Archive of Our Own

“So, I’ve been thinking.”

“Never a good sign.”

Mike kicks Will’s thigh with his sock-foot across the couch. They’re each laying at opposite ends of their hand-me-down sofa, passed down from a friend of a friend of a friend of Jonathan’s when they moved to the city in the fall. It was free; it’s not comfortable, not one bit, really, but at least the price was right. “I’m being serious, Will.”

“I know,” Will’s eyes are locked on his notebook as he writes through his English notes from class this afternoon, pencil hovering. If he doesn’t get them done now, he’s never going to get back around to it, and sometimes it feels like his professor has it out for him. “That’s the worst part.”

“Fuck you,” Mike throws his head back into the sofa’s head rest. Finally, he glances over down at Will again. “You know how I talk about girls all the time?”

The pencil in Will’s hand freezes for just a moment, something Mike wouldn’t have been able to tell at all if he wasn’t staring right at Will’s hands to avoid his gaze. “So?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, right?”

Will looks up, but Mike isn’t looking back at him. He’s picking at a loose thread on the couch cushion. “What, about girls?”

“No,” Mike shakes his head, “about boys,” he says, almost nonchalant, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Will nearly chokes on his tongue. “You’ve been thinking about boys?”

“Yeah,” Mike furrows his eyebrows in confusion before Will’s aversion finally starts to dawn on him. His eyes widen, comically big like saucers, in that stupidly charming Mike Wheeler way, and he begins to sputter, “oh, no, no, wait, no. Not for me. Obviously. No.”

Swallowing and trying to tame his stupid, hopeful, pounding heart behind his chest, Will’s face pinches up. He looks back down at his English notes, like they could be a clutch, but they don’t seem to be helping yet. He should’ve been done with getting his hopes up about Mike Wheeler half a decade ago. “For who, then?”

“For you.”

Will isn’t sure what’s worse—Mike thinking about boys for Mike, or him thinking about boys for Will. “For me?”

Mike lifts his head, letting a small, dorky smile spread across his face. Will’s heart clenches—almost. “Yeah. Like, you know, I go out with girls sometimes, I’ve brought a couple home this year to, you know, try and get over El. And you’re always, like, super chill and cool about it.”

Will’s not sure he likes where this is going. “Right.”

“But you—you know, I realized that you don’t do… any of that.”

Now, Will’s just wishing for the ground underneath him to open up and swallow him whole. Alice in Wonderland style, a viscous black hole, quicksand, fuck, he doesn’t care. Why is Mike—Will’s very straight best friend since the first day of kindergarten—worrying in his free time about whether or not Will is getting laid on the side?

“Sorry—what am I even supposed to say to that?”

“I thought I was pretty clear.”

The English notes in Will’s lap are finally becoming really fucking interesting right now. We wear the mask that grins and lies is scribbled at the top of the college-rule. repetition of “we” creates collective experience, mask = identity performed for safety, acceptance. also talks about public self vs. private self. truth stays hidden…

“—are you even listening to me?”

“No. Usually I drown you out when you talk,” Will frowns at his notes. There’s no bite.

“So, that’s a no,” Mike kicks at Will’s thigh again. “Motherfucker. I’m trying to be nice. I just—you know you can talk to me about dudes, right? If you wanted?”

“Did you hit your head or something?”

“Like, if you want.”

“No, seriously. Is your head okay?”

“Listen to me. Look, I know we haven’t talked about it all since you came out to us, right? It’s fine if you don’t want to at all—just to, you know, make that clear, if it’s private, you know, that’s fine,” Mike rambles on. Not that he’d ever admit it, but Will’s always found Mike’s word vomit kind of endearing. “And you’ve always been shy. But I’ve been thinking that maybe—maybe you do, but you don’t want to with me, us, specifically, which isn’t as cool, right? Because I’m your best friend, and if I can talk about girls to you, you should be able to talk about guys with me. If you want. I think.”

Nailed it.

Will squints. Can Mike hear his heart racing across the couch? Will thinks that Mom all the way in Montauk could probably hear it. “Did you rehearse all that?”

“Um,” Mike shifts, retreating his foot. “No.”

“You totally rehearsed that.”

“Did not.”

“Liar,” Will taps the eraser of his pencil on his notebook, a gentle, rhythmic drum. He shifts uncomfortably in his spot. “I mean, sure. Oddly nice of you, I guess.”

“I didn’t just say it,” Mike affirms, maybe a little too quick. “I mean it. Really.”

“Okay,” Will whispers. “I heard you the first time.”

“So, um, do you? Like, want to?”

Will squirms under Mike’s eyes, hesitating—plays dumb, maybe. He sort of just wants this whole conversation to be over with. “Want to what, Mike?”

“Talk to me. About boys. Ever.”

Will’s eyes fall back to his notes again. He wants to rip his hair out. “There isn’t much to talk about.”

Mike frowns. He pushes his leg back out, resting an ankle on Will’s leg. Will shifts underneath him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Mike,” Will squirms a little. He can feel Mike’s eyes boring into his face. “Don’t start with this.”

“Don’t start with what?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

Will huffs. “Do you know, like, anything about being gay?”

And just like that, Mike’s shoulders hunch over as if he’s bracing for impact. “I—have we been terrible friends to you?”

“I mean, no,” Will breathes. “But it’s not the same for me as it is for you guys,” he continues, shrugging. He thumbs at the pages in his notebook, abandoned in his lap. “I can’t just pick strangers up like you can. You know, I try the wrong guy, I get dusted. You try the wrong girl and you’re sulky and annoying for the rest of the night. I don’t…” Will trails off. He skims the pages again. “Guys aren’t exactly lining up at our door to sleep with me, Mike. I don’t know.”

Has Mike really never considered this before, how different they are, how hard it is to be somebody like Will? God, no wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to Mike about boys like Mike talks about girls.

Mike’s—he’s straight. He’s a very straight boy.

He’s a straight boy Will’s been in love with since kindergarten. Of course he’s never felt comfortable enough to go to Mike about boys, shit, he’s the boy. Who the hell wants to talk to their own crush about the humiliating, wholly unreciprocated love for them that they’ve been harboring since childhood?

Not Will, that’s for fucking sure.

Mike opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. He shifts on their uncomfortable couch, and he goes to sit up straighter, like that might fix it. His foot slips off Will’s leg without him noticing. “Oh.”

“In other words, I get no play. Not even here. Forget about Hawkins.”

Mike stares at Will, baffled. “Fuck. Yeah, that sucks.”

“Yeah,” Will laughs, low and dark. “Tell me about it.”

“Sorry for being clueless, I guess. I’ve never thought about it that way. Fuck.”

“You don’t have to think about it,” Will shrugs. “I wouldn’t expect you to be reading up on what it’s like for me. It’s not very relevant to you guys.”

“It is,” Mike defends. He widens his eyes like he’s shocked he even had the courage to say that. “And that’s a great idea. How else will I learn for you? I bet my prof would love to hear about my pamphlets.”

“Learn for me?” Will squints over again. Mike’s fidgeting with his hands, picking at his fingernails. “Okay, is there something you need to tell me?”

“No, I—it just does ‘cause I care about you, Will. I care about you. Have I not gotten that into your head enough over the years?”

Can a heart beat so fast it cracks a hole in its own chest? “Clearly not.”

“And—and the gay stuff is probably super important to you, even if you never talk to me about it. So it’s super important to me, too. And I want to know.”

“That’s…” Will trails. Blinks down at his notes; they’re getting blurry. God. Fucking Mike Wheeler and his stupid fucking —God. That stupid tone. How he always says the right thing, even if he’s got really stupid ways of saying it. “Okay. Weird. But thanks. For the, um, solidarity, I guess.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re welcome,” Mike nods, leaning back into the couch. “But just to be clear—you don’t talk about boys to me ‘cause there’s no dudes to talk about, right? Not ‘cause you don’t trust me?”

Oh, Mike. Sweet, innocent, stupid Mike.

If only he knew.

“No dudes,” Will nods. “No play, remember?” Mike lets out a deep breath. “What?”

“Just glad,” Mike affirms. “I mean, not—not that guys aren’t into you. I mean—they should be. Just wasn’t sure if this was overstepping, you know? Like, you told us you were gay, like, five years ago, and it was, you know, whatever, then it hasn’t really come up again. The Party says you don’t talk to any of them either, not even Max. I don’t know, sometimes I think I just dreamt up that whole conversation or something.”

“You’ve been dreaming about me being gay, Mike?”

“You’re being weird about this.”

Will shifts again under Mike’s leg, staring off out the window. It’s dark outside, and it’s pretty dark in here, too. The broken radiator is droning on behind them. “I don’t get a lot of practice talking about, you know. Gay stuff. It’s just weird. Feels gross saying it out loud sometimes.”

“But it shouldn’t—it shouldn’t have to be. It’s just who you are, right? It’s not gross. Why’s it any different for you than me or Lucas or Dustin?”

Will sighs. “I don’t know, Mike. It just is. Maybe ‘cause I’ve got mostly guy friends and I’m always scared about them thinking I’m being—like, I don’t know. Coming onto them, I guess.”

“None of us think that,” Mike says pointedly. He pulls his knees up under himself, facing Will with a newfound posture in his shoulders. He leans in a little closer across the couch. “I’m serious. None of us have ever thought that about you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had to hide a lot from you guys, Mike,” Will shrugs. It’s not—it’s not defensive. Tired, maybe.

“You have?”

“I didn’t tell you I was gay for a decade.”

Mike looks like his whole universe has collapsed around him; it’s like Will can see the doom clouding over Mike’s eyes. “Well, I don’t want you to hide yourself from me anymore. The worst is over, right? I already know you’re gay.”

The words hang in the air, heavy, before Will finally groans out, “don’t talk like that.”

You don’t know the half of it. You’d be disgusted, Mike.

The late nights. Watching Mike fall in love, utterly clueless and blissfully unaware. The tears, the heat lingering in his belly, staring in the mirror, pulling at his hair, sobbing into pillows to keep himself placated, praying God would change him—make him normal like his friends. Asking what he did wrong to deserve this life.

You’d hate me.

“I’m serious.”

“Okay, yeah. Mister Serious and his fake reading glasses he doesn’t even need. Can I get back to my notes, please?”

Mike’s no further than a couple of feet away from Will, now, kneeling close on the couch. He’s staring with these big, desperate eyes, a look Will’s not sure he’s ever actually seen on Mike’s face before. “Will, I’m serious, okay?”

“You’re kind of annoying, you know that?”

“I just want to know things about you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Mike frowns. “I do,” he begs. “We’re supposed to be best friends, remember? Will, I know Lucas’s favorite sex position. I don’t even know your type.”

Will chokes. “I don’t need to know that.”

“It’s doggy,” Mike grins, this beautiful, stupid, knowing grin. “He really likes when Max is—”

“You guys are disgusting.”

“I know the date Dustin lost his virginity off the top of my head. I don’t even know if you’re into blonds or—”

“Enough.”

“It was the fourth of July—”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

Mike kicks at Will’s thigh again. “I’m just saying. I’ve been a pretty terrible best friend if you still feel the need to hide shit like that from me. I mean, keeping it from Dustin and Lucas makes sense, but we—we live in the same house. And they’re not your best friend.”

“It’s not you,” Will tips his head back. “It’s just embarrassing.”

“It’s not embarrassing.”

Will sighs, wordless. Stunned, maybe. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Internalized homophobia,” Mike states, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose, almost studious as if he’s reading straight from a book. Will is bewildered. “See, Will? I didn’t even know you struggled with that. You see how much I’m learning already?”

“Why the fuck do you know what that means, Mike?”

“I learned about it in my sociology class this week.”

“Of course you—so, I’m a project? Some sort of experiment?”

“No, I’m—I’m being an ally. To you.”

“Jesus, Mike.”

“Can we just—can we promise to be more honest? With each other? Please? When do I ever ask you for anything?”

“You made me buy your Thai last night,” Will squints. “You made me draw Mike the Brave for the thousandth time, too, and you don’t even pay commission. You ask me to stay at Jonathan’s when you bring chicks over so I don’t hear—”

“—okay, enough, point taken.”

Will just grins smugly. Mike stares expectantly. “Pinky, Will?”

“God, you’re a freak, Mike,” Will groans. “And that’s coming from Zombie Boy.”

Hesitantly, Will extends his pinky, wrapping it around Mike’s outstretched finger.

Perfect. Thanks to Sociology 101, Mike’s about to become the best straight ally of a best friend any gay guy has ever had.

Surprisingly, Mike isn’t home when Will wakes up for class on Monday, which is unusual, because Mike doesn’t have class on Monday until two o’clock, and if he could sleep all day every day, he probably would.

Even more surprisingly, Will comes home at four o’clock, like he does every Monday, to Mike sitting at their pathetic excuse for a kitchen table with a miscellaneous stack of books and VHS tapes with an open notebook being furiously scribbled in. By Mike.

So, Mike… is doing homework?

God, Hell must’ve frozen over after all.

“What are you doing?”

Mike jumps. He mustn’t have heard Will walk in—Will’s not sure he’s ever seen Mike so engrossed in his studies before. “Homework.”

“That’s new for you,” Will drops his backpack right next to Mike’s on the kitchen floor, kicking off both his shoes. He doesn’t care to pick them up and put them on the shoerack, even though Will hounds him for doing the same nearly every day. It’s just—their apartment is already small, and messy, and kind of disgusting. The least Mike could do is put his damn shoes where they belong. “What’s the special occasion? Academic probation?”

“You.”

Will freezes in place. “Me?”

“Yeah, I went to the library this morning. Hey, did you know there’s a whole section about gay stuff at our school library?”

Will quirks a brow, taking a step closer to the stack of books Mike’s checked out and is—is taking notes on, apparently. He sees And the Band Played On, right at the top, with a couple of pamphlets underneath. There’s newspaper clippings scattered around. The Celluloid Closet, Will recognizes. Becoming Visible. Loving Someone Gay.

“Mike, you—I thought you were kidding about that shit last night. You don’t have to do this. Seriously.”

“Why would I be kidding? I want to. It’s actually kind of interesting.”

Will squints. “You—you checked out The Joy of Gay Sex. Are you being serious?”

“I—um. I grabbed fast. But I’m sure it’s—plenty joyful. Um, you know. Gay sex.”

Will pulls out the chair opposite to Mike, shedding his coat and laying it over the back. He takes a seat, frowning. He stares over the stack of books at Mike’s notebook, upside down. His handwriting is atrocious, but he thinks he can make out subheadings, reading something like, history, safety, dating? questions (for Will?), which makes Will panic a little. He reaches for the back of the chair so his hands don’t uselessly hover at his sides, before he finally sits down.

Will doesn’t know how to deal with this heavy feeling making itself at home deep in his chest, so he finally pipes up with, “so, you actually woke up at a decent hour for once for this,” to fill the awkward space.

Mike doesn’t notice. Mike never really seems to notice anything until it’s catastrophic.

“I’m ignoring that ‘cause I’m trying to be a good friend right now,” Mike doesn’t look up from his notebook. “Actually, can I ask you a question?”

“Depends.”

“I have two, actually.”

“That’s even worse,” Will leans over the tablemat. “About?”

“My readings,” Mike says seriously.

“You know I’m not all-knowing, right? I haven’t read any of these.”

“But you’re gay.”

Will glances up at the ceiling. “Do you know everything there is to know about D&D?”

“I mean—probably, yeah.”

Will squints. Okay, point taken. “Fine—you’ve read every, I don’t know, classic lit book ever written?”

“Whatever,” Mike taps his pencil. “Was there stuff like this back in Indiana?”

That’s hardly what Will was expecting to come out of Mike’s mouth. “Like…?”

“Like here, I don’t know. New York City. I mean, you never met anyone else like you back home, I assume. There was really nowhere good for you?”

“I knew a few people,” Will averts his eyes, scrunching his nose up. “Like me. But it was nothing like here. One of them was really helpful when I was trying to, um, come out to you. There’s a few classmates in a couple of my studios here who are out now, publicly.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Will says, low. “But—um, no, there’s really nowhere else like here. To answer your question. No clubs or classes or whatever.”

“Who—Will, who were they?”

Will purses his lips. “Have you read about outing yet?”

“Oh. Right, yeah. I have, actually. It’s impolite.”

“It’s dangerous,” Will sighs. Mike turns down to his notebook and scribbles something. Will can’t really make it out. “Look, is that all?”

“Well, how—how did you find them?”

“Who?”

“Your people back home. I don’t—don’t tell me who. Just… how’d you know? Since you—you know, you guys have to, like, speak in code and… whatever, sometimes.”

“I sort of caught them,” Will suppresses a smile. “Kissing. Somewhere they definitely shouldn’t have been. ‘Cause, you know, if the wrong person were to have seen them instead of me…”

“Oh,” Mike breathes. His whole face furrows in confusion, racking his brain as to who Will could possibly be talking about. “Did I know them?”

“Mike,” Will warns.

“Oh—right. No outing. No,” Mike mumbles, scribbling a little bigger this time, “outing,” he nods, underlining his darkened note in his journal. “Dangerous. Duh. Sorry.”

Will’s chest feels tight, split open and stitched back together. “It’s fine, Mike.”

“My other one was, um, since we were talking about code, right? Do you know what the handkerchiefs all mean? It’s called flagging—have you heard of it?”

