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There was a plan, if Lucas remembers correctly. Rescue the kids. Kill Vecna. Save the world. Done, done, and done.
And then there was another thing. A closing bullet point on the to-do list. He hasn’t stopped thinking about it. If anything, he’s thought more and more about it every second. To the point where it’s almost debilitating.
Like, there was a larger question, which is, Does Lucas Sinclair like boys, and while it’s hard to say for certain, the answer is really skewing yes lately. Everywhere he looks he’s noticing guys like they’re a brand-new species. It turns out Steve is hot, if you can get past the part where he’s basically been their glorified babysitter for several years. Dustin’s alright, but the mullet works against him as much as Mike getting rid of the mullet is working for him. Mostly, these are passing observations. Acknowledged and then dismissed. Whatever. Lucas thinks guys are hot now. Or always did and never noticed.
But there’s also a much narrower, more precise question, tapering off like an arrowhead, pointing directly at Will.
Will is the final bullet point. An offer: just to try. Although it was Lucas’s offer first, to solve that problem where Will has never kissed anybody. Middle of the apocalypse is a bad time for a first kiss. (Some would argue the opposite, but they weren’t there.)
After the apocalypse, though?
(“Hey, Lucas. You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. I was wondering…if you still…”
If Lucas hadn’t already been thinking about it, Will’s blush would be a dead giveaway.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I am. Or I do, or whatever you were gonna say.”
“Okay,” Will says. “Cool.” Why is he so cute when he’s blushing? “Um, we can talk about it later but I just wanted to…check.”
“Totally,” Lucas says. “Later, yeah.”)
Well. It’s later.
And the thing is that Will doesn’t have a room anymore, because the Byers sold their house when they left and moved in with the Wheelers when they returned, and the Wheelers’ place is something of a wreck anyway since the Demogorgon came for Holly, but anyway there is no force in Heaven or on Earth powerful enough to make Lucas kiss anyone in the circus that is Mike’s house, so that leaves Lucas’s room. In Lucas’s house. Where Lucas’s sister lives.
(“I need you to do me a favor, and you can’t ask why.”
One of Dustin’s eyebrows climbs up into his hairline. “Why?”
“Dude, I just said you can’t ask!”
“I didn’t agree to those terms!”
“Dustin, please.”
“What’s the favor?”
“I need you to invite Erica,” Lucas says, “to go literally anywhere, and do literally anything, tomorrow afternoon.”
A second eyebrow joins the first.
“Two hours tops,” Lucas says, “and I’ll owe you. Big-time.”
“What kind of drug deal are you planning, Sinclair?”
“No questions,” Lucas says, and backs away before Dustin can remember that he still never agreed to the no-questions condition. “Thanks, man! I owe you one for real! Appreciate you!”)
He’s never in his life planned out kissing someone this much. But he’s also never in his life been this anxious to kiss someone. Or this unprepared. There’s only so much thinking extensively about it can do.
None of it holds a candle to standing in front of Will Byers in his childhood fucking bedroom with the door closed and the future unwritten and saying, “So…how do we do this?”
Will smiles and giggles and says, “Um, I don’t know, I guess we just. Do it?”
“You would think I’d know,” Lucas says.
Will shrugs evasively, like he did kind of think Lucas would know but also like he’s not holding it against Lucas that he doesn’t. “I mean, the point is to figure it out, right?”
“Right.”
“So you can try it,” Will says.
Lucas swallows and nods. “Right. Same as you.”
“Right. So it doesn’t have to be like…complicated.”
Except it is complicated. It was always going to be, since Lucas failed the saving throw, since Will threaded their fingers together in that unusually-clean bathroom and said Just to try? and Lucas decided trying wasn’t necessary, that he’d already made up his mind, but then agreed to it anyway. Will thinks this is the experiment. Lucas has already figured out the results.
Shit.
