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Don’t tell the yearbook staff circulating and getting quotes, but the thing Will might love most about his date to the Valentine’s Dance is how mad they get at an offence. It’s possible that’s an unhealthy statement, considering he grew up with an abusive dad. But honestly, Will doesn’t think so. Lonnie used to crush the loved ones in his vicinity with his anger. His boyfriends and girlfriends? They crush others.
It’s happening yet again, in front of him. Andy, ruling senior if you care about high school royalty, is getting in Lucas’s face. “You shouldn’t be wearing Tigers colours. You don’t deserve them.”
“You shouldn’t be alive, you don’t deserve that, but you don’t see me whining at you,” Lucas replies cooly.
“I’m going to kick your ass,” Andy threatens. As a cluster they bristle. Dustin stands wider, Mike stands taller, El’s arm twitches. Max definitely has pepper spray and a knife in her purse. Will wants to grab Lucas by the arm and run away with him.
Lucas doesn’t need any of them, though. He just smirks at Andy and cuts right through him. “You ever think about what would have happened if my baby sister caught your eye when she bashed your cowardly fucking face in? If she’d taken your depth perception, made you useless for sports? You ever think about how worthless you’d be, how no one would care about you anymore? You sure you want to get in a fight, tonight, man?”
It’s like a lightning bolt burning through Will when Andy fucks off. It’s so fucking hot. Lucas got the job done, but all of them could have taken him. Every single one of them.
“Did I really dress in Tiger colours,” Lucas asks once they’re alone. He glances down at his green dress tshirt, split down the middle with a yellow tie. “Aww fuck, I did, didn’t I.”
Dustin shrugs. “Not your fault, man. After some negotiation we all decided on green. There are only so many colours you can accent it with.”
“You did pick yellow, though,” Max smirks.
“I just thought it looked good!”
“I think you look good,” El offers softly. “I think we all look good.”
El is not wrong. Will’s not sexually attracted to his girlfriends, but he’s an artist, he can tell when things are beautiful. After trying various lengths over the years, El’s settled on what Will’s guess is her baseline hairstyle; medium curl, short and fluffy around her head like it was in ‘84, once all the bitchin’ hair mousse washed out. It’s pulled back with a pretty headband the same mint shade as her dress, a flowy sleeveless thing with shoulder ribbons that tie into like a thousand bows. Someone’s going to enjoy taking that off her later. And then there’s Max, confident in her pine loose cowl neck sweater, and her hair done up in an coil of thin braids, a few white ribbons and about a million unseen bobbypins attached. It’ll take her double the time of everyone else to get ready for bed tonight, but relearning to braid was an important part of Max’s physio, and she often does something lovely and elaborate. Will doesn’t have to want to fuck them to know they’re both drop dead gorgeous, every day but especially now, all dressed up. He wants to hold their hands, and spin them around the room.
And then there’s Mike, Dustin, and Lucas. The party members he wants, not just needs to never part from. Dustin is by far the most on theme of all of them, the only teenage boy in Hawkins with the confidence to buy an emerald green suit. It’s fitted well, because Steve has a family tailor, and considers Dustin more family than his own father. He and Mike are currently showing off matching black eyes. El can’t always be around to freeze the flying fists, and if she doesn’t it’s not like either of them will try to avoid a throwdown. Mike, unlike Lucas and Dustin’s proper attire, is wearing the clothing of his people. Dustin might like metal music more, but Mike’s the one aesthetically committed with long hair with a permanently bleached streak that changes colour a few times a month. It’s green now, of course, the only green thing in the wash of black jeans, black dress shirt, and black suspenders with serpents embroidered on. They’re all stupidly hot. Like honestly, so hot it’s almost offensive. In this moment he wants to kiss them as badly as he wants to hold El and Max’s hands.
“We do all look good,” Mike asserts. “Do you want to go do the Photo Booth now?”
“How are we splitting that up?” Max asks.
“I bet I can bother Glee Club into giving us the camera for a bit,” Dustin opines hopefully. “Then we can just do as many as we want.”
If they were getting couples photos taken based on an outsider’s opinion, only one pairing would be certain. People have their gossip about El and Max being sluts and going back and forth between Lucas and Will, just as much as there’s shittalk about them all being fuckin’ queers. But the one pair everyone can agree on is the bad seed Wheeler and that psycho-nerd Munson copycat are disgustingly out and proud.
