Work Text:
Mike looks so old, so scultped, so competent in his military green. It stands in calm complement to his rugged dark hair and ivory skin. A blend of maturity and edges, softness and grit.
These thoughts are the ones that tell Will what he reluctantly must do.
“Truck’s coming in 15,” Mike asserts.
“Wait,” Will calls, somewhat against his own will. A part of him immediately wishes he could take it back. Or that he hadn’t been heard.
But like a stupid, loyal dog, Mike reacts accordingly.
“You should hear this too,” he admits, feeling as though each word is beyond his own control, like they’re ripping pieces out of his chest as they escape his body. But it has to be done. They have to know. “And can you…can you get Jonathan?”
Mike looks at him for a moment longer, the way he always does. Like he’s concerned and like he’s waiting for something and like he’s…just curious. Taking a borderline academic interest in Will’s wellbeing. A silence of calculation that always leaves Will wondering what could possibly be going on inside his head.
“Of course,” he finally answers. “Anyone else?”
Will shakes his head. “No. No, that’s it.”
Mike nods. It’s reminiscent of a soldier. He’s devoted, and he’s intense, and he’s got a few screws loose, but there’s a good heart in him. The kind of heart they’ll need if there’s any hope of success waiting for them on the other side.
There’s discord in Will’s chest as his friend disappears and is theoretically finding Jonathan. He looks back over at Joyce, and sees that there’s already a telltale gleam forming in her eyes. She suspects, obviously. Everyone does. It’s why he has to get ahead of this thing.
The visions press against the edges of his conscious mind once again. Get out, he hears Henry mutter. Over and over. Then the slew of terrible predictions, of friends with coldness in their eyes, family members falling farther and farther from his periphery, and Mike-
Mike returns. He has Jonathan in tow, who only spares a second longer on glowering at the boy in front of him suspiciously before turning his attention to his mom and brother.
“Will,” he breathes, coming to crouch beside him and place a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Mike said you had something important to talk to us about. Is it…is it Vecna?”
His stomach churns. “Sort of.”
He can’t help but keep a section of his attention on Mike. He stays by the door like a sentry. Ready, Will is sure, to turn any uninvited intruders away with a sharp word and a glower. He’s temperamental, that one.
Will wishes he would come closer. He wishes he would leave altogether. He wishes he’d never met him in the first place and he wishes they could spend every day of the rest of their lives together. They might, he realizes ruefully, depending on how their last stand goes tonight. Depending on who makes it out.
But if there is a life on the other side of things, he has to start preparing for it now. And it needs to begin with the truth.
There’s no delicate way to say what he has to say. No way to really soften the blow.
“Henry showed me things,” he finally whispers, and immediately feels Joyce’s grasp on him tighten. “When I was in his head. As a ploy to get me out. To weaken me.”
He must go silent for a little too long, because Jonathan pats his shoulder. “And?” he prompts gently. “What did you see?”
Will lets out a long breath, the words dancing on his tongue. He tries not to let Mike, whose dark eyes are piercing him like a military laser, perturb him. “He showed me what the world will be. For me. If we win, if we stay in this one. It’s not…”
His throat tightens. And he’s never been ashamed of how much he cries, how much he feels, but the tears make things inconvenient at times. When there’s something important to be said. A confession to be taken.
“He doesn’t think it will be a victory for me,” he’s finally able to admit, a drop streaking down his face. “He thinks I’m going to be alone. Inevitably. Because I have…I have secrets.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jonathan’s eyes shift almost imperceptibly toward the back of the room. His chest tightens.
“He showed me a world where you - all of you, even the ones sitting outside - see me. My shames, my fears. These secrets. Some of you hate me. Some of you are worried for me. But either way, the outcome…it’s the same.” He wishes he could speak more loudly. But if he does, he can tell his voice will crack and the tears will come endlessly and nothing productive will be said at all.
Joyce seems near tears herself. “What was the outcome?” she nudges.
Will glances outside, as if he can see down the hill and through the woods to the center of the laboratory where the world cracked open. “Rifts,” he says, almost laughing at the irony. “Unfixable rifts. He showed me your faces as you all walked away from me until…until I was alone.”
It had only been a vision. Will had no reason to believe it would come true, except…
Except that he had been alone before. And the loneliness Vecna had shown him, it had felt all too reminiscent of those days. Only worse. Colder than when he was running through the upside-down with no concept of alternate dimensions or monsters or men with world-destroying plans. Sicklier than when he was held captive inside his own mind watching countless men in a hospital be massacred at the hands of his vessel. Angrier than when the only souls on earth who’d held him through it all each found somewhere else they’d rather be.
He forces himself from the gloom, awakening jerkily back into the real world. Sunlight is streaming through the window, and his chair is uncomfortable, and both Joyce and Jonathan have a grip on his skin.
He sees it on their faces that they want to spring forward, assuring him that such a thing is not only impossible, but absurd. But he supposes they see that he isn’t finished with the admission, and that their words will only be meaningful once the entirety of the truth is out. They restrain themselves, and Will feels a miniscule blossom of gratitude.
It’s time.
His jaw quivers as he goes to speak again. “If I want to enter this battle with the strength I need to make it to the other side, I have to know now what the new world will look like. I have to know if he was lying or…or telling me a truth I’ve known deep inside for years,” he professes shakily.
He hears Joyce’s breath catch. It kills him that he’s hurting her, but it has to be like this. The singular way out is through.
