Chapter Text
As they pass the ‘Leaving Hawkins: Come Again Soon’ sign, Mike immediately reaches behind him for the Polaroid camera, holding it up to snap a picture of Will in the drivers seat of Jonathan’s old Ford. Will turns just in time to smile at Mike, one eye squinted a little at the sun spilling through the windshield. He shakes his head at Mike before turning back to face the road and adjusting his sun visor.
“Jonathan only gave me a couple of packs of film for that. Maybe wait until we’re more than five minutes into the road trip to start taking photos,” he says.
Mike watches as the photo prints out of the bottom of the camera, pulling it out and shaking it a little.
“And he said not to shake them,” adds Will.
Mike, impatient, ignores him and shakes it anyway, saying, “It’s important to capture us at the beginning of the trip, so we can see how much we’ve changed by the end.”
He watches as the colours start to appear on the film. He can make out the white strip of Will’s teeth and the mop of thick, brunette hair on his head.
“I don’t think much is going to change in two weeks, Mike.”
“You never know,” he says, catching Will’s eye to raise an eyebrow at him cheekily.
Will rolls his eyes in return and adjusts his grip on the steering wheel. Mike looks down at the photo again, fully developed now. In it, Will is smiling almost at the camera, his eyes fixed somewhere just above it. The sunlight that caused him to scrunch up his eye a little bathes the photo in a white light, washing it out and making Will’s face almost glow. Mike tucks it into the pocket of his polo shirt where he’ll keep it for a while, at least until Will wants to see it.
Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop plays in the cassette player, urging Mike, ‘Why not think about times to come? And not about the things that you’ve done…’ Which Mike thinks is, for the most part, the whole point of setting off on this road trip, two weeks before they both start college in New York.
The city had been the obvious place for Will to go; to be closer to his family; to live in a big place where he can find more people like him and finally live more openly; and, of course, to be in a place full of artists and creatives, where he can thrive. For Mike, there is one singular reason to have chosen a college in New York: Will.
He’d decided quietly to himself a few months after he lost El that he would never let himself lose Will again. Not through physical distance, anyway. In many ways, he feels like he already has lost him. He feels like it started happening that day at the Squawk. The day Will gave a name to something Mike didn’t realise he’d been afraid of hearing. He didn’t use the word, but everyone understood it all the same; Will is gay. It had been a shock to Mike, but not necessarily because of what Will said. It was the fact he’d said it at all. Mike has spent every day since feeling immeasurable guilt for the thought that had crossed his mind the moment the words left Will’s mouth: The thought that Will was ruining everything by saying it, because he was going somewhere Mike couldn’t follow. For good, this time.
It was an impossible thing to think. A cruel thing. Will didn’t even have a choice. Vecna made him.
But, now it exists between them. So Mike had to start acting differently around Will. He had to avoid touching him when anyone was looking. He had to grieve El alone, not seeking the comfort that he knew Will would once have been able to provide. He had to channel all his grief and rage and disappointment in himself at that; at the loss of El, because to grieve for the loss of Will as well is pathetic when he’s still right there.
It had gotten a little easier, eventually. After a while, the talk of futures and college choices and new lives outside of Hawkins stopped being so horrifying to Mike and instead he just became sort of numb to it. He’d accepted that his life was already over, and everything from now on was just going through the motions. But even that is always just a little bit easier with Will around.
So, the choice had been simple, when Will came to tell him excitedly about the Illustration and Cartooning department at SVA, to start looking at colleges in New York too. He got into Brooklyn College with a significant amount of help from Mr. Hauser, their English teacher, who had seemed surprisingly confident in Mike despite his pathetic grades throughout Senior year. Both of their acceptance letters arrived in the two weeks between Will’s eighteenth birthday and Mike’s, followed not long after by the government payouts that had been promised to them all in return for their silence about everything that had happened. The check in Mike’s hand had felt like the dirtiest thing he had ever held. Accepting it felt like accepting that El’s death, Will’s suffering, all of it, could be compensated by something as meaningless as money. But Will seemed so glad of it, as though for him it did go some way to making things better. And Mike was reminded of the fact that, for Will, money would always be a ticket to better things. It was selfish of Mike not to value it. So, despite everything within him raging against it, he banked the check, vowing to spend every penny of it on Will somehow.
