Chapter Text
To Mom,
This is the second hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to write. I don’t know why I’m so scared to say it, I know you won’t judge me or anything, but it’s scary and I don’t want to upset you . I am gay. I’ve known for a while, but I couldn’t stand the thought of ever actually admitting it. After everything, I just wanted to bury it deep down with all the other shit and pretend I was straight. It’s not an easy thing to accept and I hope you can understand why it took so long for me to tell you.
It’s not just that, everything has been getting to me recently. My friends don’t know yet. I don’t want them to hate me . It’s not something I’m ready for them to ever know yet, but I’m working up to it. And I don’t want anyone else to know. Only Jonathan knows right now because I spend loads of time with them and they figured it out because of how fucking obvious it is, apparently, when I talk about/to Mike . I know it’s stupid to not tell them, but it’s terrifying.
This just isn’t something I know how to say, which is why I had to write it out. I wanted to be able to sit wth you and tell you in person, but the thought made me feel so fucking ill, so I decided this was just as good. I hope you aren’t mad.
This is genuinely the second hardest letter I’ve ever wrote in my life. I don’t know what I’m doing and I really need your help because it feels like nothing is going right. It is all falling apart. I don’t even know how to talk to my dumbass friends anymore. I know I’m the one pulling away and I don’t want to upset them, so I’d really appreciate some advice on how to not do that.
I’m sorry I’m such a mistake and a fuck up, I’m trying to get better, I promise. I don’t want to be a burden in your life. I do think you should have just left me, it would have been easier for everyone. Mainly me, but it would have been easier. Don’t worry about me, I am fine, but I need help. There’s something wrong and I can’t fucking tell you because I’m so fucking scared, mom.
I’m sorry and I love you.
Will.
Will has written this letter eight times already and there are still a million things wrong with it. He’s written it, corrected his grammar, his wording, and the tone eight times. He’s tried to stop his hand from shaking eight times. He’s almost cried eight fucking times. Why isn’t it working? It’s such a simple thing to say, and yet the idea of ever sitting there and admitting the words ‘I am gay’ make his entire body want to crawl out of his skin and run away.
It’s such a stupid thing. All he wants is to tell his mom before Christmas, and he just can’t. It isn’t working at all and it makes him want to scream. Will groans and puts his head in his hands, writing was never his strong suit, that’s always been Mike’s and Dustin’s area of expertise. Maybe he could paint something. Paint himself a pride flag and see how long it takes for his family to clock on.
He’s being stupid at this point. Jonathan has been out for years. They came out when Will was five and Joyce was never once against it, so it’s not even like Will has to be scared about her not accepting him. He isn’t ready. He just isn’t ready, no matter how much he wants to be.
His phone buzzes on his bed but he makes no attempt to try and reach it. Whoever it is can wait. It buzzes again. Then again. Will rolls his eyes. If it’s El or Jonathan, they can come and get him. If it’s a friend, they can piss off and wait for him to answer. If it’s his mom, she’ll call any second now.
When it buzzes again, Will feels like ripping his hair out. He’s got to stop leaving it off silent, he hates the noise of it. It’s only on because his mom’s working some late shifts in a store again and she might need to call him, even though she would definitely call Jonathan and El first thanks to Will’s inability to answer a call or message.
His mouth tastes like plastic which means he should probably stop chewing on the pen, but he can’t help it. This isn’t the worst letter he’s written in his life. He wrote suicide ones all the time when he was younger - there’s still probably one in the ruins of Castle Byers - so this shouldn’t be an issue. But it is. How is admitting he’s wanted to die since he was a literal infant easier than admitting his sexuality?
Who even knows.
It’s such a ridiculous thing to him. Everything is ridiculous. There’s not even enough energy left in him from the day to be upset about it. It’s only nine and he wants to go to bed, but he can’t because his t-shirt - it belongs to Mike and he’s had it for years - smells like his best friend still. It’s such a stupid thing, but it makes Will feel warm all over. He loves it even if it’s keeping him up.
