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On Wednesday, after school, the couch in the Wheelers’ basement is broken. Mike and Will sit on the floor instead, ratty blue and yellow L.L. Bean backpacks tossed haphazardly beside the party’s latest conquest: a detailed map of the old quarry trails, painstakingly sketched out in pencil and inked over in places where Lucas and his new calligraphy pen had gotten overexcited. It’s just the two of them, since they’d biked home together down Main Street, sweaty and breathless.
So. Floor.
Mike has his back against the edge of the couch, his knees pulled up to chest and his arms hooked loosely over them. He’s knobby all over, off-putting in the way that highschoolers usually are; although, Will finds that it’s rather charming. Like there’s something almost unfinished about him still, like he’s in the middle of becoming. Will thinks he could see the art in Mike Wheeler any day. He sits beside him cross-legged, absently peeling at the edge of a sticker on the coffee table in front of them. It’s been there for longer than he can remember, fused to the wood.
“You don’t have to do that,” Mike says. Will pauses, looking up. Mike’s got some random comic flipped open in his hands, eyes roving its pages absentmindedly. He figures it's one of the new ones from the stash that Dustin had brought over last week, in this giant cardboard box given to him by none other than Steve Harrington, who swears up and down it never belonged to him. It doesn’t make sense, but then neither does their friendship, so they’ve all learned to take information about him at face value. Will swallows.
“Do what?”
Mike’s eyes flicker up, and he nods at the table; Will’s fingers.
“That,” he says. “You’ve been doing it for, like. A while.”
Will looks down, almost surprised to find his own hands still there. “Oh.” He pulls them back into his lap, presses his fingertips together. It’s a nervous habit of his, fidgeting. Like he’s got all this pent up energy but nowhere to spend it. When he was younger he could get it all out; run around in circles until the racing of his heart was nothing more than a natural physical response. But he can’t exactly do that now. Nor does he know why he’d even be nervous in the first place. Could you at least try to be normal? “Sorry.”
Mike shakes his head gently. “No, it’s okay. Just—”
It falls silent for a moment. Will is entirely used to it. Silence follows him everywhere, always has. The silence that he remembers back when he was in trouble was the worst. Nowadays, he fills it with cassette tapes given to him by his older brother, a meld of The Clash and David Bowie and whatever else Jonathan happens to stumble upon.
Mike shrugs, letting the comic book smack to the ground between his legs. His eyes drift, towards the ceiling, the basement door, then land back on Will like they always do. He frowns.
“You do it when you’re waiting,” he says plainly.
Will blinks. “What?”
“The—” Mike gestures vaguely, hands fluttering, then dropping back to his knees. “The picking. You only do it when you’re waiting for something.”
“That’s not true.” He’s defensive before he can stop himself. Is it? Will wouldn’t know. He’s never been particularly keen on memorizing his habits, mostly because he finds all of them embarrassing. Things he should’ve grown out of by now.
“It is,” Mike insists, too quickly. “You do it at the bus stop. And when we’re—when we’re waiting for a movie to start. And just now, when—” He stops himself, clearing his throat. “When we weren’t talking.”
Will’s face feels hot in a way that has nothing to do with the room. His eyes flit around nervously, landing everywhere except his friend. The map, the broken couch leg, the old Christmas lights tangled in a box by the stairs. El’s drawing of her and Mike, together. Will’s own drawings tacked up right next to them. A pang goes through his heart. “You notice weird things.”
Mike shrugs, turning to rummage through the comic book box. “Or you’re just bad at hiding stuff.” Silence settles, thinner than before. Eventually Mike clears his throat, the sound sharp against the quiet. “Anyway.”
Will startles a little despite himself and looks up at him. “Anyway?”
Mike shifts his weight, one blushing knee knocking lightly against the edge of the coffee table with a dull tap. He winces at the noise, almost like it’s betrayed him. When he speaks, he still can’t look at Will—his gaze skims the wall, the floor, familiar neutral surfaces, anywhere that doesn’t require meeting Will’s eyes. “I was thinking,” he starts, “hypothetically.”
Mike, thinking? That can’t be good.
