you for me

by fudgecakez

Summary:

“Am I hard to read?” Mike asks, his tone harsh and his grip on Will’s wrist harsher, “I’m hard to read?”

How can you tell if someone has a crush on you when they're hard to read? Will had claimed. And it ticked Mike off because who else could he possibly be referring to? How many other hard to read people has he been in love with? No, scratch that, how many people has Will been in love with at all?

Mike has known him all his life.

And he has some nerve trying to paint Mike as the villain; as if he hasn't been sitting here with his chest open and his heart hanging on display for the better half of the past hour, begging Will to reciprocate even a fraction of how he feels for him.

 

or the one where byler finally talk without being interrupted. things get off to a rocky start, but between mike's candour and will's patience, i think they'll work this out just fine

Notes:

after the events of s4vol2, mike wheeler is officially my oc (for legal reasons, this is a joke) and this is my love letter to him aka my character analysis on him

this is a canon divergent s4 au where:
- the byers never moved away
- hopper is somewhere in russia & everyone knows
- mileven broke up recently and never got back together
- no one knows about vecna yet + his curse works a little differently
(all of this is properly addressed & explained in the fic, dw)

“You never told me what Hour you are.”

 

Mike might not be as much of an extrovert as Dustin, but he isn’t as antisocial as Nancy paints him out to be in front of their parents either. He has enough friends, thank you very much, ones he enjoys spending time with as well. He has his inner party, the people he grew up with, and the ones he has the fondest memories of. Then, there are the Hellfire Club members who he has only recently started referring to as his friends. And even if he doesn’t fit in with the science nerds anymore, they are still his first pick for project partners, so there’s a mutual camaraderie present here as well. 

 

Mike may not be a people-person, but he understands that high school is about making friends and having fun. And yet, he still feels nostalgic for last week, when he was spending his mornings alone in peace. 

 

His head hits the metal pole behind him with a low thunk that itches more than it stings. 

 

“You first,” he sighs.

 

He doesn’t have the energy to talk about this right now, but the argument that will ensue if he flat out refuses to answer is not worth the trouble. He’s simply choosing the most green-collar option for himself. Isn’t that what the world is about nowadays? Being healthier and better for both yourself and the environment? 

 

He doesn’t even remember how Max found out in the first place; she just approached him with a notebook clutched in her hand one day and declared menacingly, “I know what you are; you’re one of the Hours.” 

 

Mike had been momentarily taken aback by her deductive skills, but then his face had fallen back to neutral, and he continued his solitary trek back home without confirming or denying. He should have known that would be enough confirmation for Max Mayfield.

 

“I’m Hour Twelve,” she states it like the fact it is, like she understands completely what it entails, and that she recognises how lucky she is to be the first victim. 

 

There are only twelve visible hours on the clock, after all.

 

He supposes he owes her an answer now, too: “I’m Eleven.” He must say it with the exact same cadence she did, because her blank expression gives nothing away. That ticks him off. He rolls his eyes, “Let me guess, you’re thinking: wow, how ironic, right?”

 

She has the nerve to furrow her eyebrows at him. Elaborate? She wordlessly asks, as if the two of them aren’t the adjacent halves of the same coin. That’s why they never got along in the first place—they’re too similar, and too antagonistic because of it. She has a presence that opposes his, and maybe that’s why he had been so against her joining his party in the first place. 

 

Their party has always been a democracy, of course, but there used to be a part of him that did not want to share his friends, their friendship, or the love they have for each other. But Mike is old enough to reflect on the little faults in himself now.

 

He wouldn’t call his past self a possessive control freak; he just hadn’t wanted some outsider to intrude on what they have, which—now that he thinks about it—could not have been more hypocritical of him: he was the one who wanted Eleven to join their party, yet he reacted to Max the same way Lucas reacted to Eleven.

 

“Any idea who the other ten might be?” He asks nonchalantly. It’s a good question, but it’s a deflection from his side nonetheless.

 

Max catches him on the nose: “No. I get the eleven for my ex-girlfriend, Eleven gag—I’m not stupid—but why is it ironic? Or was that all you meant? Because then, like, lame.” 

 

Never one to simply concede. Mike doesn’t understand what Lucas sees in her.

 

“Can’t you take a hint?” He hisses, “Leave it.”

 

She groans, “Are you ever going to tell me what you’re in for?”

 

Mike misses the days when the staircase leading to the back parking exit was his, and his alone.

 

Max found him sulking—”I’m not sulking.” “Oh, you so totally are. Scoot over.”—here a couple of days ago, and decided that she was going to be an even bigger pain in his ass thenceforward. So now, it’s unofficially their twin-spot for when they’re skipping the morning half of the school day together.

 

He would rather be Vecna’s First Hour—his last victim—than admit he actually enjoys Max's company. Though not because she’s fun to be around; she just spends money out of her own pocket every morning to bring a chilled can of Coke for them to share. That’s all.

 

“Thanks,” he mutters, accepting one from her outstretched hand. It’s already open.

 

Holding the rim between his fingertips, he shakes the can to hear the liquid sloshing around inside, then snorts incredulously when he realises something. She takes personal offence to this because… well, of course, she does.

 

“What?” she snaps. 

 

“In for,” he repeats wryly. “You make it sound like we were arrested for assault like Jonathan.” 

 

If only.

 

She wasn’t in Hawkins when their older siblings were sophomores in high school. It was the only thing anyone had talked about that week: did Jonathan Byers punch the crown off the Steve Harrington?  

 

Despite not witnessing the ordeal firsthand, she isn't even remotely interested in his little Steve-Jonathan parallels, so he gives her what she wants instead: “Anyways, I’m not telling you.”

 

Or doesn’t. Oops.

 

“Why not?” She demands, raising her voice.

 

So characteristic of her: demanding. She had demanded the truth out of Dustin and Lucas too. 

 

Mike observes her now: the creases between her plastered brows and the gunmetal blue of her hardened eyes. He thinks he understands why Lucas eventually gave in but never gave up on her, even when she didn’t initially believe his story. There’s something…

 

Mike doesn’t want to use the word intense; it’s been directed at him—by Nancy, Eddie, and even Dustin—way too frequently this past year, and to him, describing Max as intense is acknowledgement that they might have more in common than he’d originally thought. That his initial hostility towards her might have been more than a little misguided. 

 

It’s one thing to acknowledge your flaws with age, but Mike isn’t mature enough to accept them as flaws yet.

 

He takes a sip from the can of Coke, letting the dark liquid fizz over his tongue. He holds it in his mouth for a second before swallowing, smacking his lips, and licking over the sour film now coating his teeth. 

 

He can see Max smirking at him from the corner of his eye. He hates how she thinks she can read him, and then hates when she clearly cannot. 

 

“What?” He doesn’t mean to snap, but it still comes out clipped, vocally translating the sudden agitation building in him. He flicks the open, metal tab on the Coke can under the short, blunt edge of his nail.

 

“That was an indirect kiss,” Max announces smugly, bouncing where she sits cross-legged across from him.

 

Whiplash aches in the side of his neck. “What?” He croaks.

 

“You drinking from my drink.”

 

He startles at her brave observation, but is quick to plough the visible part of his surprise down, replacing it with an impassive, levelled stare at her. “Me and Lucas have shared toothbrushes before. This is nothing. It doesn’t count.”

 

“Or maybe you’re just embarrassed because you’ve never kissed anyone before.”

 

Mike is starting to think she preplans the flow of their conversation and crafts all her witty responses in advance. 

 

“You literally know my ex-girlfriend,” he huffs, leaning back against the baluster of the short staircase. An ex-girlfriend I’ve been very publicly avoiding these last few months, he doesn’t add.

 

“Yeah, but I don’t think it counts if you’ve only kissed…” She pauses thoughtfully, before quickly asking to confirm, “You’ve only kissed one girl, right?”

 

“One girl multiple times, but yeah,” he nods, biting his lip to hide the spike of nervous energy in his hands, “one girl.” He doesn’t know what demonic compulsion overcomes him, but he finds his lips moving out of their own volition to add, “One girl and…”

 

He can physically see her ears perk up at the mindless slip of his tongue.

 

“And? Oh!”

 

She looks much too gleeful.

 

Shit.

 

“An unexpected, but very much welcome turn of events," she continues. "But I hope you’re not going to admit that you cheated on El, because I’d have to kick your ass then.”

 

“What the hell?” Mike says, “I’m not some heartless freak.” I might be, but even I wouldn’t go that far. He could never imagine himself cheating on a significant other, but after his last nightmare, he would never be caught even entertaining the idea in jest.

 

Vecna is a finicky being, a human heart corrupted by the void of the Upside Down. He likes playing with his victims and giving them bereaving countdowns. If you don’t take your own life during that time period—which is what he firmly believes Chrissy Cunnigham’s case was—then you’re tormented with distorted realities, twisted versions of every future you fear, and past regrets that have kept you awake past midnight. Regrets that guide your fingers to the snap-lock on your window and soften your fall from the first floor onto the bushes below. All so you can find your way to the bicycle parked in your parents’ garage without waking them up in the process.

 

Mike has been doing that a lot lately: going on late-night rides. And he is not the only one either. 

 

He hasn’t brought it up to Dustin yet, but he has seen Mr Henderson spend late nights in his car. Initially, it aroused his curiosity more than his suspicion: Why doesn’t he just go home? The car can’t be too comfortable Now, Mike wonders if perhaps Mr Henderson is like them too. Like him and Max.

 

Max is still looking at him with an expectant gleam in her lively eyes. “So?” She badgers on, completely unaware of Mike's internal turmoil, ”Who else has the great Mike Wheeler kissed?”

 

“I can’t tell you,” he replies coolly, exactly how he did before.

 

“Ugh, why?”

 

“You’d hate me.”

 

“Since when have you ever cared about my opinion on anything?”

 

She makes a very valid point. Mike agrees, but he misjudges by a mile when he assumes the conversation will end on that note. Because the very next moment, when Max is opening her mouth again, Mike can already tell she’s about to make some halfwit comment on– 

 

“Was it Will?”

 

His heart lurches. 

 

For someone who rarely ever shares intimate parts of himself with others, he sure does wear his emotions in thick stripes over his sleeves. Bold, bright, and blatant to the people who know where to look. 

 

”You’re a very difficult person to talk to, Michael,” his mom said to him after dinner once. “I have to pull the truth out of you sometimes.” 

 

Is he close to his parents? He would say he’s close to his mom. Not as close as Will is to his mother, but those are the kind of parent-child relationships you only read, and maybe dream and cry about. 

 

Nancy had grown closer to their mom after she started high school, and Mike, although he would never admit it, had hoped for the same. 

 

He picks at the frayed threads of the many friendship bands on his left arm, rubbing over the turn of each braided yarn.

 

He hoped he would grow closer to his mom, and they have, but Mike can’t find the strength in him to meet her eyes anymore. Not after his last nightmare. 

