Archive of Our Own

The moment the words, “I don’t like girls,” came out of Will’s mouth, Mike’s heart started racing.

When they were followed by, “I have a—a thing for this guy, but he isn’t like me,” shortly thereafter, his mind started racing too.

And when he was the first to throw his arms around Will tight enough for him to feel Will’s heartbeat against his own chest and Will just melted into him, face buried in Mike’s neck and hands clutching the back of his shirt, Mike knew what he had to do.

There was, of course, the small matter of defeating Vecna and getting Holly and the other kids back first, which involved infiltrating a military base (again), using Will like an antenna to track them down (during which Mike shamelessly held his hand and kept Will anchored in his body), going somehow deeper into the Upside Down via another gate (this one in the hollowed out Creel house), and finally throwing everything they had at the swarm of Demos (gorgons, dogs, and bats alike) and the Mind Flayer standing over them all, with Vecna at the center of everything surrounded by a human shield of unconscious children. Small potatoes.

They almost didn’t make it out alive. In fact, Mike is pretty sure they all would have died if Vecna actually succeeded in infiltrating Will’s head like he obviously meant to. Will was the bridge, the final piece of the puzzle that Vecna (the Mind Flayer? There had been some argument over who, exactly, was pulling the strings) had been painstakingly putting together for four years. The Demos were keeping everyone else distracted, luring them away from Will (and Mike, who was still holding Will’s hand and refusing to let go, even as monsters surrounded them). El was kept busy deflecting the shadowy tendrils sent towards Will by the Mind Flayer, both arms outstretched and mouth open in a wail of rage.

And Will…

The second Vecna laid eyes on him, his knees buckled, and he would have fallen if not for Mike’s firm hold. “Mike, get away from me!” he groaned, fisting both hands in his own hair, face contorted with pain. “He’s in my head, he’s—”

“No,” Mike said, and without thinking, without caring that El was just a few feet away and everyone else could see him at any moment, he cupped Will’s face in his hands and pressed their foreheads together so hard it hurt. “No, you’re not leaving me. You’re not his, you understand? Come on, Will. Look at me, look at me.”

Will’s eyes flew open as though he couldn’t possibly have denied Mike’s command. If Mike didn’t know what it meant, the shifting color of his eyes would have been ethereal: their normal hazel, to brown, to almost black, and back again, over and over as Will fought to shove Vecna away. “Mike—”

“You can do this,” Mike told him, ignoring the icy fear in his chest, bubbling up in his throat like acid. “You’re stronger than he is, you’re the strongest person I know.” Somewhere behind them, Nancy and Hopper were mowing down bats with stolen machine guns; Murray and Dustin flanked El, keeping stray Demos from getting too close; Jonathan, Steve, and Robin were fighting to clear a path towards the kids, getting closer and closer to Vecna but not caring. If Mike let himself look, he knew he would see Holly there too, right there in the center at Vecna’s feet. But he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t lose Will again, not before he could tell him everything, and besides that, he’d promised Mrs. Byers not to leave her son’s side. (He thinks now that she knows, that she’s probably known ever since Mike fought tooth and nail for the Byers to move in with his family and argued with his mom unsuccessfully over Will sleeping in his bedroom instead of the basement. It doesn’t scare him as much as he thought it would). So he stared into Will’s changing eyes and ignored Vecna’s sick laughter from across the sea of monsters and echoing in his head. “Will, you can fight him, I know you can fight him.”

“Mike,” and there were tears rolling down Will’s cheeks now, trailing over Mike’s fingers and mingling with the blood streaming from his nose, “it hurts.”

“I know,” Mike whispered, heart cracking. “I know it does, but it’s almost over, okay? You can do this. I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s been a little over two weeks since then, and Mike still isn’t exactly sure how they all made it out. He doesn’t know what gave Will the strength to not just take back control over his own head, but to wrest control of the hive mind from Vecna/the Mind Flayer completely and use it to slow everything down enough for El to tear the Mind Flayer apart and Mrs. Byers to sever Henry Creel’s head clean from his twisted body. Mike just knows that every night since, he’s woken up with Will’s agonized scream ringing in his ears, the weight of his limp body heavy against his chest until he looks over to the air mattress a few feet away and sees Will sleeping peacefully there.

Things are still being worked out. El and Hopper are back in hiding, but Dr. Owens keeps promising that he’s very close to ensuring their freedom. They’re all exhausted and jumpy and wary, but they’re alive. Mike’s mom is set to come home from the hospital in the next week or so, and his dad woke up a week ago and is slowly recovering from being nearly eviscerated too. Nancy and Jonathan are overseeing the repairs being done on the Wheeler house, Mrs. Byers is searching for a new home for the Byers-Hopper family (because there is no doubt in Mike’s mind that Hopper and El will be moving into that house as well), and Steve is having the time of his life hosting them all and filling his parents’ enormous house with warmth and noise.

But things are slowly going back to normal, or at least as normal as they can be. And Mike has waited long enough to answer Will’s unconscious, unspoken question. He has a tentative plan, one that he’s almost positive is going to work, but he needs a little bit of input first.

Cue: Max.

During the final showdown, she’d still been much too weak to come with them. She could barely move her limbs, was still half-blind, and more than anything, no one wanted to send her back into the hellscape that she’d been trapped in for eighteen months. Lucas and Robin’s friend Vickie stayed with her, which ended up being a good call when Vecna decided to send them one last “fuck you” and try to kill her with more Demodogs on the Rightside Up. But she’s recovering, albeit slower than she would evidently like. The doctors seem to think that she will eventually gain back full range of motion, but her eyesight might never get any better than what it is. She’s dealing with it by making whoever is unfortunate enough to be nearby assist with her physical therapy. Considering that she, too, is living with Steve (Mike is fuzzy on the details, but after her mom somehow got through the quarantine and skipped town a few months back, Steve mysteriously gained custody of her), Mike and Will are most often her victims of choice, at least when Lucas isn’t around.

It makes it easy for Mike to be able to have a private conversation with her, reluctant as he is to let Will out of his sight long enough to go visit El for a few hours. He knows that Will has missed having El around all the time, and Mike may not be close to Nancy like that, but he can’t fault Will for wanting to spend time with his pseudo sister. For now though, when Max wheels herself into the formal dining room that has been temporarily converted into a bedroom for himself and Will and demands that Mike help her practice walking for the fourth time since Thanksgiving break began, he takes the opportunity for what it is.

“I need to ask you something,” he says. If this were anyone else, he might try to ease into the subject, but Max has always called him on his bullshit, and beating around the bush will just invite a snipe-fest that he doesn’t have the time (or energy) for.

“Walking and talking at the same time is kind of difficult right now,” Max wheezes. She’s got a death grip on his arm with one hand—or what she probably thinks is a death grip but is pitifully weak given that she’s still regaining muscle in her arms too—and is bracing herself against the wall of Steve’s living room with the other. She does actual physical therapy at the hospital three times a week, but she’s taken to ignoring the doctor’s advice about taking it easy between sessions. She’s determined to be fully self-sufficient by the end of the school year, and besides that, the effort takes her mind off the fact that her mom abandoned her.

Mike guides her to the doorway leading to the kitchen and its more informal dining table and carefully lowers her into a chair. She’s red and sweaty despite the fact that they’ve only been at it for fifteen minutes, so Mike gets her a bottle of water and helps her open it when her hand is shaking too badly to get the cap off. “Thanks,” she says grudgingly, deliberately knocking her knee against his underneath the table.

