want you to need me

by shrobbery

Summary:

Mike would be fine with staying just as they are.

Well, not really. It would eat him alive, there’s no doubt about it. Scoop him hollow and drown him in the possibility of something he should have never even thought about in the middle of the night with his ceiling and the flickering streetlamps outside of the window as his only witnesses. Because he’d doomed himself from the moment the thought seeped through the cracks of his forcefully built normalcy, warm, syrupy, and so, so sweet. Irresistibly so. But perhaps he could find it in himself to tolerate that kind of agony if it means keeping Will by his side. Maybe if he sees Will holding hands with some faceless boy, he could find it in himself to be happy his best friend has found someone to love him, though not more than Mike always has. Someone who wants him a normal amount, someone who hasn’t needed him since before ever even knowing the word for it. Someone who wouldn’t absolutely crush him under the weight of his emotion. Someone nice.

Someone not Mike.

But god, all he wants is for it to be him.

or

Mike Wheeler and a future ten years in the making.

Notes:

• For todonezu.

HI this is my first byler fic ever and it's probably really very ooc but yeah

DISCLAIMER: My first language isn't english!! so please bear with me

Surprisingly, falling in love is a rather quiet affair. 

 

Mike had assumed otherwise because— the thing he had with El had been loud, explosive almost. It was like falling through the sky in technicolor and so, he thought, hoped, perhaps, that sick feeling in his stomach was normal, so was that odd feeling of everything having moved just an inch to the left and being left with bruises in the wake of it. Dropping from a great height, butterflies in his stomach, the churning, it was all the same, really. It’s just how the dominoes topple, he knows. He falls in love with a girl (she just happens to have superpowers) and then they save the world and they grow up and get married and get a dog, a house, build a white picket-fence around it, and have children, two or three. Do it the way his dad did but maybe he could be a little less lame. 

 

El stares at him, fingers toying with a yarn bracelet, yellow and purple. She’s sitting across from him on his bed. His girlfriend is on his bed and instead of making out, they’re—

 

“I like, um,” he cringes internally. “I like your bracelet.”

 

For the first time in the whole hour they’ve been alone together, she cracks a little smile. “Jonathan and Will match with me,” El leans forward excitedly. “They taught me how to do the complicated braids.”

 

Mike can only smile and nod. He knows those bracelets, he’s spent an untold amount of hours sitting in his basement trying to get the knots just right because apparently his fingers aren’t as deft with the yarn as Will. It’s… sweet, not the kind of thing he would have tried teaching her because it isn’t very romantic, he isn’t very good at it, and it wasn’t conducive to saving the town either. It’s not the kind of thing a mage would be doing, braiding bracelets. But it very much is an El thing. Slowly, a warmth begins to grow in the air between them.

 

But then, he remembers Will not even frowning whenever Mike messed up, simply nudging his fingers this way and that without a word of admonishment. The memory makes him feel a little ill, and he doesn’t know why. A staticky tingle creeps its way under the spots on his skin he remembers Will having touched. As if it’ll prove anything but futile, he clenches his fists until it hurts.

 

Beneath them, under the floorboards and the insulation and the pipes, both of their respective families get ready for dinner, he can hear Nancy barking out a laugh, probably from something witty that Jonathan had said only a few seconds prior. Those two are pretty much the only two members from both families able to get through at the very least just one remotely normal conversation with one another these days. Mike and El are awkward, Mike and Will are stilted and unsure, Mike’s pretty sure Jonathan hates him. That’s that.

 

It’s horrible manners to lose himself in thought and he wants to die a little when he snaps out of it and sees El staring at him almost wistfully. He should— he should pay attention to her. But if he’s being honest here, it’s beginning to get more and more common for him to randomly drift off inside his own head whenever they’re together these days. It’s like he can see the edges of their relationship fraying and El’s the only one trying to mend the seams sometimes.

 

She’s getting tired of it, though. He can tell. And Mike feels bad about it, obviously. But every attempt he makes at trying to fix something, it’s like he’s trying to braid yarn into a bracelet again except this time, there aren’t any guiding hands making sure he does it right, no one to untangle his mistakes and give him instructions on how to fix it.

 

Well, most of the time. 

 

There’s another phantom lingering in between them. Made up of reds and greens and blues and smelling faintly of the tartish scent of paint. And it makes whatever’s left of the warmth growing around them fade like a wisp of smoke. 

 

He doesn’t know why Will would lie to him like that. He doesn’t know why Will would lie to him, point blank period. It stings more than it should, and he knows why. Will had done it so easily, singing El’s praises for him like it was nothing, like he wasn’t lying to his best friend. Somehow, more than El not actually commissioning a painting because she thinks that highly of him, it’s Will lying that smarts more. That’s insupportable. Fucking dangerous.

 

And still, and still.

 

“Mike, I wanted to talk to you alone because,” El starts and pauses. Upset, a tinge of heartbreak and something else he can’t identify makes itself known on her face. Mike wonders when he’d gotten so bad at reading her; if he was ever good at it in the first place. And then, direct as ever, in a way Mike could only dream to be, she continues. “I don’t think you love me.”

 

“Of course I…” Mike flounders. “El—”

 

Her eyebrows scrunch harder when he says her name. “Say it.”

 

Outside, the sun is setting and bathing her in a golden glow and she’s… she’s pretty. Objectively. She always has been. And by all means, it should make this easier so he tries, really does. He’s been trying for so long but clearly not hard enough because the words just get caught in his throat and won’t come out and it makes him want to die even more when El just nods and he feels like a massive jerk when her bottom lip wobbles and she doesn’t look much like a superhero anymore, just a fifteen year-old girl whose heart he’s breaking but he can’t say it. 

 

He can’t say it.

 

Jesus.

 

El rubs a fist over her eyes and his bed creaks when she stands up and walks to his bedroom door. Neither of them say a word the whole time. When she’s about to walk out, though, she levels Mike with a sad stare. He’s frozen in place, waiting for her verdict, his sentence like a man who knows he’s about to be put on death row. It’s like she can see right through him, right to the filthy, dirty, degenerate core of him and it might just be the worst thing in the world. He doesn’t want her to know. He doesn’t know, not really. He’s avoided looking at it his whole life, he’s so used to avoiding it that he doesn’t know if he’s capable of at least acknowledging it. In the middle of the night, however, when all the streetlights outside are buzzing and the people are asleep and their godforsaken town is finally quiet for a couple of hours, he can just look at it from the corner of his eye and admit it.

 

Not out loud though. Never, ever out loud

 

It’s the type of thing he’s supposed to be taking with him to the grave after he lives a picture-perfect yet ultimately unfulfilling picket fence life. It’s the type of thing that only he and the quiet nights of Hawkins will ever know about, kept an ever-aching secret.

 

She opens her mouth to speak and Mike cuts her off before she can say something too true that technically she should have no way of knowing, “You’re dumping me, aren’t you,” he smiles at her shakily. “You dump my ass?”

 

El blinks and then smiles. Sniffling wetly, she replies. “Yeah, I do.”

 

“That’s okay,” Mike nods and splays his hands out over his sheets, watching the angry red indents from his nails shift as he stretches his hands open and then closed. “I’ve been shitty recently, haven’t I?”

 

“Ignoring me all the time,” El walks over and kicks the foot of his bed repeatedly until he looks at her. “Always distracted and moody.”

 

Thoroughly chastised, Mike ducks his head and picks at his cuticles in embarrassment.

 

“And sometimes you’re mean and you are never smiling when we go on dates,” she emphasizes each point with a poke from her pointer finger to his skull. “You never talk to me about anything personal and you never say you love me even though we have been dating for years.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“And you’re always sorry but you never change,” she sighs. “So, I’m dumping you.”

 

“I know,” he mumbles.

 

“Because I don’t want to become so angry at you that we can’t be friends anymore,” her eyes remain red and teary but she’s smiling a little when he snaps his head up to look at her.

 

“What?” Mike asks, like an idiot. “You aren’t mad?”

 

“No, I’m mad, you’re a shitty boyfriend,” El punches his shoulder. “But maybe a less shitty friend.”

 

“Hey,” Mike scowls without any real bite to it. “I’m a great friend.”

 

El laughs, like really laughs, and it makes Mike a little lightheaded that he doesn’t think he’s seen her laugh like that in a while. She might do it at home around Jonathan and Will. He hopes she does. El deserves it.

 

Finally, after her laughter dies down and a heavy air of awkwardness encroaches upon Mike’s bedroom, she whispers a subdued goodbye and steps out to join her family downstairs. Depending on how obvious it is that he’d made her cry, Mike might not survive the oncoming dinner.

 

Honestly, he kind of hopes he doesn’t.

 

Still, there’s no denying the weight suddenly falling off his every limb upon El’s exit. He flops onto his back, almost bouncing off his mattress. Turning his head to stare blankly at one of the posters pinned to his wall, Mike lets out a long breath, one that he thinks he might have been holding since he first kissed El. Maybe since that night Will biked away from his house and never came back.

 

Later, he decides to sit across from Will who gives him an odd look for it. Which makes sense because he’s been sitting in front of El for months now, if not years. Jonathan raises an eyebrow and glances at Nancy who only shrugs and shoots Mike a small glare. Their parents all remain none the wiser.

 

Spoons and forks scraping unpleasantly against the ceramic plates become the backtrack to the two families’ disjointed conversations. Stilted “How are you?”s and strained “I’m good.”s

 

Will doesn’t try to initiate a conversation with him once. Not for the entire duration of the meal. He goes as far as to avoid even looking at Mike and it’s unfair because he was the one who lied. It could be guilt but there’s something else on his face, something not yet catalogued in Mike’s mental index of Will’s facial expressions. Observation upon observation about a twitch of an eyebrow or a scrunch of a nose, highlighted bright yellow and notated with the best way to fix whatever the hell is bothering Will. 

 

For the second time this night, for the second person this night, Mike wonders when he’d gotten so bad at reading his best friend’s mind when it used to be second nature. What he used to be able to decipher with a glance, he now cannot for the life of him figure out even after staring for several consecutive minutes. It’s pretty much an open-book test; he's failing on every question because he’d spent so much time trying not to look at Will, that he’s forgotten how to see him.

 

Are they even still each other’s best friends anymore? Will is still Mike’s best friend. He might not be Will’s any more though, is the problem.

 

Mike chances another glance at him, watches the slope of his nose, the sharper curve of his jaw, and how prominent his Adam's apple is now. He doesn’t know when those things started changing, when baby fat started melting off their faces, when they grew past the awkward growth spurt phase and started to become more comfortable in their bodies. There’s been a gap in Mike’s internal timeline for Will, from when he left for California and a little before too. A gap spanning Will’s latest growth spurt, whether he’s needed to learn how to shave his face or not, the last tooth he lost, if he has any left to lose. 

