Archive of Our Own ^beta

Will’s high. Really fuckin’ high. 

High enough that his mouth feels like it’s been sealed shut and he’s doing what he can only describe as “manually breathing”. He is hyper conscious of the fabric of his flannel pajama pants bunching under his knees where he sits against the wall, and somehow the feeling is simultaneously so far away. He has a fleeting thought about Doritos somewhere in his mind. 

Mostly, though, all he can really think about is Mike, breathing slow and soft next to him. The gentle “huff” of it sounds like a fucking foghorn in the silence.

…Look, Will’s only really ever been high one other time. 

Right when Jonathan started smoking, he tentatively offered to “share a bowl” with Will. Let him “take a rip”, while Joyce and El went to some work “Ladies Night” event or something. 

And Will is under no delusions as to who he is—be it Hawkins or Lenora, he’s a Grade A Loser. No one would ever invite his lame, DnD playing self to a high school party. He knew that when he was 12 and he knows that at 15. So sue him if he was curious just once about what it would be like to be a normal fucking kid.

Well, Will Byers doesn’t get that luxury, apparently.

It was just Will’s luck that as Jonathan cranked his music and sauntered on into the kitchen to pop a frozen pizza in the oven, Will was laying flat on his back in Jonathan’s room, being hit full force with the concept of Michael Theodore Wheeler. 

Like, full force.

Will, through a daze, could only picture Mike behind his eyes. His spindly hands. The way his bangs just barely brushed the top of his eyebrows. His freckles, spattered across his nose like the first summer rain on dimpled Hawkins pavement. 

And for the first time, he wasn’t embarrassed about it at all. Not even a little bit. 

He knows that being gay isn’t… well, not not normal. But he knows it’s not something he wants to parade around, at least. It scares him. And besides—regardless, whoever it is, loving as a whole feels a little hard for Will. It’s a little alien, to trust someone like that—romantically, at least. But something about Mike has always felt so right—there’s nothing bad about Mike—no, about loving Mike. It’s never been hard at all.

But it’s still scary. Sometimes.

So this time, he was full of something incredulous when that fear was gone. Poof. Like magic. No undercurrent of mortification that he’s gone and done what every high school girl hopes to do and fallen in love with his best friend. No rippling terror over loving at all—loving a boy, nonetheless.

All Will could think over and over again, like a prayer, was Mike, Mike, Mike.

When Jonathan came in to check on him next, glass of water in hand, Will was sitting bolt upright. All he said was, ”El’s door doesn’t have a lock, right?” 

And for the next 2 hours as Jonathan dozed off next to him on his bed, Will sat there and drew. After stumbling into his sister’s room and pulling that shitty Polaroid of him off her wall (the one where he’s in blue, he’s scrunching his nose like a fucking loser, he’s looking—okay, he’ll admit it—very handsome), he put Mike to paper. Just from his memory and one photo alone, he conjured Mike up and spat him out into his sketchbook like it was nothing.

He’d done it a million times before—in the margins of biology notes, underneath a pop quiz about Of Mice and Men. But this time felt different. He couldn’t place it though, until he woke up the next morning. 

Picture Jonathan, still in his bed beside him, fast asleep. Will, rolling over, bleary eyed. He chugged what felt like a gallon of water and then, with horrific embarrassment, felt everything come back to him at once.

He scrambled for his sketchbook and there it was, plain as day. The whole thing made his heart sink and soar in some twisted sort of gymnastics move. It was the best thing he’d ever drawn.

The whole thing screamed, unabashedly, I love you.

He just put the whole sketchbook in a backpack. Hid it away. Started a new one (only after having a small panic attack, both about the sketch and burning through another sketchbook when the other isn’t full), hastily pinned the Polaroid back up in the room next door, and pretended like the whole thing never happened. After that, Will swore he wouldn’t smoke again. 

It was just too fucking embarrassing, okay? For that door to be open that wide? Like, Jesus Christ. Usually he has a tight lid on whatever lame crush he has on Mike Fucking Wheeler, partially because that’s his best friend and mostly because hello, he loves his sister (because even if they broke up when they all got to Hawkins, it feels like he’d be a shitty brother to go after his sister’s one and only ex, if he even could)—but there’s something about weed that not only tears the lid off but throws it halfway across the room.

(Will isn’t going near alcohol with a forty-foot pole. So it’s being a loser for William Jay Byers forever, he assumes.)

…Until Mike comes to him (in the middle of an apocalypse, no less), and with that sweet little smile he reserves for Will and only Will (God damnit.), he makes a snarky joke about dying before he ever gets to do one regular teenage rebellion, that isn’t “ like, slaying monsters or some shit ”. 

And who is Will to say no?

So in the Wheeler basement, surrounded by pages and pages of art (Will’s art, his brain supplies helpfully) on the walls, and the impending doom of a dimensional collapse, Mike and Will get stoned. They get stoned in their childhood basement. 

You’ve got to be kidding me. 

The cliche of this isn’t lost on him, as he stares right ahead from his spot on the floor. They’ve always been Mike and Will. MikeandWill . One word. They do everything together. Duh, Mike would rather get high with him than anyone else. Sure, Lucas has gotten drunk before, woke up with a gnarly hangover, and still biked seven miles. Maybe Dustin babysat Steve and Robin after being drugged by Russians. They’ve both had some kind of… experience . But Lucas and Dustin aren’t Will, so it doesn’t even matter. Mike wanted Will, which should probably make him feel a little crazier than it does, but it doesn't—because that's just how they are. Growing up, the two of them shared everything—interests, hobbies, action figures. Hell, even their birthdays were close enough together to have joint birthday parties. No matter how they’ve fought as teens, nothing can take away that little thing that nags at both of them to gravitate back. MikeandWill.

Still, it’s humiliating for Will—he’s living out every trope in the book. It’s somewhere around 2am, and through the fog (and mild panic building inside of him) he can tell that he honestly, more than anything, just feels really tired. 

They're sitting side by side, not doing much. Back flush up against the couch, Mike is less than a foot away from him (six inches, really, but who’s counting?), and he’s tapping his feet in some unidentifiable rhythm like he does when he’s thinking. He looks almost… a little dizzy? As if someone spun him like a top then sat him right back down. 

He’s half humming, half mumbling some song that he played for Will earlier in the night—something by Sparks?—and his curls are bouncing along with whatever beats he hits, bobbing his head in time to the thumping of his toes. 

He looks young. Childish. A portrait of innocence that neither of them ever had the luxury of having. For once, Mike sort of actually looks his age—15, carefree. Stupid.

He looks… adorable.

This was a bad idea. He’s gonna regret this forever, isn’t he.

Nevermind. Fuck tired. Will is trying not to positively lose his shit right now.

And right as he’s about to hit a breaking point, Mike starts giggling just under his breath. He ditches the humming, letting the thing build until he’s snickering—until he’s toeing the line of a full-on cackle.

Will lets his head swing over, heavy and full, to look at Mike. “Dude.” Watching his shoulders heave with his laugh is starting to make Will crack too. “Dude. You’re gonna wake your family up.” 

Mike is choking through a breath. “Oh my god, I—I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing. It’s just—that’s the funny part. M……my dad. My dad is upstairs right now, Will. My dad. Can you imagine if he knew we were—“ He looks at him, red in the face, eyes widening, and mouths the next few words with absolutely no subtlety: “getting stoned in my basement.” 

Will’s face starts to twist up in spite of himself. “Oh my god, stop.” He pictures Ted Wheeler in his head and starts to grin. “Stop it.” 

Mike folds over in the middle, dropping his head between his knees with a bounce. Somewhere in the back of his head Will thinks that he moves like a cartoon character. It’s endearing. “Can you fucking imagine what he would say to me right now?” 

Before Will can answer, the other jumps up to his feet, all limbs and angles, clumsy and delicate at the same time—

Stop it. 

 —and puffs his chest out. He puts his hands on his hips and does his best to frown.

“Son, I’m very disappointed in you. I always knew you’d be some good-for-nothing shithead but this is a new low. Who knows where you’ll end up after this.” 

And the impression is so bad, so simultaneously un-Ted-like and so-very-Ted-Wheeler that Will is practically tearing up, hands folded over his middle and whole body shaking with laughter. “Mike, sit down!! You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

Because Mike has started parading around the room pointing at things and giving them disapproving glares over the top of a mimed newspaper, and he can barely hold the face long enough to get the joke across before he starts snickering again and moves on to the next thing. 

It’s making Will lose his shit. In a good way. 

It’s really, really endearing.

“ Mike !” He stands up, stumbling a little bit on the way up, legs barely holding himself up through the giggles, and he grabs Mike by the shoulders, and shakes him just a little bit. “Stop it or else I will seriously pee my pants, it is not even funny.” 

The shaking seems to rattle something back into place, because the look falls from Mike’s face and all that’s left is his heavy lidded eyes ( Brown, so so so dark brown— ) and a smile dancing across his lips ( Mistake. Look back at the eyes. ) He lingers for a minute, like that. Looking at Will, starry-eyed and shaky. 

He feels like he’s gotten the air knocked out of his lungs. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fu—

Mike’s face suddenly plunges back into barely contained glee. 

“It would be a little funny. If you peed your pants.”

“Mike !!” Will gives him a shove, something empty of malice, and flops back down onto the floor. Mike is laughing again, reeling from the force. Will’s face is surely as red as the blanket strewn over the arm of the couch and he’s not really sure what to do about the speed at which his hands are starting to sweat. 

This was a really bad idea. High Mike is goofy. High Mike is silly, like Mike used to be before the world fell apart. Right now, everything feels almost normal. And Mike’s being a fucking ham, like he used to be, and it’s way too fucking endearing. Everything about him is. Fuck.

Will takes a shuddering breath. Fuck. 

After a minute Mike plunks back down next to him. (Is he insane, or are they closer this time?) He sighs as he goes. With the exhale, Will feels his mood shift. “What?”

“What?” Mike looks at Will. (He needs to stop doing that.) He’s got the question written right on his face. Complete open book. 

Just for me, though. Like a secret language.

“You have something to say.” It’s a statement. 

“How do you do that every time?” Mike’s voice goes fuzzy without warning. Will swallows thick. (They really should’ve gotten cups of water, or something.)

“Uh… what do you mean?”

“I… I dunno. You always just know when something's up with me. It’s like a sixth sense.” He nudges Will, sloppily and just a bit too firm. “Maybe you’re the one with superpowers.” 

His face shifts again. Mike’s looking at him with something soft and messy in his eyes and Will, through about three or four drags of the world’s worst joint (Why the fuck would he know how to roll something like that? Jonathan gave him one shit lesson and then Will had to just know how to do it after that? Give him a break.) is pleading with his heart not to hope.