Mike waves it off. “It’s nothing,” he tells her, and means it. He lets her chug half the bottle before he says again, “I need to ask you something, and I need you not to tell anyone else about it, okay?”

Max lowers the bottle carefully, tapping it against the table a few times until she’s sure that it isn’t too close to the edge, and frowns. “That sounds bad.”

“No, no,” Mike says hurriedly, “it’s more like I need…advice. Kind of. Input from an…unbiased source.”

“And you came to me?”

Mike shoots her an unimpressed look that he doesn’t think she can actually see very well. “I know you were in a coma for a year and a half, but I know you remember us actually being kind of friends before that after you broke up with Lucas. I…I trust you to be honest with me.” The last part he mumbles out, reluctant to say it.

Thankfully, she chooses not to tease him about it. “Okay,” she says, shuffling in her chair so that she’s facing him head-on. “What is it?”

Mike huffs out a breath. “So…Will.”

Something complicated crosses Max’s face, there and gone in a flash. “What about him?” she asks carefully, like she’s gearing up for a fight.

Mike wants to be offended, but he recognizes that this is a sensitive subject. It’s why he came to Max rather than Lucas or Dustin, knowing that she would keep her mouth shut and give the situation the seriousness it requires. “Before we…before we went back to the Upside Down and he told us that he’s…you know.”

“Gay?”

Mike wants to laugh at how bluntly she says it, making it sound like both a fact and a challenge. “Yeah,” he agrees. “He mentioned that there’s a guy that he’s liked for awhile, right? And I just…I wanted to know…” He takes another deep breath. “Do you think it’s me?”

Max squints at him, no doubt trying to figure out what his expression is. “Before I answer that, I need to know that you aren’t going to be a dick about it,” she says finally, voice hard and eyebrows drawn in a glare. “He’s been through enough, the last thing he needs is his best friend being an asshole because—”

“Jesus Christ, Max, I wouldn’t do that,” Mike interrupts irritably. “I know I wasn’t a great friend for awhile there, but you haven’t been around, okay? You don’t know how things have been with us. God, can you just answer the damn question?”

“First of all, ouch,” Max says emphatically, reaching out to shove him weakly. “Second of all, I had to make sure, okay? Because you’re right, I haven’t been around, and you two have been glued at the hip since I woke up, but I had to say it, okay?”

“Fine,” Mike grouches, “I won’t be a dick about it, I promise. Just tell me what you think.”

Max rolls her eyes. “Well, obviously he likes you, dumbass. I knew that as soon as I met you guys. How you idiots never clocked it, I’ll never know. Fuck, I even thought you liked him back at first—”

“I did,” Mike tells her before he can think better of it. “I—I do.”

Her mouth falls open in surprise and for once, she doesn’t seem to have anything to say.

“Look.” He swallows hard, supremely uncomfortable with the situation he’s gotten himself into but determined to see it through. “I know that I’ve fucked up a lot, okay? With El, with Will, with everyone. I’ve been trying to be better though. El and I broke up not long after Vecna split Hawkins because she knew that I wasn’t really in love with her, and I patched things up with Will when his family moved in with mine. And I know I’m an idiot, okay, but I didn’t know about him. Maybe I should have, but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own bullshit and how I felt about him that it never even occurred to me to think that he felt the same. And the thing is, if he does…I know I don’t deserve him, okay? But he deserves whatever he wants. If that’s me, then I guess I should be counting every fucking blessing I have.”

Max stares at him for a few more seconds with cloudy eyes, brow furrowed. “You really like him too?”

Mike chuckles mirthlessly, feeling the same deep sadness he’s felt every time he realizes again just how much time he’s wasted. “I think I’m in love with him, actually. I think maybe I always have, I just…didn’t realize it until they left for California.”

Max squints at him some more, undoubtedly trying to better see his expression, before she finally says, “Well, you’re even dumber than I thought, but at least you know what you’re about now, I guess. Does El know? He is her brother after all, kind of.”

“I think she suspects,” Mike admits. There had been a moment where she’d looked at him, in the Upside Down with Will’s unconscious body in his arms, when something like surprise and then acceptance crossed her face. Mike hadn’t had time to dwell on it though, and she hasn’t said anything since, although granted, time with her has been limited.

“I think she’d be okay with it,” Max says. “You owe her a serious apology though.”

“You mean in addition to the several dozen I already gave her over the last eighteen months?” Mike asks dryly.

“Yes, because she didn’t have the context.”

Mike thinks this over, and then nods. “Fair.”

Max does something uncharacteristic then, and reaches out to squeeze the hand that’s resting on the table between them. “I’m assuming you’re going to tell him?”

Mike huffs out a breath, feeling lighter than he has in months. Years, probably. “Planning to. I just…need to figure out how.”

Max tilts her head. “Well…have you considered just asking him out?”

Mike frowns. “I’m not sure that would work. We hang out all the time, just the two of us. I’m not sure he would get what I’m asking.”

“So make it explicit then,” Max suggests. “Do something different, that you don’t normally do. Or, hell, something that you do normally do, so that it’s not too uncomfortable, but make it clear that the context is different. Tell him it’s a date.”

It’s a good idea, except for the clench of anxiety in Mike’s stomach. “What if we’re wrong though? What if he doesn’t…I could ruin things.”

Max rolls her eyes again. “In the incredibly unlikely scenario that both you, the most oblivious person I’ve ever met, and me, the person who clocked your ass in the eighth grade, are wrong about Will’s feelings for you, then I’ll buy you a milkshake and let you third wheel Lucas and I until the end of the school year. But Mike, even if that’s the case, you know he would never hold it against you, right? You’ve been best friends since kindergarten; that doesn’t just go away. The fact that you treated him like absolute garbage for a year and he still thinks the sun shines out of your pasty ass proves that.”

“Ew,” and Mike wrinkles his nose, “don’t talk about my ass.”

Max smirks. “Whatever. What are you going to ask him to do?”

By the time Will gets back to Steve’s from visiting El and Hopper, face flushed from the cold but looking lighter than he has in days, Mike has a plan. He can only hope that he doesn’t fuck it up too badly.

***

The past few weeks have been…strange, to say the least.

First of all, the Byers family and Wheeler children are still living with Steve and Max (and Robin, who never seems to leave and almost always has Vickie in tow). From the sound of it, the Wheeler house should be finished being repaired by Christmas, provided the unseasonably good weather Hawkins has been having holds. Dr. Owens is confident that Hopper and El will be able to reassimilate into society by the new year with their identities intact. The military has withdrawn from Hawkins altogether, lifting the quarantine and the curfew. The town is still in disarray, somewhat, cleaning up the destruction left behind from the military’s uncaring presence, but the gates are closed and the outside world is within reach again, and it seems like a weight has been lifted off of everyone’s shoulders, including the townspeople who had no clue what was going on all this time.

The strangest thing of all: Will is happy.

Which is not to say that Will hasn’t been happy these past few years, on and off. In between all the fighting and the nightmares and the possessions, there have been pockets of joy. Playing D&D with his friends; introducing El to various forms of art and watching her utterly fail at every single one of them before picking up his mom’s penchant for sewing; reforming his friendship with Mike in a way that reflects how they were before all of this started, and yet is somehow stronger than ever. Even after Will told everyone the truth, terrified out of his mind that Vecna would take that from him too, Mike was the first one to wrap his arms around Will and tell him it was okay. That he was proud of Will. That Will is perfect exactly as he is. Then he proceeded to glue himself to Will’s side for the duration of their last excursion into the Upside Down and keep Will anchored when Vecna made his last attempt to rip Will’s mind away from him entirely.

