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The Upside Down was both everything and nothing like Will remembered. Since the last time he’d been here, he’d grown four years older and nearly a foot taller, not to mention stronger, faster, more powerful, more prepared. Being back now was like rewatching a movie that had terrified him as a kid and realizing that the monsters were just bubble wrap and melted wax. The ghost of an old, bone-deep terror still haunted his form, but he felt somewhat removed from it now.
Acrid air stung his nose and eyes, metallic and chemical. Every inch of his body felt grimy, and he already was starting to smell vaguely of rotting compost. Without a sun overhead to direct them, the shadows seemed to have developed minds of their own. They settled on the ground like they were made of a tangible material, thick and inky and clinging. They pooled around his ankles like low dense fog, and whenever he swung his flashlight beam into a particularly dark crevice, the shadows slithered quickly out of sight like recoiling vines.
The group was mostly gathered at the base of the radio tower, going over some last minute logistics. Will thought that was what they were doing, anyway. He had been politely uninvited from the conversation, thanks to his extant connection with Henry. Nobody wanted him to be able to use Will as a spy again, Will least of all. Still, he couldn’t help but feel sidelined. He had spent the past four years feeling like the only person over the age of twelve made to sit at the kids’ table, and he was starting to wonder if the others would ever let him grow out of it.
That wasn’t fair, it wasn’t like it was personal to Will. They were just taking a precaution, and it was a precaution he agreed with. He tried not to let the hurt sink too deep.
He was sitting on the ground, his back propped against the brick wall on the far side of the Squawk, far enough away from the radio tower that he couldn’t eavesdrop on the plan even accidentally. He had his legs pulled up to his chest to try to preserve some of his body heat, but he knew it was a lost cause. The air was bitingly cold, the ground frozen and packed tight, and the brick wall behind him was sapping all the warmth from his back.
Jonathan was hovering nearby, pacing in a sort of sporadic, directionless way. He wandered over to the side of the building and leaned around the corner, watching the group for a few moments, before turning back to Will and drifting back his way. He repeated this every twenty seconds or so.
Will didn’t mind the buddy system that Hopper insisted everyone follow. The Upside Down was stupidly dangerous, being caught on your own could have spelled death for any one of them. He did, however, sort of resent the speed with which their mother had assigned Jonathan to the position when it became clear Will would need to temporarily separate from the group. A buddy was one thing, a babysitter was another.
Jonathan appeared at his side again. “They’re still talking.” He leant against the wall and looked down at him. “How’re you feeling?”
Will shrugged. “Fine, mostly. Cold. Kinda exhausted, kinda like I’ll never sleep again.”
“Yeah.” Jonathan sighed and sank into a squat. “I get that.”
It might not have been obvious to anyone who didn’t know Jonathan, but Will could tell there was something brewing in his mind. He waited patiently, counted the ticks and clenches of Jonathan’s jaw, followed the descent of his eyelashes as he slowly closed his eyes.
Finally, Will said, “are you gonna tell me what’s bothering you, or do I have to guess?” He wondered if it might have something to do with Nancy. He still didn’t know what had happened between the two of them in the Upside Down, only that something obviously had.
Jonathan did that small half-laugh he always did when he was caught out. He settled one knee on the ground and sat forward on that foot, so he was kneeling right beside him. “That obvious?”
“To me, yeah,” Will said. “I don’t know about anyone else.”
“Probably just you.” Jonathan raked his fingers backward through his hair, then sighed. “Okay.” He dragged that same hand down his face, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “Okay. Listen, I’m proud of you,” he said. “Seriously, I am. I don’t want you to think for even a second that I’m not.”
Maybe Will should have known it would be about that, but the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. He straightened his back and dug his fingers into the frozen ground beneath them. “Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” he said.
“Yeah, there is,” Jonathan said. “Not like you’re thinking, though.”
“Okay.” It was not okay. So completely not okay. Will was pretty sure he was seconds away from his body unmaking itself on the atomic level or something equally dramatic.
Jonathan clapped a hand on his shoulder urgently. “I’m serious. It’s not you I have a problem with.”
“But you do have a problem.”
“Yeah.” Thunder rumbled overhead. “I do. And I think you’re tough enough to hear me out on it.”
Will felt his throat bob when he swallowed. He nodded, just once, and waited.
“It’s just that you spent that whole speech trying to convince us that you’re Kenny Rogers,” Jonathan said firmly, squeezing Will’s shoulder. “And I needed to make sure you know you don’t have to be. Not when you’re David goddamn Bowie. Okay?”
Will half-choked on a relieved sob. Oh, of course that was his complaint. Only Jonathan Byers would label it a problem that Will wasn’t being enough of a freak. All the fear of a few moments prior suddenly felt ludicrous.
