Chapter Text
Month Ten, 1987
“Signals”
Will should have been focusing on Dustin and Robin explaining the projected map in the basement of the Squawk, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Mike.
Not because Mike’s new haircut brought out his sharp cheekbones and stupid doe eyes—and certainly not because their conversation in the hallway last week had caused palpable tension between them. Seven days had felt more like decades since the last time Mike pulled him into his bed, instead of sleeping with their backs turned to each other across the gap in their mattresses.
Will didn’t think of that now. He just couldn’t stand the way Mike bounced his leg or drummed his fingers along his knees. Each tap felt like the chime of an ominous clock.
“Byers, Wheeler—Eyes up here.” Robin clapped, pulling Will from his thoughts.
He scanned the board to catch up.
Dustin had scribbled numbers, circles, and a triangle between his Cerebro on Weathertop Hill, the radio tower, and the Squawk.
“You got the plan?” Dustin asked, tapping the board with his retractable pointer.
“Um.” Will tried to make sense of the map. He was usually attentive and eager to participate in crawls, but his brain felt like a jammed filing cabinet whose papers were scrunched and strewn from all his vacillating over Mike. “It’s a scalene triangle.” He snapped a hand and pointed to Dustin.
Dustin was not amused. Then again, nothing amused him anymore.
“Astute, oh Wise One,” Dustin deadpanned. “What does the said scalene mean?”
Were people looking at him? Did they think he was controlled by Vecna right now?
Mike suddenly cut in. “We’re splitting up between Vertex A and B, and C to reinforce communication with Hopper from the in-center. Since there was, uh… Since there was suspicious activity there.”
“Correct-amudo!” Robin said.
Bashful relief tinted Will’s cheeks.
A timely Paladin Mike was.
He caught Mike’s eye, instead of simply feeling it on his neck for the first time that day, and Mike looked equally rouged. He played it off with a nod of his head and quickly returned his attention to the others.
Nothing made sense between them anymore, but nothing had made sense for a while now. Will hated that he was too passive to do anything about it.
Dustin would join him and Mike at Cerebro. Robin grabbed Steve for the radio tower. Jonathan and Murray would take the Squawk van, while Lucas, Jonathan, and Erica would help get Hopper through the MAC-Z portal. El and Joyce would stick behind at the Squawk to track him.
Will wasn’t sure he was in the mood to spend more time than necessary with Mike tonight—a complete and total first—and dropped his head into his hands with a sigh. Their game of hot-and-cold was exhausting.
Everyone began to shuffle into action, but Will needed a second to raise his spirits.
Mike didn’t move from his seat either, and Will felt his eyes boring through him.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Lucas asked lightly. “You’re acting weird.”
“Nothing! Nothing’s wrong with us,” Mike said, voice a bit too high to be believable. He slapped his hands against his thighs and rose quickly. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
Lucas clapped a hand around Will’s to pull him up and shot him a sympathetic look. He always paid close attention to Will's well-being, and it filled him with fondness for his friend.
“We’re fine. Seriously," Will replied quietly. Lucas acquiesced hesitantly, patting him on the shoulder before joining the others.
Will and Mike were the last two standing in the basement.
No matter how confused or frustrated Mike was making him as of late, Will’s chest tingled pleasantly at the way he looked at him now.
“We’re fine?” Mike repeated softly.
“We can be.” Will shrugged. “What do you want?”
Mike’s face wavered with something that opened a pit in Will’s stomach.
“I want—” He said, a bit breathless. “I want things to feel normal.”
Will didn’t believe in “normal” anymore. Normal was a subjective, illusive notion designed to uphold conformity or a status quo. The two of them had crossed those lines a long time ago.
But for the sake of the inner turmoil crashing like waves in Mike’s eyes, Will sighed and agreed.
“We can be normal.”
The storm in Mike cleared, and he smiled brightly, stepping forward to throw his arms around Will.
“You’re the only one who gets me,” he mumbled into Will’s neck. It tickled and drove Will insane with desire.