 

How can a child ever look a parent in the eye again after finding out that they seriously considered having an affair? Besides, it’s one thing to simply find out, but it’s entirely another to see the events play out as the elephant in the same room. And this is how Vecna operates. This is how he plays with the guarded edges of one’s fickle heart: he sets you invisible in a play-by-play of the gaps in your memories.

 

Mike meets Max’s autumn-sky eyes, and his stomach roils in disgust. I don’t want to be like them, he begs. I don’t want to end up like my mom and dad. 

 

They might have been in love once—Nancy would remember, Mike was much too young—but he can’t see it between them anymore. He might have loved El once too, but the moment he started obsessively weighing how much in a tin balance, he knew he couldn’t keep leading her around on a barbed leash; one that left bloody scores and ripped scratches not on her neck, but in his hand. The payment for self-awareness, he presumes.

 

It tickles when he drags his nails over his left palm.

 

“It wasn’t Will.” 

 

But I wish it was.

 

“Bull-shit.”

 

Something about the way she says it, the haughty self-importance, like she knows, sparks his circuits. “What the hell are you trying to imply?” He snaps, “Just because he’s not like the rest of us doesn’t mean you can judge him for it. Even as some gag joke.” 

 

But you can judge me, a voice whispers in the back of his head. 

 

William Byers has had the queer label unjustly follow him since birth simply because he doesn’t conform to people’s perceived ideas of a normal man. Whereas Michael Wheeler, who would willingly drag his father to his middle school baseball games and who would pull a face if his mom suggested any pink decorations for his birthday party, has gotten off scottfree every time.

 

He didn't plan on breaking his almost-two-decade long streak today, but he tripped over his tongue and sliced his words over a knife anyway. And sliced fruit can never be put back together—the nectar drips down to his elbows, marking him as the forbidden seed split in Eden's garden.

 

Max raises her arms in defence, “Okay, calm down. I didn’t mean it like that.”

 

Deep down somewhere, Mike knows she didn’t—she’s friends with Will—but she wasn’t here when the bullying was at its worst. She doesn’t know how people would talk about Will behind their locker doors, and she doesn’t know just how many scufflings Mike got into with Troy over words only he was brave enough to utter louder than a whisper. She wasn’t here for any of it, so how can she possibly understand how protective Mike feels over Will? It’s instinctive, but more than that, it upsets him: hearing anyone talk that way about Will—like he’s wrong for being different. Mike knows he’s not wrong for being different, even if he doesn’t wear his disparity as apparently as Will does, so why must Will receive the worst brunt of it?

 

“I don’t care how you meant it,” he grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

Max isn’t too hung up on their little clash. She’s still thinking of the secret Mike accidentally admitted: “Wait. So, if it wasn’t Will, then who did you kiss?” She asks, wearing a slight frown as though it’s become some cosmic mystery now that Will’s out of the list.

 

Mike bites the inside of his cheek. 

 

It is a very interesting story, one that indirectly involves Max now, so he should share it with her, right? The best-case scenario is that she's disgusted enough to stop showing up to their morning hangouts; the worst-case scenario is that she breaks up with Lucas and he never speaks to Mike again. But if Mike articulates himself carefully, it shouldn’t tip into such an extreme.

 

Screw it, he’s telling her. 

 

“Don’t tell him I told you this,” he says, not bothering to stall for anticipation, “but it was Lucas.” 

 

He sees the moment it registers in her mind, eyes widening. Storytelling has never been his strong suit, and he was entirely anticlimactic with his approach, but she still gasps, “Oh my God. No way.”

 

He finds himself grinning at her reaction, “Yes way.”

 

“Does this mean Lucas cheated on me?”

 

She says it with the same impassivity, so it takes a moment to register in his head. The grin drops from his face quicker than a piano. “No!” He hastily amends. He cannot afford to have another person misunderstand his intentions. “What the hell is wrong with you? This was way before you even came to Hawkins.”

 

She must take this news surprisingly well because her next question takes Mike by surprise: “Then, is Lucas bisexual?”

 

He pulls a face, “Bisexual?” Did Vecna’s curse give her brain damage? Who the hell said anything about being bisexual? “No. He’s a man. Haven’t you seen him?”

 

Lucas convinced him to join the baseball team together during their freshman year of high school, and they had to share locker room spaces with boys who would purposely approach each other naked to assert dominance or whatever the hell. Never ask him how he knows, but Lucas is definitely a man.

 

Now, it’s Max’s turn to roll her eyes, “Not that kind of bisexual, you idiot. I mean, like, does he like girls and boys, both?” 

 

That’s a thing? Is his first thought. This is very new information to him. He might like both, but he assumed his diverging preference was simply some anomaly in a population that experiences either same-sex or opposite-sex attraction. Never both, and never simultaneously. He had no idea that was even an option.

 

But no, Lucas isn’t this version of bisexual either. “If he liked boys, I would know by now, and he likes you for some reason, so we know he likes girls.”

 

She doesn’t even look offended by his snide remark. In fact, she’s still leaning into him with curious sparkles in her eyes. “Then how did you end up kissing Lucas Sinclair of all people?”

 

He’s broken their pact already, so what’s a little more? Max might get on his last nerve, but even he won’t deny that she is indisputably trustworthy. 

 

“Remember when we told you about Troy and the kind of things he’d say?” 

 

She nods intently. 

 

“Lucas and I had a sleepover one time, and we were just talking when he randomly asked me—,” he clears his throat, pitching his voice high and nasally, “—Hey uhh, Mikey, don’t take this the wrong way but do you, like, ever wonder what it’s like?”

 

Max bursts into laughter from the combination of the ridiculous impression and the ridiculousness of the situation that the two had put themselves in. “He did not call you Mikey, oh my God!” She exclaims, slapping her hands on her knees, “But I can totally imagine the rest. Please continue.”

 

Seeing the joy on her face has Mike’s lips pulling into a smile too. It’s the complete opposite of the reaction he’d been expecting. “Yeah, he didn’t call me Mikey, you’re right, but that’s it. I offered, we kissed a little, and then he went to brush his teeth.” 

 

Even though he doesn’t need to anymore, he still adds in that last part to clear Lucas of all potential blame. In reality, Mike doesn’t know what was going through his head at the time; he just announced, “Well, that’s definitely not my thing,” but Mike still isn’t sure if he meant kissing boys in general or kissing Mike in particular, and they didn’t talk about it either, apart from a promise of never bringing it up again. 

 

Mike hasn’t even told Will yet, and it makes him wonder if Will has kissed someone under the same pact of silence, too.

 

Mike may not enjoy having Max around, but the one thing her presence is good for is distracting him from his mental spirals. She interrupts one now too: “Then, is he nonsexual?” 

 

What is that now? He thinks, which translates very eloquently to an all-encompassing, “What?”

 

“I like to read,” Max brags, punctuating with an affirmatory nod. 

 

As if that explains anything. What kind of reading material does she stash, and where does she even get it from?

 

Mike hums in dismissal, more than content to let his curiosity ebb out and the conversation fade into companionable silence but from the moment they first locked eyes across that arcade floor, Max must have sworn a pastoral oath to ensure nothing ever went Mike's way. He can feel her tossing sneaky glances in his direction now too, and he ignores them at first, keeping his vision firmly glued to the football field and the treeline beyond it, in hopes that she will tire of her antics soon. 

 

He blows out an exasperated sigh when she doesn’t, “What?”

 

“I like to read,” she repeats, “but my writing could use some work.”

 

What does this have to do with him? “Okay? Good for you, I guess?”

 

“I need your help.”

 

Mike physically shifts back, suddenly nervous of her intentions. “Uh, why?”

 

“Do you or do you not have the best literature grade in our class?”

 

He narrows his eyes at her in suspicion, “Flattery doesn’t work on me. Not from you, at least. Spit it out.”

 

The tide of her mood falls at his crashing antagonism. Mike would have been perfectly happy if their conversation had let up, so she only has herself to blame. 

 

She takes a deep breath to centre herself, before starting again, “I need to write some letters, and I need to make sure I’m saying everything I want to say.” 

 

Mike can tell what it took in her to share this with him. If he wears his emotions as lurid as blue and yellow plaid, Max glows bright red with hers—a kind of glow that scatters over the rooftops of urban skyscrapers. She wears her emotions like warnings. Don’t ignore me, they blare, don’t come my way. Mike doesn’t have time to play her contradictory puzzles.

 

Seeing how he doesn’t take the bait, Max begrudgingly tacks on, “I’m not good with words.”

 

If he took pity on her and agreed to help, “What kind of letters?” would be the first thing he’d ask, but now, as he scrutinises her stern expression—the rigid brows and the downturned corners of her mouth—he decides it’s best to keep his curiosity private. He can wait until she’s comfortable enough to broach the subject on her own. 

 

So, instead of asking the same kinds of invasive questions he wishes she would avoid, he takes the safer route for both of them and jokes halfheartedly, “You seriously think I’m any better with my words?” 

 

She sighs in defeat, “Listen, Mike, I don’t know your side of the story, it doesn’t matter to me. And yeah, sure—,” she shrugs exaggeratedly, swaying in her spot, “—maybe we’re not super close, but you're still my friend, and I know you didn’t get with El just to hurt her.”  

 

Holy hell, this is not where he was expecting their conversation to head. Fourteen-year-old Mike Wheeler would be shitting bricks if he ever heard Max Mayfield freely admit, without a gun to her head, that he was actually good to Eleven Byers.

 

However, present Mike Wheeler also should have known better than to trust the cunning, autumn fox that is Max Mayfield. She uses his lowered inhibitions to steal from right under his nose, quick and light on her feet.

 

“We also have class together, and I was there for your Valentine’s Day presentation thing. So yeah, I have a pretty good idea of how good with words you can be.”

 

Oh, right. He almost forgot about those. 

 

Near the start of the fall semester, they were told to write love poems for their literature class as a late Valentine’s Day project. Mike still remembers every word he had read out loud: she is scorching the skin of my heart, yet still, she pretends that she is safe for me to love. He was proud of it, and stunned their teacher into silence as well. 

 

Standing in front of the class, he had met El’s eyes over the edge of his paper, but she frowned and immediately looked away. Reexamining that moment now, he realises that he is not the only half of their duo staunchly avoiding a direct confrontation with the other. One would imagine that in a town as small as Hawkins, with a school as exclusive as theirs, and a friend group as integrated as the one they share, a chance encounter between them would be inevitable, but it’s been months, and the stars have yet to align for them again.

 

El must have gravely misunderstood him that day though because the poem was not for her. The original pages he scribbled his first drafts on were burned the moment his poem started structuring itself, slipping over smooth curves and sun-kissed skin. No one would know the lack of female-subject pronouns except for him, and now, Vecna who has been ceaselessly using his cowardice as nightmare fuel for the past week.

