Archive of Our Own ^beta

stage 1: denial (to regain some sense of peace)

Mike didn't do church, okay? He didn't apply for altar boy services, no matter how much his mother had begged, and he didn't get sitting still and kneeling and then standing and then kneeling again for two hours, and he didn't even try praying to God when he hadn't listened once in Mike's fifteen years of existence. Mike didn't do church, and yet he seemed to find himself in its pews more and more frequently as the world ended around him.

At first, he'd thought this— meaning his constant, panicked prayers when he'd never been much of a good Christian before (or Catholic, he could never remember what he was supposed to be), along with the rosary he kept ringed around his neck— was only a natural response to the end of the world. He was just like everyone else, one person out of the masses kneeling in the pews, pleading with God so the world would refrain from splitting open again. 

Problem was; there were no masses. Mike was all alone, head bowed in the back of an empty church, accompanied by stale air and stained glass windows. Shattered pieces of Jesus and His lamb shone at his feet, their beady black eyes judging his poor posture. And his poor excuse for repentance too, probably.

All the evangelical types— the ones who survived after the 'earthquake', that was— had packed up and left Hawkins months ago. No one who believed in God would stay somewhere so clearly marked by the Devil. 

Mike was still here because he and everyone he loved was marked by the Devil, too. Destruction followed them everywhere they went. Better to keep it contained in Hawkins, their own personal Hell. 

After realizing he wasn't just following the masses— that, for a reason which evaded him every time he tried to understand it, Mike had come to church of his own will— Mike assumed he'd come here to pray for safety, just in case there was a God out there to listen. Keep Nancy safe, he'd whispered, slumped against the back of a church pew. Keep my family safe, God, please. Keep my friends safe, keep Ms. Byers safe, keep El safe, keep Will— and his thoughts had stuttered, like even thinking Will's name would make the Devil come down on him instead. If you're listening, let this end. Don't let things get worse than they already are.

Knowing his luck, the Devil himself was probably listening in on Mike's prayers. If he kept praying for his friends, they'd probably all fall into an Upside Down gate, and if he prayed for Hawkins, the town would be blighted by famine.

So, instead, Mike started to pray for himself. Selfish, right? Instead of wishing the best for the people he loved, he'd stumbled back here on a whim again and again and begged for his own life. Please, God, make me good. Let me do something right for once in my life, let me stop hurting everyone I— and there was that stutter again. If he thought about the people he'd hurt for too long— the person you hurt, you know who he is— Mike worried the Devil might hear. Or Vecna. Sometimes, Mike thought they were the same thing.

You can cleanse people's souls, right? I'm a horrible believer, I know, I don't go to church and I once kicked a Bible I was so angry and I've cursed your name a million different times, but can't you forgive me? I've sinned, but hasn't everyone? Why am I so different?

His sins were worse. Mike knew this for a fact, but trying to think about why made his chest go tight, like every awful thing he'd done had crawled into his lungs and decided to sleep there. His parents had given up on Sunday school by the time he learned how to sneak out and hide in the churches' playground tire swing, but Mike had learned enough to understand the concept of original sin, how every man was born with a snake in their heart. Sometimes, Mike thought he'd been born with two. 

"Make me good," he whispered. He pressed his head to the dark, red-beaded rosary clasped in his hands, in the naive hope his prayers might make God real. Make me good, not good like an angel but good like the people I love, good like the people who are somehow still fighting when there's nothing left to hold on to, good like my mother and my sister and good like Will, good like—

He couldn't think about Will. Not here. Mike would bring his own curse down on Will if he started praying to be like him, to be with—

He pushed the thought from his mind just as it came, and Mike pretended it had never been there at all. But Will lingered in Mike's mind as his fingers slipped across the rosary beads, murmuring half-remembered Hail Mary's and letting the cool metal of the cross make a mark on his forehead when he couldn't keep his head up anymore. Midnight had long since come and gone, and Mike was bone-tired, eyelids growing heavy and thoughts turning muddy as his speech slurred around the ends of his third decade of the Rosary.

"Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for my sins. . ."  Us sinners sounded wrong in Mike's mouth when no one else had sinned like him; if he said us, Mike would be lumping Will in with his wrongs, and hell, Will had probably been born without a snake in his heart at all.

Mike wished, not for the first time, that he had been the one to bike home that night instead of Will. He wished they'd been at the Byers', that he'd swerved off the road and into the woods, left his bike wheels spinning and tripped on his way home. At least the Demogorgon would've taken someone who deserved it.

"Now and at the hour of our death," he completed, sliding his fingers to the next bead. "Amen." The words tasted wrong in his mouth, sour. He dirtied the prayer just by speaking it aloud.

His voice echoed across the church walls, bouncing back as a tinny mockery. Amen, you say, like it will save you. Amen, like you think that will make you any less wrong—

"Didn't realize you were actually a Catholic, man."

At first, Mike thought the words were another echo of his own voice. He didn't exactly think of himself as Catholic either, so Mike kept his head bowed on the pew. 

"I don't care if he's Catholic now, okay? He still needs to bring his fucking walkie with him." That was what snapped Mike from his half-asleep daze; he wouldn't dream of swearing in a church, not when he wanted God to like him, but Dustin would probably swear like a sailor in front of Christ himself.

Mike lifted his head slowly, turning around with all the grace of a startled turtle. The rosary nearly slipped from his fingers, and Mike lunged to snatch it up before it could get lost under a pew. 

A single shard glinted at him, white and soft as glass could be. That damn lamb was mocking him— look at me, I'm good enough for God to love. Why aren't you? "I'm not—" and he paused; if he was trying to get into God's good books, Mike probably shouldn't be saying he wasn't a Catholic— "it's, uh. It's a recent thing."

Lucas walked up to Mike slowly, rubbing sleep from his eyes as Dustin stormed past him, knocking over an empty candleholder in his wake. "I don't care what you're doing in here, dude. I'd help you with cult rituals if you brought your walkie with you." Dustin shoved the radio into Mike's hands, forceful enough to make him wince.

"Yeah, Mike," Lucas added, frowning, "you know this. Did you not think we'd be worried?"

Mike slumped back in the pew. He realized, belatedly, that he'd lost his place in the rosary beads. "Didn't think you'd notice," he said. "I just— didn't want to be interrupted, I guess."

The words echoed in the high ceiling. Interrupted, interrupted praying for the wrong thing, for the wrong person. Interrupted praying for yourself, when you should be praying for Will. Keep pretending he doesn't exist when you can't see him, and see how that turns out for you.

No, he couldn't bring Will into his prayers. Not until God had expelled the curse from his heart, the one that made him hurt and want—

Lucas slid into the seat next to him, interrupting his thoughts. Mike had brought a lantern with him, casting the pew in a sickly yellow glow, but with Lucas's white flashlight, Mike could see the concerned glint in Lucas's eye. He glanced away. 

"I think you're the last person I'd expect to see in a church," Lucas said. Mike didn't like the way he was speaking; his voice was probing, laced with questions Mike couldn't answer. "Your mom would be happy to see you here, though."

"Yeah, right. You really think he's doing this for Mrs. Wheeler?" said Dustin, incredulous. He'd stepped into the pew in front of them, sat backwards with his elbows propped up on the backrest. 

Mike had repeated the Rosary with his mom in mind five seperate times before he'd considered how everything he wished for went wrong, and he'd shoved her from his mind before he could accidentally bring death on his whole family. So, yeah, he was sort of here for his mom, but he was mostly here for himself. Again; selfish. 

"I'm not— it's not for anyone." Selfish and a liar. Mike was really outdoing himself with this one. "I just couldn't sleep."

Dustin raised an eyebrow. "And my first thought when I can't sleep is to ask God to help me out, too. Sure."

He gripped the rosary a little tighter. "Fuck off, dude." Mike wanted to say something else, maybe something a little less rude, but his mouth wouldn't form another word, because he really did want them both to, well, fuck off.

"Not when you don't tell us shit," Lucas added. His foot kicked against Mike's lantern as he scooted closer. Mike flinched as the light flickered, and Lucas frowned for a moment, casting ghostly shadows in the corners of his mouth where the light shone hard. "Come on, man. You're always quiet, even with Will. I mean, I don't remember you shutting up since he—"

Before Lucas could finish his sentence, Dustin leaned over the pew to shove him hard in the shoulder, just as Mike went stiff at the mention of Will. For some reason, Mike felt like no one could speak Will's name in the church, not when he'd think about Will with God looking over his thoughts, and— what was so wrong with his thoughts, for God's sake?

You know, whispered some treacherous part of his brain, the ever-present snake he tried to no avail to shove down. You know why it's wrong. You know what you want.

Mike wanted Will to be his friend again. He hated existing in this liminal space between them, the tension of knowing someone more than yourself before suddenly not knowing them at all. That was it.

"Just start talking, is what he meant." Dustin spoke over Lucas's protests as he held his shoved— grievously injured,according to Lucas, what the hell was that for— shoulder, his eye-roll visible even above his flaslight. "One time you hardly spoke for a whole day, and— dude, I thought Vecna had got you, or something. Freaked me the fuck out."

"I don't have anything to say." The harsh glare of the lamp turned his knuckles white where they hung at his knees; if the light hadn't drained all the color from his skin, his hands still would've looked bloodless from how hard he was gripping the cross. 

The cross edge dug into his palm. It burned, almost; maybe his sins were so great, not even God wanted to touch him.

"Oh, come on," Dustin groaned. "If you couldn't sleep, there was obviously something on your mind. I mean, what'd you come to repent for?" His second sentence was punctuated with a little laugh. To Mike, it felt more like a punch in the gut.

All Mike did was talk. He was all bark, no bite, not until his words hurt hard enough to feel like teeth. He spat everything out without a second thought, but— lately, all his thoughts had held these sharp edges; not even Mike could speak them aloud without cutting his tongue. Everything he thought was harsh and dirty, rusty blades lodged in his mind like laced Halloween candy. Top contenders in this shitty candy bucket included We're not making it out alive this time, why couldn't I love her, what's wrong with me, can I just die and get this over with already, Will looks really nice in the sunlight, my mouth tastes like sick when I think about Will, what's wrong with me, there's something wrong with me, oh, God, I know what's wrong with me—

"Nothing," Mike said, through gritted teeth. What's wrong with me still tugged on his tongue, begging to be let out and slice his throat up all the way up. "Never sinned a day in my life."

"You tore the pages out of a Bible the last time your mom sent you to Sunday school," said Lucas, raising an eyebrow. "You're going to Hell if you don't repent, dude."

Mike threw his hands up in the air. The rosary slid down his arm, catching in the crook of his elbow. "I was excersizing my right to protest!"

"The Constitution isn't in the Bible— oh, God, we're doomed. We're doomed, man," Dustin groaned, throwing his head back with his hands over his eyes. "Did you at least have some sort of revelation, then? Some key to defeating Vecna between you and the big guy up there?"

All the blood drained from his face. If the lantern hadn't already taken the color from his face, he'd look pale as a sheet, or a vampire. With the way his rosary had practically burnt an imprint in his hands, Mike already felt like enough of a monster.

He'd had revelations, all right. None of them were nice enough to share.

"There's no one up there," Mike said, mockingly. "No one's coming to save us."

All his worst words were the ones that echoed. Save us, save us, save us. Maybe everyone else deserved to be saved, but him? Someone born with sin eating up their heart, filled with so much want for something he wasn't allowed to have— why should he be saved? Why should he get what he wanted?

Dustin and Lucas glanced at each other as Mike's voice echoed, sporting matching grimaces. "I was just messing with you," said Dustin, weakly. He sounded hollow, like he couldn't bring himself to deny Mike's words.

"Don't—" Lucas paused, taking a deep breath through his nose like he was trying his hardest not to shake Mike by the shoulders— "come on, don't say shit like that. We're trying to help you out. Don't be a jerk."

Mike shrugged. He got off the pew and knelt, letting his knees hit the ground with a harsh thud. "And I'm trying to pray. Go home."

For a long while, Lucas lingered, frowning in silence as home echoed off the walls. Dustin and Lucas had their own homes. They could sleep in their own beds, but Mike's home felt less liked home and more like a roof over his head the longer the Byers stayed with them. Will's presence had always felt more like home than his own house, but now, Mike could hardly stand sitting in the same room as Will without feeling itchy all over. He always wanted to reach out and touch, for some reason— oh, don't play coy, you know the reason— and then the dread would creep in, nausea stirring in his gut as he sat on his hands, wondering why he wanted Will close so badly when Mike was right next to him.

Once the echoes stopped, Lucas stood up, beckoning to Dustin to follow him. He turned back to Mike halfway to the door, brows knit together in concern. "Come back soon, okay? Will— we don't want you wandering around at night alone anymore."

His voice snagged on Will's name. Mike tightened his grip on the rosary; maybe if he prayed just a bit more, Will's name wouldn't make his heart skip like a scuffed vinyl. 

When Mike stayed silent, Lucas seemed to give up, heaving an exasperated sigh as he shoved the church doors open. In the midst of their loud, creaking hinges, Mike caught Dustin's muttered retort; "Thought you said there was no one up there. What's the point of praying if there's no one to listen?"

"You know he's just struggling," Lucas said, lingering on his choice of words like he had something worse to say. Mike would've taken it if he did. "We all act a little weird, when things get like this."

What's the point of praying if there's no one to listen?

Just because Mike didn't believe someone was listening didn't mean he wouldn't hope for it. Mike hoped someone was listening, and he hoped they fucking hated him. He hoped God wanted him dead. He hoped God would hear his pleas and send him straight to Hell. 

"Yeah, well," said Dustin; he and Lucas were lingering outside the church doors, quiet but not enough for Mike not to listen, "if we're weird, he's a fucking mess. He and Will were like, the glue for the Party, you know? I get why Will's a wreck, but Mike?"

What's the point of praying? Mike knew he hadn't suffered, not like Will had. In comparison, Mike got off easy; that was why he'd gone quiet, why he kept all those jagged thoughts pinned under his tongue. That was why he'd left his walkie at home. No one needed to know how he felt, when everyone he knew had always had it worse. 

"He'll figure it out." Lucas's voice faded away as he walked down the steps. His footsteps were louder than his voice, by now. "Will's back. He'll be okay."

What's the point? Will didn't want him. Will was back, sure. His body was here, his eyes and his hands and hair and the little mole above his upper lip were all here, but not him. Not the Will Mike knew, not the Will that wanted him.

"If you say so." The rest of Dustin's words were swallowed up by the dead air as they walked away. Mike rested his head on the pew and started his prayer over again.

"I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and Earth. . ."

What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?

Mike wasn't sure anymore.

When Mike got home— don't call him that, Will's not your home and he'll never want to be— the sun was already up. As up as it could be when the air was filled with clouds of toxic spores, anyway. 

The clouds mostly lingered up high in the air, too far away to do any real damage, but Hopper had encouraged (well, more like insisted) everyone to bring bandanas with them, just in case the spores drifted lower. Mike had left his at home, mostly because he thought it made him look stupid— but, to be honest, he couldn't bring himself to worry over whether he was breathing in toxic ash. His life was already going to shit, so why would he be bothered by a potential breathing problem? At least he'd have a physical mark of how he'd been hurt.

Everyone else wore the bandanas dutifully, however, especially Will. He could tie the thing behind his head in a second while Mike fumbled for a full minute. With the rest of Will's face obscured, his eyes were only more striking, alert-looking and dark enough to freeze Mike in place, still warm enough to make him want to stand still in front of Will forever—

God, he had to stop this. Will wasn't his anymore, and Mike didn't deserve to think about him like this. He thumbed over the beads strung around his neck, slipped under his shirt. If he displayed them proudly, someone would ask him why, and he would have to explain how he was trying to repent for being born with the wrong heart, or at least trying for God to send me to hell where I belong.

