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Lonnie’s body was lying on the floor, completely motionless.
Some small part of Will — the young, childish part of him that he’d sometimes thought had died in the Upside Down — was screaming at him to check for a pulse, to make sure Lonnie was still alive, to save him . He’d been in this position before, after all; Lonnie had drunk himself to sleep far more times than Will could count, and Will would often find him passed out on the floor or the couch, snoring loudly.
He sure as hell wasn't snoring now.
Will kneeled down next to his dad, some twisted part of him in awe at the stillness of his body, the way his arms were bent at odd angles, the way his chest wasn’t moving up and down at a steady rhythm, anymore.
Was that wrong, though? Maybe Will should have felt something other than just the emptiness that he did looking at his dead father, but he didn’t.
He couldn’t .
Lonnie had never felt anything but hatred towards Will. Will had tried to hate him, he really had — he’d wished with every fiber of his being that he could hate his father, but he just couldn’t. He couldn’t , because hating him took too much energy out of Will, took too much of Will’s precious time — and why hate someone who would never care about him anyways?
Mike , on the other hand.
Mike had always been vocal about his hatred for Lonnie. Ever since Will showed up to school with bruises for the first time — visible ones, that is — Mike had been so protective of him, always offering Will hugs when he was on the verge of tears, asking his mom for extra long sleepovers when Lonnie decided to grace his family’s household with his presence.
Later, right before Lonnie left for good, when the beatings had become more and more frequent, Mike had been so angry ; he’d thrown rocks off the top of the quarry, into the water, seething with rage at the mere thought of Lonnie hurting Will. He’d yell in the forest, sometimes, and Will would have to shush him, tell him that it wasn’t a big deal, because to Will, it wasn’t — he’d been through it all before. He’d learned to channel his emotions into something bigger, something better; his romantic love for Mike, he often thought, was born in those times they spent alone on the outskirts of town, when Lucas and Dustin were busy, and when Mike made Will feel invincible.
If that love for Mike was the reason Will was getting hit almost every night, well. He wouldn’t have changed a single thing.
Will had never imagined, in those days when their innocence was at its peak — when the crisp fall air could blow against Will’s face and he wouldn’t feel the phantom breath of an otherworldly monster on the back of his neck — that Mike’s hatred for his father was so deep and so intense that he would do what he just did.
“Will,” Mike panted, staring down at Lonnie with wide eyes. The knife slipped from his fingers and dropped to the floor, the blood on his hands making the hilt too slippery to hold anymore. Will watched it fall in slow motion, almost like he was in a movie, one of those horror flicks where there’s a lot of screaming and jump scares. He’d never liked those movies very much. “Are you – are you okay?”
Will looked up at him. Mike’s hair was a mess, sticking up in some places where Lonnie had grabbed it in the struggle for his life — all while sneering at Mike, daring him to fucking do it, fag — and then again later, when the fear had finally entered his eyes as he realized he was dying, his movements growing more and more frantic before they stilled forever.
Will thought Mike looked beautiful, still.
He also looked worried, reaching forward to grab Will’s shirt, like he wasn’t quite sure if this was all real or if it was some twisted dream, and Will was about to disappear through his fingers. His hand left a print on Will’s shoulder in his father’s blood. “ Will .”
It wasn’t a question this time. Mike’s voice was laced with genuine concern.
“I’m okay,” Will said, standing up. He stepped over Lonnie to be closer to Mike, standing next to him, the backs of their hands brushing as they both looked down, together, at the corpse of the man that had helped start Will’s life and then had almost ended it, once upon a time.
They stood in silence, words feeling like simultaneously too much and not enough. The oxygen in the room was limited, Will felt; speaking would waste the precious air they both needed to breathe, to think, to live .
At least there was one less person to waste it, now.
“I killed him,” Mike whispered, and he shifted next to Will. Will couldn’t read him right now, couldn’t tell what he was thinking — but he really hoped Mike wasn’t about to lose it. “I finally fucking killed him.”
Of all of the things that Will had been expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it. “What?” He breathed, looking at Mike in disbelief.
Mike stared down at Lonnie, surprise still painting his features. “I’ve been waiting to do that for years ,” he mumbled, eyes flicking up to Will.
Will couldn’t help it — he laughed.
