what if when will goes to borrow fresh clothes from mike's room, he accidentally topples a shoebox in mike's closet.
loose papers scatter to the messy floor, covered in a familiar scrawl. some are wrinkled, as though crushed by shaking fists; others are torn and dog-eared, branded with dark lines scribbled over whole paragraphs deemed unworthy by their author.
"shit," will crouches, gathering the spilled contents.
he barely glances at them as he shoves the papers back into the box, but a familiar name written on one catches his eye. once he's seen it, it's impossible not to notice it's written on every sheet in his hand and-
will pauses.
he knows he shouldn't look. he's always felt so self-conscious if anyone peeked at his sketches before they were finished, he could only imagine mike's upset at someone seeing his story drafts.
sighing, he carefully places the box back on the shelf. he dresses quickly, closes mike's bedroom door and heads downstairs.
but as he lays in his sleeping bag later that night, will stares up at the ceiling in the darkness. the basement is quiet, far removed from the sounds of the wheelers sleeping in the rest of the house.
except for mike, whose rhythmic breathing punctures the silence beside him.
silence, too soft to diminish the questions rattling in his mind, yet too powerful to risk breaking with a whisper.
will wants to turn, and maybe if he did, his vision might have adjusted enough to the shadows to decipher faint outlines: the pale phantoms of his old D&D drawings plastered to the walls alongside faded posters; his unwashed yellow shirt oozing off the mound of laundry like a broken yolk left to spoil by a careless nest invader; the haphazard sprawl of mike's limbs dangling off the too-small couch, the curl of his long fingers shifting with each exhale same as a breeze might disturb a flower's petals.
but will knows if he turns, the silence will be broken by the rustle of his sleeping bag, the squeak of the fold out's old springs -
-and if the silence is broken, he won't be able help it.
he'll speak the words he know he shouldn't ask out loud
("mike, those letters, why didn't you ever send them to me?")
because then there will be more questions fired back at him, and they've just barely become best friends again, he can't lose mike, not over something like this.
no, better to just close his eyes and get some sleep.
tomorrow they would be going out to survey the damage from the new gates that divided hawkins with angry red scars.
tomorrow they would visit max, try to ignore the unnatural stillness of her once-expressive face and pretend their hearts weren't breaking.
tomorrow, they would prepare for a war they might not win.
(but tonight, tonight william byers stays awake, staring at the ceiling, haunted by an innocuous stack of papers he was never meant to see and would never ask mike about that all started with 'dear will'
unaware of the signature that looped at the end of each one:
'love, mike'.)
