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Will had grown into his skin. Mike hated it.
Around junior year, when everyone started to slip from sixteen to seventeen and talk turned from driver's licenses to college applications, Mike realized how far behind he'd fallen. Everyone knew who they were. Everyone knew who they wanted to be, and it seemed the entire teenage population had essays drafted, schools lined up in list of acceptance rates, perfected SAT scores and GPA's closer to five than four. Everyone had grown up, grown into themselves, become something real that existed outside of the clutter of their teenage bedroom. Everyone had become a person.
Mike was not a person. He was the dictionary definition of halfhearted.
College daunted him. It was a fresh start, sure, a place to shed all his sins and become someone new, but what use would that be if he didn't know who he was in the first place? A chance to escape the shithole of Hawkins didn't appeal to Mike when the fact that he didn't know what to do with his life— hell, he didn't even know what he wanted to do with the next day— would only follow him to every place he ran to. He didn't know who we was, didn't know what he wanted, and he hated, hated how everyone had it all figured out.
Call him bitter. Call him angry, call him a loser, call him a coward, but he couldn't stand how his friends had left him behind. They were his Party, so how could they have grown up without him? How could Max have gotten a scholarship before Mike had even remembered the SAT test date? How could Lucas have found his place in Hawkins High, head of the basketball team and happy to fit in, while Mike struggled to get even one member at a Hellfire meeting? How could Will have come out to them before Mike had figured out why he flinched when he let his girlfriend touch him?
Call him resentful, too. Call him a stunted idiot, or a failure of a man who forgot to bring his girlfriend flowers on her birthday or tell her he loved her. Call him a shit friend who hated the Party's achievements and hated their happiness, and it would all be true, and he wouldn't even fight it. Call him resentful of Will, call him angry at the way he could laugh and sling an arm around Lucas's shoulder or pass his classes or run the school's art club, and—
"Will," said El. "Truth or dare?"
Call him resentful of Will, and he'd probably cry. Or break his knuckles on someone's nose.
They were all playing truth or dare, at El's request. No one could say no to El, least of all Mike. And not because her big, brown doe-eyes made him fold like Will's did, but because he was always on the precipice of losing El, and losing El meant losing the last piece of his life that was on the right track to becoming normal.
Among other things. He wasn't really prepared to face what it meant to lose El.
Somehow, Mike had convinced the Party to gather in his basement for an end-of-junior-year bash. Bash might've been an overstatement, considering this party consisted entirely of a copious amount of gummy worms (courtesy of Dustin) and an even greater amount of shit beer (courtesy of Mike if you asked who took the beer, courtesy of Ted if you asked who bought it) but right now, Mike considered it a miracle that he managed to get his friends all in one place.
He considered it an even greater miracle that his dad didn't know how to count. Or maybe he didn't care enough, and assumed his wife decided to wash down her little prescribed pills with his beer. Either way, Mike was profiting.
"Dare," he said, grinning lazily around a can of soda. Will had grown into his skin, but he was still Will, and Will would drink when Hell froze over.
The vanishing of the hell dimension that had tormented his life for years probably contributed to a great amount of Will's changes. Taking away the monster that had seeped into his brain would make anyone more laid-back, and Mike knew that, but there was something more to this newfound comfortableness Will had that made Mike want to grind his teeth, or maybe yell at Will until he was just as miserable as Mike was.
Whatever. He was a bad person, and he hated Will for being happy, and his heart twisted like a wrung-out towel in his chest when he saw Will twist the bracelets on his arm with an easygoing smile. He was a bad person, and his skin felt tight and itchy all the time, and he hated how Will's skin was warm with life because he was happy with what life had given to him. Anything that life gave Mike hit him in the face like the snap of a wet towel.
"I like your shirt," said El, in lieu of giving Will a dare. This build-up and the shark-toothed grin on her face usually meant she had something evil up her sleeve, waiting to be released for dramatic effect. El's own brand of dry, almost unintentional snark was one of the few things that made Mike happy to be around her.
"So do I." Will raised an eyebrow, turning to Mike with the flicker of a smile.
Will had gotten braver. Mike hated that, too.
He returned Will's smile with a halfhearted grimace, before covering the way his mouth was begging to grin at the mussed-up bangs brushing Will's brow with another sip of beer. That marked the last of his second can.
Wordlessly, he tapped Dustin on the shoulder; even more silently, Dustin passed him another beer. He'd lost enough people to know how it felt to need a drink.
"And your pants." She turned to Mike, then, smiling coyly. Will's smile made his stomach flip, and El's made it sour. "Do you like his outfit, Mike?"
Around Mike's waist was an arm, stiflingly warm and constricting. He preferred not to think of it as belonging to El; that way, he wouldn't want to take Hopper's three inches rule to heart. "It's— uhm." Suddenly, his mouth had gone dry.
This was what Mike meant by Will growing into his skin. He used to shrink himself with tight, long-sleeved flannels and blunt, unassuming bangs, disappearing inside his own body. The only paint on his nails two years ago had been flaking acrylic, and the only jewelry on his body was the watch that matched Mike's, the one Mike wore tight on his wrist because he was more scared of losing it than losing El.
(Sometimes, that wasn't an exaggeration.)
Now, El's purple-tipped nails matched Will's. Their tendency to match was another of the few things that made Mike's heart warm to El, or Will; sometimes, Mike couldn't tell the difference between the two.
Will's fingers tapped a slow rhythm on his dark-wash jeans, loose around the thighs and barely holding on to his hipbones. With every tap, beaded bracelets clacked together on his wrists, and the stretched neckline of his tight-fitting striped tee slipped to show a little more of his collarbone. If Mike looked hard enough, he could've even said Will had cut layers into his hair.
