Archive of Our Own ^beta

1.
8:12am on a Tuesday

Jealously is an ugly emotion.

‘You’re lovely, aren’t you?’ Will says - borderline coos - and Mike’s skin prickles.

It’s - he’s fine, even if admittedly being a bit stupid. This envy would be, like, even a bit more justified if it wasn’t for the fact that Mike is currently having this jealous face-off with a Labrador, and it’s not - his best moment, okay, but he’s never claimed to be a particularly mature or reasonable man.

To be fair and clear, he’s not usually jealous of really any animals, god, this is such a strange thing to be justifying to himself, such a strange reassurance to make in his head. Mike is almost a fully grown man, and he’s usually not an idiot - though his older sister would probably say otherwise - but today he’s making an exception, apparently. He’s standing in the middle of a park practically green with jealousy over a dog, because - Will is murmuring to it and - well. Mike is sort of head over heels for William Byers.

‘Look at him,’ Will says, for the third or fourth time.

‘I’m looking at him,’ Mike replies, also for the third or fourth time. He tries to stop himself from glowering too obviously, schooling his features into something less childish.

‘Hello,’ Will murmurs, again, (how many times do you have to greet one dog?), seemingly oblivious to Mike’s sourness. The offending dog gives a small wag of his tail and snuffles.

Mike gives him a suspicious up and down. ‘He’s evil,’ he decides, and Will laughs all golden, which, take that, you dumb fucking labrador. God, this is pathetic.

‘What’s gotten into you?’ Will says, giving Mike a quick glance in question, then turning back away. ‘You’re gorgeous, hmm?’ He murmurs, scratching at the dog’s ears and jaw, and Mike actually feels the ghost of it on his own skin, a firm rub, which is - fine, a bit creepy, maybe, but he’s so far managed to restrain from punching the dog all the way to California, which has got to count for something.

‘Yeah, gorgeous,’ he echoes, reluctantly, under his breath, which could probably pretty easily be misconstrued to be about Will rather than the dog. Maybe Will is gorgeous, maybe he’s lovely, maybe he’s backlit by the morning sun and maybe Mike has this feeling that he’s been getting more and more recently like he wants to take Will’s face in his hands and do - something, anything, maybe Mike has had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on Will since they were like ten years old, and maybe nobody believes him when he says it’s not a serious one.

None of that is the point, though.

The dog makes an innocent boof! barking noise. Will smiles. Mike is going to blow it up.

‘Will?’ He prompts, and Will hums noncommittally. He looks like he’s about to get up, which is good, but he presses a kiss to the top of the dog’s head, which is - literally a normal thing to do, and yeah, the dog is kind of cute, but god, Mike wants to be that dog.

He wants Will to kiss him on the forehead like that.

Mike blinks. Okay, whoa. Not the time.

Anyway, maybe in another life he’s a labrador who’s had the pleasure of running up to Will Byers on a Tuesday morning mid-walk to get coffee, but in this life he’s sixteen years old on a public holiday trying to get as much serotonin into his body as he can while he’s off school.

Mike thinks, as Will bids goodbye to the dog, straightens up and they fall back into step with one another, that arguably taking a stroll to get hot drinks is - as Dustin has claimed several thousand times - a very “old married couple” thing to do and not very regular for two teenaged boys.

Then again, Mike can admit that he and Will have never been particularly regular.

He’s reminded of this once more when they reach the coffee shop and Will sits down, flat white (no sugar, double shot) in hand, wallet still out even though Mike fought him for the bill and (triumphantly) succeeded, and says,

‘Right, so you were saying. Four kids in the middle of nowhere, and then - where does this portal open up?’

‘You don’t really know at first,’ Mike says, chewing it over as he speaks. ‘But the first opening is in the forest, I think. I’m still drafting.’

Will oohs, like any of this is particularly interesting and not just some fleeting ramshackle idea for a novel that Mike will probably end up never finishing like always. ‘So there’s more than one opening?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Mike can’t help himself from smiling. ‘Yeah, one opening wouldn’t cause nearly enough problems. There’s got to be pain and anguish, remember.’

‘Right, pain and anguish, of course,’ Will says, biting the inside of his cheek, and it’s - not even a proper joke, and it’s not even funny, but they’re both laughing. Mike feels something warm his heart, gently sauté it like a carefully made stew, set a million tiny flowers into bloom somewhere in his sternum. ‘And there are side characters?’ Will asks.

‘Yeah. Or, like, outlines of them. An older brother, an older sister, and a peaked-in-high school guy with fuckass stupid hair,’ Mike says, only half thinking, and Will laughs again, mouth curling into a grin which is something wholly good, something rewarding.

‘Fuckass stupid hair,’ he repeats.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you’d know all about that.’

‘Oh my god,’ Mike splutters, even though he knows it’s not a serious comment, and he likes it when this side of Will comes out, anyway, when the thin veil over his snark comes off. It’s charming on him, the amused way about his mouth, the grin of his teeth. ‘Ouch, tell me how you really feel,’ Mike says, like he really has been wounded, wrapping his hands over the sides of his cup.

Will bites his lip, but he’s laughing, and this, Mike supposes, this could be called flirting if they wanted.

‘I’m joking, I promise,’ Will says, leaning back in his chair, sipping his drink and tamping down a smile, and Mike shakes his head.

‘My pride has been - wounded,’ he decides. ‘I see how it is.’ He sets his coffee down fake-offendedly and it’s as much a routine as it is a performance when Will smiles more and then backtracks, mouth sweet and entertained.

‘I like it,’ he says, smiling, cheeks tinted the smallest bit pink with mirth. ‘Your hair.’

‘Too late, I’ll be shaving it off bald now,’ Mike jokes, which earns him another grin from Will. ‘I did think about cutting it,’ he adds, only half-aware of what he’s saying, swallowing a mouthful of mocha.

Will’s eyebrows raise. ‘It’s - nice, though,’ he says. ‘Your hair, obviously.’

He reaches across hesitantly like he’s not really sure what he’s doing, and, okay, Mike isn’t sure what he’s about to do either, but that’s alright.

It’s - better than alright, actually, when Will’s hand comes to run through Mike’s fringe, carding through curls carefully, softer than should be humanly possible, saying something all the while. Mike’s brain has gone from on to off, though, because Will’s mouth is right there, and his nails are scratching against Mike’s scalp just a bit, and it would be so, so easy to lean forward.

To grab onto the fabric of Will’s stripy shirt and pull him in. To tilt his jaw up and slot their mouths together.

Now isn’t the time for those thoughts, nor the place, so Mike pulls his gaze away from Will’s mouth and focuses back on the feeling of caring touches, caution, light fingers carding through hair. Will is presumably making it into something neater, pushing it out of Mike’s face a little. He could be lopping it off in huge swathes and it wouldn’t even matter, not if he kept being this gentle, the pad of his thumb swiping against Mike’s temple all steady.

‘You could - get it out of your eyes a little, if you needed,’ Will says, a bit quiet, eventually dropping his hand, and then he clears his throat. His face has flushed an obvious rosy colour now, and it looks all nice on him, across his cheeks and ears and down under his collar.

Mike can’t help from beaming. ‘Yeah, maybe the eyes,’ he says, like he really cares. He wants Will’s hand back in his hair, he needs a reason for it right now before he combusts. Will likes his hair. He thinks Mike’s hair looks good!

‘Anyway, um, the - Mike, your writing,’ Will says, into his drink, effectively rerouting the conversation.

The fuchsia on his cheeks hasn’t faded yet. He wets his bottom lip anxiously and Mike half follows the movement with his eyes.

‘Mike,’ Will repeats, embarrassed.

‘Right,’ Mike says, tearing his gaze away. ‘Right, the, um - writing, yeah, I think I might add a plot with the sister and the brother?’

‘Yeah? Have you - fleshed anything out yet?’ Will seems to grasp this bit of information like a lifeline. Mike can’t bring himself to mind too much.

