Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“--and then she was like, Mike Wheeler, do you have something productive to add to this conversation or would you rather be spending your time elsewhere, and I was like, well, of course I don’t want to be sitting in this Medieval Poetry discussion at eight-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday, but grad requirements are no joke. Well, I didn’t say that, but I was definitely thinking it. And then–”

Will likes to think that he’s picked up a few skills since he’s come to college. The first being how to drink copious amounts of caffeine every day and still keep his heart pumping at a somewhat healthy rate. The second thing is knowing when to actually pay attention to something Mike is saying, and when to tune him out.

“--and even though they’re encouraging us to indulge our creativity, or whatever, for some reason it was wrong of me to insinuate that maybe the poem wasn’t about, like, finding God or whatever and it was just about two people boning in corsets and chainmail–”

This, as Will realized, the second Mike flounced into his dorm room some hours ago, is an example of a time the second skill comes in handy. “Yeah,” he says dutifully, right as Mike pauses to take a breath, not looking up from the charcoal drawing on his desk. “No, you’re totally right.”

The third skill he’s learned, more so of late, is knowing exactly the right thing to say at specific intervals of time in order to keep Mike thinking that he’s listening.

“Right?” Mike flings himself down on Will’s ancient dorm bed as he throws his hands over his head, springs and frame creaking loud enough that for a second Will is genuinely concerned that Mike will fall through the bottom of the bed and onto the floor. “Like, how are any of us supposed to find this shit interesting if all these poems from seven hundred years ago are literally just taken at face value, like come on, people back then would drink one sip of slightly gross water, shit their brains out, and die of dysentery, nothing cool ever actually happened, I’m going to need to use my imagination a bit here–”

Will does not have much of an interest in dysentery, but he does, unfortunately, have an interest in Mike. In Mike’s presence, that is. And also, maybe Mike. So he gladly bears the constant onslaught of words flowing from Mike Wheeler’s mouth if it means he stays like that on Will’s bed, on top of the generic plaid sheets he’s pretty sure every guy on this floor owns, and just talks at him for hours like he’s just really glad to be here. Like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing on a Friday night than just hanging out with Will. And not even necessarily hang out, like, at a party or with anyone else or doing anything that most college students would be doing on a Friday– just, hanging out with him.

Will frowns at his drawing. The shading is off but he can’t tell why.

“Hey!” Will looks up just in time for a crumpled piece of paper to hit him on the side of the head. Mike is sitting up now, and glaring at him. “You’re totally not even listening to what I’m saying right now.”

Okay, so maybe some of his skills still need a little fine-tuning. “No, no, I’m listening,” he says hurriedly, putting down his charcoal pencil and trying his best to plaster an intrigued expression on his face. “Dysentery,” he recites duly, “you were saying that thing about dysentery.”

Mike frowns. “That was at least three minutes ago,” he says, and hops off the bed. He looks over Will’s shoulder at the 2x3 charcoal drawing on the desk, due at the end of Intro to Drawing III at noon the coming Monday. “Hey, this is really good,” Mike says earnestly. He reaches down to touch it, and Will slaps his hand away before any of the black comes away smudged on his fingers. He tries very hard not to think about Mike’s hair grazing his neck as he leans in, or the smell of the Calvin Klein cologne that Nancy got him for his birthday. 

“Thanks,” says Will. “It’s a bowl of fruit.” The shading on the grapes has been bugging him for hours now, but he can’t quite figure out what’s wrong with them. Did he make them too shiny? Too round? Too oblong? He sighs and picks up his eraser again.

Mike laughs and puts a hand on Will’s shoulder, blows some of the excess charcoal dust off the page and says, “yeah, it sure is,” while Will tries to not have a conniption at the feeling of Mike’s fingers against the bare skin of his neck. “Hey, do you wanna go do something? How long have you been working on this?”

The answer is way too long, long enough for Will’s limbs to have gone stiff, his neck permanently cemented in this rounded, hunched position from being curled over his desk for hours, shading in these goddamn pears. “Do you think the grapes look weird?” Will asks, holding up the giant sheet of paper, tilting it so it catches the light in all the different angles his tiny dorm window will allow, “I’ve been working on them forever–”

“Your grapes look fine,” Mike says, rolling his eyes, and he grabs the drawing from his hand and flings it back onto the desk. Will makes a very affronted noise, because charcoal smears, thank you very much, and goes after it, checking to see if there are any creases in the paper. “Come on,” Mike begs, “Lucas is having a thing tonight, we should go! I feel like I’ve barely seen you all week, and you look like you could use a change of scenery.” And then Mike is looking at him with a very soft, pleading expression, and is putting one hand on Will’s wrist to tug him towards the door, his fingers pressing delicately against Will’s pulse point. The bottom line is that Will has never been able to say no to Mike, especially not when he’s looking at him like that.

“Fine,” Will says with a long-suffering sigh, and Mike cheers, slips his hand into Will’s as he tugs him out the door, and, God, okay, Will sincerely hopes that Lucas’ thing will have enough tequila shots available for him to forget about the feeling of Mike’s fingers squeezing his, all tight and steady like some sort of promise.

Lucas lives in a frat house, so of course the tequila, among other types of booze, is flowing freely by the time they arrive. Mike actually also lives in this frat house–if you could even say that, since he spends most of his conscious hours in Will’s dorm, and a good amount of his unconscious ones too, lately– and Will’s spent the last year of his life trying to figure out what motivation Mike Wheeler could possibly have for joining a fraternity.

Lucas was a no-brainer– he’s tall, extroverted, jacked, the youngest player on the men’s basketball team, and he somehow got unbelievably hot the summer before college started, which made him start doing things like wearing muscle tanks and aftershave while Will was still figuring out how to shave his nonexistent facial hair and tuck his shirt into his pants without it looking lumpy around his crotch. Lucas is also just an outgoing, friendly person–at least to strangers he hasn’t known for a decade and a half–and the combination of his natural charisma and smile could probably light up Rockefeller Center on Christmas Eve. So yeah, Will gets it.

He doesn’t, however, get the Mike thing. Mike is tall, but the similarities between them end there. He’s not jacked, does not play sports–unless competitive sarcastic commentary gets added to the Olympics one of these years—and while he’s a pleasant and charming enough person, Will supposes, objectively or something, he doesn’t carry that certain type of aura around him that makes Will want to fist bump him or say hey, bro as he passes him in the halls. And, well, Will is probably the wrong person to ask if he thinks Mike is hot, because to be entirely honest, he’s spent at least the last few years of his life fantasizing about Mike pulling him into a dark corner of a room during a party and going Will, I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, and not just as a friend, which leads to them making out aggressively under some stranger’s coat rack, all wrapped up in thrift store leather and wool.

This is, however, a crisis that Will has been putting off dealing with for just as many years, and will continue to do so, at least until Thanksgiving break, because he simply does not have the bandwidth to deal with whatever these feelings are when he has his illustration midterm due at the end of next week. Which he has not yet started, so he’s seriously starting to regret coming to Lucas’ thing when Mike pushes open the front door and the overpowering smell of sweat and cheap vodka fills the air.

Lucas, true to outgoing student athlete form, is waiting at the door to greet them. “Will!” he cheers, patting him on the back. “We haven’t seen you in forever!”

We meaning the house as a whole, because Lucas and Will hung out just yesterday, watching A New Hope for the umpteenth time and talking to Dustin over the phone as he apartment-sat for his neighbor. “Mike!” Lucas says, after a second of mild surprise, “you too, man.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “I live here, Lucas,” he says, but accepts the cup of mystery substance Lucas is thrusting into his hands. He takes a tentative whiff and crinkles his nose. “Ew, what is this?”

“Jungle juice,” says Lucas nonchalantly, which is probably exactly what he could call it to make sure that Will definitely is not going to venture near the stuff. “Plus, you definitely don’t live here, Mike, you’re never even around. I think there might be legit cobwebs growing in your room.” Lucas tosses back the last sips of his own cup, watching Mike sip gingerly at said jungle juice, and laughing when he gags.

He’s very tall now, Will notices, and even though he’s always been the shortest one of the friend group, it’s like he and Lucas have been racing to see if one of them will finally catch up to the other in height. Will grew, and then Lucas grew some more, and then Will got the last stages of his growth spurt, and thought they’d finally be the same height, and then Lucas started playing basketball and got taller and ripped and then Will declared it a lost cause.

Mike laughs, loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of the frat’s living room. “It’s a lot nicer at Will’s,” he says easily, shooting Will a sideways smile with a glint in his eye, like they’re sharing a secret, just between the two of them. Will tries very hard not to think about that smile. There are a lot of things he’s been trying not to think about, lately. “It’s quiet and it smells better and he lets me talk at him for hours without complaining, and at least has the manners to pretend like he’s listening.”

“Hey!” Lucas exclaims, “it’s not my fault you never talk about anything interesting or for less than an hour at a time!”

Will feels something very warm and bubbly expanding in his chest as Mike says this. It’s true, Mike has almost replaced Will’s actual roommate, whom he hasn’t seen for more than ten minutes since the first week of classes, because he’s always fucking off somewhere to do God knows what that Will doesn’t care enough to find out about. Privately, he doesn’t think his room is all that great. There’s barely any natural light and the walls are all painted-over cement so it feels a bit like a dungeon in the throes of the plague—or freshman flu— especially now during the fall when the sun sets after a measly eight hours of daylight.

But Mike doesn’t seem to care about his eternally growing laundry pile or his perpetually unmade bed or the strange smell emanating from his roommate’s closet (Mike did, at first, check to see if there was a dead body hidden inside). He seems perfectly content with perching atop Will’s bed as he works and Will talks, or as Will works and he talks, or both of them try - keyword try - and get their work done in comfortable silence. He seems fine with lying side by side on the duvet cover that’s been washed and used so long that it’s started to pill at the seams and zipper, and even brought back a sleeping bag at the start of the school year that’s been stashed in Will’s closet.

Mike has been sleeping on his floor a lot, the past couple months, in lieu of the walk back to the north side of campus where the frat houses are lined up, in this biting late fall cold. He doesn’t seem to mind the floor. Will certainly does not mind him on the floor. He does, however, consistently wish that his bed wasn’t just barely large enough for his own five foot nine frame; he has a lot of half-awake dreams, on nights where Mike stays over, where he tells Mike to forget about the floor, there’s plenty of space up here, and then they spend the entire night pressed up back-to-chest against each other, but then he always wakes up to the crinkling of Mike’s sleeping bag as he rolls over in his sleep and decides to not address it until the morning.

He still hasn’t gotten around to addressing it.

“Calm down,” Lucas is saying to Mike, who’s still having a coughing fit over his mystery punch. “It’s really not that bad, you’re just a crybaby.”

“Lucas, I don’t know how to tell you this but this tastes like straight gasoline,” Mike chokes, thrusting the empty cup back at him. “Who the hell made this?”

Lucas thinks for a minute, then says, “Tyler? Robbie? I have absolutely no clue but they did dump at least ten full bottles of booze in the keg–”

“--no wonder it tastes like shit then, fuck–”

Will mostly just finds this entire exchange amusing. Mike never gets drunk at these things, barely even tipsy, if you could call it that. He just takes a couple drinks of something or the other and wanders aimlessly around with Will happily in tow until he gets tired and they both inevitably retreat upstairs. Sometimes it’s like Mike genuinely forgets he lives here, like he thinks his room in the house is just good for acting as a motel, when it’s more convenient to stay than leave.

Will has been trying to figure out for forever why Mike even decided to rush. The only plausible reason he’s been able to think of so far is that it has less to do with the everything of a fraternity, and more to do about ensuring that Lucas doesn’t turn into the sort of douchebag that wanders around the halls spinning basketballs on his fingers and saying things like do you have a name, or can I just call you mine? to random girls he passes in the halls. Will knows Mike misses Lucas, misses the easy familiarity of his friend living next door to him, especially since Mike felt a bit left out after Lucas started getting close (and really good) with the basketball team in high school, so he tries to keep his griping about it to a minimum. But honestly, does everyone in this place have to be so skeezy?

“Do you want a cup?” Lucas asks Will, but he’s grinning toothily like they're in on some joke together.

Will raises his eyebrows. “Absolutely not,” he says, just in case Lucas was serious and Lucas laughs.

Mike groans. “Good call,” he says, and hands Will an unopened can of beer from a table. “You can have this instead.”

“Thanks,” Will says, more so because he just likes having something to hold in his hands than because of the drink itself. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands otherwise, whether to keep them awkwardly at his sides or crossed or on his hips or wherever else. Mike’s always said that looking at Will’s hands move makes him feel nervous, gives him secondhand antsiness, whatever that means. “Let’s go somewhere else, yeah?” he suggests, as another barrage of already inebriated college students pour through the front door. It’s getting very loud in here, and Will is starting to wish he’d brought along his sketchbook so he could retreat to the dilapidated bathrooms and start that midterm he procrastinated working on all week.

“Good idea,” says Mike, and then they’re waving goodbye to Lucas and weaving through the crowd. Sometimes even Will himself forgets that Mike technically lives here, forgets his vague familiarity with the building and all the good corners to go to when you don’t want to be swamped with a tidal wave of questionable body odor and sweat. Will tries very hard to focus on the countless other points of stimulation in the room– the clusters of bodies, the weird smell in the air, the uncomfortably loud music– everything but Mike’s hand on his lower back as he guides them to the back rooms of the house.

For all his griping about needing to drown his sorrows in tequila shots or whatever, Will doesn’t drink. More than like, a few sips of beer anyway, and only to fill in awkward gaps in conversation. First, because beer is nasty, and he isn’t convinced that anyone who says they’re enjoying it isn’t just in on some massive joke to fool the unsuspecting masses and then laugh at their expense. There’s no reason, as he’s explained to a very exasperated Mike countless times, for a drink to be both fizzy and taste like pond water at the same time.

But under all of that, the bigger thing is that Will just really hates feeling out of control in his own body, hates the feeling of losing track of time or sensation, and hates the memory loss after a night out. It terrifies him to know that he can’t fully control what he says or does, reminds him too much of waking up drenched in sweat, after a grueling, nightmare-filled sleep, and hearing that something happened during those hours that went missing from his memory like the final pieces of a very complicated puzzle.

The first and only time Will got drunk had ended with him freaking out so badly at the sensation that Mike had to take him into the bathroom and walk him through a series of deep breathing exercises, and the whole thing had just been humiliating to another extreme. He considers it almost as bad as the time they had to sweat the Mind Flayer out of him and his entire group of friends and family had seen him sobbing, sweating, and convulsing hard enough to consider calling an exorcist.

“Is it Mark? Or maybe Martin?” some guy across from them is asking, pointing a bit woozily at Mike. “You look real familiar. Do we have a class together?”

“Hey, Robbie,” Mike says, sounding entirely uninterested. “It’s Mike. I’m a member of this fraternity, actually.”

“Oh shit!” Robbie says, face lighting up, and Mike turns to Will, mouths jungle juice in a very overexaggerated way, miming throwing up, and Will has to hold back a laugh. “You’re the ghost!”

Mike frowns. “What the hell does that mean?”

Robbie the Jungle Juice Creator grins. “You know, because you’re never here and no one ever sees you but sometimes stuff moves around in your room and food goes missing from the kitchen that no one sees anyone take.”

Mike’s frown deepens. “The food could be anyone,” he points out, but doesn’t acknowledge the rest. “It’s a house full of college guys, and most of you guys are athletes.”

Will tries his best to hold in another laugh. “Nice to know you’re annoying them all even when you’re not here,” he says with a smile, and finally does laugh when Mike leans across the sofa to hit him on the shoulder.

Robbie turns to Will like it’s the first time he’s noticing him. His eyes narrow suspiciously. “You don’t also live here, do you? Do we have a second ghost?”

“Nah,” Mike interrupts before Will can open his mouth to say hell no. “This is my best friend, Will.” He slings an arm over Will’s shoulder, pulls him off the arm of the couch so forcefully that Will topples halfway into his lap. Ah, okay. He concentrates very hard on thinking about how gross the couch is and not the warmth of Mike’s body or the lingering scent of his cologne. “He lives on south campus.”

Will tries to ignore the bittersweet tug at his stomach that he feels at the phrase best friend. Sweet, because Mike is his best friend. He has been for almost fifteen years, and something about Mike announcing it freely to the room makes Will’s heart feel a bit like someone has pumped it full of helium. But also bitter because, well. You know. He still hasn’t gotten around to thinking about it.

Robbie nods politely. “Nice to meet you Will,” he says, and holds up a red cup full of, Christ, more jungle juice. “Do you want some of the punch I made?”

“Um,” Will says, most of his brainpower currently devoted to extracting himself from Mike’s lap without making a fool of himself. “No, I’m okay, I don’t really drink.”

Robbie nods again. “Respect. I’m gonna go top this up, I’ll see you around Will. See ya, Mark.”

Will is about to start laughing and then he sees Mike’s scowling face, and this simultaneously makes him try to hold in his laugh and also burst out laughing even harder, resulting in a very strange and strangled noise emanating from his throat. “It’s Mike,” Mike calls out after him futilely, throwing himself back into the sofa with a roll of his eyes. He turns back to Will and says, “I never liked him.”

“He seems harmless enough,” Will says, getting a bit distracted by Mike’s arm still lingering around his shoulders. “Even if he should never be allowed around mixed drinks again.”

Mike hums noncommittally, sinking into the cushions of the sofa. The half-cup of death punch/jungle juice/mystery poison from earlier seems to be hitting him a bit, causing his skin to flush a bit pink, hair splayed across the back of the sofa like a spill of ink. He pulls Will back towards him, successfully voiding all of the progress Will had made to peel himself off of Mike. “It tasted like sewage on fire,” Mike whispers theatrically, which Will has to lean in very close to hear over whatever hip hop remix is currently playing on loop. “Maybe you had the right idea tonight.”

Will laughs lightly, watches the flex of Mike’s throat as he stretches his head back, follows the movement of Mike’s hand on his own arm with an equal mixture of wariness and something warm and spiked bubbling in his stomach. It’s in moments like these, moments where Mike becomes warm and pliable, mouth slack with drink and a dusting of pink across his cheeks that Will reluctantly indulges the sour, unwashed parts of himself, the ones shoved so deep down that he’s a wrong breath away from choking on them.

Mike is not not an affectionate person, but he’s not a particularly touchy one. Will has grown up with him for over a decade, which is what he attributes Mike’s apparent ease at throwing arms over his shoulders, stretching out all one hundred miles of legs onto Will’s own extended limbs. These are also things he tries very hard to not think about. But sober, Mike is never this generous with touch, never this wide-eyed and blushed and so within reach , so for one second, Will lets himself think about it. Lets himself think about maybe, possibly, someday wanting, watches Mike’s lips part as he swallows–

–and then snaps immediately back out of it. What the fuck? “What?” Mike is saying, his expression going from a bit tipsy to Mom just called me by my first, middle, and last name in less time for Will to even think that thought in full. “Do I have something on my face? Did the juice stain?”

Mike does have a little smear of some unknown red substance on his cheek but Will didn’t see it until Mike turns to him, now, so that their faces are barely a foot apart. Here, on this moth-eaten sofa that’s surely contaminated in part with at least three venereal diseases, this is where Will is going to die. He’s sure of it. “Um,” he says, gesturing to his own cheek, “yeah, right here.”

Mike frowns and swipes at it with the sleeve of his university pullover. “Did I get it?”

He did not, in fact, get it, only smeared it further across his cheek in a very amusing imitation of Joyce applying makeup to her face before she’s fully woken up. “No,” Will grins, “you’re so useless. Here, let me–” he reaches out with his own hand, rubs it across Mike’s cheek hard enough for Mike to scowl and bat his hand away. Their faces are very close. He resolutely does not think about it.

“Um,” Will says intelligently, hand still hovering awkwardly somewhere around Mike’s shoulder. Mike just looks back at him, a bit blankly, but eyes widening slightly. Neither of them say anything. Mike blinks, once, twice in slow succession. Will feels vaguely nauseous. “I’m–”

“Fries!” Mike blurts out, and Will startles backwards. “Uh. Do you want some? To go get some that is, we obviously don’t have any here–”

Will lets out an exhale. Mike is giving him an out, and he’s going to take it. “Yes please,” he says, smiling. Mike gives him a small smile back, stands up from the couch and stretches, long and lean. Will watches the sinuous movement of his torso, the thick mess of hair curling around his the nape of his neck, and very intentionally does not look at where Mike’s sweater rides up from the top of his jeans.

The diner is the only place on campus open past eleven p.m., even on weekends. This, in Will’s opinion, is just bad business practice on the part of every other restaurant in the area, because they could be making bank off the hordes of inebriated college students looking for their fix of something deep-fried, battered, and slathered in butter and/or copious amounts of salt. As it is, the crowd is already spilling out the front door, and Will wouldn’t even be considering braving it if it weren’t for the little piece of heaven that exists as a plate of the house curly fries.

“Oh no,” Mike says, a bit wearily. The minute traces of alcohol that were even in his system seem to have mostly worn off on the walk here. He’s still pink-cheeked, but it’s early November and nearly midnight, so that’s probably why. “It might be a while.”

Will rubs his hands together and blows on them. It was a mistake to not bring a jacket. When Mike had dragged him over to the Theta house, it had only been around nine, a bit chilly but nothing that the walk uphill across campus couldn’t fix. The same walk, in fact, that prevents Mike Wheeler from sleeping in his own goddamn room for half the week. Now, however, is another story. His cable-knit sweater, while thick, doesn’t stand a chance against an Indiana November chill.

Will watches a couple slowly inch forward in line. The crowd inside doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere. “Definitely going to be a while,” he frowns, silently lamenting the premature loss of his curly fries.

Mike looks at the people, and then over at Will, where he’s trying his hardest to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. It’s a losing battle. “Are you cold? Do you want to head somewhere else?”

“But my curly fries,” he whines, and it sounds so pathetic even to his own ears that he can’t blame Mike for doubling over in laughter. “Mike,” Will says, trying to sound annoyed, but he can’t keep a grin from spreading across his face. “Mike, shut up!”

“You and those fries,” Mike laughs, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand how you get so crazy over them–”

“You don’t understand, Mike,” Will says. This is a conversation they’ve had too many times for Will’s liking. “The shape is what makes them so good! There’s more surface area, ergo more seasoning, and they’re just so fun to eat–”

“Fine, fine!” Mike relents, throwing his hands up. “We’ll go! Nowhere else is even open anyway.” He shoves one hand deep inside his hoodie pocket, and throws the other over Will’s shoulder and pulling him against his side as they approach the warm, inviting glow of the diner signs. “We’ll just have to huddle together for warmth, or something.”

“Like penguins,” Will agrees, breathing in the scent of Calvin Klein and secretly wondering if it’s too late to suggest they just go back and pick at the miserable collection of Lays products inside the dorm vending machines instead.

“Were they worth the wait?” Mike raises his eyebrows, staring Will down over the top of his stack of pancakes, slathered in butter, syrup, and something that could maybe, in the Upside Down, pass for fruit puree. Will crinkles his nose looking at it. He doesn’t get how Mike eats this stuff– he tried it once and it was honest-to-God a dentist’s worst nightmare thrown up over a stack of, admittedly, pretty good flapjacks. “Was it worth the frostbite and the penguin huddle?”

Will does not reply, because his mouth is stuffed full of gloriously fried, salted, seasoned, and irregularly shaped potatoes. He nods, swallows. “Absolutely,” he says. This is his comfort food. He could eat this same plate of curly fries every day for the rest of his life and be satisfied. Hell, if he died right now, sitting on these sticky, vinyl-covered seats in a diner booth across from Mike Wheeler– a very flushed, rumpled, happy-looking Mike Wheeler, his brain pipes up, in an extremely unhelpful way– he would die a happy man. He squirts more ketchup on his plate, and Mike watches him with a vaguely amused expression as he shovels more potato into his mouth.

“I thought I was the one who got drunk tonight,” Mike jibes, smiling as he slices his pancakes into a neat triangular stack. “You’re eating like you haven’t seen food all week.”

“I haven’t,” Will says, “the stuff they serve at the dining halls does not count as food, and I’m pretty sure serving it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions,” but he puts his fork down and picks up a fry with his hands. Just eat them like a normal person, Mike always says, but Mike Wheeler also thinks pineapple on pizza is worse than steamed brussels sprouts, so Will takes all of his food-related opinions with a grain of salt, thank you very much. “Plus you weren’t drunk,” he points out, taking a sip of water. “You got mildly annihilated by the jungle juice for approximately an hour, and then you were fine.”

Mike makes a face. “I’m never trusting Lucas again.” He shovels pancake into his mouth, and gets a smear of strawberry across the corner of his lips. Will looks at it, and then when Mike licks it off, very intentionally does not look at it anymore. “I think he was trying to poison me.”

“It was revenge for leaving him there with those guys and hanging out with me all the time,” Will says, even though the idea of Mike hanging out with him all the time and only him all the time is not an entirely unappealing thought. “Why do you always just stay at my place instead of going back?”

Mike’s fork and knife freeze in midair, hovering over his plate. A faint look of hurt flashes briefly over his face, and he frowns. “Is it bothering you?” he asks, more quietly than usual. “Am I– do you not want me to? As much?”

“No, no!” Will says hastily, “no, you know I love having you there, it’s just–” he trails off, as Mike starts to look a bit confused. “–nothing! Nothing, I promise it’s nothing.” 

Mike still looks a bit unsure as he takes his next bite. He seems to be very deep in thought, and then after a pause, where he swallows, he says, “--because I can like, screw off if you’re tired of having me around–”

“No!” Will says, so loudly that someone at the next table turns around to look at them. “I promise I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, softer, trying his best for reassuring and not just exasperated, “you know I love hanging out with you.” He does not think about what other things, relating to Mike, he might have certain L-word feelings about. “It just came out weird, I’m sorry.”

Mike stares at him for a moment, and then seems to decide that it’s not worth Will Byers’ infamous stubborn-headedness and smiles. “Good,” he says, scraping strawberry mush off his fork with his teeth. “You definitely aren’t getting rid of me anytime soon.”

“Good,” Will smiles, lifting a fry to his mouth, “I–”

He freezes. The fry drops slowly from his mouth.

“Will?” Mike says, frowning, but he doesn’t stop cutting into his pancakes. “What’s up?”

Will lifts a tentative hand to the back of his neck. Something is wrong, he thinks, but he can’t quite put a finger on it, on what’s out of place. He feels suddenly on the verge of throwing up the unreasonable amount of potatoes he just consumed. His ears are ringing faintly, vision tunneling back and forth like he’s having a serious case of vertigo. The hair on the back of his neck is standing up, prickling, like it did whenever–

Mike’s eyes widen, just as Will comes to the realization himself– “Is it that feeling?” Mike whispers, dropping his utensils with a sharp clattering noise. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Will says, feeling very thrown off balance. His ears are definitely ringing. “I– it hasn’t happened in so long–”

“We’re half a state away from Hawkins,” Mike says, looking frantically around the room, as if the Mind Flayer might be casually waiting in line to order the Deluxe Omelet Special with a side of hash browns. “It’s been years–”

“I know,” Will hisses. His skin feels covered in pins and needles, and he feels a bit like he’s on a boat stilled in the middle of the ocean, like everything inside him is getting sloshed around while his body stays still. He grips onto the table for balance, even though he knows he isn’t moving. “I- I don’t know why–”

“Hey,” Mike says, reaching across the table and grabbing onto his forearm. He pushes his almost-empty plate of food aside. “It’s probably nothing. Probably just some regular Upside Down activity across the gates or something. If something weird was happening back home, your mom or Hopper would have given you a call, right? Just take a deep breath.”

Will nods weakly. This whole thing is starting to remind him a bit of the drunk bathroom freakout fiasco. He gets an uncomfortable flashback to sitting fully clothed on the toilet with his head between his knees, trying not to throw up, from pure panic more than the alcohol, even. He takes in a breath. “Okay,” he says, still gripping onto the table for dear life. The weird sloshing feeling inside his stomach starts to recede. Across the table from him, Mike’s expression is tight, eyebrows furrowed with worry. He still has some strawberry smeared across his lower lip, Will notices, from what feels like very far away. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Okay,” he says again, “you’re probably right, it’s probably nothing.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Mike echoes, smiling a bit tentatively but still looking concerned. “Just… try and breathe. ”

Will takes in a shaky breath, exhales. Really, the thing that’s freaking him out the most is not the sensation itself, but how it caught him unawares, so off-guard. Back, during everything, it was really only noticeable by the uncomfortable tickling sensation on the back of his neck, and a weird feeling that someone was watching him. He had gotten used to it after a while, learned to constantly be aware of what was around him, sleep lightly in case it came back and tried to catch him in his dreams. But in the years after, the home stretch of high school as Hawkins repaired itself, even here at college, he had let his guard down. It had been quiet, the kind of quiet that had released all of the tension left in the air. “Breathe,” Mike is saying again, but his voice sounds closer now. “Are you feeling any better?”

Sometime in the last five minutes, all of Will’s muscles have tensed up, clenching so tight that it feels physically painful to relax. “A bit,” he says truthfully, even though his ears feel a bit like they’re full of water, and he’s suddenly very cold. His muscles all feel sore, but his voice doesn’t sound shaky to his own ears anymore. “That was–”

“--weird,” Mike finishes with a nod, still frowning. He hasn’t let go of his grip on Will’s arm, and his fingers are curled around his wrist in a firm, comforting grip. “Was that- has that happened before? Lately?”

Will shakes his head. “No, not since- you know.” You know meaning the bloodbath that was the near-end of the world, taking place in Hawkins, Indiana. “It felt different this time too.”

“Different? How different? Bad different?” Mike’s hand slips down from Will’s wrist into his palm. Will holds his breath, like small movements might scare Mike away.

“No just…” he stops, and Mike tilts his head as if to say go on. “More intense, but less threatening.”

Mike pushes a stray piece of pancake around on his plate with his free hand. The bottle of maple syrup sits, abandoned, on the side of the table. “Huh?”

“Like…” How does one explain the intricacies of hive mind possession to their friend? Even if said friend has been with them through the entire possession ordeal, this isn’t most college students’ idea of a Friday night out. “I don’t know, I was just feeling more of everything , like more nauseous, more dizzy, more off, but it wasn’t as scary as usual. Usually it feels a bit like when you think someone is watching you? Or when you hear a weird noise in the dark and all your senses are on high alert, but now I just felt weird. I still feel a bit weird,” he adds, eyeing his curly fries a bit sadly. “A little dizzy, maybe a bit nauseous, but okay.”

Mike watches him carefully, eyebrows slowly returning to their normal position. “So like, kind of like a bad hangover?” he asks slowly, smiling slightly. His hand is still in Will’s. “Or…”

“Kind of,” Will says, cracking a small grin in return. He’s suddenly very aware of how sweaty his palms are, and wrenches his hand out of Mike’s grip with a slight grimace. Mike quickly moves his own off the table. “I have no idea, honestly,” he says, “it was really sudden. Plus, I only have that one hangover to go off of, so—”

“Oh my God, shut up!” Mike laughs, and just like that, the unease and tension hanging over them, in the little booth in the corner of the diner, breaks like shattered glass. “You weren’t even that hungover, I swear most of it was just you freaking out about how much you freaked out.”

“It was bad, Mike,” Will insists, “I couldn’t get out of bed all day.”

