prompt for @stonathanweek’s first stonathan sunday: “who protects you, though?”
“Dude,” Steve says. “This can’t be good for you.”
Jonathan peels his eyes open to register two separate things, at more or less the same time. One: Steve Harrington, standing over him with his arms crossed, hip popped, and one of his muddied white sneakers tapping disapprovingly on the ground in near-perfect time to the ticking of Jonathan’s wristwatch. Two: the fact that Jonathan has had to peel his eyes open at all, which can only mean one thing.
He fell asleep.
His stomach drops.
Not good, he thinks, because falling asleep means his reflexes are sluggish now, which means it takes him a few extra seconds to process what Steve is even saying. And this means that Steve has had enough time to notice that Jonathan has woken up, and manages to frown even more, getting in an additional “Dude,” before Jonathan manages to frown, blink, and rub his eyes. Not good, because sluggish reflexes defeat the point. Not good, because—
He reaches an arm out, skimming over the hay-covered ground, frantic, frantic, until his fingers close around his gun and he sighs in relief. Secondary sensations to take note of: the twinge in his neck as he rolls it out, the ache settling in between the knobs of his spine, inelastic tension coiling taut in his shoulders, and Steve’s laser-focused stare burning a hole right through Jonathan’s head.
“What?” he insists, trying to play it off, but it comes out hoarse, sleep-rough, and Steve was here before Jonathan opened his eyes at all, so it’s probably not even worth trying. Still, there’s a look in Steve’s eyes that Jonathan doesn’t love, soft in all the wrong ways, that immediately has his hackles raising. When Steve doesn’t say anything — just lets that weird look in his eyes get even more goopy around the edges — Jonathan sits up straighter against the barn door, frowns, and repeats himself. “What?”
He expects Steve to— well, he doesn’t really know what, actually. Steve’s been surprising him these last few months, which always makes him think about the thing Nancy had said when they’d gotten back to Hawkins — about how Steve changed, in the week he and Nancy had spent fighting monsters together in Jonathan’s absence. Enough for her to go on the defensive when Jonathan asked about him, anyway.
Jonathan doesn’t know about all that. He’s known men like Steve before Steve, and he’ll know men like Steve after him. But where he would have expected the Steve of two years ago to scoff, maybe, to roll his eyes and make some offhand comment about how like shit Jonathan looks right now, the Steve of today does none of those things.
Today-Steve holds his hands out, and gestures for the gun. “Give me that.”
“What?” Instinctively, Jonathan clutches it closer to his body. “No. Why?”
“Because,” Steve says, and then he’s kneeling to the floor, dirt and hay and God-knows-what caking up along his kneecaps, another streak of mud along the sides of those white tennis shoes. Jonathan braces himself for it — you look like shit, you’re gonna take someone out with that thing — but Steve just says, “It’s three in the morning. What the hell are you doing?”
“Keeping watch,” Jonathan says, blinking even more forcefully, as if this will clear away the rest of the disorientation lingering there, in the minute creases of his eyelids, the insides of his mouth, the cracks between his molars. It doesn’t do much to help; he finishes blinking and his eyes are on their way to closing again, stinging against the chill of the night breeze.
“Yeah, no shit,” Steve says, both louder than Jonathan expects him to, and — well, more blatantly than Jonathan expects him to. It startles him just enough to make him look over sideways, at where Steve’s silhouette is illuminated by the porch light they installed by the barn door. He’s not sure what he expects to find there, but it isn’t this: Steve’s eyes simultaneously wide with concern and brows furrowed in what seems like confusion. Jonathan opens his mouth to say something, maybe to defend himself, or say hey, man, what the fuck? when Steve seems to realize how it came off and winces before correcting course. “I mean,” he says, quieter now. “I know, you keep— I see you come out here every night, and you don’t come back in until everyone else is starting to wake up again.”
The hey, man, what the fuck? that had been forming on Jonathan’s mouth makes another attempt to make itself heard, but it’s late, he’s tired, there’s a comfortable breeze blowing through the clearing, and in the end, it comes out without any bite. “What?”
It’s Steve’s turn to blink now, long and slow, like he’s realizing that Jonathan’s not doing a very good job at processing what he’s saying. “Go to sleep,” Steve says slowly, over-enunciating now, like a little bit of sleep deprivation automatically means Jonathan’s fucking stupid now. “Seriously,” Steve says, intonation picking up again, falling back into a normal pitch and speed. “How long has it been since you got a good night’s rest?”
“Not that long,” Jonathan says, but it’s probably undercut somewhat by the yawn that sneaks out around it.
Steve makes a disapproving noise, low in his throat, like he didn’t even really mean to, and Jonathan feels himself exhale in response, exasperated and exhausted, two counts turning into three, into six, seven, eight.
He wants to tell Steve that it’s not his first rodeo. That he’s used to this, a routine that comes to him almost easier than breathing: sitting awake in the dark, heart racing and ears straight for the first indication of a noise of distress. Waiting for the sharp creaking of floorboards, a jolt in the bedsprings, a sudden pause in the snores that had previously been floating their way down the hall. The quiet tap of knuckles against his door, a pair of small hands shaking him awake. The thing about the weed, later, is that it helped him fall asleep, but it didn’t help him stay that way. Left him lurching awake at two, three in the morning, heart pounding and sweating through the sheets, waking up again a few hours later feeling like he hadn’t slept at all.
He knows Will doesn’t sleep much these days. He knows Will sleeps even worse when they’ve had a close call, when the threat of something creeping up on them in the night is marginally more real than it normally feels. Steve pulls his knees up towards his chest, like he has no intention of leaving anytime soon, and Jonathan grips the pistol harder in his hand. “It’s fine,” he says. “I have to— someone has to—”
Watch them, he thinks. Protect them. Jonathan’s learned to sleep light, tread light, dream light. Guard up and bearing down.
“Okay?” Steve says, like Jonathan is simultaneously stating the obvious and also missing the obvious, something bright and glaring, right in his face. He puts a hand out again, and Jonathan hesitates; Steve glances down at the gun, raises his eyebrows again, waggles his fingers, and just for a second, Jonathan gets it — the thing Nancy had seen in him, that change. Something vulnerable and open in his expression, the early morning hour, the hair that’s falling into his face instead of standing coiffed up around it. Jonathan hesitates, and Steve says, “Jonathan, I— you think I don’t know you come out here every day?”
Jonathan opens his mouth. Lets it close. No, he hadn’t known that. “It’s not,” he tries again, and then just, “no one else is keeping watch in there.”
It might be the exhaustion, or maybe the idea of Will or Mike or Robin or Nancy sitting up in their sleeping bags, awake, waiting for something to crawl out from the shadows and reach its long claws until the door, but his voice cracks there, wobbling on the precipice of the last syllable in a way that’s nothing short of mortifying.
“I know,” Steve says, too soft and quiet for the easy target Jonathan is making of himself, and then there’s a hand wrapping around his pistol, pulling it gently out of Jonathan’s grasp. “But, like— shit, dude— what about you? Who protects you?”
An unwelcome, panicked laugh bursts out of him, too sudden and too loud for the early morning silence, but Jonathan can’t help it. He’s seen Steve in action, the way Will’s friends follow him around like ducklings in a row. Him and Robin, bodies angled towards each other, tittering away in the corner. Years ago, the idea of Steve protecting anyone would have made Jonathan throw his head back in laughter. Now, his limbs feel heavy, and there’s something open and warm in Steve’s eyes, wide and brown and dark in the dim lighting of the barn’s lanterns, and Jonathan’s fingers are brushing the palm of Steve’s hand as he passes the gun over. He thinks about that stupid baseball bat, the nails he and Nancy had hammered into it, the sound of the wood splintering around the rusty metal, and blurts out, “Do you even know how to use that thing?”
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, like he’s surprised, like he wasn’t expecting Jonathan to take this so lightheartedly. “Do you?” he replies.
Jonathan shrugs. “Enough,” he says.
Steve’s lips tilt upwards. “Enough,” he echoes in response. He turns the gun over, holds it up. Squints into the distance and pretends to shoot.
Jonathan’s eyelids are drooping again, but he glances along the firm line of Steve’s hands, thumb and index finger lined up along the trigger, and is reminded of it again: Steve’s changed. How his hands used to be so fidgety, rapping against their front door, twirling that stupid bat back and forth. How they’re steady now. Jonathan heard about Max, heard Lucas and Dustin tell Mike and Will about that day at the cemetery, Steve’s arms around her after she fell twenty feet out of the sky.
Steve lowers the gun, bumps Jonathan’s shoulders with his. “We can stay out here,” he says. Wary, like he thinks Jonathan’s going to put up a fight, even after laying his weapon down. “If that helps.”
It does help. “Okay,” Jonathan says.
“Okay,” Steve parrots.
Sleep still doesn’t come easy. Jonathan has a sneaking suspicion that it never will, for him. But for the first time in months, Jonathan tips his head back against the splintered walls of the barn, weather-worn and chipped red paint, and lets himself try to get there.
for @quinnick: kiss prompt #4 - lips barely touching
The car is out of gas. Will is about ten seconds away from maybe-dying (again). Mike Wheeler has been abnormally quiet today.
At least of late, one of those things is more abnormal than the others.
The car is always out of gas. Will doesn’t know when the last time they’d filled it up was, but he does know that it’s not his problem trying to figure it out. That’s Hopper’s deal. Or his mom’s, maybe. Or Nancy’s, or Jonathan’s, or–
Whatever! The point is that the car is out of gas, Mike and Will are stranded at the currently closed general store, and they’re probably about to die.
Again.
“Mike,” Will tries, for maybe the hundredth time. “It’s not your fault, okay, it could’ve happened to anyone–”
“Yeah,” Mike grumbles miserably, as they round the corner, from aisle four – cleaning supplies and household items – into aisle five – canned goods. Most of the shelves are empty, turned over. Mike picks up a can of pickled green beans, pulls a face, and puts it back on the shelf. “But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to me.”
Will takes a long, deep breath in through his nose. God forbid Mike Wheeler ever let anything go. “You didn’t know,” he huffs anyway. “It’s not your fault.” The store is dark, which is great for being able to roll your eyes without Mike seeing. Will’s flashlight sputters, briefly, the bright circle of light flickering in and out of view. He smacks it against his palm once, twice, and it steadies. “Seriously,” Will adds, as Mike slows to a stop in front of him. “Stop beating yourself up. So we have to wait for a ride. Big deal.”
Mike turns around to face him. His expression is mostly unreadable in the dark, but Will’s flashlight catches the edge of it – worried, a little guilty. “Yeah,” Mike says softly. “Except there are things everywhere and waiting for a ride is just– we’re sitting ducks here, okay,” Mike frowns. “I don’t like it. It feels like tempting fate.”
“Well, the simple fact of my existence feels like tempting fate sometimes,” Will jokes. It works, for a split second – Mike’s furrowed brows smooth out into something halfway amused, and he makes a noise that might be a laugh.
“Not funny,” Mike says anyway. His lips twitch.
“You laughed!” Will insists, smiling. His voice carries down through the hallway in a vibrant echo. “I know you did!”
“Shut up,” Mike whispers, looking away. “Would it kill you to keep your voice down?”
It might. Somewhere in the back of Will’s mind, he’s vaguely aware that they’re not safe here, out in the open, and that the whole point of them coming inside instead of waiting in the parking lot was to hunker down until Jonathan and Nancy could get another car here to pick them up. And also, preferably, get some gas.
Somewhere significantly closer in Will’s mind, though, is the knowledge that this is the most Mike has said – and the closest he’s come to laughing – since the car had stalled on the way from the cabin to the general store ten minutes ago, and Mike had just barely had time to pull into the abandoned parking lot before it had stopped altogether. He knows Mike doesn’t like this – being caught off-guard, out in the open. Even minute changes in the plan – which you’d think they’d all be more prepared for, considering the way things have been going lately – get Mike a little keyed up.
And the sorry, borderline pathetic part is this: despite it all, despite the ever-present threat of danger, and the impending sense of doom that’s been hanging over their heads for what seems like forever, Will feels vaguely pleased with himself anyway, seeing Mike hold back a smile instead of forcing one on his face.
So yeah, it might kill him, if he kept his voice down. That’s okay. Will thinks it would be worth it, sometimes – the danger and the doom and everything else – to hear Mike laugh.
God, what’s wrong with him? That’s embarrassing. That’s so embarrassing.
He shakes the thought off. “Whatever,” Will says instead, praying the cover of darkness is hiding the blush that’s rapidly rising to his cheeks. He angles the flashlight away from them anyway, just in case, and Mike’s face falls back into silhouette. “You know I’m right. You’re doomed just by being here with me.”
Mike shakes his head. “You know I don’t think of you like that.”
Will frowns. “Like what?”
“Like– like a bad luck charm,” Mike waves his hands around. “Or whatever.”
“I didn’t say bad luck charm,” Will exclaims. “Ouch! Stop putting words into my mouth.”
Mike grins. “Would you rather have, uh,” he picks up the nearest can to him, something small and vaguely gray, “tinned sardines in your mouth? Tinned sardines in water? Oh, gross. Never mind, actually.”
“I would rather not,” Will decides, even though the shelves are so bare that they might have to suck it up and take home the tinned sardines in water after all. “Would you like some, uh. Tuna?”
“I guess we know why there’s so much fish,” Mike sighs, leaning heavily against an empty shelf. “Nobody wanted it.”
“You mean the ten people outside of our circle of friends that are still left in Hawkins? Yeah,” Will scoffs, then sets the can back down with a soft clink. “I guess not.”
Neither of them say anything for a moment. It’s quiet in the store, the room dark and lit faintly by Will’s flashlight and the display in the corner. It lights Mike up a faint blue, catches the edges of his jaw and where his hair is curling softly over the hood of his jacket.
Will’s flashlight sputters again.
When it comes back on this time, it’s more faint than it was before. It’s dark in here, Will realizes, a bit belatedly. Like, really dark.
He takes a deep breath and shuffles closer to Mike, just a little, like the shape of his body all leaned against the empty shelves is a grounding force. Mike gives him a look that Will can’t quite decipher in the dark.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Will breathes out. The proximity is helping, a little. “Just– waiting for our ride.”
Mike leans in a bit closer too, places an arm under Will’s elbow. It’s a light touch, nothing forceful, but the semblance of support is there. “You sure? You look a little pale.”
Sometimes, Will hates how well Mike knows him. He doesn’t get antsy in the same way Mike does in situations like these, but he’d be lying if he said they didn’t affect him at all. It should be expected by now, the automatic fight or flight.
For some cruel reason, it still isn’t. “You can’t even see me,” he says, but lets himself lean into the touch anyway.
“I can see enough,” Mike says easily. “Do you want to sit down?”
Will shakes his head. The only thing worse than waiting out in the open is sitting out in the open. At least when you’re standing, you can run. “No. I’m fine.”
Will can’t see Mike either, but he’d be willing to bet real money – that he doesn’t have – that he can tell exactly what Mike’s expression looks like. The pause grows, swells and swells and swells, until Will is sure Mike is going to say something–
There’s a clattering outside.
Instantly, Mike’s hand tightens its grip on Will’s elbow. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” Will hisses, twisting around to try and see through the windows. “Of course I heard that, Mike.”
“Do you think that’s–”
“No idea,” Will whispers. With no small amount of reluctance, he tugs his arm out of Mike’s grip. He misses the warmth of it almost instantaneously, and the tugging in his stomach is only amplified by the way Mike automatically leans in behind him, places a hand on his back to replace the absent touch, like it was never gone at all. Will swallows, and flicks the flashlight off. “Now be quiet.”
“The windows are boarded up,” Mike says, decidedly not being quiet. Will wonders where the Mike Wheeler of fifteen minutes ago went – the one that was sulking and fidgeting in silence the whole way down the first aid aisle. “They’re boarded up, so nothing can get in. Right?”
“We got in,” Will points out, which Mike seems to realize at approximately the same second he does. It’s getting a little hard to think, with Mike so close to him.
Will really wishes Mike would pull his hand away.
“Right,” Mike whispers, breath ghosting gently over the back of Will’s neck. “Okay. That’s fine. That’s fine.”
Fine, Will thinks. That’s one word for it.
Another clattering. It’s closer this time.
Will freezes.
Jonathan and Nancy are probably about ten minutes out. Twenty if they had to go back to the Wheelers’ for the other car. So they’d probably be fine if they stuck it out here, because the chance of something happening across them now, in the brief period of time where they’re stuck without a ride, in a building equipped with close to nothing that could help, is small.
Small, but not nonexistent.
