Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mike hadn’t questioned his decision to major in English until he took British Literature.

Sure, it’s a university-required course that you’re supposed to take your sophomore year, but Mike had been too busy taking other English classes that had piqued his interest to bother with some stupid gen ed course. Now, it’s his junior year, and he’s finally being confronted with the class.

To be fair, Mike doesn’t hate British literature. In fact, he likes a lot of it, surprisingly. After slogging through American Literature last semester, he’s finally ready to enjoy some of his favorites–like the Romantic poets! Yeah, they were overdramatic and too bitchy for their own good, but damn it if Percy Bysshe Shelley couldn’t write a killer line (“Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; / Nought may endure but Mutability,” anybody?).

What Mike does hate, however, is awful professors.

And his professor for British Literature is the worst.

First of all, he’s not even a professor. He’s some doctoral candidate they dredged up from the depths of cubicle city in the English department to torture weary undergrads with. Mike had known he was in big trouble when he’d trudged into class a minute before it was set to start on that first day and was met with a sharp glare from behind the biggest pair of glasses frames he’s ever seen accompanied by a hand shoving a giant sheaf of papers the instructor dared to call a syllabus into Mike’s hands. The rest of the class had been deathly silent, nobody daring to talk to their neighbors.

Which is always a bad sign.

It had only gotten worse as Mike had flipped through the syllabus. They were going to spend two weeks on Beowulf? Okay, yeah, it’s important, but aren’t they supposed to be doing all of British Literature in a semester? And this out-of-touch mouth-breather wants to spend almost a fifth of it on Beowulf?

Then, there were the standards, of course; from what Mike could remember of British Literature from high school, that first thousand years is kinda boring, but he understood why those works need to be studied, and at least they weren’t going to be dithering over any of them for too long. Arthurian legends, The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene…Yeah, all stuff to be expected. After that, they were going to slog through a bunch of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious poems (yawn), but then–then they’d get to the Romantics and the Victorian novel, and after that, the modernists and postmodernists, and–

Except no, this douchebag’s syllabus skipped from fucking Jane Austen in 1817 to C. S. Lewis in the 1930s. Then, boom, course over.

So, yeah, Mike had already been scowling just from glancing over the schedule, and just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Professor What’s-His-Face had included below the schedule a lengthy paragraph that, in about half a page too much, explained that on top of all of his boring, crusty-ass literary selections for the course, they would also be reading Paradise Lost on their own time for a big final project worth thirty percent of their grade. They needed to be regularly reading the tome, writing a short essay after each section of it (twelve–count it–twelve parts for one stupid poem), and then combining all the ideas and themes they talked about in these smaller essays into a final eight-page paper on a topic of their choosing–

Except no, they didn’t even get that. No, no, no–Professor Satan-Incarnate was oh-so-kind as to provide a list of the five most run-of-the-mill, boring as hell topics for a biblical-themed work like Paradise Lost. It was all stuff like “discuss the role of sin and temptation in the poem” or “how does this poem compare to the book of Genesis” or “why was Satan wrong.”

Don’t even get Mike started on Paradise Lost–the few excerpts he had to read in high school made him contemplate scooping his brain out with a spoon through one of his ears. Even Will’s insistence that they try and read it together (even though he was in a completely different section of English and wasn’t even being forced to read the stupid book) hadn’t helped. It had just made the dull verses even duller, because then Mike was constantly being reminded that he could be doing better things, like talking to Will, or planning a campaign with Will for their friends to do, or kissing Will–

The point is: Mike Wheeler hates Paradise Lost, he hates how he got stuck with the guy who had apparently decided getting a PhD in English was the highest calling one could ever have in life, and he hates being told what to do.

So, naturally, Mike hasn’t been keeping up with his assignments for Paradise Lost. It’s mid-October, and he’s only read the first three parts of the epic. After he’d finished the third one in early September, he had to sit down and read some stuff from his own book shelves just to feel something again, not to mention the fact that he’s also taking World Literature, so he has readings for that to do, on top of readings for his linguistics course, plus a couple more of those pesky gen-ed courses that universities say are important but are really just there to keep people paying money to stick around for longer. It’s quite the scam, if you ask him.