Will’s eyes widen. “We’re done here.”

“No, wait, I—”

Shoving his chair back and shooting up from the table, Will feels his cheeks and ears flush bright red. “No more questions.”

Mike cracks a grin, eyes trailing after Will as he crosses through the kitchen, burrowing into the couch. “But you didn’t even answer—”

“Why do you have to be so weird on purpose?”

“It’s for science—”

“—you’re an English major!”

“So, like, roommates meant not… roommates?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“But not always?”

“Not always.”

“We’re roommates.”

“Only ‘cause NYU is expensive.”

“What, not because we’re secretly—”

“—shut up.”

“Apparently, Kinsey said ten percent.”

“What?”

Mike frowns. “You don’t know Kinsey?”

Will stops mid-bite, “Yes, I know Kinsey, Mike. Everyone knows him.”

“He estimates that ten percent of the population is gay. Ten! Did you know that?”

Will swallows his bite of ramen noodles, groaning into his fork. “It’s not really accurate. That stat was kind of oversimplified, and apparently, you’re very gullible.”

“Oh,” Mike says, a little taken aback. “Fine. I’ll keep learning, then.”

Will takes another bite. Mike’s ankles are crossed, resting in Will’s lap. They’ve never really done this before—been close like this. It’s not exactly helping the getting-over-Mike project.

“There were, like, three hundred kids in our graduating class, you know. So, statistically, like, thirty of them are at least a little gay? Or, like, really gay, like you. You know, full-blown. Did you know of any of them?”

Will goes to open his mouth to answer, but he can’t seem to find the right words to say to that. “No.”

“Oh,” Mike says. “That sucks.”

“Didn’t I just say that was oversimplified, anyway?”

“Still,” Mike says, wiggling his toes up at Will. “There’s got to have been more of you than just you. It must’ve been lonely.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it still?”

Will pauses a moment. Smiles a big, toothy grin—Mike’s favorite smile Will has. There’s a tiny piece of oregano stuck between two of Will’s teeth, and it makes Mike grin back, wide. “No, not so much anymore.”

No, somehow, thanks to you.

“Did you know Oscar Wilde was gay?”

Will doesn’t look up from his painting. He can’t quite seem to get that sharp angle of Mike’s brow quite right—he never really has. “Mike, everyone knows Oscar Wilde was gay. He was probably the most famous gay person of the nineteenth century.”

“Oh,” Mike deflates. “Well, have you read any of his stuff?”

“The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“Yeah,” Mike shrugs. “Have you?”

“Are you really—” Will sighs. He frowns at the eyebrow. It’s not right—something’s really off. Sure, his professor probably won’t know the difference between Mike Wheeler’s eyebrow and whatever the hell Will’s paintbrush is doing, but he will, and it’s important to him he gets it just right. “Are you really asking me about this while—while I’m sitting here painting you?”

“What about it?”

Maybe like Dorian’s, Mike’s portrait seems to have a mind of its own. Will dips his brush into his palette and collects more thinned-out brown paint, leaning back into the eyebrow. “It’s just—you know Basil was, like, super gay, right?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods. “Obviously.”

“And he was, like, super in love with Dorian, right?”

Mike hunches over, mouth going stubborn. Will’s painted that expression from memory before. “What are you getting at?”

“Stop moving,” Will chastises. He stares at the half-finished portrait up against his easel, then dryly back at Mike. “I’m just—geez, Mike, you’re making me seem like—like a perv or something, sitting here painting you, now.”

“I—” Mike exclaims, pitchy. “Don’t say that. There’s nothing wrong or—or pervy about being gay.”

Will scrunches his face up. His brush stills. “Jesus, Mike. I know that.”

“Then—take it back.”

“God,” Will groans, exasperated. He wants to rip this painting to pieces. “Can you please stop moving? This is turning out horribly. I can’t get your stupid—Jesus, your eyebrows right.”

“Take it back and I’ll quit moving.”

“You’re—fine. I take it back. Now quit. I’ve got to finish this painting by tonight so it dries by morning.”

Mike nods, pleased. He finally mellows out, straightening back up against the hard kitchen chair he’s been sitting in for the last hour. He reaches up and pushes his super fake glasses up the bridge of his nose. “But you’ve read it, right? I just read it from the library.”

Will exhales. “Yes, Mike. I’ve read it,” Will ponders a moment. “You know Dorian goes crazy and stabs Basil, right?”

Mike suppresses a grin at that. “Oh, are you getting nervous?”

Will glares at Mike in return. “No, but you should be.”

Mike doesn’t answer—in an instant, he seems to have fallen deep in thought. “I fell down a rabbit hole about him. Apparently that book was way more gay than the version of it out now is. ‘Cause he had to censor himself? And it’s all about, like, living double lives and shit. Doesn’t that suck ass? Even just a story he wrote, it had to be censored and—and erased.”

Yeah, Mike. That’s kind of how it works. What does he think Will was doing for the first sixteen years of his life if not censoring himself? “Not moving includes not talking, you know.”

“It’s so messed up people had to hide that much.”

“We still do,” Will mumbles into his canvas. Will presses his lips together, turning back to Mike. “Quit,” he warns.

“Right, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Will whispers into his palette. His eyes flick up to Mike, whose eyes are lost in thought, staring out into space somewhere behind Will’s head, and his face is all flushed, sort of like he’s frustrated. “You alright still?”

“You know I hate posing for you. My mom wanted to get me tested, you remember that? I can’t sit still and you’re kind of a bitch about it, really.”

“How do you expect me to capture your good looks and charm if you can’t sit still for it?” Will quips, dipping his brush into the solvent and swirling it around. He picks up a bigger one from his jar, grumbling something under his breath about moving onto the hair. Mike doesn’t seem to catch it.

“You know he had a lover, too?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Mike. A lover? Are you a hundred? Ew.”

“Will, how do you know when a guy likes you?”

When Harry Met Sally… is droning on beneath the sound of the city outside their second-floor apartment. They’re at the part where Harry’s finally realizing he’s in love with her, Will thinks, somewhere near the end, ‘cause he’s just rambled on and on about all these little details about her that no one else notices, but he’s only sort of been paying attention the whole movie.

Mike’s been writing in his English binder since the last movie, a Back to the Future rerun, scribbling character notes in for a short story he has due next month. He’s still writing absently, even as Will’s head snaps over accusatorily. “I’m sorry?”

Finally, Mike stops writing. He looks up. “What? I’m just wondering,” he says like it’s nothing. “How you know when guys like each other.”

The space between them falls quiet. The television drones on behind them, lighting up the darkened room. The clock is ticking on the wall, sometime past two. Will can’t believe how normal Mike sounds.

Will’s mouth feels dry. “Um,” he hesitates. “Why?”

“For my story,” Mike shrugs. “Well, kind of.”

“You never actually told me what it’s about, you know,” Will states, trying his best hand at changing the subject. It’s usually about a fifty-fifty shot if it actually works—sometimes Mike’s attention span leaves much to be desired.

Mike taps his pencil. “Well, I changed it a little. It was going to be all about this thing the group finds in a cave near the beach one night. Some alien nightmare creature. And it’s going to represent, like, their fears and shit. But I really like these characters, you know? And I think I want the story to be more about them than the monster.”

“You don’t write a lot of character stories, do you?”

“No,” Mike frowns. “My creative writing professor said that, too. That I need to expand more into the human psyche or something, stop being so scared of, like, writing people. Whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.”

“Who’s the group?”

Mike beams a little. “There’s five of them. Two of them are always arguing about everything with each other, like, who holds the flashlight, who takes the watch, the map, the compass, whether they should just go back home. But they’re best friends. Like, the whole world revolves around them. And one of them is older, a little bit, and smarter, so he’s in charge. One’s the funny guy, really small, too. Then there’s this last one, he doesn’t really talk much. I guess he just pays attention to everybody.”

The movie’s rolled into credits. Neither of them will remember to rewind it before bringing it back to Blockbuster, even though they never have the money for the fee. “That sounds cool, Mike.”

“The last guy, he pays a lot of attention to the first two. How they’re always arguing and, like, magnetized. And he thinks he sees the—the tells.”

Will swears his heart misses a beat deep in his chest. “The tells?”

“Well, yeah. ‘Cause they’re into each other,” Mike says, shrugging, as if it’s clear as day. “And they don’t realize it. But somebody else does, I just don’t know the tells. Why he notices, you know? I just don’t know how you’d know if a guy likes another guy. I mean, besides the eye fucking. Classic.”

Will gulps. “They—they like each other,” he deadpans. “And you’re handing this story in to your professor to read to your entire class?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’re writing a gay couple into a sophomore year creative writing final?”

“Well, no,” Mike corrects, “they’re not a couple yet.”

“Gay people,” Will squints, “into a sophomore year creative writing final?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” Mike frowns. “Am I not allowed to write about new things?”

“I never said that,” Will opens his mouth, gaping, and closes it again, like a fish out of water. Finally he sheepishly settles on, “you’re probably going to get in shit for writing something like this.”

“Why would I?”

“You don’t think it’s weird?” Will warns.

Mike frowns, and the overcast shadows make his face seem angrier than it is. Really, he’s soft, confused, maybe a little hurt. Will can’t really tell. “Do you think it’s weird?”

“I didn’t say that,” Will says quickly. “I just—other people will think it is. You know what they’ll think you are.”

“Well, they can all go fuck themselves,” Mike grumbles. “‘Cause it’s not weird. It’s just a story. Fiction. Half of them never like my writing anyway. But that’s not the point—I like my story. I just want to know why he figures it out.”

Will swallows. “Um, well, I think you’ve already figured it out, Mike.”

“Huh?”

“You said it yourself,” Will breathes. His eyes dance along the wall behind Mike. “You said they’re best friends, they argue about everything, they’ve got… like, that, um, push and pull,” Will explains. He lets out a breath. “They don’t know how to… deal with it, so they just, like, argue?”

Mike sits back, staring down at his notebook. “Is that how it works for gay people?”

“What?”

“Arguing when you like someone?” Mike asks.

“I don’t think it’s any different from when you like someone,” Will retorts.

Frowning, Mike wordlessly glances down at his paper again. He erases something Will can’t read from here. “It must be. I don’t argue with girls.”

“You probably would if girls ever talked to you.”

“You can go fuck yourself,” Mike grumbles. “Girls talk to me.”

“Dickhead,” Will mutters back. “I don’t know. I think it’s more different for best friends versus, you know, strangers. Less on whether it’s a girl and a guy or not.”

Mike hums. “I guess you’re right.”

Will glances up at the clock behind Mike’s head on the wall. It’s just past two-thirty, and he yawns at the realization. Finally he untucks his legs from underneath himself, standing up from the couch. “Is that all?”

Mike doesn’t look up. He’s staring down at his paper, but he isn’t actually writing anything. “For now, yeah.”

“Okay,” Will mumbles. He breathes out a heavy sigh, staring down at Mike. “Okay, weirdo. Night.”

“Night,” Mike mumbles.

He still isn’t writing. Just staring into space.

Will retreats to his bedroom for the night.

“Hey, Will?” Mike calls from the kitchen. Will can smell burning eggs—how Mike likes them, lately. Frankly, Will thinks it’s disgusting.

“No, Mike,” Will calls back.

“I have a question.”

“I’m getting sick of your questions.”

“It’ll be quick!”

Will hesitates. “How do you know if you haven’t asked it?”

Mike hums under his breath, but Will doesn’t hear it. “How do two guys on a date figure out who’s paying for dinner? Like, if you went on a date—how would that even work?””

Will furrows his brows. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mike hollers back. “You’re gay!”

What does that matter if a guy’s never taken Will on one? “For fuck’s sake, Mike. I don’t—um, maybe who’s richer, I guess?”

Mike nods into his pan. That seems like a fair answer.

Will just breathes.

“By the way—”

“—Mike, seriously—”

“—do you want any maple syrup on your eggs?”

Mike’s hovering in the doorway to Will’s bedroom. Will has his headphones on over his head, the chunky ones his school lent out to him ‘cause they felt bad about his, er, financial situation, and he’s listening to the newest mix Jonathan had made for him last weekend. He’s pretending not to see Mike out of the corner of his eye as he stares down at his sketchpad in his lap. This page hasn’t been coming together for days.

“Will?”

Will squeezes his eyes closed. Maybe if he just ignores it, Mike will retreat back to his room with whatever prodding question he’s come up with this time, unanswered.

Mike tries a little louder. “Hey, Will?”

Will huffs and finally looks up, shoving his headphones down around his neck with his free hand. “Is there a reason you’re acting creepy?”

“I’m not,” Mike scowls. He takes a step into Will’s room, hands uselessly hovering at his sides. “I’m not acting creepy. You’re just being an asshole.”

Will folds his hands over his pictures. “You’re loitering at my door.”

“It’s technically Ted’s door,” Mike crosses his arms. Will can tell he’s trying not to look at Will’s sketchpad—sometimes he likes sharing, but sometimes he’s too private for his own good.

Will rolls his eyes. “What do you need, Mike?”

Mike’s weight shifts. “I have a question.”

“No, no more questions,” Will shakes his head. “I’m out of answers.”

Mike whines, “I haven’t even asked it yet.”

“The answer is—”

“—would you want to go out tonight?”

Will glances up, studying Mike’s face. He actually looks sincere—a little flushed, maybe. He isn’t dressed up for going out, though; he’s donning grey slippers and stained sweatpants Will’s sure haven’t been washed in at least a week. “To where?”

“A bar I found.”

“I thought we agreed to quit going to clubs. We’re not cool enough for clubs, Mike. We play Dungeons and Dragons.”

“The rest of us aren’t. You might be just right for this one, though. Plus, I said a bar. Not a club.”

Will freezes. “Please don’t tell me you’re inviting me to a gay club.”

“Bar,” Mike corrects. “And what would your answer be if I was?”

“I don’t know,” Will finally says, slow, almost like Mike’s testing him. Mike’s eyes bore into Will’s from the doorway.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause you’re acting weird as shit, Mike.”

“I’m not!” Mike exclaims. “I just thought you might want to go!”

“You know I don’t really do clubs.”

Mike finally looks down. He’s been picking at a hangnail or something, fidgeting with his fingers. Will doesn’t know how he just noticed. “I was just thinking—well, reading, too, but you said you don’t really have anywhere to go,” he adds, quieter. “To, you know. Meet people.”

Will’s expression shifts and solidly lands somewhere between weirdly touched, a little sad, and utterly confused. “Okay, do I give off, like, massive, pathetic, gay virgin or something? Why’s it such a big thing to you?”

“Um,” Mike swallows. “You’re a virgin? Since when?”

That’s all Mike took from that? Will groans, twists behind him, and grabs the first thing he can see to throw across the room at Mike—it’s a stuffed bunny, because of course it’s a stuffed bunny. “What is that even supposed to mean, Mike? Can you just get out of my room?”

“Hey—” Mike catches the bunny before it hits his face. “No, I didn’t mean it like that!”

“What else could you have possibly meant it like?”

Mike hesitates. His chest gets a little tight, hearing Will admit something so heavy out loud. The bunny is soft beneath his fingertips—it’s a toy that’s been in Will’s bedroom since the first day they saw it. It’s probably never been washed, but Will takes care of everything he touches. “It’s not a bad thing.”

“I never said it was.”

Absentmindedly, Mike is still stroking one of the bunny’s grey ears. “It’s—it’s kind of sweet.”

“Sweet? Now you’re fucking with me on purpose.”

“It’s only ‘cause it’s different for you, right? You wouldn’t be one if—you know?”

Will bites something like, you don’t have to explain to me what it’s like to be gay, Mike, back, landing instead on, “yeah, it’s different for me. Everything is different for me.”

Mike swallows. “I hate that you feel like you have nowhere to go.”

“It is what it is,” Will shrugs. He picks at a corner of his sketchbook, forgotten in his lap. “What are you going to do about it? Cure AIDS?”

“Take you out to a gay club.”

“You said it was a bar.”

Mike glances out Will’s bedroom moment, eyes bright, then flicks them back down to Will. “Will you just come with me? We don’t have to stay for long.”

“If I say no, are you going anyway?”

“What, you’re afraid I’m so irresistible, even dudes won’t be able to resist me?”

“No. Gross, Mike,” Will turns up his nose. “I’m afraid you’ll scare them all away from me.”

Mike wags his eyebrows, leaning against Will’s doorframe with a dorky sort of smile spreading across his face. “My reading glasses make everyone hot for me, Will. Everyone.”

Will feels the tips of his ears burn. They do. Still, he retorts with, “you wish.”

“No, I know. And you won’t get to see Capote’s magic pay off if you don’t come with.”

“And the hair?”

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Fitzgerald,” Will grins. Mike stares expectantly, thrumming fingers against his thigh. Finally, Will hunches over himself, pulling his knees to his chest. “Fine, Mike,” he acquiesces, “one drink.”

Mike’s whole face lights up, bright and eager and beautiful. Will’s whole face feels like it’s on fire. He knows he shouldn’t still feel like this but—fuck. “You’ll come?”

Will shuts his sketchbook, finally removing his headphones from around his neck. They’re still distantly thrumming with the Pixies. “I’ll have one drink. And we’ll be home by ten.”

Mike throws Will’s bunny back and grins.