‘Yeah,’ he says, forcing the ghost of Will’s hand in his hair to fade into a memory for later and emptying the last bit of his drink. ‘Yeah, sure, I’ve got some ideas.’

2.
4:06pm on a Friday (or, a week and a bit later)

The second time Mike makes a mess of his ridiculous obsession with a one Will Byers is when he and six other too-gangly teenagers are trying to load themselves into a car.

A single, small car, one with a fold-up backseat in the boot that really isn’t meant to be used. Normal people - normal people would do scissors paper rock until two unlucky losers emerge and are designated to sit in the cramped boot area, but Mike’s friends are (unfortunately, in this instance) not normal people, and are instead conniving pricks.

So currently, Mike has found himself embroiled in a debate with Max as to who is sitting where.

Currently, he is drastically losing said debate.

‘You’re getting in the back with Will,’ Max says, for what must be the third or fourth time, obviously not planning to let up just yet.

For what must also be the third or fourth time, Mike disagrees. ‘We’re both too tall,’ he argues, stumbling for an argument and grasping on to the first one he thinks of. It comes out petulant and whiney but Will, next to him, seems not to mind, hands in his pockets. Which means Mike’s reaction is- cool, reasonable. He just values his personal space, is all.

Robin peers between them, leaning close to an uncomfortable degree. ‘You can both fit. Michael, you’re kinda lanky enough.’ She makes eye contact with Will for a second too long, which is slightly nerve wracking. Mike always feels like she has it out for him, an unspoken vendetta. He’s pretty sure she could probably kill him, is the thing. He tries not to think about it.

‘Leg space,’ he says, emphatically. ‘Will, leg space, right?’

Will makes a halfhearted noise of agreement when Mike elbows him. He’s not really playing his part, but whatever.

‘Just put your knees up to your ears,’ Robin says, dismissively, making her way back around the car to the front seat, keys jingling where they hang from her fingers.

Max snickers.

Mike whacks her. ‘Shut up.’

‘Oh, really mature, Wheeler, that’ll get you the guy.’

Mike peers very subtly around to where Will is now engrossed in some form of conspiratory conversation with Robin, back against the open car door. His hair is curling around his ears the tiniest bit, growing out sort of shaggy. Robin is winking at him. She cocks a finger gun that Will rolls his eyes at.

Mike shudders. Best not to know.

‘There’s not a guy,’ he says, too late, and it comes out meek. El laughs outright, which feels offensive. She’s been spending too much time with Max.

‘Mike, we know more than you think.’ She sounds sympathetic. Max snickers again.

Girls. Mike gives up and crosses his arms, tucking his lips together in a thin line.

‘Whatever. I’m not getting in the back, you’re both like, half my height, anyway. You should share it, instead. That’s, like, logical,’ he adds.

The girls eye him amusedly, deviously. Mike looks round the car at Will, whose stripy t-shirt doesn’t fit his shoulders as loosely as it used to, different since he sort of broadened out a summer ago (which happened because God obviously wants to send Mike to an early grave), who’s tugging at his collar distractedly while Robin talks.

Mike is- admittedly distracted too, and not just by the collar thing. Max is saying something. He’s not listening (Will is chewing on his lip again, unfairly attractive for such a normal anxious habit).

Mike has to squint into the sun to get his mind on track again, let the sore brightness needle into his eyes until his brain gets the message. Will can look as lovely and touchable as he likes, but Mike still isn’t getting in the back.

He gets in the back.

The seats are just as cramped as expected, because this car really isn’t made for more than five fully grown almost-adults, but he and Will just about fit. They’re leg to leg and side to side, too hot on a midsummer’s afternoon to be this close together. Mike tries his best to hate himself about enjoying it.

‘El’s got this scented candle that she won’t stop burning so I probably reek,’ Will is saying, amidst protest from El.

‘The candle is nice,’ she argues. This is obviously a well-worn disagreement.

‘The candle gives me a migraine,’ Will says, but it’s light hearted.

His arm is pressed up against Mike’s still, casual, and then the car runs over the curb of the road and Mike, fiddling with a loose thread on the knee of his jeans, has to do the stupidest thing possible and get horribly squashed into Will’s side. It’s not even purposeful, he swears, an honest accident; Robin swerves round a corner (no wonder she doesn’t have a license) and in some ridiculous act of hatred from God, probably, Mike is face into Will’s shirtsleeve, mumbling out a vehement “Jesus Christ!”, half lead there by a guiding hand laid on his elbow to stop him from bumping into something more painful.

Awful. He thinks, with his face planted partially in Will’s shoulder, that he should maybe just end his life.

‘You okay?’ Will says, pushing down his evident laughter for the sake of his concern. This is all handleable. Mike is handling it.

‘Fine,’ he says (croaks), because he is, really.

Will’s shoulder is - strong, steady. It smells of the sun and faint laundry detergent and maybe the barest edge of salt, like sweat under soft cotton. From here, from this close, it’s visible that he has bit of a tan left over from his stay in California, the faintest suggestion of freckles hardly visible under a newer sun-induced pink flush.

Mike thinks that everything about this is completely alright and normal (he’s finding the smell of Will’s shirt strangely life ruining. There is something very wrong with him, definitely).

‘I mean, on the upside, you don’t reek of scented candle,’ Mike jokes, weakly, trying his best. Will laughs anyway. His shampoo or something has changed, as far as Mike can tell, not that he’s noticed in a creepy way, just in an i’ve-known-you-for-over-a-decade way, and the new one is apples, maybe? El always smells of apples, so maybe they’ve run out of something at home and he’s had to use whatever is there.

Will is smiling, saying something over the back of the seat in front of him to Max, legs almost overlapping with Mike’s, closer than before. He’s warm, solid. Mike can’t extract himself without awkwardly bending his knee the other way, which would be too obvious. So he just smiles. It’s fine.

‘What?’ he says, because Will has nudged him in the arm. He looks unaware of Mike’s internal crisis, which is good. Life saving, because Mike would inevitably otherwise have to jump out of the moving car.

‘Movie requests,’ Will repeats, easily.

‘Max wants-’

‘Something good,’ Max interrupts.

‘-something good,’ Will agrees, patiently continuing, ‘Which means - I mean, I don’t really know, but this is a democracy apparently, so what do you want to watch?’

Mike blinks. Will seems to be waiting for an answer, seeing as his mouth has stopped moving.

‘I- huh? Movies, oh, it’s, watch whatever,’ he says, stupidly, because now they’ll end up watching something like The Empire Strikes Back again for the 100th time and he’ll have to pretend to be interested for the whole thing, because really? There are other Star Wars movies, other movies full stop, and this is obviously all showing on his face because Will looks at him doubtfully.

‘Really? Whatever?’

Mike blinks again, which is, he’s got a blinking problem, really, problem with watching the flash of Will’s teeth behind his lips when he speaks, the way the corners of his mouth pull upwards when Mike is being dumb.

‘Yeah. No, I mean no, god, not The Empire Strikes Back, or please not Star Wars again,’ he amends, halfway to a beg. He likes the franchise, he really does, but too much of anything is unbearable.

Well, anything except for Will, who’s laughing at his backtracking, unguarded. Robin raises her eyebrows in the rearview mirror.

‘You don’t want a slasher? What made you switch up,’ she says, turning the car onto the main road, and Mike makes direct eye contact with Will, because the thing is, he’s the one who likes horror, and - fake blood, and jumpscares, and Mike has kind of always gone along for the ride because all the scares are excuses to shift a little bit closer into Will’s side, be slightly babied, even. And also, Will is like, a fanatic, a horror superfan, and Mike is happy with anything Will likes, really. Will even knows all of this. Mike has never quite been able to bring himself to be humiliated about it.

A second of mutual quiet passes between him and Will, a shared thought. Robin is waiting for a response, probably. Mike doesn’t bother explaining, he just says,

‘I don’t know, maybe. I’m a volatile and unpredictable guy,’ like an idiot, and Max snorts and Will bites back a smile. He bumps Mike’s knee with his, an unspoken thank you, jeans against jeans.

