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Mike is sick of comics.
It’s an extreme statement, fueled by his intense itch to be outside - the sun still shining down while water pours over every inch of Hawkins, leaving no mercy to restless teenage boys who only want to run out into their backyards and do something - anything. He and Will have been stuck in Mike’s bedroom for about two hours, rain beating down hard against the hollow part of his roof, and while usually, the mere act of laying beside Will is enough to quell him, today, Mike is feeling restless.
“I want to do something fun,” Mike declares, shoving his copy of The Amazing Spiderman onto the narrow edge of his windowsill, rolled over now from his stomach to flat on his back, staring up at his ceiling - popcorned and beige paint-chipped around the corners, with glow stars that he, Lucas and Will had put up ages ago, now greatly less neon and peeling at all sides so they make a sort of hexagon more than they do a star.
Will, who’s been beside Mike, quietly holding up the previous issue of the same comic, with his arms stretched out and his elbows bumping into the sides of Mike’s ribs with the angle, turns to face him, a skeptical look, though a curious smile pokes out from under it.
Will, who Mike has been stealing glances from every so often, watching the way his eyes crinkle and his eyebrows furrow, just a little, when he’s reading the text on the page. Something about the one pm sun, softened by the ever-flowing summer shower outside, pooling at the edge of Will’s face as he lays beside Mike in his twin-sized bed, leaves Mike’s chest in a stutter.
Unlike Mike, Will has had no qualms with their lapse of quiet reading - Mike, finishing an issue of his comic, and handing it over to Will as he picks up the next one from the haggard pile right under their feet, no sounds except the rain pebbling against Mike’s window and Will breathing next him - but he entertains Mike all the same, prodding him to elaborate with an arched brow.
“We are doing something fun,” Will replies noncommittally, lifting his head and plopping back down on the pillow to readjust his disheveled hair.
Mike wants to run his fingers through it.
He opts for pushing himself up closer to the headboard instead, elbows jutting out and his head resting up against his hand so he’s at a similar height as Will.
"Okay,” Mike draws out, now set on his mission to convince Will of getting out of this room as soon as possible, “Well let's do something more fun.”
Will laughs, closing the comic he’d been flipping through and placing it on Mike’s ever-cluttered bedside table.
The comic barely lays flat atop all the junk, and Mike watches it slide until it’s hanging off the edge like a rock climber.
“We’re going to a movie soon,” Will says, peering up at the ceiling himself, “Did Dustin say which one?”
“Predator,” Mike answers easily, considering how much Dustin won’t shut up about seeing it, “Besides, that’s at seven. I want to do something fun, now.” Mike ignores the way his voice scrapes into petulance, and does not add that he wants to do something fun with Will, alone, just the two of them, because that would be too much, maybe.
Though, and this sends a little thrill straight to Mike’s heart, he doesn’t know if Will would be all that bothered by it if he had said it.
It makes Mike feel a little dizzy.
“Like?” Will asks as he re-adjusts his position on the bed, and Mike hadn’t realized how small his bed actually was, until Will scooted closer, and Mike is an inch away from pressing himself into Will’s chest.
Which is cool.
Super cool.
Mike tries to breathe without the air coming out shaky.
“Well I,” Mike clears his throat, trying to regain his composure. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have a car now.”
He says it like Will wasn’t there a week ago when Nancy had tossed him the keys to her old station wagon, with a swift, “Don’t break it while I’m gone, or you’re dead.” Before she’d headed back to Boston for some journalism internship.
Still, Will indulges him.
Mike loves him for it.
“Ah, so I’ve heard,” Will says, clicking his tongue as the corners of his mouth lift impossibly further, lazily slinging an arm up above the headboard, the collar of his t-shirt pulling down.
Mike wants to kiss him.
It’s ridiculous really, the way the want surges out of him, so fast Mike barely has the time to catch it in his hands.
Then, Will narrows his eyes playfully, because he doesn’t let Mike off the hook with anything, “Isn’t it Nancy’s car?”
“Semantics,” Mike waves him off, “So?”
“So?” Will repeats.
“So, I have a car-“
"Nancy’s car-”
“I have a car, whose owner is completely irrelevant to this discussion,” Mike bristles, if not just to see the amused look Will’s giving him, “And I can drive, and I’m bored, so can we please - please, go somewhere fun?”
Will, to his credit, only laughs a little at Mike’s dramatic declaration, pressing a finger to his chin like he’s deep in thought, splotches of blue and orange paint left on the corner of his fingers from painting before he’d biked over to Mike’s.
Summers, much to Mike’s delight, have remained consistent in their shared routines. Every day, Mike wakes up at around eleven in the morning, hair sticking out all over and with the disheveled energy of someone who was never meant to be a morning person, and he calls the Byers to summon Will for any sort of shenanigan that he can think up in the time between going to the bathroom to brush his teeth and rushing downstairs to pour himself a bowl of cereal and grab the phone from off the receiver.
Most days, he get’s lucky, and it’s Joyce on the phone, who cheerfully redirects him to Will, who’s usually been up since eight in the morning painting, because Will is a crazed man, and Mike won’t hear any alternate explanations for why one would subject themselves to that.
