Archive of Our Own

It would be a lie to say it doesn’t hurt. Will knows this, so he doesn’t say it.

He doesn’t talk about the days that blur into one another as if life were an endless stretch. Doesn’t talk about the sensations that seem to bubble beneath his skin during moments of anxiety, nor the persistent lump that seems to grow in his throat, constricting his airway.

There doesn’t seem to be a divide between the past and the present.

The things that happened before, in that horrible place, involving that smaller version of a boy who is now taller yet still frightened, seem to blur the boundaries of time, tormenting him in his dreams just as they do in his waking memories.

When he looks in the mirror, it is hard not to see that boy, yet equally hard to recognize him. Traces of him remain in his sallow skin; in the bags under his eyes; in his sweaty palms; in the heart pounding in his throat; in all those things that haunted him then and continue to haunt him now, with the sole difference being that they are no longer out in the open, but lurking in his peripheral vision’s blind spot.

Will went through things no twelve-year-old boy should ever have to endure.

And it hurts, of course. Then and now, back there and here. But speaking hurts too, so he always gives up on trying to string words together to articulate something that, most of the time, he can’t even fully process as having happened.

When it all becomes too much and words fall short, he thinks about how he wishes he could go back in time. If he could, he’d go back to before all that mess in the Upside Down, the Demogorgons and Vecna. Before the D&D campaigns. Before Mike, the swing set, and the question Will answered so eagerly, and continues to answer with enthusiasm, even though the thing Mike now seeks confirmation for hasn't kept pace with the hunger of Will’s own desires.

No, he wants to go back to before all of that. To different haircuts and clothes; to an younger version of his school; to a younger version of his mother; a less threatening of his father.

He wants to find Joyce, face still round, before the worry lines of the passing years, before her skin grew thin and her eyes became accustomed to frantically scanning for threats. He wants to find her while she was still young — before the marriage, the shouting, the arguments, and the indelible mark Lonnie would leave on her life.

If he saw her, he would say: Leave. Cupping her face in his hands, he would plead: Go far away and don’t look back.

Perhaps there was never any salvation for Will.

Leaving Mike’s house hours earlier, taking a different route, having more company, or being guarded by an armed force ready to defend him from behind a securely locked door — perhaps none of that could have stopped the monster from getting in or prevented his capture into a twisted version of a life that was only just beginning to shed its monochrome existence.

Perhaps, even without Vecna, Demogorgons, or falling beams, there still would have been Lonnie. Leaving early, taking a well-lit route, living a life where every loose end was neatly tied — all of it just to come home to no armed force, defense, locked door, or right answer. The monster’s entry would simply be the return of a tall man with a deep voice, his face twisted and his words tight with rage, whose oppressive presence would follow Will’s every step.

Perhaps there was never any salvation for Will.

In the moments he dwells on this, it is inevitable that he thinks of the only other alternative, one that would solve nothing, absolutely nothing, and yet, oh God, would solve everything. 

In that other world, better or the same, but never worse, there would be no Will. 

With any luck, there wouldn't be a Byers attached to Joyce’s name. Unfortunately, and this is the saddest possibility of all, there would be no Jonathan either. Or perhaps there would be: there would be Jonathan, and Joyce and Lonnie Byers, but there would also be the earlier unraveling of a marriage — one whose tattered remains wouldn't have been clumsily patched together by the arrival of another child.

In that world without Will, everything would be better. Joyce and Jonathan would be happier; Lucas, Dustin, Mike, and Max wouldn't have had their childhoods ruined by an absurd, senseless fight; and Mike wouldn't feel shackled to a question he asked when he was still too young to grasp the weight of its consequences.

When El escaped the lab, she wouldn't have been immediately dragged into a different version of the same doom. Perhaps she would have grown up without the crushing weight of the burden of saving the entire world and a boy she wouldn't meet until later. 

She could have discovered life on her own terms, free of conditions, and maybe she would have met Mike in some cute, silly way, in a park or somewhere along life's path, and the question he never got the chance to ask Will in this world would have been asked her instead — and in that world, the answer would still be yes to a request that would evolve into a true proposal.

In that world, Vecna, the vines, and the Upside Down might still exist. When Will feels particularly selfish, none of that matters, and he wishes his friends and family could remaining oblivious to interdimensional horrors and the rifts between worlds, leaving the burden of salvation to another unsuspecting group of people.

But then, if that were the case, would there really be no Will in that other world?

If Vecna ​​exists there, then another child exists there too. Another path. Another unlocked door. Another life. Another unrecognizable face in the mirror, with a mouth that closes around the same lack of words and a mind that fantasizes just the same about a different world, a salvation both selfless and selfish, and a trauma passed down.

God, he thinks, whenever his thoughts wander down that road. And then, even if the words never come, the tears always do. 

In those moments, he always weeps, mourning the life he wouldn't have had even if everything had turned out differently.

He mourns that child who, before hiding from monsters, used to hide from a tall human at home and short humans at school. And from their mouths came words, words that Vecna ​​would later twist even more cruelly, but whose simpler versions Will had already heard: from his father and from bullies whose anger was too big for such small bodies — and a downsized version of which was also spat out by Mike, from a body that had grown leaner, wrapped in an anger Will knew all too well, but not in that voice.

It doesn’t matter how, where, when, or by whom: there is no salvation for Will.

Perhaps all of this is a punishment, fated to always fall upon boys like him — the kind his father so despises.

When even fantasizing about another world offers no comfort, Will, with sorrow, yet resignation, thinks that if Lonnie knew about the Upside Down, he would say Will had gotten a taste of the hell he deserves.

Even without the horrors of that upside-down world, there would still be the terrors of this one.

–

“Will, for me to help you, I need you to talk to me,” the government psychologist once told him.

As soon as he was rescued from the Upside Down, the government strongly insisted he needed to talk to a psychologist, citing concerns about how that traumatic experience might have impacted his development.