Then the only thing left to wait for was graduation, which, despite Mike’s numbness, hit harder than he expected. He’d been talked around to it by Hopper, of all people, and had even mustered up the energy to hold one final D&D session before everyone started to get too busy over summer; Max and Lucas with summer jobs, Dustin with endless preparations for college; Will with helping clear out Hopper’s cabin ready to move. It was that evening, as Mike and Will stood at the sink cleaning lasagne dishes that Mike decided something.
Will had been chatting happily about how excited he was to get out of Hawkins now that they were finally done with school and Mike had asked whether anything was really stopping them now. He thought of the money sitting in his bank account, festering, and decided they should go on a road trip, setting off a few weeks before Hopper and Joyce were set to drive the U-Haul over to Montauk, meeting up with them there.
And that led them here; heading East towards Columbus in a hand-me-down car.
After a few miles, endless corn fields and suburbia give way to tree-lined verges and wide open expanses on the highway, and as they cross the state border into Ohio, Will says, “It’s finally starting to feel real. We’re actually leaving,” with an awed sort of smile.
Mike tries to match the smile, ignoring the curdling in his stomach as he thinks about the fact that this is more final for Will than any of the rest of them. He has no reason to ever go back now.
***
They reach the first stop on Mike's itinerary after only a couple of hours driving, pulling in to park up near a diner in Springfield just before three in the afternoon. They scarf down a late lunch of burgers and fries while Mike shows Will the page in his notebook dedicated to this stop, talking through everything he’s planned for the afternoon and evening.
He looks up once or twice to catch Will smiling at him as he fiddles with the straw of his lemonade, quickly schooling his features to show that he’s paying attention each time.
“And then, the best part,” says Mike, Will’s smile becoming a little infectious. “The observatory. It’s just for students, usually, but I called ahead and asked for a tour. They think we’re prospective applicants and huge astronomy nerds.”
Will’s eyes light up. “You lied to a college admissions board just so we can go look through a telescope?”
Mike smiles, pleased with himself, before closing his notebook and finishing up his coke.
They kill some time walking around the town in the evening sunshine, grabbing some ice cream which Mike refuses to let Will pay for and finding their way to the woodlands just outside of town, where they walk along the riverside. Mike accidentally-but-not-really lets his shoulder brush against Will’s every now and again as they walk, and he’s reminded of the other, slightly more selfish reason he wanted to do this with Will. So that they could be alone again, just for a while. Before college starts and Will’s new life begins.
When they’re alone, without the weight of knowing eyes on them, Mike can be like this again; close to Will. He can fall into step beside him a little easier, not worrying so much if they fall against one another from time to time. He can reach for Will’s arm when he wants to point at a cool tree that looks like it has a face, like an Ent. He can let the backs of their hands brush against one another without having to worry about what it looks like to anyone who knows Will’s secret.
The thing that Mike sort of wishes still was a secret, like it is all the way out here, away from Hawkins. It’s selfish of him, he knows that. Especially because Will actually seems happy for people to know. He’s come out of his shell so much since he told people, and that’s all that should matter to Mike. He just can’t help but miss when things were easier. When his desire to be close to Will didn't feel so dangerous.
They head back into town as the sun is setting and make their way to the observatory. After giving their names at the desk - not fake names, much to Will’s disappointment - they are soon making their way up the stairs as a senior-year student called Alex tells them about the history of the observatory excitedly. Mike and Will hurry eagerly after him, listening as he tells them about the precious, 10-inch refracting telescope, and how senior-year students like him are allowed to man it alone. They reach a circular room with a steep, domed ceiling, in the centre of which sits a huge telescope pointed directly up at the sky. The guide makes his way over to a large wheel in the wall, turning it to make the entire ceiling rotate. There is a loud groaning sound followed by a harsh clunk as he lines up the small slit in the ceiling with the lens of the telescope.
Mike glances at Will, who is staring in awe at the scene, almost bouncing on his heels with excitement. Mike smiles to himself, happy to see Will so happy.
“Okay, who wants the first look?” Asks Alex.
Mike and Will practically trip over each other to volunteer themselves first, which gets them a chuckle. Mike concedes and steps back to let Will go.
Alex steps back to let Will line himself up, pressing his eye into the eye-piece and creating a seal around it with his hands and looking up at the night sky.
