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Will’s dorm room was a shrine dedicated to not pissing off his roommate.
His side of the room was immaculate, the sort of immaculate that could only be achieved by someone entirely neurotic. The hospital corners of his sheets, textbooks stacked and colour-coded by how much they stressed him out. His desk was parked under the window, giving him a delightful view of the endless stretch of the carpark. On it sat his prized possession: a fancy architect’s lamp his brother Jonathan had scrounged for him. It looked like a mechanical praying mantis. In front of the lamp, arranged on a flat, felt mat like surgical instruments, were his tools. Pencils, from the barely-there 6H to the gloriously smudgy 6B. A kneaded eraser he’d shaped into a perfect little cube, because why not.
In the centre of the desk sat his open sketch-book, displaying his current project. A rough sketch of a headless ancient Greek, all rippling muscles, and amputated limbs. The Belvedere Torso. He’d been copying it because that was all he seemed to do. Copy other people’s work. He was doing a damn good job. The shading was technical, precise, and perfect. Looking at it made him feel absolutely nothing.
His phone rang, and he jumped, left hand skating across the page, pinky smudging a line on the torso’s pectoral muscle. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Hello?”
“Will! Honey, it’s me.”
A wave of warmth washed over him. “Hey, Mom.”
Joyce Byers’ voice crackled down the line, full of static and love and the usual eight thousand unasked questions. “I was just thinking about you! How’s everything? Are you eating? It’s cold there, I saw on the news, are you wearing the sweater I sent? The one with the reindeer?”
“It’s October, Mom.”
“So? It’s wool! It’s practical! And whimsical!”
He could picture her, phone cord wrapped idly around her finger, probably half-watching Wheel of Fortune while mentally cataloguing his entire wardrobe. “I’m eating. I’m warm. I’m good. How’s work? How’s Hopper?”
“Work is work. Hopper is… Hopper. He tried to fix the garbage disposal and now the sink makes a noise like a dying goose. Never mind that. Tell me about school. Are you prepped for your big show?”
Ay, there’s the rub. The thing his entire scholarship was riding on, the thing that the past four years of blood, sweat, and tears was building towards. The crescendo of his education. A curated selection of his best, most technically proficient work. A ticket to a respectable grad school or a junior curator position at some museum he’d never even heard of.
“It’s getting there,” he said, his eyes drifting back to the headless, perfectly shaded Grecian on his desk. “Just finishing up some pieces for the portfolio review.”
“That’s my boy,” Joyce said, and he could hear the pride in her voice. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, honey. It’s working.”
Thump.
The door flew open and banged against the wall. Argyle stood in the doorway, a hurricane in a patchwork vest, holding a pizza box.
“Dude!” Argyle yelled, not noticing the phone. “The moment of truth! I got the jalapeños on the side, just like you—oh, hey. You’re on the phone. My bad.” He gave a peace sign and retreated, shutting the door behind him.
“Who was that?” Joyce asked, inquisitive.
“Just Argyle. My roommate. He, uh, got pizza.”
There was a pause on the line. “Well,” Joyce said finally, her voice softening, “I’m glad you have a friend there. Just… keep focusing, okay? Don’t let anything distract you. This is your time. You’re doing so well, Will. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
He hung up a few minutes later, her words still echoing in his ear. He looked at his perfect desk. At his perfect pencils. At the nearly-perfect, headless torso.
Just keep doing what you’re doing.
The familiar ache bloomed in his sternum. He’d done everything right. He’d gotten the grades, won the scholarship, chosen the safe, respectable major. He made art that proved he understood form and light and history.
With a sigh, he picked up his 2B pencil. He leaned over the paper, his nose inches from the marble abs. He focused on the smudge, on bringing the perfection back. This was the path. This was what worked. Outside his door, he could hear Argyle laughing with someone in the hall, the sound messy, exciting. Will ignored it, and carefully, meticulously, began to erase the smudge.
-x-
The door exploded inwards.
Argyle stood framed in the doorway, a cloud of patchouli, clove cigarettes, and something earthier – probably actual dirt – rolled in ahead of him. His eyes were wide, and his entire body was shaking.
“Dude,” he breathed, as if delivering news of the impending apocalypse. He held up a single finger. “A moment of your time, por favor. A paradigm shift is upon us.”
Will sighed, the eraser stilling in his hand. “Argyle, I’m a bit busy.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Argyle swept into the room, gesturing wildly at the drawing. “You’re busy with a rock! A dead rock! A rock that doesn’t even have a head! Where’s the life, man? Where’s the pulse?” He leaned in, peering at Will with theatrical concern. “You’re like, haunting your own life, my friend.”
“I’m just trying to do my work. Y’know, my scholarship?”
“It’s a cry for help is what it is,” Argyle declared, straightening up. He planted his hands on Will’s tidy desk, looming over the perfect tools. “And I, as your guide to the higher vibrations of this mortal coil, cannot let it stand. Tonight, my brother, you will live.”
Will pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am alive. I’m breathing. I’m about to breathe on this assignment to get the dust off.”
Argyle huffed, pointing at him triumphantly. "That's what the machine wants you to think! 'Finish the assignment, citizen. Shade the dead marble man.' But what about shading your soul, man?" He stopped in front of Will, blocking the light from the architect lamp. "Tonight, are not Student Will, but... Dude Will. Will the Unshackled."
Will just blinked at him.
“You need to shake it off! And I know just the place.” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was still louder than most people’s normal speaking volume. “The Upside Down.”
Will had heard the name. It floated around the art building, spoken by the students with paint under their fingernails and a permanent look of mild disdain. A grungy, off-campus warehouse venue. The kind of place where people probably snapped their fingers instead of clapped, and said things like devastating, and well-put.
“That’s the… poetry slam place, right?” Will asked, already building his defence. “I have a 9 AM critique, I can’t just - ”
“Oh, but you can!” Argyle snatched the charcoal pencil from behind Will’s ear, ignoring his hands that flapped at him in protest. “This is your sword. But tonight…” He placed the pencil solemnly on the desk. “Tonight, you carry a shield.” He snatched up Will’s sturdy, hardcover sketchbook from the shelf and thrust it into his chest. “For when the truth beams get too intense. Now, come on. I’ve got a guy meeting me with some truly transcendent potato skins. This is ain’t a choice, compadre.”
Just keep doing what you’re doing.
Will stood up, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fine. But if I get ink, or… sweat… on my good fucking sketchbook, I’ll kill you.”
Argyle’s grin was blinding. “That’s the spirit! Now, let’s go spectate some spectacles!” He flung Will’s jacket at him, and Will caught it.
-x-
The smell of The Upside Down hit him first. It was a noxious combination of beer, incense, hot dust from ancient radiators, and pretentious cologne. Will, in his purple cable-knit sweater and perfectly broken-in Levi’s, felt like a single, misplaced daisy in a bed of aggressively interesting thistles. He gripped his sketchbook a little tighter.
“The vibes! The vibes!” Argyle shouted directly into his ear, spreading his arms wide as if to hug the entire room. “Drink them down, my man! I’m going to… uh… calibrate with the snack guy. Don’t get lost!” And with a peace sign, he vanished into the crowd.
Panic, cool and slick, climbed Will’s throat. He needed a plan. A strategy. He scanned the room and noticed a semi-stable-looking stack of wooden pallets near a wall, partially shielded by a massive, horrifying ugly painting of a cow with lasers coming out of its eyes. It would do. He slid into the protective hug of the nook, his back finding the solid, cool brick. Safe. At last. He flipped open his sketchbook to a clean page.
His hand moved with automatic, clinical precision. He drew the bones of the space: the strong verticals of the brick columns, the diagonal slash of a rusted support beam, the perfect glow of a lone, un-shaded lightbulb across the room. He drew the people as shapes, as silhouettes, focusing on the triangle of a girl’s leather jacket, the sloping hunch of a guy’s shoulders as he lent against the wall.
A voice cut through the hubbub, the feedback of the mic screeching violently. The host, a woman with a shaved head and what seemed like hundreds of silver hoops in her ears, began to speak.
