Chapter Text
(Summer 1989)
It’s the middle of summer. They’re sitting in a neat row of Will-Mike-Lucas-Max-Dustin on the edge of the Hawkins Community Pool, dangling their legs in the cold water, and laughing about something stupid. It’s a busy day, with the sounds of kids playing and people talking and music overlapping – ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do…’ blaring from the lifeguard’s boombox and ‘Take a chance’ from someone’s radio to the left, the chorus tinny and shrill.
But all Mike can feel is the slow brush of Will’s arm against his, naked and wet.
They’re almost-nearly pressed together in a constant give and take with each breath that has Mike’s stomach contract with heat.
Will’s hand is idly trailing in the water below them, fingers slowly waving through it as he looks up, eyes squinting against the bright sun, and smiles at him.
Mike only half notices the others leave. They jump back into the pool and splash away, but Mike’s too slow to follow. He’s caught up in looking at Will, staring at Will’s hand touching the water, while the rest of them are racing and laughing, moving further and further away.
And Mike is allowed to be like this when he’s bracketed between Will’s side and the cool pressure of Lucas’s thigh against his hip. Then it’s all right. But now they’re sitting here alone together, it triggers that narrow feeling of too close. So Mike pushes up on his arms and slowly allows himself to sink into the water as well. Only without a splash, just a long line down like a dead body with stones tied to his feet.
It’s ice cold. The water steals his breath as it runs past his stomach and chest and mouth. And then when it covers his ears, the whole world dampens into echoes.
Mike opens his eyes underwater even though they burn to see everything tinted blue. The water is dotted with spots of light, and there are whole collections of legs moving around him with white rushing bubbles following them. He notices Will’s feet dangling there, too.
On impulse, Mike wraps his fingers around Will’s ankles and pulls himself up by them.
He rises with a big gasp out of the water to see a startled Will, all wet hair and radiant sunshine on his shoulders, looking down at him like this and smiling again. “What?”
They don’t play like this anymore.
“Come on, come in!” The words taste wet and cold on Mike’s lips, but he wants Will to come along, to be together in the breath-stealing water.
Will hesitates. “It’s so cold.”
Except Will wants to be asked, really. It’s in his voice and the way that he’s looking at the water around Mike like he wants to be right there.
And Mike’s a little crazy, maybe, a little not normal right now on this hot day in Hawkins, their very last pool day. Because he opens his arms and says, without thinking, “Come on, jump in. I’ll catch you.”
Will’s smile grows wider. “…Okay?” He moves forward off the pool’s edge.
Mike’s standing close and when Will drops down into the water, it’s the immediate and startling reality of Will’s whole body that he’s holding.
In a blink it’s Will’s arms by his neck and Will’s legs wrapped around him. Mike’s hands automatically settle underneath Will’s ass, holding him up with the waterline dancing around their shoulders and Will’s laugh right there by his ear.
It’s the closest sort of hug that they’ve shared in years.
It’s also horribly intimate, and not funny, but Mike bounces Will up and down just to make him laugh some more, his heart wildly thumping as he feels things that he can’t –
So Mike moves back, wraps an arm under Will’s shoulders and one under his knees and holds him up like that in his arms, saying, “Like a princess.”
“Like a princess?” Will’s eyes are wide and incredulous but shining with laughter; he looks happier than he has in weeks.
“Yes!” Why not? It is wrong? Should Mike not say that?
But Will is playing along.
Which should be fun and not bring the instant thud of the memory of carrying Will like this at the Squawk once; as a heavy, unconscious weight, Will’s head lolled against Mike’s shoulder. Mike struggled to do it then - Lucas had to help lift him. Only adrenaline and hard panic meant that Mike was able to hold Will for real.
But now, there’s sunlight reflecting on the wavering water, almost too much to see properly.
And now, Will is looking up at him curiously as Mike slowly walks like that, his legs pushing against the water. Will’s weight is hardly there in his arms but still so outrageous to hold.
Maybe I’m strong. Brave.
Mike’s gradually moving toward the others, who are busy splashing over at the front bit of the pool. They pass by kids with floats and a group of older teens, but none of them care.
The noise seems quieter, the sun stronger, and everything slower and more at ease like this.
Maybe today I am.
Mike can see Will’s dark, wet eyelashes and the shades of brown-green in Will’s eyes. The way Will’s cheeks curve up with his smile, and the wet sheen of his lips.