He says something about sci-fi, something something time travel, something something alien. Mike likes sci-fi, but that doesn’t matter because he’s back to watching Will’s mouth.

He wants to kiss it, press his thumb to the centre bottom lip of it, bite at it, lick along the tiny peek of Will’s teeth that show when his mouth opens, which is - much too far for a thought train being had in public to get, really, especially one that was meant to be normal and innocent, and Jesus Christ, Mike needs to get lobotomised.

He tunes himself back into Robin and Max’s chatter, something about Robin being late for Vickie because of all the traffic, something about speed limits, something else about being an “unpaid chauffeur”. It’s a four minute drive back to the house from the end of this road.
Mike can keep his cool for that long, surely.

Good news: he keeps his cool successfully for the rest of the drive.

Bad news: three minutes after he gets in the door he loses it.

A verdict about the film has been come to (they did land on a shit quality, low budget horror in the end, because Max - to nobody’s surprise - has taken quite a shine to them, and Mike is always happy to indulge Will in whatever he wants anyway), which is all good and merry, so Mike goes to put some popcorn on the stove.

Max gives him a punch on the way past and follows him into the kitchen, which is uncalled for but not unexpected (her company is quite nice, though he’d be killed if he said it), and - everything is fine until Will pokes his head round the corner wearing one of Mike’s sweaters, hair mussed, saying something about Dustin wanting soda so does Mike mind grabbing one to bring through? And Mike feels himself go into cardiac shock, heart 100 times too fast, brain stopping firing on all cylinders.

‘Sweater,’ he says, just like that, about an octave too high and a decibel too hoarse, and Max (who is salting - and also eating half of - Mike’s abandoned pan of popcorn), makes a choking noise around a mouthful. Mike whacks her on the back and smoothly turns back to Will, who looks 50% confused 50% sheepish.

‘Um, sweater, yeah. Lucas knocked a drink on mine,’ he says, tugging at the hem of his newly stolen garment of clothing, navy blue and grey knit, and it’s very. Well. It lies on him differently than it does Mike, longer on his frame but much more - fitted on him at the same time, which, oh god, shoulders?

‘Right, yeah. Lucas, that fucker,’ Mike says, absently, stupidly, which makes Max cackle again. ‘Yeah, go ahead and take anything you want, actually,’ a bit too intense, probably, but the sentiment stands, ‘I’ll be through in a second, um.’ Very eloquent.

Will looks slightly bemused but also sort of fond, which Mike ends up taking as a win. ‘Yeah, ‘course, all good,’ he says, making for the door but lingering for a second. ‘What do you think the likelihood of me converting Lucas into a horror fan is?’

Mike nods. ‘One hundred percent,’ he says, immediate, unable to stop the laugh that bubbles out of his chest because they both know it’s not happening.

Will grins at him. ‘You think?’

‘For sure,’ Mike says, and then mouths never.

Will smiles wider. He’s a supernova, or the sun. Heat and brightness at the centre of the universe. ‘Totally,’ he says, biting back his own laugh.

He leaves after he’s grabbed a soda for Dustin and God, Mike needs to get a grip. This is - flirting, surely.

Maybe?

It could be.

‘Dude,’ Max says, interrupting his spiral, crunching down on another mouthful, ever the poet.

‘Shut up. And stop eating the popcorn,’ Mike adds, praying with all he’s got that his face doesn’t look as flushed as it feels, pushing her out of the way to take his own mournful handful.

She gives him a halfhearted slap on the back, which is the closest to a hug she’ll give unless it’s life or death.

Mike barely notices anyway. He’s - got a lot to think about, and an equal amount not to.

3.
3:45pm on a Monday (or, the week after)

They don’t tell you this about having argumentative friends: you will never be bored a day in your life.

Mike thinks this with his head half on Will’s shoulder, hair tied up in some dumb semblance of a ponytail, a can of soda in his hand (stolen from, again, Will) dripping cool condensation down his wrist and elbow. They’re spectating upon an epic battle (a trivial disagreement between Dustin and Max).

‘I’m just saying, it’s kind of cool,’ Max is saying, shrugging. Dustin seems appalled by this opinion.

‘No no no,’ he says, with the air of a disappointed parent, and Max groans preemptively, ‘Look, the smoke would taste gross anyway, and then you’d get addicted, and then you’d get lung cancer, and all the smoking would eventually, slowly…’ he pauses. Everyone waits patiently, ‘…painfully, kill you.’

Max shrugs and Dustin waves an arm at her frustratedly, a hand flappy gesture that says something along the lines of why-do-I-try or maybe just you’re-a-lost-cause. Mike looks between them like he imagines he would if he was watching a particularly intense match of tennis, not that he’s ever watched tennis and not that he ever will. Not his best comparison, really.

Dustin is still going. ‘And at your funeral our speech would say “RIP Max, we used to know her and then she died doing something dumb-“‘

‘-expected,’ Mike mutters, childish. Max flips him off. Will is biting the inside of his cheek like he’s holding back amusement, floppy fringe not quite hiding the way the edges of his eyes crinkle up, and something within Mike’s ribs warms and blooms, a tiny furnace, maybe, something burning hot and taking root.

‘O-kaaay, but I don’t think Dustin Henderson of suburban hell, America, is super trustable on what’s cool,’ Max says, and Dustin makes an offended noise.

‘Dustin Henderson is super trustable on what’s cool,’ he objects, massively undermining his own point.

Lucas seems to have mostly resigned himself to letting this all unfold as it needs to, which is probably the mature thing to do, but boring all the same. Even so, he raises his eyebrows. ‘First of all, ouch, Max, damn. Second, Dustin-‘

‘-no third person, yeah, yeah, I got it.’

Max rolls her eyes. None of her arguing is actually maliciously done, it’s just what she does. All bark, not much bite. Mike, of all people, knows this to be true, what with him being the target of most of her complaints, insults to his hair or his queerness or his various opinions. It’s all a shtick. They’re very close friends. Nobody will ever be told that plainly.

‘I just mean, I hardly think any of you are gospel on coolness.’

There’s a brief pause. Max is right. That doesn’t mean anybody is going to agree with her.

El chooses this moment to jump in. ‘Will has smoked,’ she points out, which, wow, not a needed reminder.

Something about the idea of Will with a cigarette in his mouth and the smell of Marlboro Reds on his clothes is life altering. Smoking is a nasty habit, obviously, but it’s evident by now that there is something very wrong with Mike, so his finding this devastatingly attractive shouldn’t be a surprise. It is anyway.

‘I mean, once,’ Will says, smiling a bit in that don’t-look-at-me way he does, scrubbing at the back of his neck.

‘And how was it?’ Dustin asks, expectantly. Mike is glad he asks, because he would’ve himself, but he’s pretty sure if he opens his mouth he’ll either end up launching all six feet and awkward limbs of himself off Will’s shoulder and at his neck like a dog, or make collection of unintelligible noises and then die. He really doesn’t want to do either of those things.

Will looks to be in careful thought, likely to avoid the possibility of Dustin killing him should he answer wrong. ‘It was fine,’ he says, after a second.

‘Boring,’ Mike says, nudging him in the side, frowning. Will looks at him, eyebrows raised a bit. The little freckle above his lip is always very distracting.

‘Sorry, would you like me to wax poetic for you?’ He’s smiling, this time with a slip of teeth, too genuine to be false.

‘Yeah, I would. Do a monologue,’ Mike says, toneless, and Will gives his shoulder a retaliating shove. Mike ignores the telltale symptoms of cardiac arrest.

‘No, I- had just hoped for something more than “it was fine”,’ he says, shrugging.

Will laughs again. ‘Alright, Michael.’

The hint of flush on his cheeks is a trick of the light. He looks touchable, and Mike - Mike won’t, won’t reach out with curling fingers or press his nose into Will’s cheek or tilt his head down just enough for their open mouths to brush, not here, but the thought is there. The world has shrunk to - a private bubble, a personal heaven, just like it always does. They briefly have a shoulder nudge battle.