Yeah. That wouldn't make for a great conversation starter.

Currently, Will was still asleep, down in the basement with Jonathan. Mike would've visited, crept downstairs and— not watch Will sleep or anything, just. . .

Okay, so he was a horrible liar. Mike would've watched Will sleep, but just to make sure he was alright! Just to make sure Will was still breathing and that his heart was still beating, and, maybe, if Jonathan wasn't there, Mike would've laid his head on Will's chest to make sure, or something. Hypothetically, because Jonathan was very much there, and Jonathan was very much terrifying. Not like Mike would ever admit that out loud, but he really, really was. 

At the moment, Mike was sat on the couch, all alone and Jonathan-free (for now) in the early morning. The house was quiet, which meant Mike was free to not stare daggers down the basement stairs, and not hope Will would walk into the living room instead of Jonathan— no, definitely not. He wasn't hoping for anything at all, other than maybe for God to strike him down.

God was entirely uncaring of his hopes, apparently. Just as Mike turned away, footsteps pounded up the stairs, freezing him in place. The steps were too loud to be Will, surely; they had a soft but noticeable weight to them, too heavy for Will's short frame. Mike could probably place his chin on Will's head, with how tall he'd gotten.

"Mike?" said a voice, deep and scratchy. "What are you doing up?"

That was Jonathan, surely. Mike couldn't remember Will's voice being that deep, even recently—

Will stepped in front of him, head tilted with sleepy confusion. Mike almost fainted on the spot.

Sometimes, Mike forgot just how different Will had become in their year apart (and sure, it had only been six months, but it felt like a fucking decade). He'd grown up was how Mike would put it, if he hadn't noticed every new detail about Will. 

What had really happened was this; Will had filled out, not in a muscled way, but like he'd grown into his own skin. He'd shot up like a fucking beanstalk, too. Mike remembered staring out the plane window and thinking about how he'd grown so tall, and surely Will would still be short because why would he grow up without Mike, they never did anything without each other, then having to hold his jaw up before it fell on the floor when Will was very nearly eye-level with him.

He'd had some vague dream of Will's head fitting snug in his chest, shattered so instantly Mike had hardly been able to hug him from the shock. And when Will spoke— his voice was deep, throaty, terrifyingly different. It sent Mike into a days-long crisis, which had never exactly left him. He'd just got better at pushing it down, most of the time.

Now was not most of the time. Now, Mike was once again struggling to keep his jaw shut, because Will was still blinking away sleep and there were these little flyaway hairs curling around his ears, and Mike wanted to brush the tiredness from his face with his hand, maybe, or his lips, and God, he was going to Hell. He'd never cared about damnation before, but with death as close as a second away, Mike was thinking about it more than ever.

"You there?" Will raised an eyebrow. His eyes were still striking, face covered or not, with those little bits of green that glinted in the sun.

If he wanted to get out a coherent response, Mike had to stop focusing on Will's eyes, so he tugged the rosary hard against his neck and averted his gaze. "I, uhm— yeah. Sorry. Didn't sleep much last night."

Will looked him up and down, scanning Mike's body quick enough to be casual. It still made Mike feel pinned, like Will could see all the snakes in Mike's heart with a moment's glance. "Oh. That's, uh— well," he said, sitting carefully on the edge of the couch, far enough from Mike to make him itch to move closer, "I heard you didn't sleep at all last night, actually."

The space between them got smaller without him noticing. Mike had never been great at controlling himself, either. "Yeah, well. Maybe your information source is biased."

"Dustin and Lucas aren't biased," said Will. He moved away from Mike just a little, something no one would notice unless they were fixated and insane. "They're just— why didn't you have your walkie on you?"

"Your biased information source didn't tell you?" Sure, maybe Mike was being a little petty by refusing to mention Dustin and Lucas by name, but he hadn't wanted anyone to know where he was going, least of all Will. "I didn't want to be bothered."

Will's eyes traveled down Mike's face, lingering on his collarbone. The rosary beads dug into his skin, reminding Mike why Will was really staring. He tugged his shirt collar up from where it had slipped on his shoulder. "Stay away from the street lamps next time, then. Lucas saw you pass by his house."

The way Will spoke was light, teasing enough to send a weird flutter through Mike's chest. Not for the first time, Mike wished he really was a vampire; maybe the light would've killed him on impact, and Lucas never would've seen him at all, and Will never would've made butterflies swoop into his stomach again. "Tell Lucas— I mean, your biased information source— to stop shoving himself in places he doesn't belong."

"He's your friend, Mike," Will responded, almost exasperated. "He has a right to wonder why you're suddenly some, like, devout Catholic."

"I'm not—" Mike threw his hands up in the air before bringing them down just as suddenly, all the fight going out of him in one big exhale. "I just needed a place to think."

Almost as suddenly as Mike had lost his fire— because saying he wasn't religious would make his fervent prayers a lot more odd than they were already— Will brought a hand up to Mike's neck, tugging on his shirt collar. "And thinking involves, what, Catholic jewelry?"

There was a moment where Mike thought Will was making fun of him for wearing 'jewelry', and his heart nearly dropped out of his chest. But instead of malice on Will's face, he had this little smirk and a teasing glint in his eye, and his hand was still on Mike's neck, two fingers slipped under the rosary beads, and Mike's skin was growing uncomfortably hot and he had to move, now.

Thankfully, Will did the work for him, pulling back like Mike had burned him. He glanced away, smile gone, uncomfortable silence coming to replace it. 

Mike tugged his collar back into place, skin still hot where Will's fingers had been. "It's not jewelry," Mike said, rolling his eyes like it would dispel the tension, "it's a rosary. For, uh, like— prayers, and stuff."

"And stuff." Will raised an eyebrow. "You're a great convert."

"Shut up," mumbled Mike. His hand came up to rest against the rosary, fingers drifting over the beads in the hopes of calming his racing heart. "It's just—" and God, here he went again, rambling on when he should've just shut his mouth, "it helps, I guess. It's hard to have a breakdown when I'm trying to keep track of how many Hail Mary's I've said instead, and hey, who knows, maybe someone up there really is listening. Maybe we'll all be saved, I don't know."

For a while, Will was quiet, letting Mike's tangled string of words linger in the air. Then, he said, simply, "Do you think so?"

Sure, Mike wanted to get in God's good graces, but not lying to Will was more important than getting to Heaven— unless the lie was that one little thing, that one little (large, large enough to choke him) snake in his heart— "Fuck no. Do you?"

"I don't believe in God," said Will, shrugging, "and if he does exist, then he sucks. So, no."

For lack of a better word, God really did suck. If God was real, he had sat back and watched atrocity after atrocity be hurled at a group of kids without lifting a finger to stop them. Maybe God could be attributed to some minor miracles— finding Will alive in the Upside Down, or him not being shot to death by those military men back in Lenora— but those were human efforts first, not the whims of someone who had let the world hang in a child's hands. If God had 'let' Will live, why let him fall into the Upside Down at all?

"You know, uh," Mike started, a little shaky, "sometimes, I think— if he's real, do you think he's punishing us?"

Will froze. Mike could see the way he stiffened against the couch cushions, back going rigid as he glanced away (because, again, Mike was fixated and insane). "For what?" His words were raspy, like his mouth had gone dry.

"I don't know," said Mike, "for our sins, or something. Or maybe Hawkins really is cursed by the devil." The rosary around his neck felt heavier, almost, like it wanted him to bow his head and repent at the mere mention of sin. 

"I used to think that." Will's voice was louder, like the words were coming out before he could stop himself. "When I was in the Upside Down, I thought it was a punishment for— because—" and he choked a little, swallowing the rest of his sentence. "I thought I really was in Hell."

Everything Will said sounded small and dull, like just the thought made Will feel like he was in Hell again. "You— hey, come on," Mike said, leaning forward to get himself in front of Will's dark gaze. "Why would you think that? There's nothing to punish you for."

Will just shrugged, glancing down to peel a bit of skin off his fingernails. Mike made his hands into fists to stop himself from doing something stupid, like pulling Will's hands off his nail or kissing all the spots where he'd stripped his skin raw, because he didn't want that. He couldn't. "I dont know, I think lots of people would disagree. The Bible, too."

Well. Mike had been enough of an asshole child to get out of a lot of Masses, but he'd been dragged to enough Sunday sermons to know what Will meant. All those whispered rumors and thinly veiled insults— He's such a sweet boy, but don't you think he's a bit old for those sorts of clothes?— the readings in church and and the hatred disguised as prayers— For our brothers and sisters afflicted by the ongoing crisis, let their lives be free from sin first and free from disease second— Mike knew what the worst people thought about Will, and he knew what they wanted to happen to people like Will. But those people deserved better than the world that treated them so poorly (except for Mike, who deserved to go to Hell for thinking about Will) and Will wasn't like those people. Will was too good to be afflicted with something that could hurt so much.

"That's—" Mike paused, because how the hell was he supposed to say this without exposing himself— "I mean, just because people say those things about you doesn't make them true. You're not like that."

"And if I was?" Will's tone was carefully neutral, but Mike could hear the shake behind it. His lip was trembling, just a little, and Mike cursed himself for noticing at all.

Maybe Mike had phrased his words a little poorly, but there was a small, hateful part of him who would rather be recognized as a zealous bigot than— one of those people. At least, until Mike's train of thought went from Will thinks I'm a bigoted asshole to Will thinks I would hate him if he was what everyone said about him. And he'd rather be the town queer than have his best friend hate him, so Mike hurried to correct himself. "Then that's— it's fine if you were, but you're not. So."

Will couldn't be like that. He was too good, too kind and soft to be thrown into a world so harsh, to be associated with people who were hated for merely existing. That was Mike's world. That was what he deserved, not Will.

"Yeah." There was a bit of dry laughter in his voice, like Mike had made a bad joke. "Yeah, I'm not."

Of course he wasn't. It wasn't like Mike was expecting Will to disagree with him, but hearing Will say it out loud made Mike's heart drop regardless.

Will couldn't be like Mike, because didn't deserve it. Will didn't deserve the pain of looking at boys and feeling the same sinking realization Mike had felt in his stomach, that sudden swoop of oh, I like him. He didn't deserve all the names that had stuck to him like glue— from rather sweet, isn't he? to fucking fairy— and he didn't deserve to have himself to sleep at night, to pray and pray for his feelings to go away, to prove people wrong for once and not be the queer everyone knew he would be. 

Will didn't deserve any of those things— but to be fair, he hadn't deserved to vanish in Hell for a week, either. If God was real, maybe he was testing Will, just to see how much pain someone could take before they stopped being good.

(Mike must've been the failed experiment. He'd stopped being good in the slightest once he realized he was the one who should've taken the brunt of all those rumors.)

They'd fallen into a thick silence, like the weight of their conversation had seeped into the air. Mike hadn't talked to Will about anything important like this since they'd arrived back in Hawkins; it had been all stilted conversations, shitty small-talk and awkward glances that didn't feel like them. They were supposed to be Mike-and-Will, not Mike, then Will. This was a start, maybe, but Will still felt closed off, and Mike couldn't figure out why.

"I, uh," Mike started— his words hung heavy in the air, embarrassingly loud in the silence— "I'm gonna get my mom to take me to the relief center, I think. Something to do."

Will shrugged, glancing away. "Don't wander off without telling anyone again, then. I'll pick you up." 

The words hardly registered in Mike's mind; he was too busy watching Will. The collar of his shirt had slipped a little, collarbones bare and flushed under the fabric. Mike wanted to trace his fingers along the skin until Will bloomed red, drag his thumb against Will's cheek and map the corners of his mouth with his index finger and watch his whole face flush dark. He wanted to feel Will's smile on his own mouth until he knew Will's lips better than his own. Will deserved love, and Mike wanted to give him that love, but mostly Mike really, really wanted to kiss Will, just to give him what he deserved, and— oh, God.

These weren't thoughts Mike let himself have at all, much less in front of Will. These thoughts were reserved for sleepless, self-loathing nights, nights where he'd imagine how Will's hand fit into his own before cursing himself for thinking about Will whatsoever, because Will would hate to know Mike wanted him like this when Mike had done nothing but hurt him. Will deserved everything, but Mike? 

Mike deserved nothing, least of all Will.

"Mike?" Will's words jolted him back to life, and Mike belatedly realized he'd been staring past Will's shoulder for at least a minute. "I, uh— it's alright if I bring you home, right? I mean, your mom can probably bring you home too, if you don't want me to—"

"No!" Mike yelled, a little too loud. Will gave him a weird look, and Mike hoped to God his face wasn't bright red already. "No, it's fine. You can pick me up."

Will raised an eyebrow, but said nothing about Mike's weird tone. "You know, I think your mom might kill you if you make her wait any longer. You should probably go." His mouth twitched up into a tiny smile. Mike really wanted to know how it felt against his mouth. 

God, he was doing a terrible job of praying his sins away if he couldn't even control his thoughts in front of Will.

"Shit, yeah. You think she'll go easy on me if I tell her I was praying?" Mike asked, pulling the rosary out of his shirt and waving it at Will. 

When Will smiled again, Mike could've pumped his fist in the air with how happy it made him to make Will smile. Because he was insane, or whatever. "Maybe, but then she'll start making you go to church with her."

Mike winced, slipping the rosary back under his shirt. "No thanks."

The cross hung heavy on his neck, tugging on his skin like a reminder. He doesn't want you, it seemed to say, whispered under the clack of beads as it shifted against his skin. Even if they're right, even if Will really is like you, why would he want you? You've done nothing but hurt him. He deserves everything, and you're nothing.

Maybe, if Will was like him and still obviously good, Mike wasn't that awful for thinking about Will how he did. Maybe he could stop praying, or maybe he could rip this damned cross off his neck and crush its beads under his heel. And maybe, just maybe, Will would—

He shoved open the front door, and the crucifix fell hard against his sternum. He shut the thought down before it could continue.

stage 2: anger (sharpens to a point/and sheds my skin)

Mike knew that thinking about Will wasn't exactly the most productive or generally good thing to do, but that didn't mean he could stop himself. Even when the cool metal of the crucifix swung against his chest as he leaned forwards and backwards, methodically cutting sandwiches and trying not to zone out and cut his own thumb off, said crucifix only reminded him more of Will than God. Sacrilege at it's finest.

It's just that what Will went through wasn't fucking fair, okay? He'd been dragged into Hell and thought it was punishment for being bullied. Not even for actually being— well, you know what— but because people thought he was different. All Mike could see was Will's wounded face as he'd spoke, his tight frown and faraway eyes, and sure, Mike was probably going to mangle every damn sandwich with his knife if he kept thinking about Will instead of what he was actually doing,but Mike couldn't stand to think Will thought he deserved to be punished—

"Is that a fashion statement?"

Oh, God— okay, Mike had to stop taking his name in vain when he still couldn't get himself to take that rosary off his neck, seriously.

Robin Buckley had been eyeing him for the past fifteen minutes, and it was starting to get unnerving, if not downright creepy. Mike vaguely knew her from her mall job at Scoops, and Dustin's long soliloquies about Steve's totally awesome friend he really should date, but other than that, he couldn't attribute much more to her than a name. 

Mostly, Mike only avoided the relief center in case he saw his friends long enough for them to pry into how he was doing (bad, worse, and at present miserable, but that was something only he needed to know). But, to be honest, he also avoided going because Robin gave Mike the creeps.

"It's— no," Mike mumbled, keeping his eyes pointedly focused on the sandwich he was cutting. Maybe if he stared hard enough, Robin might get the hint and go be unnerving somewhere else.

