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Will is asleep on the floor of Mike’s dorm room.
Mike becomes aware of this sometime in the early hours of the morning, when sunlight begins seeping into the room from between the slats in the blinds and he blinks himself awake reluctantly. In fairness, he’s kind of on the floor too - it’s not like he’d intentionally, like, let Will pass out on the carpet in yesterday’s clothes. It’s just where they ended up last night, cross legged and talking in low voices, shy smiles in the low light of Mike’s desk lamp, and then it had gotten late, and Will’s eyelids had started drooping, and at some point he’d shifted to lay on his back while he talked to Mike, hands gesturing in the air above him, and now- well. Here they are, Will’s eyelashes fluttering in his sleep against the ugly yellow-green throw rug Mike’s roommate Josh had dragged in from Goodwill a couple months ago and Mike crunched up in a ball in the opposite corner, a crick in his neck and something fluttery building in his belly.
He doesn’t know why they’d been sitting on the floor in the first place, really, except for the fact that when they’d come in last night, greasy takeout boxes in hand and laughter on their lips, the subject of the bed and who should sleep in it had seemed a little daunting, and then Will had sat down against the wall anyway so Mike had let it go. He’s made his mission this weekend to be as unassuming as possible around Will, so that he doesn’t accidentally smash into something invisible and delicate between them and shatter what little progress they’ve made. It’s been so long since he’s even been in the same room as Will for more than an uncomfortable hour or two at a time. He’s not going to fuck it up over something as ridiculous as a twin XL bed.
Still, the angle his neck is tilted at is becoming nothing short of unbearable. Mike carefully peels himself off of the floor, wincing and rolling his shoulders a couple times, and pushes himself into a semi upright position. It’s barely eight o’clock, according to the alarm clock on his bedside table, and in all honesty Mike would love to crawl up onto the very warm and very comfortable mattress that sits innocently a mere three feet from him and collapse back into sleep, but that feels- rude. It’s rude, to claim the bed for himself while Will sleeps on obliviously without so much as a blanket.
So- okay. Part of that is fixable, at least. He stands, moving slowly to accommodate his sore muscles and also Will, who has historically been a very light sleeper, though Mike wouldn’t really have a way of knowing if that’s true anymore, and grabs one of the several blankets that are piled messily at the end of his unmade bed. He shakes it out, just to make sure there’s not, like, a stray sock or pair of underwear hiding in the folds somewhere - because sometimes putting away his clean laundry is a little too daunting of a task to complete immediately, and it has to sit on his bed for a few days before he gets around to it - and then kneels beside Will, draping it over his sleeping form.
The gesture makes that fluttery thing stir in his gut again, and he swallows it down, sitting back on his heels and taking a shaky breath as he watches the steady rise and fall of Will’s chest. He wants- so many things, he wants to reach over and brush the stray lock of hair off of his forehead, wants to curl up next to him and reach for his hand like he used to do when they were little, wants to wake him up and tease him about his morning grouchiness and argue with him over what they should do about breakfast. There was a time, not that long ago really, where all those things would have come naturally to him. There would have been nothing out of the ordinary about Will falling asleep on the floor of his bedroom, and he wouldn’t have thought twice about poking him awake and insisting that they just share the bed.
But then they grew up, and Mike had gotten mean, for a minute there, and- well, he can’t really blame Will for the fact that this is the most time they’ve spent together in three years, can he? For the fact that they aren’t close anymore. He wants to be again, though, and part of that plan involves not spooking Will. He knows that Will gets overwhelmed quickly, especially by Mike , and he’s spent the last couple months trying very hard to let Will come to him when he’s good and ready, rather than forcing it. Will is elusive and enigmatic and so, so good, and Mike will be damned if he loses him again just because he doesn’t know when to quit.
He’s so busy thinking about all this, trying to decide what to do with himself while Will sleeps, that he fails to notice that Will isn’t. Sleeping, that is. It’s only when he stirs, socked feet wiggling a little on the floor, and utters a sleepy “Mike?” halfway around a yawn that Mike realizes that sitting here staring at him is probably not doing a very good job of not spooking him.
“Uh,” he says, trying in vain to rearrange himself so that it looks like he was doing anything other than watching his former best friend sleep, “Hi.”
Will’s eyes flutter open, and he frowns minutely when his gaze lands on Mike. He props himself up on his elbows, glancing around the room like the answer to Mike’s insane behavior is written on the walls, or something. “What’re you doing?” he mumbles sleepily, then yawns again, an adorable little squeaking sigh escaping him as he does so.
“Uh,” Mike says again, because he is an idiot, “Oh- um, blanket. You looked cold, so I was…” he trails off, gesturing vaguely at the blanket wrapped around Will’s torso and realizing belatedly that covering Will with a blanket is not that much less weird than watching him sleep, and even if it were, the blanket is kind of a moot point now that Will is actually, like, awake .
Luckily, Will doesn’t seem particularly fazed. He glances down, looking almost surprised to find the blue and white patterned fabric pooling in his lap, and smiles a little. “Oh. Thanks, I guess.”
Mike is pretty sure he could spend an eternity analyzing everything Will says to him and never come close to understanding the depth of the meaning behind it. You guess , he thinks, caught halfway between frustration and endearment, You guess? What’s that supposed to mean? Instead, he bites his tongue and nods awkwardly. “Yeah. Um. No problem.”
He doesn’t know where this awkwardness is coming from. Last night had gone well, so well that Mike had started to wonder if his plan to win Will’s friendship back was going better than he thought. Their conversation had come easily, and Will had kept bumping their shoulders together playfully on the walk back from getting dinner, and he’d been smiling - Mike forgot how much he loves Will’s smile, how good it feels to know that he’s the one putting it on his face. There’s a million and one little things like that, with Will, things Mike had stored away for safekeeping in the dark recesses of his brain and is only now starting to pull back out, to remember to cherish.
Will pushes himself upright, crossing his legs and pulling the blanket around his shoulders to wrap around him like a cloak. “So,” he says, cocking his head to one side. “What’s the plan for today?”
