Chapter Text
“Oh, Honey,” a familiar voice calls as the front door slides open, creaking against the hinges in protest. It drapes over Will like a blanket, warming him from the inside out. “I’m home.”
Will laughs, not looking up from his sketchbook, but he doesn't have to after so many months of the same routine.
He hears the door click and the familiar shuffle of a jacket being shed, to be hung on the rack next to his own. Shoes thud against the floor as they're kicked off by the doorway and not straightened out, surely left on their sides in the walkway to be tripped on later. Will doesn’t call out to reprimand, even though he knows the shoes would be righted and stowed away properly if Will so much as sighed loudly about it—always so quick to course correct at the slightest hint of annoyance.
Lazy footsteps all but drag across the wooden floor to where Will sits sideways on the couch, an old, beaten in thing they’d managed to find that had been passed down between tenants of their small apartment. His knees are pulled up on the cushion, his sketchbook rests against them, pencil dragging lazily across the page as The Cure's Disintegration drones out of their record player, a gift from Jonathan when Will graduated high school almost 3 years ago.
There’s a bitter chill filtering through the apartment, even with Will curled up on the end of the couch closest to the radiator. He’s wrapped in a cozy navy hoodie that doesn’t belong to him—or maybe it does, if hoodie ownership is measured in actual time spent worn rather than by who purchased it, since he stole it so long ago that Will can’t actually remember how it ended up his. Besides, it's not like he’s ever been asked to give it back. If anything, curling up in the sweatshirt on frigid evenings like this has only ever earned him a charming but shy smile. So whether it's become a regular staple of Will’s home lounge wear rotation is entirely his business and his business alone.
“Hey,” Will greets, not looking up from his page.
Mike groans in response as he throws himself down on the couch beside Will, collapsing into the worn cushions and slouching far down into the seat, boneless. When Will peaks over at him, he has his eyes closed and his head rested over the low back of the couch, exposing the pale expanse of his neck, a move that practically begs for the soft pale skin there to be kissed.
But Will isn't supposed to be thinking like that about his best friend, so he doesn't.
He just drags his pencil along the page and is grateful he wasn't drawing Mike this time when he came home. He would've had to close the sketchbook, hiding it away like he always does for fear of being caught, and that would rob him of his distraction from how good Mike looks, even slouched lazily on the other end of the couch like this. So Will counts his fucking blessings.
Mike—the dramatic that he is—brings his hand up over his eyes, covering his face in his hands and groaning again, when Will doesn’t immediately ask him about his evidently sour mood.
“So," Will tries again, a slight teasing lilt in his tone. "How was your day?”
Mike shudders, a dramatic performance Will is positive he's is putting on just for him. Will would make him a goddamn EGOT if he could. “Brutal.”
Will hums, dragging the pencil lightly along the page over lines he’d already drawn, absentmindedly. “Sorry to hear that.”
The scratch of the graphite on the page and the melancholic voice of Robert Smith fills the silence that passes between them for a few moments.
“You’re not gonna ask about it?”
“I did ask.”
Mike scoffs. “Barely.”
“You’re gonna tell me anyway,” Will says. And it was true—Mike has been a chatterbox since they were kids, endlessly filling their days with the sound of his voice, pausing only for dramatic storytelling effect and to make sure Will was still interested in what he had to say. To make sure that Will was still with him. And Will was always still with him.
“Yeah,” Mike says, pulling his hands off his face and Mike straightening his posture some and turning to Will, revealing a teasing smile that makes Will’s stomach twist. “You like hearing about it and you know it.”
Then, his slender, warm hands circle Will’s ankles, tossing Will’s feet into his lap so Mike could scoot himself over, out of the corner of the couch. Will startles for a moment at the contact, before relaxing again.
He hasn’t gotten used to Mike's casual touches in the six months of living together, since moving out of their respective dorms at the start of their junior year. The way Mike would throw an arm around him, or pull his feet onto his lap on the couch, or put a hand on the small of his back to move around him in the kitchen. Doesn't think it's possible to get used to, actually. He's tried.
The easy physical affection of their youths, lost to time and shame and notions of how two boys should properly behave, had returned with a vengeance with the secluded domesticity of their small, shitty apartment. Will is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the rug to pull out from underneath him, for Mike's face to shift into something mangled and rotting and noseless. Really, William. Did you honestly think it was real?
But the firm press of Mike's hand on his ankle is real and grounding and scorching if Will thinks about it for too long, so he tries not to.
“Yeah, I do,” Will acquiesces, with a sigh and a small smile, closing his sketchbook signaling to Mike that he'd given him his undivided attention—as if he didn’t already have it from the moment he walked in the front door, tossing out the pet name like it was nothing. "What happened?"
Victorious, Mike grins lazily at him, a charming lopsided thing that causes Will to melt further into the couch. He throws his arms across Will's bent legs, pulling them to his chest, hugging onto Will just shy of affectionately, before launching into the long story.
