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“I’m gay.”
The dinner table fell silent. Mike kept his gaze steadily focused on his now empty dinner plate, not daring to look up.
“I–I’m sorry, honey, could you repeat that?” his mother asked, voice slightly strained. The tension at the table was rising, impossibly fast (except for Ted, because–as always– Ted had literally no idea what was happening in his family).
“I said, I’m gay,” Mike repeated, louder. He finally moved his gaze from the table to be met with the wide eyed expression of Karen Wheeler. Nancy glanced from her mom to her brother, waiting to find out what would go down.
“Did you just say that you’re gay, Michael?” Karen replied, her voice lacking any emotion (which, quite honestly, frightened Mike). Still, it being far too late to back down now, Mike steadily stood his ground.
“Yes.”
Mike had expected for his mother to break down in tears, begging him to not fall in with the devil or something. He had expected his father to engage in the conversation, for once, and yell insults and slurs one after the other (probably ending with Mike getting thrown out of the house). He had expected Nancy to side with his parents, to be completely and utterly disgusted by him.
What he had not expected, however, was for his mother to break into a smile and throw her head back in laughter. He had not expected his father to continue to read his newspaper, completely indifferent to the situation (which, in retrospect, he probably should have seen coming). He definitely hadn’t expected Nancy’s eyes to widen in surprise only to exclaim:
“Holy shit, Mike, you finally figured it out!”
Michael Wheeler, not for the first time in his life, was completely clueless. He stared in shock as his mother and sister seemingly celebrated his coming out, furrowing his eyebrows in utter confusion. Huh?
“What?” he asked out loud in response to Nancy, only to be ignored once again.
“Ted! Oh, Ted! Did you hear? Did you hear him? He finally figured it out!” his mother exclaimed in glee, practically shaking his father’s shoulders out of sheer excitement.
“That’s nice hon–” Ted began, then stopped as he processed what was going on. “You mean to tell me that our son finally realized just how close he was to Dorothy?” Dorothy? Who in the everloving fuck was Dorothy?
Mike cleared his throat, finally catching their attention once again. “Hey, guys–um, what the f–heck is going on here?” he finally asked, practically begging for an explanation.
His mother looked at him fondly, almost pityingly, and said, “Oh Michael…we’ve been waiting so long for you to finally figure that out and tell us about that.” She said it so genuinely that Mike had to do a double take.
“I–wha-”
“Just making sure,” Nancy interrupted, “it’s Will, right?” Fuck, she had known. But how could she have? He and Will had been so secretive–
“I mean, I started to assume something was going on between you two when I came home to you two aggressively making out on the couch while watching Star Wars last week,” his mother replied casually. Mike choked on his spit, his face turning a deep shade of red.
“You saw tha–”
Once again, Mike was interrupted. This time, however, it was by one Ted Wheeler. “It took you that long to catch them?” his father asked incredulously. “I thought they had been together since they were, like, eleven. You know, when that romantic part of Heroes by David Bowie played over Mike sobbing when they found Will’s fake body–”
Karen glared at her husband. “Ted. What did we say about breaking the fourth wall again?”
“Right, my bad.”
The table then fell to an uncharacteristic silence. Mike broke it.
“So…you guys are like, okay with this?” he asked awkwardly. Nancy was first to respond by snickering to herself.
“Jesus, Mike, how dense are you?” Okay, ouch. “Have you seriously not realized that I’ve been hooking up–well, now dating, as of two days ago–with Robin for like, a long time?”
- “You’ve WHAT-”
“Oh my god, Nancy. Are…are you a–a lesbian?” His mother asked cautiously. Nancy rolled her eyes.
“No, mom, I’ve been making out with Robin because that’s what best gal pals do. Yes, I’m a lesbian!”
Karen’s eyes welled up with tears, as she was clearly emotional to hear this.
“Omigod, same bestie!” she replied, in the way every mother should when her daughter comes out as a lesbian.
Ted looked between the two lesbian Wheelers and nodded in approval. While the girls bonded over their sacred unbreakable lesbian bond, Mike’s father turned to him. This would turn out to be the most genuine, emotional heart to heart between a father and a son to ever exist.
“You know son, those women are clearly confused. How can any woman ever submit herself to another woman? You see, they don’t understand how super-mega-foxy-awesome-hot men truly are.” Mike should’ve been way more shocked to find out that his father was attracted to men, but after everything else that had happened that had happened that night it really only made narrative sense.