“Oh,” Mike chokes out - yet another strike against his be normal goal. Truth be told, he doesn’t have, like, a lot of things planned for this weekend, because he’s still processing the fact that Will even said yes to coming to visit in the first place. He’d barely believed his luck when, over the phone several weeks ago now, Will had asked, hey, that long weekend in October, do you think-? I mean, I’m only a train ride away, and Mike had said yes and of course and my roommate will be out of town, you could come stay, but he hadn’t actually expected it to come to fruition until Will was actually, physically here. Even now, he’s not convinced Will’s not going to just, like, pack his bag in the middle of the night and book it straight back to Boston because he’s been reminded of just how fumblingly abrasive Mike is.
The point being, Mike has a mental list about a mile long of things he would, in theory, like to do with Will, but he hadn’t gotten so far as to actually imagine he’d get to do them. “Well- I mean, there’s a couple places in town I think you’d like,” he says, rather lamely, but it makes Will’s face split into a soft smile anyway.
“Okay,” he says, like that’s that. Like he just trusts Mike with this, even though it’s mostly Mike’s fault things are like this in the first place. Mike’s heart flutters again, a persistent, tickling feeling. “Can we get breakfast first, though? I’m starving.”
Truthfully, Mike hadn’t even meant to stumble back into Will’s life this way. Their relationship - or lack thereof - had been something, for a long time, that he held in quiet grief in the back of his mind, but had kind of accepted as an unfortunate effect of growing up. Their whole friend group had kind of grown apart in high school anyway, and then grown back together a little bit, later, after they all got over the various types of angst that come with being fifteen. After freshman year, they’d stopped being a group in the way they were, and everything had become more individualized; Mike and Dustin would hang out at Hellfire, Lucas would pop over to Mike’s house from next door to play video games, Max would cut sixth period with him to get high under the bleachers. Will was the one person Mike never fell back in sync with, and by the time he realized that it wasn’t going to happen, it was too late to do anything about it without dredging up old hurt and making a bigger deal out of it than it was. They weren’t enemies. They weren’t even not friends . On the rare occasions the Party would actually all hang out in one place, Will would be there too, smiling quietly from the opposite side of the room, but he never sought Mike out afterward, never made a move to ask for more than that.
So Mike had gotten the message. They were friends, kind of, but they’d never be best friends again, and that was something he had to accept.
He’d gotten pretty good at accepting it - or, more accurately, ignoring it and pretending that was the same thing - until the end of senior year. He’d bumped into Will at a party the night after graduation - literally bumped into him, spilling nauseatingly bright red punch over both of their t-shirts and cursing loudly. Will had laughed it off, told him it’s okay, come on and dragged him by the wrist into the bathroom, where they’d tried and failed to mop up the worst of the stains with one of the hand towels on the counter. We’re ruining these, Will had said, frowning as pink-tinged water dripped from the white fabric and into the sink. Do you think- um. Wait, whose house are we in again?
Mike snorted. Fuck if I know. Lucas dragged me here.
Yeah, Dustin dragged me , Will said, and then they were both laughing again, and it felt so ridiculously good, to be laughing with Will again, that Mike hadn’t thought much of it when he’d taken the rag out of Will’s hands and reached out to gently press it against his t-shirt.
It was too familiar a gesture, too close to how they used to act with each other, and under normal circumstances Mike would have shied away from the reminder. But they were both tipsy and full of the nostalgic sort of euphoria that comes with graduating, and when Will’s eyes met Mike’s with a shy smile, it had felt like a quiet acknowledgement. For old time’s sake and all that.
Mike had finished cleaning Will’s shirt - not very effectively, but it was at least thirty percent less stained than it had been when they entered the bathroom - and had stepped back with a perfunctory nod. Right. Well, better get back to it, I guess.
Will had bitten his lip, which Mike had taken for awkward acquiescence, so he’d moved to leave, but then there were fingers curling around his wrist again. Mike , Will had said, and just that, his name uttered in that way only Will ever seems to say it, the edges of it worn and warm like there’s a million old emotions wrapped up in the single syllable, had made Mike stop short. This summer, I- will you be around?
Mike’s throat had suddenly felt very dry. Oh, he’d managed, like the extremely eloquent future English major he was, um, yeah?
Will had nodded solemnly, eyes boring into Mike’s with an intensity Mike hadn’t been privy to in a solid few years. Okay. Would you want… can I see you?
Over the summer? Mike had squeaked, a blush rising on his cheeks, and Will’s lips had twitched upward.
Yeah, I just said that.
Right, Mike had agreed faintly, because Will had just said that- just because Mike had never expected to receive a hangout offer from Will Byers ever again didn’t mean he had to act like a total idiot about it. Yeah, I mean, I’d- I’d like that. Um. A lot.
Will had smiled for real then, and suddenly Mike couldn’t remember why they’d ever stopped talking in the first place.
They’d seen each other several times throughout the summer, for long drives around Hawkins or afternoons spent at the lake or quiet evenings sitting on the Byers’ back porch together, and finally, a week before they both left for college, Mike had worked up the courage to ask; hey, Will?
They were laying on the hood of Mike’s car, soaking up the last rays of sun as it set over the lake. Will tilted his head to look at him, squinting. Hmm?
What’s- why are we doing this? Why now?
It came out harsher than Mike meant, and he’d already been gearing up to backtrack when Will answered. I guess, he sighed, head rolling back to face the sky, since we’re leaving, I didn’t want… I don’t know. I missed you.
That had been enough for Mike. I missed you too , he’d said, soft and sun-warmed, do you think- maybe when we get to school, you could-
Call you? Will had finished, a smile in his voice. Yeah, I was gonna ask.
Okay, Mike had said, and that had been that.
And now Will’s here , under the pretense of rebuilding their friendship brick by fucking brick, and Mike is terrified that he’s accidentally going to send all the blocks they’ve stacked up so far tumbling to the ground in one fell swoop.
Will, so far, seems completely oblivious toward Mike’s guilt-ridden terror. After breakfast, Mike had opted to take him into town to the record store that’s made Mike think of him every time he’s passed by it since school started, and clearly for good reason, because Will absolutely lit up the second they stepped inside and hasn’t stopped chattering on about his latest musical obsessions since. Mike is listening with equal parts fondness and trepidation, unsure of how to carry himself as Will darts around him to pull records from the shelves and hold them up for Mike’s examination. He doesn’t want to be thinking this way, doesn’t want to flinch every time Will’s arm brushes his own or question what the appropriate distance from him to stand might be, but he can’t help it. Mike has always been gangly and awkward, taking up too much space and never gaining the confidence to use it right. He feels clumsy beside Will, Will with his warm, tanned skin and bright eyes and easy charm, Will who moves through the world with such grace, taking everything in stride. He thinks that might have been what drove them apart in the first place - because they used to be together in their awkwardness, sharing the same unease, comforting each other in it. But somewhere along the way, Will had figured out who he was, and Mike hadn’t, and he’d hated being left alone in that. It made him resentful, and when he noticed them starting to drift apart, and instead of fighting for Will, the bitter, rejected part of him had decided it was for the best.