He looked so comfortable. The way Will's shirt rode up as he stretched out on the couch next to El made Mike's stomach squirm with a little bit of everything; envy, dread, fear, an unnamable tugging that made him want to push El aside so he could touch that exposed sliver of skin. It was awful, but true.
He'd grown used to feeling awful. Whatever. "He— yeah," Mike rasped out, barely. "He looks good."
"I think it would look better on me." El gave him a grin, mischievous and happy, and oh, God. Mike was going to vomit. "Don't you?"
The dare El had in her head was beginning to take shape in Mike's mind, and it made his tipsy vision spin. Seeing El and Will in the same room already felt like a glitch in the matrix, like his eyes had gone blurry and made mirror images of one person. That feeling had been made worse when El hadn't formed her own style, when she'd disappeared so easily in Will's flannels and uneven bangs that she'd looked almost exactly like him.
Max saved Mike from speaking. This was probably the only time he'd ever thank her. "What's Will gonna wear? I mean, no offense—" and Will sighed, already knowing whatever came out of Max's mouth next would make him groan— "but I don't think anyone wants to see him in his boxers."
Mike swallowed thickly. The temperature in the room was rising, or maybe it was only him.
"If you wanted my shirt, you could've asked," said Will, drily, "in a normal way. Or stolen it, like you usually do."
"It is extended borrowing," El responded. "Not stealing. And I wasn't finished with my dare."
This time, Mike was the weak one. He turned to Will with an inhaled, grit-teeth hiss, wincing in sympathy for whatever El was about to put him through. Will shook his head, but he was still smiling.
If nothing else, they still had this. They could still communicate in glances in smiles, in morse code taps and private walkie talkie channels. They were still friends, Mike thought— hoped— but the air between them had shifted since Will had gotten brave. He'd always been brave, but Mike didn't think Will had known how brave he was until he'd come out to the Party.
It took guts to for Will to tell his closest friends that every rumor spread about him was true. Mike would never want him to take it back, but sometimes, Mike wished he'd been the first one Will confided to.
"Do you like my outfit?" The arm around Mike's waist disappeared. He let out a sigh of relief, sinking into the couch cushions.
Will was looking at him. Mike stiffened, again. He wrenched his eyes away from Will and glanced to El; she did a little turn to show off her clothes, all pretty shades of cream and yellow that Will liked to paint with. A silk blouse draped across her frame, and a ruffled skirt with layers like a daffodil flared out as she spun. The gold, spiral pattern of thread on its ruffles reminded Mike of the intricate linework Will did on his art, sometimes, or the swirls he doodled in his notebooks when he got bored.
(Why couldn't he think about El without Will slipping in?)
"I like the bow on the blouse," said Will, gesturing to the collar of her shirt. "And the one in your hair."
He was always so genuine. Mike would've let out a halfhearted yeah, and his voice would've cracked halfway through.
"You can have it," she said, gleefully. "Let's switch."
"What?"
El's dare was really making Mike sick, now. "You— El, are you serious?"
He glanced around the room, checking to make sure everyone else thought this was absurd. Dustin was smirking around his can, and Max looked seconds away from cackling; meanwhile, Lucas was poker-faced, save for the slight raise of his eyebrow. "Sounds serious to me," said Dustin, raising his can to Will like a salute. "Good luck."
"Jeez, Dustin," said Max. "El's not sending him off to war."
"His face says otherwise," and Dustin's smart-mouthed comment made Mike turn to him, slowly. A flush spread across his face like the one Mike sported from his third drink, and his mouth dangled open as El's words solidified in his mind.
His face said what Mike was thinking, which was this; putting El in Will's clothes was uncomfortable. Putting Will in El's clothes was a mindfuck.
"I think— El," said Mike, "that's kind of—"
"No one cares, Wheeler, oh my God!" Max flipped him the bird, and Mike scowled. "Go play dress-up, Will. I'm taking pictures."
Next to Max sat Lucas, quiet and observing. He whispered something in Max's ear, and she snorted; they always looked so comfortable with each other, Mike thought, whether they were at each other's throats or curled together like parentheses. They weren't even touching, but the way their bodies leaned towards each other made Mike wish, for one insane moment, that he had something like them.
Okay, scratch that. He didn't want his life to be anything close to Max's, but it sounded nice to love someone without having to prove it.
"Pictures," Will breathed, a bit choked. "I— okay. Do I get to wear the bow?"
El squealed. "Oh my God, yes." She grabbed Will's wrist, dragging him upright with a giggle and swaying on her feet a bit, courtesy of about half a beer. El was a lightweight, the Party had found, and a giggly one at that. Maybe this inane idea had come from the alcohol.
"There's a camera in Mike's room," Dustin hollered, as El tugged Will away. "Don't forget it!"
"No promises," said Will, and then he was gone. Around the corner, El and Will vanished, leaving a flash of yellow skirts and honeyed-brown hair.
If anyone had asked Mike who turned the corner first, he wouldn't have been able to say. At a glance, El and Will looked exactly the same.
He was beautiful. Mike hated it.
The skirt sat snug on Will's waist where it once hung off El's hips. Mike had never noticed the way Will's waist tapered before— or maybe he had, because he'd always thought his hand belonged in that subtle curve— not like a girl's, but not in a way Mike was supposed to notice, either. He'd never noticed— oh, who was he kidding— the way Will's legs were built, a little soft but strong, too, so different from the gangly limbs he'd knocked into cabinets and table corners when they were kids.
He'd noticed every bit of Will. Mike had noticed Will since he'd swung high enough to touch the clouds on that playground swing, and he'd noticed Will since he'd realized how the way Will's hair framed his face in the rain made Mike want to freeze, or let his knees give out, or do something very stupid with his lips. He could never stop noticing Will, but now, all Mike could notice was how Will was the mirror image of El.