 

He’s not modest enough to deny his own writing proficiency. Their literature teacher has suggested he join the journalism club multiple times after all, but the thought of spending all his free time with Nancy is enough to have him begging Vecna to take the rest of his hours, too. No doubt she would slave him around after school, parading the elder sister coupled with the club president card. 

 

“Fine,” Mike yields, if only because flattery did stroke his ego. Especially when it was coming from someone as cavilling as Max Mayfield.

 

“Great!” She chirps, genuine delight in her expression, “It’s a date.”

 

The gym door suddenly squeaks behind them.

 

By the time Mike turns around, it’s already swinging and slowly coming to a halt. He doesn’t catch a glimpse of who just caught him and Max skipping the first half of the school day together, but when he whips his head back and sees the stormy concern hailing in Max’s eyes, he immediately has a few ideas.

 

“Shit.”

 

Vecna take him now.

 

 

 

—x—x—

 

 

 

Max is new. Max is bold, and Max’s favourite pastime is getting on Mike’s last nerve. Their friends often joke about how the two of them joining the Hawkins Debate Team would eventually lead to its dissolution; they don’t see eye to eye over anything, ever, but his soft spot for Will is the one topic they are in agreement about.

 

Mike has never been one to sugarcoat his words, but he always keeps his tongue more refined around Will. Right now, however, Mike is tired, and when he’s tired, there’s no sugarcoating, refining, or even sifting his words. Not even around Will.

 

“Why’d you run away?”

 

It’s late in the afternoon. The sunrays angle through the thicket of the nearby forest in nostalgic, diverging beams. 

 

A scrap metal junkyard right next to the forest line doesn’t sound like a good idea on paper, but it exists in Hawkins, and the two of them are currently sitting on the orange bonnet of one of the old, rusty cars. This place has always been their party’s central meeting point, but in recent years, it’s started to exclusively become his and Will’s spot.

 

Will seems lost in the memory of their childhood adventures too, because he sounds slightly dazed when he hums in response, barely acknowledging Mike’s question.

 

“This morning, Will,” Mike stresses.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he offers placatingly. Always such a reflexive liar. 

 

Mike Wheeler has been told time and time again about how difficult he is to read, and time and time again, in those moments, he could only think, Let me introduce you to William Byers then.  

 

He doesn’t flinch when Will lies straight to his face, because he sees it for the act of self-preservation that it is. And he understands it too, but he is just tired of it all.

 

So, he presses, “You saw me with Max this morning.”

 

Will shakes his head, still adamant, “You’re probably confusing me for someone else.” 

 

As if I could ever. 

 

Mike sighs and lets his body relax against the cool windscreen of the discarded car. He doesn’t have the energy for this. “I miss when we were kids. We took our rules so seriously—friends don’t lie, remember?”

 

Will at least has the decency to look embarrassed by the callout. He picks at the tender, red skin around his clipped nails, and Mike waits patiently for him to reply. He does, after a moment of guilty silence, but it’s in a barely audible mumble that Mike has to strain his ears to make out.

 

“You two looked close.” 

 

Mike just hums, not really confirming or denying. Let Will draw his own conclusions. Let him get the wrong idea; Mike wants him to get the wrong idea. He wants to push Will’s buttons because he has always pushed Will’s buttons, even when the adults around them would call him sensitive and scold Mike for his facetiousness. “Watch your words around that one,” they would say, only to turn their unconstructive advice onto Will—“Do you know why we don’t feed stray dogs?”—when Mike would scowl at them.

 

Will was the first friend he made in kindergarten, and they are in high school now, so he is well acquainted with how sensitive Will can be, and it's not in the way everyone immediately assumes. Will feels emotions more deeply than others and sees things from an entirely different perspective, but this has never stopped Mike from being as direct and crass with him as he would anyone else. And it is also why he holds the honour of being the first and only person Will has ever consciously raised his voice at. 

 

Mike hates when they argue. He hates when he hurts Will with glass-sharp words carved with the intention to cut bone-deep, but those are also the only moments Mike can squeeze something real out of him. 

 

Will isn’t a pathological liar, he’s just diplomatic with his words when he’s calm. 

 

There are still people-pleasing tendencies in him that Mike recognises from the past, but overall, high school has been good to him—his hermit qualities have slowly started to emerge from their shells. Will even took up painting this year, moving on from blunt, waxy crayons to smooth, pasty acrylic, and it has helped him become more expressive and vocal, but not expressive or vocal enough.

 

It’s why Mike’s words take on a vicious edge when he asks, “How much did you eavesdrop?”

 

Hurt flashes over and sticks to Will’s face. Good . 

 

“That’s not fair,” he completely angles his torso towards Mike when he speaks. “I didn’t eavesdrop.”

 

“Okay,” Mike agrees impassively. He knows Will didn’t, but Will doesn’t need to be privy to his thoughts. “Then how much did you overhear?”

 

He goes quiet again.

 

Mike almost shuts his eyes, content in waiting for Will while he gathers his thoughts. But of course, it’s the first moment when he puts his wholehearted attention to rest that Will takes him by surprise, suddenly asking, “Since when were you and Max best friends?”

 

Not this again… 

 

They had the same exact fight earlier this year, when the Byers family returned to Hawkins after spending all three months of summer vacation with their maternal relatives. 

 

October is near its end now, but Mike still remembers their argument as if it happened yesterday. It hangs over his head as though it happened yesterday too. And now, he sees its aftermath in Will’s eyes as if he’s still reeling from its day-old consequences. 

 

“You didn’t keep in touch.”

 

“It was barely three months, Will.”

 

“You called El every night.”

 

“Maybe because she’s my girlfriend and I have to.”

 

In retrospect, it was unfair to have expected Will to reply with anything else: “And so what? I’m not your best friend anymore?”  

 

In retrospect, yes, his expectations for Will were unfair. What other adjective could he possibly tack onto Mike’s forehead when said best friend was dating the very person he considered family? It is entirely unfair for Mike to still be peeved about it, but he is only human, and he will continue smothering himself in these deep, dejected feelings if it means he’ll stay human. 

 

He tastes the word in his mouth—best friend—and huffs in indignation. Will holds that mind-melting word on such a divine pedestal. Doesn’t he realise there’s more past that? Doesn’t he realise they forfeited their right to that title the moment they started sneaking away to hang out together? Mike may be a traditionalist, but last he checked, best friends don’t skip out on official club campaigns to spend the evening loitering together in old junkyards. Best friends don’t ignore every other battered vehicle in this vast, open space and choose to sit shoulder-to-shoulder next to each other. Best friends don’t… 

 

They don’t make Mike want to scream out of hatred, frustration, and a love so big that his body must convert it into pain to store it inside him. 

 

He watches Will dig his thumb into the raised denim seam lining the outer edge of his pants, and finds that he can’t even blame Will for it. He doesn’t seem to even realise how he treats Mike most of the time, whereas Mike can only focus on him, even if they’re standing crowds apart in the same room. Will relishes every point of contact between them, while Mike fixates on it until his own heart starts aching. 

 

If their school counsellor found out how much anguish he was constantly subjecting himself to by being around Will as a best friend, she would write him up for self-sabotage. And to that, Mike would only have one thing to say: Patroclus begged Achilles to let him die in his name. Except, he would never use the example of Patroclus and Achilles, because no one—no one—knows about the tattered copy of The Iliad haphazardly tossed in the furthermost zipper of his schoolbag. And he prefers to keep it that way, too.

 

Mike wears a wistful smile when he pushes Will again, “Who said anything about being friends? Maybe I like her.”

 

That grabs Will's attention. He doesn’t even realise how he scoots closer, or how he puts his hand on Mike's thigh and forces them down to the same orbit.  

 

Mike can tell Will wants to comment on the first thing he claimed: who said anything about being friends?

 

Although he is not a romantic, Will still believes in romance, and Mike can tell from the clench of his jaw that he wants to ask, Shouldn’t any relationship be based on friendship? To which Mike would have the perfect answer: Since when was friendship some great prerequisite for romantic relationships? Will would fall back into silence then, and Mike would sit next to him, entirely self-satisfied knowing that Will is now reassessing them and the basis of their entire friendship. 

 

Mike knows this is what Will wants to comment on, but he has years of practice at analysing every microexpression Will has ever made. He has folders upon folders of Will’s reactions memorised and stored into the little colour-coded, square cabinets in the back of his head, never too far out of reach. So yes, while he can tell Will wants to argue with Mike over his first statement, he also knows it’s the second that Will latches onto. 

 

His voice cracks, “You like Max Mayfield?” 

 

Bingo.

 

“Yeah,” Mike shrugs. “Who knows, maybe that’s why me and El broke up too; she found out I liked Max.”

 

“No,” Will refuses immediately. “No,” he repeats, “Don’t lie to me: you told me that you two broke up because you couldn’t lie to her face. She told me you couldn’t tell her you loved her back.” 

 

Sometimes, he forgets that El is legally part of the Byers family now. 

 

What other kinds of things does she share with Will? Do they ever have sleepovers in each other's rooms? Do they stay up late into the night just talking about everything yet nothing at all? Does El think she’s spending time with Will or merely wasting it?

 

Mike would often rant to Will about what a bitch Nancy was being and how Steve was nothing but a bad influence on her. Now, he wonders if Will has to hear the same words from El about him instead: Mike did x, and Mike is like y. If he has to, Will never gives it away. Whatever El confides in him about, Will has never let it impact their friendship.

 

It should be heartwarming, but something about that thought pisses him off. 

 

He wants a real reaction out of Will. He wants something tangible, truthful, and whole, so he continues with this charade: “Yeah,” he agrees casually, “and maybe it’s because I love Max now.”

 

He can see the gears turning inside Will’s head, trying to make sense of this new jigsaw piece. Of where it fits in the bigger picture. 

 

When he was in elementary school, Mike remembers his father buying him one of those blank, white jigsaw puzzle sets. To develop your computing and intellectual skills, son, he would say. Every time Mike thought he had completed it, his father would shake the velvet bag in his hand and pour more jagged cardboard pieces onto the table. That was a kind of betrayal Mike would never wish upon anyone.

 

Anyone but Will, it seems. 

 

“I mean,” Will tries, keeping his voice steady to assuage him, “I guess I heard Max mention a date, but I thought that was just her way of saying things.”

 

“Does it bother you?”

 

The question was waiting on the tip of his tongue, but Mike immediately regrets his rapidfire delivery.

 

Fortunately, Will does not take note of his desperation. “What?” He sputters with his eyes on stalks, visibly caught off guard, “Why would it bother me?”

 

“You clearly had the biggest issue with El when I was dating her,” Mike deadpans.

 

That must hit the nail on its bent head. Will raises his voice in the way he only ever does with Mike. “I didn’t have an issue with El,” he chokes out in disbelief, “I had an issue with you!”

 

“With me?” Mike sits up, and is only mildly impressed when Will doesn’t immediately recoil. “What do you propose I had done differently, then? Should I start spending the day hanging off you so the whole town gets the wrong idea?”

