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In his defense, Will doesn‘t get it until early 1992.
Jennifer Hayes is visiting them, a pit stop on her road trip from the Bay Area down to Mexico for Spring Break. Her hair is a pale blonde sheath all around her and she wears neon-colored strapless tops and high-waisted shorts and high heels.
“Jesus, Jenny, you’re such a cliché,” Will greets her when she pulls into the parking lot of the two-bedroom he shares with Dustin.
She looks at him over the top of her big, plastic, bug-eyed sunglasses. “Screw you, Byers,” she says.
She still smells like the perfume she used to wear way too much of in high school, doing her makeup in the passenger seat when she and Will and her brother used to drive to college parties.
Jenny is every inch the college girl. She’s in a sorority. She has fake nails. It’s kind of funny to see her plopped down on the too-bright afghan Dustin threw over their couch after the Weekend Of The Jungle Juice, midterms, sophomore year. They mix up some margaritas with the bartending shaker that Dustin bought once, but only Will ever uses, and by the time Dustin gets in, they’re a drink and a half in each on an empty stomach.
“You will not believe the day I have had,” Dustin groans. He’s in a three-two program, set to get a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the end of June already and a master’s two years after that. It’s nuts to Will, because he hadn’t even finished his existential crisis over picking a major until last semester. Dustin’s always been focused. He’s also always been a total drama queen, and that just gets worse and worse as he gets further into his degree.
“Was it Tovey?” Will asks.
“How did you know?”
It’s literally always Professor Tovey.
“Made you a margarita.”
“You are a god among men, Will Byers. Oh, hey, Jennifer, sorry, I should have said hi before.” Dustin comes into the living room (and kitchen, and den, and TV room), kicking off his sneakers. Will’s going to have to move them to the hall later or trip over them drunk. Every damn time.
“Hi, Dustin.” Jenny gets up, hugs Dustin. Dustin clearly panics and grabs Will into a hug afterwards, like that’s even a thing they do. He smells a little bit like deodorant and a little bit like sweat, but in a good way.
Dustin settles on the floor across from them, margarita in hand. His hair’s a lot shorter than it ever was in Hawkins, but he’s got this one corkscrew curl that likes to fall over his forehead. Will remember abruptly that Jennifer had a massive crush on him, senior year. He looks over at her. She’s leaning forward, asking Dustin what he’s been up to since they last saw each other, her stupidly perky tits highlighted perfectly by her posture.
Ugh.
It’s not that Will doesn’t want to help Dustin out, here. He does. Dustin’s been kind of mopey since he ended things with his last girlfriend. Will’s usually his wingman for the rebound (and by rebound, Will means he will set Dustin up for what should be a one night stand with some girl Dustin should have nothing in common with and Dustin then ends up dating her for anywhere between three weeks and half a year, and is inevitably even more down when they split up).
Will’s pretty sure he doesn’t want Jenny and Dustin hooking up, though. Jenny’s his school friend. She cried at his fake funeral when he didn’t die in 1983, and they might not share a lot by way of interests besides dick, but they’ve been at least casual friends ever since. She never really talked to his other friends, and Will kind of liked being the expert on Dustin once she developed her debilitating crush on him. She’s gone on to date nerds pretty exclusively, and Will doesn’t want to take full credit, but he’s pretty sure that without him, and without Dustin by proxy, she wouldn’t be pre-Med now.
Anyway, he doesn’t want to pick sides when they inevitably stop working out after the inevitable four to fourteen weeks.
He’s a little miffed, when, two drinks later, Jenny gets them playing Truth or Dare. It’s a transparent excuse for her to confess her long-ago crush and get some action from Dustin. He won’t leave the room, he decides, until they start actively making out. Make them really force him out if that’s what they’re gonna do. Jenny was here to visit him.
Dustin is not much fun to play Truth or Dare with, on the whole – he’s incredibly hard to embarrass. He has no issues telling them all straight-up that his first crush was Max, that his first kiss was Suzie, that his first handjob was Suzie, too, and that he didn’t fuck anyone until college.
“Aw,” Jennifer pouts. “No action in Hawkins?”
Dustin shrugs. “You asked about the first time I fucked someone. That’s not the same thing as ‘action’, technically.”
That’s the other shitty thing about playing party games with Dustin. He never gets too drunk to be pedantic.
“Okay,” Will says, “so define ‘action’.”
“The process of doing something,” Dustin says, grinning. Pedantic.
“Dustin.”
“Fine,” Dustin says. “If you ask me, anything rounding third base should count as sex. So, handjobs. But also, oral totally counts as action, and, like, what about when it’s two guys? It’s not like you jump straight into anal.”
Jennifer leans forward. “Did you fuck a guy in Hawkins?”