Meticulous, Mike spares no detail recounting his day for Will, as is his habit on days like this, when their separate obligations keep them apart throughout the daylight hours and well into the night. He tells him everything, from the apparently bullshit assignment in his English Lit class to the car that almost hit him on the walk home from work at the bookstore a couple blocks down.
That last bit causes Will to flinch slightly, a base instinct beaten into him by spending his formative years with his loved ones constantly on the brink in mortal peril resurfacing like some conditioned reflex he didn't know still lie dormant—all at the prospect of losing Mike, even in this entirely ordinary and civilian way.
Mike notices but just hums reassuringly, slumping over to lean sideways on the couch with him, propping his head up with an elbow rested on Will's shoulder and rubbing up and down on Will's legs still draped over his legs with his other hand. A move that almost sings I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere.
Mike's elbow digs into Will uncomfortably, but he's enjoying being tangled up with Mike far too much to complain to him about it.
"Have you eaten yet?" Will asks, looking up at Mike.
"Not yet."
"There's bread that's about to go bad. I was thinking about maybe making a grilled cheese?"
Mike's brow furrows, as if Will hadn't just suggested one of Mike's favorite struggle meals, as they've not so affectionately been calling them. "Wait, have you not eaten?"
Will shakes his head earning a groan from Mike as his head falls from where it was propped on his hand, pressing his forehead into Will's shoulder. Will laughs with his theatrics and has to stop himself from carding his fingers through the dark curls that are tickling under his jaw. "Mike."
"Will, it's almost 9." Mike's voice is muffled by Will's shoulder.
Will rolls his eyes. "It's barely past 8."
"You need to eat something if we're still going out later."
"And I will."
Mike groans again, lifting his head from Will's shoulder. His eye contact is stern and commanding—reminiscent of the overly tense, battle-worn boy he'd been at only 16, back when the world was hard and horrific in ways that make Will feel guilty for complaining about trivial things like a menial shift at the campus cafe or a boring Gen-Ed class he'd never really use. Will resists the urge to shiver under his gaze. Mike is far too close. He'd definitely notice.
"Your mom is going to think I don't feed you or something."
Will raises an eyebrow skeptically. "You don't feed me."
As a rule, Will almost exclusively does all of their cooking.
Once, during their first week in the apartment, Mike attempted to make them both breakfast before class on a morning they'd both overslept, each running late for their respective classes. Will had been around the hall in the bathroom, washing the sleep off his face, when the smell of smoke filled his lungs, the blare of the detector doing little to drone out Mike's string of profanities. When he rounded the hallway into the kitchen, Mike, who at least managed to snuff out the fire on his own, was scarlet and wide eyed with embarrassment.
Will had to clamp a hand over his mouth to contain his laugh until Mike finally turned back to the mess, the stove covered in soot, and doubled over in laughter, giving Will permission to join him. Their shared giggle-fit lasted all through their kitchen cleanup, clutching their stomachs and wiping tears from their eyes, grinning widely in each other's faces.
In the end they'd had to throw the pan away and were both even later for class, not that Will cared about either. But Mike doesn't cook much after that, at least nothing that requires the stove.
"You know what I mean," Mike insisted.
"No."
Mike whines. "I help."
"You stand there and watch while I feed both of us."
"Is that not helpful?"
Will bites his lip to keep from grinning. "Not really. You're kinda in the way sometimes."
"I keep you company."
"Its a small kitchen."
"It's a small apartment."
"Is that why you're on top of me right now?"
Mike has the decency to appear sheepish, like he's been caught stealing beers out of Hop's fridge again.
His cheeks pinken almost unnoticeably—well unnoticeable to anyone who hasn't spent as much time watching Mike Wheeler as Will has—and he ducks his head a little. But he doesn't remove his body from Will's, still half on top of him, half under, tangled limbs and bodies pressed together on the couch. It should feel foreign, but doesn't.
"It's a small couch too."
"Yeah," Will laughs, squirming around for effect. "I think we fit fine, though."
"Totally," Mike agrees, his eyes meet Will's again, dark and wide and gleaming in a way that makes Will's stomach roll.
His voice softens in that crushing way it always does right before he says something Will is going to stay up agonizing over. Something profound about the nature of their friendship, with a double meaning that Will's never sure is intentional on Mike's part and not the result of a childhood spent writing fantastical campaigns in flowery, over the top prose.
"We fit great."
Something like that.
And it wouldn't it just be so easy for Will to read into that? To poke at it like a bruise until he can't stand to touch it any longer?
He's done it before. Spent 18 months in the Wheeler basement, staring at the popcorn ceiling replaying the countless moments throughout each day where Mike would say something and pause to look at him in a way that seemed like he was waiting for Will to do something about it. What once seemed like endless nights of did he mean it like that and did he mean to touch my hand just… ended.
When it all went down all those years ago, Will vowed to give up on looking for signals from Mike. He wasn't like him, and Will had always known that really. Anything else was just the wishful thinking of a childish boy who played make believe and dreamed of magical powers and a knight to come save him.