 

“What wrong idea, Mike?”

 

Mike has never been an especially angry person. He’s not someone who internalises his anger until his blood starts sizzling beneath his skin. Mike would say he’s decently in-touch with his emotions: he stuffs his head under his pillow and cries when he feels overwhelmed, he wordlessly goes to hug his mom when everything else is falling apart, and he writes when nothing else inside him makes any sense. Mike is not an angry person, so he doesn’t understand why these three words from Will threaten to spill acid in his barriers.

 

Three little words.

 

Why is it always three, innocent, little words that threaten to ruin his life?

 

“No,” Will swats his arm, “Don’t ignore me! What wrong idea could someone possibly get? Is it so wrong that I want to spend time with my best friend?” 

 

That hellish word again. 

 

“Why am I the villain for reminding you that we are something to each other too, Mike? When you liked El, and if you like someone new now, I was happy for you. I was. I am! But it is so tiring how I have to constantly remind you that I’m something to you too.” 

 

Mike wants to scoff, You don’t know the first thing about what tiring is, but instead, he is only distantly aware of Will's voice droning in his ears; his attention is suddenly rapt with the hand that sits curved over his thigh, gripping with an anchoring pressure. 

 

Will has always run warmer than the rest of their friends, but he is even warmer here, like this, when he holds Mike’s heart in one hand, and flails his other around, still yelling at him about girls and priorities.

 

Even when they don’t see eye to eye on a topic, Mike still gives Will’s words utmost importance. But right now, it's different; he isn’t able to register a thing Will says because of the ocean currents swaying around him, drowning his body from the inside, and threatening to spill in laminar falls from his eyes. 

 

“Please stop talking,” he whispers suddenly, and Will falls midnight-silent in an instant.

 

He should’ve asked Will to turn away too, but it’s much too late now. He watches as Mike raises a hand to his face and digs his thumb and middle finger into his scrunched eye sockets. 

 

“Mike–”

 

“Please,” his throat burns around the word from all the effort it takes to keep the sudden barrage of tears at bay. But he’s not breathing correctly, and he’s certainly not thinking correctly, so he feels something wet slowly coating the tips of his fingers in consequence.

 

“Mike…”

 

Will doesn’t immediately start apologising for once, and Mike has never been more grateful for anything else in his life. 

 

He has to clench his jaw, to keep his voice from trembling, with the same strength it takes to keep himself from bursting into tears. “Do you really think I like Max?” He grits out. He hates feeling like this; it’s rare, and it’s so fleeting, but it leaves him feeling the most miserable he’s ever been.

 

Will doesn’t have a reply. 

 

Friends don’t lie. It was Mike who came up with that rule in the first place, so what reason does Will have to doubt him? He couldn’t even lie to El when it mattered the most, and now he’s Hour Eleven on Vecna’s clock. What a cruel, heartless, cosmic joke on his life. 

 

“Tell me,” he demands, and it comes out more snappish than he intended. He’s not angry at Will, Mike hopes he doesn’t misunderstand; he’s just frustrated with this whole game between them, and it’s starting to make his head ache.

 

“You said–”

 

“Screw what I said, Will!”

 

Thunder booms over the same shadowy cave from before, the one where all his dark emotions fester and rouse from, but Will is unperturbed once more.

 

“Do you think,” he seethes, “that I like Max Mayfield?”

 

Will physically pauses, pursing his lips. Mike hates how he can tell Will is considering whether or not to lie again, and then he hates how he can discern the exact moment when Will chooses not to.

 

“I hope not,” he whispers, quiet as a heartbreak.

 

It’s the truth, and it leaves Mike feeling raw.

 

“Why?” He pokes further.

 

“Because El–”

 

He must have expected Mike to interrupt him with another snarky, “You’re even more obsessed with her than I was,” but Mike wasn’t planning on it. He wanted to hear the convoluted mental gymnastics Will had justified in his head. However, it seems he hadn’t even cleared the first aerial hoop, because he didn’t expect Mike to let him complete his thought in the first place. 

 

Will flounders, opening and closing his mouth, but no words leave him. “Because El…” He tries again. And again, he cannot follow through. 

 

Mike takes it as his win.

 

Will is an enigma of his own: he finds it funny that Mike regards this as a win for himself. Mike can see him trying to hide a shit-eating grin behind his fist, and it ruins his sour mood.

 

“Shut up, Will,” he sniffles, but the corner of his mouth jerks in a precarious movement that has Will aww-ing and poking his cheek. Mike smacks his hand away and musters his best glare through his waning temper, “Why do I tolerate you?”

 

Because you care for me more than you’d like to admit, Will doesn’t say, but Mike knows how to read his nonverbal cues best.

 

They fall back into a comfortable silence, and Mike takes this time to desperately grasp for his thoughts. 

 

He rubs his palms into his eyes, drying the last of those unshed tears.  

 

He should bring it up now, shouldn't he? They’re going down this track already, and Mike doesn’t want to keep their game of pretend up any longer. He meant what he admitted earlier: he’s tired.

 

He takes a deep breath.

 

Will anchors closer to him, almost as if the stocky manacle between their souls keeps chipping its length away, demanding that they acknowledge this thing between them. If Mike inched his fingers any closer, their pinkies would touch. He could… They could sit in more silence and vehemently refuse to look at each other while wearing a matching, violent blush, ignoring how their fingers are gently entwined between them. Mike could do that. He wants to do that, but there are things he wants to say even more. 

 

“Do you ever…” He sucks on his front teeth, traipsing his tongue over them in thought. “Do you feel like– You know how the guys are always complaining about girls giving them mixed signals?” 

 

He meets Will’s eyes, and Will nods. 

 

“That’s such bullshit!” He suddenly exclaims, “Like, can’t you just tell when someone has a crush on you?” He could tell when Lucas was curious about him during that one sleepover, he knew when El felt something akin to puppy-love for him all those years ago, and he knows there’s something twisting between him and Max now, too.

 

Will doesn’t seem to share his sentiments, shrugging halfheartedly, “Not if they’re hard to read.” 

 

That ticks a nerve. What the hell. He frowns, “Am I hard to read?” 

 

That’s when Will realises what he just said. “That’s not–,” he stutters, “I didn’t say that.”

 

How many hard to read people has Will been in love with? No, scratch that, how many people has Will been in love with at all? Mike has known him all his life.

 

“Am I hard to read?” He repeats, his tone harsh and his grip on Will’s wrist harsher, “I’m hard to read?”

 

There’s an inscrutable emotion swirling in Will’s eyes as his gaze anxiously flits between Mike’s. What does Will see, and does he interpret it the way Mike wants him to? 

 

He lets go of Will’s arm, breaking all physical and visual contact between them. The forest boundary suddenly looks very appealing to him.

 

Unlike Max, Will gives him space when he needs it, but like Max—or maybe, more like Mike himself—not only does he know when to push, he knows how to as well. The subtle art of coercing Mike Wheeler into saying words and admitting feelings is one mastered only by the multitalented William Byers. Karen Wheeler should get in touch with him.

 

“What does this mean for us?” Will asks. 

 

For us. Will has always referred to them as we and us .

 

Mike could say it, now that Will is explicitly asking him to. He could tell Will about how difficult this past year has been for him, and he could joke about how despite having battled supernatural monsters from another dimension, the most difficult transit of his life has still been high school and growing into his own skin, discovering his own heart. I came to some revelations, he could finally admit, Have you… Have you maybe, too?

 

Not only can he say it now, he realizes he wants to as well, but the words that leave his mouth aren’t at all reflective of that: “I don’t think I can say it yet.”

 

He wants to be disappointed by the dissonance between his implicit desires and his apprehensive deliveries, but isn’t it so characteristic of him: always taking the easy way out?

 

He can tell Will isn’t satisfied by his answer either, but he respects Mike giving him one at all.

 

Screw self-preservation. He has been mining at the same ploy all his life, and his arms have started stinging from fatigue.

 

Besides, doesn’t the addition of yet make it so painfully obvious? Why is he still hiding it like some big, empyrean secret?

 

Mike’s face heats up, and he digs the tip of his right shoe into the plasticky sole of his left, keeping his gaze staunchly fixed to the ground. The ache from before returns between his brows. “It means I like you,” he confesses in an angry whisper. “I like you so much that sometimes, I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t know where to look, I don’t know where to put my hands, and you–,” Mike flings the pronoun like an insult, making Will flinch from the force of his swing.

 

He doesn’t mean to sound accusatory, but there’s no other way he can talk about this.

 

“You never even…,” Mike's voice falls apart like a brittle autumn leaf, “You were happy with how things were between us? You were just going to accept me being with her? You were happy with that for yourself?”

 

“I wasn’t–”

 

No, he really wasn’t, but, “You accepted it without even considering, hey! Maybe my best friend Mike feels the same way.” 

 

Will’s expression crumples at that, and Mike’s heartache returns in fullblow. 

 

“I couldn’t,” Will pleads, knees knocking against Mike’s. “We don’t get to choose our happy endings, Mike; people like us, we don’t get the luxury of those.”

 

He knows that. He knows that. He knows it even more intimately now that he’s sitting across from the boy who returns his love and has been returning his love all their life, yet the only thing sitting between their hearts is this barren, spring-withering melancholy. 

 

“I always knew,” he announces. “About you for me. I always knew.”

 

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

 

Why is this suddenly on Mike? Why is this suddenly being pinned as his fault? 

 

He throws his hands up in frustration, “Because you looked like you never wanted me to!” 

 

Will lowers his gaze to the ground, fumbling with his fingers.

 

Deep breaths, Mike tells himself. Calm down.

 

He bites the inside of his cheek in contemplation. “Last year?” He tries again, “When we snuck in to watch Day of the Dead–” 

 

“When you were still dating El, you mean?” 

 

People who say Mike Wheeler can be spiteful have clearly never had a meaningful conversation with Will Byers.

 

Frustration grates under the undulating grooves of his teeth. “If I wasn’t, then—,” his derisive, detached tone returns, “—would you have kissed me?” 

 

Mike can’t believe that he claimed he couldn’t say it yet mere moments ago.

 

When Will doesn’t answer quick enough, Mike finds himself running out of patience. He snatches Will’s hand, and pushes his pointer finger into the fist to crack it open. He’s met with minimal resistance, but enough that he shoots Will a dirty look—one that Will mirrors right back. 

 

He presses Will’s palm over the flat of his chest. 

 

And regrets it immediately.   

 

The petulant, grade school fighting between them ceases instantly, and he watches the horror of the realisation dawn over Will’s face. Mike could never form the words I love you on his lips, but every other part of him is restless to scream them into existence.

 

With his heartline entwined with the basal pulse in Will’s fingers, he asks again, softer this time, “Would you kiss me now? Now that you know for sure?”

 

Now that there’s nothing stopping you.

