Chapter Text
The radiator in Mike Wheeler’s apartment clanked in a way that made him feel ill.
New York didn’t care that it was February. New York didn’t care that the wind knifed between buildings and turned people into hunched silhouettes with coffee cups and opinions. New York didn’t care that his window rattled when the subway groaned somewhere beneath the street, like the city had a throat and it was always clearing it.
Mike cared, unfortunately. He cared about everything. He’d built a whole life out of that-- caring until it bruised, then turning the bruise into sentences.
His desk was jammed into the corner where the weak afternoon light could reach it. The room smelled faintly of paper and pencil shavings and the cheap detergent his downstairs neighbor swore by. On the desk sat a chipped mug that held pens, a spiral notebook full of crossed-out openings, and the latest draft of a story that he still couldn't name.
On the page, his protagonist stood in the middle of a ruined town, staring down the road like if he looked hard enough he could force the world to rewind. The protagonist was sarcastic, and sharp-edged, and brave in the way people were brave when they were terrified and too stubborn to admit it.
The protagonist was awful.
Mike had written him that way on purpose, like punishment. Like if he could make the character selfish enough, he could make the loss make sense.
Across from the protagonist, as always, was the boy.
Doe-eyed. Loyal. Soft in all the ways Mike never let his protagonist be. A boy who hovered on the edge of every scene, ready to offer comfort and forgiveness that the protagonist didn’t deserve. A boy who looked at the protagonist like he was the only light left in the world.
Mike had tried to write him differently, once. He’d tried to make the boy mean, or distant, or unimpressed. He’d tried to make him leave.
Every time, the boy turned back around and stayed. Every time, the boy reached out a hand anyway.
Mike pressed his thumb hard into the paper, right over the line where the boy’s name was written.
He’d called him Elliot this time, like that helped. Like hiding the truth behind different letters made it less obvious.
He could see it, though, even in the curve of the E, even in the way he’d described the boy’s hands-- paint-stained, gentle, always busy making something out of nothing.
Will, in other words.
Mike’s throat tightened with the old, familiar sensation; grief that didn’t behave like grief, and longing that didn’t behave like longing. Something that crawled up his ribs and sat behind his sternum like it owned the place.
He’d been twenty-five for six months now, and he still felt like the seventeen-year-old version of himself had just stepped out for a minute and was going to come back any second to reclaim the steering wheel. Instead, it was only Mike-- older, taller, with stubble he didn’t particularly like and a jaw that seemed more tired than it used to be.
A man who lived alone and wrote stories that bled in places nobody could see.
His fingers hovered over the keys of his battered word processor. He’d bought it used at some garage sale months ago. The keys were worn smooth. He loved that about it. Loved that his work was there, that every bit of damage to the old thing was proof of the things he had written.
Loved, too, that he could hit print and the thing would spit out evidence he couldn’t undo.
He read the last paragraph again.
The boy smiled anyway. The boy always smiled anyway.
“I’m here,” He said, like it was a promise the hero had earned. Like it was easy.
Mike’s eyes blurred.
He pushed back from the desk too hard. The chair skidded, the legs squealing against the floorboards. His elbow knocked the side of the desk, and the mug of pens wobbled, threatening to spill.
He caught it, steadying it with shaking fingers, and then he just… held it there. Palm flat against ceramic, as if keeping the pens upright was the most important thing he could do.
Because if the pens spilled, he might, too.
He let go and stood there, breathing in shallow counts.
Seven years.
He’d been telling himself “seven years” like it was a unit of measurement that could become meaningful if he repeated it enough. Seven years since Hawkins had finally stopped being the center of the universe. Seven years since he graduated and got to leave that shithole. Seven years since he finally started accepting that his life was officially over.
Seven years since he last talked about Eleven.
He didn’t say her name out loud anymore. Not because it hurt-- though it did-- but because it felt like saying it would be a kind of claim, and he didn’t have the right to claim her. Not after everything. Not after the way his memories of her were threaded through with guilt like barbed wire.
She’d been a person, not a symbol. But his brain had turned her into a marker anyway: Before. and After.
Before, life was kids on bikes, basement campaigns, the certainty that if you were brave enough and loved enough, you could be happy.
