Archive of Our Own

Mike has had his fair share of sleepless nights.

Pulling all nighters, over-studying for finals that he definitely could have aced if he just trusted his mind, but instead he chose Red Bull and coffee over actual food and crammed like a maniac, only for the test to be really fucking easy . 

Watching movies with Lucas until the sun rose the next morning. It had only happened a handful of times - Lucas usually fell asleep sometime during the third Star Wars - but they both had blinked at each other, bleary eyed, before shrugging and passing out on Mike’s floor.

Sleepovers with the Party, hosting a campaign late into the night, watching as one by one, they fell asleep on each other. Spending a particularly long amount of time watching Will sleep, unable to do so himself when he knew Will would be awake before him, doodling on Mike’s arms and face while he slept.

Texting Will when Lonnie and Joyce were fighting. Lonnie was gone, now; but when they were younger, they used to fight so loud it would hurt Will’s ears through the door, and he’d text Mike, terrified, because Jonathan was at a party or at a friend’s house for the night. 

And Mike would talk to him. They would text all night, sometimes, but other times Will would stop replying, typing bubbles blinking at Mike, threatening, menacing, taunting him. He’d spam Will’s phone, sometimes, until his own battery ran out and he was left staring at the ceiling, hoping against hope that Will was okay and that he had just fallen asleep.

(He always had.)

Tonight, though.

Tonight, Mike was staring at his wall, petrified. He was shaking, hands running through his hair every once in a while to make sure he was still real, still here. 

He’d hung out with the Party, tonight, like they usually did on Fridays. They’d gone to the arcade, like usual. They’d ended up at Mike’s, like usual. But then, something miraculous happened.

Will had dropped something, and Mike had gone to pick it up for him. Will had blushed, like he was flustered, when Mike had handed it to him; he’d thanked him, said his quick goodbyes, and then hurried ahead, avoiding Mike’s eyes. Mike had stared after him, bewildered.

“ You need to go for it, man ,” Lucas had said, clapping Mike’s shoulder with a little too much enthusiasm. “ He likes you back, he’d say yes !”

“ Wait ,” Mike had said, looking at Lucas with his confusion written all over his face. “ What do you mean, he likes me back ?”

Lucas had stared at him, then. He looked thoroughly unimpressed. “ Jesus, Mike. You’re like a rock or something, I swear to god.”

Lucas had walked ahead, up the stairs and out the door, shaking his head, leaving Mike standing there in his basement, mind reeling. 

Will liked him back ? What did that mean?

That…that implied some things. The back implied…well, Mike didn’t feel that way, did he?

No, no. He didn’t. He didn’t like Will; he liked girls, obviously. He’d always liked girls, and he would always like girls.

He was just aware that Will would, objectively, make a great boyfriend. 

And that Will would, objectively, be really nice to kiss and look at and dance with in the middle of the night, cheek to cheek while humming an old Sinatra song under his breath. 

All of that was normal, though. People always thought those sorts of things about their best friends, it was all objective .

Hell, he knew that El and Max held hands all the time, which was a really, extremely, extraordinarily straight best friend thing to do. He knew because they were best friends, just like he and Will were best friends.

So why would Lucas say he liked him back ?

Mike had been pondering it for hours , turning over every possible scenario in his mind for the answer. He had texted Lucas, of course. 

Mike

hey, what do you mean, he likes me back????

Mike

?????

Sinclairrr🏀

Mike I don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. 

Mike

what does that even mean?

Mike

lucas?

Mike

lucassssssssss

That was the only reply he’d gotten. 

He’d tried Max, too. 

Mike

hey, do you know anything about who will likes??

Zoomer🤢

omfg.

Zoomer🤢

u r literally the dumbest person on this planet

Mike

obviously not, you’re on this planet

Zoomer🤢

🖕🖕🖕

That hadn’t gotten him anywhere.

He tried El.

Mike

hey, do you know anything about will’s crush?

El🫧

Mike, I pinky promised Will I would not tell a single soul. I cannot break a pinky promise.

Mike

ok :(

Dustin had been just as clueless as him.

Mike

do you know anything about will’s crush

Dustybun🤓

will has a crush???? 

That left one person to text, and Mike stared at his contact name forever before throwing his phone on his bed and groaning, rolling over to face his blank wall.

He didn’t care who Will liked, right? It could be him, he’d be fine with it. 

He absolutely, one hundred percent would not care if Will liked him. It wouldn’t change a thing. Not a single thing!

Except…Mike kinda wanted Will to like him. It was so, totally messed up, he thought; to wish his one openly gay friend would like him? Yeah, that was a recipe for disaster.

Just because Will liked guys didn’t mean that he would like Mike . 