Will’s eyes are heavy and he can barely keep his head up for more than a few seconds, but he refuses to move. Everything hurts and he doesn’t know if it’s just his body's way of telling him to sleep or not. It might be, but he’d probably always be in pain then with how he’s usually lucky to get more than four hours of sleep each night.
There’s a knock on the door that makes Will jump out of his skin and suddenly wake up. He’s rubbing his eyes when El comes in with a jar and stares at him for a few seconds. He blinks a few times before staring back, stifling a yawn and spinning his chair to face her.
“What’re you doing?” she asks, stretching without moving from the door frame to try and look at the paper on his desk.
Will clears his throat and grabs the letter, scrunching it up in his hand before tossing it backwards in the general direction of the trash bag he keeps in his room, since trash cans get full so quickly. It’s not like he was going to use that, and if he changes his mind, he can fish it out of the pile because nothing ever ends up in the bag. “Nothing. What do you want?”
She holds out the jar of peanut butter. “Open it for me.”
There’s a beat as Will stares at her. Why the hell is she eating this time of the night? When he doesn't reach the jar, El rolls her eyes and walks over to him, shoving it in his face until it’s basically all his eyes can focus on without hurting. He sighs and rubs his eyes with his fists before taking it. She can see that he’s tired, right?
“Why do you have Mike’s shirt?”
Will looks down like he’s unaware of what he’s wearing and shrugs. “Because I stole it from him at a sleepover? I don’t know? Don’t you have, like, five shirts from him too?”
She rolls her eyes and gestures the jar closer to him until it’s pressed against his nose, completely avoiding the question because he already knows the answer. He takes it and it takes literally no effort to open, she was literally being lazy.
“Why’d you make me do that? You’re stronger than me. That took nothing. It’s harder to sharpen a fucking pencil than to open that, dick.”
“Didn’t feel like doing anything,” she spits back, snatching the jar back and scooping some out with her fingers, which makes Will gag because they all eat out of that.
“Use a spoon!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she replies, slamming his bedroom door after her.
He sighs and slumps back in the car, listening to the muffled telling off she gets from Jonathan in return. It isn’t late, sure, but it’s also not normal for Jonathan and El to be out of their rooms this late in the evening, and Joyce won’t approve making herself a meal at this time in the night. And no, Will doesn’t hate El, she’s just such a bitch sometimes and he does not get enough sleep to deal with her.
Will spins back around in the car to the pile and scans his eyes across it for the recently balled up paper. It doesn’t take him long to find, and the crumpled appearance after he lays it back down really just adds to the whole ‘I am not okay’ feeling. It’s covered in scribbles, which have concerning comments under them; there’s a tear from where he pressed the pen too hard; he put it in paint by accident; it’s been literally crumpled into a small-ass ball. Yeah, that’s not going to concern his mom if he uses it, is it?
Writing anything is just not his thing.
He gives in and collapses onto his bed, not bothering to turn the lamp off and searches for his phone.no messages from his family, it’s just Dustin seeing how he is since he rarely talks in the group chat anymore. Will doesn’t know how to respond, so he reads the message then slams his phone onto the bedside cabinet, not bothering to plug it in.
If it dies, it dies and he can’t do much to help that… unless he charges it, but that means searching through the clothing scattered over his floor to find the charger, and he does not have enough energy to currently be doing that.
Yes, he knows he should not leave the letter on his desk if he doesn’t want someone finding it in the morning while trying to wake him, but exhaustion gets the better of him before he can move and get it. His limbs feel like stone. His head is pounding and all that solves it is closing his eyes and relaxing his body.
There’s a long stretch of time of Will laying on the bed with his eyes closed, his hands behind his head as his headache starts to settle down. Nothing feels real during that time to Will, the only things that exist are him, the bed, and his thoughts. Not even the noise El is making in the kitchen or Jonathan telling her off for it.
He really hates California. He wants to be back in Hawkins with his friends, even if they don’t like him. The weather out here might be better, and he might not feel like dying as much now, but he misses them all. It’s better to be around people who don’t like him than to be alone. That’s what he decided the second he stepped into his new school and realised he was not going to make any friends with those bastards.
