Work Text:
Will is sketching Mike’s bed. It’s old, slightly creaky, and he wants to capture how the texture of the wood looks different in the sunlight, streaming in from the window. He pointedly is not sketching the boy sitting on it. Doesn’t mean his eyes don’t stray up to the lean limbs stretched across the bed. He’s sitting at Mike’s desk, the chair turned around so he can face the bed while working. It’s the summer of ‘89 and time feels like syrup slipping through his fingers, sticky but unable to grasp. It’s not even the end of July and Will has already started to pack for DePaul. It’s not like he would leave at this present moment if he could, but the excitement swirls low in his stomach enough to where he is reading through the course listings whenever he can.
Mike shifts, and then shifts again, antsy. He’s always been like this, but without the looming threat of the world ending and school to focus on, it's gotten worse. He abandons the comic he was reading, throwing his arms above his head, which causes his t-shirt to ride up, exposing a sliver of his stomach.
The legs. The legs of the bed. Will needs to add texture to the back two legs.
He reminds himself he can look but he can’t touch. He can’t remember the last time he actually sat on Mike’s bed. He can think of the times when Mike had sat on his bed, like the conversation in California and before that, the countless nights Mike would wake him up from a nightmare while sleeping over after the Mindflayer took hold of him and never quite let go. He would never object to Mike coming into his space. He can’t say it can be reciprocated though. He feels this unspoken line he can’t cross ever since - “Friends? No way, best friends.” Even when Mike invades his space all too often, Will can’t do the same. He squeezes his eyes shut. Goes back to the left back leg of the bed. Doesn’t look at Mike. Even when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mike shift again. Sometimes it’s hard to even look.
“What’re you drawing?” Mike says suddenly, his voice hoarse from disuse.
They haven’t talked much since Will biked over. At first, Will didn’t know why Mike kept inviting him to his house. On the first few days of summer, when they had hung out for three days in a row, Will didn’t come over on the fourth day and Mike had called the Byers house by eleven asking if Will was sick. He wasn’t. They hadn’t talked much the third day, so Will assumed Mike might be getting tired of him. But Mike insisted Will come over again. Said something about his house having an air conditioner and he didn’t want Will stuck in a hot house the whole day. If they were going to lay around all summer, they should be comfortable, Mike had insisted. They hadn’t stopped hanging out since. The Party still did DND campaigns every Friday, but every day Will wasn’t at the Squak with Robin and Mike wasn’t working at Scoops Ahoy with Max, Mike would be with Will. That’s just how it was now, apparently. Not that Will was complaining.
Will clears his throat. “The bed.” It felt too intimate to say your bed.
Mike raises his eyebrows. “Is my bed that interesting?”
He really was oblivious.
“Not particularly,” Will says, like a liar. “Just not much else to draw.”
Mike sits up fully. “Where’s that creativity of yours?”
Will sighs, “Depleted, completely gone.”
Mike leans against the wall, the painting hanging above him, almost mocking Will. “You can’t make up a mystical beast?”
Will winces, “My imagination is not really… the most fun to draw right now.”
His nightmares had continued well past the final battle with Vecna. Drawing things that weren’t in his head made him feel anchored to the real world. Where Vecna was gone and couldn’t hurt him anymore. He didn’t feel like venturing past the darkness of his nightmares to even come up with something beautiful and interesting that inspired him. Not to mention, most of his dreams were about El. El, rising in the murky air of the Upside Down. El, with blood leaking from her nose, the ringing in his ears ever present since that night. El, disappearing into the darkness right as he blinked, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Oh,” Mike says softly.
“Yeah,” Will responds, swallowing the lump in his throat and focusing back on the paper in front of him.
“Do you want to sleep over tonight?” Mike says suddenly.
“Why -”
“I mean, I just figured, y’know, you always seem to sleep better when you sleep here and I doubt the heat helps, but if you wanted -”
“Yeah,” Will says. “Yeah, okay, that - that sounds fun.” He cringes at the last word. It sounds so childish to have a sleepover when they are both about to go off to college, but the nostalgia of it all comforts Will and he would probably sleep better if he was sleeping next to Mike.