Dustin drinks.
They both stare at him.
“What? It’s not my turn.”
Jenny turns to Will. “Truth or dare?”
“Dare,” Will says, because he’s already had to get way more graphic about things he’s done to her brother than he really wanted to.
“Kiss Dustin.”
Will looks over at Dustin. Dustin grins at him, cheeks flushed with alcohol. “Come on, Byers,” he says. Will remembers him, almost ten years ago, telling Will to cast a protection spell instead of a fireball in Mike’s basement. He remembers how Dustin would let stupid Troy see what weird things he could do with his bones every day in middle school instead of telling a teacher because he honestly didn’t care about being laughed at. He remembers Dustin’s stupid puffy hairdo at the stupid Snow Ball. He remembers sneaking beers at Steve’s house with Dustin when they were freshmen, biking home in the cold, racing Dustin to the bottom of every hill.
Dustin’s twenty-one, now. He has a part-time job as the audio-visual guy for the student theater at CalTech. They’ve been sharing an apartment for almost two years now, and Will has seen Dustin mostly naked coming out of the shower, puking and hungover, sick with a fever and wrapped up in every sweatshirt he owns. Mostly, he sees Dustin like this, in a button-up shirt with some sort of pattern and jeans, with his hair a somewhat contained mop on the top of his head, with his overenthusiastic grin.
Will drops to his knees in front of the couch, leans across the coffee table as Dustin leans towards him.
They kiss.
Standard Party kissing game rules apply: no more than five seconds, eyes closed and tongue optional. Dustin made those rules up the first time he and Lucas went to a high school party together, just in case they had to kiss each other or Max, so that it wouldn’t be weird and no one would get jealous. Will’s always stuck to them even though no one else has.
Dustin doesn’t.
Dustin gets a hand around Will’s neck and angles his head just a little so he can kiss Will harder. Tongue becomes less optional when Dustin licks along Will’s lower lip, and then it becomes absolutely essential. Will kind of forgets what’s going on until Dustin groans into his mouth and he realizes he’s got his hand in Dustin’s hair, cradling his head and tugging at his curls.
He’s always wanted to do that and it’s exactly as satisfying as he always thought it would be.
The only thing Will doesn’t really get is why he never noticed, before, how badly he wanted to touch Dustin’s hair.
Dustin smiles at him again when they pull apart. He’s still flushed. His hair still looks great.
Jennifer’s leaning back against the couch cushions, sipping her margarita. “We should go out,” she decides.
They do.
Will doesn’t dance with Dustin at the club they go to that night. It’s a gay-friendly club, but still. They dance in a little triangle, him and Jenny and Dustin, and none of them make any effort to hook up with anyone else. It’s fun. Will has four more drinks, but he can’t seem to really get drunk. It’s like a part of his brain is stuck processing the noise Dustin made when Will pulled his hair.
Jenny crashes hard in Will’s bed when they get back at four in the morning. Will’s putting his pillow on the couch when Dustin wanders in from the bathroom, toothbrush in his mouth. “Come on,” he says. “You can share my bed.”
“You sure?” Will asks.
Dustin spits his toothpaste into the sink. “Will Byers. Just because I like guys doesn’t mean I’ll molest you in your sleep. Jesus Christ, I expected better from you.” Will had said the same thing to Mike and Lucas, the first time they’d had a sleepover in Mike’s basement after he came out.
“That’s not even—” Will sputters. “I wasn’t even—HEY!”
Dustin cackles.
Jennifer hugs Will goodbye in the parking lot two days later.
She didn’t hook up with Dustin.
“You’re gonna have to tell me what he’s like in bed,” she tells Will, apparently fully serious.
“He’s my roommate!” Will says indignantly. “I’m not sleeping with him. Anyway, I’ve known him since elementary school.”
Jenny rolls her eyes. “You knew my brother in Kindergarten. Didn’t stop you.”
Will flushes, rubs the back of his neck. “That’s different.”
“Yeah,” she says. “You weren’t even in love with Jimmy.”
“That is so not what’s going on here,” Will tells her, mustering as much dignity as he can. “I think you’re misremembering who spent nine months of high school wondering what kissing him would be like.”
“We were so both wondering,” Jennifer tells him. She puts her sunglasses on. “I’m gonna be late for Spring Break if I spend all day explaining your own feelings to you.”
“There are no feelings and there is nothing to explain,” Will says.
“Uh-huh.”
“Call me when you get there. Don’t do any weird drugs in Mexico. And don’t get pregnant.”
“Love you, too, Byers.”
-
They never really talk about Dustin liking guys.
Not, like, in the way that Will sat all his friends down to explain to them that he was Very Gay, Thank You.
It’s more like a compulsive thought Will keeps coming back to against his better judgment.