There’s no way he’s going to fall asleep, so he grabs his phone and groans as the light from it almost blinds him. It takes a few blinks before he manages to adapt to it again and go searching through the chat. His friends are talking about Lucas’ upcoming basketball game, which only Lucas really seems excited for, so Will makes sure they all know that he’s alive and that he’s happy Lucas is expanding his social life past their friends.
He does not get a good response to that. To Lucas being in the right, at least. They’re all happy to see him talking again because he usually ghosts, but they do not like the idea that Lucas should be ‘abandoning them’ and it makes Will feel sick. Of course they can get mad at him for it, but it makes Will hate them all. They all completely ignored him when he wanted to hang out with them, showing that he never really mattered.
Nope, don’t go back down that rabbit hole . It didn’t end well for him last time and he’s now in counselling, which he has to admit is helping, so he shouldn’t think about that too much. There was a lot going on at that time, they do not hate him, he just… didn’t have any other explanation for what was going on.
Will sighs and rubs his eyes, dropping his phone on his chest. He can’t keep doing this to himself. He’s basically falling apart and it’s going to be the death of him one day. Maybe not just yet, but he can’t see himself lasting a hell of a lot longer in this kind of state. He really does not enjoy being in California. There isn’t a single good thing he has gained from his experience here yet.
Well, there’s a few more cute guys and it doesn’t matter if you do something embarrassing because there’s a much smaller chance of you running into the witnesses again. There’s actual education on the LGBTQ+ community that’d never happen in Hawkins because no one wants to get into trouble. El seems to be enjoying herself and, when she isn’t getting bullied, does seem to enjoy school. Jonathan has a friend and is having fun, even if it’s while high. And his mom, she’s doing a lot better now, or Will thinks she is.
So maybe it’s just him. Maybe he is incapable of making friends and having any type of fun in his life. Yeah, definitely him and his issues. Something he should, you know, tell his counsellor. But he won’t, it’ll be another one of those many things he buries deep down until it erupts out of him and concerns the hell out of his family.
William, stop ignoring us , Max sends, along with the ugliest picture he’s ever seen of Lucas, which makes Lucas kick off. Will doesn’t respond, of course. He can’t be bothered. Will, I can see you reading this, answer me.
Will sighs and switches his phone off again. Pulling away from his friends isn’t a good thing, he knows, but he doesn’t… want to talk to them as much. It feels like a fake copy of the people he used to know, and it stresses him out. The thought of them all laughing at him behind his back, having their own private chats just to make fun of him. He hates it. The fact he does ignore them so often is probably more of a reason for them to do such things, but that rarely occurs to him.
There’s no point in thinking about it all and he knows that, which is why, once again, he slams his phone on the side, reaches over to switch off his lamp, and gets underneath the sheets. If his mind is only going to torture him tonight, he may as well try and get more than a few hours of sleep.
It doesn’t last long before his phone buzzes itself off of the nightstand, then after a few minutes, buzzes once more. Will wants to scream. Can’t people just leave him alone? The answer is obviously no if people keep trying to talk to him.
It takes another minute of convincing himself to move before he’s gotten the phone off of the floor and is squinting to adjust to the brightness once again. And it’s Mike of all people trying to call him. Will has no idea why, it’s not like they’ve spoken a lot. Or at all. Maybe one or two messages to see how each other are.
So what the hell does Mike want in the middle of the night?
Okay, this is serious, and I’m really, really sorry. That is not a good start to a message, Will knows that much. I know I promised to never join another Party because it seemed impossible, and I know you said you wouldn’t either. Will can already see where this is going, so he turns off his phone before he can read anything else.
He spent years with Mike. Years of his life being Mike’s best friend. He trusted Mike to actually be a good friend, despite treating him like shit for months, only to be betrayed. It’s his own fault, really, Will knows that much. Part of him knows he should have never put any trust in his friends, they didn’t care about him then and they don’t care about him now.