“I know,” Mike groans, reaching for his pancake scraps again, swiping them across the remnants of berry and maple syrup on the plate, “you made me bring you soup and complained about it for a week. It was a mild hangover, not the goddamn flu—”

Will sips his water as he watches Mike chew. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees a brief flash, like light reflecting against metal or mirrored glass. When he looks, he sees a boy staring at them from the corner of the restaurant, maybe their age or a couple years younger, with large glasses and neat brown hair, the former of which is sporadically reflecting the fluorescent diner lighting as the neon signs buzz. His face looks mildly alarmed, but mostly caught frozen, somewhere in between fear and shock. Will frowns. “Great,” he mumbles, “I freaked out so hard that someone’s totally staring at me right now.”

Mike looks around the room, and then shakes his head. “No one’s staring at you, don’t worry,” he says, and then pushes his empty plate away. “Come on, let’s get you a box for these, I know you’re going to regret not bringing leftovers back tomorrow, and I refuse to walk back here so you can get more.”

Will looks back at the corner, maybe to stare the boy down with what he hopes is a convincingly intimidating glare, but the boy is gone. “Huh,” he says, and then, when Mike makes to steal a fry off his plate, “hey, you’ve already stolen like half of this entire plate—”

The Theta house is much closer to the diner than Will’s dorm, so that’s where they head. The eleven-thirty chill has given way to a biting, one a.m. cold that has Will wrapping his arms around himself and pulling his sweater tight against his body as they walk, this time unable to keep his teeth from chattering wildly. Mike isn’t faring much better—his hoodie doesn’t seem to be doing much to keep him warm, even with the hood pulled up and drawstring tightened, causing his head to look rather small and also rather bald against the rest of his body. If Will’s skin wasn’t freezing and about to peel right off his own body, he might’ve laughed.

“H-how m-much longer?” Will says, teeth clacking almost comically in between syllables. The air is coming in through the holes in the knit of his sweater, piercing his skin like minuscule little bullets.

Mike rubs his arms. “T-ten minutes?” he replies, voice also wavering a bit. “Y-you’d think it would be warmer, w-walking uphill.”

Will nods in agreement, silently lamenting his own fate as he thinks about the journey across campus back to his own room. The streets are still fairly full, as drunk college students trickle out of whichever building they’ve chosen as their hub for dangerous amounts of drinking games for the night. It’s really fucking cold, wow. And then, as if he can read Will’s mind—he probably can, Will wouldn’t be surprised at this point—Mike says, “d-do you just want to stay at mine tonight? So y-you don’t have to walk all the way back in the c-cold, and it’s late and I don’t want you to, like, get mugged or something, that would suck.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a second, just stares at the red flush across Mike’s face, high on his cheekbones and visible even in the dim glow of the streetlights. “Uh, y-yeah,” he says, feeling suddenly very nervous even though Mike’s slept over at his place countless times. But Mike’s room in the frat is uncharted territory; he barely ever sleeps there himself, forget bringing Will along. But then Mike grins, wide and easy, and all of Will’s anxieties melt away like a pat of butter on Mike’s favorite Berry Delight Short Stack.

“Cool,” says Mike, and then falls silent. They walk the rest of the distance quietly, the silence punctuated only with the occasional huff of breath, ghosting white and lush in front of their faces or a gentle wheeze as the incline of the concrete grows too intense for their non-athletic lungs.

They go in through the back entrance, something Will forgets Mike knows about, because oh right, he actually lives here. Kind of. The party is still going steady, albeit a bit quieter as people have started to either retreat to the safety of their own rooms to nurse their impending hangovers, or have fallen asleep right on the spot, splayed across the moth-eaten, disease-ridden couches and beanbags scattered along the the main floor. Mike raises his eyebrows as they pass a couple laying perpendicular to each other on an armchair, the girl’s head crooked sideways into the boy’s shoulder, and both pairs of legs dangling off the chair. “That’s gonna hurt tomorrow,” Mike remarks, over the now-quieter thrum of music, “imagine lying in that position for hours on end.”

Will glances at the red cups in their hands and the now-empty vats of the jungle juice from earlier, and scoffs. “It’ll be nothing compared to the headache,” he quips, as he follows Mike up the stairs, feeling an odd mix of trepidation and nervous excitement in his stomach.

For all the time Mike spends in his room, in Will’s dingy, dark dorm on south campus, Will rarely comes up to Mike’s. It’s decorated plainly, with all the un-enthusiasm of a young boy decorating a bunk at a penitentiary. The wall next to his bunk is adorned with a Carmen Sandiego poster, which strikes Will as weird, because he doesn’t think Mike has ever even played that game, but also kind of hilarious because of how out of place it is. Everything else is still cement brick, painted over in a dull white, like Will’s own walls, but at least his are plastered with drawings, magazine cutouts, movie posters, some of Jonathan’s old record covers. Mike’s sheets are navy blue and plaid, whereas Will’s are gray—and also plaid. He’s almost certain their moms picked them out together.

Mike’s also got Star Wars sheets, something which, upon seeing it, makes Will’s heart grow three sizes like the fucking Grinch or whatever. “I forgot about these,” Will crows, as they step through the doorway and into the room Mike supposedly shares with three other guys. None of whom, Will notices, are here right now. God, okay. “I love these sheets, why didn’t you tell me you still had them?”

“Because I knew you’d get like this,” Mike grumbles, and moves to tug his duvet so the sheets are covered up. “I don’t know why it amuses you so much–”

“It’s because I can’t believe Mike Wheeler, Creative Writing major extraordinaire, hater of Medieval Literature and any poetry ever, self-proclaimed to now be too cool for Dungeons and Dragons and all television involving cartoons, has bedsheets with the Star Wars logo all over them–”

“Shut up Will,” Mike says, and then lobs a pillow at his head. Which only makes Will laugh harder because the pillow is shaped like goddamn Chewbacca, and then before he knows it he’s collapsed on the bed in a fit. But Mike is smiling too. “It’s not funny,” he insists, even as he grins down at him. “They came in a set, with the pillow, and it was on sale, okay? You know how my mom gets! She can’t pass up a good sale– hey, stop laughing– you’re the only person ever who can know this!”

“Me and the three other guys who live here,” Will says, gesturing to the empty bunk beds placed around the room. “I forgot you have roommates. Is that why you’re always at mine?”

Mike pauses. “Oh,” he says, and then brings a hand up to the back of his neck. His face is still very pink from the cold, hair a tousled mess from the chilly wind. He looks suddenly very caught off-guard. “Yeah,” he replies at last, “it’s a lot quieter there, I guess.”

Will makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. Mike’s sheets smell clean, if a bit stale, like they haven’t been used for a while, like his own room when he visits back home. “No wonder everyone here thinks you’re a ghost,” he comments, sprawling across the bed, “if your stuff is so unused.”

Mike nudges him over enough to perch on the edge of the bed. He kicks off his shoes, lets them fly across the room and land with a thud next to the far side of the wall. “Most of these guys don’t even spend half their time here either,” he huffs, and then, kind of all at once, “they’re always off spending the night with whatever girl they’re currently banging.”

Will raises his head slightly off of where it’s currently buried in Mike’s plain navy cloth-covered pillow. He looks, a bit warily, at the back of Mike’s head. “Is that where they think you are?” he asks, trying to sound lighthearted, but it comes out a bit flat. Look, he’s joking, okay? Mostly. Kind of. He very pointedly does not think about others thinking about Mike sneaking off to have sex with a different girl every night. Or the same girl every night. Or any girl, ever. “Boning?”

Mike wrinkles his nose. “Will, I know it’s my fault for saying the word boning all the time and introducing it to your vocabulary, but it doesn’t sound right coming out of your mouth,” and then, “and probably, yeah. Who knows. Maybe they think I’m out, like, clubbing or doing drugs or–”

“--attending back-to-back Star Wars matinees,” Will finishes for him with a grin, which is enough to get him smacked with the Chewbacca pillow again. “Okay, okay, ow, sorry! I’ll let it go!” He shoves his head back in the pillow for protection, and only raises it back up again when he sees the Chewbacca pillow being set safely down next to him. “You’re not boning, though, right?” he says, suddenly. He doesn’t know why he feels such an urge to bring it up again, as if the thought of Mike boning is not something that is CODE RED #1 at the top of his list of things to absolutely never think about. But also. Look–

“What? No, of course I’m not boning,” Mike splutters, turning a violent shade of scarlet, “how would I even hide that from you, I’m with you all the time–”

And then he falls silent, so fast that Will gets tonal whiplash from how fast Mike just went from saying boning over and over again to just clamping his mouth shut and staring at the wall across from them with such a determinedly neutral expression it was like he had just caught great-grandma Wheeler sitting down in the shower for a sponge bath again.

“Right,” Will says, that Grinch-like feeling in his heart growing ever-so-slightly. He smiles to himself, and shoves his face back in the pillow. “You’re with me all the time.” This is not a displeasing thought to have, so he lets himself dwell on it for a half-second, turns the words over on his tongue. I’m with you all the time. They taste sweet, like a fraction of a victory.

“Anyway,” Mike says, jumping off the bed, “um. Are you tired at all? I know it’s been kind of a weird night for you–”

“Right, weird,” Will starts, and then looks down at his thick cable-knit sweater and carefully starched jeans. “Yeah, a bit, I guess.” He picks at his sweater a bit. “Should I take the floor, or–”

“No!” Mike shouts, and then, when Will stares, he purses his lips and goes, “well you can take the bed and I can take the floor, you’re my guest–”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Will says, “you sleep on the floor of my room all the time, I’m not letting you do it here.”

“The bed isn’t big enough for two,” Mike frowns, and Will feels a very unwelcome pang of disappointment at the ease with which Mike says it. “You can take the bed, I’ll take the couch.” He points to the couch near the door, currently sagging under the weight of what looks like at least twenty points of assorted clothing tossed haphazardly onto it. At Will’s questioning glance, he adds, “it’s pretty comfortable, I slept there my first night before the beds got assembled,” and then, “and no, there are no STDs on the couch,” to which Will barks out a laugh.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” he says, kicking off his own battered Vans, “if you got herpes but from a couch.”

Mike pulls a face. “You’re disgusting,” he says, but his face looks like he’s considering it as he pulls his hoodie off. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt underneath, which gets pulled up a bit as he stretches his arms out of the sleeves, and his hair falls down around his neck and onto his shoulders as he shakes it free from the hood. Again, Will does not look. Or even think about looking. Seriously. “How would that even work, would you have to, like, open-mouth-french the sofa? Or—”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Will decides. He feels very awkward, sitting on Mike Wheeler’s bed in his frat house room while said Mike Wheeler starts undressing in front of him. And look, it’s not like they’ve never undressed in front of each other, but there’s a difference between seeing your middle school best friend in his tighty-whities for a few seconds versus seeing your college best friend of almost fifteen years who you’re in lo– might have feelings for start taking his clothes off after an entire conversation about boning and STDs on couches. Will stares very determinedly away from where Mike is rummaging through his dresser, top button of his jeans undone like he forgot where he was and was about to just rip them off right then and there.

“Do you want to borrow something?” Mike is asking, and Will, painfully, tears his gaze away from Mike’s roommate’s Chicago Cubs poster and onto where Mike is holding out a t-shirt that’s so huge that the bundle is enveloping his entire forearm. 

“Uh,” says Will—and yeah, not his most intelligent moment, he gets it. Mike’s eyes drop down to Will’s sweater, where the yarn has gone a bit itchy against his skin from all the sweating and walking he’s done tonight.

“I’m not letting you sleep in that,” Mike says, and throws the t-shirt at him so that it hits him straight in the face. And then, a second later, follows it up with a pair of plaid pajama pants.

“God,” Will says, holding the pajamas up. “These are huge, whoever fits into these has gotta be, like, eight feet tall. Did you steal them from the Demogorgon?”

Mike rolls his eyes. “I like them baggy,” he says, turning around and slipping off his t-shirt before tugging a different one on, and wow, okay, that’s Will’s cue to book it to the communal bathrooms. “It’s more comfortable that way.”

“Right, comfortable,” Will mumbles, a bit weakly, as he trips over his own feet trying to get up and get to the door before Mike takes anything else off. “I’m- Um, It’s- I’m. Bathroom.”

Later, when Will is tucked into the safety of Mike’s bundle of blankets, staring down a small decal of Han Solo’s face on the far left pillow, the room finally stills. 

“Lights on or off?” Mike is asking, from where he’s situated himself on the couch with a pile of blankets and one of the pillows off his own bed. He’s drowning a little bit in his pajamas, Will notes, which makes him feel something that he does not think about any further.

He never actually sees Mike in his pajamas anymore, because he’s taken to just passing out on the floor of Will’s dorm in his jeans and whatever sweater/jacket combo he wore that day, which makes Will a bit nauseous to think about but whatever. It’s better than the idea of seeing him in Will’s own borrowed clothing, and whatever mild headache he gets by seeing Mike Wheeler fall asleep in his stupid skinny jeans and socks is surely nothing compared to the hives that threaten to break out across his skin by thinking of him wearing Will’s sweaters and pajamas to bed , so he just grits his teeth and very stubbornly does not offer to share.

“I can’t believe you also have Star Wars pajamas,” Will says, not answering the question. “You’re making this really hard for me, you know–”

“ Shut up,” groans Mike, and then, again, “so, um. Do you want me to keep the light on? Or are you okay if it’s off. Because either— either one is cool with me.”

Will is a bit taken aback. He prefers to keep a light on, even a small one, but he hasn’t told anyone this but his mom, Jonathan, and El, who shares a room with him sometimes, back home. Plus, in his own dorm room there’s always enough light coming in under the door from the hallway that it doesn’t really matter. But here, in Mike’s bedroom that he shares with three other guys, there is no hallway, and there is no other light. He’s never liked the dark, and especially not since he went missing. He wonders how Mike knows. “Oh,” he says, voice coming out very quietly. Mike is watching him, expression very neutral, as if he’s genuinely waiting for Will’s answer. “Um. Off is fine. But could– could you leave the lamp on?” He gestures to the small lamp on the desk next to Mike’s bed.

“Of course,” Mike says easily, and hops off the couch. It comes on with a soft click, filling the room with a soft yellow glow when he reaches over to turn the room light off as well.

Here, under the glow of this lamp in a room nestled off the north campus of their university, surrounded by the last vestiges of a party with the soft thrum of music reverberating through the floor, Will thinks that nothing could possibly reach him again. He watches Mike climb back under his nest of throw blankets, absentmindedly pulling on a pair of fuzzy socks. Not the Demogorgon, not the Mind Flayer, not even Vecna and his entire Upside Down army. He’s protected by Mike’s irritatingly endearing Star Wars sheets and plaid duvet and the singular video game poster on the wall, kept safe by Mike’s steady presence across the room, the vague scent of generic brand laundry detergent and dust. The episode in the diner seems so far away, seems like it happened to a Will of years ago, a Will that was scared and alone, grasping for straws wherever Mike Wheeler was concerned, terrified of his friends leaving him behind. All of that, everything, disappears in an instant when Mike turns and smiles softly at him. 

“Goodnight,” Mike says simply. All of his energy from earlier seems to have been drained out of him, his eyes looking a bit tired as they catch the lamplight, the curve of his cheekbones looking deeper than usual. He has a nice face, Will thinks, but only like, objectively. It’s just interesting to look at. Will blinks. These are dangerous thoughts to be having while sleeping in Mike’s bed.

“Goodnight,” he replies instead, watching Mike turn around on the couch. He lets out a deep breath. God, okay, he doesn’t know why this is setting him so on edge. It’s just a sleepover. He’s slept over at Mike’s all the time when they were younger. And Mike always sleeps over at his place now. And just because he’s in Mike’s bed doesn’t mean anything, because Mike isn’t even in the bed with him, he’s across the room on the couch—

As if he’s tuned into Will’s internal monologue, there’s a rustling noise from the couch. And then a small voice says, “hey, Will?”

Will cracks a smile. It hasn’t even been five minutes since they said goodnight, but Mike has always been like this— chattering up until the second they drifted off to sleep, mouth moving a mile a minute. He was always the first one up at sleepovers, would wait patiently for Will to stir sleepily and then bombard him while they waited for the others to get up. “Yeah?” he says, “what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” comes Mike’s voice. He’s still facing the back of the sofa, but then he shifts, so that his face is kind of mushed up against the pillows. “It’s just—” There’s a pause, and then his next words come out muffled, like he’s talking directly into his pillows, and are entirely unintelligible. 

“What?” Will sits up in the bed, watches Mike’s frame shuffle around a bit until he finally raises his head off his pillow.

“It’s just—” Mike starts, a strange expression on his face. The light catches against the down-set curve of his brows, the jut of his lips where his teeth are tugging against it. Will watches Mike worry at that spot on his lips with a strange fascination, hoping his stare gets lost in the dim lighting. “I just— it’s why I don’t like sleeping here as much,” he continues, voice coming out a bit unsure. He sounds very nervous. “I just like your room more because there’s so much you everywhere, and mine is just sort of nothing. And, you know, yours feels so much more like home that I just never want to come back here after hanging out with you. It feels like something’s missing.”

All of this comes out in one big rush, like it was threatening to burst out of him and Mike just had to let it run its course. He looks up, looks a bit surprised to see Will sitting up and looking back at him. There’s something very vulnerable on his face. “Sorry,” Mike blurts, “that was random and you were trying to sleep, I was just thinking about it and, I don’t know, I felt like telling you. I always feel like telling you whatever I’m thinking. You’re just so easy to talk to.”

Will feels a bit overwhelmed. Sometimes he thinks he has a handle on Mike Wheeler, thinks he knows him and is comfortable in this weird limbo his brain seems to enter whenever Mike is around, somewhere stuck between adoration and devotion and a kind of bittersweet longing for something that’s always just out of reach. And then there are other times, times like these, times where Mike says things that pull his brain out of that limbo and send it hurtling towards feelings and thoughts that are very dangerous, send his heartbeat spiking and something tasting a bit like hope flooding his veins . It’s a gray area that he can’t risk leaving the comfort of, and he’s usually good about it, doesn’t think about things he shouldn’t, except for where Mike Wheeler is concerned. Will has never been able to say no where Mike Wheeler is concerned.

“Oh,” he says, and it comes out sounding a bit strangled. He clears his throat, tries again. “Oh that’s— that’s really— Mike, I didn’t—”

Mike is watching him carefully, face dipped down between his shoulders so it’s almost unreadable with the shadows cast across it. “I didn’t expect that,” Will finishes, smiling. His heart feels like it’s sprinting the last leg of an Olympic 500 meter dash, seven steps from the finish line with the entire world watching. “That was really sweet.”

Mike looks a little surprised by his own words. “Thanks,” he says, frowning slightly. “Cool. Um. Goodnight, then. For real.”

“‘Night, Mike,” Will says quietly, sinking back down onto the pillows. Neither of them say anything after that.

Okay, so maybe there are some things Will should really start thinking about.

He wakes up the next morning with a headache, which immediately puts him in a shitty mood for the rest of the day because the only good thing about being the only sober person at a party is the gleeful knowledge that you’ll be the only one without a hangover the next morning. But here he is with a headache anyway, because Will Byers cannot, apparently, have nice things.

Speaking of nice things. He spots a vaguely Mike-shaped form on the couch, buried under a mound of blankets and curled in on itself. Mike always sleeps all rolled up into a little ball. Will’s thought that was hilarious for forever, how Mike can tuck in all of his six-foot-long disaster into a humanoid shape roughly the size of a large pillow, and he’s always loved watching Mike wake up and stretch out because it’s like watching a baby alien come to life, all gangly limbs and hyper-accelerated growth.

And then— oh, right. Will groans softly, rubbing at his eyes. It can’t be too late, because the mid-November morning light is just starting to come in through the windows. Mike’s roommates are still M.I.A., and Will feels a rush of relief that no one walked in to find the two of them like that. Not that there was anything to see— Mike was on the couch and Will was far away on the bed. By himself.

But with a feeling of growing unease and trepidation, Will’s starting to realize that he might have to accept that that’s the problem— that there wasn’t anything going on, that there wasn’t anything to see. Because he probably— no, definitely— wants there to be.

“Fuck this,” he mutters, going to extract himself from the sheets he’s managed to weave intricately between his legs during the night. His head throbs faintly with every movement and he groans again. He’s still wearing Mike’s t-shirt and pajama pants from the night before, and they’re so big on him that he has to physically hold up the legs of the pants before moving so he doesn’t trip. He considers leaving Mike’s clothes on, but then thinks about walking across campus to his own room wearing someone else’s clothes, and how he’ll definitely be channeling a real walk of shame kind of aura around him and he immediately shakes that idea off and reaches for his own pants.

He folds Mike’s clothes up after, and then, in a moment of something feeling a bit like guilt, maybe regret—or something hollower, more bitter, because you can’t regret something you never had, can’t feel guilty over something you never had the chance to do—he makes Mike’s bed too, tucks in the corners of the duvet all tight around the edges of the bed. It looks untouched, like Will had never spent the night. His presence in the room would be left unmarked, if it weren't for the two items of clothing left neatly stacked at the foot of the bed.

Will extracts his shoes from the wall, locates his wallet and room keys from where he stacked them on Mike’s desk while changing, and pauses, briefly, by the couch as he’s about to step out of the room. Here, Mike’s face is visible over the top of his blanket, and his normally guarded, tense expression is more free. His eyebrows are, for once, not caught in a frown, mouth a bit slack and open, hair spilling over his cheekbones and pillow. A few strands move with every breath he takes, and Will can feel his heart stagger in his chest, stuttering like it’s caught in a fishing net with the wires all tangled up and cutting into it. And here, he lets himself think about it, pauses with one hand on the doorknob— I like Mike Wheeler, he thinks to himself, feeling his head throb. And then, because that sounds a bit childish and naïve, even to his own brain, no, I think I love Mike Wheeler. I think I love my best friend.

The revelation does not hold the weight he thought it would; this entire time that he held the words back from his own conscious mind he’s always been a bit afraid that thinking them would unleash the wrath of Armageddon upon him, like time would stop and collapse onto him. But the world does not go up in flames, plague and pestilence do not descend upon this room, and no divine voice from the heavens speaks to condemn him. It’s a Saturday morning, the week before Thanksgiving break. The world is not ending. Mike Wheeler continues to sleep, and he doesn't love Will the way Will loves him. These are the facts.

“Fuck,” Will mutters again, and steps out the door.

Chapter Text

As if his headache wasn’t bad enough, there’s a boy standing outside of Will’s room when he turns the corner from the elevator. This does nothing to improve his already pretty shitty mood, because the last thing he wants, after spending the entire walk down from the Theta house thinking about things he’s actively kept himself from thinking about for years, is to talk to some freshman going around trying to recruit him for bible study at 9 a.m. on a Saturday. “Hello,” Will calls, as he walks slowly forward. “Um. That’s my room. Can I help you?”

The boy doesn’t reply. He’s been facing the elevators the whole time, like he was standing there waiting for someone to walk out of them. Which, weird. He looks vaguely familiar, but Will can’t place where he’s seen him before. “Hello,” he says again, irritation only growing as the boy doesn’t respond. “I need to get into my room, can you move?” he tries. Nothing. God, his head is pounding. The boy stands still, staring at him with no change to his expression. The giant lenses on his glasses make his eyes look unnaturally large and the startled look on his face even more intense.

The glasses! Will frowns as he comes up to his room, shuffles around in his jeans pocket for his keys. That’s where he’s seen the boy before– it was at the diner, after his meltdown, where he saw him staring at Mike and him in their booth from across the restaurant. Does he have a stalker now? “Hello,” he tries for the last time, waving his hand in front of the boy’s face and not even bothering to keep the frustration out of his voice this time. “Are you okay?”

There’s no response again. The boy doesn’t even blink. He’s wearing a funny-looking sweater vest and t-shirt, the sort of get-up that kids might have worn back in middle school, and his brown hair is still neatly combed in place. He has the same sort of dazed, startled expression on his face that most students undoubtedly have at this time on a Saturday, after a Friday night out on the town, so Will just rolls his eyes, shoulders past the boy and into his room, and collapses on his bed.

“This is too much,” he says to himself. His roommate seems to have made an appearance at some point when he was gone, because his side of the room is disturbed, bedsheets tousled and empty takeout container on the desk, but he’s gone again. Will groans aloud into the empty space, takes his shoes off, and is about to roll over and fall asleep when he catches sight of the abandoned charcoal drawing on his desk, still left there from when Mike came over the evening before.

Was that just one day ago? Will has had one hell of a fourteen hours, and he’s contemplating just putting off the drawing until later that day, when he realizes his only other options are sitting in bed and wallowing, and thinking even more than he’s already done that day, so he sighs a bit resignedly, and picks up the charcoal pencil that’s rolled off his desk and onto the floor.

It’s nice, he thinks, tracing over a smudged section on one of the apples in this ridiculously arranged fruit bowl, to have something mundane to think about again. His illustration midterm due Friday. This charcoal drawing due Monday afternoon. The way the stupid grapes still look off to him, even though he can’t figure out whether it’s the way he shaded them in or the way he drew them in the first place. He focuses very hard on these things, trying to not let his mind wander: his illustration midterm is due Friday, and he hasn’t decided what to draw yet. This charcoal drawing is due Monday afternoon, and the grapes look wrong. His illustration midterm. The grapes. Midterm. Grapes.

Will makes it through three and a half hours of anxious sketching, erasing, and white-hot rage at his assignment before the steady solitude and peace is interrupted by a knock at the door. His head is still throbbing, despite the Tylenol he popped, and it only increases when the knock comes again, a minute later. “I’m coming,” he shouts, trying his best to dust the black of the charcoal off on his pants. He’s still wearing his jeans and sweater from yesterday, didn’t get a chance to shower or change—just barely remembered to brush his teeth—and he knows he looks a mess– sleep-deprived, tired, cranky at best, and at worst, something that could probably only be described by the word festering. “One second!”

He opens the door and his feeling of dread increases tenfold when he spots Mike standing in the doorway, hand raised like he was about to knock again. To Mike’s credit, he did last past noon before finding his way over to Will’s again, which is longer than it usually takes for him to show up. To Mike’s dis credit, he looks good. Too good. He’s showered, it seems, because the ends of his hair are a bit damp and he’s changed out of his usual university hoodie into a pair of slim black jeans, converse, and the old leather jacket he’s been dragging around behind him since their junior year of high school.

Will’s heart sinks two inches in his chest cavity as he remembers Mike’s face as he slept this morning, expression soft and relaxed. Your room feels so much more like home, he remembers Mike saying, quiet and vulnerable in the lamplit room. The memory is already made hazy, tinged at the edges with sleep and exhaustion, but brought back into a vignette-like focus by the sheer want Will feels–lets himself feel, at last– as he stares Mike down at the door. It’s like the sheer force of all these years of want are hitting him at once, like he’s opened the floodgates and is swept away in the rush of water, head barely above the surface. Mike looks good. Really good. God, okay.

“Hi,” Mike says with a smile, but it’s tentative, unsure. “You, uh. You were gone when I woke up this morning.”

He sounds disappointed, which, unfortunately, makes Will’s stomach swoop pleasantly, even against his will. He shrugs, tries to sound nonchalant. “I had my assignment to finish,” he says, “the charcoal drawing I was working on yesterday.”

Mike’s eyes take in his jeans, stained with gray, the sweater he undoubtedly recognizes from yesterday, even the socks Will has yet to take off. “The one with the fruit?” he asks, as his eyes snap back up, “it was really good.”

“Thanks,” Will says. Both of them are silent for a long minute. Mike’s lips keep twitching like he’s about to say something but then stops himself. Will tries very hard to keep his expression unreadable. He’s probably failing; he’s never been good at hiding how he feels. He knows he’s too vulnerable a lot of the time, wears his heart on his sleeve whether he wants to or not. It’s what his mom has always liked about him. It’s also one thing his dad never did. “Did, uh. Did you leave something here yesterday? Or–”

“What?” Mike frowns. “No, I just– just wanted to see if you were busy. Or if you wanted to get some lunch? From the dining hall, we don’t even have to go far if you’ve got stuff to finish.” He stuffs his hands inside the pockets of his jacket and rocks back and forth on his feet. For a second, it seems almost as if he’s nervous, like he had to talk himself up before coming here. Which is ridiculous, because it’s just Will. To Mike, Will is always going to be just Will. So he can’t be nervous.

Still, Mike fiddles with the zipper of his jacket for a moment before continuing: “I know you probably haven’t been able to take a break since you started,” he gestures to the stains on Will’s jeans, “I know how you get when you really start working. So. If you want to, you know, get something to eat. I’m here.”

Will does. Mike knows him too well, knows how he gets when he’s actually focused on something. He wants to get something to eat with Mike. He wants to laugh with him over subpar cafeteria pizza. He wants a lot of other things, too. But in the last twenty-four hours, he’s starting to realize that he can’t always have what he wants. Maybe others can, but not him. Mike Wheeler is his best friend. Will wants him. Will does not always get what he wants. These are the facts.

“Sorry,” he says, and it must come out sharper than he means it to, because Mike’s face falls ever so slightly. “I’m– I already ate,” he lies. It’s an obvious lie at that, and he knows it, and Mike knows it, because Mike looks down again at his stained clothes and messed up hair and the dark circles that no doubt have made residence under his eyes. “Sorry,” Will says again, for good measure. He feels a bit guilty for lying to Mike like this, especially when Mike looks honestly so let down by the idea of Will not wanting to spend one meal with him. He almost feels a bit guilty for other things too, but then again–you can’t really feel guilty for something you never got the chance to do.

“Oh,” Mike replies simply. He shoves his hands back in the pockets of his jacket and shakes his hair out of his eyes. Will swallows. “Um. Would you maybe want some company then? If you’ve got some work to do, maybe we can just–”

“No!” Will says, stepping his entire body into the doorframe like he’s trying to bodily block Mike from entering. This time it definitely comes out a lot harsher than he means to because Mike takes a step back like Will just tried to take a swing at him, and his eyes go wide. “I’m just really busy,” Will bites out, feeling an unpleasant mixture of satisfaction and regret churn in his stomach at the way Mike frowns. Satisfaction, because it’s like he’s proving to himself that he has willpower. Like he isn’t just helpless and lying at Mike Wheeler’s feet, at his mercy, too entirely consumed by the thought of being with him to be able to come back to his own body at all. Regret, because, well. He regrets hurting him like this, lying to him.

But deeper down, it all feels a bit misplaced. You can’t, after all, regret things you never had. And he’s never had Mike. Not really. Not even if Mike lets Will sleep in his bed and lends him his clothes and talks him down from his episodes with his own hand in Will’s. Even if he says exactly the sort of things that make Will’s heart soar through his chest like a sixties cartoon and fill his head with the sort of thoughts that will only hurt him more, in the end. Even then.

“I’ve got a midterm due Friday too,” he says, instead of trying to put any of this into words. Mike is frowning now, looking a bit lost. “And I haven’t started it yet.”

“Oh,” Mike says again. He seems to be a little stuck. “Is– is everything else okay, though? Have you had any more episodes? Like yesterday?”

And God, honestly, fuck Mike Wheeler for worrying about him. The same tight feeling around his heart erupts into being again. “No,” Will says. He’s lying through his teeth. He doesn’t know why he’s not telling Mike about the weirdo in front of his door that he saw last night too. It was probably a freshman too strung-out on party drugs and the stress of his first midterm season. Plus, his head’s been hurting like a bitch since he woke up, but nothing like it had last night. Maybe it’s the caffeine withdrawals. Maybe it’s just everything else. “No, I’m fine, I promise. I just can’t hang out today.”

