Work Text:
Will is not the jealous type.
Not the angry, possessive type, anyway. He’s always settled to cradle that bruise close to his chest and soothe it into something softer, something that lingers for much longer than anything so bold as anger or anything akin to a sense of self-worth. He lets it get washed over by sea water, and he’s surprised, anyway, when the sharp edges of seashells sting.
He doesn’t like it, the weird flush of betrayal that rises in him, because it isn’t deserved. He has no reason for it, no place in the picture, and, even now, when he has a label for all his unconventionalism, he’s affronted by his own audacity to feel so lonely when Mike trails after El into her room.
Will is not the jealous type. Not voluntarily, at least. Not compliantly. Not proudly.
Over the strumming and self-affirmations of the Cure blasting in his ears, he can almost forget about the conversation happening just next door. The walls are so thin that Will can hear El dropping a book on the other side, sometimes, or if she makes a particularly loud landing from her bed. For once, he is glad for everyone’s insistence on him becoming Vecna’s next target, and the excuse it serves for blasting Boys Don’t Cry until it feels like his brains might melt out of his ears and eyes.
Even with the guitar and drums rocking through his skull, he can feel curiosity tempting him, pawing and whining at his door, because he bites so hard at his cheek that it prickles copper, and focuses very intently on the comic in front of him, hovering over his head as he lays down, and he’s been staring at Wonder Woman’s face for the past five minutes, except the speech bubble next to her head has not made any progress on being processed.
Only feeling something like sadness and longing would, of all things, make sense for his own, jumbled up emotions. Instead, the sadness is accompanied by something like anticipation, something like anxiety, for a relationship that isn’t his, the inevitable ritual that follows, picking Mike up and handing him tape and bandages. He wonders when it became his job to patch up their problems.
Not that he minds, of course, but – undoubtedly, it’s a little ironic, bandaging Mike’s own insecurities while it, sometimes, makes Will dizzy from yearning. The want that’s clawing inside him makes him sick, how it’s been gradually scratching up everything inside his body, and leaving very little to rot. It’s not very reassuring, curling into himself at night and finding an aching emptiness.
Will knows better. He knows not to let this abyss grow.
He also knows not to fall in love with his best friend. His heart’s been out of sync with his head for a very long time.
He stares at Diana Prince’s face, mouth open as she speaks, and eyebrows furrowed. He blinks when it’s suddenly replaced by Mike.
The comic has been tugged out of his hands, and now he looks up at Mike, who leans over him and says something, inaudible as Robert Smith croons about begging on his knees. Will pulls off his headphones, catching the end of Mike’s sentence.
“– to talk.”
He struggles to sit up, mostly for Mike looming over him like this. He almost wants the comic back, just to hide away in it. “What?”
Mike’s mouth twitches into something faint of a smile. It makes something in Will ache, knowing it’s something private, the door closed behind him. Will wonders if he’ll remain like this for the rest of his life, desperate over barely-there smiles. “I asked if you were free to talk.”
Will nods before he thinks about the repercussions of it. He never does, truthfully, mostly because any fleeting moment with Mike feels so sparse, recently, and he’s been vying for it for so long. Besides, he doesn’t think he has the skill, denying Mike a moment to vent when he wants one. It’s half the reason Will gets so caught up in things that aren’t his own.
“Okay,” he responds. Mike sits near his legs while Will quickly pushes himself upward to sit against the headboard, feeling so awkward while Mike places the comic open-faced on the bed. “Is anything – wrong?”
Mike shrugs, looking away. It’s almost funny, how he goes seeking for a conversation, yet shying from it when it comes to what’s on his mind. “Not really,” he elusively replies, a tell-tale sign of complication. When Will merely waits, always a sure way to get him to talk, Mike sheepishly continues, “Me and El – um. Talked.”
And – of course, Will knew this had been coming. It is, undeniably, a constant in their conversations, recently, the ones that don’t fit in with supernatural problems or Mike reassuring himself that Will isn’t getting swept away into a hazy fog of red. They fall back into Mike’s problems, and Will is okay with it. He has nothing to say for himself.