Will isn’t really feeling inclined to take that chance. “Come on,” he says, then spins on his heel, grabbing Mike’s hand and tugging him in the opposite direction. “Come with me.”
Mike follows easily, stumbling slightly with the sudden movement. “Wh– where are we going?”
“Just come on,” Will says, then tugs Mike around to the back of the store. He yanks open a door, and shoves him inside. “Get in.”
“Whoa,” Mike says, as Will tumbles in behind him. “Will, what–”
“Would it kill you to be quiet?”
“Sorry,” Mike says, then does, at last, fall silent.
Immediately, Will wishes he hadn’t said that. It’s dark in here – even darker than out in the front of the store – and the only noise is the faint hum of a generator, somewhere behind the walls. It’s grating and stilted. Will wonders when the last time it had been repaired was.
Plus, it’s really–
It’s really fucking dark in here.
Will lets out a long, slow exhale, and reaches out to feel for the wall beside him. His palm comes into contact with chipped paint and he follows the shape of it down, lowering himself onto the ground.
“Will?” Mike says, and Will is in half a mind to say that thing about being quiet again, but–
It’s dark. It’s really dark.
“Yeah,” he says, barely audible even to himself over the faint hum of the generator, and the louder hum – demanding, prominent, persistent – of his blood rushing through his ears. “I just– sitting. I’m sitting.”
There had at least been some light out in the front, but this storage closet might as well be a void. It smells vaguely of dust, something stale and unknown and probably untouched for who-knows-how-long. Will takes another deep breath in.
“Where?” Mike asks. “I don’t want to step on you.”
Will cracks a smile. “Here,” he says, and holds a hand up in the air. “Right here.”
There’s a quiet shuffling sound as Mike moves closer, and then Will feels fingertips brushing against his. Mike latches on immediately, gripping tighter onto his hand and sits down in front of him.
Will still can’t see anything – he can’t see anything – but he can feel Mike’s presence like it’s a tangible thing.
Mike could let go of Will’s hand now. Now that he’s found him.
He doesn’t, though.
“Hey,” Mike says, then there’s another faint shuffling noise. “Where are we?”
“Storage closet.”
“Huh. How did you know it was here?”
Will cracks another smile, despite himself. “My mom worked here, remember? For, like, years.”
“Right,” Mike laughs, and then he’s moving closer, knees bumping against knees in the dark. “I forgot. It doesn’t feel like the same place.”
“Tell me about it,” Will sighs. He’s probably breathing in dust and debris and soot and all sorts of gross stuff, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He presses his knees against Mike’s a little harder, just because he can.
“I remember,” Mike starts, readjusting his grip on Will’s hand – fingers interlocked, a firmer grip – “she’d give me free candy from the front counter. Whenever I came in with my parents, I mean. My mom was so confused about why I kept asking to tag along to Melvald’s with her.”
“That’s not fair,” Will laughs. “She never let me have any candy.”
“You were a menace all hopped up on sugar,” Mike points out. “I knew how to behave myself.”
That’s a damn lie, and they both know it. “Liar,” Will says quietly, leaning his head back against the wall. “You’re such a liar.”
“Maybe so,” Mike hums. “But I’m still the one who got free candy, so–”
“Mike!” Will shoves lightly at his knee, and Mike’s answering laugh fills the small space instantaneously. It’s loud – too loud, because they’re supposed to be hiding, goddamnit – but the nagging little voice at the back of Will’s head is vanquished almost as quickly as it came. “Shut up.”
Mike, as always, ignores him. “Why don’t we turn on a light?”
“The fuse is probably blown,” Will responds. “If there’s even a light in this stupid closet.”
“I mean this, idiot,” Mike says, and then clicks the flashlight back on. The batteries must be dying, because it flickers to life weakly, steadying out into a dim yellow-white. “Obviously.”
“Don’t waste the batteries,” Will says at once, trying to grab for it. “Come on, Mike–”
“Jonathan and Nancy will be here any minute and then we can go put in new batteries,” Mike says, holding it easily out of reach. “No point sitting in the dark, right?”
“Mike,” Will tries to protest, but it’s useless. Mike’s made up his mind.
Slowly, and a little far away, Will realizes what Mike is trying to do. He’s not being subtle about it, but subtlety has never been Mike Wheeler’s strong suit. He’s always been exuberant, quick and spontaneous with his actions, and this is no different. Sitting up close, closer than would be strictly necessary in any other situation. Turning the light on, despite the dying batteries. Telling Will about coming here as a kid, all those years ago. Making him laugh. Diffusing the tension.
Jesus, and he’s still holding Will’s hand.
A wave of affection washes over him, sudden and overwhelming enough for Will to feel borderline nauseous.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. Mike can’t just sit here and touch their knees together and hold Will’s hand, and–
“Look,” Mike is saying, and then he’s holding the flashlight under his chin and grinning. “Don’t I look freaky?”
In all honesty, Mike looks fucking hilarious. The direct light casts long shadows across the dips of his cheekbones, the shapes of his eyelashes distorting wildly as he blinks. “No,” Will snorts, rolling his eyes. “You look ridiculous.”
“Really?” Mike grins, in a way that means he knows just how ridiculous he looks. “Not even a little?” He waggles his eyebrows, and the resulting effect is so comical that Will can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him, sharp and sudden and real.
“Mike,” he chides, for the millionth time. “You’re going to kill the battery.”
Mike looks way too pleased with himself. “Worth it,” he says anyway, as he sets the flashlight down. It evens out the sharp angles of his face, now that it’s farther away, lights his cheeks and nose and eyes up into something softer, more open.
Something about the steadiness of Mike’s expression is brighter than any source of light. Suddenly, it’s too much. Suddenly, it’s blinding.
God. He’s so screwed. “For what?”
“Getting you to laugh,” Mike says, simple and easy, like he’s reciting times tables instead of proceeding to turn Will’s entire world upside down on its pathetic little axis.
Will feels his lungs stutter on his next inhale. He looks away. “Don’t do that.”
The gleeful expression falters on Mike’s face. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t,” Will says, “don’t– you’re being so– so–”
Mike looks caught somewhere between confusion and amusement. “So what?”
“So,” Will tries again, and then Mike moves closer, and the difficulty of articulating a halfway decent sentence immediately increases tenfold. “So.”
“So,” Mike echoes, shifting so the side of his thigh is pressed up against the side of Will’s. He’s being slowly backed into the corner, but the thought isn’t terrifying like it might have been five minutes ago. Suddenly, Will is overwhelmed in a completely new way. “So what?”
“Nice to me,” Will gets out. “Stop being so nice to me.”
Mike pauses, then says, incredulously and half-laughing– “What? Why?”
Bad choice of words. “You heard me,” Will says anyway, because he’s nothing if not stubborn. “You’re being too nice.”
“I should hope so,” Mike says. “I mean, you’re my friend.”
Maybe Will is imagining it, but the sentence feels unfinished. Like there’s a second half to it that Mike is keeping for himself: You’re my friend – right?
The obvious answer here is that yes, Mike is his friend. But that answer feels unfinished too, like a lie by omission. Will tries to imagine it, doing these things with anyone else – what it would be like if Dustin was holding his hand, or if it were Lucas sitting next to him this close.
The conclusion he comes to, almost immediately, is that it would be weird.
It would be really fucking weird.
That feels like– something. An admission, maybe. Because the fact of the matter is that things with Mike have always been like this, and they’ve never been like this with anyone else, and Will doesn’t think they can be like this with anyone else without it being the most unsettling thing that’s ever happened to him.
The silence, he realizes, has gone on just a second too long.
“Yeah,” he blurts out at last. “Yeah. Obviously.”
Something settles over Mike’s face. “Will–”
“Forget I said anything,” Will backpedals, a little bit desperate. “Never mind. Be as nice to me as you want.”
Mike bites down on his lower lip. It looks like he’s holding back a smile. “As nice as I want?”
Oh, no.
“Sure,” Will tries. “Do your worst.”
Mike lets out a shaky exhale. He presses in further, leans in closer until their shoulders are almost touching. “How about this?”
“That’s not nice,” Will says weakly. “That’s just an invasion of personal space.”
“Seems pretty nice to me,” Mike mutters under his breath.
Will inhales sharply. “Mike.”
“What?”
“What are you– doing,” Will whispers, stumbling over his words, just slightly, as Mike places a hand on his arm.
Mike’s gaze does not waver. “Is this okay?”
Is it okay? Will thinks his brain might be halfway to leaking out through his ears. This is–
This is–
“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Yeah. Great.”
“Okay,” Mike whispers. He’s so close now that Will could count all the freckles spattered across his nose, if he wanted to. He could, and the thought is dizzying, dizzying – suddenly, it’s not the claustrophobia that’s making him feel like this. It can’t be, because Mike is in front of him, and he’s so close that Will could just lean forward and–
He could just–
“Mike.” And maybe he’s a bit of a broken record, but he can’t come up with any words other than his name. He clutches at Mike’s knee and meets his gaze and prays – to whatever deity allowed him to get trapped in a storage closet with Mike Wheeler two inches away from his face – that Mike Wheeler will find the courage in him somewhere to close the fucking gap.
He doesn’t, though, which is a sign that the universe must be majorly fucking with him. Not yet, anyway. Not anywhere near as fast as Will needs it to be – if this is what he thinks it is, it’s nowhere near fast enough.
In actuality, what it is is excruciating – the way Will’s heart is beating so loud that he’s sure Mike can hear it, in the proximity. The slow circles Mike is tracing over his other hand – the hand that he’s still holding. He’s so close that Will can discern the warmth emanating off him, the familiar scent of soap, can feel Mike’s eyes trained steadily on his mouth, and yet–
Either Mike is actually moving at a speed of one nanosecond per minute, or time has slowed to a near-stop around them. Mike’s grip on his hand is agonizing, caustic in all the places where they’re touching, each slow circle of Mike’s thumb against his wrist driving him slowly and steadily out of his mind. Do it, Will thinks, like maybe if he thinks it loud enough, Mike will be able to hear him. Do it, do it, do it.
Mike’s lips touch his.
The world stops moving.
It must, anyway. Or maybe it’s just that Will doesn’t think he’s breathing anymore – he doesn’t know if he can find it in him to remember how. All he’s aware of is this: Mike’s hands on his arm, his wrist. Mike’s leg under his own palm, warm and steady and pressed up against him in a smooth, unyielding line. The pressure of the wall behind him, the strands of Mike’s hair brushing against his face, and Mike’s lips – gentle, gentle, gentle, and nowhere near enough.
It’s like Mike is waiting for something. Waiting for Will, maybe.
God, okay.
Fuck it, Will thinks, from somewhere far off in his own head. Fuck it. Fuck this.
“Will,” Mike whispers, pulling back a precious few millimeters, and that’s it. That’s all Will can take.
Will lifts his hand off Mike’s leg, raises it to his wrist and tugs. Mike topples into him with a small gasp, Will falls backwards into the wall, and then they’re kissing.
God. Okay.
Mike steadies himself quickly, braces a hand on the wall behind them and leans in, firm and enthusiastic. His hand, Will notices, faintly and with no small amount of affection, is shaking. Just slightly. Will’s trapped between them again – Mike and the wall – but this time he can’t find it in himself to care even the slightest bit. As if there’s anywhere he’d want to go that wasn’t here, as if he’d want to be somewhere without Mike’s hand carding through his hair, or without his lips moving softly against Will’s own, or the noise he makes when Will presses forward, too fast, too eager, too betrayed by his own fluttering pulse – something like a laugh, trapped deep in his chest.
Suddenly, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. It’s–
“Mike? Will?”
Shit.
In a flash, Mike pulls away, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked and breathing like he’s just run a marathon.
Shit.
“Yeah,” Mike calls, voice cracking just slightly on the syllable. “We’re in here!”
Shit.
“So,” Will says, aiming for nonchalance. He fails immediately. His voice cracks too. Great. “That–”
Don’t freak out, he thinks. Please don’t freak out.
Mike, to his credit, is not freaking out.
“Yeah,” Mike says, voice a little high-pitched but surprisingly even. He clears his throat. “Um. Yeah. You were–”
“Yeah,” Will finishes, rather lamely. He’s grinning like an idiot. He doesn’t even need to look at himself to tell. His expression is mirrored, perfectly, flawlessly, brilliantly, on Mike’s own face.
The closet door gets thrown open, and there’s a blinding, sudden light– “What the fuck,” Mike exclaims, squinting and throwing a hand up in front of his eyes. “Nancy?”
Jonathan peers around her shoulder. “What were you guys doing in here?”
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t–
Will can’t help it. He looks at Mike, and they immediately burst into laughter.
byler + 35 for touch prompt asks: kissing their bruises and scars
(+ some bonus injury tending!)
“I can’t believe you.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”
Mike tries for a grin, a last-ditch attempt at lightening the mood, at playing it off cool, at proving that he’s not hurt half as bad as Will’s convinced himself he is. That backfires at once, though, as he winces involuntarily with his next step, and Will’s frown immediately deepens.
“Mike,” Will chides, wholly unamused. He’s not smiling. Mike wants to tell him to lighten up, that it’s only a scratch, that it’s superficial and Mike’s faced worse after tripping and falling on the Hawkins Elementary playground. He doesn’t think it’ll matter, though, because Will is looking at him with equal parts concern and exasperation and the kind of irritatingly steadfast stubbornness that makes Mike want to grab him by the shoulders and shake. Hard.
“It’s not that bad,” he repeats anyway, fighting back a second wince with everything he has as they clear the top few steps of the stairs. “Really.”
“Your leg,” Will points out, reaching a hand out as Mike lets out a slow exhale, “is bleeding. A lot.”
Mike takes his hand and lets himself be hauled up over the last stair. He glances down, sees the red seeping slowly through the rough denim of his jeans, cut open from his ankle up his shin and the back of his calf. “It’s not a lot,” he insists, because it’s really not. “It’s just a little scratch.”
Will stares at him, still holding loosely onto his hand. They’re standing in the upstairs hallway, and they’re tracking mud and dirt and, yes, okay, just a little bit of blood all over the carpet but honestly? Mike can’t find it in himself to care. “I can’t believe you,” Will says at last, but he looks like he’s trying his hardest not to smile. His eyes are giving it away, just like always– sparkling, going creased at the corners like they do whenever he thinks Mike is being funny but won’t give him the satisfaction of saying so. “You went and got yourself all cut up–”
“I got scraped by a vine,” Mike grunts, limping gently as Will hauls him into the bathroom. “That’s not cut up.”
“It is in my books,” Will says, and then Mike is lifting himself up into the counter by the sink and Will is digging through the drawers for a clean towel. “Because there’s you, and there’s a cut, and the rest is pretty self-explanatory.”
Mike watches him move, grabbing the soap from under the sink, brows furrowed and jaw set in quiet determination, the same way it is every time he’s upset. “You’re being dramatic,” he says quietly.
Will doesn’t look up. “I’m not.”
“You are,” Mike presses, as Will turns the faucet on. “Will–”
“I’m being perfectly reasonable,” Will says coolly, then sticks the towel underneath. “Go get yourself all cut up then. See if I care.”
He does care. The front isn’t even an attempt at authenticity, and Mike reaches out to still Will’s wrist as he turns off the water. “Will. Hey. Just– can you look at me?”
Will looks up. His eyes are a bit watery, and he blinks once, twice, glancing between Mike’s own eyes before looking away. “What?”
Mike immediately feels the sour rush of guilt wash over him, even in the warm lighting of the bathroom and the heady, steadying safety of Will standing in front of him, bracketed by his legs. “Hey,” he whispers, tugging him closer by the wrist. Will catches himself on the counter with the other hand, towel still clutched tightly, and looks back at him. “Are you okay?”
“Am I–” Will stares at him, blinking again. He shakes his head, laughing a little incredulously. “Yeah, I’m fine, Mike. You’re the one that’s hurt.”
“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Mike says earnestly. “I swear, it came out of nowhere and I just didn’t react fast enough.”
Will’s hand comes to rest gently just above his knee. They’re face to face like this, the low counter making up for the few inches Mike still has on him. Up close, Mike can see the shadows his eyelashes are casting across his cheek, stark in the bright overhead light. He could count them all, if he wanted, and the sparse smattering of freckles across his nose.
“I know,” Will sighs at last, those dark lashes fluttering closed. “I just–”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Mike reaches out, cups Will’s jaw with one hand. “Just– look at me, okay? I’m fine. It’s just a scratch. And you can patch me up and I’ll be good as new and also I’ll know to jump out of the way when the vines start moving next time.”
