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Rain patters on the bedroom windows, creating a soothing rhythm that puts Will Byers in mind of his childhood. Long summer days spent with his best friends down in the basement; a time when they fought monsters and forged lifelong bonds long before it all became far too real.
They’re a long way away from those afternoons. Will, especially, as he spends the day not with his guy friends but with his adoptive sister and their best girl friend.
The room has a different energy, but there’s also a certain ease. An unexpected shorthand that Will wouldn’t trade for anything, even if he could hop in a time machine and return to ten-hour D&D campaigns, crass jokes, and snacks that made his stomach hurt, because Mike’s house always had the best snacks.
Mike.
“Ah, shit. He’s doing it again.”
“Language,” El murmurs, absentmindedly. She turns the page of her magazine. “Doing, what?”
Max Mayfield looks between Will and his sister. She wears a conspiratorial smirk that can only mean Will won’t want to hear what she says next.
“Thinking about Wheeler.”
“Fuck off,” Will says, instinctively.
“Language,” Max and El chorus, albeit mockingly by Max.
El rolls her eyes and launches the magazine at Max, who deftly dodges it from her spot on the bed. She shifts onto her knees and looks expectantly at Will.
“I’m right. I know I am, so don’t bother denying it.”
Will looks uneasily at El who simultaneously meets his eye. The seventeen-year-old girl scoffs and gives her brother an exasperated look.
“You cannot make me feel uncomfortable about this,” El says. “Mike and I haven’t dated in over a year. Longer, if you think about it.”
“True story,” Max says, pointing an index finger at El in agreement. “What is it this time? Was he an asshole or the man of your wet dreams?”
“His what dreams?”
“Don’t,” Will warns Max before she can answer El. Max looks innocently at him, but Will isn’t moved. “He’s my friend. My best friend who’s …”
Looked at Will differently since he told Mike that he’s gay.
Will’s face must do something, because El and Max are both paying full attention now. The magazines on El’s bed are long-forgotten and Will’s art supplies might as well be decorative rather than serving any actual purpose.
It’s not like he can focus on much of anything these days.
“Did he hurt you?”
Will looks at El. She has a fierce, dangerous glint in her eyes.
“… No.”
“I’m not convinced,” Max says with a deep frown.
“I will kill him,” El asserts.
“What’d he do?”
“Guys,” Will sighs. “It’s not anything he did or said. It’s just …” He runs a hand over his face. “He knows I like guys. Not him,” he specifies. “Just guys. And now it’s weird.”
“Weird, how?” Max demands. “Did he say something?”
“No,” Will stresses. “I can’t explain it; it’s just something I can feel. I told him, and he said that it wouldn’t be weird, but it is. It’s like we’re learning to be friends all over again, but that shouldn’t be something you learn. You just are. And …” Will’s voice catches. “I hate it.”
Will ducks his head so he doesn’t see the pitying look on either of their faces. It turns out that he doesn’t need to worry about it, because the girls make an executive decision to dog-pile on him. Will lets out a choked laugh of surprise.
“Fuck him,” Max declares. El makes a noise of agreement. “See? If Hopper, here, isn’t berating me for cursing, I must be onto something.”
The girls lift themselves off of him, but Will continues to lie there on the bed. It’s mildly amusing to him how close he ended up becoming with both of them, especially given how much Will had unfairly resented them for his friends’ actions in the Summer of ’85.
Now, Will cannot imagine his life without them as his confidants.
“Okay: choice,” Max declares. Will tilts his head to look at her. “We watch a movie or continue ranting about stupid boys. With ice cream.”
Will and El exchange a look.
“Movie,” they chorus.
***
“Aw,” El whispers. Max looks over at her. “He’s like your pet.”
Max rolls her eyes, but it’s hard to disagree. They relocated to the living room about an hour ago to watch the movie, but only two of them have stayed awake. El quickly claimed Hopper’s aptly named La-Z-Boy while Max and Will took opposite ends of the couch.
Somewhere along the way, Will’s eyes had begun drifting shut. Max saw that he was fighting to stay awake but that his neck was at an awkward angle that would kill later. That’s when she put one of the pillows on her lap and all-but yanked him down until he laid on it.
His slow breathing came almost immediately afterwards.
“Seems fitting,” Max quips, nodding at the television.