Lucas clears his throat. They turn back to him.

Mike isn’t listening, though, not when Lucas is speaking, not when El takes Max’s side as usual, not when Dustin starts to intensely illustrate the progressions of lung cancer.

Mike is - he’s thinking, he’s tracking back over the last few weeks, maybe a month, maybe two. Even putting aside the amount of times he’s been a complete idiot failure and almost kissed Will without thinking, something either feels different - or, maybe, Mike is just going insane.

The thing is, it sounds like bullshit when he tries to put it into words. All the little things people talk about: a bump of the elbow, bantering, eye contact, snowballs into avalanches - none of that means anything, not with a friendship as long-lived and steady as Mike and Will’s. Which raises the question of where the line comes in, surely.

Where is the line between friendship and not drawn? When do you - when do Mike and Will - fall into the nebulous inbetween?

Did they cross the line years ago when they slept in the same bed for the first time?

Or was it when Will started compiling a sketchbook of solely Mike, his face drawn over and over, in charcoal or ink or pencil or acrylic?

When Nancy caught them sneaking out of the house the night of Mike’s fourteenth birthday to wander the streets aimlessly and came to some conclusions that neither of them bothered correcting, was that friendly?

When did the line to homoeroticism (not like erotic, not like Mike is thinking about that right now, not that there’s any issue with Will, it’s just that Mike’s concept of - “eroticness” feels surrounded by a soft layer of guilt, so, that’s, you know, a thought for later) when did the line blur?

It’s hard, and it feels like it shouldn’t be, but Mike thinks, not for the first time, that there is a chance - just a chance, but a chance nonetheless - that he’s not making something out of nothing. He’s only reading between the bars.

He tries not to linger on it. He tells himself he’ll think about everything later, packs it away into the back of his head. This doesn’t work, of course, but again - the thought is there.

He brings everything up, in the end, with Lucas. Lucas, who has probably known about Mike’s capital T Thing for Will since forever, which is both extremely humiliating and equally useful. Lucas, who is generally a relatively trustworthy source on - things, Things, big things, big deals.

Not that this is a big deal, that, okay.

That’s not the point. It’s whatever.

Mike waits until Will isn’t around to bring it all up, obviously, which is a lot easier said than done, considering the only reason why Will leaves Lucas’s house at all is something to do with picking up DVDs that Robin offered him for free out of “the goodness of her heart” (more likely some sort of suspicious trade deal. There’s much more to that girl than meets the eye, Mike is sure).

Will is around a lot, more than a lot, whenever Mike wants, which is always. In all honesty, that’s probably another thing to add to the mental list of reasons-why-this-relationship-might-be-a-bit-homosexualer-than-Mike-previously-realised.

After an hour of unsuccessful attempts, Mike gives up on trying to get Lucas alone and settles for the embarrassing additional audience of Max. Her and Lucas come as a package deal these days, a bit like Will and Mike if they were properly dating.

Not that that’s the plan. And if it were to be, whose business is that, anyway?

‘You know,’ Mike starts, absently scratching at the plastic of his patio chair, and then not knowing what to say next.

‘Probably,’ Lucas says, easily. ‘I know everything.’ He tosses a grape into the air and Max fails to catch it in her mouth. Mike figures this is as good a time as any.

‘Yeah, you know - Will,’ he says, turning a grape over in his fingers, the flesh of it cold and shocking onto his too-hot skin. Max nods. Mike barrels onwards. ‘Right, so we’re-’ where to go from here. ‘-I have a question.’ Broad. General. Not awful.

‘A question,’ Lucas repeats, leaning back in his chair.

Mike nods. He sits forward, knees on his elbows, and then stops because it feels too dramatic. None of this needs to be dramatic, Mike is just trying to make a friendly enquiry for the betterment of his social life.

‘Are we - do you think - are we weird?’ Mike settles on, which is once again, not a strong beginning. Max snorts.

‘Yeah, you’re weird alright,’ she says.

Mike chucks a grape at her, almost slipping out of his fingers too soon on the way. She catches it. ‘Why?’ she asks, chewing.

Mike watches an ant make its way across the arm of his chair, carrying a leaf three times its size.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says, scratching the back of his neck, sticky with sweat, ‘Are we, like,’ he pauses. Max waits. Lucas waits. ‘Like, weirdly close?’

This is seemingly not the question either of them expected. They look at each other. Mike waits for a verdict.

‘I mean, yeah,’ Lucas says, after a second or two, looking only slightly concerned. ‘It’s how you’ve always been, but yeah, man.’

Mike mulls this over. ‘Okay. Yeah. In a different way?’

Lucas peers at him over the cup of orange juice that he’s taken from Max, blue plastic with a faded print on it, once upon a time maybe zigzags or UFOs. ‘From?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mike says, thinking about it. ‘I mean I’m not with you how I am with Will, you know?’

‘Dude,’ Max says, drily. She pulls a bit of stem off another grape. She seems not to have any plans on elaborating. Lucas has set his cup down on the table.

‘No, you’re not,’ he agrees. ‘And just to clarify,’ he says, clasping his hands and looking into Mike’s eyes, ‘I would really, really not like you to start being that way with me.’

This pulls a proper laugh out of Max. Mike directs her with the best scowl he can manage.

‘But is there an- an atmosphere? Does it feel like a specific vibe?’

‘Homosexual,’ Lucas says, earnestly, which is very bold from the guy who had a crush on the basketball captain for a good year and a half in middleschool.

‘Like you’re about to start sucking face, yeah,’ Max says, less earnestly but equally emphatically, licking grape juice off her index finger. Mike grimaces.

‘Dude.’

Lucas swills his juice thoughtfully. ‘She’s not wrong.’

Mike stares at him. What? ‘Dude!’

‘You didn’t know?’

Mike is processing, he’s recalibrating.‘No,’ he says. ‘No! When? Why?’

‘The cuddling,’ Max says, like it’s obvious, which, okay. Maybe they’re a bit more tactile than is regular, but it’s nothing hugely abnormal.

‘The clothes swapping,’ Lucas says, and then he skewers Mike with a calculating look. ‘For a bit, I mean, I thought you two were…’

Mike feels his face burn. ‘What?’

‘You flirt a lot,’ Max says, forging onwards. ‘And you giggle, oh man, stop that.’

‘You live at each other’s houses. Like, sometimes for almost a week at a time.’

‘You’ve shared toothbrushes. That’s gross.’

‘You get freakily protective.’

‘You use this - baby voice with him.’

‘You-‘

‘Okay, okay, Jesus,’ Mike says, holding up a hand, recalibrating. ‘So me and Will are - we’re close,’ he says, slowly. ‘Very close, I knew that.’

‘And you have the biggest, most desperate crush on him,’ Lucas says, flatly.

Mike makes a strangled noise. ‘I - fine. But does he,’ he pauses. Feel the same? Way to sound like a character from a bad hallmark movie. This is all much too confusing for its own good.

‘You’re weird with each other,’ Max repeats. ‘Like disgusting. It’s so hard to be in a room with you.’

Mike frowns at her. He picks at a bit of wood that’s splintered off the the table. That obvious, huh. ‘Shit,’ he says, cleverly. ‘Like, mutually? Mutually - god, mutually sucking face?’

Max pretends to choke herself. ‘This might be the worst talk I’ve had with you.’

Lucas seems to be handling his discomfort more successfully, which is a blessing. ‘Yeah, mutually, Mike.’

This hits Mike like a train to the chest, a bulldozer driving over a chihuahua, a brick to the face. ‘So we’re both,’

‘Gay?’

‘Full of repressed urges?’

‘Stop,’ Mike says, staring off into the brickwork on the wall behind Lucas.

Shit. This isn’t just confusing, this is - stressful, now he really does have to do something.

Or he has to wait for Will to do something, and that’s maybe worse, to wait for the beautiful boy with the paint on his hands and the stress bitten lips.