“Not complicated,” Lucas echoes, because apparently he’s a machine whose sole function is to spit back whatever Will says even when it directly conflicts with what he’s feeling. Especially then.
“If you changed your mind,” Will starts, shifting, and Lucas doesn’t even let him get another syllable into that thought.
“No! No, I haven’t. I didn’t change my mind. If anything, it’s the opposite. I’m even more sure. That we should…try. Um, if you still want to, that is.”
“Yeah, I do.” Will is so pretty when he smiles. That charisma is a real killer; Lucas has yet to make a save. His eyes are as magnetic as they are bright. Dreamy, Lucas’s mom has said on at least three separate occasions, and Lucas hates to agree with his mom on this subject, but she’s right. Dreamy is the word.
“Great. Okay. So then let’s…let’s do it.”
Will buries his face in his hands, and a muffled laugh bursts through. His back thuds against the door. “Sorry. This is so awkward! Doesn’t it feel awkward?”
“For sure,” Lucas says. He laughs because Will is laughing. At the same time, he takes one surreptitious step closer. “I don’t know what we expected.”
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry, I made it worse.”
“You did not make it worse,” Lucas assures him, grinning. “I don’t think it could have been worse. Willllllllll,” he sing-songs, really stretching it out. One more step brings him close enough to reach out and pry Will’s fingers up. Just touching him at all is monumental. One small step for man, one giant leap for kissing Will, or whatever Neil Armstrong said. When he uncovers Will’s face, he doesn’t let go.
Turns out there was a smile hiding behind that mask. A smile beneath his officially dreamy eyes. Lucas curls his fingers so his knuckles press into Will’s palm. The smile falters; Will looks over Lucas’s shoulder, then lands back on Lucas’s face. Something in his gaze is nervous and eager and a little playful all at once.
The first first kiss Lucas had was Max. It was nothing like this. No planning, no warning, in full view of Lucas’s entire class. One minute they were dancing under the cheesy Snow Ball decorations. The next, without preamble, Max had kissed him. It was awesome. Unexpected, yeah, but awesome.
Most of that can’t be replicated here, in this room. But part of it can. Lucas sends a silent thank-you to Max from the past for the inspiration, and then he leans in, trapping their hands between them, and he kisses Will.
It is, of course, the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to Lucas. In the way things can only be when they’re so good that they loop back around, because when a thing is this good, all you think about it is when you’ll lose it, and in Lucas’s case that benchmark is fast approaching.
Will makes a small, startled noise, but he doesn’t retreat. He presses into it. It’s a sunburst, and then it’s over. Lucas breaks it, but doesn’t move away. His heart is racing, and he has the ludicrous thought that maybe Will could it feel it when they kissed, which would be crazy, but all of this is crazy. Holy shit. He just kissed Will. He kissed Will. Talk about crazy.
Now he’s just hovering. In Will’s space. Will’s dreamy eyes have gone wide and dark.
Before Lucas can open his mouth to ask something he hasn’t quite put together yet, Will lurches forward and kisses him, and somehow Lucas makes himself ready for it in the time it takes for their lips to meet.
He felt it in the Squawk bathroom, that insistent buzzing when Will held his hand, but now it’s tenfold, a hundredfold, swarm graduating to a veritable tornado. A tornado of bees. Not exactly what Lucas wants to be thinking about, so he stops. Focuses instead on the way Will frees his hands to slide them around Lucas’s neck, so the line of his forearms meets Lucas’s chest.
Lucas knows to tilt his head to one side, and maybe Will would have worked it out himself but Lucas doesn’t give him the chance. He frames Will’s face and tilts it for him. The kiss goes from good to great, in a way that promises to be life-changing in the near future.
If nothing else, there is no further doubt in Lucas’s mind that he likes guys. Or at least likes kissing guys. Or at least likes kissing Will. Shit, he’s so screwed.
(It’s hard to feel so screwed when he’s kissing Will, though.)
