Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Brown University Lovecraft Society, or BULS, as insiders call it, concludes its final meeting before Thanksgiving break with a rousing discussion about whether Thanksgiving is terrible, H. P. Lovecraft is terrible, and each member of the club is somewhat complicit in that convergence of terribleness. On the affirmative side is Gina, club secretary and junior Philosophy major; on the negative side is Monty, club treasurer and sophomore English major.

Mike watches the discussion like a tennis match: fervently and with absolutely no understanding of the governing rules. Pretty much every meeting ends like this. He’s still not 100% sure what everyone is talking about, or whether they’re fighting, or if Gina is actually suggesting the club disband. It all inevitably ends with everyone agreeing to see each other at the next meeting. Gina and Monty, who are dating, usually leave together, fingers intertwined. Tonight is no exception.

As everyone trickles back to their residence halls, Mike shoulders his backpack and waits for his roommate, Jeremy. He’d initially distrusted Jeremy, who was at Brown on a track scholarship and had already hung athletic medals on their shared wall when Mike moved in, but now Mike feels more grateful for him every day.

A sandy-haired, tan transplant from New Mexico, Jeremy is well-liked rather than popular, the kind of guy who’s so unflinchingly nice that it’s impossible to feel alienated around him. Though he’s athletic and, at least in Mike’s opinion, perfectly nice-looking, he prefers the company of nerds and intellectuals. At first, Mike had warily believed this was somehow for his benefit — that he was a social charity case. When Jeremy engaged him in a gleeful conversation on Tolkein as he unpacked his bookshelf, he had finally unclenched.

Now, Jeremy ambles over to him, easy as anything, Cate from English 110 at his heels. Cate is sweet, small and blonde and Minnesotan. So Minnesotan that Mike could tell upon meeting her. She tries to sit next to Mike — specifically Mike — in class most days, which makes him nervous. He’s trying not to read into it.

“Lively one today, huh?” Jeremy asks, clapping one hand on Mike’s shoulder as they head for the lecture hall’s main exit.

Mike snorts. “Always,” he answers, projecting confidence so that Jeremy won’t be able to tell that he had no idea what was happening.

As the three of them walk back to Mike and Jeremy’s rez hall — and Mike tries not to think too hard about why Cate is following them, since she doesn’t even live in Andrews — they chatter about class and their ever-approaching finals, whether their Intro English professor will accept Mike’s paper proposal on the development of hero narratives in comic books from the mid-20th century.

They approach Andrews, and Cate is still very much there, so Mike and Jeremy turn to her. Mike tries not to scowl, because Cate is very nice and hasn’t even done anything wrong, aside from confuse him.

“What’s up, Cate?” Jeremy asks, perfectly upbeat. He’s so nice, Mike thinks. Someone should do experiments on him.

“Sorry, I was just, um. I’ve been meaning to ask Mike—” She turns to face him head on, and Mike abruptly worries that he’s going to throw up. “When we’re back from break, would you want to maybe, I don’t know, go to a movie sometime?”

Mike looks down at her — because again, she is small — and does his best to will away the violent blush taking over his face. Cate is pretty in a Swedish sort of way, all big blue eyes and wispy, white-blonde hair. She’s smart but unpretentious and always listens intently when Mike blathers on. She is the first girl who’s ever asked Mike out — something he had, in the not too distant past, been terrified would never happen.

And Mike just stands there, feeling like his dining hall dinner is about to crawl back up his esophagus.

Jeremy, Saint Jeremy, nudges him with an elbow. “He’s kind of private about it, but Mike actually has someone back home.”

Mike turns his head to look at Jeremy, expecting a knowing smile or the hint of a wink. But Jeremy actually looks sincere, which makes Mike’s eyebrows sink down, almost to the top of his nose.

“Will, right?” Jeremy supplies, forever trying to be helpful. “He’s at CalArts?”

Mike’s stomach does some complex, Olympic-level gymnastics move. “Yeah,” he answers, shell-shocked, and then shuts his mouth so hard his teeth click. He meant that as in, Yeah, Will goes to CalArts, but now two people who go to college with him, one of whom he lives with, are going to think he meant it as in, Yeah, I’m dating Will.

“Oh!” Cate says, sounding surprised and weirdly charmed.

Jeremy throws an arm around Mike’s shoulder. “They call each other every week. It’s really sweet.”

Mike wonders if it’s possible for his natural blush to escalate to maroon. Yes, he and Will do have a set day and time to talk on the phone weekly. Yes, the calls often go longer than an hour. Yes, sometimes they happen more than once a week.

No, they’re not dating.

Mike has assumed Jeremy not sweating their room phone being tied up so often was just a byproduct of his general unflappability. But apparently he’d thought… Mike chokes a little bit on nothing.

Jeremy and Cate don’t notice, because now Jeremy is trying to set Cate up with some guy he knows, because of course Jeremy is determined to find her love anyway. Mike makes some lame excuse about homework and ducks into the building. He needs to flop down moodily on his bed, stat.

Whoever designs dorm room beds was obviously prejudiced against tall people, though, a fact Mike still forgets after just two months in college. His ankles dangle over the bottom edge of the mattress as he flings himself onto his rumpled, navy blue sheets. He stares very hard at the ceiling, where a green sticky hand still dangles precariously, courtesy of orientation week.

He’s not dating Will, and a few months ago he would have just told Jeremy that that’s because he’s not like that. But now… Now, Mike has met people from all sorts of places. He’s in two theater classes. He’s compared his own experiences growing up with other people’s — the normal stuff, not the alternate dimension monster stuff — and thought about his life a lot. And so far the verdict is, there’s a distinct possibility that he’s actually not not like that.

Which apparently Jeremy had picked up on, telepathically, or something. Because Mike is pretty sure he doesn’t talk to Will any differently than he does any of his other friends. He’s just more consistent with him, and, yeah, closer. They’re best friends. He remembers how badly he’d messed up their friendship the first time Will moved to California, and he wants this time to be different.

Except lately, Mike has had this weird feeling about the calls with Will. It’s a little like how he feels before he’s about to take a big test in a subject he’s not particularly good at. His chest does this weird, tight, fluttery thing, and he usually ends up calling Will at, like, 8:58 instead of 9 p.m.

And then Will answers, and everything is normal and nice and okay, and Mike forgets he ever had any of those feelings in the first place. It’s fine. Everything is great, as long as Mike doesn’t think too hard.

And as long as his roommate doesn’t speak again, ever.

Those hopes are quickly dashed as Jeremy returns to their room. Mike flips over and faces the wall as soon as he hears the door opening, feigning sleep. Of course, the lights and Mike’s shoes are still on, so Jeremy attempts to engage with him anyway.

“Hey, man, you okay?” Jeremy asks, almost whisper-quiet, reminding Mike why it’s so annoyingly impossible to be mad at him. He tries anyway, tamping down his reflexive I’m fine.

“I didn’t think it was, like, a secret, or anything,” Jeremy continues. “If I did, I promise I never would have said anything. I can ask Cate to pretend it never happened.”

He’s so sincere that Mike almost wants to put him out of his misery. Almost.

Instead, he stares at the wall next to his bed, at the yellow thumbtack stuck into a drawing of Mike’s house that Will had given him that summer. He waits for Jeremy to give up and turn off the lights. And then he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling again.

He tries not to think, but he inevitably does, because the truth of his and Will’s relationship is far less adorable than Jeremy assumes. The reality is that he’s going to go home tomorrow and see Will and all the rest of their friends, and they’re going to have their belated Halloween party, and Mike is going to have to act completely normal. Dustin and Lucas are going to talk to him about girls, and he’s going to have to pretend he doesn’t see Will politely avoid their conversation. He’s going to have to pretend he doesn’t want to leave the conversation himself.

