Chapter Text
“Byers, you’re looking green around the gills, man.”
Will lifts his head sluggishly, neck disconnecting from its embrace with the sofa. “Huh?”
Lucas laughs from his position on the floor, tilting his head to blow smoke at the ceiling. Will watches it with half-slitted eyes – it dances hypnotically in the low lighting of Mike’s basement. Max giggles at Lucas’ side, curled as she is under his arm, legs tucked beneath her.
“Point proven,” Lucas croaks, eyes bloodshot.
“Shuddup,” Will slurs. He clears his throat, tries again. “Shut up. I’m fine.”
“Shuddup,” Dustin mocks, and then dissolves into a fit of giggles. “Shuddup!”
The room cracks up in a unanimous, hysterical giggle, Will included. Mike’s laughter is the loudest, sitting shoulder to shoulder with him on the sofa. They’ve barely separated all night, hip to hip, knee to knee. It’s been excruciating. It’s been wonderful.
“Leave him alone," Mike defends. "He’s totally wasted.”
“Aw, Wheeler.” Max pouts. “I love it when you get all protective over Will. Makes me like you more.”
Will flushes, but Mike only scoffs. “Obviously. He’s my friend.” They catch eyes and share a grin. “Best friend.”
“Get a roooom,” Dustin sings.
“We have one, but you’re in it,” Will rebukes.
He’s not quite sure where the confidence comes from – to flirt with the line like that. It’s something about today. About now. About this very moment. Their graduation day. Their final game of DnD. Their tears and emotional purge. When Max proffered two joints to go with Lucas’ case of beers, it seemed like the only right option.
"Christ... say it how it is.” Dustin laughs. “Should we leave you two alone?”
Mike shifts next to Will, not saying a word. If he weren’t pinned beneath a heavy, hot smudge of intoxication, he thinks he would be panicking more.
As it is, he lazily rolls a shoulder; teases, “I’m not Mike’s type.”
This cracks the room up again, and Will cuts his sluggish eyes Mike’s way. There’s a sense of sobriety trying to pierce through the veil, a sense of panic that he should be dealing with. But Mike’s grinning, in on the joke, happy to be part of it, and Will relaxes. He allows his body to continue pressing against Mike’s and leaves it there.
“That’s a point,” Max muses, when the laughter dies. “You told us you’re into guys, Will, but like – what guys are you actually into?”
Every pair of eyes burns into him. He shifts in his seat. Doesn’t look at Mike – despite knowing his stare is the heaviest of all.
“I’ll disown you forever if you say someone from the popular kids,” Dustin comments, his face folding into solemn lines. “I swear to God, Will, don’t let me down, man.”
Will laughs, lets the thousands of images of Mike float across his brain, and through his memories. Wonders how he can manipulate them to describe a guy that doesn’t sound like the one sat next to him.
“Dunno,” he settles on.
Lucas and Max groan in sync, Max going so far as to ram her head against Lucas’ shoulder in apparent frustration.
“Men are so boring,” she mutters.
“Yeah,” Lucas agrees lazily, and then perks up, straightening his shoulders. “Hey!”
“Booooooo!” Dustin hollers, hands cupped around his mouth. “Give the people what they want!”
“Guys,” Will laughs. “I’m way too high right now.”
“It’s probably someone like Eddie,” Mike interrupts suddenly.
The room turns to look at him in unison, Will included.
Mike’s relaxed, legs spread much wider than they need to be. His hands are loose on his knees. His beer bottle is tucked between his legs, provoking images Will really doesn’t need to deal with right now. His curls are messed up, damp with sweat – the side parting ruined. Thank God. More Mike. Less his dad.
“Right?” Mike asks Will, with eyes at half-mast. “Someone like Eddie?”
Will doesn’t know how to feel about this question. About the way Will could put Eddie’s features on paper, alongside Mike’s, and come out virtually the same. Will also doesn’t think he has the time to debate this, given his current spotlight.
“Yeah,” Will croaks eventually. “I guess.”
Mike and Will don’t break eye contact. The room stays silent.
Finally, Dustin breaks their bubble. “I’ll allow it.”
That prompts a triad from Max, and a defence on her behalf from Lucas. The night continues in the same inane vein of conversations. Will continues to grow warm and intoxicated until by the time Lucas, Max, and Dustin stumble up the basement stairs, he’s barely lucid.
“You’re stayin’ right?” Mike asks.
“Hm?” Will lifts his heavy head, voice slightly slurred. “Oh. Yeah. S’that okay?”
“Totally.” Mike’s voice rumbles, all low and soft. “Don’t wanna be in the house alone anyway.”
Will tries to remember where the rest of the Wheelers' are. Mike told him, but he doesn’t care enough to trudge through the sludge of his mind.
They lapse into a silence that’s a bit of a fever dream. The TV is nothing but static now, a dull grey-ish blue light. Will’s limbs are completely loose and comfortable, sunk into the sofa. It might even be that he drifts off, because when Mike speaks, it jolts him out of somewhere he was falling.