This time, when they part, Will grins. In that low voice, the same one he used to compliment Lucas in the tunnel what feels like a hundred years ago, he says, “So what do you think?”
“Huh?” Lucas is partially stunned, and Will is still holding his neck, so he really can’t be held responsible for his incoherence. “Uh, about what?”
“The experiment.”
“The experiment. Right.”
“Is it…good? Bad? Terrible?”
“None of the above,” Lucas says. Figuring he may as well tell the truth where he can. Will’s features flicker uncertainly, and Lucas continues, “It’s incredible. You were right.”
“I was right?” Will beams, so visibly pleased, and breathes a laugh that hits Lucas with heat. “About what?”
“About kissing guys. It’s great. In fact, I think we should do it again.”
“Wait, I didn’t say anything— I’ve never even—”
“Great idea,” Lucas says. “We should sit on my bed instead of standing here like two idiots.”
“Lucas,” Will laughs, but allows himself to be led.
Needless to say, Lucas is drunk with power.
“What about you?” he asks calmly, steering Will into position and then pushing him to sit down. The edge of Lucas’s bed dips. “Problem solved, right?”
“What problem?”
“The kissing problem, dude,” Lucas says. He hops onto his bed, folding his knees underneath him as he looks at Will, who’s turned in his direction. “That’s what you wanted, right? To get your first kiss out of the way?”
“Oh.” Will swallows. “Yeah. Yes.”
“So…”
“It was— good. I mean, it was really good.”
“All I’m hearing is that I can do better,” Lucas says.
Will quirks his lips. “I wouldn’t know.”
In the back of Lucas’s mind, he understands that this is flirting, but if he looks at that head-on he’s going to have a crisis, so he just raises his eyes to the ceiling as if he’s really mulling over all this, then says, “Guess I’ll have to show you.”
“Guess so,” Will murmurs.
Eyes lock. Lucas’s heart skips at least one beat, but realistically two or three. He’s fucked, he knows that. He just wishes he wasn’t enjoying it this much.
Then again. That’s a two-way street.
It’s a precarious pose he’s got himself in. He steadies himself with one hand on Will’s shoulder. Leans in. Will moves as if on cue, shifting to make the angle something manageable, so he’s as sideways as it’s possible to be while still sitting on the bed. They meet in the middle, and it’s good, again, but not a sustainable position, which is Lucas’s fault for arranging them this way in the first place.
Given another second, he’d pull away to fix it. But he doesn’t have to, because Will pulls away first and gathers his mess of limbs so they’re all firmly planted on Lucas’s comforter, so their knees are touching.
“Sorry,” Will says breathlessly, “I just…”
“No, yeah,” Lucas says, and licks his lips, and they’re kissing again.
God, he could really get used to this. Will’s lips against his, the way his hands roam like he’s trying to build a map of Lucas from sense memory alone. Smoothing out the creases in Lucas’s shirt as Lucas only makes things worse for Will’s. He has a fistful of Will’s collar and the other hand crawling up to find purchase in Will’s hair, soft and inviting.
His mouth is dry, so Lucas swipes his tongue between Will’s lips, and they part. Will gasps quietly, a sharp inhale through the nose. His wandering hands land on Lucas’s shoulders.
They are not, Lucas deliriously decides, close enough. Nowhere near. The space between them is a chasm, and it needs to be gone.
“Will,” tumbles from his mouth, “hold on, just.”
Will immediately draws back. “Oh, sorry—”
“No, stop it, don’t say sorry. Don’t be sorry, just. I need to move.”
“Oh.”
Lucas scrambles backwards, throwing his own pillows to the floor so he can prop himself against his own headboard, legs askew. Will is watching with interest.
“You also need to move,” Lucas urges him. “Preferably in this direction?”
Will seems to startle out of whatever daydream he was in. “Sorry, yeah.”
“Seriously, stop apologizing. Unless you’re actually sorry this is happening, which I’m not.”
“No, I’m not. Really, really not.”
