Chapter Text
“Mike wrote about you,” El mentions, peeking her head out her bedroom door, late in the evening. And despite his best efforts to keep Mike out of his mind, Will’s heart skips a beat. “Asked how you are doing.”
“Oh,” he says, not able to think of anything else to say. “That’s—thanks for letting me know.”
El catches onto his sour mood, she’s been paying more attention to him lately. It’s not a bad thing, it’s actually really great, to have a friend here. A sister, even.
But he doesn’t know how long he’ll have her friendship, once she finds out he’s in love with her boyfriend.
El is his sister—socially, legally, but it’s a new development. She doesn’t have to love him unconditionally, the way his mom and Jonathan do. She didn’t grow up with him, she doesn’t really know him yet. She can still choose to turn her back on him.
It only takes another hour before El comes knocking on his door frame.
“Hi,” she says, her voice pulling him from his painting.
He sets down his brushes and palette, and slides the easel around before she can peek at it.
“Are you okay?” she asks, and she’s so genuine that it hurts.
“I’m fine,” he says, the complete opposite. Will keeps himself between her and the easel, though he knows she won’t invade his privacy like that.
El looks at him—almost looks through him—and knows he is not fine.
“Tell me what is wrong,” she offers, like a suggestion instead of a demand. She’s still as blunt as ever, with her straightforward words.
“It’s nothing important,” Will says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d tell you if it was.”
“But it’s bothering you.”
He shrugs. “I mean… kind of. Yeah.”
“Then it is important.”
“El, I can’t tell you,” he complains, though he’s close to giving in. He plops onto his bed, leaving space for her to follow suit. “There are just some things I can’t talk to you about.”
She picks at the frayed sleeve of her flannel shirt—which actually might be his—and keeps her eyes down in her lap.
“I have something bothering me, too,” she admits, softly, like it’s a secret. “I can go first.”
“You do?” Will internally smacks himself for not noticing earlier. “I’m sorry—it’s not Angela again is it?”
“Not Angela,” she says. “It’s Mike.”
“Mike?” Will doesn’t know what to say. She and Mike always had the occasional difficulty, and he imagines moving 2,000 miles away doesn’t help that front. He can joke, though. “God, what did he do now?”
“I don’t know if it’s important,” she hesitates.
He bumps their shoulders together. “Hey, you just told me, ‘If it’s bothering you, it’s important.’”
“He won’t say he loves me. Ever,” she says, and she doesn’t look at him.
Will takes her hand, and she stops fidgeting with the loose thread.
“I know it is hard because we are so far apart,” El says, her voice getting thick. “But he can’t even write it. All his letters end with ‘From, Mike.’ It’s like we are not even dating.”
“I’m so sorry, El,” Will says. He squeezes her hand tighter and tries to meet her watery eyes. “Mike can be an idiot about feelings, sometimes. He… he needs things to be spelled out for him. I’m sure he’ll come around, if you tell him what’s wrong.”
A teary hiccup breaks into her voice. “I can’t just tell him to love me. I want him to love me enough to tell me himself.”
Will hugs her.
He squeezes his arms around her until they’re smashed together at the edge of his bed, and she hangs onto him just as hard. Her forehead dips into his collarbone, his chin sits on her crown. They’ve got each other—sometimes they’ve only got each other.
“I know, I understand,” he mumbles into her frizzy hair. They don’t let go.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong.” Will pulls away, and is met with some resistance, but he keeps his hands grasped on El’s shoulders as he looks her in the eyes. “Mike loves you. He loves you so much, I’ve never seen him so invested in another person as he was once he met you. Don’t give up hope, he’ll figure himself out.”
Every word is another knife in his heart, but it’s all true. And Will would give anything to see both his sister and his best friend happy, even if it hurt himself in the process.
It’s a long shot, anyway—more than a long shot, it will never happen in a million years. Mike isn’t like him, he’d never be like him. So Will might as well help those two figure their shit out.
El nods, like she’s trying to convince herself and let the words all soak in.
“It’s hard,” she settles on.
And, fuck, is it hard.
Will has known Mike for almost ten years now, and been in love with him for at least half that time. It was amazing when Mike’s entire world was Will, and only Will, but he has to learn how to share.
He can only imagine how it feels for El, to be Mike’s girlfriend—and he has, shamefully, secretly—to be the center of his world, and then have it ripped away with their big move.
El’s hands find his again, and now they’re sitting nicely between them, bridging the miniscule gap.
“He’ll get there,” Will promises, and wiggles their joined hands. “He’ll say it.”
“Thank you.”
With one of their linked hands, El rubs her eyes. A bit of mascara comes with it—a relatively new experience for El, makeup, a borrowed tube from his mom—but it’s nearly time for bed, anyway.
“Okay,” she says, compartmentalizing that moment away with a loud sniffle, and moves on. She knocks their hands together. “Your turn.”
Will’s breath catches in his throat.
Worst-case scenario.
He can’t tell her about his massive, decade-long crush on Mike right after he went along and said all that. Not only would it be rude, it’d be pathetic .
