Archive of Our Own

Will is no stranger to being called weak.

Not that he ever actively tried to deny it—he was not that keen on defending himself, even after all these years, thank you very much—but the predicament he finds himself in right now might be able to prove his utter weakness to even the most well-intentioned person on this earth.

“You guys are down for tomorrow, right?”, Dustin asks, snapping Will out of his thoughts momentarily. Blinking rapidly, he redirects his eyes from where they have been preoccupied observing strands of black hair sprawling around the sofa near his leg. “I mean, it’s the last high school party, you know? Like, proper.”

“And we never went as a whole group!”, Lucas nods along, grinning at Dustin as he speaks. Will briefly catches himself thinking they might have planned this conversation beforehand, the way they so perfectly finish each other’s sentences. The smile’s wiped off Lucas’ face, however, as he continues. “This is our last opportunity before… you know. We—”

A cacophony of groans fills the room—which just happens to be Mike’s basement, as always.

“Really, Lucas?”, Max huffs, not looking up from where she is still braiding El’s hair. The two of them are sitting on the carpet in front of the television, the movie the party put on in the background long forgotten. “Always the sentimentalist.”

Will bites his lip nervously. Although Lucas might be playing it up a little sometimes to be convincing (or, as Mike or Max would put it playfully, emotionally manipulative), Will knows he was right. While graduating high school got Will one step closer to escaping the hell of a town Hawkins was, it does also inevitably lead to the group having to part ways—only location-wise, of course. At least, that is what Will hopes.

The sound of Mike clearing his throat reminds Will of the still on-going conversation about the party. Right, the upcoming party.

Mike is situated on the floor as well, leaning his back against the front of the sofa Will happens to rest on. He watches as Mike’s fingers fidget around absentmindedly with a hair tie, one he fetched from Max and El a few hours ago, right when they started braiding each other’s hair. Honestly, Will is surprised it is still intact, given the way Mike repeatedly loops it around his index fingers before stretching it into oblivion.

The way Mike’s gaze is fixed onto the ceiling, his head laying right next to where Will’s leg is resting, Will cannot help but fixate on his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down ever so slightly as he speaks. Right— Mike speaks. He’s saying something. Maybe Will should get his head out of the clouds and listen, then.

“I mean, it’s your call”, Mike says, turning his head to Will, whose glance has travelled up from his throat to the mouth the words escaped from.

Oh.

Of course, Mike insists on making it Will’s choice.

See, Will has somehow managed to dodge every single high school party his friends went to. Homework, it was one day, Call with Jonathan, it was the other. And for some reason he has been unable to figure out, Mike also kept stating reasons to not come along every single time after going without Will once. “I don’t know”, he replied when Will asked him why, “It was just not that much fun. You didn’t miss anything.”

Mike is known to wear his heart on his sleeve however, and he has never been never a good liar. If Will didn’t know any better, he would assume Mike had somehow figured out Will’s pattern of being busy every single time. And perhaps he somehow concluded Will is uncomfortable with the prospect of going to a high school party. And perhaps he understood Will’s excuses were, well, that, excuses most of the time, and perhaps that’s why he would give out some of his own excuses to instead radio Will during the evenings.

Or perhaps—Will is foolish. Delusional, even. God forbid one is in love.

Whatever it is, leaving it to Will to decide whether to go to the party or not is so Mike. And so the reason this is the boy he fell in love with. While something that resembles hope is framing the rest of the group’s faces, Mike’s facial features manage to remain relatively neutral, if not for his brows furrowing slightly, similar to how they move when he is contemplating something. Maybe he is not aware—at least, Will really wants to believe he is not— but Mike Wheeler quite literally possesses the power to persuade Will without even saying a single word. So, the fact that he sits there patiently in front of the sofa, waiting for Will’s call instead, makes his chest feel rather warm.

“Uhm, Will, man? You good?”, he hears Dustin say.

Well. Will sincerely hopes Dustin would not take it personal if one day he was made aware of how often Will spaces out as he speaks. After all, it’s not personal, like, at all. Will is just tired. Perhaps also tired of the topic of high school parties coming up regularly, although it is presumably the last time, as an inner voice sounding very much like Lucas reminds him.

The warmth pooling around his heart crawls up his neck as he feels his cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “Oh.”

Will scans Mike’s features, which are unfortunately still kept politely neutral, hoping to catch a glimpse of what he is truly thinking. No matter how Will decides to spend his evening, he is sure Mike would stay with him one way or the other. Usually, the assumption would make his heart flutter in happiness at the blatant reminder of how much Mike cares for Will to prioritize him like this.

But it really is the last possible day for the entirety of the group to go together, and Will would not allow Mike to miss out on that just because he is slightly uncomfortable at the prospect of being part of a bunch of barely-adult strangers, cramped in a house, getting drunk, making out, you name it.

So, yeah, in moments like this, it dawns on Will why people call him weak. Because the lengths he would go for Mike Wheeler are unexplored in their entirety, but if you were to ask Will, they are perhaps limitless. What are a few hours to spend in a slightly uncomfortable predicament if he can spend the entirety of them with the boy beside him, still sitting on the ground and staring up at Will through his eyelashes?

He hears Max clear her throat, the loud noise in the silent room making El giggle softly.

Right. He is spacing out, again. “Of course we will go”, Will feels himself say before he can ponder any longer. Focusing on willing the growing unease in his chest away, he directs his attention instead onto the party’s reactions, almost feeling the room light up with the smiles radiating off his friends’ faces. If his attendance is making his friends this happy, he surely just made the right decision.

“Did you just say ‘Of course’?”, Lucas smirks. “After literally finding a new reason not to go the last seven times we asked you to come along?”

As Will tries to come up with of a defense, his attention is instead drawn to Mike, who shoot up to his feet from where he sat moments ago. If his shirt rides up slightly while he stretches and Will’s focus shifts onto the sliver of skin exposed at his waist, no one has to know.

God, he is hopeless.

Mike claps his hands together to get the party’s attention, and Will finds himself to be very grateful all of a sudden. “Alright, alright, everyone, let’s pack it up. I have to get up early tomorrow to get Holly to school.”

“Sounds like a you-problem”, Max mutters under her breath sarcastically, but gets up to remove the empty snack bowls off the table.

Will is watching the figures of his friends’ bicycles put more distance between them as he pulls on the zipper of his bag.

“See you tomorrow”, Will says to Mike, before turning his head to follow Dustin, Lucas, Max and El where they went ahead.

“Wait, Will”, Mike’s voice drops to the soft, gentle tone he spoke in when he is solely addressing Will. Whether he does it on purpose or not, Will still is not sure—either way, Max teasingly referred to it as Mike’s Will-voice years ago. Despite all of his previous efforts to deny the existence of such thing, because—why the hell would Mike do that and does it mean anything—he quickly realized Max’ was right. Not that he told her any of that, of course: she would never let him live that down.

“You sure about tomorrow?”, Mike asks once Will looks up from his bike handles.

Oh. “Why wouldn’t I be?”, Will responds absently, trying very hard to ignore the intensity of the eyes he felt on his face. Sue him for being a hypocrite when he mentioned Mike being a bad liar earlier, as he is not faring much better in that field. Nothing Mike has to know.

He does, however, seem to know something, as his eyes drift to Will’s fingers, which are darting around the bell on his bicycle. Whoops.

“You know, it’s okay if you’re not”, Mike simply notes, as if it ever is that simple. “Sure, that is. We will be together for the entirety of it, and if you are not feeling well, we will just go home, alright? I’ll probably be the designated driver anyway. If we go earlier, the others can ask Steve or Robin to fetch them. I don’t mind.”

Will can’t even find it in himself to be mad at the heat he felt rise up in his cheeks. How could he not have fallen for this boy, if he keeps saying sweet things like this—so casually, too—letting him know how far he is willing to go to make exceptions for Will? He feels himself grinning before he knows any better. “Okay”, he agrees. “Thanks, Mike.”

“Sure”, Mike smiles back. “See you tomorrow, then? Radio me once you are home.”

Will nods as he moves to properly sit on the saddle of his bike. He can’t really remember a time he was not appreciative of Mike’s protective nature. But the sentiment feels more forceful than ever, on nights like these, when he is left to stare at Mike’s face illuminated by the front porch lamp as he waves Will goodbye.

It was a seven. The Demogorgon, it got me.

Will on his bike, being the last one to bid Mike farewell in front of his house, after the party hung out in his basement until it was dark; The scenario was familiar. Too familiar, perhaps.

Squeezing his eyes shut momentarily, Will tries to diminish the memory forcing itself vividly onto the back of his eyelids. Henry is gone, defeated for good years ago, he reminds himself. He would not be able to take him again. The only part of Will’s life he is still able to claim is his dreams on restless nights, after which he would shoot up in his bed, face soaked of a disgusting mixture of sweat and tears and hands clawing at the sheets in terror, lips formed around a terrified silent scream he somehow managed to learn how to suppress himself from emitting. He can only wake up his entire household at night so often before he feels bad and starts to self-compromise, okay?

“Sure. See you tomorrow”, Will finally says, before he does something really stupid. Like, ask Mike if he can sleepover in his basement tonight or maybe even worse—fall asleep to the steady rise and fall of Mike’s chest around Will’s back as he did when they shared a bed in the apocalypse years ago. As they held each other at night. Spooned, or whatever. It had literally been the apocalypse, and a few months after Mike had broken up with El, alright? Mike was probably just scared, as one should be in the apocalypse. Or perhaps touch-starved. Will decides not to think more of it. He did not ponder on it then, and he certainly would not start now. Should not start ever, even. Even with Henry gone, he is still at the risk of losing his sanity if he entertains the thought for too long.

