Chapter Text
Will’s hands white knuckle the steering wheel, and Mike just stares at him from the passenger seat of the car. It would be an understatement to say that he is freaking out.
“Prove it,” Mike demands. “Prove to me you’re Wiseheart. Change right now.”
Will glances exasperatedly from the driver’s seat of the car, where he is still very much driving Mike’s Mercury far from the lake and the deadly thing nesting there.
“Mike, I’m driving,” Will says, checking the mirror to make sure nothing is following them. “And-” he shuffles nervously. “It isn’t wise -”
“So, you’re lying to me-”
“No, no , I’m not lying to you. I haven’t lied to you. I just omitted some details until you were stronger.”
Will turns quickly to look at Mike with earnest eyes. “Mike, I was always going to tell you. It was only a matter of when,” he says, before his eyes move back to the road. “I thought maybe you saw me change at the lake; you looked right at me as I changed. But you acted like you remembered nothing. And you almost died . I couldn’t just drop this bomb on you. You didn’t know me, and Lucas and everybody were already suspicious of me. With good reason, I don’t blame them. But I promise I wouldn’t have kept it from you for long.”
Mike’s head is still spinning at the information. A heart encased several layers deep yearns to take all of Will’s words as truth.
“But you can’t show me; you couldn’t change now?”
Will fidgets, running his hand through his fluffy hair. “Um, I’m a dhampir; I can’t change right now,” Will says as if that explains everything.
There’s a bit of silence as Mike tries to process this. It isn’t “wise" for Will to change, and he “can’t” change. Mike just doesn’t have enough information.
“What is a dhampir exactly ?”
“Give me a minute okay,” Will says, focusing on the road, slowing to make a turn on a side street that Mike knows leads nowhere.
“Um, you want to go straight here,” Mike directs, realizing that Will, still fairly new to Hawkins, doesn't know where he’s going. “We can park somewhere and talk,” he adds, checking the time.
He does a double take. Has it really been that long?
His curfews soon; they won’t have much time. He lost so much time by the lake.
As Mike guides Will through Hawkins on autopilot, his thoughts whirl inside his brain, snippets of memories coming back to him in flashes - Wiseheart bringing him a hair tie, a brown bat tapping a O/X card - understanding every word out of Mike’s mouth. A tiny creature with a mole at the corner of his mouth.
A mole at the corner of a mouth.
Mike lurches forward in the car suddenly, finding Will’s mouth and a tiny mole at its corner, as clear as a North Star, Polaris. Mike’s entire world is tilting on an unsteady axis, and yet Polaris remains constant.
The mums, Mike’s face heats in the dark car, Wiseheart loved those fucking mums, and Will had given Mike purple ones.
The X/O card in the mailbox.
Mike presses his hand to his forehead.
Wiseheart and Will Byers - they’re the same person.
Unless Mike is losing his mind.
They drive until Mike tells Will to pull over in a deserted area, parking at the hardware store that Mike had once stopped by to collect some well-meaning but useless bugs for a tiny creature. A tiny creature that is actually the boy sitting next to him, if the story is to be believed.
Will shifts the gear selector up into park, sighing loudly through his nose, before raising his hands to his temples and rubbing.
Mike waits impatiently, eyes glued to his form hunched over the steering wheel. He wants answers, and he wants them now. Will’s form is haggard though, exhausted.
Shadows play over his form, leaching into the vehicle. The only lights flicker in from the clear, circular moon above and the few lampposts that litter the street. After tonight, any light at all is a comfort. The shadows outside the vehicle, outside the space between them, seem to shift and twist without cause.
It's a chilling thought.
He remembers how suffocating that fog felt, how he couldn’t see anything but gray by the lake. The horror had wrapped itself around his throat, leaving him useless and vulnerable. He’d been way out of his depth. Until Wiseheart, until Will had found him, had saved him.
Regardless of what he is or isn’t, Will has saved Mike two times now.
“Honestly, at this point I should just give you a set of keys, you’ve driven my car so much,” he says, just to break the silence.
