Chapter Text
“Uh… hey. I’m– I’m Will. Byers,” I stuttered out, shoving my hands in the pockets of my khaki pants. Matt blinked back at me for a second, as if he were processing what I was saying over the deafening music. Should I have been a little bit louder?
“H– f*ck ,” Matt swore, plucking a pair of plastic fangs from his mouth and tossing them somewhere behind him. He cleared his throat and shook his head, his eyes shut tightly. Had I met my awkward match? “I’m so sorry, let me start again,” he smiled, extending a hand out to me. “Hi. Matt Winters, nice to meet you.”
I took his hand, hesitantly shaking it. Of course he had the same initials as Mike. Of f*cking course , out of all the people at this party that my friends could’ve introduced me to, he–
“Sorry, I’m not sure how to do this,” Matt confessed, looking a bit flustered. “I, um… I wasn’t really expecting to be, you know, set up with anyone tonight. If you aren’t able to tell, I’m pretty nervous, because you’re really cute, and I’m afraid I’m f*cking this all up–”
“No no no, you’re fine! We’re on the same page,” I told him, placing a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. “I’m personally kind of terrible at starting conversations, so… you’re good, I promise. And, um, you’re pretty cute yourself.” And he was . He was lean, and stood at around six feet tall, at my best estimate. He had dark eyes, full lips, an adorable nose, a light stubble across his jaw, and beautiful olive undertones in his skin.
“Thank you,” Matt said as he shifted back and forth on his feet a few times. He was probably struggling with how to progress the conversation, just like I was. I felt unsure as to if this should’ve been considered a blessing or a curse, because yes, we understood each other, but on the other hand, coming up with new subjects was neither of our strong suits.
“So,” I said with the most serious expression on my face that I could muster, “Come here often?” Matt laughed at that, and the sound of his laughter alone set a thousand butterflies free in my stomach.
He then leaned into my space to respond to my question: “I’m not much of a party person, so, not really. My best friend, Riley, is dating your DM, and they apparently arranged this… thing… a few days ago.”
“What ‘thing’?” I asked, and co*cked an eyebrow.
“Where you and I… you know,” he replied with a light shrug.
I shook my head. “I don’t, actually.”
“Um…” Matt trailed off, and I quickly glanced over his shoulder to see Ivy making out with Hannah against a wall across the room before focusing back on Matt. She clearly wasn’t available to potentially come to my rescue if things went south. I really hoped that “you know” wasn’t code for “have sex.” It wasn’t that I was afraid to have sex per se, or that I didn’t want to; it was just that I wasn’t into the whole idea of one night stands or hookups. If I was going to have sex, I’d want to be in a committed relationship with the guy I was with.
Before either of us could figure out how to salvage this uncomfortable dialogue, a very familiar bass and drum introduction blared out of the PA system stationed in the corner of the living room.
“Oh, thank God, saved by The Cure. I f*cking love this song,” Matt sighed loudly in relief at “Just Like Heaven”’s high pitched, organ-esque synth lead. Any doubts or reservations I was having about this man were melting away by the second.
“Really? Same here!” I exclaimed, and Matt nodded.
“Yeah, they’re one of my favorite bands. I saw them live last year, and I was never the same.” He raised a hand to scratch the back of his neck, and I gawked with wide eyes.
“I will forever be jealous of you. Robert Smith’s lyricism is unmatched.”
“You’re so right,” Matt nodded along to the beat, reaching out to hold my hand in his. “And who knows? Maybe we can go to one of their shows someday.” Was this even real? What did I do to deserve this? Did I deserve this? I’d have to stick around to find out.
“Someday. Maybe,” I found myself replying, holding onto Matt’s hand a little tighter. We’d figure out the whole intimacy situation later. In the meantime–
“Wanna… dance? Let’s dance,” Matt said, pulling me by our connected hands into the middle of the crowd of people before I could manage to protest. And claustrophobia be damned, I didn’t feel like I was going to implode. Not when Matt’s hands gripped my waist. Not when my hands slowly moved from his chest, up and around his neck. Not when we swayed back and forth in a slow dance to an upbeat song. Not when our eyes met, and Matt’s nearly black irises got impossibly darker, but in the most comforting way possible. Not when Robert Smith ended his phrase, “I’ll run away with you,” the guitar top line began again, and one of Matt’s hands gently caressed the side of my face before pulling me into a soft kiss.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was kind of worried about it being so soon after meeting him, but… I didn’t hate it. Not at all. I didn’t hate it so much that I pulled him in even closer, swiping the tip of my tongue against the seam of his lips, deepening the kiss. He let me in immediately, and suddenly our tongues were sliding against each other, and oh my God, this was my first time making out with someone, wasn’t it? Was my kissing okay? Was I doing this right? Was I–
And then I felt Matt moan against my mouth, and his grip on my hips tighten, and I knew I had a generally good idea. He ran his hands up my torso and through my hair and it was like I forgot how to breathe. Just Like Heaven was still playing, but I could barely hear the lyrics anymore; just mine and Matt’s simultaneous inhales and exhales, the obscene sound our lips were likely making, and our friends’ unanimous screeching in the distance. They’d been watching us, the little sh*ts. They definitely succeeded in their mission, I’d give them that. We pulled away from one another, but not too far, as he leaned his forehead against mine, his thumb brushing my cheekbone.
“I’m not into one night stands or hookups,” I blurted out immediately. I felt heat rise to my face at my brashness. Was I sabotaging my only chance at happiness? I had probably already ruined what we had with my sky-high expectations. But before I could backtrack, Matt merely pecked my lips again with a chuckle.
“That’s perfect. Because neither am I.”
I stared up at him in awe, brushing some hair away from his eyes. “Are you real ?”
“Who even is real, nowadays? We’re all just figments of the material plane, if you think about it,” Matt replied, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I rose up onto my tiptoes and kissed him this time. He melted into it instantly, and I felt like I was going to die of pure joy.
“Wanna go somewhere that’s not your place or mine?” he asked once I pulled away. I searched his face for an impending “just kidding,” or a “no hom*o, bro,” but found nothing of the sort. This was real. Matt Winters liked me , no mind f*ckery included.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said. Matt only grinned as he took my hand in his once again, leading me out of the crowd and out into the crisp October night, laughing the whole way to his car.
“So,” Matt said, leaning his forearms on the surface of the tabletop that separated us. “Will Byers. Tell me ten things about you, go.”
We’d driven around for a few hours, listening to music and ranking our top twenty favorite bands, and it turned out that we had a lot in common. We eventually got hungry and ventured into a twenty-four hour diner. It was about twenty minutes away from campus; a very run-down place with dim lighting and 70s wood paneling, but Matt swore the food there was to die for, so I had to try it for myself. He was very, very right; I would have believed it if someone told me the grilled cheese and tomato soup combo I ordered had been laced with crack.
“Okay,” I nodded, trying to conjure up all of my generic fun facts. “Um… I’m from Hawkins, Indiana… I have a brother named Jonathan who’s four years older than me, and a stepsister named El, but I honestly just refer to her as my sister. I love D&D and I’m part of the club here, I love to read musician biographies, and sometimes the occasional cheesy romance– you know, the ones with the abs on the cover, I’m a freshman painting major, I love to sing, but I’m awful at it–”
“Now I’ve gotta hear that singing voice of yours,” Matt declared.
I shook my head vigorously. “Not a chance.” But then Matt gave me puppy eyes. Damnit .
“...Fine. Maybe after our fifth date.”
“I’m holding you to that, Byers.”
“Anyway…” I felt a smile involuntarily spread across my face. Who even was I? I’d truly believed that I would never be able to smile again after the series of events that went down in August, but here Matt was, making smiling feel so natural. “What number was I on?”
“Six, going on seven.”
“Alright, so I–I’m not much of a drinker, but when I do, it’s usually straight up liquor. Like, shots . If I’m gonna consume alcohol, I’m gonna suffer while doing it. That way, I won’t end up liking it too much. Don’t want to end up like my…” I stopped myself from elaborating further, mentally kicking myself for revealing too much of my life, “…father.”
Matt crossed his arms and slouched back into his seat, seemingly unsurprised. “Your father’s an alcoholic, then?” he asked.
I looked down momentarily at my hands, where my knuckles had gone white while clasping them together for dear life. “Something like that,” I shrugged. “He usually had beer and whiskey, so I steer clear from those, and just do shots of vodka or tequila. I know that’s not any better, but I think that if I were to drink beer or whiskey, I’d feel…” I grimaced at the thought, “more like his son than I’d prefer.”
Matt leaned forward once more and reached out to separate my hands with his own, holding them instead. I glanced down at our intertwined fingers, then back up into Matt’s eyes, and felt my face go ablaze with furious flames. “Gotcha,” he nodded solemnly as he rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand, “I admire you for distancing yourself away from the path to becoming like him. That alone takes an incredible sense of…”
“Of what?” I asked, withdrawing my hands from his in order to take another bite of my grilled cheese.
