Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Will doesn’t know what he expected when they moved. Maybe he kind of bought into his mom’s idea of a fresh start—a place he could begin again. A place where he would no longer be known as Zombie Boy, or the queer or that fairy, and he could build a whole new identity for himself. Anything he wanted. A quiet artsy kid (most likely), or a popular jock (least likely), or a theater star, or a track star, or anything between.

Instead, he got Lenora, and it’s just as much of a nightmare as Hawkins was, just in a different way. Sure, there’s no Upside Down, no horrible Mind Flayer possessions, but the people…the people are so mean. Perhaps mean isn’t the right word, cruel would probably be more accurate.

The cruelty isn’t aimed at him, but rather El, and somehow that makes it worse. They’re family now, and watching her suffer hurts his heart in a way that he didn’t know was possible. Will feels protective and weak at the same time, angry and defenseless. He misses the power that they had as a party, the indestructible feeling of a group of misfits.

And he really misses Mike. He knows that while he’s only had a handful of phone calls, El has stacks and stacks of letters, and he tries not to feel jealous, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to reach out more, or if he’s supposed to swallow this feeling down. This big something that’s been brewing inside of him for so long.

It’s frustrating—all these feelings, being friendless, the loneliness—so Will buries himself in art. All he does is draw and paint. Even in class, he draws in his textbooks and in his notebooks instead of listening attentively like he used to.

Today, they’re working on choosing a subject for an essay, and Angela’s phony voice rings out across the room, and Will fights not to roll his entire head in exasperation.

The teacher of course is a sucker for it, showering her with praise and Will lifts his head to make eye contact with El. Her jaw his clenched, her face stony and firm. They both hate her, but El more so, and for good reason.

“Can you believe this twat?” Someone behind Will whispers.

And Will is no stranger to curse words, but the brazenness of it catches him by surprise. He jerks around to face the smirking boy behind him to the right.

He’s grungy, dressed in dark jeans and black shirt, his hair a messy tangle of dirty black curls. But his face…

Will feels his cheeks heat up as the boy’s smirk widens.

He reminds him a little bit of Mike. Just a bit. Similar sloping nose, similar freckles, but this boy is more gaunt, a lot more angular. His cheekbones are higher, sharper, his jawline more defined. But still…

Will whirls around in his seat, his heart pattering too hard in his chest to be casual.

Chapter Text

Once he’s noticed him, Will can’t stop noticing him. In the classroom, in the hallways, in the cafeteria. It hasn’t even been a week, but it feels like he’s spent a lifetime observing this strange new person that waltzed into his life with one horribly worded sentence.

Every day he looks a little bit dirtier, his hair a little bit more wild, and his clothes a little bit more rumpled. And this boy looks tired. There are always dark circles underneath his eyes, as if he never sleeps, yet at the same time, he’s the most alive looking human being that Will’s seen in all of Lenora.

Will’s terrified he’s becoming obsessed.

He sees him now, in the hallway, standing at his locker (diagonal and five down from Will’s, not that he’s realized) walking beside El and he almost freezes in his tracks because at that moment, there’s eye contact.

This boy, this Mike but not Mike at all, raises a lively eyebrow and grins.

Will feels as if he’s been cornered by a feral cat. His heart skips a beat. Then two. He wonders vaguely if it’s hotter in the school than it should be.

“What is it?” El asks.

“What?” Will replies, startled.

“You look…strange.”

“Oh. Nothing.”

She hums, unconvinced. Will knows, and has known for a little while that she thinks he has a crush on somebody. She’s not exactly wrong, if that’s what you can call his feelings for Mike. But they seem bigger than that, and have for a long time. He doesn’t know what to call what’s going on with this new guy though, and decides to just not think about it.

On Friday, he learns his name. Accidentally. Unwillingly.

“Today, we’ll be working in assigned pairs.”

The whole class groans. Will is paired with a boy named Kevin, who is extremely okay. Not too nice, not too mean, just someone who likes to get his work done. That’s something Will can get behind, so he has no room to complain. El is paired with Stacy, who is a little less okay, but not the worst she could have landed with.

Angela is paired with Boris, which she valiantly fights against with the purest smile she can muster. Mr. Whittaker isn’t like the other teachers though, and doesn’t take the bait.

Will, instead of listening to the ping-ponging, sickly sweet argument over her partner, is stuck on the name.

Boris.

Boris.

Now there’s something to go along with the face, rather than just Not Mike. Will thinks that he both looks like a Boris and doesn’t look like a Boris at all. What kind of a name is Boris anyway?

“You can either partner with Boris, or receive a failing grade. That’s my final word.”

Angela looks put out, but still throws out a, “Of course, Mr. Whittaker. I was just trying to provide the best work possible. You understand, right?”

“And I’m sure you can provide the best work possible with Boris. Isn’t that right, Boris.”

Boris doesn’t reply, simply makes his way to the grouping of desks at the front of the room, which happens to be so, so close to Will and Kevin.

They’re supposed to be analyzing a piece of text, and for the first few minutes it goes well. Will works great with his partner, the room is peaceful with the monotonous drone of students talking under their voices, but with Boris so close, he just can’t help it. It’s habit at this point. He has to look.

Only this time, like in the hallway, he’s looking back. This close, he can see that he has dark eyes (Like Mike! His brain supplies.), and they feel heavy, weighted, almost as if he’s touching with his gaze alone. Boris tilts his head at Angela and smirks before rolling those eyes at Will, and Will can’t help but grin, something that says, yeah, she’s ridiculous.

He turns back to his notebook then, feeling unusually pleased.

Chapter Text

Meet after class.

At my locker.

            -Boris

At first Will doesn’t think the note is for him. The chicken scratch scrawl is worded in a way that sounds far too familiar to be passed to a stranger, but when he tries to hand it back to the pretty girl beside him, she refuses to take it.

“It’s for you,” she whispers waspishly, like he’s stupid.

Will just nods, refusing to look at her, or at Boris. He studies the handwriting instead. Small, and spiky and sloping to the right. He’s mortified. The note doesn’t include a locker number, just the assumption that Will already knows where it is, which means that it’s been noticed just how much he’s been watching the other boy.

This suddenly feels like the worst Monday of his entire life.

He wants to crawl under his desk and disappear. Will’s brain is filling with catastrophic what-if scenarios faster than he can fully comprehend them. What if Boris makes fun of him for how he’s been acting and Lenora becomes another Hawkins, where he’s just the fairy again? What if he’s angry and he beats him up? Will’s not a fighter. He’s never been in a fight.

He feels seconds away from either tears or hyperventilating, all over a stupid note and a stupid boy.

Will takes a deep breath through his nose and tries to slow his heartbeat. Tells himself he’s being absurd. The other day in class, Boris had seemed friendly enough. Maybe that’s all this is—making a friend.

He looks at the handwriting again with new eyes. Thinks this time that it looks less messy and more unpracticed. He tucks the paper into his textbook for safekeeping, and class drags on.

Boris is already at his locker by the time Will approaches. He spends a few moments dawdling, hands already clammy with nerves, which he thinks is ridiculous, but he also can’t help it. He doesn’t know what it is about this stranger that makes him respond this way, because it can’t just be the passing similarities to Mike. If he was truly like Mike, Will would feel more comfortable, and less like he’s been electrocuted.

But Boris is an enigma is so many ways, and Will is drawn to it like a compass pointing north.

He takes one step. Two. Four. And then, he’s there, right there beside Boris, who looks at him with something that is both cheerful and intense.

“William! You came. Didn’t think you would,” he says.

Boris’s voice has a lilting, heavy accent that Will can’t place, one that he didn’t quite pick up from the whisper he heard at the back of the classroom. It is both melodic and guttural, as if someone placed several accents from around the world together like puzzle pieces.

Will doesn’t know what to say, because he didn’t say he would come. He never wrote back. And he doesn’t want to say ‘you told me to,’ because that doesn’t sound right either. His tongue feels glued to the roof of his mouth, his brain moving too fast for his lips to catch anything. So, he shrugs.

Boris laughs, a loud “HA!” sound that almost makes it feel like his voice is exploding over you.

“Always so quiet, yes? Weird for an American. Everyone here is talk, talk, talk, but you, not a peep.”

He closes his locker, books inside, as their last class had finished out the day.

Will has so many questions. Where is Boris from? What does he think of America? Of school? What’s his family like? But none of them seem to reach his mouth. He’s oddly paralyzed in front of Boris, hypnotized by chaotic energy of him. His hair is cleaner today, falling over his face more in curls than the stringy mess it had been on Friday. He has bracelets on, some colorful and some dark, some leather too. And Will notices that he has large hands, with long fingers and thin, birdboned wrists. It’s all he can do to stand and let Boris continue.

“You have those eyes though,” he says. “See everything.”

Boris lifts a teasing brow.

“I’ve seen too.”

Seen you watching me, Will’s brain helpfully rewrites, and he wants to disintegrate.

“So I figure, if we’re both seeing, and nobody is talking, then I will talk, yeah? I’m good at that. Didn’t used to be good at that, was once just a shy thing. But Judy in Karmeywallag, in the Northern Territory, she taught me my English, see? Now I never stop!”

He finishes with a smile, and Will finds that he wants to learn all about Karmeywallag and the Northern Territory. He wants to know all about what it was like to learn English. He wants to know Boris. He’s eccentric and magnetic, and Will hasn’t said a single world to him which makes him feel so ridiculous, but this boy is a wild bundle of energy, and Will…he loves it.

“Uh…only my Mom calls me William, and only when she’s angry. Like, really angry.” Will finally says, for lack of anything better.

Boris still looks pleased.

“And your dad?”

“He’s…not around.”

“Dead?”

Will shakes his head.

“No, just gone.”

“Ah, one of those dads. Plenty of those dads. My mother is dead.”

It shocks Will how casually he says it.

“I’m so sorry,” and he genuinely means it.

“Nah, she was alkie, fell out of window. I was only small. Means nothing to me. I live with my dad now. We travel all over the world. He builds mines. But that makes people mad, because they promise it won’t fuck up the environment, and then mine fucks up the environment!”

Will is kind of reeling from how easily Boris shares things, doesn’t know if he’s always like this or if he considers Will a friend now and someone to confide in.

“You should come over sometime,” Boris continues. “Watch movie. I don’t live far. Walk to school every day.”

“I’d like that.”

He really would. His traitorous brain starts to conjure up the image of him and Boris on a sofa, legs tangled together like he and Mike used to do, and he immediately tries to erase it. He’s never met anyone less like Mike than Boris, and it’s unfair to keep comparing them.

“Today?”

“I can’t today, my brother and sister are outside waiting for me.”

“Oh, you come from big family!”

Will nods.

“But, maybe tomorrow?”

“Perfect,” Boris grins, more alive than Will has ever seen him, and that’s truly saying something.

Chapter Text

Argyle joins them for dinner. It’s just macaroni and cheese from a box, but he and Jonathan devour it like it’s been hand crafted by a Michelin star chef. Will knows it’s the weed, but Joyce is none the wiser. He doesn’t like that his mom is naive about this, but at the same time, he kind of wants her to stay in the dark forever. He hates it when she gets upset, and Jonathan smoking pot is bound to bother her.

“So, my friend wants to know if I can go over to his house and watch a movie tomorrow?” Will says. It comes out lilting like a question, even though he doesn’t mean it to.

“You made a friend?” Joyce asks, shining with the bright, proud happiness that only a mother can possess.

“Way to go man!” Argyle praises from across the table.

Jonathan stays questionably quiet, eyes small, red, and glassy, fully absorbed in his macaroni.

“Who is this friend?” El asks, and Will can’t tell if she’s suspicious or teasing.

“His name’s Boris. He’s new.”

“Well, will his parents be there?” questions Joyce.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should have him over here first. Just so I can meet him.”

She’s two seconds away from going into full mothering mode, which Will understands, and loves, but also hates, because he’s almost fifteen, and Lenora isn’t Hawkins. He just wants to be able to have fun sometimes like everybody else seems to get to.

Will’s shoulders sag.

“Mom, c’mon,” he sighs. “He just moved here too. He only lives with his dad. He moves around a lot. We’re just gonna watch a movie. He lives right by the school, and I’ll be home before dark.”

She gives him a soft smile, reaching over to run her fingers through his hair.

“Jonathan, can you boys pick up Will after his movie?”

“What?” at his name Jonathan is shaken from his stupor. “Will’s going to the movies?”

“Nah, he’s going to someone’s house tomorrow,” Argyle says.

“Who’s house?”

“Boris!” Will groans, frustrated.

Joyce’s face is scrunched up in a mixture of confusion and concern, but she doesn’t say anything just yet.

“Oh, right. Right.”

“He’s Will’s new friend,” El chimes in.

“That’s good! It’s good to make friends.”

“So, can you guys pick me up tomorrow?” Will asks.

“Yeah, sure!” Argyle agrees.

The next morning, for no reason at all, Will frets. He showers for five minutes longer than usual, spends extra time messing with his hair, and takes care in picking out his clothes. (He decides he hates all of them.) He keeps telling himself it’s just a movie. A movie with a friend. But that doesn’t seem to help in calming himself down.

A part of him is hoping that Boris will cancel. The rest of him thinks that he’ll die if that happens.

By the time he gets to school with El, he’s worked himself up into such an anxious mess that Boris’s shout of “William!” when he’s by his locker literally makes him jump in surprise.

“Apologies,” Boris speaks. “Didn’t mean to frighten.”

Today, Boris looks good. Or at least, as good as Will’s ever seen him. Freshly showered, hair tumbling in clean curls around his angular face. He looks semi-well rested rather than an inch from death, and his clothes don’t look slept in. He’s wearing even more bracelets than he was yesterday. Some are made of string, some look like stretched out hair ties, more are made of dark leather.

Will’s heart thuds hard in his chest, all at the chaotic picture that Boris creates.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Good, good. Movie tonight?” he asks. As if he’s reminding Will. As if Will could have possibly forgotten.

“Yeah, of course.”

Boris looks pleased, smile so big it cuts a sharp line across his face.

“Come, grab your books, we have this class together, yes? Maybe we do project today. We can be partners!”

Will scrambles at that, notebooks and textbooks almost slipping from his grip at the idea of sitting side by side with Boris, trying to accomplish an academic task. He can’t help but think, with the way his brain is working now, what a disaster that would be.

At lunch, Will and El sit together in their own little corner of the cafeteria. Nobody cares to bother them, and they don’t much care to bother anybody else. Will doesn’t mind it, but he knows that El does. Although they’ve chosen an area far away from the so called ‘popular’ crowd, it doesn’t necessarily stop them from targeting El as she walks across the room or as she passes through the line. Sometimes, she arrives at her seat near tears.

Will is worried that may be the case today, as he hears uproarious laughter from that section, and hears the scuttle of his sister’s hurried feet behind him. He glances over his shoulder and sees a spitball stuck to her cheek. They sit across from each other, her brushing at her face, when a brown lunch bag lands between them.

“Shouldn’t worry about someone that acts like such a cunt, yeah? Angela and what’s his name and whoever else. Slags like that in every school. One day they’ll find out you have teeth.”

Boris sits down as though he does it every day, slapping Will on the back as he does so. El’s brows are furrowed in confusion.

“What’s a cu—”

“Jane, Boris. Boris, Jane,” Will cuts her off.

“Your sister, right?” Boris asks with a lifted brow.

El nods.

“So pretty, too. Must run in the family.”

He ruffles Will’s hair, and Will’s cheeks heat up.

“Well, she’s my step-sister, so that’s all her.”

“Oh, really now? Did her dad marry your mom?”

“My dad died. In a mall fire. He saved lots of lives. And I came to live with Will and Joyce and Jonathan.”

Boris nods his head, looking unbothered. He takes a can of coke out of his lunch bag, tipping it jovially.

“Life, eh?!”

After school, Boris and Will meet up by the front doors. Today has been one of the strangest days of Will’s life. The addition of Boris, who passes notes in class like it’s his job, and who exchanges looks that speak full sentences, made everything more interesting than he ever could have imagined. Lunch was an animated affair, without a single moment of silence and broad, sweeping gestures to punctuate stories about Las Vegas and Texas and Alaska.

Will thinks he could probably listen to Boris talk forever. He thinks El likes him less. Possibly finds him strange and intimidating. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. A bitter part of him, a part he doesn’t like, wants to keep Boris all to himself. Wants to hoard these stories for his ears alone, even if it does make him selfish.

“Come! I don’t live far,” Boris says. He has no books or bag with him, clearly indicating that he has no plans to do homework after the movie tonight.

They step out together into the California sunlight and Boris lets out a sound of discontent.

“Hate the sun. Should have brought an umbrella. Keeps you cool. And prevents sunburn. Used it all the time in Vegas.”

“An umbrella? For the sun? Won’t that…look weird?” Will asks.

Boris shrugs, uncaring.

“Who cares. Spend too much time worrying what people think, you never have fun!”

That makes Will deliberate.

He’s been considered weird and a loser all of his life, but he’s also always been aware of it. He’s always worried about it. It was easier when he was in a party of losers, but he did always care about how people seemed to see him. How much better would it be if he just…didn’t? If he just did things for the fun of it, or because it felt good or right?

“That’s true,” he finally says after a long pause. “I guess maybe I think too much.”

“Quiet people always think too much.”

Will laughs.

“Yeah. I guess, I dunno…when I moved here, I told myself everything would be different. That I would be somebody here, and it’s made it hard to just…let go.”

“Were you somebody where you used to live?”

“No. Not at all. I was…a total loser.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Boris looks at him out of the corner of his eye, the color so dark it appears black. “Is a loser not somebody?”

“It didn’t feel like it.”

“Everybody is somebody William, even if you don’t feel like it.” Suddenly Boris takes off in a lopping jog. “See! I told you! Don’t live far! We’re already here.”