Really, really not sounds good. Sounds promising. Lucas grins as Will settles himself at his side.
Part of him wants to crack the tension like an eggshell. Talk about anything else, anything in the world beyond this bubble. But if it pops, he doesn’t know how to restore it, and sue him, he’s liking the bubble. Loving the bubble, in fact.
So he just turns to Will, who is an acceptable amount closer now but still honestly not as close as Lucas would like, and murmurs, “Comfortable?”
“I don’t really see the difference, but yes,” Will whispers.
A fizzy laugh floats up and out of Lucas’s gut, into the air.
“Just trying to give you the full experience,” he says. “Don’t want to disappoint.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Will says, in that rumbling timbre that makes Lucas’s spine tingle. “If anything, I’m the one who should be worried.”
“Oh, no, you shouldn’t,” Lucas says. He swoops in and steals a kiss, just to catch the open want on Will’s face right after. “I’m not sure I even believe this is your first kiss.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“You definitely are. I know that look.”
“I’m giving you a compliment, Will,” Lucas says. “You’re good at this.”
Will flushes like it’s his birthright. “Oh. Then…thank you. You are too. I thought there’d be a learning curve or something, but it seems pretty easy.”
“I’ve heard some horror stories,” Lucas says, and it’s true. Even he and Max weren’t exactly pros when they started kissing regularly, though to be fair, they were thirteen. “Trust me, dude. You’re lucky I’m such a good teacher.”
“Yeah, that’s what it is,” Will says, grinning. “Your teaching skills.”
“You’d be lost without me.”
“Hmm, yeah. I’m sure.” Will tips into him, squishing their shoulders. A flash goes off in Lucas’s mind, snapshot of a possible future where this is happening again, where they can be like this whenever they want. Except this is an experiment, or so thinks Will.
(Will’s no idiot, and Lucas isn’t subtle. No way he still thinks this is part of the experiment. And who are they kidding? They’re well past Will’s first kiss by this point. This is something else.)
“So,” Will says, “what’s the full experience?”
“What?”
“What you just said,” Will says. He does his best imitation of Lucas, which is pretty bad: “Just wanna give you the full experience.”
“First of all, I do not sound like that.” Lucas bites his lip. “But…alright. Yeah, okay. Let’s do this.”
He sits up on his knees, delighted to be taller than Will again. Will moves to do the same and Lucas pushes him back against the headboard, probably too hard. Will doesn’t resist.
“It goes without saying,” Lucas says, “that we can stop whenever you want. Okay?”
Will nods wordlessly. He has that look in his eye again, the cocktail of nervous and eager, but missing the mischief from before. He might be holding his breath. That might just be Lucas.
In one swift motion, he brackets his knees on either side of Will’s hips, settling onto his thighs, and draws Will’s mouth to his.
Will comes to life, grabbing Lucas at the waist, then lower, even as he kisses back. His mouth opens without coaxing, like he knew the next step and decided to skip it. God, it’s good. Everything Lucas dreamed of when he transparently situated them for maximum contact. Better.
Will pulls at him until their chests crush together like tectonic plates, digging his fingers into the meat of Lucas’s lower back. Some deep, resonant hum rumbles into Lucas’s mouth from the back of Will’s throat, and Lucas feels that everywhere. He deepens the kiss, greedy to hear that sound again. Captures Will’s lower lip and sucks it between his teeth. He knows cause and effect; Will’s grip tightens, and he knows why. Drunk on power is an understatement here.
Not like he’s the only one with power, but there’s something to be said for the advantage of experience. (His hands brace Will’s shoulders.) It’s not like he’s been kissing anyone recently, but he and Max got pretty good. (That kind of thing never really leaves you.) And it’s not like Will is Max, but some things are universal.
His lips drag away from Will’s. He nudges Will’s jaw with his nose, and Will, pliant as anything, lets his head tip, even as he breathes, “Lucas, what,” but Lucas doesn’t have words for an answer, so he doesn’t bother. He brushes his lips over Will’s pulse point.
