Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(Summer 1989)

It’s the middle of summer. They’re sitting in a neat row of Will-Mike-Lucas-Max-Dustin on the edge of the Hawkins Community Pool, dangling their legs in the cold water, and laughing about something stupid. It’s a busy day, with the sounds of kids playing and people talking and music overlapping – ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do…’ blaring from the lifeguard’s boombox and ‘Take a chance’ from someone’s radio to the left, the chorus tinny and shrill.

But all Mike can feel is the slow brush of Will’s arm against his, naked and wet.

They’re almost-nearly pressed together in a constant give and take with each breath that has Mike’s stomach contract with heat.

Will’s hand is idly trailing in the water below them, fingers slowly waving through it as he looks up, eyes squinting against the bright sun, and smiles at him.

Mike only half notices the others leave. They jump back into the pool and splash away, but Mike’s too slow to follow. He’s caught up in looking at Will, staring at Will’s hand touching the water, while the rest of them are racing and laughing, moving further and further away.

And Mike is allowed to be like this when he’s bracketed between Will’s side and the cool pressure of Lucas’s thigh against his hip. Then it’s all right. But now they’re sitting here alone together, it triggers that narrow feeling of too close. So Mike pushes up on his arms and slowly allows himself to sink into the water as well. Only without a splash, just a long line down like a dead body with stones tied to his feet.

It’s ice cold. The water steals his breath as it runs past his stomach and chest and mouth. And then when it covers his ears, the whole world dampens into echoes.

Mike opens his eyes underwater even though they burn to see everything tinted blue. The water is dotted with spots of light, and there are whole collections of legs moving around him with white rushing bubbles following them. He notices Will’s feet dangling there, too.

On impulse, Mike wraps his fingers around Will’s ankles and pulls himself up by them.

He rises with a big gasp out of the water to see a startled Will, all wet hair and radiant sunshine on his shoulders, looking down at him like this and smiling again. “What?”

They don’t play like this anymore.

“Come on, come in!” The words taste wet and cold on Mike’s lips, but he wants Will to come along, to be together in the breath-stealing water.

Will hesitates. “It’s so cold.”

Except Will wants to be asked, really. It’s in his voice and the way that he’s looking at the water around Mike like he wants to be right there.

And Mike’s a little crazy, maybe, a little not normal right now on this hot day in Hawkins, their very last pool day. Because he opens his arms and says, without thinking, “Come on, jump in. I’ll catch you.”

Will’s smile grows wider. “…Okay?” He moves forward off the pool’s edge.

Mike’s standing close and when Will drops down into the water, it’s the immediate and startling reality of Will’s whole body that he’s holding.

In a blink it’s Will’s arms by his neck and Will’s legs wrapped around him. Mike’s hands automatically settle underneath Will’s ass, holding him up with the waterline dancing around their shoulders and Will’s laugh right there by his ear.

It’s the closest sort of hug that they’ve shared in years.

It’s also horribly intimate, and not funny, but Mike bounces Will up and down just to make him laugh some more, his heart wildly thumping as he feels things that he can’t –

So Mike moves back, wraps an arm under Will’s shoulders and one under his knees and holds him up like that in his arms, saying, “Like a princess.”

“Like a princess?” Will’s eyes are wide and incredulous but shining with laughter; he looks happier than he has in weeks.

“Yes!” Why not? It is wrong? Should Mike not say that?

But Will is playing along.

Which should be fun and not bring the instant thud of the memory of carrying Will like this at the Squawk once; as a heavy, unconscious weight, Will’s head lolled against Mike’s shoulder. Mike struggled to do it then - Lucas had to help lift him. Only adrenaline and hard panic meant that Mike was able to hold Will for real.

But now, there’s sunlight reflecting on the wavering water, almost too much to see properly.

And now, Will is looking up at him curiously as Mike slowly walks like that, his legs pushing against the water. Will’s weight is hardly there in his arms but still so outrageous to hold.

Maybe I’m strong. Brave.

Mike’s gradually moving towards the others, who are busy splashing over at the front bit of the pool. They pass by kids with floats and a group of older teens, but none of them care.

The noise seems quieter, the sun stronger, and everything slower and more at ease like this.

Maybe today I am.

Mike can see Will’s dark, wet eyelashes and the shades of brown-green in Will’s eyes. The way Will’s cheeks curve up with his smile, and the wet sheen of his lips.

The line of his neck.

Mike wants to keep on staring, to find every detail that he’s missed when he’s been trying not to.

And Will is looking right back, his eyes warm and more serious now, like maybe they’re both someone different and they hadn’t noticed it yet.

Until Mike bumps Will’s legs into Mrs. Calverton, one of his neighbors from down the street. She doesn’t say anything, just frowns and swims around them.

It’s not – it’s not wrong, this. Mike knows that.

But his arms become lead, and everywhere he’s holding Will’s weight feels too foreign, so he puts Will down. Mike turns away and quickly swims to where Lucas is getting dunked by Max, his chest feeling as heavy as his arms now.

Nothing strong about that.

Dustin’s voice is just about audible, saying, “-deserved it.”

And so Mike tries to get Dustin, splashing him in the face to Dustin’ muffled screech of outrage and Max’s, “Yeah!”

Mike has to push himself to do it like he doesn’t know how to move right now or how to make his body have fun. Every reaction of his feels like it’s a second too late, skipping out of tune with the day like a stuck record.

Dustin retaliates, and so Mike allows himself to be dunked underwater until he is the one left sputtering.

They’re all acting loud, and crazy, and silly.

Trying so hard to be what they’re not anymore.

When Lucas said, “Let’s go swimming!” this morning, Mike said no. Only then Dustin argued, “It’s probably the last time that we…” and so it had to be a yes. But it’s like trying to catch a dream after waking up. It’s already been lived, and now they're just at the end.

It feels same with Will.

They used to be everything to each other. Every bit of Mike’s world was Will.

But it’s like rubber bands, now. Whenever Mike’s too close, doing something that’s maybe sort of too much, the bands snap him back. He can’t just touch Will. He can’t – shouldn’t – play anymore because it feels like… Like a princess, really?

It was a dumb thing to say.

Will doesn’t seem upset about it, at least. He hardly ever is when Mike trips over his words and pulls back his arms and has too much body to exist around Will anymore.

But Mike can feel it churning inside of him; he can’t call Will that. It’s insulting. What is he doing? Why can’t he just act normal?

They’re getting out now, Dustin saying something, and they all follow. Mike walks last because he’s slow and doesn’t pay attention. And yes, because like this he can see the dripping of Will’s hair, nearly black with water. The curve of Will’s shoulder blades, with drops rolling off them. The dip of Will’s spine with a few brown moles scattered on his skin like a private sort of thing.

And Will’s ass moving as he walks. It’s not decent to notice that; it’s not a thing that Mike should ever look at, only he does. He’s grabbing that image and squirreling it away inside in a panicked frenzy until Will turns back and asks, “You okay?”

“Yes!” Mike makes sure to nod multiple times. “Yes, yeah. Totally.”

It’s just that my eyes burn your skin without meaning to, again and again.

At Will’s questioning expression - and how weird does Mike seem today, really, that Will can tell? - Mike adds, “You know. Um. Last time.”

