Chapter Text
“So I’m just now realizing,” Mike says, after he’s caught his breath and rolled over to look at Will, who’s splayed out on the mattress looking decidedly dazed, “that this might have been a bad idea.”
This, of course, being the sex they just had, on an inebriated whim, after over two decades of being nothing more than best friends. This being the one-too-many shots they’d done at the bar with their friends, and the niggling thought that Mike had had while watching Will dance with some guy on the other side of the room, that thing about how when Will’s had a couple drinks he gets all coy and flirty and usually ends up going home with someone, sometimes without telling the rest of them where he’s going so that they have to resort to checking his location on Find My Friends and hoping he’s not being lured back to some creep’s apartment to be murdered. And that’s a train of thought Mike’s accustomed to, mostly in the way of being a little annoyed at him about it—not too annoyed, though, because he knows plenty well that Will can take care of himself and that he’s well within his right to get some strange if that’s what his heart desires—but what he’s not accustomed to is the second thought he’d had on the way home, when Will hadn’t gone home with a stranger for once and had instead ended up splitting a cab with Mike, his knee bumping continually against Mike’s despite the fact that there was room enough in the car for them not to touch. The thought being: of all the men Will’s hooked up with, why hasn’t Mike been one of them?
He still doesn’t know the answer to that, actually, and if anything the events that followed had made the question all that more pressing. Why hadn’t he ever tried pressing his knee back against Will’s, asking hey, why didn’t you go home with that guy and, upon Will’s noncommittal shrug of an answer, following it up with, well, you know, we could—if you wanted, I mean, and placing a meaningful hand on his thigh? Why hadn’t he ever followed Will up to his apartment, crowded him against his doorframe, kissed him thorough and deep until they were both gasping for air? Why is this the first time he’s ever seen Will laid bare on a mattress, eyes glinting in the lamplit room and an expectant smile on his face?
The mature answer would probably be something about their friendship, about how Mike didn’t want to mess things up. And maybe that would be true, except for the simple, embarrassing truth, which is that before tonight he’d never really thought about it that hard. And maybe if Mike weren’t as drunk he wouldn’t have followed through on the idea so immediately, but maybe that’s a flimsy excuse, and maybe the truth is that he’s impulsive and weak and, sometimes, a little desperate, and even if he’d had this realization in the middle of the day while stone cold sober he’d still have called Will up to at the very least ask him about it.
“Yeah,” Will says slowly, in between breaths - he’s still panting a little, which is fair, because Mike hasn’t really given him space to breathe basically since they got in the cab. “It was—a risk. Definitely. We could have fucked up our friendship.”
Mike notes the phrasing; could have, not did. That’s a good sign, probably. “Yeah. But…” he swallows, his throat a little tender, “I mean, maybe it was just me, but it was like… really good, right?”
Will’s head lolls to the side to face Mike, and he laughs breathlessly. “Yeah. Jesus. It was really, really good.”
Something like pride flares in Mike’s stomach. He doesn’t do hookups as often as Will does, and he’s never considered sex to be something he’s particularly good at or even something he should try to get better at, and he’d hate for Will to have to let him down gently over something like that. He wouldn’t have gotten this far if he thought that was likely, though. Something about their chemistry made it easy, just like Will makes most things feel easy, and for once Mike wasn’t caught in the mechanics of what to do or say or touch, he just felt it. “Right,” he says, trying not to sound too pleased with himself, “and, like, it probably would only have messed up our friendship if it sucked and we hated it, right? And since we didn’t hate it…”
Will grabs his hand, lifts it into the air between them, and squeezes it thoughtfully. He shrugs. “Our friendship feels fine to me.”
Mike— is a twenty-six year old man, so he does not giggle, but it’s a close thing. “Yeah, I feel fine too.” Will’s hand fits well in his own, but he knew that already. They’ve been friends for two decades, after all. “So, like,” and here he might be pushing his luck, or at the very least being too forward, but again, Will’s known him his whole life, so he figures any attempt at playing it cool is probably wasted on him, “since we feel fine about it, there’s nothing to stop us from… doing it again?”