No superpowers. Just a secret language.

Didn’t you call me a super spy?

He shrugs back. “Mm. Just a hunch I guess.” Mike looks back down at the carpet as Will says, “You always make jokes about the things that feel the worst to you.”

Mike makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. “Maybe.” He nudges—shoves, really—Will another time for good measure. “Don’t perceive me, Byers. Don’t you know I’m unknowable?” 

The thought of Mike having any mystery at all makes Will smile. “Yeah, to the rest of the world, maybe. I watched you throw your calculator at the wall in fifth grade when we almost couldn’t complete our science fair project.” He can picture him now, about seven inches shorter and wearing a striped sweater. A little boy full of rage and determination to pull this shitty thing off, damnit!! 

They won that year. Will still has the photo pinned next to his light switch—like he waves goodbye to his friends every time he leaves his room. 

It’s one of the only pictures he's ever seen Mike smile in. He ripped up the only other one that maybe ever existed.

Mike lets out a breathy laugh. “You got me there.” He draws his knees up to his chin, crunching himself up like those fortune tellers that El likes to fold. “I’m just frustrated, I guess. We’ve saved the world like five times and my dad still thinks I’m an idiot. And it’s stupid, to be frustrated about, y’know? But…We’ve saved a lot of lives, Will.” He trails off, and Will thinks he’s done, and opens his mouth, before Mike adds, like a throwaway: “We saved you. That’s worth something to me, at least.”

Will’s teeth click shut. Blame it on the pot, blame it on the fact that Will is a Grade A Loser, blame it on whatever you fucking like. Blame it on the fact that Will had just reread all his favorite fairytales to El in a quiet attempt to soothe her to sleep, most likely. But the mental imagery of Mike, like a shining knight, all swoopy hair, silver and armor, whisking Will away from danger was kind of making him a little insane.

(No, okay. Definitely blame it on the pot. This was getting out of hand.)

Shake it off, move on, dude. He needs you.

Okay. Deep breath. He can work with this.

If there’s anything Will knows how to relate to, it’s fucked up dads.

“H-he just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.” Will mimics Mike’s position, twisting his head and resting his cheek on his knee, head craning to peer at him. “I don’t think your dad knows the first thing about you.” 

His eyes were feeling particularly dry and itchy for a moment. He felt like he’d want nothing more than to close them, just for a bit, and maybe even doze off. But as Mike mimicked him, tilting his head and looking at him with all that behind his eyes, Will suddenly feels like maybe he could run a mile.

(He’s trying not to get his hopes up. He really is. But he’s seen that before. And he doesn’t want to think too hard about where.)

Polaroid, not on the desk, in a little box. Two (maybe three?) summers ago. A grassy hill.

…Fucking quit it.

Mike smiles at him, gently. Inquisitive. “Oh yeah? And what’s the first thing about me?”

Like clockwork, Will’s brain gives him the answer. 

That I love you. You’re easy to love. You’re one of a kind. I don’t have a sixth sense, I just need you so much that it scares the fuck out of me sometimes. I think about what life could’ve been if you didn’t come to me on the swings that day and it makes my whole world fall apart. 

He doesn’t know so much about you. That you’re actually very funny, for one. That you’re kind. That you’re selfless. That you’re actually also really fucking selfish sometimes, and that you make me want to tear my hair out, but you also know exactly what I need and when I need it every time. You make everything better. You can’t communicate a word you feel to anyone in this world but you always say it to me. Why do you know how to say it to me? Is there maybe something you want to say to me? Hey, back to the first part, did you know that I love you? Did you know that I always have? 

Did you know, it’s like breathing to me?

Did you know: that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known?

He doesn’t say any of that.

But he is feeling bold. He thinks this must be how it feels to want to flirt. Well, how it feels to want to flirt without feeling like you’re gonna throw up about it. So he gives an answer while somewhere inside of him something protests. 

“I dunno. You tell me, Mike. What is the first thing about you?” 

Something flickers across Mike’s face. Unreadable. Unknowable. That’s bad. Shit. What? Did he strike a nerve? Will knew this was a bad idea. Shit shit shit shit.

“I… I don’t think that I…” His face screws up, all the pieces in his head moving at rapid fire. It’s freaking Will out. “I don’t think that I’m the person that everyone thinks I am.” 

Huh? That’s an unexpected answer. “What? What do you mean? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah! No, yeah, everything is fine. I just… I think maybe that you were right. In the desert. And it’s scary to open up or whatever, so I guess I don’t really do it. And then it makes me realize, y’know, that people just… don’t really know me.”

“What about me?” It pushes past Will’s lips before he can even think twice. “Do I know you?” As soon as he says it, Mike locks eyes with him. The silence stretches out wide and flat between them. It’s thick, it’s stifling. It’s almost electric. They just sit there, heads tilted, staring at each other, and it’s another one of those new silences they have, even after the last two years, that just can’t be explained by anything but—

No. It’s not that.

For the millionth time that night, their brains both kick into gear at the same time: Will opens his mouth to backtrack, and Mike pushes forward. 

“Sorry, that was a wei—“

“I think I might like boys.” 

What.

“What.”

Mike laughs very, very nervously. He sits all the way up, breaking their mirror, sits cross-legged, won’t look at Will. “Y. Yeah. Yeah! Sorry, this was fucking stupid, I really wanted to tell somebody and I thought maybe it would be easier—“ He’s pulling at the dirty old carpet like it’s weeds on a baseball field. “I-I don’t even know, sorry, I just thought maybe if I was fucked up it would be easier but it’s…it’s you, so I don’t know why like, drugs would make it easier because everything is always easy to tell you? And I know I said somebody but that’s a lie, I wanted to tell you, which is silly, this whole thing is really so stupid but you’re my best friend and I’ve just been having this insane epiphany over the summer you were— I mean when you were in California it was so fucked up Will, I was just so sad every day and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it— I like… du-dudes? Who of our friends would even understand that? But I knew you would, but-but-but it’s so scary to talk about and my dad is such an asshole about it on the news. Like God how can you be so— whatever, so I wasn’t gonna tell anyone ever because it’s so confusing because I knew I still loved El but there was something else nagging at me like ‘Hey, dude! You seemed to reaaally love Back to the Future, and it’s starting to seem like it’s not just the plot!’ And I just wanted to run from it, and—“ 

Will is frozen where he’s sitting. His mouth is eight times drier than it was seconds ago. I think I might like boys.

Okay. That’s it. Now he’s losing his shit. For real this time.

Will bursts at the seams, until he pops. It’s an inhuman noise. Like a howl, really. He’s laughing, so uncontrollably, it’s bubbling out of him and it stops Mike dead in his tracks, frozen, eyes wide and watery. Like a deer in headlights.

The shuffling beside him makes Will look up, and he realizes what he’s doing and he gasps, a strangled little thing.

“No! No no no, Mike wait listen—“ Because Mike is standing up off the floor and it looks like he’s crying at least a little bit, he’s got so much hurt in his eyes, and Will is somewhere between panicking and feeling slightly delirious and he’s just so full of laughter, and he can’t get it out of him right so he just sits up next to Mike and grabs him by the wrist, halfway still out of breath, and blurts out: “I’m gay.”

Mike turns around so fast that Will could’ve sworn he should’ve broken his neck. And it only makes Will laugh harder, so hard he’s about to cry, because Mike Wheeler is in front of him stoned as shit in his childhood basement and he likes boys too.

“Wait, are you…?” The shock is plain as day on his face. “You can’t—please don't—you can’t joke about this, man, I really am not kidding. I mean it.” All of a sudden, something darkens. “D…don’t fucking— Will. Will, man, don’t say that shit if you don’t really—“ His voice is shaking, his hands are shaking, everything about Mike is terrified. It’s a look Will’s never really seen on him. “ I fucking mean it, I—”

“No, Mike, all the rumors were true. Y-you spent years defending me but they were right. I’m fucking gay.”

This has got to be a dream, right? This has to be fake. This is all fake. Will is gonna wake up in a cold sweat in his California room, no gate opened in his hometown, no Max in a hospital bed, no Mike Wheeler wants to kiss boys.

Hey, wait—Mike Wheeler wants to kiss boys.

Oh.

Just like that, Will is done laughing.

Mike is staring at him blankly, eyes flickering around from where Will has a vice grip on his wrist, and then back up again to Will’s eyes, and then somewhere lower down on his face that Will swears is not just the weed.

(Oh.)

He realized what he’s just said, the thing he’s just admitted out loud, and to whom, and what’s going on. He feels a little embarrassed. A fierce heat prickles up into his cheeks, bursting all red, and he watches the same color glow over Mike’s face. 

Oh.

Holy shit. Oh holy fucking shit.

“You’re serious?” Mike is sinking down onto the floor in front of Will now, moving like he’s come across a wounded animal in the woods. Moving like there’s an otherworldly monster in front of him. Moving like he’ll scare Will off if he moves too fast, which is ridiculous, because Will is pretty sure nothing he could ever do would scare him.

And, okay, yes, Will’s high. But Mike looks like a masterpiece right now.

The basement is lit only by the soft lamp in the corner, casting a gentle yellow light over the whole scene. It’s lighting up the black of Mike’s hair in a way that turns the whole thing a gooey dark brown, amber at the edges. He’s wearing some baby blue Emerson crewneck (probably a gift from Nancy) and his old Hawkins Middle P.E. shorts (which barely fit him anymore). Crouching, every muscle in this boy is poised to run. He’s all the right colors, the black of his shorts and the black of his hair linking the whole composition in front of Will together, contrasting the light light light of the baby blue, the yellow thrown across the room. The pink in Mike’s cheeks is this perfect final touch. His freckles are poking out from underneath it. He’s echoing a Hawkins wildflower field. Delicate. Breathtaking.

More than anything, right now, Will wants to paint. He likes charcoal, he likes pencils, he likes clay. But he wants to paint this. Brushes and pallet knives and thick chunks of acrylic clumped up. A thinned-out wash for the light in the back. He’s pulling the palette out in his mind, ochre and cerulean and titanium white, just a smidge, for where Mike’s bloodshot eyes are gleaming back at him just above the pupil.

Like a possession, Will reaches out and smooths a thumb across Mike’s flushing cheek, the apple of it, right under his eyes. He’s brushing away the remnants of a tear. There isn’t much under the pad of his finger, but it’s still a bit damp, and it’s breaking Will’s heart. It’s a bold move. He does it anyway.

“Yes. I’m serious.”