Other days, he gets not so lucky, and Hopper is on the other line, a small grunt on his end before he calls out something along the lines of, “Will, Mike is calling - again.” Run-ins with Hopper aside, Mike is far less fearful of him answering the phone as he is of one, El Hopper.
Not that he doesn’t like hearing from her in general, though she thinks phone calls are a little dumb when the Party spends virtually every second of the summer anyway, but still. The issue is, unlike Hopper and Joyce, who have no doubt noticed Mike calling in such high frequency, always a little flustered whenever he’s asking for Will - El has the express advantage of being Mike’s friend, and also a teenager with no care to filter what she’s thinking, which means she’s the only one willing to call him out on it. Which she does, quite frequently.
Earlier that day was no exception to that rule.
Mike had run down to the kitchen, grabbing a glass from the cabinet and orange juice from the fridge, pouring as he grabs the phone off the receiver. On the third or fourth ring, the phone picked up, and Mike can’t help but grin, leaning out as far as the cord lets him go as he shoves the carton of juice back in the refrigerator.
“Uh, this is Mike, is Will there?” Mike asks, a little brash, which he’s never claimed not to be, he thinks it’s unnecessary, to be so formal when he’s called the same number every day like clockwork for the last two months since school got out, and long before that too, asking for Will every single time.
“He is in his room,” the person on the other end replies, El, her voice far from sleep-coated the way Mike’s is, sharing Will’s ability to be up at the ass crack of dawn. Mike nods, before realizing El can’t see him, and the silence prompts her to add, “He is painting.”
“Figured,” Mike says, “Could you tell him he should come over when he’s done?”
There’s a pause on her end, and Mike can almost see her squinting as she says, “You are going to the movies with us later, yes?”
Mike shifts the phone so it no longer leans at an awkward tilt on his shoulder, opting to hold it with his hand.
“Yes,” Mike says, unsure how El really thought he could get out of it, even if he wanted to.
No qualms towards Predator, or anything, but Dustin truly had droned on for so long about it that Mike isn’t really sure he has anything left about this movie to anticipate.
“So why not just see Will at the movies?” El asks, inquisitive and very prodding.
Mike’s face warms.
“I just, we’re hanging out - alone first, is all,” Mike gets out, trying to stamp out the way embarrassment seeps out of him, and makes him want to collapse onto the kitchen tile.
He takes a sip from his glass.
“So, like a date?” El asks.
Mike lets out a pained sound as he chokes on orange juice.
“It - I don’t,” Mike gives his chest two swift taps to avoid any further choking before he continues. He feels winded, all of a sudden.
“It’s - it, it isn’t a date.” Is all Mike manages to croak out.
“Hm,” El seems to mull that over, “Well, why not?”
“Why…” Mike trails off, permanently dazed, and having the strongest urge to climb back into bed and not leave for a prolonged period of time.
Maybe he could say he got a nasty case of sun poisoning. It's certainly hot enough for it.
It’s not a secret, that his friends have picked up on what he’s been feeling, and it isn’t like El wouldn’t have picked up on it, Mike never thought that.
Mike’s not exactly, subtle, try as he might.
Once he’d gotten over the walls he’d built in regards to his feelings towards Will, and what that meant, stopped being angry and scared and drowning under trying to ignore it, he’d started pulling into it, started letting himself feel it, and it shows, frankly.
He’d just hoped she wouldn’t be so direct, is all.
El seems to be genuinely asking too, which makes the whole thing worse, because.
Well.
Why not?
It’s kind of been a question Mike’s been asking himself too, as of late.
"I,” Mike swallows, picking at the end of his t-shirt with his thumb and index finger, “I don’t really know.”
It’s as close to a verbal admission as Mike’s willing to give at the moment, and it seems to satisfy El’s curiosity, simply clicking a tongue in half sympathy and half intrigue, which means she’ll surely tell Max about this.
Great.
“I’ll tell him,” El says, “To come over when he is done.”
Mike presses his mouth in a line, unwilling to give any more material for embarrassment in this particular call, “Thanks.”
With that, El hangs up, leaving Mike to spiral out against the kitchen counter, orange juice half empty and too much going through his head before noon.
Because well, here’s the thing.
Mike’s not stupid.
He has his moments of stupidity, there’s a painting framed up on his wall, that he’s known hasn’t been commissioned for about a year, to prove that he can have his very, unrelentingly stupid moments.
But he’s not stupid.
He knows, okay, knows that this thing with Will isn’t like it is with Lucas or Dustin or anyone else.
It’s different, and he’s come to terms with that, with what that means.
When Will had moved back last summer, and after Vecna and everything else had really and truly ended, Mike had been worried that they wouldn’t find it again.
That thing that made Will and Mike, well, Will and Mike.
A certified unit, a team.
Those fears dissipated as soon as they came though, and they’d stayed a team the minute Will stepped foot in Mike’s basement again, an uncontrollable smile on his face when he first saw all the art he’d given Mike, still on the walls.
And it’d been a little scary, for Mike to start leaning into what he wanted, but the end of the world had come and gone, and Mike’s become a little less terrified to indulge himself, to lean out and touch, in the way he’d scolded himself for before. Laying his head on Will’s shoulder at Party movie nights, or sitting close enough so that their thighs touch when they’re beside each other, the furthest he’s ever let himself want, but with the same soaring flourish when Will presses back.