The line of his neck.
Mike wants to keep on staring, to find every detail that he’s missed when he’s been trying not to.
And Will is looking right back, his eyes warm and more serious now, like maybe they’re both someone different and they hadn’t noticed it yet.
Until Mike bumps Will’s legs into Mrs. Calverton, one of his neighbors from down the street. She doesn’t say anything, just frowns and swims around them.
It’s not – it’s not wrong, this. Mike knows that.
But his arms become lead, and everywhere he’s holding Will’s weight feels too foreign, so he puts Will down. Mike turns away and quickly swims to where Lucas is getting dunked by Max, his chest feeling as heavy as his arms now.
Nothing strong about that.
Dustin’s voice is just about audible, saying, “-deserved it.”
And so Mike tries to get Dustin, splashing him in the face to Dustin’ muffled screech of outrage and Max’s, “Yeah!”
Mike has to push himself to do it like he doesn’t know how to move right now or how to make his body have fun. Every reaction of his feels like it’s a second too late, skipping out of tune with the day like a stuck record.
Dustin retaliates, and so Mike allows himself to be dunked underwater until he is the one left sputtering.
They’re all acting loud, and crazy, and silly.
Trying so hard to be what they’re not anymore.
When Lucas said, “Let’s go swimming!” this morning, Mike said no. Only then Dustin argued, “It’s probably the last time that we…” and so it had to be a yes. But it’s like trying to catch a dream after waking up. It’s already been lived, and now they're just at the end.
It feels same with Will.
They used to be everything to each other. Every bit of Mike’s world was Will.
But it’s like rubber bands, now. Whenever Mike’s too close, doing something that’s maybe sort of too much, the bands snap him back. He can’t just touch Will. He can’t – shouldn’t – play anymore because it feels like… Like a princess, really?
It was a dumb thing to say.
Will doesn’t seem upset about it, at least. He hardly ever is when Mike trips over his words and pulls back his arms and has too much body to exist around Will anymore.
But Mike can feel it churning inside of him; he can’t call Will that. It’s insulting. What is he doing? Why can’t he just act normal?
They’re getting out now, Dustin saying something, and they all follow. Mike walks last because he’s slow and doesn’t pay attention. And yes, because like this he can see the dripping of Will’s hair, nearly black with water. The curve of Will’s shoulder blades, with drops rolling off them. The dip of Will’s spine with a few brown moles scattered on his skin like a private sort of thing.
And Will’s ass moving as he walks. It’s not decent to notice that; it’s not a thing that Mike should ever look at, only he does. He’s grabbing that image and squirreling it away inside in a panicked frenzy until Will turns back and asks, “You okay?”
“Yes!” Mike makes sure to nod multiple times. “Yes, yeah. Totally.”
It’s just that my eyes burn your skin without meaning to, again and again.
At Will’s questioning expression - and how weird does Mike seem today, really, that Will can tell? - Mike adds, “You know. Um. Last time.”
Will’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”
Will waits to walk next to him, so Mike bumps arms with him as they walk, wet and cold skin together again. And he thinks of rubber bands around his chest. Tight enough to hurt.
-
(Fall 1989)
College is a disaster.
The lectures are too long to pay attention to, and Mike can’t read anything because as soon as he opens a book, his eyes drift off the page. He forgets that papers are due, then feels guilty enough about it that he’s up half the night wanting to fix it but still somehow manages to do nothing at all. He sleeps in until the afternoon and shows up in classes in yesterday’s clothes, his mind full of half-forgotten shards of nightmares.
There are plenty of distractions. People invite him to things. And they seem nice enough, but it’s not right, somehow. It doesn’t feel safe.
So Mike imagines that he’s nothing.
He constantly thinks of himself as dissolving into thin air. Not having a body, not being there at all.
He stupidly ends up in a poetry elective because he procrastinated on choosing, and it was the only one that wasn’t already full. All they need to do is write one line, anyway.
Mike writes: The swings swallowed me.
The professor, a middle-aged woman with short hair and a sweater vest insisting on being called Pam, stops him on his way out to say, “Interesting, Mr. Wheeler.”
He shrugs.
Brent, Mike’s roommate, constantly talks about girls and weed and booze and parties. He makes it sound cool, like it’s something that everyone should do. So Mike goes with him, sullenly sitting on a couch all evening in between the noise, and gets massively drunk.