“That guy was, like, toootally flirting with you, Will,” Mike slurs, stumbling over his own feet as he walks down the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder with his best friend. He’s got an arm wrapped around Will’s waist, and Will likewise, to keep each other from falling down in the street as they walk home. “He was—he was arguing with you. Remember, together when we figured out that gay people argue with each other when they like each other? About which Star Wars movie is better. ‘Cause he was wearing a Star Wars shirt! In a gay bar! Look, I don’t—um, I don’t know the… the dress code for gay bars, but that didn’t seem right!” Mike shakes his head, frowning hard. “And—and, you know what, you were right to leave him alone, too, ‘cause—‘cause he wasn’t even right! Obviously it’s A New Hope. Like, obviously. I mean, who even thinks the third movie in any trilogy is the best? He was—he was so stupid, Will,” he finishes. And then starts back up again, softer. “At least we can always agree on Star Wars—oh, shit, you’re not going to vomit all over me this time, right?”

The door slams open with a heavy bang, one that makes Will nearly jump out of his skin. Mike drops his bookbag by the door, kicking off his shoes haphazardly, huffing as he slams the door behind him. “Um, hello? What the fuck?”

Mike jumps, too. “Oh, shit, I thought you wouldn’t be home yet,” he says, pulling off his hoodie. “I usually don’t skip my last class. Sorry.”

Will looks up from his bite of food at the table. He stares at the tangles of scarves on the back of their door, the muddy doormat from the rain last week they Mike still hasn’t cleaned, both of their umbrellas waiting together in the umbrella rack. Will looks away. There’s half a pot of soup on the stove that Will made and left for Mike to eat. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t…” Will begins, dropping his spoon into his bowl. He doesn’t mention the shoes thing. “You don’t look very fine.”

“How do you know when a text is suppressing what it really means?” Mike bites, pulling out his chair across from Will and collapsing into it. “I mean, what does that even mean? It sounds like a big load of bullshit.”

Will’s face tightens up as he takes another slow bite of his soup. “Oh, you read your story for class today, didn’t you?”

Mike glares at the bowl of soup in front of Will, as if it itself had given him the terribly offensive critiques on his draft this afternoon. “My professor didn’t like my story. I got a seventy. A fucking seventy, Will.”

“Shit,” Will frowns. “I’m sorry. I liked it. And a seventy isn’t terrible.”

“If only you were my professor,” Mike groans, tipping his head back. “I mean—look, he said it was well done. Well written, good characters, interesting plot. But that it’s scared of itself. I mean, isn’t that stupid? How can a story be scared of itself? It’s a story! How does that warrant a sixty-eight?”

“I thought you said seventy,” Will cocks his head to the side. Mike grumbles. Will gives Mike a sympathetic smile, ‘cause he knows all of Mike’s tells a mile away. “I don’t know,” he offers unhelpfully, “I’m not good at storytelling like you are.”

“I—I took your advice last minute and made it less, you know, obvious so I didn’t get in trouble like you thought I would. And so my classmates wouldn’t think—” Mike cuts himself off. Will raises his eyebrows silently. “I don’t know. But—my professor was just such a douche about it, like he knows I changed stuff. I usually really like him, too,” Mike runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back out of his eyes. His glasses are crooked on his nose, and it makes Will smile a little. “What?”

“Nothing,” Will shakes his head, gazing back down at his dinner.

“You look like you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not.”

“You were smiling!”

Will smiles again. “So are you, now. There you go.”

Mike groans, shoving his face in his hands. “You’ve got a good smile, okay? It’s annoying.”

Will tries not to smile bigger. Mike has no idea, does he? “Did you talk to him after class?”

“I mean, kind of,” Mike shrugs. “I asked him to elaborate, but he kind of just… gave me this weird look, and he told me to really think about the themes of the story. The—the message I’m trying to say without saying it or… whatever,” Mike trails off, voice going softer. Less aggressive, more contemplative. “I don’t even know what that means! It was just a short story about some kids finding a zombie-alien on a beach!”

Will glances over across the room, hesitant to meet Mike’s eyes. “I saved some soup for you. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

Mike visibly relaxes, looking back up to meet Will’s eyes. “You did?”

“My class got cancelled tonight, and I always cook dinner for us on Wednesdays. ‘Course I did.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be home for another two hours.”

“Consider it a sign from the universe. Go eat. Maybe you’ll be less bitchy.”

“I’m not—” Mike exclaims, dragging his feet across the tiny kitchen and looking into the pot. Their tap is leaking, just like it always does. It’s leaked since the day they moved in. They just drown it out. “Broccoli cheddar? You made my favorite soup?”

“My favorite soup,” Will corrects.

“You’re the best, you know?”

Will swallows down something bittersweet and stares back down at his bowl.

The Joy of Gay Sex had been burning a hole in their kitchen counter for over a month now—it’s been overdue for three weeks.

Today, as Will walks in the door, he realizes it’s been moved. Which—you know, really, that’d be great, if it weren’t for the fact that today, Mike’s sitting in his usual spot at the kitchen table with it laid open in front of him, notebook page open. With notes. Many notes.

Will almost wants to close his eyes, walk back out the door, and pretend he didn’t see any of this.

Unfortunately, Mike hears him as soon as he walks in. “Will!”

“I don’t want to know whatever you’re learning about in that book,” is Will’s opening line. He drops his bag next to the door and carefully sets down the half-wet painting he had to carry all the way home to work on tonight. “I really, really don’t.”

Mike glances between Will, down to The Joy of Gay Sex, and back up to Will. “Oh, this?”

“Yes, that.”

“I don’t know how you expect me to be a good gay ally if I don’t know how things work for you.”

Will swallows. This can’t be a real conversation. He wipes his sweaty, dusty hands on his jeans. “That’s something you never need to be thinking about.”

Mike frowns. “Do you want me to be a good ally or not?”

“You’ve been fine,” Will groans, shuffling across the kitchen to the fridge, pulling it open. He’s starving and frankly, he wants this conversation done with as soon as humanly possible. “You know, most gay allies, they just, like, say cool, man, I’m not going to kill you for being a fag and move on with their lives. Not—not whatever all of this has been.”

Mike winces. “Well, I’m your best friend. I’m not most people. And I hope nobody’s calling you that.”

Reaching down into the refrigerator and pulling out a tub of yogurt, probably nearing its expiry date, Will sighs. “You’re—you’re definitely above average, Mike. That’s for sure,” he affirms, cracking the tub open and sniffing it. He turns his nose up; it’s getting sour. “We need new yogurt.”

“What was coming out like for you?”

Will stiffens. “Why?”

“This section—it’s talking about coming out. I’m only on page, um, thirty-six, but I skipped around. And it’s talking about how, um, coming out is, like, partially about your first time, right? But you haven’t done that,” he frowns down at his notes. “So then it talked about the sociological aspects too, and that it’s different for people depending on where they live and stuff?”

Will sets the tub of spoiled yogurt down on the counter, slowly spinning on his heel as he faces Mike. Mike’s got this dead-set, curious sort of expression on his face. He looks so genuine, Will feels like his heart might burst right out of his chest. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Mike breathes.

Will purses his lips. “It’s kind of hard to summarize everything that’s happened to me, Mike.”

“I don’t need a summary,” Mike shakes his head. “Just—I don’t know. It says people, like, rehearse it. Or they plan it out for a long time. They try to wait for the right time. Do you think you got to do that?”

Will swallows thickly.

Dark tunnels. Big hands. Veins. Blood. Yelling. A curse.

“Yeah,” he nods.

Mike smiles tentatively. “Yeah?”

I’ll show them who you really are, William. Every secret you’ve been hiding.

Will chokes. “Yeah.”

Mike stands from the table, hesitant. His smile drops in an instant. “Will, are you okay?”

Will swallows again, backing up against the counter. Suddenly, like the drop of a hat, he’s sixteen again, outing himself against his will; thirteen, falling head-first in love with his best friend; eleven, being taken into a nightmare world for being different; six, when his first bully was his deadbeat father calling him a fag for wanting crayons for his birthday instead of a baseball set. “No, I—” he tries, breathing out, in, out. “This is—dumb. Forget I said anything.”

“What is?” Mike reaches out a hand, stabilizing Will’s elbow. “No, Will. What’s dumb?”

“This—all of it.”

“All of what? We don’t have to—”

Will feels his knees buckle against the countertop. “He—he made me. Vecna. He knew.”

Mike’s whole face shifts. Worry, confusion, realization, tragedy, anger. The hand on Will’s elbow tightens protectively. “What?”

As Will’s hands begin to shake, he tries stabilizing himself on the counter. The sour yogurt is pungent in the air. Mike takes a step closer. Will can feel himself begin to spiral in real time—as if a hair trigger has been set off, just like that. As if Will isn’t twenty years old now, almost twenty-one, living seven hundred miles away from where he grew up. “Vecna, you know that he—he saw into my head. Showed me a future where—where you all hated me for this. I—I didn’t want to tell everyone, I wanted to keep it to myself forever, but he—he would’ve told everybody if I hadn’t, I know—”

Mike shuffles a few inches closer to Will, wrapping his arms around his shaking shoulders. He didn’t know how deep this went. “He can’t hurt you anymore, Will.”

Will leans his forehead on Mike’s shoulder as a tear runs down his cheek. “It still—it hurts me every day.”

Mike squeezes Will tighter. “You—um, my book says you should’ve gotten to choose. But he took that away from you.”

Will hiccups. “It’s so—it was years ago. It’s so stupid to be so—so upset about still. Sorry.”

“It’s not,” Mike says, so gentle Will feels like bursting into tears on Mike’s shoulder all over again. “You—you deserved to choose. That’s what my book says.”

Will stares up at Mike, cheeks and eyes bright red. “Yeah,” he nods. He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry for—all of this. I try not to think about it, I—I really thought I was over it, I guess.”

“I wish I knew sooner,” Mike laces a tentative hand through Will’s hair, cradling the back of his neck. It sends shivers up Will’s spine, a feeling that’s always sent Will into a spiral, sunken pits of agony in his stomach, but it’s not—not like the ones he used to feel. It’s almost exhilarating, this feeling, his cool neck under Mike’s warm fingertips. He’s safe here. “Would you have still told me someday?”

Will’s eyes shoot back open. He sniffles, rubbing a palm at his eyes to dry the tears. He’s always hated being the crybaby, but once he starts, he can’t just—quit. “What?”

“If—if Vecna didn’t make you. Would you have… well, it says some people plan to for a long time. Were you planning?”

No.

Maybe?

Probably not.

Will swallows down ugly memories of a weed-stenched pizza van and an explosion of his heart on canvas and I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods and Jonathan’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know.”

“You—what?”

“I—you know how people are, Mike,” Will shrugs, hopeless. Mike’s still standing so, so close, like he’s teetering off the edge of a cliff. His eyes look wild.

“You know how I am, though.”

“I didn’t know.”

Mike looks—he looks hurt. His face twists. “I’m your best friend.”

“I know.”

“You think you would’ve kept this from me forever?”

Will swallows. The damn faucet is droning on behind him. Drip, drip, drip, like it’s trying to drive him mad. “Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I—of course it matters. How you feel—it matters to me, Will.”

Will wants to laugh right in Mike’s face. How you feel matters to me.

“I know,” Will finally settles on.

“I didn’t do a good enough job.”

Will drops his head. “It’s not about you. It’s about—it’s about Hawkins, and Troy. And Vecna. And my stupid dad And the ugly Reagan sign in your parents’ front lawn. It’s not—it’s not you. I trust you. I trusted you. I just—I just didn’t know.”

Silence settles between them again, heavier now. Mike’s hands are still on Will’s shoulders. Finally, he pulls Will back in again, tight and reassuring and promising. “I’m glad I know now.”

“Yeah, me too,” Will says. This time, he thinks he really means it, which makes this all so, so much worse.

“I’m serious. You can tell me anything,” Mike adds, softer. “You know that, right?”

Will closes his eyes—that’s not the fucking problem. “Yeah,” he finally says. The kitchen stinks of sour yogurt. Mike glances at the book on the table, then back at Will, like he’s turning something over in his head. “Mike?”

Mike turns back, looking right at Will. “What?”

Will breathes out. He turns to the counter, picking up the stinky yogurt, and drops it into the trash bin where it can rot until garbage day. “Nothing.”

Mike has been staring across the room at Will for at least the last five minutes now, but frankly, Will’s too afraid to ask.

Unfortunately, Mike isn’t.

“How good is your gaydar?”

Will nearly chokes on his own spit, tearing his eyes away from the television. “My what?”

“Your gay-radar. Your gaydar. It’s supposed to be—”

“I know what it is. How do you know what that is?”

“Well, how good is yours?”

“I don’t—I have no clue.”

“I think yours is probably pretty good.”

Will squints. “How would you even know that?”

“You said you found people in Hawkins, right? And you know you have gay people in your class. I feel like yours must be half decent, at least.”

“Do you ever know when to shut up?”

Mike ponders. “Will, if I walked into a room, and you didn’t know me—”

“—oh my God—”

“—would you think, hey, he looks—”

“—I really need you to learn how to shut up, Mike.”

Mike pauses. “So, I don’t look gay to you?”

“No, Mike. Jesus Christ.”

“Oh,” Mike nods, “okay,” he says, turning back to the television, seemingly satisfied. “Good.”

The Joy of Gay Sex is out again. Right there, on their pathetically tiny coffee table, open to—to a drawing Will has to immediately avert his eyes from.

There’s also a VHS tape sitting next to the book, perfectly perpendicular to the spine.

It reads—

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Mike.

This can’t be normal friend behavior anymore, can it? Like, Will knows it treaded past what Mike claims to be normal ally behavior weeks and weeks ago, but this...

Lucas and Dustin aren’t renting out gay porn tapes to support Will’s nonexistent sex life. They patted him on the back and moved on. Like, there’s a real-life gay porn tape sitting right there on their coffee table, and somehow, the gay roommate in this apartment isn’t even the one that brought it home.

“You’re home early,” Mike exclaims, emerging from the washroom, flicking off the light. His hair is damp from his shower. “Look, I was wondering, do you want to go out for Chinese with Jonathan tonight? We haven’t gone out for—”

Will’s backpack slides down his arm, crashing at his feet. He can’t tear his eyes away from the coffee table. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What?” Mike asks. He squints at Will, then follows his gaze, landing on the table. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. What the hell?” Will isn’t sure whether to burst into laughter or tears or both.

Mike, for what might be the first time, looks like he’s about to burst into flames. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Really? Because it looks to me like—”

“—it’s for research,” Mike defends, like that makes it any better. “And you weren’t suppsoed to see that.”

“Research,” Will deadpans.

“...Yes.”

“You rented out a gay porno and intended to hide it from me for—for research?”

They’re not sure who bursts into laughter first, but after a moment, both of them are laughing so hard they can’t get another word out until their fits calm down. Mike’s red like a tomato, trying to defend himself, and Will can’t believe the absurdity of his best friend—his straight best friend.

“I just—I was confused! My book is—it’s getting confusing, all the… the positions,” Mike tries, lowering his voice a little, “the angles? I couldn’t… visualize any of it.”

Will clutches their kitchen table chair, like he’s relying on it for balance. “Mike, what the hell do you need to be visualizing gay sex positions for?”

“To—to understand you better,” Mike tries, but it comes out a lot weaker than it sounded in his head. He swears it sounded better up there.

“You understand me plenty, that doesn’t—I didn’t say to watch gay porn and read up on the intricacies of gay sex. Even the library books were a little much. Jesus, Mike.”

“I didn’t watch it for—for that reason.”

“You’ve already watched it?”

Mike doesn’t respond. In fact, he kind of feels like he’s going to die, actually.

Will studies him for a moment longer. “You actually watched it. On our living room television. In broad daylight with the curtains open?”

“I—” Mike tries. “I didn’t watch it all,” he says, like that makes it better. “And the windows were closed.”

“Oh, no? You just watched some gay porn on our living room television?”

“I skipped around! The book was confusing!”

“You don’t need to—Jesus. Oh my God. You’re not being serious.”

“I’m being serious,” Mike insists. “It’s just not—like what I thought it would be.”

Will nearly cracks up all over again. “You’ve been thinking about gay sex?”

“No, not—not like that, really, I swear to God. It’s just—it’s important to you.”

Will almost falters. Almost. “I—do I need to spell it out? I’m not having any sex.”

Time must stand still. “But you will, right?” He supplies, timid. “You want to?”

Will wants the ground to swallow him whole. “That’s not—” he tries but cuts himself off, dragging a hand through his hair. “That’s not really your business, Mike.”

“But—you’re my best friend,” Mike whispers, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “How else am I supposed to—” Mike cuts himself off, frowning. “And it’s not exactly something anyone teaches you, is it?”

He’s not getting it, is he? “It’s not something you need to learn,” Will mutters.

“It is if I want to understand you!”

Will is taken aback. He stands still, silent, shocked. “You’re making this so weird, Mike, come on.”

“I’m just trying to make sure you’re—” Mike tries, fumbling, “—okay. That you’ll be okay. And that I… have answers if you have questions.”

“You’ve known about me for five years. You think I’m going to have gay questions for you now?”

Mike frowns. “No,” he falters. “Just, like, as support. I don’t know.”