He pushes past the strange hurt in his chest. Mike says talked with something of an insinuation, not quite negative, not quite positive. Will is almost scared to question it.
He’s brave, though, if only for things like this. “Talked about what?”
He watches Mike’s cheek dent in, the way he bites at it when he’s thinking something through. His hands fidget in his lap, and Will keeps his carefully still on his thighs, too aware of himself while he waits. The Cure remains playing, albeit much more muted, tinny on the small speakers of his Walkman headphones. He’s not sure whether or not it’s a bad time to lean over and turn it off.
“We broke up,” Mike finally says. “For real, this time.”
Will stares at him.
He’s been through the different phases of their break-ups, as unwillingly and unintentionally as it might have been, picking up the pieces, sometimes, for lack thereof, and the insecurities that come sprouting up in the aftermath. Will has seen every facet of these things, no matter if he chooses to, and he has remained by Mike’s side long enough to know that the words are nearly shocking, absent of any spite, offense, or anxiety like the prior times.
Mike seems at ease, almost, as if he had already taken the time to ponder it, and is fine with what he’s come to find. He says it not quite resigned, not quite determined. Content, Will thinks. It’s alarming.
He presses his lips together. He, for once, isn’t sure what to say.
His heart feels like it might beat out of his chest, and not for excitement, but for the odd territory he’s managed to find himself in, standing on a mountain of eggshells while Mike stares at him from the ground. Every move feels incriminating, with his own unrequited flaws. He doesn’t know what to say. He is not happy, nor relieved. Nervous, perhaps.
“Oh,” he thoughtfully returns, after a long, silent while. It feels like a safe bet to ask, “How – um, how do you feel?”
Mike’s mouth tilts upward, but it is not happy. “Fine, I guess. Not – upset, weirdly enough. I think it helps that I expected it.”
Will’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “You did?”
He gives a nod. “Yeah. I mean, if she didn’t bring it up first, I – I think I was going to. I could kind of tell it was over in Lenora, anyway.” He twists his lips to the side, before settling on an absent frown as he lingers on his next words. His eyebrows do that thing where they’re drawn down, concentrated on expressing himself properly. “I think – like, maybe I was trying to cling onto something I kind of already knew was – was gone, I guess.”
Will nods along, because he isn’t sure what else to do. He doesn’t know what else to say. To ask.
He is practiced in the ritual of reassuring Mike, especially when he is unsure of himself and his capabilities, his worth and value when it comes to others. Will has, admittedly, never been in the backwash of a breakup where it seems entirely mutual, where Mike has been compliant and content. It’s different, jarring, and Will doesn’t know what to do with it.
“I don’t know,” Mike says, after a long while, when silence passes, “if that makes sense, but –”
“It does,” Will is quick to tell him. “It does, it just – I get it. You were afraid to lose her.”
“Yeah,” Mike hums. “I guess so. I don’t want to lose any of my friends.”
Will nods in agreement, and that’s a fairly normal assumption to make, Mike not wanting to lose El. Mike says friends easily, though, grouping her into that league, and Will would have presumed it to be a much more difficult task, and yet, Mike claims it like he spares it no second thought. Perhaps he has come to terms with it far faster than anyone would have predicted.
“She doesn’t want to lose you either,” he says, when he’s figured out another safe place to step. “You know, as friends, or – or anything.”
Mike cracks a smile. “I know.”
Will nods, and looks away. He can’t hold eye contact for too long, right now; not with the door shut, and Mike sitting so close, hand so close to his body, and stare so heavy, and definitely not with the reveal of a breakup, and Mike taking it so well, like it truly and absolutely does not hurt him. Will wants to believe it to be true, and it looks like it is, and yet.
Maybe it’s just for some terrible part of him that doesn’t want to believe it, and feed it into the growing void in him. It’d be detrimental, letting it get hopeful.
“What about you?”
Will blinks out of his thoughts. “What about me?”
Mike tilts his head forward. “How do you feel?” He asks as if it’s obvious.
Will gives him a look. “I’m not the one who just got broken up with.”
“Yeah, but,” Mike shrugs, “I don’t know. You seemed kind of down. When I came in, I mean.”