A wolf-whistle broke Mike from his staring. "Byers," said Dustin, taking him in. "Damn. You could make a killing off this."
Lucas snorted. "Where, at the bar down the street?"
In Mike's opinion, that was a bad joke. Of course Lucas and Dustin had accepted Will, with open arms and hugs Mike couldn't stand to give, but they never knew when to stop talking.
Mike couldn't accuse them of that without being a hypocrite, so he said something else. "Bars aren't his thing," said Mike, like any of them had ever been to one. "Neither is—"
"It's not drag, Mike." There was a little glimmer in Will's eyes, the kind that made Mike feel like Will was seeing right through him. "It's El's clothes. Speaking of which—" and he did a little spin, exactly like the move El had pulled to make her skirt twirl around her— "how do I look?"
Lucas studied him. A smile spread across his face, the easy kind that came from looking at a friend and knowing you loved them. In a way that didn't involve tugging them by their shirt collar towards your mouth, at least. "A little weird," he said. "I mean, you wear it pretty damn good—" and Will flushed a little, because Lucas sounded genuine in a way Mike never could— "but it kind of makes you look like El."
"Like you duplicated," Dustin agreed, nodding. "A glitch in the matrix."
So far, Mike had only been brave enough to stare at Will's legs. It took great effort for him to wrench his eyes away from that bare stretch of skin, up to the shirt that had fit loosely around El's frame moments ago. Now, Will had the top two buttons popped open, and the careful bow El had knotted around her neck hung undone around his collarbones, flushed from what Mike first assumed was embarassement. When he took in Will's posture, the way his hands hung loose at his side and a small, easygoing smile had graced his face, Mike knew he was probably more humiliated than Will.
(If he'd noticed the way Will only tensed when Mike looked at him, he might've assumed differently. If he noticed the way Will kept swallowing so hard his Adam's apple bobbed, or how he couldn't quite look Mike in the eye, maybe this night might've gone differently. As it stood, Mike was three beers deep, and he noticed everything about Will but he didn't quite want to notice this, because he didn't want to know why he made Will nervous.)
Three beers deep, Will looked like an angel. He would've looked the same sober, but Mike wouldn't have allowed himself to look sober.
"Cute bow," he said. A flicker of a smile flashed on Will's face, bright and real enough to make Mike's stomach churn. "And, uh— the, uh—" okay, so why was he choking on air— "the buttons?"
"He looks better without them," and El turned the corner, and Mike's heart dropped. Not from love, or the fluttery feeling that spread in his stomach when he looked at Will, but from a sudden, terrifying realization.
If El was in Will's clothes, he could stand to look at her.
He could look at El and see a friend. He could look at her and see the scared, trembling twelve year old he'd found in the woods and want to tuck her in blankets up to her chin. He could look at her and see the bright-eyed girl who teased him over math homework, if I can figure out trigonometry, you have no excuse— but if he looked at El and saw her face asleep on his pillow, or a wedding veil fluttering over her eyes, he wanted to puke.
He could look at El, as long as he didn't consider their future. Seeing her in Will's clothes made him consider a different future.
Mike liked the sound of a future where Will's bedhead was rumpled on his pillow instead of El's. He liked a future that involved Will swinging his legs on a counter while Mike burned another recipe, or Will trailing his lips across Mike's neck without leaving a sticky trail of lipgloss like El did. He liked the sound of a future where he could look Will in the eye and smile without following that smile with a shot of something strong.
Not that he ever had access to that something strong. If he did, Mike would've developed a drinking problem long ago.
"I don't know," said Max. "It's kind of conservative, Will. Maybe you should pop off another button for Mike over there." She made a gesture to him, grinning around the rim of her can. Mike scowled and took a long swallow of his own.
Will was looking at him, again, sending a strange look to Mike's mouth as he swallowed down his drink. Will wouldn't drink, because loose inhibitions and the snap decisions that alcohol brought about, to quote— really aren't my thing. Sometimes, Mike wondered whether those loose inhibitions reminded Will of all the times he hadn't been able to control the choices he made in his own body, how something bigger and stronger than him had held him down and used its mind as his own.
That was what happened to queers, wasn't it?
"Fuck off," he stammered out, sending Max another middle finger. His speech slurred around his fuck, and oh, God, he was really drunk. This was what happened to queers; they got shitfaced and wasted all their potential and ogled their best friend before they'd dare tell the truth. "Will just— he never wears stuff like this."
"No shit," said Dustin. "Definitely wears it better than El, though," and at that, everyone was laughing. Even El was giggling, rosy-faced behind her hand, laughing hard enough to shake the fabric barely clinging to her frame. If Mike pulled her hair back, she could've been the mirror image of Will.
The flannel tied around her hips reminded Mike of Lenora, how his eyes had lingered on the sleeves under her outfit and wondered if it would be okay to kiss Will if he ended up in that dress. If Will looked like a girl, and he kept his voice quiet enough to not remind Mike that what he wanted was the raspy laugh of a man, and if Mike kept his hands on the dips in Will's waist instead of tracing the solid line of his jaw, maybe, just maybe, it would've been an excusable mistake. Maybe he could've gotten what he wanted, at least for a moment.
Maybe El's skirt would be an excusable mistake now. "You could be a girl," Mike said, because he was stupid, and maybe a little drunk. Maybe this third beer was bad for him, and maybe he hadn't learned how to control himself at all over the past few years, and maybe Will's face had fallen into the look of a wounded animal for one moment until Mike's vision wavered into place again. Or maybe, just maybe, Mike had to stop fucking speaking.
"Come on, man," said Lucas. "That would've messed the whole Party up."
El in Will's clothes made the concept of falling asleep next to her every night tolerable. Will in El's clothes made Mike feel a little better about wanting to fall asleep next to him badly enough for his stomach to churn with the longing.
