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Mike and El had been kissing a lot recently—like, an every day kind of a lot—and Mike didn’t really know what to think about it.
It was something that was still new to both of them, so none of them had really known what they were doing at first. That awkward kiss in the cafeteria when they were twelve didn’t count, and although the one at the Snow Ball was a slight improvement, that one wasn’t like the type of kissing they did now.
It took a while for Mike to get to this point, to not be anxious about it and even be a little confident with it, but he thinks he’s got the hang of it now. He’s gotten a lot of practice, after all.
It was kind of fun, Mike decided. El’s lips were soft, and if something was awkward they’d just laugh it off. Kissing was nice.
…Mike thinks he prefers hugs a lot more, but kissing is supposed to be better, so he pretends he likes it more. According to the many novels he’d read and films he’d seen which included kissing, the characters always seemed to prefer the kissing part, so that seemed like the right thing for him to do. And maybe, if he continues kissing El for a bit longer, he’ll get those sparks or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen when you kiss someone! He’s always thought that sounded really nice. He hadn’t been able to get them yet, but kissing was still pretty fun.
At least, most of the time. For some reason, he didn’t like it when El would cling to him too much, whenever she’d put her hands on his chest or around his neck. He didn’t really know why, but it made him feel a bit trapped; too caged in. Made his chest feel all tight. And of course, he didn’t like whenever Hopper would flip out on them, but that was more so in the beginning. Nowadays he found it quite amusing to be able to get such a reaction out of the man to be honest, and El seemed to be just as amused as he was, so if anything it just added to the whole thing (Hopper kinda deserved it for all of last year, okay?).
There was something else he didn’t like about kissing though, and it was by far the worst one of the downsides. Now that he’d started kissing El so often, it made it so 'kissing' was on Mike’s mind a lot, and sometimes it would sort of… come to mind when it shouldn’t, which was just all types of awkward and weird and confusing. The weirdest and most frustrating thing about that though, was that for some reason, every time it did, Will was there. And it was starting to drive Mike insane.
At first, it started out innocently enough.
Mike had started looking at Will’s lips, like, a lot. Or maybe he had just started to notice that he did..? Either way- Mike had been looking at Will’s lips more than was normal, and he didn’t like it. Whenever he caught himself doing it, it made him feel wrong. He would drag his eyes away, and sometimes, only sometimes, he would ignore Will for just a little while afterwards, and then he’d feel better again.
It was bad. Mike knew it was bad, he did, but what else could he do? He felt bad about ignoring Will, even if the other boy didn’t seem to notice it most of the time, but he knew he had to. He was sure Will would be grateful for it if he knew why Mike was doing it, so really, he got over the guilt quick enough. That didn't mean it left Mike's mind, though.
It was such a weird side effect of kissing! He wondered how he’d never heard of it before. Does kissing make you obsessed with lips or something?
He thought about asking Lucas about it at one point, but Mike didn't think he could take the guaranteed teasing that would come with that conversation, so he hadn't. But that just left Mike to think about it to himself, and unfortunately, Mike was quite well-known for overthinking (he might not be on a Dustin level of overthinking, but he definitely did it a lot).
There’s where things got a little more difficult though, because Mike could think a lot. Just like his mouth had some sort of unfortunate talent for rambling the most dramatic examples of bullshit, his mind could run and spiral and warp its way in a million different angles, but whenever it came to Will’s lips and why he was looking at them, Mike's mind would just… shut down. It would just stop, try to redirect his thoughts in other directions, and it was all very weird and frustrating because clearly, something in him knew it was wrong. He clearly shouldn’t be looking at his best friend like that. He didn’t want to, and he didn’t know why he did or why his own brain had come up with some weird way to stop him from thinking about it or why he was even thinking about it in the first place.
Mike had managed to ignore that labyrinth of thoughts for quite a long time (by his mind's standards, at least), until one day when he and El were kissing, and something a lot worse than just looking at Will’s lips happened.
He thought about kissing them.
While in the middle of kissing his girlfriend and mentally singing along to the lyrics of the love song playing from her stereo across the room (which were very cliché but also maybe kinda nice), the thought of Will being in El’s place crossed his mind, and Mike just about managed to cover up the way his whole body froze up, lips included.
