Chapter Text
It’s a frosty, foggy Friday night in January, and Will has another date.
Mike thinks this should have been something he was informed of before they moved in together.
Now that they’re at the same school after two years of being 1,200 miles apart, he had assumed that things would be a little closer to how they’d been when they were kids -- when they’d spent those eighteen months under the same roof when they were sixteen.
Namely: Nintendo, snacks, movie marathons, comics.
And sure, they do all that stuff. In between classes and homework, they have heated Contra competitions, down bags of Doritos, watch various sci-fi and fantasy films, and devour every Marvel release they can get their hands on.
But then there’s the added challenge of having to squeeze all of that around the dates Will goes on several times a month.
Which, fine. Mike is happy for him. The school’s arts college is full of friendly, handsome men who smoke cigarettes and drink wine and who enjoy taking Will to weird, experimental films, poetry readings, and punk concerts in abandoned warehouses.
There’s also the sex.
It’s never happened at their apartment, but Will’s come home multiple times looking rumpled and touched and heading straight for the shower. More than once, he’s even shown up with a hickey somewhere along the column of his neck.
Mike’s happy for him about that, too. Obviously. Just because he has managed to still be a virgin at twenty doesn’t mean Will doesn't get to get any action for himself.
It’s just that Mike had certain expectations when he moved in, and they had involved spending hours of uninterrupted time alone with Will Byers per week and maybe, just maybe, a little light making out. Sue him.
He’d spent the past two years at IU being clinically depressed, admitting to himself that he was attracted to men, and deciding he had been head over heels in love with Will since middle school. Ergo: moving in with the guy was supposed to be the Turning Point, in capital letters. Like, he’d actually assumed that by the beginning of the second semester of their junior year, they would be a full-on Couple.
But no. Despite Mike’s best efforts -- being a giant, obsessive weirdo who stared at Will all the time and kept wanting to hang out with him when everybody had better things to be doing -- nothing ever happened. Will went on dates and came home with rumpled hair and clothes, and Mike masturbated in the shower like a loser.
It certainly didn’t help his case that he hadn’t actually told Will that he was a) attracted to men and b) in love with him. He’d just shown up at Will’s dorm building last May with shaggy hair and an acceptance letter to the arts college as a Creative Writing major.
“Roommates?” he’d asked, and Will had hugged him. They’d managed to snag a tiny rent-controlled apartment the owner leases out to college students, had filled it with shitty, thrifted furniture, and the rest is history.
Now it’s the aforementioned frosty Friday night in January, and Mike is nursing a beer and eating Cheetos while Will is wandering the apartment, looking for his missing shoe.
“Mike, have you seen my– Ah! Nevermind. Found it!” Will works a sneaker out from under the couch and bounces on one foot as he pulls it on.
Mike eats a Cheeto. “Who are you– What are you doing tonight?”
“Mmm. I dunno. A play, I think?”
“With…”
“Obviously Wes.”
Obviously Wes. Who the fuck is Wes?
“Who’s that?”
Will makes an impatient noise as he ties his shoe. “The guy I’ve been hanging out with? You know this. Tell me you know this.”
“I guess.”
One other piece of information: there’s A Guy he’s been seeing. Wesley Taylor. Wes, apparently. He’s the TA for one of Will’s classes, which feels all kinds of unethical. But as Will describes it, he’s only two years older, and he’s smart and nice and interesting. Blah, blah, blah. Mike kind of wants to kill this Wes guy.
Will says they aren’t together. They aren’t in love. It isn’t romantic. They’re just having fun, whatever that means. West Village theater productions, apparently. Sex.
It’s been a thing for about a month now, Will’s mid-December through early-January dates all with this dude. They always go to some pretentious play or concert or gallery showing, and then Will comes home the next morning slightly hungover and with his shirt buttoned up wrong.
And that pisses Mike off because Will doesn’t even drink. Mike’s the one with the fake ID, going through the case of beer in their fridge. Mike’s the one who gets the heavy pour at whatever arts school social event Will’s dragged him to. Will drinks water or soda or iced tea.
But now he’s going out with A Guy and like, taking shots or something? Letting him wine, dine, and sixty-nine him?
“Mike,” Will says, leaning over his desk to make eye contact. He has cologne on, and it smells good but not like Will. “I’ll be back later.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t wait up.”
“I never do.”
Will narrows his eyes at him. “Can I have a Cheeto?”
No.
Mike holds the bag out to him. Will grabs a whole goddamn handful and pops two into his mouth.
“Bye,” he says, muffled.
Your mouth’s gonna taste like cheese, Mike wants to say. Instead, he nods and goes back to working on his short story about A Guy who gets run over by a city bus.
–
Now, Mike isn’t actually that pathetic. Don’t get him wrong; he’s a fully-functioning human being who goes to class and eats regular meals and has conversations with people that don’t revolve around Will Byers. He has casual friends and he’s on good terms with his teachers and he works at the circulation desk of the school library on weekday mornings. He doesn’t go to parties because he doesn’t like them, not because he isn’t invited, and he’s pretty sure there’s a girl in his screenwriting class who has a crush on him.
Bottom line: he’s fine. He isn’t someone who needs to be worried about.
It’s just that the whole thing with Will drives him crazy. Will has been his best friend since kindergarten. They have known and loved each other for over fifteen years at this point, and the fact that they’re choosing to live together in a shitty New York apartment with a loud, temperamental radiator at the grand old age of almost twenty-one has to be testament to the fact that they like each other the best out of anyone in the world.
Why would Will need other guys? Mike doesn’t need other guys. Mike is perfectly happy hanging out with Will all the time.
But again: he’s fine. He sleeps at night. He isn’t someone who needs to be worried about.
Saturday morning, when Will stumbles in at just after nine, yawning and scratching his jaw, Mike decides they need to have a talk. He’s at the coffee maker, pouring his second mug of the day, when Will drops down on the sofa and rubs his eyes like he hasn’t slept.
“You alright?” Mike asks. He fills Will’s Snoopy mug with what’s left in the pot and brings it to him.
Will gives him an air toast in thanks and drinks. “Yeah. Just tired.”
“Did he let you sleep?”
“Huh?”
“Did you get some sleep?”
“Yeah.” Will takes another sip. “Totally. Think I’ve just had a long week. I need to hibernate ‘til Monday.”
He actually doesn’t look so great. His eyes are shadowed, and his hair has gone limp like he needs a long, hot shower. He keeps yawning, too, into the lip of his mug.
Mike watches him for a minute as he drinks his coffee.
“So how was your date?”
Will huffs a breath out his nose. “Mike.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“No?”
“No.” Will shrugs. He sets his coffee down and leans back on the sofa, pulling his sweatshirt sleeves down over his hands. “I told you. We’re having fun.”
“Okay, but what does that mean? You said you’re,” air quotes, “‘hanging out.’”
“Yeah. But it isn’t dating. Dating is like hanging out but with intention.”
Mike quirks his mouth. “I wouldn’t really know.”
“No.”
Full disclosure: he hasn’t been on a date since El died. Sue him again. He spent the last chunk of his teenage years grieving, depressed, and hating himself. Bloomington’s hot co-eds weren’t a thing he gave a shit about, thank you very much.
Will makes a high, frustrated sound. “Sorry. I need to sleep.”
Mike sits down in the recliner across from him. “So how was your…not-date? Your…having fun?”
“Good.”
“Was it?”
Will exhales a breathy laugh. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“Evidence points to…” Mike tilts his head his way. “You look like shit.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean– You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.” Will leans forward and picks up his coffee again. Drinks. He twists up his lips for a moment, thinking before saying, “I don’t think I’m gonna see Wes again. At least not outside of class.”
Choirs of angels. Mike ascends to the heavens.
“Oh,” he says, as gentle and subdued as he can muster. “How come?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Try me.”
“Really?” Will presses his lips together. Hesitates. “It’s a sex thing.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
Mike chugs his coffee. It’s too hot for it, and it scalds his tongue and esophagus on the way down. He grimaces.
“So,” he sputters. “What was it?”