It wasn’t even like Mike would like Will back . It would just be nice if someone as objectively great as Will liked someone as objectively disastrous as Mike.

Mike sighed. He picked up his phone, heart banging against his ribcage.

He typed it into the search bar and stared at it, biting his lower lip. It couldn’t hurt, right? The worse thing that the gay quizzes would tell him that he’s like, two per cent gay or something. 

Who doesn’t like to look at shirtless men? 

Well, Robin, probably. But still.

His Google browser shone back at him, and if he were in a better mood, he’d hear the angelic music playing in the background of the rom-com he was in.

Not that he was the one interested in romance, but still. Will and El had teamed up to make him watch every single one ever made , so he knew how these sort of things went down.

Oh, shit .

He exited out of his tab so quickly he almost dropped his phone on his face. What was he doing? Looking up an am I gay? quiz on regular Google? Puh-lease.

Mike had had a little… experience a while back with some videos that his parents had somehow found on the wifi, even though he’d cleared his browser history. That had been almost as embarrassing as tripping and falling at his fifth grade graduation ceremony.

Almost.

He carefully clicked open a new tab, a little emoji man with glasses and a hat letting him know that he was now, officially, in incognito mode. He smiled to himself, proud, as he searched the words again, pride lasting long enough to add a fucking question mark.

Yeah. He’s that good.

The first quiz that came up had a description that said ‘am I gay, straight, or bisexual?’ Which, what. Mike had no idea what bisexual meant, but it sounded scary, and he was literally just trying to find out if the man crush he had on Will was anything more than a bromance.

It wasn’t, obviously, he knew that. He was just…double checking. So he could walk around with his zero percent gay score and show Lucas to say see? Will may like me, but I don’t like him. I don’t know where you got that impression .

Still. Did Will like him? He wasn’t sure.

It sure would be cool if he did. Quite cool. Neat-o, even.

Mike cringed against his brain. Did he sound this awkward in real life? If he did, how had nobody killed him yet? His friends really weren’t kind enough to put him out of his misery? What kind of friends were they?

Focus .

He scrolled down a little, deliberately avoiding the Wikihow quiz - the memes were too much, all right? He didn’t need the stupid little drawings of people to tell him how to be straight - only to stop and stare at one titled, ‘Are you on top of the rainbow?’

Mike sighed, dropping his phone on his chest in exasperation. He didn’t want to know if he was like, super queer or anything, he just wanted to know if what he felt for Will was…well, it wasn’t anything more than a strictly two-bros-chilling-in-a-life-together relationship. Really.

And, hell, even if it wasn’t a bromance, Mike wouldn’t want to be like, super loud about being gay. 

Bisexual? 

Gay . 

So, all that rainbow stuff? It probably wasn’t the best for him. Even if he did want to be loud about it, realistically, it wouldn’t be safe for him to do so, in Hawkins, Indiana. It had come a long way since they were kids, but it was still nowhere near the way Will had described California, after he came back. 

Mike shrugged to himself. Maybe that rainbow stuff wasn’t for him. He just wanted a nice, simple, incognito quiz that told him how gay he was. No big deal.

He re-opened his phone, ignored the plethora of texts from Dustin and the memes in the Party groupchat, and continued scrolling. Eventually, he landed on one he liked.

‘How gay are you?’

Yeah, perfect.

He clicked on it, answered a few questions easily, but then was left stumped.

Did he feel attraction to people of the same sex? Like, guys ? Men? Boys? 

Mike thought about it. He supposed he did enjoy looking at shirtless men - again, who didn’t? - but he wasn’t sure he would want to, like, have sex with any of them. How did sex between two guys even work ?

He squinted at his ceiling in thought. The more he tried to figure it out, the weirder the scenarios got, so he finally shook his head and answered as candidly as he could. 

Well, if he was being honest, he’d never really thought about having sex with anyone. Obviously, he had thought about sex , itself - he was a teenage boy , for fuck’s sake - but he’d never really imagined doing it with someone. How was he supposed to know who he was attracted to if he had never had any fantasies?

This was all way too confusing. Did Will feel like this when he was figuring out whether he was gay or not? 

Mike ached for him. His fingers hovered over the home button, ready to shoot Will a text along the lines of, hey, how did you know you were gay? or something equally as stupid, when he decided against it and continued scrolling down the quiz.

Obviously, Mike would want to live in New York. The with Will that his mind supplied was completely, definitely platonic and not at all something that he had just decided would be his life from the age of five. 

Will would always be there, regardless of Mike’s plans. No matter where Mike ended up, Will was always in the picture.

Mike wrinkled his nose. Why did thinking about that give him butterflies? Obviously he’d want to spend his life with his best friend. Who wouldn’t?