Will sighs. This is—weird. Right? Mike is being weird. Overstepping. Overzealous. Confusing. Obsessive. “Can you please just not watch porn on our T.V. again?”

It doesn’t get dropped, though, because Mike cuts right back in with, “but what if you don’t know him? You don’t know how he’s gonna act, or what he expects, or if he’s even—even safe.”

Will groans, “it’s none of your business, Mike. I’m safe. I’m fine. I’ll figure it out.”

“But what—”

“—do I get like this every time you sleep with a girl?”

Mike stuns. “What?”

“Am I all—overbearing? Worrying you’ll knock her up? Worrying you won’t—won’t even know what to do?”

Mike is silent. “I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

He really doesn’t get it, does he? Hopeless. He’s hopeless. “You are a good friend. When you’re not renting porn and watching it in our living room in the middle of the day while thinking about—about how useless I’ll be at it someday.”

Mike’s face heats up again. “Are you mad?”

“Weirded out,” Will purses his lips. “Really weirded out. Not… not mad.”

“Okay, I—I can deal with that.”

“Please return it.”

“What if I need it again?”

“For?”

Mike hesitates, which—which is new. He looks at the tape, sitting like it’s guilty on the coffee table, then back at Will, like he’s trying to decide how much he should say. “Just trying to be prepared.”

“You’re unbelievable, Mike.”

“Can you be honest with me for a minute?”

Will looks up from his book; Beloved weighs heavy in his hands. “What is it?”

“I’m going out tonight,” he shares, tossing a jacket over his shoulder. “Does this outfit make me look homophobic?”

Will laughs, taken aback, “jeans and a button up?”

“And the leather jacket? And the glasses?”

“What do you think that even—what does a homophobic outfit even look like?”

“Like—if you saw me out and you didn’t know me, would you think I’m a homophobe? “Cause I’m—I’m not. And I don’t want anyone to think so, you know?”

Will groans, burying his nose back into his book. “Bye, Mike.”

Mike slips his shoes on, letting out a deep, lovely laugh. “Fine. Bye, Beloved,” he jokes, opening and closing the door behind him in the same, swift motion.

Will’s cheeks must’ve burned all night.

Will’s pretty sure he’s fallen asleep sitting here, ramrod straight, right in front of this easel. His painting is due in the morning, a nearly two-by-three foot canvas he built, stretched, and primed all by himself that he had just barely begun before this weekend.

Naturally, wherever Will goes, Mike goes, too—that’s how they’ve both become stuck in Will’s studio at school until Will finishes this damn painting. The lights in the studio were dimmed hours ago, back when there were other students actually still in here—it’s teetering on two in the morning, now, though, so everybody has long since packed up and gone home.

Sensible, really.

“I think it’s almost done, you know,” Mike pipes up. “It looks pretty done to me.”

“You don’t know how to paint, Mike,” Will opens his eyes. “And it looks like I painted it all the night before.”

“It doesn’t,” Mike looks up again from his notebook and textbooks sitting on somebody’s easel next to Will’s seat. “It looks like you painted half of it the night before.”

“You’re a bastard,” Will groans. He glances over at Mike’s work. “How’s the writing going?”

“Stupid,” Mike shrugs. “All of my characters are stupid.”

“Well, you are writing them,” Will says, scrunching up his nose as Mike shoves his shoulder.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Mike asks.

For maybe the first time, he sounds almost nervous, like maybe he’s been sitting on this one a while. Will, feigning nonchalance, simply turns back to his canvas. “What is it?”

“You liked someone back home, didn’t you?”

Will’s posture stiffens. “What?”

Mike shrugs, like it doesn’t. Like it’s nothing. Like nothing matters at all. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about it, I guess. What it’s like not being able to date ‘cause all of us did. I guess I…”

Will drags his brush through the paint on his palette, collecting some brown. “You think about it a lot lately, don’t you?”

Mike turns away. He hesitates. “I was kind of mean to you about it back then, wasn’t I?”

Will leans into the canvas again, squinting hard at the cabin. “About what?”

“Not liking girls,” Mike spits, like it’s venomous. Like he’s ashamed of what he’s said.

Will shrugs. Yeah, he was, but that was a thousand years and five end-of-the-world’s ago. “You didn’t know any better.”

“But I should’ve, right? I should’ve known better. I was your best friend. Best friends don’t treat each other like that.”

“I kept it a secret on purpose,” Will stipples his brush through the mountain range. “It wasn’t really your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says softly. He taps the eraser of his pencil against his notes. “I can be such a shit friend, can’t I?”

“You’re only half-shit now,” Will pokes. “I mean, I live with you. On purpose. That has to count for something.”

“Ha-ha,” Mike groans. “I’m being serious.”

“It was so long ago, Mike, I really don’t care anymore, okay?”

Mike sighs. The characters on the page seem to be making a mockery of him. They’re so brave. “But you did, then? You liked somebody at home?”

Will laughs this pitying, low laugh. “I mean, it didn’t really work out. But it’s—in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“His loss,” Mike shrugs. Will tries to maintain as best a poker face as he can as he collects some more paint, thinning it just a touch on his palette. “Did I know him?”

“Could you drop it?”

“Or was it in California? ‘Cause I remember El saying in a letter once that you you were making a—”

“—Mike,” Will warns.

Mike frowns. “But I—”

“—it doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t know him,” Will collects some more brown, thins it out again with some paint thinner. “It was a million years ago. It didn’t work out. The world ended. There was bigger things to worry about.”

Mike goes silent. “Will?”

Will’s blood feels like it runs cold. “What?”

“Would you tell me if you liked somebody now?”

“What?” Will repeats.

“Like—here. A classmate or something. Do you think you’d tell me this time?”

Will squints at the painting. His back hurts, his wrist hurts, his eyes are blurring, the overhead lights are flickering away. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out for a moment. “I don’t know,” he says, honest, because the hour won’t let him lie anymore.

“Oh,” Mike deflates.

Will glances over. Mike’s face looks devastated, somehow. He’s hunched over like he’s ashamed. “I just mean—like, it depends on a lot of things. Like—like who, and… yeah. I don’t know. I guess I’ll figure it out how to tell you if I do like somebody again,” he says, softer. He can’t look Mike in the eye anymore. He feels—he feels cracked open. “I think I’m done this, now. I’m going to start cleaning up.”

Mike slams his notebook shut, “wait, but—wait, Will, do you already like—”

“—can you take my palette and find some cling wrap somewhere in here to put overtop of it? There might be some in that,” Will gestures with his chin, “drawer, right over there? I need to take this thinner to the disposal.”

Mike frowns. Right. Will likes someone in New York? A classmate? “But, I—”

“—really need to go to bed, both of us. Come on.”

“You’re being weird.”

Mike pokes at the frozen pierogies sizzling in the pan with a plastic spatula, the one that’s half-melted because Mike left it in a hot pan last semester by accident. He’s leaning against the counter next to the stove like he’s too weak to hold himself up anymore. “No more weird than normal.”

“Definitely weirder than normal,” Will says, watching Mike for just a second longer, then looks away pointedly. “Look, if this is about last night—”

“—it’s not,” immediately Mike interjects.

Will never would’ve guessed he’d miss Mike’s overly invasive questions from the last couple of months—until Mike’s retreated, barely said a word to Will since last night when they got home. Will doesn’t know what he said wrong—he’s replayed last night in the studio a thousand times today, all day during class and all evening while Mike sulked in a ball on the couch. He can’t pinpoint it. “Are you sure?”

Mike reaches up into the cupboard, grabs the pepper shaker and the powdered garlic. They can’t afford the real stuff. “Yeah,” he says. “Tired. Worked on my story all day.”

“Oh,” Will says softly. “Is it going any better?”

Mike swallows. He opens his mouth to answer—to talk about his story or his stupid professor or the burning pierogies in the pan or world peace—but instead what slips out of his big mouth is, “you know I’m straight, right?”

Will just blinks. His fingers tighten around the edge of the counter. The fucking faucet is dripping, dripping, dripping behind the sizzling of the pierogies. “What?”

“I just—” Mike exhales. “I don’t want you to get the wrong… idea here.”

Will stares at him longer. Drip, drip, drip. “What idea?”

Mike shrugs, shoulders tight. “I don’t even know. Just—with everything. All the questions. The—” he gestures vaguely with the spatula, a drop of grease falling onto the floor between their feet. “All of it. I’m just trying to be a good friend to you. A good, straight friend. That’s all,” Mike says. It’s pointed, though, and he won’t look up.

Will blinks again, hard. His eyes feel like they’re stinging and his throat wants to close around all the words Will can’t even think to respond with. Is Mike trying to convince Will or himself? “Yeah, I know.”

That’s all this ever was, wasn’t it? A—a big project. Sociology 101, right?

The butter in the pan starts to hiss. Mike stands still, staring down at the pierogies, unmoving until they begin to burn. Will goes to reach for the spatula and take it out of Mike’s hand, but Mike pulls away a little too quick with a firm, “I got it.”

Will nods, stunned. He turns on his heel to grab two plates from the cupboard. “Do we have any lettuce left?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, reaching over and turning off the stove. He shifts the pan onto a cool burner. “Toast?”

“Yeah,” Will swallows. “Yup. Toast is great.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Dinner tonight is silent, but not the kind Mike and Will like to coexist in, where every night rented VHS films and terrible radio pop and New York’s cacophony outside their window fill the empty space between them; no, tonight, it’s like something has begun to rot.

“Does it feel different?”

“Does what feel different?”

“Being gay.”

Will pauses mid-step. “Different than?”

“Being straight, I guess.”

“How should I know?”

Mike glances past Will’s face. “How did you know, then?”

Will turns toward Mike, slow. “Why?”

“Curious,” Mike deflates. “How, Will?”

“I guess I always sort of knew,” Will finally admits. “It’s never something I realized. I just always kind of knew I was different from… you know, Dustin and Lucas and you.”

“There was never just, like, a big moment?”

Will studies Mike’s face. Thinks back to six, eleven, thirteen, fifteen. “No, not really.”

“Oh,” is all Mike says.

Will and Mike are both piled into Will’s twin bed in his bedroom with a mostly-empty bottle of cheap wine sitting, now untouched, on Will’s desk. Mike’s lightened up, lately. “Will?”

Will’s already giggling. “Yeah?”

“Can I—” Mike tries, but he can’t seem to get the words out through giggles. “Can I ask you somethin’ funny?”

“Uh-huh,” Will nods, tipping his head back against the headboard. “What’d’ya wanna know, now?”

“Have you ever done anythin’ at all? Even—even kissed a boy before?”

Will hums. “No,” he peeks an eye open at Mike, sort of curled up at the foot of Will’s bed. His long, dark curls tumble in front of his eyes, and Will can’t quite make out his expression from here. “But I want to.”

“Have you—” Mike tries, fumbling. “Nothin’ even, you know, by yourself?”

Will huffs a quiet laugh, dropping his head back. “Jesus, Mike,” he huffs, and the wine must really be soothing his nerves, otherwise he probably would’ve thrown Mike out of his bedroom by now. “Have you?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Mike says, giggling quietly again. “A few weeks ago. I tried, anyway. I still don’t—get it, I think.”

“Oh,” Will breathes. His stomach twists itself up. Will’s laugh falters, just for a second. “You don’t… get it?”

Mike just shakes his head. “And then you got so mad at me for doin’ it in the living room.”

Will stills, an eye still peeked open at Mike. Mike hasn’t moved much, still laying, curled up at Will’s feet like a lap dog. The tape. “Jesus.”

“You asked!”

“You asked!”

“I’m just curious,” Mike shrugs, tracing at the patterns on Will’s comforter with his finger. “You really haven’t? It just didn’t make sense to me.”

Will’s gaze drifts away from Mike and back up to the ceiling. “No.”

“But you want to?”

Will swallows. “Yeah, obviously.”

“How do you know—like, who you want to kiss, though? Like, specifically? Do you just look at a guy, and be all, like, oh, I wanna kiss him?”

“You’ve kissed plenty of girls, Mike.”

“But it must be different for gay people, right?”

“I don’t know,” Will shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

Will glances back over at the wine. He’s definitely not drunk enough for this, and he doesn’t even drink. Jesus. “Right,” Mike nods, suddenly enlightened, “you’re not straight, so you wouldn’t know. See, I remember.”

“Exactly.”

Mike pauses for a moment, glances up at Will, and then back down to the blanket. “What if I don’t know, either? I just don’t get how you’re supposed to—know.”

“Why wouldn’t you? You—you’ve liked girls forever.”

“I—yeah. You’re right. Maybe.”

“My professor loved my final story,” Mike exclaims the moment he walks through the door. Will’s sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with oil pastels littered around his feet. This living room hasn’t been tidy since the day they moved in—there’s oil paint stains on the wall near the television and a folded up tarp for when Will’s got big paintings to bring home. Will’s got a whole portfolio’s worth of work leaned up against every wall in here, each one a different story Mike could probably recite by heart. Sometimes, Mike doesn’t know what a laundry basket is. There’s takeout containers on the ground. An old spill of Cola in the carpet that Will yelled at Mike for. “He gave me a ninety-five and told me I must’ve done some soul searching, whatever that means, and that if I wanted to expand more on these characters next semester, that he’d love to read it.”

Will glances up at the doorway. “Seriously? That’s—wow. I mean, that’s amazing, Mike. Congrats.”

Mike crosses the kitchen with his shoes and backpack and jacket still on, shoving his prized possession—his fourteen-page short story, Undertow—into Will’s face and grinning at the big, red ninety-five percent scribbled at the top of the page. “It almost makes up for the raging fucking hangover from last night.”

Will just cracks a grin. Undertow, like the tides eating you alive, like drowning in takeaway containers and Coke spills and dirty socks and canvases.

“What are you so smiley for?”

Will drops his bag by the door, right next to Mike’s like he always does. He’s got this grin on his face—he’s been wearing it since he left the art building a half an hour ago, with a hand clutched tight in his pocket. “Nothing.”

Mike looks a little closer at Will’s flushed face as Will kicks off his shoes. “You look weird.”

“You always look weird,” Will retorts. He tries to peel the smile off his face, he really does, but—shit. To avoid Mike’s staring, Will shuffles into the kitchen, popping a cupboard open and rifling through their snacks.

“You’re smiling.”

“Am not.”

“You’re turned away and I can tell you’re still smiling; I know you. It’s in your shoulders. And you’re hiding something, now.”

If there’s a jealous twinge in Mike’s voice—how they promised two months ago to be open and honest with each other from now on—then Will seems to miss it. Will straightens his shoulders. “I’m not hiding anything!”

“No, you’re hiding something,” Mike prods, shoving his books off his lap and stretching as he stands up. He crosses their tiny living room in a handful of steps, standing just a couple of feet back from Will. “We—we’re honest now, remember?”

Will squeezes his eyes shut tight. With a weak surge of confidence and his back still turned to Mike, he mutters, “a guy in my drawing class asked me to go for coffee this weekend.”

“What?”

Turning around on his heel, Will finally meets Mike’s face. He looks—perplexed. Hurt, maybe, if Will reads too much into it. “I—he gave me his number.”

Mike’s frozen in place. “What?” He repeats.

“What do you—it’s just coffee,” Will, for the first time in an hour, frowns. “Why are you being weird?”

“I—” Mike tries. Nothing else comes out. He tries again, “no, I mean—I am. I’m happy for you, yeah. Obviously,” he nods, but neither of them are sure who he’s trying to convince. Wavering, he tacks on, “why wouldn’t I be?”

“You tell me,” Will squints. He turns back around, reaching up into the cupboard and grabbing himself a packet of instant noodles. “It’s not like he’s—”

“—is he safe?”

Will frowns. “Of course he’s safe.”

“Are you sure?”

“I—we’ve been classmates for a year and a half, Mike.”

“Why now?”

Will averts his eyes, ducks his head. “I don’t know,” he admits. “He said he’s wanted to talk to me for a long time.”

“Oh,” is all Mike says. He doesn’t know what the hell else to say.

He feels like his whole world has come crashing down around him. He can’t—what if something happens to Will? What if this guy has ulterior motives? What if he gets hurt? What if—

Will grabs a plastic container from their Tupperware cabinet, filling it halfway with tap water, and peeling open the instant ramen packet. “You’re acting weirder than I expected about this,” Will says, soft but firmer than he meant for it to sound. “It’s just coffee.”

Mike continues hovering. Gangly, long legs, fidgeting fingers, ringlets of dark curls covering his forehead and nearly his eyes. “Nothing more?”

“Why should you care even if it was?”

“So you’re safe,” Mike nods.

Will cracks the microwave, setting his container on the plate and tapping it in for two and a half minutes. He presses start. “Why have you been so hellbent on keeping me safe from—from who I am?”

Mike gapes. Maybe because—because he’s lost Will more times than he can count, and finally, finally, Will is safe with him. They live in a safe apartment together, away from Hawkins, away from the small town life, away from their bullies, away from the Upside Down.

Away from all of the trauma that ruined Will’s life over and over again—everything Mike couldn’t protect him from.

Now, Mike shares a wall with his best friend, and their toothbrushes live in the same cup in the bathroom, and their shampoos live on the same window ledge together, and they grocery shop together once a week, and they watch bad movies to fall asleep to every night on their horribly uncomfortable couch, and they dance around to staticky radio music, and they give each other advice on their homework assignments.