“You really want me to tell you?”
“I really want you to tell me.”
Will sighs. He sets his coffee down again and pulls his legs up onto the couch cushion with him as if he’s settling in for a gossip session. Finally, he says:
“We’re not really compatible.”
“What does that mean?”
“We like different things.” Will casts his eyes up to the ceiling and smiles like he can’t believe he’s getting into this with Mike. “He likes being kinda–” A beat. “You know what?” Will laughs. “This is weird.”
“Come on.”
“No, it is. It’s definitely weird.”
Frankly, Mike’s offended. “Why’s it weird?”
“Because you’re…” Will gestures at him vaguely. “You.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno. You’re my best friend. I’ve known you since we were five.”
“Exactly. Why’s it weird?”
Will chuckles. “Look. I’ve never asked you for all the intimate details about the girls you’ve slept with.”
Another thing worth noting: Mike may have implied once or twice that he got around when he was at IU.
In all fairness, it had been when Will started making apologies about having to beg off their Friday night plans, and Mike had kind of responded with something like, No problem, Will. I get it. Been there, done that.
So, he’s a liar. Sue him a third time.
Instead of clearing up that little bit of miscommunication, Mike just shrugs.
“I would have told you, though,” he says, pants on fire. “If you’d asked.”
Will groans. “Yeah, okay. Fine. Do you actually want me to tell you?”
“Obviously.”
“Even if it makes you think of me weirdly?”
Mike makes a face. “How weird is it?”
“No.” Will cringes. “Nothing is weird. I’m just saying that it’ll make you think about me and…sex...and I don’t know if that’s something you want to do?”
Mike has literally never wanted to do anything more. He almost laughs.
“I’m an adult,” he says, stupidly. “I think I can handle it.”
And then Will goes on to tell him the most innocuous, innocent, sweet thing ever:
“Wes likes it rough, and I don’t. At all.”
“Oh.” Mike smiles. “Well, that’s okay.”
“I know it’s okay. But it’s sort of a…thing with me, and Wes is fun and all, but he was getting a little impatient, and–” Will gestures with his hands as if to say, the rest is history.
“Impatient how?”
Does Mike actually have to kill this guy? He cracks his knuckles.
“No, no. He was fine. He didn’t hurt me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Will sighs. “We talked about it. It was awkward, I think? But he understood.”
Mike nods. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, fists still ready to punch.
“It was fine, Mike.” Will picks up his coffee and nods toward Mike’s clenched hands. “He tried something, I said no, we stopped, we talked. End of story. All good.”
“What’d he try?”
“Nope. We’re not discussing this.” Will drinks his coffee and shakes his head. “It was a totally normal thing people do. I just wasn’t into it.”
What’re you into? He doesn’t actually ask that. Mike does have some self-control. Instead, he drinks the rest of his coffee and gets up to make more.
While he waits for it to brew, he grabs Will a chocolate chip cookie and brings it to him.
Will smiles up at him. “Thanks.” He takes a bite.
“You’re welcome.”
And what the hell. He picks up Will’s Snoopy mug so he can get him a refill, too.
When he returns to the living room with two steaming mugs and a cookie clutched in his teeth, Will has on The Price is Right. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure for them -- watching what Mike calls “Nana Shows” because they remind him of his grandmother.
They watch for a while, drinking their coffee and eating their cookies. They argue over prices of common household items and yell over the stupidity of some of the contestants.
It’s a good morning.
After, Mike glances over at Will, who looks like he’s dead on his feet, his eyes practically drooping.
“Hit the sack,” he says, nodding in the direction of Will’s bedroom.
Will gives a sleepy laugh and scratches at his neck. “I probably should.” He stands. “Shower first, then bed.”
Despite what he’d said, he clearly didn’t sleep. All Mike can imagine is Will lying awake in bed with stupid Wes. Why hadn’t he come home to him?
“Hey,” Mike says, making eye contact.
Will hums distractedly. He picks up his empty Snoopy mug to deliver to the kitchen sink.
“If you ever need me, y’know.” Mike swallows. “I’m here.”
Will smiles. “I know. Thanks, Mike.”
–
Fridays come and go. It gets colder outside, then even colder, the apartment’s windows fogging up and Mike having to wipe them with his sleeve so he can see the snow fall outside.
He finishes his short story about A Guy getting hit by a city bus, but the Guy is suddenly named Sam and the bus only knocks him out, stunning him with amnesia and setting up the central conflict to be resolved. It’s fine. Good, even. Mike turns it in, and his teacher likes it but doesn’t love it, and that’s okay because he feels the same.
Will goes out on two more not-dates with Other Guys and then suddenly stops.
It’s the second Friday in February, and there’s nearly a foot of snow on the ground. It’s freezing outside and almost as cold inside the apartment, Mike and Will forced to wear sweats and the thick, grandmotherly socks Mike’s actual grandmother had gotten him for Christmas. “Nana Socks,” he calls them.
They wrap themselves in blankets and eat take-out Chinese directly from the cartons, passing them around and complaining when one or the other has eaten most of the good bits out of the pork fried rice.
Nirvana’s Nevermind is on the stereo, kept just loud enough that they feel the beat of it over the episode of The Simpsons on the TV.
Mike scoops up a piece of broccoli with his chopsticks. He loses it immediately and has to try again. After finally maneuvering it into his mouth, he nods his head toward Will.
“No date tonight?”
“Mike.”
“Sorry. No hanging out tonight?” Mike chomps his broccoli and shines his teeth at him, showing he isn’t making fun.
Will deftly scoops up his own piece of chicken. “No hanging out. You know what day it is, don’t you?”
By the way: it’s Valentine’s Day. Obviously, Mike knows that. They had to practice romance writing in his morning class because his teacher thought it would be Fun. Mike had thought it was horrible and had A Guy get hit by a city bus at the end.
He gets more broccoli. “Of course I know.” Chews. “Thought tonight would be the night for hanging out.”
“You’re joking. Valentine’s Day is a night for dating.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot ‘dating’ and ‘hanging out’ are two vastly different things that somehow only seem exactly the same.”
Will rolls his eyes at him and forcibly trades cartons, ripping the beef and broccoli out of Mike’s hands and replacing it with orange chicken.
Whatever. Mike digs in.
“Also,” he adds, “you haven’t gone out in weeks.”
“Thanks for pointing that out?”
“I’m just saying.” Mike spears a piece of chicken and eats it off his singular chopstick. “It was a regular thing before. Like, every Friday. What changed?”
“Nothing. Just taking a break, I guess.”
“Fine.” Mike snaps his chopsticks together testily. “Don’t tell me.”
Will rolls his eyes and completely normally eats a piece of broccoli with his own chopsticks.
“I dunno,” he says, mid-chew. “It’s hard.”
Don’t Mike know it.
He’s mature about it, though: “What’s hard?”
The slight uptick of Will’s mouth tells Mike he isn’t being very mature about it, though, and that’s kind of great.
But he holds it together for his response: “‘Hanging out.’”
Mike hears the air quotes.
“Why?”
“You don’t actually wanna talk about this,” Will says, like he knows what Mike does and doesn’t want to talk about.
“Why don’t I?”
“Because you’re not…y’know.”
“Why does that matter?”
Will eats more beef and broccoli and then reaches for his can of Coke. He shrugs, mildly irritated.
“Will,” Mike says. “You’re my best friend. Don’t talk to me if you don’t want to, but don’t not talk to me because you think I’d be…weirded out or whatever. Come on. We go to an arts college. I’ve seen and heard it all.”
“Really.”
“Really.” Mike sets down the chicken carton and grabs the neglected, pork-free rice. “Is this about your…thing?”
“My what?”
“That’s what you called it. You said it was ‘a thing’ with you.”
“Oh.” Will laughs, this little one-second burst of noise. He rocks his head from side to side. “Sort of, I guess?”
“Aaaaand… Elaborate?”
“Fine. You asked for it.”
“I asked for it.”
Will sets down his drink and food and leans back on the couch. He criss-crosses his legs.
