Chapter Text
❝ This is the ending where you finally find your way home and the ancient terror inside of you is stomped out for good. ❞
Jonny Bolduc, Ending
Side A
December 7, 1986
This December is warmer than the last. Two weeks before Christmas, the first snowfall has already melted, leaving puddles outside the trailer. In the corner of the room, a plastic tree stands spindly and undecorated, a couple of gifts tucked beneath it.
The first phone call is to his house, and it goes unanswered. Mike leaves a message on the machine, just a stuttered apology and a promise he’ll see them soon. He tries to picture his mom listening to it - or stranger still, his dad - and can’t quite grasp the image, his expectations too torn between anger and grief. Soft brown, double-exposed with stiff, blonde curls.
“You sure you don’t want to ride over there?”
Over the formica table, Max is winding up the cord of her hairdryer, laying out Mike’s freshly dried socks in front of her. There’s still an uncomfortable kindness to her voice, one that makes Mike want to cast his eyes away. She’s barely taken her eyes off of him since he walked in.
A year. He was off by a year.
“They’ll freak out.” An understatement, for sure. It’s a scene he already knows the lines to, even if the actors are slightly different.
Max fixes him with a glare, plainly unimpressed. “Yeah, and they’ll still freak out if you put it off. They’ll freak out as soon as they get that message, and they’ll start ringing my phone off the hook.”
It’s the logical argument, but one Mike can’t quite bring himself to accept. Instead, he sits down at the table and busies himself with pulling back on his socks, now stiff with dish soap. There’s a fresh tension in his chest now, waiting for the sound of the phone.
The silence stretches nearly into discomfort before Max sits down across from him. “Are you going to talk about it?”
Mike nods, trying to convey something like honesty on his face. Part of him wants nothing more than to talk, to go ahead and quell the worst fears he knows they must have. The other part is too tangled in anxiety to fathom sorting it all into words.
“... Is it something bad?”
For the thousandth time in the last two months, Mike isn’t quite sure how to answer.
What he is sure of, though, is this: he can’t lie anymore. If there’s one thing he learned on the other side of the tightrope, it’s the incredible, unwavering love these people somehow have for him, no matter how he fumbles and wastes it. And the more he hides, the more he runs-
“There are bad parts,” he finally settles on. He wrings his fingers to keep from tearing at a hangnail, already bleeding. “Look, I swear, I’ll tell everyone once-”
The phone rings, and his heart shoots into his throat.
Max stands up and answers it with another firm glance, conveying something that feels inescapable. Whatever is on the other end of the line, he’s about to face it. No running, no bluffing. He watches the receiver pull away, hears Max answer with a clipped act of politeness, and then -
“Yeah,” Max tells the tinny, urgent response. “Yeah, he’s still- Hey, slow down. He’s okay, I’m not letting him go anywhere.” She rubs a hand across her brow and shoots Mike another stern look. “Yes, I already called the others, while he was taking a piss. They’re on their way.”
Mike responds with a litany of stage-whispered objections, which only earn him an exasperated eye-roll.
“Okay, okay, yeah,” Max says, trying to hurry the call to a close. “I’ll see you in fifteen.” Then, with a click and a sigh, she hangs up and turns back towards Mike, every atom of her expression making one statement: Time to face the music, Wheeler. Beneath it, though, her eyes soften as she asks, “Breakfast?”
They’re halfway through hand-scooped bowls of dry Apple Jacks when the knocks come, punctuating a rapid scuffle up the front steps. Mike’s shoulders tense, both at alarm and sheer volume, but Max is already sliding easily out of her seat, wiping green crumbs onto her pants.
“It’s open, Jesus fuck-”
The door swings in hard enough that Mike expects it to splinter. Amidst the cool damp that follows are precisely the faces he’d expected to see.
“Holy shit.” Lucas breathes it like a marvel, only to be shoved aside by burly shoulders.
“Holy shit!” Dustin echoes, rushing forward without the same awed hesitation. He grapples Mike into a firm hug, broader and stronger than it used to be. When Lucas trails over, his wide eyes tilt farther down than before.
