Chapter Text
Words are loosened from his mind to the typewriter. It's a Christmas gift from his parents, and it's maybe also an apology. For not being around for the past month or so, maybe. Or for not being around in the way Mike and Nancy needed for the past while. He's probably reading too much into it. Regardless, he's making great use of the thing.
As soon as he was released from custody and allowed back home, he had gotten out his old notebooks and began to write. Anything that came to mind was scribbled onto the pages in varying levels of legibility. Characters, cities, magic, worlds. Eventually they began to form into an idea, which turned into a plot. Characters were turned into NPCs, nebulous magic was turned into spell slots, and very quickly Mike was looking at a new D&D campaign.
Honestly, when he looks over what he has now, he's pretty proud of what it's become. A small ball of warmth grows in his chest when he thinks about playing through it with the Party. Scenes dance across his mind. He finishes off the page he was writing up and places it with the others, collecting them into a stack of around twenty-five high. A decent beginning, he thinks, for DM notes. He stands up, grabs his blue binder of assorted D&D mess and puts the new notes in as there's a knock at his door.
'Come in,' he calls.
Nancy enters his room. 'Are you gonna spend the entirety of Christmas break in your room?'
'I literally saw the Party yesterday.' Mike puts the binder back up on his shelf.
She lets out a non-committal hum. 'What are you working on?' she asks.
'Nothing. D&D stuff.'
'Aren't you guys a little… I don't know, tired of D&D now? We've all already done the whole monsters thing.' There's a look on her face that Mike can't quite parse. His best guess would be something akin to concern. His hackles go up momentarily in response, before he remembers his promise.
'It's therapeutic. We beat up the monsters,' he says instead.
Nancy doesn't respond for a bit. 'Help me with dinner?'
A pang of guilt replaces the ball of warmth he was feeling earlier as he thinks about how he's been darting to his room as soon as he gets home for the past month and a bit. 'Yeah, okay. Can we make fries?'
She smiles. 'Yeah, go turn the oven on. Make sure you take the tray out first,' she calls as she leaves.
**
It's January now, and the past two months have been strange. Mike still struggles to believe the interdimensional threat that has plagued their home for the past five years is actually, truly gone, so there's the same little feeling in the back of his neck that he's felt without fail for the past four years, once the main mess has been wrapped up. The first couple months afterwards always have everyone on edge. Flickering lights are accompanied by a sinking stomach. Shadows move on their own, but only in the periphery. Mike is used to it. He supposes everyone is. Everyone's sort of waiting for the pin to drop.
They're back to school after Christmas break. Another separate familiar feeling licks at his nape as he crosses the threshold of the main building. Voices and assorted chatter flood his ears in a strange display of normalcy. They have very little idea of what goes on in Hawkins, even after the government's cries of earthquakes, and yet the Party must pretend they are also none the wiser. It gets a little lonely, sometimes, knowing only a select few will ever understand some habits he's picked up over the years.
It got very lonely, for a bit.
But he's fixed that. Or, rather, he's working on it.
It's a work in progress.
Whatever.
In fourth-period English, Ms. Ballentine tells everyone to pull out their copy of Hamlet. These words are met with an unimpressed silence from the class, then there's a delayed shuffle as everyone reaches for their bags. A frazzled-looking woman in her 40s, it takes probably a solid 60 percent of Mike's mental energy to pay attention to Ms. Ballentine on a good day. He looks over to his right, and sees Lucas and Dustin playing tic-tac-toe in the top corner of Lucas's notebook, next to where he's titled Hamlet Act 1: Scene 2. It's a testament to how focused Ms. Ballentine is on reading Hamlet's soliloquy that she doesn't notice Dustin leaning over the isle in between desks.
Mike returns his focus to his copy of Hamlet, attempting to follow along with Ms. Ballentine's reading. Her voice, in combination with the Shakespearian English that Mike is unfamiliar with, threatens to send him to sleep. His hand drifts to his notebook, and he starts doodling absently in the corner. He wonders if Will is drawing in the margins of his notes right now. He's pretty sure Will has Math during fourth period, and he doesn't think he's ever seen Will go through a Math class with an undecorated page before.
'"Sir, my good friend,"' Ms. Ballentine reads. '"I'll change that name with you."'
Halfway through a very rudimentary doodle of an NPC he's become particularly fond of throughout his campaign planning, the bell rings for lunch. There's a chorus of books closing and chairs scraping the floor as the class packs away their things and starts to file towards the door.
'Your homework for tonight is to go through questions one through five in Chapter Seven of your textbook! Don't roll your eyes at me, Miss Hayes,' Ms Ballentine calls, rapidly losing what little attention she was holding.
Mike looks down at his half-finished drawing. He'll have to ask Will to draw up some character art of the important NPCs, he thinks. He snaps his copy of Hamlet closed, shoves it in his bag, and follows Lucas and Dustin out the door.