“Okay, can you see the moon?” Alex asks.
“Yeah,” replies Will.
“Well, as you’re probably already aware, there’s a conjunction of the Moon and Venus tonight. You see something below it that looks like an especially big star? You should be able to see a ring of light around it.”
“Yeah! I see it,” says Will. Mike grins broadly at him, trying not to laugh and give away the fact they had absolutely no idea that tonight marks some sort of astrological event.
“Okay, and in this view, you should be able to see most of the Virgo constellation. You’ll know what that looks like, of course.”
“Yeah, totally.” Will says, and then pulls away, turning to Mike and motioning him over, smiling conspiratorially.
Mike goes without question, and presses in next to Will to place his eye against the eye-piece. He wraps his hands around it and lets his vision adjust for a second. It’s a little disorienting at first. It’s darker than he expected, the stars he’s used to seeing scattered across the sky appearing larger and a little like the stretched, distorted specks of headlights on a road at night, the moon large and looming amongst them. He’s finding it a little hard to care about any of it while he can feel Will almost completely pressed against him, not stepping away.
From behind him, Alex says to Will, “Well, I think you can give him a little tour of what you saw while I go and make some notes.”
Mike doesn’t hear Will reply, but then there are footsteps, and Alex starts humming to himself quietly somewhere across the room.
The air shifts as Mike feels Will press in closer, and then a warm breath is at his ear.
“It’s so cool, right?”
Mike shivers. If anything, the view is a little underwhelming, but he’s not complaining about his current situation.
“Pretty cool,” he says, voice a little weaker than he would like.
“Um, do you see the moon?” Will asks, fulfilling the duties passed onto him by their guide.
“Yeah,” Mike breathes.
“And then, um, right below it is Venus. It… it kind of looks like a fireball, but white.”
Mike snorts a little at the comparison, but when his eyes fix on it he gets exactly what Will means.
“You should start drawing them like that from now on,” he says. “Although I did like the cabbages.”
Will’s huff of a laugh causes the hairs around Mike’s ears to shift a little, tickling at his neck.
“Um, I guess that’s all I actually know,” Will says, before Mike feels him straighten up. “Maybe we wouldn’t make such great astronomy students after all,” he whispers, still quiet enough for Alex not to hear.
Mike pulls away from the telescope to see they’re being watched from across the room, and he fights back his embarrassment. It’s not like they were doing anything wrong.
“So,” says Alex. “What are you guys interested in, exactly? Cosmology? Extra-galactic? Stellar? My thesis is inter-disciplinary -- astrochem. I’m researching the chemical compositions of CH Stars in ‘Omega Centauri.”
Mike blinks a little, then looks at Will for backup, who looks equally lost. Mike, admittedly being the bigger space nerd of the two, rifles through any physics knowledge he has stored before realising that Voltron, Star Wars and G-Force are not exactly reliable sources.
“Inter-galactic for me, definitely,” he says, hoping a vague answer will suffice.
“Me too,” Will nods vigorously.
Alex narrows his eyes at them. “You mean extra-galactic?”
Shit. “Totally. Yeah — that,” Mike says.
He continues to look between them suspiciously, but before he can say anything, Will says, “Anyway, this was great, thanks so much. We should probably get going, though,” and grabs Mike’s arm to pull them back down the stairs and out past the lady at reception who presses the button to let them out with some hesitance, as though she’s afraid they’ve got telescopes stuffed up their jackets.
They make it back to the car just after ten thirty, breathless after running like fugitives from the observatory. Once they get in the car, they look at each other and burst into laughter.
***
They drive a little ways out of town and stop at the nearest motel on the road towards Columbus. Mike asks for a twin room, quickly glancing over to Will to see if he seems okay with sharing, but Will gives nothing away. Realistically, the money in his account is enough for Mike to get them two rooms every night of this trip, but he knows these are some of the last times they’ll ever have an excuse to share a room again, and he’s not quite ready to let that go yet.
They get shown to their room; a cramped space with a hideous green patterned carpet and even worse floral-patterned quilts. They take turns to shower, Mike offering for Will to go first, before settling into their respective beds. Mike is wired from the evening, and despite the long day, doesn’t feel up to sleeping just yet. He turns on his side to watch Will, who is lying on his stomach flipping absentmindedly through an issue of Conan The Barbarian.