“About what?” Something uneasy curls low in Will’s stomach, a slow dip. It isn’t dissimilar to what he imagines it would feel like to walk into class buck naked, like in every teenager’s worst nightmares. Mike just makes a face, nose wrinkling so that his freckles overlap each other, spattered across his skin like gritty stars.
“Just about how people are bad at… stuff. Sometimes.”
“Oh,” Will breathes faintly. He doesn’t remember oxygen tasting this poisonous. “Okay. That’s kind of specific.”
Mike huffs a laugh, a flush rising to his cheeks. Will’s heart, against his better judgement, has started to race. Traitorous thing. He imagines confronting it; grabbing it by the shoulders and giving it a good, honest shake. Calm down, comes his furious whisper. You’re making me look bad. It never listens, of course. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
And Mike; sweet, unassuming, uncharacteristically nervous Mike, finally looks at him. His expression is blank, carefully neutral, like he wants to test the integrity of his own voice.
“You’re good at noticing things,” he murmurs. “Right?”
Will nods, uncertain.
“And you’re honest,” Mike adds. “About them.”
It’s only half-wrong, really. Mike would have no way of knowing that this rule hinges solely on the receiver of the answer. Namely, that Will would never lie to Mike.
“...Sometimes.”
Mike nods, exhaling. Then, briskly, like ripping off a bandage:
“Do you think you’d know if someone was bad at kissing?”
It’s—rude. Crass, Will thinks, panicked. Entirely inappropriate. He gapes, mouth opening and closing rapidly, fighting the flush that's begun to crawl up his collarbones. Will wonders how it’s even possible that he and his best friend live in such entirely different worlds, that Will can cast a single, furtive glance at him and be rewarded by a flood of bile and a nauseating feeling of sick perversion; but then Mike can sit here, stupid and ignorant as ever, inquiring about kissing to his face.
“I—what?” It must be a problem with El. That’s why Mike’s face has turned a constipated shade of scarlet, an ocean of blood. She must’ve finally snapped and let him know he’s been gagging her on his tongue, or something like that. Will isn’t really sure how kissing works. He’d never really planned on it happening, partly because he knows he’ll rue the day Joyce learns she has something new to nag him about, and partly because he’s only ever been able to tolerate the idea of one particular set of lips.
“I’m not saying I am,” Mike amends immediately. “I’m saying, like—if someone was. Hypothetically, remember?”
“Is this about El?” Will squeaks.
“What? Will, oh my god, no, just—” He drags a hand over his face awkwardly, a shock of pallor. “I mean, I guess?
“You—seriously?”
“What?” Mike’s brows knit on instinct. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.” Will’s voice cracks. He swallows, trying again. “It’s just that you were acting like this was all some big mystery. But I don’t get it. You kiss her all the time, right?”
“Yeah,” Mike says, like it’s obvious. Then he hesitates, mouth twisting. “I mean. I have.”
The distinction is so small Will almost misses it. His stomach tightens anyway, because his body never learned to differentiate between jealousy and dread. He tells himself—fiercely—that he is not jealous. That he is not allowed to be jealous. That jealousy would imply entitlement, and he has never, ever been entitled to Mike Wheeler.
“So why are you asking me,” Will murmurs, rubbing at the skin around his thumbnail, “if you’re bad at it? Why not her?”
Mike opens his mouth, closes it. He drags a hand through his hair, eyes darting toward the stairs like Mr. Wheeler might somehow be watching from the ceiling tiles.
“Because,” he says finally, and the word comes out on an exhale, like surrender, “I guess I just wanted to know if it was supposed to feel like something.”
Will’s throat goes dry. “And…it doesn’t?”
Mike’s cheeks flare pink, and he looks so young all of a sudden—too young.
“It’s fine,” he says quickly, which means it isn’t. “It’s fine. It’s just… sometimes I feel like I’m checking a box.” He licks his lips, like the honesty hurts. “Like, okay. Do the boyfriend thing. Hope she’s happy.”
Will makes a sound he doesn’t mean to, halfway between a laugh and a choke. Mike points at him like he’s caught him.