Had Mike ever felt attraction to the same sex?

What counted as attraction , what the fuck? He just liked to look at guys, sometimes, and he’d never minded when Lucas came home from a basketball game riding high on the jock mentality and slapped his ass. But did that count as attraction? 

He thought about Eddie, his old DM. Yeah, okay, he’d followed Eddie around everywhere, like a fucking puppy or something, but that was just because Will was gone. And he did start dressing and acting like Eddie - accidentally on purpose -  but that was just ‘cause he admired him, right? He didn’t feel attracted to him, did he?

Well, maybe Mike had liked when Eddie had put his arm around him to explain something in that captivating way of his. Maybe Mike had liked it when he got so close, close enough for Mike to see the specks in his eyes. So yeah, maybe that was attraction. 

But that wasn’t anything like what he felt for Will. What he felt for Will was way, way, way different; stronger, almost, in a way Mike couldn’t quite describe. 

He clicked ‘quite often’.

Which U.S. President did he most identify with? This quiz had got to be shitting him.

He clicked one at random.

Favorite root vegetable?

Potato. He couldn’t gorge on Lays like a mad man if he didn’t have potatoes.

Ideal partner for a date?

Mike paused. He’d never been on a date before. He and El - in their blessedly short, bright burning middle school romance - had done nothing but make out in her room as Hopper grumbled in the other room something about keeping the door open three inches.

Oh. That was probably for sex, wasn’t it? 

Mike hadn’t even realized.

Well, anyway. He’d never even been on a date before, how was he supposed to know who he liked to go on dates with?

He smiled as he thought about hanging out with Will at sleepovers, or getting coffee, or even just sitting in comfortable silence. Yeah, maybe he wouldn’t mind if they were the same sex as him, but it didn’t really matter . He just liked hanging out with Will, is all.

Pick a weather phenomenon? Seriously? What did that have to do with him being gay or not?

Mike hated when it rained too much; it reminded him of that dreadful day in middle school when he’d fought with Will about El. That was the same day that Castle Byers was destroyed, thanks to the heavy downpour, so he clicked sunshine, just to spite the rain gods.

Which sex is the sexiest? 

Mike stared at the picture for a long, long time before clicking just to move on. 

Pick an arbitrary box? What the hell? 

Screw your boxes, that’s what I think.

After a few more awkward questions about math and sex - somehow they ended up in the same question? Mike wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, anymore - some confetti appeared on the screen. 

You’re pretty gay! 

The words seemed to echo like the iOS messages Max sent that made the middle finger emoji appear all over his screen for a few seconds. Pretty gay? He was pretty gay? He, Michael Wheeler, was pretty gay ? 

What. The. Fuck. 

Pretty gay? What did that even mean, pretty gay? Wasn’t everybody pretty gay? Was this quiz rigged to make straight people have breakdowns after taking it? How the hell did he get pretty gay?

Mike blinked at the screen, and if doing so got some tears out of his eyes then that was nobody’s business but his. Stupid quiz, stupid phone, stupid Lucas . Why was he even listening to Lucas, anyways? Lucas always said crazy shit, and sometimes that crazy shit got into Mike’s head before he could realize what had happened. This was just another case of that happening, right? Mike wasn’t pretty gay, he wasn’t at all gay. 

He was straight!

Confident in the fact that maybe one of his best friends was tricking him into thinking he was gay, Mike took the quiz again, just to make sure. He answered truthfully, again, because why would he lie to make sure he got super straight? He was going to get it anyways. 

Except. He didn’t. He got the stupid confetti again with the same words on his screen. 

Pretty gay. 

Mike wanted to cry. What did that mean for him, then? It’s not that he didn’t want to be gay, he just didn’t like that something that he had always been confident in for so long was becoming untrue. It was uncomfortable, really, to realize that the things that he had been telling himself for ages were all lies. 

And…did that mean that…it couldn’t possibly mean -

Did he like Will?

Mike sat up suddenly, like a zombie rising from the grave. All of those thoughts that Mike had had about holding Will’s hand, or dancing with Will, or touching Will’s hair, or - oh, god - kissing Will. They had all meant…

This whole time? This whole time, Mike had been in love with Will?

Why didn’t anybody tell him sooner? What the fuck? What kind of friends did he have? How was he supposed to know that he was in love with his best friend?

Mike suddenly got flooded with emotions strong enough to knock him over. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, hair falling around his face like a dark curtain, ready to hide him from the outside world. He couldn’t even begin to figure out what he was feeling - it was a mix of shame, excitement, embarrassment, and…butterflies. Mike was nearly floating with emotions, it felt like his head was filling with helium and was going to pop off of his neck and float away, his body soon to follow so he could walk on the clouds, sun shining gently on his face. 