And as he watches Boris race up to a single story, cookie-cutter California house, Will has the thought that the small conversation they just had is going to stick with him for a very long time.

Chapter Text

While Boris’s house had looked pleasant enough from the outside, the inside was, for lack of a better word, barren. There was a sofa and an end table, but no kitchen table or chairs. No television in the living room, and nothing decorating the walls. There weren’t even boxes to indicate that they were still unpacking.

As they make their way into the kitchen, Will notices that the counters are covered in a thin layer of grime, almost as if they’ve never been cleaned.

“Would you like something to drink?” Boris offers. “We have beer in the fridge. Vodka in the freezer.”

“Um…” Will stalls. He’s never drank before. He’s not sure if he wants to. He’s also not sure if he wants to admit that he never has.

Boris senses his hesitance at once, and knocks his knuckles on the side of Will’s head.

“Too much going on up there. What’s the problem? Just a beer, yeah? Who cares?”

“Your dad doesn’t mind?” Will asks.

“HA!” Boris’s laugh explodes over him. “Is not even home. Probably won’t be home for days. Nothing to worry about.”

“I’ve never drank before,” he meekly admits.

Boris yanks the fridge open, well stocked with what looks like nothing but beer, and pulls out two.

“Perfect time to try then. Always best among friends.”

Will takes the cold bottle in his hand, already opened, Boris’s excited eyes waiting for him to take his very first sip. He does, and is tempted to spit it right back out. The flavor is strong and bitter beyond belief. He’s never tasted anything like it and doesn’t quite understand why people enjoy it so much.

“Good, yes?” Boris inquires, taking a swig of his own. “This is German beer. The best kind there is. I used to live in New Guinea, you know. And we had bad flood. All we had to drink was beer. Not good beer either! Local beer in New Guinea, terrible tasting.” He pulls a face. “But breakfast, lunch, dinner, only beer! Had headache for days.”

“If this is good beer, I can’t imagine drinking bad beer for that long.”

“HA!”

Will warms a little at making Boris laugh and takes another sip to avoid thinking about it.

“Come, I show you my room.”

It’s only a two-bedroom house, and Boris’s room is the last door on the left, right across from the bathroom. Will doesn’t know what he expected, perhaps something kind of grunge, or maybe a bit artsy, but Boris’s room is neither of these things. Instead, his walls are tented with fabric in various colors and materials, and the air reeks of cigarettes. There are clothes on the floor, and piles and piles of books in a variety of languages. Beer bottles line the window like a sun catcher, casting green light through them and onto the carpet.

“Wow,” Will breathes, enamored by the adornments on the walls. It’s an explosion of color, and he adores it. “You did all this?”

“Is easy,” Boris says. “I fold it up and keep it in suitcase. Takes only a few minutes to put it up. What movie do you want to watch?”

He walks into the room and throws himself down on a mattress that is just as colorful as the walls around him. It’s only then that Will notices a very small television and VCR in the corner of the room, along with a stack of VHS tapes.

“What’s your favorite?” asks Will.

“Have many, but right now, S.O.S. Iceberg. You seen it?”

Will shakes his head.

“Is from the 30’s. Very good film. We watch, you see! You’ll like it.”

Boris rises to set up the tape, and Will takes another drink from his beer so that he’s not hypnotized by the small of his back as he crouches down to mess with the electronics.

They don’t watch a lot of S.O.S. Iceberg. Instead, one beer turns into two, and two turns into three. Will is feeling a bit lightheaded and a bit giddy at this point, and maybe a little bit in love with Boris too.

Right now, they’re sitting flush together on his colorful bed, and Boris has a cigarette between his fingers, motioning animatedly as he tells a story about Karmeywallag. The exact kind of story will had wanted to hear when he first mentioned the town in the Northern Territory.

“Rain, rain, rain,” Boris says. Mold everywhere. Even on your shoes.”

Will wrinkles his nose.

“Judy hated Karmeywallag, but I loved her. She was so kind to me. Television everyday with me. That was my school. And you!” He gestures with his cigarette before taking a drag. “What about your school in…in,”

“Hawkins,” Will supplies.

“Yes, Hawkins.”

“It was alright.” Will shrugs. “I had, well, still have, great friends. There were some pretty great teachers too. It was the other people that were a problem. Kind of like Lenora. I did some clubs and stuff. Like the AV Club, you know, Ham Radio. I always wished there was an art club, because I draw and paint a lot, but one never got started.”

“What do you draw?”

“Anything. Everything. I used to draw our D&D characters all the time though. That was a lot of fun.”

“What is D&D?” Boris asks.

Will gasps, half seriously and half mock offended.

“Only the greatest game of all time!”

“Can we play?”

“Well, we’d need more people, but I can teach you about it.”

“Then we find more people!”

Will’s heart flips at the determined look on Boris’s face. He doesn’t even know what D&D is, but he wants to play because Will likes it, and that makes his insides feel funny. It could also be the beer, but he thinks a lot of it is Boris.

Boris grins, a sly cut of a thing that makes him look dangerous and enticing.

“Tell me a secret,” he demands.

“A secret?”

He hums his agreement.

“Quiet people always have secrets, no? So, tell me secret. You tell me, I tell you. Fair trade.”

Will clams up a little, palms sweaty around the neck of the bottle he’s holding. He has more secrets than he knows what to do with. Doesn’t even know what he would start with, doesn’t know what he can trust Boris with, honestly.

“I’m the reason my Dad left,” is what falls out of him. “My mom says I’m not, but I know she’s just saying that to make me feel better.”

They’re almost laying completely flat, only propped up by Boris’s overabundance of pillows. Will feels hypnotized by the heat of the room and the heady smell of cigarette smoke and the dark look in Boris’s eyes.

“Why would he leave whole family because of one son?”

“Because…because I’m…he thinks…”

Boris taps his knuckles on the side of his head again.

“Think too hard. Just say.”

“He always called me queer. Said I was a fag. Didn’t want a son like that.”

Boris says something in another language, something that sounds deep and spitting and guttural.

“Piss on him then,” he says in English. “What does it matter who you fuck? Nothing to do with him.”

“Kids at school, in Hawkins, they always said it too.”

Will’s eyes feel vaguely wet, as if he might cry. It hurts to talk about this, but feels good too.

“Piss on them too.”

Will gives a small, choked out laugh at that.

“Do you though?” Boris asks.

“Do I what?”

“Fuck boys.”

“I—I don’t…Do you have to say it like that?”

That puts Boris in a teasing mood. He puts his cigarette out, and places his hand on the back of Will’s neck, shaking him slightly. His smile is wide and mischievous.

“Apologies. Didn’t realize you were delicate. Perhaps I should say making love then, yes?”

Will covers his burning face with one hand, peeking through his fingers.

“No!” And he’s laughing at Boris’s antics, because he can’t help it. “I mean, like, I’ve never even kissed anyone before, let alone done that.”  

Boris’s mouth drops open in gleeful surprise.

“William! You still haven’t had kiss yet? You look like this and you have kissed nobody? Not a single soul? Why?!”

He ignores the comment on his appearance in favor of the why. He knows why. The why is back in Hawkins. The why bears a startling resemblance to the boy he’s pressing sides with, and just so happens to be dating his sister. Mike Wheeler.

“I just…haven’t found the right person?” Will offers. It’s not quite a lie, but it’s not the truth either.

“Bullshit,” Boris calls immediately.

“Okay, so I kind of liked someone…for a really long time. But it never happened. It’s not a big deal.”

“And do you still like this someone?”

Will shrugs.

“Is this someone going to kiss you?”

Will gives a bitter laugh.

“No.”

“Is time to move on then. C’mon,” Boris sits up. “Kiss me.”

Will’s entire body freezes—his heart, his brain, everything scrambling like radio static.

“What?” he squeaks.

“Is just kiss. I have kissed many people. I teach you. It will be fun, promise,” Boris says this like it’s nothing. Like they’re not both boys.

“B-but we’re both—” Will trails off.

“Piss on them, remember? I kissed my Theo all the time. Good kisser, my Theo. My favorite to kiss.”

Boris takes Will’s beer bottle from his hand and places it beside the bed along with his own, and Will finds his body rising to face Boris of its own volition. Does he really want to do this? Kiss Boris? His heart is pounding a heavy drumbeat in his chest, and he feels faint with nerves. He’s been fascinated with this wild boy from day one, and now this boy is offering to kiss him, and he’s kind of afraid he’ll never get this chance again. So, yes, he wants to. Right now, he wants to more than anything.

“What if…I’m bad at it?” Will asks shyly, embarrassed.

“Like I say, I teach you. You be excellent in no time. Come closer.”

Will scoots impossibly closer, until their knees are pressed together, and his face is so close that he could count the constellation of freckles dusted along Boris’s nose and cheeks. Boris exhales, and it’s all stale beer and cigarettes, and it should be disgusting, but Will just wants to breathe it in. He places a large, gentle hand at the side of Will’s jaw, angling his head slightly.

“Relax. Close your eyes,” he whispers.

Will does.

When Boris’s lips touch his, it’s not the soft, fumbling thing that Will always anticipated his first kiss to be. It’s an explosion. His lips are chapped and slightly rough and definitely experienced. He captures Will’s lower lip between his own, then swallows down his ensuing sigh with a full, plush kiss.

“Is okay, yes?” Boris murmurs.

“Yeah…” Will breathes, already so weak.

Boris kisses him again, and again, coaxing his lips apart more and more with each one, until they’re exchanging heated, open mouth kisses. His tongue traces a line along Will’s lower lip, and he gasps. Boris takes the opportunity to dive in.

Will is drowning. Drowning in Boris. In the taste and smell and feel of him. In the back of his mind, he has a new understanding of why El and Mike kiss so much, because this is incredible. The taste of Boris is alight on his tongue and dancing along the roof of his mouth, and impulsively, he buries his hands in the other boy’s hair before sucking on his tongue, hard, just once.

Boris groans, and the sound makes Will’s fingers tighten in the soft strands. They part only for kisses to be planted, frantically, at Will’s jawline. And Boris is mumbling something in a different language.

“Sweet mouth,” he says in English, going back to Will’s lips. “Such a sweet mouth. Could kiss you all night.”

Those words set Will on fire, and as he lets himself be devoured by Boris, he realizes, selfishly, that he wishes he could stay. That for once, in the whole time he’s lived in Lenora, he actually dreads the presence of his brother coming to take him home.

Chapter Text

Will has a hard time sleeping after his movie night with Boris. Their kiss is all he can think about, day and night, in class and out of it. It’s difficult talking to his new friend too, his eyes always drawn straight to fullness of his lower lip as he launches into a story about this or that. He seems to know it too, eyes always full of something cunning and sly and mischievous.

Boris is dangerous, Will decides. Dangerous, and addictive, because Will would give anything to kiss him again. His head is so far in the clouds that everyone in his family takes notice. El has been staring at him with a furrowed brow so reminiscent of his mother that it’s genuinely terrifying. Jonathan pats him on that back and checks in far more often then normal. Joyce gives him extra helpings of food and unleashes of full-blown inquisition about school every single evening.

He appreciates the concern, but nothing is actually wrong here.

Well, nothing physically wrong at least. If he can think hard enough to get past kissing Boris, his mind is full of heavier thoughts.

That night seems to have simultaneously lifted the fog from his mind only to drop a heavier one in its place.

The fog that was lifted revolves around Mike. Beautiful Mike, with his soft eyes and kind smiles and forever presence. Mike has…been a jerk lately. Longer than lately. Mike has been a jerk for more than a year. And all Will has done is pine for him, relentlessly, as if he’s somehow going to come around and say, “It’s okay, I like boys too!”

It hurts. Like something has been carved out of his chest, it hurts endlessly. Mike has been in his life for almost as long as he can remember, always soothing, always loving, always fiercely protective. Somewhere along the way though, that got lost. In puberty and girls, or maybe it was the Upside Down, that all fell away.

Mike is never going to love him, and he’s coping with it.

The fog that’s dropped over his brain one hundred percent has to do with Boris. Boris, who looks kind of like Mike, but acts nothing like him. Boris, who is the most alive person Will has ever met, who is full of lifetimes of stories despite only being fifteen. His mouth shoots languages like second nature, and he can talk about philosophy with an eloquence that would put college graduates to shame.

It staggers Will to realize how deeply he wants to know Boris. How much more he wants to learn. He wants to be able to trace the constellations of his freckles, to have them memorized the same way Mike’s are permanently embedded in his memory. And as he lays awake at night, he’s scared of how easy it would be to love him.

It takes him three days to work up the courage to invite Boris over to his house, and that courage comes in an envelope addressed from Hawkins, Indiana.

“Sorry, sweetie,” his mom says. “It came yesterday. I meant to give it to you.”

Will barely hears her as he scurries to his room, tearing the letter open as he goes, not even bothering to close his door behind him.

Will,

How are you?

Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply.

Hellfire (the D&D club) is going really well! I think you would really like Eddie. We all get our own shirts and we wear them on days when we meet after school.

Lucas joined the basketball team. I think he’s trying to make it into the popular crowd, but right now he’s just on the bench.

We miss you.

From,

Mike

It’s the shortest, shittiest letter that Will’s ever gotten in his entire life. He halfheartedly flips the paper over, searching for more but finds none. His letter to Mike had gone out over a month and a half ago and had been pages long. He wants to pull at his hair. He wants to scream and cry.

Instead, he tucks the letter back into its envelope and places it on his desk.

Just as quickly as he had gotten upset, he now feels flat; despondent.

He mindlessly closes his door and changes into his school clothes, wondering vaguely if Mike ever thinks of him at all. Maybe he only sends letters because he feels obligated, or because El reminds him to. Maybe none of his friends think of him, as a matter of fact.

Dustin, Lucas, Max.

Will misses them all so much, but that doesn’t mean that they miss him.

A stray tear finds its way out, tracing a path down his cheek. He doesn’t bother to wipe it away.

And then, at the front of his mind, a loud explosion of a laugh, an invitation, a kiss.

He can think of one person that doesn’t seem to think of him as an obligation.

“Hey mom?!” Will shouts down the hallway. “Can I invite Boris over for dinner?”

Will walks into school that morning with a determination he hasn’t felt since they were fighting interdimensional creatures from the Upside Down. He sees Boris by his locker, facing away from him, but still unmistakable even from the front doors.

He doesn’t even bother stopping by his own locker first, just continues his resolute march up to him, ready to give the invite of a lifetime.

“Hey,” is what he says instead, and then his breath catches in his throat. When Boris turns, there is a wine-colored bruise around his right eye, vivid and violent against the porcelain color of his skin. “Oh my God, what happened?”

Will’s fortitude is replaced with concern so quickly it makes him feel sick. It must show on his face, because Boris’s smile is placating. Just a soothing, flit of a thing.

“This?” He gestures to his eye. “Nothing to worry about. Already told Whittaker, got hit with football.”

Will can tell he’s lying. He doesn’t know how, because maybe Boris does play football in his free time, he wouldn’t know, but it just seems wrong in some way. It’s written in the way that he’s holding himself—defensive and guarded—like he’s protecting himself from outsiders. Will knows that look, has probably given off that look a thousand times.

“Boris, did someone hit you?” he asks quietly, almost too quietly to hear.

And still Boris makes the sign for him to hush.

“Nyet, William. Don’t worry about me. Is all fine.”

Will wishes more than anything that he could take Boris’s hand in his, and reassure him that he’s safe, that Will is safe, but in the open air of school, it’s just not possible.

“Do you…do you wanna come over to my house tonight?”

That immediately makes Boris light up like a star on Christmas night.

Chapter Text

For the very first time in his life, Will is actually slightly embarrassed of Jonathan. Not of his brother as a person—he loves his brother as a person—but as Argyle’s van rolls into the parking lot, big and yellow and reeking of weed, Will wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Normally, he doesn’t care what people think, especially anyone here at a Lenora, but this is Boris, and Will is constantly struck with the urge to impress him. And after a hard day he doesn’t think this first impression is quite the kind of impressive he’s going for.

Before the doors even open, Boris immediately knows what’s up, eyebrows arching into something sly as he side-eyes Will, an excited sort of smile spreading on his face. He’s never met anyone who had a face that could express so many different things at once.

Then, El opens the door, and they’re piling in.

“Boris, Jonathan and Argyle. Jonathan and Argyle, Boris,” Will introduces.

“Hey,” Jonathan starts to greet before Argyle booms over him:

“Hey, man, what happened to your eye?”

Boris gives a well-rehearsed laugh, a small slip of a thing that sounds nothing like the eruption of his real one.

“This is nothing. Just accident! Playing football near home and got hit in the eye! Such concern from American teachers though. Is good thing!”

There’s plenty of room for all of them, but Boris still chooses to sit close to Will, close enough for their knees to knock together as they speed around corners and make winding turns.

“Sucks, man. It’s easy to get hit in the eye. Happened to me once in fifth grade gym class,” Argyle says. He’s driving way too fast, causing Boris to slide and bump into Will way more often then necessary.

“Didn’t you get hit in the eye because somebody like…punched you?” Jonathan asks.

“Yeah, so? It still happens. Kids are mean, man!”

“I thought you hit him first.”

“I didn’t hit him first, you’re getting your stories confused.”

Will tunes out their conversation, knowing they’ll never make it back to them by the time they get home, when Boris leans in.

“You never told me your brother gets high,” he whispers.

Will shrugs.

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

“William, of course it matters. Means he knows where to get it. Have you never tried?”

Something races down Will’s spine, something he can’t quite identify. Not quite fear, not quite exhilaration either. Maybe it’s the thrill of knowing more about his new friend.

He shakes his head no, because he hasn’t. Hasn’t even considered it. Has Boris smoked weed before?