Will knows he needs to pack it up and move on. It’s a hopeless crush, he knows Mike will never feel the same way, and Mike’s dating his sister. Will’s tried to like girls, but maybe he could try to like any other guy, and it would work better.
He just wants his best friend back. He wants everything to go back to normal.
“I, uh, it’s really not important, El.”
But he’s not getting out of this. Not after El literally cried into his arms about her problems as a way to chip at his walls. Little does she know how close to his own her problems were.
Maybe he can tone it down. Yeah. Today’s issue wasn’t about his long, tumultuous love for his oblivious best friend, today was mostly about Mike not writing him back in several months.
That’s much more reasonable.
Still honest, but makes him a lot less guilty.
“It’s… also about Mike.” The words are pulled out of him by the kind-but-purposeful glare El sends his way. Her eyes droop in sad understanding, and Will already hates doing this to her. “We haven’t talked in so long, and knowing he’s still talking to you every week, it—it just makes me feel… left out, I guess.”
Before El can respond, he adds, “Not saying it’s your fault, at all! I know it’s different, you’re dating him, and you two still have your own problems. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Not your fault, either,” El says, and squeezes his hands like he’d done to hers.
“Yeah,” he sighs.
It is kind of his fault, though, for expecting so much from Mike. He knows he’ll only be let down by it, but his heart hurts every time he thinks of him, he can’t help but get his hopes up.
“Can you reach out to him first?” El suggests, pushing past the emotions and onto the advice. Will appreciates it.
“I’ve tried, a little,” Will says. “It’s hard when it’s so one-sided. I don’t know if he’s ignoring me, or if he’s even received my letters in the first place. Maybe he’s just thinking of how to respond. I don’t know, I don’t want to bother him.”
El’s eyes light up. “How about we write him together?”
“Yeah?” Will asks. That way, Mike will definitely read what he has to say. He’ll send something back, for sure, if El’s name is attached. “I’d like that. Thanks, El.”
“You’re my brother,” she offers, like it’s an explanation.
“I can talk to Mike for you, too,” Will adds, though quickly deflates. “Whenever… the next time I talk to him is. He needs to know he’s hurting you, or else it’ll keep happening.”
Pot, meet kettle. Not like there’s anything Will can do about his own situation, though.
El smiles anyway. “Thank you.”
“You’re my sister,” he repeats.
“Who is the painting for?”
Will fumbles his paintbrush, but catches it before it ruins his painting with bright green streaks.
“What?” he asks El, as she stands in the middle of his doorway, looking in curiously without entering.
“The painting,” she smiles. “Is it for someone you like?”
He feels the blush on his cheeks, but he doubts El can see it from her angle behind the easel. Will fiddles with the brush between his fingers.
“No,” he denies, and it sounds as fake as he feels.
“Ooh,” El cheers. “Who is it? Do I know her?”
“I don’t—it’s not like—I’m not telling you.” He hides his face behind his artwork.
“Is it…” she draws out, “Tiffany Hernandez? …Kelly Armstrong? Oh, is it Miranda from History class?”
“No, El,” he groans. “It’s not for any girl.”
“A boy, then?” she says, and Will’s heart freezes in his chest.
He can’t breathe—his lungs won’t expand beyond a little stutter to get air in—and he sure as hell can’t muscle up the strength to peek over his canvas to look El in the eyes.
He’s forced to stare at his stupid painting he doesn’t even want to finish anymore. Not with the way he stands frozen in front of it, shame coloring in every blank space on the canvas.
“Wh-what?” he says, and his voice comes out breathy and anxious, so obviously caught red-handed.
“You said it’s not for a girl, could it be for a boy, instead?”
His grip on his brush turns white. He wants to scribble all over the painting. Ruin it so its message can’t ever get out.
“I don’t—I mean, I’m not—What makes you think that?”
Will can hear El shrug, more than see it.
“I like boys,” she says simply. “If I could paint like you, I would want to give a painting to the boy I liked.”
His heart beats out of his chest and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, where to look, what to say.
El is only guessing, she doesn’t really know.
She doesn’t know, but she’s halfway there.
Would it be so terrible just to tell her? To get it out of the way? To rip off the bandaid?
She already bears witness to half the insults kids yell at him at school. Even if it’s not as bad as in Hawkins, kids here still push him around, call him “fag” and “queer,” like he’s so easy to read.
And maybe he is, maybe he’ll never have to tell anybody, because they all can tell just by looking at him.
Will can feel the prickling of hot tears behind his eyes and he hates it.
“Yeah—you’re right,” he says, but his voice doesn’t want to cooperate with him. He’s hoarse already, and very very scared. “It’s…it is for a boy.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she says airily.
“No, El, it’s not.”
She still hasn’t stepped past the threshold, comfortable to stand out in the hall to have this conversation.
Will, on the other hand, is not.
He nods his head towards the center of the room, and sits cross-legged on the floor. El follows his lead and kneels beside him, putting an arm around his shaking shoulders.
“It’s wrong,” he says, looking down into his lap. “Boys liking other boys, it’s not normal. I’m not supposed to—to feel this way, it’s bad and perverted, and everything everyone says about me is true.”
“What’s true?”