Will cracks a smile, and then huffs out a laugh, dropping his head to Mike’s shoulder. “You’re insane,” he says, a little muffled. “You’re the one that’s hurt, you shouldn’t be comforting me.”
“Did it work?”
“Maybe a little,” Will admits, pushing himself up and away, pressing a fleeting kiss to Mike’s cheek on his way to. The contact is light, brief, but Mike feels himself grow warm at the gesture anyway.
“And,” he gets out, trying his hardest to make sure his voice does not give out on him in the middle of a sentence. “You can kiss me all better afterwards.”
“I’m starting to think you did this on purpose,” Will murmurs, but he’s grinning now, so he can’t be all that mad. “We’ll see. Stick your leg out.”
Mike does. “Going to patch me up now?”
Will rolls the tattered remnants of denim out of the way. “I’ll try,” he says, studying the wound. “It doesn’t look deep, but– you know, what do I know?”
“Reassuring,” Mike mutters.
“It might scar,” Will warns him. “I feel like this kind of thing always scars. And, uh, this might sting,” he adds, holding up the towel.
“That’s cool. Scars are cool,” Mike says, “and I can deal if it– ow, holy shit!”
—
It does scar, obviously, because at some point along the way, the universe decided that Mike can’t have nice things. It’s cool, though. It’s pretty neat, and Will’s a good doctor, and it was shallow and blessedly not-infected and now he’s got a pretty gnarly pink line of a scar winding its way up the back of his calf.
“Wow,” Will says simply, when Mike pulls the leg of his pants up to show him. “That’s cool.”
“It’s awesome,” Mike grins, then flops back down onto the bed. Will is still hovering over him, Mike’s leg propped up on his lap, the leg of his sweatpants rolled up to his knee. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s a scar,” Will laughs. “How cool can it be?”
“Very. If anyone asks, I got knifed.”
Will runs one hand down the side of Mike’s calf, palm flat to the skin and his expression contemplative. Soft. “In the leg?”
Mike shrugs. “It could happen!”
“Right,” Will laughs again. “Is that cooler than a supernatural interdimensional vine?”
“Getting knifed is a story I can tell to people who are not from Hawkins, Indiana,” Mike says matter-of-factly. He pushes himself up onto his elbows to see Will better– the sloping width of his shoulders in Mike’s borrowed tee, the way his hair is still a little wet around his neck from the shower. The easy, languid way he’s sitting, curled up on Mike’s bed with one hand splayed across Mike’s ankle. Appreciative. Absentminded, like these are all things he’s doing without really being aware of them.
Will hums softly, then trails a gentle finger up Mike’s ankle, around his shin, up his calf. He stops right below the back of his knee, right where the skin starts to get soft and ticklish. Mike jerks in a full-body twitch. “Will!”
“Sorry,” Will grins, not looking even a little bit sorry. “You’re right. It’s a cool scar.”
“Thank you,” Mike says, then pulls Will down onto him the rest of the way. Will lets out a small, startled little noise before catching himself, one hand on either side of Mike’s head.
“One of these days, you’re going to kill me,” he grumbles, easing himself down onto his side next to Mike, who gravitates towards the alluring warmth of his body like it’s a magnetic thing.
“If I knife you, you can also have a cool scar,” Mike mumbles, tucking his face into the hollow of Will’s throat. “We can match.”
“Are you going to get me in the leg too?”
“Nah,” Mike whispers. “It’s a cool scar, but it’s ugly. I wouldn’t want that on you.”
“It’s not an ugly scar on you,” Will says immediately. The sound reverberates through Mike’s body from where his ear is pressed up against Will’s sternum. “You wear it well.”
“What, like an accessory?” Mike laughs, turning and pressing a light kiss below Will’s Adam’s apple.
Will hums appreciatively. “Sure,” he laughs. “You could make it work.”
“Not all of them,” Mike says, too distracted by the all-encompassing warmth of Will’s body to really be paying too much attention to what he’s saying.
Will pauses. He cranes his neck so he can see Mike, and says, “What?”
“My scars, I mean,” Mike yawns. It’s not that late– barely eleven– but it’s been a long day. He’s had a warm shower. He’s lying in bed with a very warm, very comfortable, very pretty boy, and things are starting to go a little hazy around the edges. “They’re not all that nice looking.”
Will doesn’t say anything for a moment. Mike listens to the faint, rhythmic sound of his pulse, eyes almost fluttering closed, when–
“Show me,” Will says.
Mike’s eyes fly open again. He frowns. “What?”
Will’s arms tighten around Mike’s shoulders. “You should show me,” he repeats. “If you want. I’d– I want to see.”
Mike is confused, a little. “What?” he says again. “Why?”
Will looks thoroughly baffled by the question. “Because they’re you,” he says, like this is obvious. “I don’t think there’s any part of you that’s not all that nice-looking.”
If Mike were even ten percent more awake, he’d try to protest. As it is, it’s taking most of his brainpower to even understand what Will is saying, but his brain-to-muscle communication must be better than he thought, because he’s tilting his face up before he can even register the action.
“Here,” he says, tapping at his chin with one hand. “Troy pushed me over at school. I hit my chin on a rock.”
The mark is mostly faded now, he knows, but it’s there if you squint, if you lean in and look real close. Will’s eyes dart down, then he hooks a careful finger around Mike’s chin, tilting his face upwards before pressing a kiss there, to the underside of his jaw. It’s light. Gentle. It sends Mike’s heart soaring anyway.
“You’re a sap,” Mike says, trying and failing to hide the violent red that his face is probably turning. “What was that?”
“You asked me to kiss it better,” Will says. “There you go.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “You’re about four years too late, okay?”
Will ignores him. “I like that one,” he smiles. “It’s cute. I can’t imagine your face without it.”
“It’s–! Okay,” Mike splutters, and Will laughs quietly. “Moving on.”
“Next one,” Will coaxes, but Mike shakes his head.
“Your turn.”
“What?”
“I can’t be the only one embarrassed here,” Mike says. He taps a finger against Will’s cheek. “Go on. Tell me your secrets.”
“Mike,” Will tries, but Mike fixes him with his best patented Mike Wheeler Look, and Will gives in. “You’re impossible,” he groans. “Anyone ever told you that?”
“Yeah,” Mike laughs, “you. Now come on! Tell me things about you!”
Will huffs and says, “You know everything about me,” which maybe is a little true, but it doesn’t mean Mike doesn’t like finding out stuff about him anyway. “And, uh, here,” Will is saying, tapping above his left eyebrow. “I ran into the doorway when I was six. My mom lost her shit. It wasn’t a lot of blood but I was a small kid so it looked a lot worse than it was.”
Mike’s first instinct is to laugh, which he does. He’s surprised at how it comes out– sharp, delighted. Happy, because this is one thing he hadn’t known about Will before that he does now. He can see the scar; it’s small and it’s faint, especially now that Will’s lost any vestige of a summer tan he might have had, but it’s there.
“It’s cute!” Mike runs the pad of his thumb along it, palm pressed up against Will’s cheek, then leans in, brushing his lips over the warm skin there before pulling it away. “There you go.”
If nothing else, at least Will is also turning a very entertaining shade of pink. “Who’s the sap now?”
“It was your idea,” Mike shrugs happily. He kisses Will there again, just because he can, more firmly this time. A proper forehead kiss, stroking one thumb gently under Will’s eyes. “Ta-da.”
“Idiot,” Will whispers fondly, but he holds loosely onto Mike’s wrist anyway, his own thumb rubbing loose circles on Mike’s knuckles. “Okay. Now you.”
“This feels like show and tell,” Mike says. “Like when we were in elementary school.”
“Sure,” Will giggles. “Okay. What did you bring to class today?”
Mike grins. “Um. Here.” He rolls up the sleeve of his t-shirt, points to a spot halfway between his shoulder and elbow. “From the mall. There was broken glass everywhere, so I’m honestly surprised this was it.”
Will is silent for a moment. He brings his hand up to Mike’s arm, runs his thumb back and forth over the small white line there. It’s not big, and Mike hadn’t even noticed it until his parents arrived, too hopped up on adrenaline to feel it. His mom had seen the blood and promptly freaked out. Privately, Mike had thought about Billy Hargrove and figured he should count his blessings.
“I wish you hadn’t gotten anything,” Will says. It’s quiet. Sad.
”Just cuts and scrapes,” Mike says, watching Will watch him. They’ve been through some shit. Cute and scrapes are unavoidable.
“It doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Will sniffs, leaning forward to press a kiss there too. His lips are warm against the cool skin of Mike’s arm, and he lingers for a moment, his hair brushing against Mike’s chin. He kisses him again, quick. “There.”
Mike wants to say something– anything– but he can’t be sure that whatever comes out of his mouth right now won’t be the most embarrassing thing he’s ever said out loud. Will has plenty of ammunition on him already, and Mike’s voice cracking in the middle of a sentence after Will kissed him– and not even on the mouth!– does not need to be added to the list. “Hey,” he whispers instead, and Will looks up. “It’s barely a scratch.”
Will rests his forehead against Mike’s. “Shut up,” he says, but there’s no bite to it. “I’ll worry if I want to worry.”
“It was years ago,” Mike protests. “It basically healed by the time we got home.”
“Don’t care.”
Mike sighs. He’s stubborn, but his boyfriend is almost more so, and one thing he knows now that he didn’t before is to cut his losses while he can. “Your turn,” he says instead, dropping a placating kiss on Will’s cheek.
Will makes a small, happy noise. “Um. I don’t know. I have this one here,” he points to the back of his hand, “from when Jonathan and I built Castle Byers. One of the branches was really sharp and– well, you know. It’s not even big. I don’t know why it left a scar.”
The funny thing is that Mike has seen these before, but it’s not really something he notices. Little marks, littered over Will’s body– maybe it’s a testament to how long Mike spends just looking at him, but in his head, these are all just Will. He’s so used to them that it rarely occurs to ask where they’d come from. They’re just Will.
“I think it’s charming,” Mike decides, and Will lets out a small snort of laughter.
“Charming? Really?”
“Yes,” Mike says, “because then I can do this.” He brings Will’s hand up to his face, brushes his lips across the back of his knuckles, and bites back a laugh at the way Will immediately turns extremely pink.
“You are so, so ridiculous,” Will gets out. “Charming? Seriously?”
“Yes,” Mike says again. “You heard me.”
He’s still holding Will’s hand, and he’s not very inclined to let go, so he slots their fingers together and squeezes, once.
“Ridiculous,” Will repeats, but it’s weaker this time. “Now you.”
“Um,” Mike balks. Any semblance of brainpower he gathered up for their conversation so far is rapidly being washed away, every second he spends with Will pressed up against him like this rendering him even more incoherent. He fights back a yawn, and is mostly successful when he says, “I can’t remember.”
“You can’t– okay,” Will laughs. He kisses Mike on top of his head. “Go to sleep, then.”
Mike shakes his head. “Go again. I want to hear.”
“You just want to kiss me,” Will mutters. “You have an agenda.”
Mike grins shamelessly, despite himself. “Maybe.”
“I don’t know,” Will admits. He runs a hand down Mike’s back and then pulls him in until their bodies are flush. “I don’t know what else there is.”
Mike yawns again. “I do,” he whispers, then taps a cautious hand against Will’s side, right against his ribs. “Here.”
Will stops. Takes in a soft, sharp breath. “Right.”
“Sorry,” Mike backtracks immediately, pulling his hand away. “You don’t have to talk about that one, I was just–”
But Will just shakes his head. “No, it’s okay,” he says, lips moving gently over the top of Mike’s hair as he talks. “I just– you already know about that one. And I thought we were talking about the cute little scars, you know. Like, the silly ones.”
“I’m glad my chin got all banged up just for you to think it’s cute and silly,” Mike huffs. And then, “Seriously. You don’t have to.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can say that you don’t know,” Will says, twitching slightly as Mike’s fingers dip under the hem of his borrowed t-shirt. The scar there isn’t big at all, but Mike can feel where the skin goes smooth under his fingertips. He’s seen it– he wasn’t there when it happened but he knows what it looks like. Will hadn’t said anything until they’d gone swimming at the lake that summer– tugging his shirt off and not giving it a second thought until Mike’s eyes had nearly popped right out of his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says, instead of bringing up any of that. “That it happened to you.”
“Don’t be,” Will says immediately. Mike tucks his face further into the curve of Will’s neck. “I’m glad she got it out.”
Mike hums in unsatisfied relent. “Still. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Will whispers. “Thank you.”
“I’d kiss it better but that requires a lot of moving,” Mike says, punctuating his point with yet another yawn. Will makes a quiet noise of amusement above him. “But it’s cool. I can be flexible.”
“What are you–” Will starts, before Mike cuts him off, leaning up and off the pillow to catch his lips in a kiss.
“See,” Mike whispers, smiling. “I can make do.”
“With every passing second, I become more convinced that this was a scheme,” Will sighs.
“So no kiss?”
“I didn’t say that,” Will says, then leans back in, tilting Mike’s head back until he’s lying against the pillow again, hand still splayed across his lower back. It’s warm, and it’s soft, and it’s–
“Wow,” Will says. “I’m sorry, Mike, am I boring you?”
“No,” Mike says, around yet another yawn. “I’m not even–”
“You are so even,” Will laughs, then pulls away. “Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” Mike hums, then kisses Will again. Just for the hell of it. “I know you’re not.”
anonymous prompt: “this isn’t byler but do you think you could write some hopper trying to achieve some step-son stepfather bonding time with a reluctant Will?”
As it turns out, in some weird subversion of all of Jim Hopper’s expectations, teenage girls are a hundred times easier to figure out than teenage boys.
El had been a bit of a blank slate at first. She liked Eggo waffles and daytime TV and when Jim put his records on, she didn’t complain. Maybe she just didn’t know that there were other types of music out there, but as far he was concerned, there wasn’t much worth knowing about that wasn’t Jimi Hendrix anyway.
And then things started falling into place a little. El liked Eggo waffles, but she liked them most with the kinds of toppings on top that he wasn’t supposed to technically be eating anymore– whipped cream and candy and enough sugar to induce a heart attack twenty years early.
She liked the daytime TV just fine, but she liked it better when he watched it with her, telling her what all the unfamiliar words meant. Word of the day, he’d said as a joke, when she’d asked what infatuated meant. The irony of that wouldn’t hit him for another year or so.
She liked Jimi Hendrix okay, but he suspects that she actually just liked watching him dance around to the records more than she did any guitar riff, no matter how captivating they might have been. He doesn’t blame her. He’d never claimed to be a good dancer, but he sure could be an entertaining one.
So this is where he stands, currently. Teenage girls are fine. Teenage boys are, actually, a mystery beyond comprehension.
Or maybe it’s just Joyce Byers’ teenage boys that are hard to figure out.
Yeah. That’s probably it.
Jim’s sure he hasn’t been like this when he was younger. He’d been very straightforward about his interests: his dad’s vinyl collection of 50’s rock ‘n roll, the chocolate milkshakes at the local diner, and cutting class to smoke with Joyce Byers under the east wing stairs.
Some of these more so than others, maybe, but they’d been very simple interests all the same. Nicking Marlboros from his dad’s jacket pocket when he wasn’t looking, then slipping them into Joyce’s waiting fingers as she slid into the stairwell next to him. He’s pretty sure his dad knew where the cigarettes had been going, and he’s also pretty sure he didn’t care.
“What are you smiling about?”
Seventeen-year-old Joyce vanishes in a puff of stale smoke, and suddenly, she’s here in front of him again. The real thing this time, not a hazy, memory-worn apparition– faded cotton shirt, plaid flannel pajama pants. Smiling down at him, holding a pan of scrambled eggs in one hand and a spatula in the other.
Jim raises his eyebrows. “Nothing.” He shakes his head as she spoons eggs onto his plate. “I just– I haven’t seen you smoke in a while.”
Joyce huffs out a small laugh as she slides into the chair next to him. It’s early, barely seven in the morning. The kids don’t usually get up until well into the midmorning on summer days like this, so early mornings are for them and them alone. “I’m trying not to. El doesn’t like the smell.”
“Oh. She told you?”
“Will did.”
“Ah.” He takes a careful sip of his coffee. “What about Will? He doesn’t mind it?”
He can’t see Joyce’s mouth behind her mug, but her eyes are definitely smiling. “He doesn’t like it either. He just stopped saying so after a while.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him.”
Joyce laughs again, this time as she squirts a generous dollop of ketchup on her plate. “What, you didn’t kick the habit when you were locked up?”
“Oh, no,” Jim chuckles. “No way. I thought I would, for a while, but– it’s true, you know, what they say about cigarettes being worth as much as gold in there.”
