Work Text:
Will always knew he was going to lose Mike. He just didn’t know when or how.
Now, he knows exactly how it’ll happen. That band-aid he’d delicately placed over their friendship is tearing, frayed at the edges and stretching with every minute that passes by between them. Every time Will tries to right it, to readjust and reapply it to their wounds, Mike pushes and pulls until it’s loose again.
Will is the one who rips it off, in the end. It’s on a Monday, days after the sky had torn open, the ground following suit, and the world turned on its axis.
Four days after Mike had confessed his love for Eleven. Three days after that painful journey in the back of a van in the insufferable heat. Two days after they’d seen Max laying limp and lifeless in a hospital bed, Lucas by her side with his silent sobs. One day after the army had taken over Hawkins, pushing them into mandatory quarantine until things settle down.
It's on a Monday that Will breaks.
He’s been sleeping in the Wheeler’s basement, having no real home to go back to. El stays with him, as do Jonathan and Argyle, whilst his mom and Hopper figure out how exactly they’re going to prevent the cabin from being raided by the government.
El is safe here for now, sitting quietly in a blanket fort, fiddling with Mike’s walkie talkie in the hopes that she can somehow contact Max. It never works. She can’t find her. Will doesn’t know if she ever will.
Jonathan is also quiet, mindlessly tuning Mike’s ancient acoustic guitar, shut off from the world but most of all shut off from Nancy, once his girlfriend and now something else entirely. Will knows they’ve barely spoken since that day at the cabin; a hushed, tense conversation spoken in low voices. He doesn’t know what it was about, but he knows he saw Steve’s stolen glances at Nancy when she wasn’t looking, and vice versa. Maybe the year apart has torn her and Jonathan apart forever.
Argyle is quiet too, surprisingly. He can’t get a hold of his parents back in California, although Will gets the impression that isn’t exactly an abnormal occurrence. He knows Argyle is estranged from his parents, in some way, simply because he never talks about them, or the handful of times Will has been to his house it looks unlived in. Still, seeing Argyle quiet and frowning is… unsettling, for lack of a better word.
To sum up, the atmosphere in the basement is suffocating.
What doesn’t help is that the three times Mike has come down here to try and rouse Eleven into talking to him, she has brushed him off, ignored him, or simply said she wants to be left alone. Mike gets more and more flustered each time – yet each time he makes no attempt at interacting with Will. Will should’ve seen that one coming.
The fourth time Mike comes hobbling down the basement steps, Jonathan stands up and snaps, “Jesus Christ, Mike. Just leave her alone. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Silence, heavier than before, echoes throughout the room in an instant. Jonathan is glaring at Mike, unyielding, and Mike looks like a deer caught in headlights. El looks up at them both, thoughtful, then shakes her head and returns to the walkie talkie, tugging on Will’s sleeve to lean closer from where he’s sitting cross-legged by her side.
That sets Mike off, apparently, and he’s muttering a curse word and stomping back up the steps, slamming the door behind him.
“You shouldn’t talk to him like that.” Will offers once his brother has sat back down, adjusting the guitar in his lap.
“Yeah, dude.” Argyle adds, sharing a curious look with Will. He slaps Jonathan on the knee, friendly, guarded, as if Jonathan might explode any second now. “Maybe some sweet purple palm tree delight is the answer.”
Jonathan sighs sharply, running a hand over his face. “I don’t want any right now, Argyle. Alright?”
“Jonathan…” Will begins, though the sharp look his brother gives him has him falling silent. He knows Jonathan is wound up, worrying about his relationship with Nancy, worrying about everything else that’s currently sitting on top of all of them, and the silent and unspoken love triangle hanging over Will isn’t helping.
“Thank you,” El says, quiet yet certain, keeping her eyes trained on the walkie. But it’s clear she’s talking to Jonathan.
“Don’t mention it. He’s driving me crazy coming down here every five minutes.” Jonathan sighs again, then appears to ease up, shooting an apologetic smile at Argyle who accepts it easily, smiling back.
“Why don’t you want to talk to Mike?” Will asks, voice low for El’s ears only. El shrugs, non-committal. “Did something happen?”
El’s small and delicate fingers pause their movements, thumb and forefinger wrapped around the channel dial of the walkie. “I told him I didn’t believe him, back in the pizza boy freezer. I don’t believe him. He doesn’t love him like he says.”
“What?” Will blurts out automatically, looking over at the stairs where Mike once was, the slammed door as he left. “Mike loves you. Of course he loves you.”