Mike is going to make a total idiot out of himself, because he doesn’t even know who himself is anymore, not really, and he’s pretty sure other kids had more time to think about this stuff way before college, because they weren’t busy attending fake funerals or running from the government or stopping the literal apocalypse. Sometimes he’ll see something that reminds him of those years, even all the way over here in Providence, and it’ll stop him dead. Some girl wore a black bandana to class in October and he’d nearly burst into tears, because the thing they don’t tell you about saving the world is that you never have time to mourn everyone you couldn’t save.

And you don’t have time to figure yourself out, or at least Mike hadn’t, because he’s only been away from Hawkins since August and he’s already questioning everything. Like, is he really interested in girls, or just in love with the idea of being liked? Why did he cling so hard to El after Will’s disappearance? Why does he feel some losses so much more deeply than others? Is his fascination with superheroes strictly platonic?

Why does Jeremy think he and Will are dating?

Mike squeezes his eyes shut so hard that he sees little bursts of color in all the black. He wants to power his brain off like a computer. His flight home tomorrow is at the crack of dawn.

He toes his shoes off and curls up under his covers, his brain still very much on. He writes a new campaign in his head to tire himself out, distracting his spinning thoughts with orcs and cursed objects and an unforeseen political coup.

He works hardest of all to try and forget that when Jeremy had first told Cate that he was dating Will, his very first, totally compulsive thought had been I wish.

Chapter Text

Party Halloween is scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving, before they all start making their way back to college. It had been Max’s idea, although Mike has sworn to Lucas — spit-shake sworn — that he will never reveal that he knows this.

Halloween had become a real thing for them in high school, something about the cooling weather and their shared, alienating knowledge of unfathomable horrors drawing them closer together like a skittish pack of wolves. It’s nice that they all still want to keep up the tradition, albeit belatedly, in college. Mike is mostly happy they’re doing this. He’s usually thrilled by any opportunity to pile into a house with all of his oldest, dearest friends. It’s just that, as of a few days ago, thinking about one of said friends now makes him trip over his own shoes or lose track of a conversation that he is actively having.

He’d thought a lot about it on the plane back home, that weird thought he’d had. I wish. By the time he’d touched down, he hadn’t been any closer to figuring out where it came from or what it meant. He’d resolved to simply stop thinking about it.

This is how Mike deals with most things that confuse or upset him. When he was 16, his government-appointed therapist had called it compartmentalizing. Mike calls it not burdening your friends and family with all the stupid shit in your head when they’ve all already survived the end of the fucking world.

The Wheelers had a big Thanksgiving this year — aunts and uncles, grandparents, the whole nine. Mike’s mom had gotten teary-eyed over dinner, looking at him and Nancy and saying she was so grateful to have her babies back. Their extended family had cooed in agreement, and Mike had looked askance at Holly, like he was that kid from The Sixth Sense and she was Bruce Willis.

Because of all the hubbub, he hasn’t seen Will at all yet, which makes him feel a little insane. As he gets ready for the party with Lucas and Max over at the Sinclairs’, he knows he’s being weirder than usual. He keeps bringing up Will without meaning to.

He emerges from the guest bathroom in his gray suit, his hair pulled into a ponytail to make it look as though he’s cut it short. Lucas and Max clap, and he does a self-conscious spin. Max’s seeing-eye dog, Rex, wags his little nub of a tail.

“Isn’t that suit supposed to be, like, twice as big?” Lucas asks, stooping over to readjust the white ears and fake sunglasses they’ve tied around Rex’s head.

Mike rolls his eyes. “I’m him in the first part of the movie,” he says, for what will undoubtedly be the first of many times tonight. “Will’s probably the only one who’ll get it.”

Max taps Lucas on the arm, and he glances at her knowingly. Mike frowns, feeling left out. “I thought Will didn’t like the Talking Heads,” Max says.

“First of all, it’s just Talking Heads, not the Talking Heads,” Mike corrects. Max sticks her tongue out at him. “Second of all, Will is definitely still the only one of you who’s watched Stop Making Sense.”

Max adjusts her paper-mache tail. “Yeah, because you badgered him into it.”

A cool upperclassman from Mike’s acting class had screened the film earlier in the year, and Mike had thought of nothing else for almost the entire month. He’d talked to all his friends about it — and, yeah, asked them to watch it, too, so they would know what the hell he was prattling on about. 

“I did not badger him into it,” Mike says truthfully. Will had watched it right after Mike’s first enthusiastic phone call. Thinking about their phone calls makes Mike’s brain skip a couple steps, and suddenly, without his permission, he finds himself saying, “Did you know my college friends think we’re dating?”

Lucas and Max have another wordless exchange, and Lucas sits down on the guest bed, patting the space next to himself. Mike sits down, and Lucas throws an arm around him. “You’re talking about Will a lot tonight, bud,” he says.

Mike is more than a little worried that Max and Lucas are about to give him some sort of birds-and-the-bees talk. “Am I?”

“You are,” Max confirms flatly. Her arms are crossed. Mike looks between the two of them, realizing that this is maybe more like good cop/bad cop.

Mike gives an exaggerated shrug. “Jeremy just said that to me before I left, the dating thing, and it’s like, I don’t know.” He turns to Max, then Lucas. “It’s weird, right?”

Lucas regards him thoughtfully. “Now, when you say ‘weird’...”

“I mean 'not normal, strange,'” Mike retorts, exasperated.

“And you and Will dating would be strange because…” Lucas prompts, still maddeningly placid.

Mike sits there and tries very hard to come up with a reason that won’t sound pathetic or like a blatant lie. The only thing he can come up with is because Will doesn’t want to date me, which he thinks is perhaps the most pathetic, truest reason of all.

After an extended silence, Max clears her throat. “Anyway, Mike, do all of us a favor, especially Will, and keep that shit to yourself tonight.”

Mike jerks his head back, as if she’d just slapped him. “What? Why?”

Max scrunches her mouth up, like she’s physically trying to stop herself from answering him. Lucas squeezes Mike’s shoulder reassuringly, but the gesture only makes Mike feel more alarmed.

“Will,” Max begins, and Mike’s anxious brain fills in a million horrifying possibilities. Has cancer. Wants nothing to do with you anymore. Is bringing his new boyfriend to Party Halloween. “Will had this, like, massive, terrible crush on you when we were 15,” Max says instead. “And it took him forever to get over it, and it was just, like, sad, okay?” She adjusts her sunglasses. Next to Mike, Lucas nods. “Don’t make us go back there.”

Mike is dumbstruck. Before he gets the chance to ask a helpless, “What?” Lucas claps him on the shoulder again, and suddenly they’re hustling out the door.

The party is at Will and El’s house. They’re just two streets over from Mike and Lucas now, but Mike drives anyway, for Max’s sake. Rex sits perched next to her in the backseat like a gargoyle.

The U.S. government had thrown a lot of hush money at all of them after everything, and Joyce and Hopper had put some of it towards a five-bedroom on the nicer side of town. As the adults who’ve seen the most shit, they are the de facto cool parents. They’ve hosted Party Halloween at their place — i.e., planned a date night and left the house to Will and El — since the kids were in high school.

Mike smiles as he rolls into the driveway. El always goes all-out with decor, and that’s still the case tonight, even in November. Fake cobwebs encase most of the front of the house, and the porch swing has been taken over by three little bedsheet-draped ghosts. Orange lights lead the way up to the front door. Three jack-o-lanterns guard the porch steps, and Mike can immediately tell who carved which. The sloppiest, smiliest one must be El’s; a clunky but traditional design has all the hallmarks of Joyce. The detailed Nosferatu silhouette lording over the top step is no doubt a Will Byers original. Mike gets this weird feeling in his chest when he sees it, sort of like he has to cough.