“Did you know I failed my driver’s test,” Will says, deadpan. “I don’t even have my license.”
Mike lets out a startled laugh.
Will returns it lightly, breaking the silence with music. Until all the tension breaks and both of them are laughing. Hysterically laughing until their ribs ache, until almost all their air is gone.
There’s a level of relief there. Joy that they're both still alive, despite multiple close calls at the lake.
When they finally stop, chuckles still escaping their mouths, Will looks at him, smiles warmly.
Mike believes that Will is a dhampir. He believes that Will is Wiseheart, but he doesn’t know if he should. There is a voice in his head - sounding a lot like Lucas - that says this whole story might be bullshit. Somehow, someway this is a trap, and Mike is walking right into it - like a dumbass.
“So you want me to believe this fantastical craziness, that you can turn into a bat, but you can’t even demonstrate?”
The smile freezes on Will’s face, and he lets out a harsh breath.
“I can tell you things,” Will says desperately. “Look, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a crazy situation on all fronts. But I understood you as a bat, the reason I left you the O/X card, the reason I knew El on my first day of school was because you told me about her as a bat. I knew Angela wasn’t a good person because you told me that story too.”
Will’s fairly panting at the end of the explanation. He’d spoken so fast, trying to get Mike to believe him. After seeing the mole, that both Wiseheart and Will carry at the corner of their mouths, Mike is inclined to believe this crazy, this fantastical story.
But some things just don’t add up. Why didn’t Wiseheart ever change? Wiseheart wasn’t trapped in the cage for three weeks. He and the bat walked circles around Mike’s backyard every night. If Will wanted to change, he could have then. If the reason was he hadn’t wanted to tell Mike the truth about being a dhampir, then why was Will explaining all this now?
Mike just doesn’t have enough information.
“So dhampirs…” Mike questions, and Will nods, doesn’t even let him finish the inquiry.
“Dhampirs are… different from vampires. They are the result of a union between a vampire and a human,” Will looks uncomfortable as he says this.
“They are neither one nor the other. Not completely human, not completely undead. As a dhampir, I age. I can eat regular food. I can go out in sunlight, though I burn super easy,” he looks at his hands as he says this, Mike’s shocked to notice that they’re shaking. “But, I can’t enter a house without explicit permission to do so, among other things.”
“Wait, that’s a real thing?”
“Yeah,” Will looks back at the steering wheel, begins picking at it. “The story goes, homes are sacred, a person’s refuge. Homes are the closest, physical thing to holiness a human can create, and as such, one of the damned cannot enter without explicit permission.”
“You don’t believe that you’re damned, do you,” Mike asks, horrified, when he thinks of Will, he thinks of the sun, of purple mums sitting in an open window, of musical laughter and kindness toward Holly, and Wiseheart. Mike remembers his batty face surrounded by dozens of yellow blooms. Will couldn’t be damned, there’s no way.
Will just shrugs, not meeting Mike’s eyes.
“Well, I don’t believe you're damned,” Mike says, vehemently.
The boy across from him takes a moment to process that before a smile twitches on his mouth. “It doesn’t matter really,” Will adds, sighing. “It doesn’t matter if damnation and holiness are just concepts or if they’re real. The fact is, if we actually went to that Halloween Party right now, I couldn’t walk through the front door, because the person that lives there didn’t invite me inside.”
Mike can only sit there speechless. “That must be really annoying.”
Will rolls his eyes, “I couldn’t help my mom house shop because realtors don’t actually count.”
“Uh,” Mike says, wondering about how that would work with apartment buildings or college dorm rooms. But then he latches on to a different piece of information, if Will’s mom could house shop…
“So one of your parents-“
“My biological father, Luther, though he has gone by Lonnie for the past half century, he’s a vampire.”
Mike blinks hard at the half century piece of information. “And your mother?”
“Completely human,” Will says, flashing a fond smile. It pinches together when he adds, “My mother shouldn’t have touched Lonnie with a 10 foot pole, but he can be… charming. Or so my mother tells me.”
