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The phone manages to ring exactly once before Mike’s already picking up.
“Yes, people are going to start looking for you if you stay out there forever,” he says immediately, sparing a glance at his blind spot before flicking the turn signal. “If you brought your jacket—which I hope you did, because it’s cold tonight—they’re going to figure out you’re on the fire escape at some point.”
“I know that,” Will protests, laughing. Mike’s stomach does a little swoop at the sound ricocheting directly into his ear—it’s a poor, tinny substitute for the real thing, but he finds a matching smile tugging at his mouth anyway. “And you know I’ll go back inside soon, I just—I needed a second from all the noise. And I can’t hear your voice if I’m in there with everyone.”
Mike’s grip tightens around the wheel. “I missed you too,” he says, caught red-handed in between something teasing and something true. No matter where they are, no matter what’s happening, this has always been the truth: “I miss you.”
He hears the click of Will’s teeth as he closes his mouth, inhaling short through his nose like he’s surprised. Like Mike wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. Then, “Don’t be sad. You’re not allowed to be sad,” he tells him, gently, “it’s my birthday.”
“And I’m missing it.”
“Michael,” he says, more sternly this time, “I think driving out to meet with a publisher that’s interested is a little more important than a party with some people you already see every few weeks.”
“Not when it’s about you,” he replies, without missing a beat.
He hears another echo of Will’s laugh in his sigh. “You’re impossible,” he says, and the image of him rolling his eyes is so clear that Mike can see it in the windshield, his best friend’s smile drawn in streaks of shadow and streetlights. “You’ll be there for the next one, won’t you?”
“Yeah, of course,” he answers, automatically.
“Exactly,” Will says, like he’s proven his point, and that’s that. “Now, come on, tell me how it went. Was it good? You haven’t said anything yet.” Mike knows he isn’t imagining the enthusiasm in his voice, rising in a wave as Will perks up. He hums back in response, grinning up at a red light as he drags it out, unable to resist as Will waits, impatient over the line. “Mike,” he needles.
Mike would do anything as long as Will kept saying his name like that for the rest of his life.
“They had some notes,” he hedges, “but, um—yeah. It was good, I think. I think? They agreed with some of what I said, which I wasn’t sure was possible. And I tried not to go in with too many expectations, but coming out, it was like—” He hesitates, the comparison already clumsy on his tongue—but Will makes a soft noise, prompting, unassuming, and the words come spilling out anyway. “It feels like I could fly, you know? Like I can do anything. It’s definitely weird, for sure.”
Will lets out another laugh, without any hint of scorn, warm and pleased. “I knew they’d love it. They had to.”
“You haven’t even read this one,” he points out, heat flushing high across his cheeks.
“Doesn’t matter. I knew it,” he says again, complete certainty burning like molten steel in his tone. “What did Nancy say?”
“Um.” She’ll be pleased, he knows. Mike had been terrified to hand over the pages, at the beginning—it was the first time something he’d written felt bigger than a competition or a course assignment, like it was something worth sharing. No matter how patiently his sister had waited, blue pen at the ready, there was still that fear of showing someone everything that filled up the inside of his head; and yet she’d dug through each and every word with the same diligent attention she’d applied to her own budding career as an editor. She’d be happy to know that her hard work had paid off too, accepted with a firm handshake at the end of the meeting. Even if he’d needed to travel all the way to Boston to find it. “She doesn’t know yet.”
There’s a long pause. “What?”
He lifts his shoulder in a shrug he knows Will can’t see. “I wanted to tell you first. Obviously. And I figured she was busy tonight, anyway,” he adds, clearing his throat. He tries to focus on finding an open parking spot before he says something else he shouldn’t. “Okay, your turn. What’s it like being twenty-one? Did the older kids induct you into the secret society for legal alcoholics yet?”
“The whole point of a secret society is the secret part,” Will says, solemn, “You’ll have to wait sixteen more days to find out.”
“Will,” he groans, “I thought you were supposed to tell me everything.”
