Work Text:
Right in the middle of what was turning out to be a very pleasant daydream, Will became all too aware of three expectant pairs of eyes staring right at him, and oh crap, they want a response. He wracked his brain for the tiniest hint as to what he might’ve missed, coming up unfortunately empty handed. When did he even space out? They were talking about… about…
“Did you hear anything I said?” Mike asked, and honestly, Will couldn’t have even said that it was Mike who had been speaking.
“Um…”
“He didn’t, he was totally gone, again. Did you see his face?” Lucas cut in, clearly exasperated at what was maybe his third or fourth mental absence of the evening.
“I don’t-”
“Dude seriously, what’s up with your face? You look all,” Dustin framed his face and fluttered his eyes at him and Will rolled his, trying his best to look unperturbed despite the deep flush he could feel creeping across his cheeks.
“I wasn’t-“
“Yeah, seriously, and all,” now Lucas framed his face and half-smiled at some place on the wall, looking so truly pathetic that Will silently prayed he hadn’t been that bad.
“I’m just-“
“Oh my god. Oh my god! Will’s in love!” Mike slapped his hands down on the table, fully disrupting the game they’d been playing, not that anyone seemed to care. All eyes were again on Will, this time looking annoyingly curious. He resolutely crossed his arms and made his face into an expression he hoped was indifferent, but he didn’t feel like he was succeeding. All three of the boys continued to watch him closely, Mike and Lucas looking impatient at his silence and Dustin grinning like he’d just gotten the best news of his life. Sighing, Will uncrossed his arms and looked at the table.
“No, I am not. That’s ridiculous.” This did nothing to ease the buzzing of excitement felt around the table, and feeling incredibly exposed, Will recrossed his arms before continuing. “I just have a small… crush.”
He winced at the explosion of high fives and exclamations of “yes!” and “I knew it” between the other three, hoping against hope that that would be the end of it. He’d only been out to himself for a year now, and it was still an awkward topic of conversation. It’d been a rocky journey but he was getting comfortable with himself, slowly but surely. That being said, he wasn’t sure he was ready to discuss crushes- hell, he was barely ready to even have crushes. Any mention of his sexuality made him feel like he was under a horribly bright spotlight, and the idea of anything romantic felt like a much bigger ordeal for him than for any of his friends. Of course, that’s because it was. But that was a train of thought for when he wasn’t surrounded by friends who didn’t look like they wanted to drop the topic.
“So, who is it?” Dustin probed, still looking stupidly happy.
“I don’t really… I don’t want to say,” Will muttered.
“Why not? We’re not gonna say anything to him!” And Will wasn’t sure if it was a trick of his mind or what, but at Dustin's words the air seemed to thicken a little. Oh yeah, it seemed to remind everyone, this is going to be gay.
“We have way more interesting things to talk about than my crush,” he insisted, leaning forward to mess with the abandoned board game, shuffling pieces around to illustrate his point.
“No way! No, Will, this is definitely more interesting. It’s totally fine if you don’t want to tell us his name but like, tell us about him! Come on, you know everything about our girlfriends,” and Mike’s face looked so open and encouraging that Will decided to give in, if even just a little bit.
“Okay… What do you guys even want to know?” This question was met with some discomfort, as no one seemed to know what they wanted to know. Will understood- he didn’t really know what to ask about girls, and everything he knew was simply because they all had the common ground between them to talk about girls, and he would listen in because, what else was he to do? But this was different. He felt like he was being asked to explain to a jock why art was cool- there just didn’t seem to be any relativity between the two, and he didn’t imagine they wanted to hear him talk about a boy as blatantly as he honestly wanted to.
“Is he… uh…” Mike quickly abandoned whatever his question was supposed to be, but his obvious cringe gave it away.
“Gay? I don’t know,” Will stated flatly. Right to the important question, nice, Mike. This was going about as uncomfortably as he predicted. Silence filled the room as everyone seemed to be thinking really hard about what to ask, what they could possibly want to know about a boy. Will knew what he thought about James; that he was sweet and unorganized and always smelled warm, and that he loved music and closed his eyes when hearing a new song for the first time, and that he was easy to make laugh and his laugh lit up the room. That he absentmindedly chewed on his eraser when he was listening intently and it was very distracting… But Will didn’t think his girl-loving friends would want to hear any of that. It was just… that way.
As though hearing his thoughts, Lucas groaned, and gestured about helplessly. “This is totally weird. It’s weird! Not because of you, Will, but we don’t…” He looked at Will pleadingly and sighed. “We just don’t know how to talk about guys, we don’t know what to ask.”
Will smiled a bit at him and shrugged, understanding but still feeling a twinge of disappointment, for reasons he didn’t quite understand. He didn’t want to talk about this anyway, right? So why was he upset that they couldn’t?
