Work Text:
Will wakes up on the left side of the right side mattress. He fell asleep on the right side, facing the radiator and the tightly shut curtains, but in his sleep he gravitates to the safety of company. He’s not in one of his sleepwalking phases, thank god, but the subconscious tendency, the PTSD instinct is still enough to have him roll towards the sound of support. Namely, Mike and El, both awake and chatting quietly in the other bed.
“Morning,” Will croaks out. His throat is dry, like it always is when he wakes. Either El or Mike has already considered that, there’s a plastic cup of water on the side table that wasn’t there when Will crawled under the covers.
“Hey man,” Mike calls back, twisting his long back to smile at him. Will can’t help the returning grin that unspools over his own face. There have been too many dark periods of Mike not smiling at him to under-appreciate when he does get acknowledged.
“Do you want breakfast?” El inquires.
What El means isn’t in question. Continental breakfast, schmontinental breakfast. There’s not a chance rubbery scrambled eggs or nearly expired cereal are passing down their gullets, unless one of them snags an individual serving size box to eat on the road later. Two semi-supernatural beings and their keeper brun through a lot of calories. For El, and the people lucky enough to come into contact with her, breakfast means one thing. Eggos. The inconvenience of travelling doesn’t change that. Anywhere they go, they always pack their own toaster. In this particular three star hotel the only open outlet is the one for the hair dryer in the bathroom but that’s no barrier. All it means is El using her special skills to float the Eggos in without getting up, once the timer dings.
“Yeah, thanks.” Waffles will never be as spectacular to Will as El seems to think, but he’ll eat them every time she offers. It’s family ritual, just like Lucas and Erica drinking OJ every morning when Mr Sinclair pours the table a glass.
The afternoon’s plans, discussed over whipped cream sprayed Eggos, are basically the lack of them. El wants to meet Kali on her own this time. At some point in the evening she’ll use the nearest walkie or radio to give them directions to the gang’s latest squat, and they’ll hang out family cluster to family cluster. Until then, El’s happily on her own, wandering Chicago with a picture of her sister in her head.
Once El’s out the door, Will puts his money where his mouth is on the casual comment of ‘I dunno, some art exhibit’, when asked what his morning plans were. He grabs yesterday’s newspaper from the bag of snacks they picked up when they got into town, and flips to the Arts section. Even if he can’t find a good advertised show, there should at least be ads for local galleries, beyond the Art Institute Of Chicago. Either way, it’s something he needs to do. Will knows better than to invite himself on a date with Mike. Even if Mike claims to want to hang out, all it takes is one wrong trigger and Mike’s panicking about being alone with a gay man. Will doesn’t need to hurt himself in that way. Much better to commit himself to doing something Mike won’t tag along with. Something Will won’t be able to read too deeply into, and delude himself for the millionth time about the depth of his returned affection.
It’s with cool irony that Will reads a brief article about a gallery’s showing of up and comer in the art scene, Cameron Frye’s second major collection. It’s titled Falling In Love With My Best Friend, and Will is masochistic enough to know immediately it’s where he’s going to go, regardless of the other articles in this section. It’s a collection he wants to see. Every story is a tragedy or a comedy, and Will is looking forward to walking into a space that offers either commiseration or permission to sulk.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Will announces, shoes tied, hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah, have fun. I should be back by six, unless El calls earlier.” With Mike’s declared plan being an arcade, El should easily be able to hijack the PA system and announce the code word of return to the hotel, even if Mike doesn’t carry his walkie.
The Sloane Peterson Gallery is fairly easy to find. Hawkins and Lenora both weren’t much for public transportation but the trains make sense to him. Will wishes it were harder, actually. Maybe then he’d have to focus on transit, and not the genuine twinkle in Mike’s eye as he wished Will a good time, like he honestly cared that Will enjoys himself. Within half an hour of leaving the hotel he’s on the right street, and it’s a minute’s work after that to find the correct signage.
