes while wearing a stranger’s skin. It is both natural and greatly uncomfortable to imagine being any different from the seventeen-year-old version of himself. Even after being boxed away for ten years, his uniform still smells faintly of the chapel essence, all myrrh and mildew. And if given the chance himself, he would go back there, sit under the high ceilings and let the accusing gazes stare down upon him. Just like he used to.

Inside, Mike has not really changed much—hardly at all. He traces and follows the same patterns of thought within himself today that he did at seventeen: all his fears and desires; his methods of coping and struggles of acceptance. Only now, the feelings are somehow buried deeper, beneath overgrown layers and layers of disavowal. The same boy still lives inside him, only much harder to reach. And Mike prefers his life this way. He may never be able to outrun himself, but he can certainly create distance. 

Another moment in this old uniform, dawning all of these reminders and memories, and he will break. Winds pick up as the morning moves along, so Mike sets out to buy some new clothes in town square.

The first shop he finds is a thrift store—small and worn, tucked between a laundromat and pawn shop. In the window display there’s an almost emaciated Christmas tree with twinkling lights strung and tangled through its thin branches. He goes inside, letting the stuffy smell of pine air freshener and old sweaters swallow him whole. It’s a new smell, so unlike the asylum, he cannot help but enjoy its heaviness. 

He buys the cheapest articles of winter clothing he can find: a frayed pair of jeans, an oversized black windbreaker jacket, and a sage-green sweatshirt. He checks out at the register and uses one of the changing rooms to dress, watching himself curiously in the cracked mirror glass. He pulls the sweatshirt over his head and feels something in his chest unfurl and steady, his heart gently slowing. 

Green has been his chosen color for years. He does not think about why. Not consciously, at least. But in Pennhurst, he made figures with green modeling clay; he filled in coloring sheets with varying shades of green crayons. Most sage, just like his new sweatshirt. The color isn’t even particularly flattering against his pale skin, but his eyes strangely enjoy the hue nonetheless. 

So Mike ties the black windbreaker around his waist and burrows his upper body in the soft cotton of the sage green sweatshirt. He leaves his Welton uniform crumpled up on the changing room floor, never to see again. 

Catching a final glance in the mirror, he almost looks seventeen again. Almost. Faint creases have cropped up at the corners of his eyes; there is a meager strand of gray hair woven through his dark, shoulder-length curls. The world is wider, more vast than he once knew. Scarier, and full of possibility. He could go anywhere, do anything.

But he knows where he needs to go for now.

♰♰♰

The payphone at the end of the street crackles to life when Max picks up.

“Wheeler? That you?” Her voice is sharp, defensive as always, but underneath it lies palpable relief. “I can see the call is coming from Dunnford.”

“It’s me… here in Dunnford,” he mutters, looking through the smudged glass of the payphone booth and at the rest of the world.

The town square sprawls out before him—chipped and faded brick buildings, bent palm trees shedding dead fronds, plastic reindeer sagging in storefront windows, antlers missing on some. Half-collapsed strings of silver tinsel droop between lampposts, and the December sun cuts hard across the pavement, bleaching the grounds more than it warms. Families hurry past with thin plastic bags stuffed and slouchy with groceries and holiday presents and red-and-green tissue paper. Mike stares out at the town, feeling like a ghost caught in the wrong holiday scene. 

“Oh my God, finally,” Max sighs, exasperated. “It’s nice to hear from you, crazy boy—but I’ve been waiting for hours. I thought you got out this morning?”

“I had to buy some new clothes.” He pauses, glancing down at the sage sweatshirt swallowing his skinny frame. “Also, I’m not crazy.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’re not." she says carelessly. "Just relax, man.”

Mike can do absolutely anything but relax. He exhales through his nose, the corner of his mouth twitching, and hopes she can hear his irritation.

