Work Text:
The beer tasted disgusting.
Mike never liked beer, he didn't think anyone did. How could they when the closest thing it tasted to was battery acid? He didn't like it, but he was already halfway down his fourth bottle.
He didn't like beer. He just liked what it did. College was stressful and he soon discovered that it didn't always have to feel that way, at least not at frat parties, or nights with the boys, or days when you would reunite with your best friend from your hometown.
It burned Mike’s throat, it made his head feel light, he always scrunched his nose once the flavor hit him. But it made his racing heart and trembling hands sizzle to a much more lethargic pace. Seeing Will for the first time in a few years shouldn’t make him feel like he has to drink himself to death, but it does, and it confuses him. Because before, Will’s name felt like a call home. Now as he lays next to him on the concrete of a closed down street, staring quietly at the neverending sky before them, Will feels like a reminder of reminders, of realizations hidden deep, of anxieties Mike hardly knew he had.
Until now.
He ponders taking another sip, but if he moves a bit too much the earth will start to sink around him like walking on a mattress. He hates that feeling, and maybe he hates any feeling, that’s something he’s been thinking about lately.
Lately, not now. Mike can't think much now, for Will’s hand has unceremoniously landed on his shoulder.
“Fuck,” Will groans. “That clerk at uh…at the store.”
Mike turns his head to him, cheek on cement. He barely manages a “Huh?”
“I think she knows my mom, which means she pro’lly knows me.” Will explains, and Mike doesn't know if it's the beer that's making him feel lost.
He pouts. “Okay, so?”
Will scoffs at him like he’s crazy. “ So my mom might- like, find out about us buying beer when we weren't supposed to!” His tone reminds Mike of all the times Will would desperately plead for them not to do something out of their safety net, if for the sake of his anxiety ridden mother who’d have a heart attack if he got a scratch . The memory makes Mike laugh, which is bad, because Will’s already nervous.
“ Mike. ”
Mike sucks his laughter in. “Sorry, look- it’s fine. Your I.D. looked real enough, I don't think she’ll even like… think about it.”
Will doesn't seem convinced, going wide eyed. “You know how these moms and old ladies are!” He flails his hands around to make his point. “They fuckin’ see each other and are like ‘Hi, Oh My God! How are you?! How are the kiiiiids? ’ and all of that- and then , next thing you know it’s like ‘ Oh, I think your son came here the other night to buy some beers, y’know’ and THEN-”
Mike rushes to slap his hand over Will’s mouth, muffling his word vomiting that, in all honesty, might make Mike actually vomit.
“Okay, okay, you needed to calm down like fucking yesterday, Will, Jesus.”
Will shoves Mike’s hand away from his mouth and groans, collapsing back onto the road like magnets were pulling him down.
“She’s gonna lose her shit , Mike.”
“No she's not-”
“- Yes, she is!”
“You literally don't know that because she literally doesn't know, and you're not even sure that the clerk knows her, so there's no way, literally no way! Alright? Just- chill !” Mike finishes his ramble by accidentally slapping his wrist against his own face, which in turn makes Will scoff . The bastard…
“What, like you? ‘Cause you’re not helping your case right now by being completely shit-faced ,” Ironically, Will’s words slur a bit at the end, and Mike doesn't even have to say anything for Will to turn a little red and turn to look the other way.
“Shut up,” Will mumbles. Mike simply laughs in return.
“I didn't even say anything-”
“-You looked at me.”
Mike raises a brow. If Will was going to reprimand him for all the times he’s looked at him, he hoped he never found out about Mike’s staring habit (that suspiciously, only acted up around Will).
“Oh I’m sorry, Sir William,” Mike says, taking on a ridiculous posh accent that even dialect coaches couldn't pinpoint. “-would you prefer I go blind? Must I never look in your direction again?!”
“That's not-” Will says, shaking his head. “What accent even is that, you sound so stupid.”
Even through his mean words, there's a hidden smile on his lips and the hint of a giggle in his sighs, and that's enough to make Mike want to keep annoying him.
He props himself up on his elbows, struggling against unstable bones. “Oh, Sir William! Please forgive me, I mustn't annoy you ever again!” He grasps Will’s shoulders and shakes him, pleading annoyingly and getting more ridiculous as Will dissolves into laughter, brows knitted together with concern and hilarity.
“Please shut the fuck up- I can't,” Will wheezes out between cackles, cackles that make Mike’s cheeks hurt with how hard he’s smiling.
“Must I also go mute for you, your majesty?!”
“I’m gonna leave!”
“ Whaaaaat?!”
“I’m leaving, you-you’re wasting my time.”
Mike struggles not to collapse into Will. “Oh my God, that's like, like that one song-”
“ Mike!”
“Shhhhut the fuck up, how's it go- the one that's like Oh, you’re wasting my time! You’re just, just, just wasting time!” Mike sings, or tries to, his voice hardly keeps a stable note and is more akin to forks on metal.
Will cringes into himself, shaking his head and slapping his hands over Mike’s mouth. "Oh my God, Mike, please!”