“Alright, you beautiful fuckers,” she rasped, her voice gravely, but dripping with honey. “Time for some truth. Or a lie so good it feels like truth. You don’t care. Here he is … DUNGEON MASTER!”
The cheer was loud, and Will peeked over the top of his sketchbook.
The guy who hopped onto the stage wasn’t what he expected. He wasn’t dressed like everyone else. He wore a worn, brown corduroy blazer over a faded, navy-blue t-shirt with a peeling yellow ‘X-Men’ logo. His jeans weren’t artfully ripped, they were genuinely stained with what looked like flecks of blue paint and what was either blood or tomato sauce. His dark hair was a mess, like he’d been running his hands through it moments before. He took the mic, gave the crowd a quick, lopsided grin, and then… just stood there. He closed his eyes. The room, which had been buzzing, hushed completely. It was as if the guy on stage had taken a deep breath and accidentally sucked all the sound out of the space.
Will’s pencil hovered above the paper.
“They handed me a character sheet at birth,” the performer began, his gaze somewhere over the crowd’s head, delivering his lines to the ceiling. “Pre-rolled stats. Charisma: enough. Intelligence: disappointing. Alignment: Lawful Good.” A ripple of knowing laughs. A sense of FOMO settled over Will as he watched, a stranger not privy to the joke.
“They gave me a quest with no dragon,” Dungeon Master continued, his voice dipping. He started to pace slowly, just two steps each way, a caged energy. “Just a series of correctly filled-out forms. A dungeon with fluorescent lighting and a final boss named ‘Satisfactory Performance.’”
Will’s hand started moving again, but differently this time. He hadn’t drawn like this for years. Quick, erratic movements over the paper, trying to capture the way Dungeon Master’s free hand curled into a fist when he said fluorescent lighting, the way his brow furrowed in a deep, focused frustration.
The crowd whooped at something Dungeon Master said. Will didn’t whoop, he was too distracted to whoop, barely listening to what the man was saying. A series of rapid, overlapping lines spilled from his pencil, the intense line of dungeon master’s jaw, the curve of his shoulder under the blazer, the shape of his mouth around his words, had appeared on the page. It was terrible technical drawing.
It was the first time all night, maybe all year, that Will had drawn something that felt like it had a heartbeat.
-x-
The poem ended with a sharp, exhaled breath that seemed to drop Dungeon Master’s shoulders two inches. The silence that followed was thick, charged, and then shattered by a wave of applause and shouted affirmations. Will clapped quietly, the sound feeling absurdly small and pointless.
He watched as Dungeon Master was immediately swallowed by a school of people. A girl with pink hair punched his arm affectionately. A guy in thick-framed glasses launched into what looked like an intense debate, hands slicing through the air. Dungeon Master laughed, a bright, twinkly sound that cut through the din, and shot back a retort, his whole body animated. He was the eye of the storm.
Will could leave. He’d done the thing. He’d been Will the Unshackled. He could go back to his room, his torso, his quiet, and tell Argyle he’d absorbed the ‘required vibes’. He tucked his sketchbook under his arm and took a step toward the door.
Then Dungeon Master’s eyes, scanning the room over someone’s shoulder, landed on him.
Will froze. Dungeon Master said something to the guy he was arguing with, clapped him on the back, and started weaving through the crowd. Directly toward the safety of Will’s nook.
“Hey,” Dungeon Master said, stopping in front of him. Up close, he was taller. The paint stains on his jeans were definitely phthalo blue. He smelled like spearmint gum and the musty aroma of vintage clothes. He wore an open, curious, and a little windswept, expression from the adrenaline of the stage. “You were drawing the whole time.”
“Um,” Will said, his voice a dry croak. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Just… you know. Sketching.”
“Let me see.” Dungeon Master’s tone wasn’t demanding, and dumbly, Will held out the sketchbook.
Dungeon Master took it gently. He flipped past the first few pages—the careful studies of the columns, the beam, the lightbulb. Will watched his face, expecting the polite, disinterested nod he got from his professors. Dungeon Master’s eyebrows did something else. They knitted slightly, a faint line appearing between them.
Then he flipped another page. And stopped.
There, half-hidden between a discarded sketch of a fire exit sign and a practice page of cross-hatching, was the quick messy sketch Will had done during the poem. The one of him. Just a few hurried lines trying to capture the slope of his neck, the tension in his shoulders.
Dungeon Master’s thumb brushed the edge of the paper. He looked from the sketch to Will, and when his eyes met Will’s again, his grin was sudden and electric. It transformed his whole face.
“You caught it,” Dungeon Master said, his voice quieter now, and he tapped the page with a finger. “You saw it. The… the stupid head-tilt thing I do.”
Will’s face grew hot. “It was just a quick study. The lighting was… interesting.”
“It’s good,” Dungeon Master said. He handed the sketchbook back. “I’m Mike, by the way. Wheeler. The ‘Dungeon Master’ thing is… a whole thing.” He rolled his eyes.
“Will,” Will managed. “Byers.”
“Will Byers,” Mike repeated, as if weighing the name on his tongue. “Architectural savant and secret portraitist. You want a beer? It’s disgusting but –” Mike didn’t finish the sentence, just shrugged at Will with a lopsided grin.
Five minutes later, they were leaning against a less-sticky section of wall, holding plastic cups of lukewarm, bitter beer. Mike asked about his major.
“Art history,” Will said, reciting his well-practiced line. “I like understanding the context. The masters, their techniques, the movements.”
Mike nodded, taking a sip and grimacing. “Sure, sure. The masters are masterful. But.” He shifted, turning to face Will more directly. “What about you? What do you use art to say?”
The question hit Will like a slip on ice. Professors asked, “What are you trying to achieve with this piece?” or “What does this reference?” No one had ever asked him what he wanted to say. Mike’s intense gaze didn’t waver, but it softened. He didn’t press. He just waited, as if the silence was part of the conversation.
“I… don’t know,” Will finally admitted, feeling pathetic.
Mike smiled at him. “That’s the hardest question, isn’t it?” He drained his terrible beer. “Look, I gotta go verbally spar with my friend Max over there about the feminist subtext in Aliens, or she’ll bitch at me for dragging her here tonight.” He fished in his blazer pocket, pulled out a pen, and grabbed a cocktail napkin from a nearby table covered in empty cups. He scribbled quickly.
“Here.” He handed the napkin to Will. In messy, energetic handwriting, it read:
The Star Lite Diner on 4th.
Open 24hrs. (The pie is a lie, but the coffee’s honest.)
I’m there most nights after this.
Come argue with me about colour theory.
-Mike (DM)
Will stared at the napkin. He looked up at Mike, who was already beginning to turn away, giving him an out, not waiting for an answer.
“Argue about colour theory?” Will heard himself ask.
Mike glanced back over his shoulder, that electric grin flashing again. “Yeah. Like, is burnt sienna just a cowardly version of orange? No pressure.” And then he was gone, swallowed back into his crowd.
-x-
Will did not go the next night.
He had every intention of being a responsible student. He went to the library. He opened his textbook on Neoclassical Architecture. The pristine lines of Greek columns stared back at him, but his brain kept superimposing the quick, searching lines he’d used to capture the curve of Mike’s neck. The text blurred.
What do you want to say?
What do you want to say?
What do you want to say?
What do you want to say?
The napkin was in his pocket, heavy against his thigh.
The night after that was a Wednesday. He had a study group for Art History 405. He went. He contributed. He nodded at the right times. He couldn’t remember a single word of the two hour long conversation after leaving the roon.
The diner on 4th. Open 24 hours. Most nights after.
By 10:37 PM, he was standing outside the Star Lite Diner, his breath making little puffy clouds in the freezing air. He could see the silhouette of a waitress refilling coffee through the steamy windows, the shine of tarnished silver on the stools.
He turned to leave.
The door jingled open, and a couple bundled in scarves pushed past him, laughing, heads bent together. Through the closing door, he caught a glimpse of the back corner booth.