The thought of what it might have meant for Mike to be the one interlocking their hands regularly, working his way up from shaking fingers brushing his on the first few nights until he was able to clutch Will’s hand like a lifeline every single night.

“Is this okay?”, Mike whispered on the first night it happened, his words—and mostly, the meaning Will attested to them—still way too loud in the quiet of the bedroom. Surely not any louder than the ever-accelerating pumping of his heart though, which he was convinced would jump out of his chest any minute now. If this gentle touch was the reason he would finally be put in the ground after somehow surviving being possessed and literally being burnt alive, that was Mike’s problem to explain to their families and friends.

Will felt himself nod to Mike’s question still lingering in his mind, the speed of his head moving up and down most likely giving his nervousness away. He was not able to trust his mouth to form coherent words, not really, not when he felt more than saw Mike’s trembling fingers graze his hand he had placed near his own chest. But why would Mike’s fingers tremble? Surely, the darkness was just playing a trick on his eyes. Before he could even think about asking—whatever he would even ask—Mike’s shaking fingers tenderly squeezed their way between Will’s, interlacing them on the mattress.

Oh, okay. So they were holding hands now.

Will tried just about everything—well, everything he could while being spooned by the literal love of his life, mind you—to calm his heart somehow, being convinced Mike would sense his almost concerningly fast heart rate about any minute now. Mike, or perhaps the universe, or perhaps both of these things melted together in Will’s brain a long time ago, decided not to have any mercy on him whatsoever, not when Mike stroked his thumb up and down ever so slightly on Will’s knuckles, the movement so faint Will could almost convince himself he was imagining the entirety of it.

Then he had felt it. A regular sequence tapped on the back of his hand, one that could only signify a message for him to decipher.

H-E-R-E.

The tenderness of the gesture almost caught Will off-guard.

“Good night, Will”, Mike simply mumbled into Will’s hair crown, as if those words would explain everything—anything, really—that happened in the span of the last few minutes—last few days, weeks, months, years, the last decade even. The warmth of Mike’s breath on top of his head was the only indication this was actually happening. The only indication that being held like this was not part of a dream, cruelly waiting for the feeling of safety to set into Will’s bones before the scenario would turn into another agonizing nightmare, the beautifully grounding interlacement of their limbs becoming a heavy weight as they move to suffocate him instead, drawing the air out of his lungs, the strangulation robbing Will of the ability to breathe—

None of that happened. The steady tapping on his knuckles managed to keep his mind grounded and light, guiding him into sleep strangely easy. And if he felt Mike’s lips press a soft kiss on top of his head, most likely in wishful thinking as pretending to sleep turned into actual somber, he did not question it.

Will stomps his feet onto his bike’s pedals rather forcefully before his thoughts are able to wander any further and rides into the night.

Will registers the familiar sound of Mike’s car rolling onto the driveway of their house as he clutches the telephone in his hand, tracing the pattern of the wallpaper in front of him absentmindedly.

“—and honey, most importantly, have fun! And if you don’t feel safe—“, his mother continues.

Will suppresses a sigh. Of course, he understands why the fear is taking over his mom every single time he does something normal, like finishing their D&D campaign in Mike’s basement late at night, or does something that should feel more normal than it does to Will just now, like going to a party. Still, he cannot help but cringe at being babied like this sometimes, especially while knowing none of his friends receive even remotely similar treatment from their parents. It reminds him of memories he urges to forget, being the object of worrying, disgusted, horrified glances, from strangers and loved ones alike, of Zombie Boy and of Freak and— he is not that fragile anymore, alright? He survived being stuck in an alternate dimension for a week when he was twelve, he can handle a god-damn high school party at eighteen.

“If I don’t feel safe, I’ll ask Mike to take me home”, he finishes her sentence, trying to hide the irritation in his voice. Will knows she only means well, after all, and she cares. “I know, mom. Say hello to Jonathan and Hop’ from me. I have to go.”

It does feel weird to leave a house so absent of noise, as Will got used to it buzzing with energy and joy with El and Hopper living with them for a few years now. Today however, El went to Max a few hours prior to get ready together, and with his mom and Hopper visiting Jonathan at his college, he only had music to keep him accompany during the silence. Well, he is not about to complain about the opportunity of blasting The Cure as loudly as he wanted to while he had tried to assemble together his outfit for the night. It is just unfamiliar.

“Alright, honey”, his mom’s words form around what Will assumed was a smile. “I love you, okay?”

“Yeah. I love you too”, Will returns as he hangs up the telephone before making his way to the shoe rack.

With every step he takes towards the car parked in front of his house, he feels the distress in his stomach growing exponentially. This uneasiness clawing at his insides makes him angry more than anything else, annoys him even. He is used to feeling anxious, despite the few hints of self-confidence he developed over the years. Saving the world does have its benefits for personal growth, apparently. So, being— what, scared? —scared at the idea of attending a party out of all things after literally surviving the end of the world, it just makes his cheeks flush with embarrassment. If someone were to ask him, Will would say he has no idea what he is even afraid of at the prospect of spending the evening together with his friends—well, he has a small idea. But that cannot be it, right?

Most of this anxiety is however momentarily forgotten as he opens the passenger door to lock eyes with Mike.

Mike, who looks—good, okay? Too good, even.

Now, it’s not that Will is claiming to be a great objective judge when it comes to Mike, because he is perhaps slightly biased. Point a gun to his head, and he will admit Mike always looks attractive, stunning, beautiful—whatever, he is not supposed to be the writer out of the two of them. And fine, maybe you would not even have to point a gun to his temple for him to admit these things out loud. Point being, Will finds himself charmed by every version of Mike he has ever witnessed, committing all of them to memory (even if he only has gotten a small glimpse of Mike-Wheeler-in-his-pajamas-with-a-toothpaste-stain-right-next-to-his-mouth), and perhaps also letting them inhabit various pages of his sketchbooks.

But the Mike in front of him right now— Maybe he just became Will’s reason to put the large unused canvas he got for his last birthday to use, he has been indecisively looking for a motive to paint anyway, because filling out even the remaining 39 pages of his current sketchbook with studies of this Mike would not be doing him justice in the slightest.

After spontaneously chopping a good amount of his hair off during the apocalypse (“for practicality”, he said), Mike finally got around to grow it out proper, not really bearing resemblance to what it looked like during the spring break in California. And don’t get him wrong, Will loved that hair. Perhaps delirious from hot weather and days and nights spent in forced proximity in the backseat of a pizza van, Will contemplated way too often how he could convince Mike to let him run his fingers through his hair without actually asking, because he knows that was a weird thing to want from your best friend, alright? He is not an idiot. His hair just looked so— touchable.

What had been a texture resembling waves at most back in the day has now been replaced by a mop of more defined curls, the overbearing mess of spirals bouncing with each movement of Mike’s head. (And he moves a lot. He is Mike, after all.) And yes, the curls are gorgeous, of course they are, but thankfully Will has gotten used to the look of them by now. Although he still has not gotten over the urge to run his fingers through them, but if he’s honest, he does not think he ever will.

However, what he is not used to, was how said hair is worn today. Will recognizes the yellow hair tie from yesterday when Mike stretched it around his fingers, except it now is in his hair, twisted around something resembling a bun sitting at the crown of his head.

Mike Wheeler is wearing a half-up bun, and it is the most gorgeous thing Will ever laid his eyes on.

“Hi”, Will finally blurts out, voice breathless as if he just ran from his front door to Mike’s car instead of approaching it tentatively like he did.

“I told you it looks ridiculous, Mike”, Dustin jokes, laughing at Will’s expression, which probably still displays his shock in earnest. Or maybe, something else he feels at the sight in front of him, but he sincerely doubts Dustin can read that off his face. “Come on, man, we don’t want to be late.”

Despite Will’s brain still struggling to catch up, he is luckily able to take the hint.

Lucas snorts, “Ridiculous? Dustin Henderson, you are talking ridiculous with the nest you wore at the Snow Ball—“

“First of all, Lucas, that is, what, five years ago now, and second of all—"

“Does it really look that bad?”, Mike mutters seemingly to himself, the insecure tone in his voice not even slightly concealed as he pulls out of the parking lot. Or perhaps, Will is just observative when it comes to Mike.

He feels his own eyebrows furrow in confusion, though. Insecure at what? “What looks bad?”

“Dude, his hair. Did you not see?”, Lucas speaks from the backseat, cutting their usual banter short. “What else were you staring at him for?”

Oh. Will feels his face redden. “I don’t think it looks bad”, he mumbles.

“Really?”, Mike wonders, and if he is trying to lace his voice with a tone of indifference, he is failing miserably.

“Yeah”, Will says, smiling, locking eyes with him now. Mike’s face expression feels so raw—the bun prevents his hair from falling into his face as it usually does. The lack of face-framing curls exposes his facial features in a new way, and Will already feels elated at the opportunity of searching Mike’s face for new freckles to commit to memory. “It looks good.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself”, Mike grins slightly now, one eyebrow darting up slightly, and Will can quite literally track the way Mike’s eyes moves around his face, finally pausing to fixate to somewhere right below his nose, although that really does not make sense. Strange. And also, a dangerous observation hastily stuffed into the part of Will’s brain he regularly swears himself to stay far, far away from.

Dustin clears his throat. “Right, no offense”, he starts, “but we will most likely end up looking bad if you put us through a car accident on the way there, so, if you could please pay attention to the road, Mike.”