A sharp, shuddering exhale responds.
Yeah. Okay.
It is dangerously addictive, getting that reaction out of Will. The rise and fall of his chest as Lucas slowly draws a line, half-kissing, half-dragging a slick trail to the dip of Will’s collarbone. At some point Will’s hand made its way to the base of Lucas’s scalp. It almost seems to be holding him in place. Like Lucas couldn’t move away if he wanted to, so it’s a good thing he doesn’t.
He sinks his teeth around the skin. Not like a vampire, but gentle, purposeful, like a lion carrying a cub. Will’s breath gets buzzy and harsh. There’s a dull thud, like someone’s head hitting the headboard. A whisper of a word mingles with the exhale, but it’s indecipherable.
“Want me to stop?”
“No,” Will says raggedly, the most forceful thing he’s said since he got here. “No. Not at all.”
Lucas lets his forehead meet the slope of Will’s shoulder. “You’d tell me, right?”
“Yeah, yes, but don’t— Just. You can keep doing that.”
Lucas can’t help but smirk. Will sounds like he just ran a marathon. It’s a strange thing to be proud of, kissing someone to breathlessness, but he is. Maybe just because it’s Will. Maybe especially because it’s Will.
Emboldened, he resumes what he was doing—a kind of math problem for leaving the perfect mark. He sucks skin between his teeth and teases his tongue over the spot, drawing it out for the sake of Will’s enjoyment as much as his own. If the mile-a-minute breathing wasn’t a good enough litmus test, the fingernails digging into Lucas’s skull would say it all.
Risky to leave a bruise—that’s basically begging to be interrogated, given the friends they have. Somehow, Lucas can’t bring himself to care.
He finally releases Will, sealing the spot with a kiss, and draws back to admire his work. Draws his thumb across the bloom of color.
And then Will seizes him by the jaw and kisses him hard on the mouth. Uncoordinated and wet and hungry and completely shameless. It’s the first time Lucas hasn’t been leading. He discovers there are few better places to be than at the mercy of Will Byers.
The world spins, and when it stops spinning, Lucas is on his back, and Will is leaning over him, eyes like solar eclipses. Something fiery behind that shadow. He cages Lucas with his knees, weighing into the mattress. Lucas is still processing the fact of being manhandled by Will when Will ducks down to kiss him, ruthless.
If there are words, Lucas doesn’t have them.
Their bodies align by force of gravity. Will sinks, traveling hands finding Lucas’s, and when he threads their fingers together this time it’s nothing at all like that moment in the bathroom. That was sweet. This is electric. He holds Lucas’s arm above his head, gripping him tightly enough to bruise, and Lucas doesn’t mean to groan, exactly, but he’s never been kissed like this. Never just let himself be kissed.
Will didn’t even hesitate. As the sole athlete, Lucas always thought of himself as the strongest party member. But Will flipped him like it was nothing. Like he does this all the time.
Which isn’t possible. If this is Will’s first kiss. So what the fuck.
Will is still kissing him, still just as single-minded, but a little less intense, maybe realizing how much he has the upper hand right now. Lucas squirms, natural instinct rebelling against the way Will has him pinned. He’s not trapped by any means—and he’s actually kind of enjoying the whole letting-it-happen thing—but Will takes it the wrong way and immediately withdraws. His fingers flex, releasing Lucas’s hand.
Forget the marathon; Will is breathing like he just singlehandedly killed Vecna with his mind. Lucas is admittedly not faring much better. He grins dazedly, licking his lips. Stares up at Will’s dark, wide eyes.
“Sorry,” Will manages, though he doesn’t look too sorry. “I wanted…”
Lucas bursts out laughing.
“Oh,” Will says, apparently remember that he’s only supposed to say that if he means it. “Okay, but I— I kind of— I didn’t mean to like. Trap you.”