Max Mayfield has never been gentle with Mike—never took to him with careful conversation or kid gloves. They spent most of their time at Welton circling each other like feral animals, snapping when forced too close. Having mutual best friends did very little to correct their distinctive sort of bickering and conflicted emotions. While they did not hate each other, whatever feelings they harbored were always far from amicable.

But during senior year, when everything in Mike’s world completely collapsed, Max stuck by his side—a bit of a thorn most of the time, but present nonetheless. When he was confused and terrified and needed someone to ground him, she was there. In all of his ten year sentence at Pennhurst, Max visited him the most out of anyone.

In many ways, Mike cannot stand her. She doesn’t only know how to poke his buttons; she has the unflinching ability to completely rip them apart, pissing him off beyond comprehensible belief. But when he needs her, she is always there. And to Mike Wheeler, that counts for just about everything. 

“Alright, Wheeler, so what’s our plan? I’ve still got that key El gave to me when she moved in. We should search there. I called her landlord, and he said the apartment hasn’t been cleared out or anything like that yet. Maybe there’s clues.”

Without asking for opinions or feedback, she charges forth with the specific details of her plan and relays the address of El’s apartment to Mike—only twenty-five minutes away from where he stands, just a few towns east of Dunnford. One bus token should be enough to get him there in a single trip on Interstate 95. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Let’s meet up at her apartment later. You can give me the key. I’ll look for any clues then try to find El.” Mike holds onto the receiver with a harder grasp. His throat tightens. “You can handle Will.”

To that, Max just laughs. Even on the other end of the line, it’s bitter and sharp. “Oh, fuck that, Wheeler,” she snaps. “You know that I can’t. I tried for years. If anyone can get him back, it’s you. He’s not coming back for me. Or El. Only you.”

Mike bites down—hard enough to taste blood—on his lower lip and scoffs, eclipsing her bitterness and upset. “That’s… I’m sorry, Max, but that’s just total fucking bullshit. If that really were true, he would’ve come back already.” 

Ten years. Ten fucking years and not one letter. Not a single fucking word. 

“Matter of fact—” Mike doesn’t catch himself in enough time to stop the words from coming out “—he wouldn’t have left me in the first place!”

There is a long pause as raw and vulnerable silence vacillates between their telephones. Mike’s own honesty makes him want to choke, the spoken truth of what has haunted and wrecked him for so many years now out in the open. He left me. There it is—all of it—boiled down to just three simple words that he cannot retract. 

The silence stretches on. He imagines Max biting back some cruel retort, then thinks about how this is Max “I Hate Mike Wheeler” Mayfield he’s speaking to. She would never squander an opportunity to be harsh with him, to get a good jab under his skin. 

But pity: something emotional; something woeful; something kind. She wouldn’t dare let anyone but El see that side of her. And thank God, because Mike does not want to endure a single fucking ounce of it. He doesn’t want kindness or pity, for any shred of sympathy and compassion would only shatter the fragile scaffolding of himself that he has painstakingly labored to maintain and hold together. 

On the shallow surface, he might appear apathetic and bitter, claiming that he doesn’t want to drag Will out of hiding solely because of long-harbored resentments and hatred, solely because he doesn’t care anymore. But the truth is much different, much more vulnerable and raw, stuffed down far from where Max—and anyone else for that matter—can see it. He pretends to not care; he fabricates harsh reasons and jaded perspectives to prevent people from looking too close and seeing the truth.

From seeing that, really, Mike is broken and anguished—because his best friend has moved on. Will Byers has deliberately discarded him. Mike knows it, and it breaks his heart despite how much he wishes it wouldn’t. He does not want to care anymore—but oh, how painfully he does. 

In 1987, one week after the murder, a courtroom of local juries and their grey-haired judge deemed seventeen-year-old Michael Wheeler not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced him to serve ten years at Pennhurst Asylum. Being only a teenager, and capable—perhaps—of rehabilitation, he would spend his next decade in one of Florida’s most ironclad mental hospitals, living with psychotic criminals, severe mental cases, and repeat offenders. Where they believed he belonged; a stringent and tough-loving sort of place that may finally make him good.