Will opens the glazed glass door and is hit with a layout different than anything he’s experienced going out on day trips while El and Mike do their own things. El was told to keep moving and keep a low profile, and the Party was never going to let her do it alone. Will happily chose to go with her. Better to let the people with plans go out and fulfill their destinies, Dustin at MIT and Jonathan at NYU and Steve abroad beside Robin teaching English to foreign children. Will’s happy to be in a different place every week, seeing local art and swimming in the hotel pool. He’s seen a lot of art galleries, and more than most people, probably, and he feels fully qualified to say this one is weird.
Taking up nearly all the space in the gallery, like the overgenerous jam in the thumbprint cookies Ms Henderson used to make, is a roughly built mega-shack. It looks about as well put together as Castle Byers, weathered wood hammered at weird angles with gaps, but thank god there’s no flashback to hiding in the Upside Down version, or tearing it down in emotional agony from Mike insulting his maturity and half accusing him of being queer. Well, there is, because things like that are always on Will’s mind. He’ll never not remember what Henry felt like hunting him. Slithering through his brain. He’ll never not worry about being too gay for his best friend’s capacity for tolerance. But this shoddy construction’s not traumatic, because it’s really not close at all. It’s about twenty times bigger, for one. And as rough as it looks, the gallery wouldn’t be allowed to let people inside it if it was really going to fall apart, unlike Castle Byers, which had to be repaired after every storm.
Will could walk the outer ring of the gallery. Paintings hang on those white walls too. And Will will, later. Artists deserve an audience, even if they only have one or two works showing. But he came here for the exhibit inside the installation, the surely sad, gloomy, longing, ecstatically in love, grateful for the small moments, satisfied with only being a friend, completely unsatisfied with never being requited collection of pieces that will mirror every fun, excruciating moment spent with Mike and El, the people he loves, and would die for, and sometimes hates. The other pieces can wait.
There’s only one entrance to the installation. It’s a doorframe, with a black velvet curtain hanging down to the floor. Beside the door is a small gold plaque reading Falling In Love With My Best Friend on the first line, and Cameron Frye on the second. Will pushes his way past the heavy fabric with no hesitation. He’s ready to feel commiseration with this poor guy, and the object of his unreturned affections.
The first thing he sees walking in, what he can’t help but see, it being right in front of him, is a painting of a very male individual. The short article called the show provocative, and a voice of the modern era. What the article failed to mention is that these words mean queer. Unless Will got the gender of the male name Cameron wrong, which he’s pretty sure he didn’t, it says something that the very first work is a man. A white brunet, specifically. His face is thin, mouth half open as he gestures to an unseen audience, everything beyond the confines of his school desk faded to a pastel blur. Of course that only works to make the teen himself more vibrant.
It’s a small room. A three by three of telephone booths, give or take. Far smaller than the exterior footage Will just approached. He immediately understands that this isn’t a gallery within a gallery, it’s a haunted house. Cameron’s fractured into pieces with how much he loves this unnamed boy, and his audience is going to be complicit in viewing each splinter, seeing without the choice to act on it. It’s a brilliant artistic conceit.
The next thing Will notices is that he’s on a wooden plank sidewalk. It leads, in a sharp ninety degree right angle, to a second door with a drape. He’s not ready to move on though. There’s still too much to see here. There’s only one painting hanging, but all the walls are painted with rumours, writing large enough to be legible across the patchwork wood.
I heard he told Mr Cooper a joke so funny he didn’t even get detention.
My little brother’s babysitter’s dog groomer said he saw him raising money for Kenyans.
Bro’s got a ticket for the next Super Bowl. Lucky bastard.
It’ll take Will ten minutes to read it all. Thank god for the contained size of the room, or he’d be here all day. Whoever Cameron liked, he was apparently a boy everyone in town had something to say over. Will’s in no different of a situation. Mike Wheeler’s the boy who pushed Troy in the gymnasium, the boy who had a Russian girl stalking him, who’s friends with Zombie Boy, who was a member of Hellfire, who got into fistfights decrying Munson’s innocence, and surely who disappeared the day before grad, though Will wasn’t in Hawkins at the time to hear people talk. Mike’s never been afraid of attention, can talk to anyone, and would rather be righteous than never make a scene. You have to love that about him. if they could stay anywhere longer than a week he’d have more friendships, Will’s sure of it.
