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The end of the world comes slowly.
Everyone is on a perpetual knife’s edge, waiting for the other calamity to drop, for the worst of the Upside Down to return and put to test everything they’ve been working for, but it’s been weeks, now, and nothing has come. Hawkins is half-evacuated, which opened up just enough space for the Byers-Hopper family to take residence in the home of some neighbor who remembered them kindly — or, at least, pitied them for everything Joyce's younger son had been through. Mom has plans in place for a return to California, eventually, knows the effect this place has on her son — (it feels, even now, like there is lead in his boots, like the gravity is stronger here, like something wants to keep him rooted to the spot, wants to keep him here and never let him leave) — but, for the sake of the town, for her daughter and their friends, they wait, bated breath, for the end of the world.
But it hasn’t come yet.
They’re in Mike’s basement, some Thursday evening. The five of them — Will, El, Mike, Lucas, Dustin — (Max is still in the hospital, something that they all can't help but think about too much), have ended up here a lot of late. Mike’s parents have all-but abandoned Hawkins, with Holly in tow, leaving Nancy the woman of a house that is resoundingly empty, so they fill it, best they can. Will can tell it weighs on Mike, the absence of his parents, the embarrassment of their departure. He would talk about it, but, well—
He’s been making a concentrated effort to avoid heart-to-hearts with Mike.
End of the world be what it may, there is still a significant amount of downtime, after any attempts to plan and prevent have been stymied by how little is happening, and Will is desperate for something to do besides mull over that infinite road trip. They’ve taken to near-daily movie marathons, and after three rounds of Star Wars (in its entirety) and another of Back to the Future, there is a silent but unanimous decision to turn to movies of the more romantic-comedic persuasion. Will, personally, doesn’t think that Swayze and Cusack have a thing on Harrison Ford, and why they’re the romantic leads — he doesn’t get it. But, he doesn’t know. It’s kind of nice, to see somebody getting a simple, happy ending.
They’re watching Say Anything, which Will actually has seen before — he watched it in the back of a theatre in California, next to a long-haired boy who was brave enough to hold his hand, but not enough to kiss him. But they had held hands, the whole movie, like it was normal, like that was something someone like Will was not only allowed to want, but allowed to have.
He looks next to him, at another long-haired boy, his hand resting in the space between them.
That, in any case, is not something Will is allowed to have.
He turns his attention back to the screen, watches Cusack heft a boombox over his head, ‘In Your Eyes’ crooning while Mike groans an unsupportive, “Aw, really?”
“What’s wrong with it?” Lucas barks back, defensive.
“It’s just,” Mike shrugs, “Kind of a stupid love confession, I think! Like, that’s just gonna wake the whole house, and then what’s the point.”
“Yeah, I side with Mike,” Dustin offers.
“It could be sweet,” El muses. “If it is the right person.”
“That would be proof they’re the wrong person,” Dustin fires back.
“I think it would be nice,” Will says, not really thinking over the words before he’s saying them. He gets a curious glance from Mike, and he flushes, and clarifies: “The big gesture. I mean, it’s a little over-the-top, but, I don’t know. It’s— someone taking a risk, even if it’s just risking being embarrassed. It’s nice. I would like it too.”
The next look he receives is from Lucas, mouth a bit downturned, a bit sympathetic. Lucas knows — they all know, now, he told them because fuck if he’s letting anything from the Upside Down use this against him, take this from him, and it had gone fine. Really. El had needed it explained, and Dustin is still a bit weird about it, but he’s trying, and Lucas was — to his surprise, though he then felt bad about doubting him — the first one to pull him into a hug, tell him he was still their best friend.
And Mike—
Mike had been... quiet. But when Will had asked, later, shaking heart in his dry throat, if they were okay, it seemed to startle all the hesitation out of Mike, for just a moment, and he’d gotten back: ‘Of course. Will, of course, you’re my— our— my best friend.’ But he’d been separate, a little more to the side, a little less quick to touch him, and Mike is too smart not to have figured out the obvious second part of that confession. (Which is why, by the way, he’s been so adamant about avoiding that heart-to-heart).