Mike turns his head to the road, clicking his tongue in faux annoyance, but Will can see his eyes sparkling as the corners of his mouth curled up slightly. That’s a win in his book.

“Directions, Lucas?”, Mike asks as he drums his fingers on the steering wheel repeatedly. “Not everyone knows where your cool basketball friends live.”

“Whoa, petty”, Lucas exclaims from the backseat, but sits up in his seat to give directions with a huge grin displayed on his face.

Will ends up smiling to himself as well, infected by the good mood of his friends. Maybe the night will not go that badly after all.

Except maybe it will.

He is not really sure where exactly it went wrong.

Maybe the unease he has felt tugging at his insides since yesterday evening has never been banished fully, just found a place well enough to hide for Will to gloss over it, similar to how he himself had hidden in the Upside Down all these years ago to survive, perhaps exactly the way he had hidden his entire life from— from what, exactly?

Or maybe it went wrong when the fact that he himself is wrong was finally recognized by his best friend, raindrops and tears obscuring the vision, but never erasing the memory of how the face of the boy he loved twisted in something he recognized as disgust. It’s not my fault you don’t like girls! The heavy rain around them was not able to dampen the impact of the words in the slightest, the echo of the phrase still ringing in his ears regularly— will the echo ever stop?

Or maybe it was never right in the first place, ever since It was a seven and The Demogorgon, it got me or maybe even way before— perhaps when Jonathan’s music was unable to completely muffle the sound of bottles breaking and the voice of his father’s infinitely raised voice, slurring around words Will has never been explicitly told the meaning of, but somehow deducted.

Or maybe—

“Will?”

A hand grazes his shoulder softly, but Will still turns around in panic, he must have given himself whiplash at this point, expecting— what is he expecting, really? Being hit across the face by a bottle, swallowed by what seems to be the ground whole again, banished into another dimension, or a Demogorgon creeping up on him, disconnecting his overwhelming brain from the rest of his body by severing his head from—

Foolishly, Will thinks any of those scenarios might have been easier to deal with than the sight of Mike’s face twisting in something he recognized as worry, his eyes darting all over what Will assumes is his own horrified face expression. “You’re alright? What’s wrong?”

Me, Will wants to say.

“Nothing”, he hears himself saying instead.

Mike worries his lower lip in a way that feels achingly familiar, and Will knows in an instance that his words were not believable enough. But that just means he will refuse to give Mike time to ponder about it. “Come on, let’s find the others”, Will suggests.

He looks around trying to find their friends, not even sure where they lost each other in the crowd, but then remembers why he zoned out in the first place.

They have only been here for half an hour, probably, even though time distorted into what felt like multiple hours of agonizingly loud music hammering in his eardrums long time ago, songs blending together in a way that makes it hard for Will to recognize any of them properly.

This issue does not seem to arise for the people around him, however, most of which he does not recognize. Their heads thrown back in laughter, or blending together in sloppy kisses, or moving back and forth, left and right, up and down, messily singing along to the music. Their limbs flow together like various spots of colors overlapping similarly to the way Will mixes his paints on his canvases. If he blinks quick enough, the blotches of color move around like an impressionist painting, he always had a soft spot for those. Their arms—

“There they are”, Mike’s voice calls out. What is able to break Will briefly out of his daze, though, are the fingers cautiously curling around his left wrist. “Come on.”

This makes sense, he supposes. If they were not holding onto each other somehow, they would get lost in the crowd. Mike’s hand feels like an anchor around the sea of limbs, laughter and cries around them, and Will is convinced if he lets go before they make it to the shore he will succumb to the noise and painfully drown in the vastness of it. And although Will wouldn’t mind removing himself from this situation, he is not keen on actually drowning to escape it. So, naturally, Will moves Mike’s fingers from where they are still holding his wrist, and redirects them onto his left hand instead.

Mike seems to get the intention immediately, interlocking their hands in a way that became familiar over the years, because no matter how rare the touch is, it is memorable, his fingerprints probably imprinted all over his brain at this point. As he glances back at Will for a second, as if to make sure he is alright, Mike shoots him a smile before looking back into the direction he is walking them towards.

From where Will’s feet are carrying him through the crowd, his eyes naturally fixate on the steady presence in front of him. Finally, he is able to observe the back of Mike’s head in greater detail. Will feels overwhelmed by the need to know more about the bun sitting on top of his head, wishing he got to see how Mike pulled his hair up to tug it through the hair tie. Was he happy with his first try, or was his frustration growing after multiple attempts at nailing the hairstyle, causing him to pull his hair in frustration like he often does? Or—

Suddenly Mike halts his steps, causing Will to almost crash into him. Oh. Reluctantly detaching his gaze from Mike’s head, he glares past his shoulders where he finds his friends, standing around a kitchen table hosting a huge punch bowl.

“You guys got lost already?”, Max taunts in true Max fashion. “Come on, we’ve been waiting.”

He looks around the half-circle his friends stand in, locking eyes with Lucas, who has been staring pointedly at his left hand with a raised eyebrow, not awfully disgusted, but simply questioning, confused. Oh.

Will quickly disconnects his hand from where Mike has seemingly been tapping on the back of it, which went unnoticed until—well, now. Whether the tapping was mindless or letters intended for Will to decipher, he will never know. Hopefully Mike will be understanding of how this was not the best moment to attempt subtle communication, not with the way Will is struggling to even catch a coherent thought flying around his brain.

Belatedly, he notices he has been making eye contact with El as he scans the faces of his friends. He can see the evidence of her and Max getting ready together all over her face: her eyelids are decorated with purple glitter eyeshadow, which make her brown eyes pop in a really nice way.

“Hi, Will”, she waves at him, which is also really nice, all pure smiles and joy, and Will thinks maybe everything could be alright one day. Of course, Will waves back, even if his wave is unfortunately lacking the energy El’s displayed.

“Well, we’re here now”, he replies to Max’ earlier comment, staring at the punch bowl in front of him, more specifically, at the way the red liquid inside appears to orbit around the edges of the bowl, spinning endlessly—

“Will, you want some?”, Lucas asks, pointing to where he has been stirring the liquid with a ladle, grinning in a way that could almost be described as mischievously. Will supposes it is fair to assume he has been staring at the bowl in interest, if for the way he got lost in the spinning motion.

Before he can think of an answer, though, he spots Mike stepping closer to the table from the corner of his eye. “Hey, isn’t that supposed to be sort of strong?”, Mike says, looking around the group questioningly.

“Nah, it’s usually fine if you don’t chug it down too fast”, Max shrugs, as Dustin moves his hands to the stack of red cups next to it. “Mike’s the driver, so Lucas, Max, El— Oh and, obviously, you don’t have to drink, Will. If you don’t want to.”

Now, that is strange. Is there reason to assume he wouldn’t want to? The way Dustin lists all of their names, why would Will be the odd one out, why would his name not fit into the enumeration of people who are normal and not afraid of the bright, red, fun liquid glaring at him in provocation, the color stinging in his eyes like a warning sign? Being babied, picked up earlier than his friends from everywhere, only receiving pitying, disgusted glances, being a freak and a—

“No, I’d like to try”, he shrugs. “Last high school party, right?”

Will tries his best to ignore the glance shot at him somewhere from his left, but that proves to be rather difficult. After all, Mike’s stare feels heavier than usual for some reason.

So does the red plastic cup in his hand. It just contains punch, Will knows, because he has done nothing but stare at his own reflection in the cup after El passed it onto him a while ago. The drink is not supposed to feel like it holds the massive weight of years of hiding, spoken and unspoken words, running from things that want to see him dead, but mostly running from himself.

If anyone noticed he has not taken a single sip from it yet, they choose to remain silent about it.

“Alright, we will—“, Dustin points at the free beer pong table. “You guys coming?”

Will really does not feel like moving any more than shaking his head to reject the offer, so he does just that. With everything in his vision shifting the way it does, it probably is the best idea to stay behind and lean on the counter, feigning nonchalance. Or at least, his pathetic attempt at seeming casual despite his inner turmoil at— at what, exactly?

“Mike?”, Lucas calls, but Mike is already holding up his hand. “I’m good. You guys knock yourselves out.”

“And we will”, he hears someone say, and then they disappear into the crowd. Will hopes all of them were good swimmers, because it quite literally looks like the sea of people swallowed them whole.

It is quiet for a few minutes. Well, as silent as it could be with the music blasting over their heads, so it is really just Mike who is being quiet. Until—

“Penny for your thoughts?”, Mike says, glancing at him from where he is sitting on the kitchen counter.

And against his better judgement, Will opens his mouth. “You don’t have to stay with me.”

Something like hurt or confusion flashes over Mike’s face briefly, or maybe it is both of these things, or maybe it is none of them, because maybe Will is not to be trusted at making accurate observations about anything right now, if the way the splotches still dance around his vision means anything. “What?”

Will winces. What was it he said earlier about wanting to appear casual?

“I mean, you can go have fun too. You don’t have to hover around me.”

Then, Mike appears to be deep in thought, and when he opens his mouth, what comes out is unusually quiet, almost making him seem too vulnerable given the setting. “Do you want me to leave?”

“No!”, Will counters, and the urgency in his voice makes it come across more desperate than intended, perhaps as desperate as he feels, in fact, but at least it melts Mike’s frown away, so that has to count for something. “It’s just— last high school party, this and that. You don’t have to spend it glued to my side.”

To his short-lived relief, Mike’s smile returns, even if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “Where else would I go, Will? Why do you think I only came along once?”