He found that moving on from Mike Wheeler proved to be a lot like that time that Joyce tried to quit smoking when Will was 13.
She'd hidden the packs around the house from herself, only to find them later in the middle of the night and smoke half the pack; Will avoided his calls for days, only to make up an excuse about being busy with some art project and spend the whole day with him until Mike insisted Will should just crash in his dorm for the night.
She'd try the patches or nicotine gum, going through different brands and flavors, desperate to find one she liked enough that it might dull the cravings; Will went out with other guys, trying hard not to imagine a particular boy's face when he kissed them, knowing he could never have the real thing no matter how badly he wanted it.
She said it wasn't good for her, that she had to quit because she didn't like the boys seeing her do this to herself; Will knows this isn't good for him, that Jonathan and Max give him that look whenever they're around them both.
Ultimately, Joyce still smokes and Will still loves Mike. He also happened to pick up smoking, not that that's anyone's business.
"We are still going out tonight, right?" Mike asks, untangling himself from Will and standing from the couch.
Will hums in response. He shuts his eyes and stretches his arms over his head, trying to collect himself and calm his heartbeat before joining Mike in the kitchen, where he's already turned to grab the bread from the cabinet.
"What time are we leaving?"
Mike wastes no time hoisting himself up in his usual spot on the limited counter space, once he's gotten everything out and ready for Will.
Helpful as ever.
"A couple hours." Will shrugs. "We're just meeting everyone there, I think. Casual night. No pre."
"Everyone?"
Will turns the nob on the stove, letting the starter click until the gas finally ignites after several tries. Damn thing is probably old enough not to need a fake ID like Mike and Will do.
"Yeah, everyone. Charlie and them. Usual suspects."
Mike squints at him. "James?"
"Yeah, think so."
Mike hums. Watches Will flip one of the sandwiches on the pan. Kicks his foot against the cabinet below in a way Will knows Karen Wheeler would have a conniption over if she could see.
"Maya?"
"Yes. Everyone. Like I said."
"Cool, I like her."
"Uh huh."
"She's nice."
Will fights an eye roll. She's also very pretty. Long tan limbs and equally long brown hair that shines in a way you can tell its soft without touching it that frames her delicate features. Sometimes it hurts to look at her in certain lighten or from specific angles, half convincing himself for a moment he'd seen the ghost of another girl in her place.
"And also gay."
Mike stares at Will from where he sits on the counter.
"I know that," he says insistently. "They all are."
"Just making sure."
"I just like that you have a friend that's always nice."
Mike swipes a slice of cheese from the package before Will can swat his hand away.
"Besides, she literally lives with Charlie. I've been in their apartment, remember."
"You say that like you don't also live with me," Will points out, dryly.
"They have a one bedroom. I don't think anyone's getting any ideas about our living situation unless you were looking to downsize." It's not particularly funny to Will, but he laughs anyway.
He won't tell Mike that people have in fact gotten ideas about their living situation.
Max has been downright smug over the phone when he first mentioned that he and Mike were apartment hunting together at the end of their sophomore year. Charlie's eyebrows shot up to her hair line the first time she met Mike, ignoring the subtle shake of Will's head and shaking his hand and asking if he was Will's roommate in a loaded tone that went way over Mike's head—and that was over a year before either of them had ever even suggested living together.
Mike grins at Will like the victorious idiot he is and Will kind of wants to kiss him about it. Not that that's something unusual for him. Mike's always being an idiot, at least a little bit, and Will always wants to kiss him about everything.
Instead, he just shakes his head offers Mike an out.
"You don't have to come with me, you know," Will says.
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You're just asking a lot of questions tonight. If you don't want to go this time it's fine. I won't be upset."
"Of course I want to go."
"C'mon, Mike."
Mike shifts forward on the counter, earnest. "What?"
Will fixes him with a look like he's playing dumb. "Its a gay bar. With my gay friends."
"So?"
"So its not really your scene is all."
"It's your scene though," Mike says simply as he hops down from the counter, as if that settles it. And Will supposes in Mike's mind, it must.
Without warning, he reaches up into the cabinet above Will's head, ostensibly to grab down two plates, but with the effect of crowding Will against the stove. Will's body warms over, more from the effect of Mike's body lightly grazing his back rather than the warmth of the stove. A faint touch of a hand rests on Will's waist as Mike lowers the plates to the counter and then steps away, ripping off two paper towels for them to use as napkins.
Gone like it never happened. Chills run through Will's body as the only proof that it did.
The air in Roxy’s is warm, thick with cigarette smoke and sweaty bodies, despite the cold that's descended on the city with nightfall. Men dance with men, and women with women to an upbeat, almost psychedelic song booming from the speaker system.