In any case, they all know now, and Lucas’ sympathy and his kick to Dustin’s shin when he starts to respond, and even Mike, picking up on the energy in the room and looking concerned at Will — they feel sorry for him. That he’ll never get that, that big gesture. The experience of being loved in public. Anything more than nervous held hands at the back of a theatre. He will get the risk, though, plenty of that, but the risk does feel a little less, with people who love him enough to wish the world was better suited to hold him.
As they’re all heading out, the movie (as well as Dirty Dancing, as well as the first half of Ferris Bueller for the third time — Will always votes for it, and Mike has been very invested in seconding what Will wants — but people keep ducking out halfway through the last movie) long since finished, Mike grabs Will by the arm. He nearly flinches back, but it— it’s made Mike sad, visibly, that Will never wants to touch him. So he stays still, and takes Mike’s nod to the side as guidance to hang back as they others walk out (barring El, who waits and watches Will from outside the door).
Mike, in a bizarre turn of events, ignores El to look Will in the eye. “Hi.”
“Hi?”
“Do you want to sleep over?” Mike asks, smiling in that way where the corners are just a bit too raised — it’s uncanny, and a sure sign he’s nervous. “I just feel like I never see you.”
On purpose, Will thinks, but has the good sense not to say it at least. “I think Mom wanted my— our help,” he gestures to El — Mike still doesn’t look — and shrugs. “So probably not—”
“Mom said she only needed my help,” El counters, the goddamn traitor. “Right before she left, she said she only needs one of us. You can sleep over.”
Mike does look to El now, but it is with more gratitude than attraction, less lovey-dovey than it used to be. “Awesome. That’s great!” He turns back to Will. “You can borrow some of my stuff to sleep in, right? Then maybe we could finish Ferris Bueller?”
Will, trapped between his friend’s encouraging smile and his sister’s insistent glare, relents. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds alright.”
After Ferris Bueller pt 2, and after putting on some pajamas that seem both too long and too tight, and definitely smell too much like Mike, Will sits on his friend’s bed and looks at him and tries to find a thing to say. He is spared by Mike biting the bullet. “What’d you think of Say Anything?” he softballs, because they’ve been demoted to this sort of friend conversation.
Will shrugs. “I’d seen it already, when I was in California.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” Beat. “Actually, my first date was to see Say Anything,” Will says, for no reason, because he really has no desire to talk to Mike about any of his — gay things. Ideally, Mike would view Will as a wholly sexless being whose only overlap with all the horrible things he’d heard about queers being that he didn’t like girls. Except, he thinks, it would be nice to make Mike think it could be anyone for Will besides him. That Will isn’t some obsessed freak who only wants to kiss Mike.
If the flash of genuine reproach on Mike’s face is any suggestion, he’s much more caught up on the gay part than the ‘don’t worry, I’m not into you’ part. Maybe the latter just wasn’t very convincing. “Oh,” he says, quickly schooling his expression. “I didn’t…” he trails off. “Sorry, I just— I didn’t realize you had a boyfriend.”
Will nearly laughs. Boyfriend. Even in California, boys don’t get boyfriends. “Because I don’t. We didn’t — We only went out, like, twice. We didn’t have much in common.” This is true, and was one of the reasons, and the only reason Will has any inclination of sharing. The others: he was too scared to kiss me is, honestly, pathetic, that he wasn’t even worth the risk of a kiss in a closed room with a locked door. And then of course, the other reason, but Will is taking that one to the grave, even if Mike almost definitely already knows.
“That’s a shame,” Mike says, although it sounds like anything but. It’s probably better for him, to know that his friend isn’t some — gay sex fiend, or something. “You sound like you liked him.”
Will is pretty sure he hasn’t said anything of the sort, but he shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. He was tall, had good hair. He liked my art.” He realizes he’s describing someone horrifically Mike-like, when Adam hadn’t been, really. “He had a car.”
He had said it because it sounds cool, he thinks, that an older guy with a car wanted to go out with him, but when Mike shoots up to standing and exclaims: “He was old enough to drive?!” he guesses he didn’t quite hit the mark. It is sweet, he thinks, that Mike is this worried about him. “That’s way too old to be dating a fourteen year old.”
