Chapter Text
Mike was running late again.
He’d only meant to rest his eyes for three minutes after his 4:30 alarm had gone off, but when he’d opened them again, it had been almost five, and he was supposed to meet Dustin at his place at five AM sharp. He’d barely had time to throw on some clothes, brush his teeth, and comb his hair before he’d dashed into the garage to grab his bike.
Now he was zooming through the empty streets of Hawkins, pedaling so hard his leg muscles burned. On the horizon, the sun reared its fiery head, ready to plague them with its stifling heat. These days, it hardly ever cooled down. Even at the darkest point of the night, temperatures didn’t drop below seventy-five degrees.
It was August, and they’d reached that phase of Indiana summer where it felt like your body was disintegrating. It was always hot. It didn’t rain. The washing machine was running non-stop because you had to change twice a day. Your skin was sticky with sweat even right after a shower. Your ears bled from listening to the cicadas scream at all hours of the day. You always had a minimum of eight mosquito bites, some of them in places you had no idea mosquitos could even reach.
Mike hated Indiana summers.
They made him lazy and tired. What little energy he had was drained by his body’s desperate attempts to stay cool. And he constantly had to remember stuff—like drinking enough water and putting on sunscreen because his skin burned at the mere thought of the sun. It was an effort just to exist.
He belonged in a place with sixty-degree weather and perpetual rain. He hoped New York would be just that.
He turned into Dustin’s driveway at 5:04 AM, tires screeching to a stop. Dustin was already waiting for him, leaning against his garage door with a cigarette between his lips. Dustin had started smoking sometime during Junior year, in the months after Eddie’s death. It had been one of his many unhealthy coping mechanisms. He was in a much better place now, probably as close as he would get to the Dustin he’d been before Vecna, but the smoking habit had stuck.
When he saw Mike, he flicked the cigarette butt to the concrete, squished it beneath his foot, and walked towards the pile of plastic-wrapped newspapers waiting for them.
“You’re late,” he said over his shoulder.
“Only by four minutes,” Mike huffed, still catching his breath. “Sorry. Gimme a break, Henderson.”
“If I were to add up all the minutes I’ve spent waiting for you, it’d probably amount to several days. You’re wasting my precious lifetime.”
Mike rolled his eyes and started stuffing papers into the large bag hanging off his handlebars. “You’re exaggerating. And I said sorry.”
Dustin just scoffed.
They’d started working as paperboys back in June to fill the time between graduation and college, splitting the route between the two of them. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to Mike. His dad didn’t approve, of course—he believed that Mike was far too old to be a paperboy and would much rather have him do an internship at his insurance firm. But Mike had no interest in wasting his summer at an office job that wouldn’t pay a single dime. He liked the prospect of finishing his workday before eight AM and being in full control of his time.
He just hadn’t considered how grueling it would be to be up at the crack of dawn seven days a week.
Dustin hadn’t immediately jumped at the idea of taking on a paper route. He, too, believed that they were too old for the job. But Mike had whined and pouted until he agreed—under the condition that the papers be dropped at his doorstep.
So, Mike met him here every morning. Dustin would usually grumble something about him being late, they’d stuff their bags with papers, and then they’d set off in different directions to complete their route.
“After this summer, I’ll be the most in shape I’ve ever been,” Dustin muttered as he pushed his bike to the end of the driveway.
“Yeah, no joke,” Mike said, following him. “Enough exercise for a lifetime.”
“Remind me again whose idea this job was?” Dustin cast him a pointed look. His eyes flashed in the dim morning light.
Mike swung one leg over his bike and gripped the handlebars. “I’m not having this discussion again. I’ll see you at the pool.” He shot Dustin a crooked grin and took off, heading towards the outskirts of Hawkins—another compromise he’d had to make to get Dustin on board. Dustin got to do the inner circle, the streets closest to his house, while Mike covered the more remote residential areas.
The Byers’ old house was on his route, and every time he passed it, a tight feeling settled in his chest that only went away when he turned into the neighboring street.