The far wall is littered in different names, permanent markers of all different colors—his own Will B. written in blue sharpie sits right next to a red Charlie Z. is a lesbian, signed on the wall from the first time she brought him here almost 2 years ago. A sort of who's who of the local gay scene through the years, immortalized on the wall in ink. Declaring themselves out in a fashion much reminding Will of the so and so was here style graffiti you'd find in the bathroom stall at Hawkins High. Most only wrote their first names and maybe an initial, fewer included their orientation like Charlie had, and only a handful were brave—or stupid—enough to pull their full government name on the wall for all to see.
Red light floods the bar, distorting the true color of everything in the room in a way that Will's eyes take a moment to adjust to. He's tried painting it before, capturing the atmospheric shift that takes place within the four walls of the little dive bar, the way the colors and tones are never what they should be through the LEDs and thick haze, but he's never been able to quite replicate it.
He's pretty sure the guy he's kissing is brunette, but he could be blonde, with the way the colored lights are playing with his curls in the shadowed corner of the bar. Will threads his fingers through it anyway.
His mouth slots against Will's in a way that's sloppier than he usually likes. Will assumes he's more than a little tipsy, and Will's already several drinks in himself and probably isn't performing much better, so he graciously decides not to hold it against him.
"Back to your place?" The guy asks against Will's lips.
No, absolutely not. Will's not one for taking men he's just met home.
Besides, the thought of having to explain the situation, leaving early to hook up with a guy while Mike is stuck with his friends at the bar is enough to make his skin itch. Not that he's thinking about Mike while he's kissing this guy. Because he's decidedly not.
"Can't. Roommate'll be home," Will settles for, rather than explaining the complexities of the situation as it plays out in his mind. Mostly because he's sure anyone else would tell him he's over thinking it. He reconnects their lips deciding that making out in the bar is enough fun for what was supposed to be a chill evening.
"He won't mind will he? Mine's out of the question. Girlfriend's home." And Will freezes against his lips.
"I'm— Sorry what? Did you just say 'girlfriend?'"
"Yeah?" The guys says it as if he'd just told Will he has a cat at home and doesn't see what the fuss is about. He leans in again but Will stops him, placing a hand on his chin and pushing his face away from his own.
"You have a girlfriend."
"It's not like that. I—"
"Oh my god." Will recoils, shrinking out of the man's arms. "I think you should go home to her. Or at the very least find someone else. Not me. Definitely not me."
The guy has the audacity to sigh, like Will is the unreasonable one in the situation. The fucking asshole. "Jesus, chill out. Whatever man."
Yeah, Will thinks, definitely straight.
He stares stupefied, watching the man disappear into the crowd of bodies.
Defeated, he lets himself slump against the wall behind him before making his own walk of shame back to his group. He makes eye contact with Charlie from several feet away and knows he's in for it before he even reaches the table.
“What happened to your little boy toy over there? You get bored?” Charlie asks in a teasing voice, biting her straw and leaning back in her chair like she’s enjoying some kind of show in front of her.
Will grimaces. “Girlfriend, apparently.”
As if on cue, the table collectively winces and recoils, a mix of sympathy and distaste that makes Will’s stomach roll, even though he knows it's not directed at him.
“Well, mate,” James says, clapping a hand down on Will’s shoulder, “we’ve all been there, haven’t we?” Charlie and David nod, lifting their drinks to salute Will, commiseratingly.
“Some of us have been on both sides of it,” Maya laughs. “We all get there in the end.”
“Some sooner than others,” Charlie snorts, ruffling a hand through her choppy bob, box-dyed black because her almost naturally deep-brown just wasn't dark enough for her personal taste. Maya reaches up to smooth it back out, tucking the black locks behind her ear, before planting a kiss on her cheek.
Charlie, like Will, has always known exactly who she was, never going through a phase of figuring out she was gay. She just knew the way Will just knew. Sometimes Will thinks she has a bit of a superiority complex about it, but it doesn’t seem to bother Maya so Will never comments. After a lifetime in New York City, she’s confident about her sexuality in a way Will has only really become in the years since moving here, only after getting to revel the seemingly dichotomous combination of anonymity and community it offers.
Will’s eyes flicker to the empty seat at the end of their table, beside to his own empty seat in front of him—he’s far too agitated to sit now, standing with one foot up on his stool’s foot ring, foot tapping rhythmically with the music.
“What happened to Mike?” Will asks, pulling his eyes from the empty stool.
Charlie nods with her head toward the bar. “He volunteered to get the next round after you got dragged away.”
“Said he needed another one,” David elaborates, unnecessarily.
Maya hums. “He’s a sweet boy.”
“You just like free drinks,” Charlie chastises.
“I’ll pay him back.”
“Kerouac over there'll never let you,” Charlie laughs. Will smiles to himself, knowing it's true.
Mike's 15 years of charity towards Will—always sharing his snacks at lunch, putting one of his quarters in the arcade machines for Will’s turn, and being quick to hand over his credit card during their Sunday morning grocery runs—seems to have extended seamlessly to Will’s friends, no matter how much he protests.