The second the opportunity arises, they join a brand-new party and don’t even bother telling him for months . Here he is, actually looking forward to seeing his friend over spring break even if they aren't talking, only to be told Mike went behind his back after all that .
Yeah, great friends you have there, Will . He rubs his face and huffs, not even bothering to find his phone in the bedding before pulling it over his face and praying that he falls asleep already. There’s no part of him that wants anything to do with Mike ever again, and he knows that if he could, he’d probably be crying right now.
They lost another campaign. Mike doesn’t care, of course, it was one of the best ones they had this year and he loved every second of it. The others seem to have similar reactions to it, all celebrating despite their disastrous failure. It doesn’t even matter when Mike sees how happy everyone is, they’re just happy that his friends are so happy again. It feels like a long time since they saw them all smiling so much.
Nancy won’t be there for another half an hour thanks to her forgetting she agreed to pick her younger brother up, which means that Eddie has offered to wait around with Mike, even after everyone else is gone. They don’t refuse, curious to know what’s going to happen in the next game, even if they know Eddie won’t tell. He would never tell… unless you offer him twenty bucks.
Of course it doesn’t end up working and now Mike is twenty bucks short, stuck standing outside in the cold with a laughing idiot, who is stuck in high school at twenty-years-old and plays games with minors. That alone gets Eddie to stop laughing, but it doesn’t get them the money back. Mike knew it wouldn't anyway.
“So then, Wheeler,” Eddie hums, pressing his back into the pillar behind him. Mike cocks his head to the side, staring at Eddie for him to continue. “I’ve heard about this ‘Will the Wise’ enough times to pique my interest… I’ll give the money back if you tell me who he is.” To emphasise it, Eddie waves the note around in Mike’s face.
“He was a friend… moved to California after the mall fire. Uh, he is - was, we, uh, don’t talk much anymore, he was my best friend.” Mike cringes, he hates that they don’t reach out to him anymore. They should probably do that a bit more, El’s mentioned how much Will seems to be struggling, how reserved he’s become. “Uh, he loved DnD… he was our cleric - Will the Wise. And probably the best dungeon master…”
His words falter and his eyes skip up to Eddie’s. They’re being watched by the man in front of them and it’s terrifying. It’s like Eddie can read his mind and knows what they’re currently thinking, which is not at all a nice feeling.
“No, no, go on,” Eddie says encouragingly, shooting up and stepping forwards dramatically. “Please, go on about him, he sounds interesting. It’s a shame he left, isn’t it?”
Mike nods. It is, Will would have loved Hellfire. “Yeah, uh, he - he tried to get us to play with him before he left and-” and they all refused. That does not sit well with him now. Especially not his promise to never join another party. “We - I promised to not join another party and… and he promised the same. But he’s really cool and I bet he did anyway. I wouldn’t - wouldn’t be mad at him either-”
Eddie sighs. “You’re telling yourself this because you are a bad friend, right?” Mike swallows and nods. “So you had this great kid, a better dungeon master than me, apparently, who wanted to play DnD with you. Loved it, according to Dustin… And you refused because?” He waves his hands for Mike to fill in the blanks.
“Be - because, uh, I - I was - wanted to spend more time with my girlfriend-”
“Ah! There it is!” Eddie exclaims. He claps his hands on their shoulders, making Mike jump out of his skin. “The girlfriend. A treacherous obstacle in all friendships! Honestly, you let yourself get distracted by a girl, refused to play, then joined a club specifically for DnD?”
“Yeah…”
“Yeah.” Eddie pushes away from Mike with enough force to send them to the floor, but they use the wall behind himself to prevent that from happening. Eddie spins back around and points an accusatory finger at Mike. “I should kick you out. For what you did. And force you to apologise to this… Will? Will. You should-”
“He literally - he doesn’t answer anyone’s messages anymore. Like, I don’t think he likes us.”
