Archive of Our Own

It’s the last Sunday before Winter Break, and Will Byers is having a crisis.

The crisis in question is his history paper, due in about twelve hours. The final deciding factor of his GPA before transcripts are sent out to all the colleges he applied for, and, like a total idiot, he’s got one page done.

One page.

He glances over the essay requirements he’d scrawled down in his notebook from class: four pages, American Reconstruction, pick a historical figure of your choice and their impact on–

The rest of the sentence trails off into absolutely nothing, blue ink of his pen bleeding off onto the tragically blank white of his notebook paper. It had been the period before lunch, halfway through senior year of high school, and he was honestly impressed he’d managed to pay attention long enough to realize there had been an assignment doled out at all.

Will groans, letting his head fall into his hands. It’s no use. It’s two p.m, this essay is due at eleven the next day, and he has one page done.

One page.

“I’m never taking a history class again,” he says aloud to his empty room, even though that’s one-hundred-percent totally not true. He knows that nine months from now, he’ll probably be sitting in the third row of whatever freshman art history class they’re offering in whichever college he ends up at, because they’ve got degree requirements and breadth electives and all that nonsense that’s just totally out to personally slight him. He hasn’t even chosen a historical figure yet, so he’s not really sure what it is he’s managed to ramble on about for a full page of lined paper, but it’s certainly not good. Definitely not A material, probably not B material, and maybe– maybe– C material. If he’s lucky.

And Will knows he’s not Dustin Henderson, but he’s not a C average student either, okay? He’s better than that. He might not be acing every Calculus exam and Biology II might have been the very bane of his existence– maybe almost more than the Mind Flayer had been– but he does alright.

Except it’s two p.m, and he’s still only got the one measly page of lined paper filled out, and he’s definitely going to have to rewrite it because most of it isn’t even legible– actually, he has no recollection of even writing this, and coming to think of it, he kind of just found it scattered amongst his notebooks– so maybe he’s gotta start over completely.

Okay, scratch that. Zero pages.

Will sighs, then glances down at his watch. 2:37 p.m.

And that’s how he finds himself here, in the kitchen, phone in hand.

“Mike,” he says, as soon as he hears the call get picked up. “Tell me everything you know about the American Reconstruction.”

There’s a pause on the other end, and for a second, Will wonders if one of Mike’s parents picked up, and then he wonders how to explain to them why he’s interrogating their son about United States history, and then he figures they probably don’t care either way.

Luckily for him, though, it’s not Ted or Karen Wheeler after all.

“Um,” comes Mike’s voice, a little confused. “That was, like, the Civil War, right?”

“Right,” Will confirms, even though he did have to fact check this for himself not even five minutes ago. “What else?”

“Um,” Mike says again, and then he makes a contemplative sound, like he’s really thinking about it. Which is maybe more endearing than it should be, that Mike is playing along with Will’s slow spiral into Abraham-Lincoln-related neurosis without so much as batting an eye, but whatever. He’s got more important things to focus on at the moment. Namely, Abraham Lincoln. “Wasn’t that, uh. The Emancipation Proclamation, I think.”

Will props his notepad up on one knee and starts writing. The Emancipation Proc–

“What’s this for,” Mike is asking through a laugh. “Why are you asking me?”

“History paper,” Will says, dotting his i’s and crossing his t’s. “Due tomorrow.”

Mike makes an ah sound, which comes through a bit staticky. “Suddenly super glad I decided to take Civics,” he says, definitely sounding the part. “We get, like, one homework assignment a week.”

“I’ll kill you,” Will decides, and Mike laughs again. The audacity. “I’ll kill you right now.”

“If you kill me, then who will you interrogate about post-Civil-War America?”

“Anyone else. Literally anyone else.”

“But you didn’t call anyone else,” Mike says, sounding maybe a little too gleeful for his own good. “You called–”

“Which was a mistake, I see that now.” Will rolls his eyes. “I should’ve just gone to the library, I don’t know why I thought you would, like, have a secret stash of encyclopedias hidden under your bed or something.”

“Didn’t your mom sell encyclopedias when you were away?” Mike asks, which is a good point, actually, maybe Will should check under her bed. Or, you know, in the garage, or in storage or something. “Why don’t you go to the library?”

“Um,” Will says, glancing around the house. “I don’t have a ride,” he admits, “and everyone’s out and the car is gone and it’s way too cold to bike, and it’s snowing, so–”

“Say no more,” Mike says immediately. There’s a soft rustling on his end of the line, and then his voice sounds a bit far away, like he’s stepped away from the phone to talk. “Give me, like, forty minutes, okay?”

“I–” Will doesn’t know what Mike has planned, but he’s equal parts curious and extremely apprehensive about it. “Why?”

“I’m coming over,” Mike says easily. “You’re clearly in distress.”

“I’m not in distress,” Will hisses, sounding– even to his own ears– at least mildly distressed. He pictures Mike raising his eyebrows at him, even over the phone.

“I’m coming over,” Mike repeats, “give me forty minutes.”

“I’m starting to think this is just a ploy so you can hang out with me,” Will grumbles. “And because I told you there’s no one home.”

“Never,” Mike says, but Will can hear the grin in his voice. “I just want to help!”

Will isn’t buying it for a second. What he is, however, is stranded at home with zero knowledge about the American Reconstruction and he’s getting a little desperate. “Fine. I don’t believe you, but fine.”

Mike grins even harder, probably. “Forty minutes,” he says again, and the line clicks quiet.

In hindsight, Will is a bit of an idiot.

And this is kind of out of the blue, because Will usually considers himself a pretty smart person. He’d like to think so, anyway. Not, like, Dustin Henderson smart, by any means– in that he’s not currently geared towards a Nobel Prize in three categories or on track to curing cancer by age twenty or securing a full ride to MIT anytime soon. But generally, Will likes to think of himself as a pretty level-headed guy, who possesses a decent amount of common sense. At least an average amount. Like, if you pulled him off the street, he’d be– in the common sense department– at least on par for average.

So this– today– was a very uncharacteristic lapse in his judgment.

“Hi,” Mike had said, when Will opened the door almost exactly forty minutes after he’d hung up the phone, frigid December air spilling immediately over into the house. “How’s the essay coming along?”

“It isn’t,” Will had replied, shivering.

And then Mike had grinned, kissed him on the forehead, shaken a few snowflakes off the hood of his coat, taken a not-so-subtle look around the house and said, “So, no one’s home, huh?”

So now they’re here, in Will’s room, and he’s starting to think that maybe dating Mike Wheeler is the single worst possible thing he could’ve done to his GPA, high school transcript, and any possibility of getting into a good college come spring.

“Mike,” Will groans, as Mike tosses his backpack onto the floor with an unexpectedly loud thud, then falls backwards onto Will’s bed, wiggling his eyebrows. “I’m seriously starting to think you had some kind of agenda.”

“Who, me?” And see, Mike is trying for some kind of innocent, blasé voice, except Mike Wheeler has never successfully pulled off being either innocent or blasé in his life. “What agenda could I possibly have?”

“Maybe something to do with why it took you almost exactly forty minutes to drive to my house, when we both know you can make the drive in, like, seven. Maybe eight minutes.” Will eyes the pile of papers on his desk anxiously as he slides into his chair. Maybe it’s not too late to kick Mike out. Four pages, his brain chants. And look, four pages isn’t a lot, objectively, but it’s a lot for him, okay?

“It took me forty minutes,” Mike says, rolling his eyes and reaching over to grab the backpack from the floor with a soft grunt, “because I stopped by the library on the way here.”

Will stares. “You have a library card?”

“I– yes I have a library card,” Mike says, with an air of mild offense. “I got one two months ago, and I know I told you because I called Nancy to tell her and she said she was proud of me, which is, like, Nancy-speak for I love you so much and I would die for you–”

There’s a good chance Mike did actually tell him about the library card, but, to be fair, half the shit he says just goes in one ear and totally out the other. “Oh,” he says instead, watching Mike wrestle a rather impressive pile of books out from his bag. “What are all these, then?”

Mike holds up a laminated hardcover with The American Civil War printed onto the front. “I told you I stopped by the library on the way here.”

“You– are those for me?”

“Yes they’re for you.” Mike starts laughing. “What, you think I just picked these up for some light reading?”

“I don’t know,” Will tries, even as a smile breaks across his face. “Maybe you did! Who am I to say?”

Mike ignores him. “I also got these.” He tugs another two books out of his bag, roughly the size and probably also the approximate weight of his head. “In case you didn’t find what you needed in there.”

“Oh.” Then, “Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite person?”

”Once or twice,” Mike preens, “but it wouldn’t hurt to hear it again.” 

