Chapter Text
When the plan is rigid and the sun fades to dusk and all is said and done, when the fate of the world is hanging in the balance on their shoulders, the only solid real thought he has is of Will.
The things that Will had said- to him, to his mother, his brother, everyone- still reel around in Mike’s head, appearing in sudden bursts and flashes of dazzling colour. He can’t quite shake any of it, can’t quite escape. The words weasel into his brain and through the centre of him, weaving into the delicate valves and strings of his half-beating heart. It stopped pulsing his blood properly sometime ago, somewhere between Will telling him that everyone needed to hear what he had to say and Mike coming to a shuddering realisation of just what Will meant, what he meant when he said that he wasn’t like them. It palpitates and jitters and it can’t be healthy, he knows this, he feels a similar thing when he drinks too much coffee before school, something his mother scolds him for every time, but this isn’t that, no, this is something wholly different and new and…uncomfortable?
I don’t like girls.
They don’t sound like words anymore. Not to Mike, not with the amount of times he’s echoed them back to himself. They’re like an earworm, and it annoys him. It annoys him because he thinks that, on a subconscious, molecular level, he always knew. He knew back when the scariest thing was when the nightlight went out, knew when he still fit into children’s clothes, knew when the world was still vibrant and beautiful and a Demogorgon was nothing but a made up monster. He knew, all this time, that Will was-
Gay. Will was gay. Is gay.
Mike isn’t judging Will. It isn’t a dirty thing. It isn’t a dirty word.
He wonders what his father would think.
Stop. It doesn’t matter.
Will is gay. And Mike isn’t an idiot. Not when it comes to this.
He’s not a fool, and he isn’t blind. He’s seen the way Will’s eyes linger, seen the way he seems to be lighter yet somehow more nervous around him. Perhaps he hadn’t put the pieces together before, but with this revelation, with the way Will had looked at him when he’d talked about his crush…
He feels stupid for not realising before. Guilty, even. They’ve been best friends for eternity and he’s been dating El for almost as long as he can remember and Will’s had to see that, had to see him kiss her, had to see them hold hands and giggle and run off during that summer, and god, why does it make Mike feel guilty? It isn’t his fault. It isn’t.
Mike sucks in a sharp breath to steady himself. He needs to focus. They’re leaving soon. To save the world. But still…
He takes a step towards the window of the room that he’s standing in, alone. They’re still at the Squawk, but everyone has dispersed to attend to their individual duties. So now it’s just him, standing solitary in the middle of a sunlit room with no one to witness his- turmoil? Is that what it is? He doesn’t know. He wishes he did.
Suddenly he feels terrified for tonight. Terrified for Will, specifically. When he’d seen him last night, fighting those demos…
For a flash, Mike had thought they were all doomed; that the last thing he’d see would be the claws of one of those putrid monsters coming at his face before it all went black. He knows what they say about life flashing before your eyes, now. He’d experienced it then, and what he had seen hadn’t been what he expected to- not El, not his mother, not his father, not Nancy or Holly. It had been Will. Will, small and frail, with an awkward lop of thick brown hair and porcelain pale skin, Will with scuffed shoes and bashed up toy cars and stripy socks. Will on the swings in kindergarten. Will.
Why can’t he get him out of his head?
Mike thinks of Will. Will now, taller and older, with a curved nose and pronounced cheekbones and a better haircut. Will with a broad smile and white teeth and bright eyes and a contagious laugh, Will who still loves D&D, Will who is and always has been his best friend. So Mike isn’t sure why his heart is beating the way it is. Fast.
Absorbed in thought, he doesn’t hear the door behind him creaking open or the footsteps that lightly patter against the sunlit linoleum floor. He doesn’t register the familiar cadence of breath, doesn’t notice the achingly known scent of pine and lemonade. He doesn’t notice any of it, not until there’s a shadow reflected on the floor in front of him.
“Mike?” Will says, lightly. “Hop sent me to come get you. We have to go.”
Mike tries to hide the way his shoulders tense at the sound of his voice. “Alright. I’ll be out in a minute.”