Hawkins at five AM was a different town. There were hardly any cars on the road and no people around except for a few runners that Mike regarded with mild disgust whenever he passed them. Most houses were dark and quiet at this time. Sprinklers hissed at him from luscious front yards; dogs barked when the newspaper thumped against their front door. The birds started chirping at around 5:30, once the sun had chased the lingering shadows of dawn away.
After three months of this job, Mike could probably complete his route with a blindfold on, which was why he hardly paid attention to his surroundings anymore. He was like one of those remote-controlled toy cars he’d played with as a kid. His body went through the motions—pedaling, pulling rolls of plastic-wrapped papers from his bag and chucking them at people’s porches—as his mind wandered off.
He had a lot to think about these days.
He made it home at 7:30, parched and sweaty and exhausted. His damp t-shirt stuck to his skin like clingfilm, his hair was plastered to his forehead, and he was feeling slightly nauseous from spending two and a half hours on his bike without having eaten so much as a crumb.
His parents were just sitting down for breakfast, but as usual, Mike declined the offer to join them and went back to bed. He trudged down to the basement—he’d been sleeping in there because it was cooler—, collapsed on the couch, and went out like a light.
He woke again around 9:30. His skin was sticky from the dust that had mingled with dried sweat, and his lips tasted salty when he licked them. This was another thing about summer that irritated Mike—how physical it was. It found countless ways to pester his body. He was constantly itching or burning or sweating. For someone who spent most of his time in his head and didn’t like to be reminded of his physical shell, this was incredibly unnerving.
After a cold shower in the basement bathroom, he changed into swimming trunks and a clean shirt that he’d sweat through within an hour, and went upstairs. The house was blissfully quiet at this time of the morning, with his dad at work, his mom running errands, Nancy taking one of her aerobics classes at the YMCA, and Holly being away at summer camp. Mike had the space all to himself, a rare luxury he savored by throwing open the door to the backyard and eating his cereal under the awning on the patio, bare feet propped up on the table. As he drank two cups of black coffee, waiting for it to clear the fog of sleep, he listened to the neighbors arguing next door. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower roared. A few houses over, children squealed and splashed in a kiddy pool. Bumblebees buzzed around the hydrangeas his mom had planted in the spring.
Mike leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Hawkins past nine AM was full of noise. The town always woke up when he went back to sleep, and it didn’t quiet down until late at night.
After a few minutes of listening to the world coming to life around him, Mike squinted at his wristwatch. It was ten—opening hour at the community pool. The others were probably already there.
Ever since Lucas had gotten the job as a lifeguard, they’d spent pretty much every day at the pool. It was the only place where the suffocating heat was even remotely bearable.
As Mike gathered his stuff and left the house, a familiar flutter started low in his stomach, growing stronger and stronger the closer he got to the pool. By the time he pushed his bike into the bike stand and squeezed through the turnstiles at the entrance, his insides had twisted into a tight knot and his heart was clanging against his ribcage. He craned his neck, searching the sea of people for his friends. And then he saw them: Lucas, clad in red swimming trunks, lounging in the lifeguard chair. Dustin slathering himself in sunscreen while waving his hands around, mid-story.
And Will. Sunbathing on a towel by the edge of the pool. Shades covering his eyes. Hair still damp from his morning swim.
Mike took a shaky breath, steeling himself before he set into motion.
He hadn’t gotten used to it yet—Will having this effect on him. It had caught him kind of off-guard. Mike still remembered, like it was yesterday, the first time they’d hung out at the pool after graduation. He’d been sitting on a lounge chair, rummaging his backpack for his book, when Will had walked up to them, shirtless, backpack slung over one shoulder, aviator sunglasses resting low on his nose.
Mike had learned two new facts that day.
One: Will had abs.
Two: He liked Will’s abs.
Getting to see Will Byers without a shirt on was perhaps the only good thing about summer.
It had been an instant obsession. Why did Will have abs? This was meant to be a private thought, but Mike had blurted it out loud, for all three of them to hear: “Why do you have abs?”
Will pulled his sunglasses down, gave him a weird look, and replied, “I’ve been hitting the gym with Lucas”, with a dismissive shrug like that was all there was to it, already distracted by some robotics magazine Dustin was shoving in his face.
