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The first thing Mike notices is that Will’s eyes are so wet that they shine.
The first thing he thinks, with all the chest-shaking fear of a hare stuck in a trap, is: I’ve been caught. This nameless panic, this aching shame, has caught up to him, and Will has found him out, and the ugly truth has brought him to tears.
The thought, dread as it is, lasts only a second. Will has so much to grapple with right now, so much that could upset him or make him feel afraid. Him talking to Joyce doesn’t necessarily mean Mike has anything to fear—in fact, it's a silly thought, as Mike has barely said anything to Will as of late—it only means that Will is hurting. That is not a cause for fear, but for worry.
Will is looking over his shoulder, in the direction of this sudden intruder, and it’s a sharp arrow of a look that finds its true mark. It hits Mike harder than a mere look should; it makes his heart twist in his chest. The worry grows.
Concern for Will has become a natural part of Mike’s life since that day four years ago that he had gone missing, but in these days leading up to the anniversary of his disappearance, it has become something all-consuming, something Mike can’t push down or ignore. Between that first glimpse of Will the sorcerer at the MAC-Z, the attempt to take down Vecna that had left him unconscious, and Will’s clear distress after he had awakened, Mike’s thoughts haven’t been able to leave Will’s side. God knows he’s tried. He has so much to fear, so much to lose sleep over in all of this madness—his parents still hospitalized, Holly still missing, and all of his friends heading toward what has to be a certain doom for some of them—yet Mike’s thoughts manage to stay on one maddening target.
Thoughts, not actions, because as worried he is about Will, he has no idea how to make things better. How to help. How to translate the twisting of his heart and the dread pit in his stomach into something that Will could understand or tolerate. He has decided that keeping it unspoken has been protecting them both, and in order to keep it unspoken, he needs to keep himself locked behind his armour. Something that keeps Will out as much as it keeps himself in.
So he stands by and watches. Keeps a safe distance. It has protected him this far, has kept him together on the inside, and has protected Will from the nasty truth.
Now he’s frozen again, and both Will and Joyce are looking at him, and it’s clear he’s stumbled in on something that he definitely wasn’t meant to.
“Oh, uh… sorry.” He hears the words leave his mouth, in a voice that’s too devoid of emotion. It certainly can’t be his own. “We just heard from Hop. He’s fifteen minutes out, so we should probably leave in five.” His gaze ends up on Will—it always does—and he can’t help but ask, “Is everything okay?”
Joyce is patting Will’s hand. “Yeah. We’ll be out in a minute,” she says.
Will’s looking away from Mike now, like even the thought of him is too much to bear. It makes Mike feel awkward, clunky. Maybe, he fears, he is the problem. Maybe his thoughts are loud enough for Will to hear. Maybe his expressions, guarded though they are, have let something slip. Or maybe Will just knows, as he always seems to—knows something he shouldn’t. Knows what Mike is keeping locked up under that armour.
Mike turns to go, to escape a room that has become all too stuffy, the walls that seem to be closing in on him, when Will’s voice calls out: “Wait.”
And as much as Mike wants to hide, his body responds to that voice immediately. When he turns back, Will is standing, his olive shirt doing little to hide the deep breaths he’s taking, the slow and shaky movements of his chest. It’s the physiological reaction of a warrior headed to battle, not a boy in a room with his mother and his best friend. It terrifies Mike, if only because it’s the mirror image of how he feels in that moment.
“I think you need to hear this too,” Will says. He looks over at Joyce, voice breaking as he adds, “Separately.”
Joyce tilts her head as Will comes up to Mike, taking him by the elbow, and the simple action makes Mike’s skin run so hot, he feels as if he’s been burned. It’s strange. Usually you don’t want to get burned again, but Mike wouldn’t mind another touch like that, or maybe a hundred.
No—Mike can’t think like that, not now. He steels himself, tries to banish the impulse.
Will speaks to him in a low voice, words meant for Mike alone. “I know this is, like, terrible timing, but… do you think you could ask Hop to wait just a bit longer? I need to talk to you on the roof. Alone. I just… I need to talk to my mom first. Just this one request, and then I won’t ask anything else of you.”
Mike’s heart seems to have found its new residence in his larynx, and the act of speaking around that lump in his throat makes his voice something shallow and shaky. “Yeah, Will, of course, but… Are you really okay?"
Will looks at him through a sheen of tears, red eyes burning hot, and manages a nod. “Don’t worry about me, Mike, just… just wait for me there.”