If Max thought she’d been helping Mike’s Will obsession by dropping that bomb on him back at Lucas’s house, she was sorely mistaken. As they lope up to the house, Mike nearly drops the six-pack of Budweiser he’s carrying at least three times. Each time he relives Max’s revelation — massive, terrible crush on you, took him forever to get over it — he completely forgets how to walk.

It’s a good thing Lucas has already yanked the beer out of his hands when Will answers the door.

It’s hard enough that Mike has to see him at all after all this, but Will is dressed in a gauzy, drapey, sleveless tunic sort of thing that dips low under his neck and stops just above his knees. He’s a little tan, and Mike thinks he sees even more little moles on his arms and neck than he had before. Will had cut his hair short at the end of summer, but it’s starting to grow out again, curling slightly where it meets the back of his neck and his ears. Will has a small, gold ring in his right ear now, Mike notices.

That odd feeling flares up in his chest again. He forces a cough into his elbow, but it doesn’t go away.

They all exchange hellos and hugs and Will explains his costume — something about a Pre-Raphaelite painting that Mike barely catches because he’s too busy worrying whether or not he’d hugged Will normally enough. Will compliments Mike’s costume and he snaps out of it, smiling. He thanks Will and turns to flick Lucas on the forehead.

“Three blind mice!” El calls, laughing, as she emerges from her room, dragging her boyfriend behind her.

Lucas and Max wave, and Lucas tries to adjust Rex’s headpiece again before El takes a picture. Mike remembers that she’s in the throes of an obsession with Little Women — the Katharine Hepburn movie, not the book — and guesses that she’s dressed as Jo. Her boyfriend, a guy named Paul who she’d met at her grocery store job (and who, Mike thinks, does actually look quite a bit like Ralph Macchio, as described) must be Laurie. Mike admires their costumes, and El tells him that she knew he would get it, “since Little Women was a book first.” He laughs and drags her under his shoulder in a one-armed hug, realizing just how much he missed her.

El has a Ouija board set up in the sitting room and tarot cards in the dining room. Will controls the music from the sitting room in between. Mike brings him a cup of soda and leans back against the low wall separating them from the kitchen. They make easy conversation as Will riffles through his tapes. Lucas and Max grab drinks and then go to have their fortunes told. Uncannily, Max looks almost directly at Mike, one eyebrow raised, as they leave the kitchen.

Of course, almost as soon as he and Will are alone, it comes flying out of Mike’s mouth. “My friends at college think we’re dating.”

A little bit of Sprite comes out of Will’s nose, and Mike winces. “They— us?” Will recovers, after a moment of spluttering. He gestures between the two of them with one frantic pointer finger. “You and me, us?”

Mike shrugs, wide-eyed, beer sloshing dangerously in his bottle as he flails. “My roommate just…assumed. He said the way we schedule our phone calls is ‘sweet’” he recounts, punctuating the last term with air quotes.

“Well.” Will says it like a sentence, with absolutely no inflection. He’s staring somewhere over Mike’s right shoulder, looking more than a little shell-shocked. He clears his throat again, probably still fighting off Sprite-induced coughing spasms. “Um, that’s, you know.”

Mike very much does not know. It’s…crazy? Impossible? Retraumatizing? Actually not a bad idea?

“I mean, even if— you’re not even…” Will adds coherently, gesturing at Mike as a whole.

Mike, still not getting it, shakes his head. “Not even…?”

“You know, into…” Will looks at him meaningfully, and the unspoken word pops into Mike’s brain.

Guys.

The creepy bells from the Suspiria soundtrack start playing, as if the universe is acknowledging just how mortifying this is. “Oh. I mean.” Mike takes a sip of his beer in an attempt to hide his face. “I don’t know.”

Will goes somehow even more rigid. “Oh.” La la la la la la la, croaks the Suspiria theme.

Dustin chooses this exact moment to bulldoze into their space. “Weed brownie?” he offers, showing each of them the sheet pan in turn. His crazy white wig tickles Mike’s nose. Mike has no idea when Dustin even got here. Has he been here the whole time?

They shake their heads simultaneously, Will murmuring a “No, thanks.” 

Dustin tears off a chunk of brownie and pops it into his mouth. He seems content to just, like, join their conversation, king of social cues that he is, so Mike does his best to tell him to fuck off using only his eyes.

Blessedly, just as Dustin starts to ask what they’re talking about, Lucas calls his name from the dining room.

“RIGHT-O, MY LIEGE!” Dustin bellows. Will catches him by the elbow before he strides off and grabs some brownie for himself. Dustin bows dramatically to both of them, and they bob their heads in return.

“Kind of weird to hear fantasy-speak coming out of Einstein’s mouth,” Mike muses, watching Dustin’s retreat.

Will snorts. Either his piece of brownie has magically disappeared or he’s already eaten it, which — Mike’s never seen Will Byers partake in mind-altering substances even once in their 19 years of life. He tries not to read into it.

“I don’t want to be mean, but isn’t Einstein kind of obvious?” Will asks. “You think he’d dress up as some totally obscure scientist and then lecture all of us about who it is.”

Mike grins. “I love that that’s your idea of being mean to Dustin,” he replies. And, yeah, okay, he can hear the fondness dripping from his own voice, can picture it sounding the exact same way when he picks up the phone on Saturdays with a, “Hi, Will.” He maybe gets where Jeremy was coming from.

“I just feel like he’s always doing his best,” Will says, shrugging. Mike feels that fluttery thing in his chest again and hopes to god Will cannot tell. “Anyway,” Will adds, taking a careful sip of soda, “you were saying?”

“I was…” Mike starts, trying to remember where they’d left off. 

His latent attraction to men. Right.

“Um,” he starts eloquently, then clears his throat. “There’s like, a lot of gay people at Brown, actually, as it happens, so, you know.” Will looks at him, uncomprehending. “I just, like, made some gay friends and ended up talking to them about like, life, and whatever. Family. Relationships.” He says that last word in a weird little voice, hoping to defuse the tension. No vulnerability happening over here, nope, don’t worry about it. “Turns out we ended up relating to each other more than I thought we would.”

Will’s just staring at him, wide-eyed. Mike works dutifully to look him in the eye — not at his clavicles, or at the mole on the right side of his neck.

“Relating to each other how?” Will prompts.

“I don’t know.” Mike shrugs. His palms have begun to sweat. This is the first time he’s articulated this to anyone. “Like, thinking you’re obsessed with a male character in a nerd way and not a — gay way, but then realizing it’s actually both.”

The world doesn’t stop spinning on its axis. Will just nods, like he gets it, and says, “Han Solo.”

Mike thinks about the Halloween costume he wore almost four years in a row during elementary school, and his throat goes a little dry. “I’m more of a Luke guy,” he says with a relieved laugh. “But yeah.”

Mike looks at Will, and something he can’t quite name passes between them. Now that he thinks about it, hadn’t Will dressed up as Luke for all those Halloweens?

Will turns to lower the volume a little bit as the strings from Psycho kick in. “So then your friends are just wrong because we’d make a terrible couple,” he says when he turns back, still not quite facing Mike.

Mike frowns. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, think about it,” Will says with a shrug, like this is the first time he’s ever entertained the idea. “Neither of us really has any relationship experience. I’m a dog person and you’re allergic. I’m a light sleeper and you snore. You’re messy but also weirdly particular about your space. We live on opposite sides of the country.” He takes a deep breath and adds, matter-of-factly: “And we obviously wouldn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

“I—” Mike starts, feeling more wounded than is probably appropriate for a hypothetical rejection. “I could take Benadryl,” he replies indignantly. “For the dog.”

Will smirks like he’s trying to tamp down a laugh. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Mike parrots, scowling. He has no idea what’s going on anymore.