And I love you. It’s boys, it’s always been boys. Ever since I was little, I just knew. I had no moment of realization, no push for anything but the plain knowledge that I liked something that I wasn’t supposed to. And it was terrifying.

But it was never so scary when it was you. It never felt so suffocating. And I think it’s always been you. I’m serious about that too. So serious that I think it’s becoming a part of me—second nature, really. To love you. Do you feel it too?

I hope you do.

Mike sucks in a breath. Will’s lip quivers.

Wait. What the FUCK is going on.

The moment hits him like a truck. It’s overwhelming.

Panic shoots through him. Will pulls his hand back like he’s been burned, pulls his hand back from Mike’s wrist. Tucks his whole self in, pulling his grey thermal sleeves over his fingers. 

(Even if he likes boys, that doesn’t mean Mike likes him. He’s being insane. He’s doing it again. It’s the weed. It’s all in his head. Fuck being bold, what is he thinking .)

The movement startles Mike. He plops down onto his ass with an unceremonious thunk, that coiled thing in his demeanor uncoiled. “U-uh. Woah. Seriously?”

Just like that, the magic in the room is broken. They’re back to being MikeandWill, stoned in a basement.

Damn it.

“Yes, idiot. I wouldn’t lie about that.”  It’s almost snappy, even if he doesn’t mean it. The lines have no real bite to them. He’s just reeling from just about every single thing happening before him, and Will can’t help but let his true emotions show, even if it’s just for a moment. He’s stunned. What the fuck. It’s all just too surreal. “I’ve known since like… forever.” He scrubs his eyes with his sleeved fists. He’s begging for some sense to be scrubbed back into his fucking brain. What is fucking going on right now. “I… I just can’t believe you would tell me right now .”

Sheepishly, Mike scratches his neck. He’s back to being tense again. “I told you it was stupid. I just—“ He throws his hands up in the air. “I’m so fucking nervous! Sue me! Like, El and I just broke up, and telling someone felt l-like an-an-an— an admission of some kind, that there was something fucking wrong with me—“ 

That snaps something back into place in Will. “ Mike .” There’s a firmness there that he didn’t know he had in him. It probably would’ve startled him if he was sober. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You just like who you like, okay?”

…I promise, there’s nothing wrong with you, and I need you to know it. I need you to believe me. Because I cannot let you live your life thinking you’re just as fucked as I am. I need you to love yourself and I need you to know that everything about you is perfect and fine and perfectly fine. I cannot let you hate yourself too. Because you make me feel like this is okay, like this will be okay. 

You make me feel normal again, after everything. You make me feel human. 

Mike shuts up immediately. Nods quietly. His shoulders seem to loosen up, even if it’s just a little bit. And his eyes start to water again a little bit too.

Oh my god.

“Are you really going to c—“

“NoiamnotgoingtocryWilljustgivemeasecondokay.” It tumbles out of him paired with a wet, pathetic, half-smile-half-frown, and Will feels his heart swell as Mike shoves the heels of his palms into his eye sockets.

“Miii-iiike, cmon. You’re ruining the first time you’re ever getting high. You’re high! And your family doesn’t even know!” He’s teasing, gently, tentatively reaching out for his wrists and tugging them down from his eyes, smile playing across his lips, and when Mike looks at him, eyes red and getting redder, pushing into a wobbly grin, he lets out an airy huff.

“I’m high and I like boys and my family doesn’t even know,” He whispers, stifling his laugh. “They have no idea. ”

Will’s grinning too now, feigning irritation with an eye roll. “Lucky. My family definitely knows I’m high.” 

Mike cracks up at this one, knowing it’s Jonathan’s weed. He’s positively roaring with laughter, and he slides his wrists out of Will’s grasp and interlocks their fingers instead.

Will is taken aback by the movement but all he can focus on is goofy Mike, silly Mike, laughing Mike—the little dimple Mike has just below his eye, the way Mike’s forehead creases when he laughs, Mike’s nose crinkling up, just like that picture on El’s—

Too far. Back it up.

Okay, so he focuses on their hands instead, which is a bad idea, because when he finally stops laughing and shaking their hands around (like he’s trying to rattle the joke right out of them), he leaves their fingers intertwined. And he’s looking at Will again, just like that, that little messy thing. That thing that makes his eyes blur a little bit and his brows ease up. Then, (Will can see it on his face. Superspy .) Mike’s got a question.

Will knows the question before Mike can even get there.

“Jonathan knows too. His weed, his secret to keep too, I guess.”

The other boy frowns, and Will’s face is somewhere damn near close. He hates this—the weight of this thing, of being gay. It’s hard enough to try to drown out that voice in his head (which sounds suspiciously like his dad’s) and carry on pretending he’s…normal, or whatever. And now he’s going to be questioned? By Mike?  

It was hard enough to tell-not-tell Jonathan last year. Now he’s gotta tell Mike? Mike Fucking Wheeler? 

Vecna take him now.

“How… how did you tell him?”

There it is.

“I didn’t mean to. He found out, I think. Maybe he just always knew. I dunno.” Will tucks his chin against his chest, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb into the little indent of Mike’s, before he realizes what he’s doing, and forces himself to stop. He’s trying to put the anxious energy somewhere else, literally anywhere else but inside of him.

(For a moment, he flashes back to the pizza kitchen. Will is looking at El and Mike and Argyle framed in the window like a teen movie, and Jonathan (like he always does) coming to his emotional rescue and tugging him out of whatever blitheringly sad mental spiral he was in about his best friend never loving him back, and to reassure him that no matter what happens, he’s still Will and Jonathan is still Jonathan. To reassure him that he would always have his back.)

(But just before that, all he could think about was how good Mike looks in blue. )

(Of course, he’s wearing blue now.)

You look so good in bl—

Dude. He’s still really fucking high.

“Always knew?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I dunno, Mike. He’s Jonathan. That’s my brother. …You know how he is.” It’s a bit dismissive, and he doesn’t quite mean it to be. But that fear is creeping up on him again, so he lets it happen. Anything to pump the breaks on the interrogation happening while they’re holding hands this tenderly.

He hums in understanding. Now Mike is rubbing his thumb across Will’s, floating onto his wrists absentmindedly. It sends a chill up his spine. Both boys are staring at the motion, transfixed. Mike looks like he could sit there forever. Will fights the urge to scramble for a pen again. He was never great at drawing hands. But he thinks he could figure it out.

“Does anyone else know? About you, I mean.”

Mike laughs, dry. “Yeah, right. Can you imagine having a heart-to-heart with Nancy?”

“Jonathan seems to manage.”

He laughs once more, but it’s real this time. It spills out of him like he doesn’t expect it. “Oh my God, how high are you?”

“How high are you?”

“Oh, I am very high. It’s pretty bad. It’s been like an hour, hasn’t it? I feel like I’m getting even higher.”

“That is not how this works.”

“What if it’s how it works for me, huh Mister Know-It-All?”

“Mike,” Will’s laughing too now. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“And how would you know? It’s not like you’ve ever smoked before.”

Something in Will’s expression must give him away, because Mike’s expression flips instantly. “No. No. You’re serious.” He’s devastated, but not in any real way. “ Without me?!” There’s a playful whine in his voice, like Holly when she doesn’t get exactly what she wants.

“I’m sorry!!” Will is echoing the tone, trying not to giggle, soothing a fake wound. He draws out the last syllable. So-rreeeeeeeeeeee . “I’m sorry, okay! I didn’t know when I’d be home to see you, you can’t blame me. What if I wanted one teenage rebellion?” He squeezes Mike’s hands. “If anyone deserves that, it’s me.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Mike’s face falls immediately. The light falters, and Will scrambles. Shit. “Mike, no, not like that, I’m just kidding—“

“You’re right, though. You deserve more than what you got.” He squeezes Will’s hands back, like a call and response. “You always have.”

Oh FUCK.

The shock courses through him, positively reeling from the mood shift, reeling from the sentiment, reeling from how earnest he looks, eyes tender and melty, lips slightly parted. There’s a stray curl that’s jutting out just by Mike’s cheekbone and it’s taking everything in him for Will to resist reaching over and tucking it back into place. 

He has to break this moment. It’s happening again. It’s bowling him over, his brain feels like a fried fucking egg. Mike is looking at him like that again, and if he doesn’t do something about this in the next thirty seconds to make it stop (in a simple way where the moment ends), he’s going to do something to make it stop (in a slightly deranged way, like bringing Mike’s knuckles up to his mouth and kissing each one).

Is he… leaning closer?

Will tears his eyes away, looking down at their hands again. “So you agree.” He looks back up at him, cheeky. “I didn’t know that the great Mike Wheeler could do that.”

Mike startles a little bit, then starts to smile. He’s trying to fight it. “Do what.”

“Agree with me.”

“Oh, fuck off. I agree with you all the—“

“Name one time.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes! I’m serious. Name one singular time that you—“

“Right no-“

“Right now doesn’t count, stupid. One other than this.”

“Well, you didn’t say that in the rules!”

“There are no rules, Mike. Just answer the question.”

They’re both laughing again. The conversation is easy. Will feels like he’s cocooned in something, like he’s protected from the storm outside, from the apocalypse. If he squints, it’s like they’ve been like this forever. MikeandWill—no fight in some past summer, no hellish second dimension. No arguing. No hurt. Just the two of them, bickering like they always have. He lets himself get lost in it, the simple argument, Mike’s teasing, Mike’s teeth lined up in his mouth, Mike’s dimly lit eyes. The shadow of being stoned along the edges of his voice. It goes on like that for a while. Will could’ve let it go on forever. 

They’re still holding hands.

Finally, Mike says; “Okay, fine. I may be a little contrarian bitch,” (Will coos at the word ‘contrarian’—“Wow, that’s a big one for you Michael!”) “you win. But that doesn’t settle one thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If this isn’t the first time you’ve ah-partaken in the ganja—“ He says it with too much emphasis and a breathy voice. (Will lets out a long groan—) “then what did you do the first time? Or… what was it like, I guess.”

That shuts Will the fuck up. He slams his teeth together so hard they clack. He stops laughing—almost tucks his hands back into his sleeves but Mike is cradling them so tenderly that he doesn’t have the heart to let go, he doesn’t want his fingers to feel cold again, so now it’s his turn to tense up. He’s coiled. He cannot, will not, admit what happened last time. The humiliation would just be too much.

This has got to be the worst moment of the night.

(That’s probably not true. But it’s up there.)