“I like hanging out, okay? It’s fun. I like going to concerts and movies and all that, and I like…” He does a revolving motion with his hand. “...that, too. Having…sex.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s hard to find people who are like, okay with my…needs, I guess.”
Mike doesn’t see the problem with Will’s needs. He wants to have gentle sex? In what world is that bad?
“I don’t get how not liking rough sex is a weird thing,” he says, lowering his brows.
Will shrugs. “It isn’t. And it isn’t even the not liking rough sex thing, really. It’s the fact that I have boundaries and…preferences that most guys aren’t into when the goal is having fun.”
Mike nods. “Like what?”
“Mike.” Will scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t think I can…talk about this with you.”
“Come on.”
“This is mortifying. I need you to know that.”
“What’s mortifying?” Mike scrunches up his nose. “We’ve killed monsters together.”
Will leans his head over the back of the couch, resting for a moment with his eyes closed. “Lithium” plays. Kurt Cobain screams the chorus.
Finally, he sits up and levels Mike with a stare.
“Basically: I have issues, and I need someone who’s cool with being sort of…easy with me and who's also okay with certain non-negotiables I have involving really normal, common things I don’t like that a lot of guys expect as the most…rudimentary stuff to do during hook-ups.”
Mike has approximately seven thousand questions, but he keeps his mouth shut for once. Instead, he asks:
“And you can’t find that?”
Again: not that Mike Wheeler is any sort of sex expert -- especially considering he’s never had it -- but who in their right mind wouldn’t want to have gentle, careful sex with Will in any way they’re allowed? How is that even a problem?
Will turns a hand upward in a half-shrug. “Maybe when I’m older I’ll have more options. But young college guys? I mean, I’m sure they exist, but it’s not really something you lead with when they’ve just asked you to go to a concert.” He huffs a laugh. “‘Wanna go see The Smashing Pumpkins with me?’ ‘Sure, and by the way, lemme tell you about my issues…’”
Issues. He has issues, he said.
Mike bites his lip. “So…”
“Sooo... I think I’m taking a break. I like sex, but maybe I should just wait until I meet somebody who wants to actually date and then go from there.”
“And you haven’t met anybody like that?”
Will shrugs. “Anyway. There’s the story. Everything’s fine. I guess I’m just not made for casual sex.” He sweeps up his Coke and takes a drink.
Mike stirs his chopsticks around in the rice container.
“But if you could find someone who was into that…’” he says, not looking up. “Would you want that?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Will clears his throat. “I mean, it depends. It couldn’t be just anybody. I have standards.”
“Obviously.”
Will takes a deep breath and stretches. He stands from the couch, gathers up his garbage, and carries it to the kitchen.
Mike watches him go.
–
Will’s break carries on, and it takes a week for Mike to work up the nerve to do the bravest, craziest, probably stupidest thing he’s ever done: offer himself up on a silver platter.
In his defense, it makes perfect sense.
They’ve been best friends for over fifteen years. They love and care about each other more than anyone else in the world. They have history and know each other’s deepest and darkest. Will needs someone to have gentle, accommodating sex with him, and Mike is in love with him.
It’s perfect.
Only, bringing it up is just about the scariest and most difficult thing he has ever done.
He spends days trying to do it, clearing his throat and beginning many conversations he never works up the nerve to finish. He’s pretty sure that by the end of it, Will thinks he’s lost his mind.
“Are you okay?” he asks one day, after Mike has just spent thirty seconds staring at him and opening and closing his mouth like a fish.
No.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Mike rolls his eyes and walks away.
Will shouts after him. “You were staring!”
“No, I wasn’t!”
Maybe he is someone who needs to be worried about.
It isn’t until the 22nd that Mike is finally able to get it out. They’ve just arrived home from a showing at the community center for Will’s impressionism class, and Mike has drunk one too many glasses of wine from the open bar.
He isn’t drunk, just toasty, in a state in which he’s warm and floaty and highly and embarrassingly complimentary of Will’s artistic abilities.
“You’re like, amazing,” Mike says, leaning against the wall while Will unlocks their front door. “Yours was by far the best.”
“Okay, you sycophant,” Will says, shouldering open the door.
“I’m not being a sycophant. I’m telling the truth.”
“I believe you.”
Mike follows him through the door, unwrapping his scarf. “Sorcerer…”
“What?” Will laughs.
“I don’t know. You have powers. Like, special innate art powers.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
For some reason, Mike follows Will all the way through the apartment and into his bedroom. It seems like a good idea.
He sits on his bed and watches, mouth slightly open, while Will takes off his own scarf and jacket, then tugs off his gloves and drops them on his dresser.
“Hey,” he says once Will is down to just his button-down and trouser pants. He looks so, so…
“What? You’re really drunk. Get out while I change.”
“I have a proposition.”
“Stand on one foot and spell proposition.”
Mike groans. “Shut up. Just listen.”
“I’m listening!” Will laughs.
“I was thinking about your…problem.”
“What problem?”
“The sex problem.”
“Oh my God. Mike, you need to go to your room.”
“Just–” Mike holds up his hands. “I will, but just listen.”
“Mike.”
“I’ve been trying to say this for like, a week.”
Will blows out a breath. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against his dresser.
Mike swallows. “I want to humbly offer my services.”
It’s the absolute lamest way he could have ever phrased it. Even through the wine-haze, he recognizes it immediately.
Will laughs in disbelief. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I want to…” He doubles down, dammit. “I want to offer my services. Humbly.”
“What are you saying? You really need to go to bed, Mike.”
“I’m saying that if you want -- if you’re interested -- then I’d be willing to…y’know. Do that. For you.”
“Do what?”
Does he have to spell it out? Surely Will understands what he means.
Mike flutters his lips in a way that doesn’t at all support his claim that he’s sober. “You said you need somebody who’s willing to have sex with you in the way you…need it. And I wanna be that guy. If you want that, too. Obviously.”
Will looks like he’s going to blow his top. “What?”
“Why do you keep asking that?”
“Because I thought I just heard you offer to have sex with me.”
“I did.”
“Okay, but like… What?”
“Come on.”
“Mike, why would you wanna do that?”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not gay?”
“What does it matter if I am or not?”
“Are you?”
Mike rubs his hands over his face.
“Mike,” Will says gently. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re not…like that. You’re drunk. You had like, five glasses of wine.”
Damn. Maybe he is drunk.
Mike groans, frustrated. “I know exactly what I’m saying, Will. And if you don’t wanna do it, that’s fine, and you can forget I proposed it. But I just thought…”
And then he says something even more embarrassing.
“I just thought that since you need sex in a specific way, and I’ve never even had sex before, we’re like, a great match, y’know? Because I don’t even know what sex is like, actually, and pretty much anything’s gonna be good to me, and–”
“Stop.” Will comes over and holds out his hand like he’s planning to have to physically restrain him. “Mike. What?”
“Again with the–”
“You’ve never had sex?”
“Is that the only thing you heard out of that whole–”
“I thought you slept around at IU?” Will scrunches up his face. “You need to go to bed, Mike. I don’t think you know what you’re saying, and this is all gonna be awkward as hell in the morning.”
“I lied. And yes, I know it’s gonna be awkward as hell, thank you.”
“Also, your argument makes no sense. If it’s true that you’ve never… How do you know what you’d like? How do you know it would be good for you? You’re not…like that, and it’ll probably be gross to you, and–”
“Anything with you would be good.”
Another stupid thing. Mike stands from the bed and prepares to go drown himself in the bathtub.
His only saving grace is that Will laughs -- at him or with him, he doesn’t know, but it beats Will calling him a freak and kicking him out of the apartment.
“Mike,” Will says. “Go to bed. We’ll talk about this tomorrow, okay?”
“But it’s gonna be awkward tomorrow.”
“You’re too drunk to understand this right now, but I can assure you that things have never been more awkward than they are right this second.”
“Oh.”
Will takes Mike by the arm and walks him bodily to his room on the other side of the apartment.
“Go to bed.”
“I’m gonna kill myself.”
“Don’t do that.” Will eyes him. “You’re joking, right?”
“Shut up.”
