Archive of Our Own ^beta

Grief is a funny thing. The ache left behind by El’s passing was lessening with time. Mike can’t help but feel like it’s betrayal to get over her so soon, even if it had been fourteen months. They’re all handling it differently. Lucas seems the most unprepared, as if sitting eighteen months by Max’s bedside seemed to give him a new sense of hope that nobody truly dies, and that they can get El back somehow, some day. Max and Dustin – who have spent the last few years cycling through their grief and regret – seem to be handling it the best. They’ll talk about it sometimes; it’s never a long conversation, maybe Max would mention a nightmare, or Dustin would mention something El had said once, and they would all move on. It’s as if lingering on the stories would break their tacit agreement to not talk about it.

Will – well, Will is quiet, like he is most of the time these days, which Mike kind of prefers. It’s never uncomfortable. Whenever El or the Upside Down comes up, it sits between them in that way where it feels heavy, but somehow easier to deal with because they have each other. 

Mike doesn’t really feel like a kid anymore, which he supposes he’s not really. He’s two months away from his eighteenth birthday and it feels strange being thrown into the realities of adulthood without ever getting a chance to experience a full childhood, or even lamenting the loss of his youth. 

It’s one of those cold February afternoons that they’ve been having lately where the sun never really comes out from behind the clouds. Hawkins is grey and boring and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do, which is all the same, because they all have annoying responsibilities now. Mike settles down onto the sofa in his basement, next to Will who has a sketchpad in hand. The others are scattered around. The plan was to watch a movie, but Dustin is now sprawled out on the floor with his AP Chemistry book, occasionally throwing out an expletive about redox reactions, while Max is heckling Lucas as he tries to fix Mike’s broken TV. 

Next to him, Will is biting his lower lip in concentration. Mike peeks over his shoulder to see that he’s adding the final bit of detail to Max’s hair. The drawing itself looks like the party in the middle of a forest. Mike can’t keep the smile off his face as he catches sight of himself in the drawing; somehow, Will managed to get the freckles on his nose right, and he’s not even sure his own parents could identify them from memory. He shoves Will’s shoulder lightly and smiles when Will looks at him in slight confusion at being brought out of his drawing spell. “I like it,” Mike says quietly, tilting his chin forward towards the drawing.

Will huffs out an exasperated chuckle. He says, “You like everything I draw.” Mike shrugs in response; there’s no point in denying something that’s been true since he could form actual memories. Will goes back to his drawing, moving onto Dustin. Mike shuffles a bit closer till he’s practically draped over Will, and Will seems to adjust around him, and Mike lets his head fall onto Will’s shoulder. He can feel Will freeze for a moment, his drawing hand hesitating on his sketchbook. “Are you okay?” Will asks after a beat, putting his pencil down.

Mike nods. “I’m always okay,” Mike says. Quietly, he adds, “Are you okay?”

“Can’t complain,” Will responds after a moment. He’s silent for a while, going back to drawing, and Mike takes a moment to tune out the room.

He doesn’t get far because Lucas drops down to the floor in front of the sofa, accidentally kicking Dustin in the process, which leads to another minute of Dustin swearing up and down about chemical oxidation. Mike can feel Lucas staring at him, which has been happening quite a bit lately, and eventually gives up on trying to ignore him.

“What?” Mike asks, not bothering to move from where he’s very comfortable. 

Lucas shrugs. “I was just thinking.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Max teases, as she settles next to him. He wraps an arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer, and dropping a kiss on top of her head.

Mike exchanges a quick look with Will. He’s been noticing the changes in Lucas and Max. They don’t bicker as much, which probably has a little bit to do with them growing up, and a lot more to do with how they’ve all been flirting with loss as long as they can remember, and breaking up every six weeks doesn’t have the same appeal.

“I was thinking,” Lucas starts again, his voice a little bit more somber. “Do you guys think that when we’re old, and I’m talking like fifty with a beer belly and gray hair kinda old, we’ll look back on —” He hesitates, looking around the room to gauge everyone’s reaction because they all know what’s coming. Dustin puts his calculator down and sits up straighter. Lucas exhales and says, “when we look at the Upside Down, we’ll start forgetting about it? Like it’ll feel fake at some point, like it’s something we all just collectively imagined.”

The room is quiet for a long time. It’s Will who eventually breaks the silence when he says, “No.” Three sets of eyes look at him, but Mike closes his eyes. Mike shifts even closer to Will, however impossible that is. Quietly, Will continues, “Trust me, I’d love to think it was all a part of my imagination, but –” Mike feels, rather than sees, the way Will’s hands tremble. “That’s a pretty fucked up thing to imagine.”

Mike wonders if he’s allowed to reach out and take Will’s hand, or if their current position is already crossing some imaginary line that they implicitly agreed on. Mike supposes things are supposed to be different now, but he can’t think of that too long or the quiet creature in the back of his mind comes to life, and he really doesn’t want to deal with that when Will is so close.

“I agree,” Max says quietly to pull Mike out of his thoughts. “I feel it all the time, everywhere. I don’t know if we can forget about it, but maybe it’s just something we live with.” She pointedly doesn’t mention Vecna, which is their biggest rule. Vecna and the Mind Flayer have fell out of their lexicon completely. Dustin even crossed out every mention of them in their D&D binders, tasking Mike to come up with new names.

“I feel like the specifics are gonna fade one day,” Dustin adds. “At least, I hope they do. Well, obviously, not the friendship part, but you know, the other stuff.”

“Mike, you’re being uncharacteristically quiet, which normally I’d be grateful for, but it’s freaking me out right now,” Max says, giving him a look that’s too close to concerned for him to appreciate.

Mike gives her the finger in response, which makes her smile, so he can be proud of himself for timing that right. “I don’t know,” Mike eventually says when he can’t handle everyone staring at him anymore. He feels like they all think he’s made out of glass. “I think El would want everyone to be happy and comfortable, but I don’t know when that’ll be or what it’ll look like.” Before anyone can ask the thing they’re all desperate to ask, Mike snaps, “God, I’m fine. You’re all looking at me like I’m going to jump off a cliff or something.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dustin says drily.

Lucas gives Mike a look. “What?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Are you all done staging an intervention?” He asks, annoyed suddenly. Will shifts next to him, putting down his sketchbook and pencil, and giving him a soft look. Mike sighs. “Can we watch the movie now?”

Lucas wordlessly starts Empire Strikes Back, as Dustin puts away his books. Mike lifts his head and gets up off the sofa to grab a blanket. When he returns, Will looks at him with such gentle care that Mike feels that strange flip in his stomach that’s been happening a lot more lately. Mike settles back next to him, draping the blanket over both of their bodies.

“You don’t have to be okay, you know,” Will says, quietly, a little while later. 

Mike stretches an arm over the backrest. “You don’t either,” Mike replies.

Will hums and curls into Mike’s side. “This might sound crazy, but I actually am okay,” Will says, keeping his voice low when Dustin shoots them a look. “Like, really, Mike.”

Mike looks at Will and even in the darkness, he can tell that Will isn’t lying. 

~

The new prom fliers are everywhere. Max spends lunch complaining about the theme being David Bowie’s Changes, which seems too on the nose for anyone to be happy about. She then immediately accepts Lucas’s promposal, which mostly consists of a reenactment of Lucas asking her to dance at the Snowball, all those years ago. Dustin makes a remark about how half this school thinks they’re all freaks and losers.

“Let them,” Mike counters because, goddamnit, they’ve been through enough. He looks at the poster again and scoffs at the design. “They could have had Will draw something for this,” he says to the table, which earns him murmurs of agreement. Mike looks around and checks his watch. “Hey, where’s Will anyways?”

“At the nurse’s office,” Lucas says, copying Dustin’s calculus homework. Mike stands up suddenly in sheer panic at the thought of Will needing to go to the nurse’s office, and then feels a little ridiculous when Will walks into the cafeteria. Lucas snickers, “Calm down, Mike. You can let him out of your sight for five minutes. He just forgot to submit his physical form this year and he needs it for graduation.”

“Oh,” Mike says, sitting back down. “Yeah, I was just – nevermind.” 

He’s pretty sure Lucas is saying something, but the creature in the back of his mind starts rearing its head again at the thought of Will, but a lot less timid than it used to be. Thinking objectively about it brings forth a barrage of facts that Mike never thought to question before. Will is his best friend. Will is who he wants to be around when he is sad or happy or angry or bored. Will is the most important person in his life.

Will likes boys. Will liked a boy, for real, at some point, even if he guards that secret harder than Mike has seen him guard anything. Mike can’t breathe when he thinks about all this too long, or what any of this means for him. 

“I think I’m failing stats,” Will says as he sits down next to Mike at the cafeteria table, dropping a folder onto Mike’s binder, covering the prom poster. To Dustin, Will adds, “You need to save me.”

“Am I all of your go-to cheat code right now?” Dustin says with a groan. “We need to trade for fairness.”

“I’ll cover your English homework,” Will offers.

From there, everyone starts dividing up assignments to get through the next two months until they can finally graduate and get the hell out of this shithole. Mike, for his part, pokes at his peas and laughs when he needs to. When the topic switches to college acceptance letters, Mike turns his focus to Will and where he can see Will’s hands folded on the formica of the cafeteria table, calm. Mike, in a totally not weird way, likes Will’s hands: they draw things that Mike can stare at forever and they reach for Mike, sometimes, grounding him in the reality of the world. Will constantly does something tangible and good, and Mike has always felt comfortable in their shared silences. He feels like the creature in his mind is biting down on crevices of his brain he didn’t think existed.

“Earth to Mike,” Dustin practically shouts, waving a hand in front of him. Mike blinks at him. “I asked if you made a decision yet.” Mike blinks again, a little thrown off by the conversation. Right, college. There’s a pile of acceptance letters on his desk at home. He hasn’t opened any of them, but he knows that if it’s a big letter, it’s an acceptance. He shakes his head and Dustin lets out a frustrated groan. “Come on, man.”

They don’t talk about college much. It’s stressing everyone out. Max thought about community college for a bit, but then decided she’ll follow Lucas to wherever he’s going, get a job, and maybe she’ll go back to school eventually. Will put his decision in for NYU the second he got his letter. Dustin has been in early action at MIT since November. 

Mike looks at the prom poster. One thing at a time, he thinks, which is well enough because the bell rings and Mike groans. He follows the group out the cafeteria, waves bye to the others, and falls in step with Will as they walk towards Mike’s locker, and then English class.

“Mike – Mike, are you listening to me?” Will asks, leaning against the wall next to Mike’s open locker. Mike digs through his locker for his copy of The Scarlet Letter. 

“Yeah,” Mike says immediately because he’s always listening to Will. “You need an 80 on the next stats test.” Will’s eyes widen slightly, as if he wasn’t expecting Mike to actually be paying attention. Mike grins. “And, you think Dustin is a terrifying tutor.” Will opens his mouth to say something, but Mike beats him to it. “How’d I do?”

“You’re annoying,” Will says. He knits his brows together and gently asks, “What’s gotten into you?” 

Mike doesn’t immediately respond. Instead, he looks down at the prom poster that’s been haunting him all day. Will looks over his shoulder before Mike can shove the poster between all his other papers. He sighs and hands it over. “Don’t make fun of me,” Mike says quickly. 

Will’s face pinches in confusion and then amusement when realization hits him. “You can’t be serious,” Will snickers. 

Mike shrugs. “I know we hate this school, but it’s not the craziest idea.”

“It’s not,” Will agrees. He has a faraway look in his eyes as he scans the hallway and then he sighs. He leans against the wall again, looks down at the ground, and says, “It’s just different for me, you know.” Mike stares at him until Will looks back up. “I can’t exactly ask someone to go with me and it would be so boring otherwise,” he elaborates. “I’m surprised they’re even letting you go without a date.”

“What are you talking about?” Mike asks, then realizes, and amends by saying, “No, not about that. I know what you mean, but why would it be boring? We could – I don’t know, hang out.”

Will raises a brow. “You want to go to our high school prom, which would definitely be boring, to hang out with me when we hang out all the time.”

“Okay, well, who would you go with?” Mike says, changing the topic because he’s blushing so hard they could probably see him in the Upside Down if that still existed. “If — you know. You didn’t live here, things got better, and we all just stopped being assholes to each other for no reason.”

Will hesitates for a long time. Mike thinks he’ll finally find out who this mystery guy that Will had a crush on is, but Will just shakes his head and taps the book in Mike’s hand. “We’re gonna be late to class.”

Mike shuts his locker. He’s about to say something else when he notices Will’s hoodie. Before he could think too hard about it, he reaches out and pulls one of the draw strings. “This is mine, by the way.” 

“Oh, I must have accidentally grabbed it last night,” Will explains, the tips of his ears turning pink. Cute, Mike thinks. Shut up, his mind supplies to the relentless creature. “I’ll get it back to you.”

“No, it’s – it’s fine. You should hold on to it,” Mike rushes out before he can overthink. He explains, “I think I grew since I got that and it’s kinda tight.” It’s a lie, Will knows its a lie, but they’re past the point of asking questions. 

All Will says is, “Oh.” Will is silent for a long time, as they turn the corner to get to the classroom. He’s silent until they’re at their seats and then he says, “Thanks, Mike.”

~

“Can they kick you out of college if you fail all your senior year classes?” Mike asks from the basement floor. He aggressively highlights something completely useless in his textbook. He stares at Nancy’s chemistry notes from a few years ago, which she kept in a much better condition than his own notes. 

“Yes,” Dustin says immediately. “But, you don’t have to worry about that.” Mike is about to thank Dustin for his unfounded faith when Dustin adds, “They’re not gonna rescind your offer because you haven’t even put in your decision yet.”

“What?” Will asks, sitting up suddenly from where he was lying down on the sofa. His copy of The Scarlet Letter drops to the floor. “Mike.”

“I still have three weeks,” Mike protests. “They said June 1st.”

“It takes two weeks to mail it in,” Lucas says, throwing a crumbled up piece of paper at him. “Dude, you’re gonna end up like Steve. What the hell has gotten into you?”

Well, there’s the whole end of the world shitshow that we’ve all conveniently decided to ignore, Mike thinks. “I don’t know,” Mike says quietly. “I don’t know.” 

There’s some truth to it. He doesn’t really know what’s getting to him. El is the obvious answer; it’s probably the one everyone is expecting. There’s some truth to that as well. He thinks it’s a little bit crazy that everyone is so stuck on ignoring all that, but he’s struggling to figure out where his grief ends, and where it’s starting to feel like an excuse. There’s also this; he’s spent his whole life in this basement, with these boys, and the thought of scattering is hard. He wonders why he’s the only one feeling this way. 