“I know he does, but not like a boyfriend.” El touches Will’s elbow gently, prompting him to tear his eyes away from the steps and look back at her. El doesn’t look… upset about it. Sure, she’s upset – everyone is – but not about this. “I love him too. But not… like a girlfriend should.”
“Oh,” Will breathes, and he’s sure his expression must do a good job at displaying his obvious surprise, because El smiles at him, amused. “Did you break up?”
“Yes,” El confirms.
“Then why does he keep coming down here to talk to you?”
El shrugs, then her gaze turns intense, curious yet not forceful. “He keeps asking me about the painting.”
Will swallows audibly, hands beginning to shake in his lap. “Painting?”
“Will,” El breathes, calm, collected, placing the walkie talkie gently on the carpet between them so she can take one of Will’s hands into both of hers, even if Will’s hand is clammy. “It’s okay.”
Will’s mind reels, caught between panic and curiosity. Panic, because it seems like El knows exactly what painting she’s referring to – the one used to successfully reveal his feelings behind a veil. Curiosity, because it also seems like El isn’t angry or sad or disgusted by him. She seems… she’s smiling, and for this reason, Will’s eyes start to burn.
“He told me what you said when you gave it to him. That it was from me.” El confirms everything Will is thinking, which is terrifying in its own right. Because El is his sister, maybe not by blood but through circumstance, and the last thing he wants to do is hurt her. “I’m sorry you felt like you had to lie.”
“I’m not, I mean. I don’t – don’t know what you…” Will stumbles over himself and his words, hand flexing in El’s own. Her skin is soft and dry and warm, nothing in comparison to his. His hands are weathered and aged, from painting and fighting and clawing and scratching his way back to this world when he was twelve.
“Will,” El interrupts his incoherent stumbling with a smile, a look in her eyes like she adores him, a look that makes him feel better for being different, better for being who he is. “You are my brother, and I love you. I don’t want you to feel like a mistake. You’re not a mistake.”
Will doesn’t know what to say, because this isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. Honestly, this conversation was never going to happen, and Will was going to take his feelings to the grave with him. But now El’s hands are covering both of his own, soft and delicate just like she is, strong underneath. She’s smiling and she’s accepting of him, and before Will knows it there’s hot, wet tears sliding down his cheeks.
“She’s right, you know,” Jonathan adds, voice soft and tender, both hands clutching the guitar in his lap tightly.
Argyle is watching them, too, a similar soft expression on his face. “Turn that frown upside down, little Byers.”
Will huffs out a wet laugh, rubbing at his tears with his wrists once El releases him with a laugh of her own. Jonathan is smiling now, too, the first smile Will has seen on his face in four days. And Will feels better, he does, but he thinks about his best friend upstairs giving him the cold shoulder, and finds himself frowning again.
“You should talk to him, Will,” El says firmly, like she’s already made up her mind, like Will doesn’t have a choice either way.
“He won’t get it,” Will shakes his head. “He never gets it.”
“If he doesn’t get it, then he doesn’t deserve you.” Jonathan interrupts, and from the look on his face Will can tell he’s completely serious. Will suddenly feels much younger under his big brother’s protective gaze, like he’s twelve years old again hiding in his bedroom when his dad comes back drunk, enveloped in Jonathan’s arms until the yelling stops.
“You’re a catch, little dude,” Argyle adds, surprisingly succinct. “Maybe he just needs a little, like, push in the right direction. Or maybe you could get him drunk.”
Jonathan slaps Argyle on the arm. “Dude!”
“What?” Argyle rubs his arm in offence. “It worked for you!”
“That was six months ago, and we’re friends.”
“Still worked, didn’t it?” Argyle elbows him, bouncing back from the seriousness of the situation with ease. “Impenetrable Jonathan Byers finally opening up about his problems. Who’d have thought, bro?”
El and Will exchange a laugh, and when they stop, El’s eyes are soft and full of nothing but love. “Go find him. I promise it’ll be okay. And if it isn’t, I can redecorate his room with my mind.”
“Righteous,” Argyle breathes, out of his depth.
Well… when she puts it like that, Will doesn’t have much of a choice, does he?
He doesn’t realise how much of a bad idea this is until he’s closing the basement door behind himself only to be told my Mrs Wheeler that Mike isn’t home, that he’d stormed out without a word to her not five minutes prior.
“He shouldn’t be out on his own like this, not with everything that’s been going on, what with hellfire and everything else.” Mrs Wheeler is rubbing at her temples with both hands when she speaks, fingers disappearing into her curly hair shaping her face. “Was he like this in California?”
“I don’t know,” Will admits honestly, unable to comfort the woman in the way that she needs. “I’ll find him.”