And Will is actually safe here. Safe, here, with Mike. Protected. Coveted.

Here, Mike can make sure of that.

All that, and all Mike can say is, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t get to be weird about this,” Will says softly. “After all of your—your extra curricular studying, you can’t be weird when something good finally happens to me.”

Mike’s mouth feels like he’s been chewing on chalk. “I’m not being weird.”

“You’re being weird.”

Mike swallows the dust. “I just—I mean, is he even your type?”

Will nearly laughs. “Mike, what does it matter? Will I be unsafe if he wasn’t? He’s brunette. The horror.”

“So you’re happy,” Mike corrects in a whisper.

Will doesn’t answer, and before he knows it, his microwave is beeping at him to open it. Sighing into his bowl of soft noodles, he shuffles over to the tiny sink and begins to drain them with a fork. “I’m a grown up,” Will eventually settles on, as gentle as he can be about this. “I already lived with one overbearing mother my whole life, you know? You can—you can take a step back. You don’t need to take care of me. I’m okay.”

All Mike can even think to say is, “but I like to take care of you, Will.”

The water from Will’s noodles pouring down the drain fills the silence.

The next day, they don’t talk.

It’s eleven o’clock on a Thursday night in late January when Mike pipes up with, “are you going to call him?” from across the apartment.

Will doesn’t look up at Mike. “Yeah.”

Will calls Carlton at noon the next day. They plan for Sunday at three.

“So, Carlton.”

“That’s his name, yeah.”

“Is he picking you up?”

“He doesn’t drive.”

Mike’s face twists up. He’s sat just a sofa seat away from Will with a novel open in his lap, but he hasn’t been retaining much of it. “Not very gentlemanly to me.”

“Neither of us drive either,” Will points out.

“Because it’s expensive in the city!”

“Yeah,” Will nods, cocking his head at the television screen. He’s not even sure what movie this is—some sci-fi one Mike brought home last week that they haven’t yet gotten around to watching until tonight. “Hence why he doesn’t drive.”

“I’m just saying, you don’t want to date a guy who’s… like, going to take care of you or whatever? You know, pick you up, open your car door, buy you stuff?”

Will tries not to linger too long on that—refuses to get his hopes up. This date will be good for him. After the last couple of startlingly confusing months he’s had within the four walls of this apartment, he needs… something new. Someone who actually gets it. “He’s really sweet, Mike.”

“Is sweet supposed to be good enough for my best friend?”

Will glances over at Mike. Mike isn’t looking up—still staring right down at his book, lost in thought, but Will’s been keeping track on the wall, and he knows Mike hasn’t turned a page in at least ten minutes. Mike shifts uncomfortably. “He’s plenty good enough.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Kind of.”

“Bad nervous?”

“Excited nervous,” Will’s fully staring at Mike now, and he’s pretty sure Mike can feel the scrutiny of Will’s gaze under his skin because he keeps shifting in his seat, readjusting his legs and arms and hair over and over again. “I’ve never been on a date before.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Mike says. “Does he know that?”

“No,” Will says. He’s resting his ear on the back of the couch, now, facing Mike’s direction. “Hasn’t come up yet.”

If Will lets himself dream, he might be able to make out a hint of greed in Mike’s voice. That he knows things Will’s date doesn’t. It makes Will queasy. “Isn’t that a good thing for him to know?”

Will glances away, even though Mike still won’t look at him. “I guess so.”

“I just—” Mike begins, and finally he flips a page. His voice comes out almost desperate as he says, “I just—what if he, like, does too much for you?”

Will cocks his head, perplexed. “Does too much, now?”

“Like—” Mike tries, but the words die in his throat. Nothing sounds—normal. Any way he can possibly think to say this sounds weird, even for him. “Like—kissing or whatever.”

Will chokes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mike huffs, thumbing at the pages of his book, gaze still pointedly downcast. He probably doesn’t even know the title of it anymore. “Will, what if he tries to kiss you and you don’t know what to do?”

There it is.

Mike’s biggest worry—right there, out in the open. The world doesn’t fall apart. Will doesn’t yell or scream or storm out. Will doesn’t even say anything, actually, so finally, finally Mike looks up for—he’s not sure. Approval? A blessing?

Will has the gentlest ghost of a smile on his face, though, which quite confuses Mike. “What?”

“That’s a really weird thing for you to be worrying about, Mike.”

Mike just shrugs. He doesn’t meet Will’s eyes. “I just worry about you.”

“You worry about whether or not I’m a good kisser?”

Silence falls over the two of them. Mike shifts again. “I don’t know if he’s the right one for you to learn that with, is all.”

Will holds his breath. “What, to learn how to kiss with?”

And, to Will’s utter shock, Mike finally says it. “Yeah.”

Will lets it out. Purses his lips. “If not the only boy who’s ever been remotely interested in me, then who, Mike?”

Mike fans through his book. “I don’t know.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause it’s sounding to me like—”

“—I’ll teach you.”

Maybe the world does fall apart outside their window.

“...What?”

“What?”

“You’re—”

“—straight. Obviously. But I’m a good friend who cares about you. A lot. Right?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Will nods. His whole face is burning up, and he tips his head back against the couch. His eyes burn as he stares right into the overhead light. “Straight. Obviously.”

“Don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“You’re the one who just offered to—”

“—I just—isn’t it better to learn with somebody you know and—and trust? Rather than, I don’t know, like, make a fool of yourself in front of somebody you like?”

Will squeezes his eyes shut tight. “You think I’ll make a fool of myself?”

“Not if you learn first,” Mike says, defensive and soft, “I was a terrible kisser my first time. Humiliating. I was just lucky my girlfriend didn’t even know what the hell kissing was.”

“And you don’t want me to… humiliate myself?”

“Exactly,” Mike nods. “Friends—friends kiss all the time. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Will pauses. “Just to be clear—”

“—I don’t, like, want to kiss you,” Mike shuts his book, gripping it tight in his hands. “But I’m willing to. To teach you.”

“To teach me,” Will parrots.

“I’m just—I’d do it. For you.”

Will swallows. Mike jumped off a cliff for him. What’s a little kiss? “For me.”

“Yes,” Mike nods. The room falls quiet again. “Will you?”

There’s hair tumbling in front of Mike’s wild eyes, but Will can see something—something nervous. He can feel it, radiating off of Mike’s skin, coursing through his veins. Something about his posture, the hunch in his big, broad shoulders, the way he’s inched a little closer, his insistence, it all makes Will’s head begin to feel fuzzy, like it did a couple weeks ago with half a bottle of wine sloshing around his belly. Against his better judgment, Will nods one tiny, curt nod, and breathes out a nervous sigh of—of something. It’s definitely not relief.

Mike nods once back, like that settles it all. There’s an unexplainable pit in his stomach.

He’s thinking about The Joy of Gay Sex again, this line from the coming out section, he thinks. He takes the lead, Mike remembers. And nothing terrible happens.

The devil does not rise out of the mattress to claim you.

Mike shifts a couple of inches closer. He takes the lead.

Will doesn’t move any closer. Mike does. Mike’s breath catches, just for a second. “Okay,” he finally says, quieter than he means it to. His eyes flicker down to Will’s lips, pink and slightly parted. There’s a blue ghost of stubble along Will’s jawline that Mike’s not sure he’s ever noticed before, not this close up. His stomach twists up.

And then he leans in.

Will’s breath is hot on Mike’s lips, and something about the burning heat on his skin and deep in his stomach floods his body all at once. It’s so strong he almost pulls away.

The panic gives way to a new surge of pleasure.

Will meets him halfway. That’s what surprises Will the most—the way Will doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t flinch. Just… stays. Closes the distance like he’s been waiting forever, like he’s not the one taking lessons right now.

It’s soft at first. Careful, hesitant, like they’re testing. Will’s lips are a lot softer than Mike expected them to be, and suddenly he’s self conscious that he hasn’t put on lip chap since he moved out of his parents’ house when his mom actually reminded him to put it on every day. Not exactly soft like a girls, though. Different. Will’s cologne floods Mike’s nose.

It’s a good different, Mike thinks.

In fact, it’s so good-different that Mike kind of forgets what he’s supposed to be doing.

Mike’s hands are fisted in the sofa until he abruptly pulls away, eyes wide, and realizes this is supposed to be—this is meant to be a lesson. “Um,” he whispers, “you—um. Good… job.”

“Mike?”

“Just—think about your hands,” Mike clears his throat, whispering right up against Will’s lips. The hands Mike has memorized in his psyche; veiny and slender and warm and so constantly stained, pen ink and charcoal and oil paint. “Like… this,” he breathes, trailing a slow, slow hand up Will’s side, nestling it on his jaw like puzzle pieces slotting together. His thumb finds its home on Will’s cheekbone and he can feel, under his warm fingertips, how hot Will’s skin is. “Ready?”

Will tries to open his mouth, but his throat gives out on him.

“Your turn,” Mike whispers. “It’s simple.”

Will nods against Mike’s breath, imitating how Mike’s hands trailed up his side, lingering on the skin of his waist where his shirt has ridden up, both nestling around Mike’s neck. Mike feels himself twitch under Will’s hands. His stomach jumps. “Good?”

“Perfect,” Mike nods. For a moment, neither of them make a move—they simply stay still, close enough that Mike can feel Will’s breath against his mouth, warm and hesitant and uneven. It’s quiet again, but not the same kind of quiet as before. This time it feels heavier, like something tipped. Like something has begun to sink.

Mike’s thumb shifts against Will’s cheekbone. Will’s eyes flutter shut. Mike leans in and meets his best friend’s lips again without thinking.

It’s stronger, this time. Will tastes like coffee and medicated lip balm. Will is pressed up against Mike nearly everywhere they can be, and it’s still not enough.

That’s when it really hits Mike. Nothing about Carlton will ever be enough for Will.

That’s always only ever been Mike’s job.

Fuck. This isn’t what this was supposed to be.

This was supposed to help Will.

Mike pulls away first, panting into Will’s lips. A string of saliva connects their bottom lips that Mike brings the back of his hand up to his mouth from Will’s jaw, dragging it across his lips and wiping the stickiness away before he even realizes what he’s doing. He can’t look Will in the eyes anymore. Will feels like he wants to throw up all over this ugly couch. “See?” He says, low, like something is so totally wrong. “That’s—that’s all it is.”

Will blinks. Slowly he leans back into the couch when Mike leans away, as if something expensive has shattered and he’s desperately trying to mend the broken pieces all back to where they’re supposed to go. “All it is,” he repeats. He wipes his mouth.

“All set for—for Carlton tomorrow. Easy. You’re—you’re a fast learner.”

“Mike?” Will whispers, desperate, but before Mike can even hear it, he’s already gotten up off the couch, rounded the corner of the hall, and retreated back to his bedroom.

Sunday at three comes and goes. Will doesn’t leave his room.

Mike doesn’t knock, but he does linger outside Will’s door a handful of times Monday, even when he knows Will left early for class. He makes dinner for Will even when he knows Will’s going out for Chinese with Jonathan tonight and didn’t ask Mike to join—which is okay, really, he’s not their brother. It’s just that he’s joined every Byers’ Chinese night for the last year. He makes Will his coffee, too, with way too much sugar which Mike always turns his nose up at, but it’s just how Will likes it, and sets it on the kitchen table until it goes tepid because Will hasn’t been around to drink it. He puts on A New Hope even though it’s Will’s favorite—not Mike’s, even though that’s what he’s told Will since they were kids—and lets it run through twice while he pretends to read his textbooks. He takes Will’s laundry in their shared bathroom hamper to the laundromat downstairs and folds it all up for him when it’s done in the wash.

How does somebody hide in a five-hundred-square-foot apartment?

Apparently, it’s pretty fucking simple.

Mike doesn’t let himself cry. The leaky faucet continues to drip.

He presses his knuckles into his eyes until it washes over. Over, and over, and over.

It’s cloudy on Tuesday. Once, Will missed the clouds of Hawkins.

In New York, he’s not sure he does anymore.

Will is almost twenty-one years old.

He shouldn’t be waking up in tears anymore.

Except tonight, on a cold, January night, he does. Big, hot, ugly tears are pooled in his eyes the moment he opens them, shooting up from bed with something between a gasp and a choke. He can’t even remember what it was about. If he had to guess—probably the usual. A hungry little belly, chapped lips, bloodshot eyes, cold slime spread all over his body. A thunderous, maroon landscape in the middle of the day, as if the sun has exploded in the sky.

Usually he remembers them, though. Usually he wakes up with a pounding in his head, with flashbacks he has to choke down, where he’ll throw the covers off of his sweating body and pad around the corner to Mike’s bedroom, climbing into his twin bed and falling asleep until class the next morning.

Tonight, it’s a quarter past two, and he can’t remember his nightmare this time, and he’s terrified of speaking to Mike again, of further decimating what little willpower he’s been clutching onto for the last decade of his life. Will can hear wind whooshing outside the window. There’s a tree branch outside that loves to bang on the windowpane of Will’s bedroom when it gets windy out.

Will tries. He tries so hard to fist the tears away from his eyes, to practice the breathing exercises his old psychiatrist used to tell him to do when he’d work himself up all by himself, to quit the shivering. He can’t. All he can think about—the only fucking person he wants is Mike.

Except Mike wiped his mouth after they kissed. Mike looked at Will with the most nauseating look Will’s perhaps ever seen on Mike’s face. Mike got up. Left the room. Mike disappeared.

Mike hasn’t wanted to talk to him for—what, three? Four days, now?

Mike doesn’t want to deal with a fucking baby anymore.

A sob escapes past Will’s lips, which he clamps shut with his hand, because despite the wall that separates them, their beds are maybe a foot away from each other at most. Sometimes, when Will is trying to be brave, he’ll curl himself up into a ball on his bed and cry until it inevitably wakes Mike up, no matter how quiet he’s trying to be. They used to joke together that Mike just had this—this instinct for Will. That whenever Will’s in trouble, down to Mike’s cells, he just knows. His neurons fire wrong. His bones ache with it.

Will bites at the palm of his hand to stifle himself. His head is pounding with rage.

Mike doesn’t wake up. Or maybe he does and he’s just ignoring every single firing in his body to come and comfort his best friend.

Or maybe his body has rewired itself.

Will chokes. It tastes like the memory of blood and slime and hunger.

He throws off the comforter of his bed, stepping a foot and then another onto the matted carpet floor. It’s grounding beneath his toes, but still, he’s hunched over in his too-big tee and the sweatpants he’s pretty sure he stole from Mike when they moved in together that hang a little too low on his hips, and he stumbles through the darkness of his bedroom to the door, swinging it open so hard the doorknob hits the back wall of his bedroom before he can even understand what he’s doing, like his cells are being drawn to Mike’s, only a wall and a universe away.

It always takes two steps out of Will’s room until he’s at Mike’s door. Just one, two, there. He doesn’t even need to repeat the same foot twice. Except tonight, at two-thirty in the morning, he walks back and forth between his door and Mike’s like a lost pet, alone and afraid.

He paces, he bites at his palm, and at some point, without even meaning to, like opposing poles, his hand closes around Mike’s doorknob and he turns.

Mike isn’t asleep when Will walks in. He’s not even in his bed. There’s a tall, lanky silhouette facing the window, but Will only catches it for a moment before it’s making a move to the door. “Will?”

“I—I just—” Will tries. His voice doesn’t sound right, like it’s foreign to his ears. He sounds so broken it almost embarrasses him.

There’s strong, grounding arms wrapped around his shoulders before Will can even process how fast Mike is back in his vicinity.

At first, Will doesn’t hug back—just for a second, where Mike thinks maybe he’s ruined everything all in a moment—but then, his resolve dies, and he sobs ugly tears into Mike’s shoulder, letting himself shatter into a million fragmented pieces for Mike to pick up. He does; quietly, in the dark and hollow night, two-thirty in the morning, Mike picks up every single one of them.

Will wakes up at noon the following afternoon, tucked into Mike’s shoulder.

He doesn’t move. He just blinks once, twice, glances around the room—he’s in Mike’s room, right. He’s remembering, now. His eyes feel puffy. His whole body is sweltering.

Mike’s awake, Will realizes. Will notices Mike’s hand is laced through his hair, too, fingers carding and thumb gently rubbing circles into the crown of his head. Will watches, unmoving, as Mike stares up at his ceiling, even breaths and long, tired lashes.

Will groans a little, which startles Mike enough to retract his hand from Will’s hair, which makes Will sit up an inch, blurry eyes on Mike. “How long’ve you been ‘wake?” He mumbles. He watches Mike’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat, head tilted back into his pillow.

“An hour, maybe,” Mike’s voice thrums deep like it always does in the mornings. Will’s body floods with warmth. “Sleep okay?”

“An hour?” Will repeats. He shifts a little, realizing all at once how close he and Mike are pressed up against one another. They’ve been like this for an hour and Mike didn’t move once. Will props himself up on an elbow, rubbing the sleep out of his puffy eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“You were sleepin’,” Mike says softly. “Figured we could just skip class today. You needed it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Will nods, shutting his eyes and groaning a little again. “I’m sorry for—”

“—no, no sorries,” Mike shakes his head. Will frowns. “You had a rough night,” Mike says, softer. He reaches a hesitant hand up, instinctively tucking a long strand of hair behind Will’s ear. “Are you feelin’ okay?”