Oh, also, halfway through September, Professor I-Know-No-Joy let slip that his thesis is actually on, surprise surprise, Paradise Lost, which had made Mike even angrier. It had also convinced him that this course was all some elaborate scheme being put on by his professor to cull undergrads’ brains for ideas and themes that he, in all of his doctoral candidate glory, hadn’t been able to pick up on yet after reading the stupid poem approximately thirty-four thousand times.

This brings Mike to where he is now, whining at the table in his and Will’s apartment, his cup of decaf (Will had forced him to switch their freshman year after Mike went through a three-day spell of absolutely no sleep) growing cold. Not that it would have stayed warm for long anyway–there’s a chill outside, and their apartment, while not a total shithole, can’t keep the heat in unless it’s summer, and the cold only sticks around when it’s winter. They’re, like, one step up from living in the insulation equivalent of a tent.

“But it’s bogus,” Mike emphasizes for what must be the twentieth time that night. Paradise Lost is sitting on the table, facedown, and he still hasn’t made it past the first page of the fourth part. “This is the worst collection of British literature I’ve ever seen, and he’s just mining us all for his stupid little degree!”

Will looks up from his sketchbook, nose scrunched just a bit. “PhDs are kinda serious, Mike. They’re not just stupid little things.”

“They will be once this guy gets one!”

Will plays into it for a moment, jabbing his stub of charcoal in Mike’s direction in a mocking how could you ever be wrong? gesture. “Right.”

Mike throws his arm out, accidentally knocking it into his mug. It spills just enough of that bitter, caffeine-depleted liquid over the edges to splash a little on his copy of Paradise Lost, and at this point, it’s a miracle Mike hasn’t decided to completely soak the whole thing. He’d flush it down the toilet if he thought the pipes in this complex could handle it. “I’m serious, Will! This guy is taking what is literally the best art form and turning it into this boring slog through the same five authors saying the same five things, and then professors and teachers wonder why nobody wants to read, and it’s all because they’re giving everybody the shittiest literature known to mankind out for assigned reading.”

Will, however, had stilled somewhere around when the words best art form had left Mike’s lips, leaving his shoulders tense and fingers tight against his charcoal. Once Mike finishes his diatribe, he sets his sketchbook on the table and crosses his arms, studying Mike with an intent gaze.

Fingers tapping against the table, growing sticky from the fresh coffee stains, Mike quirks an eyebrow up. “You checking me out?”

Will twists his mouth to the side, shaking his head.

Their apartment suddenly feels too quiet, and it sends a sting of anxiety into Mike’s chest. Whenever Will gets like this, it usually means he’s upset or about to call Mike out on some bullshit.

Which, to be fair, Mike had been running his mouth a lot, but even replaying the past few minutes in his head, he can’t seem to pick up on anything too offensive. It’s not like that one time he’d implied that Will only liked Nirvana because maybe he had a little crush on Kurt Cobain, and Will hadn’t spoken to him for a day.

“What is it?” Mike tries again. “Is something wrong?”

“Literally the best art form?”

Mike shrugs. “Yeah. Writing is great. Why?”

Will holds up the sketchbook, turned to a page featuring a rough study of light and shadow across Mike’s face, and shakes it in the air. “I’m a visual arts major!”

“And?”

Will glares at him. “You’re basically saying your major is better than mine.” As Mike opens his mouth to object, Will cuts him off, “Plus, I just disagree on a, like, fundamental level.”

There’s an underlying pulse of playfulness to the conversation, Mike realizes–after all, the debate over the nature of art is far less important than whatever Will may or may not feel when he looks at the Nirvana poster taped up on his wall. They’re not completely out of the woods, but it’s fun enough to encourage Mike to keep going.

“Oh? You disagree?” He leans a little across their rickety table. “How so?”

Now, it’s Will’s turn to shrug. “I guess…Visual art gives you more freedom than language. You don’t need words to convey anything–it’s all taken in by the eyes, and you can either read your own meaning into a piece, or the piece can depict something that language simply can’t describe.” After a pause, he adds, “There are limits to understanding when it comes to words, because they’re restricted by meanings, but visual art doesn’t really have that. You don’t have to know a certain language or the definition of a word to look at a painting and feel something or give meaning to it.”