Mike doesn’t say anything for a good twenty seconds. He’s staring at Will like he’s trying to see through his eyes and straight into his brain, and then Will has to look away, because there’s a good chance Mike might be able to, if he tries hard enough. And then, “okay.” It comes out soft. “I– sorry I interrupted you. You– um. You can go back to your stuff now.”

The tight feeling around Will’s heart loosens a bit as the hopeful expression slips slowly off of Mike’s face. His eyes are wide and round, and he suddenly looks very boyish, like the Mike Wheeler he knew back in elementary and middle school, all big eyes and round face flushed in the apples of his cheeks. It’s almost hilarious in contrast to the dark outfit, the leather jacket, the grown-out slender wave his hair falls in. “It’s okay,” Will says, more genuinely this time, “you didn’t interrupt, I just– I just really can’t hang out today.”

“I know,” says Mike, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet again. His voice is very neutral, and it sounds like he’s trying very hard to keep it that way. “I get it, not everyone can be a Creative Writing major like me and have literally nonexistent midterms–”

This makes Will smile, and seeing it, a wave of relief washes over Mike’s face. “Anyway,” Mike continues, “um. Let me know if you need anything?”

“Yeah, sure Mike,” Will says, trying to keep himself from forcibly slamming the door in Mike’s face. His whole body is buzzing like he just downed four cups of coffee, which is a bit ironic because he’s certain that this sluggish, antsy feeling coating the inside of his skin exists because he hasn’t had a single drop of caffeine in two days. “Thanks.”

When he does close the door, listening for the sounds of Mike’s footsteps retreating, he doesn’t even make it back to his desk before the panic sets in, the reality of what it means to be entirely head over heels for his best friend, living what seems like an unfathomable stretch of time–the rest of his life, even– knowing that Mike Wheeler could never feel that same way about him. It’s the Saturday before Thanksgiving break. It’s past noon. He’s in desperate need of a cup of coffee. Mike Wheeler does not love him the way Will wants him to.

These are the facts.

These grapes, Will decides, are not worth the trouble. They are the bane of his existence, the sole reason for all this anger and frustration constantly coursing through his veins. He’s managing fine until early Monday morning, when around two a.m., the tension builds up so intensely that he snaps his best sketching pencil between three fingers and tosses the pieces into the garbage can without a second thought. He’s in half a mind to stomp his feet and wail and scream like a child throwing a tantrum, except his roommate has actually graced Will with his presence today, sound asleep after wordlessly stumbling into the room around ten last night, so he can’t do any of these things.

Things didn’t used to be this complicated, Will thinks, a bit bitterly, as he scrawls his name and date across the back of his drawing and stuffs it in his case for class later. This was as good as the grapes were going to get. He was going to have to accept, after spending three days tirelessly slaving over them, that this was it. It’s all the fault of these goddamn grapes. This is why he’s so pissed off. The grapes, and maybe, also Mike. 

Mike didn’t stop by on Sunday, which shouldn’t upset Will— because he apparently made it pretty clear, the day before, that there was something wrong and he didn’t want to see Mike— but it does. For some reason he expected Mike to bounce back, show up at his room the next morning to drag him to breakfast, or with a stack of DVDs to play in the student lounge, or just to sit on Will’s bed and talk like they have countless times before. So when the hours slipped by, Will’s frustration grew with each tick of the second hand on the clock, and Mike didn’t show. Well, it was Will’s own fault for being rude, dismissive. For lying to Mike through his teeth. He shouldn’t have been upset.

So why was he?

And, look. Will doesn’t mean to ignore Mike for the rest of the week. He means what he said– it’s midterms season. He’s got an assignment due Monday, and another due Friday, and as of the present, they’re both disasters-in-progress. So if he hears a knock on his door, or a voice calling out “Will? Are you there man?”— it’s not his fault for not answering, okay? He’s busy. He’s distracted. He’s feeling a bit flighty and a bit confused, can’t stop thinking about how apparently his room in this corner of campus feels like home to Mike Wheeler. Confused because Mike just says these things and then he can go around pretending like everything’s fine, can carry on with his day without giving it another thought, but then Will’s left thinking about it for weeks on end.

But under all of that, he’s also angry, and he doesn’t know why. He’s keyed up and raring for a fight the way he hasn’t been in years, not since Mike and El started dating and he spent the entire summer of ‘85 with a sporadic frustration spreading under his skin like an infection no antibiotic could cure. That frustration was channeled in other ways— tearing down Castle Byers stick by fragile stick. Ripping up the photos of the Party that lined the walls, right down the middle where Mike and Will stood next to each other. Letting the pieces of the photos flutter to the moss-covered ground like maybe the jagged edges could take root right there in the middle of the forest. Taking Jonathan’s baseball bat to the hand painted wooden sign and, with each crack of splintering wood under the bat, feeling release rushing through his nerves like a wave breaking against the shore. 

But here, he doesn’t have Castle Byers, he doesn’t have photographs, and he doesn’t have Jonathan’s baseball bat. What he has is his illustration class’s feedback day on their midterm assignments, and his sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled scrawl of images across his concept sheet.

“This is kinda dark,” says the girl sitting next to him on Tuesday morning, but she sounds impressed, not judgmental. “You’re really tapping into something with this one, huh?”

Will looks over to where his concept sheet is splayed out on the desk. They’re working in pairs today—he’s with the blonde girl who sat in front of him for the first two weeks before moving to the back of the classroom with her friend. Her hair is cut choppy and short, ears decorated up and down with silver rings, eyeliner drawn on black and sharp in a way that reminds Will a bit of his mom’s college photos. He can’t remember her name, but she’s nice enough. “Just thought I’d try something new,” he says. Tree roots branch across the paper, colored in with harsh, jagged black swipes and rough angles. Halfway across the page, the sharp juts of their reach turns softer, more sinister, black tentacles reaching across the faded midwest horizon.

The girl hums approvingly, tucking her hair behind her ears and popping her gum. “You’re really talented,” she says, and then gestures to her own, brightly illustrated scene with a laugh. “I should definitely branch out more with my stuff, but it’s hard, you know? To step out of your comfort zone?” She scribbles a few notes down onto their feedback sheet. “I don’t know, I’m always kind of afraid that people will laugh at me if I try something in a different style. Which is kind of ridiculous because who even cares, right?”

“Right,” Will echoes. He’s grateful for her talkativeness—it means he doesn’t have to fill the awkward silence with any words of his own. “I get it. Sometimes— sometimes it feels like people are judging you for a lot of things, but then it turns out they didn’t even notice and it’s all in your head.”

The girl pauses her scribbling and looks up at him. “Yeah,” she says slowly, smiling. “You’re right, I just get stuck in my own head a lot. Maybe I can make it work for me though, the whole tortured artist thing.” She laughs, and then points at the figure in the middle of Will’s drawing. “Is this supposed to be you?”

“Uh, not really,” Will says. And he’s not lying— it wasn’t supposed to be him. But then when he started drawing a person, caught up in the twisting and lurching of the branch-tentacles, running towards the horizon. Well, it wasn’t his fault that he started drawing short brown hair, a plaid shirt. Neatly pressed khakis. A kid, frozen in time years ago. “It’s up for interpretation.”

The girl nods. “Right on,” she says, and then slides her feedback sheet back over to him. “It looks great so far.”

On Friday morning, Will’s up early to drop his midterm project off. He doesn’t have to attend class that day, and he doesn’t have any others scheduled, so he figures he’ll take the day off. Maybe walk down to the pond and feed the ducks. Maybe catch up on some much-needed sleep. Maybe bury himself under a mound of blankets and wallow. He doesn’t know, but the point is, he’s moping. And sulking a bit, even. And yeah, maybe it’s a bit childish of him to keep putting off addressing his problems like this but that’s the thing— nobody’s perfect, and especially not Will fucking Byers.

His plan, however, is derailed immediately when there’s a soft knock at the door, so gentle that Will would have missed it completely if he weren’t already by the door putting his shoes on.

“Who is it?” he calls out, a bit absentmindedly, as he loops his shoelaces through the holes where they slipped out.

“It’s Mike,” comes the reply, and it’s quiet through the wood. Will freezes. “Um. Is it a bad time?”

Will pulls the door open, feeling no small amount of unease building in his gut. Mike Wheeler is standing in front of the door, like he’s done a hundred times before. Except this time he’s holding a McDonald’s bag and a takeout hot drink cup. Will looks at the bag and the cup, and then back up to where Mike is watching him, expression a bit apprehensive, guarded. “Oh,” he says, and then, “hi Mike, what are you doing here– it’s so early–”

“Are you mad at me?” Mike blurts, and then suddenly turns a bit pink, like he’s embarrassed for asking. He tightens his grip on the McDonald’s bag, paper starting to crinkle under his fingers. Will stares, feeling rather caught off-guard. 

“It’s just– you keep saying you’re busy, which is cool, I know you are. But you also haven’t wanted to talk to me lately, and I feel like you’re trying to avoid even just being around me, and I just–” Mike pauses, frowning slightly. His lips are a bit red in some spots, like he’s been biting at them, and even just that thought makes Will feel a bit overwhelmed. “Did I do something? Or did I say something? To upset you, I mean, because I don’t–”

“Mike,” Will interrupts, deciding to put him out of his misery at last, despite the churning, rolling tidal wave of want and fear and dread coming to life inside him. “I’m not mad, I promise. It’s just–”

The words don’t come to him easily. He can feel them all getting kind of stuck and tangled up at the back of his throat when he tries to speak, because he doesn’t even really know what he’s trying to say. He’s never been articulate like Mike has, he’s never known exactly the right thing to say to make someone feel better or to communicate his frustration without getting upset. What he’s trying to say is that he’s sorry, in a way. Sorry for pushing Mike away, sorry for moping around by himself like a stubborn little kid, sorry for taking it out on Mike when he didn’t even do anything wrong. Sorry for, maybe, even just wanting the things he wants in the first place. 

“It’s just been a weird week,” Will finishes. He’s still got his art case slung over one shoulder, one hand on the doorknob in the same position he opened it in. “I– I’m sorry I’ve been a bit distant, but it’s not your fault. You didn’t say anything wrong, I promise.”

This is a half-truth. It’s not Mike’s fault, and he didn’t say anything wrong, objectively speaking. But Will’s realizing that nothing has ever been objective when it comes to Mike. And he didn’t say anything wrong, but it was wrong to Will, wrong to his traitorous brain and heart to say things to Will like it feels like something’s missing without you, when Will is already trying to push down all this want that’s built up inside him.

Mike stares at him for a long moment, impassive, before he must decide that it’s good enough for him and his face breaks out in a huge, relieved grin. “Okay,” he says easily. When Will sees the way Mike’s eyes crinkle at the corners, the way he thrusts the McDonald’s bag and takeout cup into Will’s chest, whatever semblance of a wall Will’s fooled himself into thinking he’s built comes crashing down in a fraction of a second. The bag is still warm, the cup still steaming.

“I just really hate when you’re not talking to me,” Mike is saying, “I can’t stand it.” He pauses, and then adds, “and I brought you breakfast, by the way, since I figured there was no way you’ve eaten already this early in the morning. Um. It’s an egg sandwich. And I also got you coffee, because you looked super tired last time I came by and I know how you get when you’ve got stuff coming up and there was also no way you’ve gotten more than three hours of sleep each night this week, and you also turn into a monster when you’re uncaffeinated and nobody wants to see that–”

This is all a bit much for Will, who’s been stunned into silence at Mike’s sudden verbal onslaught. He gets like this a lot, like once he starts talking he just has to ride it out until it’s all out of him, like he’s not in control of his own tongue anymore. And then again, Mike’s right on every count– he hasn’t eaten, he’s barely slept, and he’s been feeling particularly irritable as of late, so Will stutters out a “wow, thank you,” and accepts the coffee gratefully.

“It’s two sugars with cream,” Mike offers helpfully, as Will takes a sip, “that’s how you like it, right?”

It’s exactly how Will likes it, which makes him feel even more overwhelmed because everyone else thinks he just likes it black– that’s what’s easiest to grab in the dining hall with his other friends, and that’s how his mom drinks it back home so he never bothers to ask her to add milk and sugar to his mug. “Yeah,” he replies, a bit bewildered. “How did you even–”

Mike gives a wave of dismissal, opening up the McDonald’s bag and pulling out two wrapped sandwiches. “You always pour two sugar packets into your coffee at the diner,” he says, rummaging around for a napkin, “and also one of those cream things, sometimes.” He holds out one of the sandwiches. “Um, I didn’t know you were heading out, so I thought maybe we could eat in here if you weren’t busy, but I guess–”

Partially in an attempt to keep Mike from talking any more and saying the sorts of things that make the vicious, roaring thing in Will’s stomach any more excitable, Will shakes his head around a mouthful of hot coffee, swallows, and says– “No! I mean, I was heading out, but just to drop this off, and then I’m free for the day. Um,” he stops, watches the way Mike watches him, so expectantly, and then–partially against his own conscious judgment– blurts out, “do you… want to come with me? We can eat on the way? Or go for a walk after, maybe? Or–”

“Yes,” Mike immediately says, face lighting up so brightly that Will’s stomach drops right out of his body and through all twelve floors of his dorm building. “And do you– do you maybe want to hang out after that, too?”

Will was a half-witted fool, then, to think he ever had the willpower to deny himself this, the simple pleasure that’s seeing Mike smile like he is right now, knowing that it was him who put that smile there. Willpower is a joke, resolution and resolve are words that are entirely missing from his vocabulary. Will has never been able to say no to Mike Wheeler.

“Yeah,” he hears himself say, as if from rather far away. The collar of Mike’s leather jacket is turned up on one side but not the other, causing his hair to get caught in between it and the long curve of his neck. Will feels his fingers twitch, like they’re about to reach out and pull the stray lock of Mike’s hair free even without his consent, and he clutches his coffee tighter. Swallows. Looks away. “That sounds great, Mike. Um. Let’s just head to the Arts building real quick, yeah?”

“Cool,” Mike says, falling into an easy stride beside him. “Do I get to see whatever is in that case?”

“Hell no,” Will says, so insistently that Mike grins, evil and wide across his face, and immediately makes a playful grab for the case, and Will has to keep batting his arms away the entire elevator ride down twelve stories and to the front door.

They eat their sandwiches by the duck pond on east campus, sitting side by side on the stone benches and watching the ducks stick their heads underwater, ruffling their feathers when they come back up. It’s still early, enough so that the sun was only just creeping over the horizon when they left Will’s dorm, and now it just barely reaches above the sparse sprinkling of trees on their Midwest college campus.

Will’s sandwich is good– it’s greasy, lukewarm, and Mike got his with extra cheese, no bacon, like he likes it. Will tries not to think about what that means, Mike knowing his coffee order by heart, without even trying. Knowing his distaste for bacon, ever since he got a stomach bug in fifth grade and threw up his entire Sunday morning breakfast. Just being around Will so much that he’s started to memorize these little things about him like they’re gospel truth. No one else knows how he likes his coffee, Will thinks, as something existing in the gray area between pleased and sour settles into the pits of his stomach. No one else could recite his breakfast meat preferences off the top of their heads.

“So,” Mike says, interrupting his flow of thought. He’s done with his food already, wrapper stained with grease and crumpled up in his hand. “My mom called and asked if you wanted a ride home tomorrow morning. For Thanksgiving.” Will opens his mouth to respond, but then Mike cuts him off with, “and I said yes, of course. Like, I’m not going to make your mom or Jonathan drive here to pick you up when we live, like, a few minutes away from each other.”

Will doesn’t say anything at first, too busy looking at the light smear of ketchup on the side of Mike’s mouth. God, someone give this boy a napkin, or Will’s going to have a stroke by the end of the semester. “That’s okay right?” Mike adds, frowning, at Will’s lack of reply. “I mean, you are going home tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” Will says hurriedly, looking back up to Mike’s eyes, and then around them at the ducks in the pond. One of them is currently preening her feathers, tail stuck up in the air. “I am, I didn’t get a chance to ask my mom yet anyway, so thanks.” He takes another bite, chews, and then says, “what about Lucas and Dustin?”

Mike fidgets with the collar of his jacket. “Lucas has an away game, so he isn’t coming home until Sunday, but he’s taking the bus. And Dustin’s apartment-sitting until Tuesday.”

“So it’s just us,” Will says with a small smile. He means it to be a jibe, maybe a bit teasing, like hey, unlucky me for being stuck in the car with you for two hours, but it comes out a lot more sincere, a bit sharp. A bit like hey, we’ll be together. In a car, for two hours. He frowns at the inflection, pops the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth to cover up the sudden rush of warmth threatening to spread across his face.

“Just us,” Mike echoes. He’s looking down at the stone bench, scraping at the cement filling with one nail.

He has a bit of a faraway expression on his face, and when he looks back up, he starts to say, “Will, I actually- I wanted to tell you something–”

Will sits up straight. There’s a strange movement over Mike’s shoulder that draws his attention away from the cold morning flush brushed across Mike’s cheeks, a familiar flash of light reflecting against round glass. He hisses out “Mike–” and gestures towards the now-familiar figure of a boy with brown hair, thousand-yard stare through the lenses of his glasses, and drab sweater vest attire. He’s standing maybe twenty feet away, silhouette contrasted against the green of the bushes around the pond. “Mike, please tell me you see that guy.”

Mike frowns, turning around and staring right where the boy is, and Will holds his breath, until– “who am I supposed to be looking at?” Mike asks, not turning around. He’s looking right where he should be, but his eyes keep passing over that patch of shrubbery when they should be catching instead. Will’s stomach sinks, heartbeat quickening. Is he actually losing his mind?

“That boy, he’s standing right behind you,” Will presses. The boy in question is, as always, not moving a muscle, not doing anything to indicate that Will has noticed he’s being stalked by a loser in 70s nerd attire. “With the glasses and the sweater. You really don’t see him?”

Mike turns back to Will, concern written plainly all over his face. He crumples his sandwich wrapper even tighter in his palm, and says, “there’s no one there, Will. Is everything okay?”

“I think I’m going crazy,” Will says faintly. He’s feeling a bit dizzy, and his head is still throbbing faintly like it has been all week. Crazy is nothing new for him. He’s done crazy before, knows how it looks on him, like he’s wearing the world’s most humiliating dunce cap. He’s been Zombie Boy before, he’s been the freaky new kid, he’s been Lonnie Byers’ son. “I keep– I keep seeing things, this guy, he’s got dorky glasses and hair and this sweater vest.”

“You’ve seen him before?” Mike presses, ignoring everything Will said about an outfit that he normally would have loved to make fun of. He leans closer to Will and puts his hands on his shoulders, looks into Will’s eyes and scans his face like he’s looking for a sign that the Mind Flayer might be living in his brain and waving to the outside world through Will’s pupils. Realization flashes across Mike’s face and he says, “last weekend in the diner you had an episode out of nowhere, do you think—”

“No,” Will responds immediately, “it’s not like that. I can’t feel him anymore–” and he doesn’t know whether he’s referring to the Mind Flayer or Vecna or whomever, but it’s true. There’s no lingering tugging in his mind, no flashes of visions or inter-dimensional travel. “And,” he pauses, looks up into Mike’s eyes where his gaze is steady on Will, brown eyes wide and unblinking. God, it’s not easy to think when Mike is looking at him like that. Suddenly, this dizzy racing of his pulse doesn’t seem entirely related to the issue at hand anymore. “I definitely haven’t had any more episodes.”

Mike doesn’t let go of his grip on Will’s shoulders. “You’re sure? No migraines? No visions? No nightmares?”

“I said it’s not like that,” Will says, and then he bats Mike’s hands off his shoulders because the warm pressure of his fingers is making it rather hard to focus. “It’s not like when Max was possessed, and it’s not even like when I was possessed, it’s just–”

“But you keep seeing this guy, right?”

“I do,” Will says slowly, “but it’s like he doesn’t see me, somehow. Like, when the Mind Flayer had me, in my visions, it would be interacting with me, talking to me, and then when it finally reached me, touched me–” he breaks off with a sharp breath and stops, closing his eyes. When it touched me, he wants to say, I stood my ground and it wasn’t enough. I tried not being scared and it wasn’t enough. And then it turned into me, and I’ve spent the last few years trying to figure out where it ends and I begin. 

Mike’s hand wanders over to his and he squeezes it lightly, as if to say it’s okay, and Will takes another breath. To his embarrassment, it comes out a bit shaky. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m being–”

“You’re not being anything,” Mike insists, looking up at Will through a smudge of black lashes and furrowed brows. “I can’t imagine it’s an easy thing to talk about.”

Will shrugs. “It’s been so long that sometimes I think I’m being stupid,” he admits, “like it’s too long for me to be using it as a reason to not drink at parties, or to sleep with a light on, you know?”

If any of this surprises Mike, he doesn’t let it show, just squeezes Will’s hand again and nods. “It’s not stupid,” he says, “not at all. But I get it. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but whatever you’re seeing now–”

“I can tell it’s not like that,” Will finishes for him. He closes his eyes again and takes in another breath, focusing on the familiar scents of Mike’s cologne and coffee filling the air around them, like it’s a bubble that only the two of them exist in. “Whoever this is,” he starts again, “he never seems to notice I’m there. I tried talking to him when he showed up near my room, but he didn’t notice or respond. He never even blinks or moves. So I don’t– I don’t think he’s dangerous. He just seems a little… a little lost, maybe?”

When he opens his eyes, Mike’s looking at him with a strange look on his face, mouth slightly parted. “What?” Will says, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.

Mike shakes his head, and then smiles strangely, looking away. “Nothing,” he says, and then, “I just think, sometimes–”

“What,” Will says again, more insistently. “You think what?”

Mike doesn’t respond, just purses his lips slightly, like he’s thinking very hard. “I don’t know who you’re seeing,” he says at last, not answering Will’s question, “but I have a feeling it has to do with Hawkins. Again.”

Will groans aloud, but smiles. He already feels a bit better, this heavy weight of anxiety he’s been carrying around with him for a week already lifted off his heart. “When doesn’t it have to do with Hawkins,” he jibes, and Mike laughs. “Like come on, we’re in college and this shit keeps following us around.”

“I know,” Mike agrees, releasing his hold on Will’s hand and pushing off the stone bench. “I swear the Upside Down is like, obsessed with us or something.”

“It’s so lame,” Will says. He crumples up his sandwich wrapper, drains the last sips of coffee from his cup, and follows Mike over to the trash can by the walkway. “But at least I’m not possessed this time.”

Mike smiles and takes the trash from his hands, tossing it lightly in the bin. “At least there’s that. And hey, even if you are going crazy,” he adds, his smile turning softer, something serious flashing across his face under the casual ease of humor, “we’ll go crazy together. Remember?”

Something light and painfully sweet floods Will’s chest, and his heart starts to feel a bit like it’s floating out of his body. “Right,” he says, flashing back to middle school evenings spent in Mike Wheeler’s basement, decorated with department store rugs and couches and the smell of chocolate chip pancakes on sleepover mornings. It’s all blurred together a bit in the past few years, memories of one slumber party bleeding into the next like watercolors running all over each other on the paper. But Mike is always there. It’s like Will’s got tunnel vision but instead of a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s just his vision narrowed in on Mike Wheeler’s face. He smiles. “Crazy together.”

Will stumbles into the living room of his house around noon the next day to find El already waiting for him at the kitchen table. “Hello,” she says, grinning up at him as he struggles to close the door around his bags. Will notes that she does not get up or offer any help, despite her literal telekinetic powers. “We weren’t expecting you until later today.”

“Hi El,” he says around a grunt, finally slamming the door shut with one foot and dropping his bags on the floor. “Thanks for the help.”

Her grin only widens as she takes in the layer of sweat he got from dragging his bags up the driveway and wrestling with the front door key. She swings her feet back and forth in the chair. It’s a new set, Will notices, ones tall enough that her feet don’t touch the ground. His mom must have bought them after he moved out. “Are mom and Jonathan home?” he asks, making his way over to grab a glass of water. The mid-November chill has nothing on the uphill climb from the cul-de-sac and his tendency to overpack.

El shakes her head, scribbling something down on a stack of papers she has sprawled across the table in front of her. “Mom is at work,” she says, without looking up. She pops the pencil in her mouth as she picks up an eraser– why she doesn’t just put it down, Will doesn’t know– “and Jonathan is at the grocery store.”

“Cool.” Will downs the water in three large gulps, and looks over El’s shoulder at where she’s rapidly writing down a lot of numerical problems that fly right over Will’s head. “What are you working on?”

“Math,” she replies simply, as if this was not obvious.

Will raises an eyebrow and slides into the seat in front of her, peeling one of the bananas sitting in the center of the table. “Well, duh.” Then, “Hey, your hair looks really good.”

El does look up at this, and shoots him a very pleased, genuine smile. Her hair’s grown since Will saw her last, at drop-off day, and it’s gone all the way down to the middle of her back. There’s some sort of intricate braid woven through either side of her hair that Will knows is too fine of handiwork to be her own or their mom’s. He takes a bite out of his banana as she says “thank you,” and reaches a hand up to her head, almost as if she’s checking to make sure the hair is still there. “Max put the braid in it for me.”

Ah, so he was right. “It looks great,” he says, “just never let mom near your hair with a pair of scissors again.”

El grins, tugging at one of the strands falling in front of her face. “My bangs finally grew out,” she says, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, even though they’re the only two people home. “I am never letting her do that again.”

Will laughs in agreement, running his own hand through his hair. It used to sit straight across his brows in the form of blunt-cut bangs for years, but now he just kind of lets it fall as it pleases around his forehead and face, thankful that Hopper had finally wrestled the shears out of his mom’s hand and dropped him off at a barber’s. “Try having them for your whole life,” he agrees, “I’m not used to having my forehead exposed.”

El hums, pleased, and goes back to her math sheet. “They didn’t look that bad,” she says, but she seems to be fighting back a smile. “How is your semester going?”

How is his semester going? That’s a good question. “It’s been interesting,” he responds truthfully, trying and failing to not drop a piece of banana on his jeans. “Um. Been doing a lot of art.”

“Well you are an art student,” El responds in a deadpan, and then squints at a series of strange symbols on her paper that Will is, like, ninety-eight percent sure aren’t part of the English alphabet.

He rolls his eyes. “You’re very funny, you know that? Been spending a lot of time around Max and Steve lately?”

“Max, yes. Steve, not so much. He only comes by to hang out with Jonathan.”

“It’s because Dustin’s away at college.” Will bites off another banana chunk, picks at the little stringy bits stuck between his teeth. “He’s the only one Steve actually cares about.”

“He hangs out with Nancy and Robin,” El points out– (“the only one of us, El”) –“but Max comes over almost every day.”

Will hums noncommittally. “I can see that,” and then, “how’s Hawkins Community?”

El gets a wicked glint in her eye as she pushes her math sheet over to him. “I’m learning a lot of math. I think I like it a lot.”

Will makes a face that he thinks is pretty spot on to an art student’s realization that his sister’s turned into a math geek. “Ew, why,” he says, miming a gagging motion that makes another piece of banana fall onto his jeans, which makes El bark out a laugh in response.

“It is easier than words,” she says simply, pointing at where her answers are written out in careful rows and boxed neatly. “Or pictures,” she adds, “I’m not good with either of those. But math is… math. It’s always the same, no matter who does it.”

Will rolls his eyes again and says, “Well, clearly we aren’t related by blood, because that’s such bullshit.”

“We can’t all be art students.” El scratches her cheek with the tip of the pencil, leaving behind a faint gray line. “Or photography students.”

“I think the math gene got lost on me and Jonathan,” Will admits. “Hey, what’s this symbol mean?”

“That is a summation,” El says, and then she looks at him and her whole face lights up. “Can I teach you math?”

Will would not endure this from anyone but El, and even then, only because he hasn’t seen her in months and is strangely fascinated by her ability to understand numbers in a way that entirely escapes him. “You can try,” he says, and then she scoots her chair over and spends the next half-hour until Jonathan gets home explaining to him things like statistical significance and whatever the hell a Chi-squared test is.

“Is it square or squared–”

“Will, it does not matter, focus–”

Jonathan makes spaghetti for dinner, which comes as a huge relief to Will because he opened the fridge when he got home to see large chunks of discount mystery meat thawing in the front drawer, and he didn’t even want to think about what his mom might have been planning to make with those. “Do we have any bread?” Will asks, rummaging through the grocery bags still lying on the floor. “Or cheese?”

“Only the sandwich kind,” Jonathan replies, grabbing a wooden spoon for the sauce. “And only the sliced ones.”

“I guess it was a long shot,” Will says, “but at least we don’t have to eat the mystery meat.”

Jonathan only smiles at him in response. His hair’s been trimmed, shorter than Will’s seen it in a few years, and he’s wearing a strangely classy sweater and well-fitting jeans. “You look nice,” Will points out.

Jonathan smiles. “I got called into work today because some of my photos got chosen for a magazine. And then– and then me and some people went out to lunch to celebrate.”

Will squints, halfway to the cabinets to grab plates for everyone. “Some people? You only have five friends and two of them are your younger siblings. And all your coworkers are, like, sixty–”

“Some of them are my age!” Jonathan insists. “We just had a whole bunch of interns come in. Plus Nancy was there.”

“Right,” he says, instead of pressing the matter any further. Hopper’s already situated himself at the table, listening good-naturedly to El as she walks him through the current curriculum for a Psychology degree at Hawkins Community College.

“I like statistics,” El is saying, and Hopper’s eyebrows climb continuously closer to his hairline as she talks, “I’m hoping I can take another math class next semester. It’s very interesting.”

“Wow,” Hopper says, sounding genuinely very impressed. “Well, you didn’t get that from me, kid. I’m lousy with numbers. Always have been.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.” El rolls her eyes, but smiles fondly at him, not pointing out that they aren’t related by blood anyway. “I’m in college.”

“Maybe,” Hopper says, but he grins and ruffles a hand through her hair, laughing when she groans and bats his hand away. “But you’re always a kid to me.”

Will sits down next to them, piling spaghetti onto his plate. “Give me a break, I just got back home,” he gripes, but flashes Hopper a grin through a mouthful of pasta.

“Table manners,” Hopper says, without a second glance towards Will or his spaghetti. “Couple of semesters away at college and I swear you kids turn into animals.”

“Not animals,” Will mutters, even as he’s actively shoveling more pasta into his mouth. God, this beats cafeteria noodles and tuna salad sandwiches any day, even if it’s just boxed spaghetti noodles and sauce from a jar. It’s hot, it’s seasoned, and it hasn’t been sitting out for eight hours before being served. “I’m just a growing boy.”

“You stopped growing two years ago,” Joyce says, walking into the room and grabbing a plate, placing a hand casually on Jonathan’s shoulder as she walks by him. “And I’m glad, too, because it was expensive to keep buying you new clothes.”

Will groans. “Can’t a guy just be hungry after coming home for Thanksgiving break? I mean, I thought this entire week was going to be about food anyway. And most of my stuff used to be Jonathan’s,” he adds.

Joyce ignores him. “Hopefully my cooking skills have improved.” She studies her pasta contemplatively. Will thinks about the mystery meat in the fridge and fights back a grimace. “I’m thinking we’ll keep the turkey small this year?”

“And pumpkin pie,” El chimes in, “we have to have pie.”

“Pie is absolutely necessary,” Jonathan agrees. “But I’m partial to apple, so maybe we’ll have to take a vote.” He frowns at Will, who’s slurping noodles into his mouth with a ferocity to rival the Demogorgon. “But you won’t get any if you keep being disgusting.”