 

There’s a box of fancy oil paints under Mike’s bed. A full set of that brand Will has always loved yet could only afford to buy one tube every once in a while. He’d seen it at the airport right as he landed in California and bought it on a whim. In a way, the whole end of the world ordeal might have been a blessing in disguise because at least his parents were distracted enough that week that they’d forgotten to scold Mike for the quite frankly absurd amount of money he spent on the paint. He just saw the brand and then suddenly, he was putting his wallet back in his pocket, the paints tucked snug and safe in his bag.

 

It’s gotten dusty even though he slides it out every once in a while just to hold it and mull over how to approach Will to give him the present. Once upon a time, he would have just walked up to his best friend and handed him the box without a word except maybe to pester him about watching him paint or show him the finished product before anyone else, and Will would have agreed because he would be so happy about the gift and so eager to impress Mike not knowing that he’s never really had to try because he’s always been dazzling and Mike can’t fathom ever being unimpressed by any of his art. By any of him, honestly.

 

When Mike hands it over to him, what’s Will’s face gonna look like? Surprised? Delighted? Disappointed or worse, confused? Because, yeah, Mike has been shitty lately and he’d understand if Will were to be confused about a random gift but it wouldn’t hurt any less. It would be tangible proof of him being a shitty best friend and somehow, to him, that’s worse than being a shitty boyfriend. Which, y’know, is normal. It’s normal.

 

It’s normal. God, leave him alone.

 

Silence looms over the two families once dinner comes to an end before Mrs. Byers offers to clean up the table, Mike’s mom following suit not long after. Will offers to help wash the dishes because there’s a reason why he’s mom’s favorite out of all of Mike’s friends. 

 

Mike stands up so fast, his chair screeches loudly against the floor. “I can he—”

 

“It’s fine,” Will shuts him down without pause

 

Only faltering for a brief moment, Mike bulldozes over the rejection, “Oh I insist,” he says, putting on his most angelic expression that has Nancy narrowing her eyes at him in suspicion from where she’s trying to look casual while chatting with her boyfriend. “You’re the guest, y’know. It’d just be rude to let you do chores.”

 

Under her breath, Nancy mumbles. “Since when did you care about being rude?”

 

He kicks her ankle and darts away to the sink before either she can retaliate or Will can reject his help a second time. Which frankly, would just be abjectly humiliating. Mike’s dignity can only take too many hits before he shrivels up and dies looking like a long-limbed gangly raisin.

 

Will’s cough and the clinking of plates is what pulls him out of his self-effacing stupor. Immediately, the plate in his hand slips out of his grasp and falls into the water-filled sink with a splash. “Shit!”

 

“Are you—”

 

“I’m fine,” he clicks his tongue at the water splashed down his front and turns to Will. “You should probably do the washing. I’ll dry them.”

 

“Alright, then,” Will steps up beside him, close enough that they’re practically elbow to elbow, that he can feel the heat radiating off of Will’s forearms, exposed by his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Far enough that they aren’t quite touching. Too far. Much, much too far.

 

They work like a well oiled machine in silence, Will getting done with rinsing just as Mike holds his hand out for another dish to dry. It’s quiet, their elbows bump every once in a while, Will looks oddly angry about it and Mike doesn’t know if he hates the jolt of electricity that comes with the skin to skin contact or craves it like an addict experiencing withdrawals.

 

More than once, Will stops scrubbing and opens his mouth as if to say something, his head halfway turned to Mike’s direction while his eyes are still trained on the ceramic in his hands. But he never speaks, never turns his eyes on Mike. It’s driving him crazy, the anticipation. Far too often for him to act normal about it, Mike considers dropping a mug on the floor and watching the jagged shards of it scatter across the floor just to get Will to look at him. He’ll take a glare. Shit, he’ll take anything as long as it’s from Will.

 

The only reason he doesn’t do it is because Will’s pants are rolled up to his ankles and there’s an infinitesimally tiny chance that one of the shards could fly in his direction and slice his skin open.

 

And he’s aware that he’s doing an awfully good impression of a toddler acting out for attention right now, okay? He fucking knows. But he’s been an asshole and he misses his best friend like he’d miss his right arm, maybe more because he would definitely get rid of both of his arms if it means fixing things with Will. And he just wants— He wants. He just wants.

 

Wants so badly, his joints are creaking under the weight of it. 

 

This kind of neediness makes him feel like he’d crush Will under the weight of it all. There’s just too much. So much that it’s bleeding into every corner of his mind, his subconscious finding ways to make everything about Will Byers. Swingsets and Tonka Trucks and blank pages of printer paper and the woods at night and loose sweaters and flannels and sunrises and sunsets and full moons and cliffs and lakes and ambulances and stretchers and boxes of crayons and markers and missing person’s posters and the color yellow and comic books and the squeak of a bike pedal fading into rain and stupid fucking oil paints at an airport in California that cost more than four days’ worth of food.

 

He feels sick with it, as if he’s eaten too much and he’s on the verge of popping. Mike wants to throw it up and run away from it and he wants to keep it inside himself and hide it from the rest of the world except the person beside him who won’t spare him a stupid glance right now, who looked him in the eye and told him all these nice things about his importance and how much his girlfriend needs him, who lied to him and won’t show any sign that he knows that Mike knows, who, since meeting him, Mike hasn’t spent a day not thinking about. 

 

Mike Wheeler is going insane and it’s all Will Byers’ fault.

 

Now that, he could put on his gravestone.

 

When Mike finishes drying the last plate, they simply stand there, parallel to one another. They don’t look at each other and they sure as hell don’t speak. Whatever Will wants to say is caught in the half an inch of space between them and from the corner of his eye, Mike can see him rolling his jaw.

 

Before he can think better of it, Mike jerks his head in the direction of the stairs. “I have, uh…” he loses steam but shakes himself out of it. “I’ve been getting into these new comics recently. Do you wanna, I mean,” he pauses, swallows. “We should read them. Together.”

 

Will purses his lips, eyes darting towards the door but gravitating in Mike’s direction like they just can’t help themselves. “I was actually just planning on drawing, so—”

 

“You can, still! Well, it’s,” Mike scratches the back of his head and stares very, very hard at the floor. “I just wanna hang out. It’s been a while.”

 

“Jane’s here,” Will’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Wouldn’t you rather…?”

 

“We just broke up, actually,” Mike says and it feels vaguely monumental that he’s saying it to Will of all people.

 

Will blinks, something flickers to life in his eyes but it’s gone as quick as it had come. “Is that why she looked like she’d been crying when she came out of your room?”

 

Laughing nervously, Mike responds. “It wasn’t like that. El dumped me. We can hang out in my room tonight.”

 

“Jane, Mike,” Will rolls his eyes.

 

“I just said we—”

 

“Her name’s Jane,” he snaps, his gaze sharpens into a glare. “Would it kill you to stop forgetting it?”

 

This is unfamiliar territory. This Will that’s an older brother who loves his little sister, who’d fight, kill for her. Mike hasn’t quite met this version of him just yet. He wants to get to know him, turn him inside out and memorize the intricacies of what makes him different from before. Which parts burn brighter.

 

Mike holds his hands up in acquiescence and grimaces. “Right, my bad,” he drops his them, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “Jane dumped me. So…”

 

Will’s posture melts into something easier, more familiar. “You know, as her brother, it’s probably my responsibility to console her after finally gathering the courage to break up with her shitty boyfriend,” he shrugs, smiling blandly. “I hope you understand.”

 

“C’mon,” Mike’s expression sobers. “And there’s—” the fucking painting. “Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

 

For a split second, Will looks hunted and his shoulders draw up into a stiff shrug. “Okay, then.”

 

Five minutes later finds both standing in the middle of Mike’s bedroom. Will’s eyes slide across Mike’s walls, stopping at the wall where a multitude of his drawings are pinned. Mike can see him glance off to the side where the painting leans against the nightstand, rolled up. Eventually, Will’s eyes settle on him. This is the game they’ve been playing with each other for weeks. Staring, getting caught, looking away, not talking. 

 

It feels oddly normal though. Because they don’t really do that anymore. Talk.

 

“So, uh,” Mike begins. He tries to tamp down the irritation that flares up inside him at the mere sight of the rolled up painting but it’s evident that he’s failing by the way Will frowns. “Crap, this is—”

 

“Mike,” Will takes a halting step towards him, the thing he’s been itching for all evening, but Mike, like the idiot he is, snaps at him.

 

“Shut up!” The hurt that’s been dulled by their recent lack of interaction sings back to life in his blood and runs like acid being spat right out of his mouth. “Why’d you lie?”

 

Will blinks at him.

 

He wants Will to admit it, he wants it so badly. Mike doesn’t want to be the one to start the fight today yet at the same time, he can feel himself tipping into cruelty, his tongue getting sharper the longer Will stays silent. If he admits to lying then maybe they can end this before Mike says something so stupid that it sends him biking out in the dark again. 

 

Between them, the sound of rain hitting metal like a shower of bullets lingers like shitty cologne. Beneath their skin are the splintered remains of Castle Byers, stinging, stabbing.

 

“Lie about what?” 

 

Mike knows Will. Maybe not as well as he used to. Still, he knows him. And Will doesn’t lie to him or at least he never did which makes it that much easier to identify how he digs the nail of his thumb against the cuticle of his middle finger so harshly, he smudges a droplet of blood across his skin, how the corners of his lips tilt downward, how his left hand fiddles with the purple and yellow yarn bracelet on his right. This intricate, over a decade in the making index Mike has of Will Byers and his ticks, just makes it so painfully easy to tell that he’s being lied to.

 

The thing is, it might have worked on anyone but Mike. But he’s the one who’s been watching, the one who’s been remembering, the one whose attention diverts immediately to Will any time he walks into a room, no matter if he’s in Mike’s field of vision or not because he knows Will by the fall of his feet and the rhythm of his breathing. Could pick him out in a room blindfolded. Knows him like he knows no other. 

 

“The painting, Will!” he snaps, noting with satisfaction how Will’s entire frame jerks at the mention, face going splotchy with redness in embarrassment. “When I thanked El for it—

 

“Jane,” Will cuts him off, even as his face fills with barely-concealed panic.

 

“When I thanked Jane for it— guess what she told me?” Mike pokes him in the chest, his instinct to go for right where it hurts rearing its head. “C’mon, Will. Fucking guess!”

 

“Don’t—“

 

“She didn’t know what the hell I was talking about,” Mike spits out. “I was standing there thinking about all those things you said and how much—” the words get caught in his throat. “It was so—“

 

Embarrassing. It was the first piece of kindling that had caught fire, everything else following soon after. Standing there, the sun streaming into Jane’s windows as she looked at him in confusion after he’d been on the verge of spilling his guts out after that first thank you. Having believed Will, having believed that he was needed. That anyone would need him. He doesn’t know why Will would bait him like that, how hadn’t he broken the second Mike asked him if he meant what he’d said? Why hadn’t he done any of his tells when he confirmed he did?

