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Will, he's sure with something approaching absolute certainty, is going to die.
Ironically, it’s not going to be because of the Upside Down or Vecna. It’s not going to be because his luck finally ran out, because Hawkins swallowed him whole at last, a mere year before he would finally get out for good. It’s not because of some leftover stray demo or because of the goddamn Mindflayer.
No, Will survived all that. Battered and worse for the wear on the other side of it, but miraculously enough, they all made it out alive.
No. No, what’s going to kill Will is Mike. Perhaps he should have seen that one coming.
The thing is that, ever since they defeated Vecna for good, Mike seems to have given up on the concept of personal space. At least, where Will is concerned; he remembers perfectly fine with everyone else.
And see, the thing is that at first, Will had a suspicion. Or rather, a theory, really; that it was Mike’s weird, idiot way of signalling that he was fine with Will, post-coming out, even after he had some time to think about it. Look how fine, Will, arms constantly slung around shoulders, thighs pressed together, sharing a room, sharing a bed, Mike’s forehead pressed to the back of Will’s neck.
It would have been a very Mike way to go about it; blatant and stubborn, and somehow, despite all that, endearing in that world-ending way that had gotten Will into this whole mess in the first place.
Except—well. Except, Mike hasn’t stopped. Hasn’t been awkward and forced about it, or anything other than what he used to be, years ago, before Will had missed some invisible signal that changed them from one day to the next.
He hadn’t noticed how used to it he was until it was gone. He hadn’t noticed how used to the absence he'd become, until the bright, indomitable presence that is Mike goddamn Wheeler pushed his way right back past all of Will’s carefully crafted defences.
And see, it’s not as if Will’s complaining. In fact, he’s probably complaining not nearly enough, if the knowing looks their friends grace them with are anything to go by. Will doesn’t care, cannot bring himself to deny himself this when Mike is so clearly the one to initiate it, over and over.
When Mike knows, has known for months and months, and still pushes his face into the crook of Will’s neck during movie night, his breath hot against Will’s skin, neon static of the flickering TV catching in his hair and leaving Will’s fingers itching with the urge to touch.
Which brings him back to the point: just because Will doesn’t mind, doesn’t mean that it isn’t slowly but surely killing him. Mike sleep-warm in the bed beside him, one arm slung around Will’s waist; Mike in only his swimming shorts and his eyes dark in his sun-flushed face on the shore of Lover’s Lake, leaning over Will to tell him about his newest campaign idea. Mike, always reaching for him, always finding him first in any room, eyes on Will, constantly—Mike, Mike, Mike, until Will is so full of him, he swears he must not have drawn a single proper breath since he was five years old, and Mike looked at him for the first time.
To say that Will gets used to it would be a wild exaggeration, but he learns to deal with it again, mostly. They never talk about it, but Mike doesn’t stop either, and even when the Wheelers’ house is fixed up, even when the Byers-Hoppers have finally found their own place to stay, Will finds himself in Mike’s bed, or Mike in his own, more nights than not.
They don’t talk about it, but they both wake up from nightmares often enough; they both have an easier time calming down again when there’s someone there with them. When it’s Mike, for Will, and they never talk about it, but he knows it’s the same for Mike. That he’s the same for Mike, at least in this. The thought should not make him feel as warm as it does, but it does.
To say that Will gets used to it would be an exaggeration, but he’s stupidly grateful for it, all the same. For the ease of it, for Mike slotting himself back into place as if he never left, as if he has to prove a point now. And perhaps he does, but Will still wakes up with him right beside him, so he doesn’t mind.
It’s not everything he ever wanted, but it’s way more than he ever thought he’d get. He can deal with Mike’s maddening tendency to drive Will to the brink of sanity every other day. It’s kind of the opposite of a hardship, in fact.
Their summer before senior year—their last summer, not that Will is thinking about it—is when it finally sinks in that Vecna is gone. That they are free to be stupid teenagers now, their parents slowly comfortable enough to let them out of their sight, half their group with a license, all of them with Fake IDs.