“Would it be corny if I said ‘Will-power’?” Matt glanced at me sheepishly, and I had to hold in a laugh as I chewed.
“ Incredibly ,” I replied. “Although, you’re not the first one who’s said that.”
“Damnit. Who beat me to it?”
“My friend, Dustin,” I smiled at the thought of my friend. I should call him soon , I thought to myself. I miss him . “He’s always had the weirdest names for things.”
“Like what?” Matt asked, and I froze. Like what? Like… Watergate? Demodog? Vecnapocalypse ? I couldn’t tell him about any of those things without sounding like a total psychopath or violating the conditions of my NDAs.
I settled on a simple, “... I forgot.”
Matt snapped his fingers, disappointed. “Damn.”
“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement, then lifted my eyes up to his again with a small smirk. “But I know for a fact that I’ll remember something at, like, 1am and call you up to tell you about it.” Matt let out a chuckle at that, and I frowned in confusion.
“Sorry to break it to you, hon…” Matt replied slowly, testing out the new name on his tongue, making me blush, “but it’s 1:32am.”
My eyes widened at that. “No f*cking way.”
“ Way .”
“We’ve been here for, what,” I checked my watch, just to verify how long we’d been seated in the diner booth, “ four and a half hours ? And I still barely know anything about you!”
Matt chuckled. “We’ve gotta finish the list of ten things about you , first!”
“Not my fault you keep distracting me.”
I could hear the smile spreading across his face as he said, “I’m distracting, now, am I?”
“You are,” I admitted.
Matt narrowed his eyes and stroked his chin in feigned suspicion. “Interesting.”
“Okay,” I took a deep breath, pushing the conversation forward before I got too flustered and lost my train of thought once again. “So… Hawkins, Jonathan and El, D&D, books, my major, singing, alcohol, my father, Dustin–”
“Dustin doesn’t count,” Matt said.
“He does, too!” I insisted, letting a little bit of my inner child seep through the cracks of my adult persona.
“Fine,” Matt relented with a slight eye roll, “But only because I like you.”
Well, that was very forward of him. It wasn’t too out of pocket, given the fact that I’d literally made out with him not even ten minutes into knowing his name, but listening to a guy openly admitting his romantic feelings for me without any form of hesitation was something I had yet to get used to. I spent years hiding my own feelings, and Mike… f*ck Mike . “I like you, too,” I told him, and I felt a sense of… accomplishment? This year’s Moving On Award recipient is… Will Byers, from Mike Wheeler to Matt Winters! Cue the fanfare, confetti, et cetera.
“… And that’s ten.”
“Really?” I shook my head in confusion. “What was ten?”
“That you’re into me.”
“Oh,” I said with a slight eye roll at my own stupidity, “Yeah. I guess that was ten things.”
“And that’s my number one. I like you ,” he nudged my foot with his under the table with a smirk, “I have severe ADHD, I had a dog as a kid and named him Swayze— he was a pomeranian. I’m a senior material studies major because I can’t make decisions to save my life. I have a passion for writing and have this dream of writing and illustrating my own stories someday–”
“Woah, me too!” I interrupted, and Matt’s eyes lit up in surprise.
“No way, you write as well?”
How to Explain The Status of Your Co-Writing Relationship with Your Ex-Best Friend Who You Were in Unrequited but Not Actually Unrequited Love With, All Without Mentioning His Name for Dummies would’ve been pretty useful right about now. “Uh… no. I used to work on silly comic books with some of my old friends, but I only illustrated. Someone else did the writing.”
“Cool,” Matt nodded in approval.
“I have no idea what's gonna happen next. But, whatever it is, I... I think we should work together. I think it'll be easier if we're... we're a team. Friends. Best friends.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
“So, uh—” f*ck, I hadn’t even realized I’d spaced out. “That was five, right?” Matt asked me, and I nodded, taking a sip of my Diet co*ke. How long did I dissociate for? This hadn’t happened to me in months .
“My favorite subject back in high school was Home Economics,” he continued. “Frankly, I think the skills taught in that class helped me out in life way more than any trigonometric equation ever could. I smoke grass regularly, but hate cigarettes.” Now I had a valid reason to quit smoking. Not like I should’ve been smoking underage to begin with, but that was besides the point.
“I love virtually anything Stephen King, I’m a coffee connoisseur of sorts since I work at a café, and…” Matt leaned his elbow against the table and rested his head on his palm, deep in thought. “If I were to live anywhere in the world for the rest of my life, it would be Israel.”
I raised a quizzical eyebrow at that. “Why Israel?”
“I have some extended family there, in Tel-Aviv. I went to Jerusalem a few summers back, and… f*ck , that city is beautiful. I’ve been there only once, but there’s something about exploring your religious heritage in the place it originated is so surreal .”
“Wait, you’re Jewish, too?”
“Yeah. I actually grew up in an Orthodox home, but my parents were really loose with the religious laws and sh*t. But when I came out as gay, I guess… all of the rules suddenly mattered. They cut me off, like, seven years ago,” Matt told me, pressing his knuckles into his palm one by one with his thumb. “Which, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if spending the rest of my life in Israel is the most logical idea I’ve ever had–”
“You said you’re a senior, right?” I asked. Matt nodded curtly. I did the mental math, and came to the conclusion that either I was horrible at simple subtraction, or… “You were cut off while you were a freshman in high school ?”
“Yup.”
“Wow, I can’t even imagine what that must have been like for you. I’m so sorry.”
“Eh, I was better off,” Matt said with a resigned shrug. “I lived with my now-ex, Hayden, for the rest of high school. His parents were so supportive. It made me jealous sometimes. But they ended up being more influential on my life than my own parents had ever been capable of being.” As he spoke, I couldn’t help but let my mind drift to my own mom and dad. The opportunity to disown me was right there in front of them, and yet, they hadn’t thought twice about accepting me when I came out to them. I was glad that Matt at least had Hayden’s parents to lean on. That was, until they broke up. So did that mean that he didn’t have any family at all ?
“I kind of don’t want to ask this because it sounds pretty f*cking shallow in comparison to what you just told me, but… why’d you two break up?” I asked hesitantly. Matt dismissed my self-consciousness with a wave of his hand.
“You’re totally fine, it’s a valid question. I’m completely okay with sharing, too, if you’re worried about that.” It was like he was in my head . “I didn’t really want to break up with him, honestly. But he insisted that since he was going to Utah for college and I was going to Illinois, long distance wasn’t feasible. I just wanted him to be happy, and for us to end things on a high note, so… I let him go. After I did, though, I was so hesitant to get back into the dating scene. I couldn’t picture myself loving anyone else. He taught me what love was.”
I knew how that felt. I told him so, and he chuckled softly before resting his head on the palm of his hand. “We’re a lot alike, I think,” he said as he glanced up at me, sparkles dancing in the umber shade of his irises. “Aren’t we?” Damn, Matt knew how to make a man swoon . I was falling harder for him by the second, and I wasn’t in any kind of rush to slow down.
“I’d say so, yeah.”
“Good, I’m glad you agree,” Matt said. “Because for the first time in a long time, I can see further than a few days into my future.”
The rest of the night went by faster than either of us could believe. Once the sun had begun to rise, we’d left the diner and headed back into the city. Matt insisted on kissing me at every red light. For years, I’d held onto the belief that I wasn’t worthy of romantically-charged physical contact, yet here Matt was, openly willing to give it to me. So I happily obliged, because what the hell, I hadn’t received affection like this in my whole life.
Matt drove us to McKinley Park, and we walked around hand in hand for a little bit longer until both of us were yawning in the middle of every other sentence. We found a nearby bench and I checked my watch, and saw 08:43 flashing back at me. I turned to look at Matt, who was stifling yet another yawn, and I couldn’t help but giggle at the complete lunacy that was this twelve hour date.
“The exhaustion has finally caught up with us, huh?” I teased.
Matt exhaled, leaning his head against my shoulder. “Yeah…”
“I don’t want this to end, though,” I admitted.
Matt hummed into my tee shirt in with assent before muttering, “What if it didn’t have to?”
I shrugged, causing Matt to lift his head back up so our eyes could meet. “I don’t know what you’re alluding to,” I began, “but I’m still not sleeping with you–”
“I never said anything about that–”
“...Yet.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying, but I was planning on simply sleeping.” Matt smirked, continuing on with the comedic bit, despite my confession of being open to having sex with him in the future. “As in, a synonym of slumber, snoozing, s–”
He was being so adorable, I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached up to hold Matt’s face between my hands before pulling him in and firmly pressing our lips together. I felt him gasp against my mouth in surprise, and I realized then that I was the one initiating the kiss this time. And that felt f*cking amazing.