They talk about something else until Mike’s heart rate goes back to normal, and then he stumbles off to join the tarot room. El is explaining a series of cards to Max as Paul looks on admiringly. Mike wonders if he ever looked at El like that, and feels awful that he can’t remember.

Eventually, he sits in front of El, legs crossed, and pulls cards that she says will represent his past, present, and future. She flips over the first card to reveal a woman blindfolded and holding two gigantic swords. The second card is called “The Tower,” and it shows two people leaping out of a building that is simultaneously being struck by lightning, catching on fire, and getting covered in ice. Mike can feel his face flushing when El turns the card over and says, “Oh.” He suddenly regrets asking her to tell him his fortune.

The last card, called “The Lovers,” depicts a naked man and woman standing on either side of an angelic figure in the sky. “Oh,” El says again, this time grinning, and Mike’s stomach lurches forebodingly.

He mumbles something about needing some air and makes for the bathroom, where he does not need to barf but definitely does need to sit on the toilet for a little bit with his head in his hands. The last several days of his life have been incredibly confusing, and he feels like he’s being pushed right up to the edge of something. He can’t tell whether it’s a new horizon or a steep, sharp cliff.

He does know that, for a guy who apparently couldn’t get over him just a few years ago, Will seems pretty happy not to date him now. He’s surprised at how much that gets to him, makes him feel like he’s walking around without a layer of skin. He hasn’t felt this way since Will and El moved to California, or Will went missing. And that realization only makes him feel annoyed at himself, because it doesn’t make any sense, because Will is here, and everything is fine.

He uses that mantra as a cudgel, hoping that if he beats himself with it enough he’ll believe it: Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.

Fresh air still sounds like a good idea, so he wanders out to the back porch. Of course Will is there, his bare feet on the second-to-last step, with a half-smoked Marlboro between his fingers.

Weirdly, seeing him doesn’t make Mike’s panic worse. He suddenly, inexplicably feels like everything might be fine.

“So that’s still a thing,” Mike observes, standing on the top two porch steps and leaning back against the wooden handrail. “What, you haven’t experienced enough mortality already?”

Will looks up at him and rolls his eyes, one side of his mouth quirking up despite himself. “If I let you bum one, will you stop lecturing me?”

Mike stretches his left hand out for the pack and pulls out a cigarette. Menthol floods his nose, and a wave of longing follows right behind. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed this smell. How much it reminds him of Will.

“Light?” he asks, handing the pack back and trying not to look Will in the eye.

Will pats his hips. “Shit,” he says. “I think I lent it to Jonathan before he left.”

“Oh,” Mike replies. “That’s okay, we can just…” He sits down on the steps, facing Will. He looks at Will’s costume again and lets out a confused little laugh. “Where were you even…?”

Will looks down at himself, then looks back up. He shrugs. “I had it in the waistband of my boxers,” he says. He looks sort of flushed, Mike thinks, but he’s probably just making that up.

Determined against all odds not to think about that , Mike latches on to the next thing that enters his head. “Do you really not even have a coat?” he asks. “Aren’t you freezing?”

“I’m fine,” Will tells him, a little bit exasperated and a lot affectionate. “Do you want a light or not?” he asks, gesturing with his own, very short, cigarette. “This thing is almost out.”

“Oh.” Mike swallows and hopes Will can’t hear his throat click. “Sure.”

They lean in towards each other, cigarettes between their fingertips. It’s not like Mike hasn’t seen people do this before — it’s just what you do when nobody has a lighter. He’s sure Will does it all the time with his cool artist friends. But he has to concentrate very hard to keep his hand from shaking.

Will’s almost smoked his cigarette down to the filter by now, so Mike has to lean in a fraction more. Will seems focused on the task at hand, but Mike has never been more aware of his proximity to another person. Their noses are centimeters away. A light breeze ruffles Will’s hair, and he cups his hands in between their faces to keep it from extinguishing their cigarettes. His left pinky is a whisper away from Mike’s cheekbone. Mike thinks about plucking the cigarette out of Will’s mouth, about tilting his head just a little bit to the left and closing the distance between them, about other, more salubrious ways to get the taste of menthol on his tongue. He thinks about the fact that he’s thinking about that, and then he’s thinking about it so hard that surely Will must know, but he drags his eye’s up from Will’s mouth and Will only raises his eyebrows at him, inhaling and signaling that Mike should do the same. It’s a miracle he’s even able to summon the oxygen necessary to breathe in and steal some of the heat from the cherry of Will’s cigarette.

The whole process probably takes thirty seconds, but it easily shaves five years off of Mike’s life. He takes his first drag and coughs, leaning back and angling away from Will so he doesn’t blow a bunch of smoke right in his face.

“Oh, man,” Will says, and he’s laughing at him, but he’s also rubbing his back. “Do you ever do this when you’re not with me?”

Mike is far too proud to tell him the truth, which is no, so he changes the subject. “When’s your flight tomorrow?”

Will ashes his cigarettes on the steps. “Like, ten. So glad it’s not a red-eye.”

Mike nods, trying to look like he’s sharing in Will’s relief instead of fighting the urge to slash all of the Byers-Hoppers’ tires. He glances at his watch. “Well, that’s officially in…less than twelve hours.” He wipes his hands on his pants and stands up, flicking the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Do you wanna go somewhere?”

Will looks up at him. Mike wants to brush the hair out of his eyes. He thinks maybe a lot has happened between the bathroom and right now without him even knowing it. He expects Will to ask where they’re going, maybe even bicker with him. Will just says, “Sure.”

Mike takes another drag from his cigarette and then hands it to Will, who smiles and follows his long strides to the driveway.

Chapter Text

There’s nothing playing at the drive-in, because it’s nearly 11 p.m. and late November, but Mike pulls into the perfect spot anyway: penultimate row, center. He leaves the car on to keep the heat running and the radio going. The former is for Will’s benefit, but the latter is for his. His car is automatically programmed to the local Top 40 station, and Will hasn’t stopped bitching about it since Mike turned the key in the ignition.

Mike takes his hair down, combing it out with his fingers, and the starting strains of “Look Away” by Chicago seep out of the speakers. Will snorts derisively. “God, this song is inescapable, ” he groans. 

Mike is pretty sure he can see him muttering along to the lyrics under his breath in the side mirror, though. He’s about to make fun of Will, but then he catches the lyrics at the end of the first verse: And from what you said, I know you’ve gotten over me. It’ll never be the way it used to be.  

Suddenly, the situation feels a lot less funny. Mike reaches out to punch the preset button for Will’s go-to station, where they’ll undoubtedly be playing something he’s never heard before.

He regrets this immediately when he’s met with “Lovesong” by The Cure.

“Oh, shit,” Will says, beaming. “I love this song.” 

Mike wants to shake him and scream, “I know! This is your favorite band! It’s from their eighth album!” As if that will prove he deserves to be sitting with Will, alone, in this car.

Instead, Mike watches Will lean back in his seat and close his eyes, like he’s listening to a prayer. He pretends to play the drums, foot tapping an invisible bass drum pedal and all, and Mike just smiles at him like an idiot. He considers calling Will a dork, but he’s worried it will come out sounding flirtatious. He wonders, alarmed, if every other time he’d ever called Will a dork he had, in fact, been flirting with him. Some distant part of him is keenly aware that once Max finds out they left together, she is going to lose her shit.

And then the chorus of the song kicks in, and Mike’s heart abruptly feels like it’s going to fall out of his ass.

However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you…

All at once, everything falls into place. Mike gets it — everything he’s been ignoring or puzzling over or picking at all week like loose thread. Every errant thought or foreign feeling. He sees it all clearly for the very first time.

He also understands why his brain protected him from these truths for so long, because the reality of everything is, objectively, very bad.

