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It was nearly four pm when Mike hit the emotional wall that forced him to stomp out of his dorm room.
He couldn’t even fully explain why, and maybe that was part of the problem.
Mike hated not understanding his feelings, and it felt like that had been his entire life lately. Ever since the world didn’t end, Mike had felt totally lost.
He’d spent his entire life being kind of a helper.
Needing to be needed.
That was how it had been since the beginning. Desperate to save Will, to protect El, to keep things together. Mike knew how to do that. How to exist with purpose. How to fight towards something.
But since he was twelve, that had been his entire life. Grief and fighting. Working towards a goal, trying to protect someone, trying to save someone. Always something outside of himself.
Mike, as a person, as anything more than a concept, was something he hadn’t had to address at all for most of his life. Certainly not the most formative years of it, at least.
And when the world didn’t end, everyone else seemed relieved. Like they knew who they were and how to move forward. But since Mike was just a kid, his entire life had revolved around either Will or El. He hadn’t always done it well, but he’d always been dedicated to one of them. Trying to save Will from the Flayer. Trying to save El from the government. Trying — and always, always failing — to be a good enough best friend or boyfriend.
He had no fucking idea who to be when El was gone and Will just… didn’t need him anymore.
Everyone else seemed to know who they were and Mike was obviously happy for them that they didn’t have the same problems that he did, but he also felt more and more like he was being left behind every day.
El was gone, and while Mike wanted to believe his own theory about her being okay, it had been more of a choice. She had asked him to make sure that the others would understand and forgive her, and his little story had been the easiest way for Mike to do that. Still, in his heart of hearts, Mike knew that she was dead and gone.
Max and Lucas had come out of it all together and okay. They still had grief and physical therapy and a thousand other things to contend with, but they both had strong wants and desires and senses of self.
Dustin, ever a genius, had aced out of school, managing to maintain the pieces of himself and Eddie and Steve that had helped to shape him into who he was. He stayed funny and clever and never, ever wavered on who he was and what he wanted.
And Will. Will who had become so brave, so sure of himself. A real fucking hero. He stayed Mike‘s best friend, but he also never seemed lost in the same way that Mike did. All of that suffering and loss hadn’t broken him and Mike was so impressed, but also so ashamed that he didn’t know how to do the same.
He didn’t know how to be even half of what his friends were.
He wasn’t a leader any more and as much as he could play DND and tell his stories. He only knew how to tell theirs. His own had been a sort of mystery forever. Because his own story fucking sucked. He was lonely and sad and confused. He was disappointed in who he had become. Embarrassed at it too.
Sitting in his car, Mike had no idea where he meant to actually go. He left because he felt like he was going insane.
He left because Will and Carlton had gone out for a date and he had to watch them go holding hands. Because Will had squeezed his shoulder as he walked out. Mike had said that he hoped he had fun, and the words felt like poison on his tongue.
He felt angry and jealous and bitter that his best friend was so happy and so sure, and he had no fucking idea where to even begin. He felt like a shitty, selfish person for not being able to just be fucking happy for him.
He wanted Will to be happy. Of course he did. He’d never loved anyone the way that he loved Will, his first best friend. His favourite person.
He just… didn’t want it to be like this.
He didn’t want to watch Will walk away anymore, and he had no idea what that meant for him.
He left a post-it on Will’s desk telling him that he was going for a drive.
By all rights, he should be back before Will if he was just going for a drive. But on some level, he knew he wasn’t going to be back any time soon.
He just had to work out where the fuck he was actually going.
He’d been driving close to five hours already when he worked it out.
But really, maybe there was only one place he could be going. And maybe he was mad at himself for it, because he felt like a loser, knowing where he was going. Knowing who he was going running to in his time of personal crisis.
The longer he drove, the more confused and anxious he felt. He just felt so fucking guilty.
He felt like he had failed. Will told him once that he was the heart of their party. He’d never really believed that it was true, but it felt more fake than ever. How could he be the heart, or even the fucking spleen, when he had failed so badly?
Failed to convince Eleven to stay. Failed at being the person his friends deserved. Failed at everything he’d wanted to be growing up. Everything he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be so much more than what he’d become.
He’d last seen Will six hours ago, and somehow he stupidly just… missed him.
Missed them.
What they used to be. What they were supposed to be.
He missed a time before Carlton, and he hated what that said about him.
He drove for damn near ten full hours, only stopping for gas, when he finally pulled up where he was going.
God, why the hell had he gone there? He didn’t want to be there.
He knocked the same way he would have as an annoying twelve year old, even as an annoying nineteen year old. He knocked loudly and consistently until the front door finally swung open.
“What the hell, Wheeler? It’s two o’clock in the fucking morning.”
“Your hair looks like shit.” Mike snarked instinctively, pushing past Steve into his place.
He’d been there before, last Christmas, so he wasn’t surprised by the ugly furniture and undeniably homey vibe as he entered.
Nor was he surprised by the flustered fake annoyance that Steve was employing as he grumbled along behind Mike.
“Sure, kid, come on in. Yeah, my home is always open to you, apparently even at two in the morning. No, no, I don’t need sleep and I definitely don’t need you to like, call and give a heads up that you’re coming or anything. I don’t have a life outside of you kids and your drama and I definitely didn’t think we were done with all of this now that—”
“I get it, you’re sarcastic and bitchy, can we move past that part?”
Steve spluttered, scoffing. “Oh, for sure, Michael, let’s just move right past my feelings about being woken up by you in the middle of the night so that you can—”
“Steve.” He sighed heavily, dropping onto Steve’s couch with a groan. “Please?”
Just like that, all of his attitude sapped away.
More than anything, it was like a game that they played. Pretending there wasn’t at least some layer of understanding between the two of them.
Mike had always resented the way his friends obsessed over Steve. It wasn’t enough that his sister dated him, but then suddenly Dustin was obsessed with him. Then Max and Lucas too. On principle, Mike had always felt like he was meant to hate him. As a brother, yes, but also as a loser facing down a popular kid.
But getting older had taught him what Steve meant to everyone else, and to him too.
Because as a kid, Steve was emblematic of the bullying that his friends had faced and his sister betraying the losers for a ‘popular’ kid.
As an adult though, Mike saw something different.
Steve was just a kid then too. Like they had all been fighting monsters. Sixteen or seventeen when Mike first met him, he’d been kind of a doofus. Annoying and arrogant and impatient.
But then he’d abandoned his entire life for them.
Then he’d risked his life again and again and again for kids he barely even knew. Kids who were full of attitude and condescending quips no less.
He’d been a dick, sure, but he’d been kind. He’d owed them nothing and yet he’d been kind. Driving them around, spending his little paychecks on giving them ice cream. Taking that bat and using it to protect kids that by all rights, were nothing at all to him.
He’d taken beatings, faced torture, and really, truly nearly died a thousand times over.
So yeah, Mike and Steve’s relationship was built off of pretending to hate each other, but Mike knew his own respect for Steve was far more deep rooted.
In the end, Mike thought maybe a part of him had idolised Steve just as hard as the other kids had.
He hadn’t really understood it until he was sixteen years old, yelling desperately for a group of kids to follow him, keep their eyes on him. He’d kept them behind himself, been willing to do anything to save them. He’d have willingly been ripped apart in a heartbeat to keep them safe.
He looked at Steve differently after that.
He got it then. He finally got how difficult, how terrifying it was. How much pressure.
Still, this was their long-standing relationship. He and Steve, this was how they related to each other.
And really, Mike hadn’t ever thought he’d elect to come to Steve for help with anything at all. But he’d been in the car, and he’d gone on instinct. Pure instinct had led him from college back to Hawkins, so that he could seek help from a man he’d spend years claiming to hate.
“Okay, Wheeler. Okay. What’s going on, man?” His voice had softened a lot, and he ran a hand through his messy hair, as if trying to pull himself into the land of the living.
“... Will.” He said it like he was confessing something bigger. It felt huge. He hadn’t admitted it to anyone else. The way all the worst, most selfish parts of him were winning when it came to his best friend.
He couldn’t admit to Dustin or Lucas or Max how bad he was being, but… apparently he trusted Steve with that. It was news to him, somehow.
Steve dropped into a particularly ugly armchair, leaning forward onto his knees to meet Mike’s eyes intently.
“Okay, sure, yeah. What about him?”
“I’m a bad friend.” Mike admitted, breathing it out like a vomited confession, like something he was desperate to be rid of.
Steve blinked at him, visibly surprised.
“Did something happen?” Steve asked.
Mike was somehow sure that Steve was making a conscious, concerted effort not to be impatient with him.
“Yes.” He paused. “Well, no. It’s— it’s more like… more like…”
Steve waited, gesticulating vaguely for Mike to go on.
Mike rolled his eyes, a brief return to form, before sighing heavily.
“He got a boyfriend.” Mike huffed out a breath.
“I know.” Steve agreed slowly, brows raised. “Carlton. Will, Robin and I met up a while back and he introduced us. Seems like a good kid. What about him?”
Mike felt like a fucking idiot.
Of course Steve didn’t get it. Why would Steve get it?
“I… I just…” How was Mike even meant to begin to talk about this? “It’s driving me crazy, man. I hate the guy.”
Steve stared at him. His eyes were still a little cloudy with sleep, but he looked a lot more present after that admission.
“Okay, Wheeler, here’s the deal. If this is a problem I can help with, then let’s talk about it. But if this is about him being gay, then I think you’ve probably come to the wrong household, because I—”
“God. No. Obviously no.” Mike snapped, annoyed, “I’ve known about that for like, nearly four years. I don’t give a shit about that, like at all. I mean, we requested to be dorm mates years after he told us about that. I don’t— I never—”
“Okay, okay.” Steve raised his hands, placating. He could obviously see the panic on Mike’s face, because his affect softened. “I just needed to put that out there first. On principle.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing it further. “Okay. So you had Carlton. But not because of homophobia. Cool. So why do you hate him then? What’d he do?”
Mike thought that should have been easy to answer. Everything Carlton did annoyed him.
Yet… “Uh… I mean. He’s just… obnoxious. Like, he’s just… always around.”
Steve’s eyes narrowed, looking at Mike like he thought he was insane.
“What, like they’re sleeping in your dorm all the time or something? Because if you’re trying to escape them, there were other places than Hawkins.”
Mike’s face screwed up at the implications. Sure, Will and Carlton were adults. Mike himself was nearly twenty. Still, the idea of the two of them like that made Mike feel a little bit ill. Or a lot ill. He may actually vomit.
“That’s fucking gross, Steve, what the fuck? Ew.” Mike sounded thirteen again. He felt it too, yelling at Steve.