He got the sudden urge to run somewhere, to leave and sprint a marathon, but his heart was pumping like he’d already done so. 

God, he needed to tell Will. Mike knew how he was - he’d be super awkward around Will now that he had realized how he really felt, and Will would either notice and be really sad about it or he’d notice and tell Mike to fuck off, because he didn’t like Mike like that. 

And he sure as hell didn’t love Mike like that. 

So Mike had to tell him. He glanced at his phone, ready to send Will a really cringey you awake? text at…oh, god, two in the morning. Will was probably…yeah, he was probably asleep, anyways. 

Mike’s knee began bouncing up and down, against his will. There was too much nervous energy in him and he needed to leave and go somewhere else, now. 

He stood up abruptly, brain feeling like it was being crushed in his skull as his vision blacked out for a moment. It came back in a heartbeat, and Mike shook his head, trying to clear it. He looked down at his current state of undress - his oversized, extremely soft Star Wars tee he’d stolen from Nancy (that she had stolen from Robin , of all people) and his underwear. He threw on the nearest pair of pants, some ugly plaid pajama pants that were way too short for his miles of legs, but they would work.

He looked around his room for socks, eyes landing on a single white one. He pulled it on with only minor difficulty. He dove into his drawer for a second one, preferably a white one, but the one on top was green , vomit green, and Mike was just getting fucked over tonight, wasn’t he?

He yanked it on with way too much aggression, and it ended halfway up his shin, double the size of his white sock, and he sighed. He wasn’t going anywhere anybody would see him, anyways. 

He jumped a few times as he put on a shoe in probably the most ungraceful way anybody had ever put a shoe on, and couldn’t find his other one. Hell, he couldn’t even find another shoe in the mess that was his room, and Mike mentally slapped himself because this would all be a lot easier if his room didn’t look like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. He ran out his door and down the stairs as quietly as he could with one shoe on, and then flew down the stairs to the basement, nearly tripping and falling as he did so. 

The front door would trigger the alarm, all right? The basement door didn’t, for some reason, and he intended to make use of that fact. 

Mike stopped and glanced down, then looked up at the heavens, silently asking whoever was out there if they were really going to make him suffer so. 

He heaved a sigh that was probably too loud, considering he was sneaking out of his house at two in the morning, but he felt like it was justified by the way the universe was fucking with him. 

He sighed again as he slipped his foot into the pink and white Stompeez slipper, wincing as the pressure from his foot threw the ears of the dog up like it was surprised. 

Fuck. Him. 

He took a step and winced again when his heel fell out of the back of the slipper, because Holly was still really young and had feet much, much smaller than the sasquatch-esque feet Mike had. 

Oh, the things he did for love. 

He carefully opened the back door, and nearly laughed in triumph when the alarm didn’t immediately begin blaring in his ear. He stepped outside, and oh, holy shit , it was cold . He ran back inside, grabbed the nearest coat, and then sprinted back outside, determined to make it to Will’s house before he died of hypothermia. 

Mike glanced to the side and stopped short. 

Steve gave him a little wave from underneath Nancy’s window. Robin was standing on Steve’s shoulders, her red Converse digging into his shoulders. Mike looked up and…well, honestly, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t Robin Buckley and his sister, goody-two shoes Nancy Wheeler, making out through her bedroom window at two in the morning. 

Out of the two discoveries Mike had made tonight, he wasn’t sure which was more shocking. 

Steve made a sound, and Mike looked back down to the older boy. He put a finger to his lips, shhh , as if Mike wasn’t already sneaking out of their house and would be grounded for life if he got caught. 

Mike made something akin to a duh face, and Steve rolled his eyes. He looked back with an eyebrow raised, and if he wasn’t holding on to Robin’s ankles to make sure she didn’t fall, Mike was pretty sure he would’ve had his hands on his hips in his trademark mom pose. 

Mike shrugged, then made a heart with his hands and placed it over his chest, and hoped Steve understood, because he most definitely wouldn’t be going over there to explain himself. 

Mike ran to his bike and threw his slipper-clad foot over the side before looking back at Steve. He had one hand off of Robin’s ankle and was raising it in a mock salute, and Mike barely had time to smile back before Robin was squawking and swaying in a way that definitely would’ve resulted with her on the ground if Steve didn’t put his hand back up to steady her. 

Mike shrugged to himself as he rode away, wind whipping at his face, fingers going numb. 

Maybe the two older Wheeler siblings weren’t as perfect as they had always seemed. 

The bike ride to Will’s was a decently long one, but it was mostly downhill, so Mike stood up and just let his body take over. He had done the trek hundreds of times, in the early morning and late at night and in the snow and the rain. His body could get there on autopilot with his eyes closed, probably. 