“Have you?” he asks, and the question feels weighted somehow, like he’s asking so much more.

“Of course. All the time in Las Vegas, especially with my Theo.”

Will feels a pang of jealousy at the mention of Theo (My favorite to kiss.) and tries to bury it back down. He knows very little about the boy; only that he was Boris’s close friend from Vegas, that they kissed, and now they apparently smoked weed together. It doesn’t help anything to be jealous of somebody you don’t know that’s also not around.

“Oh. What’s it like?”

Boris’s grin slides slow across his face.

“It is fantastic. All calm. No worries. Is why your brother does it.”

“I’ve never thought about it before. Trying it, I mean,” Will admits. “Just doesn’t seem like…me.”

“Life is about new experiences, no? How do you know what is you if you never try new things?”

El is starting to give Will an odd look over the top of Boris’s head, probably because of the whispering, but possibly also because they’ve taken so many sharp turns that Boris is practically seated in Will’s lap, and Will’s cheeks feel warm, and his palms feel sweaty, and he probably looks like a mess.

Will wants to say that he already is trying new things. He’s trying the newest thing of all—Boris. No drink or drug could possibly be as exhilarating as this strange boy that suddenly decided he and Will were friends.

“We should try to get some,” Boris continues. “Smoke together. It will be fun.”

There’s something about the way that he says it, so hopeful and fervent, that makes Will’s heartstrings pull hard. Will has always been eager to please, has always been honest and earnest to a fault, and he never considered it a problem until right now. Because he wants to make Boris happy. He wants to see his face light up again like the moment he invited him for dinner. And if smoking weed will do that, even if it’s only once, is it really all that bad?

“I…I…” Will’s caught in a stutter, unsure of what to say.

At that moment, Argyle careens around another corner and Boris falls further into him. They are pressed together in some odd conglomeration of a sideways hug, keeping each other from tumbling over and sliding around. (In the back of his mind, Will thinks El is a genius for wearing a seatbelt. They should have done that, and he vows to do so for the rest of his life.) Involuntarily, Will glances at Boris’s face, so, so close to his. The paleness of it despite the constant California sun. The dusting of freckles. The pink fullness of his lips. He feels hypnotized. Entranced.

Boris licks his lower lip, jolting Will out of his reverie. His heart clenches tight in his chest with mortification. Boris’s eyes are dark and heavy, pupils large, and his expression is wonderfully playful and teasing. As if he knows every single one of Will’s thoughts and plans to have fun with them.

Will wants to kiss that look right off his face. Wants to kiss him so bad it hurts, and from the knowing quirk of Boris’s brow and the slight uptilt to his lips, he knows it too.

“Alight, everybody out!” Argyle sings.

They hadn’t even noticed the van pull up to a stop. Will scrambles to untangle their limbs while Boris looks on humorously. El’s still giving them a befuddled stare, and the two in the front seat are none the wiser.

“Mom works from home, so she’s here, but I don’t think she actually gets off until five. Then we’ll have dinner. I don’t know if it’ll be meatloaf or lasagna, but that’s usually what she makes when we have guests,” Will says, leading Boris into the house after everybody else is already inside. The other boy is looking on in wonder, gazing at the pictures on the walls with the delight of a small child in a toy store.

“I have never had meatloaf. Seen it once or twice in Texas, but didn’t try,” Boris replies, examining a picture of Will from Kindergarten. “This is you?”

Will nods.

“So small! I have no photos from this age. Moved too much, you see. But here, so many! You must be very loved, yes?”  

Will doesn’t know what to say to that. He is loved—loved by his mother, and Jonathan and El, he’s kind of on the fence about his friends, but once he was so certain about their love too. Yes, Will is loved, yet still, he shrugs.

Just then, Joyce comes down the hallway, telephone held to her ear and giving the usual rehearsed dialogue that comes with selling, “volumes A through Z, yes, Mrs. Sanders.”

“Your mom?” Boris asks, voice low.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t tell me she was hot.”

Will’s brain does an incredible impression of a train crash, synapsis stopping, molecules freezing, no thoughts whatsoever except for blank abject horror.

“You think my mom is hot?” he demands incredulously.

“Of course!” Boris says this like it’s nothing. Like he hasn’t just ripped Will’s entire world apart with one sentence. “Look at her. I see where you get it from. So lovely.”

And then, Boris sighs, and Will is struck with the urge to scream. Joyce waves and apologetically gestures to the phone, a sign that she’s working and will have to greet them later.

“Well, she’s busy, so why don’t we go to my room?” and he sounds flustered and petulant like a child.

“Sure!” Boris chirps, not seeming to mind in the slightest.

Both boys wave back to Joyce before Will grabs Boris by the arm and guides him to his bedroom. He didn’t have a plan for any of this. Not just Boris thinking his mom is hot or whatever, but what he would actually do once Boris was here. He doesn’t have movies, or beer, and the Atari is in the living room. His room isn’t colorful and exciting like the other boy’s is.

By comparison, he’s so boring and plain it’s physically painful. He wants to squirm into himself and disappear. Where Boris is vibrant, Will is beige. Or in the case of his room, yellow. Not even a good yellow either, but rather a very 1970s out of fashion yellow. His bedspread is plain, his desk is uninteresting, the only thing remotely noteworthy is the corner where he paints. His easel is set up with a canvas already, and sketches are pinned up to the wall around it.

Boris goes straight for it, like he’s being pulled there by an invisible string.

“You really do draw,” he says.

“Mmhm,” Will hums.

Boris’s eyes are raking over his sketches like he’s observing something magnificent in a museum, and it’s making Will feel nervous.

“What will you do with the painting?”

“Oh that’s…it was supposed to be a present. I dunno, it’s stupid.”

“Why stupid? Anyone would be grateful to get such a gift.”

Will’s picking at his fingernails, a bad habit he thought he had stopped when he was much younger, but for some reason picked back up as soon as he moved to California.

“It’s complicated,” Will sighs, hesitant to get into his history with Mike at all, let alone his feelings surrounding him and why he would start painting him a picture in the first place.

“Is it? Or do you just think too much?”

That makes Will want to smile, already imagining the feeling of Boris’s knuckles against the side of his head in a gesture he’s becoming familiar with.

“Maybe both?”

“Is for this person you want to kiss you, yes?” Boris assumes, not incorrectly at that, as he abandons the painting to dig through his pockets, coming up with a crushed pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “I can smoke in here?”

“I…” Will rubs at his forehead in frustration, not at the smoking, but rather at how quickly Boris can see right through him.  “Yeah, sure. But you have to do it out the window.”

He watches as his friend throws the glass open, cigarette poised between two fingers, the long line of his body leaning up against the windowsill. He does it all so quickly, as if the motion is well practiced. He rolls his head, popping his neck, which Will shouldn’t find charming but does, before he speaks.

“You never answer. The painting. Is for the person you want to kiss you?” Boris lilts the last part like a question even though it’s really not.

Will huffs, thinking hard.

“Who hit you?” he asks. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“Not fair trade.” Boris takes a drag off his cigarette, eyes stony.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know about…about Mike…if you just, please, tell me who hit you.”

The silence in the room is heavy as Boris contemplates, smoke drawing patterns in the air above his head.

“My dad,” he finally says. “Came home last night. Drunk. Always Drunk. I don’t think he knew it was me he was hitting. At least, not this time. He cried, left me some money. He won’t be back for a little while. Is all fine.”

Will’s heart feels a bit broken in a way that he doesn’t think can ever be fixed. His own parents have always had problems—his dad has always been a jerk of the highest degree—but Will has never once been hit. It’s something he’s never even worried about, not even when things got really bad and the fighting was at it’s worst. But for Boris, getting hit sounds almost normal. Will feels tears prick at the back of his eyes. Swallows once, hard, to fight them down.

“Have you ever told anyone that this happens?” Will asks.

Boris gives a mirthless chuckle.

“Tell who? For what? So I can get taken away? Deported? Nyet. No, thank you.”

“I…I don’t know how to fix this.”

“Is nothing to fix,” he puts his cigarette out and tosses the butt out the window. “Can make much better by telling me about this Mike though.”

“I think we should talk about this a bit more, Boris.”

“I don’t.”

And he looks serious, perhaps the most serious Will has ever seen him. It’s a dark mood, almost brooding, with a dangerous edge to it, as if Boris is on the verge of snapping. Whether that’s out of sorrow or anger, Will’s not sure, but he also doesn’t want to test it.

Will sits on his bed, and Boris follows. The window is still open, allowing a breeze to come through, and the faint smell of smoke sticks to Boris and still lingers in the air.

“Mike’s my best friend,” Will starts. “We met when we were five.”

Boris makes a noise like he’s impressed.

“Long time,” he says. Will nods.

“It is. Mike’s been a part of my life for so long, not having him kind of feels like I’m missing a part of myself. It’s just, I know I told you the things my dad and kids at school used to say about me, well because of that not a lot of people wanted to be my friend. But Mike, he didn’t care. He would still hug me, or hold my hand, or share a sleeping bag with me, no matter what people said. He never treated me like I was different. He’s always been so protective and so kind.”

Boris is nodding along, full attention on Will as he speaks.

“But, I dunno, a few years ago, he started kind of getting into girls, and I didn’t, and things started to change. He started pulling away hard. It’s like one moment he was my best friend, and then he was a really, really shitty friend. Right before I moved here, we stopped hanging out at all. Nothing. No D&D, no movies, no sleepovers, nothing. And now, I just got this stupid letter in the mail, almost two months after I sent him one that was pages long, and it’s barely a paragraph.”

Will’s embarrassed to realize that he’s starting to tear up again. He tries to swallow them back down like he did before, but it’s not working as well.

“Somewhere along the line, I know I fell in love with him. I don’t know when it happened, it just kind of did. But I also know it’ll never work because Mike’s dating Jane.”

Boris gasps.

“Your sister?!”

“Yeah, they’ve been together for a few years now.”

“No!”

And then Will’s crying. Not full on sobbing, but there are definitely tears streaming down his cheeks, and with frustrated, uncoordinated hands, he wipes them away.

Boris coos something tender sounding in another language and swipes a thumb through the wetness under his left eye.

“I never know what you’re saying,” Will chokes out. “And I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“One day you will learn the things I say. Right now, I call you sweet boy.” He presses a kiss to Will’s cheek, and Will has to bite down on his own lip to keep the gasp inside. “You are sweet boy. Sensitive. Big feelings. Is good thing.”

“Boris…”

“Let me make it better.”

Then Boris kisses him, and everything in his brain immediately falls silent. There is no Mike, no worrying about the future, no stress about the past, he’s not even concerned about dinner. There’s only the soft pressure of Boris’s lips on his, every bit as magnetizing and hypnotic as they were on their movie night.

“I’ve wanted this,” Will mumbles, and as Boris kisses him again he feels his mouth slide into a smile.

“I know,” he mutters back. Gives him another kiss—a quick, closed mouth flit of a thing. “Seen you watching me.”

Will is filled with a combination of embarrassment and humor. He laughs once before squeaking out “Oh my God,” and burying his face in his hands.

“No, no, no,” Boris is laughing too, trying to plant kisses where Will’s hands don’t cover, on his cheeks and forehead and underneath his chin as he squirms around because of the attack. “Is so cute, William. Would I lie to you?”

There’s a minor scuffle composed of laughter and affection until Boris is wiping away all of Will’s tears, replacing them with gentle presses of lips and murmurs of fondness. For what has to be the hundredth time, Will is struck by just how much he likes this wild boy and all his eccentricities. In a moment of daring, he leans back, pulling Boris with him, so that he’s laying flat on his bed with Boris leaning up above him.

He says something low in a different language and presses a hot kiss to his mouth. It is hungry and open, and followed by a twin kiss to the side of his throat.

Will’s breath catches somewhere in his chest, deep inside his lungs.

Another kiss is pressed to his throat. Then another, and another, and he finally exhales a shaky, shuddering breath. He turns his head, determined to catch Boris’s lips in another kiss, and Boris seems eager to meet him halfway.

Will wants to kiss this boy for the rest of his life. Wants to hit pause and live suspended in this moment forever. Kissing Boris tastes like possibilities and the sunrise on a new day, and yes, he’s addicted in both the best and the worst way.

He tangles his fingers in his messy curls and holds him tight, listens to him sigh a soft sound.

“Please don’t stop,” Will whispers as Boris pulls back.

The boy nudges his nose along his cheek before dipping down and nipping at his pulse with his teeth. Will gasps sharply.

“Wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” he whispers back.

Then he kisses him again, all desperate and messy, teeth and tongue, two hurt boys looking for comfort in a world that’s harmed them both.

Chapter Text

They emerge from Will’s room a little after six, hoping that nobody will notice their kiss-swollen lips and wild hair. Boris looks a little worse off than Will, curls sticking out stubbornly even though they had tried to straighten them out as best as they could. Will feels a tiny sweltering of pride in chest every time he looks at him, because he did that.

They’ve been talking and laughing and making out off and on for hours, and Will can’t think of any other way he would want to spend his time. Now, it’s time to share Boris with his family, and a selfish little part of doesn’t want to—wants to keep Boris as his and only his for as long as possible—but the rest of him can’t wait for his mother to meet him. He has high hopes that she’ll see this wild something in him and love it just as much as he does, and nurture it the way that she’s always been so good at.

They find her in the kitchen, stirring green beans in a pan on the stove.

“Hey Mom,” Will greets.

“Hi boys!” Her voice is soft and high and happy, the way it always is even after a long day of working. She turns around to face them and pauses, concern immediately coloring her features. She had been to preoccupied on the phone to noticed Boris’s eye earlier, but she notices now.

“What happened there?”

And maybe it’s the mothering concern as opposed to a teacher’s strict command, but it takes Boris a second to respond, and the laugh sounds even more forced than usual.

“Is nothing! Got hit in the face with football. Tried playing with kids near my house. Can be rough game.”

Joyce Byers looks like she doesn’t buy it for a second. She patters her way over to him, so calming that it wouldn’t even spook a feral cat.

“Did you ice it?” she asks. Her hand wavers for a second, almost as though she’s resisting the urge to rest it on his face to examine closer.

“No ma’am,” he answers, unusually polite. 

“Well, it’s a little bit late for that now, I think. I hope you won’t play so rough next time.”

Her eyes look far too knowing, and under the weight of them, Boris seems to shrink. He nods his head, and she gives him a small smile.

Will and Boris end up setting the table, something Boris has clearly never done a day in his life. Will finds this equal parts concerning and endearing. He lets the other boy set everything out haphazardly and then corrects things behind him, explaining where the knife and the fork go and why, and laughing when Boris vehemently argues that the logic behind it all is stupid.

Jonathan and Argyle don’t join them for dinner, but promise to be back in time to take Boris home.

When they’re all seated, El on Will’s left, Boris on his right, his mom asks the question he’s never been quite courageous enough to bring up himself—not with all the stories of his travels and knowing just how much he’s moved around.

“Where are you from, Boris?”

“Everywhere!” he chirps. “But also nowhere. Have lived many places. Ukraine, Australia, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, New Guinea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Texas for two months, Alaska, Nevada, that one was most recent,” he shrugs. “Mostly Australia and Ukraine though.”

“That’s a lot of traveling for such a young man. And you do okay in school?”

“Mostly. Some things better than others. Took me awhile to learn English, and some things still are confusing, but I’m okay.”

“That’s good to hear. You know, Will struggles in some things too,”

Will cuts her off with a strangled, “Mom!”

“What? It’s math. Everybody struggles with math, it’s okay.”

“Not everybody,” he argues.

“I’m bad at math,” El chimes in.

His mom gives a ‘told you so’ look.

“There are more important things to be learning than mathematics anyway. Philosophy, that’s my favorite. Learned a lot in New Guinea and Saudi Arabia. Is very, very important subject. Understanding the truth about yourself and the world, how you exist in it, there is no greater thing,” Boris says.

“Wow,” Joyce sounds impressed. “That’s quite an advanced subject for someone so young. I wasn’t aware the school offered Philosophy classes.”

“They do not. I do a lot of my learning alone. Lots of books!”

Boris chooses then to take his very first bite of meatloaf, and Will could swear the other boy is going through a divine experience. His eyes roll back and close as he sighs in ultimate contentment.

“William,” he breathes. “Why did you not tell me that your mother was a chef? Or that meatloaf was so good?”

His mom laughs, a shocked, flattered thing.

“I don’t know about all that,” she says.

Boris opens his eyes again only to gesture wildly over his plate.

“Is literally the greatest thing I have ever eaten! Have only heard of meatloaf before this, now I understand why Americans love it so much!”

El is looking at Boris with a mix of befuddled amusement, not quite knowing what to say or how to interject, but enjoying the antics all the same.

“Well, I’m glad you like it, Boris. Please, eat as much as you want.”

Boris nods, mouth already full of food again. The smile on Will’s face feels massive, something so wide that it burns his cheeks. Something about watching Boris enjoy the simple pleasure of a meatloaf with reckless abandon fills him with an astounding amount of joy. His heart feels full of something big, but also light, and he adores these moments, these tiny wild moments where he feels so alive.

Will draws his eyes away from the boy next to him only to catch the gaze of his mom, who looks far too interested and far too knowing. Will clears his throat and focuses on his plate, going from airy to slightly guilty at the drop of a hat.

Jonathan and Argyle show up just as the dishes are being swept away, windswept and both clearly stoned out of their minds. Joyce, as always, is none the wiser.

“Are you boys ready to take Boris home?”

There is a solid three second delay before, “Sure thing, Mrs. Byers!” comes from Argyle.

“Great. Boris, do you need to grab any of your things?”

Boris is carrying a stack of plates into the kitchen, finding them a resting place in the sink when he says, “Just one thing. William, will you join me?”