She was just weirdly loud, and she didn't carry herself like any of the older girls Mike knew (girl, singular, because Nancy was generally the only older teenager who talked to him). She always had her head held high, and Mike had never seen her get all nervous and hair-twirly, or whatever girls did when they talked to boys (boy, singular, as in Steve, who he also only knew from Scoops and Jonathan beating him to a pulp) and Mike had not been watching her, okay? His eyes just wandered over to her because she liked to talk loud enough for the whole room to hear. He was not envious of her, and he definitely wasn't scared of her. Nope. No way.

"So— what? You think God's gonna save us?" Robin's tone was casual, eyes focused on her own sandwich like she hardly even cared enough to look up at Mike. In comparison, Mike felt like he was trying too hard with his lack of eye contact, so he sucked it up and abandoned eye contact with his butter knife.

Mike shook his head. "Nope. Not really." If he looked closer, Mike could've noticed how Robin was wearing these little cross earrings, black studs that Mike did not notice at all, because he was not looking closer. Nope. No way.

Even when Mike had his eyes on her, Robin didn't bother glancing up from the sandwich she was cutting. She held her knife like she wanted to put it in someone, and Mike was not fearing for his life, not even the tiniest bit. "I think God abandoned us a long time ago," she said, jabbing her knife into a jar of peanut butter. She had a steak knife, for some God-awful reason, and Mike was sort of beginning to sweat as she made holes in her bread. "Too many sinners in Hawkins for him to want anything to do with us. That rosary's not gonna save you if he's not looking at all."

See? Creepy. Mike's fear was totally justified.

"You know it's a rosary?" That was what got Robin to finally glance up, knife poised precariously close to Mike's wrist.

"Catholic mother," she snorted, as an explanation. "I know way too much— oh, hell, you don't even know my name and I'm already telling you about my devil mother." She raised her hand up, presumably for a handshake, which would have worked if she still wasn't holding that fucking knife. "Robin— uh, Buckley, if you care. I noticed you staring, but everyone stares, so I get it. I'm loud, and no one here likes to talk."

Mike got the urge to back away a little, but he held his ground. "I know you," he said, before realizing that sounded just as creepy as Robin out of context, "from, like, Scoops. At the mall. And it's Mike." He still wasn't sure if he'd trust Robin with his last name. "I don't think I want to shake hands with a knife blade."

Robin glanced down at her hands, eyes wide like the knife had only appeared once Mike mentioned it. "Oh, shit, sorry! Forgot I was holding it— wait, Mike? Like, Nancy Wheeler's brother Mike, or. . ." She trailed off, seemingly distracted as she searched for a place to put her knife. It ended up stabbed inside the jelly jar, peanut butter remains still smeared across its surface.

So Robin already knew his last name. Double the creep factor. "You know Nancy?"

"Yeah," said Robin, enthusiastic to an unnerving degree. "You know, I see the resemblance. Same hair, same staring habit, prickly and rude. . . oh, yeah, Scoops! That was why I recognized you."

Okay, all those things were definitely true about the both of them, but who did Robin think she was to be insulting his sister? "Go say that to Nancy and see where that gets you."

"She'd laugh, probably," Robin said, shrugging, "but two months ago, I'd probably have a bullet hole in my shoulder. So-o," and she paused to turn away, drawing out her vowels as she picked her knife up again, "if I can get her to warm up to me, of all people, how hard can her little brother be? And Steve's not here, so I thought I'd take a stab at making child friends. Follow in his footsteps, or whatever."

Yeah, Mike wasn't even going to question that. He knew enough about Steve from the amount of times he'd caught Steve sneaking through his sister's window. "So you're talking to me. . . because I'm a child? I don't like where this is going."

"No, idiot— sorry, that's a term of endearment, I swear— I'm talking to you because you're interesting. And I wanted to know what your deal was with that rosary, 'cause I think Nancy would punch God if she got the chance. I wanted to know if you were like her, or if you were some religious freak."

Robin returned to her sandwiches, and Mike decided to do the same thing. At least three feet away, to avoid Robin's literal weapon. "Is freak a term of endearment, too?" Now Mike was freaked out and annoyed. Robin was loud, and rude, and she didn't seem to think before she spoke at all, and she acted kind of like Mike, which— no, he did not want to think about that.

"Yes, actually," she said, shrugging again when Mike rolled his eyes. "I mean, if it bothers you, tell me to screw off and I'll go," and Robin said this so casually, Mike was almost impressed, "but it'll really hurt my feelings, and I know you wouldn't want that. So tell me, what's up with that rosary?"

"What's up with your cross earrings?" Mike retorted. He wasn't too keen on answering her question.

Robin raised an eyebrow, like she knew something Mike didn't. "You noticed these studs? Wow, you really were staring."

"Yeah, because you're loud. How the hell did my sister warm up to you?" Mike winced even as the words came out. He just— Mike wasn't in a great mood, okay? Between not sleeping for an entire day, and Will's fucking frown that Mike really wanted to kiss better, and Mike wondering when Will had stopped telling him things like this, Mike was one minor inconvenience away from losing it entirely. Maybe he'd take Robin's knife and go on a peanut butter and jelly rampage, or storm off to yell at Will and ask why he'd changed so much, because apparently yelling at everyone was something he did now. Apparently.

"I'm persistent," she said, seeming only mildly phased by Mike's outburst, "and I can never really tell when someone's actually mad at me, and we were both put on sandwich duty, so you're stuck with me for the next hour or so. Anyways, you wanted to hear about my earrings?"

"I could just walk out right now."

Robin laughed, and Mike turned back to his next sandwich in the hopes she wouldn't think he was genuinely interested in her earrings, because he wasn't. "Yeah, right. Everyone has free will, unless you believe in God, I guess. Then everything's predetermined, sort of, because God sees all but you're still 'free to choose', or whatever, which doesn't make sense whatsoever, but— I digress. You want to know what I think about it all?"

"I'll use my free will and say sure," Mike said. Regrettably, he was smiling. Maybe he should use his 'free will' to get the fuck out of here.

"I think," Robin said, leaning in close with a conspiratory glance around the room, "he's a fraud. I think his holier-than-thou, I'm-so-perfect shtick is stupid and see-through. I think, if he's real, then God is just as bad as the rest of us for letting his asshole church congregation go on a witch hunt beating children half to death over a— board game, or whatever it is you freak children do. And I hope he sees me wearing these earrings because I hate his guts, and I hope he knows there's nothing he can do about them until I die, because I have free will. He's just the poor fuck who got stuck handling a planet full of shit."

All throughout Robin's rant, Mike had been methodically spreading peanut butter over a piece of bread, more focused on letting his jaw drop as she spoke than where his hands were moving. When he glanced down, Mike realized he had smeared peanut butter over four separate slices of bread, but he was finding it hard to care when Robin's words were still ringing in his head like someone had punched a bell in his brain.

His mouth was strangely dry, like all the air had been dragged from his lungs and scraped at his throat along the way. He'd never thought someone could be so unabashedly honest to someone they'd hardly met. "I— wow, okay," he rasped, blinking rapidly. "You, uh— is this, like, something you care about a lot? Religion-bashing?" 

Robin leaned away from him, a sheepish smile on her face. "I mean, I could tell you a lot about free will and shit, because that was my favorite argument to disprove my mother, but generally I just don't know when to shut up. Your turn." 

She gestured to his neck, and Mike internally groaned when he realized his shirt collar had slipped again. He had to stop 'accidentally' taking Will's clothes from their shared closet; they never fit right, not since Will had gone and had a growth spurt without telling him. 

"It's not— it's nothing, really," Mike muttered, squaring his shoulders. If he tried hard enough, maybe he could shrink in on himself and disappear. "The prayer's, uh. Distracting, I guess."

"Really? I couldn't stand it," said Robin. "All that sitting still, repeating the same bullshit over and over again?" She snorted, shaking her head. "God, no thanks. What are you trying to distract yourself from, anyway?"

The way she was looking at him— eyes narrowed and questioning like she could see straight into his soul— made Mike freeze, withdrawing in on himself even more. The knife slipped from his fingers and clattered against the table. "I don't know, probably the fact that we're all going to die?"

Robin leaned over to grab his dropped knife. "That's all? Huh. Nice peanut butter monstrosity, by the way." She gestured with Mike's knife to his four slices of heavily peanut-buttered bread. Mike winced.

"Yeah, well," Mike huffed, making two sandwiches out of his peanut butter monstrosities, "it's hard to focus on making the right kind of sandwich when you keep saying weird shit."

"I thought you liked my weird shit." Robin grabbed Mike's sandwiches and put them in two plastic bags, seemingly uncaring of how she'd called them monstrosities only moments earlier.

Mike smiled a little, despite himself. "I, uh— well, it could be worse. Are you really going to hand those out?"

Apparently, Mike had said something hilarious, because Robin laughed to herself for a solid ten seconds before she caught Mike giving her a weird look. "Some people really like peanut butter, you know?" 

She even waggled her eyebrows, like this was some inside joke she thought Mike would get. Yep. Still weird and unnerving, but Mike didn't think he was one to judge. "Uh. Sure. Are you going to use your free will and pass those out?"

"Hm," she hummed, tapping her chin like she was putting a lot of thought into this, "no, I think you should. You look like a guy who needs to use his free will some more—"

"Buckley? Why the hell are you talking to Mike?"

And there was the other half of why he didn't volunteer at the relief center.

Dustin and Lucas were walking up to him and Robin; Lucas had a laundry basket of clothes balanced on his hip, while Dustin was carrying absolutely nothing. Lucas did not look happy about this. Behind them trailed a shadowy, tired-looking figure, a little hunched over behind Lucas, too hidden to see except for the brown flyaways of his hair, like he'd just woken up. And since Mike was fixated and insane, he immediately recognized those strands of hair as Will's, because only his hair curled up like that after he'd run his hands through it, and why did Mike know this, again?

(Because he loved Will, obviously. That didn't mean Mike deserved to know anything about him, though.)

"You just hate seeing your friends have other friends!" Robin responded, rolling her eyes. By the time she'd finished her sentence, Dustin and Lucas had come close to the table. Will was still trailing behind, a few paces away like he didn't want to be associated with them.

"No, dude," said Dustin— Robin didn't seem to flinch at being called a dude, which only made Mike more taken aback— "it's just weird seeing you talk to Mike. Why would you do that to yourself?"

Mike opened his mouth to protest, but Robin swooped in for him. "He's not that bad, and he's my only child friend who will volunteer at the same station as me. Right now, he's kind of number one."

Dustin made an outraged noise, jaw dropping wide open. "You two are friends now?" Lucas and Will rolled their eyes in tandem. Mike was much more focused on Will.

"I don't know," she said, turning to Mike. He backed away, even though Robin had set her knife down minutes ago. "Are we?"

Hello? Why did he have to be put on the spot like this? "I—" and now Robin was leveling him with possibly the most terrifying stare he had ever seen, eyes narrowed like she was God seeing into his soul, so if Mike said something wrong he was probably going to get struck by lightning, "uh, well. I guess there's worse people to be friends with."

"You could be friends with Steve," Robin agreed. Dustin nodded solemnly.

"He's literally your— nevermind," Mike sighed, shaking his head. "Why are you here?"

Lucas raised his laundry basket. "Uh, donations?" He shook the basket like Mike was an idiot for asking that question, which— fair. "And Dustin wanted to help sort clothes with Mr. Munson."

"What's little Byers doing here, then?" Robin asked, gesturing to where Will was skulking behind Lucas.

Now that Robin had pointed him out, Will finally stepped into view. He glanced to Mike for one small second, then looked away, probably because Mike was already staring like a crazy person. If he already missed Will after not seeing him for a few hours, how the hell had he survived when Will had been gone in Lenora?

(He hadn't, really. He'd hid in his basement and played Nintendo listlessly, wishing Will was with him and wishing he'd listened when Will had wanted them to spend the rest of their lives together in this basement. He'd spend the rest of his life in Antarctica, as long as he was with Will.) 

"I'm taking Mike home, Robin," Will said, shrugging. "His mom didn't want him walking back.

"You know Robin?" What the fuck? How many friends had Will made without him? (And there he went, being selfish again. Will could have friends he didn't know about, because Will's life was more than Mike. It still hurt to know how much Will had moved on without him. He couldn't help being selfish, when it came to Will.)

Will gave him a weird look. "She worked at Scoops last summer?" And, okay, Mike should have connected the dots, but he'd been focused on other things last summer. Like El, and loving El, and why he didn't even like El— which, thankfully, was all over now. He'd broken up with El, which meant he could finally really like her in the way he wanted to. Fortunately, this freed up Mike's mind from El, but unfortuantely, it made a hole in Mike's head just the right size for Will-related thoughts to slip into.

"To be fair," Robin interjected, before Mike could defend himself, "I didn't remember Mike's name, either. How do you two even know each other?"

Robin had leveled her stare on Will, now, eyes narrowed and dark as she looked Will up and down. Unlike Mike, Will didn't flinch; he stared right back at her with the same hard stare. If Mike didn't know Will, he would've thought he disliked her— but with the way he was shifting on his feet, heel tapping against the floor, Mike knew he was at least a little uncomfortable. 

For a moment, Mike was glad to recognize something about Will that hadn't changed, until he felt the rosary shift around his neck like a reminder that he didn't deserve to know Will at all.

"He's my— we're friends," Will said, keeping his eyes on Robin even when Mike was sure he knew Mike was staring. "You seriously don't remember Steve shoving us through your back room every week?"

Just before Will cut himself off, Mike's heart had fluttered, swooping in his chest at the thought of Will calling him his. When he changed trajectory, Mike swore he could feel his heart shatter. He couldn't blame Will, not when Mike hadn't done much to deserve to be his, but it still made him feel a bit sick. Like he was watching his whole life slip through a sink drain without doing anything at all.

"I try to block that whole summer out," Robin said with a wave of her hand. "Anyways. You three are stalling here, and if Ms. Kelley sees you milling around she'll yell at me, and I do not want that. Also, I've had my fill of children for the day, so go. Shoo."

Dustin sent Robin a rude gesture, but walked away regardless. "You'll miss us when Harrington doesn't come back!" Lucas followed, rolling his eyes as he paused to mouth something to Will. In response, Will nodded, and Mike tried not to chuck Robin's steak knife across the room. Why was everyone close to Will but him?

With Dustin and Lucas gone, the air around them was plunged into an awkward silence. Will turned to look at Mike, and Mike flitted between looking at Will and the floor, and Robin stared at them like they were both crazy. Mike couldn't blame her, either.

"What did I say about milling around?" she said, giving Mike what she probably thought was a pat on the shoulder, but was more like a shove harsh enough to knock the wind out of him. "Go home, little Wheeler. Make sure little Byers knows you're grateful for the ride— wait, does he even know how to drive?"

"I know well enough," Will said, shrugging. "I have my learners permit— well, had, but either way, I won't crash, uh, little Wheeler into a tree." His mouth quirked up into a small smile as he tried (and failed) to surpress his laughter. 

Mike whirled on him in mock outrage, only a little hurt to be called little, because he was nearly fifteen, for God's sake. "I'm not— I'm literally taller than both of you!"

"Emotionally, you are small and stunted," Robin said, "ergo, little. Now go. Seriously, I thought you'd be jumping for joy, getting out of being stuck with me early."

"I am not—" wait, no, she wasn't exactly wrong— "whatever. Have fun making more peanut butter monstrosities." Mike walked out from behind the table, really internally fuming this time. Sure, he wasn't the best at handling his emotions, but how could anyone be in the literal apocalypse? And how could she tell so easily?

He stormed in front of Will, only checking behind him once— okay, maybe twice— to make sure Will was following him. They got halfway through the relief center before Will spoke, apparently unable to contain his laughter any longer. "Come on, Mike, you're not stuck with Robin anymore. Where's your joy?"