It’s embarrassing how easily he reads Will, sometimes, yet seems so glaringly blind at other moments. Still, now, Mike has a good hold on him, the unspoken things he does, and he wonders if that brief moment of surprise had really given him away so well, or if it’s something he’s doing right now, something on his face, or the way he sits, or the way the lurking shadow in his stomach isn’t something he can properly shake off, even now.
The pit in his stomach rolls over, and he shakes his head. “No, I’m – I’m fine. Really,” he adds, when Mike raises his eyebrows. “I was just caught up in my own thoughts, I guess.”
It’s the truth, in a sense of omission, but it satiates Mike anyway. “Oh,” he says. “What about?”
You, he wants to say, but that’s too much. He’s too much.
“Nothing,” he replies. Mike gives him an unimpressed look, and Will jerks a shoulder into a half-hearted shrug. He feels too seen, like this. He almost wishes someone would interrupt them.
Mike chews on his lip, and Will directs his eyes to the vast checkered pattern of the bedsheet in front of them, just to keep his stare away, just to make sure his face isn’t too readable. The song is still audible from the headphones. That feels too revealing, too, now, because Robert Smith is just a little too relatable when he sings something about how he thought that you needed me more, more, more –
“I feel like you used to tell me things,” Mike says.
Will looks away from his Walkman, back to Mike. It’s almost startling, finding him already looking back. “I – tell you things,” he replies, a little awkwardly. He barely gets through the sentence before Mike is already shaking his head.
“No,” he frowns, “you – you used to tell me things. Like, stuff you wouldn’t tell everyone else.” He seems conflicted, and he looks away. “Stuff just between us.”
Will doesn’t know where to begin.
He could blame it on a lot of things; the first option, seemingly, always appears to be Mike, his silence, his lack of anything to offer Will in the last six months. The second, following like clockwork, could be the idea that there’s nothing to say, except there’s been so much brewing under Will’s skin, sometimes he’s terrified he’s going to wake up one day and his body will have been replaced with something melted through the sheets and burned into the floor.
Neither of these options would be completely true, though – partially, maybe, the same way milk partially takes up a cake and loneliness partially takes up his stomach. It’d be easy to blame the stomachache on intolerance.
The real culprit is, however, that – he isn’t sure he could bear being brushed off.
Will is terrified of baring himself open for Mike, to take the things he hasn’t been able to say to his mother or to Jonathan or to himself, to take those things and hand them to Mike, and for Mike to take Will’s admissions and twist them into a rocky road back to something else, to take it and spin it into a tale for El, for Will to become a stepping stone for better things.
The hypocrisy of it is not lost on him, in between pushing his own words out of the way for Mike and in the grit of dried paint stuck under his nails. Maybe it’s for the fear of finally receiving a confirmation to being second to El – a well-known fact, and Will would like to say he’s come to terms with it, but the truth is, the idea makes him hurt so terribly, he sometimes presses a hand against his heart to force it back into his ribcage.
If he were to open up his hands, unclench them from the fist he’s been holding them in, and if Mike were to turn away, then –
Will doesn’t know what he would do.
It’s jealousy. He knows it’s terrible, and he knows he’s been sick for a long time. He can’t help it.
He can’t say it, either.
He replaces it with, “I just have nothing to tell.” It’s close enough to the truth.
Mike looks unconvinced. “That’s not true,” he tells more than says, as if he’s sure. “And – and even if you didn’t, you’d at least tell me that, too. Without me asking, at least.” His frown is more of a scowl, now. “I don’t want to – ask you to tell me things. I just want you to tell me, because we’re friends. Best friends, you know. Like we agreed.”
It almost makes him laugh, how persistent Mike is on this, saying it like he thought it meant something, and it had meant something to Will, it had meant everything, but Will’s been a little shaky on what Mike’s been holding to value on the other end of things. It’s maybe mean, to beat the worth of the words Will’s been clinging onto into the ground, until Will can almost convince himself he hadn’t cared at all, but the bruise is still there, and he had done it to himself, hurting this way, and it shouldn’t ache so deeply when Mike comes back, holding it all in his hands like it’s something delicate, like he cares.
It doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t make sense. Will doesn’t know what to say. An apology feels fitting. “So–”
“Don’t apologize,” Mike interrupts, and Will’s mouth clicks shut. “I just – want you to talk to me again. Like before.”
“Okay,” Will finds himself agreeing, if only to appease the look on Mike’s face, hurt and troubled. “I will.”
Mike’s eyes glance over him, flickering, as if looking for something, and then he lets out a little sigh, something relieved when he lets his figure slouch. “Okay,” he returns.
When neither of them speak again, Will, admittedly, lets himself relax a little, placing his guard down as he turns back to his Walkman, and he rewinds the tape. It’s unnervingly quiet, then, no coppery music in the background while it’s rewound, and it’s nearly awkward.
Will presses play, preparing to put his headphones back on, and Mike asks, “So you’ll – you’ll tell me how you feel?”
Will can’t help the baffled look on his face. “What?”
“How you feel,” Mike repeats, like it’s obvious. Will keeps staring at him. “I – want to know how you feel, when you’re – you’re sad, or angry, or happy, or – or anything. I want to know.”
Will doesn’t know why it feels so much more implicative than Mike probably means it to be. “How I feel,” he echoes faintly. Mike nods. “I – about what?”
He shrugs. “Anything. Vecna. The Cure. Hopper’s cooking.” Will cracks a smile, and Mike doesn’t look away from him. “The apocalypse,” he lists. “Lenora.” Will fiddles with a stray string on the bed. Mike bites at his cheek. It’s quieter when he adds, “Me.”
The word is so soft, Will would be certain he shouldn’t have heard it, if not for the way Mike is sure to keep his eyes on him when he says it. Will involuntarily freezes in his fidgeting, and Mike’s still staring at him, incessant in its heaviness, and Will doesn’t know what to do under it. He hopes his face isn’t as pink as it feels.
It feels like a trap, replying to that. He doesn’t know what to say, every reassurance feels like too much and not enough, the pendulum of indecision that rocks him back and forth swinging wildly in his core. Mike feels open to anything, right now, like he used to be before, the same thing Will’s fallen for before, and he’ll keep falling into. He can never help it.
Still, he tries to keep himself steady when he replies, “I – I don’t know.”
It’s as though Mike’s somehow gotten closer, in the inches between them on the bed. Will’s never wished so badly for Mike to have left the door open. Mike looks disbelieving when he repeats, “You don’t know?”
He knows too well what he feels. He’d take ignorance over this any day. Even now, Will can’t lie to him, and instead tells him, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh.” If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Mike looks disappointed.
It’s only for this, for Will’s inability to keep any sort of remedy away from Mike, that he tries to fix the forlorn expression on Mike’s face. “I just,” he begins, feeling clumsy with himself, “I don’t know. You’re Mike. I – you’re my best friend. I – um.” He’s susceptible to choking on his own words when he forces himself to speak, “I like you.”
He tries to make it sound platonic, but it comes out a little too raw, anyway, all scratched out and bloody, and he hopes it isn’t noticeable. Mike’s face doesn’t betray anything, although his stare is so unbearably soft, it makes Will want to shrivel up into nothing.
When Mike’s hand finds his, it’s warm and certain, entwining their fingers like he means to, and Will doesn’t know what to do with that. His stomach is twisting into itself.
The smile that Mike gives him is warm, familiar. Will almost can’t look at it. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Will croaks miserably.
Mike’s smile widens. Will glances down. Mike’s fingers are slotted between his, and Will looks elsewhere, to the door instead, brown and unassuming. He’s terrified his hand might start sweating. His hand clutches onto Mike’s, tightening indiscernibly, the same way he would when they were younger, before he remembers himself.
He does a little less than jerk his hand away, fingers clumsily removing themselves, and it’s effortful, too, when Mike’s still holding on. “Sorry,” Will thoughtlessly blurts, “I didn’t mean to –”
His mouth shuts when Mike insistently reaches out and grasps his hand again. It’s intentional. It’s unmistakable. Mike’s reassuring eyes feel almost like a challenge.
His fingers curl into Will’s. His hold is firm, present, tangible.