He spends the night seeing the room spin around him and then, near morning, leaning his sweaty forehead onto the cool toilet seat in between rounds of puking.
And he hates it. He hates it all.
The second line is due, and Mike probably fucks it all up by writing, With star-shaped throats.
Nothing makes sense; nothing is there to make him feel anything good at all. It’s just this layer of terror underlying every breath, as if there might be a Demo popping up at any moment. And he’d be so horribly relieved if one did because then he’d know what to do.
Then he could call Will back.
-
(Summer 1989)
After the pool, they go eat at the brand-new Burger King that’s opened right on Hawkins Main Street, because Lucas starts his shift there at one and he has the employee discount.
Lucas makes Max snort so hard some strawberry milkshake comes out of her nose. So then they all try to do it as well, and it’s hilarious and messy, and there’s just this edge of holding on too tight from all of them.
Laughing too much and too loud.
Smiling too bright.
Or maybe that’s just in Mike’s mind. Maybe the others really are that relaxed and happy and not embarrassingly aware of the way that Will’s knee has bumped his seventeen times under the table already and that it’s mostly Mike’s fault that it has. Mike has long legs, and he’s wearing shorts, and so is Will, and they’re sitting close. It’s just skin, just that.
Will bites his burger and sauce goes everywhere, and he’s laughing at something that Dustin said, and he’s not graceful; he’s not full of light and warmth. That’s just Mike thinking it.
It’s all just Mike.
Leaving Lucas behind to work, they bike around aimlessly until Will has to go to the library and Max to her job at the car repair shop that she seems to love. Dustin wants to go read Engines of Creation again to prepare for college, so they give up on the day, and Mike bikes home alone.
It’s only afternoon, and the house is entirely silent. He goes upstairs, light streaming in the window of his stuffy room.
Mike locks the door, takes the walkie out of his backpack - he never leaves the house without it even now, just in case – and turns his radio on to the Squawk. ‘-such a perfect day...’
He somehow still carries the scent of chlorine even though he showered it off – with Will right there next to him showering too, Will’s eyes closed underneath the spray, and did he have to look like that, as if it felt really nice?
Mike’s shorts drop to the floor and his underpants as well, and then he’s falling back onto the bed, onto warm, soft pillows. And his hand that still smells like burgers finds his quickly stiffening hard-on.
It should be lazy, like this. With no one else in the house.
'I thought I was someone else. Someone good.’
But it feels uneasy in the sunlight and after swimming and purposely bumping his knee with Will’s because Mike knows why he’s – he knows.
Will’s legs wrapping around him in the pool. The feeling of carrying Will. The look of Will’s ass. Mike tightens his hand on himself so much that it should hurt, but it feels good; that’s the whole problem. It always feels so, so good.
What does Will do when he’s by himself?
What is it that has Will's head tilt back and eyes close like he did under the shower spray? Would he…?
Mike has thought about this in the way that his arm brushed Will’s at the pool. He has thought it and then dipped away from the thought, quickly touched it in his mind, and then hidden from it again. Because he sort of knows what boys like Will do, right?
What men do together.
Mike’s just curious, he tells himself, the morals of it hazy already. He’s slowing down because he’ll come just thinking about it like he has before, but he never actually has dared to try-
Only maybe today.
Mike moves his hand underneath his balls. It feels strange, tracing his fingers in between his butt cheeks while getting off.
He has some hairs there. And he’s ticklish, maybe, a bit. Sensitive. Is he supposed to be? Is that weird?
Mike takes a deep breath, feeling dizzy with fear.
And does it.
He presses a finger inside.
First just the fingertip and then down to the first knuckle even though it’s really tight and harder to do than he thought it would be.
It's weird. Uncomfortable. It feels completely out of place down there. It's almost enough to make him stop, only it's also strangely velvety-soft inside. Mike wiggles his finger around and suddenly he’s really, really close to coming, gasping at the edge. He jerks off fast, and he tumbles into coming like that, with his finger still inside of him, spurting all over his hand.
So that’s what that is then. Sort of.
What Will does.
Mike feels kind of brave after. For trying something new. And also as if he might be sick, but that’s the burger, probably, and the memory of carrying Will in his arms again.
And the way that the sun was hitting the pool.