He asks, every now and again. It’s not like Dustin has a whole lot of boundaries.
“Why do you never date guys?” Will asks, just before Dustin heads out on a date with Sophie (two weeks of dates so far, blonde, glasses, definitely not a keeper).
Dustin shrugs. “Opportunity? Dating girls is a lot easier. I know the rules.”
Will laughs. “Steve taught you the rules. Steve has been dating a man for almost as long as you’ve known him.”
“Worked so far, hasn’t it?”
“Sure,” Will says.
When Dustin gets back in less than two hours later, he’s in an inexplicably bad mood. He doesn’t see Sophie again.
They get trashed at a house party in early May, one of Will’s Pomona friends’ houses. There’s a guy in a full sagehen costume wandering around handing out vegan Jello shots. It’s hard to not be trashed.
“Who’d you sleep with in Hawkins?” Will asks, leaned against Dustin on the porch. It’s SoCal in May, so it’s not exactly cool, but it smells less like bodies and alcohol outside and he’s drunk enough that things are a little too spinny for comfort. Dustin’s less drunk because his bachelor’s thesis is due in four days. It’s finished, he just needs to proofread, but Dustin gets pretty anxious around deadlines.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Dustin tells him. He’s sitting on the steps of the porch next to Will, leaning forward, elbows rested on his knees. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, because he has this whole thing about short-sleeved button-ups being wrong but he still gets really hot. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone.
It’s actually pretty true. Dustin doesn’t really say much about his endless parade of girlfriends except that he’s dating them and, when they stick around a while longer, what he thinks is cool about them. He hasn’t given an excessive info dump on a girl’s preferences or bedroom activities since Suzie.
“Ugh, you’re such a good person,” Will says. “I told you, like, everything about Benji.”
Dustin bumps their knees together comfortingly. “That was advice-related kissing and telling,” he says. “That’s okay.”
“Benji sure didn’t think so.”
“Benji’s a dick.” Dustin says it mildly, but he means it. Benji kind of broke up with Will over how much he and Dustin didn’t like each other and also how unwilling Will was to do hard drugs and get tied up in bed.
Will kind of wonders what it says about them that he and Dustin literally never like each other’s partners.
At the end of May, Dustin gets to walk with the graduating class of ’92. He’s technically not going to get any certification until his master’s in two years’ time, but because he’s technically moving on into grad school, he gets the cap and the gown and an empty frame to put his eventual diploma in. His mom can’t make it (Tews is sick. The Henderson household takes Tews pretty seriously. Lucas thinks it’s ridiculous. Will gets it), but Steve and Billy fly in for it and stay for a week.
Will’s pretty beat from his own finals. Now that he’s actually decided to stick with his Psych major, his classes have gotten harder and it feels like his attention span is waning, focused only on the shit he needs to know. He’s up by eight for Dustin’s graduation anyway. It’s a big day, after all.
He helps Dustin tie his tie over today’s cream-colored button-down with blue stripes. The back of his hand brushes against Dustin’s hair as he straightens the tie and collar situation and he remembers, suddenly, how it felt to sink his hand into those curls when they were kissing.
“Why’d you never tell me you’re bi?” He asks.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Will.” Dustin says. “Is now the time?”
Will steps back, shocked. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”
Dustin rubs a hand across his face. “You didn’t overstep,” he says, “I’m just not sure what you want me to say.”
“I don’t know,” Will says. “It seems like…I don’t know, we know a lot of gay people, or bi people. I thought you’d talk to me. It’s not something you need to hide.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Dustin says. “It’s just not relevant. I’m not going to start dating guys.”
“Why?”
Dustin looks him dead in the eye. “Because they’re not you, Will.”
He heads back into his room and gets his cap and gown. Will’s still sort of blankly staring at the space he used to be in two minutes later when the front door slams shut behind Dustin.
Even ten minutes after it’s over, Will doesn’t remember a single word anyone says during the graduation ceremony. He gets up and cheers when Dustin walks across the stage, he knows that, but every single graduate with a last name from I to Z might as well not even exist, and the commencement speaker is a grey blob in his memory.
Billy elbows him somewhere around the time they should be getting ready to get up. “You okay, Byers?” He asks.
“Uh-huh,” Will says.
Billy gives him a look.
“Got a lot on my mind,” Will says.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Not here.”
They talk before dinner that night. Steve’s taking them all out (he insisted) and he and Dustin are getting in some long-planned bro time beforehand. Billy sprawls out on the ugly afghan Jennifer Hayes watched Will and Dustin kiss on two months ago and gives Will this look.
It’s the worst. Ever since Will was sixteen and terrified of everything and Billy let him cry about it, Billy has been the best friend he could ask for. But there are still boundaries and shit. Even the time Billy had taken him to a clinic to get tested, that was fine, because no one had been asking Will what he felt.