 

There must still be something gnawing at him inside, because Will’s eyes are wide and hyperfocused on the warmth of Mike’s palm over the back of his hand; on the testimony of Mike’s sincerity beating in the creases of his fingers. His lips are parted but his jaw is slackened, and no words form in his throat.

 

Mike thinks he’s slowly starting to piece Will’s predicament together. 

 

Earlier today, he described Max as demanding, knowing full-well that his own conscience holds a staff even more grand and imperious than hers.

 

Mike wanted El to join their party despite Lucas’ very valid concerns, and got his way in the end. He wanted the new Nintendo NES for his birthday despite his grades not justifying such an expensive gift, and he had griped and stormed up to his room when his parents tersely informed him of such. But despite his next report card not being any better than his last, he still received the NES for his birthday. 

 

So, Mike knows what he wants, and he gets what he wants. It never occurred to him that maybe Will isn’t as harmonious with his own implicit desires as Mike is. It never occurred to him that maybe Will wasn’t aware of the nature of his feelings until very recently.

 

He drops Will’s hand and sighs, “Do you ever think about how much you hurt me sometimes?”

 

How selfish of him: Will wasn’t the one parading around with a girlfriend when his heart was beating with soft daydreams and thudding with feverish nightmares of someone else.

 

When you were still dating El, you mean? His voice echoes in Mike’s head, When, when, when… 

 

Mike is cruel on purpose. He’s cruel when he wants to hurt Will. But Will can be cruel too; he just doesn’t realise it half the time. Maybe because his words are always reflective of reality, and he sees them as true more than he deems them cruel.

 

Mike wants to take it all—all of Will’s honest cruelty—and carry it with him forever.

 

With that in mind, he yanks Will in for a kiss. 

 

As an extension of himself and the tone of their evening, their kiss is harsh, too: it’s a messy crash of sealed lips. The slope of Will’s nose digs into his cheek, and the curve of their eyelashes curl over each other from the proximity. 

 

It’s not very pretty, but it sets something aflutter in Mike’s lower belly. 

 

Will isn’t exactly kissing him back, but he makes Mike’s knee jerk when he lifts a soft hand under the curtain of Mike’s shaggy black hair, cupping his neck. That’s when he knows he’s about to be kissed back. That’s when he knows Will is going to let him have this, and that is when Mike forcefully pulls himself away. 

 

“Do you like me back?” He whispers, suddenly remembering how it was Will who first asked, “What does this mean for us?” and never gave an answer of his own for. However, he also moved to kiss Mike back first, which should be answer enough, but Mike has always enjoyed making Will squirm. And this is nothing different.

 

Mike might have pulled himself away from the kiss, but Will doesn’t pull himself away from Mike; the bold, yet tentative hand on the side of his neck retreats, but Will stays leaning into Mike’s space, not denying what’s just transpired between them. He acknowledges that they can never retrace their steps back to the people they were an hour ago. Although, if you were to ask Mike, an hour is still a generous timeframe. Time rewinding to sixty minutes ago would not change what they are, were, and thenceforth would always be: two people who’ve always known, yet never reacted. 

 

This—the risk they took in receding daylight—at least broke the stagnancy of the past year. 

 

“I–,” Will opens his mouth to answer with a conviction that Mike recognises, and in that split second, decides, can wait. 

 

Wait—as if there isn’t a stopwatch wired to the peripheral nerves of his heart. As If there isn’t a fear-eating monster grazing at the dark, bloodless corner of his heart, wailing, Let me have this! Let me have you.

 

So, with Will’s lips still formed around the I, Mike dips his head in for another kiss. And this time, Will is more than ready for it; he places a quick and assertive hand on Mike’s chest to steady the intensity of their kiss. 

 

The slide of their mouths is clumsy and uncoordinated at first—their movements a phase off—and for a moment, Mike assumes Will is holding himself back.

 

But that’s not exactly what’s going on here, is it?

 

He hasn’t done this before, he realises suddenly, and shame soon souses the satisfactory thrill of that realisation, but he’s careful not to let himself imbue in those feelings yet, stashing them aside for later.

 

For now, he grabs Will’s wrist and whispers against his lips, “It’s just me.” A little dreamy and haloed around the edges.

 

He guides Will’s hand to his face, and has to tamp a desperate sound down when the tips of Will’s fingers curl over his jaw, soft and reverent. Will still hears it—there’s barely any space between them, of course he hears it—and his eyes glisten when he looks at Mike next, lips parted and almost expectant. 

 

Mike wants to give him everything. 

 

Will’s hand tenses over Mike’s jaw when he leans back in, but it doesn’t deter him. The whimper trilling in Will’s throat when their lips touch doesn’t deter him either, but he still pauses, heart beating in his ears. 

 

In their quiet respite, Will slides his hand lower and curls it over Mike’s nape, firm and present. If his skin wasn’t already sparking under Will’s touch, he never would have felt the gentle pull. That light tug. He never would have heard Will whispering his name under his breath, and he never would have inclined his head to the right again, slowly pressing his lips back between Will’s.

 

So tender that his heart bleeds with it. 

 

He opens his mouth, tapping Will’s chin to wordlessly beg, You too, please. Will gets the hint, slowly parting his lips in tandem with Mike’s, and letting Mike finally kiss him properly.

 

He tugs on Will’s bottom lip when they part, a wet sound clicking between them. Will’s face goes bright red with it as he trembles under Mike’s heavy gaze. 

 

There’s something so… His heady reactions to something so innocent, it’s… Mike doesn’t want to analyse the way his heart jackrabbits or the way his bones melt into his veins.

 

He lets Will pace their next kiss, slow and languid, while he tries his hardest not to blush from the wet kissing noises between them.

 

This isn’t his first kiss: he knows this routine by heart. He’s used to the gentle, lip-sucking sounds, but it’s also been months since he last heard them.

 

Whether it was in his room or El’s, he was sternly instructed by each parental figure to keep the door open three inches at all times. And right now, he and Will are—this might not have been his smartest idea—alone in the least frequented part of Hawkins’ junkyard. 

 

Will must realise this at the same time, because he's leaning more of his weight into Mike, who’s slowly having to recline back to accommodate him. 

 

Will pauses the movement of his lips, detaching the connection between them with a sweet, slick sound that has something hot jumping in Mike’s gut. Is this how it feels when you finally reward yourself for the wait? 

 

There’s a blush dusting the smattered palette of Will’s freckles. Mike has fixated on them countless times before. He’s lost himself trying to count and shape mindless swirls in them. He would be mesmerised by Will’s freckles now too, if he wasn’t so distracted by the sight of Will’s acute gaze glued to his lips. It kicks his heart into disarray. 

 

Due to the absence of any proximity between them, he hears the light hitch of Will’s breath—a little squeak of that short, sudden inhale—when he draws his eyes back up and finds Mike wholly entranced by the sight of him.

 

Lower, Mike watches the bump of skin over Will’s throat undulate when he gulps, and this time, he catches Mike’s straying gaze connect the freckles back up to his face.

 

There’s a breath of time where neither of them knows what to do next. Mike knows what Will wants to do, and he knows how desperately he wants Will to do it too, but neither of them has any idea of how to initiate again. 

 

Their first kiss was fueled by Mike’s waning frustration, and their last made him realise that their reactions to these mutual but never expressed feelings were born from the same honey-trap nectar. Because now… 

 

Now, Mike wants to kiss him because…

 

He swallows nervously, a jittery sensation in his lower abdomen.

 

Now, he wants to kiss Will because they’re alone, because no one can find them out here, and because they would hear if someone was approaching them from afar. Mike can see the same heart-shaped thoughts coiling in the depths of Will’s pupils. Could he encourage Will to make the first move this time? It sounds challenging, but he should have known it wouldn’t be: Will hasn’t rocked back an inch or even breathed since they parted. 

 

Mike unfurls his fist over the base of Will’s skull, raking the blunt curves of his fingernails further into Will’s hair in a slow, deliberate manner.

 

A violent tremor wracks through Will’s entire body, and in an instant, the readily cooling air between them is vacuumed aside and Will’s lips are flush between his once again. Mike is happy to follow a millisecond behind Will’s lead, letting his spine slump backwards onto the slanted windscreen of the creaky, old car. 

 

Will kisses with the length of his entire body, and it’s exactly the way his feelings manifest: in fields of blooming spring flowers. 

 

He finds serendipity in tragic love, while Mike sees the human heart for the lover of tragedies that it is, but when Will holds his hand out and beckons Mike to join him in his rosy fantasy of a spring field, even the nihilistic Mike Wheeler cannot resist the gravity of Will’s whims. After all, an abandoned scrapyard in Hawkins is as much of a spring field’s sanctity as they will ever see. And try as he might, Mike is still only a fallible human.

 

In the grand scheme of things, he is still only a teenager who is finally alone with the person he loves, who loves him back, too. So, one can only blame him so much for willingly parting his lips once Will’s kisses start turning open-mouthed. Once they start pushing at him with a need that Will would never voice out loud, but one that leaks from him in billowing crests of stormy, plunging waves.

 

When their tongues finally meet in the middle, Mike hisses and almost bites. Will doesn’t tear away from him, but Mike hears the zesty puff of air he releases from his throat, teasing and cocky in ways that make his head spin. Any other occasion, any other person, and Mike would never have recovered from the embarrassment of it. But he has known Will all his life. And the split-second, highly unrealistic flame of hope that maybe Will has spent his years being Mike's best friend while wanting nothing else but to pull Mike in for this too…

 

It's enough to ignite him into motion. 

 

He places one hand on the hood of their car to keep himself from toppling over, and lets his other hand caress the back of Will’s head. He gives Will a moment of reprieve before surging into the kiss. 

 

The spit-swap makes their kisses louder and their lips so unbearably wet, but Mike is starting to like the sounds they’re making: the lip-smacking and the spit-squelching. Will’s tongue was abrasive against his at first, but now he tastes like the sour remnants of the cherry-red lollipop Mike was sucking on after school. And he feels silken in Mike’s mouth.

 

His lips are starting to go numb when they finally pull away with hooded eyes and wet threads connecting the tips of their tongues. 

 

Steamy breaths puff between their open mouths, and he has a moment of realisation: God, he just had Will’s tongue in his mouth. A vicious wave of this… this… He doesn’t have a word for it, but it's something magnetic and addictive in his lower belly. Will’s tongue was just curled around his, and they were making out.

 

Someone slap the ever-living shit out of him right now, because God… God, he never would have heard if someone was approaching them from afar. 

 

They’re nearing dangerous, marshy waters here, and yet, he still kisses Will again—a soft, gentle peck—trying not to blush when their lips snag, still wet and sticky from some of their heavier kisses.

 

“Do you like me back, Will?” He asks quietly.

 

He must have kissed all coherent thought out of Will’s head, because his only reply is to edge himself closer to Mike again, wearing his cloudy intentions clear in his slate eyes. 

