Archive of Our Own

When it's summertime, Will Byers hibernates.

It's been entirely too easy as an adult to hide out for the past 7 years of living on his own. To his friends in the city, he just tells them deadline crunch and the light in my place is too good in the mornings, I can't miss it and I'm so behind on everything, you guys go without me. And they never question it because his job is so flexible — an artist, holed away in his studio which is also his living room. Working both late and early when things get busy, meetings at the most inconvenient times, so no, sorry, I can't go to the park tomorrow, but you guys have fun.

But the reality is, when the temperature crosses eighty, he closes the blinds and cranks up the A/C window unit to its meanest setting. The world will get on without him until the weather breaks around September when he can get away with it again.

His apartment sits above a bodega, so it's easy to walk down on cool evenings to grab whatever sustenance he needs (which is often just cereal and milk or quesadillas with cheese made in the microwave) in a light jacket. It's a good apartment, one that he's been in for 3 years now that's still in the same neighborhood as NYU where he attended school, so it's familiar to him and he's not the type of person that likes too much change. And most importantly, there's a huge desk by the window in the living room where he spends most of his time hunched over one of his work projects or sketching in his own book with charcoal or pencil.

It's July now, and he's wearing a long-sleeved shirt in a room that he's freezing himself out of on purpose. It's one of his older brother Jonathan's old shirts that he left behind when he left Hawkins, one that Will stole for himself and easy to layer under any t-shirt that he has. One of those thermal weaves. His lifelong friends have long since stopped commenting on it. Dustin did, for a long time — it's 90 degrees outside, are you crazy? Will had laughed and said I run cold. And because of the mess that the Upside Down made with his body, everyone stopped asking, figuring that it was just something new that they needed to get used to.

Will runs cold. Will doesn't swim.

Except he used to be the best swimmer in their group. The summers when they were still all carefree, they used to swim in Lover's Lake until their fingers pruned. He'd stayed under the water long enough once that Mike had gotten scared and jumped in after him fully clothed. Will had popped his head out of the dark green water, laughing with his lungs on fire. Completely unafraid.

The biggest difference, over the last year, is that now there's someone in his life who is much more insistent on making his presence known. Will hasn't had to answer to anybody in a long time.

But now, or again, there's Mike. Who comes over at least once a week ever since he moved to the city last fall — getting a job at a middle school on the north side, eighth-grade science that paid him enough to lease a studio that was the size of a generous bathroom. When he called Will the day that he got his keys from a payphone outside, he had told him I'm only like 15 minutes away from you. Two subway stops over, I could walk there right now if I wanted to. And Will had smiled to himself in his apartment with a spoonful of peanut butter in his mouth. Mike had said it like it was some sort of divine coincidence, but every apartment that he toured was in the exact same neighborhood as him. After years of phone calls and only seeing each other for major holidays, his best friend was now 15 minutes away.

So, most Fridays now Mike shows up around 6 after getting off of work with a plastic bag of Thai food in his hand from a few blocks over — he had never even tried it before he moved here, Indiana not really known for their international cuisine and more for a variety of casseroles. But ever since he'd tried drunken noodles for himself, he'd been hooked and insisted that they didn't need to try anything else except for the bag of fried vegetable wontons that they always split together. He's always, always a little out of breath from the stairs of Will's walk-up, talking before he's even made it all the way inside the door about something that happened at the school that day.

Will draws while he talks, or pretends to more often than not. Mostly, he listened with his chin in his hand, unable to not give Mike his full attention. Watching how his hands move frantically, the same way they always have when he's telling a story.