Mike musters all the strength he can, and he follows Will’s instructions. The others are still preparing for their last crawl, designating weapons and consulting maps and discussing strategy, so Will’s request for extra time is easily granted. The thought of a few more minutes to ready themselves actually seems to grant some relief to the tense group.
Mike finds his way to the roof of the Squawk, forcing his leaden feet up the ladder. It’s strange: he doesn’t know exactly what to expect up here, but Will’s conviction tells him it’s something he should fear. Will has taken a thread and started to pull, and maybe he’s had the thread in his hands for a while now, and maybe it’s just taken Mike until now to realize that he was the thing being unravelled.
That look—Will’s look, sharp and true despite the redness and the tears, was an indication. It was the throwing of the gauntlet. They’ve both been playing a game they haven’t dared to name, but Will is about to name it, to make his gambit, and Mike doesn’t even know what the rules of the game are, let alone what move he’s meant to make in response.
He wishes he had a little bit of time to prepare. He wishes this had happened years ago. He wishes this would never happen at all. He’s a flurry of fear and anticipation and he’s more feeling than flesh.
Last time he had been up here, it had been with El. They had sat right at the front of the roof, overlooking the field, the sunset, two public figures to be viewed by anyone who happened to pass below. That was how it had always been with El. He had always managed to do it right in public, a well-studied actor playing his part.
But the thought of being so exposed with Will is something unbearable. Mike retreats under the radio tower, sitting at its base, looking up at the looming structure and praying the signals it sends can obfuscate the truth that Mike has tried so hard to hide from Will. From himself. He hopes that Will doesn't catch him.
At the very least, they’ll be hidden from sight of the others. No one else will come across them here. If Will discovers Mike's shame, it will be a private revelation, not one to be paraded around. That thought still doesn't help his aching chest.
It feels like an eternity, or maybe a fleeting few minutes, before Will arrives. Mike knows in that moment that he has no hope of hiding from Will.
The warm sunlight hits Will’s face, highlighting the tracks that his tears have taken down his cheeks, the flush that rests there, the swelling around his eyes. He looks so open, so clear, so beautiful. Mike bites back that last one. He can’t let that thought get too far, because that same light is on Mike now: a light that can’t be hidden from. A light that can’t be denied. Any thought that enters his mind is fair game for Will to discover. And Will cannot discover those kinds of thoughts.
Will crosses the distance, closing the space, and sits beside Mike. He’s far enough that Mike can still breathe, but close enough that that breath quickens, escaping in arrhythmic bursts.
The game begins.
Will clears his throat, crossing his legs. “Hey,” he says, his tone too casual for what feels like a final confrontation. Despite that tone, his voice sounds raw, scratchy.
“Hey,” Mike offers in reply. It’s simple. Safe.
“Thank you for… for waiting. I know it’s so silly to ask this of you, right now of all times, but…”
“It’s not silly,” Mike insists. He’s terrified, his whole being is set against the very idea of talking to Will about whatever this is, but he can’t help the impulse to put him at ease. The need to make Will feel okay has overridden his own need to hide. “It’s never silly.”
Will nods, tilting his head. His eyes are down at his lap, then they’re up at the tower, then they’re across on the field—everywhere but Mike.
“I’m not really sure how to tell you this, Mike,” Will starts. “I didn’t… I never thought I would have to. I never thought I should. I mean, I’ve… I’ve imagined it, this, a lot of different times and in a lot of different ways, but…” He rubs his hands on his knees. “I’m sorry. I’m already not making sense.”
And the nameless thing, the one that is being torn from Mike’s very core, begins to come into view. Will is trying to name it. To do so is to break what Mike has viewed as an unspoken oath, a shared, silent acknowledgement, a spell.
“Mike,” Will says earnestly, “it would help if you took off that stupid hat.”
Mike is so taken aback that he actually laughs. A real, honest-to-God laugh—he’s almost forgotten what that feels like.
“You… You don’t like my hat?” he asks, his hand finding his way to the black toque covering his hair. “It's to keep my ears warm. I thought it might be cold in the Upside Down.”
“As your friend, I would rather see you freeze than wear that.”
“Will,” Mike breathes, and the offended tone that has snuck into the utterance paints a smile on Will’s face. Mike slips the fabric from his head and runs his hands through his hair, hoping his hat hair doesn’t look too ridiculous.
“Mike, I… I miss talking to you like this,” Will says, and Mike’s smile flickers like a pinched flame. It’s an accusation of sorts, to suggest that things have changed. “It used to be so easy, and then it was hard, and then—I don’t know, I thought we had figured it out last spring, but then we started living together and it was like, it was like nothing had really changed. There was… there was this wall. You know what I mean.”