He’d never gone at two in the morning, though. This was new. 

The cold air was refreshing, and it blew his hair out of his face and allowed him to focus more on what the hell he was going to do when he got to Will’s house. 

He hadn’t really had a plan past get out of the house , and he had done that - pretty successfully, he might add - but he had no idea what to do next. What if Will wasn’t even awake? What if Mike confessed to Will, but Will rejected him? Mike wasn’t sure he could take that sort of thing, and he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to ride all the way home with a heavy heart weighing him down. 

He only realized he was in the Byers’ driveway when he nearly launched over the handle bars of his bike after hitting a rock. Mike got off of his bike, careful not to let the dog’s ears on his slippers get caught in the chain, and then dropped his bike unceremoniously in the gravel. He ran over to Will’s window and jumped, a little, both to get warm and to get his excess energy out. 

There was a light on in Will’s room, so maybe…

Mike grabbed a pebble, and threw it at Will’s window. It landed with a clunk sound, one that was really a lot louder than Mike had intended, but there was still no movement in the house, so he figured it was all right. Mike grabbed another one. 

Clunk . 

Nothing. 

Clunk.

Mike turned around as he thought he heard something in the woods behind him, then shrugged to himself and tossed another rock at the window. He leaned down to pick up another one when he heard it hit. 

Smack!

“Ow! Mike, what the fuck?” 

Mike straightened up so fast he felt his back pop in three seperate places. Will was looking out his window, rubbing his forehead and observing Mike with an amused expression painting his features. He was backlit by the soft golden light coming from his room, and his cheeks were flushed from the cold. Mike stared. 

He was gorgeous . 

“Mike?” Will asked again, pulling his hand away from his head to reveal a red mark the size of a pebble - oh, wait. “What are you doing here?”

What was Mike doing here? He totally could have just texted Will, or called Will, or ran away to California and submerged himself in the ocean, never to be seen again -

C’mon, Mike, say something smooth.

Mike hitched a thumb over his shoulder, towards the woods behind him. “Looking for rocks.”

Oh, Jesus Christ. 

Will somehow managed to look more amused. “At two in the morning?”

And you know what? Maybe that was why Mike loved Will. He didn’t question anything about Mike’s terrible lying skills, just the fact that he was supposedly looking for rocks behind Will’s house at two in the morning. 

“No time like the present,” Mike said, and god , was he ever going to learn to shut up? He wished some monster from the imagination of a six year old would come out of the woods and kill him, right here. He leaned down to pick up another rock, and when he stood back up, Will was looking at him oddly, like the glowing light behind Will was behind Mike, instead. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Aren’t you freezing? In your…winter coat?”

Mike looked down at what he was wearing. The bright yellow rain jacket he had pulled on was not helping his attempts to be Romeo. “It’s actually very warm, thank you very much.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Will shot back, good naturedly, and god , Mike was so in love with him. He needed to run over and grab Will by his flushed cheeks and just stare in his eyes as he recited the sonnets he’d learned in English class. “Want to come in?”

“ Please .”

Will moved out of the way and watched as Mike attempted to climb through the window. He hauled himself over, stopping halfway, and he grunted when his stomach landed on the sill. He couldn’t make himself move one way or the other, and he kicked his legs aimlessly outside. 

“Oh my god , Mike, we’re on the ground level .”

Mike shimmied a little and ended up face down on Will’s bedroom floor, feet sticking out of the window. His back was bent weirdly, and he groaned as he rolled over and brought his feet in.

He looked up at Will to find him giggling uncontrollably, covering his mouth with a hand. “Oh, shut up, I don’t think you could do any better,” Mike complained jokingly, rolling around on the floor and wrestling with his arms a little to get them underneath him so he could push himself up. 

“Mike,” Will gasped, and Mike turned to look at him with wide eyes. He could feel his face lighting on fire, and he really, really hoped Will couldn’t see. “Why are you wearing… that ?” Will laughed and made a hand motion to capture all of Mike, and Mike looked down at his clothing choices. 

“I…uh. I just really needed to talk to you, I guess,” he said quietly, shrugging. He looked back up at Will, sheepishly, biting his lip.

Will looked back with something soft in his eyes, but then they got that amusing glint they always did when Mike was being an enormous idiot. “Are those - I mean, is that Holly’s slipper?”

“I think I might be gay,” Mike blurted out, apropos of absolutely fucking nothing , and he put a hand over his mouth like doing so would take the words back from where they were hanging in the air between the two of them, almost palpable on Mike’s chilled skin. 