“Have you listened to this one?” Will is asking now, holding up a record with an unfamiliar cover. “It’s pretty good. Not their best, but pretty good.”
Mike had never been great at keeping up with Will’s constantly expanding music taste even when they were younger, and now is no exception. He shakes his head. “If it’s not on the radio, I probably haven’t heard it, just as a general rule,” he admits, which makes Will laugh. He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but the sound of Will’s laughter makes him crack a smile anyway, his shoulders relaxing a little. This part isn’t so hard - talking about music, games, movies, they’ve always found camaraderie there. If Mike ignores the more complicated facets of their relationship and focuses on things like that, the small things, the reasons why he wants to be Will’s friend again in the first place, it makes this whole thing feel a little more manageable.
With a renewed sense of vigor, Mike dives into the discussion, asking Will questions about the bands that he’s been pointing out, offering up his own opinions, most of which are probably too simplistic for a music connoisseur such as Will, but either they’re passably educated or Will is committed to pretending they are, because he smiles and nods along at every turn.
By the time they leave the record store, Will armed with several new cassette tapes, Mike is starting to feel like he actually might be making progress on the securing Will’s friendship front. There’s a warmth in the way Will talks to him that makes Mike slightly dizzy, reeling, as usual, from the sheer amount of goodness that exists within Will Byers. Surely Mike doesn’t deserve this pair of eyes looking at him like he’s the only person in the world, the upward quirk of Will’s lips when Mike makes a stupid joke. There’s logically no reason he should get a second chance with Will, but as the day drags on it becomes increasingly clear that he is, in fact, getting one.
They end up at the park, across the street from a tall concrete building that boasts a bright, sweeping mural across one side. This, too, has made Mike think of Will a few too many times lately, and he tells him so as they settle down in the grass to admire it.
If Will thinks it’s bizarre that Mike has made a habit of spotting pieces of him everywhere he goes for the past few months, he doesn’t say so, just nods thoughtfully as he considers the painting. It’s a little abstract, swatches of color swirling out from the center of the piece and creating a sort of kaleidoscope effect, but the image in the middle is clear; two silhouettes, sprawled out lazily on a bed of grass not unlike the one Mike and Will are seated on now, faces turned toward the sky and fingers linked. Their faces are shrouded in a mosaic of color, as if to maintain the privacy of the subjects, but Mike is struck with the sudden conviction that if he walked up to the wall and stared deep into the face of the figure on the right, he’d find his own mirrored back at him.
“It’s nice,” Will says after a long minute, his voice low and thoughtful. Mike tears his eyes away from the image and finds that Will’s already looking back at him, something unreadable in his expression. “It really reminds you of me?”
Mike hadn’t thought much of the confession initially, but with the way Will’s looking at him now it occurs to him that maybe it’s something he should be embarrassed by. “Yeah, I mean,” he coughs, voice sounding significantly less even than he would prefer, “Like, I think about you anytime I see anything art-related, so.”
This isn’t exactly less embarrassing, but it at least deflects from the mortifying intimacy that he’s just now noticing the mural represents. And it’s true that he thinks about Will like that, whenever he sees someone holding a paintbrush or sketching in a notebook or how he sometimes catches himself looking at people’s hands, comparing them to Will’s slender artist’s ones. Trying to recall the way his fingers looked curled around a pencil, the smudges that inevitably wound up streaked across his knuckles and the sides of his palms. Thoughts like that, about Will, have become so normal to him that he’d forgotten to wonder why there were so many of them.
Will doesn’t respond, just nods slowly and looks back up at the wall, brow lightly furrowed. Mike wants- he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to reach over and smooth out the crease between Will’s eyebrows. He wants to explain that he wasn’t trying to be weird about it, that he doesn’t even know why he’s been plagued with all of these thoughts recently and he’s pretty sure that, either way, the solution is to become Will’s friend again, officially, because then he can stop freaking out any time Will gets close. If they can go back to being friends, Mike can go back to feeling normal about him - even though it’s been so long that he’s not sure he really remembers what feeling normal about Will felt like.
What ends up coming out of his mouth, after several excruciating moments of deliberation, is, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Will glances back over at him, and this time the hint of a smile graces his lips. “Oh,” he says, a laugh in his voice, “Me too, Mike.”
Good, Mike thinks, that’s- that’s good, that Will’s not, like, regretting this whole thing. However, the admission still doesn’t feel like enough , and he frowns, frustrated with himself. He can’t figure out what it is he’s trying to get out of this, only that there’s something , some innate desire within him that won’t be sated until Will does or says whatever it is Mike needs him to. “Okay.”
This time, Will’s laugh is audible, though there’s a tinge of concern to his voice when he asks, “Is something wrong? You look kind of, like. Constipated.”
That’s not a bad word for it, Mike thinks, at least metaphorically - there’s an insistent surge of emotions that are trying to claw their way out of him, but they’ve gotten so jumbled together that it’s caused a jam, and he can’t even manage to untangle them enough to put a name to any of it. “I’m fine,” he lies, “It’s just, like, weird, you know?”
“Uh, yeah,” Will agrees, though his nose is crinkled in a way that tells Mike he doesn’t really know, actually, “you mean, me?”
“No,” Mike says, almost angrily, and then, thinking about it a little more, “Well, maybe. I’m just adjusting, I guess.”
“To being friends again?” Will asks, head tilted to one side as he tries to work through what Mike’s saying.
Mike’s stomach does a very strange flipping thing, and he blinks. “We’re friends?” he blurts before he can stop himself.
All at once, the confusion on Will’s face clears, and he laughs, tilting his face up toward the sunlit sky. “Is that what you’ve been torturing yourself over all morning? Yes, Mike, we’re friends. I thought that was obvious.”