Mike nods and there are a few moments of silence before -
“Can I watch you draw?”
Will blinks. “What d’you mean?”
Mike gestures to his comic, “Not really interested in that today.”
He shifts to the side, patting the spot next to him on the bed.
Oh.
The unspoken line sputters in front of Will.
He forces a laugh, “I can’t really sit on the bed and draw the bed from the angle I’ve been working from at the same time.”
Mike shrugs. “Just take a picture. The light is changing, right? It’ll be weird to draw it if the sun keeps going down.”
Will doesn’t say anything for a moment. Mike must take this for hesitance and he looks over Will’s shoulder. “The camera’s right there.”
Will swivels around. Nods. Inhales. Picks up the camera, moving robotically.
“Do you want me to move or -”
“No, it's fine, I’m just drawing the bed anyways.”
Mike flushes, for some unknown reason. “Right.”
It's that moment that Will captures - Mike sitting cross legged, stiff on the bed, cheeks pink, hands fidgeting in his lap as he smiles awkwardly. The camera clicks and sputters before whirring and pumping out a dark picture. Will sets the camera down, plucking the picture from its slot, grabbing his sketchbook and pencil, before approaching the bed.
The line is fading by the second as he climbs on the bed, next to Mike. He leans against the wall, sitting cross legged as well before setting his sketchbook on his lap and laying the picture face down, waiting for it to develop. Their knees brush, and Will feels his entire body grow warm. He’s not wearing shorts today, just a pair of light washed loose jeans, since Mike’s house is almost cold with the air conditioner running at full blast. But the touch is enough to make it feel like air conditioners have never existed.
Will surveys what he has so far, avoiding Mike’s gaze which he can feel go from his face to the page and then back to his face again. The outline is done and the front two legs have most of the texture down to the way he wants it. He picks up the picture, fanning it in front of his face, and then blowing softly where he can see Mike’s face coming into view.
He and Mike are both on the same side of the line now. He looks at the desk where he sat for weeks on end and feels uneasy with how comfortable he feels sitting on the opposite side of the room. Mike is picking at the skin on his palms, callouses visible from holding the handle bars of his bike every day for years. Will wonders how many times he’s drawn those hands from memory, and then feels slightly wary of the fact that some of those drawings might be in the sketchbook in front of him. Mike would recognize his hands. They’re long, nimble and pale. Very distinct in Will’s opinion. When Mike is typing, he can see a faint purple vein running down his left hand, from his knuckle to his wrist. He hasn’t seen Mike write in a long time. Aside from campaigns, his original work has been a topic of mystery ever since El died.
Will continues blowing on the picture, contemplating. “How come you haven’t written anything in awhile?”
Mike turns to look at him, his hair falling into his eyes. It’s started to get longer again, a little shaggy like how he had it in California, but not quite the same length. “I dunno,” he says.
Will raises his eyebrows. “Mike.”
Mike goes back to picking at his callouses. “Will,” he says, petulantly.
“I told you why I don’t - why I haven’t been drawing as much.”
There’s a moment of silence and then -
“My head's not on right,” Mike says. “It’s, y’know, scrambled.”
“How so?” Will asks, setting the picture down and squinting at the bed legs again. The picture isn’t the
clearest, but he’ll manage.
“Just like, feel like if I started writing anything more than campaigns, I’d be delving into stuff I can’t - I don’t have the right to write about.”
“You have every right,” Will says, softly. He doesn’t even know what Mike is talking about, but anything he does write is somehow crafted in a bold and delicate way.
“It’d be about you,” Mike says and Will’s head shoots up. “I’d write about you.”
“W-what?”
“The week you disappeared,” Mike says. “Worst week of my life, but I’d write about it.”
I feel like my life started the day I found you in those woods.