A year. A year. A-
Mike swallows around a dry throat. “Hey, guys.” It’s a double exposure, a carbon copy of a different morning in a different kitchen, except… Except it’s not. Not really. He keeps expecting his stomach to sink, and his heart to twist, but they don’t. Instead, something else catches in his chest, something he can’t quite identify. It creeps up into his throat, prickles behind his eyes, warm and trembling.
“We missed you so much, man.” Lucas’ arms replace Dustin’s, his stubbled chin settling against Mike’s cheek.
Behind him, Dustin sniffs through his permanent grin. “You’re- are you okay?”
Mike blinks, trying to nod. “I’m- I-”
“Come on.” A shuffle of socks, as Max runs interference. “Let him breathe.”
Lucas’ grip loosens, and for an unexpected second Mike’s reflexes want to pull him back in. “Yeah, sorry, just- God, dude…” He’s smiling too, his eyes round and watery, and it’s then that Mike gets it. He gets the aching warmth in his chest, and the itch in his shoulders, begging to be held closer. He gets how this is different, even with his friends speaking the same wondering words, shedding the same tears.
He doesn’t feel their pain, this time - he feels their love.
“Okay, shoes off.” Max tugs the guys away, gesturing down with an empty cereal bowl to where they’ve trailed muddy slush on the linoleum. “Cavemen, I swear.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Dustin scoots back, toeing off his sneakers, but doesn’t take his eyes away from Mike, still joyful and appraising, latching onto details in a way that should leave Mike feeling uneasy. Instead, he just smiles back. “Your hair’s shorter,” Dustin finally settles on. “You cut your hair.”
“You look good,” Lucas adds, tucking his shoes neatly next to Dustin’s tumbled pile.
Mike tucks his chin down, eyes glancing between his friends. “Thanks. I, uh. I am.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie. “I’m good.”
The words are nearly swallowed by another flurry of noise from outside. He hadn’t turned at the puttering approach of a car, but the burst of muffled voices catches his attention, and the rush of feet on the front steps strikes through his stomach with anticipation. He thinks back to Max on the phone, saying that she’d called the others, and realizes with sudden certainty that she hadn’t been speaking to Dustin or Lucas. Someone else is out the door, and he thumbs through a split-second list of possibilities, starting with the Hawkins Police and culminating alarmingly in his parents.
“It’s open!” Max turns to shout, but the door is already flying open before the word is out. And on the threshold, against the cold, bright morning-
“Mike,” Will gasps.
Time seems to slow. Mike’s heart freezes, and his head spins, filling with a thousand tumbling thoughts that he can’t begin to give voice to.
Weren’t you in Greenwood?
Are you as tall as me now?
Do you remember any of it?
Before he can speak - before he can sort through and make sense of any of it - he’s being knocked back by something soft and shaking, digging fingers into Mike’s back and shuddering out breaths against his neck. Will smells like toothpaste, and he isn’t dressed for the weather, and he’s getting tears all over Mike’s forehead, and it’s all Mike can do to wind up into his arms and let himself break, and break, and break and-
“Mike???”
He lifts his head with great effort, just enough to see-
Nancy crosses the room in a heartbeat, bed-headed and wrapped in a coat he knows is Joyce’s, already reaching out to tug Mike into her arms. Behind her, El is clambering up the stairs too, eyes awed and bloodshot.
“Hi.” Barely a whisper as he lets his sister tuck him fiercely against his chest, as he reaches a hand out to grip El’s shoulder.
“Oh my god, Mike.” Nancy’s voice, murmured into his sweater, amidst the bustle and warmth of six pairs of arms wrapping in, six soft voices whispering relief. “You’re- you’re actually-”
“I’m okay,” Mike answers. “I’m okay.”
He turns just a bit, meeting Will’s unwavering gaze - and for a moment, for a flash, he catches something he can’t name. An awed confusion beneath Will’s tearful joy, like he’s trying to put a name to a distant face. Then, the moment passes, resolving back into a wide, trembling smile.
Mike smiles back, closes his eyes, and feels.
The questions don’t stop, but by the time the station wagon turns onto Maple, they’ve at least slowed from their rapidfire urgency. Nancy keeps glancing over, face cycling through emotions Mike gives up on trying to name. Relief, mainly, but also surprise, like she’s still stepping onto the Mayfields’ porch in a loop.