What was it Mike wanted… for things to feel normal or go back to normal? Was there a difference?
His answer came when Mike’s gaze flickered down to his lips.
Kissing Mike felt like the most normal thing in the world, if normal meant easy.
It was thinking too hard or talking about what they were doing that created an air of tension and the past week of awkwardness. If Mike wanted things to feel normal, Will could simply just stop trying to talk about it and keep kissing him.
This was a waste of time.
Will practically pushed Mike up the stairs, and they hurried off to grab their bikes and start the crawl with the others.
Guilt pierced Will like the cold air hitting his face as he cycled towards Weathertop Hill.
He knew in his bones that establishing a true “normal” meant defining their ambiguity. It meant asking Mike to choose between him and conformity, no matter his feelings.
And Will was tired of convincing himself that Mike struggling to understand his feelings meant that he had none.
He cared too much about Mike to selfishly cling to what he could have of him. It wasn’t fair to either of them.
He couldn’t return to Mike’s room tonight without talking to him first.
***
From the top of the hill, Hawkins appeared smaller. It had nothing to do with the city limits. Rather, Hawkins cowered under the looming military helicopter beams, the overwhelming tanks patrolling the streets, and the metal bandaid that held the earth together. The town’s stones, bricks, and fields were no less victims than Will, El, Max, Bob, Barb, or any of its residents.
Dustin approached Will at the summit, bumping his shoulder. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Where did he begin? The first day he wandered through the Upside Down at eleven, tripping over a vine in Mike’s hand-me-down sneakers from the year before. Or right now, more anxious about talking to the boy finicking with the Cerebro signal than the apocalyptic skyline before them.
“I just… I hope things will work out in the end.” Will said.
Dustin hummed.
The sort of things each of them thought about went unspoken. Mutual confirmation bias.
“I don’t trust hope anymore,” he replied. “I trust myself.”
Will hadn’t trusted himself since the day Vecna first touched him. But Dustin was right — Will’s roadmaps were in no hands but his own. No one could choose a route for him, not even Mike.
“Hey! I got them!” Mike piped up from the radio controls. “This is Vertex A—live and ready. Over.”
The radio buzzed, and Dustin and Will sped over to join.
A failed crawl meant everything went smoothly.
Hopper entered the portal.
The van followed him.
The “suspicious activity” turned out to be nothing but a nest of Demobats. Dustin ripped grass out of the ground and cursed.
El couldn’t find Henry.
Neither could Hopper.
“This is bullshit!” Mike declared, sitting cross-legged. “I don’t understand why he’s hiding!”
He’s building, Will thought. The static of the radio hissed.
A chill pinched the back of Will’s neck. His hand flew up to catch it.
“Will? Are you okay?” Mike snapped his full focus to him, wide-eyed. “Was it him? Was it Vecna?”
“I’m fine. It was nothing,” Will replied, nausea swirling in his gut. He quickly dropped his hand as if to hide it.
“That was kinda freaky, man,” Dustin said hesitantly. “It didn’t look like nothing.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Mike said.
Will felt glued to the spot by the residual tingles running down his spine.
“You guys go. I’ll catch up.”
“What? No!” Mike protested. “I’m not leaving you alone here. Are you crazy?”
Will sure felt crazy. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel like turning out his dinner.
“Dustin, you go update the others. I’ll stay here with Will.”
Will’s eyebrows shot up. He had planned to talk to Mike tonight… but he meant to set the moment up of his own volition — not that anything that ever happened in his life had been a choice.
“You sure?” Dustin asked, more to Will than Mike.
There was never a good time to throw a grenade. Might as well just get the explosion over with.
“Yeah,” Will answered.
Dustin looked between them oddly. “Ooookay,” he drawled. “See you guys tomorrow.”
When Dustin was out of sight, Will broke.
“Do you ever feel like… Like something is wrong with you?”
“What?” Mike asked, nonplussed.
“You know, like you don’t fit in.”