“You’re my favorite person,” Will says decidedly, and then crosses the room to his bed and tosses Mike’s bag off the bed, where it lands on the floor with an alarmingly loud noise. Will glances over in alarm. “What was–”

“More books,” Mike says, then pulls Will down from where he’s half-hovering over the bed, until he catches himself on the mattress with a small noise of surprise, both hands on either side of Mike’s hips. “I believe a thank you kiss was in order?”

“I didn’t say anything about a thank you kiss,” Will starts, but because he’s Will and Mike is Mike– that is to say, weirdly captivating and somehow irresistible to Will’s brain, especially when he’s still all bundled up in his giant winter coat and his awful, ridiculous hat and he lugged a backpack full of books here, all the way from the library, just for Will’s stupid essay – Will leans in anyway.

Mike smiles against his mouth almost immediately, even though Will has yet to kiss him properly, anything more than just a light brush of their lips against each other. His hands come up to clutch lightly at Will’s waist as he teeters slightly, steadying, the position a bit fumbling and precarious where he’s sort-of hovering, one knee propped up on the bed. “Hey.”

It comes out quiet, barely audible even in the silence of the room, and it’s so ridiculous that Will breaks the kiss to laugh. “Hey? Really?”

“Hi,” Mike says instead, and then he tugs Will in the rest of the way, so that he collides with Mike’s chest with a soft oof, and then they both end up horizontal, limbs tangled together. “Hello. What’s up?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Will decides. Mike’s giant winter coat is making soft rustling noises as he moves. Will attempts to simultaneously clamber off of him and maybe– just a little– lean in a bit further. “I knew you had some sort of ulterior motive– I’ll be over in forty minutes my ass– at least take your jacket off before you start putting the moves on me?”

“Done,” Mike says immediately, and then he’s unzipping his– frankly ridiculously large– jacket and tossing it to the side of the room. “Thank you kiss now?”

Will purses his lips. “The hat has to go too.”

Mike tugs off the hat. “You drive a hard bargain, Byers. Thank you kiss now?”

“And the–” 

The word scarf gets lost to the warm air of Will’s bedroom as Mike slips his hands into Will’s hair, palms cold against his ears and the back of his neck. Will considers, for one fleeting second as Mike lets out a small, pleased noise against his mouth, allowing himself to fail his history class, letting his GPA plummet, and resigning himself to a future at Hawkins Community College, twenty minutes away.

“Mike,” he tries, brain urging him to get up! Get up and write your essay! His body, apparently, has different plans, though, because somehow his hands are on Mike’s cheeks and they’re a little more horizontal than when they started, and any minute knowledge Will might have retained about Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War has just totally disappeared from his brain altogether.

In the end, it’s Mike that breaks the kiss. “Okay,” he says, pulling back and grinning, pleased. He looks even more flushed than when he’d come in from the cold and the snow. He pushes at Will’s shoulder with one hand, urging him to move. “Go write, I don’t want to distract you.”

Will rolls his eyes, crawling backwards until his feet hit solid ground again. He picks a blue thread off of his t-shirt– a stray remnant of Mike’s stupid, stupid scarf. “Uh huh.”

“Seriously!” Mike lies back on Will’s bed, limbs outstretched so that Will can see the Star Wars print on his shirt, old and faded from use. He catches Will’s eye, and then frowns, starting forward. “I can go, though, if you’re seriously busy– I really did just want to drop those off for you–”

Will shakes his head. “No! No, it’s okay, I want you here. Keep me company?”

Mike relaxes, then grabs one of the books for himself. “You like me,” he teases, as Will settles down into his desk chair, picking up his pen again with no small amount of trepidation. “You like having me around.”

“Yes, that’s generally a big part of why you date someone,” Will announces, and then Mike’s stupid blue scarf goes fluttering to the ground, and he falls blessedly, blessedly quiet. 

And then it’s just Will, his pile of library books, and the sheets of paper staring up at him from his desk, blank and unmoving, like they’re mocking him.

He sighs. It’s going to be a long evening.

And here’s the thing, right, is that even when Will is neck-deep in the throes of his current least favorite subject ever– besides Biology II, maybe– it’s still somewhat more bearable with Mike around.

It’s kind of gross and ridiculous and sappy of him, but Will likes to think he’s a pretty smart guy, and that means, without a doubt, this is something he can’t even pretend to deny. Something about Mike’s presence is soothing, steadying, pleasant even in near-silence.

Mike himself is anything but quiet, glancing up every few minutes from the book he swiped from Will’s shelf with some kind of totally unrelated comment– “How many people in the Party do you think I could take in an arm wrestling contest?” To which the dead-honest answer would be zero, but Will is trying to not be the world’s shittiest boyfriend, so he just pretends to be too busy reading about the Proclamation of Amnesty to hear anything.

And it kind of sucks, too, that this is how they have to spend this Sunday evening. Maybe it’s Will’s fault, for totally forgetting about this stupid assignment until the day before, because it’s rare for them to have time alone like this– really alone, with no one in the house and none of their friends around, either. Meaning they don’t have to hold hands under the lunch table and hope no one notices, even though they probably have, by now, with the way Will’s brain has this tendency to turn into total mush whenever Mike touches him. They could, hypothetically, be cuddling on the bed with the door wide open, no mom or police-chief-stepdad to walk in on them. Or even laying together on the couch or something, which probably shouldn’t feel this daring and romantic and sappy to think about, but for some reason, totally does.

“What are you smiling about?” comes Mike’s voice from the bed, startling Will out of his light reverie. “Is your essay really that interesting?”

“No,” Will snorts, glancing down to where he finally just crossed over into page #3. Two hours of painstaking, grueling work, and all he has to show for it are two sheets of lined paper and a whole lot of blue ink smudges on the side of his palm. “Not even a little.”

The bed creaks softly as Mike clambers off of it, and then he’s coming up behind Will, chin resting gently on the curve of Will’s shoulder. “Then what?”  

Will’s not sure how to say that he started smiling because he was thinking of taking a nap with Mike Wheeler in the middle of his living room without getting made fun of for the next forever, so he just shakes his head and says, “Nothing.”

“Come on, I know it’s something,” Mike presses, tucking his face into Will’s neck. “You haven’t smiled for the last hour and now you’re sitting here just giggling to yourself.”

“I wasn’t giggling,” Will protests, “I was just smiling like a normal person,” and Mike laughs quietly, 

“Okay, what were you smiling like a normal person about?”

Will doesn’t grace him with a response. “Can you finish this for me?” he asks instead, resting a hand on Mike’s wrist where his arms are still wrapped around him. “Please?”

“I think my writing skills are pretty much limited to DM-ing, but I’ll try.” Mike clears his throat. “We the people of the United States–”

“That’s the Constitution, idiot,” Will laughs, and Mike lifts his head up the rest of the way to frown. “That was, like, a hundred years before this.”

“Oh. Maybe it’s best if I stay far, far away from your paper, then,” Mike says, and then he’s straightening, tugging at Will’s forearm. “Think it’s time for a study break?”

And there’s not much Will can say to protest that, so.

The book Mike had stolen off of Will’s shelf was, apparently, Animal Farm. “You were reading this?” he asks, picking it up and glancing at the back cover as he sprawls across the bed. Mike climbs back on next to him, reaching across him for the book and plucking it out of his hands. “It doesn’t really seem like your style.”

“It would actually be pretty interesting if I could concentrate for more than a paragraph at a time,” Mike admits, and then he sets the book down on the bedside table, shoves his face back into Will’s neck and says, muffled, “I missed you this week.”

“You saw me every day this week, Mike,” Will laughs, even as he curls instinctively towards the shape of Mike’s body next to his on the bed, neck craning against the pillow. This is much, much nicer than history papers, and plastic-wrapped library books, and the disaster of academia that could maybe, in another universe, pass as Will Byers’ history notes. “We have three classes and lunch together.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike says, tangling their feet together, his wool socks scratchy against Will’s bare ankle where his jeans have ridden up. He sighs, and Will shivers at the warm air ghosting across his collarbone. “I just don’t think I’ve gotten time alone with you this whole week until now.”

Will makes a sympathetic noise into the side of Mike’s head. “I know,” he echoes, and presses a kiss there for good measure. Like an apology for not being able to do the sorts of things he knows Mike wants to– the sorts of things he wants to do too: beg out of group hangouts to take Mike out on a date, just the two of them, somewhere nice but not too nice because they definitely don’t have the kind of money for that. But somewhere that’s, like, a step up from the sandwich place where everyone gets their morning-after fix. Bring him flowers, maybe, or throw an arm around his shoulders even when there are people around, like Lucas and Max do for each other, without it being a whole big deal.