Will glances up during the interlude, and Mike must look truly terrible, because he immediately turns the radio volume down and asks, “What? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, sorry,” Mike says, his voice muffled as he drags his hands over his face. “Just— tired.”

“Okay,” Will says, though he’s clearly not buying it. “We could go home?”

“No,” Mike tells him, but he says it too urgently, so Will just looks bewildered, like Mike is acting like a basket case. Which is fair, Mike guesses, because he is. He drops his head onto the steering wheel in an attempt to catch his breath, but that just sets off the horn, which makes him jump about a mile out of his skin.

“Oh my god,” Will laughs, one hand on Mike’s shoulder. “I haven’t seen you like this since Brown put you on the waitlist.” This is, of course, exactly the sort of thing Mike wants to be reminded of right now. “What’s going on?”

Mike very reluctantly takes his hands from his face and tucks some hair behind his ear so that he can look at Will from the corner of his eye. Even from that vantage point, he can tell that Will is as much endeared to him as he is bemused by him, and he can tell that it’s adorable. He’d started this night very confused by the idea that he might want to date Will, and now here he is, thinking that Will is adorable. Everything is terrible.

“Everything is terrible,” he groans, slumping back in his seat.

“Oh, okay,” Will says affably. “Well, if that’s all.”

Mike exhales, sharp and sudden, like the breath’s been punched out of him. “I ruined everything, and I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

He didn’t know he was going to say that, and now that it’s out there, he wishes he could stuff it back inside himself. It’s a little too ugly. A little too true. Suddenly it’s as if all the levity has been sucked right out of the car. He’s mortified to feel tears building behind his eyes.

“Woah, hey.” Will squeezes his shoulder. Mike slams his eyes shut so that Will can’t see how shiny they are, but he can feel him moving closer, leaning toward him over the gearshift.

“I don’t know if maybe I missed something, but I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Will says. It’s the kindest way someone could possibly tell Mike that he is insane. Will’s thumb presses into Mike’s collarbone, and Mike selfishly hopes it leaves a bruise.

“No, it’s nothing.” Mike shakes his head, rolling it from side to side. “I'm sorry. I’m just being stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Will tells him softly, and unfortunately that does actually make Mike start to cry a little.

“No, I am,” he says, swiping under his eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s fine, it’s not— I’ll get over it.”

Just like you did, his brain supplies helpfully.

“Is it something to do with your dad?” Will asks. “Did you tell him you’re not going to declare Econ?”

And Mike laughs somewhat hysterically at that. Was that really his biggest problem just a few days ago, the last time they’d talked? He can’t remember a world in which the most stressful thing in his life wasn’t this, The Cure forcing him to realize that he’s stupidly in love with his best friend and probably has been for years. That he’d spent said years a) not seeing this and b) dating the guy’s sister.

“No,” he tells Will, instead of all that.

“Okay,” Will says, and he’s so patient — so the opposite of him — that Mike wants to die. “Do you think it would help if you told me what’s going on?”

No, the voice in Mike’s head snaps immediately, but instead of saying that, he just sits there for a second and thinks. He remembers their catastrophic freshman year of high school. He remembers that not talking to Will — or anyone — is what got him into this mess in the first place.

Will’s hand stays warm and steady on his shoulder. Mike takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. He looks out the windshield at the giant white screen in front of them.

“I always thought it would be fun to bring someone here. Like, you know.” He shoots Will a furtive glance. “But they set it up after Vecna, obviously, and it’s not like I was going out with someone, and now…” He gestures vaguely. “College.”

He steals a look at Will again. His hand has dropped from Mike’s shoulder to the space between them, next to the gearshift, but he hasn’t backed away. He doesn’t look disgusted or shocked. Just confused.

“So, I don’t know, it’s so stupid, and I kind of didn’t even realize I was doing it, but suddenly it’s like—” The next words leave him quickly and painfully, like bloodletting. “We’ve only been in college a few months, and I’d better take you here before all those art school boys figure out how awesome you are.” Mike mashes his palm against his eye again and chokes out a wet, hollow laugh. “And I know that that makes everything weird, and you said you didn’t want to ruin our friendship, but, sorry.” He shrugs. “I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

When Mike gathers the courage to look at Will again, he finds him somehow more perplexed. Will looks out at the big movie screen, then back at Mike. “You think you ruined our friendship by…taking me to an empty drive-in?”

Mike looks at Will with profound exasperation. He’d thought he was supposed to be the clueless one here. He’s honestly not sure he has the ability to spell all of this out for Will, considering he only figured it out himself, like, five minutes ago. But he’s just frustrated enough to try.

“I ruined our friendship because I want to take you on a date to this drive-in,” he says somewhat snappily — which is maybe uncalled for, but, whatever. He’s dealing with a lot. “And because you don’t want to date me back, because of long distance and—” he gestures in front of his face, fingers spread wide, like this can somehow communicate the injustice of it all  “—dogs . Except now I’ve realized that I’ve been into you for fucking who knows how long, so I can’t just be your friend anymore.” He sniffles and limply gestures outward, like, ta-da. “And that’s why I lost my shit over The Cure.”

Mike properly drops his head onto the top of the steering wheel this time, his hands cushioning his forehead. He is suddenly, profoundly glad that Will will be thousands of miles away from him in a matter of hours. He’s also grateful for the way his hair curtains around him, leaving zero opportunities to look over and attempt to interpret Will’s face.

There is a very long, very tense silence, though, and Mike interprets that plenty.

“You,” Will says after a moment, and then falls silent. Just as Mike is about to start driving himself insane again, Will speaks. It’s an entire sentence this time: “You want to date me.”

It’s not a question. Will says it quietly, his voice low and even, and even in this most dire of moments, one of the first things Mike thinks is how much he likes Will’s voice. He’s going to miss hearing it get like this on the phone, when they’ve been talking for so long that Will starts feeling tired all the way out in California. Mike’s chest clenches, as if preparing itself for heartache.

“Um,” Mike says intelligently to the steering wheel, and then tips his head back to look at the visor above his seat. One of the pictures clipped to it is from this summer — Will in his short bathing suit, propped up on one elbow to flash a peace sign at the camera; Mike under the full shade of his beach umbrella, his face almost completely obscured by his copy of It. In another world, Mike thinks, he could put this on his bulletin board at Brown and tell Jeremy it’s a picture of him and his boyfriend.

Finally, Mike turns to look at Will. “Yeah,” he tells him simply. It’s an understatement.

Will stares at him for a second. And then he shoves him. Hard. Mike’s shoulder bumps into the driver’s side window, and he thinks he’ll at least get that bruise he’d hoped for. He whips around, about to ask Will what the hell is wrong with him, but all he sees is the passenger door slamming shut.

Will stalks around the front of the car. The headlights briefly turn him into a blinding specter, and Mike is vividly, bizarrely reminded of avenging angels. The thought leaves his brain as quickly as it enters, his stomach dropping as Will yanks the driver’s side door open. 

Mike blinks at Will’s waist, then stares up at his face. Will looks pissed and almost manic, his brows drawn together over too-wide eyes. His chest is heaving like he just traveled miles. Mike can’t imagine a universe in which Will would ever kick his ass, much less for being gay, but he also can’t come up with another outcome here.

“Get up,” Will tells him, his voice raw. “Please.”

Mike gets up embarrassingly fast for someone who’s about to get decked in the face. It makes him wonder what else he would do just because Will asked. Jump off a bridge, probably. His parents had been wrong all along.

“You’re right,” Will bites out. “You are stupid.”

And then Will kisses him, one hand on his waist and the other on his cheek. It’s fairly brief and to-the-point: Will presses his lips to Mike’s long enough to get his point across, to make sure there’s no room for misinterpretation, and then he pulls away, like, Your move. By that point, thank god, Mike’s brain has finally processed the only relevant information: Will just kissed him.