"Why?" Will tilted his head. The bow in his hair wobbled precariously, and El stood on her tiptoes to fix it in place.
Seeing them standing next to each other was a real mindfuck. For a moment, Mike almost couldn't tell which one was supposed to be his girlfriend.
"I mean," said Dustin, shrugging, "one of us would've had to date him. Her."
The air in the room felt tense, now. If Mike used his overactive imagination, he could imagine Dustin prodding at an unaddressed elephant in the room, a quiet acknowledgement of Will and girls that had never been spoken aloud.
"Had to," Max repeated, snorting. "Like girls exist to be dated."
Mike's grip around his can tightened. Will gave him another weird look, and for his sake, Mike set down his can.
"I didn't mean it like that. Jeez." Dustin held his hands up in surrender. "I'm just saying, like, when we were kids, girls talking to us meant we were practically married. Imagine how nuts we'd go if girl-Will was actually our friend."
At Will's open collar, his fingers played with the untied bow. Mike followed the rapid twitch of his hands, how his lithe fingers twisted the ribbon as Dustin and Lucas talked on. His feet shuffled under him, and his eyes darted across the room like they wanted to escape somewhere. "How much longer does this dare go on for, again?"
"Until we go home and change," said El, shoving him with another giggle, "and I get to put your clothes in my drawer."
She turned to him fully, leading him back to the couch and nearly stumbling over an end table as they collapsed together on either side of Mike. Immediately, Mike stiffened, flinching hard when El's hand brushed his shoulder. She frowned and started to trace circles in his sleeve, like that would calm him down.
On the other couch, Dustin and Lucas were lost in their own conversation. "Who do you think would've dated him— fuck, her? Girl-Will. We need a name for girl-Will." This was definitely a drunk conversation. Dustin and Lucas thought of some insane things together, but even they had enough tact to not talk about Will as a girl sober.
Everyone thought it. Will was always a little different, a little less of a boy than the rest of them. He always spoke softly and shrunk himself down, walked and talked and laughed in a way that everyone thought looked like a girl. Mike knew there wasn't one way to be a guy— hell, he knew he wasn't much of a man, either, not when his hair brushed his shoulders and he couldn't play sports with a gun to his head— but he knew what the world thought about what it meant to be a guy, and he knew Will didn't fit that definition.
Dustin shrugged. "Willow?"
"I was thinking Winnie," said Max, looking Will up and down. Next to Mike, Will stiffened, laughing awkwardly; Mike could feel the vibrations of Will's voice in his chest, and it made the alcohol in his stomach want to come back up. "Did you only like me because I was the first girl who didn't immediately want to hurl when she looked at you?"
Mike remembered Lucas saying something along those lines, once. You only like her because she's the first girl who's not grossed out by you. Most other girls were still grossed out by him, so El was really his only option. Without her, he'd go into college girlfriend-less, and leave college alone, and people would start saying you know, you're a handsome man, where's that girl of yours? It's getting a bit too late to not be ready to date. You've always been good friends with Will, what's that all about?
El was his only option. Nothing else could happen, not in the world they lived in.
"I lacked the meaning to true love," Dustin sighed, dramatically. "Now Suzie-poo—"
"I think Winnie would date Mike." Max looked anxious to move on from anything dealing with Suzie-poo. Unfortunately, this had the added effect of giving Mike a heart attack. "What? You know it's true."
Mike would date Will. Mike would date Will and only Will, and he didn't want to live in a world where Will was Winnie, or Willow, or any other girl who walked and talked and smiled like Will and wore his face with too much lipgloss. If they lived in another world, a world that was kind and open, a world that wouldn't take queers as a cardinal sin and a stain on the family name, Mike would date Will.
As it stood, Mike and Will lived in a world where holding hands might put them in a morgue, or at least alienate them from everyone they loved. As it stood, the closest thing Mike had to Will was El, and as it stood, she would never be enough. "I— you— it's not about him being a girl," Mike spluttered out, barely. "It's about—"
"The feelings," Will finished, because they always seemed to know what the other was thinking, except when it was most important. "And I could date him, if I wanted. Mike thinks I make a convincing girl, right?"
He hated Will. He hated Will's confidence, and the tentative grin that stretched around his can of Coke, and the fact that he could stretch out in El's clothes so close to Mike that the ruffles of his skirt brushed Mike's crossed leg. He hated the way Will wasn't really looking him in the eye, how the words that came from Will's mouth left a bitter taste, from the way he was wincing around them. He hated Will, and he hated that he couldn't press himself into Will's side and say I like you better in your own clothes, and he hated how he had to lean into El's body in clothes that smelled like Will.
He especially hated how Will wasn't confident at all. "It doesn't matter," he spat. If Will put his tongue in Mike's mouth, they would both taste bitter. He hated the way he'd dreamt about something like that. "You're not one."
Silence filled the air. Mike hated the shared looks that passed around the room, too, how even El seemed to be in on something he wasn't privy to. She grimaced around her drink, taking a long sip like Mike's words would disappear on her swallow.
"I still prefer Winnie," said Max. She glanced away from the Party, swirling the can in her hand. A sloshing noise replaced the silence.
"I don't know," mused El, and suddenly, the thick tension was gone. There was almost nothing El's bright grin couldn't fix, other than Mike's feelings. Or lack thereof. "I think Willow needs to look a little more convincing."
More shared looks passed between them. Max and El were having their own conversation in their heads, and why couldn't Mike do that with El? What blocked the signal between them, where El could set her hand on the small of Mike's back and bat her eyes, and all Mike could do was stiffen? What broke him?
(The boy sitting beside him, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves, waiting for Mike to look back at him. The boy beside him blocked every signal El could ever give, but Mike wouldn't listen to a single signal that Will would ever let through. Cue radio silence.)
