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“Mom, can we… um. Can we talk?” His voice was already unsteady, which was not a good sign. Visions of what Vecna showed him flashed through his mind, for just a moment, before he pushed them down, down, and further down, until they reached the heavy weight settled in the pit of his stomach.
Joyce’s face contorted itself in worry. Her face looked like that a lot these days, ever since he first went missing all those years ago. Will hated that look, if he was honest with himself. He wished she never had to make it. Not because of him. But he knew she always would. She was always going to worry about him, even if he never told her what he was about to say. She would always worry, but at least she could know the truth. He owed her that much. And he did trust her, with this. With him. All of it.
“Actually.” Will cleared his throat and balled his fists, trying to summon every ounce of strength and confidence he still had left. Robin’s words echoed through his mind, shutting out the lingering dread left from Vecna. It’ll be easier when he tells someone. When someone outside of him knows, and is cool with it. If he can just talk about it, maybe it’ll be easier to face. “I think Jonathan should be here too. You both deserve to hear this.”
Joyce nodded. “I’ll go find him,” she said, patting him on the shoulder before turning to leave.
Will had about two minutes to pull himself together. He tried to go through it in his head, the speech he thought about giving but never actually believed he would. In a way, the secret was comforting. It was the last bit of tape holding together the status quo, after all the change everyone had gone through over the past five years. This was the last change. Tomorrow wouldn’t be like today. But it wouldn’t anyway, if Lucas was right. This was his last chance to be honest. The last opportunity for them to know. He didn’t know who was going to survive Vecna’s plan, and he didn’t want to have any regrets. Not about them. Not about this.
Too quickly, Joyce came back with his brother. Jonathan’s face matched his mother’s. Part of Will wanted to back out, to reassure them everything was fine, to let everything be normal for just one more day. But instead, Jonathan sat down beside him, and rested a hand on his shoulder. He nodded, like he knew what was coming. He already knew what Will was about to say. And he wasn’t running away.
“So.” This was already harder than he expected it to be. He tried to look at his brother and mother, but he couldn’t. Instead he settled his eyes on the coffee table in front of him, focusing on the coffee ring that had been left by someone that morning. Probably Mike, but could’ve been anyone. Will took a deep breath and kept going. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, with all of this. I mean, Steve’s plan is… great, I think we have a good shot, but. If, just in case…”
“Will, sweetie,” Joyce said, her eyes full of gentle reassurance. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay, all of us. I promise you that.”
“I know, but Mom, if something happens-”
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“Mom,” Jonathan interrupted. “Let him finish.”
Joyce nodded at her eldest son, and Will took another deep breath. “If something happens,” he continued. “I want you both to know something. I… haven’t been fully honest with you, with either of you, and I don’t.” Another breath. “I don’t want there to be any more secrets.”
“Whatever it is, honey. Whatever you have to say, we’re your family. And we love you.”
He nodded, and he knew it to be true. “It’s just, when Vecna had me.” Just saying his name sent a shiver down his spine. He fiddled with the ends of his sleeves as he kept going, a way to ground him, a reminder he was here, not there. “He saw… everything. Everything I ever thought, everything I ever felt, things that… things I’ve never told anyone. And after everything he’s done to me, and the Wheelers, and to Max, I just. I hate the idea of him knowing. Him, and not you guys. Because, if he’s the only one, then it just. It feels like something I have to hide, like it’s something bad, something I could never be honest about, because if they knew, they’d… But then I thought, if someone I trust, if people I love knew the truth, and they didn’t hate me, if they didn’t want to hurt me, then maybe, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so awful. Maybe I’m not just this broken weak kid. Maybe I could be normal, for once in my life."
“Remember what I told you?” Jonathan said. “When we got you back, and those kids were picking on you? About how… being normal is overrated?”
Will smiled at that. He couldn’t help it. “Being a freak is the best,” he repeated, as if Jonathan had told him yesterday instead of years ago.
“That’s right,” Jonathan said.
“But I’m still… different from you. Different from my friends.”
“Different how?”
“Because I’m-”
He tried to form the word, that three letter word he spent his whole life afraid of, but he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t let him. As much as he tried, his mouth just refused to make a sound. “Do you remember when Dad insisted I go with him to that baseball game when I was little?”
“Yeah, and I remember he never showed up,” Joyce said, her voice still bitter even after all those years.
“No, before that. Before he left, I mean. The first time he took me. Do you guys remember what he said? Why I needed to go?”
Joyce shook her head, but he knew it wasn’t because she forgot. “Will, listen to me. Your father, that man, he does not know you. The second he started… treating you like that, I should’ve gotten you and your brother out, and I am so sorry I ever let him hurt you.”
“Mom, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know all of… I mean, Jonathan and I, we kept so much of it from you back then.”
“No, but I knew.” Joyce’s eyes started to water, just the slightest bit. “You both were just kids, I was your mother. I’m so sorry. To both of you. I should have protected you from him.”