“I wonder why,” Eddie muses. “Sinclair told me that you and he… well, you were complete dicks towards this cleric while he was trying to do a campaign, right?” Another weak nod. “And all because he was being… over the top? Too dramatic?” He hums in agreement. “Just like I do?”
“Yeah.” They hate everything about himself. It’s official. There is nothing Mike likes about himself anymore. They were officially the worst person on earth. There’s not even a reasonable explanation to why they did it, not unless Will counts Eddie being charismatic as a very good reason for Mike to join the club in a matter of minutes. And he seriously doubts Will would count that. “It’s so shitty. I know - I - how the hell do I fix that?”
Eddie shrugs. “I’d have no idea, Wheeler. Friends aren't my strong suit… Does he know about Hellfire?”
“No,” they mumble.
“Then leave while the opportunity presents itself, otherwise you may dig yourself a hole you are unable to escape from.” Eddie pulls out a cigarette box. Mike stares at his hands for a few seconds. It isn’t meant to be weird, but it definitely falls into the category when Eddie says, “don't worry, your sister is here, I’m not offering you one.”
To be completely honest, Mike would appreciate one right now to calm himself down. Fuck all the side affects of it, he’d happily take one, but he knows Eddie does not sell anything to anyone under the age of seveteen. No matter what it is, he will not do business with an under-seventeen-year-old.
“But seriously, you are a dick.”
“I know… He gave away his game and everything because he - he said he wouldn’t want to join another party. Ever.”
Eddie grimaces and pats Mike on the shoulder with a cigarette hanging in between his teeth. Yes, Mike is staring. No, he does not care. He can admire how cool a person looks and have it not be weird. That’s all he’s doing. That’s also a good excuse, right? He joins Hellfire because Eddie is so fucking cool and Mike loves how he looks.
It is a bit weird in the sense he might have changed a few of their clothing choices to look like Eddie, but they really want to look like him. They’ve tried to grow their hair out and all, but their mom doesn’t really approve of that choice, which ended with them agreeing he could have a mullet as a compromise.
It’s disappointing when Nancy finally pulls up and presses down on the horn, indicating that she’ll murder Mike if they aren’t in the car in the next few seconds. So Mike tears his eyes away from Eddie’s lips and trudges over to the car. He waves at Eddie, who gives a two-finger salute in return before lighting his cigarette.
“What’s up with you?” she asks as soon as he’s in the car.
They don’t respond, slumping into the seat and staring out of the window all the way home, debating whether or not to tell Will, to leave Hellfire, or to hope Will never finds out. Not one of those solutions sound appealing. Maybe he can drop it in the group, hope that Will sees, then message him privately about it.
But that could end… whatever they have left. It sure can’t be considered friendship, they haven’t talked since September and Will wished him luck in high school along with the guys. Since then, he’s taken to talking to Dustin more than anyone.
Mike hates himself for it, of course they do. He’s a prick for how they handled all of this and now has until spring break, when they’re going to see the Byers, to sort all of their shit out and hope that Will isn’t that mad at them. Three and a bit months. Yeah, Mike has no chance of sorting all of this out in that amount of time.
It was really just a bad idea to have let Mike agree to join Hellfire in the first place. Dustin and Lucas should have stopped them as they were agreeing to it, but no, they had to be all excited over it as well. God, Mike is mad at them for no reason as well now. Of course he is, he just has to blame everyone else for their own doing.
“Okay… Did someone… say something?” Nancy asks.
Mike swallows and looks at her before saying, “I’m a really shit friend.”
Their sister glances at them a few times and sighs, not actually responding. It makes Mike wonder if everyone else knows already and he’s just stupid, unaware of how badly they’ve treated the one person they care about the most. “What did you do?” she asks after a stretch of him staring at her.
“I promised Will I wouldn’t join another party.”
“You-” Nancy sighs and props her head up with her hand, leaning against the car door. It feels like they’re about to get into trouble for failing another maths test or something along those lines, but he deserves worse for what he’s done. “You just… Okay, well, does Will know?”
“No,” they mumble.
