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“I don’t like girls.”
Mike freezes halfway to the door, his hand braced against the frame, and stares into the room where Will, Joyce, and Jonathan are huddled in a small circle in its centre. He’s pretty sure Will says something else, keeps talking for a little while after that, but he can’t be certain because his ears are ringing and his vision has gone all tunneled and cloudy.
I don’t like girls.
Mike doesn’t know why that admission makes his breath catch the way it does. Or maybe he knows. Maybe he just can’t let himself acknowledge it or it’ll mean that it’s real.
His skin is buzzing. Guilt churns in his gut because the confession hadn’t been for him but he’d heard it anyway and now he can’t even manage to act normal about it. He isn’t sure he will be able to act normal about it ever, which is horrible; it’s so horrible, and he’ll never be able to explain it to Will. How can he explain something that he doesn’t even understand himself?
Mike senses Joyce’s gaze before he actually sees her looking at him. His vision tunnels in on her now instead of Will. Her brow creases in that worried way that it does so often these days and she opens her mouth, probably to call attention to him, but Mike has turned heel and sped from the doorway before he can hear her say anything.
When he gets outside, he rounds a corner and presses his back up against the cool brick of the WSQK building. Dazedly, he feels his lungs inflate and then push the air back out in a rush, his chest heaving, the rest of his body frozen in place. His mind swirls, flashes with a memory that makes him sick to the stomach to recall.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.
God, maybe Mike had always known. He’d always known and he’d used it against Will anyway, because he’s selfish and cowardly and can never say the right things. Those words must have cut deeper than Mike had ever intended them to. No wonder Will had been so upset. Mike had known he’d messed up the moment it had left his mouth. Its stale taste still lingers to this day whenever he thinks about it.
He feels like he might pass out. He lets his head thunk back against the bricks, hard. It hurts but maybe that’s good. Maybe it’ll knock some sense into him. Maybe he can replace one headache with another.
But he doesn’t think any amount of temporary pain is strong enough to overpower a headache that might have already lasted a lifetime.
He doesn’t realise he’s squeezed his eyes shut until he hears Will’s voice, feels him there at his side, and still he keeps them closed because he doesn’t think he can bear to look at Will right now.
“Mike?” Will comes close – Mike can sense the heat of his body – but doesn’t touch him. “Mike, I think we need to talk. I can explain–”
“I’m sorry,” Mike finds himself blurting. He opens his eyes. Will’s face is flushed and his hair is a bit messy from where he must’ve run his hands through it. His hazel eyes look green in the sun. The light haloes him, softens his features, illuminates the rosy tint of his cheeks. Mike looks away.
“What?” There’s hurt laced into Will’s tone. “You don’t have to be sorry that I’m–”
“Not about that.” Tears prick at Mike’s eyes. He swipes his wrist across his cheek furiously, makes a point to keep looking away from Will. “I’m so sorry, Will. I don’t know why I’m… I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
In his peripherals, Mike watches Will’s face drop. His eyes go wide with concern. He takes a step forward, reaches for Mike’s arm. Mike flinches away. God, he can’t even touch him. “Hey, nothing’s wrong with you,” Will says softly, carefully. If he notices Mike’s avoidance, he does a great job of not reacting to it.
But there must be something wrong with him because how else does Mike explain this feeling? How else does he explain what he’s done?
“I hurt you,” he whispers, and the words are simple, but they encompass everything, and Will might never know the gravity of them. “I hurt you, didn’t I?”
The sun is dipping lower in the sky. Will’s skin glows golden. Mike stares at the mole above the corner of his mouth.
“Mike–”
“No, I did. When I… when I was an asshole to you that night, the summer before you moved. All you wanted to do was spend time with me– with us. You were right. What you said was right.” El was never more important than you, he wants to add, but doesn’t
“It doesn’t matter,” Will says firmly, and Mike trusts that it’s true, but it still matters to him. “That was so long ago, Mike, honestly. I’m not hung up on it.”
Mike sniffs, looks up at Will’s eyes now. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
With a small smile, Will says, “I’m sure you didn’t.” It sounds like he believes it.
It’s all too much, the patience Mike has been granted when he doesn’t deserve a scrap of it. Will has always been patient with him. His unwavering loyalty towards his friends has never gone unnoticed by Mike. He sees it. He sees it all the time and maybe Will deserves to know that. But Mike is a coward.
