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It's one of those nights again.
Occasionally, Jonathan wonders if he should bite the bullet and call in anonymously to Robin’s Saturday night advice segment. He imagines how their conversation will go, sometimes.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special caller here with us tonight.
Um, good evening.
Good evening to you too, good sir. What can I help you with?
Uh, I had a question?
That’s what Rockin Robin is here for!
Is there a way to turn off the voices in my head?
There's humidity in the air and exhaustion in his bones, the worst kind of combination. All he wants to do is sleep. Can’t, not until this chorus in his head winds down. Has elected to pretend to read, shifts his eyes from page ninety-five back to page ninety-four of East Of Eden, chides himself for not paying attention. Go big or go home, Byers. Twists and turns, left and right, from his back onto his stomach. Buckle down and pick a lane. Thinks longingly of his bedroom in Lenora Hills. Get your head in the—well, you get it. All sorts of heckling happening up in there, just the way he likes it.
Will rolls over on his mattress and stares at him for many seconds. “Jonathan?”
It’s possibly a bit pathetic how quickly he latches on, hands going lax as the paperback falls close, inner monologue an infinite loop of thank fucking God. He really doesn’t care. Anything to escape his own company, right about now.
“Yeah?”
His voice betrays none of that, impressively. It is casual, cool, perfectly offhand. He has no personal investment here whatsoever. No, sir, none at all. He’s just here for a good story.
Will takes his sweet time. Jonathan begins to worry this might be a matter of moderate-to-great-significance, not merely a God-gifted distraction. Which is to say—shit. He wonders if the answer will reveal itself if he just concentrates hard enough on the specific vibrations in the seemingly silent air. Even just the broader points will do.
For example, is there a problem? It feels like there’s a problem. Is there something Jonathan can do to fix the problem? Clearly, since Will is bringing it up to him at one in the night after spending the whole day with decidedly more competent people. Worse, is there something Will mistakenly believes Jonathan can do to fix the problem? Likely, very likely, given his track record.
Advice, that must be it. He can do that, he does that all the time. Used to, at least. He thinks so, at least. Fell off in the middle there. Got caught up, left behind, life and near death, you know how it is. Trying to get back into it, this fine art of making it up as you go along.
His mind drifts to predictable places, the hot topic now many months old. El, Mike, El-Mike, pizza kitchen, Hopper’s cabin. Crawl days are hard on all of them, but there’s the good parts, too, supposedly. There’s the getting-to-see-El parts, as Mike is happy to remind anyone at any hour of the day.
Romantic advice? Wrong person to ask, buddy. There is a not-insignificant possibility that your big brother was passively dumped last week, or last month, or the month before that, and he wouldn’t even know if you asked him. His maybe-girlfriend-maybe-not looks like she gets a headache every time she looks at him. Why do you think he’s sleeping down here in the basement with you?
Words of affirmation, the generic kind. No, no, he’s sorry, he shouldn’t have said that. That’s not what he meant. He likes spending time with you. Obviously he likes spending time with you, now and forever and always. That will never change, okay? He’s sorry.
Condescension has leaked in. He’s sorry about that, too. Yes, he understands that you’re not a baby, that you don’t care what he does with his time. Conceited assumption, so not cool. Please forgive him.
But this isn’t about him! Please carry on, never mind the guilt trip. From now on, he will shut up and listen, only offer comment when explicitly asked. Breathe in, breathe out. Okay, okay. No thoughts, head empty. Starting—now. What’s on your mind, brother dearest?
As if he’s heard his thoughts, Will mutters, “I’m sorry about California.”
It’s incredible, the different webs his mind can weave, spilling out in all sorts of directions and never managing to entangle any prey. Invisible and silk-smooth and in a goddamn hurry to reach a conclusion already. And yet, never the right one. California?
Roll with it, just roll with it.
Jonathan traces one strand back to the last, zigzags all the way back to the place of origin, neutral ground that feels a million miles away. Brushes it all away with a careless hand, fucking cobwebs, and reaches for the different thread Will is holding out, sand-coloured and a couple years old.
Now is the time to listen to that snide little voice that’s taken up permanent residence in there somewhere. Perhaps it will spur him into action. For once and for all: get your head in the game, Byers.
Okay, Steve.
“Hmm?” he manages. In his mind’s eye, Steve slow claps.
