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The images Henry showed Will are sitting like a stone in his stomach as he watches everyone getting up and start to set the plan into motion. Will tries to help where he can, but flashes of awful things keep echoing round his head - the sneers; the disgusted stares; the matching sets of shoulders as everyone turns their back on him. The cold sluice of rain on his body outside the Wheeler’s garage as Will fled from that argument with Mike.
Eighteen months living together and they’ve still never really talked about that day. He’s not surprised Henry could exploit that uncertainty.
The worst part about what Henry had shown him was that it wasn’t a trick or an illusion; Will knows the difference. He can feel it on the back of his neck and in the pit of his stomach. It’s not the future, but it’s a future. Henry showed him one of the pathways of possibility - things that could happen, once everyone finds out about him. It wasn’t even the worst one Will has imagined by himself, but it’s set Will on edge like his imagination alone never could, because Will knows this one could be real.
Worst of all was the look on Mike’s face. It was exactly the same as that day in the garage; except this time, there’s no flash of regret afterwards.
Will knows Henry was just trying to upset him, to knock his confidence. But it worked. The only thing that sickens Will more than the idea of Henry using his deepest fears to destabilise him is the fact that it fucking worked, and now Will doesn’t know if he really believes in himself the way he did yesterday. He doesn’t know if he truly believes that he can do this.
It makes him want to laugh bitterly. Yesterday, Will’s memories of Mike had saved everyone. Today, they might be the thing that kills them.
The bustle of people around him continues even as Will slows to a stop. He leans against a shelf stacked with records, trying to take deep breaths and stop the churning in his stomach. God, if he was normal, he wouldn’t have this worry. He wouldn’t have this secret. Then, Henry couldn’t use it against him.
“You okay?” Robin asks, startling him slightly as she bustles in with an armful of records.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Will says. Robin looks at him with a knowing expression, but she doesn’t push it - just starts shelving records. This is probably what makes him open up to her, in the end. “I’m just… scared,” he admits. “Of… a lot of things,” he says, knowing she’ll know what he means, even if she won’t understand why he’s bringing it up now of all times.
Robin gives him a sympathetic look.
“Me too,” she says. “But we’ve got this. We kinda have to,” she says with a shrug. “And hey, if it all goes to shit, at least we’ll all be too dead to know about it!” she chirps.
Will rolls his eyes, but she’s made him smile despite his anxiety. He’s glad he met Robin. He doesn’t think he’s ever made a friend so fast in his life, and he knows it’s pretty much only because they’re both queer, but he doesn’t care. She’s the only other queer person he’s ever met. She’s the only person who knows what it’s like. Hell, she’s the only other person in the world who knows that he’s queer.
Well, maybe Jonathan. They haven’t talked about it since the desert. Living in the Wheeler’s house, they haven’t really had the chance.
Robin doesn’t have time to stay and pry all his troubles out of him. She’s got a million things to do and to get ready, and she’s clearly in a rush, but she lays a comforting hand on his arm as she dashes back out again with a different stack of records and papers.
“We’re all here for you, Will,” she says softly. “And if no one else is, then I am,” she says, and then she’s gone in a swirl of papers and leather sleeves. As she goes, a record sleeve falls off her stack. Will grabs it, ready to call her back, but she’s already gone. He looks down at the record in his hand; Control, by Janet Jackson. Robin played this on the radio last week, and for some reason the spoken-word intro had stuck in his head, Janet Jackson’s smooth voice crooning into his head,
This is a story about control.
Will turns the record over in his hands, and the gears start to turn in his mind with it. He looks out to where Robin is laughing with Steve - Steve who apparently knows that Robin is queer and is, incredibly, fine with it - and she just… looks so free. He thinks of her words from the tunnels again, but only briefly - it’s the way she looks with Steve that makes Will start to think.