The wrong kind of big deal, that is. Because if Will had his way, he’d kick up the world’s greatest fuss over this, the fact that he’s dating Mike Wheeler– he’s dating Mike Wheeler! If Will had his way, he’d already be halfway to the roof, the freezing cold, snow, and ice be damned, just to make an even bigger deal over it and scream I’m dating Mike Wheeler! for all of Hawkins to hear.

Unfortunately, because this is Hawkins, Will’s plans for a grand romantic declaration of love have been pretty much spoiled for the foreseeable future.

“I finished the last of my college applications this week,” he says instead, by maybe a slight means of distraction. Hoping, somehow, that this will make up for that voice Mike said it in: disappointed, but trying not to be, that he hadn’t gotten to see Will outside of school this week, or Hellfire, or hanging out with the Party. Like dating Will came at a cost, and this was just something he had to resign himself to, and he was still getting used to it.

It must work, because Mike lifts his head off from where it’s been shoved out of sight into Will’s chest and says, excitement creeping through anyway, “Really?”

Will nods, smiling. “Yeah, so sorry if I was– I know I was kind of busy this week, but I just finished Boston, Chicago, and, uh, NYU, so–”

“I’m sending mine in tomorrow,” Mike interrupts, and he’s grinning so big and bright that Will is leaning in before he can really even think about it, cupping a hand around Mike’s neck and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him.

“Will,” Mike laughs, caught halfway between trying to talk and kiss him back. After a second of mild surprise, he twists fully onto his side, pulling their bodies flush, and then relaxes, letting Will slide a hand into his hair. Mike’s other hand is resting on his chest, fingers curled lightly into the cotton of his shirt, brushing against the buttons of his flannel. This is much, much nicer than history homework, Will thinks, as Mike sighs against his lips, and he leans in once, quick and insistent, before pulling away. This beats the Civil War any day.

“That was nice,” Mike says, sounding a bit out of breath, eyes lingering on Will’s mouth. “What– um. What was that for?”

Will traces a finger down Mike’s arm. “Um. Just– when we’re in college,” he starts, and Mike’s eyes snap up to his own. “I’ll hang out with you every day. Just you. And we can– we can do stuff that isn’t just hang out in one of our rooms all day and hold hands under the lunch table–” 

Mike is nodding before Will even finishes his sentence. “Yes. Yeah, that’s good. Plus, I think Max might have caught on to the holding hands thing, because you totally turn super red every time we do it.”

“I do not!” Will sputters, and Mike laughs again.

“You’re literally turning red right now!”

“Fine,” Will says, “I’ll go to college on the other side of the country and you can just–”

“Hey, no,” Mike says softly, leaning in until their noses bump against each other. “I’m sorry. You’re not red at all. Your face? Colorless. You could be a vampire.”

“I hate you,” Will decides, which is maybe the most obvious lie he’s ever told in his life. Besides, he is fighting back a blush with everything he’s got– not so much about the holding-hands-under-the-table thing, but more about college, and Mike, and college with Mike.

It’s something he thinks about more often than he wants to admit, which maybe isn’t great for keeping his hopes down and expectations on the realistic side, but he can’t help it. It’s too easy to slip into that sort of daydream: of them in college together, somewhere that’s anywhere that’s not here, of him being able to hold Mike’s hand in public, take him out for dinner on a whim, brag about dating Mike Wheeler like he wants to, this undeniable yearning in his chest that won’t be fulfilled until everyone in the nearby vicinity knows he’s dating Mike Wheeler. 

Maybe that’s weird and codependent of him, but whatever. Who cares? It’s all Will can think about on nights like this, where they haven’t been able to do romantic stuff together, just the two of them, other than study dates like the one they’re having now. And because Will isn’t Dustin Henderson, and he actually has to try in his classes, said study dates usually involve a little too much studying and not enough dates for his liking.

“No you don’t,” Mike says easily, but before Will can protest, he hears the telltale sound of the key turning in the front door, and voices spilling into the hall.

“Shit,” Will says, twisting upright and pushing off the bed. Mild panic is already shooting through him, even though the door is closed and they’re not even in much of a compromising position. It’s a reflex at this point– he hears someone coming, he panics. “Hold on, wait here.”

Mike is already straightening up, and the startled look on his face makes it look like they were doing something a lot less innocent than literally just lying there, gazing stupidly into each other’s eyes or whatever. He makes a strange, stilted movement towards the window, like his instinct was to immediately clamber through it and run away.

Will stops in his tracks, raising an eyebrow. “Were you about to–”

“No,” Mike huffs immediately, straightening out the wrinkles in his stupid (not at all stupid) Star Wars shirt.

“Okay,” Will says slowly, one hand on the doorknob, “because your car is outside, so they totally know you’re here. There’s no point in running away.”

“I wasn’t running away,” Mike insists, and then sits up, posture unnaturally straight. “You can open the door now.”

Will’s expecting his mom, or maybe Hopper, since it’s nearing about five and at least one of their shifts is ending soon, even if he can’t remember which. Instead, El’s voice floats down the hall. “Will?”

Will frowns, poking his head through the doorway. “El? What are– who else is here?”

As if on cue, Dustin, Lucas, and Max all pop up at the other end of the hall, clad in jackets of varying sizes, shapes, and colors. “Mike!” Dustin calls, the pom pom on his head shaking slightly as he looks around, “I know you’re here too, man, we saw your car outside!”

Will turns, shooting Mike a look like see? Mike pulls a face back at him but relaxes, no longer sitting upright like he’d been hit with a sudden electric shock. “Yeah,” he shouts back, “we’re in here!”

“Oh,” El says a moment later, peering through into Will’s room. “What were you guys up to?”

Will’s trying his hardest to go for a nonchalant type of look, sitting at his desk with the scattered remnants of his essay in front of him. “Studying,” he says simply. He holds up a book for proof.

Mike nods in support. “And I’m reading.” He holds up Animal Farm from where he’d grabbed it back off the bedside table. It might have been convincing if he hadn’t been holding it upside down.

El squints. “Your book is the wrong way,” she says, then turns back to Will. “Do you want to play a game with us? Or are you busy?”

“History essay,” Will says apologetically, and El makes a sympathetic noise and nods. “Sorry, El. What kind of game?”

“We were playing in the snow, and then it got very cold and very dark,” El says, tugging a mitten off of one hand and shoving it into the pocket of her jacket before getting to work on the other. “So we thought we would come here and play some board games. Is that okay?”

“Um, you live here too, El, you don’t have to ask.”

“In case you were very busy!” El insists, in between blowing on her hands. She turns to look at Mike and says, “We’re playing Monopoly, but if you don’t come, Dustin is going to call dibs on the shoe.”

Mike’s eyes widen, and he glances over at Will. “Um–”

“Go,” Will laughs, because getting Mike Wheeler physically away from him is probably the only thing that’ll force him to power through this assignment before midnight, and also because it’s Monopoly, and Mike has very strong feelings about Monopoly, beating Dustin Henderson at Monopoly, and calling dibs on the shoe. Not necessarily in that order. “I’ll work at the table, it’s okay.”

And see, Mike is asking “Are you sure?” in a very kind, considerate voice, but he’s also halfway out the door, even as he peers back over his shoulder.

Will rolls his eyes, and then scoops up his teetering pile of library books, papers, and a pen. “I know you need the shoe to win, or whatever it is you–”

“I don’t need the shoe to win, okay, I could win with whichever–” 

“That’s good,” El chimes in, “because Dustin is about to grab–”

And then Mike’s gone, and Will sighs, catching El’s eye as he trudges out of his room. “He’s so ridiculous.”

“Yes,” El says, and then, eyes widening, she takes off after him. “I have to go. Max is going to take the thimble.”

Max Mayfield ends up with the thimble after all, because she played the I’m blind, I get dibs card, and because she is blind and also because she’s Max, El lets her get away with it.

“Personally, I would not be letting this slide,” Mike grumbles. Will glances up from the fourth– and final!– page of his paper to catch the disgruntled look on Mike’s face, eyebrows furrowed and lips turned down in a pout. “The rent on this place is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well,” Lucas starts, as Mike starts counting out paper bills. “Maybe that’s why you’re so bad at Monopoly.”

“Fuck you, I’m still winning,” Mike says, staring dejectedly down at the board. Will bites back a laugh, but he must have let out a small noise regardless, because Mike looks up immediately, raising an eyebrow.

“Is something funny?”

“No,” Will says, even as he feels himself smile even wider. “No, no, sorry, keep going.”

“Because,” Mike continues, ignoring Dustin as he takes his turn, squinting up at Will from across the living room. “I could beat you at Monopoly any day, okay, don’t laugh at me.”