Oh. Luckily Will’s mouth does not betray him this time, because he is not willing to face the consequences for what words would have escaped it. Perhaps something along the lines of “Despite all my efforts to not read into literally everything you do, I might have assumed you never went here more than once because you wanted to use those evenings to hang out with me instead, and now I realize how stupid and delusional my assumption was, because of course the logical conclusion should have been that you just do not like high school parties, and you definitely do not like me, at least not in the way I like you, and even considering you might was stupid, stupid, stupid, just like falling for you in the first place was stupid, and—"

Yeah, that would not be a great thing to say.

Looking up, he sees a girl refilling her plastic cup. Right. That is also a way to stop himself from talking right now.

Will finally raises the cup he holds in his right hand to his lips, slightly trembling as he does so. This seems to get Mike’s attention for some reason, but Will decides not to think more of it, not think at all, in fact, as he tentatively takes a sip.

He knows it tastes of something—of too much, in fact, the different fruit flavors blending together in his mouth, the sweetness of it almost feeling explosive—but all he can focus on was the bubble of anxiety he has continuously tried to turn a blind eye to throughout the day, and the way it feels like it expands further and further until he is sure it will be all his body consisted of.

“So, what do you think?”, Mike asks him after a while. Or maybe immediately afterwards. Will is not really sure, given what he just said about making accurate observations and all.

“Not bad”, Will shrugs, hoping Mike’s question is about the taste of the drink and not anything else, and immediately takes another sip, just to busy himself from having to say anything else.

Even through the daze he finds himself in, Will can see how this situation is awkward. It is not that the two of them are not used to silence. In fact, they often share the same space and quiet, each of them up to something else: most of the time, it is Will with a sketchbook in his lap, pretending his drawing reference is not sprawled out on the sofa right in front of him, and Mike, engrossed in a comic book or chewing on his pen while he comes up with new ideas for his upcoming campaign.

This silence however is nothing short of cringeworthy. It is almost like he can hear Mike’s brain trying to come up with things to say, or ask perhaps, but he just refuses to verbalize any of them for some reason, and Will finds himself hoping it would stay that way.

And before he knows it, not that he knows anything, really, because he is still clueless on how much time had passed, Will manages to drain the entirety of his cup. He is not really sure he got to acknowledge the taste at all, but it is probably not supposed to be about the taste in the first place, so it is whatever.

“Hey, take it slow, alright?”, Mike says as Will makes a move to push his body off the counter, but finds himself stumbling forward instead. “How are you feeling?”

Oh.

And Will does not have the faintest idea what exactly it is, by the end, that finally bursts the bubble in his chest. His bet is between the hand on his shoulder, the loud noise of a bottle, or perhaps a glass, breaking somewhere on the dance-floor, or the most recent thing Mike asked. How are you feeling? Where is he supposed to even start, stuck between feeling nothing and everything at once?

If Will had known what it was in the end, perhaps he could have prevented the way the disgust and the hatred and the fear and the disappointment and the vastness of everything and the constrictiveness of nothingness escape from the hideaway and spread everywhere, entering his blood-stream, claiming every part of him, claiming him—

“Will?”

He feels his own hand clutch at his chest, in desperation, desperate for—for air, perhaps, or the pressure of his fingers at his throat are the last feasible attempt at stopping the dread from taking over his body and washing over his mind, afraid of losing control to the feeling, similarly to how he lost control when—

“Shit, Will, hey, hey, just breathe.”

Will really is weak, because he will never be able to resist Mike’s soft-spoken inquiries, even on what feels like his death bed, though he is not laying down, so he supposes the logistics of dying this way are questionable, can you die while standing without tumbling onto the ground, actually, he is uncertain, but he has a feeling he is just about to find out with the way his heartrate accelerates into oblivion.

The motion of his eyes fluttering open actually strikes Will with the realization he is not able to remember closing them in the first place, and then he wonders what else he cannot remember, and then he tries to think of what he possibly could have forgotten before, and then he remembers too much, and then he wishes he could just forget everything he ever remembered, forget everything he ever knew—

Despite the blurring edges of his vision, Will does not fail to recognize the worry planted on Mike’s expression all over, and then the lights invade his vision, different hues blending together in a way that would be interesting to observe in an artistic manner, but now just push the dread to press onto his stomach violently, and then it crawls up his throat, or wait, that is the bile, and oh, maybe he needs to get that out, but he has been trying to get the unease out of his body since he found the first trace of it, perhaps when he was seven, or eight, and it never fully vanished, so whose to say he did not become one with it, perhaps merged together all those years ago?

Distantly, Will catches the sound of a pathetic, painfully wrenched out whine, and he wondered who is in pain, and if he should help them, could be of any help for anyone at all, even, and then he notices that the sound has emerged from his own throat, but that is surely not what he sounds like, like Will Byers, so he has to assume whatever it was that spread across his limbs has already found his way into his brain, ate him alive, and he finally lost control and succumbed to this dreadful twinge inside of his body, and oh god, Mike does not know, and what if he attacks him, grabs him by the throat and chokes him like he did with his own mother all those years ago?

But how can he warn Mike, if he is not even able to remember how to form words, and now he is going to die, but worst of all, he is going to take Mike with him, and he will do just about anything to stop that from happening.

Will feels his own arms dart forward, his spread-out palms pushing whatever it was in front of him far, far, away, with a force he did not know still has space to reside inside of his limbs. It is better this way; he simply cannot afford hurting anyone, because, oh, what if this form of possession is contagious and he will overtake everyone, just about everyone around him? Hive-mind, he will become part of the hive-mind again, or maybe he already is, so—

So—Will’s legs decide then and there that they have to carry him out of the kitchen he still stands in, finding what he assumes was an exit far, far away from the crowd, because what if he runs through the sea of people and passes whatever is wrong with him onto someone else, so his legs speed up and he almost runs into the glass door he now comes face to face with, if not for someone opening it in time, and that person surely says something, because something that sounds like annoyance flies past his ear, and maybe he should apologize, but he is not sure he can even trust himself to do anything except sprint, sprint away from the party, the punch bowl, the group of strangers, his friends, his best friend who he must have hurt by pushing him a little too forcefully onto the ground, or a wall, he never checked where he landed, but it is alright, because surely Mike will understand why he had to do it, once he will find out Will is possessed again, similar to how he was the first one to understand when Will was a spy, a liar, a traitor—

Before he knows it, he is kneeling on the ground, hands grasping at what feels like blades of grass beneath his fingertips, but it seems maybe he never exited the party, the loudness of the music and party and the hollering still rings in his ears, and maybe this is some sort of out-of-body-experience and in reality, he is still standing in that kitchen, but the most important thing: Not that he checked in thorough detail, but it seems he is occupying this patch of grass all by himself, he is not risking putting anyone in danger, he will not become that again, a spy, a liar, a traitor—

Will does not know what comes first, or maybe it happens at the same time, his own panting growing increasing louder to his own ears until something shoves his way past his mouth, out of his body, all while a trembling hand brushes his hair back, detaching it from where it has been plastered on his forehead, drenched in sweat.

Picking up his own sounds of gagging and retching and—oh, Will really is throwing up—the variety of noises drawn out of his own body makes his brain hurt for some reason, so Will is appreciative of the way his own hands shoot to the sides of his head. Even through his own shaking hands covering his ears rather forcefully, he is able to make out a voice speaking next to him, voice sounding soft in an attempt to soothe, but panic painfully obvious, although Will is struggling to discern any words, and maybe he does not have to, because he has no way to reply anyways.

Covering his ears, however, only manages to increase the volume of his internal sounds, somehow, and he half-mindedly expects the next thing he will hear to be the sound of a slug falling onto the grass, finding its way out of his stomach onto the ground. His own pants become shorter, and shorter, and— so Will moves his fingers to pull at his own hair instead, the pain of twinging his strands between his fingers is a clever, but given his luck, probably futile attempt at distracting him from the pain shooting up literally everywhere else in his body.

Whatever bile it is he ejects out of his body, it just keeps coming, and what if it will never stop, and what if when his stomach is finally spent and empty, he will move on to throwing up his insides, and maybe that will be the only way to feel right again, but at this very moment, the taste of disgust in his mouth feels nothing but wrong, so what does he even know?

Someone smarter than him would have counted the seconds, maybe, or kept track of time somehow, but when Will heaves and notes the subsequent noise of expulsion is missing, it feels like it had been a really, really long time. Will blinks his eyes open, only to realize the suddenness of the motion might have been a mistake, because despite the darkness of the night, being able to see anything, really, it still overwhelms him as he stumbles backwards.

Instead of landing onto a patch of grass, his fall is cut short by what feels like the warmth of another body, and oh, Will is kind of cold, in contrast, and maybe that is because he likes it cold, oh—

“It’s okay, Will, you’re okay.”

Oh, that is the voice from before, and of course it was the voice of Mike, still is, and, why is he here, instead of staying where Will pushed him, far, far away from himself, because that is where he should have remained, instead of sitting here, one hand still brushing his hair back and the other, hovering just above his right hand—

“Hey, Will? Could you give me your hands?”

Will knows he is addressing him, but he still takes a while to make sense of the words spoken, they all seem to be entangled, twisted together, but his question is about what Will can give, and he would give Mike Wheeler just about anything if only it keeps him safe, safe from himself, even, so if it is only his hands he wanted, he could have them. Surely, he has already figured out the danger Will is, since Mike is smart, so very smart, and he will restrain his hands, and call the others for help, and they will lock him in the shed, tie him to the chair again—

But of course, Will is weak when it comes to Mike, so he lets go.