“Please don’t make me say it again,” Will says.
“Okay,” he says automatically, even as the thread threatens to slip from between his fingers.
Will regards him with keen-eyed apprehension, tentative expectation. Both at once, somehow. “So…”
“Um.” Confusion sprouts, and he smothers it just as quick. Context is overrated, anyhow, but also somewhat sorely needed. “Uh, is that all?”
“What, that’s not good enough for you?”
“No, Will—Jesus.” Imaginary Steve shakes his head. Jonathan wonders if he’s always been so bad at this. “I just don’t exactly understand, I guess.”
“Oh,” he says. “Um, never mind, then.”
There’s things about Will that haven’t changed since he first learned how to form words. Like this, this push-and-pull between blurting something out and then walking it back. Bursting at the seams with a story or a thought, a confession or a question, but never indulging himself outright. You have to coax it out of him, you have to play along and pretend you’re forcing his hand.
“Hey, don’t be like that,” he says, turning around to face him. Will turns away. Always making him work for it, this one. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“Forget about it.”
As a kid, he’d simply take a seat in Jonathan’s general vicinity and sulk and sigh for hours till he had no choice but to take the bait.
Something bothering you?
No.
Sure looks like something’s bothering you.
I’m fine.
Okay.
It’s just—
“But I want to know. C’mon, I’m dying to know. If you don’t tell me, I’m not gonna be able to go to sleep and it’ll be your fault—”
“Okay, okay,” Will relents, exasperation evident. Hint of a chuckle, barely there but there. See, the thing about Jonathan is that he’s been doing this for years, and the thing about doing something for years is that you get kind of good at it.
“It’s just—”
There’s things about Will that haven’t changed, and he hopes that they never will.
“I, um.” Jonathan worries at the nail on his index finger, watches him stutter and stumble through an evidently difficult sentiment. In a moment of great restraint, he bites down harder and doesn’t tell him to take a deep breath. “I know I got on your case a lot in Lenora.”
A definite spark of surprise ignites somewhere. “Oh.”
Often, it’s harder to remember that there’s things about Will that have changed. That he’s closer to sixteen than to fourteen, that he’s started taking Holly Wheeler to school, sitting with her while she draws and trying his best to answer her big questions about life. That the very concept of sincerity doesn’t seem so lame to him anymore.
Jonathan, after all, is no stranger to deflection. Will used to get so worked up about it when he thought he owed him an apology, fingers twisting and leg bouncing, every word mumbled half-heartedly against Jonathan’s shirt. About earlier, he’d start, embarrassment so palpable you could reach out and grab hold of it. It just felt like the right thing to do, cutting short the excruciating ritual and putting him out of his misery. Shh, you don’t have to say sorry, not to me.
The instinct gnaws at him right now, an incessant need bubbling up from the depths. California was a weird place, 1986 a weirder time, and Will seemed perpetually fed up with him for the whole of it, but it’s not like Jonathan didn’t give him plenty of reason, what with the new best friend and the marginally shorter temper and yes, the weed. God, the weed.
Don’t worry about it, feels like the obvious answer. Double down for good measure. I deserved every bit of it and more.
But he looks at Will again, and there’s clearly a conversation waiting to happen here. There’s things he wants to say, things he’s been waiting to say, perhaps. Cutting that off at the knees seems—unwise, unfair. There’s humidity in the air and exhaustion in his bones, the worst kind of combination, and he’s just about given up on sleep. Might as well hear him out.
“I did get an awful lot of doors slammed in my face,” he ventures. It’s something of a gamble; he’s not sure if it’s a good move to try to be funny so early on, but then Will smiles, and he relaxes. He doesn’t need to get it exactly right; he just needs to keep the ball rolling long enough that it bounces against the side of Will’s shoe.
“I think it was just weird for me,” Will continues. “Like, the move.”
“Right.”
“My friends—”
“A thousand miles away,” Jonathan supplies, and Will’s face lights up in recognition.
“El—”
“Struggling.”
“Mom—”
Will’s eyes catch his, and he knows neither of them are going to be able to come up with an end to that sentence. Mom was—going through a lot, he’ll leave it at that.
“And you,” Will finishes.
“Off being a loser?” Jonathan guesses.
“No, just.” And there goes the hand to the mouth, bad habits passed down the line. “Not perfect, I guess.”