His eyes are dark.
“Is – this okay?”
Will’s throat feels inexplicably dry.
He nods.
The space between them feels nonexistent, now, but Will is pretty sure he’s been frozen in place for this entire conversation, he thinks, and he can’t quite tell if it’s his imagination, or if Mike’s been this close all along.
Still, he doesn’t move away, even when he’s sure Mike’s leaning closer. He’s close enough now, anyway, for Will to feel his warmth, hear his inhale and exhale, the slightest movement of his eyes, and the smell of his shampoo.
He doesn’t want to be a fool for wishful thinking, and it’d be a humiliating thing, assuming that Mike is leaning in to kiss him, except he’s still leaning closer, tightening his hold on Will’s hand, and Will holds his breath when their noses nearly brush, and he’s sure, now, there’s no doubt about it, that Mike’s –
Will tries to steady himself, tries to brace for impact, but he can’t help but wince, the crawl of shame, sadness that slithers up his spine, and he tries to accept it, tries to welcome it, even, Mike’s approach, but he can’t help it, the way he flinches, the way he –
“Please don’t kiss me.”
He doesn’t know why he says it.
And he doesn’t say it, really – pleads it, maybe, the way the whining of a dog isn’t really speaking and the way the wail of a whale isn’t really speaking, but something else, something less logical and more instinctual, something that arrives when in the mercy of a force more powerful. It comes out in a voice that’s a little too desperate, a little too frail, and it’s pathetic, embarrassingly so.
He’ll worry about patching up his dignity, later, when it doesn’t feel like he’s moments away from shattering into tiny splinters, painful to touch, and when Mike isn’t only a thoughtless move away.
Mike halts only a breath away from him, peering into his eyes, and Will feels his resolve flicker in certainty, if only for a moment. “Right,” he breathes, sounding out of his body, airy and mostly a hushed whisper.
His eyes are wide, when they look at him. Innocent, even, enough to make it hurt.
Mike moves away before he can take his words back. He blinks, as though he remembers where he is. “Right,” he repeats, more solid this time, and embarrassed, “right, yeah. Sorry. Sorry, I –”
“No,” Will shakes his head, “I wasn’t –”
The thing is, Mike is – Will’s refused to think about it, about Mike – kissing him, doing anything near his mouth or his face or – or anything, and it’d been a lot, then, those milliseconds where it felt like Mike had held the meaning of life suspended between the space of their lips, yet something in Will had shrieked to stop.
Maybe it’s because of the way he’s never let himself imagine his first kiss, and especially his first kiss with a boy. Maybe it’s for the thud in the next room over, a book hitting the floor, where Mike had just been freshly broken up with. Maybe it’s because of the hurt that just keeps growing, how his heart feels like it’s being squeezed into mush, rotten and sick. Maybe it’s because it still feels like he’s second best.
Will’s eyes sting, and he bites at his lip.
“I shouldn’t have assumed,” Mike’s saying, still, “that you’d – I mean, obviously, right, you don’t want to, um, you know – kiss. Me. That you don’t want to kiss me, I’m sorry I –”
“You don’t want to kiss me,” Will tells him. It comes out scratchy and ugly. It’s true.
It’s startling, how quickly Mike halts in his words, his body. He freezes, stares at Will for a moment, and it’s a slow reaction, watching him frown, blinking several times, as if to process, before he says, “What?”
“You – don’t want to kiss me,” Will repeats, a little quieter. It’s even worse, the second time around.