It sinks in when they make use of it—when they drive around Indiana, when they take weekend-long camping trips, when they spend long nights in Indy, visiting Steve and Robin. When they get stupidly drunk on cheap beer and sweet mixed stuff that leaves Will’s tongue sticky, and his head filled with cotton and Mike, Mike, always Mike.
Mike, who makes it his goal to get rid of whatever non-existent space remains between them, to drive Will out of his mind with his fingertips on Will’s wrist, his head in Will’s lap, his tired smile, pressed to Will’s collarbone.
“You know, you could always tell him to stop,” Robin says, on a clouded, humid day in late July. They’re sharing ice cream in the newly reopened centre of the town, and Will may or may not have spent the last twenty minutes bemoaning the unfair temptation of Mike Wheeler’s freckled shoulders, and how more often than not, they end up pressed up against Will’s, these days. Whatever. The heat is melting his brain a little.
“Robin.”
She shrugs, as if it is that simple.
“You could also make a move instead,” she says, and this time Will does roll his eyes, because—
Because, look. It’s not like he’s stupid. He knows that Mike’s behaviour isn’t—normal. That he doesn’t act like this with any of their other friends, and that there are whole galleries Will could fill with moments that he could read into, that he could analyse to death. That he could stake all his hopes on.
He’s been down this road before. It took the world almost ending for the umpteenth time for him to get the fuck over it, when the gamble, predictably, did not pay off. Will’s gone through statistics class; he knows how this goes.
Robin shrugs, but her eyes are knowing. “Just saying.”
She’s not wrong, but Will’s not going to tell her that, because telling her would be acknowledging it, and Will—
Will can’t be the one to do it. He cannot.
It all changes on the tail-end of summer, late August days ticking down as the last year of High School looms ever-nearer. It’s still warm and humid, but it started raining hours ago, a steadily worsening drizzle that seems indecisive on whether it wants to turn into a full-blown storm or not.
It is only the two of them holed up in Will’s room, Will leaning against the headboard, sketching, and Mike sprawled sideways across the foot of the bed. Through the open window, the smell of late summer and wet earth fills the room, mingling with the sweet-herbal smoke from the joint they are handing back and forth between them.
Its effects are buzzing pleasantly at the base of Will’s skull, giving the whole scene a hazy quality—the rain outside, Mike comfortable in Will’s bed, Will’s hand familiar with the lines it’s drawing, Mike’s face like a homeland. Like wandering halls of his childhood before they became a living nightmare. It’s the fact that Vecna is gone, and Will got his best friend back; that time seems to unspool in fits and starts—like one day, the summer promises to never end, and the next, his mother brings up college applications. It’s Mike stretching to pass Will the joint, then dropping his hand and curling his long fingers around Will’s ankle, thumb brushing over the bare-skinned bone of it.
Will takes a drag from the joint, keeps his eyes fixed on his sketch book. Says, voice carefully casual, “Only one more year till we are out of here, can you believe it?”
Mike, predictably, goes still. They haven’t talked about it, quietly but deliberately side-stepping the topic of how, despite everything, their days in Hawkins are numbered. And sure, it’s not monsters and wormholes, threatening everything they hold dear, this time. But some nights, when Will thinks of California and letters that didn’t come, when he thinks of staring at the phone for hours, hands refusing to pick it up; when he thinks of the dreams they all have, and how they will take them to different ends of the country—well on those nights, he thinks that this is almost as bad. That no one warned him, really, that survival means growing up, and growing up means letting go. That it would be this goddamn hard, even when he cannot wait to see Hawkins in the fucking rear view.
It is a shame, he thinks, as he watches Mike swallow, that Mike and home have ever been so intrinsically linked that any time he tried to unravel them from each other, it ended up feeling like trying to extricate his fucking lungs. Hard to live without those, it turns out; someone should have warned Will about that, too.
Mike swallows once more, and then turns his head, looking up at Will. His hair is growing long again, and the white shirt he wears hangs loosely on him.