Sighing Will glances at Mike’s face, his hand reaching to pick at the steering wheel again, “She fell hopelessly in love with him when she was a teenager, had my older brother and I, within the decade her and Lonnie were together.”
“You have a brother?”
“Yeah, his name is Jonathan, and he’s pretty cool. He presents more human than I do though.”
Mike has to take a minute to process that. “What exactly does that mean?”
“Well, um, you see,” Will says, eyes wide and panicked, “He can enter houses with no invitation. His biggest vampire trait is that he can sleep for long periods of time - like days. He can’t change into a bat. Only I can do that, and it isn’t always the easiest.”
Will’s face flushes from the top of his forehead to the base of his neck. “Sometimes, I get stuck,” he mutters quietly under his breath.
“ Stuck ?”
“It’s not easy okay,” Will says, voice high, stressed. “But yeah, that’s why I stayed a bat for so long.”
“You were stuck,” Mike questions again. How is one meant to make sense of (1) supernatural beings and (2) supernatural struggles. He feels completely out of his depth here. “You were stuck for weeks .”
Will’s face is still flushed, but he just meets Mike’s eyes and nods.
Being stuck as a bat for almost the entire month of October though, it explains why Will didn’t just change in his backyard. If he couldn’t, if he was stuck.
Wiseheart’s injury probably didn’t help the changing process, Mike guesses. And no wonder Wiseheart didn’t visit after Mike got out of the hospital, Will might have gotten stuck for another month.
Everything is logical in a penitentiary type of way. Looking into the distance, Mike finally nods.
“I guess it makes sense that not all dhampirs are the same,” Mike says, attempting to reason with Will's story.
Will - probably picking up on the confusion in Mike’s voice - adds. “Well, look at it like this, are you and your sisters all the same?”
Nancy's short frame and Holly’s blonde hair flash before his eyes. Mike doesn’t know if there’s ever been siblings that are less alike. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Mike’s eyes lock with Will’s in the vehicle. Human to dhampir. Dhampir to human.
Will takes a shuddering breath. “And the reason you got so hurt. Mike, I’m so sorry . But I couldn’t change back as quickly as I wanted. I wish I could have gotten you out of there sooner.”
The lake, a flash of fluorescent green, too much red, and pain. Mike remembers before, remembers Wiseheart’s pained gasp as a thorn was pulled from his side.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Mike says immediately, knowing it in his bones, telling the Lucas in his head to shut up. He’s not successful. “Right?”
“Of course not,” Will says, shaking his head adamantly. “They called us in to help with the thing by the lake.”
Mike looks out the window, a bright moon shining down on the asphalt, as he rubs his palms along his jeans. “You, your family… hunt monsters?”
“Kind of,” Will shrugs. “My mom has a ton of experience as a human living in the supernatural world. She’s basically a badass. The police chief here,” Will pauses for confirmation. “Last name Hopper?”
Mike nods in acknowledgement.
“He called her, got her number from some phony psychic with supernatural ties. Anyway, we came to help. And I was trapped as a bat. Then, I made a dumb rookie mistake.”
Looking pointedly at Mike, Will shoots him a glare, “I went to the lake alone.”
“I was looking for Wise- I was looking for you,” Mike responds, defensively.
Will pokes him in the chest, “First rule of monster hunting, don’t do anything alone.”
Mike just glares.
The dhampir wags his finger at him. “It's literally the first rule of the trade.”
Throwing his hands up, Mike admits defeat, “Fine, alright, I messed up, and I won’t go back there alone.”
“Good.”
“Fine.”
Huffing, Mike breaks eye contact, putting space between him and Will, at some point during their conversation they’d gotten closer. Mike leans back now, looking at the clock and grimacing. He moves to rub his eyes, trying to take in all this information.
Will seems uncomfortable with the silence and continues talking. “And I would change for you now, but my mom and my brother might literally kill me, I was gone for so long… They were so worried about me. My mom said I was grounded for life. I had to delay my start date at the high school, since I just vanished because you were taking care of me. But they didn’t know that, so they were worried sick...”