Mike’s hands stutter where they are. His hand is only inches away from Will’s own. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not – El,” Will forces out, ignoring how he can feel his eyes stinging horribly, and he hopes he doesn’t cry. “I’m not –”
“I know you’re not,” Mike interrupts, looking hurt. “I don’t –”
“Just because she broke up with you,” Will swallows, forging on, because if he doesn’t say it now, he never will, “doesn’t mean that I’ll – that I’m just waiting for you to – for my – turn, or something. I – I – I don’t know what I said, or – or did to make you think that I’ll be your – your rebound, or –”
Mike’s eyes widen. “Will, I –”
“– whatever, but I’m not going to do that,” he shakes his head, and all of him is a little shaky, now, clammy and cold and plain sad, and he might cry, he thinks, “I can’t do that to – to her, or to you, and I – I didn’t ever expect you to – to want me back, or – or anything, I know that I’m not – I’m not your – I’m not El or – or whoever, but –”
“Will,” Mike’s still saying, barely heard over Will’s stuttering, and it’s getting difficult to speak, with his chattering teeth, how he gets when he’s suddenly so cold in times of despair, and, now, too, he can’t help it, shivering where he is while unhearing Mike’s insistences. “Will, I swear you aren’t –”
He moves forward, then, hands raising to grasp at the air, stopping only short of Will’s arms when he lurches backwards, shaking his head and leaning away. “Please – please don’t kiss me.”
“I won’t,” Mike answers, and he stays where he is, but his hands move, anyway, soft when they carefully wrap around his elbows, “I won’t, I promise.” Will doesn’t back away, watching as Mike holds him, and keeps a fair distance between them. “Just – hear me out,” he pleads, staring into Will’s eyes. His hands are warm. “Please.”
It’s an embarrassing time to realize his cheeks are wet from tears, Will thinks. He can’t move his hands to wipe them away.
Mike sounds earnest in front of him. It’s for this that Will whispers, “Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoes, looking relieved. “Okay.”
He doesn’t move away, still, eyes searching Will’s face for something, Will isn’t sure, but he seems to find whatever it is.
“I know you aren’t El,” is the first thing he says, and Will barely resists from jerking back. “I know that. I couldn’t – I mean, you guys are similar in some ways, but,” Mike shakes his head, “you’re nothing like the rest of them, Will.”
Will doesn’t want to read into that. He doesn’t want to, and he won’t, and he denies, “I’m not any –”
“You are,” Mike insists, “you’ve – you’re not any of them. Nothing is the same without you, and I – you’ve got to know, you’ve always been my best friend. I mean, more than that, because Lucas, Dustin, Max, and even El – they’re also great, but you’re not just great, you’re something else. Like, something more than that.” He hesitates, then, looking away, but one glance at Will seems to solidify it when he says, all sincere, “I’ve never felt like this with anyone else.”
Will doesn’t know what that means, what Mike means by that, and Will isn’t sure it’s good for him to guess or try to spin something grand out of a thin thread of nothing less than the sugarcoating sentimentality of close friends. Will doesn’t know what he means, and it’ll kill him, trying to figure it out.
He ignores every instinct protecting his pride. “I – I don’t understand,” Will says, throat croaky like he hasn’t spoken in years, and it feels humiliating to admit, some blaringly obvious sign that he seems to keep missing. “Feel like – what?”
Mike bites at his lip, and he’s worried it under his teeth enough to bleed.
“Like,” he begins, voice low and quiet, as if he’s careful to keep this safe only for Will to hear, “I’m – crazy.”
His thumb swipes over Will’s skin as he says it, letting his hold loosen enough to travel to Will’s hands instead, and he holds those gently, bringing them closer. Will lets himself get pulled closer, his hands tugged to Mike’s chest where he holds them like they’re something delicate.
“I know,” he admits, “that I keep acting stupid with – with you, and you never deserve it, but this – it isn’t another one of those things.” He breathes out, and it comes out uneven, uncertain. “I’m trying really hard to – to say the right things, and I’m already messing up, but I’ve been hiding behind El for so long, and I know I’ve hurt you, but I lo– I – I –”
He cuts himself off with a sharp inhale, looking frustrated with himself. He doesn’t let go of Will’s hands.
“I like you,” Mike says, and his face is pink, maybe from embarrassment, but the words come out like he’s trying to keep his voice steady, “and – of course, I do, but it’s more than that, more than – more than anything. It’s just – you’re my best friend, and – and my favorite person, and no matter how – stupid I am, sometimes, you’re there for me anyway, and I – I know I mess up a lot, but I want to be there for you, too. Always.” He averts his eyes, but his hands betray himself when he clutches at Will’s. “If – if you want me to be.”
“Yes,” Will says unthinkingly. Then, he does think about it, the consequences of his own words, and finds that the answer is still the same. “Yes, I – I do.”