Will lowers their hands, still linked together, and looks at him contemplatively. “Right this minute?”
Mike flushes. There’s a forty percent chance Will’s fucking with him, but- “I mean, I need a couple more minutes before I can, uh— but, like, if you want,” he stutters out.
Will laughs again, an airy thing, which is solid evidence that he was, in fact, fucking with him. “I’m hungry.” He rolls over and kisses Mike full on the mouth, which is a little surprising but certainly not unwelcome. “Food first, and then you can try your luck again.”
Now that he mentions it, Mike could definitely eat. He and Dustin had split a plate of wings back at the bar, but that feels like a lifetime ago now. He nods, pushing himself up on his elbows and wiggling his toes just to make sure that his muscles haven’t actually turned to jelly. Will, evidently not having the patience for this test, climbs over him out of bed and fishes two pairs of clean boxers out of his dresser. He chucks one pair at Mike’s head. “For your modesty.”
“You didn’t care about my modesty twenty minutes ago,” Mike mutters, but he puts them on. Will’s kitchen has a pretty big window.
He follows Will out of the room and hops up onto the counter while Will pulls out a pan and pours oil into it. “What are you making?”
“Popcorn,” Will says, grabbing a glass jar full of kernels off the counter and holding it up.
Mike smiles. “You know, you could just buy the microwave kind like a normal person.”
“I like it like this,” Will says dismissively, turning his back to him and shaking the kernels into the pan. “Be nice or I won’t share.”
“Sorry.” Mike grabs Will’s bluetooth speaker from the other side of the kitchen island and fiddles with it. It comes to life with a jaunty series of beeps, and Mike glances around, wondering where he left his phone. His eyes fall to his jacket, which is in a crumpled heap by the door, and he hops off the counter and goes to root around in the pocket.
Will glances over his shoulder, smirking at him. “Are you going to put on good music, at least?”
“All my music is good,” Mike sniffs, which even he knows isn’t true. He finds his phone and connects it to Will’s speaker, scrolling through his playlists for something to set the mood.
Will ignores his comment, probably because it was pretty obvious ragebait. “I have a record player,” he points out, as if everyone and their mother doesn’t already know this about him, “if you actually want to set a mood.”
“You and your record player,” Mike grumbles good-naturedly. Will’s record player is actually pretty sick—not that he’s going to tell Will that, it’ll go right to his head. It’s one of the portable ones, with a blue-green case, and it sits on top of a meticulously organized shelf full of vinyls by old guys Mike’s never heard of.
He clicks on a playlist, and music comes blasting out of the speaker. He winces and fumbles to turn it down. “Sorry, I think I’m still a little drunk.”
Will snorts. “You definitely are. I can smell it on you from here.”
“Hey!” Mike does a quick breath test against the palm of his hand, and is dismayed to discover that Will’s telling the truth. “You fucked me anyway,” he rebukes.
Will’s still focused on the pan, which is beginning to pop and sizzle, but Mike can see the tips of his ears turn red. “Yeah, well.”
Something stirs in Mike’s chest, and he propels himself forward, pressing himself along Will’s back and hooking his chin over his shoulder. Will lets him do it, a soft, questioning noise escaping the back of his throat, but he turns his face toward him when Mike noses along his cheek.
Their eyes meet, noses brushing, lips a breath apart. It’s still a little dizzying, even after everything else they’ve done tonight. Mike is still unaccustomed to being this close and personal with him. He swallows. “Hi.”
Will’s breath stutters over Mike’s mouth. “Hi?”
Mike leans in a fraction of an inch, and Will surges forward to meet him with a fervor, one hand finding its way to Mike’s jaw and gripping it hard. Mike lets him, but he doesn’t reciprocate, just presses their lips together for a long minute and then steps away with a self-satisfied grin. “Just proving a point.”
