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Assistant: Title: all this time (how could you not know?)
        Author: astrobi astrobi 
        Chapter: 1/1 
        Summary: Mike sighs, looking down at his hands. "I always thought I would end up with someone more similar to me, you know? Someone I can talk about, like, hobbies and music and stuff with, without them visibly losing interest halfway through.”
  You have more in common with him than El, says the voice in Will’s head. He wonders, briefly, whether it would be weird to shove his face back into the pillow and scream.
Will is definitely not qualified to be giving out any relationship advice. For one, he's never actually dated anyone before. Second, one of the people in said relationship is his sister. And third, the other person is the guy he's sort of in love with. There's no possible way this could backfire. Right?
        Contents: Summary:
            
              
  Mike sighs, looking down at his hands. "I always thought I would end up with someone more similar to me, you know? Someone I can talk about, like, hobbies and music and stuff with, without them visibly losing interest halfway through.”
  You have more in common with him than El, says the voice in Will’s head. He wonders, briefly, whether it would be weird to shove his face back into the pillow and scream.
Will is definitely not qualified to be giving out any relationship advice. For one, he's never actually dated anyone before. Second, one of the people in said relationship is his sister. And third, the other person is the guy he's sort of in love with. There's no possible way this could backfire. Right?
            
        

        
  Notes:





    
      you saw the title. you read the summary. i think you know where i'm going with this.(in case you don't- this is so disgustingly self-indulgent idek what to say. just let will be selfish and have good things! and hang out with his friends! and be a wonder twin! god!)title is, obviously, from you belong with me, the lyrics and mv for which created a fic idea that lodged itself in my brain and wouldn't leave until i wrote 27k words for it. lol.
    

    
        (See the end of the work for more notes.)
    



  





    
        
          
  You’d 
  
    think
  
   that by now, Will would have learned his lesson about butting in where he wasn’t needed and letting people figure out their sh@t for themselves.

  Apparently not.

  Look. He’d honestly just meant to call El down for dinner, okay? It’s meatloaf night, and Will personally thinks meatloaf is a crime against humanity, but for some reason, El loves it. Which means she gets an extra serving and Will’s left to scrounge for scraps in the pantry after gritting his teeth and smiling politely through dinner, as well as scraping as much as he can get away with onto the floor for Chester to eat.

  And he’s not, like, an awful person on 
  
    purpose 
  
  or anything. He 
  
    knows
  
   he shouldn’t eavesdrop. It’s just that El 
  
    never
  
   raises her voice, especially not on the phone. And she rarely leaves the room door closed at all, much less tightly shut. And Will hasn’t seen her since they got back from school that day, so he’s starting to wonder whether she’s okay or if he needs to grab Mom. He’s just about raising his fist to knock and announce his presence when he hears it:

  “Mike, that’s not fair, she’s only trying to 
  
    help.”
  

  And, oh. That’s interesting.

  From an objective standpoint, obviously. Because El’s his sister, and Mike’s his— his best friend. So if they’re having trouble— 
  
    again— 
  
  well, it’s probably important, actually, that Will knows about it. Because they’re two people that are so close to him, of course. And if anything goes wrong, he’s gotta know what to say.

  Will can’t hear Mike’s response, but it doesn’t seem like he got around to saying much before El goes, “Well, maybe it’s a 
  
    good 
  
  thing we haven’t seen each other all week, then,” which 
  
    ow, 
  
  sounds pretty serious. Will frowns, and debates, for a second, whether it would be 
  
    too 
  
  invasive to press his ear to the door to hear more.

  Yeah, that’s weird. That’s probably crossing a line. It’s his sister and his— 
  
    best friend,
  
   so there’s a bit of a gray area when it comes to nosing around, but this is probably way, 
  
    way 
  
  beyond that. Will takes a step back for good measure.

  “—and what if 
  
    I 
  
  think some space is good for us?” El is saying. “Does it not matter what I think?”

  Okay, this is actually getting a lot more serious than Will thought, a lot 
  
    faster 
  
  than he thought. He frowns, lowers his hand from where it’s still poised over the wood of the door, and decides that maybe El’s meatloaf can afford to wait an extra thirty minutes for her, if Chester doesn’t get to it by then. He takes another step backwards, and then the floorboard creaks beneath his feet.

  
    Traitor! 
  
  Will freezes in his tracks. Maybe El didn’t hear. Maybe she was too busy yelling at Mike to notice, he thinks, wincing. Maybe—

  The door flies open, slamming against the doorstop with a soft 
  
    bang!
  

  “Uh,” Will says, in direct line of sight from where El is sitting on her bed. Sh@t. He’d forgotten about his sister’s telekinetic powers, somehow. Again. He raises a hand in a tentative wave. “Hi, El.”

  El doesn’t look mad, like he might have expected. She looks mostly confused, one hand covering the mouthpiece of the phone, sitting anxiously cross-legged in her favorite sweats and Hopper’s old socks. “Will?” She frowns. “Is everything okay? I heard you outside.”

  “Uh,” he says again. Like, everything’s fine with 
  
    him, 
  
  but he thinks it’s a bit funny that she’s in the middle of what seems to be escalating into a bit of a screaming match with her boyfriend, and she’s asking 
  
    him 
  
  if things are okay. “Yeah,” he says, pointing over his shoulder. “I was just gonna say— dinner. It’s meatloaf today.”

  This somehow makes her crack a smile. “Meatloaf!“ she exclaims, one hand still on the phone. “Mike, I have to go,” and Will catches one static-filled, garbled exclamation through the receiver before she slams the phone down.

  For a moment, there’s silence. There are a few small objects floating around El’s head, the way they tend to do when she gets agitated. But after a few seconds, they start dropping, one by one. A few colored pencils land on the edge of the bed and roll over to Will’s feet.

  “So,” Will tries, picking up Forest Green and Desert Sand, “meatloaf?”

  El sighs. “Yes,” she says, uncrossing her legs and pulling them up to her chest. “Give me five minutes?”

  And Will was saying that thing, about staying out of other people’s business— but now this isn’t an 
  
    El and Mike 
  
  thing, it’s just an 
  
    El 
  
  thing. And El’s his sister, who’s clearly upset, which immediately 
  
    makes
  
   this his business.

  “Hey,” he says, stepping over a Rubik’s Cube and a small teddy bear as he walks over to the bed. “What’s wrong?”

  El doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then she sighs again. “It’s Mike,” she says, picking at a loose thread on her flannel. Which, you know, Will had deduced for himself, what with the yelling, but he also isn’t about to let on just how long he was at the door, so.

  “Right,” Will says, sitting down across from her, tracing absentmindedly over the quilted flowers on her bedspread. “What about Mike?”

  El shoots him a small smile. “Max said,” she starts, looking like she’s searching very hard for the right words. She’s like this a lot— afraid that using the wrong word will make people upset with her, even though it’s not like Will’s so great with words, either. “Max said she thinks it would help us if Mike and I had some… space,” El says at last, fiddling with the button on her shirt. “Since we’ve been feeling… 
  
    annoyed
  
   with each other. But then I told Mike that Max said this and—”

  “—he didn’t like that, huh?” Will supplies, raising his eyebrows. This, at least, explains the yelling. 

  El shakes her head. “He said we barely saw each other in the last week and a half, which made him frustrated. And that should be enough 
  
    space 
  
  or else we wouldn’t see each other at all. But—” she pauses, crosses her arms over her knees, then sighs. “Sorry,” she says, “Mike is your best friend, I’m sure you don’t want to hear—”

  “No, no!” Will says. Maybe he’s a bit of a horrible person for having to tamp down whatever is happening in his chest, but it’s there all the same. And then he catches sight of El’s face, soft frown as she rests her cheek on her arm, and his stomach sinks. 

  He’s a horrible, horrible person. 

  “No!” he says again, quieter this time. “You can tell me,” he reassures, resting a hand on her elbow. “It’s not weird, I promise.”

  Okay, so he’s a horrible person 
  
    and 
  
  a liar. But it’s El, so he’ll suck it up. El sighs again. “It’s nothing,” she says, “things are just— strange right now.” On the bedside table, her school-sanctioned copy of 
  
    The Scarlet Letter 
  
  quivers ominously, then slowly rises two inches into the air. 

  “It’s going to be okay,” Will says, which is kind of his go-to response whenever El says this— that things are 
  
    strange 
  
  between her and Mike. And, the second part of that thought: “You guys will figure it out, I know you will.”

  El laughs lightly. “Maybe,” she says, sounding very unsure. “He just has been…” she trails off, looking for the word, 
  
    “smothering 
  
  me, lately. He gets upset when I don’t want to attend his D&D games, and he also gets upset when I want to do other things with other people.”

  Will hums. In reality, this is a conversation they’ve been having for a long time, in a lot of different ways. Max and El had had a movie night instead of attending the last big Hellfire meeting. The thing was, Max had gone to Lucas’ basketball game at regionals the weekend before, so he hadn’t gotten upset about it. Mike, however, was bummed. Beyond bummed. Kind of p@ss@d off, even. So maybe best that Will doesn’t say anything to El about that.

  “He probably just misses you,” Will settles on at last. “It’s the second semester of senior year. Things are weird right now, with college and the school year ending.” He trails off. 
  
    Don’t say it, 
  
  he thinks to himself.
  
     Don’t say it, Will. Come on, Byers, I 
  
  know
  
     you have more sense than that—
  
“Maybe you should try spending a bit more time with him,” he says, against all better judgment, “just trying to do things he likes a bit more. Not because you want to do them, just to— to be around him.”
  Great. So now he’s not only a horrible person 
  
    and 
  
  a liar, but also the harbinger of his own eternally-prolonged suffering. At this point, he has no one to blame but himself.

  El frowns, but 
  
    The Scarlet Letter 
  
  floats slowly back down to rest atop her table again. “Do you think that will help?” she asks, but she still sounds a bit unsure.

  
    No, 
  
  says a little voice in Will’s head. He immediately slaps an imaginary hand to its mouth. “Yes,” he says instead. “I think he just misses you. That’s all.”

  That’s honestly probably 
  
    not 
  
  all, but what does Will know? He’s never even been in a relationship. But apparently that hasn’t stopped him from dishing out a whole lot of advice he’s definitely not qualified to give.

  Whatever. All’s well that ends well, or whatever it is they say.

  
    For Mike and El, 
  
  says the voice in his head, 
  
    but not for you—
  

  “So!” Will stands up, clapping his hands to his thighs and holding out a hand to help El up from the bed. “Meatloaf?”

  “Meatloaf,” El agrees, standing up. They’re halfway to the door when she grabs his wrist, hesitating. “Actually. Can I ask you something?”

  Will turns. “Yeah, of course.”

  El’s eyes dart nervously around the room, and she tugs lightly at a lock of hair falling out of her braid. “You said I should spend more time with Mike,” she says slowly, “but— what if I don’t want to?”

  Will frowns. “You don’t want to spend time with your boyfriend?”

  
    Interesting, 
  
  says the voice.

  
    Shut up, 
  
  Will thinks back.

  “No!” El says, and then, “well, kind of? I like spending time with him when we are all together. But sometimes when we’re alone, it’s— weird.”
Very interesting, the voice chimes in. Which honestly is kind of interesting, so Will lets it be.
  He’s such a horrible person.

  “Weird how?”

  “Awkward,” El says simply, and then frowns, like she didn’t mean to say it. “Sorry. Never mind. I will ask him if he— if he wants to hang out tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Will says, plastering a smile onto his face. He feels, senselessly, a bit disappointed, even against his own will. And he shouldn’t, because he’s literally the one that told El to hang out with Mike more. Hang out with Mike 
  
    more. 
  
  As if— as if that’s what Will really wants, them hanging out any more than they already have for the last four years of his life. 

  He blinks, shaking his head minutely. He’s such a horrible person. 

  
    Interesting, 
  
  the voice drawls.

  “Dinner!” Joyce calls from the kitchen, and Will pulls the door to El’s room open before the voice can come back.

  “Can I have your meatloaf?” El is asking, her small smile turning wider, more real as they round the corner.

  Will scoffs. “Not 
  
    all 
  
  of it,” he says. Meatloaf might suck, but he’s a growing boy. He needs nourishment. And sometimes, rummaging around for Pop-Tarts that he reheats in the microwave after dinner just won’t cut it.