“See? You’re making fun of me. Don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry,” Will says, still a little breathless. “It’s just—wow.”
“I’m serious,” Mike insists, but there’s no bite behind it. “And before you say anything, I’m not saying she’s the problem. She’s not. She’s… she’s El.” His voice goes strangely gentle around her name, like he’s defending her from the conversation itself. “It’s me. I’m the one making it weird.” He pauses for a couple moments, swallowing, before he shrugs. “The other day, she asked if I was okay. And I was like, yeah, obviously. And then she gave me this look like she knew I was lying.”
A sharp little spear of pain goes through Will’s chest at the thought of his sister, of El—sharp, not because he resents her, he could never, but because she deserves someone who doesn’t have to rehearse feeling. Will knows this better than anyone.
“What did she say?” he asks softly.
“She said I overthink everything.” He pauses, then adds, quieter, like it’s the part that keeps him up at night: “She said I don’t have to force myself to do stuff just because I think I’m supposed to.”
“And what did you say?” Will asks, even though he thinks he already knows.
Mike’s mouth twists. “I said she was being dramatic.” He looks at Will, helpless now, like he wants someone else to tell him what he did wrong without making him feel stupid for it. “And then I thought about it for, like,three days straight. Which kind of proved her point.”
Will’s lips twitch despite himself. “Yeah.”
Mike’s shoulders ease a fraction.
“I’m not—” he starts with a huff. “I’m not trying to do anything bad. I just want to know if it’s… me. Like maybe I just don’t get stuff like this. Normal stuff.”
Will’s stomach flips at that word. Normal. He picks harder at the sticker, finally lifting a corner clean off the surface.
“You get stuff,” Will supplies, probably unhelpfully. “You get a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah?” Mike asks, hopeful and uncertain all at once. “Like what?”
Will opens his mouth, choosing carefully. I don’t know, Mike. You get what it feels like to be different. You get the loneliness, the helplessness. You make it beautiful. So, me? You get me.
“You care,” he says instead. “You try. You actually think about whether you’re messing up. Which is already, like… way ahead of most people.”
Mike smiles, soft and crooked. Then, because he is Mike Wheeler and has never known when to stop while he’s ahead, he adds: “Still. Kinda sucks to find out you might’ve been doing something wrong the whole time.”
Will lets out a breath that is almost a laugh. “Wrong?”
“Yeah,” Mike insists, like Will is being deliberately obtuse. He struggles not to see the irony in that. Mike tips his head back to stare at the ceiling, thinking. “I don’t know. Everyone acts like it’s this huge thing. Like it’s supposed to feel like—like lightning.”
Will’s stomach twists, not from jealousy this time but from a kind of bleak understanding.
“Lightning,” he echoes, dryly.
“Yeah.” Mike’s eyes flick back to Will. “Does it?”
He almost chokes. Instead, he keeps his face carefully blank; his voice careful, too, like he’s stepping around glass.
“I…wouldn’t know.”
Mike’s ears go pink, the color crawling up the shells of them. “Right. Yeah. Sorry.” He clears his throat, shifting his weight; his knee knocks the coffee table again with a dull tap. This time he doesn’t wince. “But like—you… would you know? If it was supposed to?”
Will’s fingers curl around the peeled corner of the sticker. The thing is flimsy in his hand, almost nothing, but the action gives him something to hold onto that isn’t the full-body panic blooming hot under his ribs.
“I don’t know,” Will says, which is true in the way that it isn’t. “Maybe?”
Mike leans forward a fraction, interest sparking through his embarrassment.
“See? That’s what I mean. You’d tell me if I was doing it wrong.”
“That’s your reason?”
“You don’t lie,” Mike says, defensively now. He’s started to fidget, too, eyes downcast. Will licks his lips nervously. El must’ve really ripped him a new one. “Besides…never having had your first kiss makes you, like, unbiased. Right?”
Will could very well choke and die right now. Mike’s voice has gone small, careful.
“And what,” Will asks slowly, timidly, “would you want me to do, exactly?”
Mike’s jaw shifts. He looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers once, like he’s testing them.
“I dunno,” he murmurs, lashes fluttering. “Help?”