“Please, Wheeler, you’re lucky I’m sitting this one out.”

“It’s true,” Max says, reaching across the board for her piece. “He could take you, easy.”

Mike lets out an offended noise, and then a slightly more pleased one as he glances down at the board. “Oh, that’s two-sixty from you, Maxine.”

“Don’t call me Maxine,” Max hisses. “And full offense, but I’m going to need someone to confirm that Mike isn’t trying to cheat a blind girl out of her money.”

“Unfortunately, he’s right,” Lucas sighs, and Max groans. “Two-sixty, please.”

“Unbelievable,” Max groans, but she hands the money over.

Will catches Mike’s eye again and shoots him a small smile. It’s in moments like these where the old, familiar ache makes a reappearance, glancing at Lucas’ arm resting on the small of Max’s back as he leans over the board to wrestle his boat out of Dustin’s hands. None of them would mind if Mike or Will said something, he knows, and it’s hard imagining the people who’d stuck by him endlessly when they were younger turn into the sorts of people they were defending him from, but that’s a sort of panic that doesn’t go away so easily. Not even when you’re dating Mike Wheeler and it seems like the big, scary, impossible task of getting Mike Wheeler to date you is as big and scary and impossible as it gets, and then you’re actually dating Mike Wheeler and then you realize that, hold on, there are friends and parents and overly inquisitive older brothers to think about too, and–

Will lets out a breath. Calm down, he thinks, because it’s six p.m. on a Sunday and there’s a time and a place to be having this sort of crisis, and here, at the dining table with all his friends and his boyfriend in the living room, definitely is not the place he would have had in mind. Something must be showing on his face regardless, though, because Mike frowns, and holds his hands up like time out!

“Hold on, guys,” he’s saying, clambering to his feet. “Snack break. Or maybe a water break, whatever. And, uh, Dustin, the bank is a mess. You might want to reorganize.”

El lost bank teller privileges three weeks ago because someone couldn’t resist the temptation to use their powers and sneak bills off of everyone else’s stacks, and Dustin doesn’t abide by much of a moral code for anything other than the sacred game of Monopoly, so it works out in the end. “Hey,” Mike says, quietly, pulling out a chair. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, totally,” Will says, putting his pen down. “Why?”

“You looked a little bummed,” Mike says, then leans in to read over Will’s shoulder. “Abraham Lincoln got you down?”

“It’s the stupid top hat,” Will agrees. “It just makes me so mad.”

“I know that’s not true, because you love top hats. It’s your piece of choice in Monopoly. You get all cranky about playing without it.”

“Yeah, because it’s the best one,” Will counters easily, still looking down at his paper. “I just have the conclusion left, and then I’ll be good to go. And then I can beat your ass into bankruptcy.”

Mike is silent. “Four twenties do not equal a hundred, Lucas,” Dustin is shrieking, somewhere across the house. “Either you’re trying to cheat me or you’re seriously bad at math.”

“Hey,” Will says after a second, because Mike still hasn’t said anything. He frowns, leans in. “Sorry, I didn’t really mean that thing about beating your ass into bankruptcy– I mean I did, because I totally could, but I could maybe be convinced to go easy on you if you want–”

“We could tell them,” Mike blurts out, and then the next part of the sentence– not too easy, but I promise I won’t demolish you too bad– evaporates off of Will’s tongue.

He blinks. “What?”

Mike glances over to the living room, where El is currently busy tugging her battleship out of Lucas’ fingers. “I saw you move the piece,” Lucas is saying, amid half-hearted protests. “El, your nose is literally bleeding.”

“I’m just saying,” Mike says, and then places a hand on Will’s knee, under the table and out of view. He squeezes, once. “I– if you wanted to tell them, I’d be on board. But if you still don’t, that’s okay too. You just looked sad, and if that’s why– I don’t know. I just want you to be happy.”

That’s maybe the sappiest thing Will has ever heard in his life. He’s also sure, if he’s not careful, that there’s a good possibility he might just burst into tears, right here, right now. “Mike,” he gets out, “we don’t have to do that, you know, it’s a lot even without making it a whole thing.”

It’s hard enough without making it a whole thing, Will thinks, and he doesn’t say this, but he thinks that Mike probably understands him anyway. He’s always been able to.

Mike looks at him a moment further. “It would be worth it,” he says simply, and he’s opening his mouth to say more when the phone rings, sharp and sudden from the hallway.

Will startles, jumping up fast enough for the chair to go scraping across the floor of the kitchen, knocking Mike’s hand off his knee. “I’ll get it,” he announces, to no one in particular, already halfway to the phone by the time anyone else looks up.

“Wow, Mike,” Dustin calls, “so much for a snack break.”

“I was strategizing,” Mike yells back. “I needed Will’s expert opinion because apparently no one respects the hustle anymore.”

Will rolls his eyes and turns back to the phone. “Hello?”

It’s Hopper’s voice that answers. “Hey, kid, it’s me.”

“Oh, hi.” Will glances around the room. “Is, um. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Hopper says, and there’s a light rustling on his end of the phone. “Listen, I just wanted to call and say that the roads are getting pretty bad, so I’m picking your mom up from work and we’re coming back, and I’ll drop her off to get the car tomorrow once they clear the ice off.”

“Oh,” Will says again. “Um. How bad is it?”

Hopper chuckles. “What, you haven’t looked outside in the last two hours? It’s coming down like crazy. A foot and a half, easy. The roads are frozen all the way over.”

“Sorry, I– El brought everyone over and we’ve been playing Monopoly in the living room. I mean,” Will adds, “they were playing Monopoly, and I was doing homework. We’ve been a bit distracted.”

“Wow. That’s impressive, kid.” Hopper makes a contemplative noise. “Homework on a Sunday night. You’re better than I was, that’s for sure. How many of your friends are over?”

“Um. All of them?” Will tries, and Hopper lets out another laugh. “Sorry, was that not okay?”

“No, that’s fine,” Hopper says dismissively. “Have them over whenever. I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to be driving home, though.”

“Mike’s car is out front, and I think everyone else walked here from Dustin’s.” Will frowns and leans against the wall a little bit. Mike leans into his field of vision, raising his eyebrows like you okay?

Will flashes him a thumbs up like yeah, super. “Okay,” Hopper is saying, the faint jingling of keys in the background. “Your mom and I are about to come home, should be another twenty minutes, but I don’t want you kids driving or biking or– or roller skating, or whatever it is you do–”

“Max doesn’t skateboard anymore,” Will corrects automatically, “or not– not here, at least.”

“Right.” Hopper pauses. “So I think your friends should probably just hunker down here for the night, and then head out once the ice gets cleared off tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Will says again. Mike is still looking at him, a bit amused, a bit intrigued, leaning back in the chair until it wobbles precariously on the kitchen floor. His mind is still stuck on their interrupted half-conversation: we could tell them. We could tell them. 

They could. They could tell them. They could–

“Will?” Hopper’s voice cuts through, a bit staticky. “You still there?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” Will shakes his head, “yeah, no, I’ll tell them.” And then, “Wait, hold on– what about school tomorrow morning?”

“Oh, right, yeah, schools are closed. The roads won’t be cleared all the way until noon at least.”

A pause. “Oh no,” Will groans, leaning forward until his forehead hits the wall with a soft thump. “No. You’ve got to be kidding. No way.”

“Kid? You alright?”

“My essay,” Will whines, rubbing a hand over his eyes, trying his hardest to fight the urge to open the door and throw himself into a snowbank. “I spent all evening on my essay, and now I don’t even have school tomorrow.”

As it turns out, a house full of six high school seniors, plus your mom and also your police-chief-stepdad, isn’t the most conducive for talking to your secret boyfriend about staying secret boyfriends. Which maybe Will should have seen coming, because the universe just likes to fuck with him like this, but he’d kind of spent the last few hours powering himself through the world’s most boring assignment– that he didn’t even have to finish, apparently– with the promise of a gratifying cuddle session as a reward.

And now Will’s whole extended circle of family and friends, sans Jonathan, are smushed into the living room together, and he kind of wants to shove his head between the couch cushions and start screaming.

This isn’t a situation that Will ever thought he’d find himself in, if he’s being honest, but his life has been kind of the equivalent of a page ripped right out of a really shitty comic book up until now, and apparently it’s time to introduce some really cliche chick flick tropes too. We could tell them, Mike had said. I just want you to be happy. Which is, without a doubt, the single sweetest and nicest and most romantic thing anyone has ever said to him– even though Will hasn’t had a whole lot of experience in the sweet and nice and romantic department up until now. It just– doesn’t seem like the kind of talk you should be having when your mom is currently heating up multiple cans of soup over the stove, seven feet away.