“Ew? You’re all adults, I’m just trying to work out why you’re here, you little shit!”
“Little? I’m taller than you are!”
“You’re the same height as me.” Steve shot back, throwing his arms out dramatically.
“I am definitely taller than you, even with your stupidly tall fuckin’ hair.” Mike shot back, glad for the distraction from his own issues.
Steve groaned, loud and irritated.
“You could be seven foot tall, Wheeler, and you’d still be a little shit to me. I saw you at every awkward kid phase you’ve ever had. You can change your hair and get glasses, but I remember that bowl cut, kid, and I always will.”
Mike scoffed, “I had good hair most of that time.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, man.” Steve shot back without hesitation. “So, if it’s not them being gross in your shared dorm, what’s your problem with him?”
Mike floundered for something real. A real reason to hate this guy as much as he did. And he did. He hated him.
“He just— he doesn’t deserve Will. He won’t ever really understand him. Not like I— not like we do.” Mike managed, watching Steve mouth a silent ‘ah’ of understanding.
“Have you spoken to Will about this?”
Mike stared blankly. How the hell was he supposed to do that? How could he tell Will that he hated his boyfriend? Will deserved to be happy. Mike didn’t want to cause any more trouble, he loved Will. He’d always loved him. And Will had suffered so much for so long. Who was Mike to fuck that up?
“How could I? He’s— he’s happy.”
Steve hummed, “I thought you just said he wasn’t good enough? That he didn’t understand Will like you do?”
He hated that Steve had caught that.
“Well, I mean, yeah. How could he? How could he ever understand it? The nightmares and the scary shit Will sometimes draws and the way he panics sometimes if people touch him when he’s not ready for it. Will’s had… so much bad. How can some random, average-ass guy ever be enough for a fucking sorcerer? A hero?”
Steve hummed again, judging. He sighed heavily. Seemed like he was trying really hard to find the right words to say.
“Just some guy, huh?” He asked, “Who should Will be with then?”
Mike had asked himself this question before. Probably too many times.
“I— I don’t know. Someone better. Someone who sees how special Will really is.”
“Like you?”
Mike choked.
“What? Why— Why would you—?”
“See, kid, I have this theory.” Steve told him, his voice surprisingly gentle. “ABout why you came to me and not Nance or Henderson or anyone else. I think you do worry about Will ending up with just some guy, but I also think it’s more than that. I think you came to me because you’re just some guy too. And you aren’t sure how to feel like enough. How to feel like you deserve to go after what you want. And I think you picked me to come to for help because I’ve been through this too. Being just some fuckin’ guy. Wanting someone you don’t think you’re good enough to have. Not knowing how to handle the fear and the inadequacy? Having feelings for someone who is already with someone else?”
Mike’s eyes shot up to land on Steve’s face, big and panicked. His heart hammered in his chest. But would it really be so crazy to say that was back at college, wherever Will already was?
When it had all always been about Will. When he’d spent so long and so many years fighting to get his best friend back? When he’d cast El in the same role of someone he loved. Someone who needed him. Someone to project the pain onto?
He’d loved El. He’d truly and genuinely adored her. He’d have died for her in a heartbeat. But could he truly and honestly deny all the nights he’d sat awake wondering if it had ever really been what it was meant to be? How many nights had he lain awake, guilty that after all of it, he still couldn’t love her the way she deserved?
How could Mike ever allow himself to love anyone else when he’d already caused so much damage in failing to be what people needed him to be? How could he ever really fall in love when he’d failed at loving El?
And, in his coldest, darkest, most vulnerable moments, the question echoed.
What if he couldn’t love Will Byers the way he deserved either? What if he’d be responsible for hurting him over again? For fucking over the two people he’d loved most?
What if they had both just been better off without him all along?
“I— what are you implying?” Mike asked, altogether unconvincingly.
“We both know I’ve been there, kid.” Steve said slowly. “You’ve got nothing to hide from me.”
“But I’m not— I’m— straight.” The words came out aborted and wrong, totally unconvincing.
“Okay, Mike.” Steve didn’t push. “So then how can I help?”
“I—” He swallowed hard. “It’s— it’s better for everyone if I stay away. It’s better that he’s found someone. That way I can’t— I can’t fuck it up again.”
Steve looked so deeply sad as he met Mike’s eyes. Like Mike had said something that genuinely hurt him to hear. He knew he was probably Steve’s least favourite of them all, and yet, he still looked so fucking sad. Was what Mike said really so bad?
“What do you mean ‘again’?” Steve asked, clearly being careful with his words. It kind of hurt to realise how hard Steve was trying to genuinely help and understand. He hadn’t really realised that Steve cared about him that much until now.
“I fucked it up before, didn’t I? I was a shitty partner to El and a shitty best friend to Will and a shitty brother to Nancy and Holly. I try, Steve, I really fucking try, but I just keep fucking it up. I just— I just never know how to be what anyone needs. I’m terrified of not being needed, and I’m even more terrified of failing when people do need me. I can’t— I can’t do that again. He deserved more.”
Mike heard his own voice break as he spoke and he squeezed his eyes shut, determined not to cry in front of Steve. Or, really, just in front of anyone. He was still so afraid of how he was perceived. He was still so afraid of letting everyone down.
“Hey.” Steve began slowly, eyes flickering over Mike’s face. “Hey now. Let’s, uh, let’s run that back just a little bit, shall we? Even if you were shitty to them — and that’s a big fucking if, man, because I know you were good to those people — you were a goddamn kid. When you met Eleven, you were fucking tiny, man, I remember. I was there. You were a tiny little kid with parents who were never paying attention and bullied that harassed you and a missing best friend. You lost Will, then El, then Will again, then both of them all at once. You were four foot ten and fighting monsters like you were in some shitty kid adventure movie. Of course you’re not perfect, how the fuck could you possibly be? You lost her when you were sixteen, Mike. Sixteen. Do you know how many sixteen year olds know how to be good romantic partners? None. Especially not kids with your kind of trauma.
“All of you kids went through so much. So much. You have no responsibility to be everything to everyone. You have no responsibility to be perfect and reliable and infallible. I was a shitty partner and friend at sixteen too, man. I had no idea who I was or what I was doing. It’s okay that you’re still figuring it out. It’s okay if you move forward. I know how much you loved El, but you were also a child, Mike. Loving her then doesn’t mean you can’t love someone else now. Loving her differently than how you thought you did doesn’t equal a betrayal. Figuring out how you feel late is not a betrayal.”
Mike was crying. Mike was crying in front of Steve fucking Harrington of all people, and he couldn’t stop. Everything Steve said had cut right to the heart of how he felt.
“She had nothing when she met me, I was meant to— I was meant to be better. I tried so hard to deserve the love that I got from her. TO deserve the friends that I have, but I don’t, y’know? I didn’t even deserve Will’s forgiveness for how shitty I acted during those years, let alone… let alone…”
“She’s gone, Mike. I don’t say that to be cruel, but… denying yourself love or joy in life out of guilt isn’t what she or anyone else wants for you. You’re not betraying her.”
Mike sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay, but… but what if I already did betray her? What if I never loved her the way I was meant to? What if I made those last few years shit for her because she knew on some level that I didn’t love her right and I just — I just couldn’t say it back. I didn’t say it back. And then Will told us and I handled that all wrong too. I didn’t say the right things and I didn’t— I didn’t handle anything right. I never handle anything right and— and Will deserves better than that.”
Steve shifted where he sat, leaning in closer again.
“Mike. Can I ask you a real question?”
Well, he’d already cried in front of Steve, so why the hell not? He just nodded.
“How often did your parents tell each other that they loved each other? Or you guys?”
Mike blinked, “I don’t know. Before they nearly died, like never. Dad still doesn’t, but mom does now a bit.”
“Right.” Steve said. “So telling people you love them wasn’t normal for you guys growing up, right?”
Mike shook his head.
“Okay. So you loved El, right? Not romantically, maybe, but you did love her?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. So you find Eleven when you’re a little kid, you take her in, and you spend the next four or so years trying to protect her. Not to overwork her battery, not to push herself too much. You spend those four years trying to be what you think she needs. You can’t save her, none of us could have. But you made sure she knew she was cared for and valued in that time. With words, maybe not, because you were a confused kid. But she still knew she was loved. Not just by you either. By all of us. You were a kid, and you put all of this responsibility on your own back. Of course you weren’t perfect, Mike. You were a confused, hormonal teenager battling the whole world.”
Mike sniffled, his shoulders hunching in, making himself small.
“She saved the world. How can I— how can I ever—?”
“Wheeler, man, listen. What happened was tragic and awful, and I’m not surprised you still struggle with it. But none of it means that you don’t deserve happiness. Or love. You’re still just a kid, Mike. Your life can’t end at sixteen. I know you know how much she would hate that.”
Mike sighed deeply. What Steve said was logical. It didn’t help.
“And what about Will?”
“What about him?”
“What if he wants you? What if by punishing yourself, you’re punishing him too?”
Mike hadn’t considered that, but the thought settled like lead in his gut.
“He— he doesn’t. Want that. Want me.”
Steve stared at him like he was stupid. Mike felt stupid.
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“He has Carlton.”
“Man.” Steve shook his head, “He had you first.”
They stared at each other again. It felt like a long few moments. Like they were each waiting for the other to crack. Finally, Steve tried again.
“You love him.”
“I didn’t—”
“But you do.”
Mike listened to the heavy silence. It felt like a physical presence.
“Steve.”
“Michael.”
A beat.
“Alright, here’s the deal, man. You were tiny. Just a tiny little goddamn squirt. Barely even half baked. You’re holding yourself to this insane standard. No one your age had anything figured out, and most of them didn’t have the weight of the entire world on their shoulders. Let alone all of that grief on top. So answer my question already. Do you love him?”
“Yes.” Mike whispered, “Yeah, of course I do. All of it was about him. Since the very beginning. All of this happened because I couldn’t let him go. Because he was my best friend and the best thing I ever had. I got older and I got scared because it was always so big between him and I. I loved El, and so it was easy to focus all of those feelings on her instead of— instead of—” He swallowed hard. “I wasn’t allowed to feel that way about him. My parents weren’t, they aren’t— they aren’t like Mrs Byers and Hop. Feeling that way was… I couldn’t. I was too scared and…” He tried to swallow away the lump in his throat, but failed. “Yes, I love him. I always have, even if I couldn’t— if I couldn’t let myself. I thought I could be okay with just being alone. That it was what I deserved. But I live with him and every single day, I…”
Mike picked helplessly at the skin of his thumb, trying to keep from crying again. In front of fucking Steve.