“Sure,” Will replies, a little confused. He follows Boris back to his room, trying to think of what he could need when he’s pretty sure the other boy didn’t bring a single thing to his house to begin with. Except his cigarettes. Maybe he left those by the window?

Boris closes Will’s door behind him and Will gets as far as, “did you forget…” when Boris’s lips are on his. It’s not the playful thing it was earlier, but forceful, and needy, stealing his breath away with the intensity of it. Boris buries a hand in his hair, tilting his head up higher so that he can kiss deeper, and Will gasps into it.

When they part, Will has to try to remember how to breathe, which is next to impossible because Boris is still so close; close enough to nudge their noses together in a sweet show of affection. His heart skips a beat in his chest.

“What was that for?” Will whispers.

“Does it have to be for anything? Wanted to kiss you, so I did.”

“Okay,” he sighs, just this side of dreamy.

“Okay.”

And Boris kisses him again, just a small thing this time.

“You have wonderful family, William. You know that?”

Will nods.

“Good.”

There’s a sharp pain in Will’s chest, spreading outwards to his throat and fingertips and toes, because Boris doesn’t. He doesn’t have a wonderful family full of people that love him. He has a father that hits and leaves for days, and Boris can’t do anything about it because of his citizenship status, and it’s not fair. It hurts and it’s not fair. His eyes are starting to burn with unshed tears, so he grabs Boris by the back of the neck and hauls him forward into one more powerful kiss. One so strong it makes Boris groan.

The other boy runs his hands up his arms and onto his shoulders, gently holding him, as they part and just look at one another.

“Always wish I could kiss you all night. The mouth you have on you,” Boris runs his thumb over Will’s lower lip. “Gorgeous.”

Will feels his cheeks heating up, and even though he may want Boris to stay too, he knows that he can’t.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he murmurs.

“Yes, tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Will has a hard time sleeping that night, wrought with guilt over something he can’t control. The idea of Boris going home to an empty house, of sleeping alone, of being afraid, it keeps him awake. As the hour creeps close to one o’clock, he sneaks out of bed for a glass of water only to be waylaid by Jonathan, who’s eating at the dining room table.

“Hey, you alright?” Jonathan asks.

“Yeah, I was just…” Will gestures vaguely to kitchen. “Why are you eating right now?”

Jonathan shrugs.

“Didn’t eat earlier. Figured now was as good a time as any.”

“Are you high?” Will probes. Because honestly, Jonathan spends so much time high now that sometimes it’s a little hard to tell.

“No, not really. Just hungry. I don’t usually smoke by myself in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, okay.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

And Jonathan’s making that face, that concerned, almost fatherly one, the one that’s always been able to get Will to open up about anything.

“Yeah, I mean…no…well…” Will sighs, shoulders drooping.

Jonathan gestures to the seat next to him with his fork.

“Wanna sit?”

Will patters over to the chair and slumps into it, staring hard at the woodgrain of the table rather than at his brother.

“So, what’s going on?”

Will ponders for a for a long moment, the seconds dragging on for what feels like eons as he contemplates how to phrase his dilemma without getting Boris into any trouble.

“If you knew something about someone,” he starts, “something bad, should you tell someone?”

“What kind of bad? Are we talking about drugs or murder here?”

“Nothing like that, more like…” Will chews on his lower lip for a second, “if someone you knew was being hurt.”

“Ah,” Jonathan nods his head. “This about your friend? And his eye?”  

He doesn’t respond, too overwhelmed with the pounding of his heart in his chest and the prickling of fear and worry in his stomach.

“Will,” his brother reaches his hand out to pat his arm soothingly, “talk to me.”

The dam breaks and Will sniffles, tears flooding forward.

“His dad…he hits him. And then he leaves, sometimes for days. And Boris can’t tell anyone or else he’ll be deported. I mean, he doesn’t go without, his dad leaves him with money and stuff, but he…he…he hits him, Jonathan. And there’s nowhere he can go, and there’s nothing I can do.”

And then he’s sobbing, full-bodied and painful.

Jonathan tugs him close, bringing him into a warm hug, shushing him gently while promising him it’ll all be okay.

“You can’t tell anyone!” Will insists, pulling away. “You can’t tell anyone or they’ll take him away!”

“It’s alright. Hey, it’s gonna be alright. You said he’s alone a lot right?”

Will nods his head, finally staring Jonathan in the face. His eyes are clear and determined.

“Well, he’ll always be safe here, right? So, he’ll just have to come here more often. Mom’ll love it. She loves that you have friends. So anytime his dad is home or anytime he’s lonely, just tell him to come here. It’ll all be fine, Will. And I know you don’t want to, but maybe consider telling Mom this, okay?”

Will’s already shaking his head in protest.

“No, just hear me out. If she knows what’s going on, she can keep him safe. Trust me, she’s good at that. She’ll know what to do. Just…consider it, okay?”

“Okay,” Will concedes.

“Good. Is there anything else?”

“No. I was just gonna get water and try to sleep.”

Jonathan pats him on the shoulder.

“Do that then. Try to get some rest. Everything will feel better in the morning. Hey, you wanna hear some good news? Mom was gonna tell us in the morning. I only found out because I had a phone call with Nancy earlier.”

“What?” Will asks. He can’t imagine what good news could possibly come from Nancy that his mom would want to tell him.

“Mike and Nancy are supposed to spend spring break with us.”

Will’s heart freezes in his chest.

Chapter Text

Will feels like a ghost the next day. Spring break is only about a month away. One month and Mike will be in his house for a whole week.

El had been ecstatic when Joyce told them the news over breakfast, and had immediately rushed to pen Mike a letter. Even now, the torment of school can’t get her down, smile etched so firmly on her face that no threat of spitballs and laughter can even begin to erase it.

“You are quiet today,” Boris comments at lunch. “Are always quiet, but more today.”

“Aren’t you excited?” El asks.

“Excited?” from Boris.

“Mike is coming to visit!” She clarifies, with a wide, beauteous smile. “He’s my boyfriend. And Will’s friend.”

Boris’s face is unreadable to Will, as well as his voice as he lets out a clipped:

“I’ve heard.”

“I am,” Will insists. “I am excited. Just…I dunno…surprised, I guess.”

His words don’t sound very convincing, but El seems to buy them well enough.

“This Michael, when will he visit?”

“At the end of March, over spring break,” Will says.

“I see.”

Boris looks like he’s thinking hard about something, brows furrowed and lips downturned into a slight frown. Will can’t help but study him, but with Mike on his mind, he’s back to drawing comparisons between the two of them. Boris kind of looks like if Mike went feral and decided to go live on the streets for a few years. He’s rough around the edges, wild and sharp, with incredible wit and a filthy vocabulary. Today he’s back to looking tired, hair slightly dirty, and he has this malnourished appearance about him—starved saint-thin and willowy, so pale for California it looks almost unnatural.

But something about him makes Will’s heart beat faster and harder. Makes his palms clammy and his stomach swoop like racing on a bike. They’ve only been friends for a handful of weeks, but he’s learning to accept that he adores this boy.

Mike is more Indiana suburban. Fine clothes, neat hair, can-do personality. Always a believer in the power of friendship. Or at least he used to be, before he became what Will would consider a poor friend. Mike has his own dysfunctional family, but they’re dysfunctional in a way that works. His parents love him. He gets three meals a day. He’s never gone without or wanted for anything. For as long as he can remember, Will has been entranced by Mike. The softness of his eyes, his determination, his casual affection.

But right now, today at this lunch table, he’s never felt more torn in his life. His heart yearns for Mike like he’s missing a part of himself, but something inside of him wants to reach out for Boris too. He’s never liked more than one person before, and it has him so jumbled up, he can barely breathe.

“You should use the phones to call your mother. Ask to spend the night,” Boris says, interrupting his musings.

“I don’t think I can do that on a school night,” Will responds.

“It’s Friday,” El states, almost cautiously. She’s staring at him quizzically, borderline concerned.

“Oh.”

Boris slaps a hand to Will’s forehead as if checking for a fever, something that only his mother has done to him up until now. He feels his face heat up at the concern.

“So spacy today, William. Sure you are feeling well?”

He moves his hand from his forehead down to one of his cheeks.

“You are warm.”

Will pushes Boris’s arm away by the wrist, embarrassed at how flustered such a simple touch has made him.

“I’m fine!” he insists. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. I’ll call my mom between classes, okay? I’m sure it’ll be okay as long as I can get a ride home tomorrow.”

Boris looks immensely pleased, and it hits Will then what he just agreed to. Spending the night over at Boris’s house. Everything in his body immediately rearranges itself, his stomach bottoming out to his feet and his heart leaping into his throat.

He fights the impulse to glance at Boris’s lips as he thinks of the last time they were in Boris’s room—their very first kiss. Would they be drinking again? Making out again? Where would he sleep? Does it matter? He loses the battle and catches himself staring hard at his friend’s mouth. And he notices, of course he notices, dark eyes catching Will’s, bright and alive.

He gives him a smirk that’s just a little bit coy, and Will wants to combust.

Between the concern about clothes and figuring out how he’s going to get home, his mom says yes. Boris is right there when it happens, and he lets out a whoop of excitement so loud that people passing by turn and stare. After that, the day passes so slowly it almost feels like time is going backwards. Will doesn’t know if it’s excitement or nerves that keeps the hand on the clock from moving forward, but by the time the last bell rings, he swears he’s been living the same day for at least seven years.

Boris meets Will at his locker, as always, bookless, and looks to be almost vibrating with excitement.

“Why are you so happy?” Will asks with trepidation.

“You will see, William,” Boris says, gleefully. “You will see. Now come!”

Will barely has time to stuff his things into his backpack before Boris is ushering him towards the door, a hearty skip to his step that Will is woefully suspicious of. He doesn’t even have time to give his goodbyes to El, and he hopes beyond hope that nothing bad happens on her way to Jonathan and Argyle. It’s rare that anything does, but for anything to bring her down when she’s so happy today would absolutely devastate both of them.

“I can’t even have a hint?” he presses once they start the short trek to Boris’s house.

“Nyet! Just know that tonight will be one of the best nights of your life,” he says this with his hands spread wide for emphasis, and Will’s confusion grows.

His friend is an enigma, and best night of Will’s life could mean anything from watching an obscure movie to finding a dead body. He really hopes it’s not the latter.

Boris’s room looks exactly the same as it did the last time Will visited. Boris hadn’t even offered him a beer like he had before, simply guided Will into the fabric coated room only to dig around in a stack of empty cigarette boxes.

“Come,” he urges.

Will shuffles over to him, only to jump when Boris knocks his knuckles against his head in a familiar gesture.

“Let’s get you out of that head, yes?”

Out of one pack he pulls out something completely unmistakable.

A joint.

Will’s stomach swoops in apprehension. It was one thing to think about smoking weed, especially in Argyle’s van with Boris pressed up against him. It’s another thing entirely to have it held out in front of him.

“Where did you get that?” he asks. It comes out accusatory.

“No need to worry about that,” Boris assures him. “Is safe. I promise you.”

“I dunno, Boris.”

The other boy makes a sound, like sigh, brushing off his hesitation.

“Always so tense, William. So worried about everything. Is just you and me. Even your brother does it. Most harmless drug there is. Have done it many times. And if you don’t like it,” he shrugs, “wears off quick and you never have to try again.”

Boris holds out the joint, poised between two fingers, looking every bit like the dangerous drug dealer he was always warned he would encounter in his childhood.

Will feels trapped. On one hand, he’s afraid. Afraid of delving into something illegal, of doing something he knows would upset his mother so much. But on the other hand, he’s a bit curious, especially since Jonathan does it, and a part of him wants to know the appeal, and the voice in the back of his mind wants to know if one time would really be all that bad. Especially with Boris, who he trusts, even if he doesn’t know why.

Boris starts to lower his hand as the seconds drag on.

“Would never make you, William,” he assures him. “Only thought it would be fun.”

Will’s heart thumps hard in his chest. This is why he likes Boris so much. Always up for an adventure. Never afraid of danger or consequences. Plunging headfirst into everything. Yet, he’s still considerate in his own way. If Will said no, Boris wouldn’t pressure him more, or make fun of him. He might smoke on his own, but he would never ask Will again or put him in a place where he felt uncomfortable.

Will wants to be more like that—more like Boris. Daring. Unafraid. Less like his insecure self.

He grabs the joint before Boris’s hand can fully fall.

“I’m only doing this once,” he says.

Chapter Text

Will has never felt more calm in his life. If his brain disintegrated and reformed as a cloud, this is probably what it would feel like. Thoughts flow slowly and drift away without him even fully realizing that he’s had them, and his muscles are so relaxed that he’s pretty sure he’s melting into Boris’s mattress.

Boris on the other hand, is someone that gets more chatty when high. He’s been monologuing for several minutes about something that Will’s brain can’t quite grasp onto. Sometimes he thinks he remembers to nod, but he can’t find it in himself to worry much about it.

The only unpleasant part is that his mouth is dry. Desert dry. His tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth and his throat clicks when he tries to swallow, and it makes him want to gag.

“Boris,” he says. “I’m thirsty.”

He gets a thumbs up in return before the other boy shuffles out of the room.

Will drifts back into his relaxed state for what feels like an eternity, aware of his body in a way he’s never been.

Soon, Boris returns with two beers and presses one into Will’s hand, and he drinks it greedily, the taste absolutely divine in his parched mouth. He sets the near empty bottle on the floor just as Boris flops next to him on the bed, and they both turn on their sides to face each other. His friend’s eyes are small and bloodshot, his smile wide. Will vaguely wonders just how he looks when Boris traces a finger along his cheek and mutters something.

“What are you saying?” Will asks.

“I say beautiful boy.”

Something about that makes Will giggle—a genuine giggle—and he slaps his hand over his mouth to stop it.

“No,” Boris is trying to pry his hand away, “don’t hide your laugh from me. Is wonderful sound.”

Will lets his arm fall only to bunch his fingers up in the fabric of the other boy’s shirt. He stares at him for a moment, taking in the line of his jaw and the deep color of his eyes.

“I like you,” Will whispers, the words just falling out, not even needing courage, simply passing as a thought. Boris’s smile grows.

“I like you,” he says in return, leaning forward to nuzzle their noses together.

It’s so sweet, and Will’s heart feels so full.

Did Mike ever make him feel this way? Full of electricity and alive? He tries to think back, past all the heartache and the pining and finds himself coming up short.

“What are you thinking?” Boris queries.

And Will doesn’t want to say that he’s thinking about Mike, not when they’re together like this, so he shrugs.

“Is this Mike of yours, yes?” he says this gently, without a hint of judgement.

“How do you always know?”

“You get a look on your face. Almost sad.”

“Oh…”

“Is okay, William. If I didn’t have practice, I would do same thing with my Theo. Some people, even though they make you feel filled with…something, they can also make you unhappy.”

Will chews on his lower lip for a moment, aching with the idea of Boris being unhappy, ever. At home, or with Theo, traveling or with friends. Boris is capable of such boundless joy, and Will thinks he deserves to feel that freedom always.

“Will you tell me about him? Theo?” Will asks, still feeling hesitation even through his high.

Boris cups his hip with one of his hands and knocks their knees together as he intertwines their legs.

“My Theo was…different,” he sighs. “So experienced in suffering. Sometimes I wonder, if we had not both been so lonely, would we have gotten so close so fast? I do not know. There was a bombing in New York a few years ago, and he was in it. His mother died. Without her he became…what is the word…” he mutters something before grasping onto “ghost.”

Will clenches and unclenches his fist in Boris’s shirt, enraptured by his words, and Boris mimics the gesture on his hip.

“He lived with his father, not a good man. He was much like me. Nobody to worry about what he was doing or where he was going. Together we drank and we smoked and all sorts of things. We had fun. But when we did those things, drank too much, I mean, we would do other things too. Kiss and such. And he never wanted to talk about it.”

Boris’s voice takes on a mournful tone, his eyes casting downward like he either can’t stand to look at Will, or can’t bear to hold onto the memory of Theo.

“I gave him my whole heart, but he refused to look at it. And sometimes…sometimes I think this is okay. But sometimes I hate it too.”

“Where is Theo now?” Will asks. “Still in Vegas?”

“No. His father died, driving drunk in the desert. He went back to New York. Asked me to run away with him. I almost went, too. But I just…could not. I was afraid. And almost every day since, I have felt regret in some way. I miss him.”

“I am so sorry, Boris,” Will murmurs.

He looks up then, catching Will’s eyes in a hard stare.

“Do not be. If I had gone, I would not have come here. I would not have met you.”

Not for the first time, Will is enraptured by the feeling of how easy it would be to love Boris. His heart is beating heavy in his chest, his palms collecting sweat despite the artificial calm clouding his mind. He finds himself wanting to tell the other boy everything—about Mike, about the move, about the Upside Down. But he knows that he can’t, for his own safety. If Owens or the government found out, he has no idea what would happen to Boris. Deportation would likely be just the beginning of it.

“What are you thinking?” Boris asks.

“Just how much I trust you,” Will says.

That makes him smile, a soft gentle thing that makes his eyes light up like the stars past midnight.

“There are things…things I wish I could tell you…but I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because I legally can’t. It’s the whole reason we moved to California in the first place. Like, something bad happened, and the government got involved, and we had to sign all these papers saying we’d never talk about it. And we can’t break that agreement, or else bad things could happen. I just…I want you to be safe, Boris.”

Boris squeezes his hip again, and Will is learning to love the feeling.

“I knew you were hiding something,” he says. “Too quiet to have not seen bad things. I understand.”

Will is so relieved he could cry with it.

“It would be so easy for me to love you.”

It tumbles out of his mouth like a prayer, all heart and feeling and Boris breathes it in like air. He tangles their legs together even tighter, pulls Will even closer, until their noses are brushing again, and Will can see every freckle and every eyelash.