(Try as he might, the task has always seemed impossible.)

Once visitation rights had been approved after the initial sentence, Mike’s friends came to see him. El cried rivers of tears and held his hands and brought him books to read. Max was her usual steely and mouthy self, but after his entire world being flipped upside down, Mike actually appreciated the familiarity of her attitude.

Will had yet to visit. Days passed by without change, without Will, but Mike kept telling himself that he would visit soon. He would schedule a call to the visitor line. He would send a letter. He would be there. He would. He would.

Mike waited and waited—every single day—for Will to do something. To come to him. To walk through the door. To just show up.

But after spending two lonely months in Pennhurst, waiting for his best friend to finally visit, the girls came to tell him that Will would not be coming. That he had suddenly and unexpectedly dropped out of Welton Academy before graduation. That he packed up every scrap of his belongings and ran away without a word, disappearing into the night with no explanation. Nobody knew where he was going. He left a note on the desk assuring that he was safe and leaving willingly. The girls brought it to Mike, and he studied its intricacies for days on end: rereading every line, inspecting the penmanship. It was Will’s familiar handwriting; the paper even smelled like him, like vanilla and pine and the myrrh-tinged musk of Welton Academy. 

Will had undoubtedly written the note, but that was all he did; the empty assurances were his final words, not another spoken or written since. 

So for a decade now, that lone scrap of paper has been everything, the only solid piece of evidence for Mike to cling onto. Everyday since he first held those words in his hands, the truth has been painfully glaring: Will moved on, moved forward into a life where Mike Wheeler—his once best friend—did not exist.

Mike knows this truth like a bullet wound in his chest cavity. No matter what Max says or believes, he has lived in the ache of this absence for ten years and knows that Will does not want to be found, least of all by Mike himself. 

Each day, he tells himself that this loss is tolerable and fine—that this is a good thing, in fact. Everything will be easier—cleaner and simpler and purer—if he believes that a life without Will Byers is for the better. He tells himself that he hates Will after all this time. He latches onto every shred of his anger and shapes Will into a villain, someone selfish and cowardly, hoping it will be easier to survive that way.

And it should be easier—it would be. 

But Will Byers is impossible to hate. Even when Mike so desperately tries to hold only animosity toward him, when he sharpens the memory of him running away into something jagged and cruel, he cannot truly hate Will. His guard always seems to slip, letting the honest truth bleed through and settle deftly within him. He still thinks of Will fondly, still remembers the particular cadence of his beautiful laughter. He sees fragments of Will in every pleasant part of the world—in certain shades of the sky; in lyrics from a love song on the radio; in the art that makes his finished puzzles. Like a ghost wrought from beams of sunlight, Will haunts Mike every day, seeping into and blazing stark in every part of his life. 

This is why he cannot be the one to go out and find him after all these years. To see the real Will again—true flesh and blood, not a figment taken from the reel of memories that Mike both scrutinizes and holds dear—is an utterly terrifying prospect, an unbearable reality he does not want to withstand. He cannot invite this familiar ghost into the room and be forced to realize that it is (and has forever been) alive… alive all along, but doesn’t want him anymore; doesn’t even notice him.

“…Mike.” The receiver sputters and crackles again when Max finally speaks, her voice quieter than before but just as cutting. “Just… Find him, okay? We don’t have time for your pride. El doesn’t have time.”

She says this—but it isn’t a matter of pride. Not at all.

“It’s… It’s not about my pride.”

“Then what is it about?” she asks pointedly, her question hanging on an unmistakable thread of frustrated desperation.

She waits for a reply, but Mike has nothing to say—because Max can never understand how much Will has always meant to him, and how much he despises the fact of that; how he cares about El deeply, but that seeing Will again means so much more than just finding help from an old friend. Max can never know what it is really like to be best friends with Will Byers. To have built something so good and stable, then fuck it up the way Mike did that night by being selfish and sinful, greedily wanting more. To desperately need forgiveness, but be hopelessly abandoned instead.