He chokes on his words. “How I’m a—I’m a faggot, a queer, I’m disgusting and wrong . I’ve tried to like girls, I swear, it just—it doesn’t work. I’m so sorry.”
El is quiet for a long time, the only way he knows she’s still there is her soft hand on his shoulder that hasn’t budged.
He tries to get his tears under control. He’s just proving them all right, anyway, he’s always been too gay and too sensitive for his own good. No wonder everyone can tell by looking at him.
“They’re wrong,” she says.
“No, they’re not, El. They can tell—”
“They’re mean,” she says instead. “Bullies said those things, they want to hurt you.”
“Well,” he laughs sourly, and it burns his throat. “They won, it hurts.”
“They call me a freak, because I’m different,” El states. “They are not wrong, but they are mean.”
“El, that’s not… that’s not the same thing."
“How?” she challenges, and she’s holding both of his hands in hers again. “They want to hurt me, but I know what I am. I am not the monster. They are. They hurt people, on purpose, so they feel better. It’s what they do to you, too.”
“But I—”
“You do not deserve it,” she says, meeting him at his teary eyes. “You should not be… hurt for loving somebody. You are not hurting anyone by liking a boy. It is okay. You are okay.”
“Okay,” Will says. It’s mostly just to placate her for now, but some of it makes sense, in a strange way.
He knows the bullies are just being bullies—he’s given El a similar version to this speech before, too—but it’s hard to dismiss their insults when they’re the same ones Will tells himself.
The tears eventually dry, though. And El’s head is tilted against his shoulder, her arms wrapped comfortably around his side. He’s tired.
“So… the boy you’re painting for…” El tries, though Will can tell it’s mostly a joke.
“Nope,” he says, nudging her off him and standing up. “That’s all you’re getting out of me for today.”
“Worth a shot,” she says.
He looks at the distance between her and the door, and realizes he doesn’t want to be alone in an empty room anymore. “Do you want… Could you stay? With me?”
El doesn’t answer. Instead, she takes his hand again and they sit against the headboard of his bed, squished into his army of pillows.
They don’t do much for the rest of the night, it’s just nice to be in one another’s presence.
It’s been a long six months of relative solitude. Before, they could radio and have the entire Party over for a sleepover within the hour. Now, the best they have is barging into one another’s rooms and while hoping they’re not overstepping any boundaries.
He is so grateful to have El as his sister, but Will was never lonely like this in Hawkins.
Just under two weeks from spring break, Will puts every second his free time into finishing up his painting for Mike.
He’s mixing paint colors in the morning while brushing his teeth, rushing through his homework to start foreground details, leaving the dinner table early and going to bed late. Everything has to be perfect.
“Are you going to give it to him before spring break?” El asks, hanging around his doorway.
“No.” Will adds nothing else. Anything more would give it away, and he’s already revealed too much as it is.
“After?”
He dips his used brush in the water cup and pulls out a finer one for details. “No.”
“But you will give it to him, right?”
“Yes,” Will says.
“And you’ll tell me who it’s for?”
He supposes it’s unavoidable, once the time comes. “Eventually.”
“Hmm,” she accepts. Will dots a few more highlights on the canvas as El stews. “You’re still coming to the airport for Mike, on Saturday, right?”
Will looks up at her, now. “Of course, he’s still my best friend. And I wouldn’t leave you alone with him, after how he’s been treating you.”
“Will?” she says, after a moment. She sounds pensive, which is never a great sign for Will and his walled-up emotions.
“…Yeah?”
“Is the painting for Mike?”
He sets down his brushes. This is going to be another long night.
They arrive at the dinner table. His mom stepped out—she’s been going out a lot recently, with little explanation—and Jonathan is always somewhere with Argyle. They have the house to themselves, so Will has decided to treat this like a business meeting, impersonal and serious, in their seats across the table from one another.
“I made the painting for Mike,” Will says, and it feels final. He tries to think of the best way to phrase this, without the crushing weight of his secrets suffocating him, right here and now. “And I do—I lo—I like him. I… yeah. But he’s always gonna be my best friend first.”
His hands are folded on top of the table, and he stares down at them. He does not dare to meet El’s eyes—he’s always been a coward, in that way.
“I… I know how much you love him, and I know he loves you, too. I don’t want to get in the way of that, at all, I promise,” he says. “I just—I guess I miss having him as my best friend. And I was hoping this painting would help, in some way.”
He risks a glance at El, and she’s not mad. He can’t really tell what she is, though.
“That’s all,” Will says. “I’d never want to fight you for him, or anything like that, of course. I… I want him to know that I still care about our friendship, after all this time, you know?”
“I know.”
El takes his hands from across the table, and her palms are as warm as her gaze.
“I love you,” she says, soft and honest and real.
He’s close to tears—why isn’t she mad at him? Why doesn’t she hate him? How did he get so lucky to have her as a sister?
“I love you, too.” And he does.
El smiles, but her lips turn from kind to snarky, and she says, “So now will you show me the painting?”
“Oh, shut up!” He shoves her hands off his and crosses his arms, but he’s laughing, too, now. They'll be okay. They really will. “You’ll see it when he sees it. I promise.”