Will’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”

Will waits to walk next to him, so Mike bumps arms with him as they walk, wet and cold skin together again. And he thinks of rubber bands around his chest. Tight enough to hurt. 

-

(Fall 1989)

College is a disaster.

The lectures are too long to pay attention to, and Mike can’t read anything because as soon as he opens a book, his eyes drift off the page. He forgets that papers are due, then feels guilty enough about it that he’s up half the night wanting to fix it but still somehow manages to do nothing at all. He sleeps in until the afternoon and shows up in classes in yesterday’s clothes, his mind full of half-forgotten shards of nightmares.

There are plenty of distractions. People invite him to things. And they seem nice enough, but it’s not right, somehow. It doesn’t feel safe.

So Mike imagines that he’s nothing.

He constantly thinks of himself as dissolving into thin air. Not having a body, not being there at all.

He stupidly ends up in a poetry elective because he procrastinated on choosing, and it was the only one that wasn’t already full. All they need to do is write one line, anyway.

Mike writes: ‘The swings swallowed me.’

The professor, a middle-aged woman with short hair and a sweater vest insisting on being called Pam, stops him on his way out to say, “Interesting, Mr. Wheeler.”

He shrugs.

Brent, Mike’s roommate, constantly talks about girls and weed and booze and parties. He makes it sound cool, like it’s something that everyone should do. So Mike goes with him, sullenly sitting on a couch all evening in between the noise, and gets massively drunk for the first time.

He spends the night seeing the room spin around him and then, near morning, leaning his sweaty forehead onto the cool toilet seat in between rounds of puking.

And he hates it. He hates it all.

The second line is due, and Mike probably fucks it all up by writing, ‘With star-shaped throats.’

Nothing makes sense; nothing is there to make him feel anything good at all. It’s just this layer of terror underlying every breath, as if there might be a Demo popping up at any moment. And he’d be so horribly relieved if one did because then he’d know what to do.

Then he could call Will back.

-

(Summer 1989)

After the pool, they go eat at the brand-new Burger King that’s opened right on Hawkins Main Street, because Lucas starts his shift there at one and he has the employee discount.

Lucas makes Max snort so hard some strawberry milkshake comes out of her nose. So then they all try to do it as well, and it’s hilarious and messy, and there’s just this edge of holding on too tight from all of them.

Laughing too much and too loud.

Smiling too bright.

Or maybe that’s just in Mike’s mind. Maybe the others really are that relaxed and happy and not embarrassingly aware of the way that Will’s knee has bumped his seventeen times under the table already and that it’s mostly Mike’s fault that it has. Mike has long legs, and he’s wearing shorts, and so is Will, and they’re sitting close. It’s just skin, just that.

Will bites his burger and sauce goes everywhere, and he’s laughing at something that Dustin said, and he’s not graceful; he’s not full of light and warmth. That’s just Mike thinking it.

It’s all just Mike.

Leaving Lucas behind to work, they bike around aimlessly until Will has to go to the library and Max to her job at the car repair shop that she seems to love. Dustin wants to go read Engines of Creation again to prepare for college, so they give up on the day, and Mike bikes home alone.

It’s only afternoon, and the house is entirely silent. He goes upstairs, light streaming in the window of his stuffy room.

Mike locks the door, takes the walkie out of his backpack - he never leaves the house without it even now, just in case – and turns his radio on to the Squawk. ‘-such a perfect day...’

He somehow still carries the scent of chlorine even though he showered it off – with Will right there next to him showering too, Will’s eyes closed underneath the spray, and did he have to look like that, as if it felt really nice?

Mike’s shorts drop to the floor and his underpants as well, and then he’s falling back onto the bed, onto warm, soft pillows. And his hand that still smells like burgers finds his quickly stiffening hard-on.

It should be lazy, like this. With no one else in the house.

'I thought I was someone else. Someone good.’

But it feels uneasy in the sunlight and after swimming and purposely bumping his knee with Will’s because Mike knows why he’s – he knows.

Will’s legs wrapping around him in the pool. The feeling of carrying Will. The look of Will’s ass. Mike tightens his hand on himself so much that it should hurt, but it feels good; that’s the whole problem. It always feels so, so good.

What does Will do when he’s by himself?

What is it that has Will's head tilt back and eyes close like he did under the shower spray? Would he…?

Mike has thought about this in the way that his arm brushed Will’s at the pool. He has thought it and then dipped away from the thought, quickly touched it in his mind, and then hidden from it again. Because he sort of knows what boys like Will do, right?

What men do together.

Mike’s just curious, he tells himself, the morals of it hazy already. He’s slowing down because he’ll come just thinking about it like he has before, but he never actually has dared to try-

Only maybe today.

Mike moves his hand underneath his balls. It feels strange, tracing his fingers in between his butt cheeks while getting off.

He has some hairs there. And he’s ticklish, maybe, a bit. Sensitive. Is he supposed to be? Is that weird?

Mike takes a deep breath, feeling dizzy with fear.

And does it.

He presses a finger inside.

First just the fingertip and then down to the first knuckle even though it’s really tight and harder to do than he thought it would be.

It's weird. Uncomfortable. It feels completely out of place down there. It's almost enough to make him stop, only it's also strangely velvety-soft inside. Mike wiggles his finger around and suddenly he’s really, really close to coming, gasping at the edge. He jerks off fast, and he tumbles into coming like that, with his finger still inside of him, spurting all over his hand.

So that’s what that is then. Sort of.

What Will does.

Mike feels kind of brave after. For trying something new. And also as if he might be sick, but that’s the burger, probably, and the memory of carrying Will in his arms again.

And the way that the sun was hitting the pool.

Chapter Text

(Summer 1989)

The day after the pool, Mike is standing next to Will in the parking lot between the Family Video and the Palace Arcade, waiting for Dustin to finish his ‘just have to get this real quick’ run into the video rental.

Max and Lucas just left. It’s hot and they can’t get back in the car because Dustin locked it and took the keys.

The parking lot smells like car exhaust.

And it’s quiet because they don’t - they don’t hang out like this anymore often, Will and him. Just the two of them.

Mike runs his finger over the dust on the hood of Dustin's white Subaru, feeling the grind of the particles beneath his fingertips.

It’s better if they don’t.

Because, like always, Mike can feel things thrumming in the air between them. Stupid things like ‘Do you know that you’re a little bit sunburnt from the pool yesterday?’ Because there is a hint of red on the bridge of Will’s nose that Mike’s eyes have been drawn to all day.

And worse things, much worse, that make the sweat prickle uncomfortably underneath his arms.

Like how Will’s turned away from him so that they’re looking at the same bit of nothing, hot sun reflecting off cars in the quiet afternoon heat of Hawkins, and Mike can see the line of Will’s jaw and wants to nuzzle it like a dog.

Or how he already knows that he’s going to be remembering this later, Will’s shoulders and the dip of his back and the curve of his ass just barely leaning against the car. Mike likes watching it, how Will looks. And that’s not right, is it?

Especially because Will seems so expectant lately. Happy at the thought that he’s going to go away to college soon. That he’s going to leave.

Which feels heavy like the heat beating on their shoulders. Mike stupidly wants his face to get sunburned, too; he wants a matching hint of red on his nose so that they’re the same, so that they’re together in a set.