“Remember,” Mike says, voice low like a secret, “after the Mindflayer? When—“
“Yes,” Will says, before Mike can finish. He’s not sure that he can bear to hear it right now, didn’t think that Mike would just bring it up. Didn’t think, in truth, that Mike remembered it at all.
Back when Will had recovered from his possession, Mike still refusing to leave his side for longer than absolutely necessary, they had talked about it. Will had woken from a nightmare, and before he could stop himself, he had told Mike—how he couldn’t wait to leave Hawkins, to get out, to never look back.
It had been shortly before he had realised that he was gay. In retrospect, that insatiable itch to run and never look back might have been a clue, really, if not for the trauma drowning out everything else.
He remembers Mike’s face that night. How the first shock had melted into brief hurt, then understanding. How, before Will could clarify that he didn’t mean leaving Mike, Mike had nodded. “Of course. Wherever you want to go.”
It had struck him speechless enough that Mike had noticed. Had raised a brow at him and said, all warmth, “What, you think you’ll get rid of me that easily, Byers?”
As if it were that simple. And it was, with Mike, is the thing. For a while, it had been.
Mike’s still looking at him, and he doesn’t look nearly as confident as he had all those years ago, but the question is the same. “Do you know where you want to go yet? CalArts, still?”
Will’s throat is dry, and he hands the joint back before taking a sip of his Coke. He’s stalling, and they both know it. Outside, the rain is coming down in sheets now, thunder rumbling in the distance.
“That’s the dream,” Will says, and watches as Mike’s smile curls fondly. He swallows. “Are you going to ask me?”
Mike meets his eyes again, fingers flexing around Will’s ankle. It’s a heavy look, sharp like a dare, and Mike doesn’t break it when he says, “Yes.”
“Ask, then.”
“I—yeah. Let’s try to get into the same college? There are enough that do arts and writing, and I’ve been thinking that I could do literature instead, too, and—” Mike stops, dragging in a harsh breath before focusing back on Will, unflinching. “—don’t disappear to the other side of the country, Will. I’m not sure I can do it again.”
Up until the moment when Mike said it, Will had not expected him to actually say it. Which was a foolish notion, sure, but it doesn’t change that his heart is hammering in his throat, and that he thinks, a little hysterically, that he will never, ever get over Mike Wheeler. Not because he is clearly determined to follow Will wherever; it’d be lovely if it were that simple. Will’s learnt a thing or two about self-preservation, these last few years, and he knows it would be easy enough then. To rip off the band-aid, to find some reason, to finally establish some distance and get off the hook that’s Mike goddamn Wheeler.
No, what Will realises then, Mike’s dark eyes fixed on him, is that it doesn’t matter. Mike could move all the way to the goddamn moon, they could never see each other again, and Will would still not ever get over this. Not in any way that matters, not in a way that doesn’t mean that, if Mike crashes back into his life at any point, Will wouldn’t uproot himself all over for him.
“Hey, this shouldn’t be that shocking of a question,” Mike murmurs, poking Will’s knee with his free hand, joint loose between his fingers.
“No, it’s—“ Will shakes his head. Smiles, and knows it must look shaky around the edges, a little frayed. “Alright, let’s try to get into the same college. Or at least ones in like, closer vicinity than Cali and New York.”
It’s worth the minor heart attack he is currently experiencing when Mike beams at him, wide and pleased, until his eyes crinkle. He’s always beautiful, Will knows it all too well, but he’s devastating like this; and it’s going to be Will’s for a while longer.
He knows that they will not spend their lives like this. At some point, Mike will meet someone, and he might not abandon everyone else over it a second time, but he won’t ask Will to make his life choices alongside him for another ten years.
It’s strangely alright. If he never gets over Mike anyway, he might as well keep him in the ways he gets to have. Will can live with the ache; he’s done it for years now.
“Cool,” Mike says, and takes a drag from the joint.
Will snorts in spite of himself. “Cool.”