Almost naturally, Mike has always been good with Will’s school friends, joining them regularly when Will is able to drag him out of the apartment. Will was a little worried at first, his art school friends all being so different from any of their prior friends in Hawkins, save maybe Robin—though Mike never seemed too fond of her, for whatever reason, his brow always furrowing in frustration when Will would bring her up. But Mike seems to genuinely enjoy their company, spending weekends at Charlie and Maya’s for game nights, grabbing dinner after a showcase for the art department, and nights like tonight—getting drinks at Roxy’s, a gay dive bar a few blocks away from their apartment.
“Too bad you couldn’t even get a free round out of Mr. Girlfriend, huh,” James says, squeezing Will’s shoulder again.
“Mr. Girlfriend?” Mike’s voice appears behind him. Lovely, Will thinks to himself, perfect fucking timing.
Will resists the urge to slump forward and bang his head on the table. As much as he loves this place and the staff, he knows it’ll be sticky with probably several days worth of spilled drinks eating away at the tabletop’s varnish.
“Who’s Mr. Girlfriend?” Mike asks, setting the drinks down on the table.
Will doesn’t catalogue how his long, nimble fingers grasping around the glasses, managing to palm three drinks in each hand without looking like he’s in any fear of dropping them. He also doesn't track them as they uncurl from the cups as Mike sets the drinks down on the table, sliding them across to each of his friends, his hands dwarfing the glasses.
Anyone who says otherwise is liar and is not to be trusted.
“Will’s mystery dance floor man,” David chimes in, characteristically unhelpfully. “Or Will’s former mystery dance floor man, I should say.”
“He’s not my anything, evidently,” Will corrects. David holds up his hands in mock surrender.
Mike slides into the stool beside Will, raising an eyebrow up at him in mild shock. Mike never had a particularly good poker face. “He had a girlfriend?”
Will snatches up his drink from the table, taking a long sip and chewing on the straw as he nods, unable to bring himself to recount the story to Mike.
Mike’s brow furrows. “But— he was—”
“All over him?” Charlie supplies.
“Handsy?” Maya says.
“Devouring our poor William?” James adds.
Mike scrunches his nose at the last one.
“He’s apparently straight,” Will sighs, setting his glass down in front of him and rolling his eyes.
“So what’s he doing here?” Mike demands, gesturing wildly to the bar scene around them, filled with bodies of men pressed against men and women cozied up to other women in the booths. He’s seemingly more affronted than Will is.
Charlie raises an eyebrow, a look playing in her eyes that Will can’t quite discern but reminds him of Max all the same. Will makes a mental note to call Max more often. “You’re here.”
Mike’s brow pinches as if he’s not understanding Charlie’s line of reasoning. “I’m always here.”
“Right,” Charlie retorts, biting back an obvious laugh. “Because that makes it better.”
Mike’s mouth falls open slack, looking something like a fish out of water. He’s speechless in a way that immediately lets Will know that Mike is more than a little tipsy—words never fail Mike when he’s sober, always ready with some biting, smart-ass comment that Will shouldn’t find endearing but inevitably does. Well, that and the accumulated row of glasses lining the table in front of where Mike sits, also don’t suggest he’s at all sober right now.
“There’s plenty of straight guys here, I’m sure,” David supplies, rescuing Mike with a reassuring clap on his back, although Will isn’t sure that’s true.
“I just don’t understand why he’d do that,” Mike mutters, taking a large sip of his drink. Will flinches, trying not to be hurt by Mike’s words.
“Why he’d wanna make out with Byers, sloppy style?” Charlie asks, raising her brow suggestively.
It’s Mike’s turn to flinch. “No, Charlotte” he says earning a very mature middle finger, “I don’t get why he’d try to hurt him like that.”
Well, at least Mike isn’t completely dumbfounded at the idea of someone wanting to kiss Will in the dark corner of a bar. Even if Mike himself doesn’t want that, the idea that it would be incomprehensible that someone else would stings a little. Will is relieved that Mike’s issue with Mr. Girlfriend shoving his tongue down Will’s throat, seems to be his lack of consideration for Will's feelings rather than some sort of judgment over his poor taste.
Little wins, but Will will take what he can get.
“He was experimenting,” Will explains bitterly.
“He was being mean,” Mike whines with a frown. He looks petulant and stubborn, pouting at him like that. It would be almost child-like if it wasn't for the indignant intensity the expression contained.
God, Will loves drunk Mike. But then again, he loves sober Mike, too.
Will sits in his stool, claiming his spot next to Mike and resigning himself to an evening of drinking away bitterly in the corner with his friends. Will hadn’t even been looking for anything tonight, but Mr. Girlfriend was cute and seemed like he liked Will. Now he just feels dirty and sort of violated.
Will’s had enough of being used to last a lifetime.
Will says as much, sighing as he sits down to mope for the time being. “That was gross. I feel used.”
“Hey!” Maya protests. “Uh, uh, uh. Get back out there stud.”
Will splutters. “I’m not getting out anywhere! I’m staying here with you guys, like we originally planned.”