Mike excuses himself after a bit more thought, throwing out a weak, ‘I’m gonna head home,’ and trudging off Lucas’s patio towards where his bike is lying on the ground.

He’s too distracted to really cycle safely - but he guesses, even if a truck did happen to hit him on the way home and end his life, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

4.
2:37pm on a Sunday (or, a fortnight later)

‘With all due respect,’ Will says, stepping back, ‘You are awful at this.’

It would be easier to take him seriously if he wasn’t spattered head to toe in paint, cobalt and marigold mixing to a teal on his forearms and forehead, striped across his knuckles and chest. Mike isn’t sure he looks any better.

‘It’s my first time,’ he defends, as Will dabs at a blank spot on the wall with a thin, squareish brush. ‘You do this kind of thing, like, every day.’

‘Your first time…at using a paint roller,’ Will repeats, toneless. ‘Not at doing anything epic.’ He goes over a strip of uneven blue, smoothing it out. Mike knows Will won’t agree, but it really is an art despite its simplicity.

‘Hey, you use rollers to underpaint in some of your bigger pieces,’ Mike argues, for the sake of being contrary, ‘I’d argue that’s pretty epic.’

Will, now fighting the losing battle that is trying to get his hands clean of paint, rolls his eyes. ‘Not what I meant,’ he says, but his face is a pretty pink, and Mike is smug about it. ‘I just mean it’s not rocket science.’

‘No, it’s art.’

‘If your handiwork could be called that,’ Will mutters, teasing, and Mike yelps and does the dumbest thing possible and chucks his paint covered brush at Will in retribution. It hits him smack in the chest.

They both stare at the mark it leaves.

‘Oh,’ Will says, ‘The game is on.’

What ensues is - maybe the messiest ten or so minutes of Mike’s life. Will jabs at him with a painty hand and he dodges, just to slip over on the tarp that’s been spread beneath them to catch excess paint, skidding to collide with Will’s knees, smearing them both in sunny yellow.

Mike shakes his brush at Will’s face, dripping with a mixture of soap and paint, earning him a surprised laugh, big hazel eyes and a honey smile.

It’s dumb, and childish, and they’re wasting time (and money), but Mike has never announced himself as a particularly good or sensible person. A stripe of yellow makes its way across the bridge of his nose and into his hair, and he can feel it plastering his curls to his forehead.

Blue smudges from Will’s cupid’s bow to the dip of his jaw. Both of them are smiling, sticky, have given up on any real pretence of continuing to responsibly paint.

‘Your mom might slaughter us,’ Will reasons, once Mike has stopped trying to attack him with his paint roller.

‘Not her wall,’ Mike counters. Will seem to agree with this.

They stand shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the room, socked feet planted on paint covered plastic, and look at what is meant to be Holly’s freshly redone bedroom paint job. 

‘It really is bad,’ Will says, musingly.

‘Yeah.’

‘Your part is worse. Everything is layered way too thick,’ he adds, and Mike pretends he minds.

‘I’ve never done it before, I didn’t know it would get that wet,’ he says, shrugging. Will side eyes him. It takes one second, two seconds, and then Mike feels himself go wide eyed in realisation. ‘No - no!’

It’s too late, though, and Will is badly holding back giggles behind a hand, his grin all saccharine, the flash of his front teeth lovely. Mike can’t help from smiling back, and then they’re both unsuccessfully fighting peals of laughter, meeting eyes and starting over again, elbows digging at each other’s ribs until they’re stumbling. Mike is simultaneously sixteen and in love and ten years old and carefree.

‘Oh my god,’ Will says, catching his breath. ‘You’re ridiculous.’

‘Alright, Will the Wise.’

They both giggle. Mike scrubs a bit of blue from his temple. There’s a big swathe of golden yellow across Will’s cheek and Mike raises a hand to rub it off for him, swiping the pad of his thumb back and forth, warm on warm, gentle at getting the colour off Will’s skin.

‘Don’t get it in my eye,’ Will says, laughter fading, but his voice is a little hoarse still. He goes a bit red under Mike’s fingers, face all hot. It’s cute, he’s cute, Mike wants to squeeze his face in his hands. He’s a - a darling, as Mike’s mom would say. A sweetheart. ‘If you poke me I’ll kill you, Mike.’

‘Yeah,’ Mike repeats, too quiet, hardly listening, ‘Kill me.’ And Will’s breath seems to stutter in his chest.

They’re so close.

It would be too easy, is the thing. For Mike to let his thumb slide lower, press it to Will’s bitten bottom lip. Lie his palm on Will’s neck and draw him in until his breath is hot on Mike’s face like a promise. To twine their hands. To lean in just a little until their noses bump and their lips fit.

The other thing is, Mike is pretty sure he could.

He’s not certain, but he’s at a solid pretty sure that if he were to lean in, that, well, Will wouldn’t mind. Would press back, even, take ahold of Mike’s shoulder and pull him close. A hand in his hair, maybe. Which is - good. Nerve wracking, but definitely more than he thought he’d ever get to say.

I’m pretty sure Will Byers wants to kiss me. I’m pretty sure my best friend wants to kiss me. It doesn’t feel real.

‘That’s it, then?’ Will says, and Mike breaks out of his daze to wonder if in some horrific freak mistake he was actually speaking aloud.

‘That’s - I, what?’

Will gives him a slightly strange look that falls short because his ears are still fuschia. ‘The paint, is that it?’

Mike blinks. ‘What? Yeah, that’s it,’ he adds, giving Will’s cheek a last rub with his index and middle fingers. There’s no paint left, he just doesn’t want to let go.

‘Thanks,’ Will says, as Mike’s hand falls away. He doesn’t look weirded out, which is nice.

‘No problem.’ Obviously.

They go on with the painting for a bit, and Will talks about a new comic series he’s just picked up that would probably really annoy Mike, apparently, because of all the unexplained world building, and if Mike is paying more attention to the movement of his lips, pink and chapped, than his actual book review, well.

That’s nobody’s business but his.

5.
10:24am on a Saturday (or, two weeks onwards)

‘Are you entirely sure she can cook?’

For such an early time in the day, Jonathon isn’t even the first person to ask. First there had been Joyce, and then Mike’s mom, voices lowered in careful precaution. Each time Will muffles a laugh, and each time Mike, fulfilling his younger brotherly duties to the utmost, doesn’t bother.

‘No,’ he says, for the third time in a day, snickering and peering over at Nancy. ‘I’m pretty sure she can’t.’

‘Shut up,’ Nancy says, toneless, also for the third time in a day. Mike closes his mouth wisely. It’s more entertainment just to watch.

‘It looks nice,’ Jonathon calls, obviously trying his best, even if there’s a bit of a question in his voice. Nancy rolls her eyes, but her mouth twitches at the edges.

Affection. Gross. Mike represses a shudder and - perhaps ironically but unable to stop himself nonetheless - slings an arm out and around Will’s shoulders.

‘Looks like I might not be the worst cook in the house,’ Mike says, smugly. Will laughs, shoulders shaking under Mike’s arm, halting chopping vegetables for just a second to open his mouth and then apparently think better of it. Mike can guess, but he asks anyway. ‘What? What are you thinking?’

Will shakes his head to himself, pressing his lips together. In the most non-obsessive way possible, Mike thinks it’s cute. ‘Nothing, just that El did joke that she broke up with you for your…culinary skills.’

Nancy, who is at the other end of the kitchen counter whisking a poor attempt at a white sauce in a pot, laughs (which is payback for earlier, probably). Mike cringes slightly, trying his very hardest to remain unabashed.

‘Yeah, well, maybe it was an acquired taste.’

‘What, you or your cooking?’

Will is smiling, tongue tucked to the inside of his cheek, and - it’s just as well that Mike is a weak loser who can’t even pretend to be mad at him for more than two seconds.

Nancy laughs more. Mike shoots her a dirty look.

‘Rude,’ he says, and he knows he looks like a kicked puppy, but can’t manage to rearrange his features into anything more mature. He’ll take it to the grave, but some childish part of him very much enjoys the attention pouting gets him.