The second room is dimly lit, painted black, and far more painting heavy. There are four on each wall not consumed by doorways. They share the theme of the love interest in slightly outlandish locations for a teen, like a nightclub or on stage in a men’s ballet unitard. Each pairing also depicts a black void, human shaped, hovering near the captivating boy.
It’s staggering, how familiar that feels. Not the specifics of course. Even now, as perpetual tourists, Mike’s not big on dramatic public events and thrilling stunts, beyond whatever’s necessary to keep his people safe. But the emotion behind it? The reality of being a crushing black hole of wallflower disinterest while the person you love shines? Will’s been that since Henry first took him. Before, even. He’d been the timid, parent-abused faggot for years before Henry got his hands on him.
The third room is clearly the right edge of the installation. It’s the same width as the first two rooms, more or less, but it’s double the length. The flooring underneath his feet takes up the entire space, making it less of a bridge and more of a dock. If docks had thick pillars reaching the ceiling, and a step in the middle.
Unlike the dark and blank walls, the three pillars deserve another look.
They have postcard sized paintings affixed to them, Maybe about two dozen in total. Will can appreciate the range Cameron has with scale, between the first room’s giant portrait, and these miniature pieces.
The theme of the room quickly comes together. It’s one night, or a series of visits to the same place, a campground. Each postcard is a different detail. A flashlight illuminating two sleeping bags, really playing with the light source and the sheen of the polyester surface. A silhouette of black tree branches against the light night sky. The stone building that’s the public bathroom at the campsite looking nothing less than a magical fairytale hut. A close up of a mouth smeared with chocolate and marshmallow. Embers floating up from an implied campfire.
It feels intimate. Of course it does. It must have killed Cameron to share a tent overnight. At this point, over a year into their vagabond lifestyle, you’d think Will would be immune to sharing a hotel room with Mike, but no. To this day, it can still make Will’s heart race. Even if El’s a solid barrier to any sort of impropriety Will still sees him in bed, vulnerable. He sees his ribcage when the A/C doesn’t work and he sleeps with his shirt off. He hears his little snuffling snore, and wakes up to his low conversation. It makes Will wonder what Cameron woke up to, if he woke up first to look at his crush’s slack face and long eyelashes, birds chirping in the background.
He wonders about it all the way until the last two paintings on the pillar closest to the second door, also on the left. Because the first is two boys, the heavily featured one and a new brunet with a more rectangular face, kissing. And the second is a Dutch angle of an haphazardly unzipped sleeping bag, and the crush in only boxers, legs bent up and out, beckoning.
It’s the moment every gay boy dreams of. The moment when your straight friend gets just drunk enough to be temporarily curious, while still having the safety net of ‘what happened last night’. Or even better, not bringing it up at all. What Will wouldn’t fucking give, for Mike to get that drunk in some sort of manufactured isolation. But it’ll never happen. He and Mike are never alone like that. That’s the entire point, for them to make sure El isn’t alone.
The fifth room is either a fantasy, or the insanely best case scenario. The roughshod walls are painted a sensual burgundy, ceiling and floor too. It’s a wise, though not exceptionally visible background to the dozen or so paintings crammed into the space. It’s smaller than those on the other side of this structure, leading Will to think there will probably be two more to complete the installation. Unlike the other rooms, Cameron’s even used the space above the doorframes to hang more art, more variations on the theme. And that is downright pornographic closeups of the friend’s body. Either Cameron’s been lucky enough that the friend is queer or questioning too, or it’s just a story of desire, and how much he wants him.
It’s interesting how none of the sexual pieces contain the whole body. A negative critique might speak of how compartmentalised Cameron’s view of his friend/lover is. There’s a closeup of a shoulder with fading scratch marks forever immortalized. There’s purpling hickies above a collarbone. There’s one from the back that’s just a far oversized Red Wings jersey and a few inches of bare upper thigh at the bottom of the painting. Lovers shouldn’t just be a collection of body parts you enjoy, it’s true. But Will’s spent more than a minute watching the line of Mike’s jaw when he chews on a pen, or the way he fiddles with his hands. Even if he hasn’t gotten the pinnacle experience of fooling around with his love, he can understand how the sum of a man is each and every single one of his perfect parts.