“Thank you, Will,” Mrs Wheeler sounds like she means it, a soft yet stressed smile on her face as she waves him off. “He took one of the bikes from the garage. Put a coat on, it’s raining.”
“Thanks, Mrs Wheeler,” Will disappears into the garage, shrugging into his discarded bomber jacket that’s two sizes too small for him now. He must have left it here years ago, years before he moved, years before everything changed. It’s a faded yellow, once bright now dull, just like Will feels.
Mike’s bike is missing, and Will scrambles to right Nancy’s and pedal away from the house. It’s raining, but it isn’t heavy, the particles in the air making it seem worse than it is. The atmosphere should be toxic to breathe, but it isn’t. Or maybe Will has spent so much time in the Upside Down that his body has built a resistance to it.
He pedals slowly out of the driveway and turns right, leaving the cul-de-sac, cycling past a group of people huddled together under a tree to shield themselves from the rain. The town is quiet – quieter than normal, at least – given everything that’s been going on. Most of the residents of Hawkins packed up and left shortly after the earthquake, citing that the devil was in town, which might be halfway true in some way.
He finds Mike’s bike discarded at the side of some trees on Mirkwood, and Will slows to a stop beside it, using his feet to steady himself.
“Mike?” Will asks the rain, hopping off the bike and dropping it delicately on the ground, making his way into the woods. The air is thick and makes it difficult to breathe, or maybe it’s the way Will’s lungs constrict as he steps further into the underbrush, using his hands to push away stray branches in his way.
“Mike?” He asks again, a little louder this time, eyes darting around the trees.
“Will?” Mike’s voice echoes to his right, and he swivels around in fright to find the younger boy standing a few metres away, hands in his pockets and shoulders up to his ears, dressed in a dark blue waterproof coat. His hair is damp and drooped around his face, coming just short of touching his shoulders, his eyes wide and surprised. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was – I’m looking for you.” Will decides, balling his hands into fists by his sides. “Your mom said you’d gone out.”
“Oh,” Mike hums, then seems to snap out of whatever reverie he’s fallen into, a smile on his face. “Well, you found me.”
Will studies his friend's face for a short moment, scanning over the bags under his eyes, the way his freckles stretch over the skin of his nose and cheeks, the way his lips fall into a frown with the growing silence. Clearing his throat, Will breaks it. “What are you doing out here?”
Mike shrugs, kicking at the ground with his feet. “Didn’t wanna stay in the house anymore, I guess.”
“Really?” Will forces a laugh, because, god, this is awkward. Why is it so awkward? “I thought you’d be glad to be home.”
“It’s not really home anymore, is it?” Mike says, kicking a stray rock towards Will, who promptly adjusts his weight to kick it back. “Hawkins, I mean. It’s falling apart around us as we speak.”
As if to hammer his point home, thunder crashes above their heads and startles them both, the air becoming thick and heavy, the rain battering against the ground at increased velocity. Will pulls his hood over his head, prompting Mike to do the same, shoulders hunched up to his ears.
“I swear I didn’t know that was going to happen,” Mike jokes, a little breathless.
Will snorts. “You mean you didn’t know when the weather was going to change?”
“Right,” Mike grunts, looking down at the ground again, prompting Will to fight the urge to pull his hair out. Then, softly, so softly Will almost doesn’t hear it, Mike asks, “Why’d you come after me?”
Will realises he’s out of his depth so, so quickly. He doesn’t want to have this conversation; he never wants to have this conversation, not now and not ever. He isn’t ready to say it; Mike isn’t ready to hear it.
“I have something to tell you,” Will says, completely going against his own thoughts. The second it’s out of his mouth he wants to claw it back in, to reverse time and go back to where the awkward small talk had been bearable. Mike looks up at him with raised brows, waiting for a continuation of something that Will can’t even put into words.
He’d hidden his feelings for a reason. He continues to hide his feelings for a reason. Mike doesn’t reciprocate, and Will could potentially ruin their friendship by revealing anything. Still, the ache in his heart, resonating in his bones and making him feel weak at the knees, doesn’t make him feel any better. He feels weak and he knows he isn’t weak. Byers aren’t weak.
Jonathan isn’t weak. His mom definitely isn’t weak.
Will Byers is not weak.
“What is it?” Mike prompts after a heavy minute of silence. Will’s fingernails are digging into his palms and it hurts, and he has to manually instruct his fingers to unclench, leaving crescent mood indents on the inside of his hands.