It’s not a question, it’s a statement, and Mike can’t evade its truth. Will is closing in on him: on the simple fact that something is left to be shared.
He nods.
“And this… this wall,” Will continues, “it’s not, like…” He winces, lost in his own metaphor. “I think I put it there. It’s something I made.”
Only then does it hit him. Will isn’t pointing fingers at Mike. He’s confessing something of his own.
The weight of what Mike had read as an accusation lifts from his shoulders, lightening his entire body, but now it feels too light. His veins race with the possibility of what Will could say. Everything feels too fast, too strong, and he’s so light that he might blow away in the next breeze.
He hardly comprehends the words as they leave Will’s mouth, so surreal are they. “And it’s, it’s so stupid, because—you’re really my best friend, Mike, and we both know you can’t hide things from your best friend. Not forever. It’s not like I wanted to lie to you, I just… I was just afraid of what would happen if I peered over the wall. But the wall, this—this thing,” he says, gesturing between the two of them, “that I made, it’s not protecting me. It’s making me weaker, making me vulnerable to… to him. It’s something he can use.”
“Will,” Mike murmurs, “if there’s something you want to say…” He has to pause here, because he doesn’t even know what he’s implying, and he doesn’t want Will to read things the wrong way in this delicate game they’re playing. “If there’s something you want to tell me, don’t say it just because of Vecna. Don’t let him force your hand.”
“I want to say it, Mike.”
Mike swallows hard. Nods.
“This wall metaphor is stupid. I never was as good with words as you were. I wish I could paint this instead of…” And then Will tilts his head, and a small, nervous smile bends his lips. “I guess I kind of did. I guess maybe I’ve tried to do this once before, but… I got scared, and I thought you wouldn’t want to hear it, and so I hid the truth behind a lie. That painting. I… I lied when I told you it was from El. And, um, I guess there was a half-truth in there, but I kind of… I kind of messed it all up, and…”
Will looks at Mike with an intensity that threatens to shatter him. It pierces right to that gnawing in his stomach. It dares it to name itself.
“Here’s the truth, Mike. I had this…” Will’s voice quavers, and tears escape his eyes, but he doesn’t look away. “This crush, on someone.”
Crush. That’s the first thing that hits Mike, but then had registers. Had. It’s a damning word.
“No,” Will says. “Crush—no. I…” Will laughs, in spite of himself and everything, and tears slip past his lips and onto the tongue that says, “I love someone, even though I know, I know they’re not like me. And I think maybe it’s obvious between the weirdness of last spring, the… the moping and the arguments and the not-so-subtle glances and the painting, that damned painting, but until I name it… until I, I tell that person… it’s always going to stand in my way. Our way. It’s going to be an obstacle, and I don’t think… I don’t think it should be. So I’m naming it, Mike. I’m naming it now.”
With those words, Will has pulled the last length of the thread. The truth at Mike’s core has been laid bare: at least to himself, if not yet to Will. Because Will hasn’t said those three words aloud, but he doesn’t have to. He has said his side as clearly as he needs to. The person he loves is Mike. And acknowledging that possibility allows that truth within Mike to finally breathe, if not to flourish.
The revelation fills Mike with a desperation he’s never felt before. It’s a desperation with a million targets: a desperation to reach out and take Will’s trembling hand in his own, to tell Will his truth, to shout it from the rooftops, to immortalize it in writing, to say it over and over until neither of them can believe there was ever a doubt.
Unfortunately for both Mike and Will, Mike is so dumbfounded that his brain fails to send any meaningful signals to the rest of his body. He is frozen again.
Will swallows. He brings his hands to his face, and that simple action of hiding nearly shatters Mike’s heart. “I’m sorry if this is… too much for you to handle, or—or if you feel like it changes anything, I just… I had to tell you. It had to be now. I don’t know what it means for us. It just… had to be now.”
“Will,” he manages finally. The name takes something out of him, and it’s a moment before he can add, “Just give me a second.”
Will’s voice is quiet when he offers, “I can leave, if you—”
Mike reaches out and takes Will’s hand, hard enough that it must surprise both of them. Hard enough that Will can’t slip away from him—not now. Not again.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Mike says, his voice a mess of breaks and shudders. “I don’t want you to leave me ever again. Look at me. Do I really need to say it?”
He asks because it seems so impossible that Will hasn’t already figured it out. Mike has hidden behind his armour for so long, but Will’s words were enough to tear all that armour away, to turn it to molten steel, to leave Mike standing there in all the simplicity of the truth, the honest truth.