His reaction only makes the other boy more excited, as he waggles his brows and lets his whole face beam. “Oh my God, you did something crazy, didn’t you! Was it awesome? Did you like… go skinny dipping or something? Did you-you— I don’t know what there is to even do in California, did you …go surfing?” Mike’s expression turns. His voice almost drops an octave. Somewhere in his brain, Will is registering this as… jealousy? “Was it at a party? Did you like… go to a high school party? With cool kids and lights and shit? Did… did you…” He falters even more. “Did you kiss somebody?”

His whole expression is dark. All dark and pinched tight. He can tell that Mike is trying desperately (and failing miserably) to seem nonchalant about the whole thing, but he’s watching it eat him whole. Mike is searching his face, eyes darting all over, like he’s going to miss a muscle twitch if he so much as blinks. He’s so full of seriousness that it’s toeing the line of uncomfortable. 

Will swallows. There was no gradual shift this time—he’s got to just be bright fucking red. Like a tomato. Like that old puffer vest he used to wear. “N…No. No. It was just… me and Jonathan. It was just us at the house. He fell asleep and I just drew until I passed out.” He eeks out. 

It’s only after the beat of silence that follows that Will realizes what he just said, and the torment that is about to follow.

Oh fuck.

The shade over his eyes practically drips out of Mike’s face, relief crashing down over him. (Wait. Relief? ) He brightens almost immediately, nodding with that shit-eating grin (that frankly, is just a little too soft to be shit-eating, like there is something about it that is kind, and friendly, and—)

Dude. Reel. It. In.

“Ooooooooh, I see. A boy’s night. Just you, Jonathan, and Cheech and…Chong. Chong? Is that his name? Oh wow, I really am a loser.” Will is laughing at him nervously, still pent up, hoping and praying that he will keep having nothing but dust in his brain and not put the last part together. 

But of course, it’s Mike, and he’s nothing if not attentive to every single word that slips out of Will’s stupid mouth, so he says; “What did you draw?”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Will, c’mon. What did you draw?” He’s smiling again, that shit-eating unbearably attractive kind little smile.

“...Nothing.” It’s hesitant. Too hesitant.

“Wii-iilll…” Mike sing-songs, just like Will had earlier. He unlaces their hands ( Nooooo— ) and slides up past his forearms ( Uh oh. ) until he’s just above the bend of Will’s elbows. He leans forward, slowly, repeating Will’s name over and over again. He says it with two syllables as he goes. Wi-ill. It’s taking everything in his power for Will not to practically scream right now.

He keeps tipping forward until their foreheads are touching—just their foreheads. Like he’s looking at Mike through one of those fisheye lenses that Jonathan likes to play with sometimes, if they’re in the darkroom at school. He’s peering up at him through the thick curtain of his bangs, the only straight part of his hair, but if Will looks close enough he can see the little wave at the ends, if only he let it grow long enough. His eyes are framed so delicately by little strikes of dark lashes. Delicate. Again. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Mike Wheeler so fragile before tonight. Maybe he’s just never looked close enough.

Mike stares at him for just a moment. His eyes are practically bulging out of his head from this angle. “Tell me.”

“Oh Mike, come on, seriously. It’s not a big dea–”

“I know it was at least something cool because you won’t just tell me and you’re always the most insecure about the things that turn out the coolest.” 

Will turns an even deeper shade of red. His brain is practically mush now, and Mike must feel the sweat popping up where their foreheads meet. He tenses under Mike’s grip and feels him give his biceps a little squeeze. Nudge of encouragement.

I thought I was supposed to be the superspy. He isn’t supposed to know my language.

Is he?

What he manages to stumble out is: “Don’t perceive me, Wheeler. Aren’t I unknowable to you too?”

And it makes Mike topple over laughing, his forehead slipping off as he falls onto his side, still holding onto Will’s arms. He almost takes Will with him, before his hands catch back on Will’s hands, and ohforfuckssaketheyreholdinghandsagain . 

He’s feeling his resolve crumble, because Mike is running his thumb along the inside of Will’s palm now, and it’s such a soft thing, and it’s all he can even think about, really. Nothing else.

It’s definitely not just the weed anymore. Will is just tunnel-visioning on his dumbass best friend like his life depends on it. He’s got nothing in his head at this point—nothing else except Mike, flopped over in front of him. He’s halfway on his back and halfway on his side, like a dog rolling over as a party trick. All he’s missing is the lazy wag of a tail and there he is, just a puppy on the basement floor. He’s got an honesty in his face that Will just can’t deny, like he really does want to know what he drew.

He thinks it again: this was such a bad fucking idea. He can’t ever let this happen again.

“Seriously Will. Tell me.” Another squeeze of his hands.

“No, Mike, it was lame, it didn’t—”

“I love your art. Clearly.” He gestures to the drawings pinned up on the walls with their hands, still linked. Will tries to steady the spike in his heart rate at that. “It’s not like I won’t like it.”

“No I don’t think you won’t like it, I just—”

“Tell meeeee.”

“Mike.”

“Pleaaase.”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you.” Statement. Not a question.

“Tellmetellmetellmetellmetellmetellmetell—”

“Oh my God, fine. Fine. Jesus Mike, you’re so—”

Will is grumbling as he’s standing, the cold rushing in between his fingers as he disentangles himself from his best friend (which, as this night is passing, is starting to become a harder and harder label to slap on whatever they have going on). He’s pitching over as he goes, the act of standing making the whole room wobble for a second, before marching to the bottom of the stairs. He plunges his hand into his backpack and hesitates, just for a moment. He reconsiders this. 

There are alarms blaring in his head, everything is screaming at him that hey, IDIOT, this is a TERRIBLE FUCKING IDEA, and dread is piling up inside of him, so high that he thinks he’s gonna drown in it.

But it’s all coming to him through this thick, dense mist. Like he’s looking at all that panic from underwater. After everything that’s happened tonight, he doesn’t have it in him to be panicked.

He remembers that moment where Jonathan woke up next to him back in Lenora, sleeping in the same bed like they did when they were little kids. He rolled over and saw Will, perched on the edge of the bed, holding his sketchbook. When Will turned around to him, tears threatening to spill over, Jonathan looked over his shoulder, down at the paper—and there was Mike, clear as day. 

All he said was, “Wow.”

Not in a mean way. Not in a judgy way. But incredulously. As if Will was Van Gogh, or Picasso, and not some sad, tragic, gay teenage boy who just got so stoned that all he could draw was his best friend. Like this meant something. Like it could mean some thing.

Wow.

Something about that gave Will enough of the balls to do what he did next. (Which, was probably a stupid choice, because as soon as he started doing it he regretted it.)

He grabs for his favorite sketchbook, the one with the black cover and yellow sticker stars that El had plastered all over it. 

(No, it’s not hidden. No, it didn’t go away. He just started a new sketchbook. And wouldn’t open this one anymore.)

(Until he would, late at night, and run his fingers over the last filled page. And he’d think it too: Wow .)

He stands there, hip cocked, while Mike is sprawled out on the floor in front of him like an oil spill or a skater who just ate shit. And he flips flips flips through the pages, until he finds what he’s looking for. And in a hasty, clumsy motion, he drops the sketchbook on the ground right next to Mike’s head, and hits the floor right after it.

He doesn’t know whether he can’t bear to watch or whether it’s all he wants to do, but he doesn’t quite have a choice. Because just as fast as he puts the sketchbook in front of him, Mike is clambering upright and snatching the thing off the ground, pouring over the page in front of him.

Will doesn’t have a very big sketchbook. It’s 9x12, at most. But the drawing takes up the whole page. 

It’s a pencil sketch of Mike in ¾ profile. He’s looking slightly off from the viewer, smiling big and wide. His mouth is open slightly, like he’s midway through a laugh. It’s only a bust, really, but Will had drawn in his wrists and his hands, closed over themselves, raised up right under his face, like he was shaking a D20 before a particularly dangerous roll. Each curl has been drawn over tenfold. His hair is raven dark against the white of the paper. All the midtones are just the right shades. The rough angle of his nose looks very romantic against the little curl of his lips, the soft swipe of his bangs. Will even captured it, too, exactly how he wanted: those freckles like the first summer rain, on dimpled, airbrushed, homesick Hawkins pavement.

Everything is deliberate and completely carefree. There’s a looseness to this piece that Will doesn’t think he could ever recreate. He’s usually too meticulous, detail-oriented. But everything flows perfectly, the composition, the draw from the crinkle of Mike’s eyes (so dark, so gentle, there’s a little glint in them that Will couldn’t place even if he tried) to his folded-up fingers (blunt, rectangular—his real ones are cradling the sketchbook like it’s gold) to the watch on his wrist (that stupid calculator one that he’s worn every day since his 9th birthday). It all flows dangerously well. It’s an oxymoron, deliberate and free, angular and round, soft and harsh and obvious and so, so subtle.

Will wants to throw up. 

It’s quiet for too long. The air has been sucked dead out of the room. Mike is just sitting there, shocked into silence, his mouth shaped into a petite O . Hair is tumbling around his shoulders, curtaining his face from Will except for little gaps in the black. 

Will is starting to hit a fever pitch. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take. Mike, in front of him, with Mike in front of him, and Will behind all of it, starting to feel a tremble build up in his spine.

After what feels like a century, all Mike can say is:

“Wow.”

Wow. 

“Yeah, uh. That’s… that’s what I did.”

“Wow.” Pink is starting to creep into Mike’s cheeks. Will follows suit. “This… you— wow, Will.”

“I know, it’s probably really creepy or whatever I just—”

“No!” He practically shouts it, shoots his head straight up, and it startles both of them. “No, no, Will, this isn’t fucking creepy, this is— I mean I… I don’t even know what to say .” Mike has got that unreadable thing on his face again, but it’s mixed with this inexplicable awe and… embarrassment, almost. Like he’s being looked at under a microscope, but doesn’t feel too bad about it. He drifts back down to the drawing.

“Then don’t! Don’t say anything, really, Mike, ‘cause this is so stupid and I really—I-I-I really should’ve kept this one to myself but you asked and I— y’know I didn’t want to say n—”

“Will! Will.” Mike is getting up from next to the couch, practically crawling over to Will. Oh Jesus Christ. He’s got that honesty in his eyes again, misted over with…something else. 

“Stop it, please Will. It’s so good. You’re so good. Like, this is insane. This is amazing. You’re amazing.” He’s babbling now, having dragged over the sketchbook with him, and it’s taking everything in Will not to flinch away from both things, the sketchbook and Stoned Mike Wheeler clamoring next to him. “I… I’m literally at a loss for words.” He looks at him, wide-eyed. Starry-eyed, like he did earlier, that soft messy thing, that unspeakable look—the picturesque shine over pools of nothing, like the Upside-Down sky.