And the thing is, with the rebuilding of their friendship, Mike has become touchier. They always shared space easily as kids, crowding close enough that their shoulders brushed and knees knocked together, and hugs hello and goodbye were never in short supply. But it feels more…deliberate now. When they’re all crowded in Steve’s living room for informal dinners that he says his parents would hate if they hadn’t ditched Hawkins and their son the moment the earth split apart, Mike sits so close that they’re pressed together from shoulder to ankle. Which maybe Will could write off as a result of the fact that even the Harringtons’ living room couldn’t quite support eight people to begin with, and then ten when Mike’s parents were released from the hospital just before Thanksgiving. But Mike does the same thing even if there’s more than enough space for him to create some distance, even going so far as to throw an arm around Will’s shoulders or rest a hand on the nape of his neck, fingers drifting restlessly into Will’s hair.

And he does it no matter who is around to see.

At first, Will genuinely thinks that Mike is just trying to prove to him that Will’s confession has changed nothing between them. That Mike isn’t afraid of the implications of having a gay best friend. The touches will fade, Will is certain of it, as soon as Mike is sure that Will has gotten the message. In fact, Will was positive that Ted and Karen Wheeler moving in would stop them altogether. He knows that Mike’s mom adores him and always has, and Mr. Wheeler has always been absent and uncaring of his children’s social lives, but they’ve never struck him as the most…accepting of people. Fear of the unknown in Mrs. Wheeler’s case, and disdain for anything out of the norm in Mr. Wheeler’s. If anything though, their arrival seems to make Mike double down even more, until it feels less like he’s trying to prove something to Will and more like he’s trying to prove something to everyone else, or even himself.

Will doesn’t know what to make of it.

Either way, no one is looking twice at them. Well, at least they aren’t in a bad way. Jonathan and Nancy, who seem to have repaired the awkwardness between them for the time being, keep smothering smiles and whispering to each other. Robin keeps shooting Will meaningful looks and mouthing, Avalanche! in an extremely unsubtle way. Max just takes their closeness as a repeated opportunity to force them into helping her regain enough strength in her legs to ditch the wheelchair. Then, the one time Lucas goes to tease Mike about being little more than a leech, she smacks him in the shoulder harder than she probably meant to, given his yelp and her immediate apology about not knowing where her strength lies lately. Dustin just frowns and says, “Haven’t they always been like this?” El just seems highly amused by the whole thing, which Will thinks is fair, because he finally told her about his feelings for Mike and tried to apologize profusely, only for her to cut him off with a hug and saying that there was nothing to apologize for and she hopes that Mike treats him better than he treated her, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Now there’s what’s been happening today.

It’s the first week of December, just under a month since the final showdown with Vecna, and unfortunately, they’re at school. For a year and a half, Will genuinely didn’t understand why school was even still a thing. Did no one understand the danger they were in? Was the military presence not enough to indicate that the “earthquake” was so much more than that? But after a rushed two weeks in May of 1985, just enough time for exams to be taken and the seniors to get their diplomas, the city must have taken the summer to decide that normalcy was the best policy. So they went back in August as sophomores, and Will spent every day being simultaneously grateful for the distraction of classes and pissed that he had to deal with things as normal as bullies again.

For once though, they hadn’t been after him. Whether that was Lucas’s elevated status on the basketball team or Mike’s insistence on glaring at anyone who even looked at Will for a beat too long, Will was pretty much left alone. It helped that Troy and James seemed to have vanished with about half of the student body, those with fortunate enough families to get the hell out of Hawkins before it was shut down. No, the bullying fell on Dustin now, who insisted on carrying on Eddie Munson’s legacy despite the danger, and Will, for the first time ever, became a protector instead of someone who needed to be protected.

Everyone is antsy the way that students always are in that strange, three-week gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. There seems to be little point in studying when they all know that they’re about to have a glorious two weeks off soon anyways, especially when the weather is so unseasonably mild. Freezing, for sure, but snow has yet to fall, which Will can’t help but be grateful for. Perhaps the nightmares have been kept at bay by Mike sleeping just a couple of feet away, but his old dislike of the cold has returned tenfold. Thankfully, Mike has no shortage of sweaters that he’s happy to pile onto Will, always looking at him with a gleam of…something when Will acquiesces and wears them.

Mike had handed over his prized leather jacket this morning too, despite Will’s protests, before driving themselves, Max, and Holly to school in his dad’s sedan. They’d both gotten their licenses during the summer, but there had rarely been a car available, so Mike is taking full advantage of his parents’ medical house arrest. Mr. Wheeler grumbles a lot about it, but given that he’s still having difficulty doing much more than going up and down the Harrington’s stairs, he reluctantly hands the keys over every morning for Mike to take the three of them to school, as long as they drop off Holly too. Mike seems to have no problems carting his baby sister around after what happened to her. She’s doing better, but she’s still sharing a room with Nancy and Robin every night, at least when she can be convinced to try and sleep. Fortunately, this morning Derek Turnbow was already at the elementary school when they dropped her off, and she’d linked her arm through his and waved cheerfully to Mike and Will on her way inside. She still won’t talk much about what happened in Vecna’s mindscape outside of what she and Max did together, but whatever it was seems to have helped her form a fast friendship with Derek.

Mike, for his part, has been weirdly jittery all day. He’s usually a little better at concentrating in class than Will is after cleaning his act up their sophomore year, seemingly bolstered by their renewed friendship, but during all four of their seven classes together today, he’s been practically vibrating out of his skin. It’s bad enough that Max snaps after lunch and demands that he let Will push her wheelchair to their shared physics class instead (she seems to have worked out some deal with the school to allow her to be a junior, provided she does extra studying to make up for missing her sophomore year. Mike and Will spend a lot of time taking turns reading out of textbooks for her while the other assists with her physical therapy). When the last bell finally rings, he’s up like a shot and herding Will towards his locker impatiently.

“What is with you?” Will laughs, trying to ignore the zing of electricity that darts up his spine when Mike’s hand lands, once again, on the nape of his neck. “You’ve been acting like a total freak all day.”

“I have a surprise for you,” Mike blurts out. He leans against the locker next to Will’s like he’s trying to be casual while Will grabs the textbooks he’s going to need over the weekend (damn Mrs. Reynolds for assigning them an essay that’s due two days before break). He fails miserably, of course.

“What sort of surprise?” Will asks warily. The last time Mike had a “surprise” for him, it ended with them both in tears and Nancy finding them with their arms locked around each other, Will’s painting newly framed and a box of unsent letters on the basement couch. Not that Will regrets that conversation, but holy shit, had it been as terrifying as it was freeing. Learning that Mike knew he’d lied about the painting, only to reveal that he had, in fact, written Will several letters in addition to apparently calling repeatedly while the Byers were in California, mended them in such a way that Will hadn’t thought was possible.

Mike chuckles, maybe thinking back on that too. “So I know you’re going with your mom to check out that house a couple streets down from ours,” he starts, fiddling unconsciously with the zipper of his own leather jacket on Will’s shoulders. It’s a nervous habit he’s always had, not just pulling at his own clothes but other people’s. Mostly Will’s, but Will has always ignored it, brushing it off as nothing. “She’s picking you up, right?”

“Yeah,” Will confirms, somewhat regretfully. As excited as he is to have his own room again, his own space, he’s going to miss sharing with Mike. It’ll only be for a little while, given that they’re intending to carry out their younger selves’ plan of going to college and rooming together, but still.