Mike was there.
He was buried in a landslide of paper: spiral notebooks, loose-leaf sheets covered in furious scribbles, a couple of battered paperbacks used as weights. In the middle of the table sat a half-dissected alarm clock, gears spilling out like guts. Three empty coffee cups teetered dangerously on the edge of the table. Mike was chewing on the end of a pen, his brow furrowed, completely absorbed in the chaos before him.
The door jingled again.
Mike didn’t look up at the sound. Will hovered near the ‘Please Wait to be Seated’ sign, feeling like an idiot. The waitress gave him a once-over and jerked her thumb toward the back. “He’s back there. You with the clock surgeon?”
“Um. Maybe?”
She shrugged. “Slide in. I’ll bring you coffee.”
Will approached the booth like a condemned man approaches the gallows. He cleared his throat.
Mike glanced up, his eyes distant for a second, but then they focused. On Will. The intense focus melted, replaced by a smile so bright and unguarded it nearly sent Will spinning on his heels and running out of the diner.
“Hey,” Mike said, shoving a notebook aside to clear space. “Okay, defend Impressionism to me. Monet’s water lilies are bourgeois eye-candy. Fight me.”
Will slid into the cracked vinyl booth, his nervousness dissolving in the face of the challenge. “That’s… reductive. They were capturing light as experience.”
“Breaking daddy’s rules to paint gardens is not a revolution!” Mike shot back, leaning forward, his eyes alight. “Where’s the anger? Where’s the sting?”
“Not all art has to be angry! It can be a comfort, it can wrap you in its arms, and tell you it’ll all be okay.” Will parried, lips twitching into a smile.
“Art as a warm blanket,” Mike said, nodding thoughtfully. “Okay. Acceptable. But temporary.”
“Art as a language is permanent,” Will countered, leaning forward, resting his chin in his hand. “It builds on what came before. A cross-cultural conversation that crosses centuries, millennia.”
“A conversation most people aren’t invited to!” Mike gestured wildly, almost knocking over the clock gears.
Will’s sketchbook had appeared on the table almost without him realizing it. As they talked, his hand moved. He drew the geometric simplicity of the sugar dispenser. The rounded glass of the pie case with its solitary, sad cherry pie. Safe, inanimate things. Mike ranted, some bollocks about the corporate appropriation of street art that had Will’s eyes rolling, and his hands chopped at the air for emphasis. Will’s pencil followed, desperately trying to keep up. It traced the dramatic arc of Mike’s wrist. The blunt strength of his fingers. The way his thumb pressed against his forefinger when he made a point.
Will was so caught up in the flow of line and argument that he didn’t notice Mike had stopped talking. He looked up.
Mike was staring at the sketchbook, the words of his rant frozen in mid-air. He lowered his hands to the table.
“Do I look like that?” Mike asked. His voice was different.
Will had been caught. He snapped the sketchbook shut, his face flaming. “It’s just practice. Hand gestures are… complicated. For drawing. This was good practice.”
Mike didn’t look at his face. He kept looking at the closed sketchbook. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His expression was thoughtful, almost vulnerable. The waitress arrived with a pot of coffee, refilling Mike’s cup and plonking a fresh one in front of Will.
Mike finally looked up at Will. Soft. Warm. “No one ever draws my hands,” he said.
Will, heart hammering, didn’t know what to say. So, he did the only thing he could. Very deliberately, he drew a single, careful line on the fresh, white paper.
Mike watched. He picked up his pen, turned back to his own chaotic notebook, and started writing again.
When Will left, hours later, caffeine jittering through his veins, it was with a scrap of paper with Mike’s number scrawled on it, tucked between the pages of his sketchbook, waiting to be discovered.
-x-
Will’s studio art class was called Advanced Techniques in Representation, and he should love it, but Professor Martin Tilbury was an oppressive, critical nightmare. The walls were a blinding, clinical white, and the only sound was the careful scratch of charcoal on paper.
Will’s assignment was a hyper-realistic self-portrait. It was meant to be a culminating display of everything he’d learned. For weeks, he’d been working from a small, precise mirror clamped to his easel, trying to capture the exact fall of shadow under his own jawline, the specific way his hair curled against his forehead. He had grown more and more sick of the sight of his own face.
But something was off.
His hand, usually so steady and sure, felt disobedient, refusing to do what it was told. The line of his shoulder in the drawing looked tense, hunched. He went to soften a shadow near his temple with a blending stump, but instead of a smooth gradient, he pressed too hard, and the charcoal smudged, creating a dark, bruisey patch. He tried to correct it, but only made it worse. Frustrated, he shoved the large drawing pad aside. From his bag, he pulled a different, smaller sketchbook. This one had a black cover, and he kept it zipped in a separate compartment. It was his most guarded secret.
He opened it.
There was a two-page spread of frantic, overlapping lines that felt like the clattering energy of the Star Lite Diner at 1 AM. There was a page where he’d tried, over and over, to capture the shadowed hollow at the base of Mike’s throat as he’d laughed, a memory drawn not from sight but from the visceral feeling in Will’s own chest. On another page, a single hand, his own, was drawn reaching across the paper, the fingers straining, not for anything concrete but just… reaching. The lines were urgent, sometimes broken, smudged with the heel of his hand. They were messy. They were emotional.
They were everything Tilbury would hate.
“Byers.”
The voice, cool and dry as bone, came from directly behind his shoulder. Will jerked, instinctively slamming the black sketchbook shut. He hadn’t even heard Tilbury approach.
“Let’s see your progress,” Tilbury said, his pale eyes on the large, smudged self-portrait on the easel.
Will’s throat tightened. “It’s… still in the mid-tonal phase, sir.”
Tilbury stepped forward and unhooked the drawing pad. He held it at arm’s length, his expression blank. His gaze traced the clumsy smudge near the temple, the overly aggressive line of the shoulder.
“This is undisciplined, Byers,” he finally stated, his voice cutting through the quiet studio. A few other students glanced over, then quickly looked away, afraid of being next. “It’s sentimental. Sloppy.”
Will felt the words like a slap. “I was trying to push the contrast, to show more depth —”
“You are losing your line,” Tilbury interrupted, his tone final. He tapped the paper with a perfectly clean fingernail. “This edge here. It’s tentative. Then here, it’s brutal. There’s no consistent voice. No control.” He handed the drawing pad back to Will. “Reel it in.”
He turned and walked to the next victim’s station, leaving Will standing there, holding his pad limply. The smell of the fixative was suddenly suffocating.
Will picked up a fresh piece of charcoal. His knuckles were white. He looked at the mirror, at his own carefully neutral expression.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned his back on the mirror. He opened the sketchbook book to a new page. With a hand that was no longer tentative, he swept his hand across the page, a deep, dark slash across the white space left in its wake. It was undisciplined. It was dangerous.
It was his heart.
-x-
(3:17 PM) Will: Today was just… one of those days where you feel like a ghost wearing a person suit.
His phone buzzed almost instantly.
(3:18 PM) Mike: first of all, that is a killer opening line for a song. second, i hate that you feel like that. person suits are overrated anyway. ghosts have better vibes.
(3:20 PM) Will: The vibes are currently ‘damp ectoplasm.’ Not great.
(3:20 PM) Mike: for the record, you are the least ghost-like person i know. you’re the opposite of a ghost. you’re… solid. in a good way.
Will’s throat felt tight. Solid. No one had ever called him that. He was used to ‘quiet,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘careful.’ Never solid.
(3:22 PM) Will: I feel about as solid as smoke right now.
(3:22 PM) Mike) smoke is powerful. smoke signals. smoke screens. smoke after a fire means something happened.
Will stared at the words. Evidence of life.
(3:24 PM) Will) How do you always do that?
(3:24 PM) Mike) Do what?
(3:25 PM) Will: Take the rotten feeling and make it sound… beautiful.
The dots bounced for a moment.