“So, hypothetically,” Will starts.
“Oh boy,” Billy says. “Am I gonna need a drink for this?”
“Look, do you wanna talk about this or not?”
“I’m listening,” Billy says.
“So, hypothetically,” Will continues. “Let’s say that I’ve been having thoughts about a person I didn’t expect. And, um, maybe that person is interested. But it’s not something I ever expected, and it seems really risky for me to just…go for it.”
“Okay,” Billy says. “So what I’m hearing is that you like someone and they like you. Where’s the risk?”
“What if we can never be friends again?”
“Do you want to be friends again?”
“Yeah.”
Billy shrugs. “That is risky.”
“…That’s it?”
“What?” Billy asks.
Will huffs. “You’re supposed to, like, tell me I should go for it because I’ll regret it if I don’t.”
Billy grins, wide, dangerously pleased with himself. “Sounds to me like you already know what advice you want to get. Why should I bother giving it?”
“I hate it when you’re right.”
After a while, he looks over at Billy. “Hey,” he says.
“Hmm?”
“How did you know you were in love with Steve?”
“Ask easier questions,” Billy mutters. His ears are going red. He’s such a sap, really. “I don’t know, man. I wanted to see him all the time. Being with him felt good. I tried to imagine being without him and it made me fucking miserable.”
“Okay,” Will says. He thinks about—he thinks about Thanksgiving, at Billy and Steve’s place. Dustin giving Will his sweet potatoes. Dustin pouting on the car ride over from Hawkins before that Thanksgiving because Will wasn’t spending enough time with him. Dustin meeting him on the quad in front of the Will’s dorm at Pomona and telling him bluntly that they should move in together sophomore year because his roommates freaked out when he got nightmares and Will being so relieved he could cry because his nightmares were even worse. Dustin wearing one of Lucas’s old wifebeaters while they carried boxes into their apartment. His heart is jackrabbiting in his chest.
“I need to make a phone call,” he says.
There are at least three girls yelling in the background when Jenny gets to the phone, but she makes them all shut up when Will tells her, miserably, “You were right about Dustin.”
“What are you gonna do about it?” She asks.
“I think I’m gonna do something,” Will says.
“Okay.”
“Is it?”
“Huh?”
“Okay. I know you used to crush on him.”
Jenny laughs. “Oh my god, Will. I used to crush on you.”
“You thought I had died, that was fine,” Will says absently.
“You’re so fucked up,” she tells him. “Listen, he’s crazy about you. Just bone him.”
“That is the worst advice,” Will says, knowing full well that he’s going to follow it.
“Whatever,” she says. “I get to be flower girl when he makes an honest nerd out of you.”
The phone call doesn’t exactly relax Will, but it does settle his stomach enough to make it through dinner. Dustin’s not noticeably different than he is, otherwise, loud and excited and enthusiastic and Will wonders how long he’s felt this way and not let it affect him.
He tries not to cringe when Steve makes them all toast Dustin’s success three times in a row. He feels like the worst friend.
Billy and Steve walk them back to their apartment by ten. It’s not much of a celebration of Dustin’s accomplishment, but they want to hit up the beach early tomorrow, before it gets way too crowded. Anyway, the real party will be the Fourth of July, in Hawkins, when everyone’s back together again.
Dustin heads straight for the bathroom and his toothbrush when they get in, apparently intent on going straight to bed. Will kind of gets it. He would try to hide, too.
Actually, no, he would have never had the guts to just come right out and say what Dustin said this morning.
“Hey,” Will says, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door. “Can we talk?”
Dustin meets his eye in the mirror briefly, looks away, puts the lid back on the toothpaste. “It’s okay,” he says. “I know I—it’s fine that you’re not interested. I’d just really appreciate it if you could not ask so many questions about, y’know, the whole bisexual thing, because it makes it really hard for me to draw appropriate boundaries. I hope you don’t mind still living with me, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but it’s been more than a year and we’ve been fine, and—”
He just keeps going. It’s clearly a speech he’s practiced in his head all day, and it’s very Dustin in that it’s incredibly comprehensive and leaves very little chance for Will to protest anything he has to say.
“I think you’re operating on a flawed premise,” Will says eventually, when Dustin slowly begins to run out of steam and starts repeating stuff.
Dustin frowns. (He gets really touchy about negative feedback, especially when he’s prepared.)
“You assumed that I’m not interested,” Will says, scuffing his socked foot across the threshold. There’s a metal plate that’s supposed to go there, but it came loose a week after they moved in and it’s resting on top of the refrigerator because they keep meaning to fix it and never do. Will likes the way the sharp edge feels against the ball of his foot.