“God, I can’t believe…” She says it for the third - or maybe the tenth - time, shaking her head.
“I know,” Mike answers. He tired quickly of the routine, but can’t find it in him to be annoyed. Maybe not for a few more hours.
“You’re really-”
“Look at the road, Nance. Jesus.”
The brakes slam on, uncharacteristic of Nancy’s usual driving. Skirting the speed limit, sometimes, but as precise as everything else about her: her handwriting, her vocabulary, the pleats of her clothing.
Under the borrowed coat, she’s in a mismatched pair of sweats. Her hair is flat on one side, and there’s a smear of makeup under one eye. He thinks back to her arriving with Will and El in tow, and doesn’t have to wonder where she slept last night.
The Byers’ weren’t in Greenwood anymore, he was quick to learn. They’d barely made it into the spring before breaking their lease and trucking back up north. No one had yet told Mike why, but his stay at Max’s house hadn’t extended long past their tearful greetings. Karen and Ted were at church, Nancy had told him, and beating them back to the answering machine was in the best interest of their mother’s cardiac health.
“Stop sign.”
“Shit.” Another jolting brake, and a polite wave to the crossing driver. They’re halfway across town now, and Mike feels every block as a new butterfly in his stomach. The day is still bright and blue, melting the rest of the snow down to asphalt.
“What can you tell me?” Nancy asks, breaking a few more moments of quiet. It’s a gentler approach, over her own journalistic prodding.
In his gut, he knows where this is going. Nancy is going to know. His friends are going to know. And after so much time walled inside himself, he wants to come clean. He wants to let them in on what he’s been through - not just since the crash, but in the dark stretches before that. Only-
“It’s… It’s hard to explain.”
Nancy levels an utterly unimpressed look at him. “Mike.”
He gives a soft huff of a laugh, in spite of himself. There isn’t a thing they've been through that wasn’t bordering on impossible to explain, and he can’t begin to imagine what it would take to not be believed. Still, there’s a flicker of doubt in his thoughts.
Maybe it’s not about being believed. Maybe it’s about being judged. He can still see it behind his eyelids - jagged lines like dark matter, stretching across the sky, sparking from his own hands.
Scribbled, black crayon on printer paper. Spider legs filling the horizon, ripping through the earth.
The likeness isn’t lost on him. The Mind Flayer’s creation, and his own.
“Was it the Upside Down?”
Nancy’s voice is quiet. Hesitant. She pauses the car too long, until another driver sends a quick blast of their horn.
Mike takes a breath, shakes his head, and answers: “More like… the Sideways.”
He thinks he might say more, now that the first, quiet crack has split through the dam. Nancy’s eyes widen, taking in the answer and instantly seeking more, but there isn’t time. The roofline of their house peeks into view, and Mike’s heart picks up pace, eyes scanning for-
They’re just getting out of the car, underneath the shaded carport. His dad’s legs in familiar khaki, his mom in a belted coat and heels. Holly, her hair too long and her legs too knobby. Three heads turn to track Nancy’s car down the driveway, and Mike has to force himself not to crouch out of sight, steeling back against the headrest until-
“Michael?!”
The station wagon has barely slowed to a stop before Karen Wheeler is kicking out of her shoes, racing on hosed feet to grapple for the door. And even after she’s tugged him from his seat - after she’s held his cheeks in her palms and pressed lipstick into his hair, after he’s looked over her shoulder and into the startled, wet eyes of his father - his mind is still trying to catalogue. Blonde hair, but soft against his face, instead of sharp with aerosol. A dizzy panel of spot-the-differences, pulled from a children’s magazine. He gives up, wilts into her grasp - blinks against tears when his dad wanders over, stunned, and pulls them both in.
It’s after more kissed brows, after more clamoured assurances and tugging hands, while the rest of their family bustles inside, that Mike finally leans down to meet Holly’s careful, calculating gaze. She’s a full head too tall now, chewing on the skin of a chapped lip.
“Hey.” Mike smiles, trying to match her own quiet, gentle language. “I missed you.”
He isn’t sure what to expect in response. She’s had an extra year of growth, of being shuttled around to speech therapy, but he’d never thought to imagine her any different. He’d never pictured her with a louder voice, or longer words.