“What?” Mike stammered, abandoning his backpack. “Since when?”
Will, still glancing at Dustin’s magazine, didn’t even look up. “Dunno. March or April.”
Mike levelled an accusing glare at Lucas, demanding confirmation. How had he not known about them going to the gym together? He knew about everything else going on in Will’s life.
Lucas leaned forward in his lifeguard chair and made a face at him. “Dude, why are you being so weird about this?”
“I’m not!” Mike had said. “I just didn’t know that’s something you guys do now.”
Lucas flexed his pecks. “You think I’m getting these from sitting in this chair all day?”
When Mike just stared, Lucas snorted. “What—you wanna join us? You can tag along, I don’t mind. Do you mind, Byers?”
“Nope,” Will responded as he dragged an empty lounge chair next to Dustin’s.
Mike was certain he was suffering a heatstroke. “No,” he sputtered, distraught. “No, thanks. My paper route is exhausting enough.”
“Well, then stop being weird about it,” Lucas said.
And that had been that.
Ever since that day, Mike had spent a significant amount of his time studying Will’s abs. They weren’t the in-your-face kind that looked like a tortoise shell. They were almost delicate; a fine line down the middle, three understated bumps on either side. They looked soft and firm at the same time, and they were surprisingly lithe, twitching when Will laughed or breathed hard after a swim.
Over the summer, Mike had watched them become more tan and more defined.
And he had mastered the art of discreet staring. He now owned a pair of mirrored sunglasses and knew just how to prop up his book to make it look like he was reading when in reality he was watching Will sunbathe.
He lifted his hand in greeting as he walked up to his friends. All the lounge chairs were taken, so he dropped his towel on the ground under Lucas’s sunshade. “Hey, guys.”
Lucas nodded at him, eyes trained on the kids in the pool. “What’s up?”
Dustin handed him the sunscreen. “I was just telling the guys about a dead raccoon I saw on my paper route this morning.”
Mike distractedly unscrewed the sunscreen, glancing at Will, who had yet to acknowledge his presence.
“I’m telling you, this thing sat in the fucking rocking chair on Mrs. Gilbert’s porch. I thought it was her cat!” Dustin chuckled. “I accidentally threw the paper at it, which made it topple over, and that’s when I realized it was dead.”
“And not a cat,” Lucas supplied from his chair.
“And not a cat,” Dustin confirmed, still chuckling.
“Huh,” Mike said, swiping sunscreen over his nose. Was Will napping? He couldn’t see his eyes through the tinted glass of his shades, so there was no way to tell.
He handed the sunscreen back to Dustin and took his shirt off. In his periphery, he saw Dustin and Lucas exchange a meaningful look. There had been a lot of those this summer—they seemed to have a lot of opinions about his behavior. Mike found he didn’t care.
“What about you?” Dustin said, evidently still trying to include him in the conversation. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary on your route?”
Mike wouldn’t have been able to name a single thing he’d seen on his route this morning, ordinary or not. His thoughts had been elsewhere.
“No,” he said.
“Alright, man,” Dustin sighed, leaning back in his lounge chair. “Nice chat.”
Mike ignored him and pattered over to the edge of the pool, poking Will’s calf with a toe before lowering himself to the ground next to him, feet dipping into the cool water. “Hey. Are you sleeping?”
Will lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and smiled at him. “No, I’m awake. I just sorta tuned you guys out because I didn’t want to hear Dustin’s story about the dead raccoon a second time.”
Mike smiled back. “Understandable.”
Will lowered his hand again, letting it skim over the water. “So, how was work?”
“Boring.” Mike’s gaze snagged on Will’s fingers in the water. Will had recently started wearing a ring on his thumb. It was a dark silver shade and quite chunky, engraved with little intertwined branches. Apparently, it had been a gift from Jonathan, who’d found it at some cool vintage store in New York.
The ring was another thing Mike had gotten inexplicably hung up on.
Will made a low humming noise in the back of his throat, still smiling. “The same as always then.”