Will lowers his head and squeezes his eyes shut again.
Not about him.
About El. God, he missed her.
“Sounds like a great way to unpack all that trauma,” Will says.
Mike snorts. “Yeah, jumping in that quarry would be major character development.”
Will’s head shoots up again. “What?” he says, voice hoarse. A pit formed deep in his stomach, curdling the cereal he ate that morning. “Mike, what are you talking about?”
Mike looks at him, confused. “Oh, I figured Dustin or Lucas would’ve told you.”
“Told me what?” Will hears his voice, but it’s like it's coming from outside his own body.
Mike scratches the back of his hand. “I just - well Lucas and El ran off, so it was just me and Dustin. We were at the quarry. And Troy found us. Started threatening us, got a hold of Dustin. He said he’d cut out his teeth if I didn’t - y’know…”
“Jump?” Will’s voice cracks right down the middle. “You seriously thought they were going to -”
Mike cuts in, hands moving in front of him erratically, “Look, I don’t know what I thought. Dustin was in danger, and they had just pulled your body - fake body, I mean, from the quarry. And I just - I just didn’t know what else to do. I kind of had this crazy irrational thought, like, if I was going to die, at least I was gonna be pulled out the same way you were.”
Will sets the sketchbook aside entirely. His heart felt like it was being pierced and then healed all over again from the relief that Mike was still here. That he was still alive. “How the hell did you survive?”
“El,” Mike says simply. “She got there just in time.”
Will shook his head in disbelief. Covered his face with his hands. Felt his eyes sting with unshed tears and the lump returning to his throat. “Jesus,” he says.
“Will. Hey, I’m okay,” he hears Mike say softly, so softly the tears threaten to spill over. “I mean, I made it this far, right? We’ve all come close to death plenty of times.”
Will sits up, pressing his palms into his eyes so hard he sees stars. It keeps the crying at bay. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he says, knowing the check in is coming. “I just can’t believe you did that.”
He uncovers his face and sees Mike’s hands on his knees, pinkie tapping like he doesn’t know what to do with it. If he were to stretch it out enough, he would be touching Will’s knee. Will doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t know what to do with any of this. He doesn’t know how one person can handle this much emotional turmoil this young and not have some sort of lifelong brain damage.
“Yeah, me neither, honestly,” Mike says. “I’m just happy that El saved me. I would’ve missed you coming back.”
Will can’t imagine returning to a world without Mike in it. “Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t have gotten to understand how the Upside Down works, let alone go there. I mean, how am I supposed to write about it if I’ve never even been there?”
“And yet, you haven’t written anything,” Will points out.
Mike shoots him a look and Will smiles back innocently. “I don’t appreciate that,” he says.
“It’s the truth,” Will says, returning to his drawing. He hadn’t made much progress since he left his chair. “Besides, no one has a claim on the Upside Down. I draw it. Sometimes, anyway. And you can write about it.”
“Except I can’t,” Mike says. “I literally am unable to.”
“'Cause you don’t ‘have a right to it?’” Will puts the last words in air quotes.
“Yeah, I mean, you survived a week in there. El destroyed it. I just watched it take the both of you over and over again. Whether it was in my dreams or right in front of me, I couldn’t stop it.”
“Mike, all of us had stuff happen to us that wasn’t okay - ”
“Its not just that - I just, it’s just how I handled it after. With you, with El, everything was so muddled.”
“Mike, I’ve told you, it's okay.”
“No, Will,” Mike’s voice comes out choked now. “Even now, after everything, it’s all wrong. I mean, me and El -”
“What are you saying?”
“I just - fuck, I never got the chance -” There’s a pause, where Mike swallows. “We were friends first. And I wish we had the chance to be friends again.”
“You and El loved each other -”
“But we didn’t listen to each other. Not in the way friends should.”
Friends don’t lie.
They listen.