Will crosses his arms over his chest and huffs. “I didn’t exactly have a lot of options, Mike.”
“Yeah, but it’s still—” he looks back over at Will, from his nervous pace, and some of the angry energy seeps out of him. “I’m—” He cuts himself off. “Was that who the painting was for?”
He barely manages to stifle the laugh. “The what?”
“You know— the painting? El said you were working on a painting for a girl you liked, but obviously you weren’t—” He scrunches up his face in that way he does. It would be cute, if it wasn’t painfully obvious how much he hates talking about Will’s gay stuff. “So it was him, right? You were working on a painting for him?”
Jeez, El, Will thinks, worrying again just how well she can read him. Because the painting for the ‘girl he liked’ is currently right across from him, hung front and center on Mike’s wall. (Will won’t deny that he felt a surge of pride when he first saw it displayed, even if he knows it’s only because of what Mike thinks it means, for him and El). This is a nice out, of course. He could write off this one glaring, obvious show of his heart, at least. It would be nice, he thinks.
But then again, something about friends and lying.
“No,” Will says. “I didn’t— I didn’t paint anything for him.”
Mike furrows his brow. “Then who was the painting for?”
Will laughs a little. He’s a little scared he might cry, if not. “Mike.” It feels obvious, so obvious, that it shouldn’t be scary to say. And it isn’t like he’s giving away the whole truth. “I only worked on one painting. Your painting.” Then, tacked on: “The commission,” to put space between the ideas of ‘painting’ and ‘someone you like’.
Mike immediately shakes his head. “No, no that’s not right.”
“It isn’t?”
“Yeah, I mean, no, she specifically said there was a painting you wouldn’t show her, that you were working on for someone you—” By the way he goes a bit slack-jawed, mouth shaped in a small ‘o’ from the last vowel sound he made, it is clear something has been put together. He turns around, then, to look at the painting on his wall. “ Oh, ” he says, breathless.
“It’s the commission, Mike,” Will says, hurriedly. He is glad Mike is turned away, can’t see him red in the face. “I just didn’t want her to see it until—”
“There wasn’t a commission,” Mike interrupts, back still to Will. He walks toward the painting, raises his hand to the canvas like he is about to touch the bright red heart. “I asked El about it. She told me there wasn’t a commission.” What? What? “I knew you lied, but I didn’t know why.”
And now he does. He isn’t looking at Will, tracing his fingers along the contour lines, never directly touching the paint. “When did you— when did you talk about that?” How long hasn’t he said anything? Why hasn’t he said anything?
“When she broke up with me,” Mike says, voice impossibly level.
Will shoots up to standing. “She did what?”
“Two weeks ago, I think? I didn’t want—” He sighs, and finally turns back to Will. He eyes search over Will’s face, a slow and drawing look like trying to piece him together. Like he hasn’t already. “The lie, about the painting — you worked so hard to keep her and I together. I didn’t want you to be miserable, thinking you wasted that time.” Mike takes a step toward him. Will stays, frozen. “Are you miserable?”
Trick question, Will! It feels like he’s on a game show, stage lights boring into him and a smiling host needing him to say the right answer to question he can’t even begin to understand. He’s not sure he can breathe. “I’m— I’m not— Oh, shit, I’m so sorry, Mike.” What else can he say? What else could be the answer?
He can feel the tears building.
“I—” He hurries forward, chasing each word with the last. “I didn’t think she would break up with you, I wouldn’t have lied if I thought—”
“Will.”
“I’m sorry I lied about the painting, but it was— you both needed it, I thought. I’m sorry, Mike—”
“Will.”
“It wasn’t, wasn’t supposed to be a painting for someone I liked,” half-truth, at least, and it is the best he can manage, with Mike so close to him and the fluorescent overhead light scalding on his skin. “I just wanted to make something for you, because you’re my best friend, Mike, you’re my—”
The final word, ‘friend ’, is grabbed from his mouth by the firm press of Mike’s lips on his own, a point of contact he cannot even parse as a kiss for the first few seconds, and when he does, when he understands this as Mike is kissing him, he just as quickly pushes him away.