“God, times were easier when those people kept their filth behind closed doors,” I heard a voice say from a few feet away. I let go of Matt and turned to see three men standing together in denim biker jackets in front of the bench we were sitting on.
“What did you just say?” I asked, moving to stand up.
“I said that the world was better off when fa*gs like you weren’t shoving your ideologies down our throats,” I felt Matt tug on my arm as if to say No, don’t feed into it, they’re not worth it , but I was so beyond done with being mistreated that standing up to these idiots felt like a walk in the park… literally .
I approached the men and rested my hands on my hips, popping one out for added Gay Emphasis. “I know of another thing that I could shove down your throat, but I don’t think you’d like it all that much.” They stared back at me in stunned silence, but I wasn’t done with them yet. “So if I were you, I’d back the f*ck off and mind your own business. I know a good lawyer.”
They didn’t need to be told twice; they immediately fled the scene, leaving me feeling satisfied and Matt shellshocked. I turned back to ask if he was okay, only to be grabbed by my biceps and pushed against a tree a few feet away. And suddenly Matt’s tongue was down my throat. It only lasted for a second before he pulled away, his eyes wild. “That was so hot. Will ,” he whispered, reaching up to hold my face in his hands. “That was so f*cking hot, c’mere–” I let out a giggle as Matt kissed my neck once, twice, and then moved back to my lips, swallowing the moan that escaped my throat. It hit me then that we were still in public.
“Okay, okay,” I lightly pushed him away, much to both of our disappointment. “Let’s go before we actually get hate crimed.”
I opened my eyes to a popcorn ceiling. I despised popcorn ceilings. I bolted upright, processing this unfamiliar room in a slight panic. When I was met with red walls and a poster of the album “Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me,” by The Cure, I remembered where I was; Matt and I had gone back to his house after spending twelve hours together. I was in his bed, and he wasn’t there with me. He really had been serious about respecting my wishes, and took the couch.
I flopped down onto my back and turned my head so my cheek rested on the pillow I’d slept on. I breathed in and could immediately identify Matt’s scent; pine and a faint hint of lavender dryer sheets. God, yesterday was a whirlwind. And to think it all started with Shaggy and Dracula.
I turned my head to look out the window to see that the sun was almost set. I’d slept through the entire day. My sleep schedule was definitely going to be f*cked up for a while. Honestly, though, if I had to choose a twelve hour date with Matt Winters or a healthy circadian rhythm, I’d choose Matt. There was no doubt about it; I’d fallen hard, and fallen fast .
After letting myself wake up a little more, I pushed myself off of the mattress and wandered out of Matt’s room, down the hall, and into the living room, where Matt was still asleep, a little bit of drool puddling on the decorative pillow below his head. He was an adorable sleeper. As if he could hear my thoughts, Matt’s eyelids fluttered open slowly and I was greeted with a shy smile.
“Mornin’” Matt rasped out.
“Try evening,” I replied with a low chuckle.
Matt stood up from his spot on the couch and made his way over to me, lifting a hand to push a piece of hair out of my face and behind my ear. “Did you have a nice sleep?”
“Yeah,” I said. Matt intertwined his free hand with mine.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked me. I nodded in lieu of a response, and then I was being pulled in and kissed like Matt’s life depended on it. I was so happy. I was so damn happy that I started smiling into our kiss, effectively breaking it. I looked up at Matt to notice that he was grinning as well, and we broke into a fit of giggles before leaning into each other again and falling, falling, falling… right into Matt’s bed.
“This is getting awfully hot and heavy” Matt muttered against my lips, and I groped his ass as he hovered over me.
“Yeah,” I agreed with half my mind turned to putty, and he grinded down against me, eliciting a moan from the both of us, “It is.”
“You wanna stop?” Matt asked, and I pulled away, thinking I’d made him feel uncomfortable. He must have seen the worry on my face, and was quick to reassure me otherwise with a light peck to my lips. “I mean, I don’t want to stop, but… I want to respect your boundaries. I won’t do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”
“Matt,” I said, relishing in the sound of his breath hitching following my mention of his name, “I’ve never felt this way about a guy in my life. It’s a crime that we just met a little less than twenty four hours ago.”
With a surge of bravado I didn’t know I even had, I flipped us over with a grunt so I was the one on top, bracketing Matt in between my arms. He looked up at me in a haze, his eyes filled with pure lust.
“So I say f*ck it.”
I’d just gotten back from Painting I, where Miriam had made the announcement that The Heart had been selected for a display in the lobby of the Admissions office building. I was glad that others were able to find joy in the piece I’d spent hours upon hours in emotional turmoil over. After class, I headed back to my dorm and called Lucas. We’d started up a routine of calling once a week, if not every two weeks. Dustin and I spoke a little less frequently, but we thankfully had that kind of friendship where we could go a while without talking and pick up right where we left off. El and I spoke almost daily. I heard the ringback tone go through a few times before Lucas picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hey Lucas, it’s Will,” I said.
“Hey, man! How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been alright, you?”
“Same here, pushing through,” I heard the sound of a door slamming in the background. “Oh, hey babe, Will’s on the phone if you wanna say hi! Max just got in from PT.”
“Give me the phone, stalker,” I heard Max say, and I smiled as I heard the phone shuffling between their hands. “ William . My dear.”
“You let her call you William?” Lucas shouted from a distance. “You never let me call you William.”
“You don’t let me call you Lukey Poo,” I replied, and I heard Lucas tut in disappointment.
“There’s a huge difference between the connotations of William versus Lukey Poo. I’m gonna let you decide which one is degrading.”
“Touché.”
“So how are you?” Max asked me.
“I’m good.”
“Woah,” Lucas complained, “so with me you’re just alright, but with Max, you’re good?”
“Same thing.”
“ Barely .”
“I’m alrood ,” I laughed, leaning back onto my comforter. “Or galright .”
“God, you sound like Dustin,” Lucas huffed. He wasn’t… not right about that. “Wait, I’m gonna dial him in, hold on.” There was a brief silence, followed by–
“Lukey Poo! My brother!”
“For God’s sake, not you, too.”
“God is dead, Luc-ass Puke-Ass.”
“Brutal! Will, help me out here.”
“Will? You’re in Cali?”
“Nope, still in Chicago. Hey, Dusty Bun.”
“Would you look at that, the Party’s back together again!” Lucas exclaimed. “Well… minus Mike, of course.”
“And El,” Max added.
“Yeah, and El,” Dustin repeated. “How is she, by the way?” Classic Dustin, always asking about El. Maybe Mike had been right in Letter #24 when he mentioned the possible chemistry between those two.
“She’s good,” I replied. “The program she’s in at Vanderbilt is kicking her ass, but she’s kicking theirs right back.”
“Oh yeah, I bet,” Dustin gushed. “She’s so determined and committed, though, so I believe it.”
“Yeah,” Max agreed.
“Has anyone heard from Mike?” Dustin asked, and I felt my mouth go dry.
“No, he hasn’t picked up any of my calls this month,” Lucas said.
“Mine either,” Dustin sighed. “Will, have you tried calling him?”
Friends don’t lie . “No.”
“Why not?”
Why would I was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it at the last second, opting to reply with, “I think he’s just busy, guys. I heard the writing program at U of Indy was pretty rigorous.”
“For a kindergartner, maybe!” Lucas snorted. ”Plus, Mike’s always been some sort of prolific author prodigy! It should be a piece of cake for him!”
“Right?” Dustin grumbled. “I’m so confused. He just… vanished out of our lives.”
“Will, what if you tried calling him?” Lucas asked me hesitantly before adding, “He’s always had a thing for you.”
“ What? ” I shot up into a sitting position, unable to comprehend what I had just heard.
“Yeah, I gotta admit, buddy, you lost me there, too,” Dustin said.
“I just mean he’d probably pick up if he knew it was you,” Lucas explained, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “You and Mike have always been closer with each other compared to the rest of us.”
I exhaled extra heavily, hoping they’d pick up on my reluctance to do what was being asked of me. “I don’t know.”
“I sense some tension,” Dustin remarked. I could see his wiggling eyebrows from all eight hundred and forty-nine miles away. “What are you not telling us?”
“Nothing! Just–” I cut myself off with a groan. “ Fine . I’ll call him. But I’m telling you guys now that he’ll probably be like this with me too.” They were completely fine with that. Of course they were. Because they loved to see me suffer, apparently.
We ended the call about half an hour later, and I found myself still sitting on my bed with the receiver in my hand. Was I really debating upon whether or not I should call Mike? Yup. Was it a bad idea? Probably. Was I going to follow through with it? That remained to be seen.
“To call or not to call,” I whispered to myself, “That is the question.” Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them. To die.
No. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
Midterms came and went, and suddenly, it was Thanksgiving break. Matt and Riley had invited the rest of our D&D Party to spend Friendsgiving at their house, but I had to decline. I knew that if I didn’t come home for the holidays, I would never hear the end of it from my family and friends back in Hawkins.