Guided by tall people who barely looked him in the eye, Will was led into a room with rainbow-patterned walls and white furniture; he sat in a cushioned armchair near a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Anne.

At first, Will said nothing but his own name.

After all, what would he talk about? The cold he felt even when it was hot? Tentacles that seemed never to have been removed from his throat? The weight of the rifle, which he had clutched to his chest in a desperate need for the protection and comfort of something solid and real, and the song he had hummed softly, hoping his off-key melody might conjure some fond memory to whisk him away from the clicking sounds of monsters trying to track him down? About the people he had called out to — Mom! Jonathan! Mike! — and the help that never came? The grayish darkness and all those sticky corners, the strange sensations in his body, and the nightmare that didn't end even when he opened his eyes to something worse? About the salvation that, even when it arrived, couldn't fully pull him away from that place, that slimy wall, living through a horror that not even the most tormented mind could have conjured up?

About fear he feels all day long and suffers through at night, knowing he’ll have to sleep and dream of terrifying variations of what happened? The frightened boy in the mirror, who looks nothing like him? That same frightened boy in the mirror, who is identical to him? His friends and their mirrored looks of terror, and the oscillation between relief and tension that weighs down the air in every interaction?

How can he speak about something he cannot describe?

After three silent sessions — during which Will simply sits in the armchair staring at the papers, art supplies, and pencils on the table, imagining the drawings that would express what he lacks the courage to say, yet never actually doing it; never doing it; not wanting to do it, not there —, Will asks Joyce to take him out of therapy.

“Why, honey?” she asks, setting the plate she was washing onto the counter beside the sink and, wiping her hands on her shirt, turns her whole body toward Will. “I thought it would be good for you to talk to someone.”

“I don’t need to,” he says, offering no elaboration. Is there an elaboration to offer? To say I don’t need to. I’m fine, would be a lie. I don’t need to. I don’t feel comfortable talking to a stranger, would be a half-truth.

I don’t think I know how to say it, would be the whole truth, but even that is something Will doesn’t know how to say. 

So many things remained stuck in his throat, even after the beams were removed.

Joyce looks at him, her eyes and the corners of her mouth turned down, but she is gentle enough not to push back. “All right,” she replies, leaning in to run her hand delicately through his hair. She smooths the strands between her fingers, a conflicted look marring the harmony of her features. “All right,” she repeats, though she looks no less worried.

Will smiles, or at least thinks he does, and lets his mother pull him into a hug.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she recites.

Will doesn’t know whom she is trying to comfort.

–

Does it count as help if it came too late? Is there a cure if he can’t find the words to explain the pain?

–

After the final battle, things change a little.

Now, they gather everywhere — at the arcade, the parks, the lake, the mall, at each other’s houses — just as they did before it all happened.

It carries the bitter taste of what childhood might have been.

Despite this nostalgic attempt to reclaim the past, their limbs are too long now, they are too tall, and other things — college, girlfriends, and boyfriends — demand their attention. Even so, they cling to any shred of normalcy. They try to let go of what could have been and savor how it is. When Will feels an itch and reaches for his neck, everyone still tenses up, though they are relaxing more easily with each passing moment.

Now, there are no more shivers caused by Vecna’s monstrous voice, nor the ghostly brush of his claws to warn of impending danger. Now, there is only the sound of laughter being relearned and voices testing out words free from fear.

“Want to come over to my place? We could watch a horror movie. I’ll let you pick which one,” Mike says diplomatically. 

They are leaving the mall: Lucas, Dustin, and Max are ahead, excitedly discussing the movie coming out next week, while Mike and Will trail slightly behind.

Despite Mike’s calm words, he seems to be vibrating at a restless frequency, and his left hand, hanging at his side, trembles a little, as if he isn't quite sure what to do with it.

“What about the others?” Will asks, distractedly scuffing the toe of his shoe against the concrete of the parking lot. Anything to avoid lifting his head and looking at Mike.

“Just the two of us,” Mike replies, his voice so low that Will doesn't even feel his own head lift or realize he’s looking up until he finds himself staring into dark eyes and every inch of a face he is forbidden to kiss. “Like the old days."

His head snaps back down as he swallows a derisive laugh.

In moments like this, more than at any other time, Will wishes he were stronger, infinitely stronger, and capable of saying no to Mike. If he could, he would tell Mike that no, he doesn't want to spend time with him, and, to the question of “Why?”, he would simply lie and say, “I don't want to.”

To be bolder, he would say that he doesn’t want to be his friend, that their friendship is beyond repair, and that both of them made sure of it. 

He wants to tell Mike that the boy on the swing set is dead, without specifying (or even knowing) who he’s referring to: himself, a twisted, corrosive version of someone who was once pure and affectionate, or Mike, who is nothing but sharp edges and shameless words spoken by the same voice that was once gentle and careful with its sentences.

But are they really so different from their younger selves? After all, Mike keeps asking the same question, and Will keeps giving him the same answer.

Best friends is a title that has been reinforced and renewed so many times that Will feels it’s now just the hollow echo of something that was once true. Best friends, now, is a hollow phrase dressed up to look like something — a memorial to those two children who desperately need to be convinced that nothing has changed, even though everything has.

It’s childish and silly, and yet it’s all they have: the refuge of an undisturbed childhood, from before malice was learned and feelings veered into the wrong extremes.

When Will risks another glance, he finds Mike still looking at him in the same way he’s been looking a lot lately. As if their eye contact were a form of permission to explore new territory, Mike’s gaze travels across Will’s face, alert to any shift in the shadows of the torment Will struggles to keep buried beneath his skin.

As much as he wants to tear open his skin right there in front of Mike and point out every dark mark on his body, he won’t do it. No, not anymore — not now, after everything.

Not after I feel like my life started the day we found you in the woods and the disastrous It’s not my fault you don’t like girls! Not after Lenora’s silence, nor the brief avoidance, interrupted only when Mike needed to feel better about himself.