“I want to say it. I want to tell him. But it’s all so… there are so many reasons I’m not supposed to. Because I couldn’t say it to her. Because my parents would never forgive me. Because he has someone else. Because he deserves so much better than me. Because if I was going to be brave enough, I should have done it five fucking years ago. I didn’t though. I’ve done it all wrong and I don’t want to be selfish again.”
“Don’t you think most of it is… his decision? And your parents, I… look, Mike, I don’t know those people at all. What I do know is this: your mother nearly died saving Lucas, Max, Robin and Vickie. She loves you a lot. So maybe she’ll be better than you think. But if not… you have so many people who love you, man. Me, Nance, the other kids, Joyce and Hop. No matter who you are, what path you go down, you’ll have us. You’ll always have us.”
Mike was crying again. He fucking hated crying.
“I have this— this painting. Will gave it to me, but El commissioned it. It’s hanging up in my dorm room. It just— it feels like a reminder. Of everything I’ve done wrong. That it should be emblematic of me and El, but all I see when I look at it is Will. His talent, his loyalty, his kindness. Not knowing who I’d be without him. I just can’t— I don’t know how to—”
“Okay, nope. Thought I could sit this one out, but I can’t.” Mike startled, head whipping around when he heard a voice coming from behind him, leaving Steve’s bedroom on a mission.
Jonathan Byers looked tired, watery eyes and hugely frustrated.
Jonathan Byers.
Who apparently… had been in Steve’s bedroom. At two in the morning. His hair was a rat’s nest, and Mike just stared, wide eyed.
“What the fu—...” He turned to look at Steve, eyes huge. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Steve made a face like an awkward grimace and shrugged. He mouthed something that looked like ‘what?’ and then turned his attention to Jonathan, who propped himself against the kitchen bench to sit.
Mike had whiplash.
Jonathan and Steve?
Jonathan and Steve?
“I thought he was asleep.” Steve finally said, a bit sheepish.
“I was. Mike’s voice woke me up like a distress signal.”
“Rude?” Mike managed, eyebrows furrowed.
“What? You’re supposed to be off at college. Any of your voices unexpectedly bring on cold sweats.” Jonathan met his eyes, “Especially yours.”
“Still rude.” Mike grumbled.
“Anyway, I was going to politely pretend not to be hearing anything until you mentioned Will’s painting. Turns out I can’t do that. Do you really have your self-loathing blinders on that badly?”
Mike had no idea what Jonathan was referring to, and he sighed. How had he ended up talking to these two specific people about WIll? Why had he done that to himself?
“C’mon, Mike, that painting wasn’t from El. It was from Will. You’re a smart guy, mostly, I kinda just assumed you’d put that together after Will came out.”
Mike was apparently not a smart guy, even mostly. He hadn’t even considered that. Maybe, a voice in the back of his mind told him, he had purposely never let his mind linger on any questions about it.
Just like he avoided the little voice that asked if he’d really loved El as he meant to, he’d avoided the voice that whispered those nagging questions in the dead of the night. Why would El never mention the painting? Why would she include DnD when she’d never shown any interest?
Pressingly, there was one line Mike remembered of her letters. That Will had been painting for a girl he liked. Mike had tried to forget it, but it had stayed in his head.
How long had he trapped all of those memories behind a wall to avoid the conclusion Jonathan was leading him to? No avoiding it now. Jonathan had been there. He would know better than anyone.
“I…” Mike trailed off, avoiding looking at either of them. “I guess I didn’t want to assume anything. And Will never said anything.”
Jonathan shrugged, “Probably thought it would be incredibly obvious after he told us all. Maybe also thought if you’d wanted to ask, you would. Or maybe, y’know, he didn’t say anything out of respect for El. And your… grief.”
Mike swallowed hard. He really was going to be sick.
“But… but if he did it for me, then…”
Steve gave him a genuinely shocked look.
“Oh god, you’re really only just figuring this out now?” He looked at Jonathan, like trying to confirm that he, too, was terrified by this conclusion. That he, too, found it impossible to believe that Mike had been so stupid.
Stupid or maybe intentionally blind.
“Penny in the air…” Steve mumbled sarcastically.
“But then, if the painting wasn’t from El, then the painting for someone he liked was me. And then… then I’m his Pammy.”
“Tammy.” Steve interjected.
“What?” Mike asked, irritable and quick, “Who gives a fuck? The point is that he had a crush on me and got over it. He got over me. I had a chance and I missed it. And now he has fucking Carlton.” His voice was getting louder, panic building.
Jonathan and Steve exchanged another look, and Mike felt like he was going insane. He could freak out about that later. And he would too, because what the fuck?
“Man…” Steve began slowly. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m deadly fucking serious, Steve.” Mike spat, tipping his head back with a groan. “I came here and you made me confront my stupid feelings, just to tell me that Will used to have a crush on me. A crush he said himself was never about me. And now he’s with someone else. This is the worst possible news ever. I’m going to have to drop out of college.” He threw himself back against the couch dramatically, groaning.
“He’s so smart and so stupid all at the same time.” Mike heard Jonathan mutter to Steve.
“Okay, so… so… yeah. Okay. Yeah. So Will had a crush on me. Cool. And he made that painting. And… jesus christ, if I thought I was a fuck-up before, this kind of didn’t help. I fucked up way worse than I originally thought I did. And I already thought I did. I just thought I was a bad friend. Christ, I really fucked everything up. Oh my god.” The more he remembered, the worse it got. It got so much worse. “Oh, I’m a moron.”
Jonathan and Steve didn’t really answer, waiting for Mike to work his way through all of the shitty memories that flooded back.
Sure, Mike had already apologised for all of that. For all of his bullshit over the years. Because yeah, he’d been thirteen when he told WIll it wasn’t his fault that Will didn’t like girls. He’d run after Will to apologise then and there. He’d apologised more than once. Again, he’d apologised when WIll came out. He also just… simply didn’t mean it that way. As dumb as it sounded, Mike really hadn’t meant anything hateful by it. He’d meant that Will was still young. He’d meant that they were all growing up faster, not differently. Despite all that, the guilt felt so much worse now.
Because all of a sudden, his own teenage cruelty felt so much worse. Because him being a shitty friend had been bad enough, but knowing that Will had liked him…
“He should hate me.” Mike whispered, his voice small.
“Dude, you were a kid.” Jonathan this time. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was pissed at you at that time too. Mad on behalf of my baby brother because I didn’t want him to get hurt. But it’s been years, man, and no one is genuinely believing you’re a shitty person or friend. I know how hard you fought for my brother. I know how much you mean to each other. I mean, sure, you could be an asshole. You were a hormonal, traumatised, confused teenager. Steve bullied me at that age. I beat the shit out of him—”
“Would we say beat the shit out of?” Steve muttered.
“We’re all just human. Humans that went through too much too young. Maybe it’s time to forgive yourself for your worst moments as a child soldier. Everyone else has.”
And now Mike was crying in front of Jonathan too. He was never going to be able to look either of them in the eye after this. He also simply knew too much, but that was a later problem.
“I let him think I didn’t love him.” Mike whispered, “Maybe I was a passing crush for him, but it— it’s not that for me.”
“I know you know that nothing about that was a passing crush.”
“I’m only going by what you and I both heard him say.” Mike shot back quickly, trying to protect himself.
Jonathan was glaring at Mike through his messed up bangs.
“You of all people shouldn’t want that to happen. You’re protective of WIll. I just keep messing it all up. And, y’know, he’s happy with someone else now. I’d only be messing it up for him again.”
Jonathan sighed deeply, “Don’t put that on me. If you wanna self-sabotage because you can’t stop punishing yourself for dumb shit you did at fifteen, then that’s on you, but I’m not going to be the reason. I’m protective of my brother, that’s true. But Will’s also an adult now, perfectly capable of living in the world that he already helped to save. He’s loved you since you were both too little to even know people were evil and closed-minded enough to tell you that it was wrong. And he’s my brother, but I’ve known you since you were, and I’ve never really believed any of this was one-sided. You and my mom. You two never gave up on him. So sure, yeah, you’re an idiot. But you’re an idiot that I trust to love him. And, y’know, get him. He might be fine with someone now, but they’ll never understand. The bad dreams, the bad days… they’ll never understand the way you could.”
Mike stared at Jonathan’s earnest expression, dark eyes scanning his face for signs of… what? Judgement? Disapproval? Anger?
Maybe he wanted someone to be angry with him.
Maybe he wanted someone to yell.
Maybe he thought he deserved it.
“You’re trying to work out how to twist this, aren’t you?” Jonathan asked, proving how well he really did know Mike. “You can’t, Wheeler. If you’re looking for my disapproval as an excuse, too bad. I approve. I think you should drive home and tell my brother the truth right now, actually.”
“Woah.” Steve cut in, hands raised. “Not right now, because it is a very long drive and it’s the middle of the night. Crash on my couch tonight. Confess gay love tomorrow.”
Mike stared, open mouthed and shocked. Flustered. His face fucking burned.
“You guys being together sucks and you’re gross, by the way.” He got out, wishing it had more bite and less the sound of a petulant child saying ‘I know you are but what am I?’
“Hey, you little shit, we’re trying to help you after you turned up like a wet puppy on my doorstep at two in the goddamn morning.” Steve bit back, and it came out so like he might have sounded six years ago that it was almost a relief. He was a kid fighting a war back then, but somehow it still felt like simpler times. He knew who he was supposed to be then, at least. It had been spelled out too clearly then. Now, it was just a blank slate.
Mike wondered if the twelve-year-old version of himself would be terribly ashamed of who he’d become.
He tried to imagine, and was met with the image of a tiny, roundfaced version of himself yelling that he was the only one who cared about Will.
Recognising him by his breathing alone.
FIghting and screaming and doing whatever he had to do to get to Will.
Dragging him from a lab crawling with people much bigger and much more violent.
At twelve, Mike Wheeler would have done anything in the world to make Will Byers feel loved. He would have fought God himself to be by his side.
Before all of the guilt. Before he and El had built a shrine to their shared trauma in the form of their misguided and forced childhood relationship.
The world had told Mike that he was supposed to love her and so he had done his very best to. The world had told him he should want a girlfriend, should put that above all else, and Mike had tried to be that. He’d tried to make the love he felt for her enough.
But they were just children then.
Children trying to be who the world wanted them to be.
They knew each others’ pain so innately, but had they really known each other? Not as warriors or victims, but as people. Had they really loved each other?
“I just… I don’t know.” Mike admitted slowly, “Maybe it feels like the kindest thing I can do is let go. Maybe I’d only ever be a reminder of pain. Maybe I don’t… maybe I don’t deserve to be happy.”
