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Ten minutes should fix it, this dull ache that has settled somewhere behind his eyes. That’s what he has decided, because there is no time to properly nurse a headache and there is no way to undo what he just did. Everyone knows.
Just ten minutes of sleep, or at least ten minutes to rest his eyes.
From where he’s lying on the couch, Will can hear the beginning of yet another life-threatening excursion. Steve’s voice is being carried down the hallway, full of bass and nerves. Nancy is emptying a box of bullets onto a table to count them; their metallic noise making his head pound. There’s shuffling feet, papers rustling, conversation he can’t quite make out. Someone has microwaved another bag of popcorn and the smell makes Will’s stomach churn.
His own words echo between his ears. I’m ready to show him I’m not afraid anymore.
Did he mean it? Because now, he isn’t so sure. Now, all he wants to do is lay in a quiet room and sleep until the dark circles under his eyes disappear and he feels the way he did five years ago, when classroom bullies and a menacing father were his biggest threats. When he knew that no matter how bad his day was, he could disappear into Mike’s basement with his friends and become a wizard.
Sorcerer may be an upgrade, but now it’s real, and he isn’t so sure that he isn’t afraid. In fact, he’s pretty damn sure that he is.
He takes a deep breath in through his nose and blows it out slowly through his mouth, and then he does it again. He is aware of his own heartbeat. The blinds that cover the large windows in the main room of the WSQK building are losing their battle against the sunlight, the bright rays landing on Will’s eyelashes and piercing through his eyelids.
How long has he been lying here trying to get ten minutes of sleep? Twenty minutes now? Thirty? No one has come to check on him, and he decides he’ll keep trying until someone does.
A few more minutes and he can feel sleep taking him. His muscles relax, his jaw unclenches, his heartbeat softens. His thoughts begin to melt like candle wax, slipping out of his reach as his consciousness fades, and then, when he’s just on the precipice, he remembers Mike’s face.
Will furrows his brow at the fresh memory. It was risky to talk directly to Mike during his speech, he knew that, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed Mike to know, more than he needed anyone else to. In a perfect world, he could have told only Mike.
But the world is far from perfect, so he pretended instead. He pretended that he was in his bedroom in California, or in the back of a van, or in a golden field of grass at sunset, the blue sky and the yellow leaves of autumn trees meeting somewhere in the middle. He pretended that it was just him and Mike, despite all of the eyes on him.
Did he also pretend to see something other than just surprise on Mike’s face? Was he just making up the way Mike’s eyes widened, the way he sat up a little taller? The way his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, a serious look on his face? Could he have imagined the searing eye contact between them after he said, I’m ready to show him I’m not afraid anymore, as if they were the only two people in the room? The way Mike nodded, the determination he saw there.
His ears strain to hear Mike’s voice in the other room, or the footsteps that he could recognize anywhere. There’s only the sound of a chair scooting across the floor, a loud cough, a comment from Lucas that makes Max laugh.
“Stupid,” Will squeaks, barely audible, as he brings his hands to his eyes and pushes on them. He is not going to get any sleep.
“Will?”
He freezes, listening. In his exhaustion, he must have hallucinated it.
But then, closer, “are you okay?”
He opens his eyes, squinting into the light, to see Mike standing behind the couch. He’s taken off his vest and beanie since the last time he saw him, and in noticing this, he realizes how warm the building has gotten. Mike’s dark curls fall over his forehead and his lips are wet, like he had just been worrying them between his teeth.
Will pries his gaze away from Mike’s lips to look at his eyes, but the deep chocolate hue of them is too rich and he has to look away.
“I’m fine,” he says, sitting up slowly. He winces as the position change makes his head throb, the blood in his veins jumping to action.
Mike reaches for the back of the couch but doesn’t touch it. “You don’t have to get up, nothing is happening. I was just checking on you.”
“I wasn’t having much luck sleeping anyways,” Will says with a smile, “too much to think about.”
“Well, you couldn’t have chosen a brighter room to nap in,” Mike observes.
