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They were all either about to kill Vecna with the world’s most insane plan ever, or die, horrifically and tragically and together. In the moment that he and Will stopped for breath while climbing the Squawk’s tower in the Upside Down, though, those two options were the last things on Mike’s mind.
No, he was still mentally in the Rightside Up, a few yards away inside the Squawk.
“I don't like girls… or, I do, just, not like you guys do.”
“He was just my Tammy… It was never about him, it was about me.”
He thought about El’s words to him when they had finally settled back in Hawkins over a year ago.
“I need to learn who I am, Mike. Not as a daughter, or a girlfriend, or even a friend. Just Jane Hopper.”
His heart dropped in his throat as he stalled for time, taking a sip from his water bottle and handing it to Will, offering him some.
“Thanks,” his best friend murmured, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Mike tried not to think about it too much, or about the way Will’s shoulders pressed against the confines of his jacket, or the way his lips glistened- and then he realized that maybe he didn’t have to spend so much energy repelling these thoughts, trying to suffocate them or kill them one by one like the world’s most painful weeds.
Will was… like him. Will had liked him, at some point at least, and there was hope. He had a chance.
No matter how small, Mike realized, he had a chance. And right now, before they blew up the Upside Down and hopefully managed to avoid blowing themselves up with it, he couldn’t think of a better time to take it.
“Hey… Will. About what you said earlier, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. No wait- that sounds like I’m sorry about what you said. Obviously I’m not. I mean- I mean, God, I’m fucking this up already.” Will laughed, and the soft, familiar sound reassured him enough to try again. “I was just trying to say that I’m sorry I didn’t notice, and that you had to go through that alone.”
“Mike…” he heard Will respond, saying his name oh so gently and absolutely shattering him until he was sure he’d rain down this absurdly tall tower in shards that landed haphazardly on the Upside Down’s backyard, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But I do,” he insisted, pressing on, “I do, because I was so- I was so wrapped up in myself I couldn’t even see that you were dealing with all- all of it! And I pushed it right in your face without even realizing-“ he stopped, the words clogging in his throat, suffocating him as they cut off his oxygen supply.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!
Right.
He swallowed the memory, forcing himself to continue. “I should have been there. To listen, and to- I don’t know. I don’t know, I just should have been there to support you, and to stand up for you, to make sure you didn’t feel so alone and-“
“It’s ok, Mike,” Will reassured him, because of course he did, even though it was the farthest thing from okay Mike thinks has been far from ok, “I think… It was something I had to do alone anyway. I didn’t even realize what it was for the longest time, you know? I think it always had to be this way. I’m just glad we can still be friends.”
Friends.
The word lands funny on Mike’s ears, but he hides it with a grin that is somehow both cocky and bashful, a Wheeler original.
“Friends? No thanks,” he starts, teasingly, but God, it’s that look on Will’s face, the one he’s known for so long, probably the only look of his best friends that he’s never been able to place or name unlike all of his other ones.
It’s full of suppressed longing, a certain love that’s laced painfully thick with hope he knows has to fight its way through layer upon layer of sadness. Mike knows this because he knows Will, and he knows the feeling too. He recognizes it in himself.
His grin drops, face earnest and eyebrows crowding up as his eyes widen with vulnerability and adoration.
“No thanks,” he says again, and it’s barely more than a whisper. He looks at Will’s lips, licking his own before he could even realize what he was doing. His hand lands on the railing, slightly closer to Will than it needs to be. Will, whose hands are still wrapped around that damn waterbottle, and Mike wants to toss it down the tower so they’re free to find his own, so their fingers can interlace and he can kiss each and every one of Will’s knuckles. The severity of the thought takes him by surprise, and he reaches his other hand out as well, to steady himself this time.
Will’s body language mirrors his own as they lean into each other, locking eyes. They’re so close he could see Will’s breath catch. He could watch his Adam's Apple bob enticingly before dragging his eyes back up, following the sharp jaw and the curve of familiar lips in front of him, slightly chapped but full and a deep pink, because Will always sucks on them when he’s nervous. He must have been nervous. Was it because of Mike?
“I’d rather be… something more. If you’d have me. I think that… Well, I think that you and I might not be as different as you expected. And- I just feel so stupid, because if I’d have realized sooner we could have saved ourselves so much heartbrake, I could have saved you so much heartbrake, because God, I was a self-absorbed asshole, and I just-“
He just had to say it.