Mike sighed, pulling a knee up to his chest and resting his chin on it. “Yeah.”
With Will reclining on the ground, Mike could sneak a peek under his shades and see that he had his eyes closed. So, he let his gaze wander—over Will’s stomach, his shoulders, his neck where it curved into a pronounced jawline.
Maybe if he looked hard enough, he would find the answers.
Why he was unable to breathe sometimes, when he saw Will.
Why he felt nervous before he even got to the pool, knowing Will would be sunbathing without a shirt on.
Why he had to think about him constantly, even at five AM when his brain was barely functioning—especially at five AM when his brain was barely functioning.
The thing was, Mike didn’t want to be the kind of guy who saw his best friend differently after finding out that he was gay. That was precisely what he didn’t want to be.
But he did see Will differently. Or—not just Will, but everything. He saw everything differently.
When Will had told them that he liked boys back in ’87, Mike’s initial reaction had been one of mild curiosity. Huh, he’d thought, I didn’t know that was an option for guys like us.
He knew that it was a possibility, of course, generally speaking. He knew that gay people existed. He hadn’t been living under a rock. But he’d thought they only existed far away, in New York or Hollywood, in glittering costumes on his TV screen. He hadn’t considered that ordinary guys from Hawkins, Indiana, could also be gay.
Not that Will was ordinary—far from it, actually. He was anything but.
Still, Mike had been utterly puzzled.
Maybe it wasn’t the fact that Will liked boys so much as the fact that he had liked Mike apparently, at some point. Will hadn’t said this in so many words, but he’d talked about some crush he’d had on a guy that wasn’t like him, and his eyes had basically burned a hole into Mike’s face, so Mike had done the math and concluded that he’d been the crush.
Which his ego, embarrassingly, must’ve liked a lot, because he’d been giddy about it for weeks.
He'd never asked Will about it. It didn’t feel like a fair thing to do. “Hey, let’s talk about that time you liked me and I didn’t like you back!”
Mike might be nosy, but he was no asshole. Besides, Will had used the past tense when he’d talked about this crush. Like it had been a childish phase that was long over. Schoolboy infatuation. There was no point in stirring it up.
That didn’t mean that he wasn’t dying to know, though. What Will had seen in him. When he had seen it. Why he no longer saw it. How he’d even known.
Which was a natural reaction to finding out your best friend used to have a crush on you, right? Who wouldn’t wonder? Mike had certainly wondered a lot. So much so that he tried to put himself in Will’s shoes, every now and then—to expand his horizon, understand Will’s perspective better. Whenever he saw a reasonably good-looking guy at the grocery store or the gas station, he’d think to himself, I wonder if Will would like this guy.
It had become such a habit over the last two years that it sometimes just sort of slipped from his mouth. Just last month, when the four of them had watched The Lost Boys in his basement on a rare rainy day, Mike had pointed at the screen halfway through the movie and blurted, “Is it just me or is Edgar kinda cute?”
The room had been quiet for a second. Then Lucas had stated, very matter-of-factly, “Edgar is such a little dipshit.”
“Well, he might not be the smartest but at least he takes action,” Dustin had argued, mouth full of popcorn.
Mike had flushed bright pink. “No, I’m not talking about his personality, I meant—” He stopped short. “Nevermind.”
Then Will had piped up from the corner of the couch, “No, I see what you mean.”
Mike’s head whipped around so fast he heard a soft crack.
“Personally, I prefer Dwayne, though,” Will added, not once lifting his gaze from the screen.
Interesting, Mike had thought. Will likes the vampire with long dark hair.
His first thought was that he should grow his hair out again.
His second thought was that he was the biggest dickhead on earth for wanting his gay best friend to find him attractive just to get an ego boost out of it.
He’d banned himself from looking at Will for the rest of that night, too mortified to make eye contact.
But he’d looked at him more and more every day since.
Now, he didn’t just wonder which type of guy Will might like. He also wondered which type of guy might like Will. It was stupid he hadn’t considered this before. But there couldn’t be that many gay guys in Hawkins, and Will was surely drawing all their attention, with his abs and his tousled hair and his vintage thumb ring. Mike was positive every boy who liked boys had a crush on Will Byers.