This makes Will laugh, and he studies one of his fingernails in order to stop himself from looking up at the other boy. His tall presence looms beside him.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
They’re silent for a long moment, and then, after a sigh, “hey, um, I kinda wanna talk to you, if that’s okay.”
Will feels a wave of adrenaline wash over him, simultaneously heating his face and making his body feel cold. He shifts on the couch, moving his legs to make room for Mike, but he still can’t bring himself to look at him. The cushions groan beneath him, like they’re feeling what he’s feeling.
“Okay.”
Mike doesn’t move, and again, Will questions his own sanity.
“Maybe, like, not here? There’s just so many people in the other room.”
Finally, Will looks up at Mike. The turn of his head is too quick, too eager. Mike’s lips are pressed together in a thin line, the only readable part of his otherwise unreadable face.
Will nods and stands. “Yeah, yeah, sure.” He brushes his hands over his jacket, just to have something to do.
He looks toward the exit, unsure if Mike is wanting to leave the building altogether or just find a different room. “Uh,” he begins, but Mike cuts him off.
“The basement? Maybe?” Mike fiddles with the sleeve of his sweater. “I don’t think anyone– I don’t think anyone’s down there.”
Will stares at him, taken aback. For a moment, he wonders if Mike is trying to get him alone to scold him, to tell him that he never should have embarrassed him in front of everyone like that. In the next moment, he hates himself for thinking that Mike would ever do that to him.
Besides, he’s pretty sure Mike didn’t catch on anyway.
“Okay, yeah.” It comes out breathy, desperate.
Mike smiles awkwardly, a sight that is familiar and endearing to Will, and then turns toward the basement. Will follows him, eyes fixed on his back, trying not to imagine the warm skin beneath the thick fabric there.
When they reach the basement entrance, Mike pulls the shelves to the side. They both flinch at the loud scraping of metal on linoleum and Will looks over his shoulder, listening for any disturbance in the noise coming from the other room. He hears only the steady murmur of voices. A backpack unzipping.
“Hey, come on.”
Will jumps and tries to play it off by clearing his throat. He turns to see Mike waiting for him, already standing on the second step. Once he’s over the threshold, he slides the shelves back into place, slower and quieter than Mike had.
Their footsteps are heavy and loud on the stairs, and the air is cooler down here. Despite its regular use, the space is still eerie. There’s a stillness that settles over everything, and the air smells of dust and wet concrete. Winter after winter of snowmelt dampening the walls that never fully dry underground.
Will watches Mike as he walks over to the couch, lingers for a few seconds, as if he’s contemplating whether or not he wants to sit, and then finally plops down onto the cushions. The old couch doesn't have much bounce to it, and the jolt it sends through Mike almost makes Will laugh.
He scans the room for a chair he can pull over, but Mike is already patting the empty space on the couch next to him. “Here, sit.”
Will makes his way over and sits, more cautiously than Mike had. He rubs his thighs and leans against the arm of the couch, as far away from Mike as he possibly can. It’s quiet then, and Will stares at his lap until the silence starts to make his stomach hurt. The couch creaks as Mike shifts a little closer.
“You nervous?”
Will looks up at him. Duh, he wants to say, but instead he just stares at Mike and blinks.
“About the plan, I mean. About stopping Vecna,” Mike clarifies.
Oh. Will swallows and nods, before quickly remembering what he had told everyone about not being scared anymore. “I mean, no. No, not really. I think it’s a good plan.” He hopes Mike can’t tell that he’s lying, but to hope that would be ridiculous. Mike knows him all too well. “I don’t know.”
Mike moves, his hand beginning to reach out before retreating back to his lap. His leg begins to bounce, like he’s holding something back. He seems nervous himself. “It’ll all work out. I really believe that.”
Will looks up at him again. Nods.
Mike continues, “I mean, really. We have El, her sister, and you. How could we lose with three superheroes? And science!”
Will laughs and he can feel his cheeks heat up. Superhero. Is that how Mike sees him?
“I guess so,” Will says.
“I know so.”
They look at each other, Will’s eyes darting from Mike’s eyes to his lips, his faint freckles and strong nose. When he looks back up, Mike’s eyes are exploring too, somewhere below Will’s eyes. He looks up again, caught. His hands seem to suddenly be very interesting to him, as he looks down at them and curls his fingers closed. Opens them. Closes them again.