“You wish,” he says back, clearly amused, and Mike resists the urge to tell him he’s right.
“Well, how is everyone? Am I coming back to our place in shambles?” It’d be a shame, to say the least. They’re coming up on two years on their lease, and Mike almost likes their landlord, including her ancient pet tabby, who’s definitely warmed up to him during their tenancy. He’d see it as a milestone, except she’s been leaving him to do figure-eights around Will’s shoes in the hallway without fail since their very first day.
He can’t exactly blame the cat.
“Oh, you know. Same as usual, except now Robin’s trying extra hard to hand me a different drink every time I see her. I think Vickie keeps pulling the party to the side for tips on preventing alcohol poisoning just to split the difference.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he observes dryly, “Did you give any of them a try?”
“Actually, Max made me some kind of cocktail and just told me to trust her,” Will says, over Mike’s loud, overdramatic groan. “It wasn’t even bad! It was good, really, her ratio was just, um. Generous. That’s when I figured I should step out.”
“Maybe getting older takes all the fun out of alcohol,” he muses aloud, fully aware that neither of them tends to drink anything too strong at house parties anyway. Will laughs again, and Mike smiles at his own reflection, switching off the engine.
“Maybe. Or building a tolerance helps with staying sober?” he suggests.
“Or,” Mike says, “we just discovered another one of your superpowers.”
“You would say that.”
“Of course I would,” he agrees, something fond spilling into his voice like honey, sticking along the backs of his teeth without his permission. As if he has any control over how he sounds, when it comes to Will—as if he could change the way his words always seem to go all soft along the edges, even under the shape of ink scratching across paper. He clears his throat again, climbing out of the car. “Any other words of wisdom, sorcerer?”
“I’m not sure. I think I missed the crystal ball I was supposed to get for my birthday.”
“Don’t worry, you still have, like, five minutes until midnight. Maybe it’s in the mailbox downstairs,” he jokes, before he glances down at his watch and freezes. He’d gotten distracted after all. “Oh, shit. Two minutes, actually.”
“That’s too bad,” Will sighs, “Better luck next year.”
“Well, you don’t need it anyway. Your magic’s still innate.” Mike starts walking as fast as he can without falling into an outright sprint—he doubts he’s coordinated enough to give Will his undivided attention without tripping over his own feet. “Tell me what you see when you look into the future. What did you wish for?” he asks.
He hears Will swallow. “I don’t know. I’m happy with where I am right now.”
Mike’s hand drifts towards the jacket pocket sitting up high near his chest, to the left of the zipper. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t something you can still want.”
A beat passes. He can hear every sound Will makes, down to the tide of his breathing, drawing soft and slow through his lungs. He would know that wingbeat rhythm from another room, another world, another life—something behind Mike’s ribs clenches as he inhales too, the truth unravelling him to the bone. Mike likes to think he would know Will Byers anywhere.
“Will,” he says, very quietly, “what do you want?”
Will lets go of that very breath they’ve both been holding, an admission carried light on a heavier exhale, nearly impossible to catch if Mike hasn’t dedicated his whole life to noticing everything about his friend—his first and his best and just his. “Same thing as always,” he says at last, and Mike stops short in his tracks. “You.”
“You have me,” he answers instantly, almost bewildered. He looks around him like his surroundings could provide any assistance, spying the bodega across the street before he lurches back into motion, speeding up into what could charitably be called a jog. “Will. You have me.”
“Mike, that’s not—” He cuts himself off there, voice fluctuating as he shakes his head. “You don’t have to say that.”
“But I mean it,” he says, and Will sighs.
“No, you don’t. Not the way I mean it. You’re just saying that because it’s what I want to hear, but I don’t—I mean, I want—”
“Will,” he interrupts, because he can’t stop himself, even though he tries to do that less, these days. He steadies his voice, lowering it as he rounds the corner. “Are you drunk?”
“No, not anymore,” he admits, “or maybe not in the first place.”
“Good,” Mike says firmly, his shoes rattling against the stairs as he races up to the third floor, leaping up two steps at a time. “Turn around.”