  Not that he won’t do that anyway, but. You know.

  Will is a horrible, horrible, 
  
    horrible 
  
  person.

  Because it’s bad enough to kind of be head-over-heels in love with your best friend— which is probably weird and invasive and crossing a hell of a lot of boundaries as is— but it’s even worse when said best friend is dating your sister.

  Your 
  
    sister.
  

  And when they’ve been dating for, like, four and a half years and you still haven’t managed to get over it—

  —forget it. Will is a horrible person. He’s a horrible person, a liar, and probably a bit of a closet sadomasochist, too. Because not only does he have the world’s most embarrassing crush on Mike Wheeler, he keeps 
  
    pushing him closer 
  
  to his sister.

  His 
  
    sister.
  

  Will groans, letting his forehead fall forward onto the cool metal of his locker the next morning. Honestly, f@ck this. F@ck all of this. It wasn’t 
  
    his 
  
  fault Mike and El got together in the first place, but sometimes, it sort of seems like his fault that they’ve stayed together this long.

  That’s an awful thing to think. He’s such an awful person.

  And that’s the whole thing though: that doing anything 
  
    but 
  
  talking them through their sh@t— which Will is severely underqualified to do considering the only person he’s ever even kissed is his 
  
    mom— 
  
  feels like sabotage. Even if it’s not actually sabotage, and in reality, he’s just sitting there quietly as Mike word-vomits at him or El subconsciously telepathically throws small, occasionally sharp objects around the room, it 
  
    feels 
  
  like it is.

  You know why? Because Will is a horrible person, who’s in love with his best friend. His best friend that’s dating his 
  
    sister. 
  
  And for some reason entirely unknown to the cosmos, he keeps getting dragged back into the murky waters of their relationship like the unforgiving arms of the Thessalhydra pulling him down when he’s been wounded with a maximum attack-point blow to the side.

  Maybe this is, like, some sort of heavenly retribution for generally being a horrible person. A horrible, horrible, horrible—

  “Hey,” comes a voice behind him, and Will startles hard enough to hit his elbow against the blue metal of the lockers.

  “Uh, hey,” he says, rubbing his elbow and fighting back a wince. “Sorry, you, uh. You startled me.”

  “Clearly,” Mike grins. “You okay? You seem a little jumpy today.”

  Personally, Will can’t remember a time when he 
  
    wasn’t 
  
  jumpy, but whatever. “Yeah,” he says, and then frowns. “We need to get you a bell. You’re too quiet.”

  “What, like a cat?” Mike laughs, adjusting his backpack on his shoulders. “But it’s so entertaining watching you flail around.”

  “I don’t 
  
    flail,” 
  
  Will hisses, but he’s smiling. “I’m— I'm very graceful!”

  “Mhm.” Mike does not look impressed. What he 
  
    does 
  
  look, however, is— good. He looks good. Unfairly good for eight in the morning, actually. And he’s wearing—

  “Hey,” Will says, pulse suddenly soaring through the roof. “Is that my hoodie?”

  “Oh,” Mike says, looking down at his— definitely 
  
    Will’s— 
  
  hoodie. “Sh@t, sorry, you left it at my house and I must have grabbed it instead of mine this morning. I swear, I basically got ready in the dark.”

  Okay, cool. Mike 
  
    basically 
  
  got ready in the dark, and he still looks like he walked off the pages of a Calvin Klein catalog.

  Or maybe that’s a bit much, because Calvin Klein models probably don’t wear NASA hoodies with moth-eaten holes spattered above the wrist cuff. They wear, like, boxer briefs. And tiny swim trunks. And—

  God. Will is a 
  
    horrible 
  
  person.

  “Do you want it back?” Mike is asking, already setting his backpack down on the floor and going to grab the hem. 

  “No!” Will all but yelps, holding out a hand before Mike starts, like, 
  
    stripping 
  
  in the middle of the hallway.

  Okay, that’s also maybe a bit much. Because he’s wearing a shirt underneath, so he wouldn’t even be, like, 
  
    naked 
  
  or whatever. Plus, taking off a sweater is actually a very normal thing to do. For most people, anyway.

  Breathe, Will.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Mike raises one eyebrow, slowly reaching back down for his backpack. “You seem a bit high-strung today.”

  “Yeah, well,” Will says weakly, pulling his Biology textbook out of his locker and slamming it shut. “When am I not?”

  “Mm,” Mike hums, watching Will struggle to balance Biology on top of U.S. History on top of Calculus. He reaches both hands out, saying, “Do you want some help with that?”

  “No,” Will says, visibly leaning backwards as he maneuvers the books around in his arms. “No, I’m good.”

  “Mm,” Mike hums again, but he’s smiling this time. “I’m sure.” And then, as they set off down the hallway, “Hey,” he says, a bit hesitantly. “I don’t suppose you’d want to, like, study for the Calculus test tomorrow? Together, I mean. Do you want to study— together? Like, after school or something, obviously not tomorrow because the 
  
    test 
  
  is tomorrow, so–”

  Will blinks. F@ck him. F@ck his life. “We have a test in Calculus tomorrow?”

  Mike stares at him for a moment, then bursts into laughter. “So is that a yes?”

  Will would bury his face in his hands, if his hands were not currently occupied by fifteen pounds of district-approved board-standard educational material. “Yeah,” he says, nodding, “yes 
  
    please. 
  
  But I don’t know why you’d want to study with me, I’m sh@t at math. Go ask Dustin maybe, he’ll secure an A for you.”

  “You’re plenty good at math,” Mike scoffs, which is less flattery than it is just a flat-out lie. Will’s averaging, like, a B-minus in Calculus, which is more than okay with him. But if Mike’s looking for a study partner, then he should probably point himself in the direction of Dustin Henderson’s shiny, gold-star-certified A-plus, two semesters in a row. “Plus, I like studying with you. You make it fun, even if it’s math.” A pause. “So, I’ll walk to your place with you after school?”

  And, well. There’s not much Will can do to protest if Mike says something like 
  
    that, 
  
  so. “Okay,” he says, and then squints. “Wait,” he says suspiciously, “are you only asking to study at mine because I told you my mom made cookies yesterday?”

  Mike grins, wide and toothy, and bumps Will bodily with his shoulder. “Maybe,” he admits, while Will tries his hardest not to go careening into a small huddle of freshmen from the added momentum of his stack of textbooks. “My mom can’t make snickerdoodles like yours,” he laments, pulling the door to the side stairwell open, “they’re not the same.”

  In Will’s opinion, cinnamon sugar and cookie dough can only be improved so much before all variations of them start to taste the same, but whatever. “Fine,” he says casually, as if hanging out with Mike Wheeler hasn’t been sending his stomach into rollercoaster-like loops and drops and corkscrew spirals for just about twelve years. “I’ll meet you by the bike racks after sixth period.”

  
    “Hell 
  
  yeah,” Mike cheers, which is just about when they arrive in front of Will’s second period History class. And then, Will frowns.

  “Hey, isn’t your second period on, like, the other side of the school?”

  It is— he knows this for a fact, actually. Mike’s had English second period since the beginning of the school year, which is all the way in the East Wing. Currently, they are very much in the 
  
    North 
  
  Wing. Far, far away.

  “Yeah,” Mike shrugs, as if the bell isn’t about to ring any second, and as if he doesn’t already have, like, twenty tardies under his belt. “I just wanted to walk with you.”

  “Oh,” Will says, and then, so fast that his brain can’t even rub enough brain cells together to say 
  
    goodbye, 
  
  or 
  
    thanks for walking with me– 
  
  like a normal person– he pulls the door open and ducks inside before his stomach can partake in any more questionable loop-de-loops.

  He’s a horrible, horrible, 
  
    horrible 
  
  person.

  “Enjoying the cookie?” Will asks drily, watching Mike where he’s splayed out across the carpet of his room, Calculus textbook spread open on chapter twenty-one. 

  It’s three in the afternoon, late April sun trickling in through the slats of the blinds. The house is quiet; his mom’s still at work, and El is— actually, he’s not sure where El is. She’s probably around somewhere. Or something. Mike and Will had come back maybe ten minutes ago, just for Mike to make a beeline for the kitchen, and then the box on top of the table.

  “Yesh,” Mike gets out, muffled, as he pushes himself up onto one elbow on his side. “These are so good.”

  “You’re getting crumbs on the carpet,” Will points out, stepping over Mike’s outstretched legs to get to the stereo. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Sorry,” Mike says, not sounding very sorry about it, actually. He picks up the largest crumb from the carpet and, after a moment of quick deliberation in which he definitely thinks Will isn’t looking, pops it into his mouth.

  “Ew, 
  
    Mike!” 
  
  Honestly, it’s a lost cause at this point. “You’re 
  
    so gross.” 
  
  And then, in response to Mike’s sheepish grin and the additional crumbs falling out of his mouth, Will sighs and rolls his eyes. “Okay, whatever. What’s the mood for our study music today?”

  Mike rolls over the rest of the way onto his back as he swallows, and lifts his head up slightly from the floor to look at him. “Uh,” he says, voice a bit strained, “something loud, so I can’t hear myself suffer.”

  “That’s a bit counterintuitive, isn’t it?” Will says, but he’s already kneeling, shuffling through his collection of tapes. “Because studying Calculus 
  
    is 
  
  suffering, so.”

  “True.” There’s a shuffling noise behind him, and then Mike is coming up behind him, peering over his shoulder at the rows of tapes and records lining Will’s shelves. “Are we thinking of going with tape or record today?”

  “Uh,” Will gets out. To be entirely honest, at the moment he’s not thinking of tapes 
  
    or 
  
  records, but more about the warm puff of air Mike is letting out against the back of his neck as he talks. He’s— he’s so 
  
    close. 
  
  And his hair is just barely grazing the part of Will’s shoulder where his t-shirt is slipping to the side. And he smells— amazing, actually. Will makes a mental note to ask him what cologne he’s using. 

  After he’s done silently and casually losing his mind, that is.

  “Because,” Mike is saying, leaning forward and reaching fully over Will’s shoulder now as he runs his fingers over the first few tapes on the shelf, “you have New Order on tape but The Cure on vinyl and I’m kind of feeling both of them right now.”

  “Right,” Will says weakly, as Mike rests his chin gently on his shoulder, and waits, surveying. “Uh, right,” he says again, listening to the soft 
  
    in and out 
  
  of Mike’s breathing and the feel of his hair on his neck and the gentle brush of his skin— “well,” and yeah, so much for coherent thought or whatever.

  F@ck him. F@ck this.

  “Well it’s your music,” Mike prompts gently, somehow taking Will’s sudden inability to speak in stride, “and your stereo and record player, so whatever you want,” and 
  
    words, 
  
  Will. Words would be good. Any words. Just one, even.

  “New Order’s good,” Will gets out— and good, yes, 
  
    words— 
  
  ducking forward and away from Mike’s touch, reaching for the first tape just as Mike moves with him. Their hands land on it at the same time, Mike’s palm curling simultaneously around the spine of the tape and around Will’s fingers, trapping his hand between hard plastic and the soft warmth of skin.

  “This one?” Mike says, which is kind of a stupid question, Will thinks, because 
  
    clearly 
  
  that’s the one he was also going for. But whatever.

  “Yeah. Yes. Sorry,” Will says, blinking rapidly, “I was just— sorry.” 

  “Will, it’s okay,” Mike laughs gently, taking his hand off the tape and leaving it pressed into Will’s hand. “Stop apologizing.” He’s still there, hovering right behind Will where they’re both crouched on the floor. And if Will turned his head a bit, their faces would probably be—

  —very close—

  
    No! 
  
  What the hell? Will blinks again, hard.

  He’s a terrible person. He’s so awful and horrible and— and every other possible synonym that exists for being a complete and utter piece of sh@t. Because it’s one thing to be a horrible person and a liar and all that other stuff inside his head— because it’s his 
  
    thoughts, 
  
  and a good amount of that is stuff he can blame on, like, the unconscious desires of the mind or whatever else modern psychology has to say about it. But it’s cool, as long as that’s where they stay. In his 
  
    thoughts. 
  
  And he doesn’t think about actively 
  
    doing 
  
  things. Things like—

  —like 
  
    turning his head 
  
  when Mike Wheeler is sitting so their faces are six inches apart from each other. Mike Wheeler, who’s dating his sister. His 
  
    sister. 
  