They eat on the floor because Will doesn't have room for a proper table. So instead they spread everything out on the coffee table with the TV on low. They've gone through entire series that way (Star Wars, Star Trek, Back to the Future, The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Basket Case, Amityville Horror — the list goes on). And most nights, they fall asleep against each other. This happens so often that it no longer phases Will the same way it had the first month or two — Mike’s head rolling onto Will’s shoulder somewhere around 11 like clockwork, his glasses askew on his face. He's learned how to sit so still so that he doesn’t wake him and ruin it. Sometimes Mike's hands would find their way onto Will's body in some kind of way, either on his waist under the blanket or an arm slung over his shoulder. Always covered by at least one layer of clothing and usually blanket. And Will pretends he doesn't notice that Mike stays longer than he needs to every single time, even when he could make it back to the subway before the last train.

One night in March, after they finished the first Gremlin movie together, Mike had curled into Will. He had thought Mike was going to say something because his breath kept hitching up. But nothing came out, and the next morning he was acting super weird. Not staying for coffee, letting Will pour it into his favorite mug but rushing out the door instead of drinking it. Will had told himself it was better that way.

Mike is still Mike to him, no matter how much time has passed. He had held Will's hand during the scariest moments of his life and told him that they would always be best friends after Will came out of the closet to him, admitted to his childhood crush. Will has never once been able to hear the word friend now without a sort of wince. Because Mike is still easy to love, he always has been.

And Will is — well, he runs cold.

It's hot enough that Will can see glimmering light on the pavement outside. Mike huffs into the apartment, sweaty and apologetic.

"The train was a sauna," he says, kicking the door closed with his heel. He has the only spare key, so Will never has to unlock the door for him. He sets the bag on the coffee table and flops dramatically down onto the couch, one hand on his forehead like a weary, Victorian lady. His shirt is stuck to his body in dark patches of sweat and the hair that usually sits on his forehead is matted down. "We need to move out during the summer, the city in July feels like it's on fire. Why do we do this to ourselves?"

"Because I was stupid first," Will responds, smiling at him. "And you followed me here."

"Well, then I'm stupid-est," Mike agrees, lifting his arm to look at him. "You okay over there, you look kind of qu— wait, are you wearing a sweatshirt? Will, it's 95 degrees outside."

"Oh, it's just a thermal. Besides, I have the A/C on."

"Yeah, it's like the arctic in here, I can even see my breath. You know the buttons on there aren't just for show, right? You can turn it down." But he's grinning at him as he says it, letting him get away with it. He starts unpacking the food, and Will lets out a breath. Mike never pushes him about this. He makes a comment here and there, but never tries prying for more than that from him.

So they eat their normal dinner, a new movie that neither of them had seen that Mike had picked up from Blockbuster on the way there. It's definitely supposed to be scary, but Will doesn't feel that phased by it.

During a quieter scene, Mike says something without looking over at him." Lucas and Max are apparently using Lucas' rich uncle's lake house in the middle of August. The one upstate that they mentioned last Christmas? They're going to be right in our neck of the woods, so I think Dustin is driving over from Boston, too."

Will feels a deep pit in his stomach, getting bigger. "Yeah, Max mentioned last week."

"Apparently they have their own dock and even, like, a whole rope swing. And the views up there—" He finally turns towards Will, his face a muted yellow from the screen. "I think you'd really like it."

"I've got that deadline for that indie magazine I was telling you about?" He hopes it works, but he doesn't think it will. He's already given too much away to Mike when he told him about the project a few weeks ago.

"I thought that wasn't due in the beginning of September? That's plenty of time."

"It's just a really big one, I don't want to leave it to the last minute." The pit in his stomach is expanding into a black hole of guilt ready to pull him in because of the terrible lie.

"You dodge me all the time lately," Mike says. He rubs a hand over his jaw. "I keep trying to figure out if I did something to make you mad."

And that is what undoes him. Mike is trying to find the fault in himself like he's the cause for all of the pain Will has to endure.

"You didn't do anything," Will says. His own voice sounds a million miles away. "God, Mike. You didn't — no."

"Okay." Mike picks at the label on his water bottle. But Will can tell that he's about to say something, he's finally done holding it in. "Can I ask you something? And you can tell me to fuck off."