They linger there, something precarious to the moment. Outside, the wind is rushing in the trees, the rain drumming down, drowning out anything but the thunder.
“You know, Max told me about this thing,” Mike says, eyes fixed on the joint where he holds it up, rather than at Will. He sounds mildly nervous, obvious in the way he tries to sound casual.
“Oh?”
Mike hums, eyes flicking over to Will briefly. “It’s called shotgunning; hits harder, apparently. Wanna try?”
Will feels distinctly like he is missing an important detail, but far be it from him to question the strange leaps Mike’s brain likes to make. “Sure; show me?”
A beat, during which Mike looks like he does when he’s calculating the odds, the needed hit points and chances of the dice; just how much to give and just how much to hold back. Then he rolls over in a quick, fluid motion that Will is frankly surprised doesn’t leave him dizzy, and shuffles across the bed on his knees, a strangely determined gleam in his eyes.
It usually precedes something either amazing or crazy, and then every once in a while, both. With all that attention suddenly fixed on Will, he feels pinned; like he doesn’t actually know what he agreed to, and Mike’s about to do something—inevitable. Something that will be impossible to take back, and that’s a silly thought because all they’re doing is sharing a joint, except—
Except, Mike—with his shoulders squared and a look in his eyes that just dares Will to say something—takes Will’s sketchbook from him, swings a leg across Will’s legs, and then straddles Will’s lap. There’s no other way to put it, even as he holds himself up, even as Will’s brain is short-circuiting, even as he looks up at Mike, throat impossibly dry, and thinks that this, this is how he dies.
“Mike—“
“Trust me?” Mike says, and it clearly comes out as more of a question than he means to, but the effect is devastating, all the same. Will’s fatal flaw, after all, has always been that he trusts Mike way too much; to catch him, to find him, to stay with him. To do impossible feats of incredible unlikelihood, like being another queer kid in fucking small-town, Indiana; as if the miracle of a friendship like theirs hadn’t been enough to skew Will’s luck for years.
The point is, Will thinks, head spinning, that it’s a ridiculous question, and he plans on telling Mike so, over the rumbling thunder, the pouring rain, over the reassuring warmth of Mike’s legs pressed against Will’s, but he meets Mike’s eyes and does not get a single word out.
A part of him is still present enough to wince, somewhere in the back of his head. He’s gotten better at dealing with Mike’s—presence. Has, over the last couple of months, even come to expect the way Mike had disregarded all concept of boundaries between them, has been pushing into Will’s space as if intent to make a home there. To make him lose it before he can finish High School, no inter-dimensional horrors needed. Used to it would still be a gross exaggeration, but Will no longer flinches; no longer aches so badly, thinking that if he got to have all this—Mike’s friendship, his affection, the easy comfort between them—it really isn’t such a terrible thing not to have him in other ways, too.
But oh, Will has nothing to defend against this: Mike hovering above him, eyes hazy and cheeks flushed. Mike, looking down at him, rest of the world secondary, asking Will to trust him, please.
Finally, Will nods, realising that Mike is still waiting for an answer. He clears his throat. “So, uh, how—“
Mike nods, as if the question bolsters him. “It’s pretty simple; I’ll take a hit and exhale it into—into your mouth. You’ll take it, and we both get high. Easy.”
For all of Mike’s attempts to look smooth about this, his flush deepens with the words, his hands knotting together between them. It would be endearing if Will wasn’t simultaneously hit with the urge to run as far away from Hawkins as he could possibly get, and a want so scathing it makes his fingers burn with the urge to drag Mike closer, to fast forward whatever game they are playing here to its inevitable conclusion, find out just how badly they will crash and burn if only to get to touch the flames, just once.
“Okay,” Will says, at the same time that Mike says, “I mean, not—not touching our mouths, not kissing, just—okay?”
Will does laugh then, nerves and just Mike, familiar despite everything, making the sound spill out of him. He tips his head back and watches Mike, the way he tracks each movement. “Okay.”