“We were just - she’s gone, and all our moments together, our fights and arguments are crystalized in time. I can’t shift them into the shape I want them to be. We were never supposed to be together, like that, I mean. We never talked about it, but I knew and she knew. The only thing I truly understood, that we both understood, even if we never said it outloud, was that if we both survived, we would learn something about each other that didn’t exist when we were twelve. I mean, she died at sixteen and I can’t think of anything else I knew about her that wasn’t a lie or about her powers, her time spent in the lab, or fucking liking Eggo waffles. I just - I just wish she could have existed outside of that lab, outside of my memory as something other than my superhero girlfriend -”
“She did.”
Will doesn’t realize he’d spoken until Mike, breathless and shaking, says, “What?”
“She did exist. Outside of your memory, I mean.” Will’s heart clenches when he remembers their conversations in California, the ones done over the dinner table or late at night when neither could sleep. “We can’t know everything that was going on inside her head, but she told me about her time with Hopper, with Kali, with her mother. How much she cared for all of them, even in the little time she had. But Mike,” Will feels his voice cracking again. He takes a deep breath in. “She liked to color. She would paint her nails every Sunday in Lenora. She helped me work on my Alan Turing project, and that’s what helped me -”
Will’s eyes drop to his lap, worried he’s said too much. He can’t remember when he set his sketchbook aside, but he must have done so, because his hands are picking at a loose thread in his jeans. “Her life was more than just you being a shitty boyfriend to her,” he says. He’s unafraid to call it like it is now and Mike snorts at that. “And I don’t think that’s all you were to her. But I’m sorry you couldn’t be more. I’m sorry you two couldn’t be friends in the way you wanted to be.”
Mike is silent and completely still - a rarity. It’s so jarring that Will turns to look at him questioningly. Mike isn’t looking at him. He has his head tilted back, frozen, staring at the painting above his head. The One Way road sign is pinned next to it, pointing to his dresser and closet.
Worried he overstepped, Will furrows his eyebrows. “Mike?”
“Mhm,” Mike says, still not moving.
“Does that - does that make sense?”
Finally, Mike turns to look at him. At first, his eyes are consumed with brown, the kind of pure milk chocolate that sticks to your fingers and is rich on your tongue. Then, when his eyes focus on Will’s face, they are swallowed by black.
“Yeah,” he says. “It makes sense.”
They are staring at each other now, heads against the wall, and Will is unable to look away. It feels like being stripped naked, just the thought making Will blush, so intimate and bare it aches. There’s a gravitational pull, keeping his eyes on Mike’s.
You can look, but you can’t touch.
Mike’s eyes flicker across his face landing on his lips, briefly, but so intensely Will feels like he could scream. Then, they focus somewhere to the right of his chin. Will doesn’t see it until he feels it, too focused on Mike’s face to realize Mike’s hand has come up to touch his jaw. Will stills, like a deer caught in headlights. Like if he moves it will be over.
Mike’s thumb strokes right above his jawline, like he’s trying to smudge his fingerprint across it. “You -” he whispers. “You have a pencil mark right here.”
It’s suddenly too much, entirely too intimate. Will uses all of his willpower to tear his gaze away from Mike’s, causing Mike’s hand to fall away from his jaw. He feels his face flush, Mike’s fingerprint still indented on his skin. His breaths are coming out shakily and he tries to steady it, focusing on splaying his hands across his thighs.
“I didn’t get it,” he hears Mike rasp.
Will turns to look at him, incredulous. He has to be joking. But he’s not, his hand is still hovering midair, and his eyes are still intensely fixed on Will’s face. He’s frowning, almost petulantly, like Will took away something important to him.
Before Will can stop him, Mike takes his thumb to his mouth, his tongue darting out to wet it. Will feels his mouth drop open slightly as Mike glides his wet thumb over the pencil mark. The point of contact makes Will’s entire body go hot and he swallows back something like a whine.