Will huffs. “You are such an asshole.”
“Yeah, but you—”
“I know, I know.” Will turns back to his popcorn, which is now almost fully popped and is dangerously close to overflowing. “Looks like this is all for me.”
“Wait, no!” Mike yelps, and Will shrugs at him ambivalently even as he pulls out two bowls and starts portioning the popcorn into them.
They carry the bowls to the couch, where Will flops down opposite Mike and starts trying to stick his toes in Mike’s face and in his popcorn. Mike yelps and bats them away, and Will pouts at him, which, absurdly, is almost enough for Mike to let him put his dirty feet anywhere he wants. It’s weird; on the one hand, this is the same as they’ve always been, aside from the part where they’re half-naked and Will’s covered in little red marks. On the other hand, it’s never felt like this, where seemingly every move Will makes doubles Mike’s desire to kiss him. He wonders what changed, if anything, what led him to, on a random Friday night, suddenly become so egregiously attracted to his best friend, or if maybe this was always lurking somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
“Catch,” Will says, and throws a popcorn kernel at his face. Mike misses it spectacularly, which would be embarrassing except for that when he throws one back, Will misses even worse. It’s not long before the floor is littered with popcorn, and Will’s snort-laughing as he lobs kernels at Mike too rapidly for Mike to even consider catching them, instead just letting them collect in his hair and on his chest.
“You’re wasting it,” he says, but he’s laughing too, giddy in a way he can’t remember being since they were kids, staying up late at sleepovers and overdosing on junk food.
“It’s my popcorn,” Will says, as a kernel hits Mike square in the forehead. “I can do what I want with it.”
“At least let me defend myself,” Mike says, as another kernel lands in the hollow of his throat. He pushes himself forward, a shower of popcorn falling to the floor as he moves. Will pauses with his hand halfway into his bowl, watching Mike with a sly anticipation. Mike crawls over him and hovers there for a second, just looking at Will’s face, admiring it in a way he’s never really done before, before he dips down and kisses him, slow and full.
Will’s mostly-empty bowl thuds to the floor somewhere to Mike’s right, and he reaches for Mike’s shoulders, pulling him down with a gentle force until they’re lined up from head to toe, the solidness of their bodies pressing together. Mike’s intention was just to throw Will off his game, maybe tease him a little, but he quickly abandons that plan as Will skates his fingers over his shoulders and slides a leg between Mike’s thighs. Mike suddenly remembers what Will had said about trying his luck again later. He gets the feeling that the odds are in his favor.
This feeling is corroborated when Will slides a hand up into Mike’s hair and tugs, very intentionally. Mike groans, and his hips stutter against Will’s thigh. Will had discovered that Mike likes that almost immediately earlier, and is apparently determined to capitalize on it as much as humanly possible.
Will does it again, harder, and Mike whines. “You- are such an asshole,” he gasps. Among the many revelations he’s having tonight, there’s this; Will is mean.
Will’s breath is hot on his ear. “You’re gonna fuck me anyway, though.”
Mike should have known better than to say something that could so obviously be used against him. He takes a deep breath and tries not to come in his pants at the gravelly sound of Will’s voice in his ear, saying that, because he’s an adult, thank you, not a fumbling, inexperienced teenager. Christ. “Am I?” he finds the wherewithal to say. “I didn’t know.”
“You are,” Will says, but it’s less certain this time. He pulls Mike’s head up by the hair, mercifully ignoring the pathetic whimper that’s dragged from Mike’s throat in response. Will meets his eye and smiles, a little sheepishly. “Please,” he adds.
Mike smiles back. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”
The next few minutes are a blur. They’re kissing again, more hungrily this time, muffled sounds lost between their mouths. Mike’s hand finds its way inside Will’s underwear for the second time tonight, and Will loses his smug attitude in record time, head straining back against the couch cushions, lips parted. Mike sits up on his knees to watch the way Will’s abdomen clenches with every stroke, admiring the line of his throat, tilted back and exposed. He’s about to say that they should move back to the bedroom when Will’s hands find his hips, yanking him closer, pulling his boxers down, and Mike decides that bedrooms are overrated.