And Will watches it shift again, as his gaze is pulled back down to the drawing. Something heavier takes its place—something Will really can't name. Whatever thing in Will’s head that was soothed by Mike’s praise is getting turned feral again by this indescribable emotion taking over his best friend’s entire presence.

“Hey…” Mike says it without looking up. His voice is doing something crazy around the edges. He says the word like it’s an eggshell, or the remnants of their friendship back in March. He says it with reverence.

“Yeah?” Will’s heart is practically falling out of his chest. Like he doesn’t even have ribs to keep the beating thing in place.

“I... I don’t really know how to tell you this.”

“You can just say it, Mike.” Will’s expecting the worst.

‘I… I really don’t know if I can.”

“You can take your time. I-I can wait.”

The silence swallows the room.

After what feels like a century, the three words crackle through the air:

“It was you.”

“What?”

“It was your fault.”

Will’s heart drops. No. That can’t mean what he thinks it means. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Not El.

“Wh… What are you—”

Mike laughs, something huffy and dry. Nothing like the other sounds that have been coming out of him tonight. This one’s got fear. Resignation. 

“It was… look, you made me—” He clears his throat. He still won’t look at Will. “I… Like I said, that summer was really hard, y’know? And the months after that were hell, frankly. I had so many feelings, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I talk a lot of shit about nobody knowing who I am, but I don’t even know either. I know damn well that I didn’t back then.” He laughs again, a little more normal this time. “I think maybe I still don’t.” 

Does anyone, really?

“...I really don’t even know if I like boys.”

Will’s heart crashes even further. Different reason, same feeling of the world falling down around him. He doesn’t really know why it hurts this badly, because it’s something he’s always known, somewhere inside of him. That no one he knew would ever be like him. But after whatever hope he was given tonight, it still feels like getting a hot needle shoved through his eye. 

“Well, that’s—I dunno. ...I don’t know if I like all boys, I should say.”

Will’s heart is back up. Jesus CHRIST. 

Tonight has been a total fucking nightmare.

“I just know… it started with you. You. It’s your fault, Will. You opened that door. Just from being kind, and gentle, and… so Will. So yourself. And I lived, so, so-so-so— so scared, without you. When you were gone the first time, when you almost died… I didn’t know why. Until it was too late, and then I was scared for a different reason, because I liked boys , and I knew because of you, and then I took it out on you like a total prick, and I didn’t know what to do. I just didn’t. Then you were gone. Again. And I couldn’t talk to you. I didn’t want it in writing— I mean come on, that just freaked me out. A-a-and I didn’t trust my mom to not pick up on the other line from our phone, and your mom became a fucking telemarketer? I mean, I didn’t know what to do .”

His voice is quivering in his throat, and the whole thing is just spewing out of him, the floodgates open. “I knew… I knew you would understand. Dustin and Lucas, they wouldn’t understand. But Max might, ‘cause, I dunno, we— we— we struck up this weird sort of.. friendship in algebra. I mean, we are friends, but… this was different. Like she disappeared from everyone else but we had this class together and it felt like we both kind of knew this is all we were gonna get that year. So we just kinda stuck together. And I thought about telling her because, y’know, for all her… her Max-ness, she gets it. She does. But I was too late.” He clenches his jaw once, twice. Like the regret is palpable. It makes Will’s heart ache.

“And I don’t want to be too late this time, Will. To talk to someone about this. To talk to you about this. And I’m— I’m sorry that I have been a total asshole about it, and that it took smoking weed to do it, that’s so lame of me, I know. But… I’m just so scared, of the world, and n-now— of myself? Myself too? It’s just… it’s too much.”

Mike shifts in his spot, just a little bit. Something else is growing in between the words, slightly feverish. He takes a deep breath before continuing on: “But there’s something… there’s something about this .” He runs a light touch over his own nose in graphite. “This shit. You… if you can make boys look like this in a drawing? If you can make someone like me look like this? If this is how you like boys ?” He gurgles out another laugh, the most human one out of the last three, wet with emotion, on the verge of tears. “I mean, I know you’re an artist but this is just crazy. If this is what boys are to you, then… I think, maybe I shouldn’t be so scared of myself after all.”

Look, Will’s been through a lot in this life. 

It’s one thing to have your dad be an abusive, alcoholic, homophobic son-of-a-bitch. It’s another to have him walk out on you, your brother, and your very unstable mother when more than anything she just needs another pair of hands in the house. And it’s a whole other animal entirely to not only disappear into another dimension, but then to have the dimension possess you, and then (because the world is not done with you quite yet), to lose to the fucking interdimensional bad guys over, and over, and over again. It’s just too much for one boy to handle.

But Will has handled it. 

On shoulders that weren’t broad enough to do it and on these adult ones—these more adult ones, he should say, because 15 isn’t quite adult but if this had started when he was 15 maybe he would’ve been a little more stable about it. 

All of this is to say that none of the bullshit he’s ever seen with his own two eyes in his life is comparing to whatever the fuck is happening in front of him right now. 

He feels like someone has ripped the rug out from under his feet, but they’ve done it like that fancy dining table trick where you can yank the tablecloth without moving a single piece of place setting. Like everything is where it should be— should’ve been, his whole life. He feels completely the same, but entirely different. It’s his turn to be the oxymoron.

Mike’s used past tense language. It was your fault. I knew because of you. The implication here is that whatever he felt about Will was something gone.

(The brother in him flares up at the realization that past-tense means that El got the short end of the stick. Even if she broke up with Mike, it still means he wasn’t perfectly good to her. Which Will knew, but this is a new low. And that’s all his sister deserves: perfectly good. So the brother in him frowns.)

(But the selfish little thing inside of him, the one that never sees the daylight, is crowing at the realization that Mike has ever liked him at all.)

Mike has ever liked him at all.

That’s enough for Will.

Superspy. Secret language.

(This is Mike showing his cards. He’s revealing his hand under the table to Will, because it’s been a fucked up two years, and Mike knows he’s been a fucked up best friend through it all. They’ve had a million arguments, a million conversations, a million apologies. It’s all been smoothed over, for the most part, but there are these moments. Where Mike is trying to do it in a new way—say it without saying it. Apologize. This almost feels like one of those. It feels like he’s trying to make up for something, sort of. It feels like he’s giving Will a simple truth to make up for all the lies he’s ever told.)

(He‘s sticking his hand out now, metaphorically, to Will. Open towards the sky. A question. And he's asking for something back—if Will is actually willing to give it.)

What he wants to do is a little fucked up (Returning the favor, for all Mike’s Grade A Fuck Ups). Mike is revealing something so, so tender. But to return the favor, Will has to steal the spotlight a little bit. And he knows he said, fuck being bold. But Will feels like someone just dropped a lit match into his mouth, and his blood is gasoline. He’s high in his best friend’s basement. He’s 15 and he’s about to do something stupid.

This is his one teenage rebellion.

Everything is on fire right inside of him and everything is on fire miles and miles away. He’s completely calm and all he can hear is his heart beating, beating beating beating so loud in his ears that it almost drowns him out, when he says—

“It’s not all boys.”

“What?” Mike finally looks up at him. His face is shimmering, just a little bit. Like he’s let a singular tear out. He sounds tired. He looks tired, and Will wants to tuck him in somewhere, protect him from the spores in the air outside, from the monsters in the closet, from the end of the world. Wants to hide Mike from the doom. From what it means to love a boy. From what it means to love a girl. From what it means to love at all, in any time—let alone as the world caves in.

“I don’t…” Will licks his lips. “I don’t draw all boys like that.”

“I… What?”

Mike’s got to have rocks in his head, because Will has to say it again, louder this time: “That’s not what it looks like to love all boys. It’s not every single one.” 

(He looks right into his eyes, unwavering gaze, pouring everything into the dark there, because it’s the only kind of darkness that Will has ever felt safe in. When he came back from the Upside-Down he had to sleep with a nightlight, and when he and Mike would try to have sleepovers like normal and Will would wake up with a gasp and a sob, Mike would wake up too, hold him, make him look into his eyes and breathe with him, slow, one -two-three-four- hold - one -two-three-four, and Will would swim in the dark brown until he fell back asleep. And Mike would stay there, awake, until Will did.)

“So, what. Do you just draw me like this.” Statement, again. It’s dripping in sarcasm.

Will doesn’t answer. He just keeps looking.

They sit like that. Locked in the moment. That electric thing again. And Will sits, and he waits. He waits for Mike to understand.

(He’s always waited for Mike. For Mike to get it.)

It dawns on him all at once. It quite literally, looks like the dawn breaking. Like a wave tumbling over Mike’s face. The fall of a bird from a tree. The way tea steeps into hot water in a clear cup. It all clicks, all at once.

“Oh .”

Thank God he doesn’t have to explain. (It’s that secret language.)

“Yeah, oh.” Will says, a little mockingly. He’s trying to lighten the mood, to ease the storm in the air. But he doesn’t look away, even still, as the truth blooms over Mike, and he’s a wildflower field again. His hair’s a mess. His face is starting to tinge peach. That lamp is lighting the damp on the apples of his cheeks in such an ethereal way. Mike is so beautiful. Will’s eyes trace the lump he swallows as he processes it all.

(Will thinks to capture the color in his face, the one that’s starting to bleed down his neck, he’d need to use white pencils over a pink watercolor wash. He doesn’t think it would work any other way.)

Slowly, so, so slowly, Mike shifts closer to him. If the last time he did this, he was approaching a wounded animal, then this time, he is the animal itself. He looks so, so fragile, again, so tentative, like if he moves too fast, he’ll break everything in the china shop. He’ll shatter the moment with his horns. 

Will doesn’t look away. He barely moves from where he is, head moving up towards Mike, body leaning back, as Mike, at a snail’s pace, starts to loom over him.

They come to a stop, right there. Will, crosslegged, hands folded in his lap. Looking up at Mike, on his knees, right in the little V of Will’s crossed legs. Will’s back is against the table in the center of the room, where they used to play DnD for hours. Mike has one hand over his mouth, like he’s trying to keep whatever stupid thing he wants to say shoved inside, and the other to the left of Will grabbing onto the tabletop, white-knuckled. 

“Hi.” It comes out like a whisper.

“Hey.” Mike says it like that again. Reverance.

Will, still looking, staring, really, like he’s never seen Mike in his life, being so selfish for once, barely changes his expression when he says; “What do you think your dad would say to this conversation?”

“Please don’t talk about my dad right now. Please do not fucking talk about my dad right now.” Mike mumbles around his clamped hand, breathy and slightly deranged. He wants to laugh but he just can’t, his eyes flittering all over Will’s face—he doesn’t know where to land. He’s trying to take the joke into his brain but Will watches his expression flicker in time with his gaze, like he’s trying to shove more paper in a shredder that’s already full. 

