Chapter Text
If anyone had asked Will what he expected senior year to be like, he could’ve given them some pretty wild ideas. Hell on earth, would be his first one. A waking nightmare is another one of his favourite terms. The rest involve high amounts of swearing or are just long screams punctuated by periods of silence.
As he drives to school at the beginning of March however, Queen blasting through the opens windows and his best friend complaining in the passenger seat, he realises how wrong those phrases were.
His mom always says that what goes down must go back up again. He never believed her up until now.
“Can you turn it down?” El moans, pressing the coffee flask to her lips. Will debates ignoring her, because Freddie Mercury deserves to be played loud, but a particularly high not convinces him otherwise. He concedes and turns it down.
El smiles at him and turns her attention back to the window. He never thought silence could be this comfortable with another person. He was wrong.
It’s still weird to him, how quickly his life bounced back after he told El everything. There was the initial period where everything was still shaky. The morning after was the hardest, in his opinion. Having to sit down and talk to his mom and Jonathan. Calling Lucas and Dustin and Max. Finally putting middle school behind him.
It got easier after that. He got used to a certain comfortableness. Got used to talking to his mom. Got used to having friends in the hallway and at lunch. Got used to The Hopper’s being there more often than then not.
The bad days got few and far between. Now, as he pulls into the parking lot, he barely remembers what they felt like. They instead become like the dull throbbing of a distant headache.
Max is waiting for El, just like she always does. She accepts the flask gratefully and gulps the coffee down, only pausing to nod a greeting to Will. That’s their normal routine. After Will apologised, that day over the phone, they formed this sort of carefully considered alliance. They don’t speak much, but it goes unspoken that Max knows. Not only does she know, but she understands. She’s the only one who does, really.
El was right, he had realised when making those phone call apologies. They do care. It’s an odd feeling, a little intoxicating, but he tries hard not to let it get to his head.
The only apology yet to make is to Mike. Mike has always had a way of making him unravel and Will knows, he just knows, that any attempt at an apology to Mike would just end up with him apologising for everything: for the party, for the staring, for the fists and the words and everything in between. He knows if he starts talking he won’t be able to stop. Mike would crack him with his soft eyes and his gentle hands and his unknowingly deceptive ways.
He's still clinging on to Mike, and the idea that he doesn’t know just how wrong he is inside. Part of him knows Mike knows, that maybe he always knew. The soft way he said “come on guys,” when his friends had been harassing Will in sophomore year was enough of a tell. But still Will clings to the mortifyingly amazing idea that Mike had defended him because they were friends, somewhere deep down. Not because he was the schools walking AIDS poster.
El had suggested he told Mike, once. They were driving to school in amicable silence, an old Beach Boys tape filling the gaps, when she had twisted in her seat to look at him. Will kept his eyes on the road.
“Why don’t you just tell Mike how you feel?” she had asked, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe to her it was. Something to do with not having to live in inconsolable fear with yourself.
When he had laughed her off, she had just shrugged and said, “you don’t know what will happen until you try.”
The whole thing was laughable, but for some reason, Will couldn’t stop thinking about it for nights afterwards. The idea of confessing his love like in a romantic movie. Mike, admitting it back. Mike, intertwining his fingers in his hair. Mike, kissing him.
The thought made his throat dry, panic rising like bile in the pit of his stomach.
No, Mike doesn’t know and Mike can’t know. No matter what El says.
The first half of the day is fine. He’s getting used to fine, the mediocre feel of it. Days are no longer bad, they are fine and sometimes they are good. More often than not they’re just okay.
Things still trip him up sometimes. An odd look or a question in class. One day, he vows to himself, they won’t. One day I’ll be nothing but happy. Just like everybody else.
Today it’s Mike that trips him up. He’s disposing of his copy of Grapes of Wrath after literature when he sees him. he’s used to seeing him out of the corner of his eye, but he’s so much more present now, a sturdy figure just ten lockers down.
He finds himself staring at Mike. He has an advantage, from where his locker is, not that he ever used to see it that way. He has a clear sightline to where Mike stands every day. He can see the casual way he slips texts books into the middle of the clutter. He sees when his friends from track, or film club, are there, forming a sort of semi-circle around him.
Now, however, he sees Mike lean forward and press his face against the cool metal of the locker. It’s a trick Will knows well. He used to do it on his particularly shaky days, when his body just couldn’t stay still. Mike struggles for a breath, seems to catch it in his lungs and pulls back. He looks vulnerable, a little unsure of himself. Like the Mike Will once knew, back before the words and the blood and eyes that had hardened under years of strain.
Maybe that’s why Mike slams his locker shut and casts a glance around the hallway to check if anyone saw his brief falter. They haven’t. No one has, except Will.
A year ago, Will would’ve ducked away from the intrusive gaze but now he lets Mike’s eyes land on him. They hold there, only for a moment, but it’s enough for Will to see. Mike looks small. Fragmented.
Back pressed to the floor. Breathless, panting. Eyes pleading with the tears collecting just in the corner. Will feels strong, body adrenaline, fists stinging. He doesn’t like feeling strong.
Mike pulls away from his gaze and melts into the sea of students. He heads north. Towards the track field. The gym. The car park.
Will heads north, like he normally does. North means the cafeteria. He used to hate it, ears ringing with the noise of voice clambering over one another. That was his outward excuse, his real one being the table in the corner that Mike occupied.
Mike is gone now. Will can’t recall the last time he saw him eat lunch in here. It feels like a flip has been switched, but Will doesn’t know why.