Immediately, some of the pain he could have sworn was about to split his head open subsides. And as he holds out his hands, removing them from his scalp—oh, he had still been pulling at his hair—his left hand drops somewhere behind him, resting on something he assumes is Mike’s leg, and his right hand is immediately being enveloped by a warmth painfully familiar. Blinking wearily, he realizes it is Mike’s fingers clutching his own.

“Good”, Mike exhales. “You’re doing well, okay?”

Mike’s quivering fingers—those, that are not preoccupied with clutching Will’s right hand like a lifeline—are still treading through his hair. The touch possesses a gentleness Will is not sure he has ever been the object of, and he cannot help but lean into the touch. This would be nice to fall asleep to, and if he closes his eyes long enough, maybe he can imagine he is back in Mike’s bedroom from three years ago, the warmth behind him now gut-wrenchingly familiar to the way Mike embraced his body and pulled it close back then.

Before he knows it, his head shifts further downwards, and downwards, until he rests on something warm. Will really did it, he really is back in Mike’s bedroom, resting on his bed. Will has to get as comfortable as he can before the dream comes to a violent end, so he shifts and—

The pillow moves slightly, for some reason, and oh, this is not a pillow. In fact, it is warmer than a pillow, and most importantly, Will realizes, it is Mike’s lap.

Perhaps unwisely, he tries to open his eyes to confirm this—and yes, these are indeed Mike’s wide eyes staring at him, indeed his fingers that are cradling his head and indeed his lap Will’s head is propped up against.

“Sorry”, Will forces out, his voice hoarse in a way he is unable to recognize. “’M sorry”, he mumbles again, just in case Mike is also confused where the sound came from, and he points to Mike’s lap in explanation. This entire predicament surely must be uncomfortable for Mike, and he is not only referring to the way Will was invading his personal space. Still, Will makes no move to actually get up, because frankly, he is not sure he would even be physically able to at this point.

“It’s okay”, Mike simply returns, and Will is confused, because how is any of this supposed to be okay? How is he ever supposed to be okay? “How are you feeling?”

Will huffs, the irony of the situation not lost on him. This was exactly what Mike asked before it all escalated in the way it did, the words are still echoing in his head, after all. Not that he is blaming Mike, this was bound to happen at some point, but Will would have preferred if it did not happen in the middle of the kitchen in a house he had never been at before. And never will again. Probably. Will is aware he has not managed to make the best first impression.

“Gross”, he croaks, cringing at the sound of his own voice. “Disgusting.”

And perhaps Mike knows Will is not only referring to the taste of vomit in his mouth.

Mike’s answer comes in a low hum, similarly to the sound he makes whenever he is deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. Even as the shadows of the night dart around the planes of his face and make it hard to decipher his expression, Mike is still a pretty sight to behold.

If this is the last thing he sees before he dies, maybe it will all be alright in the end after all. Even if it does not feel like death is breathing onto his neck in this immediate moment, Will still has to assume the worst, his life mostly consists of worst-case-scenarios after all. If this is his death-bed, so comfortable and soft and warm, and Mike’s lap, Mike, who is still wearing his endearing bun, then maybe Will would not mind waiting for death to take him.

“Like your hair”, Will’s voice cracks, and oh, he really said that out loud.

“What?”, Mike stammers, exhaling a nervous laughter. “What did you say?”

Well, fuck it. “Your hair”, he repeats against his better judgement. “It’s really pretty.”

Forget what Will said before about being unable to make out accurate observations at the moment. Despite what he wants to believe and despite the darkness they are surrounded by, he is very sure Mike is blushing right now, his cheeks reddening because of something Will said, and maybe he should not push his luck, but some barrier between his brain and mouth is missing, for some reason and—

“You are pretty.”

Mike’s lips part in something resembling utter shock, and Will sees the way his eyelashes flutter rapidly, as if to make sure this is really happening, and to be fair, Will is still not sure it really is, so he cannot really blame Mike for his disbelief.

“Wow, okay, so, you threw up a lot”, Mike fumbles around his words, tittering in a way Will found absolutely endearing. “So, I’m kind of surprised you’re still drunk. From, what? One cup of punch?”

“’M not drunk”, Will replies, almost annoyed at how Mike assumes he would only compliment him if he is out of it. And yes, he is out of it, sort of, but Mike would only need to flick through his sketchbooks to see hard evidence of the fact that Mike is always pretty to Will.

“Sure”, Mike simply says, smiling and his cheeks still painted in a pretty pink. Will tries his best to commit the color to memory so he can recreate and mix the color for the large canvas he was talking about earlier. “But seriously, are you okay?”

Oh. Okay. Okay.

Of course he is not okay, and this was just a pathetic, naïve, short-lived break from the claws of possession that will scratch his insides, again, sooner than later, so he should—

“Whoa, Will, slow down”, Will hears Mike say, but he can pay him no mind. What if he really throws up another slug, or what if he already started spreading the dread—

He scrambles his body away, as far as he can, given the magnetic pull Mike’s body has on him, and leans back on his hands. “What are you doing?”, Will gasps, hurrying backwards across the grass now.

Mike’s hand is still floating in the air where it soothed over Will’s head a few seconds ago, and Will already longs for the warmness, the softness, the gentleness, the lo— Will misses the touch, but he will miss Mike a lot more if he is buried six feet under, so this will have to do.

“I—I don’t know?”, Mike stammers. “Being there for you?”

“No.”

This time there is no mistaking the way the hurt drips all over Mike’s features. He is silent for a few seconds, seemingly thinking of what to say, to try to convince Will, perhaps, but then—

“Okay”, he mumbles, voice so unbelievably vulnerable Will could cry, except he already has been crying for a while, as he just notices. “Should I get El? I’d say I could call your mom, but—”

He already makes a move to get up, but no, that’s not— “No!”

Mike blinks. “Okay, Will, you are seriously giving me mixed signals here.”

Maybe that is the trigger, in the end. He will never be able to know for sure. “You—you want to talk about mixed signals?”

Oh. It feels like his own face contorts into the expression he saw on Mike’s face all those years ago, when the rain danced around them and It’s not my fault you don’t like girls! and Will, come on! and perhaps this is how Mike felt all this time ago.

The blatant hurt on Mike’s face is making way for surprise plastered all over his features, before it transforms into something more knowing, defeated perhaps. “Oh, so that’s what this is about”, Mike says, as he sits back down, and Will thinks he shouldn’t be able to sound so knowing about this, if Will is still struggling to put into words what he even feels. It just is not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, and in the end, that’s the thought that spurs him on.

“Why—Why are you even here?”, Will starts, slurring the words slightly as he speaks, and he wants to stop saying anything, this will go wrong, and he will say too much, and Mike will leave, just like Will did in the summer of 1985, but it is like the vomit crawling out of his stomach a few minutes ago, the words are coming and coming and he cannot cease the way his tongue forms around them. “Why are you even here, like— like you really expect me to believe you care, all of a sudden? When you keep switching up, when you suddenly ask if I’m okay or try to check up on me, after sidelining me for more than, what, an entire year or two because of— and then, and then you held my hand every fucking night like it means something, but of course it doesn’t, because nothing ever means anything with you, because you refuse to just explain yourself one single time— fuck, I don’t get you, Mike, and I don’t know if I ever did at all—"

Maybe under different circumstances this would have been metaphorical, somehow, interesting to observe from a bird’s eye view. The way Mike makes his way through the grass on all fours, most likely pulling the lower part of his pants through Will’s vomit, as he crosses the distance to get to him, and—

Hug him?

“Will”, Mike mumbles into his hair, and, oh, Will is sobbing again, has been for a while, gasping for breath, shaking his head frantically into where Mike holds him onto his chest. “I am so— fuck, I am so sorry.”

“No”, Will gasps, automatically. “’M sorry.”

“What could you possibly be sorry for?”, Mike whispers, and oh, he sounds like he is about to cry too, if the way his voice shakes around the question is any indicator.

Reluctantly, Will removes his head from where it has been tucked into Mike’s neck, only to see the proof for himself, and oh.

Mike’s eyes are swimming with tears, some of which are slowly making their way out and down his face now as they stare at each other. His cheeks are now flushed for an entirely different reason, but still so warm, and pink, and even with the anger and frustration clutching around his heart now, Will cannot deny the fact that Mike Wheeler is absolutely beautiful.

“You— you are right with everything you said, Will, of course you are“, Mike begins, as he wipes his tears away roughly, and Will wishes he could do it instead, because he would do it so much more gently, caressing his cheek while stroking his thumbs tenderly over his cheekbones. His hands twitch slightly at the thought, but— “I have been an asshole— no, I still am, evidently, and I’m sorry. Every single day. I am not trying to switch up on you, and me caring is not sudden, I— fuck, I always care, Will, how can I not?”

Will is so exhausted, and he does not want to do this talk, like ever, but especially not right now, but somehow, his mouth opens automatically— “I don’t know”, he says, “maybe when you refused to call for a year, or write to me, and then refused to acknowledge me on my birthday except for the opportunity to pick a fight just the very second your girlfriend was absent, and then you promised to be best friends, only to switch up when El was back. Oh, or maybe it is the way you literally cuddled up to me every night, and held my hand, just because you missed her, but then refused to talk about any of it in the daytime.”

Mike’s flush deepens after the last sentence, if that was even possible, but Will is not done yet, and perhaps, he never will be. “So, forgive me, Mike, if I am questioning if you even care, because I refuse to be a goddamn replacement for my sister, okay? This has never been fair to either of us, and you know it.”