Will blinked at him, face pale, and Mike had just begun to think he had said something wrong when Will crossed the distance between them and pulled Mike into the tightest hug of his life. Mike squeaked in surprise - which he thought was very dignified, thank you very much - and very carefully extracted his hands from in between the two of them to wrap them around Will. 

They stood there, for who knows how long, and Mike burrowed his face into Will’s neck, surprised when the other boy only let out a small huff of laughter and didn’t squirm away. 

Mike hadn’t realized how much he had needed this. 

All of his confusion, all of the bad feelings that had been almost overwhelming as he had ridden over to the Byers’ were fading away slowly, magically disappearing from his body and making him feel ten times lighter. He hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing on him until the weight was gone. 

He hugged Will tighter, and Will returned it, before backing away a little bit. His cheeks were slightly flushed, and he blinked at Mike for a few seconds before putting a hand on his shoulder. His elbow was extended, almost like he was trying to keep as much space between them as possible, and Mike definitely didn’t notice. “Mike, you know I’ll accept you no matter what,” Will said softly, and Mike nearly wanted to cry tears of joy at hearing those words, even though he had said the same thing to Will just a couple of months ago. “Is that why you rushed over here so quickly? To tell me?”

Mike nodded, not trusting his vocal chords to say something that began with I and ended with love you . 

Will smiled at him, and Mike basked in the glow. “Why couldn’t you just text me? It’s, like, three in the morning, what if you got…kidnapped or something, I don’t know,” Will rambled, sounding suspiciously like Mike himself, Mike recognized. “I mean, did anybody know you left?”

Mike shrugged. “Steve was there.”

Will made some sort of amused face that consisted of him scrunching up his nose, and Mike nearly fainted. Instead, he swayed in his shoes, and Will’s grip on his shoulder tightened infinitesimally. “Steve?”

“He had Robin on his shoulders. She and Nancy were making out through Nancy’s bedroom window,” Mike explained, as if that made any more sense as to why Steve Harrington was at the Wheeler’s house in the early hours of a Saturday morning. 

Will stared at Mike, mouth agape, and Mike took the opportunity to shed his rain coat. He tossed it over the back of Will’s chair when suddenly a thought struck him, probably his first one in a couple of hours. “Wait, what are you doing up? It’s three in the morning, Will, you need sleep.”

A pink blushed climbed Will’s cheeks and Mike wanted to run over and kiss him senseless. “I was just…working on a piece,” he explained with a shrug, toeing his carpet with his sock.

“Oh. Cool,” Mike said lamely, and he internally winced. Now that he knew he was not straight, was he going to be so cringey around boys all the time?

No , Mike thought, he didn’t think he would be. He was pretty sure the only boy - or person, really - that could make him feel this way would be Will. 

“Cool,” Will agreed, carefully skirting around Mike to get to his bed. He quickly threw an edge of his blanket over a piece of paper, and Mike watched curiously as he turned around, obviously trying to block the scene with his body. Then his face turned pensive, and he looked at Mike nervously. “Actually…”

“What?” Mike asked, walking over to join Will near the bed, and Will looked up at him through his lashes shyly, and Mike wanted to press his lips gently to each individual lash, every freckle and birth mark on Will’s face. He wanted to cup Will’s face with his hands and just stare at him, map every part of him in his mind so he would never forget, and then do it all again. He wanted to grab Will’s hands and tug him close, pressing a kiss to his nose and then leading him around a little circle, dancing so close that Will would be able to feel Mike’s heartbeat interspersed with his own, would be able to see clearly in Mike’s eyes just exactly what he does to him -

“Do you want to see what I was working on?” Will asked quietly, and Mike blinked at him. He clenched his hands into fists as he realized he wasn’t really holding Will, and the loss of nothing felt monumental. “You don’t have to, obviously, but -“

“Yeah,” Mike interrupted, before Will could go and change his mind. Will smiled at him, then, and Mike realized how glad he was that Lucas had sent him spiraling into a stupid sexuality crisis in the first place.

“Okay, well -“ Will started, reaching under the blanket to grab the paper. He looked down at it, then back up at Mike, and Mike wanted more than anything to tear it out of Will’s fingers and jump out the window to run home with the art, his art, because it would always be terrific to Mike, and the suspense was killing him.

But his score against Will’s window was currently one for the window and zero for him, so. Maybe that plan wouldn’t work out so well.

So, instead, Mike stood patiently, just like a normal, regular human being, and he waited for Will to finish his sentence. “Don’t laugh, or get mad, okay?”

“Why would I get mad ?” The idea of getting mad at Will for making art was so astonishing that Mike took a small step back.

“Well, I don’t know, I don’t know how you’ll react to something like this, I -“

“Will,” Mike started, and then Will was thrusting the paper into his hands. 