After, all that was left were moving vans, empty rooms, statelines between him and every place that had ever made sense.
New York was supposed to be the After that worked. The After that looked like growth instead of loss. A city big enough to swallow him whole, so he could stop feeling like the world had been shaped around his failures.
Instead, it only made the echo louder.
He walked to the window and rested his forehead against the cold glass. Below, the street was a moving collage; a woman shouting into a payphone, two teenagers in oversized coats laughing, a man hauling a crate of through slush. The city flowed around itself like nothing had ever stopped. It would keep flowing if Mike stopped.
Mike watched it with the strange, distant envy of someone who couldn’t figure out how to be part of the motion without being dragged.
He could still see Hawkins in his sleep.
He could still hear every scream. He could still see Eleven standing in the gate, more determined than she had ever been.
He could still feel Will’s hand in his.
That part was the worst. Not the monsters. Not the blood. Not even the way grief sat in his apartment right next to Mike. Laid next to him as he slept and choked him every time he woke up.
The worst was the hand.
Because it wasn’t just an old memory. It wasn’t just a childhood thing. It wasn’t something he could file away under “then” and move on from.
Will’s hand was haunting. What haunted Mike the very most, though, was the promise that came with it. Crazy together.
Back then, it was Will who was falling in deep. It was Will who felt like he was going insane, who couldn’t hold it together. Who needed someone to go crazy with him.
Will wasn’t crazy anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time.
But Mike? He had lost it. He knew he had. He was crazy and he was alone. Together was no longer an option-- together had been robbed away from him by his own selfishness. His own inability to act, to try something, anything.
Crazy together didn’t exist anymore. Will’s hand in his didn’t exist anymore.
He did see Will sometimes.
Not like before. Before had been the boys’ room, the basement, the Byers’ living room, the mall food court, the in-between spaces where their lives had once overlapped so naturally it felt impossible that they ever wouldn’t. An entire eighteen months of living side-by-side, and never acting on emotions that bubbled beneath his chest.
Now there were art galleries.
White walls. Wine in plastic cups. Voices that had learned to sound confident even when they were saying nothing. People who called Will “interesting” like it was a compliment, instead of singing the praises in Mike’s head.
Mike went anyway.
He’d tell himself he was being supportive. That he was being a good friend. That the distance was a kindness.
He’d tell himself a lot of things.
In truth, it was the only way he knew how to still orbit Will without crashing into him.
The first show he’d gone to-- three years ago now, in SoHo-- he’d stood in the doorway too long, frozen by the sight of Will in a black turtleneck, hair longer than it used to be, laughing with someone Mike didn’t recognize. Will had looked up across the room, and their eyes had met, and for a single second it had been like time stuttered.
Will had smiled.
Not the careful smile Will used for strangers. Not the polite one. The real one-- the one Mike had carried for years in the back of his mind. The one that was pure light.
And Mike had almost crossed the room.
He’d almost done it. Almost stepped into the light and said,‘Hey. It’s me. I’m here. I never stopped being here.’
Instead, he’d lifted his hand in a stiff, awkward wave and then-- coward, coward, coward-- turned his body just enough to let someone else squeeze past him, breaking the moment like a snapped thread.
He had stayed for twenty minutes, reading every placard like if he could understand the art enough, it would excuse how badly he understood everything else. He had bought two paintings. He had left before Will could come over.
After that, it became a pattern.
He’d show up late, when the room was already full. He’d stand in corners and pretend to study brushwork. He’d laugh at the right times. He’d avoid Will’s eyes until he couldn’t.
And every time he did look, Will was… Will. Older, yes. Sharper in some ways, softer in others. Like he’d grown into the parts of himself he’d once been afraid to name.
Will’s art made Mike feel like he was being read. Like Will had turned the inside of his own head into color and shape and dared the world to look.
Mike would go home afterward and write protagonists who were awful on purpose, as if punishing himself on paper could keep him from doing it out loud.
And then Carlton showed up.
Carlton was the kind of person Mike might have hated on principle at seventeen; tall, handsome in an effortless way, a smile that made other people smile back like it was automatic. The first time Mike saw him, Carlton had been holding Will’s elbow-- not gripping, not possessive, just… there. Present. A casual intimacy that made Mike’s stomach drop through the floor.