Somewhere between them, Will sees how Mike’s hand twitches, as if he wanted to reach out to him, but changed his mind at the very last second. “Will, I didn’t think— I mean, this was years ago, and I—”

“Yeah, Mike, that is the damn problem! It’s been years of— this, and you refuse to explain yourself, even now. How do you not get it?”, Will groans, hand running through his own hair in frustration. “Just forget it. Let’s just do it like every single time before and refuse to talk about this the next day, okay?”

As Will wants to push himself off the ground to stand up, to leave, to run to God knows where, anywhere that is not here, exposed in front of Mike and letting words escape from his mouth which he swore to keep inside, like, forever, he feels fingers clutching his wrist, unfamiliarly stronger than all the other times today.

“Look, I— I don’t know how to explain—”, Mike starts, but Will just finds it in himself to huff in response. “It’d be nice if you were just willing to try, then.”

And as Will feels the familiar sensation of Mike tapping something onto his wrist, he pulls his hand away, as if he had been burned. “No more of— this, Mike”, he chokes out, cursing internally at how his voice breaks. “No more games. Say it straight to my face, or don’t say anything at all.”

Mike gulps visibly, but nods. “Okay”, he whispers, defeated. “Okay.”

Will takes the silence as an opportunity to scan Mike’s features, the way his lower lip trembles slightly before he rests his thumb on it, biting on his nail absently.

“I lied”, Mike said, finally. “About how I don’t know how to explain it. I— I might do, but I think you won't like it.”

Will releases a frustrated sigh, “Mike—“

“No, I will— I will explain it to you, I swear”, Mike goes on, clutching his head in frustration, but frustrated from what, Will thinks, because at least he has the answers to confused questions Will had for the last few years, so he has no right to be frustrated. “I think— Maybe now is not the best time, you are clearly not doing well—”

And Will cannot help but scoff at this, humorlessly. “Yeah, take a wild guess why.”

He really gives Mike the opportunity to elaborate, he thinks. Even waits a few seconds longer than he feels himself able to, but when Mike just blinks at the ground and picks at the blades of grass beneath them, Will groans in exasperation. “You’re unbelievable”, he snaps as he tries to stand up once more.

“I care”, Mike says suddenly, voice small, and Will finds himself freezing and halting all movement at the way the air seems to shift around them. “I care— and that’s the problem, Will. I care too much.”

“Wait— what?”

Mike seems to stare everywhere but at Will, as he released a shaky gasp. “Do you not understand? I— I wanted you too much”, he murmured.

And something new started to bloom in Will’s chest, something that feels like hope, or surprise, something that feels like it could annulate the dread and the shame and the disgust in his veins, but he forces it down. He never got what he wanted before, so why would he now?

“No, I don’t understand”, Will whispers instead, and he is not sure where all the energy and anger and electricity buzzing in his body went to, but he refuses to raise his voice any further, like if he speaks up maybe this moment, whatever this moment is, would shatter. And he can not let that happen, not when he is this close to an answer, so close to something that seems like honesty from someone who refuses to coat himself in anything but half-truths lately.

Mike finally stares at him, blinking rapidly, and as Will sees a single tear run down his cheek, it is so achingly familiar to the memory in the shed, and he is not sure he ever told Mike he remembered everything he said, everything from you said yes to it was the best thing I’ve ever done, and the feeling of déjà-vu strikes him like a bolt of lightning, burns him from the inside out.

“I just— I feel like I’m going crazy”, Mike chokes out then, an echo of a Halloween night, shared secrets and the feeling of going crazy together, “Sometimes I care so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I— I know we— we were always different, you know? But this— this feeling persisted, and I know it is not supposed to, and so, you were never supposed to know, so I thought I’d rather push you away than engage even slightly with any of these thoughts.”

Will’s brain is really struggling to catch up, and he finds himself still stuck at— “What feeling?”, he murmurs. “What feeling, Mike?”

Mike shakes his head, wiping his tears furiously. “Please, don’t make me say it”, he whispers, voice trembling in a way that causes Will’s heart to pound arrhythmically in his chest. And as weak as he is, and as much as he does not want to push Mike further, he needs to know what this is about, he needs to be sure, because this could change— just about everything, if his assumption turns out to be correct, but Will is uncertain where his wishful thinking starts and his logical deduction ends.

He finds himself catching Mike’s wrist in ease, then, as he makes another move to rub his cheeks in irritation, seemingly with himself. “Can you tell me, please? The truth, Mike. That’s all I will ever ask from you”, and then, Will chokes a laugh, and he does not know why he says it. “What happened to friends don’t lie?”

As he strokes his thumb over Mike’s wrist to calm both the accelerated pulse he feels buzzing underneath the freckled skin and his own alike, Will is reminded of the fact that this is the first time in a while that he is the one who initiates the touch between them, unlike all the time before, when he waited for Mike to start holding his hand, or tapping on his skin, or stroke his hair, or entangle his limbs with his own, or—

Maybe Mike has been trying to tell him something all this time. Or maybe, Will just refuses to believe something resembling his year-long wishful thinking can even be remotely close to the truth.

Either way, he needs to know, know for sure, and—

“Friends don’t lie”, Mike echoes, seemingly to himself. “But that’s the problem, Will. I— This feeling— these thoughts— They— fuck, this is hard, but— they want me to be more than that. More than— than your friend. They want me to care for you, not out of overprotection, but out of— out of love, and they want me to— to hold your hand in the daylight, and they want me hold your face and— and kiss your lips and— God, Will— this was so stupid, Will, I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

Maybe Mike says more after that, maybe he doesn't, because either way, Will finds himself stuck at—

Out of love.

Love. Love. Love. Mike loves him.

Will is not crazy, at least not crazier than Mike is, and the touch and the words and the care and the glances mean something, after all, after Will was convinced they held no meaning beyond the starvation for touch, any touch, really and it was not about Will, never was— but it was, it truly was, Mike just said it, Mike loves him.

And the warm, hope-resembling feeling in his chest refuses to be willed down any longer as it crawls through his limbs, and his head, and Will finds himself overwhelmed again, but not with the feeling of being possessed—instead, it feels like the first time he feels like himself in a long time—not with the feeling of throwing up—instead, he scrambles for how he can return the gesture, how he can make Mike believe it’s not just him, how he will put into words that he has reciprocated the love that Mike feels for so long, he doesn’t remember a time he has not been feeling like this—

Mike Wheeler loves Will Byers, and—

And Mike—

Mike gets up from where he has been sitting, and rubs his palms against his jeans. And only then does Will realize he has not said anything, yet, he has not answered yet, despite his lips parting around a silent gasp for what feels like too long now.

Too long for Mike, apparently, who now holds out a hand for him to take. “Come on”, he says, as if there was even the slightest chance Will would ever be able to move on from this conversation, from this confession, from the truth, as if it would not inhabit his thoughts day and night from now on, as if— “Let’s get you home.”

And his voice sounds so dreary, so dull, a hollow echo from when it had been shaking, trembling and breaking from what feels like a few seconds ago, but Will realizes, it has probably been more than a few seconds, and the realization that Mike— that Mike loves him, is in fact so addictive that he can drown in the thought, probably did drown in it for what felt like a long time.

As he takes Mike’s offered hand to rise up to his feet, his heart shatters at the way he immediately lets his hand go once he sees Will standing on his feet, more or less steadily. Mike drops his hand, and Will is struck with the realization that he, that Will was always the one who ceased their hands from touching, their fingers from interlacing, their limbs from flowing together under the safety of their blanket. Mike had always been the first to touch, the last to let go, up until now.

Will rubs at the corners of the mouth with his sleeve while his arm is still floating in the air uselessly, the coldness of the air and of Mike and the drop of his hand sobering him up properly. Not that he had really gotten the chance to get drunk, but admittedly, he sure felt out of it before. Not that any of that matters anymore, not when Mike hurries back to the party, back to the parking lot and back to his car, leaving this moment behind him for good.

“Mike”, he shouts, because Mike had to listen, he got it all wrong, and if Will can just explain himself, he would understand.

But Mike does not even spare him a glance, walking straight ahead still. “You don’t have to say anything”, he replies flatly, voice almost too quiet given the distance he continues to put between them. The distance in his movement, his touch, his words, it makes Will almost believe he has imagined the entire thing, because it feels so sudden and Will needs to know, needs him to know—

“But what if I want to?”, Will calls out, making a move to grab at Mike’s arm, to get him to listen, to wait. But he flinches away, hard— from the almost-touch or his voice, he will never know. “What if I want to say something about it?”

Mike halts for what seems like a second, Will thinks he might have imagined it, before he continues walking ahead. “Let’s get you home, alright? I will let the others know, you can just wait in the car.”

Before Will even gets the smallest chance to protest, because he will not be waiting in the car while Mike will make up some lie to their friends, just to preserve Will’s dignity, after he got into a bathroom to conceal the fact that he just sobbed his eyes out, because God forbid, someone knows that he has emotions, or at least that’s what Will assumes would happen—

“The others— The others were worried about you!”, Dustin’s voice calls out, and yes, sure, those were their friends waiting for them around the parking lot. Max stops kicking rocks under her feet, Lucas halts his back-and-forth pacing and looks up from his watch, El looks to them instead of around the house as if she had expected Mike and Will to fall from the sky up until that point, and Dustin—

“Whoa, dude, you look terrible”, he says to Mike, peering up at him suspiciously, which surely draws the attention of the rest of the group. El glances at Will, then at Mike, then at the unfamiliarly large space between the two of them, gaze finally snapping back at Will, and she must be puzzling something together, opening her mouth to—

“Shit, did he have too much to drink?”, Max asks.