“SOMETHING HAPPENS, AND I’M HEAD OVER HEELS!”
“ Shut up!”
“ I NEVER FIND OUT, ‘TILL I’M HEAD OVER-” Mike snatches a beer bottle in his hand and uses it as a microphone. “ Heeeeeeeeels!”
Will sighs once again and in one swift movement takes the bottle right out of Mike’s hand. “Alright, enough of that.”
“Hey, that's mine!” Mike protests, singing session cut short. Will looks back at him with a lazy smirk as he drinks from Mike’s bottle.
Will shrugs. “What’s yours is mine's, Wheeler.”
Mike would never admit out loud how Will’s tone made his throat feel a bit tighter and his stomach flutter, and how he wished he could just down another bottle to drown that feeling just like he did every other time. Nearly 15 years he’d known Will, and still he couldn't pry his eyes away from the curve of his nose to his ridiculously sculpted jawline to his rosy lips, resting comfortably against the glass of the bottle. Mike silently ponders ways to turn himself into that beer bottle.
Hazel eyes lock onto Mike’s, then: “What?”
He opens his mouth, not sure what to say. Will’s half lidded stare is immobilizing, it kills Mike’s logical thinking.
“That's an indirect kiss, y’know.” Idiot. Will scrunches his nose at Mike’s statement.
“Mm?”
“You drinking from my bottle,” Mike continues, leaning back against the palms of his hands and trying to sound nonchalant. He should be, he is. He’s Michael Fucking Wheeler, for God’s sake. He managed to remain emotionally stunted in the face of most things. In the face of life ending threats, the face of his parents, the face of El, but why not the face of some Goddamned boy he met in kindergarten?
His internal dilemma showed, or maybe Will was just a telepath, tilting his head and pouting. “Aw, what, you want a real one?” He reaches a hand out to pinch Mike’s cheeks, and he slaps Will’s hand away a bit harsher than he intended.
“Shut up,” Mike chuckles, doing everything in his power to avoid looking at Will. Instead he focuses on the sky above him, at each drop of shining white, at the pearly moon beaming down at him, it raises the tides in his memories.
“Plus, I already kissed you once.”
Will pauses all movements, then clicks his tongue in amusement. “Oh my God. You remember that?”
Remember. Mike remembered it more often than he liked to. Them two, thirteen, sitting on the cold floor of Mike’s garage entrance and looking up into the sky. A full moon. A longing stare. A shy kiss never to be revisited.
“Of course I remember that.” It comes out too sincere, and Will might've caught it. He scoots just a centimeter closer to Mike.
“What, it keeps you up at night?” Will coos playfully. “Made you feel something?”
Oh, Mike regrets this. This is the first time he’s seen Will past the point of tipsy. The new cockiness, intimacy, and invasion of personal space…never would he have guessed that Will was a flirty drunk. Mike already couldn't keep his shit together with a normal, shy Will. This was…
“Yeah, made me feel ill .” Mike deadpans.
“ Oh yeah?” Jesus Christ, that tone, what is his problem?
“Yeah, I almost threw up, like, my entire digestive system,” Mike exaggerates, it helps. If he was annoying and gross and stupid enough maybe this entire thing could shift back to whatever it was before Mike brought up the kiss. Will laughs at him, but somehow it feels like he's not buying it.
“Okay, now you’re dragging it.”
“You're the one that asked!”
“I was just curious!” Will puts his hands up in defeat, turning away from Mike and looking up at the moon as well, like he too was remembering whilst bathing in its light. “I didn’t think you’d remember, it was so long ago…we were, like, what, twelve?”
“No, thirteen, it was after Max moved there,” Mike quickly corrects him, which earns him a look.
“Hmm, look who had it on their calendar.”
“Oh- fuck off! It didn’t mean anything!” Mike struggles to keep down something explosive inside of him, rolling his eyes. Even that was too much, he shouldn't be affected whatsoever, but Will was just too much, and Mike couldn't feel little enough.
Will, as if he planned his every move, snickered and gently pressed the lukewarm beer bottle against Mike’s cheekbone. “I don't know, you look pretty flushed right now.”
“You said it yourself,” Mike argues. “I’m completely shit-faced.”
“I don’t know why you have to do that. Can't you have just one or-or two?” Will asks with some actual worry. It almost makes Mike feel bad. Almost.
“It calms my nerves,” Mike says.
“Your nerves?” Will repeats. “Damn. You're getting worse than me with the anxiety, and that's saying something.”
He was getting up there, Mike supposed, but only when he thought of certain choppy bangs and D&D campaigns left unfinished.
“It’s not all the time, just today- I felt…I don't know, jittery?” Mike explains. The second he’d gotten off that plane and saw Will peeking through a sea of people, Mike’s heart exploded and hadn’t yet been put back together, like he was still feeling the residue of that adrenaline rush. Will scoots a little closer again, now they’re both sitting shoulder to shoulder, and that alone sobers Mike far too much.