There are many things running through Will’s mind at that moment. He’s very much aware that there’s tissues and a glass of water on Mike’s bedside that could clean that pencil mark much better than Mike’s spit and finger. He also knows that it does not take this much caressing to get a pencil mark off of skin. These facts are present in his mind one moment, and the next, when Mike goes to cradle, yes, cradle, his face to supposedly get a better angle, these facts vanish from his brain. He can’t stop himself from leaning further into Mike’s space, his breath now fanning over his face.
Will cannot think of any logical reason for why this is happening to him, unless it's the divine intervention sent down to Earth to mock him. He can’t handle it anymore. His gaze drops to Mike’s lips, slightly chapped, rosy pink, and full. Their noses are inches from each other now and the only thing Will can do is surge forward to press his lips against Mike’s.
Soft is the first thing that registers in Will’s brain. So soft. Like clouds made of silk, a smooth glide of skin. At first, there’s no response from Mike, no indication that he’s even aware he’s being kissed. Will’s about to pull back when he’s suddenly made aware that Mike’s hand is curled around the side of his neck, keeping him there, keeping him close, his palm pressed where he can probably feel Will’s pulse hammering at a concerning speed, and his thumb isn’t stroking over the pencil mark anymore. It’s touching just to touch.
Mike is the one that pulls away first, and that's when Will realizes that his hand had been gripping the collar of Mike’s shirt, as if he needed something to hold onto or else he would fall apart completely. He’s breathing heavily as he slowly unclenches his fingers, leaving Mike’s shirt wrinkled and uneven. Mike is looking at him, eyes wide and lips parted.
Will thinks he’s never been more terrified in his life. Terrified of losing the friendship that partly made him who he is today. Terrified of that small flickering bit of hope in his chest extinguishing completely. He’s terrified of the fact that he even has hope now, after everything.
They stay like that, staring at each for a few moments, before Mike says, “You - you still -”
Will’s surprised he can even form words. “What?”
“You said - you said, back at the Squak - just Tammy, you said I was just your Tammy.” Mike’s voice is hoarse, this time not from disuse, but from desperation. “I thought, fuck, I mean I thought that meant you didn’t want me anymore.”
Will doesn’t know what to say except, “Mike -”
“You said friends - on the radio tower, that’s what you said Will, I know it -”
“Mike, I know what I said,” Will interrupts. He sighs, “You - Mike, you didn’t deny it. You agreed, I mean, God, you said - you said best friends. That's what you said.”
“Yeah.” Mike’s hands go to his hair, like he’s going to pull it out. “Cause that’s all I thought you wanted, all I could have was what we’ve always been. Like that was the most I could get after everything I’d done.” His voice is strung out, wrecked and shaky. “If this is how you feel, I can’t deny it anymore, I just can’t. Will, I can’t deny how much I want you.”
Will inhales sharply, head going foggy. Mike couldn’t mean what he thought he meant. He just couldn’t. The air is thick with tension, Mike staring desperately at Will, and Will - Will, again, can’t look away. He lets his eyes trail over Mike’s rumpled shirt, his flushed cheeks, his eyes, still swallowed by his irises, and his lips, a darker shade of pink than before.
He did that, Will realizes. Will made Mike look like that. He wants to see how else he can make Mike look. The thought takes over all rational thought, and suddenly, it's all he can think about. He leans forward, one hand making its way back to Mike’s collar, and the other shakily delving into the hair at the nape of his neck. Mike’s eyelashes flutter, and Will thinks it should be dangerous for a person to look this beautiful. He leans into the touch, lips parting and Will needs to kiss him again.
His voice comes out in a whisper when he says, “Can I -”
“Please, Will -”
That’s all he needs to hear before he’s pulling Mike in by his neck, swallowing an honest to god whimper that crawls out of Mike’s mouth. It’s more than just a press of lips this time, it's a scramble to touch.
Mike’s hands find their way to Will’s hips, and Will lets out a sound of surprise as Mike basically tugs him onto his lap. Will finds purchase in Mike’s hair, both hands gripping at the roots, which makes Mike whine. With that, Will slips his tongue along Mike’s lip and he opens his mouth to let Will in. He feels Mike’s fingers make their way under Will’s shirt, stroking the line of his hips.