And this feeling isn’t new, this wanting to reach out and touch, to be close whenever possible.
The extent of it has expanded maybe, but Mike has always wanted Will, in some way, wanted him near, wanted him safe.
Still, this surging want follows Mike everywhere he goes, and it’s much more than he’s willing to excuse as something he’d want with his friends. Mike wants to kiss him.
Mike's not stupid. He knows Will, knows him to his core - and well, Mike is almost completely sure, that Will wants to kiss him back.
The thought could send Mike into fever.
So, why isn’t it a date?
Mike doesn't know the answer, even a couple hours later as they lay on his bed, Will with his paint-smudged fingers and Mike doing his best to avoid looking at his mouth.
“I know somewhere we can go,” Will says finally, smile wide and tone playful, asking Mike to trust him.
Mike doesn’t even ask before he’s grabbing the car keys.
For all his cockiness, Mike hadn’t actually familiarized himself with Nancy’s car enough to just hop in and start driving.
He spends an embarrassingly long amount of time trying to figure out how to adjust the seat height and know certain buttons.
Will, at least, finds it very entertaining, eyebrows raising past his bangs, laid flat on his forehead from the rain they’d run through to get into the car because Nancy wasn’t willing to park in the garage before she’d given Mike the keys, and candidly, he hadn’t felt like it.
“So much for knowing how to drive,” Will says, tapping innocuously on the dash as he watches Mike struggle.
“Shut up,” Mike huffs, no real malice behind it.
Will raises his hands up in surrender, the corner of his mouth quirking up as he looks out the window to see the rain as it falls onto the concrete.
After a moment or two of fumbling, Mike gets out the driveway and onto the road, both hands on the wheel at a good distance, feeling water splash against the base of the car, from the shallow flooded road.
The benefit of living in a sleepy cul-de-sac in Hawkins, Mike doesn’t have to worry too much about driving too slow or driving at any speed really, the chance of encountering another car very slim on a Tuesday afternoon like this one.
From Mike’s side, Will fiddles with the radio, some channels only mildly cutting out due to the weather.
Clouds are rolling in now like they’re chasing the car down, and it has Mike watching from his rearview mirror to see if they’ll catch up.
Will settles for a rock channel, Def Leppard playing at low volume as Will plays with the string of his rain jacket, that’s fit snug against him, sleeves rolling up a few inches whenever Will shifts in his seat.
Mike makes a right turn, peering out a little at the road in front of him, the windshield wipers not doing their job nearly as fast as they should be.
Maybe that’s why Nancy gave it to him.
“You wanna tell me where we’re going?” Mike asks, tapping his index and middle finger against the wheel as he brakes at a stop sign. Will gives him an evasive smile, that Mike forces himself to look away from because he’d like very much to not crash the car, staring at Will and his infuriatingly perfect face.
“It’s a surprise,” Will says.
Mike raises an eyebrow, “Hate to break it to you Will, but I’m the one driving.”
Will thinks about it for a moment, “I’m an excellent direction giver.”
“Will.”
“Fine,” Will relents, “Lover’s Lake.”
Mike kisses his teeth, taking a second to glance at Will, who’s watching him drive. Peering even, if Mike was feeling descriptive. “Kind of a bad day for swimming, no?” Mike asks, nodding his head towards the window to motion at the sky.
Will just shrugs, “It’s still sunny out, and a little water never hurt anyone.”
“Tell that to drown victims,” Mike mutters, the flooded road making him regret ever suggesting something fun, the water making him feel like a duck in a pond.
Will arches a brow at Mike’s sour mood, teasing him, “Thought you wanted to do something fun?”
Mike rolls his eyes, “Whatever. I think you’re way too trusting in my driving ability, considering it’s a twenty-five-minute drive, and the road is flooded.”
Will smiles, tapping the headrest of Mike’s seat as he leans against his own, “We’ve got time.”
And, well, he isn’t wrong.
Mike just shakes his head, an endearing smile peaking out, try as he might to hide it. He does not comment on how Will’s hand stays up against Mike’s headrest, nor does he do anything more than look straight at the road when Will gives him a teasing smile before he’s turning the volume up, letting the music sink all around the interior of the rain armored car. Mike just presses the way his heart flutters under his palm.
The road, flooded as it may be, gets easy to navigate once Mike gets the hang of it.
Rain continues to barrage the windows and the car’s roof, but it’s less aggressive, a little more settled and Mike feels like he can loosen his elbows and not watch the road like a hawk every second.
He also, of course, does not look at Will.
Not when he messes with the radio, tongue sticking out ever so slightly in concentration as he tries to figure out what song best fits the mood of driving thirty miles per hour down a one-way road. Not when Will taps his fingers up against the dash, or when he spares a glance at Mike every now and then, letting his eyes linger on the side of Mike’s face while Mike watches from his peripheral. And when he does glance at Will, who makes no move to look away when Mike catches him, only smiles with a lazy contentedness and warmth spread all across his face, Mike does not fight the urge to park the car on the side of the road and kiss Will senseless.
He doesn’t.