Okay, fair point. Will knows how to put things in just the right way, even if he does prefer visuals over words, and he always manages to draw out the personal and the universal in such beautifully simple ways. Shit, it kind of makes Mike want to drag him to the couch so they can cuddle and kiss while they watch whatever new slasher film Will had decided they needed to torture themselves with for the week.

Except Mike is also one for challenges, and he’s quite obstinate. Yeah, Will makes some great points, but it doesn’t change the fact that Mike feels differently.

And he’s also quite fond of bets.

“Well, I disagree with that, obviously,” he starts. “Sometimes it’s not enough to just look at something and feel things about it. Sometimes you need somebody to put it into words so you can understand it better and rationalize it out.”

“But not everything needs to be rational.”

“And not everything needs to be emotional.”

At an impasse, they stare at each other across the table. Mike has a grin stretched across his face, his coffee-stained copy of Paradise Lost long forgotten, and Will’s eyes have a little mirthful glow dancing in them as they narrow, daring Mike to continue.

Which he does, gladly. “How about this: I bet I can convince you writing really is the best art form.”

Will rolls his eyes. “First of all, you won’t. Second of all, isn’t this a pointless debate?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t we just agree to disagree? We like different things, they both can be great…What more is there to say about it?”

“A lot more, Will,” Mike emphasizes.

“Like?”

Mike chews on the inside of his cheek before throwing his arms out once more. In doing so, he knocks his coffee mug precariously close to the edge of the table. “Well, that’s what the bet would be for! For us to talk about it more!”

Will rubs a hand down his face, leaving little smudges of charcoal across his cheeks that Mike has to fight the urge to swipe at, because, yeah, sure they’re dating, but he’s also trying to put up a serious front about this debate.

“So? How about it?”

Will twists his face into a pained look. Even with his messy bangs that hang low against his forehead, Mike can tell his eyebrows are scrunched up with concern. “You and bets are never a good thing. They never turn out well.”

“To be completely fair, neither of us won the concussion bet, so that one was neutral.”

“But that doesn’t justify your bet with Max that ended with you having to shave off half of one of your eyebrows, or that other bet with Max that ended with you having to graffiti the side of your dad’s car, or that other bet with Max where–”

“I think the lesson there is never make a bet with Max,” Mike counters.

Will groans, throwing his head back to look at their ceiling with the slightest hairline crack running through it. His shoulders slump with defeat. “But how do we even measure any of this? And what’s even the prize?”

Brain whirling, Mike rests his chin on his hand and begins to tap his fingers against the table in rapid staccatos once more. After a moment, it all starts to take shape in his head, and he’s running his mouth before it’s even fully come together into a cohesive plan, “Well, great art makes you feel stuff, right?” Will reluctantly nods. “Then the truest way we can measure this without it being by word of mouth, which can be easily falsified, is by our emotional reaction to it–in this case, crying.”

“So, you want to make me cry?” Will deadpans.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Mike dips his thumb and forefinger into his definitely cold coffee and flicks some across the table at Will, who responds with a grumpy look, his arms reflexively trying to cover his sketchbook. “You know that’s not the point of this! I would never purposefully make you cry!”

“That’s literally what you just said, though. You want to convince me writing is better than visual art, and the only way you can measure it is by whether you can find a stupid poem that makes me cry.”

“But they can be happy tears!” Mike offers, anxiety welling up a little in his chest. Hell, he clearly did not think this through, but he also can’t back away from it now. He has to win this bet, not just to prove his point, but to prove to Will that he can, in fact, handle bets in the first place (just not with Max–never again with Max). “Yeah, only happy things or–or moving things. Like, things about…love?” He purposefully tilts his head down just so he can look up through the waves of his bangs, stare through the strands to see a partially shaded version of Will.

Will tightens his mouth into a thin line, then sighs. “And what, exactly, is the prize?”

“Bragging rights. Obviously.”

Will stares at him.

Elbows pressing into the table, Mike leans a little closer. His eyes roam all over Will’s face, looking for any signs of agreement in his tense jaw and raised eyebrows. Paradise Lost’s pages curl up a little against his forearms.

Finally, a small smile pushes at the corners of Will’s mouth, conceding. He has that familiar look in his eyes he always gets when Mike proposes some outrageous plan–a little incredulous, a little curious, and just amused enough that he can’t say no. “Yeah–why not?”