“You’re not,” Dustin says.
Will scrapes his foot harder against the corner. “Why would you think that?”
“I’m not your type.”
“I have a type?”
Dustin finally turns to him, exasperated. “You date jocks. Y’know, athletic guys. They’re all really built, and they’re kind of mean, and incredibly good-looking.”
“I thought you only dated women until two months ago! I didn’t even know I could be dating you!”
“That doesn’t change an established pattern—”
“Well, it sure as fuck changes your established pattern,” Will argues. “Why not mine?”
Dustin sputters. He’s really cute when he’s flustered. “Because you’re not interested in me.”
Will pushes himself off the doorframe, walks right up into Dustin’s personal space and kisses him.
Dustin’s shorter than him. He’s a bit broader, and he’s always seemed bigger to Will because he had this way of capturing people’s attention, even as a kid. Will was a teacher’s pet – he was quiet and smart and he did everything on time and never got into trouble. Dustin was a disaster, he was loud and opinionated and always had something to say about everything, but he could always get their teachers going on subjects no one else would have even thought to ask.
Will’s always liked that about Dustin, how much he’s learned just by being Dustin’s friend.
He also likes how Dustin kisses him back, unreservedly, his hands clenching tight against the sink when Will puts an arm around his waist. He likes how he’s always felt like Dustin’s larger than life, but here, now, in their bathroom, kissing, Will feels right in his skin, taller and maybe a little stronger than Dustin and so close to him.
Dustin looks wrecked when they pull apart.
Last time they kissed, he was fine. A little drunk, sure, but nothing like this, wide-eyed and panting, his tie askew and his chest heaving. To be fair, last time Will had just kissed him, not pressed their entire bodies together.
“Do you mean it?” Dustin asks.
“Huh?”
“I need to know if you mean it,” Dustin says. “I can’t do…I need this to be real, Will, or I’m out.”
“You’re so brave,” Will breathes out, kisses him again. When he thinks to stop, he’s got his back to the wall, head pressed up against the towel rack awkwardly, his hands on Dustin’s ass.
“S’not an answer,” Dustin says. His breath is hitching. Will’s teeth are on his jaw, on his neck.
When Dustin’s hand sneaks up the back of Will’s shirt, palming across his back, a shudder runs down Will’s whole body. He slots their lips against each other, slides their tongues together as deeply and nastily as he knows how. Dustin’s chest rumbles around some sort of noise that can’t escape through their kiss; he presses closer and tighter against Will.
Will gets a hand in Dustin’s hair and tugs a bit.
It’s kind of a blur how they get to the couch, but by the time they do, Dustin’s shirt is all the way unbuttoned and the tie is off. Will’s lost his jacket and his shirt is rucked up to his armpits, Dustin pressing him back against the cushions. Dustin pulls back to peel it off him, and the split second their bodies aren’t connected while Will pulls the shirt the rest of the way over his head is apparently enough to remind Dustin about all his second and third and fourth thoughts.
He’s breathing really fast, which is gratifying. Will traces the line of his chest, of his belly with his eyes. He’s seen Dustin like this more times than he can count, from summers in Hawkins when they weren’t even teenagers yet to Dustin’s late mornings running around the apartment trying to get his bagel and his coffee and his shirt and not be late to class. He hates when, even now, Dustin shrugs his shoulders forward so his shirt closes, hides the atypicality of his build. He reaches out to touch, to somehow tell Dustin that he’s great, that Will wants this without having to find the words.
“I’m sorry,” Dustin says. “I really, really need to talk about this first.”
Will closes his eyes a second, counts to three. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right. Sorry I pushed.”
“Hey,” Dustin tells him. “Don’t knock it. That was excellent making out. I’m not against the making out.”
Will’s lips twitch in a smile despite himself.
“Okay,” Dustin says. He settles back, leans into the cushions so their heads are bent together, side-by-side, so Will can feel it on his lips when Dustin exhales. “So here’s the thing. I don’t want things to be weird. I can’t just hook up now and not talk about it again, that doesn’t work for me. I’m all in on this, Will, I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“How long have you felt this way?” Will asks. Dustin’s hand is right by his. He rubs his thumb across Dustin’s knuckles.
“I don’t know,” Dustin says.
Will looks at him.
“Okay, fine,” Dustin says. “I started thinking about it towards the end of high school. I was so—happy that we’d both be in California together and it just kind of clicked. That I could feel that way about you.”
“That’s such a long time,” Will says, more to himself.
“It’s not like I’ve been alone for years waiting for you to notice me,” Dustin point out. Right, the parade of girlfriends.
“Did you dump them all for me?” Will asks.
Dustin snorts. “Please. I’ve gotten dumped more than I did the dumping.”