Wrong, wrong, wrong-
“What’s wrong?” El had asked, confusion written all over her face (rightfully so), and Mike can't even remember what he responded to that. But he remembers that he went home shortly afterwards, muttering some excuse about chores but promising to come over extra early the next day, which he did. He did.
He and El started kissing even more after that, and Mike may or may not have initiated most of it. He had to. He had to kiss El to remind himself and to reassure himself that he liked it. It was nice. It was even fun, sometimes. The consistent lack of sparks was more frustrating than ever before, but he never spent time dwelling over it. His mind wouldn’t allow him to, anyway.
Thoughts about that were locked away tightly in a box inside another box, which was in (yep, you guessed it), another box which had a giant lock on it, and this box was pushed to the very back of Mike's very messy brain. And that's where he tried to leave it, to collect dust and be forgotten about.
Needless to say, it didn't exactly work. But it wasn't all his fault.
Mike and the rest of The Party (aside from El for obvious reasons, and also aside from Dustin for more boring, non-superpower related reasons) had been sneaking into the movie theater at the mall a lot since Steve had started working there, and it was supposed to be awesome. In theory, it was. On top of simply annoying Steve (which was fun in and of itself), they got to sneak in all secretly through a back-entrance which was, admittedly, pretty cool even if you take away the fact that it made the tickets free, but it wasn't all it could have been. At least not to Mike.
See, they had this coordinated seating plan: since it was pretty much impossible to find four unbooked seats in a row that wasn't at the front (and they refused to sit at the front), they always sat in two's fairly close to each other, but not close-close, and Max and Lucas were obviously always sat next to each other (except for that one weird time when they were fighting and Mike had to sit next to a suffering Lucas who kept trying to vent to Mike throughout the film (Mike would never ever in a million years admit it out loud to anyone, but he would have preferred Max's company at that moment)).
With Max and Lucas (mostly) always sitting next to each other, that left Mike and Will to (mostly) always sit next to each other, too, which should have been fine. Really, it should have been. But the kissing thing seemed to have messed with his head more than he thought, because now Mike… noticed things.
Instead of admiring the cool story he was supposed to be looking at on the giant screen right in front of his face, Mike took notice of just how good Will looked in the dim lighting of the theater.
Not how good he looked in general, no, but how he looked especially good in the theater. As if Will being good-looking in general was so obvious it didn't need to be pointed out to him, and, well… it didn't. Somehow, for some reason, Mike just knew that.
He didn't even know when he had first taken notice of it, but nowadays it was just an undeniable fact of Mike's horribly confusing life: Will was cute. Handsome, even, and wow if that thought didn't make Mike stop dead in his tracks as if he'd been running full speed toward a brick wall the first time it rang through his head.
Just the first time though, because just like with the kissing thing, there was a perfectly normal explanation for this!
Listen: Mike may not like how he's started taking notice of his best friend's (good) looks every time they hung out, but... he guessed it was kind of difficult not to. Right? Will was good-looking, that was just a factual statement. You could ask anyone! And, in turn, sitting next to good-looking people was something that gave everyone butterflies, right? It didn't matter who it was. And in the movie theater, they (mostly) always sat next to each other. And Mike's thoughts about Will's (good) looks were more frequent in the movie theater.
See? It made sense.
Will and him would get very close together each time they went to the movies, and that's why it messed with Mike's head, because nowadays when he gets close to someone (someone being El), kissing happens. And he and Will got close to each other a lot.
They (mostly) always sat next to each other, and Will was always the one sneaking in candy in his lumpy backpack that Mike would sometimes pass along to the rest, and Will's hands would always brush against Mike's own when he did. And surely that had to count as like, getting extra close, which meant extra butterflies and extra glances.
Again, Mike wasn’t sure why he even took notice of these things in the first place, but he did.
Will (mostly) always sat next to him, and their hands would touch when passing candy (and sometimes just because), and Will would jump in his seat whenever a jumpscare would happen, and one time he even grabbed hold of Mike’s hand when he got that extra level of scared. He had quickly let go of it, muttering an apology which Mike dismissed like it was just in his nature to do so, because Will wasn't in the wrong, Mike was. Mike was in the wrong for missing the touch when Will let go of his hand, even if it was only for a brief, excruciatingly long second before his mind shoved that thought right back down before it could lead anywhere.