“Yeah, Will is not feeling so well, so I will get him home”, Mike hurries, walking towards his car. “Do any of you guys need a ride too?”

Before anyone can even begin to open their mouth and answer the question, El steps forward. “No”, she exclaims, determinedly. “I think you should stay with him, if he’s not doing well. We can just ask Robin or Steve to pick us up later.”

“Actually—“, Lucas starts, but El fixes him with a stern glance. He seems to get the memo, then, eyebrows raising as he continues and nods along. “Yeah, totally! We will be fine, you guys better get home safe. We will radio tomorrow, alright?”

Believe him when Will says he is really glad all of this supernatural stuff is over, really over, now, but in this very moment he would want nothing more than to be able to know what is going on in El’s head as she stares at him, mouth twitching as if she expects him to just read her lips, or read her entire mind at this point, and God, Will wishes he could.

Mike’s stare shifts between his friends, as he seemingly tries to understand what’s going on. He does give up rather quickly, however, and resigns with a defeated sigh, exhaustion audible in his voice. “Alright, have fun”, and then quieter, “Come on, Will.”

Will climbs into the passenger seat automatically, a pathetic echo from when he had done the same what must be hours ago. The naivety of joking around with his friends now seems like lifetimes ago though, the way his entire world-view has been shaken up ever since he left the familiarity of this seat, now that he knows Mike Wheeler loves him—

Maybe he is still out of it—could anyone really blame him, to be fair—because he is unaware for how long he has been sitting there, probably still gaping in shock, until Mike reaches over to fasten Will’s seatbelt and oh, Mike is so close, and Will cannot help but stare, stare, stare, take in all the freckles and the way his hair bounces slightly as he leans back onto his own seat.

And Will really wants to say something, he has to, he has had time to prepare for this for much longer than a decade now, after all. He has so much to say, so much to do, like run his fingers through Mike’s hair and track the constellation of his freckles with his own index finger and trace over those worried lips with his thumb, and—

His fingers twitch with the want to do all of that, any of that, really, but he was really out of it, is still really out of it. The way exhaustion rolls over the entirety of his body should not be surprising to him, because so much happened in the span of nothing, and now that he feels safe, safe with Mike, safe at his side, safe in Mike’s car, he cannot fight the way his eyelids grow heavier, heavier, and, a—

“—‘re you awake? Will?”

Of course he is. He can’t really be asleep, he can’t, it’s impossible, because why would he be able to hear, but he cannot open his eyes—

“Okay, shit, hold on.”

He is being dragged up, no, it does not feel that violent at all, actually, it feels smooth, gentle, as his arm is pulled up to be put around a shoulder, the familiar warmth of the body pulling him further in, lulling him further and further into unconsciousness.

“Hold on, I got you.”

And before he knows it, any of it, really, before he has any chance to dwell on any of the touch, he hears the familiar jangling of his keys being pulled out of his left jacket pocket— and oh, they are home now, in his house—

And then he is on his bed, the mattress familiarly warm but somehow feeling empty, but Will isn’t sure what he is missing, but he definitely knows who he is missing at this very moment, and then someone is pulling off his jacket, and someone is untying his shoe laces, and one shoe drops onto the ground, the sound echoing loud in the silence, and the other—

And someone, no, Mike, Mike is leaving and Will is on his bed, on Will’s bed, but not on Mike’s, not with Mike, not with—

“Mike?”

The figure in the doorway startles slightly, but yes, that is Mike, and why is he in the doorway, why is he leaving, where is he— “Where are you going?”

Will reaches over to turn on his lamp on the nightstand, which he has to do anyways before he sleeps, because he is eighteen but still requires a nightlamp to sleep, and he hates himself for that, but that’s not something he even has time to think about right now, not when Mike is right there, right there, leaving, going—

“Home?”, Mike replies, phrasing it like a question, when it shouldn’t be, there should be nothing to question—

“Stay.”

Thank God for the nightlamp he turned on, because Will does not really know what to make of the silence, but he recognizes the familiar wrinkle of Mike’s nose and his creased forehead in the low light of the room, and the way he—

“I— I don’t know, Will”, Mike stammers. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

Now it is Will’s turn to furrow his brows. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

This display of hesitation startles Will, clears his head, and suddenly he is wide awake. He swings his legs over the bed, walks up to Mike, who— who is freezing up?

“Mike, why wouldn’t it be?”, he repeats, as he continues approaching Mike, who walks backwards, and backwards, until he hits a wall, and Will would laugh about the metaphor in that if he was not so worried.

“Uhm— uhm, I don’t know”, Mike mumbles, as he is tapping his feet irregularly on Will’s bedroom floor, and pulling at his fingers with a force that must be painful, and licking his lips, and Will is overwhelmed with Mike’s expressiveness, not for the first time. “Maybe— maybe because you will, you know, remember in the morning what— what I said, and then, you will understand what I actually meant, and then, you will be disgusted, and— you know, kick me out or something—”

“Mike”, Will interrupts gently. “I remember, okay? And I understand. And I am not disgusted.”

If anything, this revelation makes Mike tense up further, if that was even possible, given the stiffness that has never left his posture in the first place, ever since he stood up from that grass field, so Will sees no choice but to simply continue speaking. “Stay?”

“Okay”, Mike nods, seemingly given up. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure”, Will confirms.

And then they just stand there, in silence, if not for the wall clock above the doorway ticking. Tick, tick, tick, and Will uses the quiet seconds to take in Mike properly for the first time since he told him— since he got to know that Mike Wheeler loves Will Byers. And isn’t that surreal, the boy in front of him is in love with him, with Will Byers, and Will feels himself becoming giddy at the realization again, and suddenly overwhelmed to coat those pink cheeks in kisses only to make him understand, and—

Oh, he still hasn't told him, so he opens his mouth to do exactly that, “Mike, I—”

“So, I have like, no clothes here, actually, and my pants feel kind of disgusting, and, uhm—”

“Oh, of course”, Will finds himself replying instead. “You can borrow something. Hold on.”

And he will tell Mike everything, eventually, like, as soon as possible. He really wants to, believe him, but Mike is so awfully distracting. The way he just keeps asking stupid questions, like where is the bathroom, as if he hasn’t been here like a hundred times, and where do you keep your extra toothbrushes, as if he doesn’t have his own designated blue toothbrush in the mug by the sink because his mom became slightly annoyed with how Mike would constantly forget to pack his own for every single sleepover, which aren’t a lot in total, to be fair, because Mike’s basement was still the party’s favorite for hanging out, day and night.

Perhaps, Will realizes far too late that all of these more-stupid-than-usual questions might all be part of Mike’s ploy to avoid the conversation, and then—

“Where’s your sleeping bag?”

Will almost forgot the nervous ball of energy waiting in his bedroom while he got ready for bed in his blissfully quiet own bubble, even took a shower and all, washing all the memories of disgust and fear and anger off. So, when he enters his room feeling more refreshed than ever to see Mike searching his closet, he can’t help but frown. “Mike. What are you doing?”

Mike doesn’t even bother to look up. “What?”, he replies absentmindedly, continuously rummaging around his clothes.

“What are you doing?”, Will repeats, as he walks to closer to Mike, who, yes, sure as hell is wearing Will’s pajamas. Yes, they have a slight height difference, even if Mike loves to pretend there is still an astronomically large vertical distance separating them. But the way Will’s shirt seems slightly too wide on the shoulders, but a few inches too short in length, and his shirt rides up slightly with every movement—

Cool, Will is very cool, not nervous at all, about this predicament, and maybe if he tells himself that a few more times, it will become real.

“Uhm, I was setting up my place to sleep”, Mike says. “But I can’t find your sleeping bag, didn’t we always put it here, I thought I remembered—”

Will cannot help but snort, and immediately regrets it as Mike startles slightly by the sound, looking up, and Will is reminded how he is still nervous, anxious, full of fear, because Will has been too stupid, too much of a coward, to calm his nerves and to just tell him.

“Sorry”, he immediately says, maybe about the sleeping bag, or maybe about the fact he is such a coward. “But it’s not here. It’s in El’s room, because Max was here a few days ago and El’s bed is too small for the both of them.”

Mike simply nods, “Right, yeah. That makes sense.” And no, it doesn’t, not really, because Mike gets up to go to the door, to the hallway, and looks into the direction of El’s bedroom—

“Wait”, Will laughs. “You can’t just go into El’s room, Mike.”

“Oh”, and Mike’s cheeks heat in embarrassment again, or maybe they have been flushed deep red for a long time and Will has just managed to get used to the look of them already. “Right.”

Will lets out a deep breath. One. Two. Three, he counts, as if that will help him muster up the courage to— to, what, exactly?

“But my bed is not too small”, he finds himself saying before he can think any better of it, and this is so stupid, perhaps, “We can— we can share. The bed, I mean.”

“Oh”, Mike says again, this time smaller and almost sounding like it was choked out involuntarily, before he clears his throat. “Right. Uhm.”

Right, and Will decides to take some mercy on the nervous jittering mess still standing in the middle of his room as he climbs into his bed first. When Mike makes no move to follow though, Will feels something between irritation and endearment. “Mike”, he calls out. “You know you actually have to, you know, get into bed to sleep.”

“Oh”, Mike says, again, as he finally makes a move to close their distance ever so slowly. Will is now left to consider that perhaps Mike has lost his ability to speak more than three words, because there must be no other explanation for how he deviates from his usual blabbering chatter-box-behavior.