“Off,” he says in a rushed staccato breath, tugging at Will’s boxers, and Will nods eagerly. Mike pulls them down and over his ankles and Will kicks them off somewhere to the popcorn-littered floor. Mike slides his thumbs into his own waistband, only to discover something poking him in the upper thigh. “You asshole,” he says with a laugh, “you got popcorn in my pants.” The kernel falls to the ground as he shucks off his boxers.
Will grins. “Not my fault you can’t catch.”
“You have terrible aim!” Mike complains, but he’s already climbing on top of him, so it’s probably not very convincing.
Will spreads his legs, bracketing Mike between them. Mike skates his fingers along the inside of Will’s thigh, goosebumps rising in his wake, and says, “I should go grab the—”
“I have some,” Will interrupts, waving a vague hand over his head. “Behind me, the table? There’s a drawer, can you—”
Mike leans over him, peeking over the arm of the couch to see that, sure enough, the coffee table has a little drawer underneath it. He pulls it open and roots around for a minute before emerging victorious with a roll of condoms and a small bottle of lube. “In the living room?” he asks, smirking even as he tips some of the oil onto his fingers. “Little bit forward, isn’t it?”
“I like to be prepared,” Will says with a shrug. He snatches the condoms out of Mike’s hand and rips one off of the line. “Sue me.”
Which is a solid point, and convenient for Mike at this particular moment, so he lets it go. He has more important things to focus on, anyway, such as the softness of Will’s skin as he slides a hand between his legs and the soft, bitten-down noise Will makes as his slick fingers find their target. Will’s not loud, Mike’s discovered, at least not at this stage. The sounds he makes are breathy and faint, clearly unintentional, to the point where Mike kind of wonders whether he’s aware he’s making them.
He presses his face to Will’s throat to hear better as he works two fingers into him. Will tilts his face toward him, lips brushing over the top of Mike’s forehead, eyes heavy lidded as he noses into Mike’s hair. “Shit, that’s good,” he mumbles against Mike’s temple. Mike smiles, pleased with himself, and crooks his fingers, searching. Will’s body convulses against the pressure, and he whines, halfway between blissful and indignant. “Mike.”
“Yeah?” Mike asks innocently, keeping his fingers pressed insistently against Will’s sweet spot. “You need something?”
Will whines again, and Mike relents, if only because he doesn’t want this to be over too quick. “We did this already, remember? You can go faster.”
Mike kisses Will’s neck, continuing to pump his fingers slowly. “Want you to be comfortable,” he murmurs, a little petulant.
Will hums a laugh. “Dork,” he says, like he always does when Mike says something sweet to him. Mike isn’t usually inside him when he says it, though. “I’m fine, seriously. I know what I can take.”
“Guess so,” Mike relents, pulling his fingers out and sitting back on his heels. “Mr. living-room-lube-stash.”
Will laughs, pressing the condom packet into Mike’s clean hand. “It’s not that crazy!”
Mike grins, making quick work of rolling the condom on and lining himself up. “No, no. I’m sure all the guys you bring home are grateful for it.”
Will smiles back, hooking his arms around Mike’s neck. “Yeah, usually.” He kisses him, once, softly, on the lips. “Don’t tell me you aren’t too.”
Mike isn’t a liar, so he doesn’t. Instead, he kisses Will again at the same time as he presses in, filling him slowly and steadily. Will releases a punched-out, satisfied breath into the kiss, wiggling his hips a little beneath Mike as he adjusts. “Good?” Mike asks when he bottoms out, a little breathlessly.
“Very.” Will’s eyelids are heavy, like they’d been last time, his face already falling slack with pleasure. “You can move.”