Will's heart is still thumping, getting louder. He mutes the TV so that he can focus. "Of course."

"Why haven't you ever had a boyfriend? Did you ever want one?"

It's not — it's not at all like that. Not his own choice. But what was he meant to say?

Where did this even come from?

"I don't mean it like—" and Mike really starts to ramble now, tripping over himself to get to the next word. "I'm not saying there's anything, like, wrong with you. Swear to God. I'm not saying that you should have one, but I've known you forever. I know basically everyone you've ever had a crush on, and that somehow, included me back in high school. But then nothing ever happens with them, you just seem to move on from them and never talk about it. And I started thinking — I don't know, that maybe you don't want to, I guess? Which is fine, some people don't. Or maybe that you do, uh, want to, that is and something's in the way. And I'd like to know if it's the second one. If there's something that I can do."

He looks entirely too earnest in how he's looking at Will, his big, stupid eyebrows raised up in concern.

Will never would have told Mike without the presence of someone else in his mind. For a long time, he had told himself that he would take his crush with him to the grave, just so that he could have Mike in some capacity. When that was taken away from him, somehow he didn't lose him. Somehow he was still right here.

"It's not that I don't want to," Will says, which isn't a good answer. And, look. It would be so easy to leave it there and to just tell him that he's been too picky over the years. But he tries to pick one of the excuses that he's used time and time again, but he finds himself unable to say any of them. He's so tired of it.

"It's not that I don't want to," he says again, and his voice cracks down the middle. "I want — God, I want so much. I just — nobody would want me if they saw."

"Saw what?"

"Me, all of me. It's—"

"Will, what are you talking about?" Mike asks, confused at the turn that this conversation took.

"I'm disgusting," Will admits quietly.

It's not that he's never wanted anyone. Not that he's never wanted to be wanted by someone else. He's not a cold person, or closed off on purpose. He has always wanted — for so long and so hard. To be kissed. And to be touched. On purpose, over and over by someone who meant it. To fall asleep with the warmth of another person pressed against him and to wake up tangled in each other's messy, human bodies. To be held.

Loved — more than anything else. More than he has ever wanted anything in his entire life.

But he's never been able to shake it. His therapist now, who he visits twice a month in a tiny downtown office has called it a "trauma response to bodily autonomy."

(Or: every time he thinks of someone else's hands on him, he thinks of the thing that touched him first.)

Something that moved through him, not just touched. Wearing his skin like a coat and tasting the world through his mouth. He knows that it isn't his fault. And he's had to tell himself that every single day. This humiliating work of learning to live in a body that still doesn't always feel like his own.

Knowing, and feeling, are not the same. And he's always been a little overly sensitive.

He still showers with the bathroom light off, and the door open a crack for the hall light to be able to come in. There's a towel he keeps in there just to drape over the mirror when he steps out, keeping him from catching his own reflection as he steps out. It only ever reminds him of how much he hates what he sees.

So, Will is 25 years old, and he's never been in a relationship. Never even on a full date. The only people who have ever shown interest in him have been complete accidents, usually classmates or colleagues that asked him out to drinks but he didn't put the implications together. When it hit him, he always made an excuse to get himself out of the restaurant or bar while the guy sits confused at their table.

Even after all of the self discovery and work that he had to put into understanding and accepting his sexuality as a gay man, actually viewing himself as someone desirable — that's not him. Nobody wants him. Or at least, they wouldn't.

"I'm not trying to be dramatic," Will says next, trying to cushion it the conversation and rein himself back in. He's speaking in hard truths, difficult to hear, but things he knows with all of the certainty in his body.

"I didn't think that you were," Mike responds, but he's still not done pushing.

"It's hard to explain."

Mike turns toward him, one of his gangly, thin knees pulled up on the couch. "Then don't explain, you don't owe me anything I promise. But whatever it is, I'm not going anywhere. We've been friends for almost 20 years, so you're it for me, I think. You know that, right? I just want to be sure that you're happy."