Hopper had come back, taken one look at the six teenagers piled into his living room, sighed, and made his way into the garage to dig out the spare blankets and sleeping bags.

“Just this once, I don’t think he was unhappy to see me,” Mike had said, grinning, as Lucas made his way over to the phone to call his parents. “I think we’re making progress.”

Will had rolled his eyes. “He’s never unhappy to see you. He likes you just fine.”

“Well, that’s my boyfriend’s dad and also the chief of police,” Mike had whispered, crinkling up his nose. “I don’t think just fine is going to cut it.”

Mike Wheeler’s tentative attempt to get on Jim Hopper’s good graces, however, had pretty much been foiled by him parking in the good spot in the driveway all those hours ago, meaning that Will’s mom had to maneuver over the slippery concrete holding multiple bags of groceries, trying not to drop them. “Hi Mrs. Byers.” And apparently Mike is trying to make amends now, poking his head into the kitchen. “Do you need any help?”

Will bites back a laugh. Next to him, El shoots him a puzzled look. “Why is Mike being weird?”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing since we were five, El,” Will says, and then Dustin and Lucas climb back into the living room from the hallway, and Max goes over to call her mom. “Believe me, I’d tell you if I knew.”

“Is Mike being weird again?” Dustin launches himself over the arm of the sofa, and is mostly successful in not completely dying. “Shit, sorry Will,” he says, catching himself on Will’s leg with one hand.

“Please don’t die,” El says solemnly. “This would be a very embarrassing way to die.”

“What do you mean Mike’s being weird?” Will glances over at the kitchen, where Mike is standing talking to his mom, shoulders hunched up near his ears and looking a bit like he wants to melt right through the floor and disappear. “He seems normal to me.”

“He was being nice to Hop earlier,” Max pipes in, holding up the phone. “Anyone else need to call?”

“No, we’re good.” Dustin crosses his arms. “Maybe he’s on drugs.”

“Drugs?” El and Will exclaim at the same time, and Joyce whips her head around, one hand still clutching the ladle.

“Drugs? Who’s on drugs?”

“No one’s on drugs, mom,” Will promises, as Lucas erupts into peals of laughter. “Dustin’s just being an idiot.”

“Sorry Mrs. Byers,” Dustin says apologetically. Next to his mom, Mike raises his eyebrows, eyes widening like help!

Will sighs and gets up. “I saw your distress signal,” he whispers, coming up so their shoulders are bumping. “I’m here to rescue you. You’re welcome.”

Mike’s fingers twitch, just once, against the back of Will’s hand, like he’d been about to slide their fingers together on instinct. “Thank you,” he whispers back. “I was trying to help but I don’t think I’m doing it right.”

Will looks down. Mike’s holding a butter knife with four extremely unevenly buttered slices of white bread on the cutting board in front of him. “Um. What were you trying to do?”

“Grilled cheese. For the soup,” Mike pouts, “but the butter’s too cold and I can’t get it to spread.”

God, Will wants to kiss him. Out of all the things the universe has done to slight him over the years, this might be the worst– making Mike Wheeler stand here, in the middle of the kitchen, wearing his stupidly dorky Star Wars shirt with that pout on his face and Will isn’t even allowed to kiss him.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” he says, looking away before he does something really stupid, like– like just press Mike up against the counter and kiss him in front of all his friends and his kind-of-stepdad and his mom – “You can put butter in the microwave, you know.”

Mike stares down at the offending stick of butter and frowns. “Oh.”

Will can’t help it. He starts laughing. “You’re so– you’re ridiculous, did you know that?”

“I might have some idea. You only remind me every day,” Mike smiles, rooting around in the cupboard for a bowl. “Multiple times a day, even.”

“What are you boys whispering about?”

Will startles lightly at the hand on his shoulder. “Mike was being dumb. As usual.”

“Sorry Mrs. Byers,” Mike grins, “I’ll be a lot faster with the bread now.”

Joyce looks amused. “Mike, how many times do I have to–”

“Right. Joyce,” Mike mumbles, the tips of his ears blooming bright red. “Sorry. I’m getting used to it.”

“No one else calls you Joyce,” Will says absently, peering over at the pot of soup on the stove. Tomato. Solid choice. “Why are you making Mike do it?”

His mom doesn’t say anything, simply opens the fridge door, squinting against the light, but he sees the corners of her lip twitch. “I’m just giving you two a hard time, hon.” 

Will frowns. “Okay, but–”

“Who are we giving a hard time?” And oh, okay, apparently he’s doing this with both his mom and his kind-of-almost-stepdad, who’s basically enough of his stepdad to drop the kind-of-almost, because Will figures that breaking into a Russian prison and then killing some monsters together and then breaking back out is at least a little bit of an equivalent to a marriage proposal. Kind of. Hopper leans one hand against the wall.

“No one,” Mike grumbles, just as Will says, “Mike,” and Joyce says, “These two,” and then Hopper gets a bit of a weird look on his face and Will is seriously, seriously considering opening up the door and just letting the Midwest storm take him in full.

“What is it this time, Wheeler?”

Mike turns back to his bowl of freshly microwave-softened butter, poking at it lightly with a finger. “I didn’t do anything!”

“The only crime you’ve committed is forgetting how to use a microwave,” Will teases, and Mike lets out a small, offended gasp.

“Look, I wasn’t going to barge into your kitchen and start pulling out bowls and demanding the use of your appliances, okay–”

“Like that’s ever stopped you before,” Will scoffs, “I’ve seen you make yourself entire meals in the middle of the night,” and then Mike smears a butter-covered finger across his cheek in retaliation, and Will– okay, he doesn’t shriek, but he does let out a noise. A very small, very dignified noise. “You–!”

“Sorry,” Mike grins, which means Will immediately does not believe him, even a little. God, he wants to kiss him so bad. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Okay,” Hopper announces, and Will looks up, expecting maybe to be reprimanded, or to be told to stop fucking around with the grilled cheese sandwiches, or maybe just to go wash his face because that’s gross. Instead, Hopper’s looking at his mom, who’s emerging victorious from the depths of the fridge with a clove of garlic in hand. “Yeah, okay Joyce, I see what you mean.”

“See what–” And look, Will doesn’t pretend to understand this thing they have going between them, because he doesn’t really like to think about his mom and her kind-of-husband-kind-of-boyfriend more than he has to, but– yeah. He has absolutely no idea what’s happening here. “What’s going on?”

Joyce just shoots Hopper a look, which is maybe one of the grossest things Will has ever seen in his life, Lucas and Max be damned. “Oh, nothing,” she says easily, and apparently the rules of family honesty mean nothing to anyone anymore.

“It’s something,” Will insists, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What is it? Are we moving again? Are you two getting married? Are–”

“No and no, but why were those the first two things you thought of?” Joyce looks over Mike’s shoulder, and laughs softly. “Mike, hon, it’s okay, I can take it from here.”

Mike looks like he’s going to protest, but then he glances down at the butter stain on his thigh, and seems to decide that it’s probably not worth it. “Sorry Mrs– Joyce. I promise I tried.”

“How did you get butter on your pants,” Will starts, and then Mike is tossing a stray bread crust at him, and Will laughs– “Okay! Okay, sorry, just– no more bread, please–”

“You two are sweet,” Joyce says, turning the stove on and lifting the big pan onto it. “But Mike, please pick up the bread from the floor.”

“Oh, shit– oh, fuck– okay, wait, sorry! Sorry!”

Will’s on his way back to the living room when Mike catches him by the wrist. “Hey,” he whispers, “can you– can we go to your room for just a second?”

Will can feel his eyes bugging right out of his head. “Now?” he gapes. “Mike, everyone is here, we can make out later–”

“Oh my God, no,” Mike says, eyes wide, “I meant I have something to give you, and I didn’t want everyone to see.”

Will blinks. “Oh.”

An irritatingly smug smile is slowly making its way across Mike’s face. “Wow, okay, I don’t not want to make out with you, but I wouldn’t have taken you for–”

“Shut up,” Will hisses. His face feels like it’s about to burst into flame, and Mike is looking way too pleased with himself for Will’s own good. He grabs Mike’s hand, chances a quick look around the house, and starts in the direction of his room. “Shut up, shut up, yeah, okay, let’s go–”

Would it be too suspicious to close the door all the way? Maybe, but Will is sure that his tomato-red cheeks are probably incriminating enough as is, even with the door wide open, so he thinks fuck it, and lets the door fall shut with a soft click. “Okay, loser, what was the thing?”

Mike is kneeling, rummaging through his backpack, and then he straightens with a triumphant noise, something clutched in his right hand. “Aha!”

Will squints. “What is it?”

