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“Remember when I told you I’d never fall in love?”
Mike stops dead in his tracks. From outside the WSQK door he can still hear the muffled sounds of the truck being loaded up, the crunch of gravel under a dozen pairs of feet, the incongruous swell of birdsong that seems like it belongs in another field, another life, another memory. Lucas and Dustin were waiting for him to join them, but he’d forgotten his hat in the DJ booth and darted back inside, promising them that he’d be out in a second. Nancy had said the beanie looked stupid, but fuck that, he hadn’t washed his hair since the pipe incident and absolutely no one needed to be seeing that mess. If the world was ending, he might as well have his hat.
He’d just jammed it back over his ears when that voice caught his attention. He’d know it anywhere.
Will.
Hesitantly, he approaches the lounge, pressing himself against a wall in the corridor. What the hell is he doing? Mike doesn’t eavesdrop. But then again, he can hear soft sniffles. Will is crying. Is he okay? Did something happen? Mike should be there. He approaches the entryway, where he catches a glimpse of Joyce next to Will. Shit. Private family moment. Mike hesitates.
“I was wrong, mom.”
He has to push down the sudden urge that rises in him to burst into the room and—he doesn’t exactly know. The building seems to have gotten infinitely hotter in the last five seconds. Instead he swallows, sweating, and tries to still the sudden pounding in his chest.
“There is someone, and I guess you could say there has been someone for a long time. And I wanted to tell you, and I wish I could’ve earlier. I tried really hard to be normal. But I am…I am different. And for ages, I didn’t understand why. I still don’t entirely…I mean, I’m not sure if there’s a good explanation, or anything.” Will pauses, and Mike is surprised to find himself still so attuned to his best friend that he can catch a hint of a smile on Will’s face mixed with the thickness of tears without seeing him.
“Anyway. I’ve just been so scared of being hated or pushed away, but mostly—I just—everyone knew. Lonnie, Troy, even Vecna. Like, how did they all know? What about me gives it away? It just really, really sucks that I was the last one to figure it out myself. So, um….I’ve been meaning to tell you this on my terms.”
Mike doesn’t register that he’s stopped breathing.
“I’m gay,” Will says.
Will has been painting a lot, but he won't show me what he's working on. Maybe it is for a girl.
“Thank you for telling me,” Joyce murmurs. “I love you, Will, and that will never, ever change. You are so strong, and so brave, and I am beyond proud of the man you’re becoming. I hope you know that. Oh, honey.”
Mike’s been listening, but Joyce’s words don’t really register.
I think there's someone he likes, because he has been acting weird.
Not a girl.
Joyce again, sounding underwater. “Is it Mike?”
Mike can’t not look. Will, through tears, lets out a strangled laugh. “It’s always been him.”
Oh my god. He’s going to be sick. He’s going to cry. He’s running out of air and his heart is pounding so fast it’s left him several miles behind.
And then—
He’s sixteen and Will Byers has just saved his life. He doesn’t know where those powers came from or why he isn’t dead, but what he does know is that his heartbeat has sped up to match the short-circuiting lights around the compound, flickering like crazy, and that the rest of time has sort of slowed to frame his tunnel vision and that whatever untapped well Will just drew from wasn’t anger but some sort of ridiculous, boundless spring of kindness and empathy and sensitivity, and those traits that Mike has heard everyone else in Hawkins call weak must take insurmountable strength if they can stop death in its tracks.
He’s fifteen and he’s sort of hoping that Will can give him permission to move on. He doesn’t know why he craves the validation, but every time Will turns his green eyes on Mike and starts to coax him back towards the slowly closing door that is whatever is going on with him and El, Mike can feel the sting of bile rising in his throat. He wants Will to say that it’s okay and you’re stupid when you’re twelve and no one really knows what they want in middle school. But Will doesn’t say and Mike knows he’s being ridiculous so he swallows and wedges his foot in the doorframe.
He’s fourteen, and standing stiff as a board after pushing El’s hands away when she’s kissing him because the sensation of her soft fingers on his face just doesn’t sit right and he can’t explain why. He’s a deer caught in the headlights. Outside it’s raining. It’s not my fault you don’t like girls it’s not my fault girls it’s my fault don’t like girls. He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, wait, I didn’t mean it like that—he doesn’t know how he meant them. They were like a knee-jerk response he’d been trained into, except he has no recollection of who taught him. Maybe his father and mother arguing or sitting in silence every night at dinner. Maybe himself.
He’s thirteen and they’re in his basement on Halloween night, but even though the scariest things in the world live in their minds, the basement still feels like their own world where they’re entirely safe and no one can touch them and no one else can understand how they feel. When he puts his hand on Will’s, everything else slips away.
He’s twelve and he’s saying goodbye to Will outside his house as night falls and when he looks into those wide green eyes he sees the two of them four years later brushing shoulders and elbows and dry knuckles as the sun rises on the end of everything except each other.
You know, like ‘blank makes you crazy,’ like the word…
…yeah. Crazy together.
You never say it.
You didn’t have to.
Mike feels like he’s been hit by the force of a truck. Everything had started to slot together, a thousand-piece puzzle that he’s been completing half-blind finally finished and staring at him in the face. The last piece had clicked into place. Maybe now was the wrong time, and maybe all of this had taken too long to admit to himself, but unlike Mike (at least up until this moment) Will had known who he was and what he wanted.
And Will likes him. Loves him.
In front of him, the doorway stands wide open. Will, who has yet to see him, is pressed up against Joyce, who’s threading her fingers softly through his hair. It’s like some kind of shot he’d see at the cinema: the window shutters half up, casting a wide bar of golden light across Will’s face, the room burnished with his glow. Mike doesn’t know what he means to say or do, but he sure as hell won’t let Will feel alone. And besides—he thinks it’s probably time to do a little sharing himself. He’s no Mike the Brave, but maybe if Will the Wise and Kind and Honest had all the strength he needed to face fear, Mike can let the facade fall.
Mike takes a deep breath and steps inside.