The route out of his neighborhood blends into familiar stores and streets, breezing past Melvad’s, the cinema, the library.
It’s a weird change of pace, to actually be driving a car that is his own, even conditionally, rather than be opted to borrow his mom’s SUV the few times she lets him. It’s stupid maybe, but there’s more personality to Nancy’s old car, though Mike would never let her hear him say it. There’s baggage behind the wheel and in the trunk, and no doubt every other coated memory of his sister and her years here, from things as stupid as dating Steve Harrington of all people, to hitting demagorgons with her car. Things as simple as her driving Mike to school when he was in middle school or freshman year, it’s all piled into the tints of the windows and the metal of the old thing, carried over as some sort of vigil for things that won’t happen again, good or bad.
It’s Mike’s too now, to carry, to make memories of his own in. It sends him for a loop, but it’s cool, to have the opportunity to drive, to go places, without having to ask his parents to borrow the car or mustering the energy to ride his bike across town. He can go further than Hawkins if he wanted, and he could do it with Will in the passenger seat.
For now, he pulls into the rain-slick graveled path between trees, Lover’s Lake visible but trailed back, and glances at Will when he parks.
“I won’t lie, I’m regretting my decision for fun,” Mike says, hands still on the steering wheel and staring out at the lake as it stays about a hundred feet out, capturing water droplets in a patterned fashion and just from this far, it looks cold.
Will laughs, unbuckling his seatbelt and turning the radio off, sudden crisp silence and the sound of spewed drops of water.
“We’ve swam in the rain before,” Will says, smiling out at the windshield with anticipation, “It’s for old time's sake.”
“We were like, eight, at a public pool,” Mike says, outlining the steering wheel with his hands, up and down the edges like he’s checking for bumps on the leather, “And we got sick for days after that.”
“It’s different now,” Will insists, straightening up against his seat in a matter-of-fact way.
Mike, is not convinced. “How’s that?” He asks, raising an eyebrow.
Will smiles, “Well for one, you have a car.”
Mike laughs, “I do have a car.”
“And we are significantly less flu-prone than we were,” Will says.
“Also true.”
“And last but not least,” Will says, anticipation in his eyes like he’s starting a drumroll, “Last one to the lake pays for dinner.”
With that, Will pushes his body up against the passenger door and nearly tumbles to the ground getting out.
“That’s not-“ Mike starts, but Will’s already out of the car and running. Mike fumbles with his seatbelt before he’s running after Will, only half remembering to lock the car as he trails after Will at full speed.
“You’re such a cheater!” Mike calls out as he runs, feeling every inch from his hair to his sneakers being soaked in water.
Will ignores his accusations in favor of taking off his rain jacket and his t-shirt, and Mike makes a pointed effort to look away as he does the same, tossing his keys in his rain jacket pocket, his shirt sticking to him in wet clumps from the rain.
He really needs to reevaluate his idea of fun.
It’s Will that gets in the water first, smug look to match Mike’s unimpressed scowl, which only makes Will laugh even more before he submerges himself and reappears with his hair wet and pulled back like it's been gelled back.
Mike does eventually get in, swimming closer to where Will is at the center, water only about shoulder deep.
“That was evil,” Mike says, rippling water over to Will, just to drive it home, just to see the grin on Will’s face.
“Evil?” Will echoes back, voice drawn in mock surprise like he’s never done a bad thing in his life.
“You heard me,” Mike reaffirms, a smug smile on his face as the pellets of rainfall on them. The water is considerably less cold than Mike had anticipated, flooding his body with a warm temperature from the sun shining before.
He and Will stand at the center of the lake, treading water as they look at one another, uncontrollable smiles riding the coattails of the space between them.
“I know how to play the game,” Will responds shrugging, still facing Mike as he treads towards him closer.
“Sure,” Mike humors him, “I’ll buy you a burger but you’re not getting a drink.”
Will puts a hand to his heart and doubles over, swishing water around him like he’s made a current in his dramatic movement.
“You’re the evil one,” Will laments and Mike shrugs, hovering ever closer to Will like he’s a planet in orbit.
And Will, words aside, is smiling and as Mike rotates around him a little, playfully making slow aerial circles with his treading, Will turns his head with the movement, to keep their eye contact, amusement stocked up the whole way.
“What are you doing?” Will asks voice tinged with humor.
Mike doesn’t really know, so he settles for, “Orbiting.”
Will laughs at that, “Orbiting?”
“Mhm.” Mike stops his treading to float up on his back, letting the water drift him up to the top of the lake, rain droplets on his face and the sky still gray with blue pinched at the corners. He lets the water hold him for a second, eyes closed until he bumps right into Will’s torso, who stares down at him with owlish eyes.
“You’re something else, you know that?” Will says, shaking his head with a lip-bitten smile.
Mike stays back-floating, looking up at Will, as he pulls a lazy smile, “Only for you.”
The humor in it does nothing to not spike Mike’s heart rate as he says it, and as incriminating as it sounds, as it is, Mike does not regret the way it makes Will’s face flush, slightly, crossing one arm over his other and pushing the hair out of his face, pieces that had stuck themselves onto his forehead.
Mike’s feeling brave maybe, or maybe he took that orbiting thing to heart, because if anyone’s the sun, an uncontrollable pulling force of gravity, that makes Mike want to lean in, it’s Will.