 

“What was that for?” Mike asks, his composure goes from fraying to completely unravelled. He laughs, a little hysterical. “Was it just— did you think it'd be funny if I made a fool of myself? You said all those nice things and you didn’t even mean them—”

 

And maybe that’s the crux of it all. Ever since they met, Will’s every compliment had been genuine, paired with bright eyes and an all the brighter smile. And Mike had thought— Mike had thought he really, truly meant those things he said. That he really believed Mike was needed, that losing him would hurt. That he’s the goddamn heart.

 

“I wasn’t lying about that,” Will says with a slight tremor running through his otherwise firm voice. “I wasn’t. I swear.”

 

“Jesus Christ, can’t you just admit it?”

 

“It’s not that fucking simple, Mike!”

 

“You lied to me.”

 

“This isn’t just about you!” Will’s face goes ashen and Mike hasn’t seen him this scared since— “I can’t— I’m sorry for lying to you, alright? I’m sorry. But I can’t tell you why.”

 

Mike’s shoulders drop, all the fight in him suddenly goes up in smoke when he sees Will’s bottom lip tremble. “That’s not fair.”

 

Something blazingly furious flits by in Will’s expression but it’s already smoothed out by the time Mike notices. “Yeah, well…” he shrugs.

 

He and Will simply stand there, staring at each other. Will looks like he’s either preparing for a fight or preparing to bolt at a moment’s notice, his back hunched and his entire posture tense as a bowstring.

 

“Is…” Mike begins, trailing off. “Can you tell me? If it’s a secret, I won’t tell anyone. You know I won’t.”

 

Will breaks eye-contact, staring at the floor as he works his jaw. With his head ducked like that, Mike can’t see his face and he almost doesn’t want to. Not once has he ever had either a pleasant or a sane reaction to Will crying.

 

Once, back when they were kids, some asshole pushed Will into the sand pit. It was bad, there was blood all over his knees and as a result, all over Mike’s hands. And then, Mike looked up from where he was trying in futility to pick sand out of the snatches of torn skin and saw the tears cascading down Will’s cheeks. He’d always been a silent crier. Lonnie particularly hated when he was loud, was what he told Mike when they were the only two left in the basement one night.

 

Mike doesn’t quite remember the guy’s name. Something like Jake? Jack? 

 

But Mike does remember how he bled.

 

Now isn’t very different. Will steps away from him when he approaches, shaking his head. “I’m fine, it’s fine.”

 

“Will.”

 

“Drop it, okay?” he says, once his back hits the wall. “I’m fine, so drop it.”

 

“I can’t,” Mike keeps striding over to him now that he can’t back away anymore. He stops when they’re barely a foot apart, the toes of their shoes touching. “You’re crying, I can’t just drop it.”

 

“Mike, please.”

 

“I’ll fix it,” Mike’s hands twitch at his sides, itching for something to do, anything to get rid of the anguish staining Will's face. “Whatever it is, I’ll fix it, okay?” Finally, he just decides to grab either side of Will’s face so that he can look him in the eye when he says. “Let me fix it. I don’t care, I’ll do anything,” Will’s hands come up to his wrists to try and pry his hands away but Mike doesn’t budge. “Do you understand that? Anything.”

 

He waits until he feels Will nod before pulling him into a hug, not giving a solitary shit that his shoulder’s getting wet and that it’s kind of uncomfortable. He wouldn’t care if it started raining asteroids in Hawkins, not if Will wants to keep hugging. Not knowing what else to do, the hand that isn’t slung across Will’s back begins to card through unfairly soft brown strands of hair, scratching every once in a while.

 

When Will inevitably pulls away, the lack of contact almost immediately leaves him feeling bereft. Which is kind of insane considering they’re still technically hugging, it’s just his shoulder that Will has moved away from so he can mumble. “You can’t fix it.”

 

“I can try,” Mike says resolutely. “If it’s you, I can try. I’ll always try.”

 

Mike feels rather than hears Will’s scoff, breath striking hot against the column of Mike’s neck. “Didn’t you say you had comics you wanted to show me?”

 

Mike tries not to let his disappointment shadow his movements as Will pulls away from him, still avoiding his gaze. He hates it. He hates it. If he and Will are the only people in the stupid room, they should at least be able to look at each other!

 

Much like most of his other weird ticks when it comes to his friendship with Will, this thing's been bugging him since they were little. Back then, when Will wasn't looking at him, he would deliberately walk into Will's line of sight so that he'd have no choice. While he grew out of that method, the urge itself was never something he could truly kill. 

 

Mike wouldn't call himself a greedy person, per se. Though a lot of witnesses could and would argue that his constant need to monopolize Will's attention is, in fact, an expression of greed. Throughout the years, Mike had learned to get more subtle with his methods. From walking right into Will's field of vision to tapping him on the shoulder. From throwing seemingly inexplicable tantrums that stressed the hell out of both of their moms to silently sulking with his arms crossed until Will finally rolls his eyes and relents.

 

Nancy likes to get uppity because she thinks she’s so much better than him but he’s seen her cross her arms and sulk that one time Jonathan came over to their house while their mom and dad took Holly to the park. He’d been expecting to accidentally walk into the horror show of them making out at some point and evidently, his sister had too. Hence the sulking and the eye-rolling at the lack of it. Mike would annoy her about it if she hadn’t been in charge of babysitting him and Will one too many times for him to gain any leverage.

 

Vividly, he remembers being five years old with this fresh new friendship that he knew would be the best thing ever. Mike remembers having been so completely annoyed one time, because Will, his new friend— his new best friend wasn't paying attention to him despite Mike calling his name like seven times in favor of watching some other, cooler, older kid try and swing in a complete circle at the park. Which by the way, he knew was a completely fruitless endeavor and thus that kid was an idiot for thinking he had a chance in the first place. At some point, Mike had gotten so irritated that he'd grabbed Will by the front of his shirt, and made sure they were looking at each other as he, acting very much like the five year old he was, whined, voice nasally. “I'm talking to you.”

 

Anyone who possessed a modicum less patience than the sweet angel Will had been at five would have, rightfully so, been annoyed. But instead, he had only apologized and listened to all the nonsense Mike wanted to talk about attentively for that entire afternoon.

 

So, yeah, he's always kinda been a douchebag about and, occasionally, admittedly more often than he likes, to Will. 

 

All of this to say, the negative impact of Will avoiding looking him in the eye is not at all unprecedented. Not even a bit. Precedented, actually. Very, very, very much so. Just ask Lucas and Dustin how he was like when they first started tagging along with the two. It's a miracle they decided to stick around this long.

 

“Will,” Mike says, incredulous when he sees the way Will sits precariously on the edge of his bed when there's like, a whole mattress’ worth of real estate that Mike would gladly let him take up. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

Will looks around as if Mike’s the one being weird. “Sitting…?”

 

“On what, air? Sit like a normal person.”

 

“I am!”

 

“No, dude. You're like,” Mike flaps his hands weirdly in some gesture that he doesn’t even know the meaning of but Will seems to comprehend without missing a beat. “Way on the edge.”

 

“It's your bed.”

 

“No shit.

 

“You're making a big deal out of nothing.”

 

“No I'm not!” Mike laughs, he waves his hand at the way Will's thighs are hanging completely off the mattress. “How are we supposed to read like that?”

 

Will leans back defensively but he's finally looking at Mike and he's also smiling so Mike honest to god really couldn't care less about winning the argument anymore. “I was planning on getting comfortable later on but then you started attacking me—”

 

“Attacking you.”

 

“Attacking me,” Will nods resolutely as he scoots backwards on the bed, toeing his shoes off until they hit the carpeted floor with a dull thump. He pats the bed as if beckoning a dog, and just as obedient as one, Mike complies.

 

He realizes right as he’s leaning over Will to reach for his nightstand that he probably should have grabbed the comics before getting on the bed because now, they’re too close and the air between them as Will stares up at him is so thick with tension that it’s almost buzzing, quiet as a lightbulb. It shouldn’t be different from when they were hugging earlier but it is. Because earlier, Mike had been so focused on getting Will to stop crying that he hadn't even noticed that Will’s using a different shampoo than the last time they were this close to each other. Now though, there’s no missing it.

 

Will’s always had a distinct smell. Not a bad one, no, not at all. It’s just that… whatever shampoo or body wash he uses inevitably mixes with the scent of the art supply he’s currently obsessed with. Sometimes it’s mint blending with acrylic paint, sometimes it’s cinnamon mixed with oil pastels. 

 

Right now, it’s eucalyptus and oil paint. Mike has the odd urge to try and capture the complexities of the scent and preserve it in a candle that he can light whenever he so pleases. He’s aware that isn’t usually a thought people think about their best friends, having known each other from childhood or not. His thoughts drift along that path anyways.

 

Without his notice, Mike has apparently paused in the middle of his quest to get his comic books to tilt his head down just a little and keep inhaling the air around Will who flicks his shoulder. “Mike?”

 

Mike doesn’t notice just how close he’s gotten until now, with the ends of his hair brushing against Will’s cheekbones. Evidently, it tickles, if the way Will’s cheek moves away and he leans his head back further into Mike’s pillow to escape the contact are anything to go by. From this close, he can see every speck of green and brown in Will’s eyes, he can almost count the faint freckles dusting the bridge of his nose, how the shadow of his eyelashes spider across his cheeks, fluttering once every so often.

 

He can see the way the column of Will’s throat moves up and down when he swallows, how the air around it shifts with the motion. There’s a precipice of some sorts crumbling beneath his feet. Harsh winds nip at his skin as he stands at the edge of it; he could jump, deal with whatever that entails. He could run and keep Will right where they are. Stagnant, yes, but permanent.

 

That unreadable expression passes across Will’s face again and Mike can feel the desperation flood every inch of his body. He doesn’t know Will as well as he’d like anymore, as well as he used to. When did I stop knowing you? He wants to ask, When did you stop letting me know you?

 

“Mike,” he repeats, pushing his palm against Mike’s chest. “Have you gotten it?”

 

Closing his hands around a rolled up wad of paper, Mike breathes, “Yeah,” and then, he puts his weight off his hands and falls to the bed on his back, springs creaking unpleasantly as the mattress bounces a little from his movement. The ground under his feet is solid as he runs away from that edge.

 

There’s just no risking Will. No way.

 

That same boy who’s leaning up on his elbows to stare at him. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Mike smiles at him, opening the comic book right where he’d stopped reading the night before. Will’s leaning over his shoulder and Mike tries not to shiver with the potential of contact, warm breaths puff against his jaw when Will asks questions about the plot and his fingers twitch against the pages every. single. time.

 

At some point during their quiet reading, the streetlights outside flick on one by one though it’s been dark for hours by now. Will watches them and Mike watches him watch them.

 

“Hey.”

 

Will turns to him, quirking an eyebrow. “Hey yourself.”

 

Mike inhales silently, almost bracing for impact, “Earlier…” he fiddles with a loose thread on his comforter and tries not to sound as ravenous for the answer as he really is. “What’s it?”

 

The little smile on Will’s face falters until it’s completely faded off his face. He looks away. “Hm?”