Will feels as though he’s being pricked a thousand times over across his body. He wants to scream in Mike’s face, but he also wants to ask why. Why try now, when that bond surrounding the tedious, insane echo of “Best friends!” is a bigger of a mess and more weakened than it has ever been?

But he also wants Mike to hug him. He wants Mike to love him, like he once seemed to, and wants to feel that affection again, that once seemed real. He wants Mike to defend him against the school bullies, to throw an arm around his shoulders and lead him away, and he wants Mike to defend him from himself, too.

Instead of demanding any of this, Will simply lets Mike keep looking at him as if searching for something to fix, merely to satisfy some sense of duty he thinks he has. 

Will makes sure his face remains unreadable, keeping his mouth in a hard line and his teeth clenched, stopping himself from uttering words that haven't yet been invented to explain a torment that refuses to take concrete shape.

Finally, he shrugs and gives a brief nod. Mike, brows now furrowed, shifts his gaze from Will’s face to where Will’s shoe had been tracing patterns on the ground. He seems to want to say something. His mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. Perhaps he suffers from the same thing Will does, because he says nothing more — he just nods, as if agreeing with a comment only he could hear.

"Okay, great," he mutters, waving his hand toward where the bikes are parked. "Let's go." He walks off awkwardly, glancing furtively over his shoulder to see if Will is following. With every step he takes toward the bikes, Will wants nothing more than to spin on his heels and walk away. He’d go on foot, leaving a stunned Mike behind. He’d head home alone, to the bedroom he’d never leave again.

He wants never to look at Mike again, yet he also wants to look at him constantly, and his eyes now remain fixed on the spot where the fabric of the shirt outlines Mike’s broad back.

Mike, I hate you, he thinks, swallowing hard as he stares at Mike’s back, blinking furiously to hold back the tears that have suddenly welled up. For being such a good friend that I fell in love with you. For being such a bad one later on, and yet I stayed in love.

But he doesn’t say it, no. Will says nothing. First, because it isn’t true. Second, because Will is ashamed of how much he wishes it were.

You’re the worst friend I could possibly have, he thinks, but that’s a lie too, and even if it weren’t... God, if it weren’t a lie, he would deserve that truth.

–

There is so much anger in Will. So much.

The boy in the mirror, with his big, innocent, wide eyes, stares at Will in disbelief. Who are you?, he seems to ask.

Wide eyes shift into tired ones. Chubby cheeks give way to hollowed-out skin. Who are you?, Will snaps back — and then regrets it.

–

One day, Will has a particularly bad nightmare about the Upside Down. It is one of the worst, because, magnified by the feverish nature of the dream, there are fragments of memory.

In it, he is pinned to the wall, just as he was when he was rescued. He is almost part of the tentacles, so tightly is he being wrapped. In his mouth, sliding down his throat, pumping God knows what into his stomach, is a thick, slimy tendril.

There is no room to speak, no words to shout. The people he would normally call for help have never seemed so deaf and distant, and the tendril filling his throat forces any attempted word back down into the pit of his stomach.

Scared, terrified, and alone, Will wants to scream, and tries to. MMMMmpppph: only murmurs escape. The vibration of his attempt to speak makes the tendrils seem even more alive; they shudder along with him. It is disturbing. Horrible.

He wishes he could speak, say anything at all, and call out for help to anyone. 

He wants to apologize for being a bad boy. For all the things he’d done wrong and been scolded for. For being weak and crying, and for not knowing how to be strong and stop. He wants to swear he’ll be good and do everything right from now on, if it’s a matter of doing something right or wrong.

But to whom would he plead? In the dream, he isn't sure.

To Vecna.

To Lonnie.

To… God? 

In a strange way, he feels that the three of them are alternate versions of the same thing: a blind, extreme, and authoritarian power that would say, Yes, Will, you can leave now, like Lonnie used to say after grounding him, or, No, Will, I still have big plans for you, like Vecna ​​came to repeat endlessly over the years.

This power they wield keeps Will trapped by their whims and leaves him at the mercy of their compassion. There is no point in voicing his pleas; they are always ignored. Even if his throat were clear and his vocal cords free to vibrate at the highest frequency, his lamentations would go unheard.

When Lonnie used to lock him in the closet, during those long, damp afternoons when Joyce was at work and Jonathan was out, Will would pray to God.

His pleas were feverish: he wanted his father never to get angry again and never to lock him in there again. He would repeat his prayers in his mind until the palms of his clasped hands rang out. Until the words lost all meaning. Until he heard the sound of Lonnie’s unsteady footsteps much later, when the sun was nearly setting and his mother and brother were almost due home, and, being hauled out by the elbow, he would hear Lonnie mutter, "I hope you’ve learned your lesson."

It seemed he never did.

From a very young age, Will discovered that no amount of pleading could spare him.

When he wakes up, gasping and sweaty, his heart pounding in his ears and a sob stuck in his throat, he doesn't scream for help.

–

If the war is won, why doesn't Will feel victorious?

-

Mike was, in fact, the first person Will felt comfortable talking to (if the monosyllabic answers he used to say to Jonathan didn’t count).

It’s funny how things are. Funny, too, how they change.

Years ago, the very mouth that often refused to utter a word to anyone exclaimed to a younger, smaller Mike, “I want to watch Alien!”

Mike, who was holding a handful of different tapes, dropped them all on the floor, and, wide-eyed and grinning so wide it nearly split his cheeks, he looked at Will.

It was a look of such wonder that Will never forgot it.

Of course, without a second thought, Mike picked the Alien tape up off the floor and enthusiastically sat down next to Will on the couch. Every now and then, he’d turn his head to look at Will, his wide eyes shining in the basement’s dim light. 

Occasionally, Will would meet his gaze, and they’d smile — Mike, broadly, Will, shyly — at each other.

It’s funny how things change.

Now, Will sits as far away from Mike as he can and ignores the hurt glances Mike keeps casting his way. He doesn’t speak, either. Doesn’t. Mike tries to get him to talk, asking trivial, easy-to-answer questions, but Will just nods or shakes his head, never saying more than three words in response.

