Chapter Text
Will couldn’t have predicted himself liking drinking as much as he does. True, he didn’t like going to the few graduation ragers the party attended– it was way too loud and made him self-conscious about sweating so much– but now he enjoys the comfortable buzz he gets when he has a few beers with his friends.
Maybe the term ‘friends’ is too generous to say, given that the rest of the party’s off to college. It’s just him and Mike left to quietly rebel during their gap-year. Underage drinking and going on late night walks along the train tracks has been their preferred method of such, the exact pastime keeping them distracted tonight.
Mike stops walking, stumbling only slightly, and looks up. “You can see the big dipper,” he says, scrunching his nose and squinting at the night sky.
Will looks up. He’s decently drunk, so tipping his head back makes him a little dizzy and he struggles to focus on the constellations. “Where?”
“In the sky.”
Will rolls his eyes and looks at Mike, who’s visibly holding back a laugh. “Where in the sky, Wheeler?” he says in a light-heartedly annoyed tone.
“Right there,” he lazily points up, bottle in hand, extending his long index finger.
Will can’t see what Mike does, and he’s worried he’ll fall over from vertigo if he keeps staring up, so he keeps walking. “It’s too cloudy. Can’t see anything,” he says before taking a swig. His beer was cold when they left Mike’s house, but the time it spent in his jacket pocket and the heat from his hand turned it lukewarm at best. It gets the job done though, making his mind feel light as he continues his meander down the tracks and tries not to focus on the offer his co-worker proposed to him earlier today
“Do you remember when we saw the aurob– orabor– the northern lights?” Mike asks, catching up with him and smiling stupidly.
Mike is a gamble every time they drink. Most nights, like tonight, he’s silly and dreamy, hell-bent on making Will laugh or see the beauty of the stars. Other nights he’ll be depressingly nostalgic. He reminisces on their childhoods together and their adolescence with Dustin, Lucas, and Max, talking about how much he misses them and how he can’t wait for them to come back for the holidays. Occasionally, he’ll get sad. One night, Will found himself holding Mike as he cried, shoulders shaking while he stammered about how he, 'Could've tried harder to save her,’ and how he ‘Should have been better to you, Will.’
It was that night that made Will implement the preventative action of a five drink each limit on their nights together. Mike, gravely hungover and deeply embarrassed the morning after, gladly adhered.
“Yeah,” Will smiles at Mike as he walks, “On our camping trip after 6th grade, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And Dustin slept through it– God, he was so pissed in the morning!”
“I tried waking him up–” Mike whined.
“But he just kept threatening to punch you so–”
“So you, me and Lucas stayed up, just talking and watching them for hours.”
“Yeah, until Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair heard us and screamed to go to bed,” Will giggled.
Mike laughs, looking down at the tracks and slowly letting his smile fade. He sighs, “Man, I miss those guys.”
Will bites the inside of his lip. Drunk as he is now, he knows they’re moving into dangerous territory by talking about the good old days.
“Well, they live just down the road from you, if you ever wanna visit them. But I don’t think they’d appreciate it, seeing as they’re almost empty nesters with Erica graduating in–” Will snorts when Mike playfully shoves him. He stumbles but regains his balance before falling off the tracks, only spilling a few drops of his drink.
“I’m not talking about Lucas’ parents, dumbass!” Mike says, smiling.
“You’re the dumbass!” Will shoves back at Mike, who grabs onto Will’s shoulders to steady himself, half-drunk bottle resting against his chest.
“I thought I was the heart,” Mike slurs his words, looking down at Will. His eyes are softly glazed and he’s got that stupid smile that makes Will simultaneously want to caress his face and set him on fire.
“You still are,” Will whispers, suddenly aware of how close Mike is to him now.
Mike’s lips tremble and his eyes momentarily flick down to his feet before he looks back at Will, the hazy expression returning. Taking a breath, he licks his lips and leans down, pressing his mouth onto Will’s as both boys' eyes flutter closed.
There it is, Will thinks, giving into the rare fourth option of Mike’s drunkenness. If he’s not laughing, reminiscing, or crying, he’s kissing Will.
He can feel Mike grab his face with his free hand. The beer in the bottle swishes close to his ear, and he grabs at Mike’s jacket as best he can without dropping and shattering the drink in his own hand. Will cringes at the sour taste of beer on Mike’s tongue as it enters his mouth, but his lips are so warm and hands so gentle, Will isn’t bothered for long.
If anyone asks Will, he knows he won’t be able to explain what he and Mike have going on. All he knows is that since that night in the junkyard, Will can count on one hand the times Mike’s had the guts to repeat what he described as ‘acting stupid’...
***
It was late August. Dustin had moved into his college dorm a few days before. Mike and Will were waving from the street as Lucas and Max drove away, teary eyed and hopeful for the future ahead of them.
When Lucas’ green AMC Eagle turned the corner and left their sight, Will sighed and turned to Mike. “And then there were two,” he said, giving him a sad smile.
Mike’s shoulders dropped and he smiled like he was being forced to at gunpoint. “Wanna get shit faced?”
And that’s how they ended up laying on the hood of a wrecked Chevy in the Hawkins junkyard.
“If you had to kiss a female celebrity, who would it be?” Mike asked, out of the blue.
Will chuckled, and turned his head to look at his best friend lying next to him, “What?”
Mike turned his head and silently stared, as if he knew he didn’t need to repeat the question, his brown eyes harmlessly curious. Will felt his mouth run dry.
He cleared his throat and said, “Why do you want to know?”
Mike shrugged, the fabric of his jacket rubbing against the metal hood beneath them. “I don’t know,” he slurred, softly. He was definitely more drunk than Will was. “I guess I’m curious about what gay guys find attractive about women.”