“Are you going to tell him, or are you going to stress about it for the next four months until you see him again and fucking crack under the pressure? Because, and this is with all the care in the world, I will not be comforting you. It’s your own fault either way.”
“I - how the fuck am I meant to tell him. ‘Hey, Will, I’m a backstabbing bastard, please don’t hate me?’”
Nancy shrugs and reaches over to squeeze his shoulder before glancing at him again. “You never know. It might just work.” Her voice is riddled with sarcasm and they want to slap her for it, but he won’t. She laughs and takes her hand away again. “I can’t really say anything else, Mike. I don’t want you to drop out just for your best friend who doesn’t even live here-”
“He’s barely even a friend anymore-”
“And that’s an issue for another day. But you are not going to drop out. I don’t want you to. Just - just tell him. Let him know, tell him he can be angry at you. Don’t - let him know it was a mistake, you were scared and lonely and Eddie was the first person who was nice to you.” he scoffs. “Seriously. You can’t - you can’t expect it all to sort itself out if you’re going to be a stubborn bitch over it.”
“Okay.”
They don’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. He doesn’t want any more of her advice, it isn’t helping at all. They feel even worse knowing that they are going to let the guilt sit until it gets too much and he cracks, just like she said he will. It’s not at all a good solution, but it’s definitely a solution.
They know how much Max would laugh in their face and call him fucking pathetic if she were still talking to them all and wasn’t avoiding them all unless over text. She would call him a mouth-breather. Tell him to get over it and tell Will. Well, maybe not, she and Will seemed to be closer than most of them… and there’s jealousy rising in his chest. They can’t be jealous over someone they aren’t even a good friend too.
It’s midnight by the time Mike comes to any type of decision, meaning he wasted four hours of their night staring at their phone and debating what to do. Nancy came by and tried to offer some more advice around ten, but he shut it down and told her to go away before she could even try and say anything. So they’re screwed if they sleep in in the morning, because she will not be waking him up.
This isn’t his best idea ever, and they’re fucked if their mom wakes up thanks to this, but he calls Will anyway and prays that he picks up.
He does not.
Mike stifles a groan. It’s shocking in the sense it’s only nine in the evening, and El has told them all about Will’s sleeping issues, so he shouldn’t be asleep. And Mike just saw him active in their group for the first time in over a week. It could be him ignoring Mike for the sake of ignoring them, they know that.
That doesn’t stop them from trying to message him. Okay, this is serious - a great start, a perfect way to scare someone off after barely talking - and I’m really, really sorry. That’s even worse, he’ll know something is up. I know I promised to never join another Party because it seemed impossible, and I know you said you wouldn’t either. Yeah, Will is going to hate him.
They swallow and push through it anyway. But I did. It’s called Hellfire and me, Dustin and Lucas joined on the first day of school. Dragging their friends into it is unfair, but they can’t get away with how they treated Will while Mike doesn’t. I am sorry, I didn’t mean to, but my mind completely blanked - Mike still doesn’t get why he seemed to forget everything the second Eddie introduced himself - when the dungeon master, his name is Eddie, came up to us and offered.
I don’t expect you to say anything. I know it’s such a shitty thing to tell you over text, but you didn’t answer my call. He groans outwardly and rubs his eyes. Hate me, never talk to me again, think whatever. I am sorry.
And he hits send without checking through it.
They watch as Will opens the message and reads it. And they wait. And wait. And wait. He waits for at least ten minutes.
He’s not answering you , rings through Mike’s head. Will isn’t ever going to answer Mike again after that. He’s fucked their friendship over for a final time, and it’s all his fault. God, if only they weren’t impulsive in the worst situations, maybe they would have thought about it before accepting the offer from Eddie and wouldn’t have had to think about how he’s betraying Will.
It could have been worse in the sense Will could have responded with something horrible, or called Mike back and screamed at him. He could still tell El how much of a dick they are, of course, but Mike really doubts he would do such a thing. They’re praying he doesn’t, at least, even if he one hundred percent deserves it.
And now they have to tell everyone they told Will about Hellfire. Great .