Had he really forgotten this was Jonathan? His Jonathan, who had never once made Will question the depth and sincerity of his love? He would almost be angry at himself for assuming the worst of his brother if he weren’t so overwhelmed with affection. “Okay,” he said, voice thick and eyes wet, even though he had cried himself completely dry not even two hours prior. And then he was tipping forward, arms lifted, and Jonathan caught him up in a crushing embrace.
“Definitely still proud of you,” he said into his shoulder. “For the record.”
Will laughed wetly. “I know. I know you are.” He blinked a few more stubborn tears from his eyes, and then started to pull out of his arms.
Jonathan let him free from the hug. “You okay?” he asked softly, his hands settling at his sides.
“I’m okay,” Will said. “And I promise I’m not trying to be Kenny Rogers. I’m still zombie boy, still a freak, still gay, and I’m…yeah, I’m okay.”
And…huh. That was a word Will had never dared to apply to himself out loud before, not even when he spilled his guts back at the Squawk. He was taken aback by how mundane the moment felt, at how uninteresting the word itself was. He’d expected for the moment he said it to be taken over by some thrill of fear, or perhaps an excited buzz from the novelty of honesty, but there was nothing like that. It passed his lips like any other ordinary word, coming so easily that he hardly noticed what he’d said until he was already done speaking.
The smile on Jonathan’s face could have illuminated half the Upside Down. “Yeah,” he said, and he sounded a little choked up too. “Yeah, you’re okay.”
A pair of footsteps crunching on frozen ground caught Will’s ear. He and Jonathan turned their heads in sync, just in time to see Mike come around the corner.
“Hey,” he said. Will could have banged his head against the wall. Did Mike have some sort of radar for sensing when Will was having an emotionally vulnerable moment? How did he always manage to turn up at the worst times?
“Hi,” Will said. Jonathan didn’t say a thing.
Mike gestured over his shoulder. “Um, I’m here to trade off,” he said. “So Jonathan can go over his part of the plan, I mean.”
Cool, so the universe hated Will and wanted him dead. Old news, but the reminder still hit him like a slap to the face. Jonathan was looking at him with too much understanding in his eyes, and that alone was enough to have Will waving him away.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
Jonathan gripped his shoulder, squeezed it once. “I won’t be long,” he said, then got to his feet.
“I know.”
With a single nod in Mike’s direction, followed by one last worried glance over his shoulder, Jonathan vanished around the corner.
“I thought his part of the plan was just…stick with Nancy,” Will said.
“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to know anything about the plan.” Mike dropped easily on the ground beside Will, crossing his legs, putting his back against the wall, folding both hands in his lap. Will, in contrast, kept his legs drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. They looked at each other for a few seconds.
“Hi,” Mike said.
Will couldn’t help but smile, even if it was a weak attempt at one. “Hey.”
“I’ve never actually been to the Upside Down before today.” Mike gestured at the dense, dark, spore-filled air.
Some part of Will had known this, but it was odd to be reminded of it all the same. The Upside Down had been such an enormous part of his life for so long, an inescapable shadow, the fear that shaped him into the person he was now. It was hard to believe that this was Mike’s first time seeing it, when Will couldn’t seem to stop seeing it.
“Lucky you,” he said dryly.
Mike grimaced apologetically. “Man, you are so much cooler than I am. I would not have survived a week down here at twelve. I don’t think I’d survive a week down here now.”
Will shook his head. “I only survived because Henry wanted me alive.”
“Oh, right.”
They lapsed into silence, neither looking at the other. Will kept his eyes on the field in front of them. In his peripheral view, he could see that Mike was keeping his own eyes on the sky.
A few more seconds passed, and then Mike clicked his tongue consideringly and glanced sideways at Will. “Can I say something super dumb?” he asked.
“Since when do you need permission?”
He rolled his eyes and grinned. “I was just thinking, I bet we could survive a week down here together.”
Oh, Will wanted to kiss that unaffected smile right off his stupidly pretty mouth. He shook his head, half in denial and half to clear his thoughts away. “Wh—what? Why? No we couldn’t.”
Mike stretched his arms high over his head, letting out a strained little groan of effort, and Will tried not to scream. “I think we’d figure it out. We’d learn all the tricks, like the scary place in that one movie.”
“Right, yes, of course.” Will nodded. “I really appreciate your specificity, I know exactly what you’re talking about.” And holy shit, Will needed to stop speaking immediately. He’d played almost this exact game before, (“Are you trying to say I’m evil, and hell-bent on destroying the world?”), and had left that conversation with a pit the size of the Upside Down in his stomach.
“You know the one I mean.” Mike smacked him gently on the shoulder.
At the casual touch, Will’s body warmed like a summer thunderstorm. He lifted a hand to the side of his face to obscure his blush. “I really don’t.”
“The one with the cool swordfight? Mom made us take Holly to see it a few weeks ago.”
Will burst out laughing. “The Princess Bride?” he asked, looking at Mike through a gap in his fingers. Mrs. Wheeler had not, in fact, made the two of them take Holly to see it. She had only made Mike take her, and Mike had whined to Will about it until he agreed to come too.