“God, let me eat in peace, I just got back –”

The next two days pass by in a comfortably lazy rhythm. El’s classes aren’t over for the holiday until Wednesday afternoon, so she spends most of Sunday sprawled across the floor of Will’s room working through problem set after problem set, and then revising a draft of her essay.

“What classes are you even taking?” Will asks at one point, looking through an assignment that seems to be written entirely in a different language. “All this for a psych degree?”

El nods, still flipping through a homework packet. She’s taken to tucking her pencil behind her ear when she’s not using it, and Will thinks it gives her a very intellectual air that’s beginning to suit her quite a lot. She’s stopped looting his and Jonathan’s closets for clothes– probably a wise choice, considering neither of the Byers boys were known for having cool, fashionable styles in high school– and now whatever she’s wearing seems to be a mix of hand-me-downs from Joyce’s old collection, or various items borrowed from Max and Robin.

Today she’s got on a giant, lumpy sweater and jeans with patches sewn on over the knees. He’s not quite sure whether they’re actually meant to be mending the clothes, or if they’re just there by design. “This is for my Introduction to Statistics class,” she says, and then gestures to a stack of papers where there are paragraphs after paragraphs scrawled in her loopy handwriting, “and this is for Communications.”

“What’s communications,” Will wonders aloud, to which El shrugs and replies, “it’s a lot of writing, and I do not like it.”

There’s a few minutes of silence, during which Will fiddles with the knobs on his stereo and gently wipes away at the layer of dust that’s accumulated on the top from lack of use. He’s running his finger over his music collection, watching his finger come away brown-gray and dirty– AC/DC, Bowie, The Clash, The Cure, and he’s made it all the way down the row to The Smiths before El pipes up with, “How is Mike doing?”

Will jerks his fingers away from the cases and jumps back like he’s been caught with his hand in the metaphorical cookie jar. “Wh- huh?”

El looks at him with a very neutral expression on her face. She doesn’t even raise her eyebrows when she shrugs. “Mike. How is he?”

“Um,” Will says, “he’s. He’s fine. Why?”

El shrugs again, looking back down at her papers. “I have not seen him in a while,” she says simply. He can’t tell what her face looks like. “Not since you left for school. And you see him a lot.”

“Well I wouldn’t say a lot,” Will tries. It’s a lie and they both absolutely know it.

“He’s your best friend,” El says, a bit absently, and then, “do you think this sentence sounds weird? In the late nineteen-sixties, the increase of media propaganda–”

“Well he’s your friend too,” Will cuts her off. “And I would say the rise of media propaganda, maybe?”

El nods, taking the pencil out from behind her ear and scribbling out a line on her paper. “Thanks,” she says. “I don’t like this class very much. And he is my friend, but not my best friend. And you go to school with him and I do not.”

“Well why don’t you ask about Dustin,” Will mutters weakly, “or Lucas, or–”

“Will,” El says pointedly, and then finally does set her pencil and papers down to sit up and look at him. “Why are you being weird?”

“I’m not being weird,” he mumbles, “I’m being normal.”

“No, you’re being weird,” El insists, and then she squints. “Did something happen with you and Mike? Are you not friends anymore?”

“What? No!” Will says, loudly enough that El’s eyebrows shoot up and she leans forward.

“Then what?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles. He looks down at his hands, picks a bit at the skin around his fingernails. God, this is so embarrassing. All the stuff that was happening with Mike seems so far away now that he’s back home, like the diner and the night in Mike’s room and all those times he’s woken up to Mike fast asleep on the floor of his dorm are things that stay safely locked away on campus grounds. Like what happens in Mike Wheeler’s frat room at two-thirty a.m. stays in Mike Wheeler’s frat room. “We’re still friends.”

“Then why are you being weird about Mike? Did he upset you? Did you have a fight?”

“No, he didn’t upset me, El,” he says, fiddling with his hands some more. He reaches over to dust off the spine of Blondie’s Eat to the Beat. “Everything’s fine, we’re still best friends.”

“Best friends,” El repeats, but her eyes have narrowed a bit. With her hair falling over her shoulders and a steely determination in her eye, she reminds Will a bit of their mother. Which wow, that’s scary. “You say that like it is a bad thing.”

“It’s obviously a good thing, El.” It comes out a bit sharper than he intends it to, and El frowns at him. “Can we please drop this now?”

“Sorry,” El says, and she shrinks back a bit into the spot she was sitting in before, from where she had slowly begun to inch towards Will’s spot on his bed. “Is everything else okay?”

“Everything’s great,” he says glumly, and wow, even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying.

El studies him for a long moment, stare unblinking and a bit unnerving. She’s got this strange ability to just stare at him for what seems like minutes on end without blinking, and it reminds him a bit of the reptiles he sees behind glass windows at the zoo. “You can tell me things, you know,” she says at last, softly, and the intensity with which she says it makes Will blink. “I like when we talk.”

“I like when we talk too, El,” he says honestly. “You’re my sister. I tell you things I don’t want to even tell Jonathan sometimes,” he adds, which makes her laugh because it’s true. There are things Jonathan doesn’t understand, sometimes, like why grilled cheese sandwiches are better sliced into triangles than rectangles, or why they get the split tubs of chocolate-vanilla ice cream instead of buying them separately– Will takes the chocolate half, and El takes vanilla– or why it’s more fun to steal someone else’s clothing than wearing your own.

Even more than that, El gets the whole Upside Down thing in a way Jonathan never will, no matter how hard he tries to be there for them—what it’s like to have thoughts and feelings in your head that aren’t always your own, visions you don’t want to see. They’ve had shared nightmares before, found each other getting up for a glass of water at the same time, wide-eyed and sweaty. “But– I don’t know-”

“It’s okay if you don’t know,” El offers. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and fidgets with a thread coming loose from one of the patches of bright fabric covering her knees. “I’m not so good with words either. It can be hard to figure out what to say.”

Will feels his mouth tilting downwards in an almost-frown. “Yeah,” he agrees, and then, thinking about everything he feels when Mike so much as just looks at him, says, “I just don’t even know where to start.”

El hums softly. She clambers up onto the bed next to him and plucks the Blondie album out of his hands, seemingly uncaring of the dust smudging across her fingers. “You can try saying it, if you would like. Max says that sometimes starting from the beginning and talking helps, even if it doesn’t make sense.” She blows the rest of the dust off the cover and hands it back to him, resting a placating arm on his back, right between his shoulder blades. “Or you don’t have to say anything if you do not want to. That’s okay too.”

Will feels himself tearing up a bit, which is ridiculous, because they haven’t even started talking about anything important, or actually emotional. She’s just sitting here and comforting him for something that he hasn’t even said. This is so ridiculous. And yet– “Thank you,” he says, a bit shakily, “I– maybe sometime later. If that’s okay.”

“Of course,” El says easily and slides off the bed, landing in a neat crouch on the floor. She looks at him again, and there’s something a bit too knowing in her expression for his liking. “You know I love you, right?”

He grins back at her, swiping the heel of his hand over his eyes, and takes a deep breath. There will be no crying today. “I love you too,” he says, and then, “don’t you have an essay to be working on?”

“Don’t remind me,” El groans, and leans over to turn his stereo on.

Will intends to spend Tuesday morning much like he did the previous two: lying around in bed in his pajamas until the clock by his bed has spun into a truly ungodly early afternoon hour, and his mom comes in to check on him because she’s begun to get worried that something’s wrong. And then he’ll say, “I’m fine, mom, just recovering from school,” and urge her out the door, just to burrow back into his blankets and fall asleep until it’s really too ridiculous of an hour to stay in bed any longer.

“Like I said, college is turning you kids into animals,” Hopper remarked the first morning, when Will stumbled, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen at two in the afternoon to pour himself a rather pathetic-looking bowl of cereal. “Your mom and I have been up since seven.”

“Sure,” Will mumbled, dousing his Cheerios in milk and trying very hard not to spill any on the counters. “But how many cigarettes have you gone through already today?”

“Oh, so he’s got jokes now,” Hopper teased, swatting him playfully with the newspaper as he walked by. “You’re not as funny as you think, you know that?”

But today, of course, fate seems to have other plans for Will, plans that don’t include sleeping away the lingering ache in his temporal lobe, or closing his eyes and slipping back into a series of feverish half-dreams that include scenes like Mike running across town to his house in a mid-November downpour and saying Will, I’ve realized something, the way I feel about you–

The shrill sound of the telephone ringing interrupts today’s half-dream, and just as Will thinks he can slide back under the lull of sleep, his mom is rapping sharply on his door. “Will,” she calls, and he blinks, “are you awake?”

“I am now,” he grumbles, rubbing his eyes heavily with both hands. “What time is it?”

She comes through the door, pulling the phone with her as far as it’ll go, waggling it in the air with the mouthpiece covered. “It’s Mike,” she says, and Will’s stomach undergoes a simultaneous leap and squeezing motion inside his torso. Today’s half-dream had been particularly enjoyable, and while it’s slipping out of his reach already, he faintly remembers a drink-flushed Mike on a couch during a party, saying, this is Will, he’s my best friend.

“What?” he asks, still feeling incredibly out of it. “What time is it?” he says again, “and what does Mike want?”

Joyce just shrugs, then looks over her shoulder in a moment of brief alarm. “I don’t know, but could you please take the phone, honey, the coffee pot just started smoking out the back.”

Will almost trips over his sheets getting to the hallway, trying his hardest to keep his eyes open when they keep closing. “Mike?” he murmurs into the mouthpiece, “is everything okay?”

“Will!” Mike shouts through the phone, and Will immediately winces and pulls the phone away from his ear. “Is that you?”

“Obviously it’s me,” he says, failing to keep the irritation out of his voice. But– “is everything okay?” he asks, again, because why on Earth would Mike Wheeler be calling his house before the sun’s fully over the horizon unless something’s wrong.

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine,” Mike dismisses, quieter now. His voice sounds very tinny and far away through the phone. “Listen, I need you to meet me somewhere.”

“What?” Look, Will’s vocabulary is limited on a good day, after coffee and getting actual food in his system, so he’s definitely incoherent at best right now. “Where? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain everything,” Mike says, “but meet me by Castle Byers in twenty minutes, okay?”

“Whoa, whoa–” Will rubs at his eyes again, and yawns noisily into the phone. “Can I at least drink my coffee first?”

Mike makes a contemplative noise through the receiver. “Normally I wouldn’t allow it, but be honest with me– are your eyes actually open right now?”

“No,” Will admits, leaning against the wall and staring into the pitch-blackness of the back of his eyelids. He tries opening them again, to no avail. “I hate that you know me so well. Coffee first,” he says again.

Mike sighs. “Coffee first,” he agrees at last, “but meet me there in an hour, okay?”

“Okay,” Will says weakly, but Mike’s already hung up.

When Will stumbles into the woods an hour later, he finds Mike standing in the clearing and El already standing next to him, which makes something a bit unpleasantly sour start to rise up in his throat, against his will. “Oh,” he says, still blinking away the last vestiges of sleep from the insides of his eyes. He looks back and forth between Mike and El, who’s bundled up in Will’s old fall coat that used to be Jonathan’s, before that. “El, did he call you too?”

“No,” she says simply, and crosses her arms. “I was with him this morning.”

Will blinks, once. “You were with him,” he echoes, and it comes out a bit flat in all the wrong places. It’s stupid to get jealous, he knows, or to feel whatever it is he’s feeling as he looks at his sister and best friend standing in front of him. He’s done this already, danced this dance, whatever; he knows by heart the ugly green thing that roared to life inside of him and stayed alive the entire time Mike and El were together. And it’s honestly so stupid, he’s not going to do this again, not going to put himself through it again when he knows exactly what it’s like.

And yet— is that why El was asking about him? Is that why she was so insistent that he was being weird? Was it because she was trying to gauge whether to get back together with him? God, this is so stupid. He’s so stupid. Just because Mike let him sleep in his bed and brought him coffee the way he likes doesn’t mean—

“We ran into each other at the pumpkin patch at around 7 this morning,” El explains, and, okay, that sentence is actually so out of the ordinary that it makes the gears turning at top speed inside of Will’s head grind to a scraping halt. 

He frowns. “What? Why were you at the pumpkin patch? And what were you,” he points at Mike, “doing awake and out of the house before 10?”

Mike dismisses him with a wave of one hand. “My mom and Holly wanted a centerpiece for dinner and staying home meant getting roped into political talk with my dad,” he says, “but that’s not important—“

“El, why were you at the pumpkin patch,” Will interrupts, because if they were having a reunited lovers’ tryst of sorts then sure, a field full of autumn squash that’s being picked over by rabid Midwestern women preparing for a fall holiday isn’t the most romantic place Will can think of. Not as romantic as, say, by the lake. Or up on the quarry. Or a picnic on the roof. Or Mike climbing through his bedroom window and saying Will, I need to tell you something I’ve waited too long to say—

“I wanted to make pie,” El is saying, and Will blinks again. “The pumpkins are discounted now because it’s the end of harvest season.”

Will does recall El saying something about pumpkin pie at the dinner table a few days ago, but he had been too busy trying to not spill any more sauce on himself to really pay attention. “Oh,” he says instead, and then, “okay, what’s the big problem then?”

At this, El sighs and rolls her eyes, a heavy, bereaved sigh that instantly puts Will on guard because nothing Mike could say to follow that sigh could possibly be good. Mike, on the other hand, grins, wide and toothy from ear to ear. He spreads his hands out and announces, “There’s something wrong with the pumpkins!”

“I told him it’s not a big deal,” El mutters, and maybe it’s just too early for Will or maybe all of his brains have leaked out through his ears at the sight of Mike bundled up in a big sweater and jacket and the sort of hat that has a little yarn pom-pom on the top with his cheeks flushed red from the chill. “He wouldn’t listen to me! He kept insisting there was something wrong.”

“What?” Will’s been saying what? a lot in the last hour. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s the big deal with pumpkins?”

“You don’t get it,” Mike says, like he’s gearing up for the big reveal in any action-horror movie ever. “El could see it and I couldn’t!”

“El could see the pumpkins and you couldn’t?”

Now Mike rolls his eyes, which is honestly more annoying than anything else because he’s giving Will a lot more credit than he probably deserves at being able to decipher whatever the hell is coming out of Mike Wheeler’s mouth. To be fair, he’s usually good at it. He’s just having an off day today. The pom-pom hat is really distracting, okay? “No,” he says, adjusting the hat on his head where it’s begun to slide up. His hair juts out from underneath in black tufts, so black that they almost look blue in the weak morning light. “She— ok El, do you just want to explain?”

“There’s nothing to explain,” she starts, but immediately goes on anyway. “I told Mike maybe we should just go to the grocery store and buy the pumpkin in a can because the ones in the field looked like they were going bad. And then he said—”

“—and then I said what the hell are you talking about, these are gorgeous and also fifty percent off, lemme get my mom and Holly to choose one of these— ” Mike cuts in, despite himself, and El lets out another sigh like she’s shifting the weight of the entire world on her shoulders. Will looks back and forth between them, watches the practiced ease with which they pass off words to one another, as easily as if they were tossing a ball back and forth in the yard. He frowns. “And then,” Mike continues, “El said, no, these are rotting, don’t you see the black goo all over them?”

“It was very gross black goo,” El adds helpfully, throwing her hair back over her shoulders where it gets blown into her face by a gust of wind.

“But that’s the thing,” Mike says, much too gleefully for eight-thirty in the morning on Thanksgiving break, “I couldn’t see the goo!”

“The goo,” Will repeats, a bit listlessly. “I don’t follow.”

“It’s like back in ‘84,” Mike chimes in, with all the air of an elderly gentleman recounting the good ol’ days of yore, “when the Hive Mind was growing and making the tunnels and El said Hopper got called in one day to investigate this black goo growing on all the pumpkin patches.”

El purses her lips. She looks a bit wary. “It was gross when he told me about it,” she says casually, “but apparently it helped him figure out where the tunnels were. He said he followed the rot.”

Will is still mostly not following, but— “You think it’s like the ghost,” he says, turning to Mike, realization dawning slowly upon him, and Mike’s face lights up.

“Exactly!” he exclaims, clapping his hands together. “El can see the goo, I can’t. You’re seeing people, I’m not.”

“You’re seeing people?” El turns to him, suddenly sounding very interested. “Like, going on dates?”

“What?” Will splutters, “no!” He very pointedly does not look in Mike’s direction. “Mike thinks I’m seeing people but, like, a ghost. As in, I’m hallucinating someone.”

El’s face goes back to normal, and she says “oh,” a bit disappointedly, as if having hallucinations of the loser nerd from The Breakfast Club is more normal than Will getting asked out for a coffee by the cute guy in his Composition class. Not that he’s really, you know. Brought that whole guy thing up yet. And he guesses that in the grand scheme of all things Will Byers, it actually probably is more normal for him to be slowly losing his mind and plunging into the depths of madness and despair than worry about things like what color makes his eyes pop or should he kiss someone on the first date or wait until the second.

“Anyways,” Mike plunders on, blissfully ignorant of whatever’s going on in Will’s head. He looks a bit more pink than before. Will tries to not think about it. “I’d take you back and show you but it got really busy as we left. I had to call you from a phone booth because I couldn’t wait until we got home.”

“Should people be eating the pumpkins if there’s Upside Down goo all over them?” Will’s not really raring for a repeat of the Billy Hargrove Mind Flayer Army situation here, okay?

“It will be fine,” El says, “nothing felt weird about it. Plus, I’m mostly sure that the goo doesn’t actually exist.”

Whatever that means. 

“Right,” Will says, partially out of actual agreement, but mostly because if there’s anything he’s learned after El moved in with them it’s to just roll with whatever she says and then decipher it later. He pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “It doesn’t exist. And nothing felt weird.”

El tilts her head at him, surveying. “Did you feel anything? You know, in your head?”

He thinks she’s referring to his Vecna/Mind Flayer sixth-sense, because despite all of their shared supernatural dimension infiltration trauma, her perception of the Upside Down has always existed in a slightly different realm than his own. He’s pretty sure she only has a vague concept of what it means for him to sense something in the way he does, versus the way she does. “Um,” he says, “no, not really.”

“And you’re seeing people? Ghost-people? Not relationship-people?”

Will chances a glance over to Mike who, for some reason, has developed a very curiously blank expression on his face, as if they’re discussing the stats for the next World Series instead of skirting around the topic of Will’s love life. Which is kind of pointless because his entire sorry excuse for a love life is standing just three feet away from him. “Definitely not relationship-people,” he confirms, still looking right at Mike, who holds his stare for a few more seconds before shrugging minutely, almost indecipherably so, as if to say that’s a shame. Not that it means anything. “But yes to the ghost-people. But I don’t feel anything. In my head, I mean.”

El nods, as if this confirms something she’s been thinking for a long time. “It’s probably not a big deal, then. But maybe we should go back later. To see.”

“Dustin comes back today,” Mike adds. He nudges at a rock with the toe of his Converse, digging it out of the frost-hardened ground with a small grunt. “And Lucas is back already. We can ask them to come with us.”

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled,” Will deadpans, because he hasn’t seen Dustin in a couple weeks but it doesn’t take a genius to know that pumpkin-goo-hunting is probably not how he wants to spend his first day back from apartment-sitting.

“Exactly,” Mike chirps, and then the cheerful look on his face falters. “Uh, that was all I had to say, really, so do you guys want to meet back here, at say, 8?”

“Wait. Actually, I have to finish my essay,” El says, but she doesn’t sound too upset about it. “I forgot about it earlier and I have classes tomorrow morning.” She shrugs, wholly half-heartedly, and shoots Will a look that he can’t quite figure out. “But you guys should go, and if you get attacked by a ghost-person, scream really loudly and I will probably hear you.”

“That’s reassuring,” Mike says, and then he takes a step back and says, “well, I should probably–”

“You should stay for breakfast,” El says suddenly, and hm, okay. Will had said that thing, about not being jealous anymore, earlier, but at El’s sudden insistence Mike hangs around, the vicious, clawed, fanged thing in his chest stirs, albeit a bit sleepily. “On Tuesdays, Jonathan makes potatoes. He’s always in a good mood because Nancy works in the office that day.”

Will thinks about Mike taking off his knit yarn cap and jacket in the entrance to their house, maybe shaking his hair out from where it’s definitely stuck to his head a bit, thinks about watching the red flush fade from his nose and cheeks as he warms up. And then, elation turning a bit bitter in his throat, he thinks about him and El cozying up together over a cup of hot cocoa, maybe El saying, “Do you want to do something later, Mike? Just us two?” and without even meaning to, he says, “um, actually–”

Both of them turn to look at him, and the excited look slips right off Mike’s face. “Do– do you not want me to?” he says, and he looks so genuinely disappointed that Will’s stomach swoops. And then he remembers that only a few days ago, Mike thought he was upset with him, and didn’t want to hang out with him anymore, for some reason, and then he immediately decides to glue his mouth shut for the rest of his life lest his foot keep finding a way inside it.

“Sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to say that. You should come, Jonathan makes great potatoes.”

El is also looking at him strangely, but after a few seconds she turns away. “They’re very good,” she agrees, and Mike grins.

“Okay,” he says, without even a second of hesitation. He throws one arm around Will’s shoulders, knocking him off balance with the full force of his bodily exuberance, and Will teeters on his two feet, instinctively wrapping an arm around Mike’s back to steady himself. “I’ll just call my mom and let her know when we get to yours, if that’s cool.”

“That’s cool,” Will echoes. Mike must using a different body wash than usual, now that he’s at home, and he smells good. Really good. Like vanilla, or something. It must be Nancy’s. Will’s brain feels a bit fuzzy.

“Cool,” Mike says again, looking down at him. He nods at El. “Come on, let’s go.”

El shakes her head but lets out a small smile. “You both are weird,” she says, “I should have said yes when Max asked me to go to California with her for Thanksgiving. She leaves today. Is it too late to catch a flight?”

“You love us,” Will says, leaning a bit into the weight of Mike’s chest under his head as he allows himself to be pulled along the dirt path back to their house.

El doesn’t say anything to that, but she does give him that strange, unreadable look again. If she asks him about it later, Will can always just say he was blushing from the cold.

“You are being weird,” El hisses at him later, as Mike excuses himself to use the bathroom and wash his hands. “I told you the other day you were being weird about Mike, and now I’m right.”

“I’m not being weird,” Will tries, but it’s a futile effort. He is being weird, and they both know it, because accidentally protesting when your sister asks your best friend to come over for breakfast because you think they spent the morning making out over a pile of haunted pumpkins is kind of weird. “Okay, I’m maybe being a little weird,” he admits, as El shoots him a very Joyce look. “But I promise I didn’t mean to.”

She frowns at him, sliding a cup of orange juice across the table and lowering her voice, even though Jonathan isn’t in the kitchen anymore. “What did you mean then?”

“I– I don’t know–” Will stammers, “I just–”

“You didn’t want him to come for breakfast?”

“No, no I did– I mean I still do want him here–”

“But then what? Why are you acting like you don’t like him anymore?”

The problem, Will thinks faintly, watching El’s eyes narrow suspiciously the longer she looks at him, is that he does like Mike. Too much. He feels more than a liking for him, too. And probably one second too late, he remembers that he’s entirely too expressive for his own good and there’s probably some of that written all over his entire face right now, because El’s starting to get a very keen expression on her face. Her eyebrows climb steadily towards her hairline, and she starts to say “Will–”

“I think–I’m gay,” Will blurts out, apropos of absolutely nothing, because the words I think I’m in love with Mike were forming dangerously close to the tip of his tongue, and his brain tried to do some rapid-fire damage control by divulging the lesser of his two giant, world-stopping secrets. Which failed, clearly. And then he immediately clamps his mouth shut as El’s mouth drops slightly open. Fuck, what the fuck? What was that thing he was saying, about gluing his mouth shut so he wouldn’t keep putting his foot in it?  “I mean. Um.”

“Okay,” El says, after a moment, closing her mouth and frowning slightly, “but what does that have to do with you not liking Mike?”

“I don’t not like Mike,” Will says weakly, resolutely refusing to make eye contact. “And. Uh. Aren’t you going to say anything?”

El blinks. “About what?”

“That I think I’m gay. I mean, I know I am,” Will adds, voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m definitely gay. I. Um. I like men. Guys.”

“Okay,” El says again, and she’s starting to sound a bit confused. “That is okay. Do you want me to say anything about it?”

Will stares. Honestly, the defining feature of his crisis of sexuality wasn’t that he thought his sister— who had been kind of created in a lab and trained to see into alternate dimensions, manipulate things with her mind, and enter others’ consciousness— would be grossed out by him or find him unnatural or whatever. But still, it’s a bit startling, after spending your entire adolescence hearing Troy Walsh—and James Dante and even a certain Lonnie Byers—call you the sorts of names that make your heart drop out of the bottom of your stomach and blood rush through your ears. It’s weird to hear someone just. Not care. Especially one of the someones that are the closest to him.

“Not really,” Will says, and he feels a sudden rush of relief run through his body, like stepping into a warm bath after coming in from the cold. Something in his chest feels tens of pounds lighter. “I— I just thought you’d be surprised, or something, at least. I don’t know.”

El hums thoughtfully, taking a sip of her juice. And, after a moment, “Well, Max says college is when people start to experiment sexually, so I guess it makes sense,” she says, so matter-of-factly that Will chokes on his orange juice.

“I’m– I’m not experimenting,” he stammers, wiping futilely at the juice spilled on the table and dribbling down his chin. “And I’m– I’m definitely not experimenting sexually— can we actually not talk about this anymore?”

“Experimenting sexually or you liking boys?” El starts, which is when Mike comes out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans. Will shoots El a wide-eyed look, begging her silently to not say anything, and thank God for her magical powers of perception because she immediately mimes zipping her lips shut, and smiles.

“Hey guys,” Mike is saying, “you ran out of hand soap so I took another bottle out, if that’s okay. I still remembered where you kept the spares.”

“That’s good, thank you,” El says, but she’s still looking at Will. There’s something very fond in her expression.

“Yeah, thanks,” Will mumbles, looking away from El’s suddenly very intense gaze and down at the table.

Mike looks back and forth between them, to Will and then El and then back to Will again. His hair, true enough, is rumpled where his hat was sitting on it, and there’s the remnants of a cold flush across the bridge of his nose. His lips look very pink. Mike catches Will looking at him and frowns. “Did— did I miss something? Did you guys say something when I was gone?”

Will’s about to open his mouth and tell Mike to shut up and go get some food, but he isn’t sure that it won’t come out as something else: I think I’m really really in love with you, can I please kiss you breathless over this kitchen table we’ve owned for my entire life, where we’ve eaten so many bowls of cereal and pancakes and chicken noodle soup together, and done our homework after school and traded Halloween candy, can I hold your face in my hands to take the cold out of your skin and kiss the flush off your cheeks and then can we eat scrambled eggs and breakfast potatoes after, so he’s very grateful that El beats him to it, because holy shit.

“No,” she says, lightning fast, and then stands up. “You grab plates, I will serve.”

Jonathan left twenty minutes ago but he left them all plenty of food on the stove, kept warm with the lids still on the pots. El scoops eggs and potatoes onto a plate Mike hands her, and Will watches them move in sync, something a bit somber tugging at his heart. It’s not the roaring green-eyed monster from earlier. It’s not really anything that’s alive, anymore, like telling El the smaller half of his biggest secret was enough to keep the jealousy at bay for the rest of his life, some kind of implicit trust come to life between them even though he hasn’t said the words he was actually thinking— it’s just a bit bittersweet, knowing that he’ll never have with Mike what they had.

Unlike El, he’ll never know what it’s like to have the full force of Mike’s attention on him, or to feel the warm, steady weight of Mike’s palm in his hand, or to be able to kiss him hello and goodbye and for every hour in between. He’s stuck with all these half-memories, like knowing what Mike smells like fresh out of the communal showers, or seeing him come awake with rumpled bed head and gross little crusts in his eyes, but not being able to do anything about either of these but watch from afar. And maybe it’s a little unfair of him to be jealous of his little sister in this new way—not jealous of what he thinks she’s going to try and start up again but just jealous of all she got to have and he didn’t, even if it’s gone now— but he thinks he’s earned the right to stew silently from a distance.

“Wait, Will doesn’t like bacon, remember,” Mike is saying to El, who’s about to put two strips from the pan onto Will’s plate.

“Right,” El says, and then turns around when Will’s plate is full. “Sorry, I always think it’s the sausage you don’t like.”

Will’s pouring himself more coffee from the pot when she says this. “It’s okay,” he says, and then, “do you want any?” He holds the coffee pot up and El wrinkles her nose.

“Ew, no.”

Will shrugs, sits back down at the table next to Mike, who’s already shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth with a rather impressive voracity. “These are good,” he remarks, stabbing another piece of potato with his fork. “When did Jonathan get so good at cooking?”

Will pours ketchup over his own plate, and takes a bite. “He’s always been good. You just never really got a chance to taste it. It was always my mom cooking for us. Or, like, heating up microwave dinners.”

“Huh,” Mike says, watching Will take a sip of his coffee. Joyce got a new coffee machine the other day and it makes it strong, and he’s not really a fan of his coffee black but it’s hot and knocks the last lingering traces of sleep right out of his brain. And he’s been missing out on his caffeine kick ever since he got back from his sporadic midterm work craze, so he’s not complaining. Much.

He must be making a bit of a weird face either way because Mike shoots him a strange look, and then, after a moment, stands up so quickly that the legs of his chair scrape loudly against the wood of the floor and Will flinches back hard enough to almost splash hot coffee all over himself.

“Hey, what’s wrong–” and then, when Mike starts rooting through the cabinets and opening the fridge, “–do you need something? Mike, I can get it for you–”

“Here,” Mike says, sitting back down and sliding two items gently across in front of Will, who stares, a bit dumbfounded. It’s a small carton of milk and a box of sugar. The good sugar, like the kind El likes to use for baking. Will didn’t even know where they kept this in the house.

“What–” he starts, which is intelligent, he knows, and then, “how did you even know where to find this?”

Mike already has another spoon of food in his mouth, so he just shrugs. “I don’t know, that’s where it seemed like it would be,” he says, after swallowing, and then pauses. “I mean. That’s how you prefer it, right?”

El is watching them both very carefully from across the table, and she’s giving Will that look again, the one she was giving him right before he went and blurted out that he was super into dudes, and he’s not exactly sure what’s going to come out of his mouth this time if she keeps looking at him like that, so he looks carefully down at his mug and stirs in milk and sugar until it’s the perfect shade of light brown.

“No, you’re right,” he says, and for some reason it comes out a lot softer and quieter than he intends to. He can feel El’s stare burning into the side of his head, but he still doesn’t look up. “Thanks, Mike.”

He hears a sharp inhale, and when he does look up, El’s mouth is twitching like she’s trying very hard not to laugh. “Oh,” she says, “I see,” and then she makes eye contact with Will and promptly goes very still. “I mean. Sorry. Never mind.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up, Will thinks very loudly in his head, in case El’s actually been properly psychic all along and was listening to his internal monologue earlier, the one about wanting to press Mike up against the kitchen table and kiss him senseless. Or whatever. Shut up, please shut up.

“Sorry,” El says again, but smiles for real this time, which makes Will think that maybe she actually really is psychic, and then he feels his entire face get warm like it actually caught on fire. Shut up, he thinks, one more time for good measure. Mike’s knee bumps his against the table and he feels his face get warm all over again.

“Hm,” El says.