The anger he holds toward Will for being so far is inseparable from the anger he holds toward himself for being too close. And because of that, Will is—and will always be—woven into every moment of Mike’s existence, unable to be forgotten. A bygone habit he cannot quit. A loaded and lingering smoke floating in his orbit. Will might have moved on—but Mike will never be able to. 

Time may be God’s most forgiving gift, and someday the unfolding decades may lay their merciful hands upon Mike in absolution—but he will never forgive himself. The pain will forever live inside of him for he cannot outrun himself. 

It’s something that Max can never truly understand, and he has no intention of explaining it to her. He would rather die and bring his feelings to the grave.

“Whatever. Fine,” Mike says, practically spitting the words. His knuckles turn white from his hard clasp on the payphone receiver. The cord sticks to his damp palm, the plastic sticky with old grime. “Fine. I’ll look for Will. I’ll try to bring him back.” 

“Alright then,” she says, and he can just hear the smug little smirk in her annoying voice. “Now that’s a good boy, Wheeler.”

“Fuck you,” he retorts, but is barely able to conjure any real bite. He is too tired. Too hungry for some real food. Too sick of reliving the past. 

“I’ll see you tonight, alright? Be there or I’ll send you back to the looney bin.”

“You’re not funny,” Mike deadpans. “Like… at all.”

“Ah, c’mon, you love me,” she says, then promptly hangs up the phone.

Fucking Max, he mumbles under his breath.

♰♰♰

Before catching the afternoon bus, Mike eats lunch in a cracked vinyl booth at some random diner off main street. It’s the sort of place where the coffee tastes vaguely of gasoline and the jukebox hasn’t worked since the seventies. An old Pattie Smith song hums from an invisible radio in the ceiling rafters as the smell of grease fills the air. He orders eggs and toast—something cheap but filling enough—and scans the day-old local paper that someone had left behind on the table. He takes slow sips of shitty coffee.

Everything begins normal—event calendars and lifestyle features, like reading any other newspaper—until he turns the grayscale page to find an article headlined: MURDER TRAIL CUTS ACROSS NORTH FLORIDA. Mike pushes his half-empty mug away and inspects the details further. 

Three bodies have been discovered across varying towns in Northern Florida. All the victims are young men and women, but the geographic and victimology patterns are too scattered and varying for the police to make any sense of a possible motive. The article expands from murders to disappearances. Reports of missing people in areas near the murders have skyrocketed since the end of summer, and nobody knows for certain if the two issues are related or a tragic circumstance. 

Either way, there is enough destruction and blood spilled between every line to evoke a cold pit in the base of Mike’s stomach.

Frantically, he scans the newspaper for names of the identified bodies and missing peoples, his heart hammering in his chest. Every trace and detection of his eyes are deliberate and specific for two people. He sighs a long, drawn exhale of relief when he finds neither Will nor El’s names listed under either group. For now, that is enough—a fragile and pitiful relief that he allows himself to cling to (just for a moment) as the waitress circles around with another pot of steaming coffee.

Mike folds up the newspaper and shoves it into the back pocket of his jeans, tucking it away as far as he can. Burned coffee slides down his throat with a scalding misery when he takes another gulp—much too hot for his mouth, but he almost savors the sting. The pain reminds him of the serrated memories that he has tried to swallow and digest, the flickers of hope that he has folded into nothing. Every prickle of longing and ensuing guilt emerges with the steam curling from his mug. 

Part of Mike cannot help but linger in the space that Will once occupied, in what has now become haunted, a liminal place of both comfort and torment. He stares down at the sage green of his sweatshirt sleeve for an unbroken minute—and when he finally looks up at the world around him once more, he reminds himself to stop waiting for ghosts to walk through the door and say hello.