“So,” he says, catching Will’s attention. “Thoughts on day one of the road trip?”
Will rolls and throws the comic on top of his bag, settling on his side to face Mike with his head propped on an arm.
“A perfect first day,” he says decisively.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Mike smiles to himself. “And you’re happy to be out of Hawkins? You don’t regret giving up the last two weeks of summer with the Party?”
Will thinks for a moment, but then says, “No. I was ready to leave, I think. What about you? Any regrets?”
“Nope,” says Mike, smiling broadly. As he watches Will’s face light up in a matching smile, he thinks, no regrets at all.
“It’s good to have the distraction, actually,” Will says, casting his eyes down.
Mike sits up a little and asks, “Distraction from what?”
Will sits up against the headrest and sighs. “I guess I’m sort of nervous about starting college.”
“You are?” Mike asks, genuinely surprised. It had seemed like Will couldn’t wait.
“Yeah. I mean, I’m excited, too. But it’s going to be weird to be around people that don’t know everything that’s happened to us, and why I am the way I am. Why I get nightmares, and why I’m so jumpy all the time. It sort of feels like my life is finally starting, and I just want to leave the past in the past, but it’s written all over me, you know?”
Mike watches him for a few moments, taking everything in. In some ways, Will has confirmed some of Mike’s biggest fears. Of course, Will would feel like his life is finally starting. His life hasn’t really been his own since they were twelve years old, and now he has the chance to change that, away from everything that reminds him of the past. But to hear it out loud is jarring to Mike, who feels like his life is ending; his world collapsing around him.
And then, there’s the acknowledgement that Will wants to leave the past behind, while Mike is desperately clinging onto it like it’s a lifeline. Like it’s the last reminder that he was useful, once. That he had a purpose. That people needed him.
More important than any of that to Mike, though, is Will’s worry. So he says, “You’re more than any of that, Will. Your cool new college friends are just gonna see how awesome you are and none of that stuff will matter.”
Will huffs an incredulous laugh at Mike, but his shoulders relax a little. He looks at Mike, cautious, then away again before saying, “And… I guess I’m nervous about all the other stuff, too. Like, dating and… everything else.”
Mike, looks away on instinct, cheeks reddening, before forcing himself to make eye contact with Will again. He can tell Will struggles to talk about this stuff with him, and Mike hasn’t exactly done much to help, there. When he first came out, Mike was weird about it, for reasons Mike can barely explain to himself, let alone to Will.
In an attempt at overcompensation for those first few weeks, Mike has done everything he can to try and show Will he’s not shy about it. He tries to bring it up as often as possible, or coax Will to be more open, even where Lucas and Dustin sometimes clam up a little. He wants, selfishly, to be better than them, to be the friend Will comes to about it instead of anyone else. He’s even gotten annoyed on Will’s behalf when the others have been clumsy about it all. Like the time about halfway through senior year when Dustin asked Will whether he thought he’d be like the 'girl' or the 'guy' in the bedroom, and Lucas laughed instead of being furious like Mike was. He’d told Dustin to shut the hell up and huffed angrily at him the rest of the movie night, even though, secretly, he sort of wanted to know more about it, too. Like whether Will does want to do that, with men. Whether he thinks about it. What he pictures when he—
“Sorry,” Will says into the overly long silence. “I didn’t mean to—“
“No!” Mike insists. “No, it’s not—“ He sits up fully, turning to face Will cross-legged. “I get it.” He shakes his head, correcting himself. “Or, I mean, I don’t ‘get’ it, but I know what you mean.” He winces.
Will keeps watching him, cautious, before settling back and saying, “It doesn’t matter.”
Mike curses himself and leans closer, trying to bridge the gap between them, between the beds which now feel miles apart. “It does, Will. Talk to me about it. Maybe I can help.”
Will snorts. “I don’t think you can help.”
Mike blanches a little. “I— I didn’t mean, like…” His voice is small, almost scared. He worries he’s said something wrong, given something away that he isn’t supposed to.
But then Will is chuckling and turning back to face him. “I know what you meant, Mike. But I still don’t think you can help. It’s just different for guys like me.”
Mike hates it when Will says things like that: 'guys like him.’ Separating himself from Mike. Highlighting the gnawing distance that’s growing between them.