He likes the routine that has become usual. Locating the middle-left table and slotting himself into the vacant seat next to El. She smiles when she sees him, through a mouthful of apple, and presses her body into the side of his. It’s a half-hug. A welcome greeting.
Lucas sits opposite. He greets Will with words, a warm “Hey,” eyes full of conversation waiting to be had. It feels familiar, like putting on an old pair of shoes.
He nods his usual greeting to Max but finds no response. She’s bent over a book, pen flying across the paper, nose pressed to the pages. He wouldn’t be surprised if she couldn’t hear anything around her.
He turns to Lucas instead. “What’s she studying?”
“Physics,” Max answers bluntly, but doesn’t look up.
The answer doesn’t explain much, so Lucas fills in the blanks. “It’s for her final. She’s just now realised she needs straight A’s to get into Yale.” He breaks off the crust of his bread and slides it to El.
“You’re going to Yale?” he turns his attention back to Max. Sitting next to her, on that hill, bodies pressed together, she had told him about travelling. He had been so sure that Max would still be by his side next year. He didn’t expect that of Dustin, or El, or Lucas, with their plans and their preparations. He certainly didn’t expect that of Mike. No one would ever hold Mike back, Will had no doubt of that.
But if Max is going to college that leaves just him, and Hawkins.
She must hear something in his voice, because she lifts her head momentarily.
“Not if she doesn’t pass physics,” Lucas is joking, but Max’s stare doesn’t waver.
“Maybe?” her voice is soft. Unbelievably so. It makes Will want to cry. “I’d like to have the option. Who knows how I’ll feel when we graduate but right now I don’t want to-”
“Burn any bridges?” Will supplies. He gets it, he really does. He just wishes he hadn’t already burnt all of his.
Max turns back to his studying, though he brow is creased and her eyes keep flitting upwards. Will tries to ignore it.
“You okay?” El whispers but he bats her off. He doesn’t need pity; he has no use for it anymore. What he needs is to stop thinking about himself, sitting alone in his bedroom, knuckles stained red with someone else’s blood.
The distraction comes in the form of Dustin, who throws himself into the seat next to El and slings an arm around her shoulder.
“What did I miss?” He asks, as though it’s a secret society meeting and not lunch.
Will just shrugs and lets the conversation carry on without him. It quickly turns to the candy store and its untimely end.
“It’s a disgrace,” Dustin is declaring as El laughs at him. “Don’t laugh. That was my livelihood! I had a profitable little business going and it what? Gets shut down for no reason.”
“It is illegal,” Lucas supplies, “and very against school rules.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re the student president.”
“It would be the truth even if I wasn’t.”
Will tunes them all out in favour of picking at the sandwich in front of him. Food is still fear to him, but it’s a shameful one. It was fine when it was just him and El. Most of the time lunch would slip by and she wouldn’t even notice he hadn’t taken a bite. But now, there are eight scrutinising eyes instead of two and it would look suspicious, sitting in the lunch hall and not eating a thing. He doesn’t want the hushed whispers to return, nor the secrets they carried with them.
So now, he eats a few bites and tips the rest in the bin, waving goodbye to the table as he heads to his last lesson.
Time now feels weird to him. Sometimes it’s like sludge, and he’s dragging himself through it. Other times it barely passes and before he knows it he’s curled up in the bath, shivering, with no recollection of ever climbing under the shower fully clothed.
He sits down in American History and then he’s in the car, knuckles turning white against the steering wheel. He reconstructs the day in his head. Math, Chemistry, Lit, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike-
He tries again, and this time he recalls Lunch, and History and Climbing in His Car. He lets out a breath, then swerves right. It’s the medication, he knows it is. Time was never so sticky before his new dose. His mom had insisted on it, demanded he see a doctor right as he walked through the door.
He’s drowning. He’s drowning under the weight of Hopper’s raincoat and his mom’s arms that encircle him.
“Will, baby,” she’s crying, nails against back. Jonathan isn’t saying anything.
“He’s alright,” Hopper is reassuring, with the steady sound of his voice. He squeezes his shoulder a little too tight, “Him and El were just hanging out.”
It’s a half-lie. Would’ve been good, too, if Will wasn’t still crying and Hopper’s face wasn’t drawn with nerves.
“I’m calling the doctor. I’m calling the surgery right now and we’re gonna fix this, Will. I promise you we’ll fix this.”
He swerves again, and curses this time. Those damn meds. He’s fine, he doesn’t need them, he’s perfectly fine. Everything is fixed. He has El and Lucas and Jonathan doesn’t hate him and he can actually breathe now. Everything would be perfect if Mike would just listen to his apology. But it’s fine.
He doesn’t remember parking the car, or unlocking the front door, but he must have done because now his shaky fingers are fiddling with the child-proof cap of the medicine bottle. It finally gives under his hand and he empties it upside down, watching the tiny little capsules find their way down the plughole.
Once they’re gone he can feel his stomach unknotting. He slams the bottle down a little heavier than necessary and his whole hand vibrates.
One breath, then two breaths, until his lungs no longer feel like they’re concaving. He steps back, eyes focusing on his reflection. He looks more like himself then he has in years. His hair is neat, straight lines and edges, only just obscuring his eyes. His face isn’t pinched or drawn. He tries for a smile and it doesn’t feel foreign.
Inside is different, too. Recently he’s been feeling things he’d forgotten. Excitement. Expectation. That light-headed feeling when you’ve been laughing too much. They mix together with the anxiety and the dread in the pit of his stomach and make him feel human again.
He studies his reflection. Repeats his mantra.
I’m okay.
I’m okay.
“Am I okay?”