Jonathan shook his head.
“You know what I think about sometimes? I remember this one day, you were maybe eight or nine. You and WIll burst into the house, all noise and chaos. You had a blood nose. I asked why, and you ranted for a solid five minutes about these bullies, and how they’d called you names. You said it had been worth it to see their faces when you called them neanderthalls. As if that was a totally normal thing for an eight year old to even know. But you had this whole big story to tell. Never even mentioned Will. It wasn’t until later that night, when Will asked if he could sleep in my room, that he told me what really happened. That some kind cornered Will and was calling him some really hateful, gross things and you jumped right in to insult the guy and copped the blow. WIll couldn’t sleep because he felt so bad that you got hit because of him. But you didn’t tell that story, because you didn’t want to embarrass him. Right? Because you’re always been so special to each other, long before all of this bullshit. Don’t forget, Mike, I knew you before the Upside Down. Before El, even before Lucas and Dustin. You can’t convince me to hate you for that shit. I remember. I know. If me and Steve can get along, you sure as hell can forgive yourself.”
Mike remembered that day clearly actually. He hadn’t even considered it. That was his best friend and Mike knew he had a hard enough time at home with his Dad. He couldn’t fix everything, couldn’t fight every battle, but it never stopped him from trying.
“Dustin told me one time about how you jumped off a cliff once for him. Same bullied, I gather. He said they all thought you were going to die. How you just swallowed and stepped off, even while he yelled at you not to do it. You piss me off deeply, Wheeler, but I don’t think we’re the audience you’re going to convince that you’re somehow undeserving of love. It’s not like Nance didn’t have similar relationship challenges. Not like you were the only one capable of being thoughtless or bad with words. BUt you expect so much of yourself all the time. You were never meant to be some leader or soldier or lifeline. You were a kid doing your best. You still are. There’s still room to grow.”
Mike might have cried more tears that evening than he had in all the years since they’d lost El. Steve and Jonathan’s words hit him hard, piercing directly through every wall of armour he’d attempted to erect.
It was horrifying, to be seen and to be known in such an intimate and vulnerable way. To have two people he’d known forever and bickered with forever hold a mirror up to him in that way.
Because they were right. About all of it. Most of all, about Mike not believing he deserved to be happy or to grow. About him feeling like, despite all of it, he’d somehow managed to fail everyone when it mattered.
The world had been saved, and it continued to spin, but who the hell was he anyway?
Not a hero, not a paladin, not a leader.
Just some fucking guy, like Steve had said.
“I don’t know who I am anymore.” He confessed, “I don’t know who I am when I’m not fighting. Or, y’know, scheming. For so long, I only knew how to be… needed. I didn’t know who I was outside of El. Then she was gone and I… all I could do was tell everyone else’s story. Because Max and Dustin and Lucas and Will, they’ve always known who they were. They’ve always been so much themselves. But… if I’m not the guy fighting for El or fighting for Will, who even am I?”
His voice sounded small when he looked up at them. He felt all hollowed out, like he’d tipped the contents of his entire soul out to them. Like he was waiting for them to judge and appraise. Waiting to be told just how broken and pathetic he really was these days.
“You know what I think the biggest lie in the world is?” Jonathan asked, voice soft. Mike shook his head. “That you can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first. Or that you can’t expect anyone else to love you if you don’t love yourself first. For a really, really long time, I didn’t love myself at all. I didn’t know myself either. Didn’t stop me from loving Will with every fibre of my being. Didn’t stop him from loving me either. Didn’t stop me loving Mom or Nance or Argyle or you. You don’t have to know who you are to deserve love. You don’t have to believe you deserve it for it to be true. Sometimes, loving someone actually is loving them while they can’t love themselves. Maybe you don’t have to feel lovable right now, Mike. Maybe you don’t have to know who you are.
“Maybe it’s enough to keep fighting to find out. To keep working towards loving and knowing yourself. And maybe, all that will be a little bit easier if you let someone else love you while you do. Maybe we can learn to accept love even on days we’re not sure we deserve it, and maybe we can pay that back with all the love we have. I know how much love you have to give, Mike Wheeler. And I don’t believe you when you tell me you don't deserve it back. You can’t stop us from loving you, and you can't stop my brother from loving you. But you can love him back. And you can keep fighting for the day you feel worth loving again.”
“What if I never do?” Mike croaked, feeling every bit the same twelve year old afraid to lose his best friend again.
“You will. Time moves on, Mike. You will too. If you let yourself.”
Jonathan got to his feet, gesturing for Mike to do the same.
He did, legs shaking and face wet.
Jonathan folded him into a hug. A hug Mike needed more than he could even put into words. He felt young again, even taller than Jonathan now. It didn’t matter, it still felt like family. He was surprised when Jonathan kissed the top of his head as he pulled away. Like maybe he meant it when he said he loved Mike too.
“You’re a good kid, Mike. It’s okay to still be lost. Just don’t let that stop you from finding love in the meantime. You both deserve it.”
With that, Jonathan turned to walk back towards Steve’s bedroom with an air of finality. Like he already knew all of Mike’s resolve had crumbled to nothing. That Mike was going to go home and finally, finally spill out his entire heart at Will’s feet. Maybe he really did know Mike as well as he said, because now that he’d sobbed his way through voicing his deepest fears, he knew that there was no going back. The toothpaste didn’t go back into the tube. It never would.
“Okay, Wheeler, I’m going to get you some blankets and stuff to sleep in, okay? You’re sleeping on the couch tonight, no buts, no complaints. No driving until you’re appropriately rested and fed and watered. Got that? I’m not above calling the cops on you.”
Steve stood with his hands on his hips. Teacher or coach or no, he still just looked like Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington to Mike. Grumpy and long-suffering expression used to mask how genuinely he cared. Mike nodded, and Steve went off to get blankets and clothes.
Eventually, when Mike had changed into sweats too large and a jumper that hung low on his collarbones, Steve sighed.
“Just one more thing, man, okay?”
Mike was exhausted, but they really had helped him, so he nodded.
“I know what it’s like to feel guilty for moving on, even when you know logically that it’s time.”
“Nancy?” Mike asked, lost.
“No.” Steve didn’t elaborate, but Mike could suddenly picture dark, curly hair and big, wild eyes.
“Oh.”
Steve swallowed. “I know part of you feels like you should grieve forever. Not just them, but everything they were supposed to be. Everything you were supposed to be together. But she’s gone, and you grieving and suffering forever won’t earn you piety points. It won’t bring her back. It’ll only mean you both died that day. It isn’t what she wanted for you. You’re allowed to live, Mike. You’re allowed to be happy.”
—
It had taken a long time for Mike to fall asleep.
Steve’s ugly couch was incredibly comfortable, weirdly, but he’d spent a lot of time thinking about it all. Eleven, Will, him.
In the end, he still felt guilty. It hadn’t waned at all, but he felt something else too.
Some strange, exhausted relief. Relief to have gotten it out. Relief to know that he wouldn’t be totally alone if he fucked everything up. Who would’ve thought Jonathan and Steve would ever be the safe-guard so that he wasn’t totally alone? Certainly not him.
Maybe he’d never stop feeling guilty. Maybe he’d never stop wondering if he could have and should have done more.
It didn’t mean he couldn’t love or be loved. It didn’t mean he had to stop trying. He thought that that had to be enough.
Eventually, he did manage to fall asleep, and he dreamed, unsurprisingly, of Will. Of knowing Will was in danger, but being unable to get to him. Of knowing he was suffering, and fighting and fighting but never getting any closer. He was in the place in El’s mind, but she wasn’t there. Instead, he was all alone, treading water and fighting desperately to find a way out and back to the land of the living.
Back to Will.
He woke up missing him. It hadn’t even been two days since they’d last hung out, but Mike missed him anyway.
His arm was slung over his face, protecting him from a shard of light that attempted to blind him where he’d slept. He was comfortably toasty, but still a little sweaty from his nightmare.
He had no idea what time of day it was, and no idea where Steve or Jonathan were.
Seeing them felt oddly like a dream. Something the strange recesses of his mind would cook up instead of what actually happened. But still, he was in Steve’s place, and he wasn’t sure if his own brain would’ve even been half as kind to him as they had been the previous evening.
He wandered around the place looking for Steve, and found him scrubbing the dingy shower. So at least he hadn’t been abandoned there all alone, he guessed.
“Morning, sunshine. Or afternoon, I guess.”
Mike winced. “What time is it?”
“Nearly five pm. That drive must have really taken it out of you. That and, y’know, the therapy session we sat through.” He flashed a wry smile in Mike’s direction. “In future, you should probably warn people where you’re going first.”
Mike blinked, quietly hoping that was rhetorical and not actually a problem they’d had.
“Wh—?”
Steve sat up straight, counting on his yellow rubber-gloved fingers. “Let’s see. Byers was first. The little one, obviously. All worried sick because you said you were going for a quick drive and then never came back. He tried to get a hold of Henderson or Sinclair first, but when they hadn’t heard anything either, they branched out. I told him you were sucking your thumb like a baby on my couch. Max called next. All strung out and extreme attitude. Two of you really could be siblings, y’know? Henderson was next, said he’d already called Nance and your mom. Then Nance calls, because she still worries like you’re a baby. After that, calls stopped, so I presume news got around that you were here with me. You sure had a whole search party after being gone for less than twenty-four hours.”
Mike groaned, “Oh no.” He grumbled. “Not enough that everyone knows I just dipped, they all know I must have had some kind of breakdown if I’d come to you of all people. God, they’re all going to want to know what it was about and why I didn’t go to them.” Dustin and Lucas were both closer to him physically than Steve was. Nancy too.
What was he even going to say?
‘I couldn’t go to someone who loved me too much.’
‘I needed to go to someone who might be mean to me.’
‘I needed to go home’.
Or better yet, the truth.
Some part of him had known that Steve would be able to help. That he’d blurt enough out to scare Mike away, but kind enough not to make it worse. That he’d seen how Steve had loved and helped his friends and he’d needed that. That Steve wasn’t as close to him as the others, and that made it feel less scary.
The truth was, there were a lot of reasons, none of which were particularly logical. But he’d needed Steve and, like always, despite not being related to any of the kids, Steve had been there. And now, in the cold light of day, he was back to teasing Mike like nothing had happened.
Mike needed that.
“Byers has called twice since.” He added, a little knowing smirk on his face. “He’s had Dustin call one time too. I don’t think Dustin was meant to say so, but you know how he is.”
Byers has called twice since.