Mike snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that one.”
“I thought you were talking about a horror movie. I don’t remember a scary part in The Princess Bride.”
“There totally is, remember? With the big rats and the quicksand?”
“You’re saying you think we could survive the Upside Down like Westley and Buttercup survived the Fire Swamp,” Will said flatly. “Are you hearing yourself?”
“You don’t think we could?” He added a lilt to his voice, a poor imitation of Westley’s tone, and quoted: “We know the secrets of the Upside Down, we can live here happily for quite some time.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re a sorcerer.” Mike extended his arm, palm up, imitating the way Will used his powers. “That’s even better than a pirate. You’d protect me.”
Mike’s endless ability to set Will’s heart fluttering probably should have been considered a superpower all on its own. He turned his face away to hide his flattered grin. “So I’d be doing all the work?” he asked.
“Not all the work,” Mike said. “I’d be there for…y’know, moral support.”
Will nodded. “Right, of course. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Maybe he sounded a bit more sincere than he’d meant to. Maybe Mike just knew him well enough to easily discern when he was being genuinely sarcastic and when he was just deflecting. Either way, he didn’t reply right away, leaving Will’s slightly-too-honest sentiment hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.
Finally, Mike said, “good thing we never have to find out.”
A lump formed in Will’s throat, like all the leftover emotion from his talk with Jonathan had congealed and calcified. “Yeah,” he said. “Good thing.”
The quiet that fell over them now was a comfortable one, warm and easy like it had been when they were kids. And Will was finally starting to relax, to settle into the idea that he wasn’t losing Mike, that his best friend wasn’t going anywhere, when Mike spoke again.
“Hey, so…about what you said. About not liking…y’know.”
For a fraction of a second, every single system in Will’s body halted. His blood stopped pumping, his lungs turned to stone, his nerves dulled to a cold and painless network beneath his skin.
Then it was over, and he somehow managed to sound totally casual when he replied, “yeah?”
Mike’s lips twitched. Will would only have called it a smile if he were feeling exceptionally generous.
“I mean, I’ve never…it was, I just wanted to—I don’t know how to—shit, hang on.” Mike bent over and buried his face in his hands. “Sorry,” he said, voice muffled. “Give me a moment, I’m screwing this whole thing up.”
“You don’t have to say anything, Mike,” Will said. “We kinda—I don’t know, I think we all said everything we needed to say already.”
“No!” Mike’s head snapped up and he stared at Will, eyes wide and urgent. “I have to—god, just give me a second, okay?”
And because he had never really been able to refuse Mike anything, Will just nodded.
Mike lowered his face back into his hands and, for almost half a minute, neither of them said a word. Will, for his part, just wanted this whole thing to be over. He’d done it, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he already gotten through the worst of it and come out alive on the other end?
When Mike had walked in on him and his mom at the Squawk, Will had been seized by a bout of temporary insanity. Mike had stepped into the room, and Will’s traitorous heart had screamed fate!
He didn’t consciously make the decision to invite Mike into the conversation. Before he really knew he was doing it, he was getting to his feet and telling Mike to wait, saying “you need to hear this too.”
Mike had looked back at him with a concerned furrow between his eyebrows, and Will was struck with a dizzying clarity.
There was no way in hell he would survive that. If left alone with just his mother and Mike, Will knew damn well where all his attention would be. Instead of focusing on himself, on the thing he needed to get off his chest, he would be fighting to keep his eyes from straying to Mike’s face. He would spend the whole conversation cataloging every microexpression, and he would lose his nerve at the first sign of disgust, or he would end up blurting out something he didn’t mean for Mike to know, or he would break down sobbing and lose the ability to even string two words together. He was trying to get over Mike, the last thing he needed was a conversation so charged and intimate when he should have been creating more distance between them. This wasn’t about Mike, not anymore.
So he swiftly followed his words up with, “everyone does,” and hoped Mike didn’t notice him falter.
When he said it, he had been picturing just his family and the Party. He would widen the circle to include everyone whose opinions mattered most to him, everyone he was so terrified he’d end up losing. Mike could grab Jonathan, El, Lucas, Dustin, and Max, and maybe Will would find Robin for emotional support. But Mike had heard the word everyone and hurried out of the room before Will could elaborate, and then Murray and Steve and Nancy were all filing in along with everyone else like this was some kind of last-minute group meeting, and Will had fiercely told himself that it was better this way. No more secrets, nothing left for Henry to use against him. Better to overwhelm himself anyway. The more people in the room, the more sets of eyes on him, the easier it would be to treat Mike like another face in the crowd. So he let them all stay, let them fill the room and create a buffer. Mike was just one of many, and it was easier like that. Safer.