Maybe it was psychotic — though, he didn’t really care at this point. The absurdity of the situation was finally catching up to him, and it was escaping in a nervous giggle up and out of his throat. Before he knew it, Mike was looking at him like he’d lost his damn mind. “ Mike ,” Will giggled, a little bit breathless and yeah, maybe a little crazy.
“What?” Mike asked, bewildered. “I have !”
“You’re so ridiculous,” Will snorted, looking back down at the body of his father. “I love you.”
Oh.
He hadn’t meant for it to be like this. Will had dreamt up every possible scenario for his confession to Mike: in his bedroom, listening to music, smoke from a blunt that they had been passing back and forth curling in the air, like Will’s fingers in Mike’s hair. Or in Mike’s basement late at night, after the rest of their friends had said their goodbyes and left, but Will was still there, always there.
He’d even thought about saying it in the back of a van with tears in his eyes.
He had never imagined it to be in the rotting living room of the house he’d grown up in, letters painted haphazardly on the walls, red lighting flashing outside, ominously lighting the scene of a fucking murder in front of them. A murder that Mike had committed , right in front of Will.
And, yet. Here he was.
Mike’s eyes whipped up to look at him, wider than they had been since Lonnie’s death. Will shook his head, almost in disbelief. “Um, I mean –”
Mike smirked at him. “I love you, too,” he interrupted, lifting his arm up to wrap around Will’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I…”
He trailed off. There were a million things that Mike probably felt he had to be sorry for, but none of them really warranted an apology, Will thought. Anything and everything that had happened before — before the world ended, before Lonnie had stopped breathing, before Mike had killed him — was minuscule now, a microscopic problem in the scale of what they had faced down together in the past few days. They’d done so hand in hand, practically — and literally, sometimes, especially when the sky had turned blood red and their chances for survival had shrunken exponentially — and now Will grabbed Mike’s hand again, even though it was dark with blood that made up half of Will’s own.
He squeezed it three times, hoping it communicated his point well enough. Will forgave him.
Mike turned to face Will, his big, teary eyes searching Will’s face. Will watched him, admiring the freckles of copper that shadowed his natural ones. He was beautiful, always and forever.
Mike leaned in, then, cupping Will’s jaw with his bloody hand, and he kissed him, pressing their lips together hard enough that their teeth clacked against one another. Will reciprocated immediately, lost in the taste of Mike, of the feel of his hands in his hair and on his back, pulling him impossibly closer.
The hands that were holding him gently now, like he was something to be revered, were the same ones that had pushed Lonnie into a wall earlier, and had gripped a knife tight and sunk it into Lonnie’s skin, over and over and over again, until he’d died.
Maybe Will should be scared — if Mike could do that to Lonnie, logic says that he could do it to Will, too, right? Except — except Will didn’t think he would. Mike had never laid a hurtful hand on Will; even when he’d been so angry that the words he spat were like venom, and Will had screamed back, Will had a feeling the thought had never even crossed his mind.
Because — despite what the law may say — Mike was a good person. His heart was pure, a glowing thing that lit up any room he walked into, and it kept Will warm whenever he was at his coldest. He could feel Mike’s heart beating against his own chest, thrumming hard, and Will kissed him harder, bringing him as close as he could.
Mike had been so brave, facing down Lonnie like he had; Will had always known that he had it in him to be brave, to be courageous. That was his job as Will’s paladin, after all.
Mike broke away for air, pressing his forehead to Will’s, breath hot against Will’s lips. “We need to –” he started, but Will cut him off with a kiss.
He didn’t care what they needed to do, or what they should do — Will needed to kiss Mike. He needed to show — he needed Mike to feel that Will wasn’t going to leave him just because he’d killed someone. He needed Mike to know that Will would kill for him too, would murder anyone and everyone if Mike wanted him to.
Will would do it for him in a heartbeat.
He hadn’t realized he was that in love with Mike until he’d watched Mike stab Lonnie over and over and over , even after he had already breathed his last. He hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted Lonnie gone ; or, not even just gone, but dead and gone. Will had just stood by and watched while Mike had brutally murdered his father with nothing more than his bare hands and a rusted knife from the kitchen of Will’s childhood home.
Mike looked really fucking hot doing it, too. So there was that.
Mike’s bloody hands were tangled in his hair, fingers rubbing gently against his scalp, and Will wanted to push Mike up against a wall like Mike had done to Lonnie, except for a very different reason. Before he could, though, Mike pulled away, breathless.