And recently, he’d been wondering if he was one of them.
That certainly seemed to be the most straight-forward explanation as to why Will affected him this way. Mike had felt this kind of breathless anxiety before—he’d been much younger then, and the feeling hadn’t been as intense, but it had been there. The clammy palms. The racing heart. The uneven breathing. He’d felt it once before. Years ago. With a girl.
And that was what threw him for a loop.
He didn’t like boys. Not because he didn’t want to, not because he thought it was gross, not because he’d been taught not to. He didn’t like them, point blank. He’d never looked at another boy and felt any semblance of attraction. He saw guys showing off their muscles at the pool every single day, and it didn’t faze him in the slightest. Whenever the boy from next door—the one Will kept insisting was so hot—visited home from college and mowed his parents’ lawn on Saturday mornings, wearing nothing but tiny little shorts, Mike felt… absolutely nothing.
Will was the only boy who ever made him feel this way. And that couldn’t be right. Surely, if Mike was actually attracted to men, he’d be vaguely attracted to all of them, not just a singular one.
Which brought him right back to his initial fear—that he was just some self-obsessed asshole who couldn’t handle his best friend being gay.
He spiraled through this exact thought process at least once a day. Usually when he saw Will.
It was getting really, really tiresome.
“You have sunscreen all over your face, by the way.”
Mike had to blink several times before he remembered his whereabouts. As he surfaced from the depths of his thoughts, the cacophony of noise from the pool came back to him in one big rush—kids screaming as they went down the slide, water splashing everywhere, Lucas’s whistle shrilling.
Will was sitting up now, reaching out a hand to wipe over Mike’s face.
Mike gulped. “Huh?”
Will bit back a smile. “Your sunscreen,” he repeated. “You didn’t rub it in properly. You’ve got white streaks everywhere.”
“Oh.” Mike’s face grew hot in a way that had nothing to do with the scalding sun.
“It’s okay, I got it,” Will said, brushing a finger over Mike’s nose, his forehead, his cheekbones, so gently it almost tickled. Mike, for some reason, held his breath.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.” Will scooted closer, inspecting Mike’s face with laser focus, and Mike felt his gaze like a physical thing, like a bug crawling over his skin. “That’s better,” Will finally said, wiping Mike’s cheek one last time before lying back down on his towel.
Mike released a long, careful breath through his mouth.
Will was slowly but surely turning him into a gigantic mess.
In the afternoon, after Lucas’s shift ended, they rode their bikes downtown to The Milk Bar where Max and El worked. The Milk Bar was an ice cream shop that had opened up last summer and had quickly become a new hot spot. It was retro-themed, with checkerboard floors, shiny mint-green surfaces, and fifties music blasting from the speakers twelve hours a day. The girls had to wear pink-striped minidresses and white ruffled aprons—Max absolutely hated it. El absolutely loved it.
The bell chimed when they pushed through the doors into the gloriously air-conditioned shop. Kids were milling around, sipping milkshakes and laughing. The air smelled of sugar and sunscreen.
Behind the counter, Max greeted them with a less than impressed look. “I swear to god, Lucas,” she hissed, “if you order the most complicated milkshake on the menu again, I will smother you in your sleep tonight.”
Grinning, Lucas leaned over the counter and gave her a long kiss that turned Max’s wry smile into a genuine one. “I’ll just have a plain vanilla milkshake, please. How about that?”
She bit her lip. “Great choice.”
As the others ordered their drinks, Mike sauntered over to El, who was standing behind the ice cream display. “Hey.”
She offered him a broad grin. “Hey.”
She’d been growing her hair out ever since escaping Dr. Brenner’s new lab three years ago, and it now reached all the way down to her bellybutton. Today, she wore it in two loose braids, a few stray pieces fluttering slightly in the gust of air blowing from the vents behind her. Her skin was sun-kissed despite the long days she spent behind the counter, and her eyes twinkled in the way they always did recently.
El was the very picture of joy.
It was a little contagious. Almost enough to lift Mike’s spirits. Almost.