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight,” Lucas says slowly, dusting a stray leaf off the sleeve of his jacket and frowning. “You called us here, smack-dab in the middle of a week’s break after midterms season, at eight o’clock at night, because you think there’s something wrong with the pumpkins.”

“Don’t forget the part where he said Will’s being haunted by Urkel’s ghost,” Dustin adds, entirely unhelpfully, as he digs around in his bag. “You idiots realize I just got done apartment-sitting for two weeks, right? I was supposed to spend tonight in bed with my girls KFC and Domino’s on each arm, rejoicing in the fact that I’m no longer breathing in the hair of four separate long-haired cats and the scent of stale potpourri.”

“I love cats,” Will supplies, as if this is supposed to take away at all from the fact that Dustin spent two weeks administering suppositories to Mrs. Clarence’s Maine Coons and coming away with a face full of scratches for his efforts. After that, even he wouldn’t like cats much anymore. “They’re cute.”

“Well, Mews was cute before he got eaten,” Dustin says, a bit gloomily, and Will is itching to point out that maybe Mews wouldn’t have gotten eaten if Dustin hadn’t tried to keep a secret Demodog in his house and lied to them about it. And then again, maybe if Will hadn’t coughed up said Demodog into his bathroom sink, the whole situation could have been avoided entirely, so he keeps his mouth shut. What had Dustin named it? Something really stupid, like Bart. “But cuteness factor aside, you should’ve seen the hairballs he hacked up. Nasty stuff.”

Mike ignores both of them and says to Lucas, “Lucas, you’re an econ major and we live together, I know for a fact your midterms were total bullshit. It was just a couple hours of you looking over flashcards— something something revenue, equity, and then you were off shotgunning beers in the basement.”

Lucas flashes him a bright, toothy grin, almost white enough to see even in the hazy dark of the early nighttime woods. “You got me there,” he agrees, and then, “and, man, what do you mean live together, I get to see you just about as often as your parents do,” and then he shoots Will a look that’s a bit hard to discern. “You’re always over at his,” he says, “the only time I got to see you in the past month was when you spent all of last week sulking in your room because you and Will had a fight–”

“I was not sulking,” Mike hisses, crossing his arms and turning a bit pink, at the same time Will starts to say, “We didn’t have a fight–”

“I don’t pretend to understand your quarrels,” Lucas interrupts, shouldering his own bag, as Dustin hands him a flashlight. “But whenever you guys have a fight, Mike, you get all mopey and upset about it. Have your little lovers’ spats, I don’t care,” and then Will opens his mouth to say something about they’re not lovers’ spats, but maybe he kind of wants them to be, and he doesn’t trust his mouth to not say that if he opens it. And then Lucas is flicking the flashlight on and filling their little circle in the woods with a bright, fluorescent glow. “Now are we going ghost hunting or not?”

In the flashlight’s radius, Will can see that Dustin’s got on this hideous orange puffer jacket situation that makes him immediately squint away. “What?” Dustin says, noticing Will looking. “It’s easy to spot me in this, in case I get trapped somewhere and need rescuing.”

“Or you’ll just blend in with all the haunted pumpkins,” Lucas snickers, to which Dustin, despite his skepticism, actually looks a bit nervous.

“They’re not haunted,” Mike insists. He’s wearing his same winter jacket from earlier that morning, sans pom pom hat, which is a bit of a shame because Will thinks he’s probably the only person he knows who could pull it off. Free of its confines, his hair is spilling out around his head and the neck of his jacket, tousled a bit by the wind and walking across the rough terrain. He’s gripping a torch in one hand but it’s unlit, and he’s got a walkie talkie held tightly in the other, matching the ones they’ve all got tucked into their own jackets. “And it’s not ghost hunting,” he adds, hopping awkwardly over a rock. “I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with the pumpkins, you’ll totally see when we get there.”

“Will, are you in on this?” Dustin asks him. Will can hear the steady thump thump of Dustin’s hiking bag hitting his back as he walks. “What the hell does he mean, you’re hallucinating? Because Mike didn’t sound nearly as concerned as he should have about it over the phone. So if this is some sort of prank, I’m telling you guys now that I’m so over it.”

“It’s not a prank,” Will promises, trying his hardest to not trip over a stray tree root. “But I’d also be lying if I said I knew what he’s planning.”

“We’re going to scope out the pumpkins,” Mike says again, somehow already a good thirty feet ahead of the rest of them. Will blames the fact that Mike’s legs are long enough for him to climb like a tree. “I already told you guys.”

“Whatever the hell that means,” Lucas grumbles. “Pumpkins this, pumpkins that, I swear I haven’t heard him this excited about something since he told me he and Will were going to college together. Which, mind you, super stung because the two of us also got in,” he gestures to Dustin, who nods supportively, “and then he said he wanted to rush with me and he still didn’t sound that pumped.”

“Lucas, please shut up,” Mike shouts, and Will can’t see Mike’s face but he can feel his own getting a bit warm, even in the crisp chill of the air.

“Oh,” he says, a bit quietly, definitely too quietly for Mike to hear. He holds a hand up to his cheek where, sure enough, it’s burning a hot hole through the fabric of his gloves. “You were that excited about going to college with me?”

“I’d like to reiterate that we all go to school together, and I literally live in the same building as him and don’t see him nearly as often as you do,” Lucas adds, “so if we’re playing the favorites game here then I’m gonna chime in and say El’s my favorite.”

“What about me!” Dustin scowls hard enough for Will to see it, even though half his face is hidden in shadow. “I thought we were best friends, Lucas, I honestly can’t believe this betrayal–”

“It’s because El’s never stolen my Atari cartridges and refused to give them back,” Lucas says huffily, as the breeze carries Mike’s cackle back to them. “Even Space Invaders, man, that was cold. And she’s prettier and smells better and has killed more people and is generally cooler than you.”

“I’m plenty pretty and cool,” Dustin grumbles. “And I’ll have you know I’m a total lady killer, actually, which counts. And, hello, what about your girlfriend?”

“Max is already my favorite by default,” Lucas reasons, “so it would be kind of redundant to say her again. Plus, she’s kind of scary and, as her boyfriend, I usually end up bearing the brunt of all that misdirected rage.”

“Fine. Max can be my favorite then,” Dustin says, and hopefully that settles it, because Will can’t stop thinking about how Lucas said he was Mike’s favorite and Mike hadn’t protested or offered a rebuttal this entire time. “She’s also a lot prettier than you, Lucas, and she could hand you your ass on a silver platter at any video game, easy.”

“We get it, you guys are both lame and the girls in this friend group are cooler than you both,” Will says instead, purposefully not saying your girlfriends because Mike and El have been broken up for years, even if their exact dynamic feels a bit muddy and uncertain sometimes. To him, anyway, but that’s probably because of his tendency to chronically overthink everything related to Mike Wheeler.

There was a weird stretch of time where they all thought of El as Mike’s, that year she was gone—especially Will, to whom El had always felt more like a ghost story or a character out of X-Men than a real person. He thinks the others forget, at times, that he didn’t even meet El until that day they had to flambé the Mind Flayer out of his scrawny, thirteen-year-old body, that she wasn’t really a person of her own to him until a bit later than that.

It doesn’t feel like that anymore though, and heaven forbid Will lets it slip to El that they all vaguely thought of her as belonging to Mike Wheeler, because she’d send him barreling through a portal straight into the Upside Down again, except this time she’d leave him there. Plus, since she moved in with them, to California and back again, she’s kind of felt like Will’s too, even more than when she used to almost-be Mike’s, which makes him smile. In a cooler, more autonomous way, of course.

And she’s definitely a real person to him now, because comic book superheroes don’t do things like use up all the hot water and steal your clothes and eat the entire pint of ice cream you stashed in the freezer.

At the same time that he’s thinking about El and Mike and also a bit about the look on Hopper’s face whenever she and Mike get within five feet of each other, he just barely steps over a particularly gnarled root jutting out of the ground. Here, a good ways into the woods behind his house, the trees are starting to look more and more like the ones he had drawn for his illustration midterm– jagged, sharp, almost sinister in the dark. He takes in a breath. It’s getting cold out, even though his jacket and the scarf his mom forced on him before he left, never mind him being an adult now, or whatever, and he wraps his arms around himself, shivering slightly. “How much farther away is the farm anyway?”

“It should be coming up any minute now,” Mike calls back, and sure enough, another fifty feet to the right and the woods open up into a wide, flat expanse of farmland. “Hawkins’ finest,” Mike drawls sarcastically, holding out both arms in front of him.

“Holy shit, slow down,” Dustin wheezes, climbing up the hill behind them with Lucas in tow. Lucas, infuriatingly enough, is neither out of breath nor sweaty, and Will- who’s starting to feel a bit boiled alive in the layers of sweat accumulating under the insulation of his clothes- wants to strangle him, a bit.

“That was a nice walk,” Lucas says, grinning, definitely just to piss them off, so Will conveniently looks away when Dustin whoops him with the butt end of his flashlight— “ow, Dustin.”

Mike ignores them. “Guys, focus.” He turns to Will, says, “do you see anything weird?”

“Weird is kind of a broad term,” Will says, but squints off into the distance anyway, like he’s expecting to see a teenage Emmet Brown waiting on the horizon. “What kind of weird are we looking for, exactly?”

“I don’t know, black goo, dead bodies, your ghost–”

“That’s a lot of different kinds of weird,” Dustin points out, but wrestles two more flashlights out of his backpack as they start climbing down the hill to the first row of gourds, which are mostly just piles of leaves and vines indistinguishable from each other in the dark. “Do you think we should split up? You know, if we’re looking for weird–”

“Dustin, I know you have more sense than that,” Lucas chides, shoving him in the side, “because you watch more of those geeky horror flicks than any of us and I know you know that’s the first and most immediate way to make sure someone dies.”

“Well sue me if I don’t think the Mind Flayer’s hanging out in this pumpkin field,” Dustin exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air, “two days before Thanksgiving, too, like doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

“It’s not the Mind Flayer,” Will says, in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. “I would have felt it if it was. But honestly, I feel pretty normal. Relatively.”

“Well if it’s not the Mind Flayer, or Vecna by association,” Dustin adds, “then who exactly is the bad guy here?”

Will frowns. “Uh, bad guy?”

Dustin rolls his eyes. “There’s always a bad guy when weird shit happens. Like the Demogorgon, and then the Mind Flayer, and then the Mind Flayer again, and then Vecna–”

“Guys!” Mike interrupts, holding a hand out to his side and stopping so abruptly that Will bumps into him. “Do you all see that?”

Lucas squints, swiveling around in place and pointing the flashlight in the direction Mike is gesturing in. “See what?”

“Something moved between those bushes,” Mike says hurriedly, already starting towards wherever he saw whatever-the-hell.

Lucas, Dustin, and Will exchange glances like he’s gone insane before Lucas shrugs and says, “Well we should probably follow him in case he gets attacked by a rogue butternut squash,” and Dustin cackles loudly enough for a bird to take off from a nearby tree.

“Mike?” Will calls out, “are you there? Did you find something?”

There’s no response, and Will stiffens. He’s getting a bit antsy, and not because he’s sensing something that’s off, nothing to indicate that an Upside Down-y Eldritch horror is lurking around the corner for them. These are just regular old scared-of-the-dark heebie jeebies, but he’s so used to them coming with something more that his immediate reaction is to take one step closer to Dustin’s side. “Mike!” he calls again.

“Either this is legit spooky,” Dustin says, turning the beam on his flashlight higher, “or Mike’s about to jump out from behind those bushes screaming something he thinks is hilarious and then Hop’s gonna get called to this spot tomorrow morning because someone stumbled upon Mike Wheeler’s mysteriously disemboweled body while trying to find a pumpkin for their cornucopia.”

“Double disemboweled,” Lucas agrees, and then shouts, “Come on Mike, this isn’t funny! We’re too old for this shit!”

“Mike!” Will calls, in a last ditch effort. His teeth have started to chatter a bit. “It’s really fucking cold, come on!”

There’s a rustling in the bush closest to them, and all three boys stiffen, flashlights immediately pointing towards it.

“Lucas, we’re really counting on you being as ripped as you said you got,” Dustin says, voice dropped into a whisper, “because now would be a really bad time for you to lie about getting jacked.”

“I’m absolutely jacked, Dustin,” Lucas whispers back, but still shuffles backwards until he’s in line with the other two. “But if the Demogorgon 2.0 is in there, remember that I’m mad at you for stealing my Atari cartridges and I can also totally outrun you.”

“Guys, shut up,” Will hisses. The bush rustles again, and Dustin takes in a deep breath beside him.

“Lucas, do you still have that slingshot?” he asks, which makes Lucas let out such a pained exhale that Will almost laughs.

“You idiot, you didn’t bring any weapons?”

Dustin shrugs helplessly. “Honestly, I kinda thought we were going to crawl around the pumpkins for a while and then go home and dip into Mrs. Wheeler’s hot chocolate stash, I didn’t think anything actually weird was going to happen.”

Will scowls. He doesn’t have any weapons either, unless the stick lying by his feet counts. And he’s not sure how much help that would be against a netherworldly monster, but maybe if he goes out fighting it won’t be as embarrassing when he gets eaten in front of his friends, and if he’s extra lucky, they might leave out the stick part in the story they’ll tell everyone else, and just say he went out fighting with his bare hands. “In the grand scheme of things, a spooky pumpkin patch and a creepy bush aren’t that weird,” he says, but he picks up the stick anyway. “Should we, like, charge? Is that something you’re supposed to do? Do we attack now?”

At this, both Lucas and Dustin turn around and look at him with identical what the hell are you talking about expressions, taking in the image of Will in his yellow jacket and knit scarf, clutching a stick in one hand, eyes wide and eyeing the bush, and they both start laughing. “What the shit,” Dustin wheezes softly, “if this was a horror movie, you’d be the first one dead, Byers.”

“Agreed,” Lucas says, “why the hell would we charge at the freaking bush,” –and then Will throws his hands up, narrowly avoiding braining Dustin with the stick, trying to not point out that hello, he actually survived on his own in a nightmare dimension for an entire week when he was only twelve, and came out mostly normal, thank you very much.

“I don’t know, maybe because my best friend could be actually eaten alive in there right now?”– and then Lucas raises his eyebrows.

“All right, play the favorites game again, we all know how it is,” he says, but before Will can ask him what the hell that means, the bush rustles again, and then Mike comes tumbling out of it.

Will just about has a heart attack, and is maybe one misfired neuron away from pathetically throwing the stick at Mike like a boomerang, but Lucas beats him to it by shrieking and tossing the flashlight at him with such good aim that Mike yells “what the fuck?” and dodges it just in time.

“Lucas, I thought you were an athlete, don’t you guys have your reflexes more trained than this?” Mike pants, hands on his knees and bent over. His hair is falling in front of his face, and he’s got a couple twigs and leaves stuck in it that make Will’s fingers itch with the urge to pick them out. And then, maybe, run his hands through Mike’s hair and rub the dirt off his face, too. Whatever.

“Usually,” Lucas says, “except my fight or flight instinct has been on a hair trigger since November nineteen eighty-three.” He picks up his flashlight and dusts it off. “What the hell man? What was that about? Did you find the thing you saw?”

Mike waves him off, still breathing heavily and bent over. “No,” he says in between breaths, “that was just a rabbit. But,” he pauses, looking up and straight past Lucas and Dustin at Will.

They lock eyes for a moment, Mike’s lips parted on an exhale and cheeks flushed red from exertion, eyes wide and hair wild. Oh, Will thinks, on a split second beat.

For a moment, it’s like Lucas and Dustin have faded into the background, like the edges of an underdeveloped polaroid, and it’s just him and Mike standing in this field and staring at each other. Oh, okay. Mike doesn’t break eye contact with him as he stands up. 

“There’s something I think you guys should see.”

“I don’t get it,” Will frowns, looking down at the body on the ground. “That’s my ghost.”

Lucas sputters out, “ that’s your ghost?” from where he and Dustin are standing next to them, jaws practically on the ground. Dustin’s clutching the straps of his bag with a white-knuckle grip, as if he’s got some holy water or a Bible he’s about to reach for in there and start praying, and maybe a rosary for good measure. Actually, scratch that; he’s pretty sure Dustin was raised Jewish.

Lucas, meanwhile, is holding his flashlight in one hand, and the stick that Will abandoned in the other, positioned like a baseball bat. “That’s the person you’ve been seeing following you around?”

“Well yeah,” Will says, “but usually he’s, you know. Following me around. Standing up. Not–” he gestures to where the body is lying supine on the fertilizer-covered ground, glasses knocked askew and sweater vest streaked with dirt. “Not actually dead.”

“This is the person?” Lucas repeats, and then he finally picks his jaw up off the ground and says, “but that’s–”

“That’s Fred Benson,” Mike interrupts. His lips have gone pressed into a thin line, any flush or redness in his cheeks gone. “ He’s your ghost?”

“I don’t know who the hell Fred Benson is,” Will starts, “but more importantly, you guys can see him? You can actually see him?”

“Fred Benson’s your ghost?” Dustin says, and okay, Will knows this is supposed to be a super freaky, important moment for him but he can’t help but roll his eyes.

“Yeah, fine, apparently Fred Benson is my supernatural tormentor,” he relents, “except who the hell is he?”

The other three are quiet for a long minute, enough so that Will starts to wonder whether Fred Benson was actually secretly the fourth member of the Party, and maybe they found him to replace Will while he was in California, and maybe that’s why they’re all so quiet is because he just insulted the death of their best friend, and maybe now he’s being haunted by him because he was Will’s replacement and there’s some kind of long-held undead grudge he’s about to be subjected to–

“Fred was Vecna’s second victim,” Lucas says softly. His voice has gone quiet, a bit solemn. He looks away. “He died back in ‘86. You know, when all that was happening.”

All that. Right. The apocalypse, et cetera. Sometimes it’s hard for Will to keep up with all that happened in Hawkins when they were gone. He’s been filled in through bits and pieces by Lucas and Dustin, but most of it happened while he and Mike were packed into a van barrelling across seven state lines at fifty over the interstate speed limit, so it’s been hard to follow at times. “Oh,” he says quietly, and suddenly he feels a little bad for this guy who he’s been calling the nerd from the Breakfast Club, and Steve Urkel’s wannabe in his head all along. “That’s– I’m sorry. I didn’t know him.”

“Neither did we,” Dustin pipes up. He’s surveying Fred’s body with a vague look of something between sadness and curiosity on his face. “He went to our school, but we never really crossed crowds.”

“He did the school newspaper with Nancy,” Mike says suddenly, expression very hard to read. The flashlights’ glow only lights up one side of his face, leaving the rest hidden in shadow. Will has a sudden memory of lying in Mike’s bed, watching Mike across from him on the couch all lit up in orange-yellow lamplight, saying I just like your room more because there’s so much you everywhere like it was nothing at all. He feels a bit overwhelmed.

“Mike–” he starts, but then trails off.

Mike takes a deep breath. “That’s– those were the only times I ever saw him before he died. I’d run into them in the journalism club room, when Nancy was running late and I needed a ride home. Or he’d come over to work on something, sometimes, but I always stayed in my room.”

There’s another minute of silence. Will watches a trickle of blood run down ghost-Fred’s face with a sinking feeling in his gut, something apologetic and guilty, even though he never knew this kid. He wasn’t even on this side of the country when he died. But maybe being haunted by someone makes you more sympathetic to them, forms some kind of kinship with the person– are they still a person if they’re a ghost?– because Will suddenly starts to feel very dizzy and a bit sick to his stomach. He stumbles backwards, just barely managing to stay upright and not land heavily on his ass in the dirt. “Guys, I–”

“Whoa, whoa, Will!” It’s Mike who gets to him, first, because of-fucking-course it’s Mike. “Will, are you okay?”

Lucas hovers anxiously behind Mike’s shoulder. “Is this an Upside Down thing? Are you seeing anything else? Should we get your mom? El?”

“Guys, shut up,” Dustin says, except it’s all starting to get a bit blurry and faded around the edges, and their voices sound like they’re talking to him while he’s lying at the bottom of Steve Harrington’s newly redone outdoor swimming pool. “He’s obviously freaking out, don’t start talking about the Upside Down, Lucas.”

Will thinks Lucas might be scowling, but their faces are all swimming in and out of his field of vision, as if he’s watching reflections in the ripples spreading across a puddle of water. Mike’s face is closest to his, most in focus. Will watches puddle-Mike’s mouth open, and then, a good two seconds later, hears him say, “Will, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he manages to croak, his own voice feeling like it’s coming from outside his body. There’s a delay between when Mike opens his mouth and when the sound of his voice hits Will, like waiting for a clap of thunder after a stroke of lightning. Will squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m just–”

“Maybe we should get Mrs. Byers,” Dustin’s voice says, from very far away, and then there’s a rustling sound like someone getting pushed gently into a bush. “Ow–”

“Will,” Mike’s voice says again, and there’s a pair of hands on his shoulders now. This feels an awful lot like the incident at the duck pond, Will thinks, pulse racing wildly under where his scarf is wrapped around him. He scrambles to pull it off, like it’s the thing that’s choking him, making it hard to breathe. It feels like when he was telling Mike about the Fred-ghost after the two of them ate breakfast on that stone bench, and all Will could think about was leaning over and kissing the ridiculous taste of ketchup and griddle-stale grease off of Mike’s lips. And it was right after he let himself think about these things too, about wanting the things he’s been wanting for so long. And still wants, even now.

He takes a deep breath, concentrating on the feeling of Mike’s hands against his shoulders and the scent of Mike’s vanilla soap floating into his personal space. He didn’t used to smell like vanilla before coming home for break. “Yeah,” he says again, and it sounds a bit less pathetic now. “No I’m– I’m okay.”

When he opens his eyes, Mike’s looking at him with concern written all over his face, eyebrows furrowed and lips pulled all tight like he was trying to keep himself from talking. “Are you sure?” Mike asks, and okay, now this is also starting to feel a bit like the diner incident and the drunk bathroom incident before that– Will’s starting to think he’s gaining a bit of a track record, here, which is super embarrassing, and with his last bit of mental capacity, silently prays to any celestial being that might be listening that Mike doesn’t remember most of those incidents.

“I just–” Will starts, and then Dustin and Lucas also pop into his field of vision, both also frowning deeply. “I just don’t even know this guy,” he continues, “I don’t even know him and I’ve been seeing him around for, like, two weeks, and I keep freaking out thinking that all this shit is going to come back for me, and I’m so on edge all the time, and I don’t even know Fred. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s really sad how he died, but we never met, we never spoke, I don’t know why he’s haunting me, and no one could see any of this before except El, and now you all can, and I have no idea what’s going on, and–”

“Okay, Will, you’ve gotta breathe.” This time it’s Lucas who interrupts him, although not unkindly. Mike still doesn’t move his hands off Will’s shoulders. It’s not very easy to breathe, for more reasons than one. “We’ll figure it out, okay? You know we will. We always come through.”

“Lucas is, as always, super right,” says Dustin. “We’ll figure it out, okay? But— but right now, maybe you should take it easy.”

Mike nods in agreement. “We can pick this up later,” he says, and rests one hand against Will’s cheek. “You’re super pale, and you’re kind of clammy, I don’t want you passing out, okay?”

Somehow, it’s Mike’s concern that kick starts his brain into fight or flight mode. Or, in his case, basic competency. “Okay,” he says weakly, “yeah let’s— later.”

Mike backs up for a second, and there’s faint mumbling like the three of them are talking amongst themselves, and then—

“I’ll walk you home, okay?” Mike says, helping Will to his feet. He doesn’t say it like it’s a question. More like a statement. I’m walking you home.

“Okay,” Will says again. “Um, Dustin, Lucas—”

Lucas holds up a set of keys. “I drove,” he says, “because I’m cooler than you all.”

“ Some of us have to bike, Lucas,” Mike says, but there’s no bite behind it. “Dustin?”

“Lucas gave me a ride,” Dustin says, “I’ll make him drop me back,” and then he puts a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Hey. Walkie us when you get back, okay? Wanna make sure you losers get home in one piece.”

Will feels a bit like he’s going to get snapped in half by a too-strong gust of wind, so maybe one piece is a bit of a tall order. “Yeah,” he says, “Of course. Um. We’ll radio.”

“Goddamn pumpkins,” Lucas says, but he’s smiling. “Always the goddamn pumpkins.”

He and Mike walk in steady silence for maybe five, ten minutes, conversation halted in favor of shoes stepping over crisp leaves, caked onto the floor of the woods like a blanket.

Mike doesn’t say anything— he seems to be waiting for Will to initiate the conversation, like anything they talk about has to be on his terms only. Which, it’s nice, Will supposes, kicking up the leaves in front of him as he walks, because now he doesn’t have to say anything about how this is the third meltdown Mike’s had to talk him through in a week and a half. But the polite silence is also probably a bit pointless because Will has no idea what to even say. He stares at the ground in front of him, stubbornly refusing to look beside him where he can feel Mike’s gaze against his profile.

There are a couple of times Mike makes a noise like he wants to say something, like he’s opening his mouth and then shutting it again, or when he raises his hand up to rest against his neck like he does when he’s nervous. Will watches him carefully out of the corner of his eye, watches the careful distance Mike’s keeping between them, a steady seven feet of space that feels simultaneously claustrophobically close, and gut-wrenchingly far away.

The moon also slipped behind a thin cover of cloud some fifteen minutes ago, leaving the space around them feeling dark and murky in a way that it didn’t before, when they were all walking up here together. It’s surprisingly exhausting, picking his way past rocks and roots and the undergrowth with only the one flashlight to light the way– plus, he’s also on edge in a way that he usually isn't. Will knows this stretch of the woods like the back of his hand, he’s biked and ran and climbed through it for years on end during his early childhood, but now his skin feels like someone’s just dipped him into a cold tub of water and set him outside in a midwinter chill, all frosted over and hardened into a shell he can’t claw his way out of.

“Wait–” he manages to pant out, after another torturous minute or two of stumbling over sticks and branches he can’t quite make out in the dark. He reaches out blindly for Mike’s sleeve beside him, and finds his hand already there, just a few inches away from his own, outstretched like Mike was reaching for him on instinct as soon as he started talking. Will grips the edge of the sleeve between his fingers and tugs twice, in quick succession. “Wait, Mike, can we– can we stop for a second? Can we–”

Mike turns in front of him, and lightning-fast grips gently onto Will’s wrist from where it was already grazing against Mike’s fingers. His hands are warm from where they were tucked into his pockets and Will resists his initial instinct to flinch away, and instead takes a breath when Mike says, “Yeah, yeah, what’s wrong? Are you–”

“I’m fine,” Will says, but his breath is coming out heavy, and he feels like he hasn’t been able to get a proper pull of oxygen to his lungs in many minutes. He probably hasn’t, because decent lung capacity, strength training, and regular exercise are not words that are incorporated into his vocabulary. He leans over to put a hand on one knee, the other still caught in Mike’s grip. “I just– can we just wait for a minute? Can we sit down? I’m– I’m a bit tired.”

“Yeah, of course,” Mike says, maybe a bit too fast, nodding his head. He doesn’t point out that there’s no reason for Will to be this physically exhausted already, because they’ve barely walked a half-mile stretch on rough, but relatively flat terrain. “Yeah, let’s– do you want to sit down over here?” He gestures towards a large tree trunk, fallen over and half-rotted into the ground like it had been there for a very long time. “Or we can–”

“No, that’s good,” Will says, a bit faintly, and they make their way over it together, still joined at the hands. Will finds a foothold in a rough notch of bark and hauls himself onto the top of the log somewhat gracefully– as much grace as he can gather up in his body, anyway– and Mike hops on after him, throwing one long leg astride and then the other, so he ends up sitting facing Will, their feet pointing in opposite directions, shoulders almost bumping.

The wood is rough under his clothes, dulled edges of the bark still sharp enough to feel through his jeans, and he shifts a bit, trying to find the smoothest patch of wood, until he ends up pressed up against Mike, their thighs aligned and leaning entirely into each other’s personal space.

“Sorry,” Will mutters, trying to lean away. It’s all getting a bit overwhelming, even though the dark and quiet are taking away what would be the two most pressing stimuli on any other occasion. But Mike is right up there against him, and he’s– God, he’s enough, sometimes, to be more distracting to all five of Will’s senses—six, if you’re counting it that way—than if you dropped him right in the middle of the pit at an AC/DC concert on a one-hundred-degree day. “I can move, if you–”

“No, it’s okay,” Mike says, looking up at Will with a very tentative expression on his face, very carefully stilled, like he’s going to get scared off if Mike makes any sudden movements or speaks in sentences that are longer than five syllables. “I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure,” Will starts, more to convince himself than Mike, really, that it’s okay to get this close to him, as if Mike can see right into his brain and knows all the things that flash through it any time they make physical contact across more than one point of flesh. It’s mostly a lot of God, he’s so warm, and I could kiss him, now, if I wanted, if I wasn’t a coward. “I don’t want to like, intrude-”

Mike scoffs, brushing off a stray piece of moss that’s floated onto his thigh. “Intrude on what? My personal space? Like you ever gave a shit about that before,” which, yeah okay, he’s got Will’s number with that one, hit the nail on the head, whatever.

Mike shuffles an inch closer, enough so that their shoulders are also pressed up against one another now, and Will, true enough, feels himself leaning into the magnetic pull of him, until he can feel Mike’s body heat seeping down into the marrow of his own bones and the space between them is all but vanished.

Neither of them say anything for a minute— Will’s mostly concentrating on getting his breathing back to normal which, due to current circumstances, is proving more difficult than normal. He tries very hard to not think about the infinite points of contact up and down their arms, instead looking down at the layer of decomposing leaves and debris below their feet, focusing on the sensation of the sharp tree bark digging into his palms. He’s getting his hands and clothes so dirty, he knows, but whatever, because if he doesn’t put his hand on the dirt-soaked wood, then the only other option is to rest it against Mike’s leg, which— no.

“Can I ask you something?” Mike blurts out, kind of out of the blue, just as Will’s blood pressure has dropped back down into something near the medically accepted standard. He’s fiddling with the zipper on his jacket and not quite looking Will in the eye.

“Um. Sure,” Will says in response, against all better judgment, and he can feel his pulse immediately skyrocketing into the upper one-hundreds again.

“Are you-” Mike starts, and Will tenses immediately, holds his breath, so sure, somehow, that the next words out of Mike’s mouth are going to be either into dudes or into me, and he’s not exactly sure which he would prefer, so he figures maybe just pausing on his next inhale will be enough to stop time at the second before Mike continues talking.

But Mike doesn’t say either of those things. “Are you— okay?” he says instead, which surprises Will so much that he finally looks up to where Mike is peering at him through the curtain of hair brushing over his eyes. His eyebrows are tilted up in genuine concern.

Will blinks. Yes, he means to say, or maybe sure, I guess, but what he actually says is: “Why?”

Mike holds his gaze for three of the longest seconds of Will’s life before he finally looks away. “You’ve been a little, I don’t know— distracted, lately,” he starts, going back to toying with the zipper on his jacket, sliding it up and down with a quiet series of zwoop noises. It’s the only noise around them.

“Distracted,” Will repeats, and it comes out a bit flat. Of course he’s been fucking distracted, he’s spent the last two weeks thinking he’s going slowly out of his mind, or maybe that he’s about to be the target of an interdimensional super-alien game of tag, again, so he can’t help the irritation seeping into his voice when he says, “well obviously I’ve been distracted, Mike, but you can’t blame me, can you?”