 

“The problem you don’t think I can fix,” Mike lets himself fall back into old habits and crawls until he’s right in front of Will. He has half a mind to back him against some surface so he really doesn’t have a choice but to look at Mike. “What is it?”

 

Even while facing him, Will isn’t looking directly at Mike, rather, somewhere past his shoulder, maybe at one of the incessantly buzzing streetlights outside his window. “What would it take for you to stop asking?”

 

“You telling me what it is.”

 

Will snorts dryly, tipping backwards until he’s laying his head on Mike’s pillow again. From where he’s laying, he stares at Mike for a solid ten seconds before settling his gaze on the ceiling, “I don’t…” he inhales shakily. “I’m—“ he swallows. “The painting is— I’m—” he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and makes a noise of frustration as the words refuse to come loose from his chest.

 

“This isn’t about the painting anymore,” Mike scoots over and lays parallel to him, their pinkies barely brushing against each other so that he won’t be towering over Will when he admits…

 

He doesn’t know. Well, he knows but he also— he’s heard it from other people’s mouths for years, spat out like venom. There’s no way in hell he wouldn’t have noticed which insults Will flinches away from most violently. Not when he’s the one that Will always trusted to never bring it up afterwards. Not when Mike has turned the very same insult on him and watched him flinch the same way, his face shocked like he’d never expected Mike to turn that particular knife on him before his expression melted into that abhorrent look of desolate hurt. Stupid argument, stupid night, stupid Mike.

 

So, he’ll lay beside him, he won’t loom over him, won't frighten him like almost everyone including himself has.

 

“I like someone,” Will finally spits out.

 

“What?” Mike whips his head to the side, eyes wide but Will only stares resolutely at the ceiling. It catches him completely off-guard how Will’s confession makes his insides feel like they’re being grabbed and tugged and twisted. Phantom sensations of intestinal torsion make him want to turn over to the edge of the bed and vomit. Just the idea of Will wanting someone in that way feels almost like a personal betrayal for some indiscernible reason. “You do?”

 

“Yeah,” he stares straight at Mike’s whirring ceiling fan. “For a while.”

 

“Who—“ Mike snaps his jaw shut so fast, he’s pretty sure he’s cracked a molar. It’s unbearable, the notion of Will simply thinking about kissing anyone. Burrowing under his skin like an itch he won’t be able to get rid of even if he scratches through his skin, scratches until he bleeds, scratches muscle, scratches down to the bone. It’s a crawling sort of discomfort that sprawls across his entire body, one that he knows he’ll only be rid of if he fucking dies and he’s not actually entirely sure it won’t follow him into the afterlife like some eternal damnation for being a complete and total coward.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Will dismisses, mouth trembling. “S’not like he’d ever—“ he chokes and the silence that follows is deafening. His breathing turns more and more ragged by the second as he sits up, his face ashen and his hands trembling right where he’s holding them to his mouth. Tears begin to leak out of the corners of his eyes as he shifts from staring at Mike to completely avoiding looking at him. The fear leaking out of him is unbearable and suffocating but Mike isn’t really paying attention. Floating, yeah, he’s floating, kind of? Not in a good way. It’s like when you’re on a roller-coaster and it’s that split second on the edge where the engineers tease you, pausing right before its stomach-dropping descent and you feel like the king of the world, like you’re floating over everything.

 

He?

 

The mechanism holding the car up at the peak of the roller-coaster releases and he goes careening down to the ground with no signs of stopping.

 

He.

 

Oh— Mike flinches so violently against the realization that he actually jostles Will a little from where he’s sitting on his bed. Somehow, Will’s admittance only makes the itch worse. Mike wants to know, he wants to know so, so badly who it is but if he finds out, he might just whither away and die. The itch might swallow him whole until there's nothing left of him but sheer wanting of something he has yet to identify. It’s only when Will moves to stand up, wiping his eyes desperately as his other hand fumbles with the shoes he'd left at the foot of the bed earlier that he realizes how his reaction has been deeply misread. “Hey, wait—“

 

“Fuck off—“

 

“No, no,” Mike grabs ahold of Will's upper arm before he can manage to succeed in putting his shoes back on and pulls. “It’s okay, I was just— Will, hey,” he braces a hand on the back of Will’s neck until he goes still. “It’s fine. It's already dark out, don’t go. Please,” about a hairsbreadth from getting on his knees and begging, he settles for simply resting his thumb over Will’s jumping pulse. “I don’t care, okay? I really don’t care, you’re still you,” he drags his hand up until he’s brushing his thumb ever so gently over Will’s cheekbone. “You’ll always be you.”

 

For the second time this evening, Will wraps his hands around Mike’s waist and cries against his shoulder. Except this time, he cries like it’s all coming out of him involuntarily, audible and sickening and as always, all Mike wants to do is make it stop. He rubs circles into Will’s back, his shoulders, his arms, his wrist, the back of his neck, his cheeks, anywhere, everywhere.

 

Soon enough, because Will has always been too strong, too resilient for his own good, he speaks, voice hoarse. “I’m still on your bed.”

 

Mike can pick out the tremulous fear woven into his words. “And you’re exhausted,” he lets gravity pull him down with Will still in his arms. He thinks, maybe he might die. Surely, Will can hear the heart pounding under his ear, surely, he can hear what it beats for.

 

Surely, he can hear it chanting his name over and over and over.

 

Mike doesn’t quite know what he’s feeling. He has an idea or two and the simple notion of being— it feels like burning alive. Like it’s thick, dirty motor oil flowing through his veins instead of blood. He feels filthy, a phantom sensation of dirt beneath his fingernails. He’s dirtiest where the feelings are strongest. It’s agony and maybe it would hurt less if he didn’t have Will in his arms, but that would just kill him, he thinks. If Will were to be ripped out from his hold right at this moment, he might just collapse, dead on the spot, an empty man. He’d be a yawning chasm, a ghost chasing smoke lingering in the corners of his vision, searching endlessly for the scent of eucalyptus and paint.

 

For this, he’s fine with burning alive. Will hates being cold, after all.

 

“So?”

 

“It’s a perfect combination,” Mike mutters into his ear more than he whispers, so close that there’s no possibility of not hearing one another.

 

“I don’t think your dad—“

 

“My parents are out,” Mike lets the back of his head fall against his headboard with a sharp thunk. “Didn’t you hear the front door closing?”

 

“I was… distracted,” Will shifts on top of him and tilts his head, the pale yellow light of the lamp light catching the way his cheeks blaze red. Mike, in all his mercy, elects not to bring attention to Will’s gaze flicking down to his mouth for a split second. Probably imagined it. “Is that why Jonathan went up to Nancy’s room?”

 

“Yuck,” but after a beat, Mike relents. "Probably, yeah.”

 

Will drops his head onto Mike’s collarbone once again, his puffy, red-rimmed eyes slowly falling shut.

 

Like an idiot who just can’t help himself, Mike breaks the silence. “So, uh,” he coughs. “Who’s that guy you—“ god, he can’t bring himself to say it, without scowling. “You were talking about?” he pokes Will in the cheek until he finally opens his eyes with a glare. “Do I know him?”

 

Exhaling steadily, Will mutters, eyes flitting away to one of the posters on the wall. “…yeah.”

 

Almost immediately, Mike’s mind begins to go haywire, whirring a mile a minute, rapidly running through all the possibilities, pointing out characteristics that Will would probably find attractive. Friendly? Kind? Romantic? Funny? Tall? Clever? Witty?

 

That’s almost offensive. Mike’s not even half of those things. Matter of fact, what reason does he have to care if he is? He's Will's person. The best friend, the one he's known since before he began to fill out his clothes so well, back when his voice was still nasally and high before it deepened and smoothed out. There's just no topping that.

 

Not until he finds someone he can make out with. A seething voice in his head tells him.

 

No one asked, loser. He snipes back.

 

Just the idea of someone holding Will like he’s doing right now, like he’s been doing for years, but having the permission to drag his face up for a kiss is utterly intolerable and makes him want to jump right out of the window. What the hell? No one should be doing that. 

 

He probably wants someone nice. Patient, interested in what he’s interested in, someone who’s never said anything to him so cutting during a pointless argument that it had driven him to go biking away in the middle of the night again, in the rain. Someone… not Mike.

 

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Lucas?”

 

“Luca—“ Will blinks, and then leans up on his elbows to look down at Mike. “Lucas?”

 

“Or Steve,” Mike frowns. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? You like his hair?”

 

“Mike.”

 

“You know, it’s probably a wig or something.”

 

“We’ve seen it wet,” Will points out.

 

“You have?”

 

“We have,” Will punches his shoulder. “Remember?”

 

Oh yeah. Doesn’t matter though. “Did you think it looked cool?” Mike asks, brows furrowed.

 

“I mean, yeah,” Will says, visibly holding back laughter. “He always looks pretty cool, no?”

 

Yeah, “No,” Mike says stubbornly. “He’s like, average.”

 

“Steve Harrington,” Will lowers himself from his elbows and digs his chin into Mike’s sternum painfully. “Average.”

 

Mouth suddenly dry as a desert, Mike looks down at where Will is settled on top of his chest, oh so comfortably using him like a pillow. It’s unbearable. “Yeah.”

 

“Sure, Mike,” he yawns and says as his breathing begins to even out. “Whatever you say.”

 

They’d brushed their teeth some time after dinner but Mike would really rather they change into their pajamas. Jeans are horrible to sleep in. His aversion to inconveniencing Will does win out in the end though, so trying very hard not to jostle the frankly kind of heavy teenage boy on top of him, Mike stretches his arm out and clicks his bedside lamp off.

 

Unable to help himself, not when they’re this close to each other, not when the only thing he can see or smell or feel is Will, Mike brushes his fringe away and tips his head forward until he can graze his lips across the smooth skin of Will’s forehead, light enough that he doesn’t even know if their skin made any contact, and he whispers, growing drowsy with the sensation of their breathing in sync. “G’night.”

 

And then he proceeds to have the best sleep of his goddamn life.

 

☾ ☀︎

 

Early morning sunlight filters through the gaps in between Mike’s curtains and paints stripes of gold across Will’s face, his eyelashes fluttering every two seconds, mouth quivering every three. Numbness spreads across his arm but he can’t— won’t— bring himself to shake Will awake. He knows about the nightmares, has heard and seen and suffered through trying to stop Will from clawing something invisible and impossible to forget out of his throat.

 

Mike always expected to meet a nice girl his dad would like, someone who wouldn’t make fun of him except for when he would find it funny, someone creative, hazel eyes, brown hair, shorter than him but not by much, someone nice enough to make up for him being an asshole, he’d get a pet if she wants one, a nice house, a few kids but only in even numbers or else one of them might get lonely, a picket fence. She would smell nice, he used to imagine, like mint and oil pastels, maybe cinnamon, maybe acrylic paint.

 

Instead, it goes like this: 

 

He meets a boy one day, when he’s far too young to know what falling in love would feel like, and they become the best of friends. They grow up a little but it never feels like enough, spend late nights down in his basement and they add a couple of people to the group but it’s always him and that boy at the center of it all.