The word is so quiet it almost disappears, ephemeral. Like if Will had blinked he would have missed it; the wavering insecurity in his best friend’s voice, the slight hunch of his shoulders.
Will, honest to God, tries his damndest to keep back a laugh, breathless. Mike is a lot of hard-to-swallow things—loud and stubborn and tactless, but he’d have never imagined the sun would ever rise and fall upon a day where the only thing he could think to say to Mike Wheeler’s face is are you out of your goddamn mind?
“You can’t just… do this,” Will says instead, gesturing vaguely between them, at the room, at the floor, at everything. “And then make it sound like a science project.”
Mike’s mouth twists. He looks offended for half a second, and then—because he’s Mike—he looks guilty.
“I’m not making it a science project,” he argues. “I’m making it normal.”
“That’s not how that works.”
Mike huffs, letting his shoulders sag.
“Okay, fine. Not normal. But—” He rubs the back of his neck, eyes sliding away again like he can’t bear to look at Will and say the next part at the same time. “But I can’t ask El, because she’ll… I don’t know. She’ll say I’m being weird again.”
Will’s heart does something ugly and tender all at once. It slips and slides around in his chest, wet with understanding, with longing.
“She won’t,” he says automatically, because he’s always been the kind of person who defends people he loves, even when it hurts. “She cares about you.”
“I know she does,” Mike amends quickly. His voice goes quieter, almost fierce with it. “That’s not what I mean.”
Will’s throat tightens. Mike sits there for a moment, staring at his hands.
“I just don’t want to feel stupid,” he admits, finally, the admonition so plain it makes Will ache. “I don’t want to be the only person who doesn’t get it.”
Will lets the words settle in the space between them. He thinks of all the times he has been the only person who doesn’t get it; the way that loneliness can so quickly turn into a punishing tide, unbearable and overwhelming.
“You’re not stupid,” he says, softly.
Mike’s eyes flick up. “Then help me,” he pleads. Simply, like he hasn’t just asked Will to hand him his own beating heart in a paper bag. He’s turned his entire body to face him now, fingers worrying over a dark scab on his knee. Just like you. All sick and nervous. “So it’s not hanging over my head.”
Will searches his face for something reckless or teasing. Something to satisfy that incessant voice in his head, the one that’s screaming at him to wake up, to realize there would never be a lifetime where this wouldn’t be a cruel prank to play on the confused queer boy in small-town Indiana, childhood and D&D loyalties be damned.
But there’s nothing. Just earnestness.
“You’re serious,” Will murmurs.
Mike nods once. “It’s just practice.” Will’s pulse is loud in his ears.
“Practice implies doing it.”
And, finally, Mike has the good sense to truly look embarrassed then, a faint fairy-pink creeping over his cheeks. “Well. Yeah.”
“With me.”
“You’re my friend,” he tries, like it explains everything. “Friends help each other with stuff.”
“And if I say no?”
No hesitation. “Then it’s fine. I drop it.”
He means it. That’s the problem.
Will shifts closer without fully realizing he’s doing it, but he can tell that Mike notices immediately. He always does. His eyes drop, watching silently as he scoots a fraction or two closer. Will wonders, if Mike listened hard enough, if he could count his heartbeats.
“…Okay,” he murmurs. Onetwothreefourfive.
Mike just blinks. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Will repeats. “But we have rules.” Sixseveneightnineten.
Relief colors the other boy’s face. He exhales steadily, lips turning up at the corners. “Sure. Of course.”
Since there are about three hundred other more pressing matters, Will makes sure not to linger too long on the concept of Mike being relieved by Will’s consenting to being kissed.
“No overthinking,” he starts, dazed. “And you stop if you think the weird stuff is happening.”
“It won’t,” Mike says, immediately, eagerly. Will is suddenly hyperaware of the distance (or rather, lack thereof) between their faces, swallowing roughly around the heart-shaped lump in his throat. He casts him a look, marveling secretly at the odd conviction in his voice.
“It—sorry.” Mike corrects himself, hands resting over his legs. “If it is, we stop.”