 

They’re not even doing anything besides kissing and talking, but the sheer want pulsing inside his head has Mike pulling one of his legs up onto the hood of the car. 

 

He meant for it to serve as a physical barrier between them, but if Will read it as an invitation to splay his thighs on either side of Mike’s waist, Mike would never have corrected and pushed him off. But in return, he wouldn’t hold the sole responsibility of whatever then followed.

 

Fortunately for both of them, Will catches on to what Mike really intended—and not what he subconsciously wanted Will to glean—and pauses mid-way. 

 

Are Mike’s own eyes as wide and glazed as Will’s right now? Does he wear his longing as sheer, stretched, and thin as Will does? Can Will take one skim over his skin and realise how he saturates every living, breathing moment of Mike’s entire day? 

 

He hopes so, because he’s not helping his case otherwise with how suddenly he says, “I don’t want to kiss you if you don’t like me back.”

 

“I do,” Will whines. It’s a sound of frustration more than anything else, but it still pierces a place deep in Mike’s gut and carves its space there. 

 

He has never seen this side of Will before; he never thought Will to be capable of such transparent pining. How long has Will waited? Has he suffered his feelings in silence for as long as Mike has? Longer? He hopes it was longer. He wants to have that advantage of being the last person to fall, of being less likely to fall apart when the other isn’t around.

 

“Say it properly,” he demands, even though he doesn’t need to hear it anymore. Even though Mike implicitly knows it as the truest fact in his life right now.

 

Will has always been self-sacrificial, but Mike never imagined Will would give up parts of himself that he never once alluded to. “That was my first kiss,” he whispers, glassy eyes wide with uncertainty as if that would be some cosmic dealbreaker for them. As if Mike’s heart doesn’t skip where it sits: melded with the skin of Will’s open palms. 

 

Mike knew this. He concluded this: Will was nervous because he hasn’t done this before, but Jesus Christ, hearing the confession drip from his tongue… 

 

Giving someone your first kiss: what bigger true love’s admission exists in the known universe? Letting someone take your first kiss and fisting your hand in their collar to keep them locked in…

 

Yes, Mike doesn’t need to hear the words from Will anymore, but his voracious heart still wants to, and Mike would do anything to feed its rhythmic beat in the final few days he has left. So, he kisses Will again, and lingers—mouth unmoving—in an intimate press of lips. 

 

Kissing simply for the sake of feeling Will against him.

 

Will tries to move; he places a hand over Mike’s waist and coerces him with the slow glide of his fingers up his clothed back. He tries to kiss Mike’s bottom lip, sucking the tender flesh into his mouth, and tries to pull back so he can repeat it on his top lip too, mimicking what Mike’s been doing to him. But Mike fists a hand into the soft buzz of hair on his nape, keeping him in place.

 

His grip must be as harsh and impetus as his intentions, because it has Will gasping against him.

 

He adds one more entry to the ever-growing list of regrets that Vecna can use against him: not opening his eyes in time to see Will Byers inching up from the hood of their car, pulling himself deeper into Mike’s chest.

 

He’s close enough for Mike to feel the bony jut of his clavicle poking him, but before he can get any closer, Mike is using the grip he has on Will’s hair to drag him away, breaking the kiss. 

 

“Pause,” he pants. 

 

Will is driving him mad.  

 

If the sight of the deep, dark pools of Will’s deep, dilated pupils still fixed on his mouth wasn’t enough to make him pull Will back in, then the sight of his kiss-swollen lips definitely is. The only reason he does not is because he is a man on a mission, and men on missions must always proceed with their end goals at the forefront of their minds.

 

“I’m all three of your first kisses now,” he whispers over Will’s mouth. Four, if he wants to be technical. 

 

And that means I get to keep you forever! The cherubic kindergartener in him ecstatically jumps around—the one who first found Will by the swings all those years ago. He still remembers how viscerally protective of Will he was back then; he didn't want to share him with Lucas either, though he had considerably mellowed out by the time Dustin rolled into the picture. 

 

Mike has grown out of his childish exploits over the years, but his essence will always remain: he doesn’t want to share. He’s not someone who likes to share. He is, has, and always will be fiercely protective of the people in his life that he cares most about.

 

Right now, he also feels as though his heart might beat straight out of his chest or implode right there, inside the cavity of his lungs. 

 

“Say it please,” he begs. 

 

Please, prays the boy who has sat behind Will in Spanish class all semester, sketching the pattern of his shirt or the mole in the corner of his mouth, only to furiously scribble over the pages when he couldn’t get them right. Art has always been more of Will’s forté. 

 

Please, he yearns, I’m sorry for interrupting you before. I want to hear it now.

 

Will whispers as though he’s sitting on cloud nine, “How do I know this isn’t a dream?”

 

His oneiric intonation is entirely too intoxicating. Mike mirrors it, voice barely a hushed breath in his mouth, “What do you mean?”

 

Then he remembers: Will believes in romance. He’s probably never even practised confessions in front of a mirror or acted out fantasies with a pillow. Mike would never admit to either of those, but it comes with the growing teenage boy experience. He has said I love you to his reflection before, imagining others standing in its place: they are always five-foot-seven—sometimes six, other times eight—with brown hair and an even fringe. He cringed every time the words echoed in his own ears, but he has done it, and it’s only now occurring to him that maybe Will never said the phrase out loud before because he was waiting. Waiting for Mike to carefully pry it out of him. Exactly how he pried that first I do out of him, too. 

 

Nothing about how Mike treats others is careful though, and he wouldn’t be careful with his coercion methods either. But perhaps, it wouldn’t even matter: a rosy blush is already painting Will’s cheeks with delirium, and there’s a glossy sheen in his doe eyes that screams, Make me say it! Take the words out of me for you. 

 

Mike is finally starting to understand what’s surfacing between them—this game that Will enjoys playing, biassed entirely in his favour, that Mike has always been destined to lose.

 

He’s sitting in front of Will with his chest open like a wardrobe, with his heart hanging on display, but there’s still more to this little game of theirs. There’s still something Will wants that Mike is deliberately keeping at arm’s length from him; it’s the same thing Mike wants out of Will too. Something he’s been begging Will to say all evening, only to have it phrased in ways he never expected: that was my first kiss, Will had confessed.

 

Does Mike even need a verbal I love you out of him anymore? 

 

Hasn’t Will already imparted his half of the phrase? Even before today?

 

Mike remembers so clearly the piece Will wrote for their Belated Valentine’s Day literature project. He knows he was Will’s muse for it because why else did he find the crumpled page Will had been reading from, with the original poem and all the little doodles over the words, in his bag after he arrived home from school?

 

He hopes one day he can be strong enough to bring this up to Will too. To tell him that he still has that page tucked into his little brown journal, the one with the peeling leather and tearing pages. He hopes one day they can look back on these memories with a jovial fondness. I can’t believe I hid that from you for so long, he’ll laugh, caressing Will’s wrinkled hand, but at least, I have you here with me now.

 

Sometimes, during physics class, when they’re studying something Mike has already read up on, he’ll turn to the last page of his notebook and rewrite that one, very specific line from Will’s poem until his hand is cramping and black ink is smeared all over his palm: take aim with your sincerity, and then as usual, say something dangerous, something war-inspiring, something like I love you. 

 

He does it so often that the swirl of his hand around those letters has become intrinsically familiar to him. He traces the same pattern on his jeans with the tip of his thumbnail now, too: I l…o…v…e … And then he pauses, as he always does, before quietly adding the possessive pronoun that sparks the phrase into life: you. 

 

I love, I love, I love… I am brimming with a love that consumes me, and it’s all for you.

 

It’s scary, he thinks, to admit that someone's hand might be the key to your chest. That someone might have freeway access to your heart and know all the midnight routes to it that are entirely unfamiliar to you, as the host of your own body.

 

It’s scary, yes, but it doesn’t scare him. The adjective drapes over the idea of being bare and being known, but the verb does not overrun his nerves. It’s Will on the other side of the equation, after all, and Mike has no secrets from him. Not anymore, at least.

 

Still, he’s careful when he tries to broach the subject, “Do you think it’s scary? Saying it out loud, I mean.”

 

Will snorts, and Mike is only half-offended. “Doesn’t it scare you?” He asks, but it knocks closer to an accusation.

 

Mike vehemently shakes his head, his dark locks wagging like a Golden Retriever's ears. It makes Will chuckle, but it’s not a particularly happy sound. Mike can’t blame him. Not when he knows the whole story between him and El. 

 

Will is still generous enough to play along with his charade, giving as rough as he takes, “Fine. Why don’t you say it first then? Since it totally doesn’t scare you and I’ve dreamt our entire evening up, right?”

 

How unfair, Mike thinks, while his heart sings to Will’s request, I love you, I love you, I love you, as if it wants to string nylon around those three little words and anchor them to itself, leaving his mouth parched and his lover wanting. 

 

But Will’s wistful smile contradicts Mike’s fiery silence when he says, “See—,” voice as clear as the morning bird’s song, “—you get it.”

 

Mike doesn’t get it.

 

He wants to pull Will to his chest and make him listen to the way his EKG spells out the words that terrify him to admit. 

 

Will doesn’t get it either.

 

He wants to wait until Mike is ready to hear and reciprocate, when he has been hearing and reciprocating all his life. Just because the words feel foreign and bitter on his tongue, does not mean he doesn’t reciprocate exactly how Will feels for him. And Will gets this. He understands this better than anyone else, but he still wants to wait for Mike to catch up. He still wants to wait until those words no longer feel slimy in his mouth or leave nauseating shivers in his body. 

 

This is why—even though they do—Mike doesn’t get Will, and Will doesn’t get Mike, and they are perfectly content in their perpendicular contradictions. A silent understanding and wholehearted acceptance existing in that one, fleeting intersection between their resonant souls.

 

Mike sighs, letting gravity act on his weight so he’s laying back against the car’s windscreen once more. “So, what now?” He asks.

 

Will is still leaning into his space, slightly bent over his reclining body. He wears a calm smile free of all jitters from earlier this evening. 

 

Mike feels lighter too. He’s a lot more emotionally…

 

He shouldn’t say drained, but there’s a different kind of tiredness in his muscles now. He doesn’t want to say exhausted, but there’s a weight compelling his eyes to fall shut. He isn’t saying worn out, because when Will caresses his fingertips under the long sleeves of Mike’s shirt, he still shivers, finding himself wanting with an intensity that wracks his every cell. An intensity that reminds him of the boy who would sit next to Will in the cafeteria and start trembling under the ferocity of his own desire. 

 

Hold his hand, it would order imperiously. Shift closer to him.

 

Mike has gotten physically ill in the bathroom more than a few times because of how much it took from him when he tried to deny and push it away. See what happens? His gaunt reflection would then scorn him in the dust-speckled mirror, See what you’re doing to your own damn self? All the phantom chest pains and heart aches when Will would smile at his seat partner instead of him, or when Will would purposely sit next to Lucas at the cinema instead of him.