"She called me emotionally stunted." Mike shoved the door open and walked into the parking lot, before realizing he wasn't sure which car was Will's. "How am I supposed to have any joy after that?"

Thankfully, before Mike could embarrass himself by asking which car Will drove here— Joyce's old green bug was nowhere in sight, and it honestly made Mike a little sad— Will made his way to some scuffed gray thing parked haphazardly next to a tree. "I don't know. I just thought you seemed uncomfortable next to her, but I guess I read it wrong. Sorry."

"Well, I wasn't," Mike retorted, "so." He trailed off, pulling open the passenger door of Will's car. Technically, it could've been Jonathan or Joyce's car, and not knowing whose seat he was in only made him more angry.

They fell into silence— not really comfortable, but not uncomfortable, just odd, strained silence— as Will started the car. Some vague, synth-heavy beat started to play, presumably from some cassette tape Will had bought without Mike, playing some music Mike didn't know Will was into. Mike got the sudden urge to pull the tape out and crack it in half. "You were the uncomfortable one," Mike huffed, leaning into the headrest as Will shakily turned out of the parking lot. Distracting a new driver with his stunted emotions probably wasn't his best move, but he hadn't made a lot of good decisions, lately. This was just the latest of many.

Thankfully, Will managed to keep his eyes on the road as he spoke. "I don't think I was." Mike could see his annoyance in the way his jaw twitched, the way his mouth tightened in a firm line— God, stop looking at his lips, idiot— and Mike didn't want to press him, but Will's stuttered sentence of He's my— he's my— he's my— kept repeating in his head like a broken cassette, and it was making Mike insane. Not like he wasn't already.

"Oh, come on," Mike said, "I saw you. You were looking at her weird, and you kept tapping your foot, and you looked like you wanted to bolt out of the room like a startled rabbit. I mean, I get that Robin's a little unnerving, but she's really not that bad."

"I don't even know her, Mike," said Will. "Just— I don't know, I thought maybe you'd talk to someone from the Party before you started making friends with strangers."

"We were hardly talking," Mike countered, throwing a hand in the air and hitting the ceiling, because apparently this car was smaller than the Byers' last vehicle, "we were just next to each other. There's nothing in my life to talk about, anyway, not since the world started ending and you— you started hesitating before calling me your friend, apparently."

The car stuttered as Will's foot fell off the gas pedal. If there had been any other cars on the road, they probably would've been rear-ended, but Mike couldn't really bring himself to care because he was mad at Will, and it shouldn't have been a big deal, but it felt like the end of the world because Mike was never mad at Will. Never.

Will's driving was slower, now, more measured. He still hadn't turned to look Mike in the eye. "That's not what I meant when I said talking," he said. "Dustin and Lucas and I, we just— we want you to actually tell us shit, you know? Even if you have gone into some sort of, like, religious fervor or whatever, we just want to know so you don't wander outside at two in the morning and get your head bit off by a Demogorgon."

Mike let his head fall against the headrest with a groan. Dramatic, maybe, but why did everyone think he was losing it after sneaking out twice? "Seriously? You're all ganging up on me so I'll talk about my feelings? Since when did you start conspiring with everyone but me?"

Will made a careful turn onto the next street, looking both ways before speaking again. At least Mike's shitty mood wouldn't get them in a car accident. "I'm not conspiring, I'm— we're concencered. This—" and he gestured to Mike's hand, which had unconsciously drifted to the beads under his shirt, "isn't like you. Didn't you try to bite your mom when she wanted to send you to Bible camp?"

"I was six," Mike groaned, with more laughter than anger, "and she wanted to send me for three weeks. That is absolutely a biteable offense."

"Well, if it was three weeks," said Will, laughing. His laughter dispelled all the tension in the air, and for a moment, they were Mike-and-Will, and everything was smoothed over again. For a moment, all that existed was Will's warm smile and the fluttery feeling in Mike's heart, and he could hardly remember what had felt so unfair only hours ago.

"You know," Will continued, once his laughter had died down, "we could make it a trade. The feelings, I mean."

With great strength, Mike resisted the urge to throw his head against the car headrest again. "How much did Dustin and Lucas shell out to make you so insistent on this?"

A little smile flickered at Will's mouth. "Enough to retire and play Nintendo in your basement for the rest of our lives. I mean, if you don't want to, it's okay." He faltered, going quiet as he made another turn. "It's just— I don't know, we haven't talked much, and it'd be nice to know if you're, like, doing okay, but— sorry, I'm being weird. You don't have to say anything."

Mike shook his head vehemently. He'd take any excuse to talk to Will, even if it meant being emotionally vulnerable when most of his emotions revolved around Will. "No, it's not weird, I just— what do I even say?"

"You could tell me what you're so pissed off about, maybe," said Will. For a moment, Mike thought Will was annoyed with him, until he realized Will was still smiling. "I mean, you're dramatic enough already, but I swear I've seen you throw your hands up in the air five times since you got in the car."

"The car," Mike said, a little strangled, before realizing he sounded sort of insane without context. "That's just— that's it, okay? I don't know whose car this is, and I didn't know you'd gotten your learner's permit until five minutes ago, and you haven't even mentioned driving once since I saw you in Lenora. It's like you're just forgetting to tell me all these important things in your life, and—" he groaned, throwing his hands in the air again before remembering what Will had said and pushing them firmly in his lap. "I don't get it. We're friends. You're supposed to tell me everything."

There were a million more things he could've said, a million seething angry thoughts he could've screamed into the dashboard until his throat had gone raw. He couldn't let them out, not without exposing his gnashing, jagged thoughts and cutting Will on their sharp teeth, but God, he wanted to. 

He wanted to tell Will how he hadn't deserved to have his whole childhood taken away like that, how angry it made him that Will had been dragged around by monsters and hardly a soul had lifted a hand to truly help him. He wanted to tell Will how, even before monsters had started to seep into their lives, Will hadn't deserved to be hated by the whole town off a rumor. He'd deserved more than his deadbeat, asshole dad, and he'd deserved more than a town that turned the other way when little Will showed up to school with bruises on his wrists. Mike wanted to tell Will how, sometimes, he got angry enough to bring a fucking brick down on the heads of all the people who had hurt Will. 

Sometimes, on the off chance he was selfish enough to pity himself, Mike would think he hadn't deserved it, either. He hadn't deserved to be thrown into a world that would tear him apart if it knew what he was on the inside. He hadn't deserved to be born like this at all, sticky and dirty with want branded across his insides, etched into his lungs and heart by a mistake of biology. Sometimes, Mike's anger overflowed into his hands, and all he wanted to do with them was tear open his heart until he'd found the twisted vein or shrunken muscle that made him wrong. Sometimes, Mike was so angry with himself for being who he was that he'd rather not love anyone at all than love Will.

(But loving Will was nice sometimes, wasn't it? When he laughed and the sound sent shockwaves straight to Mike's heart, or when Will gave him another drawing just for him— sometimes, it was nice. Mike hated living in a world where it couldn't be nice all the time.)

Will pulled into the Wheeler's driveway, and Mike hardly noticed until Will finally turned to face him. "I didn't realize you wanted to know," he said, softly. "Honestly, I didn't think you really cared about what I did anymore."

Unlike Mike, Will didn't sound angry, just resigned. "Will, I— why wouldn't I care? I mean, I know I was a really shitty friend this past year, but I never stopped caring. You're my best friend."

"Well," Will started, smiling. There was this teasing glint in his eye that made Mike want to swoon, which was stupid, because no one fucking swooned except for, like, Victorian maidens. "Start acting like it, and maybe I'll drive you around some more."

He unlocked the car and got out before Mike could respond. Mike hurried after him, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to get to Will. 

"You said it was a trade," Mike said, nearly panting as he stumbled up to where Will was unlocking his front door, "right? Also, when the hell did you get a key to my house?"

Will pushed open the door with a laugh. "Your mom gave it to me the first day we started staying here. Are you sure I don't tell you things, or are you just not paying attention?"

Honestly, Mike had probably been more focused on Will's face whenever that had happened, so he couldn't really excuse himself. "Whatever. It's your turn. Tell me about your feelings, or, uh— anything, I guess. Whatever you wanted to tell me that you thought I wouldn't care about."

Will paused in the middle of the hallway. "Right here?"

"I, uh," and Mike glanced past Will and into the kitchen, where both his mom and Holly were milling about, "no, I guess not. My room?"

"I'll race you," said Will, with a wicked grin. Before Mike could blink, he turned the corner and disappeared.

When he chased after Will, Mike's chest felt lighter than it had in the car— lighter than it had in a long time, really. For a moment, they were Mike-and-Will again, and for a moment, things didn't seem so bad anymore.

For a moment, Mike was almost okay with being himself.

stage 3: bargaining (if i've lost you for good/could there be any other way?)

"Tell me more about free will."

"Oh my God, you actually want to listen to me talk? Never thought I'd see the day."

Robin was on her lunch break, slumped behind the Hawkins High gymnasium with a peanut butter sandwich held between two of her fingers like a cigarette. Peanut butter was probably healthier than lung cancer, so Mike wasn't going to judge. 

It was a miracle Mike had gotten Will to drive him here at all, really. They'd stayed up late together, trading feelings and experiences they'd missed out on with each other like a game of ping pong. They'd tossed the ball back to each other until nightfall; Mike would say Your turn, and Will would say This is going to sound stupid, but I kind of missed your face— hey, stop laughing, I told you it was stupid— so I drew you a lot. I mean, I know it's weird, but you were the one who wanted to know what I was doing in Lenora, and I wasn't going to lie, and Mike would say No, that's not weird at all, I, uh, I really want to see them, actually, because he couldn't act normal about anything when it came to Will, and Will would say Maybe later, besides, I left most of my sketchbooks in Cali. Your turn.

Once they'd gotten bored of their game of emotional ping-pong, Mike had suggested they hook up his Nintendo and take turns playing Mario, or whatever you want to play, really, though this is probably lame, and I bet they had better arcades in Lenora. Will said he hadn't really gone to any arcades in Lenora, and that playing with you is more fun, anyway. Mike had tried very hard not to blush bright red, but from Will's smug grin, he knew he had failed.

So, to put it shortly, Mike and Will had stayed up until about two in the morning taking turns on his Nintendo, and Mike had been the one to drag him out of bed (Mike's bed, because Will had fallen asleep there and Mike had taken the floor for reasons that absolutely did not involve potentially waking up cuddled against Will) the next morning. Sure, he could've just started with that, but it was hard for him to stop talking about Will once he'd started, so—

"Hello?" A sharp rap to his head jolted Mike out of his thoughts. "Anyone in here? I think I hear an echo in your skull, Wheeler."

Mike jerked his head away. "I— fuck off, Robin. I didn't sleep well."

"Why?" Robin tilted her head, sort of like an owl. Maybe she was more suited for a different bird name. "Too busy praying for the world not to end?"

"No," Mike huffed, "I was— hanging out with someone. A friend." Seemed like he couldn't call Will his, either. Not like he deserved it, when Will had kept saying Your turn and Mike had kept telling him half-truths, lies wrapped up in a neat little bow. I missed you a lot, and I'm not sure why I didn't call was, in Mike's mind, I missed you so much I felt my chest collapsing with how much it ached, and I didn't call because I thought you'd never pick up. He was getting better at lying, but that didn't make it painless. Mike still felt like someone was ripping a rib out of him with every white lie.

"A friend," Robin drawled, stretching out her vowels in a way that made Mike want to walk back through the fire exit door right then and there. "Were you and this friend discussing my theories on God until three in the morning, too?"

The fire exit door was looking very tempting right now. "Again, no," he said, coming to rest against the wall next to Robin, "and stop saying friend like that. It's weird."

Robin took a bite out of her sandwich. "You're the one assuming it's weird. I didn't say anything. Who's your friend?" Her last sentence came out muffled around a mouthful of peanut butter.

"I, uh," Mike said, glancing away, "Will. The one who drove me home yesterday?"

"Ah." Robin took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. "The one who called you little Wheeler with me. I like him." She looked Mike up and down with this weird, hard stare, and Mike wasn't sure whether to run through the back door or put her head on backwards with his hands like an owl. 

"You're being weird again," Mike said, still refusing to meet Robin's gaze. "Can you just answer my question?"

Robin chewed for an infuriatingly long amount of time while Mike tried not to scream. Finally, she popped the rest of the sandwich in her mouth, swallowed loudly, and shook her fingers of crumbs like she was shaking the ashes from a cigarette. "Well, I guess we've got—" and she glanced down at her watch, a bulky lavender-colored thing that reminded Mike of his and Will's matching ones— "fifteen minutes until they want us back in, so I'll oblige— if you tell me why you care in the first place."

"A trade," Mike said, quietly. Like me and Will, he thought, smiling wistfully.

"Yes, dingus, a trade." Robin rolled her eyes. "Why'd you suddenly go all heart-eyes on me? I hate to break it to you, but, uh, I'm kind of a legal adult now, so—"

On heart-eyes, Mike was snapped back into reality. He scrambled to make it a point that he had not and would never make heart-eyes at anyone, speaking over Robin as she rambled on. "I was not making heart-eyes, why would I ever— what the fuck, no, ew! Gross. We're changing the topic now. Lecture me on free will."

"Oh, thank God," Robin muttered. She looked strangely relieved, even as Mike fixed her with a hard glare. "I was worried I'd have to— well, whatever. You've got to tell me why you're asking first, though, because literally no one asks me to talk about the things I like just because I like them. There's an ulterior motive here."

Well. She wasn't exactly wrong. Mike had gotten good at leaving things out; saying I missed you and leaving out the part where he'd written letters and letters about how he felt more like he'd lost a piece of his heart, or saying I didn't sleep well last night and leaving out the part where he'd wondered why God would choose for him to do and say such awful things if his whole life was predetermined, whether God had just set him up for failure. Sometimes, Mike wondered whether he was destined to be a horrible person. Maybe anger was embedded in his genes as much as loving when he shouldn't was carved into his heart. 

"I can't just be interested because you have interesting things to say?" Mike glanced away. He knew he was deflecting, and he knew Robin was smart enough to see straight through him.

Robin snorted. "No."

They fell into an uneasy silence. Mike stared at the wall, worrying at the beads under his shirt, while Robin stared hard enough to burn holes in his skull.

"I think you're the one with the staring problem," Mike said. He pressed the sharp edge of the cross into his thumb, hard. "Whatever. Do you think— I mean, if God is even real, or whatever— do you think he chooses stuff like that? Do you think he made you infuriating, and made me—" Made him what? Disgusting? Irrational? Angry and harsh and full of sharp edges? Gay? "Like this? Do you think we get any choice in who we are?"

By the time he'd trailed off, Robin's stare had gone from terrifyingly searching to startled, for some reason. "That's, uh," Robin started, raising an eyebrow, "you're asking some deep questions, Wheeler. Reading philosophy books doesn't make me a philosopher."

"Dustin told me you learned Russian in two days last year." Mike crossed his arms. "You're smart, and this was a trade, and I gave you what you wanted, so— talk. Tell me what you think."

"You think I'm smart," Robin said, grinning. Mike opened his mouth to protest, but Robin shushed him with a hand to his face and an "Uh-uh, Wheeler. You wanted me to talk, so I'm going to talk."

Mike rolled his eyes at the hand still hovering over his mouth. Robin ignored him. "Catholics don't believe in determinism, generally— like, that God decides everything you do before you do it, all that shit. My mother always told me—" and she paused to pitch her voice up in a high, nasally tone— "'Oh, yes, God knows exactly what you will do, right up until you die, but you're the only one responsible for your actions', which, obviously, is bull-fucking-shit. If God knows I'm going to pull your ear—" 

She moved her hand away from Mike's face to tug on his earlobe. "Ow, Robin, what the hell?"