“It’s – it’s, I mean. I think…” Will stumbles over himself, losing his nerve somewhere along the way. His mind screams at him to retreat, like a broken record, to retreat someplace safe and never bring this up again. But, no. The world literally is falling apart around them, and there’s no better time than the present. “Do you remember – remember the painting I gave you?”
Mike nods wordlessly. It’s progress, at least, even if Will already knew the answer to that. El had no reason to lie to him in the basement. Mike knows El didn’t commission the painting; he knows El had no say in it, hell, she had no idea what it was before all this. No, this painting had been from Will, not El. The words he’d said in a frenzied rush in the back of the surfer boy pizza van had been from Will and Will alone.
Still, Mike knew that and still didn’t bring it up with Will, right? Why?
“I know you know.” Will decides, straightening his back and squaring his shoulders. “I know you know it wasn’t really from El.”
“Oh,” Mike’s face turns pained for a short moment, before he looks away, squinting against the rain. “Why’d you lie about it?”
“I didn’t lie,” Will replies, because he didn’t, not really. The words he’d said were true, even if he’d disguised their true meaning, choking muffled sobs behind his palm. “El does need you.”
I need you. But I can’t lose you. Losing you would… it would hurt too much, Mike. It’d just hurt too much.
“That’s not what I mean.” Mike is getting mad now, and Will can tell by the way his lips purse, his eyes slanted, the way he lifts his chin up towards the trees to their left as if they’re the ones in the wrong here. “You told me El commissioned it when she didn’t. You broke the most important rule of our party, Will.”
Will’s mind reels. Of course Mike didn’t think much of the confession – of course he’d focus on the part where he’d lied. Even if it was for Mike’s own benefit, because realising Will’s feelings for him just before they had found El would have been catastrophic. And they could’ve lost El in the process.
“So, you, what?” Mike blurts out, turning to face Will now, irritated by his stubborn silence. “You just told me what I needed to hear? You lied about all that stuff, about El needing me-”
“She does need you, Mike.” Will injects, successfully interrupting Mike’s outburst. This isn’t how he wanted this conversation to go. But maybe it was inevitable, really, where they stand at the end of the world, yelling at each other over something that shouldn’t matter. That’s always how things seem to end up with them now, yelling until one of them storms off into the pouring rain.
“Then why’d she break up with me?” Mike shoots back, using his hands to express just how angry he actually his. It’s always zero to a hundred with Mike, and this time is no different, even as they glare at each other through the pouring rain. “You made me think all this stuff – like what you said was true, then pushed me into something I didn’t even want to say. And then she didn’t believe me anyway!”
“It’s not my fault you don’t love her, Mike!” Will yells, then wishes he could catch his words mid-air and swallow them up again before they ever had a chance to leave his lips. Mike looks at him, miserable and shivering, and Will knows he’s struck a nerve. And you know what? He doesn’t even care – he doesn’t care if this hurts Mike, because he’s hurt too. He’s been hurt for too long.
“I thought lying to you was the right thing to do,” Will tells him, voice lower this time, more in control of himself. He balls his hands into fists to stop himself from talking with them, from waving them around aimlessly just to get his point across. “You needed help – you needed a push, and I gave it to you. What else was I supposed to do? Let you be miserable? Because I didn’t want that. I don’t want that. I just…”
Will’s eyes start burning, and he fights to keep the tears at bay. He’s cried enough this past week to last him a lifetime. He trails off, unwilling to let his voice break, and looks down at his feet, kicking the dirt on the ground.
“You just what?” Mike prompts after at least a minute of heavy silence, nothing but the rain battering against the leaves to break it. His voice is softer now, but Will refuses to meet his eyes, breathing harshly.
“I just didn’t want you to be sad anymore,” Will says, quiet and small and broken. “I thought maybe if I gave you the painting, made a speech and hid how I felt that it would make a difference.”
“What?” Mike blurts out, and Will realises his mistake at once. He didn’t mean to say that – he didn’t mean – that’s not what he meant to say.
“I mean, how El felt. How El feels.”
It’s a lame excuse. Will knows it. Mike knows it.
“No, that’s not what you meant, Will.” Mike is looking at him with wide eyes, although there’s something in them that Will can’t identify. Hope, maybe. Fear, most likely. “What’d you mean, you hid how you felt?”
“I…” Will scrambles to come up with a new lie to cover his tracks, because that’s just what he does now. He lies to people – he lies to himself, most of all, even if Mike makes him feel like he shouldn’t be lying. That he’s better for being different. That he’s not a mistake at all, that Lonnie was wrong about him.