“So, love me,” Boris says softly. “And I will love you.”

Will can’t help it; so overcome with feeling and warm emotion, he pushes forward and presses his lips to Boris’s, and it feels every bit like coming home. Boris sighs gently and holds him tight, kissing back with quiet enthusiasm.

“Boris,” Will breathes.

“Nyet,” he says against his mouth. “If we are together, then I am your Borya.”

“Borya…”

Boris rewards him with a hard, open-mouthed kiss, and Will nearly whimpers at the heat of it. The hand at his hip releases to wrap around his waist, pulling him until they’re close enough to be one person, and Will releases the other boy’s shirt to wrap around his back.

Will has never held another person so intimately, or been held by another, and experiencing it is making him feel joyous and floaty in the greatest of ways, and as Boris’s tongue slips past the seam of his lips, he has the realization that he can live this way now. Giving and receiving affection. With his boyfriend.

And for the first time in a long time, Will is undeniably happy.

Chapter Text

amazing art of the confession by ao3 user lustrosorchid

Will has been having nightmares since his first encounter with the Demogorgon. Sometimes they’re the kind he can’t quite remember, the kind that wisps away like smoke in spring breeze come morning, but other times, they cling. On those nights, he sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning, often waking covered in a sheen of sweat, as though he’d biked the entirety of Hawkins as fast as he could in the middle of July.

Tonight, sleeping in a shared bed with Boris, still in his school clothes and with a loose arm wrapped around his waist, he doesn’t dream at all.

In fact, when he wakes, stomach growling with hunger, he’d bet money that it may have been the best sleep of his life.

Will shifts, careful not to disturb the other boy (his boyfriend, his mind usefully supplies), so that he can observe him in sleep. He decides that Boris looks younger while resting. The harsh angles of his face seem to smooth out some, making him look less world-weary and more youthful. And as his eyes dance behind his eyelids in a dream, Will is entranced by the length of his eyelashes, casting dark shadows on the height of his cheeks.

Boris calls him beautiful boy, but right now Will thinks that he’s perhaps never seen anyone more beautiful in his life. It scares him in some ways that he could fall for someone so intensely in such a short amount of time, but the other’s enigmatic air and indisputable knowledge, as well as his open mind, have made it impossible not to. He’s drawn to his entire existence, not just his appearance.

Boris chooses that moment to stretch, getting more comfortable in his sleep, clinging to Will tighter as his hair falls away from neck, revealing the long, pale line of it. The looks, Will can’t help but think, unable to look away, are simply a bonus to all that Boris is.

When Boris wakes, it is slowly, rather than all at once like Will does. He extends his legs, rubbing his feet along Will’s in a ticklish gesture. The arm around his waist tightens and releases twice before his hand smooths up along his ribcage. Then, he nuzzles closer, burrowing his nose into Will’s shoulder and muttering something thick and sweet sounding, eyes still closed.

“Good morning,” Will says. He’s been awake for what feels like hours at this point, just studying Boris, and thinking about life.

Boris hums deep in his throat and squeezes him harder, making Will’s heart soar.

With slight trepidation, almost like he’s not allowed, Will buries a hand in Boris’s hair, scratching lightly at his scalp, and Boris leans into it like a cat.

“S’nice,” he mutters, voice gravely with sleep.

“Yeah?”

“I can hear you smiling.”

Will is indeed smiling, so hard and so wide the apples of his cheeks are starting to burn. He can’t help it, the happiness and affection inside of him so full to bursting he feels like he could drown in it.

“Sorry,” Will apologizes, though he doesn’t fully mean it.

“No. Never be sorry for such a thing.”

Boris leans back then, eyes finally opening to look at him, and they are heavy lidded and slightly hazy. Will stops scratching because it takes his breath away. Here, in this room of shrouded fabric, Boris could be a prince. Etheral, with his soft skin and dark irises, lips full and slumber pouty pink.

Will has never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life.

And as if he knows exactly what he’s thinking, Boris quirks a lively, animated brow and grins, slow and sharp and dangerous. The hand at his ribcage strokes up and down in a false soothing motion.

“What do you need?” Boris asks.

Will has no idea what to say. He doesn’t know if a kiss can be classified as a need, even if it feels like it. Even if he yearns for it like a man might yearn for water in the desert.

“I…I..” he falters.

“Come now,” the other boy tugs him closer with all of his limbs, legs tangling together, nose bumping his cheek. “Learn to take what is yours, yes?”

Then, they’re melting, all lips and tongue and teeth.

“Hungry?” Boris asks some time later. The question distracts Will from where he’s running his finger over the other boy’s kiss-swollen lower lip.

“Yeah,” he replies. And he is. Actually, he’s starving.

“I have bread. Sugar.”

The meager offering and odd combination gives Will pause.

“Um…” he trails off.

“What?” Boris questions, quirking his brow again. “Have you not had bread and sugar? Is very good! Like dessert. Come!”

He jumps up from where they’ve been lounging against the pillows, holding a hand out for Will to grab. Will stares at it for a moment before taking it. Boris helps him up off the mattress, but does not let go afterwards, simply continues to hold his hand as they make their way down the hall and into the kitchen, an action that has heat flooding to Will’s cheeks.

He holds his hand still as he digs through the cupboards, pulling out what looks to be the only plate in the entire house (a sad, white, cracked thing), a loaf of bread, and a bag of sugar before finally letting go. Will mourns the contact but is fascinated to watch Boris work. The bread Boris has isn’t sliced sandwich bread, but rather the kind you would get from a bakery. He tears it with his fingers, placing chunks on the plate before covering them with sprinkles of granulated sugar. Then, he holds a piece in front of Will’s face.

“Bite,” he demands with such resolve that Will’s afraid to say no.

So, he bites. And the other boy was right. It’s sweet.

That doesn’t mean it’s good. But it’s definitely sweet.

Will points to his own mouth, before saying between bites:

“I don’t think this is food, Boris.”

Boris looks shocked. Then huffs. Then makes a noise like a cat that’s been startled.

“You just don’t know what is good! Spoiled with your meatloaf! That’s what you are!”

Will can’t help it—he laughs. A full body laugh, bending at the waist, holding his stomach. And Boris, instead of being insulted, looks incredibly pleased.

Chapter Text

Time flies by once Will starts dating Boris. He’s not exactly sure how. Maybe it’s because the days are more enjoyable; a sweet note passed here, a stray pinky slyly linked with his underneath the lunch table there. They even spend more time together outside of school. Sometimes, Will goes to Boris’s house, but more often than not, Boris is at Will’s. So much so that his mom has taken to coddling him like a third son.

Will never did bring up the other boy’s home situation with her, but she either senses it, or sees something special in Boris, just like Will had hoped she would. It’s not uncommon for her to offer him seconds or thirds at dinner, or to include him in the cleaning up afterwards. She asks him about his grades on tests and quizzes, and even expresses her disappointment when he doesn’t do well. The first time it happened seemed to shake Boris to the core, sent him stuttering and stumbling over his words in a confused apology. If it had been any other person, Will might have found it humorous, but knowing that Boris has never had anyone to press him to do better when it comes to his grades, the whole situation left him drowning in a shadow of melancholy.

Will’s favorite part of Boris coming to his house so often, and of his mom’s affection of him, is that on some days, if they’re really lucky, she lets him spend the night regardless of whether or not it’s a school night. It kind of helps if they casually mention that Boris’s dad is away at the mine—a move that’s a mixture of honest and manipulative. Sometimes Will feels bad because she doesn’t know the whole picture, but at the same time he feels that telling her would be worse. Because he couldn’t just tell her one thing, like that Boris’s dad disappears for weeks at a time. He would have to tell her everything. The abuse. And that they’re more than friends now. It’s just how talking to his mom goes.

And neither Will nor Boris are ready for that. Maybe for different reasons, but still, it would likely be too much.

Either way, tonight is one of those lucky nights in question. It’s a Thursday, and they just had lasagna for dinner. Boris is dressed in a pair of Jonathan’s old pajamas because Will’s are far too small for him, but Jonathan’s are way too big still, and the pants drag over his feet, and the shirt leaves his collarbones exposed, and Will can’t help but think that Boris looks cozy and cute in the warmest of ways.

They’re sitting in Will’s room, Boris lounging by the window, cigarette in hand, and Will on his bed, fingers itching for his pencil and sketchbook.

“Can I draw you?” Will asks.

“Huh?” Boris cups his hand to his ear in an old man gesture.

“You heard me.”

“Yes, just wanted to hear you say again.”

Will rolls his eyes.

“C’mon. Let me draw you.”

Boris ashes his cigarette before taking another drag.

“Why now?” He questions.

Will shrugs.

“I dunno…you look…” he gestures vaguely “…nice.”

He’s more than familiar with the smirk that slides across his boyfriend’s face. Sly and playful and lively, and even though they’ve been together for weeks at this point, it still sends the same sharp rush of heat into his stomach as the first day he met him.

Boris stubs his cigarette out and tosses the butt out the window before making his way over to Will’s desk chair. And he sprawls, all gangly limbs and elongated neck, tousled hair and vivid eyes.

“Draw me pretty, yes?”

Will can barely breathe.

“Okay,” it comes out as almost a whisper.

His hands are nearly trembling as he pulls his sketchbook from his backpack. Sticking up from between the pages is a note Boris had passed him earlier in the day, and he plucks it out delicately before spreading out on the bed next to him. Blocky, foreign letters with a scratchy, lopsided heart scrawled messily on a spare piece of paper. He’s not entirely sure what it means, but the heart kind of gives it away. He intends to find somewhere safe for it. He intends to keep it for the rest of his life.

Will looks back at Boris, looks at the way his shirt droops over his shoulder. Looks at the peek of his toes from underneath too long pajamas, how otherworldly he looks even in the yellow of Will’s bedroom.  

He flips to a blank page in his book, picks up a pencil, and starts drawing.

“Amazing!”

Boris is leaning over his shoulder, sitting behind him on the bed and pressing his body into the line of Will’s back. Will is flush with the heat of the contact and embarrassment by Boris’s praise.

“It looks just like me, William! Such a talent you have!”

“It’s nothing much,” Will dismisses. “I had a good model.”

Boris makes a “psh” noise.

“Give yourself more praise for your work. You have done this for a long time. Yes?”

Will nods.

“My whole life,” he agrees.

“Then say you are good!”

“I mean, I’m alright but I still have…”

“Nyet! Say you are good!”

“Boris, I—”

Boris chooses then to kiss the back of Will’s neck. Then the side. Then just below his ear. His hand grips tight on his shoulder.

“Say you are good, William,” he demands, voice low.

Will exhales, and it comes out shaky.

“Borya…” he sighs.

Boris hums a pleased sound.

“Say it,” he persists.

“I’m good,” Will says. “I’m a good artist.”

He can feel the other boy’s satisfaction in the way he traces his hands from his shoulders down to his elbows, in the way he presses a chaste kiss to the crown of his head.

“Very good,” Boris all but purrs.

Then, he lets go of Will all at once to lounge back against the pillows.

“Now, put that down and come kiss me,” he insists.

Will has never moved faster in his life.

The thing about Boris staying the night is that he’s supposed to sleep in the spare bedroom. Most of the time he starts out there, but after everybody falls asleep, he usually creeps down the hallway and crawls into bed with Will. They both sleep better that way, tangled together and sharing the same breath until dawn.

All things considered, it’s an innocent act. It’s not like they’re doing anything more than making out at any given time. Will absolutely loves it. On nights that he gets to share a bed with Boris, he doesn’t have to worry about nightmares at all. And although Boris never talks about it, he doesn’t have to worry about whatever is plaguing him either.

They should have expected to get caught eventually.

Will just didn’t think it would be today, or by Jonathan.

He’s in the middle of one of the best dreams of his life; something floaty and warm and colorful, when the door to his room closing rouses him slightly from sleep. Then, there's knocking. Nothing loud, just annoying.

Will cracks his eyelids, taking in the vibrancy of the new day and the warmth of Boris wrapped around him when his brother standing in room next his closed door makes his heart jump and then freeze.

He goes through what feels like a dozen emotions at once. Fear. Anger. Sorrow. Rage. Fear again. Will feels like a trapped animal.

And that agony must show on his face, because Jonathan looks immediately soft and placating.

“Good morning,” is all he says.

In response, Will reaches and arm out to shake Boris awake.

Like always, he wakes slower than Will. He shuffles, stretches, fights awareness in a valiant battle until Will says:

“Boris.”

And it’s said so seriously that it jolts him into the daylight immediately.

When he sees Jonathan, his eyes harden like stone, and he places a protective arm around Will’s waist, as if to defend him or as if to dare Jonathan to say something. It makes Will second guess waking him up, because where Will is tender and delicate, Boris is feral and full of teeth.

Sensing the tension in the air, Jonathan holds up his palms as if to say he comes in peace.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan starts. “You’re not in trouble. You two will never be in trouble for something like this. Will, look at me…”

It takes everything in Will’s body to look his brother in the face, but when he does, his eyes are shining with unshed tears and he looks so heartfelt and sincere.

“There is nothing in this world that could ever make me love you less, do you understand that? I love you. I will always love you. And I hate that you felt like you couldn’t come to me with this. I just need to make sure that you two are safe and happy, that’s all.”

Will’s brain is spiraling. After a lifetime of being known as the queer and that fairy, after years of being convinced his wrongness was the reason his dad left, Jonathan’s words are everything he’s ever wanted to hear. And he can’t help it. Wrapped up in Boris’s arms, sitting right in front of his brother. He cries. Like a small child with a wound that won’t heal, he sobs, hard and open, until two sets of arms wrap around him from two of the people that he loves most.

Chapter Text

absolutely incredible art by bleedingclawss

Mike’s visit is starting to loom over Will like an oppressive darkness. He never once thought he would live in a reality where he would dread a visit from Michael Wheeler, but now, things have changed. He has a boyfriend. He has a brother that accepts him for who he is. He’s gone an entire month without fawning or pining over his best friend—something he hasn’t done in literally years—and he’s happy that way.

The painting he spent countless hours on still sits in the corner on its easel, and whether or not to give it as a gift like he intended is still up in the air. Each hour that passes adds to the feeling of dread that sits heavy in his stomach, and that just increases the layer of guilt he’s built up on top of it, because at the heart of it all, Mike is his friend, and he should be excited.

Johnathan’s been spending more and more time with Argyle getting high because Nancy backed out at the last minute. Will can’t imagine what that must be like, so he doesn’t blame him for being a bit more distant. He’s still affectionate when he’s here though. Always a pat on the back or a hand on the shoulder available for both him and Boris. It’s nice. It’s comforting.

El is so happy she may as well be in her own universe. She’s chattier than usual, which is beautiful. She seems less daunted by school and there’s a perpetual skip to her step. Will wishes she could always be this happy, hates that Lenora has made her feel so sad.

Mike makes her happy. Mike made him happy once too. But now, he just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

Boris picks that moment to knock his knuckles on the side of his head, snapping him out of where he’s been zoning out at his easel from his bed for who knows how long.

“Too many thoughts in your head, William,” he chides.

Will sighs.

“Yeah…”

Boris walks around in front of him, blocking his view, and raises an eyebrow. It’s his way of asking what’s on his mind without actually asking what’s on his mind.

“I just…” Will starts “Do you think…I dunno…Maybe?” And then he throws his hands up.

“Makes sense!” Boris teases.

That makes Will smile.

“Shut up, Boris.”

His boyfriend holds a hand out for him to grab and Will takes it, still marveling at the difference between them after all this time. Where Will’s hands are short with wide palms, Boris’s are all elegant length. Like a pianist.

“Try again, William,” he urges.

Will chews on his lower lip for a moment.

“Mike is gonna be here tomorrow, and I’m nervous, I guess? I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. It’s like, I should be excited because he’s my best friend, but also, there’s a part of me that just…doesn’t want to see him. At all. And…I think I’d feel better if you came with me…to the airport.”

Boris lets out a sound of understanding.

“Can you…do that for me?” Will asks.

When he looks up from their entwined fingers, Boris’s face is soft, and when he leans down to place a kiss on his forehead, Will all but melts at the comfort of it.

“Of course,” he murmurs.

Sitting at the airport is torture. Seconds feel like hours. Minutes feel like years. Will wants to go home. He wants to go back in time. He wants to go back to the safety of Boris’s cloth adorned room and be held until he feels safe again. He wants to hold Boris’s hand, but they’re in public.

He feels stupid in his carefully picked out clothes holding his stupid rolled up painting. Will had grabbed it last minute on a whim and has regretted it every moment since. Boris is acting weird too. A little distant, not nearly as reassuring as Will needs him to be. But he looks nice. Really nice. Freshly washed dark denim jeans, faded black shirt, curls cleaned and bouncy in a way that has Will wanting to run his fingers through them. It’s all he can do to keep his eyes off him.

Normally Boris can sense this, teases with this, but now it’s almost like he’s ignoring it. It makes Will’s stomach feel curdled and sour like spoiled milk.

Suddenly, El taps him, repeatedly, excitedly, and jumps up.

And he sees him.

Mike.

Preposterous Mike, all decked out in glorious technicolor, walking straight towards them. Will grabs Boris by the wrist and hauls him up as they all rush to greet him. El dives straight into his arms and receives a kiss in return, and there’s a noise in Will’s ears, like ocean waves, and a sinking in his stomach too.

He feels like he’s watching from a million miles away. Observing through a television screen. Mike gives El flowers. Rests a hand on her waist.

And it hurts. It still hurts. Why does it still hurt?

Will feels a facsimile of smile form on his face as Mike turns to him, and Will opens his arms, heart beating hard in his chest. Only, instead of a hug, Mike presses his shoulder into him and gives him two awkward pats on the back. Will’s heart sinks. Shrivels up.