Now though, with her eyes steady and solemn, Holly leans up on the toes of her buckled shoes and whispers, “Did you save him?” The words are soft, but unhalting, and utterly unexpected.
“Save- who?”
She fixes him with an impatient gaze borrowed straight from Nancy. “The other Mike,” she says simply, as though the words don’t send a shock right through Mike’s stomach. He can only stare back for a long moment, mouth gaping, waiting for something to make sense.
And yet, something does. Scraps through space that he can’t quite translate, flashes of worlds that only just brushed his hands. Somewhere, timeless and distant, there’s a pair of blonde pigtails, and there’s a boy dripping on a foyer floor. A sister who he doesn’t always know is something more.
“I think I did,” he finally answers, and he hopes with all he has that he’s right.
It’s cold in the house, but Mike can hear the heater starting up, buzzing in the vents. Over it, his parents’ voices - his dad, hovering by the kitchen phone, swiftly begging off of work. His mom, harried but joyful.
“Does Joyce know?”
“The kids might have told her by now.” Nancy is starting up the coffee pot as Mike walks in. She pauses to lift up a mug in his direction, a silent offer that he turns down.
Karen closes the fridge, setting a carton of half-and-half down on the counter. “I’ll call over there in a bit. Unless she’s down at the station, with Jim.” She crosses, reaching to give Mike’s shoulder a squeeze on the way, but he’s frozen under the touch, one word echoing in his ears.
“Jim?”
Another déjà vu, another moment of cold, creeping doubt at what world he’s landed in, until-
“Oh, shit!” Nancy finishes pouring her coffee, and steps over to slide a tight, warm arm around Mike’s shoulders. “Let me catch you up, come on.”
December 31, 1986
“Okay.” The engine stutters off, and Nancy pulls the keys out with more force than necessary. “I made sure Jonathan got plenty of sparkling grape juice. You can have one sip of champagne, okay? Not a drop more.”
Annoyance at least takes the place of anxiety, for a few blessed moments. “Thanks, mom,” Mike huffs, reaching to open the door. He’s stopped by a tap on his shoulder.
“Hey.” Nancy’s voice softens, the authority seeping out in favor of affection. “It’s okay if you’re not ready for this.”
It must be plain on his face. It certainly was last week, the first time he pulled up to this house, with its old, white clapboard, its muddy front drive, the scraggly stretch of field out back. They’d moved in just before Thanksgiving, and Hopper - still slow and thin from months that Mike was learning in careful pieces - was working on a battery of repairs. Fixing the stairs under the last owner’s wheelchair ramp was next on the list, El had explained during Mike’s first tour.
She hadn’t been surprised when he already knew the layout.
“I’m ready,” he answers. “Or- I’m ready to be ready.”
Nancy smiles, teasing and amused and so, so fond. “Okay, weirdo.”
Seeing Hopper hasn’t gotten any less staggering. Even against the familiar backdrop of the farmhouse, the look in the man’s eyes when he opens the door is a stark contrast to the long months on the other side. It has been ever since their reunion in the Wheelers’ kitchen some weeks ago, bustling through the door with Joyce with wet coats and held breath.
He hadn’t had to think hard to know what the difference was. Across that vast, unnamable space, the other Chief had greeted him with doubt, with a mourning too long past to give way to hope. A pain that felt like anger, instead of love.
What he hasn’t figured out is what’s different, here - the others, or himself.
“Hey, kid.” Hopper claps a hand on Mike’s arm, stepping aside to usher him over the threshold. “Good to see you.”
The warm air of the house smells like dinner rolls and tomato sauce, and he barely makes it a step inside before an excited clamor explodes from the living room. He registers Nancy pushing past, but otherwise the tangle of greetings is nearly indistinguishable. He accepts a one-armed hug from Jonathan, a hair-ruffle from Steve, a cheery fist-bump from Robin. A stranger with shaggy hair and a fiercely patched jacked - Eddie, he thinks - offers a theatrical bow, and an assurance that he’s heard only good things about Mike.
Then, just as soon as he’s fought his way through the first wave, Mike is swept into the quick, fervent grasp of Joyce Byers.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She pulls back, and tugs his head down to plant a firm kiss on his snow-dusted hair. He can feel her grin, even when he can’t see it. “How are you doing?”