Why they decided to watch Lady and the Tramp is beyond Max. Though, the real question is why they even own that VHS in the first place. It would be one thing finding it at the Wheeler household considering Holly’s age compared to their own.
“He is really comfortable with you.”
Max is a bit more reluctant to agree with El’s latest assessment. It’s true, but it almost feels like she’s giving herself more credit than she’s owed. She runs her fingers through Will’s hair like he is a sleeping cat.
“I’m pretty sure he’s just exhausted,” Max eventually replies. “You saw the dark circles.”
El’s lips turn down at the sides before nodding.
“It isn’t fair,” El insists. “He deserves to be happy.”
Skeptically, Max says, “You think that’s possible as long as he’s hung up on Wheeler?”
“I was,” El points out. “Once.”
“You had no frame of reference,” Max counters. “He was your first boyfriend.”
“Lucas was yours.”
“And look what kind of mess we were until after I woke up.”
Max’s smile softens around the edges as she thinks of the boy who never gave up on her. Who reached parts of her soul locked inside a memory that only Vecna seemed to hold the key to for what felt like an eternity.
As for Will … Well, Max supposes it isn’t all that different. From the stories that she’s heard, Will was born and there was Mike. They met on the first day of Kindergarten, for fuck’s sake. How is Will supposed to move on from the boy who was always there, even if it would make him sane?
Neither one of them gets a chance to say anything else, because the front door opens. In walks three soaking wet boys in rain ponchos. Max rolls her eyes and stops the movie. There is pretty much no chance that they’ll finish it now, and they were already barely watching it.
“Howdy,” Dustin calls as he removes his shoes.
“Shhh,” El hushes. The three boys give her strange looks until they move closer. “He’s asleep.”
“He okay?” Lucas asks with a concerned expression.
Neither girl responds, but Max gives Mike a hard look. He furrows his brow.
“What?” he asks, defensively. “What’d I do?”
“I don’t know,” Max replies in a casual tone. “Guilty conscience?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“What is anyone talking about?” Dustin asks.
Max watches as Mike’s eyes zero in on the hand that still strokes Will’s hair. Will shifts on her lap, but then he settles into presumably a more comfortable position and stays asleep. Mike’s expression is more pinched than before, and he crosses his arms like …
Like he’s jealous.
You stupid bastard, Max thinks in disbelief.
Almost as cosmically true as Will being tragically clueless.
“Problem?” Max challenges him.
“Why are you doing that?” Mike asks. Max raises her eyebrows. “He’s not your boyfriend.”
“No,” Max agrees. “My boyfriend’s standing right there.” She appraises Lucas. “Do you have a problem with this?”
“No. Why would I?” Lucas says, quickly. “You and Byers are friends.”
“I date him ‘cause he’s smart,” Max tells El with a wry smile.
“Why are you being weird?” El asks her ex-boyfriend.
“I’m not,” Mike insists. “I just think it’s strange that Max and Will are cuddled up like couples act. Dustin agrees with me, right?”
“Dude, you couldn’t pay me to get into whatever this is.”
Mike shoots Dustin a betrayed look. He turns in a last-ditch effort to Lucas. To his credit, Lucas also looks like Mike has lost his damn mind.
“Even if Byers wasn’t a better friend than that, and I didn’t trust my girlfriend,” Lucas prefaces, “when has he ever shown any interest in girls?”
Mike tenses and looks at Lucas like he just crossed some sort of invisible line.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike demands. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Of course there isn’t,” Dustin says. “That’s not what Lucas is saying, is it?”
“No, but Wheeler knows that,” Lucas says, narrowing his eyes. “Like he knows we’ve defended Will our whole damn lives against the assholes who made assumptions about him.”
“Looks like you may still need to,” Max chimes in.
“Max,” El interjects, sharply.
Ignoring her, Max looks directly at Mike.
“Just because someone doesn’t call you a name, doesn’t mean they can’t still hurt you,” Max says. “Take me for example. My vision’s shitty now, but a random asshole calling me a cripple isn’t what I hate most. It’s when someone that I know treats me differently. When it shouldn’t change anything.”
Max watches the color drain from Mike’s already pale complexion.
“Is that what he thinks?” Mike whispers. “That I see him differently?”
“Don’t you?”
“Hold on. Pause,” Dustin says, holding up his hands. “Did Will tell you he’s gay?”