For the longest time, he’s felt powerless. A puppet being strung along, forced to endure whatever torture Henry wanted him to, and forced to suffer as his friends and family did all the work to save him. Will finally saved someone in return, and Henry stuck claws into his mind and ripped out his biggest secret, tortured him with images of rejection, threats of forced outing, backs turned upon him. But Will thinks back to something he learned from one of the psychologists at Hawkins Lab that he’d been forced to see after everything in 1983. He had told her about these weird thoughts he got sometimes - like holding a kitchen knife and imagining stabbing his mom, or standing at the top of a staircase and thinking about throwing himself off it. Thoughts of things he didn’t want to do, but that came into his head anyway.
“It’s perfectly normal,” she told him. “Most people experience these intrusive thoughts from time to time. It’s called ‘the call of the void,’ although some people call it the ‘high place phenomenon.’ It happens when your brain recognises that a situation is dangerous, but gets confused about how to act on it,” she explained. “Imagining yourself doing the most dangerous thing is the way your brain takes control of the situation. Jumping off the staircase is the most extreme action you can take; it puts you in the most control. Of course, you don’t want to do that; that’s why you don’t do it,” she had smiled at him. “But your brain still pictures it.”
It had helped him then, to know those thoughts were nothing to do with the Upside Down and that for once, he was normal. And it had helped him, when he felt so powerless, to know that his brain had been trying to take control even when it couldn’t do it before - even if the way it was doing it was scary.
Will looks back down at the record in his hand, and runs his fingers along the soft edge of the sleeve where the cardboard goes fluffy from wear.
Control of what I say,
Control of what I do.
He thinks about Robin, and about what she said about coming out to Steve. How free she’d felt. Will hasn’t felt free since 1983. Maybe not ever, now that he’s thinking about it. This weight has been pressing down on him forever and he’s barely shouldering it lately. And now, on top of that, Henry is using it as a weapon; a foot on his neck, ready to suffocate him if he doesn’t submit to him.
Will might not be able to free himself from Vecna and his schemes, but there’s one thing Will can do to take some of the power away from him. Henry has taken everything from him - he won’t let him take this.
Will steps out of the record room and makes his way back to the lounge where his mom is organising from. She’s staring into space looking concerned, but he needs to talk to her right now, before he loses the nerve.
“Mom?” Will calls softly, coming up behind her. She turns around, and Will rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Um… Earlier today, when you asked me what happened in Vecna’s mind, I didn’t tell you everything,” he begins. He always feels like a child whenever he has to confess a lie to his mom, but then she frowns, and Will suddenly realises she’s looking up at him. He’s struck by how small she looks all of a sudden. How breakable. He’s not a kid anymore and she’s not invincible, he realises all at once. Will loves his mom, and he knows she loves him, but it was her plan that got Henry so deep inside his mind and trapped him in a trance.
It wasn't her fault. But she can’t protect him anymore, Will realises.
“Let’s talk,” she says gently, taking his hand in her fragile grasp and pulling him to the couches to sit down.
Will takes a deep breath to settle himself. He hasn’t planned out what he’s going to say, and dragging the words out of his chest is like pulling his own teeth out.
“Um, okay. So," he mumbles. "So, uh... When Vecna attacks, he weakens you by turning your own mind against you,” he finally begins. “By bringing out everything inside you that hurts.”
Mom’s hand tightens on his, but Will presses on. He has to explain.
“I fought back by focusing on happy memories instead. Memories from when I was a kid. When I wasn’t scared,” he says. He can’t quite look her in the eye. “That’s how I took control in the MAC-Z, and how I killed those demos. And I thought the same would work on Vecna, too. But he found a way past. And he showed me things, mom,” Will says, voice trembling.
He swallows, blinking back tears and trying desperately not to remember the images Vecna had forced into his mind; that vile cocktail of shock and fear and hatred and discomfort and disgust, more than anything the disgust is what Will wouldn’t be able to stand and Vecna knows it.
“He showed me the most awful things,” he whispers.