Dustin and Lucas don’t seem to want to lecture him anymore; both of them going back to their individual assignments and outlines and practice exams. Will, on the other hand, shifts so he’s sitting cross legged next to him, their knees bumping and their shoulders brushing. He keeps his voice low when he says, “If this is about El, you can talk to us.” He frowns lightly and says, “you can talk to me.”

“It’s not,” Mike says quickly. Will gives him a look and Mike runs a hand through his hair. He looks over at the others, who seem distracted, and decides it’s not all that bad to talk about. “It’s really not. I did make a decision, but I just don’t know why I didn’t send it in yet.” Will makes a sympathetic noise and Mike continues, “I’m just scared.”

“It’s a big change,” Will offers gently. He lowers his voice even more so that it’s barely above a whisper. “What did you decide?”

“NYU,” Mike replies, looking at Will questioningly. “I was thinking that we could, maybe, be roommates. If you want.” Will blinks at him slowly. The creature in his brain starts panicking and Mike quickly says, “It’s okay if you don’t. I mean, being stuck with me for another four years – or well, even a year, wouldn’t be great. And, I guess, you’ll want to meet people and maybe you’ll meet someone –”

“Mike,” Will cuts him off softly. He reaches a hand out to squeeze Mike’s shoulder. “Of course I want to be roommates.” He lets out a low laugh. “We lived together for almost two years.”

“I miss it,” Mike says suddenly. 

Will’s face breaks out into a smile. “I miss it too.” 

~

“Wait, who are you working on the project with?”

“Gareth Scott,” Will says as they walk to fourth period history. Mike makes a face at the fact that Will, apparently, decided to ditch their campaign to work on an art project with Gareth from third period. “We’re doing human portraits. He’s –” Will hesitates, drops his voice a little, so only Mike can hear. “He’s good looking.”

Mike freezes, then slowly blinks at Will, who doesn’t realize at first. He takes a few steps ahead before turning around and squinting at Mike in confusion. “Mike?”

Mike quickly shakes his head and rushes to fall in step with Will. “Right, good looking, continue.” Will still has the same look of confusion on his face and Mike can feel his face warm. When Will doesn’t say anything, Mike squeaks out, “Gareth from third period, good looking.”

“I know. I was the one telling the story,” Will says with some exasperation. He knits his brows together and exhales sharply. “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” Mike says immediately. Will looks at him sharply and Mike sighs. “I just didn’t know about Gareth, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Will says, his shoulders relaxing. “It’s just an art project, Mike.”

Mike nods again, and desperately tries to ignore how his insides feel like falling out.

~

Mike hears his radio crackle and hiss, taking him out of his new comic books that he’s not really reading, but staring at to not think about Will at Gareth’s house, hanging out, working on a stupid art project.

“Mike, are you awake? Over.” Will’s voice comes through. 

Mike rushes across the room to grab his radio and practically shouts, “Will, are you okay? Over.”

“I’m home,” Will says a minute later. Belatedly, he adds, “Over.” Mostly because he knows Mike gets annoyed when people don’t close out their messages over the radio. Mike breathes a sigh of relief. The radio hisses again and Will’s voice drifts back in, saying, “Can you come over? I can’t sleep. Over.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Over.” Mike responds. 

It takes some maneuvering, but Mike manages to get out of his house without much of a problem. The ride to the Byers new house is only about ten minutes now. The wind is a soft, steady breeze that runs through Mike’s hair, causing stray curls to fall into his eyes. His mother keeps telling him to get a haircut, but Will had let slip that he liked Mike’s longer hair a month ago, and Mike can’t bring himself to cut it, yet.

Mike drops his bike on the driveway and looks at the window to Will’s room, which is faintly lit up. He taps on the window once and waits until the curtains are drawn apart. “Hey,” Will whispers into the hush of the night, as he opens the window. 

Mike pushes himself onto the window stool and then over the sill. “Hi,” Mike responds, running a hand through his hair. Will smiles slightly and rubs his eyes, and Mike can see him trying to fight his tiredness away. He looks soft in the soft orange bedside light. “Hi,” Mike repeats breathlessly, feeling something skittering under his skin like ants crawling. He’s been in Will’s room plenty of times; he’s snuck into Will’s room in the middle of the night since they were children. They’ve done this. Many times in fact. Except, things are different now, and Mike can’t help the way his palms feel clammy and the way his fingers twitch in nervousness. 

“How was it?” Mike finally asks, ripping the bandaid of. Will just stares at him in the strange, curious way he’s been doing a lot more lately, like he’s trying to understand a version of Mike that’s different than the one he’s known his whole life, which is fair because Mike feels like a different person now. When the weight of Will’s stare starts getting to him, he lets out a nervous laugh. “Your art project,” Mike prompts. He hesitates, scratches the back of his neck, and ducks his head. “Gareth.”

“He’s nice,” Will admits, walking towards his bed. Mike follows and sits down on the floor, leaning against where Will is laying down. If Mike leans back a little more, he can feel the feather light brush of Will’s forearms against his hair. “I think I was just hoping for something different,” Will says, quietly. Mike makes a noise in response, letting Will talk about it in his own time. “I don’t know what I was hoping for. Sometimes it feels like I fell behind the pack, and there’s nothing in Hawkins that could help. I get jealous sometimes, of Mom and Hop, of Lucas and Max, of –” He hesitates. “Nevermind. It’s hard to explain.”

Mike shuts his eyes. “Try me,” he manages when he can finally find his voice. Mike tilts his head up and finds Will already looking down at him. Mike feels like he’s been drugged, drowning in the soft orange light of the bedroom, underneath the power of Will’s stare. He turns around, slowly, so he’s facing Will directly, and leans his cheek onto the bed to look up at Will. 

Will swallows hard enough that Mike can hear it. “I don’t know. I think I spent so long pretending I wasn’t a romantic because it was easier than admitting that I’m different,” Will explains, as he looks down at Mike. “I had this crush a while ago, and thank god Robin talked me out of it because I think I would have had all these expectations of what I wanted from him, and he wouldn’t have been able to give me that, and that’s not fair to him.”

“But, what if he likes you?” Mike says, incredulous. As if anyone in the world wouldn’t want to give Will everything he ever wanted. Mike doesn’t even know who this guy is, and he feels the way his gut twists in anger at him for breaking Will’s heart. “That should be enough for him to give you what you want.” 

Will snorts in reply and reaches a hand out; he hesitates for a moment, and Mike expects him to retreat, because Will has been doing that a lot more lately. However, this time, Will doesn’t. Instead, he pulls on the curl falling onto Mike’s forehead and twists it around his finger lazily. “Not everyone wants to drop everything to find a waterfall in some other country to be with someone they love, Mike.” He shakes his head and smiles slightly. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. It would be nice to just –” Will cuts himself off, biting his lip in the way he does when he’s thinking hard. “You know what, nevermind.”

Mike stares at him, but Will isn’t looking at him. He has his eyes closed, still playing with Mike’s hair absentmindedly.

“Can I be honest?” Mike asks, suddenly.

Will still doesn’t open his eyes but he murmurs, “Isn’t that what we’re doing right now?” Mike doesn’t have it in him to say that no, they’re not, because there’s a million things he needs to tell Will, and he knows Will has his own secrets now. It’s strange how that happened; somehow, Will is both the person Mike is the most honest with and the least honest with.

Swallowing hard, Mike says, “I don’t think I was serious about that.”

This gets Will to open his eyes. He turns so he’s on his side, facing Mike, and he’s close enough that Mike can see all the various shades of green and amber in Will’s eyes. “You don’t have to tell me,” Will says, because he doesn’t really need to ask the question, it’s been hanging in the air for ages now, ever since El’s sacrifice. The others know some of the story, but Will knows most of the story. “But if you want to, I’m here.”

And habit says, bite it all down and don’t say a thing, Mike Wheeler, but he keeps staring into Will’s face and he thinks that there’s nowhere else to put this. Mike is out of space in his head and in his heart, that he’s filled up every bit of space between the atoms in his body with various aches and wants. If all that is going to spill out,  it might as well spill out in all its ugly uncertainty into Will’s hands. Mike has always liked them.

He says, “I don’t think I was in love with El.” 

Will blinks at him. “Come up here,” he says, and Mike does, crawling onto Will’s bed so they’re laying side by side, shoulders and hands brushing. 

“I should have told her,” Mike admits into the quiet hush of the room. “I can’t now, which pisses me off, and then I feel guilty about it because she’s gone, and I should be mourning her.” Will makes a small, soft noise next to him. “It makes me upset that my biggest regret is not being able to tell her that I wanted to break up.” Mike thinks about it, tries to remember those last few years, and adds, “I’m not even sure we were together in the end. I don’t think my heart was in it anymore. Does that make me a bad person?”

Will is silent for an achingly long time. Then, barely audible, he says, “You can’t choose who love or don’t love, Mike. I think this would all be easier if you can.” Something rises through Mike like acid, threatening to pour all over the tenderness of the moment. “You did love her, you know. Maybe not in the way that you thought you should, but you cared for her. She knew that.”

“I can’t believe it’s all over,” Mike says, turning on his side. Will matches him, shifting a little closer, their bodies curving like parentheses towards one another. 

Will whispers, “I’m glad it’s over. We get to start over. All of us.” 

Then, Will yawns suddenly, the tiredness clearly creeping in finally. Mike doesn’t need to check his watch to know it’s too late to go home now, not that he’s trying very hard. Will seems to register that and looks away, blushing, pulling his hands closer to himself. Mike pushes himself on his elbows and watches him. 

“You take the bed,” Will says, quietly.

There’s a determined, resigned edge in his voice, which is enough to remind Mike how totally fucking stupid this is. They’ve shared a bed before, even if it’s been a couple of years since they last did it. Mike can see the doubt forming on Will’s face and he scoffs. “You’re not sleeping on the floor,” Mike says before Will can protest. “We’ve done this before.”

“Yeah, but –” Will starts, and then he sighs. “I’m not winning this war of wills right now,” he says decidedly. He moves so he can get under the covers. Mike lets himself stare for a moment before he gets under the covers on his own side, sits frozen in indecision for a while before he reaches over – careful to arch his body – over Will to turn off the light.

The next thing Mike knows, Will’s alarm clock is going off. Mike opens his eyes and sees nothing at first, just a blur, and then he blinks twice and sees the divot of Will’s collarbone, the curve of his shoulder. Everything else starts filtering in pieces: the weight of Will’s arm across his side, their legs tangled together, how Will had tucked his head under Mike’s chin, fingers loosely clinging to Mike’s shirt.

The alarm is still blaring across the room somewhere and Will tilts his head up a little. It takes a moment for Will to figure out his surroundings; he curses under his breath and sits up suddenly, his eyes huge with nervous shock. 

“I’m sorry,” Will says, voice hoarse with sleep. His hair is sticking up at forty-five degree angles and he has pillow creases on his face, and it’s all fucking adorable. Mike suddenly is thankful he’s spent his entire life able to repress his impulses because he wants to touch Will’s hair, wants to put it all back in place, but he knows that would maybe, possibly, freak Will out. That’s why, with all the strength he could muster, Mike checks his watch. “Can’t believe I let you convince me to go out on a school night,” Mike says.

Will gives him a look of real, actual despair. “Shut up,” Will mutters, getting up, and leaving Mike suddenly very cold. “Coming to my house barely counts. Besides, late nights are basically training for college.”

“So what you’re saying is that we’ll be home watching Star Trek re-runs most nights,” Mike says, sitting up as well, and tugging at the hem of his t-shirt. He eyes the door. “What are the chances our moms have called each other already?”

“Depends on whether your mom realized you’re not home yet,” Will says, walking around his room and grabbing various textbooks and school supplies. He pointedly won’t look at Mike, which does upset him a little, but Mike stores it in the box of things that are weird with Will now, but maybe in a good way. He doesn’t get to dwell on that because there’s a knock at the door before Joyce calls both their names. Will gives him a look. “I think your mom called mine.”

~

Prom night is supposed to be magical. At least, that’s what Nancy has been telling him since she was ten and he was seven. Then, she didn’t actually go to her senior prom, what with Vecna opening the gates and sending Hawkins into an apocalyptic earthquake and all. So, technically, Mike is the first one in the family to go to prom since his own parents. His mother is excited; he lost count on how many photos she’s taken. Holly is excited too; she spends the entire day asking him about his date (that he doesn’t have), the song (that he doesn’t care about), and Will (that he can’t talk about). His father is pointedly not excited; he gives Mike a disappointed look over breakfast, asks why he couldn’t find a girl to go with, and mutters that prom tickets are getting expensive, even if he just got another promotion. Mike mostly ignores him.

Mike also doesn’t know when the party decided that they’re taking their pictures at Mike’s house, but they do everything at Mike’s house and this might be one of the last times that they get to do something life changing here. Mike doesn’t want to think about that. 

Dustin arrives first and tells off Mike’s dad at the door. He gives Mike a once over and says, “Dude, you need to do something about your hair.”

“Shut up,” Mike mutters, but looks at himself in the mirror. Personally, he thinks his hair looks fine. He’s not trying to look like Steve Harrington. He’s just trying to get through this night without having some giant crisis that would send him into a mental breakdown. “Your hair looks like dried noodles.”

Dustin raises his middle finger, but before he could escalate, Lucas and Max walk into the room. Max’s green dress matches Lucas’s tie, and they both look so fucking happy that Mike gets this rush of secondhand joy. “Wow,” he manages after a moment. 

Lucas poses in front of the room, holding his suit lapels apart. Max rolls her eyes at him, but Mike sees the way she’s trying, and failing not to smile. “He’s been doing this all day,” Max explains, still looking at Lucas. 

“I’m just trying to keep up with you,” Lucas shoots back, grinning at her. “I’m the luckiest man in the world.” Max shoves his shoulder lightly, but she can’t stop smiling when he dips her to kiss her. 

“Alright, we get it,” Mike says with a groan. “You’re in love and the rest of us are going to prom alone, like losers.”

“You said it,” Lucas tells him with a shrug. “Of course, if you would just get out of your ass for five seconds –” Max elbows him. Lucas winces slightly and clears his throat. “You would know that you should put yourself out there.”

Whatever Mike was about to say dies on his lips because Will walks into his room. He’s fixing his tie absentmindedly. He mutters, “Mike, your dad is insufferable.” He looks up to catch Mike’s gaze and Mike immediately freezes. “Um,” Will breathes out. “Hi.”