“That’s fine,” Mike says quickly. “I have to pick up a few things on the way back to Steve’s anyway; Nancy told me yesterday that she was planning on harassing the construction workers to try and get the house finished by next week, so she won’t run by the store for me. How she means to do that, I’m not sure…”

“Guns, probably,” Will jokes, and gets the laugh and the temporary lightening of the buzzing tension between them that he’s looking for.

“Probably,” Mike agrees. “But listen – I called the movie theater in Greenfield and they have an eight o’clock showing for that movie you were talking about over Thanksgiving – Flowers in the Attic? I was hoping you’d want to go see it tonight. I know we’ve got Reynolds’ essay, but we’ve still got, like, two weeks for that, and since no one else really gave us any homework for the weekend, I figured we could take a break.”

Will’s heart gives a traitorous skip at the hopeful tone of Mike’s voice, combined with the heat rolling off of his body given that he’s hovering so close and still holding onto the hem of his jacket. He shoves it down and grins, slamming the locker shut. “I could go for a movie,” he says, excited at the prospect of getting out of this goddamn town, even just for a few hours. Greenfield isn’t far, just over half an hour by car – more like twenty minutes if he can convince Mike to let him drive. Given Nancy’s somewhat scary driving skills, he never would have expected Mike to be the more cautious driver between them, but so he is. “We’d get home pretty late though; you sure our parents would be okay with that? Not to mention Lucas and Dustin’s—”

“Actually,” and Mike swallows, eyes darting down to his fingers and back again, “I was thinking it could just be the two of us. Like how we used to?”

Will blinks, surprised. Sure, when they were a lot younger, movies had sort of been their thing. They’d bike to the dinky little theater at the edge of Hawkins, or get dropped off by one of their parents at the one in Greenfield if they were lucky, but once Max entered the picture and Starcourt Mall went up seemingly overnight, that had ended. And maybe they’ve watched a lot of old movies in Mike’s basement late at night in the last year and a half, Mike seemingly waiting for Jonathan to sneak into Nancy’s room before making his way downstairs and crashing down onto the sofa next to Will, but that’s a far cry from actually going to the movies together. “Dustin might be mad,” he cautions, heart thumping a little and mind racing. Doesn’t Mike understand the implications of what he’s suggesting? Sure, no one outside of their Party and Co actually knows for sure that he’s gay, but two teenage boys going to the movies alone together might draw some attention from bystanders, not to mention those that do know. “He’s been wanting to see it too.”

“He’ll deal,” Mike says with a shrug. Their little corner of the hallway is mostly empty by now; Will’s locker is on the far end of the school, away from the main entrance, and most of the other students tend not to hang around at the end of the day, choosing instead to linger on the front steps or in the parking lot. “And your mom already gave the okay. So did mine. I think they actually want us out of their hair for an evening. Holly’s having a sleepover with Debbie and Lucas is taking Max to Hop’s cabin for a sleepover with El, so with all the kids gone, they’ll probably have a wine night.”

Will stares at him, nonplussed. “My mom hates wine.”

“Steve’s parents left ‘the good stuff,’ whatever that means,” Mike says. “Either way, they’re fine with it as long as we’re back home by two. Honestly, we could probably get away with staying out the whole night. I think your mom in particular might actually be happy if you got into some normal teenage trouble for once.”

“That might be true,” Will allows, smirking slightly. “Okay, sure. We can leave at seven? After dinner?”

“Great.” Mike grins, the tension leaving his shoulders almost completely. For a second, he seems to hesitate, fingers tightening in the leather, before he releases it long enough to give Will’s hand a squeeze that lasts all of one second but sets Will’s entire body on fire. “It’s a date.”

Which makes Will’s heart just about give out.

Before he can respond—though what he would say, he has no clue, but it would probably begin with What the fuck, Mike? or something along those lines—Mike is darting away. “See you back at Steve’s!” he calls over his shoulder, face suspiciously flushed.

Will stands there for a long minute after that, looking down the hallway that Mike has already disappeared down. “It’s a date.” It’s a date. It’s a date? Will tries to figure out if he hallucinated their whole conversation, from Mike’s hovering to the quick squeeze of Will’s hand to “It’s a date.” But no; a quick look down shows that the zipper of Mike’s leather jacket has been pulled halfway up from the hem, something Will would never do unless he was actually zipping it up. His hand is slightly clammy now from Mike’s sweaty one. He feels a little too warm despite the chill, because no matter what the school does, Hawkins High is always a little too cold or hot depending on the weather outside.

No, Will decides as he finally follows Mike’s trail to the doors, where his mom will undoubtedly be waiting patiently in the parking lot. That just happened. Mike asked him to see a movie that he knows Will has wanted to see (and that Mike decidedly doesn’t, because after what they’ve been through, he doesn’t find horror and suspense as funny as Will does anymore), deliberately made sure that it was just going to be the two of them, and apparently even went so far as to check with both their parents that it’s going to be okay if they get home late. Even with Will’s extremely limited (read: nonexistent) experience, he knows what all of that means.

Mike just asked him out.

On a date.

What the fuck?

“Hey bud, how was school?” he hears Jonathan ask as if from far away. When Will doesn’t answer, just slides into the backseat on autopilot, Jonathan adds, “Will?”

“Yeah, I’m ready to go,” Will answers, staring down at the zipper that he still hasn’t fixed. He misses the concerned looks that Jonathan and his mom exchange before she puts the car in gear and begins to drive.

“Well!” Mom says cheerily. “I think you’ll like this one better than the last; it’s close to the Wheelers and Sinclairs, just a couple minutes by car and about a ten-minute walk if you wanted. It’s not as big as theirs, but there’s more than enough room for all of us to have our own space. There’s even a sun porch!”

“I didn’t know houses had those this far north,” Jonathan chimes in, sneaking a glance back at Will. Will barely notices, thoughts still racing as he begins to catalogue, for probably the millionth time, every interaction he and Mike have had over the last twelve years. Ever since Robin pointed out the signs she looked for from Vickie, he’s been going over it all again and again, torn between confusion and hope. Does it count if you’ve been best friends for most of your lives and, except for a painful one-and-a-half year period, obliterated any concept of personal space a long, long time ago? Because he and Mike have done all of those things and more, repeatedly, even when Will was taking extra care to keep a safe distance.

“You could paint from there, Will!” Mom tries. “We could make it into a little studio for you.”

“Yeah,” Will says faintly, finally drawing the zipper back down to the hem of Mike’s jacket. “Sure.”

Once they actually get to the house, he tries to pay better attention. After all, even after he leaves for college, this might be the place he comes to visit for years to come. It’s nice, much bigger than their old house, but still smaller than Mike’s and Lucas’s, and even their house in California, which despite his best efforts, never felt like home. There are a lot of windows, which means the house is chilly despite the realtor having turned on the heat before they arrived, but Mom talks about putting up blinds and curtains. Will thinks that he would probably keep them pulled back in his room anyway; it’s always best to paint by natural light.

The master bedroom is downstairs, complete with an ensuite bathroom like Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler have, and upstairs are three smaller bedrooms and another bathroom. Jonathan offers to take the smallest of them, citing his intention to start looking into college again for the fall semester and his interest in moving to his city of choice before then to work for awhile and settle in. The other two are identical but for one of them having a bigger closet, which Will decides should be El’s. Ever since Mom taught her to sew in California, her wardrobe has grown exponentially, even though she had to start over when they returned to Hawkins. Besides, the other bedroom is a little brighter, the walls painted a soft green that, inexplicably, makes him think of Mike.