Now, he was realizing just how naive he’d been to think he’d successfully circumvented the problem. It turned out he had only managed to delay it for an hour or two. Because now he was in the Upside Down with nowhere to run, and Mike was obviously ready to have that private, serious conversation Will had cheated him out of by inviting everyone else in. Being Will’s best friend, the person he used to tell absolutely everything, it made sense he’d want to talk about it sooner or later. Will just wished it could have been a bit later than this. Because this was even worse than if he’d gone with his original impulse of including only Mike. At least if he’d done that, he would have had his mother there. Sitting with Mike behind the Squawk, there was nothing he could use to dilute his attention, no way to water down the enormity of his feelings.
“You’re just…so cool,” Mike said, and Will’s head snapped over to him.
“I’m what?” he asked, genuinely shaken.
“You’re cool,” Mike repeated, like it wasn’t the most ridiculous compliment he could have given. “You got all…confident and proactive, like you’ve really got things figured out.”
“Mike,” Will said weakly. “Come on.”
“I’m dead serious. I thought you were really cool for telling us that. Brave, too.”
Before everything, back when things were easy, Will might have nudged Mike’s knee, or lightly shoved his shoulder. As it was, he kept all four limbs to himself and settled for snorting quietly. “You’re joking. I was crying so hard it felt like I was gonna puke.”
“You weren’t gonna puke. And even if you did, like, projectile vomit on everyone in that room, it still would’ve been one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen,” Mike said, sounding every inch the best friend Will had always known. Teasing, understanding, entirely too gentle. Will laughed at Mike’s attempt at a joke, his throat a little thick. Mike flashed him a subdued grin. “Seriously, that’s like—that’s what bravery is, right? Doing things even when you’re terrified of them? It’s scary, what you just did.” He paused. “Really scary.”
Will’s nose was stinging and a pressure was building behind his eyes, but he managed a small, unsteady smile. “I guess we named our characters wrong,” he said. “We should swap.”
“Will the Brave doesn’t sound too bad.” Mike knocked his foot lightly against Will’s. “I don’t know about Mike the Wise, though. Pretty sure I’d need some actual wisdom before I could go around calling myself that.”
“You’re wise,” Will said reflexively. Mike scoffed, and Will shook his head. “No, seriously, you are. You’re imparting wisdom right now, aren’t you? And it’s not just that. You always notice things no one else does, like what I can do with the hivemind, like—”
“Nothing useful,” Mike said shortly. “Nothing that matters, not—”
“Are you kidding? Those powers saved—”
“I didn’t notice this, Will,” Mike said, voice hard and immovable. Will’s mouth snapped shut and his heart stumbled in his chest. Mike let out a shaky exhale. “You’re my best friend, and I didn’t know.”
For a moment, silence fell between them. Will swallowed, mind racing. There had to be some magical combination of words he could say here, something to absolve Mike of this weird guilt he had decided to shoulder.
Slowly, he said, “I didn’t want anyone to notice. You can’t beat yourself up for not seeing it, you weren’t supposed to.”
Mike ducked his head. “I used to just…know things about you.”
Will didn’t like how closely they were edging around the truth. He nodded his head once. “You did. Mostly because I was letting you see them.”
“But you didn’t want me seeing this?”
“Would you?”
Mike balled his hand into a fist and then slowly unfurled it. He repeated this action twice more before finally speaking. “Guess not.”
“It was hard,” Will blurted, because this was the real danger of having such an intimate conversation with Mike. Just being around him made Will want to spill his guts. “Keeping it from you, I mean. I don’t want you to think I enjoyed keeping secrets from you, because I didn’t. I’ve always hated lying to you.”
A soft, momentary smile stole over Mike’s lips. It seemed impossible that something so warm could exist in the Upside Down, but Mike had always had a knack for impossibilities.
He pulled one leg up to his chest and rested his cheek on it. “Did you…ever think about telling me?”
“All the time,” Will said on an exhale.
Mike was silent for a few moments, his dark eyes scanning every inch of Will’s face. “I wish you had.”
Will tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, mostly to avoid staring too long at Mike. “I was scared.”
“Of me?”
Yes. “Of myself.”
“I’m glad I know now.”
And for a moment, it almost felt like they were kids again, when smiling at Mike was easy and uncomplicated. When he wasn’t afraid to pour all the warmth and affection in his body into the upward curve of his lips. “I’m glad too.”
Mike returned the smile, but there was something hesitant in his face. And just like that, all the ease of childhood was gone, and everything was terrible and complicated again.
Will swallowed and looked down at his own shoes, cowed by Mike’s hesitation.
For a full minute, neither spoke. The ambient chittering and rumbling of the Upside Down seemed to grow louder and louder the longer they went without talking.
“I also wanted to say I’m sorry about—about your crush,” Mike said, voice quiet and measured and almost robotic.
That was the absolute last thing Will wanted to talk about right now. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
Surprised at the ferocity in Mike’s tone, Will couldn’t stop himself from stealing a glance at him. To his even greater surprise, he was looking right back. Their eyes locked, and Will felt himself freeze in place. Mike’s eyes were wide and dark, and his jaw was clenched oddly.
