Chapter Text
When Michael Wheeler walked back into The Squawk and saw Will and his mother talking between themselves in hushed tones, he almost turned around and walked the other way. Then, he saw the look on Joyce’s face. It had progressed past nervousness, past worry. And if it was anyone else that she was talking to, Mike would’ve shrugged it off and walked right back out the front doors again.
But it was Will she was sitting with, and she looked terrified. The furrow of her brows betrayed the anxiety she was feeling despite the way she tried to smile with her chapped lips, which were bitten to shreds, and the way she wrung her hands in her lap. And Will has turned around now, and there’s tears in his eyes threatening to spill, and his shoulders are shaking with every shallow breath he’s rapidly taking, and his face is pale, and Mike feels his stomach drop. He couldn’t let go of the feeling that wormed its way into his stomach even if he wanted to, that same fear he saw on Joyce’s face, he felt pulling at him, calling him to do something, anything.
Instead of comforting Will, or asking what was wrong, or anything remotely helpful, he froze. Like a deer in the headlights, unsure of what move to make. “Oh- uhh…” Mike starts, letting his eyes wander, scanning over Will’s face again. “Sorry. We just heard from Hop. He’s fifteen minutes out, so we should probably leave in five.” Mike points his thumb behind himself, berating himself mentally. “Is everything okay?” he finishes lamely, swallowing the terror that he felt seeing Will that upset again.
After everything Will has been through, you’d think that Mike would’ve at least somewhat gotten used to seeing his best friend in various stages of distress. He never has, though, so every time he sees Will upset, Mike feels something fragile inside his heart crack and crumble. When Vecna came out of the Gate at the military base, Mike felt whatever was left of that soft part of himself weep as Will was toyed with by Vecna. And when Will saved him from the Demogorgon that was about a second and a half away from turning his face into mincemeat by awakening some sort of innate magical power, Mike felt the damage in his chest mend a little as he met eyes with Will from across the carnage.
He can’t lie, the fact that after everything, Mike being in danger was the thing that jumpstarted his powers, not being kidnapped, or spending a week in the Upside Down, or being possessed, or any of the awful things that happened to him, Mike can’t help but feel a little flattered. It made Mike feel less small, less unimportant.
More like someone special, someone treasured, like someone that would be missed. Someone that Will cares about.
That last thought made the ache he felt inside quiet a little, if only for a moment. He quickly squashes the feeling back down again before anything can come of it.
Mike’s train of thought, and the silence that had fallen over the room was interrupted by Joyce, her voice soft as ever, “Yeah, we’ll be out in a minute.” she says, and that’s that. He’ll have to check on Will later, and with that, Mike reluctantly turns to leave. He hears someone stand, and then Will speaks.
“Wait.” Will starts, and Mike turns, meeting his best friend’s eyes, hoping this is the window into whatever it is that’s been making Will look so lost these past few days. “I think you need to hear this too.” Will continues, inhaling sharply, before he continues with, “Everyone does.”
Joyce stands, and squeezes Will’s shoulder. “I’ll go grab the people outside. Wait here.” She says, briefly meeting Mike’s gaze, and then she’s gone down the hallway, and Mike hears the door open gently, then he hears the weight of the door scraping across the floor and slamming shut.
Mike walks further into the room, and he sits himself down on the couch closest to Will, staring at his friend, hoping to glean something, anything, from the boy across from him. Will slumps back into the chair from where he was standing, and Will’s eyes briefly meet Mike’s.
Will’s always been quiet. Even before all of this Upside Down stuff happened, Will was soft spoken and gentle, and he never said anything even mildly inflammatory, which, Mike supposes, is why they made such a good team. Mike the Motormouth, and Will the Whisperer.
Even now, Mike still sees glimpses of that broken down child in Will sometimes, in the way he hides at the edges of groups, or with the way he doesn’t voice his discomfort about something until it’s too late, out of fear of upsetting someone. Will’s skittishness improved for a few years after Lonnie left, which in hindsight makes Mike seethe with anger - he didn’t know the full extent of it, but even at his young age, he was able to figure out that something was wrong. Now he knows the gist of what happened in that house, the hand shaped bruises that wrapped their way around Will’s scrawny arms, Will’s reluctance to speak to any adult, especially men, and Will’s claustrophobia, but at the time, Mike was just so happy to see Will finally coming out of his shell after the dust of the separation settled. Then, of course, he got snatched away to the Upside Down, and nothing had been quite the same since.