He looks up at Mike for the first time in what feels like years. Mike is looking at him carefully, giving him his full attention for the first time in a long time. His hair is poking out from his hood and half matted to his forehead, his fingers curled around his too-long coat sleeves. He’s shaking, too, but whether that’s from the cold or this conversation, Will doesn’t know.
He does know Mike is waiting for an answer. An answer that Will knows he has to give. And it has to be now.
And if I was going to lose you, I’d rather get it over with quick. Like ripping off a band-aid.
Will rips off the band-aid. “The painting, it – it was from me. From me to you. The words I said, they were… they were from me. I feel – I feel that way about you.”
Mike looks like someone has slapped him across the face. He pales, if it’s even possible, and Will feels bile rise up in his throat in response. He backpedals immediately, losing his nerve somewhere along the way, somewhere in the fear in Mike’s eyes. “I mean, I don’t want to lose you. You’re my best friend, Mike.”
He makes sure to punctuate ‘friend’ clearly and succinctly, although it doesn’t have the intended effect considering his voice breaks around Mike’s name and tears have filled up in the corners of his eyes, threatening to fall any second now.
“Oh,” Mike breathes, finally, finally saying something. Will could kiss him in relief – but that’s the exact type of thought he needs to avoid right now. For both of their sakes. “I thought you meant… something else. It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to lose me, Will.”
Something… else? “What’d you mean?”
“Nothing.” Mike is the one backpedalling now, waving his hands in front of himself. “You’re my best friend, too.”
Will blinks under the rain, peering out through his hood over at Mike, trying to read him. Is it possible… that Mike understood him just now? Understood what Will was trying to say, finally, finally understood? And Will had backpedalled, and now Mike is backpedalling, and Will wants to pull his hair out at the emotional whiplash this conversation is giving him.
“I mean,” Will presses, obviously plucking his confidence out of thin air, watching as Mike’s eyes snap back to him the second he starts talking again. “I… I did mean something else. I do mean something else.”
Mike’s eyes widen again, mouth hanging open. But Will needs to hammer this point home. He needs Mike to know. It’s now or it’s never.
“The painting, it – the words I said, they were… they were real.” Will struggles with himself, talking in circles, working himself into a trap that only Mike can save him from. “But they weren’t from El.”
“Oh, I know,” Mike shakes his head, and Will watches as droplets of water trickle down his forehead and along his nose. “I get it, yeah. Will, you don’t have to worry about us being friends. We’re always going to be friends, alright?”
Mike is just not getting it. Will wants to scream at the top of his lungs until they burn, until the birds in the trees overhead get spooked and fly away, and maybe, hopefully, they’ll take Will with them. Mike is staring at him again, squinting against the rain as he rubs a hand over his face and pushes his hair back into his hood, revealing his freckled forehead.
Mike is not getting it. Maybe he never Will. But Will needs to try, again.
“No, Mike.”
“What?” Mike frowns. “We’re not friends?”
As much as Will loves Mike to the moon and back, sometimes he wishes he could just leave him up there.
“I – that’s not what I mean.” They’re just talking in circles now, and Will is getting frustrated. It has to be now. It has to be now. “Mike, I – I’m… you know how I told you you’re the heart? The heart of the party?”
“Yeah,” Mike breathes, but it doesn’t sound like a question. Is he standing closer now? Will isn’t sure. He’s too busy looking at the laces on his shoes.
“Well, I really believe it. You’re so good, Mike. The party needs you.” Will blurts out, rushing his words and maybe stumbling over a few but he needs to just get this out and he won’t let Mike interrupt him this time. “I need you. And not in the way – not the way the party needs you. I need you because I – because I love you. I love you, and I know that’s probably disgusting and weird and everything else Lonnie told me it was. But it’s the truth.”
He doesn’t dare look up at Mike, too focused on trying to stop the steady stream of tears falling from his eyes. Maybe Mike won’t notice – maybe the rain is too heavy for him to notice. Maybe he’ll take Will’s heaving chest and burning lungs as a reaction to the cold and the wet, and not anything else, not the panic searing through his chest, the urge to run far, far away and never come back.
The silence stretches, and Will doesn’t stop looking at the ground beneath his feet. If anything, he’s tensing for a fist fight, or something, anything that might be the consequence of revealing something like this. But it never comes – nothing ever comes, because Mike isn’t saying anything. It’s only the sound of the rain and Will’s heavy breathing between them.
Sheepishly, afraid, Will forces himself to look up at Mike. He is closer, much closer than before, and his lower lip is trembling. Mike’s eyes are rimmed red and watery, his cheeks flushed and hands twitching by his sides. He made Mike cry. Oh, no.