He thinks of all the other times he’s hurt Will, the times that his mind projects onto the insides of his eyelids like a horror film that just keeps rewinding itself, replaying eternally, when he’s lying in bed late at night, struggling to drift off. He thinks of California, and the letters he’d written to El and not to Will, and the painting that he knows El didn’t commission, and he thinks of Will collapsing last night, then running to him, not being able to touch him, his best friend. Not being able to touch him because he had been scared of what it would feel like. He’s scared of what he knows it feels like, to touch Will, because Mike had hugged him after he’d taken out those three demogorgons with his mind and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
They used to touch all the time, when they were younger. It was so normal between them that it became second nature, and Mike doesn’t remember when exactly they lost that. It might not have been a specific moment, more of a gradual forging of distance, but he knows deep down that it was his fault. And it makes him sick. With grief, with regret, with anger – all of it.
Mike looks at Will now, standing across from him, the hand that he’d extended earlier now folded over his middle. He looks at Will, into his deep, kind eyes, maps out the sadness in them that he knows so well. And in a humiliating moment of self-pity, he lets himself feel guilty for all the things that he can’t admit aloud. He wallows in it, but doesn’t say anything.
For a second, Mike’s hand twitches out, like it has a mind of its own. But then it drops back to his side. Will’s gaze follows the movement. There’s a flash of something unhappy across his eyes, but then it’s gone as quick as it appeared. It’s one of those things that you only notice when you know someone well enough to catalogue the little changes that are invisible to everyone else.
“Anyway, you weren’t even meant to hear that,” Will continues, scratching the back of his neck. “I sort of panicked. After… well, Vecna…” He swallows thickly and Mike watches fear flood away the sadness grooved permanently into his features, and it makes him want to hit something. “He showed me things. He showed me what might happen if I told people, used it against me to scare me, and it just made me feel like something’s wrong with me. So I think I just needed to tell the people who matter. To prove him wrong, or I guess maybe to prove something to myself. Which is why I’m not upset that you overheard, by the way.”
Pathetically, Mike’s heart lurches. The people who matter. “Were you going to tell me anyway?” he asks, and it sounds stupid and childish, and he immediately wants to take it back.
Will opens his mouth, then closes it again, and his lip twitches. He looks thoughtful for a few seconds, then says slowly, “Uh. I don’t know. It’s not… It’s complicated. It’s not an easy thing to–”
“But I’m your best friend, right?” Mike presses on, internally screaming at himself to shut his goddamn mouth. “You could have told me. I’d be fine with it. Shit, I am fine with it. Obviously. You know me. You know me well enough to know that, right?”
At that, something pulls at Will’s brow, furrowing it, and suddenly Mike doesn’t recognise his expression at all. His heart sinks. He can’t read the exact emotion on Will’s face. He can only tell that something is wrong and, once again, it’s his own fault. Maybe he doesn’t know Will as well as he thought he did. Maybe he did know him, once. But they’re older now and there’s been a distance between them for a while. A distance that Mike has clearly made little effort to bridge.
The fact that Will is even still entertaining his bullshit is a miracle. Or maybe it’s a testament to his intrinsic and unrelenting kindness. Mike is undeserving of it. He’s done nothing but take, take, take with little to give but awkward apologies and some poorly-veiled admiration when Will’s eyes had rolled back and he’d thrown his hands out and he’d snapped those demogorgons into pieces. He’d saved Mike’s life. And what has Mike ever done for him?
He’s made Will cry. He’s made him doubt himself, their friendship. It’s a friendship that, objectively, shouldn’t even exist anymore. Mike has pulled away time and time again, unravelled what they built so carefully when they were kids. Will is the fragile piece of thread still knotting them together. Mike is sure that if either of them jolt too hard away from each other ever again, that thread will snap for good.
Suddenly, Mike is embarrassed to have claimed that Will should have told him. Will doesn’t owe him shit.
Now, Will sighs heavily, and Mike is honestly just shocked that he’s still talking to him instead of turning heel and walking the other way. “Look, there’s something else I was gonna tell Mom and Jonathan. But it’s… well, it makes things a bit complicated. It’s not something I ever wanted you to know.” Then he adds under his breath, “I’m not sure if you of all people would even want to know.”
Mike frowns. “Of course I want to know. I want to know all of it.”
The corner of Will’s lip quirks upwards. It looks like he’s trying to fight it, but Mike sees it forming there: a fond sort of smirk. Mike has no idea how Will is finding this amusing while Mike has felt on the verge of tears since he’d walked in on Will’s confession a few minutes ago.
“Trust me, you don’t,” Will asserts.