Will takes advantage of this upper hand while he has it, letting himself study Mike and the way his chest is expanding with every breath. His dark eyelashes flutter, his leg has stopped bouncing and sits beside the other one, long and off-limits. His fingers, also long, slender and beautiful, pale against his dark pants. Will follows one of Mike’s curls with his gaze, from the top of his head to where it ends just beside his ear.
Staring at Mike, Will is positive that he knows every part of him better than he knows himself. He could hear Mike’s breath from another room and know it was him, touch his arm in the dark and know it couldn’t belong to anyone else.
Will could die and come back as something without a body, come back as a tree, and he could look over at the sapling growing beside him and know that it was Mike. He would know him anywhere.
He also knows that he must have lied to everyone. He is not over this. How could he ever be?
He is surprised when Mike is the first to speak again.
“I just think, since we are going to survive this–” he begins, but stops. He shakes his head, like he didn’t like where that sentence was taking him. “What you told everyone today.”
Will watches him. Is that a question? A comment? He manages to find his voice. “Yeah?”
“I feel like I didn’t react right. I don’t know, I just feel like I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t?”
“Yeah, like–” Mike exhales, sounding frustrated. Will can’t tell who the frustration is targeted toward. “I should have reacted better. For you. I was just– there were so many people, and you were saying so many things. I froze.”
Will waits to see if there are any more words to come. After a few seconds, there are.
“I’m just sorry. I’m sorry.”
There’s a loud thud on the ceiling, like someone dropped something heavy upstairs. Neither of them react. Will could have anticipated questions, or even a lecture, but never an apology. He almost asks what he is sorry for, but he doesn’t think he needs to.
“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s a lot to process. I mean, I don’t think anyone is really ready to be told something like that.”
Mike shifts, facing Will. “No. It’s not that. You could tell me anything, Will, and I’d be ready to hear it. I just– I don’t like how–”
Will’s ears are ringing. “You don’t like how… what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Will opens his mouth to reply but pauses, tries again, pauses again. Finally, “what do you mean?”
“Before today. Before you felt like you were forced to do it. You didn’t have to keep that secret from me.” His voice sounds strained, raw. “Did I make you feel like you couldn’t tell me?”
“No. No, Mike. Never. I just– I wasn’t ready.”
Mike flings himself back against the couch, hands thrown over his face.
Hesitantly, Will tells him, “I almost did. A few times. I just was too afraid to lose you.”
When Mike drops his hands and looks over at Will, there are tears in his eyes. The sight makes Will’s heart sink. “You thought I wouldn’t want to be your friend because you don’t like girls?” He looks more pained than Will has ever seen him.
“No. Mike. No. It was because–” Will stops talking, shifts his own body so that he is facing Mike completely. “Don’t you understand? Didn’t you get what I was saying earlier? About that crush?”
“Yes,” Mike chokes, sniffles. So he had caught on. “I know. I know now, but I could have known sooner. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“I couldn’t have possibly known that.”
Mike links his hands together and stares at Will’s knees. His lungs spasm, desperate for a full inhale of oxygen that Mike isn't giving to them. “It was awful, Will. It was awful. Watching you cry like that. You were scared. It was awful.”
Will isn’t sure what to say for a long time. Mike looks like a wounded animal that might run if any sudden movements are made. When he speaks again, it’s nearly a whisper. “Mike, can I tell you something? Something I’ve never told anyone before?”
Mike looks up at him. His eyes are dry again, but he looks exhausted. He nods.
“I don’t like girls.”
The surprise on Mike’s face comes and goes in an instant as he realizes what Will is doing, and he sits up straighter. His arm braces against the back of the couch, the busy pattern of his sweater clashing with the hideous green and yellow pattern covering the antique piece of furniture.
“I’ve been afraid to tell anyone, but I’ve been especially afraid to tell you, and not because I think you would care, or shut me out, but because you’re the reason why I realized it.” The end of the sentence gets away from him, but it’s already escaped before he can pull it back in.