It’s not uncommon for Mike to sit between Will and whoever else is nearby, his shoulder pressing firmly against Will’s, his mouth slack as he occasionally gropes for words, his brows furrowing whenever Will doesn’t respond the way he used to.

“Are we…” He tries one day, cornering Will on the basement stairs but looking intently at the nearest step, “are we okay?” 

Will swallows a sigh and the urge to hug Mike and kiss him until he forgets all his worries.

“Sure. We are,” he replies, but it’s weak and lacks conviction.

It feels like the same question all over again, “Best friends?”, and the same answer, once more, “Best friends.”

As he’s done a lot lately, Mike furrows his brows, twists his lips, opens his mouth… and says nothing.

–

Mike keeps trying, if the frustrated contortions of his face can ever be called that.

At the end of every game, when everyone else is getting up to leave, Mike practically rushes to Will’s side and, shifting his gaze between Will’s face and the tips of his sneakers, always asks if Will would like to stay a little longer.

Will’s heart swells and empties; it beats and breaks.

On good days, making up a lie takes almost no effort. “I can’t,” he usually says, already looking toward the stairs. “I promised my mom I’d be home for dinner.”

He ignores the slump of Mike’s shoulders, the way his face twists into something pained and small. Sometimes, Mike murmurs an “Okay” and tries again: “I’ll see you tomorrow?” Will nods every time because he’s trying to be strong, but he never manages to be strong enough.

Other times, Mike says nothing; he just stands there, his eyes frantically searching Will’s face, and Will ignores the fist of pain rising in his throat every time he forces himself to turn his back on him.

On bad days, Will is weak and stays. He sits on the basement couch, with Mike pressed firmly against his side, ignoring all the empty space, and tries not to think about every inch where their skin touches, or the synchrony of their breathing. Despite his efforts not to look at Mike, he always feels the ghost of Mike’s gaze hovering over him.

In the blue light of the television, Mike’s eyes are dark and bright, seeming to hold a universe of questions that never quite make their way up his throat. Sometimes Mike risks a shy smile, and Will risks a smile that must look more like a grimace.

Most of the time, Mike just watches him in silence. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t try to crack jokes. Just looks at Will — shyly at first, then with an insistent gaze.

When Will dares to look back, Mike’s brows are always slightly furrowed around a question he never voices.

Will doesn’t ask him to say it out loud. He’s afraid Mike’s mouth might settle into the same agonizing syllables it seems so used to. "Best friends?"

Will’s answer would remain the same. "Best friends."

It would be a lie.

-

Will must be getting better at this, seriously, because turning Mike down doesn't take as much effort these days.

The tearing sensation in his chest whenever he concocts a lie to avoid going to Mike’s house is starting to feel like mere turbulence, a routine disturbance — not because the intensity has faded, but because Will has grown so accustomed to the pain that his flesh doesn't even flinch at the piercing stabs.

Mike grows more demanding as Will becomes more evasive. His mouth, which used to hang open, stammering out uncertain, unfinished sentences, now opens and closes around words that sound almost like pleas.

“You could come over today, and we could read the new comics I bought,” he now suggests, no longer asks. His hands, which used to rest at his sides, now hover around Will — in the air above his shoulder or inches from his arm, without ever actually making contact.

“I can’t today,” Will now replies, without needing to pause and think. His eyes, once eager to meet his friend’s, now avoid them — darting from corner to corner, from exit to exit, refusing to settle on Mike’s face or memorize the placement of the freckles dotting his cheek, the prominent bridge of his nose, or those dark eyes that hold a range of unreadable emotions, emotions that will never mirror his own.

Mike’s eyes, matching his requests, grow more demanding too. They gaze at Will almost relentlessly, and Will feels suffocated by the weight of being seen and studied.

Yet, every time Mike does this — this thing of staring at him and trying to make him look back —, all Will can do is remember that long stretch of time when it was Mike who shied away from his gaze, and Will who was the one making pleading requests. 

Maybe that’s all there is for them now: roles reversed, a complete lack of synchronization.

Maybe, now, Will just has to wait for that all-too-familiar moment when Mike will ignore him again, with the difference that, this time, he’ll be prepared.

This time, there will be no patching things up, no conversations in his bedroom, no apologies that don’t even begin to cover the reason for the regret.

There will be only him and Mike, at opposite ends of a room, in different corners of life, and, in the distance between them, an unbridgeable gap filled with words insufficient to mend a bond that has snapped.

-

But Mike doesn’t give up.

He goes to Will: at the lake, he weaves past his friends’ half-wet bodies resting on their towels and sits right next to Will; at the arcade, he follows Will through the sea of ​​bodies and plays every game Will plays; in his basement, during long D&D sessions, he favors Will the Wise in all his feats, and later, when everyone else stays to watch a movie, his eyes avidly track Will as he chooses a seat, and he sits beside him when there’s room, or stays close when there isn’t.

He tries to talk to Will, no longer intimidated by his short answers or offended by the long ones Will gives to other people.

He just stays close and talks, as if no time had passed and there were no cracks in their relationship.

As if Mike had never ignored him back in Lenora, and like Will weren’t ignoring him now in Hawkins.

As if, back then, Will didn’t have had the masochistic habit of coming downstairs whenever a new batch of letters arrived, and, seeing Jane always walk away with a small envelope in hand, had to swallow the tears of not receiving one himself. 

As if Mike weren’t now squeezing into the gaps of a silent space, straightening his shoulders whenever they slump, asking that same question ("Want to come over to my place today? Just the two of us?"), and walking away alone with the same answer.

And Will doesn’t understand what made Mike give up before, or what makes him try now.

A part of him, a remnant of the time when Mike’s friendship seemed like the only sure thing in the world, wants to grant the forgiveness Mike might not even realize he’s asking for. It wants to return to that blind trust and the freefall that came before hitting the ground.