Mike thinks about it. How he would feel if he didn’t know where Holly was, for almost a whole month, only for her to turn up and tell him that someone had put her in a cage.
“You must hate me,” Mike whispers, horrified. “They must hate me.”
“What, of course not,” Will says, quickly, sincerely. “I couldn’t hate you, Mike. And my mom is so thankful for you. We found out that the slime that was all over me that night,” Will pauses and Mike turns to meet his eyes. They were dark at this time of night, with only the moon to light the inside of the car.
“That slime, Mike, it’s dangerous, and it had gotten into my blood,” shuddering, Will continues. “It could have been a disaster. I was a bat, and couldn’t very well clean my wound myself, so I’m very thankful you did! I needed you that night, Mike.”
Involuntarily, his face feels quite hot and a smile curls on his mouth. Mike tucks his head to hide his face before continuing his line of questioning.
“And the thing at the lake? Does your mom know what it is?”
Will looks uncomfortable then, uneasy, “We still haven’t identified it… but we know that it's dangerous, that it's growing.”
The smile falls quickly from Mike’s face after that.
“I want in,” Mike says. “Whatever it is you and your family are doing, whatever it is you do, I want to be a part of it. I want to help take that thing down.”
Thinking about a brown bat with vines surrounding its neck, choking, Mike’s full of conviction. “Do you, Paladin Mike, promise to protect the innocent?”
That thing has to die.
Will doesn’t tell him no, he doesn’t question Mike’s capabilities. He just nods solemnly.
And they’re agreed. That thing has to go.
As Mike’s curfew quickly approaches, he trades places with Will in the driver’s seat of the Mercury. Mike drives Will to the other side of Hawkins to drop him off home before heading quickly back to the Wheeler residence. He is two minutes past curfew, but if his mom wants to ground him over two minutes, she can eat it a little. Mike had to take Will home first.
He doesn’t sleep that night. With thoughts of dhampirs and vampires and the tiny brown bat that is actually a very handsome boy, sleep does not come. His thoughts whirl in his mind. A high speed carousel, he’s unable to stop.
Will has introduced him to a whole new world; one where the monsters of his games are real.
Anything could be real . Every creature of the night could be lurking through the world right at this very moment. At the very least, Will’s vampire father is out there. Undead. Immortal.
Is Will immortal? If he’s half, what does half immortality look like?
Mike’s mind continues to jump from question to question in the night. What about this thing by the lake? Does it respect people’s homes like vampires are forced too?
Will Mike’s family, will his Party be safe as the plant continues to grow?
School seems meaningless in the morning light. He wants to scream at his mother at the breakfast table. There’s something at the lake. Vampire, dhampirs, and who knows what else are real. Why should school mean anything when monsters lurk in Hawkins?
Mike’s eyes are black and bruised. He yawns so wide as he parks his car, in the school parking lot, that his jaw cracks. He keeps checking over his shoulder, feeling as if something is watching him.
Catching movement from the corner of his eye, he jolts in fear, adrenaline shooting through his entire body. He remembers that there’s a knife in his backpack before he registered that it's just Max.
Her hair, a flickering flame in the fog.
She waits for him to exit his car. Like yesterday, she arrived at school ridiculously early again.
“Sup, Wheeler,” she greets with a smirk, and Mike goes on autopilot. He just doesn’t have the brain capacity or the focus to think about Max Mayfield and their tense relationship right now.
Playing the dual role of red shadow and pissed mother, she spends a second day not letting Mike out of her sight if she can help it.
Mike hardly acknowledges her; instead, his thoughts are consumed by the supernatural. He wants to talk to Will. He desperately needs to talk to Will.
Vampires and dhampirs and growing evil things.
But what else is there? What else could be out there?
If the Byers Family are actually monster hunters, then what other monsters are there? Does every character in DnD have some basis in reality? Are there demons? Are there goblins and ghouls and ghosts?
Will Byers is a dhampir, doing an excellent job of passing as a human boy in high school. Could anyone else have been hiding in plain sight?
The thought is enough to drive anyone mad.