“Go to bed. Don’t kill yourself.”
“I have to pee.” Mike shoulders his way back out of his bedroom and toward the bathroom.
“Fine. Go pee. I’ll see you in the morning.”
In the bathroom, Mike stares longingly at the tub. Ultimately, however, he decides it’s too much of a hassle.
–
He reconsiders it the next day when he drags himself from his bedroom at nearly noon with a furry, wine-stained tongue, a splitting headache, and entirely too much memory of the previous night.
“Oh my God,” he says upon spotting Will on the couch.
Will glances up from his sketchbook. “Hey. You’re alive. That’s good.”
“Not for long. Don’t get used to it.”
“That’s too bad. I made coffee.”
Mike heads straight for the kitchen, bypassing the coffee for now and jerking open the cabinet where they keep their painkillers. He taps two extra strength Tylenol onto his palm and then swallows them down dry. Only then does he go for the coffee. He fills his mug to the brim and leans back against the counter to sip it.
Will has Sonic Youth’s Goo spinning on the record player. It makes Mike’s head hurt worse.
“Mike,” Will says from the living room, tone changed from the playfully wry of just moments before to something softer, less sure. “Can we talk? Please?”
Mike drinks his coffee with his eyes closed.
It unfortunately does make him feel a little more alive. It’s just that his head is absolutely splitting. He makes a grumbly sound and takes his coffee with him to the living room. Will sets his sketchbook down on the coffee table and looks over at him like he’s about to perform an interrogation.
He looks so good too, in gray sweatpants and a white long sleeve T-shirt. He hasn’t changed out of his pajamas, nor has he brushed his hair, and he looks sleepy and rumpled in a way that makes Mike hurt.
Speaking of hurt: Fuck, his head. He drops down in the recliner and rubs at his temples.
Will takes an audible breath. “How much do you remember?”
“Too much.”
“Anything in particular?”
“A lot in particular.” Mike drinks his coffee and groans.
“You said a lot last night.”
“Can we please just…” Mike sighs. “I remember everything I said. It was all true and real, but I said it in the fucking lamest way possible and made shit weird. Okay?”
Will picks up his Snoopy mug and takes a sip of coffee. “So you remember, I think you used the phrase, offering your services?”
“Holy fuck.” He’s too hungover for this. “I don’t know. Did I?”
“Do you remember?”
“Obviously.”
“And that was real?” Will leans forward, his knees touching the edge of the coffee table. “Like, you weren’t just wasted?”
It’s a perfect opportunity to back out -- to say he was absolutely hammered, had zero inhibitions, and blurted out something embarrassing and inaccurate to how he was actually feeling.
He sighs.
“That was real,” he says.
“Humbly. You said ‘humbly.’”
“Shut up, Will.”
Will smiles.
They drink their coffee.
“So are you?” Will gestures vaguely with his Snoopy mug. “Attracted to…men?”
Mike swallows. Shrugs.
“I dunno,” he says. He pulls his legs up into the recliner with him. “Yeah? I think.”
“Okay.” Will nods, taking it all in. His cheeks are flushed. His hands rotate around his coffee mug. “Since when?” He catches himself. “When did you…figure that out?”
Mike stares down into the dark sheen of his coffee. “About a year ago?”
“What happened a year ago?”
Fucking Carlton happened. Christmas break. Will had popped a Dorito into his mouth and as casually as anything, said he’d “done stuff” for the first time with a guy in his Figure Drawing class named Carlton. Mike had literally thought he was going to burst into flames. He’d almost flipped the table. He’d almost screamed until his face was red. He’d wanted to rip a hole in the universe.
Instead, he’d simply sat there and nodded dumbly. He’d said that was cool, that was awesome, Will, asked if he liked Carlton, if it was a one-time thing or if they were like, dating.
Later that night, he’d quietly lain in his sleeping bag on the basement floor beside Will. He’d stayed up for hours wondering what he could say to convince him to let him zip their sleeping bags together so he could bask in his body heat and the smell of his shampoo. He’d wondered how much of his normal life he was willing to sacrifice in order to kiss him just once.
The feelings surprised him, though they shouldn’t have. He’d known for years. He’d known from the moment he was cognizant enough to reflect on his relationship with El and the difference between how she made him feel and how she was probably supposed to make him feel. He’d known from the first time he’d cried while touching himself one night not long after graduation, thinking of things that, after, made him feel sick with worry. He’d known since he’d saved the letter Will had sent him their first semester of college, unfolding it and refolding it over and over again just so he could see the Love, Will that he knew was probably just Will’s way of being sweet and kind to his lonely best friend 1,200 miles away.
Yes, he’d known. He’d known it all. It had just taken some asshole with a stupid name to inspire it out of him to the point that he was able to say to himself:
Will Byers, I'm going to love you forever.
Obviously, Mike tells Will Byers none of these things.
“College,” he says cryptically.
Will nods slowly in return, his eyebrow quirked.
“Okay,” he repeats.
Mike chokes down more coffee and pushes a hand through his greasy hair. It’s just shy of too long now, the longest parts of the shag nearly at his shoulders.
“So what do you say?” He feels manic. Anxious. His ears ring.
Will sets down his coffee mug and picks back up his sketchbook. He looks down at his drawing, eyes firmly away from Mike’s, when he says:
“I think you’re really hungover and should probably go back to bed.”
–
It’s two days of absolute misery before the subject is breached again. It’s enough time for the snow outside to melt to a horrible sludge. It’s enough time for everyone to start quoting the new Wayne’s World movie: No ‘Stairway.’ Denied! It’s enough time for the coffee maker to start making a weird noise it didn’t make before.
And it’s enough time for Mike to wonder if Will Byers is trying to kill him.
But finally, it’s Tuesday night, and they’re watching that Rescue 911 show they’re obsessed with and eating popcorn out of the giant tin tub they’d bought right after Christmas and had just now cracked open.
They’re together on the couch, which is rare -- Mike typically taking the recliner -- but it’s the only reasonable arrangement due to the snack situation. Will has on sweatpants, white socks, and a giant plaid robe because it’s still bone-achingly cold. His feet are on the coffee table, and Mike’s are beside them, nearly touching.
The “Like A Rock” Chevy commercial is on. Will stuffs a handful of alarmingly orange popcorn in his mouth. Chews. And with his mouth full, he says:
“Can we talk?”
Mike turns to Will. “Yeah. Of course.” His heart pounds.
Will sets the popcorn tin on the coffee table, dusts off his hands, and clears his throat.
“What you…offered last week. Tell me again. Were you…serious? You weren’t drunk and–”
“Yeah. I was serious.” Mike sucks his bottom lip into his mouth.
“But–” Will smiles, this funny tilt of his mouth like he’s trying to talk Mike into admitting to a joke. “Come on, Mike. You didn’t mean it.”
“Sure I did.”
“But– Mike. That’s–”
“Will.” Mike takes a deep breath. “I meant it. I…” His face cracks into a smile. “I humbly offered my services.”
Will cringes. “Do you know what that means, though?”
“Pretty sure it means having sex with you.”
“Holy… Holy. Okay. Uh. But I don’t really think you understand the whole–”
“I’m offering to have sex with you, Will.” Mike rubs his hands over his face. “I don’t really know what I wouldn’t understand about that.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Will turns fully sideways on the couch to face Mike. “It’ll ruin our friendship.”
“Why would it?”
“Because you’ll get all weird after, and then I’ll get weird, and then we’ll never have, like,” he waves his arms around him, “this ever again.”
Mike’s desperate:
“What if we promise we won’t get weird after?”
“Easier said than done.”
“But you don’t know that.” A beat. “We’re best friends, Will. We’ll think of it as just, like, two best friends…helping each other out. And then after, it’ll be business as usual.” He waves his hand. “This.”
“Mike.”
“Come on. Think about it?”
“I have been thinking about it. That’s why I brought it up.”
“Oh.”
“And I want you to know that I’m not…opposed to it.”
Angels. Choirs. Ascension.
“Yeah?”
“I just really care about our friendship. And if we lose that, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Mike takes a deep breath. This somehow feels like the most important moment of his life.