  F@ck all of this, honestly.

  “Sorry,” Will says, springing to his feet so suddenly that Mike falls back onto his elbows in surprise. “I was totally just spacing out, I don’t know why—”

  “Math can do that to a person,” Mike nods solemnly from the floor, watching him fiddle with the knobs of the stereo. He tilts his head, an amused expression spreading across his face. “I don’t blame you.”

  “Yeah,” Will agrees, instead of pointing out that they haven’t actually gotten around to studying yet. 
  
    Leave Me Alone 
  
  starts playing softly through the speakers, and Will digs his textbook out of his bag with a groan. “Now that you’ve had your snack,” he says, shooting Mike a pointed glare, “and the tunes are good, let’s, uh. Let’s math.”

  “Let’s 
  
    math?”
  
   Mike laughs, unfolding the full length of his body and walking back over to where his book is still spread out on the ground. “Good thing we’re not doing English, huh?”

  Will glares harder. “Shut up.”

  “Mm, how about 
  
    no.”
  

  Mike’s a pretty good study partner. Not necessarily for the 
  
    studying 
  
  part, because he’s honestly kind of awful at it. He gets distracted, like, 
  
    constantly, 
  
  and always interrupts Will’s half-hearted scribbling to say things like 
  
    Hey, do you think any of our teachers have done it in the teachers’ lounge? 
  
  Which is kind of the last thing Will wants to think about, and probably the only thing that could put him in a worse mood than absolute convergence and infinite series, but alright. Also because the answer is probably 
  
    yes,
  
   so.

  And maybe that means Mike isn’t a pretty good study partner after all, but whatever. His presence is comforting in a way that few others are, and probably the only thing that could get Will to sit his ass down and willingly subject himself to this in the first place. So maybe Will’s a bit biased. He’s probably never had an objective opinion on Mike Wheeler, like, ever. Even If he’s sitting on the floor of Will’s room, spewing crumbs all over his carpet and generally being kind of a nuisance, Will’s still happy to have him here. 

  Really happy. Irrationally happy, even.

  It’s such b@llsh@t.

  
    “Absolute convergence
  
   sounds like it could be such a badass thing but it’s just math,” Will says, maybe forty minutes later. He pushes his first sheet of practice problems aside, and stretches his arms over his head with a groan. “Like, come 
  
    on, 
  
  that’s such an awesome name for a cataclysmic event.”

  “Saying that is definitely just tempting fate” Mike says, rolling his shoulders and sitting up too, and then, “whoa, I heard your back crack from all the way over here, holy sh@t.”

  “Nice,” Will grins, cracking all of his knuckles in turn just to watch Mike’s face crinkle up in displeasure. And then, “Wait. Are you— 
  
    done
  
   already?”

  Mike blinks down at his papers, covered in messy scrawl and more Greek symbols than actual numbers, which is such a scam. 
  
    Math 
  
  is such a scam, come on. There stopped being numbers involved in math like, three years ago. It’s such b@llsh@t. 

  “Yeah,” Mike says, “I just finished the problem set, actually.”

  Will stares. “How the hell did you do that so fast?”

  Mike’s opening his mouth to say something, a smile already starting to spread across his face, when, in the background, the tape abruptly stops playing.

  “What?” Mike whips his head around. “Was that supposed to happen?”

  Will frowns. “No, it was like, in the middle of a song, right?”

  At Mike’s answering nod, he crosses over to the player, hitting it sharply on the side to see if maybe that might miraculously fix it. And nothing happens, of course, except his hand starts to hurt a little bit. “Ow,” he says, and then, “okay, what the hell?”

  “No, look,” Mike says, “it’s still playing, the volume is just super low.” Which is true, actually— the knob for the volume is somehow turned all the way down, despite both of them having been on the other side of the room this whole time.

  In the grand scheme of things, this is not the weirdest occurrence Will has ever borne witness to. It is, however, happening right after he spent a good chunk of time doing math homework, so his brain is a little fried. “What the sh@t?”

  Maybe 
  
    fried 
  
  is an understatement.

  He turns the volume back up and Bernard Sumner’s voice fills the room once more—

  —for about fifteen seconds. This time, Mike and Will both stare right at the knob as it turns all the way to the left, and the room falls silent.

  “Oh, there’s 
  
    no 
  
  way,” Mike is saying, crossing his arms, “not today. Absolutely not today. 
  
    Please 
  
  not today. I was having such a good day, too.”

  Personally, Will isn’t sure what’s been all that great about Mike’s day, because he got written up for being late to second period and then they had to do 
  
    math 
  
  and now they’re here, which is kind of nice, but probably not nice enough to make this an objectively good day for Mike. “You think it’s—?” Will waves his hand around a bit ambiguously, to convey the, you know, 
  
    general supernatural shenanigans 
  
  that usually tend to follow them around. 

  And Mike looks like he’s about to shrug a bit passively or nod or something, when Will hears a soft 
  
    thump 
  
  next door.

  Oh. Okay. 

  He knows what’s happening.

  He yanks his room door open. “El!” he shouts down the hall, “what did I say about messing with my stereo!”

  There’s a beat of silence, in which Mike looks thoroughly perplexed, walking over to peer down the hallway with Will, and then the speakers crackle to life again: 
  
    “I saw you this morning, I thought you might like to know—”
  

  “Sorry,” El laughs, her own door opening, “you were just playing it so loud—” She pauses, catching sight of Mike. “Oh,” she says, then “hi, Mike,” and it’s not 
  
    hostile 
  
  so much as it is just kind of—

  —oh, okay. Will gets what El was saying yesterday, about her spending time alone with Mike and it being 
  
    awkward. 
  
  And for a split second, he thinks it’s happened already, that they broke up sometime in the last twenty hours, and for the umpteenth time, he tamps down a flicker of something a bit too eager in his chest as Mike clears his throat and says, “Hi.”

  Will looks back and forth between them. “Is everything okay?”

  El nods. “I asked him yesterday if he wanted to— 
  
    hang out
  
   after school, and he said he couldn’t because he would be busy—”

  Will turns around to look at Mike, frowning. “You had other plans? Did I, like, get in the way of them or something—”

  “No!” Mike says hurriedly, glancing rapidly back and forth between El and Will, looking a bit trapped. “It was— you were the plans! I mean, I was already going to ask you if you wanted to do something, and I guess I was pretty confident you would say yes, so—” 

  He trails off, looking back at El. “Sorry, El,” he says, and he does sound a bit sheepish, and maybe this might derail into another shouting match, so Will starts shrinking back into his room on instinct. “I didn’t— and we have a math test tomorrow!” Mike adds, as if he didn’t entirely skip the middle part of whatever he was going to say. “We’re just studying.”

  That part is questionable, because Will doesn’t really think a lot of productive 
  
    math 
  
  has been accomplished since Mike got here, but he’ll let it slide. There’s something definitely strange about the intonation of Mike’s voice as he’s talking, the defensive hunch of his shoulders. 
  
    We’re just studying. 
  

  Will frowns. Of course they’re just studying. There’s no need for Mike to get weird and defensive about it. El has no reason to not believe him.

  But then again— what does Will know? He’s never even been in a relationship. Maybe this is just how it is.
“It’s okay,” El says, and she— actually, she doesn’t sound that upset, for some reason. “Max and I are hanging out instead.”
  “Oh,” Mike says, and Will frowns harder, trying to discern if he sounds disappointed or not.

  
    If you have to think about it, 
  
  the voice from earlier pipes up, 
  
    he probably isn’t.
  

  Whatever that might mean.

  “It’s cool,” Mike is saying, “what are, uh. What are you and Max thinking of doing,” and he actually sounds—

  —relieved?

  Nah.

  It’s pretty clear that this isn’t going to end in a screaming match though, so Will deems it safe to come back out from the cover of the doorframe and step into the hall a little bit. Mike takes a step closer to him as he does so, without even looking at Will, like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it.

  “We’re going, um.” El taps her nails against her door impatiently, closing her eyes in concentration. “What’s that word for when you— when you look at things in the store but don’t buy them?”

  “Window shopping?” Will offers.

  “Yes!” She points at him, smiling. “We are going window shopping. For, um—” now it’s 
  
    her 
  
  turn to look a bit sheepish, for some reason. She looks down, away from Mike. “For prom dresses. And then real shopping later.”

  “Prom?“ Beside him, Mike stiffens. “Prom isn’t for forever, right? It’s like—”

  “—only thirty-one days away, actually,” Mike chimes in softly, and this is what effectively extinguishes the misplaced, awful thing sparking to life in Will’s chest. Of course Mike knows. He’s probably planning some big ask for El as they speak. Of course he’s keeping track.

  “Right,” Will says, trying to not sound as pathetically miserable as he’s starting to feel. Because if he did— sound miserable, that is— that would make him a horrible person. Horrible people are bitter, jealous, and not happy for either their sisters or their best friends. Or both, if they’re, you know. 
  
    Dating.
  

  Will is not going to be a horrible person. Right now, at least. “Right,” he says again, “we have to— we have to study,” he adds, pulling Mike back into his room with maybe a bit more force than is necessary, judging by the way Mike rubs at his arm and frowns lightly. “Sorry, El,” he says, as she walks by his room, waving, on her way to the front door.

  “Play something actually good!” she yells out behind her as she tugs her shoes on.

  “New Order 
  
    is 
  
  good!” Will and Mike call out simultaneously, and both turn to look at each other, laughing, as Will’s bedroom door falls shut behind him.

  “What was all that about?” Mike says from Will’s bed, still holding his arm to his chest, smiling.

  “Sorry,” Will says again, going to grab his math notes from next to where Mike is sitting. He hesitates. 

  “Mike,” he starts, one hand still on the doorknob, “if you’ve been so upset that you haven’t been able to spend time with El, why did you— why 
  
    didn’t 
  
  you hang out with her today?”

  “When have I— how did you know that?” Mike says instead, leaning forward on the bed. The smile’s fallen from his face. “That I’ve been upset, I mean?”

  “Um. Lucky guess?” Will tries. It’s probably not the best idea to let on just how much two people in a relationship talk to you about the other. That too— to ask him for advice, not even, like, to 
  
    gush 
  
  or anything. “I mean, El was saying— I don’t know, I told her to ask you if you wanted to do something. Something 
  
    you 
  
  liked, for once, since she missed our Hellfire thing and you seemed a bit bummed about that too, so she said she would, and—”

  “Wait,” Mike says, holding his hand up. He looks so far beyond 
  
    perplexed 
  
  that it might be hilarious— if Will weren’t currently feeling very stuck between a metaphorical rock and an equally metaphorical hard place. “
  
    You 
  
  told her to ask me?”

  Ah, sh@t. The gap between the rock and the hard place is closing, fast.

  “No?” Will tries again, but he might just be a terrible liar because Mike does not look convinced in the slightest.

  Cool. So he’s a horrible person and a liar, and not even a good one at that.

  “Will,” Mike sighs, and then he falls backwards into the bed with a soft 
  
    thump. 
  
  “I’m not, like, mad, I promise. I just—”

  “Yeah?” Will climbs onto the bed next to him, the mattress adjusting with a soft creaking noise. He busies his hands with gathering up his scattered math notes, makes a point of looking through his textbook until Mike says—

  “I think I’m a terrible boyfriend.”

  And oh, okay. That’s— not what Will expected. “What?” He frowns, putting the textbook and the papers down, looking over to where Mike has both hands pressed to either cheek, and is staring straight up at the ceiling. “Why would you say that?”

  Mike scoffs. “
  
    Clearly 
  
  El’s more excited to go hang out with Max than even the idea of spending time with me alone. And, you know, I can’t say I blame her.”

  Will shakes his head. Hearing Mike talk about himself this way— “What are you talking about? I’m sure— I’m sure she wanted to hang out with you. Alone, even.”

  
    “Even?” 
  
  Mike laughs weakly. “Yeah, my relationship would have to seriously be falling apart for my girlfriend to want to hang out with me, alone 
  
    even.”
  

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Will rolls his eyes, hitting Mike in the arm lightly. He crawls over on the bed so that he’s sitting by Mike’s head, looking down at him. “But seriously, where— where is this coming from?”