“Better, yeah,” Will finally agrees. The sun reflecting off of Mike’s white bedroom walls makes his eyes hurt. “We should get up.”

Will feels it before he sees it, the way Mike’s hand lingers in his hair for half a second longer than it needs to, like he’s not sure where exactly it’s supposed to go now. Then it drops back to the mattress between them. “Yeah,” Mike finally agrees.

They both lay still.

Finally Will asks, “do you feel like getting up?”

Mike breathes in, out. A sheepish smile twinges at the corner of his mouth. “No, not really.”

“We should probably eat.”

“Yeah, we probably should.”

But still, in the mess of sweat and blinding sunlight and bedhead and morning breath and tangled limbs, neither of them move.

“—you know, I really wish you didn’t always leave your muddy shoes on the floor.”

“Why didn’t you go on your date?”

“They mess up the carpet and I always have to mop the landing. We’re not going to get our deposit back when we move out.”

“Will, why didn’t you go?”

“And your dishes—you never rinse them when you’re done with them, so they dry out and then we have to spend double the time it takes to wash freshly dirty dishes than two-week-old, crusty ones.”

“You sounded really excited about it. You sounded, um, into him.”

“I wish you picked up your socks from the living room floor more.”

Mike stares right at Will. “Is it because of me?”

Will sucks in a breath. “I just think you should be more considerate of our shared living space,” Will says. “That’s all.”

Mike looks away.

The scarf is itchy on Will’s face. He’s a step behind Mike who’s got his hands shoved in his jean pockets, hunching like he’s trying to make himself smaller amongst the crowd of people they’re threading through.

They don’t talk for the first two blocks.

When they arrive to the grocery store they come to once a week without fail, every Friday afternoon, Mike’s the one to break their silence. “Did you bring a list?”

“Yeah,” Will says. He’s retreated again. He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong—what’s going on in Mike’s stupid, complicated, backtracking head. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He wants to scream and cry and tear his hair out and collapse into Mike’s arms and kiss him, kiss him to fix it, kiss him to break everything down all over again, he doesn’t care.

He wants everything to change. He wants everything to stay the same. He wants everything back to normal. He and Mike have no normal. He and Mike were never normal.

They walk silent through the grocery store, shoulder to shoulder as Mike pushes their cart up and down the aisles. Mike picks up the tofu for Will, the granola bars, the coffee grounds, the yogurt, the milk, the cheese, the lettuce, the carrots, a big bag of apples. Will grabs his favorite canned beans, hummus, some crackers. They wander to the eggs, the bread, the cereal and the rice and the pasta and the potatoes, the frozen vegetables, even though Mike hates eating peas. Bananas. Canned soup. At least ten packages of instant ramen noodles.

“You don’t eat much meat anymore,” Will breaks the silence as they pass the meat coolers. “You can, you know. Have meat in the house. Just ‘cause I don’t doesn’t mean you can’t. I don’t care.”

Mike just shrugs. He laps the meat coolers, glances at them once. He doesn’t pick anything up. He doesn’t need to.

Will wonders if passerby can tell everything between them is wrong. Maybe that sweet old grandma can tell they kissed a week ago and haven’t had a normal night together since. What if that mom and her two screaming toddlers down the chip aisle know that Will has been spiraling about his best friend for months? That couple down the row, choosing which tea to take home as they giggle together into boxes of teabags makes Will sick.

Their total is thirty-eight and some change, rounded out right to forty bucks when Mike chucks two packages of Reese’s Pieces onto the conveyor belt at checkout. Will doesn’t say anything, but he tamps down a smile at the gesture.

Maybe everything is broken here. Maybe peanut butter candy can fix it.

“Why are you being weird again?”

“I’m not being weird.”

Mike’s definitely being weird.

Will’s been sitting on the floor with oil paint tubes littered around him. He’s got a sketchbook open right beside him on the floor with fragmented pencil drawings all over the page. He has this stupid painting—a metaphorical self-portrait, Will’s worst nightmare, as if just a regular self-portrait wasn’t bad enough; Will hates looking at himself like that, like he’s supposed to be something beautiful, like he’s worthy enough to be captured in brushstroke forever—due next week and he’s trying his best to stay on top of it this time. English and math have been kicking his ass lately.

“You’re hovering.”

“I’m sitting ten feet away from you.”

Will still hasn’t turned around, but he can feel Mike’s eyes boring into the back of his head. He’s had something of a sixth sense for Mike’s drilling gaze as long as they’ve known each other. “You’re hovering.”

“I can’t watch my best friend paint?”

“Not when you’re being weird about it.”

“I’m not being weird about anything.”

Will tips his head back just far enough to catch the top of Mike’s bedhead. He’d say he wished Mike brushed his hair more, but he kind of likes it this way. “You’re always weird.”

Mike cocks his head. “How so?”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m reading.”

Will tips his head backward and twists his back, balancing his palette on his lap as he looks at Mike straight on this time. “You don’t even have a book,” he points out with an edge to his voice.

“I’m reading in my head.”

Will squints his eyes. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Thinking of book ideas, then.”

“By staring at the back of my head?”

Mike swallows. “Will, are we ever going to talk about it?”

All Will does is obfuscate by turning back around to face his painting with a clipped on, “about what?”

“I’m being serious, Will.”

“Can you stop saying my name like that?”

”Like what?”

“Like you own me,” Will frowns. He picks up a thin brush, douses it in paint, and straightens his back up toward his canvas. Before he can make a brushstroke, though, he slouches back down again, continuing with, “you’re the one who’s been avoiding it. Actually, no, you’re the one who started it. I have nothing to say.”

Will’s back is still facing Mike—good, because it was a low blow and Will knows it, but he doesn’t think he’d have been able to see the look on Mike’s face at that without his heart splitting clean in half. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah, you did.”

The silence stretches on, as if Mike’s contemplating actually apologizing, but Will should’ve known better. Thank God he’s facing away from Mike when he hears, “I just—I don’t know. It didn’t mean anything. Can we just pretend it never happened?” like a broken repertoire, because had he not been, he’s not sure he’d have been able to hold it together.

You know that moment on a rollercoaster when you’re two hundred feet in the air, and there’s a break in the momentum where you’re just—sitting. Dangling off the edge of a cliff, feet swinging, awaiting your doom. And then, when you least expect it, you freefall with that ugly, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, and all you can do about it is hang onto the lap bar and scream?

The reeking linseed oil is making Will nauseous. There’s a smudge of paint across Will’s lips, the Will kept safely in the canvas, unfractured, smiling shy. The paintbrush is shaking in his hand. He can feel ugly tears brim in his eyes. “I guess.”

“Okay. Cool.”

“Fine.”

Mike doesn’t say anything for a long moment before shifting on the couch, laying his head down on the armrest. He’s picking at a thread on the sleeve of his hoodie. “Do you want me to make dinner tonight?”

“I’m going to school.”

“What?” Mike frowns. “You don’t have school today. It’s already almost seven.”

“I need to finish this painting,” Will says, but his voice cracks like he’s thirteen again. Thirteen and heartbroken over the same fucking boy. He can’t believe he’s let this happen again.

“In the middle of the night?”

Something ugly snaps inside Will and he picks up all of his paintbrushes in a haste, dropping them into his jar of thinner, putting the lid back onto his palette, and clicking it shut. He pushes himself up onto his feet, juggling his glass jar of brushes, the palette, and his sketchbook he’s slammed shut from the floor. He manages his best and most steady, “yup,” before shuffling right past Mike on the couch and slipping into his bedroom.

Will hears a pointed, “wait, what the fuck, Will?” from the living room. He sets down his jar and palette on his desk as carefully as he can before he bites at the palm of his hand. The back of his eyes sting.

He doesn’t let Mike see him cry, though, not even as he pushes past him through the living room with his book bag slung over his shoulder, picking up his still-wet canvas and bee lining out the front door while Mike asks what the hell is wrong with him, muttering something about Mike being, “so fucking stupid,” as he slams the door shut behind him. No, he waits until he boards his subway car en route to Jonathan’s place.

People see worse on the subway every day. He wonders if any of the other passengers in this car are cracking, too.

Vaguely, he wonders if it looks as bad as it feels.

Through blurry eyes, Will stares at his painting, wet paint edge sitting on the disgusting subway floor. It’s gotten smudged. His cheeks, his nose, his lips, the gentle, easy smile on his face has been dragged through by Will’s hoodie sleeve in his rather unceremonious exit.

Wearily, Will stares out the window instead, clutching harder onto the wooden crossbar.

Will doesn’t come home for three days, so his yogurt from their grocery run spoils in the fridge. Mike doesn’t throw it out.

Mike sleeps on the floor of Will’s bedroom the second night, and he tucks himself into Will’s sheets the third. He doesn’t remake the bed in the morning.

He misses his newest short story’s deadline.

God, that stupid fucking tap. The dripping drives Mike crazy all alone here. Mike calls the landlord again. Can you please send someone to finally fix this?

Will’s never been very brave, but then again, maybe Mike’s not either, he thinks, because neither are brave enough to speak first the day Will finally comes home from Jonathan’s place.

But the tap is finally fixed, so that must be something, even though Will doesn’t mention it.

He doesn’t mention the unmade bed, either.

“It’s grocery day,” Mike says.

Will glances up at the calendar. Surprisingly, Mike flipped it to February while Will was gone. It’s already Friday? Huh. “Yeah.”

“Can we go together?”

“What, ‘cause you’re too weak to carry everything by yourself?”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to come with me, then yeah.”

“Did you make a list?”

“Yeah,” Mike says. “You need yogurt.”

“Okay,” Will agrees. “Let me get dressed, then.”

“What’d you get on your story?”

Their shoebox of an apartment smacks of coffee. “Huh?”

“I remember you had a new story to hand in last week. What’d you get on it?”

“Oh,” Mike mumbles. He’s stirring an obscene amount of sugar into Will’s favorite mug. “I don’t know. I haven’t finished it yet.”

He brings Will his drink. With the gentlest smile, Will takes it from Mike’s hands, and he brings it up to his lips. “You’ve had all week.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. “Just haven’t been in a writing mood.”

Mike wants to ask about Will’s self-portrait, the one that was due on the same day as Mike’s story was, but he doesn’t.

Somewhere in between the not talking about it and the really not talking about it, it sort of does get easier to pretend things are fine again. Because they’re Mike and Will, best friends and partners-in-crime and enemies and roommates and classmates and soulmates all at once, and neither of them are strangers to pretending.

Mike still watches Will paint. Will still sits on the opposite end of their shitty sofa. Mike still rests his feet in Will’s lap. Will still puts on movies they’ve seen a dozen times together for background noise. They talk, but they don’t talk. Mike still looks at Will with the same wild eyes, and against his better judgement, Will still lets him.

Somewhere in between, they end up at the fucking club again.

This club fucking stinks of booze and sweat and probably vomit. Will doesn’t remember it smelling so bad the last time they came, but then again, the last time they came he drank two vodka lemonades and the Star Wars guy sent him over a shot of something nasty from across the bar. He doesn’t exactly remember how it smelled.

But it smells in here tonight. And the air is stuffy, and everybody is dancing just a little too close, and the music kind of sucks, and the strobes are giving him a headache deep in his temples, and the fucking smoke machine smells like it’s really on fire. Somebody traces the back of Will’s arm as they walk by behind him and it sends a sinking feeling through Will’s body. Will can feel eyes on him all night.

And yet, they dance.

Shoulder to shoulder on the sticky floor of an underground club they shouldn’t even technically be in for another two months. They’re sober off of overpriced Sprite from the bar and they’re drunk off of each other.

Will keeps his eyes mostly forward, on the crowd, on the lights, on the DJ up front, anywhere but at Mike, even though his eyes have been drawn to Mike for as long as he’s known what really looking feels like. It’s easier like that, he thinks. Pretending is easy—he’s been pretending his whole life. Performing for a crowd of one; he can’t decide if the audience is supposed to be Mike or himself anymore, though.

Maybe that’s why Will sees him come before Mike does, with that sinking feeling in his gut again. Watches a tall guy with dark hair and a five o’clock shadow tap Mike on the shoulder from behind, hardly a foot away from Will, muttering something to Mike that Will can’t make out under all the noise, not even as he stares at the guy’s lips to figure it out—his best guess is, “I’ve been looking at you from across the room,” or maybe, hopefully, “I keep losing all my balloons on the moon.”

He’s smiling into Mike’s ear.

There’s a hand hanging low on Mike’s waist.

The whole room is flooded in green light, soft on Mike’s skin, Will’s yellow shirt, the floor and the smoke and the crowd, but Will can tell, even under the fluorescents, that all of the color drains from Mike’s face as soon as he registers that somebody who isn’t Will is touching him.

In an instant, Mike is slinking away from him and into Will’s space like a gravitational pull, a protective hand lacing itself around Will’s waist as if they’ve practiced this a thousand times before. The floor is thrumming beneath their feet. “Can you get the fuck away from me?” Mike shouts. “I’m clearly here with someone.”

Will’s eyes grow wide at Mike’s outburst, glancing from Mike to the guy, back to Mike, and back to his admirer. He raises his hands like he’s been caught by the cops, chuckling out a halfhearted, “shit, man, I didn’t know. Y’all ain’t even dancin’ together.”

Black and white strobes surge. Mike shuffles in even closer to Will at the accusation, grumbling a vague, “I have—I have Will,” as if any of that matters to Five O’clock Shadow over here. “He’s—”

There’s a knowing look in this guy’s eye, one Will’s afraid to meet. He keeps his eyes firmly on Mike, tucked safe into his side. He doesn’t seem particularly interested in dealing with Mike’s outburst anymore, though, since he turns right to Will with a drunken smile on his face and says, “brother, you’ve gotta keep a tighter leash on him, else you’re gonna lose—”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before Mike’s snaking a hand up Will’s back, another cradling his jaw, kicking at one of Will’s feet to get him to turn away. To protect him. Mike leans in close to Will, Sprite and hostility hot on his breath and hotter on Will’s lips. Will’s back is turned to the man, now, but Mike’s not looking at Will. He’s glaring right over Will’s shoulder.

Will swallows thick. His eyes flutter shut right as the beat drops, right as the room bursts into a cacophony of cheers and drums and blinding red lights, right as he feels a hot tongue on his bottom lip, right as he doesn’t move an inch out of Mike’s tight hold on him.

Will doesn’t see it, but the man eventually backs away in surrender.

Mike doesn’t care to see it either.

Mike doesn’t move. Doesn’t drop his hands, his eyes don’t dare soften. He stares straight down at Will, eyes wide and wanting, needing, as he breathes hot on Will’s lips. Stares hard as if Will’s the only other person in this damn room, as if Five O’clock Shadow never even existed. Will shudders under Mike’s hands like he’d let Mike lay him out and pick him apart right here if he wanted to. Will’s breath catches hard, his hands hovering before settling, unsure, low on Mike’s waist, gripping his jacket as if Mike will fade away if he doesn’t.

The thing about kissing Mike Wheeler is that it’s nothing like Will expected it to be.

He’s laid awake for a decade of his life at night, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what it’d feel like to finally be seen. To be looked at and understood—not see through like broken glass. To be cradled and taken care of and chosen.

Kissing Mike feels like none of that.

Kissing Mike is clumsy, mind numbing. Desperate. It’s overbearing and protective and nauseatingly possessive. It’s like his mouth is insistent as if he’s trying to say something without the words to back it up—something Mike’s been doing a lot these days.

Mike’s grip on Will tightens, on his jaw and pulling at the collar of his shirt behind his neck, as he pulls away from Will’s mouth, panting hard, glancing down at a string of spit connecting their lips. This time, Mike doesn’t move either of his hands an inch—he won’t let go again. Instead, he leans in impossibly close to Will’s face again, breathes heavy on Will’s lips, and drags his tongue across his bottom lip to clean up what he left behind.

Will swallows down a whine. His hands go slack on Mike’s waist.

Mike lets out the softest, breathy laugh at Will, dragging his fingertips slow down Will’s spine, settling them on his lower back, pressing Will’s hips into his from behind. Will drops his head on Mike’s shoulder, breath catching and uneven. His stomach feels all knotted up. He can feel himself slipping.

He can’t quite think straight anymore.

Doesn’t really want to. He’s lost all resolve, and probably all his dignity, too.

He doesn’t really care.

Fuck, he’s so going to regret this in the morning.

“Will,” Mike whispers. Somehow it cuts through the noise like a megaphone against Will’s ear, even though there’s shouting and booming bass and heavy drums making his head throb.

“Don’t,” Will says. His head is still resting on Mike’s shoulder, fuzzy, gone.

Let me pretend for one more night.

In the morning, Will wakes up with a pounding behind his eyes and cotton in his mouth, blistering sunlight blanketing the room through bent metal blinds that only cover half his window. He wants to roll over and shove his face back into his pillow, pretend last night never happened. Sleep the whole day away.

Pretend the only thing separating him and Mike isn’t a foot of space and an inch of drywall.

Fuck. He really has to piss.

The alarm clock on his bedside table reads just past ten. If Will is lucky, Mike will still be asleep, maybe until mid-afternoon like usual, so Will can try and think of—of anything to say to Mike.

But since he’s Will Byers, Mike is already awake with a cup of English breakfast, a stack of buttered, rye toast, and an extra-strength ibuprofen ready for Will. Confusing, brutal, greedy Mike.