Mike. Jesus Christ, does Mike even realize what he’s done? Even if Will is right, and Mike intends this to be a date, what does it mean? Does Mike actually like him, or is he viewing Will’s sexuality as an opportunity to explore? Is he missing El and just wanting a relationship? If he does really like Will, then how long? Since Will displayed undeniable power at the MAC-Z? Longer? Shorter? Has he been pining as long as Will has? And if he has, then why now? Because Will already took the first step, even unconsciously, by admitting he likes boys? Did Mike figure out that he’s the guy that Will has a “thing” for? Does he realize that by “has a thing for,” Will actually meant, “head over heels, hopelessly in love with?”

Oh God, Will thinks dismally. No matter what the answers are, he’s going to have to figure out something to wear tonight. Considering that most of his clothes are still loans from Mike himself, aside from a few items donated by Lucas and, oddly enough, Steve, that could be a problem. There’s nothing he has that Mike hasn’t already seen. What is one supposed to even wear to a date?

“Okay,” Jonathan says, right next to him, and Will startles. Mom is chatting with the realtor downstairs, undoubtedly giving her Dr. Owens’ information (apparently he’s the one funding this, having told Hopper, “Pick a place, then call me. I’ll take care of the rest,” which is nice of him). “What’s with you? You’ve been like a zom—you’ve been weird all afternoon.”

That, out of everything, is what finally snaps Will back into his own body. He laughs, feeling some of the tension drain from his shoulders despite the knot of anxiety in his stomach. “I mean, I am Zombie Boy.”

“Shut up.” But Jonathan grins, evidently relieved by Will’s response. “Seriously though, are you okay? You’ve been really out of it. Is it…I mean, I know that it’s gone now, it’s closed, but you’ve had that – that post-traumatic…”

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Will fills in. “And no, that’s not it. I’m just…” He weighs his options. Jonathan has warmed back up to Mike over the last eighteen months, though he’s still more reserved than he used to be with him. But Jonathan has actual experience dating a Wheeler child, so… “How did you know that Nancy liked you?” he settles on. “I mean…how did you know that it was okay to go out with her?”

Jonathan, suspiciously, doesn’t seem surprised by the question, which makes Will wonder exactly what Mike said to his mom when he asked her to let Will break curfew tonight, and what Mom then told Jonathan about it. “I mean…” Jonathan turns thoughtfully to the window of Will’s chosen room, taking in the gray sky overhead. “The thing is, me and Nancy didn’t exactly start out…normally. You know? I mean, we didn’t even go on a date until we’d been together for over a month.”

Will frowned. “The Snowball wasn’t a date?”

“More a pre-date,” Jonathan acquiesces. “Lower stakes. But honestly, I don’t think I was really sure that she liked me back until we kissed at Murray’s, and I’m not sure that we would have even gotten there if it weren’t for that meddling dickhead.” Will can’t help the snort that escapes him. “We had chemistry, and we got along okay when we were trying to figure out the Upside Down shit initially, but aside from that, we hadn’t ever really taken the time to get to know each other. Like I knew she was crazy smart, and she knew that I liked photography, but that was really it. Honestly, we kind of went about things backwards, you know?”

“Okay,” Will says slowly, taking that in. “But once you guys…did all that,” and he purposefully avoids thinking about the fact that Jonathan definitely means that they slept together before anything else, because ew, “how did you figure out that it was more? That you guys weren’t just…friends?”

Jonathan seems to be thinking about his answer carefully. “I guess we took a chance,” he responds after a long moment. “I’m sure that Nancy calculated the risks, but I just…I don’t know, I don’t think there was really a choice for me. I was completely gone on her, and it got to the point that, once I knew she liked me back, it was worth the risk. But Will – it’s different with us than it is for you.”

Will shoots an unimpressed look down the stairs in the direction of his mom’s voice. “Because I like guys?” he deflects, knowing full well that’s not what Jonathan means.

Jonathan gives him a flat look. “No,” he says, “because Nancy and I weren’t really friends for that long before we started dating. We only knew each other because of you and Mike initially. Even if things didn’t work out, there wouldn’t be much to lose.”

“So,” Will huffs out a frustrated breath, “you think it isn’t worth the risk?”

“I think that Mike took a huge chance today,” Jonathan tells him, doing away with pretenses altogether. “And I think that no matter what happens, you can’t lose him. Even when he was being a total jackass—” Will gives a startled laugh, because Jonathan has never outright insulted Mike before— “he came back to you. What you guys have…it’s deeper than just friendship. You’ve had your ups and downs, but you two always make it through. And I know that you’re scared, and wondering what this means, but think about this: you’ve said it out loud. Told the truth, and I know it’s not how you saw it happening, but you did it. Mike hasn’t done that yet, but he asked you anyway. Hell, he told other people about it. Yeah, he asked Mom, but he checked with his own parents too. He knows the implications.”

Mom calls them from downstairs, evidently ready to leave, but Will can’t get that last question out of his head. “But why now?” he insists.

Jonathan shrugs. “Maybe because the world finally isn’t ending. Maybe because he’s tired of waiting. But if you want my opinion, I think it’s because of you. You asked him a question, Will, whether you intended to or not. He’s answering you.”

And Will doesn’t know what else to say to that.

They descend the stairs in silence, but just before they turn the corner into the living room, where Mom is probably waiting by the front door, Jonathan grabs his shoulder. “It’s just Mike,” he says in a low voice, forcing Will to meet his gaze before he smiles gently. “It’s just Mike in a different context. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

Coming from Jonathan, it means everything.

“Okay,” Will exhales. “Can you help me pick something to wear?”

Jonathan grins. “No,” he says, “but Robin will.”

***

Mike feels jittery all over again by the time he gets back to Steve’s. It’s not that he expected Will to say no, per se, but he is wondering if he maybe should have stuck around to see his reaction to Mike calling it a date.

It’s not like Will won’t be back soon; it’s already a little past four, Mike having stopped at Melvald’s to grab snacks to sneak into the theater, and since Mike’s mom got out of the hospital, she’s begun insisting on a set dinnertime. “We all need to get back into our routines,” she rasped, voice held to her throat. “It’ll help us heal.” So they’ve been eating dinner at six o’clock on the dot, Mrs. Byers, Steve, and Mike’s mom doing the majority of the cooking, though Mike and Will join them sometimes to get ideas of easy things they can make when they eventually go to college. He likes it, actually, helping his mom with things that she’s still a little too weak to do, and it’s hilarious seeing Steve in a pink apron and looking like he’s having the time of his life cooking with his ex-girlfriend’s mom. Lately, he’s been letting himself imagine a future for himself and Will where they have their own kitchen in their own house, or apartment, maybe in New York or Chicago. Somewhere they won’t have to hide, or at least not as much.

He knows he probably needs to actually check that Will is okay with this being a date, but he’s worried. What if he’s read everything wrong? Even with Max’s assurance that he’s definitely the guy Will was talking about when he told them all he’s gay, Mike can’t help but wonder why. Sure, he likes to think that he’s grown as a person, but he knows how badly he treated Will before the Byers and El left for California. And what he said that day in the rain…why Will even wants to be friends with him after all of that is beyond Mike.

But he saw it: the way Will’s eyes widened with surprise when Mike said that he just wanted it to be them. How he paused for a split second and looked up at Mike with something that looked extremely close to hope before he deliberately smoothed his expression, something that Will is all too good at. Mike hates that he’s learned how to hide so well, especially from Mike. He hates even more that it’s entirely warranted.