“I love you, Will. And I know you said it was just a crush, but the way you looked at me- I couldn’t go on with this plan without saying it-”
He probably would have gone on rambling like that for quite some time, but suddenly his mouth was rather occupied as those lips he had been staring at crashed into his own, still wet with the water Will’s hand hadn’t caught and tingling, leaving a burning sensation all throughout Mike.
“Oh!” He tried to exclaim, but the sound was swallowed hungrily by the lips wrapped eagerly around his own, Will’s lips, he reminded himself, and what was he doing, standing around and making noises like an idiot?
He’s wanted this for years, that much he can admit to himself now, and with that thought rushing through him he surges forward, gripping Will’s head like a lifeline with one hand, the other moving instantly to those biceps that had been oh so distracting recently.
Will mumbles something, it sounds like satisfaction, but if there was anything coherent inside it it was lost, drowned out in the crash of their bodies, smothered by the warm and enthusiastic press of Mike against him.
Mike finds hands tangled in his hair, and he actually lets out a soft groan when Will tugs on his short waves, carding his fingers through his hair and holding them like nothing could ever make him let go.
They’re both hungry, almost insatiable as if they’ve been waiting for this moment for years- God knows Mike has been, and then it hits him, clear as day, that Will has been too. Of course he has been, when have either of them not been on the same page about things as sacred as this, and it feels so right and he just wants more and more and-
“Mgh!” he lets out subconsciously in surprise and indignation when Will pulls away. He felt all too light and far too cold at once, missing the contact, the pressure, the warmth, but most importantly, the words they didn’t need to say.
The reassurance that this was real, that Will felt the same way, that he wanted Mike the same way Mike wanted him.
Tammy his ass. Whatever the stupid metaphor was, Mike got the gist enough to know one thing: he wasn’t it.
Will's lips on his had confirmed that, and if they hadn’t, his face, flushed red with puffed cheeks and amazed eyes, definitely did.
The moment between them, full of a surprised silence from both parties’ ends, broke when Will laughed.
“If I had known you were so eager, I would have done that years ago,” he says with a smirk. God, when did he get so confident and why did it make him so deviatingly handsome?
“Oh-“ Mike said intelligently, incredibly flustered at the bold statement. “Well, my bad then.”
Will laughed again, and when he knocked his shoulder with Mike’s, he returned the gesture. They went back and forth until the two of them were literally swaying with the weight, falling into one side and then into each other, laughing like idiots before they blew up an entire dimension like none of it mattered.
None of it did matter, because this was the closest Mike had ever felt to how it was before, before that awful day four years ago, before the nasty stares when he held Will’s hand in his own, before either of their father’s comments had started to really fester and set in, before the Upside Down.
When Mike crashed into Will for the last time, he grabbed the courage to lean down, just lightly brushing their lips together before steading himself by grabbing the other boy’s shoulders so neither of them were careening around anymore. Will didn’t let him pull away, deepening the kiss.
“Who's eager now?” Mike teased, but he knew he was as red as the sky above them, and bit his bottom lip to try to keep a huge grin off his face, a losing battle.
“Whatever, you loved it,” Will shot back, but the bold new confidence of his was clearly short lived because though his voice is playful he can’t quite meet Mike’s eyes. Mike fixed this, lifting his chin with two fingers.
“I did,” he confirmed, smiling like an idiot, any attempts to mask his face left behind in his attempt to make sure Will knew how loved he was.
Suddenly, a smile was matching his own and Will blinked up at him, somehow still surprised at the affection but happier than Mike’s seen him in ages. He feels the same way.
“We should probably go,” Will says, though he does sound regretful.
“Can’t it wait?” Mike groans, though he knows the answer before the words have left his lips.
“The whole ‘saving the world on the most strict timeline we’ve ever had’ thing? No, I don’t think it can,” came the exasperated but fond reply.
“Right, right, fine,” Mike huffed, but he was already heading for the ladder to the next level. Reaching down, he twisted himself to ask for another kiss, but Will shook his head, his hair bouncing on his forehead, lips pursed.
“You can have another kiss when we’ve killed Vecna and blown his home land to pieces,” he promises.
Suddenly, Mike’s motivated for battle in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever been before.
They were going to win this. They had to, and with the most loyal people he had ever met supporting each other, Mike knew they just might be able to pull this all off.