He’s blushing like it’s a competition he needs to win. Like he’s embarrassed.
“Oh my God, Will,” Lucas says. “It was hot. Jesus Christ. Stop apologizing or I’m gonna get a complex.”
“It was hot that I, that I held you down?”
“I could have gotten myself out of it,” Lucas says, shrugging. “Didn’t want to.”
“Really,” Will murmurs, like this is a revelation.
“Yes, really. Everything happening here is hot as hell,” Lucas says, and Will ducks his head to hide a huge smile. “What, you don’t agree?”
“No, I agree, I just…I don’t know, I guess I didn’t know you could just say that.”
“You can only say it if it’s true,” Lucas says seriously. “Otherwise there’s a fine. Two hundred big ones.”
Will laughs. An army of butterflies invades Lucas’s internal organs. Different from the relentless stirring that’s been kicking up a dust storm since that first kiss by the door. That was want, and this is something softer. Simple in a different way.
He made Will laugh.
“Hey,” Will says. “While I’ve got you here.” That makes Lucas laugh. Will braces himself with one arm, and his free hand rises to his clavicle. “What exactly…?”
“Oh, the hickey?”
Will repeats the word with quiet intrigue.
“Pretty fun, right?” Lucas says. It’s stark against Will’s skin. Eye-catching. They might be screwed for real. If Dustin even gets a glimpse of it, he’ll put two and two together in no time. But it was absolutely, unquestionably worth it.
Will nods. He bites his lip. “Could you teach me?”
“Uh,” Lucas says, because first he needs to reboot his entire fucking brain. Right. Right. This is— right. Lucas is the first kiss. Will is practicing. Will is learning. For whatever lucky sap gets the next kiss. (As if Will needs any fucking practice whatsoever.) “Uh, yeah. Sure. Right— right now?”
“No! Like, another time, maybe. I just, it was…it was good. I liked it.”
“I could tell.” Lucas doesn’t need to see the blush to know when it creeps in. “In a good way,” he adds. “The point was for you to like it, so if you didn’t, that would be a problem.”
“Okay, but you should… Do you? Also like it?”
“Dude, obviously. I’m the one who gave you the hickey.”
“No, I mean, if I…I just don’t really know…how, but I feel like…”
“Will, you’re killing me. Say a whole sentence.”
“This is my first time doing anything with anyone,” Will says. “Sorry I’m not the most articulate.”
Ugh. That’s true. Lucas was way worse than this the first time he and Max did anything more than close-mouthed kiss at a school-sanctioned dance. Like, Max hit him several times before he managed to string enough words together to say anything useful.
“Fine, you’re right.” Lucas presses his lips together. “I promise not to judge you, if that helps?” A promise Max did not make, for the record. And if she had, it would have been dishonest, because she judged Lucas constantly. He judged her right back. That was their thing.
He doesn’t want it to be his and Will’s thing. If they can even be said to have a thing.
Will breathes out nice and long. He sits back on Lucas’s thighs. Lucas doesn’t bother propping himself up. No view compares to the one he just had, but the ceiling’s bland monochrome might keep his overactive imagination at bay. Otherwise he might zero in on the weight of Will’s body, the way it felt to be restrained, the pressure on his chest—
“It helps,” Will says. His gaze hovers over nothing on Lucas’s back wall. “The thing— the hickey. I liked it. I don’t know if that’s…if everyone does. But if you…I mean, I want to do stuff you like. So you feel like that. That’s all I’m trying to say. That’s why I asked if you could teach me.”
“To…to use it on me?”
“…Yes? Who else?”
“I thought…” Lucas says, fading out. This is the right moment to prop himself on his elbows. “Are we doing this again? Another time?”
Pink darkens to crimson. Will looks away. “Oh, sorry, we don’t have to, I just thought— but if you don’t want—”
“Wait, stop it,” Lucas protests. “I do want to.”