It was a rough sketch, but it looked a lot like the person Mike saw when he looked in the mirror. Except, way, way better.

“This is…” Mike started, unable to finish. He looked both nothing and everything like this, and it was odd, seeing himself from the point of view of someone else. Will made him look good , and that was really weir -

“I’m sorry if it’s creepy,” Will said quietly, and Mike looked up at him. “I just really felt the need to draw you, you know?”

“I’m not an artist, Will, I don’t -“ 

“Oh my god , Mike,” Will laughed, and Mike grinned at the sound. “You’re such a dumbass.”

“Yeah, but I’m your dumbass,” Mike said teasingly, but Will looked down, something akin to sadness crossing his features. Which. What? “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Will raised his eyes. “Oh, nothing. You’re just a dumbass.” He flopped down onto his bed, hair falling in a halo around his head, and Mike was barely restraining himself from jumping on top of Will and kissing him into the mattress. Will squinted up at him, curious. “I don’t think you ever answered why you came over to come out to me in person.”

Mike shrugged and sat down next to Will, thighs barely touching. 

The electricity that coursed through Mike’s veins when they touched couldn’t be something only he felt, could it?

“I just…Lucas pointed something out earlier tonight - er, last night, I guess, and I had a full on gay crisis in my room thanks to a Buzzfeed quiz, and -“

Mike heard a sound coming from Will’s general direction and he glanced back to find Will biting his finger. “What are you doing ?”

Will let go of his finger and put on a serious face, frowning ever so slightly. “I’m trying not to laugh at the fact that you had a crisis because of Lucas and an online quiz,” he replied, deepening his voice and definitely clueless about what it did to Mike’s insides. 

Mike shook his head. “It was stressful , you have no idea -“

“Oh, I think I do -“

“ Anyways ,” Mike said, kinda loudly, and Will shushed him gently before motioning for him to continue. “Anyways, I was just thinking about you, and calling you didn’t seem like enough, so…” Mike shrugged and put his hands down on the bed, leaning into them a little bit.

“You were -“ Will’s voice was so quiet that Mike had to lean towards him to hear. “You were thinking about me?”

His voice raised a pitch at the end, like he was nervous. 

Mike shrugged again. “Yeah, I mean, you’re kinda the reaso -“

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit .

Will looked taken aback, flabbergasted , even, and Mike would bet his entire life savings that if they were standing up, he would have taken a shocked step backwards.

“I’m the -“

“I - I mean…”

“ Mike ,” Will whispered, effectively shutting him up. He sat up next to Mike, shoulders brushing, pinkies nearly getting caught on each other. Will was way too close to expect Mike to be thinking about anything except kissing him, about grabbing his hand and bringing him closer and just pressing their lips together so he could show that Will means…well, everything to Mike. 

“I’m…sorry. I’ve just been…you know, it’s been a really confusing couple of hours, and -”

Will made some sort of sound, and Mike shut up. Again . “Was I the reason that you were…confused?”

Oh, my god. 

His voice was so soft that Mike could almost reach out, shape it and fluff it with his hands, and use it as a pillow. Mike hadn’t ever heard Will sound so… scared , but so full of hope at the same time. 

It was kinda how Mike had been feeling, up to this point. Terrified of the fall, but hoping against hope that Will would be there to catch him. 

“Yeah,” Mike said, quietly, and it hung between them. 

Will turned away, nodding, facing forward stiffly like he was scared, or thinking, or even disgusted -

“You were that for me, too,” Will whispered, and Mike could feel his eyes widen and nearly pop out of his head. “A while ago, I mean.”

Mike’s world felt like it was crashing down. Will had liked him, and now he didn’t? That was a special kind of torture that the universe had concoted, and Mike wanted more than anything to run and jump out the window and have it slide down with him stuck in it. 

He faced forward, now, nodding slowly and somberly, trying not to let Will see how sad he was. “Yeah, well, that’s okay, I mean -”

Will turned to him. “I’m not confused anymore.”

And then he was kissing him. 

Will leaned forward and grabbed Mike’s face with so much force that Mike jumped, a little, and then immediately scolded himself for doing so, and then scolded himself for scolding himself, and then Will was sighing against his lips and Mike’s mind pretty much stopped working. 

He wanted to reach out and touch Will, but he was still holding the sketch that Will had made, and he didn’t want to mess it up, but Will was kissing him , so he didn’t want to break the kiss to move the sketch. So Mike just kissed him back, softly, and Mike could almost feel all of the emotion that was flowing from Will’s lips to his. 

Will was deepening the kiss, just a little, and yeah , okay, Mike had to reach out and touch him now. He carefully changed positions, moving to face Will, and he set the sketch on Will’s bed ever so gently. 