“Fuck, Will,” Mike said, a surprised laugh rolling off his lips, and maybe Will wasn’t the only deranged one here. He looked at Will in complete awe, and Will just stared back, at Mike’s blown pupils and kiss-swollen lips.
Mike reached forward to brush some hair out of Will’s eyes, and Will shivered as he felt some blood cool on his face, surely leaving a mark on his forehead. “Mike,” he whispered, his voice suddenly hoarse.
Mike watched, his face frozen in a look of absolute reverence as he traced a gentle fingertip over the line of blood that was inevitably framing Will’s face. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he whispered back, almost more to himself than to Will.
Will would’ve looked away, but Mike’s hands had him under a spell, so he stayed where he was, watching Mike watch him. He could feel his hair beginning to clump together as the blood dried, and they really needed to get rid of the body before it began to smell enough that a demodog found its way into the house, but Will was absolutely entranced by Mike.
A door banged open behind them, and they both scrambled for the knife on the floor before the intruder could get to them.
“Relax,” Hopper said, walking in with a single hand up. Joyce followed behind him, holding two shotguns, one in each hand. “It’s just us.”
Hopper raised an eyebrow at the two of them, and Will realized they must be quite a pair: Mike holding up the rusted, blood-stained knife and Will with his hands curled into fists in front of him, like his blood covered knuckles would do anything to stop an Upside Down monster.
“Are you boys okay?” Joyce asked gently, and she took a few steps forward before stopping suddenly. Her eyes widened, and Will winced. “Oh my God,” she whispered, looking up at Will with something akin to terror in her eyes. “What did you do ?”
Will hadn’t considered how his mom might react to seeing her ex-husband dead on the floor, his body mangled almost beyond recognition. He looked from her, to him, and back to her, watching as her horror grew and grew, overwhelming her usually gentle eyes. “He…I…”
Will couldn’t say it. He couldn’t fucking say it because it was too hard to explain how much he had needed Lonnie dead so he couldn’t haunt him anymore, how much more he loved Mike now that Mike had put him down.
“I killed him,” Mike said simply, stepping in between Will and his mom. “He was saying the…the absolute shittiest things to Will, threatening him and shit, and I – I finally snapped.”
“Mike,” Joyce said, voice trembling, but over her shoulder Hopper was looking at Mike with some newfound respect in his eyes. A breath escaped Will’s chest with a punched out sound.
“It’s okay,” Mike said, and Will wasn’t entirely sure who he was talking to now. “I’ll take the fall for it.” He paused. “He fucking deserved it, though.”
Joyce smiled at him, and Will suddenly realized that she wasn’t mad at them at all; she was glad . “Yeah,” she said, letting out a breathy laugh, much to Will’s surprise. “Yeah, he did, didn’t he?”
She turned to Hopper and stood for a moment, like she was debating looking back at the body, but instead she turned her chin up to him. “Arrest them and you’ll have to arrest me too, Hop.”
And, God. Will loved his mom.
Hopper looked at her like she was insane. “Are you kidding? I have no jurisdiction here,” he said, winking at Will over her head.
Joyce nodded once, then brushed past him. “Then help them get rid of it. My boys are not going to jail for putting that bastard in his place.”
The three of them watched as she walked out the door, not even sparing her ex-husband and ex-abuser a second glance, and Will had never been more proud of her.
Hopper looked back at the two of them, baffled. “As if I wasn’t going to help you,” he scoffed, then clapped a hand over Mike’s shoulder. “Wheeler.”
He didn’t say anything more, but Will felt like he didn’t have to. Mike stood up a little straighter with the older man’s hand on his shoulder, and despite the arguments they’d had in the past, Will felt like this had healed them, a little bit, or was at least a start for things to get better.
Mike turned to Will as Hopper leaned down to examine the body. “You okay?” he asked quietly, reaching for Will’s hands and locking their fingers together. He squeezed it thrice, and Will smiled at him with tears in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he replied, just as quiet, and looked back at the body of a man who had never loved him, but still shared half his blood anyway.
Will was suddenly reminded of a saying his mother used to say to him and Jonathan all the time, when they would come across a dead animal on the way home from Castle Byers and Will would run home crying.
Sometimes, something must die for something new and better to be born.
Will looked down at his and Mike’s hands, then back at the body.
Yeah, there was probably some truth to that, he thought.