Will murmurs a sorry though he’s still smiling, turning his face inwards to
Mike’s arm a fraction, just barely, the skin of his nose brushing cotton. Such a small action shouldn’t have the right to make Mike feel like he’s being burnt alive at the pyre, but it does, and he can sense how red his face is getting. The curse of being pale.

‘Anyway,’ he says, stumbling over his words, avoiding Nancy’s questioning glance, ‘Right, um, I, an acquired taste - me and my chef talents.’

‘Right,’ Will says, grinning down at his cutting board, the white slip of his teeth on show. ‘Totally. I mean, I think one is easier to like than the other.’

‘You like me?’ It’s meant to come out light, obviously, a stupid joke, a dumb bit of banter, but Will’s hand stills on the handle of his knife for a second.

‘Sure,’ he says easily, after a very brief pause, but it’s slightly too genuine, said with care rather than passingly. He goes on dicing broccoli for Nancy. Mike can’t help but look for a bit longer.

‘Sure,’ he repeats. Will meets his eyes briefly and smiles. He’s too much. Mike hardly knows what he’s gotten himself into. ‘Let me, um, get that for you,’ he says, almost awkwardly, taking the cut vegetables from under Will’s hands, passing them down the counter to set them next to Nancy.

He wants something to do with his hands, takes a dish and runs it under the tap just to keep busy. He scrubs at it with a sponge, feeling fraught with some kind of nervous energy. Why now? Get it together.

‘Mike,’ Will says, breaking him out of his thoughts. He sounds amused.

Mike looks up, maybe incriminatingly fast, too eager. ‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks,’ Will says, and he sounds bemused but lovely. He sounds - confusing, these days, too fond to do anything but make Mike go dumb quiet or trip over his words. ‘For giving the cutting board to Nancy?’

Mike looks at him, for too long, an idiot.

‘No problem,’ he says, hands wet with detergent and water, dripping down his forearms onto the tiled floor as he stands, useless. Nancy makes a coughing noise and he remembers she exists, mentally kicking himself, god, she’s going to give him shit for this later.

Will smiles again, closed mouth, like he knows he’s Mike’s favourite, which is embarrassing, and goes to pick up a new lot of vegetables to cut, asparagus this time.

His left hand is drumming absently on the counter, tapping away in time with some inaudible music. Mike couldn’t have less of an idea what it is, less of an idea about all the music that Will likes so much, but - he wishes for a second he did. The rhythm is repetitive. Something Depeche Mode, maybe.

Mike keeps washing the dishes.

Each time Will hands him a new one, each time their fingers brush, he runs his hand under the faucet a little bit more purposefully, like hot water could wash away his affections, like it could even begin to. He feels like everything is bleeding through onto his face, all the want in his head flying out of its brittle constraints and staining his skin pink and blushed.

Will says something to Nancy. Mike, drying his wet hands on a cloth, barely hears it over the heartbeat in his ears.

‘Can you take this?’ Will asks, passing over a bowl and thanking Mike when he takes it to let it soak, leaving it in the sink with a bit of detergent.

Will’s hair is all getting in his eyes, the fringe of it a heavy curtain. Mike swallows and digs his nails into his palms hard enough to leave red crescent shapes, stopping himself from reaching out to fix it. He reaches for the chilli oil instead, shaking it over the half-assembled salad sitting in front of him just to have something to do with his hands. This evidently doesn’t go unnoticed, because Will, to his left, raises his eyebrows.

‘You don’t like chilli oil,’ he states, like Mike has forgotten, which, okay, maybe he did for a second, and he tries not to grimace.

‘I know,’ he says, even though he didn’t. Will looks at him, which is more nerve wracking than it should be, his nice eyes, his careful focus.

‘Okay.’ He looks a bit amused again. Mike is really just glad that he’s good for something, even if that thing is being unintentionally entertaining. ‘I - I’ll go put it outside,’ he says, and Mike nods, too quick, too many times.

‘Cool,’ he says, stupidly, and then as soon as Will is gone contemplates stabbing himself with the nearest kitchen knife.

‘What was that?’

Nancy breaks him out of his semi-suicidal trance, her question sounding less like one of confusion and more like one of judgement. Mike looks up at her, fumbling with the drawers in front of him, hurrying to open one just to have something to do.

‘What?’ He says, very un-smoothly, and Nancy just raises her eyebrows.

‘You’re so weird,’ is all she says, and Mike squawks in outrage.

‘There’s no - weirdness,’ he objects, feeling how blatant the lie is as he says it.

‘Bullshit,’ Nancy says, staring into his eyes with so much vehement force that he looks away.

He doesn’t have anything to say. She doesn’t seem to either for a few moments.

‘Mike, if you ever need to-’ Will’s voice comes through from somewhere close, as if he’s just round the corner, and it takes all the willpower in Mike’s body not to turn towards it like a plant toward the sun. ‘-if you ever need to talk,’ Nancy finishes, quieter, ‘Then tell me.’

Mike blinks. He looks at her, processing.

‘I don’t need to talk,’ he says, feeling the need to defend himself.

‘Sure.’ Nancy sounds like she’s doing her best to be patient. ‘But if that changes-’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll come to you,’ Mike says. He feels the lie as he says it, and he hears her sigh as she turns back to continue prepping whatever it is she’s prepping. ‘Thanks,’ he adds, lamely, as Will steps back through the doorway.

Nancy looks up. Either frustrated is just her resting face or Mike is always doing something wrong, it’s a fifty-fifty. She sighs again, but there’s softness behind it. ‘It’s no problem.’

‘Right,’ Mike says, unable to keep himself from a matching eye roll. Maybe he’s more like Nancy than he realised.

There’s a quiet, slightly awkward sounding throat clearing. ‘I think Holly wants you outside?’ Will says (when did he get there?), inexplicably holding two blue crayons out. ‘Nancy, I mean,’ he clarifies.

Nancy sighs for the third time, pats her hands on her jeans and pushes past out of kitchen, taking the crayons with her on the way.

‘She seems annoyed,’ Will notes, and Mike feels an irrepressible urge to reassure him and also reach out and - hold him between his palms.

‘Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I think that was me,’ he says, fake wise and joking without thinking, because apparently his brain just logs out whenever Will gets close to him.

Will laughs, giggles even, hand in front of his mouth like he’s trying to hide. It shouldn’t be charming.

Devastatingly for Mike, it absolutely is.

‘Alright,’ he says, because he can’t think of anything else he has to do all of a sudden. ‘Um, there’s a while until lunch, we can - do you want to go up to my room?’ And then he wants to kill himself, because, does that insinuate something? He’s made the same offer a thousand times before.

Will seems unbothered. His hair is curled up just so at the nape of his neck. ‘Yeah, cool. You had that new series you just started, right?’

Mike doesn’t reply. He’s wondering if reaching out and pushing a hand into Will’s hair would be too weird to get away with.

‘Mike. Mike?’

‘Hmm?’

‘A - comic series, I think?’ Will says, squinting a little like he might’ve gotten it wrong, which is ridiculous because he never does. He always listens, which Mike loves him more for. ‘Some sort of superhero thing?’

Mike knows what he’s talking about. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says, because he’s decided against shoving his hand into Will’s hair in some effort of self preservation. ‘Sure.’

He turns to follow, but Will is still standing there, and then they’re face to face. There’s the lightest sheen of sweat across Will’s upper lip. His skin is flushed in the heat. He looks extraordinarily tangible. When he swallows, throat bobbing, Mike inadvertently follows the dip of it with his eyes. Committing it to memory, maybe, the tiny beauty mark on his jaw, the fading couple freckles by his collar.

This time, though, just as Mike is about to slip up (gaze wandering, head inclined just a touch), he pulls back with careful thought, not - guilt, not indecision. 

He doesn’t want to kiss Will with Nancy around. He doesn’t want to kiss Will with Jonathon in the next room. Mike wants to kiss him soon, definitely - he will once he gets the courage up (also soon, hopefully), just not with their families in such close proximity. He wants to kiss Will uninterrupted.