Mike shifted on the grass. “When have any of us ever ‘fit in?’”
Will rolled his eyes. “No, Mike. Not fit in at school. I mean, like, you don’t even fit in with our friends. Like, no matter how hard you try to do what everyone else is doing… You’re still different.”
Mike opened his mouth and closed it with a frown as if the retort had died on his tongue. The only sound on the hilltop was the distant whistling of the wind in the trees.
Will wanted to break the silence, but he anxiously picked at the grass in front of him instead. Mike kept his gaze fixed down at Will’s fidgeting hands.
Eventually, he quietly answered, “Yeah.”
Yeah. Will thought so.
If Mike’s “normal” meant like everybody else, they’d been kidding themselves for a long time now.
“So what are we doing?” Will sighed. “I don’t think either of us is your version of normal, and I’m sick of pretending we can twist it to be.”
Mike flinched at Will’s words. Normal. There wasn't a word Will hated more.
“I am normal. I—I like girls!” Mike retorted.
Will scoffed and threw his arms out. “Then why did you freak out during Stacey’s presentation, or—or put your hand on my knee?” His voice cracked. “Why did you kiss me at all that first night? Why do you keep kissing me now? It’s not right, Mike. It’s not.”
It’s not right. Will wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or what they were doing anymore. He wasn’t sure there was a difference. Not when journalists, the proponents of truth, called him an abomination no less than the Church. Not when their own president had called people like him "sick unfortunates."
Not when the only person he wondered if he could divulge these fears to kissed him with obliviousness, like if he thought too hard, he’d realize the rest of the world was right.
“I—”
“I can’t live in this limbo anymore!” Will cried.
Mike’s eyes pooled with fear and splashed with confusion. “You’re my best friend, Will.”
“Well, I don’t feel like your best friend,” he mumbled.
“What? Why?” Mike's confusion sounded earnest.
Whatever inner, self-loathing voice Will worked hard to fight off seemed to permeate the very tissue of Mike’s being.
Will felt like he was talking to a self-restrained dam holding back a waterfall of understanding. If Mike refused to understand himself, he couldn’t begin to understand Will.
It didn’t mean Will wouldn’t try. Stubbornness was in his blood.
“Because best friends don’t make out in the locker room, Mike!” He shouted, rising from the ground. “Best friends don’t sleep together! They don’t… They don’t do what we’re doing.”
Mike stared up at him with an unreadable expression that drove Will mad.
“If you really think they do,” Will’s voice grew deep with resignation, “go kiss Lucas or Dustin. Or better yet, get back together with El.” He turned on his heel without sparing a final glance at Mike. He was done.
“That’s different!” Mike shouted after him, scrambling up from the ground to run after Will and turn him around by the shoulder. Will hated that even now, Mike’s touch sparked electricity.
“That’s completely different! Those are my friends — they’re not like you,” he implored.
Like you. Was Mike trying to rub salt in the wound?
“Like me? What, they’re not fags?” The word Will had been taunted with his entire life slipped out before he could stop it.
Mike paled and dropped his hand like he’d been caught.
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Will replied, his eyes stinging with the tears swimming through his head.
He stormed off.
“Will, wait!” Mike ran after him again. Will would laugh if he weren’t crying.
“No, you wait!” He prodded Mike in the chest with the tips of his outstretched hand. “I can’t sit here while you figure yourself out or use me to put together the pieces. I want this so bad it’s killing me, Mike. But I can’t will this to mean something if you don’t want it to. I’m done. I really am.”
Mike’s face faltered. For a split second, Will dared to hope his words had broken the dam.
“You can’t walk alone, Will—Vecna!”
If that was all Mike had to say, there was nothing left for him here.
Will stormed off to grab his bike and speed off before Mike could follow. He’d return to his old mattress in the basement with Jonathan, and maybe never come back up.
Will knew people like him didn’t get happy endings. He’d just been foolish enough to trust hope and beg it not to let him break his own heart.