“Pretty sure that’s a question Will should answer. Not one of these two.”
Five heads turn quickly to look at a bleary-eyed Will. He rubs his eyes tiredly and lifts his head off the pillow before surveying the room. Then, he looks at the TV.
“Did I miss the pasta scene?”
El’s squeak of laughter leads to the girl covering her mouth.
“You did,” Max confirms, similarly amused. “It’s overrated anyway.”
Will’s jaw drops, seemingly forgetting why he woke up before. Dustin, to Max’s even greater amusement, looks equally outraged.
“Bite your tongue!” Dustin cries.
“He’s right,” Will says next. “It’s one of the most iconic, romantic scenes in animated cinema. In the history of all cinema.”
“I guess that answers who actually owns this VHS,” Max says with a teasing grin.
“And proud of it,” Will says, firmly. He glances slightly at the others. “Same feeling applies to, uh … what you were talking about before. At least I’m trying to be.”
“No judgment here, man,” Lucas says.
“Ditto,” Dustin says. “Sorry if we ever made you feel like you couldn’t tell us.”
Will shakes his head, but Max sees some of the tension leave his shoulders.
“I figured out early on who it’d be dangerous to tell. It wasn’t you guys,” Will says. “Knowing it is one thing. Saying it out loud … hasn’t felt any more natural. I’m working on it.”
“Can we talk?” Mike blurts out. Everyone stares at him, including Will. “In private?”
Max isn’t surprised when Will doesn’t weigh his options for more than a split second. She knows what the answer is going to be before Will nods his head or gets up from the couch. She knows Will. She knows how Will feels about Mike and knows what he’s meant to him, even when Mike disappoints him.
She has no doubt that Will can hold his own, but she’s equally aware that Mike holds Will’s heart in the palm of his hands. That’s more power than any teenage boy who’s ass-backwards when it comes to love, and his own emotional intelligence, should have as far as she’s concerned.
The other four are silent as Will leads the way out of the living room. Mike trails him up the stairs and presumably toward Will’s bedroom. Max exchanges a look with El.
“What’s that look mean?” Lucas asks.
El gives her a knowing look. Max rolls her eyes, understanding the message loud and clear.
Lucas is smart. But he’s still an oblivious boy.
***
Will’s bedroom is a sanctuary, and Mike cannot shake the remarkably strong feeling that he should genuflect once he crosses the threshold.
It’s the power that surrounds Will. It’s not just innate in him, but it’s infused in every part of his life to the point that it follows him. There’s power in the way that Will moves, both careful and guarded but with a sense of purpose that came out of understanding who he is and how that could be harnessed to destroy the Upside Down.
There’s power in the art displayed around his room. It’s not displayed for show, but seemingly as a reminder. A promise to the small boy with the big box of crayons that his lifeline is still a huge part of who he is. He is still someone who sees beauty where there’s darkness and color when he’s told that things are black and white.
Most potent right now is the power behind Will’s eyes. It isn’t always obvious, especially when he doesn’t quite meet Mike’s eyes, like he hasn’t fully done since the three boys came in from the rainstorm. But it’s there. Mike is always searching for it, using it as an anchor when it feels as if he’s the one who’s adrift. He’s the one losing parts of himself, whereas Will’s gaining new understandings of the most intrinsic elements that define and matter to him.
“Mike?” The raven-haired boy blinks and meets a pair of hazel eyes. “Are you okay?”
That. That’s also Will’s power. The ability to put others first, even when they don’t deserve it. He did it for years when he tried to be the son that Lonnie wanted and expected him to be. It wasn’t all that different in school when he made himself smaller so he wouldn’t take up any extra space or attract the attention of bullies.
He’s also always done it with Mike. He puts Mike’s needs ahead of his own. Even when Mike hasn’t deserved it.
Especially when I haven’t deserved it, Mike thinks dejectedly.
“No,” Mike replies, candidly. “I’ve been a shitty friend. And … you deserve to know why.”
Will’s eyes grow noticeably wider, but he doesn’t respond. He is giving the floor to Mike who, upon realizing that, feels his heart beat harder and quicker in his sternum.
Be brave, Mike thinks. Be strong like Will.
“You telling me you’re gay did change things. Not like that,” he rushes to say when Will’s face slackens. “I don’t care — no, shit. What I mean is, that doesn’t bother me. You deserve to be happy and if this is that, then that’s all there is to it, right?”