I had yet to tell my family about Matt. It wasn’t like I was intentionally withholding the information from them. I was just so busy between finishing The Heart , organizing D&D campaigns with Kate, and making out with my boyfriend that when I did have time to talk to my family, the conversation was pretty surface-level. But now that we were all in the dining room together, digging into Mom’s kick-ass mashed potatoes, I’d figured that this would be a good time to bite the bullet.
“Guys… I have some news. It’s, uh… it’s pretty important.”
The sound of everyone’s forks on their plates stopped mid-scrape. I took a shaky breath. This wouldn’t be too difficult; coming out was the worst of it, but I was still anxious as to how everyone would take the news that I was actually dating a boy.
“What about, sweetie?” Mom asked.
“So… I might have a boyfriend.”
“Might?” Dad grumbled, stabbing a piece of broccoli with his fork. “So, what, you have half a boyfriend?”
Mom scoffed. “Hopper, for Christ’s sake–”
“We’re Jewish, Joyce.”
“For Christ’s sake –”
“Mom! Dad! Let him talk,” El cut Mom and Dad off, nodding at me to continue. “You were saying?”
“I have a whole boyfriend,” I playfully rolled my eyes. “We’ve been dating since the beginning of this month.”
“I’m very happy for you, Will. You deserve this,” my brother said in earnest, and I tried not to get choked up. He’d really been there for it all , hadn’t he? He’d seen me fall in love for the first time, and helped me through all of the grief and heartbreak that followed.
“Thanks, Jon.”
“So what’s this boy’s name?” Dad asked.
“Matt Winters.”
“Matt Winters,” El repeated, her eyebrows furrowing as she processed this new information. She shifted her gaze back up to me. “And you like him?”
“Um… I wouldn’t be dating him if I didn’t like him.”
“So why didn’t you invite him here for Thanksgiving?” Mom asked, looking almost offended if it weren’t for the wide smile on her face. “You know we have no problem with hosting guests!”
“Yeah, I know. That’s not the reason why I didn’t invite him, though,” I grimaced. How could I explain that Matt wasn’t anything like Mike, and that I wasn’t sure how they’d react to me dating someone new? How could I explain that I still wasn't exactly completely over Mike yet, and taking Matt home to Hawkins with me would have felt a little bit too… soon for me?
“I don’t know,” I continued, “I… I just … I want to make sure the guy I bring home for holidays is someone I’m one hundred percent serious about. And I’ve only been dating him for, like, less than a month, not to mention he’s my first boyfriend ever! Cut me some slack!”
“So I guess you could say that this Matt is out of your… Wheel house,” Jonathan muttered, and El snorted. He just had to go there, didn’t he?
“Hmm,” Dad stroked his beard in thought. “I wonder if that tall glass of water of yours is back in town yet.”
“No, please, not this again ,” I whined, putting my head in my hands as discussion about Mike Wheeler broke out at the dinner table. This had been a common occurrence throughout all of high school. Everyone in my family had convinced themselves that Mike reciprocated my feelings, and that we would eventually get together.
El and Jon teased me endlessly whenever I came home from Mike’s place, and forced me to recount every single second we’d spent together. Mom was a meddler; she’d always find ways to get Mike over to our house for family meals, and made it a point to emphasize the word family with the implication that he was a part of it. When Mike asked me to senior prom, that was the icing on the cake for Dad; I think he even made a chart after that. Dad was both my biggest cheerleader and my biggest comfort, especially when I told him about what happened after I found the letters.
But that chapter was over.
I cleared my throat, and everyone stopped talking, turning to face me. “Matt is really great, guys,” I said in a low voice. “And yeah, he’s not Mike, but… at least give him a chance, will you? I’ll bring him home during Spring Break, and you guys can meet him then.”
The fall semester had finally come to an end, and of course, we had to party about it. Matt had arrived at my dorm room to pick me up, and when Aaron noticed us kissing in the doorway, he had more than a few choice words to say to and about us. I’d played it off like I usually did, claiming it wasn’t a huge deal, but I had been dealing with Aaron’s bullsh*t for months now. It was like he was an ice pick, chipping away at my soul as if to say, “Let’s see how much verbal abuse Will can take before he shatters!” This was the breaking point for me. So when we got to the party, I drank. And drank. And drank .
I’d somehow lost track of Matt’s whereabouts, and found myself standing in an alley next to the building where the party was going on. There was a payphone stationed near the entrance of the alley, so I decided to take a little trip there and use the rest of my spare change to make a phone call.
“Hello?”
Was that Mom? Holy sh*t, it was Mom ! I knew she was small, but I didn’t know she could fit into a pay phone! How did she know I was there?!
Oh, wait, I thought, I called her. She isn’t actually inside the pay phone, idiot… Why did I call her again?
“Hello?” I heard her ask again. f*ck, I already forgot she was on the phone.
“Mooooom. Mommy. Hi,” I slurred, leaning against the wall. I thought right then that I’d have been perfectly content melting directly into the concrete.
“Will,” Mom said, her voice getting all hushed and concerned, “Are you okay?”
“Yup!” I proclaimed to the empty alley. My voice echoed all the way down to the other end. “I’m faaaaantastic . Just a lil’ drunk, though.”
“I can hear that, honey.”
“Is Dad there?” I asked, wrapping the metal cord around my wrist. I briefly considered what it would be like if I ever decided to introduce handcuffs into mine and Matt’s sex life, and I swore I gave myself heart palpitations just by thinking about it.
“Dad is passed out on the couch and snoring like a trucker,” Mom replied, pulling me out of my filthy, filthy thoughts. “Why? Do you want to talk with him?”
“No,” I shook my head, looking around to make sure I wasn’t holding up a line or something. I most definitely wasn’t. “I just wanted to make sure I didn’t… I don’t know, ruin your night or something. Fridays are usually your movie nights.”
“Oh, we already watched our movie a few hours ago, some easily forgettable rom-com.” I could hear my mom’s smile as she spoke. I loved seeing my mom so happy ever since she married Dad. It was like she’d been brought back to life. “Now I’m just reading in the big blue arm chair, and so it’s just you and me.”
“Perfect,” I said, turning around and leaning my forehead against the brick and mortar in front of me, “Cuzzz I gotta-lotta-say .”
“... You sure you’re okay?” Mom asked, and I hummed in substitution of a “yes.”
“I’m suuurrreee,” I closed my eyes and grinned at the sound of my drawn-out syllables, but they snapped open again at the memory of standing in my old living room being yelled at by a very similarly-sounding drunken voice. “An’ I promise ‘mnot an alcoholic. I don’t wannanduhlidah ,” I said, and lifted my hand up, extending my index finger to emphasize my point. I heard my mom lightly snicker on the other end of the line.
“Can you repeat that?” she asked me. “I’m having a little bit of a hard time understanding you.” f*ck . I must have been really drunk for her to not have understood me. God, I really was turning into my–
“Hmm… d’ya think I’ll end up like Lonnie?”
“Baby, are you kidding me? You are nothing like Lonnie.”
“He usedta drink a lot. A looooootttttt . Remem…emm…mer? An’ he alwaysssaid I’ll never be a man. He called me a fairy. A fa—“ I felt my voice crack as emotions took over my psyche, and I silently cursed myself for still crying over my dad over a decade later.
“Will. I want to make myself very clear,” my mom told me, and I stood up a bit straighter. Unlike me . “He’s less than half the man that you are. You are an incredible, talented, sweet young man. Being gay doesn’t negate any of the great qualities you have.”
“I’m a teeerrrible person,” I said, and mouthed along with my mom’s predictable reply.
“You are not a terrible person.”
“But what about what I did to Mike?” I whined.
“You did what you needed to do to protect yourself, baby. He’ll understand that eventually.”
“But what if I made a misssTAKE?”
“Only time will tell. It’s never too late to call him.”
“Yeah.” I looked up and noticed that at one point or another, Matt had joined me in the alley. How much of the conversation had he heard? Hopefully not too much. “Hey, mom?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, honey,” Mom replied. “Now make sure to go hydrate. Stay safe, okay?”
I nodded, realized that she couldn’t see me nodding, and provided verbal confirmation this time around with an, “Okie. Byeeeee.” I was so drunk. I hung up before turning to face my boyfriend. “Hey, babe,” I greeted him with a sh*t eating grin on my face. He was so so cute. Adorable. Gorgeous. Hot. Sexy. Edible . “Where have you been? You having a good time?”
“I’ve spent the past fifteen or so minutes looking for you !” Matt said, scuffing the soles of his Converse against the gravel that lined the sides of the alley. “Was that actually your mom?”