At lunch, Mike sits next to Will in the hopes that he can sneak a burning question or two while pretending to eat.
He doesn’t get a chance. Lucas’s eagle eyes watch them suspiciously for almost the entire period. Mike feels Max’s eyes as well, but her eyes are different - knowing in a weird way that makes Mike’s skin crawl. El watches them too; her eyes locked more to her “brother” though.
The only one not watching them is Dustin, the absolute gem that he is, though his questions are almost as bad.
“How was Trick-or-Treating.” Dustin asks innocently from the lunch table.
Mike’s mind blanks out, catches Will’s eyes with a little panic.
“It was fun,” Will covers for him. “Holly is super sweet, though her taste in candy is questionable.”
“Did you get any 3 Musketeers?”
“No, come on. Not you too,” Will says, shaking his head. “Peanut butter and chocolate are the superior pairing.”
Lucas can’t help himself. “Actually, gummies are the superior candy by far.”
“Absolutely not,” Max interjects. “Dustin and Will were more right than you. Chocolate is the way to go.”
“I am an equal opportunist candy eater,” El says. “I do not discriminate. They all bring my tummy joy.”
The table all turns to look at her before the Party, plus one Will Byers, bursts into peels of laughter.
Mike’s English class is the only one he shares with Will, and it's there that he’s finally able to corner him.
Or tries too. They’re paired into groups to discuss a certain passage and its implications, so they’re sitting next to each other when Mike whispers questions about the supernatural.
“It’s not really wise to talk about this in public,” Will whispers, under his breath, barely audible.
Mike wants to pull out his hair; he wants answers now . He’s tired of waiting.
Reaching up Mike tugs a piece of hair, until Will brushes his arm against Mike’s. Mike freezes, his arm tingly from the brushing connection, hyper aware of how close he and Will are sitting.
“We can talk about it, just not here,” Will murmurs. Mike can feel his warmth across the small distance between them, and he sways closer to chase it.
Someone coughs in the classroom, and it's like a bucket of cold water over Mike’s head. He backs up, mourning Will’s warmth as he creates space between them.
Will looks up slightly with dark lashes. “Do you want to come over after school? I could explain more then?”
Mike’s nodding before he remembers. “I actually get to pick up Holly from school today,” he frowns.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner then? If you don’t mind meeting all the Byers, that is,” Will says.
“Okay,” Mike agrees, thinking about meeting Will’s mother, the human, the badass that made a place for herself in the supernatural world.
Later, Mike panics in front of his closet.
He doesn’t know what to wear.
Feeling like a complete idiot, he scans his closet. Mike wants to make a good impression on Mrs. Byers because he wants to help take down the monster by the lake. He tells himself fiercely that’s the only reason. Mike needs to present a capable, mature picture. He needs to look trustworthy, responsible.
But would he be trying too hard if he changed from his school clothes? Would Will even remember what he was wearing at school? What if Will changed and Mike didn’t? He would be mortified . Taking a note from Karen Wheeler’s book, Mike decides that it’s better to be overdressed than underdressed.
Mike’s going to change; he just doesn’t know what to change into.
He plops his fist on his forehead several times before calling in reinforcements.
“You look nice in blue,” Holly says, decisively, from the depth of Mike’s closet.
He nods to himself, trying to stop blushing on the other side of his bed. Nancy and his mother have both said something similar. His mother is always begging him to wear blue, when Mike walks to the breakfast table in all black. “You’re so pale, sweetie,” Karen will say. “Black just washes you out. Blue, though, blue is your color.”
Mike feels safe wearing black, but if he looks better in blue.
He wears blue - a sapphire blue button up with black denim and a nice coat.
“Shoes,” he asks Holly desperately. She can’t abandon him now; they’re not done. He doesn’t know if his converses are acceptable for a dinner at the Byers Household.
Holly puts him in black loafers and sends him out the door with a slight push. He’d been pacing in front of it for about 15 minutes before the push, so he should probably be grateful to her.
His mother hadn’t batted an eye when Mike told her he was going to the Byers house for dinner, since Will is “such a nice boy, Michael.” She’d even helped him get a gift together since they’re new to Hawkins.