(3:26 PM) Mike) it’s not me. it’s you. you’re the one living a life beautiful enough to have metaphors. most people just have bad days. will byers has spectral existentialism.
A real laugh escaped Will this time, startling a squirrel. He leaned back against the cold stone, the tension in his shoulders loosening a fraction.
(3:28 PM) Will) Spectral existentialism. That’s the name of my next band.
(3:28 PM) Mike: i expect royalties. i’ll take payment in the form of those little detailed drawings you do of boring things. the salt shaker one is my lock screen, by the way.
Will’s heart did a funny little flip. He’d drawn that saltshaker weeks ago at the diner, absentmindedly, just to keep his hands busy while Mike ranted about postmodernism. Mike had watched him do it. He’d asked him to do it.
(3:30 PM) Will) You’re joking.
(3:30 PM) Mike): [Image Attached]
Will opened it. It was a slightly blurry screenshot of Mike’s phone home screen. There, in crisp detail against the dark background, was his drawing of the Star Lite Diner salt shaker.
(3:32 PM) Will: I’m… wow. That’s a weird thing to have as your lock screen.
(3:32 PM) Mike) it’s not weird. it’s a perfect little piece of the world, seen through your eyes. it’s better than a picture of my own face.
Will didn’t know what to say.
(3:34 PM) Will: What do you have me saved as in your phone? Please don’t say ‘Salt Shaker Guy.’
The dots bounced. Then stopped. Then bounced again.
(3:35 PM) Mike) …i might have something worse.
(3:35 PM) Will) Oh god. Is it ‘Art Ghost’?
(3:36 PM) Mike) no. it’s… okay, promise you won’t bolt. it’s embarrassingly sincere.
Now Will was genuinely curious.
(3:37 PM) Will: I’m braced. Hit me.
A pause.
(3:38 PM) Mike) ‘North Star.’
Will read the two words. Then read them again. His breath caught. It was too much. It was romantic in a way that felt vast and ancient and terrifyingly serious for two people who had mostly just shared bad coffee.
(3:40 PM) Will: Mike.
(3:40 PM) Mike) i know. it’s a lot. i told you it was embarrassingly sincere. it’s just… you know when you’re lost, and you look up and there’s that one constant point? that’s how talking to you feels. even when you’re having a ghost day. especially then.
Will’s vision blurred. He blinked rapidly, looking up at the pale grey sky. North Star.
(3:43 PM) Will) I just have you saved as ‘Mike.’
He typed it, feeling utterly inadequate in the face of such a gesture.
(3:43 PM) Mike) ‘Mike’ is perfect. i wouldn’t change it.
(3:45 PM) Will) My bench-nest is failing. The person suit is getting itchy.
(3:45 PM) Mike) benches are the worst. abort mission. come to headquarters.
(3:46 PM) Will) Headquarters?
(3:46 PM) Mike) my apartment. it’s messier than a bench, but it has blankets, a functioning kettle, and my questionable presence. i won’t make you talk. we can just… exist. you can be a ghost, or a north star, or just will. whatever you need.
An address followed.
(3:46 PM) Mike) 224B Maple, Apt 3. door sticks. shoulder-check it. i’ll leave it unlocked.
Will looked at the address, then at the text above it.
Whatever you need.
He stood up, his legs stiff from the cold and the tension. He typed one word.
(3:48 PM) Will: Okay.
He put his phone away and started walking, the word ‘North Star’ glowing warmly in his mind, a tiny, constant light leading him to Mike.
-x-
Will found himself on the floor of Mike’s apartment, his back against a cracked leather sofa. Mike’s apartment was the perfect mirror of him. Books were stacked not by author or genre, but by some mysterious, unknowable system, a worn copy of Maus perched on a book of Calvin and Hobbes comics, a dog-eared philosophy text supporting a battered sci-fi paperback. Half-finished poems were taped to the walls, words crossed out and rewritten in frantic arrows. In the centre of the room, a sprawling Dungeons & Dragons map was laid out, intricate and waiting, little painted miniatures standing guard.
When Will finished speaking, relaying what Tilbury had said to him earlier, Mike, who had been pacing a tight circuit, stopped dead. He was furious.
“A perfect, empty house,” Mike seethed, his voice low and tight. “That’s what he’s teaching you to build. Perfect lines, perfect shading, perfect, dead silence inside. Who the hell wants to live there?” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand even more wildly on end.
Will hugged his knees tighter, the logical part of his brain that craved Tilbury’s approval whispering that Mike was being dramatic, disrespectful.
Mike’s eyes scanned the chaotic room, searching for something. They landed on a cardboard box in the corner, half-collapsed, and a can of black spray paint sitting on a windowsill, likely left over from one of Mike’s own guerrilla art projects or a failed attempt to customize a thrift store find. He strode over, snatched them up, and dragged the large, flat piece of cardboard into the middle of the floor, right over the D&D map. The miniatures wobbled angrily.
He thrust the cold, metal spray can into Will’s hands.
Will stared at it. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Tell me what you’re afraid of,” Mike said, and he pointed at the vast, brown blankness of the cardboard.
Will’s first instinct was to hand the can back. This was ridiculous. He’d never used spray paint before.
His finger found the nozzle. He stood up, his legs shaky. He faced the cardboard, a bland, corporate brown expanse that suddenly felt like the entire wall of Tilbury’s studio, like the expectant page of his senior portfolio.
He pressed the nozzle.
A violent hiss erupted, making him flinch. A wild, sputtering streak of jet black lashed across the cardboard, in a shocked, jagged scar.
He sprayed again.
Another streak, crossing the first. Then a frantic, swirling scribble in the corner. He thought about the smudge Tilbury hated. He sprayed a messy, dripping blotch for it. He thought about the feeling of being ‘undisciplined.’ He ran out of black, grabbed a can of red Mike silently handed him, and kept going. The red screamed over the black. It was, technically, terrible.
When he finally stopped, the can falling from his fingers with a clatter, he was breathing hard, his heart hammering against his ribs. His hands and forearms were flecked with paint.
He looked up, panting, his eyes wide.
Mike was just watching him. All the earlier fury was gone, completely dissolved. He was looking at Will like he’d just seen something miraculous happen. A soft, almost awed smile touched Mike’s lips. He took a step closer, his voice a quiet whisper in the paint-scented air.
“There you are.”
-x-
The poem was a blade that twisted violently in his heart.
“The saint who longed for stain,” Mike had spoken into the mic, his eyes finding Will in the crowd like a compass finding north. “Who prayed for dirty hands …”
Will felt flayed open, heart on display, beating messily for the world to see.
After the set, they’d walked back to campus in silence, shoulders brushing, the autumn cold not doing anything to dull the heat under Will’s skin.
At the steps of Will’s dorm, they’d stopped. The light from the lobby spilled out, carving Mike’s face in gold and shadow.
“That poem,” Will started, his voice rough.
“Yeah,” Mike said, not looking away. He was close. So close Will could see the flecks of lighter brown in his dark eyes, could smell the faint scent of old coffee and ink on him.
“Was it…?”
“It’s about wanting something so much it scares you,” Mike hummed, the confession hanging in the whisper of space between their mouths. “Something that feels like falling, even when you’re standing still.”
Will’s breath hitched loudly. He could have closed the distance then. He should have. But panic reared in his gut, acidic. He took a shaky step back, towards the safe, bright light of the lobby. “I… I should go. Big day tomorrow.”
A flicker of something crossed Mike’s face. He nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels. “Right. Yeah. Get some sleep, Byers.”
Now, in the tomb-like silence of his dorm room, Will felt sick. Argyle was mercifully absent. Will stared at his reflection in the window, the ghost in the glass.
Let me be good. Let me be safe. Let this feeling stop.
But the feeling was a living, growing thing. It was the pressure of Mike’s shoulder against his during the walk. It was the low timbre of his voice.
He couldn’t stand it. He grabbed his jacket.
His feet carried him across the silent campus, past the library, past the art building, into the neighbourhood of grad student housing and crumbling old houses. He found himself at the familiar, paint-chipped door of Mike’s apartment building. He didn’t hesitate. He knocked, three sharp raps that echoed in the stairwell.
