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Mike wasn’t sure what surprised him more, finding out that El had not commissioned the painting, or the fact that Will had lied about it. El breaking up with him somehow had not made it on the list of things that surprised Mike in the last few days, because, even if he would have never admitted it a few weeks prior, it had been bound to happen for a while.
He was on his way back to his room, and after the conversation he had just had, he wasn’t sure whether he hoped that Will was awake or not, because Mike honestly had no idea what he would say if he was.
The problem was that all Mike knew was that Will had lied about El commissioning the painting, but he didn’t know if everything else had been true.
He shook his head.
There was no way all of that could have been true—or he just wouldn’t let himself hope that it was—Will had probably just said all that because he thought that Mike needed it.
Maybe he had needed it, in the moment, but now it was just confusing.
He was standing at his door now, with his head on the doorknob, finally deciding that he really hoped that Will was asleep. There was no way he would get any sleep now, knowing what he knew, with Will in the same room and awake.
He had barely opened the door, when he heard Will’s voice from inside his room.
“Mike?”
Shit.
Mike quickly entered the room and closed the door behind himself. He saw his best friend sitting up on the spare mattress next to Mike’s bed that he had been sleeping on when Mike left to check on El, a blanket thrown over his legs.
“Yeah, uhm, I hope I didn’t wake you up, I know some of the stairs creak a bit. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember and everytime I mention it my parents say they’ll see if they can do anything about it but they don’t—” shut up.
“You did. It’s okay though, I don’t mind,” Will said with a smile (Mike was pretty sure that he did mind, and was just too nice to say so), “where were you?”
“Oh, I couldn’t sleep, I went to check on El.” And ended up literally coming out to her.
“Was she awake?” Will asked, a hint of concern in his voice—Mike thought about lying, saying that his now-ex-girlfriend had been asleep, but figured it would just make everything difficult when El inevitably told Will about it herself.
“She was. We—” he paused and realized that he’d been standing in front of the closed door since entering his room, and went to sit down on the mattress next to Will. “We talked. About— about some… stuff.” Yeah, stuff. Mike had to take a deep breath—he hadn’t thought it would actually be hard to tell Will that he and El broke up.
“She, uh— she broke up with me.”
It was quiet for a moment, and he was about to repeat himself, or start explaining and say too much or something, when Will finally spoke.
“Why?”
Oh, that was what Mike had been nervous about.
“She just thought we’d be better off as friends, you know? We’d had this…fight, the morning after I arrived in Lenora, about how I didn’t— how I never told her that I loved her.”
“Do you?”
Mike turned his head to look at Will for the first time since sitting down. He knew what the other boy meant, but asked, just in case ; “Do I what? ”
“Love her,” Will clarified, without sounding like Mike’s question had been stupid—though it definitely had been, in his own opinion.
“ Of course— ” he started, a bit too quickly, “—yeah, I do love her, just, not like that .” He looked at Will expectantly, hoping that ‘like that’ was enough of an explanation.
It must have been, because Will just nodded and looked away. It suddenly made Mike remember what else he had been thinking about before entering his room, before all his thoughts became messed up when he saw his best friend just sitting there, wearing some of Mike’s clothes, still looking sleepy after being just woken up, and the warm glow of the lamp on Mike’s bedside table making him look so—
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about if— if that’s okay.” He stopped his thoughts before they could go any further than that—
“Sure.” Will turned his head back in Mike’s direction.
“When you showed me the painting— how much of it did you mean?” He asked quietly.
“What?” Will frowned at him—it wasn’t really obvious though whether it was a confused or nervous frown—angry wouldn’t make sense in this situation. Right?
“You weren’t honest about El commissioning it so I wondered— how much else you said might’ve been a lie.”
Will definitely looked nervous now.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to though, it’s fine. I was just curious—” he hurried to explain, because seeing Will upset gave him just about the same feeling as being punched in the gut.
“All of it was true.” Will interrupted him, his head turned away again. “It just wasn’t about El .”
Mike didn’t know what to say to that.
Of course it hadn’t been about El, she didn’t commission the painting, so there would have been no reason for Will to talk about her feelings when he had shown it to Mike.
‘That’s what holds this whole party together, heart.’
‘You make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all.’
“Oh.”
It had just slipped out unintentionally, but apparently Will took it as a reason to keep talking, which was stupid, because Mike’s brain was not processing much at the moment.
“I’m sorry, Mike. I—I’m so sorry I—”
Stop apologizing , Mike thought, you always apologize when you did nothing wrong , but his brain still wasn’t working fast enough for him to actually say it before Will was speaking again.
“I know I shouldn’t feel like that about you, I used to try to ignore it, but I—I really couldn’t, and I know you don’t feel like that about me. It’s okay if you don’t want to be my friend anymore, or if you hate me now, I get it—” even though his face was turned towards the wall, Mike could still see him wipe tears off his cheek.
Tears.
He was crying.
Shit.
Mike moved to sit closer to Will, then gently put a hand on his best friend’s shoulder.
“Will,” he started, hoping he sounded as reassuring as he meant to—even with the tears he could feel welling up in his eyes, and wrapped his arms around him. “It’s fine, really.”
It took a moment for Will to hug him back, and they sat there for a few minutes, neither of them saying a word.
“Really?” Will eventually whispered, breaking the silence, but not making a move to pull away.
“Remember when I said I had a crush on that girl sitting next to me in science back in fifth grade?” Mike asked instead of answering. “I lied. I didn’t care about her at all.”
Will let out a watery laugh. “What?”
“Yeah, when Dustin had that super annoying crush on some girl from, like, seventh grade— and when he asked me if I liked someone and didn’t believe me when I said no, I just said I liked her because she seemed nice.” He continued, relieved that Will had stopped crying. “It pissed me off so much when he wasn’t persistent when you said you didn’ have a crush.”
They sat in a comfortable silence again, until Mike decided that, if he had already said this much, he could just go on and say everything—there had been an awful lot on his mind the past few months .
“I probably should’ve thought about it a little more then, why I didn’t care about girls at all—well, I didn’t feel like I had to when I had all of you to hang out with. Still, I didn’t think romantically about any girl until I met El, I mean that should’ve made it obvious.”
That hadn’t been too hard to say, it was less than he’d told El earlier, but—
“And when I was dating her, sometimes it felt like I had to decide between her and you.”
Will pulled away, and Mike was sure that the room hadn’t been this cold earlier.
“Do you mean you as in me or you as in—” Will tried to ask, but Mike was too nervous to stay quiet for any longer than five seconds.
“As in you , just you. Not the party. I didn’t feel like I could have both of you.”
When there was no answer for longer than two seconds, he didn’t wait for Will to say anything before continuing,
“I mean you’re wrong, because I do feel like that about you, and it took me way too long to realize it.”
There still wasn’t a word from Will, and Mike started worrying that he might’ve been wrong, and that his best friend had not, in fact, meant ‘like that’ , well, like that.
“Are you joking right now, because if you are, it’s not funny.” That was not an answer he had expected.
“ No? I wouldn’t joke about that!” Mike said defensively. “Wait, are you joking right now?”
“No, really I’m just—confused,” Will replied, “so—you mean it?”
“Yeah.” He took one of Will’s hands in his own. “I do—I do mean it. I love you.”
Mike had felt terrible the last time he’d said it—he was scared for El’s life and didn’t know if there was a way to help her—but this time he had a warm feeling in his chest, because Will squeezed his hand and answered, with a soft smile;
“I love you, too.”