He’s careful to try and evade the self-deprecation impulse, but it sneaks its way in, regardless. “Don’t know if I was ever that.”
“I mean,” Will says, and then there’s a long pause, long enough for imaginary Steve to pop back in. Fishing for compliments, real classy of you. “To me, you were.”
There’s versions of Jonathan that would give anything to be here, listening to this. There’s versions of Jonathan that thought they’d never even find their way back here, that Will would just think of him as some vaguely pathetic bum for the rest of his life, equal parts oblivious and overbearing. There’s versions of Jonathan, tiny, lonely ones, that used to live off of this, innocent, wide-eyed awe and Who I Want To Be When I Grow Up essays.
Then there’s the version of Jonathan who’s currently peering down at Will drawing uncertain circles into his blanket. It doesn’t really feel like a moment to celebrate, all things considered.
“But not since California?” he asks.
“Well, you’ve made a strong recovery, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Jonathan says. Too little, too late, Steve whispers. Better late than never, he retorts. “I’m asking for the list of my crimes.”
“Your crimes?” Will’s forehead furrows, eyebrows drawing together. “I’m the one apologising. Do you mean my crimes?”
He doesn’t get it, does he? He doesn’t get that only of them is on trial here, that only one of them will ever be eligible for a sentence. Acts of self-defence aren’t punishable by law, nor should they be.
“Your crimes were simply reactions to my bigger, more prominent crimes.”
Will huffs. “Are you really going to make this into a competition?”
“Try me.”
For all of five seconds, Will tries to resist. Then, something shifts behind his eyes, and Jonathan knows he’s got him. They’re not so different, the two of them, not when it comes down to it.
“I got mad at you about everything,” he says, more passionate than regretful, now that he’s got a point to prove. “Like, everything.”
“For good reason,” Jonathan defends.
“Sure, but.” His voice pitches downwards. Softer, slower. “It’s not like it was your fault.”
The first few months in California were strange. He showed up at his new school, and nobody gave a single shit. When they did, it was to compliment him on his band tee, to casually invite him to the party happening that night. To offer freely—oh, so many things. Gossip about the teachers, a tour around town. A joint, a safe place to smoke it.
Sometimes, he said yes. Patted himself on the back for putting himself out there. Got baked, didn’t come home till Will and El were already in bed. He just assumed they were getting invites, too. If it could happen to him, surely it could happen to kids who weren’t making their first friend ever.
He and Nancy were writing each other long, frequent letters. No detail was too unimportant, no incident too trivial to share. He was on the phone as often as he could get it on loan from Mom, from El. Never really Will, though. There was so much up here, so many new things he’d never seen or heard of, so many things he could painstakingly describe, indulge in the joy of introducing her to them. The plants here, the strange shapes they came in. The clothes, so nauseatingly bright. And the people, God, Nancy, there’s so many people here, it’s—
Their new house had stairs in it. You could go up those stairs and find a whole new floor, a whole other set of rooms that—somehow, miraculously—also belonged to them. If the one bathroom was occupied, worry not, there was a second one to lock yourself into for your designated breakdown of the month. He asked Mom if he should look for a job the weekend of their first week there, and she stared at him with glazed-over eyes. He repeated himself and she said, just focus on school, hon, okay?
He said, okay.
He asked Will if he wanted to come exploring with him. He should’ve asked El, too. He got scoffed and scowled at, and he didn’t push it. He said, fuck it (in his head) and he said, okay (out loud).
He got in his car and drove and drove for hours on end, from one edge of town to the other, passenger seat going empty for what was maybe the first time in years. Deluded himself into thinking he got away, convinced himself it was freedom he was tasting at the tip of his tongue.
Then, of course, his car broke down. Hence began the fall from grace, ugly and unrelenting.
“Maybe not,” he says now. “How I was acting certainly didn’t help, though.”
“How were you acting?”
“You said it yourself.” The memory of that night bursts into life behind his eyelids, razor-sharp with washed-out colours. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forget it, the latest and most damning of his Will-related failures. “Distant, stoned. Blind to what was happening right in front of my eyes.”
Will shifts uncomfortably. He mumbles, “Nothing bad was happening.”
“You were having a bad time,” he says, gentle as he can be without sacrificing gravitas. Mixed results. “You were going through so much all by yourself, and I hate that—”
“I’m always going through shit,” Will cuts across. “That’s hardly the end of the world.”