 

The boy goes missing and for some reason, it’s like he’s taken something vital out of Mike’s chest with him and left him with nothing but an empty cavern void of a single sound, no steady rhythm now that it’s got nothing to beat for. 

 

Even though they get him back, even though they save him from the monster seeing through his eyes and using his body, Mike can’t go back to how they used to be. Every attempt met with a feeling of being completely off-kilter, that cavern in his chest only being half-filled in the wake of the boy’s return despite everything he’s tried to shove in there to give the illusion of fullness.

 

He gets himself a girlfriend and, inexplicably, the cavern not only remains half-full, but grows as empty as that night when he watched a bicycle fade away into the distance and never come back. The yawning emptiness of it gnaws at him like a rabid hyena, rendering him constantly irritated and mean.

 

He makes the boy cry more than he ever means to.

 

Brave as he’d like himself to believe, the boy scares him so much, he’s nauseous with it. The boy lives in his daydreams, his nightmares, and his reality, utterly inescapable and he finds himself disinclined to attempt escaping it.

 

The boy is a living phantom that dogs his every step, every thought, every breath. The rhythm of the boy’s breathing becomes the metronome that the beat of his heart follows and it’s killing him. Over and over, he dies a million little deaths and each time he hopes it kills his unquenchable wanting, his boundless needing.

 

It never does. Instead, he’s imbued with even more wanting, even more needing. He lays awake in the middle of the night, just him and his ceiling that never stares back sharing this secret, this age old truth that’s been eating him alive over and over day by day ever since the boy handed Mike that very first drawing.

 

Obviously, the boy is different from everyone else.

 

Fireworks come from each touch of skin to skin instead of from that very first meeting and he is certain that fireworks wouldn’t be an adequate description of if he and the boy ever kiss. He needs another word, something bigger, brighter, something that blazes hotter than anything on Earth.

 

Mike is absolutely certain that putting his lips to the other boy’s would be much akin to a dying star, bright enough to be seen from lightyears away.

 

He must have lived a life not centered around the boy at some point, he just can’t seem to recall it. The boy is all he knows, the boy is all he wants.

 

The boy is in his bed and it’s just dawned on him now what that itch under his skin has always been, that cavern in his chest slowly filling back up with every second he spends staring at him.

 

It was during these moments, that he’d fallen, Mike supposes. The silence of the dawn when the sun slowly comes out of hiding and shines upon those not yet awoken by its glow. In the quiet of a house still asleep the morning after a sleepover, Mike had always pulled the blanket up to cover the boy.

 

There’s the silences in between songs when Mike would always let him take the next pick, the silence of watching him be so engrossed in making art, the deafening silence of his absence.

 

Falling in love with Will Byers, is, after all, a rather quiet affair.

 

When he sits up and looms over Will’s face, his shadow blocks the sunlight from falling onto his face. He mourns the sight of it but not enough to move away. Never enough to move away.

 

He doesn’t keep track of how long he puts his weight on his one hand like that but his shoulder begins to ache in protest of his position soon enough. Still, he watches, his hand just barely brushing up against Will’s ear, their faces inches away. There’s so little space between them that Mike can see Will’s pulse quivering underneath the skin of his neck.

 

Maybe it’s the intensity of his staring, maybe it’s because it’s gotten too warm for them to be this close, but Will rouses awake and only looks surprised to see Mike inches away from him for a fraction of a second before his lips turn up into a private little smile. Mike likes to think he’s the only one who’s ever gotten to see it, “Morning,” he says, voice hoarse and gravelly.

 

“Morning,” Mike repeats, voice barely above a whisper. Anything louder might break this strange state of stasis they’re in, this pocket of uncomplicated. He wishes they could stay here forever, an eternal sunrise spent in the languidness of just having woken up, the warmth of having done it side by side.

 

A blade swings above them, hanging on by a singular hair. The sword of Damocles perilously dangles over their relationship, on the verge of something irreversible. Threatening to cut right through what they’ve always been and strip them right down to what they will be from the moment all the cards are laid out on the table.

 

Mike would be fine with staying just as they are. 

 

Well, not really. It would eat him alive, there’s no doubt about it. Scoop him hollow and drown him in the possibility of something he should have never even thought about in the middle of the night with his ceiling and the flickering streetlamps outside of the window as his only witnesses. Because he’d doomed himself from the moment the thought seeped through the cracks of his forcefully built normalcy, warm, syrupy, and so, so sweet. Irresistibly so. But perhaps he could find it in himself to tolerate that kind of agony if it means keeping Will by his side. Maybe if he sees Will holding hands with some faceless boy, he could find it in himself to be happy his best friend has found someone to love him, though not more than Mike always has. Someone who wants him a normal amount, someone who hasn’t needed him since before ever even knowing the word for it. Someone who wouldn’t absolutely crush him under the weight of his emotion. Someone nice.

 

Someone not Mike.

 

But god, all he wants is for it to be him. 

 

He’d spend the rest of his life loving Will, given the chance. Whether or not Will knows how deeply it runs for him, how long it's been in the making, how heart-rendingly awful it’s been the whole time, he’ll do it. There’s not a single version of himself who wouldn’t. This is his end point, this is where he was always meant to be, always has been.

 

Mike doesn’t move from his position until Will presses a hand over his chest and pushes him into sitting normally. He digs his thumb into the meat of his shoulder until he’s massaged a majority of the ache away from the muscle as he watches Will get ready to eat breakfast.

 

“You should change.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“You’re still wearing your clothes from last night,” Mike tilts his head. “Jonathan might get worried.”

 

“You care if Jonathan gets worried?” Will looks at him skeptically.

 

He shrugs, “You do.”

 

Will eyes his closet and relents with a sigh. “Fine. Still got some of my clothes in there?”

 

“Yeah, top left.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

Heat rises to his cheeks when Will begins to peel his shirt off after managing to fish one out of the depths of Mike’s closet. His hands twist into his comforter as he quickly averts his eyes, staring so intensely at one of the posters pinned to his wall, he’s surprised he hasn’t burned holes into it yet. They’ve changed in front of each other a multitude of times before but it feels different now. 

 

And besides, he’s always had a hard time looking at the scars littering Will’s torso. Sometimes, when he moves too roughly, too quickly, he winces and makes an aborted gesture to rest his hand over one of the fire poker scars. After doing a bit of reading at the library, Mike’s pretty sure Will’s scars are adhering due to lack of proper care. There isn’t a lot of information about treating it available for the public but Mike knows he’ll need scar cream, a lot of massaging. Mike studied up on what would hurt the least and work most effectively. He’s been looking for an opportunity to bring it up although it seems like doing it now would feel a little… untimely.

 

Eventually, the rustle of clothes being shoved back into the closet stops and Will huffs out a little laugh which Mike takes as his cue to look back. The shirt Will is wearing used to be Jonathan’s and it also used to drown his frame. Now, it fits him perfectly, if not still a little loose around the neckline. The pajama pants only fall to a little above Will’s ankles. 

 

It really has been a while since their last sleepover.

 

Will wrinkles his nose. “I smell like mothballs.”

 

“I bet,” Mike pushes himself off the bed and stomps around for his shoes. “Mom puts in like, three per cabinet.”

 

Will shakes his head fondly before pausing on his way to the door. “You’re not gonna change?”

 

Mike looks down at his wrinkled shirt, weighs the pros and cons. Nancy might look at him weird but she’s always looking at him weird, he’s also not too into the idea of being apart from Will long enough to take his current clothes on and put new ones on, sue him. “Nah.”

 

By the time they enter the kitchen to make breakfast for themselves, Nancy and Jonathan are already there, chatting lightly over a pan of cooking pancakes. He and Will always wanted to be roommates in college as soon as they manage to get the hell out of Hawkins. He wonders if they’ll be able to exist around each other so easily. Everything’s always been easy with Will, sometimes so easy that it circles back into difficulty, he doubts being around each other more than they usually are would change it all that much.

 

A thought slips into his mind unbidden and his stomach churns unpleasantly with it. Nancy and Jon are a couple.

 

He shakes his head and tries to get his head to go quiet again, deciding to help with the pancakes.

 

Oddly, he, Will, Nancy, and Jonathan are still the only ones at the table by the time they’re all ready to eat. “Mom and dad didn’t come back last night?”

 

Nancy shrugs and answers, still chewing on her pancakes. “Mom and dad came back late and left early,” she points her fork at the hook where their car keys should be hanging. “They took Holly with them.”

 

“Yeah, obviously,” Mike frowns down at his pancakes until Will reaches over and starts drizzling syrup on them for him. “Oh thanks,” he looks back at Nancy. “I mean, where’d they go?”

 

“Picking up a new car at the dealership,” Nancy scratches her cheek. “Apparently this one’s making concerning noises.”

 

They stare at each other for a beat before somewhat awkwardly going back to eating their pancakes. Beside them, Jonathan and Will share an amused look.

 

“Where’d you sleep last night?” Mike nearly jumps out of his seat trying to reach over to firmly pat Will on the back when he starts choking on his food. Jonathan looks on in mild interest, an eyebrow raised.

 

“Where did you sleep last night, Jonathan?” Will snarks back. Suddenly, Nancy seems awfully interested in her pancakes.

 

The brothers remain locked in a stare-down until they reach a silent agreement to simply not discuss it any further. For the rest of breakfast, the four of them eat their pancakes with definitely too much butter and syrup in companionable silence broken up by quiet snatches of conversation. It’s comfortable. Mike likes it.

 

But he’d like Will back in his room more, thanks.

 

“So, uh…” Mike begins, swallowing a gulp of milk as he gestures with the glass still in his hand. “I think I’m gonna go brush my teeth.”

 

He elbows Will who looks at him in confusion before realization dawns on him. He rolls his eyes, endeared. “Could you show me where you keep the mouthwash? I couldn’t find it last night.”

 

“Of course,” He traps the fabric of the sleeve of Will’s shirt and tugs at him lightly until he stands up. “Let’s go.”

 

Nancy looks like she’s holding back laughter while Jonathan watches him carefully as they trudge their way to the bathroom. Just his steady gaze alone feels like a threat.

 

“You sounded like a robot.”

 

“I did not.”

 

“Of course,” Will straightens his back rigidly, imitating him in an overly apathetic and toneless voice that is by no means whatsoever accurate. “Let’s go.”

 

“Fuck off, man.”

 

He actually does show Will where they keep the mouthwash but it’s mostly because Will might not kiss him without both of their mouths being squeaky clean and Mike, quite frankly, isn’t too keen on testing that hypothesis out. 

 

“So, uh,” Will shifts on his feet once they’re back in the bedroom and Mike is pretty gleeful to note that he doesn’t look nearly as uncomfortable standing here as he did last night. In fact, he looks as comfortable as he always used to be. As he always should be. “Comics?”

 

“Actually, I—“ Mike coughs, his ears burning. As soon as he tries to say it, the words get stuck in the back of his throat. “Yeah, yeah comics.”