“You did, Mom,” Jonathan said. “When it mattered, you were there for us. You did that, you kept us safe.” Will nodded in agreement. He never, not once, blamed his mother for his father.
“Will, what he called you, that… word he used-”
“Would it be so bad?” Will interrupted. He felt tears drop to his hands that were still fiddling with the ends of his sleeves before he realized the tears still left in his eyes. “Would it be so horrible, if I was what he thought I was? Would it be the end of the world?”
He looked her in the eyes for the first time since he started this whole speech. Something in her face shifted. He couldn’t read her. He waited for her to answer, but she didn’t.
“I’m different,” he said again. “I tried not to be. That summer, when the mall opened, when Dustin and Lucas and Mike… when they all got. Girlfriends. I wanted to be like them. But deep down, I guess I always thought… I mean, I think I always knew.”
“You’re young, honey,” Joyce said, as if she was trying to convince herself more than anyone. “You’re only sixteen, what you’re feeling right now, it’s perfectly normal-”
“You’re not listening to me, Mom-”
“What, just because you like drawing and not baseball, you think you’re-”
“That’s not why I-”
“You’ll find someone someday, you’ll find a girl who-”
“And if I don’t? Or… or, if I do, but it’s not… who you’d expect it to be. If it’s not a girl. What if it’s a boy, would you still… would that be okay…?”
For a horrible, long moment, the words hung in air that felt like lead. Will wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t sure he still remembered how. There didn’t seem to be any oxygen in the room anyway.
Finally, Jonathan reached out and put his hands over Will’s. He didn’t realize how much they were shaking until his brother steadied them. When he spoke, it felt like finally breaking the surface after being underwater for a lifetime. “Of course it would be okay,” he said behind tears. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you a hundred more times, a thousand if that’s what it takes, however many times you need to hear it before you believe me. You’re my little brother, and I love you. Nothing could ever change that. Certainly not this. Okay?”
He seemed to be waiting for Will to answer, but at that point he was crying too badly to make any sound come out. So instead he just nodded, and Jonathan pulled him into a hug so tight it was hard to breathe again, but this time for the complete opposite reason.
After a moment, Jonathan finally pulled away, his face wet with tears, and it was only then that Will realized his mother hadn’t answered him. “Mom,” he started. But she still didn’t answer. He still couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Mom, can you just say something? Anything, please?”
“I…” She stood, and started pacing. Her hand covered her mouth, which made her face even more illegible. Tears rolled from her eyes and across her fingers. “I’m just scared, Will,” she finally admitted. “I just, you’ve already been through so much, I don’t want your life to be any harder than it has to be.”
“It was always going to be harder, Mom. It always was, I always knew that.” He pushed back tears with the palm of his hand, but new ones fell faster than he could wipe the old ones away. “But you know what would make it easier, if you just… if you were okay with it? If you could try?”
“It’s not that I’m not… ‘okay with it,’ Will. I just, I love you. So much.”
“I know, Mom. I know you do.”
“I’m your mother. I’m always going to worry about you, Will. Always.”
He nodded, and then she was hugging him, just like she would when he was a kid. Gently she stroked the back of his hair, and whispered “I love you, it’s okay, I love you,” over and over again as he just sobbed until it was all out of him. Until there was nothing left hidden away. Until everything was out in the open.
And then Will heard two things at once. The door opening, and Mike’s voice. “Hey, Murray said we’re all good to go, so we’ll probably head out in- oh. Uhm. Sorry, should I…?”
Will wasn’t quite sure what Mike was thinking about the scene he walked in on, all three Byers openly crying together. But with courage Will didn’t know he had, he said “No, actually. You should know, too.”
“Know what…?”
Will patted his mother’s back and pulled away from her. “Mom, can you and Jonathan tell Murray we’ll be out in a minute?”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Will nodded, and Jonathan said “Come on, Mom,” as he gently pulled her away. He gave her as much reassurance as a look possibly could, and she agreed to walk out with him, leaving Mike and Will alone.
He waited until they heard the door close behind Joyce and Jonathan before he took a seat next to Will. In that voice he always used when something was wrong, that voice he reserved just for Will, he asked “What should I know?”
And there it was. The air was made of lead again. He knew saying it out loud would be hard, he always knew that, but it was still so much harder than he ever expected it to be. Mike, for his part, let Will take his time. He just waited, listened, in that patient way of his. He never rushed Will, never made him do or say anything before he was ready. When Will finally did speak, he didn’t say what he expected he would.
“I lied about the painting,” he said.
It was such a simple thing, phrased like that. But it meant everything. Mike nodded, reinforcing the idea that he already knew everything Will was about to say. Or most of it, anyway. But he didn’t look angry. He didn’t look disgusted. He just looked… like Mike. That was all the encouragement Will needed. So he kept going. “In Lenora, what I said about El, it wasn’t… strictly true. I mean, it was, but it wasn’t…” A breath. “What I mean is, it wasn’t about her. It was about me. It was always just about me.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” It wasn’t accusatory. It wasn’t upset. It was just an honest question.