“What an honor,” Will says, embarrassment coating his voice, and Mike’s smile grows a little wider as he hums in response.
They’re both quiet for a second, the dropping sound of rain into water and the smell of petrichor filling Mike’s periphery.
It’s not the kind of fun that has him running around the backyard, letting pent-up energy off, but it’s something.
It’s nice.
They stay there for a while, Will periodically swims around, but stays in one area, like they’ve created their own whirlpool for just the two of them to share.
Will makes his way back over to Mike, hovering over him once again, and just looking.
Mike looks back.
“What’s something you’re looking forward to?” Mike asks Will after their lapse of quiet, Will with his shoulders half above water.
It’s been a while since Will’s been in the California sun, but the slightest remnant of a tan remains, coating over in warm tones, even as the rain falls on the both of them.
Will looks good.
Mike doesn’t dwell on it.
“Looking forward to?” Will asks, and Mike moves off his back and stands in the water, slowly hovering over a rock at the side of the lake.
Will follows, leaning up with Mike, head up against the moss. There’s a house or two on the edge of the lake, but they’re either too far or too rain-coated to get a proper look. Mike looks out at the expanse all the same.
“Like, I don’t know,” Mike says, “This is the first summer we’ve had where the Upside Down’s gone for good, for real this time.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Will says, running a hand through his hair and crossing his arms.
It’s something Mike's thought about a lot before, the idea that this summer should amount to something.
Should be some momentous amalgamation of teenhood, of everything they’ve wanted to do and never got the chance to, everything they never even got the chance to think about.
And it isn’t in the same way as it was before, Mike rushing to grow up in an attempt to outrun the feelings he thought were wrong, feelings about a life he wanted to live, running from his disinterest in girls or his disinterest in cookie-cutter houses and a green backyard with a dog, feelings he has for Will.
But it’s true all the same. This was the first normal summer they’d had since 1983, and it was easier to keep holding a routine, that it had been to venture for than that, even if that routine looked like the Party seeing a movie, or going to the arcade, or going to the same corner table at the same diner; Will biking to Mike’s house every day and lounging in his bed, or in the basement watching movies they’d already seen, maybe half with the excuse of Mike sitting closer than strictly necessary to Will, the warmth of their pressed legs outmatched only by the way Will leaned in closer.
Fun things, but safe things, no risk, and no reward really, because that meant nothing bad could happen, nothing could be ruined of this delicate thing they’d made it on the other side of.
El’s words from earlier in the day echo back.
It isn’t news to Mike, that he hasn’t gone further than leg-pressed movies and staring at Will’s side profile in the car, because he’s afraid. He knows that well enough.
Mike’s terrified, terrified out of his mind that he’ll ruin everything they’d just salvaged, ruin everything by doing something as simple as reaching out and touching. It scares him, how much he wants.
Mike wants and he wants; to tuck a hair behind Will’s ear or press his forehead, against Will’s until they’re breathing the same air, kissing him quietly and soft, and desperate and loud, until neither of them remembers what it means to breathe. It scares him, this want, and it’s all he thinks about some days, knowing it’ll never go away.
Mike can’t imagine that, almost losing Will again and again throughout the years, only to have him back, to get to be up against a rock at Lover’s Lake in the rain, where they’re safe and alive, and here, only for him to lose Will again by doing something as giving into an unrequited want.
Even if Mike is almost sure it wouldn’t be unrequited, even if he’s almost sure.
It isn’t enough to ruin this, ruin them.
The only thing worse than losing Will to the Upside Down would be losing Will to his own hand, Mike completely responsible for Will never speaking to him again.
Still, maybe Mike’s restlessness comes from the frustration of his own fear. There are only so many times you can be afraid before you’re back to wanting, and Mike keeps being pulled into Will’s orbit, try as he might to stop.
“It just feels like we should be doing more,” Mike continues, “Maybe that’s dumb, there isn’t much to do, but it just. It feels like nothing really changed and we just, have to move on and live like people who’ve never experienced any of this before. It just feels like we should be doing big things, to make up for it, or something.”
Mike rests his head back with Will on the mossy rock, ignoring the way his hair tangles up into damp curls around his face, ignoring the feeling that what he’s said doesn’t make sense. He tilts his head to the right, looking at Will who’s clearly thinking, lips pursed and the slightest pull of his eyebrows.
Mike wants to run the tension smooth with his fingers.
“I think us doing nothing is as good a sign as any that things are okay,” Will suggests, voice quiet to match the quiet tapping of rain around them, “I think it means, well, that maybe the other shoe doesn’t drop, maybe it never will. Maybe we just get to sit around and live life like normal people, and that doesn’t have to be bad.”
Will doesn’t sound too sure of it himself, giving Mike the impression that he’s thought about it too.
But it’s nice, to see it that way. Maybe they’re afforded the luxury of moving on, that they don’t need overwhelming storylines with happy endings that crash into you and hit you in the gut. Maybe they can live slow, maybe they can live like they have time.
The question always comes back to how.
Mike blinks at him, a warm hum at Will’s words. “Maybe. But can you imagine living like none of this happened? With a white picket fence and all that shit.”