 

“You good?” Will tilts his head and the sunlight catches his eyes just right and Mike is so in love with him, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

 

It’s not like he’s always been comfortable in his own skin but it’s always felt— fine. Like it’s his and he’ll only need to wiggle and grow to get truly comfortable; like finding a good position to fall asleep in.

 

Will makes him feel like he’s going to pop at the seams, takes the breath from his lungs, his coordination, monopolizes his every waking moment. He’ll never get over this, he realizes with a sudden pang of nausea. It could be years in the future, and he’d still be haunted by this beautiful phantom in his dreams, lingering in his peripheral vision and the worst part is— he doesn’t think he’d mind all that much. As long as it’s Will, as long as he’s Mike’s in some way, in some form. Be it here, tangible in front of him with his eyes melting into honey from the sunlight or in some far off future where he’s nothing but a memory, a what-if that’ll walk hand in hand with him for the rest of forever, but he’d still be Mike’s memory, Mike’s ghost. Mike’s.

 

“Hey,” Will shakes him slightly, frowning. “Mike?”

 

Mike snaps out of his stupor, out of breath and suddenly filled with a desperate kind of urgency. “Ye— yeah?”

 

“You okay?” Will touches a palm against his forehead and the contact burns like an inferno. “You look a little—“

 

“Let’s just read, yeah?” Mike laughs and it sounds phony even to his own ears. “Get on the bed.”

 

He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining the flush that rises to Will’s cheeks at his words but then again, it’s not like he’s doing much better himself. With how lightheaded and dizzy he’s feeling, it wouldn’t be a shock to him if he started hallucinating Will blushing at anything he says. Because he’s being, like, a total loser right now.

 

Get it the fuck together, Michael.

 

Oh, great. Nancy’s the voice of reason in his head now. That’s a good sign.

 

She did get the guy, though. 

 

Will settles on a pillow beside him and they shift around until they’re comfortably situated, Mike absentmindedly flipping through the brightly colored pages. He should probably be paying attention to the plot. Despite knowing this, his mind meanders anyway. Not far, just under his bed.

 

“I like the linework in this edition,” Will hums, tracing his fingers gently over the lines in a particularly impressive looking action panel. “I wonder what pen the illustrator uses.”

 

“Mm,” Mike hums, coming back into focus in the present. “I’m pretty sure it’s some fancy Japanese marker.”

 

“It does remind me of Japanese comics,” Will nods as if he knows exactly what marker Mike’s talking about. He probably does. “It’s western coloring with Japanese linework. I like it.”

 

“Thought you would,” In terms of story, there’s a couple other comic books scattered over the floor of his room that he’d rather read. This one has the most distinct artwork though, so it was the obvious choice. “You’ve been reading Japanese comics?”

 

“No, I’ve just seen them around,” Will flips to the next page. “Guy I sat next to back in Lenora is half Japanese, his dad sends him a lot of stuff through the mail.”

 

“What class?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“What class was he sitting next to you in?”

 

“Oh, Geography. The teacher kept boring us to death every class so we just got to talking,” Will’s eyes flick to him for a moment, an almost imperceptible quirk to his lips. “Now that I’m thinking about him, I kinda wish I asked for his address.”

 

Mike stills. “His address?”

 

“Yeah,” Will gives him a look. “To write letters and stuff.”

 

Mike’s finger twitches against the side of Will’s neck from where his hand is slung over his shoulder. “You guys, uh,” he coughs. “Close?”

 

Will shrugs, that strangely smug glint in his eyes becoming more prevalent by the second. “I guess.”

 

“Cool, that’s—“ Mike’s lungs constrict. “That’s cool.”

 

“Mhm,” Will then leans in close, making sure to catch Mike’s eyes before whispering conspiratorially, “I’m honestly closer with his girlfriend, though,” he tilts his head, face barely two inches away from Mike’s. “I only have Geography with him but I have Biology, Art, and World History with her, so,” he shrugs.

 

Getting lost in the burn of his ears and the low melody of Will’s voice, it takes Mike a little longer to process the words than it probably should have. “Girl— girlfriend,” he blinks. “He has a girlfriend?”

 

“Yep,” Will pops the ‘p’, looking far too amused. “She’s great.”

 

“Oh,” Mike exhales, a weight lifting off of his chest. “That’s good,” he flushes and waves his hands around, laughing nervously all the while. “For him, I mean.”

 

“I know,” and Will’s voice sounds almost patronizing. “You look really… happy for him.”

 

“I’m happy for all relationships,” Mike splutters. “I— I support love.”

 

Will’s smirk melts into a fond smile. “Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Mike nods resolutely. “Always.”

 

“Thanks,” Will ducks his head and hesitates before looking back up, smiling mischievously. “So does that mean you’ll help me find a boyfriend?”

 

“That’s not— I mean, if that’s what you want— I guess I could—“

 

Will lets him make a fool of himself for a couple more seconds before bursting out in laughter, “God, your face,” he knocks his head back against the wooden headboard. “I was kidding, Mike.”

 

He sighs in relief.

 

“I’m fully capable of finding a boyfriend all on my own.”

 

Annoyingly, Will is still laughing when Mike tries (and fails miserably) to shove him to the ground, gasping in between breathless laughter. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” he snorts. “You just made it so easy!”

 

“Oh, screw you!”

 

Mike tosses his comic over the side of his bed, and tackles Will down by his shoulders. He tries not to let his laughter slip, hell bent on trying to remain looking upset. It overtakes him anyways until he’s shaking with held back laughter on top of Will.

 

Just like last night, he lifts himself up on his palms so that he doesn’t crush Will under his weight. Their laughter dies, fading into heavy breathing as they stare at each other in the early afternoon sun. Mike’s grin falters, he swallows, tries to look away, fails.

 

Shit, the sun loves Will. Slivers of light filter through his curtains that he thought he’d shut and he’s thankful that he apparently hadn’t because one of the bands fall just over the right side of Will’s face. His fringe had gotten swept away from his forehead in their little scuffle, his eyes are breathtaking, Mike could get lost counting every speck of color in them for hours, his lips are—

 

Will’s tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip and it’s just then that Mike notices he’s been staring. His eyes snap up to meet Will’s.

 

The wide grin slowly but surely melts off Will’s face as he stares, watches Mike carefully. He opens his mouth to speak once, twice before finally just keeping it closed.

 

They stare at each other for a long time. Or at least, Mike thinks it’s pretty long. Truthfully, the ray of sunlight on Will’s face has probably barely even moved half a centimeter by the time either one of them speaks.

 

“Mike, what are you—“ Will begins, his voice vulnerable, quiet as if afraid to break the stalemate between them, “What’s the goal here, huh?” one of his fingers twitches on his stomach. “Are you— I just, are you making fun of me?”

 

Mike frowns. “No, what?”

 

“Cause’ that’s mean,” Will barrels over him, his own momentum keeping him talking. “It’d be mean, Mike.”

 

“I’m not making fun of you, I swear,” Mike puts a hand to his own chest and feels how embarrassingly fast his heart is beating. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Will.”

 

“Then, what is this?”

 

“It’s…” right in front of Will, right now, he’s burning up from the inside. He has to see it, right? How Mike’s dying, his chest burning like an unending inferno, choking on his own blood, the noose of all he feels for Will tightening and tightening and tightening around his neck. It’s wrong, it’s all so wrong. Can he even say it out loud? Is that something he’s pushed down so far, he won’t even be able to find the words for it anymore? He’s made big talk in his own head about kissing Will but all he’s doing is proving to be the coward he’s afraid he’s always been. He’s flailing, he’s drowning, he needs Will to notice and hold out his hand, maybe to save him, maybe just to have someone to drown with. 

 

He’s not supposed to be like this. It’s wrong, he’s wrong. He was supposed to find a girl, have kids, get that house. He doesn’t want it. He’s tried so hard, for so long.

 

Why can’t he just want it?

 

If it’s Will, though, maybe it— he just can’t find himself to see Will as anything other than his person. Will likes boys, he’s still the same as he was before he admitted it, except maybe a little lighter. He’s not intrinsically wrong the way Mike feels like he is. So, what now? Mike has been breaking his own heart since he was a kid, this isn’t much different. Best to cut his losses and just get it the hell over with. It’s not different. It’s not.

 

What would even be different?

 

He’d be breaking Will’s heart this time, too. Again. Knowingly.

 

And he already has, he knows, just seeing the way Will’s face crumples at his silence, his pleading stare dulling into bland resignation, like he always knew Mike would be too much of a coward to admit what’s been lingering between them like cigarette smoke for years, clinging onto their clothes, warming every accidental touch, like he knew even last night that Mike would break his heart again and decided to go upstairs and read comics with him anyways.

 

Something snaps, the sword of Damocles falling through the air with a whistle, landing as Mike’s hand on Will’s cheek, catching it right as he begins to turn away. “Hey, hey, no,” Mike tries to catch his gaze and feels like crying himself when Will keeps looking anywhere but the absolute piece of shit in front of him. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, It’s— I’ll fix it,” it. us. 

 

“Don’t bother,” Will knocks Mike’s hand off his face and pushes him off as he sits up. “Forget it.”

 

“Will—“

 

“Fuck, just forget it,” he still won’t look at Mike. “Pretend I never said anything. It’s stupid,” his voice cracks when he jerks his neck to the side and says. “I was being stupid.”

 

All Mike is anymore is just this— this big, tender bruise, walking around the world painted a myriad of purples and blues and greens and it could very well just be the normal colors of a bruise or it could be smudges of paint from the only pair of hands he’s ever wanted to hold him and all he does is ache. It hurts, he doesn’t want it to hurt anymore, he doesn’t know how to make it stop and he wants it to stop so fucking bad. 

 

“I’m sorry,” He pleads, voice splintering. “Will, it’s not— I’m—“ he wants to claw his throat open; maybe then the words can finally make their way out. “It’s you, okay?” He tries, gesturing at Will. “It’s you.”

 

“Me,” Will echoes. “What does that mean?”

 

Mike jumps off the bed and begins to pace in front of Will, “You know,” he bends down to look Will in the eye, laughing in disbelief. “I’m so bad at hiding it, there’s no way you don’t know,” His voice falters into something just a little louder than a whisper. “You have to know by now.”

 

Shaking his head, Will frowns, eyebrows knitting together. “I can’t live off assumptions, Mike,” he shrugs sadly. “That’s not fair.”

 

“It’s you all the time,” Mike shoves his hand down his own throat and pulls the words out with all the strength he could possibly muster, “Even when it’s not you, it’s you,” make him understand; Will has to understand. “It’s never not been—“ Mike drops to his knees and reaches for the paint set under the bed. It bounces once, twice when it lands on the mattress beside Will who stares at it as if he’s in a trance, “Don’t you get it?” Mike stops just short of grabbing him by the shoulders, “Even when you aren’t there, you’re all I can—“ he stumbles back a step until his back hits his window. He doubles over like he’s just finished running a marathon, hands on his knees. When he lifts his head, Will is looking at him. “You’re all I ever— all I think about. It’s you. All the fucking time.” he laughs weakly. “I can’t breathe around you.”