Mike wonders if she would be so approving if she knew that Will was also a dhampir.
The Byers House is a small one story house on the edge of Hawkins. What the house lacks in physical size, it makes up for in land. The driveway is long and covered with gravel, in their massive front yard is a wheelbarrow out of which flowers bloom. A small flag hangs by the wheelbarrow with a turkey on it and Happy Thanksgiving written on the bottom, and on the porch is a white porch swing that Mike can see swaying in the wind.
There’s a stone bird bath on the other side of the yard. Mike lets out a chuckle imagining a stuck Will having to take a bath there.
Smaller than the Wheeler’s house by far, but it’s warm. Mike can feel that warmth from his car.
Parking, the laughter dies in his throat, and Mike takes a deep breath, preparing himself to meet Will’s badass mother and dhampir brother.
Rubbing his hand along his dark jeans, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. It’s Will coming to meet him.
His heart gives a solid thud in his chest.
The sun is setting, and in the bronze lighting, Will looks…
He looks very nice - fully dappled in light and coming closer. His eyes sparkle.
Clearing his throat, Mike exits the car. “Hi,” he says, nervously. “I hope this is okay. My mom helped me make it, and I thought that if you like fruit as a bat, you would probably like fruit as a human, right,” Mike babbles. “I mean who doesn’t like at least one fruit, so I added a lot of different ones. Bananas, of course. Grapes, apples since they’re in season.”
Mike finally gathers enough courage to meet Will’s eyes for the first time since he left the car.
His smile is warm. His eyes still sparkle.
Mike holds the fruit basket gift in front of him like some sort of shield.
“Of course, I still like fruit,” Will says. “I’m sure my mom will appreciate the gesture. Why don’t you come in?”
Will moves to take the fruit basket from Mike, and he gives it up reluctantly. With nowhere to put his hands, Mike shoves them in his jean pockets and follows Will into the house.
“So funny story actually,” Will says as they walk. “My mother is very talented, and Jonathan is amazing. But none of us are fabulous cooks, so I hope you like KFC.”
Mike lets out a huffy breath of relief at the absence of perfection. “KFC is good,” he says; it’s also familiar, which is comforting.
“Mom and Jonathan went together to pick it up, but they should be back soon.”
Will wipes his shoes on the front matt, so Mike follows suit, not wishing to track dirt into…
The Byers House.
Entering the home, Mike is greeted by a living room wall completely covered with information. The wall is a web of maps, papers, pictures, lines drawn this way and that, circles noting dates, and at the center - a picture. A detailed drawing, a huge pitcher plant with vines slithering across the entire page.
“Sorry! Oh my God! I’m so sorry,” Will is saying. Something grips Mike’s arm tightly and guides him to the kitchen away from the anxiety inducing wall.
“That’s my fault. I’m so sorry. I should have warned you,” Will continues, guiding Mike to sit at the table.
Taking a deep breath, Mike steadies a queasy stomach. “Yeah, a warning would have been nice.”
Will winces. “Sorry, this is just how my mom organizes things. Sometimes I forget that not everybody has a murder wall in their home.”
Shaking his head, Mike comes back to the space, noting one or two boxes still in the corner. The kitchen is clean; the sink is empty, and the table has a small turkey in its center.
“Sorry,” Mike says. “I just haven’t seen a drawing of it before, and that’s exactly what it looks like. Freaked me out just a little.”
Will crouches in front of his chair, looking up at Mike with a concerned face.
“If you feel up to it, this would be a way you can help,” Will says, solemnly. “I’m the only one of my family to have seen it. I drew it. But if you could look at it again, tell me if I missed anything.”
“Not right now,” Will adds quickly. “And not ever if you say so, just let me know.”
Mike nods. Determination solidifying in his chest. “And do you, Paladin Mike, promise to live without fear?”
“I’ll do it now, if you show me your good art after,” Mike says slyly.
Will’s cheeks pink, and Mike thinks that might be reward enough.