“Well, I knew we were, like, trying,” Mike says, though now that he’s voicing it aloud, it sounds a little bit pathetic. He tries not to think about the fact that Will’s been noticing his internal crisis this whole time, and just has, apparently, the best poker face in the entire world about it. “I just wasn’t sure.”
Will’s amusement fades into something softer, more understanding. He places a hand on Mike’s knee, and Mike stares down at it in vague wonder. There’s a smudge of blue on the back of Will’s wrist, even though he hasn’t touched a paint set since he got here. It makes Mike feel kind of faint. “I want to be close again,” Will says, voice gentle like Mike is a wild animal he’s trying not to spook. “I think- I don’t know. We’ll get there. But we are friends, okay?”
“Okay,” Mike whispers meekly, “you have artist’s hands, do you know that?”
Will laughs again and squeezes his knee, and Mike feels a little more complete.
It’s only when they get back to the dorm, late that evening, that Mike remembers the Bed Conundrum. He glances at Will, who’s kicking off his shoes in the doorway, then back at the mattress. “You should take the bed,” he blurts.
Will pauses halfway through shrugging off his coat, cocking his head to the side with a faintly amused expression. “What?”
Mike swallows. “The bed,” he explains, a little helplessly. “You slept on the floor last night. I felt bad.”
“You also slept on the floor,” Will points out, which- that’s embarrassing, that he noticed that, that he probably put together the fact that Mike passed out on the floor with him because he was too much of a coward to have an actual conversation about sleeping arrangements. Is Mike really that easy to read? Can Will tell, no matter how hard Mike tries to be calm and normal and not scare him away, how badly Mike wants this?
“Yeah,” he forges on, cheeks burning, “Because I felt bad.”
Will’s definitely smirking at him now. He finishes slipping out of his jacket and drapes it gingerly over the back of Mike’s desk chair. “Sweet of you,” he says idly, as if the words don’t threaten to make Mike’s heart beat straight out of his chest, “but I don’t need you to torture yourself for me.”
That’s a dramatic way to put it, Mike thinks, but it’s also, kind of, exactly what he’s been doing ever since Will grabbed his arm in the bathroom of that random jock’s house at the start of the summer. “Noted,” he says faintly, “but I still think you should take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Will nods slowly, as if this is all very reasonable, then glances over his shoulder at Josh’s bed. “I mean, there is this extra empty one just sitting there.”
Mike’s mouth drops open, and he splutters, “That’s- I mean, he’s only gone for the weekend , don’t you think it’s weird to-” he stops abruptly, finally catching a glimpse at the way Will’s looking at him, half incredulous and half fond. “Oh. You’re joking.”
Will bobs his head once, his amused smirk not faltering even for a second. “I am, yeah.”
“Right.” Mike stares at him for a beat. “Okay, I’m gonna change.”
The quiet rumble of Will’s laughter fills the room as Mike swivels and starts rifling through his closet for a pair of sweats. He’s still not entirely sure the bed matter is actually resolved , but he’s pretty sure if he tries to talk about it any more he’ll give himself an aneurysm, and Will seems unbothered, so- whatever! His main concern with the whole thing had been about making Will sleep on the floor, so at least it’s out there, the idea that he doesn’t- doesn’t have to, or whatever. Surely that gives him some points, as a host.
Objectively, it’s still kind of early to be going to bed - they only just got back from dinner, and he can still hear the sounds of people laughing and talking as they pass in the hallway outside, but Will is moving around somewhere behind him, and when he turns back around Will’s tugging his pajama shirt over his head, the strip of exposed skin at his waist quickly obscured by fabric. And then Will’s crawling onto Mike’s bed, and slipping under the covers, and clearly Mike didn’t think this through all the way, because the sight of Will in his bed is making him feel a little bit hysterical.
It’s like this; Will’s hair is mussed, and his shirt is worn and faded, and the pale fabric makes his skin look all the more warm, the hint of a summer tan still clinging to it. And it’s all terribly familiar, the way he settles himself in Mike’s space like it’s nothing, and Mike has missed him , so much more than he even realized, and there’s a hot, sharp feeling of want tugging at the core of his gut. He doesn’t even know what it is he’s yearning for, exactly, why the mere sight of Will Byers makes his stomach churn and his heart ache like this, but he knows that there’s something there, some objective his body has that his brain has yet to catch up with. He thought he’d fixed the problem, earlier when Will told him they were friends, but it’s becoming abundantly clear to him that the pit of desire within him runs much deeper than he’d anticipated, and he wants .
He must stand there staring for a minute too long, because Will glances up at him from where he’s propped against the pillows and arches an eyebrow. “Mike?” he says, and then, before Mike can even attempt to figure out how to explain himself, he goes, “Mike,” again, this time in a lower, softer voice, and his hands twitch on top of the duvet. “We can share, you know.”
And it’s not like Mike had been gunning for that, not really , it’s not like he’d been trying to goad Will into the idea, because he’s not manipulative like that and he would have gladly slept on the floor all night if it meant Will was comfortable. But at the offer, that pull of desire in his belly turns sharp and insistent, and he’s fumbling out a clumsy “Okay, yeah, sure,” before he can think better of it. Maybe this is it, he reasons, as Will smiles and holds the covers open for him, maybe this is what he’s been searching for, these past few months when just hearing Will’s voice has made him feel all heady and dazed. Maybe this will be the thing that finally settles that feeling.
They wind up side-by-side, faces level with each other, like they used to do when they were little kids staying up late on sleepovers to trade whispers and giggles back and forth in the minimal space between them. It feels achingly intimate, so much that Mike is almost embarrassed by it, but then Will’s socked feet rub against his shins and Will smiles shyly, and suddenly Mike doesn’t really give a fuck about embarrassment.
“Hi,” he whispers, stupidly.
“Hi,” Will whispers back - it sounds less stupid when he says it - and his fingers flex again where his hands are tucked just beneath the pillow. “Want to turn out the light?”
“Oh, right.” Mike rolls onto his back and extends an arm to switch off the lamp on his desk, plunging the room into darkness save for the nightlight plugged into the opposite wall that spills a soft orange glow across the floor. Mike had felt childish, bringing it with him to school, but he’s grateful for it now, because it provides just enough light that he can still make out the details of Will’s face when he turns back to look at him.