“Nothing, Michael.”
“Well, DUH! I know, but like… if you had to choose,” He leaned forward to take a sip of his beer, but stopped before it hit his lips, “And don’t call me Michael. You sound like my nana.”
Will watched Mike’s throat bob as he drank, trying not to pay attention to the drop of amber escaping his lips and streaming down his chin. Will looked back at the stars above them and thought about Mike’s hypothetical.
Will was eternally grateful that his friends and family had been so accepting when he told them the secret he’d held so tightly for so long. The relief he felt that day– cradled by the people who made life worth living, telling him that they’d love him no matter what– was a greater high than alcohol could ever bring.
Of course, when the dust of their final battle with Vecna had settled and normalcy began its slow and steady comeback, there had been an onslaught of questions for Will. ‘How long have you known?’ From his mom. ‘Have you ever kissed a boy?’ From Max. ‘So, which one of us is hotter?’ From Lucas and Dustin trying to settle a bet.
But Mike had never joined in on the Q&A. In fact, he was usually the one to put a stop to it if the questions from the other guys ever stepped toward the realm of invasive. Will found it strange that, when Mike finally did ask him a question related to him being gay, it was about kissing girls.
Mike wiped his mouth and turned back to Will, still awaiting an answer.
“I guess… Ally Sheedy, maybe.”
Mike fully sat up and gave him a strange look, “Like from The Breakfast Club?”
Will rose to join him, “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing! I just…” Mike hugged his knees close to chest, looking out into the junkyard and tapping his chin with the lip of the bottle, “I wouldn’t have expected it.”
Will poked him, emboldened by the liquid courage. “Alright, what about you?”
There was that confused look again. “What about me?” Mike asked.
“If you had to kiss a male celebrity, who would it be?”
Mike’s face flushed beneath the flickering lights of the yard. His nose and brow scrunched like his brain was malfunctioning. Turning away again and gripping his bottle with white knuckles, he snapped, “I wouldn’t!”
If Will didn’t know Mike so well, and wasn’t so drunk, maybe he would be put off by this sudden outburst. But he only leaned over and followed Mike’s eyeline. “And I wouldn’t kiss a girl, Mike,” he quipped before whispering, slyly, “it’s a hypothetical question.”
“It’s different, Will!” Mike defended, voice as high and squeaky as it had been when they were kids, “It’s different.”
Will cocked his eyebrow, “How?” Okay, maybe he was being too bold now.
Mike seemed to consider the question, staring at the ground and chewing the inside of his lip. A wave of guilt suddenly overtook Will. Had he gone too far? He placed a gentle, friendly hand on Mike’s shoulder, “You don’t have to answer if you really don’t want to.”
Mike looked at him, his eyes and smile tender as the morning light, before scoffing and looking away. “I don’t know,” he sighed, “I don’t think I’d kiss any celebrity. It would be like kissing a stranger. I’d feel better kissing a friend.”
Will’s palms grew slick with sweat. What was he trying to say? He looked for clues in his expression, but Mike's eyes stayed glued on the ground. Tired of acting cagey and knowing they’d probably forget this conversation when the sun came up, Will decided to press his luck.
“Like Lucas and Dustin?”
Mike cringed, but the smile on his face remained when he shouted, "Obviously not!”
“Then who?” Will threw back, matching his volume.
Mike finally turned and faced him again, something dark and real brewing in his expression as he raked his eyes over Will’s face. Like Will had asked something more serious and not at all hypothetical.
The air around them grew tight. Suddenly, they weren't laughing anymore, and being drunk wasn’t fun anymore, and they weren’t just friends anymore. Friends don’t stare at your lips. They don’t grip onto your sleeve with shaking hands. And they certainly don’t lean in and kiss you.
It was slow, and strangely cautious considering Mike’s intoxication. Will didn’t even have time to close his eyes before Mike pulled away. It was over so quickly, Will was momentarily horrified that he’d somehow hallucinated it happening. Could beer do that? But he couldn’t have. Mike’s fingers were still tangling the fabric on Will’s sleeve, and his face was still mere inches away.
Will wanted both to cradle and slap Mike’s face. Run his hands through his messy black curls and shake him while screaming, ‘What the hell is wrong with you and can you please do it again?!’
Instead he only stared dumbstruck as Mike exhaled, releasing his grip on Will. “Fuck, I’m so wasted” he sighed as he hopped off the hood and placed his half-empty bottle on the ground.
“Yeah?” was all Will could think to say. He hoped Mike couldn’t hear the quiver in his voice when he said it.
“Yeah, it’s making me act all stupid. probably time to call it a night,” Mike said as he stretched his arms over his head and avoided any eye contact.
“Okay,” Will mumbled. He jumped off the hood and gasped at the sudden shattering crack that crunched beneath his boot when he landed. He looked down to see his feet stood in a display of broken glass and spilled beer.
Weird.
Will forgot when exactly he’d dropped his beer. And when he gazed up to see Mike walking hurriedly away, making his way back to town with or without Will, he hoped that he would keep forgetting things about this night.
***
Will didn’t forget. It was the opposite, actually. He didn’t sleep a wink that night. The memory of Mike burned permanently onto his lips and replayed in his mind when he grazed his fingers across them.
Even now, as he kisses Mike on the train tracks, Will knows that he’ll fight through his own drunkenness to remember every last bit of it. That he’ll hold the memory of this kiss, precious and rare as a diamond, with a vice grip until his best friend inevitably works up the courage to refresh him with a new one.
Will isn’t stupid. He knows this fragile dynamic they have is bound to break. But for now, he’ll savor the way Mike whines against his mouth when Will slides his hand up and pulls his hair. Like an inmate enjoying his final meal on death row.