Will’s hesitation lasted just a second too long. He felt the exact moment the silence shifted from comfortable to loaded. “It is,” he said quickly. “It is fine, seriously. It wasn’t ever about him, not really.”
“But it sucks,” Mike said. “It just…it sounded like you really liked him.”
There had to be a way out of this conversation, one that Will just wasn’t seeing. Maybe he could jack into the hivemind and get the ground to open up and swallow him, or he could fake a vision and pretend to go catatonic just so he wouldn’t have to keep talking to Mike about this. “I did,” he said. “But it—it happens, you know? Sometimes you like someone who just doesn’t like you back. Remember when Dustin had a crush on Max?”
“Ugh, that was awful.”
“He got over her,” Will said. “And then he met Suzie, and she was obviously a better match for him anyway, so it all worked out. Just because I haven’t found my Suzie yet doesn’t mean I never will.” Or my Vickie, he thought, but kept that to himself.
“I know, I know,” Mike said. “But it still sucks. I mean seriously, we could all be dead tomorrow, and you’ve never—it’s awful that this guy you liked didn’t—have you ever even kissed a boy?” The moment the words had left his mouth, Mike reared back in shock, like he hadn’t been the one to blurt that out. He looked suddenly ashamed, his ears flushing red. “I mean—”
“No,” Will said. He laughed, not an ounce of humor in it. “No, Mike, I’ve never held hands with a boy, let alone kissed one, and I’m probably going to die before I ever get that chance, so don’t lecture me about how much it sucks, okay? I know it does. It’s sucked for years, and it’s never going to stop sucking unless I just man the fuck up and get over myself.”
Mike opened his mouth, clearly ready to argue, and Will held up a hand to stop him. If Mike wanted Will to bare his soul to him like he used to, then that’s what Will would do. But if he stopped talking now, he knew he’d lose his nerve along with his momentum, and he might never broach the topic again. He hadn’t even gone this in-depth about his feelings when talking to Robin, but Mike was still Mike. Will might have been trying to get over him, but that didn’t mean Mike couldn’t still be his best friend. He wanted Mike to know him again, the way he did before Will started shutting him out. Maybe this could be the first step in properly re-establishing the friendship Will had messed up. Not patched with a bandaid and some platitudes this time, but mended by something honest.
“It’s like…being gay, it’s this huge part of me.” He didn’t miss the way Mike’s eyes widened at his use of the word. He swallowed and continued speaking. “Sometimes it feels like it’s all of me. And it’s not just who I am, it’s how I love, and who I love, and that—that’s the part that sucks. Because no matter how much I wish it could just be about me, it’s never going to be just me.”
At long last, Will knew himself just as well as he had at five, knew what he was to his core: A lover. Now that he had finally put words to it, he could feel it shining out of every part of him, tight beneath his skin. He’d spent so long loving everyone else that he’d forgotten how to love himself. He’d come to resent it for the weakness it caused him, had many times wished he could carve it out of himself just long enough to get a respite from the ache. But it was getting exhausting, hating his own capacity for love. It was high time he remembered how to love it instead.
“I have so much love in my life,” he said, staring straight ahead. “I’ve got Mom and Jonathan and El. I’ve got you, Lucas, Dustin, Max, Robin—and I finally, finally have myself too. That’s more than most people like me ever get, and I’m so grateful for all of you. So it feels like—like if all that isn’t enough for me, if I get to keep everyone who loves me and I still wish I had more, that’s just shitty and selfish.
“This whole thing has to be about me, because if I let it be about him, then I’m going to die wanting. I can’t do that to myself, I can’t die wanting the same thing I was born wanting, because then what—what were the last sixteen years even for, right? I have to be enough on my own, does that make sense? People like me don’t get to want more. We’re supposed to just settle for what we get and be grateful for it, and I am grateful. I am.
“But, Mike, I…” Will squeezed his eyes shut. “I did really want to fall in love,” he admitted, voice low and fractured. He had never verbalized this to anyone, wasn’t sure he had ever even admitted to himself just how deeply this particular ache ran. “I guess it’s nice that I never needed to, but I still wanted to. And part of me feels like that should have counted for something.”
Something soft and sure landed overtop of Will’s icy hand, and Will jerked in place, startled. He looked down just in time to watch Mike gently maneuver his hand into Will's, turning his palm upright, prying his fingers apart, and weaving his own through them. Once their hands were properly entwined, Mike settled them both back on the ground.
Their joined hands sat between them like a landmine. Will felt no telltale goosebumps at the back of his neck, but he still couldn’t convince himself that what he was seeing and feeling was real. Mike was holding his hand, his grip unwavering and unafraid. His hand was warm, his presence grounding, his pulse fast but steady. It was hot soup when he was sick, it was crawling into Jonathan’s bed after a nightmare, it was a steaming mug of cocoa on a snow day. It was the blinding, painful release of a red-hot poker stabbed into his side, purging his body of everything unclean and unkind. Will’s mind felt like a blown fusebox. He stared down at his hand, completely uncomprehending, like if he watched it long enough it would somehow become something he could make sense of.