“You want your usual?” she asked, already reaching for the ice cream scoop.
Mike nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”
He watched her press two perfectly shaped scoops of cherry ice cream into a cone, the bangles on her arm rattling noisily.
“There you go,” she said, handing him the cone over the counter. When Mike dug through his pockets for some cash, she dismissed him with a wave. “It’s on the house.”
He gave her a sheepish smile. “You do that too often, El. They’re gonna fire you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, they’re not. I’m only gonna be working here for a few more weeks anyway.”
Mike nodded, licking his ice cream. Right. El was moving to Montauk with Joyce and Hopper in September. She’d be doing her last year of high school there.
He leaned against the counter, studying her bright eyes and easy smile. “You started packing yet?”
El shook her head, dunking the scoop in a bowl of warm water to clean it. “There’s still plenty of time.” She caught his eye over the ice cream display, and they exchanged a conspiratorial grin. They’d broken up a long time ago, but she had a few traits that proved he’d had a lasting impact on her during her formative years, her tendency to postpone chores until the very last minute being one of them.
They’d ended things in California. Or rather, they’d never really gotten back together after their fight. It had been an ugly fight. One that had forced Mike to confront a truth he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself yet—that he wasn’t in love with her. Not anymore, at least.
To this day, he couldn’t say when it had happened, precisely. When that bubbly excitement had faded and shifted into something calmer, less intense. Something more platonic. He’d just had this gut feeling. He’d known that it would be a lie, if he said those three words to her, the ones she’d wanted to hear so badly.
And friends didn’t lie.
After that fight, she’d been taken to some bunker in the desert by Dr. Owens. She’d sent him a note to let him know she was okay, signing it ‘From El’, and that had kind of settled it for good. When they saw each other again at the end of that week, there had been an instant understanding between them. They would always be tethered to one another, in some way. But they didn’t have to be girlfriend and boyfriend to honor the unique connection the universe clearly had in mind for them. They just had to be there for each other, protect each other. Because that’s what they’d always done, and that would never change.
After that, it had been easier to tell her that he loved her. The words now meant something else.
He licked his ice cream again. “Busy day so far?”
“Yeah.” El wiped her hands on her apron and sighed. “Very busy. I can’t wait to get off and rest my legs.”
Dustin joined Mike at the ice cream display, flashing El a timid smile. “Hey, can I do the banana split today?”
He’d made it his mission to try every single one of the thirty-five flavor options this summer. Which was harder than expected, apparently, because he kept coming back to salted caramel.
As El scooped Dustin’s ice cream, giggling about some lame joke he was telling, Mike found the others at their usual table in the corner and slid into the booth. Most days, they hung around The Milk Bar until closing and then headed over to Dustin’s with the girls.
Will was slurping a chocolate milkshake, in the middle of telling Lucas a story, and absentmindedly handed Mike his maraschino cherry.
Mike loved cherries. Will felt indifferent about them.
“Thanks,” Mike said, popping the cherry in his mouth. Will nodded distractedly, hair falling over his eyes. It had gotten lighter after three months of sunbathing, various shades of gold blending into the earthy brown. It looked really pretty.
“Wait,” Lucas said, leaning over the table. “So, you’re saying he just took off after? And you haven’t heard from him since?”
“Nope.” Will shrugged, stirring his milkshake with his straw.
Mike frowned. “What are you guys talking about?”
Lucas slung an arm over the backrest of the booth. “Will made out with some guy back in May and never told us about it.”
Mike nearly choked on his maraschino cherry. “What?”
“Calm down, both of you,” Will said, sipping his milkshake. “It was nothing serious.”
Mike disagreed. He thought it was very serious. “Who?”
Will set his glass on the table and leaned back, making the leather upholstery creak. “Can’t tell you that,” he said calmly.
“Why not?”
Will held his gaze for a second. “Because he isn’t out.”
Oh.
Mike’s stomach plummeted. Cherry ice cream dripped from the cone onto the back of his hand. “Wait, go back to the beginning. I need to hear the full story.”