He pushes Mike away and staggers backwards until he hits the edge of the bed, falling ass-to-mattress. He barely registers it. He presses his hand to his mouth, and tries to breathe, and tries not to cry, and forces himself to look at Mike.
And Mike is smiling.
“Will—” he starts, but Will cuts him off immediately, shaking his head.
“What— What?” His words sound fake, his tongue feels leaden in his mouth. He can feel his body shaking, too warm and too cold and Mike is still, somehow, smiling. “I— why did you?”
“I wanted to,” Mike says, and steps closer, like he is going to sit on the bed next to Will, like Will could stand him being that close.
“No, Mike don’t.” Will holds up a firm hand between them, and Mike doesn't step closer. “This isn’t funny, Mike.”
“It isn’t supposed to be?” The smile isn’t gone, but his brows have furrowed, confusion lacing his tone.
“Just because I’m—” The word catches in his throat, but this, if nothing else, he can do. “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean you can fuck with me like this.”
Here the smile drops. “Oh! Will, no, I’m not. I like you! I’ve been— figuring it out, since El broke up with me—”
“No.” Will stands. The shift in position moves him closer to Mike, and it’s so dizzying that he immediately shuffles to the opposite side of the bed. “You don’t like me. You don’t.” He doesn’t, and he can’t, and Will cannot bear to hear it. “I want to go home.”
“Please don’t.”
“I want to go home.” He is not going to cry. He won’t. But he needs to go before that risk becomes an inevitably. “I’m gonna call Jonathan.”
“Will...” Mike sighs, and curls back into himself. “Okay. Yeah. I’m, I'm really sorry. It doesn't have to change—”
“It’s fine.” He wipes under his eyes. “I do want to believe you. I do." He doesn't add the contradiction. He doesn't need to. "And — thanks for having me over.”
Mike nods. “Of course. Always.”
“Yeah.”
Will goes downstairs. He calls his brother. He waits in the dark, deserted living room. Mike doesn’t come downstairs, and Will forces himself to be content with this. There is no way this goes well, no end to this decision of Mike’s doesn’t end with the dashing of any trepid hope Will dares to feel.
Nancy passes by at one point, before Jonathan manages to arrive. She takes in his puffy, red face, and the way his hands are still curled in tight fists around the fabric of his pants, and sits down next to him. She nudges him with her shoulder. “My brother’s being an idiot again?” she asks, gentle smile and gentler eyes.
Will sniffs. “You could say that.”
“You usually can.” She pats the back of his hand, and turns to look out at the dark living room, not moving away from him. “You know,” she says, cautious, “that you’ve always been the most important person to him.” Will scoffs. “No, I’m serious. He never shut up about you when we were kids, I could’ve killed him. And it didn't even make sense, because you were a sweetheart and I couldn’t imagine what you wanted to do with him. But, god, was he obsessed with you.” She smiles, and he can tell she is glancing at him from the corner of her eye.
“And I know... I know things have been weird. Jonathan told me he pulled away from you, when you moved. But, listen. He never took your drawings down. Any of them. He would start stories at the dinner table with your name, before trailing off. He was going through something, and I know that doesn’t make it okay, but, Will, I promise you're still the world to him. He’s my little brother, and I love him, and I know it must be hard to trust him again, but I really hope you would try. He still adores you. It’s just... built into him."
Will shuts his eyes, hoping she isn’t looking as he starts to weep, silently as he was taught. He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder, gentle but present, real, and hears her finish: “Always was, always will be.”
Will spends a week in the closest thing to solitude one can get in the eye of the storm that is Hawkins. He avoids his friends until they come chasing him down and dragging him to a night of movies — Mike excluded from the chasing party, and far off and quiet at the movie one — avoids Jonathan and his mother until he is sat down at an intervention of sorts — determining that he is no, not possessed, he promises — and, obviously, Mike. He writes a letter to Adam that he ends up trashing, because it isn’t fair to lead someone on when you’re not really into them (Will knows that perfectly well, now). He listens to Boys Don’t Cry on endless loop, and proves the title wrong a dozen times over the seven days.