Will’s still smiling, but it’s a faint thing, now, more a subtle quirk of his lips than anything else. “You okay?” he asks softly.
Mike nods, a jerky, too-quick thing. “Yeah, ‘course,” he says, forcing a smile that is undoubtedly leagues less convincing than Will’s false breeziness tends to be. “Why?”
Will shrugs one shoulder, but his eyes bore into Mike’s, and when he speaks again, it’s very clear that he’s mulled the words over a few times before actually getting around to voicing them. “You’ve been acting kind of, I don’t know. Skittish. Since the summer, but especially this weekend.” Mike purses his lips, but makes no move to deny it, which is probably a good thing, because it doesn’t seem like Will would let him if he did. “Do I,” Will starts, haltingly, eyes darting back and forth between Mike’s own like he’s already searching for the answer, “make you nervous?”
Mike exhales, his shaky breath too loud in the space between them. It’s hard enough to sort through his own feelings where Will is concerned; it’s another thing entirely to attempt to explain them to Will himself. He looks at Will’s face, the planes of it softened in the darkness, and tries to draw forth the answer closest to the jumbled mass of the truth. “Yes,” is what he lands on, followed by, “maybe. I don’t know.”
Which isn’t a real answer, but feels true, at the very least, and Will must know this, somehow, because he nods, once, head bobbing against the pillow. “Okay.”
He doesn’t ask for further explanation, but he’s clearly waiting for it anyway- or maybe that’s just Mike, always a little too desperate to make himself understood. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking,” he says, hesitantly, the words clunky and too honest in his mouth - he hadn’t planned for this part, this quiet evening confessional, and he feels a little out of his depth. “And that- makes me sad, I guess, because I think I used to be good at reading you.”
“You were,” Will murmurs, a little absently. He looks a little sad about it too, his eyes wide and dark on the other side of the mattress.
Mike swallows. “Well, now I’m not. And it stresses me out.”
Will laughs, kind of, except that the noise gets stuck somewhere on the exhale and peters out into a broken sort of sound. “You could just ask, you know. What I’m thinking.”
“Yeah?” Mike is struck, suddenly, with the absurd urge to reach out and press his palm to the side of Will’s face along his temple, like he can absorb his thoughts straight through his skin. “You’d tell me?”
Will’s mouth twists thoughtfully, but he nods slowly, like he’s deciding. “Yeah. I’d try, anyway.”
“Okay,” Mike breathes. His heart is pounding, though he’s not sure why. He feels like he’s on the precipice of something- is this it? he wonders, as that strange heat twists in his gut again. Is this what I’ve been wanting from him? “What are you thinking?”
Will smiles. “I didn’t mean now,” he says, but it’s good-natured, teasing.
“You said,” Mike insists, a little petulantly, “You said I could ask. Is it something bad?”
Will laughs again, for real this time, a warm rumble in his throat. Mike wants to press his ear to his chest, hear it straight from the source. “No,” he says warmly, “I’m just- it’s boring. I’m thinking about you.”
“Oh.” That doesn’t seem boring to Mike, but hey, what does he know. “What about me?”
“Just,” Will murmurs, and it’s there again, that look of unmistakable fondness, soft eyes and a warm smile when he looks at Mike, and it makes Mike feel crazy about five different ways, “you’re so earnest. I’m thinking about how that’s one of my favorite things about you.”
“Oh,” Mike says again, a little hoarsely, “like- how so?”
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” Will says, which isn’t exactly true- like, yeah , Mike desperately wants to know every single thing Will has ever and will ever think about him, but that’s not quite the same, is it? He’s not just looking for empty appeasements; he wants to see himself through Will's eyes, see if Will sees anything worthwhile there. It’s not about ego boosting, it’s just- he wants to know how Will feels about him. That’s all. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about you too,” Mike says, a little unconsciously - he’s still kind of stuck on the earnest thing, but that’s Will-related, so it’s not like the statement isn’t true. “And that I like that you have favorite things about me, which is probably really vain, but it’s just sort of nice to hear, and- and I have a lot of favorite things about you too, so it evens out.”
Will laughs again, but it’s more of a surprised sound this time, like Mike shocked it out of him. “Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Mike wets his lips, meets Will’s eyes, thinks about how he can’t really think of anything he dislikes about Will, save for the hard to read thing, but that had been more of a comment on their relationship than on Will himself, anyway. “I like your artist’s hands,” he starts, and, ignoring the way Will’s eyebrows shoot up, barrels on, “and how you laugh, and the way you get all intent when I’m trying to say something like you’re really determined to understand. Also, um- how kind you are, how everything you do comes from a place of love, and I like that you’re giving me another chance to know you, which is definitely vain of me, but I think I would have been really sad if I’d missed out on that, so.”
Will’s eyes have gone wide, and his lips are parted slightly. “Okay,” he whispers faintly, “you have a lot of thoughts.”
Mike grimaces. “Yeah, I know.”
There’s silence for a minute - Will looks like he’s still processing, which is cool, because Mike did kind of word-vomit all over him, and anyway it gives him time to keep mentally listing his favorite things about Will, just because he can. His eyes, for example. Mike likes those a lot. His whole face, really, and his voice, and the way his hair looks splayed out across the pillow, and-
“What are you thinking now?” he asks compulsively, when the silence has stretched on for an indeterminate amount of time.
Will meets his eyes, something Mike can’t name churning behind his irises. “I, uh,” he says, and then blinks a couple times, like he’s trying to rouse himself from sleep. Is he tired? Mike couldn’t fall asleep now if his life depended on it. “You really want to know?”
Mike frowns. “Obviously. Why else would I ask?”
“Touché,” Will says, and kisses him.
It takes Mike a second to realize what’s happening - to recognize the soft brush of lips against his own for what it is. By the time he pieces it together, he’s already kissing back, some latent instinct kicking in, and once his brain has caught up, he finds he doesn’t really want to stop. His hand fumbles for Will’s jaw, gently tilting him to one side for a better angle, and Will leans into the touch, rolling halfway onto him before he seems to remember himself and pulls away.
“Sorry,” he rasps, cheeks flushed in the semi-darkness. He’s hovering over Mike, one hand planted on his shoulder for stability. “Figured it would be easier to just show you.”
