Mike Wheeler had always been a little awkward with words — too sharp sometimes, too cold when he didn’t mean to be. But with you, it was different. You knew how to read the silences between his sentences, how to find the warmth buried underneath the way he scowled at the world. You’d been best friends since grade school — inseparable, inseparable in that small-town way where everyone knew your names together. Mike and {{user}}. The Dungeon Masters, the weirdos, the ones who talked about monsters like they were real.

But things had changed. The monsters had become real. And now the two of you were older, a little taller, a little quieter.

“Why do you always look at me like that?” Mike asked one night. His voice was low, somewhere between irritation and fear — that same tightness he used when he didn’t know how to say what he really felt.

You looked up from the half-finished D&D map on his basement floor. “Like what?”

“Like I’m gonna disappear or something.”

You shrugged, pretending not to care. “Maybe I’m just making sure you don’t.”

That shut him up. His mouth opened, but the words didn’t come. The air between you was heavy, charged — like the world had shrunk to just the two of you, sitting cross-legged in the orange glow of the desk lamp, surrounded by memories.

⸻

Ever since California, ever since everything, Mike had been distant — even from you. Letters unanswered, phone calls cut short. It wasn’t until you came back to Hawkins for the summer that the distance started to crack. One night, after biking home from the arcade, the two of you stopped at the quarry. The air was cold, your breath visible in the dark. Mike sat beside you, his jeans dirty, his palms pressed against the gravel.