Mike pulls Will’s face back to his with far less restraint, biting at his lips for one, two, three short kisses before swiping his tongue into his mouth. Will makes a throaty little sound, clenching his hands in the fabric of Mike’s jacket, and Mike makes one back. It might be mildly embarrassing, the profound effect that Will has on him, if it didn’t also make Mike feel like he has been officially and unanimously elected King of the World.

In what is easily the most coordinated series of movements he has ever pulled off, Mike takes a few steps forward so that he can shut the car door, then spins Will around so he can crowd him up against it. Will is laughing sort of breathlessly, so Mike has no choice but to laugh breathlessly, too. And then the rest of his brain powers back on.

“Wait,” Mike says, his hands very much on Will’s face and his lips very much slick with Will’s spit. “What’s happening right now?”

Will regards him with something like vexation and pity. “I want to date you, too,” he says, his thumbs at the dip of Mike’s waist. “Even though you are the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”

“What about—” Mike wracks his brain. Hadn’t there been things, earlier? Reasons he’d felt terribly sorry for himself? “Dogs,” Mike remembers dazedly. “I snore. I’m messy.”

“Benadryl,” Will says immediately. “Ear plugs. And I don’t actually care.” And then he tugs them back together with two hands in Mike’s shirt collar.

A girl at some party during freshman orientation had haltingly described Mike’s kissing style as “enthusiastic.” Mike tries to shoo away the memory and its accompanying insecurity as he gets lost in Will, who certainly doesn’t seem to have any complaints. Mike kisses the mole on the side of Will’s neck, dips his thumb into the hollow of his clavicle. He holds him like something precious, ephemeral. He can’t believe he talked himself into not having this for so long. Not just with Will, with — boys. Will is so solid next to him, smelling like menthol and smoke and sweat, and Mike is dizzy. He runs the pad of his thumb over the short stubble on Will’s cheek and feels, perhaps for the first time in his life, blessed.

Will’s hands drift up from Mike’s shirt to his head, fingers carding through his hair, and Mike goes slack leaning into it, his hands sliding up Will’s torso and rucking up his costume on one side. Mike sees the hem of Will’s navy boxers peeking out from under the fabric on his right thigh, and that makes him feel so overwhelmed he has to rest his head on Will’s shoulder to catch his breath.

He lightly tugs at the tunic with one hand, his knuckles just barely grazing Will’s leg. “This costume,” he says into Will’s neck. He’s aiming for joking, but it comes out all breathy. “It’s kind of, like…slutty.”

Will cracks up, throwing his head back. Mike is so mesmerized watching his Adam’s apple that he forgets to be embarrassed. After Will decrescendos into spasmodic chuckles, he pulls Mike’s face away by a few inches, thumbs at his cheekbones, so that he can give him an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”

“Very much not a criticism,” Mike tells him, grinning. “I’m a big fan. Huge.”

Will raises his eyebrows. “Dustin said it was a very good historical piece. He wants to incorporate it into a campaign.”

Mike mirrors his expression. “Dustin doesn’t want to maul you,” he counters. After a moment, he amends: “I hope.”

Will laughs, then gives Mike a mock-somber look. “Either way, now we’ll have to tell people that you called me a slut during our first kiss.”

Despite the ridicule, Mike’s stomach does a series of tiny cartwheels over tell people and our first kiss. “Okay, I didn’t call you a—” he starts, but Will cuts him off with a press of his lips. It’s quick and sweet and they’re both laughing. Mike keeps trying to make his case, even with their faces a breath apart. “We’ve also gotta be, like, fifty kisses in by now, at least.”

Will kisses him again. Fifty-one. “I’m glad you like my costume,” he says. “I like yours too.” He holds one of Mike’s lapels, running his thumb over the fabric. “You look really good.”

And even though they’ve been making out for the last ten minutes, that’s what finally makes Mike blush. “Yeah, well.” He taps his white-sneakered foot against Will’s bare one. “Thanks for watching that movie even though you, direct quote, ‘wouldn’t be caught dead listening to new wave.’”

“This guy that I’ve liked forever was obsessed with it, so.” Will shrugs, knocking his knee against Mike’s.

Mike takes the strong urge to fidget and tell Will to shut up and channels it into kissing him speechless, grabbing his face and angling down so Will can lean against the side of the car. Will goes easily, opening his mouth and tucking his hands up under Mike’s jacket. Mike can feel the heat of Will’s palms through the fabric of his shirt, and it makes his head go all fizzy. He remembers that’s something he’s always liked about Will, the way he runs hot. He thinks he’s pretty much always liked everything about Will, which maybe should have been his first clue, but here he is anyway, adding new things to that list like “soft hair” and “kisses like he means it.”

After a while, Will looks at Mike’s watch and his eyes widen comically. He needs to be at the airport in almost 6 hours, meaning they’ve spent the better part of three making out against — and eventually, when Will got too cold, in — Mike’s car. Early-morning birds are starting to chirp in the distance. Mike’s headlights shut off god knows when.

This is no accident, Mike learns, as he puts the key in the ignition and discovers that the battery is absolutely, unequivocally, dead. He can’t find it in himself to be upset about this, and Will is the same. They laugh and agree to walk to a gas station tomorrow.

Mike unearths a picnic blanket, beach towels, sweats, and two mismatched socks from his trunk. Will pulls the sweatshirt and pants on over his costume. Mike wishes he had a camera. Will is wearing head-to-toe Brown gear, and he wants the image tattooed on the backs of his eyelids.

Will also puts his dirty socks on without comment. Mike thinks that’s pretty much the same as a profession of love, at this stage.

They put the driver’s and passenger seats all the way back and curl up to face each other, beach towels wadded under their heads as pillows. Mike puts the blanket over both of them, although he feels about a million miles away from sleeping. Will’s eyes are wide open, too. Mike reaches over to tug at the front of Will’s sweatshirt. He suddenly feels too far away.

“How are you doing?” he asks Will, almost whispering, like this is a sleepover and their parents are still awake down the hall.

Will smiles at him and takes Mike’s hand in both of his, playing with his fingers. “I sort of feel like I’m gonna throw up,” he tells Mike. “But like, in a good way.”

Mike laughs, a short little huff through his nose. “Well, as long as it’s in a good way.”

“The best,” Will says, squeezing the tip of his pointer finger. “Promise.” 

“Like how air turbulence is actually kind of fun,” Mike offers.

Will looks at him, expression unreadable in the dark, and says, “Okay, freak.”

They drift in and out of conversation for a while, Mike’s hand still surrendered to Will’s side of the car. After one comfortable silence, Will looks down at Mike’s hand in his. “Um, so,” he starts, writing something on Mike’s palm with his pointer finger. “You’re ‘into’ me?”

Mike laughs. “Did we not establish that?” he asks. But Will doesn’t say anything, or look up from his hand, so Mike stops laughing. “Yes,” he says, earnestly. “Very.”

Will draws little circles on his palm. “And…something about being into me for a long time?”

Mike blows out a long breath through his lips. “At least since the first time you moved to California.”

Will’s finger stills on his hand. He looks up. “Mike.”

“I’m serious!”

Will scoffs. “You didn’t even talk to me when I first moved to California. You basically didn’t even look at me until the world started ending.” Almost as soon as he’s finished saying it, he seems to put it together. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Mike grimaces. “I’ve recently realized that that is extremely abnormal behavior.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a while as he runs his fingers up each of Mike’s. It tickles, but Mike does his best not to flinch. “I thought you could tell what a massive crush I had on you,” Will admits eventually. “Even from thousands of miles away, and it just, like, repulsed you.”

Mike remembers Will’s fifteenth birthday and tries, very actively, not to hate himself. “Would you believe me if I told you I had no idea you liked me, ever, until, um. Today?”