Will isn’t doing well. That’s pretty obvious to everyone now and he hates being treated so fragile again. Maybe he should have repressed it all… at least kids wouldn’t laugh at him for being such a cry baby, and he wouldn’t be such a burden to his family all the time. It had to be him, didn’t it? He had to be the complete screw up.
His worst time of the day is dinner because it gives his mom the perfect time to question all of them as much as she wishes and none of them can escape it. Luckily, today, El seems to be getting the brunt of it thanks to a bruise acquired by being tripped over. Will did tell Joyce, of course he did, and El refused to admit it was true until the injury started to show.
It’s also the worst due to the amount of ‘thinking time’ given to him. No matter whether he is or isn’t the one being questioned, he has way too much time to think about things and it is horrible. The opportunity to make everyone uncomfortable through admitting all of his feelings presents itself every single dinner time, and he always considers it. There’s not a day where he doesn’t, the idea almost feels too good to ignore.
Somehow Will manages to avoid being asked anything as El drags her thing on for ages, then Joyce goes to question Jonathan, and that takes forever thanks to their high state. Will has to say it is entertaining, watching his brother completely unaware of everything and stumbling over their words while trying to play off being sober. And somehow Joyce still hasn’t noticed what they do in their freetime.
It isn’t nice in the sense it ends with Will thinking about Mike’s message, which he did go back and read two days ago, the morning after Mike sent it. It led to him never talking to anyone outside of his family anymore. He knows El gives his friends updates about how he is, but he can’t bear to do it. Not now. Not after finding out that they did that after refusing to play DnD with him for almost nine months. An entire nine months just for them to join a DnD club.
It puts him off his dinner within seconds of starting to think about it, meaning Will barely eats, talks, or looks up from his plate. It’s right before Christmas and he is falling apart. Again. He’s starting to think that, for the past three years, he’s just been cursed when it comes to Christmas time as it seems to always be his worst time of the year.
He and El are in the middle of cleaning the dishes when their mom comes in and asks to talk to Will, and he freezes for a few seconds. Her tone is sweet, but she wants to talk to him alone. Did she find the letter? There’s a chance, she reacted the same after finding one of the many suicide letters he wrote, and that didn’t end well. At least she knows, though. He was so relieved that she found out instead of him having to directly tell her.
El looks at him and nods for him to follow, which he does, placing the cup down on the side and shuffling towards his mom’s room. As he does, his breathing starts to go sporadic as he gets closer, scared that she’s going to shove the letter into his hands and demand some kind of explanation.
But no, she’s folding clothing when he enters her room, closing the door behind himself. At most, she smiles at him and asks for some help. There’s something else, he can feel it, there’s something she wants to say and he doesn’t want to know what it is. It can’t be good. It can’t be good at all if she’s not straight-up confronting him.
“Are you okay?” she asks, not looking at him.
Will stops what he’s doing and looks at her in return, swallowing thickly and nodding. There’s no way he can convincingly say ‘yeah’ right now.
“Oh, well, El told me what happened with your friends.” She stops what she’s doing and places the shirt in her hands down, sitting on the bed and patting it for Will. He looks at her with soft eyes for a few seconds before sitting next to her, his hands in between his thighs. Of course El told her. “I can’t imagine that’s helping… whatever’s wrong.”
“No… it isn’t,” he mumbles.
Joyce sighs and places her hand on his thigh. “You know you can talk to me, right? I’m here for you, Will, and there isn’t a single thing you could think or feel that would make me care any less. I am here for you. You - I will do anything that can help you feel better, you know that. We got through - we’re getting through your feelings towards - towards death, we can get through anything life wants to throw at you.”
He nods again as tears start to swell in his eyes. The only way he’s going to be able to do this is by getting that letter and giving it to her. He doesn’t want to explain anything else right now because he’s convinced that coming out will make him feel completely fine again. Maybe it will, who even knows now, he sure doesn’t.
“Can - can I go get something?”