Will lets out a short, wet laugh. "You don't even know what I'm talking about."

"I don't have to."

"You won't say that after," Will says. And then, he stands up. Ready to show him — how else would he ever be able to explain this?

"I'll—" His hands are shaking violently and they felt like they belong to someone else. "I'm gonna show you, but just don't say anything, okay? Because I want to get through it and I've never actually talked about it before."

"Will, you don't have to—"

"I know," Will says. "That's why I'm going to."

He stands up and turns around so that his back is facing Mike first because that feels easier, and he starts to push his sleeves up. That part, the tiny scrapes and cuts that he collected during his time saving the world, his entire family has. Chosen, and not chosen. The entire group of them are all covered in a few more battle scars than other peers their age.

But then, Will reaches for the hem of his own shirt. Fingers numb to the touch, he's so clumsy that it doesn't feel like it's going to happen. His body is rejecting it.

Behind him, he can hear Mike breathing hitch.

He pulls the shirt over his head and drops it to the floor, and then he turns around. It's freezing in here, so the cool air from the window unit makes the scars pull tight. It always happens in the winter, the thin white lines going pale and stretching out, aching like a bruise. And it's quiet. So, so quiet in the room because Mike isn't saying anything. Will's trying his hardest to not start shaking in fear, or sweating. He's trying to figure out how long it's taking Mike to count them all.

There's too many, and he'll realize that soon. But the larger ones — those are the hardest to reckon with. The large burn scar from when he was just 12 enveloping the entire side of his torso, mottling the skin there. It took him months to stop flinching when he changed in front of a mirror. Years to be able to put on a shirt without running his hand along the side of his body and feeling the bumps along the thinner skin. Like spilled wax, reminding him of being burned from the inside out an entire lifetime ago. He's lived with it longer than he's been without.

But the worst are the spider-web like scars that cover his entire chest. Starting around his collarbone, near the edge of his throat and radiating the whole way down his chest and arms, over his shoulders and down his back. Mostly pink, but sometimes white in the thin lines left behind.

They never faded. The doctors had promised him they would, in the initial checkups when after they had just defeated Vecna.

Then he turned 18 and he'd got to say no for the first time. To the checkups and tests. He'd gone to New York for school in a city where nobody cared to ask why he was always wearing a long-sleeved shirt. No one in his life has seen the webbing that was still there after all this time. His friends, his brother, his mom even. He stopped going to the doctor, too. It's not smart, but he's young and he'll worry about it later.

Mike still hasn't said anything, and he knows what that means. What he's thinking because Will has thought them all too. No one would ever want him because his body isn't his.

"I don't ever really show people because it's — uh, it's embarrassing, I guess. I'm not sure how I would ever explain them," Will says, manages to somehow say something.

"Will—"

"I know it's a lot, but—"

He makes himself turn around and look at him. Watches Mike's stricken face as he takes in his chest this time, maybe finding the rest of the small scars, the remnants of the Upside Down and fighting when he never wanted to.

It's like something close to torture, watching his face. Worse than anything he's felt before. Mike's gone white to the lips, his eyes enormous and dark. But it isn't — it isn't disgust. Knowing Mike Wheeler for 20 years, he knows what face he makes when he doesn't like something and he had been bracing for it his entire life, the sneer of his lips pulled back.

Instead, it is a sort of grief that’s spreading.

Is it worse? Or better?

"Will," Mike repeats, but it's almost entirely air. He's up on his feet after that, stopping in front of Will with his hands hanging open and useless at his sides. "Can I— I'm not sure what to— Do you want me to leave?"

"Please say something that isn't sorry," Will answers. It's not Mike's fault.

"I wasn't going to say sorry," Mike replies. There's a hint of something incredulous, at the implication.

Will doesn't believe him and he says it out loud, too.