Since Will’s return, Mike has messed up more times than he can count on both hands. Prioritising El over his friends, for one. Not that she’s not a good friend to him, but he shouldn’t have said half of the things he said, especially not to Will. The echoes of the fight they had in the rain still haunts Mike.
So there they were, sitting across from one another, both awkwardly avoiding eye contact. “You’re okay, right?” Mike probes, looking up at Will, and Will nods jerkily, turning his gaze to where his mother disappeared down the hall.
Mike extends his hand, and places it over Will’s hands, which he was currently wringing nervously in his lap. “Whatever you have to tell us, it’ll be okay. I promise.”
Will’s hands still, and for a moment Mike regrets his actions. He should’ve known that they weren’t close enough for that to be okay anymore, he should’ve known that it was a bad idea. Mike was such an ass to Will, he’s probably the last person Will wants to hear reassurance from, and-
Mike is cut off by Will weakly chuckling, and Mike can feel his cheeks heat up slightly as their eyes meet. “I hope so, Mike. I.. I have to tell everyone this.”
Both boys hear the door open again, and Mike shoots his hand back from Will’s like he was burned. Will swallows and averts his gaze from Mike, and Mike feels like the biggest idiot on the planet for the way he’s been acting. He’s managed to hurt Will again. This is what happens when you let yourself get close to him, Mike internally chides himself.
Soon enough, everyone is either seated near or standing around Will, and Will’s fidgeting with his hands in his lap again, nervously avoiding looking at anyone in the room. Dustin and Lucas have crowded on the couch next to Mike, and Jonathan, Nancy and Joyce are sitting across the room from him. Steve is leaning by the wall next to Robin, who has sat herself on a desk, and Eleven is sitting on a chair next to Max, who was wheeled in by Vickie.
“I… I-I haven’t told any of you this,” Will starts, inhaling deeply, “because… Because I… I don’t… I don’t want you to s-see me differently. But, the truth is…” he stutters, looking at the floor. “The tr.. truth is I am.. I am different. I just…” Will sighed, swallowing nervously, before he continued. “I just pretended like I wasn’t, because… because I-I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be like everyone else - I wanted to be like my friends, and…”
Mike knows deep down where this conversation is going, and his heart sinks further down into his stomach.
“And I am like you. I’m like you in.. in almost every way. We.. we like playing D&D late into the night,” Will laughed under his breath, “and-and, we like that old person smell in Mike’s basement, and we… we like biking to Melvald’s for malted milkshakes, and we like getting lost in the woods, and-and, getting lost in Family Video and-and arguing about what to rent and settling on Holy Grail for the millionth time.” Dustin chuckles at this, and Mike would too, if he didn’t feel the guilt of the fight they had in 1985.
Will smiles at Dustin, before promptly returning his gaze to the floor, “And… and we like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and-and trading comics, a-and NASA, and Steve Martin, and Lucky Charms, and…” Will’s eyes begin to fill with tears, and Mike’s stomach is churning with the guilt he feels. “Literally all the same things. I just… I just… I-I just… I… I-I I don’t like girls.”
There it is.
God, Mike is an idiot. The memory of them in the rain, Mike yelling ‘It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!’ at Will, after everything he’d been through? All he wanted was to feel normal again, spend time with his friends again like his world didn’t end in 1983 when he was taken. And Mike lashed out at him, for what? The crime of wanting to hang out in his basement like when they were little? Mike’s heart aches, and he wishes he’d done something differently. In his memories, Will bikes off in the rain, and Mike lets him.
Was Mike really just lashing out at Will for acting childish? Or was he desperately trying to cover up his own insecurities by being an asshole? Mike wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole, if it meant he didn’t have to carry the guilt for the way he acted for a second more.