After everything, despite everything, Mike still had him. He might not deserve it yet, but he was determined to find a way to. A way to show Will what he meant. Who he was to Mike.
“Fuck.” Mike answered eloquently.
“You’re going to have to go back and face the music eventually. Tomorrow. When you won’t be driving at ass crack o’clock in the morning to get there safely.”
“What if I just stay here forever? Become a sad English teacher relating every story back to my misspent youth and love that got away?”
Steve scoffed, amused, “Could problems, kiddo. First being that you and I will not survive a full week here without killing each other. Secondly, does your love know that he got away? Because it sure seems like he’s trying hard to come back, based on the multiple worried phone calls I have had to field today.”
Mike felt his cheeks burn. He felt the uneasy swell of hope in his chest. It scared the hell out of him.
“He has Carlton now.” Mike reminded.
Steve snorted and grinned, “Wanna know a secret?”
Mike feared the secret was going to fuck with his head, but he agreed anyway.
“Jonathan hates the guy. Thinks he’s too boring for Will. I think he’s secretly relieved you’re finally gonna intercept that. Also, he doesn’t think Will’s all that interested. Says he’s seen him in love before, and this isn’t that.”
Mike blanched, staring intently at him. “Are you supposed to be telling me this?”
Steve shrugged, returning to his scrubbing, “Eh, he’s not my brother.”
“By the way, about that…?”
A sly, amused grin pulled at Steve’s lips.
“None of your goddamn business, you little shit.”
—
Mike did end up driving back the following morning. He wound up getting dinner with Holly and his mother, but not Ted. Mike didn’t really keep in contact with him much, and apparently he wasn’t interested in seeing Mike either.
Steve made him eggs before he left, and Mike pretended they weren’t good, even though they were. He may have had a hidden softness for Steve, but giving each other shit was what they always did. It was nice to have some normalcy, even if he was pretty sure he was about to go back to college and blow his life up for good.
He told Mike that Will and Dustin had both called again to check in while he was at dinner. Mike tried not to get all sad and dramatic thinking about how much they all cared for him, but it was a near thing. He felt all sad and dramatic, because if he followed through, things were going to change. He didn’t know how yet, but he knew that they would.
He had the benefit of knowing his friends would be okay with it all, but he had a sinking feeling that he was going to lose his family. As it stood, he had no idea how Will might react, and that terrified him.
The drive was long and a little terrifying. He ran through it all again and again, telling himself he could still back out. Sure, Steve and Jonathan knew now, but they wouldn’t tell anyone on his behalf. He could brush it off, lie and tell Will that he’d left for some other perfectly logical reason. That he’d simply decided he missed home and driven there on a whim.
He wasn’t really sure if he could.
Now that he’d admitted it all to Steve and Jonathan, he wasn’t sure how to put that truth back into the box. Now that it was outside of his own head, it felt too real to deny. Especially to Will. No one had a right to whatever he felt, but Mike didn’t want secrets from the party anymore.
For a while, he’d denied it enough to himself that it didn’t feel real. Now though, Mike knew. He’d finally, finally looked directly at the thing in the corner of his eye, and he couldn’t go back to pretending not to notice it there.
He knew how Will had thought, when they were younger, that Mike had gone cold or distant because he’d suspected and been uncomfortable with Will’s sexuality. But that was it again. The thing in his periphery that he couldn’t bear to look at. It was never Will’s feelings that Mike feared. It was his own. He hadn’t had a clue about Will. What he had known was that he missed WIll. That a boy his age wasn’t supposed to feel that way. That a boy shouldn’t want to pull his friend in close like that. Or miss him like that. So he’d tried not to. He’d hurt Will, he saw that clearly in hindsight. But the part he could never explain was why.
It had taken years, but Mike finally had the words and the understanding to explain why he’d acted so confusing. So hot and cold.
It was never Will he was running from, it was only ever himself.
Mike could try to talk himself into or out of having this conversation all he wanted, but as he pulled back into his college parking lot, he really had no idea what he was going to do or say.
It was near nine pm, and Mike was kind of hoping that Will wouldn’t be in their dorm at all.
Even as he opened the door, he knew it was too good to be true. Will had been worried about him. Of course he’d still be there waiting. What Mike was even less excited about though was the second occupant of their already small dorm room.
Carlton Briar looked kind of like if someone had run Mike himself through a supermodel machine. Always dressed nicely, always with presentable hair. His face was a lot less distinctive than Mike’s, a lot more conventional. He looked, Mike thought, like someone they might choose to play him in a movie.
He was just as tall, but nowhere near as lanky.
Mike hated him.
He was perfectly polite, perfectly normal. Totally wrong for Will. Of course, the surface level similarities between them sort of stung, now that he knew it had been him that Will had once had a crush on.
Will had a physical type, that was fine. That was normal. It probably meant the crush had been more physical than emotional. That was fine too. Totally normal and fine.
He knew Jonathan had said it hadn’t been just a crush, but that was harder to believe facing Will and Carlton, perched on Will’s bed, hand in hand.
Mike stood, in Steve’s oversized sweats that he’d borrowed, feeling like the weird outsider of their happy little setup.
They were all freaks and outsiders once, but day by day, it felt more and more like everyone else had grown into themselves and found their place.
Not Mike though.
Mike was still just Mike, only he’d stopped trying to force his hair to be straight and he wore glasses to read and write.
Mike didn’t speak as he closed the door behind himself.
Will had no such reservations.
“Uh, hello to you too?” He snarked, leaning forward. “Your short drive lasted two days.”
Mike really and truly did not mean to roll his eyes. Nor did he mean to sigh. But he was tired, emotionally overwrought and a Wheeler, which meant he didn’t have the emotional regulation to be normal about any of this. He was trying hard to remember everything he’d wanted to say, but he was distracted by Carlton, and the feeling of Will’s eyes on him, and the realisation that everyone had grown up and into themselves except for him.
“I just, y’know, I needed to go home for a bit. I didn’t realise that was where I was going until I was already hours away. It’s all good, really. I’m fine. I guess I was just… missing Hawkins and didn’t know it.”
A loaded moment of silence told him that WIll was not going to take any of that for an answer. Which, really, Mike had already known was the case. But there was no way he would be saying anything vulnerable in front of Will’s boyfriend.
“You… drove back to Hawkins on a whim, with no notice, and you want me to believe that’s normal and fine? And since when do you go to Steve when you’re missing Hawkins? Aren’t you the one who always says it’s weird how obsessed everyone is with Steve? Now you’re making overnight drives to see him?” Will had dropped Carlton’s hand and had shifted forward on the bed. Mike was moving around the room, straightening things up and attempting not to look at them. He could guess Will was getting ready to intercept if he had to.
“Steve Harrington? Oh, he’s cute.” Carlton added amiably, totally unhelpfully. Will and Mike both shot him looks. He raised his hands in defence of himself, “Not like you, babe, obviously, I was just…” He was trying to break the tension by suggesting something between Mike and Steve, which was so disgusting and misguided that it only made them both stare harder. Mike was pretty sure Carlton was trying to help him, and that only made it worse.
“He’s known us since we were eleven and he was sixteen, Carl, that’s gross.” Will muttered irritably.
“And he dated my sister for ages.” Mike added, disgust audible in his voice.
Carlton winced, “Shit. My bad. I didn’t… think about it.”
Mike rolled his eyes, less subtle this time, and WIll turned back to face him again.
“Right. Steve dated Nancy. You’ve been giving Dustin and Lucas shit for going to him for help forever.”
“Okay.” Mike shrugged it off, moving to tidy his side of the room, happy to do anything besides sit and feel the physical weight of WIll’s gaze on him.
“Okay?” Will asked, rising to his feet, but not making any further movements in Mike’s direction. “Are you really just not going to acknowledge how deeply strange that is, Mike? I was— I was worried about you.”
The pang of guilt incited by Will’s words was hard to ignore. He wasn’t going to do any of this in front of Will’s boyfriend. He wasn’t even sure anymore if he wanted to do it at all. His eyes drifted over to the painting. The one that had never been from El. Because El had never been the owner of those words or those thoughts.
Had their relationship been more than trauma and guilt and fondness dressed up as true love? Had they simply been together because they’d been too young to know who they were without each other?
And if so, where had Will gotten those words from?
Had they been true once? Had someone really loved him like that once? How cruel, Mike thought, to finally see it clearly so many years later. They were still so young, but Will had already let go of Mike. Mike hadn’t even tried.
“You don’t need to be worried about me, man. I’m cool. I’m fine. I’m always fine.” Mike knew how empty those words sounded. Felt.
“I don’t— Mike. After everything, don’t tell me not to worry. If I just disappeared, wouldn’t you worry?”
Mike did, momentarily, pause at that.
He thought of himself at twelve years old. Of his frantic, immovable will to find his best friend. The way he’d been willing to do anything to get him back. The fear, the paranoia, the overwhelming feeling that he had lost a piece of himself.
“Obviously.” Mike snapped, trying to shove ancient memories of grief and panic back in the box where they lived inside his head. “But this isn’t that.”
“Well, how was I meant to know that? I had to call—”
“You don’t have to call anyone.” Mike cut him off, stupid and defensive and triggered by the memory of all that loss. His heart raced.
“You’re being an asshole again, Mike.”
He sighed, turning to face Will properly. Will’s eyes were fixed on him, hard and a little angry. That was easier than worried, at least.
“Sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to scare you, I just needed someone to talk to and for whatever reason I went to Steve. Alright?”
“No.” Will answered immediately. “Not alright. You drove over ten hours to hang out with Steve and just talk,” He put airquotes around the last two words, “instead of, I don’t know, your best friend of fifteen years. Who, oh yeah, happens to live with you!” He huffed heavily, “Help me understand, Mike, because I don’t.”
“I’m not—” He cut himself off, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I’m not going to talk to you about all of this in front of him.” He gestured furiously at Carlton, who sat there listening like the nice, polite, personality-less automaton that he was. It just made Mike mad, and he knew it was making him look crazy.
“Are you serious?”
Mike shrugged, “Well, you wanted to know why I went to Steve and not you, so… you were a little busy.”
“Mike, that’s total bullshit. You drove ten hours to Hawkins because you couldn’t wait max three hours for me to be back from a date? You hear how nuts that sounds, right?”
“Can you just…” He sighed, “I needed to talk to him. I don’t know why him exactly. Maybe I just thought he’d… I don’t know. Get it.”
“Get what?” Will shot back, frustrated.
Mike sighed, “I can’t…”
He glanced at Will’s boyfriend again, whose brows had furrowed like he’d finally figured out the depth of the issue. The depths of their respective need to know absolutely everything about each other.