“I think all three of you have suspected. At one point or another,” Will says ruefully. He thinks of careful conversations his mother’s had with him about love where it feels like she’s walking on eggshells, of all the times Jonathan’s hammered home how fulfilling and affirming it is to be a ‘freak’, of a rainy conversation where the root of his discord with his friends came to light.
He wonders if Mike thinks of that moment now. His friend’s stormy eyes betray nothing.
“I’m…” he breathes, savoring the last few moments before the change of the tides, the flipping of the world.
He feels Jonathan’s unwavering hand on his shoulder, as constant it has been from the very day he was born, and suddenly, the raging sea within him calms to nothing more than a cloudy, still lagoon.
He almost smiles as he admits the truth. “I’m gay,” he says quietly.
Instantly, Jonathan’s arms are around him. It might have been suffocating if it wasn’t so relieving. He melts into the embrace as a fraction of the misery caused by Henry’s visions and Will’s own shame dissipates.
He feels Joyce cling to them both, and even more of it ebbs. He’d known, of course, that he had her love. And Jonathan’s too. But to see it so physically, with Joyce’s hands in his hair and Jonathan pressing a kiss to the side of his face…it calms the irrationality that comes with the unknown. Now they are here, in the light, and there is no more cause for anxieties.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers when they all pull apart. “I’m sorry that I…stayed with your father for such a long, long time. When he would say those terrible things about you. And…and tried to take you to baseball games.”
At this, all three of them let out a husky laugh through tears. And it’s wonderful, to find levity in something so dark. Because Will knows as much as the rest of them that it doesn’t matter anymore.
Joyce presses her thumb to his cheekbone. “I won’t lie and tell you I’m not worried,” she says, sobering up again. “But if there’s anything I’ve learned the last few days, it’s that I should take my cues from you. Because you are cunning and…and creative, and-”
“Wise,” comes a voice that implies a much closer proximity than Will had expected.
Suddenly, Mike is behind him, looming like an unspoken blot on the sun. His dark brown eyes are so transfixed on Will’s face that he doesn’t even see the look Joyce and Jonathan give each other before retreating just enough to give the two boys space to face each other.
“Will the Wise,” Mike repeats, crouching down to meet Will at eye level. “The kindest, most intuitive member of our party.”
His lips are cracked. Will wonders if he’s been drinking enough water. There’s an imploring and soothing look to his face that Will has seen before. An earnestness in his gaze. So similar to the nights Mike would take him home and comfort him after his visions got the better of him.
There’s also, clearly, a war being waged behind his eyes. About what, Will can’t say. He only hopes it isn’t about him.
“Are you mad?” he whispers, and he doesn’t even take the time to worry about whether or not the question reveals more than he’d like to let on.
Mike’s eyes grow wide before he shakes his head vehemently. “Never,” he vows.
And now Will begins to sob. He puts his head in his hands and lets the weight of the last few days, the fact that he almost watched the lanky, brooding, ridiculous boy in front of him leave this earth, crush him like a stone. He cries like a child. Like he’s being exorcized all over again.
But there are hands on his wrists, pulling his hands away from his eyes and forcing him to look out into the world again. Forcing him to look at that face he knows so well, knows too well.
“I’m not mad,” Mike insists, and Will might finally and truly be losing it, but he swears there’s a modicum of understanding in his friend’s voice. His fingers seem to be absentmindedly caressing Will’s forearms. “And if anybody else is mad when they eventually find out, I’ll kill them. Swear to god.”
Will tries to breathe normally, but the sensation of fingertips on skin is interrupting the usual flow of information in his brain. He laughs airily, distractedly. “H-how are you going to do that?” he manages to ask teasingly.
Mike shrugs. “You weren’t there, but I took down a flaming demogorgon with a shovel. I’m kind of a badass now. Figure I could pretty easily do the same with Murray if he has a problem.”
This forces another laugh out of Will. “There’s no way I’m telling Murray,” he says, rolling his eyes at the thought of the bumbling, idiotic conspiracist finding out the piece of himself that has been locked away so deeply and privately.
Mike laughs too, but his eyes don’t leave Will’s face. “Well. You know. If it comes to that.”
“Sure,” acquiesces Will.
He looks around. Sees the joy in the way his mother bites her bottom lip, the pride shining in Jonathan’s watery eyes. And he understands that this is all the family he could ever need. Even if, for some reason, the rest of the world rebukes him, he will always have these most important players at his side. Like they were in the shed. Like they were in his memories.
The thought of family brings a sudden thought to the forefront of his mind, though. “I’ll tell Jane,” he promises, daring to glance back and meet Mike’s gaze for a moment. “Of course I will. I don’t want you having to keep a secret like this from your…your girlfriend.”
And there’s just a moment of hesitation that leaves Will’s head spinning as if he’d just been knocked backward into an endless ravine. “I actually should probably tell you-” Mike begins, only to be cut off when Murray re-enters the room.
“Time to go, kids,” he says, jingling the keys and speaking in that grating and ironic tone that makes Will want to succumb to Vecna and let the world implode. “Your chariot awaits.”
He glances around the circle. “Thank you,” he mouths, the behemoth of a weight lifted from his chest.
There’s still more to say. There’s still more to understand. But for now, he knows he has the undying devotion of his mother, his brother, and his…his paladin. It’s more than enough. It will sustain him through the battle that lies ahead, and more importantly, the inevitable picking up of pieces that waits for them on the right side up.
He leaves the SQWK with a smile.