“Mmm,” Will hums, a smile dancing on his face. “You were pro’lly nervous to see me, I get it.”
Silence.
Mike can’t bring himself to say anything, to confirm or deny, or to psych him out by singing another horrible song. He just feels trapped, unable to conjure up something that’ll push Will away, that’ll make his lungs work properly. Will studies him in the silence, his careless expression slowly turning to one of surprise, blinking with realization.
“You really were nervous to see me, weren’t you?” Will breathes, the corners of his lips quirked up. “I thought you were joking about that kiss meaning something to you.”
Mike shakes his head, smiling nervously and eyes trailing across Will’s face, struggling to stay away from his lips. “It…it didn’t.”
Liar, Will’s eyes argue. So much for their bullshit saying. Will nonverbally tests his lie, ever so slightly grazing Mike’s fingers with his own. At the same time that Mike’s cheeks warm up, Will seems to be hit with another wave of confidence.
“Alright,” He says. “So prove it.”
Mike’s muscles go rigid, his heart gets stuck in his throat. “What?”
Will relishes the stutter in Mike’s words. “Prove it- let me kiss you…and it’ll mean nothing, right?”
Right. It was nothing, it had to be. Mike told himself through and through that it was just friends doing stupid, kid shit and nothing more. And he wants to truly believe it, he wants Will to believe it, because if he doesn’t he might just faint or actually give himself alcohol poisoning to lose any and all feeling that still grounded him to this closed down road.
So, desperate, Mike quickly closes in and presses his lips against Will’s. His eyes are shut tight as if that would shield him from the twisting and turning in his stomach, like when you pinch your nose while drinking foul medicine. But, Will isn’t chalky Peptobismol, he’s sweet cough syrup. He makes Mike too loopy, his hand resting on the left side of his chest has him melting just a little bit more. The kiss was already too long to prove Mike’s point, but he still pulls away naively hoping Will would buy it.
Mike steadied himself. “See? Nothing.”
Will purses his lips, like he already won. The hand on Mike’s chest snakes upwards to his shoulder.
“Your heart was racing, I could feel it,” He whispers. Suddenly, his touch feels like it burns.
Mike, still not ready to lose, plays dumb. “So?”
“So, I think it did mean something.”
Despite the amount of pure audacity Will was entrenched in, Mike could also sense he was looking for something. A sign, an answer, permission . Maybe that’s what Mike had also been looking for all this time, permission to finally bear his heart out, to free it from the hundreds of coping skills he acquired to lock it away. So, with a healthy amount of fear in his chest and a cloudy brain, he grants Will and himself that permission.
“Prove it then.”
Will grins, and when he leans in, this kiss proves to be a lot different than the previous one. It’s calm, slow, accepting and warm and Mike felt tingly in all the right places. Will’s hand finds itself at the back of Mike’s head and it pulls him closer, deeper, and that's all Mike needs to completely lose any composure he tries to hold. He’s clunky, hands shaking as he caresses Will’s cheek, teeth clashing gently, a bottle falling to the ground, but Goddamit Will’s mouth feels so right and when it seems like Will’s going to pry away, Mike pulls him back in by the collar.
Will gasps against Mike’s lips, and that drives him all the more insane. He’s sure the world is shifting around him when Will fists his fingers into Mike’s hair and grabs his free hand, guiding it to his waist. He wanted him, he wanted him as much as Mike wanted him and that had to be impossible. He didn't know if beer could cause hyper realistic hallucinations, though, so maybe it was real. Will’s torso felt real enough.
“Mm…Mike,” Will mumbles, breaking away for a second to move over Mike, practically straddling him. He notices Mike's wide eyes and gently squeezes his face.
“Don’t get all nervous on me now,” He says. Mike doesn't think he can keep that promise, but he’ll try.
They kiss again, and again, and again, and Mike thinks he could do this for hours, maybe days. It was like all those forgotten dreams had become real at this very moment, and this very moment also felt like a dream. He looked up at Will and the moon peeked from behind his head, like a halo, shining down on him and making the ocean in his head roar and crash.
Teeny bits of rock dig into Mike's elbows when he props himself up on them, but he doesn't care, he can hardly feel them. All he feels is Will’s legs pinning him down and his shivers when Mike's hands slide down his spine, or when his nails rank softly against his skin.
Eventually, Mike ends up lying down entirely on the road, Will’s hands on either side of his head. When his vision stops spinning, he finds himself absolutely entranced with the man on top of him. A blush spread across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, he looked out of breath, disheveled, antsy. Mike can't help himself, brushing up Will’s messy hair and smiling like a fool. Will smiles as well, this time it's more like his usual ones, sheepish.
“What?” Will asks. Mike's hand stops at his cheek, the contrast of his warmth against Mike’s cold skin was refreshing.
“It always meant something to me,” Mike admits. “Always.”
Will smiles even harder, lifting a hand up and wrapping it around Mike's arm. He leans into his touch, kissing the inside of his wrist.
“Me too.”
Mike hopes more than anything that he’ll remember that in the morning.