“No, listen,” Mom says, taking his hand again. “Whatever he showed you, it’s not real. He plays tricks. He lies.”
Will swallows back a sob.
“No, he doesn’t,” he says. “What he showed me… it didn’t come from him. It came from me.”
Will feels it all well up in him again. All those feelings he’s struggled with for so long. Robin’s advice gave him the tools he needed to accept who he is; to start to fix the hurt. But the wound has only just started to heal.
Will doesn’t hate himself. Not anymore. But Vecna pulled all that old pain to the surface. He ripped the bandaid off just to pour salt in the barely-healing wound.
“He sees everything. All my thoughts, all my memories. And all my secrets,” he says. He’s fairly sure he’s crying now. He’s not entirely inside his body at the moment. He presses on anyway.
“Max… she told me he’s afraid, which means I can beat him,” he says. “But for me to do that-” he tries to continue, but it’s like his tongue is a stuck record. It skips over a blank groove for a few agonisingly long seconds. He wrenches his eyes away from the window with its fading sunlight and forces himself to look his mother in the eyes. “I think there's something you should know,” he chokes.
Suddenly, they hear loud footsteps. Their heads whip round just in time to see-
Mike. Wearing army camo he got from god knows where, dark curls tucked into a beanie away from his face.
Despite everything he’s going through, Will’s worn-out heart still somehow finds the energy to skip a beat.
Mike relays some message or another from Hopper, but his eyes are locked on Will’s the whole time for some reason and Will realises that telling his mom was never going to be enough. He thinks of Robin’s snowballs and avalanches and he’s so tired of carrying this fucking torch for this boy; of trying to work out what’s going on in Mike’s head; of all of it. He’s so tired.
Up in the mountains, they use dynamite to cause avalanches on purpose. Controlled avalanches. They start with an observation of the terrain and the snowfall, then they do a risk assessment to see if it’s worth it, and if it’s needed; then they set up the explosives. Then they clear the mountainside, and finally, they detonate.
Will’s done the observations, and he has no idea if it’s worth the risk. But if it’s a choice between him laying the explosives or Henry, he’ll clear the mountainside as best he can and blow it all up himself.
“Wait,” Will says, standing. “I think you need to hear this too.”
Mike stops in his tracks, looking at Will with the same deep care and concern that he’s been looking at him with for years. Will can’t let Henry take this away from him. If he’s going to lose him - if he’s going to lose any of his friends - he’s going to do it himself. He’s going to be the one in control.
“Everyone does,” Will says. “Can you… can you go get the Party to come in here?” he asks. “Oh, and Robin? If that’s cool?” he adds quickly. “But no one else. Please.”
Mike nods, and goes to get them. He looks confused, particularly at being asked to get Robin - Will’s only known her for a few days, after all, and this is clearly serious - but Will wants her there for support. Even if this all goes completely to shit and Vecna’s worst visions come true, Will knows that Robin won’t turn her back on him. So will his brother, now that he thinks about it. When Mike is gone gathering up their friends, he pokes his head into closets and side-rooms until he finds Jonathan. He beckons him over and sits him down next to his mom. Jonathan doesn’t ask what this is about, and Will thinks he must somehow know. He always seems to know what Will needs to talk about.
He definitely knows that Will is queer. Will has held their talk in the pizza shop so close to his heart that even Vecna didn’t get hold of it - it’s the only reason Will is certain that Vecna showed him possibilities rather than a certain future. Vecna thinks (or maybe hopes) that Jonathan would reject him. Knowing that Jonathan would never, ever turn away from him is like steel in Will’s spine, keeping him standing tall even when he feels like he’s made of nothing but smoke and dust.
Mike comes back then, with the rest of the party close behind him, and there’s an awkward moment as they all shuffle around and get settled. Will goes over to the door and closes it tight, so that no one else can hear them. The last thing Will needs is someone like Hopper overhearing what he’s about to say. He knows his mom loves Hopper, but the idea of having this conversation with the stern, macho cop-slash-soldier that is Jim Hopper is something Will has quite literally had nightmares about.