“Different how?” He asks, even though he thinks he knows. Harder, is what Will means. Scarier. Riskier.
“Well, for starters, there’s the whole issue of figuring out if someone is, you know… an option.” He glances at Mike, as if to see if he’s crossing any lines. Mike nods, encouraging.
“Which,” Will continues, “I have a bad track record with.” He smiles, as if at some inside joke, which Mike also hates.
“But, in New York, won’t all that be easier? There are places you can go to meet people, right?” Seedy places, he thinks. Places he doesn’t want Will to go, but isn’t that the only option for boys like him? Mike feels a little sick thinking about it.
Will nods, considering. “Yeah, that’s what Jonathan says. And, like, at college. There are groups you can join.”
“Really?” Mike is genuinely surprised. Groups that meet in the daytime? Groups that talk about this stuff openly? Like it isn’t something that’s meant to be kept quiet?
“Yeah, and Jonathan says SVA will have, like, a tonne of gay guys,” Will says with a wry smile. He’s getting confident, using the word. He glances at Mike again for a reaction.
Mike smiles, as brightly as he can and says, “See? Sounds like you’ll have no issues meeting people.” You’ll have guys lining up at your feet, Will. And you’ll forget I even exist.
Will shifts a little. “Maybe. But then even when I do, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never even kissed anyone.”
Mike knows this, but there’s still something comforting in knowing Will hasn’t been living some secret life where he’s done all this stuff already.
“Kissing is overrated, anyway,” he says with a shrug. Seriously, he never really got what the big deal was with that. It’s nice, he supposes, to be intimate with someone like that. It always made him feel closer to El, especially when they had so little to talk about with one another. But it was hardly the fireworks and butterflies everyone always makes it out to be.
Will rolls his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say. But I have no idea what I’m doing. What if I’m terrible at it?”
“You won’t be,” says Mike. “You’re good at basically everything. Except Dig Dug.”
Will sits up straighter, a challenge in his eyes. “You were one place ahead of me on the leader-board before we left Hawkins.”
Mike shrugs. “Still better than you.” He smiles at Will, watching as some of the tension leaves Will’s shoulders. “What else are you nervous about?” He asks, wanting to know more. Always wanting to know more about what’s going on in Will’s head.
Will sits back again, eyes darting around the room as he wrestles with what he wants to say. Mike lets him, knowing the words will eventually come. After a minute or so, Will says, quiet, “The rest of it. Like, what comes after kissing.” He blushes, a deep red blooming under his cheeks, mirroring the heat in Mike’s own.
“I guess that’s… definitely different for guys,” Mike says. Will huffs a short, sharp laugh. “Not that— I wouldn’t know, either way,” Mike adds, for some reason.
Will turns to look at him, an odd expression on his face, and Mike wonders again if he’s said something wrong. Will knows, right? That he and El never… went that far. But, he supposes, he never actually talked to him about it. They never really talk about this stuff at all. Not the way Lucas and Dustin talk about it, all jokes and innuendos.
“It is different for guys, yeah,” Will says, not commenting on the second part of what Mike said. Whether out of avoidance or courtesy, Mike can’t tell. “I know a little about it,” he continues. “When Jonathan came back for the holidays after Sophomore year, he’d borrowed this… book from his roommate. It had all these instructions about how men… do it.” He seems to physically recoil from the words leaving his own mouth.
Mike can’t help but laugh through his own discomfort. “Instructions? Like with... visuals?”
“Yeah!” Will laughs too. “I literally couldn’t look at Jonathan for, like, two days afterwards. It was so awkward.”
Mike laughs again, a high-pitched sort of ‘Hah!’ and says, “That’s crazy. I can’t imagine Nancy ever giving me something like that. I think I’d throw up.”
Will snorts. “Well, I don’t think you ever have to worry about Nancy giving you a gay sex book, Mike.”
Mike’s smile drops and he swallows uncomfortably. “Yeah, no. I mean, obviously.”
“Anyway, I mean. I get it, in principle. But it seems sort of scary, you know? Like how do you know if that’s what someone wants? And there are things to consider with guys, like who wants to do what, and how to prepare, and—“ He stops himself, looking at Mike with wide eyes, as if realising he may have said too much.