“Hey,” he says. Then he looks at the rolled up canvas. “What’s that?”

Will shakes his head.

“Nothing. Just something I’ve been painting.”

Mike nods.

“Cool.”

Why is this so uncomfortable?

Argyle, in all his stoned glory steps forward and wraps his arms around Mike, who’s eyes widen in shock, arms splayed and unsure of what to do.

“Nah, nah it’s a knockoff, man,” Argyle declares after reading the tag on the back of Mike’s shirt.

Will clears his throat.

“Sorry, that’s Argyle,” he says.

The two nod at each other, and before Argyle can continue his line of thought about Mike’s clothes, he pushes Boris forward a bit, hand between his shoulder blades.

“And this is Boris.”

Boris says nothing.

Mike says nothing.

Argyle, glancing between them, laughs and says, “Woahhh, you two could be brothers, man.”

And for the first time since arriving at the airport, Boris turns to look at Will—really, truly look at him.

To outsiders, his face might look flat, but Will can see in his eyes that he’s furious.

The drive to the roller rink is nothing short of torture. Will sits between Boris and Mike. Boris, who is refusing to look at him, and Mike, who only has eyes for El.

El is oblivious to any tension and is entirely on cloud nine, planning their day out detail by detail, while Mike listens, completely enraptured. The only person who has any clue to his suffering is Jonathan, who keeps catching his eye in the review mirror, and he’d really rather he didn’t.

Seeking comfort, Will slides is pinky over to Boris’s hand, only to have him jerk it away.

Will wants to cry. Feels like he’s going to, eyes burning with it until he breathes deep and pulls it back inside.

When they pull up to the curb to let everyone out, El and Mike going first, racing for the door like somebody is after them, and Boris clamoring over Will as though he’s in the way, Jonathan holds him back.

“Hey, Will?”

He turns his head, poised to follow the others.

“Just…try to have fun, okay?” Jonathan says.

Will nods, knot in his throat. He feels like if he says anything, everything will come spilling out in a torrent of snot and tears and broken heart shards.

Inside is worse.

Will never imagined it could get worse, but it does.

Mike and El share a milkshake and couple’s banter. They hold hands as they skate. He finds out that El has been lying to Mike, making him think that she’s happy, and popular, and doing exceptionally well in school. It makes him feel uncomfortable and weird, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it because somewhere along the way, Boris has ditched them for the pinball machines.

“Where’s your friend?” Mike asks as they take their second break from skating.

Will shrugs.

“Not very social is he?”

“He just doesn’t know you.”

“Boris talks a lot,” El comments. It’s said kindly and with affection. It makes Will grin, a slight, sad thing.

“Yeah, Boris does talk a lot,” he says.

“About what?” Mike questions.

“He’s not from here,” El responds, fiddling with her skates. “So, a lot about where he was before.”

“Oh, yeah? Where’s he from?”

“Everywhere,” Will answers. “Ukraine, Russia, Sweden, Australia, Alaska, Texas, Nevada. He didn’t even learn English until he was older.”

Mike makes an impressed face.

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Will sighs. He rubs his hands on his knees. “I’m gonna go find him.”

Will takes off his skates and replaces them with his sneakers to go hunt by the pinball machines, but comes up empty. Then, he checks the bathrooms. Then the snack bar.

Then, he remembers who he’s searching for and walks out the front door and is immediately rewarded with the image of Boris smoking by the corner of the building.

He and Boris have never been upset with each other. Knowing that he’s about to have some form of confrontation with one of the most important people in his life has him weary and anxious, but remembering the explosion of his laughter and the sly quirk to his lips has him feeling a hint of bravery too. Boris is worth it.

Walking the length of the building takes seconds but feels like minutes, and he knows by the way he turns his back that Boris sees him coming.

“Hey,” Will greets.

Boris says nothing in return.

“Boris…please don’t be mad at me. Or at least tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it. Please?”

The other boy scoffs.

“Is nothing to fix,” he says, and his voice sounds cold.

“Don’t say that.”

Will reaches out a hand and buries it in Boris’s shirt sleeve.

“Talk to me.”

Boris whirls around then, all fiery anger and stony eyes, jaw clenched tight. As if his anger has brewed so much he can’t hold it in anymore. And then, it explodes, up and out:

“Him! Your Mike! You never told me we look the same! All this time I thought you wanted me, but I am just another him, no?! And you and this painting, you take it to the airport like you are going to tell him everything right there! I gave you so much and all this time…all this time…”

He lapses into something thick and foreign and angry, throwing his cigarette to the side.

“You love someone that treats you like shit, William! But that doesn’t mean you get to treat me like shit too! So fuck you! And fuck Mike! I’m done with you!”

The pain Will feels is physical, almost as though he’s been punched.

“Done with me?” his voice cracks halfway through.  The tears are out before he can even comprehend them, leaking from his eyes silently like raindrops on a spring day in Indiana.

“Don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that,” Boris scolds.

“Boris, I…” Will reaches out to grab him again but he shrugs it away.

“You don’t get to be upset. I am upset.”

Will sees it then, the shine to his eyes and the flush to his cheeks, like he’s barely holding it together. And this hurts, it hurts, and he doesn’t know how to make it better.

“Boris, you’re not a replacement for Mike. You never were.”

Boris scoffs.

“Maybe I noticed a few times that the two of you look alike, but most of that was before I ever talked to you. Before I got to know who you are. I love you for you, Boris. I love…so many things about you.”

He shifts from one foot to the other, avoiding Will’s gaze.

“I love…all your stories. And the way you talk. I love how you make me feel brave. I love how smart you are, and how you can…speak a full sentence without ever saying a word. I love how alive you are, and how alive you make me feel. I love you. I love you so much.”

Will’s breath hitches on a sob.

“And I’m sorry that I hurt you. I never meant to. I mean, if you looking like Mike was even on my mind, why would I have asked you to come with me to the airport? Wouldn’t I have been more worried about it? I mean, make it make sense. You’re the only one on my mind, ever. Yes, maybe a part of me will always care about Mike and will always be confused, but nothing is going to change the fact that I love you. Every day, I love you.”

Boris looks like he’s struggling, numerous emotions crossing his face one after another.

“He’s stupid and he looks like a bird,” he says finally.

Will lets out a wet laugh.

“You don’t have to like him. Are you…still done with me?”

Boris takes a step closer to wipe a stray tear off of Will’s cheek.

“After a speech like that, how could I be?”

And maybe it’s not an ‘I love you’ but for now, in the middle of this shit day, Will can accept that well enough.

Chapter Text

look at this art from tumblr user kiriluvly doesn't it make you want to cryyyy

“Is he staying here too?” Mike asks when he spots Boris’s backpack and belongings in the spare bedroom.

“For tonight, yeah,” Will answers, grabbing the bag. “But you can have the room. Boris can stay with me.”

He moves around, stuffing shirts and books into the pockets, ignoring Mike’s quizzical stare.

“Does he stay here a lot?”

Will shrugs.

“Sometimes. His dad’s job keeps him away from home sometimes. And, you know, it’s just the two of them, so…” he trails off.

“Oh…”

“Yeah. It’s fine though. He likes it here.”

This is the first time Will’s been alone with Mike since he’s arrived in Lenora, and it feels weird. Stilted somehow, as though they don’t know what to talk about. As though they’re not even friends anymore. It stings, because they used to be so comfortable with each other and used to be able to talk about everything. He can’t believe this is the same boy who sat with him in his basement and promised they were crazy together. It feels like a lie that was told a lifetime ago.

“William,” Boris peeks his head around the doorframe. “Your mother says there is a…a…” he pauses, makes a gesture with his hands while muttering something. “What is another word for bed roll?” he asks.

“Sleeping bag?” Will offers.

Boris snaps his fingers excitedly.

“Sleeping bag, yes! Could not think of it. Your mother says there is a sleeping bag I can use.”

Will can’t help but grin, a slight, affectionate thing.

“It’s in the back closet, but I’ll help you get it.”

Boris gives his thanks in what Will is learning might be Ukrainian before flitting off down the hall, like they’re in a race and he knows Will is going to follow.

“He…calls you William?” Mike questions after a beat.

Will almost wants to laugh.

“He does.”

“That’s weird.”

He gives Mike a shrug, making sure all the pockets of the backpack are zipped up properly.

“I dunno, I like it.”

“So, do you like, go by William now?”

He does laugh then, a quick burst of a thing that takes him by surprise.

“No, no, no, gross. Only Boris gets to call me William. Like…it suits him. But nobody else!”

The look on Mike’s face is odd and highly contemplative, and Will’s not entirely sure why.

“You look like you’re thinking too hard about it, Mike. It’s okay, it’s just my name. I’ve gotta go help Boris now, but you should unpack.”

He slings the strap to the bag over his shoulder and walks out of the room, feeling Mike’s eyes on him like a weight the whole way.

The sleeping bag is Jonathan’s because Boris is too tall for Will’s old one. And even though things are marginally better between them, it still feels slightly wrong to be alone together in his room, and he hates it. Boris is too quiet, and Will misses his idle chatter like a part of himself. He unrolls the bag next to his bed, fiddling with it for far too long, making sure it’s straight and fluffing up the pillow more times than necessary.

“Is this…okay?” he finally asks, looking at the other boy. Boris lifts a shoulder, as if he’s not giving it much thought. Then, he plops down on Will’s bed.

“Don’t plan to sleep there anyway,” he says, stretching out on the mattress.

“O-Oh?”

He props himself up on one elbow, body turned to the side.

“Why would I?” he pats the space next to him. “Come,” he urges.

Will follows, earnestly, eagerly, destroying the sleeping space he just so carefully made by clamoring all over it. He mimics Boris’s pose, laying on his side, head propped up. And he wants to fall into him so badly; wants to hold him and be held, and smooth away the slight furrow to his brow.

Boris places a hand on Will’s waist, and he feels like he can breathe for the first time since the airport.

“Are you still mad at me?” Will asks.

He shakes his head.

“No, William. I am not mad.”

Will’s eyes flood with tears and he bites his lip to keep them in.

“You are mine,” Boris continues, “And I am yours.”

“I’m yours,” Will says. Then he leans close, presses a delicate kiss to Boris’s cheek. “I’m yours.”

Boris turns his head to catch Will’s lips in a tender kiss, and they both sigh with it.

“Sweet boy. My sweet boy,” Boris praises once they part. “I will sleep with you tonight.”

That makes Will smile, just imagining being curled up with Boris, not having to worry about nightmares—looking forward to feeling warm and safe.

He lays down, hands tucked under his cheek so that he’s looking up at his boyfriend, the complete definition of lovestruck.

“Good,” he says.

And then, as if drawn by the dynamic of the room, or able to sense that nobody is welcome at this moment, Mike chooses to walk in.

“Hey!” he starts, making Will jump, then he trails off with, “…uh…” because Boris’s hand is still clasped at Will’s waist, and they’re laying face-to-face, incredibly close together. Not kissing at the moment, but close enough to be able to.

“Hello, Mike,” Boris greets, sounding enthusiastic and welcoming while Will remains paralyzed in shock.

“…Hi. Um…this was in my room. I think it’s yours?”

Will rolls over onto his other side, and Boris still doesn’t move his hand, simply lets it roll with him so that it’s still on his waist, and he’s presented with a book that’s clearly Russian.

“Ah, yes!” Boris chirps. “Is a philosophy book. Very good! Everyone should read.”

Mike just nods, seemingly lost for words.

“Thanks, Mike, you can just throw it on my desk.”

It occurs to Will that maybe he should get up, but almost as though he’s reading his mind, Boris’s hand clamps down harder. Not painfully, but almost possessively, and he decides then to stay where he is.

Mike uncertainly places the book on the desk before sliding back to the door. Will almost feels sorry for him, he looks so uncomfortable and out of place. It’s almost like he’s trying to make a connection but is incapable of finding the pattern.

“I’m also supposed to tell you dinner is almost ready,” Mike offers.

“Okay. We’ll be right out,” Will says.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

And then he leaves, shutting the door behind him. Boris’s laugh immediately explodes over him, and Will rolls over again to smack him in the arm.

“It’s not funny!” he scolds. “Did you see him?!”

“Like a deer caught in headlights! Your poor Mike. Not a thought in his head.”

“Boris!”

Boris wraps his arms and legs around him like an octopus and holds him tight.

“Do not be upset with me, William.”

“I’m not upset with you, just…that was a lot.”

“Is not like he saw us making out, no? Just talking. What is wrong with that?”

Will leans back to look at the other boy, and from the wicked arch to his eyebrows to the sly curve of his lips, he can see that there’s a lot wrong with that. He just doesn’t know what it is yet.

“You’re up to something,” Will says. “I don’t know what it is, but you’re up to something.”

“I get up to many things for you, love.”

Love

Love

The name rings in his ears as heat floods his face, and when Boris leans in to kiss him, still holding him tight, he absolutely melts.

Chapter Text

absolutely beautiful incredible amazing art by tumblr user pollennn

Later that night, when they’re getting ready to settle into bed, Will wipes at his eyes in frustration for at least the third time in just as many minutes. He’s cried enough today—more than enough—and he refuses to cry again just because Mike said nothing about his birthday. He’s already made an agreement with his family to celebrate after he leaves, as he thought it would have been too much to have a party on the same day he flew in, but he thought Mike would have at least remembered. But he said nothing.

And completely unbidden, his mind is flooded with past birthday parties, surrounded by all of his friends and family, plus presents. D&D figurines, new pencils, Mike with the sketchbook Will would cherish for years clasped tight to his chest. When did he start to mean so little to all of them?

His sorrow must be palpable, because Boris sneaks up behind him and wraps his arms around his waist, chin resting on his shoulder.

“What is the matter, William?” he asks.

Will shakes his head, resisting.

“Talk to me,” he insists.

He makes a sad sound, almost like a whimper.

“I feel…forgotten,” Will says, and he finds that his words feel so very true.

“How do you mean?”

“I didn’t hear from anyone today,” he says, almost a whisper. “Mike didn’t even say anything at all. I mean, I know we agreed to do it all later, but I thought maybe something about today would be special.”

“I am…confused,” Boris confesses. He lifts his chin and uses his arms to rotate Will so that they’re facing each other.

“It’s my birthday,” Will admits. And one stray tear spills over. He’s quick to brush it away.

Boris makes noise of pure surprise.

“Why did you not tell me this?!” he exclaims

“I dunno, we never talked about it. I don’t know when your birthday is either.”

“It is in July. But that does not matter now. What matters is you. What a horrible day you have had. Why did you do nothing?”

“My family, we agreed to wait until Mike and Nancy left. Well, Nancy didn’t come, so just Mike, I guess. But, I thought I’d get a phone call from Hawkins. Or a letter. Or maybe Mike would say something. That was just wishful thinking though. I think…maybe they’ve all moved on, you know?”

Boris makes a soft, soothing sound.

“Who could move on from you?”

He plants a kiss to Will’s cheek. Then another, and another, until he’s showering Will’s face with kisses in a show of affection that has him giggling.

“Stop, that tickles,” he mock complains as he squirms.

“Nyet! Never! I’ll never stop!”

Then Boris swoops in and steals a kiss from his lips, making Will hum with satisfaction.

“Thank you,” he murmurs when they part.

“For what?”

“Making me feel better.”

“I haven’t even started yet, William. Come! We have a birthday to celebrate!” He says, giving Will a firm shake.

“What? Celebrate? Celebrate how? Come where?”

But Boris is already scurrying to put his shoes on.

“Put shoes on! Quick!”

“Where are we going?!” Will asks with wide eyes.

“You will see!”

So, Will slides his shoes on at the same time Boris opens his window, looking at the short drop down.

“We can go out here,” he says.

“We’re sneaking out?!” Will yelps, far too loud in the quiet room.

“Hush. Yes, we’re sneaking. Is your birthday. Will be fun.” Then, Boris holds out a hand. “Trust me?”

And he does. Will does trust him, for some unknown reason. Probably more than anyone. And maybe sometimes that’s a mistake, but he truly believes that Boris always has his best interest at heart. So, shoes tied, and slightly nervous, he slides his hand into his, and the smile he gets in return is blinding.

“Let’s go then,” Will says.

They’ve been walking for miles. Literally miles. And somewhere along the line, Boris has started singing.

“Is Polish,” he insists. “Here, listen:”

Wszystkie dzieci, nawet źle, 

pogrążone są we śnie, 

a Ty jedna tylko nie.  

A-a-a, a-a-a…

“That’s nice,” Will says with a small smile. “What does it mean?”

Boris’s laugh explodes over the empty street.

“Theo used to give me shit, but it is a children’s song. One of my favorites though. Here:”

There once were two small kittens

“Two small kittens?”

“That’s exactly what Theo said! But hush! Listen!”

Oh, sleep, my darling,

And I’ll give you a star from the sky,

All the children are fast asleep

All others, even the bad ones,

All children are sleeping but you.

A-a-a, a-a-a—

“That’s really nice, Boris.”

Boris gives an exaggerated bow while still walking.

“Thank you. I am glad somebody else thinks so.”

“I was much more of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star guy myself,” Will admits.

“What is that?”

“You’ve never heard Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star?! How is that even possible? I thought it was…I dunno…universal.”

“Never heard of it.” Boris nudges him with his elbow. “Sing it to me.”

“No! No, no no, no, no. Absolutely not.”

“Why?” Boris whines. “I sang for you.”

“That’s just way too embarrassing. And you were already singing.”

“How could anything you do be embarrassing?”

Boris gives him a teasing shove. Then he steps behind him and starts to tap on his shoulders annoyingly.

“Sing to me, William,” he insists.

Then he ruffles his hair.

“Oh my God, you’re a pest,” Will sighs.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high

Like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are

He claps his hand over his mouth when he finishes, face flaming red and chest swelled with embarrassment. But Boris claps eagerly and swoops him up in a big hug from behind, stopping their walk in its tracks.