"Five dollars," said El, inexplicably.
"Ten sounds more convincing," Max said.
Dustin coughed, breaking the girls' intense eye contact. "Are either of you going to include us in this conversation?"
"No." El turned back to Max. "Red or pink?"
Max tilted her head, thinking. "Red," she confirmed. "Mike's gonna flip his shit, though."
Next to him, Will shifted in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs. The bow on his head had fallen askew again. Unbidden, Mike reached over, raising a hand to Will's hair and fixing the paisley-patterned ribbon back into place.
His knuckles brushed against Will's bangs, skimming the skin of his temple. "Your hair's soft," he said, quietly.
"I— thanks." Will breathed out a laugh, and Mike's stomach flipped. "El and Max are about to screw me over, aren't they?"
"Probably," he said. For a moment, the past few minutes were forgotten between them, and all that existed was the now; the way Mike was smiling like a lovesick idiot, how Will, for all the confidence Mike thought he had, looked shy as he glanced away.
All was forgotten, until El spoke again. "Mike has been drinking," she said, shrugging. "He doesn't mean it."
Usually, the worst of his thoughts were kept away by a wheedling voice in his mind, one that told him to shut up, don't get too close to him, stop pretending to yawn to put your arm over his shoulder, what are you thinking? Three beers deep, however, that voice was passed out in a drunk stupor. He stretched his arms over his head, bringing one down on the couch cushions to barely brush Will's blouse-covered shoulder.
The fabric felt like El. Mike flinched and pulled away.
"Sure," said Max, unconvinced. She turned to Will, then, saying; "Ten dollars to let El give you another dare?"
"Fifteen." Will crossed his arms. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and Mike ached to kiss it away.
He pushed himself away from Will, leaning his arm on El's shoulder. The only warmth he felt from the movement was in his mouth, the way his spit tasted like shitty beer and bile.
"Fourteen, so I can split it evenly with Dustin," said Max. Next to her, Dustin made an outrageous splutter. "What? I'm broke."
Eventually, Will nodded, and El and Max's faces broke into equally evil grins. "Max got me this new tube of lipstick at the mall yesterday," she said, looking Will up and down. "I think Willow looks incomplete without it."
"Winnie," huffed Max. "Think it's sanitary to share mascara?"
"Oh my God, no," said Dustin, frantically. "The bacteria alone—"
This was not going in a direction Mike liked. Suddenly, the narrow bit of space that sat between him, Will, and El felt suffocating, like their sheer presence was taking away all his air. The alcohol was really getting to him; he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't see anything except the lipgloss El was waving around and the way she was fishing through her purse for a spare tube of mascara. His mouth was starting to taste sharp, chemically sick, like the thin, near-sweet tang to vomit when it came up after hours in an empty stomach.
"Found one!" El grinned, spinning a tube of mascara in her hand. "Do you trust me near your eyes?"
Will swallowed thickly. "Uhm. More than Max?"
The room was spinning. Mike was going to throw up.
"Good." El got up, sitting down next to Will with her makeup poised like a weapon. Mike wanted to grab the tight collar of her shirt and kiss her until he could convince herself that she was better than Will. She twisted open her lipstick with a wet pop—
He really was going to look like El, now. Mike couldn't stand to see it. "I have to—" and he gagged on air, on thin beer coming back up his throat— "restroom. I need to—"
Another wave of nausea hit him. Mike stood up and sprinted for the stairs.
El had grown into her skin, too. Mike might've hated that more.
He was proud of her. Mike was so proud of her, so happy that she could smile without the shadow that used to haunt her every expression, happy that she could make friends and talk his ear off about the millions of girl-friends she'd made from school, how they were all very pretty. Nothing made Mike happier about El than the fact that she knew what it was like to be herself.
As time went on, however, it seemed that being herself wouldn't include being with Mike for much longer.
They were boyfriend and girlfriend in name only, in holding hands at school like plastic dolls with their hands shoved together and leaning against each other at Party hangouts in the same way. Mike couldn't remember the last time he'd spent time with her alone, but he could remember every girls' night with Max, how El cozied up next to her more often than him. They'd drifted so far that Mike wasn't sure he'd kissed her for more than a moment since she'd started wearing lipstick, that thick, tacky stuff that always made Mike feel slimy and wrong.
El was becoming herself, and with it came long hair and detailed craft projects done with manicured, purple-painted nails, beaded necklaces and rose-red lipstick that Mike scrubbed frantically from his mouth with his thumb when she wasn't looking. El was becoming herself, and Mike was becoming nothing, a halfhearted ghost of a guy who would probably become a business major, or something, and move into a cul-de-sac where the trees died in summer and no matter how much he watered, the lawn refused to grow green.
El was becoming herself, and Will was becoming himself, and Mike was becoming sick. He vomited into the sink again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he looked up from the dirty bowl. Sorry, mom.
"Mike? You okay in there?"
He gagged into the sink again, dry-heaving as the hand that wasn't wet with sick clutched the bathroom counter. When he stared down his reflection, Mike saw a smudge, all unruly dark hair and teary eyes and an open mouth he never knew how to close. It only made him feel sicker.
"I think," he said, pausing to make sure this was the last of the vomiting, "I can't hold my liqour."
"Beer isn't liquor," said Will, drily. "Can I, uh— come in?"
If he let Will in, he'd see what a mess Mike was in all his wasted, halfhearted glory. On the other hand, Will had seen Mike fuck up since the day they'd met, so— "Yeah."
The doorknob jostled. "You still have to unlock the door, you know."
"Oh." His face turned hot; by now, it was probably the shade of a dark cup of wine. Mike stumbled to the door, fumbling with the lock for a solid minute before he got it open. Somehow, vomiting up all his beer only seemed to make him drunker.