“I was scared, I guess. Scared it’d freak you out. That you’d finally realize, I’m not like Dustin, or Lucas, or Max. That I’m not like you.”
Mike waited for a long moment, making sure Will wasn’t going to say more. When he didn’t, he said “We’re a party of freaks and weirdos, remember? Do you really think I’d be so afraid of different?”
“It’s… a different kind of different, Mike.”
“I don’t think you’re as different from me as you think you are, Will.”
Why did he always have to do that? Be so vague? A million interpretations with a million different outcomes swirled through his head, until he didn’t know where to go from here. He had no idea what was next to say. So he opted to wait until Mike decided for him.
“I miss when we used to talk to each other,” he said finally. “I miss when you used to tell me things. Just me. Things you thought the rest of the party wouldn’t understand.”
“That… was a long time ago, Mike.”
“I know,” he nodded. He looked off into nothing for awhile, then suddenly he said, as if he had quickly realized he needed to, and didn’t trust himself to wait, “Do you remember what you said, the night you went missing?”
He honestly couldn’t. Every time he thought about that night, the fear and the panic and the cold were all he could remember.
“When you cast fireball, you dropped the d20, and my mom called me. You and Dustin found it but I never saw it. But you told me, you said you rolled a seven. You told me you missed. You could’ve lied, said you rolled higher, or said you forgot the roll by the start of the next session. But you didn’t. You told me the truth, because back then, you couldn’t lie to me. I miss when you couldn’t lie to me.”
Will couldn’t help but smile at the memory. He’d forgotten that campaign. The last night everything was normal, and it all felt okay. “I miss it too,” he admitted.
“So it’s decided then. No more lying.”
“No more lying,” he agreed. And then, just as quickly as Mike asked his question, Will asked before he could change his mind, “Did you know, that summer? When I left in the rain?”
“Know what?”
“‘It’s not my fault you don’t like girls?’” Even years later, that line still stung. Even though he apologized. Even though.
Mike looked just the same as Will felt. Like that line still stung him, just as much. Even though he apologized. Even though. “I don’t know,” Mike said, and it seemed like he honestly didn’t. “Maybe. But I think maybe it was… about me. I don’t know.”
That didn’t make any sense. Absolutely none. “But. You and El.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Me and El.”
Mike’s face was completely blank. Frustratingly, infuriatingly blank.
“I did care about her. I mean, I do. So much. But sometimes, I just feel like… I don’t know. I’m not doing it right.”
Nothing was making sense. Nothing about this was making any sense. “What do you mean?” he asked. And in his head, he kept repeating, No more lying. No more lying. Please, just this once, no more lying…
“Sometimes I would feel what I’m supposed to. I mean, how Lucas described it with Max. Sometimes I would feel like that. But then sometimes, it felt like I just… didn’t feel anything. And then I’d just feel guilty. But I didn’t know what for, like, what I was doing wrong. And then sometimes, I’d look at you, and I’d just…”
“Feel different?” Things slowly started to click into place. But that old voice in his head kept repeating, Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up, he’s not like you, he’s not like you, he’s not like you.
Mike nodded, but his face was still blank. “And that’d just make me feel guilty all over again. And then I’d feel confused. So so confused, Will. I can’t even explain it, not even to myself. So I decided, you know… maybe it’d be easier not to feel. So I just didn’t. I grew distant, from you and El. From everyone. I just kept pushing it further and further down, until… I think I forgot how to feel anything.”
“Mike, that’s just not true.”
“I didn’t cry when those demos attacked my parents.” He said simply. Like he was describing the weather. “Not when Nancy found our mom, just… mangled there on the floor. Or our dad crumpled in on himself upstairs. Not when we realized Holly was gone. Not in the hospital, when my parents were in surgery. Not when my mom woke up and told us about Henry. Not when we lost the kids. Not when Max came back. There was just nothing.” True to what he was saying, his face remained utterly expressionless. Completely hollow.
“Maybe a part of me was jealous of you,” he continued. “You always seemed to know what you were feeling. Exactly what you were feeling, even if you were scared of it. You never seemed confused. You just always understood yourself, you know? And I was always… I don’t know. Left behind, I guess.”
“Left behind?” The concept that Mike felt left behind by Will was almost laughable. He might’ve even laughed, if Mike didn’t still seem so empty. “Mike, that’s how I always felt. That you were growing up without me.”
“I don’t think I ever really did,” he admitted. “I still just feel like a kid. Just pretending.”
“Yeah, I think everyone feels like that,” Will said, and Mike let out a breath that almost, very nearly sounded like a laugh. “But we didn’t leave each other behind, did we? We’ve always been… right here. I’m right here, Mike.”
“I’m right here, Will,” he said.
“We’ll go crazy together, right?” Will asked. Tears were running down his face again but his eyes remained clear. Mike remained in perfect focus.
“They say it does make you crazy,” he said. And finally, for the first time in however long, tears ran down his face, too.
Will knew exactly what he meant. “Yeah, it does.”