He wants to look at Mike again and wants Mike to look back at him. He wants Mike to ask, “Best friends?” so he can answer, “Best friends,” but he also wants Mike to ask more so he can give a bigger answer.

He wants Mike to put his arm around his shoulders, yes, but he also wants him to hold him close. He wants to laugh with Mike, yes, but he also wants to kiss him. He wants to be his best friend, yes, but he also wants to be his boyfriend.

His answer will always be bigger than the question.

So Will says nothing, or says “no.”

-

It happens on a hot summer afternoon, with Will’s shirt sticking to his sweaty skin as he stands in Mike’s living room, on his way to the door.

The campaign ended early. The rest of the Party is already outside, grabbing their bikes and saying goodbye with promises of a trip to the lake the next day. Mike’s parents aren’t home, and he’d invited Will to stay a while longer, but, as he’s done a lot lately, Will declined.

With a bitter taste in his mouth and a body fighting the urge to run back to Mike and promise to stay forever, Will prepares to head home and spend the rest of the afternoon focusing on not drawing the contours of a face he knows by heart.

A hand closes gently around his right wrist, and Will stops. His breathing stops, too.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s Mike holding his arm, but it is.

“Uh,” Will says, thinking of a thousand different ways to tell Mike he needs to leave, but the other boy is faster.

“Will, what’s going on?” He asks the question he’s been holding back all this time, and the grip on Will’s arm, while not painful, is firm — a sign that they’re going to talk about this, and Will won’t be able to fall back on excuses. 

Will’s breathing, now shallow, seems to come in bursts of air, as if a tiny bird were fluttering its wings in his throat. He bites his lip and turns, coming face-to-face with Mike, dark eyes full of questions and a mouth that has found the courage to ask.

Mike lets go of his arm when he realizes Will isn’t going to run off. His face contorts in various ways, his eyebrows dancing across his forehead as if he’s summoning every ounce of mental energy to answer an unresolved question.

Met with Will’s silence, he moves to the center of the room, his shoes digging into the carpet. An anxious energy radiates from him. He runs a hand through his hair, fingers tangling in the curls, before quickly dropping it. He raises his hand again and opens his mouth to speak, but shakes his head and lets his hand fall once more.

Will doesn’t know why, but this time, he can’t look away from Mike. There is something agonizing in his expression, in the slight tremor of his lips, and Will swallows down a surge of regret rising rapidly in his throat.

When Mike looks at Will again, his eyes are red. Will can’t tell if it’s from anger, exhaustion, or sadness, but he fears it’s a mix of all three.

“You’re ignoring me,” Mike states. His mouth snaps shut at the end of the sentence, the corners twitching downward ever so slightly. “You’ve been ignoring me this whole time.”

Will draws in a sharp, audible breath. Despite having lied all this time, he now only has the strength to tell the truth. “Yes, I have.”

The look of devastation on Mike’s face is one of the most painful things Will has ever witnessed, yet Mike recovers so quickly that Will feels almost relieved.

He doesn’t know how to handle it when Mike is sad. But that look on Mike’s face — that fury twisting his features, eyes blazing, mouth curling into the spiteful sneer of someone about to bite — that, Will recognizes.

“I thought we were okay,” Mike says, his voice rising with every word. “I tried—I know things have been kind of weird, but I thought we were okay. That we were better. That you’d forgiven me for Lenora and… and… and for everything else.”

Will says nothing.

“God!” Mike exclaims, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Why won’t you say anything? What’s going on, Will? I try to come after you and talk,” he sucks in a sharp, ragged breath, “but I feel like you’re… it’s like you aren’t even here! Why aren’t you here?! I know I did… I know I could’ve been a thousand times better as a friend—God, I know that, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about it—but I can’t fix anything if you won’t let me try! I need you to tell me, and I need us to… I can’t… Will, I can’t lose you, okay? Not you. Not you, too.”

Now he shakes his head frantically, like a child, and his voice trembles in dismay. Will feels tears forming in the corners of his eyes and he makes every effort in the world not to let them fall.

When Will speaks, it's low. "You don't have to... try anymore, Mike. I don't want you to try anymore."

Mike stumbles back as if Will had slapped him. "What?"

It's Will's turn to shake his head. “I think that– I think that our friendship…” But Will has no words, nor does he know how to explain. “I think we would be better off not being friends,” whispers.

Mike looks at Will as if he were seeing him for the first time. His mouth hangs open and his eyebrows knit an expression of pain that Will could never draw because he can't look at it for long.

“You don’t mean that,” he insists, weakly, eyes wide pleading and turbulent. "You're saying this because you're hurt, Will, and I know, I know I have a tendency to screw things up, but this– Will, what you're saying isn't true. It's not. Being your friend," he chokes out, and his eyes get impossibly redder, "was the best thing—"

“No. Don’t do that, Mike,” Will interrupts. “Not that,” he shakes his head. "Enough."

“W-What?”

“You're lying,” Will bites. "It's okay. You don't have to be my friend just because you feel like you should—"

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Mike tries, desperately, but Will doesn't stop, doesn't stop, because this is it, here and now. It’s this.

“—and I release you from this obligation you think you have to me—”

“What?!” Mike is now shrill.

“It's okay, Mike,” Will tries to comfort him. Tries to console yourself. "It's okay. It's better this way, isn't it?"

"NO! What are you even talking about?! What obligation? You think I'm your friend because... what, because I feel indebted to you? Because I feel like have to? God, where did you get that from?! Where is this coming from?! How can you believe that after— after everything—" The words seem to get stuck in his throat. His entire body trembles, and he has never looked as desolate as he does now.

Will wants to go to him and hug him. Wants to apologize and go back to hiding behind a past title, a category that became too small for the huge mess they have become.

But all of Mike's sadness seems to share space with his anger, too, because he soon asks, outraged and spiteful and hurt, "What in the world would make you think such a thing? When have I ever done anything to imply that I don't want you around?"

As soon as the words come out, there is silence. Silence, because Mike knows he's played it too low, that there are a lot of counterarguments Will could use, and he seems ready to counter them all, whether they're right or wrong. But silence too because Will remembers the biggest argument of all.