“Wonderful!” he croons. “Was that so hard? And such a voice you have!”

“Please, I was barely singing.”

“Does not matter, still such a great sound!”

“You’re ridiculous.”

Boris releases him so that they can continue their journey, one arm wrapped around Will’s shoulders.

“Only for you.”

“You’re ridiculous for me?”

“Yes.”

“How much…farther…uphill…do we have to walk…?” Will pants.

“Just…a bit,” Boris replies.

Will feels ready to collapse. All this time he’s had no idea where Boris has been taking him, just that it’s a long ways away, and if it’s discovered that they’re gone his mom’s going to kill them. Well, maybe not kill, but be very disappointed in them, and honestly, he’d rather be killed.

The next few minutes are full of silence and panting as the slope gets deeper, then it eventually starts to level out and they can breathe again.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where you’re taking me?” Will asks for what feels like the hundredth time.

“I am sure. I told you, is birthday surprise.”

Will can’t help it, filled to the brim with bone deep exhaustion, he groans. It just makes Boris laugh.

“So unhappy, William. Just wait until we get there, you will change your tune.”

“I’m starting to doubt that.”

Boris places an affronted hand to his chest.

“You doubt me? Shame, William.”

Will chuckles and shakes his head at the antics.

After several more minutes of walking and Boris’s mindless chatter of this and that, he gets a barked out order of:

“Close your eyes!”

“What?” he asks, confused. They’re still in the dark, with nothing around but California mountainous roads and a few scattered houses.

“Close your eyes, I said. You will ruin the surprise. I will lead you.”

“Oh, I don’t like this,” Will complains as he hesitantly shuts his eyelids. For good measure, Boris places his hands over them gently and prompts him to walk forward. Will shuffles his feet blindly, terrified he’s going to trip over something. He grabs on to Boris’s wrist for comfort.

“How long do we have to do this?” he asks.

“Only a moment, I promise you.”

Under his feet, he feels the ground change from road to desert dirt, indicating they’re going off trail. Will pauses.

“Is okay.” Boris assures. “I have been here before. Just trust me.”

So, he does. Boris leads, hands over his eyes for what feels like an eternity but can only be a moment before he asks:

“Are you ready, William?”

Will nods.

And then the universe is spread below him. All of Lenora, in lights.

He and Boris are high up on an overlook, able to see the entire town below, lit up bright like the night sky and Will’s breath catches in his throat at the beauty of it.

“Wow,” he whispers.

“Here,” Boris rummages around in his pockets and comes up with a lighter, flicks it to life. “Pretend this is candle. You have to make birthday wish, yes?”

Will’s thoughts feel like they are simultaneously moving too slow and too fast. Today has been so big. The appearance of Mike. Almost losing Boris. Getting Boris back. The forgetting of his birthday. The last minute gift. And his heart feels full to bursting looking at this boy with a backdrop that could be stars, bathed in the orange light of fire.

“I love you,” Will says, so softly it could be his wish. And maybe it is.

Boris flicks the lighter back out to reach for him.

“And I love you, William. More than you know.”

Chapter Text

Will wakes up the next morning exhausted from his late night trek. He and Boris didn’t get in until the early hours of the morning, and then they stayed up even later, curled up around each other whispering stories in the dark. Will thinks it will forever be one of his favorite memories.

He’s almost entirely forgotten whatever sly thing Boris has been plotting regarding Mike until he starts to see signs of it at breakfast. His mom is working in her usual little nook, and they’re all eating El’s favorite, except El’s not there, and Mike looks miserable.

“It feels like trouble in paradise, yes?”

Mike throws Boris a scathing look at the same time Will chooses to scold him with a heated: “Boris!”

“What? Am just saying. Jane is missing, and your Mike here, his face is so long.”

Mike takes a prolonged drink from his glass while Will gives Boris an urgent look to drop the topic of conversation.

“Did you know that she was lying?” Mike asks Will. “You know, about school and stuff?”

“Not until you got here,” Will answers honestly.

Like the flip of a switch, Mike explodes.

“Then why didn’t you say something?!” he exclaims. “This whole time I’ve been thinking she’s been happy when she’s actually been miserable! And I could have done something! Or said something!”

“Mike, I didn’t even know until yesterday, what was I supposed to do?”

“Be a good friend and tell me!”

“That’s not fair, Mike,” Will declares seriously.

In a soothing gesture, Boris reaches out to rub careful circles on the inside of Will’s wrist with his thumb. It works, an immediate sense of calm filling him, replacing the anxiety and hurt.

“Why are you so angry at William? School is filled with insufferable twats. None are nice to Jane. She did not want you to know. Is not his fault. Sounds like it is between you two,” Boris says.

Mike’s eyes are pinned to Boris’s hand on Will’s wrist, unmoving. And all at once, all the fight seems to go out of him.

“She broke up with me,” Mike admits.

“Over that?!” Will asks.

“No. No, it’s…it’s a long story.”

“Are you…okay?”

Mike scrubs a hand over his face, looking tired and years older than he really is.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just gonna go…do stuff.”

Then he jerks his seat back from the table unsteadily and wanders away, leaving Boris and Will staring after him.

“That did not go like I planned,” Boris comments after a beat.

“What?”

Will whirls his head around to stare at his boyfriend, who looks sheepish.

“Planned? What did you plan?”

“Not that!”

Will banishes Boris to his room so that he can take El her breakfast alone. He knocks tentatively at her door, forever cracked three inches.

“Can I come in? I have your breakfast,” he says.

“Yes,” she replies.

El is seated at her desk, going through what looks like letters. If he had to guess, they’re probably all from Mike.

“It’s your favorite,” he continues as he walks in, leaving the door ajar the way she likes it.

“Thank you.”

He places the plate next her, unsure of where to start. Unsure if she even needs comforting.

“Hey, Mike said you guys broke up. And I just wanted to let you know that I’m here, okay?”

He figures that’s as good of a place as any.

“Thanks. But I’m fine,” El says, finally looking up at him. Her face looks firm and resolute.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he did say you broke up with him, so…” he trails off.

“I did.”

“Do you…want to talk about it?”

El says nothing, just turns back to her letters.

“El,” Will sighs. “We’re friends. And more than that, we’re family. I’m never going to try to make you talk, but I’m your brother, and I’m always going to be here for you. You know that, right?”

El sniffles, and with heartbreak Will realizes that she’s starting to cry.

“I know,” she says.

“Why are you crying then? What can I do to help?”

She turns to face him, cheeks stained pink and eyes watery.

“Mike doesn’t love me,” she sobs.

“What?” And Will almost wants to laugh in disbelief. “I’m pretty sure he does. He’s been attached to you for years, El.”

“That’s not love. He never says it. He’s can’t even write it. All these letters—” she starts shoving papers in his face as if to show them but she’s moving them too fast. “from Mike, from Mike, from Mike. Even the flowers, from Mike. I need him to say it, and he won’t. Even last night he couldn’t. So yes, I dumped his ass.”

Will recognizes the term as one she learned from Max, and his chest burns with it, the ache of missing friends. Max would know what to do about this. He can’t even begin to comprehend Mike’s behavior, it doesn’t fit inside of his brain. Mike loving El goes hand in hand to him. It’s always been an undisputable fact.

“How long as this been going on, El?” Will asks.

“Months,” she says. “Since home.”

Will does the only thing he can think of to stave off the burn of the hurt. He leans forward and wraps his arms around his sister, who grabs him fiercely back.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’ll all be okay. I know Mike. He’s not…the most in touch with his feelings. Something’s going on, and chances are he doesn’t even understand it. But no matter what, you’re going to be okay. We’re all here.”

El gives him a watery laugh as they part.

“Max always says there’s more to life than stupid boys.”

Will grins.

“Yeah. There’s more to life than stupid boys.”

“So, it is his fault? Is he stupid?”

“Boris!”

“What? I am just asking!”

Will is barely back in his room before Boris is ambushing him with questions with the air of an excited puppy.

“Why are you so quick to throw the blame on Mike?” Will questions. “Maybe the breakup was mutual.”

Boris looks at him skeptically from where he’s standing between the bed and the easel, cigarette already poised between his fingers, although not lit.

“Did you see that face of his? That was no mutual breakup, William. He did something stupid, I know it.”

“He’s not stupid, Boris, you just don’t like him.”

“Because he is stupid.”

Will sighs, shoulders slumping, wondering if this is something he should fight. If he fights for Mike’s honor, Boris could easily take it wrong, and it would start a fight between the two of them. But it also feels terrible letting someone just call Mike stupid for the sake of it.

“I can’t tell you anything anyway, I’m not going to betray Jane’s trust like that, okay?”

“No fun,” Boris pouts. “But good brother.”

He edges near the window to light up his cigarette.

“It upsets you when I call your friend stupid,” he states.

“Yeah, it does,” Will agrees, surprised by his boyfriend’s observation.

“Why? My Theo was an idiot. Smart! Very smart! But an idiot all the same. Always drinking too much, blackout drunk, and throwing up everywhere. And so repressed with feelings. You can be smart and stupid, William.”  

Will’s never thought of it that way. To him, Mike’s always been brilliant. Maybe he didn’t get the highest grades out of the party, but he’s always been knowledgeable about various things. And maybe he’s not the most in touch with his own emotions, especially lately, but he’s always been good about handling the feelings of others. Not so much recently, but growing up, he was  the best. Calling him stupid makes Will feel like a schoolyard bully, and he hates it.

“I still wouldn’t call Mike stupid,” he says. “Maybe more…out of touch.”

“Out of touch how?”

“I dunno…He used to be really good at feelings and stuff. And he used to always say the right thing. But lately, he’s just…not. I don’t know why. Like, maybe he’s confused, or he’s lost himself or something. But I’m confident he’ll be okay. He’s still Mike.”

“Do you think he and Jane will be okay?”

Will shrugs.

“I hope so.”

Boris’s eyes are serious.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, I do. He makes her happy. Well…usually. And I want her to happy. I want him to be happy too. And me, I’m happy with you.”

Boris smiles and holds out an arm for Will to come closer. He does, squeezes himself close to Boris’s side despite the cigarette held in his other hand.

“Now, will you tell me what you’re planning?” Will asks.

“Who said I had a plan?” Boris says unconvincingly.

Will pokes him repeatedly, making him squirm away.

“You did! Just a little bit ago, you did!”

“Nyet! Never happened! Stop with the fingers!”

Will continues the attack until they’re both laughing and breathless.

Chapter Text

amazing art by ao3 user ViennasSolution of chapter 12! look at it! 

“I think we should go hang out with Mike,” Will says. He’s currently sitting on his bed, sketching a picture of Boris stretched out languidly on his floor. His curls are spilled every which way, and his shirt is riding up to show a peek of his stomach. Will feels flustered but is trying hard not to show it—he thinks it’s stupid that he can still be flustered so easily.

“I think we should smoke weed again,” Boris offers in rebuttal.

“That sounds great, except I said I was only doing it once, and Mike is here now.”

“No fun,” Boris frowns.

Will finishes the final touches on Boris’s hair before laying the sketch pad and pencil down next to him.

“Oh, I’m no fun, huh?” he asks, teasing.

Boris nods, his frown quickly transforming to a small smile quirking at his lips.

“None at all.”

Will lithely climbs from his bed and makes his way over to his boyfriend, kneeling next to him on the floor.

“Just the most boring person you’ve ever met, right?”

Boris reaches out to wrap his elegant fingers around Will’s wrist.

“The very worst,” he says.

Will lets himself be pulled down so that the other can tug him into his arms and press a full kiss to his mouth. He kisses him again, and again, and again, until they’re both breathless.

“You know my door doesn’t lock. We’re gonna get caught eventually.”

Boris’s smile is wide now.

“Exciting,” he says.

“I know I’ve said this before, but you’re ridiculous. That is not exciting.”

His boyfriend nuzzles his nose underneath his ear in a ticklish gesture that has tingles running down his spine.

“Should let me mark you,” he mutters.

“Mark me?” Will squeaks. “Like…a hickey?”

Boris hums his confirmation.

“Just a small thing,” he assures him. Then he buries his face in Will’s neck making him squirm at the sensation.

“You’re insane!”

He grabs Boris by the face and pushes him back down so that he can evaluate his expression, and he immediately regrets it. His eyes are so alive and mischievous, highlighted by a sly grin and flushed cheekbones. He looks every bit like he stepped out of a dream, and it makes Will feel woozy and weak.

“Why would you want to do something like that?” Will presses on despite the feeling. Worried that if he stares too long or falls into it that he’ll end up giving in.

“How could I not? Look at you. Want everyone to know you are taken.”

“It’s spring break, Boris. They’ll want to know by who.”

“Is that so bad? For them to know you are mine? Your brother did not mind.”

Will shrugs one shoulder, immediately conflicted.

“It would…change things. Jonathan is Jonathan. My mom’s…my mom.”

“And she is a good mother. I can tell.”

Will pulls his lower lip between his teeth, stomach churning at the thought of his mom’s reaction. He knows in his heart that his mom loves him, and would never turn him away, but there’s this itch at the back of his mind, this horrible scenario he’s built up over years where’s she’s devastated. Devastated at the loss of her marriage, because all along her husband was right about him being…

“Hey,” Boris startles him with a soft touch to his face. “Do not think so much, William. I would never force such a thing. You know that.”

Will reaches up to cover Boris’s hand with his own.

“I know,” he says. “I know that. I wish I could tell them too. I’m just…not ready.”

“And that is okay.”

Overwhelmed at his boyfriend’s understanding, Will leans down again to capture his lips in another kiss, which Boris welcomes with a sigh. He’s so full of feeling, a big undefinable frenzy, that he can’t really help himself. For once, like Boris encourages him to at times, he takes. He nips at his lower lip, not gently nor too hard, and Boris parts them willingly for a deep, open mouth kiss.

This time, Will’s the one teasing with the tip of his tongue, dipping and tracing in a way that has Boris—his Borya—pressing back for more. The door lock is long forgotten as Will tangles a hand in his boyfriend’s hair, holds him still so that he can devour and plunder in a way that has them clinging tightly to each other.

When they part, lips swollen and eyes hazy, Will only has one thought in his mind.

“I fucking love you,” he murmurs.

Boris’s eyebrows raise as he smiles. Then, he giggles, a silly little thing Will’s only ever heard when he’s high.

“You said fuck!” he says gleefully, kicking his feet for good measure.

Will gives him a flat look despite the affection he feels.

“That’s what you take out of all of this?”

“Mhmm,” Boris hums, threading his fingers through the hair at the back of Will’s head. “You are sweet boy. Never hear bad words out of you.”

“Maybe you’re a bad influence, then. And I’m not always a sweet boy.”

Boris pulls Will down a fraction so that he can press his nose into Will cheek and whisper: “You are always my sweet boy.”

Will can’t help but grin as Boris presses a peck to his cheek.

“And I love you too, William.”

“Good,” Will says.

He starts to rise from the floor, where he’s been sprawled and tangled in Boris for who knows how long now.

“You know we still need to hang out with Mike, right?”

Boris throws an arm over his eyes and pretends like he doesn’t hear him.

Chapter Text

adorable art by tumblr user chickenistasy

They find Mike sulking in the spare bedroom. High degree sulking—sprawled facedown in the mattress, completely immovable and lethargic. It’s sad and pathetic, and Will feels terrible for him, but Boris just looks amused. Will has to resist the urge to jam another finger into his boyfriend’s stomach as punishment. He’s kind of confused as to how Mike can be so devastated when according to El, he’s the one with the issue when it comes to saying how he feels, but he’s trying hard not to judge.

“C’mon, Mike, let’s go do something. You can’t lay here all spring break,” Will urges.

“Like what?” Mike asks. His voice is muffled into the blanket beneath him.

“We could go to the movies?” he suggests. Mike groans.

“We could go back to Rink O’ Mania?”

Another groan.

“We could teach Boris about D&D?”

That makes Mike lift his head.

“I thought you gave all your stuff away,” he says.

“Well, I did. But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember everything.”

He flops his head back down.

“That’s not as fun.”

Will sighs and rolls his eyes towards the ceiling as if asking a higher power for help. It’s rare for Mike to get like this, but it’s awful when it happens.

“Okay,” he walks to the end of the bed and grabs one bony ankle and tugs. “We’re gonna go in the living room, watch Ghostbusters, because Boris has never seen it, eat junk food, and have fun. You love Ghostbusters.”

Mike lets himself roll with the tug on his ankle and eyes Boris as he goes.

“You’ve never seen Ghostbusters?” he asks him.

Boris shakes his head, still looking far too amused for his own good.  

“That’s just wrong.”

“It is wrong,” Will agrees, “so get up, Michael.”

They have more junk food than they know what to do with. Bowls of it. Popcorn, chips, candy, cans of soda. Boris looks like he’s in heaven, already shoving handfuls of Doritos in his mouth like a man starved.

“So, this movie, what is it about?” he asks.

Mike stares at Will an abject horror.

“How is this even possible?” he whispers as Will passes him on the way to the VCR.

Will shrugs.

“He watches a lot of old movies. You know, stuff from like the 30s.”

“Why?”

“I mean, they’re pretty good. I watch them too sometimes. Usually at his house, but they’re not bad.”

They turn they’re attention back to Boris.

“It’s kind of like what the title says. They’re Ghostbusters. They hunt ghosts. It’s great.” Mike says.

“Is it scary?”

“Not really,” Will chimes in, setting up the VHS. “More funny, I think. But mostly, it’s just cool.”