Will can only nod, like a reflex. But his chest remains tight, wound hard with the knowledge that rules have never protected him from himself. They’ve only ever delayed the damage. Be kind. Be patient. Be forgiving. None of it has ever worked.
Mike is the one who shifts closer now, like he’s approaching a deer he doesn’t want to startle. Will’s pulse rattles violently against his ribcage, and when their knees accidentally brush, guilt flashes hot and immediate through his body. He thinks, absurdly, of Lonnie’s old church pamphlets Joyce used to hide in the kitchen drawers. Of words like temptation and choice and sin, words he couldn’t understand, words he’d begged Jonathan to make sense of for him late into the night. He thinks of how often he’s been told, directly or otherwise, that wanting the wrong thing is infinitely worse than wanting nothing at all.
And God, has he wanted this.
Not this, exactly (he’s never let himself imagine it so clearly, lest someone find a way to project his traitorous thoughts), but Mike, always Mike, threaded through his entire life like a quiet ache.
Will thinks, briefly and viciously, that if there is a God here on this Earth, it has had plenty of time to get used to the sound of boys like him begging to be made something else.
“Tell me what I’m doing wrong,” Mike says quietly.
Will looks at his mouth. Then at his eyes. Back to his mouth.
“I might have to see first, Mike,” he says.
Mike snorts; swallows. Nods.
“Okay, then.”
He leans in, and Will knows, has always known, that if this goes wrong, it won’t just be awkward, it won’t just be embarrassing. It will confirm something ugly he’s believed about himself for a long time: that touching what he loves turns it impure, that his feelings make things worse. That Mike’s easy, uncomplicated affection will sour the second Will’s desire brushes against it.
He’s only doing this for El. He has to remember that.
The kiss is tentative enough to really not be one at all. Soft and uncertain, Mike’s lips press against his like they’re checking for a response. Will feels his first instinct—panic. Sharp and dizzying. His body reacts before his mind can, heat flaring up beneath his skin, hands curling uselessly at his sides.
This is wrong, his thoughts chant immediately. This is wrong, this is wrong.
Not because it feels bad. Because it doesn’t.
And then Mike pulls back, breath hitching. And Will is confused.
Mike isn’t like Will. He’s kissed El on multiple occasions—or at least, that’s what he’s said. And sure, she might’ve sent him packing harshly enough to have him think he’d need Will’s validation, of all people, but he’s also fairly certain Mike knows what a kiss actually is. Unless he really is that hopeless.
“So?” Comes his weird, stupid, strange question.
Will doesn’t answer right away.
Mike’s brows knit. He looks worried, a flush creeping up his neck. “That bad, huh.”
“No,” Will says quickly. This must be what being drunk feels like, he thinks distantly. Mike is everywhere, all around him. “It’s just—”
“Just what?”
“You didn’t—” Will gestures helplessly between them. “You didn’t stay.”
It feels inappropriate, like he’s overstepping his role in this entire operation. He’d grown up telling himself to slip between the floorboards, keep his chin low and his expectations lower. It paid off to get by in life unnoticed, because that way there’d never be a chance to get hurt.
Mike looks surprised, and it's almost comical, how his brain has to reboot around the information.
“I—” He stops himself, lips parting briefly. His eyes flick down and then back up, uncertain. “I thought that was…better,” he admits. “Pulling away. So it didn’t get…”
Another pang through his heart. “Weird?” Will supplies.
“Yeah,” Mike murmurs, “weird.”
It lodges in Will’s chest like a thick shard of glass. Weird is what people call things they don’t care to understand. Weird is the polite version of wrong.
“Isn’t that what we’re trying to figure out, though?” Will swallows roughly, tongue foreign in his mouth. “I mean, you have to find out. Right?”
Something flickers in Mike’s gaze. He studies him for a moment, legs and arms and hands and body altogether much too involved in Will’s space, but he thinks he can forgive it all if only to hear the tentative hope in Mike’s voice when he says: “So I should’ve stayed?”
“Yes.” The answer is immediate, too honest. Will feels it bloom in his chest the moment it’s out, bright and mortifying. He forces himself to explain, to backpedal into safety. “Just longer. That’s usually…how it works. I think. I don’t know.”