“Mike, I’m sorry, I – I’m sorry,” Will scrambles, grasping at straws to try and save whatever they have left. He hadn’t meant to make Mike upset. Maybe he’s disgusted, maybe he’s so taken back by his best friend of over ten years being queer.
Mike moves quickly, his movements blurred in Will’s tearful eyes, and suddenly two long and lanky arms are wrapped around his shoulders, squeezing him so tightly that all the air escapes his lungs. Will’s first instinct is to hug back, to wrap his arms around Mike’s waist and hug him like he never wants to let go, burying his face into his neck.
Mike is shaking, and he’s also soaking wet, but Will doesn’t care, because he isn’t pushing him away. He’s actively initiating physical contact – something Will was sure would be over for them. Once you’re labelled as queer you’re treated differently, people treat you like an alien, someone who doesn’t belong.
But Mike isn’t one of those people, obviously. Will doesn’t know how long they stand there, clinging to each other like the world might end if they let go. Hell, maybe it will, with their luck.
“Will,” Mike says lowly, so lowly Will isn’t sure he’s imagining it before he hears it again. “Will, I need to show you something.”
“What?” Will blurts, but it’s more of a whisper, like this is a private conversation for them and only them. “Show me what?”
Without another word, Mike’s hand trails down Will’s shoulder, along his elbow before pausing at his wrist, latching on tight and pulling. Mike leads Will further from the road, moving south, whilst Will scrambles to keep up with him.
His mind is reeling. He’d just told Mike everything, told him how he feels and how he’s been hurting, and Mike hasn’t said one bad thing about it. No, Mike is actively holding his hand – when did that happen? – and leading him further into the woods, intent on taking him somewhere to show him something.
“Something?” Will echoes his thoughts aloud, using his free hand to hold onto his hood to keep it upright.
“Something,” Mike confirms, and that’s that.
It isn’t until Will notices a familiar tree that he knows exactly where Mike is taking him, and he stops dead in his tracks with a sharp tug on Mike’s hand. Mike stumbles at the sudden shift in momentum, catching Will’s shaking head and trembling body with his wide eyes.
“Do you trust me?” Mike asks. Will doesn’t know how to tell him he trusts him with his life, so he just nods, and Mike tugs him along again.
Castle Byers. Will hasn’t been here since that fateful day last year, under similar weather conditions, where he’d torn down his one safe place in the world in a fit of rage, hurt and frustration. It isn’t exactly a location he wants to return to, but Mike isn’t giving him another choice.
It isn’t until they make it past the last set of trees that Will sees it – Castle Byers, still standing. The wood is splintered and broke in some places, the sign up top once snapped in half now glued back together. It’s standing upright, a new structure, better than before, as if someone has rebuilt it in his absence. He can still hear Jonathan’s nagging from years ago, back when they’d made it together, telling Will repeatedly that he’d catch a cold if they stayed out any longer.
Now, it’s just him and Mike, standing hand in hand, looking at it without a word. The silence is needed, and it’s comfortable, up until Mike gives his hand a squeeze.
“Lucas, Max and Dustin helped,” Mike tells him, voice strained and a little breathless, like he’s just run a marathon. He doesn’t meet Will’s eyes when he turns to look up at him, keeping them trained on the structure before them. “But I wanted to – to fix it. To fix what I did, to fix us. I know you wrecked it because of me, because of what I said. I was a jerk, Will, and I know you probably won’t forgive me, but I had to try, right? I had to try.”
Will is crying again, which shouldn’t be surprising at this point. “You did this? For me?”
“Yeah,” Mike offers him a small, lopsided and sad smile. “I just… I missed you so much when you left. I guess rebuilding it made me feel like you were still here somehow. I like reading comics in there sometimes, or – or planning D&D campaigns. Sometimes I just… I just come here and think about, like, everything. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry for what I said that summer, and you didn’t deserve it, I was just – I don’t know.”
Will doesn’t know what to say, he never expected anything like this. When he first destroyed this place, he knew he wouldn’t ever come back to it. He never wanted to come back. And now that he’s standing here, Mike’s hand in his – something else he never thought would be possible – he finds himself smiling through his tears.
“Let’s, uh, let’s go inside,” Mike suggests, and Will can do nothing but nod and let Mike hold up the makeshift curtain (an old bed sheet, respectfully) and let him inside. “Oh, shit. I forgot about the password.”
“It’s okay,” Will croaks, looking around the small space as Mike ducks inside and carefully adjusts the sheet behind himself to shield them from the rain.