“About El. And… other things.”
Will looked genuinely hurt, and Mike knew he’d fucked that one up.
“You think Steve Harrington can understand missing El better than I can?” His voice sounded raw. Mike met his eyes, and they were so fucking sad. How the hell was he meant to explain? He was making such a mess of it all.
“Oh, that’s the, uh, the stepsister who died, right?” Carlton asked, smiling a little like he was finally catching up on what they were talking about.
The stepsister who died.
Like El was nothing more than a link in the chain of Will’s life. Just a name he should probably remember. Like she hadn’t saved the world. Like she wasn’t a real person. A good person. A kid who never got the chance to grow beyond a kid who terrible things happened to. Who never, never got to live a free life.
Hearing her reduced to a girl who died, it made Mike’s heart burn. Romantic or not, he had loved her fiercely. Learning that it wasn’t the kind of love he thought didn’t make the relationship any less real to them both at the time, nor did it make the devotion he felt to her, even now, fade. It was different, reshaped and clarified, but it was real. She was real. He loved her. He mourned the person she should be. The person she should have had the chance to become.
“I’m getting out of here.” Mike muttered, aware of the way he’d physically winced in response to Carlton’s comment. “Christ, never thought I’d wish that I’d just stayed in Hawkins.”
“Mike, do not go running off again, I swear to god.”
“The hell am I meant to say, Will?” Mike glared back at Will’s stupid fucking boyfriend over his shoulder. “Forgive me if I don’t want to talk to you about El in front of this utter dickstain.” Mike snapped, all the emotion he had welling up in him all of a sudden.
“Woah, hey, Mikey, I thought we were friends.” Carlton tried, raising his hands in surrender. Mike had to take a deep breath not to say something he couldn’t take back. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive, ok? I was just, uh, trying to keep up.”
“You can’t.” Mike snapped, thoughtlessly, “I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice, normal, good, boring-as-batshit dude or whatever, but you can’t. You weren’t there, you’re not one of us, and there are things that you’ll just never understand. You hear us talking about someone we both lost and jump in all glibly like that? Stay the hell out of it.”
“Mike, that’s enough.” Will said, his voice soft. Mike glanced over at him, but he didn’t look angry. He looked sad. Lost, maybe. “I was just worried about you. I wish you’d confided in me, but it doesn’t need to spiral into all of… this. I guess I just thought if you needed to come to someone, it would be… y’know. Me.”
All thoughts of the boyfriend vanished, Mike could only focus on Will. Big, empathetic eyes. They were red-rimmed. He looked like he’d been emotionally cut open. Tired too. Like he hadn’t slept. Had that been Mike’s fault too?
“It was about… the painting.” Mike got out, choked, not wanting to give more away in front of Carlton. “I don’t know why Steve. Maybe because talking to Dustin or Lucas or Max would make it too real. Maybe because I thought Steve would understand. He lost Nancy, y’know, to someone else and had to learn how to be okay with it, and I… um, fuck, this metaphor really doesn’t work at all, does it? I needed to talk to him about what it was like to lose… the painting. When I didn’t… understand what… y’know, the painting meant to me.”
It made no sense at all. He only hoped WIll could gather his fragmented thoughts into something tangible.
Will’s eyes were narrowed at him, like he was trying hard to understand what exactly Mike had been getting at. Maybe he’d even guessed rightly, but if Mike knew Will, and he did, he’d be assuming he must’ve misunderstood.
“I think all Will’s really asking for is for you to keep him in the loop in future so that he doesn’t have to worry for your welfare. Right, babe?”
Will didn’t break eye contact with Mike. Mike wanted to tell Carlton to shut up, but he was busy trying to confess a thousand things to Will with his eyes.
Trying to tell Will how much he meant. How much he’d always meant.
Will had grown into a handsome, self-assured and talented man, but Mike had loved him long before any of that. There wasn’t much naivete to their lives anymore, but Mike could still see Will that small.
His bunny-toothed smile and lively eyes. Will never lied to him. Until the painting, at least.
If all they’d lied to each other about was their feelings for each other, then they still had a lot of time to make things right.
Mike just had to hope Jonathan and Steve were right.
“I think you should go.” Will spoke softly, eyes unwavering from Mike’s gaze. Part of Mike wanted to hide from the intensity of Will’s gaze. Flutter and fluster away from the weight of it. Once, he would have. Out of sheer shame and fear. Not now.
He wasn’t a scared, confused kid anymore.
“Maybe walking it off would help you guys resolve the fight.” Carlton added, good natured.
The corner of Mike’s mouth quirked up.
Will sighed, “I meant you, Carl. I think maybe you should go.”
A long moment passed between the three of them. Mike heard an offended scoff, but didn’t look. Instead, he watched the way that Will stared right back at him. Like nothing his actual boyfriend said or did could be more interesting than holding Mike’s gaze.
“Are you… you’re not serious? You freak out nonstop for two days because your best friend, a grown man, by the way, has decided to go home for a few days, but now he’s back and suddenly you don’t need me here to comfort and distract you anymore?” He sounded genuinely blindsided. If Mike was a better person, he might pity him. But he had no idea what he’d gotten himself into the middle of. No normal relationship with a normal guy could supersede what they were to each other. All of them, yes, but especially Mike and Will.
“C’mon, man, this is—” He stared daggers into the side of Mike’s face, but it wasn’t enough to shake their unflinching eye contact.
Like a challenge. Neither of them wanted to be the first to surrender. He wondered if Carlton could see that too. The extent to which neither of them wavered.
“Jesus.” Carlton shook his head. “Is this some sick game you two play with people or something? Some sick little jealousy thing?” As if Mike would ever willingly share Will Byers. “Whatever. You two deserve each other.”
Mike heard the door slam, but his eyes remained.
Will started to smile, even despite what had just happened. Mike was pretty sure he’d just ruined Will’s aggressively normal relationship, but Will didn’t look mad. Somehow, he didn’t even seem surprised. Mike was, but maybe that was because he was stupid.
“I hate that guy,” Mike muttered, no longer interested in lying, “and I hate the way he acted like he had to protect you from me. As if you’re not perfectly capable of knocking my ass off its axis.”
Will hummed, but Mike got the sense that whatever he’d just said, it had been the correct thing.
“Who told you about the painting?” Will asked, gesturing blindly towards it.
“I was stupid for not realising sooner,” Mike said, in lieu of a real answer, “but I’ve been stupid about a fuckload of things, Will. Like forever. But you know that, you’ve known me forever.”
Will sighed, thoughtful. “So you drove to Steve to talk to him about El and the painting? Explain that to me. Because that makes no fucking sense. Did someone say something to you that freaked you out? It’s not like it was anything you didn’t already know anyway.”
Mike was confused.
“What did I know? I didn’t know about the painting? I was an idiot for not seeing it, but I— like I said, I missed a lot of things, Will. I— I missed opportunities I didn’t even realise I had.”
“You’re being intentionally vague.”
“So are you.” Mike answered without missing a beat.
Will breathed a deep sigh, finally looking away to drop back onto the bed. The tension, which had felt like a palpable, living thing, sapped away. Mike felt like he could breathe again. He sat on his own bed, dragging his knees up to his chest.
He felt like a kid. He was sure his therapist would say he was self-soothing. He was terrified. He didn’t trust his own ability to read the situation at all. He’d only ever had one relationship, and it started when he was just a kid, too young to understand the emotional weight and nuance of anything.
“You know I had feelings for you then, obviously. The painting was an extension of that. I meant to tell you how I felt, but you wouldn’t even hug me, and you and El needed each other, so I lied. But I figured I was doing it for the right reasons. Selfless reasons. If it helped you two to be happy then… y’know, it sucked, but I could live with it. And then I got over it, because the world was ending and we all had bigger problems. Now it hangs between our beds and haunts me, just like it haunts you. Only for different reasons. I never told you because I didn’t want to take a link to her away from you. I was never going to tell you. Evidently someone already did though.” He sounded, suddenly, exhausted. Fragile. How much damage had Mike done without even knowing?
Even if WIll was over him, Mike thought he deserved to know.
“So here’s the thing.” Mike began, running a hand through his hair, “I actually didn’t know. About the painting or about your… feelings. Maybe on some level, I… but no, I didn’t know. I tried really hard not to think about who it was, actually. Told myself I was respecting your privacy, but…” He sighed deeply, “y’know.” He hated himself for being a coward. Mike the Brave indeed.
“Jesus, Mike.” Will got out, his eyes fixed on the painting. “I thought it was completely obvious.”
Mike raised his shoulders in a useless shrug.
He had no good excuse or amazing insight. He had simply been a lonely, confused kid with no good role models for what love really looked like. He knew he loved Will. Hopelessly. He just hadn’t understood what that meant. Hadn’t understood what it looked like when it was real. He had, perhaps blindly, thought everyone was as devoted to their friends as he was to WIll.
“My family…” Mike said softly, “I really had no idea what it was… meant to be. I used to feel so much contempt for how emotionally dysfunctional they all were, and I didn’t even realise that I was growing up the same way. So… afraid of myself. So afraid of letting everyone down and not being useful enough to be loved. I didn’t know loving someone could just… ‘cause. I thought I had to earn it. All day, every day. I was never much good at assuming anyone wanted to keep me around. When I lost you, I think… I think maybe I lost that childlike faith or something. All I knew was that I couldn’t bear it again. So I learned how to be needed. That way I could… be useful, but… from a safe distance.”
He wasn’t sure if he was making any sense, or if WIll thought he was going out of his mind. Either way, Will was listening attentively. His eyes flickered over all of Mike’s face, like he was trying to peer directly into his mind.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t let myself feel much. Because I was so fucking terrified of losing everything all over again. It was easier to be useful, and to just… try to be as much as I could be for everyone. For a while now, I’ve been… trying to figure out which feelings are real. What feelings are real, but maybe… different than I thought. And… and what feelings I’ve been, maybe lying to myself about.”
“I’m not sure I follow.” Will finally whispered, listening closely.
“I’m not entirely sure that I do either.” Mike answered softly, smiling sadly. “For a long time, I’ve wondered what kind of person it would me if I realised that I didn’t… love El how I was meant to. I mean, I did. Love her. Of course I did. But I was so young, and so was she. And as real as those feelings about her were, I’m not sure it was what it was… supposed to be. I think I’ve been choking on that for years now. Scared that if I admitted it, I’d like… tarnish her memory. Or, y’know, make it not true. So I told myself that if I just never moved on, then I’d never have to face that fear. I could just leave it, preserved and crystalised as it was. And I… I was doing well, really well. I was okay with being alone rather than being some kind of traitor. Until… Colton.