“Okay, so I know it’s not Christmas yet,” Mike starts, shuffling his feet against the carpet, “and I’ll get you something else for Christmas, this isn’t that– but I was going to give this to you whenever you finished your college applications so I’ve been carrying this around for a while, just in case, and you said you just mailed off your last few, so–”

“Mike,” Will breathes out, staring at the small, rectangular outline of the glittery wrapping paper. The Wheelers always wrap their gifts in a different paper of choice every year. This year, it’s sparkly red cellophane. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“It’s small, I promise!” Mike insists, placing the gift into Will’s hands. “It’s maybe a little stupid, it’s kind of– actually, it’s really stupid, okay, just open it, you’re killing me here–”

“Okay, okay!” Will says with a laugh, peeling the paper back slowly. “Okay, I’m opening it.”

“You’re doing it so slow,” Mike says, barely one full second later, fidgeting in place. “Hurry up!”

Will rolls his eyes, says, “I just want to appreciate your wrapping, okay, sue me,” but rips the rest of it off in one go. Then– “Mike,” he says slowly, “did you make me a mixtape?”

“Okay, so it’s definitely super lame,” Mike corrects himself, “and it’s kind of a bit gimmicky, but, like–”

“No, shut up,” Will announces, and Mike falls silent. “Mike Wheeler, you didn’t tell me you were a closet sap.”

“I didn’t tell you I was a closet lots of things,” Mike says, and Will laughs, despite himself. This is, objectively, a hilariously ridiculous thing to get so emotional about, but–

“Will,” Mike frowns, taking a step closer, “are you–”

“Shut up,” Will blubbers, “I don’t want to hear it,” and then Mike’s face does some complicated, twisty thing, lips twitching like he can’t decide if he wants to laugh or frown, and he’s there, pulling Will’s arms around him and tucking his cheek over Will’s head. And– “Are you laughing at me?”

“No!” Mike says, and then, a second later: “Okay, not at you. I just think you’re cute.”

“I’ll kill you,” Will says, except it comes out a bit emotional and choked up and therefore probably not believable in the slightest. Mike laughs again, more audibly this time. “You– no one’s ever made me a mixtape before. Except for Jonathan, but you know, he doesn’t count because he’s my brother, and–”

“I’m trying to have a romantic moment here, so can we please stop talking about your brother?”

“Yeah, okay–”

“Okay, the reason I said this was stupid and dumb and just a little gimmicky,” Mike continues, pulling away from Will and reaching around to tug the tape out of his hands, “is because– okay, I don’t even know how to explain this, it’s so stupid– it’s, like, college inspired? For when your acceptance letters come rolling in and you get to run off to somewhere that’s far away from here and live out your big artist dreams–”

“Big artist dreams,” Will snorts. “Mike, I don’t even know if I’m gonna get in anywhere, and maybe I won’t even leave Hawkins, and–”

Maybe we won’t even go to college together is right there on the tip of his tongue. Will breathes in, swallows it back down. This isn’t the time, and this isn’t the place. “I don’t know,” he says at last, “that seems so far away.”

“No, I’m serious,” Mike insists, a light flush blooming across his cheeks. Will wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss him, and kiss him, and– “You’re incredible, Will, and you could go anywhere you wanted. Anywhere you do want.” Mike taps on the cover of the tape with one finger, and Will looks down. “Anyways, this was just my attempt at being funny, it was more about the gesture than the tape, because it’s mostly songs you listen to already, so–”

He trails off. “Homesick,” Will reads, and then immediately starts laughing. “Close to Me, Go Your Own Way– oh my God, Mike–”

“Do you like it?” Mike grins. “It was supposed to be inspired, but it turned out just mostly kind of lame, but you’re my boyfriend so you have to at least pretend to–”

“Shut up,” Will decides, “I need you to shut up now before I do something stupid. Really stupid.”

This is dangerous. Dangerous, Will thinks, because his entire family and all of their friends are a room away, and there’s nothing separating him and Mike from evil, prying eyes except for two inches of plywood. But Mike is here, and he’s giving Will a mixtape and sure, it’s maybe the dumbest, most stupid, most Mike Wheeler mixtape of all time, but it’s his. It’s his, and Mike is his, and this is his too. All of this: gentle teasing in the kitchen, lying in bed with Mike with nothing but the white noise of the fridge to fill the silence, mixtapes composed solely of the worst puns Will has ever seen in his life, and yes, holding hands under the lunch table, as cherry-red as it apparently makes him turn. It’s his, it’s his, it’s his.

Will can count on one hand the number of things he’s had like this before, and it’s for this last reason that he thinks fuck it, throws his arms around Mike’s neck, and kisses him. Which should really be more underwhelming than it is, because they’re dating, but Will doesn’t get to kiss Mike Wheeler nearly as often as he’d like– which is maybe always, all of the time– but whatever.

Mike makes a soft noise against his mouth, then steps in until the space between them vanishes, tucking his hands under Will’s unbuttoned flannel and sliding around to his back. His hands are warm, even through the thin cotton of Will’s undershirt, and he pulls away briefly, for one second, to say, “I knew you wanted to steal me away and ravish–”

“Shut up,” Will murmurs, and Mike lets out a breathy laugh against his lips. “Shut up, shut up, I need you to shut up now. ”

“Okay,” Mike says immediately, and Will should kiss him more, actually, if it makes him so agreeable all the time. He reaches a hand up into Mike’s hair, kisses Mike until his head starts spinning and something stirs in his chest, soft and warm and his–

The door slams against the doorstop with a bang! Will jumps backwards instantly, eyes flying open, trying for the life of him to look like he was doing anything other than kissing Mike Wheeler in his room with the door shut, which is proving a bit more difficult than he’d have liked, considering that was exactly what he’d been doing, one-hundred percent. “Um,” Mike is saying, “we were just– I had something to–”

Hopper looks entirely unimpressed. “Dinner’s ready, kids,” he says. “Hurry up.”

“Mixtape!” Mike blurts out, and he looks about as red as Will feels right now. “I had a mixtape to give him!”

“Yeah,” Will tries, holding it up for proof, except his voice comes out hoarse and cracks right there in the middle of the single syllable. Maybe it’s not too late to crawl out the window without being noticed.

It’s kind of a useless effort either way. Mike’s hair is messed up and his cheeks are flushed and Will’s shirt is rumpled and–

Hopper’s expression does not budge. He raps on the door with his knuckles before turning around. “Three inches, Wheeler,” he says. “Rules still apply.”

Will frowns. “What does that mean?”

Mike’s face is slowly turning from a violent red into a strange, ashy gray. “Okay,” he starts weakly, then drops his face into his hands. “Yeah, okay. So. Hopper definitely knows.”

“You’ve never experienced a snow day before?”

El raises her eyebrows. “No? I mean, I’ve seen snow before. Is that a snow day?”

“A snow day,” Max goes on anyway, “is when there’s so much snow that school gets closed and you spend all day in bed fucking around and watching TV and drinking hot cocoa.”

“Or you could go play in the snow,” Dustin chimes in, peeking through the slats in the window at the pitch black of the driveway. “And make like, snow angels and stuff– holy shit, it’s really coming down out there.”

“Let me see!” Lucas shoves him aside with one shoulder, and Dustin lets out an irritated yelp. “Holy shit.”

“Dude, I just said that,” Dustin says, and then ducks under Lucas’ arm to look through the blinds there. “That’s gotta be at least two feet.”

“Of snow?” El’s eyes are wide, but she doesn’t budge from her position on the floor, both hands buried in Max’s hair. “That’s a lot of snow.”

“Ow,” Max mutters, “El, you’re pulling too hard.”

El makes an apologetic face. “Sorry. I’m new to braiding.”

“El, you’ve gotta tuck that strand over to the middle,” Mike says, and then he’s reaching over El’s shoulder to direct her hands. “You put that one in the middle, and then the left one, and then the right– no, the new right section–”

Will looks over from the kitchen and frowns. “How do you know that?”

Mike shrugs. “Holly’s going through a thing right now,” he says simply. “Wait, okay, El, you’re going to turn her head into a ball of yarn if you keep holding your hands that way.”

“Please don’t turn my head into a ball of yarn,” Max mutters, just barely loud enough for Will to hear. “Just because I can’t see it–”

“You could pull it off,” Lucas says, just as Dustin goes, “Oh, that would be funny,” and then Max lets out a sigh.

“Wheeler, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m trusting you to make sure El doesn’t turn my head into a ball of yarn.”

Mike grins. “You got it.”

Max hesitates. “Actually, scratch that. Where’s Will?”

“Here,” he calls, turning the faucet on full blast. “Putting all your dirty hot chocolate mugs away.”