Mike swallows roughly, looking down at Will’s mouth for a split second before nodding resolutely. “Okay.” He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “you’re sure?”
And Will concedes, even as something hot and aching presses behind his eyes. You’re sure is such a gentle thing to ask. But that’s Mike, always checking, always trusting Will.
“Yeah. And—” Will hesitates, heart thudding. He feels ridiculous even saying it, all theory and no experience, but the words are already there. “You kinda have to push. You were just…hovering.”
“Uh, noted.”
“And maybe,” Will winces, “don’t hold your breath. You stopped breathing, I could feel it.”
Mike’s ears go adorably pink. “I did not.”
“You did,” Will pushes, not entirely sure where he’s getting this confidence from. “It made you tense.”
The other boy lets out a quiet laugh, head dropping down for a singular bashful second, while Will just kind of sits there in utter, quiet shock. He feels afraid of breaking this moment; of saying something wrong, of doing something wrong, so much so that Mike would snap out of it and realize what it is that’s actually occurring right now.
“Alright, Will. You’ll tell me if it’s wrong?”
A beat passes.
“I’ll tell you,” Will says, quietly.
So Mike shifts again, closer, close enough now that Will can feel the warmth coming off him, feel the faint drag of breath between them. The closeness makes him feel dizzy. He thinks of all the times he’s trained himself out of moments like this. How long it’s taken him to perfect the art of staying very still, of letting feelings pass through him without ever touching the outside world. He thinks of how wanting Mike has always felt like something sticky and unclean, something that would stain everything it brushed against.
Mike waits, face hovering mere inches away, eyes half-lidded. He always waits.
“You can—” Will starts, then stops, because Mike has stolen the words right off his lips.
It’s gentle, but it isn’t tentative in the way it was before. Mike’s mouth settles against his and stays there, steady and intentional, just the way Will told him. He doesn’t flinch or pull away, and Will’s hands remain curled uselessly in his lap, fingers trembling. He doesn’t trust himself yet. But then Mike is exhaling softly through his nose, breathing, and the kiss deepens by degree rather than force. There’s no primal urgency, none of this terrifying hunger he’s been warned so much against. Mike is just close, just learning the shape of Will’s mouth by feel alone.
But the most surprising part of all, is that nothing curdles or cracks apart under the weight of Will’s wanting.
His chest aches with it. The unbearable normalcy of it all, the crossing of that useless line he was raised to believe would scorch him on contact. Mike moves back a fraction, only to press two chaste kisses to his bottom lip, and then Will is tilting his head; a small, involuntary movement, just enough to keep the kiss from slipping away. Just enough to say yes again without speaking.
Mike makes a soft sound at that, not so much a breath as it is the sound of surprise, and it lives somewhere between them for a second before dissolving. He adjusts instinctively, following the tilt of Will’s head without a second thought, the most natural correction in the world. The kiss holds, searching and patient.
Will is aware of everything at once: the exact point where Mike’s mouth fits against his, the faint press of teeth through lips, the warmth that seems to spread outward from that single point of contact until it fills his sick, nervous chest. His heartbeat feels too erratic, like it might give him away, but Mike doesn’t pull back. He doesn’t react at all, except to stay.
Will’s shoulders loosen without him meaning to. His breathing stutters, then evens out, syncing accidentally with Mike’s. For the first time since it started, he has undeniable proof that this is happening and nothing terrible has followed.
Mike pulls back only when breath demands it, lingering close enough that the absence of contact isn’t as jarring. His forehead nearly brushes Will’s, their noses ghosting past each other as they separate. Mike’s eyes are unfocused, a little glassy, like he’s still catching up to himself.
“Okay,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.
Anxiety flares in the pit of Will’s stomach. Vaguely, he registers a tingling on his lips, the memory not having yet decided where it might fit itself in his head. There you have it. Misery wells in his throat. Mike is a stupidly good kisser and now you have to say it to his face. He tries opening his mouth, but no sound comes out.
Mike shifts first, visibly nervous. His hands move awkwardly for a second, like his body’s just now remembered it’s supposed to be embarrassed.