“Will…” Mike’s voice comes out hoarse, and he swallows. You shouldn’t ask. Don’t. “In college.”

Will looks at him. “Yeah?”

“You’re going to do… Um. Gay-” Mike still doesn’t like that word. It’s too big. It means too many things, like looking at the floor as hard as he can whenever he hears it. But for Will, he can force himself to use it. “Gay things. Right?”

Will moves a bit. He's startled. “Er… maybe?” His face settles a little and he says gently, “I mean, I hope so?”

Mike has never asked. Only right now he’s sorry that he hasn’t, not when he’s had a whole year and a half to talk about it and there are only a fistful of days left that are constantly slipping away and there’s so much about Will that’s strange and new that he doesn’t know yet.

“Does it…” Mike bites his lips and stops.

Okay, terrible idea. He can’t talk about this.

He can’t.

Will is looking at him now, though. And Will doesn’t seem upset about it anymore after crying so hard at the Squawk that day that he told everyone. Mike can’t understand why he isn’t more upset. There were years where Mike knew every single shift in Will’s face, and he could tell what Will was thinking and why he was quiet and what to do to make it better. But now Will just seems okay. Maybe a bit shy, but okay, and how can that be? How can he feel so all right about it?

Like right now, Will says lightly, turning towards him, “You can ask. If you want.”

“I just don’t get…” Mike asks, quickly, before his confidence runs out, “How does it fit?”

“What?” Will frowns.

“The, ah…” Mike sort of motions his hands awkwardly into the air, knowing that he looks like a complete idiot.

But Will gets it, understanding flowing over his face. “Oh!"

So Mike pushes on. “Won’t it hurt? A lot?” Because he was thinking about this, and if one finger already feels like that, then how is Will going to do a whole…? It’ll hurt him. They’re going to hurt him, those boys who are going to do that to Will, and it seems important that Will thinks about that before they just try to shove it in and-

“I think that it, you know, needs…” Will definitely seems uncomfortable now. He can’t look him in the eye. “…preparation.”

“Preparation?” Mike says it just a little too fast, he knows. Too eager.

“Like, um. A l- lubricant. It means like oil, or Vaseline, or something.” Will looks down at the parking lot markings, and he is blushing. It only adds to the sunburn, and he’s so pretty looking flushed pink in the sun. “And then with... fingers. Or, um.” His eyes skip away.

“Really?” The fingers bit he got right, Mike thinks, a bit smugly. It’s just the oil thing that he didn’t know.

“Yeah, you can’t just…” Will stops talking.

“Jam it in?” Mike offers, his words too fast for his brain to catch up on what he’s saying.

Will burst out a nervous laugh. “No! No, you can’t just…” His nose scrunches up a little. “Jam it in.”

“Okay.” Mike smiles, too, as they look at each other.

It’s funny, right? It’s okay between them.

But he does feel kind of dumb asking now. “Sorry. It was a stupid question.”

“No!” Will shakes his head, sounding sincere. “No, it wasn’t. I also didn’t… I mean, I, ah, I have a book.” He takes a breath. “I only know because I have a book about it. Jonathan gave it to me.”

“Oh.” There’s a bit of a pause, and Mike looks away, pretending to be interested in the cars. And the bright blue sky, which is the exact shade the pool was yesterday, only with a few wispy clouds.

Will speaks up slowly, “You could…” He glances at him. “You could read it if you like.” He looks down again, flustered. “I mean, if you want. It has a lot of, um, it explains. All of it.”

“Sure.” Mike’s already nodding before Will’s done talking. “Sure, yeah. Cool.”

“If you come by the library tomorrow, I could bring it?”

“Cool,” Mike repeats again, as if he doesn’t know any other words that mean yes.

Because yes, he wants to read that book, and yes, he wants to talk to Will. He has more questions, actually, but there is no way to describe any of them out loud, and the silence feels like it’s going to gut him with knives. Is that what you do when you’re alone, too, with your fingers? Do you like it?

Then Dustin grants them both the enormous favor of finally coming back, holding a bag of tapes and saying, “I saw Stacey, she’s-“

Mike lets Dustin’s words flow over him as they get in the car. He automatically claims the seat up front next to Dustin that was Lucas’s before, leaving Will to the back.

He’s glad of that because some space is good. Mike’s aware that he shocked Will, asking something like that out of nowhere. And that he must sound really weird.

He tries to seem focused on the road as they get going, although he’s not seeing any of it.

The car radio is playing lowly, and Mike wants to wince at the song, or change the channel, but he forces himself not to. ‘-rain again, falling on my head like a memory.’

Dustin drove them up to Indianapolis this morning because RadioShack never came back to Hawkins. And Will wanted things from the art supply store, and Max and Dustin like the thrift store there. They all agreed to stop by Karma Records, and Books Unlimited, and then of course they went to Comic Carnival. Mark still knows the four of them by name from when they used to come in as tiny kids on their birthdays.

So now they’re stocked up with books and comics and gadgets, all in plastic bags on the backseat.

Next to Will.

Mike tries not to look back too obviously or too often.

‘-talk to me, like lovers do.’

It’s okay, right, that he asked? Will knows about these things. Of course he does. He has a whole book, and he’s probably doing it all the time. It’s just Mike who doesn’t. Who couldn’t even make it past the first knuckle without coming, but that’s something that he never, ever needs to tell anyone about.

Dustin drops Mike off first, so Mike, bag of books in hand, gets out and mumbles something like, “Later.”

He can hear Will’s soft, “See you tomorrow,” and he makes sure to smile.

“See you.”

-

(Winter 1989)

After a couple of months of being roommates, Brent suddenly asks, after catching Mike staying in yet another night again, “Hey, you’re not like, a fag, are you?”

“What?" Mike jumps. “Why? No!”

And then he tries to smile in a way that feels like there’s a clothes hanger stuck in the corners of his mouth and his lips are going to slide off because he thought that he was doing okay. That he was acting all right.

Normal.

“It’s just like, nothing personal, but I’ve never seen you with a girl.” Brent settles back on his bed, completely comfortable. “And I don’t want to catch it, you know. The AIDS.” Brent shrugs. “It’s in their pores.”

Mike swallows. “…Yeah.”

‘Funny how there’s a face underneath my face.’

He can’t go to class after that. Mike says that he’s sick, staying in bed all day and staring at the ceiling.

He doesn’t forget to eat, it’s just that it feels like too much effort to walk all the way over to the dining hall and exist in between all those people.

Or to put on music. Read. Watch TV. All of it feels too fragile, as if moving at all is going to break him in a way that he’s not going to recover from.

‘There’s a full body rib-caged underneath my own.
And it would be great if it was yours well done for secretly being me.
Here’s an award for questions with car exhaust and sunburn licking your face,
and guilty slippery fingers like snakes.’

-

(Summer 1989)

As soon as he walks into the house, Mike goes to look through the kitchen.

There’s a bottle of Crisco canola oil on the kitchen counter. And then in the cupboard, hidden behind the pepper and the salad dressing, a dark green bottle of olive oil. Mike doubts on which one to pick. In the end, the olive oil reminds him of the Romans or Greeks the most, and they were the ones who invented doing this whole thing, right? So that’s probably best.

He can’t just grab the bottle, though. Mom might want it for cooking.