At one point, he got frustrated enough to shake when he got his fingers around the lock and it just wouldn't turn, and he was about to call it quits and tell Will to fuck off when the knob turned under his fingers and—
Mike never should've unlocked the door.
Will always had longer eyelashes than the girls in the Party; it was something Max teased him about, lamenting on how it wasn't fair for him to have all that when he never had the need to bat his lashes at a boy across the room. When Will had come out, Max had said something along the lines of well, at least you can put those things to good use, and Will had laughed her off and said, awkwardly, I don't think anyone would want that.
Now, with Will looking up at him under thick, dark lashes, Mike couldn't understand how Will had managed to be so wrong. Mike wanted nothing more than for Will to let his eyelids shutter closed with want, for his lashes to flutter so close to Mike's that he could feel them ghost across his cheek. He was beautiful, and Mike's heart had already stopped, and until his eyes dipped down to Will's mouth, he looked nothing like El.
"Are you going to stand there," said Will, raising an eyebrow, "or are you going to let me in?"
Mike swayed on his feet as he watched Will. His lips were painted with the same ruby-red lipstick El liked to wear, with little flourishes that slightly exaggerated his top lip in the same way El decorated hers. He and El had the same Cupid's bow, too, the same curve to their lips, the same mannerism of refusing to break when someone else looked them down. They both liked to tilt their head and smile in the face of Mike's slack-jawed stare.
Maybe, now that El's lipstick was on Will, Mike wouldn't mind the taste. His legs buckled a little more, unwilling to support him after he'd pounded their blood cells with can after can of beer. "I think I'm going to sit down," he said, slowly, backing up to the rim of the bathtub and nearly collapsing when his ankles hit the hard porcelain.
For a moment, Will stood in the doorway, the hall light giving his hair an angel's halo. "I— hey, hold on," and Will rushed towards him, coming to sit beside him on the bathtub rim. "Let's, uh— let's sit against the wall, okay? Don't want you falling in the tub."
An arm came to wrap around his shoulder. He could stand to think of this one as Will's, until he felt the silky blouse brush against his neck. Then, he couldn't sink down to the floor fast enough.
"Maybe we should stop stealing your dad's beer," suggested Will. Mike hated how he used we, when this idea was all Mike's own. Will was always so ready to implicate himself in the crimes only Mike would commit.
On the floor, Will's legs were crossed, sending El's skirt fanning about his thighs in a blanket of yellow frills. Mike was overcome with the sudden, insane urge to trace the gold-hued thread that crawled up the fabric with his fingers, reaching up higher and higher until he got to the blouse and felt Will's strong frame under the faux-silk. Because he was drunk, and lost, and falling behind everyone he loved and generally very, very stupid, Mike did exactly that.
"Maybe," Mike hummed, noncommittally. He leaned into Will's side, almost reveling in the way Will stiffened when he started to trail his fingers along the hem of the skirt. "You smell like her."
Will shrugged. Mike watched with a flicker of self-satisfaction as Will's eyes drifted to his fingers, how Will couldn't seem to pull his gaze away. "I'm wearing her clothes," he said. "It's, uh— it's okay, if you think this is weird. I get it."
"What?"
In Mike's mind, this was less about El's clothes, and more about everything he'd done wrong. He didn't have to say what, because he knew what; all those times Mike had left him alone for El, how he'd yelled, bitter-tempered and revoltingly angry— the kind of anger that tore him up from the inside out, the kind of anger that got him to spit out his shredded guts in someone's face— in the rain, it's not my fault you don't like girls! This was about how Mike had been too much of a coward to hug Will when he'd come out, how they'd been on-and-off between best friends and barely talking ever since.
This was about the lipstick on Will's mouth, how his friends had dressed him up for fun and pictures that humiliated him in the same way El's gentle teasing would make Will's face burn. This was about how Will thought Mike could hardly look at him because looking at a queer was synonymous with being one.
"It's fine," Will said, like the swirling hatred in Mike's gut for anyone who got to be happy didn't matter, "if you were never okay with me being—" he couldn't say the words around Mike, just like Mike couldn't say the words around him— "you know, too."
This was about reading through the lines. This was a plea to Mike. For once in your life, Will was saying, stop being a jerk.
Will swallowed thickly. The mascara that had clumped on the corners of his eyes was beginning to smudge from how much he kept blinking. "I mean, it's not. Not really. But I guess, if you're like this," said Will, "you keep losing people. Over and over again."
He sounded so broken, and so okay with it. Like Mike being a horrible person was just a fact of life, now. The sky was blue, Will Byers had never liked girls, and Mike was only a good friend when the lights were dimmed low and he could pretend loving Will wasn't such a bad thing, as long as he couldn't see him.
"Will, I— come on," and Mike's voice was breaking, and he wanted to go home, because this was only his house and his home was with Will. "You know how I feel about it. About you."
"I don't." If Mike looked at Will from the corner of his eye, the lipstick ringed around his teeth made him look exactly like El. "One second, you'll hold my hand over a horror movie, like—" and he paused to laugh, dry and humorless as his red mouth dipped into a frown— "like we're kids again. And the next—"
"I leave," said Mike. He slumped down the wall, staring dead into the bathroom tiles. "I know."
He couldn't stop himself. Sometimes, he'd disappear for weeks at a time, isolating himself from everyone like Will was still in Lenora and he had a good excuse to sulk around in his basement. Sometimes, he'd stick himself to Will like glue, bumping shoulders in school hallways and grabbing ice cream together on the weekends until someone made note of it— think you like Will more than your own girlfriend, man— and he'd vanish with no warning, only to show up on the Byers doorstep with an armful of movies in a week's time.