“Huh?”
Mike laughs softly, rumbling, like he needs to cough. “I just – what you said. You know, earlier?”
“Said a lot earlier, Mike,” Will groans, stretching out his tingling arms and legs.
There’s an answering silence that forces Will’s eyes to look over for the first time in a while. Mike’s face is flushed, probably from the beer, and his eyes are glassy, probably from the joints.
“’Bout you not being my type?”
“Oh, yeah. That." Will flushes. "I didn't mean to - to make it weird or anything. I was just - just messing around.”
“No, I - I know.” Mike sniffs, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Just – you would be, you know. My type.”
Will squints over at him. “I think that’s the buzz talking.”
“More like – more like the buzz is letting me talk,” Mike whispers, eyes huge and dark. “Letting me say – say that… Um. Look, there’s probably proper shit I need to say when I’m, you know, sober. Properly. But – just – right now…” Mike swallows. “I don’t wanna overthink it. I just – I want you.”
“What?” Will blinks rapidly, trying to pull some semblance of sanity back. “You… want… me?”
He says it in such a dazed, stoned way that it comes out more like: you? Want? Me?
Mike stretches his hand across the sofa, presses it to Will’s knee. Will’s guts boil. He suddenly becomes painfully aware of every pulse point in his body.
“Yeah, like – like bad.” Mike finishes this with a lip bite and a sparkle to his eyes that looks a little delirious.
Will feels as if there’s a million things he could respond with – important, sensible things.
If only he could grasp them.
If only he could find the desire to be serious. To be level-headed. To be Will the Wise.
But he doesn’t want to be Will the Wise.
He wants to be Will the teenager.
He wants to be high and drunk, with someone flirting with him in a dark basement. He wants an experience most straight guys get, and that Will himself has only ever dreamed could happen to him.
So he lands on the only question he can: “Why?”
“You have no idea what…” Mike’s fingers curl tighter into Will’s knee; they dig through the denim. “… what you look like right now. How you look right now.”
Will lets it go to his head. Lets it feed his ego and not trip the lines of his insecurity. Allows himself this moment. His hand falls on top of Mike’s, his fingers drifting over Mike’s knuckles.
Looking up beneath his lashes, Will asks, “An’… what do you wanna do?”
The pupils of Mike’s eyes split open, and Will’s pretty sure he’ll never be able to scramble back out of them.
“I wanna… I mean, if – if you want to, I want – I wanna blow you. It’s all I can think about.”
Will’s breath turns shallow. He shifts in his seat. Mike’s eyes track the movement like a hawk. Mike’s chest is rising fast enough that Will can see it hitch under his shirt.
“Yeah,” Will finally squeaks.
“Yeah?” Mike repeats, raising his eyes, round and hopeful.
Will’s heart is doing something stupid and fast. Possibly cardiac arrest. He presses his fingers firmly over Mike’s knuckles.
"I've never - It'll be - I mean, yeah. Just yeah. Okay."
It seems to do something to Mike, this bumbling, hinted mess of words. He exhales, long and shaky, and both his body, and grip shifts. It’s careful, and his thumb brushes once, over the inside of Will’s knee. His body orbits closer.
The space between them is unbearable. Humming. Its own living thing. Mike’s breath is warm and uneven against his cheek, ragged. The TV whispers static, and the whole world is narrowed to this couch, this basement, this moment.
Mike looks at him like he’s trying to commit the moment to memory. That’s what tips Will. He leans in suddenly, decisively, closing the distance. Their mouths meet, not gently. It’s a kiss born of restraint, snapping, of an endless want finally finding a place to land.
What’s most surprising is that Mike kisses like he’s starving. Like he couldn’t stop if the world was coming down around their ears. His hands are desperate, encouraging Will’s own. Their fingers curl in fabrics, pulling at each other. Yanking and ungraceful. They gasp and moan together.
“Jesus,” Will breathes when they part for air. His voice is wrecked already. His jeans are tight. “I didn’t - I didn't expect you to be like this.”
Mike blinks, face flushed and eyes glassy. “Like what?”
Will’s lip curves. “So… needy.”
Something flashes across Mike’s face. Something sharp and pleased. Confidence, or smugness. His mouth tilts into a smirk.
“Yeah?” He murmurs. “You don’t seem to hate it.”
“I don’t,” Will confirms.
“Good.”
Mike presses a hard kiss to Will’s lips and then shifts. Will is pushed back against the sofa, Mike over him, and Will’s back to repressing the urge to explode into a million pieces. Will's t-shirt comes off, hurried and impatient. Mike sits back on Will’s knees, and his hands and eyes map, trace, and indulge.
“God…” Mike mumbles beneath his breath. "You look..."
Then he leans in, and his lips destroy the flesh of Will’s neck with hot kisses, with longing drags of his tongue, with desperate scrapes of his teeth. Will whimpers, despite biting down on his lip. When Mike pushes his legs apart and folds ungracefully to the floor, Will releases a high-pitched sound he’s never before uttered.