"I was going to say—" Mike's voice breaks and oh God when is the last time he saw Mike cry? Maybe when they all graduated college and came back to Hawkins the Christmas after, and there was an empty spot that nobody sat in. It was Mike who ended up crying, quietly, with his glasses off, and Will who sat beside him and didn’t say anything. He’s still not sure he’d have known what to say. That was almost 5 years ago now. "You've been keeping this to yourself all this time? Carrying this on your own. And I thought you were mad at me because of the stupid comment I made last week about Max— I'm so stupid. I'm so fucking stupid."

But Mike isn't looking away, the way that he'd pictured it in his head so many times before. Which is maybe the most relief that's he's ever felt because Mike is right here, still looking at him with a sort of tenderness in his eyes reserved just for Will. Under his wet face and his blotchy cheeks, it's still there. And it's reading his body, the entire horror of it without changing.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, softly.

Will can't believe it, the first real question he's asking. "Yeah, sometimes. Especially when it's cold, it's really sensitive the skin there. It's not like the rest of me. It's weird, but it just feels too much."

Mike looks like he's in pain.

Will keeps going. "That's what I'm scared of most, the feeling of someone else touching them. I mean, they're definitely not pretty and I know that, but — that thing is still in there. In me. In all of my skin all of the time. And I think that if someone touches me, or puts their mouth — I'll end up back there and they'd be able to see it happen. And they'd realize that they weren't touching me, they were touching this evil thing. And that isn't fair to them, putting someone through that."

"Will."

"It's not fair," he repeats, looking down at the floor.

"Will, look at me."

He looks up to see Mike closing the distance between them, holding up his hand out. An offering to him.

"Can I touch you?" he asks and it is the last thing that Will ever expected to come out of his mouth.

His heart is slamming against the confines of his ribcage.

Yes, he thinks.

"I don't know," is what he says.

Mike nods at him, eyebrows furrowing together as he searches for something else to say.

"I want you to," Will admits, his voice hoarse. "I really want you to. But I don't know if I—"

"You can stop me at any time. You say anything and I'll stop. I won't even blink, I—"

"I know, Mike," Will says, and a laugh tears loose from somewhere under all of it. "You're the only person who I would trust to listen."

Do you know that is the weight of my world? Being held up.

Mike takes a shuddering breath. He touches him.

It's not what Will expects, or braces himself for with his eyes squeezed shut. But he doesn't feel any sort of slimy tentacles wrapping around his wrist. It's Mike putting his hand flat against his sternum, warm skin pressing so carefully into his own.

Nothing else happens, nothing at all.

Nothing bad.

No, just the rest of his hand spreading. Snaking out onto the raised skin and the strange numb-bright nerves of the scars. Mike's long fingers reaching just the edge of where his throat starts. Will feels his own pulse fluttering. He's some kind of trapped bird.

"Is this okay?" Mike asks.

Yes, he thinks again. This time he can only nod.

"Tell me if it's not."

"It's okay," Will spits out because no, Mike is not allowed to stop touching him. He's never allowed to move his hand again. There's this feeling of pure relief running through him, at someone touching him even just a little. Nothing hurts at all right now.

Mike's hand starts to move slowly, trailing along one line and out from Will's chest toward the top of his shoulder. His fingers are so light that they almost tickle, and he almost immediately misses the full weight of Mike's hand.

Mike's breathing funny, too. Concentrating hard on Will's body and how he's reacting. Will can see that he's biting the inside of his cheek in the quiet.

"Does this hurt you? What does it feel like?" Mike asks.

"No, it's a good weird. Like I can feel everything more than I should, but I know that it's you. So maybe my body does too?" He lets out a deep sigh, eyes closing. "I like it more than I should."

"Too much?"

"It's a lot, but no. Don't stop, please." He's not above begging, pleading with Mike. There's a part of him that will have to go feral after this, desperate for more.

Mike keeps walking his fingers down Will's entire arm, tracing the raised skin there almost like he's reading braille. Taking his time so that he knows what each of them mean no matter how many there are. His hand loops back up his arm and starts to trail down his chest, down to his ribs.