“Hey, look at that,” Mike said, oblivious to Will’s turmoil. “You’ve, uh, held hands with a boy now."
Maybe Will really did die when he was twelve, and the past four years had just been his own incredibly specific brand of hell. That was the only reasonable explanation for this.
“I don’t think I can help with the rest of it,” Mike went on. He was looking at Will with the easiest smile, his forehead totally relaxed, not a single hint of his usual scowl or furrow. “But there’s gonna be time for all that after you kick Vecna’s ass and save the world, right?” And Will knew he wasn’t imagining the way Mike’s gaze flicked down to his lips for a moment. But Mike had been stealing glances at his lips for years, that wasn’t a signal so much as it was just one of Mike’s many idiosyncrasies.
Will blinked at him, his mouth and throat totally dry. This was so far beyond uncharted territory. This wasn’t just treading water in the middle of the Pacific, this was like waking up in the Upside Down for the very first time all over again. He was lost, confused, had no clue how he’d gotten where he was, had no idea what kind of danger he might be in.
When another few heartbeats passed in silence, Mike coughed and turned his head. “Sorry you got stuck with me. I would’ve booked Mark Hamill or Ralph Macchio, but I was on a time crunch.”
“Mike,” Will said, silently mortified at the way his voice nearly cracked on a single whispered word. He knew he should’ve pulled his hand free. This was only prolonging his torture, sending his system all the wrong signals. If the goal was moving on, he was doing a pretty shit job of it.
“No, wait, Harrison Ford, right? You were always obsessed with Han.”
“I was not,” he protested, cheeks flaring with heat.
“No, Rick Moranis!” Mike said suddenly. “In Little Shop, right? Holy shit!”
Will buried his face in his free hand. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn't swing Rick Moranis, but I hope I’m good enough for now.”
And Will couldn’t stand that, couldn’t stand the thought of Mike thinking he was nothing more than a consolation prize. “You’re great,” he said. “I mean, it’s—this is enough. More than enough. You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” Mike said. “Let me do nice things for you sometimes, okay?”
It was so ridiculous. Will was back in the Upside Down after four years, he was probably going to die before the day was out, and nothing frightened him more than Mike’s hand in his.
And it was a nice thing that Mike was doing for him. The kind of nice thing that Will would never even have thought to ask for. It confused him to no end, but who was Will to argue? For whatever reason, Mike had decided to spend a few minutes of his time holding Will’s hand, just so Will would get to walk to his death knowing how it felt to hold another boy’s hand like that. It was so stupidly sweet and entirely selfless and completely Mike that Will sort of wanted to hurl himself off a cliff.
He also sort of wanted to just close his eyes and accept this for the nice thing it was. It might have been temporary, it might have been Mike just being a good friend, but he was still holding Mike’s hand. It wasn’t the first time Mike had held his hand, but it had been about three years since he’d last done it. And he’d never woven their fingers together like this.
“So? What’s the verdict?” Mike asked. Will made a questioning face at him, and he clarified: “Your first time holding a guy’s hand. Is it everything you dreamed of?”
Yes. Will’s mind supplied. It’s everything and more, because you’re real. I can’t believe you’re real. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to know you, I can’t believe you’re not afraid of touching me.
Instead of saying even one word of that, Will frowned like he was really deliberating over Mike’s question. “A bit sweatier than I imagined,” he said at last.
“But it’s…okay?” Mike asked, ignoring the joke entirely.
Will shrugged, trying for casual, certain he was failing miserably. “Yeah, it’s good. I get what all the fuss is about.”
“Good, that’s—that’s good.” Mike squeezed Will’s hand, and Will’s chest felt so bright and hot he was surprised it wasn’t emitting some kind of glow. “I just wanted to do something nice for you, y’know?” He gestured at their hands with his free hand. “It’s nice, right? This is nice.”
“Probably nicer for me than it is for you.”
“I don’t know.” Mike made a so-so gesture with his free hand. “It’s pretty nice for me too.”
“Nice in a different way, then,” Will said.
Mike tilted his head. He frowned, then: “Oh! Oh, yeah, I guess it would be different. Duh.”
“Duh,” Will echoed incredulously. “Mike, did you seriously f—”
“I didn’t forget,” Mike said, before Will could even properly voice his accusation. “It just wasn’t at the front of my mind.”
It was so completely impossible to not be in love with Mike Wheeler. Will wasn’t sure why he’d ever tried. “It’s the entire reason you’re holding my hand in the first place,” he said.
“I know that!” Mike gestured defensively with both hands, yanking Will’s hand along with him (not that Will minded being dragged around by Mike). “I just—I don’t know, once I started holding your hand, it stopped being important to think about why. I had other things to focus on, my mind moved on.”