Mike doesn’t need to be told twice. He snaps his hips hard, and Will’s answering groan makes him feel a little dizzy. They’d worked out a decent rhythm the first time, and it’s easy enough to find it again, though they’re both still a little clumsy both with the lingering traces of alcohol and unfamiliarity with each others’ bodies. Still, it doesn’t feel as foreign as Mike might have expected, seeing Will this way. Sure, they’ve never explored this kind of intimacy before, but they’ve been friends for two decades. He has a pretty good sense of the way Will moves, the shape of him, and their physical boundaries with each other have always been decidedly flexible. He may not have experienced this version of it before, but he knows how Will’s body operates in relation to his own.
If the beginning of the night had been something of a frenzy—instinctual, spur-of-the-moment, ridiculous and messy—this is something more comfortable, quieter. It’s Will’s arms around his neck, his ragged breathing in Mike’s ear, his knees hugging Mike’s hips, caging him in. It’s Mike’s face in Will’s neck, one hand gripping his bicep, the other at his waist, losing himself in Will’s body. It’s the little whimper Will makes as he adjusts, and the way Mike immediately shifts his weight to accommodate him. It’s—nice. For lack of a better word.
At some point, Will starts making little figure-eight movements with his hips, which Mike thinks is either a sign that he’s close or is an attempt to send Mike to an early grave. “Fucking hell,” he moans against the shell of Will’s ear, and Will makes a similar sound that could be agreement or could just be instinctual. “You’d better be close.”
Will laughs, kind of, except for the part where it tilts into a moan at the end. “What, you don’t— ah— want to— go first?”
Rather than answer, Mike reaches down and wraps a hand around Will’s length. Will shudders, thighs quivering around Mike’s waist. Encouraged, Mike keeps stroking him, angling his hips down in an attempt to find his spot again. He must be successful, because less than a minute later a broken sound rips itself from Will’s throat and he arches his back, spilling over Mike’s hand and onto his stomach. Mike slows his thrusts down to a pulse, working him through it, but when he goes to pull out Will’s legs lock around his waist, stopping him. “You can keep going,” he says, and swivels his hips down pointedly.
Mike groans. “Yeah?”
Will’s heels press into his lower back, an obvious yes. Mike isn’t about to argue with that, so he drops his face back into the hollow of Will’s throat and lets his body take over, his thrusts shallow and sloppy as he gets close. Will is making soft, overwhelmed noises and stroking Mike’s spine softly, and it’s not long before Mike tumbles over the finish line and collapses on top of him, spent.
Neither of them talk for a while, content to just lay in the mess they’ve made, holding each other. Will’s petting Mike’s hair now, a little mindlessly, and Mike thinks he could easily stay here forever, even considering the unpleasant stickiness between his thighs and smeared across their stomachs.
Eventually, Will switches on the TV, and Mike pulls out and disposes of the condom before nestling closer to him, shivering a little as sweat cools on his skin. Will’s rewatching Abbott Elementary, and they get through an episode and a half in companionable silence, save for Mike’s occasional murmured commentary and Will’s soft laughter, before Will shifts a little underneath him and grimaces. “Okay,” he says, as if they’re in the middle of a conversation that Mike is for some reason not privy to, “I need a shower.”
Mike laughs, sitting up to give Will space to detangle himself from him and climb off the couch. He’s honestly surprised Will made it this long without caving to the sensory overload, but maybe that’s just part of the side of Will he’s just learning about, the version who takes strangers home from the bar and, apparently, fucks them on the couch without preamble and lays with them in the afterglow.
Mike’s about to lay back down to wait his turn when Will turns to him, expectant. “Well, are you coming?”
Mike blinks. “To shower?”
“Yeah.” He looks Mike up and down, looking like he’s biting back a laugh. “‘Cause you could definitely use one.”
“Hey,” Mike rebuffs, no bite to it, “that’s not what I— well. Yeah, sure, I’m coming.” He hops up from the couch, and Will smiles, a little shyly, and laces their fingers together before leading him down the hall and into the bathroom.