Will let out a long-suffering sigh, as if this conversation was a huge inconvenience to him. “There is no story,” he said. “We met up in the woods one night. Made out in his truck. Then he started freaking out and took off. We never spoke again. That’s all there is to it.”
In the woods?
“What were you doing in the woods?” Mike asked, voice high-pitched. How had it even come to this encounter? And why was he just now hearing about this?
“He asked me to meet him there,” Will explained with a shrug. “He approached me after class one day.”
“Someone on the football team,” Lucas supplied unhelpfully.
Mike’s mind was spinning in violent circles. “B-but,” he stammered, “why would some random football player approach you?”
Will scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Mike, I don’t know. Maybe because he wanted to explore and I was the only openly gay guy at school?”
This shut Mike up. He felt his face heat up, blood rushing loudly in his ears. He’d done it again—he’d said the wrong thing. Asked the wrong question. Shown the wrong reaction.
This always happened. The first time Will had told him about an encounter with a guy had been after spring break last year. He’d visited Jonathan in New York, and Jonathan, apparently, had snuck him into a gay bar where he’d had his first kiss.
Will had told him one night after school, when they’d been playing D&D in the basement. He’d waited for the others to leave, hanging back until they were alone. And then he’d told Mike, blushing with excitement, about this tall blond college freshman he’d kissed in some gay bar in New York.
What the hell? Mike had thought.
“What the hell?” he’d said, eyes wide as pennies.
And he’d seen it on Will’s face instantly. The flush draining from his cheeks. The light in his eyes dimming. The corners of his mouth sagging.
And Mike had the sinking realization that he would no longer be the person Will confided in about these things.
As confirmed by this situation right now.
If Will had met this guy back in May, that meant he’d kept it from Mike for three months. Mike didn’t like the idea of Will keeping anything from him for three months, let alone something of this magnitude. They used to tell each other everything. Mike still told Will everything.
Well—almost everything.
Dustin slid into the booth next to Mike, ice cream cone in hand. “What’s with the long faces?”
Will pushed his hair out of his eyes and made a vague gesture with his hand. “I just told them about the football guy.”
“Oh,” Dustin said, nodding. Completely unperturbed. “The one you met in the woods back in May?”
“Yeah.”
Mike’s stomach did that thing it had started doing recently where it coiled into a heavy, compact ball. He stared at his melting cherry ice cream, unsure how he was supposed to finish it. He felt like throwing up.
Of course Dustin knew about this guy. He’d replaced Mike as Will’s confidante.
Because Dustin never said the wrong thing. In fact, he went out of his way to always say the right thing. After Will had come out to them, Dustin had done extensive research on the topic, basically inhaling every piece of information he could find. He was like a human encyclopedia now. He knew everything there was to know about gay sex, recent developments in the AIDS crisis, and various activist groups. He knew which celebrities were gay and where the closest gay bar was. And he had little inside jokes with Will, talking about cruising and other things that made Mike feel left out and clueless.
“How did that even come up just now?” Dustin asked, licking his ice cream. “Did you hear from him again?”
“Lucas wanted to know if I’ve met anyone recently.” Will picked up his milkshake and poked at the dollop of whipped cream with his straw. “And no, I haven’t heard from him. I don’t know if he’s even still in town.”
Dustin shot him a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, man. That sucks.”
Will shrugged again, lips stretching into a crooked grin. “That’s alright. He was a horrible kisser anyway.”
The others laughed, and Will’s grin broadened, but as soon as the conversation shifted to a different subject, Mike saw the smile disappear from his face, and he had a feeling Will wasn’t as unbothered by it as he was pretending to be.
It wasn’t fair. Will shouldn’t have to sneak around the woods with some guy who only wanted to explore and didn’t even give him a call afterwards.
Later, when they settled around the fire in Dustin’s backyard as they did most nights, Mike scooted his camping chair close to Will’s and waited until the others were engrossed in a heated debate about different marshmallow brands before he leaned over and whispered, “It’s his loss anyway.”
Will, who’d been half-listening to the conversation, turned around, startled. “Hm?”
