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“Oh,” Mike looks between Joyce and Will, noting the tears staining his cheeks, an unspoken tension he intrudes on, “sorry, I’ll” he gestures to the door backing away, but before he can leave Will stands.
“Wait,” he says a little too loud, a little too frantic. “I think this is something you need to hear too.”
As if to cover himself, he quickly adds, “Everyone does.” Mike nods, feels a churning in his gut, nerves, but for what he didn’t know. It doesn't take long before Jonathan, Nancy, Dustin, Lucas, El, Max, and Mike sit scattered across the two couches.
Will knows he called for this moment, but suddenly there is a coil of dread in the pit of his stomach, telling him that he is not normal, and that the only thing keeping him here, allowing him to be loved is the wall he’s spent so many years constructing. The difference, though, is he knows now that is a lie. He lets his eyes linger on Mike, the curve of his brow, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the softness of his lips.
“I’m sorry to gather you all round like this,” his hands are trembling, but Joyce is quick to reach out to steady them. He looks up, her gaze telling him it’s okay to stop, but also giving him the strength to go on.
“The truth is I-I haven’t told any of you this because…because I-I don’t want you to see me differently. But the truth is…” His eyes glance frantically around the room from face to face settling back on his hands, “the truth is I am. I am different,” his voice cracks, he knew the tears would come, but he tries to hold back the flood gates a little longer.
“I just..I just pretended like I wasn’t because I didn’t want to be, I wanted to be normal like everyone else, and I am like you, in almost every way, but I just..I just…”
A breath.
“I just..”
“I..”
A deep steadying breath.
“I don’t like girls.” Will sighs, shuddering breaths between words, “I mean I do. Just…Just not like you guys do.” The flood gates are open, tears pour like waves, “God why am I over-explaining being, being, like this, I just-”
Joyce is the first to speak, reaching for his hands, wrapping them tightly between hers. He feels her warmth steadying him.
“Nothing could ever stop me from loving you, Will. You’re my son, and you will never lose me. Ever. Okay?”
“Me neither,” Jonathan stands, coming over wrapping his arms tightly around his brother, tears streaming down his face, pride beneath them. And suddenly all of his friends are standing, Dustin and Lucas telling him they won’t lose him, hugging him. Nancy and Robin standing together, pride beneath their gazes too. Will’s eyes flit to Mike almost instinctively, and he sees something in his gaze, but he pushes the thought away. He is surrounded by love and will not let those thoughts in. Before his mind can betray him, Mike is standing too, embracing him with the others. Will looks up through glossy eyes and the sandwich of his friends to meet Mike’s. He doesn’t know what it means, wills him to say something, but then they’re separating, the moment over just as it begin, tears turn to sniffles, and El is there hugging him, and Max asking to be hugged and Will laughs then, a real genuine tear filled laugh, because this is his family. In this room. And whom he loves will never change that.
“We should get going,” Will says, the dread in his chest easing with each smile and touch of those who leave him. All go out of the building, except one. Mike, his brown eyes dancing around Will’s. Another wave of dread. Is this it? The one he feared losing the most? Is it happening? He imagined it 100 ways but never like this.
“Can we talk?”
Will nods, not trusting his voice to crack, knowing he’s seconds away from breaking all over again.
“I know sometimes I can,” his voice drifts in and out, soft as always, but patient, looking for the right words. “I can be cold. Distant, maybe. I just, the way you looked at me, and maybe I’m reading into things, but. Will. I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.”
Realization dawns, “Mike, no, of course not-”
“No, please, just listen. I haven’t always had the courage you have. I’m not as strong as you,” his voice drops to a whisper now.
Will laughs then as a tear falls down his cheek, “I’m not.”
“You are. You’re the bravest, strongest person I’ve ever known.”
“I’m still shaking, Mike, still,” he held out his hand gingerly, allowing it to tremble before his friend for a moment. Suddenly, Mike’s hand is on his, warmth rushing from his palm to his chest.
Mike’s breath catches for a moment, but then he pushes forward, “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m scared, too. I’ve always been scared. And I haven’t had the strength you’ve had. But watching you bear your heart, God Will, you don’t understand what it meant to me. What it means to me.”
Will pauses, his hand still between the two of Mike’s. His mind reels, searching for meaning in those words. What it means to him?
“What-”
“Please, just, if I don’t say it now, all of it, I might never say it.” Mike’s chest was rising with worry and Will only looked to him and nodded, his eyes softening. “I’m listening.”
“I lied to you.” Another steadying breath, this one filled with the strength to go on. “El never broke up with me. I broke up with her. Ever since that day in the woods, she was always there. She brought us to you, saved, you, and she was one of my best friends, and suddenly Lucas thought I liked her, and for a while I thought I did too, and suddenly we were 14 and everyone around us was coupling up and I was told this was right, and that we were meant to be together just as we had, I mean we went to the Snow Ball for christ’s sake” he was rambling so Will gave a squeeze to Mike’s hand drawing him back to himself.