“Because suddenly it was all really obvious, y’know? The thing I’d been hiding from, it was you. Or, no, it was the way I… felt about you. Because if I let myself understand that it was always you, then I’d be saying the way I loved her wasn’t real. I’d be wrecking that memory. Her memory. So I panicked. And I panicked about not being strong enough to ignore what I felt. But now I look back and… Will, I’ve loved you since we were kids. I— I never could’ve loved anyone else, because my stupid, loyal, wasted heart already lived with you.
“Losing you, so young, it fucked me up so badly. And I know you had it worse, I do, I just need you to understand. I couldn’t handle losing you again, and so I tried to put all that love into someone I thought was a superhero. Someone I thought I couldn’t lose. But we were lost, traumatised kids and the responsibility we felt to each other would’ve drowned us both. I think— I think she knew in the end. I think we both did. That I was trying so, so hard to love her. I couldn’t say it because I couldn’t mean it. Because I was still on the swingsets with you and nothing really changed.
“I went to Steve because he loved Nancy, and he managed to work through it to stay friends with her. I thought maybe he could help me work out how to… keep you. Even if it wasn’t how I wanted. He said some stuff that hit a little too close to home and— and I realised that I was holding onto a lot of guilt and, um, anger at myself. For things I said and did when I was thirteen or fourteen. So I, uh, I know you’re over me, and that’s cool, because I never even knew you were, uh, under me. But I did want to apologise. For making all my bullshit your problem. I never wanted to get away from you or make things weird with you. I just, uh, I didn’t know how to not… love you. So I, well, I tried to stay away. And I caused damage by putting that on you. And I’m sorry.”
His heart hammered against his ribcage, his entire being a hurricane of fear and turmoil and guilt so intense that he couldn’t see or feel anything else.
There, he told himself. He’d finally done it. Mike the Brave.
And now his whole world would change. Will would pull away and he couldn’t un-know what he knew. He didn’t want it to be, but he’d signed his fate that his life would be harder because of this, just like Will’s. He could never go back to pretending to be blind. Pretending to feel how everyone else felt. It was horrifyingly scary, but… he also felt… freer. He took a long, deep breath and wondered if it was his first real one since he was twelve.
Will dropped down beside Mike on the bed, shifting back to push his back into the wall beside Mike’s.
“Are you okay?” Will asked softly.
Despite it all, the hurt and the confusion and the mess of it all, Will was worried about Mike. Will was checking in on Mike.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up from his chest.
“What?” Will asked, smiling a little too, albeit nervously.
“You.” Mike whispered, “You’re so good, it’s stupid. I’m trying to apologise for being a shithead to you because of my own fear and you’re checking in on me.”
Will’s smile turned into something a little more real.
“What you just did was really big and scary, Mike. I’ve done it, don’t forget. You deserve a second to breathe and collect yourself. Are you okay?”
Mike considered the question for a moment, and eventually just shrugged. He didn’t really know if he was okay. He’d admitted something about himself, but he’d also confessed to things that had been causing him emotional turmoil and stress for years. He thought he might sleep for twenty-four hours straight, just from the sheer relief of not holding it in anymore. And how strange, to feel suddenly like he’d shed a weight he hadn’t even known that he was carrying for most of his life.
The guilt was all still right there; the guilt and the stress and the singing fear that if he woke up the next day wishing he could go back into hiding — not from the world, but from himself — he couldn’t. He’d committed to this now, and telling Will made it real like nothing else, in a way he could never undo. Will was the most important person in his life, and now he knew.
“I think I’m okay.” He said softly. “I, uh, didn’t tell you this for you to do anything about it, by the way. I just wanted you to know that it was never about you. Or it was always about you. Or, Christ, that it was about my feelings for you but not in a bad way. I just— I was never trying to, like, reject you. In… any way.”
What the fuck was he even saying anymore?
“I forgave you for any of that years ago, Mike, I thought you knew that. You’ve also apologised before. For all of it.” He reminded Mike, sitting parallel but turning to look at him, keeping his attention kind of gentle. “But, y’know, I appreciate you telling me the truth.”
“I think you’re trying really hard to say the right thing right now, and I appreciate that, but also, can you… can you say something normal instead? I think I’d rather you just call me an asshole again. I did call you boyfriend a dickstain earlier.”
Will cracked a genuine smile and Mike was relieved by the normalcy of it all. He’d keep being a dick if it kept things from getting weird again. He respected the kindness, but he’d also far rather have normal Will. His Will.
“You are a dick, but he was being shitty too. He should have tried to sense the tone a little more. But that was also kind of my fault. I should have told him to go earlier, but I was kind of hiding behind him. Maybe.”
Mike’s brows raised, “Hiding from me? You sure could’ve fooled me, given how mad you were at me for going to Steve.”
He snorted, “Yeah okay, but in fairness, you have to admit that coming home to that note and then finding out that you were with Steve of all people was somewhat alarming for me, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I can see how that was scary. But how was I meant to explain that I was there freaking out about you in front of your boyfriend, of all people? I was doing this thing where I was trying to be like, really nice and mature and shit because of some advice I received, but then you were mad at me and he was being a douche and I kinda failed at being nice and mature.”
“You did jump to dickstain pretty quickly.”
Mike shrugged, “I think it’s a little bit in my nature these days.”
They paused, smiling warmly at each other. It felt a little better. A little more normal.
“I’m right anyway.” Mike finally said. “I’m sure that he’s like, fine and normal and whatever, but he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get us.”
“Well, yeah, he doesn’t know about demogorgons or the Upside Down, but—”
“Nah,” Mike shook his head, “That’s not what I mean. I mean that you and me were you and me before all of that even happened. I’ve said it to you before, I think, but it’s like… like, I have other friends. Lucas and Dustin and Max and Erica and, all of it, but it’s not like us. It’s not like you. It never was the same. They’re all great and important, but they’re not you. And for a long time, I don’t think I understood because I’d just been like that forever. Romantic stuff wasn’t something I thought we were allowed, so I didn’t consider it until I saw you with your… stupidly normal boyfriend, and then it was like… like, oh, shit. If that’s an option, then I want that too. You. All of you. I— I think… I think if there’s any part of you to have, I want it. I think maybe I just didn’t know it was something I could want.”
Will laughed, totally breathless, and if Mike wasn’t misreading it, he would say that Will seemed affected by that admission. And if WIll was affected, then maybe Jonathan was right. Maybe Will hadn’t entirely left Mike behind. Not that he thought he had any room to assume. Especially not after everything that had already happened. They had somehow gone through something akin to the full spectrum of human emotions just since Mike got back to their dorm.
“I know I’m supposed to answer,” Will said softly, “but I just… don’t really know how right now. I’m not sure whether to take it all totally seriously when you’re clearly having a hard time with a lot of things right now. I mean, do you think you might just be kind of… projecting? Or like, maybe because I was an option and then I wasn’t anymore and so…”
Mike shook his head, shifting where he sat to face Will properly. “See, here’s the thing though, I didn’t know you were an option. Like at all. I didn’t know who you meant when you told us, and even if I had known, you told us that you were over it. I— this has nothing to do with how you felt, this is all on me. I mean, I get it. That you think I’m a mess. And, y’know, I am a mess. A total fucking mess literally all of the time. And I get that anything you felt is… in the past. That’s not why I told you though. Your brother told me that he thinks the biggest lie is that you need to have it together to love or be loved. I mean, he said it differently, but that was the gist. Being a mess or whatever doesn’t mean the feeling is any less real. Maybe I’m a fucking mess, but that doesn’t that the way I feel about you is fake or diminished or whatever. This isn’t a new feeling, Will. It’s not new, I just finally understand what it is. Does that make sense?”
Will sucked in a deep and heavy breath before blowing it back out.
“When the hell did you talk to Jonathan?”
“Um…” He didn’t really know how to answer, “I guess he was visiting Hawkins and overheard me talking. I was spiralling and self-sabotating and he kind of shut me the hell down. In a good way. They both did. I got put in my place.” He ran a hand through his hair, awkward and a little overwhelmed. He’d been so glad to get the words out, but now he regretted that. Or at least, he regretted that he now had to sit in all of that, even knowing that Will had clearly heard his feelings out and not reciprocated them.
“You… got told off by Jonathan and Steve about me? And… love?” He asked, completely skeptical of what he was being told.
“Yeah. Kinda thought Jonathan hated me.”
“I mean…” Will shrugged, “he’s known you since forever. Why the hell would he hate you?”
“I wasn’t always… y’know. Good to you. That’s what I told them. That I felt bad because I was a shitty friend and a shitty partner.”
Will rolled his eyes, “I honestly had no idea you were still so mad at yourself. I mean, you weren’t some evil bully, you were an awkward kit that didn’t know how to handle anything and desperately wanted to just be normal.”
Mike shrugged, yanking himself up to his feet and beginning to pace the length of the small room. The conversation sucked. Mike didn’t want to talk about himself or his insecurities anymore, especially not now that he’d put his feelings out there.
Why the hell had he decided to do that again?
“Can you just sit down?” Will asked, and Mike shook his head immediately, all that panic starting to build again. He’d really said it out loud. Will was sitting on his bed, looking up at him with a totally unreadable expression on his face.
“No.”
“Why?” Will asked, voice patient.
“Trying not to freak out. Duh.”
It all kept on that way. Mike paced. Will watched.
“Would it help if I told you something going on in my life? Something embarrassing even?” He offered, every bit the sweet kid he’d been the very first night Mike lost him, admitting the demogorgon had gotten him. He’d always been so sweet and so good. He always was the soft edges to Mike’s sharp points. Calmer and more rational to Mike’s more hairbrained and impulsive.
Mike managed to nod.
Will smiled a little, shifting to sit upright more, gaze still on Mike even as he paced around uselessly.
“Okay. I’ve been working on this painting for one of my classes, but my teacher says my style is underdeveloped. It’s weird, because I know it’s literally her job, but it makes me kinda crazy. I’m trying to teach myself that it’s okay to not always get it all right, but it feels kinda like she just hates everything that I do. I’m trying to just pivot to her style more for the sake of the class, but she wants this hyperliteral thing, and my style is more comics.”
Mike listened to him talk, calmed by his voice, but holding in his annoyance at the actual content of his words.
For about five seconds.
“So she just has no taste then.” He answered without thought.
“It is okay to take feedback though. It’s just hard, though. Like, personal. I’m sure you have the same thing with your writing.”
Mike kept walking. He wanted to have a better answer, but he was hypercritical of his own work as it was, and the work he turned in wasn’t at all personal in the way that the work he kept for himself was.
