Author's Note: Hi y'all! Just wanted to let you know that this is up on A03 too, and a few of you have noticed and notified me, which I appreciate. My user is the same if you want to check it out: chattrekisses. Thanks for all the support my lovely nerdy children!
So they were dressing shopping.
That was a thing.
Apparently, so was flirting with Will, and Troy wasn't complaining. His face was, from it's untoward amount of blushing, but otherwise, Troy felt… well, there wasn't really a word for it. He flipped through more dresses, rubbing the silky fabric between his thumb and forefinger carefully. The feeling of Will actually responding to his without being disgusted was electric. The feeling of Will accidently brushing his elbow and not apologizing, but maintaining eye contact just a moment too long was doing strange things to Troy. He felt like his stomach was carbonated, bubbly and threatening to take him over with happiness. He-
"Sparkly." Came a voice by Troy's right ear, surprising him and nearly making him jump out of his skin. It was El, carrying a mountain of ridiculous gaudy and sequined dresses. She held them up for him to inspect. "These are sparkly." Troy waited a moment, but El was still offering the dresses to him, so he reluctantly took them.
"Um… yeah. These certainly are sparkly, El." He said. And they were, they caught the light and reflected it, and Troy felt like he was carrying a disco ball. "Are you planning on trying them on?"
El wrinkled her nose. "No."
Troy's eyebrows creased. "Then why the hell would you give 'em to me?" He asked, but not unkindly. His speech still had mannerisms typically geared towards being mean, but El bypassed his blip in kindness with ease.
She poked him in the chest and said, "You are feeling sparkly, right? These are sparkly too, like you."
"Sparkly?" Troy asked in confusion.
"Sparkly." El confirmed. She then pointed to his stomach. "You feel sparkly here, right? When you talk to Will? It's like how I feel when I talk to Mike."
Though El was right, Troy winced, not at her words, but her volume. He spent a solid minute looking around and making sure Will was in earshot. He finally spotted Will by the shoes, tapping each heel against the palm of his hand, seemingly trying to see which one was the pointiest.
"I do feel sparkly," Troy said, voice hushed, face red. "But you can't tell him, okay?"
"Okay." El hummed. She tapped the sparkly dresses. "You should ask him to the Snow Ball."
"Oh, my god, I couldn't do that. I could not do that. That would be… no. He wouldn't say yes, and even if he did, then everyone would know!" Troy bumbled.
"Know what?" El asked, tipping her head to the side.
"That I…" He dropped his voice lower, to a whisper. "That I like boys."
El shrugged. "Why do you care what they think?"
Troy opened his mouth to respond, but he didn't have an answer.
El hummed knowingly, and then started to walk away. "You should talk to him."
And then she disappeared in the racks of clothes.
"Jesus." Troy cursed and frowned at the pile of sparkly dresses in his arms. His eyebrows furrowed and he huffed, dropping the dresses in the middle of the aisle, then gingerly stepping over them. He was not going to be seen with those sparkly monstrosities a moment longer. He then sucked in a breath, and huffed, stomping over to Will.
He came up behind Will, hands fisted in his pockets, breath shallow with nervousness. "Hey." He said.
Will jumped at the unexpected voice and spun around, face-to-face with Troy. "Oh! Hi!" Will held up a pastel purple pump with a good six-inch heel for Troy to inspect. "These are ridiculous, aren't they? How can anyone walk in them? They're like… like… um…"
"Stilts?" Troy offered, taking the shoe from Will. Sparks of electricity shot through Troy where his fingers brushed Will's.
"Yeah! Stilts. They're like stilts." Will grinned at Troy, and Troy ducked his his head, blushing hard. He stared pointedly at the shoe.
"If El wore these, she could stab anybody who tried to mess with her. She'd be freaking dangerous." Troy said.
"El's already dangerous." Will said with a brisk smile.
Troy's eyebrows drew together. "What?"
"You know that though. She apologized for breaking your arm, right?" Will asked. He tapped his lip thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure I was supposed to remind her to do that… did I remind her?"
"Wait, what?" Troy stiffened, eyes wild. "That was El?"
"Yeah… did she not apologize? I'm sure she just forgot too, I'll remind her-" Will started, but Troy cut him off.
"It all makes sense now! Jesus. Wow. Okay then." Troy ground the toe of his shoe into the floor. "I deserved it anyway." He blew out a sigh, feeling like he might cry. "God, I've been such an asshole…"
Will's voice went soft and he laid a hand on Troy's arm. "Hey, it's okay. We've all done bad things, but that doesn't make us bad people. You aren't a bad person, Troy. You're trying, and that's what matters."
Troy tried to suppress the hope bubbling in his chest, but he couldn't help it, the feeling - sparkly, like El said- was consuming him. "Are you going to the Snow Ball?" Troy asked, his words rushing and tumbling over one another nervously.