Will barely suppresses the grin, and then firmly suppresses it the minute Mike decides exactly where his gaze is going to land is squarely on Will’s mouth.

Oh. Okay. So it wasn’t just the weed.

The tension in the room is so thick Will can practically see it. It’s making him dizzy. He feels like he’s hearing someone else speak, when he says, “Does this mean that maybe… maybe whatever uh, what did you-you say, door-of-liking-boys was opened with… with me, and didn’t close, properly? Maybe?”

Will’s never claimed to be smooth, especially not with Mike Wheeler laser focused in on his lips like it’s the only thing he’s ever seen, so it’s not the most attractive way to ask the question but it gets the job done, because without missing a beat, Mike simply replies:

“It’s you. I think maybe it’s always been you. I liked El but… but I loved you. I think…” He takes a shaky breath. “I think it always has been.”

It’s always been you.

And he’s honest. He’s earnest. He says it like he means it. Because he means it.

You can’t communicate a word you feel to anyone in this world but you always say it to me. Why do you know how to say it to me?

And Will, Christ, he’s held out this long. He really has. He’s done his best but he just can’t take it anymore.

He surges up, leaning forward, and catches Mike’s face in his hands, pushes his hands into Mike’s hair, presses his lips against Mike’s, presses his lips against Mike’s.

It’s funny, what Will’s brain can do, because right now, it supplies him with a memory of the breakfast table and pouring syrup on his eggs. I’m not gonna… fall in love.

What a fat fucking lie that was.

He gets it now, what everyone meant about kissing, about touch, about love. About love. Mike is nothing but the stuff, he’s full of it. If Will was gasoline and a lit match before, he’s a fucking firecracker now. If Mike was surprised by the kiss, he doesn’t show it. He’s pounced on Will like a fucking vulture, nudging him back, pushing his lips apart, threading his own fingers through the short cropped hair at the back of Will’s neck—

(It’s funny, what love can do, because the nape of his neck has always been such a scary thing, a place like a black hole, and Mike’s gentle touch there makes it feel like a supernova.)

He’s so out of breath, and suddenly it hits him all at once where he is and what’s going on. 

The moment hits him like a truck. It’s overwhelming.

But this time he doesn’t panic. It only grows inside of him. All that love.

He’s got chills all over, and for the first time in his life, he’s not terrified by it. It doesn’t mean that some horrifying monster is going to eat his soul, or kill his family, or blow his childhood home clean off the face of the earth. All it means is that Mike is right here, and he’s got his hands cradling his cheek, his neck, and he’s got his heart beating almost flush up against Will’s. And all he can think to do is push back on Mike, sit up higher, be closer to him, tuck his thumbs right along his jawbone. Open his mouth, deepen the kiss. Push their hearts together for real this time—because his brain is doing it again, that mantra: MikeMikeMikeMikeMike. MikeandWillMikeandWill. Mike. Mike Mike Mike.  

Mike lets out a short gasp at the sudden movement, taking the whole thing in stride, tipping back to match Will’s burst forward. He steadies himself on Will’s shoulders, tilting his jaw, and it’s all Will can do to not explode when Mike slides his hands down to his waist.

It’s a first kiss, for Will at least, which means he should probably be more insecure about how much his hands are trailing around Mike’s neck, his hair, his chest. He should probably be more self-conscious about most of the things that are happening, like the little hum in the back of his throat and the indescribable urge to open his eyes just a crack to peek at the freckles across the bridge of Mike’s nose. He wants to pull him closer, so he does, tumbling into the space between his knees, throwing one fist into the curls right behind his ear, the other into the fabric of his sweatshirt. Really, Will should be so nervous that he’s nauseous. And maybe somewhere inside of him he is, but if that’s true, he doesn’t know it. He can’t feel any of these things, because Mike smells like Mike, like Tide detergent and some terrible cologne he bought at Starcourt, and he smells like the plasticky paint of White-out because he writes all his papers in pen and then can’t erase when he misspells opportunity, and he smells like the fir of the Hawkins woods, almost as if he rolled in the sap as a kid during all those summers playing adventurers in Will’s backyard and it just never came off. Kissing Mike is like the crash of the first snowball of the winter on his back. It’s Lenora sun on his face tipped towards the sky. Kissing Mike is the wind whipping through his hair as he cruises down Cherry Street, it’s the scream before the plunge into Lover’s Lake, it’s the calm before the storm and the storm as it tumbles over him. Kissing Mike, funnily enough, is that first Hawkins rain. All because he’s Mike, Mike Wheeler, and he’s kissing him back. He’s every good thing Will has ever known, and his lips are so soft and so sweet, and it’s like this is the only thing that Will has ever wanted. Like this is the only thing he’s ever been missing in his miserable life. Maybe it really is. All he knows is that Will is kissing Mike, and he’s practically blind with the thought.

Until suddenly, it stops, and they both pull away as if something just clicked in both of their brains at once. Like there was a record scratch in the room, or someone flipped a switch. They jump back unceremoniously, perfectly synced, only to find that Will is pretty much in Mike’s lap, and Mike is staring at him, hair wild and tangled, a halo around his head. It’s catching the lamplight again, melting into that other color entirely. It almost looks like a black cat laying in the sunlight, glowing burnt orange. 

His lips are bitten pink, eyes wide, and he looks like he’s swallowed the sun and all the space around it. Dazed, breathless— Mike looks, right now, to be the human equivalent of scribbling with a crayon. There’s just so much of him. He’s just sitting here, in front of Will, staring at Will, looking at him like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. And he just won’t look away.

It’s like that, for a moment: both of them so close. They’re almost nose to nose. Will can barely see anything but Mike’s eyes, his eyebrows shot up behind his bangs. They’re just staring at each other, chests heaving, a lot of feelings hanging in the air. Big feelings. But neither of them say anything, the silence crackling between them like the static of a walkie. 

Oh.

Wait.

Suddenly, it all crashes down at once. He feels fear shoot through him like a gunshot. A cup overflowing in the sink, it all bubbles up in his throat. He’s drowning, suddenly. Will’s scrambling away from him, tucking back into himself, pulling out of Mike’s lap: “S…Oh, fuck. Oh my God, Mike, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even ask— Why did I do that? I should’ve stopped forever ago. Holy shit, I am way too high, why would I ever — That was-that was so fucking horrible of me—I’m so, so sorry, I-I— Jesus Chri—”

“ Don’t. ” It’s almost too loud. It’s all he says. Mike’s looking at Will still, and he’s firm, but tender. That tone again. Wow. That’s all it takes for Will to freeze back up. He’s not in Mike’s lap anymore, but their knees are still touching. “Please don’t be sorry.” 

“Okay.” He whispers back. It’s hardly a sound.

“Have you… you ever kissed anyone before?”

What? That wasn’t the response he was expecting. His heart rate must be a hundred and fifty.

“You… you’re not mad?”

“Answer me, Will.”

“Mike."

“Please.”

“…No.”

“No?”

“No… I—” Will fights the urge to apologize again. It’s all he can really think. “Mike, seriously, I didn’t mean to—“

“Never?” It’s low, soft. Mike has that thing behind his voice still: incredulous, reverent, awestruck. He’s leaning forward slow again, so slow that it aches. Will doesn’t move a muscle as Mike’s reaching up to put his hands on his face.

Oh my God.

“Never.” 

He’s cradling his face now, rough palms resting on Will’s cheeks. Staring still. It’s making Will sweat. He closes his eyes. He can’t even look at Mike. He’s trying not to cry, he swallows thickly, he forces the tears back.

“Mike, I’m so sorry .”

“Will. Can you just look at me?” He doesn’t even acknowledge the apology.

With a shaking breath, Will slowly opens his eyes. Mike is looking at him like he has a star in his ribcage, or Saturn inside his head. Mike is looking at him like that again. That summertime Polaroid gaze. The thing he used to look at… Well. He’s looking at him like he used to look at El. Like he’s crazy about Will. 

Like he’s in love.

Without a break in eye contact, a change in expression, a twitch of the face, Mike says; “Where, oh where, William. Did you learn to kiss like that.”

Statement. No room for interpretation.

If tonight has been a rollercoaster, then this was the biggest drop. Like a sixty-foot plummet into the unknown. He feels like his heart has just fallen out of his ass. And he knows now he isn’t dreaming—because not even in his wildest dreams would that be Mike’s response to an unprompted kiss. In his head, he’s about a million miles away.

Will must startle at the words somewhere in his physical body, or start burning up, or do something unspeakable with his face, because Mike starts to grin. He smiles at him from under his bangs, slouching like he always does. He slouches around Will, always, like he’s trying to get on his level—even though their height difference really isn’t so big anymore. His eyes are round, soft. There’s a fondness all over him that Will can’t name. He’s never seen Mike like this before. He’s flirting. 

Mike is flirting. With him.

It’s so, so sweet. It’s sickening. If Will thought the build up to this was his breaking point? Then this must be just beating a dead horse.

He doesn’t even have an answer. He just scrunches his face up, closes his eyes, twists his neck and buries half his face into one of Mike’s hands. He’s positively burning. “Oh my God.”

“I am so serious.”

“Mike.”

“I’m not kidding Will, I think this might actually be your superpower.” (Holy shit, is it even possible to be more cringe-worthy than that?—)

“You are being so embarrassing right now, stop it—”

“What! Do you want me to lie?”

“I just kissed you, we just kissed, I didn’t even ask, and this is how you’re reacting—”

“I mean I can’t lie to you—”

“Oh for God’s sake, Mike, I just screwed up so bad and you’re teasing, you’re unbelievable, just stop it!—”

“Make me, then!” It’s a tease, it’s a joke. Delivered with a smug face. But Mike—he has this little shimmer behind his eyes. It’s almost like a hunger. Like he really means it. Puppy-dog honesty turned wolfish. It’s driving Will a little crazy. And for all his humor, Will is watching it drive Mike a little crazy too.

(Oh holy shit.)

This whole night has been torture, torture for Will. He’s scanning Mike’s face, and Mike is scanning his, and they’re back to being in that stalemate-locked-in-cut-it-with-a-knife tension. He has no idea what is going on, he’s so lost and he somehow knows exactly where he is, because this is a moment he’s begged and prayed for every night since he was 5, before he even knew what love was or what it meant to be a boy who loves boys, let alone his very best friend and his better half. He’s sort of lost in the sauce of it all, but he thinks somewhere deep in the somewhat sober part of his brain that if he can get away with a kiss right now then, well, what else can he get away with?