Mike’s brain, which had been working at a near-dangerous pace up until Will’s mouth landed on his, is choosing this moment to finally quit on him. “Um,” he says, a little hoarsely, trying to string together a coherent thought that isn’t about Will’s mouth, which is still, objectively, very close to his own- “Right, yeah. Good, um, good call.”
Will’s mouth does that twitching thing that Mike is slowly becoming obsessed with - he’s maybe starting to understand why, now - and he whispers, “Right.”
They both stay frozen there for a beat, just looking at each other. Mike isn’t sure what to feel or do or say, and he figures that must mean that he hasn’t collected enough data yet to reach a proper conclusion, so he decides to remedy that. His hand, which is still resting against Will’s jaw, slides up into his hair, and Will makes this breathy sort of sighing sound, and that’s all it takes; Mike pulls him down to meet him, and Will rolls the rest of the way on top of him, and now this- this is kissing.
And it should be shocking, right, because this is Will , and they’re supposed to be rebuilding a friendship here, not making out in the dark in Mike’s dorm room, and Mike hadn’t really considered himself to be a person Will would even want to kiss in the first place. Mike hadn’t thought he wanted to kiss Will. But it’s becoming increasingly clear, the longer Will’s lips are pressed against his own, that Mike did want this. Somewhere in the back of his screwed-up, too-full brain, he’s thought about this. There’s no other explanation for how natural this all feels, how practiced and steady his movements are as he cards his hands through Will’s hair, traces his lip with his tongue, noses into his cheek. That tightness in his core has finally subsided, the insistent press of yearning that he hasn’t known how to satisfy until now - oh , he thinks, when Will’s hands loosely cup his face, so this is what it was, the thing I’ve been wanting. I didn’t know.
It might be a scary realization to come to, if it didn’t feel like such a relief. Because now, at least, Mike has a name to put to this swirl of uncomfortable emotion that’s been building in him since June. There will be time for freak-outs later, time to sort through the how and the why and the when, to wonder whether he’s always felt this way or if it popped into existence one day without him noticing. But for now, he’s too busy cataloguing it, matching every confusing emotion he’s felt for the past few months with a desire that it was tied to. That fluttery feeling meant I wanted this , he thinks when he cradles Will’s face in his hands, their noses nuzzling together, and that ache in my chest meant I wanted this , when Will presses into an answering kiss with a soft sigh of contentment, and that dizziness was me wanting this , when Will’s hands find their way under his sleep shirt and he’s confronted with the warmth of skin on skin. All this time, I wanted him. I want him.
The only reason he’s able to stop himself from voicing any of these thoughts is because Will is doing a very good job keeping his mouth otherwise occupied. Which is probably for the best, because while Mike has learned by now that speaking his thoughts as they come is simply part of his process, it’s probably not a good idea to work through all his Will Angst verbally in front of Will himself. He settles for focusing on kissing him, like he can press all the words directly into Will’s skin, and does his best to keep his quiet revelations just that- quiet. At some point, long after Mike’s stopped keeping track of time or how many kisses they’ve traded, the energy shifts, gets a little softer, less urgent. Will’s face is tucked into Mike’s neck, and he’s pressing slow, languid kisses to the skin there, gently exploratory. Mike’s hands, which he’d shoved up Will’s shirt about twenty-five kisses ago, press against Will’s ribcage, testing the firmness of the muscle and bone underneath, and he stares up at the ceiling, marveling at himself, the universe, how he managed to get lucky enough to experience the sequence of events that led to him lying here with this boy in his arms.
Will lifts his head from Mike’s neck, and their eyes meet for the first time since Mike began kissing him like a starving man. His expression is a sharp contrast to the way Mike is feeling right now; confusion and trepidation and a tiny bit of awe swirling in the face of Mike’s blatant euphoria. “You’re kissing back,” he murmurs, voice rough and gravelly. Mike wants to trace the sound down the line of Will’s throat, find the place it comes from, bite it.
“I am,” he confirms, because that’s a more normal response.
Will looks at him for a long moment, then takes a breath and nods slowly. “We should get some rest,” he says, but his voice sounds unsure, like he’s tossing out a collection of words just to see if they’re the right ones.
Mike almost wants to laugh at the notion of rest , which seems like such a ridiculous proposition when placed against the much more enticing option of making out the entire night, but he promised himself he’d let Will set the pace this weekend, and that’s just as true now as it was before he knew what it was like to have Will’s tongue in his mouth. “Sure,” he says, trying not to show his disappointment, and rolls over, gently pushing Will onto his side and then pulling him into his chest. Will makes a soft noise of surprise, like maybe he thought Mike was going to shove him away as soon as the prospect of more kisses was denied him. Mike holds him tighter in retaliation, and within minutes, Will’s breath has evened out where it ghosts over Mike’s collarbones.
I want him , Mike mouths at the ceiling, just so that someone out there knows, and tucks his smile into Will’s hair.
When Mike wakes up the next morning, Will is still in his arms.
This makes sense, because the twin bed kind of forces them to cuddle whether they like it or not. Mike understands now why he’d felt so wigged out over the concept of the bed and who should sleep in it - he’d been wanting this closeness, had wanted the forced proximity, limbs entangled, faces inches apart.
That being said, while he’s still holding Will in the technical sense, he’s not holding him, not like he’d been when they fell asleep last night. Mike’s arms are loosely draped around Will’s torso, but he’s migrated back to press against the wall, unnaturally stiff as he blinks at Mike. Clearly, he’s been awake for a while, and Mike is very much not awake yet, but he offers up a small, questioning noise in the back of his throat by way of greeting.
Will doesn’t react to this noise whatsoever. He’s propped up on one elbow, staring down at Mike with an intensity that is just the tiniest bit nerve-wracking, and will probably graduate to being anxiety-inducing once Mike’s brain has booted up for the day. “Hi,” Will says after too long of a pause, his voice unnaturally flat, “I’m hungry.”
Mike is not really sure how he expected to be woken up the morning after sticking his tongue down Will Byers’ throat, but it wasn’t like this. He frowns, rolling onto his back so he can check the time displayed on his alarm clock. Eight thirty-three.
Every instinct in his body screams that it’s too early, that whatever conversation they’re going to have - because they’re going to have to have one, that much is clear to him - can wait another few hours. He wants to pull Will back into his chest and let the solid weight of him lull him back into sleep, all warmth and quiet affection.