“God no,” Will says and Mike laughs at his disgusted expression. “Living normally doesn’t have to mean - doing that. It could just mean, doing what we want to do, knowing we have the time to do it.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, “What do you want? With your normal life.”
Will smiles, face slightly flushed and shrugging, “I don’t know.”
Mike bumps his shoulder into Will’s, “Come on, not one thing you want?”
Will turns to his left, shaking his head a little before, “A cat.”
Mike laughs at that, “A cat?”
Will nods, “Yeah, a cat. And a nice apartment, and comic books.”
Mike smiles, watching the lake ripple under the gentle touch of the falling water, “No fraud in Vegas?”
Will squawks, “You never said that was on the table!”
“I asked for anything you wanted-“
“You said out of a normal life, that isn’t an average everyday thing, Mike-“
“You don’t know that,” Mike argues, hands up as Will lightly shoves his arm, the warmth of Will’s hand spread all over.
“Whatever,” Will says, mouth pulling up into a smile, “If we couldn’t do fraud in Vegas, then I’d want a cat and an apartment.”
“We?” Mike asks, unable to contain the smile that spills over at the implication, turning his body a little closer to Will, “I’m still there in your crime escapades?”
“I,” Will’s face warms considerably, “Of course you are. I need a partner in crime.”
“Of course,” Mike muses, “Who’s gonna be your getaway driver.”
“Exactly,” Will affirms.
“Big dreams, Byers,” Mike teases, running his hand on the jagged rock behind him.
“Shut up,” Will says playfully, and then with a little more sincerity, “I don’t know. I don’t think I need huge things to look forward to, I just want, to make up for it, I guess. Be happy. It’s hard enough for people who haven’t experienced all this, I figure it’s a reasonable goal for someone like me.”
Mike doesn’t know what to do with the overwhelming wave of sadness that courses through him, hearing Will say that. Will deserves more than happy, hard as it is to get. He deserves everything he’s wanted in the world and then some. He deserves the sun and the planets and every moon that’s ever been deserves everything that orbits towards him and everything he’s never got to hold in his hands. Mike shifts closer til his shoulder is under Will’s, the warmth of their connected arms leaving Mike simmering.
“You deserve happy, Will, you deserve more than happy,” Mike says, and Will averts his eyes, mouth pulled into a sad smile.
Mike puts a hand over Will’s under the water, squeezing as Will looks down at their slightly distorted hands under the blues and greens, before looking back at Mike.
“I mean it, okay,” Mike says firmly, “Happy is hard to get, but you deserve the world, Will, you shouldn’t settle for less than that.”
Will darts his tongue from his lips, and Mike takes a second too long to avert his eyes.
“Hard thing to get,” Will jokes, a little shaky, Mike smiles, shifting his hand so they’re fingers are interlaced.
Will shivers, ever so slightly.
They stay that way for a moment, both flitting eyes from their hands back to each other’s eyes, and Mike wants to kiss him.
They’re so close, less than five inches apart, and Mike wants to kiss him, so badly.
If he shifted his body a little more, if he tilted his head down, just a little, he could.
The rain seems to have it out for Mike, as always, what was once a slow rhythmic sprinkle turning into an obnoxious pour. It pelts them and wells, barely able to see anything past the haze of it.
“Jesus Christ,” Mike mutters, and Will chuckles quietly from beside him.
“We should go back inside,” Will says loudly over the rain.
“Yeah,” Mike agrees, and while he wants to get out of the rain, his hand keeps itself tucked in Will’s, and his feet urge to stay planted on the lake’s sediment.
Still, all good moments must come to an end.
Seriously, Mike hopes it never rains in Hawkins again.
Mike tugs on Will’s hand, pushing through the water as quickly as they can, still connected by the fingers, a little inconvenient but wholly worth it, Mike savoring every second he can feel Will’s fingertips brushing up against his knuckles.
Putting their t-shirts and shoes on once they reach dirt is a whole other debacle.
Mike is reluctantly forced to let go of Will’s hand in order to tug on his shoes, damp and slightly flooded from the rain, and his shirt in no better condition.
Unsurprisingly, it is much harder to put on fabrics when they are clinging to each other from inches of rainfall.
In a matter of miracle work, Nancy left a towel in her trunk, along with a first aid kit and flashlights, because she was nothing if over-prepared for every situation. Or she figured Mike would pull something like this.
Either way, Will and him make it inside, grabbing a towel on their way in, turning the heat on as he manages to slightly dry off his hair and clothes, alleviating the soaked Chihuahua feeling he had from head to toe, slightly.
He passes the towel to Will, who takes it as a teasing smile forms on his mouth.
“What?” Mike asks.
“You’re hair,” Will says, shaking his head as he laughs.
Mike runs his hands through his hair a little, trying to find the balance between messing with it for the better and making it look ten times worse.
“Better?” He asks after a few seconds.
Will doesn’t reply, instead reaching a tentative hand to the top of Mike’s head and pulling a couple of strands framing the side of his face, thumb brushing the side of Mike’s face as he does.
“Better.” Mike feels heat press against his cheeks, and he looks back out the windshield. The rain is back to beating against the metal hood of the car, now in much thicker quantity, and Mike is half sure the roof could pull in and flood the whole thing.