Holly passes by on her way out, but luckily she doesn’t care at all about why Mike’s pouring olive oil into a glass in the middle of the day as if he’s about to chug it.

Mike feels a little lightheaded hurrying up the stairs, holding the glass.

Okay then.

Okay.

He locks the door and takes off all of his clothes because he has the idea that he needs to be naked for this. And also he feels pretty gross and sweaty from being in Dustin's hot car for so long. He stinks, so maybe a shower after, and that brings back the image of Will showering at the pool with his eyes closed, and oh god.

Mike lies down on the bed, and it’s embarrassing that his dick is filling out so eagerly already when he hasn’t even done anything yet.

He opens his legs, experimentally dips his fingers into the olive oil, and then finds his way to his ass again. Only he doesn’t aim it quite right, so the oil rubs off where it doesn’t need to be.

He collects another dip of oil, and by then it’s really slippery all over, so yes, he can do it. Press in a finger.

Will was right. It does go in so much easier.

Mike adds a second finger, which is tight, but the oil helps a lot. Moving them in and out makes a noise now, too, an actual squelching sort of sound. It sends hot pangs through his stomach because it is so dirty and he can feel his cheeks burning. All of this is filthy, and the thought of anyone finding out that he ever did this to himself feels like he’d actually burn up or burst apart or be hacked into a dozen mortified pieces.

But it has his dick contracting all by itself and makes a little bit of come appear at the head.

Mike tries to move his fingers in and out so he can hear the noise again while jerking off at the same time. He uses the oil for that, too. It’s great, slick on his dick, dripping everywhere, his hand whipping back and forth in fast strokes.

He’s already close, so he pushes his fingers in and out as fast and hard as they’ll go and stutters into coming like that, eyes closed, trying not to imagine…

He wipes his oily hands on his upper legs. He’s a mess anyway.

Mike lies there, in the afternoon heat, watching his dick softening now in between the black curls of his pubes, with the white drops of his come on his stomach. He runs his fingers through them like he did to the dust on the hood of the car, idly smearing it in patterns over himself. 

He forgot to turn on the radio when he came in, so it’s just silence.

It smells like olive oil, the whole room. Kind of like a salad.

And Mike’s sharp sweat, too.

His come.

He’s waiting for the guilt to hit like a hammer, to take away his breath and make him want to hide.

He experimentally sniffs his fingers, too, and realizes that there’s sort of a sweet smell from his ass. Which seems like it should be disgusting. All of this is. So wrong. If he was a decent person at all, he should feel different things right now that aren’t just the heavy thumping of his heartbeat and something like excitement curling around him still.

Mike thinks of chlorine and the smell of it clinging to his body afterwards, just like the feeling of Will wrapping his legs around him. The weight of him.

Will’s blush today.

It makes Mike want to poke and prod Will, then hold him in his arms and say that it’ll all be okay. And then maybe try to make him smile like that again and ki-

Only he can’t. That’s only for boys like Will. The ones who tell the whole world about what they are. Whose laugh sounds like music and who walk like they’re a little light in the loafers – Mike heard that expression once and thought that it sounded like something beautiful, exactly how Will is. Light and bright.

Which is nothing like Mike, obviously.

Mike’s body doesn’t mind, though. He’s half-hard again just thinking about it. And that’s enough, because now he’s done it once and he’s covered in oil, he might as well keep on going. He opens up his legs and tries again with two whole fingers straight away, which makes him sort of grunt. 

Does Will make any sound when he does this? Would he be whisper-quiet because of the thin walls of the cabin? Or loud, with groans?

Mike works hard on the second one, sweat slicking his body and oil getting everywhere, trying to push his fingers in as deep as he can. When he accidentally moves them at just the right angle, it’s so toe-curlingly good that he’s suddenly out of breath and shaking. The room feels like it’s simmering around him, and he has to bite his lips not to shout when he finally trembles into coming like that, incredibly hard.

He lies there, feeling weak and stuck to the sheets with oil all over his ass and hands, spurts of come over him, his heart still racing. And he feels the tears prickle his eyes.

It was supposed to be horrible, this. Nasty.

Mike was meant to do it just the once to find out that he hates it and then never again. To be full of shame and hurt afterwards for even thinking about it.

So it’s not right; it’s not fair that his body makes it feel like this stunning, dazzling, throat-crushingly hot thing. 

Like deep down it wants to-

Be like Will.

Chapter Text

(Summer 1989)

Mike doesn’t have a summer job. Maybe he should have gotten one, because it feels like everyone – Lucas at Burger King, and Max at Kington’s auto shop, and Dustin at the Hawk Theater, and even Will in the library archive – they’re all having a life.

While Mike is watching them have a life.

It feels like the days move past him without doing or being anything. They’ve felt like that for a long time already, though. Since it all ended, he’s often made out of nothing.

Mike just lies on his bed, headphones on, Pink Floyd vibrating through his skull. '...When I was a child, I had a fever...'

And this new thing, the olive oil thing, it can go in with the nothing. It can go hide and be complicated over there, so he doesn’t need to think about how crushingly good it felt. Or how he’s aching a bit down there today because he couldn’t stop and did it one more time last night before going to sleep.

It’s easy when you can make things not matter anymore like that. Just put them aside. It makes living feel kind of empty, but Mike’s good at that by now. He imagines that he’s a machine sometimes, a robot, who can get through whole days and weeks and months without waking up all the way, just doing what he’s expected to do.

It makes everything hurt a lot less.

Will’s shift at the library starts earlier on Saturdays, so Mike bikes over there right after his breakfast, which is actually around eleven.

It’s drizzling. The kind of rain that doesn’t seem like a lot but pearls on his face and soaks through his jacket anyway.

He pushes the door open and is hit with the comforting smell of library and the librarian’s always-suspicious frown from behind the desk. Mike’s not sure if it’s because she recognizes him as the weirdo who once spent months borrowing everything they had about warfare strategy and bombs, or as someone who knows Mr. Clarke. “Hi, where’s Will working?”

She squints at him, then says, reluctantly, “Downstairs.”

Mike hurries down there. It smells even more like old books, with something a bit damp and moldy thrown in.

When he was small, he used to imagine the library like how it is in fantasy movies, where you can pick up huge tomes that haven’t been disturbed in eons, full of dust and wisdom. They’d always be in places like this. Dimly-lit basements.

But instead there’s Will, doing something on a machine that sounds like a hundred pages flipping at once. Will glances up and sees him, his eyes lighting up. “Mike!”

“Hi.” Mike tries to lean against a table, but it’s too low, so he sort of awkwardly bounces off it. “This is, er, where you work?”

Will motions at the machine. “I’m adding microfilms to the archive. It sort of makes me motion sick after a while, though, looking through them. But it’s quiet, down here.”

“Yeah.”

Will’s right that it’s quiet, but it also feels heavy and very dark. And kind of wrong that Will would spend all summer doing this just to earn some money. Mike glances at him. Do you like this, really?

Will says, “It’s, ah, it’s in my backpack?”

He gets up to go find his book, and Mike wants to tell him not to bother. That he doesn’t care about knowing gay things at all, that he doesn’t want to look. But the words don’t come, and it’s too late anyway because Will returns to hand him… “Wonder Woman?”