As he looks at Will’s drawing of the plant, Mike thinks Will has gotten all the major points. The huge pitcher part that had engulfed his arm, the vines that had tightened around Wiseheart’s throat. Will has colored it red, which is correct, but…
“I remember a flash of neon green,” Mike says, absently, unable to look away from the thing. The drawing is mesmerizing; it looks as if it could start moving at any moment.
“Green?”
“Yeah, before it got me; there was a flash of green. I can’t remember if it was the plant or what, but it was a truly awful shade of green - like vomit.”
Will hums thoughtfully, writing Mike’s addition on a sticky note and adding it to The Wall, next to the picture in the center.
Watching Will hang the note, Mike can’t help but question it. “Does that really help? Does this- ” he gestures to The Wall in its entirety, “does it help at all?”
His companion just shrugs, “I guess there might be better ways to organize the information, but we Byers are a visual bunch. It helps to see, to see how everything's connected.”
Mike nods, before moving to - he was going to nudge Will, but he thinks better of it - pulling back at the last moment, and using his arm to motion instead, “Now can it be time for the good art?”
The blush returns to Will’s face, as he nods and leads the way to a bedroom down the single hallway. He opens the door to a bright yellow room, a Jaws poster hanging on a wall. In front of the room’s single window sits a large easel, and in the corner there are several boxes stacked on top of the other. The twin bed is made but rumpled as if someone sat on it during the day.
“So I haven’t completely finished unpacking,” Will’s saying, as Mike looks over his shoulder into the bright bedroom, Will’s bedroom.
Mike’s eyes catch a canvas in a different corner near the closed closet. Involuntarily, he takes a step forward, desperate for a closer look.
Dozens, hundreds of yellow petals layer upon each other to create a close-up portrait of the mums that sit outside of the Wheeler house. Mike knows there his mother’s mums because at the bottom of the frame, under the hundreds of petals is a stone design that matches the pots that sit on Mike’s patio.
“It’s beautiful,” Mike says, unconsciously.
Looking back, Will’s eyes shimmer in the fading sun cascading through his transparent yellow curtains.
“Yeah,” Will questions.
“Yeah,” Mike says, helplessly. Will moves to the canvas, picking it up and bringing it over, so that Mike can examine it more closely.
“I don’t normally do flowers, but these were so pretty,” Will says, as he hands the painting to Mike.
“And you love yellow,” Mike adds, taking the canvas with eagerness, Will’s room a testament to his preference for the color.
“Yeah,” Will says, bashfully. “It’s probably my favorite color.”
“It’s quite bright,” Mike says, absently as his eyes scan the details of the painting. The shading, the flicks of deep gold and burnt orange, the hints of green that peak through here and there.
“Too bright,” Will questions hesitantly.
“What, no,” Mike says, forcefully. “Yellow is warm, like the sun.”
Flecks of gold appear in Will’s eyes, Mike’s heart - the achy thing - thuds painfully in his chest. Longing, it lashes at bindings Mike’s made.
Bindings that Mike has made for his happiness, for his own safety. Bindings of ice, of stone, of steel, ones he’d thought had been indestructible.
Mike will make them so, and he forcibly fills the cracks in the layers and mentally takes a step back from Will Byers and his amber eyes.
“Though the yellow curtains might be a bit much,” Mike says, voice dry.
“Oh,” Will says, turning to look at the curtains in question. “Yeah, maybe,” he adds with a forced chuckle.
Mike feels like an asshole then, wants to kick himself for making Will self-conscious. He loves the yellow room, the yellow painting, and even the yellow curtains. He loves the warmth of the color, and the brightness it brings. The cheerfulness it represents is something that Mike craves. Having yellow curtains isn’t something that Mike should be picking a fight with Will about, his hands on the canvas tighten in anger.
Why is he like this?
“There here,” Will says then, head tilted to the side as if he’s listening.
“What,” Mike says, returning to the moment.
“We have a few minutes,” Will says. “My mom and Jonathan will be here soon.”
Taking a deep breath, Mike rubs his thumb over a yellow petal, hoping for the best.