Well, duh , I thought. Who else would I call ‘mom’? Well, besides Steve, obviously. “Yeah! She said to say hi to you for her, by the way.” That was a total lie, but it would keep the tone light.
Or so I thought, because Matt had one more question for me. It was the one question that I’d been dreading ever since we’d started dating. “Who’s Mike?”
I was way too intoxicated to have this conversation right now. I met Matt’s eyes for a second, shook my head and battled my way through a choked, “We used to be friends. But he’s dead to me now. You have nothing to worry about,” before keeling over and violently throwing up onto the ground.
“Alright, sweetheart, we’ve gotta get you back to the dorms. You’re absolutely wasted,” Matt coaxed me to stand up and threw one of my arms around his shoulders. “You mind if I ask Pete for backup? I don’t think I can get you home by myself.”
“You calling me fat, Winters?”
“I think we both know they don’t call you Buff Byers ‘cause you’re fat, Will.”
“ Waiiit a minute, who told you about the Buff Byers thing?”
“I have my sources.”
A few minutes later, we’d successfully located Pete within the sea of people he’d been dancing with, and we had to bribe him with twenty dollars to get him to leave the party and help us out. We said goodbye to everyone else on our way out, but right before we reached the door, I recognized the song blasting from the PA system and shouted, “I f*cking love this song!” The song in question was “There is a Light That Never Goes Out,” by The Smiths. I happily drawled along with the lyrics to the song as my friend and boyfriend practically carried me down the street and back to the dorms. The singing didn’t stop when we reached my dorm hall, or when they dragged me up the stairs, or even when they fished through my pockets for a solid five minutes, trying to find my keys to let us in.
“And if a tennn tonnn truuuck… kills the both of us… To die by your siiide, well, the pleasure, the privilege is miiine,” I murmured the last chorus, getting a bit emotional as I watched Matt take off my Vans and help me into bed. He was too kind to me. I didn’t deserve it.
“Vecna would’ve had a field day with you…” I sighed, which resulted in a confused chuckle from my boyfriend. My sweet, sweet boyfriend who had no idea about what I’d been through, or the damage I was capable of. So much for my NDAs . I could just blame it on the alcohol if he asked about it later. Matt tucked me in under my comforter, brushing my bangs off my forehead and pressing a kiss there.
“Alright, lover boy, sleep tight.”
I was in the passenger seat of a car, and the road was dark, save for the headlights that lit the road in front of me. I looked down at my hand, which was being held by a very familiar and large hand. My eyes lifted up to see Mike in the driver’s seat, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers to the beat of some synth pop song that was playing out of his car radio.
“Mike?” A smile graced his features as I said his name. He didn’t take his eyes off the road as he rubbed a thumb over the top of my hand. What the hell?
“Yeah, baby?” This was pure insanity . There was no way he’d actually called me–
“... Baby?”
“What is it, love?” Mike replied so casually that I wanted to scream . But I pushed my emotions back down, settling back into the passenger seat and pretending like this was a totally normal occurrence.
“... Nothing,” I muttered, the fingers of my right hand picking at one of the rips on the knee of my jeans. “It’s just…”
“Will, we’ve been together for, what, five years now. Don’t tell me you’re uncomfortable with me calling you ‘baby.’”
Five years . Jesus Christ. “No. No, you’re fine,” I said.
“Good,” Mike grinned before bringing our joined hands to his lips to kiss the back of my hand. “I love you.” My head was spinning .
“I love you, too,” I heard myself say without even thinking about it. Okay, this is officially a dream, I thought. This is way too good to be true.
We continued on down the seemingly endless road for a few more miles before I spoke up again. “So… where are we going?”
“Heaven,” Mike replied.
“You’re funny,” I deadpanned, “No, really, where are we going?”
“Heaven,” Mike repeated. I felt a little bit guilty when I found myself staring at this dream version of Mike, trying my best to commit him to memory. “I mean it, Will. To die by your side… it’d be such a heavenly way to die.” That sounded familiar. Where was that line from again?
“Wait, what?” I asked, but before Mike could clarify, he was pressing his foot as hard as he possibly could onto the gas pedal, accelerating until the speedometer was essentially useless. Within seconds, he’d sent the car plummeting off the edge of the— cliff?? — we’d been driving alongside the entire time.
The car flipped with a likeness to an Olympic gymnast, and I heard the sound of bones cracking above the faint background music that was still playing. I’d always wondered about that kind of scenario– if someone got into a fatal car accident; would the music continue to play? Apparently so, considering that the song “Stayin’ Alive,” by the Bee Gees was still playing. That song should never be played in a car for this exact reason; the irony is simply too cruel.
The car eventually gave up on trying to be a flying trapeze artist and settled in a diagonal position with the wheels in the air. Smoke from the undercarriage of the car traveled through the air vents and filled my lungs, and I struggled to breathe. But I didn’t even care; I had to check on Mike, see if he was okay.
He was not. I turned to my left side, and screamed in horror at the sight of Mike’s bloodied, mangled body sprawled across the dashboard, broken glass pricking his bare arms. Wait… there was no way his arm could be way over there and still be– oh my god. Mike’s arm. It had been ripped off his body. Holy sh*t. Mike’s arm was–
“Mike,” I forced out amidst my heaving breaths. “Michael, can you hear me?” I reached out and smacked him in the face in an attempt to wake him up. Please don’t be dead . “Michael James , if you don’t f*cking respond to me right now I’m gonna–”
“Relax, Will. I’m still here.” Using his middle name always did work like a charm.
I let out a high-pitched sob in relief. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Mike said quietly, his own breathing labored. He glanced down at his arm and whispered something along the lines of Would you look at that, my arm is gone , but I couldn’t exactly tell; his speech was starting to sound garbled, as if he was choking on blood. He coughed a bit out, and I watched it dribble down his chin, proving my hypothesis correct. He was going to die without immediate medical attention.
“Come on, let me–” I went to undo my seatbelt, but realized that my limbs had stopped working. “... I can’t move,” It was most likely a severed spinal cord. “Mike, I can’t move.” I couldn’t move, and the last time I’d ever touched Mike was in the form of a slap in the face.
“Me neither, baby,” Mike laughed. His arm was quite literally torn off his body , yet he still found the will within himself to laugh. Maybe he was in shock, and the adrenaline had numbed his pain receptors. I wasn’t sure. But what I was sure of was that this dream needed to end. It was getting a bit too real .
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Mike! We’re gonna f*cking die out here if someone–”
“Shh. We’re okay,” Mike whispered, closing his eyes as he spoke. “We’ve got each other, right?” Crazy together. Deranged together. Batsh*t insane together.
Dead together.
“...Right,” I shut my own eyes, but was only able to for about two seconds before Mike was hacking up blood. I watched as it splattered across the surface of the shattered windshield. “We’re really gonna die, huh?”
“All that matters is that I’m dying with the love of my life by my side,” Mike muttered, all of the color slowly draining out of his face. “The pleasure– no, the privilege – is mine.” I watched his head loll to the side as the blood loss and lack of oxygen to his brain caused his heart to stop beating.
I was startled by the sound of someone gasping, and paused when I realized that the sound was coming from me. I tried to catch my breath, lifting a hand to my heart to try and ground myself with my heartbeat. I felt the familiar sensation of tears pricking the corners of my eyes, and I shut them tightly, hoping the image of Mike’s severed arm would eventually fade.
“You okay?” I heard from across the room, and I squinted my eyes to see my roommate sitting up in bed. Why did he care? He hated me. He’d aimed slurs at me all the way down the hallway when Matt had come to pick me up for the party earlier. What changed?
“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” I forced out, turning away from him and facing the front of my body towards the wall. I just needed to think of a good memory and play it out on a loop in my head to fall back asleep. I’d done it before.
A strong hand belonging to Aaron met my shoulder, and I gasped at the sudden contact. How had he gotten over to my side so quietly? Why was he over here at all ? Why was he touching me like that? “You don’t sound fine,” Aaron whispered, his mouth close enough to my neck that the tendrils at the nape stood straight up. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach; something felt wrong . “No, really, I’m fi–”
Before I could even process what was happening, his hand shifted down my arm and firmly grasped my wrist. “What are you doing? Stop it,” I told him, and shook my arm in an attempt to get him off of me, but that only ignited something in him, because he pushed me from where I’d been laying on my side and onto my stomach, straddling me and holding me down. “Please stop. Please stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop –”
He grabbed my other wrist and held both of them in one of his hands, as he forced my head into my pillow by my neck with the other to shut me up. He leaned down so his nose was buried in my hair, and I writhed in his grip as he inhaled. “I can make you feel better, Will,” he ghosted his lips over my ear. “Just stay quiet, and we won’t have any problems.” This could not be happening. It had to be another nightmare.
But I already knew the truth; I was wide awake .