He knocks his head against the top of the steering wheel. “We’re gonna be so sick,” He mumbles a little miserably, still feeling the water pooling in his shoes.
“We can say it’s for old time’s sake,” Will offers. Mike looks up from the steering wheel, unable to help the small smile that forms when he sees Will’s face, coaxing and playful.
Mike stays with the side of his head leaning on the steering wheel, looking at Will in the passenger seat, who holds a smile pointed at Mike before he’s looking out the windshield himself. The rain beats down against the glass, like tiny marbles that dissipate into puddles.
“It’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” Will says, staring at the rain as it hits rhythmically against the curved window, a patterned thing. Mike, does not look at the rain, not for more than a second, before he’s staring right back at Will, watching as his eyes zone in on the pouring water, his mouth twitching with excitement as he takes it all in.
“Yeah,” Mike mutters, “Really beautiful.”
Will, turns towards him, catching his stare.
Mike doesn’t look away.
He’s already been caught, and also, he just really doesn’t want to.
Will blinks, his face flooding pink.
The stare Will gives him makes Mike feel see-through like Will can see as far as his exoskeleton.
Still, Mike holds his gaze. Any information Will wants is his, to hold in his hands, to poke and prod with his fingers til Mike crumbles, it’s his, and he can have it. The car feels smaller than it had a moment ago, and if Mike is leaning forward, then so is Will, like magnets.
Whatever it is Will is looking for, he seems to find, the corners of his mouth slowly turning upwards as he looks out the driver’s side window, past Mike’s head, before looking right back at him.
“You know,” Will says, a little too evenly, “You parked next to Skull Rock.”
And.
Mike’s breath hitches, propping his head up from the wheel so he’s sitting straight, then looking out the window to see he had in fact, parked beside Skull Rock.
Oh, so it’s like that then.
Mike, to his credit, does not burst into a hundred different flames, though it certainly feels like it, with his parched mouth and the air knocked right out of him.
Mike darts his tongue out from between his lips, eyes still on Will.
“I guess I did, huh?” Mike murmurs, untrusting his ability to say anything more.
“Mhm,” Will hums, and it’s remarkable that either of them can hear the other over the pouring rain, but really, under Will’s intense stare, Mike can’t hear anything else.
“You ever been before?” Mike asks, mostly as a joke, and also maybe, just to know.
Not that he wouldn’t know, there isn’t an abundance of things to do at Skull Rock, and an even more minuscule group of people to do those things with.
Mike does not focus on how they are parked there, he and Will, the two of them alone with Will’s hair still damp and pressed against his forehead and sticking out from his ears, and Will within kissing reach.
Mike feels faint.
“To Skull Rock?“ Will laughs, an amused skepticism on his face and voice airy and brittle like he’s still trying this interaction on for size.
“No,” Will says, and then a little curious and anxiety-bitten at the corners, “Have you?”
Mike shakes his head, nose scrunching at the idea of going here with anyone but Will.
And well.
“First time for everything,” Mike says, catching himself by surprise.
Will’s breath hitches, and Mike flourishes under the weight of it.
Mike watches the way Will fumbles with the string on his rain jacket, swallowing.
He’s nervous. That makes both of them.
Mike is scared.
He’s terrified that all of this will build up and crash, burn right in front of their feet and they’ll be left with a decade of friendship in wreckage they can’t salvage themselves from.
But maybe Mike has been thinking too big, and Will had been right, about savoring a life of living instead of surviving.
Maybe they don’t need to drive out of Hawkins and never look back, have some definitive closing chapter to a life that’s already been filled to the brim with chaos beyond compare. Maybe he just needs to do what he wants, even if it scares him, because he can do that now, without worry that every day could be numbered for someone he loves.
Mike is scared, but no one’s ever gotten anything they’ve wanted by not leaning into fear, and Mike stays wanting until he’s pulled with nerves at the ends like a fraying thread.
Because he might not know everything, but he knows this.
They’re parked at Skull Rock, as incredibly giddy and cliche as that may be, and they’re staring at each other with an intensity that knocks Mike’s breath back and holds him tight in transfixion, and Mike is sick and tired of not reaching out and touching, and if Will’s nervous expression and anticipatory hand on the dash is any indication, he feels similarly.
Maybe Mike deserves this, the quiet movie moment, the silence in a summer rain kind of indulgence, that picks him up by his fingertips and dances him all the way to a cliche moment that falls into his lap.
Maybe Mike deserves this, deserves Will, deserves the more than happy he knows Will should get.
Maybe the world can fit in both their shared palms and they can hold it together.
“Can I kiss you?” Mike chokes out, his knuckles white as he presses his hand up against the steering wheel.
Will moves as far as the console will let him go, leaning a hand on Mike’s arm to brace himself.
“Yeah,” Will whispers like he didn’t think Mike would really ask.
That makes both of them.
Mike leans slowly into Will, pressing his forehead against his, and interlacing their fingers, revels in the way he can feel Will’s heart beating, the way it speeds up when Mike gets closer, all through the pulse point in his wrist.
They stay there for a moment, maybe more, time has left the space they've created in this car, and Mike only keeps measure of it by the count of their pounding hearts, melded into one as he shuts his eyes and savors it, lips slowly inching closer to one another.
