Chapter Text
Mike doesn’t know why the hell they thought it was a good idea to have Mike and El room together alone.
Maybe it was how El kept oscillating between tears and numb, dead silence after Max. Maybe it was that Mike himself looked as shattered as he felt after the false confession. Maybe it was because Will’s eyes were completely blank as he sat in the van, the only actions he was willing to do being to move away from Mike in the van. But Jonathan, Argyle, and Will are rooming together in the larger two-bed room, and El and Mike got the one.
It’s quiet. El’s clearly not interested in talking to him, and Mike can’t blame her. He doesn’t want to talk to himself either.
Somehow, after nearly an hour of complete silence, they wind up sitting next to each other in silence, staring at the wall side-by-side.
It’s El who speaks first.
“Why… do you not say it without force?” El asks, voice somehow both watery and flat.
Mike has to stay in the quiet for a while, trying to gather his thoughts. “...Do you want me to tell you what… the ‘good option’ is, or the truth?”
El sniffs. “Truth.”
Mike tries to find a nice way to say it. Fails. “Because… I don’t love you. Not… I love you. I love you a lot. You’re one of my best friends. But not- I don’t love you. Not in the way you want me to.”
It’s quiet, and Mike squeezes his eyes shut, trying to shut out the voice in his head saying ‘you ruined everything, you’re a fag, you’re worthless’ at the simple act of telling the truth. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried, I just- I can’t.”
It’s dead silent, and Mike waits for rejection, for her to start crying, for anything, but instead, there’s just a warm, soft hand finding his on the blanket, entwining their fingers.
(She likes lotion. It’s endearing, actually, that she collects lotions and different products because she likes the bottles. She wrote him a letter showing him that she caught a spider and made it a little house in her empty jar. He loves that about her.
Just… as a friend. Always as a friend, no matter how hard he tries.)
When Mike manages to open his eyes, look over at her, she’s looking at him, her expression somewhere between sad and resigned and calm.
“This is not working, is it?” she says quietly.
Mike hesitates, the part of him that wants to hide screaming ‘dig your heels in, don’t let go, you have to be normal,’ but after a second, he nods, eyes tearing up even as he gives a small smile. “No. It’s not.”
They just sit there, both with watering eyes and small smiles as they just look at each other, before El whispers, “Friends?”
Mike manages a bigger smile as he nods, this time harder. “Best friends. Always.”
It’s quiet again, both of them staring at their entwined hands.
Mike just tries to breathe. She doesn’t know that the reason he doesn’t love her is because he’s… wrong. Because he thinks about Will in ways he shouldn’t, cares about Will in ways he shouldn’t. She doesn’t know the reason he-
“Is it Will?” El asks abruptly, and Mike jumps a little, heart rate immediately doubling.
No. No, no, no-
“Are you a telepath now too?” he defensively half-jokes, trying to hide that he’s fully fucking panicking. “Because I’m not-”
“Mike.” El interrupts, still looking at him with gentle brown eyes. “Friends don’t lie. You said you would tell the truth.”
Mike stops mid-word, mouth still-half open, and he feels like all of the air has been sucked out of the room. His hand suddenly itches in hers, everything screaming to turn away and pull his hand away and pretend, pretend, always pretend, but-
Well, friends don’t lie.
And he just agreed to break up and become friends. And he just promised to tell the truth.
Mike hesitates, starts to make a noise, cancels it, manages to look at the wall instead with teary eyes before he squeezes them shut.
“I-” he manages to choke, and then because it’s easier, “How did you- how’d you know?”
“You look at him,” El says slowly, softly, almost wistfully, “and you talk to him and you think about him the way I want to be looked at and talked at and thought about. Like… special. More important than everything and everyone else.”
Mike pulls his hand away and presses his face into his hands, struggling to press down a panic attack, throat closing and breath stopping along with it.
“Mike?” El asks quietly, going to gently rub up-and-down between his shoulder-blades the same way Joyce does whenever she tries to calm anyone down. “What is wrong?”
Mike chokes, shaking his head and making a noise.
El takes a deep breath, gently patting her hand on his head, tangling her fingers in the black curls. “It is alright. I forgive you for loving Will when you dated me.”
“That’s- that’s not the issue.” Mike chokes out. “Never-”
He can’t finish around the lump in his throat.
El’s hand stills, then gently cards through his hair. “I… do not understand.”
It dawns on Mike, with a sickening kind of realization, that she grew up in a lab.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand.
“It’s-” Mike chokes on his tears. “It’s sick, for two-”
He can’t even say it as he just plain cries, tears over the 60 Minutes episode and every slur he and Will have ever been called, tears over the way he can’t help but flinch every time he sees a blood donation poster, tears over the fact that he knows who he wants and can never do anything about it.
El is quiet for a moment as Mike cries, but after a moment, she says, “Is this about AIDS?”
Mike can’t help but go stiff - he didn’t expect her to know what that is, or-
“Will explained. When the people in Lenora would not talk to him because they said they would catch AIDS from him.” El says. Mike stops crying, just… distracted, pulling away from his hands to stare at her. “He said it was a disease that makes everyone sick but it makes the gay people sick more, so everyone is mean even though it is just a disease.”
Mike blinks. “I- he wasn’t… in Lenora?”
“Some people liked him, but most people pretended Will did not exist because they said he had AIDS.” El says simply. “He said it is almost all gay people who are getting sick, and it kills them.”
Mike’s voice cracks when he says it. “It is.”
El doesn’t react to that. She simply shrugs slightly and says, “It is a disease, right?”
He nods, still looking at her, trying to understand.
“The flu does not make anyone evil even if it only spreads in one city.” El says. “And cancer does not make anyone evil even though it makes people die.”
Mike’s breath catches in his throat again. “You- it’s different.”
“Why?” El says. “No sickness is only for bad people. Many good people had AIDS, right?”
Mike doesn’t know. He doesn’t know of anyone that has AIDS. Nobody comes to mind.
“Probably.”
“And AIDS is a disease that gets spread and you are not born with?”
“Yeah.”
“Then AIDS is a sickness like the flu. Not just liking boys. That is not sick. I like boys too and that is not bad.” El says, turning to face him and crossing her feet on the bed. “You and Will are not sick with AIDS, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you are not sick.” El says simply, smiling slightly at him. “And you just like boys, like I like boys and Joyce likes boys and Will likes boys.”
Mike’s brain breaks again. “Will…”
It clicks.
The painting - Mike wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t El. It was Will. It was.
(He thought so, because El doesn’t know anything about D&D, but-)
“You go talk to him.” El says, smiling at him and gently patting his head again. “I am going to take a shower.”
“I- but-”
Mike wants to. God, he wants to. But… isn’t it wrong? To basically go try to get with El’s twin brother when they just-
She moves from his head to his shoulders, staring him dead in the eyes as she holds him still.
“I dump your ass. Again.” El says. “Kiss my brother. I love both my friend and my brother enough to want you to be happy.”