 

Sunlight warms his entire back as he finally folds into himself on the floor, his face buried in his hands. Not a single tear falls but he trembles with the effort of holding it together immediately after falling apart. Will is still staring at him when Mike lets his hands fall and looks at him.

 

“You…”

 

Mike wipes his hands on his jeans, swallows, nods. “Yeah.”

 

A familiar look dawns on Will’s face, offence on behalf of his family. “What were you doing with Jane, then?” he hisses. “Were you just—“

 

“I really thought I liked her like— like that,” Mike stares up at the ceiling and hopes. It’s the first time he’s ever done this in the light of day. “I tried, okay? I tried so hard.”

 

“So you, what?” Will’s face softens but his voice is still firm. “Used her?

 

“I was planning on all of the…” he swallows, waves his hand. “I never planned on ending it.”

 

“You were just gonna marry her ten years into the future knowing you didn’t even love her?” Will presses.

 

“Stupid, right?” he fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “The entire time, I just wanted—“ his eyes flick to the paint set on the bed and then away again.

 

“That’s not fair,” Will cuts him off, face pained. “to any of us.”

 

“I’m sorry, okay?” he mutters. “I already apologized to her, too.”

 

“To any of us, Mike,” Will repeats, his voice has gone soft, almost pitying. “That includes you.”

 

Mike stills and it’s just now that he feels his eyes growing damp, with how his voice cracks and trembles, he sounds about twelve years old when he asks. “You think so?” 

 

He feels twelve, too.

 

“You were planning on growing old and dying like that,” he walks over and sits by Mike under the window, wincing at the way the position on the hard floor tugs painfully at his scars. “S’pretty unfair.”

 

“Yeah, I…” Mike stares at the side of his face and breathes out. “I guess.”

 

They sit in comfortable silence for a while before Mike breaks it, eyes trained on the paint set laying innocently on the bed,“So, uh,” his ears burn red. “Do you like it?”

 

Will hums, sees where he’s looking, and then smiles. “You know my favorite brand.”

 

Mike doesn’t quite know where they stand just yet. It has to be okay to stare now, right? He’d really like to get to do that more often from now on. “…yeah, I pay attention, you know.”

 

“I do,” Will nods agreeably. “Must have been expensive.”

 

“Yeah, well I wasn’t exactly looking at the price tag.”

 

“Wow,” Will grins at him bumping their shoulders together. “Mr. Rich guy here doesn’t need to look at price tags.”

 

“Shut up,” Mike laughs. “I just recognized the brand and blacked out.”

 

“Blacked out?”

 

Mike nods solemnly. “Yeah, I grabbed the box and the next thing I knew, I was standing outside the store with an empty wallet.”

 

Eyes forming crescent moons, Will leans against him heavily, his entire body trembling with the force of his laughter. “You’re so stupid,” he chokes out, gasping for his breath as his laughter finally dies down. “But thank you, though. Really.”

 

When Mike turns his head to the side to smile at Will, his eyes widen at the distance between them or rather, the lack thereof. A light flush creeps up Will’s cheeks, eyes flicking down to Mike’s mouth for a delicious second before he breathes out sharply and averts his eyes.

 

Subconsciously, as if Will has his own gravitational force, Mike’s body follows his as he pulls away, not letting him put more than three inches of distance between them. Maybe he tied a string around Mike’s heart during a sleepover when they were younger and has been tugging at it ever since, maybe he’s the phantom hanging over Will’s shoulder that he just can't seem to get rid of.

 

Maybe, Mike realizes, they’re each other’s ghosts. Maybe they always have been.

 

“If you want,” Mike begins, his voice softer than a whisper. “If you want,” he says, a little louder. “I’d let you.”

 

For the past few seconds, Will’s thumb has been doing its best to scratch a line into the dark hardwood of Mike’s floor. It stills, he stares at Mike, face unreadable. 

 

He doesn’t speak, his thumb starts moving back and forth incessantly once more.

 

Slowly, Mike creeps his hand closer and closer to Will’s until he can hook their thumbs together. Will doesn’t fight him about it but his lips turn down into a small frown. “What’s wrong?”

 

Will’s thumb twitches beneath his, eyes darting towards the door. “You think something’s wrong just because I’m not taking your offer?”

 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” Mike says earnestly even though they both know by now that he probably won’t get over it for a while. He won’t ever take what Will doesn’t want to give, though. “But I want you…to.”

 

Will slides his hand further under Mike’s until that yarn bracelet is brushing up against his skin. “Your door isn’t locked.”

 

Mike blinks. “Yeah.”

 

“Your curtains are open.”

 

It all clicks into place. Briefly, Mike mourns the possibility of kissing Will under the setting sun in the near future. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make, though. He’d kiss him in the dark a million times if it means getting to kiss him at all.

 

“Nancy won’t care.”

 

Tension that Mike hadn’t even noticed melts off Will’s shoulders. “Yeah, but still…”

 

“Jonathan doesn’t know?”

 

“He— he might,” he shrugs. “Probably before… I don’t know.”

 

“But you’ve never…?”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay,” Mike regretfully slips his hand off of Will’s so that he can stand up. “Alright, I’ll lock the door,” he reaches over and slides his curtains shut, Will grunting quietly as he gets on his feet.

 

He almost expects the sensation of the doorknob’s cool metal against his skin to snap him out of some kind of trance. And yet it doesn’t, this is somehow his reality, not a dream. Although, Mike thinks absently as he turns his head back all to watch Will with his eyes closed as he lays down on Mike’s bed, one hand settled over the paint set, Will might as well be both.

 

“All done.”

 

Will rolls over, his chin resting on his crossed forearms, his elbows dipping into the edge of the mattress as he watches Mike walk over to him. Instead of sitting on the bed beside Will, Mike kneels on the floor in front of him until their faces are level with each other.

 

He’s still aching, maybe he’ll always ache. Setting his chin lightly atop the edge of the mattress, so close that the tips of their noses are brushing, Mike finds that he doesn’t really mind. Aching so sweetly for the rest of forever may not be the death sentence he always thought it would be. Will’s lips curl up into that nauseatingly fond smile he’s always worn and Mike can’t believe how long he’s been fooling himself into thinking he’s on the edge of a cliff when he’s really been falling and falling and falling into those hazel eyes with no signs of stopping for an honest to goodness decade.

 

He doesn’t want to hit the ground.

 

Will isn’t looking him in the eye when he speaks lowly, gaze trained a little lower on his face. “Hey.” 

 

Knocking their foreheads together, Mike grins until his eyes squint. “Comfortable?”

 

“Mm,” Will shrugs, tilting his head, closing another millimeter of distance between them. When he speaks, his breath brushes over Mike’s mouth like a humid summer breeze, he’s dizzy with it. “Could be better.”

 

For a second, just a second, time freezes around them and they hold still like those insects that have been frozen in amber for a million years or those plaster casts of those people in Pompeii caught in a single snapshot of a moment for all of eternity.

 

The moment splits right through the middle and then, Mike snaps his head forward and his hands come to drag that face, that boy’s face closer to his and he’s finally, finally, kissing Will who exhales sharply upon contact of their lips against each other. Carpet digs into his knees painfully but all Mike knows at the moment is the smell of eucalyptus and oil paint and the taste of mint toothpaste and he could live with being frozen in time like this, trapped in amber to be studied in a couple of millenia, he couldn’t care less if a volcano erupted and encased them in ash, god, how could he possibly care about anything else after this? That’s a stupid thing to expect from him, the universe should know better by now. He’ll go insane, he needs this like those boys that smoke on the hoods of their cars behind the school need their next cigarette, like that man in the suit pacing outside the liquor store needs his next bottle. It’s only one kiss, barely more than a peck, really, but he’s forming a chemical dependency for it anyways. He needs Will running through his veins, needs him like smoke in his lungs, needs him all over, all the time.

 

Will pulls away first, eyes wide and curving into laughter as he watches Mike chase after him, “Hey— this is—“ he says in between laughter. “This is a bad angle, my neck’s starting to hurt,” he leans down and bumps their noses together from where Mike is looking up at him pleadingly. “And we gotta give your knees a break.”

 

“My knees are fine.”

 

“I’ve heard them pop.”

 

“You hallucinated that,” Mike says but he lifts himself up to sit on the bed regardless of his arguing against it because there really is just not a single bone in his body that’s willing to deny Will of anything he’s capable of providing and then some. “I don’t believe you.”

 

Will rolls his eyes in exasperation and this time, he’s the one who grabs Mike by the collar and pulls him into a kiss which he can’t help but fall helplessly into, his body melting into it like he’s planning on trying to merge into one person so that he can simply live underneath Will’s skin. They’re both smiling into it and at some point, Mike pushes his mouth against Will’s so firmly that he accidentally pushes them flat on the mattress, his hands falling from Will’s face to catch his weight so that he doesn’t, under any circumstances, have to pull away.

 

Every kiss is deeper than the one before it and as a result, smudges spit all over their chins. It’s a little obscene, the sounds of their heavy breathing and their lips smacking against each other in the otherwise completely silent room but the world would have to end for him to give a damn and even then, it’s not a guarantee because he might elect to ignore a theoretical implosion of Earth’s core if Will makes that one sound again. 

 

Unable to help himself, Mike squeezes his eyes shut before blinking them open, his vision slowly unblurring. He stares down at Will with his eyes half lidded as they kiss, watching, always watching. He notes how Will’s eyebrows scrunch, how a blush brighter than Mike’s ever seen on his face creeps up his cheeks, painting his freckles in stark relief. Now that he’s opened them, he can’t seem to let them fall shut again, lest he miss how a vein makes itself known on Will’s neck whenever Mike brushes his tongue between the seam of their lips.

 

The steady rhythm of their kissing isn’t actually steady at all, they’re frantic and messy and loud but it’s sweet all the same. Mike already knows how many nights he’ll spend staring at his ceiling thinking of how Will’s mouth had dropped when Mike dug his teeth into his lip and the choked off sound he made when Mike took the opportunity and swiped his tongue into Will’s mouth.

 

Will presses a hand to his collarbone, thumb fitting perfectly into that notch in his throat and pushes him off. Like a complete loser, Mike unwittingly lets out a pitiful noise at being separated from Will, looking at him with his eyebrows drawn together in a silent plea. Throwing his head back and laughing breathlessly, Will pinches his cheek and smiles at him almost patronizingly. “I do need to breathe. Y’know?”

 

Rolling his eyes, Mike acquiesces and then gets a brilliant idea. He runs his tongue across the ridges of his own teeth before giving in and using one of his hands to tilt Will’s head to the side, exposing the smooth column of his throat. Mike presses his lips to skin, smiling against Will’s pulse, wondering how it’d feel on his tongue instead. He shifts his head a little bit without detaching his mouth from Will’s neck and raises an eyebrow at him, a silent: May I?

