Chapter Text
When Mike Wheeler entered the room and saw Will turn around with tears in his eyes, he stopped in his tracks. Mrs. Byers was sitting with him, a concerned look on her face.
“I think you should hear this too, Mike. Get the others, please.” Will’s voice was trembling, and that made Mike scared, feeling once again like the little kid who slept on the floor next to his best friend’s bed to be there in case anything happened (what he would’ve done if something happened, he hadn’t thought that far).
Sure enough, everyone (even people who Mike didn’t understand what part they played in all this, for instance, Mr. Clarke, their middle school science teacher) gathered around the couch of the Squak’s break room in no time, no one knowing what to expect from Will’s confession.
The boy with the green eyes stood in front of them. Mike had noticed before, of course he had, but he just couldn’t stop himself from pointing out in his head how beautiful Will looked, even during the potential end of the world.
Will looked at each and every one of them, and when Mike’s moment came to make eye contact with the boy, he gave him a small smile. I’m here, he wanted to say, we’re all here with you, for you. One only reserved for Will; but the other boy didn’t return it, and Mike furrowed his brows.
“I haven’t been completely honest with any of you,” Will started, “I haven’t been honest for a very long time.”
Will’s pacing was making Mike dizzy. Max raised her hand.
“Was it you? The one who told us to run.”
The boy chuckled at the memory, and so did Max. The tension in the room dissipated slightly, but when Will spoke again, everyone held their breaths again. Mike noticed how only his right hand was trembling. The left one was curled into a fist so tight his knuckles were turning white.
“That’s where I wanted to get to. This will change how you see me, and everything that has happened, forever. And you can’t begin to fathom how sorry I am. No one hates me more than I do right now.”
He was only shedding tears from his right eye, Mike noticed. His own breathing turned shallow.
“I guess there’s no other way to put this. Vecna’s been seeing through me since he got me in the Upside Down.”
The world blurred around them, Mike swore. No one spoke, no one dared to make the littlest noise of surprise or shock. The air in the room was heavier than it had ever been. A stray tear fell down his own cheek.
Joyce was the first to speak, voice and frame trembling.
“Honey, what do you mean, seeing through you?”
“When he first…got me, he did something to my…my eye.” He pointed to the eye Mike noticed wasn’t crying. It was the same shade of green it had always been, but he could see it now. A glint, a reflection, a vein redder than the others. “He… took it as his. It didn’t belong to me anymore. But it was still in me. A part of me was always his.
Since then, he can just see whatever I’m seeing at any given time. I thought it would go away when you burnt the Mind Flayer out of me.” He lifted his shirt slightly to reveal the scar Nancy’d given him when the heaters weren’t enough. “But it didn’t. He used my eye less since Billy was flayed, and he didn’t need it when we were in California. He did spy sometimes. Just to see, just to remind me he was still there. When we started with the Crawls, he used it daily. That’s how he knew to hide.”
Will was right. This changed everything.
“So…” Lucas spoke from beside Max, holding her hand, “everything you’ve seen since you came back, he’s seen it too?”
Will, who didn’t seem to trust his words too much, nodded, and everyone’s eyes widened with the implications.
“All the plans…? Everything we talked about just now?” Dustin spoke.
When Will’s eyes faced the floor, Dustin stood up.
“Oh, we are so fucked!”
Mike could tell the room was about to explode, and he supposed Will could see it too, because he left.
The instant the door closed, the room did explode.
“Why did he wait so long?!”
“Oh my God, he knows everything. We’re never getting him!!”
“We could’ve done something.”
While everyone was busy screaming and trying to form a coherent plan, Mike slipped away. To do what, he didn’t know. He just wanted to see Will.
The boy was on the rooftop of the building. The sky had just turned dark, but the few lights outside the Squak helped with vision.
“Don’t speak,” Will said. “Don’t let me see you.”
But, Mike wanted to scream, I want you to see me, and I want you to see you still can.
Instead, he sat behind Will, opening his legs so Will was between them, so close he could breathe in his neck. Subconsciously, Will leaned back, resting against Mike’s chest. Mike’s forehead rested on his nape, and he closed his eyes.
“Hate me, please.”
Mike’s hand rested on his stomach. Tapped.
— • • • • • — • • — •. NEVER. Will chuckled at it.
“I know, but you should.” Mike sighed against his neck.
“You don’t get it. He knows everything. Everything I’ve shown him just from standing in a room where a plan was being made could get us killed any moment.”
— • • • • — • • • — — • • • • •. BREATHE. Will chuckled, again.
— • — — — — — • • — • — • • — • — — • • • — — • •. YOUR EYE?
“I don’t even remember what he did exactly. At first, he just…sank his claws into it. I thought he was going to pull it out. There was so much blood. When I woke up, he was gone, and my eye was still there, but then he used it. I felt him there, and then he spoke in my head. ‘You’ll make a great spy, William’.”
Mike’s hand slipped under his shirt, and he found his scar. He brushed his thumb over it, before tapping again.
• • • — — — • — • • — • — • — —. SORRY.
“What are you sorry for?”
— • — — — — — • — — • — — — • — — • • — • — — •. NOT KNOWING.
— • — — — — • — • • • — • — • • • • — — • • • • — • — — •. NOT REALIZING.
“You didn’t, no one did, because he didn’t want you to. It’s not your fault, Mike.”
Mike opened his eyes. That sounded so wrong, when Will said his name. A touch of disdain Mike’d never heard from Will when calling his name, and he knew.
It was Will’s left hand that came to rest over his.