The mattress then dips, ever so slightly, as Mike carefully maneuvers his body into the bed, and Mike is actually next to him, and he is so close, again, and—

“Mike? Do you not want the blanket?”

“Oh”, Mike breathes, and Will can’t help but snort quietly, after all, he has managed to render Mike Wheeler speechless, out of all the people in the world ever. But eventually, Mike shifts his body to settle under the covers.

His body feels so very stiff next to Will, he must be so uncomfortable, his shoulders hunched up in tension. And not that Will isn’t scared or anything, but his nervousness definitely pales in comparison to the anxious mess in his bed next to him. So, he considers his next move, carefully, because how should he go on about this, and maybe he should just steel himself for the second time today and tell him, tell him for real, this time—

“You can’t really fall asleep if you are this tense”, Will points out instead, and it feels like something stupid to say, but at least it’s something to break the silence, so maybe it’s better than nothing.

“Yeah”, Mike says in response, but doesn’t look away from where he had been boring holes into the ceiling, and Will just cannot have that. Not if he actually bores holes into his ceiling, obviously, his mom would be very mad, understandably so, but he also cannot handle Mike being too afraid to even look at him.

And before he can cop out, again, he finally succumbs to the urge that’s been clawing his insides out for the whole night, the whole year, the whole thirteen years they had been friends with, perhaps, and reaches out to cup Mike’s left cheek.

He hears Mike breath in sharply, and thank God he is this close, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to hear it, and Will is hovering above him now, on his bed, and he is able to observe the way Mike’s eyes widen and his pupils appear to be slightly dilated, and he is blinking rapidly—

“Relax”, Will says softly, immediately recognizing the facial cues and how Mike was so nervous, it was stupidly endearing, but he kind of wanted to avoid Mike dying in his bed from a heart attack, like, at all, but especially before he knows how much Will is in love with him, so, “It’s just me, Mike. It’s just me.”

Mike’s response comes in an audible gulp, and Will is stuck on watching his Adam’s apple bob slightly as he nods. Will can’t help but smile fondly as he reaches out to trace his throat’s movement, and he swears he hears Mike exhale a rather shaky breath at the sensation.

“Can I say it now?”, and Mike frowns in confusion. “What I wanted to say, earlier, when you wouldn’t let me.”

He recognizes the panic in Mike’s eyes, then. He probably wants to protest, wants to bring up another excuse, another way to avoid this talk like maybe We should sleep, actually or I have to use the bathroom, if you will excuse me or I forgot something in my car, let me fetch it and drive away and escape across state lines and never return. But he makes the wise decision to simply nod instead, and Will feels overwhelmed with the sudden feeling of gratitude, that Mike still chooses to trust him, despite the fear and anxiety displayed so evidently through his body language.

I can do this, Will thinks to himself, then. I can do this. He trusts me, and he loves me, and I love—

“Okay”, he starts, willing himself not to freak out, because Mike likes him, loves him, even, apparently, and he loves Mike too, obviously, so what can go wrong, really. “I remember what you said, earlier, all of it— well, not all of it, maybe, because I was kind of preoccupied, you see? I—“, and he swallows before the next words, “I couldn’t believe you felt— feel like that, Mike, because— because I—”, and why can’t he say it, why can’t he say it—

Will can’t help but emit a frustrated noise, then. “Can I—“, and maybe he becomes more stupid by the second, by initiating this at all, but Mike’s eyes are so wide, so vulnerable and so full of fear, that Will can’t find it in himself to think too hard about what he wants to do. “Can I show you instead?”

Mike nods then, and worries his lower lip, again. The motion draws Will’s gaze in, and his lips look bitten raw, so chapped, and so kissable all of a sudden that Will is overwhelmed with the wave of feelings rushing over him at the sight. He gives into the urge to run his thumb over Mike’s lips then, so fascinated by the way his lips part slightly and he feels Mike’s hot breath on his finger, but this isn’t enough, he needs—

“Is this okay?”, he asks again, to make sure, his confidence faltering by the second, because what if he misread everything until now, and Mike actually meant platonic love, or something, and he will ruin everything by doing this, “Mike, I need you to say it.”

“Yeah”, he exhales finally, and then, “Please.”

And the desperation in his voice is the last nail in the coffin, Will thinks, as he leans down to press his lips onto Mike’s, because he just realizes he has never kissed anyone in his life, and he has no idea about the logistics of it, and about how it actually works, and he will do it all wrong, and—

But then he feels it, the warm breath that had fluttered across his thumb earlier now on his own lips, and it suddenly feels so much hotter, like maybe it can burn away all the nervousness, anxiety, fear, the shame that’s still lingering in the back of his mind, like all the time, and maybe it does that right then and there, melts it all away, until only Mike and his stupidly warm lips and the love he feels for the best friend still laying under him remain.

And maybe the same is happening for Mike right now, maybe the warmth just melted away the last tether that held him back until now, because suddenly, something in his body visibly snaps, tension escaping all his limbs and making way for the euphoria, the frenzy, the boldness, as he moves his hands to Will’s shoulders, and—

And Will is back on the mattress, he realizes then, as Mike pushes him onto the bed, movements buzzing with an energy he hasn’t exhibited in the last few hours, days, weeks, months perhaps. Mike’s touch—because he is touching Will now, hands warm where they are entangled with his hair and grasping his left shoulder—somehow still has something that feels like gentleness to it as he is the one hovering over Will’s body, now, and still kissing him, kissing him stupid.

Will feels his brain melt further, further, until maybe its contents will be spilled and displayed on the pillow underneath him, until it will be clear for just about anyone how whipped he is for the boy above him, because all his thoughts are screaming Mike right now, like Mike is kissing me or Mike loves me or just Mike Mike Mike, until it will say in his autopsy report So this boy was definitely in love with his best friend, and oh, he hasn’t told Mike that yet, and he should, he definitely has to—

“Mike”, he tries to say, but it comes out pathetically, such a pathetic whine, and he should be embarrassed, would be embarrassed immediately actually, if not for Mike’s answering sigh, which sounds so pleased, so happy, that Will cannot help but smile like a love-ridden fool into the kiss as their mouths part for a second. And the second feels way too long, he needs Mike’s lips again, like right now, since like yesterday, but he has to say it first, before—

“Was that okay?”, Mike whispers immediately, voice hoarse and broken and lips so red and Will could cry about the amount of love and adoration he feels.

“More than— more than okay”, Will replies immediately, and Mike’s face expression relaxes instantly, and he has been worried, and he probably is worried right now, will be slightly worried forever until he finally hears Will say it, so of course he does exactly that.

“I love you”, Will says, and finally emitting the words feels so relieving, all of a sudden, he feels like he could move mountains, or save the world all over again, or survive two weeks instead of just one in the Upside Down. “I’m in love with you.”

Mike’s eyes fly open in surprise, then, and Will’s heart flutters, because even until the very last second, even after years of hand-holding and touching and after minutes of frantic kissing, Mike seriously doubted that Will loves him. He always thought he was obvious, but apparently, he has been doing a pretty awful job at loving him if Mike has been this insecure about it.

“I love you”, Will repeats, just to see Mike’s reaction again, just to make sure he heard it and he knows and understands and he does, of course he does, given the way the disbelief plastered on his face makes way for the widest grin he has ever seen.

“I love you too”, Mike mumbles onto his lips then, and gives him another kiss for good measure.

They are left to just— take in the sight in front of them, staring at each other’s faces framed by admiration and amazement and love for the other, and Will appreciates the way his body feels so light, left without a trace of the hatred, or disgust, or bile, or anger, and he thinks he could get used to this.

Mike then has the nerve to break the moment by rolling onto the mattress beside him. “Sorry”, he laughs in reaction to Will’s confused stare, “My arms kind of feel like spaghetti right now.”

“You know, we should sleep, actually”, Will says, starting at the glow-in-the-dark stars he had put up there with El two years ago. He was eighteen, yes, but he still loves the stickers on his ceiling, thank you very much. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah”, Mike agrees, but makes no move to actually roll onto his side and sleep. Not that he has observed Mike’s sleeping patterns over the years in great detail, because why would he do that, excuse you, but Will is pretty sure he is not able to fall asleep on his back, facing the ceiling like a goddamn fairy-tale princess.

“Do you—“, Will starts, before he can even think about what he wants to ask. “Do you want to— lay like we used to, as in— uhm—”

The silence feels awfully long, and Will thinks maybe he has been hallucinating the entire thing, as in, the entire day, or the entire thirteen years, because why was Mike not saying anything, and this is so unbelievably embarrassing, and maybe he is too needy after all— “William Byers”, Mike says then, and it sounds awfully lot like he is smirking, grinning ear to ear, probably, “are you trying to ask me to cuddle?”

Mike is flirting with him, and Will is going to die today after all, he thinks.

“Very presumptuous of you, Michael Wheeler”, he answers weakly, but rolls onto his side, reminiscent of the way he used to before Mike’s arm reached out to pull him close— and yes, that’s exactly what is happening right now, and before he knows it, Mike is holding him, spooning him even, and now he knows exactly what this means. That it means everything, in fact, that it means Mike Wheeler is in love with him, and that it means that he is here, and that everything is going to be alright.

“I love you”, Mike whispers into his hair then, instead of the Good night from years ago, and finally, it all clicks into place, and there is no more confusion, no more questioning, no more thinking and overthinking, and maybe it is all worth it in the end. “We will talk in the morning, okay? About, tonight, and everything.”

And this time, Will is confident he is not imagining the kiss pressed onto his head as he drifts into dreamless sleep.