"That wasn't me doing that," Robin said, a fake pout on her face. "That was God, because he knows and determines everything, but— oh, wait! I have free will, so that was me, but according to my delightful mother, that was also God. See how it doesn't make sense?"

"Did you really have to pull my ear to do that? And did you have to do it so hard?" Mike reached up a hand to rub at his sore ear.

Robin's grin turned wicked. "I had to prove my point somehow," she said, with a pat to the side of Mike's head like she was petting a dog. Mike scowled. "What I'm saying is, either we live in a paradoxical world that logically cannot make sense, God isn't real, or God can't decide everything. Which one sounds better to you?"

That made sense, but it wasn't really what Mike wanted to hear. "I don't know, it's just— sometimes I feel like I can't control myself, you know?" Oh, God. Here came the rambling, where he spilled all his guts and threw them up later when the regret sunk in. "I feel like I'm stuck on one set path, sometimes. And it sucks, because it's this really shitty path that makes me do things and say things I'd never want to say, but it's like I can't stop it from happening. "

He fell silent for a moment, glancing up to Robin in case she thought he sounded stupid, or something. Instead, she was wearing that startled look again; it wasn't the sort of expression that made Mike want to talk about his feelings, but he kept going nonetheless. "I thought if I prayed, God might put me on a nicer path, or whatever, but it's not working. I'm stuck on a one-way track to Hell," he finished, laughing dryly.

Silence stretched between them once again. Mike momentarily considered finding the fire extinguisher next to the back door and drowning himself in a spray of foam.

"So," Robin said, right as Mike had decided to waterboard himself with the fire extinguisher, "you want me to tell you God forces you to be an asshole."

Mike spluttered. "What— I— no! I just wanted to know if that was true, and obviously it's not, so."

Robin made one long, drawn-out hum, not exactly in agreement or disagreement. "Do you want to do these things? Whatever's making you an asshole?"

For once, Robin wasn't trying to pry into Mike's life and ask him why he was an asshole. Mike was still pent-up enough to spill every awful thing he'd done with nothing more than a nudge, so the words spilled out anyway. "No, obviously," he snapped. "I— sorry, it's just weird to talk about. Sometimes it feels like I have to be, uh—" and he shook his hands, gesturing to his body like that meant anything, "like this, you know? Like I have to protect myself by pushing Will— everyone away. I don't know. It's stupid."

And there he went again, taking out his guts with his own damn hands for someone he hardly knew. Robin could've pulled out his intestines like rope, and Mike would've let her, because at least it would mean he'd have someone to talk to. 

"Will, huh," was all Robin said for a long while. She didn't look at him; instead, she stared out into the football field, dark with mud from a storm weeks ago. No one had bothered to come and wash it away. 

There was a strange, faraway look on her face, a soft frown on her mouth and a little furrow in her brows that probably matched how Mike looked right now. Mike wondered, for a brief moment, whether they were sad about the same thing.

"Yeah," Mike said, finally. "Will. What about him?"

"You don't want to hurt him?" Mike nodded vehemently. Something soft flashed in Robin's eyes, widening in understanding. "Then don't. Stop trying to protect yourself from whatever it is you're running from. If Will's really your friend, you don't need to protect yourself from him, too."

Sometimes, Mike felt like he was almost allowed to love Will if he kept his guard up. If he only stared for a few small seconds, if he only let himself linger near Will's warmth for a moment before pulling away, then it was almost okay for him to want so deeply. If no one could tell how much he loved Will, then wasn't it okay to love Will in secret? 

Mike had to protect himself from Will. What he was made him dangerous— not like Will had once been, but worse. Will held a monster in his body, and he had fought back; Mike held a monster in his heart, and he let it consume him.

"I feel like I have to," Mike said, quietly. "I feel like if I'm honest with him, I'll hurt him. 

"Then you hurt him." Her words were blunt enough to make Mike startle back in shock. "Do you have something bad to say to him? Do you really think that whatever you're not being honest with him about is bad enough to hurt him forever?" She leaned into him with wide, searching eyes, and Mike was reminded again why he'd found her unnerving in the first place.

His first instinct was to say yes; since that first flutter in his heart, Mike knew his feelings were wrong, sharp-edged, harmful as broken glass. If he let Will pick up the pieces, Mike would only hurt him— but Mike had hurt Will a million times over, and still, Will had never hated him. Even if he sliced Will wide open, Mike wasn't sure Will had it in him to hate his best friend. 

The thought of Will putting so much trust in Mike was terrifying. Why would Will still not hate him, even after Mike had hurt him over and over?

"I'll hurt him," said Mike, "but he'll never hate me. He's too good for that, you know?" 

"I've spoken to him maybe twice, so I don't think I do," she said. "And you're making heart-eyes again."

Unfortunately, Robin was right. Mike tried his best to turn his face into a scowl. "Am not."

Robin probably would've believed Mike more if he'd said the sky was green. "Uh-huh," she drawled— and her wristwatch beeped with a shrill yell before she could continue. If that was divine intervention, Mike might have to go back to church tonight. "Shit, my lunch break was over five minutes ago, fuck— okay, Wheeler, you're coming with me."

She took hold of Mike's wrist, dragging him along behind her as she shoved open the back door with her foot. "What the hell? I'm supposed to be at the donations table!"

"Nope," Robin said, popping the p, "you're folding my clothes. You've got to pay me back for my amazing philosopher talents somehow."

If this was also divine intervention, Mike was going to throw his rosary across the room, and if God cared about him at all, it would hit Robin right on the head. He folded her baskets of donated clothes regardless.

If God had set Mike on a fast-track to Hell, he could at least have fun with it. That was what he was supposed to get out of Robin's speech, right?

He tugged on his rosary with a nervous energy, rolling the beads between his thumb and index finger as he pulled it in and out of his shirt. He was hardly doing anything monumental. He was using his free will for one tiny thing, something that wouldn't be a big deal to Will at all, even if it was a huge, ginormous, heart-stopping deal for Mike. Even if the mere thought set his entire face on fire. He was probably bright red right now.

Mike took a deep breath, leaning against the wall of the basement stairs to idle for a moment. He'd hung out with Will all day after leaving the relief center; Will drove him around again, but this time, they'd went around the half-destroyed Hawkins instead of going straight home. They'd loitered in Melvald's for a good hour, and Mike had tried his best not to make direct eye contact with Ms. Byers, because if anyone could see into his soul like Robin, it was Will's mom. Then, they'd driven past the arcade and reminisced in front of its shuttered, half-shattered windows.

I came here a bit, Mike had said, when you were gone, but it didn't feel the same. Dragon's Lair sucks when you're not backseating me, honestly.

And here I thought you hated it. Will had poked Mike in his side with a teasing smile, and Mike had lost his breath. 

He'd lost his breath again, now, trying to summon up the courage to ask one little, tiny thing. "Come on," Mike hissed to himself, as quiet as possible, "come on, idiot. Free will. You can do this."

He took another step down the stairs, reciting what he wanted to say even though it really wasn't a big deal— like, at all— and he was overreacting like a crazy person. He was crazy. Fuck.

"Would you, uh," Mike started, "fuck, no, that's stupid, I sound like a school teacher. Do you want to sleep in my room again tonight— no, that's too forward, uh— okay, Will, do you want to come upstairs and play video games and maybe fall asleep in my bed again, except this time I won't sleep on the floor in a sad blanket burrito— okay, come on, there has got to be a better way to phrase this—"

"Are you sick?"

Mike nearly fell down the stairs. "No, I, uh—" he stuttered, catching himself just before he tumbled straight into Will's arms (not like that wouldn't be nice), "I just—"

"You're really red," said Will, raising an eyebrow. "And what were you mumbling earlier? You sounded like you were about to throw up."

Well, he wasn't before, but if Will kept talking, there would absolutely be vomit all over this staircase. "I wasn't mumbling, I just— uh. Is that couch you're sleeping on comfortable?"

"What?" Now Will just looked confused.

"The couch," Mike repeated, as if that explained anything. "You're always waking up early when you sleep in the basement, but when you slept in my bed last night, you woke up a lot later, so I was just wondering if, uh— you'd like to, maybe, uhm, sleepwithme?"

Either Mike's imagination was taking over his eyes, or Will's face was totally turning red. Mike prayed to God that it was the latter. "You're mumbling again," Will said, a little breathily.

"Sorry," Mike said, glancing away sheepishly. "I, uh, I said— would you want to sleep in my room tonight?"

Fuck. Will was going to think he sounded stupid, and he wouldn't want to sleep in the same room as Mike, much less talk to him—

"Sure." 

"What?"

There was this small, shy smile on Will's face, an expression Mike hadn't seen in a long while. For a moment, Mike worried he really would fall down the stairs this time, because Will looked so stupidly perfect and it was making Mike weak in the knees. Fuck his free will, and fuck everything he had done to lead up to this moment.

"I said sure, Mike. I was just about to fall asleep anyway, so— is that my sweater?"

Mike froze. If he'd looked pink before, he was probably fire-hydrant red by now. "I, uh— it's your fault for putting your clothes in my closet," he muttered, turning away. 

"I brought two shirts with me back from Lenora," Will said, obviously not convinced. "Do you not know what your clothes look like?"

Okay, abort mission. Go upstairs, change into his own clothes, gaslight Will into believing he'd never worn this stupid sweater in the first place. Mike turned around with a huff and took the stairs two at a time.

"You're sleeping on the floor," Mike called out, halfway up the stairs. Will just made a drawn-out uh-huh, devolving into laughter as Mike rounded the corner and sped up the stairs to his room.

So Mike was— well, he wasn't fucked, per se. He'd shoved his guts back inside him after he'd puked them out to Robin, and used all those guts to exercise his free will and ask Will to sleep with him. In the same bed as him. Whatever.

Point was, he could do this. He could crawl in bed with Will and actually fall asleep instead of staying up all night out of nervousness, because it was normal and perfectly fine to sleep in the same bed as your best friend, even if he happened to have life-ruining romantic feelings for said best friend. As long as he kept his words and touches entirely platonic, couldn't Mike be a little lovesick in his head?

(If she'd heard what he was thinking, Robin would've shook him like a dog toy. By exercising his free will, Mike knew she'd meant being honest with Will, not tricking Will into sleeping in his bed, but Mike was scared, okay? He'd admit it. Just because he had the choice to confess how he'd been lying to Will for years on end didn't mean he wanted to choosethat choice.

For now, at least, Mike could have this. If he bottled all his broken-glass feelings deep down in his stomach, he could get close to Will without cutting him. He'd never get exactly what he wanted, so he'd have to settle for something close.)

Will was wearing Mike's shirt. Mike was absolutely and entirely calm about this.

"Payback," Will explained, actually calmly, at Mike's spluttered outburst of What— I— Will, what the hell? He was quite proud of those words. It was possibly the most coherent sentence he'd said all day. "You stole my favorite sweater, so I'm going to sleep in your Queen tee."

"I— Will, that's my favorite," Mike whined, messing with his pillow so he wouldn't have to look Will in the eye and see him wearing that shirt again. "You're going to get it all wrinkly."

Will, for some reason, picked his blanket up off the bed and set it on the floor. "I don't know if you know this, but there's this thing called a washing machine—"

"Hey, get up here," Mike said, turning to Will before remembering he was still wearing that shirt. Mike needed to get the lights off as quickly as possible. "The floor's more uncomfortable than the basement couch, you know."

"Really?" The blanket started to slip from Will's grip, and Mike caught it in his hand. Their fingers brushed for a split second, and Mike momentarily considered building a pillow wall between them. If that tiny touch made him want to pull Will close and kiss him senseless, how was Mike going to handle himself for the rest of the night? "Are you sure you wash those sheets?"

"I—" Mike spluttered again as his eyes got caught on the spot where he'd stretched the collar, and a patch of Will's shoulder was visible, oddly tanned and spotted with freckles (since when did he have freckles oh my God he had freckles), "I wash them. Often. Stop making excuses and get in my bed."

Mike tossed his blanket on the empty side of the bed and patted the spot too forcefully, probably. Will was going to think he was a complete creep, that Mike was taking advantage of him by letting Will sleep in his bed, that Mike was disgusting and wrong and horrible for the way his heart fluttered as Will slipped into his bed, wearing his clothes, and— oh, Mike was going to be sick. He'd be too busy choking back vomit and broken glass to sleep.

"I'm in your bed," Will said, plainly. "What next?"

The lamp cast a warm glow on his features, outlining the soft plane of his cheeks and the curve of his Cupid's bow. Mike wanted to slip into Will's side of the bed and drag his finger down his face, map the ridges of his jaw and the curve of his lips and God, he looked really kissable right now. Will always did, but with how he wore Mike's clothes and made them his, stretching the sleeves with his arms and tucking his knees under the too-long hem— this was a bad idea. Mike really wanted to kiss him, and this was a bad, bad idea.

"Now," said Mike, turning off the lamp before he lost control of himself (this time, by using his mouth for kissing instead of yelling), "we sleep."

In the dark, Mike watched the vague outline of Will's frame fall back against his pillow. "Sleep," he agreed.

So, with a great amount of self-control, Mike laid in his own side of the bed and tried to sleep. He shut his eyes, crossed his arms tight around his chest, and counted sheep. He did not touch Will, or turn to look at Will, or ask Will if he was asleep. He allowed himself this much; Will's warm presence, the faint feeling of Will's weight in his bed and the suggestion of Will's body heat against his skin, Will's deep, quiet breaths that Mike counted more than he counted his sheep. He had tested his luck enough for today. He had seen how far he could veer off his path to Hell, how much he could use his free will before God grabbed his strings and made him spit fire. Or, well, not God, since Mike knew now that he did this to himself. 

"Are you asleep?" Will's voice sounded strangely small, and the urge to wrap Will in his arms swept over Mike like a wave.

If Will was speaking to him, Mike could turn around to look at him, so he shifted around and ended up in a tangle of blankets. Fuck. "Not even close."

"Me neither," Will admitted, like a secret. 

"Well, if neither of us are sleeping," Mike said, scooting a bit closer in the process of untangling his legs from his blankets, "you wanna trade again?"

"Only if you go first." As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Mike could see Will's mouth turn upward in a small smile. If he kissed Will in the dark, would God turn a blind eye?

Even if he does look away, a small part of him whispered, there's other things in your head that will damn you to Hell. Even if Will lets you kiss him, he'll never let you love him.

Mike ran a hand through his hair, like he could dispel the thought from his mind with a shake of his hand. "I, uh," he started, eloquently, "okay." His mind went blank after that.

He could change the trajectory of their friendship with three words, right here. He had the will to say whatever he wanted, but as he opened his mouth, his throat closed, and he found he could say nothing at all.

"You don't have to say anything," Will said. He began to turn over, pulling his blanket with him. "Sorry, I— I want to know you're okay, but I don't want to push you. We don't have to—"

"Wait." Mike's hand was on Will's shoulder in an instant, before he could stop himself. He'd broken the barrier he'd set between them with one touch; now, the dam lodged in his throat broke free, words spilling out of their own will. So much for staying in control.

Will turned back to him. His lips were parted, just a little, and Mike hated himself for noticing.

"Do you think," Mike said, quiet, "we'll ever get the life we want?"

Will's mouth closed once, twice. "What do you mean?"

Even if he felt like his words were spiraling out of his control, Mike wouldn't expose himself completely. He couldn't let Will know what sort of life he really wanted— an apartment with Will, one bedroom, the sort of life where they twined together into one person— but he could make himself at least a little vulnerable, a shallow incision to expose his bleeding heart, just to see whether Will would stitch him back up or dig his fingers into the wound.

(Mike knew Will would always stitch him up, because he was just too good. And even if Will got his whole hand in the wound, if he wrapped his hand around Mike's heart and squeezed, it would be okay with Mike, because why would Will ever do anything wrong?)