“What? Embarrassed ‘cause you’ve got a crush on someone?” Mike punctuates it with a casual laugh, but he doesn’t really feel like laughing, so it comes out more like a dejected cough.
“Well,” Will starts, the smirk dropping slightly.
“You do?” Mike can’t help but cut in again. His heart thuds hard behind his ribcage, echoes in his ears.
“Mike…” Will chews on his bottom lip, stares at his feet, then back up at Mike with huge, guilty eyes. He looks like he’s really considering it, saying whatever it is, and Mike wonders why the hell a crush would be scarier to admit than what Will already has, but then something sort of clicks in Mike’s brain and all the air leaves his lungs at the same time and he stands there, winded, blinded by panic and confusion, and just stares.
You of all people, Will had said. But why not Mike? Why not Will’s best friend?
“Will?” Mike breathes, but then he hears approaching footsteps, and he bites his tongue hard.
“Oh, there you are. You okay, buddy?”
Jonathan rounds the corner but stops a few paces from the two of them. He looks between them, and Mike takes a hasty step back. Like they’ve been caught doing something they shouldn’t. Even though they’re just talking.
Jonathan glares at Mike. Not in a mean way, because Jonathan has never been unkind, but in a way that feels slightly like a warning. Or like a dissection; like he’s sizing him up, trying to get a read on him. Mike ducks his head and resists the urge to run away. Or to curl into a ball right there on the ground, maybe. His heart is still racing a million miles an hour. He can’t wrap his head around why.
“I’m okay. Sorry I ran off like that. I had to…” Will trails off, glancing at Mike, and then back at Jonathan, who narrows his eyes and nods in understanding. It makes Mike feel like the butt of a joke, even though nobody is making fun of him.
Jonathan clears his throat. “Does he…?”
“Yeah, he heard,” Will replies quietly. “He knows.”
Jonathan doesn’t say anything. Instead, he nods again, then steps forward and wraps Will up in a hug. Will makes a little noise of surprise but melts into it easily. Jonathan cradles him, kisses the top of his head. Mike feels it in his own chest like the branding of a hot iron on his heart.
“I love you, and I’m so proud of you,” Jonathan says, muffled in Will’s hair. Mike watches Jonathan squeeze him harder, feeling incredibly awkward, but also dangerously like he might cry again. “You’ve got me, okay? And Mom. Always. You always have us. And you’ll always have the people who matter. I never want you to think that you’re alone, because you’re not. You never have been.”
More tears prick at Mike’s eyes. Something writhes in his insides, something hot and constricting, and, abruptly, he’s finding it difficult to breathe again. His cheeks are wet. He turns away from Will and Jonathan’s embrace, faces the wall. Throws a hand out to brace himself against it. Brings the other up to cover his crumpling face.
The people who matter.
Is Mike one of those people? Has he ever been? He’s sure that he used to be, but does he matter now? Would Will really have trusted him enough to tell him if he hadn’t overheard?
Maybe if Mike could just say what he wants to out loud, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as keeping it all in. Maybe he’ll never know the difference.
Will and Jonathan exchange a few more quiet words which Mike hears vaguely but doesn’t process. He leans his weight against the wall, sniffs into his hand, digs blunt fingernails into the flesh of his cheeks. His chest burns. His lungs burn. His eyes sting as he surrenders to his tears. He wonders briefly if this is what it had felt like for Will, when they’d burnt the Mind Flayer out of him all those years ago; consumed by a relentless, burning heat.
It’s a stupid comparison. Mike hasn’t suffered half as much as Will has.
Distantly, Will laughs and shoves at Jonathan’s shoulder, and Mike is forced to face reality, forced to pull himself together. He doesn’t turn back around. He can sense Jonathan’s eyes on him but to his credit he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he mutters something to Will and heads back inside. Mike is almost expecting Will to follow him, but then a hand lands on his shoulder, and it doesn’t move away even when he flinches again.
Another hand joins the first, and Mike is being turned around. Will looks at him, the smile dropping from his lips when he notices how Mike’s face is scrunched up, a reflexive defence against breaking down completely, and his hazel eyes mirror Mike’s pain back at him. It’s empathy; abundant and innate. Will might be the most empathetic person Mike has ever met. He might be the most empathetic person in the world.
Mike swallows around the lump in his throat, presses his hand harder against his mouth. It does little to stifle the sob that claws its way out, muted by his palm, but still audible. Will’s eyes soften.
“Oh, Mike, c’mere.”