"Hmm?" Will look up in mild shock, like he hadn't been expecting the question and he didn't know what to think or say. "Um… I… I don't know. I wasn't planning to, but maybe? I was going to watch Star Wars but…" Will spotted the deflating expression on Troy's face and quickly amended. "I wouldn't be opposed to going! I just don't know who I would go with…"
"Um… would you maybe want to…" Troy mumbled, looking down at the floor. He felt the anxiety fizz in his chest. "Go in a group or something? With Lucas and Dustin?" He winced, terrified and angry at himself for wimping out and not just asking him, but still frightened of Will's answer.
A smile creeped across Will's face. "Okay."
"Yeah?" Troy said, trying to contain his happiness.
"Yeah." Will confirmed. "I'll ask Lucas and Dustin about it tonight, okay? How can I… contact you, I guess? Do you have a phone or a-"
"I have a walkie-talkie… it's a supercom." Troy rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment, cheeks pinking. "I know it's kind of dorky…"
"I have one too!" Will grinned. "We all do, actually. Tune into channel six, and I'll let you know, okay?"
"Great!" Troy said, rocking back and forth on his heels. "I'm excited." He confessed.
"I'm kind of nervous." Will said, pulling a dress from a rack near them. "I've never been to a dance before." He scrutinized the pink dress. It was satin-y and had a scalloped hem. "Do you think El would like this one?"
"You've never been to a dance before?" Troy asked. He eyed the dress and shrugged. "I don't know much about dresses. Maybe we should just show her?"
"Okay." Will said, carefully draping the dress over his arm. "I've just never felt the need to go. It doesn't seem that fun." He realized his words and quickly amended. "It doesn't seem fun if you don't have anyone to go with, and I'm going with you, and Lucas and Dustin, so…" His voice trailed off and his shoulders pulled up towards his ears. "I don't know."
"I think it'll be fun. I hope it'll be fun." Troy said. He was scared, terrified really of what people might say or how they might react to seeing him go to a dance with Will, Lucas, and Dustin. That in itself would rock the boat, but what if people knew that Troy had wanted to go just with Will? What if they knew he wanted to go with Will because he liked Will? Romantically?
The boat wouldn't rock, it'd flip clean over.
"If it gets weird, we can hide outside." Troy offered. "Or we could bike home."
"Maybe we could watch Star Wars at Mike's after!" Will said, and Troy could hear the excitement building in his voice. "He has the best TV."
"I've never actually seen Star Wars." Troy admitted.
"What?" Will asked, looking personally affronted by the information. "That's ridiculous. It's a classic. We have to watch it. We'll watch it after the dance, at Mike's."
"Yeah?" Troy asked. He was so damn hopeful, finally having the opportunity to have friends, maybe, a crush, maybe, all the maybe's were swirling up inside Troy. He was sickeningly happy.
"Yeah." Will smiled, like the ray of sunshine he was, and awkwardly patted Troy on the shoulder, sending a bolt of electricity through the other boy. "Come on, let's show the dress to El."
"Okay." Troy replied, and they went off, searching for El. They found her by the changing room, holding a pile of pink dresses. When she saw the one Will was holding though, she dropped the pile. Luckily, Troy had been expecting this, and he caught them before they hit the floor. El said nothing, just took the dress from Will with a smile, and disappeared into the changing room. Troy and Will tapped their feet anxiously, stealing glances at each other while they waited for El to come out.
When she finally did, they knew that it was the perfect dress for her. Satin and pink, with thick straps and a scalloped bodice with a matching scalloped hem.
"Perfect." Was all El said.
And perfect it was.
Nancy was off looking for shoes for El, so Jonathan and Steve stood together, observing Troy and Will talking and blushing together.
Steve grinned and ran a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. "I think my brother likes your brother."
Jonathan tilted his head, watching the two of them was casual interest. Obviously, Troy was interested in Will. He was bright red and sputtering half the time, and Will didn't seem to mind. In fact, Will seemed to be receptive to Troy's clumsy advances, which was a little shocking to Jonathan. He thought that Will liked Mike, but from Will's ease and subtle flirtation with Troy, Jonathan inferred that Will must not like Mike anymore. Jonathan trusted his brother, and he knew that Will would never lead anyone on (honestly, he probably wasn't even capable of the notion of doing that), so he must actually be interested in Troy.
Will was much more comfortable around Troy than he was around Mike when he had liked him. He also seemed happier, brighter somehow, and Jonathan was happy to see his brother happy.
"I think that my brother likes your brother." He answered, and he wasn't lying.
"Good." Steve said. "They both deserve something good in their lives."
Jonathan nodded, and then turned to Steve. "We're friends, right?"
A smile creeped over Steve's face, slow and honest. "I hope so."
"Good." Jonathan said. "We deserve something good in our lives, too."
"You already have something good in your life." Steve pointed out. "Nancy."
"Yeah." Jonathan smiled and shifted, happiness bubbling inside of him. "Well, then you deserve something good in your life."
"Really?" Steve asked.
"Really."
And everything was alright.
Author's Note: CHILDREN! Hullo. Hope you enjoyed, sorry it took so long, sorry it's so short, check out my Stranger Things insta ( strangerschnapple) and my Riverdale insta ( bettycoope.r), and my other platforms this is on (A03, Wattpad, and ), yada yada, self-promo, yada yada, I love you all, yada yada.