“… Right,” Will says, uncertainly. Mike is already fucking this up big time. “Why did you think there was something going on between me and Max?”
Shit.
Grimacing, Mike says, “You heard that?” Will doesn’t respond. He barely even blinks. “It looked … I dunno. Closer than friends.”
“Intimate” is the word that he’s circling, but Mike would sooner drop dead than use that word to describe Will with anyone else, let alone Max. As it is, Mike’s face already feels warmer than it should and there’s a slight dampness underneath his collar that has nothing to do with the rain.
“So you thought she was interested in me?” Will asks, skeptically. “We’d never do that to Lucas. Plus, even without all that other stuff, she’s like a sister to me.”
“I know,” Mike groans. He needs to regain control of the conversation. “I didn’t say it was rational. It was a knee-jerk reaction. I was a jerk. I always am.”
There’s a beat of silence before Will exhales and shakes his head.
“Only in days ending in ‘Y.’”
It takes Mike a few seconds to understand what Will just implied. His jaw drops and sees that Will is fighting a smile. Mike huffs with a mix of amusement and outrage.
“I’d be more offended if I hadn’t just made a case for myself,” Mike says. Somberly, he adds, “But what I was saying before.”
“About things changing?”
Nodding, Mike stares out the window. It’s teeming, the rain hitting the glass sideways as the wind whips the branches on a nearby tree. Mike expects that they’ll need to take backroads when they head home. The trees on this side of town are notorious for littering the roads.
“It got me thinking about how we’ve been friends forever,” Mike says. “How I felt for a while like there was something you were holding back, but I figured you’d tell me eventually. And that I’d be there for you like you’ve always been there for me.”
“Mike …”
“I wasn’t.”
“That’s not true,” Will cuts in. “Yeah, it’s been weird since then, but you didn’t do anything wrong or make it feel weird when I told you. I told you. That, in itself, means that I felt comfortable. And I don’t regret that.”
“Not even now?”
Will rubs the corners of his eyes, but Mike suspects it’s from a different sort of fatigue. One that no amount of sleep can diminish and replace with relaxation or peace of mind.
“You know what you just said about holding something back?” Will says instead. Mike nods. “Double that and reverse it. What are you dancing around saying?”
Lips dry, Mike’s tongue darts out as a nervous reflex.
“I’ve been seeing things differently,” Mike rambles. “Wondering what else I’ve seen as black and white. What else I might’ve missed. Not about you or about the Party, but life in general. How we see everyone and the types of categories and labels we give ourselves and each other. I guess what I’m wondering is …”
He trails off mid-sentence. The words just sit there on his tongue. Weighing it down like a kid on one end of the seesaw who refuses to push off, because he’s not sure where it’ll take him. If he will soar or come crashing down to earth with a thud.
Gently, Will prods, “You’re wondering …?”
His tone is so gentle. Will encourages him in a way that mystifies Mike, because how is he so patient? How has Will not screamed at him or demanded that he say what he basically forced them to come up here so he could say?
“I’m wondering,” Mike croaks. He clears his throat, cheeks flushed from the inner betrayal. “How you knew you liked boys.”
Will’s mouth forms an “O” shape before he lowers himself onto his bed. To their shared surprise, Mike collapses into a pretzel in the middle of Will’s bedroom. Mike doesn’t quite meet Will’s eye, suddenly feeling like a pupil on the first day of school. Unsure what sort of teacher is waiting to make his year great or hell on earth.
Except, it isn’t anything like that. Not when Will slides off the bed and onto the floor. He leans his back against it, but he’s now eye-level with Mike. There isn’t a moral or experiential high ground. They’re equals.
Will deliberately guaranteed it.
“The crush came before the label,” Will confesses. Mike stiffens. “It wasn’t like a lightning bolt or anything. It just happened naturally, but then all the other voices started to get louder about how I was ‘this’ or ‘that’, and I tried to kill that part of myself.”
“You mean hide it … don’t you?” Mike says, feeling a tight knot form in his chest.
“No, I don’t,” Will says with a sad smile. “Hiding who you are and trying to kill it are two different things. I thought if it was gone, the … yearning would hurt less. Not just for the crush, but for the life that never fit me like it seemed to fit the rest of you.”
Mike latches onto two words in particular.