Will snorts. “No.”

Mike shrugs. “Believe it, baby.”

“You’re joking,” Will says, after another still, silent beat.

“I am not.”

“Mike,” Will says sincerely. “If fourteen-year-old Will could see us right now, his brain would explode. ”

“I mean, same,” Mike laughs, because it really is absurd. “For like, so many reasons.”

“So then why were you…?” Will very kindly trails off instead of saying like that, or so fucking weird, but it’s implied.

Mike takes his hand back to press down on both of his eyes. “Do you have any idea how weird it is to miss your best friend, like, 200 times more than you miss your own girlfriend?” he groans. “I wanted to talk to you every day. I wrote you so many letters and then just threw them out. I just felt, like, lost after you guys left.” He slowly uncovers his eyes, readjusting to the night. “So when you went to California this time, I didn’t want to mess it up.”

Mike can’t totally tell, but he’s pretty sure Will is smirking when he turns to face him again. “And then your friends immediately assumed we were dating.”

Mike laughs. “Yeah well, and I couldn’t get over that, could I? The idea of you and me…” This time Will reaches over, and Mike takes his left hand in his right. The distance is both too short and too long and the angle is all weird, but Will threads their fingers together. “And then tonight Max told me you had a crush on me, but that you’d gotten over me,” Mike continues. “And it hurt, which was kind of unexpected.”

Will squeezes Mike’s hand in his. “But Max was wrong.”

Mike grins. “Max was wrong,” he repeats. It might be his favorite sentence in the world.

Will is silent again. He runs his thumb back and forth over Mike’s. Mike wonders if he even knows he’s doing it.

“A year ago, I would have given anything to be over you,” Will admits. “And I tried! I really did, but…” He squeezes Mike’s hand again. “I mean, it’s you.”

Mike thinks Will must be able to see his big, stupid smile, even in the total darkness. Cheshire Cat-style. “That’s, like, so dumb of you, actually,” he tells him. “You could have had so many boyfriends by now.”

Will turns to lie on his back, dropping Mike’s hand. “You know what? You’re right. Maybe I need to reconsider my options…”

“Hey,” Mike laughs, grabbing for him. It’s not hard at all to get Will’s hand back in his. “It’s you, too,” he says after a minute, his throat tight. “For me.”

Will squeezes his hand again, and he sounds a little awestruck when he says, “Okay.”

Chapter Text

They’re woken up too few hours later by the horrifying cacophony of someone knocking on Mike’s car window. It’s one of Hopper’s old goons, the one that took over as sheriff. The one without the mustache. Mike grew up with these men, he is aware they are supposed to be important. For the life of him, even with their badges on, he cannot be bothered to remember their names.

They’re not in trouble. The sheriff just exchanges greetings with Will and calls Hopper, who says he’ll be there in five. Mike kind of wishes they were in trouble.

“You’ll be fine,” Will laughs, rolling his eyes. Mike scowls as he scrapes his tangled hair back into a ponytail. He hasn’t even said anything.

Hopper rolls up in his truck exactly five minutes later, as promised. It’s a quarter past eight, and they still need to get to Indianapolis for Will’s flight. Will’s bags are already in the truck bed.

“Hey, Hop,” Will says, smiling, like he didn’t just stay out all night with a boy. 

Hop just grunts out a “Hey, kid,” and pulls him into a side-hug. And then they’re climbing into the truck while Mike just stands there, flummoxed, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You coming to the airport or waiting for a jump?” Hop calls out the window, not even looking at him, as he closes his door.

Mike scrambles for the truck’s passenger door. He’s going to the airport, obviously. What kind of question is that?

Once they’re all buckled in — Will in the small middle seat, still the picture of innocence, with Mike next to him, even taller than usual as he sits up yardstick-straight — Hopper pulls a thermos and a paper bag out from beside him.

“Coffee,” he says, handing the thermos to Will. He tosses the paper bag onto Will’s lap and shifts into reverse. “Donuts.” He points to the floor by Will’s feet, at a pair of sneakers. “Shoes.”

“Ugh, you’re the best,” Will groans, twisting open the thermos. It’s straight-up black coffee, of course, Mike notes. Just how Will likes it, because he is insane.

Will hands him the paper bag, and Mike peeks inside. There’s one glazed chocolate donut (Will again) and one French cruller. He feels a sudden, unexpected pang of affection for Hopper. That’s the exact donut he takes from the box every time he stays at Will’s.

“Is everyone upset I didn’t get to say bye to them?” Will asks Hopper, as Mike tears off a chunk of chocolate donut and hands it to him.

“Nah,” Hopper tells him, eyes on the road. “Your mom, maybe, for a second,” he amends, with a tilt of his head. “But not after she figured out where you were.”

Mike and Will look at each other at the same time. Will’s hair is still kind of rumpled in the back, and there’s a flush creeping up his ears and over his cheeks. Mike notices, for the first time, a series of red marks leading from Will’s ear to under the collar of his sweatshirt. He is, apparently, a biter.

He has to face front and plant his hands on his thighs, so that he doesn’t test Hopper’s magnanimity. Will kicks his foot. Mike bites his lip, trying not to smile.

They make the drive without incident, aside from Hopper staying consistently 20 over the speed limit, and get to the airport with time to spare. Hopper drops them off instead of walking in with them, a move Mike is not stupid enough to question. He gives Will a long hug, complete with what looks like several bone-shuddering back-slaps, and says “See ya” in a way that makes it sound like “I love you.”

As Will hoists his duffel and backpack from the back of the truck, Hopper puts his hand on Mike’s shoulder, looking him right in the eye. Mike does his level best not to flinch.

“I ever pick that kid up from a night out with you again and see him wearing different clothes than the ones I sent him out in, we’re gonna have a talk,” Hopper says. “Understand?” 

He holds Mike’s gaze without even blinking. Mike blinks, like, twelve times. A lifetime ago he might have said something smart, or made an excuse, or rightly pointed out that Will was technically still wearing the same clothes and he had only been cold. Now, he just looks back at Hopper and says, “Yup. Yes. Sir.”

Hopper claps him on the shoulder. “Good man.” Mike’s knees don’t crumple, but it’s a close thing.

Mike scurries after Will, following him to security. He tells Will to shut up, even though he hasn’t said anything, and Will laughs.

They only get 20 minutes of aimless chatter and shy smiles before Will’s plane starts to board. Will tugs at one of his backpack straps. Mike already knows what’s in there without even having to ask: his latest sketchbook, pencils, markers, a comic in case the turbulence is too bad for drawing. Web of Spider-Man, probably.

“So,” Will says.

Mike fidgets, tucking an errant curl behind his right ear. “So.”

Will shifts closer, making room for an old woman in a wheelchair. “When do you get back to Brown tonight?”

“Uh,” Mike tries. Will is right in front of him, and suddenly facts are hard to come by. “Nine?”

Will grins. “Okay,” he says, a little quietly. “Call me at ten?” 

Despite standing more or less still, Mike sounds like he just ran a marathon when he replies, “Yeah. Ten.”

Will glances over his shoulder at the dwindling line. “Guess I should go.”

Mike’s eyebrows sink to the center of his face. Right. They’re here because Will is leaving. For California. Three thousand miles away.

Will looks at him, brow furrowed and mouth askew — like he empathizes, but he’s trying not to laugh at Mike anyway. Mike wonders why he’s so attracted to someone who finds his pain amusing.

Will straightens Mike’s right lapel. “Christmas break is in, what, three weeks?”

Mike feels a short, sharp ache in his chest. Three weeks. It feels like a million years from now. He’ll have turned in all his finals by then. He’ll be, like, a whole other person.