“We won’t. I promise,” he says. “Let me…” Embarrassment, intense and overwhelming. He pushes on. “Let me take care of you, okay?”
Will’s face goes tomato red. Not an exaggeration. Mike feels lightheaded, and the Hallelujah Chorus rings loud in his ears.
“Mike.”
“Okay?”
Will blows out a breath through parted lips. He looks around him as if searching for someone or something to give him a push. Finding nothing, he looks to Mike. He smiles: embarrassed, soft, beautiful.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Will’s face scrunches. “If you’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Okay, well–”
“When? Now?”
Will laughs. “No! Not now.”
“Then when?”
“Impatient.”
“Maybe.” Mike bounces his brows. He’s about to beg.
“How about…” Will peers up at the ceiling. “Friday?”
Damn. Friday. Yes, absolutely.
Mike nods. He’s aware he’s embarrassingly eager, but he can’t let that bother him too much. He’s going to have sex with the love of his life in three days. Anyone else would be the same.
Will grins at him, then looks away. That tomato red face. That sweet, upturned mouth. Mike could just die.
–
The days leading up to Friday are exceedingly Normal in a way that makes them feel performative. Mike and Will go to class, do homework, write or draw, hang out, and go to bed at unreasonable hours in the same way they’ve done for the past seven months. No one brings up their plans. No one acts awkward or gives the other strange looks or is especially avoidant.
In fact, aside from Mike partaking in the neediest, most compulsive precautionary masturbation of his life, Wednesday and Thursday pass as if nothing at all life-changing will be happening Friday evening.
Then Friday actually arrives, and suddenly, things are entirely, unignorably Abnormal.
For starters, Will doesn’t visit Mike that morning at the circulation desk for the first time in weeks.
He has a gap in his Friday morning classes, and with few exceptions, he spends every Friday between 9:00 and 9:50 at the campus cafe, grabbing himself a healthy and nutritious breakfast of coffee and some giant, thousand-calorie chocolate pastry. And without fail, he brings Mike whatever portion of the pastry he couldn’t finish and a 50-cent small black coffee with one creamer.
It’s basically tradition. In fact, Mike can’t remember the last time Will didn’t show up at the circulation desk at approximately 9:52 on Friday, setting down the paper bag and the coffee cup before telling him he’ll see him at home later.
So when 9:52 comes and goes with no Will, Mike feels a little unmoored.
Then when Mike gets home that afternoon, Will isn’t even there. Instead, there’s a note magnetized to the fridge stating he’s working on a project at the studio and will be back for dinner.
Now, in and of itself, that isn’t unusual. Will’s frequently at the studio, taking advantage of the school’s free art resources and good lighting. But Fridays are his off-day, the day he’s out of class at one and pushing the stuff he has to have done by Monday to Sunday afternoon like a normal college kid.
Mike sits on the couch in an empty, silent apartment and wonders what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
It isn’t ideal, obviously. Ideally, he and Will would fall together into bed after an impassioned kiss, the two of them confessing their love for each other. Doves might fly over. There may be rose petals and candles.
He understands that that simply isn’t realistic. He understands that in order for that to happen, he’ll have to get a whole lot braver.
He wonders, wringing his hands, if Will was right. Will this ruin their friendship?
Mike won’t let it. He won’t let it be more awkward than it needs to be.
It’s five o’clock. He showers, changes his bedsheets, tidies up the apartment -- just the little things he and Will have been neglecting: the empty coffee mugs, the messy stack of records, the eraser shavings on the coffee table -- and has a beer while watching the news like his fucking dad.
After, he orders Italian food and wanders aimlessly around the apartment while he waits for it to arrive. He bites his nails down the quick and runs his hands through his damp hair, causing it to dry funny, with rake-marks and puffy bits on either side of the part.
Mike stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, cringing at his look. He lifts his shirt, examining his thin chest with the barely-there dusting of hair starting to grow in between his pectoral muscles. He pulls his sweats to his thighs -- looks at that, too, and wonders if he’s adequate, if he can even remotely compare to what Will has seen.
Ultimately, he decides he’s too skinny and too pale and too awkwardly hairy in the most awkward of places. He pulls his shirt down and his pants up and switches off the bathroom light.
The food shows up barely five minutes before Will does, and Mike has just enough time to unpack it on the coffee table and put on a Pearl Jam tape when the door rattles open.
And the thing about Will is that he’s beautiful even at times when most people would look like complete and utter shit.
Case in point: he’s been in the studio for five straight hours, has paint stains all up his hands and wrists, is red-faced from the cold, and has the glazed look of someone who’s been staring at the same canvas for too long.
Even still, thinking about crawling over him in bed exactly as he is now, no changes whatsoever, makes Mike hot under his clothes.
“Hey,” Will greets. He sets down his bag and comes over. “You got food! Thanks.”
Mike feels faint. “Yeah. I figured we’d– Before we–”
“Yeah. Good call.”
Will unwraps his scarf and tosses it onto the arm of the couch. He begins to pull off his coat.
“So, your day was–”
“Good. Was yours–”
“Good.”
“Cool. Good.”
“Yeah.”
Coat off, Will fidgets with the zippers and toggles. He folds it over his arm and bites his bottom lip. Sniffs. He has a runny nose from the cold and still, still, Mike thinks he looks basically perfect.
“So,” he begins, clearing his throat, “I got fettucini alfredo, chicken parm, and that salad you like with the gross olives. Oh, and bread, obviously.”
Will smiles. “Obviously. Thank you. Sounds great.” After an awkward pause, he nods toward the bathroom, an apologetic, scrunched look on his face. “But actually, can I…? I was gonna go jump in the shower for a minute and–”
“Oh.” Mike deflates, which is stupid. Will is snotty, has paint all over him, and smells like bus exhaust. He’ll certainly want to shower. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.”
“I’ll be right back.” Will gestures toward the food. “Promise.”
“Totally. Yeah.”
Totally. He wants to rip out his own hair. He’s overeager and embarrassing as hell.
Sighing, Mike rearranges the food on the table, gets up, does a few aimless laps around the living room and kitchen, and then returns to the couch to wait on Will.
The man in question is back in fifteen minutes, dressed in an old Sex Pistol’s shirt and gray pajama pants. His hair is wet, and he smells like Irish Spring and Speed Stick. His face is that bright, tomato red again, and Mike doesn’t know if it’s from the heat of the shower or from the thought of what they’re going to do later.
He looks away and begins popping the lids off the aluminum foil trays. Will grabs the remote and changes the channel from local New York City news to MTV News: The Week in Rock before collapsing onto the couch beside him.
They’re quiet while they unpack the food, grab plates and forks, and dig in. It’s surprisingly not awkward and even verges on comfortable. It’s what they always do, eating the brunt of their food in friendly silence before introducing conversation once their immediate hunger is sated. Mike watches Will’s hands as he grips his fork and twirls into the bed of spaghetti beneath his chicken parm. His nails are still speckled with dried paint that he’ll spend the next two days scraping at with this thumbnail, always showing up to class on Monday with clean fingers that will progressively grow more streaked and speckled throughout the week.
He suddenly meets Mike’s eyes, catching him looking. Mike glances away.
On the TV, a VJ in front of a neon logo talks about the popularity of “Smell’s Like Teen Spirit” and Nirvana’s upcoming tours. Kicking off the conversation part of their meal, Will mentions being willing to sacrifice his left arm to see them live. He’s still angry with himself for missing their North American Tour at the end of ‘91.
Mike smirks. “Why your left?”
“Bills to pay. Art can’t make itself.”
“You could work it out.”
Will cocks his head and squints. It’s cute as hell.
“I don’t know about that, Mike.”
Mike bites back a smile. “Next tour,” he says. “We’ll go. I’ll get the tickets. No limb sacrifice necessary.”
Will reaches over, pinky outstretched. A fleck of green paint is on his nail. Mike hooks their pinkies together and shakes.
They finish their food and MTV News. Mike gets up and grabs them more sodas -- a Coke for him and a Lemon-Lime Slice for Will. He sits in the recliner when he returns, the two of them separated by the coffee table.