He climbs onto the fire escape outside their kitchen window at the exact same time Will looks back towards the spiral staircase, silhouetted faintly in the gaps of light escaping from behind drawn blinds. His eyes go wide under the amber glow of nearby lampposts, lips parting with surprise as Mike ends the call, still looking directly at him. He doesn’t stop moving forward.
“You have me,” Mike repeats, and suddenly his hands are framed around the sides of his best friend’s jaw, tilting him upwards as he leans down and meets Will’s open mouth with a kiss. His fingers are cold where they were exposed to the midnight chill, but Will’s skin is warm under his touch, like this could be where the sun had gone once it slipped beneath the horizon line—if only Mike hadn't always known him to be the brightest thing to look for, anywhere he went. Will’s lips are even warmer, soft and slack under his own.
He pulls back, just barely, eyes searching Will’s. They flicker open under his gaze, dazed and low-lidded, a shared breath pluming through the sparse space left between them. Will lifts a trembling hand to Mike’s cheek silently, and he can’t help but sway into the contact, the gesture natural, instinctive, gravity rewriting itself to make sense.
Will treats all of his belongings with the same precise, painstaking care. Mike has known this even before he received his first ever gift from Will—a drawing of Chester made just for him, all the way from the Byers’ home, because their kindergarten teacher had insisted no pets were allowed in the classroom for show-and-tell—he’d known it because he could recognize every crayon used in the portrait, because Will had named him every shade in his twenty-colour set. Even now, with somewhat steady commissions coming in from the drag queens at the bar two blocks away, he still uses erasers until they’re worn into stubs, and he holds onto Max’s original mugs from pottery class before she actually learned how to spin the wheel, and he always eats the pickles in his sandwiches when they forget to remove them from his order at the deli. And yet, somehow, that care is nowhere to be seen as Will’s phone tumbles out from his grasp, clattering against the iron platform below their feet as Will shuts his eyes and crushes his mouth back to Mike’s.
It had been 11:57 p.m. when Mike got out of the car. They make it as far as two minutes into an entirely new day when his best friend kisses him on the lips—eager, hungry, desperate, honest. Suddenly, those artist’s hands of his are everywhere, flattening the collar of his jacket and tugging at Mike’s arms to drag him closer and sweeping up over his shoulders to sink into his curls.
He’d put his hair up, earlier, just for the meeting—because even if his mother’s learned to contain her reactions every year he steps foot back into his old house with Nancy for Christmas dinner, she still likes to insist he keep it out of his face for a formal occasion—and he hadn’t bothered undoing it in his rush back to New York. Blunt nails scrape now over his scalp, and an undignified, frankly embarrassing burst of sound crawls out of his throat, buried under Will’s tongue as his hair falls back into place around them in a curtain.
Mike pulls away again, and Will lets out a whine this time, fingers lacing at the nape of Mike’s neck before he can get too far away.
“You have no idea,” he pants, the words damp with his heaving breath, “how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
“Well,” Will trails off almost as soon as he speaks, eyebrows scrunching playfully, “I did think I was going crazy sometimes. Like I was just seeing what I wanted to see.”
Mike thinks of all the times he’s lingered too long at the door on his way out, watching Will paint under the sun through the window of their tiny living room. His cheeks go warm again. “It’s been driving me crazy. You drive me crazy,” he says emphatically, and then he’s closing the distance between them again, dipping in to press his lips to the side of Will’s face. He scatters kisses across his forehead, over the slope of his nose, along his cheek where it curves up with the strength of his smile. Will watches him the entire time through squinted eyes, made uneven at the borders with nothing but joy, something so bright it shines through his face like a beacon. Mike kisses him again, because he can, because he tastes like cranberry juice, because he doesn't even have to try not to, because—
“I love you,” he breathes, still cradling his best friend’s face. “I fucking love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears pool at the corners of Will’s eyes, and he nods. “I love you too.”