Mike can’t even measure how seeing Will makes him feel, it’s wadded up in his throat and congested in his chest, and he’s torn between the terror of knowing he really can’t run from this any longer and the kind of longing that can actually kill him. He manages to swallow hard and say, “Um, hi.”

Lucas lets out an undignified laugh and everyone turns to look at him. He pats Will on the shoulder and says, “Looking good, man.” 

That seems to shatter some of the tension, knock it right out of Will’s bones, and he laughs. His face is flushed pink and he shoves Lucas lightly. “Thanks.” He looks between Lucas and Max and says, “You guys too,” before walking out the room with them.

Mike stares after him for too long.

~

Prom is overrated, Mike decides. It’s held at the banquet hall over Enzo’s and the theme is too self-indulgent. There was a speech about the earthquake, the mall fire, and the Russians. Nobody knows about the military or the Upside Down, and nobody can. So, the five of them exchange uneasy looks. Lucas passes a flask to Max, who passes it to Mike, who passes it to Will, and eventually Dustin finishes it off. Someone on the basketball team gets up there and gives a speech about all the people they’ve lost over the years because that’s just what happens at these things. There’s notable names missing, as expected, but then dinner is served while the DJ starts playing all the hits.

Mike moves the potatoes around his plate; his appetite has been off for a while now, which he just thinks is a symptom of everything else being off. Will is next to him, looking at the dancefloor that’s filling up now. They both watch Max pulling Lucas onto the dancefloor, which is then followed by one of the girls on the debate team asking Dustin to dance. Dustin, understandably, freezes. 

“I think his brain broke,” Will whispers. 

Mike snickers. “Someone reboot him.”

“Put him in rice,” Will adds.

Dustin does eventually manage to get onto the dancefloor. Mike catches Will frowning. It’s the tiniest little thing, but that slight downward crease in his mouth transforms his entire face.“Hey,” Mike says, suddenly, touching Will’s hand, and when Will turns to look at him, Mike doesn’t take his hand away.  “We could leave, if you want.”

Will smiles at Mike, small and sweet, and Mike likes to think it’s just for him. “Thought you said you wanted to experience this before you got out of here.”

“Yeah, I changed my mind,” Mike says, wrinkling his nose. “Come on,” Mike says to him, takes one look around the banquet hall, before grabbing Will’s hand and tugging Will towards the stairway that leads to the roof. 

“Mike, what –” Will starts. 

Mike says, “Just trust me, okay?”

Will is quiet as he lets Mike tug him along, up the stairs, towards the rooftop door. Mike lets out a triumphant noise when the door isn’t locked, pulling Will with him to the rooftop. “Mike?” Will asks, uncertain, and Mike just tightens his grip on Will’s hand, until they’re on the ledge. From this vantage point, you can see all of Hawkins, not that there’s much to see, but the night is bright and Will has that twinkle in his eyes when he gets to do something mischievous. 

“Oh,” Will says, hushed. He stares around the nonexistent skyline, and then up at the clear sky. He looks hazy with wonder, hazel eyes dark and starry, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he inspects the space for a long, quiet moment before his gaze settles back on Mike. “You’re unbelievable, Michael.” There’s something almost delirious in the tone of his voice, as he shakes his head and collects himself. He points out beyond Mirkwood where the lab stands dark under the moonlight. “It looks so fake now.”

Mike looks out at the lab. He’s a little surprised how quiet his mind is when he looks at the haunted corpse of the building that started this whole thing. “Yeah,” Mike agrees, sitting down on the edge, He dangles his feet over the edge. Will settles down next to him. “I can’t wait till you get to leave this place,” Mike says. “I mean, all of us, but especially you.”

Will looks at him with brilliant affection. “I can’t wait till you get to leave this place too,” Will shoots back gently. “You do too much, Mike.” Mike scoffs and is about to protest when Will bumps his shoulder against Mike’s. “No, I mean it. You didn’t have to hang out with me tonight. You could have asked anyone at school.”

“Me?” Mike asks incredulously, cursing the way his face picks up color whenever he flushes. “I mean, I did say we could hang out if all else fails.”

“Oh, I’m the last resort, huh?” Will asks. Mike is about to protest and stumble around how that’s absolutely not true and could never be true when he catches Will’s smirk. 

“Asshole,” Mike mutters. “I have no idea where people get the idea you’re not a little shit.”

“Homophobia, probably,” Will says solemnly. Mike’s eyes widen and he opens his mouth to apologize for something, anything, when Will laughs. “Jesus, Mike, relax.” 

Mike’s smile is instinctive, reflexive, and he couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to. “We should have one last great summer,” Mike suggests when they fall into a comfortable silence. Will tilts his head to look at Mike, silently encouraging him to continue. “Like, we could make a bucket list. We could hit Hawkins’ best hits one last time before we leave for good. It would be a good way to make up for all the summers we’ve lost.”

“So, what, arcade, movie theater, back to the arcade, and then your basement?” Will teases. 

“The diner has good milkshakes,” Mike retorts. “I have a car now,” he adds. Before Will can say the obvious comment, Mike groans. “Okay, yes, it’s Nancy’s, but she won’t be back for a while. I think she’s scared mom and dad are gonna yell at her for dropping out of college.”

“Your mom won’t care,” Will points out.

 “And I don’t think my dad remembers Nancy even exists,” Mike says with a snort.

Will crosses his legs on the ledge and tilts his head so he can stare at Mike’s face properly, and maybe it means a lot more than Mike ever thought that he’s not shy at all under Will’s gaze. The air between them has been different for months, but Mike can’t tell if he’s just thinking too much about it. Mike knows well enough that he’s probably been obvious in his feelings, even if Will would never put him on the spot. Will, for his part, feels like he’s been withdrawing more than ever. Mike notices it sometimes when Will hesitates to hug him, or the curious tilt of the head he does when Mike reaches for him, or on the rare occasions Will does reach out first, he backs away just as quickly.  

But then, every so often, they get like this. Mike feels like they’re seven again, planning what they would do over summer break. “There’s also the lake,” Mike suggests when the silence between them stretches. “You like swimming.”

“No, you like swimming,” Will says automatically, still smiling. 

Mike grins. “I like swimming.”

Another silence. This one lingers as Mike shifts a little closer to Will; their bodies touching from shoulders to knees. Mike kicks his feet into the space in front of them, as he looks down at the ground. There was a time, a year ago now, where Mike’s first thought would be dangerous, something that could get him institutionalized if anyone knew. Now, he’s mostly contemplating how it would be if he takes Will’s hand again, links their fingers together, traces the back of Will’s knuckles, and slowly pours each of his feelings out into the open. 

It would be terrible, though. He would mess up, somehow. He would say the wrong thing, like he always does. Will would pity him, maybe, in that gentle way he does when he brushes off Mike’s apologies. Then, they would go to college, and maybe they’ll be roommates for a year or two. But, eventually, Will would go to a bar somewhere, meet someone who can articulate his thoughts better and be more stable, and Will would live his life out, happy and comfortable. Mike would be there too, he thinks, watching it all play out. Mike looks back down at the ground and vaguely wonders how far it is.

Mike feels a light tap to the back of his hand, and he looks over at Will. Something indecipherable spreads across Will’s face. “Mike?” he says, hesitantly. He’s still smiling in that same hazy way, but there’s something else behind his eyes. Mike hums in response. Will looks down at his hands for a moment, drawing a shaky breath that causes Mike’s nerves to spike, before he says, “You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” Mike nods. Will makes a sound that sounds like a huff of laughter. “I kept wondering how different my life would look if you knew I was gay,” he hesitates a moment and Mike registers that Will doesn’t say the word out loud much. “I genuinely expected the worst, you know.”

Mike frowns. He feels his bottom lip quiver and he feels any words he has caught in his throat. If only you knew, Mike thinks. Except, he’s never been as brave as Will. It would be so much easier if Will could just read his mind, enter some deep mindscape of his, and sort out Mike’s emotions. All he can manage is breathlessly saying, “Will.”

“It’s not because of you,” Will quickly adds. “The idea of drifting away from you scared me more than anything.”

Mike feels the warm wetness pooling in his eyes and he blinks rapidly. “Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t gotten tired of me.” It’s Will’s turn to look at him. “I haven’t always been the best.”

“You’re the best thing to happen to me, Mike,” Will says, casual as you like, but Mike knows Will’s voice better than that and hears the faint tremor.

Mike knows he’s bright red, too, probably, but he’s smiling, and he says, “Liar.”

“Not about this,” Will admits, smiling back. 

~

Nothing really happens in Hawkins anymore. Their local high school graduation is enough to make the local radio news that only locals listen to, with the anchors talking at length about the various changes to traffic that will be put into effect for safety. On Monday, he drives Dustin so they can pick up their graduation robes and the tickets for their families. They pass by the memorial to lives lost on the way back, and Dustin gets quiet, but then he shrugs and asks Mike to drive him to the comic book store. On Tuesday, Mike is practically dragged to the post office by Lucas and Max, so he can mail out his college decision to NYU. Afterwards, Max suggests that they drop off a thank you present to a doctor at the hospital. On the way back, none of them mention why Max needed to thank the doctor in the first place. On Wednesday, he gets his final report card and stares at the list of A’s and B’s that feel a little unearned, but his mother kisses him on the forehead and says she’s proud of him. He somehow managed to get through high school consistently making honor roll, even with the world ending. 

On Thursday, Nancy comes home. They sneak beers out of the fridge once their dad falls asleep on the recliner and go up to her room. She takes one look at him and asks, “Are you okay?’ Mike considers it for a long time and replies, “Yeah, I think so.” She hugs him and tells him that he should enjoy this summer. It’s been a long time since he’s been allowed to be a child, apparently. Mike doesn’t  have it in him to remind her that both the law and the dull ache in his chest say that he’s not a child anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.

On Friday, he finds Will on the stretch of Mirkwood where Castle Byers used to be, but is now a stretch of wild forest. There’s bushy leaves and prickly vines, and somewhere in the middle is Will Byers in a sweatshirt that Mike is certain belonged to him at some point, but he long stopped keeping track of. Mike steps over the dirt path underneath which has  grown over with moss.

“We could rebuild it, if you want,” Mike says, stepping into the clearing. Will flinches slightly, clearly not expecting Mike. He turns to look over his shoulder, and then relaxes, smiling in that small, secretive way he sometimes does with Mike. “Jonathan is home.”

Will shakes his head. “It feels weird hiding out in the forest,” he admits, quietly. “Jonathan and I started building it the night my dad left,” Will continues softly. Mike knows the story and they’ve talked about it many times, but he’s sure Will has some kind of point to make. He takes his time, walking over to a cut tree stump. He sits down and looks up at Mike. “I needed a space that was just mine.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Mike says. The basement was his place for as long as he could remember. The hours he spent as a child retreating into his comic books and his campaigns and his imagination while the world moved around him were some of the best moments of his life. He couldn’t even begin to get that feeling back, if he tried. Mike drops to sit on a patch of grass, stretches out his limbs and lets out a sigh. “So, what’s going on with you?”

Will grins. “I just wanted to say bye,” he explains. 

Mike blinks. “We’re here all summer.”

“No, I mean, I wanted to say bye to that version of me,” Will says, waving around. “I don’t think he thought he’d be here.”

Mike considers it and says, “That version of you was still pretty great.” He picks at the dry grass. “Like, despite everything.”

“He was scared of everything,” Will points out. The sun rises high overhead and it’s the first real hot day of the year. Will shifts to pull his – Mike’s – sweatshirt off, folding it neatly and holding onto it. “That version of me cried for six hours straight at the very thought of having a crush.”

This gets Mike’s attention. They don’t talk about it, like they don’t talk about most things from eighteen months ago. Will had a crush on someone at some point, but Mike didn’t ask then, and doesn’t think he could ever since. He waits for Will to say something more, but Will doesn’t. He’s more busy pulling apart a leaf by its veins.

“Did you ever tell him?” Mike asks, trying to keep his curiosity from showing and his jealousy from screaming. 

Will looks at him for real now, blinking slowly to reorient himself in the conversation. “Who?”

“The guy,” Mike prompts. He gestures wildly, as if that’s supposed to explain something. “You know, the one you liked before. You stopped liking him, right?” He knows he sounds pathetic.

Something in his tone causes the corners of Will’s mouth to dip into a frown, and Mike hates himself a little more than he did five minutes ago. “No, I never told him,” Will says, flatly. “He had a girlfriend and he didn’t like guys.” 

“His loss,” Mike offers. 

Almost like he didn’t mean to, Will barks out a laugh. Mike narrows his eyes. It takes Will a moment to settle and he shakes his head at Mike’s confusion. “You can’t just go around saying things like that,” Will says. He doesn’t give Mike a chance to protest or ask what Will means because he asks, “Anyways, why are you here?” It’s clearly a distraction tactic, but he has that determined look in his eyes that makes it clear he’s done talking about this.

Mile wraps his arms around his legs, tucks his knees in close, sets his cheek on his knees, and feels the flush rise on his cheek. “I didn’t see you all week,” he says simply and honestly. Will’s face softens. Then, Mike pulls out a folded piece of paper and hands it to Will. While Will reads it, Mike explains, “The bucket list we were talking about. I think I have the perfect schedule of D&D,  all the movies coming out this summer, the best times to go to the lake, and sleepovers. We have eighty-eight days between graduation and orientation.”

Will snickers, “Are summer jobs part of this?”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Don’t ruin it.” 

Will stares at the piece of paper for a long time and then he looks at Mike carefully. “You really are okay, aren’t you?” Will asks, softly. 

Slowly and deliberately, Mike nods, and then says, “I am. I don’t know if I can ever forget everything that happened, but –” Mike breathes in and out to steady himself before he continues, “Is it terrible I’ve moved on?”

Will huffs out a low laugh and shakes his head. “No, Mike, it’s not.”

Mike grins at him, a little wobbly.

~

Knowing that graduation is coming and actually holding his diploma in his hands are two very different things. Feeling the weight of the diploma jacket in his hands now, Mike realizes he never really thought it would happen. He never questioned it when he was twelve; he wanted to go to Chicago, or New York, or if he could really convince his parents, even further to London or Paris and write a book. At the time, the book he wanted to write was about alternate dimensions with sorcerers and magic, and a battle between good and evil. Call it stupid, call it naive, but Mike is a firm believer of miracles and a world where everyone is happy and nothing wrong ever happens. 