The next few weeks were a blur. Aaron left and hadn’t come back after he raped me that night. I didn’t leave my room. I bailed on my date night with Matt over the weekend. He asked me over the phone at one point if I was planning on returning home for Hanukkah, and I glanced at my calendar for a moment of contemplation, noticing that the first two days had already passed before giving him a halfhearted, “Nah. I’ve already missed the first two days, and wouldn’t be able to catch up. I’m just gonna… stay here, I guess.”
That was a horrible idea, because the next thing I knew, my mother was in my dorm room, the expression on her face reading as a combination of disappointment and worry. “Hi, Mom,” I greeted her in a weak voice, and she merely shook her head, stomping over to my bed and whipping out a f*cking stethoscope from her purse– courtesy of Owens, I assumed.
Despite my protests of being fine, she pressed her hand to my forehead before pressing the stethoscope to my heart, then to my back to hear my lungs. She dropped the stethoscope back into her purse and squeezed both of my shoulders, her eyebrows nearly becoming one with how hard she was frowning. “William Jacob Byers, you tell me what’s going on right now. Skipping Hanukkah without any call or explanation?!” I was in deep sh*t. She helped me pack up my things and drove us back to Hawkins that same day.
I didn’t tell my mom exactly what had happened, but did confess that I had been in a depressive state of being for the past few weeks following something traumatic that happened to me. Thankfully, she didn’t press me in regards to the topic of said trauma, but instead made an appointment with my old Upside Down therapist, Judith. I went to see her the day after I got home. Judith was a great therapist. I was so often the listener in my day-to-day life, but she took the approach of “you talk, I nod and give advice when you want it,” so it felt great to have the opportunity to rant about my problems and get validation from a sweet elderly lady who wore her own hand-knitted sweaters.
When I told Judith about what had happened with Aaron, she’d asked me if I told my family or Matt about it. I said no, I hadn’t. She asked why, and I admitted I was just afraid of my family becoming overbearing like they had been when I was a kid, and I was terrified of losing Matt over something I hadn’t been able to control. She suggested that if I couldn’t tell my family, I should at least tell my boyfriend when I was ready, as it wasn’t fair to him to continuously cancel our plans and keep him in the dark. I thought back to the last time we spoke, where he’d expressed feeling like he’d done something wrong when he hadn’t done anything wrong at all.
My mom had also managed to arrange weekly sessions over the phone for when I went back to Chicago. Recovery isn’t linear , as Judith often said. She was right. And in order to begin recovery, I needed to take that first step. So I spoke with Matt on the phone that night. He confessed to having called my mom, and was surprised when I wasn’t angry about it. I actually thanked him, because if it weren’t for my mom, I probably would’ve still been rotting away in my bed back in Chicago. When he asked me why I was depressed, I broke down crying at first, but found enough strength in myself to tell him the truth about what Aaron had done to me.
“I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch,” he’d said. “And as soon as you get back, we’re going to move you into my place. Riley’s moving Kate in after break, too. But you cannot go back to living with that asshole.”
Right before we ended the call, I wrote his phone number and address information down on a post-it. “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” Matt had told me. “I love you.”
“Bye,” I whispered, hanging the phone back up on the wall.
I prayed to whatever higher powers existed that my friends would just f*cking give up already on trying to get Mike to hang out with us. For the past few months, the Party had been updating me on Mike’s whereabouts– or lack thereof– as he’d essentially fallen off the grid. I wasn’t particularly surprised, because I understood why he cut me off, but then again, why had everyone else been lumped in with me on Mike’s Do Not Interact list?
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked hesitantly.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Max countered, looking up from her and El’s joined hands, where she’d been painting El’s nails a shade of deep purple. I shrugged, not sure how to go about explaining why I was discouraging them from contacting our…. no, their friend.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, glancing back down at my sketchbook, where Mike’s left eye had begun to take shape on the page. I resisted the urge to cringe at myself. “Just… don’t expect much from him.”
“Believe me, man, I know,” Lucas said, slumping down entirely too forcefully onto the couch next to me with his cordless phone in his lap. “He never calls any of us anymore, we’re always the ones who have to reach out to him.”
“Which is why we’re calling him now,” Dustin reiterated the same sentiment that he’d been mulling over for the past half hour, pacing all the while. “We’re useless to Mike if we don’t at least try .”
“Okayyy,” I shrugged all of their ignorantly charged hope off my shoulders. “But as long as I’m in the picture, you won’t have any luck getting him into the same room with us. So don’t say I didn’t warn you when he declines.”
“What happened between you two, anyway?” Dustin stopped pacing and adjusted his MIT hat. I really hoped his new Thinking Cap™ was… faulty, or something, so he wouldn’t have any chance of figuring out the truth.
“Nothi–” I began, but El started talking at the same time as me, leaving me unable to keep her from saying:
“He and Will had a falling out.”
“El, for f*ck’s sake , oh my–” I slapped a palm to my forehead in a combination of embarrassment and frustration. This was not how I’d wanted the Party to find out about this… in fact, I would’ve been completely content if they never found out at all and if Mike just… if he’d just… stayed away. I gulped at that sobering— and borderline concerning— thought.
“Over what? When? How? Spill! ” Dustin appeared in front of me, shaking my shoulders. He hesitated for a moment, gripping my shoulders a little tighter, and then letting go altogether before… petting my arms ? I heard Lucas huff a laugh through his nose as he began dialing Mike’s number, which I subconsciously recited in my head as he pressed each key.
“On a completely different note,” Dustin retreated back to the bowl of Cool Ranch Doritos on Lucas’ kitchen table, “you have got to explain when and how you got so muscular! You’re, like, hot . You should go into, like, a bodybuilding competition. I’d vote for you.” El and Max burst out laughing. I shielded my face with my hand, a mild embarrassment quickly consuming me.
“Everyone shut up, I’m putting him on speaker,” Lucas announced, and I sighed, grateful that the conversation had officially been diverted away from The Fight. Not like my body composition was a better topic by any means, but I’d take what I could get.
“Hello?” Mrs. Wheeler’s voice came through on the other end of the line. I’d forgotten that Mike shared a single landline with his family, insisting that our walkies were immortal. Spoiler alert: No, they were not; they eventually died permanently back in 1988, rest their souls. May their memory be for a blessing.
“Hey Mrs. Wheeler, it’s Lucas. How are you?”
“Oh, Lucas! I’m doing okay, sweetie, thank you for asking! How’s… UCLA, right?”
“You remembered! I’m busy all the time, but it’s going well, Mrs. W.,” Lucas grinned. Max rolled her eyes as she muttered a quiet, “ Kiss ass .”
“Well, I’m sure you didn’t call here to talk to your friend’s mom , so I’ll get Mike for you. One second,” she chuckled to herself. There was a brief moment of silence, and then–
“MICHAEL!” Mrs. Wheeler’s screeching voice came through clear as a bell, and the rest of us had to hold in our laughter. “LUCAS IS ON THE PHONE!” She’d accidentally covered the wrong end of the receiver. We heard the low thump of footsteps down the stairs, a bit of shuffling as the phone changed hands, and a quiet thanks, mom before–
“Hello?”
And suddenly, I couldn’t feel a thing. f*ck.
“Mike!”
“It’s been ages , bro!”
“Where have you been?”
“... Heeeyyy guys,” the all too familiar voice of Mike Wheeler came through the speaker, and I had to refrain from curling up on the floor and melting into a puddle of tears. I forgot how much I missed his voice. However, it sounded slightly hoarse, probably due to talking to the point of overuse, or having just woken up… at four in the afternoon? No, overuse sounded more reasonable; Mike had never been a quiet person. Shutting the f*ck up simply wasn’t in his vocabulary.
“It’s good to hear you’re alive and well, man,” Lucas said.
I think I was the only one who made out the sarcasm-laced laugh on Mike’s end: “ Hmmh … yeah. So… what’s up?”
“Your dick,” Matt’s voice offered up in my head. I shoved my boyfriend’s vulgar humor into the furthest corner of my mind, because the last thing I needed to think about right now was Mike’s dick. Not like I’d thought about it prior to this. Well… not very often .
“We’re hanging out at my place right now, and we wanted to see if you feel like making the trek across the vast expanse of our lawns to join us!” Lucas replied.
There was a moment of silence on Mike’s end, followed by a shaky exhale. “... Is he gonna be there?”
Lucas furrowed his eyebrows. “Who?”
“I think you know who I mean, Lucas.” I pointed at myself with a look that screamed I told you so , and Lucas’ eyes widened dramatically at the realization that I was, in fact, right. Mike wanted nothing to do with me.
“... Yeah,” he said in a low voice with a likeness to a confession, not once breaking eye contact with me. I was not going to be let out of this one easily.
“Yeah no, I’ll pass. Thanks, though.”
“Are you s—” Lucas began to protest.
“Bye, guys,” Mike cut him off before promptly hanging up, leaving everyone else’s jaws on the floor. And then… all eyes on me. Understandably .