  Mike is silent for a while. Will’s tape is done playing, so there isn’t even the steady croon of music for him to focus on, just the awkwardly hushed clicking of the tape in the background. And just— just Mike, next to him. He’s still staring up at the ceiling, expression blank. “I don’t know,” Mike says at last, “it’s just—” he pauses, and when he speaks again, it’s slow, like he’s choosing his words very carefully. “Maybe this is an awful thing to say, but— sometimes I feel like you care more about me and El being together than she does.” He blinks, then startles, like he’s just realized Will is sitting next to him. “Sorry! Sorry, I know she’s your sister, I didn’t mean for it to be like—”

  Honestly, maybe this is Will’s own fault for meddling in the first place. His 
  
    sister, 
  
  he thinks a bit weakly, as he watches Mike push himself up onto his elbows and brush the hair out of his face. His 
  
    sister 
  
  and his 
  
    best friend. 
  
  “It’s okay,” he finds himself saying, and immediately wants to shove his face into a pillow and groan. “It’s not weird—” it totally is— “she’s my sister but you’re my best friend, so— just keep, like, the gross details out of it and you’re good—”

  
    “Wi-ill,” 
  
  Mike is saying, and then Will finds a pillow shoved into his face anyway. “Ew! You’re so—!”

  Will peels his face out of the pillow, pushes Mike’s hands away as he drops it back into the duvet, and laughs. “What were you saying, though?”

  Mike sighs, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know,” he starts, “and this is probably kind of not the best thing to think either, but sometimes it feels like El and I— we don’t have anything in common, you know?”

  Will’s been getting the idea, yeah. But that’s not, like, something he can 
  
    say, 
  
  so he just nods solemnly. “How so?”

  “It’s crazy, because we’ve been together for so long, since we were so young,” Mike continues, “but, I don’t know. It feels like she doesn’t care about any of the things I care about. Like, El and Max both didn’t come to our Hellfire thing,” and okay, Will also 
  
    knew
  
   that was going to come up again, ouch, “but at least Max went to Lucas’ game, right? And I saw them hugging after, even though Lucas was all sweaty, but Max was so proud of him. And it just made me—” he trails off at this, picking softly at the threads on Will’s bedsheets. “And it’s not like I want to go shopping with her or Max either,” he adds, and then, “but sometimes it’s like— I always thought I would end up with someone more similar to me, you know? Someone I have more in common with. Someone I can talk about, like, hobbies and music and stuff with, without them visibly losing interest halfway through.”

  
    You have more in common with him than El, 
  
  says the voice in Will’s head. He wonders, briefly, whether it would be weird to shove his face back into the pillow and scream.

  
    Shut up, 
  
  he thinks.

  “Maybe that’s a horrible thing to think,” Mike is saying around a sigh.

  At this, Will frowns. He knows 
  
    horrible. 
  
  He’s 
  
    thought 
  
  horrible things. He might even be a generally all-around horrible person for even thinking that thing about having more in common with Mike than El does. But whatever Mike is thinking is 
  
    not 
  
  horrible. It’s—

  —well, it’s probably not 
  
    normal 
  
  to think those things about a four-year long relationship, but what does Will know?

  “That’s not horrible,” he finds himself saying, “I get it. Like, I’d want to, um. If I were dating someone,” he says hurriedly, suddenly feeling a bit warm, “if I 
  
    were, 
  
  then I’d want to have stuff in common with them too.” And at the inquiring tilt of Mike’s head, he continues: “And you’re 
  
    not 
  
  a bad boyfriend, come on! You’re— you’re caring and funny and you do all that charming stuff girls go nuts for, like holding the door open for them and pulling out their chairs. And you’re a fantastic listener, and you really care about people. That’s— that’s good! All the other stuff— it’s ridiculous, is what I'm trying to say. Of course you’re a good boyfriend.” 

  And, okay, maybe Will isn’t too sure about what makes someone qualified to be a 
  
    good boyfriend, 
  
  but he knows— as true as gut instinct and intrinsic like a hair-trigger evolutionary response— that Mike has all the makings of one. When he talks to Will it’s like he’s hanging on to every word he’s saying, like he 
  
    cares. 
  
  Mike just cares 
  
    so much. 
  
  That’s boyfriend material as far as Will is concerned.

  “Yeah?” Mike smiles tentatively. “You really think so?”

  “Mhm,” Will nods. And then, because his stomach is doing something funny thinking about Mike being 
  
    boyfriend material— 
  
  “just, like, talk to her about it. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “Oh,” Mike says, and for some reason he sounds a bit disappointed. He looks at Will carefully; one, two, three, 
  
    six 
  
  seconds pass before he says anything: “Yeah, I guess.” He shrugs. “Thanks, Will.”

  “You’re, uh. Welcome.” It feels like this conversation is over, judging by the way Mike bounds out of Will’s room and back into the kitchen for more snacks.

  So why does it feel so— unfinished?

  Will puts his head in his hand and groans aloud to the empty room. “I’m such a loser,” he says, to absolutely no one.

  “You’re such a loser!”

  Will blinks. “Good morning, Lucas.”

  “It’s technically past noon,” he points out, sliding into the seat next to him at their lunch table. “But it doesn’t matter. You know why? Because you’re a 
  
    loser 
  
  twenty-four hours a day.
  
    ”
  

  Will pops a chip in his mouth. “What did I do this time?”

  “You,” Lucas starts, pointing an accusatory finger at him while simultaneously snatching a chip from his bag with his other hand, “studied for our math test for, what? Like an hour? And you totally aced it.”
“I did not ace it,” Will exclaims, swatting his hand away. “It’s math! Since when have I ever aced anything in math?”
  And Will might not have known it was possible to glare with such intensity while also crunching on a potato chip, but he does now. Lucas Sinclair, freak of nature, defying all odds since 1971, glares even harder as he says, “Mike said that 
  
    you 
  
  said you thought it was easy! So when 
  
    we 
  
  took it together the period after,” he gestures between himself and Mike, who’s just now sitting down next to Will, “I had total false confidence in myself, psyched myself out, and failed.”

  Will turns to look at Mike, who looks entirely baffled at the conversation he joined halfway. “Why the hell would you tell him I said it was 
  
    easy? 
  
  I didn’t say that!”

  Mike shrugs. “You did! You said, uh—”

  “I said it 
  
    should’ve 
  
  been easy,” Will corrects, trying to pull his bag of chips away before Mike can get to it. Sadly, very unsuccessfully. “And then I said I totally bombed it anyway.”

  “I hate you,” Lucas says anyway, even though this totally is not Will’s fault, hello? Plus, 
  
    easy 
  
  math for him is, like, eighth grade algebra. Anything past that totally beats him, which they 
  
    know, 
  
  too.

  Will passes him another chip. “Sorry,” he says anyway, grinning. “Do you hate me less now?”

  “A bit.”

  Dustin and Max show up with El in tow a good seven minutes into lunch, after Mike’s already devoured his sandwich and is eyeing Will’s carrot sticks with a certain gleam in his eye. “You don’t even like carrots,” Will huffs, but he sets them in between him and Mike anyway.

  “I know,” Mike says, biting into one with a 
  
    snap. 
  
  “But I’m hungry. I’ll eat anything.”

  “So!” Max interjects, scooting over next to Lucas. “Now that we’re all here—” which causes Dustin to shoot Will a justifiably worried look— “El and I wanted to ask if you two,” she gestures to Dustin and Will, “want to come prom dress shopping with us later.”

  
    “Why?” 
  
  Dustin and Will exclaim simultaneously.

  “You’re very honest,” El says, pointing to Dustin, and then, to Will, “and you have good opinions about colors.”

  “Plus,” Max adds, “I need help to convince El to be a little more adventurous. Wear something a little scandalous,” she says, winking, and El makes an unimpressed face.

  “Why can’t we 
  
    all 
  
  go,” Dustin starts, looking about as helpless as Will feels, “why just us?”

  “No boyfriends allowed,” Max says simply. “Right, El?”

  “Right,” El repeats, suddenly looking very interested in the table. “No boyfriends.”

  Next to him, Mike is also looking very carefully away, over their heads and out the window opposite them. Will frowns. 

  “—and I’ve been saying that’s ridiculous,” Lucas is saying, ripping off a chunk of his sandwich and popping it in his mouth. “Mike and I should be allowed to see! It’s prom, not, like, a wedding.”

   At Max’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “You know, because you’re not supposed to see the bride before the ceremony— whatever! My point is, how am I supposed to match my tie to your dress if I don’t know what your dress looks like?”

  Will and Dustin pull identical, disgusted faces. “I’ll 
  
    tell 
  
  you what color it is,” Max says, just as Dustin goes, “You two are so 
  
    gross—”
  

  “I think it’s nice,” El pipes up, around a mouthful of tuna salad. Which Will didn’t even know they 
  
    had 
  
  at home, but apparently they do. “It’s sweet to match.”

  “Sure,” Dustin scoffs, and then, to Max and Lucas— “why can’t you guys be more like Mike and El? 
  
    They’re 
  
  not gross.”
If it’s possible to get even quieter when you’re already being dead silent, Mike’s doing it. He looks— uncomfortable. Deeply, deeply uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than Will has ever seen him, and he’s seen Mike get wedgies pulled on him for, like, years. He looks a bit like he would rather be crawling through Vecna’s hellscape than be here, actually. And it’s this last bit, accompanied by a sudden protective urge swelling up inside him that makes Will blurt out, “Okay, we’ll go!”
  “We will?” Dustin pauses, barbecue Lays halfway to his mouth. “Why?”

  Will gives his best try at an 
  
    agreeing now, questions later 
  
  sort of look, which seems to work because Dustin shrugs. “Why not, I guess,” he says, and then, after chewing and swallowing, “and El, Max is totally right. I don’t want to see you in anything that doesn’t have either ruffles or a pattern.”

  “Or both?” Lucas offers, and then the rest of the table erupts into discussion over whether El would look better in ruffles (Dustin), a big bow (Lucas), shiny fabric (Max), or bright pink (El, tentatively).

  Beneath the table, Will feels a knee bump against his, pressing against it like a silent 
  
    thank you. 
  
  Mike still isn’t looking at him, but there’s a small smile playing at the corners of his lips as he bites into another of Will’s carrot sticks.

  Will swallows. Christ. He presses his knee back into Mike’s in acknowledgment, and watches Mike’s minuscule smile grow out of the corners of his eyes. Then, before anyone can notice his face starting to heat up: “How about a big, shiny, bright pink bow?” 

  And then El threatens to telepathically pull his dress pants down at the dance if he makes her try on anything with a big, shiny, bright pink bow, so maybe not.

  The lady behind the counter at the dress store is… enthusiastic, to say the least.

  “Good afternoon, ladies!'' she chirps to the girls, Will and Dustin trailing in after them, eyeing each other and the racks on racks of ballgowns with no small amount of trepidation. And then she catches sight of Will and Dustin and her excited grin only grows. “Ah,” she says, “and these must be your dates! Prom shopping, no? You make a lovely group!”

  Will looks at Dustin, who looks at El, who looks at Max, who looks back at Will— all with the same dumbfounded expressions on their faces— and then they burst into laughter.

  “We’re siblings,” Will and El both say, pointing to each other, while Dustin and Max are nearly doubled over, simply saying “No!” and gasping for breath.

  The lady’s slowly starting to look like she’s regretting coming into work today. “Ah,” she says, looking like she’s trying to figure out what Dustin and Max’s situation is, while glancing rapidly back and forth between Will and El— surely trying to figure out how they’re related while not really looking alike. Apart from the hair, kind of. “I see.”

  “They’re just here to help,” El says, as they get led through rows upon rows of bedazzled dresses in enough bright colors to make Will’s head start to throb— almost worse than that time he got possessed and had his consciousness literally ripped to pieces by a supernatural being infiltrating his mind.

  “So maybe that’s a no on the bright pink,” he says to El, honestly more for his good than hers. She nods solemnly in agreement.

  And look, Will’s not, like, a fashion expert or anything. He wears mostly the same thing everyday for a 
  
    reason— 
  
  that’s one less way for him to accidentally look like a loser. So when Max makes a beeline for something puffy and blue and more tiered than a wedding cake, Will slinks away to a chair in the corner, watching El and Max twirl around with resigned amusement.

  Even Dustin kind of gets into it after a while. “More sparkles,” he’s cheering, as El comes out of the fitting room in a purple number. “El, this one’s too boring, come 
  
    on.”
  