Now, he knows bad things do happen. Bad things happen every day, and sometimes those bad things happen to him and his friends, and not all of those things are supernatural. His mind spent so long refusing to acknowledge the possibility that he clung, and clung, and clung to an idea for so long. At eighteen, he thinks he should have learned his lesson and lose some of that unwavering faith in a miracle and inherent goodness. Except, he’s here, he just finished a five hour campaign with his friends, and his mother made his favorite meal. His friends are around the dinner table, his little sister spent the afternoon playing with her friends downstairs, and Will just lightly kicked his foot under the table.

Mike raises his brows and mouths, “What?”

“You’re spacing out,” Will says under his breath, carefully moving his peas to Mike’s plate, while Mike moves his carrots over to Will’s plate. 

“I was just thinking,” Mike says quietly, hooking his foot around Will’s ankle and smiling when Will doesn’t move it away. Somewhere around the table Dustin is shouting at Nancy about journalistic integrity, and Max is weighing in just to cause controversy. “I was dreading this day all year, but nothing really changed.”

“You worry too much,” Will teases. “I think you could give my mom a run for her money.”

Mike points his fork at Will. “Eat your carrots, Byers.”

His dad is the first one to retreat for the night, mumbling something about too many damn kids in the house. Mike suspects he’s also a bit over having to give time to Mike’s existence. Holly has long fallen asleep, and his mother broke out her favorite wine and her favorite record to signal that she’s done for the night as well. Nancy mentions having plans with Jonathan, which causes Mike and Will to exchange a look. At last, the party lingers on Mike’s driveway. Mike notices that Will doesn’t grab his bike when the others do. 

They hug a lot more now. Physical affection has always been a part of their friendship, and Mike thrives under that. Now, though, after a profound sense of loss that leaves scars they’ll never talk about, they make sure to hug each other goodnight just in case they wake up to news of another missing child.

“So,” Mike says, shoving his hands into his pockets as he turns to look at Will. Dustin’s bike is retreating down the road and he’s finally, finally, alone with Will. “You could sleep over,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant. 

Will looks at Mike for a moment, and Mike wonders if Will is going to say no. It’s another thing they don’t talk about much; the sleepovers are more impulsive now, which Mike supposes is similar to how they were when they were children, but it’s different now. These days, it’s sneaking in late at night and sneaking out early in the morning, like some sordid affair that they need to keep hidden from their parents. That particular thought makes the creature in Mike’s brain scream and thrash around in a warning for Mike not to get in too deep. To stop before he does something that could ruin the best thing in his life.

“I could, huh?” Will eventually asks, a teasing lilt to his voice.

Mike grins, crooked. “Should,” Mike amends. The early summer twilight finally starts setting around them and Mike feels the breeze pick up. Will, almost on instinct, steps a little closer to Mike and shivers slightly, wrapping his arms around himself. Mike tilts his head towards his front door. “I have the new Alpha Flight issue and the new Uncanny X-Men issue.”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were rich, Wheeler,” Will says in response, but he turns to walk towards Mike’s front door and Mike can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “I need something to sleep in,” Will says, as they make their way upstairs.

Mike finds a t-shirt and pair of shorts for Will while Will goes to call his mom. He fidgets with a loose string on the t-shirt, twisting it around his finger, and then letting go. Mike doesn’t know when he started feeling nervous around Will. He knows, now, what it all means, what it probably has meant for a while, but he doesn’t remember when it started. Sometimes, he thinks Will gets nervous around him too, but he doesn’t know if he’s reading too much into it. 

Maybe this is just how they’ve always been, a little shy around each other, color rising to each other’s cheeks when one of them says something dangerously close to the precipice of something, but then they separate and settle into what they know. Mike remembers holding Will’s hand when they were five, kissing his wrist to make a cut feel better when they were six, and thinking about how ridiculous it would be to get married when they could just live with each other forever when they were seven. In hindsight, Mike wonders why it took him this long to get here. 

Will walks in before Mike can go down that path. Wordlessly, Mike hands Will the spare clothes, and Will takes them, fingers lingering where they brush Mike’s. He doesn’t move them away and Mike stares at them, and then at him, at Will’s hazel eyes that almost look green under the dim lights of Mike’s bedroom, and then back down to where Will is clutching onto Mike’s t-shirt. Mike thinks he could spend forever looking at Will’s hands if given the chance.

“I should change,” Will says eventually. Something meaningful flickers over Will’s face as he schools his face back into what Mike is used to. Just like that, the air between them clears. Will shoves Mike’s shoulder lightly. “And, you should turn around.”

“Right, sorry,” Mike says as he turns around. It’s a bit stupid because he’s seen Will shirtless; they’ve changed around each other before. He hears the faint sound of Will taking his shirt off and Mike flexes his fingers on his thighs, forcing himself to look at the faint stains on his wall as a way to calm his mind down. 

It feels like an agonizingly long time until Will finally says, “Okay, I’m good.” Mike turns around and immediately looks down at the ground because he doesn’t have it in him to deal with Will in his sleep shirt, in his bedroom, looking soft and tired. When he looks up, Will has a small, shy smile on his face. “Thanks, Mike.

The sleeping bag is already set up on the floor, but Will follows Mike to the bed where his new comics are already spread out. Will sits on one side, cross legged, and opens the issue of Alpha Flight and Mike unelegantly flops down onto the other side, causing the bed to dip and for Will to let out a startled giggle.

“You’re like an uncoordinated baby deer,” Will teases.

Mike grins. “Baby deer are cute,” he says before he could think. He’s about to stammer out a follow up, but Will just laughs again and shakes his head. Mike opens his issue of Uncanny X-Men. He’s not really reading though. Instead, he watches the way Will bites his bottom lip as he flips through the issue slowly. 

A little while later, Will lays down, shifting until he’s on his stomach. He looks up at Mike and says, “What are you reading?” Mike shifts his own issue down until Will can peak over where it’s spread out on Mike’s thigh. Then, probably deciding that the angle doesn’t work, Will sits up again and shifts until he’s sitting right next to Mike, resting against the head rest, his shoulders brushing against Mike’s, as he looks over Mike’s shoulder.

Mike shifts a little closer to Will; he’s not sure he meant to, but it’s almost on instinct, and now he’s frozen in place. It’s just that Will is always warm, and he smells familiar, but Mike couldn’t even begin to describe it. He smells like home to Mike, like something so ingrained in him. Will slides down a little until his cheek is pressed against Mike’s shoulder. Mike looks down at him at the exact time Will looks up at Mike, a flash of uncertainty across his face. Mike shifts so he can move his arm around Will, and Will reaches across Mike to flip to the next page.

“Hey, I was still reading that,” Mike mumbles, as Will lets out a soft laugh, his breath fanning the sliver of collarbone exposed by Mike’s shirt. “You’re slow,” Will says, but flips back so Mike can finish. Mike smiles and looks down, feeling unexpectedly shy suddenly, as they disregard all those unspoken rules about personal space. 

Mike doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. With each flipped page, one of them makes a sleepy comment while the other makes a sleepy noise that says I heard you as they slide further and further down the bed. They are both heavy-eyed, drowsy, and mellow, and in the quiet of the night, the meaningless conversation feels more intimate. Mike knows they’ve done this before; this is what they always do, but he can’t ignore the slight tingle he gets when Will moves on the bed and rustles the sheets. The tingle creeps into his fingertips and his toes, and he wonders how he’s ever going to move forward.

He wants more of everything now. The friendship, the affection, the way his mind thinks that waking up tomorrow is worth it if he can see Will smile; they have it all already, but it can be more. Mike closes his eyes, and keeps in mind the possibility of less and maybe even none. Mike can remember everything he’s ever said to make Will sad, and he wonders if that’s just what he is. He could never make El happy. He doesn’t know if he has it in him to make Will happy. If Mike says something, and Will doesn’t feel the same way, or Mike screws it up somehow, they’ll get awkward with each other, maybe even resent each other. Maybe they’ll drift completely apart. Mike doesn’t know if he could continue living if he didn’t have this at all.

No more Will. That doesn’t even bear consideration.

Will yawns softly, moving again, and Mike bites his lip. Mike doesn’t realize that they’ve somehow managed to curl towards one another, until they’re facing each other. “Can I ask you something?” Will says, blinking slowly.

Mike nods.

“Do you ever think about the future?” Will asks.

Mike breathes out. “No,” he says truthfully. “Not mine, at least. I don’t know what to think about.”

“Waterfalls?” Will asks. He sounds curious.

Mike shakes his head and blinks back the drowsiness that takes over him. “I think that was a story. Something I needed to tell myself. I thought maybe it would help her too, but I don’t know.” Mike flushes at how young he feels sometimes. “I think about stories with Will the Wise as well, so it wasn’t just waterfalls.”

“Yeah?” Will asks as a sleepy smile crosses his face. “What do you have for me?”

Mike thinks about it. There’s a story he can’t tell, but he thinks about Will a lot and has a lot of other stories too. “Well, I think about you going off to a big city somewhere and finding what makes you happy,” he says quietly. That’s all it comes down to in the end for Mike. More brave than he’s felt in years, he adds, “I hope to be there too, if you want me there.”

“Mike –” Will breathes out. He raises a hand and it hovers over Mike's jaw, but Will doesn’t touch him.

“Yeah?” Mike asks, hope creeping into the deepest corners of his body.

Will drops his hand and says, “I can’t think about my life without you.”

“Me either,” Mike says immediately. 

The silence passes between them. They’re still facing each other, their quiet huffs of breath blending together in the space between them.Will looks happy and content lying there; the corners of his eyes slightly crinkling, lines around his mouth soft. Mike feels his heart skip a beat. Not now, he thinks. 

It’s Will who finally sits up. He points to his sleeping bag on the floor and says, “We should sleep.”

You don’t have to get up, Mike thinks. But, it’s too late and Will is already making his way to the floor.

~

It starts as Max’s idea and Mike should automatically know that means it’s a bad idea. He’s not sure how Max managed to get her hands on weed, but Mike suspects it has something to do with someone named Reefer Rick. He makes the executive decision that nobody should ask any questions. So, that’s how it starts. Then, Dustin convinces Steve to buy them some cheap alcohol under the pretense that they need to try things before college, as a science experiment, so they know what to do when they get to college. Steve, obviously, doesn’t question it. Mike plays his part too; he waits until his parents and Holly leave for the weekend to visit Nancy to invite everyone to his basement. So, they’re having a party. Kind of. If it was possible to have a party with the same four friends that he sees every day.

“I can’t believe we’re going off to college,” Dustin says for what feels like the hundredth time that evening. “Can you imagine college girls?”

“No,” Mike says just as Lucas says, “Duh,” which earns him a much deserved shove by Max, which somehow ends up with the two of them pushing and shoving until he has her pinned to the sofa. Lucas kisses her and they’re both laughing.

Mike takes another sip of whatever is in his cup and drops down to the floor. Dustin hands him the joint. He eyes Dustin and with great effort, says, “How do I do this?”

“I don’t know,” Dustin practically shouts, gesturing around. “You look like you would need to figure this out before college.”  Mike blinks at him, slowly, wondering what that’s supposed to mean. Dustin groans, “Just inhale it, man.”

Will sits next to him and hiccups, clearly past the threshold of whatever he’s been drinking. He reaches for Mike’s cup and Mike moves it away. “You’ve had enough,” he says with a smile. 

Will shoves him lightly and smiles sweetly, in a way that only Will can, that Mike hands his cup back to Will. Will takes a sip from the cup and holds onto Mike’s sleeve as Mike tries inhaling the joint. Mike sputters and coughs, which causes Max to laugh from the sofa.

He glares at where she’s perched on Lucas’s lap. “You’re so weak, Wheeler,” she teases. 

Lucas laughs from his spot and Mike snaps, “What are you laughing about?” He hands Lucas the joint. “You try if you think it’s so funny.” To that, Lucas looks at Max, uncertainty all over his face, but Max just gives him a smug look back. Lucas sighs and tries inhaling, and just like Mike, starts coughing. This causes the whole room to erupt in laughter, as Lucas hands the joint back to Max.

Mike finds a spot next to Will and prods Will’s calf with his foot. “Hi,” Mike says, coversationally. “Been a while.”

There’s a small smile on Will’s face. “Hey,” he says, with a tilt of the head. “Come here often?”

Mike can’t stop the fit of giggles that bubble out of him, which just causes Will to start laughing. Mike doesn’t know what possesses him to reach out and touch Will’s face, cupping it between his palms, letting his fingers stroke his cheekbones. Will starts to say something, but stops and shuts his mouth. He looks at Mike with large eyes, dilated by alcohol, but unmistakably bright. “Hi,” Mike says again when he can.

“For fucks sake,” Dustin mutters next to them. They step apart to stare at Dustin, who hands the joint over to Mike. “Finish it, Romeo.” The joint is almost down to the roach, with probably a single hit or two left.

Mike shoves Dustin lightly but takes the joint. He looks over at Will; his face is flushed, but he has this mischievous glint in his eyes. “You alright there, Wheeler?” Will asks softly, amusement rimming in his voice.

Mike takes another hit and meets Will’s gaze; warm, hazel eyes softening and crinkling at the corners. His mouth quirks up at the sides in a silent smirk. This time, Mike exhales, blowing smoke up into he air in front of him as he lets out a soft chuckle. He turns to Will and offers the joint. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know how,” Will admits, frowning slightly.

The fuzzy bits and pieces of an idea begin to coalesce and come together in his mind. He darts a quick look over at Lucas and Max, who have disappeared to god knows where and then to Dustin, who has now fallen asleep on the sofa. Mike takes a long, deep drag, letting the smoke fill his mouth. Then, before he can lose his nerve, he leans into Will, close, closer, until their lips are touching, and exhales, pushing the smoke past Will’s teeth.

It isn’t really a kiss, and it only lasts a few seconds before Mike pulls back an inch or so to make sure Will isn’t going to freak out on him. Will is staring at him, pupils blown wide, looking more than a little dazed. Will bites his lower lip before ducking his head. God, it’s almost unfair how cute he is, Mike thinks.

“Um. What was that?” Will says, and Mike has to smile, just a little, because he isn’t moving away. 

Mike shrugs. “Saw it in a movie.”

Mike feels it bubbling up in his lungs and he is powerless to stop it.  It hits him all at once and he starts giggling, which makes Will laugh again. He fully steps into Mike’s space, dropping his forehead to Mike’s shoulder and Mike could feel Will’s breath against his neck. He slips an arm around Will’s waist and pulls him a little closer, and Will looks up at him. “Are you okay?” Mike asks softly. 