Then Will is hugging him and Mike is properly crying, snivelling into his shoulder. It’s humiliating and ridiculous. Mike shouldn’t be the one crying like a baby. He has no good reason to be upset. Will is the one who’s just laid out all his vulnerabilities, admitted something huge and important and personal. Something that changes everything.
It shouldn’t change anything. It’s horrible of Mike to think that it does. But as Will holds him, lets him cry into his shirt like Mike did so many times for Will when they were little, it feels like nothing will be the same ever again.
It’s fire where Will is touching him, his hands winding around his back, one of them snaking up towards the nape of his neck, fingertips grazing the skin there. Mike lets himself cry, lets all the emotions pour up and out of him, and he lets Will bear them. It shouldn’t be this way around, he knows, but he can’t stop now that he’s started. And Will doesn’t seem to mind. He’d hugged Mike first this time. He’d pulled Mike in. And now Mike knows for certain that the reason he never wants to initiate touch is because he’s terrified of it feeling like this every time. It’s intense and it’s painful, and it’s his favourite thing in the world.
Mike isn’t an idiot. He knows what it means, the way it’s simultaneously easy and impossible for him to touch Will. Something he wouldn’t even think twice about with Lucas or with Dustin is all he can focus on for weeks afterwards when it’s with Will. If a brush of skin brands him, then a hug like this might leave its imprint on him forever.
Mike doesn’t want to, but he eventually pulls back. Will reaches up and swipes a thumb under his eye. He keeps the touch light and friendly. Mike can tell he isn’t trying to push any boundaries or anything, not that he ever would purposefully. But it’s almost too light. Like Will is scared to do anything more. Like the hug was enough, or maybe too much. Mike wants to fall back into his arms. He wants Will to touch his face with both hands, rub both thumbs over his cheeks, trace his jaw with his fingertips. Mike looks at Will’s lips and he thinks about kissing them like he has so many times before, except now he doesn’t push the thought away immediately. He lets it sit. He soaks in it; hopeful, terrified, ashamed.
And in this prolonged moment of vulnerability, he says, “The painting. It was from you.”
Will frowns, shakes his head. “What? Mike–”
“El didn’t commission it, I know she didn’t.”
Will opens and closes his mouth a few times, clearly trying to formulate an excuse, but when he can’t settle on one, he just sighs. His shoulders slump a bit. Anxiety bleeds across his features. “Did she tell you?”
“No,” Mike says, and it comes out all choked up. He’s stopped crying now but his throat is raw and his eyes are still stinging. “I just know. She wouldn’t have asked you to draw something like that. That isn’t how she sees me. It's how you see me. You drew that for me. You drew it for me, and I took it back to Hawkins and I put it under my pillow and it’s been there ever since.”
It feels like a confession of his own. Will looks at him with wide eyes. He looks at him for a long time. They take each other in, Will searching Mike’s face for something that Mike doesn’t know how to find and grasp and hold at the surface for him to see. After today, after this conversation, Mike isn’t sure they’ll ever be able to look at each other the same again.
Will’s eyes dart across Mike’s face, and he swears they land on his lips but it’s only for a fraction of a second so he can’t be sure it wasn’t a mistake. The brown in his eyes is more noticeable now, the dark of his pupils urging the vibrant green to the edges of his irises.
“I’m scared, Mike,” he says finally, soft and timid.
Mike doesn’t know what to say. He digs his nails into his palms and wishes Will would put his hands back on his shoulders. It might help tether him to the Earth so he doesn’t float away.
“I’m scared that Henry is still gonna… gonna use it against me,” Will gets out. He looks away from Mike’s face, his eyes unfocused, trained somewhere behind him. “And I’m scared you’re gonna see the truth and you’re never gonna want to talk to me again so I need to tell you myself because I don’t want to lose you, I can’t lose you.” Will’s eyes shimmer but he doesn’t cry. “I was going to tell Mom and Jonathan but maybe the only person I really should be telling is you.”
“You’ll never lose me,” Mike breathes, and remorse aches in his chest because he’s made Will feel like he’s lost him before and he’d rather die than do it again. “Jonathan said it, right? You’ll always have the people who matter.”
Will meets his eye again, and the smallest of smiles edges its way onto his face. Mike can’t help it. He smiles, too.
Will clears his throat. Sucks in a breath then lets it rush out as he says, “There is someone.”
“Someone you have a crush on?” Mike prompts. His heart trips over itself, threatening to burst right out from behind his ribs. He keeps his cool as best he can, tries not to get ahead of himself, although he thinks he can gather the truth from the evidence he’s been given so far.