“Really?”
They don’t talk about Russia much– at least not out here. Not in the morning, not after a good night’s sleep, not in the kitchen, where things are supposed to be happy and warm and filled with light. This isn’t the place for it– for things that are dark and cold and desolate, for monsters or funerals or death.
He clears his throat. “Hey,” he says instead, “listen, I was thinking.”
“Oh, yeah? About what?”
“I was thinking, maybe,” he starts, speaking more into the inside of his mug than to Joyce, now. “Maybe I’ll take Will out for the day. Do something together.”
If Joyce is surprised at all, it doesn’t show. “Yeah? To where?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he admits, and she gives him an amused look. “I wanted to ask you first.”
Now she looks surprised. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jim shrugs, “he’s your kid! I didn’t want to cross any boundaries, or–” He trails off at the look on her face. “What?”
Joyce ducks her head, smiling softly. “No, that– that’s sweet, Hop. If he’s okay with it, then I’d love for you two to do something together.”
“Really? You think he would?”
“I–” Joyce starts, and then gets a contemplative look on her face. “You know he adores you, right?”
“Please,” Jim snorts, “he’s a sixteen year old boy. He doesn’t adore anybody.”
“Except–”
“We don’t talk about Wheeler before noon, Joyce,” Jim interrupts, and then Joyce is throwing her head back in another laugh. It’s a nice look, Jim thinks, maybe not as privately as he’d like. He’s sure she can tell exactly what’s on his mind.
“Okay! Sorry! But yes, of course. Go have a day out, just the two of you.”
“Okay,” he agrees, then takes a sip of coffee. “Okay. Sounds good.”
—-
The issue here is that given Joyce Byers’ infamous overprotectiveness, he’d thought acquiring her blessing to have a bit of adoptive father-adoptive son bonding would have been the hard part. And now he’s standing in front of Will’s room, hand raised to knock, feeling just about as jittery as he had when he had to give the Wheeler kid the shovel talk.
Both times.
Now or never, Jim, he thinks, because for all of his bravery fighting monsters and Russians and that time he broke his own ankle and ran through miles of snow on foot, this doesn’t compare. This is Will. This is Joyce’s kid. And he doesn’t know why that makes him so nervous, but it does.
You can do it. It’s just a teenage boy.
He sighs, and raises his fist.
“Yeah?” Will’s voice is faint from behind the door. “Come in.”
“Hey,” Jim says, and then steels himself, gathering every remaining bit of courage in his body to say, “you got a minute to talk?”
Will raises his eyebrows. “Sure,” he says. It’s wary, cautious. He sits up further, from where he’d been reclining back on his pillows. “What’s up?”
It doesn’t take a genius to see that he’s on edge. Jim supposes maybe this is a bit out of the blue, so he tries to relax, tries to make sure his body language reads I come in peace. “What are you reading?” he tries, nodding towards the book in Will’s hands.
“Um.” Will turns it over, looks at the cover like he has to remind himself. “It’s Slaughterhouse Five. Jonathan gave it to me,” he says slowly.
Jim lets out a low whistle. “Damn. That’s impressive, kid. Is it any good?”
Will shrugs. “It’s okay so far. I just started though.”
Jim doesn’t know enough about Slaughterhouse Five to keep this conversation going with any merit, so he figures maybe he should just cut to the chase. “Hey, listen,” he starts, and Will’s eyebrows creep a little farther up his forehead. “I was thinking of spending a day out. Go for a drive, grab some lunch. You want to tag along?”
“Oh,” Will says. “Um.” He holds up his book. “I was thinking of getting ahead on this, actually.”
Jim Hopper has braved Russian prisons, secret labs, an underground dimension, his own faked death, and being stood up by Joyce Byers. This is fine.
“Okay,” he says, “that’s fine. No worries.”
“Sorry,” Will adds for good measure, still half-upright on his bed and looking very much like he does not want to be having this conversation.
“Seriously,” Jim says, already backing out into the hallway. “It’s okay. Have fun with the book, kid.”
—-
“He hates me, Joyce.”
Joyce shoots him a look as she climbs into the passenger seat of the car. “He does not hate you, Hop. Maybe you just caught him off guard.”
Jim groans, putting the car in reverse. “I knocked before I went in!”
“Jim.”
“What?”
Joyce pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and drops it into the ashtray. “Please don’t smoke in the car,” she chides. And then, “Well, what did you say to him?”
“I asked him about his book, and then if he wanted to tag along with me while I–”
“Okay, I’d say that caught him off guard a little.”
“How?” Jim exclaims, and then Joyce laughs.
“I don’t know! Will’s just– he needs a second, okay, Hop? Don’t take it personally. I promise he does not hate you.”
“Okay,” he grumbles, as they turn the corner past the high school. “One more shot, and then I’m accepting the fact that both your kids hate me.”
“Jonathan doesn’t hate you either,” Joyce says, but she looks like she’s fighting back a smile. “He just– he doesn’t show affection like that.”
“They hate me,” he repeats, accelerating down the backroad. “They both hate me.”
—-
Attempt #2 goes better. Somewhat.
“Hey,” Jim says as he walks through the door the next evening. Will is curled up on the couch, sketchbook open on his lap. He looks up as the door opens, startling slightly, then relaxes.
“Oh. Hey, Hop.”
Hey, Hop, he thinks. That’s better than Hello, Chief.
“Is your mom home?”
Will shakes his head and looks back down. “She’s at the Wheelers’. She’s having, um. Wine night. With Mike’s mom.”
“Oh, okay.” Jim pauses. “Hey,” he starts, and Will looks back up. “Listen, I don’t suppose you want to watch a movie or something tonight?”
Will blinks. “A movie?”
You’ve come back from the dead, Jim, he thinks. This is just a sixteen year old boy. He shrugs. “Yeah, you know, everyone’s out for the evening. Thought we could make a night of it, just us two.”
“Um.”
“You can pick,” Jim offers, tossing his hat on the kitchen table. “I won’t judge your taste, I promise.”
Will’s lips twitch upwards at the corners, ever so slightly. “I have good taste,” he protests, and Jim shrugs, like sure! Okay! “But I can’t today. Um. Sorry.”
“Oh. Big plans tonight?”
“Actually,” Will starts, pursing his lips. “Mike and I are grabbing dinner soon.”
Oh. Oh. Okay. It’s a bit of a low blow, getting passed over for the Wheeler kid, but it’s fine. Jim can roll with the punches. “Huh. Anywhere good?”
Will shrugs, but he looks like he’s on the verge of a smile. “Just the diner on Main Street.”
“Oh, the diner,” Jim laughs, pulling out a chair. “I used to go there every day when I was your age, actually. Best milkshakes on this side of Indiana.”
“Yeah?” Will puts his pencil down. “What was your order?”
“Ham and cheese. And a chocolate milkshake,” he answers immediately. He dreamt about those milkshakes, thought about them during long, cold nights behind bars, nothing but prison-grade gruel to fill his stomach. Comfort food. The kind of memory you hold on to longer than you’d expect.
“I get ham and cheese too,” Will says, and then he looks a bit surprised at himself, like this was something he didn’t mean to say. “Except I get, um. I get strawberry instead.”
Jim pretends to think it over. “Strawberry’s good,” he admits, “but not good enough.”
“Hey!” Will says, laughing. “Come on. Chocolate is so boring.”
That feels like a win, even if it’s a small one. He’s smiling before he realizes it. Making light banter over milkshake flavors shouldn’t be this exciting, not for someone like him, not for someone who’s been through what he has, but–
“You need a ride?” Jim holds up his car keys, still clutched in one hand. “I can drop you off.”
The smile fades slightly from Will’s face. “Oh, um. Mike’s picking me up, actually. In, like, ten minutes?”
“Wheeler can drive?”
“He got his license last month,” Will says, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. Jim’s first instinct is to protest– something about that’s not safe, and I don’t know if that’s the best idea, but he bites his tongue.
If Mike Wheeler can kill monsters, he can drive a car just fine. Probably.
“Okay,” he says at last, standing up and grabbing his hat. “Have fun, kid. Tell Wheeler to drive safe. Five under the speed limit. It’s my buddies on patrol tonight, remember.”
Will looks like he simultaneously wants to laugh and groan. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Hop. I’ll tell him.”
“Have a milkshake for me,” Jim says, then slinks off to his room.
Okay. That could’ve gone worse.
—-
“Okay, I don’t think he hates me.”
Joyce gives him a look like see? “I told you he doesn’t hate you,” she says, reaching across him for the olive oil. “What did you say this time?”
“Something about watching a movie,” Jim says. “I was– God, okay, Joyce, can you take over the onions for me?”
Joyce laughs, and says, teasing, “Broke your way out of a prison but chopping onions is too much?”
“This is why I don’t cook,” he says, then makes his way over to the record player in the corner of the living room. “I’ll take over music duty.”
“Sure,” Joyce calls. “You don’t cook because of onions.”
Steely Dan crackles to life as he turns around. “Oh, yeah,” he grins, “this is it. This is the good stuff.”
“Jim,” Joyce laughs. “What– are you supposed to be dancing?”
Hey, he’s said it before. He’s not the best dancer, but he’s definitely an entertaining one. “Times are hard,” Jim croons along, and Joyce’s laughter grows. “You’re afraid to pay the fee–”
“You’re awful,” Joyce shakes her head, even as Jim grabs a hold of her hands. “And– Hop, my hands are all onion-y.”
He ignores her. “When you need a little bit of lovin’–”
“Ew,” comes a voice from the hallway, and Jim turns around.
“Hey, hon,” Joyce says absentmindedly, dropping his hands and wiping hers on the towel. Onion, she mouths at him. “What’s going on?”
Will shoots him a bit of a strange look. “Sorry. I was just wondering when dinner was going to be.”
“Twenty minutes?” Jim offers, then grins. “Thirty if your mom tries to put me back on onion duty.”
Will crinkles up his nose and turns in the direction of the living room. “What are you playing?”
“I don’t wanna do your dirty work,” Jim belts out in response. Joyce and Will stare, identical dumbfounded expressions on their faces. “Steely Dan?” Jim offers.
Nothing. Apparently he’s dating into a family with zero taste.
“Sorry,” Joyce shrugs. “It’s cute, though!”
Cute! He squints in Will’s direction. “You too?”
Will mirrors Joyce’s shrug. “Sorry. It’s not really my thing.”
“Oh? What’s your thing, then?”
Will stands up a bit straighter. “I don’t know,” he says. “Um. I like The Cure. Stuff like that.”
“The Cure,” Jim muses. “That band, you got the, uh. You’ve got records of theirs, right?”
“Yeah,” Will smiles, then moves forward to sit down at the table. “Jonathan gave me some of his older ones when he left for college so I started, uh. I started collecting them.”
Okay. Okay, he can work with this.
Over Will’s shoulder, Joyce shoots him an impressed look and a thumbs up. You got this, she mouths, and then, aloud: “Hey, I just remembered, guys, I’ve got to go deal with the laundry. Just a second.”
Will frowns. “The laundry isn’t going right now.”
“Okay, then I’ve got to run a load. Be right back,” Joyce says, and then she flashes him another thumbs up and she’s gone, off down the hall.
There’s a moment of silence. Will looks around the kitchen– at the pasta boiling on the stove, the dishes in the sink, the wooden grain of the table. “Okay,” he says after a moment, “I think I should–”
“Hey,” Jim blurts out, “why don’t you, uh. Why don’t you bring one of your records out? You can have a turn.”
Will stops, halfway out of his seat. When he speaks, it’s quiet, a little pleased. “Yeah?”
Jim nods, spreads his hands out. “Show me what you got.”
Will comes back a couple minutes later with a record in his hands. “Um,” he starts, “so this is their newest one, they released it a couple months ago.”
The red of the cover looks vaguely familiar. Jim’s sure he’s seen this one around in the record shops, something like that. “Very interesting,” he says, as Will drops the needle carefully onto it. “This is, uh–”
He knows the band, of course. He’s not that out of touch. But Will’s mouth twitches as he says, “The Cure,” and then, “um. This is one of my favorites so far.”
Jim doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the guitar. Drums, coming in steady and insistent. He lets out a low whistle. “Alright, wow. Didn’t take you for a rock fan, kid.”
To his surprise, Will smiles. A real smile. “Yeah,” he says, standing awkwardly by the record player. “Jonathan got me into them when I was younger. Um. I guess he liked stuff that had loud guitar and drums and stuff so, you know, I also– I like that stuff too.”
“Loud guitar,” Jim snorts. “Yeah, that sounds like your brother.”
“My dad– um,” Will says, hesitantly. “Lonnie. He hated loud music. The drums and the– I think that’s why Jonathan listened to it so much.”
Right, Jim thinks. Lonnie Byers, an infamously giant piece of work. That checks out. And then, another smaller voice pipes up with You’re the chief of police, Jim. You can get away with–
“Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me,” the song croons, “your tongue’s like poison–“
Will’s eyes widen. “Um,” he says, fiddling with the player. “Um, actually, let’s– I like this other song too, so–”
Jim bites back a laugh. “I like it,” he says, which isn’t a lie. It could grow on him. “The guitar. It’s nice.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Jim nods, and then, as the second song starts to pick up– “Will.”
“Hm?”
“Is this a love song?” he grins. “Your second favorite is also a love song?”
“I– no,” Will splutters, immediately turning a brilliant scarlet. “‘Just Like Heaven’ is not a–”
“–I kissed her face and kissed her–”
“Lots of kissing in these songs,” he points out, and Will groans.
“Oh my God, it’s not–! The album is literally called Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me–”
Jim grins. Teenage boys are complicated, maybe, but you can count on them all getting flustered the same way. “I’m just teasing, kid. Could you go get your mom, please, because this sauce is about to burn and I don’t trust myself with it.”
“I wouldn’t trust her with it either,” Will mutters, even as he peers around the corner into the hall. “Mom?”
If Joyce hears him laughing, then– whatever. Jim gets a pass. It was for a good cause.
hey :) so i was wondering if you could incorporate 3, 12 and 50 into a single one shot ? bc that would be Amazing but if you don't want you you can just pick whichever haha
challenge accepted !! this was super fun to write thank you !! :^)
3, 12, and 50 for touch prompts: hiding face in neck + pushing a strand of hair behind their ear + putting a hand over the other’s mouth to shut them up
If you’d asked Mike, a few years ago, how he thought he’d end up dying, he’d have a few different guesses. Clawed to death by monsters, maybe, was up at the top of his list for a while there. Shot to death by government agents also made the top five more than once, which was kind of worrying. And it was probably very concerning that getting stomped on, impaled, or eaten by an alien supermonster hivemind was on there at all.
Suffice it to say that he didn’t die in any of those ways, since Mike is currently, in the present moment, alive. But probably not for long. He’s seen some shit, and he hasn’t even graduated college, and maybe it’s a little bit pathetic that after all of that– the monsters and the Russians and the end of the world– that this is how he really dies: backed up against the wall at some completely questionable house party, being flirted with by Will Byers.
At least, that’s what Mike thinks is going on here. If he’s being totally honest, he doesn’t have all that much experience in the flirting department, considering that the one person he’d ever dated hadn’t done much flirting and the one person he had maybe wanted to flirt with hadn’t–
Well, it doesn’t matter. Said person is doing it now, and for all of Mike’s past reminiscence and speculation on the topic, he didn’t think it would be happening like this.
“You look nice tonight,” Will is saying, barely audible over the low thrum of music in the background. They’re not even somewhere particularly loud– the hallway is a blessed reprieve from the chaos of whatever is happening in the living room, but Will’s voice has dropped into something low and intentional. He smiles. “You should wear more green.”
Oh, god. Mike is going to die.
“Uh. Really?” he says, in what’s definitely not a squeak. It comes out assured and confident and–
Oh, who is he kidding? Will’s smile grows, surely delighted at the unfortunate crack in Mike’s voice. He leans in a bit closer, and it’s barely a few inches, but he might as well have just pushed Mike up against the wall and–
“Yeah,” Will whispers, so soft that Mike has to lean in another inch to hear him. He reaches a hand out and runs a thumb along the hem of Mike’s sweater, the side of his wrist brushing softly against Mike’s collarbone. Mike’s heart stops dead, still and unmoving and seized up, right there in his chest cavity. “It’s definitely your color.”
“Oh,” Mike breathes, and yeah.
So Will might be flirting with him, is the bottom line here, and the issue isn’t so much that it’s unwelcome– the opposite, in fact. Mike feels a little bit like if he weren’t caged in by Will’s arm on one side of his chest and the adjacent wall on the other, then his soul might be just flying right out of his body altogether. It feels like maybe it’s already halfway there, because Will’s gaze is steady, eyes sparkling with amusement even in the dim light of the hallway, and wow, are his hands shaking?