It was a bad habit. He knew it. That didn't mean he wanted to quit.
Will brought his arms up to his chest, hugging himself tight. "Why? I— God, Mike," and his voice broke, and it was all Mike's fault, and he wanted to curl up in a ditch somewhere and die. "What is it about me you can't accept? How come all our other friends don't care? How come it's just you?"
He was so beautiful. Will was the picture of perfection, an oil painting Mike wanted to sweep his hands through and utterly ruin. When tears started to pool in his waterline, Mike's fingers twitched to thumb at Will's mascara-laden eyes until his fingers were stained wet and dark. He was beautiful, and he was happy, and he made Mike's stomach churn because all Mike could do was ruin everything.
In her clothes, in her skirt and in her bow and her makeup, Will looked like an El that Mike was able to love. It made him sick.
"When I first found El," said Mike, in lieu of an answer, "I thought she was you."
His bottom lip was trembling, too. Mike wanted to smudge the rose-petal color off Will's mouth until his lips tasted like Will instead of El.
"I still see her like that, sometimes," he continued, staring down the wall. In the corner of his eye, Mike watched a single dark tear slide down Will's cheek and leave a black stain on El's shirt collar. "In the dark, when her hair's pulled back, or when she's wearing your flannels and they smell like you. Sometimes, she's you."
A small, wounded noise stopped him. "Mike." Will stared him down, so heavily Mike had no choice but to look at him. "You— come on. I'm not her."
"If she didn't look like you, I don't think I could stand to be with her." All those admissions he'd kept tucked under his tongue were spilling out, now. With every word, Will only looked more horrified, more sick to his stomach. Mike couldn't stop.
"She doesn't act like you," Mike said, quietly. "She never will. She'll never like the movies you do, or laugh like you do, or make my heart do that— you know, that nervous little thump-thump thing that happens when you look at me too long. But sometimes," and here was the real kicker, the real moment where both Will and El turned to hate him, "if I close my eyes when I kiss her, and we're not touching, and we're in your house and your mom's lit that cranberry candle that always clings to your clothes—"
"Stop," said Will, pleadingly. "Stop it. You're drunk."
Mike laughed, a slow, slurred thing that came from bad decisions and knowing he was fucked since he first opened his mouth. "I can pretend she's you. I wish she was you."
"You need to sober up." Will stood. "I— I'll get you some water, you're not thinking straight—"
"You look like her," he said, grabbing hold of Will's arm. "Let me— please," and he was begging incoherently, because Will couldn't leave him even if he'd left Will the same way a thousand times before, "please. Let me look at you."
Above him, Will towered, conflicted. His eyes flitted between the door and Mike, mouth pulled down in a frown, mascara smudged around the corners of his eyes. From Mike's view on the floor, he could see the way just a hint of Will's chest peeked out from the blouse, the flush of red under his collar, the way he swallowed so thickly Mike could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat. He swallowed again, letting out one more wet, shaky sigh.
Slowly, Will pulled Mike up. His hand slipped around the small of Mike's back, keeping him from swaying on his feet; in turn, Mike's own fingers came to slip under the bracelet at Will's wrist, the last one he hadn't given to El.
If Mike looked into the mirror, he could see the back of Will's head, the steady layers cut into his hair and the loose cream collar ringing his neck. The mirror cut off just before Mike could see his skirt, and that was what made everything a bit more bearable. Until he looked into Will's eyes, at least, because then all Mike could see were the watery smudges of Will's hazel gaze, how his eyes were the one thing that would never look like El's. The deep brown in hers always made Mike flinch.
"I like looking at you," he slurred, because somehow, the alcohol was only messing with him more. "It's easy, with you."
Will wouldn't look at him. "Is it easier like this? When I look like your girlfriend?"
"Feels like it is," Mike said, thickly. He tripped forward a little, making Will stumble until his back hit the counter. "It would all be easier, if you were a girl."
"You want that," Will breathed. His pupils were blown, wide-eyed like a cornered animal. "You want me to be—"
"I want you," and Mike's voice was breaking, and his eyes were starting to sting, and he felt nauseous again even though he'd already vomited everything up. He was ruining everything between them, and he couldn't stop, all because he was selfish enough to put his own wants before the feelings of the person he loved. He didn't deserve anyone, and yet here he was, shoving himself exactly where he didn't belong.
Unconsciously, his hand came to cup Will's cheek. Will stiffened, but he didn't pull away. "I want you," he repeated, "but if you were a girl, then— then I could have you. I could hold your hand in public, and kiss you without feeling scared, and I don't know, maybe I wouldn't mind the feeling of lipstick so much, if it was on you."
A cold, almost angry stare settled over Will's features. "You can't put up with being scared for me?"
"I don't know," said Mike, and he was honest, and this was why he hated being honest. All he could do with honesty was hurt people.
Mike stroked his thumb over Will's cheekbone. If he ruined everything, if this was the last time they spoke, Mike was selfish enough to get one thing out of it. "I could hug you," he said, "and I know you would feel different, but maybe it would still be okay. I could take you out on dates, and you could lean on my shoulder in a sticky diner booth and we could share a milkshake with one straw."
Will laughed, wetly. "We already do."
"The waitress wouldn't give us dirty looks when she passed by," said Mike. "We could move in together, too. One bedroom. I could cook for you, and you could sit on the counter and I—" and his voice wobbled, and the room started to spin— "I could say you looked pretty, and it would be okay."
"You— God," he choked out, laughing like the noise had been punched out of him. "You're a coward."
The words hit Mike hard. Not like a punch to the gut, or a stinging slap to the face; coward hit like stepping out into the sun after cowering in darkness, like how the eyes adjusted to light by blinking and wincing until the burning sensation of seeing again subsided. It hit like something he couldn't comprehend at first, until he saw the sun in all its bright, inescapable glory and realized the truth was something that would shine over him forever.