Mike realises his eyebrows had crept up his forehead when he feels them drop back down again. This is the most Will has ever said about this topic. Even when Dustin and Lucas would tease him about it, he kept quiet. Mike wants to know more. He wants to know everything.
So, he takes them into even more dangerous territory. “What do you think you would want? You know, like, which way would you prefer, do you think?” He tries to avoid Dustin’s careless wording from a few months ago, but he’s still not sure if he’s asked it right. He’s not sure if it’s something he should ask at all.
Will furrows his brows, looking down at his hands. “I’m not sure.” He looks like he wants to say something else. Something serious, that causes his features to twist uncomfortably, but he doesn’t. Mike can tell that this isn’t something to push him on.
He swallows, the sound of it echoing loudly in the quiet of the room. “I guess, that’s just something you figure out, right? With time.”
Will nods, still looking a little shell-shocked. “Yeah. I guess I’m just scared everyone else is going to have that all figured out and I’ll be… behind, or whatever.”
Mike understands that feeling deeply. He’s felt behind in life since he was just a kid, always playing catch-up. Always putting on a performance of normalcy, even though he feels anything but normal. And really, there’s not much he can say to that. Because they sort of are behind, both of them. They scraped through school by the skin of their teeth, after years of grades being the least of their worries. They haven’t made new friends, outside of people being unwillingly brought into the fold of their insane lives, in years. And when it comes to dating, they both have a pretty shitty foundation to be working from, there.
“You’ll figure it out,” he says, weakly.
Will smiles at him and nods, clearly unconvinced. He scoots back on the bed and pulls the covers over himself.
“Light off?” He asks, reaching over to the lamp in between them.
Mike gets himself under the covers too and nods. Will pulls the string on the light and they’re plunged into darkness. Mike hears the rustling as Will settles back into his bed, and then listens to Will’s steady breathing for a few moments.
Into the darkness, he feels more able to say, “The guys you’ll meet in New York have no idea how lucky they are, Will.”
Will doesn’t say anything, though Mike is sure he’s not asleep yet.
***
They drive the rest of the way into Columbus the next morning, grabbing breakfast at a diner before walking through town along the riverside. As they get closer into the centre, the skyline comes into view, filled with huge skyscrapers, bigger than anything they’ve seen in Hawkins, or even Indiannapolis. Mike digs around in his bag for a crumpled tourist map of the city that he found in the motel reception the night before. He studies it for a while, trying to make sense of the cartoonish interpretation of the city now surrounding them, before pointing them in the direction of where he wants to go.
They find the Museum of Art after taking about twenty wrong turns. Will stills as they take in the grand, arched entrance. Inside, he looks at everything with a sort of reverence, leaning into every painting, every sculpture to get a closer look, while Mike simply watches him, bathing in the joy radiating off him.
“God, I wish I could paint like that,” Will says, standing in front of a huge canvas in the middle of an especially grand room which seems to depict a series of semi-nude women. Mike sort of grimaces at it, trying to see what Will sees, but failing.
“Nah, your stuff is better,” he says, honestly meaning it.
Will snorts and shakes his head at Mike. “Yeah, right.”
“It is!” Mike assures him. “Remember that one you did of Lucas’s character fighting the pirates in that campaign? And he was, like, swinging from the masts and there was all this carnage around him, and then the freaking Kraken was creeping up in the background? That was way better than this.”
Will looks at him for a long moment before breaking out into a shy smile. “Mike, that was not better than this. This guy was a master.”
Mike shrugs. “So? You will be, too. One day.”
Will looks down, trying to hide his smile. “Hardly,” he says. “Anyway, I’m studying illustration. Best I’ll manage is being a comic book artist.”
“You say that like it isn’t the coolest thing ever,” says Mike.
***
For lunch, they grab sandwiches at a deli and sit by the riverside in the sun, listening to the sounds of the city behind them. Cars honk incessantly in the distance, cutting through the low hum that seems to buzz constantly, a mix of traffic, roadworks and distant building-construction.
“It’s sort of crazy that New York is even bigger than this,” Mike muses.
Will nods, crumpling up the wrapper of his sandwich and stretching out in the sun. “Feels like we’ll just be invisible there,” he says. “Nobody will know us. We can just… be whoever.”