**
After school, they cycle to the Hopper-Byers residence. Their new house is still small, and a fair ways out of town, but Joyce and Hopper both say they prefer the quieter atmosphere and a simple life. Will tells the Party it's because their governmentally issued hush money has gone mainly towards El's reintroduction to society. Apparently Owens has been working overtime behind the scenes, and Mike can't help but feel grateful.
'So,' Mike starts, sitting down on the new living room couch next to Max. 'I've been thinking about running another D&D campaign.'
His words are met with various sounds of excitement, and Will's face immediately lights up. 'Oh, Max and El can play for the first time!' He turns to his sister sitting next to him. 'I'll help you build your character,' he says, and she gives him a smile.
'Are we rolling completely new characters?' Lucas asks. 'Or are we sticking with the classics?'
Mike sits up, pleased with the interest his friends are displaying. 'I thought you could roll new ones. That way El and Max are at the same level as you guys, and I can work your backstories in with the existing plot,' he says.
'Hold on, who said I wanted to join your nerd game?' Max pipes up.
'Oh, that's okay! We'll just have weekly hangouts without you,' Lucas says.
'Shut up, of course I want to.' Max rolls her eyes, and she shares a grin with Lucas.
'What's it about? What type of— is it Star Wars themed? That'd be so cool. We should do a Star Wars D&D campaign at some point,' Dustin says.
'Not Star Wars, but that'd be cool. It's more of a classic high-fantasy story. Think Lord of the Rings, you know. But with some twists. I don't want to give away too many spoilers, though, you'll have to find out stuff as we play,' Mike says as he hands a piece of paper to Max to read. 'That's got some more basic info, so— yeah. If you wanna play, tell me about your characters sometime next week, and we can do a session zero maybe the week after, if we all have time.'
Nods and noises of agreement come from the Party as the information sheet is passed around the group. Dustin tries to read over Lucas' shoulder, and receives a hiss of 'Wait your turn!' in response.
'It's like, a weekly thing, right?' Max asks. 'Only cause it might get tricky with finals and stuff later in the year.'
'Well, we usually aim for weekly or biweekly, but chances are life will get in the way. Plus, Mike'll have to prepare everything beforehand, and maybe a week won't be enough time,' Will says. He holds the information sheet out for Mike to collect.
'No, keep that, so you can base your character around it,' Mike says, refusing.
A smile pulls at the corner of Will's lips. Another ball of warmth makes its home in Mike's chest at the sight of it, and he knows intrinsically that he'll be saddened when the smile leaves.
'But if I have questions I can just ask you,' Will says. He meets Mike's eyes, conveying an emotion Mike can't quite read. The smile is still there. Will places the sheet of paper on the coffee table.
Mike falters a little bit before responding. 'I— yeah, true.' The eye contact becomes a little too much, and he turns to look inside his bag. He rifles around in his bag for a couple seconds, finding the pieces of paper tucked into a school notebook before sitting back up. He hands them to Max, again, who looks at the page on top with confusion.
'Character sheets,' Mike says by way of explanation. 'Lucas'll help you set that up,' he adds to Max, as the sheets get dispersed across the room. Will has turned around and is explaining to El what each part of the sheet means. It doesn't look like El understands much of what Will is saying, but she seems entertained anyway.
A pang of emotion floods Mike's chest as he watches them. Despite their complete lack of blood relation, they act so similar to twins that most people who didn't know the Hopper-Byers family members beforehand would not hesitate to call them biological siblings. They even look fairly similar.
So it only makes sense, due to their similarly traumatic childhoods at the hands of Vecna and Dr Brenner, that they would bond. Of course, moving to California together probably helped. It must have been lonely. Mike wonders if El ever talked about him to Will. He wonders if Will ever talked about him to El. It hits him, suddenly, that Will knows El better than he ever did, despite being in a relationship with her for almost two years. A sudden beat of loneliness strikes his chest, even surrounded by his friends. And, if he's being honest with himself, El probably knows Will better than Mike does at this point. Even after their conversation a couple of months ago on the radio tower, their relationship has been somewhat… strained.
Although, Mike knows he has himself to blame for that. He made a promise, back then in the Upside Down, one that he hasn't fulfilled. In all honesty, he's been a little distracted. His parents were released from hospital about a week and a half before Christmas, and before that, he was spending as much time as he possibly could not thinking. The easiest way to do this was to head upstairs to his room and write, but it only took a nudge from Nancy before he realised the Byers were probably doing more housework at the Wheeler house than he was, so he stepped up a bit. Cooked dinner, cleaned, helped Holly with homework, accompanied Nancy on grocery trips. The tasks were kind of mindless, and he appreciated being able to turn his brain off and scrub the oven spotless. And during any downtime, he was upstairs, scribbling away in various notebooks.
He still talked to Will and the rest of the Party, of course— he talked to Will almost every day, he was living in Mike's basement— but everyone's time was fairly occupied with getting their lives back together. Will and Jonathan spent a good chunk of time with Joyce, Hopper, and El, who were busy helping with the new house.
And then his parents were released from hospital, and so Mike spent a lot of time avoiding the lower levels of his house.