“I didn’t say it was the end of the world,” he points out. “But it does matter, bud. Of course it matters, and it matters that I was too high to notice.”
“You did notice,” he says quietly. “You tried to ask, and I got mad at you about it.”
January of ’86 onwards was a blur. By that time, he’d burned through enough goodwill that Will barely spared him a glance except to roll his eyes. By that time, he’d caught on enough to realise he hadn’t really made any friends at school, and was fast losing—or supposedly losing—the ones he’d left behind.
Didn’t matter what he realised, though. By that time, he was too lame, and Will too in the throes of teenage angst, for them to be seen together, let alone hang out. They met exclusively at mealtimes, and many, many times, Jonathan considered throwing the last vestiges of his dignity out the window, clutching at his hand and begging. Please, please, tell me what I’m doing wrong, tell me how I can make it right.
But, of course, he knew. It was only ever the one thing.
He didn’t like the weed. He didn’t like Argyle, by then a permanent fixture at Jonathan’s side. He didn’t like that it made them loose and giggly and talkative (the word he preferred to use was stupid). He didn’t like the smell, lingering on clothes and bedsheets alike.
It crept up on Jonathan, how much he enjoyed it. How often he was doing it. How intensely he was thinking of it when he wasn’t doing it. He’d wake up in the morning, head relatively clear and full of vows of a new beginning. Then, Mom, refusing to come out of her room. El, unresponsive and prone to bursting into tears. Phone calls with Nancy, suddenly only ever about college. Will, making it very clear that talking to Jonathan was the last thing he’d rather do.
And so, back to the back of the van it was.
Even at his worst, he’d like to believe he tried. He coerced Argyle into chauffeuring the kids places, he kept his ears perked when they talked in short, stilted sentences to each other. He took his openings when he found them, when Will looked just that bit less likely to bite his head off. Hey, you guys have fun?
Please stop talking.
In that way, Will has a point. In that way, Jonathan won’t lie. Under a mountain of various kinds of guilt, there’s a sliver of vindication. Then again, there’s guilt wrapped up in that, too.
“You did,” he relents. “But I’m sure there was a reason you felt like you couldn’t talk to me.”
“There’s no reason,” Will snaps, suddenly emotional in a way that makes alarm bells go off in his head. He sneaks a look, and it’s enough for him to scramble upright on the couch. “It had nothing to do with you, and I was just an asshole for no fucking reason, all because you dared to have a life of your own and—”
“Hey, hey.” Jonathan’s not sure how he got here, on the floor sitting right in front of Will, but thank God his body hasn’t betrayed him just yet. “Hey, that’s enough.”
And Will looks right at him, mouth trembling and eyes surprisingly dry, and he’s so little and so grown-up, and trying so hard to punish himself for imagined wrongs from when he was even littler, and it’s so unfair that Jonathan can’t just snap his fingers and make it all go away.
He swipes a hand across his face. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Jonathan tells him. “Just—hear me out for a second?”
Will nods miserably.
A competition. He really told Will that it was a fucking competition, and he never once even questioned where that might lead them. And now look where they are. He’ll admit it: he was wrong, as wrong as is humanly possible. That’s never been a particularly hard thing for him to admit.
What’s hard is this next part.
“Forget what I said earlier, okay? I was being an idiot,” he says. Breathes in, breathes out, looks up at Will’s face and forces the rest of it out, all in a rush. “I think this is going to be a lot easier if we stop trying to blame the whole thing on ourselves.”
Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do. For the sake of the greater good, for the sake of your little brother’s tendency to put himself down. Cross the bridge of hypocrisy allegations when you get to it.
True to form, Will doesn’t let him get away with it. He sizes him up, skeptical. When he speaks, all traces of a tremble have vanished. “Says you.”
He is fast seeing the virtues of practicing what he preaches. Better late than never, he reiterates to Steve defensively. Steve remains silent, inanimate.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” he declares with a bravery he cannot justify. Will looks mildly intrigued, and Jonathan swallows away the dryness in his throat. Here goes nothing.
“You’re right.” It’s a safe start, but a start nonetheless. “You did get mad at me a lot, often for reasons you’d refuse to tell me. And that didn’t feel great, always feeling like I’d done something to upset you.”
Was that the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life? Quite possibly.