“Do you remember when we were little,” Mike asks while they’re waiting for the water to heat up and Will is pulling two towels out of the cupboard in the hall for them, “and we took baths together?”
Will laughs, rounding the corner with towels in hand and setting them on the lid of the toilet. “Yeah, like, twice. Only because you were always instigating mud wars and my mom didn’t want to send you home covered in dirt.”
Mike grins. “Oh yeah. I forgot that part.”
“Convenient,” Will quips. He puts a hand under the water stream, testing the heat, then, apparently satisfied, climbs over the rim of the tub. Mike follows him, accepting the arm Will offers for balance, and then they’re standing under the water, facing each other, skin flushing with the heat of the steam.
“Hi,” Mike says, stupidly.
Will, of course, doesn’t mind it when Mike is stupid. He smiles, and tilts forward for a kiss, the water on their faces intermingling and running in rivulets down to their throats. “Hi.”
He steps away, grabbing a bar of soap from a little shelf on the wall and working up a lather between his palms. Mike watches him scrub his chest and stomach, humming quietly to himself, and concludes that Will didn’t so much want to shower together in an intimate way as he did just for company. Which is its own kind of intimacy, Mike supposes.
Will passes him the soap bar when he’s done and steps aside to let Mike have full access to the stream. He pauses when he sees Mike’s face. “What?”
Mike’s smiling. “Nothing. This is fun.”
“What, showering?”
Mike rolls his eyes. “No. Well— maybe. Just, tonight in general.”
“Oh.” Will’s face softens. “Well, yeah. I always have fun with you. Duh.”
Which, yeah. Fair enough.
They don’t bother with boxers this time. After they dry off, Will wraps his towel around his waist and leads Mike back into his bedroom, where he sits down crisscrossed on the bed and looks up at him with a warm, lazy smile. “Tired yet?”
Getting there, but— “Not quite. You?”
Will shakes his head. “Want to play cards?”
So they play cards, sitting naked on the bed facing each other, Will’s sheets a mess around them and still stained with the evidence of their first encounter of the evening. Will is a sore loser, which Mike has always found amusing, but is now noticing that it’s pretty cute, too, the way Will pouts and crosses his arms and refuses to meet his eye. Mike kisses him about it, and that seems to put him in a better mood. Somewhere around the fourth round of rummy, Mike leans in for a kiss and Will catches his wrists in his hands, Mike’s cards slipping from his fingers, and rolls on top of him again. Mike laughs, and they tussle on the mattress for a few minutes before settling into a slow makeout session, roaming hands and warm skin still flushed from the shower. It’s aimless at first, more exploratory than anything else, but eventually Mike can’t help but grind his hips up against Will’s thigh, at which point Will pins his hips down and starts kissing down his chest, and Mike sees stars for the third time that night as Will takes him in his mouth.
He returns the favor, obviously, because he wants to and also because Will makes a point about not making a mess again after they just showered, and then he crawls back up Will’s body to lay down on his chest, fully worn out and content.
“It’s almost six,” Will sighs around a yawn, pulling the comforter over them with one hand and cupping Mike’s shoulder blade with the other. “When’s the last time we pulled an all-nighter together?”
Mike snorts. “College, probably.”
Will shudders. “I prefer this kind.”
“Yeah. We had some good ones, though.” Mike’s eyes drift shut, despite his efforts to keep them open. “Remember when you almost OD’d on energy drinks?”
“That’s not what happened,” Will says around a laugh.
“I remember your hands being shaky for like three days after.”
“That— well, yeah, I guess that did happen.”
“See?” Mike smiles sleepily, nuzzling into his chest. “I’m right.”
“Sure,” Will says, which is a testament to how tired he must be. His hand is warm against Mike’s back, keeping him in place. He pats his shoulder lightly. “Go to sleep, Mikey.”
Mike doesn’t need to be told twice.