"After this is all over," said Mike, "do you think we'll really be happy? Or is all this—" and he paused to gesture around the room, a meaningless motion that Will understood anyway— "do you think it'll haunt us forever? Is life going to punish us for wanting to survive?"

Is life going to punish me for wanting you? 

A ragged sigh echoed through the room. It took Mike a moment to realize it belonged to Will. "Is it bad for me to say no?" Will sounded small, resigned. "I don't want to make everyone more hopeless than they already are, but I never got to be happy, even in the lulls between all this insanity." He laughed into his pillow, a humorless sound that only made Mike's heart ache. "I don't think anyone else got that, either."

The thought of Will never being happy made Mike want to jump into an Upside Down gate and tear Vecna to pieces right then and there, until he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd been truly happy, either. "You deserve to be happy, though. When it's me, I feel like I'm asking for too much, you know?"

"Asking for what?" Will said. He'd propped himself up on one elbow; now, with Will staring down at him, Mike was the one who felt small. "The right to be happy? Come on, Mike. Everyone deserves that."

Mike shrugged. "I think I need too much to be happy. The things that I want, I— I don't deserve them."

I don't deserve you. 

For a moment, all Will did was consider him. His mouth opened and closed again; if Mike could've seen any better in the dark, he would've been sure Will was breathing faster. "Why not? You deserve everything you could ever want, after what we've been through. All of us do. We deserve mansions, and I deserve my own art studio, and Lucas's little sister deserves her own fucking pony, and you— well, I don't know what it is you want, but you deserve it. You've done so much to deserve it."

This was why he didn't deserve Will. He was too kind, too trusting; Mike still didn't get why Will came back to him over and over, no matter how many times Mike tore him open.

"I don't know why you trust me," said Mike, glancing away. "I don't know why you think I deserve it, because I— God, if you knew— I just don't, okay? No matter what happens, no matter how much money or material bullshit the government gives us to shut us up, no matter what job I get or even if I retire on some fucking deserted island, it'll never be enough. I'll never really be happy, but it's fine. That's just how it has to be."

His voice had gone raw as he spoke, all choked from the thick lump in his throat. Mike knew he wasn't making sense, unless Will had already put together the pieces. He'd rather sound insane than let Will put together the pieces.

Hesitantly, Mike turned his gaze back to Will. It was hard to see his face in the dark light, but he didn't look downright disgusted. His mouth was pursed in a frown, and his eyes looked darker than usual. Not out of pity, or confusion, or hate; it was just sadness, plain and simple. Mike didn't deserve it.

"It never has to be like that," said Will. Mike hated how he sounded like he believed it. "You— I trust you because I know you, Mike. There's nothing you could want that you wouldn't deserve."

You don't. It's my fault you don't know me anymore.

Mike looked away. "And what if I wanted to take your place? What if I wanted to be the one who got taken that night, and what if I wanted all those things to happen to me? What if I deserved all the rumors and all the names instead of you? What if I should've been the one to come to school with— with bruises, and—" he paused, choking on his own words. "What then?"

"Stop." Will was sitting upright, now, but Mike couldn't bring himself to move at all. "You wouldn't want that. It wouldn't make you happy."

"It would," Mike countered, suddenly, "because then it wouldn't be you. People like you— good people don't deserve all the horrible things that happen to them, but people like me? Fuck, Will. It should have been me."

Will wasn't looking at Mike either, now. "Don't. Don't say that."

When Mike started talking, he'd never been good at getting himself to stop. Even though he loved Will more than himself, Will's words were only enough to keep him quiet for the time it took to swallow the lump in his throat. "You're good, Will. I don't know how you do it, how you've been put through all this bullshit and still stayed so good, but— I'm not. I've barely gone through anything, compared to you, and it's already turned me bad. People like me—" and he paused to glance at Will when the lump in his throat got too thick to swallow. 

For one split second, their eyes met, and Will's gaze widened like he knew exactly what Mike meant when he said like mewith so much emotion. "I deserved to take what everyone said about you," Mike continued, choking on his own words, "because you're not like that, and I'm— I—"

Mike's voice tapered off. The way Will looked at him was absolutely miserable, and Mike couldn't stand to see it for a second longer. Instead of looking, Mike sat up, grabbed his blanket, and slipped off the bed. "Nevermind. I, uh— I'm gonna go get some water."

All Will did was watch him go. He didn't try to stop Mike, didn't call out or ask Mike why he was bringing his blanket to get water or grab Mike's hand and ask him to stay. Will already knew what Mike was, and he was good enough not to open his mouth and tell Mike what he really deserved.

Just as Mike reached the door, Will made a small noise, a soft, pained choke in the back of his throat. Mike stilled.

"You still didn't deserve it," Will said, quiet.

Mike closed the door behind him.

stage 4: depression (was the water filling up for years/or did i wreck it all in a day?)

You know what? Fuck Robin. 

Fuck Robin for going on that stupid tirade about free will, and fuck Robin for convincing Mike that it was okay to hurt Will, and fuck her for forgetting to mention that just because Mike could technically do whatever he wanted, his free will still came with consequences, because being a self-deprecating idiot never went well for anyone, whether they were doing it on purpose or not, whether they chose to be awful or not—

Blaming it on other people made it a little less awful, if only for a bit, until he remembered how this would always be no one's fault but his own. 

He had to be up and out of the house before Will woke up— which would probably be early, after Mike had abandoned him to sleep all alone— but he didn't really want to get up. Sure, there were loose springs digging into his back, but he'd prefer that over looking any of his friends in the eye and having to explain why he didn't want to go back home.

Well, couldn't he go see Robin? Sure, he had cursed her out five minutes ago, but with how she'd said Will, huh? so gently, like she knew all Mike's thoughts with nothing more than a name— it gave Mike hope. Maybe he wasn't alone, after all.

So it was decided, then. He'd go see Robin, though he didn't know where she actually was, and hope she'd let him wallow in his own misery for a little while. He slipped off the couch, and something hard dug into his neck; it took Mike a few moments to recognize the beads as that rosary he'd thrown on days ago, something he'd forgotten to take off with the combined distraction of Will and Robin. The thought of praying now almost made him laugh, but Mike hadn't lied when he'd said it was distracting; even if he wasn't praying, just rubbing the beads under his thumb was enough to calm him. 

He slipped the beads out from his shirt and ran them through his fingers. Maybe if he prayed, just a little, God might take pity on him and let him disappear before he walked out the door.

"Wheeler." Something hissed on the coffee table, a crackly static noise that sent a splitting headache through Mike's skull.

Mike shoved his face into his hands and prayed for God to take him now.

"Mike. Michael. Michael James Wheeler! I know you're listening, you ass. I see you moving."

That was what got Mike to stop dead in his tracks. "What the fuck?" He scrambled for the walkie.

"Like hell you're turning this off," Lucas said, far too loud for Mike's tastes. He moved to turn down the volume, and—

"We said don't turn us off, Michael!" Oh, God. Why was Dustin here too?

"Stop calling me Michael," Mike groaned, hand hovering threateningly over volume knob, "and how the fuck are you watching me?"

Something hit his living room window, hard. A loud thunk echoed through the room.

"You know we're neighbors, right?"

Slowly, Mike turned to the window. Through the half-open blinds, he saw Dustin and Lucas sticking their heads out of their window, with grins far too evil for seven in the morning. Moments like these made Mike wish he'd agreed to his mom's plans to leave Hawkins. "Okay, cut it out. What do you want?"

"We don't want anything from you," Dustin said, smirking, "but, since you're up, why don't you go with me to help Robin set up The Squawk?"

Oh, hell. 

Mike hadn't been making good use out of his walkie, so he'd never been burdened with Robin's chipper voice squawking through his radio at eight-o-clock sharp, but he'd heard enough from Dustin— and Robin herself— to know all about her and Harrington's radio show. They'd set it up as a defense mechanism against Vecna; the whole town had been encouraged to keep their radios on at all times, tuned to The Squawk or some other station, but since Mike didn't particularly care for Steve Harrington's voice or the concept of trying to stay alive, he hadn't listened once, nor had he visited The Squawk's actual location. He still wasn't too keen on visiting at all, but seeing as he now recognized Robin's face and wasn't actively terrified her— which he never was, okay, she was just a bit intimidating— it couldn't be so bad, could it?

At least now he knew where Robin was. "I was already going to go, actually. By myself," he emphasized, shooting a glare to his neighbor's window.

"So I can go back to sleep?" Lucas sounded relieved. Mike crossed his fingers and hoped Lucas would stumble back to his bedroom and forget he'd seen Mike at all.

Obviously, God hated when Mike hoped for anything, because Dustin shoved him and said "No, idiot! We're biking him there."

Lucas let his head fall against the half-open windowpane with a solid thunk. "You know, Mike, if you could just be normal and not go wandering off in the middle of the night, I could still be asleep right now. This is all your fault."

The rosary itched under his shirt, a reminder of where he'd wandered to in the middle of the night. Suddenly, Mike didn't really want to go anywhere at all. What was the point?

Will hated him. Mike had no right to say anything he'd said last night when he'd felt maybe a fraction of the pain Will had experienced. He had no right to look Will in the eye, not when Will could see all the sick thoughts blooming in Mike's mind right behind his pupil. Will hated him, and Mike deserved it, and he hated that he deserved it, and he hated being here at all.

"Fuck off, Lucas," Mike muttered into the walkie's receiver. "I'm going. Catch up to me if you want."

Mike could've spotted Dustin's eye-roll from his bedroom window. "You don't even know where The Squawk is, dude."

Mike gave his neighbor's window a rude gesture and unlocked the door.

"Tears for Fears? Really?"

"You're holding a Madonna tape," said Mike, scowling. "I could say the same to you."

Mike knew his music taste was a bit boring, maybe, but it wasn't like he'd spent his spare time looking for anything better to listen to. Honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he'd spent his free time doing anything other than sulking. 

"Okay, fine, assuming you'd like Madonna was a stretch," Robin relented, "but you've got to be more interesting than Tears for Fears and, like, Van Halen, or whatever boring people listen to." She spread out a series of tapes in front of Mike, glancing between the tapes and his face like he was supposed to light up over an album. "Blondie? Bowie? The Cure? Come on, anything?"

A few weeks ago, none of those names would've rung a bell in Mike's mind, but Will had changed that. He'd asked Mike what he'd done to pass the time, you know, without me to bother, Will had said with a wry smile. Mike had ignored the way he wanted to feel that smile on his mouth and stalled, saying something vague about video games and some D&D,but I sort of sucked without our cleric to back me up, and, uh— what about you?

Will had, a little hesitantly, launched into an animated rant on the music store he'd found in Lenora, how they'd even burn custom mixtapes for you, it was awesome. I made a few, but I left most of them behind, except this one— and he'd pulled out a cassette with a list of tracks scribbled in Will's small, neat handwriting, then put it in his Walkman and let it play until the tracks looped back again.

Honestly, most of the songs Will liked were a bit depressing, to put it bluntly. Bowie and The Cure were nice and upbeat sometimes, but The Smiths? Joy Division? If Mike had sulked in his basement with those on loop, he wouldn't have made it out alive.

"I, uh," he started, glancing away, "no, not really."

Robin sighed through grit teeth. "What about Will? He's got to have better taste than you."

Mike glanced away, frowning. "I don't know." That was a lie. He could probably name every artist Will had gushed over in five seconds flat. "He, uh, he likes a lot of sad, mope-y stuff. Not the shit you want to play to defend people from Vecna."

"So-o," Robin mused, selecting a few tapes from her disorderly pile, "The Smiths, I'm guessing?"

For some reason, Robin's hard stare made Mike's face go hot. He opened his mouth a few times, then closed it when he realized no words would come out. "Uh-huh," Robin drawled, flipping the cassette around in her hands. "What's his favorite?"

He couldn't remember the name, exactly, but the words had been looping in his head all day. "It goes like, uh—" Oh, God, singing in front of Robin, what was he doing, "for once in my life, let me— uhm— get what I want. . ."

"Lord knows it would be the first time," Robin finished, laughing. "You've got a nice voice, Wheeler. I bet Will would like to hear it.

The lyrics struck a sour chord with Mike, and honestly, he thought his voice had come out all strangled, but if Will would like it— okay, no, he had to stop. Will wouldn't even want to hear his voice again, after what he'd said. "Aren't you supposed to be on air right now?"

"Oh, shit!" Robin scrambled for her mic and pressed a series of buttons with one hand, while shoving a headset on with the other. The buttons would've made sense to Mike two years ago, but now, he couldn't make heads or tails out of what Robin was doing. "God, Steve takes an early-morning shift at the relief center for one day and I start us off five minutes late, fuck, that asshole is never going to let me hear the end of this— Go-od morning Hawkins!"

The rest of Robin's spiel flowed through Mike's ears like water through a sieve. She prattled on about the weather— ash, spores, a spot of sunshine!— read off an obituary for a man Mike had never known, then, finally, picked up the Smiths tape and poised it over her cassette player.

"This one's for all the hopeless hearts out there," she said, turning back to send a Mike a wink, which— what the fuck? "I promise we'll have something more upbeat soon, but for now. . ." and she prattled off the name of the song before inserting the tape.

Morrisey's deep croon began to drift through the room (and yes, he only knew the lead singer's name because of Will). Mike tried not to rip his ears off. "This song sucks."

"You smiled when you sang it," Robin countered. "Why are you here, anyway? Did you miss my charming personality?"

Sure, Robin was growing on him like a leech, or a patch of possibly-poisonous moss, but charming was still dead last on the list of adjectives he'd used to describe her. Intimidating had crept down the list along with it, though. "I, uh— just didn't want to stay in the house. It felt—"

"—suffocating?" Robin finished, quirking an eyebrow.

"Oh my God, please stop reading my mind." Mike took a few steps back to lean against the wall, letting his head fall against the concrete brick with a tired sigh. 

They fell into silence for a long minute. Robin closed her eyes, humming along to Morrisey's string of please's, while Mike mouthed the words and hope she still wasn't looking. He wasn't going to get what he wanted, no matter how much he pleaded, but he could at least sympathize with the bleak song.

"I don't get why Will likes this band so much," Mike said as the song strummed off into an instrumental. "All of their songs are so hopeless, you know? I mean, even listening to it makes me sad."

Robin turned to him, raising an eyebrow. As the first song faded away, another track came to replace it; a jaunty, whimsical tune, with lyrics about a man in a tutu. "Does this make you sad?"

As much as Mike wanted to say the song made him want to dig his own grave, it was sort of catchy— and it definitely wasn't sad at all. "I, uh— okay, whatever. Maybe just Will just listens to their most depressing songs, then. I mean, he played me this mixtape, and all the songs were about death and being hit by a double-decker bus and, like, never finding love, or whatever. I don't know. They made me want to run into a double-decker bus."

"Well," said Robin, as she searched through her pile of tapes, "sad people listen to sad music. Would Tears for Fears make you feel better?"

Sad people listen to sad music. It was an obvious assumption, something Mike should've noticed thirteen songs into Will's mixtape without a single upbeat melody, but the idea hadn't occurred to him until now. He'd been sad, and he hadn't listened to sad music. He'd sat in silence, or buried his head in his hands to the tune of the Mario level he'd put on pause, or listened to the rustle of paper as he'd flipped through his binder of Will's drawings (and, one time when he was more angry than sad, the harsh rip of thick paint paper as he'd torn a drawing of his own smiling face in two). 