He was a coward. Will knew that better than anyone.
"Yeah," he slurred, brokenly. "I am."
A choked, hiccuping noise echoed around the bathroom, and Mike wasn't sure whether it had come from him or Will. Either way, Mike had ruined him. He'd swept his fingers through the oil painting and left Will a mascara-smudged, undone mess, bow hanging off his hair and shirt collar askew.
He wanted to make things worse. If Mike got one last shot, one last moment to see Will wholly, he wanted to make Will's makeup run until there was nothing left of El on him. He wanted to kiss Will until all that lipstick was gone, undo the buttons of El's shirt until he only felt Will's skin. He wanted to rip that stupid bow from Will's hair and crowd him against the counter and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, and he wanted to be less of a coward, and he wanted to be someone who could kiss Will on the tip of his nose and deserve to see him smile.
Mike deserved nothing. He was still good at taking.
"I am," he said, again, "and that's why I'm going to kiss you."
He took the gasped don't from Will's mouth with his lips. Lipstick was still thick and sticky on Will, but Mike could at least feel the shape of Will's mouth on his own. Will was crying, too, and Mike had never kissed someone who was crying, but it was nice to wipe away Will's tears and hold him close, and it was nice even when the kiss got hungry, even when Mike realized he had to pull away before devouring Will whole.
"You—" and Will blinked, and the glint in his eyes turned angry again, and he was pulling Mike back by his shirt collar to devour him back.
The hand Will once had to balance himself on the counter came up to tug at Mike's hair, harsh and demanding. Mike crowded Will into the counter with nothing more than drunk force of will and grasping hands, one coming to slip under El's blouse and feel his skin instead, the other cupping the strong line of Will's jaw. When Will pulled his hair by the roots, Mike yielded, because he deserved it. He leaned into the touch, whining as Will tugged him impossibly closer by the hair and his shirt, half because he was so overwhelmed by Will actually touching him and half from shock that Will was brave enough to hurt him. Not that Mike minded being hurt by him.
When Mike's knuckles brushed against El's shirt, his one-track, drunk mind screamed get it off, get it off, get it— so he took his hands from Will's waist to uncoordinatedly fumble with the buttons, and Will let him, and Will let him, and it must not have been so bad if Will let him. If Will let Mike's hands roam across all the parts of his chest that were undeniably a man's, if Will slipped a hand under Mike's shirt in tandem and gripped at Mike's skin like he was trying to pull it off, then it wasn't the worst thing to run his tongue over Will's teeth and feel all the parts of him that could never be El.
For a split second, Mike regrettably pulled back to breathe, and Will chased him with his mouth. His one-track, stupid drunk mind thought cute, before jumping to the lipstick smeared all across Will's cheek in one long, incriminating streak.
"El," rasped Will, wide-eyed and shaking. "We— you're drunk, Mike— El—"
"I'm going to kiss you," he said, "until all her lipstick is gone."
And, without preamble, Will was kissing him again.
A high-pitched, keening noise came from Will's mouth, so desperate it almost sounded like a sob. He was crying into Mike's mouth, maybe, or maybe Mike was crying into his. As long as they were touching each other, as long as Mike was close enough to Will's hair to smell his vanilla shampoo instead of El's lavender perfume, as long as Mike could feel the hard line of Will's ribs and Will could feel the lithe muscle under Mike's skin, nothing mattered.
When Mike kissed El, one way or another, Will always seemed to be somewhere in the room. He was in the tiger plushie on Mike's bed, in the watch on Mike's wrist, in the flannel around El's shoulders or the cold breeze in the air. Will was always between them.
When he kissed Will, Mike couldn't think of anyone else but him.
Nothing mattered. Even when Mike's hand slid into Will's hair a bit too tenderly, a bit too much like love, nothing mattered, even when Will shoved him away with another choked sob. When Will glared at him like a wounded animal, clutching the side where Mike had held him like Mike had torn him open, nothing mattered, because for one perfect moment, Mike had gotten to hold Will like he was allowed to love him.
Will wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "It's gone," he said, coldly. "Hope you had fun."
In the mirror, Mike saw a flicker of his lips. They were redder than Will's.
Under his hand, the bathroom counter was warm where Mike had pressed Will down. Will was walking to the door, now, and Mike was gripping the sink, saying nothing, until— "Wait."
Will stopped under the doorway. "What?"
"Sorry your first kiss tasted like vomit," said Mike, drily. A flicker of a smile appeared on Will's face, then disappeared just as suddenly.
"You can fix this," said Will. He glanced away, out into the light of the hallway. An angel's halo appeared around his hair, flyaways floating around his face from where Mike had mussed it up. "You were drunk. It's okay."
Mike shook his head. "It isn't like that. You know it's not."
The frown that pulled Will's mouth stayed, this time, burned in Mike's mind like the watery mascara trailing down his cheeks. "Figure out what it is, then."
He'd ruined it. Mike had ruined everything, but this was what he wanted, right? That one last chance to have Will before he disappeared entirely? That selfish urge to take and take had overcome him, but at least he'd gotten what he wanted.
Was that more important to him than Will?
"If you were a girl," said Mike, suddenly, "do you think you could've changed me?"
Will stopped in his tracks. "No. It doesn't work that way."
"Then I guess we have this," he said. Mike gestured to them, to Will's chest still red with Mike's fingerprints, to Mike's mouth smeared red like a crime scene.
For one moment, Will looked him up and down, and nothing existed in the world except for the two of them. His lip wobbled, and he looked so hurt, and Mike's stupored mind couldn't comprehend how he'd done this to Will again.
"I guess we have this." He turned the corner, and Mike was cold, and Mike was alone.
He guessed this was what he deserved.