Mike watches him for a while, wondering what, exactly, that means to Will. He considers what that would look like for him; being whoever. But he doesn’t even know who he would want to be if he could. To him, the anonymity of the city is promising for another reason. The ability to be completely invisible, fading into the background, unknown and unseen. But to Will, it seems to mean something like coming out of hiding.
An unexpected question rises in Mike, and before he can stop himself, he asks, “Will?”
Will hums in response, eyes closed against the sun.
Mike swallows before continuing. “If Vecna hadn’t made you, would you still have told everyone, do you think? Would you still have come out, I mean?”
Will’s eyes snap open and he turns sharply to look at Mike, something sort of like fear in his face, and Mike can tell that the question has taken him back there, to that day. Mike regrets it immediately.
“Sorry, ignore that,” He says, hands coming to fidget in his lap.
Will’s eyes roam his face for a few seconds before he turns back to watch the river. He takes a breath before saying, “It’s okay. Um, I— I wanted to, yeah.”
“You did?”
Will nods. “I was working up the nerve to do it, actually. But… I would have done it differently. I didn’t want it to happen… like that.”
Mike nods, remembering the scene. Tears streaming down Will’s face as his eyes roamed a room full of people, some of whom he barely knew, as he tore himself open so that Vecna couldn’t do it for him. He remembers the sting of the words when they finally came out, like nails being hammered into a coffin. ‘I don’t like girls.’ An echo of the words Mike had yelled at him two summers prior. It felt direct, like a rip to his own chest. It felt like Will was saying, ‘You were right, Mike. Are you happy now?’ And of course he wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy about any of it. But the worst of it was that a part of him was still thinking the way he had when they had that fight. The unsaid words still lingered in his mind. 'Why aren’t you just pretending? Why can’t you at least try?’
And then, he’d hesitated. As the rest of his friends went to comfort Will, he’d stopped himself. He feels sick to think of it now. But at the time, it felt almost necessary, like a defence. It felt like a way of showing the people in that room that Will was right, Mike isn’t like him, and here, he can prove it. He wouldn’t hug him, not properly, anyway. Even though he desperately wanted to. He wouldn’t take him to the side and ask if he was okay, even though the sight of the tears on his face made Mike’s heart break. He wouldn’t touch him again, at least not where people could see it.
“How would you have done it?” He asks.
Will’s initial shock at the topic being brought up seems to have subsided. He lolls his head from side to side, considering, before answering, “I would have done it piece by piece, you know? Not all at once. I probably would have told my Mom first. Or Jonathan, but I think he already knew.”
“Really?” Mike asks, ignoring the sting over the fact that he didn’t make it into Will’s top two.
“Yeah. He had, like, this really un-subtle conversation with me about it the day we rescued El in Nevada,” Will smiles to himself at whatever memory he’s conjured. “And then,” he continues, glancing at Mike and then away again. “I wanted to tell you.”
Mike’s heart lifts. “Yeah?”
Will nods, biting his lip and smiling to himself, a little embarrassed. “It’s… Ugh, it’s so embarrassing to think about it now, but… I think I was going to try and confess.”
Mike’s eyes widen. Confess? To the crush? He was going to tell him how he felt?
“I know, I know,” says Will, watching the change in Mike’s expression. “Sorry if that’s… weird to think about. And, like, I know it would have been a terrible idea. I just… I got this stupid idea in my head that I was, like, picking up on stuff. Signs, or signals, or whatever.” He snorts. “Crazy, right? Maybe Vecna did me a favour.”
Signs. Signals. That— what? That Mike wasn’t straight? That he liked Will back? Mike’s stomach turns, and then turns back over. Will was going to confess to him.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Will says, after Mike is silent for a couple of beats too long. “I’ve made it weird. And you were with El. I know that. I wouldn’t have, like, expected anything, you know? I just… I hated lying to you. I hate keeping things from you.”
Mike is still trying to catch up on the many revelations of this conversation when his mind catches back on something else. Jonathan. The van. The long drive, and the painting. Mike knows Will lied about it, but he never understood why, or who the lie was actually for. He knew from the second the words left Will’s mouth, ‘El commissioned it,’ that they weren’t true. But Mike had allowed the lie because it seemed like it was hiding a truth Mike wasn’t ready for. At the time, he thought it was that he and El were past the point of fixing. That the relationship was over, and Will was just trying to hold them together for Mike’s sake, or for El’s. But now, he realises the lie had been to protect Will. To guard his own heart, which Jonathan had seen. Will hates lying to Mike, but he had, over and over again about this, because Mike hadn’t given him enough reason to believe he could be honest.