It seems to settle something in Mike, because he exhales in a rush, leans forward; rests his fingertips against Will’s jaw as if it comes to him as naturally as any other touch he bestows on Will, and says, voice low and rough, “Open your mouth.”
Outside, lightning is quickly followed by crashing thunder. The rain drums down like gunfire. Will’s hands, like instinct, settle on Mike’s hips, finding warm skin through the worn fabric of his shirt.
It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, Will thinks, all static and thunder. His entire body flushes with heat when Mike takes a drag from the joint and leans in, their bodies coming together so easily now, Mike’s fingers sliding into his hair, their noses bumping.
Mike stays true to his word; their lips do not touch, even as he exhales the sharp smoke into Will’s mouth, warm and humid from Mike’s lungs, and Will—
Oh, Will wants to drown in it. Mike’s hovering close, and their mouths are not touching, and in a way, that is worse, is almost the thing that makes Will go out of his mind for good. Mike’s heavy against him, his eyes dark, and the smoke burns down Will’s throat. His pulse is loud enough in his ears that it drowns out the storm. If Mike pulls away now, he might die, and that should be a ridiculous thought, but Will thinks it might be true. The world has narrowed down to this—pouring rain, the smell of summer ending and starting over thick in the room, and Mike, Mike, Mike; his breath in Will’s lungs and his weight on Will’s legs, and his fingers pressing into Will’s neck as if to overwrite everything but his own touch for good.
Will exhales, and the smoke billows between them. His entire body feels heavy, overly aware of all the points where Mike is touching him. Mike doesn’t move away, his fingers pressing a little more firmly against Will’s jaw, thumb tracing the underside. “Another?”
Will’s pretty sure that he has never been this high before, and he can’t even tell if it’s due to Mike or the weed. Probably both, and whatever it is has left his mental faculties behind long ago, and so he merely dips his chin in agreement. Watches as Mike smokes what is left of the joint down to the filter and holds the smoke, putting out the joint carelessly before leaning in. He slides his other hand around Will’s jaw, too, presses close; tips Will’s head back with gentle hands, and then exhales into Will’s mouth a second time, breath hot and intimate.
Mike pulls away only far enough to look at Will. It still isn’t close enough, and Will wants—he wants. Wants Mike to climb right inside of him, make a bright, burning home in the cavity of his chest as the smoke is doing. Wants him to never leave, wants to never think about extricating Mike again, only to find himself choking to death.
“Was it true?” Mike asks, apropos of nothing.
Will blinks. He thinks he should be more shocked by whatever it is Mike is doing here, but then, he isn’t entirely oblivious. There are only so many explanations for Mike’s behaviour these last couple of months, and, in a strange way, this just feels like something they have been on a collision course for, for a while.
“Was what true?”
“That you—that you moved on. That you are over me. It was me, right?”
And despite the direction of Will’s current thoughts, that still catches him off guard. His brain works slow, thoughts sluggish. He drops his hands from Mike’s hips to his legs, which is a mistake. His shorts have ridden up with the way he’s straddling Will, and Will finds his fingers on the naked skin of Mike’s thighs.
They both inhale sharply, the sound loud in the room.
“Was it?” Mike murmurs, and he’s leaning in close again, their noses brushing.
Will’s fingers push up until he finds the seams of Mike’s shorts, fingertips sliding under the fabric just a little. He feels too hot in his skin, and he should do something, say something profound. Something that matters.
Instead, his body seems to switch to instinct, and when Mike’s breath fans hot across his mouth, he pushes his hands up, up, until he finds Mike’s waist; wraps his arms around him and pulls him against himself until they are pressed together, chest to chest, Will’s face now conveniently buried in Mike’s neck.
It takes him a moment to realise that they’re pressed flush together now, that he’s hard, and so is Mike, but once he does, he makes a punched-out kind of noise, pulling away to look at Mike.
He has no idea what he would have said. Is kind of glad, in retrospect, that he doesn’t find out, because Mike is looking at him with his eyes blown wide and his lips bitten red, and says, voice rough and plaintive, “Please don’t be in love with someone else.”