For his own sake, he hopes not.
And the issue isn’t that it’s unwelcome, but more so that in all his years of existence and all the crazy shit he’s seen, somehow, being flirted with by Will Byers was lower on the list of things Mike thought might happen to him someday than interdimensional portals or his telekinetically gifted ex-girlfriend.
“You look nice too,” Mike gets out, in a surprisingly even voice. Will does look nice, so this isn’t a difficult sentiment to portray by any means. He’s swapped out one of his usual sweaters, big and worn comfortably around the edges and all down the seams, for something a little more fitted. It’s a soft cream color, and Mike doesn’t know where Will got this, because he’s been shopping at the same stores the entire time since they moved here for school and none of them carry clothes like this. Mature, a little grown up, and really, really attractive.
Will lets out a small, pleased noise. “Yeah?”
“How many drinks have you had?” Mike peers suspiciously down at him, because it’s not like Will is an idiot, per se, or super uptight about these sorts of things, but he’s not usually this– this bold. If Mike is going to be blunt about it, Will has never been this bold before and maybe it’s about time, but that doesn’t mean Mike is any more ready for it.
Not that he’s complaining. Oh, god.
“One,” Will grins. “Why? How many have you had?”
Christ. Mike swallows, and says, “Like, half. It was nasty so I just– um. Left it there. Heads up, by the way, don’t drink the jungle juice.”
“Noted,” Will laughs. It does something to Mike’s stomach, watching the way his shoulders relax, like he’s comfortable and at ease here, standing in front of Mike all up close and personal in a dark corner of a dark hallway with– oh, god– no one around.
“Yeah,” Mike says, kind of lamely, and notices belatedly that his gaze has settled somewhere around the general vicinity of Will’s mouth sometime in the last forty seconds or so. Maybe longer, if he’s being totally honest, but who’s counting, right?
(Mike. Mike is counting.)
“So anyway,” Will continues, without missing a beat. “You look really good in green. I don’t know why you never wear colors.”
“It’s not on purpose,” Mike insists, even though it kind of is, because it’s a lot harder to accidentally look like an idiot if all of your clothes match by default. “I don’t know, I just– I don’t have a reason to?”
“Okay, well,” Will starts, and then he moves forward until their chests are almost flush against each other, and Mike is seriously, seriously backed into a corner, even more than he was before. Both metaphorically and extremely literally. “It looks nice with your hair,” Will murmurs, and reaches a hand up to tug lightly at a strand falling loose around Mike’s face.
Will smells really nice, actually, like the good cologne he wears on special occasions, and Mike doesn’t know why he dressed up so nice to go to a party where you have to scoop your drinks out of a bowl with a red plastic cup, but hey. Again, he’s not complaining.
“My– my hair?” Mike asks faintly, because it’s just his hair, and he hasn’t ever given it much thought before now, because it’s only hair. Black and just long enough to land on this side of inconvenient, but suddenly Will has one hand in it and it’s not just hair anymore, but maybe the best thing to ever happen to him.
Will nods. He looks a little pink, which is quite possibly the most endearing thing Mike has ever seen, and it’s also more of a confidence booster than it probably should be, that Will hasn’t turned into a total smooth-talking Casanova out of literally nowhere. That maybe he’s losing his shit just as much as Mike is right now.
“Yeah,” Will says, and yeah, his voice catches just a little bit on the single syllable, and Mike bites back a pleased smile. “It looks really good with your hair,” he says again, then tucks the loose strand carefully behind Mike’s ear. “So that’s one reason.”
“I hardly think that’s good enough reason to redo my entire wardrobe,” Mike says, egged on just a little bit by the way Will is definitely turning more pink by the second.
“It brings out your eyes too,” Will murmurs, looking steadily up at him. It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s thinking– half his face is drowned out in shadow and the proximity is rendering Mike kind of useless altogether– but Mike thinks maybe he has a guess.
He blinks. “My eyes?”
“Mhm.” Will strokes the pad of one thumb over the skin there, just over his cheekbone. Mike instantly forgets how to breathe. Christ. “They’re pretty.”
“I– are you sure you’re not drunk?”
“Stone-cold sober,” Will assures him. “Why? Who’s asking?”
Me, Mike thinks, me, me, me. What he says is, “Um. Someone.”
Will raises an eyebrow, but he keeps his hand right where it is– resting on Mike’s cheek, thumb under his eye, and oh, god. Mike is going to die.
“Someone?”
“You don’t know him?” Mike tries.
“Shame,” Will says noncommittally, and it sounds like he might be on the verge of laughing again. He steps back, the vacuum-seal proximity between their bodies vanishing in an instant as the air of the room rushes in all at once– stifling, stuffy, a little warm and sweaty and immediately, it’s like the noise in the place has been cranked up to ten.
Was it this loud in here all along?
Mike is going to scream. He’s going to die, right here in the hallway, and then he’s going to scream some more. “Where are you going?” he asks, and it comes out a bit petulant and a bit needy and way, way too thrown off-guard for his liking, but he can’t find it in himself to care. The lingering warmth of Will’s palm against his cheek is something he’s already missing like it’s a physical thing.
“Who’s asking?” Will says again, and dear god, if Mike had known before what it would have been like to be flirted with Will Byers, he would have, like, grabbed a couple witnesses and signed off an early copy of his last will and testament, bequeathed his meager belongings to whomever they may concern, then laid himself down to die in peace.
“Me,” Mike blurts out this time, taking a step forward from the wall and grabbing Will’s wrist. “I’m asking because I think you shouldn’t go and you should just stay here with me and– and flirt with me some more, because, um. That was nice, and I liked that, even if I thought I was going to die for a minute there, and if you go then– um. You can’t flirt with me anymore?”
Will smiles for real this time, wide and shocked and pleased. “Yeah?” And it’s a little shy when he says it, like maybe he didn’t actually expect this to go anywhere, like he didn’t expect Mike to grow a fucking pair and stop melting into the floor long enough to reciprocate.
“Yeah,” Mike whispers, and he’s just started to pull Will back towards him, Will already stumbling a little with the motion, when he hears a voice from around the doorframe they’re currently maybe ten feet away from.
“Mike? Will?”
“Shit,” Will mutters, eyes wide. “What the hell is Max doing here? I thought she was upstairs.”
Mike opens his mouth to answer when a second voice responds, “I swear I saw them go through here,” and it might be Dustin and it might be Lucas but all that’s really important is that whoever it is is close, and Mike doesn’t know if he has the cardiac strength in him to go through all of this again later, and all of his brainpower is currently being used to not pass out on the spot, and–
Lucky for him, Will has his shit marginally more together. “Here,” he’s saying, then there are fingers wrapping around Mike’s forearm and before he can fully process what’s happening, he’s being dragged in the opposite direction. Will throws open a door, then shoves Mike inside.
Mike wrinkles his nose. “It smells like feet in here,” he says, and he can’t see Will’s face because it’s pitch black in– wherever they are– but he’s willing to bet real money that he’s rolling his eyes.
“Coat closet,” Will says simply, “now shut up.”
Okay, yeah, makes sense. There’s something heavy and soft brushing up against Mike’s side, and he takes a couple steps backwards until he can feel the wall behind him. God, okay. This is fine. This is fine. This is–
“You know,” Mike says, as if this will distract him from his unnecessarily sweaty palms, “you didn’t have to ambush–”
Quick as lightning, Will claps a hand over Mike’s mouth. “If you want to kiss me,” Will hisses, and, okay, he’s pressed up against Mike again, which is fine, it’s great, actually– “I’m going to need you to shut up.”
The footsteps come closer. Mike holds his breath. He thinks maybe Will is too because he can’t hear him breathe, and he’s gone tense and still where he’s pressed up against Mike. A voice that’s definitely Dustin’s is grumbling, “Man, if I find them and the taco place down the street is already closed, I’m going to kill him.”
Mike bites back a laugh. The taco place closed twenty minutes ago, which he knows, because he’d been on his way to find Dustin when he’d– when he’d run into Will in the hallway.
Oh, god.
“Are they gone?” Will whispers, as if his hand is not currently over Mike’s mouth. He clears his throat like hello, and Will drops his hand. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“Who said I wanted to kiss you,” Mike says hoarsely, and Will’s hand pauses somewhere between his collarbone and sternum.
“Well,” he hears Will say, still entirely invisible in the dark save for a few dots of faint light coming in through the slats in the door. “You don’t have to kiss me. If you don’t want to.”
For the first time all evening, Will sounds a little hesitant. No, Mike thinks. He can’t have that. He shakes his head, even though Will can’t see him. “Let’s not be too hasty here, okay, I didn’t say that.”
A pause. “Yeah?” Will says, a little shy, almost. “You want to kiss me?”
Screw it.
“I do,” Mike says, as earnestly as he can find in himself to muster up, and he hears Will breathe in sharply somewhere in front of him. “I really, really want to–”
To Will’s credit, kissing in the dark probably wouldn’t work out for anybody. Mike is a few inches taller and the angle is a bit off, and it’s pretty impressive, if he’s being honest, that Will’s mouth lands mostly on his. Which should also not be rendering Mike as totally speechless as it is– being kissed on the corner of his lips in an awkward, clumsily endearing sort of way– but Will has always surprised him. “Shit,” Will says, pulling back slightly, “sorry, I was trying to guess where you were, and I–”
“It’s cool,” Mike hears himself say, and he didn’t mean to say it, but it seems that his brain has sort of kicked itself into autopilot mode, because he’s reaching out before he can really think about what he’s doing. His hand brushes Will’s shoulder, and he moves it up against the side of his neck, and says, hesitating, “Here– let’s try this.”
“Okay,” Will says softly, not even a whisper with how quiet it comes out. Mike drags a hand into Will’s hair, brings the other one to cup his cheek, and slowly, slowly moves forward.
“I’m going to kiss you,” Mike murmurs, tracing a thumb over the curve of Will’s lower lip, grounding himself. “Um. Just so you know that I’m, like, coming in.”
“Okay,” Will says again, and then Mike kisses him.
It’s instantly better this time– so much better, Mike thinks, immediately going lightheaded with the sensation of it. It’s like every other sense is dialed up to eleven in the dark– Will’s hair soft against his hand, the scent of his cologne, the faint taste of orange soda on his lips. The soft, startled noise Will makes in the back of his throat, cut off like it escaped him before he could stop himself, and that thought is enough to make Mike’s stomach swoop in a dizzying sort of way, that Will really wanted to kiss him so badly that he just couldn’t help himself, that maybe he thought about it in all the same ways Mike had. That maybe he came up with a hundred and one ways it might happen and maybe this was a possibility, in Will’s mind– a coat closet in the dark, barely one drink in.
“I can’t see you,” Will says, pulling back so that their lips are just barely brushing against each other. He’s got his hands on either side of Mike’s neck, like he’s anchoring himself lest he drift away entirely in the dark.
Mike lowers his hands, pulls Will in by the waist– the solid planes of his back, the soft fabric of this sweater, this goddamn sweater– and says, “You’re the one that kissed me in the dark, you idiot.”
Will makes a small noise of affront. “You’re the one that asked me to,” he says, a little smugly, which technically isn’t the most true statement, but Mike supposes that he had kind of set himself up to be kissed, so maybe he should let this one slide. And then Will runs a thumb along to his chin, tilts his face down, slowly, slowly, and kisses him again– and Mike can’t remember what exactly it was he was protesting.
Maybe Will had been onto something, because Mike is pretty chuffed about not being able to actually see the person he’s kissing, especially when that person is Will, who Mike spent a disproportionate amount of time wanting to look at even before this whole thing went down, but this is pretty nice for now, he thinks, as Will presses him a little more firmly into the wall. And that’s also nice, because Mike thinks he might be dying, and the solid parallel weights of the wall behind him and Will in front of him might be the only thing keeping him from keeling over entirely.
“Okay,” Mike says, pulling back, which is nowhere close to his top ten most intelligent moments of all time. Or even twenty, maybe. “You–”
The rest of the sentence gets lost to the sands of time, because the door is flying open so fast that Will flinches, and Mike tightens his grip around his waist on instinct. “What–”
“Oh,” Max Mayfield is saying, arms crossed. “This is where you two disappeared to.”
Mike closes his eyes, and prays to whichever higher power might be listening for a rapid, painless death.
Nothing happens. Figures.
“Come on, man,” he hears Dustin say, “we were looking for you guys!”
“We know,” Mike says, and then immediately wants to sink through the floor and disappear at the way his voice cracks, just a little. It’s barely noticeable, really, but his friends are like sharks in blood-infested waters. Lucas’ smug grin grows so wide that Mike considers just leaning over and smacking it off his face.
“Oh,” he says, far too gleefully for Mike’s liking, “so is this what you meant by I’m going to go look for Dustin, Mike?”
“Didn’t realize I took up residence near Will’s tonsils,” Dustin grumbles.
Will groans, dropping his head to Mike’s shoulder. “Never talk about my tonsils again,” he mumbles against Mike’s collarbone, but he’s smiling. Mike can tell, even if he can’t see him.
“Not even if they’re inflamed?”
Will doesn’t pull away, just shakes his head and tightens his arms where they’re wrapped around Mike’s neck. Despite himself, despite the way his face feels about a million degrees warm right now, Mike smiles. “No,” Will says simply. “All of you go away.”
“Yeah, I bet you want us to,” Max says, “but I’m serious. We gotta go. Someone just threw up on the couch and it’s nasty in there.”
Mike wrinkles his nose. “Way to kill the mood.”
“Mission accomplished,” Max says, and wiggles her car keys in the air. “I’m leaving in five, with or without you.”
“I don’t want to stay here with the puke sofa,” Mike admits, pulling away with no small amount of reluctance. “So we should probably–”
“Yeah,” Will agrees, pressing a kiss to Mike’s cheek. “Now come on. I want to be able to see you when I kiss you this time.”
It’s a good thing the hallway is still dark, because Mike goes very, very red.
SUNI!!!!! can i maybe request byler + giggling while kissing🫢🫢 go crazy with it i know itll make me insanely giddy
liv !! absolutely anything for you !! this got away from me so fast and it's so. it's. well. you'll see. here's kiss prompt #29 - giggling while kissing
“Someone’s in a good mood today,” Will remarks, raising an eyebrow at Mike over the top of his book. “What’s gotten into you?”
Mike just grins, closing the front door behind him. It’s five o'clock on a Thursday, meaning Mike’s had class from ten this morning almost straight through four p.m., with a brief break in between American Lit and his creative writing workshop where he’d run across campus to the good café for a bagel and a coffee. According to all logic and reason, Mike should not be in a good mood. He should, statistically speaking, be in a really shitty mood.
And yet.
“Nothing,” Mike says, dropping his bag to the floor, right there in the entrance to their apartment. “And what the hell? I got home, like, three seconds ago.”
Will keeps the same look fixed on him as Mike kicks his shoes off, sending them tumbling one after the other into the corner of the room. “Call it a certain je ne sais quoi,” Will replies, following Mike with his gaze as he immediately moves to pick up his shoes. “I can tell.”
Mike turns and squints. “You know French?”
“Sure,” Will laughs, then sets his book aside. He stretches, long and lazy along the length of the sofa, socked feet emerging from the ends of the blanket he’s got thrown over him. “Let’s go with that.”
“You don’t know French,” Mike announces. He would know. Will took Spanish with him for all four years of high school – four agonizing years of conjugating the past participle and imperfect subjunctive – and was even brave enough to attempt a brief foray into an introductory college class before finally calling it quits. Personally, Mike thinks it’s impressive Will lasted the semester. Mike had collected his high school credits and never looked back. “I would know.”
“Yeah?” Will leans back on the couch, watches Mike shuffle the rest of their shoes into place on the shoe rack. “Maybe I do.”
He doesn’t. “Prove it,” Mike says, then picks his bag up off the ground and plops it on top of the dining table. “Say something in French right now. Something romantic.”
“Bonjour,” Will says easily. “Mon ami.”
Mike squints even harder this time. “‘My friend’ is not a romantic thing to say, and also, you’re a liar.”
Will frowns. “How do you know French?”
“I don’t,” Mike laughs. “But I read a lot of Agatha Christie.”
Will gives him a weird look, a little incredulous and a little amused, then holds up the book he’d been reading. It’s Mike’s copy of Murder on the Orient Express. “Yeah, I know. You're unbelievable.”