He doesn’t think about Mike, if he can help it.
He doesn’t think of what he could be missing.
Ir’s the evening of the seventh night that it happens. He doesn’t even notice at first, the music low and faded enough that he assumes that Jonathan or El must have borrowed his record. But the song continues, and it is isn’t the muffled, soft sound of a record through wall, but the tinny, sharp tones of a cassette, but from afar, amplified and carried through air and window.
He sits up with a start, not sure if he should stand up and look through the window — because what if it’s not what he thinks? Or worse, what if it is?
The lovely roughness of the lead vocals ring out — The Cure, Will would recognize it anywhere. It is. It is outside. And Will cannot consider himself a brave thing, not yet, but God does he want to be.
So he looks.
Through the window, he sees him, Mike-goddamn-Wheeler, standing outside his window holding up a goddamn boombox, mouthing along the words to goddamn Boys Don’t Cry.
Thirteen times. Thirteen times in seven days, does Will prove wrong that title.
He opens the window, screen and all, and leans out. “What is this?” he hisses, loud enough that Mike will catch the words, and gentle enough that Mike will surely here the smile in his voice.
“I thought you’d like it better than ‘In Your Eyes,’” Mike responds, grinning even wider.
“No, what are you doing here?”
“Hoping you’ll believe me.” He lifts the boombox just a bit higher. “I know, I completely understand if you can’t. But I’m just so, so fucking sorry for that whole year, and I really, really like you, and if you don’t want any of that now, I will just be around as much or little as you want from me until you trust me again.” He nods, looking Will straight in the eye, as if trying to convey the whole thing into a place where Will might understand it. “If that isn’t too much to ask.”
“I thought,” Will starts, feeling himself near tears, “I thought you thought the boombox scene was stupid?”
Mike the Insolent, just shrugs. “It’s like you said. There’s something special about loving someone enough to risk being embarrassed. It’s probably the same with looking stupid."
“There really is.” Will, just a little breathless, asks, “So — love, huh?”
Mike the Flustered shrugs, so heavy that there is nothing ‘just’ about it. “I think so.” Then, shaking his head. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure.”
Will laughs, and cries a bit, and says, “What if you came in?”
Will learns quickly, how wonderful kissing Mike can be.
Notably, when it is not a three-second-moment of confusion.
Will shifts back, not far enough that he is no longer fully pressed to Mike. “You’re so stupid,” he whispers. He leans in to press another short kiss to his mouth. “What would you have done if anyone else heard you?”
Mike grins, his eyes crinkling and so soft Will thinks he could imagine no better fate then being held forever in the warmth of Mike’s gaze. “I’d tell them the same thing I told you.”
Will snorts. “Please don’t tell Jonathan you’re in love with him.”
“No,” Mike shoves his shoulder. “I’m serious. If you’ve already come out to all of them — I’m not ready to tell my parents. I’m not sure about all of our friends. But anyone in this house? I want them to know how much you mean to me. You deserve that. I want to give you that.”
“You,” Will laughs and tucks his head into the crook of Mike’s shoulder. “Mike Wheeler, you are a sap.”
Mike groans and leans his head back, and Will chases it, pressing his mouth for a brief second against Mike’s neck. “Maybe,” he relents. “I really liked Say Everything. Maybe that’s where I got it.”
“You’ve been a sap a lot longer than that.” He puts an arm around Mike’s waist, and feels the warmth as Mike’s hand wraps around his wrist. “I liked the movie too,” he says, mouth tucked right behind the curve of Mike’s ear.
“Really? You liked it this time, even without your tall, older, car-owning friend?”
Will turns just far enough to nip at Mike’s earlobe. “I liked it very much this time.”
“Good.”
Will leans back out of the magnet-force that is Mike Wheeler, enough to look him straight in the eye. He reaches up to push the hair out of Mike’s face. He lets himself, fully, believe.
“Hey, hey,” Mike says, hands going to Will’s teary face. “Why are you shaking?”
“I don’t know,” Will responds, trembling and tremulously smiling. “I think I’m happy.”