Footsteps, quick and light, approached from inside. The door swung open.
Mike stood there, wearing only a worn-out pair of sweatpants and a thin, grey t-shirt. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He blinked, surprise melting into something warm and horribly tender. “Will? Are you okay?”
All of Will’s carefully rehearsed words, I couldn’t sleep, I was just nearby, deserted him. The sight of Mike, sleepy-soft in his doorway, broke him. His face crumpled.
“I’m not okay,” Will choked out, the words torn from him. “And I don’t feel safe. And I don’t… I don’t want it to stop. The feeling. I don’t want it to stop, Mike.”
Mike’s eyes widened. In an instant, he reached out, not hesitating, and pulled Will inside, shutting the door against the world. The apartment was dim, lit only by a desk lamp.
“Hey,” Mike murmured, his hands coming up to cradle Will’s face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that had escaped. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Will gasped, shaking his head, his hands coming up to clutch at Mike’s wrists. “It’s not. It’s terrifying. You’re terrifying.”
Mike’s breath caught. Instead of pulling back, he leaned closer, his forehead gently touching Will’s. “Then let me terrify you,” he whispered, his voice raw. “Because you terrify me, too. Every single day.”
The confession hung suspended between them. Will could feel the heat radiating from Mike’s skin, see the pulse jumping in his throat.
Will’s gaze dropped to Mike’s lips, then back to his eyes. He gave the smallest, most imperceptible nod.
It was all the permission Mike needed.
One of Mike’s hands slid from Will’s face, down the column of his neck, over his shoulder. It came to rest firmly on Will’s hip, his fingers splayed, possessive and grounding, gripping him through the fabric of his jeans. The other hand mirrored it, anchoring Will in place.
With a sound that was half-sob, half-relief, Will surged forward. His own arms flew up, wrapping tightly around Mike’s neck, his fingers tangling in the soft, slightly matted hair at his nape. He buried his face in the space between Mike’s neck and shoulder.
Mike let out a shaky breath, a deep shudder that vibrated them both. He pulled Will closer, impossibly closer, until not a sliver of light could pass between them. Will could feel the frantic beat of Mike’s heart against his own chest, a wild counter-rhythm to his own. He could feel the strength in Mike’s hands, the lean muscles of his back under his palms.
Mike turned his head, his lips brushing the shell of Will’s ear, his breath hot. “You’re here,” he murmured, the words vibrating through Will’s whole body.
Will tightened his hold, his own voice muffled against Mike’s skin. “I’m here.”
-x-
(01:08 AM) Mike: i can’t stop thinking about your hands.
Will was in his own dorm, freshly showered, and Argyle snored in the bed across the room. He stared at the text, curled on his side in bed.
(01:09 AM) Will: My hands? They’re covered in charcoal.
(01:09 AM) Mike: i know. i have a matching set of grey smudges on the back of my t-shirt from where you were holding on. they’re perfect. i might never wash it.
Will’s face burned. He brought his own hand up, staring at the faint, stubborn grey lines in the creases of his knuckles. Evidence.
(01:11 AM) Will: That’s… the weirdest romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.
(01:11 AM) Mike: good. i aim for weird and romantic. a two-for-one special. but seriously. the way they feel. like they were made to hold fragile, important things. like sketchbooks. and… other things.
Will swallowed hard, his heart hammering against his ribs. Other things. He knew what Mike meant. The memory of those hands on his hips, pulling him in.
(01:13 AM) Will: You’re going to give me a complex.
(01:13 AM) Mike: you deserve a complex. a beautiful one. you’re beautiful, you know that?
He read the sentence three times. People didn’t say that to him. They said his work was beautiful, or precise, or skilful. They said he had a good eye. They praised what he made, not what he was.
(01:15 AM) Will: People don’t usually say that to me.
(01:15 AM) Mike: what do they say?
(01:16 AM) Will: That my art is beautiful. Or thoughtful. Or well-composed.
The dots bounced, pulsed, disappeared for a long moment. Will held his breath.
(01:18 AM) Mike: will. your art is beautiful. because it comes from you. but the art is the byproduct. you’re the source. they’re complimenting the echo because they’re too far away to hear your voice. or they’re not listening for it. you are… gorgeous. in here. [Attached: A photo, clearly taken just now in Mike’s dim apartment. It was a close-up of the back of Mike’s own t-shirt, the faded grey cotton. Two perfect, slightly smudged handprints in charcoal were visible, stark against the fabric, right over his shoulder blades. The caption read: Proof of life. And beauty.]
The photo was so intimate, so ridiculously Mike.
(01:20 AM) Will) Mike… I don’t know what to say.
(01:20 AM) Mike: you don’t have to say anything. just know it. let it be true. because it is. you’re my north star, remember? you have to be beautiful to guide people. it’s in the job description.
It was too much. The poetry of it, the sheer, unguarded sincerity. Will felt like he was standing in a spotlight he hadn’t auditioned for, wearing a costume he didn’t know how to wear. Mike was giving him his heart, fully formed and beating, and Will was terrified he would drop it. That he wasn’t strong enough, or good enough, or real enough to hold something so precious.
The euphoria began to curdle horribly into panic. This was moving too fast.
(01:23 AM) Will: I’m really tired. I should sleep.
The pause was palpable. He could feel Mike’s slight deflation through the screen.
(01:24 AM) Mike: of course. get some rest, ghost-boy. sweet dreams. <3
(01:24 AM) Will: Goodnight, Mike.
Will put his phone face down on the nightstand. He lay in the dark, the afterimage of the handprint photo burned into his eyelids. Beautiful. North Star.
He felt like a fraud.
The warmth of the evening, the safety of Mike’s embrace, it all felt like a dream belonging to someone else. Someone braver. The panic solidified into a cold, hard decision. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hold this much feeling. He would break it. He would break Mike.
He reached for his phone again, his fingers icy. He opened his contacts. His thumb hovered over Mike.
With a trembling breath, he tapped ‘Edit.’ He deleted ‘Mike.’
In its place, he typed a new name. A name that felt safer.
He saved the contact as:
The Poet.
-x-
Day 1
Will’s To-Do List:
- Finish anatomical study of hands
- Complete tonal gradient chart (10-step, greyscale)
- Begin final draft of senior show piece #1: “Vessel Study I” (ink wash)
- Do not think about the diner.
- Do not think about corduroy blazers.
- Do not think about the way he says “Byers” like it’s a prayer.
His phone buzzed from its place on the library table, face-down. He flinched. He’d been outlining a perfect, empty Greek amphora for three hours.
When he finally flipped it over, there was a single notification.
(9:47 PM) Mike: hey. missing you. diner’s too quiet. waitress asking about you. hope the project is going well.
Will’s throat closed. He typed and deleted a dozen replies.
‘I miss you too.’
‘This project is killing me.’
‘I’m still scared of you.’
He pressed his fists to his eyes until he saw stars.
(11:23 PM) Will: Sorry. Buried in work. Talk soon.
Day 3
Will’s Progress: “Vessel Study I” was complete. It was a masterpiece of control. The ink wash was flawless, the edges crisp. Dr. Tilbury would approve. Will wanted to set it on fire and dance on the ashes.
His phone buzzed twice in the afternoon.
(2:15 PM) Mike: found a new contender for worst coffee in the city. youd hate it. its at this gas station off the highway. it tastes like motor oil. thought of you immediately.
(2:16 PM) Mike: in a good way. the thinking of you part. not the motor oil part.
Will stared at the messages. A weird, pained laugh choked him. He could hear Mike’s voice, see the wolfish grin. He clutched the phone, thumbs hovering. He could say something. One thing. Just to let him know he was still alive.
He put the phone in his bag. He took it out an hour later. The screen was dark. He didn’t text back.
Day 5
The panic was a cold, hard stone in his gut. He’d started “Vessel Study II.” This one featured a cracked, but precisely reconstructed, ceramic bowl.