It’s a question he’s heard over and over now, and even if he can’t fault this big, beloved family, it never gets easier to answer. Because there’s relief, and there’s joy, but there are other things behind them, things that still nip at his heels between breaths. The sheer overwhelm, at the whirling, gripping attention. The fear every time his stomach tenses, or the light changes, or a dog barks down the street.
And under it all, the root that still sits tight around his ankle. The ghost of the hollow in his stomach, the once-nameless thing that never went away, that may never go away.
“I’m okay,” he says, and he knows that Joyce knows. Her smile turns soft, her eyes earnest.
“Tonight goes however you want, okay? All at your own pace.” She squeezes his shoulder. Then, her smile quirking upward: “The others are upstairs. Go let them know dinner’s in ten.”
If the kitchen table had been crowded before, on that first, nervous morning, it’s overflowing now, leaving plates to be gripped in hands or balanced on knees. A few eat standing over the counter, in the spare gaps between hot dishes. Lucas, draped across the back of Mike’s chair, has already slopped a meatball down his own T-shirt.
The chaos is comfortable in a way Mike wasn’t expecting. He’s the center of attention, but it doesn’t feel cloying or suffocating. Instead, mouths full, the others clamber to fill in the holes they’ve left over the last few weeks. A harrowing battle against flesh-eating bats, recounted enthusiastically by Dustin and Eddie. A vivid description of his sister’s machine-gun victory, retold by a wide-eyed Robin, who will never remember teaching him math.
And with each story, he listens, and he catalogues. Parsing through the faint flashes he can feel in his memory, deciding what’s familiar and what’s new. Max, her eyes blue instead of a half-remembered murky white. Eddie Munson, part-friend and part-stranger, making it out of the Upside Down. Things he shouldn’t remember - happening this way, or differently - brushing against his mind nonetheless.
Next to him, El doesn’t say much. Mike feels her gaze, though, flicking to his reactions after each story. It’s a physical touch, a faint, questioning nudge against his thoughts. A transfer of concept, more than words, like he’d felt with the blink dogs. There’s never any suspicion from El, though - just patience. She sees what’s there, feels the way he’s different, and trusts he’ll explain it in his own time.
An assembly line of dishes are clattering into the sink when his parents get there, the doorbell’s chime somehow prim in its announcement. They’re greeted with an affection that Mike isn’t yet used to - Joyce squeezes his mom in a tight, grinning embrace, while his dad laughs openly at something Hopper has said. Robin lifts a smiling Holly up into her lap, asking about her gymnastics lessons. Another reminder of missed months, but it doesn’t feel like poison in his stomach the way he first expected. It feels like something beloved, like something he wants to be a part of.
Eventually, they settle into the living room, pulling in dining chairs and leftover moving boxes, stacked pillows and step stools, all dragged in a circle. Mike doesn’t sit up front. Instead, he tucks on the sofa between Nancy and his mom, elbows and knees knocking. Someone refills his orange soda, and a crocheted blanket drops into his lap. He sees Will’s eyes land on him from across the room, full of an understanding that he reads immediately: this doting and attention is going to get old fast, and as soon as it does, Will will be there to listen.
The room finally falls quiet. Mike clenches his fists, steadies his chest. Nancy gives his arm a quick squeeze; El lends another palpable sweep of comfort into his thoughts, wordless and clear.
Then, with a deep breath, he begins:
“So, it all started with this giant dog.”
“I still can’t believe it.”
Will’s room is dim and hushed, the desk lamp’s glow barely reaching the bed. Muffled chatter drifts from downstairs in occasional swells, more frequent as the clock gets closer to midnight.
“It’s like-” Will continues, giving a faint shake of his head. “It feels like I’m going to blink, and you'll be gone again.”
Mike looks over, eyes tracing Will’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I won’t. I promise.”
He’d followed him upstairs half an hour ago, dizzy and pink-cheeked with laughter. Will had needed a sweatshirt, or maybe a blanket, and he had looked at Mike with something unreadable. Hesitant, but beckoning. And once he’d wrestled into a warm sweater, Will hadn’t turned back towards the door. Instead, he’d landed on the creaking mattress, back against the bent plastic slats of his blinds. He had needed quiet, Mike knew innately, and joined him without a second thought.