“He’s been like this since August,” Dustin was the one to start talking. He looked rather accusatory as his eyes narrowed, and I felt my stomach fall out of my ass. “So… whatever you did must have really f*cked him up.”
“Hey!” I put my hands up, “What makes you think I was the one who did something?!”
“Y-yeah,” Lucas added on, “like, maybe Mike did something to… I don’t know. Whatever happened between you two, though, it’s made him really distant. I think something is seriously wrong.” I suddenly felt the air in the Sinclairs’ living room run cold, and… looked up to see Max adjusting the thermostat. I would never get used to the concept of central air, even after having it in my own house for years.
“What do you mean?” El asked, her voice quiet.
“Okay, for instance, you know how Mike’s a talker?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well, that Mike is gone , because phone conversations between us never make it past three and a half minutes,” Lucas said, his eyes trained on the floor as he spoke. “It’s all hey bro, how are you doing, good, good, how’s school, great, I’m busy actually, can I call you at some other point and we can catch up, yeah sure talk soon. The end. And then he never calls me back.”
“Yeah, he’s been short with me, too,” Dustin added. “And that’s saying something, because that man is a f*cking skyscraper.”
“You must know something , Will,” Max said from where she stood, returning the focus of the conversation back onto me. Honestly, I was starting to get a bit frustrated. I’d obviously played a pretty large role in Mike’s downward spiral, and it was eating away at me with every new second that passed. But at the same time, I thought my friends would take the news of our falling out as a sign to not press me about him.
“I really don’t, actually,” I replied, “and I’m kind of confused as to why this is my problem.”
“Woah, Will, calm down, I didn’t mean to make you get defensive,” Max said, her eyes wide, probably surprised at my blatant apathy to the situation. “It’s just that you two were so close for years, and I thought… I thought maybe you were just trying to protect him, or something.”
That was fair. “Right,” I whispered, and closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry for snapping. I’m just–” I opened my eyes back up, “I’m tired of talking about Mike. He’s not gonna change, so why are we still trying?” I was nervous for a moment that I’d pushed a bit too hard attempting to move on from the current conversation, but was relieved when everyone nodded in agreement.
“That’s a very good point,” Lucas said. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Yeah, let’s change the subject…” El trailed off, sending a mischievous smirk my way. “Will got a boyfriend.”
I was going to murder my sister. I knew she meant well, but… I was going to murder her.
“Boyfriend?!” everyone shouted at the same time, shock spreading like wildfire across their faces. I nodded, and then the questions started hitting.
“What’s his name?”
“Where’s he from?”
“What is he majoring in?”
“We need details , Byers! Details!”
“Matt Winters, yes, the initials are purely coincidental, Winston-Salem North Carolina, and he’s a senior material studies major.”
“And he treats you well?” Lucas asked, and I turned to face him, pulling my sketchbook closer to my chest.
“More than well,” I replied earnestly. “He’s… he’s incredible , honestly. He’s sweet, he’s talented, he’s affectionate, he’s out of the closet…” Unlike someone else I knew. But they didn’t have to know that .
I didn’t need to continue listing adjectives for much longer, because my friends’ previously unison bumbling split into two separate subconversations. I heard Lucas and Max bickering about how Lucas never said things like that about Max and it’s a wonder she hadn’t dumped his ass for the fourteenth time by now; Lucas rebutted with the fact that all their friends knew her already and therefore didn’t need Lucas to elaborate upon her best qualities. Dustin turned to El and nudged her with his elbow. She turned to him, giving her full attention as he muttered quietly, but not quiet enough to the point that I couldn’t overhear, “Mike’s gonna be pissed.” I watched my sister take in this information before she nodded with a tight grimace.
Mike’s gonna be pissed.
I let out a shaky breath I hadn’t been aware that I’d been holding, and looked down at my hands, which had somehow become fists in my lap. Mike’s gonna be pissed. But I was finally happy. I had Matt, and he was a better boyfriend than I could have ever asked for. Mike’s gonna be pissed. So what? He messed with my head, he deserved it. Mike’s gonna be pissed.
“Hey, um, I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back,” I said to no one in particular, and ignored everyone’s suddenly concerned voices as they faded into background noise. I closed the bathroom door a bit harder than necessary, and put a hand over my mouth as I began to hyperventilate. Mike’s gonna be pissed. Mike’s gonna be pissed. Mike’s gonna be pissed.
I leaned forward and vomited into the toilet.
I mounted my bike and knocked the kickstand up with my foot, leaning my weight onto the right pedal as I biked down the empty streets of Hawkins. It had been a long day at Melvald’s; I’d been tasked with running the store for the weekend on account of it being my parents’ wedding anniversary, and my dad had planned a surprise trip for my mom to Lake Superior. On any other occasion, it would have been fine. Working at Melvald’s wasn’t the problem, rather, it was my last week of working there before I left for college wherein lied the issue.
It was the day after The Fight. “Can you grab some coin rolls from the back, honey?” my mom had asked me from the counter. I nodded, put down the notebooks I’d been stocking, and headed to the supply closet, turning up the volume on my walkman as I went. The lyrics of Billy Squier’s “My Kinda Lover,” infiltrated my mind as I grabbed the coin rolls and walked back to the counter, where… oh no . Mike Wheeler was walking down the sidewalk in the direction of our store.
“f*ck,” I whispered to myself as I approached my mom. She looked up at me, her smile fading when she noticed the panic in my expression. “Mom?” I felt my voice waver, “Mom, hide me. Please.”
“What? Why–” she asked, but there was no time to explain. Mike was mere feet away from the door. He’d probably f*cking seen me by now.
“Just do it,” I begged. “Please.” She thankfully didn’t press me any further and gestured for me to duck below the register. I did so as quickly as I possibly could, and held my breath as I waited for the little bell above the door to ring. And it did.
“Hey, Mike!” I heard my mom’s voice above me, and I lowered my head into my hands. What the hell was I even doing? Why was I such a coward? I couldn’t even face Mike, while he’d come all the way to my mom’s store, probably looking for—
“Hey Ms. Byers…” I heard Mike say, “Is Will here by any chance? I need to talk to him.” He definitely sounded like he hadn’t slept last night. I hadn’t, either. I couldn’t. Not with the feeling of Mike’s lips on mine existing for the sole purpose of haunting me. I wanted so badly to stand up, jump the counter, and pull Mike into me so hard that it would send us crashing to the floor so hard that we’d get permanent amnesia and therefore erase the horrors of the past twenty four hours from our memories.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie, he left a little while ago.”
I heard Mike sigh. “Is he headed home? Or–”
“I’m honestly not sure, he never tells me anything these days.”
“Well, when you see him next, can you…” His voice broke– and so did my heart. “Can you please tell him to call me?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Thank you. I hope you have a great rest of your day.”
“You… too,” my mom said slowly, and I heard the bell ring once more as Mike left the store. Out of nowhere, I felt my mom’s foot lightly kicking my shin, and I knew then that I was in trouble. I stood up to see her leaning against the counter with her arms crossed.
“What in the world happened that could possibly make you want to hide under a counter to avoid your best friend of thirteen years?”
“Listen, it’s complicated–”
“You love Mike!”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem, Mom!” I broke down then, my voice dissolving into quiet sobs. She pulled me down to her level and rubbed my back comfortingly, but I didn’t stop talking. “I love him. I love him so much it hurts. And I’d just come to terms with him not feeling the same, but yesterday, I found twenty six love letters to me that he’d written over the past two years– yeah, according to the letters, it turns out he’s apparently gay and in love with me, what the hell are the odds of that happening– and when I brought them to him asking for answers, he just kissed me.”
Mom pulled away then, her eyebrows furrowing across her forehead. “He kissed you?! Wow! Isn’t that a good th–”
“No!” I groaned, running a hand through my hair. “No, it’s not a good thing, because it isn’t true! He doesn’t love me. He just said he did, and he says a lot of things–”
“He was probably just scared, baby! Remember how nervous you were to come out to me and Dad? Besides, you know he hasn’t ever really been the best at expressing his feelings. He most likely wrote those letters because he was too afraid to tell you.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. Um, you’re probably right.”
This flashback, in combination with what I’d overheard the last time I hung out with the Party, had me so far gone into a mental breakdown that I thought I was going to explode. Mike’s gonna be pissed. Mike’s gonna be pissed. Mike’s gonna be pissed . I was distraught . I couldn’t go home like this without Jonathan and El asking me a thousand and one questions, so I decided to take a little detour to the park.
“We stealthily made it out of my window and down onto the ground without dying, and then we grabbed our bikes before making our great escape. We biked out into the night, wind whipping through our hair, and I just felt so free. And for a second, just a split second, I imagined what it would be like if we were together, and we were sneaking off to make out in the woods or something. That would be so romantic.”