There’s a light chorus of sorry, Will, and thank you, Will from the living room, and he huffs out a laugh, drying his hands on the towel by the stove. “You’re all losers,” he decides, walking back over.

“Yeah, but we’re your losers,” Lucas grins, holding two hands over his heart. “You love us.”

“You took all the mini marshmallows,” Will points out, and Lucas shoots him a look of betrayal. “I’m leaving you stranded outside. I’ve decided.”

Mike pats the spot on the couch next to him like come sit, and Will slides in next to him. It’s freezing outside, and it’s late, and the temperature in the house has started to drop too. Will dug out an old pair of fuzzy socks from his closet, and he had to threaten Mike with a kiss moratorium to get him to stop laughing at the ridiculous pattern. Unfortunately, there was no such kiss moratorium he could place on the rest of the Party that would actually count for much, so.

And Mike is warm, and they’ve consolidated the masses of sleeping bags and spare blankets into a uniform, shapeless pile of sorts, and Will’s mind has started to go blissfully, dangerously fuzzy around the edges. He doesn’t think much of it when he leans into Mike’s warmth, doesn’t think much of it when he tucks his legs up into his chest, and really doesn’t think much of it when he reaches around Mike’s shoulders to throw an arm across the back of the sofa.

Lucas and Dustin both look at him, then each other, then at him again. “Okay, no offense,” Dustin starts slowly, holding a pillow and hovering tentatively over the most abundant corner of the blanket pile. “But what are you doing?”

Will blinks. Mike is looking at him with an amused look on his face, wide-eyed and a little pink across the bridge of his nose, and God, okay, Will wants to–

“Um,” he says instead. “Huddling? For warmth?”

“For warmth,” Lucas echoes, and then looks back at Dustin again. “Huddling. For warmth.”

“Like penguins,” Mike offers, and then rests his head on Will’s shoulder like this is supposed to be helping, or something.

God, he’s so stupid. Will loves him so much. He bites down on his lower lip and, fighting back a smile– “Like penguins,” he agrees. “Why, Lucas? You’re sad you’re not included?”

“Oh, I’m taking you up on that,” Lucas huffs, and then he’s colliding roughly with Will’s side. “If you were a penguin, Will, you’d be a macaroni penguin.”

“I agree,” El chimes in, and then Max starts laughing hard enough for El to lose her grip on her hair. “Max!”

Mike rolls his eyes. “What kind of penguin would I be, Lucas?”

“A little penguin,” Lucas says immediately. “I mean the species, not just, like, a really small penguin. Even though they are really small penguins.”

“Fuck you,” Mike sighs, as Dustin climbs onto the arm of the sofa. “I’m the tallest one here!”

Lucas ignores him. “And Dustin, you’d be a– rockhopper penguin,” they finish simultaneously, and Lucas’ eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. Really?”

“So what?” Dustin shrugs. “I’ve thought about it before.”

“Yeah, well,” Will starts, and then falters, frowning, at the look on Lucas and Dustin’s faces. “What?”

They look at each other again, and Will is maybe about two seconds from opening the door and leaving them all to the mercy of the ongoing blizzard if they keep doing this–

“Nothing!”

“You guys keep– you keep giving me looks, okay, whatever happens to friends don’t keep secrets, or–”

“Friends don’t lie,” El says automatically, tying off Max’s hair and turning around. “Secrets are okay.”

“Secrets are lies by omission,” Will says, and then immediately feels like the world’s biggest hypocrite, because– well. You know. He decidedly clamps his mouth shut and decides to never speak again.

And speaking of never speaking again. Mike hasn’t said anything in, like, two full minutes, ever since that thing about the penguins, and Will’s starting to think he took real offense to whatever it was that Lucas said. He turns, maybe to say I don’t think you’d be a tiny penguin, except he thinks Lucas was kind of spot on about that comment, so. Whatever.

What’s wrong, he’s about to ask, except when he turns around, Mike isn’t sulking. He’s not moping either, he’s– he’s staring at Will with wide eyes, just looking at him, a small, reverent smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Oh, Will thinks, something tugging warm and low at his stomach. Oh.

“Mike,” he starts, “what–”

“I can’t believe this,” Lucas says, somewhere behind him. “Guys, let’s– I think Hop dumped the rest of the pillows in Will’s room. Let’s go get them.”

“Why do we need four people for pillows?” El asks.

“They’re too heavy for Lucas to carry on his own,” Max laughs, grabbing a hold of El’s arm.

“Okay, rude–”

“Mike,” Will says again. “Really?”

Mike just smiles wider, leaning further onto Will’s shoulder. “What?”

Will can’t help it. He kisses Mike right there, right where his eyes are crinkling up at the corners, right over the red blooming pleased and flushed under his freckles. “Don’t play dumb,” he chides, “and stop looking at me like that! You’re being so obvious!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mike says, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “I’m just looking at you like I always do.”

Will laughs. He can hear his friends shuffling around inside his room through the walls, and drops his voice down into a whisper. “We might have a problem on our hands, then, if you look at me like that all the time.”

“I can’t help it,” Mike whines, and drops his head all the way onto Will’s shoulder with a light groan. “I was just– I was thinking, okay, and I was just–”

Will raises an eyebrow. “Anything in particular?”

“I–”

“I would totally be big spoon.” Dustin’s voice comes floating around the corner and Will straightens, frowning. “It’s so much better.”

Lucas comes bounding into the living room as he croons, “Is that an offer, Dusty-bun?”

Will catches Mike’s eye, and they immediately burst out laughing. “Later,” Mike says, in between breaths. “I’ll tell you later.”

Later, apparently, means two in the fucking morning.

Will comes to slowly, in a hazy sort of way that indicates that he’s definitely not supposed to be awake right now. His first instinct is panic, because it’s dark and the house is fucking freezing, and he doesn’t know what it is that woke him up, so he sits up with a gasp–

–and almost falls off the sofa.

“Whoa,” comes a voice next to him, and then a pair of arms are catching him around the waist and pulling him back in. “Are you okay?”

Will relaxes, even with his heart feeling like it might beat right out of his chest. “Mike?”

The figure next to him shifts, as Will’s eyes adjust to the dark. “You were slipping. I didn’t want you to fall off,” Mike whispers, which is, okay, pretty obvious in hindsight. He laughs softly. “I don’t think both of us fit on this thing.”

Will rubs at his eyes with one hand and sighs. “No, probably not, because you’re a freak of nature–”

“The middle of the night and you’re still mean to me,” Mike says drily. It’s weird, lying like this and not being able to see him. “Okay, I can go find a spot on the floor, hang on– um. I think the blankets are all in use though.”

It takes a second, because Will’s brain is still playing catch-up. Precarious as their position is, Will teetering on the edge of the sofa and Mike smushed all the way against the back of it, it’s warm, and it’s comfortable, and his brain suddenly feels very, very reluctant to let that go. “Okay,” Will sighs at last, bracing himself for the cold as he pushes the blankets back. “Okay, come on.”

Mike hesitates. “Where are you going?”

Will considers it pretty impressive that he steps on a grand total of zero people getting up, considering how his eyes are still mostly closed. “My room,” he says around a yawn, holding out a hand. “Bed. Big bed. Bring the blanket.”

“Um,” Mike says, even as he gets up, one hand gathering up the small pile of blankets they’d been curled up under. “So you realize you– Hopper’s going to kill me, right?”

“He’ll kill you anyway,” Will dismisses, and Mike lets out a soft, alarmed noise as they make their way down the hall, blankets dragging on the floor behind them. Will twists their fingers together, Mike’s palm cold against his own. “Better to be killed after a full night’s sleep.”

“Do you hate me? I think you actually wanted me dead this whole time. Will? Do you hate me?”

“Yes,” Will decides. His eyes are– well, he wouldn’t be able to see much better if they were open anyway, so it doesn’t matter. “That’s why I’m dating you, idiot.”

“Knew it.”

“Keep your voice down, oh my God, no need to yell.”

“Sorry.”

The bed creaks softly as Will climbs onto it, just barely able to make out the shape of it in the dark. Mike follows, landing bodily on top of him with a muffled grunt– “Shit, sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Will yawns again. He holds out his arms. “Come here.”

“This is nicer than the sofa,” Mike admits, settling in, his back flush against Will’s chest. “Even if I don’t make it to see the morning.”

Mike is warm. He’s so warm, and Will can’t remember the last time he felt this content. This is nice. This is something he’d like to do more. This is something he’d like to fall asleep to every day, he thinks, a bit absent and far-off from the lull of sleep already washing over him. “This is very nice,” Will mumbles into the fleece of the sweater Mike had borrowed from him earlier. “I like this.”