“I’m sorr—”
This is the part he refuses to do.
“Please don’t.”
Will blinks owlishly at him, and he stutters to a halt. You don’t have to say sorry, not to me. Calm down, calm down. Don’t be a martyr, that weirds him out. Think compromise, not competition. “I just—I think we should save the apologies for the end. More efficient that way, don’t you think?”
Nice save, Steve chimes in, before Will can even begin reacting. Shut up, Jonathan tells him.
“Right,” Will says, somewhat awkward. His gaze drops down to where his left thumb is moving back and forth on the opposite palm. Jonathan waits. Will sighs a big sigh.
“Everything just changed so fast.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, you made a friend before I did. You got that weird look in your eyes—like Mom used to get sometimes—and then it just never went away. And…”
“What?”
“You started locking your door,” Will blurts, hands twisting together like it’s something shameful to admit. Something shameful to get upset over. Scrambling to cover it up, he adds, “It’s not a big deal, but, like—you never used to do that.”
They used to spend so much time holed up in Jonathan’s room, growing up. Will used to drag himself up onto the bed to set up for the evening, homework and blanket and various items of leisure in tow. He used to do it when Jonathan wasn’t even home, half the time. He used to fall asleep in there and refuse to budge or be budged, the other half of the time.
For a small but significant span of time, between Mom telling him about the move and Mom neglecting to tell him that they were rich now, he remembers thinking he and Will would be expected to share a room in Lenora. And he remembers thinking, that might not be so bad. Then—
“That’s fair,” he says, because Will looks like he doesn’t believe that it is. “You locked your door too, though.”
“I know.”
Then they both shut themselves into their respective too-big rooms within five minutes of their arrival in Lenora, apparently.
“I didn’t—I never wanted to stop talking to you. You know that, right? It’s just, you got so frustrated when I tried. I thought, maybe you wanted to be left alone.”
“I don’t know why I did that.” There’s something like a scoff in Will’s voice, scorn bubbling up and out. It feels a little too familiar. “Easy target, or whatever.”
Fourteen is such a terrible age. He thinks everyone’s destined to be a little bit prickly when they’re fourteen. Fourteen-year-old Jonathan had ten-year-old Will eating out of the palm of his hand, hanging on to his every word, downright clingy, and he had the gall to find it annoying. All that Jonathan wanted to do was to drown in his records, fantasize about running way, and be rude to his mother. He didn’t even know how good he had it.
In comparison, fourteen-year-old Will was practically an angel. Although, that’s generally true of Will and Jonathan at every age.
“That’s a bit dramatic.” He chuckles, trying for light and airy. “Anyway, isn’t that what I’m here for?”
“No, that’s not what you’re here for.”
Another thing about Will that has changed: he can (and will) put Jonathan in his place these days. Without hesitation, too.
“Look, I won’t pretend like it didn’t hurt my feelings sometimes,” he sounds out. Still doesn’t feel right. Regardless, he perseveres. “When I’d ask you something in passing, and you’d ignore me, it felt like—I don’t know, like you hated me or something.”
He realises his mistake just as a fervent panic lights Will’s eyes up. Fuckshitfuck. Internally, he holds up a finger before Steve can run his mouth.
“I don’t hate you,” Will says, and there’s such an urgency in his voice that his hands practically itch to reach out. “Jonathan, I don’t.”
“I know that,” he replies quickly. There’s some desperation in his voice, too. Not sure where that came from. “No damage done, I promise.”
“But you just said—”
“It’s how I felt at the time.” Jonathan has to commend himself. It takes true skill, to dig himself into a hole this deep singlehandedly. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
He can feel it coming, the mounting urge to make a speech Will is inevitably going to groan at. The problem being: that’s never been enough reason to deter him. The problem being: he doesn't really see any other way out. Trust your gut, that’s what Mom always told him.
“Listen, Will.” Screw it, screw it, screw it, he’s doing it. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s pretty normal to be really fucking mad at the world when you’re young. I was so mad all the time, when I was that age.”
“You didn’t take it out on other people, though.”
“Maybe not on you.” Jonathan snorts. “And you didn’t take it out on other people, either. As far as I remember it, certain other people took their shit out on you.”
Will honest-to-God gapes. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
Jonathan blinks in mock surprise. “What?”
“Anyway,” Will bulldozes past, shaking his head in disbelief. “I wasn’t talking about certain other people, I was talking about you.”