 

They don’t end here either—these silly little self-inflicted griefs of the human heart—Mike knows they don’t, but patience has always been Will’s strongest virtue. If anyone knows how to deal with and wait for Mike Wheeler several steps ahead, it’s Will. If anyone would forfeit their head-start to walk all the way back and hold a warm, welcoming hand to the inner child still frozen in fear inside of Mike, it’s Will Byers.

 

Will has a plan for them now, too. One that Mike doesn’t immediately agree with because it pokes a hole outside of his comfort bubble, but one Mike is responsive to because of Will. Perhaps it’s unhealthy how dependent Mike is on him, and perhaps, it will significantly hinder their progress in the future, but for the present—and at least now, in this quiet moment of reprieve when his mind isn’t roaring with Vecna’s nightmarish horror scenarios—Mike is content to take Will’s hand and let him lead once more.

 

“Well,” he says, “you can start by apologising to El, and then we can talk about this whole thing again. With proper words. Like adults.” 

 

Mike must not have kissed him thoroughly enough if he’s still able to apply logic and plan so far ahead.

 

Apologise to El? He considers, then promptly realises, I never did that, did I? 

 

He turns his head to bring the faint, snowy edges of Will’s outline into view. Will is still wearing a soft smile. One that crinkles his eyes into endearing half-moons.  

 

Would she want to speak to either of us if she knew how red your lips were from mine? 

 

Where that thought materialises from, Mike hasn’t the faintest clue, but a part of him wants to vocalise it to see if he can make Will blush again.

 

Despite how tempting it sounds, Mike doesn’t have a moment to even entertain the idea properly before his neurons are extending a sprawling network of dendrites towards a different path instead. One that reminds him that he is Hour Eleven, and that he has a little less than a week left to make amends.

 

“Right now, like, right now?” He tries to jest, cracking a lopsided grin to alleviate the sudden weight on his mind.

 

If Will senses something shift in him, he doesn’t mention it. Suspicion doesn’t even manifest on his features. He probably reads it as the kind of normal, internal struggle anyone might have at the thought of reconciling with a messy ex. 

 

“Yes, right now, Mike,” he replies. “I mean, the sooner the better, right? Just get it over with.” 

 

Just get it over with is not Will’s operating style, but it’s one he knows Mike can relate to best.

 

“Do you guys have a curfew for her?” He asks.

 

For her own safety, Hopper implemented strict curfews, and Mike was not allowed anywhere near the premises of their trailer after sunset. And judging by the melange of purple and orange in the sky, he can tell they don’t have much more sunlight left.

 

Will eases his concerns immediately with a simple, “No.” So quick and casual that Mike doesn’t know what to do.

 

He and El were friends once; they were friends before they were anything else, too. Mike still remembers the time when Will was the most distant to El, and now they live under the same roof and eat three meals a day on the same table. Now Mike is the one left feeling like an outsider to their newly budding relationship. Do they get along? Do they fight and make up the very next second like he and Nancy do? Does Jonathan take sides when they argue? 

 

There was a time when Joyce would refer to Mike as another one of her sons; she still does, but the frequency of it has abated, probably because the frequency of Mike’s visits has abated as well. But when Mike was still a frequent guest at the Byers household, Jonathan would let him intrude on his and Will’s personal bonding time, too. He even hammered a couple nails into Castle Byers, and had both of the Byers brothers fret over him when he accidentally missed and banged up his thumb instead. 

 

Mike has always been a well-integrated non-member of the Byers household, and now, he wonders how he will fit with El under the constraints and expectations of this new dynamic.

 

However, he decides his most immediate concern is: “Does El know that you… for me?”

 

Will rocks his knuckles into Mike’s shoulder, and speaks with the same mellow cadence he’s chosen to employ for the evening. “Yes, Mike,” he answers with a lilt in his voice. “She does, and before you ask, she’s the one who brought it up.” When Mike blinks owlishly at him, Will adds, “She’s a lot more observant than you think, and I promise, she won’t be mad. She just wants an explanation.”

 

There’s no judgement in his tone, but Mike sees his consolatory words for what they truly are: you made a version of her up in your head, and have been running from the fear of it instead of simply turning around and facing her truth.

 

A pang of familiar, flesh-melting guilt suddenly surges between the vertical mesh of his ribs, but he ignores it. He ignores the rising temperature in his chest, and pretends the consequences of his actions won’t crescendo with the moon tonight.

 

He teases Will instead, nudging him with his knee, “Were you not explanation enough?”

 

Will only shrugs at that. “Like I said,” he admits breezily, “you’re hard to read sometimes.” 

 

His mom says the same about him before kissing his forehead—he hoped he wouldn’t have to hear the same words from Will’s mouth, too. But he has now, and this is the second time Will has uttered them in the same evening.

 

Hard to read objectively or is this a sentiment you share, too? Mike wants to ask, because as immature and self-important as he can be, refusing to see his faults as points of personal improvement, he recognises the silent request in Will’s words as naturally as the Sun recognises the moon among the speckles of satellites in their galaxy. You’re hard to read, he claims, when he really wants to say, I know we’re growing older, and you have your own shit to worry about, but please don’t become unfamiliar to me.

 

Mike hums, swinging his leg that dangles off the bonnet of the scrapped car. The back of his sneakers make loud clanging noises every time they collide with the thermoplastic bumper. 

 

I’ll work on it, he promises to himself. You won’t lose me. He hopes he can promise it to Will one day, too.

 

For now, he tries to steer the mood from sombre back to lighthearted by conversationally asking, “Would your mom kill me if she found out about today?”

 

“No!” Will suddenly squeaks, glowing red in the face. “No, but uhm—,” he clears his throat, “—but, uh, we would get into a lot of trouble.” 

 

Trouble sounds a lot like a repeat of that one weekend when his parents went to visit Nana and he invited El over. He left his bedroom door wide open under the impression that none of the supervising adults would be home for the next two days. But as they say, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and he and El were interrupted with a high-pitched, scandalised shriek. They hadn’t been doing anything. They never went beyond making out, and Mike was in no rush to, but one can empathise with a mother who returned to retrieve her youngest daughter’s favourite plush toy, only to find her only son with a girl underneath him. 

 

Needless to say, his parents had called to apologise and excuse themselves, explaining that a nameless something had come up with their beloved son that required them to postpone their visit.

 

Both he and El received the most awkward birds and the bees talk before his mom volunteered his father to drive El back home.  

 

“Michael Wheeler, just what were you thinking?” She scolded Mike in the meantime. And upon his father's return, even he clicked his tongue at Mike, “That was very irresponsible of you, son.” Nancy somehow got caught in the crossfire of it too—“You were supposed to keep an eye on him!”—and the evening had continued to spiral once Mike accidentally let his mouth run and revealed one of Nancy’s biggest secrets: the multiple late night Steve-and-the-window incidents. This happened months ago, but Nancy is still mad at him.

 

Mike doesn’t even realise he’s frowning until Will digs a painful finger into his thigh. It stings, but he doesn’t react to it. Instead, he lifts his head to ask, “Does your family know? About you and your…” He tips his head to the side in vague generalisation.

 

“Me and mine?” Will grins, reiterating to give Mike a perspective of how dumb his wordchoice can be, but all Mike gleans from it is how in-sync the two of them are. Will still understands what Mike means to say, even when he eats half his words and tapers off on the rest.

 

“No,” Will exhales sharply through his nose, “that’s not something we talk about, but you for me…” He trails off, a little shy, tugging at his fingers.

 

Mike likes the way they’re phrasing their feelings for each other: you for me, and me for you. 

 

“…It’s a very open secret back home,” Will finishes quietly.

 

Since when? Mike wants to demand, How long have they known?  

 

If he phrased it like that, Will would see right through it, immediately deciphering the true question lacing his intentions: Is your art as saturated with me as my writing is with you? But he could be clever if Will gave him a moment. He could string his words in combinations that don’t reveal him while getting him what he wants in the same pan. He could, but he doesn’t.

 

Instead, he abruptly jolts up, a sudden realisation hitting him like a freight train. “Wait!” He yells, “Don’t tell me Jonathan knows too!” 

 

Jonathan, who is only the coolest older brother to their entire party—right after Eddie—but he is still Will’s older brother before he is anything to Mike.

 

As if sensing his train of thought, Will laughs and returns his hand to settle on top of Mike’s thigh. “He’s just very observant,” he says. “I think he always knew. Before Mom did too.”

 

The reminder of a maternal presence looming over their heads brings Mike’s attention back to Will’s face; there’s still a healthy flush painting his cheeks, but it could easily be overlooked as one caused by the wind beating on his face when he bicycles home from the Hellfire Club—the one both of them promised their families they were attending tonight.

 

Will’s hair isn’t mussed either, and his clothes aren’t crinkled in suspicious patterns; Mike did keep his hands to himself for the most part.

 

His lips are a whole other story though. Not because Will wears the evidence of their evening on them. Not at all. In fact, the glistening redness subsided some time ago. 

 

Mike isn’t even embarrassed to admit it: he doesn’t like how unaffected Will looks now. Maybe if he went home with a mark on his neck and wearing one of Mike’s cardigans, Will’s mother would exchange a meaningful look with his brother, and Will and Mike won’t have to explicitly come out with the truth to them later on. 

 

He can’t ever imagine being invited back to the Byers' house if he sent Will home with a visible kiss mark on his neck. It’s embarrassing how he even considered this as a viable route, but then again, Will’s mother still extends lunch and dinner invitations to Mike whenever he stops by, lingering outside in the yard, despite knowing how much he has tormented her son’s days and nights. If only she knew how her son tormented his own, too.

 

“God,” he groans, rubbing both hands down his face, “what a name I must have at your house.” 

 

Will must be in a really good mood now, because he laughs again. If Mike knew this was all it would take to see Will in lighter spirits, he would’ve kissed him a lot sooner. 

 

“You have nothing to worry about,” he reassures. “Mom and Jonathan already adore you. You’re like her second– third. Third son. She’d never hate you.” 

 

Suddenly, this has become a much more charged conversation. One that prickles under Mike’s skin.

 

He's only ever had one lover before Will, but he never had to endure an official meet the parents dinner with her. Mostly because he came into her life before her father-figure did, and because he knew Hopper before the man even met El.

 

Will is right: his family already knows Mike as the best friend. But the thought that he’ll now have to reintroduce himself as something more has his stomach twisting up into tight knots. 

 

He can’t believe he’s already thinking about meeting Will’s family as the boyfriend when he doesn’t even know if that label applies to them yet. 

 

Are we? The question churns through the folds of his brain, Are we boyfriends now? 

 

Will hasn’t addressed it; is that what he meant when he mentioned revisiting this conversation later? It’s the only fathomable route Mike can think of that such a conversation would take. It suddenly makes more sense why Will wants him to close his chapter with El with finality before moving on to the next. He would have done it eventually without Will’s incentive too, but like he said, get it over with, right?