Will’s eyes scan the people surrounding him. Nervously, he follows up with “I mean.. I mean I do, just… just-just not like you guys do.” Will sits up a little bit, and with that, his eyes flicker across the faces of the people in the room with him. Mike can’t bear to meet his friend’s eyes, so he fixes his eyes on his own shoes, feeling his lips pursing themselves into a thin line.
“And I, uh, I had this… crush on someone,” Mike lifts his head up, and he looks at Will, and Will’s wide, teary eyes are looking straight at him, and that fragile thing in Mike’s chest shatters into a million tiny shards when he realises what that means. Will continues hiccuping out a laugh in between his sobs, averting his gaze before he continued, “Even though I know, I know they’re not like me. But-but then I realised, it was… it was never about whether he liked me or not, it was-it was about me… It was about me- and I thought I was finally okay with myself, but… but then today…”
That’s enough. In fact, that’s more than enough. Mike stands, and he doesn’t care that there’s people looking at him, and he falls to his knees in front of Will, wrapping him in a hug. Mike feels Will stiffen in his arms, and he whispers into the crook of Will’s neck through his own tears, “I’m sorry, Will. I’m so fucking sorry. I’ve been such a dick, and all those things I said, I never should’ve said them.”
Then Will is hugging him back, and Jonathan is hugging the two of them, and so is Joyce, and so are Dustin and Lucas, and Eleven’s joined the hug, and Will is sobbing into Mike’s shoulder, and for a brief moment, everything is okay. Mike feels Will’s hands grip at his shirt like he thinks if he lets go, Mike will disappear. Vickie wheels Max’s chair over, and she’s joined the hug, and distantly, Mike can hear Robin crying, but he doesn’t care, because the centre of his world has told him how he feels, and Mike isn’t letting Will go anytime soon.
The rumbling of a car engine pulls everyone from the moment they were having, and the hug separates.
Almost.
Mike is still holding onto Will, and Will is still holding onto Mike.
The world around the two boys shrinks, and for the moment, the only things that matter are Will and Mike. Mike and Will.
Mike really should’ve seen it sooner. As much as Mike prides himself on his intelligence, the fact that Will’s feelings had to be spelled out like that for him to realise, god he was such an idiot.
Suddenly, in this embrace, everything in Mike’s life has finally managed to make sense. The way he never really cared about girls. The way everything he did with El was just what he assumed he had to do. The way he’d cared so much deeper about Will than he did about any of his other friends.
Really, Mike thinks he’s known deep down this whole time. He was just so scared, that he shoved it deep, deep down, until it reared its head again today. The feelings that he’s desperately tried to keep buried emerge, and Mike’s sobbing in Will’s arms.
“It’s been you this whole time, Will. I’m sorry you had to spill your guts for me to realise what I was feeling.” Mike whispers into the embrace. “God, I’m such an idiot- the painting?”
Will chuckles wetly, and in between his sobs he murmurs back, “El didn’t commission it.”
“El and I broke up in California. God, Will, I’m so sorry, I just- I didn’t want to say anything. I was so scared, I think I knew the whole time that it had to be you, but- but I just…”
“I know.”
There was a lot of work to do between the two of them, and there was a lot more work that needed to be done to save the world, but in this bubble, in this brief respite from it all, things felt okay again. Maybe things will keep feeling okay like this.
Mike breaks the hug, finally, and cups Will’s face with his hand, using his thumb to wipe a tear on Will’s red cheek. Mike lets his eyes wander to Will’s lips, and for the first time, he doesn’t fight them. He doesn’t bring his eyes back up embarrassed, or change the subject, or awkwardly pat Will on the shoulder. He looks back into Will’s eyes, an unspoken question in their shared gaze.
Will nodded, and their lips pressed together for the first time, and it was everything Mike was told he should’ve felt with El, and it was beautiful, and God, maybe things really would turn out okay.
The door to The Squawk opens, and the world returns to the two teens, but Mike can’t find it in himself to care. Mike stands, offering his hand to Will.
Will takes it, using the back of his other hand to wipe the tears from his face.
When Hopper walks in and sees Mike hand in hand with Will, he can’t help but groan.
“Why does it have to be my kids you date, Wheeler?”