“Yeah,” Will says, blinking slowly. He gets on his tiptoes and drapes his arms around Mike’s neck to balance himself. “Please,” Will says, his eyes wide and pleading. Mike knits his brows together and realizes that he has another drag in him.

“Are you sure?” Mike asks, looking at Dustin’s passed out form on the sofa. Will nods immediately and urgently. Mike takes another drag and holds it; he feels the hit build through his body, but then Will’s hands move to Mike’s hair, and Mike has never felt more grounded, even with the room blurring around them. He traces his thumb along Will’s jaw before hooking it under Will’s chin to crane Will's head upwards. Will immediately opens his mouth and Mike exhales smoke again; their lips brush again in the faintest ghost of a kiss, but this time Mike feels Will press back a little firmer, almost like a real kiss.

Mike takes a step back to look at Will. “Are you okay?” Mike asks again, gently. He reaches down to take Will’s hand. Every point of contact between their bodies feels like it’s on fire and buzzing with static. Will looks down at the ground, and Mike traces his finger against Will’s throat before tilting his head up again. “You’re going to need to answer me before I freak out.”

Will nods distractedly, licking his lips, as he looks up at Mike again. “You’re going to kill me, Mike,” Will murmurs, out of breath. He reaches a hand out and cups Mike’s jaw, tracing mindless circles with his thumb. His voice is slow when he slurs, “Like, actually kill me.”

Mike blinks, trying to orient himself in the room, which is spinning around them. “Yeah, maybe,” he whispers. Mike’s left hand lands on Will’s hip, at the space between the top of his jeans and where his shirt rode up, as he hugs Will, his other hand carding through Will’s hair. “Maybe, but then I’d die too.”

“You guys,” Lucas says, running into the basement. Mike groans as Will steps back and they separate. Mike feels his heart practically beating out of his chest as he desperately tries to stop the feverish flush that’s taking over his face. He looks at Will, who doesn’t look much better, with his wide eyes and messy hair.

Lucas holds up a six pack and eyes them both suspiciously. “What were you guys doing?” Mike glares at him.

~

Mike isn’t sure which one of them was sober enough to get sleeping bags out the night before, but he wakes up the next morning on his basement sofa. The first thing he notices is that his head wants to split open and his mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls. Next, though, he realizes that he’s tangled up in a throw blanket and a mess of limbs. It’s not the first time he fell asleep with Will sprawled all over him; Will’s elbows digging into Mike’s side and face pressed against Mike’s chest.  It’s happened enough times over the years that Mike doesn’t immediately panic. Instead, Mike takes a moment to appreciate the steady rise and fall of Will’s breath and the constant beat of his own heart. A different kind of warmth bubbles in Mike’s chest as he looks at Will’s sleep slack face.

Then, one by one, Mike’s memories start flooding in. Oh fuck, he thinks. Mike shifts a little to free one of his arms. He lightly shakes Will awake. “Hey, Will,” Mike whispers. Will mumbles something and somehow manages to snuggle even closer into Mike’s chest. He carefully tilts his head to look at the floor where Max and Lucas have managed to make some sort of makeshift nest out of sleeping bags to fall asleep in. Dustin, on the other hand, is asleep on Holly’s bean bag chair a few feet away, with an actual duvet. Mike matches his breathing to Will’s deep, steady inhales, and long, soft exhales. Before he has a chance to worry about what happens next, Mike drifts off into sleep.

The next time Mike wakes up, it’s because Will kicks his shin. “Ow,” Mike whines, opening his eyes. Will shifts, pushing himself off Mike, but in the process, nearly rolls off the sofa. Mike manages to catch him at the last second. Mike yelps, “What the hell, Will?”

Will shoves his shoulder lightly, but he settles back down on Mike’s chest, as Mike drapes an arm around Will’s waist. At that gesture, Will hisses, “You have ten seconds to explain yourself, Michael.”

“Well, William,” Mike says, dragging out Will’s name and tightening his hold. Will lifts his head to glare at Mike. “You didn’t know how to smoke a joint.”

Will rolls his eyes. Then, suddenly, his face falls and he asks, “You’re not freaking out, are you?”

“No,” Mike says immediately. Maybe he should be freaking out. It’s kind of a big deal; they kissed, or well, they did something. It’s close enough to a kiss. Mike likes to think it’s testing the waters of something that neither of them are prepared to talk about. Will still has that sad, little frown on his face and Mike can’t stand it. He adds, “It was kind of fun.”

This seems to catch Will by surprise because he raises his brows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mike confirms. Will gets that same look he’s been getting all summer where it feels like he’s studying Mike in some way, and doesn’t know how to understand whatever he finds.

When Mike knits his browns together in confusion, Will murmurs. “How are you not freaking out? You should be freaking out. It’s the kind of thing to freak people out.”

Mike snorts. “Do you want me to freak out?” 

“Obviously not, Michael.” Will says with another roll of his eyes.

Mike grins. “Full name twice in ten minutes. That has to be a record.”

“Yeah, set by your mother,” Will shoots back. He sighs deeply and looks away from Mike. “I just don’t want you to freak out and this becomes a problem later between us.”

Mike reaches a hand out to force Will to look back at him. “I had fun, Will. Trust me.” When Will doesn’t say anything. “It won’t be a problem, I swear. If it is, we’ll talk about it when it happens, like we always do.”

This seems to satisfy Will because he drops his forehead against Mike’s chest and yawns. “You really are unbelievable,” Will mumbles into his chest.

~

Mike sometimes wonders how drowning feels. Not in that scary way where people look at him funny, but in a scientific way where he wonders about death sometimes. He thinks about that one afternoon in late June when the party decides to go to the cove on Lake Jordan, on the edge of the woods. It’s deserted because nobody comes out this way, choosing to go to Lover’s Lake instead. Even if they did, this particular cove was a secret. The only reason they found out about it in the first place was because Mike got lost on the way to Will’s house eleven years ago.

Mike has always been a good swimmer. When he was younger, his family would go visit his uncle’s lake house on Lake Michigan. At first, Mike was too scared to go into the water; his dad thought that was ridiculous, but Nancy took his hand and slowly helped him in and got him a cupcake when he finally didn’t need her to hold his hand. He always liked the way the water flowed around him, like all his senses were merging together and his limbs gradually lost their tension. 

Sometimes, he thinks about how he just stopped going swimming, without ever really choosing to. First, his uncle died, which was all the same because he was old, and kind of mean, and Nancy hated that he always smoked. Then, he spent the summer after seventh grade trying his best to avoid thinking about where Eleven disappeared to. He also spent a lot of time with Will that summer, like most summers, and Will wasn’t feeling great. So, Mike did his best to find things that would distract Will. The arcade was the best, the comic book store was passable, but Will didn’t like swimming and hated being cold after he got out of the water, so Mike hated the same things. The summer after that was a shit show and then every summer since, the world was ending.

So, it takes Mike a while to get used to the water around him. He jumps off the giant rock and lands in the water, which still hasn’t picked up summer heat yet. His limbs gradually untense, and he spreads his arms out like angel wings and slowly starts to kick his feet. He feels his cheeks flush from the high heat above him. 

He’s about to close his eyes when he feels water splash onto his face. Mike jolts, getting water into his eyes. He gasps, as he flounders for a moment in the water, but then he feels a reassuring hold under him. Mike blinks slowly, stares around him blankly, threading the water under his feet, before finally landing on the wooden dock by the shore, where Max and Will are lounging on beach chairs, and Max is looking over Will’s shoulder at something he’s drawing. Next to him, Mike hears a cough and then feels a shake of his shoulders.

He turns to find Lucas raising a brow at him. “You’re welcome,” Lucas says pointedly.

“You wouldn’t need to save me if you didn’t almost drown me,” Mike shoots back. This earns him a roll of the eyes from Lucas and a shove. Mike splashes him lightly and says, “Wanna race to the dock?”

Lucas snorts and swims ahead a little, so he can turn to face Mike. “So you can show off for your boyfriend?” Lucas says. His tone has a teasing undercurrent to it, but Mike opens his mouth and closes it, lost for words. Lucas softens and says, “You can talk to me, you know. It’s not like we would judge.”

Mike kicks his feet up so he can float on his back again, staring at the sky. “Yeah,” he says quietly. He knows that. He’s always known that. The four of them, and Max now, have always been united through everything. “It’s not that,” Mike admits honestly. “I know you wouldn’t care. It’s just –” Mike thinks, closing his eyes when he can’t stare at the sun any longer. He feels the tip of his nose burning slightly. He can hear the quiet kick of Lucas’s feet. “It’s just that I feel like a screw up all the time, and I’m gonna mess things up with him.”

Lucas is silent for a long time, until Mike hears another splash, before he feels the water on his face. This time he’s more prepared, so he glares at Lucas, who just levels him an unimpressed look. “Man, I’m not saying you don’t screw up most things,” Lucas starts and Mike opens his mouth to protest, which earns him a shove. “Shut up and listen, okay?” Mike nods. “I’ve known you since the second grade and the only thing I know for sure about you is that you would do anything for Will.”

“Well, yeah,” Mike says because no shit. That’s at least eighty percent of his personality and he knows himself well enough to admit that.

Lucas swims around a little once he can’t thread in place any longer. He continues, “And, he makes you happy.” That’s also a given, Mike thinks, so he doesn’t say anything. Besides, Lucas also looks like he would shove Mike under the water if Mike interrupts again. “You’re both getting out of this town soon, anyways.” Lucas hesitates, and then a little quieter says, “Mike, you make yourself so miserable sometimes. We don’t say it because you’re like a scared animal sometimes, but it freaks us out. He makes you happy, Mike. What the hell is stopping you?”

Mike thinks, really considers it, and says, “Well, I don’t know if he likes me back. He did mention liking someone else, remember?”

Lucas groans and swims back towards the dock. “You’re hopeless, Wheeler,” he calls out.

Mike stares and then swims after him. “Wait, Lucas, what am I hopeless about?”

By the time he makes it to the dock, Will is sitting on the edge, with his legs dangling into the water. Mike swims up, leans against the edge on his forearms, and reaches one hand up to brush his hair out of his face. When he looks up at Will, he finds Will already looking at him. His t-shirt is sticking to him, across his chest and shoulder, and he’s smiling at Mike in that private way that he does that Mike likes to think is just for him. 

Mike can’t help the boyish feeling that rushes through him; it’s the kind that he doesn’t think he felt since he was a little boy, and all he wanted was attention from Will. Back then, Mike convinced himself it was how all friendships were; his mother has always told him that feels too much and his father has always told him it was a problem. Except, then, he met Lucas and Dustin, and eventually El and Max, and while Mike doesn’t think he ever learned how to stop feeling too much, it’s nothing compared to the rush he gets when Will looks at him a bit longer than he looks at anyone else.

“You sure you don’t want to come in?” Mike asks, tilting his head up and smiling at Will. He knows his face is probably flushed pink. “It’s not that cold.”

Instead of answering, Will reaches a hand out and brushes the curls out off Mike’s forehead. “Has anyone told you that your freckles are –” Cute, Mike’s mind supplies hopefully. “Easy to draw,” Will says instead.

Will’s hands are still on his face, sliding down to his cheek, and Mike leans into the touch. “You’re the only artist I know,” Mike says. “Well, and Holly, but she doesn’t count. You’re the best one I know.”

Mike sees the way Will bites his lip to keep from smiling even more, if that was somehow possible. Will gives up and just lets his face break out into what Mike can only describe as the most radiant thing he’s seen in his life. The last six years of his life have been awful for many things, but seeing Will lose his joy systematically might have hurt the most. When Mike is honest with himself – and that’s rare, even if he’s trying – he knows that maybe he has been in love with Will forever, since the first time they sat next to each other on that swing set and Will said he’d be Mike’s friend. And all this time, Mike feels like he’s been writing a story in his head to a future where his world eventually moves on from all his various problems, as they should apparently, and he’s left wondering if he ever deserved to be happy. 

It’s a strange epiphany to have; that, somehow, he could hope for a future, with Will. Maybe, if Will would have him, which Will might, if the way Will’s thumb is tracing absentminded circles on Mike’s cheek is anything to go by. 

It takes everything in Mike to not whine when Will drops his hand to say, “I need to get home soon.” Mike wrinkles his nose. “Don’t complain,” Will says before Mike could get a word out. “I need to get to work. They’re gonna fire me if I’m late on my first day.”

“I forgot you’re doing that now,” Mike groans. “So boring.”

Will glares at him, which actually comes out as a pout. “Well, I’d rather not starve when we’re finally in New York.” Then, he shoves Mike lightly. “Unless you’re planning on supporting me.”

“I have three dollars to my name, and I stole two of those from Nancy,” Mike says solemnly. 

“We’ll both starve then,” Will says, standing up. Mike immediately pushes himself up onto the dock.  He shakes his head, causing the water from his hair to drip everywhere. “Mike, stop,” Will whines. “You’re so annoying.”

Mike brushes his hair out of his face again and sees Will staring at him; he feels the way Will’s eyes flicker over his chest and then pointedly back up to his face. Will looks away, blushing, and takes a step back. 

“I’ll walk with you,” Mike murmurs softly.

Will chuckles nervously. “You don’t have to. I can walk myself home, you know.”

“Sure,” Mike agrees. “But my feet feel like raisins, and they –” he hesitates and tilts his head to gesture beyond Will’s shoulder where Max and Lucas are kissing. “They look like they need some privacy.”

Will turns around and stares. He huffs out a laugh and shakes his head. “God, a gate could open right here and they wouldn’t notice.” He smiles softly. “It’s sweet though.” 

Mike follows Will towards his beach chair. He helps Will fold it, and Will tosses Mike his towel. Mike wraps it around his shoulders and slips on his shoes. Wordlessly, he falls in step with Will, as they walk through the woods back home. 

They’re almost at Will’s house when Mike notices Will’s open sketchbook. “When did you draw that?” Mike asks, pointing at a drawing of himself. It’s remarkably lifelike, except there’s a brightness to the way his eyes look, his hair doesn’t look like a bird’s nest, and his freckles look almost traceable. Mike has never seen that version of him stare back in the mirror. “You got my freckles exactly right.”

“Told you that they were easy to draw,” Will responds after a moment, not meeting Mike’s gaze. “I was just practicing today.”

Mike shoves his shoulder and Will looks up at him. “Told you that you were the best artist I know.”

~

Mike decides he hates the five day work week. He hates it so much that he might even ask Jonathan for his books.