“No, no, of course not,” Mike says hurriedly, and he looks a bit sheepish. “I didn’t mean like that, just—”

“Is this about before,” Will starts, “because I already told you I wasn’t mad at you either—”

“I don’t think you’re mad at me,” Mike says, “and it’s not— it’s not about that either.”

“Then what the hell is it about,” Will snaps, maybe a bit too harshly, but he’s all keyed up and running purely on a mixture of adrenaline and fear and a longing so intense it’s burning a hole through his throat like stomach acid coming back up through his esophagus.

And maybe- maybe there’s some of that acid leaking into his words too: “because you’re always asking me if I’m mad at you when clearly I’m not mad at you because I’m always hanging out with you and talking to you and putting up with your monster hunting bullshit and I never get annoyed with you when you ask but—”

“You just seemed a bit sad, that's all,” Mike interrupts, eyes snapping up to Will’s face, and then he falls abruptly silent.

It comes out softer than his usual speaking voice, and he looks away, away from Will, away from their touching shoulders, away from where they’re sitting close enough to be cycling the same breath of air between them.

Will frowns. “Sad? Seriously? I seem sad to you?”

“Not sad, like, depressed,” Mike clarifies, “just like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Will doesn’t want to hear the unnecessarily complicated mental gymnastics that Mike’s train of thought is undergoing right now. He feels dizzy, lightheaded but at the same time like his body’s filled with lead and anchored itself to the ground. He’s cold. The rough bark under his hands is pressing deep enough into his skin to leave red imprints in his palm. Mike still smells like vanilla and the cold, earthy tang of the bushes they were all climbing through. 

“Something on my mind,” he repeats, half in a daze and half out of stale confusion, “I was— I’m— being haunted by the ghost of some teenager I’ve never met and I don’t know why, I don’t know why him, I don’t know why El was seeing the same shit I was seeing when no one could, except now everyone can, I don’t know why I got to be normal for five years and now I’m a freak again, I don’t know why this bullshit won’t leave me alone, I don’t know why you—”

He trails off with a small hiccuped breath, because his tongue had been forming around the words won’t ever love me the way I want you to, and even now, he’s barely clamped his lips shut around them in time. They’re still there, on the tip of his tongue. Will thinks if he opens his mouth just a sliver of the way, they’ll find a way to slip out of him, dirtied and metallic like water seeping up from oversaturated soil.

Will bites his tongue. Turns his face away.

Mike doesn’t say anything, and Will can’t see his expression from here, either. The flashlight’s been set down in front of them, wide base resting against a divot in the wood to point up against the sky, so only half of Mike’s face is illuminated even when Will faces him.

Then, “—why I what?”

Will turns back around. Mike’s still looking away, but his gaze is fixed determinedly on a spot five inches away from Will’s face. “What?” Will repeats, a bit dumbly. There are a lot of what ’s being exchanged between them right now.

“You said— you said you don’t know why I— and then you stopped.” 

And then Mike turns to look at him and whatever fear Will thinks he’s known before pales in comparison to this, to the spotlight beam of Mike Wheeler’s full attention turned on him while the space between them is simultaneously so nonexistent that it’s turning into a vacuum—

Having that turned on him while it’s dark and quiet and the flashlight is casting a glow on Mike’s face and carving out the graceful curve of his cheekbones, and when Mike’s lower lip is tucked tentatively between his front teeth, like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it—

“Why I what?” Mike repeats, and the low light is definitely playing tricks on Will’s eyes now, because it looks for a second like Mike’s eyes dart down to his lips and then back. “What do I do? Why is it—”

Will can’t really think. The air around them smells like sharp, rich earth and the scent of Mike’s vanilla body wash, and the heady rush of it is overwhelming him in all the ways his body even has left to be overwhelmed by.

“Nothing,” Will says, but it’s weak, and he covers it up by clearing his throat. “It’s nothing, it was an accident. I— I didn’t mean to say that.”

“ Will. ” Mike says, but doesn’t say anything after that. He must know Will well enough, then, to know that he’ll stick to this story, as transparently bullshit as it is. His name ends up hovering in the air between them, abandoned— Will. Will. Will. Will’s never really cared too much for his name before now, but it sounds right, the way Mike says it. All thin and breathy, persistent.

“Can we get back to the topic of me being haunted,” Will says weakly, before any of these thoughts can make their way through his traitorous lips. He kicks the back of his heel against the solid bark under his legs, shifts a few inches to his right, away from Mike. God, he can’t breathe.

Mike holds his gaze for another second and then looks away, and in an instant, whatever spell was hanging over this five-square-foot space they’re occupying disintegrates like a rotting leaf below the heels of Will’s worn-out sneakers.

“Right,” Mike says, and he clears his throat too. “I don’t— what do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Will huffs, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until bright spots erupt, dancing, in his field of vision. “Anything? Everything? Something? I’m just— I don’t even know what I don’t know, you know?”

Mike blinks slowly at him, and then shakes his head. “Um, I don’t think I will follow.”

“Like,” Will starts, “like why, and how, and when, and—”

“Maybe let’s start with one of those at a time,” Mike says, and now he looks like he’s trying to hold back a smile, watching Will’s flustered floundering for words.

Will feels his body relax a bit, watching the careful tilt of Mike’s lips upwards, the slow lean of his body away from Will’s; he’ll take the out, take the road more traveled by all the way back into familiar territory. He doesn’t— he doesn’t know what the hell to do with Mike all pressed up close to him and looking into his eyes and saying his name like Will, but he can deal with Mike laughing at him. 

“Right,” Will says, rubbing at his forehead. “Um. How about why?”

Mike doesn’t say anything, even when Will looks at him, and it isn’t until he tilts his head expectantly that Mike startles and says, “Oh, were you asking me, like, for real?”

“Why would I ask you if I didn’t want your opinion,” Will says, fighting back the urge to roll his eyes. Familiar territory, this is familiar territory. This is good.

“Well, to be honest, I don’t have a solid theory.” Mike rubs at the back of his neck. Will watches his hair curl around his neck and wonders, briefly, what it would be like to rest his hand there, at the nape of Mike’s neck, to feel the wave of his hair like a blanket against his knuckles. “The hard science, it was always more Dustin’s forte than mine. Like figuring out the gate and the electromagnetism stuff, way back then, that was— that was all him.”

“And Lucas said you were the one who realized what El meant when she was telling you guys about the Upside Down,” Will points out, “don’t undersell yourself. If you hadn’t figured that out, I wouldn’t have ever made it out. I care about— about what you have to say,” he finishes, in a bit of a rush, because he does care about what Mike has to say but also— but also about Mike, so.

Mike ducks his head. “Yeah?” he says, and it’s very soft, almost shy. “For real?”

Will nods, echoes, “For real.”

Mike glances down at his hands, looking very contemplative. “Well,” he starts, twisting his fingers together, “to me it seems kind of like— flashbacks, or. Or no, that’s not the word I was thinking of. Like memories, kind of, you know? Like all these afterimages of the Upside Down’s memories. Does— does it have memories?” He looks up at Will like he expects him to actually know the answer to this question, and Will shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he says truthfully, “that makes it seem really alive, you know?”

Mike hums thoughtfully. “To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is alive, you know? Like if the parallel dimension that’s been screwing with us for years actually had a consciousness all along. But anyway,” he continues, “from what El said, and what you were saying, it doesn’t seem like any of this is happening in real time, you know? It just feels like memories of things that happened years ago are just being… being… superimposed onto our world, kind of. I don’t know, I’m probably not— I’m probably explaining this horribly, I know,” Mike rambles. It’s all coming out of his mouth very fast. “Like I said, this is definitely more Dustin’s thing than mine, so maybe it would’ve been better if he walked you home instead—”

“Stop,” Will finds himself saying, before he can properly even register it, “no, I get it. And I’m glad— I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad it’s you.” And then he thinks what the shit, Byers, as Mike’s mouth turns up in a small smile.

“You’re glad it’s me?”

The last time Will’s subconscious mind tried to do damage control, he ended up blurting out to El over the breakfast table that maybe the reason he rewatched Return of the Jedi so many times had less to do with Leia in the gold bikini and more to do with Luke Skywalker in that all-black getup during the final fight scene, so he chooses his next words very carefully:

“Yeah, I mean. Dustin and Lucas, they’re my best friends too, but you— you’re my best friend. And I love them, but with us— and you’re— and um. With me,” and okay, so much for choosing his next words very carefully. He can feel his face get a bit red, and he prays to any and all deities that might be listening that it’s too dark for Mike to see it.

Mike, meanwhile, looks extremely amused. “I guess Lucas was right then, about the playing favorites thing.”

“Don’t get a big head,” Will rolls his eyes, but there’s no bite behind it. “I don’t want to stroke your giant ego any more than it already has been.”

Mike’s face splits open into a grin, eyes crinkling up at the corners. There’s an odd fluttering sensation in the pit of Will’s stomach. “I’ll tell you a secret,” Mike says, and then he’s leaning forward and resting one hand gently on Will’s knee, tilting his body so that whatever space was put between them when they moved apart is effectively diminished again. He squeezes Will’s knee, once, and conscious thought blows sideways out of Will’s brain. “You’re my best friend too. Like, best friend.”

“Cool,” Will replies hoarsely, trying to pretend like Mike calling him his best friend isn’t simultaneously the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him. Like Mike’s hand isn’t just casually touching his leg– squeezing it, even– like he isn’t smiling soft and easy and warm and leaning so into Will’s personal space that it wouldn’t even take conscious effort to just tilt his head forward and—

“So what’s the deal with ghosts,” he blurts out, tearing his eyes away from the vermilion-flush curve of Mike’s lips, visible even in the dark, and back down onto his hands, still in his lap. He picks at a stray piece of skin peeling off from around his nail.

Mike’s hand does not move from his leg, but his grip does loosen, fingers twitching ever so slightly against the inner curve of his knee. “The deal?” he asks, tilting his head a bit to the side.

“Yeah,” Will waves one hand in the air to say you know, “like what’s their deal? Am I being A Christmas Carol’d or is it more of an Edgar Allan Poe-type situation where Fred Benson’s trying to tell me that I’m going to die a tragic death sometime in the next few days?”

Mike ignores the part about Will foreshadowing his own death. “Wow,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “I actually have no idea what that means. When did you get so– so educated?”

“Some of us paid attention in high school English,” Will says, even though he most definitely did not pay attention for about ninety-eight percent of high school English, and instead, spent each period doodling in the margins of his notebooks and watching the girl next to him pop her bubblegum all over her face and then habitually scrape it all off. “And the only perk of having an English major for a- for a best friend is having someone to point out the ridiculously gauche symbolism haunting my everyday life.”

“Get it? Like, haunting?” Mike looks very smugly pleased with himself, and Will has to fight the urge to either push Mike violently off this tree trunk or catapult his own self off of it and hike the rest of the way to his house on his own. “And I’m a Creative Writing major, hello,” he adds, which Will knew anyway, eyes dropping down to his hands, “which is basically the same thing except it makes me even more of a disappointment to my parents, if that was even possible. They wanted me to go off and major in something practical like business or marketing, even econ like Lucas would’ve been okay, but here I am—”

“You’re not a disappointment,” Will says immediately, even though that’s not even really what Mike was getting at. Mike raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re- you’re cool, and super smart, and you always show up for your friends and you’re the first one I want to tell things to when I’m excited or sad or scared—” and Mike’s starting to get a weird look on his face, oh God, rein it in, Will, “—and you’re definitely better at stringing a sentence together than I am, you’re actually getting a degree in it, so please just ignore whatever it was I just said. But, um. My point was that all those things matter a lot more than whether you’re going to work some sales job with a retirement fund someday.”

Mike is silent for a minute. A long minute, and Will’s starting to wonder if he’s royally overstepped when Mike says, in a voice barely above a whisper, “You— you think all those things about me?”

Mike’s not, like, an insincere person, but a vast majority of the things he says are usually coated in a thin layer of sarcasm or dry humor or an air of general amusement. So it catches Will a bit off-guard to hear his voice like it is now: raw, soft, delicate. A bit pitched, even. Surprised. “You think I’m cool? And– and smart? And you want to–”

“What was that thing I was saying about getting a big head,” Will tries, but it comes out a lot weaker than he would have probably liked it to.

He clears his throat. “But, um. Yeah, you are. You— I don’t know, you look so effortlessly cool kind of all the time, and if I didn’t already know about your Star Wars sheets I never would have guessed,” he grins when Mike rolls his eyes, “but it’s also like, okay, how many people would have dragged me out here to solve my ghost problem, you know? I can count on both hands the number of people who would have even believed me, much less those who would organize a search party to figure this out, and it’s just–” okay, rein it in, Will! 

Mike’s getting this look on his face that’s somewhere between flabbergasted and something that’s a bit reminiscent of vague nausea, maybe, and okay, this is starting to all get a bit too real, a bit too fast— “You’re a good friend, is what I’m trying to say,” Will finishes hastily, the last few words all kind of tangling themselves together into a knot as they leave his mouth. “Um. There’s no one else I would. You know.”

You know. He prays Mike doesn’t know, prays this is all flying right over his head, prays he isn’t looking up at the red covering Will’s face or the unsteady waver to his breath. But at the same time, he wants Mike to know, wants him to maybe already be aware, maybe– maybe that would make this easier, if he never has to spell it out for him, if he knew everything all along and just never said anything about it–

“I think so,” Mike says at last. He looks a bit stunned. “I think–”

He falls silent, after that. It’s the most silent they’ve been in a while. Sometime in the last fifteen minutes, Mike’s moved close enough to Will again for him to hear the gentle inhale-exhale of his breathing, even with the breeze rustling softly through the bare-branched canopy above them. Close enough to watch the shadows of Mike’s eyelashes dance across the arches of his cheekbones as he blinks.

“Can I ask you something, this time?” It’s Will’s turn to break the careful quiet, and Mike looks up at him.

“Yeah, shoot.”

“Um,” Will starts. “This is probably going to sound dumb, but it’s been bothering me forever, I– I’ve been wondering– why did you rush the frat? With Lucas?”

When Mike doesn’t respond right away, Will goes on: “I mean, just because it doesn’t seem like you like it very much. And, you know, you never really stay there for more than thirty-six hours at a time and—” He cuts himself off, suddenly remembering what Mike was saying to him on the couch the other day, about feeling like home and there’s so much you there, and wonders, briefly, if Mike even remembers saying any of this— if any of it was conscious thought or just pulled out of him by sleep and exhaustion. “I never got the feeling you wanted to, in the first place.”

“It’s– the frat? You’re asking about the frat?” Mike says, eyes widening a bit, and then, all of a sudden, he starts to laugh. It’s really a bit ridiculous, now that Will’s thinking about it, that this is the first thing that came to mind in the situation they’re in, and Mike’s leaning over with his head resting gently on one of his hands, so he’s probably thinking the same thing. “That’s so–”

“It’s super random, I know,” Will cuts in, “you don’t have to–”

“No, no, it’s cool,” Mike says, straightening up again. He brushes a lock of hair out of his face and grins widely up at him. “I just thought– never mind. It’s actually kind of stupid now that I’m thinking about it, so you have to promise not to laugh, okay?”

“I’d never laugh at you,” Will says, trying– and failing– to sound sincere because that’s a lie if he’s ever heard one. He laughs at Mike literally all the time. But for the sake of the situation, he tries very hard to keep the encroaching smile from climbing too high onto his face.

“It’s actually because, well. Lucas was going on and on about all these friends he was making, after he signed onto the basketball team, and then he was telling me that he was sad we never had much time to see each other anymore, since he was always so busy with practice and all, so that was part of it,” and okay, that’s maybe a third of Will’s theory that was right.

“But also,” Mike continues, and for some reason, he looks down at where he’s propped one foot up in front of him, tugs a bit awkwardly on the laces. “Also, and don’t laugh, okay? It was because I felt like I should want more friends than I had, you know? Like, I was totally happy just hanging out with you all the time. And Dustin, and Lucas sometimes, too. But mostly you. And I thought maybe that was weird, that I only had, like, three friends, plus my ex-girlfriend and her best friend back home, and I figured that I was hanging out with you so much that you probably got sick of me along the way.

“But more than that, the weirdest part was that I was totally okay with it, you know? Not talking to a lot of people, just us and our routines. I liked it. I was never bored, or– or lonely, anything like that. I thought– I don’t know, I thought I should have wanted more friends than I had, so when Lucas asked if I wanted to rush with him–”

Mike trails off, tugs at his shoelaces some more. He looks equal parts amused but also, under that, a bit sad, almost. “Well I thought it couldn’t hurt, meeting some more people. And then I actually ended up hanging out with you even more, since, well,” he finishes, looking back up at Will with a strange look in his eye–

And then it hits Will with a force so strong that it knocks most of the air out of his lungs– that Mike not only remembers the talk they had in his room that night, but that he also meant every word he said, about Will’s room feeling like home to him, about liking it just because of how much Will there was everywhere.

He isn’t really sure what to do with that information now that he has it, isn’t really sure what to do when Mike is watching him so expectantly, so he just says, “Oh,” pulling a bit at a piece of hair that’s fallen into his face just to have something to do with his hands, because he isn’t really sure what else to say to that, either. He’s hit with the simultaneous compulsion to give Mike a hug and also, maybe, to kiss him a little. But that’s nothing new.

“Anyways,” Mike says, quieter now. “It’s not a whole big story, if that’s what you were wondering.”

“I did think it was a bit funny,” Will admits, drawing his knees up to his chest. His legs have gone a bit sore from holding their position. He rolls out his ankles, his calves. “Since you don’t really like new people, or jocks, or large parties. I thought it was just to keep Lucas from turning into a frat boy wonder.”

Just us, and our routines. I liked it. I liked it. I liked it. I liked–

“That was a part of it,” Mike nods, “but the rest wasn’t really anything, um. Specific. And you said you wouldn’t laugh,” he adds, pointing an accusing finger at Will.

“I’m not laughing!” Will raises his hands in surrender, and it’s true– he might have laughed before, at the thought of Mike in his leather jacket and Converse getup, all surly and brooding, having to partake in, like, a hazing ritual, or doing keg stands with a bunch of sorority girls cheering him on in the background– but somehow, it’s not as funny now. “I swear, you– you try to come off as some super moody, sulking loner but you actually say the sweetest shit without trying.”

Mike smiles so wide that his eyes crease up at the corners, bumping Will in the shoulder with his own. “You thought that was sweet?”

You’d think Will had learned his lesson by now, about faux pas, feet in his mouth, et cetera, but apparently not. He resolutely keeps his mouth shut and does not grace Mike with a response, just stares at him with an expression that he hopes conveys something along the lines of shut up, you’re so dumb, and not God, I am so enamored with you– and as far as nonverbal communication goes, Will likes to think he and Mike are more skilled at it than most, but this also comes at the cost of Mike being able to read his inner monologue word-for-word, so he wipes that look off his face too. He aims for something more like casually neutral, instead. “I guess. If you’re looking at it that way.”

Mike keeps watching him for a few moments after that, smile slowly fading from his face until all that’s left is a quirk to his brow and the remnants of a delighted gleam in his eye. He keeps watching him like maybe he can stare Will down into saying something, which is honestly pretty damn close to working– if Mike keeps those eyes fixed on him, Will might say–

Will might say–

Mike opens his mouth. Pauses. Then sighs. “Do you think it’s, like, some unfinished business type thing?”

Will blinks. “What?”

“That’s the deal with ghosts, right? Usually?” Mike waves a hand around like you know. “Unfinished business. Closure. Things you didn’t get to do when you were alive. Long-held grudges, lovers you gotta see one more time before you descend into the unknown. Et cetera.”

Will frowns, pointing at himself. “And you think it has something to do with me?”

Mike studies him for a moment, gaze sweeping up and down Will’s form, all curled up and hunched over where his knees are tucked under his arms and pulled up close to his chest. Will can feel the tips of his ears getting a bit warm. “Honestly, no,” he admits, tilting his head a bit to the side. “You didn’t know him, right? Fred?”

Will shakes his head. “I didn’t, I swear I never met him, never even talked to him. So it can’t be about– about me.”

“Unless you were his longtime star-crossed lover, then no, I don’t think so,” Mike says, looking like he’s fighting back a smile. “I mean, you weren’t having some long-distance affair with him, were you?”

Will can’t even find it in himself to roll his eyes at this. “ No,” he says, shaking his head at him a little because Mike is probably joking, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. “And I don’t think he held a lifelong grudge against me, either, unless, I don’t know, I stole some crayons from him in elementary school that I never returned.”

“Which is also not possible,” Mike says, “because ten-year-old you would never have stolen some kid’s crayons, so we can cross that off our list.”

“So no grudge,” Will holds up one finger like he’s checking it off a list, “nothing that was bothering his ghostly soul enough to keep him from passing over, no unfulfilled professions of love. Um, to me anyway,” he says, and then he trails off a bit as Mike gets a bit of a curiously thoughtful look on his face. “What, you don’t think he had an unfulfilled profession of love to make, do you?”

“No, no,” Mike brushes him off. His hand comes up to rest somewhere on the side of his neck, scratching at the underside of his jaw. “Not exactly. It’s just— that thing you said, about something bothering his ghostly soul, or whatever, and keeping it here.”

He squints a bit in Will’s direction, like there’s something on Will’s face that he’s trying to make out in the dark, and continues: “Just humor me here, okay? Has there been— has there been something bothering you lately?”

Will’s about ready to punch Mike square in the nose and leave him abandoned here, in the woods, to bike home alone. “Are we seriously on this again,” he throws his hands up in the air, “are we seriously doing this again—”

“Just humor me, alright?” Mike cuts him off, and it sounds so oddly serious after their last bit of banter that it shuts Will right up, hands still hovering in midair. He drops them back carefully into his lap, frowns.

“Sure,” he says, “fine, whatever. And, obviously I’ve been bothered by this whole thing—”

“No, no, no,” Mike says, rather impatiently for someone who won’t just cut to the fucking chase, Will thinks, but alright, whatever, sure. “No, like, before all that. When I was saying, earlier, that you’ve seemed a bit- a bit sad lately, I meant it. It was- it was even before you had that episode in the diner, remember that one?” 

Will nods— of course he remembers, duh— and he frowns. Where the hell is Mike going with this? “Well, yeah,” he says. Mike rubs at his jaw a bit harder.

“Anyways,” Mike continues, “I don’t know, you just seemed kind of down for a while, and I know it wasn’t just this you had on your mind because you’ve seemed that way, a little, before it all even started. So I just wanted to ask,” he finishes, a bit hesitant, eyes flicking up to meet Will’s, “if there’s anything you’ve been wanting to know. Talk about. Or say. Or— or anything that’s been, like, weighing on you, or something. Anything.”

“I’m fine, Mike,” Will says, rather lamely in comparison to all the fights he’s been putting up tonight. It comes out more resigned than anything else. Any trace of ferocity in his voice is now gone; he feels too tired, already, to argue this with Mike anymore.

Mike is persistent. He’s— he’s caring. He seems genuinely bothered that Will’s been— been sad, or down, or whatever. He’s— God, okay, it’s times like these when it’s really hard to not be in love with him. 

And obviously, Will knows what he’s talking about. Why does Mike think something’s made him sad? Why has he been withdrawn?

He just didn’t know that Mike could tell. Was he that obvious? Has he always been that obvious?

“I’m fine,” he says again, but all the fight’s been drained out of his voice and it sounds like a lie, even to his own ears. He squeezes his eyes shut.

It’s all getting a bit too real. Again. Too— too close, way too close, to the truth.

Next to him Mike laughs, but it comes out weaker than before. “Come on, Byers,” he says, softly. “You think I don’t know when you’re upset?” Mike nudges him softly in the leg with his own knee. “I’ve known you too long to not be able to tell when something’s bothering you. Something big.”

Will digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He knows he’s probably smearing dirt all over his face, hands already coated it in, and it’s all over his pants too, for sure, but he can’t find it in himself to care. Come on Byers, you think I don’t know when you’re upset?

“It’s— it’s nothing, Mike, really,” he says, keeping his eyes firmly shut. He doesn’t want to open them, doesn’t want to see how Mike’s probably looking at him: in genuine confusion and oblivion, or, maybe, disgusted realization. He’s not sure which would be worse. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me,” Mike says, a bit huffily. “You think it’s not a big deal to me when my best friend is sad?”

“I think,” Will says, slowly, still with his hands pressed to his eyes, “that it shouldn’t be a big deal when your best friend is sad, because he’s kind of always—”

Belatedly, he realizes that telling Mike Wheeler that you’re kind of always sad is the epitome of a terrible idea— second only to, probably, blurting out that you fantasize constantly about holding his face in your hands and running your thumb over his lips before leaning in and pressing a kiss to them, or something— so Will finally removes his hands from his eyes and looks up, if only to assess the damage of what he’s just said.

Sure enough, Mike is looking straight at him, eyes a bit wide, mouth a bit downturned, lips a bit parted. Will instantly wishes he could take it back. 

“Believe it or not,” Mike says, voice now barely more than a stunned, hushed whisper, “I don’t want you to be sad. I actually want you to be happy, which is insane, I know. So of course I care. Of course— of course it’s a big deal to me, when my best friend is upset.”

Will frowns. It’s not the first time tonight that Mike’s said best friend, but it’s the first time he’s said it with any semblance of bite behind it, like it’s thorny and unpleasant as it leaves his mouth, covering his tongue all up in spines. It’s— it’s almost how Will feels, when he says it.

Best friend. You’re my best friend. We’re best friends. Best friends. I actually want you to be happy. So of course I care. We’re best friends.

He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose. Sighs. “Why are you doing this, Mike,” he says, and it comes out tired. Maybe a bit sad, after all. “I know I said I’d humor you, but— you’re so, I don’t know. Persistent. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“You know, Nancy tells me that I often remind her of a wart that no amount of topical treatment can vanquish,” Mike responds. “So I do get that a lot, actually.” And then he sighs, and presses his knee to Will’s leg again, warm and solid. Persistent. “And let’s just say I have a theory, okay? Would you listen to me if I said that?”

“ Do you have a theory?” Will peers at him through the dark as the flashlight flickers between, the silhouette of Mike’s face going in and out of view. “Or are you just saying that?”

“Of course I have a theory,” Mike huffs in mock affront, and thumps the back of the flashlight with the palm of his hand until it stops flickering. “You were the one that was just telling me that I’m super smart, and cool, or whatever, so it’s- uh- probably going to be spot on, too. Just wait.”

Will watches the sudden dip of Mike’s head as he says this, watches him twist his fingers together and worry at his lower lip between his teeth. It’s all barely visible in the light now, but he suddenly feels very exposed. Mike seems— he seems nervous, almost, which is ridiculous. He has— he has nothing to be nervous about. It’s just Will.

“Okay,” he says slowly, “enlighten me, then.”

“Let’s just say,” Mike starts, “for argument’s sake, that this wasn’t a Fred problem, but it was a you problem.”

“A me problem,” Will deadpans. He wasn’t sure what Mike meant by theory, but suggesting that Will seek counseling, or go see a shrink or whatever, seems a bit much. “What—”

“And let’s just say,” Mike continues, paying Will absolutely no mind. “That maybe— maybe your weird psychic link to the Upside Down gets triggered when you’re really mad. Or frustrated. Or scared. Or—”

“—sad?” Will supplies, a bit hollowly, because it doesn’t take a genius to be able to tell the general direction Mike is taking with this. “For argument’s sake, of course.”

“Of course,” Mike echoes, tugging at some of the hair falling into his eyes. His other hand is resting, splayed across his thigh, close enough to Will that their pinkies are almost touching.

They could be touching. Will could reach out— one quick brush, one small motion excused as a spasm of the wrist— 

They could be touching.

“And, uh—” The confident streak Mike was on seems to be trailing off into uncertainty. He falters, slightly, scraping at a thin growth of lichen on the wood underneath them. “I’m just spitballing here,” he says, sounding very much not like he is, “maybe it’s like— like flashbacks of things that already happened. Like on a video player, or like memories.”

“Memories?”

Mike bites his lip some more, twisting it between his front teeth. He’s still looking down instead of at Will. “We mentioned earlier how we didn’t know if the Upside Down had a collective consciousness, or whatever, but— if it’s some sort of feedback loop, if something tripped your connection to it— it would explain why you and El can see what’s going on, and no one else could.”

“Not to be that guy,” Will holds up a hand, “but there’s a glaring hole in your— your theory. You guys did all see him, remember? Fred? Just recently, actually.” This is all a bit— a bit much. His head feels extremely heavy but somehow also a bit like his brain’s been pumped full of helium.

Mike hums thoughtfully for a moment, undeterred. “It could get more intense the more you feel,” Mike suggests. “Did you— did something freak you out right before we saw him? Were you really scared? Angry? Anything?”

Will blinks, tries to think back to right before Mike runs off into the bushes. The things he was feeling, thinking, dreading.

He had been— he’d been watching Mike’s hair blow around in the nighttime breeze. Watching his cheeks flush red from their walk and the cold. He’d been— he’d been listening to Lucas saying that thing, about Will being Mike’s favorite, and Will had been riding a nauseatingly dizzy high from Mike’s lack of rebuttal. He’d been— he’d been thinking about Mike and El, their easy comfort at the breakfast table. Has it always been platonic, or something more?

And then when Mike had disappeared— he’d been thinking about the night at the diner, Mike reaching across the table and holding onto his arms like a drowning man clings to a life preserver. He’d been thinking about Mike lying on the couch, telling him that his room felt like home. Like home. Not a phrase without meaning, burden, connotation.

Had he been sad? Well, yes, definitely. But more than that, Will thinks, coming back into his own body with the shock of this realization, it’s not just sadness. It was anger, it was grief, it was hope, it was— it was want, filling him up so thoroughly that he could taste it in the back of his throat, overflowing out of him so rapidly that he thinks his vision might white out, even now.

He grips onto the rough bark beneath him, uncaring, suddenly, of the unpleasant scraping of his fingernails against the wood or the deep prints left against his palm. He can tell that Mike is still watching him, out from under the cover of his bangs to maybe try and lessen the intensity of his stare, but it doesn’t work. Will can tell.

He opens his mouth, maybe to say, you were wrong about this one, sorry Mike, or can we please stop talking about this, but all that comes out is, “Oh.”

It’s small, quiet. If Mike hadn’t already fixed a steady gaze upon his face, he probably would have missed Will even saying anything.

“What?” Mike asks, and then he’s shuffling closer, enough so that their faces are almost right in front of each other, existing so wholly in each others’ spaces that they’re definitely sharing breaths between them. “Is— everything okay?”

Will presses his lips together. There’s a telltale hot, prickling pressure behind his eyelids, and he squeezes his eyes shut again in the hopes that it’ll go away. This is so— this is so embarrassing. He will not cry. Not today. Not in front of Mike, especially.

“Yes,” he whispers. “I’m fine, it’s okay.” But he must not look very okay, because there’s a slight rustling noise next to him as Mike lifts a hand onto his shoulder.

“Hey,” Mike says gently. He’s rubbing a thumb over the spot where Will’s shoulder meets his clavicle in what he probably thinks is a soothing gesture, but is actually lighting Will’s skin aflame, up and down his whole body. “I’m— I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you start thinking about— about anything that you didn’t want to think about. I should’ve thought about it before springing that on you, I could’ve waited until we were inside somewhere, or you asked to talk about it, or—”

“No.” Will cuts him off halfway through. They’re always doing this: an incessant push and pull of apology and forgiveness, withdrawal and proximity, chaos and comfort over and over again in an eternal cycle that has Will’s mind reeling. 