The change in position reframes everything – the angle, the power, the weight of Mike’s attention. He looks up at Will with eyes blown wide, lips pink and swollen, and Will feels the gravity of it slam him in the chest.
“Still okay?” Mike asks quietly.
Will doesn’t hesitate.
“Yeah, Mike,” he says. “I want it.”
Mike’s fingers fumble at his jeans, and Will scrambles to help. It isn’t until he’s still again, legs spread, top off, jeans yanked down, that he feels exposed. His chest hitches, fighting vulnerable little whimpers. Mike’s eyes devour him, which helps. Run over his bare chest, and the trail of hair leading to his leaking cock.
“I –” Mike swallows, gaze bouncing up and down Will’s body. “Wow.”
Flushing, Will shifts, his cock throbbing, his limbs heavy and hot. His brain is foggy, and his vision fuzzy.
It seems like Mike’s going to speak again, but he doesn’t. He wraps his longer fingers around Will’s dick and smirks when Will jolts at the contact. Mike leans in eagerly, lips parted and slick from their kissing. They wrap around the head of Will’s cock with confidence, with purpose.
Will can’t stop his eyes from rolling into his skull. His brain is swimming, and yet so intensely connected to his body. To the roiling heat low in his stomach, to the pulsing twitch of his cock, and back up again to the tension of his neck where it strains.
Mike presses his head down lower, lips tight, and Will groans. His hand slides into Mike’s curls, something he’s always wanted to do. His fingers close tight and possessive, the palm of his hand fitting to Mike’s sharp cheekbone. His balls feel heavy and aching. There’s a building urge in his hips to fuck his best friend's throat.
Despite Will receiving mind-numbing pleasure, it’s Mike who makes the loudest sounds between them. Will stares down at him, where his chin is tucked, his lips split wide. Where saliva pools and dribbles to the space between Will’s hips, soaking the hair and skin there. Will swears his lungs will stop working soon, his breath aborted, mangled sobs.
Heat slams Will’s spine violently, pushing his hips forward. Running from agony to agony, burying deeper in Mike’s throat. It’s amazing how Mike keeps on swallowing his cock, his cheeks stretching with the thickness. Will just nearly bottoms out before Mike gags, and pulls back with a rattling gasp.
A runner of spit pulls from Will’s cock to Mike’s bottom lip.
Will can’t stop staring at it.
He moves his hand from Mike’s hair without thought. Gasping raggedly, grotesquely. Mike stares, a flush heavy in his cheeks, lips parted. Will runs his shaking thumb over Mike’s slick bottom lip. Then he pushes it in.
Mike's eyes yawn open, dark holes in his face. His hand grips Will's wrist tightly, damp and hot. Then he sucks without being asked. Without being told. Holds Will’s eyes without shame.
A groan gurgles from Will’s throat. Mike releases Will's wrist and leans down again, swallowing Will’s cock back down his throat. Only this time, Will’s thumb is taken with, and he’s lodged inside Mike’s wet, warm mouth alongside his dick. Mike's free hand runs up Will's quivering stomach, stroking the hot skin up to his chest.
Will goes cross-eyed, trying to decide which sensation he’s feeling the most, and where. What it is exactly that’s turning him on, or if it’s simply all just turning him on.
The knuckle of his thumb pressing against a throbbing vein of his dick. The pad of his thumb rubbing against the slick inside of Mike’s cheek. Will keens, his eyes locked on the movement, on the scene. His ears tuned to every heavy breath from Mike, every muffled moan.
His balls tighten. He’s not going to make it. He could screw his eyes closed, could focus, prolong it like he wants. But then he’d be denying himself Mike like this. Mike with his glassy, dark eyes and his eager lips, and hands; his fucking ungodly sounds. Mike’s other hand grasps and pumps what he can’t fit into his mouth, and Will’s thigh muscles jerk, his stomach twinging sharply.
Shaking, Will pulls his thumb from Mike’s mouth, dragging against his own dick with a hiss. Then he shoves both hands into Mike’s hair, hunching forward. It feels more intimate as he curls up, as Mike becomes truly engulfed between his legs. As his hips thrust shallow and desperate. Mike's hand on his chest is forced to his collarbones, where his fingers then curl and stroke.
Will knows he should ease up, but God, it’s so good. It’s so devastatingly good, and Mike is humming approval, moaning approval, near enough sobbing approval. Will's fingers clench harder in Mike's hair, tugging at the root. His whole body lights up, tensing and constricting.
“Mike! I’m – fuck, I –”
Mike doesn’t move. Curls his nails into the base of Will's throat. That’s Will’s limit. His whole body locks when his orgasm slams into him. It’s dizzying and exciting and mind-numbing and the best thing he’s ever experienced in his entire life. Will curls in even tighter, his abs constricting painfully, his cock twitching violently in Mike’s mouth.
Will’s not sure his heart rate will ever come down. Mike slips off his dick slowly and looks up with half-lidded eyes and a smug little smile.
Staring at the curve of his smirk, Will lets out a breathless laugh, drags him in, and kisses him senseless.