“Right, and it was supposed to be right. I meet a girl, we grow up, get together, stay together. But it never felt like that. Right, I mean. I love her. I do, I really, really love her.”
Will felt his heart drop a little at the words, naivety settling in.
“But it’s the same love I feel for Dustin, or Lucas, or Max. It wasn’t… different. I heard my whole life that love is this all-encompassing, blinding feeling, and you’ll know it when you feel it, when the right girl comes along, that’s what my mother always said. El was the perfect girl, is the perfect girl, but it never felt different.”
Mike pulls his hand back then, and Will watches as his eyes grow distant, his voice quieting.
“I’m right here,” Will pleads. “Talk to me.”
“It never felt different with El,” his eyes drop to his shoes drawing up to Will’s inch by inch till he can see the tears on the taller boy’s cheeks, “But when I saw you on the swings that day, the first time I ever saw you, I didn't know what made me do it but I went over and just asked if you wanted to be my friend. And then that Halloween, in my basement, I knew I wanted to be there for you, however you needed it. I didn’t feel like that with Dustin or Lucas. And when I saw your hands trembling, I don’t know why but I-I had this urge to reach out and steady them. I felt it that day in the rain too, when I was a total asshole, and I saw you biking away, and I just I felt this, this pull, deep in my gut, and it wasn’t anything I ever felt before, and I didn’t know what it was all I knew was that it was different. And when I saw you in Lenora, with your yellow shirt and that damn bowl cut, I felt this pull to reach out and wrap my arms around you, and there it was again my heart in my stomach telling me to go to you, again and again and again,” Mike breathed in deeply, his words stealing the air from his lungs. And Will was staring at him, just staring at him.
“Will please,” Mike cracked then, tears falling silently, begging the other boy to say anything.
“I’ve loved you since we were 5,” Will said. “Since you, this dark-haired boy came up to me, and I remember thinking you were so cool and I wanted to be your friend. And then by some miracle you asked. You asked.”
Mike reached up, wiping a tear off Will’s cheek, allowing his hand to linger there, and it was one beat, then two beats. Will didn’t know who moved first, only that they met in the middle, a desperate kiss, one that had been building from years of heartbreak, of watching each other slip away only to know their hearts longed to be closer. Mike broke it first, if only to take it breath, and then brought Will back to him, softly this time, allowing his hands to roam through Will’s hair, down the base of his neck. Will followed suit putting his palm flush against Mike’s back bringing themselves impossibly closer to one another. And then Mike pulled back, breaths returning slow and even, Will’s arms wrapping around him tightly, if only to say I won’t let you go again. Will let himself have this moment, let his head fall forward slotting under Mike’s chin against his chest. Beneath Mike’s shirt, Will could hear the erratic beat of Mike’s heart and couldn’t help but take pride in having that effect on him.
“She was right,” Mike whispered against Will’s hair.
“Who?” He muffled back.
“My mother,” Will did pull back then, a laugh startling them both, their arms still connecting them, “How is it you’re possibly thinking about your mother right now.”
“You’ll know it when you feel it,” Mike recites, “I always thought that was stupid, but she was right.”
Will felt his cheeks reddening, a smile spreading as Mike took the chance to lean toward him. He did, and they kissed, a peck slowly deepening, until the slam of the door made them both stumble back. Suddenly, Robin was rounding the corner, eyes widening as she clocked Mike’s wrinkled shirt, Will’s hair sticking up at odd ends, their red lips revealing them both.
She tries to hide her smile, failing, as she says, “Hopper’s here, ready to go?”
They look to one another, nodding, but Robin is already gone.
“No one has to know,” Will says first, as if suddenly Robin had brought him back to the reality of the world they live in.
“I want them too,” Mike says quickly as if sensing the doubt on Will’s face. “ Just maybe we wait until after all this. I mean after you totally annihilate Vecna.” Mike shoves Will playfully, but suddenly becomes serious. “Will, I don’t want to hide this, or you, or me, I just, we will. Tell them, I mean. As long as you’re okay with that.”
“Yes,” Will’s smile spreads across his face, “I would like that.”
“Will?”
“Yes?”
“I never said it.”
“That’s ok, you don’t have to.”
“I know. I just, the thing is, I think I’ve always known, but I was just too scared, am still scared, but I love you. I do, like in that way, I love you.” Will can see his confidence grow with those three words, words he knew he hadn’t been able to say months before, and suddenly it was as if he was saving them all this time for this moment.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being scared,” Will’s voice is a whisper, “whether it be about us, or everything that’s happening, but I love you, too, Mike. And I always have.”
“You’re such a sap.”
“And you’re a cliche.”
“A perfect combo really,” Mike says as he reaches for Will’s hand pulling him to the door, “It was always meant to be.” Will rolls his eyes, grin never leaving his face, as this boy, this perfect, charming boy, loves him and that was the whole world.