Someone is touching it. Touching the worst thing about me, with love.

He's never felt that as confidently as he does now, the fact that Mike loves him. The thought has never once been an easy one. But he isn't touching Will like he wants to take something, or ask anything of him. This is something entirely different.

"Can I try something?" Mike asks. "You can say no."

He keeps doing that, checking in. Making sure Will understands that this is on his terms. But Will's going to give him anything that he asks for.

"What?" he asks anyway, because he has to.

Mike swallows audibly in front of him, maybe just because they're still too close to each other. "I want to— Can I kiss them?"

Anything that felt lax in his body snaps to attention, reality hitting him hard because that can't be real. Is he dreaming? Maybe he has been this whole time.

But even in his dreams, how Mike looks when Will's eyes go wide is not anything his brain has ever shown him before. He's flushed down to the roots of his hair, red on all sides. Terrified, clearly. But not about what he wants, but at what Will is going to say.

None of this makes any sense.

"I hate it, I hate that he did this to you," Mike continues. "I can't change it, but I can be a better memory. If you let me."

Is Will breathing anymore?

"You don't have to let me," Mike amends quickly. "If it feels wrong or makes you uncomfortable. Tell me that you don't want me to and we can sit back on the couch and finish the movie. I'll never bring it up again—"

"Mike," Will interrupts. He's laughing. Crying, too, he realizes. But that has probably been the case for a while now.

Let him?

"Yes. God. Yes. Please."

Mike lets out a sound like he's been punched, half sob, half laugh. "Yeah?"

Will nods at him and that's all it takes before Mike is on his knees, hot breath hovering around his navel now. It's — in many other scenarios it's something out of his wildest dreams to have him this close.

Mike's hands settle again, on either side of his waist to grip there for a minute. Just the two of them in this quiet room together. It's always been the two of them, since they were kids. But it feels like this is something that neither of them are going to be able to take back.

He starts at the bottom of the skin that's visible without his shirt, which is the large burn from Mike's own sister. Though Will had never blamed Nancy because she saved his life, as well as everyone else's.

(And — there's another thing he doesn't really talk about. That entire year of his life because he doesn't remember a lot of it. It all only comes to him in blurry scenes.)

There's a mouth, soft and chaste, right where the ruined skin starts.

Will's knees buckle.

"I've got you," Mike says, lips still against his skin. Warm — were all lips so warm or just his? "I've got you, I'm here."

"Sorry, I can't help—"

"Don't apologize. Don't you dare."

Mike kisses him again, a little higher up into the scar itself. And then again, moving through the middle alongside Will's ribs. Worshiping him here, placing flowers at his feet. The skin there is strange and each kiss lands harder than the last. He had been waiting so long for this, was convinced that it was never going to be his. Shaking, his hands come up to grip and find Mike's hair to hold onto.

It doesn't matter if it's temporary, this attention was enough to carry Will through the rest of his days.

"It's okay," Mike whispers, between kisses. "It's okay, you're okay. Beautiful—"

"Don't," Will says, because that's mean. Mike isn't allowed to use that word on him.

"I'm going to say it a million times until you believe me. I don't care how long it takes." He presses his forehead into Will's soft side for a second, eyes shut. "I should've said it so long ago."

What comes out of Will's mouth is a strange noise that gets stuck, and Mike continues the path with his mouth. He stands up the closer that he gets to the web of scars on his chest, hunching over to place a long press of his lips to the hollow below his left collarbone. He is endlessly patient as he continues along each and every small thread of it. None of these touches make his body roll with nausea, nothing he's doing makes Will want to claw himself open. No, he feels warm.

"Is this okay?" Mike asks again, a murmur against his collarbone. And just before he can get even close to Will's neck—

"Wait," Will says.

Mike pulls away before the word even gets all the way out of Will's mouth, eyes intense as he checks over him to see where he went wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Will says, and now he's shaking. “It’s not you, it’s—”

"I know," Mike says, sad. He looks like he's sad again. "We don't have to do do that part."