Seemed to.
Will the Wise. Will’s perceptiveness and permission shouldn’t amaze Mike as much as it does, but Mike supposes it’s inevitable. His best friend has always seen him exactly as he is, even if Mike has taken the scenic route to get there, himself. He’s never expected anything of anyone that they couldn’t give or shouldn’t want for themselves.
Will’s always taken Mike’s breath away, and he continues to do it right now. From that first day on the swingset when they tried seeing who could pump their legs the hardest to right now as they’re sitting in Will’s dimly lit bedroom.
That moral high ground might be non-existent, but Will is still encouraging Mike to reach new heights. To embrace unexamined altitudes if it means seeing a fuller picture of who he is and what Mike needs to feel most complete. Most self-actualized.
He doesn’t expect Mike to do it alone either. The hand in Will’s lap might as well be outstretched in offering. Waiting for Mike to take it without any judgment or reservations.
Mike understands a thing or two about yearning.
“I don’t think it fit me like I thought it did.” Mike’s voice is tight. “I think I … put too much pressure on myself to make it fit. And now I’m just bent or … or broken.”
Like trying to force the wrong puzzle piece out of frustration. Or insisting that one answer to the crossword must be a certain word despite knowing it won’t work with the others surrounding it.
“I promise, you’re neither one of those things.”
The corners of Mike’s eyes burn when he looks at Will. Mercifully, there is no pity in Will’s eyes. Just a lot of understanding and empathy for what Mike is saying without using the actual words.
“And proud of it. Same feeling applies to, uh … what you were talking about before. At least I’m trying to be.”
“I’m not proud like you.”
“Do you think it happened overnight?” Will says, softly. He leans forward, but stays where he is seated so that there’s still distance between them. “It took years. And it’s still so fresh. It wasn’t something I could do on my own either. I needed other people to believe in me. Including you.”
“What?”
Will exhales and shakes his head.
“If it weren’t for you and Robin, we wouldn’t be here,” Will says. “Her helping me realize I had what I needed inside of myself. You thinking I was actually a sorcerer …”
“You were a sorcerer. Still are.”
“I needed to believe all of it, myself, but I needed to hear it, too,” Will says like there wasn’t any interruption. “Just like you needed to be reminded you’re the heart. And I’ll keep reminding you until you believe it, too.”
“I was always so jealous of the way you saw things so clearly when we were young. I guess I still am,” Mike says with a self-deprecating laugh. “All that talk about me being the ‘heart’, or making El feel like she isn’t a mistake …”
“I lied.” Mike freezes. He looks closer at Will. “Sort of.”
Mike doesn’t say anything and neither does Will. They just stare at one another, feeling like an ocean is separating them by way of the floor space between them. When Mike cannot tolerate one second more of silence, he clears his throat.
“I don’t understand.”
“Everything I said in that pizza van was a version of the truth,” Will clarifies. He looks paler than before, but there is also clear determination in his eyes. His jaw is set. “I believed every word. It just didn’t come from El.” A beat. “You’ve made me feel like I’m not a mistake.”
The roaring intensifies in Mike’s ears.
“Not always.” Will blinks in surprise. “Not that one summer.”
“Thank God we’re not permanently frozen at fourteen,” Will says, lightly. Mike doesn’t crack a smile. “It was a bad summer. It hasn’t been a bad friendship. Not even close.”
Something warm settles in Mike. Like an ember spreading, giving him hope and the sense that he can see more than a few feet ahead of him. Like there might be a brighter future, any future, stretched out in the distance if he just keeps taking the steps toward it.
“Will,” he begins. He takes a deep breath. “Did El really commission that painting?”
Conflict rages behind Will’s familiar, grounding hazel eyes.
“No.” Mike cannot help his slight intake of breath. “D&D is our thing.”
Our thing. It’s true, and Mike isn’t sure how it hasn’t occurred to him since Will gave him that work of art. Once life settled down and Mike found the painting tucked away in his basement, safe from destruction, he should’ve understood what Will couldn’t say in the van.
Hell. Mike should have understood what the painting meant when Will told him that he really doesn’t like girls, because that’s who El had assumed Will was painting for during all those months in Lenora. An unnamed girl that he liked.
“The crush came before the label. It wasn’t like a lightning bolt or anything. It just happened naturally.”
Quietly, Will asks, “Are you mad?”