Her smile slips for a second as she says, “what? Of course, you don’t have to ask. This isn’t an interrogation, sweetheart.”
Everything in his body feels like it’s being ripped out as he basically runs to his room and starts searching. It’s buried under one of his shirts, he knows that much. The issue there is that he has absolutely no idea which one, and there are about twenty different shirts on his floor at the moment.
When he finds it, he’s on the verge of tears because his mom’s words are ringing through his head. If she can get through him being suicidal, she can get through him being gay. They - he doesn’t even consider them comparable issues, they are simply two stupid things he’s been forced through.
Joyce is waiting on her bed and smiles warmly when he reappears, and he breaks down into tears. He doesn’t even get past the door frame before he’s a blubbering mess and holding the letter out to her, and refusing to explain himself as she reads it.
He ends up sitting on the bed with his head in his hands as she goes over the letter at least four times. He’s read it a million times, he knows at most it takes two minutes to read, so she’s definitely re-reading it.
There would be silence between them if it weren’t for Will’s crying, his body shaking with each sob. It makes his chest ache and he wants her to hug him, but he won’t move until she’s ready to talk again. Maybe she is mad. Maybe this is the one thing she didn’t want to hear from him and she hates him now.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says. Will hears the paper being placed aside and Joyce wraps her arms around him, pulling him into a hug. “You don’t have to be sorry. You could have - you should have come to me earlier about what’s wrong… I wouldn’t judge you. And I’m happy you decided to tell me you’re gay, I can’t imagine how hard it is. And there is nothing wrong with it.” She gently grabs Will’s face and forces him to look at her, wiping tears away with her thumbs. His mom’s soft voice is making him shake more, but now the crying has gone silent and he can't do more than stare at her as she smiles at him. “Do you know what you need help with?”
Will shakes his head. All he knows is that he needs help. More help than he’s currently getting. And he was wrong about coming out, he barely feels any better. All there is now is that his mom knows he’s not getting better. No matter what he says or does, he is not getting better.
“Okay, that’s - hey, hey, it’s fine, Will. We don’t have to worry about the specifics right now, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers. He swallows. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. You did nothing wrong.”
“Everything about me is wrong.”
Joyce’s face twists in agony and she pulls him into a tighter hug, rubbing circles into his back. They stay like that for a while, while she repeats that there is nothing wrong with him, that life is cruel to some people but he is strong enough to get through. It hurts. Everything she says hurts because he can’t bring himself to believe it.
“Is there anything else that your friends have done… to make it worse?”
Will pulls away and sniffles. Not all of them, just Mike. Mike just had to be the one he’s in love with only to go and hurt him, but he doesn’t mention that. So he shakes his head and goes to wash his face when told to. His mom has decided that maybe a day out of school for him and out of work for her will be better, as in she is going to take him out for the day to try and help his mood. Will doesn’t say anything about it. He really needs a day to himself.
And he’s so fucking happy she’s understanding. All the worked up panic over coming out for it to not even be the main focus of the conversation. A side piece of information as they try and sort out the rest of everything wrong with him. God, he feels fucking pathetic.
The rest of his night is spent curled up on the couch as they watch movies together. El is sitting with them and Joanthan is out, again. None of them really talk throughout it, and Will is allowed to pick most of the movies after he starts to calm down, which doesn’t take as long as he expected.
After El drifts off to sleep around eleven, Joyce clicks her tongue and runs her hand through Will’s hair. “Do you feel any better?”
He shrugs.
“M’kay… want to watch another movie or should we carry El back to her room between us?” Joyce giggles.
“I - I think she’d hit me before I could even try,” Will mumbles. His mom rolls her eyes and kisses the top of his head before getting up to wake up El, who does not react well to being woken up so soon after falling asleep.
Will sits on the couch for a while longer, thinking. He still hates himself and it’s not like his struggling wasn’t obvious, but it feels like the weight from his shoulders has been removed. It feels… kind of refreshing and he is glad he told his mom. Now all he needs is for her to sort out the issues with his friends and his life will be perfect again. As if it was ever perfect.