Pushing down his hood, Will takes in the sight of his childhood safe place, his home away from home, brought back to its previous glory. It’s a little rustic, but it’d always been that way. There’s still an old cot inside, with new and cleaned sheets, safe from the rain and dirt outside. There’s pages from comic books on the branches that line the walls, some that Will doesn’t recognise – that’s when he realises Mike hadn’t been lying. Mike comes here on his own, decorates, and leaves.
Will sits down on the cot before his legs give out, his knees folding as he does, looking to his left and spying the previously torn photograph on the wall, now taped back together. It’s the four of them in their ghostbuster costumes, much younger. There’s writing on the side of it, scribbled messily, reading: Next time, include your zoomer in your secret photos, Will! Miss you – Love, Max.
Will can’t stop himself from trailing his fingers over it, thinking about Max, lying unconscious in the hospital bed with Lucas by her side. Mike sits down next to him, pushing his hood down and running a hand through his hair. Will can feel his eyes on him, but he can’t tear his own away from the photograph, from Max’s words, from their smiling faces.
How could he ever rip this up?
“You said I’m the heart of the party,” Mike breaks the stretching silence in his quiet voice, the one he so often graces Will, the one he used to always use. “You were wrong. You know that, right? I’m not the heart, it’s you. It’s always been you, Will.”
Mike’s pinkie finger is touching Will’s own, an accidental brush, and Will uses it to his advantage to link their pinkies together, skin wet from the rain outside this small, safe space. He’s sure he hears Mike’s breath catch in his throat, but he could just be imagining it.
Maybe he’s imagining all of this. Maybe Vecna already has his claws in him, and Will is going to die any minute now. Maybe it’s all a hallucination, all of this, the look Mike is giving him, like he hung the moon and stars when he resolutely knows he didn’t.
“And I know I’ve been weird and – I’ve been distant this past year, it’s just,” Mike keeps talking, something he always does, trying to fill a silence that doesn’t necessarily need to be filled, but he does it anyway. Will has always loved that about him. “I just couldn’t find the right words. I didn’t know what to say to you, on the phone or in letters and I just – I guess I just stopped trying, and you didn’t deserve that. That was me working through my own shit. All this stuff with you and El, I just. I don’t know.”
Except something in Mike’s expression reveals that he does know, that he’s hiding something, something he can’t exactly find the right words for. Will knows the feeling.
Thunder rumbles above their heads, prompting them both to look up at the roof of Castle Byers and listen, maybe try to work out how far away the storm is. Whatever horrors await them, whatever darkness looming from the Upside Down bleeding into their world awaiting them, at least Will has this moment, this moment of pure calm, even if he’s tearing himself apart on the inside.
“Mike,” He breathes, prompting Mike to look down at their conjoined pinkies. “Did you – did you understand what I said?”
When I told you I love you, did you understand what I meant?
Will isn’t sure he has the courage to say it aloud again.
Luckily, because somehow fate and circumstance is on his side today, he doesn’t need to say it again. Mike’s eyes turn dark, and he furrows his brow, flipping his hand palm up so Will can link their fingers together, pressed against the soft cot between them. Will’s breath catches in his throat, unable to form any words, unable to ask what Mike is doing or what this all means.
He doesn’t need words. He doesn’t need them because Mike reaches out with his free hand and lifts Will’s chin upwards, angling his face to look at Mike in the eyes. Mike looks at him, and for the very first time in his life, Will feels seen. He feels bare, naked, vulnerable under the heavy gaze, like he’s been torn open and all of his secrets are revealed.
Mike’s hand is shaking against his own when he leans forward, and Will feels the ghost of his breath against his cheeks, unsteady and uneven. Mike is nervous, obviously, though Will can’t figure out why. He’s nervous, too, of course, but likely for different reasons.
Or maybe for the same reasons, because Mike pulls Will in by his chin and kisses him. It’s soft and gentle, a little hesitant, as if Mike doesn’t know that Will wants this, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Will’s eyes flutter closed as Mike moves his lips against his own, tightening his grip on Will’s hand.
The world doesn’t end, and stars don’t shoot out of his fingers and toes, not like they make it seem in the movies. But it feels right, it feels like it’s the one thing that’s been missing in Will’s life. It’s like coming home from a thunderstorm to a warm house and a cosy blanket. It’s like waking up from a nightmare and realising everything is okay, that he’s safe and secure with Mike wrapped up in his arms.
Still, if Mike is doing this out of pity, or if he’s unsure, Will can’t let it continue. He’ll be opening himself up to a whole new world of hurt if that happens. Slowly, deliberately, he presses his hand against Mike’s chest and pushes him back, their lips falling apart.