They drink their sodas. The music video for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” plays on TV.
Things are unbearably awkward again. The fact that Mike doesn’t break into loud and dramatic song like he normally would when the chorus hits makes it obvious. Alas, Anthony Kiedis goes at it alone. Mike chugs his Coke.
“So, hey,” Will says suddenly.
Mike swallows. The can crinkles under his nervous squeeze. “Yeah?”
“Do you still wanna do this?” Will smiles, this uncomfortable, embarrassed thing, and avoids eye contact. “Sorry for jumping right into it. It’s just– This is really awkward. I feel like we’re both pretending we’re not planning to…y’know.”
Mike sets down his Coke can.
“Yeah, totally. I still want to. I mean, as long as you still do.”
“I do.”
“Okay, so–” Mike rubs both hands over his face. “We’re still… Okay. Good. Cool.”
Will finally looks at him. “And this won’t ruin our friendship? I mean–” He looks back up at the ceiling, another one of those smiles pulling at his mouth. “We’re not gonna do this once and then start avoiding each other, right?”
Mike wants to laugh. That isn’t even remotely a concern of his. Mostly, he’s worried they’re going to do this once and then he’s going to want to do it all the time -- morning, noon, and night. He’s worried he’s going to end up destroying himself over how much he loves Will Byers and how afraid he is of letting him know that.
Mike doesn’t laugh. Instead, he says:
“Right. Of course not.” He huffs a laugh. “We have the next Nirvana tour to go to, after all.”
Will grins. “Oh. Yeah.”
They sit silently for a long stretch of time. They drink their sodas. Will picks the last stray olives out of the salad tray and eats them.
When he’s done, he wipes his hands on a napkin and turns to Mike. “Let’s talk, then. About…y’know.”
Mike scoots up in the recliner and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Okay.”
“I know you say you’ve never…before.”
“I haven’t.”
Will nods. “Okay. Um. Well. You’ve never done it before, but– Are there things you think you would want, or…” His eyes go back to the ceiling. “Anything in particular? Or anything you wouldn’t want?”
Mike’s pretty sure he would be willing to do literally anything with Will. He presses his lips together. Shrugs.
“Anything’s good, I think. I don’t really know a lot yet, but– Yeah. Anything’s probably good.”
Will takes that in.
“Okay. We can talk about it during or after or– Y’know, if there’s anything…”
“Yeah. Totally.” Mike nods. “So…you? What things should I…”
Will scrunches up his face like he’s been dreading this conversation. He drinks his soda. Pulls his legs up on the couch with him, criss-crossing them. He sighs.
“I told you I have issues.”
“Yeah.”
“You know I still have…problems sometimes with sleep and…memories, y’know. Of…what happened to me when I was taken.”
Mike doesn’t know what he was expecting Will to say, but it wasn’t this. His stomach falls.
Will leans his head against the back of the couch. Gives that embarrassed smile again. “Sorry,” he says. “I’ve literally never told anyone this, so– Bear with me.”
Mike waits.
Finally, Will straightens and continues:
“I’m sure you’ve heard all the stuff about how Mom and Hopper found me. And I had, y’know, the cough and the sore throat for a while.”
Mike remembers. They’d said the vine was…
“Vecna’s vine was down your throat.”
“Yeah. All the way into my stomach.”
Mike was twelve at the time. He hadn’t thought about it past how horrible it must have been -- how it made him want to gag thinking about it, this visceral fear of choking.
He’s almost twenty-one now. It’s so much more horrible to imagine now that he’s older, now that he understands ways a person’s body can be violated and what that can do.
He just hasn’t thought about it. He hasn’t considered. He hates that he hasn't, that this is something Will’s been struggling with and Mike has had no idea.
He watches Will’s face now and understands where he’s going with this.
“Basically: Because of that, there’s some stuff a lot of guys want that makes me…sick to do them.”
Mike meets his eyes. “Like what?”
“Like… I don’t like…things in my mouth. Especially if I could…gag or…” His face goes red again. “And I don’t like not being able to see the other person’s face, so that takes away a lot of positions. I don’t like aggression or being shoved around or like, pinned so I can’t move. I don’t like dirty talk unless it’s–” He leans over his own lap, hands to his cheeks like he’s about to say something horribly embarrassing. “Unless it’s, like…nice stuff.”
Will’s eyes flit to Mike’s then away again. He sighs.
“I know you might want some of those things. Most people do. Like, blowjobs and doing it from behind are kind of the basics of sex. A lot of people think playful aggression can be fun.”
“Will, if you don’t like it, we won’t do it.”
Will smiles, soft. He nods. “It’s just sort of a thing with me, and I’ve never talked about the cause with anybody. Obviously.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t freak out or anything. I can get through it. It just makes me feel sort of…scared and uncomfortable, like something’s…wrong? And then I’ll get kind of sick and in my head, and– It doesn’t go very well. It’s hard for me to focus enough to…” A beat. “Drinking before can help. I’ve tried that and–”
“You don’t like drinking.”
“No.” Will wrings his hands. Fidgets with his fingers.
Mike thinks about all the times Will’s come home hungover. He thinks about Will trying to get through certain sex acts. He thinks about Will telling Wes about his needs the last night they were together and then lying awake until morning, worried about it. He thinks about Wes getting hit by a city bus.
“So you see my problem?” Will scrunches up his face again. “I know college sex is mostly about fun. I don’t know how fun I am.” He gives a tight, awkward smile. “Back out now if you want, Mike. I promise I won’t be offended.”
Mike kicks his socked foot under the coffee table. “No way.” He smiles back, genuine. “I bet you’re a lot of fun.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Yeah. We will. And hey. Tell me if we do anything you’re not into. I totally get your whole…thing, y’know. I get why you have it. And if I do anything by accident that makes you feel uncomfortable, just tell me. Sex should be good for you.”
Will captures Mike’s ankle between both of his feet. “Thank you. You too, y’know. If you find out you don’t like something…”
“I’ll let you know.”
They drink the rest of their sodas and pretend to ignore the fact that Will is holding Mike’s ankle with his feet. Mike chugs the last third of his Coke and contemplates the warm, cottony softness of Will’s socks against his skin.
–
After they’re totally done -- all drink cans empty, food polished off, music over, TV show ended, and random, off-topic conversations brought to a close -- they stand, clear the coffee table of trash, and act like they’re getting ready for bed at 7:30. They pee. Brush their teeth. Gargle with mouthwash.
“Your room or mine?” Mike asks, leaning against the bathroom door jam and watching Will swish and spit.
Will wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yours.”
Mike goes to his room and paces.
When Will comes in five minutes later and shuts the door behind him, Mike asks:
“Do we need condoms?”
Will laughs. “No. We’re not doing…that...tonight.”
“Okay, good. Because I literally don’t know how.”
Here’s the thing: Mike’s spent years and years thinking about sex. He’s seen a bunch of porn magazines. He’s seen a handful of porn videos that were getting passed around his dorm back in Indiana. He currently spends most of his week in a New York City arts college, where a solid quarter of the male population is gay and a solid half of them are happy to talk about their sex lives with their friends in class. He’s read a handful of gay sex scenes while workshopping fiction stories. He has ideas about what stuff looks like.
Mike knows where things…go, in theory. He just doesn’t know the ins and outs of anything.
He does know how to humiliate himself, however:
“Actually, I don’t really know how to do anything but kiss, so this is probably gonna be really bad. But I’m a quick learner, and you can feel free to tell me if there’s anything I can do better or–”
Will takes off his shirt. Mike shuts his mouth.
He swallows heavily -- a full-on, embarrassing gulp -- and watches as Will starts pushing off his pajama pants, one side of his navy boxer shorts sliding down with them and exposing a few inches of his hip and the top edge of his deep brown pubic hair.
Has he ever thought about Will’s pubes? Vaguely. In the sort of way you look at all the weird stuff on your own body and sort of assume everybody else your age has it, too, though you can’t really imagine exactly what it would look like.