Mike and Dustin are the front facing couple of the group for one simple reason. In a group of wildly contrary teenagers, they’re at the extreme edge of enjoying pissing people off. It could be said of either that they get it from their parents, despite their parents being total opposites.
Ms Henderson is a doting, supportive mother. The most knowledgeable you can be about your own son without breaking an NDA. Dustin’s been out to her for years. Since before Will told Jonathan, even. Steve idled in the driveway in case Dustin needed to escape, but from Day One she wanted nothing more than for him to be happy with the person of his choosing, whatever gender they happened to be. If ever a parent were to be told the six of them are together, it would be Ms Henderson, easy. Mom might take it okay, but she doesn’t keep secrets from Hop, and he would shit his pants.
Mr and Mrs Wheeler, or, like Dustin titles them because he sees himself as equal with most adults and far above them, specifically, Goddamn Karen and Fuckin’ Ted -which is still more respect than Max has, with Mr and Mrs Useless- they have different opinions. For them bisexuality is Mike pretending to not be straight for rebellion’s sake. Like his hair, and mocking everyone, and the tattoo on his forearm he got when El went in for her coverup weren’t enough to satisfy his rebellion quota, so he topped up by telling people he likes to suck dick. Fucking ridiculous.
Dustin and Mike both get fueled by their parents in very different ways. Love, or hate, they both come to school each morning with enough energy to fight everyone all day long. Dustin stands on tabletops and screams, Mike sneers, and they both brawl if they have to. Mike is gigantic, if twiggy, and he’s got a weight set in his room and can throw a punch. Dustin is thick, built like a bull, and he doesn’t go down easy. Surprise surprise, bullies, the kids who jumped off a cliff and electrocuted a man to death to protect friends don’t think twice about a little baby fistfight.
Will just doesn’t have that inner core of energy. He gets tired, or scared. Either way it’s bad, a direct path to frozen fast. He’s pretty sure Terry Ives has more fight in her locked body than him. Max, El, Lucas, they’re all more likely to fight back than him. They all have to be careful in their own ways -black boys are more harshly punished, El can kill if she doesn’t self regulate, and Max’s bones are fragile- but ultimately they’re all aggressive. All fight, on the fight vs flight vs freeze graph, Will the only outlier.
He’s not totally without a spark though. He’s at the Valentine’s dance, after all. He could be at home, safe. Instead he’s had one on one dances with El, Max, and Mike. Would it be smarter to not dance with Mike, flagrant homosexual? Yes. Is Will going to have dances with Dustin and Lucas too? Also yes. And if he’s lucky, his personal batch of rumours will keep the fists out of his face.
To this day, he doesn’t know how it got out. El, Mike, Jonathan and Argyle all say they didn’t tell, and Will knows he didn’t, but somehow it got around that back in California Will and El got expelled and narrowly escaped jail for trying to murder someone with a roller skate. Will hates it, all the lies woven hideously around the truth, but it does come in handy sometimes. It puts him on par with Lucas on the general population’s danger scale, whom everyone knows killed Jason while Andy tried to stop Erica from double teaming the poor guy.
Dustin does in fact succeed in annoying the Glee Club reps, Bruce and Lorraine, into five minutes with the camera. Will didn’t get to experience freshman year with everyone, and by the time they got back he was gone, but he’s been told Dustin going off the way he does is an affectation learned from the late Eddie Munson. Will doesn’t think it’s fair to put the trait entirely on Munson, Dustin’s been lecturing since fourth grade, even as a kid not afraid to call anyone stupid. But the metal, the long hair, the speeches centred around the evils of mob mentality and the crimes religion causes? Yeah, some of it is to honour his fallen mentor. It’s enough to make you wonder if he’d’ve gotten into sports if Steve had croaked it instead of Eddie.
Equipment granted, they start taking what’s bound to be a ton of pictures. Will’s certain Dustin will make a point of hanging out in the darkroom and collecting what he likes of the results. Photos are big in the Henderson house, Will’s never seen a teenage boy scrapbook like Dustin does with his mom. Max likes to give stick figure drawings to her lovers, and demands them in return. El likes letters. Mike likes phone calls, and late night whispers on the walkie. And Will? He’s going to paint this night. Maybe not literally, six folks dancing together in tacky pink lighting, balloons everywhere. Instead it’s going to be something abstract. Twenty different shades of green, stroked and swiped and woven together. In his quiet, hidden way, it’s going to mean something. Because that’s the way he can be, when he’s surrounded by fighters on all sides.