 

“Aren’t you lucky Hopper isn’t around?” Will says. His cheek is squished against the shoulder he rests his head on, body still fully angled towards Mike. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Mike’s supine figure ever since they… uhm.

 

Mirth dances in his eyes like flickers of an autumn bonfire. “El told me he couldn’t stand the sight of you.”

 

Mike is so glad at least one of them finds amusement in his grievances. “Don’t remind me!” He groans loudly, “God, he was such a nightmare.” 

 

Hopper’s soul probably shivers in Russia every time Mike thinks of him. He should stop speaking of him in vain, out of respect for the in absentia, but his petulance makes Will giggle, and wait– Who were they talking about again?  

 

Hopper is a big, burly man; he can endure a couple more shivers in whatever ice prison the Russians have him detained in. He’ll survive, but if Mike doesn’t hear Will make that ditzy little sound again, he’s sure to die. Without a doubt in his mind. Vecna just appeared in the corner of his eye to personally relay his fate. Hopper would understand. 

 

“But listen! No!” Mike pules, his voice taking on a whiny edge that only fans the frequency of Will’s giggles. God, he feels as though he’s fourteen again. “Hopper didn’t hate me because I was El’s boyfriend! He just had something against me. As a person! Wha– Stop laughing! I’m being serious! Imagine if he was still here; he’d be on my ass constantly because of you, and then we’d never know peace again!” 

 

There. Even though his heart is racing now, and his breaths have turned shallow in his chest, he managed to imply the b-word between them without the land engulfing him into the fiery pits of its personal, central hell. 

 

“You’re so dramatic,” Will rolls his eyes with a fondness that leaves indelible marks in Mike’s skin; in the layer where tattoo ink sinks and stays. 

 

Will slides off the hood of the old car in one smooth movement, dusting the back of his beige trousers before turning to Mike again. 

 

Mike counted: Will barely kept him out of sight for four seconds. 

 

“Let’s go?” He offers Mike an outstretched hand, an open palm. An invitation, a reminder that Mike isn’t facing this alone anymore. 

 

Guess there’s no talking his way out of this one. 

 

He takes Will’s hand.

 

 

 

—x—x—

 

 

 

“We’re still working on a separate bedroom for El, so she’s sharing with Mom for now.” 

 

Will rambled their entire ride home, the extra time Mike took to park his bicycle in the Byers' front yard, and during their slow trek through the living room leading into the bedroom corridor.

 

Will rambles when he’s nervous, while Mike tends to shut down. 

 

What does Will have to be nervous about? 

 

“Mom’s working tonight, so you should have El to yourself,” he says as they come to a halt in front of a door that isn’t so much unfamiliar as it is unvisited. 

 

Mike watches as Will nervously slides his fingers into the back pockets of his jeans, rocking back and forth on his heels. Even when he’s wearing those ridiculous trainers with extra padding on the bottom, Mike still towers a couple inches over his head. 

 

Will meets his eyes once, then immediately looks away, exhaling through his mouth. They stand close enough for Mike to feel that gust of breath on his chest. 

 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Will asks tentatively.

 

Mike only shakes his head.

 

These doors aren’t soundproof; El probably already knows they’re standing outside, trying to work up the courage to face her. 

 

Will nods, his movements jittery and clipped, and withdraws from Mike, walking backwards into the living room.

 

Mike lifts a hand to rap his knuckles on the vertical hardwood door. He receives no verbal answer from the other side, but hears a soft click! of the handle unlocking. An olive branch or an opportunity? His fingers curl around the cool metallic doorknob… He’ll just have to find out for himself.

 

Will rubs the back of his neck and sends him one last wobbly smile—one that Mike stashes away to analyse later—before he’s twisting his wrist and shoving the bedroom door shut behind him in the same breath. 

 

Mike doesn’t get a moment to survey the rest of the room because his eyes are immediately drawn to the lithe figure sitting at the writing desk, back turned to him and the door. The only light in the room shines from the table lamp beside her as she hunches over the desk, arm moving in patterns he recognises. She’s writing something.

 

Mike suddenly feels very, very sick. He didn’t prepare a speech for this encounter. If he had been thinking a little more rationally earlier, he would have negotiated penance time with Will to collect and draft his words on paper before barging in here. He can’t trust himself to get them right if he’s plucking them in the moment as he speaks. 

 

“Hi…” He starts awkwardly, cringing at the inconsequential casualness of his own tone. 

 

He strolls into the centre of the room, still standing an appropriate distance away from El. He doesn’t want her to think he’s here to get this over with, as was his original intention. 

 

This is the first time in God-knows-how-many months that they’re alone together, and El has yet to acknowledge his presence. Though this is better perhaps, because he doesn’t know how to act around her yet. As her ex and her brother's current boyf– best friend. Best friend is okay.

 

“I’m sure you don’t want to see my face right now,” he blurts out before he can drive himself into a tizzy over it, “but for what it’s worth, I do care for you.” 

 

He doesn’t let the sight of her freezing in her spot scare him. He had used the word care in their last argument, too; I care for you, instead of the three words she wanted to hear from him all summer. The same ones he has wanted from Will all their life.

 

“I care about you so much,” he remains steadfast on it because it’s the truth, and even if it’s the truth she never wanted, he needs her to know this much, “and I'm sorry it’s not something I could properly tell you before. I wasn’t even planning on telling you today. I don’t think I ever planned to tell you at all, but Will and I, we talked today. About…” us.

 

He can’t say that. 

 

Will might have mentioned his own situation to El, but there’s no way El could’ve read Mike’s when he never explicitly showed any interest of that sort. 

 

He can’t do that to her yet, so he corrects himself last minute: “About– about me, and he told me I should do it now, so I don’t regret not doing it years later.” 

 

Days later, a dark, parasitic voice echoes in his head. 

 

Shit. Shit!

 

Mike wouldn’t call himself a particularly anxious person with publicly-manifesting ticks, but every now and then, he’ll feel a boiling hot ball of anxiety in his stomach that speeds time up. And if there’s one thing Mike absolutely cannot afford right now, it’s granules of time pouring right through the cracks between his fingers and right through him. 

 

He’s pacing around in the same circle now; he can’t stand in one place and feel his legs shake under his weight, that would ruin his composure. 

 

“Listen, I– You’re mad at me, and I get that!” His words are becoming increasingly more panic-stricken, “I messed up! I was the biggest coward ever, and you didn’t deserve that. I should've been honest with you sooner, I know that, but can you please just look at me?” 

 

Would it help? No. If he doesn’t know what to say in her presence, he wouldn’t know what to say to her face either. But feeling like he was speaking to an empty room was starting to drive him mad.

 

There must have been enough of a tremor in his voice that El took pity on him and straightened her spine, turning her chair around. Her lips part with something Mike knows he has to brace himself for, and the muscles in his abdomen clench in anticipation—a tense contraction so strong that for a moment, he stops breathing entirely.

 

He’s not expecting the stern expression on El’s face to suddenly morph into brisk confusion. It’s not much different from the impassive displeasure she was wearing before; her brows are still furrowed, and a frown is still pulling at the corner of her lips, but there’s a softening around her eyes. She’s not looking in his direction anymore either.

 

“Mike…” Her tone vacillates in an intimately familiar tune, prickling over his skin. He follows the slow raise of her slender arm, one finger lifting from her fist to point at him– No. She’s pointing to something beyond him, “What is that?”

 

Right on cue, Will barges in, shoving the door open. 

 

Mike takes a long perusal of the panic aflame in Will’s eyes and thinks, I’m not the only one who feels this uneasiness then, which is quickly followed by another soul-crunching realisation: What does he know? How does he know?

 

“Hey, is everything okay?” Will asks hesitantly, “I just heard a–” An odd expression crosses his face when he sees El’s sagging arm, but it quickly shifts to supernatural horror once he follows the path of her pointer finger. 

 

The initial panic inside Mike has already subsided. He hasn’t heard the disquieting sound of the broken chime yet, but he knows the illusion of the grandfather clock is now wedged into the mortar behind him, arms playing around hour seven. Reading the time he has left. 

 

Seven days.

 

There are two pairs of eyes fixed on him now. 

 

Mike’s throat suddenly feels parched. He’s surprised he can even rasp the words out, “You should sit down for this…” 

 

There’s a chill creeping under his shirt, wrapping around the swathe of skin above his belt like a lover’s embrace in the kitchen when the moon is in its twilight orbit. Too bad he won’t be around long enough to experience what that’s like. Too bad he’s just regressed on every step of progress he made with Will today.

 

He sees embers of hurt flicker in Will’s eyes, and in that moment, Mike realises that while he may not be a liar, intentional omission of the truth can be equally as detrimental to relationships as outright lies are. Maybe even more so. And perhaps, that is why Mike didn’t flinch when Will uttered the first lie of their evening: because what he did triggered consequences just as damning. Because he isn't any better than the liar he claims not to be.

 

Will is an angel who still wordlessly does as requested of him: softly shutting the door behind him and taking a seat on the edge of the double bed.

 

Mike doesn’t meet either of their eyes after that. It’s one thing to be on the receiving end of one person’s judgemental glare, but he’s not strong enough to handle the combined weight of both of the Byers siblings’ levelled and accusatory stares.

 

He didn't mean for either of them to find out until he and Max had a more solid grasp of their situation, and now, this evening has just become a whole lot more complicated than an impromptu, coded-confession to his longtime crush and an improvised apology to his ex-girlfriend. 

 

Shit.

 

Vecna take him now.

Notes:

i actually calculated and 14% of this is just byler making out lmao. icon behaviour. LET MIKE WHEELER AND WILL BYERS KISS IN S5!! LEAVE A KUDOS TO SIGN THIS PETITION tehe <3

i love the “both of us know we’re in love with each other but neither of us will do anything about it” trope so much. and the combination of forced confessions + forced kisses + my current favourite ship? i'm in heaven 😭🤘🏽 plus of course, we are forever feeding the “mike is impulsive and would confess to/kiss will first” allegations. he's never escaping these

the poem mentioned as will’s is actually not that romantic, but the context doesn’t matter, i just liked that one line in it & edited it a little. mike’s poem is perfect and it’s the one he would’ve read out loud in class (with “she” pronouns instead of “he”)

this was originally supposed to be a madwheeler fic but the premise wasn't working for them so i switched up and decided it was going to be a 3k byler confession drabble. and then it spiraled from there because i was having way too much fun inside mike's head. and now this is a 17k byler fic written to promote the s4 madwheeler + lowkey wheelclair agenda

please leave a comment if you enjoyed this fic. tell me any parts you particularly liked, or any piece of mike's internal monologue that you found interesting. give me a string of heart emojis, or even just a keyboard smash. anything and everything is good, and appreciated so so much by me!
i always reply to comments. however, if you preferred i didn't reply then please add a little "(whisper)" or something at the end of your comment ^-^