Mike’s eyebrows do that thing that Will loves, and he presses on. “I wanted to tell you in California, but I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t because it would have made everything so messy. The last thing you needed was for me to tell you this then.”
Mike shakes his head, the smallest movement, but Will ignores it. “The past eighteen months have been the most confusing of my life, because I had this crush on this boy and I had to live with him. But, thinking about it now, I’m not sure if I would call it a crush. It’s something a little different than that, I think.”
“Different?” Mike’s sudden input startles Will.
“Yeah. Different. A crush is something you get over, but I don’t think this is like that. And you wanted me to be honest, so I am. I’m gonna hold you to what you said, about this not changing anything.”
Mike nods and reaches out again, but just like the first time, he pulls his hand away before it can touch Will. It makes Will’s head spin.
“I think I’ll love you forever, and it scares me, but I can face it now.” He can hear his throat straining like he might cry, and he hates it. “I lied earlier. I lied.”
Will closes his eyes tight, takes a deep and shaky breath. Now he waits for the impact, for the bomb to drop and the dust to settle, so he can see if anything is salvageable in the end. Earlier, a room full of people had been watching him, but now, it feels like the entire world is watching him, because it is. Will’s entire world is watching him.
There’s the gentlest brush of a hand on Will’s shoulder, so gentle he thinks he’s imagining it, but then it turns into a squeeze and he knows it’s real. Still, he can’t bear to look at Mike.
“Can I ask you something?”
Will nods.
“Who the hell is Tammy?”
There's a pause, a second where Will opens his eyes to stare at the floor, and then he’s laughing. He gives up trying to hold back his tears and feels one roll down his cheek as he tries to answer Mike, but another laugh escapes his throat instead.
“What?” Mike asks, and Will can hear the smile on his lips.
Finally, Will is able to look up at Mike, who looks horribly confused and very much impatient, but he’s smiling nonetheless because Will is laughing. Or at least, Will chooses to believe that’s why he’s smiling.
Will gathers himself enough to speak, wiping his face with his jacket sleeve. In this November chill, it’ll take a while to dry. “We went to school with her. She was Robin’s first crush, but she didn’t like Robin back. Then Robin realized she didn’t need her to be herself. It was just a metaphor.”
“Tammy… the girl who butchered the national anthem that one time?”
“Yeah, her.”
“You compared me to Tammy?” Mike guffaws, running his hands through his hair. “Will.”
“I mean, I’m sure you're a much better singer than her.”
At that, Mike smiles and gives Will a playful shove. For a moment, Will is back in the field again, watching Mike walk away from him. Maybe it was ridiculous for him to have expected Mike to understand what was going on then.
“Serious question, seriously,” Mike begins. The phrasing makes Will grin. “Did Tammy ask Robin if she wanted to be her friend in first grade?”
“Mike…” Will rolls his eyes.
“No, really! Did Tammy and Robin have, like, a million sleepovers? Or did Robin run to Tammy, crying after swallowing gum because she thought it would be in her stomach forever?”
All Will can do is watch Mike talk, a sad smile on his face.
“Did Robin disappear into thin air for so long that Tammy couldn’t eat or sleep? Did Tammy have to go to Robin’s funeral? And when Robin came back from the dead, did Tammy have to watch her continue to suffer knowing there was nothing she could do to help? Did that almost kill her?” Mike pauses for a second and shakes his head. “Do you think Tammy would die for Robin?”
“Mike–”
“Do you? Because I don’t think so.”
Will digs his short fingernails into his palms and shakes his head.
“I’m not your Tammy, Will. I’m your Mike. I’m your Mike.”
Another tear rolls down Will’s cheek before he even realizes he is going to cry. Of course he knows this. Of course he knows this. He nods, because it’s all he can do. When Mike reaches out and pulls him into a hug, Will melts into it. The smell of Mike is so familiar to him; another detail of his that he would know anywhere.
Mike holds him for a while. At some point, one of his hands begins to rub circles over Will’s back, and Will makes an embarrassing noise into Mike’s shoulder at the touch. When they pull apart, one of Mike’s hands lingers on Will’s knee. He pretends not to notice, but it’s the only thing he can feel.