For a moment Will is still and unmoving, a statue beside Mike. Then:
“Are we…alright?”
Mike feels his eyebrows furrow. He does turn, then. “Of course we are,” he says lightly. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Will shrugs. He looks stricken. “I…” Mike notices the way his throat bobs. “I just wasn’t sure, after what I said. Before.”
“Oh.” Mike draws his lips together. “No, of course we’re fine. I said you’d never lose me.”
Will shifts uncomfortably between his feet. Mike feels unsteady.
“But did you mean it?” Will’s voice is strained, painful. It grates. Mike hates how…uncertain he looks. How could he ever doubt their friendship? What they have?
Mike shakes his head incredulously, mouth slipping open an inch. “Of course I meant it!” He claps a hand onto Will’s shoulder, and immediately regrets it. The warmth of his body is…something. Mike isn’t sure quite what, but it is firm and surly and surprisingly svelte and definitely something.
Stop.
Mike drops his hand again. Will’s face twists into a peculiar expression.
“I meant it, Will,” he repeats. “Really, I did. You’re never gonna lose me. You’re my best friend. The best friend I’ve ever had. Nothing in the world will ever change that. I promise.”
There’s a long beat. A silence. Will looks as if he’s at war with himself. Like he’s on the verge of saying something that he thinks he’ll regret. Mike knows the look all too well, the same way he knows every other expression Will makes. He’s got a mental catalogue of them. Hell, a five hundred page book. He knows Will’s expression, the same way he knows his mother always makes him pancakes and bacon on Saturdays. It’s the look of being on the brink of jumping.
“How can you be so sure?” Will says eventually, and casts his eyes away. Mike immediately misses the chocolate brown. They’re similar to El’s, but darker. With guilt he realises that he hasn’t even thought about El in the last hour.
Mike shrugs. “I just am.” But Will still looks unsure, so he says: “You know you can tell me anything. What’s bothering you?”
He knows what’s bothering him. But he asks anyway.
Will takes a shuddering breath, and gulps. “You say that nothing could ever change that. That no matter what you will always be my friend. And that’s nice of you, Mike, really, and I know that you mean it, I do,” he says, and he’s on the brink of rambling and Mike’s staring at his lips trying to keep up with his frantic words, “But would you still mean it if I said that you were my Tammy?”
Mike goes to open his mouth, not really sure what he’s going to say, but then-
“And I know you don’t know what that means, it’s just something that Robin said, but I- Mike, when I was talking about having this crush on someone-”
“How did you work out that your crush wasn’t like you?” Mike interjects, and Will’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. “How can you be sure?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking, but he is, and suddenly he needs to know like he needs oxygen and coffee and hot water for his showers.
Will rubs awkwardly at his neck, adjusting his head a little. When he does, the golden rays of the setting sun somehow align perfectly with his face, and his eyes are suddenly flecked with speckles of brilliant amber. They’re like pools, pools of light. Mike thinks that-
Oh.
Oh.
That can’t be- he isn’t-
He loves El-
“I knew because he didn’t look at me the way I looked at him,” Will says. “I knew because he had- has- a girlfriend, who he loves, and she loves him. He doesn’t like boys. And even if- even if he did- he wouldn’t like me, that’s for sure.”
Mike’s eyes flick between Will’s as he finishes speaking. He’s beautiful.
Could he-
No-
He does love El. He does.
But this- Will- feels instantly different. It feels right. How can something so wrong feel so right? He’s not supposed to feel this way about his best friend. But he realises, in that swallowing, golden moment, that he does, and there is nothing he can do about it. Maybe it took Will coming out in front of him to realise that they weren’t so different, that maybe they were both sinners and the shunned and the sort of person that his father would turn his nose up at and sneer at and call a fag. Mike knows, then, that he's been willingly blind for most of his life. Willingly living in a state of comfortable denial with the wool pulled over his eyes, fastened by his own hands. He knows then that he does like girls- like El- but he likes boys too.
Specifically Will Byers.
“Will,” he chokes out with a huff of air. He can’t stop now. The words are spilling from his lips like water. “You’re wrong.”