Suddenly he realizes that he is angry too. There's anger accompanying Will's sadness, too, and, for what seems like the first time, one of them speaks louder.

“Really, Mike?” He feels his entire body shake, waves of pain, grief and a love that never had a place to be properly drained running through his body. “How about My life started the day we found you in the woods?” He spits, his face twisted in anger, so much anger that he feels like the lump in his throat is boiling with the eruption of gastric juice from his stomach.

He doesn't know where so much anger comes from, but it doesn't seem new.

Perhaps this is the destiny of all people: to give in to the ugliness of life, to unscrupulous words. Maybe no one can manage not to be angry. Maybe Will should have gotten angry first, yelled before. Why is he the one who always listens, never the one who says?

Mike pales, as if someone had taken a straw and sucked out every last drop of his blood.

“I-I… It’s not—,” he stutters, frantically shaking his head from side to side, with his palms raised as if Will were a skittish animal that needs to be calmed.

The movement is like a match lit in a pool of gasoline. Will's heart beats so fast in his ears that he only hears his next words because he shouts them. “Then what is it?!”

Mike stops, eyes wet and red, face twisted in emotions Will doesn't want to name. Like a thread being pulled, all the fight seems to leave his body. He still shakes his head weakly, but his mouth, which hangs uselessly open, does not close around any word.

Will is tired. God, Will is exhausted. “What was it then, Mike?” He asks, now quieter, his voice cracking on the last syllable of the name of the one who, before, didn't make his heart hurt so much. He looks Mike deep in the eyes and finds only guilt and regret. “Why did you make such a statement about how your life started the day mine ended?! The day I disappeared? The day I was dragged away and—and I had things down my throat and— I was alone, and it was cold—”

And I cried your name. And you meant so much to me. Why did I mean so little to you?

Mike's eyes are now wide, almost hysterically so, and the frantic shaking of his head make his curls fly from side to side. “No, no, no," he chants, voice nothing but air, devoid of strength. "That’s not what I meant,” he insists.

Words. Mike speaks so many of them, yet at the end of the day, he never really says anything.

“That’s what I’m asking you: what did you mean?” But Will is already exhausted by that conversation. By that open wound that he and Mike are now staring at. By the knowledge that it’s there, and there is no patch or string of words in the world capable of erasing its existence.

Will is so full of marks.

God, Will is so full of marks, and there he stands, holding out his wounded arm to Mike, asking him to work some restorative magic, to turn back time to before the cut was made, to stop himself from ever making it.

That’s what he wants: not an excuse, not a scar sealing the open skin, but a rift in time through which Mike could step to spare Will from yet another pain, another mark. He wants to erase those words from his existence, because hearing them hurt, and they would hurt during the healing process, too.

“I— Will, I— Eleven was dying. I was terrified and… and I said the first thing that popped into my head, I just said whatever—I didn’t mean it that way. I would never, ever mean it that way,” he stumbles over his words, almost breathless, voice high-pitched and desperate, with a flush spread from his face to his neck. “The day you disappeared, Will, was—was the worst day of my life. But Eleven… she—she needed me to…” He doesn’t finish, but Will understands.

Eleven needed me to say that.

Will didn’t need to be spared from hearing it.

Suddenly, it’s too much. 

It’s all too much: the contorted expression on Mike’s face, that once looked at him with such tenderness and softness; the relentless tightness in his chest and the words echoing in his ears; the matching tears on both their faces.

Will has never been spared anything in life, but perhaps that’s the problem — he expects others to define and recognize his boundaries. He had hoped Mike would realize what he’d said and rephrase it or never have said it at all, because he expected Mike to know exactly where it hurt and to avoid all of Will’s wounds as if they were his own.

How naive Will can be, still waiting for a savior who will step only in the right places. How many more times will Will have to go hoarse before realizing that no help is coming, that no plea is being heard?

He’s done. He’s done wasting his energy.

With a hollow ache in his stomach and a lump in his throat, Will turns away. He leaves behind Mike’s chorus of pleas — “Will! Will, c’mon! Please! Please, let’s talk about it, please!” —, who tries to follow him for a few seconds, but stumbles over his own feet. 

He doesn't look back.

–

Mike shows up at his door not even half an hour later, his insistent knocking making the wood rattle. He’s lucky no one else is home; otherwise, Jonathan (or worse, Hopper) wouldn’t be gentle when opening the door.

Will had little time to calm down, but the anger that had been vibrating through every pore has now shifted into a dry sadness, and the tears aren't falling as frequently as they were fifteen minutes ago.

When he opens the door, Mike looks a mess: curls undone, hair sticking out in every direction, shirt crumpled and creased, as if he’d balled it up before putting it on, and chest heaving with short breaths, as if he’d run all the way there.

Behind Mike, his bike lies discarded on the ground, as though he’d hopped off before coming to a complete stop and just let it drop haphazardly.

Will’s eyes are weary as he makes room for Mike to enter, while Mike’s eyes are frantic as he steps inside.

“You didn’t let me explain,” he says, stopping near the sofa.

Standing next to the doorway, Will crosses his arms and hunches his shoulders, looking down at his shoes.

Mike’s panting; he opens his mouth to start, but seems too breathless to say it all at once.

He takes a deep breath and, with eyes now determined and more steely than ever, tries again. “I thought I needed to say that. To Eleven,” he says, his voice wavering slightly around her name. “My whole life, I thought things had to be a certain way. I thought I had to act a certain way. It was never my intention to say that the way I did, Will, and I need you to believe me on that. Even so, I said it. I said it, and I regret it. I’m sorry. I said it because, in that moment, I needed a small part of it to be true. Not the part about it being good when you disappeared, but about it being good when I found her.”

Mike’s voice drops then, and his shoulders slump. He takes a hesitant step toward Will.