“How, um- How was your appointment?” Will asks. His voice is soft and lenient, leaving room for Mike to refuse the question.
He wants to, for just a moment, but he doesn’t.
“It was fine.” And it’s maybe a little bit of a lie, so he adds, “Could’ve been worse.”
The office had been cold, with a sterile light that flickered, but Dr. Higgins was nice. Young, with a curly ponytail and a soft smile. Not the way he expected a psychiatrist to look. There were no imposing leather armchairs, or judgmental frowns from behind scribbled notepads. Instead, Mike had squeezed a foam ball in his hand and been offered questions to answer at his own comfort level. He couldn’t talk about all of it, not about the fear and the monsters, but he let himself talk about the rest. The black hollow under his ribs, the spinning in his brain. The sleepless weeks, the thoughts about jagged cliffs and bottles in bathrooms. And when they were done the doctor had called in his mother, and Mike had hunched up in his chair and listened.
Depression, like he’d once talked about with Will, back on a bedroom floor that looked just like this one. And there was something more - something not yet diagnosable, though long-since studied and discussed. Karen Wheeler had balked and teared at the word “bipolar”, but Dr. Higgins had done her best to explain the variation, this unfamiliar sequel that didn’t quite meet the rules of the first. Hypomania, she’d said, and Mike had tried his best to understand, to pluck memories and fit them into her description.
He isn’t sure how to feel about it. The books in the library had mostly been frightening, but he can’t ignore the sense of control that comes with having words for it all.
Will pulls his legs up, crossing them; his knee prods against Mike’s. “Are you gonna keep going?”
“I guess.” Mike shrugs, fiddling with his sleeves. “She gave me some medicine.”
“And you’re gonna take it?”
“Yeah.” He says it with certainty. “I- I want to feel better.”
And just like he hasn’t yet told them his diagnosis, he hasn’t told them yet how bad it was, either. They know some of it, of course - they know he was sad. They know that he wasn’t talking, that he was failing school, that he felt shitty enough to run away. He hasn’t talked about being suicidal, though. Not yet, but maybe one day. His therapist, set up by Dr. Owens, says he needs a support system.
“I want you to feel better too.” Will is quiet for a moment, but in the low light Mike can tell that he’s not done, that there are more words coming. Something secret, something important.
It comes in a soft breath: “I’ve… I had a dream. A few dreams.”
Mike looks over, heart skipping to a pause. “About what?” And somehow, he knows the answer before it comes. He knows it like his own memories, shaking him awake in a cold sweat every night.
“The sky,” Will says, barely over a whisper. “A beach.” He pauses. “Dogs.”
Blood rushes in Mike’s ears as his heart rushes back to life, nervous and punishing. He tenses, pulling his knee away from Will’s like it might burn. “I- I, uh.” His voice sounds too loud, like their friends downstairs might hear his guilt, and he lowers it. “I did something, I think. I sort of- I think I-”
“It’s okay,” Will starts to say, but Mike shakes his head.
“I pulled you across.” And not just Will, he thinks. His mom, too. El, maybe. He could see it in his eyes, both in the other world and here in his own. Moments of knowing, of skipping a breath and looking too long. “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”
“I don’t mind.” A hand reaches to rest on his, thumb rubbing against his knuckle. “I like knowing.”
“It was stupid, I could have-” Hurt them. Killed them. Made everything so much worse. Destroyed everything he was trying to return to, just because he couldn’t keep himself from needing.
But Will’s voice stays steady, his hand firm and soothing through Mike’s sweatshirt. “You didn’t, Mike. You didn’t hurt anyone. You made it back.”
Maybe the words flick a switch, or maybe he’s just out of fight, but all at once Mike feels himself crumble inward on a shaky exhale. A string cuts, and he tips towards Will without thought. Just an unconscious need for rest, or for comfort.