  “I don’t know,” El says, fiddling with the strap on her shoulder. “I kind of like it.” She turns to Will, frowning. “What do you think?”

  “Hm? Uh,” Will starts, because objectively, it’s a nice dress. But it’s not like he’d really know what a 
  
    not-
  
  nice one looked like. Unless it was really, really hideous, probably, like what his mom had worn to 
  
    her 
  
  senior prom. “It’s really pretty,” he says at last, because that seems safe and also true, and then, “you look good in purple, El.”

  She beams. “Do I? I can’t tell.”

  Dustin nods. “You do. It suits your personality.” Which Will kind of gets, actually. Especially this one, kind of flouncy and bright purple, even— unfortunately— devoid of big bows or sparkles as it is. And then Dustin says, “Mike would lose his sh@t if he sees you in this,” and then El stops mid-twirl, the scrunched-up fabric at the bottom of her dress rustling loudly in the sudden silence filling their corner of the room.

  “Really?” she asks, but her excitement from earlier, when Will had said she looked good in purple, has vanished. She sounds— uncertain. Cautious. Like she’s asking because she actually doesn’t know the answer.

  Will frowns, and very carefully does not make eye contact.

  To his left, Dustin also seems suddenly very unsure. “Uh,” he says, “yes? Yes. Yeah, obviously. Why wouldn’t he?”

  And that’s when it hits Will with the force of a freight truck: El and Mike haven’t told the rest of them. About, you know. The problems. 

  Except Will knows, because El tells him things. And El doesn’t know Mike also tells him things, but he does. And El tells Max things, which Mike knows, but Will isn’t 
  
    supposed 
  
  to know that El tells Max things. But he does, because he’s an awful eavesdropper and total crosser of boundaries. So other than Mike and El, Will is the only one that 
  
    really 
  
  knows. Like, 
  
    everything.
  

  Christ. His head is spinning.

  Suddenly, he feels kind of like he did when he was thirteen and seizing, screaming, in a hospital bed— like a double agent. A super spy, or whatever it was that Mike had called it. Working for both sides. And, because El is kind of maybe very psychic— potentially— he very rapidly starts thinking of anything 
  
    but 
  
  Mike.

  The math test they had today. Slaving over studying for their math test. Studying for their math test— 
  
    with Mike.
  

  F@ck this. Along with feeling inexplicably dizzy, his stomach is also starting to hurt a little.

  “Okay,” Dustin whispers, as El ducks hurriedly back into the dressing room. “What the hell was that?”

  Will shrugs, his best impersonation of genuine confusion, and pulls one leg up onto the chair with him so he can wrap his arms around it, feigning nonchalance. “What was what?”

  Dustin scoffs. “Come on,” he says, crossing his arms. “That was weird, right? Are Mike and El okay?”

  Will shrugs again. They’re most definitely 
  
    not 
  
  okay, but, you know. Dustin doesn’t need to know that. “Yes?” he tries, then, at Dustin’s unimpressed look, sighs and says, “maybe? How am I supposed to know?”

  “El’s your 
  
    sister,” 
  
  Dustin says, “and Mike’s your 
  
    best friend. 
  
  So if anyone here would know, it would be you.”

  Okay, sh@t. That’s extremely, very, exactly true. Sometimes Will forgets that Dustin is, like, the smartest person he knows. Except Mike, maybe. And Dustin’s saying it like that exact thought doesn’t already run through Will’s head, like, fifteen times an hour on average. “Sh@t,” Will says aloud, without meaning to, and then Dustin’s frown deepens.

  “You 
  
    do 
  
  know something,” he says immediately, halfway between concerned and gleeful, and Will’s starting to wonder whether some of El’s powers rubbed off on him when Max— bless her— flounces back into the room.

  “Thoughts?” She holds her arms out and spins, grinning.

  Honestly, not many things can render Dustin Henderson speechless, so Will makes a mental note to put Max Mayfield in a blue satin dress the next time he needs Dustin to shut up. Which, statistically speaking, is probably going to be pretty soon.

  “Wow,” he says, and then reaches up to adjust his baseball cap where it’s slipping off his head. He leans forward, clapping his hands dramatically to his cheeks. “You look— you look 
  
    great.”
  

  Will watches Max put a hand on her hip and pop a pose in the mirror, amused. “Watch it,” he laughs, “or else Lucas is gonna beat your ass for moving in on his girl.”

  “Lucas can 
  
    try,”
  
   Dustin scoffs, but he’s grinning. “Plus, that ship has sailed. Max could’ve had a piece of this and she passed. No take-backsies. You hear that? You had your chance!” he calls over to Max, who rolls her eyes.

  “Woe is me,” she deadpans, “oh, what could have been.” And then she looks over to Will— “Do you like this better or the pink?”

  What’s with everyone and asking him about the colors? Even though, admittedly, the answer to this one is obvious. “Blue,” he says immediately, and then he stands up and walks over to her. “Hold on, the back of this is all uneven, I think you missed some buttons.”

  “Thanks,” Max grunts, shuffling around to look at the back in the mirror. And then, just as El emerges from behind the curtain, in a strangely yellow-green number that secretly kind of reminds Will of Upside Down goo, Max says, “So, Will, you asking anyone to prom?”

  And maybe Will might have believed that it was a casual question if Max hadn’t said it in that trademarked Max Mayfield voice— evil, conniving, and entirely up to no good.

  “Um,” he says, and then releases the last button with a 
  
    snap! 
  
  “No, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Max asks, 
  
    way 
  
  too innocently. “There are so many girls that are into you, you know. You could just, like, hold up a sign in the cafeteria saying 
  
    ‘Go to prom with me’ 
  
  and you’d have, like, fifteen girls there within the minute.”

  Will blinks. “What. What are you talking about?”

  Over in the corner, Dustin is cackling. “Dude,” he says, “come on, you’re a total chick magnet.”

  Will blinks again. What? 
  
    “What?”
  

  “It’s true,” chirps El, who’s making displeased faces at herself in the mirror. “Lots of girls ask me if you are single. Does this color look gross to you?”

  “Very,” says Dustin, just as Will goes, “a little, yeah,” because, unlike some people, he’s 
  
    trying 
  
  to speak with some tact, thanks.

  And then, back to the problem at hand— 
  
    “Who’s 
  
  asking you if I’m single, El?”

  “Oh, let’s see,” El says, and then she starts counting so fast on her fingers that Will starts to feel a bit faint. “Susan from English, Caroline from History, Cassie A. 
  
    and
  
   Cassie W., Jennifer Hayes, Jennifer Wilson, Jennifer—”

  “Okay!” Will yelps, as El and Max also burst into laughter alongside Dustin. A few rows of dresses over, they’re getting some pretty strange looks. Will sits back down, head in his hands. “That’s a lot of people,” he says, muffled by his palms. That 
  
    is 
  
  a lot of people. A lot of— a lot of 
  
    girls, 
  
  especially. “And a lot of Jennifers.”

  “Told you you’re a total chick magnet,” Dustin is saying, and then, holding out another purple dress, “El, wait, try this one on.”

  “Do you want me to tell them you’re single?” El asks, eyeing Will a bit strangely. “Because I keep saying that I don’t know, just in case you didn’t want me to—”

  “No!” Will says, maybe a little too fast, because all three of them turn to look at him, confused. “Um,” he says, more quietly. Sh@t. “No, that’s okay. Thanks, El.”

  She nods, examining the dress in her hands with a pleased smile. “Okay,” she says simply.

  “Why don’t you go with—” Max starts, before Dustin cuts her off.

  “He’s going stag with 
  
    me, 
  
  right, Will?” He throws an arm around Will as he grins. He can definitely, 
  
    definitely 
  
  feel the relieved slump of Will’s shoulders, probably hear the soft sigh of his exhale too— but for once in the eight years Will has known him, Dustin Henderson keeps his mouth blissfully shut.

  “Right,” Will says, plastering a grin on his face. Max is still frowning at him, and El too, but for different reasons.

  “What is— going 
  
    stag?”
  

  “It’s when you’re a loser who doesn’t have a date,” Max snorts, and Dustin scowls.

  “Hey!” And then, to El, “It’s like, when you go alone, without a date. But you can go with your friends and still have fun!” He says this last part with a glare towards Max’s direction. She grins.

  “Stag,” El repeats slowly. “And you— have fun with your friends?” 

  “Yep.”

  “And you can— dance with them?”

  “You can dance with whoever you want, El,” Will laughs, watching Max preen in the mirror in a very un-Max-like way. “The world’s your oyster when you’re, uh. Going stag.”

  “Whoever I want,” El says, a bit quietly, like this wasn’t intended for their ears. She looks down at the dress in her hands, and a strange expression washes over her face, like she’s on the verge of realizing something big. Next to them, Max’s corduroy jacket starts levitating an inch and a half off the floor where it’s folded.

  “Yeah—” Will starts, frowning, grabbing at the jacket before anyone sees. He means to say 
  
    are you okay? 
  
  because El hasn’t levitated anything in public in a very long time, so something must really be upsetting her. 

  And then Max slips on a pair of heels and Dustin lets out a low whistle, and Will and El both get distracted by Max’s uneasy, teetering steps across the room. The jacket drops back to the ground.

  “I say this with all the love I carry in my soul, Maxine,” Dustin is saying, one hand held over his heart, going down theatrically on one knee, and Max pulls a face at him. Will snorts. “You show up to prom looking like that, and Lucas Sinclair is going to have a heart attack even before the basketball team manages to spike the punch bowl.”

  Mike looks like sh@t today.

  Like, objectively. 
  
    Subjectively, 
  
  he looks great. Not that Will would ever say that, even if it’s true (and it usually is). But for a gorgeous, sunny early-May Friday— blissfully free of tests, presentations, or essays, mind you— Mike looks suspiciously awful. It’s been a week and a half since he and Dustin went prom dress shopping with the girls, and Mike has been kind of weirdly M.I.A the entire time since. 

  “You look like sh@t,” Will hears himself say, cornering Mike near their lockers, and then blinks. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that—”

  But Mike is laughing, for some reason, so he can’t be too mad. “Well, good morning to you too,” he says, sounding more cheerful than he probably should, judging by the bags under his eyes and the fact that Will’s seen him wear this exact sweater to school for the fourth day in a row. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Will says simply, leaning against the lockers. “Just wanted to say hi.”

  “Well you 
  
    didn’t 
  
  say hi,” Mike points out, grabbing his history textbook and closing the locker. “You said I look like sh@t.”

  “Sorry,” Will says again, even though Mike didn’t say it like he was p@ss@d off or anything. And he still doesn’t look p@ss@d off. He’s just— 
  
    looking
  
   at Will, a small smile playing on his lips, textbook in one hand and the other grabbing loosely onto the strap of his backpack. Just— looking. Standing there in the hallway, with people rushing to get to class before the bell rings, the crowd diverting easily around the two of them.

  And then, because Mike isn’t saying anything and Will’s stomach is starting to get a bit flip-floppy with him 
  
    looking 
  
  at Will like that, he sighs, taking in the tired slump to Mike’s shoulders, the way his hair is rumpled where it usually isn’t, and fights back the urge to do something stupid, like 
  
    run his hands through it
  
   or something. “Hoffman’s after Hellfire today?” he asks at last.

  Mike blinks. “Uh, yeah. Yes!” And then, after a moment of hesitation, “should I tell the others, or—”

  That’s a good question. 
  
    Should 
  
  Mike tell the others? It’s a tempting thought— all six of them, laughing over bowls of fudge-dipped vanilla ice cream with sprinkles, or whatever horrible concoction it is that Mike decides to come up with today. Reveling in the last few weeks of high school, their schoolwork slowly winding down as graduation draws near, leaving them with the sort of free time they haven’t had in months. Laughter and friendship and quality time with your loved ones, and all that bull. It might be nice for Mike to be around his friends.

  But then, the part of Will that makes him feel like kind of a horrible person— the selfish, jealous, petulant little kid in him that wants to grab onto Mike Wheeler and never let go, like they’re in elementary school choosing partners for freeze tag at recess— finds him saying, “I thought it could be just us this time, if that’s okay,” before he can even think about it.