Resolved not to let Mike and Boris sit next to each other, Will slides into the middle of the couch as the movie starts. Mike is already on the edge of his seat, seemingly feeling much better as he sips on a can of soda and digs his hand in a bowl of candy, eyes fixed firmly on the screen. Boris is less enamored with the ghost and the troubles of the main cast, choosing instead to trace a finger over the top of Will’s hand in a way that makes him shiver. His eyes dart over to his boyfriend’s face, only to meet a dark, impish stare return.

In a moment of daring, Will splays his hand out, allowing Boris to thread his fingers between his in a gentle handhold that has him blushing, while Boris looks endlessly pleased. He leans close, and closer still, to whisper in Will’s ear:

“Sweet boy.”

And Will feels like he’s going to combust. He holds Boris’s hand tighter, buries it in the space between them, and floats away on the feeling of holding a boy’s hand in his living room like he’s always dreamed of doing.

Sure, Mike’s here, and maybe flirting with Boris while trying to make him feel better doesn’t make him the greatest friend there is, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention anyway.

Soothingly, lovingly, as the movie continues on, Boris traces his thumb along one of his knuckles, and Will finds himself wishing that he could curl into the contact more. He wants to burrow into Boris, wants his arms thrown around him, their legs tangled together as they watch whatever movie the other boy chooses.

It’s odd, he thinks, glancing at Mike, that he used to want this with someone else. Odd that sometimes it still stings, but for the most part he feels so unfathomably full and happy. Suddenly, his heart freezes in his chest, because Mike’s dark eyes are peering back at him. They glance down quizzically at where his and Boris’s hands are intertwined, but hidden, and then back up at Will with a furrowed brow.

He fights the urge to wrestle his hand back from his boyfriend, blaming that urge on raw panic. He tries to remember, no matter how much it hurts, that Mike already knows about him.

It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!

He sucks in a deep breath, searching for bravery. It’s just Mike.

It’s just Mike.

Boris is with him. And it’s just Mike.

look at this beautiful art by tumblr user pollennn of chapter 16!!

Chapter Text

beautiful art by tumblr user galiadeeznuts

No matter how much time he spends with Boris, it’s always hard seeing him go. They had finished watching Ghostbusters, hands clasped tightly together despite Mike’s confused glances every now and then, only for his mom to kindly remind him that Jonathan and Argyle were due to take him home that afternoon.

It makes his stomach swoop downwards like a pit, feeling so much like a loss, even though he knows in his heart that he’ll see him again soon.

After the three of them collectively clean up their movie mess, Boris dismisses himself to gather his things from Will’s room, leaving Will and Mike alone in the kitchen. Will, at that moment, wants nothing more than to follow.

Mike is standing next to the sink, watching him with eyes that seem to hold something knowledgeable, but with what, Will doesn’t know. He isn’t sure he wants to find out either—not just yet.

“So…” Mike starts. And like a startled colt, Will runs.

“I’m gonna go make sure Boris doesn’t forget anything.”

The look on his friend’s face can only be described as put out.

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” Will assures him.

Mike nods. Will nods back. And then flees, flees to the safety of Boris, who is waiting for him behind his closed bedroom door, arms crossed, smirk on his face.

“You jerk,” Will says immediately. “You did that on purpose.”

“I would never do such a thing, William. Only thought you two could use a moment. He looked as if he has had his first thought in years.”

“That’s…” Will splutters, “that’s not nice.”

“HA!” Boris’s laugh explodes throughout the room. “Am not wrong though.”

“What if I don’t want to know his thoughts?” Will asks, shifting uncomfortably. It makes him feel terrible to say. There was a time not so long ago when he would have given anything to know every thought on Mike’s mind. Good or bad. But now, he just doesn’t feel ready. He had a moment of bravery during the movie, but he forgot during that time that he was going to be alone to face the consequences.

“You worry it is bad?”

“I mean, yeah.”

“Why?” Boris asks, dropping his arms and stepping closer, reaching out to give comfort.

“He saw us holding hands,” Will almost whispers.

“So?” Boris says nonchalantly.

“What if he…what if he’s…”

“Piss on him if he’s angry. No loss to you. But maybe he is not angry. He could be many things. Confused. Jealous—”

Will scoffs.

“Mike’s not jealous.”

“How would you know? Everyone should be jealous that I have you.”

Boris is fully in his space now, holding on to his arms, nuzzling his nose into his cheek. It makes Will feel complete and loved.

“I don’t want you to go,” he murmurs.

“I don’t want to go either, but I will be back.” Boris presses a kiss to his cheek, then to his chin. “Nobody could keep me from you anyway.” He presses a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Even if I have to climb through your window, I will see you soon, William.” Then he kisses his mouth, full and sweet, and Will tangles his fingers through his boyfriend’s hair, messing up the curls in the back as farewell gift for the trip home.

Mike and Will stand in the doorway, watching Boris load up into Argyle’s van. Mike has his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the doorframe in a way that should look nonchalant but somehow doesn’t. With a final wave goodbye, and the van sliding closed, Will’s heart still yearns for his boyfriend to come back. How much time can you spend with another person before it becomes unhealthy, Will wonders. Because he wants to spend every waking second with Boris. Every sleeping second too.

“You two seem…close,” Mike finally says as Argyle backs down the driveway.

A cold chill makes it’s way down Will’s spine, his palms clammy for the first time in a long time. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for this. But at the same time, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be. And sometimes, you just have to rip off the bandage.

“We are,” he agrees, turning to go inside.

Mike follows him, through the entryway and all the way into his room, every bit like a duckling following his mother. He wants something from Will, and he’s not going to stop until he gets it.

“How long have you guys been friends?” he finally asks. He is puttering around Will’s space, prodding things on his desk, gazing at drawings on his walls. It feels awkward. It probably wouldn’t if Will didn’t know he ways prying.

“A few months, I guess.”

Mike hums, paused at a rough sketch of the painting that’s still rolled up in the corner of the room.

Will knows what that noncommittal sound means, especially combined with his pinched brow.

“You don’t like him,” Will states.

“I didn’t say that!” he jumps in to argue.

“You didn’t have to. It’s okay, Mike. You don’t have to like him. Honestly, he doesn’t like you much either.”

Mike looks aghast.

“He what?! What did I do?!”

“Well, what did he do?” Will claps back.

“Nothing!”

“Exactly.”

Mike’s face settles into something that can only be called a pout, and Will’s nerves settle some as his anxiety is replaced with humor.

“He smells like cigarettes,” he says after a moment.

“Well, he smokes, so that’s probably why.”

He pulls a disgusted face.

“Gross.”

Will shrugs.

“I don’t mind much. I mean, my mom smokes, so I don’t really think about it.”

“Yeah,” Mike sighs.

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Will’s sitting on his bed, tapping on his knees with his fingertips, and Mike’s just standing there, doing nothing, and it’s so awkward that Will wants to die. It’s never been like this with Mike before. They’ve always been able to talk, and they’re silences have always been companionable. This just feels like torture by comparison.

“Mike,” Will interrupts after a few long moments. “Will you just say whatever it is you need to say?”

His friend lets out a long breath of air, almost as though he’s been holding it before coming to sit next to him on the bed.

“I tried calling, you know.”

That’s not what Will expected to hear.

“You did?” he asks. “When?”

“All the time. Almost every day at first. But the line was always busy. I didn’t know your mom was working from home until El mentioned it a few letters back.”

“Oh. And I was…mad at you for not calling,” Will mutters.

“And I was mad at you for not calling,” Mike says.

They stare at each other for a moment, Will in surprise, and Mike looking forlorn.

“But why…why didn’t you ever answer my letters?” Will wonders.

“I did. Well, sort of. I always wrote back, but I didn’t always send them.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Mike.”

Mike wrings his hands together, head downcast and mouth pulled into a wretched frown.

“I’ve been…having a hard time…with some things,” he says, so soft it could be a whisper.

Will reaches out to cover Mike’s hands with one of his own.

“What things?” he asks just as softly. When Mike doesn’t respond, he presses on. “You can tell me anything, Mike. You know that.”

“I think I…I think I might…have feelings…for you.”

A like a key in a lock, everything in Will’s brain clicks into place. The distance, his struggles with El, Mike’s mood swings. It’s not puberty, or girls, or anything that Will’s done. It’s Mike struggling to accept himself.

“Oh, Mike…” he sighs. He turns to the side to pull his friend into a hug, and as soon as his arms are around him, the tears come. Mike is sobbing, full and open into his arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cries, and Will just continues to rub soothing circles into his back.

“You don’t have to apologize. Mike, I loved you before I even knew what love was. And for a long time, I felt like I was a mistake—like there was something wrong with me—but then I realized that loving you couldn’t possibly be a mistake. Something that perfect couldn’t possibly be wrong. You made me feel better about being different. Do you understand that? But…I’m sorry, you’re a little late. I’m…I’m with Boris now…and…I’m happy.”

Mike sobs harder, wraps his arms around him and squeezes tight.

“I know,” he says between sniffles. “I can tell. That’s why I don’t like him.”

“And that’s why he doesn’t like you. Because I loved you first.”

“I think I loved you first too. I just didn’t know it.”

“And that’s okay.”

Will creates a bit of distance between them so that he can wipe Mike’s tears away and hold a gentle hand to one of his cheeks.

“You will always be my first love, Michael Wheeler. And I will always care about you.”

Chapter Text

gorgeous fanart by tumblr user fluffyfangirl 

His alarm clock says it’s nearing midnight, and Will’s still wide awake. He’s had an exhausting day, and his eyes are burning with tiredness, but he can’t quite get his brain to shut down and just sleep. A part of his is still reeling with disbelief.

Mike has feelings for him. For him.

A few months ago, this would have been the highlight of his life. An absolute dream come true. Now, it feels bittersweet.

Will tells himself it wouldn’t work anyways, because Mike is all the way in Hawkins, and he’s here in California. That kind of distance for all four years of high school is bound to create some strain on a relationship, no matter how much someone wants it to work. But in the end, none of it matters anyway, because now, he has Boris. Boris, who makes him happier than he ever could have dreamed. Boris, who treats him like someone precious every day. Boris, who is right here in front of him, where he can touch him and see him anytime he wants.

Without realizing it, he’s starting to drift off to thoughts of Boris—the memory of his hands running down his shoulders, the sight of his crooked grin, the way shadows cast on the inside of his wrists. He’s almost fully peacefully asleep when he hears it, a tapping at his window.

A persistent, melodic tap, tap, tap, tap.

It’s so gentle it doesn’t even frighten him, just eases him out of his pre-slumber with a whisper of confusion. His addled mind conjures up the image of a bird pecking at the glass, but the logical side of his brain knows that can’t be right.

Will sits up in bed, and his heart stops when he’s greeted with the shadow of a person instead. In the darkness, the looming figure looks larger than life—dangerous and oppressive, and he can’t help but think of every murder news article that’s ran in the paper in the last six months.

Slowly, so slowly, he creeps out of bed and over to his light switch, barely daring to breathe, a scream for Jonathan on the tip of his tongue. Light floods his room with the flick of a finger, illuminating like the sun, and relief floods him instantly. Because it’s Boris.

Of course it’s Boris.

Will slaps a hand to his forehead and sighs, a long drawn out thing, before padding over to his window and tugging it open.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and it sounds like a demand. “I thought I was about to get murdered.”

Boris’s grin is bright. He chucks his backpack through the window as Will takes a step back before hauling himself inside.

“Didn’t know murderers knocked,” he replies.

Will splutters, and Boris laughs, far too loud for the quiet of the night.

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Will asks again, softer this time. “Is everything okay?”

He reaches his arms out towards Boris in concern, thinking immediately of his father, and his eyes track over his face in search of bruises or sign of a struggle.

“Everything is fine, William. Said I would come through your window, yes?”

Will lets out a disbelieving sound.

“Only if it’s been too long. It hasn’t even been a day, Boris.”

“So?” Boris walks into Will’s open arms, and Will immediately tightens his grip around his waist. “Maybe that is too long.”

Will stares into his eyes, taking in their dark color, the warmth of them, the seriousness of Boris’s words hidden beneath a slightly joking façade.

“You’re so…” he trails off, overcome by emotion, unsure of what word he’s even looking for. Ridiculous perhaps, because that’s what he always says. Perfect, maybe, because it sometimes really feels like he is.

Instead, he kisses him, a sweet tender thing, full of love and adoration because how could he not love and adore this eccentric boy of his?

Boris hums into it, wraps his arms around him in return.

When they part, words fall out of Will unbidden.

“Mike told me he has feelings for me today.”

Boris’s eyes widen in surprise, underlined by something hot and angry.

“I told him he was too late. That we were together and that I’m happy.”

“Are you?” Boris asks.

“Am I what?”

“Happy.”

Will buries his face into Boris’s neck.

“Borya…” he sighs. “I am happier than I’ve ever been.”

Boris’s grip relaxes from where he unconsciously constricted it, and he strokes Will’s back soothingly.

“You chose me?” he asks quietly. And the way he says it sounds so young and wonderous that Will gets a lump in his throat from the emotion it brings. How many people have passed Boris by, he wonders. How often has he been second best?

He unburies himself so that he can look his boyfriend in the eyes as he says:

“I will always choose you.”

The words act as a trigger. Boris’s face twists in a conglomeration of emotion before settling on blank, and a single teardrop traces its way down a sharp cheek.

“I will always choose you,” Will repeats, softer this time.

Then, quicker than he can take a breath, Boris’s mouth is on his. Devouring. Consuming. His kiss is open and raw and it’s all Will can do to hang on.

“Sweet boy,” Boris mutters when they part for air. Kisses him again. Then presses his lips, hot, to a blushing cheek. “Love you. So much I want to scream with it.”

He nips Will’s lower lip with his teeth, making his toes curl inside his socks.

“Love you too,” Will whimpers. Boris is everywhere. Kissing his chin, his jaw, the side of his neck. Then he’s back at his mouth, tongue dipping inside, and Will is drowning.

He lives for this. Lives for moments where he and Boris can fall into each other like this. He wishes often that he could pause time and just kiss Boris like this for an eternity.

The idea comes to him then, in that moment, when he’s wishing for another infinity.

The next morning, Will wakes wrapped up in Boris’s arms, well rested, and full of apprehension. His idea from the night before is still at the forefront of his mind. After an ungodly amount of time making out, he pitched it to Boris, who was supportive, and, if anything else, excited.

His boyfriend seems to sense him fretting, and even though he’s half asleep, he runs a calming hand up and down Will’s back.

“Is okay, William. Sleep for now,” he says, voice thick.

“I can’t,” Will replies. “I think I should do it now.”

That rouses Boris immediately.

“Now? Right now?” he asks.

“Yeah, like at breakfast. I mean, the sooner the better right?”

Boris’s eyes are bright and alert.

“If you think so,” he agrees.

Will shuffles slightly, creating a bit of distance between them so he can look at Boris more clearly.

“Will you…Will you stay with me? I mean, like come with me while I do this? I want you there.”

His boyfriend looks astounded.

“You are sure?”

Will nods.

“Please,” he adds for good measure.

“Of course,” Boris says, dipping down to give him a fleeting kiss. “Just for you. Always for you.”

They clamber out of bed a moment later, Will in his oversized pajamas, and Boris in his shirt and jeans, and they both stand in front of his door. Boris, waiting for Will to make the first move, and Will waiting for his bravery to kick in.

“I can do this, right?” Will asks.

“Yes, you can do this.”

He nods and places a hand on the doorknob.

“But William, you do not have to.”

“I know,” Will says. “But I want to. I wasn’t ready before, but I am now.”

Will opens the door with the turn of the knob, and they walk to the dining room together, side-by-side.

Everyone is seated at the table already. Joyce is sipping a cup of coffee, and Jonathan has the morning paper spread out in front of him. Mike and El are sitting on opposite sides of the table.

Jonathan is the first to look up.

“Didn’t I take you home yesterday?” he questions, looking completely casual.

Joyce looks up then, brow furrowed.

“Boris! I didn’t see you come in! Good morning.” She says.

“Hi, Boris,” El chimes in.

Mike stays silent, but nods his greeting.

“M-Mom,” Will stutters, then he curses inside his mind for sounding so nervous.

She picks up on it immediately, eyes widening with concern.

“Will? What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

And her voice is so gentle, so motherly and caring, and he’s so, so afraid and has been afraid for so long…

The tears just come. They start to fall and don’t stop falling. He feels like he can’t breathe. Then, there’s a hand in his. Boris’s hand. And a whisper.

“Is okay, William,” he says.

His mom is talking too, begging him to tell her what’s wrong. And when he comes back to himself he can see everybody’s concerned faces and pinched expressions, looks of love and worry. And for the first time, he feels the words rise up out of his throat.

“Mom,” he starts again. “I’m…I…I’m gay. And Boris is my boyfriend. I wanted you all to know.”

The moment is so surreal he almost feels like he can’t see, like this isn’t actually happening. But it is. Joyce’s eyes well with tears, her hands clasped to her chest, and she breathes:

“Oh my boy. My boy.”

She scurries around the table to envelop him in a hug.

“I’m so proud,” she says. “And you!”

She jerks back, almost as if noticing Boris for the first time. Then she sidesteps and wraps him in her arms too.

“Come here, sweetheart.”

Boris makes a startled sound, something between a yelp and a squawk, before allowing himself to sink into her embrace.

Over his mother’s shoulder, Will can see Jonathan and El and Mike all getting up. Mike has a warbling little half smile on his face. El looks dazed and confused by the situation, which doesn’t surprise Will in the slightest, given her still growing knowledge of the world. And Jonathan, Jonathan is crying too. Silently. Happily. He looks like he’s glowing.

Soon he and Boris are crushed in a gaggle of people in a giant familial group hug, and Will doubts, as Boris squeezes the hand he’s still holding, that he’s ever felt so loved in his whole life.

And he’s so grateful.

But most of all, he’s happy.

adorable fanart by Rey!