‘Are you coming?’ Will says, sounding lost.

Mike follows him up the stairs.

6.
7:02pm on a Friday (or, six days later)

Will thinks about it all the time, kissing Mike.

He sometimes wishes he didn’t - didn’t like Mike, didn’t want Mike - but the fact is undeniable. It’s been around since they were kids, since that day on the swings, since the beginning of Dustin and Lucas, since Mike dated El for a ridiculous period in middle school, since Nancy and Jonathon started going out, since forever (or forever in Will’s mind, anyway).

The kissing thing is newer, but not by much.

In the end, Will always comes back to the knowledge that loving Mike is the best thing to happen to him. There’ve been other close calls, but Mike will always be the greatest.

He’s the greatest when he’s being stupid, when he’s DMing, even when he’s mean, when he’s chewing the end of his pencil during class. To be completely honest, (which Will rarely is), Mike is pretty much the greatest - great - on every occasion.

Even now he’s great - shoved into the corner of a booth at Surfer Boy Pizza, with his bony left elbow dug into Will’s side. It’s uncomfortable, but Will is finding he really, really doesn’t care.

‘So is it, like, planned out yet?’ Max has an impossibly large bite of pizza in her mouth, words mumbled out around it. Mike, across from her and next to Will, shrugs, hands splayed on the edge of his seat.

‘I mean yeah, pretty much. There’s a couple scenes I’ve had down since the start,’ he says, in that casual way he always does, and Will privately thinks that he’s maybe the coolest person alive, writing a book series at 16.

Max grunts in acknowledgement. ‘Right, so how many parts?’

Mike seems to think this over. He chews on his pizza, which is decorated in pineapple, much to Will’s dismay. ‘I think five, maybe six total.’

There is much clamour at this. Dustin gestures with his can of coke. ‘And you have it all planned out?’

‘I guess, like, roughly. I wouldn’t want to start something really good and end it awfully in the last bit of part five, you know?’ Mike shifts, knees knocking Will’s, seemingly unfazed by their closeness.

‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ Will says, which earns him a nod from Mike. ‘You have to plan it out so it’s not all - fake set up to the end.’

Dustin points a slice of pizza at him in agreement. ‘Yeah, that would be criminal.

The conversation continues, a mix of laughter and indignant objections, and Will lets it blanket him, a background wash of warmth. The food is nice, if a bit oily and slightly underdone, and the company is better.

‘Any romance?’ Dustin asks, with a waggle of his brow, obviously referring to Mike’s writing, but it’s clear to see where this is going.

Lucas slaps the table emphatically. ‘Romance for Mike, what a joker!’

Dustin ohohohhs and Max hacks into her elbow, choking, and - Will isn’t laughing, for his own sake, but if he were, he couldn’t be blamed for it.

Mike scowls at across the table comically, brow crinkling. ‘Funny,’ he deadpans. He doesn’t actually seem put out, but Will offers a shoulder bump of comfort anyway, which is received with a smile and an almost abashed glance down at the floor.

‘I think Lucas should pay for everyone’s food,’ Will says, half protective on instinct, half to distract himself from how his ribs have gone all suffocatingly tight at the look on Mike’s face. ‘Because of that comment.’

‘You always take Mike’s side!’ Lucas protests, and Mike gives Will a pleased look, and it’s - true, but Will wouldn’t admit it even if you tortured him on the rack for six hours. He ignores the heat crawling up from under his collar in favour of sipping his drink.

‘Think before you bully,’ Mike advises Lucas, saving Will from having to speak again and dodging when Dustin chucks a fry at them both. ‘Thank you for defending my honour,’ he says to Will solemnly, picking up the fry from the table and holding it out like an offer. Will eyes it wearily, but he takes it and drops it on the edge of his plate anyway.

‘Of course.’ He says, just as serious, which makes Mike laugh. He looks, unfortunately, really nice when he laughs, dimples flashing, the freckles across his nose crinkling. Will could live in that laugh, could live in every crease of Mike’s mouth and face forever and never grow tired of the view.

‘Looks like there might be romance in the cards for Mike after all,’ Max mutters, and Dustin shushes her, and Will feels a bit like creature of the week, but can’t bring himself to mind because Mike doesn’t seem to either.

El steals a fry off Will’s plate and he barely notices, wrapped up in his constant habit of watching and looking and never, ever touching how he wants to.

Mike is lovely, is the thing, but that makes him awful. He’s lovely even under the fluorescent lights, lovely even with pizza grease on his mouth, lovely without trying.

‘You alright?’ He asks, and his voice is as gentle as always, and all Will thinks is kiss me kiss me kiss me.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Fine.

A half hour later, walking out of Surfer Boy Pizza, Mike is in what Will would call his peak form.

Mike reaches his peak, his best, when he’s animated and bright eyed, hands flying everywhere while he talks, hair all loops and loose curls in that horribly soft, unfairly good looking way it gets. He’s lit up, luminescent, rambling all about plot structure and colour relativity in film, writing compared to directing.

Will is sure he could fill a book, a bible, a library, with all the information he’s being fed. It is raised, every now and again, that Mike Wheeler is a little bit “too much”, but he’s never been too much for Will.

‘Chekhov’s gun is, like, a 101. Basically, there’s a gun on the wall in the first act, use it by the end of the third. Otherwise it shouldn’t be there, you know?’ Mike says it all thoughtful, like he thinks about this all the time for hours and hours. Will could, coincidentally, listen to him talk for hours and hours.

‘Right. Does it ever not matter? I mean, I know some techniques are suggestions rather than guidelines,’ Will says, just for the sake of prolonging the conversation, letting his eyes skate down and to Mike’s mouth, the pensive tuck of it, the pink of his lips.

‘Sometimes, I guess,’ he says, clearly after some consideration. ‘It depends how big the gun is.’ He pauses to make a rolling gesture with a hand. ‘Not like literally, but-‘

‘-the more in depth and ongoing the detail, the more the gun has to be used. Yeah, I get it,’ Will says, and he means it genuinely. Mike, on top of his various other skills and talents and niceties, is a natural born talker. He grins at the road, seemingly surprised at the earnestness of Will’s attention - which he shouldn’t be, not after all this time.

‘Cool,’ he says, hands in his pockets. Will silently, awfully, guiltily, falls a bit more in love with him, just like always.

They come to the end of the sheltered walkway, but Mike stops short before they get out into the carpark, turning around. ‘Um, I - do you want a ride?’

Will blinks. ‘Oh, I, I’ve got my bike,’ he says, hating himself for it because of course he’d rather play passenger princess in the shotgun of Mike’s car than cycle home on his own.

‘Right,’ Mike says, skeptical for no apparent reason, and then there is a reason because he points and says, ‘It’s raining,’ and it is. A tiny river has formed in the gutter, dampening the fabric of Will’s sneakers.

‘Oh,’ Will says, and silently thanks whatever god that he doesn’t usually believe in for blessing him. Maybe heaven is Mike Wheeler’s hand-me-down, broken-headlight car. ‘Yeah, yes, a ride would be great. Thanks, Mike.’

Mike smiles, almost smug, and when he blinks his dark eyelashes splay against his cheeks in pretty arcs. He gets pleased about such strange things. Will can feel himself flushing pink under his gaze.

‘Cool,’ Mike says, for the second time in about seven minutes, and then, more determinedly, interrupting whatever sort of moment was being had: ‘We can strap your bike to the roof.’

‘Um,’ Will says.

Fifteen minutes later, the rain has picked up.

Mike, climbing into the drivers seat, discards his very wet shoes in favour of going damp-sock-only, and Will follows suit, tossing his sneakers into the back where they fall to the floor with a thump. Mike has only just started the ignition. The drone of the engine is a dull hum.

Will unpeels a strand of wet hair from where it’s plastered against his forehead, covering his smile with a hand out of habit, laughing helplessly anyway.

‘Maybe not your finest plan.’