It’ll be okay, he tells himself. He wishes he could ask Max for another pep talk, but she went home with Lucas to spend some time with him before heading over to the cabin to sleep over with El. Steve took his parents to the hospital for a check-in and some repeat tests to make sure they’re still healing well; Robin is at the Squawk, presumably with Vickie, who Mike is beginning to suspect more and more isn’t just a friend; Nancy is definitely still harassing those poor construction workers repairing Mike’s house; Holly went home with Debbie straight from school; and the Byers are still out, which officially makes this the longest they’ve spent looking at a house. Mike wonders if this is the one and, as much as he doesn’t want to stop sharing space with Will, hopes it is; if he can’t have Will in his house, then at least he’ll just be a stone’s throw away.

Mike takes advantage of Steve’s empty house to take an extra long, extra hot shower, taking the time to properly condition his hair and talk himself out of panicking. He has an outfit picked out already, with Max’s input of course, even though she still can’t see very well. Her eyesight is improving; if she holds something up to within about six inches of her face, she can almost see it clearly. It was enough for her to help Mike put together a pair of dark wash jeans and a forest green sweater that he suspects came from Steve’s closet, though Max wouldn’t say. Mike wouldn’t be surprised; Steve doesn’t know how to be a parent, that’s for sure, and as much as anyone can see that he adores Max like a little sister, his methods seem to end at letting her do whatever the hell she wants short of breaking the law. Which really isn’t that different from what her mom was doing, so maybe it’s all the same to Max.

Either way, he has to admit that she has good taste. For all that she snipes at him for reading too fast when he’s trying to help her study and bitches about him being a slave driver during informal physical therapy despite the fact that she’s the one who keeps asking, Mike knows that she genuinely wants this to work out. True to his word, he went to see El the day after Thanksgiving and told her the truth about his feelings for Will. As he suspected, she already knew, and while she wouldn’t give any indication of her thoughts for Will’s feelings, she brought up the painting again, asking him to remind her what Will said when he gave it to Mike. Though Mike is more inclined to believe that she just wanted him to have to examine the words (for the millionth time, though she doesn’t know that).

It feels good, Mike thinks, having told two people now. Three, if you count Mrs. Byers’ tamped-down excitement when she pointedly asks when he and Will are planning to head out for the movie the moment they get back. Will flushes immediately and quickly changes the subject, informing Mike (and Steve and Mike’s parents, who got back just before the Byers did) that they’re going to take that house. It’ll be another month or so until they can move in, and Mike’s mom generously invites them to come back to their house for a few weeks to get everything together before the move. Mike’s dad doesn’t say anything about that, but he does give Mike’s outfit a critical look and tells him to wear the green beanie, as it’ll go with the sweater, to which Steve enthusiastically agrees. His mom smothers a smile, exchanging a knowing look with Mrs. Byers.

Six people then, Mike decides, feeling a strange mix of embarrassment, apprehension, and relief that his parents don’t seem to be taking this badly. Seven, because he should have known that Mrs. Byers wouldn’t keep her mouth shut about his request and would tell Jonathan, who keeps shooting Mike contemplative looks. Eight and nine, because Nancy and Robin get home at the same time and are immediately intercepted by Jonathan, who murmurs something that Mike can’t hear over the water he’s boiling for spaghetti noodles. Whatever it is makes Nancy sidle over to him not-at-all casually with her investigative reporter face on while Robin lets out an aborted squeal and whisks Will away. Jesus Christ, this is a mess, Mike thinks in dismay, fending off Nancy’s questions as best he can while trying not to overcook the noodles. Who knew that asking for a curfew extension would alert everyone he knows to the fact that he was planning a date with Will? Not Mike, though he thinks now that he should have.

Dinner, thankfully, goes by quickly with no pointed comments or innuendos, though Mike can tell that Robin is dying to do both of those things. He’s relieved to finally get in his dad’s sedan with Will, even though it means that they have at least half an hour of potentially awkward conversation ahead of them.

Mike hasn’t let himself think it, but Will looks nice. He’s still wearing Mike’s leather jacket, but he’s changed out of the Hawkins High sports sweater (Lucas’s) that he was wearing under it before in favor of a light blue knit that somehow softens the curve of his jaw a little bit. The khakis he’s wearing are new, Mike thinks, or new enough, vaguely remembering Nancy taking them both shopping a few months ago in a fit of sisterly kindness. They look good. Will looks good.

Mike takes a deep breath, turning the key in the ignition and choosing to say so. “You look good.”

For some reason, Will laughs. “Thanks,” he says, ducking his head a little. “You do too.” He hesitates for a moment before he adds, “You should let me drive.”

It’s so unexpected that Mike actually pauses in the act of shifting the car into gear. “Why?” he asks warily. As much as he likes (loves) Will, the other teen is not flawless, and while most of his flaws are minor and adorable to Mike’s rose-tinted glasses, his driving skills leave something to be desired. While Mike took Nancy’s driving lessons as examples of what not to do, Will seems to have done the opposite.

“We’ll get there faster,” is the predictable response.

Mike narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Faster does not always equate to ‘alive’ with you, Byers.” He continues what he was doing, executing a slightly clumsy four-point turn and carefully cruising down Steve’s long driveway.

“That’s extremely rude of you to say,” Will sniffs. He’s drumming his fingers a little nervously on his thigh, Mike notices, but his shoulders are mostly relaxed and his tone is humorous. “I have never once gotten us into an accident.”

Mike tilts his head in consideration. “Well…”

“Upside Down related events do not count,” Will warns, but when Mike chances a quick glance at him, he’s grinning.

“If you say so,” Mike says graciously, feeling his heart skip when Will reaches out and shoves his shoulder lightly. Before he can think too hard about it, Mike snags his hand and gives it a quick squeeze before Will can take it back. He’s gratified by Will inhaling sharply and squeezing back before letting go so Mike can navigate them out of Hawkins and onto the highway.

Mike knows that he still needs to clarify things with Will about what they’re doing here, but they’ve already fallen into easy, familiar territory speculating about this movie, remembering movies they’ve gone to in the past, expressing excitement about actually going to a movie theater together for the first time in well over two years (given Starcourt burned down and the small, dingy Hawkins theater that somehow survived going out of business at that point was torn apart by the rifts). Mike doesn’t want to mess up the dynamic they’ve gotten back, not yet. But he’s always been a bit of a coward, so.

They’re ten minutes out when Will asks suddenly, “Are you sure you want to see Flowers in the Attic? I know how you feel about horror movies, we can find something else.”

Mike frowns at the semi-truck in front of them, which is going too slow for even Mike’s standards. “Of course I’m sure,” he answers, taking a quick look over his shoulder after checking the mirrors and pulling into the left lane to get around it. “You’ve been wanting to see it.”

“We don’t have to though,” Will insists. His fingers twitch on his thigh again.

Mike takes a quick, calming breath and takes another chance: “Well, maybe you’ll just have to protect me then.” It’s just about the cheesiest thing he can possibly say, and he almost regrets it, feeling his face go red with embarrassment.

But when he looks over again, Will is smiling softly, face equally red. “Yeah, I can do that.”

***

All things considered, the movie is pretty great.

Mike insists on buying their tickets, seeming oblivious to the curious look the ticket attendant gives them, so Will retaliates by getting their popcorn and drinks before Mike can do anything about it. His heart skips when Mike bumps into him in protest, but he’s grinning when Will dares to look up at him and his eyes are sparkling with amusement and something shy. By the time they’ve found their seats towards the back and dead center, the room just beginning to darken and the first movie trailer starting, Will’s begun to relax a little bit. Jonathan was right: no matter the context, this is still Mike. His best friend of over a decade. Whatever the outcome of tonight, they’ll be fine.