“No,” Mike says. He says it slowly, but he means it. “You put the Party and … and me ahead of yourself. You did what you thought was needed for us to go on, and it’s just hard to accept that you made the right call when it hurt you in the process.”
“I survived,” Will points out. He gives Mike a reassuring smile. “We’re all still he —”
“Do you still have that crush?”
The color that was previously absent from Will’s face immediately rushes to his cheeks. That, in itself, is a pretty clear answer to Mike’s question. Evidence that Mike can cling to right now while everything else feels hopelessly abstract and uncertain.
“No.” Mike’s heart sinks like a rock. “It stopped being just a crush years ago.”
The ember becomes an inferno.
And suddenly, he needs to be closer to Will. Not just staring at him from across the room like the two of them have done for so many years. They’re not those kids anymore. As much as they’ve grown out of old clothes, old bikes and, God knows, old hair styles, Mike’s beginning to wonder when they outgrew what they mean to each other.
When the label of “best friends” was no longer big enough to contain their multitudes.
Mike should have stood up right then. He should’ve gotten to his feet and walked over to Will’s bed. Instead, he inches his way over on his hands and knees. He immediately regrets making that choice, because there’s absolutely no way of doing it with any dignity.
The only thing that makes it mildly less mortifying is Will fighting against his own laughter. Mike finally settles beside Will and arches an eyebrow at Will’s red face.
“What?” Mike says, dryly. “We’ve been on hundreds of crawls. Why should it be different now?”
Will bursts out laughing.
“That’s bad,” Will manages to choke out. “Like … ‘dad-level joke’ bad.”
“If me coming over here like a centipede didn’t kill the mood, you comparing me to Ted Wheeler definitely did.”
“Sorry,” Will says through a giggle.
A giggle. An unfairly sweet giggle. As Will leans forward, his bangs fall into his eyes. Without thinking, Mike reaches to brush it aside before his hand freezes mid-air. Will’s laughter fades, like the air was punched out of his lungs.
Searching for any sign of discomfort, Mike inches his hand closer to Will’s forehead. Will’s hair is as soft as he remembers it from when they were kids. Back then, touching each other’s hair and face felt as normal as grabbing the other’s hand to run somewhere quick.
Then, there was that flip. A day that no one quite remembers, but it’s when they realize that time marches on and there are certain things that boys have to leave behind. Should no longer do.
Rules that overrode the Party’s rules for far too long.
Will’s eyes closed when Mike made contact. He hears the brunette’s slightly uneven breathing as he withdraws his hand. It’s astonishing to Mike that he could have any effect on Will or such a significant one like he just witnessed.
“The whole time?” Mike whispers.
Will opens his eyes. They’re clear and devastatingly honest.
“Most of it.” Then, “You’re really not weirded out by me?”
“God, no,” Mike insists. He turns so that he can face Will more. “I didn’t know how to act around you, because … I didn’t know how to act. I started thinking about what you must’ve spent years thinking about, and then it didn’t seem so strange to me. Then that freaked me out.”
“And you spiraled,” Will finishes. Mike nods. “Vintage you.”
“Yeah,” Mike chuckles, half-heartedly. “Your wisdom has always made me better.”
Will pulls a face at the line but laughs anyway. Next, he exhales and rests his left temple on the side of his bed. Mike slouches slightly so that he mirrors Will with his right temple.
“This is not how I expected today to go,” Mike admits.
“Ditto,” Will says. “I figured I’d take how I felt about you to my grave.”
Now, it’s out there. It’s known in a way that it technically already was, but not by using the actual words. That pivot is so significant that Mike feels like a little kid again. Like he’s rediscovering all the ways that you can care about someone and just how big those feelings can become.
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Will is worrying at his lower lip, so Mike nudges their feet. “Seriously. I wish I knew back then what I know now.”
“I dunno,” Will murmurs. “I think … I think we did it right. A normal life without the Upside Down would’ve obviously been better, but that and everything else brought us closer.”
“It sounds like you’re glad it happened.”
“I’m not,” Will clarifies. “But I’m glad we met El. I’m glad we became friends with Steve and Erica and Robin.”
A pit forms in Mike’s stomach.
“And Eddie.”
“And Eddie,” Will echoes. “I’m glad my mom has Hopper. And you weren’t half as close with Nancy as you are now.”