Will takes a breath.
“Benji dumped me because of you,” Will says. “I mean, the sex thing, too, but he said I would rather spend my life watching TV and getting high with you than go out with him.”
“Was he right?” Dustin sounds unashamedly hopeful.
“Yeah,” Will admits.
“I didn’t dump anyone because I thought I had a chance with you,” Dustin says. “I just. There would always be this point where I knew I didn’t feel about girls I dated the way I felt about you and it seemed…”
“Dishonest?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want the world to fall apart if we’re ever…not,” Will says. “I don’t want to have to split up our friends on holidays and I don’t want to never be able to talk to you again.”
“I don’t want that either,” Dustin says.
“So…” Will draws his knees up against his chest.
Dustin shrugs. “The question is really, is it worse if we never go there or is it worse if we go there and can’t go the distance?”
“We both don’t have great track records at going the distance,” Will points out.
“Point,” Dustin says. “Counterpoint: I’ve been into you for years, now. Feels like it’s not changing.”
“Could you still be just friends with me after all this?”
Dustin tangles their hands together. “Byers, I’m always gonna be your friend. Even if you break my heart.”
“You wanna do this,” Will says. Dustin’s been pretty transparent about it, but Will needs to be sure.
“I want what you want,” Dustin says. It’s a lie. A nice one, but a lie.
“’m not good at this,” Will says. “The talking bits. I get angry at myself and I hate it.”
“I’m really good at talking,” Dustin says. “I’m gonna talk so much you might not even have to ever again.”
Will presses his forehead against Dustin’s, willing himself to bring out the words. “I think I want this,” he says. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since that time we kissed. And I think I probably wanted it before, I was just not dealing with it. But I’m really scared, Dustin. I need you in my life and I don’t know if I can lose that.”
“And if I promise you I won’t ever leave, even if we don’t work out?”
Will shrugs uncomfortably. “People break promises.”
Dustin looks indignant for a second, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s met Lonny.
“Okay,” Dustin says. “So what I’m getting here is, you want this, I want this, the only problem is the potential consequences.”
Will nods.
Dustin’s other hand clasps around Will’s as well. “So how about, hear me out here, we take things slow? No grand gestures, no telling people, just…seeing how it goes.”
“No grand gestures?” Will asks. “You?”
Dustin winces a little. “No public grand gestures?”
Will kisses him. “That sounds good,” he says a while later.
-
Dating Dustin is not actually that different from being his roommate. Dustin still makes dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Will on the other weekdays, and they cook together or order in on the weekend. Dustin still regularly fails to get up in time for his classes and Will has to hand him all his shit from all the places he forgot he put it last night because he just drops his stuff wherever when he gets home. Will still stays up too late studying because he’s too worried to sleep anyway before tests and Dustin still makes him herbal teas in the evening and espresso in the morning.
The things that change are small:
Dustin brings him stuff home with the groceries more often. Not big stuff, but sometimes he’ll see a little potted plant that looks kind of sad and lonely at the store and he brings it home because someone needs to take care of it. Sometimes he gets Will a snickers. Sometimes he splurges on wine not from a box.
Their TV evenings sacked out on the couch together still involve endless discussions about what to watch tonight, but now, when Will loses, he distracts Dustin from his endless National Geographic documentaries with long make-out sessions on the couch. It turns out even Dustin stops caring about crop circles across different cultures when Will wants to lay him out flat on the couch and kiss his neck for half an hour.
They still sleep in different rooms, but when Will dreams about the phantom burn of a radiator against his skin, the sound Bob made when a demodog bit into his liver in his ears, he crawls in with Dustin. He doesn’t always fall back asleep, but Dustin’s warm and he breathes out in these little snuffles and when he notices Will in his bed he usually throws an arm over Will and pulls him close.
When they go to the movies, or to a concert, or anywhere, really, Dustin offers to pay every other time. Will usually tells him he’s being dumb and that they’re still going to go halves on everything. Dustin still gets him Reese’s Pieces from the concession stand more often than not.
Once, Dustin yawns wide and stretches his arm around Will in the process.
“Seriously?” Will hisses at him in the dark of the movie theater.
Dustin grins at him.
They don’t have sex immediately.
It’s kind of weird. Will knows they both want to, knows they’re both hard and panting for it more than once over the course of the next few weeks, but Dustin will pull away, kiss him goodnight and go to his room. Maybe it’s part of taking it slow.
Maybe it’s just a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Either way, it’s driving Will a little nuts.