His phone buzzed late, when he was in his dorm, staring at the wall.
(1:08 AM) Mike: wrote a new thing tonight. it was bad. really, really bad. all the words were wrong. i miss u.
Will’s heart cracked clean open, bleeding on the floor. He typed fast, before he could stop himself.
(1:11 AM) Will: I’m sure it’s not bad.
The reply was almost instant.
(1:11 AM) Mike: it is. but thanks for lying. u okay?
(1:13 AM) Will: Just tired. Sorry. Going to sleep.
(1:14 AM) Mike: night, will.
The period at the end of his name felt like a punch.
Day 7
Will was in the 24-hour campus lab, putting the final details on the stupid fucking cracked bowl. His eyes burned. His back ached. He had successfully not-texted Mike for 48 hours. It felt like he’d severed a limb.
The buzz of his phone was a phantom pain in his missing limb. He didn’t want to look. He had to look.
(10:17 PM) Mike: okay im officially worried. not in a weird way. in a ‘worried about my friend’ way. waitress saving you a slice of cherry pie. please send a sign of life. a punctuation mark. anything.
Will read it. Then read it again. The my friend felt like a deliberate, painful choice of word.
He couldn’t do this anymore.
His hands were shaking. He typed the only true thing he could offer.
(10:23 PM) Will: I’m alive. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mike.
He sent it before he could think. He stared at the screen, waiting. The three little dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
(10:25 PM) Mike: thats all i needed. just… be alive, okay?
Will put his head down on the cold library desk, next to his perfect, cracked bowl, and cried silently. He had cut out the messy, emotional part of himself, and it was agonising.
-x-
(10:42 PM) Will: I finished my portfolio.
The text sat there, unanswered, for three torturous minutes. Will sat on the floor of his dorm, his back against his perfectly made bed. The large portfolio case lay beside him like a casket. Inside, sleeved in crisp acetate, were six illustrations for a "Modern Mythical Bestiary." They were breathtaking. They were dead.
(10:45 PM) Mike: thats huge. congrats. must be a relief.
The tone was careful, neutral. Will swallowed hard. His fingers trembled as he opened his camera, focused on the phoenix illustration, the most technically ambitious, the hollowest, Will’s least favourite, and took a picture.
(10:46 PM) Will: [Image Sent]
He watched the three dots appear, pulse, and disappear. A long, agonizing minute passed.
(10:48 PM) Mike: will. thats… fucking incredible. the texture on those ashes. the light on the wings. its insane.
This was worse. This was polite admiration. This was what everyone else would see. He needed Mike to see what he saw.
(10:49 PM) Will: Look again.
Another pause.
(10:51 PM) Mike: i am looking. its masterful. tilbury must be creaming his khakis.
Will typed through a blur of tears.
(10:52 PM) Will: That’s all you see?
The three dots appeared and stayed. Will could imagine Mike on the other side, holding his phone, staring at the image, really looking this time.
(10:55 PM) Mike: …its cold.
Two words. They were an axe-blow to the dam inside Will.
(10:55 PM) Mike: its like you built a perfect, beautiful robot of a phoenix. where are you in this, will?
Will gasped, the phone slipping from his hand. He fumbled for it, tears now falling freely, smearing the screen. He couldn’t type. He just stared at the question. Where are you in this?
Mike didn’t wait for an answer. The texts came in rapid succession now.
(10:56 PM) Mike: where’s the guy who drew my stupid hands?
(10:56 PM) Mike: where’s the guy who attacked a cardboard box with spray paint because he was angry?
(10:57 PM) Mike) where’s the boy i held in my apartment? i miss him. i miss him so much.
Will curled in on himself, phone pressed to his forehead. The phone buzzed again in his hand. He wiped his eyes, smearing tears across the image of the perfect, soulless phoenix.
(11:01 PM) Mike: please.
(11:01 PM) Mike: please come over.
(11:02 PM) Mike: you don’t have to talk. you don’t have to show me anything else. just come here.
(11:03 PM) Mike: i need to see you. i need to know you’re real. i miss you. i want to hold you. please, will.
(11:04 PM) Will: okay.
He didn’t remember grabbing his keys or jacket. He left the portfolio lying discarded on his dorm room floor. He was out the door, running across the cold campus, the texts burning in his pocket.
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
-x-
The climb up the stairs to Mike’s apartment felt endless. Will’s heart was a frantic bird trapped in the cage of his ribs, his breath coming in short, sharp huffs in the dimly lit stairwell. He didn’t knock. He just stood there, fist raised, trembling. Before he could make contact, the door swung inward.
Mike stood framed in the warm, yellow light from within. He looked like he’d been pacing. His eyes were wide, dark pools of worry that instantly scanned Will’s face, taking in the tear-streaks, the redness around his eyes. For a long second, they just stared at each other.
“Hey,” Mike breathed, the word barely audible.
Will’s voice was gone. All he could do was take a shaky step forward, over the threshold. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing them in the familiar warmth of Mike’s apartment. A half-written poem was taped to the fridge. It was all the same, but everything felt different this time.
Mike didn’t reach for him. He just stood there, his hands hanging at his sides, clenching, and unclenching, giving Will space, waiting for him.
“I’m not in them,” Will whispered, his voice barely audible. “In the drawings. I’m nowhere in them. You were right.”
Mike’s face crumpled. “Will…”
“I tried so hard to be what I’m supposed to be. And it’s… it’s a beautiful husk. It’s nothing.” A fresh tear traced a path down his cheek. “I’m so tired of being nothing, Mike.”
“You are not nothing,” Mike said, the force in his voice startling them both. He took a step closer, his gaze burning into Will’s. “You are the most something person I have ever met. You see lines and light and beauty where everyone else just sees… stuff. Even when I’m trying to be just a loudmouth on a stage, you see the parts I’m hiding.” His voice dropped, becoming unbearably tender. “You drew my hands, Will.”
“I see everything,” Will confessed, the truth now pouring out of him like blood from a gaping wound. “I see the way you get a little line right here,” he gestured weakly near his own brow, “when you’re thinking hard. I see the way your smile is lopsided when you’re really happy. I see the paint stain on your shirt that’s been there for three weeks. I see it all, and it’s all I want to draw, and it’s wrong. It’s all wrong, but I don’t care anymore.”
Mike closed the final distance between them. He didn’t grab him, not yet. He lifted his hands, slowly, giving Will every chance to pull away, and gently cradled Will’s face. “Then don’t care,” he murmured, his eyes searching Will’s. “Be wrong with me. Be… be here.”
Will leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut for a second. The simple warmth of Mike’s hands an anchor. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admitted, his own hands coming up to rest on Mike’s waist.
“Neither do I,” Mike whispered, a faint, shaky smile touching his lips. “We’ll figure it out.”
Will opened his eyes, flicking his gaze down to Mike’s lips, then back up. He saw the same want, the same fear, the same dizzying hope reflected back at him.
“Mike,” he breathed, a desperate plea.
It was all the permission Mike needed. Mike leaned in, slowly, giving Will one last moment to change his mind. Will didn’t.
Their lips met, a soft, a tentative brush. It tasted like of salt from dried tears and the faint, familiar hint of Mike’s spearmint gum. It was warmth, and a slight tremor in Mike’s lower lip that mirrored the earthquake inside Will’s own chest.
Will’s fingers curled into the fabric of Mike’s shirt, holding on. Mike’s hands slid from his face, one tangling gently in Will’s hair, the other splaying across his back, pulling him closer.
When they finally parted, it was only by a breath. Their foreheads rested together, their eyes still closed, sharing the same air.
“I see you,” Mike said, breathing the words into Will’s very soul, “I see all of you.”
-x-
The morning light in Mike’s apartment was kind, painting the mess in soft gold. Will woke up tangled in Mike’s sheets, the scent of them surrounding him. For a moment, there was only the peace of it, the rightness of waking up here, with the sound of Mike quietly clattering around in the tiny kitchenette.