With the door shut, Will is closed in a room with Mike, Lucas, Max, Dustin, El, and Robin, plus Joyce and Jonathan on the other couch. Now that they’re all actually here it seems like way too many people, and panic spikes in his stomach. Will’s palms start to sweat and he knows his anxiety is visible on his face because Mike immediately asks him if he’s okay.
“I’m fine,” Will says, but Mike’s dark eyes are the same as they always were and friends don’t lie comes rushing back to him unbidden. “Well, kind of. I’m not hurt. But I have to… I have to say something.”
Will sits down and looks up at his friends, then immediately has to look back down again. He can’t keep his hands still, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves.
“I…” he tries to begin, but that stuck-record feeling is back. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking a little bit. “This is really hard,” he whispers.
Mom puts a hand on his knee, but he gently shakes her off. He’s bouncing it like crazy, the way that normally drives her insane, but he feels like if he doesn’t move he’s going to explode. Anxiety isn’t dripping off him, it’s vibrating out of his body in shockwaves. Someone opens their mouth to speak, but Will cuts them off. If he doesn’t start talking now he’s never going to get to do it.
“I’ve got something to tell you all, and I’ve never told this to anyone. Because I… because I don’t want you all to see me differently,” he says. “The… the truth is, I am… different,” he says. Will dares to look up. Jonathan is frowning; the frown he makes when he’s really listening. Lucas is doing the same, and Dustin just looks incredibly focused. Will can’t bring himself to look at Mike yet.
He looks over at Robin, and she nods at him. She looks completely calm, for once, and Will follows the rise and fall of the necklace on her chest to guide himself through a steadying breath.
“I’ve always been different. I’ve always felt different, and it’s not… it’s not just because I’m a nerd or I’m into comics or whatever,” he tries to joke, but it doesn’t come out light-heartedly at all. He wishes he’d scripted this; speaking from the heart feels too raw. He wants to be vague, to shield himself, but he can’t. He knows how Vecna works. Trying to run away from his fears will only get people killed.
Will takes a deep breath, fidgeting with a hangnail. He picks too hard at the hangnail and it starts to bleed, a droplet of red welling up at the edge of his finger.
Well, if he’s going to do this, he might as well do it properly.
“I tried not to be, for a while,” he murmurs. “I tried to pretend”, he says, huffing with a humourless laugh. He doesn’t think he did a very good job, but he did try. “I tried to pretend that I was normal, like everyone else. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends,” Will says, and looks at where they’re all sitting together, bunched up close on the tiny sofa like a single creature, MikeLucasDustin, all so different but so similar, too. All three of them different sizes and shapes and colours but sharing one thing in common that Will never can, that could so easily be the one difference that’s too much for their friendship.
Something about the three of them together cracks Will’s thin veneer of composure and the anxiety starts to break through.
“And I mean, I am like you guys. In… in almost every way, y’know? We… we like playing D&D late into the night,” he blurts out, smiling. “We like that weird smell in Mike’s basement, and- and we like biking to Melvald’s for milkshakes, and…”
Will starts listing things off, throwing memories out like offerings. He’s barely even aware of what he’s saying as the words start to pour out of him. Like desperate attempts to prove his normalcy. His friends nod and smile as he reminds them of all the fun they’ve had together, but their smiles start to drop when it becomes clear that Will can’t stop. It’s all nonsense, spilling out of him too fast; arterial spray as Will opens his heart too quickly, and he’s panicking, he realises. Will feels very far away from himself, barely listening to the random shit he’s saying, and he’s breathing too fast. Tears started to blur his vision at some point - he doesn’t know when - and out of the corner of his eye he sees Jonathan’s concern fast approaching the point at which he’ll intervene, stop Will from talking, but if Will doesn’t say this now he’s never going to say it.