Will had leaned in to say something to him, mouth close to his ear, and Carlton had laughed, and the sound had been bright and easy like a life that hadn’t been eaten alive by darkness. That hadn't gone through Hell and back.
Mike had felt, with horrifying clarity, like he was watching the ending of a story he’d never gotten to start.
He’d smiled anyway. He was good at that. He’d shaken Carlton’s hand and said all the right words, as if the words could keep his chest from cracking open.
Carlton had been nice. That almost made it worse.
After that, Mike cut down the visits.
A few times a year. Enough that he could tell himself he hadn’t abandoned Will. Few enough that he could keep pretending he wasn’t standing in a room full of art, quietly falling apart.
He’d told himself he was being respectful. He’d told himself Will was happy and Mike had no right to disrupt that happiness with the messy, selfish reality of his feelings.
He’d told himself he was too late.
He’d told himself, ‘You missed your chance’, until the phrase became a routine, like brushing his teeth.
Sometimes, late at night, when the city outside had finally exhaled into something quieter, he’d imagine an alternate 1989 or 1990 or 1991 where he’d been braver. Where he’d been honest. Where he’d looked Will in the eye and said, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I know it matters,’ and Will had looked at him with those careful eyes and believed him.
Sometimes, he imagined Will saying yes.
Sometimes, he imagined Will shaking his head.
The problem was, even in his fantasies, Mike couldn’t control the outcome.
He turned away from the window and went back to the desk.
The page waited for him, both innocent and accusing. Like it knew Mike was going to write about Will all over again. That Mike would cry onto the sheet later until the ink smudged into ugly blotches.
He sat down, hands poised, and typed anyway.
The protagonist said something cruel. The protagonist made a joke at the boy’s expense because it was easier than admitting he needed him. The boy smiled, because the boy always smiled, because Mike didn’t know how to write him otherwise.
Half an hour later, Mike realized he hadn’t blinked in too long. His eyes burned. His wrists ached. The story on the screen looked like a confession and a cowardice at the same time.
The phone on the kitchen counter rang.
Mike froze like he was still fifteen and his mom had just caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. The ring was loud in the small space, an invasion. Most of the calls he got were wrong numbers or editors with too many critiques and ‘helpful options’.
He let it ring twice, three times.
Then, with a sigh that felt like surrender, he stood and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
A beat. Then--
“Miiike!” Lucas Sinclair’s voice was warmer than the radiator, familiar in a way that made something inside Mike go loose.
Mike blinked hard. “Lucas?”
“Yeah. Who else calls you like that?” Lucas sounded like he was smiling. Mike could picture it easily; the tilt of his mouth, the way his eyes crinkled when he was genuinely happy. “Man, you sound like you thought this was the government or something.”
Mike huffed a laugh that came out rough. “In my defense, the government has called before.”
“Okay, fair. But it’s just me.” Lucas paused. “You good?”
The question landed too softly, which made it dangerous. Mike swallowed.
“Yeah,” He said automatically. “Yeah. I’m good. Just-- writing.”
“Still writing.” Lucas said it like it was both an observation and a small, steady victory. “Good. Keep doing that.”
Mike’s throat tightened again, but in a different way. He leaned his hip against the counter and stared at the scuffed linoleum.
“What’s up?” He asked, trying to sound normal.
There was a rustle on Lucas’s end, like he was shifting the phone to the other hand. Somewhere behind him, Mike could hear muffled movement-- another voice, maybe, distant and amused.
Then Lucas cleared his throat in a way that made Mike’s stomach flip with sudden, inexplicable dread.
“So,” Lucas said, drawing the word out, “I’m calling for an official reason. Like, a mail-it-to-you reason. But I figured I’d call first because… I don’t know. Because I wanted to.”
Mike stared at the wall. The air in the apartment felt too thin.
“Lucas,” He said, half warning, half plea. “What’s going on?”
Lucas laughed, and this time Mike heard Max’s voice in the background-- sharp and bright.
“Tell him already, Sinclair.” Max called.
“Okay, okay.” Lucas took a breath, and Mike could hear the grin. When he spoke again his voice was steady, certain.
“Mike Wheeler,” He said. “You are hereby invited to my wedding.”