Will thinks he understands the progression of Cameron’s life once he steps through to the next room. Steps up through, the sidewalk is steeply angling up. It’s the smallest yet, painted an envious green. There’s only one painting, a life sized piece of the best friend intimately close with a brunette woman. It’s possible she’s their beard, a way to keep safe in whatever nasty environment they grew up. It’s been pretty heavily implied that everyone and their mother cares about every minute movement of the best friend. Undoubtedly him not dating someone would gather attention, so better to have a girl. Or, worse, the best friend is straight, with exceptions. Cameron might be a nice guy to have around in the privacy of a basement or tent, but a girlfriend like her is who you can bring to the kitchen table. Tragic, but no surprise. Whatever her role in their lives, it’s clear now that the artist is only getting part of the man he loves.
The last section of the installation is just as unique as the rest of them. There’s no framed painting, the environment itself is the art. The bridge Will’s been walking is now high enough to be a boardwalk, culminating halfway through the room, inviting the viewer to sit on the edge and take in the three hundred and sixty degree mural. The ceiling and the upper third of the wall is crystal clear blue sky, the mid-ground is water, and the floor underneath the wooden structure is genuine sand. There are three towels laid out, the Looney Tunes one fitting in with the immaturity of the primary striped one and the baby pink with seashells. And there are other props too, a broken spined book and a pair of kicked off flip flops, and the bottle of sunscreen discarded on its side.
There are a lot of things Will can take from the immersive art piece. To most straight people, the bright open scene would probably denote a happily ever after. But Will can’t look away from the three towels. Whatever happened between Cameron and his best friend, it didn’t end with just the two of them. Maybe he got a ‘she’s my girlfriend’ screamed at him, just like Will did at the rink. Maybe he had to fall back to forcing himself content to hang out with his best friend and his girlfriend. Maybe this was one of the last times they hung out, because he just couldn’t get over how much it killed to not be picked. This room is a pronounced ending, and not just because the velvet curtain is positioned opposite of the original entrance.
Except, he’s wrong. As Will exits the installation piece it mirrors walking in, his eye forced towards one specific item. In this case, directly in front of him where it can’t be missed, is a glass walled office. There are two desks in it, positioned face to face. At one is Cameron, unprofessionally dressed in the Red Wings jersey the other man was apparently borrowing during sex. At the other is a woman in a pretty dress and denim jacket. Her hair is bottle red, but it has to be her, the interloper. And then, unmistakably the man in all the paintings, sits a third person on the flat plane created by putting the desks together. He’s gesturing as he’s speaking, as expansively as the second room had Will imagining is his nature.
The man, the object of both their affections, laughs at something. It’s faint, at this distance, audibly, but the joy on his face is palpable. He ruffles Cameron’s hair, then tightens his fingers to hold him in place for first a forehead kiss of companionable delight, then a real kiss. In public. Unafraid of what a client or coworker might say. It’s not the first gay kiss Will’s seen. There have been evenings he’s sneaked away to see the local version of the scene, come home to Mike and El in the bed next to his itchy and sweating, both satisfied and completely and utterly not. But it’s the first casual in mixed public like it’s just okay display of affection he’s witnessed.
After a long enough kiss to imply serious interest, the man returns to bum down crosslegged, only for the woman to slump forward to place her head on the man’s thigh. It might come from a place of frustration, given the stack of papers she shoves away as she does so, but it’s distinctly not platonic. Steve and Robin were cuddling a lot in the months before the end, but never like this. The three of them are actively together, or at least they’re both with him.
Cameron begins to tidy the woman’s papers, a favour of caretaking, as the man lightly massages her heavily hairsprayed head. They’re so intimately close that the horrifying happens; Will feels his eyes well up and spill over. Ever since his final possession and release, he’s tried to revel in big feelings. After three weeks of nothing but frozen hate, any emotion is a sensation worthy of happening. But this is just embarrassing, though. Cameron getting what he wanted shouldn’t be affecting Will this much. It’s not like Cameron’s success will tip his own scale.