“It’s… uh, not a crush.”
Mike raises his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“I… I’m in love, and I have been for a long time. Since I can remember. I think I’ve spent more of my life in love than I have out of it.” Will laughs wetly, and he doesn’t meet Mike’s gaze as he goes on. “And someone… someone told me he was just my Tammy, that it was never about him, it was about me. And that helped me be okay with myself. It helped me reach inside myself and find what I needed to activate my p– Vecna’s powers. But…”
Will pauses for a long time. Mike doesn’t take his eyes off him, entranced. He has no idea what a ‘Tammy’ is but he has an inkling that it doesn’t really matter.
“I think she was wrong about Tammy,” Will confesses. “I think it’s always been about him.”
Mike swallows and his throat is rough like sandpaper.
“It’s always been about you.”
“Oh,” is all Mike can say, his voice cracking around the word.
“You’ve always been a part of me, Mike.” There’s a hint of a smile on Will’s face still, something timid and bittersweet. “We’ve been a part of each other, I think. Knowing you has changed me, and it’s true that accepting myself was never about you or anyone else, but all the rest is about you. Everything. You’re a constant in my life. Sometimes it’s easier to feel whole with you than it is to breathe. It’s dumb, but I think I’d feel like something was missing even if I had never met you.”
Mike holds his breath. Every muscle in his body is tense, hot blood thrumming in his veins.
“So, you’re not my Tammy,” Will continues, finally making eye contact. “You’re my Mike. That probably doesn’t make sense to you, but it’s not important. Just…” He gulps in a heavy breath, and Mike is worried he might freak out, take it all back, run away, but then he says, “I love you,” and Mike’s body goes lax and he releases all the air in his lungs, thinks he might collapse from the sheer weight of Will’s admission.
“I– I know it’s a lot to drop on you,” Will stammers, wringing his hands in front of him, buzzing with a contagious nervous energy. “I’m sorry. And I know you don’t feel the same way, I’ve come to terms with that now, so you don’t need to worry about that part of it. We can keep being friends, really. I’ll get over it. I just can’t lose you, Mike, I really–”
“Wait, stop. Stop.”
Mike shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them and throws his hands out to grab Will’s twitching ones. Their fingers slide together, into place. They haven’t held hands since they were kids. They’ve never held hands like this at all, completely intertwined, palms flush, skin pressed purposefully to skin. Will snaps his mouth shut, looking terrified and hopeful in equal amounts. He stares down at where their hands are joined.
“You don’t get to decide how I feel,” Mike says quietly.
Will coughs out a dry, incredulous laugh. “Mike, you don’t have to–”
“Shit,” Mike hisses through his teeth.
If he does one useful thing in his life, one thing that actually means something, it has to be this. He can’t keep forcing it down, hurting himself, hurting the people around him because he’s too much of a coward to admit what he really wants.
He can’t keep hurting Will. He can’t.
“Fuck. Shit. Shit. Okay.”
Mike tugs, pulls Will forward, releases one of his hands so he can wind an arm around his back and up to the nape of his neck, and he kisses him.
And Mike was right before, everything has changed. But it feels, for the first time ever, like this is exactly how it was always supposed to be.
Will doesn’t kiss him back right away. He sort of freezes up in Mike’s arms, limbs stiff and heavy, but Mike is done with hesitating. He couldn’t back out now if he tried, anyway. Now that he’s done it, he wonders briefly how it’s possible that he ever managed to resist. Then Will melts into it, kisses him back, and Mike isn’t thinking about much of anything anymore.
Will’s free hand flies up, grabs urgently at Mike’s bicep, so Mike pulls him in closer, tilts his head, parts his lips, and Will’s hand moves instinctively to clutch Mike’s waist. Will fists the material of Mike’s jacket and Mike gasps into Will’s mouth. Will wants this. He wants this as much as Mike does. It’s likely he’s wanted it for far longer. Mad with desperation, Mike drops Will’s hand that he’s still holding and cups his jaw instead, the pads of his fingers skimming the velvety skin beneath Will’s cheekbone. Will inhales sharply through his nose, pushing forward against Mike so that their chests bump. The swirling sensation in the pit of Mike’s stomach that he’s accustomed to feeling whenever he looks at Will is instantly amplified tenfold, and he notes that all this time, that feeling has been butterflies.
Butterflies; wings beating, fluttering, tumbling over each other. Butterflies when Mike looks at his best friend. Butterflies when he kisses him. Butterflies in his stomach since as far back as he can remember, and he’d been too stupid, too afraid for all of those years to accept what it meant.