“No way, you can’t end on a bad note like that.”
“I just feel cheap and I’d like to forget it.”
“Maya’s right,” David adds. “If you wanna forget it, the best way is to pick another man to swap spit with.”
Maya reaches across to high five David and the table erupts into roarious laughter. Mike finishes his drink beside him, playing with the straw he didn’t use and pushing the ice around his glass noisily.
Will chuckles despite himself, shaking his head insistently. “No, I’m staying here. I just wanna hang out with you guys.”
James sighs exasperatedly from where he’s perched on a stool to Will’s right. “Fine,” he huffs, “I’ll do it.”
He says it with a put on attitude, like its some chore he's volunteering for. It's enough for Will to assume he's joking until James leans into Will’s space, causing Will to shriek in nervous laughter, leaning towards Mike to escape. He just feels his shoulder press against Mike's in an effort to shrink away from James's advance.
“Woah. What?!”
“Come on, William,” James grins. “You need a man to kiss. I’m a man, willing to kiss.”
The table whoops encouragingly.
James has never been shy about openly flirting with Will. In fact, he’d been quite flagrant about it, doing it in front of a number of Will’s boyfriends and flings over the years. It’s all in good fun, but Will supposes that he probably gets away with more than he should because he’s pretty and anything sounds sexy with that accent.
“We’re friends,” Will reminds, laughing incredulously.
“Good friends, even,” James smirks. "What's the harm?"
The table oohs with James's challenge. Will's glances out to the table of traitors he formerly considered friends. His eyes meet Charlie's, who hasn't spoken in several minutes and is watching him with a daring look on her face, staring at the scene playing out across the table from her like she sees something Will doesn't and already knows how this will play out.
Maya and David have started a chant, hitting the table with their fists. "Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss."
Charlie raises a sharp, thinly plucked eyebrow in challenge. Will shies away from her daring stare and looks back to James, who can barely control the joy on his face and Will turns his neck toward him coyly.
James smirk is downright smug, knowing he's nearly won Will over. "What’s a little kiss between mates, huh? You know you’re curious, Willy."
It’s the alcohol.
It’s the two empty glasses sitting in front of Will, the shot from earlier, and the barely sipped drink in his hand, coupled with the fact that Will has always been a bit of a lightweight, that even has him considering it. Will can feel the numbing buzz flowing through his system, and he feels loose and good and it’s probably why he allowed himself to be pulled away by Mr. Girlfriend in the first place.
Will can’t think of a reason not to.
James is fun and pretty and nice, and Will probably would’ve given into his flirtations a long time ago, if it wasn’t for the six-foot-tall, ever present, brooding elephant in the metaphorical room that is Will’s life. But the thing is, James already knows about Mike.
Fuck, the elephant is sitting two seats down from him and just bought him a round of drinks—and yet he’s still offering.
Why not, Will thinks and he smiles, earning a widening grin from James like he's reading his thoughts and knows he's won him over. When he shifts forward again in his seat, eyes lowered towards Will’s mouth, Will doesn’t stop him. He closes his eyes and leans forward slightly, as the table begins their chorus of exciting whooping again.
Then, a hand holds him firmly rooted in his seat, gripping his shoulder with an intensity he’s never known James to be capable of. Another hand finds his jaw, cupping the underneath of his chin and pulling his head back around—away from James.
Will’s eyes flutter open in surprise to find himself a mere hairsbreadth away from Mike.
Mike's spun him around on his stool almost too easily. Will would credit the alcohol softening his muscles and causing him to go so easily with the movements, but he knows his body has always been attuned to Mike's in this particular way. He goes where Mike calls, even wordlessly like this.
Mike’s brow is raised in the middle, pulling together and upward—seemingly asking a question Will isn’t sure he has the answer to—and making his dark, glassy eyes look soft in a way Will has always melted into. His breath fans his face, smelling like rum and coke and reminding Will immediately that Mike isn’t entirely in his right mind, that he wouldn’t be doing this sober, that this is just a drunken attempt at being funny and he’ll let go of Will’s jaw any second now and they'll both laugh it off.
But Mike doesn't let go. His hand his firm, like he's sure. Confident in a way that only Mike really could be in a situation like this.
Will’s mouth falls open slack, ready to protest but it dies on his tongue when Mike’s eyes trace the movement, clouding over and darkening with intensity. Mike’s tongue peaks out, wetting his lips as he lifts Will’s chin higher, pulling his face impossibly closer to Mike’s.
If Will moves, even an infinitesimal amount, they would be kissing.
“Mike, wha—” Will doesn’t pull away as he starts to voice his confusion, and Mike seems to take that as all the permission he needs.
In an instant, fifteen years of friendship collapses in on itself, with the remaining distance between Will’s mouth and Mike’s, folding in and imploding until it supernovas into something new entirely. It’s his own personal Big Bang. For the rest of Will’s life he will measure time by this kiss—BK and AK, years Before Kiss and years After Kiss.