He’s going to say something, he’s going to apologize for shrinking Mike down to nothing more than a hallway crush, but Mike speaks first.
“How do you know, anyway?”
Will wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Know what?”
“How do you know I’m not like you? How did you know I was just your Tammy? You didn’t even ask me.”
Will stares at him and waits for him to laugh, to shove him playfully again and say just kidding, but he doesn’t. He just sits and waits for Will’s answer.
“I– I don’t know, I– you like girls,” Will manages to choke out.
Mike hums. “Yeah, I do.”
Will blinks. “So…”
“Well, how did you know you liked me? When did you know?”
Will’s face heats up and he knows his cheeks are red. “Mike…”
“Come on! Tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me,” Mike repeats, poking at Will’s side as he tries to squirm away.
“Stop! Okay!” Will shrieks, laughing. “I don’t know, I guess I just– I think it was always different with you. I always wanted your attention, and I wanted you to like what I wore to school, and I liked it when you would ask me to keep my drawings and then hang them up on your wall.”
Will clears his throat and plays with the short hair at the base of his neck, trying to find his next words. Words that are sure to embarrass him. “And then, I don’t know, a couple summers ago, I realized I liked to… look at you. And when you looked at me, my chest and my stomach would feel funny. I looked around at Lucas and Max, Dustin and Suzie, you and El, and I realized that the way you were all feeling about each other, I felt that way about you.”
Will pauses, wonders if he should try to continue. Mike isn’t breaking their eye contact, and it takes everything in him not to look away. “If I say anything else, I’ll embarrass myself.”
Mike nods, like he understands, which is completely ridiculous because how could he? Will realizes he hasn’t heard any noise coming from upstairs in a while and the thought worries him. “Mike…”
“Just– I–” Mike looks up at the ceiling, taps his fingers against his thigh. When his gaze returns to Will, his eyes are full of determination. “I do like girls. But, I like looking at you, too.”
Will swallows, straightens his posture, doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
Mike continues. “I need to think about everything, and I think you’re definitely, like, way ahead of me here,” he pauses just long enough for both of them to laugh, “but, I don’t think I’m that much different than you. Just give me some time, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Will says, the smile on his face brighter than the sun that had kept him from sleeping earlier. He realizes suddenly that his headache is gone.
“Come here.” Mike shifts closer to Will, hugging him again but with less space between them this time. There’s a hand that isn’t his own playing with the hair on the base of his neck, and suddenly, Will wonders if he’s possessed and hallucinating, or already dead.
He quickly chases that thought out of his mind, because he’s waited long enough for this, and more than anything, he knows it’s real. This happiness, this hope, there is nothing more real.
The sound of the shelf sliding away from the basement entrance pulls them away from each other, and before Will can think, Mike is already grabbing the book on the nearest table and flipping it open to a random page.
“Will? Mike?” Jonathan’s voice travels down from above, loud but unsure.
“Yeah!” Will yells back, and Jonathan is immediately trotting down the stairs, footsteps heavy on the old wood.
When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, both boys turn to look at him expectantly. His mouth opens, but no words come out as he looks back and forth between them.
“Yeah…?” Mike says, the word coated in his signature attitude. Will smiles.
“Uh, what are you up to? We’ve been looking for you.” Jonathan relaxes a bit, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“Reading,” Will tells him.
“Oh, cool. What are you reading?”
Will turns to look at the book as Mike flips it over to glance at the cover. “Uh, The History of Paper Manufacturing.” Will has to take a deep breath to keep himself from laughing.
“That’s– that sounds interesting,” Jonathan tries.
“Very!” Mike says with too much enthusiasm. Will stands, deciding he needs to save the three of them from this.
“Are we heading out?” he asks.
“Just about. Come on up,” Jonathan says, squeezing Will’s shoulder before turning for the stairs. They share a look before he leaves and Will knows that, somehow, he knows.
Mike shuts the book and throws it onto the couch, shaking his head. Will can’t help but laugh, pleased with himself when the sound of it makes Mike smile.
They bump elbows all the way up the stairs, both too stubborn to let the other jump ahead or fall behind.