A million thoughts are running through Will’s head. He thinks about lies, listening and love, but mostly, he thinks about lines. About the ones that have been drawn, then crossed, drawn and then crossed again. He wonders if there were even ones in the first place, or if the only thing left is the eraser shavings found on the bed. His life has revolved around lines, the ones he can toe, the ones he stays far away from, and the ones that he can’t help but make colorful when they want to be grey. But any lines that he’s ever drawn are doing fucking loops and swirls, because he can’t stop shaking, whether it be from anticipation, happiness, anxiety, or relief, he doesn’t know.
He can feel the setting sun on the side of his face and it occurs to him that it’s not just him being bathed in it, it’s Mike too. And he’s always looked beautiful in the sun. It’s hot, heavy even, as they are both pulling back, panting for air. Before Will can take a second breath in, Mike is pulling him further into his lap so his knees bracket Mike’s hips, and oh -
It’s even more desperate now, and Will can’t help but roll his hips and Mike’s hands clamp down from where he was just dipping his thumbs into the waistline of Will’s jeans, firmly keeping him there.
“Will, oh my god -” Mike pants, pulling back even as Will chases his mouth for more. He thinks it's a privilege to know what sounds Mike makes when he’s like this.
Mike lets him capture his mouth again in a mess of spit and skin, before he feels one of Mike’s hands lift from his hips, and grab his chin to tilt it to the side. Will gets an eyeful of Mike’s pale freckled collarbone, with his shirt now stretched to one side and he has the absurd urge to bite it. This is before he loses all capabilities of having thoughts of his own because Mike is now pressing his lips to the side of Will’s neck.
It’s so delicate, Will thinks he could cry. Mike is kissing him like he’s something precious, something to be revered and worshipped. Ever so slowly, he trails kisses from where his neck meets his shoulder up to the spot just under his ear. Will can’t help but roll his hips again, this time in a circular motion, and this time, he feels Mike’s arousal press against his own. They both let out muffled moans, Mike’s into Will’s neck, and Will’s into Mike’s shoulder.
“Mike, I - I need -” he hears himself say, so out of control, as he grinds down again.
Mike is guiding his hips now, moving them in a steady rhythm, but Will can tell he’s getting erratic with how tight he’s gripping him. “Jesus Christ, Will, how are you - Nghh, fuck, oh my god -”
“Mike, please -” Will doesn’t know what he’s begging for, but all he knows is he doesn’t want to stop.
“Can you -” Mike swallows what sounds like another whine and Will has another insane thought to put his fingers in Mike’s mouth just so he can feel the vibration of his moans. Later, he decides. “Like this -” and he punctures the words with a thrust of hips that makes Will keen. “Can you -”
“Yes, Mike. God, just like that.” Their grinds are starting to get uneven and Will realizes just how quick this is going to last. Worried he’ll finish too soon, he says, “Are you - are you close?”
“Will, you have no idea - fuck, what you are doing to me right now.” They are essentially panting into each other's mouths now, too consumed with desire they can barely kiss. “You’re so -” Mike says, unable to finish the thought, before retilting his chin to the side so he can latch onto Will’s neck.
It’s not delicate this time and Will is obsessed with it. Mike sucks the skin into his mouth, surely leaving behind bruises Will will delight pressing into later. He groans, moving his hips faster now, hands still gripping onto Mike’s hair. He can’t help himself when he says, “I’m what, Mike? Tell me.”
“You’re so pretty,” Mike says, breathing unevenly, and that's what makes Will fall right over the edge. Mike follows close behind with a “Fuck, Will -”
They ride it out together and once their breathing calms, Mike presses soft kisses along Will’s jaw, maybe even right over the pencil mark. Will presses his forehead against Mike, and chokes out, “I can’t deny it anymore either. I never really could.”