So, Mike nodded in agreement because Will was indeed super-mega-foxy-awesome-hot.
Ted then went on to tell Mike about how he was actually regularly hooking up with Lonnie Byers in the kitchen of the McDonald’s Lonnie worked at and how Lonnie was “one great piece of ass” and that he hoped, for Mike’s sake, that those genetics had carried on.
“So,” Ted said, finally wrapping up his speech about his gay sex life, “in conclusion, keep slaying those baddies, son.”
And then, all of the sudden, the Vecnussy himself burst through the walls of the Wheeler house.
“Oh my goooooood queens, did Mike finally say it?” Vecna squealed, leaning onto the Wheeler’s dinner table.
“Daddy Vecna!” Ted yelped in surprise. “You came back!”
Vecna turned to Ted, his eyes glistening with unshed tears of pure happiness. “I came home.”
Vecna then grinned, booping Ted on the nose. “Just for you, Discord kitten.” Vecna knows about Discord, despite it being the 1980s because he was born with magical gay powers that allowed him to see into the future for very important pieces of information, such as the fact that Ted was his certified Discord kitten.
Vecna turned to Mike, leaned down and whispered into his ear, “As my girl Taylor always says, ‘the haters gonna hate’ so Michael, bestie, just shake it off.” Vecna completed his speech by performing Taylor Swift’s belt in that one part of Shake It Off, causing Ted’s heart to melt.
Vecna then turned to the rest of the family, smiled sadly and said, “I must be off now, my queens. Don't forget to slay the day away. Byeeeeeee!” The mood now somber, Ted clambered to his feet and called:
“Wait!”
Vecna turned over his shoulder, his eyes wide and vulnerable. Ted continued, “I…I can’t live without your Vecnussy, Vecna. Please–I’m coming with you.”
Vecna’s eyes welled up with tears. The two met in the middle and shared a passionate, emotional kiss. Nancy, to match the mood, grabbed her recorder from her purse that she always carries everywhere and began to play a slow, tender version of My Heart Will Go On from the Titanic. By now, everyone was tearing up.
The star crossed lovers walked into the portal into their small apartment that they now shared in the Upside Down. Wiping the wetness from her eyes, Karen turned to her two eldest children.
“Well, I have to go meet up with Joyce to do–um–girl…things…bye!” And just like that, she walked out the door leaving Nancy and Mike standing alone in the dining room. They both agreed that they should go to bed, and walked upstairs into their respective bedrooms.
—
Once Mike closed the door to his room, he opened his closet to reveal one Will Byers who had stayed there through the entirety of dinner.
“So, um, how did it go?” Will asked hesitantly. Instead of answering Will verbally as a normal person would, he grabbed the other boy by the collar of his shirt and pulled him into a kiss.
After about five seconds, Mike pulled back and grinned. Will laughed softly. “I’m gonna guess it went pretty well? I mean–since you’re still in one piece and all.”
Mike pulled them over to lay down on his bed, shoulder to shoulder. Mike leaned to brush some of Will’s hair off of his forehead and replied, “All things considered…yeah, it went pretty well.” They shared a soft smile and enjoyed the comfortable silence with the knowledge that, at the very least, their families still loved them. No matter what.
“Oh, by the way, I don’t really have a dad anymore,” Mike said casually, causing Will to jolt out of his relaxed and happy trance.
“What? Mike! You said it went well! How the fuck does that add up–”
“Nonono, it’s okay!” Mike interrupted. “He just kinda…ran off with Vecna so they can live a happy romantic life together in the Upside Down. Nothing bad, I swear!” This put Will at ease for a moment, and they resumed their previous, intimate position. That is, until Will’s brain cells fired back up and he processed what his boyfriend had just informed him.
“MICHAEL, WHAT THE FUCK–”
—
For those of you who were wondering where the fuck is my child Holly throughout entirety of this heartwarming story, the answer is simple. During dinner, she decided to go back to her room to continue playing with her Barbie dolls (where all of the Barbie dolls are lesbians adopting ‘slaybies’, as she had put it. Oddly enough, the dialogue between two of the Barbies was so aggressively homosexual that it tore a riff in the fabric of space and time–ultimately being enough to summon Vecna himself.