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Will doesn’t like what he feels whenever he looks at Mike.
It’s sort of like the way he felt when he was still trapped over there, where everything was terrible and wrong and nothing could fix it. Like the vines that curled into his skin and the monster that raged in his stomach, all swirling around and pricking his insides.
It’s not normal; what he feels. Will’s gotten used to not feeling normal, and never really ever did in the first place. Even when he was just Will Byers and hadn’t even become that-boy-who-died, Will knew he hadn’t fit in the way other kids did.
They still remind him every day what an outcast he is; he wants to yell at them, shout I know and I’m fine with that, but he really, really isn’t.
He has his mom. His brother, his friends, the memory of power and instability and every rotten thing to ever walk this earth all roam inside his brain, coalescing into one front that feels too fake to not be real.
At least-
That was before The Thing.
It started with a simple touch. A word, a turn of phrase. The sound of laughter, the sound of silence; everything and anything in between. Will supposes that maybe this is the payment he has to take for what he’s caused in this town.
Like that’ll help, Will will sometimes try not to think, but then he glances over at his mom and the feelings sway to the side of hopeful.
Will is awfully good at hiding. It’s one of the only habits he picked up that he considers useful, unlike the cowering or the checking behind his shoulder every few minutes that he can’t seem to shake off. There’s nothing that he can’t hide from, not even monsters.
But along the way, he learned that facing the monster could end worse than hiding, so he’s taken to doing the latter. Will thinks that he’s so good, in fact, that it’s kind of surprising when Jonathan starts looking at him funny.
Will looks at himself in the mirror every single day, turning over his image and poking and prodding at flesh and bones he hopes are still his, but still can’t seem to find what Jonathan sees. Maybe his brother sees someone struggling; sees a kid who’s lost his way so many times he can’t even recall the feeling of walking down the right path.
Sometimes, Jonathan seems to see Will. Well, see him. See what kind of sick, hazy feelings are turning rotten right beneath his skin, see the uncertainty in his eyes and the questionable line of his gaze, the slight shake of his hands or the tremble of his lower lip-
Will loves his brother, dearly, but there are some things he wishes he could keep for himself, just once. To discover something new that didn’t come from Jonathan is an idea he had always curiously pondered over but never really fulfilled.
(Now, he watches Jonathan tangle with Nancy and thinks maybe, just maybe, he’s found something new.)
New doesn’t mean exciting. In fact, Will would go as far to say that he hated new things. Change was difficult, and alarming.
Change was the blush on his cheeks or the rush in his pulse when he felt that awkward, crazy sense of rightness that came with watching calloused hands or small lips or flat chests. Will’s just gross like that. And he doesn’t know if there’s anything particularly wrong about the way he feels; knows his mother loves him and appreciates him every moment she sees him healthy and utterly happy.
Jonathan’s the person he doesn’t want to disappoint, though, so he just-
He just-
Will’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it does, it’s a sunny afternoon and Jonathan’s seeing Steve and Nancy out the door to their home. Everything just seems so normal and mundane that it’s almost as if that’s the only time things can go wrong.
“Is everything okay?” Jonathan asks him, and there’s a line on his mouth that Will wants to wipe away. His brother doesn’t need to be worried on his behalf, or anything. “You know you can talk to me, right?”
“Yeah,” Will replies, because he does. Knows that whatever this thing is, he can spill it all to Jonathan like a tipped glass, filled to the brim with anxiety and a host of other messy emotions. “Is-”
Will looks away from Jonathan’s imploring eyes. He doesn’t really want to look at him when he asks this.
“You know how you and Nancy, just- you just work?” Will starts again. “What if I… would there be anything wrong if I didn’t want that?”
There’s a brief pause where he can’t hear Jonathan breathe, and then he says, “Like how?”
And here comes the hard part.
“What if I wanted it to work, just not with, um, Nancy?” And because that sounds weird, he adds on, “With, uh, girls in general. Like, at all.”
The silence after this stretches on so long that Will has to grip the soft fabric of their couch, trying not to let his insides turn dark and cold. Just when he thinks that Jonathan might really be disappointed, he turns to Jonathan.
Jonathan’s eyes are deep and oddly relaxed. The flecks of gold seem to look down onto Will with a sort of fondness his brother is known for, and it eases Will. Calms him right on down, just like it does every other time, without fail.
Then, Jonathan is hugging him, pulling Will close to his body and heart and he can hear his brother’s pulse racing, but it doesn’t feel like fear. More like affection, than anything else.
“Jonathan?” Will asks. His words are muffled by Jonathan’s shirt, vibrations echoing through his brother’s skin.
“There’s never anything wrong with you, Will. Okay? God,” Jonathan says, but he sounds choked up and intense. “Don’t ever think there’s anything wrong with feeling what you do, Will, because if you want to love someone, no one can ever take that from you.”
Will laughs, and now he’s crying, just a little bit, because he’s come back from so much and prevailed, even if it didn’t feel like it. When his laughs turn into slow sobs, Jonathan just holds him like the child he is, and he doesn’t even regret getting snot and tears all over his brother’s shirt.
(Jonathan takes him to Steve’s the next day, on a Sunday when the rains have rolled in and everything feels stupidly wet. He couldn’t have called ahead, because Steve’s face is surprised and damp from what was probably a shower, and Will hides behind Jonathan because this is such a big house and from all the times he’s interacted with Steve, he doesn’t really know him. Will wonders why they’re here.)
(He stops, though, when Max’s brother comes around the corner in nothing but some loose, drawstring pants, and the air between him and Steve is so familiar to his own one-sided feelings it hurts.)