“God, there’s nothing to do here,” Mike says with a groan. He drops down onto his back from where he’s sitting on Dustin’s bed. He rips a piece of paper from his notebook, folds it into an airplane, and throws it at Dustin who is on the floor packing for a trip. “I can’t believe you’re going on a road trip with Steve.” He wrinkles his nose.

“Because being here is so much more fun, right?” Dustin asks, flatly. He stares at two swimsuits. He looks at Mike and then at Lucas, who is badly tuning a guitar. “Which one?”

“I don’t care,” Mike says just as Lucas says, “Neither.”

Dustin rolls his eyes. “You guys are useless.” He folds both into his suitcase. 

Mike gives it another five minutes before he says, “I swear time is moving slower today.”

“You could pick up a hobby,” Lucas says. The guitar screeches when he tunes it too far.

“You’re only doing this because Max called Prince hot,” Mike shoots back. Lucas sticks up his middle finger. After giving it another two minutes, Mike says, “Can we watch a movie at least? They’re showing the new Ghostbusters at the theater.”

“And there we have it,” Dustin says smugly. He looks at Lucas and says, “You said he couldn’t even last a day.”

Mike looks between them. “What?”

“Will,” Lucas says slowly, putting the guitar down. “Your mood is about Will.”

Mike shakes his head. “No, it’s not,” he says quickly. “I’m just bored and you guys are boring.”

“Right, and it has nothing to do with Will having a job,” Dustin observes. Lucas snickers.

Mike glares at them both. “Of course not.”

“We totally believe you, Mike,” Lucas says in a tone that says that he clearly doesn’t believe Mike at all.

Mike groans once again, dropping his head to the pillow and looking up at the ceiling. He waits, checks his watch, notices time literally stopping, and lets out a deep, exasperated sigh. He reaches over the edge of the bed to look at Dustin. “What do you and Steve even talk about?”

“Girls and sex, mostly,” Dustin says promptly. 

Mike makes a face and mutters, “Forget I even asked.” He lets out another sigh and looks at Dustin and Lucas. They ignore him. He tries planning out a campaign, but all he can think about is Will and how insane it would be to interrupt Will’s shift at the theater.

“Man, you can hear him pining,” Lucas eventually says, after Mike sighs again. “Can you do something productive?”

“I am being productive,” Mike snaps, lifting his notebook.

“I’m not sure doodling Will’s name counts,” Dustin snickers.

Mike glares at them and sits up. “Guys, I’m serious,” he says, suddenly. “Don’t joke about this, okay?”

Dustin and Lucas exchange a look and it’s Dustin who finally says, “Mike, relax. You know we love you.”

Lucas nods. “We’re only teasing you because we want you to do something about your feelings.”

“It’s not that easy,” Mike mutters. “You guys don’t get it.”

Lucas sighs and walks over to sit by the bed. “No, we don’t, but we know you and Will.”

“And, Will is crazy about you,” Dustin adds. He shuts his suitcase with a click before moving to sit near the bed too. 

Mike shakes his head. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, we do,” Dustin says, gently. “He treats you differently.”

Mike shrugs. “Yeah, but –”

“You know what he said to me the other day when I asked if my hair looked good?” Dustin asks, cutting Mike off.

“That it doesn’t?” Mike offers. This earns him a smack behind the head to which Mike yelps, “That hurts.”

Dustin ignores him. “He said that it was way above his pay grade, and I should ask Steve instead.”

“So?” Mike asks, rolling his eyes. “Your hair looks the same as it always does.”

Lucas groans. “You’re just being dense,” he says, giving Mike a look. “It’s not about the hair. You could go to Will with your overgrown bird nest and Will would actually care.”

“You guys are so scientific about this,” Mike says sarcastically. “We’re talking about feelings and not your anecdotal evidence. He's getting over someone he used to like.”

“That whole shit about how he had a crush makes no sense,” Dustin says. “Who the hell can Will even have a crush on?”

Mike shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know who he hangs out with.”

“You, Mike,” Lucas says, practically shouting. “He hangs out with you.” He waves around the room. “If this entire afternoon experience is telling us anything, you’re insufferable to hang out with and yet, Will thinks you’re the best thing to exist. That says something.”

“You guys are always cuddling,” Dustin adds. “If I came up to you right now, you’d shove me to the floor.” Mike stares at him. “See, you can’t even argue. Will would do the same.”

“At this point, Will could flat out tell you that he’s in love with you and you would think he’s talking about someone else,” Lucas exasperates, but Mike can hear the fondness in between his words.

Mike just stares at Lucas and Dustin. He opens his mouth, tries to come up with anything, and then shuts it again. When he stays silent for too long, Dustin looks at him carefully. “Is this about El?”

“No,” Mike says, immediately. “No – it hasn’t been about El for a while, maybe even before it all ended.” Mike bites his bottom lip and tries to explain it in a way they would understand.

Lucas knits his brows together and asks, “Is it about your dad or something?”

Mike snorts. “Vecna could get me in front of my dad and he wouldn’t notice.” 

Dustin laughs, suddenly. When Lucas and Mike stare at him, he chokes out, “I can’t believe the first time any of us actually mentioned Vecna by name is because Mike can’t get his shit together and talk to Will about his feelings.”

“Makes sense,” Lucas says before breaking out into a fit of giggles.

Somehow, one thing leads to the next and Mike finds himself laughing along too. Dustin doubles over, clutching his stomach and wiping his eyes as he laughs. Lucas tries stopping, makes it a second, and then breaks out into another laughing fit. Mike doesn’t remember the last time any of them laughed this much.

“What the hell?” Will asks, walking into the room at some point. He still has his vest from the movie theater on. He looks between the three of them and asks, “What did I miss?”

He drops down on the bed next to Mike and Mike smiles at him. “Nothing. We just missed you.”

Will’s brows furrow in confusion. He says, “I was gone for four hours.” 

~

“Mike, you need to clean your room and finish packing,” Karen shouts as Mike runs into the kitchen. “We’re leaving tomorrow after your father comes home from work.”

Mike grabs a poptart from the pantry and throws it into the toaster. “Mom, Will hasn’t had a day off in weeks,” Mike whines. He knows he’s being dramatic because his mom rolls her eyes, fondly. “We have a whole day planned.”

From the table, his dad says, “You know, Michael, you could get a job and learn some responsibility.” Mike ignores him, grabs his poptart when the toaster dings, and waves goodbye. Behind him, he can hear his father say, “You know I’m right, Karen. You see what happens to all those starving artists in those big cities.”

Mike rolls his eyes.

A ten minute bike ride later, Mike sits down at the dining table in the Byers house and swirls the milk and cereal in his bowl. He tries not to stare at Will, who looks relaxed with tousled hair and in an oversized gray hoodie that looks remarkably similar to one that Mike lost a few months ago.

The kitchen is warm and tiled in white and bright blue, and Joyce is sitting on one end of the table, smiling fondly between them. “So, what’s the plan today, boys?” 

“We’re going to the arcade first before all the kids get there,” Will says, getting up from the table. He picks up his bowl and then Mike’s. “We can’t get Erica and her friends off Operation Thunderbolts. If you try to pay her off, she says it’s bribery.”

“She learned what quid pro quo means,” Mike explains. He gets up from the table to walk over to where Will was pouring his coffee. Mike leans in front of Will and reaches up to grab a coffee mug from the cabinet, just as Will turns around to face Joyce, his face a mere inches from Mike’s own. Clearing his throat lightly, Mike looks over his shoulder at Joyce and says, “I don’t even know what quid pro quo means.”

“I think it’s a legal term,” Joyce says, amusement all over her face.

Mike slowly pours the coffee from the pot and continues, “We’re going to the matinee showing of Batman.”

“It’s been impossible to get tickets because all the moms keep wanting to see Michael Keaton,” Will adds with a groan.

The corners of Joyce’s mouth quirk up into a small smile. “Is that so?”

“Mom, you and Hopper came to the theater twice,” Will says, rolling his eyes. He looks over his coffee mug at her. “Either you really care about comic books or you really care about Michael Keaton.” Mike tries his best to stifle his laugh, but fails.

“Maybe I just wanted to see my boy at work,” Joyce points out, which makes the tips of Will’s ears turn pink as he groans. He finishes the last of his coffee and drops his mug into the sink. Mike catches the glint in Joyce’s eyes as she asks, “So, arcade and then the movies. What’s the plan after?”

“I think your mom is fishing for information to spy on us, Will,” Mike teases. He finishes his own coffee. “Lucas and Max are meeting us at the diner on Adams Street,” he explains as he rinses his mug and places it face down in the tray next to the sink. Just in case Joyce actually is worried, Mike adds, “He’ll be home by nine.”

Will shoots him a look. Mike shrugs.

“He’ll be home by nine?” Will mocks as they bike down to the town center. “And they say chivalry is dead.”

Mike looks at him from the corner of his eyes. “Give me a break. She’ll send Hopper after me, as if you breaking your curfew is somehow my fault.”

~

“I swear, Keith is going to die in this town,” Mike says, glaring at Keith’s ticket counter at the arcade, before looking over Will’s shoulder to where he’s fighting one of the Black Warrior gang in Double Dragon. 

Will bites his lip in concentration and twists the joystick. “Did he ask about your sister again?” Will asks, but then curses under his breath when he loses his last life. Mike tries not to laugh as the top score table comes up and Will is seventh, with Erica holding most of the other spots. “And, she calls us nerds.”

Mike shoves his shoulder. “Let’s play the two player.” He reaches around Will to take control of the joystick, brushing Will’s fingers in the process, which he pointedly ignores as he says, “Maybe, between the two of us, we can beat a fifteen year old.”

“Maybe,” Will agrees, a bit distracted. 

~

“It’s a movie about Batman,” Mike exasperates, tilting the leftover popcorn towards Will, as they walk through the theater lobby. “Why were there more scenes of the Joker? That shouldn’t be how this works.”

Will reaches over to grab the last bit of popcorn. His mouth twitches as he says, “I guess they know he would be a big draw. People like a villain.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Mike says, gesturing around, which causes a bit of the popcorn to fall to the ground. “It’s just bad writing, you know? Having the Joker murder Bruce’s parents makes no sense and doesn’t fit into the overall universe. Like, how would Alfred not lose his job for letting Vicki Vale into the Batcave? It shows no integrity towards relationships that actually matter.”

Will grabs the popcorn bag out of Mike’s hands before he spills more of it. He tosses it into the trash can. “Okay, calm down,” he says, laughing slightly. He gives Mike a look and Mike sighs, bends over, and picks up the dropped kernels and tossing them into the trash. Will beams at him. He says, “Yes, it was bad writing. You can write your own version in the future.” 

Mike actually considers this and says, “No, I’d want to write my own stories.” He catches Will looking at him with genuine curiosity. “I’d develop my own fantasy world, with monsters and magic. Maybe even a dragon.” He looks at Will and adds, “You could draw the cover.”

The corners of Will’s eyes crinkle in amusement. “So, this is a partnership, now?”

“Wasn’t it always?” Mike asks, as he pushes the door out the movie theater.

When Mike looks over at Will, he has an unreadable look behind his eyes, even as he smiles. “Yeah – yeah, I guess so.”

~

“You need to shut up about Batman, Mike,” Lucas says from the diner booth. He passes his milkshake over to Max to try. “We all get it.”

“Think of how I feel,” Will teases. “I’ve been hearing about it for hours.”

Mike shoves his shoulder lightly. They’re sitting so close together in the booth and Mike can feel his neurons buzz every time Will shifts next to him, bumping their knees together or brushing their shoulders together. “I’m just saying,” Mike grumbles, reaching over to take a fry off Will’s plate. “Batman was supposed to be the main character, but it felt like a Joker movie.”

Will pats his shoulder sympathetically and pushes his plate towards Mike to finish. “Your sister has a problem,” Will tells Lucas. “She has a high score on every game at the arcade.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a nerd,” Lucas says with a wave. He looks between Mike and Will and asks, “So, what else did you guys do today?”

Mike nearly chokes on his fry when he catches the way Max’s eyes flash with pure chaos. “Yeah, tell us, Wheeler. What did you guys do today?” She says lightly. He kicks her under the table. She winces for a fraction of a second before smiling sweetly at them. 

Will looks at him and Mike looks down at his watch. “Well, look at that. We’re hitting curfew time,” he says quickly, dropping a five dollar bill on the table to cover his and Will’s share. “I promised Joyce that I would get him home by nine and I’m already in my parents’ bad books. I don’t need her disapproval too.”

“I’m sorry,” Will says to Lucas and Max, but he follows Mike out the booth. Apologetically, he adds, “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Lucas calls after them.

Outside, Will wrinkles his nose. “You didn’t have to pay for me, you know. You blew through your allowance this month.”

“Half of it is from Nancy’s old piggybank that she forgot about,” Mike says, with a wave. He ignores how his face flushes and hopes Will can’t see it under the street lights. 

~

They leave their bikes in the garage and step into the Byers house. Mike thinks that while the new house looks so different from the old one, there’s something unmistakeable about stepping foot into Will’s home. Maybe it’s that Joyce immediately checks in on them, and asks if they had a good time. Maybe it’s the fact that the house looks a bit mismatched and quirky in a way that would give his mother a heart attack, and his father an excuse to spew some shit he heard on the news, but that gives Mike a sense of normalcy. In a way, both the old and new Byers houses just feel like bigger versions of his own basement. 

Mike follows Will upstairs to his room. Once inside the room, Will collapses on the bed and says, “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.”

Mike drops down on the bed beside Will. He kicks his shoes off and sighs as he lets his body relax. He prods Will’s calf with his sock clad foot. “I had fun today.”

“Me too,” Will says, heaving himself up on his elbow to turn around and face him. As conversational as you’d like, Will says,  “I like spending time with you.” There’s a small smile on Will’s face.

Mike feels his heart skip a beat; a golden flutter inside his chest. His hands want to move, touch a face he memorized better than his own. It’s a face Mike has loved longer than he can remember, even if the nature of that love has shifted over the years. He wants to make Will smile even wider, then lick those smiling lips and taste his happiness. The creature in his head says you shouldn’t, but why shouldn’t he, really? What if Will feels that way too? What if this is the way it was always supposed to be? What if it makes them happy – what if it makes Will happy?

Wouldn’t it be worth it, then?

“Will –” he says, but closes his mouth when he can’t find the words to describe what he is thinking.

Will stares, waiting.