“It’s— you were right. You were right, okay?” He says, when he looks up again, looking Mike in the eyes. “I was sad, I think. I was sad, and I was angry— I was a lot of things, actually— I still am a lot of those things,” he adds. “So. You don’t have anything to apologize for. You were right. Your theory. It was right.”

It feels like he’s admitting to more than he actually is. Like if Mike just reads between the lines a little bit, he’ll understand exactly what he was right about. What Will was sad about. Or angry, or confused, or hopeful about, or whatever. He’s a lot of things about it.

When Mike speaks up, it’s quiet. “Angry? What were— what are you angry about? And— and the other things?”

Maybe Mike is close to reading between the lines. Will’s heart feels like it’s clawing its way up his throat. “Nothing,” he says, watching Mike’s eyelashes flutter closed as he blinks. “It’s nothing.”

Both of them are quiet for five long breaths. Mike’s hand is still resting on his shoulder, thumb caressed in the divot of Will’s collarbone under the lapel of his jacket. “You can tell me,” Mike says encouragingly, and Will shakes his head.

“I can’t,” he whispers.

This, too, feels more like a confession than anything else he’s said tonight. There aren’t many things he can’t tell Mike. He knows everything about what Will went through with the Upside Down. Knows about Vecna, the Mind Flayer, everything in between. He knows about Will’s childhood, his messy family secrets and all the horrible, nasty things he got bullied for in school. Hell, he was the one that stood up for him most of those times. He knows every one of Will’s deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secrets— 

—except for one.

What he doesn’t know is that somewhere along the line, in between every remark fired back at a snot-nosed elementary school bully, in between every sleepover and lunches spent swapping cookies for potato chips, after every time he talked Will down from a vision or nightmare or a drunken bathroom panic attack, Will fell in love with him, a little bit.

Maybe— maybe more than a little bit.

But he doesn’t keep secrets from Mike. Mike doesn’t keep secrets from him. To admit there’s something Will can’t say to him is fundamentally an admission by omission. Will’s praying Mike isn’t reading between the lines.

Mike blinks. “Were you angry at me? Is that why you can’t tell me?”

Will almost wants to laugh. “I could never be angry at you, Mike,” he says, and it’s true. He could be pissed off, or frustrated, or irritated, or even a bit mad— but to be foundationally angry at Mike seems almost oxymoronic to him. He’s never been able to stay mad at Mike Wheeler. Mike’s too quick to apologize. Will’s too quick to forgive. Round and round they’ll go like this, always until the end of time. “I just. I can’t say, okay?”

Mike is silent for one beat longer. And then, so quietly that Will almost doesn’t hear—would have ignored entirely if his line of sight hadn’t been drawn, with an almost magnetic force, to the curve of Mike’s cupid’s bow—“What if I had a second theory?”

Will frowns. “What?”

Louder, this time— “What if,” Mike says, voice catching a bit on the change in syllable. He clears his throat. “What if my theory had a second part? And you don’t have to talk. You don’t have to say anything, even. You’d just have to— you’d just have to trust me. What then?”

“You were pretty spot on with the first bit,” Will says, maybe a bit miserably, but can you blame him, really? “I don’t see why this would be any different.”

Mike bites at his lip again, the enamel-white press blooming into red flush. Will looks away, a foot to the right, over Mike’s shoulder at the nearby curve of a bare tree branch arching over Mike’s head.

“I’m really hoping I’m as smart as you keep saying I am,” Mike laughs, but it falls flat. Forced. “Or else—”

He trails off, eyes glancing over Will’s face for a sign of— of what? What is Mike looking for?

“Or else what?”

Mike shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “But do you? Trust me, that is.” His voice comes out a bit breathy, shaking slightly at the edges.

Will’s frown deepens. That’s one of the most ridiculous things he thinks he's ever heard. Does he trust Mike? Of course he does— he trusts him with a blind, optimistic faith that’s strong enough to scare himself, sometimes.

He trusts him with his fears, hopes, dreams. He trusts him enough to set his own beating heart into Mike’s hands, heavy and hammering away at its desperate rhythm. He’d let Mike lead him out of hell, blindfolded in the dark, with no hesitation. He’d bet his life on him, again, strapped to a gurney with another unimaginable horror clawing its way out of his consciousness. Mike would be the one person he’d remember, again, even if he couldn't even remember his own name. No questions asked.

So asking such a simple question— whether he trusts Mike— it’s rather foolish to do so when the answer is so obvious.

“Yeah,” Will whispers, instead of trying to put any of this into words. “Yeah, of course I do, you know that.”

“Okay,” Mike says, as if he’s trying to steel himself. He takes in a breath, and then his hand moves slowly from Will’s shoulder around to the side of his neck.

“Wait—” Will starts, feeling the cold press of Mike’s hand against his skin. He shivers, only partially because of the cold. 

Partially because of, well. “What are you—”

“You said you trust me,” Mike says simply, hand slipping up an inch so that his thumb grazes the spot just under Will’s jaw. 

They lock eyes.

The deep brown of Mike’s eyes look entirely black in this dim lighting. Will is suddenly hyper-aware of everything surrounding them: the quiet croaking of a frog in the bushes. The soft rustling of the bare branches above them and the leaves on the ground. The smooth, dry weight of Mike’s palm against his pulse point. He swallows, feels Mike’s hand move with the flex of his own throat. “Of course I do,” he repeats.

Mike’s gaze drops down to his lips. Oh. Oh.

Is he— He’s going to— 

Is he—  

“Okay,” Mike whispers, and Will, for the hundredth time, squeezes his eyes shut on instinct. “Okay,” Mike whispers again, and then there’s a horrible, drawn out second between them—

And then a loud crackling noise erupts between them, so sharp that Will’s eyes fly open and he jerks backwards, fast enough to send him falling onto his back on the wide stretch of wood, mouth falling open in a gasp and heart hammering. What the fuck— what the fuck was that? And Mike— 

Was he about to—

Mike is in an identical position, now five feet away from Will, hands scrabbling at the zipper of his jacket. His eyes are wide, darting down to his hands and back to Will, and down again. “Fuck,” he says, pulling out his walkie-talkie from the inside pocket of his jacket, where loud static is coming through, interspersed with Dustin’s voice.

“Code yellow… Code yellow! Come in, Will…Mike,” Dustin’s saying, in bits and pieces. “It’s been… hour… you guys home yet? Is everything okay? Do we have… find you… need help? Code yellow… over…”

Mike looks up to Will, chest rising and falling rapidly, mouth open in a gentle O. He blinks once, and then three more times in rapid succession, before reality seems to catch up with him and he fiddles with the antenna of the walkie talkie and holds it up to his mouth. “It’s Mike,” he says, sounding about as breathless as Will feels, “sorry, we’re good. We were just—”

He stops, looking up at Will, who just stares back. Some unspoken question seems to pass between them— what were they doing?

“—talking,” Mike continues, looking away from Will and down at the dirt streaked on his hands from moving away. “We were just talking. We got carried away. Sorry we didn’t check in.”

There’s a moment of crackling silence, before Lucas cuts in: “…shit, man… you can’t disappear… after something spooky happens… thought you guys… about to call Mrs. Byers… over.”

“No!” Will says loudly, enough for Mike’s eyes to snap back to him in mild alarm, and then shock, again. He pointedly looks anywhere else. He hopes the walkie is even picking this up. “No, we're fine, I promise. Um, over.”

Another pause. “Okay…” comes Dustin again, “what the shit, guys… get home safe. Call us for real… Over and out.”

“Stay safe… goddamn idiots….over and out,” Lucas repeats, after a moment, and then the channel falls silent.

It’s too silent.

“Um,” Will says, because he cannot physically bear this quiet anymore. His hands are stinging a bit; he thinks he might have cut them up a bit as he slid across the rough bark. His pulse is still racing like he ran a marathon, uphill. He feels a bit dizzy, too. What the hell— “Do you need to—”

“I— we should go,” Mike says abruptly, and then slides off the tree trunk with a soft grunt. He’s watching Will carefully, like he’s afraid Will might freak out again. Which is a fair assumption, honestly. He can’t even get annoyed by it. “I’ll walk you home and, um. My bike’s still out front, I’ll ride home—”

“No,” Will blurts out, hopping off with none of the soft grace that Mike had and all of the hard impact. He groans and rubs his elbow where it hit the wood, and Mike makes an aborted, jerky movement towards him at the sound, hand raised like he was already about to catch him. He lowers it, slowly. “You should stay,” Will says, grasping at Mike’s sleeve.

There’s something desperate rising within him— already missing the close warmth and proximity of Mike’s body to his. The space between them seems much too far now. Will needs— well, he doesn’t know what he needs, but Mike’s hand pressing against the curve of his neck was pretty damn close to something, he thinks.

“It’s late,” he adds, when Mike doesn’t say anything. “You should just sleep over.”

These are words he’s said so many times, back at school, that they’d almost lost all meaning. It was more of a courtesy, then— Mike wouldn’t ask to stay on his own. Will wanted him to stay with an unspeakable desperation. He’d ask and Mike would agree immediately in the same practiced rhythm, over and over again.

But this— this is the first time he feels like he’s actually asking. Like Mike might actually say no.

“Stay,” he says, once more for good measure, and then Mike’s face softens into an easy smile.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, and then he’s pulling Will slowly back up the path to the house. “I can stay.”

Chapter Text

Will is pretty sure that no one will be awake and at home by the time they get back.

It’s not even 11:30, but his mom’s having dinner with Hop, Jonathan and Nancy are both at Steve’s, and El’s usually asleep by now. Will thinks going to bed at ten is the only way she’s able to wake up as ridiculously early as she does, sipping tea leisurely and looking fresh-faced and twinkle-eyed as he stumbles out of his own room, half-dead. So, with a bit of luck, he and Mike will be able to slip quietly into his room with no fuss, and simply not have to talk to each other or anyone else the entire time.

He should’ve figured, though, that he doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record with good luck. 

El’s still up and loitering around in the kitchen when Will pushes the front door open, and immediately wishes he had just snuck them in through the window. Even though she probably would’ve been able to tell. 

He’s also starting to think she just spends most of her time hunched over their wooden table, perched in a strangely contorted position atop a chair, much like a gargoyle on an old stone building, with some combination of papers scattered out in front of her. 

“Hi,” El says, not looking up from whatever she’s working on. She’s holding a half-full glass of milk up to her mouth, using her other hand to scratch absentmindedly behind her ear with a pencil. “Did you have a good time at the farm?”

“Um,” Will says, Mike motionless beside him. He feels suddenly very awkward, standing in his own kitchen, covered in dirt and mossy streaks of green. “Sure, I guess?”

“Did you find anything? Any ghost-people?” El asks, a bit absently.

“No,” Will says, at the same time that Mike blurts out, “Actually—” and Will elbows him sharply in the ribs.

“ Ow,” Mike whispers, rubbing at his side, as El finally looks up at their combined voices. She frowns.

“Hi, Mike, welcome back,” and then, “you guys are filthy.” She gestures vaguely up and down at them, and Will raises a hand to where he knows his cheek is entirely covered in dirt. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Will says, much too quickly, thinking about what they did. What they almost did, maybe—

—him and Mike sitting together in the dark. Talking, pressed up shoulder to shoulder. Mike, with a hand pressed flat and warm over his carotid, leaning in— 

Beside him, Mike stiffens. “We tripped,” he says, a bit stilted. “Um. Over a pumpkin.”

“Over a pumpkin,” El says flatly. If she were wearing glasses, she’d probably be peering at them over the rim like a librarian. She raises an eyebrow. “Both of you?”

“Yeah,” Will says. “Um. We tripped together. I fell— I fell on top of him. The ground, um. It was— dirty.”

“On top of him,” El repeats. She looks half gleeful, half confused, and one hundred percent disbelieving. “Okay, fine, don’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t that interesting anyway,” Will says, trying very, very hard not to look at Mike beside him. He fails, of course, ending up glancing at him in what he hopes is a discreet way, out of the corner of his eyes.

It doesn’t matter. Mike’s not looking at him anyway. His attention is taken up entirely by something seemingly very interesting across the room, over by the TV.

The two of them, sitting side by side. Pressed up all close together.

Mike saying, “I have a theory, do you trust me?” 

Mike leaning in, hand brushing up Will’s jaw, leaning in, leaning in, leaning—

“Mhm,” El says, squinting at him a bit. With a jolt, Will remembers that he can’t exactly recall where her psychic abilities end, and she might have honestly just read that entire train of thought as easily and vividly as flicking through film on a reel. And then she sighs, looking back down at her papers. “Please shower,” she says, with the air of someone announcing that the conversation is coming to a close, and asking them to also please exit the room and leave her be. “You smell awful,” she calls out, as they walk by her.

“Whatever. Wait, is that my shirt?” Will responds, and she flashes him a grin as he passes that confirms that yes, it’s most definitely his shirt.

“I actually do smell pretty bad,” Mike offers, as they walk down the hall to Will’s room. His voice is smaller than Will has ever heard it before, but he says it with a tentative smile, like some sort of olive branch. Maybe things— maybe they don’t have to be weird. Maybe they can just pretend that nothing happened. It was a fluke. Mike’s giving him an out. Will’s going to take it.

“Come on, you reek, Wheeler,” he says in response. His accompanying grin is too weak, he knows, a bit watery around the edges, translucent. But if Mike notices, he doesn’t seem to care. “Don’t understate it.”

Mike rolls his eyes, then makes a weird, twitchy, half-movement of his arm like he was about to lift it up to Will’s shoulder before he thought better of it. “Um,” he says, hand still hovering kind of in midair, “do you mind if I— do you think I could use the shower, actually? I really am kind of gross.”

“No kidding,” Will scoffs, more to cover up the faint heat spreading across his face than anything else. It’s ridiculous. Mike’s showered here plenty of times. It's ridiculous. And yet— “Yeah, for sure. Um. Bathroom’s right down there,” Will says, realizing a second too late that this is probably the dumbest thing he’s ever, ever said, because of course Mike knows where the bathroom is. He’s basically lived in this house part-time for fifteen years. Of course he knows where the bathroom is. 

Will mentally slaps a hand to his own face.

“Right,” Mike says, looking at him a bit strangely. “Um. I’ll just be in here then. Showering.”

“Right,” Will echoes. “Um. And I’ll just be— around— if you need me. Just— just yell, if you need something. Or don’t yell, actually, or I’ll think you’re, like, hurt or something. Just, um. You know. Whatever. Have a good— um. Shower,” he finishes lamely, as Mike nods, eyebrows raised, and kind of shuffles sideways into the bathroom. 

The door shuts behind him with a gentle click, and Will lets his head droop, groaning softly. What the fuck? Has he just— lost all ability to be normal? What the fuck was that?

Apparently fifteen years of friendship means nothing anymore, because he just apparently lost any and all ability to talk to Mike Wheeler like a normal fucking person. “What the fuck,” he mutters aloud to himself, walking back down the hall, “have a good shower? The bathroom’s right down there? Who says this shit?”

He waits in the hallway for a couple more minutes— waiting for what, he doesn’t know. But then he hears the sound of the shower turning on, and figures maybe that’s his cue to go before his stunned loitering turns less confused and more weird.

“El?” He calls, turning the corner into the kitchen, “you still there?”

Sure enough, she’s still sitting at the table, limbs somehow contorted into a different, yet equally uncomfortable-looking crouch on the wooden chair. She’s chewing determinedly on the end of her pen, and Will wrinkles his nose as she looks up and takes the pen out of her mouth. “Yeah?”

“Can I—” Will fiddles with his fingers, suddenly feeling a bit anxious. It’s ridiculous. This is all so ridiculous. It’s just El. It’s just El, and also Mike. But just El, for now. “Can I sit?”

El frowns at him. “Obviously,” she says, “you do not have to ask. You live here.”

“I know,” Will says, but he slides out a chair anyway. “I didn’t know if you wanted to be left alone.”

“If I wanted to be left alone, I would have worked in my room.” And yeah, okay, that’s a good point. El smiles at him, but there’s something lying underneath it— worry, maybe, concern. Confusion, even. “Is everything good?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” Will says weakly, looking down at the table and running one fingernail along the grain of the wood. He doesn’t say anything.

“Is Mike—” El starts.

“Mike isn’t anything,” Will says, almost immediately, which makes El’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Okay,” she says slowly, “I was only going to ask if you two are sleeping together.”

What? 

“What?” Will all but yells, and then, quieter, “El, what the fuck?”

El frowns. “Together, in your room tonight. I thought he was staying? Why else would you bring him here so late?”

Are you two sleeping together? Will doesn’t even have enough words left in his brain to think any coherent thoughts about that. 

“Do you— did you mean sleeping over ,” he hisses, trying to not think of him and Mike sleeping together. He fails, almost immediately. “El, what the hell, you can’t just say stuff like that.”

“What else does it mean?” she asks, but there’s a bit of a glint in her eye that Will is sure was put there by a certain Max Mayfield. He lifts a hand up to his cheek. He’s definitely red as a tomato right now.

“You— it— okay, never mind,” he rushes, “but you can’t just— why would you say that? About Mike?”

El just shrugs and makes a weird twitching motion with her lips like she’s trying to fight back a smile. She goes back to writing. “I just misunderstood the phrase,” she says, in a way that makes him think that she most certainly did not.

Again, he blames Max. He makes a note to start brainstorming ways to keep her in California forever. “Is he not sleeping over, then?”

“No— I mean, yeah, he is, but—” Will stops, chews a bit on his lower lip. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” El says simply. She fidgets a bit with the sleeve of the flannel button down she’s wearing over her sleep t-shirt— his flannel button down! He makes another mental note to steal it back later— and smiles. “Is it about Mike?”

“No,” Will says immediately, which obviously makes him look both like a coward and a liar, and he’s usually not both of these things at the same time, so this isn’t a great look on him. “Yes,” he amends, after a second’s pause. “Do you think he’s— is he—”

“Would this have anything to do with the talk we had this morning?”

Jesus H. Christ, was that only this morning? “Maybe,” he admits.

“Are you going to ask me if I think he’s being weird?”

“Maybe,” Will says again.

“In the same way you were being weird about him?”

“Yes,” Will says, before he can fully process this, and then, “wait, no! Wait, what?”

“You’re not very good at hiding things,” El says, which first of all is a blatant lie. Will is excellent at hiding things, thank you very much. Unfortunately for him, his sister’s been blessed with extrasensory psychic powers of perception and also maybe telepathy, which is really coming back to bite him in the ass right now. “We live together. I can always tell when you lie.”

“We haven’t lived together in the last three months,” Will grumbles, but he’s fighting a losing battle here. “But whatever. You’re not going to start spouting that friends don’t lie bullshit at me, are you?”

“Friends don’t lie but brothers and sisters lie all the time,” El says wisely. “Brothers and sisters, and also boyfriends—”

“Whoa, okay, who said anything about boyfriends!”

“Max,” El says, and Will makes a third note to search up discount one-way plane tickets to Canada. “She says—”

“Max says a lot of things, I get it,” Will interrupts. “She has a lot of opinions, especially on college students’ sex lives—”

“Now you are the one bringing up your sex life,” El points out, “not me. But if we’re talking about it—”

“Okay, okay, okay!” Will’s definitely almost shouting now, out of frantic desperation to bring this conversation to an end. “Okay, that’s enough of that.”

El’s smiling widely at him. In the background, the muted sound of the shower continues, water splashing sharply against ceramic tile. “I missed you,” El says earnestly. “It has been boring here without you.”

“Well you have Max,” Will rolls his eyes, but smiles back. “She’s been keeping you busy.”

El nods. “She has been teaching me a lot about being a college student. Also, what does boning mean?”

Will has a sudden flashback to sitting on Mike’s bed in his room, saying the word boning over and over and trying not to combust into flames. “Uh— no,” he decides firmly, “and you need to stop talking to Mike and Dustin.”

“You talk to Mike enough for both of us,” El agrees, which— okay, whatever, that’s not untrue. “But Dustin and I call a lot to make fun of the rest of you.”

This is about what Will expected. “Right,” he says. “What exactly do you make fun of?”

El holds a hand up to her ear, thumb and pinky outstretched to represent a phone. “Mike says we can’t hang out because he needs Will to help him with his narrative fiction assignment,” she says, in a pretty good imitation of Dustin’s voice, “even though I know that asshole already finished his narrative fiction assignment and turned it in last week.”

“Uh,” Will says, because he actually remembers helping Mike with his narrative fiction assignment— or not helping? Mike had been asking him about something something romantic closure and narrative pacing and in the end they’d just ended up spending the day hooking up Will’s Atari to the TV in the student lounge and taking turns on it. “I remember that day. It was— actually, I didn’t end up helping him with anything. We gave up on the assignment and played Pac-Man. Why did he come over if it was already done?”

El shrugs. “I don’t know. But,” and then she pauses, “is everything okay between you two?”

Honestly, what is it with everyone and asking him if things are okay. That’s such a subjective word, Will thinks, that it’s hard to even tell what’s okay and what’s not. What does okay even mean, really?

“Sure,” he says instead, “yeah, I think so.”

“Because,” El continues, giving him a very librarian-esque look again, “you know you can tell me—”

“Everyone also keeps saying that,” Will says weakly, letting his head fall into his hands. Maybe he’s being melodramatic— whatever. He deserves a little bit of melodrama. “I know, I know, I have great people in my life that I need to communicate better with, you’re all there for me, I get it.”

“If you and Mike are—” El gestures vaguely with her hand, and Will stares, “that’s— that’s good! I think he’s good for you. Obviously he makes you very happy. And you make him very happy, so—”

“What,” Will says flatly, “we’re not—”

El raises her eyebrows again and he falls silent. In the bathroom, the sound of running water stops abruptly, and Will can hear the faint swish of the curtains being slid aside. “We’re not anything,” he says again, “now be quiet or he’ll hear you.”

“If you’re not anything, then I don’t know why it would matter,” El whispers with a roll of her eyes, but she gathers up her papers into a neat stack. “Anyways. I’m done with my homework now, and I’m very happy tomorrow is my last class. On Thursday morning, Jonathan and I will be making pie in the kitchen, so please leave us alone.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will says, a bit absently. “Sure. Pie.”

“Mom and I want pumpkin, Jonathan wants apple, Hop says anything’s good when you slap ice cream on top, so you need to help us decide—”

“Hey, Will?” Mike’s voice floats down the hallway, faint from behind the door. Will stands up fast enough for his chair to go clattering down to the floor.

“One second,” he calls out, probably entirely too hastily, and El raises another eyebrow at him. She’s gotten good at that, lately. Will’s never going to understand the fine motor control she has over her facial muscles. “And also, apple,” he says, setting the chair up straight.

“Bo-ring!” El complains, as Will tries not to book it down the hallway.

“Mike?” He presses one hand to the bathroom door. “Is everything okay?”

There’s a beat of silence, and then a vague shuffling noise through the door. “Yeah,” Mike says back, speaking more quietly now. “Yeah, sorry, it’s so dumb, I should’ve— I should’ve remembered sooner. Um— I don’t actually have any clean clothes, could I borrow something?”

He says the last part all together in one word, like couldiborrowsomething? Will stands there in bewildered shock for a moment, before it hits him that oh, right, the entire reason Mike was taking a shower was because he was covered in dirt and was generally kind of disgusting— not that Will would ever really find him disgusting, which is a whole other problem on its own— and, “Yeah, of course,” Will says, taking a few tentative steps back into his room. “Um. Just gimme a second, okay?”

It isn’t until he’s rooting absentmindedly through his drawers that it hits him— how catastrophic of an idea this is. Lending Mike his clothes. Lending him his pajamas, no less. Seeing Mike all bundled up and soft and warm out of the shower in his clothes. 

And then going to sleep.

Together.

Waking up.

Together.

Will squeezes his eyes shut and groans. There was a reason he never did this back at school, okay? Why he let Mike just fall asleep in whatever he was already wearing instead of asking him, hey, those jeans sure look uncomfortable, wanna wear my pajamas instead? In his head, it was justified as Mike’s punishment for usurping his floor constantly, except it was actually kind of a blessing to have Mike usurping his floor constantly, so who is Will even kidding?

He just never lent him anything because Will Byers is a coward. Too much of a coward to be able to see Mike Wheeler in his clothes and live to tell the tale.

“Ugh,” he says aloud, massaging his temples with one hand. Really, when did this all get so complicated?

(The answer to that, fittingly enough, is not simple either. It was mostly fine when Will was silently yearning from the safety of the eight-foot difference between him in his bed and Mike on the floor. And then Mike had to go and maybe-almost-kiss him in the middle of the woods and now Will’s about to have a conniption, stroke, and aneurysm all at once inside his childhood bedroom.)

“Was that a noise of pain?” Mike calls across the hall, and Will startles. “Do I need to rush in to save you? I’m only wearing a towel, but I’ll do it.”

“Oh—” It comes out of Will’s throat, embarrassingly strangled. “No, no, I’m good—” he calls back, trying valiantly to not picture Mike in just a towel. All warm and pink from the shower, too. “All good,” he says again, “not hurt!”

He grabs a shirt and a pair of pajama pants at random and slams the dresser drawer shut, trying not to think about Mike rushing anywhere to save him, either, like a knight in glimmery shiny silver chainmail armor.

He prays El isn’t overhearing this conversation from the kitchen, either, but the grin she shoots him from around the corner— as he fumbles through the gap in the bathroom door to hand Mike the clothes, while trying his hardest to not burst aflame— just proves his theory that he’s never had good luck with anything, ever.

Will’s had a lot of bad ideas in his time.

It wasn’t too great that one time he followed through on Lucas’ dare to eat a pickle dipped in hot fudge sauce ( blech), or that time when he was thirteen and was convinced that he could climb a tree faster than Dustin (he could, but he could also fall off the tree faster than Dustin). Plus, the entirety of his bowl-cut era wasn’t exactly his time to shine.

This, however, is pretty up there in his list of catastrophically bad ideas. 

Will balks in the shower for as long as he possibly can before his fingers get pruny and the hot water runs out. He lathers shampoo through his hair once, twice, even thrice, just to kill time. He uses up probably a fifth of their soap, just sudsing it up and washing it all off again, until the entire bathroom is filled with steam and smells like Irish Spring and extra-gentle generic brand shampoo.

The bathroom mirror is all fogged up. Will wipes away at it with his hand until the blurry outline of his own face is visible— skin super red from the hot water, hair flat and running water down his neck. He frowns. Does he look— kissable?

No, that’s stupid. 

He turns his head to the side a bit, rests tentative fingertips over the spot on his neck where Mike’s hand had been resting. What would it feel like to have his hand there again? If Mike leaned in again, maybe this time Will would be ready. Maybe this time, he’d lean in too. Maybe this time—

Okay, this train of thought is helpful to exactly no one, especially not him. Maybe Mike wasn’t even about to kiss him. He probably wasn’t. It was probably nothing.

But if he was— interjects a little voice in his head.

“Shut up,” he says aloud, scowling, to his reflection, which has gone a bit pink-cheeked in a way that’s probably not from the excessively boiling water.

His reflection just stares back, as the condensation slowly takes over the mirror again.

Back in his room, Mike’s set up some sort of haphazard nest of blankets on the floor. He’s unearthed the spare comforter from the closet, as well as the spare pillow, which is worn flat and has a questionable stain on one corner that’s been there as long as Will can remember. It’s why they keep it as a spare, okay?

“Um,” Will says as he walks in. Intelligent, he knows. “What are you doing?”

Mike startles. He’s been lying on his stomach on the floor, flicking through Will’s music collection. “Sorry,” he says, making to get up, “I was just looking through your music. Did you not want me to?”

Will waves him off. “I don’t care about that, dummy. I meant this.” He gestures to the blanket pile.

Mike rubs at the back of his neck. His hair is still damp— very damp— okay, cool. “Oh,” he says, “I mean you asked if I wanted to sleep over so I—” he trails off. “Should I have not gone through your closet? Sorry, I just remembered where you kept the extras, I just assumed—”

Honestly, what is it with Mike and automatically thinking that Will’s got a problem with him looking at the stuff in his room? “I don’t care about that either,” he says, trying his hardest to not roll his eyes. He perches on the corner of his bed, trying his hardest to not look as terribly awkward as he feels. “Stop apologizing.”

Mike’s eyes follow him, looking up at him from where he’s cross-legged on the floor. “Sorry,” he says, and then his mouth immediately turns up into a smile. “Sorry,” he says, again, probably just to mess with him this time, and then Will half-heartedly thumps him with a pillow off the bed.

“I mean why are you—” he waves his hand at the pile again, “—that?”

Mike frowns. “I need to sleep somewhere?”

He’s going to make Will say it, isn’t he? Will groans inwardly, doing what’s probably the mental equivalent of clenching his fists. “I mean you could just—” He points to his bed.

Mike frowns some more. “But then you’d have to sleep on the floor?”

Maybe Will actually isn’t in love with Mike after all, because Mike Wheeler is, apparently, an idiot. Maybe he’s gotten love feelings mixed up with whatever type of feeling it is that makes you want to use your fists to knock some sense into someone’s empty cranium.

He takes a deep breath, about to say: you idiot, just come sleep up here with me. But then he looks at Mike’s expression, eyes wide and expression carefully blank— too blank— and realizes that yes, Mike’s going to make him say it. 

Mike won’t come to that conclusion on his own, not now; for the first time, they’re treading uncertain waters.

He takes a deep breath. You idiot, just come sleep up here with me.

But Will Byers is a coward, apparently. He closes his mouth again. “Never mind,” he says, a bit clipped. “Can we go to sleep now?”

Mike opens his mouth, then closes it again. And then, “Of course.” It also comes out strangely terse. “You must be tired.”

“Exhausted,” Will confirms. It’s— mostly the truth. 

He is tired. Partly because of the everything about the day he’s had. But he’s also tired of a lot of other things.

For one, the way Mike keeps looking at him. Like he’s about to detonate any second, no warning. Or like he just watched Will step on a puppy’s tail and not even care. Or maybe somewhere in the middle of those two, apprehension and shock. Just wide eyes and carefully neutral expression, like he’s scared to even look at him the wrong way.

Will is so tired of it.

There’s a rustling noise as Mike moves the blankets around. Just say it, Will thinks to himself. Just say it. Come on.

“Goodnight,” Mike says, and then after a second’s pause, he’s crawling over and flicking on the lamp by Will’s bed, looking pointedly at anywhere but Will.

Will, on the other hand, stares.

“This is— this is good, right?” Mike says, suddenly sounding worried. “I thought you—”

“No, it is,” Will says hurriedly. His fingers twitch across the hem of the blanket of their own accord, like they’re about to reach up for Mike’s wrist. Just say it, come on. Don’t be a coward. “Thanks.”

Mike turns away. “No problem,” he says, and then he’s crossing the room, turning the bigger light off. There’s another loud rustling noise as he climbs into his pile of blankets, and then the room goes entirely quiet.

Will has a feeling Mike is holding still on purpose, trying not to make noise. Trying not to draw attention to himself. It is, after all, exactly what Will is doing.

He closes his eyes, even though Mike can’t see him, takes a deep breath. Come on, Byers. Say it. Say it.

This was a lot easier back in the safety of his dorm room, where the twin bed was too small to actually hold two people. So Will could just think things like forget the floor, come join me up here in the comfortable privacy of his own brain, knowing there would be no situation in which he would actually be able to say those words aloud.

Will’s bed now, however, is not a twin. It can definitely fit two people, even if one of them is the abnormality of human growth lying in the corner of the room.

Say it, say it, his brain chants, and then, another smaller part of his brain chimes in: you won’t. Because you’re a coward.