Will bit his lip to stifle a laugh, but it escaped through his nose anyway. “That explains so much.”
Mike shifted in place, turning his body to face Will, and leant his head sideways against the brick wall. For a few seconds, he just watched him.
Like, really watched him.
Okay. That was enough of that. Will raised his eyebrows in a silent question, and Mike’s eyes immediately darted sideways. It reminded Will of an odd phenomenon from their childhood. From the ages of roughly seven to twelve, Will would occasionally wake on the morning after a sleepover to find Mike silently observing him. A moment of eye contact was all it ever took to turn Mike’s head away, and he always spent the next half hour or so looking a bit hunted. Will had been curious about it for a while, but then it stopped happening, and he eventually forced himself to stop wondering.
“What, uh…” Mike was whispering for some reason, almost like he, too, had been thinking of sleepovers. “What does it explain?”
Will answered in a whisper of his own. “You.”
“What about me?” Mike scooted an inch closer.
“That once you start doing something, you stop thinking about why you started doing it in the first place,” Will said. He tapped the back of Mike’s hand with one finger, to say for example. “And then you just keep doing it, because you’re pretty sure you had a good reason at some point.”
Mike’s eyes fell down to their joined hands. He took in a short breath, and then looked back up at Will. “I really want to be able to argue with you about that, but…” He returned the gesture, tapping the back of his hand lightly. Then he let out a single heh. “Plus I think that’s one of the reasons El gave when she dumped my ass, so…”
Will snorted. “God, don’t tell me she asked why you were even dating and you couldn’t answer her.”
Eighteen months out from the breakup, it was getting easier and easier to joke about it with both Mike and El. The two of them had actually both seemed ready to make fun of it within the week after it happened, but Will had always been more hesitant. These days, he was a little more assured about what was fair game and what was too far.
“You know us so well.”
Will bumped their elbows together. “Yeah, it’s almost like you guys are my best friend and sister or something.”
“Or something.” Mike’s eyes crinkled when he smiled, and even in the ambient darkness of the Upside Down, his freckles were clearly visible on the sides of his nose. A long time ago, Will had idly fantasized about cataloging every freckle on his face with a kiss. But that was back when such fantasies were novel, back when Will’s feelings for Mike still fit inside his body. Now, those same feelings had outgrown him several times over, and he was pretty sure that the effort of keeping them contained had driven him a little insane. Insane enough that he skipped past the idea of kissing freckles and instead just imagined putting Mike’s entire nose in his mouth.
Jesus, he needed to be fucking euthanized or something.
Just when he was starting to seriously consider jacking into the hivemind just to ask Henry to put him down like a sick dog, the sound of footsteps shook him out of his spiral.
He and Mike startled as one, and both looked over just in time to see Robin appear around the side of the building.
“We’re all wrapped up,” she said. “Heading up the beanstalk in five m…” she trailed off, her eyes landing on the space between their bodies where their joined hands lay. “In five minutes,” she said quickly, looking back up at their faces so quickly that Will could almost convince himself she hadn’t seen.
Almost.
The brightness in her eyes was too strong to mistake.
“We’ll be right over,” Mike said.
“No rush.” Robin’s voice was airy, laced with the slightest rasp of emotion, and she was obviously entirely too happy about whatever she thought she’d figured out. Will wasn’t looking forward to explaining that Mike was just being a good friend, especially because it was such a strange way to be a good friend. Lucas and Dustin had both been very good about Will being gay, but neither of them had offered to hold his hand just so he’d know what it felt like. At least Robin would probably commiserate with him, once she got done laughing at how deeply weird Mike could be.
Then she was gone, just as quickly as she’d appeared.
“No rush my ass,” Mike said scornfully. “The world is ending.”
“I don’t think she was being literal.”
Mike sighed. “We should get going.”
Will nodded, bracing himself for the cold that was sure to infect his hand and never leave it the moment Mike dropped his grip.
But Mike stood slowly, hand still wrapped in Will’s, and then pulled Will up after him. “Ready?”
“No,” Will said honestly. “But, um, thanks.” He looked down at their hands. He had honestly expected Mike to let go by now. He wasn’t sure what to do with the fact that he hadn’t. Was Mike waiting for Will to let go? Had Will already held on for too long? He wished he could read Mike’s mind, or that Mike would just tell him what he was thinking for once. “This was nice of you. Like a last meal on death row.”
“You’re not on death row,” Mike said immediately. He sounded fierce, almost angry. “You’re not.” He squeezed Will’s hand.
Will didn’t have the energy to argue, not about this. “I’m not,” he said. “But if I don’t make it, I’m still glad to have had this.” That shitty, selfish part of Will was keening desperately from the pit of his hollow stomach, urging him to push for more, to see just how much he could get away with. He wondered if he could get Mike to kiss him if he looked pitiable enough.
“Thanks,” he whispered, and then slowly pulled his hand out of Mike’s.