Trying to talk himself calm is shaken up even further when the best friend, the lover, the double boyfriend, makes eye contact with him through the glass wall. Will has never wanted to fade into the background more. Sure, they’re brazen with what they’re doing, but that doesn’t mean he should be watching. Something he’s certain he’s about to be told, as the man gestures until Cameron stands to round the desks and rub the woman’s shoulders, a replacement comfort so the man can hop off the gleaming wood and head for the door. He’s about to be told off for being a voyeur, something he lives in fear of. He never wants to be caught watching Mike and El too long.
Oddly though, he comes to Will with a smile, not a protective scowl. “Hello, I’m Ferris, which you should know, except he didn’t put my name in a single one of the rumours. Cam’s only inaccuracy, really. Town where we grew up, everyone said my name, all the time.”
Yeah, that really doesn’t surprise Will. He’s obviously maxxed his charisma, and then doubled that. For privacy, he almost suggests, before gagging on the words. He doesn’t want to prompt the confrontation. Instead he comes up with the similar but far less loaded, “anonymity?”
Ferris declines to pursue the easy line of conversation. But nor does he go straight into condemning Will. Instead he asks an enigmatic, “so who is it?”
“Who’s what,” Will replies. Thank god the tears have stopped, though he still feels kind of shaky.
“The guy you want to be looking at you like I look at Cameron and Sloane,” Ferris answers bluntly.
Ahhh. No wonder they weren’t afraid to be queerly affectionate at a place of work. The girlfriend -double girlfriend? It’s unclear, especially considering how gently Cameron’s touching her in the background- owns the gallery. She can’t fire herself for immorality. She can’t beat her own ass in the parking lot, or spit in her own lunch.
“Why do you assume it’s a guy?” Will shoots back.
He shrugs. It’s not an ambivalent Argyle shrug, it’s a cocky, educated Nancy shrug. Ferris trusts his read of people. Fair, probably, if he’s as often the centre of attention as Cameron’s show implies. “You’re not the first jealous gay guy I’ve seen. Straights can get jealous too, but it’s usually got a horny undertone, because trios must be sexy and plowing the girl all the time. Gay men are more sad, jealous, because being closeted while others enjoy their lives is hard.”
“I am not closeted.” Will snaps. He worked too hard to come out to be pushed back in.
Ferris is, at last, immediately contrite. “Sorry, my bad amigo. You’re right, I don’t know your story.”
“The same as every other sad gay, I guess,” Will says bitterly. “An unobtainable crush, a world that hates you, angry foreign government agents.”
Ferris smirks, like Will’s joking. No one will ever believe them, besides El’s sister’s gang, and conspiracy nuts. Will is a Russian nesting doll of reasons to feel isolated. He’s not even in the same toy box as a stuffie grabbed from every angle, like Ferris.
Then, because things aren’t terrible enough already, right in front of his eyes Ferris has what Will repeats to himself is a seizure so he won’t freak about the charismatic stranger being possessed. That has to be impossible now, the Mind Flayer is obliterated. But that fact doesn’t stop Will from being unsettled when Ferris stares off into nothingness for thirty seconds, attention fully gone from this plane.
When Ferris snaps back, it’s with new vigour. Like whatever he experienced while subconscious charged him up. He says, crackling with energy, “you could tell him. Him him. He probably already knows. The best friend isn’t stupid. Speaking from experience.”
Considering Will lives in fear that Mike will realise how much he wants him, it’s truly appalling advice. “I should tell him, and his girlfriend, my foster sister, that I love him.”
Ferris doesn’t for a second waiver over his divine intervention. “If he hated it, he’d already be gone. I don’t know your situation, but there’s a reason he’s still around.”
The reason is because people need him. Mike is the heart. He knows he keeps El and Will alive, with him beating in their chest. It doesn’t have to be romantic, or sexual. Good for Cameron, that he got his erotic ending, but things don’t always work that way. Will’s going to be Mike’s best friend and El’s quasi-brother until the end of time, and no amount of dumb advice from Ferris will change that. A month from now he’ll just be another rumour. I heard a guy in Chicago was in a permanent threesome. Oh yeah? I heard he found a sack of doubloons while planting trees.