“Mike-” Will tries to speak, but Mike interrupts him, eyes open, pupils blown.
“Don’t. I don’t want to think anymore; I’ve done enough thinking, Will. I’m not going to waste time with you anymore.” He says, and then leans back in, and Will accepts the second kiss easily, more prepared for it this time.
Mike’s lips are chapped and bitten raw – a habit of his when he’s nervous. Will’s can’t be much better, slippery from the rain outside and his own tears, but it doesn’t seem to dismay Mike at all. Mike kisses him languidly, yet attentive, like he’s testing out the give of Will’s lips, the feeling of them against his own, and Will can do nothing but let him and ball his hand into a fist around the front Mike’s coat.
He doesn’t know how long they sit there, entwined with each other, blind to the outside world. The rain hasn’t eased, and it clatters against the roof of the fort, but Will doesn’t pay it any mind, too busy trying to control his breathing as they kiss open-mouthed, switching up the angle and tilting their heads in the opposite direction.
Mike is kissing him. Mike is kissing him. Mike is winding his fingers through the hair at the nape of Will’s neck and pulling him closer, making soft, quiet sounds against his lips. Mike is pressing into the kiss in the same way Will is. Mike is the one to lick his way into Will’s mouth and deepen their kiss, sending Will’s brain into meltdown.
It’s thunder crashing above them that rips them apart in fright, causing them both to start laughing and poking at each other. It’s free and it’s easy, it’s easier than Will thought it would be. It’s so easy to link Mike’s fingers back with his own and squeeze them, delighted when Mike squeezes back.
“Hey,” Mike breathes, cheeks tinged pink from a reason other than the cold. “What you said in the woods, did you mean it?”
Will swallows thickly, his adam’s apple bobbing with the movement. “Yeah, I – I did. I do.”
Mike nods, taking that in, then leans forward and kisses Will again, chaste this time, lingering only for a second, before he smiles wide, flashing his crooked teeth. “I want you to know that I – um, me too.”
“What?” Will blurts. Because kissing your best friend is one thing, but declaring your love for them is something else, something Will never imagined could be possible. “You love me?”
“No,” Mike shakes his head sharply, then graces his fingertips along the curve of Will’s jaw with a smile. “I’m in love with you. I think I always have been, but… it just took me a while to figure it out.”
Will feels his face heat up, a blush decorating his cheeks and disappearing down his neck into his coat collar. His smile must be blinding, because Mike looks away, suddenly shy and clearing his throat.
“If that’s, uh, if that’s cool.”
Will chokes on his words, but he knows he has to get them out. “It’s more than cool, Mike.”
Mike smirks suddenly, the tension easing from his shoulders. “It’s ice cold?”
Will shoves him. “Shut up.”
“What?” Mike feigns hurt, holding both of his hands over his heart. It doesn’t last long, because Mike can’t seem to keep the grin off his face, watching as Will laughs, freer than he has in years. “God, I missed you.”
Will’s laughter dies in his throat, replaced with nerves, watching as Mike smiles at him, snaking his arm around Will’s waist. “Is this real?”
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Mike offers. “Unless it’s a dream and I’m about to wake up. That’d suck.”
“You’re an idiot,” Will laughs, shuffling closer so their bodies are aligned, thighs and sides pressed together. “You’re lucky I love you.”
Mike’s smile is blinding, even if there is some hesitance there, as if he’s not sure if he’s allowed this. Like he’s not sure if he deserves it, after everything that’s happened, which is fair. They have a lot to talk about, but right now? Right now it doesn’t matter what they’ve both said and done in the past, what matters now is Mike leaning in and Will meeting him halfway, and they’re kissing again.
It’s Will who suggests they go back first, after spending over an hour huddled in Castle Byers reading comics and stealing kisses, exploring each other, testing out the waters in this new thing between them. When they do head back to Mike’s house, Mike is still holding his hand as they make their way through the door despite Will’s obvious protests. Mrs Wheeler takes one look at them, noting their conjoined hands, then rolls her eyes, a small, knowing smile on her face, and that’s that.
No yelling, no berating, no disgust. Simple acceptance with a smile. (And an order not to trail water into the house because they’re both still soaking wet and dripping all over the carpet.)
It’s a Monday when Will rips off the band-aid, intent on allowing his wounds to scab over and heal.
It’s a Monday when Mike Wheeler kisses him, and the wounds they’d dealt each other over the past year heal.
It’s a Monday that Will realises maybe Mike isn’t the heart, but that they both are. They’re both irreplaceable in the party, and they’re stronger together than apart.
Maybe that’s what will win this war. Heart.