Mike feels lightheaded. He distracts himself by pulling off his own shirt, then awkwardly works his sweats down his legs and kicks them off inelegantly onto the floor.
He has on his good boxers: the gray ones with the black pinstripes. Still, he feels awkward as hell while he waits on Will to finish, for some reason, folding his pants. He holds his hands in front of his crotch in a way that he hopes doesn’t look awkward but that makes him feel a bit better about the fact that he’s already at least a little bit hard.
“Are you okay?” Will asks when he’s done. He takes two steps forward and glances from Mike to his bed.
“Yeah. Fine.” Mike climbs on and scoots to the headboard. “Just–”
“Nervous?”
“No.” He huffs. “Yeah.”
Will climbs on and sits beside him. And suddenly, there they are, two guys in boxers, side-by-side on Mike Wheeler’s bed, one of them with a partial boner and the other with a righteous flush that does nothing to make the boner less of a reality.
Mike holds his hands in his lap. He takes a deep breath. “Can we kiss?”
Will laughs, his face lighting up, and it’s completely insane how good he looks, how much he makes Mike want to bite his own palm.
“Um. Yes. We can. Definitely.”
Mike stares at him with his mouth open for probably an awkwardly long time. Will looks up at him. He bites his thumbnail for a moment before bringing it back down when Mike begins to lean in.
You are so fucking beautiful is what Mike wants to say.
Instead, he leans in and in and in and touches their mouths together -- gentle, chaste, then not. It’s like a teenager’s first kiss that slides naturally into something softer, deeper, his hands going up to touch Will’s cheeks, fingertips feeling out the angles of his jaw, the barely-there brush of his stubble.
He leans back, lips still touching, and breathes, then presses in again. Will’s hands come up to the nape of his neck, pulling him in harder.
Never in Mike’s life has he experienced anything like this. It’s like someone’s lit a fire inside him. He’s kissed before. He’s made out. He’s never once thought it was possible to come from kissing.
Will’s mouth is hot and wet, and he kisses in the same way he draws and paints -- with personality, with flourish, with care. He sucks on Mike’s lips, slides his tongue in, makes breathy, sighing sounds.
He presses in and leans against Mike’s chest, and Mike gasps into his open mouth and lets himself fall backward onto the pillows.
Will leans over him, and Mike slides his hands from his cheeks down to his neck and back up to his chin, which he cups, angling him so that he’s just right.
I love you, he wants to say. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Mike kisses him and kisses him, drags a hand down from his face to his shoulder, then down his side, then back up. He touches his armpit, then his chest. Will puffs a laughter-breath out his nose and pulls back, smiling. Red-faced.
“Okay?”
Mike tugs him back in.
The kisses get less coordinated, more drags of open mouths, touches of tongues. Will rolls to his side and Mike follows, gently easing him onto his back and planting another, then another kiss on him. He leans back.
Will’s eyes are shiny. His mouth is open as he pants.
Mike quirks his brow.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Are you crying?”
Will gives him a soft clap to the shoulder. “No. Shut up.”
Maybe he isn’t. He looks a bit like he is. Mike watches him for a moment, making sure, before leaning in and kissing him again.
This time, it’s more intentional. Mike hovers over him. He sucks at his mouth, then his cheek, then jaw. Will’s neck is hot and soft, and the tilt of his head makes the crease above the notch of his collar bone the perfect place to land his mouth.
And sucking his neck… Amazingly good. Somehow, Mike feels like he was made for it, his lips and tongue making the perfect suction, the sensation so human and natural.
Will goes gaspy at it, his hand coming up to stroke through the hair at the back of Mike’s head. Mike licks him and sucks him until he has Will laughing, the bob of his Adam’s apple and the vibration of his vocal chords the best, sweetest thing ever.
“What?” Mike lifts his head. Will shoves him fully over onto his back and climbs on him.
And that? Well. That’s another thing entirely.
Mike’s hard. He’s known this for fifteen minutes. And he’d assumed the same was happening to Will. You don’t make the kinds of noises he was making without something complicated going on downstairs.
But now, as Will stretches out over him, his crotch fully pressing against his thigh, Mike has the proof right there: this tangible, weighted lump under cotton held tightly to the bare skin of his leg.
He pants.
Will kisses his lips once, then buries his mouth in Mike’s neck, and Mike feels real fear for a second that he might actually get off to this with nothing but the friction from the tight crotch of his own boxers to do it.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and Will’s humping him, sort of, his hips thrusting against his thigh as he sucks on Mike’s neck, and okay: hell fucking yes. But also:
“Hold on, hold on,” Mike whispers.
Will pulls back. He looks at him, his mouth open. “Hm?”
“I am…not not about to…”
“Oh.”
“I mean– I’m not, but– I guess I could.”
Maybe Mike will drown himself in the bathtub after all.
Will smiles.
Maybe not.
“That’s okay,” Will says. He kisses him -- on the mouth, this time, and it’s soft and slow. “Can I touch you?”
“Um.” Mike laughs, high and awkward. “It’ll be over in like, twenty-five seconds.”
“Can I?”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
Will bites his lip and studies his face for a minute. He’s amused, and Mike isn’t sure if that’s good or bad.
He can’t quite make himself care either way when he feels Will’s hand snake its way under the waistband of his boxers.
“Oh my God,” he says, closing his eyes.
There’s a rhythmic series of breath puffs across his face, Will laughing, and Mike feels his hand on him and his lips against his jaw and then his neck, and he thinks he might die right there in the middle of his bed.
His first thought: handjobs are approximately a million times better than doing it yourself.
His second thought: he really, really loves Will.
His third thought:
“Oh my God.” He opens his eyes.
Will holds himself up on one elbow and watches Mike’s face while he jerks him off. Mike watches him right back.
Will’s mouth is open, and the bottoms of his top teeth are visible. He keeps blinking slowly, and his breaths are harsh, loud puffs, and Mike knows this is the point of this. He knows doing this to someone else has to be arousing. But he’s still somehow amazed that Will looks turned on by what he’s doing.
“Feels good,” Mike breathes, thinking he should say something. Will smiles, his eyes going squinty and nose scrunching up. Mike thinks he’ll pass out if Will doesn’t kiss him. He reaches up, takes him by the neck, and pulls him down.
And this? This is approximately twelve million times better.
Mike can’t breathe properly, but he tries his damnedest. Will huffs little chuckly breaths into his mouth and speeds up the movement of his hand, and Mike thinks he moans when Will starts humping him again.
It’s actually unbelievable. Mike feels like his dick is about to launch off into space. Will Byers is thrusting against him and breathing hard in his face and against his mouth, and Mike wants to say, I’m going to love you until we’re ten-thousand years old and our bones have turned to dust.
Instead, he says, all in one breath, “Holy fucking shit” and comes in Will’s fist.
Mike’s been having weekly and often daily orgasms for a long time. He’s had hundreds. Maybe nearing a thousand at this point. Still, he’s never felt anything like this.
It keeps going, starting like it always does and cresting in a way that makes him utter this embarrassing, high-pitched whining sound, all the breath leaving his lungs. But then as it starts to ebb, Will kisses him, and Mike thinks about Will’s hand on him, stroking him through it -- thinks about the quick slide of it due to the wetness on his palm -- and it’s like his orgasm rises again, almost as if it’s a second one, and he kisses Will’s mouth and feels his tongue and thinks he’s actually going to pass out.
His thighs shake uncontrollably after. Will lets go of him and slides his hand out of his shorts. Mike lies there boneless and useless and pants, his mouth open and tongue about to come out like a dog’s.
“How long was that?” Mike asks when he can finally breathe again. Out the corner of his eye, he spies Will leaning over the bed and wiping his hand on Mike’s discarded shirt, which, fair, but come on.
Will laughs. He pretends to check an invisible watch on his wrist. “Ummm… Forty-five seconds.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yeah. Thirty seconds.”
“Will.”
“What?”
Mike sticks his tongue out at him. Will leans in and squishes their noses together.
That might be his favorite thing Will’s done. Mike presses his lips up and kisses him.