This must all show on Mike’s face, because Will’s weird pity-smirk only deepens. “I think we can survive three weeks,” he says, still holding Mike’s jacket with his right hand. “Considering.”

Mike lets out a little laugh through his nose. “Considering.”

The line to the gate is nearly finished. Will glances around for a second, and then he leans in and kisses Mike.

It’s easy and brief, a see-you-later kiss. But it happens in full view of god and Gate A14 and everyone, and it makes Mike feel hydrogen-light that Will would do such a simple, enormous thing because of him. Like being with Mike is something Will might be proud of.

“Okay,” Will says. “Bye.”

Mike gives an awkward wave in response. If people are looking at him as he watches a smiling Will walk onto the gate, he has no idea. He stands there for longer than is probably socially acceptable, dumbstruck and scarlet, until he remembers to go call Nancy for a ride back to his car.

-

Mike calls at ten p.m. sharp, and Will picks up on the first ring. They talk about how their flights were. (Will had a smooth flight and worked on the storyboard for his animation final; Mike read The Dark Half and went through some turbulence. Will jokes that at least Mike got to have a little fun.) Will complains about his roommate, Clarence, who gets home tomorrow and is snobby and terrible and essentially the opposite of Jeremy. Mike explains Jeremy’s integral role in his Week of Realizations. It’s basically the same as all their other calls, in that Mike completely loses track of time as he lies on his bed and laughs or groans or mhms along with whatever Will is saying, or gets so excited describing random stupid stuff to Will that he has to put the phone between his shoulder and ear in order to gesture emphatically.

It’s not the same as all their other calls in that, after Mike comes down from a laughing fit about two hours in, he says, “I miss you.”

It comes out fond and natural as anything, like he’s said it before — which maybe, actually, he has, but it used to sneak into other phrases like, “I can’t wait to be back in Hawkins” and “You know, you could always transfer to RISD.” Still, he faceplants into his pillow, face on fire, while he waits for Will to say something back.

It doesn’t take long. Will tells him, “I miss you, too,” without a hint of teasing or irony. The sheer sincerity kind of blows Mike’s mind. He has trouble believing anybody misses him when he’s gone, and this is his favorite person.

“I was thinking,” Mike says to the green sticky hand on the ceiling. “On the plane. Maybe I could come to LA in January for a few days before spring classes start.”

“I mean, yeah,” Will says, laughing dazedly, almost like he’s surprised. “Maybe I could come to you, though? We can deal with Jeremy instead of Clarence?”

“This is why you’re the brains in this relationship,” Mike quips. And then all of the buoyant, puppy-love energy in his tiny dorm room is swiftly replaced with abject horror, because on top of being a late-bloomer idiot, by the end of this conversation Will is also going to believe that he is clingy and presumptuous. “I didn’t— I mean— um—”

“Mike, shut up,” Will orders. Mike shuts up. “I didn’t go through all that just to be, like, seeing other people or whatever.”

Mike swallows. “Oh.” He thinks, briefly, of Cate, and almost throwing up outside this very residence hall. “Yeah, no, I super don’t want to see other people.”

He forces himself to stop talking before he adds something dumb like, Ideally ever again.

“Good,” Will says emphatically, sounding a little crazed. “Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.” Mike’s voice comes out kind of muffled, because of the hand he has pressed to his face. “I just— like you, a lot, and I don’t know how not to be a freak about it.”

This was, somehow, the correct thing to say, because Will’s voice is cashmere-soft when he speaks again. “I like you a lot, too,” he says. It maybe should be a given by now, but Mike still feels like he could jump out his window and fly. “Believe it or not, you being a freak is actually a huge part of the draw.”

“That’s—” Mike laughs dryly. “That’s so unfortunate for you.”

“No,” Will replies. “Not really.”

Mike presses his hand to his face again, this time to avoid screaming into the phone. 

He must still let out a squeak or something, because there’s a static crush on the phone as Will does an aborted sort of half-laugh. “Sorry,” he says. “Is this totally weird?”

Mike leans against his wall, careful not to get hair grease on the drawing he has tacked up there. “I think the weirdest thing about all of this is how not weird any of it feels.”

Will laughs in earnest this time, more static coming over the line as he exhales, like he’s relieved. “Cool. I was sort of thinking the exact same thing.”

“What we were doing before,” Mike babbles, “that was weird. This— let’s just do this now, please.” He grins as Will laughs a little more right into his ear.

Before Will can respond, Mike’s door creaks open, and Jeremy walks in slowly with a duffel on one shoulder.

“Jeremy!” Mike shouts in greeting before turning back to the phone. “Will, Jeremy’s back!”

“Jeremy!” Will shouts back, trying to be heard through the handset. “Tell him he’s, like, our favorite person now.”

“Will says hi,” Mike tells Jeremy, tilting the phone away from his ear.

“Hi, Will!” Jeremy calls. He dumps his bag onto the floor and flops onto his bed. “I just had the longest flight ever,” he tells Mike. “Figured you’d be asleep. Isn’t it, like, one a.m.?”

Mike checks his watch. It is, in fact, 1:30, and he is actually very tired. He points to the handset. “Had to make sure um, you know.” He can already feel the blood rising to his face before he even says it. “The boyfriend got home okay.”

Jeremy smiles at him. “You guys are sweet,” he says, like it’s the most normal observation in the world, as he gets his toothbrush out of his luggage.

Mike puts the phone to his ear again as Jeremy heads out the door. “I should get ready for bed,” he tells Will.

There’s a beat of silence, and then: “What did you just call me?”

“Oh.” Mike shields his face with his free hand. Even with just the bedside lamps on in the room, he doesn’t want Jeremy to come in and see him looking like a beet. “Uh, can we talk about that tomorrow?”

“You’re not in trouble, Mike,” Will reassures him. His voice is so warm. Mike wants to bottle it up and drink it to fall asleep. “Whatever the exact opposite of trouble is — that. You’re in that.”

“Oh, okay,” Mike says stupidly, like he’s not actively sweating.

He mumbles through a goodbye and a plan to call later and puts the handset down. He stares at the beige phone blankly, distantly aware that he’s too overwhelmed to shower or brush his teeth.

By the time Jeremy returns, he’s already under the covers, but he sits up. He’s certain Jeremy won’t give him shit about his Ewoks T-shirt.

“Um, Jeremy,” he says, then clears his throat. “Sorry I was so weird about, um, the Will stuff, right before break. It was…” He grasps for an excuse, knowing that Jeremy will eventually learn the whole story while also aware that the time for said (long, complicated) story is not two in the morning. “I just kind of needed to get over myself, I think.”

“Okay,” Jeremy replies, nodding earnestly. He’s listening to Mike like a dad from the movies would, sitting on the edge of his own bed with his feet planted on the ground, his elbows perched on his knees, and his hands clasped. He leans toward Mike, brow furrowed with considerate interest, like Mike could tell him anything in the world and he would accept it implicitly.

“And I mean, you can— tell people.” Mike continues. “Like, it’s not a secret. Unless you meet my parents, in which case it definitely is, and don’t tell them, please.” Jeremy, god bless him, laughs at this, which means Mike can laugh at it a little, too. “But in general, like, yeah,” he concludes. “I don’t want to be weird about it anymore.”

Jeremy smiles back at him in his dad pose. “Sounds good,” he says. “I’m really proud of you. You seem really happy.”

Jeremy is wearing an old track meet shirt to bed. All those gold medals are still on the wall behind him. It is so weird, Mike thinks, that this approval from another teenage boy makes him feel like his heart has grown three sizes. He decides he is going to be friends with this man for the rest of his life.

Mike thanks him, and Jeremy, of course, denies that there’s any reason to thank him at all. They exchange good nights and turn off their respective lights.

And Mike lies there with a stupid grin, mooning at the ceiling, until the green sticky hand lands right in the middle of his face.

-