He hit puberty a little later than his friends. When Mike was busy spending every waking moment attached to El’s lips, Will was still waking his mom up at four AM most nights to comfort him from nightmares that left him shaking and crying. When Lucas and Max were getting serious and not constantly dumping each other over ridiculous shit, Will was only slowly beginning to realize that he really didn’t want to date a girl. When Dustin and Suzie broke up after over a year of long distance radio calls, Will had only just parsed that his dad had always been right about him and he was just about as queer as they came.
Once he had hit it, though, he had kind of started to understand. Orgasms were great. Sex was great. Having them with other people was the best. Questionable decisions in high school aside, for about two years, Will had absolutely reveled in the concept of casual sex. Just knowing that someone was into him for the way he looked and acted, that they wanted to touch him and be close, was a powerful high. Even after, in sophomore year, when he’d tried dating more seriously, sex came first and feelings after.
Things are different, with Dustin.
The first week of breathless make-out sessions against the door of their apartment, on the couch, up against the kitchen counter, had left Will reeling and ready for more. The second and third had led to more jerking off than Will had done since he was fifteen and realized what his dick was for. He knows he’s not alone, either; he’s seen Dustin’s expression when Will gets in from a run and takes his shirt off. Once, memorably, he had heard Dustin, in the shower, oh jesusfuckingchristYES muffled through the door but enough to get Will going all over again.
By week four of dating Dustin, even going straight from kissing Dustin to jerking off alone in his room is not cutting it for Will. He can still smell Dustin’s deodorant, can still feel the softness of Dustin’s hair in his hands.
He finds himself crowding Dustin up against furniture to get just a little more all the time, brushing against him more closely than he needs to when they’re in public, doing everything he can to just fucking get more touch.
He breaks when he has Dustin settled on top of him, warm and heavy on the couch. Kissing is nice, kissing is great, but most of Will’s attention is taken up by Dustin’s hips squirming up against his, erection unmistakable.
When Dustin pulls away, eyes hazy but intention clear, Will gives up.
“Please, Dustin,” he begs. “I’m going crazy here.”
Dustin looks down at him. “What?” He asks.
Will surges up to kiss him again, pulls Dustin down closer against him, grinds up with a purpose and moans helplessly at the friction.
Wrenching away his lips, Dustin says, “You mean you wanna—“
“Yeah,” Will says. “I wanna. Don’t you?”
Dustin scoffs. “Of course I want to.”
Because Dustin is Dustin, there’s a lot going on in that sentence, and Will really just wants to pull him back down, to rut up against him until he finally, finally gets to know what it’s like when it’s Dustin making him come, but he pulls himself together instead.
“Dustin, I wanted this a month ago already,” he points out.
“It’s more than just a hookup now, though,” Dustin says. “I mean, I—“
Will sighs. “It was always going to be more than just a hookup.”
“Yeah,” Dustin says, “but it’s different. You’ve been with a lot of guys.”
“You’ve been with a lot of girls.”
“Not for sex,” Dustin says. “I’ve had sex with three people.”
Dustin has dated ten different girls since they moved to California.
“Seriously?” Will asks.
“Seriously,” Dustin says.
“Oh.”
“And I feel like I should mention, the one time I was with a guy wasn’t exactly an in-depth look into what gay sex is like. We just kind of…rubbed off on each other. And it was a really long time ago.”
“But why?” Will asks, baffled.
Dustin shrugs uncomfortably. “Because people kind of suck sometimes. I know I look different, and I’m a nerd and I don’t do a lot of exercising. People don’t want to see me naked. I don’t want to see me naked.”
Will makes an impatient noise. “I like looking at you,” he says. “I know what you look like naked. Why’s that changed?”
“Because you’re really hot,” Dustin says. “And you’ve been with a lot of really hot people. And I’m inexperienced and not very attractive and if we are in this for the long haul that might be a problem.”
Will knows, intimately, that Dustin won’t believe him if he says you are hot. Instead, he repeats, “I like looking at you. And yeah, I also liked hooking up and having sex with people who look different, but only because no one like you ever asked.”
“So you mean if I’d just sidled up to you at a party two years ago and suggested it, we’d have gotten here earlier?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? I never really thought about who I was hooking up with much,” Will admits. “They asked and I said yes.”
Dustin hums a sound of interested agreement.
“Really only three?” Will asks. Scientific curiosity is a thing.
“Shut up,” Dustin says.
“Three people doesn’t make you inexperienced,” Will says. “I just always thought…”
“What, I was getting laid every time I went out?” Dustin scoffs. “As if. Some of us have to work a lot harder at it.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” It just kind of slides out of his mouth, but once it does, Will can’t seem to stop himself from continuing. “You’re really nice, and you do things for other people, and you’re smart and funny and I really, really like the way you kiss me. Sex should be the easy part.”
“I always overthink it,” Dustin says. He’s blushing.
“Don’t,” Will advises. “I’ve known you for more than half of my life. Sucking you off is not going to chase me away.”