Mike falters, then, as if he hadn’t expected it. “Really?” He asks, and he sounds hopeful. “You do?”
Will, very carefully, curls his fingers around Mike’s. When he returns the embrace, the world, shockingly, does not succumb to darkness like he expected. His mouth feels too dry to talk, so he nods.
Mike bites at his lip, and it does nothing to conceal his smile. “Okay,” he mumbles, ducking his head. Will’s heart races in its cage.
They sit there for a moment, and the world seems to come seeping back to Will, the rush of blood calming in his ears, and he can hear The Cure still playing, a little muffled where the headphones press into the bed. He’s sure the rest of the cabin is plenty occupied, but it feels awfully intimate, alone in a room with Mike, as if everyone else is miles away.
Still, despite himself, he is still stuck on one thing. “I’m – your favorite person?”
Mike looks up from his lap, seemingly surprised. “Of course,” he answers, ardently, like it’s a given. “I thought you knew.”
It had never been obvious to him. He has been spending so long questioning every step he’s been taking, wondering if his place is merely to stand in the wings and wait for the curtain call. Mike sounds sure, honest, and Will wonders if one of them has gone insane. He says, “I didn’t.”
“Oh,” Mike replies. He frowns, looking troubled, and then, with a large degree of certainty, says, “Well. You are.”
It leaves Will no choice but to believe him. He meekly returns, “Okay.”
This seems to satiate Mike, when his eyes seem to smooth out, soft when he looks at Will. His lips quirk up in a small smile, shuffling a little closer, although he makes no move to lean forward. “Okay,” he repeats, sounding satisfied.
They stare at each other, hand in hand, and that terrible feeling in Will has slowly been whittling away into something better than nothing. Something nicer, he thinks, something that makes his chest feel full and doesn’t have him shying away from Mike’s gaze.
Something, he supposes, makes him a little braver, too. He contemplates himself, before leaning forward to brush a soft kiss against Mike’s cheek.
It’s only a fleeting thing, but the anxiety draws the moment out for much longer, the hitch of his own breath and the feeling of Mike’s hair curling into his face accentuating into things that would otherwise be insignificant, but it’s enough to remember for several sleepless nights.
His stomach twists from nervousness, and he hadn’t given himself time to overthink it, but it’d been nerve wracking, nonetheless. Yet, when Will leans away, it’s to find Mike looking rattled to his core, mouth just barely agape and pink in the cheeks, and blinking several times. He looks, undoubtedly, sweet.
For this, Will has the courage to confess, “You’re my favorite, too.”
This seems to break Mike out of his revere to properly stare at him, face deepening into scarlet, and his Adam’s apple bobs with a swallow. “Oh my God,” he warbles out, sounding so out of bounds, Will can’t help the laughter that bubbles out of him. “You – will you do that again?”
Will blushes. “Now?”
“Whenever,” Mike replies immediately, “now, or – or whenever you want. Anything you want.”
He is so fervent about it, Will feels warm to the core, and he can’t help but look down at the space between them, sparse, with their knees pressing against each other. When he glances back up, it’s intense, the way Mike stares at him, soft and unabashed. He presses Will’s hands against his chest, and, if Will concentrates, he’d bet he could feel the pulse of his heart.
Mike tilts a little closer, but it lacks insinuation, no motive other than to be a little closer and share the same space. He is quiet, careful, and maybe a little eager when he asks, “Do you mean it?”
Will blinks at him. “What? That you’re my favorite?” Mike nods affirmatively, Will tries not to look away when he admits, “Yes. ‘Course.”
Mike can’t hide his smile, pleased and youthful, and he doesn’t move away. “You’re mine, too,” he murmurs, the words heavy in the air.
Will tries to swallow down the way his heart jumps to his throat, flushing at the earnestness. When Mike brings up their hands to his mouth, it’s followed by almost a ghost of a kiss, the way he presses his lips against the back of Will’s hand, but it’s a certain thing, and he’s sure to keep his eyes on Will. Will can’t help the way his breath hitches.
“Always,” Mike says, honest and true.
It sounds like a promise.