So Will decides, what the hell. 

He leans in, so slow. Pulls Mike’s hands off his face. Swallows once, licks his lips. He’s got a loose grip on Mike’s wrists, and Mike is leaning back, just a little bit, eyes widening, fluttering. It’s his turn to be bashful. 

This is a very good look on you. Will catalogs it somewhere behind his eyes.

They’re almost an inch apart. 

Before Will tackles Mike, pinning him to the ground, tickling his sides. 

Mike yelps as he hits the ground (“ WILL! ”), scrambling to get away from the other, half-laughing, half-screaming, joy spilling out of him and Will cackling all the while.

“Stop!! You bastard!! This isn’t what I meant, cut it out! ”

“No!! Never! Kissing is my superpower?! You are so corny, Mike—” Will is laughing so hard that he can barely get the words out, and Mike is sprawled out under him, writhing as he tries to escape Will’s torture, and Will really just can’t remember a time where he was so happy. And it’s not just the pot. He feels like he’s on cloud nine.

“ FINE, fine! Fine, you win Will— stop!! Stop it! Do you want me to pee my pants?!”

Will stops, finally, chest heaving, hovering over Mike, bangs falling forward. He lets it hang in the air for a minute, before saying: “It would be a little funny. If you peed your pants. Wouldn’t it?”

Mike groans. It’s a terrible joke. He shoves Will over, who is still howling with laughter. “You are insufferable, Will.”

He laughs, and wipes his eyes. Looks over at Mike, who is doing some halfhearted attempt to pout and stalk over to the couch. He flops down on it while Will is standing to do the same. “Yeah, well… I think maybe I’m about to get a lot worse.”

“What is that supposed to mean.”

“Wee-eell… if my superpower to you is kissing —”

“You’re never gonna let this go are you—”

“Then I just might have to do it more .”

Mike is trying to look irritated. Bless his heart, he really is trying so hard. He’s got his arms folded, legs crossed, lip poking out. His jaw is borderline grinding with how hard he’s clenching and unclenching it. And yet the minute the word more comes out of Will’s mouth, he’s turning bright pink in the face, spreading out from his cheeks to his neck. The pout becomes a half-smile. Barely stifled. Tight-lipped. He makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

“Unless… y’know. You don’t want that—”

“No.” Lighting speed response. Mike sits up, spine ruler-straight, all faux anger gone from his face. He’s doing that puppy-dog honesty thing again: completely open book, all the pages turned up towards Will. “No, I do.”

“Mmhmm. That’s what I thought.” Will hums, smug. 

With a huff and an eye roll, Mike slouches back down, trying to sink into the couch, as if he’s hoping it will just swallow him whole. He’s attempting to not even look at Will, staring at some stain on his sleeve instead, or the art on the walls, before swinging his gaze back around like it’s a fucking magnet. And when he gets there, eyes skirting around Will’s face, the whole shape of him—it’s as if someone just dropped Will in a deep fryer. He burns up with it. His smirk slowly slides into an embarrassed little smile, something twisted up and turned in, lip firmly between his teeth. 

The further he slides into bashfulness, the less Mike stares at the walls. The less Mike stares at the walls, the more Will slides into bashfulness. It’s a vicious cycle. The tension is picking back up again, but it’s sweeter this time, less nervousness, so much more sure.

Until Mike, a little smile playing across his lips, murmurs, “How long has it been?”

“Huh?”

“How long… How long have you known?” He blinks for the first time in minutes. “That it… I don’t know. That you…” Mike makes a little gesture with his hands. “...y’know? That it was …me.”

“... Ten years.”

“ Ten years ?”

“You’re gonna laugh.”

“I won’t, Will.”

“Yeah, you will. And it’s okay, because it’s silly—but you’re still gonna laugh.”

“Try me.”

He sighs, shifting in his seat. He’s steeling himself for the admission, because he knows as soon as he starts the story it just won’t stop. “We were five. It was Halloween, and my mom made me that P—”

Mike gasps with excitement. “Paddington Bear costume!” His eyes are gleaming with delight.

Will laughs in spite of himself. “Yeah, that Paddington Bear costume. It was great for her, because it was the first year she could just throw me in a too-big coat and paint a little nose on my face. I don’t think my costumes ever got easier for her after that.” He’s smiling at the thought, tearing his eyes away from Mike to look down at his hands, tracing little circles in the flannel of his pajama pants. He feels a little nervous now, laying the memory out in front of him. He feels a little bare. ( Hah .)

“Well, it was that Halloween. And it started pouring rain when our moms had taken us trick or treating with Jonathan and Nancy. Lucas was there with his dad too. And we had only been to a few houses, before it started absolutely pouring. Lucas started crying, like, immediately, because he was so pissed that his Halloween got ruined. He went home, but our moms just took us back to your house. We sat on the couch and looked at what candy we had, and I remember you just— you looked at me in your Scooby-Doo costume and decided that you were gonna give me all of your candy, because you wanted me to have a good Halloween. It didn’t even matter to you that we were five or that all we had gotten was a few 3 Musketeers or Snickers bars. It just mattered to you that I was happy, and that I had a good night.” 

He sniffs a little bit. “It wasn’t really a big deal. There was just something about it—you just noticed and you cared. A-and it felt like you never really stopped after that. Not really, anyway. It just seemed like you always knew stuff about me that I didn’t, or stuff that I didn’t even notice. I don’t even think I knew that I was disappointed that Halloween got cut short, but you did. Then you actually did something about it. I don’t really remember when I realized that, y’know, that was the moment. But I think that was it. You passed me a Reese’s, ‘cause you knew it was my favorite, and I never looked back.” Will finally looks up. “You just made it easy. To… to love you, I think. To feel loved by you.” He clears his throat. “You never made me feel like I was a freak just for feeling something, even when the rest of the world tried to make me think that it…. That it wasn’t okay.”

“Holy shit.” Mike breathes. He’s gaping at Will, wide-eyed, heart splayed out all over his face.

Will is suddenly very nervous now, slightly mortified over how honest he was. And over the fact that Mike, in fact, didn’t laugh, and instead looks intensely impacted by the story. He goes back to studying a particularly interesting patch of his pants. “Sorry, uhm. That was a lot, wasn’t it? It’s just, I’ve had a long time to think about this I gue—”

“I’m gonna tell you mine now so I don’t kiss you again. Is that okay?” It bursts out of him all in one breath. Mike looks like he’s about to blow up. He’s flushed bright red and his bottom lip is crammed between his teeth. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s okay.” Will almost whispers it, shocked back into bashfulness by the forwardness of it all. He can’t really do anything else other than agree, even though all he really wants to say is, ‘Kiss and then tell?’ “Go for it.” 

“Okay. I don’t think I’ve ever not loved you.”

He doesn’t hesitate for even a moment. Like he’s waited his whole life to say it.

Oh.

Wow.

“I think that I asked you to be my friend and then I just decided somewhere in my head that that meant I asked you to be in my life forever. Like, I know 4-year-olds on swingsets don’t know anything about life but I think I did myself a massive fucking favor that day. I don’t think… I mean, Jesus, Will. Every time we are separated by like, some terrifying impending horror, I’m more scared that I’ll never get to see you again than the fact that I-I could die. And then I was more scared of sending you letters than starting high school. I care about you so, so much. I need you in a way that’s so big that it scares the shit out of me. And then it doesn’t, because it’s you .” Mike is rambling again, gaze unbreaking as it bores into Will’s soul. “I can’t be scared of loving you. You’re Will Byers. You’re every single good thing in the world. All you do is make things with your hands and you know how to love e-e-everything around you like it’s your damn job, Will. You have all the potential to be so, so cruel, to me especially, and you’re not. You’re not. You just aren’t. It’s incredible.”

He covers Will’s fidgeting hand with his own. “What I’m trying to say is that… I think I’ve always loved you but I just didn’t know it. I didn’t know it until you looked at me in your old house, and we were packing everything up. You… You looked at me and told me that you could never join a new party, that it wasn’t even possible .” He smiles, and it’s shaky. Will realizes with a start that Mike is just as terrified as he is. That this whole thing has been a front for how nervous he is. It’s dawning on Will that Mike has felt like this since he moved away. That the reasons for his batshit behavior in California and before is this, right here: it’s all the same reasons for Will’s behavior too. Love. Because love makes you crazy. It can even make you scared. And it’s so obvious in hindsight, but he was just so fucking blinded by his own fear that he couldn’t even see it—the tremor in Mike’s shoulders, or the little twitch of his left eyebrow. All the things that he would’ve seen right away, if he wasn’t trying so hard to ignore every little thing about him, just to save his sanity. “You acted like it was crazy that I had even considered the fact that you might want to play DnD with anyone else. But I knew what you were really saying. I heard you. I promise.”

“El kissed me after that. She told me she loved me too. But I watched the truck drive away, and-and your mom’s car, with you and Jonathan in it. And… and something felt different. Like… I felt like it mattered more to me that you would never, ever leave me—not for anything, not even after moving halfway across the country—than my own girlfriend telling me ‘I love you'. That’s all it took. For me to-to realize, what you meant to me. I just went home and cried. It was so overwhelming—all the feelings I had, like— like-like-like stored up for you. But you were gone, and you were a boy. So I ignored it. I ignored it. ”

He takes one big deep breath. “And that was the stupidest thing I ever did.”

Will laughs, nervous, and Mike beams at the sound. “No, I’m serious, Will! It really was! I— It made everything so complicated for no fucking reason. I’m so stupid, I’m so sorry, I should’ve talked to you sooner—”

“Mike, it’s okay .” He flips his palm up so it’s facing Mike’s and laces their fingers together, squeezing softly. “I promise it’s okay.”

“Well, it’s not okay to me. I should’ve been smarter.”

“Maybe you should’ve.”

“ Rude —” He smacks Will’s thigh with their conjoined hands.

“ But … you did it at all. That’s what matters to me. I…” He trails off, suddenly feeling that twinge of anxiety once more. “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“It’s gonna be kind of stu—”

“When are you gonna understand that nothing you say is stupid to me?” 

Will’s brain sort of blacks out at that one, and it’s everything he can do in his power not to scream, or punch him in the face, or something else as equally absurd. Mike watches him be swallowed by his own flustered surprise and flashes a thousand-watt smile. 

(Will doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of that.)

Instead, he bites his lip to hide his grin. “Probably never.”

“We can work on that.” He tugs their hands towards him, tucking them under his chin. The motion tips Will just a little closer to him on the couch. “Just ask me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“... Will.”