And just like that, Will is making out with his second straight guy of the night—which he thinks probably defeats the whole purpose of the second kiss.
How the hell does he keep getting in this fucking situation?
It's sloppy and wet and drunk, and yet Will has never been kissed like this in his goddamn life. Mike crushes his mouth to Will’s with zero hesitation, with the confidence and assuredness of someone who’s thought about this enough to mentally measure the distance, timing, and angle needed, although Will’s thoughts might just be devolving into delirium.
It’s nothing like how he thought kissing Mike might be, back when he allowed himself to think like that.
Back then, the thoughts had been the teenage fantasies of a closeted boy who had never been kissed, and daydreaming about an awkward gangly teenager. But now, Will knows better and he knows what a kiss feels like when it's hungry. And now Mike is a man and there's nothing awkward about the way he’s kissing Will like he’s been starved for days, intent on devouring him whole.
Mike’s mouth slots against his, moving with a click sound each time their lips slide against one another. The hand under his jaw guides Will’s face up toward his as Mike searches for a better angle. His tongue plays at the seam of Will’s mouth, tracing all the way across from one corner and back slowly, until Will opens his mouth with a sigh against Mike’s lips. Will balls his hands in Mike’s jacket, clenching his fists hard as Mike’s tongue moves past his lips exploratorily. Will gasps in pleasant surprise and bites Mike’s bottom lip when he feels Mike’s tongue brush his own, causing Mike to smile against his lips. As if he's enjoying this as much as Will is.
When Mike pulls back, still holding Will’s chin tenderly, Will is completely breathless—though he’s not sure they’ve been kissing all that long, it might be an effect of being this close to Mike himself. Even in the dim light of Roxy’s, illuminated only by the red LEDs and the small tea lamps in the middle of each table, Will can see that Mike’s lips are kiss bitten red and slick with spit—Will’s spit. Will had done that to him.
Will lifts his gaze back up to Mike’s eyes to find them dark and heavy-lidden and intensely focused on Will’s mouth. He figures his own lips must look much the same and wonders for a moment if Mike is regarding them with the same reverence and wonder that Will had afforded his. But he hasn't yet really met his eyes directly, and Will had gotten impossibly worse at reading Mike's expressions, despite having spent more time with him in the last 6 months than he ever had before, so he's not sure he'd be able to tell even if he did.
It only takes a second for the more rational conclusion to form in Will's head: Mike is panicking. Somewhere, in Mike's messy mind—even more muddled by the too many drinks poured by a heavy-handed bartender who Will had noticed making eyes at Mike earlier while Will tried to explode him with his mind—he must be realizing what he's just done. Will's body tenses, the dreamlike floaty feeling pressed into him by Mike's lips replaced with fear and apprehension.
But then Mike’s gaze finally meets his after several moments, as though through the result of quite a bit of effort, and then he smiles. Casually even, as if he just rolled a nat-20 and decidedly not like he's still cradling Will’s face in his slender hand, with his spit covering Will’s mouth.
“If someone was gonna do it, it should be me, right?” Mike murmurs lowly, for only Will to hear.
His thumb rubs over the corner of Will's mouth, brushing across his bottom lip, before Mike rubs the pad of his thumb against the side of his finger and repeats the motion along Will's top lip. Will's brain short-circuits when he realizes Mike has wiped his spit from Will's lips. He isn't sure if he's trying to wipe away the mistake, rubbing at Will's mouth like his thumb is an eraser that can magically undo the last several minutes, or if its just an extension of the tenderness that Will has come to enjoy from Mike in recent months.
Mike drops his hand from Will’s face, and he instantly feels cold at the loss of contact. The instant freeze of it feels haunting, like he’s 13 and seizing in a rotting pumpkin field or 15 and watching the town split in four, or 16 and watching through the eyes of a Demogorgon as the Wheeler’s house gets attacked. But he’s none of those things. He’s 20 and sitting in a bar with his fists still clenched in Mike’s jacket after just having made out with him.
He has goosebumps all the same. Turns out his body doesn't know the difference between fighting for his life and kissing Mike Wheeler.
Will supposes he is fighting for his life really, in a different sort of way.
He drops his hands from Mike, and Mike takes the opportunity to lean around him, catching James’s eye—though Will is sure he already had it. He’s sure everyone at the table’s attention has been firmly fixed on the two of them since the moment he grabbed his shoulder.
Mike speaks directly to James, corner of his mouth upturned in a cocky smirk, when he breaks the silence that has descended on the table in the otherwise noisy bar.
“What’s a little kiss between best friends, huh?”
Oh, Will wants to kill him. He wants to grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull him in again. Maybe both.
This wasn’t what Will had in mind when Mike promised them they’d stay best friends up on the radio tower just over three years ago. He’s absolutely positive this isn’t what Mike envisioned.
It's a fluke, Will decides. A one time thing, brought upon by Will’s own bad decision making, too much alcohol, and the weird buzzing energy Mike always seemed to get when James got overly friendly with him.