Anyway, there hasn't been a lot of mental room for his promised apology recently, so he's guessing that's why he struggles to look Will in the eye. It just seems really… big, for some reason. Every time he considers pulling Will aside for a chat, a lump of something unpleasant forms in his throat and he loses the ability to speak. There was an embarrassing moment at the Party's Christmas present exchange where he was about to ask Will to step outside briefly, but Will looked up at him all doe-eyed from his comfortable position on the Wheeler's sofa, and the lump in his throat threatened to cut off his oxygen supply.
He hasn't really made a lot of progress since. He can't even figure out why it's such a daunting task. When he tries to think further, his train of thought is derailed, and he's left trying to catch smoke. It's just too big of a thing for him to properly conceptualise at the moment. Yeah, that's the solution he'll settle on. He can sort it out later.
The Party chatters a bit longer about D&D, discussing character ideas and explaining game mechanics to Max and El, who both look equally as lost.
'It's not as complicated as it sounds, it'll make a lot more sense when you're actually playing,' Lucas says.
Max and El look a little unconvinced, but neither of them voice any sudden disinterest, so Mike counts this as a win.
'I'm going to play a dwarf lady,' Dustin says with a grin. 'An alcoholic dwarf lady barbarian with a beard.'
'Yeah,' Lucas laughs. 'I'll play her husband. A shy little cleric or something, he just follows her around. Total wife guy.' His words are met with laughter from the rest of the Party, and he and Dustin instantly turn towards each other and start whispering conspiratorially, planning out their background.
'Can they do that?' El asks.
'Do what?' Mike says.
'Have their characters… know each other. Before the story starts. Is that allowed?'
'Yeah, if you and another player agree on it. Or, you can ask me and I can make it so there's NPCs who know about your character beforehand,' Mike says.
'NPCs?' She tilts her head ever so slightly, in such a way that Mike can't help but be reminded of Will. Has she always done that? Or has she picked that up from Will, having lived with him for several years?
'Non player characters. Basically, the random people that I voice that you'll meet along the journey,' Mike explains for her.
Her face doesn't lose its gently confused expression. 'Are you not also a player?' she says.
'Well, yeah, but it's… different, I guess. Cause I'm also telling the story, you know?'
They continue their discussion on whether a Dungeon Master counts as a player for probably too long. It devolves into a conversation about whatever the TV programme they have on in the background is about, before long. It's nice just to be able to chat with El, though, like they used to.
Mike regrets how messy their relationship got, particularly when she and the Byers' had moved to California. Thankfully, despite having a lot less life experience than Mike, she seemed to have her head screwed on correctly and noticed they weren't behaving as a boyfriend and a girlfriend should. No doubt there was a fair amount of outward influence from Hopper, but even Mike can understand now that they were doing more damage to themselves and their relationship when dating, so they settled with staying friends. Hindsight is 20/20, he supposes. And honestly, Mike prefers it this way. It's easier, there's less pressure. Sure, he misses kissing. Who wouldn't? But kissing El was beginning to feel a bit like something he did because that's what a boyfriend did, rather than something he wanted to do.
The day they finally broke it off, a couple of days after they realised she wasn't going to be hunted for sport by the government, and they were going to be let back home, he felt such an intense feeling of what he could only describe as relief. This was immediately followed by guilt, because surely he should be feeling sad. But he looked at El and only saw relief in her face, too. They had hugged, and promised not to drift apart. And they hadn't, so far.
Dustin is the first to get up. 'I'm catching a movie with Steve and Robin later, so I gotta head out,' he says, grabbing his bag.
'Yeah, I should head out too. I have so much Math homework to get through,' Lucas says, also rising. He looks at Max, a question in his face.
'She is sleeping over here tonight,' El says with a big grin, clasping Max's hand in her own.
'Oh, right. Girls' night. Have fun, then,' he says as he and Dustin head towards the door. 'See ya, Will.'
'See you tomorrow,' Will says, curling his legs up on the couch comfortably. The TV has just started playing an episode of Star Trek, and he's idly watching.
'Mike, you coming?' Lucas calls from the doorway.
He kind of wants to stay. In the past, it wouldn't have been unusual for Mike to stay over at the Byers' house for hours on end, even after the others had left. Will never had to invite him to stay longer, it was just a given. And it's not like Will is awkwardly waiting for Mike to leave. He seems relaxed, sort of like he's expecting Mike to stay and watch Star Trek with him. But something stops him. He's not entirely sure what, but a feeling on the back of his neck makes him second-guess himself.
He's waited a second too long for it to be natural, so his belated response of 'Yeah, coming!' is clearly noted by Will, who develops an expression on his face that Mike can't read.
'See you tomorrow, guys,' Mike says, gathering his things and turning so he doesn't have to look at Will's unreadable expression for longer than necessary. He misses the days when Will was like an open book to him.
He hears El and Max say goodbye, and he sticks his hand up in a wave without turning. But then he hears Will's, and he turns back to give him a grin. Will meets it almost immediately. His chest warms slightly, anxiety lessened, and he closes the door behind him.