“I’ve been looking for that,” Mike says, even though he absolutely hasn’t. “You thief.”
Will just smiles, beckoning Mike over to the couch with his free hand. “You love me,” he says, which is a lot closer to the mark than Mike would like Will’s rebuttals to his (entirely unserious) jabs to be.
Mike walks over, of course, because Will is right, and Mike loves him, and love makes you do crazy, stupid things – like being happy on a Thursday evening when your head hurts and your body hurts and all you want is to sleep straight through Friday afternoon. Frankly, it’s ridiculous how happy Mike feels. It’s a bit of an embarrassing look for him, actually.
“Hi,” Mike says, entirely unnecessarily, and lets Will pull him down with one hand. He lands sideways, sprawled halfway across Will’s lap, over the top of the absurdly fuzzy blanket they keep at the foot of the sofa.
Will smiles up at him. “Hey,” he replies, easy and warm. It’s also ridiculous, along with everything else, how soothing the single word is as it leaves Will’s mouth, how Mike’s oncoming headache ebbs, ever-so-slightly, at the sound. Will’s still got Mike’s book in one hand, but he folds a page down and sets it on the coffee table, then scoots over to make room, pressing his back up against the sofa cushions. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” Mike sighs, tucking his face into Will’s neck and trying his hardest to not fall off the edge of the sofa. He wiggles his feet under the blanket too, tucks them under Will’s calves, the warm fleece of his pajama pants. “A little tired,” he admits, and Will lets out a sympathetic noise above him. “But good.”
“I’m glad,” Will murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Mike’s head. “And I know for a fact you’re in a weirdly good mood because I folded down the page of your book and you didn’t even yell at me.”
It takes a second for the words to land. Then–
“Oh, you asshole,” Mike laughs, immediately twisting around in Will’s arms to look at his poor, innocent book lying on the coffee table’s coaster-dotted surface. “You were testing me?”
“You told me you didn’t care about that anymore,” Will points out, one arm wrapping instinctively around Mike’s waist as he moves. “You said you were working on it.”
“I am working on it!” Mike protests. “It’s a secondhand copy anyway, it was already dog-eared and– it’s not about that! I just think you’re so–”
“Mhm?”
“So ridiculous,” Mike says halfheartedly, as Will drops a light kiss to his nose, then his cheek. “I’m in a normal mood. A normal, fine, ordinary–”
“Sure–”
“–and I’m not any more happy than usual–”
“–uh huh–”
“Will!” Mike laughs, breaking away from Will’s vice grip, pulling back from where Will had been leaning in to press another kiss to his cheek. “Oh my god.”
Will just smiles at him. His hair is a bit messed up from lying on the couch, and Mike can feel himself warming up, slowly, from the late February chill he’d braved to walk from the bus stop back to their apartment. “Sorry,” he says, a bit apologetic, a bit pleased, and entirely genuine. “You’re just so fun.”
“I hate you,” Mike whispers. He’s sure that any hope of the phrase having even the slightest semblance of effect is vanquished immediately by the way he says it – breathless and adoring and totally, completely lovesick. “You’re infuriating.”
“You love me,” Will repeats, looking even more happy with himself than before, like getting Mike riled up and flustered is the highlight of his day. He pushes a strand of hair out of Mike’s eyes and asks, more seriously, “Are you hungry? You want something to eat?”
“Yeah? You’re gonna cook for me?” Mike asks, as if they don’t know a grand total of maybe five recipes between the two of them.
“Sure,” Will says. “Yeah. It’ll be romantic.”
Last Mike checked, they needed to get groceries, and he’s not sure what they even have that could feasibly be put together for a meal, but Will’s weirdly good at that sort of thing – throwing the most random ingredients together until it resembles something vaguely edible. Not gourmet, by any means, and sometimes not even good, but, like – if you need caloric sustenance, he’s your guy.
Mike isn’t sure how he feels about another one of those meals, though. Especially when he considers the stockpile of tuna cans in the pantry that’s been there for about a million years. He gives Will a suspicious look. “Like what?”
“Don’t give me that look,” Will says, then shoves gently at Mike’s side to get him to stand up. He follows, kicking the blanket off into a haphazard pile on the end of the sofa, and trailing Mike into the kitchen. “Mac and cheese. From a box.”
He hops up onto the counter while Will digs around the cupboard for a pot, then goes about filling it with water. The kitchen is silent for a while, save for the low humming of the fridge, the sharp clicking of the stove as it turns on. Mike watches him move, a low flame of affection bursting to life in tandem with the gas-fueled warmth against his skin. It’s probably dangerous to be sitting so close to the stove when it’s on, but whatever. It’s the only strip of counter that has enough space for Mike to climb onto and still be this close to Will.
“What’s up with you?” Will asks, pulling a box of mac and cheese off of the cupboard shelf and peering curiously up at him.
Mike, a little belatedly, realizes he’s smiling. “Nothing,” he says, as Will sets the box down on the counter next to Mike’s thigh. “Why?”
“I don’t believe you,” Will says, then slots himself easily into the space between Mike’s legs, rests two hands on his hips. “You never smile this much on a Thursday.”
“You’re so hung up on it being a Thursday,” Mike hums, as Will presses his fingers into Mike’s skin, pushing up the soft fabric of his sweatshirt just a little. “Why are you– hey, that tickles!”
Will just grins, watching Mike squirm with no small amount of joy on his face. “Watch out for the fire,” he says, calm and collected and cool as a cucumber, like he wasn’t the one that nearly got him burned in the first place.
“Watch out for the– oh, shut up,” Mike says. Will laughs, low and pleased, and leans forward, tilting his face up.
“Come down here,” he says, frowning. “I can’t kiss you when you’re all the way up there.”
“Not my fault I’m taller than you,” Mike mumbles, but slides off the counter anyway. He lands a bit awkwardly, stumbles half a step forward before Will steadies him.
“I’m hung up on it being a Thursday,” Will says, tucking a kiss to the side of Mike’s cheek, right under his ear, “because you’re always miserable on Thursdays.”
“I am not,” Mike laughs, as Will pulls back. “What gave you that idea?”
“You’re up early and you have a million classes and you never get enough time to actually eat during the day and you never let me forget it,” Will says, the answer a little too immediate for Mike’s liking. He steps closer, presses Mike back up against the counter until the cold linoleum tiles are digging into the small of his back. “And you’re a menace when your blood sugar is low. Is that it? Did you eat a real lunch today? Are you currently operating under normal human physiology?”
Mike thinks back to the solitary bagel he’d eaten in approximately seven bites while running between the English building and the Communications building. “Um. Unless you count me getting an everything bagel instead of plain, then no.”
“Then what is it?” Will asks. “I can tell, you’re so– you’re being so–”
Mike gives him a strange look. “I don’t think I’m being anything,” he says. It’s true – he doesn’t feel any different from normal, except maybe a little warmer and a little fuzzier and a little bit more hungry than on his average day. “What’s your deal? What am I being?”
“Smilier,” Will says, tilting his head like he’s looking for a nonexistent giveaway in Mike’s face. His eyes dart over Mike’s features, slowly, drinking them in.
“That’s not a word.”
“If I guess,” Will starts, ignoring him, “will you tell me?”
“There’s nothing to guess– Will!” Mike shrieks softly, as Will peppers a quick succession of kisses across his cheek and down his neck. “Fuck you, that tickles!”
“Good grade on a paper?” Will hums against his throat, which isn’t really doing much to help with the tickling thing. Mike tries to pull away, but Will’s grip is steadfast, unyielding. “Heard back from your advisor?”
“No, and no,” Mike gets out. “Nothing happened!”
“Don’t believe you,” Will murmurs, then kisses Mike over the bridge of his nose. “Class got canceled?”
“Thankfully not,” Mike laughs, “because we were peer reviewing today– Will, oh my god, why are you–”
“Be honest with me,” Will says, squinting slightly, “are you on drugs?”
“How the hell would I be on drugs,” Mike stares, a grin spreading, wide and giddy, across his face. His chest is aching from laughter, cheeks already tired from smiling so hard. It’s ridiculous how often he feels like this around Will. He didn’t know you could feel so exhausted in such a wonderful way, by such a wonderful thing. A welcome ache, soothing and grounding and exhilarating all at once. “I don’t understand you.”
“Then tell me,” Will says quietly, leaning in again. He kisses Mike, soft and intentional, thumbs rubbing circles over his hips where his crewneck had ridden up earlier, long and slow enough that Mike forgets about it, for a second – the teasing and the prodding and the interrogation – and the warm ache of laughter gives way to something smoother, steadier. He wants to sink into the feeling like a warm bath – or maybe a dry macaroni noodle in a pot of boiling water.
“The water,” Mike mumbles, barely decipherable. “It’s boiling.”
“It’s just water,” Will says, “it’ll be fine,” and kisses him again.
That’s a good point. “Okay,” Mike whispers, and lets the feeling overtake him – Will’s hands, steady and warm where they’re pressed against Mike’s skin. Where his hair is still damp from his shower, because Will is ridiculous and lame and has one morning class on Thursdays and gets to lay around at home for the rest of the day.
Will presses another kiss to Mike’s lips, leans in once, twice, and–
Thud.
“Ow,” Mike groans, pulling away just long enough to squeeze his eyes shut and rub at the back of his head, where the cabinet had oh-so-rudely refused to move out of the way for him. “Great.”
“Mike,” Will says in mild disbelief, biting down on his lower lip. His eyes are sparkling, cheeks a little flushed. God, Mike loves him. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he breathes out, smiling. “I’m– yeah, that was so stupid.”
“So stupid,” Will grins. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Mike groans again, exasperated and drawn-out, and that’s it – Will laughs, bright and happy and eyes going all crinkles at the corners and moves in to kiss him again.
“You’re so ridiculous.”
“Don’t laugh at me,” Mike protests, but he’s laughing too, catching Will’s soft exhales as they leave his chest, leaning forward to press more of his weight into him. Will moves easily, lets Mike grin against his mouth – wide and happy and far too pleased for his own good.
“Okay, don’t tell me,” Will says at last, pressing a final kiss to Mike’s cheek before pulling away. “I’m just happy you’re happy.”
“Will,” Mike starts, then reels him back in with one hand on his wrist. Will looks startled, eyes wide as Mike catches him by the other hand too. “I was– nothing happened, I swear. I was just thinking about you earlier.”
Will blinks. “You were thinking about me?”
“Yeah,” Mike shrugs. Will says this like it’s a rare, wondrous occasion – Mike thinking about him, that is – and not something that usually happens during most of Mike’s waking hours and some of his unconscious ones too. “I was thinking about you. You just– you make me feel better. I didn’t notice anything was different.”
Will just looks at him. “So you’re not on drugs?”
Mike drops his head to Will’s shoulder and sighs, long and bereaved. Will laughs, low and breathy next to his ear, wraps both arms around Mike’s waist, and holds on. “Seriously?”
“I’m kidding,” Will murmurs. “That’s sweet. You– really? What were you thinking about?”
This is embarrassing.
“Just you,” Mike admits, a little muffled into the fabric of Will’s sweater. “Just– coming home to you, after a long day.”
“Sap,” Will says, saccharine and so fond that it seems to be spilling right out of him. Mike can feel it, all the ways Will loves him, like it’s a physical thing that’s taking shape under his hands. They’re what make Mike think about him so often, all the time, in the middle of a painstakingly long lecture or seminar. Turning memories like these over in his mind, the simple comfort in knowing his day is going to get better as soon as Will gets his arms around him.
“Shut up,” Mike says. He turns to kiss along the curve of Will’s cheekbone, right under his eye, where the skin has gone wonderfully pink and creased with laughter, then pulls away. “The water’s been boiling for, like, ten minutes, by the way. Just so you know.”
happy birthday @andiwriteordie !! love you to the ends of the earth and back <3 here’s a ficlet for a fun little idea we were talking about: au where bob never dies and mike gets a part time job at the radio shack
Mike takes a deep breath, clutching tighter at the piece of paper in his hand. It’s a windy fall afternoon, and it would really suck if after all this– scrounging up a barebones résumé, sitting through one hundred and one interview questions with Nancy over the phone, gritting his teeth and listening to his dad give him the go-getter talk– said résumé blew away in the breeze and ruined all his chances at a halfway decent job before he even walked through the door.
It’s only a part-time position anyway, and Mike’s never really been one for nerves in situations like this– public speaking, parent-teacher conferences, so on. But this feels different, somehow. He glances up at the bright red letters above his head, large and cartoonish against the beige of the storefront, and exhales. Radio Shack.
It’s just computers. He can do this. He knows computers. Kind of. He also knows–
The bell above the door jingles slightly as he walks in, and at first glance, the store looks empty. It makes sense– it’s three o’clock on a Wednesday, and anyone who isn’t at work is definitely too young to be perusing a Radio Shack in their downtime.
“Can I help you?”
Mike spins around. There’s a guy maybe his dad’s age in the corner, wearing a uniform vest and a wholly unimpressed look on his face. Mike straightens up and tries his hardest to not look like an overly suspicious teenager who’s up to no good, but the man’s expression does not change.
“Um,” he says, “I’m looking for Bob Newby? If he’s here?”
The man– Daryl, Mike thinks, squinting at the name tag– frowns. “Bob’s in the back. Any reason you’re asking for him?”
“I’m here about the Help Wanted sign? Um. My friend’s mom is friends with him and said you guys were looking for a– well, I’m only sixteen so I can’t work here, like, nine to five, but– yeah,” he finishes, a bit lamely, and Daryl raises his eyebrows.
“Hm.”
“So,” Mike tries again. “If he’s around…”
If his dad could see him now, he’d probably have a heart attack at how Mike is being exactly the opposite of assertive and confident and all of that bull. “Yeah, I’ll go grab him,” Daryl sighs, then gives Mike a contemplative look. “You know anything about radios?”
“I know some,” Mike huffs, because he wasn’t the president of AV Club for nothing, okay, and he wouldn’t even be applying here if he didn’t. Who does this guy think he is?
“Sure,” Daryl says, then disappears into the back room.
There’s a minute of silence, where Mike studies the display up at the front of the store, listening to the faint sound of U2 playing from the store’s speakers, and then there’s the soft creaking of a door opening.
“Hey!” someone calls, and Mike turns around.
He hasn’t seen Bob in a few years– not since he and Mrs. Byers broke it off– but they’re very obviously on good terms. According to Will, anyway. He looks mostly the same as he did back then, maybe a little more gray in his hair, but the same cheery smile. He’s got on the same uniform vest as Daryl, a nametag. Maybe a couple more lines by his eyes.
“Hi,” Mike starts, a bit uncertainly. “It’s me. Um. Mike Wheeler. Will’s friend. Will is– well, you know Will,” he finishes, all very fast and with none of the professional decorum that his dad and Nancy both pleaded with him to have.
Bob just laughs. “I do. And of course I remember you, Mike,” he says, then gestures Mike over to the desk at the front of the store, near the register. “I heard you're here about the job?”
“Um, yes.” Mike looks down at the sheet of paper in his hand, a bit wrinkled from how tight he’d been gripping it outside, and frowns. Mike Wheeler, it reads up at the top, and not much else, because he’s sixteen, and AV Club probably counts as some sort of leadership thing, but– “Will told me that his, um. His mom said that I should– you know.”
“Okay,” Bob says simply. Then, not even glancing at Mike’s pathetic excuse for a résumé, “How soon can you start?”
Mike blinks. “Um. Technically tomorrow, I think,” he starts, “but don’t you need to, like, interview me? Or something?”
At this, Bob looks up and smiles gently. “Mike. You knew BASIC at thirteen. You’re a great kid, so the job’s yours if you want it.”
“Oh. Oh! Well, yeah, I’d love to– yeah!”
“Great! You have school until– two-thirty? Three?”
“Two.”
“I’ll see you here at three tomorrow,” Bob smiles. “We can get you oriented with things, start your training. Bread and butter, so it won’t be too exciting, I’m afraid, but–”
“No!” Mike interrupts, feeling a sudden rush of relief. “No, that’s okay, I’ll be here. Um. Thanks, Bob.”
For some reason, Bob’s smile softens. “Excited to have you here, Mike. I’m glad you came by.”
—
So Mike has a job now. Which is– you know, nice, but it’s still a job, so it’s not like Mike would come in on a Saturday when he didn’t have to, or choose to be here instead of, like, hanging out with his friends or something. But as far as high school employment goes, Mike figures he probably got a pretty good deal out of it, compared to the poor souls from his history class working at the McDonald’s down the street. Here, there’s no grease and there are no fryer burns, and there’s no embarrassing uniform or visor hat. It’s just one blessedly simple vest and a name tag that says Mike, because the idea of people coming in and calling him Michael made him want to throw something.