He likes the movie right off the bat, finding the suspenseful shots and unsettling music funny rather than frightening. He’s halfway through the Reese’s Pieces that Mike had pressed into his hand before he realizes that Mike is stock-still next to him but for his nervously jiggling knee, expression carefully blank. When the door shuts with a snap behind the children, firmly locking them up, Mike flinches full-bodied. “Mike?” Will whispers, leaning closer so that the armrest is digging into his side a little.

“I’m fine,” Mike murmurs automatically, tearing his gaze from the screen and pasting an unconvincing smile on his face.

Will narrows his eyes skeptically. “We can go…?”

“No!” Mike’s response is a little too quick, just loud enough for someone a couple rows in front of them to turn and shoot him an annoyed look. “No, it’s fine,” he continues, quieter. “I’m having a good time.”

He isn’t, Will knows, or if he is, then the fear is overshadowing it. But if there’s anything Will knows, it’s that Mike is stubborn to a fault, and if Will pushes the issue it’ll just make it worse. Mike turns determinedly back to the big screen, forcing his leg to go still and deliberately taking a sip of the soda Will got for them to share. After another moment, Will slowly looks back too, taking in the movie and fingers itching with the urge to do something…insane, probably.

The theater is dark though, relatively empty but for two or three other couples and a group of giggling girls in the front corner who don’t seem to actually be paying any attention to the movie, choosing instead to pass a flask back and forth. A quick glance back reveals that there’s no one in the last two rows behind them, and they’re alone in their row. It’s a risk, Will knows, but Mike is a tense, miserable line next to him and while Will is terrified of fucking this up, watching Mike force himself to go through this is even worse. So he takes a breath, holds it for three seconds, and then slowly slips his hand underneath the armrest and wraps his fingers around Mike’s wrist.

For a moment, Will thinks he’s done the wrong thing. That he’s misread this entire situation, all the way back from Mike throwing his arms around Will after his confession to pressing their foreheads together in the Upside Down to saying it’s a date to dressing in that sweater that Will has never seen that makes his eyes seem a little lighter somehow to buying Will’s ticket to sitting through a movie that he hates. Mike stiffens somehow even more, freezing up entirely except for a surprised glance at Will, who stares unseeingly at the screen in front of him and tries not to panic. And then – and then, Mike twists his wrist underneath Will’s fingertips until he can press their palms together, interlocking their fingers. And a second after that, Mike uses his free hand to move the drink from between them to his other side, raises the armrest, and leans his shoulder against Will’s so that he can more comfortably hold Will’s hand on his knee.

All of the tension leaves Will in a rush, tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying this whole time. Against his side, Mike relaxes too, leaning his head back against the seat and exhaling a too-loud sigh, like he’s been holding his breath without noticing. When Will chances another look at him, Mike is smiling at the screen, biting his lip like he’s trying to contain it a little. That combined with Mike’s grip on his hand and the way he’s a solid warmth along Will’s side now makes his whole body tingle and for a second, Will has the absurd urge to lean over and kiss Mike.

He doesn’t, but he’s starting to think that Mike might let him.

Will doesn’t really pay much attention to the movie after that, too distracted by trying to figure out how to stretch this date out as long as possible without Mike catching on. Where they could go, if there might be a diner or something nearby that they could grab coffee at. He chuckles a few times when a couple of the other occupants gasp or, at one point, scream from the front row. Mike squeezes his hand and leans a little further into him, heavy enough that Will finds himself bracing his arm on the opposite armrest, but he doesn’t mind.

All in all, it’s the best movie he’s seen in a long time.

By the time they make it back to Mike’s car, Will having reluctantly let Mike’s hand go when the lights came back on, it’s nearing 10:30. They have about three hours before they absolutely need to drive back to Hawkins to meet their parents’ 2am curfew, though Will suspects that Mike was right in saying that no one would mind if they missed that given how enthusiastically his mother had shoved them out the door and Mrs. Wheeler’s cheerful, “Have fun kiddos!” with absolutely no reminder of the previously established rule. Neither of them have been to Greenfield in several years, and Will is still trying to figure out where he might casually suggest they go when Mike says from the driver’s seat, “You up for ice cream?”

“It’s freezing,” Will points out. It’s true; even in the car, it’s cold enough to see their breath.

Mike’s expression softens a little with worry. “Shit, I didn’t even think of that. Are you—?”

“No, I’m fine!” Will says hurriedly. “Ice cream sounds great!”

“Are you sure? We can try to find something else, or head home—”

“Mike, I promise I’m good.” Will takes another chance and reaches out again, a little braver this time, to squeeze Mike’s forearm where his hand rests on the steering wheel. “The cold doesn’t bother me so much anymore.”

Mike looks doubtful. “I know that’s not true.”

Will rolls his eyes fondly. “Okay, fine, it does, but I’ve got your jacket, and I’m assuming we won’t be eating the ice cream outside.”

For some reason, the corner of Mike’s mouth twitches. “Not exactly.”

Five minutes later, the heat in Mr. Wheeler’s car has warmed them up considerably, and Will’s glad for it when they pull into a Sonic and take one of the spots near the end of the parking lot. For a Friday night, it isn’t as crowded as Will expected, and the nearest car is four spots away and mostly obscured by the huge menu sign anyway. It sends a slight thrill through him, wondering if Mike picked this spot on purpose.

Five minutes after that, Will is holding a vanilla shake with more Reese’s Pieces mixed in, laughing when Mike steals the cherry off the top of it and then makes up for it by handing Will one of his tater tots. “Okay,” Mike says, eyes shining in the dim light from the menu and the streetlight outside. “New rule: horror movies are now reserved for the safety of my basement or our future dorm room. I’m sorry, but I can’t handle one on a big screen again, I just can’t.”

Will smirks. “Aww,” he teases gently, tilting his head back on the headrest and swallowing the leftover nerves so he can go on to say, “what, I didn’t do a good enough job protecting you?” He tries desperately to ignore the implication of Mike bringing up the dorm room.

Mike groans, though Will knows he didn’t miss the way Mike’s eyes had darted down to his throat a second ago. “C’mon man, not all of us have nerves of steel like you do. And don’t make fun of me for saying that, it was stupid.”

“I just think that after the actual monsters we’ve fought, fiction is pretty damn funny,” Will points out. “And it wasn’t stupid, it was—” He cuts himself off and swallows again, mouth going dry.

Mike’s staring intently at him, the way he always has, like the only thing he wants in the world is for Will to finish his sentence. They’re still tiptoeing around the subject, and one of them is going to have to say it out loud. But Will has been hiding for so long that he isn’t sure he can. The last few weeks have been blissfully nightmare-free, but there’s a part of him that’s afraid that this isn’t real, that Vecna didn’t die, that the Upside Down isn’t gone. That all of this is in his head.

Mike knows, Will thinks. Exactly what Mike knows is the question, but he knows Will, and maybe that’s all that matters. Because he doesn’t ask Will to finish the sentence. He just sets his milkshake in the cupholder, turns his body to face Will head on, and says, “I know I said it before, but I’m really proud of you. Not just for telling us about you, but for everything. Will, you’re the strongest person I know. You…you made it through hell and you came out the other side more yourself than you’ve ever been. And I…I wish I’d told you a long time ago what I feel for you.”

Will exhales as slowly as he can, trying to keep his hands from shaking. “Tell me now?” he asks tentatively.