Will leans into him. His hair bunches against Mike’s cheek, and his hand twitches, and-
It’s the sight of the roof that does it, somehow, moonlit through the blinds. He can see the rough edges of the shingles, and the peeled paint of the gutters, and something flutters through his chest. Because if he pulled in the shattering sky, and the blink dogs, then maybe-
“Do you-” He shifts away just enough to glance over, guarded and uncertain. “Do you remember…”
For a moment, Will looks as though he’s trying to. Face still and mouth open, thumbing through something half-forgotten.
Then, all at once, he pulls in a deep, sharp gasp. His cheeks flood pink, and he turns quick enough to tweak his neck. Once his wide eyes land on Mike, they don’t leave.
“Yeah,” he breathes, gaze flicking over Mike like he’s seeing something for the first time. “Yeah I- I think I-”
There’s a sudden sound in the hallway, the excited chatter of voices and the creak of the old floors. El and Max, laughing as they dip in and back out of El’s room, never stopping to pay mind to Will’s closed door. Then, with a cheerful pair of shouts and clattering footsteps, the girls head back down the stairs to rejoin the party.
Over Will’s shoulders, Mike catches the time on his alarm clock. 11:57.
He reaches his hand back out, just a fraction of an inch, until the very edge of his finger brushes against Will’s. A gesture easily passed off. An option presented silently.
“Do you want to go back downstairs?” Will asks. He doesn’t move his hand.
Mike blinks, and breathes. “If you want to.” He’s not sure the others are expecting them, by this point.
With a slow, faint rustle of movement, Will turns towards him.
“Is… Is there anything else you want to do?” His words are slow and soft, warm against Mike’s cheek.
Mike knows the answer. He’s known the answer for a long time, far longer than he’s understood it. He’s known wide eyes and cold rain, his friends’ jeering insistence turned inward. He’s known clawing grief, bound up in a person on the other end of a useless radio, a person he thinks can fix him. He’s known the fierce, devastating need to grow up, grow up, to be someone else, someone who’s normal and okay, with a girlfriend on his arm.
But he’s also known relief, at a pale, smiling face in a hospital bed. He’s known a quiet promise over candy wrappers, an understanding he can’t find in anything else. He’s known a pretty girl leaving him outside the mall, but he’s known a boy pedaling away from him in the rain, and how it hurt so, so much worse.
And after it all, at the very end - he knows a quiet future on the edge of the ocean. He knows a rumpled bed with a shared blanket. A closet with two sets of clothes, and a bathroom with two toothbrushes. And it can all be his if he just lets it.
He looks over at Will - at his dark, nervous eyes - and he says, “There’s something else I didn’t tell you guys.”
For a second Will just freezes, his face falling in poorly hidden disappointment. He pulls back a couple of inches, and Mike misses the press of his shoulder instantly.
“What is it?” Will asks.
Mike barely has to try. He doesn’t have to clench his fists, or close his eyes. His eyes flick to the stretch of roof outside, and he thinks - and he’s there, snow-flecked shingles under his palms. There’s a moment of silent stillness from inside, and then the blinds are shoving away, snapping at the force as Will’s face comes into view, staring in plain shock. Mike looks back with a wide, daring grin, and helps him muscle the window open, just far enough for Will to shove his way out on hands and knees.
“Holy shit!” He gives an awed huff of a laugh, eyes flicking over Mike as though he’s going to find the answer somewhere in his unruly hair or his dirty socks. “How did you-”
“ -Seven, six, five-”
The voices are quieter up here, but they still make it up the stairs: the last half of a countdown, the final ticks towards midnight. His family, his friends - everyone he loves, everyone who loves him - just steps away in cheerful unison.
“-Four, three, two-”
Mike smiles, and says, “I’ll tell you later.” And as the first fireworks stir up across the frozen fields, he leans in and kisses Will.
If their first was a goodbye, rushed and stolen on a dying beach, this one is a hello. A hello, and another hello, and then they’re pulling back and smiling, and laughing, fingers reaching to lace and tangle. Bright red lights up the sky, in shimmers instead of fractures, and Will leans back in-
Side B
January 1, 1987
-to kiss him again, and then again. Another pop of a firework pulls them apart, but only enough to breathe, their smiles pressed close from edge to edge.
“Happy New Year,” Will says, in words felt more than heard.
And like a steady warmth in Mike’s stomach - like a light filtered through water, a saving breath of air - he knows that it’s going to be.