“No, I know. That’s why I didn’t say any-“
“Is he hot?” Dustin asked suddenly, making very direct eye contact and actually looking very invested in the answer. All eyes turned to him then, Mike’s eyes widening and Lucas whispering“dude”, but Dustin shrugged. “What? It’s what we’d ask him if he had a crush on a girl right? Will probably likes this guy for the same reasons I like Suzie, he’s just not a girl. So, first question, is he hot?”
Will blinked at him a few times, and realized that he was being absolutely serious. He opened his mouth to respond and closed it again, not really sure how to answer such a forward question. But his stupid face gave him away- he felt a smile sneaking up despite how nervous he suddenly felt. Dustin laughed and pointed at him.
“He totally is, you’re looking all bashful again! You can’t hide attraction, buddy.”
Now Will actually laughed, and glancing at his other two friends, he noticed Lucas looking visibly more relaxed and Mike looked excited again.
“Yeah, he’s… he’s hot. He’s cute, too. He’s, um. Tall, taller than me, and he’s a little clumsy, and he gets embarrassed about it, and it’s really sweet. He has tons of freckles, and really blue eyes, and the best laugh ever. And he laughs at things I say all the time, which is actually almost a bad thing, cause I just like to hear him laugh, so I spend half of class thinking of things to say, you know?” Will could feel his face and ears burning, but telling his friends about James' laugh made him think of yesterday at school when he’d really cracked up about a doodle Will made in the margins of his notes, and that lightened his heart quite a bit. He really did like his laugh.
“That’s how I am around Max,” Lucas chimed in, then shrugging as he added, “Well, when I was trying to get her to like me. Now I’m just trying to stay out of trouble most of the time.”
“Yeah, you’re like, really bad at that. You’ve gotten me in trouble with El more times than I have,” Mike held his arms out as though presenting Lucas to the group, and looked seriously at Will. “Don’t listen to him.”
“I won’t. Actually… he and I are partners in class, and I think I do okay on my own,” Will grinned at his lap, and all three boys looked back at him with surprise clear on their faces.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Dustin demanded.
Will leaned twiddled his thumbs for a bit, debating how much he really wanted to share here. Ultimately though, his excitement was too much to contain. He stared at his hands for a few seconds longer before looking up again. “I think that maybe… he might like he back.”
Another explosion of high fives and yelling, and this time, Will didn’t feel nearly so uncomfortable. He was actually really stoked to see his friends react this way- to say it was going better than he ever imagined was an understatement. He’d been dreading the day they found out about any crush of his, let alone the first that he was still trying to figure out himself. But now that they’d gotten past the initial awkwardness, he wanted to keep talking about James. He’d kept his feelings bottled up long enough and it actually felt really, really good to be able to share them with the exact people he didn’t realize he wanted to share them with.
Mike’s brows furrowed and he looked momentarily hesitant, but couldn't seem to contain himself. “Didn’t you say you don’t know if he’s, you know, also gay?"
Will hesitated, and said, “I don’t really. I just feel like it’s a possibility. Which I know doesn’t really mean much, but it just... feels nice to hope, I guess.”
Each boy nodded solemnly, and Will almost laughed at the absurdity of how serious they seemed to take it, as though an unrequited crush was the worst thing that could happen. While they may have it far easier, Will decided heterosexuals were weird. He could most certainly think of worse things, and the likelihood of there being another gay kid his age in Hawkins, Indiana, who might actually like Will back was slim to none. Disappointment was expected. But he supposed they didn’t have to think of these things- the girl liked them back or she didn’t, and therefore the latter option was, in fact, the worst that could happen. Still, they seemed to relate to his struggle, and he had rarely appreciated them more.
The boys eventually drifted into comfortable conversation, regaling tales of past broken hearts and the struggles of having a girlfriend. Once Lucas and Mike began fussing over resetting-up the bothered game board and arguing about who was where, Will caught Dustin’s eye and moved over by him.
Bumping his shoulder into the other boy’s slightly, he muttered, “Hey, thanks for not being weird.”
Dustin grinned his signature grin and threw an arm around him, giving him a squeeze. “You’re the first person to ever say that to me and that’s weird. Now, I’m gonna kick everyone’s asses in this game, and you still need to tell us more about this guy! You can’t just leave us hanging with ‘he’s dreamy’.” With that, he let go of Will and reached out to reclaim his game piece, leaving Will in bemused horror.
“I didn’t say that! I never said that!”
“Oh, you said it, bud. Even if you didn’t say it, you said it.”
Only huffing a little- for Dustin’s benefit, who smirked in satisfaction- Will was actually quite happy to oblige. Despite his worse fears, there really wasn’t that big a difference between him and his friends. James just wasn’t a girl, and that was okay, and they wanted to hear more about him. Everything was just the same. Settling back into his spot at the table, he allowed all the thoughts he’d been keeping to himself to spill out, accepting any and all teasing that was to be expected from having a crush. And it felt good, actually.