I eventually reached the playground of my childhood. My eyes drifted to the swingset; it looked so small and rickety now, compared to how I used to imagine it as a castle when I was a kid. I sat down on one of the swings, getting used to the feel of the hard plastic pushing into my sides. My friends weren’t kidding. Long gone was the skinny kid I used to be; I really had built up more muscle than I knew what to do with. I took a deep breath and propelled myself off of the wood chips by my heels. As the cool wind blew through my hair, emotions ran high as it hit me that I had grown up.
“Hi, I’m Michael! Do you want to be my friend?” “Yes!” I felt a few stray tears escape my eyes, and pulled a hand off one of the chains to brush them away. I continued swinging for a few more minutes, hoping that it would calm me down, but I just got even sadder as time dragged on. I met Mike on these swings , I thought. We were best friends. I loved him. Now that we don’t talk… he’s just a ghost. I jumped off the swings and took a few seconds to reorient myself, glancing down at my shoes.
But then, I heard a faint rumbling across the pavement, and looked up from the ground to see a tall figure skateboarding down the sidewalk. Oh my god. It was Mike. Mike was here. Mike was… out of the house? Oh my god, Mike was skateboarding at night in my direction. I felt panic rise into my throat and suddenly felt the urge to throw up again. I had to hide. f*ck, I really had to hide, because Mike was getting closer and closer and I was in no condition to talk to him.
I dashed across the playground, trying my best to stay as quiet and as low to the ground as possible in order to not be seen. I managed to reach the metal slide and crouched behind it, raising my head the slightest bit upwards so I could see over the edge of it. Hawkins still hadn’t replaced that damn slide, even after all the times my friends and I had burnt our asses in the ninety degree summer heat throughout our elementary school days.
As Mike approached the playground, he skidded his skateboard to a stop and paused to look around, probably making sure he was the only one there. His head turned in my direction, and I prayed my reflexes were quick enough as I escaped his line of sight. They thankfully seemed to suffice as I heard the wheels of his board begin to roll once again. I peeked over the edge of the slide like the creep I was and watched Mike skate in circles around the basketball court. His long black hair was covered by a beanie, but was still long enough to flow gracefully behind him. God, he was beautiful. Just as beautiful as I remembered. I missed him. You know what? Screw it, I’m gonna talk to him, I thought. I’m going to make things right between us. Against my better judgment, I stood up and made my way over to Mike.
He caught a glimpse of me in his peripheral vision and had to do a double take before jumping off his board to walk over to me. We both watched it roll away and fall off the pavement and into the grass before turning back to each other.
“Will,” he was the first to speak. It felt like a whole century had passed since I’d last heard him say my name, and I’d forgotten how much I loved hearing it.
“Mike.” I looked up at Mike then, taking in the entirety of his appearance. He had dark circles under his eyes, and judging by his oily scalp, he looked like he hadn’t showered in days.
“How have you been?” he asked me. Typical Mike , I thought, always wondering how I’m doing . Then again, he was just asking a simple question found in most conversations, I was nothing special.
“I’m doing alright,” I replied, shoving my hands into my jean pockets. “How are you ?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that?”
He’s been like this since August, so… whatever you did must have really f*cked him up.
“... Not particularly, no.”
We stood there for a few seconds in silence, unsure of what to say. I decided to speak first this time around. “So… how are things in Indy?”
Mike scoffed then, closing his eyes tightly in frustration. “You know, the least you can do is f*cking apologize .” He was right; I’d left things on a horrible note, and had yet to mention anything about our fight.
“I know, Mike, I’m s–”
“No,” Mike cut me off, his gaze hardening. “You’re only sorry because I prompted it.”
“Says the one who expected me to just accept the fact that he was in love with me and not question his integrity after finding twenty six love letters in his bedroom.”
“You shouldn’t have read those.”
“ You shouldn’t have left them out!”
“Well, I was a f*cking dumbass, what else is new?”
“Well, so am I, then, because I had finally convinced myself that you didn’t love me, just for you to go and turn my whole world upside down!” Neither of us even noticed or reacted to the unintentional pun.
“I do love you, Will,” Mike’s voice softened as it always did, and he took a step closer to me as he spoke. “I do . What do I have to do to make you believe me?”
“Kiss me,” I replied.
Mike groaned at that, rolling his eyes as he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “What do you mean, kiss me ? I did kiss you that day, and you–”
“But you only did it because I prompted it ,” I shot Mike’s words right back at him, and he could only blink. “If you really love me, you’ll prove it to me by kissing me for real. No leading me on and letting me down. No goddamn love letters. Just… kiss me.”
He took a deep breath then, his eyes meeting mine once again and his expression turning into a determined resolve. “You want me to kiss you for real?” Mike whispered, closing the remaining distance between us. “I’ll show you real.”
The sound of Mike’s skateboard violently smacking against the pavement brought me back to reality. I was still hidden behind the slide. I ran my hands over my face, rubbing my fingertips against the corners of my eyes. I was so exhausted that my imagination had gone off the rails.
I needed to go get some sleep. But Mike was in the way of my route home, and I was not prepared to pass him on my bike just to get stopped and forced to have an awkward, real-life encounter with him. What if I just… took the next street over? I thought to myself. That could work. But… where did I leave my … bike. My bike rested on its side against the swingset, clear on the other side of the park. I’d forgotten how far I’d wandered away from it, and wondered briefly how Mike couldn’t have seen it yet. I glanced back over to the basketball court at… Mike. Who wasn’t there .
“You stalking me, Byers?” I heard from above me, and even though my mind had deducted that that he had spotted me behind the slide, my heart still jumped at the sight of Mike looming over me. I stood up, brushing the accumulated woodchips off my knees from kneeling.
“You caught me, Wheeler,” I chuckled, and Mike smiled back.
“How have you been?” he asked me. Typical Mike , I thought, always wondering how I’m doing . Then again, he was just asking a simple question found in most conversations, I was nothing special.
“I’m doing alright,” I replied, shoving my hands into my jean pockets. “How are you ?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that?”
He’s been like this since August, so… whatever you did must have really f*cked him up.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, rocking back and forth on my feet a few times. “All of this is my fault. It’s my fault you’re like this.”
“Yeah. It kind of is.”
“I shouldn’t have blown up on you like that. If I hadn’t, then maybe all of this could have been…” I faltered, and Mike shook his head.
“There was no avoiding it, Will,” he said. “I went about it all wrong. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. I should have taken the time to explain to you–”
“But you did explain, that’s the thing,” I said. “I was just too caught up in my own anger and confusion to notice–”
“I don’t blame you for being angry and confused,” Mike told me, and I looked up to notice tears welling up in his eyes. “I was angry and confused at myself for my inability to tell you the truth about how I felt. It scared the sh*t out of me.”
I couldn’t help but reach up then, resting my hand against his cheek and swiping the tears away. He let out a small sniffle and lifted his eyes from the ground to meet mine. They say that the eyes are windows to the soul; the pain in his eyes sent me right back to that day of our mutual heartbreak, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I lifted my other hand to hold the other side of his face, and ran my thumbs over his cheeks once more before I—
Heard someone yell, “Ow, f*ck!” knocking me out of my daze of delusion once again. I looked up and saw that Mike had fallen off his board, and was laying on the pavement on his back, unmoving. For a moment, I feared that he’d knocked himself out, but relief flooded my body when I saw him reach his hands up to his head and run his fingers through his hair with a groan. He didn’t get up, though, so I hesitantly rose from my position on the ground and approached Mike slowly. He noticed my shadow and whipped his head in my direction, eyes wide. He looked stupified, unable to find the words to say to me. Not like I could have done any better.
I knelt down next to him, and couldn’t help it when my breath hitched. Mike looked gorgeous from this angle, in the moonlight, below me . I felt something primal within myself awaken, letting a low noise escape my throat as I let my body take over. I crawled a bit closer to Mike, reading his expression for any stop signs. And then… I pounced .
A shiver went down my spine, shaking me out of my hopefully last scenario. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but my knees were starting to hurt from crouching behind the slide. I pulled my hands off the rail of the slide to rub my freezing cold palms together.
“Goddamnit!” Mike shouted at the night sky, which had turned a light grey with the snow that had begun to fall over the park. I blinked a few stray snowflakes out of my eyes and pulled my hood up, preparing to sprint across the park, grab my bike, and go . All the cardio training I’d done over the past semester had to have been done for a purpose. And this was it.
I took a few deep breaths, about to make a run for it, when I heard a high pitched whine come from the direction of the basketball court. I took one last glance over to Mike, who was reaching into his pocket and pulling out… was that a flask ? My suspicions were confirmed when he unscrewed the top and tipped his head all the way back as he proceeded to chug the whole thing in a few seconds. Oh god.
He’s been like this since August, so… whatever you did must have really f*cked him up.