“What would you have said?” He asks, needing confirmation that he’s right. That Will had actually told him everything in the summer of 1986.
“What?” Will asks, a little high-pitched.
“If you confessed. What would you have told me?”
“Mike, we don’t have to—“
“I— I want to know,” Mike urges, forcing a smile. An attempt at softness, at lightness. A smile that’s trying to say, this can just be for fun, right?
Will studies him for a few moments, brows furrowed. He sighs, sitting up and bringing his hands to his lap where he fidgets with them. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I probably would have made a complete mess of it.” He huffs a cautious laugh.
Mike widens his smile, tilting his head to say, go on.
Will rolls his eyes, but continues. “I would have tried to tell you what I think— thought — about you. Um, that I liked how smart you are. Maybe not always in the most obvious ways, but, like, in the way that you’re imaginative and get obsessive about really specific things.” Will lifts the corner of his lips in a small smile. “I know Lucas always got bored of it, but I didn’t. I like how passionate you get. And… I maybe would have said that I liked your bossiness sometimes. You’re a good leader, Mike, even if you sometimes get a little too invested.” He cracks a wider grin, and despite the stuttering of his heart at the words he’s hearing, Mike can’t help but let a shy smile creep onto his face.
‘You’re the heart, Mike.’
“And I would have told you how kind you are. How great you are at making people feel better about themselves. Like when you compare them to your favourite superheroes. Because I know how much those characters mean to you and it’s, like, the best compliment ever.”
This stings a little, as Mike remembers how El never really heard what he was saying when he called her a superhero. She’d almost winced, once, at the words, and Mike didn’t know what to do. How to make her understand what he saw in her. But Will understands. He always understands, and Mike feels like an idiot for not seeing that until now. Now that it’s too late.
Will goes on, smiling broadly now, “And I always sort of liked how much you hate getting to know new people. Because even though you always end up being the best friend to them, it still takes you a while to warm up sometimes. But, you were never like that with me. It made me feel sort of special. You always made me feel special.”
‘You make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all. Like she’s better for being different.’
Will’s voice trails off at the last words, and he looks up at Mike nervously, as if he’s said too much. And maybe he has. Because now it’s almost impossible for Mike not to want more. Now he wants to hear every kind thing Will has ever thought about him, so that he can collect every word and keep them close. He wants — he wants Will to still want him. He wants a second chance, or a first chance, even, because hadn’t Will written him off before he’d even had that? He wants this confession to be real this time, not hidden behind someone or something else, so that maybe, maybe…
But it isn’t worth thinking about. It isn’t real. And Mike can’t want it to be. Mike can’t be like that.
“See?” Will says. “Aren’t you glad I never said any of that?”
Except, he sort of has, and now Mike won’t be able to stop thinking about it.
Mike sniffs. Clears his throat. Blinks against the sting in his eyes. “It was nice,” he says, weakly.
Will looks at him expectantly and Mike knows that this is normally when he would crack a joke, say something dumb to signal the end of the serious conversation. To let Will off the hook.
He clears his throat, brain foggy, scrambling for something to say. “Um, you missed a chance to talk about how you get ‘lost in the deep well of my eyes’, or how my ‘luscious hair glistens in the sun’. But, A-plus for effort.”
Will smiles and shoves his shoulder with enough force to almost send Mike toppling over. Mike laughs, the tension lessened by the sight of Will’s smile.
“Also, I’m not bossy. I’m assertive. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, right,” Will rolls his eyes.
“I’m not!” He says, indignant. “Anyway, we need to get back to the car.” He stands up, trying to get them off the topic altogether. “Quickly, or else we’ll be trying to find a motel in the dark again.”
He holds out an arm to help Will up. Will looks at him with a quirked brow.
“What?” He asks.
“Bossy,” says Will, with a shrug. He takes Mike’s outstretched hand.
“Assertive,” Mike corrects, hauling him up. He tries to ignore the heat creeping up his arm from the point where their hands are joined.