Will pushes on the door to his bedroom with a light hand, shuffling his feet past the frame into the hall. Mike startles, whipping his head to the sound. “You’re awake.”

Will only groans. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Mike nods. He sets down the mug he was pouring. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Will says. He brings a hand up, shuffling his bedhead out of his eyes. “You?”

“Fine,” Mike says.

Will steps a foot further into the kitchen. He wonders if they’re going to talk about it this time, or if they’re going to live in limbo forever. Will would, he thinks, if Mike asked. He’s pathetic. He’d do anything Mike wanted from him, even if it killed him. He always has.

“You didn’t even drink,” Mike finally pipes up with. “But I have Advil for you. And breakfast.”

Will swallows thick. He pulls out his chair at the table as Mike brings Will’s plate and his favorite mug. “Why are you doing all of this?”

“‘Cause I’m your friend?”

Will wants to scream. Wants to freefall on that damn rollercoaster for all he cares. “Right,” is all he says, though. Because he can’t. He’s Will—he can’t scream. He can’t explode.

“Right, what?” Mike frowns. He sets down Will’s toast, but Will doesn’t touch it. “We’re not friends anymore?”

Will’s head throbs. He tips his head back, popping his Advil, washing it down with a sip of the tea Mike made. Maybe it’s the headache that finally lets him say, “I don’t know what we’re supposed to be anymore, Mike,” because he’s so, so tired of pretending. He can’t keep this up anymore.

Mike hunches against the kitchenette. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You act so clueless sometimes for somebody so smart.”

“I’m not—”

“—Mike, can I ask you something?”

The hunch in Mike’s shoulders worsens. Still, he nods. “Whatever you want.”

Will rubs his temples with the pads of his fingers. “What was last night about?”

“The club?”

Will wants to scream. “The—”

“—he was being weird, Will.”

“He was being a normal gay guy in a normal gay bar. You know, the place where gay guys go and assume the other guys there are like them?”

“I don’t care about that,” Mike admits, small. Timid, maybe. He won’t look Will in the eyes. “He should’ve known I was there with someone.”

“But you weren’t.”

“I was so,” Mike’s voice rises, stronger, “I was with you. I was dancing with you.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Will sighs. His vision is dancing, migraine spots twinkling out of the corner of his eyes. “God, I can’t—”

“Seeing all of those guys staring at you last night made me sick, Will.”

Will squints his eyes open, right up at Mike. “What?”

Mike kicks a foot. The lights are so, so bright, blindingly so. “I don’t want anyone else touching you like that,” he mumbles. He shuffles toward the lightswitch, noticing Will’s telltale squinting. He knows Will’s headaches a mile away.

Will breathes a gentle sigh of relief. “I can’t do this with you right now,” Will whispers. “My head might explode.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Mike whispers.

“Are you doing this all on purpose? To—to make an idiot of me?”

“Doing what on purpose?”

Will’s lip quivers. “You—for God’s sake, Mike.”

“What, Will? Why can’t you be—be honest with me? For once?”

Will shoves the chair back from the table, taking a step backwards. Mike doesn’t see it. Maybe Mike will never see it. Maybe Mike really doesn’t get him as well as Will thought he did. Still, his voice wavers, “all I’ve been is honest with you.”

“Not if—”

Will clutches his head. “The—the painting, Mike. And the—those stupid phone calls. The letters. Moving in with you, for God’s sake. Are you—are you blind?”

Mike frowns. Usually he stands inches taller than Will, something Will’s always liked about him, but now, his shoulders are still hunched like he’s—ashamed, maybe. Or afraid. Afraid of Will. Afraid of himself. All he can mutter out is a clipped, “what?”

“Don’t be stupid. I know you’re not stupid.”

Mike’s face drains of color. Will is still hovering a couple of feet away, head in his hands, afraid, like a deer ready to flee. “What are you saying?”

Will tilts his head, gives Mike a wry smile, squinting at him. “You know exactly what I’m saying.”

“For how long?” Mike whispers. “How long, Will?”

“Fuck. Forever, Mike. Who cares? Why does it matter?”

“It—it matters,” Mike feels his lip quiver. Slowly he shuffles to Will, standing still at the table, hunched over his untouched toast and tea, and extends a hand out. “Here.”

Will’s resolve hasn’t returned, apparently. He’s always been easy. He takes Mike’s hand, warm and calloused and big against his own, and swallows thick. Mike has Will stand up slowly, wrapping a gentle arm around his waist, and leads him back to his own bedroom, curtains drawn.

Sleep. A nap. Yeah, Advil and a nap and Mike’s chest sounds really, really fucking good right now. He knows it’ll all hurt like a bitch in a couple of hours—deep in his chest, the regret, the disgust, but somehow, Will can’t find it in himself to care.

“Mornin’, sleepyhead.”

Will groans. His mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton and trying to swallow feels like fucking sandpaper in his throat. “Huh?”

“How’s the head?”

There’s—a hand in Will’s hair, and tingles down his spine, so… good. Pretty good. Fuck. “Mmmf,” Will groans out again. His skin is on fire under Mike’s blankets, against his clothes, his skin. “Time is it?”

“Afternoon sometime,” Mike says. “Feeling okay?”

“Better,” Will says. The pounding in his head has thankfully subsided, but his brain may aswell be Jell-o. “What are you—did you sleep?”

“No,” Mike says, sharp, simple. He’s still threading his fingers through Will’s messy hair.

Will chokes on a breath. “You’ve just been laying here with me?”

“Yeah,” Mike nods. Like it’s easy. Like this is easy for him.

Will can’t believe how easy it looks for Mike.

“Why?”

“You weren’t feeling good.”

Will collapses again against Mike’s pillow. The—the club. The guy. The kiss. The haze. This morning. The painting, the letters. Mike’s fucking fingers in Will’s fucking hair. Mike’s cologne. Mike’s two-day-old facial hair. Mike’s greedy eyes. Mike’s bed.

“You’re so—confusing,” is all Will says. All his dumb, messed up brain will let him say.

“What, I can’t take care of you?”

“Not like this,” Will whispers. He doesn’t pull away, though. Not like this. Not like this, but please, let’s stay like this forever.

Mike swallows. He tilts his chin down, glancing at Will’s flushed cheeks, his puffy eyes. “I know you better than anyone else does, don’t I?”

“What?”

“I know you better than anyone else in the world,” Mike states, like it’s an indisputable fact. “How did I miss it?” Mike’s arms tighten around Will’s body, like he’s making sure Will won’t get up and flee on him. Will’s chest flutters and sinks all at once.

“It’s humiliating,” Will sighs. “And I shouldn’t have even—can we pretend I never said that?”

“No,” Mike says, immediate and soft. “No, I don’t want to do that.”

“I do,” Will groans. “It’s disgusting.”

“Shut up,” Mike says. “It’s not.”

“It is,” says Will, burrowing himself into Mike’s blankets, as if he’s trying to hide from him.

Mike flips the blanket up, though. Huffs as he shakes his head at Will. “Stop hiding from me,” Mike says, gentle. “I want to see you. Please?”

With a crimson-flushed face, Will shakes his head, groaning like he’s going to be sick. “Why aren’t you disgusted with me?”

“It’s not disgusting.”

“I don’t want this to ruin our… um, everything,” Will says, soft, like he’s afraid. Mike tightens his hold around Will’s shoulder. “I know it’s a huge—”

Mike cradles Will like he’s precious. Maybe he always has and Will’s never noticed it, too worried about pulling away, keeping a thick wall of glass up between them so Mike doesn’t get the wrong idea. Maybe, though, just maybe, though Will’s never let himself consider it, Mike’s wrong and sick in all the same ways Will is. “Has it ruined everything so far?”

“I…”

“We’re still in bed like we always are,” Mike points out. Will thinks he can feel Mike’s heart racing under his hoodie as he readjusts on Mike’s chest. “I still love you like I always have.” Something ugly bubbles up inside Will at that. The room is bright enough that Will would be shocked if Mike didn’t notice Will’s face drain.

That’s exactly the issue. “I know you do.”

“I still want to take care of you and—and help you. Still want you to feel safe with me.”

“I do,” Will whispers. He’s not sure he means it anymore.

“I think I’m the only person who gets you.”

Will sputters. Mike tightens his arm around Will again. Don’t hide from me. “That’s a… a big ask, Mike.”

“I’ve—I’ve been waiting to feel about you what I remembered feeling for El,” Mike says slowly, nodding to himself as if trying to convince himself of what he’s saying. “And it hasn’t—it hasn’t happened. None of it. I don’t—I don’t feel any different about you than I did yesterday, or last week, or five years ago. It’s all been the same to me.”

“Way to let me down easy,” Will mumbles. His eyes sting again. He’s so—tired. He’s exhausted. He wants to crawl into Jonathan’s arms, even Mom’s, let himself cry and cry until there’s nothing left to rid himself of. Purify himself.

“I don’t think that’s what I’m saying,” Mike frowns. He tucks a stray piece of hair behind Will’s ear. “I don’t know what I’m saying. With El, I—I never got that big sinking feeling like Lucas talks about. I never knew what to do. Was like I was coasting with her. It’s just not the same with you.”

Will’s throat feels tight. He can’t look up anymore, he just stares at Mike’s chipping dresser drawers. “What’s it like with—with me, then?”

“Easy,” Mike breathes. “Like—like breathing after being underwater. I thought the—the coasting was normal, you know, maybe different people experience it different. That’s what I’ve always felt like with—with girls, so I was kind of waiting for—for it to start feeling like that with you, for you to feel more like… that. But it hasn’t, I guess.”

Will finally glances up at Mike, who’s laying, propped up against the wall with a pillow behind his head. His eyes look red in the dim light of his bedroom. “What—are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I—my prof, for sociology last semester, she was teaching us about—about people like… um, you know, for a couple of lectures. And… I don’t know. I guess some of what she said was… a lot. I think that what I—felt about El, it wasn’t… normal. So I just—did what I always do.”

Will swallows. “Obsess?”

Mike clears his throat. “Get all weird about you.”

Will tips his forehead closer to Mike’s chin. “You’ve always been weird about me.”

“You know, when she broke up with me,” Mike chews on his lip, sighing a deep, hollow sigh, “I was relieved.”

“You didn’t seem relieved. You cried for a week.”

“I did not,” Mike gasps softly. “I just—I don’t know if this was a big—a big realization for me either,” Mike whispers finally. “I think it’s always been there for me, too. I just didn’t—get it. Until last night, or—or maybe a few months ago, so I just—shoved it all onto you. Like I always do.”

Will freezes. “What are you—”

“I don’t really know.”

“It’s—it’s okay,” Will whispers. He gnaws on his lip, frowning up at Mike. “It’s okay not to, I—I guess I kind of figured. For a while, maybe. Or… like, hoped. I don’t know.”

Mike tips his head back. Will catches a stray tear fall from his eye, and he shoves himself up on an elbow. “I think about you. All the time. And I don’t think that’s—normal either, so I don’t get how—how I missed it for so long. You—fuck, I don’t know. You’re so beautiful—how you love, Will. I—I never got how you thought you were disgusting. I hate hearing you say that, I—everything about you. I never got it. I missed it all.”

A gentle hand threads itself back through Will’s hair, and Will sees Mike’s lip begin to quiver. “Hey, no, Mike—”

“I don’t—it’s not bad for me, Will. I just—I’m so clueless. I want to know—want to learn everything. About me. And—and you.”

Will stares down at Mike, a little wobbly on his arm, still weak from sleep. “So, all the questions?”

“Genuinely helpful!”

“And the porn tapes?”

“Oh my god,” Mike groans. “Can we never mention that again?”

“Does it make it better or worse that I’m genuinely asking?”

“Both,” Mike tips his head back. Warmth blooms through his chest, all up his shoulders and neck, settling high in his cheeks. Will smiles.

Mike throws his free arm over his eyes, letting out a gentle, embarrassed laugh. “Was I subtle, at least?”

“Mike Wheeler and subtle in the same sentence?” Will prods. “Hardly. Confusing, yeah. Subtle? Hell no.”

“Fuck,” Mike groans. “How do you even—put up with me? God.”

“It’s easy when I—” Will starts, but frowns, cutting himself off. His cheeks flush as he lays himself back down.

“When you, what?” Mike prods. He lays his arm down, now, propping himself up to see Will better. Will’s hiding his face again. “No, let me see you—no more hiding,” he says, “when you, what?”

“When I—I fell in love with you a million years ago for how—how stupidly passionate you are, Mike,” Will groans. “Like, unwaveringly. It actually makes me sick sometimes.”

“And you say you never write?” Mike scoffs. “You should pick it back up again.”

Will flushes. “No, that’s your job,” Will shakes his head. “Writing your stupid best friends falling in love with each other.”

“My professor’s going to love this new development, don’t you think?”

“Huh?”

Mike purses his lips in a tight line. “He helped me.”

“With?”

“My story.”

Will squints. “Your story, huh?”

“I may have gone to him the week you were gone,” Mike squints back. “And cried during his office hours. May have. May.”

“About me?”

“Who else?” Mike quirks a brow. “Lucas?”

“I mean—you know Lucas’s favorite sex position,” Will scrunches up his nose, sweet like a bunny, “and you seemed pretty—”

“—was that one subtle, at least?”

Will’s head falls to Mike’s chest. “What are you asking, Wheeler?”

“Asking your type,” Mike brings a slow, delicate hand up Will’s back and cradling the back of his neck. Will’s never much liked people touching his neck—obvious reasons, he’s sure—but Mike cradling him like he’s precious, fingers gentle against his skin, threaded through the nape of his hair, thumb pressed securely into his jawbone? His brain could do for a rewire. “Can I know it, now? You never told me.”

“Annoying nerds,” Will grins into Mike’s hoodie.

“Dark hair? Lanky, bad style, fake glasses, kind of ugly?”

Will frowns, furrowing his eyebrows as he looks up at Mike. Really studies him—as if he couldn’t paint his face from memory by now. Smooth skin, sharp nose, dark eyes, wild curls, strong jaw. Angles and edges and valleys. Acne scars like battle wounds. Long lashes. Hollow cheeks. Mike seems to squirm under Will’s gaze, for maybe the first time in his life. He’s never been looked at like—like he’s beautiful before. “Beautiful,” Will whispers.

Mike swallows. Will watches his Adam’s apple bob up and down, nervous. “Biased.”

“Objective,” Will shakes his head. He brings a tentative hand up, staring right at Mike’s face, tracing a finger down the hollow of his cheekbones. “Beautiful boy.”

Mike turns his face away. “No, Will.”

“No more hiding,” Will scrunches up his face while Mike groans. “Don’t turn away from me. I’ve never been allowed to look at you like—like this before.”

“You can’t just steal my lines.”

“All mine now,” Will says. He traces a finger down Mike’s jaw and Mike shivers under his warm skin. Whether he means the lines or Mike, he’s not quite sure.

“Can you be honest with me?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think the glasses are hot?”

Will chokes. “Michael Wheeler.”

“I asked for honesty, Will Byers!”

“They make you look like a dork, Mike.”

“But?”

Will glances at Mike. His eyes trail the black frames, sloping over his nose, caging his eyes. The tips of his ears light up, burning red. “But they make you look…” Will swallows. “Smart. Pretty. Kind of unbearably, actually.”

“Jesus, Will.”

“Tell me about it, Mike.”

As it turns out, learning how to love each other out loud is a lot easier done than said.

Mike still cooks most of their meals, standing hunched over the stove of their kitchenette. He still makes Will’s tea, his coffee, his buttered rye toast. He still forgets to rewind their VHS tapes before returning them to Blockbuster. He still picks out Will’s tofu at the grocery store, he hasn’t touched a piece of meat in months, he still sits and squirms under Will’s sparkling, knowing eyes when Will needs a muse for a new painting. He still lays his smelly feet on Will’s lap during movie nights. He still writes about them in code for his assignments, and his professor still laughs at him during office hours. He still cradles Will when he cries, buries his face in his chest after nightmares.

Will still paints Mike like God himself crafted each freckle and mole and hair on his body. Will still cleans up after Mike, his stupid socks he lays everywhere, the mud on the floor he never remembers to wash up. He still lays blankets over Mike as he falls asleep on the couch to yet another A New Hope rerun even though he knows damn well it’s not Mike’s favorite of the trilogy. Still, he lets Mike cradle him, lets Mike rant, lets Mike pace grooves into the apartment floor, back and forth and back and forth, when he’s so stressed he can’t think straight. He still reads Mike’s stories and gives feedback, however biased it may be. He buys Mike’s Thai and draws Mike the Brave for the billionth time.

Except now, they’re allowed to say the quiet part out loud.

Sometimes Mike sits up off the couch, wraps an arm around Will’s shoulders and drags his head down into a mess of blankets covering his lap so Will can rest his weary head. He’ll lace his and Will’s fingers together under the blankets during Party movie nights and it’ll send Will’s heart into a wild, nauseating panic. Mike presses a chaste kiss to Will’s temple when he hands him off his tea in the morning. One day, Will came home from class to both of their tiny twin beds pushed up together in Mike’s bedroom, even though his is smaller, so they don’t have to wake up with sore necks and backs anymore. Mike still takes Will to the club sometimes, too, except he wraps an arm around his waist and holds him close like he means it. They play footies under the kitchen table now, like they’re twelve with a crush. Mike rests his head on Will’s shoulder and kisses his neck when Will’s cooking, or painting, or watching T.V. from behind. He tucks fallen strands of hair behind Will’s ear and blushes at himself.