“Can I touch you now?” he asks, hand sliding down to rub at Will’s hip.
Will huffs against his mouth. “Yeah. Please.”
They kiss for just a moment, Mike’s hand fingering along the bottom edge of Will’s shorts, and then Will rolls off him. Mike leans over, careful not to pin.
He goes back in on his neck, drags his right hand down Will’s quivering stomach, and slips it into his boxers.
Will laughs breathily when Mike wraps his hand around him, and Mike wonders if he’s this perfect and giggly and happy for other guys and if so, how the absolute fucking hell could they not want to keep him forever?
He hates every guy Will’s ever been with. He hopes they all get hit by city buses. Mike leans in and kisses Will’s smiling mouth and does his best to make him feel so good he will never think about anyone else ever again.
“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” Mike says, dragging his mouth back down to Will’s neck.
Will makes a really great sound, this gasp with just the littlest bit of voice to it. “Just do what you’re doing,” he murmurs.
Mike starts by doing what he does to himself, but after a minute, he figures out that Will’s breath picks up when he rubs his thumb just under the head, so he keeps at it.
He pushes up on one elbow like Will had done and watches his face. Will has his eyes squeezed shut, but he looks like he’s feeling good, his mouth parted and tongue coming out every now and again to lick at his lips.
Mike presses a kiss there, and Will opens his eyes. He smiles, then tilts his head all the way back, chin to the ceiling.
“Good?” Mike takes advantage of the position and kisses down the column of Will’s throat.
“Mmhm. Keep going.”
Mike does, using the noises, the breaths, and the pulses from Will’s body to let him know when to speed up and when to slow. His hand is slick now, and the glide is smooth. He feels Will’s stomach trembling beneath his forearm where it rests against it. He feels an occasional, pulsing throb beneath his palm.
He’s close; Mike can tell. He leans in and kisses him again, then rests his mouth against his cheek and just breathes against him as Will starts to shake.
“Mike,” he says, and Mike thinks that under the right circumstances, he could come again from it, this breathy, barely-voiced wisp of a thing.
“Yeah, Will,” he murmurs back, words muffled against his cheek. “Come on. I’ve gotcha.”
“Okay. I’m gonna–”
Mike speeds up his hand, leaning back on his elbow so he can watch it all. After a minute, it happens. There it is. Will’s face crumples, his eyes nothing but crinkles and his top teeth coming out to bite at his bottom lip. He breathes hard, and Mike feels him throb in his palm.
It’s amazing. He smiles and almost laughs, and Will releases his lip and makes another great, breathy sound, his back arching and stomach shaking.
Mike’s hand is suddenly warm and sticky-wet. He leans in and kisses Will through the last of it, keeping up the slow, up and down drag of his palm until he feels him shiver.
When he’s done, Mike presses one last kiss to Will’s cheek and slips his hand free of his shorts.
And that’s…something to see. He stares at it for probably way too long and then, what the hell, wipes it on his own boxers. He’ll have to change them anyway. He looks over at Will, who’s staring at him, a funny look on his face.
“What?”
Will shakes his head. Mike lays back down, and the two of them rest on their sides, facing each other.
After a minute Mike smiles and scoots in close. He’s meaning to kiss him again, maybe bask with him in all the oxytocin flooding their systems.
But instead, Will rolls onto his back. His face has gone red again. His eyes have gone shiny.
“Are you okay?” Mike doesn’t touch him, though he desperately wants to.
Will presses his lips together. He nods. “Yeah. Of course.” He stretches. “That was really great.”
Relieved, Mike smiles. “Yeah. It was.”
They lie there in silence for several minutes. Mike hears Headbangers Ball starting up on the TV in the living room. Despite having wiped it off, his hand is starting to feel weird and crusty, like there’s a thin layer of Elmer’s drying on it.
“Okay,” Will suddenly says, breaking the silence. He sits up and slides off the bed. “I’m gonna go clean up before I’m glued into my shorts.” He gestures around the room. “I’ll let you have your room back.”
Mike wants to tell him not to go. It’s only a little after 8:00, but he wants to tell him to clean up and come back to him. They’ll crawl in bed together and sleep.
Instead, he chuckles. Shrugs. Says:
“Cool. Yeah. Good idea.”
Will picks up his shirt and pants and holds them to his chest as he leaves the room. He closes the door behind him.
Mike waits for the sounds of Will to use and leave the bathroom and then rolls out of bed. He gets a clean pair of boxers, picks up his pants, and digs another shirt out of his laundry basket.
After washing and getting redressed in the bathroom, Mike looks at himself in the mirror. His face is flushed. There are pink blotches on his neck from Will’s mouth -- not hickeys, just suck-marks that’ll fade to nothing within the next hour. He washes his hand and wrist, where he finds another whitish streak. Will’s…
Mike blows out a breath. Holy fuck. He and Will have…
He can’t help it. He grins so hard he has to smother it in his shirt, which he pulls up and holds over his mouth.
After a moment, he drops his shirt. His reflection looks insane. He turns off the light, opens the door, and leaves the bathroom.
Will’s in the living room watching Family Matters and drawing. There’s another can of Slice on the coffee table and a napkin with a stack of three Oreos. He’s back in his Sex Pistols shirt and gray pajama pants, and aside from the flush to his cheeks and the similar blotchy suck-marks on his neck, he looks just like he did before they’d gone into the bedroom together.
Mike feels terribly awkward, but he’s committed to being normal about this whole thing. He takes a deep breath, crosses to the kitchen, and grabs his own snack and soda.
“Were you lying?” he asks immediately, dropping down into the recliner. Because apparently, he can’t actually be normal about this whole thing.
“Huh?” Will looks up from his sketchbook.
“About it being good.”
Will laughs. “No, I wasn’t lying. Why do you ask?”
“Because I only lasted like thirty seconds.”
“And I only lasted like two minutes.”
Mike shoves a whole Oreo in his mouth and cracks open his soda. “See?” he says with his mouth full. “We’re not avoiding each other.”
Will grabs his own Oreo and takes a bite. Unlike Mike, he chews and swallows before asking, apropos of nothing:
“Do you wanna watch a movie?”
They get more snacks, cut the lights, and put on Mike’s VHS of Alien. Then, for the next two hours, they eat cheddar popcorn and cookies and watch Sigourney Weaver be a badass on starship Nostromo.
When it’s over, Will’s sleepy, his eyelids heavy and chin starting to bend toward his chest as the credits roll. Mike watches him for a while without saying anything, thinking about leaving the recliner and climbing onto the couch with him. They’d get a big blanket and wrap themselves up together, and they’d lie back and put on Arsenio and not watch it. Mike would kiss Will’s cheek and feel his breath on his face.
“What?”
Will’s stretching, looking over at him. Mike blinks, caught.
“Going to bed?” he asks, choosing to ignore it.
Will yawns and nods. “Yeah.” He stands.
Mike stands, too, and starts picking up their trash from the coffee table -- the empty cans, the popcorn tin, the half-empty Oreo package. Will picks up a napkin and uses his hand to swipe their crumbs into it. He follows Mike into the kitchen and drops the napkin in the garbage, then leans back against the counter.
When Mike’s put everything away, he leans against the opposite counter and crosses his arms over his chest. He and Will gaze at each other.
“So, hey.” Will scratches his neck, nervous. “Do you think you’d maybe wanna…” He smiles at the ceiling, then scrunches up his nose before once again meeting Mike’s eyes. “Would you wanna do it again?”
Mike’s heart pounds. His mouth drops open, and he breathes hard. Nods. “Yeah. Totally. When?”
Now? Right now? Mike would drop his pants and do his best to make Will see stars from the kitchen of their shitty little apartment, the Arsenio audience fist-pumping and woofing on the TV in the background.
That’s apparently not quite what Will had in mind.
Instead, he says, “Friday? Same time, same place?”
Mike huffs a laugh. “Yeah. Definitely. Friday.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
Will gives a little wave. “Night, Mike.”
“Night, Will.”
Mike tilts his head up to the ceiling and closes his eyes.
He’s completely fucked, right?