There’s a pause, filled with only the soft rise and fall of their chests, falling slowly into the same rhythm. Will almost doesn’t notice when Mike shifts, moving his hand up from where it had been resting on his hip, lacing their fingers together right there, over his chest. Will can feel his heartbeat from here, through his sweater, and, okay– this, right here, is the best thing that has ever happened to him in his entire life.

“Knew you were a closet romantic,” he murmurs, even as he smiles. “That’s cute.”

“Shut up,” Mike says, but he sounds like he’s smiling too. “It wasn’t a secret.”

“No kidding.” Will tightens his hold, shuffles closer to bridge that already nonexistent gap between them, until they’re pressed up in one fluid line. “I’m sure everyone knows by now.”

“Yeah, probably,” Mike whispers, then goes silent.

Will is really about to drift off back to sleep when he hears it.

“I love you,” Mike mumbles, sounding halfway to sleep himself. “That was the thing– what I was thinking about earlier.”

It feels anticlimactic, somehow. Maybe Will is just tired, and maybe it’s just cold, and maybe his brain has finally, finally, just shut off, but it doesn’t feel nearly as momentous as it should, for it being the first time either of them had said it. Will thought it would be a bigger deal. Everyone made it seem like it should have been a bigger deal, but it just–

– it just feels like a fact. Like something that undoubtedly is. 

So that’s that, then.

“Idiot,” he whispers into Mike’s hair. “I love you too. Obviously.”

Will’s first mistake of the morning is forgetting that his kind-of-stepdad is the chief of police.

Which doesn’t mean much on its own, because he knows this, but he did forget, unfortunately, that Hopper usually lurks around the kitchen at six in the morning before heading in to work. Which is also coincidentally the exact moment that Will gets up to use the bathroom.

“Morning, kid,” comes a voice from the kitchen, just as Will is closing the bathroom door behind him, and he just about jumps out of his skin.

“Fu– oh, hey, Hop.”

Jim Hopper, as usual, does not look impressed. He also does not look up from the morning paper. “Sleep well?”

“Um–”

Hopper raises his eyebrows. “Yes?”

Will nods, once. “Yeah. I slept– it was fine.”

“Noticed the bedroom door was closed,” Hopper says, and puts the paper down. “I thought we agreed on three inches?”

“To be fair,” Will points out around a yawn. “You didn’t actually tell me what that means.”

Hopper stares at him for one second, then two, then three, and then groans. He drops his head into his hands, but it looks like– maybe– he might be smiling.

“Okay, fine, loopholes, that was on me.”

“I wasn’t trying to–” Will starts, then promptly gives up. “Um. Never mind.”

Hopper still has his head in one hand as he beckons Will over. “Come here.”

“Um. Am I in trouble?” Hopper’s going to kill me, he vaguely remembers Mike saying. Maybe Mike’s going to wake up on the last day of his life to Jim Hopper going all Jack Nicholson on Will’s bedroom door.

“No,” Hopper chuckles, shaking his head. “No, you’re not in trouble, I just wanted to– you know I’m not good at the mushy stuff, kid, I’ll leave that to your mom, but–”

He looks at a bit of a loss for words, and Will can’t honestly say that his brain is working well enough to be of much help, so he just waits.

“Are you happy?”

That’s– not what Will expected. “What?”

“Are you happy,” Hopper repeats. “With the Wheeler kid?”

Will figures maybe telling Hop about the I love you might be a bit much for six in the morning on a Monday, so he settles for a nod. “Yeah, I'm– very.”

“You like him?”

Again, maybe not the best time for the I love you thing. He nods again. “I do.”

“He’s treating you alright?”

At this, Will snorts. “He’s harmless, Hop.”

“Just routine questions,” he shrugs, punctuating it with a sip of coffee. “So?”

“Yeah,” Will decides, trying and probably failing to fight off an oncoming blush. “Yeah, he is.”

“Okay,” Hopper says simply, looking a bit amused. He turns back to his paper. “Three inches, kid. No loopholes this time.”

Mike Wheeler is, apparently, the world’s most chaotic sleeper. Will had already known this of course, because he’d spent an unfortunate chunk of his childhood being subjected to being kicked and elbowed and shoved off the bed in his sleep. This time when he gets back to his room, Mike has, somehow, managed to maneuver himself almost sideways in the ten minutes Will was gone.

“Mike,” Will hisses, shaking him by the shoulder. “Mike, wake up.”

Mike does not budge. Will sighs, then leans in and presses a kiss to Mike’s forehead. “Mike,” he tries again. “Wake up!”

Either Mike Wheeler is just good at getting what he wants, or he’s sappy and cliché, even in his sleep. He stirs lightly, and slowly blinks his eyes open. “Will? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Will slides back in next to him as Mike turns. There are pillow creases on his cheek, and one arm of Will’s sweater is slipping off his shoulder, and it takes every ounce of willpower remaining in his body to not immediately burrow into Mike’s chest and fall back asleep. “I just– so Hop definitely knows. About us, I mean.”

“Oh?” Mike frowns, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. “How–”

“He cornered me in the kitchen just now.”

“Okay, yeah,” Mike says. “That makes sense.” Then, “Okay, wait, did he sound, like, angry, or murderous, and should I be counting my days?”

“Oh my God.” Will starts laughing, tucking his head into the warm curve of Mike’s shoulder. Mike makes a pleased sound above him and rests a hand on Will’s back.

“So, no?”

“No,” Will confirms, and then presses a kiss there, right over Mike’s pulse point, just because he can.

“Okay, so was that all, or–”

“I want to tell my mom,” Will blurts out, and Mike’s eyes widen, just barely.

“Okay,” he says again, “any particular reason for this epiphany? At– um. Whatever time it is right now?”

“I mean, I’m sure she already knows,” Will goes on, “but– I don’t know, I was talking to Hop and I was just– I want to have you over for dinner, you know, and I want my parents to say embarrassing stuff to you about me and I want to pretend to be embarrassed about it even though it’s all probably stuff you already know about me anyway, and I want you to sleep over and I want to have to keep the door open three inches and I want you to show up to take me on a date and do the banter thing with Hopper and the pictures thing with my mom and–”

“Oh, wow,” Mike breathes, and Will stops dead in his tracks, just in case that was the kind of oh, wow that means slow your fucking roll, Byers, that’s way too much way too fast – 

“Yes, yeah, me too,” Mike is saying and then any remnant of doubt Will had, about too fast and too much flies out of his head and out of the window into the snowed-over driveway and the street. Mike reaches under the blanket until his hand bumps into Will’s, and he squeezes, once. “Yes, oh my God, wait, so can I take you on a real date now?”

“Yes,” Will grins, a laugh bubbling up and out of him, light and sweet and fizzy. He squeezes Mike’s hand back. “Yeah, sure, except, you know, nothing crazy–”

“Nothing crazy,” Mike says, in a tone that immediately fills Will with no small amount of wariness. “Just– okay, I’m definitely bringing you flowers, and–”

“Mike,” Will groans, but he couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice if he tried. “You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, here.”

“No, you don’t get it.” Mike shakes his head, and reaches up to brush a stray lock of hair out of Will’s eyes. “I’ve been planning our first date in my head for years, okay?”

“For– we’ve only been dating two months!”

Mike’s expression does not falter. “Yeah. I know.”

This time, Will is the one who breathes out, steady and slow and a bit overwhelmed in a heady, warm way. “Oh.”

“So,” Mike continues, unfazed. “I’m buying you flowers and that’s that.”

“Yeah, okay,” Will says, a bit faintly. “I like tulips.”

Mike grins and kisses him on the nose. “Done. Whatever you want.”

“Okay, wait,” Will says, before the warm, fuzzy feeling can take over his brain completely– “Just– just my mom, though. Can we hold off on telling everyone else? Just for a little while?”

“Like I said,” Mike says easily, “whatever you want, Will.” He pauses. “I mean, I’m like ninety percent sure they all already know. But yeah. We can just let them– um. They can just stew in it for a while, that’s fine.”

“I like having you to myself sometimes,” Will admits. “And I want to do all that stuff with you in front of them, but it’s like– you’re my thing, you know? And I just want you to myself for a little while longer. Is that bad?”

At this, Mike does pull him back in, arms wrapped around Will’s waist. One hand comes up to the back of Will’s head, carding lightly through his hair. “You’re my thing too,” he says softly. “Plus,” he adds, yawning quietly, “I like having a dirty little secret. It’s fun.”

Will rolls his eyes, even though Mike can’t see him. “They totally already know, Mike. We ditched them in the living room to sleep in my bed.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“Go back to sleep,” Will whispers. “We’ll deal with that in the morning.”

“Technically, it is–”

“Sleep, Mike.”

“Okay.”