There was also that one time when Will somehow managed to fall asleep during one of the loudest films Mike thinks he's ever watched, and his head had lulled to the side and onto Mike's shoulder, but that time it was a little different. It didn't make Mike nervous or anything like that—it just made him feel all soft, as he adjusted himself so Will could lay more comfortably.
It reminded Mike of when him and Will were younger, and they'd have unplanned sleepovers in his basement because Will kept falling asleep on the couch. His head would rest on Mike's shoulder just like that, and Mike would smile, not angry about Will missing the movie in the slightest, and carefully adjust how he was sitting just like he was doing then.
That scenario really shouldn't be a fond memory to Mike considering the reason Will was so tired was because he could barely sleep during the screaming matches that would happen in his house at night back then, but it was. They were only a couple of years into their friendship at that point, and it had taken Will quite a while to open up about it. When he did though, Mike remembers feeling very proud of him, and honoured to be someone Will felt like he could go to, and talk to, and rest safely with.
They started planning sleepovers for every single weekend after that conversation, which they managed to keep up for almost two months before Will's dad apparently finally noticed and put a stop to it, for some reason or another. Mike never got an explanation, and Will would just shrug his shoulders or change the subject whenever Mike had tried asking him about it afterwards. Will's dad had always been an asshole anyway, so Mike couldn't exactly say he was surprised about it. But with Will no longer sleeping over at Mike's every weekend, he'd started to get tired a lot again. Will might have been good at hiding it in class and from Lucas (Dustin hadn't moved there yet), but Mike had always been good at reading the other.
So, looking at Will a lot to see how he was feeling without having to ask him directly just became something Mike did a lot. He became really good at it, and the same went for Will. Will could read Mike a lot better than Lucas or Dustin, and sometimes even better than Mike himself.
The two of them used to have entire conversations during class without even making a sound. But that was before all the kissing, and everything that had happened since.
Now, Mike couldn't even look at Will without feeling weird about it, let alone have entire silent conversations with him. He was also pretty terrified over Will catching onto what was happening, because like, Mike didn't even know what was happening. How was he ever going to be able to explain himself? The mere thought of that scenario happening sent shivers down his spine. No, Mike had to simply not get caught.
It was something that was getting harder and harder to avoid as time went on though, especially at the movies. Even glancing over at the other boy in the theater was a gamble, because sometimes Mike's eyes would like, linger there without Mike even realizing, and then he'd have to snap out of it somehow.
He didn't mean to! Mike swears he didn't. It just happened sometimes. It's not like Mike could just stop looking at Will, or even stop stealing glances of him. Mike's Will-glances were necessary, okay? Sometimes, Mike would glance over at Will just to reassure himself that Will was fine (sometimes during horror movies, sometimes just because), or to prepare himself for the possibility of Will jumping into Mike’s space again.
When Mike would do that, though, he’d always stop and just… look at Will, for a bit. He didn't usually, at least not deliberately, but at the movies it was hard to resist. It wouldn't be for longer than a few seconds or so, that would be too obvious, but Will’s face always looked more captivating than usual with all the colours from the screen painting his features with stark patterns and illuminating it with various lighting. And then Mike's eyes would always drag down to Will’s lips before pulling away, always. As if it was just the natural thing for Mike’s eyes to do, even though it shouldn't be.
It must be all that kissing. Mike had become obsessed with mouths for some odd reason, and poor Will had to fall victim to it, and the forced closeness of the movie theater just made it worse. That had to be it. But even when knowing that, Mike just wouldn't stop.
During a kissing scene shown on the giant screen, with Will next to him after just having gone for their shared candy bag at the same time, Mike couldn’t help but entertain the idea of Will’s lips pressing against his own again, like that time so many weeks ago on El's bed, and he tried pushing the thought aside as quick as he could.
But this time it was worse.
Mike couldn’t help but think of Will’s lips being a little firmer than El's; more kissable. Mike couldn't help but think of Will's hands in his hair, tugging slightly, and Mike couldn't help but think of his own hands holding the nape of Will’s neck and holding him close, closer than he ever liked El being because Will would never be able to make him feel caged in like that. He thought of the two of them softly laughing together in their shared space, their foreheads leaning against each other while they caught their breaths and having it feel easy and right, and Mike almost stood up and walked out of the theater right then and there.
Kissing makes you fucking crazy, Mike decided. His other, more scary thoughts were shoved deep, deep down, and he didn't look over at Will for the rest of the movie. And then not for the rest of the day, either.