“I don’t know. I’m not as good at being vulnerable with my coursework as you are. I think I probably detach a bit too much.”
He was still pacing, but a little more genuinely focused.
“It’s so much easier to take criticism on anything else. But then, I guess it’s all I was ever really good at. The only thing that’s really… mine.”
Mike shook his head, ‘That isn’t true at all, and I think you know that, actually.”
“Mm.” Will brushed that away, “What else? Oh. I like your hair better like this.”
At this, finally, Mike stopped pacing. Better than what? What hair had been the inferior kind? And what made it better now? Once upon a time, Mike would have sworn he didn’t care, but he was through with that pretense. He wanted to figure out who he was. Really. Not just because it was easy or because he was mimicking someone he looked up to.
“The hair you had through senior year and the first year of college was… I mean, it was fine. You didn’t look bad or anything, but you didn’t really look like you either. It was too neat and structured. Like your dad. Or even Steve. I always liked it better all curly and unruly. Like when we were kids. Or when we woke up from a sleepover and you didn’t bother trying to tame it.”
Mike had no idea that Will had even thought about his hair and its texture, but Will kept on speaking like he was thinking out loud. Mike knew it was a distraction tactic, but it was working. He wasn’t pacing anymore, he stood perfectly still by the closet, eyes fixed on WIll’s neutral but thoughtful face.
“Anyway. I’m glad you grew it back out again. And stopped with the gel. It didn’t look even half as soft. And you know, ugly haircuts were my thing, you were always the one with the more defined style. But I guess it was partly that you always treated your loser status like a badge of honour back then. Dustin too. Same rebellious smartass who broke into government labs.”
Mike listened, surprised anyone but him had ever given thought to it. He had worn his loser status like a badge of honour, that was true. But that was because of them. His best friends and favourite people. The people who made him feel cool for being different.
“I always thought you guys were so much braver than me. You were all more outspoken. I always admired that.”
The insight into the way Will thought of him had him frozen, listening intently. Learning what he could. He wanted to argue at least half of it, but he didn’t want to disrupt the train of the thought.
“Sometimes I wish that I had gotten to tell you all about me without the end of the world. I thought that I had to make sure that he couldn’t use my fear to stop me. I was scared and I was forcing myself to be brave. I don’t… regret it. But I think about it sometimes. How I would’ve done it if the world wasn’t ending. Sometimes… sometimes I think I would’ve just told my mom and Jonathan first. And then… maybe try something else when it felt okay. You and Dustin and Lucas next. Maybe I would’ve told the party first. Picked my words more carefully. Found a way to say it without crying. Or… a way to say it that was about me and not about Henry.”
He’d been talking to himself more than Mike, really, and Mike wondered if his own revelations had triggered these memories. He stared at Will, magnetic, wonderful, open. Will, open in a way he never had been. More careful back then. More guarded. He was speaking more earnestly and more freely. Mike loved him for every breathless and distracted word.
“Sometimes, when I was feeling brave and a little delusional, I would imagine that I would talk to you separately. I’d tell you that it was important to me that you knew, because you were always supposed to know me better than anyone. I’d tell you that I knew you didn’t feel the same way, but it was okay, because one day I’d get out of Hawkins and find people like me. And I’d imagine you hugging me and saying I was still your best friend. And I’d think to myself that this was the best case scenario. But then… then sometimes, when I wasn’t keeping myself in check properly, I’d imagine being brave enough to kiss you. To just take a risk.”
Mike’s mouth was dry. He supposed this was all Will’s way of telling him the truth. He had managed to slow down Mike’s spiral all the way down, because Mike couldn’t think about anything but what Will was telling him. Like Mike wanting him back was some kind of insane impossibility. He said it like the memory was precious. Something that he looked at with love and nostalgia. A lifetime ago. Mike held his breath.
“Those were the scenarios I felt most guilty for. Like I was being weird or something. Creepy. I tried never to let myself think about you that way. I was scared you’d somehow just know and hate me for it. But I was, y’know, an emotional teenager, so I’d think about you kissing me back. You’d be all confused at first, give me this wild look, and then you’d kiss me again. Like I could somehow make you feel it too if I just loved you enough. And I’d—”
Mike had been carefully staying quiet to avoid disrupting the quiet candour Will was gifting him with.
But that little word had knocked him so far off balance that he hadn’t been able to help.
“You loved me?” He asked, his voice sounding almost childlike in how dumbstruck and hopeful it was.
Will had said feelings. He’d said a crush. Love was something else entirely. Love was bigger. It was deeper. It was… so much more devastating. To imagine WIll holding all of that alone. To imagine that there was a time they had loved each other and Mike had been too blind — too guilty, too scared, too trapped — to even know.
Will laughed, breathless, green eyes meeting Mike’s, calm despite the melancholy he seemed so full of.
“C’mon, Mike. How could it be anything less? I know you as well as anyone could ever hope to, and still all I wanted was to know more. All I wanted was for you to just keep looking at me like I mattered. Like you’d willingly fight any monster just to keep me safe. Even if the monster was in my own head. What I told you that day in California, it was all true. Just not about her. I was the one who felt broken and wrong and different. You made me feel… like those were the special things about me. None of the love I described was a lie, I just… I just knew it’d mean more to you coming from her.”
Nothing had ever been less true. Mike breathed heavily, trying to calm his fluttering heart and racing pulse.
“But… I thought I was Tori?”
Will’s brows bunched in the middle. “Tammy.”
“Why does everyone keep correcting me? Out of spite, I don’t want to know her real name. I don’t want to be her.” Mike grumbled. “I got enough to know it was a crush that never mattered. Something easy to get over. A…” He waved his hand dramatically, “A passing fancy.”
Will cracked a grin, soft and amused, “God, you’re such a pretentious writer.” He teased. “If you could do it all perfectly, telling people how you feel, how would it go? How would you want it to go?”
Mike shrugged, feeling lost. “I only admitted it to myself twenty-four hours ago. I didn’t really stop to think, I just… I don’t know. I figured if nothing else, I could just… just make sure that you knew. Like what Jonathan said. That I don’t have to feel worthy of love to be able to give it. He said this thing. That he knew how much love I had to give. I’ve never been very good at expressing it. But… I figured I could at least make sure you wouldn’t have to doubt that you were worthy.” He shrugged, his thoughts scattered and confusing.
“It should be about you, Mike, not me.”
Mike shrugged again, laughing nervously, “It is about me, though. It’s about letting myself be who I want to be. I want to be a person who shares love. I want to be… I want to be a person that makes the people around me know how loved they are. I love you. It’s the truest thing I can say. I can’t promise I’m gonna stop being messy or angry or annoying or petty. I can’t promise that I’m going to be fixed overnight or that I’m not going to get it all wrong again tomorrow. But I can be the kind of person who gives the love I have away to the people who deserve it. Because he was right. I have so much to give. I don’t know whether I deserve to be loved back, but I know being brave and open is… a step in the right direction. I think that’s enough. To… let myself love as much as I can, until the day I feel like I deserve it again.”
Will rose to his feet, taking a moment to fix the jumper that had become unbalanced on his shoulders. He patted his hands off on his thighs and took the few steps across the room to where Mike stood.
Mike’s fingers twitched at his sides.
“You don’t have to do this,” Mike said softly, “I didn’t tell you because I wanted something from you. I told you because you deserve to know that I—”
Will’s right hand raised, capturing an unruly curl beside Mike’s face and tugging gently. Mike barely felt it, but he still shivered at the soft, attentive gaze Will fixed on the mess of hair.
“Shut up, Mike.” Will whispered, sliding an arm around Mike’s waist and using it to pull Mike close. He rose a little onto the toes of his socks, right into Mike’s space.
“Close your eyes.” Will whispered, not a question. His voice sweet and painfully fond.
Mike did.
After all, it was just a kiss. Just lips, just hands. Just breath and heartbeat and skin.
There was nothing just about it.
It felt, for one transcendental moment, one iridescent heartbeat to the next, like the whole world had changed shape and colour. Everything felt dimmed, numbed, everything except for Will. Will beneath his fingertips, beneath his lips, felt vivid and frenetic.
It was barely anything physically, Mike knew that, but that wasn’t really all that it was.
It was the sheer culmination of everything. Every shared look, every bumped shoulder, every quiet giggle. Every breathless secret. Mike and Will shared lifetimes worth of memories between them, good and bad. Torture and comfort. They’d lived lives most people could never begin to understand. The understanding between them was innate. From one breath the next, the kiss had gone from a sweet, lingering thing to something else entirely.
Hunger. Desire. Connection. Home.
He could drink and drink and never get his fill.
Will, his Will, was in his arms. His fingers laced into Mike’s hair. Confident and steady and warm.
Not a scared, defenceless kid anymore. Stronger. Braver.
Mike loved him so fiercely he felt that he might be entirely made from it. Skin and bone and nerves, all sewn together with Will. Love for Will. Intrinsic.
The transition from standing to bed should’ve been easier, given the tight quarters, but Mike tripped over his own discarded show, and they broke apart as he fell.
Giddy. Effervescent. Weightless. That was how Will looked. How Mike felt.
Will seized the moment as Mike collapsed heavily onto his bed.
“It was a lie. That you were a crush I got over. It was a lie. I tried. I really, actively did. I think you might be in too deep.” He was breathless. So happy. Mike could see it. He climbed onto the bed, leaning over Mike.
“In my marrow.” Mike agreed, already writing flowery prose in his mind. A new direction for a writer experiencing something so big and so revelatory for the first time. “I knew you were still a Hawkins freak at heart,” he teased, “no matter how hard you tried with Magazine Me.”
Will showed him, gentle and flirtatious. “Maybe I just have a type. Ever think of that, Casanova?”
“Mhm.” Mike agreed, grinning, “I did. Your type is me. But more normal. Sad.”
Will shook his head, but he only leaned closer to Mike anyway. “You got confident quick.”
Mike hummed, pulling Will until he lay at Mike’s side, tucked into him.
“It was undeniable.” He whispered brightly, “And I’m just… I’m just really stupid happy, Will.”
Will twisted so that he was propped up over Mike, looking down at him. Mike couldn’t wipe the smile from his face, not even if he tried.
They went on that way for a while. Talking. Exchanging gentle kisses. Learning to know each other in this new, glorious way.
Eventually, on the verge of sleep, Will finally brought it up.
“So… Jonathan and Steve?”
Mike hadn’t said it, hadn’t even hinted at it, but Mike was all energy when he answered.
“I fucking know, right?! We have to work out what the hell that is.”