Dustin makes a very interesting noise in the back of his throat.
“We’re good?” Will asks.
“Yeah,” Dustin says.
“Good,” Will says and sets to work.
It shouldn’t really be a surprise that someone who had a ranking of favorite Halloween candy is a bit of a hedonist, but it kind of knocks Will for a loop, how responsive Dustin is. Dustin sighs against his lips when Will runs his hands down Dustin’s back; his hands clench around Will’s waist when Will runs a thumb over his nipples. The way he groans, gutturally, when Will sucks at his neck, has been what Lucas would grossly term ‘spank bank material’ since the first time Will heard it, but he learns quickly that it gets better when he gets his mouth on more of Dustin.
“Get your shirt off,” Dustin tells him, breathy. “I wanna find out what you like.”
“Bossy,” Will says, but he knew that and he likes it.
Dustin’s methodical, a scientist. This sentence is true in most regards (they had a taste test of different condiments running for the first three weeks they lived together). Will discovers it’s also true for sex. Dustin uses his hands first, traces blunt fingers down Will’s sides, grins when he squirms. He scratches at a nipple, then pulls a bit, and when Will gasps and his hips strain up, he repeats the movement. He does the same with his mouth, after.
Will’s hazy and pleased by the time Dustin gets to his belt buckle, turned on and excited and warm. Dustin feels good, and Will doesn’t let him get much further than losing both of their pants until he slots them back together, gets one hand tangled in Dustin’s hair and another on his butt.
“You really like pulling my hair,” Dustin mumbles against his lips. He means to sound smug. He sounds strung out and turned on.
“You really like it when I pull your hair,” Will returns. He demonstrates and Dustin’s hips jerk against his.
It’s a feedback loop after that. The slide of their cocks together is electrifying and the way Dustin moans directly into Will’s mouth is incredible and one good thing leads directly to the next.
Will loses the ability to kiss back eventually, his mouth open and slack. Dustin’s forehead is resting against his collarbone, Dustin’s hot breath on his chest another pinprick of sensation. He squirms a hand between them, gets it around both of them together. It’s wet and sticky; Will always leaks a lot.
“That feels so good,” Dustin says, muffled, into Will’s chest.
“Yeah,” Will says. “Look at me?”
Dustin does, and a minute later, his eyes shut tight and he grunts out a series of noises as he comes between them. Will follows a moment later, the jerk of Dustin’s cock against his and the extra wetness of his come all he needed to send him over the edge.
Coming down from orgasm with someone warm and tight against him is a satisfaction and a relief Will’s been waiting for for weeks, now, maybe even months, since the first time they kissed. Maybe years, since Dustin was the first one to say, “good for you” when Will came out, was the first one to call Will up to hang out on the weekends even though he had a girlfriend, was the first one to put Will first.
It’s even more of a relief, after, he finds, that he doesn’t have to consider getting dressed and leaving. He follows Dustin into the shower instead, crowding close together even though they’d have enough space to stand apart, gentle hands and soft touches under the spray of water. Dustin’s calm, now, after everything’s been said. He’s out of things to say, apparently, even if his hands are still in motion, touching every bit of Will he can.
They curl up in Dustin’s bed together, after, curled together under soft sheets and Dustin’s insane amount of pillows. Dustin leaves the bedside lamp on a little and in the low light under the covers, this could almost feel innocent. Will remembers dozens of sleepovers almost like this, camped out under the covers and reading comics until they passed out, showing each other their favorite parts.
Maybe it is innocent, maybe it’s just the same, because in the half-light, Will can stroke gently down Dustin’s skin and tell him all his favorite parts of Dustin’s body, and Dustin’s mind, and his big, big heart.
“I should have known when you gave me all your sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving,” Will says, almost sure Dustin will have forgotten.
“It seemed like you were freaking out about something,” Dustin says.
“I was. And you knew and you didn’t push or anything, you’re always so nice.”
“I’m not,” Dustin argues. “I’m a dick. Ask anyone.”
“No you’re not,” Will tells him. “Or, like, the best kind. You’re a dick because you care.”
“I’m gonna put that on my tombstone.” Dustin pauses for a second, presses a kiss to Will’s nose. “I should have known when you got your hair cut in junior year.”
“I should have known when we moved in together.”
“I did know.”
“I’m gonna have to write Jenny a thank-you card.”
They both laugh.
Will wakes up the next morning feeling like his heart is so full it could burst. He hasn’t felt like this since the brief moment in time when it seemed like El was gone and Mike was his friend only, who saw things about him no one else knew. Except then, it had been tainted with the bitter knowledge that, really, Mike didn’t see him that way. Now, there’s nothing weighing his full heart down. Just happiness.