Now, however, Mike could imagine the music drifting through Will's room in tune with Mike's silence, eighteen hundred miles away (yes, he'd memorized the distance); the swell of a singer's voice in time with the tear of paper in Mike's hand, Will's sobs muffled under lyrics about soil falling over Morrisey's head while Mike muffled his own jerky cries into his pillow, so embarrassed over crying that he'd bit a bleeding hole in his tongue to stay quiet, Will refusing to get up to pause his CD player even when the music skipped into silence, tear tracks lining both their faces on the same night, in the same curled-up positions in their beds—

No. Why would Will cry over him, when he had hardly reached out to Mike in the year he was gone? Honestly, why would anyone cry over him?

"Will wasn't sad, though," Mike said, shrugging. "He got to escape the hell of Hawkins for a year. He should've been happy."

Robin glanced back at him as she shoved another tape in. She didn't say he was an idiot, but her stare spoke louder than words. "He left all his friends in Hawkins, too. You seriously think he was happier all alone?"

"Without me, yeah," scoffed Mike. "You don't understand. The first thing I did when I saw him again was ignore him for a girl I didn't even—" o-kay, he had to stop himself before he went down that path— "I just keep being a dick to him. And I know why I'm being an asshole, but I can't tell him that because he'll just hate me more. But I kind of already did tell him, and now I don't think I'll ever look him in the eye again without, like, having a complete breakdown. So, yeah. He was happier without me."

"Really." For a moment, Robin just looked at him; her you're an idiot stare turned soft, brows furrowed in what Mike hoped was understanding. "Has he ever told you that he hates you?"

Mike ran a shaky hand through his hair with a clipped groan. In the background, The Smiths continued to play, singing about how life was simply taking and not giving. "No, but— whatever. This is your fault, anyway, with your stupid rant on free will. I can't just do whatever I want, not when I want— things. Things Will wouldn't want."

He was getting a little too close to the truth, now, but Robin seemed to understand. Just like Will, she seemed to just know. Unlike Will, the thought of Robin knowing felt comforting, like a weight gently lifted off his chest.

She walked away from her cassette player, leaning next to him on the wall even as The Smiths song looped back on itself. "You know what," she said, smiling a little, "I'll accept that. It can be my fault, if it makes you feel better. But— look, I've seen that boy maybe ten times total, for about five minutes each, and he looks at you like he would throw himself off a cliff if you asked. I'm not a very perceptive person— seriously, ask your sister, she has a first-hand experience of how dense I can be when it comes to people— so if even I can see how much that boy would be willing to do for you, I don't think whatever it is you want would make him hate you."

"That's the problem," Mike said, letting his head tilt back against the wall. "He wouldn't tell me he hated me, even if he did, because he's just a good person. I don't know how he does it."

"And you're not?" Robin raised an eyebrow. "Mike, come on. What did my stupid rant influence you to do last night that would make you a bad person? Drugs? Murder? Vandalism? If it's vandalism, can I do it with you? I'm an ace with spray paint." She was laughing, but not at him; she laughed like the idea of Mike being a bad person was so impossible, it was almost funny. 

Mike glanced away. When he tried to speak, his voice became quiet, small. "I asked him to sleep in my room."

"And?"

If Mike had imagined telling someone what he felt, he'd been sure the fallout would be devastating. It wasn't like he'd ever planned it to happen, but now that he had spilled his guts, he could see his fate going something like this; Robin's look of worn understanding turning into a cold, disgusted sneer, a door shoved open in his face and a spat-out You really thought anyone would be okay with this? and a crack in his heart as an earthquake swallowed him whole for daring to think he would ever be anything but alone.

Instead, what he got was one genuinely confused stare and a long stretch of silence, interrupted only by the third replay of the same song. There was no better way to kill Mike's self-deprecating, forever-alone sort of mood than the urge to smash a cassette player to bits.

"No, you don't get it," Mike said, choking up a bit in the middle of his sentence. "I— I wanted him there. More than I should have."

"Yeah, I got that around the time you started blushing at his name," said Robin, plainly. "Where does the vandalism come in?"

Mike pressed the heel of his palm to his eye, hoping his oncoming tears would disappear if he rubbed hard enough. "There's no vandalism," he muttered, laughing dully. "It's— he knows, Robin. I told him that I wanted to take his place, that I wished I could've been the one who got so hurt instead of him because I would've deserved it, and he asked why I'd think that, and— well." 

He fell silent for a moment, before Robin made a circular gesture with her hands as if to say Speed it up, Wheeler. He hated how he could basically hear her voice in his head. "He knows like you know, okay? But it's different, because I've known you for two days and you could never see me again with no consequences, while I'm so intertwined in his life that he couldn't scrub me out even if he wanted to. He lives in my house, he's worn my clothes and slept in my bed and— and touched me, without knowing I—"

"What did he say?"

Mike was halfway through I love him when Robin interrupted. "What?"

"How did he react when you told him?" As the same song looped for the fourth time, Robin finally got up to change the tape. Something soft and synth-heavy echoed through the room, and Mike only recognized it as New Order because of Will. "Did he kick you out? Yell? If he did, I'll get Steve to kick his ass. Or your sister— no, Nancy would put a bullet hole in his gut and get convicted for first degree murder. I'll get Steve to beat him with his nail bat."

"I, uh," Mike started, then immediately winced when his voice came out all choked, "I kind of left? Before he could say anything?"

The tape in Robin's hand clattered to the floor. "You— oh my God. You didn't give him the chance to say anything, and now you're just assuming he hates you?"

Okay, when she put it like that, Mike did sort of sound like an idiot. He crossed his arms, huffing and turning away in the hopes that Robin wouldn't see his shame. "He found out I lied and took my anger out on him for years because I'm the sort of person you see on the news after their throat got slit for kissing a boy. Why wouldn't he?"

"Jesus, don't—" Robin marched over to him. "Wheeler. Look at me."

Against his better judgement, Mike looked. "It's pointless," he said, "okay? I know what it's like for people like me. You die early and abused or you live alone and unhappy forever. That's the life I'm going to get. I'm just being honest."

To that, Robin shoved him— not unkindly, but harsh enough to make Mike wonder whether he'd have a palm-shaped imprint in his shoulder the next morning. "No, you're being a pessimistic ass. You can— no, you're going to have a good life, and being too scared to tell a boy you like him doesn't make you deserve it any less. Sure, you'll never get that cul-de-sac house or a wife that trims your rose bushes—" and at Mike's unimpressed look, she added "don't look at me like that, I don't know what it is that normal people want, not when I'm the one who wants the wife— but if you keep saying you're going to die alone, or whatever, you'll start believing it."

He'd taken the thought of dying alone— or maybe even surrounded by people he didn't love, a wife he had no connection to in a house that wasn't his own— as fact, an inevitable ending to his one-track life. But he hadn't always thought that way; when he was younger, his future had always looked like an apartment with Will, a job writing comic books and, well, maybe a pet dragon, too. He'd been naive, maybe, but he'd never seen an unhappy life as an inevitability. 

Maybe he'd just been right. Minus the dragon, unfortunately, but what was stopping him from at least trying for something better?

"I'm not saying everyone gets to live like that," Robin continued, a bit more somber, "because they don't. We live in Hell even without the Upside Down, but there's no God that's going to strike you down for wanting things, okay?"

Mike ran a hand down the beads under his shirt. Strangely, they didn't seem to hang as heavy anymore. "Yeah," he said, quiet, "okay— wait, you— wife? What?"

Robin smiled, ruffling a hand through his hair, which— no thanks. Mike shied away with a scowl. "Come on, I thought you already knew that. I'm almost as obvious as you. Now," she said, turning away from him to rummage through what looked like a large pile of metal scraps on an end table, "where is that walkie?"

"What?"

"Wheeler, what channel do you use to talk to your little friends?"

"Little friends—" he spluttered, sending Robin a sharp glare— "okay, channel seven. Why do you want to know?"

All Robin did was twist the knob on her radio and grin into the receiver, ignoring Mike completely. "This is Redbird, is Dustybuns here? Over."

A crackly groan came from the radio. "For the last time, my code name is not Dustybuns, it's—"

"Yeah, yeah, can it, Dustybuns," Robin said, smirking. "Do you know where little Byers is? Over."

"He's at the church," Dustin said, a little warily. "I just dropped him off— are you spying on me? Over."

Instead of answering Dustin's question— which Mike would've asked too if he was in Dustin's position, because what the fuck— she said "Thank you for your time, Dusty-boy. Over and out." A series of infuriated shouts came from the receiver before Robin switched channels, wincing.

"He is unbearably loud," she said, chucking the radio onto the couch like it wasn't one of the most expensive things in the room. "I don't know how Steve puts up with him. Anyways, you said you wanted to see Will?"

Mike gave her an incredulous look. "When did I say that?"

Robin shrugged. "You were making heart-eyes, but, like, sad ones." Before he could ask what heart-eyes looked like, anyway, because he thought his eyes pretty much always looked the same, Robin shooed him towards the door. "Now go apologize to your boy before I get Steve to beat you with his nail bat instead."

The words your boy shouldn't have sent a wave of butterflies though Mike's stomach, but they did nonetheless. "Yeah, I— uhm. Okay." 

"Go get 'em, Wheeler," said Robin, grinning. She ruffled Mike's hair again, shut the door, and Mike was alone.

stage 5: acceptance (open up my heart)

This time, Mike knew why he'd come here.

It had always been for Will. Most everything he'd done had been for Will, be it kneeling on a dusty church floor or biking in the pouring rain just to say sorry.

The first time he'd entered the church, he'd come there refusing to think of Will at all. He'd shoved Will from his mind, pushed him away because it was the only thing Mike knew how to do. The second time, he'd prayed for Will over and over, rolling the rosary beads between his fingers and whispering save him, save him, save him. Mike had always known why he'd save Will over anyone else; that truth had turned from something a much younger Mike couldn't even consider as wrong, to something a slightly younger— and much stupider— Mike had locked away deep in his heart, to something a Mike from minutes ago had hated to be true. Now, with his hand on the already ajar church door, Mike couldn't find it in him to hate it anymore.

When he'd entered this church for a third time, Mike had hated who he was enough to pray to a God he hardly believed in. On that third time, Mike would've let Vecna himself open his heart with a scalpel as long as he'd stitch Mike up whole and complete, free of the rotten thing that made him want so deeply.

It was never rotten. His heart had never been wrong, or disgusting, or sick, because how could any of those things be true when he loved Will?

Will wasn't sick. There was nothing in the world that could make him wrong, so if Mike loved him, he couldn't be wrong. He couldn't.

Gently, Mike pushed open the door and slipped inside. Early morning sunlight filtered through stained glass, casting little rainbows across the floor. Someone had swept away the shattered shards, flattened out the deep red rug in the middle aisle, even straightened the tilted crucifix right above the altar—

A harsh ripping noise echoed through the church, floating up to its high ceiling. Mike whirled around, searching his pockets for a weapon before realizing oh, wait, he never carried weapons when he went out alone because he'd never seen the point in saving himself, and of course that had to come back and bite him in the ass at the worst time—

"You're late."

The way Mike jumped at Will's voice would've been funny, if his heart wasn't racing hard enough to beat out of his chest. "I— Jesus, Will."

A large piece of paper hung in Will's hands, obscured in the half-light of a faraway window. Coated in shadow, he was almost intimidating, but Mike couldn't feel afraid of Will even if he was the monster Mike had thought was about to come for him. 

"Taking the Lord's name in vain in a church," Will said, with a mock-gasp. Even before he stepped out into the light, Mike could see his smile. "Isn't he, uh—" and he turned, gesturing to the towering crucifix with his free hand— "listening? Or, uh, something. Sorry, I don't know how this works."

Will was smiling. That had to be a good sign, right?

"Me neither, honestly," said Mike, a little warily. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought you'd be here." Will stepped a little closer, pausing to lean on a nearby church pew. A slant of golden light fell on his face, filtered through a stained-glass halo around the shattered face of Jesus; the light caught on his hair and pooled in his eyes, creating his own halo of honey-brown around his head and a mosaic of color in his eyes. Mike thought, for a moment, that Will deserved his own stained glass mosaic more than that false god on the wall.

Mike must have zoned out for too long— how could he not, who wouldn't get lost in Will's eyes— because Will awkwardly cleared his throat and continued, glancing away. "It's, uh— it's nice, here. Peaceful. I get why you like it."

"I mean," said Mike, glancing around, "the church itself is nice. Not a big fan of the people who come here."

That was when Mike expected Will to sneer, roll his eyes and say Of course you wouldn't, not when they'd shove nails through your palms like the guy up there if they knew what you were. Instead, Will just smiled again, a sad little thing that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yeah, me neither. I, uh— I think some of them came back, actually, because—"

He paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he unfurled the crinkled piece of paper balled up in his hands. The thing was torn at the edges like someone had desperately clawed at its corners, with harsh strokes of dark paint across its surface that dripped tacky spots on the paper like deep black blood. The words on its surface were either written in a rush or by someone with poor handwriting; it took Mike a while to read it fully, but once he did, his stomach churned like he was going to be sick.

"This kind can only be driven out by prayer," Mike said. He— oh, God, he really was going to be sick. Was this a message from Will? Was Will telling him to get on his knees and pray, press the cross on his neck to his forehead until he burned its imprint into his skull? Should he go find the cracked baptismal pool and drown himself until his sins had leeched out into the water?

He would, for Will. He'd swallow holy water until he choked, if Will wanted it. 

"They didn't even get your club symbol right," Will laughed, stiltedly. Mike's eyes drifted to where Will was gesturing; he'd been so caught up in the words, he hadn't even noticed the bright red slash over the Hellfire club's demon mascot.

"It looks kind of like a monkey," said Mike. Will nodded, and for a moment, his smile reached his eyes. Then, he crumpled up the paper, and his gaze went flat once again. 

Except for the breeze whistling through the windows, the church was entirely silent. Faintly, Mike could hear Will's shallow breathing, even see the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. He seemed nervous, strangely, eyes darting around the room like he wasn't sure where to put them.

"Do you think the same people who hung, uh—" and Mike paused, gesturing to the crinkled ball in Will's hand— "that—do you think they cleaned up the church too? I mean, the last time I came here, I almost impaled myself on broken glass, and now it's all clean."

"I did it," Will said, finally settling his gaze on Mike. His shirt collar felt far too warm, like the sunlight had decided to make a home in his skin. "I mean, I came here because I'd thought you'd be here, but you weren't, so I decided to wait, but— I don't know. I just didn't want you spending your time somewhere so. . . broken."

Will's gaze pinned him still. Even his tongue felt frozen solid; it took Mike a few moments to open his mouth and say anything at all. "You really just did this? For me?"

His eyes were so soft, and still, Mike felt entirely exposed under his gaze. Will looked resigned, strangely, which only made Mike even more still. "Well, yeah," said Will, shrugging. "I guess one of us still thinks they can pray themselves away."

Now, Will was even smiling, but it looked so wrong. There was no light in his eyes, no crinkles in the corners, no teeth poking out from his pressed-together lips. Mike wanted to run forward and grab him, shake and yell and plead until Will just told him what he'd done wrong, what he could do to fix this, how can I fix this, please, but he was frozen still. The world was crashing down around him, and he was still.

"Will," and Mike's voice cracked, embarrassingly full of emotion, "Will, if this is about what I said last night—"

"It's fine." Mike hated how Will was still smiling. "I get it, okay? Being like— like this— it sucks. I know. If you think you can escape it, if you think God really can take your sins away, that's great. At least you won't be alone."

Like this. Will had gestured to himself, like he was like Mike. But he'd said—

Mike shook his head, like he could make Will's words less true if he denied them enough. By now, he should've known denial did nothing to make those sorts of feelings go away, but it didn't mean he wanted to stop trying. "But you're— Will, you said you weren't—"

"No," Will said, "you told me I wasn't. There's a difference."

And, suddenly, Mike could move. He took one shaky step forward before the weight of Will's words shackled him to the floor, boulders at his feet. 