“You just can’t say no to me, huh?” Mike teases.

“Don’t make me change my mind.”

But Mike has already moved on to other plans. "So," he draws the word out for far longer than what he should, "Wanna seal it with a kiss?"

A warm smile fills Will's face as he leans over, arms against the table, and his face drifts right in front of Mike's, wonderfully hazel eyes narrowed and gazing down. No matter how many times Mike studies them, he still feels like it's the first time he's ever seen them, helpless but to marvel at the mix of green and brown that changes depending on what Will's wearing or the lighting in the room. It always makes his heart race, and the space between his chest and stomach tightens with anticipation, just like before their first kiss and before every single one that’s followed. Mike feels his mouth instinctively pull into a grin, and he tilts forward, eyes slowly drifting closed–

"Not after you got coffee on my sketch, Mike." Will's voice is teasing, but there's an underlying thrum of annoyance. It makes Mike's eyes bolt open and land on the sketchbook beneath Will’s arms, where dots of coffee are splattered almost like freckles against Mike's charcoal face and around his head like stars.

"Oh," Mike sighs, wincing a little.

"Yeah," and Will leans in, just a little closer, their lips almost brushing, his breath warm against Mike's mouth, "Ob."

Then, he abruptly pushes out of his chair and scoops the sketchbook off the table, the warmth of his breath pulling away from Mike's face. He tucks the book up to his side and pads down the hall, turning towards his room.

Mike’s head instinctively turns to track his movements. "How long is it gonna take you to do homework?"

"Don't worry." Will turns around and leans against the doorframe of the hallway. It lets out a resounding groan that reminds Mike that he needs to tell the front desk that the frame is barely clinging to the wall by a couple of nails and maybe a wad of gum, and it’s not helping with the near-constant chill in the apartment. "It won't take me long to fix my sketch, but you're going to be up all night reading Paradise Lost, so, it's your room tonight."

Mike doesn’t quite have the heart to tell Will that he’s definitely not reading Paradise Lost tonight–he won’t be adding fuel to the fire for Professor Shithead’s PhD for as long as he can help it, and he’ll just figure out the whole grade thing later. No, he’s gotta start figuring out how to best approach this bet; he needs to comb through all the books on his sagging bookshelf and scattered in stacks all over his floor to find the best of the best to convince Will that, yeah, literature actually is the superior art form.

(Even if Will’s art beats out anything Mike’s ever read in his life, but he has a point to make, okay?)

So, Mike simply raises his eyebrows and gives a slow nod. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Will watches him closely. Then, mouth pulling into a smirk, he disappears around the corner.

Mike’s going to crush his boyfriend in this bet.

Will had to pull no less than twelve different books out of Mike’s hands in the hours between nine, when they’d both retreated to Mike’s room to work on homework, and one, when they’d both finally crawled into his bed. Mike feels dead-tired, having been nearly put to sleep by part four of the worst epic poem known to mankind, but Will still sits against the headboard, his knees pulled up like an easel to hold his sketchbook. It’s full of more D&D sketches, doodle creatures his mind comes up with in the blink of an eye, flashes of memories from their stint as interdimensional monster fighters, and even a few sketches of Mike and the rest of the Party. Mike’s flipped through it so much he can see each page in order in his mind, their sketches basically etched onto the back of his eyelids.

“We have school tomorrow,” Mike groans, tugging at the leg of Will’s pajama pants. “You already draw, like, ten hours a day–”

“Well, I have to practice if I’m going to win this bet, right?”

A lazy grin crosses Mike’s mouth, but it turns into a frightfully large yawn. Like, large enough to make both sides of his jaw crack and to feel a muscle tweak in his neck. Lying on his stomach with his head twisted to face Will probably isn’t helping him much, though. “You’re not gonna win. Not if I can help it.”

“Whatever you say,” Will sighs before reaching down to poke Mike’s cheek with the eraser of his pencil.

