after the last chapter this one really felt like a long fucking exhale, like they’re together and happy and free, they’ve met each other’s families and went on a date, and there’s still a lot to figure out but we can fucking breathe now #htdc
chapter 1 chapter 11
we really went from mike mentioning W for the first time in ID to will typing his own ID entry. they’re growing all over the place 🥹
epistolary byler au where will and mike attend college in different cities. one day, will sends mike a notebook with concept sketches for an adventure comic about a cleric, a paladin, and their ragtag group of friends.
mike absolutely adores every single page. inspired by it, he writes a follow-up vignette in the following pages, and mails it back to will. will illustrates it, adds his own lil details to it, and includes suggestions for the next scene in a sticky note... then mails it back to mike.
from then on, they start trading the notebook back & forth – ten, twenty, thirty times – until by the end of the year, they've got enough pages for an entire comic collection. they decide to polish it up and submit it for publication. they expect nothing of it, so they carry on with their lives and start a brand new notebook with brand new ideas.
a month later, a publisher calls. there's a brilliant offer on the table, but it means mike has to move to nyc. he doesn't even have to think about it. he transfer colleges and, by fall, he's unpacking boxes in will's apartment.
and so begins their journey as creative partners... and, well – as partners in every sense of the word.
the way this was the PERFECT opportunity to parallel the basement scene in s2 with Mike grabbing Will’s hand to calm him down and Will coming out to him by telling him about the visions Vecna had shown him and finally opening up about his feelings