“I love El,” he says, his voice trembling, and Will swallows hard against the lump of pain in his throat, crossing his arms tighter. “But I never…” He exhales sharply and hangs his head. “I was never able to love her like that.” Will can hear his own heart pounding in his ears, but Mike’s voice rises above it as he continues, “Will, I was so desperate to love her like that that I would have said and done anything— I did say and do anything, and I was a terrible friend to Lucas and Dustin, but especially to you. I was so blinded by trying to make the life I thought I had to live work out that I couldn't tolerate any hint that maybe that wasn't the life I wanted. Maybe that wasn't right for me.”

He takes another step closer. Will’s breathing is frantic now, and he tries not to dig into the meanings of what Mike is saying, tries not to unearth what Mike seems to be implying.

“Eleven was dying, and I was doing what I thought I had to do. Saying what I thought I had to say. All this time, Will, I’ve been ignoring everyone else’s pain so I wouldn’t have to face my own,” he says, his hands trembling at his sides, his eyes darting frantically across Will’s face. “You have every right to be angry. God, I’d be angry if I were you. What I said was horrible, but it was also a lie,” and his mouth closes so firmly around that word that it seems to echo in the air.

Another step. The tips of Mike’s shoes are now touching the tips of Will’s.

“Do you know what was true? Do you know what was always true, and I never had to force anything, there was no sense of obligation?” Hesitantly, he reaches out toward Will’s crossed arms, his eyes searching for any sign of rejection in Will’s expression. Finding none, he gently tugs at Will’s hand and wraps his own fingers around it.

Mike’s eyes are frightened. So are Will’s. But within those red-rimmed irises, eyes that have wept and burned with anger, that once refused to look at Will but now hold his gaze steadily, Will finds a determination where before there seemed to be only fear.

Mike squeezes his hand. “When I said the best thing I ever did was ask you to be my friend... that wasn’t a lie. It never was, and it never will be. To this day, that’s the truest thing I’ve ever said. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Will. I don’t want to find out. And I am sorry," his eyes are impossible sad. "I'm sorry for having to keep apologizing. I'm sorry for having so much to apologize for," his voice falters. "I wish I could undo every wrong thing I've ever done to you, every wrong word I've ever said. Trust me— If I could, I'd go back in time and do none of it. I would've never hurt you. But I can't. I can’t undo the things I said, but I’ll spend the rest of my life apologizing for them. If you let me.”

Mike’s eyes are now hopeful, his hand now holding firmly Will’s.

“I wasn't good before, Will, but I can be good now,” he continues. “I can be better. The life I thought I wanted—I know I don't actually want it. More importantly, I know what I want, and I'm trying to... to learn what to say to get it. Because I love you. I do. Truly.”

Despise his earlier, feverish fantasies about turning back in time and preventing every bad thing from happening, Will, now calmer, recognizes that his defense mechanisms are untethered from reality. A different world, a rift in time: different pseudo-solutions, yet the same ongoing, unhealed wounds; a pain felt from a distance. 

In each of these scenarios, he removes himself from the equation. The result? Anger. A boy he doesn't recognize looking back at him in the mirror. Words stuck in his thorat. A growing hollow in his stomach as the pain piercing his skull intensifies. Monsters and humans alike, with their tentacles, acions and words, doing whatever they please to him. 

So much power held by others; so little left for himself.

The conflict with Mike just now was awful and painful, but it was also that: a conflict. Words spoken and countered, volleyed back and forth between them. Pain externalized. Wounds laid bare. Words that give shape to the pain.  

That terrible knot he thought he couldn't swallow, born in that dark closet, grown in the Upside Down, reinforced by Mike's words and actions in Lenora, and compounded by everthing that followed — now has an opening for air. There is a way for words to get out. Ways to explain the pain and point to it, and demanding repair means acknowledging it and talking about it. 

In all that clash happening now, Will spoke, didn't just listen. And Mike listened, didn't just speak. It’s not as if everything has been magically resolved, but the air between them is less heavy now, less thick with unspoken words. 

Mike, who is right there, has never looked more like that boy on the swing set. 

When the thought arises, Will chides himself: they aren't those boys anymore. A lot has happened between them — the difference is that, now, this jarring difference doesn't mean something bad. Those little boys no longer exist, not as the small, naive ones Will has frozen in his memory, but traces of them are indeed present all over Mike's face and all over Will's body.

And the remaining part of that little boy is the one that can no longer bear feeling angry.

So, he smiles. It’s still an awkward movement, a mere lifting of the cheeks. Gazing deep into Mike’s eyes, Will tries to reclaim the truth of a term he once didn't hate, and, as if raising a white flag, he tries to be content with what he has, and what he has is this: “Best friends?”

Will has a hole in his gut and a voracious hunger. He opens his mouth wide to devour more than he can swallow. Perhaps his requests should be small, simple and realistic. Mike has stripped away all his armor in front of him, and the only thing Will can do, the only thing that strikes a balance between what he wants and what he can actually get, is accept what is being offered and seek more… elsewhere.

Maybe the issue isn't his gargantuan demands or his insatiable hunger, but the delusional act of asking the wrong person the wrong question and expecting the right outcome.

It hurts, of course, and it’ll hurt for a while. But perhaps Will needs to keep his feet on the ground and get his head out of the clouds. He complains so much about Mike and how much he’s changed, yet fails to recognize the changes in himself.

There was a time when being Mike’s best friend was enough. It will have to be enough again. All the reproaches he leveled at their friendship left only two bruised bodies.

They will learn to be best friends again, and the question won't have to be asked again almost every month because there won't be so many things putting it to the test.

But in the air, there is no echo of "Best friends," period. There is only silence and Mike, brows furrowed, looking utterly confused.

“What?” he asks. “No.”

Will blinks, disoriented, heart sinking. Before he can apologize and let go of Mike’s hand, Mike’s other hand moves to Will’s neck, to the very spot where the shivers used to run, and, resting his palm against the skin, he tilts Will’s face upward with decisive handling that leaves no room for doubt.