Plus, it’s fun. Maybe Mike is a little biased, because he’s him, but it’s fun. It really is. Four hours a day, three days a week, Mike is surrounded by gadgets and gizmos and exactly the sort of stuff that would have made twelve-year-old him burst into happy tears. He can picture it now, if he’d gotten his hands on one of these radios back in middle school– he would have been really annoying about it, maybe, but it would’ve been awesome.
So it’s fun. He’s having a good time, and he’s also getting paid, which is a nice little bonus, and it’s a few extra hours each week that he doesn’t have to be in the house, which is an extra little bonus, so that’s cool.
“Check out these headphones,” Bob whispers to him on an especially slow Thursday afternoon. It’s late November, and Mike’s been working here maybe a month, maybe a little more. The store is quiet and he’s just clocked in when Bob rushes over with a plastic-sealed box and an ecstatic grin on his face.
Mike shrugs his backpack off and drops it onto the floor behind the register before leaning in. “Whoa. Those are headphones? They look so–”
Well, the first word that popped into his head was fancy, but that’s maybe not the most professional word to be using here. Whatever.
“New releases in stock tomorrow,” Bob announces, “just in time for Christmas sales. Now look,” he continues, peeling the box open, “this one’s for the display, but I thought you might want to check it out before I locked it up.”
“Please,” Mike grins, already bouncing back on his heels in excitement. The headphones are more sleek than the ones he has right now, a birthday gift from a few years ago, already battered from overuse. They’re all shiny black metal, the cushions around the ears softer and larger than his own. He looks over at Bob, who’s wrestling with the display stand. “Can I touch?”
“You break it, you buy it,” Bob calls back, and Mike laughs.
“Deal.” He lifts it up with one hand. They’re heavy, solid, cool. Mike has never wanted something more in his entire life. “Whoa.”
“Cool, right?”
“So do I, like, get a pair for free, or…”
“Nice try,” Bob laughs, adjusting the hinges on the display stand. “You get your regular paychecks and your employee discount, but that’s all I can swing you, I’m afraid.”
Mike blinks. “I get an employee discount?”
“Hm, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Could’ve roped you into paying full price.”
“Stop,” Mike says, a smile breaking out over his face. “I get an employee discount? Seriously?”
Bob lifts the headphones up and out of his hands, setting them down carefully on the stand. “You seriously didn’t know? Of course you do, Mike, every employee gets a discount.”
“I didn’t think that counted for fancy stuff,” Mike admits. “I thought that only counted on, like, remote batteries and stuff like that.”
“You get fifteen off the whole store,” Bob tells him. “So, you know, if you wanted to get yourself a Christmas present–”
Mike does. Mike really, really wants to get himself a Christmas present. “Hey, so what are your overtime policies for minors again?”
“Nice try. I’m going to finish setting this up, but I think someone’s coming in,” Bob announces, flashing Mike a you got this smile before slinking away into the back room.
“Anything for the headphones,” Mike says under his breath, then looks over to the door. “Hi, welcome to Radio Shack, how can I– oh. It’s just you.”
“Just me?” Will gasps in mock affront, winding his way through shelves of spare parts and batteries until he’s standing in front of Mike, across the register. “Rude.”
“You know what I mean.” Mike rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling anyway. “You’re taking up all the time I could be using to woo customers and break big on my next paycheck.”
“Why the sudden interest in the paycheck?” Will inquires, swinging his backpack onto the floor so it’s bumping against Mike’s. “You never cared about that before.”
“Excuse you! I am a working man,” Mike says, even as he bumps bodily into one shelf with his hip, sending the radios on display rattling. “Shit– oh no, wait–”
“Very professional,” Will laughs, then he perches atop the chair behind the register and pulls out his physics textbook.
“Shut up,” Mike mutters, looking over the dials to make sure that everything is still plugged in and good to go. “You– get out of my chair, you don’t even work here!”
“Mike?” comes a voice from the back room, and then Bob’s poking his head back out with a small frown. “What was– oh, hi Will!”
“Hi Bob,” Will says with a cursory smile and wave. It’s polite, but a little bit awkward just like every time Will comes to visit Mike at work. Mike figures there’s no way around that awkwardness, because it’s probably a law of the universe that it’s going to be kind of awkward to see your ex-girlfriend’s son, who you saw in a mind-controlled fugue state before he released a bunch of monsters through an interdimensional portal and almost killed you.
But because Bob is Bob, and doesn’t have a resentful bone in his body, he seems to like Will just fine.
Everybody likes Will. Mike thinks it would be hard not to. In a completely unbiased way, of course.
“How are your classes going?” Bob asks, just like he does every time Will comes by.
“They’re okay,” Will replies, just like he always does whenever Bob asks. Mike bites his lip to hold back laughter, because every time they have this exchange, all he can think about is the time Will told him about Bob’s Dracula costume with the fake teeth and couldn’t finish describing it without bursting into laughter. Mike hadn’t thought the Dracula costume was too funny– more predictable and boring than anything, if you asked him– but he did like watching Will laugh like that, all red-faced and giggling until he teared up.
“Physics is really kicking my ass this year,” Will is saying, holding up the textbook he’s already started to splay open on the counter.
Mike raises an eyebrow. Their exchange usually doesn’t get this far. “Oh, I loved physics,” Bob says, a bit absentmindedly, as he brings out the display stand again, now complete with a fully decked-out set of headphones. “It was one of my favorite subjects in high school.”
“Lucky,” Will mutters, squinting down at the pages. “I hate it.”
“It’s not so bad,” Mike says without thinking, tinkering with one of the dials that had gotten messed up when he knocked the radio over. “It’s just math.”
“Yeah, and I don’t like math either,” Will laughs, “in case you forgot.”
“I think if I told you two I also liked math, then you’d shove me into a locker or something,” Bob remarks with a laugh. “Is that– do kids still do that? Shove each other into lockers?”
“Sometimes,” Mike and Will say simultaneously, then they glance at each other and immediately look away before they start laughing again.
“Sometimes,” Mike says, as Will stares resolutely down at his textbook again and bites back a grin. “We both got shoved into lockers so– I’d say yeah, kind of.”
He waits for– okay, he isn’t sure what he’s waiting for, but it feels like it should be pity, maybe, or a frown, or some generic adult response like Hey! That’s not cool! Bob doesn’t do any of those things, though. He pulls a face and says, “I know the feeling.”
“What– you?” Bob is an adult, which seems so far removed from petty teenage social hierarchies and hallway fistfights that it’s kind of funny, but also–
“Mike, I was the founder of AV Club. The founder. Meaning that I was such a big loser that I came up with a club that no one had even thought of before.”
“Hey!” Mike protests. “I was president of AV Club!”
Bob just smiles. “Don’t you have a job to be doing, Mike?”
—
So yeah. He’s got a job, and it’s nice, and it’s fun, and only part of the reason it’s nice and fun is because Will Byers comes to hang out with him after school while waiting for Joyce to finish up her shift at Melvald’s across the plaza.
Really, that’s only part of it!
“I can’t believe thirteen-year-old me thought I’d be cool in high school,” Mike laughs one day. Cool is maybe a stretch, because he’s sure he knew, even then, that cool was something that would always be a little out of his reach. “I thought I’d grow out of my ham radio phase at least.”
“I did too,” Bob says thoughtfully, digging around for a new set of batteries. “And now I’m the general manager of a Radio Shack. I’d say I’m doing alright.”
“Maybe GM of a Radio Shack is in my future too,” Mike ponders aloud. It’s a thought he’s had before, of course, but not like this, exactly. In his mind, his future is daunting, claustrophobic in its proximity. His father’s wheedling about business school, law school– something, anything that could put food on the table.
The thought terrifies him to his core in a way he can’t really place. Ted Wheeler hadn’t been like Mike in school– pushed over on the playground, tripped, threatened to jump off a cliff or see his best friend hurt in front of his eyes. He hadn’t been Steve Harrington either. Mostly, his father had been nobody. A nobody who married the most popular girl in her grade, a nobody who comes home to a family he barely knows, a nobody who works a job he doesn’t like and pretends like that’s something Mike should want too.
He doesn’t want that. Of course he doesn’t want that. But he’s not sure what the options are, for people like him. The nerdy guys, the losers, the ones sporting scabbed chins and broken arms all throughout middle school, the Bob Newbys of Hawkins, Indiana. The–
He chances a glance over to the corner. Will is sitting at a table there instead of up at the register for a change, because he’s got actual homework to do and Mike’s got a job to be slaving away at. He studies Will’s frown as he stares down his umpteenth physics problem of the day, the way he chews lightly on the eraser of his pencil.
People like him, Mike thinks, the nerds and the losers and the–
“Whoa,” Bob chuckles, and Mike glances back down to see that he’s been trying to screw in the back of the battery pack in way past the allotted tightness. “Someone’s a little distracted.”
“Sorry!” Mike puts the screwdriver down. “Sorry, sorry, I was just– thinking.”
“Must have been something interesting to get you all spaced out like that,” Bob points out, raising an eyebrow. “What’s on your mind?”
Mike glances up again. Will is looking at him already, this time, a bit inquisitively, and Mike feels his face turn ever-so-slightly warm at being caught. Will smiles, raises a teasing hand like hey.
“Oh, nothing,” Mike says, but it comes out distracted, a bit faint. Bob follows his gaze, and Will looks away immediately, out the window. “Just– eyes got tired. You know.”
Bob does not look convinced. “Right.” He pauses, then turns the radio onto its side. “You think you can handle it from here?”
Mike stares. “What, me? Fix this? On my own?”
“It’s ham radio, Mike,” Bob says, giving him a light pat on the shoulder. “You know ham radio like the back of your hand.”
“I– yeah, I guess,” he says, picking the screwdriver back up. It’s an old model that someone brought in for repair that morning. Bob had waited until Mike got there so they could take it apart together.
Bob watches him for a couple of minutes. It’s another slow day, no general-managerial duties to be attended to. Mike focuses all his attention on the plastic and wiring in front of him– sets the disassembled pieces down in a careful row, studies them. He can hear the store’s fan running overhead, the soft rustling of Will’s pages turning from the corner of the room. The wire– he can’t figure out where this wire connects to. Mike lets out a frustrated huff.
“Nothing,” Bob scoffs. “Amateur radio and you’re still distracted. What’s up?”
“I just,” Mike starts, sighing. “Nothing. It’s dumb.”
General Manager of a Radio Shack. Mike likes it here. He does, seriously, it’s fun and it’s nerdy and it’s the sort of thing that he’d never be able to tell people he really enjoyed without getting so much shit for it. It’s a job made for guys like him and Bob–
But that’s the thing, right– is that guys like him and Bob make do. They end up happy out of coincidence, they don’t end up in love, they need people to need them and yet they never do. No one ever needs them. Not like they might need someone else, instead.
They get love and then they lose love and then they become the General Manager of a Radio Shack and maybe things will turn out alright, and maybe not.
“Do you ever wish things worked out differently?” Mike blurts out, and then his eyes go wide. “I mean– shit, that’s totally unprofessional– shit, I probably shouldn’t swear while I’m on the clock– I mean–”
But Bob is laughing. “It’s okay,” he says, grinning. “I hear worse stuff from our customers on the daily.”
“Right,” Mike says, probably beet-red. It would suck if this was what he got fired for. “I just meant–”
“I know what you meant,” Bob reassures him, then leans over his shoulder. “And this part should go over here, by the way. They look really similar, so I don’t blame you.”
“Right,” Mike says.
He waits.
“And–” Bob takes in a soft breath. “Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expect. Doesn’t mean that it’s bad.”
“Right,” Mike says again, vaguely embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean– right.”
One second goes by. Two. Mike twirls the screwdriver around between his fingers and looks back at Will, who’s got his face scrunched up in some complicated, twisted expression that makes Mike want to laugh, and simultaneously want to reach over and smooth out the creases from between his eyebrows. Bob watches him with one raised eyebrow.
“You know,” he starts, and Mike’s gaze snaps back to him. “You remind me of myself, Mike.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Mike snorts. The nerdy guys, the AV guys, the almost-had-it-but-didn’t guys.
Bob shakes his head, chuckling. “I mean, you’re a smart kid. You really are. Not many kids your age would be this excited about taking apart a radio, or– or new headphones, or programming languages.”
The nerdy guys, Mike thinks again, and suppresses a laugh. “It must be an AV thing,” he says instead.
“Sure,” Bob nods. “But if you told me– younger me, AV Club me– about you, he would’ve thought you were the coolest guy in the world.
“I– what? Really?”
“Yes, really! Look, Mike, you’re a smart kid, but you’re also– you’re stubborn and you’re creative, and you don’t take crap from anyone. You fought monsters. And you won. I didn’t have that when I was younger, and I think if I did– maybe if I did, then things would’ve turned out differently for me. God knows I could have used some of that determination. God knows I should’ve stuck to my guns more.”
Mike knows he’s stubborn, but he’s never considered that to be a good thing. It’s always been a point of frustration for people he knows– refusing to cut his hair shorter, refusing to apply to business school, refusing to do shit he doesn’t want to do. He’s never heard it referred to as something to be admired. “I guess I’m a little stubborn,” he relents, in a moment of frankly hilarious irony. “Maybe just a little.”
Bob grins at him. “There you go! I admire you for that. It’s not easy to know what you want.”
“I don’t,” Mike laughs in disbelief. “I don’t know what I want.”
“But when you do, you don’t give up,” Bob presses. “You dig your heels in and you get it, one way or another. And that’s why we’re not so similar after all.”
Mike doesn’t say anything. Guys like him and Bob– they are similar, despite all this bull about him being brave and cool and– whatever else. Guys like him– they’re the AV guys, the losers, the somebodies but in a bad way, the somebodies that nobody wants.
I admire you for that.
“Let me tell you something else,” Bob says, dropping his voice into a whisper and leaning in closer. “Joyce? Mrs. Byers? She said Jim– Chief Hopper– offered to pick Will up from school so he wouldn’t have to wait or bike home.”
“Um,” Mike says, a little lost. “Okay?”
“But Will waits for her anyway,” Bob says. “Only he doesn’t wait there, at Melvald’s. He walks across the plaza to hang out with you. And the days you’re not here, Joyce says he goes straight home after school.”
“Oh.” Mike blinks. He feels like he’s on the verge of something, here, something close. Something important. “I– okay.”
The bell over the front door jingles sharply, and Mike jumps, startled. “I– uh, the radio–”
“This piece goes right there,” Bob points out, then claps him on the shoulder again. “You work on that, and I’ll get this guy. And– Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a smart kid. Brave. Stubborn. Don’t forget that. Sometimes things don’t go the way you expect,” Bob says, a twinkle in his eye. “But sometimes that’s a good thing.”
22 for touch prompts: falling asleep on the other's shoulder (+ bonus mini soundtrack that i listened to on repeat while writing this)
“Remind me again,” Mike says, as Will climbs into the passenger side of the car, “why we have to go to this thing today?”
Will gives him a look. Or his best attempt at a look anyway. He’s ninety percent sure they fall too flat to ever be effective, or Mike would have stopped saying stupid shit years ago. “This thing?” He struggles with the seatbelt for a moment before it finally clicks into place. “You mean your sister’s wedding? To my brother?”
Mike pulls a face. “If you want to get into the semantics,” he mumbles, adjusting the rearview mirror, and Will laughs.
“You’re ridiculous. It’s their wedding, Mike.”
“Rude to get married on a Saturday night,” Mike says, as if every wedding in the history of the world ever hasn’t taken place on a Saturday night. “Maybe some of us had things to do.”
“Yeah? What did you have going on?” Will asks, smoothing down the lapel of his suit. This jacket is a lint magnet like nothing he’s ever seen before, and he plucks a little piece of it away. “Hot date?”
Mike wiggles his eyebrows, and Will realizes immediately that this was the wrong thing to say. “Yeah,” Mike chirps, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “You.”
Despite himself, Will feels his cheeks turn red. It’s stupid, because he quite literally handed Mike the opportunity to say this on a silver platter, and it’s more dumb than any sort of flirtatious, except the unfortunate truth of dating Mike Wheeler is that he doesn’t even have to try and actually flirt to get Will blushing like a teenage girl. “I had that coming,” he admits, and Mike grins even harder than before. “And we didn’t have a date tonight.”
“We did! We were going to–”
“We can order pizza and watch TV when we get back, Mike,” Will chides, and, when Mike’s lower lip turns downward in something reminiscent of a pout, “this is Nancy’s wedding.”