  Mike blinks again, and then something in his posture straightens out. “Okay,” he smiles, and it’s like half the shadows on his face just got washed away from this new angle. “Yeah, that’s— that’s good with me.”

  God, Will 
  
    sucks. 
  
  He might actually be the lamest person he knows— even including Lucas Sinclair, who does gross things like bringing Max soup when she’s sick and holding her hand under the lunch table when he thinks the rest of them don’t know except for that they’re both blushing and grinning like idiots. He’s lamer than 
  
    that, 
  
  which is a real low blow and should probably serve as some sort of reality check for just how much of a loser he is to get butterflies at the idea of getting ice cream with Mike alone.

  What is he, twelve?

  “Cool,” he says instead, plastering on his best 
  
    not-lame 
  
  face. “Uh. Should I meet you at— uh.”

  “We have Hellfire before anyway, remember?” Mike says, and he sounds a bit amused at Will’s floundering. “We can walk together.”

  “Right,” Will says weakly, watching Mike’s smile grow ever so minutely. “Sorry, I—”

  “You apologize too much,” Mike says, “stop that.”

  The word’s already out of his mouth before Will even realizes. “Sorry—” he starts, and then breaks into a grin. “I don’t know why I keep doing that.”

  “Me neither,” Mike says, bumping their shoulders together, and then, over the shrill shriek of the first bell as they walk to class, “you know, it’s funny— in the thirteen years I’ve known you, it’s not like you’ve had much to apologize for.”

  Will thinks about that last part for the rest of the day. Through all his classes, through his friends’ easy banter at lunch. Even through the Hellfire meeting, which is supposed to be important because it’s the second to last one of the year— and, therefore, of high school altogether— but El and Max’s absence is glaring like a big red emergency siren placed smack-dab in the middle of the table they’ve gathered around.

  Or maybe that’s just to Will, because it doesn’t really seem like anyone else cares. Not even Lucas; when Will had pulled him aside and asked, quietly, if he was upset that Max didn’t want to come again, he’d just grinned toothily and said, “Nah, it’s cool, she came over last night instead and we played Mario together,” and then, at Will’s raised eyebrows, reluctantly added, “okay, she whooped my ass at Mario, but it was still fun! And then we tried making dinner, but neither of us can cook for sh@t. So we ordered pizza instead, and it was free, actually, since it took, like, an 
  
    hour 
  
  to get there—”

  So maybe it’s just Will who’s noticing their absence then. Mike seems to be less upset about it than last time, because he’s not like, brooding or sulking or glaring that trademarked Mike Wheeler glare. He doesn’t seem to be reacting much at all, actually, not even when he barely rolls a four for strength and then promptly gets his ass handed to him by a rogue troll hiking its way down the wintery mountainside. And Will kind of wants to grab him by the shoulders and yell 
  
    ‘Talk to me!’ 
  
  even though that would probably be a bit weird in this room full of people and probably pretty counterproductive.

  And about the other thing— he still can’t stop thinking about whatever the hell Mike said about apologizing. Because Will’s got 
  
    plenty 
  
  to apologize for— just yesterday he’d knocked over an entire can of root beer onto Mike’s favorite jeans, which was probably not a big deal on its own except he was too busy laughing to help him clean up before it set. So that’s one thing. And last week, Will had fallen asleep and missed their plans to catch a movie, so Mike was left babysitting Holly on a Friday night alone. That’s another thing. And the week before that, Will had sided with Lucas and said that Mike needed to get his head out of his ass and stop moping around all the time— which Will actually does feel pretty bad about because it’s obvious that Mike’s, like, working through something right now, even if he didn’t have to snap incessantly at people to be doing so. That makes three.

  And, you know. The other things— the ones he 
  
    really 
  
  can’t apologize for because then he’d have to bring them up in the first place. He’s intrusive and pushy, always prying and asking Mike about sh@t he probably doesn’t want to talk about, so that’s four things to apologize for. He constantly thinks about Mike showing up at his door saying things like 
  
    ‘El and I broke up, and I think you know the reason why,’ 
  
  with a dreamy expression on his face before trailing Will to his room, pressing play on a Richard Marx album, and kissing him hard enough for Will’s head to spin like a scene ripped right out of a chick flick. That’s five. And then Will is going behind Mike’s back by talking to El about him when he probably wouldn’t want that, and vice versa, so that’s six and seven. And, all of the above included, he’s probably kind of an overall horrible person for wanting whatever he wants and thinking whatever he’s thinking, so that’s at 
  
    least 
  
  reasons eight through ten.

  But who’s counting, right?

  “I’m thinking fudge brownie,” Will says aloud, tapping one finger to his chin. “But I’m also tempted by strawberry?”

  Next to him, Mike lets out a contemplative hum as the couple ahead of them in line crawls forward a few inches. Will can hear them talking from here— the girl is angling for a shake, the guy for a vanilla cone. Which is probably the most boring thing Will’s ever heard, but alright. “Me too,” Mike admits at last, sighing defeatedly. “Strawberry but with, like, gummy worms on top.”

  Will doesn’t bother hiding his disgusted face. Ever since the start of junior year, Mike’s had this thing about disgusting ice cream flavors. Or, he’ll choose a perfectly great flavor— like strawberry— and ruin it entirely by putting something 
  
    weird 
  
  on top— like sour gummy worms. “What the hell is wrong with you,” he says, examining the flavors more carefully. Fudge brownie sounds 
  
    really 
  
  good. But also: strawberry.

  “You get one, I’ll get the other, and we can share,” Mike decides, and then it’s their turn to order so it’s not like Will has time to protest anyway.

  “Did you 
  
    have 
  
  to put the gummy worms on it,” Will whines, watching Mike get handed his cup over the counter, a few minutes later. His own fudge brownie cup is blissfully free of invertebrate-shaped snacks. 

  Mike digs a worm out with his spoon and bites into it. “Yes,” he grins, around a mouthful of pink sugar, “yes, I did.”

  It’s a nice day out, and the interior of Hoffman’s is already filled with people celebrating the lengthy stretch of daylight hours still ahead of them, even at six-thirty, so they maneuver their way outside, the bells above the door jingling lightly as it swings shut. “D’you wanna sit down?” Will asks, sucking a chocolate swirl off his own spoon, and Mike nods.

  They sit down on a bench overlooking the park, Will on one side and Mike on the other. And then, for some reason, they find themselves leaning back against the armrests facing each other, instead of, maybe, sitting side by side like normal people. “This is good,” Will says after a moment, watching Mike stretch one leg out so that it’s bumping Will’s shin where his own legs are crossed.

  “Mm.” Mike’s digging another worm out from under his mound of ice cream, blue this time. “You want some?”

  “Wormless, please,” Will says as they swap cups. “I don’t know why you’re like this.”

  “Life is all about adventures, young Padawan,” Mike quips, scooping chocolate into his mouth.

  “I’m two weeks older than you, dumbass,” Will says, but he’s laughing anyway, spooning rapidly-melting strawberry ice cream into his mouth.

  All at once, things seem so suddenly uncomplicated. It’s like here, on this park bench with Mike, the things that used to worry him are all melting away. The daunting prospects of their futures in college, looming over him since acceptance letters started trickling in back in March. The calculus test that Will’s pretty sure will end up tanking his GPA right before graduation. The scratch on the car he got when taking it out for a practice ride four days ago. His oral presentation for U.S. History next week that he’s yet to start researching.

  And everything else too— El and Mike and prom and matching dresses and suits and ties— is just dirt swirling down the bathtub drain. Will isn’t picky. He might be stubborn and difficult but he knows where to draw the line and where to step back. He’s maybe kind of a horrible person, but he’s trying to be better.

  So if this is all he gets— reclining on a wooden park bench with Mike Wheeler, legs extended so they’re pressed up together in a smooth, unfluctuating line, watching small drips of chocolate run down the side of the spoon and onto the previously unmarred white of Mike’s Hellfire t-shirt— if that’s all Will gets, then he’ll count his f@ck@ng blessings and take it.

  And then, as if he’s reading Will’s mind a bit: “So. Prom,” Mike starts, swiping messily at the chocolate on his shirt.

  “Yes,” Will says, gesturing for Mike to give his ice cream cup back. “What— what about it?”

  “Max said you all went dress shopping with them,” he says, still not looking up at Will. 
  
    Them 
  
  meaning Max and El, probably. And 
  
    you all 
  
  meaning— him and Dustin?

  “Yeah,” Will frowns, “you were there at lunch when we were talking about it, remember?”

  “Right,” Mike says. He opens his mouth and closes it again, like he was going to say something but then changed his mind, so Will waits, just in case there is something after all. He stretches his leg out too, after a moment, tips of his shoes tapping against Mike’s thigh.

  And then, when Mike still hasn’t said anything: “El’s wearing purple,” Will tries. Mike frowns, c@cks his head, as if to say 
  
    What? 
  
  “You know,” Will goes on, “so you guys can match. So you can wear, like, a purple tie or something. Anyway, I don’t know if she told you.”

  “Oh,” Mike says, a bit flatly, then, “no, she didn’t.”

  “Oh,” Will parrots, and then promptly shuts his mouth. The following silence feels like he messed up, somehow, in telling Mike this. Even though it’s stupid— El would’ve told him soon, if she hasn’t already. And it’s not supposed to, like, be a secret. “So, are you going to?” And yeah, he’d literally just decided to shut his mouth and not say anything else about it, but apparently his mouth had other ideas.

  “Going to— what?”

  “You know,” Will waves his spoon around in the air. “Match. Get a purple tie. That’s— that's something people do, right?”

  At this, Mike laughs softly. “Yeah,” he says, and then his expression drops into something a bit sad. “Yeah, that’s definitely— something people do. Lucas won’t shut up about it. He’s dragging me along tie shopping at some point. Which is so lame because it’s just a 
  
    tie, 
  
  you know? You don’t even have to, like, try it on.”

  “Yeah, because El and Max took 
  
    forever,” 
  
  Will agrees, digging around for a piece of brownie, “hey, idiot, did you steal all the brownie chunks?”

  Mike grins, unashamed. “Only some,” he says, which is a flat out lie, because there’s clearly none left. “And, uh. Okay, I don’t know, are you—” he falters slightly, which is what makes Will look up— it’s rare to find Mike at such an awkward loss for words.

  “Am I what?” he prompts.

  “Are you— you know. 
  
    Matching. 
  
  With anyone?” It comes out very stilted, near-full stops between words.

  Will frowns. “Huh?”

  “You know.” Mike waves a hand around in the air, gaze fixed on the tree next to them. “Matching with someone. A— you know. Like, when you have a date to prom, and you— match. With them. Are you?”

  It takes Will a moment to understand exactly what Mike is asking. “Are you trying to ask me if I have a 
  
    date?”
  
   he asks, a bit incredulously, trying to keep his eyes from bugging right out of his head.

  Mike shrugs noncommittally. For some reason, he’s still not looking at Will, but instead seems very interested in the unpolished grain of the bench they’re sitting on. “Well, do you?”

  “Do I— no,” Will snorts, 
  
    “no, 
  
  I don’t.” And then, prompted by some entirely unknown cosmic force of the universe, one that’s seemingly had it out for Will since the very day he popped into this existence, he blurts out: “Max and El said a lot of girls want to go with me, though.”

  They’re outside. It’s mid-Spring, so the birds are chirping and the children are playing and the people are frolicking, and all that nonsense. It’s loud— ambient noise filling the park— and yet, you could probably still hear a pin drop with how silent and still Mike immediately goes.

  Will sort of feels like bashing his head into the stiff wooden boards of the bench. Or getting up and running away. Or laughing hysterically in an attempt to play it off as a joke. Anything to stop Mike from looking at him like that, like he’s been stunned right into a dead silence.

  “Oh,” Mike says quietly, after a few of the most terrifyingly tense moments Will has ever experienced in his life. Including, mind you, the possessions, the abductions, the near-death experiences, and the actual 
  
    apocalypse, 
  
  so that just goes to show how much he seriously wants to sink through the floor and pass away right now. Mike’s leg has gone a bit slack against his on the bench.

  
    You’re an idiot, 
  
  says the little voice in Will’s head, which he actually didn’t need this time, because he already knew this. It’s one thing to talk your best friend— and the guy you’re sort of in love with— through taking your sister to prom. But it’s another to blurt out to him that a 
  
    whole bunch of girls 
  
  want to go with you.