Mike smiles a little, ducking his head. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but Will thinks he’s blushing. “I don’t know how to tell you without it seeming too much too soon.”

The words settle in Will’s chest and fill him with warmth even as they send a thrill down his spine. He gets the implication, doesn’t think that there is any possible way he couldn’t. Jonathan was right: whether Will meant to or not, he started this a month ago when he said the words out loud to everyone, but looked Mike in the eye as he did. He meant it as some sort of release, a way for him to let the feelings go and be content with acceptance, but he thinks now that Mike has been answering him repeatedly since then. Not just tonight, but every time he crowds closer than could be considered platonic, or gently probes Will to eat something at lunch, or take a break from studying. Jesus, Mike held his hand for hours in the Upside Down, surrounded by everyone else that they love, and he pushed so far into Will’s space in order to shove Vecna out of his head that Will couldn’t see anything else.

He’s been telling Will what he feels. So maybe Will can be the one to bridge the last few inches.

“You know that I lied about the painting,” Will whispers, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. “I told you when you confronted me about it that it was just because I thought it would mean more from El than me and that it was supposed to be an early birthday gift for you but…I lied about that too. And I’m sorry,” he rushes on, even though Mike made no indication of interrupting him. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I was still…so afraid. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“I told you that you couldn’t,” Mike murmurs, and this time he’s the one to grab Will’s hand. “I meant it.”

“I know,” Will breathes. “And Mike, everything I said in the van, I meant it. That even when I hated myself for what I—what I am, you never made me feel like I shouldn’t. And that scared me so badly when I realized what that meant for me, for us. After everything Lonnie used to say to me, or the kids at school…I didn’t know how to process that, and I was scared to drag you down with me. But I was also scared that you would hate me if you knew the truth. I shouldn’t have, I know that now, but I…I was never going to tell you, you know? Not the extent of it.”

Mike’s eyes seem darker than ever, boring into Will’s soul, darting between Will’s eyes and mouth and their joined hands like he doesn’t know where he wants to look. “If you’d told me it was you in that van, I think I would have kissed you,” Mike says, just loud enough for Will to hear. “I wouldn’t have given a damn that Jonathan and Argyle were there too. And there’s a part of me that’s glad you lied, because I think I would have ruined everything, but…I wasn’t confused by that point. I knew I liked you, Will, I’d known since the day you guys left for California. I was just…hiding.”

Will laughs a little breathlessly. “I figured out I liked you when you told me that asking me to be your friend was the best thing you’d ever done.” It’s freeing to say it out loud, finally releasing the words from his heart and letting them float between them. “You’re the one that got through to me, you know? I barely remembered my own name, but I remembered you. And I remembered that day. And I just thought to myself that I had to get back to you, because you’d already lost El and I didn’t care if it was the same, I wasn’t going to make you lose me too.” And there’s more he wants to say, and to ask, but Mike is releasing his hand in favor of angling Will’s head up with fingertips on his jaw and leaning so far into his space that Will has no choice but to kiss him back.

Will knows immediately that he’s never going to forget it. He was still whispering that last word when Mike moved, which means that he catches Mike’s bottom lip between his own, and it doesn’t matter that he’s only ever had one kiss before (an extremely brave girl in California that asked him to tutor her and caught him completely off guard). It’s good pretty much immediately, the way Mike exhales shakily through his nose and flattens his palm on the side of Will’s neck, the tip of his nose digging into Will’s cheek slightly. One, two, seven seconds in which he kisses Will three times, each one feeling a little braver, and then he starts to pull back. “Shit, sorry, I swear I meant to ask—”

“Consider this blanket permission to kiss me whenever the hell you want,” Will interrupts him, sliding his fingers into the hair at the base of Mike’s neck where it’s just starting to curl up at the tips. (He knows that Mrs. Wheeler will probably try to insist on a haircut soon, and Will also knows that he’s going to do whatever he has to in order to convince Mike not to let her.) Every ounce of remaining anxiety over whether or not Mike is on the same page as he is has evaporated into the scant space between their lips, which shrinks almost entirely when Mike lets out a tiny sound and tilts closer again.

It’s better this time, the way Mike uses his hand on Will’s neck to pull him closer, slotting their mouths together firmly and devastating Will completely when he tentatively licks Will’s bottom lip. Mike takes advantage of the way Will’s mouth falls open in a cut off whine to press in, and it’s overwhelming but not in a way that makes Will want to stop. In fact, he vaguely thinks that he could stay like this forever, kissing Mike with the center console digging slightly into his ribcage, fingers twisting in Mike’s hair and cataloguing the way Mike’s breath shudders out of him every time Will pulls the slightest bit. That is extremely interesting, and Will is toying with the idea of climbing over the center console altogether to see what that might make Mike sound like, but before he can figure out how to get his knees underneath him to do so, Mike is easing away and pressing their foreheads together. They breathe for a long moment, chests rising and falling in sync, and Will thinks that they’ve always been like this, moving when the other moves, down to their hearts beating in time. “At least we know that works,” Will jokes softly, barely even aware of what he’s saying.

Mike’s hand tightens on the back of Will’s neck, grounding him by covering up the part that always prickled when danger was near. “We work,” he states, leaving no room for argument. Not that Will ever would. “We’ve always worked. I just…maybe want to add a little to that.”

“I get what you mean,” Will says solemnly, feeling Mike’s bangs brush against his temple when he nods. “Super ultra best friends.”

Mike laughs, using his free hand to shove at Will’s chest so lightly that it does absolutely nothing to move him. Not that it would, what with Mike still holding onto him so tightly with the other hand. “No, you weirdo. Jeez, you kiss all your best friends like that?”

“Just the ones I really like,” Will responds. There’s some sort of giddy excitement rising up within him, making him feel oddly shaky. He tries to hide it by pressing another kiss to the corner of Mike’s mouth. “Okay, so not super ultra best friends. What else could you possibly be thinking?” It’s a little mean, maybe, but he wants Mike to say it out loud, this thing they both know the other is thinking.

“We could start a new Party,” Mike whispers without hesitating, dark eyes never once leaving Will’s. “You and me.”

Will grins and kisses Mike squarely on the mouth this time. “You and me.”

It’s not boyfriends, but it is. It’s not I love you, but Will knows what Mike meant earlier when he said too much too soon. Either way, it feels like falling, and for once Will isn’t scared at all.

***

It’s nearing four in the morning when they finally get back to Steve’s house, having relocated from Sonic after a little while to driving back to Hawkins (for which Mike reluctantly handed over the keys and let Will drive) and parking near Weathertop to sit in the backseat and talk some more, interspersed with bouts of kissing that never go any further. Will informs Mike of what Jonathan told him earlier that day about how he and Nancy started out, to which Mike retaliates by relaying why he always joined Will in the basement after Jonathan snuck up, and it was only partly because he wanted Will’s company. “Whatever,” Mike mutters after kissing Will some more, hand sneaking up the back of Will’s sweater and resting solidly on his lower back. “No pre-dates for us. We don’t need to test out our compatibility.”

There’s a single lamp on in the living room, to which they exchange wary looks. They have to walk through it to get to the dining room, where their mattresses are set up. It could be any one of their parents, or all three (but probably not Ted, unless it’s just to scold them about keeping his car out and wasting gas). But it’s not their moms.

It’s Steve.

(Mike and Will crack up so hysterically that Max wheels herself out of her bedroom across the hall, demanding to know who the fuck is making so much noise, only to join their laughter at the blurry sight of Steve with his hands on his hips, looking disapprovingly at all three of them.)