Right as they’re about to touch, Mike pauses, a thought occurring to him.
“Wait,” Mike says, and Will’s eyes fling open. “I can - I can move the car if you want.”
“Huh?” Will asks, a little out of it as his eyes keep pulling down to right below Mike’s nose.
“If you uh - don’t want our first kiss to be at Skull Rock, we can- I mean, I can park somewhere else,” Mike says, feeling a little embarrassed as Will stays put, owlish eyes blinking at him.
“Just because, I mean, I don’t want you to think this is just us making out, I mean it is - if you want, but it’s also more than that so, it’s, if you want to move we can-"
“Mike,” Will interrupts, biting down his lip as the corners of his mouth betray a wide grin, “Please stop talking.”
“Yeah,” Mike breathes out, staring at Will’s mouth and his fingers pressed up against Mike’s arm with urgency.
“Yes, I can - okay,” Mike agrees, because who is he, to deny Will of anything?
Mike leans in, letting his lips press against Will’s slightly parted ones, and Mike doesn’t know whose breath hitches first as their lips connect, only knows that it feels like Will’s sucked the breath right out of him, and every second their mouths stay together is another second Mike’s breathing back in.
Kissing Will is a lot like loving him; It fills his body with a warmth he didn’t know was possible, and it has his heart tipping right out of his chest like a rattling birdcage. Mike wants and he wants and he wants and he doesn’t think he can live without doing this again, without feeling the warmth of Will’s lips and their clashing teeth from their equally parted desperation.
Mike moves his hands up from his spot on Will’s hips to grab his face, cupping his jaw as he kisses him, shaky hands firming each time Will presses back into his mouth harder.
Will presses himself impossibly further into Mike, one knee on the center console as he climbs over it, grabbing Mike’s rain jacket with both of his hands and nearly tipping them both over as he presses Mike up against the driver’s side window.
It elicits a punched-out exhale from Mike, his hands moving from off Will’s face and onto Will’s sides, wrapped up in him as his thumb presses into Will’s back, his other hand moving up to Will’s chest, pressing a hand to his beating heart and tugging on Will’s shirt so he’s even closer.
Mike has forgotten how to breathe maybe, and he doesn’t care, because Will’s hands are on him, first his jacket, then as Mike pushes up against the kiss, cupping the back of his neck and tangling his fingers in his hair.
“Will,” Mike rasps, sliding his hands to the side of Will’s neck as he braces himself, staring into Will’s eyes, and his flushed cheeks, his hair sporadically plastered over his forehead and around the corners of his ears.
Mike runs his hands through it, fingers pushing the hair up against Will’s forehead until it’s out of his face, and Will can see his eyes.
Will, looks about as wrecked as Mike feels, darting his tongue as he catches his breath, and Mike feels his lip twitch up, watching Will, and the way his eyes dance all over Mike’s face, committing it to memory, maybe, the same way Mike is doing.
"That fun enough for you?" Will asks hoarsely, breath caught and voice raw, face aching grin ever visible.
Mike laughs, crystal-cut and crisp as the rain stays coating the car from outside.
"Yes," Mike says, voice muffled against Will's shoulder, and he tightens his arms around Will's waist.
“How mad is everyone gonna be if we miss the movie?” Mike asks after a moment burrowing his face in Will’s shoulder, and Will laughs, hearty and warm and shaking Mike with the motion, tangled up into limbs and the ever-present need to touch.
In a minute, they’re going to need to untangle themselves from one another and drive back to Mike’s house to get dry clothes.
In a minute, they’re going to have to sit through Predator, with damp hair and kiss-swollen lips, in a theater with their friends, who are suspicious by nature and perceptive to a fault, and they’re probably going to link pinkies halfway through the movie.
Now though, Mike’s turned his face into Will’s neck, soft and warm, as Will has his arms wrapped tight around Mike’s torso, hands inside Mike’s rain jacket and over his t-shirt, and Mike gets to reach, as far as Will lets him, and feel Will’s skin against his until every part of Mike is splotchy in his fervency.
Will and Mike are going to talk about this, in Mike’s bedroom, or in the car after the movies, or in his basement after a few more chaste kisses, but for right now, Mike presses his head back up against the driver’s side window, coaxing Will to look up at him with the pad of his finger.
For right now, Will smiles, contented and drawn out, and he kisses Mike’s finger, right at the knuckle, before he’s leaning up and kissing the corner of Mike’s mouth, then his jaw, then his nose.
Mike lets himself flourish under Will’s touch, doesn’t dare break the moment with words, only the sound of the water, still beating down on the hood of the car, the windshield wipers, slower than they should be, and Mike and Will’s shaking breath, as they shiver under each others touch.
They’ll talk later when the rain has cleared, or on the drive back home, or when they’re both overwhelmingly sick from a cold they no doubt have caught, or whenever their lips grow numb from kissing, and then some.
For right now though, the rain stays pouring, and the car is in park, neither one of them has coughed yet, and Mike’s just tilted his head down to capture Will’s mouth in his, with a hand steady on his neck as Will pulls at his hair with interlocked fingers.
For right now, they’ve got time.