Will was like him. Will was queer, gay, a myriad of vitriolic slurs, whatever you wanted to call him. The specific word Mike would use to describe him didn't really matter. 

What mattered was this; Will had biked by cul-de-sac houses with smiling nuclear families and known with a sinking certainty that he'd never have his own family, much less a single person who would be willing to have a family with him. Will had listened to his friends make gossip about crushes, girls in shiny lipgloss and plaited hair, and wondered why he couldn't seem to care until he looked over his shoulder at a nondescript boy— Mike couldn't imagine the boy being him, but he couldn't imagine it being anyone else, either— and realized he wanted something else, something that landed you dead in a ditch or alone in an empty apartment. Will had hurt— or, rather, he'd never stopped hurting, because this sort of pain wasn't the kind you could turn off once you knew what it was— over and over again with every reminder that he lived in a world that was built for everyone but him.

What mattered was, on top of being stolen by monsters and possessed and bruised and beaten bloody by monsters with and without claws, Will had lived with the weight of knowing he'd been cursed from the start. He'd been taken to Hell and thought it was punishment for something as simple as wishing to look a boy in the eye and dare to watch him smile.

"I'm sorry," Mike rasped, forcing his knees not to buckle as he leaned on a pew. "I didn't— come on, I didn't mean it like that. You know it doesn't change anything, right?"

Will shook his head. "You did, though. You can't tell me I'm the same person as always when you're trying to— fuck, I don't know, exorcise the queer out of your heart, or whatever."

"That's not—" Mike's voice broke, and he found himself holding up more of his weight on the church pew. "That's not it, Will, I wasn't—"

Mike watched, transfixed, as Will raked a hand through his hair. How could he still look so beautiful, even as Mike was about to lose him? "Stop. Just stop, okay? I told you, it's fine. You'll be happier when you get over it, anyway. I was born like this, but you— I mean, you had a girlfriend, for God's sake. You've still got a chance to be normal. I don't blame you for taking it. You deserve it."

"Then what do you deserve?" At Mike's question, Will seemed almost surprised, startled at Mike's earnest tone. "If you can't be normal, what are you supposed to deserve then?"

Only hours ago, Mike could've answered his own question, saying something along the lines of an early grave or a long, lonely, pathetic life. Will being like him threw a wrench into his answers, because Will deserved the whole fucking solar system and then some.

"I don't know, Mike," Will said, with a ragged sigh. "I wish it wasn't— well, this—" and he paused to gesture to the ruined church, in all its early-morning, broken-glass glory— "but that's what it has to be, right? You know it. That's why you're still wearing the cross."

Almost at Will's behest, Mike's hand drifted up to his neck. The rosary must have fallen out of his shirt collar in his frantic bike here; it swung freely above his collarbones, deep red beads like spots of blood ringed around his neck. Mike slipped the beads between his fingers, but they didn't give him any comfort. "But I don't want that," Mike said, so quiet he could hardly hear himself at all. "I don't want it to be like that."

"Then why are you still wearing it? Why did you keep coming here, and why did you think you should've taken my place, and—" Will choked down something that might've been a sob, if Mike could've handled him being so sad. "I don't understand. What do you want?"

Mike wanted a lot of things. He wanted the world to stop ending, and a sleep that came without waking up screaming, and a house that didn't feel empty even at max capacity. He wanted to watch Will smile again, and he wanted to listen to another God-awful song from The Smiths just to watch Will mouth the words, and he wanted one more drive in Will's car with their hands interlinked above the console, no matter how reckless that may be. He wanted this weight of being alone off his chest, and he wanted a life he could control, a mouth he could control. He wanted to live his life without feeling like his love was a curse.

Did it have to be a curse? 

If you keep saying it, you'll start believing it. Robin was— well, of course she was right. It only infuriated Mike a little, this time.

"You," was all Mike could get out for a long moment. His throat closed up, that large lump of shame and the urge to shut up, shut up, oh my God you're ruining everything coming to rest on his tongue. But Will was looking at him like this wide-eyed, kicked puppy, and Mike couldn't stand to see Will look so sad, so he swallowed down the guilt and kept going.

"It's because of you," Mike continued, only marginally more composed, "okay? You're the reason I came here." His voice went soft, like it always did around Will. There was a time when he'd hated it, thought of his voice as a weakness, but he couldn't hate it when that voice made Will melt, when his mouth twitched up in the ghost of a smile.

In an instant, Will's smile disappeared. His eyes turned hard again, and he glanced away. "So what? I infected you? It's my fault you're so— sinful, or whatever?"

Mike spluttered, scrambling for an answer. "I— what? No, Will, I meant— when you asked me what I wanted, I meant I want you."

All Will did was stare. If the church was a bit quieter, Mike probably could've heard Will's rapid blinking, like Mike was an illusion that would disappear if Will tilted his head the right way. "You— what," he rasped, more of a solid exclamation of shock that a question. "What?"

He wasn't angry. That had to be a good sign too, right? 

"It's just— I thought you couldn't be like me," said Mike, with a half-crazed laugh. "I thought you would hate me— without saying it, because you're too nice for that. But with me— do you ever feel like, sometimes, your feelings just spill out of you? Like they're overflowing, and there's nothing you can do to keep them inside?"

And there was that smile, that little tilt of Will's mouth Mike had hoped he'd see one more time. That was definitely a good sign. "All the time," Will murmured, shaking his head.

"Yeah, that's, uh," Mike started, feeling an embarrassing flush bloom hot on his face as Will looked up at him, "that's how I feel about you. Like, all the time. But I couldn't just tell you, because you'd hate me, in that sort of silent way you hate people— hey, you know I'm right, I saw the glares you threw at our seventh grade English teacher— and I think you hating me would kill me, honestly. My whole life is you."

Will raised an eyebrow. His face was a mask of calm, but Mike could see the underlying shock in the twitch of his lips, the rapid blinking that cast soft shadows on his cheek. "Your whole life," he breathed, unevenly. "Really."

"I mean," and o-kay, Mike was really embarrassed now, "technically, I guess not. I mean, I have the Party, and my family, and— fucking Robin, now, apparently, but they're not you. I came here and prayed, even when I knew it wouldn't work, because I'd rather lose all of myself than lose you."

"And if you lost yourself," Will said, with a wry smile, "if you lost the way you— you want me, would I still be your whole life?"

If he lost the way he loved, Mike would lose Will. There'd been a time where Mike had thought he'd already lost Will— six months ago, writing letters without an address, and one hour ago, slumped against the wall of an abandoned warehouse— but Will was still here. He knew that Mike loved him in everything but words, and words were unnecessary when Will could read Mike's whole soul with one look, and he was still here.

"No," said Mike, "I, uh. I guess not. I didn't think I deserved you, really, and I still don't, mostly because I thought I didn't deserve anything if I was— you know, a queer. Gay. Whatever. But you're the same, and you— you deserve the world, Will."

Will took a little step forward, and suddenly, the only distance between them was one church pew and a slant of sunlight. "Well, by that logic," said Will, and— oh, Mike got what Robin said, now, about Will looking at him like Mike was his whole world— "don't you deserve the world, too?"

That was something Mike could answer in his sleep. "No, because it's not just that. You deserve everything you could ever want because you're just— you're a good person, okay? I know I already told you this, but God, I think I could go on for hours about how good you are. I'm not like that. I hurt people over and over and I don't know how to stop, and I— it's not that I hate loving you, I just hate how much it hurts you."

It was strange, how one word could come out so easily around the right person. Mike could tell Will he loved him a million times over without hesitation.

"You love me?" 

Time slowed as Mike stared at Will's face, watching as his smile disappeared to a shocked stare. His voice had gone breathy, quiet in a way where not even the church walls echoed it back, and for a moment, Mike thought he'd ruined everything— but Will still looked so awed, like he couldn't imagine Mike loving him at all.

"Yes, Will!" Mike threw his hands up in the air, and Will's eyes followed the motion with a small, awed laugh. Like he couldn't believe Mike still had his flair for dramatics when Mike had literally just said he couldn't contain his emotions around Will. "Was that not obvious when I said I want you?"

At least Will had the decency to look embarrassed, turning away with a bright flush. Mike wanted to kiss the spot on his cheek where all the blood pooled and turned his face pink. "I, uh," Will stammered, wincing, "no?"

"Of course I do!" He couldn't stop himself from yelling; when he'd kept his feelings locked up for years on end, they were bound to explode like a shaken soda can, or pulling the pin on a grenade. Will usually flinched at loud noises, but he didn't shy away from Mike's voice. "I mean, I try to hide it, but you know I can't. You've seen it, when I say all these stupid things, about you not liking girls or how it was your fault I didn't call, or that I'd take your place in all this Vecna bullshit in a heartbeat— which, actually, is still true— but I thought, maybe, if I stopped trying to keep it in, I'd stop hurting you too."

"You don't have to, though," and fuck, that was not what Mike wanted to hear. Where was the real yelling? Where were the screams, the rightly deserved anger over how Mike had treated him? "If you're still scared, or angry, it's okay to want to hide. It's okay—" and Mike interrupted him before Will's voice could break, before he had to watch Will break down again.

"No! No, it's not fucking okay," Mike yelled, but even Will knew he wasn't angry. "Being scared isn't an excuse. Yeah, I was fucking terrified, and I still sort of am, but it's still my fault. Sometimes I thought I was just fated to be a horrible person, but— actually, Robin was the one who screwed my head on straight about this, I mean, can you believe it— fate isn't real. I'm not, like, destined to do the same bad things over and over, and you're not destined to forgive me. Don’t forgive me. You deserve better."

Echoes flew between the church rafters. Better, better, better. Forgive me. There was nothing Mike wanted more than forgiveness; he'd fall on his knees and scrape the skin from his shins if it meant Will would forgive him. He was trying to be better, he really was, but that didn't mean Will had to take it. 

Mike was too focused on the echoes to notice when Will came closer. In a blink, Will went from one church pew away, to half a pew away, to six inches of air and a thin layer of goosebumps away from Mike's body. "You— what the hell, Mike," Will rasped, voice cracking midway. "What happened— it's already happened, okay? It doesn't matter if either of us deserved it or not. It doesn't matter if I deserved to be possessed, or if you deserved to be a fucking jerk to me, or whatever other sins you're dragging around like a dead horse. If we're going by what we deserve, we'd probably be dead ten times over."

This had to be the highest amount of times Will had sworn in one breath, and to be honest, it was making Mike a little dizzy. Will was so close Mike could count every eyelash, close enough to feel Will's body heat warm on his arm. Which was probably because Will now had a hand on Mike's arm, but regardless, Mike didn't think he ever wanted this feeling to end. As long as it ended well, but Will was still looking at him with that wide-eyed you're my whole world sort of stare, so Mike had high hopes.

Huh. He hadn't felt hope in a long time. It was strange, that fluttery warm sensation in his chest, but it made sense for the feeling to only come out around Will.

In Mike's silence, too awed by Will to really form words, Will spoke. "It's just— it's insane that you thought I wouldn't love you, when you've basically been the first person who came to mind when I learned what love was. So I don't care if you think you don't deserve me, okay? Because— I mean, if according to you, I deserve the world, then I can have anything, right?"

"Yeah," Mike breathed. His scratchy voice had nothing— no, it had everything to do with the fact that Will was very, very close.

"You're my world, then," Will said, simply. "I deserve you."

And, well, Mike had never been the best at getting a grasp on his emotions. They poured out of him like water through a sieve, shining in his eyes and mouth and hands, which was probably why he grabbed Will's face and kissed him. 

There were more fireworks in the half-second where Mike leaned in than when their lips really pressed together; Mike got the pleasure of seeing Will's wide-eyed, startled face, like he somehow hadn't expected Mike to kiss him after saying Mike was his whole world, and felt emotion explode in his chest like an unfurling flower. When they kissed, well— with Mike's only experience being pursing his lips so he wouldn't taste lipgloss, and Will's experience being presumably none, it was less fireworks, more smiling into each other's mouths like lovesick idiots.

Mike had felt sick, once. He'd felt like the heart on his sleeve was a symptom of a larger illness, not just a part of him like his hand was a part of his arm. Once, he'd felt bile in his throat at the thought of even getting close to Will, much less kissing him, but all that sick churning in his stomach disappeared when he realized wanting Will wouldn't make him lose Will.

But Mike could only take being so close to Will for so long, still. He couldn't control his grin whatsoever, and really, he was just pressing his smile against Will's, and why would Will even like that—

"Sorry," Mike gasped, as he pulled away, "I, uh, kind of suck at this, and shit, I didn't even ask if I could kiss you, and you never even said you had feelings for me, so—"

"I said you're my world," Will said, raising an eyebrow, "and you think I don't have feelings for you."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to assume."

Will laughed, a shocked thing that made butterflies swarm in Mike's stomach. "You— I love you, oh my God—"

Apparently, Mike had rendered Will speechless, because Will's next move was to tug Mike by his fucking rosary just to kiss him. He pulled Mike hard enough for it to hurt— actually, hard enough to break the string and send the beads clattering to the floor— but Mike thought he deserved it, even if Will wouldn't think so. 

Will had a grip on Mike's neck like he'd disappear if Will moved away, but Mike didn't mind when everything else was soft. Will wasn't tentative, wasn't careful, but he was still gentle; pressing his mouth to Mike's with undisguised want Mike thought could only come from him, hard enough to feel undeniably real but soft enough to only leave Mike's lips a little swollen. Mike would've let Will turn his lips a bruised black and blue, if he wanted, but Mike didn't think that was something Will was capable of wanting. 

In turn, Mike snaked one hand in Will's hair, another around his waist, in the hopes that maybe he could get close enough for their bodies to fuse together. Even when his mouth slipped open in the urge to just get closer, there were still no fireworks; there was just Will, soft and warm under his touch, and Will, who was somehow good enough to forgive him when Mike thought he'd done nothing but hurt, and Will, who said Mike was his world.

Even when Mike pulled away, Will still kept his grip firm on the back of Mike's neck, like he wanted Mike close just as much as Mike wanted him close. It was a little hard for Mike to wrap his head around, to be honest.

"You want me here," Mike breathed, his questioning tone dissolving when he could hardly form words at all. "You— why?"

"If you have all day, I could tell you," said Will, smiling. "It's a long list."

"All day," Mike echoed, mirroring Will's own smile. "I didn't know there were that many good things about me."

Will glanced away, sheepish. "Well," he said, "if you don't want to hear them, I guess I'll just go—"

Mike latched onto his arm before Will could move at all. "No, no! Tell me. Boost my ego," he said, grinning as he tightened his grip on Will's arm and walked them both into a church pew. "Since, apparently, I'm your world, there has to be a lot—"

"And I'm your whole life, apparently, so-o. . ." Will trailed off, giggling as he slowly leaned into Mike's shoulder. Mike pushed himself closer, letting Will make a home in the crook of his neck; it was where Will had always belonged.

Their legs pressed together in the pew, side by side as Mike snaked his hand up Will's arm. Warm light filtered in through stained-glass windows and cast rainbows all over their faces, all down their clothes and at their feet. This church wasn't meant for them, but if Mike wanted it to be, maybe it could.

He didn't have to deserve anything for it to happen. He didn't have to be some irrevocably bad person to do bad things, and he didn't have to hide himself away to get the life he wanted. It was strange, to think he could just exist without hurting other people, to think he could love and get that same amount of love in return, but all signs pointed towards it being true.

Mike didn't believe in signs. He didn't believe in fate, or God, or divine intervention— but he believed in Will, and Will loved him. And Mike wasn't sure if he deserved it, but he knew he wanted that love, those soft smiles and wide-eyed looks and smiles he could feel with his own mouth, and— you know what? Fuck being deserving of anything, really. 

If Mike wanted it, and Will wanted it, that was enough for him.