The memory of the night before flooded back with a comforting, settled warmth. Then, hot on its heels, a clawing anxiety. 48 hours. The senior review. The culmination of four years. The judgment of Dr. Tilbury.
Mike appeared in the bedroom doorway, holding two mugs. He was wearing a pair of glasses Will had never seen before, round and slightly askew, making him look like ridiculous. He handed Will a mug. “Coffee. It’s approximately as strong as a tar, so be warned.”
Will took it, their fingers brushing. “Thanks.”
Mike sat on the edge of the bed; his own mug cradled between his hands. He looked at Will, his expression serious behind his absurd glasses. “The review is Monday.”
“I know.”
“Whatever you choose to show them,” Mike said, his voice low and steady, “it has to be yours. Not Tilbury’s. Not your mom’s.” He paused, a flicker of vulnerability crossing his face. “Not… mine. Yours.”
Will looked into the dark depths of his coffee. He thought of the “Modern Mythical Bestiary,” still lying on his dorm floor.
“I know what I have to do,” Will said.
-x-
Will used his student ID to secure a private studio in the fine arts building, a small, white cube with a north-facing window and a cement floor that was splattered by thousands of different shades of paint. He locked the door.
For a long time, he just stood there, surrounded by the blank canvas and the arsenal of colour. The ghost of Tilbury whispered in his ear: Composition. Underpainting. Tonal values. Control.
Will took a deep breath, picked up a stick of vine charcoal, and walked up to the vast, white expanse.
The first mark was a long, sweeping, diagonal line from the top left corner to the centre, a violent gesture. It was the line of Mike’s arm throwing a word into a crowd. He followed it with another, then another, building a furious, gesturing skeleton. He used the charcoal until it was dust on his fingers, smudging with his hands, his palms, the heel of his hand, layering darkness until the white canvas was storm-grey.
He switched to thinned, raw umber acrylic, painting over the charcoal with a rag, staining the ground, searching for forms in the chaos. A shape emerged from the storm—a torso, leaning back, a throat exposed, vulnerable. He followed it, mixing a furious, glowing red and, with a cheap bristle brush, slashed in the suggestion of an open mouth.
Then, he stepped back, chest heaving. The central figure pulsed with a rough, unfinished power. But it was only half the story.
This was the harder part.
He picked up a smaller brush and a tube of cerulean blue, a colour that had always felt like his own quiet melancholy. In the centre of the charcoal-and-umber torso, right where the heart would be, he began to paint something new.
It started as a simple shape, a curve that echoed the main figure’s posture but turned inward, protective. He layered the blue, letting it blend wet-into-wet with the reds and browns, becoming one with the storm and yet distinct. He added hints of other colours—a fragile yellow ochre, a whisper of magenta.
It was him. A self-portrait not of his face, but of his becoming. He painted it emerging from the chest of the central figure, not as a separate being, but as its core, its truth. They were intertwined, inseparable, a symbiotic collision, a shout and a whisper.
He worked for hours, losing all sense of time.
Then, he turned to the background. With a fine liner brush and a steady hand that surprised him, he painted faint, precise, architectural lines—the ghost of a Greek column, the strict perspective of a tiled floor, the careful edge of a window frame.
He was exhausted, covered in a kaleidoscope of paint, his muscles aching. But he wasn’t finished. The painting needed a title. He mixed a thick, buttery paste of titanium white. With a small, stiff brush, he wrote in clean, confident, all-capital letters along the bottom right edge:
INCANDESCENT
He stepped back, wiping his hands on an already-ruined rag. He looked.
He had two hours until the studio closed. His body trembled with adrenaline and exhaustion. He sat on the floor, his back against the paint-spattered wall, and simply looked at the thing he had birthed.
He pulled out his phone. His fingers left faint blue smudges on the screen. He typed a text to Mike.
(9:14 PM) Will: It’s done. It’s mine.
He didn’t send a picture. Some things needed to be seen in person, to be breathed in, to be felt in the space they occupied.
The reply came a minute later.
(9:15 PM) Mike: i know it is. can’t wait to witness it. come home.
-x-
The university gallery felt like an asylum, its walls a punishing, clinical white. The floors were polished black tile that reflected the cold, precise track lighting. The air smelled of fresh paint and quiet judgment. Professor Martin Tilbury stood with his hands clasped behind his back, a satisfied sheen in his eyes as he surveyed the fruits of his program.
Will’s classmates had presented their theses. They were polished, conceptually safe, technically impeccable. They were perfect guests for Tilbury’s sterile temple. He nodded along, offering clipped, approving comments. “Excellent control of medium.” “A rigorous conceptual framework.”
Will stood at the back, trembling. Beside him, covered by a plain white cloth, was his canvas on a wheeled dolly.
“Byers,” Tilbury’s voice cut through the quiet. “You’re last. Let’s see what you’ve settled on from your… developmental phase.”
All eyes turned to him. Will saw the polite curiosity of his peers, the mild interest of the other professors. And he saw Mike, leaning against the far wall by the exit, a solid, steady presence in his corduroy blazer. Mike gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod. Not a smile. Just a grounding look that said, I’m here. It’s yours. It’s you.
Will’s fingers were cold as he gripped the handle of the dolly. The wheels squeaked, a shocking, metallic whine in the quiet.
He cleared his throat. His voice, when it came, was soft, but it didn’t shake.
“For years,” he began, his eyes finding Tilbury’s impassive face, then drifting to Mike’s warm one, “I believed art was about control. About building perfect, silent things.” He took a shallow breath. “I was wrong.”
A ripple went through the room. Tilbury’s eyebrows drew together slightly.
“I met someone,” Will continued, his voice gaining a thread of strength, “who taught me that art isn’t about control. It’s about the spill. It’s about the truth of the spill. Even if that truth is messy. Or scary. Or loud.”
He turned his back on the audience then. He faced the white cloth. His hands, still smudged with faint, stubborn traces of phthalo blue and cadmium red, took hold of the fabric. He didn’t unveil it with a flourish. He simply pulled it away and let it drop to the polished floor in a soft heap.
For a second, there was absolute silence.
Then, a collective, sharp intake of breath.
INCANDESCENT glared back at them. It was a shock of violent colour in the white room. It was undeniably, breathtakingly alive.
One of Will’s classmates, a graphic design major, whispered, “Whoa.” Another took a step back.
Professor McIntosh, the ancient, kind-eyed head of the art history department, leaned forward, his glasses slipping down his nose, a slow smile spreading across his face.
The visiting curator, a sharp-eyed woman in a sleek black dress, didn’t gasp. She went very still, her head tilting. She took a step closer, her eyes scanning the surface, the textures, the embedded words. “Now this,” she murmured, almost to herself, “has a heartbeat.”
But all of this was peripheral noise. The only reaction that mattered, the only one Will’s eyes were locked onto, was Professor Tilbury’s.
The man’s face had frozen into a mask of cold, total disapproval. He stared at the painting as if it were a biological hazard that had been wheeled into his clean room. His lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line.
The silence stretched, becoming oppressive. Tilbury finally spoke, his voice like dry ice scraping metal.
“This,” he said, the single word dripping with disdain, “is undisciplined sensationalism, Byers.”
Will felt the words like a punch, but he didn’t flinch. He stood his ground.
“It lacks all technical rigor, all conceptual clarity. It is emotional masturbation.” He gestured sharply at the canvas. “This is not what this program is for. This is not art. This is… a mess.”
The final word hung in the air, brutal and definitive.
Will’s heart hammered, but a strange calm settled over him. He looked at the painting, his truth, his spill, his beautiful, terrifying mess, and then back at Tilbury. He wasn’t the scared ghost in the library anymore.
“I understand that’s your perspective, Professor Tilbury,” Will said, “But this is my thesis. The conclusion I reached after four years of studying control.” He gestured to the painting. “This is my control.”
Tilbury’s eyes narrowed. “Your ‘control’ fails to meet the established criteria for this review. It is an affront to the very discipline of art.”