“...and NASA, and Lucky Charms, and- and-” Will is saying, and he’s running out of things to say. “- literally all the same things!” he cries out, desperate, voice too loud in the tense silence of his audience. “I just- I just… I-I just…”
It’s not like he’s a stuck record this time; it’s like there’s a physical block in his throat, stopping the words from coming out and holding them there in his trachea. Choking him, like a vine. Will can’t speak, can’t breathe, and then-
“I don’t like girls.”
The words are so simple when they come out, and they ring in Will’s ears. Jonathan is still looking at him the same way he always has, and it’s a comfort, but his friends aren’t. Dustin tilts his head like does in class, when he’s considering something from an angle he’s never even thought of before. Lucas is very still. Mike shifts in his seat, blinking rapidly with an unreadable expression on his face. Will looks around at his gathered friends, and he knows the panic is clear on his face, but Jonathan is giving him this soft, encouraging smile like he’s proud of him and Robin just keeps her eyes on his, shoulders squared with tears touching her cheeks and Will has never felt like this before.
He’s crying now, and he wishes he wasn’t crying but he is, he always is. He feels like he’s spent almost his entire life on the verge of tears. Will tries to blink away the tears and only succeeds in sending them cascading down his cheeks and he hears the combined voices of his father and Vecna in the back of his mind sneering at him about how boys don’t cry, how crying is for fags and girls, but Will pushes them firmly away. He’s doing this because he refuses to let either of them hold his sexuality over his head any longer. And so here he is, stammering out a confession; confirming what he knows people have thought about him for a long time, and there are hot tears on his cheeks that feel almost cool compared to how hot his face is. He’s crying, and he’s so scared, still, and God, Will thought it would be over once he said it. But the words are out and he can’t put them back in and he’s still scared. Nobody has leapt up in disgust and started screaming about him about filth and sin and disease, but nobody has really reacted either.
Will doesn’t really know how this is supposed to go. He doesn’t have a script for this. He came in here with the sole aim of telling the truth, and so that’s what he’s going to do.
“I, uh… I had this crush on someone,” Will says, and despite all his best efforts he looks right at Mike and he can’t pull his eyes away from him. “Even though I know… I know they’re not like me,” he says, voice thick with tears. Mike’s face is still unreadable. Will looks right into the deep, dark brown eyes he’s so familiar with and he can’t make sense of what he sees there. “And I tried not to,” he says. “I tried for so long and I- I hated myself for it, because I knew he didn’t feel the same way,” he says, and his friends noticeably stir when Will says ‘he’ - that undeniable, explicit confirmation making its way home. “I tried not to, but it wasn’t…” he takes a shuddering breath. “It wasn’t my fault. Liking him… it wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong.”
Somehow this is harder to admit than his queerness.
“I was finally okay with myself,” Will says, flicking his eyes over to Robin and matching her wet smile. “But then when Vecna was inside my mind he… he dug through my mind, all my memories and thoughts and my secrets, and he took it all for himself and twisted it into something foul,” Will cries. “I just- I couldn’t let this be one of the things he took from me. I understand if… if you guys don’t see me the same way anymore, or if you-” he chokes “-if you don’t want to be my friend anymore, but I couldn’t let him use this against me.”
Will feels that swell of panic again and takes a slow breath. He gasps on the inhale and shakes on the exhale but it works; he finally tears his eyes away from Mike and when he speaks again his voice is steadier.
“He showed me these… these horrible, awful images of things you guys might say and do if you found out and I’m so, so scared,” he confesses. “Maybe he was tricking me, showing me my nightmares to shake my confidence. Well, it worked,” he laughs bitterly, wiping at his wet cheeks. “But even if he’s right and that nightmare is going to come true… I want it to be mine,” he says.
By the looks on his friends’ faces, they don’t understand him.