It makes Will feel terrible, and he needs Mike to be his Mike again, to break him out of this. "Say something stupid please," he asks.

Mike blinks. “What?”

"Anything at all? Just, want you to be yourself. It makes this easier."

"Okay," Mike's eyebrows furrow together as he wracks his brain for something to say — anything at all. "Did you know that earthworms have 5 hearts?"

A wet laugh gets out of Will before he can stop it. “Uh — no?”

"Open any curiosity door that you can find. Don't you remember Mr. Clarke saying that all the time?"

"You're bringing up Mr. Clarke right now?”

Mike’s mouth is trembling at the corner, close to a smile. “Yes because I’m Mike, your Mike. And I’m not going anywhere near your neck until you tell me to, okay? So tell me if you—"

"I will — you can stop checking."

"Never," Mike says. "I'm going to check every single time for the rest of my life, you'll be sick of me."

Will doesn't know what to say, if he even believes him. It's what he's wanted to hear — that his Mike is going to be his. But that's not anything that he's ever even dared to daydream too deeply about because it hurts too much knowing that eventually Mike will move on from him. Marry someone else, maybe even have kids and a job that makes him wear loafers everyday. That future isn't his to live, no matter how much he wants it.

Mike's cheeks are flushed red, but he's not taking it back. He lifts his head with one last drawn-out kiss almost at the nape of his neck. "I mean it," he says. "I wasn't planning on saying that tonight. I was going to wait for — I don't know, never, probably because I'm a coward. But I do mean it. I've meant it for a really long time. I'm in love with you. I think I've been in love with you since — well, I'm not sure if I ever remember not loving you. I just got really bad at saying it to you. And I've tried so hard to date other people. I tried to want them. But I'd come over here and think that seeing you is the best part of my entire week, and if I ruin it, I'll die."

Mike places the palm of his hand right in the middle of Will's chest, fingers splayed out, pressing down.

Has Will ever actually been touched before? Why does it feel like this is the first time?

"I can't keep pretending that I don't need you. And I don't care about the scars, Will. You listening? I mean, I hate that he hurt you and I wish that I would've sliced his head off years earlier. But they're not what stands between us, okay? They're just part of what got you here. And I'm glad that you're here — with me."

Will can't speak. He's thought about this moment so many times, but in all of them, they ended badly. Mike usually told him I don't think of you that way. He never once wrote a version of the scene in his head like this one.

"Say something," Mike whispers, after a while. Too long. "Please? You're scaring me."

"I'm trying."

"Yeah?"

"I just—" Will's laughing again, deliriously. "I've been in love with you since. Well, I'm not quite sure either."

Mike starts laughing with him, completely disbelieving and half bent over. He takes Will's face in both his hands, and asks, "Can I kiss you again? On the mouth this time."

Will nods at him, still smiling. "Yes, you can. You can do whatever you want just—"

It isn't like the movies that he's seen, it's better. They're both still crying a little, which is an odd sensation as their cheeks press into each other's. It's clumsy, but it lasts a long time despite Will's inexperience. He had never thought that he was going to get to know what this felt like.

But — getting to kiss Mike makes him feel less afraid about everything else. Because if he was going to be able to have something this good, how much did anything else matter?

It's not gone, though it would be nice if this was some sort of magic spell. The fear lives too far inside of him and he knows that there will be many days where it'll come back up. A hand in the wrong place, something that dials his progress back that they'll have to work through.

But Mike's warm lips against his own — it makes him feel more in control than ever.

"You'd let me know? If you weren't?" Mike asks against his lips when he finally pulls away.

"Promise," Will replies, touching Mike's cheek. Wiping what he hopes is his last tear of the night off.