He looks back at Will, at the carefully blank expression he’s just starting to learn to see the cracks in. His eyes give him away; they’re too wide, darting all over the place, unsettled. Now that Mike thinks about it, Will looks vaguely like he might be sick.
“Yeah, sure, okay,” he says, and scrambles out of bed so that Will won’t have to climb over him.
By the time they’re both dressed and sitting in the campus dining hall, two trays of eggs and hash browns in front of them, the silence has become unbearable. Will won’t look him in the eyes, and his stoicism seems impenetrable, stretching cold across the table.
Mike makes it halfway through his eggs before he pushes his tray away, worried he’ll throw up if he tries to eat another bite. “So, last night,” he says, swallowing back the anxiety clawing at his chest. He means to say more, maybe thank you or what happens now or can we do that again, please, like, a lot , but his throat feels like it’s made of sandpaper, and the words get caught, so the sentence just hangs awkwardly in the air for a minute. He thinks maybe he should apologize, though he’s not sure what for. Will kissed him. Will told him he was thinking about him. Surely Mike responding with enthusiasm can’t be a breach of boundaries, when it was Will setting the precedent?
Will takes a sip of water, swallows, then nods. “Last night,” he agrees, evenly. If Mike didn’t know better, he’d think Will was completely unbothered by the whole thing, but he still recognizes some of Will’s tells, both the old ones from their childhood and a couple of the new ones he’s picked up, and he doesn’t miss the way his hands shake slightly as he sets down his water glass. “We kissed each other.”
Another of Will’s tactics for dealing with discomfort; bluntness masquerading as bravado. He bites down a smile despite himself. “We did,” he says, and then, because he never seems to be able to shut up at the appropriate moment, he adds, “a lot.”
Will’s lips twitch. “Okay, Mike,” he says, faintly exasperated, and stabs at his eggs with a little more force than is strictly necessary.
Mike is undeterred. “You kissed me,” he reiterates, even though Will knows , he was there , he’s just- Mike’s having a little bit of a hard time believing that it really happened. Will was in his arms, and Will was kissing him like he meant it, like the last three years of relative silence were completely moot, and Mike doesn’t know how to grapple with this version of reality. He’d gone into this week with the goal of maybe, maybe getting Will back as a friend, and this so far exceeds that goal that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
“You wanted me to,” Will shoots back, defensive, even though Mike really hadn’t meant it as an accusation. Not you kissed me as in ha, gotcha, you’re into me , but more you kissed me as in holy shit, really? You’re into me?
“I did,” he confirms, just so there’s no confusion, and watches with satisfaction as Will’s cheeks turn a dusty pink.
“Okay,” Will says again, though this time his voice wavers a little. “So, good. That works out, then.”
“Right,” Mike agrees, a little bemusedly, “Will, can you look at me, please?”
With a sigh, Will reluctantly tears his gaze away from his breakfast. “Look,” he says, with an air of resignation that Mike absolutely does not understand, “I’m not trying to be a dick, okay, it’s just- I’ve wanted, uh.” His haughty demeanor falters a little, and the blush on his cheekbones darkens slightly. “That- last night. I’ve wanted that, with you, for a while, so I don’t know if I can- I mean, I probably shouldn’t have. You know?”
Mike blinks. “How long is a while?”
Will gives him another look, the kind of eye-rolling exasperation that they used to rib each other with, and the stroke of familiarity is surprisingly welcome, despite the circumstances. “Mike,” he sighs, “I don’t know, okay, that wasn’t my point, I just-” he blows out a frustrated breath. “I don’t want you to think I’ve been, like, coming onto you this whole time, like since the summer and everything, because that’s not what I set out to do here-”
“Whoa, wait,” Mike interrupts, feeling vaguely like his head is on the verge of imminent explosion. “That’s not- Will . Hey.” He has the bizarre urge, all at once, to reach across the table and grab Will’s hand. He holds back, because that is not part of his ‘not spooking Will’ plan, which he is stubbornly determined to stick to. “I know that. I didn’t think you were, like, trying to seduce me or something.”
Will’s face, which had shifted from pale pink to fire-engine red at the word seduce , relaxes slightly as he processes Mike’s words, and he glances down at his plate sheepishly. “Okay, good,” he mumbles, with a note of finality.
Mike watches him for a beat, a little at a loss. He’s still not entirely sure what to make of last night - because he’d liked kissing Will, he really had, and he thinks somewhere in the back of his brain he’d known that he would, but at the same time- well. This hadn’t been part of the plan. He doesn’t have a script for this, and he’s not in the right mindset to formulate one, not when he’s still reeling over the revelation that this was something he was even capable of wanting in the first place.
He does want it, though. The strict definition of what it might be is still a little unclear to him, and he’s not sure he could explain it to anyone else if asked, but- Will was there, for all of it, wasn’t he? Will knows their history, knows Mike . He understands. And maybe it’s enough that Mike wants , for now. Maybe the details don’t matter so much.
Mike clears his throat. “If you had,” he says, voice trembling, “been trying to- been coming onto me, I mean. I wouldn’t mind.”
Will’s eyes snap back up to meet his own, which does nothing to quell the surge of nerves rising in Mike’s stomach. “Mike,” he says, in a whisper that falls just shy of reproachful. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it,” Mike insists, forcing himself to hold Will’s gaze, even though at the moment it feels vaguely like looking into the sun. “Like I said, I- I wanted you to kiss me yesterday.” He swallows, then adds, feeling a little bit ridiculous at having to spell it out, “I liked it.”
Will smiles faintly. “Well, that I could tell,” he says in a low murmur, which- flirting . Will’s flirting with him, again , and Mike can’t even bring himself to be offended by the statement, because- yeah, he’d probably been pretty obvious about it, what with all the making out. That’s fair. “I just wasn’t sure…”
Mike summons all the bravery left in his body and says, “If you wanted to do it again, I would- I’d let you.”
Will arches an eyebrow. “You’d let me, huh?”
Mike winces. “I mean- fuck. I’m bad at this. I would want you to, how’s that? I don’t know- I didn’t know I wanted to kiss you until I did, but now that I have, I think maybe I’ve wanted to for- for a while.” He slumps back in his chair, courage officially spent, and looks at Will through his lashes. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, just… don’t be mad at me, okay?”