“I just don’t know how much experimenting you plan on doing,” Will mumbles.
Lucas’s jaw does not hit the floor, but only because he’s not within range of the floor right now.
“Will. Holy shit. Hold on. Get up. Get off me for a sec.”
Will does, and Lucas shoves himself to a sitting position. Face to face, he claps a hand on each of Will’s shoulders to stare down his dreamy eyes.
“The experiment is over,” Lucas says. “If it ever even started. Honestly, I’ve been pretty sure since we talked about it at the Squawk, and I’ve been one thousand percent sure since all the kissing started. This isn’t about that, alright? This is fun. This is good. And hot as hell,” he tacks on, hoping to make Will smile. It works, but it’s tempered by confusion, so Lucas prays that the no-judgement thing goes both ways and says, “I hate to admit it, but you were right again. I totally do like boys. One in particular, apparently, so if you don’t want to keep doing this, then I get it, but I have no problem—”
Will kisses him before he can meander his way to ending that sentence, which is probably for the best, because it might have gone on forever. Instead, he gets to enjoy the taste of Will’s lips, stale air and something abstractly familiar that he can’t place. The flavor of knowing someone this long and still learning them differently, maybe. It’s a sweet and easy kiss. Lucas caresses Will’s jaw.
He’s pretty good at reading between the lines. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a huge relief when Will murmurs against Lucas’s mouth, “Yeah, me too. In case you couldn’t already tell.”
“Thank God,” Lucas says, between each press of lips. “I mean, I kind of figured, but I didn’t wanna assume, and then you brought up the experiment, and—”
“Shh, I’m trying to kiss you,” Will whispers, shutting him up the way only a good kiss can. (That, Max also did. Lucas couldn’t complain then, and he definitely can’t complain now.)
A flash in Lucas’s mind, snapshot of this moment and a hundred more like it, stretching like mirror images as far as the eye can see. They saved the world so that Lucas and Will could have this. So that Lucas could have Will.
When they come up for air, Lucas grins. “Dibs on not telling Dustin.”
“I am not telling Dustin,” Will says, horrified.
“Fine, then I’ll tell Dustin if you tell Max.”
“Uh-huh. Nice try.”
“I’ll tell Max, you tell everyone else?” Lucas prods the hickey. “Just saying, either we tell them or they figure it out.”
“I don’t really care,” Will says. “Let them wonder. Who knows, maybe they won’t notice. I was gay for years and nobody noticed that.”
“Hey,” Lucas says, affronted. “I noticed.”
He was just courteous enough not to say anything.
“True,” Will says, softening. “Well, the good news is, you’re the other person in this secret, so as long as you don’t say anything, I’m pretty sure we can get away with it for at least another couple weeks.”
“Will Byers, you rascal,” Lucas says, grinning. “You want to sneak around?”
“I mean…not forever, but at least for a little bit. I don’t know, is that…okay?”
“Uh, hell yes. With my dex and your charisma, we’ll be like ninjas. Lying ninjas. Lying, kissing ninjas, oh my God, this keeps getting more awesome."
“Lying, kissing ninjas,” Will repeats, bemused. There’s a glimmer in the ocean of his eyes. “That does sound romantic, in a…Tom Cruise way.”
Lucas preens. They both know what Will really means by that.
“We should just keep it secret ‘til someone figures it out,” he suggests. “Bet you five bucks Dustin gets it first.”
Will raises an eyebrow. “Dustin doesn’t even know you like boys. Actually, does anyone know? Besides me, I mean?”
“No, and that’s the genius of the plan,” Lucas says. “Wait. I said it to Max while she was in the coma, so she might know, if she ever heard anything I said. But she also might just know from, uh, being smart and noticing stuff.”
“Then I’ll take that action,” Will says. “Five bucks it’s Max.”
“Byers, you have yourself a deal,” Lucas says, and when they seal it with a kiss, he can feel the smile on Will’s lips.