“Whatever happens now, it’s mine. He doesn’t get to decide what you know, or when. I’ve tried to hide it for so long, but Vecna wants to use this against me, and I am not going to let him. I was… I am, absolutely terrified,” Will murmurs. “But I’m not ashamed anymore. This is my life, and I’m sick of him taking it from me. He doesn’t get this. He doesn’t get to have this power over me. If he wants to use this as a weapon, then I’m… I’m taking the bullets out of the gun. He can’t have this. This is mine.”
With that, Will runs out of rope. End of the line. He slumps back against the chair like he’s just run a marathon; every part of him feels wrung out and hollow. So much of him has been filled with this guilt and secrecy and fear for so long that letting it all go empties him entirely.
The room is silent in a way that rings in Will’s ears and makes him scared to look up, but it doesn’t last long.
“Will,” Jonathan says, standing up. There are tears on his face and a smile on his lips. This isn’t Will’s nightmare after all. “Get over here.”
Will crashes into Jonathan’s arms in less than a second, and in even less time than that he’s sobbing into his brother’s shirt. Jonathan holds him tight, squeezing him so hard he almost can’t breathe. A tiny body - their mom’s - plasters itself against his back, and Will is pressed tight between them and it feels like their bodies are the only things keeping him from falling apart on the floor in a messy pile of bones and tears. She turns him around, holding the back of his head against the crook of her neck like he’s a tiny child again and Will feels safe again, in between the two people who would never let him down, no matter what nightmares Vecna might project into his head. Joyce Byers is tiny and frail - and yet she is a giant, she is made of steel and her sons will never, ever be unprotected. She whispers into his ear, words of love and comfort, and eventually, Will’s sobs slow and his breathing starts to even out.
“You are my son, and I will always, always love you,” she says, loud enough for everyone to hear. She kisses him on the forehead, suddenly tiny again as she leans up, and she finally steps back.
Will wipes his face, breaths shuddering, and feeling a little embarrassed at having had a breakdown in front of all his friends but he’s more worried that no one has said anything yet. The first one to do it is Max.
“You’re gonna have to come down here so that I can hug you,” she says, waving him over with a weak flick of her hand. Will smiles, sighing in relief, and hugs her as tight as he dares. When he pulls back, Lucas is behind him, wearing a grave expression.
“That was really brave,” he says seriously. “For real.”
He doesn’t hug Will; Will didn’t think he would. He claps their hands together, clasping them for a second, and then steps back with a nod.
“Yeah, man. That takes balls,” Dustin says. “I’m proud of you, buddy,” he says quietly.
Mike doesn’t say anything. He looks rather shellshocked, but he nods rapidly when Dustin speaks. Then, he stands up. Lucas and Dustin and Jonathan all visibly go on alert when Mike stands up, and Will knows he must’ve been very obvious about his feelings. But Mike doesn’t walk out, or get mad, or even seem to have noticed that Will spoke half of his coming out speech directly to Mike. He doesn’t seem to know what to do at all. There's something brewing behind his eyes - something shining - and he holds eye contact with Will for a long time. His mouth opens and then closes like he wants to say something but it's stuck in his throat. He makes a sort of aborted upwards gesture, like he’s thinking about hugging Will but then thinks better of it. He holds onto Will’s biceps for a second and then nods again, then pulls him in for a hug. Mike's arms wrap around him like he's something precious and for a moment Will's whole body is warm, and then in the blink of an eye Mike lets go and steps back, avoiding Will's gaze with red cheeks.
It’s the weirdest reaction yet, but Mike didn’t freak out. That’s more than Will had hoped for.
Once Mike steps back, Robin is beaming at him with tears in her eyes. She doesn’t come over and hug him, she just grins at him with starry, damp eyes.
“How do you feel, Byers?” she asks, voice croaky.
Will takes a second to answer honestly.
“Um… wrung out,” he says. “Relieved,” he adds. And then, after a short pause; “I feel… like me.”
Robin grins at him. A matching smile spreads its way across his face, growing bigger and bigger until he can't help himself. A laugh bubbles up out of Will, and it's as easy as breathing.