Will shakes his head slowly. “I’m not mad,” he assures him. “I was never mad.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Mike huffs. “I never know if I’m saying the right thing with you.”
At this, Will’s face breaks into a wry smile. “You don’t always,” he acknowledges with a dip of his head- which, again, is fair, but also makes Mike feel like he might die, “but it’s- well. I’m sorry I’m hard to read.”
That doesn’t sit right, Will apologizing for something that’s really just Mike’s own insecurity bubbling over, so Mike shakes his head. “I’m sorry I forgot how.”
“You didn’t,” Will says, shrugging that way he does when he’s trying to brush something off. “I mean, it’s on purpose. I’ve learned how to hide better.”
Mike frowns. “What, from me?”
“Sort of,” Will sighs, “not exclusively. I don’t know. I just… was afraid. That you’d figure it out, and I’m not quite so afraid anymore, but the habit’s still there, you know?”
Mike does not, in fact, know , but it makes him feel a little better to hear that, apparently, he’s not supposed to. “Figure- what was I going to figure out?”
Will meets his eyes again, and the elusive smile makes a reappearance at the edges of his mouth. “How much I wanted you,” he says simply. “Or,” he adds, smile turning sheepish, “want. I guess.”
“Oh.” Mike’s cheeks burn, but there’s something warm expanding in his chest, too, and he chooses to focus on that instead. “Well, you don’t have to hide that, um. Anymore. If you don’t want to.”
Will considers him for a long moment, then nods stiffly, and extends a hand across the table, palm facing upward. This time, Mike does reach out to take it. “Okay,” and now Will’s smiling for real, eyes crinkling up at the corners, and that one isn’t hard to read at all.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Mike says eventually, swinging their interlaced hands idly in the space between them. Will had suggested going for a walk, after they’d finished their breakfast in blushing silence, and now they’re walking together through the small main road in town. They’ve been talking about nothing for the past hour or so, and neither of them have brought up the prospect of kissing again, but Mike’s still thinking about it rather obsessively, and he can tell Will is too. He wants to pull Will onto a side street and push him against one of the trees lining the side of the road and kiss the taste of scrambled eggs and cheap dining hall coffee off of his mouth, but he figures this is still a pretty delicate situation, and also that Will probably wouldn’t react very well to being kissed in public in broad daylight. He hasn’t let go of Will’s hand since breakfast, though, and Will keeps squeezing his fingers every once in a while to punctuate whatever point he’s making, and that all feels very promising.
“Which question?” Will asks. His face is tilted up toward the sky, where the sun has made a brief appearance through the reddening leaves of the trees overhead, and the dappled light is catching pleasantly on his cheekbones and in his hair. Mike is having trouble looking away.
“You said earlier,” he says, absently admiring the cluster of freckles below Will’s left ear, “that you’ve wanted to kiss me for a while. How long is a while?”
Will groans, though it’s considerably more good-natured than his attitude had been this morning, which Mike counts as a win. “Are you trying to embarrass me?”
“No!” Mike yelps. “No, I’m just curious. Plus, it’s kind of flattering. That you’d, like, thought about it.”
Will’s lips twitch. “I’m pretty sure it’s normal to think about kissing someone before you actually go ahead and do it,” he points out. “You’re the outlier there, not me.”
Mike flushes. “It’s not my fault,” he says petulantly, “that I’m bad at sorting through my emotions.”
“Can’t imagine who else’s fault it would be,” Will says, and then, ignoring Mike’s squawk of offense, “I, well, the first time I remember wanting to kiss you was when I was twelve.”
If Will’s goal in the admission had been to shut Mike up, which Mike’s half convinced it might have been, it’s certainly effective. He stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, Will faltering in his step beside him and giving him a look of minor concern. “That,” Mike says hoarsely, after his brain has finished short-circuiting, “is a lot longer than a while .”
Will makes a face. “How long is a while, then?”
“Like- Will!” Mike splutters, indignation and shock and a sharp pull of what he’s beginning to recognize as affection fighting for dominance in his brain. “It’s, like, maybe a year or two, not six .”
“That makes no sense,” Will sniffs primly, though Mike suspects that, as usual, his casual tone is a cover for vulnerability. “A year or two ago we were barely talking.”
That is true, and Mike probably would have come to that conclusion too if he hadn’t been so busy reeling over the fact that Will had kissed him, has wanted to kiss him, and Mike wants him to keep wanting to, and- all of the things. “I didn’t know,” is what he ends up saying in response, suddenly apologetic. “That was- a long time to leave you hanging. I’m sorry.”
Will snorts, using his grip on Mike’s hand to pull him back into motion. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, as they resume walking, “I told you I’m not mad, and I meant it. These things happen, you know?”
Mike does know, because that’s exactly what he’d told himself about Will for the years that they were distant with each other. That it happens, that friends grow apart, that he didn’t need to be broken up about it because it was just a fact of life. And he still believes those things to a certain extent, but he also knows that the consistency with which he’d repeated them to himself should have been a clue a lot sooner that he didn’t actually want to accept them. “We haven’t really talked about it,” he points out. “What happened.”
Will doesn’t look at him, but his Adam’s apple bobs, and he jerks his head in what could, potentially, be interpreted as a nod. “There’s not a lot to say. I liked you, but I couldn’t- neither of us were willing to be what the other needed.” He squeezes Mike’s hand. “It’s okay. We were fourteen.”
The words are careful, near-rehearsed. Mike can tell Will’s thought about this, has maybe been waiting for Mike to ask. And there definitely is more that could be said, but Mike thinks the gist of what Will’s saying is true, and maybe- maybe the rest doesn’t really matter, at least not right now. He swallows. “And now?”
Will glances over at him, something soft and warm in his expression. “It’s like I said before,” he says with a shrug, “I missed you. I think we’re different enough now that it can be- good, maybe.”
Mike nods, mulling this over quietly as he glances up at the trees, the red-orange light shimmering through the branches. When he looks back at Will, it’s with a smile. “It feels pretty good to me.” He nudges Will’s shoulder with his own. “When do I get to kiss you again?”
Will’s face splits into a wide, mischievous grin. “Great question,” he says, and then Mike is being pulled down a side street and kissed up against a tree, in public and broad daylight, and he can’t find it in himself to complain. Not even a little.