They do end back up on the couch again, their regular routine as they finished the movie. It was long-since over, the two of them having moved to be horizontal. Mike lying on his back with his head perched on the armrest with Will stretched out half on top of him. Both bare-chested and under a blanket together, Will's cheek on Mike's collarbone.

Mike's fingers have started to trace another spot on his arm, going around it a few times. The gesture doesn't make him feel at all tense, he just gets sleepy.

"This one? What's it from?" Mike asks because it is obviously different than the rest. He's stopped on Will's left hand, on the knuckle of his ring fingers that always sits a little crooked and has a pale line across the joint.

"Bike accident," Will answers. "Elementary school, don't you remember? I broke my finger and Dustin still swears it was to guilt him into letting me have one of his favorite comics."

Mike’s hand has moved up to his temple, fingers sliding into his hair until they find a small, hard ridge near the hairline.

“Passed out and hit my head,” Will says. “Uh — several times."

“Two," Mike says, pressing a clumsy kiss onto the nape of his neck. Then he finds the small nick at the corner of Will's eyebrow. "Three?”

“Do you remember when we had to kidnap Derek? I had to tackle him and I ended up with a bunch of hay in my eye that I rubbed too hard in the barn. It seems so silly compared to the rest."

There's a big one, an uneven line across his shoulder clade from when he fell out of a tree in the Upside Down, running away from a monster he had never seen before. It was a long way down, and he told Mike about. The first time he's ever told anyone.

All of this stuff that he's kept to himself, what good is it doing him?

The thin white bands at each wrist, so faint you could miss them unless you knew were leftover from vines restraining him. It was hard to tell what was in his mind and what wasn't in Vecna's world, but those vines. He would never be able to forget those.

He is mostly asleep by the time Mike’s fingers go back to his arm, to the soft inside. There are small round marks there, clumped together. "This one?"

"Can I tell you tomorrow?" Will asks, but it's not because he doesn't want to tell Mike what happened. It's just that he's drifting off fast. Half mumbling his responses now.

"Hey," Mike says, almost asleep. "I won't pressure you about the trip, but if you wanted to go I'd be right there. I could stand next to you the entire time and nobody would see anything that you don't want them to. And if you did, you know, want to show them then—" He lets a huge yawn. "Then I'd make sure no one says anything stupid to you, even Dustin. That's what boyfriend are for."

Will tenses up, not having expected him to say that, which makes Mike falter.

"I mean — I'm not assuming or anything. I just thought maybe—"

"Mike."

"Sorry. Sorry, I'll shut up."

"Mike." Will lifts his head. He is soft-faced and wrecked, his eyes sore, but he feels like he is glowing from the inside out now. "Ask me."

Mike stares at him before his whole face grins boyishly. "Will Byers, will you be my boyfriend? Officially? We could watch movies together with lots more kissing, and hold hands when we go out with your friends—"

"Yes," Will says. "To all of it. Yes."

Will blinks awake the next morning to sunlight coming into his window, which is wrong because he never keeps the blinds open there. He's disoriented as he makes himself sit open his eyes fully to figure out what's different about his bedroom today.

There's a warmth behind him that makes it feel like he's had a space heater all night and breath tickling the back of his neck as Mike snores behind him. That is what's different.

Mike's glasses are folded neatly on the bedside table and the blinds are open. He must've got up earlier in the morning and opened them out of habit before crawling back into bed with Will.

The sun brings his attention to the scars on his body in the light of the morning. A view he almost never takes in. It's not beautiful. He won't lie to himself about that this soon, but it doesn't feel like a new wound anymore.

It just feels like a lot of summers that he's missed.

Behind him, Mike stirs awake. Will can feel his arm tighten and then gets goosebumps down his body when Mike presses a new, warm kiss on the back of his bare shoulder. There is no way that he would ever get used to that.

He closes his eyes and smiles, pushing back into Mike so that they're properly spooning. He laces their fingers together, and lets the sun beams hit their bodies. He doesn't have to decide today if he wants to go to the lake house, but he does think he might like to learn to swim again.