"Wouldn't call that little, mate," James laughs.
Maya swats out at his arm. "James, shut up," she chastises in a hiss, and Will sends a silent thank you into the universe for his friend.
"No no," Charlie says with barely concealed mirth. "Keep challenging the boy, I wanna see how far he'll take this."
Will decides if he ever does get his hands on one of Nancy's guns, he'll have to take out Mike, James, and Charlie in no particular order. He’s sure Nancy wouldn't mind. She’s always told him she likes him more than Mike and its not like he doesn't already know how to use it.
Mike snorts but doesn't comment. He just picks up Will's drink and takes a sip out of it, which is just as well, seeing as Mike had paid for it and Will is already feeling far too nauseous without even thinking about the taste of alcohol on his tongue again. Not least when he has the has the taste of Mike still on his tongue, and Mike is sitting there pretending he doesn't.
God, Will is going to throw up.
But he can't because Mike would assume he was just wasted and all but carry him home, allowing him to lean into him and wrapping a protective arm around his body to pull his weight along the dark street on the walk back to their shitty little apartment. Might even get him to his room, help him shed his shoes and his jeans and get him snug under his yellow comforter. Will doesn't think he could handle any more physical contact with Mike tonight without vibrating out of his skin.
As if the asshole can hear his thoughts, Mike slumps over on his stool, tossing an arm around Will's shoulders. His head rests comfortably a top Will's. He continues the conversation he's in like nothing happened.
Drunk idiot, Will thinks and loves him anyway.
Its well past 1 in the morning by the time they stumble into the apartment together, after several minutes of Mike fumbling to get the key in the lock. Will's not even really drunk anymore, just slightly buzzed more than anything. The kiss with Mike—because holy shit, there was a kiss with Mike—apparently very effective at sobering him up.
But he still kind of feels like he needs to throw up. But that's probably related to the fact that Mike kissed him and then didn't talk about it and how Will isn't sure they ever will.
Mike doesn't seem all that tipsy anymore, either. More tired than anything else. Will suddenly has a vision of Mike coming home earlier that evening, already worn out from his long day and practically throwing himself onto top of Will on the couch. Hours ago that feel like years now.
They'd made it home just fine. Leaving the bar with hugs and kisses on cheeks from his friends, and a Charlie demanding him to call in the morning and give her an update, as if there was anything more that was going to happen between him and Mike tonight. Will already knew they wouldn't so much as discuss it. None of Mike's physical affection over the past year had gone addressed—why would they start now. This was no different, Will reasoned.
Mike locks the door behind them and turns to Will, looking beat as he steps on the heels of his shoes to kick them off, leaving them sticking out in hall again. "Water. Brush teeth. Bed."
"Yes, please." Will nods.
"Two waters, coming right up."
Mike moves into the kitchen as Will kicks off his shoes by the door, straightening out Mike's converse and placing them next to his own.
The red light of the answering machine blinks incessantly, glowing in the otherwise dark apartment, beaconing Will over to where it sits, fastened on the wall by the kitchen. His movement is clumsy as he stumbles towards it, like a dying moth following the glow of a porch light. Will fumbles for the voicemail button, pushing his thumb into the 9 button first, then the pound sign, before accidentally before he finds it.
"You have four new messages," the robotic voice announces into the quiet of the apartment, punctuated only by the machine and the noise of Mike fumbling around filling glasses of water for them both in the kitchen behind him. "First message, Friday, 9:49 p.m.."
Will slumps forward, resting his head on the cool counter top as the first message begins to play.
"Hey, Will," Jonathan's voice rings out, a bit strangely. "Call me back as soon as you get this. It's important."
Will's heart drops, worry creeping in, and he moves to call him back but the machine beeps, and a new message from Jonathan starts before he can.
"Next message, Friday, 11:26 p.m."
"I guess you guys are out for the night. Call when you get home. I'll uh, I'll be up for a while. I have a train home in a few hours." Will's stomach twists, gripped with fear for what kind of emergency could warrant multiple voicemails from Jonathan and a midnight train back to Montauk.
Another beep. "Next message, today, 12:43 a.m."
"Uh, hey Will. Mike." Jonathan pauses, voice serious even with the distortion of the phone line, and dread overtakes Will. "Look I have to leave soon, so I'm just going to say this, I don't think it can wait until morning. She came home last night, okay. She's with Mom and Hop. I'm heading there tonight—"
Will is faintly aware of something hitting the floor with a loud crack behind him and the sensation of water hitting his feet. There's presumably broken shards of one of the cups Mike was filling scattered on the floor all around him.
The glass fell. And the other shoe drops.
"—and I think you guys should too, as soon as you can. And don't tell the rest of your friends yet, okay? Hop's request. Obviously, bring Mike. I think he just wants the family together first. I love you, please travel safe. See you soon."
Oh. Then it hits Will, full force like a telekinetic shove to his chest.
Jane.
"End of messages."