Will grins. “It’s inside. Don’t-“ Mike was about to open it, but Will touches his hand, just for a split second. “Don’t look at it here.”

“…Okay.” Mike zips it in his own backpack like the secret that it is. “Thanks. For… that.”

Will turns towards another machine. “Do you want to see how it works?”

“Sure. Yeah.” Mike doesn’t actually care about newspapers; that’s more Nancy’s thing. But he wants to know about Will, always.

Growing up, Mike used to be able to rattle off Will’s likes better than his own. Will’s favorite food, Will’s most treasured comic, Will’s preferred route home, Will’s coziest sweater, Will’s best crayon. Because it was always Will first, Will’s thoughts and what Will loved that Mike thought was important to know about.

And then, somewhere along with growing up, he made himself stop caring like that.

About anything, really.

Mike stands next to Will by the bench with a pile of old newspapers and watches as Will weirdly plugs in an iron. “It’ll go on a 35mm film roll, like this one.” Will shows him. “The film’s already loaded, so now I just need to photograph each page.” He smiles a little. “After they’re ironed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, so they don’t have any creases, because it makes shadows on the image.” Will points. “Can you see that pedal?”

Mike looks down between his feet. “Yeah?”

“Step on it when I say so?”

In the dim light, Will’s hands are only lit by the light of the camera as his iron glides over the pages in a soft woosh. He’s clearly used to it, moving it easily. As the iron heats up more, it starts smelling sharply like heat and newspaper.

Will says, “Now,” and Mike presses his foot, making a cool ‘shhhht’ shutter sound.

Then Will flips the page, and they go again.

Mike’s eyes keep on getting stuck on Will. The way that his hair falls as he’s looking down. How the shadows play on his face. It feels sort of fragile, working together. Like they should be whispering.

He has memories of watching Will draw and it feeling like this, too. Mike must have been doing something else himself, probably reading. But what he actually remembers is sitting next to Will, often close enough that their thighs were pressed together, and staring at Will’s hand on the page.

While now it’s just the sound of the iron, Will moving his hands away, looking up, and then Mike pressing the shutter button. It’s simple. Quiet.

They go through newspaper after newspaper.

Will says, his voice low as he changes out a microfilm roll, “If they’re properly stored, they’ll last for five hundred years,” and it sounds important. Special, to be doing this.  

Mike stays all the way through photographing the backdated editions of The Indiana Chronicle, pressing the pedal with his foot before Will turns.

After they've gone through the entire pile, Mike asks him, “How do I look up something?”

So Will shows him how to use the other machine, how to roll out the microfilm, stick it in, and then wind it up like the inside of a giant VHS.

The Hawkins Post archive section is huge, but it’s organized well.

Will probably knows what Mike’s looking for, but he says nothing and, other than the occasional glance, gives him space. Mike has to scroll through a few days – the 7^th of November 1988, the 8^th of November, and the 9^th - but it’s finally in the edition of the 10^th.

A small, tiny square in the obituaries. ‘Jane Hopper, with love.’

He’s glad, in a weird way, to see it like this. El’s name.

Preserved for five hundred years.

-

(Winter 1989)

After a few days of uneasy silence, Mike makes himself show Brent El’s picture and tells him, “I had a girlfriend. Jane. I met her when we were twelve, and then she died in junior year. That’s why I haven’t… been looking at girls.”

“Fuck.” Brent seems startled. “Sorry, man.” He thinks about it, a frown between his eyebrows, and then asks, “Oh, that’s why you’re always like, writing poems?”

No.

Mike hasn’t written a single thing about El. And that seems terrible yet again, another point on the long list of things that he should have been doing. He should have spent months crying at El’s grave. Or playing her favorite songs, or having daydreams about her that hurt. But he never did.

Like he’s not a proper person with real feelings about anything.

Mike starts, ‘Maybe you killed me, too.’

And then the rest of the page stays blank for weeks.

-

(Summer 1989)

After another hour in the library, Mike says goodbye to Will and bikes back home.

He could go bother Max at the car shop if he really wanted to, but they’re not that kind of friends. Lucas won’t be at work yet, and neither will Dustin, so Mike could stop by either of their houses to see if they’re in. Or ask them on the walkie, but he doesn’t.

Home again.

He sits on the bed and takes Will’s Wonder Woman comic out of his backpack. Inside is a thin book, smaller than Mike was expecting.

But as soon as he sees the cover, his breath stops.

Because he was thinking that it would be a dry text, kind of like their biology textbook that talked about ‘when the ovum is receptive to the spermatozoa,’ and needs a lot of imagination to be anything.

This… doesn’t.

It says in big bold letters, ‘The Unofficial Guide to Gay Sex’ and underneath is a picture of two fully naked men, both of them hard, kissing each other.

It’s the most explicitly gay thing that Mike has ever seen. It moves through his body like he’s on one of those roller coasters about to drop down from a great height and not sure whether he’ll make it.

No wonder that Will didn’t want him to look at it in the library.

Mike gets up to double-check that the door is locked and then sits back on his bed with the book, fighting the urge to close the curtains and read it under the covers with a flashlight like he’s twelve and it’s the Conan the Barbarian comic where he takes off his loincloth to go bathing in the stream. 

Mike swallows and opens the first page.

It starts with a drawing of a man being touched by another man, with text calling it ‘Mutual masturbation, where one lies with a friend, allowing oneself to be fondled and stroked.’

The next page Mike’s eye catches on, ‘A finger to caress your ass called postillioning,’ with a picture of someone doing it.

After that, there’s ‘Fellatio’ – he has to close his eyes around then and take some really deep breaths.

Mike quickly puts a hand in his shorts, takes out his dick, and starts stroking it.

This is what Will has been reading? This?

It’s insane. It’s porn, right? Will gave him porn. Mike can’t even make it through the full book before he's coming in a rush of hot cheeks and a blizzard of images in front of his eyes.

He’s careful not to get any come on the actual pages, but it’s a close call.

Afterwards, he leafs through the rest of the book, eyes still stuck on the illustrations and pictures because they’re… actual naked men with actual hard-ons touching each other like that’s okay, like they’re pleased to be doing it.

It’s like the whole concept of men having sex like this was only made up in his head before - something vague that Will might do. But now it violently rises off the pages straight into his dick, and it’s going to make him hard again.

Eventually Mike focuses enough to actually read some text. There’s a whole entire chapter starting with ‘Ass fucking, humping, buggering, sodomizing, or anal intercourse,’ which sounds like too many names for one thing, but he reads it closely anyway.

There is what Will said: ‘Anal relaxing is necessary. This can be accomplished by the experienced user, otherwise copious lubrication, time, and caution are advised.’

And it talks about the fingers but also something that Will didn’t say at all: ‘Your partner should open you up gradually by rimming and then inserting one finger into you, then two.’

It makes Mike flush when he realizes from the illustration what exactly rimming means. Licking there?!

It seems dirty, but kind of… in an interesting way.

A lot of the pictures do.

Later in the afternoon, Mike spends some time trying to determine which parts the book falls open to by itself. And which pages look a little crinkled. Will is always careful with his books, though, so it’s hard to tell. But it’s mainly the first chapters, Mike thinks, the ones with a few lines about kissing and gay bars and finding ‘the one who is on your sexuality radar’.