“I’d like it if you could try,” Will whispers, his eyes locked on the grasp of Mike’s hand around his own, “because I’m not sure I’ll believe it otherwise.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Give it a name.”
Mike forces a deep breath in, then another one. He hasn’t even said it to himself, hasn’t been able to as he’s stared himself down in the mirror or lain with his own feelings in the obscurity of night.
But he had been alone then. He has Will now—his bravery, his light. He borrows some of it for himself.
“I’ll name it Will,” Mike says, “because that’s what it always says to me. This… this voice in my head, this feeling in my bones. Always saying Will. Always thinking of you. Always… Shit. It’s not something you put into words, Will, it’s just there, always. You’re always there.”
A smile cracks across Will’s face, so wide and relieved that Mike can’t help but reciprocate, even though he feels like he’s maybe about to pass out. The light above them is bright, but it’s not blinding. It’s illuminating—illuminating them, illuminating everything.
“I was going to get an orange mohawk,” Mike starts, keenly aware of the wetness of his own eyes, “because—”
“Bowie?” Will laughs.
“I thought you would like it,” Mike says, a smile-shaped sob escaping him. Maybe it’s a laugh. He’s not sure of anything, save for the fact that he loves Will and he doesn’t want this moment to end, as dizzy and wild as he feels, and now that the dam has come down, all the truths start to come pouring out in a rush that he can’t control. “Maybe you would have thought it was cool, given me a compliment. I mean, thank God I didn’t.”
“I think it would look good,” Will offers.
“Don’t,” Mike warns, and they both laugh. Will shifts his hand just slightly, so that their fingers are now intertwined, and the feeling is so simply, impossibly good. “Don’t say that, because I’ll do it, because… you make me so stupid, Will. I haven’t been able to think straight for longer than I can even remember because it’s like my brain just turns off around you. And I’m sorry if that stupidity has ever made you feel bad or… or like you needed to hide, or like I wouldn’t accept you, it’s just… you know, this hasn’t been easy.” Mike swallows. “Loving you—it hasn’t been easy. I mean, it’s easy to—to love you, but to accept that, it’s been hard.”
Will shakes his head, seemingly breathless, unable to wipe that smile from his face.
“Sorry. I just… I never thought I would hear that word from you. Um.” Will puts his other hand over Mike’s, his thumb tracing the smallest of circles there. “Yeah, Mike, you have been kind of stupid sometimes—”
“Hey—”
“But I get it. I mean, Mike, why wouldn’t I get it? We’ve both had a lot of shit to deal with in our own ways, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? Somehow, we still wound up here.”
“Not somehow,” Mike reminds him. “Thanks to you. Your bravery.” He thinks back to the way Will had arrived at the roof, already flushed and red-eyed. “Is this what you were telling your mom?”
Will nods. “I think they’ve always kind of known. Mom and Jonathan. But there’s a difference between them knowing it and me getting to tell them. And telling Mom… telling you… it was so absolutely terrifying, but so freeing. To know that I’d thought up a million different ways that it could’ve gone wrong, that I’d believed for so long that my future held this dark, inevitable reckoning, and to know now that none of those horrible things actually come true. I feel like I can do anything, Mike.”
Mike knows what he means. He’s lost his armour, but he feels more courageous than he ever has before.
He gives Will’s hand a soft squeeze. “Feel like you can take down Vecna?”
“Vecna doesn’t stand a chance,” Will laughs.
A car horn sounds out from the ground below, bringing Mike back to reality. Vecna isn’t a hazy nightmare they’ve just woken up from: he’s a reality they’re getting closer to with each minute that passes. This blissful moment in the sun has been captured just before the last crawl, before the last charge at the monster that has torn all of their lives to pieces, before midnight arrives.
“Guess we should go,” Will says, though neither of them make a move to.
“Hop can wait,” Mike says. “Just another minute. God knows we’ve waited long enough.” They do give it a moment, sitting there in a warm silence that feels protective in itself, before Mike dares to ask, “Do you think it’s dangerous? Going to the Upside Down together, knowing what we know now? I mean—don’t you think Vecna might try to use one of us against the other?”
Will’s eyes find Mike’s again, their steadiness a balm to his nerves. “This is the one thing he can’t have, Mike. We’ve named it now; it’s ours.”
Mike remembers that—remembers the name he’s finally dared to speak as he and Will make their way back to the ground, hands slipping from each other’s grasps, the warmth of cupped palms still lingering. Mike remembers it as they stand in the back of the truck, rumbling around in the harsh red light, the world’s most terrified cargo. He remembers it and holds onto it, the one thing he won’t let himself lose now: Will.