Will, I think I – No, that’s not – Will, do you think we should – No, no – Will, what if we –

“You okay?” Will asks, leaning close, eyes wide open and concerned. “You look kinda sick. I swear, it’s the fruit roll-ups –”

Mike’s left hand is a traitor, it moves before he can decide; he feels like he’s floating on air as his hand lands on Will’s cheek. Mike pushes himself closer to Will, and then he is kissing him, his lips over Will’s, like he’s pictured more times than he could admit. Will makes a surprised sound, but kisses him back, softly, keeping it slow and delicate. Then he pulls back, holding Mike away with one palm against his chest. Their lips part with a faint wet sound.

“Mike.”

Will looks shocked, his eyes impossibly large. Mike bites back a groan when he looks at Will’s lips and the faint blush that creeps over the bridge of Will’s nose, all because of him. He doesn’t want to stop and talk; he wants things to just work out magically, so they can continue kissing and touching. Except, Will looks like he wants to cry and Mike feels a little out of his depth.

“I wanted to do that for a while,” Mike admits.

“Okay,” Will says, licking his lips and looking away.

Mike isn’t sure what he expected, but this is certainly not the best case scenario. He also has a worst case scenario, which is that Will walks away and they never talk again. But, he has no clue what happens in between.

“I’ve been thinking – all summer, and maybe even before that –” Mike hesitates, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know why it took so long, but maybe I should have done it sooner. Before El –”

“Mike.”

That’s not a good tone and that’s not a good look. “That’s not fair,” Will says, shaking his head and looking away sadly.

“Okay, you’re right,” he says softly. He never wants to make Will sad. He wishes he could go back to earlier in the evening.

Will exhales sharply and doesn’t say anything for a long time. Mike can see him blinking the wetness in the corner of his eyes rapidly. “You’re grieving, Mike. You’ve been through a lot recently.”

“So have you –”

Will lets out a wet, unamused laugh. “Yeah, I have, but this –” he waves between them. “Trust me, Mike. I’ve had plenty of time to think about this and the fact that I don’t like girls.” Will breathes in and out and Mike can physically see him trying to calm himself down. “This isn’t something you impulsively decide to get yourself into.”

“You don’t believe me,” Mike says slowly. “Or you don’t trust me.”

“Don’t be an idiot, you know I do,” Will says gently. He reachs out to cup Mike’s face. “I trust you more than anyone else, but I also know you better than anyone else. You feel so much, Mike. Those feelings bleed all over everything.”

Mike stares. He feels his insides twist.

“What about our friendship? You think it’s that easy?” Will says; his fingers are still gently tracing the edge of his jawline. “What if you freak out? Things could never go back to normal, and I don’t think I could ever deal with that.”

“This didn’t just occur to me, you know,” Mike says. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now.”

This gets a surprised look out of Will, but he doesn’t push it. “Mike, El was your first girlfriend, and she died. None of us have been able to adjust properly, even if we’re all trying our best.  You’re just trying to get back that feeling.”

Mike has to hold back an incredulous laugh. There’s nothing comparable about the two situations. “I never loved her like that,” he says.

Will isn’t discussing it. “I’m here for you,” he says. “If you need to figure out the gay thing. Don’t tell me you know what you want after pulling yourself away from everyone for almost two years.” He stops Mike’s protests with a look. “This friendship is important to me. There’s my family, and then there’s you. Do you get that? I need you to be okay. I need for us to be okay.”

Mike feels his resolve crumbling. Their friendship is too important to risk. Looking back now, he would have taken El’s friendship over their brief, messy relationship any day. But, then, he looks at Will’s lips, and remembers the way they felt against his own, and wonders if it’s not worth risking it. They’re best friends, so why can’t they be that and more. But Will is still looking at him with wet eyes and Mike forces himself to nod. “Okay,” he says. “Whatever you want.”

Will leans forward and kisses Mike’s cheek; it’s barely a brush of his lips, but Mike feels it inbetween the atoms of his body. “We’ll get through this, okay,” Will says. There’s something unplaceable in the tone of his voice and Mike hates that there’s something that he can’t understand about Will. “Together.”

“Yeah, together,” Mike agrees, feeling a sudden emptiness wash over him.

~

The drive from Hawkins to Boston takes fourteen hours, and Mike spends most of it with headphones over his head. The walkman Max had given him for last year’s secret santa has seen better days, but Mike really isn’t in the mood to talk to his parents, of all people. They stop in Dayton so his dad could fill up on gas and Holly and Mike can get a slice of pizza. They stop in Pittsburgh to sleep at a hotel with a pool. They arrive at 9 AM in Boston, where Nancy is waiting for them, with coffee and bagels.

She shows them around Emerson with such practiced precision that Mike wonders where she learned to lie from. Mike distracts his dad with some quip about how much he hates baseball when his dad asks one too many questions about job prospects with a journalism degree, and if Nancy should consider dating again. They take Holly to the science museum, so she could see the planetarium. Eventually, they go to a restaurant that his mother wanted to go to, and his father complained about, and through it all, Mike doesn’t think they spoke about anything important or interesting. Nancy walks them back to their hotel, and says goodnight to their parents and to Holly. To Mike, she shoots him a look.

“We’re going to go on a walk by the Harbor,” Nancy explains.

His father shrugs and takes Holly inside. His mother tells Nancy to make sure Mike is back by eleven. It’s not until they walk in silence to the pier that Mike finally breathes a sigh of relief. He looks up at all the buildings around him in awe before saying, “I can’t wait to get out of there.”

“They’re not so bad,” Nancy says. “It’s mostly just dad.”

“I think I just need space,” Mike mutters, looking out at the little ships in the Harbor that almost look fake. 

Nancy gives him that look that only Nancy can; the one siblings throw each other when they want you to cut the shit and spit out whatever is on your mind. “You’ve changed,” Nancy remarks, as if she’s commenting on the water in front of them.

“Yeah,” Mike says simply. 

Mike’s relationship with Nancy is different from his relationship with anyone. In a lot of ways, she was his first friend, and then his first enemy, and now, she has this very specific place in his life that nobody else can step into. Nancy had made a passing comment once, about a year before, how it feels like looking into a mirror. Mike didn’t ask her to explain then.

“Are you gonna tell them about dropping out?” Mike asks when they pick up little Cedar Crest ice cream cups from one of the stands along the pier.

Nancy pulls a face. “They won’t get it,” she says. “I just need a win, you know? I need a good story, something I want to write about, and things will fall into place.” She scrapes the inside of her ice cream cup and adds, “I just feel so restless all the time.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. He feels restless all the time too. He licks the vanilla ice cream off his wooden spoon, tasting more of the wooden spoon than the ice cream itself. “I don’t need a win. I just need to not lose all the fucking time.”

“What’s going on, Mike?” Nancy asks, reaching out a hand and squeezing his arm. Her voice is soft and tentative, like she’s approaching an easy to scare animal. The tone doesn’t help much though; Mike feels his body going taut with panic all the same. “Did something happen – is it Will?”

Now that the question is in the open, Mike considers denial, but that would accomplish nothing except making him look like an ass and lose his one chance to talk about this with someone. So, after a long pause, he says, “I kissed Will.” He thinks that should get the whole situation out nicely, without needing to go into details. 

“Oh, huh,” Nancy says slowly, considerately. “So, what’s the problem?”

Mike doesn’t know why, but the laughter bubbles out of him and he feels the weight of the world lift. Nancy leads him to a bench in front of the boats and he starts telling her everything. He’s never been good at hiding things from Nancy, but he’s even worse at lying to her. So, when she stops him and asks, “Are you in love with him?”

Mike says, “Yeah. Like –” He thinks what the best way to even describe the level of his love for Will. “He’s Will,” Mike settles on with a shrug. That’s it, isn’t it. That’s all Mike really needs to know.

Nancy smiles and gestures for him to continue. When Mike finishes, he finds himself breathing heavily. Nancy waits until he calms down and says, “Well, I think you might just need to wait this one out.”

Mike thinks he could wait forever. 

~

Early August brings a heat wave to Hawkins, and they all find themselves on the top of Weathertop, trying to hook up Cerebro again. Mike strips off his shirt as soon as he gets to the picnic blanket. His body is sticky, the back of his neck is sunburned and peeling, and he’s probably several levels of dehydrated. A fresh drop of sweat tears up on his brow and makes a slow, wet path down the plane of his cheek as he lets out a groan.

“This sucks,” Mike says, to no one in particular. Next to him, Will is also shirtless, sketchbook in hand, drawing. “This sucks,” Mike repeats. Will looks over at him, and Mike doesn’t miss the way Will’s eyes trail all over his body before returning to his sketchbook.

“Wheeler, stop complaining,” Max says from the other side. She has on a heart-shaped pair of sunglasses and her finger in a magazine, flipping lightly. 

“Yeah, stop complaining,” Will says softly, the corner of his mouth turning up into a half smile. “Lay down. You're creating shadows in my book.” Mike drops down onto the picnic blanket to lay on his back between Will and Max.

Even though Mike feels kind of awkward the first few days, he doesn’t allow their dynamic to taper off into awkward glances and avoidance. It seems to help Will too because, despite a few rough days, their relationship returns to something akin to normal. And it’s surprisingly easy to morph their friendship to include that as well. Mike tells himself that they are best friends who possibly could have been more, but chose not to. This is a good choice because Will, for some reason, thinks it’s a good choice. They don’t mention it, but they don’t act like it didn’t happen either. Mike thinks there’s little they won’t be able to adapt to, and when that thought makes him start to hope for something else again, he squashes it immediately.

“Can I see?” Mike asks.

Will twists his sketchbook to show Mike a picture of Dustin and Lucas where they’re in the distance, fixing Cerebro. Mike doesn’t know if it’s definitely true, but he thinks drawings of them have way less details than Will’s drawings of Mike. He has no way of proving that though.

“I think if this works, and any one of us are in Hawkins, we’d be able to radio each other anywhere,” Dustin says, walking back to the picnic table with Lucas behind him. “That way, we would all be able to keep in touch.”

Mike wrinkles his nose and says, “Phones do exist now, you know.”

“And we’re not Mormon, so you can call us,” Will adds, not looking up from his drawing, except to look sideways at Mike. Mike exchanges a look with him, as he bites back a laugh.

Lucas practically drapes himself over Max, looking at her magazine with great interest. “It’s going to be really weird though. In a couple of weeks, we won’t be seeing each other every single day.”

Mike closes his eyes and considers it, truly, for the first time. He wonders if Hawkins will feel like home if they’re not all here together. He thinks about how hard it was when Will moved to California, and how the party split in different directions. That had dire, supernatural, consequences. But, even on a human level, Mike remembers how lost and confused everyone felt. 

Will taps his hand lightly and Mike opens his eyes to look at him. “We’ll come back for Christmas,” he says softly, so only Mike can hear. 

Mike is hung up on we, like they haven’t given up on each other and the idea of a we. “Yeah, I just –” Mike hesitates. “I’ve never been good at change.”

“I know, Mike,” Will says quietly. “But, things have changed.”

Maybe for the better, Mike thinks, clinging onto that for dear life.

~

Dustin leaves on a Wednesday. They all meet up on the Hendersons’ driveway. It’s a whole ordeal; everyone hugs everyone, Steve gives a pep talk even though Mike has no idea what Steve knows about college, and Dustin’s mom spends the entire morning crying. 

Lucas leaves on a rainy Saturday afternoon. His flight from Indianapolis to Los Angeles leaves at 9 PM. Max is there with her three suitcases and Mike jokes that she packed up her whole life because she’s trying to get away from him, but then couldn’t keep the tears out of his eyes when she hugs him tightly. Lucas couldn’t even get the words out; he hugs Mike, then he hugs Will, and then he hugs Mike and Will. Christmas is only four months away, Mike tries reminding him, except he’s crying and it comes out wobbly.

Mike and Will watch as the Sinclairs’ car leaves the driveway just as it starts raining.

“How’s that for symbolism?” Mike asks, looking up at the sky, where a storm is coming in.

Will winces when the lightning strikes. A little awkwardly, he says, “I should go.”

“Don’t do that,” Mike mumbles, walking towards his own driveway. Before Will can ask, Mike says, “It’s raining, your house is downhill, and your bike is gonna skid.”

Will huffs out a laugh, falling into step with Mike, as they head up the front steps into Mike’s house. “Are you ever going to stop protecting me?”

“Probably not,” Mike admits. 

Somehow, falling into ritual with Will is as natural as anything. They play with the Atari for a bit in Mike’s basement, which has an assortment of boxes with things Mike wants to take to college, that they pointedly avoid looking at. Somewhere between reading through every new Fantastic Four issue and eating shitty takeout pizza, Mike realizes it’s late. Then, Will realizes it’s late. Then, they both look at each other and decide that no, they will not be doing the push and shove with offering and refusing sleepovers, only to end up where they want to end up. So, wordlessly, they walk up the basement stairs. Mike shouts to the house that Will is sleeping over. His mother says she’s okay with it as long as Will’s mom is. His father ignores him. 

Mike quietly throws Will a thin white t-shirt and shorts. Will, just as quietly, finds the extra toothbrushes in the bathroom linen closet. They brush their teeth and get ready for bed in comfortable silence, bumping hips and elbows at the sink. 

It’s not until they’re walking back down the hallway towards Mike’s room that the routine shifts. Holly’s bedroom door is cracked open slightly, and it’s way past her bedtime, and Mike makes out the clear, unmistakeable sound of sniffles and tears. He exchanges a worried look with Will and knocks on her door.

“Hey, Hol?” Mike asks softly. “Are you okay?” He gives her a moment to decide if she’s inviting him in before he slowly opens the door to find his baby sister crying. He exchanges another look with Will and they cross over to where she’s on her bed. Mike sits on one side of Holly, and Will sits on the other. “What is it? Is it another nightmare?”

“I’m sorry,” Holly says quickly, wiping the corner of her eyes to stop crying, but almost like a dam breaking, she starts again. “I’m sorry,” she whispers again. “I’m so stupid.”

Mike is about to say something, but it’s Will who steps in. He carefully reaches out to take Holly’s hand. “Is it –” he hesitates, looks at Mike, and when Mike nods, says, “Is it Henry?”

Holly nods. “It’s just a stupid nightmare, but I’m so scared.” 

“It’s okay to be scared,” Will says gently. “I still get scared all the time, and so does Mike.” Mike nods, but doesn’t say anything. Holly wipes the corners of her eyes again. “Whenever I get scared, I think about what makes me brave and lean into that.”

Holly lightly touches her chain, with a newly made figurine of Holly the Heroic, and turns to Mike. “Do you have to leave?”