“I’m in love with you,” he says again, and Will blinks, a tear stealing free. Mike swipes it away with his thumb. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
Will blinks a second time. “You made it, though. You’re here,” he says, realization dawning across his face as he stares up at Mike. “You—you drove all the way back on the same day to get here?”
“I’m always going to come home to you, Will,” he says, and he means it with everything in him. And, because he means it too, “I love you.” Will’s already beaming before he adds, hurriedly, “Happy twenty-first.”
“Now it’s also the day you got your first publishing deal,” he points out, eyes practically sparkling, “and we both get something to celebrate.”
“Oh.” Mike straightens back to his full height at the reminder, hesitating. “Can I—show you something?” He waits for Will’s nod before reaching into his pocket for a folded piece of paper. “I had, like, this entire dumb plan for how I was going to do this, and obviously I already screwed that up—”
“You haven’t screwed anything up.”
He pauses, glancing up shyly as he bites down on a smile, eyes darting back down before he manages to meet Will’s steady gaze. “Okay. True. I just—there was this idea in my head for how things were meant to go. I was going to take you out next weekend for our birthdays, and it was going to be just us. I thought—I thought maybe things were about to fall into place the way it’s felt like they could, recently, but then you said what you said, and I needed you to know. So. Here,” he says awkwardly, thrusting the page over towards Will, reluctant to drop a hand from Mike’s shoulder as he takes it. The other plays idly with the curls at the back of his head, even as he unfolds the paper in quarters. “One way or another, this was always meant for you.”
“For Will,” he reads out, “because I could have written The Lord of the Rings in these pages, and loving you would still be the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“I signed the deal because it was good. And because they let me put this on the front,” he says, watching a variety of emotions flit across Will’s expression, hummingbird-quick, and even more delicate. He shifts his weight nervously between his converse when he doesn’t get a response. “I mean, this isn’t your only present, obviously. There’s a mixtape in my room waiting for you after the party ends, and I went to the comic store two weeks ago to get the new Amazing Spider-Man before they ran out, but, um—”
“Mike,” he says slowly, “What are you—this is—”
“It’s only going to be a small release, and I guess I don’t know what comes after that,” he admits, “But I wouldn’t have any of it without you, so. I dedicated it to you. You’ve given me so much of your art over the years, so much of you, I—I figured this was the least I could do, after everything you’ve done for me.”
“It’s not a competition,” Will says, sniffling his way through a laugh. Mike smiles at him, at the sound, at the real thing after all, brought forward in perfect evidence.
“I know. But everything you said a second ago, about me saying or doing this because you wanted it? That’s not how this works. This story—it’s ours. You can read it now. I want you to read it. I thought I had to keep it from you until it was done because it was too obvious, but—I didn’t even know if you felt the same way, and I still had to tell you. I’m made as much of you as I am myself,” he says, shrugging, “and I’ve never known anything else. Will, I’ve been yours since that day on the swingset—”
He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Will’s hand is already tight around the piece of paper, and his grip is even tighter when he throws his arms around Mike. Mike lets out a breath, relieved and unburdened and inexplicably dizzy, wild joy flaring down to his toes. He drops a kiss to Will’s shoulder before burying his head into the crook of the other boy’s neck, revelling in the way Will clutches onto him, palms flat against his shoulder blades, pulling him in close like it was meant to be a promise.
“You have me,” he whispers, his own oath and an assurance and the vow he plans to keep for the rest of his life, “for as long as you want. Wherever you are is exactly where I want to be.”
“Mike,” he murmurs, tilting his head down to look at him. He’s smiling like they’re both on the inside of some joke they haven’t even finished telling—like they’re a film reel still spinning off in its own orbit, like they’re only the beginning of the story. “I’ve wanted you forever. I still do.”
“Then you have me forever,” he says simply, his insides buzzing, bees caught in his chest and honeycomb thick at the back of his throat, his heart soaring up on translucent wings where it stands with his arms wrapped around him. “Deal?”
Will grins and leans up to kiss him again. “Yeah. I think I can make that work.”