After several moments of silence, where Mike simply watches Will’s careful hands scratch away at his sketchbook, framed by the soft light of the bedside lamp, Mike’s eyes begin to drift closed. Everything feels so peaceful right now, just like it always is when they’re together. Even when both of them wake up in cold sweats, terrified of the reality that had haunted their lives little more than a few years ago, they’re always able to find their way back to serenity. Measured breaths, fingers drawing slow circles across shoulders, holding the other as he cries for reasons he can’t quite understand…

Yes, this moment is peaceful, just like all the others. Until–

Poke.

Mike blinks awake, head jerking up from the pillow to glare at Will through narrowed eyes. “What?”

Will’s smile is so soft that Mike almost leans forward right there to kiss him, except Will’s already saying words, and he’s supposed to be listening, right? “What about the painting?”

Mike shifts up onto one of his elbows, now turned to face Will. “What painting?”

“The painting. The one you jumped into the Upside Down for.” Will grins, pointing his pencil at the wall across from the bed. Because Mike has had it hanging up for so long, always near a window so he can see it in the daylight, its colors have faded slightly, and its edges are a little curled up. It’s still the same painting, though: a three-headed dragon stomping through a forest towards the Party’s D&D characters that charge at it with the full force of their attacks, and there, right in the center, a crimson heart on Mike’s shield.

The painting Will had told a lie about and that Mike had jumped into hell to discover the truth of. The painting that had, inexplicably, been the catalyst to bring them together like this.

“What about it?” Mike slowly asks, eyes drifting back over to Will.

“It’s nice, right?” Will tries. “You still like it and everything? Because I was thinking, after this semester, during winter break, I could make an updated one. Add El and Max to the mix, since they have characters now. Or…” his voice trails off, and that soft smile turns into a teasing smirk, “It could just be you. Fighting the dragon all alone.”

Mike swallows against the sudden dryness in his mouth. Lethargic moments before, now, he feels wide awake, attentive. He shifts more onto his elbow and tilts his head up at Will. “Oh? Really?”

“Yeah!” Will says, voice a little too cheerful. “I know nothing beats the original, given everything it led to…" He gently pushes the end of his pencil against a chunk of Mike’s bangs and tucks it behind his ear. "But still, it can be done."

Mike feels very, very distracted right now, which isn’t good, because he sees the glint in Will’s eyes, and his teasing smile is just a smidge wider than usual. He stares at Will’s mouth–

No, he needs to focus on the trap that’s being set.

“It’s amazing what art can do, right?” Will queries, leaning close enough that their noses almost bump together.

Don’t get Mike wrong–Will can be very smooth and cool under pressure. Surprisingly so for someone who’s afraid to tell waiters when he’s gotten the wrong order or would rather break his own fingers off than ask a store employee for some assistance finding a specific aisle.

But this?

No, this is too heavy-handed.

Mike snorts, dropping against the bed and directly onto his back. He shakes his head, eyes glued to the ceiling. “I know what you’re doing, Will the Wise. I can read your moves from a mile away.”

“What moves?” Will asks innocently, but his tone is spiked with sarcasm.

Mike glares up at him. “Quit trying to end this bet before I’ve even had a chance to try.”

Sighing, Will twists his mouth to the side, sticks his pencil in the sketchbook, and lets the book slide to the floor by the bed, which, given both of their busy minds and twitchy hands, is where most of their stuff goes in their apartment at this point. He rolls onto his side to face Mike and pokes him in the side, right above his scars from the Upside Down. “I had to try. Just to see.”

“Well, it didn’t work, so.”

“Maybe next time,” Will sighs with a wistful air to his voice. He leans over and presses a kiss to Mike’s cheek, then twists around to turn out the light.

Mike casts one last glance at Will in the dark as he settles down to sleep. His attempt to sabotage this whole thing before it even got off the ground was cute, to say the least, but it’s not going to work on Mike–definitely not tonight.

Besides, Mike had already gotten teary-eyed staring at the painting earlier this morning, right before he’d left for class. He looks at it every day while he’s getting dressed, and it always reminds him of how far they’ve come, which means he always ends up fighting away the pricking of tears at the corners of his eyes when he should be thinking of good discussion questions for his linguistics class that he definitely did the reading for.

He’s still in the clear, though, because that was this morning. But, still…lying in the darkness with Will’s arm curled over his waist, he can feel the painting staring at him from across the wall, and he begins to wonder if he’d signed up for more than he’d bargained for.