“It’s your birthright to take things out on me,” he says simply. And before Will can interrupt, “Jokes apart, though, my point is: you were in a new place dealing with a lot of difficult stuff and you reacted—all things considered—pretty reasonably. Better than I would’ve, better than most people would’ve. You deserved to blow some steam off, and I know it didn’t mean anything more. And it’s normal, and all your friends did it, too, and I did it, and Nancy did it, and Mom probably did it when she was a kid. And it’s not something to beat yourself up about.”
Will stares, eyes unfocused in a way that makes Jonathan feel like he’s seeing right through him. Then, he mumbles, “That’s a lot of points.”
“Well, they’re excellent points,” he counters. “And I’m not willing to move on till you’ve agreed to all of them.”
Does the intensity of his voice throw that joke off? Probably, supplies Steve. But Will seems to be considering it, so who the hell is a figment of his imagination to question it?
“All of them?”
“Each and every one.”
“Even the last one?”
“Especially the last one.”
“Um.” Will chews on his lip, a characteristic sign of the imminent big decision. Spend yet another evening at Mike’s or go down to the very-cool-very-fancy record store with Jonathan. Finish off the last slice of birthday cake or leave it for tomorrow. Accept or argue.
This is the longest pause of his life.
“Okay, then.”
He inclines his head in surprise. “Okay?”
“Yeah, if you say so.” Will exhales, hitch in his breath so slight it wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone else. And he shifts till he’s settled against the couch beside Jonathan, shoulders bumping into each other. And that’s how you do it, Jonathan gloats in imaginary Steve’s face. “Thanks, by the way.”
Silence settles, stretches. If you say so. He dare not do anything to disrupt it. Five minutes later, Will finds further thoughts he needs to set free. Despite himself, Jonathan smirks. He didn’t even have to be prompted this time.
“I just, I thought you had better things to do,” he says. “Talking to your girlfriend, or your new best friend, or fucking off somewhere to smoke, or whatever. And, like, I know it’s not true, I know it’s not, but it just felt like you didn’t care anymore.”
Jonathan lets the silence re-settle, re-stretch. He’s not sure of what to say, except he is sure of what to say, except he already says it so much, except apparently not enough. He’ll say it, anyway, a fact more than a promise. What’s one more time?
“You’re never gonna get rid of me, y’know.”
“I know that,” Will grumbles. Dismissive, incredulous. Like there isn’t a shadow of doubt. Warmth blooms in Jonathan’s chest for a fleeting few seconds, right up until he starts speaking again. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s stupid but, like, you just kinda gave up if I avoided you the first time, or, like, snapped at you. And, before, you wouldn’t have stopped till I told you what was going on. I know that’s, like, unfair but…”
“It’s not unfair,” he refutes. He thinks idly of the way Will used the word before. Before, when things were right. Before, when Jonathan could make promises and keep them, listen to questions and answer them, identify problems and fix them before they caused trouble. Before, when Will took up one hundred percent of his brain space at any given moment. In many ways, it wasn’t such a bad life. “Why is it unfair? You’re right.”
“No, but, you shouldn’t have to keep doing that.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Jonathan tells him. “But you know me, too. I just—I worry, I can’t help it. It was always gonna be something, if not you. I get worried, and I make it everyone’s problem, and when they don’t have the time for it, I get all up in my head about it and then—”
“Then you get high,” Will supplies. He winces afterwards, like he’s half-afraid the half-joke will make Jonathan storm off and away.
“Right.” Jonathan grimaces. Doesn’t move, glances sideways at him. “My bad.”
“Don’t say that,” he says. His tone is admonishing all of a sudden, apprehension replaced by reprimand. It makes him sit up straighter. “You’re allowed to do what you want, even if I throw a fit about it.”
He can’t help the grin that bursts onto his face. He also can’t help the arm that sneaks around Will’s shoulders. “I appreciate that.”
Call it formulaic, but this is where Jonathan expects their conversation to wind down, taper to a graceful end with allotted time for individual introspection if so required. Beginning, middle, end. Meaty conflict, adequate resolution. All in a day’s work.
Clearly, he should know better than to assume things by now.
“Is that why you didn’t want to go to college?” Will says suddenly, and his heart leaps up into his throat. “Because you thought I wouldn’t approve?”