When their lips touch (Oh, my fucking God, Will's melted brain has half a neuron to think with), time seems to hang suspended in the air. 

The butterfly in his throat stops fluttering. The knot in his stomach seems to loosen. The hand not held by Mike trembles and hesitates as it moves toward Mike’s curls, but it manages to reach them.

As Will’s fingers tangle in Mike’s curls, he lets out a sigh, and Will makes a whimpering sound deep in his throat. Mike’s grip tightens, and his mouth opens until Will feels the light brush of Mike’s tongue against his own.

It is a sensation unlike any other. There are no words in the world to describe it, so Will doesn't think of them. He doesn't think; he simply melts further into the hold, snuggles closer into the embrace, and kisses with more force, more fervor.

Their lips move against each other, and the breathless sounds they let slip, along with the wet sound of the kiss, are the only noises in the air.

Mike gently releases Will’s hand and moves his own to Will’s waist, squeezing firmly. Will’s now-free hand makes a more determined path to Mike’s hair; he rakes his fingernails against the nape of Mike’s neck and pulls, feeling the texture of the strands he had previously only been able to draw and dream about.

Mike grunts against his mouth, and Will sighs against his tongue; it feels so, so good, such a perfect fit, that Will never wants to pull away, never wants to exist apart from that movement or step away from that moment.

Mike holds him tighter and more firmly, almost lifting Will off the ground, and devours his lips with greater eagerness and hunger, like a man eating his first meal after a lifetime of fasting.

Will feels tears running down his cheeks, but these, unlike almost all the others, are not from anger or sadness — these are from happiness, an emotion Will had thought too sophisticated for a boy like him.

Happiness tastes like Mike’s saliva, but it also tastes of a freedom Will is experiencing for the first time, unshackled from the horrors of a punitive life and from a insipid and contained victory following a series of explosive defeats.

It tastes like a life where words aren't rationed; where love that has somewhere to go; feelings can be spoken without veils of lies.

A space to speak. Someone willing to listen.

When their lips part, their foreheads remain pressed together, hands digging into skin as if trying to break through any barrier.

The breath of Mike’s words brushes against his lips as he asks, “Boyfriends?”

Will smiles, the movement freer now, teeth showing through the gap, life squeezing through the darkness, colors painting a monochromatic existence. Fuck it. Will is someone who has reached the peak of his capacity for devouring; his gaping mouth will consume everything it can, with the nonchalance of one who knows he is capable of digesting it all. “Boyfriends.”

–

The boy in the mirror looks at Will with curiosity. They share the same green eyes. The same light-streaked hair. The same eyebrows and wide-eyed gaze.

The same memories of vines sliding down his throat; of tentacles holding him in place; a man confining him in an enclosed space; a salvation that never came; people who didn't hear his cries for help.

But also of arms wrapping around him. Calm voices speaking louder than screams. More love than anger. A salvation that did come. People who never stopped searching for him.

This time, the boy doesn't seem to ask anything, yet Will answers the mirror: “I am you.”

-

“Will,” Anne says, “tell me about before. Let’s talk about your childhood.”

In the same armchair where he’d sat years ago, Will lifts his head and meets Anne’s eyes. There is no judgment or criticism in them, only the message: You speak, and I listen.

For a very, very long time, there was a lump in Will’s throat. This obstruction blocked the passage of air, food, and words. Will had grown up around that lump. He had learned to work around it when necessary, but never to swallow it. God, Lonnie, Vecna — they all added mass to the lump in his throat. Even so, it was to them that Will pleaded. It was from them that he sought forgiveness and mending.

When he didn’t speak, it was them he was unknowingly protecting. The words that didn’t exist in his vocabulary — they were the ones who had torn out the pages. For a very long time, words were all the bad things that had ever been said to Will, not something he could use.

All this time… All this time, Will felt like he was screamig at deaf ears, until he finally silenced his lamentations: he didn't talk about his pain; didn't fight it; didn't argue back. But was he shouting to deaf ears, or just shouting to the wrong ones?

He cried out to God, begged his father, tried to bargain with Vecna — all for nothing. Nothing. Spent half his childhood believing that one day his father would regret his actions; the other half thinking one day Vecna would grow tired; a whole life thinking that God would create a rift in space-time or offer him the erases that would wipe it all away.

All those big men and their enormous actions, their words that hemmed him in, the spaces they woult put him in and the things that stopped up his throat — and he, small and lost, willing to use his limited words to ask for forgiveness or redress. 

How much power he had given them, so many chances to fix him through futile pleas for forgiveness. He spent a long time thinking he would have accepted their apologies, if they'd ever come — that this grand, enormous act of making amends was the only thing missing —, but realized that the ideia of forgiving them, and the mending effect that magical forgiveness would bring, existed only because it was never going to happen. There were no words for Will's pain, because he felt that pain needed to be acknowledged and mended by those very people, in a twisted exchange: they had taken his voice, so they were the only ones who could give them back.

The mending or the breakthroughs Will had hoped would mark the start of his healing process were never going to happen. Meanwhile, he remained trapped with a limited vocabulary, a full stomach, and a throat forever choked up. God. So much wasted time.

So long to realize that the person who most needed to hear his pleas for help was… himself. No mending would ever come from anyone else. The sentencer he would construct, the words he would choke on, regurgitate, until finally managing to get them out — only he could be satisfied with the structure. 

There is a lump in Will's throat. There is the ghostly memory of tentacles sliding all the way down his mouth. There is a confined space in his mind that keeps him held captive for something he doesn't understand. There is a hollow ache in his stomach. 

But there is breathing room around that lump. There is color contrasting with a gray memory. Breath where there was once suffocation. An open space and an invitation to process the guilt of having been violated, until, finally, he can understand that there was nothing he could have done back then, but there is something he can do now. 

In his stomach, there are also butterflies. In his throat, there are also words. 

In the armchair where he’d sat years ago, looking into the eyes he once avoided and arming himself with every word he knows and all the pain he has ever felt, Will then says it.