There’s also ‘Friendship means more to most gay men than it does to straights, as gay men know how to cultivate and value it.’ Which has him feeling a tight heat that’s sort of like embarrassment.

Mike even sniffs the book, bringing the pages close to his face just to check whether Will might have… But it just smells like a book. Like paper.

It’s fine, all that, but the later chapters are more interesting anyway. They show things Mike had no idea were even possible, the images searing into his mind. ‘Irrumatio or face-fucking.’ ‘Sixty-nine.’ ‘Orgies.’ ‘Fisting.’

Mike tries to memorize all that he can.

He didn’t say when he’d give it back. It feels kind of urgent though; he can’t keep this too long, not in his room, not when Mom sometimes comes in here to clean or Holly to be a brat. No one can ever see this around him.

So Mike keeps the book on him the whole time. When he’s not in his room locked in with it, it’s with him. Even at dinnertime it’s clutched in his backpack between his legs. When he takes a shower the next day, it comes along to be locked in the bathroom with him – standing up in the sink to be looked at from the shower itself, because when else is he going to get off like that?

It’s the most dangerous book that Mike’s ever held.

And Will just let him borrow it. Mike considers that, thinking that he’d never be that bold to even admit to anyone that he’d ever seen this, never mind that he owned it.

Will is amazing for sharing it.

None of them work on a Sunday, so Mike goes over to hang out at Dustin’s in the late afternoon.

He bikes over there even though Dustin’s house is close by because it’s still sullenly raining.

Mike walks in, not bothering to ring the doorbell because he can see the others’ bikes there already – he’d gotten distracted by looking at the fellatio illustrations just one more time.

But when he opens the door to Dustin’s bedroom, they all stop talking to look at him.

“…Hi?” Mike checks with Will first, trying to read from his face what’s wrong. There is something - Mike can feel Will’s worry like a physical thing in the room.

Is this about the book? Mike has it with him, of course. It’s burning a hole in his backpack right now. He asks, “What, am I late?”

“Only by about a day,” Max says.

Lucas frowns. “Where were you yesterday?”

Oh, shit. They were supposed to meet up in the arcade after Lucas’ shift, weren’t they? “I forgot,” Mike admits. “I was busy.”

Dustin, always too curious, asks, “Why, what were you doing?”

“Um.” Mike meets Will’s eyes again and tries to give him a funny overwhelmed sort of look because he hates seeing that thrumming unease in Will. He says, awkwardly, “…Reading.”

It works. Will’s eyes turn a little softer, less anxious.

Of course, now Will is going to guess exactly what Mike was so busy doing last night that he forgot all about the arcade. Which is mortifying in its own right.

“Oh, that novel that you got in Indy?” Dustin asks, “Hyperion?”

And Mike has to quickly make up a, “Yeah. Yeah, totally. It’s like, really good. Full of… adventure and…” His mind wildly tries to find anything that doesn’t sound remotely like gay sex. “…cooking.”

“Cooking?” Dustin frowns.

But Will’s mouth makes a little twitch that Mike loves seeing. It’s like he’s talking in a secret language about something that only the two of them know about.

“Yeah, it was…” Mike, high on having this effect on Will, says, “…interesting.”

At least Will has the decency to look away before quietly smiling.

Dustin brings out his latest robot, Mr. Wheely, and they make it spin in circles to the tune of Dancing Queen. 

After a while, Will sidles up to him and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Mike looks down, feeling shitty for worrying him like that. “I really did forget.” But, “Why did no one use their walkie?” His was with him in his room, he definitely would have heard them calling. And he could have biked over still.

“Oh, I don’t, I mean…” Will shrugs. “I don’t think that any of us carry those anymore.”

Mike does. It’s in his backpack right now next to Will’s crazy gay sex book.

But the four of them don’t think like that anymore, Mike knows. They all somehow became normal teenagers again who only care about having a good time and college, things like that. While Mike still isn’t. Normal. He’s still waiting for El to call. Or for the next terrible thing to happen.

Will says softly, “I thought that maybe you were upset. About the book.” He eyes him. “That it was more than you, you know, wanted to see.”

He seems so cautious. Like he really did worry about it. And Mike wants to make it all better. He says brazenly, “Well, it is. Um. A lot.”

Will nods hesitantly.

“But I’m not upset. I wouldn’t…” Mike looks at Will and tries to sound sincere. Honest. “You know that I wouldn’t, right? Be like… mad about it.”

Will nods again, more sure this time.

Mike’s definitely something about the book, but upset is not it.

It does feel weird, having it on him here and having Will right next to him talking about it. A Will that knows that he’s been reading those things. About buggering and cocksucking and fisting.

Maybe it’s being shut in his room with it for the last day-and-a-half, but Mike can still see the images in his mind’s eye. All the men touching each other, some smiling, some with their eyes closed in bliss.

But Will doesn’t ask, so Mike doesn’t give it back.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

(Summer 1989)

Mike bikes over to Hopper’s cabin with the book in his backpack like a glowing light. Like a bomb, like something that could combust any minute and destroy him.

Only Mike’s much more aware of this than he ever was of the actual bomb.

He even set his alarm so he’d be at Will’s early enough in the morning. Hopper’s car passes him by on the dirt road, and Hop gives him an easy wave, one hand on the wheel.

Then Mike runs into Joyce, who’s just walking out of the door, juggling a travel cup of coffee, a lit cigarette, and her car keys, and who says, “Oh, hi! Will’s just having breakfast.” She doesn’t seem surprised that Mike’s here at all, just in a hurry.

But then she doesn’t know the sort of thoughts that Mike’s smuggling into her house.

He hesitates by the door.

It’s not like when he was thirteen and he came here to kiss El. It’s more like later, when he wasn’t allowed to come by anymore because it would give away her location, and the few times that he did were filled with dread and things that were bigger than them.

And Mike thought, When it’s all over and done, we’ll break up for real. But right now we need to support each other.

El looked like she wasn’t sure whether they were together anymore, either. But they’d spend a long time leaning into each other anyway, and he’d tell her stories about how it was all going to be okay.

Now Mike’s here to give away Will’s location. Or his own. It feels more like that, like this is going to alert the military or the cops or someone important. That Mike likes…

That.

He pushes the door open and sees Will at the table, looking happily surprised, with a bit of a smile around his lips. “Mike! Hi.”

“Hi! I, ah. I came to bring you the…”

Like Joyce said, Will’s eating breakfast. Will looks at him and offers, “Do you want some of my cinnamon toast?”

Mike smiles. “…Sure.”

When he was little, he loved eating over at Will’s house. They always had toast for random meals – Will’s usually with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

Or buttered noodles. Canned corn and potatoes. Hot dogs from a jar.

It’s only years later that Mike realized that they eat like that because they don’t have the money for bacon in the mornings and meat with vegetables for dinner every day. That Joyce doesn’t know how to cook roasts or salmon and doesn’t have time for making anything like Mom’s home-made lasagna.

But when he was a kid, it always felt safe to eat with them.

He sits next to Will, accepts a piece of Will’s toast that tastes like a hundred sleepovers, and then watches him clear the table.

Will asks, shyly, “Do you want to come to my room?”

His room. El’s room.

Mike nods. He’s been in there since El, of course. But he doesn’t- it still feels like El’s. Like she might be there.