Mike pulls out of the parking lot. ‘Hey, that went - fine,’ he argues, but it only takes a second for his cheeks to dimple. ‘Maybe not my finest,’ he relents, and he’s ridiculous, utterly absurd, beautiful all the same.

‘So you didn’t mean to detach the roof rack?’ Will asks, grinning when Mike splutters. He wordlessly accepts Mike’s half-hearted whack in the arm as retaliation, if only out of want for the touch of his hand, long gentle fingers, calloused palms.

‘Look-’ The soft tick of the indicator as they round a corner, ‘-I got the bike onto the roof for you.’

‘That you did,’ Will admits, feeling his mouth pull up into a smile. The rain washes against the window, soothing, blurring his view of the streets outside. ‘I think I did more than half the lifting.’

Mike is all pink in the face, almost red at the tips of his ears and at the place where his shirt collar meets his neck. It suits him. ‘Just because you’re - like, strong or broad or whatever,’ Will wouldn’t put it like that, but, okay, ‘Doesn’t mean you have the right to bully me for my lack of… muscular integrity.’

‘Muscular integrity?’ Will repeats.

Left turn down a side street, take a right at the second turn off. ‘Yes.’

‘Is that a thing?’

‘I will crash this car,’ Mike warns, and Will laughs at him, unable to resist the urge to reach out and put a hand on the back of his shoulder, careful that it’s not too jarring, casual enough that it shouldn’t seem too strange.

Surprisingly, Mike leans into it.

‘You alright?’ His eyes are still on the road, but he turns his jaw briefly against Will’s hand, skin on skin. Mike runs hot, always has, but now he feels like - fire, the sun, an asteroid on a path straight toward Will’s heart. His breath is just the same.

Will tries not to implode. ‘Yeah,’ he says, only a little too hoarse. ‘Yeah, I’m alright.’

The soft crackle of radio music carries them all the way along the road.

Mike pulls up at the end of Will’s street, just round the corner from his house where the mud is thinner and easier to get through than it is right by the driveway. The rain is slowing. He puts a hand on the back of Will’s headrest when he reverses. It shouldn’t make Will’s heart flip, but it does, and he turns away in some act of - self preservation, maybe, as he unclips his seatbelt to get out.

‘Wait,’ Mike says, a hand still on the wheel, and Will obligingly (against his own better judgement) stops opening the car door.

‘Yeah?’

Mike pauses. ‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘For today. It was nice. I mean it always is,’ he adds, like he’s realising how out of the blue he’s being, brow furrowed, ‘But, you know.’

‘Um,’ Will says. One second, two seconds pass.

And then he leans back into the car and kisses Mike on the mouth.

Look, if you were to ask Will why, he wouldn’t have an answer - or rather, he’d have a million and ten answers, but not a single one that makes sense for right now. It’s just - it’s Mike.

The actual kiss lasts about half a second before Will wrenches himself back away, refuses to meet Mike’s eyes, and immediately tries to stumble back out of the car, which, okay, probably makes him the shittiest person on earth - and only gets more embarrassing when Mike grabs his wrist, wide eyed, and pulls him right back in the door.

‘Will,’ Mike breathes, looking shell shocked, which is the worst thing he could’ve said because it communicates nothing about how he feels.

‘Mike,’ Will responds, feeling a lot like he wants to kill himself.

‘Will.’

‘Mike?’

‘Will,’ Mike repeats, somewhat worryingly, and then says, very decidedly and equally nonsensically, ‘No,’ and tugs Will very quickly over the gearstick to smash their faces together.

They’re kissing - kissing again, even, and Will doesn’t know where to put his hands, the passenger door is still open, the rain is coming in, but there’s the insistent press of Mike’s mouth and Will really doesn’t care about anything else.

It’s a bit uncomfortable, definitely, with their too-tall bodies crammed against each other, and Will is still folded over all weird with the hand break digging into his side. The radio station music is still playing, something ABBA now. Will finds a place to put his hand, settles it on the nape of Mike’s neck.

Apparently this is the right thing to do because Will is suddenly and relatively forcefully being climbed upon, rolling his seat back as far as it can go to accomodate for six feet and a bit of teenaged boy tumbling into his lap.

‘Mike,’ he says, too hoarse.

‘Hey,’ Mike says back, drawing away enough to smile and haphazardly pull the car door shut, cheeks dimpling. By no definition is he suave. Unrelatedly, whenever Will looks at him for too long, it feels like his ribs are going to shatter.

‘Hey,’ Will repeats, smiling, hot in the face, almost flat against his seat.

Maybe he lets his head tilt back too easily when their mouths slot again, maybe he’s too willing, but Mike is just as eager and even more hasty, pressing into the hand Will puts against his cheekbone, mouth open. The engine is still running.

Mike’s nose bumps against Will’s cheek and the seatbelt is getting tangled around them and then,

‘Wait,’ Will says - rasps, even, a hand flying to his face, and Mike pulls back like he’s done something wrong.

‘Yeah?’ He says, so nice and careful that Will’s head hurts.

‘No, just - it’s getting late and - I realised who’s taking this radio slot.’

‘This is rockin’ Robin,’ the radio crackles, and there is a loud, ridiculous bird squawk noise.

Will stares at Mike. Mike stares back.

‘Oh my god,’ he says, and slams the NEXT STATION button with enough haste that Will can’t help but laugh. ‘Don’t laugh,’ Mike murmurs, frowning and nosing against the side of Will’s jaw.

Will, humiliatingly, just barely keeps himself from shuddering. Mike laughs anyway, like he knows, and he’s - awful. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Will.

‘I - um,’ Mike begins, and then interrupts himself by pressing a kiss to the side of Will’s throat. ‘Would like to do this more.’

Will doesn’t have it in him to do anything but blink and nod weakly. ‘Mike,’ he says, at a lack of more important words to say, when have there ever been more important words to say? ‘Yeah, I - want to,’ he agrees belatedly, as Mike takes a handful of his shirt, devastatingly eager all over.

‘Cool,’ he says, grinning all teeth, and Will slides a hand into his hair and pulls him in close enough to kiss him on the cheek.

‘Cool.’

A car drives its way past, a familiar number plate, a familiar colour. Mike, pink in the face under his freckles, pink at the tips of his ears, pink all the way down to his collar bones, is apparently still determined to, somehow, ruin Will’s life even further. He peers out the window, running a pensive tongue over his red-bruised bottom lip, dimples giving him away, and says,

‘Hey, isn’t that Jonathon?’

Will is going to kill him. Will is going to kiss him breathless for the rest of his life. Will is going to kill himself.

‘Please be quiet.’

Mike noses further against Will’s neck, hot breath fanning his ear. ‘Shit, what if he’s with Nancy?’

‘Miiike.’

‘If Nancy saw us she’s going to be such an annoying prick-‘

‘Michael,’ Will says, repeats, for 1000th time, because Mike’s name has become either a mantra or a prayer on his tongue, and he can’t help but laugh. ‘Jon absolutely already knows, and - and honestly? Nancy probably does too, because she’s smart and you’re not subtle, so,’ Will says, clawing his way into making a point while he still has the ability to speak, ‘So.’

Mike brings his head back only to angle it back down again. His knees have come to sit on either side of Will’s legs. ‘So,’ he mimics, quiet, mouth splitting into a closed smile.

Everything sounds like the soft fuzz of guitar in a Bowie song. This must have been what he was talking about when he wrote “idiot love sparks the fusion”, because he really can’t have meant anything else.

Mike drags a handful of careful kisses on the bit of skin between Will’s neck and collar, pressing his face there. When he lifts his head, his eyes all too obviously snag on the wet of Will’s mouth, criminally blatant. Will has been victim of Mike’s awful staring habit for a good decade, but it’s still both embarrassing and stiflingly sweet, to be looked at so unabashedly so often.

Will smiles through the humiliation. Mike groans, but his mouth tucks up at the corners, too nice.

‘Kiss me again,’ he says, and Will complies.

He’s always liked Mike Wheeler best.