Before Will could respond, the visiting curator spoke up. Her voice was cool, professional, but carried undeniable weight. “With respect, Mr. Tilbury, ‘the discipline’ has always been expanded by work that challenges its established criteria.” She moved to stand slightly closer to the painting, examining the interplay of the precise lines and the wild paint. “This piece demonstrates a sophisticated dialogue between formal academic training and raw, expressive impulse. The technical skill is here,” she pointed to the faint architectural lines, “it’s highly compelling.”
A low murmur broke out among the other professors. Professor McIntosh nodded. “There’s clear intentionality here, Martin. A deliberate deconstruction. All of the elements show a deep engagement with conceptual layering.”
Tilbury’s face was stony. “I cannot pass this.”
Will saw Mike shift against the wall out of the corner of his eye, saw the anger tighten his face. But Will just looked at Tilbury, the man who had been his guide, his teacher, his jailer.
“Then fail me,” Will said, the words simple and final.
The gallery went dead silent again.
“Fail me on your criteria,” Will continued. “But this is the work I’m leaving this program with. This is who I am.”
He didn’t wait for a dismissal. He didn’t look at his grade sheet. He simply bent down, picked up the fallen white cloth, but instead of covering the painting again, he folded it neatly and placed it on the dolly. He took the handle of the dolly, the wheels squeaking once more in the profound quiet, and turned his back on Tilbury. He wheeled INCANDESCENT toward the exit, toward the warm, steady presence waiting for him by the door.
-x-
The cool autumn air outside the gallery filled Will’s lungs. It was laced with the scent of fallen leaves and diesel from a distant bus. His hands were still trembling. His pristine academic record was probably in tatters. Tilbury’s cold, furious face promised a grade that would be a scarlet letter on his transcript. The path to the quiet curator job, the respectable grad school, all of it had likely gone up in smoke.
He saw Mike before Mike saw him. Mike was pacing a tight, anxious pattern on the brick plaza, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his corduroy blazer, his head down. Every line of his body was tense with waiting. He looked up, his gaze sweeping the doors, and locked onto Will.
Mike’s face was a storm of worry. He strode over, his eyes searching Will’s for damage, for defeat. “Are you okay?”
Will stopped in front of him. He could still feel the ghost of the gallery’s judgment, the chill of Tilbury’s words. But they were just ghosts. The living, breathing reality was the boy in front of him, his eyes dark with concern.
“I showed them the truth,” Will said, his own voice surprisingly steady. A small, weary, but genuine smile touched his lips. “It was… terrifying.” He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “And it was mine.”
The worry in Mike’s eyes ebbed away. He took a half-step closer, his hands coming up as if to reach for Will, but then they hesitated, hovering in the space between them.
This was new. This was Mike, who charged at stages and arguments and feelings with relentless certainty, now hesitating. He was scared, not of the gallery, or Tilbury, but of overstepping. Of assuming that this tectonic shift in Will’s world included a space for him.
Will saw the hesitation. He saw the love and the fear in it. And in that moment, any last shred of his own fear dissolved.
He closed the distance.
He didn’t grab Mike’s lapels or make a dramatic gesture. He simply stepped into the space Mike’s hands had carved out for him, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to Mike’s.
It was messy. Will’s hands came up to cup Mike’s face, his thumbs brushing over the soft skin papering his high cheekbones. Mike’s delayed shock broke, and a soft, shattered sound escaped him as his arms finally came around Will, pulling him in so tightly it stole his breath.
When they finally parted, they didn’t go far. Their foreheads rested together, their breaths mingling in white puffs in the cold air. Mike’s eyes were closed, a look of stunned reverence on his face.
“Wow,” Mike breathed, the word a soft prayer against Will’s mouth.
Will laughed, the sound giddy and free. “Yeah.”
Mike opened his eyes, his gaze searching Will’s. “What now?”
Will looked over his shoulder at the stark, white gallery building, then back at Mike, at the warm, alive, paint-stained, brilliant boy. He took Mike’s hand, lacing their fingers together.
“Now,” Will said, squeezing his hand, “we go make something else.”
-x-
The air in The Upside Down was different now. It still smelled of dust, cheap beer, and incense, but to Will, it smelled like home. The fairy lights were the same, the brick walls still covered in a layers of chaotic art. But the terrified ghost in the corner was gone. In his place, a young man stood in the wings of the stage. He clutched the edges of a large, fresh sketchpad. A digital projector, borrowed from the AV department, hummed beside him, its lens trained on a blank screen behind the stage.
The host, the same woman with the shaved head and silver hoops, grabbed the mic. “Alright, you beautiful heathens! We’ve got something special tonight. Give it up for a first-time performer, a man with a truly distinctive voice … W. BYERS!”
The cheer was warm, curious. Will walked out into the pool of light. He saw two familiar faces in the crowd, Argyle, beaming and giving him two thumbs up, and in the very front, leaning against the stage with his arms crossed, was Mike.
Mike’s grin was blinding. It was the same smile that had gutted Will the first time he saw it. It said, I see you. You’re here.
Will gave a small, nervous smile to the crowd, then set up his simple station: a stool, the sketchpad on a music stand, a cup of pencils and charcoal. He nodded to the sound guy. A haunting, instrumental piece of music began to swell through the speakers, atmospheric, with a pulsing cello line and the sound of distant, echoing piano notes.
He clicked on the projector. A giant, bright white rectangle appeared on the screen behind him.
Then, he picked up a piece of charcoal.
He didn’t look at the crowd. He looked at the blank page, illuminated by a small clip light. He took a deep breath and let his hand move.
The first mark was a single, confident, sweeping curve, projected twenty feet tall behind him. The crowd murmured. He followed it with another, a line that contradicted the first, creating tension. The beginning of something. A great cracking open.
He switched to a pencil, adding fine, delicate lines that wove through the bold charcoal strokes. He worked quickly, intuitively, his entire being focused on the conversation between his hand, the page, and the music. He smudged with his thumb, creating shadows. He used the side of the charcoal to block in dark areas of pure emotion.
On the giant screen, the audience watched a world being born in real-time. They saw chaos resolve, momentarily, into the suggestion of a face, not a portrait, but the idea of a face. Will lost himself in it. The nervousness vanished, burned away by the focus of the act. This was his language now. Not words shouted into a mic, but truths whispered through line and shadow, projected for anyone brave enough to watch.
He didn’t know how long he worked. The music began to crest, the cello reaching a resonant, aching note. On his page, two distinct forms had emerged from the chaos, not separate, but intertwined, one of bold, assertive strokes, the other of softer, searching lines. They leaned into each other, a shared centre of gravity. He took one last piece of white chalk and made a single, bright mark at their core. Incandescent.
The music faded to silence.
Will put down the chalk. His hands were covered in a galaxy of grey and black. He looked up, blinking, returning to his body, to the room.
The Upside Down was utterly silent. Then, the applause started. People were on their feet. Will saw Professor McIntosh clapping with a look of deep satisfaction. He saw the visiting curator, the one who’d defended him, nodding slowly, a pleased smile on her lips.
But his eyes found Mike. Mike wasn’t clapping. He was just staring, his earlier grin softened into an expression of such profound, overwhelming pride and love that it stole the air from Will’s lungs. Mike’s eyes were bright, and he gave a slow, deliberate nod.
That’s my artist, Mike mouthed up at him.
Later, after the crowd had swarmed him with congratulations, after Argyle had enveloped him in a weed-scented hug declaring him ‘fully vibed,’ Will found Mike waiting for him by the battered fire exit, the one that led to the quiet alley. The noise of the venue was a dull thump behind the door.
Mike didn’t say anything. He just reached for him, pulling him close by the hips, their foreheads coming together like magnets finding their pole. Will’s hands, still gritty with charcoal, came up to rest on Mike’s chest.
“My angel,” Mike whispered, his breath a warm cloud against Will’s lips. “I’m so proud of you.”
Will pulled back just enough to look into Mike’s eyes, into the beautiful, messy, brilliant future he saw reflected there. “I love you.”
End.