He had been right to anticipate the cold. It was a chill like only one other he had ever felt before (“he likes it cold.”), the kind that saturated his whole hand, sharp and empty and heavy.
Mike’s hand chased Will’s out of its grip, and he caught Will by the wrist. “Hey,” he said, sliding his hand down to take Will’s again. “Where are you going?”
Will stared down at their joined hands hopelessly. He shook his head once and looked up at Mike. “We can’t, we have to go.”
Mike nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Neither of them moved.
“Mike,” Will said despairingly. How many more times was he going to have to do this before it stuck? He felt like he let go of Mike anywhere from ten to fifty times every single day, and each one hurt just as much as the last. Why did Mike insist on making himself so impossible to really let go of? How on earth was Will supposed to get over him in any way that mattered?
“What?” Mike was smiling at him, swinging their hands back and forth idly.
He really didn’t seem to be getting it. So Will straightened his spine, pushed his shoulders back, and set his jaw. “Mike, I just told every single person we know that I’m a queer. They see this?” He lifted their hands to chest height and lowered them again. “They’re going to assume things about you that I know for a fact you don’t want them to assume.”
Mike fell still for a moment, lips pursed, obviously digesting Will’s words. He gave the very slightest shake of his head, then took a half-step closer to him. Their hands dangled between them like a rope bridge, and Mike tightened his grip. “Will,” he said. “An evil undead wizard is using my little sister as a battery so he can smush two dimensions together and remake the world, eliminating all human life in the process.”
With less than a foot of empty air between the two of them, Will was no longer totally certain he could differentiate between the thunder rumbling overhead and the blood rushing in his ears. He waited, breath caught somewhere between his heart and his throat.
Mike was wearing one of his famously indecipherable expressions. With his barely-parted lips and round eyes, along with the potential energy Will could practically feel building under his skin, he almost resembled a dog awaiting a release command. The longer Will went without speaking, the tighter Mike’s hand clenched around his own.
Finally, Will managed to gather just enough breath to say, “fair.”
All the air left Mike’s lungs in a single relieved exhale. His grip was so tight that Will could feel his pulse quickening, and it felt like an invasion of Mike’s privacy to even notice such an intimate detail. His brown eyes darted all around Will’s face, moving with dizzying speed from his eyes to his jaw to his cheek to his lips and back again. Seemingly without intention, the tip of his tongue glanced across his chapped lips. Will couldn’t stop his eyes from following the movement, but when he realized where he was looking he snapped his gaze back up to his eyes. As if startled into movement, Mike quickly turned his head to look around the corner of the building and toward the tower.
Will leant sideways and angled his head so he could see around Mike, trying to get a better look at the rest of their party. A quick headcount told him that they were still the only two the others were still waiting on. Not wanting to make them wait any longer, Will took a deep breath and began to move toward the group. He didn’t get more than two steps before he reached the end of the tether between them and it yanked him back. His heart sunk when he realized Mike hadn’t budged an inch.
Trying not to let his disappointment show too visibly, Will started to pull out of Mike's hold for the second time. “Seriously, you don’t have to make yourself look like a queer for my sake, it’s not—” Then he saw Mike’s expression, and all his protests left in an instant. Without even really thinking about why, he stopped trying to pull away. Instead, he settled his hand back into Mike’s, the curves of their palms pressing together with no negative space between.
Because Mike didn’t just look hesitant, or uncomfortable, or even nervous. He looked scared. It was a unique and specific kind of terror, one Will knew far too intimately. Not oh-god-what-if-they-think, but oh-god-what-if-they-know.
Understanding nearly bowled Will over, and a single dazed “oh” slipped from his mouth before he could reel it back in. The word landed between them with all the subtlety of a grenade, and Mike shut his eyes like he was bracing against a real explosion. The air around them crackled with the usual static of the Upside Down’s lighting storms, thick and hot and sharp.
Two hours ago, Will had finally accepted that Mike would just never be an option for him, that he needed to move on if he ever wanted to be happy with himself. Now, all of a sudden, Mike had him wondering again.
He desperately wished they had more time, even just a few minutes, but they seriously had to leave. There wasn't any time left for them to waste, not anymore. They had a wizard to kill, a wormhole to blow up, a world to save. There wasn’t time to even broach the subject, and now there might never be time, depending on how the rest of the day unfolded. They could both be dead and rotting within the hour. Life as they knew it might be totally eradicated.
But Mike was here, and so was Will. And even if there wasn’t time now to understand, there was always time to wonder. And between dying wanting and dying wondering, Will was pretty sure he’d pick the latter every single time.
“Hey.” He tugged Mike forward, closing the distance between them. His breath was hot and unsteady, and the only reason his hand wasn’t shaking was because Mike was still holding it. “Mike the Brave, right?”
Mike looked down at Will with glassy, glistening eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. “Yeah. Yes. Mike the Brave.”
And though he let Will lead the way, Mike followed without any protest.