  Will doesn’t even 
  
    like 
  
  girls.

  But it’s not like Mike knows that.

  “So,” Will starts, a bit tentatively, “El—”

  “Are you?” Mike blurts, and then falls silent again.

  Will blinks. “Am I 
  
    what?”
  
   Honestly, would it kill Mike to speak in more than just sentence fragments?

  Apparently it would. “Going,” Mike says simply, a bit huffily, even, which sends the first tinge of annoyance racing up Will’s spine.

  “What, with the girls? All of them?” This is— honestly, the idea of that alone is so far beyond 
  
    laughable 
  
  that it actually 
  
    is
  
   laughable, but when has Will’s life 
  
    not 
  
  been positively saturated with hilarious irony? He digs harder at the cup of ice cream that’s almost entirely on its way to melting by now. He’s 
  
    not, 
  
  most definitely not, but still— “I don’t know, Mike. Why are you being weird?”

  “I’m not being weird,” Mike mumbles, staring straight down into his cup of strawberry slush. “Never mind, actually. Forget I said anything—”

  “I’m not—” Will sighs, apropos of nothing at all, just that dejected look on Mike’s face that seems to have more control over his fine speech and motor skills than his actual brain does— “going. With the girls. I’m not.”

  “Oh,” Mike says again, but this time, whatever it was about the bench and the pink liquid in his cup that captured his attention seems to lose it at last. He looks up, and sounds almost genuinely confused when he says, “Why not?”

  Will curls one leg up so that it’s resting crossed over Mike’s, instead of next to it. He stirs the swirled remnants of chocolate in his cup half-heartedly, more to have something to do with his hands than to actually eat it. The answer to Mike’s question is pretty straightforward, in all honesty: 
  
    ‘I don’t like girls,’ 
  
  he could say, and that would be that.

  In theory, of course. Reality is never that easy. “Are you okay?” he asks instead, honing in on the tired smudge of purple under Mike’s eyes he’d been thinking about all day. “You seem a little—”

  
    Mopey 
  
  is the first word that comes to mind, but that seems a bit mean and invalidating and also kind of b@tchy, and Mike’s probably still annoyed that Will and Lucas called him that last week, so he just trails off instead. “Yeah,” Mike is saying, “I’m fine, why?”

  To an untrained ear, Mike probably could’ve gotten away with it. And it’s not that he’s a bad liar, necessarily, it’s just that Will’s been stuck to him since they were five, like the maple syrup stains clinging tacky and sweet to their kitchen table. So he knows Mike’s tells— the quick twitch of his lower lip, the widening of his eyes. “You seem a little bummed,” Will continues, because that seems like a safe enough word to use. “What’s wrong?”

  For a moment, it looks like Mike might protest again. But then, almost for the first time since they even sat down, Mike’s eyes flicker up to his own and stay there— for one beat, two, three. 

  “I overheard you and Lucas at Hellfire today,” he says, finally.

  Will frowns. “About— when we were talking about Max?”

  Another pause, then Mike nods tersely. “It’s kind of a stupid thing to get stuck on, maybe. But all I could think about was— they’re so good together, you know?”

  “Mhm.”

  “And— and it’s just 
  
    Hellfire, 
  
  so I don’t know why it’s upsetting me so much, but it is,” Mike says, scratching at the bridge of his nose and looking away. “I just wish— I don’t know, sometimes I get the feeling that El doesn’t even want to hang out with me, much less do things I like.”

  
    It’s awkward, 
  
  El had said to him last week, about hanging out with Mike alone. But Will doesn’t think that’s something he’s allowed to actually 
  
    say, 
  
  even if Mike is right on the money. Instead, he just says, “Oh,” hoping that it comes out conveying empathy and understanding instead of, like, confusion. “That’s—”

  And 
  
    sh@tty 
  
  maybe isn’t a great word to use either because it’s 
  
    El, 
  
  not some hypothetical girl that Mike is talking to him about. It’s 
  
    El.
  

  “And,” Mike continues, sounding hesitant but more determined by the second, “sometimes I think maybe— maybe it’s not working out. But then at the same time it’s like— it’s 
  
    El, 
  
  you know? She’s one of my best friends, and for so long— I don’t know how to say—”

  Will’s stomach hurts, and he’s getting the feeling it isn’t because of his double-scoop of fudge brownie ice cream topped with chocolate sauce.

  “I’m sorry,” he settles on at last, because he 
  
    is 
  
  sorry; that seems like a real nightmare of a situation for someone like Mike to be stuck in— Mike, who would rather do something stupid and inanely impulsive like jump off the deep end of the quarry than see his friends get hurt. Mike, who’s probably frustrated and hurt and simultaneously  guilty for feeling frustrated and hurt and talking it out with his girlfriend’s brother. He’s— a lot of things, actually. 
  
    Sorry 
  
  doesn’t even begin to cover it.

  And then, swallowing down something strangely acidic, like a small object caught in his throat, coated in bile— “But whatever it is— I’m sure you guys will figure it out. Either way, no matter how— and at the end of the day, I’m here for you too,” he tries, on a whim, and then finally, 
  
    finally
  
   shuts up.

  
    I’m sorry, 
  
  he’d said— partially out of, like, empathy or something of the sort. And partially as a truth. 
  
    I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
  

  Add that to the list of apologies he owes. 
  
    I’m sorry.
  

  Mike looks at him, for a long, unbroken moment, and then his eyes dart away, back to the trees above them in bright spring bloom. “So,” he says, an unnatural evenness to his voice that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago, which is probably Will’s cue to shift gears to something else, now. He smiles, tentative but teasing. “You didn’t like the gummy worms with the strawberry, huh?”

  Will lets himself laugh. 
  
    “No,” 
  
  he says. “Gummy worms should be eaten alone. By themselves, like God intended.”

  “I don’t think the cosmic plan ever involved gelatin in the shape of worms,” Mike says, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling bigger now, leaning forward and standing up. “Here, gimme your cup, I’ll throw it away.”

  Will trails him to the garbage can, stretching his legs out. “You have so much chocolate on your shirt,” he points out, and then, as Mike turns back to him from the trash, “and a little in your hair too— how the hell did you do that?”

  “What? Where?” Mike runs a hand through the bottom of his hair, where the longer strands have started to curl around near his neck and cheeks. He frowns. “Did I get it?”

  “No,” Will snorts, and then reaches out to brush away the dried chocolate clumped together on the hair by his eyebrow. “How did you get it so far up here?”

  “I’m a man of many mysteries,” Mike says, turning his head slightly downwards so Will can reach better. “Is that— is that good?”

  “Mm,” Will hums, looking determinedly at the strand of hair between his fingers and not at Mike’s face, “yeah, I got it.” 

  And then, for some inexplicable reason, before Mike can turn away— Will tucks the offending strand of hair behind Mike’s ear.

  “Um,” Mike is saying, and Will blinks. “Thank you?”

  “Sorry!” he blurts, snatching his hand away, “I don’t know why—”

  
    “Will,” 
  
  Mike says, laughing, leaning back on the arm of the bench, “you’re always doing that. Why are you always doing that?”

  Doing 
  
    what?
  
   “Doing what?”

  “Apologizing,” Mike says with a shrug. “You’re always, like, apologizing for stuff that doesn’t matter. Or stuff that you didn’t even do— and I don’t know 
  
    why—”
  

  “Oh,” Will says, bodily fighting back the urge to say 
  
    sorry 
  
  again. “I don’t know, I just—”

  “Because I meant what I said,” Mike says, voice going quieter, more serious. Behind them, the wind rustles softly through the canopy of leaves, “Back at school, I— you don’t have anything to apologize for. If anything, 
  
    I’m 
  
  the one who should be apologizing.”

  Will doesn’t think he’s ever heard anything more ridiculous in his life. 
  
    Mike
  
   apologizing. To 
  
    him. 
  
  “What?” It comes out just as incredulous as it feels, actually, and he’s sure his eyes are bugging right out of his head. 
  
    “Why?”
  

  It’s another few seconds before Mike answers. “I don’t know,” he sighs, “I feel like I’m always— you’re always having to deal with my sh@t. And, I don’t know, I feel like one of these days— maybe it’s a lot, you know? Maybe you’re getting tired of it.”

  Will blinks. “Mike,” he starts, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“Dealing with my sh@t,” Mike says again, as if that’s the part that made Will ask and not, you know. The whole rest of it. “It can be— I can be a lot, and El’s your sister, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
  “Mike,” Will says, cutting him off so that Mike’s mouth is left open mid-sentence. There’s something pounding against his skull, a bit frenetic and hazy in its thrum. “I don’t feel like I 
  
    have to
  
   anything— are you kidding me?”

  Mike frowns. “What?”

  “Have you ever seen me do anything I don’t want to do,” Will starts, and then, because Mike’s opening his mouth again— “okay, have you ever seen me do anything I don’t want to do 
  
    without complaining 
  
  about it?”

  Mike’s mouth snaps shut. “No,” he admits, but it comes out kind of small. Will clenches his hands into fists.

  Horrible. He’s horrible.

  “So I don’t know where this is coming from,” he continues, watching Mike watch 
  
    him, 
  
  leaning so casually against the bench in his Hellfire t-shirt and worn-out black jeans, eyes getting wider and wider by the second. And it’s laughable, 
  
    so laughable 
  
  that Mike thinks 
  
    he’s 
  
  the one being difficult, that Will has to tamp down a hysteric laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep within his chest. “But I don’t feel like I 
  
    have to 
  
  anything with you, okay? I’m here because I want to be. I’ll always want to be around you— I’ll always 
  
    need
  
   you around because you’re my best friend, okay? And you’re not— you’re not a 
  
    lot. 
  
  Not to me, so—”

  So Will’s made some bad decisions before but immediately after the words leave his mouth, he’s starting to think that this is, by far, the most idiotic thing he’s ever said in his life. Not because Mike starts, like, crying or some sh@t— because, first of all, Will would just sink right through the floor right back into Vecna’s hellish underworld with no hesitation if he did.

  But then Mike does something even worse, actually.

  Mike hugs him.

  “Thank you,” he hears, briefly, before all of Mike Wheeler’s five-eleven frame is colliding with his own, knocking the wind out of him so suddenly that he can’t tell whether the sudden head rush that follows is because 
  
    Mike is hugging him 
  
  or because Mike just actually, physically, literally crushed all the oxygen out of his lungs.

  It’s probably a bit of both, to be honest.

  “Mike,” he starts, slowly, before there’s a weird snuffling little intake of breath from someone around his left ear, and then Will decides that maybe it’s okay if he doesn’t try to talk his way out of this one.

  He shuts up.

  
    This is nice, 
  
  something in the deep recesses of his brain says, and for once, Will’s got to agree. He brings his arms under Mike’s, sets his palms on the smooth curve of his back. 
This is nice, says the voice again, insistent and maybe a little too eagerly this time, actually.
  And Will can’t guarantee that nothing stupid will come out of his mouth if he opens it— like conveying just how 
  
    nice 
  
  this is, so he keeps quiet. Mike still smells like his nice cologne from the other day— studying in Will’s room to New Order playing in the background. And he also smells a bit like chocolate, because he’s the grossest, messiest eater that Will’s ever met in his life. And maybe that’s kind of a weird thing for him to notice, and maybe it kind of makes him a horrible person for being endeared by it anyway–

  –or maybe not.

  Maybe this is all Will gets: ice cream with Mike in late evening sunlight. Listening to music in Will’s room. Hugging over the park bench and swapping scoops of chocolate and strawberry back and forth– and then wiping said chocolate off of Mike’s face because he’s 
  
    gross 
  
  and 
  
    disgusting. 
  
  And maybe, like some sort of heavenly retribution for just 
  
    sucking 
  
  really g@dd@mn hard, that’s all Will is ever 
  
    going
  
   to get.

  That’s fine. He’s not picky. He’s not difficult. He’s making amends with the universe or whatever.

  “Thank you,” Mike says again, right into the curve of his shoulder, this time, and then squeezes him tighter.

  Will is so, so screwed.

  But apparently, things can get worse.

  Honestly, it’s Will’s own fault for not seeing this coming. Historically, things haven’t just capped out at 
  
    awkward 
  
  or 
  
    slightly painful
  
   for him, have they? 
  