“Okay, okay.” There’s a beat. It feels like the words are stuck in Will’s throat. Even if he knows the answer, it’s still petrifying to think. The silence stretches into infinity, and somewhere Will registers that for the first time in almost three years, it’s not full of something rotten. 

Finally, he says: “...You promise that you want this?” The quiver in his voice is apparent.

Mike looks like he just got punched in the face. “Will. You have to be joking.”

“I told you, it’s stupid, I just—”

“Will.” His voice drops. Hushed and husky and he’s looking up at him from under his lashes, slouching again, on Will’s level again, tugging their hands closer to himself to bring Will with them. “Do you think I would… I just— do you…” Mike frowns. “After everything that’s happened—b-both tonight and just, in our lives, y’know—you still really think that I wouldn’t just tell you?”

“I don’t know.” He looks away, swallowing hard. “I… I think maybe I still don’t even know if this is real.” He laughs, and it’s a little ugly. 

Mike pulls Will just a little closer, until they’re just a few inches apart. They’re facing each other on the couch now, bodies doing that mirroring thing they do, because after eleven years as best friends it’s a guarantee to pick up those little motions of the other. Mike’s legs are tucked under himself, folded tight and neat in spite of the length. Will is curled up like a small cat beside him. Mike has dragged their hands ( because they’re still holding hands ), into his lap, and he’s slowly reaching toward Will with his free one. They’re facing each other and they’re so close, so close. “Can…” He swallows too. Mike’s eyes are wide, and he glances down at Will’s lips. That shaking breath again. The nerves are written all over his face—and that want, Will notes. The reverence. He feels a little insane. “Can I maybe help with that?” 

Christ. His insides turn to utter and complete goop.

If this is going to be the rest of Will’s life, he’s so fucked.

He nods, just barely, and Mike, so sweetly, leans in, cupping Will’s face. Mike kisses him. Mike kisses Will. Mike kisses Will.

Will sighs into the kiss, eyes fluttering shut. He untangles his hand from Mike’s and threads his arms around his neck. The butterflies in his ribcage are banging against the bones. Mike swipes a gentle thumb across Will’s cheek, and the motion makes Will dissolve even further. He tilts his head just a bit, and it makes their noses bump, and Mike rumbles out a laugh. If their first kiss was hungry, this one is satiated. Melting, slow heat. It’s fragile, somehow still tentative even after two love confessions and countless apologies and it’s even still nervous through being stoned as shit. They’re two boys kissing in a basement, and even if the world is ending, two boys kissing feels like the world exploding. But right now, it’s not, because Will is trying to make all of the love he has for Mike seep into him, he feels so light that he’s smiling into Mike’s mouth, and nothing, nothing, could make him change his mind: he wants this. And Mike does too.

Mike only leans back when they both run out of breath, and he’s flushed bright red. He almost looks as if he’s embarrassed by his own forwardness. “Does… Does that, um. Does that answer the question?” His voice is hoarse and quiet.

“Yeah. Yes.” Will is still smiling. “It does. It does, I promise.” His arms are still thrown around Mike’s neck, and their chests are flush together over their bumping knees. He’s drinking in the moment, putting the whole thing away somewhere so he’ll never forget the color running over Mike’s face, all hot pinks and burning reds. Honestly, he still looks mildly mortified. “Hey. You okay in there?”

“Yeah, sorry. … Sorry, woah.” He blinks like he’s coming up for air after a near-death drowning experience. “I think I’m sobering up. Holy shit, I—wow. You’re so— so … Christ. Okay. Yeah, okay. I’m just gonna…” He shuffles even closer and buries himself in the crook of Will’s neck, wrapping his arms underneath and around, and slotting his legs in between Will’s. “There. …I’m gonna stay here for a while, actually. Is this okay? I hope this is okay. It’s just—yeah. Yeah. I think I’m finally processing how embarrassing I’ve been for the last two hours.” Will feels Mike scrunch his face up against his shoulder. “Oh my God.”

Will laughs, bright and loud, and it clatters through the whole room. He really is so fucking happy. “Hold on, now you’re apologizing? You are apologizing to me right now? After pulling the sappiest thing I’ve ever seen on me? You’re gonna feel sorry for making me kick my feet like an actual school girl? Are you okay? ”

Mike groans. “Stop, oh my God—”

“Make m—”

“Do not steal my line, Will, that is so cliche!”

They say it at the same time, which only makes Will giggle harder. “I will do whatever I want, Michael.” He squeezes Mike, hooking his chin over his shoulder, tucking his cheek against the back of Mike’s neck. “Case in point.” And he tips back and flops both of them on the couch with a soft oof, so they’re laying parallel. 

He feels Mike scrunch his face up again, before he hears the muffled cry of “ Will! ”, and he keeps laughing, like there’s a force that is just bursting it out of him, and he feels Mike start to smile too. It’s so happy, everything inside of Will, every single part of this moment, and he bundles Mike up tighter in his arms, squishing him tight against his chest in a vice grip. Mike protests, but only for show. It’s fucking adorable. He fights the urge to nudge Mike upright and pepper his face with kisses, before finally relinquishing his hold with a sigh. He settles for pressing a kiss into the raven down of Mike’s hair.

They lay like that, for a long while, not saying anything. Like they’ve said all they needed to say, at least for tonight. They’re both thinking, Will can tell, but neither has anything they want to say—anything they need to say. They’ll figure it out eventually, but for tonight they’re okay. They’re both just okay, for the first time in a very long time. They’re both home. MikeandWill . MikeandWill in the basement. 

Will’s so cozy. Breathing softly, Mike laying flat on top of him. He’s so warm, like a human furnace, which is so unexpected for someone so bony. The white noise of their breath and the rhythm of Mike’s heart slowly, ever so slowly, puts Will to sleep. He doesn’t think he’s felt this safe since he was nine years old. Just as he’s about to succumb to it, the comfort and the slumber, he hears Mike say it:

“Will? …I love you.” I love you. “I want to say it more.”

“I love you too. You don’t have to say it, Mike. I know.”

I know.

Mike wakes up in the basement alone. Sun is filtering through the ash and clouds before shining weakly through the windows. Everything feels terrible. His eyes are dry, his mouth is dry, his hands are dry. It’s like being a damn raisin. And his head feels like it’s full of wool. He can hear the sounds of cutlery and cooking upstairs, probably Nancy or his mom or somebody who woke up and started making breakfast. Will is gone, which is funny, because he never wakes up first. He rubs his whole face and lets out a massive yawn. 

Where is Will?

Wait. What the fuck happened?

Mike screws up his face in remembrance, forcing the night back to him. Okay—they smoked in the basement. He made fun of his dad. Then— Oh.

It hits him like a fucking freight train. He literally drops his jaw as it comes back to him, all at once. 

Oh my God.

His expression morphs into an open-mouthed grin, and he feels his whole face burn into a crisp. Fuck. Wow. Mike laughs at himself; it’s really more of a bark as he feels intolerable levels of embarrassment and equally all-consuming levels of joy all in one go. Oh my fucking God.

He… oh. Holy shit.

It’s so much for Mike, that he fully stands up from the couch, and jumps up and down three times in a desperate attempt to process any given memory in his head. 

He did it, not only did he smoke weed (Huzzah!), he finally got the nuts to tell someone about his… problem, you could say, but he told—well, he told the source of the problem. And then he kissed the problem. And then he realized it wasn’t a problem at all, how could it have been? Because loving Will Byers could never be anything but incredible. So needless to say, it’s a lot to process at a bright and early… 11:00 am.

Mike laughs again, in spite of the embarrassment, and spins in a circle. He runs his hands through his hair. He sort of feels crazy, but a good crazy—like he could singlehandedly take on the entire Upside Down by himself. Wow.

He needs to see Will, he realizes, with a shock. He wants to see Will right now.

(He wants to kiss Will. Right now .)

Mike practically trips over himself once the thought hits him, moving to sprint up the stairs to the rest of the house and tackle Will wherever he is (assumedly the dining room table), before he actually trips. Trips right over Will’s sketchbook, discarded on the floor. He yelps, bending to make sure he didn’t fold any pages, because if he fucking folded or crinkled or (God help him) tore one of the pages of Will’s sketchbook? Well, he might as well just go drop into the Gate himself.

Before he can even get close enough to check on the state of the paper, he immediately sees what’s on the pages in front of him. 

On the left side, it’s the sketch of Mike from last night. It looks just as good as it did, all soft lines and hard angles and loose shading. 

On the other page, is a wall of almost entirely his own face. Over and over and over again. 

It’s Mike, laughing. Mike, slouching. Mike, scowling. There’s a few sketches of hands intertwined, overlapped, one with pinkies linked—and he can tell it’s him and Will, from the scar on the knuckle that matches the one that marked Will’s journey into the Upside Down, and the way the middle fingers bend like Mike’s do. There’s one that’s Mike asleep, face smooshed against fabric that looks suspiciously like Will’s grey thermal shirt. Right next to it is Mike looking bashful and doe-eyed. They’re all incredible.

They all look just like the one on the left. Like whatever thing had been keeping Will from ever replicating the thing on the left (Which, Mike would know, of course—know that the left-side portrait is different, good different, because he spends hours looking at Will’s art) had completely disappeared. It was like there was some wall up, something hiding this unbelievable layer of Will’s talent from the world, and it came crashing down. Overnight, it came crashing down. What could’ve caused that, huh?

Mike is delirious. He fights the urge to scream. WOW.

Wow. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.  

He thinks it again, and it’s absolutely blaring in his head. Where the fuck is he? He needs to see Will right now.

So he bounds up the stairs, taking them two at a time. And he knows whatever comes next, he won’t be alone. There’s no such thing as lonely, anymore—not for Mike. Because every time he needs someone, he knows who will be right there, just as kind and patient as he has always been. He wants to tell Will, I’m here now! I’m right here! I understand, I do, I always have, somewhere in me, even if it didn’t seem like it, or even if I didn’t know it. But I know it now, I swear, and I’m not going anywhere, not for anything, not for the world. You see me. I see you. It won’t ever change. 

I know I’ve said I don’t believe in fate. I think that was a lie. (Friends don’t lie, but friends don’t feel like this. I know that now. Isn’t it so funny that it took me so long?)

But that belief in fate? Maybe I do believe, only when it comes to you. You transcend every boundary. You’re the only exception. Every time, over and over. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. If I could, I would choose you first, every time.

Hey, do you know it now? That I love you?

Because I do—love you, I mean. I love you. I always will.

(And he knows he doesn’t have to say it. But he still wants to.)

(So he will. He’ll say it until he’s tired of saying it. And he’ll never get tired of it— loving Will. )

(Who could ever be tired of something so beautiful?)