Although it looks different now. Will has hung up his own pictures. A lot of them, actually. And his art, all over. Drawings of Will the Wise and the party. Mike himself is in a lot of them. But there are some of El, too. And there’s Will’s graduation scarf, and his books, and his music, and it’s all so Will. It smells like him in here and a little like the cinnamon toast still.

Will turns on music. He just presses play, so it’s a cassette that was already there. ‘...Oh, please, say to me…’

“The Beatles, really?”

Will shrugs and says teasingly, “It’s not, like, the sheer genius of The Butthole Surfers, I know, but…”

He's right, that sounds even worse now, having read the book and knowing what those men in the book do with buttholes.

Mike shares a look with Will. “Um, well.” He raises an eyebrow. “Speaking of…”

Will laughs. He sits down on the bed, and Mike sits down next to him – with enough space in between them to put down his backpack and take out the book. Wonder Woman edition 33.

“I read it.” Mike might as well admit it. There’s no way that Will would believe him if he tried to say that he didn’t anyway.

Will nods.

‘…I want to hold your hand...’

Mike tries to make it into a kind of joke. “How did Jonathan even get that?”

“Oh,” Will smiles, too. “He says that in Chicago there’s this special shop. You have to be twenty-one, and they check your ID, but he went in there and he asked for, you know. Something that explains stuff. For me. It was his present for my eighteenth birthday. He said that I should… know.”

“Wow.” Mike can’t imagine Nancy ever giving him something like this.

“Yeah, he’s…”

“…A great brother!” Actually, Mike never really liked Jonathan, but that’s just insane that he went and bought that for Will.

Will smiles proudly. “He is.”

And it feels okay, between them, more so than Mike thought that it would be after reading this. It’s fine, it’s just Will. The same Will that he’s known forever.

Will isn’t one of the men from that book. He was probably just as freaked out by it as Mike was.

That thought makes him feel bold enough to take the actual book out of the comic - ignoring the cover and that page and definitely not looking at that page, Mike flips to nearly the end and shows a picture to Will. “Do you know… What’s this?”

It’s a man dressed all in leather. He’s very muscular, with a black cap and a mustache, looking kind of menacing.

And then another man who’s mostly naked except for a few leather straps of some kind across his chest. He’s lying down, and his hands are tied up with rope. It doesn’t show his dick or anything, which is why Mike’s not exactly sure what’s going on.

The caption underneath isn’t much better. It says, ‘Sadism and masochism, as well as bondage and discipline, are common practices in the gay community. Master and slave dynamics are prevalent as...’

Mike looked at it for a long time, trying to figure out why it was sex, but he couldn’t. So he asks, “Do you know what that’s supposed to be?” 

Will says, carefully, “I think that it’s a bit like D&D.”

“Like D&D?” What?

“Yeah, they’re like… pretending?” Will crosses his hands in front of him as if he’s tied up and says, pitching his voice, “Oh no, Master, you have captured me! Whatever shall you do?”

Mike considers it. It sounds intriguing. The more he thinks about it, the more so, a flash of heat crossing through his body at the thought of Will saying that to him. “Okay...”

“I think that they’re supposed to agree first,” Will says. “You know, on who is playing as the master and stuff. There’s a thing about it further in the chapter.”

Will sounds a bit shy, but he makes it sound pretty reasonable. Not like something only for perverts.

“Right.” Mike nods. He can see how that would work. “First you pick the character and then you play the campaign.”

It actually makes a lot of sense the way that Will says it. More so than most of the stuff in the book does. Mike smiles again at Will, filled with relief, somehow. He thought that it was yet another thing that he wouldn’t understand at all, but he totally does.

Hearing it like that makes him look back at the page and ask, “And the nipple thing?”

Because the man in the picture has some - it looks like clothespins or the hair clips that Holly has in all kinds of colors, only they’re stuck to his nipples, one on each side.

Will says, slowly, “It’s because they’re… sensitive?”

“Really?” Mike looks back at Will. “How?”

Will hesitates.

“Like, pinching them?” Mike looks down at his chest and, through his t-shirt, pinches a nipple between his nails. It hurts a little bit, but barely. It’s definitely not like, sexy.

He looks back at Will.

“No, I think like…” Will shows a slow swipe of his thumb over his own chest.

He’s flushing a little, and Mike likes that, that blush on Will.

Curious, Mike reaches out. His fingers touch Will’s chest, and he traces his thumb right where Will did it, but he can barely feel the little bump of Will’s nipple through his t-shirt. “Like that?”

Will swallows, looking down at Mike’s hand. “Um.”

And yeah, of course that’s not working. The fabric is too thick to feel much of anything through it, right?

“Can I try?” Mike asks while he lifts the bottom of Will’s shirt.

Will blinks. “…Yeah?”

Mike slides his hand underneath Will’s t-shirt, up over Will’s stomach and ribs, and then flat on Will’s chest until he can feel a nipple, and he swipes his thumb over it.

He can’t see what he’s doing. His hand is hidden underneath Will’s shirt, right by Will’s heart. He can only feel the little nub.

And see Will’s mouth open a little.

Mike does it again, his thumb running in a gentle tickle over Will’s nipple. Will’s chest is moving up and down shallowly as he breathes.

He keeps on going. And then Mike slips his other hand underneath Will’s shirt over smooth and warm skin and touches the other nipple at the same time, while Will is taking shuddering breaths as if it’s really good.

“Is it different when someone else does it?”

“…Yes.” Will sounds like he can barely speak. So Mike gives him one last lingering brush of his fingers, then moves his hands away, feeling like he’s huge somehow. Like he’s a giant doing enormous things.

He touched Will. Like that.

Mike waits for the regret to topple him, to spike in his stomach and make him want to run, but it doesn’t. He can just see Will’s flushed face and Will’s eyes with his long eyelashes and how Will looks like the sun is shining from inside of him always.

Will asks, still looking a bit stunned, “Do you want me to… try?”

“Okay.” Mike agrees quickly, not sure what he’s doing at all, only that his hands are shaking a bit as he lifts up his shirt to make it easier for Will.

Will reaches out, and that feels nice, like how any touch of Will’s feels. But it is different because it’s deliberate. Will’s hand is sliding over the bony, ugly bits of Mike’s chest as if they’re special. Will is looking at him so closely, almost like how he looks at the paper when he’s drawing.

Then Will’s fingers reach a nipple and he strokes it.

It’s fine. Not, nothing like what it seemed to be doing to Will. But Mike doesn’t mind because Will looking at him so softly is making his whole body feel a sparkling kind of tension anyway.

“Do you like it?” Will asks in an almost-whisper.

Mike nods. “Sure.” Will can do that all day if that means he stays this close.

“I think that it’s also…” Will looks at him, and Mike can tell that Will wants to do something else but he's scared to. So he nods encouragingly to make him feel better about it, whatever it is. It's okay, I don't mind.

Will hesitates.

But then he leans in, and he – oh, what is he doing – he comes closer until his lips brush Mike’s chest.

What? Mike can only stare as he watches Will gently trace his lips over his nipple. It’s incredible. Seeing Will’s mouth on him.