It’s such a ludicrous notion that Will laughs when he pulls him down to kiss him, at last; that it bridges the gap between his cowardice and his want, just enough for that last bit of space between them to finally, finally break away.
For the briefest moment, they hover there, frozen, mouths pressed together clumsily. Then Mike inhales, the force of it rattling through his chest; then his fingers tighten in Will’s hair, not harshly but just enough for pressure; then he parts his mouth and angles Will’s head the way he wants it, and it’s—
Will has thought about this moment, this pipe dream, this impossible thing so often, he thought that if it ever did happen, he would be prepared.
He isn’t. Mike kisses him open-mouthed and with intent, his hands in Will’s hair, on his face, his back, his chest. They are rocking against each other, a slow, steady roll of their hips that Will feels all the way down his spine; feels it deep in his chest, the way it terribly feels like coming home.
The weed buzzes underneath his skin, and every touch of Mike’s is a revelation.
Will could get lost in this if he let himself, but he has learnt a thing or two about self-preservation, these last few years. It takes all his self-control, but he does break the kiss, pulls back to look up at Mike.
That alone is almost enough to break him; Mike’s flushed, his eyes glazed, his hair a mess. Will has never wanted to kiss him more, and supposedly, he can now, and—
“So, are you?” Mike asks, when Will doesn’t speak. Will stares. “Over me.”
“What do you think, Mike?” he gets out, smiling helplessly. He gestures between them, the mess of them; it unravels something bright inside of him, the way they are both so clearly on the edge of shaking apart. Same page—lately, he and Mike keep finding themselves on it all over again, and perhaps, Will thinks, leaning his forehead to Mike’s jaw, that does mean something, after all.
“Good,” Mike laughs, relieved and pleased all at once. “Because I’m kind of ridiculously, stupidly in love with you, and it would’ve really sucked if I had misread this.”
No matter with how much conviction he says it, it is hard for him to say, Will can tell. The fact that part of Mike doesn’t even seem to have believed that he had a chance—Will is kind of bowled over by the sheer, tenacious bravery of it.
“I’m kind of ridiculously, stupidly in love with you too, as it turns out, so I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Will says, stretching to press a kiss to the corner of Mike’s mouth. It’s an insane feeling, bubbly and bright in his chest, that he gets to do this. “In fact, I’ve kind of come to accept that it’s terminal, or whatever. So, I just—you have to be sure, Mike. I need you to be sure.”
Mike hums, pulls away a little. His expression is serious, marked by the small crease between his brows that he gets whenever he gives something conscious, deliberate thought. He is still holding Will’s head gently; tilts it now, left to right, his eyes roaming over Will’s face.
It feels strangely exposing; intimate, but not in a bad way. Will digs his fingers into Mike’s waist and lets him think it through.
At last, Mike leans in and presses a brief, chaste kiss to Will’s forehead. “I may only be seventeen, and I may, one might say, be an idiot half of the time. I haven’t fully figured out what I want to do with my life, now that the world supposedly is no longer ending, and it may have taken me a stupidly long time to figure this out. And honestly, you definitely deserve better, but—“
“Mike—“
“But despite all of that,” Mike continues, undeterred. His eyes are intense, but there is a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It makes him look boyish and hopeful, and Will loves him so much that he knows, he knows, one day it will kill him. “I’m sure, more than about anything else in my life, that I want to wake up next to your stupidly perfect face for just, oh, the rest of my life. I’m sure, Will, okay? I’m sure.”
Will isn’t even surprised when there are tears springing to his eyes, his throat closing up. “I cannot stand you,” he chokes out, and Mike laughs, and then they’re kissing again, lazy and messy, as if they have all the time in the world.
Outside, the storm has moved on, the rain now a slow drizzle. The future unspools ahead of them, and Mike is kissing him, and kissing him, and kissing him, and for the first time in years, Will feels not a single shiver of dread beneath his skin.