Now, Will lets his eyes linger on Mike without a paintbrush in sight. What once felt so deplorable, so shameful, so sickening, makes Mike smile and blush and laugh and hold Will’s little face in both of his hands like he’s precious, too. Mike will say things off the cuff, I missed you today, or you look pretty like that, or, God, can I kiss you? and it’ll send Will’s head reeling. The other day, Mike dragged Will into his lap and buried his face into the crook of Will’s neck because you feel better than my blankets do.

It’s so easy. Will never thought he deserved easy.

Will never thought he deserved to breathe without worrying about the heaviness in his chest suffocating him slowly.

Loving Mike is even easier than breathing. He thinks it always has been.

“No, you—”

“—no, you—”

“—Will, what are you—”

“—Mike, I swear to—”

“—if we die again, I’m going to—”

“—I didn’t kill us last—”

“—fuck—”

“—time.”

Mike tips his head back. “That was your fault.”

“My fault? You’re the one who just launched us over the—”

“—yeah, baby. Your fault.”

The controller stills in Will’s hand. Mike’s never said that before.

Will’s whole body floods with heat. He turns his face away from Mike, all the shock and anger and irritation flowing right through and out. “What?”

Mike pauses. A quiet beat passes between them. “Oh, was that not—”

“—say it again.”

Mike hesitates. “Baby?”

Will swallows down a grin. An embarrassing, sheepish, tiny grin. “Yeah. That.”

Mike sets his own controller down on the coffee table, reaching out for Will’s body like it’s instinct, now. Maybe it always has been. “You’re all red,” he points out, twisting at Will’s hoodie sleeve. Well, his own hoodie sleeve, actually.

“Shut up.”

“Can’t, baby,” Mike says, soft and gentle and low, and Will’s belly blooms with heat. “Gimme that,” Mike takes the controller from Will’s slack hands. “C’mere.”

Will’s halfway through sketching a page he’s kind of hating when the door to their place slams open. Mike doesn’t kick his shoes off—surprise, surprise—but he drops his bag, right on top of Will’s, the same way he’s done a thousand times before. “I’m pretty sure my prof is trying to kill me.”

“Hi to you too,” Will calls from across the apartment. His legs are tucked underneath himself, curled up in the corner of their ugly, ugly couch. Will hates it worse every time he sits on it. He doesn’t know how Mike falls asleep on this thing. “What happened?”

Mike mutters something incomprehensible while shrugging out of his jacket, throwing it on the back of Will’s kitchen table chair. The apartment smells like rain as cold air floods in around him. His curls are damp at the edges.

And then, in three long strides, Mike crosses the apartment and cups Will’s jaw in both hands without even slowing down, and he kisses him. One, two, three seconds. Chaste and sweet and instinctual. He tracks mud along the whole kitchen floor and carpet.

Will’s pencil slips across the page as his body goes slack in Mike’s hands.

Mike’s already striding away by the time Will’s brain catches up to what just happened, disappearing into the kitchenette. “Why is it freezing in here?” he complains, rifling through cabinets. “Did the radiator die again? How aren’t you cold?”

Will’s staring at the wall, eyes wide. His mouth won’t move, never mind make a sound, but his fingers do, pressing two gentle fingers to his bottom lip, tracing the tingling.

“Will? Hey, are you—”

“—you kissed me.”

Mike turns back over his shoulder. He sees Will, two fingers pressed up against his beautiful, delicate lips, and finally, his heart skips a beat in his chest. “I did kiss you.”

“Oh my god.”

“You just came home and—and kissed me.”

Mike’s ears start turning pink as he stares between Will and the pantry cabinet door. His stomach grumbles. “Well, yeah, I just—” he gestures helplessly, picking out a box of probably expired Ritz from the cupboard, “I—I saw you. You’re all—curled up and… and cozy. Pretty.”

Will swallows. “Oh,” he whispers. His sketchbook has been discarded in his lap with his red face now buried deep in his hands. “Okay. That’s…” Will makes a precious, strangled noise into his hands.

Mike abandons the crackers on the counter and strides back across the apartment again immediately. “C’mere,” he says, laughing now, that breathless sort of way he does when he’s overwhelmed. “Jesus Christ, you’re red.”

Will buries his face deeper into his hands. “You’re so—”

“Hey,” Mike says, softer. He crouches down in front of Will, curled up into the couch, soft hair and red cheeks and squeezed-up face. “No. No hiding, Will. C’mere,” he says softly, like he’s suddenly afraid to scare Will away. He gently grabs both of Will’s wrists, pulling them away from his face “Aw. Yeah, there you are. Hi, baby.”

Will’s face burns. “You kissed me hello,” Will accuses weakly as Mike crowds into his space again. “You’ve never done that before.”

Mike just grins and straightens himself up, a firm hand on Will’s jaw. “I did,” he says, and he presses another to Will’s lips.

“—the sea crashed on the shore as brilliant rays of sun shone off the white caps. Salt clung to the air and the waves broke endlessly at their bare feet, buried in sand, devastatingly gold and blue beneath the setting sun. His smile looked like sunlight through stained glass; warm, reverent, burning. The kind of beautiful that hurt to look at for too long,” Will reads. “Are you kidding?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“He looked like someone worth praying to. I mean, Mike, seriously.”

“What?”

“You’ve never written like this before.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s… mushy.”

“Whatever,” Mike grumbles, snatching his notebook back from Will. He slams it shut.

“—hey, I was—”

“—nope, you’ve lost story privileges.”

Will frowns. “Give it back.”

“No way. You—”

Will squints, shoving his blanket off his lap and standing up, towering above Mike, staring right down at him. “Not even now?”

Mike tosses his notebook aside. “No.”

Will only shrugs, gently picking up the blanket from Mike’s lap now, too, shuffling himself to straddle Mike’s thighs. He snakes a slow arm behind Mike’s neck, threading his fingers through Mike’s grown-out curls. “What about now?”

Mike’s breath catches hard enough Will feels it against his own chest. “You’re… cheating,” he says weakly.

“You wrote it,” Will murmurs, thumb tracing slowly through the curls at the nape of Mike’s neck. “Not me. Don’t blame me for you being gross and mushy.”

Mike’s face burns bright red beneath him. “You weren’t supposed to read all of that out loud.”

“Why?” Will tilts his head, devastatingly gentle, terrifyingly close to Mike’s face. “You meant it, didn’t you?”

“I mean everything,” Mike swallows. Will tips his head forward, pressing his forehead against Mike’s. “You know I do.”

“Yeah,” Will breathes. His eyes drop down to Mike’s lips. “Yeah, I know.”

“Hey, Will?”

“Yeah?”

They’re sitting side-by-side, pressed up against one another in the back of an empty subway car, bundled up in sweaters and hats because New York City decided April was a good time to have snow again. “I’ve got a question.”

Will tilts his head toward Mike, silent.

“How do—” Mike frowns. “Um, like, when two guys are—are into each other,” he continues, kicking a foot out, “and they, like, kiss and sleep in the same bed and call each other baby and stuff in private, who, like, asks who?”

Will has to turn away to suppress his smile. “Asks who what, Wheeler?”

Mike hesitates. “To be boyfriends someday? Hypothetically?”

Will thinks his heart could explode. “Whoever’s richer, I think,” he grins.

Mike’s face flushes. “Are you sure? ‘Cause—”

“—oh, I’m sure, baby.”

Mike frowns, glancing off. “You’re enjoying this way too much. I’m trying to be serious.”

“You ask stupid questions on purpose,” Will shrugs.

“And you never answer them!”

Will smiles, slow and soft beneath his scarf. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question.”

Mike swallows. “Would you say yes? Hypothetically?”

Will finally turns back to Mike, reaching out and pulling at Mike’s scarf. “You’re still asking the wrong question, Mike.”

Mike’s face scrunches up. “C’mon.”

“You never asked if I already think you’re my boyfriend,” Will says quietly. The subway car rattles beneath them both, screeching softly against the tracks as it barrels downtown, but Mike just stares at Will like the whole world has narrowed down to the handful of inches between their lips. “What do you think I’d say if you did?”

“Oh,” is all Mike says, devastatingly faint.

Will’s fingers are still tangled loosely in Mike’s scarf. “Yeah, genius. Oh.”

“So, like, hypothetically…?”

“Yes. You idiot.”

There’s tears in Mike’s eyes the moment he shuts the door behind himself after ushering Will in. They both rid themselves of their winter gear before Will finally realizes Mike’s choking back sobs. “I—Mike, hey, what’s—”

“I’m so sorry,” he chokes out, “I’m so—I feel like a fucking idiot, I just—”

“—hey, no, none of that,” Will shakes his head, standing up tall on his tip-toes. “It’s not—”

“—you’re so brave,” Mike hiccups. He ducks out of Will’s grasp. “It’s our best friends. I’ve known them for—forever. I don’t know why I can’t—be honest with them. I’m not—I’m not ashamed of you. Or—or me. I’m not, I just—”

Will extends both of his arms around Mike’s neck, tucking his boyfriend’s face into the crook of his shoulder as Mike chokes back these nauseating cries. “I know you’re not,” Will whispers. “I know. Hey, it’s okay. It’s not—”

“—it’s not okay,” Mike swallows. He wraps his arms weakly around Will’s middle. “You’re so brave. You—you told them forever ago, even when you didn’t want to. I’m so—pathetic. I’m—”

“—if you say sorry one more time, Michael,” Will threatens, but it’s completely and utterly empty. “Just because they’re cool with me doesn’t make it less scary. You don’t owe them—anything. Hey, I’m serious. Look at me,” Will mumbles, pulling back from Mike’s weak embrace. “Hey. They’ll figure it out eventually. We’re not in a rush.”

“I know,” Mike frowns. “I know, I was just—I was excited to tell them, and then seeing—El and Max and… I just froze.”

Will tilts his head, threading a gloved hand through Mike’s hair. He purses his lips. “Isn’t keeping a secret for a while kind of hotter, anyway?”

“Will?”

“Mmmf,” Will groans into Mike’s lap. He tucks the blanket around his shoulders closer to his chin. “Not gettin’ up.”

“I have a question and you’re not allowed to laugh at me, okay?”

“No promises,” Will mutters.

“Or kill me.” Mike has re-rented The Joy of Gay Sex, because—of course he has. It’s way too fucking early for this. “How do you—” he begins, thumbing at one of the pages. “I’m serious. You aren’t allowed to laugh at me.”

Will groans into Mike’s lap again. “Shouldn’t you be studying for finals?”

“Are you—are you a bottom?”

Will’s fidgeting goes completely still. The birds outside are singing, just like they always do, as if Will’s ridiculous boyfriend hasn’t just—his eyes shoot open, even though Mike can’t see his face from down here. “Mike.”

“I told you, no—”

“—oh, no, I’m not laughing. I’m kind of considering jumping off the fire escape, actually.”

Mike groans as he flips the page. “I’m curious.”

“Why?”

Mike just swallows. “Wild guess, genius.”

Will shifts his eyes around the room. This suddenly got—really fucking real. “I…”

“Do you… not know? I mean, I know you’ve never… but I haven’t either, and I think…” Mike trails off.

Will buries his face into Mike’s pile of blankets in his lap again, groaning. He mumbles something muffled into the bunches of fabric pressed against his mouth.

“I—think so,” Will grumbles into the fleece. The gentlest laugh bubbles out of Mike’s chest. Will, face flushed and hot, springs up, “you—evil motherfucker, I wasn’t allowed to laugh at you, but you can—”

“—no, I’m—” Mike shifts, pushing Will’s bedhead back. “Like, glad, is all. Not laughin’ at you.”

“Glad?”

Mike flips another page as Will stares, bewildered. “Doesn’t feel like me,” Mike swallows. “Being. You know, that. What you are, I think. So I wanted to make sure.”

“Oh,” is all Will says. He purses his lips. “You’ve been thinkin’ about—about that?”

Mike glances away now, too. “So what if I have?”

Will’s ears burn red. “Mike,” he groans, tipping his head back against Mike’s belly. “You’re—”

“—haven’t you?”

Will just groans again.

Will’s paint water has gone murky brown three times before Mike finally notices he’s being stared at instead of actually painted.

“This is for your final, you know,” Mike interjects. “Your future.”

Will just swishes his brush around the murky water some more.

“You’re doing it again,” Mike finally says.

Will blinks. “Doing what?”

“Where you stare at me instead of doing your work.”

“Asshole,” Will frowns. His paintbrush stiffens in his hand. Yeah, he hasn’t painted on the canvas for—he doesn’t even know how long. Mike’s stupid eyebrows are still stupid and crooked. So are his stupid, stupid fake glasses. “I don’t do that.”

“You do,” Mike points lazily with the end of his pen, as if he’s won something. He’s sprawled across the couch beneath the warm lamp in one of Will’s old sweaters, sock feet kicked over the armrest. His notebook is splayed open across his lap, covered in edits and sticky notes and angry red circles from his classes final workshop of the year—his final chance to get it right. “And I’m allowed to point it out, now.”

Will quirks a brow. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“‘Cause I’m your boyfriend,” Mike grins, “and you love me. Even when I can’t sit still.”

Will taps his brush against the glass. “Somehow.”

The apartment is warm tonight. Their stupid radiator is clanging again, and the kitchen still smells sort of like burnt garlic from dinner. Rain taps gently on the windows over the fire escape. May has been the first month they’ve been—together every day of it, so far.

The room falls silent. Will goes back to his painting, Mike goes back to his notebook, until Mike pipes up again. “You know,” Mike says, not even looking up from his page, furious and red all over, “I think I finally figured out why you freaked out about Basil so bad.”

“Huh?”

“Dorian and Basil,” he says. “Besides the stabbing thing. Should go without saying.”

Will stares between Mike and his painting. Mike living inside the canvas, forever brushtroked and lit-up and smiling and beautiful. Hard angles of jaw and nose and cheeks, soft eyes and curls and lips. Will swallows thick. “What have you figured out, then, genius?”

“You were scared of putting too much of yourself into it like he was,” Mike says simply. “I didn’t get it before.”

“You sound awful full of yourself there, Gray,” Will grins.

“No,” Mike shakes his head, kicking a leg out. “You were scared I’d notice how you felt if I looked at it, too. And that I’d go batshit crazy and stab you to death about it.”

“Not untrue,” Will collects some paint. He goes to hold it up to the canvas, and then shrinks back down. He glances at Mike beside the edge of his painting. “Everything about you terrified me.”

“Could say the same for you.”

Will leans back against his chair again, zeroing in on his easel. They fall into silence again until, again, Mike pipes up. “Actually, was that too much? I sound insane. My professor says I overanalyze everything I read now.”

“Way too much, yeah.”

“He was impressed I wrote such a thorough review of that book for extra credit.”

“Did you actually get any?”

“No,” Mike glares into space. “He said, and I quote, Mr. Wheeler, I’m beginning to suspect you only read literature to project onto it, and then, I didn’t assign this novel at all this semester. Why should you get extra credit for merely enriching your brain? Which, like, what the fuck does that even mean?”

“You’re—”

“No, you know what, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this earlier. Then, he asked me, have you considered Basil’s tragedy wasn’t unrequited love after all?”

“What was it, then?”

“The fear of being truly perceived,” Mike hums. Mike glances up at him through those stupid fake glasses. “By someone he knows he loves.”

Will’s brush stills in his hand. “And?” He mutters. “You believe him?”

“I think I’m starting to, yeah.”

Will purses his lips into a tight line. “You’re moving too much again.”

“Or maybe not, and his real tragedy is he didn’t have a really, really hot and super smart author boyfriend as his muse, so he couldn’t—”

“No, Mike, that’s my tragedy. And what a tragedy it is, his big mouth he won’t shut. Jesus. Now quit moving, would you?”

“Not even if I got up for a kiss?”

“No. This is due tomorrow.”

“Not even a really, really good—”

“—sit back down, Michael.”

Mike’s bouncing off the damn walls the moment he walks in the door.

“You’re never going to guess—no, you know what? Don’t guess. Close your eyes.”

“Jesus Christ,” Will mutters. He sets down the wooden spoon, shoving his face into the crook of his elbow. “What now?”

“My prof let me print out my stories from the year,” Mike says, dropping his bag right in front of the fridge. He must be tracking rain in. He couldn’t care less. “My manuscript. And I—it’s all printed. Finally. And I want to show you.”

Will smiles underneath his arm. “I’m ready. Now, preferably, so this pasta doesn’t—”

Will is cut off by Mike shoving a stack of paper into his free hand. Will drops his arm, glancing at the makeshift book, sleek and white and Mike’s. He swallows down a choke. “Oh my god,” he whispers, clutching the bind. “This is so—it’s so real. Holy shit.”

A Lesson in Coasting by Michael J. Wheeler, is typed up at the top of the page. Will flips it open.

The next page reads, For Will, who finally taught me the difference between coasting and landing ashore.

Will stares up at Mike, mouth agape. The pasta is definitely overcooking.

“I got a ninety-eight,” Mike just grins. “Two points off for not getting here sooner.”