Kissing Will is like nothing Mike has ever experienced before. He’d kissed El when she was his girlfriend and it had been sweet, but it hadn’t come close to the heat and the unbridled yearning that spills up out of him now, forging a burning path through his torso and out onto his tongue only to be swallowed up by Will. Will is in his arms and Will’s mouth is on his, and it burns. Nothing has ever compared. Nothing ever will.
It all makes sense. Everything.
Will breaks the kiss first and comes away breathless, staring at Mike in amazement, lips pink and parted slightly. Mike can feel his eyelids drooping and mouth curving into a dopey grin. His breath comes faster the longer he stares at Will and maps out the flush on his cheeks and realises with disbelief that he put it there.
Will swallows thickly, clouded gaze unmoving from Mike’s mouth. “Do you really–”
Mike uses the hand that’s still cupping Will’s jaw to draw him back in because he can’t fathom wasting anymore time talking when he’s already wasted so much. Will doesn’t seem to mind being cut off. Their lips slot together again, soft and sweet, and Mike thinks they might have been made for this, both of them. Made for each other.
Time must pass but it doesn’t feel like long enough. They have to move away for air again. It doesn’t seem fair, the need for oxygen. It doesn’t seem important.
Sometimes it’s easier to feel whole with you than it is to breathe. That’s what Will had said. About Mike. Maybe they don’t need to breathe at all. Maybe they just need each other.
Mike smiles at Will, wide and elated, and commits those words to memory. Commits Will’s face after he’s been kissed to memory, too, and prays that he’ll get to see it again a thousand times anyway.
“Mike,” Will whispers. His expression still radiates astonishment. Mike can’t blame him. He’s astonished, too.
“I love you,” Mike admits breathily. “I mean, I’m in love with you.”
Will’s bottom lip wobbles. His eyes shine with unshed tears. Mike takes his face tenderly in both hands, cranes his neck so they’re almost nose-to-nose.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he hopes it comes out as genuine as he means it. “I know it’s not enough but I’m sorry. I’ve been such an asshole to you and I’ll– shit, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll make it up to you every single day for the rest of my life if I have to. Just…” He sighs, and Will’s face scrunches up as he chokes on a sob. “I know you said you’ll get over it, but I feel the same, I always have, so please… please tell me I’m not too late.”
Immediately, Will shakes his head. He captures his bottom lip between his teeth in a visible effort to compose himself. Mike is mesmerised by it. “You’re not too late.”
“Fuck.” Mike’s heart soars. “Thank God.”
Shakily, Will lets out a laugh. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” he murmurs.
Their noses bump together. Mike resists the overwhelming urge to just lean in and keep kissing him. Now that he knows what it feels like, he doesn’t think he can ever stop wanting more.
“If you’re going crazy…” He thinks back to that time on the couch in his basement on Halloween three years ago, a memory that comes to him easily, and his heart glows with a deep and visceral fondness. “Then we’ll go crazy together, right?”
Will smiles through his tears. Mike can’t take his eyes off him because he’s beautiful when he’s happy. He’s beautiful all of the time.
“Crazy together,” Will echoes.
Then another voice says, “Oh. Shit. Sorry.”
Instinctively, as if they’ve been electrocuted, Mike and Will spring away from each other. Panic engulfs Mike as he looks up and clocks Robin hovering a few feet from them, eyes wide. He opens his mouth, scrambling to formulate some sort of rational explanation for what she might have seen, but no sound comes out. Will is still and quiet beside him.
“Or… congrats? I think?” Robin folds her arms and cocks her head, watching them curiously, and Mike is just about to ask her what the hell she means by that when Will scoffs and waves a hand in Robin’s direction, playfully brushing her off. Mike ogles him, dumbstruck. Will is blushing, but he doesn’t look like he’s been caught. He doesn’t look nearly as horrified as Mike feels.
“You were wrong about Tammy,” Will declares, swiping at his damp eyes with the back of his hand, and then it's Robin’s turn to scoff incredulously, and not for the first time today, something clicks into place in Mike’s brain. The panic subsides. Maybe Robin isn’t somebody they need to hide from. Maybe she’s safe.
“For the record,” Robin announces, “this is the first time I’ve ever been wrong in my life, and yet I am so incredibly glad to be.”
To Mike’s perpetual surprise, Will giggles. Then Robin giggles.
And then, because there’s nothing else for him to do, Mike finds himself giggling, too.