I’m not a coward, he thinks to himself, and maybe this mental conversation is reaching new levels of pathetic, okay. He digs his fingers into the corners of his eyes, grits his teeth, and before he can chicken out, says, “Mike?”

“Yeah?” The response is instantaneous, like Mike was waiting for Will to call his name.

But he probably wasn’t. Why would he be?

“Um.” Will takes a breath, steels every nerve in his body, and says the words he’s been thinking on a loop since the beginning of the year: 

“You should just— just forget about the floor,” he says carefully, feeling a bit like he’s reading lines off a script. Stupid. He clenches his hands into fists. This is so stupid. It’s just Mike. “And come sleep up here with me.”

The answer, this time, comes after a long pause. Will’s starting to wish that maybe the Demogorgon could come crashing through the walls of his house again and take him back now, when Mike says, again, “Yeah?”

It’s smaller this time. Almost shy.

Will swallows. Stares straight up at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he says.

There’s another pause, and then yet another shuffling and rustling of sheets as Mike stands up. Will keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the ceiling, but makes out Mike’s form walking around the corner of the bed. The mattress dips, slightly, as he slides onto it.

“You can get under the covers,” Will adds with a small smile, and Mike goes, “oh, right,” and the mattress shifts some more as Mike maneuvers his limbs under the duvet.

Okay, that’s that. That’s done with. The hardest part has passed. It’s cool.

Or— or maybe not.

Because now, in close proximity, Will can say with absolute confidence that this is the worst idea he’s ever had.

Forget about the pickles and the trees and letting his mom hold a bowl to the top of his head to cut his hair. This takes the cake, easy.

Mike doesn’t smell like vanilla body wash anymore. He smells like— he smells like Will. Like the soap his mom’s been buying since he was in kiddie diapers. The shampoo they’ve been using for just as long.

And— oh God. He’s wearing Will’s clothes. His clothes. So he smells a bit like their fabric softener, too, their detergent. The wider shoulders of Will’s t-shirt are draping off of Mike’s smaller frame, but Will has a sneaking suspicion that if he peeks under the covers, the hems of the pajama pants Mike borrowed will be riding a few inches above his stupid ankles.

This was a bad idea. A catastrophically horrible idea.  

Neither of them say anything, and Will gets an inkling, led by Mike’s unnatural stiffness and matching stare at the ceiling of Will’s room, that he might be thinking something similar.

This is so stupid.

Say something, his brain urges, but Will does not trust himself to open his mouth at random with all that stuff he was just thinking about Mike in his clothes and smelling like his soap. Say something normal, he thinks, like, wow, your hair is getting so long. Or, that shirt looks good on you. Or wait, maybe not that—

“You’re getting the pillow wet,” is what comes out instead. 

What the fuck? He wants to smack himself.

Beside him, Mike turns his head, so they’re both flat on their backs, looking at each other. He frowns. “What?”

Okay, apparently this is what they’re talking about now. Will swallows, hard, then reaches out a hand to tug at one damp lock of hair curled around the top of Mike’s collarbone.

Mike is so warm. Will can almost feel the heat emanating off his skin. “Your hair,” he says, “you’re getting the pillow wet.”

Mike lets out a half-laugh, rising up onto one elbow. “Sorry,” he says, “I can—”

Will’s had just about enough. “Stop that.” He tugs Mike back down until he hits the mattress with a soft umph. “Stop apologizing,” he says again, “or I’ll have to kick you out.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Mike says, but he’s smiling now. “You’d never leave me out there.”

This is true. But Mike doesn’t have to know that. “I guess you’ll have to find out,” Will says, shrugging in what he hopes is a nonchalant manner.

It’s no use. They both definitely know he’s lying.

Mike doesn’t say anything after that. His smile morphs into something softer, a strange, analytical look on his face as he peers at Will through a damp layer of hair. It’s already drying, curling up at the ends. It amazes Will how Mike’s hair does that— have shape, texture, a mind of its own. He’s been growing it out for so long, looking so serious and mature with it, that sometimes this version of Mike seems so far removed from the round, chubby-faced boy he grew up with.

“Aren’t you tired?” Mike says at last, still looking at him. “I don’t want to keep you up.”

And sometimes, he doesn’t seem far-removed at all. He’s still the same Mike. Caring, persistent, rough around the edges. But never— never with Will.

“I am,” Will says, “but—”

He doesn’t finish the thought, and neither of them make to move, either.

Say it, his brain says again, ask him. Ask him. Ask him.

“No,” Will says aloud.

Mike frowns. “Huh?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” Ask him. Ask him. Ask him—

Will’s been brave once already tonight. What’s one more time?

“Mike—” he starts, and Mike’s gaze snaps to his eyes.

“Yeah?”

Ask him. Ask him. Ask him. Ask him. Ask him.

He takes a deep breath. “What was—” 

Nerves of steel. 

Ask him. 

Coward. 

Ask him. 

“What was that theory you were testing out? Earlier?”

Mike breathes in sharply, but quiet enough that Will wouldn’t have heard anything if he wasn’t so close. “It was, um.”

Say it, Will thinks, but this time it’s not at himself. Say it. Say it. Say it.

“It was just,” Mike says slowly, “um. It was about why— why you were so sad for a while. And, um.” A pause. “And angry. And all those other things”

“Okay,” Will says softly. “What was your theory?”

“It was dumb,” Mike says, looking away. “You— you don’t want me to—”

“I do,” Will interrupts, trying very hard not to sound too eager. “I do want.”

Mike’s entire degree and future career might be about finding good ways to string a sentence together, but clearly Will’s isn’t. That was an awful way to end a sentence.

“Oh,” Mike says, sounding like he’s realizing about fifteen different things at once. His eyes glance down, once, to Will’s lips. “Oh, okay.”

Will’s heart is beating so loud that he’s almost positive Mike can hear it. 

“Okay,” Will echoes.

Neither of them move. Will’s heartbeat is definitely loud enough for Mike to hear. He feels a bit like his chest is turning inside out, adrenaline flowing through his arteries strong enough for him to feel the sharp ache of it with every beat of his pulse.

“So—” Will starts, and before he can finish that thought, Mike is kissing him.

Listen, Will’s not going to lie and say he hasn’t thought about this a lot, okay? In his head, their first kiss has happened a million different ways, in a million different timelines: Mike pulling Will into a coat closet during a party before they make out for hours and hours and hours on end. Walking each other home from the cafeteria, then kissing goodbye in the doorway. And, years ago, before Will could properly quantify just how much and what he was feeling for Mike— a grasping, desperate kiss, smearing blood and dirt and sweat across their faces. Just holding, clutching, protecting. And even before that— something tender, sweet, blurred with childish innocence, the kind of kiss that makes you turn pink and wrinkle your nose and go, “Is that what the big deal is about?”

It’s almost ridiculous how far from any of those situations this is.

The first thing Will becomes aware of is how warm Mike is. The soft, gentle press of his lips against Will’s feels like Mike’s turned into a human furnace. And then, in shocking contrast, the cool brush of his still-damp hair against Will’s cheek. His hand coming up against Will’s jaw, shaking and tentative. Oh, Will thinks, in the far-off depths of his brain, oh, oh, oh. 

Mike’s kissing him. He’s kissing him.

He feels something bubbling up inside him— warm, molten, lighter than air. Like sunlight pouring through mildew-covered wood. Small sips of hot cocoa after coming in from the cold. His heart has probably crawled entirely out of his esophagus by now with how fast it’s beating, and wow, okay, isn’t that embarrassing, that Mike can definitely feel it with where his hand is pressed against the line between Will’s throat and jaw?

But that’s the thing, though— is that none of this is embarrassing. The things that would normally have Will’s brain on overdrive— how out of breath he feels from just this one press of lips to another, how fast his pulse is racing, his shaky inhale as he reaches a hand up to cup Mike’s face— all fade into the background like the edges of Jonathan’s half-developed film. It’s just him and Mike, focused in the center of the frame.

All his senses spiral into tunnel vision until it’s just this— the scent of his detergent and shampoo and the flushed press of palm to cheek, Mike’s lips still grazing carefully, unmoving, against Will’s like he’s scared that Will’s going to pull away any second.

It isn’t until Will brings his hands up to Mike’s cheek, the first trembling touch, that they get catapulted out of this hazy limbo and into something else entirely.

Mike lets out an exhale like he’s been holding his breath this entire time, shaky and punched-out from somewhere deep under his ribs. His hand tenses and releases, twitching quick as gunfire, in its hold on Will’s jaw, and then moves up and back, into the soft line of his hair against the nape of his neck, suddenly clutching, grasping— pulling Will in so close that the hair’s breadth of space still existing between their mouths vanishes. It’s all crushing lips together, noses pressed crookedly against each others’ cheeks, in what should be painful and awkward and clumsy but is, in reality, enough to send Will’s soul soaring out of his mortal body.

From what seems like twenty feet out of his own mind, Will hears himself make the most embarrassing sound he’s ever made in his life, a kind of whimpered puff of air against Mike’s lips, unable to do anything more than just grip Mike’s face pathetically and squeeze his eyes shut. This is— yeah, okay, cool. He can roll with this. This is good. This is—

—not good! Mike’s pulling away, all too suddenly, and Will hears, more than feels, almost, the sudden rush of cold air flooding in between them where, a second ago, no space used to be. 

Mike’s eyebrows are upturned, face left open and vulnerable, a glorious flush of pink smattered across the curve of his cheeks and nose. Will stares. He stares and stares and stares, taking in the red smudged across Mike’s lips, the unsteady rise and fall of his sternum where it disappears under the duvet, the messy spill of his hair sideways against his face and the pillow. He drinks it in like it’s his oasis in the middle of a desert, stares until Mike surely starts feeling a bit self-conscious, and frowns.

“Was that— was that okay?”

“Um, yeah,” Will says, and then he feels himself flush all over because he did not know his voice could go that deep, wow, okay. His breathing is definitely embarrassingly off-pace. He clears his throat. “Yes. Yeah, that was—”

“What?” Mike says, but he’s still breathing a bit off-kilter, and Will gets hit with an endearing rush of understanding that Mike is genuinely asking, he really wants to know what; he’s worried, maybe, that he blurred Will’s boundaries by kissing him without asking.

Will bites at his lip. Mike’s eyes follow. “Nothing,” he says, unable to fight back the upward twitch of his lips, “you know, I think— I think I’m still a little sad, actually.”

And then Mike’s face is splitting open in the widest grin Will has ever seen, enough so that he thinks he can turn off the lamp by his bed because Mike’s smile could light up this entire room ten times over. “Yeah?” Mike says, barely above a whisper. There’s a familiar look there, that boyish, playful smirk that’s had Will keeling over for years and years now. “I think I can fix that.”

Will barely has time to process the fact that— what the hell— Mike Wheeler is flirting with him, before Mike’s hand is carding through his hair again, pulling him in.

This time, though— this time, Will is ready. The clash of teeth and noses and chins does not come; Will meets Mike halfway, tilting his head to the side, a bit, until their lips slide into place together, instead of against.

“Will.” Mike’s gasp of his name is soft, barely more than an exhale, like he didn’t even mean to say it, whispered out on a breath like he did. Like he couldn’t even help himself.

Will’s stomach just about drops clear through his body.

And— God, does he know? Does Mike know? What it does to Will, saying his name like that? Full of want, full of admiration, attraction, desire — like Will was not insane for wanting what he did for so long, like he wasn’t delusional, wasn’t fucked up or disgusting for wanting his best friend like this— not when his best friend wanted him too. Maybe— maybe just as much as Will did, even.

“Shut up,” Will says, against Mike’s lips as he presses in and pulls away, in and out like the lazy sway of the tide. He’s getting so dizzy with this. He doesn’t even think he’s inside his own body anymore. Is it possible to remote-control a human body? God, Mike is so warm. “Please— please just—”

That’s also a horrible way to form a sentence. Luckily, it seems like Mike has more important things on his mind. “Yeah, okay,” he whispers, and then he’s leaning into Will’s space, their bodies pressed up into one sinuous line, his hand using its grip on the curve of Will’s neck to tilt his head back and back and back—

And then Will’s back hits the mattress— somehow, he’s been rolled over from his side without even noticing — and Mike’s propped up on one elbow above him, palm pressed flat against the pillow by Will’s head, before he lets out a startled, half-muffled noise and winds his fingers through Will’s hair, cradling his head on either side and letting his body weight fall to rest against Will’s chest.

It isn’t until that contact is made— the warm, heavy weight of Mike’s torso against his, the soft, draped folds of Will’s own t-shirt getting bunched up beneath his fisted palms— that suddenly the contact isn’t enough. Will thinks he could combust with the forceful need to be closer, to hold Mike to his own body until the space between them disappears into a vacuum.

On a whim, he lets his mouth fall open, lax, pulls Mike down at the same time that he pushes his body up, trying to convey that inane, overwhelming feeling—to be so close to him that they occupy the same space—without having to try to put something so mortifying into words.

A soft shudder wracks the entirety of Mike’s body and he groans, so loudly and throatily that Will feels himself flush— he prays to God that El didn’t hear that, or she’ll never let him hear the end of it. And then Mike runs his tongue along Will’s lower lip, and thus begins Will Byers’ transformation into a damn near hypocrite, apparently. He feels an identical sound leave his own mouth, captured immediately by Mike’s answering kiss, deepened into something hot, flushed, slick, almost—

Oh God.

This is— this is a lot, okay? It’s all one big heady rush of sensation: the tactile weight of Mike’s body against his own, the smell of his hair and the caustic warmth of his skin, the taste of Will’s spearmint toothpaste and the— the soft, drawn-out clicks of their mouths coming together and separating. God, okay, he’s definitely blushing now, that’s definitely enough to get his stomach swooping excitingly. It’s just— total and complete sensory overload.

And then it hits Will all at once: that this isn’t just anyone he’s kissing. It’s Mike.

Mike, who’s been his best friend since kindergarten. Mike, who helped him bandage up scraped knees and paper cuts. Mike, who scoured the entire town when he went missing, who never gave up on him ever— not when he thought Will was dead, not when Will wasn’t even Will anymore, not when Will was fighting his way through possession and hellscapes and the horrifying ordeal of college application essays—

Mike, who was excited to go to college with him. Mike, who, apparently, is content just spending time in Will’s presence, hour after hour, day after day. Mike, who believed Will instantly when he said something was wrong, who brought their friends together to help him figure it out. Mike, who’s persistent and loud and snarky and kind and so full of love that it constantly just spills out of him—

It’s Mike.

Something he does, some minute hesitation or movement, must give away this train of thought— it’s not even mental gymnastics that his brain is doing right now, it’s more like it’s weaving in and out through those hoops you can set on fire— because Mike pulls back, releasing the soft suction on his lower lip with a noise that has Will’s breath juddering to a halt. His pupils are blown, the already deep brown of his eyes made impossibly darker, the inky smudge of his lashes across his heavy-lidded eyes fluttering until they come to rest, half-open.

“Hey,” Mike says softly, eyes flicking back and forth between Will’s own, searching. Will isn’t sure what he looks like right now, but if his own expression is anything like Mike’s— dazed, kiss-drunk— he’s honestly applauding Mike for being capable of coherent thought at all. “You okay?”

It’s unbelievable that Mike looks half out of it and is still checking in on Will. Will, who is so far beyond okay that it’s not even funny. He thinks he might have astrally projected his body into oblivion. He thinks the entirety of the Upside Down might be collapsing in on itself. He thinks— 

—he thinks he should probably figure out a way to get his vocal cords to work, because Mike’s starting to look a bit worried.

“Yeah,” he manages, “yes, yeah,” and, okay, even if it’s not realistic to expect him to have an entire array of complex vocabulary on hand right now, maybe a couple of other words might be good—

“I’m great,” he says, unable to draw his eyes away from the shadow of freckles across Mike’s nose, backlit in beautiful pink. “It’s just— I didn’t— you, I didn’t think—”

Nice. Really, good one, Byers. He groans, and— with no small amount of reluctance— removes his hands from where they’ve slotted into place on either side of Mike’s face so that he can bury his rapidly reddening face in them. “Actually, ignore all of that,” he mumbles.

“Hey,” he hears Mike say again, and then there’s a hand slowly peeling back the iron-clamp grip of his fingers against his eyes. “Will. Look at me.”

There’s a beat, a pause, where they’re just looking at each other. This, somehow, is immeasurably more vulnerable than the act of literally sticking your tongue into someone’s mouth. Which— he just did. Oh God.

Mike’s hair is falling, a bit, into both of their faces. Will is suddenly hyper-aware of how he’s pressed up against his pillows— immobilized both by the unyielding weight of Mike’s body against his own and also the intensity of his stare.

“Will,” Mike says, and he’s saying his name like that again. Breathy. Persistent as all hell. Full of— of want, maybe. Affection, definitely. He leans in, brushes a feather-light kiss against his lips, tantalizing and sweet, before it’s gone. “Hey, it’s just me.”

“Well, yeah,” Will whispers, not sure how to convey that that’s half the point— is that it’s Mike. It’s a lot. “It’s you, that’s— I didn’t even know—”

Fortunately for him, Mike seems to be able to figure out what he’s trying to say well enough. They’ve always been good at this— half-glances speaking enough to fill entire pages. His soft smile morphs into something more serious, and he leans in until there’s barely an inch between them. “Come on,” he says, hovering, hovering, hovering. Mike’s going to kill him. “Of course it’s you. For me, I mean. It’s always been you. I thought— I thought you knew. Until. Well.”

The speech center of Will’s brain has seemed to have melted out his ears. “Me?” he echoes, a bit faintly. “It’s always been me?” Always is a very heavy word. That’s— a lot of time. He turns it over in his mouth. “Me?” he says, again.

Mike laughs, short and surprised, “Yes, you,” and then, a bit sheepishly, “I’m— I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I— I thought you figured it out, that day in my room. And then— I thought you were avoiding me because you got weirded out, and I didn’t want to—”

It’s honestly a miracle that Will is comprehending any of this with Mike so close to him, so he just shakes his head, frantic. How do you tell someone you’ve loved them probably since before you knew what it meant to love someone like that? 

The answer is— you don’t. Not if you’re operating on six percent brain capacity, and you have the same sorry excuse for a mental dictionary that Will does. “It’s— you’re it for me, too,” he mumbles, turning redder than a beetroot, and Mike lets out a pleased, “yeah?” And then Will decides that maybe— maybe the time for talking is not now.

Will leans in first this time, and immediately, any lingering doubt of whether Mike wants him slips away, easy as a whisper-thin flick of an autumn leaf in the breeze. There’s no question, anymore, about if Mike wants him as much as Will does— how can there be a question, when Mike touches him like this— reverent and awestruck— and when he’s being kissed so thoroughly that he can’t even remember his own name?

It strikes him, in this instant, that he would do absolutely anything, if only Mike asked him to. If he wanted, if he keeps kissing him like this, Will could take on the Mind Flayer’s undead army single-handedly— and win.

If Mike’s hand keeps tightening in his hair like this, clutching and releasing like instinct and apology, Will could find his way out of the gate in Lover’s Lake, swim to the surface with his eyes closed and limbs bound. 

He would even brave the dining hall lines on mac and cheese Thursdays and come out— mostly— unscathed. He’d do any of it— all of it— if only Mike asked.

And look, Will’s not, like, an expert on making out or anything, but if it’s like this all the time—

He gets it, okay? He gets why Mike and El were going feral at each other that summer they were together. Why Jonathan would duck into his room with Nancy in tow and emerge hours later, ignoring calls from Will that lunch was ready— even chicken pot pie, the blasphemy— clothes rumpled and hair all messed up. He gets it. If it’s like this all the time— he doesn’t know how people stop, honestly. 

How could Will ever have the willpower to pull away with Mike’s hands tugging gently at the roots of his hair, sending electric sparks shooting down his skin, coaxing his mouth into falling open wider with a gentle nudge of tongue against tongue that has another embarrassing, whispered plea slipping past his lips.

How could he ever refuse these things: the soft curtain of Mike’s hair falling down over his wrists. The warm curve of the back of his neck and all the soft hairs there, the shiver that runs down Mike’s body when Will grazes his fingernails over them. The freckles across his shoulders that Will presses his palms to, appreciative, knowing they’re there even when they’re not sun-darkened in full summer bloom. The strip of skin on Mike’s back that gets exposed as Will tucks his hands under the hem of the shirt on a whim, pushing the shirt up and his fingertips in as Mike releases his upper lip with a soft bite and low hum that set his heart aflutter, something warm and fluid settling in his gut.

How could he ever have the strength to pull himself away? To deny himself these things— these nice, good things that he finally gets to have?

To have. Selfishly, he thinks, mine, running his thumb over the curve of Mike’s cheekbone, the smooth skin under his eyes, down against the corner of his mouth when it slides open against Will’s, tapping lightly against the slender bend of his chin as their mouths separate. Mine, mine, mine. All these things are his now— he gets to have them . And also, maybe, Mike.

Fortunately— or maybe unfortunately— Mike is the one who pulls back in the end, Will leaning pathetically into the movement and falling back onto the pillows with a frown when Mike does not oblige him.

God, Mike’s lips are red. So red. They’re red, glossed, parted open with heavy breaths— heavy, Will thinks, a bit dizzily, because they were just making out— God. What the fuck?

“So,” Mike says, lips curling up into a half-smirk. He’s twisting a strand of Will’s hair between his index and middle finger gently, so gently, none of the frantic intensity of two minutes ago. “Are we, uh. Is this—?”

Will blinks, gaze not straying from the curve of Mike’s cupid’s bow. “Yeah. Yes. Sure, yes. This is.” And that’s not even in the top five least eloquent ways he’s completed a sentence today, but he’s distracted, okay? He lets this one go. 

Will becomes simultaneously aware of three things when he blinks his eyes open the next morning:

One, he forgot to close the blinds, and mid-morning light is streaming directly down onto his face. This is probably what woke him up, because he’s the annoying sort of light sleeper that gets woken up by an errant bird chirping too loudly in the morning.

Two, there’s an odd ache in his neck, like he spent the entire night with his head slipping off the pillow.

Three, there’s a large, warm, Mike-shaped mass pressed up against his front, and copious amounts of jet-black hair tickling his nose.

Ah, okay. He scrunches his nose up, tries to blow away the offending strands of hair without waking Mike up.

Mike, whose shoulder Will’s face is pressed into. Which explains the neck pain, at least. Not that Will is, in the grand scheme of things, complaining.

Mike, who’s tucked himself under the curve of Will’s arm, Will’s hand pressed over Mike’s heart, their fingers loosely intertwined.

Mike, who Will apparently fell asleep cuddling. After, you know. Making out the entire night.

God, okay.

There’s something ridiculously giddy swelling in his chest as he blinks the sleep out of his eyes. Mike is warm— so warm. Their feet are tangled up together, sheets woven up into one big mess between them. Mike’s hair is literally everywhere, falling forward into his face, across the pillow, all over Will’s face. He still smells like their shampoo, but it’s long-since dried into haphazard waves, tousled and messy from where it’s been pressed up against the pillow.

And from where— oh, God— from where Will had his hands all tangled up in it last night.

If Will had a free hand, he’d be pinching himself right now. He wants to laugh. He wants to sob. He wants to sink to his knees and kiss the ground like a sailor returning from a months-long voyage.

Is this real? This can’t be real. This is some fever dream from the Upside Down. It’s got to be.

But— no.

Apparently, he’s done with the Upside Down. Apparently, he’d been pining so hard for his best friend he, what, haunted himself?

This is so embarrassing. As soon as Mike wakes up— and they make out some more, maybe— he’s never going to let Will live this down. Ever.

Part of Will wants to curl up and die. The other, larger, part wants to close his eyes, burrow back into the blankets, and squeeze Mike tighter, in case this is all a vivid hallucination that’ll be gone when he blinks next.

He’s gearing towards the second option, and is honestly about to shove his head back into the sweat-damp crook of Mike’s neck and doze away happily.

Except—

—he’s being morally betrayed by his bladder.

Honestly, fuck human biology. Will wonders, briefly, if maybe it would be better if he were one of those deep-sea invertebrate species that just excreted waste through pores in their skin. Although that’s also terrifying, and also disgusting.

Whatever. He needs coffee.

He peels himself out of Mike’s embrace slowly, making tiny, halted movements so as not to wake him up. Luckily, Mike sleeps like the dead, which is always annoying when Will’s trying to wake him up so he can, you know, book it to his morning class. But now he’s grateful for it. Let Mike sleep. Let him rest. He must have gotten tired out from—

—from certain activities. Oh, God.

Will is suddenly overcome with the urge to, like, bring Mike breakfast in bed or something. Which is gross and disgusting because it seems like the kind of thing Lucas would do for Max, which Will swore years ago never to emulate in any future relationships for fear of grossing out all his friends. It’s also kind of pointless because he only really knows how to make buttered toast, which is something Mike might as well just make for himself. What if Will burns it? What if it’s not as toasted as Mike likes? What if he hates the kind of bread they have? What if—

Okay, yeah. Bathroom first. Then toast.

They’re out of all kinds of bread, actually, so any ideas Will has of romantically waking Mike up to freshly buttered toast and room temperature orange juice— they forgot to fill up the ice tray, too— fly out the window and disintegrate into the cool November morning air.

Whatever, it’s no big deal. Will is adaptable. He makes do. If not toast, then— 

Never mind, they don’t have cereal either. Didn’t Jonathan just get groceries over the weekend?

Will settles on coffee, in the end. He waits for it to percolate, flicking through last Sunday’s funnies in the newspaper tossed over the kitchen table as the water in the machine slowly comes to a boil. The house is quiet, still. His mom and Jonathan are at work already, El’s got classes until one. The clock above the stove reads 10:17, and warm, lazy rays of sun are streaking in through the windows, washing the kitchen in watercolor layers of yellow-gold, made only brighter by the vivid orange-brown canopy of trees outside.

The roaring, vicious thing that used to live in him keeled over and died at some point around midnight last night, replaced by this soaring elation inside his chest that Will doesn’t, honestly, think is ever going to die down. Everything feels— it feels calm, in a way Will hasn’t experienced in a very long time.

Maybe— maybe ever.

While he’s pouring out a mug of coffee, rooting in the fridge for the milk— he can’t ever go back to drinking his coffee black, now— he remembers that Mike is definitely more of a tea person. They should have tea, right? At least something as basic as, like, English Breakfast, or something. Or, like, chamomile, maybe. Honestly, Will’s never been a tea person, but he sees El drink it a lot. She probably won’t be mad if he steals one for Mike.

Sure enough, he finds a tin of Earl Grey in the pantry, right in front of the good sugar. He stirs a spoonful of the sugar into his coffee too, for good measure, and takes a sip.

Good. That’s good. Good stuff.

His brain is still a little— well, it’s a bit slow this morning, too busy running images from last night on loop. Mike’s hands in his hair. His hands in Mike’s hair. His hands up Mike’s shirt. Mike’s mouth on his—

Okay. Cool. He takes another sip, squeezes his eyes shut, and smiles.

The water’s still heating up in the kettle when Mike stumbles into the kitchen, yawning. His hair is all messed up, face lined with pillow creases, one side of his t-shirt— Will’s t-shirt!— caught in the band of his pajama pants—Will’s pajama pants!— which are, sure enough, about five inches too short on him. There’s also a smear of toothpaste on the corner of his mouth, and a soft flush across his cheeks.

The giddy thing in Will’s chest swells immeasurably more at the sight. He knows he’s grinning like an idiot, can feel the way his cheeks are starting to hurt from the sheer joy bursting to life inside him.

“Morning,” Mike says, speaking into another yawn. He stretches, arms wide above his head, and this time, Will takes great, gleeful pleasure in staring unabashedly at the smooth strip of Mike’s exposed stomach. 

He gets to do these things now. After so long spent trying to not look— trying to not think about and not look too long— now he’s actually allowed: to look, and to touch, and to want— to want someone who wants him back.

“Good morning,” Will says, over the rim of his coffee mug. And then, “Oh, wait, this is for you.”

He pours hot water into the second, empty mug on the counter, tea bag already resting inside. It says World’s Best Grandpa on the side in cartoonish block lettering— a gag gift from Mike for his eighteenth birthday. Even though, hello, Will is only two weeks older, but whatever. He hands it to Mike, who accepts it with a bit of a dazed look on his face. “What—”

“It’s Earl Grey,” Will clarifies, reaching out a bit absentmindedly to brush away the toothpaste smear on Mike’s mouth. “I hope that’s okay, we don’t have too many types of teas, I think this is just what El drinks, so—”

“—Earl Grey is my favorite, actually,” Mike says quietly, smiling, catching Will’s hand in place and pressing a small kiss to his thumb. Easy, practiced, like this is the kind of thing they do a lot. And it’s so— fond, is the only word Will can use to describe it, that the giddy thing inside him feels like it’s about to burst entirely. He’s definitely smiling the world’s goofiest smile right now. “Thank you.” And then, “Where is everyone?”

“My mom should be back around noon,” Will says, still smiling, somehow. “El around one-thirty, Jonathan a bit later.”

Mike doesn’t say anything, but this time, it’s not a pause that’s intertwined with anything other than just that— silence. There’s no tension, nothing left unsaid. Everything they want to say, everything they’re feeling, wanting— Will can feel it spilling wordlessly out of them as easily as the steam from the mug curls around the rim and up over Mike’s cheekbones— dissipating easily into the warm kitchen air.

“Hey,” Mike says, after a moment.

Will swallows around his mouthful of coffee. “Hm?”

Mike smiles. “You’re my best friend, did you know that?”

It’s ridiculous that this is what makes Will blush more than anything else in the last twelve hours. “Mike,” he starts, but it trails off into a laugh. “Really?”

“Really,” Mike confirms, even though that’s not what Will meant— less is that true and more you’re secretly the sappiest person I know, actually. “I— You’re— I’m so happy I get to know you,” he says, and Will ducks his head.

“You’re being so cheesy, actually, gross.”

“I think I should be allowed to be cheesy,” Mike grins, young and boyish and so easy. “I think we both totally get to be cheesy.”

“Would it be cheesy if I kissed you now?” Will mumbles, half into his mug, half into the rapidly closing distance between them.

Mike’s eyes go wide. “No,” he says, and then, “well, yes, but obviously I think you should do it anyway—”

It doesn’t matter. Will is already there by then anyway, pressing Mike gently against the wood of the kitchen table, kissing the floral, woodsy taste of tea off his lips. It’s kind of funny, he thinks, that he does get to kiss Mike on this table after all— where they’ve sat and done their homework together for years, and traded their Halloween candy, and eaten dinner and breakfast and every meal in between. Mike’s hands are already on his face, and Will can feel him smile into the kiss.

God, this is cheesy. This is so cheesy. I’m kissing my best friend, he thinks, I’m kissing him. And I’m kissing him. And—

The giddy thing inside him bursts, all at once, bright, happy confetti in his lungs.

The sun shines steadily through the window onto them, as Mike leans in to kiss him, and again, and again, and again. Languidly, Mike’s hands come to rest against Will’s waist, then wrap around his neck, restless like he can’t decide where they fit best. He’s smiling around giddy kisses pressed to Will’s cheeks, kisses away Will’s answering laughs for good measure, their mugs abandoned on the counter. They have time. They have so much time now— like things can be slow and lazy and bathed in honey-gold light forever.

It’s 10:35 in the morning, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Every evil thing to exist has been simultaneously banished from Will’s life. Mike Wheeler does love Will the way Will loves him.

These are the facts.