“I’ll be back for Christmas,” Mike says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “I’m only a phone call away until then, and so is Nance.”

“You also have your friends, you know. Derek, Debbie, Wendy, and all the others. Lean on them for strength,” Will adds.

Holly blinks up at Mike, and then suddenly, turns to Will to engulf him in a hug. Will hesitates for the quickest moment before hugging her back. Mike helps tuck her in, even if she insists she’s too old for that now, and quietly steps out the door. Will follows Mike until they’re in Mike’s room, and Mike shuts the door behind them. 

“Thank you,” Mike breathes out. He opens his arms in invitation and Will slowly steps forward. Mike pulls Will in close, and slips a hand into his hair. Will drops his head to Mike’s shoulder, and Mike feels the way Will breathes in once. “Thank you,” Mike repeats. When Will lifts his head, Mike leans forward to kiss his forehead, which causes Will’s eyes to go very, very wide. Mike presses his forehead against Will’s. “I love you,” he says.

“Mike.”

“Give me a chance to say my piece,” Mike begs. Will doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t step away. He looks a little scared and shaken, staring at Mike like he’s not sure what’s real. “I know I’m impulsive and not the smartest, but you can’t seriously think I don’t love you. Like, since the very beginning, it’s been you and me. We’ve done everything together, talked through everything together, survived a fucking apocalypse together. Maybe I didn’t understand what all this meant back then, but I do now. So, yeah –” Mike breathes out. “I’m an idiot, but I love you. And, I’ll do whatever it takes to convince you that I’m not just falling into this without thinking it through.” He smiles a little lopsided grin. “I can wait forever, if you want me to.”

“Mike Wheeler,” Will whispers breathlessly. “You’re not allowed to change your mind about this.” Will pushes him lightly against the door, and grabbing his hair in one hand, kisses him. 

Mike is stunned, but that doesn’t stop him from kissing back. Will’s mouth is soft and slack and already half-open, and Mike falls into him, their bodies tilting together, as he licks his way into Will’s mouth, easy and good and instinctual. Mike makes a needy sound in his throat, trying to make his hands let go of Will’s shirt – no, actually, his shirt on Will – but he has missed this so much, more than he thought he did, more than he thinks should be possible considering how little he’s had to experience it. But, he remembers Will’s taste, remembers every detail of their previous kiss, the warmth, the feel of Will’s lips. 

Mike lets himself go completely this time because this is what he is, that’s what he has always been. He has been offering and offering everything he is and all that he has, and has been willing to settle for however much of it Will accepts. It’s always been in Will’s hands. 

Then Will makes a noise that sounds like a huff of pure laughter, just pure happines, and Mike grins back automatically, into the soft wetness of Will’s mouth. He’s happy; earlier this summer, most of the last two years, most of the four years before that, maybe even since childhood, he thought he forgot that he could be happy, but he’s alive, and so unbelievably happy here.

“You have no idea how long I wanted this,” Will tells him, pressing a kiss just under the curve of Mike’s bottom lip, murmuring into his skin. “I didn’t let myself hope.”

“How long?” Mike asks, before he can censor himself. He’s not sure if he really wants to know, but he can’t not ask.

Will’s face goes soft. “Too long,” he says.

“As in before –” Memories start flooding in and Mike, maybe for the first time, in his life, puts together signals and signs that he never should have missed. 

“I loved you since before I even knew what these feelings were,” Will says with a soft sigh. He bites his lip like he does whenever he wants to keep his smile from getting too big. Mike kisses the lip he is biting.

~

Mike’s last day in Hawkins feels completely anticlimactic. Mike spent the last week packing. His room is mostly stripped empty and the basement looks strange without Mike’s trinkets. He’s not taking most of them to NYU, but he figures it's time for Holly to have her own space. The last thing he packs is the thing he’s been wanting to ask Will about for years.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mike asks, wrapping his arms around Will, placing a light kiss onto Will’s temple.

There’s something tentative in Will’s eyes, as he looks down at the painting. “It was mostly just that I’ve been telling myself this couldn’t possibly happen for years. I had so many reasons, Mike, of why this would have never worked. At that moment, I just thought that I could give you the painting and free myself of the possibility of losing you. If I pushed you away first, I couldn’t lose you, right?”

Mike considers this. A part of him wants to just hug Will until they fuse together, because he only spent the last year wanting more than he had and thought it was torture; he can’t imagine what it would be like to live with that for so many years. 

“This isn’t –” Mike says, but stops before he can finish the sentence. The subject is sensitive on so many levels; he’s never been the best at articulating his feelings. “Maybe I didn’t know as long, but this was inevitable, wasn’t it?” he asks, not expecting an answer. “I wasn’t ready to see it back then, I think.” He traces the painting. “I wonder if I would have gotten here sooner if we didn’t have to deal with everything.”

Will’s hand covers Mike’s. “Yeah, inevitable sounds about right.”

~

There’s a coffee shop on Waverly Place that sells expensive pastries that Will adores. The only problem is that the line is always too long and Mike always seems to end up there at the same time some little old lady decides she wants to pay for her croissant in nickels. He checks his watch, then checks it again as if the time was somehow wrong the first time, and deeply sighs. By the time he gets to the front of the line, he knows he’s going to be late to meet Will.

There’s a lot of things Mike needed to get used to when it came to New York City. The subway stressed him out at first. On their first night in the city, Mike tried smiling politely at an elderly woman, who then told him to fuck off. Will couldn’t stop laughing at him until a young teenager glared at him and told him to get out the way. So, subways had a learning curve. Everything is so expensive; he’s sometimes tempted to ask his mom for help, but knows he’ll never hear the end of it from his dad. After several weeks of making twenty dollars last a whole week, Mike decided he needed a job. Will seemed to agree, so they spent morning after morning piling over newspaper listings to see what interested them. A month later, Mike is still jobless, but his mother did give him some spending money, so he can afford to splurge on little things.

There’s a lot of things that he loves about New York City though. The anonymity is something that shocks him daily. He’ll never see the same person twice, and if he does, they don’t recognize him. Even the regular homeless people and weed dealers around Washington Square Park don’t seem to register him, even if he recognizes the same faces over and over again. There’s one particular lady with pigeons in Central Park that Will says hello to every Saturday afternoon, who never seems to remember him. But, still, anonymity is exactly what Mike and Will decide is best for them. After years of slurs and taunts, secrets and the supernatural, it feels good that nobody knows anything about them.

It helps that they live on the corner of Cornelia and Bleecker in a little one bedroom brownstone walk-up and that they can ride their bikes around the neighborhood. Mike likes the jumble of comedy cellars along MacDougal Street and they make it a point to hit the free shows whenever they can, in between classes, extracurriculars, and Mike’s secret side project of trying, but absolutely failing to write a book. He thinks he’s following in Nancy’s footsteps a little; he frequents the White Horse Tavern, pretends he’s Kerouac, and hopes that maybe something will click eventually. Will comes along too, with his sketchbook and occasionally his watercolors. Mike sometimes looks around and can’t help but laugh at how, somehow, they look like every other couple in the place. Maybe they weren’t outcasts and freaks after all, and it really was just finding the right place at the right time.

They have fake IDs, even if they don’t use them much. Mike tagged along with a few of Will’s friends on a bar crawl down Christopher Street on a Thursday evening a month into the semester, and spent the entire night making out with Will in any secluded corner he can find. They ended up at the pier at some point that night, found one of those New York pay phones that they’ve only ever seen in movies before, and called Lucas. Drunk and elated, they took turns shouting how much they loved Lucas and that he was the best friend they could ever have. It wasn’t until they were done that they heard Max laughing on the other end.

On a random mid-October Wednesday, Mike sat next to Will in the middle of Washington Square Park as Will painted. Some woman with orange glasses, orange pants, and orange hair asked Will if she could buy his painting. They exchanged a look and managed to talk her into a quarter of their monthly rent for the painting. You could make a career out of this, Mike had said. Don’t be ridiculous, she’s clearly selling drugs, Will had responded. They decided they’ll come back the following Wednesday to try their luck again.

Mike’s mom calls him every morning. In her own way, she asks if he’s okay, if he’s safe, and that she’s been seeing a lot of things on the news in Mike’s neighborhood, about things she doesn’t know how to speak about. Joyce calls every night. She says the same things, in her own way, which might be a little better than his mom’s, about how they should be careful, and she’s so glad they found each other so young, and that they survived everything together. Nancy knows how to say the right thing because she has been saying a lot of the right things about the same things to people in Boston. Jonathan knows how to say the right things because he just knows how to. 

Will and Mike think about the plague too, quietly, when they walk by St. Vincent’s after the weekly study group session for their freshman art history class that covers Will’s major and Mike’s electives. On those days, they’ll go up to the roof of their building, split a joint, and decide life isn’t terrible. On the contrary, it’s wonderful actually, and they really have survived everything together. 

So, really, Mike can spend some money on an overpriced pastry as a treat for his boyfriend for finishing his midterms.

“I love you,” Will says, biting into his cream puff. “I don’t say that enough.”

“You’re only saying that because I got you a four dollar cream puff,” Mike says, draping his arm over Will’s shoulder, as they walk through the park back to the apartment. Will wraps an arm around his waist, slipping two fingers into the front belt loop of Mike’s jeans, as he settles in close. Mike turns to lightly kiss Will’s temple. “How’d it go?”

“The professor says his freshman expository writing class is the hardest gen ed,” Will explains, looking haunted. “I’m failing, Mike.”

Mike plucks a piece of the cream puff out of Will’s hand. “That’s what you get for not registering for my section,” Mike says, popping the piece into his mouth. Will looks devastated and just pathetic enough that Mike laughs. “Don’t do that,” Mike says, as Will pulls himself out of Mike’s arm to march ahead. “Oh, come on, Will.”

Lucky for him, he’s faster than Will, and Mike catches him from behind and pulls Will against his chest, underneath the tree in front of their apartment steps. “I’m sorry,” he says, kissing Will’s cheek. Mike smiles against Will’s cheek and closes his eyes when he feels Will smile back. Mike tucks his head into the crook of Will’s neck. 

Mike feels Will digging around his jacket pocket for his keys. Before he finds them though, their elderly neighbor walks out from the front entrance of their apartment, and both of them freeze briefly, wondering if this is the part where they have to step apart. Instead, their neighbor raises a hand and waves at them. “Have a great day, boys,” he says, walking down the road.

Mike blinks. Then, he exchanges a look with Will. 

“Thank god we moved here,” Will says, looking after the man.

Mike nods slowly. “Yeah,” Mike says, finally, and tugs Will even closer, so that when he says the next part, it’s mostly hidden in a kiss, “I love you.”

~

Will twitches next to him in the backseat of Nancy’s car, as they pass by the Welcome to Hawkins sign. Out of six years of trauma, Mike reaches out to hold his hand. “You okay?” he asks. 

“Yeah, I think the goosebumps are about being back here,” Will says. Mike exchanges a worried look with Jonathan. Mike can trace the expressions on Will’s face as he realizes. “Oh god, not that,” he splutters. “No, no. This is normal, being gay in a small town, kind of goosebumps,” he explains.

Hawkins kind of exists like a mausoleum, living in all its haunted obscurity, and they’ve all curated their loneliness there for so long that Mike isn’t sure it’ll ever leave them. Even if they leave it forever, which Mike hopes to do soon enough. He has plans; some of them big, some of them impractical, but all of them involve New York and Will and maybe, someday, things like their own place and a ring and all the things that he never expected to do before.

Mike watches Nancy look at Jonathan, and then, Nancy catches his gaze in the mirror. Not for the first time, he thinks she can read his mind, or maybe they both have the same mind. 

“Home sweet home,” she mutters after they drop off the Byers. “I feel like we both have things we need to tell mom.” Mike nods. Before he could say anything else, Holly runs out and practically tackles Mike in a hug.

Christmas with his family is like it is every year. His grandma calls them early in the morning and they each get a customary ten dollars and a Christmas card from her. This year, his mom opted for matching pajamas for all of them, which Mike begrudgingly has to admit that he kind of likes. Gifts are exchanged, which mostly consists of things his mother thinks they would want, and things that his father has no clue she bought. Mike gets Holly a record player, Nancy gets her a couple of vinyls, and Holly makes them both matching bracelets.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Mike tells Nancy. “Except, I’m here if they disown you for dropping out.”

He means it as a joke, but as sober as ever, she says, “I’m here for you. No qualifications, Mike.”

In the end, he decides that his father doesn’t need to know that he’s gay and has no interest in knowing anyways, which is all good because Mike has no intention of conversing with him much. His mom, on the other hand, sits him down and holds his hand. Mike isn’t sure what he tells her; he practiced with Will over and over again, reworded it like it’s a draft of one of his papers, and when the time came, he bled all over the room as he spoke, and spoke, and spoke. 

In the end, he laid bare every bit of himself that he could and she took one long look at him and asked, “Are you happy, baby?” When he nods, she kisses the top of his head and says, “That’s all that matters.”

In the basement later that day, after a four hour campaign, Mike drops down onto the couch, and lays his head down across Will’s legs. Will’s hands are gentle as he cards his fingers through Mike’s hair. “I’m telling you, it’s actually amazing,” Will says, not looking down at Mike. “There’s so much to do. We made a bucket list on our first day of every tourist and local thing we wanted to do, and we’re not even ten percent done.”

“Okay, and, I’ll raise you this – when we left LA, it was 84 degrees,” Lucas replies. “We were swimming in Malibu a week ago.”

“We have beaches too,” Mike shoots back, closing his eyes when Will scratches his scalp lightly. “Have you ever heard of the Hamptons?” He’s never been out there, but he heard someone mention it in class. 

Max wrinkles her nose. “You get richer overnight, Wheeler?” 

“I think you’re all missing the real winner here,” Dustin cuts in, as he walks down the stairs with a plate of brownies that Mike’s mom made. “Boston has history, museums, a harbor, and the World Science Fiction Convention was there this year, so I win.”

“There’s currently a blizzard going on with 32 inches of snow,” Max chirps sweetly. She takes a brownie off the plate when Dustin offers her.

“You really didn’t have to remind me,” Dustin tells her. As Dustin offers the brownies to Will and Mike, who really can’t keep his eyes open anymore, he says, “Well, aren’t you two adorable.”

“Yes, we are,” Mike says, without opening his eyes. Then adds, “Yes, you were right, and no, you don’t have to remind me.”

Will laughs, “I think he means that he loves you guys.”

Mike really does. He’s happy the world didn’t end all those years ago.