Will’s hands were in his hair, now, and Mike was enjoying this far too much. He reached out, hands shaking, and grabbed the front of Will’s shirt, scrunching it in his hands and pulling him forward, and Will went with him, because Will always followed Mike, always trusted him, and oh , that made so much more sense now. 

“I can feel you thinking,” Will murmured against his lips. “Stop it before you hurt yourself.”

Mike laughed against Will’s lips, and Will smiled against his, and yeah, maybe Mike wasn’t confused anymore, either. 

***

Mike biked home as the sun was rising. 

It had been hard to pull himself away from Will, because Will was home, more home than Mike’s empty house would ever be. But, he would be seeing Will later that day, anyways, and Mike had nearly fallen asleep on Will’s bed when Will had shook him awake, saying something about the wrath of Karen Wheeler . Whatever that meant.

Will had promised him more kisses when he saw him later today, but only if he got some sleep first, so Mike had reluctantly left out the window and biked home with a new fervor.

He was proud of himself, too. Not only did he finally manage to get his head out of his ass and talk to Will, but he also tied the window. Window one, Mike Wheeler one. 

The day was full of miracles. 

When he rode up in front of his house, Mike was surprised to see Steve sitting on his walkway. He dumped his bike in the grass and walked over. “What are you still doing here?”

Steve looked up at him, surprised. He shrugged, pointing half heartedly at the window he had been standing under earlier that morning. “Robin finally just climbed through the window. I’m her ride home, though.”

“Oh.” Mike was trying valiantly to keep the image of what Nancy and Robin were doing out of his mind. 

“You look happy,” Steve pointed out grumpily, motioning to his own hair. Mike reached a hand up and yep , of course, his hair was a complete mess from wandering hands and riding his bike in the dark. 

“It’s uh…a long story,” Mike said, carefully backing away to avoid getting questioned by Steve Harrington, the bane of his existence. “Anyways, I’m gonna go to bed -”

“Was it Byers?” 

Mike stopped in his tracks. He watched Steve blankly, and Steve squinted at him. “Little Byers, I mean. Jonathan is not for you.”

What the everloving fuck?

“How did you know?” Mike asked quietly, and Steve smiled a genuine smile at him for the first time… ever , probably. 

“It was only a matter of time until you two got your shit together. I think Henderson and Sinclair have a running bet on it,” Steve said, blissfully unaware of the alarms blaring inside Mike’s head. “I’m glad it happened, Wheeler. You guys make each other really happy.”

“Thanks,” Mike squeaked, and Steve frowned at him. “What?”

Steve shook his head a little and looked up at the sky, like he was asking for divine intervention. “Please, for the love of God, use protection. I know that it can be -”

“Okay! I’m gonna stop you there!” Mike all but yelled, and Steve looked nearly as uncomfortable as Mike felt. Mike began to back away again, and this time, Steve didn’t stop him. “Enjoy…my front yard.”

Mike was in the basement door before Steve could say anything more. He shut the door, kicked off Holly’s slipper, threw off his raincoat, and crept upstairs as quietly as he could. He plugged his ears as he passed Nancy’s door, because he’d already been traumatized enough by Steve to last him the entire weekend. 

He collapsed on his bed and stared at the ceiling as light began to shine through his window. 

Mike reached over to grab his phone, which he had somehow left on his nightstand in his hurry, and checked his messages. Most of them were from last night, when he had been making out with Will, and apparently, word had gotten around.  

El🫧

Mike, you know I can hear you, right?

Sinclairrr🏀

Finally, man. Jesus Christ I was about to lock you two in a closet together. 

Zoomer🤢

ur still the dumbest person alive

Dustybun🤓

ok, i did some investigating, and i think will might like this guy from our class

Well, word had gotten around to everyone except Dustin, evidently.

Mike decided to ignore those for now. He scrolled through his notifications when a new one popped up. 

Will the Wise🙃

[screenshot attached]

Mike opened it, and laughed out loud. It was the same screen he had stared at hours ago, confetti covering some of the words. 

Will the Wise🙃

guess we’re both pretty gay :)

Mike smiled and rolled over, typing out a reply. 

Mike

guess we are :)

Will the Wise🙃

we still on for later?

Will the Wise🙃

i told lucas we were

Mike

yeah, of course! i cant wait to see you

Will the Wise🙃

i cant wait to see you, too :)

Will the Wise🙃

now go to sleep <3

Mike couldn’t help his grin. After some grumbling - he couldn’t just let Will win like that, okay? - he sent a heart back and then threw his phone back onto his nightstand. He rolled over onto his side, stared at the wall for a little bit, and then fell asleep with a smile on his face. 

Yeah. Mike really wasn’t confused, anymore.