“That football guy,” Mike said, making sure to keep his voice low. “It’s his loss. Whoever he is, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Will looked at him for a long moment. His eyes reflected the flickering fire, orange seeping into murky greens and browns. Mike had always thought that Will’s eyes looked like a forest after heavy rainfall.
“Thanks, Mike,” Will murmured, a surprised smile playing on his lips. “That’s really sweet.”
Mike’s heart fluttered in his chest. “Seriously. He’s an idiot for running off.”
Will made a noise that sounded like a bemused grunt. “He was kind of an idiot even before he ran off.”
The corners of Mike’s mouth lifted. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Will grinned, shaking his head. “He could barely string a sentence together.”
Mike snorted. “Well, what did you expect? He’s a football player.”
“I know.” Will crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair, eyes closed. “Not my best moment.” He fell silent, and they listened to the crackling of the fire and the bickering of their friends for a few seconds before he added, “He wasn’t really my type anyway.”
Something rushed up Mike’s spine, something prickling and hot. “No?”
“No.” Will smiled again, eyes still closed. “He was like, five inches shorter than me. And kinda stocky—built like a lumberjack. Had his hair cropped really close to his scalp.”
Mike licked his lips, staring at Will’s face, transfixed by the firelight dancing over his skin. “And that’s not your type?”
“No, not at all.”
Mike opened his mouth, but no words came out. The question burned on his tongue. What is your type?
Will turned his head and regarded Mike with a quirked eyebrow, like he knew he wanted to ask. They gazed at each other for a minute, and the air seemed to thicken around them, settling heavily on Mike’s skin. His pulse spiked.
Then Dustin suddenly shouted, “What the hell?”, and the moment shattered.
Will broke eye contact first, frowning at Dustin who jumped up from his chair and pointed at the back porch. One of the lights was flickering, glowing impossibly bright before dimming abruptly.
Max, who was already a bit tipsy, nudged El’s shoulder with a snort. “You messin’ with us or something?”
El rolled her eyes, taking a swig of her beer. “You know I can’t do that anymore.”
“Relax, Henderson.” Lucas grabbed a can from the cooler and popped it open with a loud fizz. “The lightbulb’s probably just on its last leg.”
Dustin shook his head, still staring at the now-dark back porch. “The light wasn’t even on.”
“Maybe it was,” Luas said, lifting the can to his mouth. “Maybe you just remember it wrong.”
Dustin sat back down with a rattled look on his face, like he was beginning to question his sanity. “I could’ve sworn that I never turned the lights on.”
“Whatever, man.” Lucas leaned forward, stoking the fire with the rusty rod they’d found in the backyard a couple weeks ago. “They’re off now. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” Dustin sighed as he reached for the box of Graham crackers behind him. “Well, who wants s’mores?”
The tension dissipated just as quickly as it had crept in, and the back porch remained shrouded in darkness for the rest of the night. The flickering light was soon forgotten.
They hung around the fire way past their bedtime, eating marshmallows and telling stories while the cicadas screeched around them. The air was warm and humid even hours after the sun had gone down, and Mike felt a bone-deep exhaustion that only intensified when he remembered his four AM alarm.
When they finally filed out of Dustin’s driveway at midnight, he could barely keep his eyes open anymore. Lucas was already on the road, riding his bike in circles as he waited for Max, who was in the garage whispering with El. This meant that Mike would have to wait, too—since they lived in the same street, they always rode home together.
He rested his elbows on his handlebars and stifled a yawn as he blinked at the spot in front of the garage where a huge pile of newspapers would materialize mere hours from now.
Then, suddenly, Will was next to him. Mike immediately straightened.
Will flicked a mosquito from Mike’s forearm and leaned over his bike, murmuring directly into his ear, “Tall, dark, and brooding.”
Despite the lingering warmth, Mike felt goosebumps crawl over his skin. “What?” he croaked.
“That’s my type,” Will said, lifting one shoulder in a small shrug. “In case you were wondering.” Then he pushed his bike to the end of the driveway, hoisted himself up, and took off into the night.
Mike stayed back, ground swaying underneath his feet, and wondered if it was possible for his sleep-deprived brain to hallucinate entire conversations.