“You don’t—” he starts, then stops, already wincing. “I mean. You don’t have to like, critique it or anything. That wasn’t—”
“It was good,” Will blurts, head pounding. The words trip over themselves on the way out, clumsy and exposed. He clamps his jaw shut immediately after, as if he might be able to swallow them back down. Maybe the ground could split open and do the same to him, too, just for good measure.
Mike freezes. There’s a lock of dark hair falling over his eye, a sheen of something on his lips that makes Will blush furiously when he notices it. “Yeah?”
Will nods once. Then again, because apparently his body has decided this is the only way it communicates now. “Yeah,” he repeats. “You didn’t do anything weird. It was good.” And it was also my first kiss.
“Okay. Great.” Mike pauses, reaching a hand up to scratch at his jaw. “Because that would’ve been… really embarrassing.”
Some of the tension bleeds out of the room in increments. Mike shifts, crossing and uncrossing his legs like he can’t quite decide what configuration is appropriate post-kiss. Will watches him do it with a strange fondness, the same way he always has.
“You didn’t bolt,” Mike says after a moment. “That’s… uh. Good, right?”
Will exhales a shaky laugh. “Is that the standard?”
“I mean,” Mike shrugs, “it was kind of a lot.”
Will considers that. The heat still humming in his chest, the ghost of pressure on his mouth. The terrifying, miraculous fact that the earth has not cracked open to swallow him whole.
“I guess,” he says carefully, “but you asked me not to overthink it.”
Mike snorts. “Right. My bad.”
They lapse into another lull. Will is acutely aware of his own body again; his hands folded too tightly in his lap, his knees angled toward Mike without his permission. He keeps glancing at him. Not blatantly, but often enough that Will notices. Like he’s checking to make sure Will is still there.
“So,” Mike tries finally, drawing the word out. “Uh. That answers my question, I guess.”
Will’s stomach gives a small, nervous flip.
“Which part?”
“The… bad-at-it theory.”
“And?” Will asks.
Mike grins then, crooked and boyish and relieved. “Sources suggest I’m apparently not terrible.”
Will peeks up at him. He’s reminded of the all quiet moments he’s witnessed on accident; walking in on his mother and Hopper two cigarettes deep in conversation, Jonathan and Nancy with their hands entwined under the dinner table, all of Lucas’ penned letters—Dear Max. He wonders if this is one of those moments.
“It also didn’t feel like homework,” Mike blurts.
Will furrows his brows. “Huh?”
“The kissing,” Mike clarifies, color crawling up his neck. “With you. I mean—with El it felt like that sometimes, and I just—” He trails off, likely acutely aware he’s walking a line with no clear edges. “This didn’t.”
A pause settles between them. Mike’s gaze drifts, unthinking, back to Will’s mouth. He startles when he realizes he’s doing it, jerks his eyes away. Will’s heart has picked up again, an unsteady thumpthumpthump that drives him wild, leaves him lightheaded. He should run circles around Mike; an eddie, a vortex, the deadly Charybdis.
“Sorry. I—uh.”
“It’s fine,” Will mumbles, because his body seems intent on protecting Mike from discomfort at all costs. “And, um. I’m glad. I told you you aren’t stupid.”
Mike’s face softens. He glances towards the stairs, at the door where the faint sounds of clinking dishware have started to drift down into the basement, then back at Will. It must be time for supper now. They’ve spent a fair part of the afternoon down here. But there’s something in Mike’s expression that looks like reluctance. Like he knows that once he stands up, this moment won’t be theirs anymore.
“Thanks, Will.”
Will crumples the sticker in his palm. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
He makes to stand up, a dull ache spreading through his chest, but then Mike’s hand is reaching out to clasp over his arm, clammy and pale and pretty. Will almost gasps—thankfully, he doesn’t, but he definitely comes close—and Mike winces apologetically.
“Sorry. But just…so we’re clear. I might be all practiced out, but.” He swallows once, twice. “You could still use some work.”
And Will—he flushes; a deep, cherry red, head to toe.
“Mike! Will! Come up for dinner!”