Will opens his lips a little, and then it feels wet around his nipple. He’s licking, and then kind of sucking, and Mike can feel the strange reverse pressure go straight between his legs where he was already a bit hard, but now he’s-

“Ah!” The noise escapes completely without Mike wanting it to. It sounds like a moan, maybe, in a really embarrassing way.

Will looks up at it, startled. Like he’s not sure about what he just did, either.  

But, after eyeing him for a long moment, Will keeps on going. And then he does the other side, sucking harder, which is even better - Mike can feel the heat shoot through him in bright bursts.

It’s so good that he can barely stand it, seeing Will like this and feeling it at the same time. It doesn’t even matter that he’s been getting off so much over the book because this is real. This is real life, and the brush of Will’s hair and the feeling of Will’s hands sprawled all over him and Will’s mobile mouth making little waves of pleasure happen and he’s, it’s –

“Okay, that’s, okay!” Mike moves away, aware that he sounds panicked and that he’s breathing hard. His shirt falls down again. “I get it!”

Will‘s gaze flicks down to Mike’s crotch for a split second, and he can tell, Mike knows that he can. So Mike quickly crosses his legs, pushes himself back on the bed, and sits with his knees bent up, but he knows that they both know it.

And his chest feels wet with Will’s spit, and his nipples feel raw underneath the cotton fabric. Even the brush of his shirt over them feels too good.

Will glances at him again. Mike fights the urge to hide his face in his hands and mumbles, “Shut up.” He feels weird and hot, but he smiles just a tiny little bit at Will too because that felt… wow.

Will slowly smiles back, looking really relieved somehow. “…I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but…” It’s obvious. Mike can feel his hard-on pulsing eagerly between his legs still, and he feels like laughing, like the tension is sky high and he needs to get it out somehow.

After a moment, Will asks, “Do you want, um, something to read?”

Mike sends a dark look at ‘The Unofficial Guide to Gay Sex’, fallen to the side on the bed. “Well, not that.”

Will laughs a little.

So Mike pushes on, trying to fix what just happened. “That won’t help.” He makes a face at Will. “Like, definitely not. At all.”

“No.” Will bursts out a laugh, looking embarrassed and sort of happy in a wondering kind of way, like he’s not sure whether he can be, but it’s all over him anyway.

Will gets up and finds him a Miracleman and a few Who’s Who comics from DC.

So Mike lowers his legs and spreads the comics on his lap to read, while Will carefully crawls onto the bed as well to sit next to him with a Sandman. Pretty close. Not too close, but they’re almost kind of leaning together, and that’s really nice.

The Beatles cassette has stopped playing, so now it’s just the sound of them turning the pages.

Will’s eyes keep on flicking towards him while they’re reading.

Mike isn’t really reading much either, just looking at the pictures as his mind keeps on wanting to replay what just happened and what it felt like and how it even happened.

They read for a while, inching closer together until they’re side to side, and it’s the best feeling. It’s like being twelve again sitting this close to Will, only now Mike’s floating in a whole different way, kind of vibrating inside his skin, and it feels like…

Like happiness.

-

(Fall 1989)

Whenever Brent wants ‘privacy’ with his never-ending stream of girlfriends, Mike sits in the hallway with his Walkman and a pen and notepad, writing. He doesn’t care that he barely has any friends. Or that it makes him look like a nerd.

He is one, after all.

Jump in the breathless pool I'll catch you
I dare you
I beg you
Only my arms are rubber
So you’ll slide right under

He often goes home on the weekends. They’re slow days full of memories. Mike DMs for Holly and her friends a few times, and it’s pathetic, right, playing D&D with them? Except that it’s probably the best he feels in a while. At least he’s useful there.

At Thanksgiving, he hangs out with Lucas and Max and Dustin. Will doesn’t show. He stays in New York or he’s in Montauk - Mike doesn’t even know.

As the final project of the semester, they have to write an essay on a war poet. Pam assigns him Wilfred Owen, so Mike dutifully reads poems about heroic young men marching off to war, about the trenches and misery, and then the letters Owens sent. It’s only when he reads the parts about Siegfried Sassoon and ‘we knew we loved one another as no men love for long’ that Mike feels the heavy thud of recognition. Oh.

It’s there so often, in books and in poems, like a secret hidden just underneath the surface. They seem to whisper, Us too.

So Mike reads.

And he sits in the hallway with his Walkman and a pen and notepad, and writes.

Gunshots louder than you breathing my name
bones snapping like dry meaty twigs
for me

You were a kind killer
yet I’m still
screaming against your fingers,
panting like smoke at the raw bursts of you
lingering inside of me

 -

(Summer 1989)

Mike stays for lunch – which is grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from a can that Will makes – and then bikes with Will to the library to drop him off there for his shift.

Getting home, it already seems impossible that it actually happened. More like a dream that Mike half-dreamed and now doesn’t fully remember, only how it made him feel so warm.

Mike knows that he’s the one who started it. The one who asked for it. The one responsible.

But the idea that Will would ever do something like that, that Will leaned in and actually… It’s like they slipped into the book, into some sort of world where that’s possible, and it’s all sweet touch and sounds stuck in Mike’s throat, his body feeling things that are too big to be allowed.

As soon as he’s in his room, Mike locks the door and turns the radio on to muffle any sound – ‘-ou are listening to the Squawk, and I’m Vance Goodman, with all the tunes for your afternoon-‘  already sure of what he’s going to do.

He had to fill up the glass with olive oil twice in the last few days because it’s also great to jerk off with, and his whole room smells like it because it gets all over the sheets, but he doesn’t care one bit. He’s already trembling while lying down, kicking off his shorts and briefs and pulling up his shirt.

It was wet, Mike remembers. His chest felt wet with Will’s spit.

So he licks his fingers and spreads his own spit all over his nipples, making them wet again. It feels a bit cold in the cool air.

And then some olive oil on his left hand. The book said to lift his legs, so Mike bends his knees onto his stomach and pushes his fingers in until they’re right there at the best bit. He’s getting better at that, finding it straight away, turning his fingers so they’re right there.

Mike’s touching his nipples like Will did, imagining Will’s mouth on him. The brush of Will’s lips. The little huff of Will’s warm breath. And then the wet feeling of Will’s tongue, the sucking of his mouth.

He doesn’t have a hand free for jerking off like this, but it doesn’t matter yet. It’s good, imagining Will and then pushing himself up and down onto his fingers.

It’s so incredibly good, like a relief, like breathing.

Mike pinches his nipples, too - much harder than Will did, but maybe biting? Maybe he’d get Will to bite him if he asked? And that’s, that – Mike starts moaning, low little whimpers overpowered by the radio.

His nipples are feeling swollen and sore by now, and he’s never cared about them before, but somehow it’s incredible, the little almost-painful tugs on them together with his fingers inside of him.

He feels waves of shivers over his whole body while he pushes his fingers right there. He hasn’t even touched his dick, but he can feel it build anyway. Mike keeps on going and keeps on thinking about the feeling of Will’s mouth and what it looked like.

His mind is imagining everything at once. Jumbled images of what if Will was here, right now? And the men from the book, the things they do. All the pictures of dicks and hands and asses and fucking.

How Will looked, flushed and breathing shaking breaths - Mike’s clenching around his fingers until he just comes, his dick going off all by itself in spurts onto his stomach as he gasps and trembles and wants impossible things.

It’s insane.

All of it is.