“I was never Nancy’s favorite sibling,” Mike says noncommittally, releasing the parking brake, “she won’t even notice if I’m not there,” which one, is not true because Mike makes up about a third of Nancy’s bridal party so she will most definitely notice if he goes AWOL. And second, this is also not true because Will knows that Holly is currently in the throes of teenage angst, and Mike is still working on the angst but he’s moved on from the teenager part, at least, which is definitely earning him some points in Nancy’s book. So at worst, he’s tied with Holly. At least for the next couple of years.
And Will knows he’s not being serious anyway. For all of the fuss he’s kicking up, he knows Mike is happy for them. Will checks the backseat to make sure he put the presents in the car earlier that afternoon, and says, laughing, “Cold feet? It’s not even your wedding, Mike.”
“I know,” Mike moans, falling forward until his forehead hits the top of the steering wheel. “And it’s exciting! I’m happy for them! And your brother too, and I know your mom and Hop are so pumped, and– it’s just that I’m not so pumped about spending the evening with my family.”
Will suddenly feels very, very stupid. Jesus, he hadn’t even thought about that– about Mike’s parents being there, and his nana, the one that his mom had totally guilted Nancy into inviting because she might not live long enough to see Mike and Holly get married, Nancy, just let her have this. Which was kind of a depressing enough thought on its own, Will thinks, even without the entire conversation that had followed, the one he’d overheard Mike have on the phone in the living room, loud and frustrated before he’d slammed the phone down on the receiver hard enough for Will to hear it from their bedroom.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes out, then rests a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to them, okay, Mike? Just– hang out with us instead. I know Dustin’s been dying to break out his new dance moves.”
Mike cracks a tentative smile, then turns his face slightly so that one side of it is illuminated by the glow of the street lamps outside. “I’m scared he’s going to get driven away in a stretcher,” Mike admits, and Will grins.
“Yeah, probably. It’ll be a good distraction, at least. I’ll tell him to take one for the team.”
Mike nods once, but he doesn’t look convinced. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Will hesitates, then drops his hand to Mike’s and slots their fingers together. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Look at me.”
Mike looks up the rest of the way. He looks incredible tonight, which is something Will’s been thinking ever since they’d started getting ready an hour ago, and at least half of the reason it took him so long was because he’d been totally distracted the whole time. Maybe Will is just biased, which is a little true, sure, but Mike should definitely wear suits more– and he’s officially taking it upon himself to make sure that Mike wears suits more– because suddenly he’s tempted to take Mike up on his offer of becoming a runaway best man and going back inside and collapsing on the couch and kissing him stupid into the early hours of the morning.
“What?” Mike is saying, eyebrows twisting a little self-consciously. “You’re looking at me funny.”
“You just look really nice,” Will says simply, and then, because that comes nowhere close to how good Mike looks in a tie, “no, actually, you look– wow.”
Mike’s lips twitch, but he looks a little pleased. “Wow? Really?”
“You’ve rendered me speechless,” Will nods rapidly, and Mike’s shy smile breaks into something more genuine. “You– look at you, I mean– I can’t even– wow.”
“Will,” Mike says, drawing out the single syllable until it feels big enough to fill up the whole car. “Okay, I look nice! You can stop playing it up now.”
His cheeks are turning red, slowly, visible even in the dim lighting of the street lamps through the windows, because it’s early fall and it’s started to get dark ridiculously early in the day. It feels like a victory, getting Mike flustered, even after a year of dating. Will smiles to himself.
“I’m not,” Will says, then leans in across the console. “Come here. I’ll prove it.”
“You’ll–” Mike gets out, eyes going wide in surprise, “–has anyone ever told you that you’re–”
Whatever it was that people may or may not have told Will is apparently a mystery that will die with the universe, because Will never finds out. He kisses Mike with one hand still holding his, threads a hand through his hair and cups his jaw. Soft. Slow. Unhurried, even though they should have left ten minutes ago and they’re going to be cutting it real close– Will can’t be bothered to rush.
Mike hums low in the back of his throat, pleased, and shifts closer. He’s pushing himself up over the console, a hand ghosting the side of Will’s neck, when–
Beeeeep.
“What–” Will jerks backwards, startled, and Mike immediately lets go of his hand. “Did you just–”
Mike rubs his elbow and moves further away from the wheel. “I got a little distracted,” he laughs, but the tension has ebbed from his shoulders a little and his eyes are creasing up at the corners, so Will considers this a mission success, thank you. “We should probably go?”
“Good idea,” Will says, then reaches over to smooth out a stray tuft of Mike’s hair that was– he thinks, a little proud of himself– definitely not out of place before. “And hey,” he adds, before Mike can take the car out of park. “Seriously. Ignore your parents. It’s not their wedding, okay, it’s Nancy’s. And Jonathan’s. And they both want us there. Together.”
Mike’s lips press together into a thin, determined line. “You’re right,” he nods, “I know, it’s just–”
“I know,” Will echoes, and Mike shoots him a grateful smile. “Now let’s go, or we really will miss the ceremony.”
—-
They don’t miss the ceremony, which is good, because having both the best man and the– whatever Mike was– would probably not be a good look for anyone involved.
“I can’t believe you cried,” Dustin says, after the toasts are done and the speeches are given and everyone’s been supplied with enough champagne to go a little loose and maybe a little tear-happy.
Mike scowls across the table at him. “I didn’t cry,” he insists, which is kind of pointless because Will had been watching him the whole time he’d been standing up there, shuffling his feet awkwardly in place at his designated spot in between Holly and Robin Buckley, and he’d definitely cried. Just a little, but he had.
“You did,” El chimes in primly, plucking at her shrimp cocktail. “I saw.”
“Thanks, El,” Mike mutters, sinking back in his chair a little and crossing his arms. “It’s– the vows were very emotional, okay, you’d have to be made of total stone to not tear up!”
“I didn’t cry,” Lucas announces, which is a fucking lie, by the way. Will saw him dabbing at his eyes in the bathroom on the way here.
“I think it’s sweet,” he says, instead of throwing Lucas to the dogs like he maybe should have. He flashes Mike a grin, leans over in his chair to bridge the space between them and squeezes his hand, once. “They were very sappy vows, to be fair.”
Mike blinks up at him from where he’s slumped down to somewhere around shoulder height. “You didn’t cry.”
“Oh, I did,” Will assures him. “I just cried in the back with Jonathan while he was getting ready.”
“Really?” Mike perks right up. “You did?”
“Yes,” Will laughs, “and I can’t believe you’re happy about it,” and then Mike grins so wide that Will can’t help but lean in the rest of the way and press a quick kiss to Mike’s cheek.
“You two are disgusting,” Lucas says, and he’s maybe one strike away from Will speaking up about the bathroom incident after all.
“Maybe so,” Mike relents, looking properly cheered up now. “What about it?”
Mike’s grip on Will’s hand never falters. Will feels himself turn warmer with every slow pass of Mike’s thumb over his knuckles, even with their hands tucked under the tablecloth and out of view. And it isn’t from the champagne. He’s had just the one glass with dinner, which is nothing, so it must be something else that’s making him feel like this. Something–
“You okay?” Mike murmurs as his thumb pauses, briefly, on the back of Will’s hand. “You got kind of quiet out of nowhere,” and yeah, there it is.
“I meant it,” Will says, lowering his voice so their friends can’t hear them from across the table. “What I said in the car, I mean. You look beautiful.”
It’s a little amusing just how fast Mike can turn such a violent shade of red. “You can’t just say that,” he splutters. “Give a guy some warning, Jesus, Will–”
“Mm, no,” Will decides smugly, watching the red creep down the collar of Mike’s carefully starched dress shirt. Then, because the soft lighting of the venue and the way Mike’s hair has started to fall free around his face is doing something funny to his chest and stomach, Will nods to the dance floor and says, “You wanna?”
Mike hesitates, looking over his shoulder. “Dance?”
Will shrugs, then looks over to where Jonathan and Nancy are trying– and failing, quite hilariously and miserably– at a dance of their own. “I mean, it’s a wedding, and people dance at weddings. Not that either of us are good at it, but it might be fun to try?”
Mike chews nervously at his lower lip and nudges Will’s foot with his own. “I don’t know,” he admits. “My mom was eyeing me earlier and I was totally avoiding her by hiding out over here but I feel like the dance floor is fair game for a–” he waves his hands around, “pseudo-confrontation. Nancy’s only three years older than you, blah, blah. When are you going to settle down, blah, blah. Even though I’m here with my boyfriend, which apparently doesn’t count for shit, and–” Mike sighs dejectedly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring the mood down, it’s just– I was having such a good day, too.”
Will squeezes Mike’s leg, just above the knee. “You were having a good day? Really? Even though your hot date got canceled?”
“Well,” Mike rolls his eyes. “My sister got married, and now my hot date is all dressed up and sweet-talking me, so I think this is even better than pizza on the couch.” He pauses, contemplating. “Actually, scratch that. It’s not. But it’s a close second,” Mike adds, then grins and picks Will’s hand up again. “Dance– later, maybe? I’m really enjoying this for right now.”
“Of course. Anything you want,” Will smiles, as the music in the background softens into something more mellow. He pulls his chair up so that it’s flush with Mike’s, their thighs pressed up together in one line, and passes Mike a flute of champagne from the table. “You might want to drink this, though, because your mom looks like she might be heading over here any second.”
“Thanks,” Mike groans, then knocks the whole thing back in one go.
—-
Will knows that a big fancy flashy wedding isn’t really Jonathan’s style, and he didn’t think it was Nancy’s either. Which is why he was surprised to get an invite to an event at all, because he’d honestly sort of thought they’d make a courthouse affair of it and then have everyone over for dinner or something. They’d been engaged for, like, three years, because it was career stuff and then more career stuff and then a couple months of long distance while Jonathan was doing some photojournalism thing in London, and Will had figured at some point that they’d get so tired of being engaged that they’d show up the next day with papers from City Hall and that would be that.
Apparently, though, in a not-so-surprising turn of events, Nancy Wheeler takes to event planning like a moth to flame, and Jonathan was immediately dragged along for the ride. He didn’t seem too upset about it, though, when Will had asked. “It’s Nancy,” he shrugged, like that explained everything. And maybe it did, because not too long after that, Will started dating Mike and everything immediately clicked.
Which is maybe the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to him. For anyone else, Will would not even entertain the thought of fussing over seating arrangements, and he’s certain he only knows, like, five types of flowers– if pink and red roses count as two different types. It’s Nancy, Jonathan had said, and Will hadn’t gotten it then but he does now.
Mike’s hand twitches on Will’s bicep, fingers clutching once at the fabric of his shirt. Will’s suit jacket lies abandoned on the chair behind them. Mike had leaned over maybe half an hour ago to rest his head on Will’s shoulder, as it got later in the night and guests started slowly trickling out of the room. And then, maybe fifteen or so minutes ago, his breathing had evened out, fingers slackening in their grip against his arm, and Will doesn’t know how the hell Mike can fall asleep in a room that’s filled with so much noise, but he can’t help but find it endearing– wholly, completely, embarrassingly endearing.
And he gets it, he does. It’s Mike, he thinks, chest flooding with warmth in a strange, hollowed-out way, like there’s nothing left inside him except this feeling. It’s Mike. It’s Mike. It’s–
“Hey, hon,” comes a voice behind him, and Will startles, just a little, then immediately relaxes.
“Oh, hey mom,” he whispers, and Mike’s hand twitches lightly against his arm again. Joyce gives him an amused look, glancing down at Mike, then back at Will.
“Did he fall asleep?” she asks, pulling up a chair next to them. “I’ll be quiet, don’t worry.”
Will feels himself smile before he actually realizes he’s doing it. “Yeah,” he snorts softly, “but I have no idea how.”
As if roused by some sixth sense, like he knew they were talking about him, Mike stirs, lifting his head off of Will’s shoulder and blinking blearily. “What–”
“Shh,” Will says, and Joyce bites back a smile. “Go back to sleep.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Mike says, and then yawns loud and conspicuously. “Shit– I’ve just been so tired this week, sorry, Will–”
“Don’t be,” he says immediately, even though his shoulder and arm are starting to fall asleep, just a little. Will drops a kiss to the top of Mike’s head, and feels him start to smile into his shoulder before stiffening, a little self-consciously, and glancing up at Joyce.
“Um–”
“Oh,” his mom waves a hand, “don’t mind me. You two are so sweet. You remind me of Nancy and Jonathan after they started dating. Jonathan would turn so red, but maybe not as red as you’re turning right now, Will–”
“Mom!”
“Red?” Mike perks up, and then, “Oh you are turning red!”
“Shut up,” Will mumbles, but he’s sure it’s not convincing in the slightest. “Did you come over here just to embarrass me?”
Joyce puts two hands up in the air like hey, don’t look at me. “I was just going to let you know that Hop and I are taking off,” she says, eyes sparkling. “He has the early shift tomorrow, but Mike, now that I’ve caught you– your speech was wonderful. Really. Jim was tearing up and he told me to never let you find out but I figured you’d want to know.”
Mike blinks. He still looks a little out of it, still a little red from sleep or the champagne from earlier, but he smiles, sudden and pleased. “Really?”
“Don’t tell him I told you,” Joyce grins conspiratorially. “But yes. It was very sweet.”
“Thanks Mrs. Byers,” Mike says, the words stretching into another yawn, quieter this time. He groans lightly, then pushes himself off of Will’s shoulder and sits back up.
Will peers over at him. “Are you tired? You want to head back?”
Mike rubs at his eyes with both hands, blinks a few times in rapid succession, then shakes his head like he’s trying to shake the sleep out of his body, like it’s a physical thing. “No,” he smiles, and it’s a little bit tired, but he looks happy. “No, not yet.”
“Okay,” Will whispers, and he’s probably grinning like an idiot, but he can’t help it. That’s the common denominator here, between every interaction he ever has with Mike– that he’s so happy that he just can’t help it. “You still want to get pizza on the way back?”
“God, yes please,” Mike groans in relief. “Um. No offense, but wedding food is just– like what the hell, man, I’m starving. That was nothing.”
“Pizza it is,” Will agreed easily, mentally making a pros and cons list of getting a large and having leftovers or saving money and going for a medium. “Pepperoni?”
“Anything goes,” Mike is saying, and then Joyce clears her throat.
“Well,” she says, snapping her purse shut and smiling. “Hop and I are heading out but– oh, drive safe you two. Eat a slice for me, actually, I’ve been craving pizza all week.”
“Bye, mom,” Will smiles, craning his neck upwards as she plants a kiss on top of his head.
“You too,” she says to Mike, who barely has time to blink in surprise before his mom is dropping a kiss on his forehead. She rests a hand on his shoulder briefly as she smiles and says, “I’d welcome you to the family, Mike, but you’ve been a part of it for years already.”
“I– bye, Mrs. Byers,” Mike says faintly, eyes wide, as Joyce waves goodbye. He turns back to Will. “Part of the family? Really?”
“It’s what you get for dating your best friend,” Will murmurs, glancing out over the rapidly emptying room before tugging on Mike’s arm until he falls into him with a small, startled noise. “You get smothered by my mom.”
“I wouldn’t call it smothering,” Mike laughs, eyes darting down to Will’s mouth. He swallows, and says, softly, “Plus, I like your family. No complaints from me.”
Will hums, soft. “I’m sorry about– you know. How did that go?”
“Nancy said she survived mom and dad with minimal damage,” Mike laughs drily. “And nana too. And I managed to avoid them long enough that they didn’t have a chance to ambush me, so.”
“Good,” Will says, kissing Mike softly on the corner of his mouth, then again, right over the curve of his cupid’s bow. He’s a little warm, a little loose and pliant from sleep, and he moves easily, tucking a finger into the loop of Will’s tie and pulling him in closer. Their knees bump against each other under the tablecloth, chair legs scraping gently across the polished floor as Will leans forward. “I’m glad,” Will says into the kiss, and Mike smiles.
“Me too,” Mike whispers, tucking his hands into Will’s hair and pulling away, just barely. “Because now they’re gone and all of our annoying cursory invite relatives are gone and it’s just you and me– and Nancy, and Jonathan, and El and Lucas and– whatever. I think I owe you a dance.”
There’s something slow and melodic playing as Nancy and Jonathan make the last of their rounds, most of the tables empty and the dance floor cleared out. Will grins, kisses Mike one more time for good measure, then stands up. “Okay,” he agrees, “but I’m leading.”
“I don’t think it makes a difference, because neither of us can–”
“I’m leading,” Will says again, and Mike chuckles, shaking his head.