It’s true. There’s an alternate scenario out there where he and Nancy don’t find common ground. Where she’s just his obnoxious, bitchy older sister instead of their protector. Someone who fires sawed-off shotguns and strategizes for crawls like she’s done it for her entire life.
His sister is a bad-ass, and Mike is so glad that he didn’t miss learning that lesson.
“Then, there’s us.”
Mike focuses on Will. A slight smile plays on the other boy’s lips, making something flutter inside of Mike’s chest. His right hand rests on the carpet as he twists some of the loose strands.
“We’ve had our ups and downs.”
“Pun?” Mike shakes his head. “Good.”
Mike shoves him lightly, causing a grin to break out on Will’s face. Then, Will shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t change our story.” His eyes sparkle as if to say: See? You’re not the only one who can be corny. “Not if it means ending up here. Happier than I’ve felt in years. Ever.”
It doesn’t happen in slow motion for Mike. Not like how Will later says it did for him. Almost as if an invisible string — “Or a pasta noodle?” Mike will tease. — is doing all the work.
The build-up is everything else. All the moments when they would laugh around the D&D table in Mike’s basement. The feeling of relief when Will returned and they reunited, knowing that he would be safe on some level as long as he was there with them. Those weeks of separation in Hawkins that summer, followed by months of distance when they were pulled apart by a force greater than two thousand miles and an emotional ocean that neither knew how to cross.
To them rebuilding their bond in a war-torn Hawkins. Fighting Henry Creel and the Upside Down one final time. To Mike, seeing firsthand, as the power that he always knew existed inside of Will burst out in the most epic showdown with the creatures that originally took him from them.
To now. Sitting in Will’s bedroom. Faces inches apart from each other. Until it’s no longer two boys figuring it out at all. It’s one feeling.
They meet each other somewhere in the middle of it.
The first thought that crosses Mike’s mind is that Will’s lips are surprisingly soft. He hadn’t given it much thought — he tried not to let himself think of Will that way, period — but now it’s all that’s on his mind. Until his hand slips into Will’s hair, and he has the same thought there.
Swiftly followed by another one:
Why didn’t I do this sooner?
For someone who Mike knows hasn’t kissed anyone before, Will’s a far better kisser than Mike was on his first try. Maybe it’s maturity. Maybe it’s that the stakes are higher for the two of them and there’s no room for awkwardness, at least in Will’s mind. It certainly feels that way for Mike.
It’s so severe that he expects to mostly feel tension, but any of that fades as soon as Will grabs his other hand and squeezes it. It melts away most of Mike’s anxiety and, now in its place, is a feeling that he’s strengthening roots.
Roots that have existed for years, buried so deep in the earth that the tree growing in its place is immovable. And somewhere, just there to the right, is Castle Byers. A sanctuary. Home.
Will. Will. Will.
“All good in here, Byers?”
The two boys spring apart as the door opens. They look up with wide eyes and see Max staring back at them. She blinks several times and then hums. She turns and walks back down the hall while shouting:
“The boys owe us twenty bucks, El!”
The door is still open, but neither of them can process any part of what just transpired. Will looks at Mike with still comically wide eyes. Mike opens his mouth like he’s prepared to say something and proceeds to close it with a skeptical expression on his face.
Then, they hear Dustin shout:
“No fucking way!”
They both burst out laughing.
“I feel like we should be angry that our best friends are betting on us,” Will giggles.
“We sure they’re not betting on me?” Mike says, wryly. “I wouldn’t have taken those odds that I’d finally be honest and share a feeling.”
“You’ve always valued honesty,” Will says, shaking his hand. He reaches for Mike’s hand. “And you feel more than you give yourself credit for. That’s why it’s so easy for people to be who they are around you. There’s so much room to explore. And it’s safe. You’re safe.”
Mike’s heart squeezes at almost the exact moment that Will squeezes his hand.
I love you, he thinks helplessly.
Maybe it’s not too soon to feel it. Maybe it wouldn’t be too soon for Will to hear it. All Mike knows is there’s finally the time and the space to say it when they are ready. Preferably on a day where there weren’t already half a dozen other revelations.
It deserves its own moment.
Mike smiles against his best friend’s lips when Will initiates the next kiss. He cannot wait until that moment comes, if for no other reason than to see the look on Will’s face.
That will be everything.