 

Will exhales shakily and answers him with the hand to his neck moving to hold the underside of his chin, guiding his mouth lower, under where most of the collars of Will’s shirts would fall and then moving back up to scratch at Mike’s skull as he does his best impression of a vampire that hasn’t fed in over a century. Mike discovers, to his delight, that if he sucks hard enough, he actually tastes a little bit of iron— drawback being that the bruises he leaves behind after so much suction are… significantly darker.

 

Evidently though, Will doesn't mind all that much, y’know, considering that he’s shoving Mike’s face into his collarbone so hard, it’s like he’s trying to weld them together.

 

“So,” Mike speaks, his voice reverberating through Will’s skin rather than being actually audible. “Can I kiss you again?”

 

Blinking at him blearily, Will asks. “What do you call this?”

 

“Letting you breathe,” Mike smiles innocently. And then, he repeats. “Can I kiss you again?”

 

For as long as they’ve been friends, their chronic inability to say no to each other has gone both ways. So, it’s no surprise that Will melts immediately upon his request, tilting his head to receive the kiss that Mike pushes (quite enthusiastically) onto his mouth.

 

There really isn’t any telling how long they spend making out on Mike’s bed, especially with the curtains shut. They’re completely breathless by the end, though and Mike’s elbows buckle and he lets himself fall on top of Will. He hides his bashful smile by burying his face into the junction of Will’s neck and shoulder. Yeah, sure, maybe he’s lost all his dignity by trying to maul his, as of a couple hours ago, best friend like a literal mountain lion, but he doesn’t want to make it known how absurdly enamored he is with Will just yet.

 

He’ll save that for when they really are… something else. On the unlikely occasion that this isn’t simply a one time thing where they give into the urges that have been running like an electric current throughout their entire relationship and then move on like nothing’s happened. With their lives, with other people.

 

The thought sobers him enough to roll off Will and stare at the ceiling, his ever-present companion throughout this entire shitshow. He’s used up all his bravery for the day, he might be able to chance a look at what expression Will is wearing on his face later. What’s he supposed to do if he looks over and sees that look on Will’s face that says he’s about to give all of it up just so Mike can go on with his life pretending his heart wasn’t stolen bit by bit through every stroke of a brush, a marker, a pencil, a crayon?

 

“Are we…” the back of Will’s hand brushes against his. “I never wanted to ruin everything.”

 

Mike’s heart sinks. “Is that what we did?”

 

Will makes a noise. “I don’t want it to be,” the pillowcase rustles but Mike still hasn’t built up the guts to look his future in the eye for this conversation. “Do you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then, nothing’s ruined.”

 

Mike turns to look at him, incredulous. “Just like that?”

 

“Just like that.”

 

“Well…” It really doesn’t help that when Mike takes a breath to steady himself, all he can smell is Will. “What now?”

 

“Can we,” his gaze turns plaintive. “I mean, I liked it. This, uh. You.”

 

“You like me.”

 

“I— yeah, I do. Obviously”

 

“Then we can do the thing,” Mike waves a hand between them, heart pounding so loudly, he can feel it in his ears.

 

“The thing?”

 

“The dating thing,” Jesus, he sounds like a thirteen year-old. “I wanna do the dating thing with you.”

 

Will stares at him with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open slightly before he seemingly collects himself and answers, “Okay, let’s do the— the dating thing.”

 

And you can’t blame him for the giddy way his heart skips a beat nor the childish way he beams at Will’s response. Not when it feels like he’s been waiting his whole life to get here. This. Will. “Cool.”

 

It’s comforting, how Will’s mouth trembles with the effort of trying to contain his own glee. He nods back. “Cool.”

 

When his parents pull up to the driveway in their shiny new car with Holly in tow, they bring with them the threat of discovery. But as it turns out, it’s much more tolerable being scared when your boy? Best? Friend’s there to make out with you until you forget about it.

 

Who knew?

 

☾ ☀︎

 

Apartment hunting in NYC as two fresh college students should be considered one of the nine circles of hell, is all Mike is saying. The first apartment they checked out had black mold, the second one had a toilet that wouldn’t flush with a broken ventilation system which is a complete recipe for disaster, the third one had upstairs neighbors fornicating at three in the fucking afternoon, the fourth one, Mike is pretty sure used to be a meth lab, and now, he finds, as they tour their fifth apartment this week, finding the will to live is getting extraordinarily hard.

 

The landlord turns to the two of them. “I do regret to inform you that only the first bedroom I showed you has airconditioning—”

 

“That’s fine,” Mike cuts in a little too quickly. He elbows Will when he hears him try to hide a snort behind a cough.

 

“...Alright,” she backs away slowly, swinging the door to the second bedroom open. As soon as he lays eyes on it, Mike knows that Will’s already planning out the logistics of turning this bedroom into a studio of sorts. It gets enough sunlight, because windows, it has good ventilation, again, because windows. Ample space on the floor and walls, no carpet, close to the bathroom sink.

 

As a whole, the apartment is… surprisingly nice considering all the ones they’ve been in before this one. Clean, it’s loud outside but that’s to be expected, the neighbors are loud but not noise complaint loud, it’s… it looks like somewhere they can build something.

 

Right as the lock clicks shut upon their exit, Mike asks: “How soon can we move in?” Because of course, priority number one is get the fuck out of Hawkins as soon as physically possible. With Will, but that’s a given. They’re already halfway there, all they need now is a place to go home to.

 

The landlord is remarkably patient with their (mostly Mike’s, really) barrage of questions and by the time she’s left, they’re both staring at the floor in front of them in disbelief. This whole time, they’ve been focusing solely on what big thing comes next that they haven’t quite managed to plan what to do when ‘next’ finally comes. They may have other things to prepare for but they’re here. They’ve decided on an apartment.

 

Roommates. They’re gonna live together. Share a kitchen, a dining table, a bathroom, and a bed. For as long as he can remember, Mike hasn’t ever let himself want these things for longer than a passing thought. Yeah, he always thought they'd be roommates once they got to college but the simple notion of living with Will for the first time after high school with the intention of doing it for the rest of their lives has always been too risky to even consider and now they’re here and they need to pick out a couch and a good, sturdy bedframe, a nice desk that can handle the weight of a typewriter. Oh god, there’s so much to do—

 

“Mike,” Will says, looking as baffled as he feels. “Mike, we’re gonna live together.”

 

“Yeah,” Mike tries to blink himself out of his stupor and fails. “Holy shit.”

 

He had wondered at some point— when this thing with Will had been new and delicate— if the novelty of making him smile in this new context would ever wear off. Mostly naiveté brought on by the fact that the novelty of getting to kiss a girl had worn off after a good few months.

 

It’s been years and kissing Will still makes him as dizzy as the first time. More than once, he’s woken up in the middle of the night, half-caught in a dream thinking he never did do that thing, say those words that changed his life. It probably won’t stop happening even if they start sharing a bed permanently but at least he’ll be able to reach over and get a handle on his beautiful, beautiful reality.

 

He figured— he figured the unabating, greedy wanting would stop or at least slow down once he and Will made it official but it persists. All that desperate, violent, sickening wanting. Funnily enough, it flares up the most when he’s with Will, when they’re in public and all Mike wants to do is play footsie with him under a café table, hold his hand, lean over and wipe a smudge of food off his cheek, just— normal couple things. Because that’s what they are. A couple.

 

Maybe… at some point. New York would be better about it than Hawkins, probably.

 

The first night they spend in their new apartment, they sleep on an air mattress on the floor of the only bedroom with air conditioning after carrying box after box up to the sixth floor of their building and they don’t wake up until 2:00 in the afternoon the next day. 

 

There’s an ache that shoots up from his shoulders and his lower back when he turns over to face Will and watch him sleep. It’s a rare occurrence that he wakes up before his boyfriend and he isn’t one to look a gifthorse in the mouth. Slowly, ever so slowly, Mike splays his hand over the jut of Will’s jaw, skimming his knuckles over the line of his neck on the way.

 

Mike would live a hundred lifetimes, suffer through a million deaths just to get to have moments like this, however fleeting, however mundane. Greedy as he is, he’d settle for any crumb of Will he can scrounge up. Perhaps it’s only through luck that he gets to have this much. He likes to think he worked his ass off to get here.

 

Afternoon sunlight passes straight through their window because they still haven’t gotten to buy curtains in their rush to leave their hometown that never really felt much like home. Will is beautiful, always has been, and always will be, without a doubt. Mike can’t imagine ever getting tired of looking at him, he looks forward to the incoming crows’ feet, smile lines, everything that makes it visible just how long they’ve been each other’s. How they’d grown up together and now they get to grow old together too, if luck will have it.

 

Mike can feel Will rouse before he sees it, breathing shifting from rhythmic to the beginnings of a yawn. Without opening his eyes, he scoots closer and burrows his face into the crook of Mike’s neck who laughs softly. “Good morning, Will.”

 

“Mm,” one of his arms comes up to be slung over Mike’s hip. “Morning.”

 

“What’s on the agenda for today?”

 

“Sleeping.”

 

“You said we’d unpack,” Mike smiles down at him fondly, only getting fonder when Will pulls back an inch to glare up at him.

 

“I don’t give a fuck,” he groans. “Everything hurts.”

 

“Told you to let literally anyone else try to carry the box of art supplies but no—“

 

“The paint set was in that one,” Will admits, and Mike’s mouth snaps shut so fast, it’s almost comedic. “No one else’s gonna be as careful with it as I was.”

 

“Ah, in that case,” Mike swallows. He loves Will so much, so much, loves him like no other, in an impossibly all-consuming way that would suffocate anyone else but Will shoulders with ease. “Jesus.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I love you.”

 

Will huffs and pats his lower back, right where his muscles ache, “Love you too.”

 

“So much,” Mike leans away from their embrace to stare Will in the eyes. “Maybe too much.”

 

“I can handle it,” Will leans forward and nips at Mike’s bottom lip. “Don’t you think I can?”

 

Mike can’t help but chase after his mouth when he pulls away. “Of course I do.”

 

“Then let me,” he smiles mischievously. “Roomie.”

 

Mouthing at that spot under Will’s ear, Mike laughs. “That’s gonna get old.”

 

“You think so?”

 

“I know so,” Mike pulls away and then leans back in to kiss him on the mouth, a steady rhythm that has him pushing, biting, sucking harder every time he feels Will’s breath stutter. Without the threat of parents pulling up to the driveway or siblings barging into the room without knocking, the pair of them can kiss for however long they want, whenever they want. It’s practically all Mike’s ever wanted, and then some.

 

At the end of it all is this apartment, is Will in their bed, planning their future, is the paint set painstakingly carried up six flights of stairs.

 

At the end of it all, Mike and Will are what they are, what they always have been, what they always will be.

Notes:

happy birthday helen i love you. I ate absolute shit during tennis for this and my top lip started swelling but that's on the milder end of the spectrum. OHHH and i cooked my tongue on boiling broth yesterday so that was fun.