College—in a vague, all-encompassing way—was the catalyst for the biggest of their very many fights in California. Will found out about his Emerson application, its non-existence and distant abandonment, and got all worked up about it. Bluntly, stubbornly, he wouldn’t fucking stop demanding answers, and Jonathan’s not proud of it, but he couldn’t take it after a point. Fourteen-year-old baby child throwing around big words like aspirations and potential and future, as if he knew anything about anything, as if Jonathan wasn’t doing this for him. Will said, are you seriously going to throw your life away like this, and he said, maybe if you did the laundry once in a while instead of giving me attitude all the time—
Yeah.
Will showed up in his doorway that night, fumbled load of laundry tucked under one arm. On the verge of tears. Got hugged and held and doted on, by Jonathan’s guilty conscience more than Jonathan himself. Got it drilled into his head that everyone messed up the first time. It all worked out in the end, a rare moment of breakthrough, but it still does keep him up at night, sometimes.
“Um,” he says now. No other words come out. He clears his throat, to no avail.
“You don’t have to say,” Will offers tentatively. “If you don’t want to.”
He thinks he said it because there was a small, bitter part of him that agreed with Will. And he didn’t actually have a good answer for either of them, not one that felt right in his mouth. As a matter of fact, he still doesn’t. Not for Will, not for Nancy, and not for any part of himself, small or otherwise.
“It’s not because of what you said,” he reassures. Someday, he’s going to be able to sort out his thoughts on the matter. Someday, when the world stops ending and he stops sleeping on a basement couch. That day, he’ll tell Will all about it. “But since you’re offering, I think I’ll pass on the long and short of it for now.”
Will nods gravely, sadly, like he knows what Jonathan is thinking. “Can we say sorry now?”
Something inside him weakly protests. “You already said sorry.”
“Can I say it.” Will pauses. “Um, how would Dad put it—with my chest?”
Jonathan raises his eyebrows in momentary shock. When was the last time that Will brought Dad up first? When was the last time, if ever, that he poked fun at him? Interesting questions, no doubt, but not immediately important. More pressing is the one reflected on Will’s face, growing swiftly more unsure with every second of withheld permission. Too much?
He’s learnt his lesson; he will not preach what he does not practice. Ergo, the answer is: not really, not even close.
“If you insist.”
Will deflates in relief. He takes a deep breath, in and out. “I’m sorry for taking my bad moods out on you, and, uh, for not telling you what those bad moods were about. And for not letting you help when you tried.” There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes when he finally looks up. “And, uh, for judging your lifestyle, even if it was annoying and gross.”
“I’m sorry for being annoying and gross,” he replies dutifully. Will giggles, spurring him on. “And, uh, generally unapproachable. And for not being there. And, uh, for trying to be there in ways that were frustrating and unhelpful to you.”
Will considers it for a long moment. Then, smile slowly creeping onto his face, he says, “So you’re saying you can’t read my mind? That’s pathetic, Jonathan.”
“Well,” he muses. “If you always used your big boy words like this, I wouldn’t have to.”
“You’re going to regret saying that when I never talk to you about anything ever again.”
He laughs. Squeezes Will’s shoulder, once-twice-thrice, then lets it go to stand up and clamber back onto the couch. He feels—good. Sated, like he belongs in his own skin. The two of them just cleared up years-old confusions. Steve has long since dissolved into nothingness. Will smiles up at him and lies down, his sheets murmuring as he pulls his covers up to his chin. Then, blissful quiet, inside and outside.
He's just about ready to pass out, he thinks.
Like magic, sleep wraps itself around the edges of his consciousness right one cue. He is half-in, half-out, absentmindedly listening to the sound of Will’s breathing. One, two, three, four. The pleasant haze digs its claws in deeper. He is surely not making it to ten. Seven, eight. What comes after that? Nine—
“Will you let me try?”
Will’s words jerk him back to reality. He tries to blink away the groggy disorientation. “Try what?”
“Weed.”
He may actually be already dreaming.
“Thought you said it was annoying and gross.”
“It is.”
“So…”
“Just, hypothetically. Would you let me try?”
Jonathan thinks about it. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not for little kids to dabble in.”
Will makes an undefined noise of protest. It intensifies when Jonathan laughs at him. “I hate you.”
“That’s too bad,” Jonathan says. “I love you.”
All is as it should be.