    Hell 
  
  no. They’ve skyrocketed right past those two straight into, like, 
  
    apocalyptic.
  

  Okay, maybe he’s being a bit dramatic. But this d@mn near feels apocalyptic either way.

  It’s nearing one in the morning, that same night. And Will’s not really sure 
  
    why
  
   he’s up, because it’s more like why the hell not? It’s Friday and he doesn’t have sh@t to do tomorrow, so he’s lying sideways across his bed, tossing the Rubik’s Cube he stole from El up and down with one hand– instead of, you know, actually trying to solve it– thinking about… 
  
    things. 
  
  Things that may or may not involve ice cream, and Mike Wheeler, and ice cream 
  
    with 
  
  Mike Wheeler, and talking to Mike Wheeler over ice cream, and that’s when he hears the phone ring.

  And for a second, Will thinks that maybe he gained some of El’s telekinetic powers after all and, like, psychically willed the phone to ring, or something. As it is, he just barely makes it out to the living room by the last ring, and he’s expecting it to maybe be Lucas or Dustin, chewing him out for abandoning them after Hellfire. What he 
  
    doesn’t 
  
  expect is this:

  “Will? Is that you?”

  Will freezes. Maybe he 
  
    did
  
   psychically cause the phone to ring after all. He makes a mental note to check with El if that’s, like, a thing she can do. And then, “Mike?”

  There’s a pause, and then a soft shuffling noise on the other end. “Yeah, it’s me,” Mike says. He’s speaking very quietly, voice breathy into the receiver. “Sorry, did I– did I wake you?”

  “Nah,” Will says, “I was up. Do you want– should I go get El?”

  “No!” Mike says, with such conviction that Will almost flinches back from the phone. “No, sorry,” Mike is saying, “I just meant, like. I was just talking to her, so.”

  
    Oh? 
  
  And apparently the little voice in his head hasn’t gone to sleep yet, either. 
  
    What about?
  

  “Uh,” Will says, because he’s not really sure where this is going. “What about?”

  “She was just here, actually, she just left,” Mike goes on, seemingly ignoring him. “So she wouldn’t be there anyway. And we, uh. We were talking. Like, I was talking to her. And I guess she was talking to me too– sorry. You get it.”

  “Right,” Will says, frowning, “right, I know how, uh. I know how talking works, Mike.”

  There’s another pause, a soft breath into the receiver. “So El just left,” Mike says again, “she’s sleeping over at Max’s, by the way.”

  “Okay,” Will says, still frowning. “I mean, is that why you’re calling? To let me know about El?”

  “No,” Mike says, but he lets out a noise like a small snort. “I mean, it can’t hurt, right?”

  “Right,” Will echoes, and then he falls silent. Maybe if he shuts up for long enough, Mike will just say whatever it is he needs to say instead of just breathing into the phone for full minutes on end.

  “So,” Mike starts, and Will braces himself because this sounds 
  
    serious. 
  
  That was a very serious 
  
    ‘so.’
  
   “So, what, uh– do you know what you’re wearing for prom?”
That, however, is not a serious thing to say. Will blinks. “What?” 
  Mike takes another deep breath, static crackling through into the headpiece. “I’m thinking of green,” he goes on. His voice sounds a bit shaky– or maybe that’s just the static. “Like a green tie or something, I don’t know.”

  “Mike, it’s almost one a.m.,” Will says, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his other hand, “is this code for something? Are you being held hostage? Give me a sign or something, if you are.”

  Mike laughs, soft. “No, I’m not being held hostage,” he says, “I’ve just been thinking. You know, about things.”

  “You? Thinking? That could be dangerous, you know,” Will quips, leaning against the wall. This is nice. This isn’t a bad way to pass the time, even if it is one in the morning, because it’s 
  
    Mike.
  
   “What sort of–”

  And then the gears of his brain grind to a screeching halt, and he stands back up. “Wait,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose, “did El get a different dress? I thought she was wearing purple,” because 
  
    d@mn it,
  
   he didn’t wait two and a half hours in that store for her to 
  
    change her mind
  
   three weeks before the dance, 
  
    hello!
  

  “She is,” comes the immediate reply– and then the pause after that seems to stretch on for what feels like much longer than it really is. “We’re just not, uh. We’re not going together anymore.”

  Will stands up straighter. “What?” he says, because at first he just thinks he heard wrong. Because there’s 
  
    no way– 
  
  “Why not?”

  His pulse is rushing through his ears– so loud that he almost doesn’t catch Mike’s reply. “Because,” Mike says, slow and intentional, like he’s bracing himself for something big, “El and I just broke up.”

  Maybe it’s some sort of sign that he’s not as awful a person as he could be, because Will’s first thought is El.

  And his second, and his third. And then his 
  
    fourth 
  
  thought– that’s Mike.

  Mike, who broke up with El. Or maybe it was El who broke up with Mike. Anyways, Mike– who’s single now. Single, and wearing green to prom, apparently.

  And, after a brief period of silently freaking out in the dark, Will decides that the problem won’t, unfortunately, just 
  
    go away
  
   if he stubbornly denies himself sleep, so maybe this is something he’ll have to deal with in the morning.

  Except, because he’s William Byers and nothing has ever gone his way his entire life, that’s easier said than done.

  He’s wide awake by seven– on a 
  
    Saturday, 
  
  too– which is possibly the most cruel part of his whole ordeal. And then he waits until he hears the front door open sometime around noon, and then soft footsteps walking down the hall into El’s room next to his.

  And then, because he doesn’t want to be that dickwad that ambushes someone right after they got dumped, he waits 
  
    another 
  
  hour before creeping out of his room– just in case El is, like, ugly crying on the bed.

  As it turns out, El is 
  
    not
  
   ugly crying on the bed, actually.

  “Hey,” Will says, knocking softly on her door. It’s mostly open anyway, which is the first thing that strikes him as strange, because wouldn’t you, like, need privacy for this sort of thing? Not that he’d know. He hasn’t even dated anyone, much less been broken up with. “I, uh. I heard.”

  El’s gaze falls immediately on the plate in his hand, and she puts down the book in her hand, smiling. “Are those waffles?”

  “Uh, yes,” Will says, holding out the whipped cream-covered monstrosity. It’s a peace offering. You know, because he 
  
    sucks. 
  
  But also– even though he might not know a lot about breakups, he 
  
    does 
  
  know that stuffing your face with sugar and carbs after the fact is a major hallmark of one, so. “It’s for you. I thought it might cheer you up.”

  “Thanks!” El holds her hands out as Will walks towards the bed, and then she tilts her head at him. “But– I’m not sad?”

  “El, it’s okay.” Will perches carefully on the long side of the bed, watching El scoop whipped cream off the top with her fork. “Mike told me last night. You don’t have to, like, pretend.”

  “No, I know,” El says, and then, “hey, did you put M&Ms on this?”

  “Yeah, you like them, right?” Will says, to which she nods, fishing out a green one from underneath the maple syrup pool. “But seriously– if you want to talk, I’m here.”

  
    “No, I know,”
  
   El says again, and then puts her fork down. “I know Mike told you. But I’m not– I’m not sad, I promise.”

  “Oh.” And Will’s no expert on relationships but he’s pretty sure that most people would be sad that one ended after four and a half years, so he finds himself blurting out, “What?”

  El sighs, looking down at the plate. “Is it bad,” she starts, and Will leans in closer, “that I’m not sad? Does that make me a bad person?”

  “Whoa, hey, no,” Will says immediately, because he knows sh@t-all about relationships but he does know things about maybe being a bad person– a 
  
    horrible, horrible person– 
  
  and he knows that El is anything but. 
  
    Anything 
  
  but. “Of course not. Why would that make you a bad person?”

  “Mike and I just dated for so long,” El continues, picking the fork back up and scooping more whipped cream into her mouth, “I thought that was what we were supposed to keep doing. I didn’t know how to not be– how to not be his 
  
    girlfriend.
  
   So I thought I was supposed to 
  
    stay
  
   his girlfriend. I didn’t know there were– other options.”

  “Right,” Will says, feeling a bit weird in the stomach, “other options. Like– like breaking up, I guess. But what– what changed? You guys were so good together–”

  “I don’t think we were,” El cuts in, eyes widening slightly. “Sorry– is that also a bad thing to say?” At Will’s answering shake of the head she goes on: “I think we make more sense as friends. And I think Mike has felt the same for a really long time too.”

  Will’s probably going to look like an @ssh@l@ if he agrees, so he just nods in what he hopes is a supportive way. “So did you break up with him, then?”

  At this, El snorts, picking up the knife and cutting a neat triangular section of waffle. “No,” she says, “we actually— we did it together. He called last night and asked to talk and I said,” she pauses to chew and swallow, “and I said that would be a good idea. That I— I have been wanting to talk to him too. And then we talked. And then we agreed to break up. Together”

  “Right.” Will’s starting to feel a bit lightheaded. “So are you sure you’re—”

  “Will.” El leans forward and puts a hand on his knee. “You’re very sweet for caring so much. And I know you— I know you have been trying your hardest to help us—”

  
    “—what,”
  
   Will squeaks out, feeling himself turn a vague shade of puce, 
  
    “no, 
  
  it wasn’t— not like that—”

  
    “Will,” 
  
  El says again, but she’s laughing now, “it’s okay, I know Mike talked to you about— things. I’m not mad. I’m glad you could be there for him.”

  And this is when the guilt really, 
  
    really
  
   starts to hit him, washing over him cold and hard-pressed against his skin. “El,” he starts, the weird feeling in his stomach heightening, “I’m not—”

  El ignores him. “You’re the most selfless person I know,” she says with a shrug, digging out a blue M&M this time, “I know you wanted us to be happy, so thank you for trying. It just turns out that 
  
    happy 
  
  for me and Mike is— when we’re separate, I think. Broken up.”

  Will swallows, hard. There’s something pricking at the space behind his eyes and he blinks in rapid succession. He’s not going to cry, okay? Not over 
  
    this, 
  
  not when El just got broken up with— or 
  
    did 
  
  the breaking up, too— but still. “Are you really— happy? Are you happier— broken up?”
El gives him a long, searching look. There’s something very unreadable in her expression— unreadable but somehow also very reminiscent of the fact that she can probably, like, read minds or something. Or enter minds, or something, and Will feels suddenly very vulnerable. “Yes,” she says at last, smiling earnestly. “Yes, I am. We’re good friends, but— it took us a very long time to figure out that’s all. Just friends.”
  “Just friends,” Will echoes, letting out a breath. “Right.”

  “Plus,” El adds, sliding the plate of waffles over to Will, “oh, here, take some.” And then, as Will is spooning a forkful into his mouth: “Plus, I think Mike likes someone else anyway.”

  Will nearly chokes on his bite. Well, he kind of does a little, actually, and then El has to thump him forcefully on the flat of his back until he stops coughing. 
  
    “What?” 
  
  Because there’s 
  
    no f@ck@ng way— 
  
  hasn’t Will suffered enough, honestly?

  “I said,” El frowns, watching him splutter, “he likes someone else—”

  “No, I 
  
    heard 
  
  you,” Will says, not even trying to hide how miserable he probably sounds right now. Maybe this is a sign, after all. Maybe this whole entire sordid affair is a sign that Will should just, like, pull his head out of his ass and find someone else to be obsessed with. Maybe it’s a sign that he just straight up 
  
    sucks 
  
  and doesn’t deserve nice things. “I was just surprised, sorry. And, uh. Are you— okay with that?”

  “It’s okay,” El says, “and what? With Mike liking someone?”

  “Yeah,” Will says gloomily, taking a cautious bite of syrup-soaked waffle. “Isn’t that weird for you? Him liking someone else so soon?”

  El hums thoughtfully for a moment. “Truthfully, Mike hasn’t felt like my boyfriend in a long time,” she says, as if that’s a much more casual thing in actuality than it should be in theory, “we’ve just felt like— like friends. So if he likes someone,” and here, she looks at Will very, 
  
    very 
  
  carefully, and he frowns. “If he likes someone, then I’m happy for him. I want him to be happy, no matter who it’s with.”

  “Great,” Will mutters, “no, yeah, I get it. I’ll be happy for him too.”

  “No,” El sighs, “that’s not what I mean.” And then she fixes him with another patented El Hopper look, and Will’s getting the weird feeling that maybe she kind of 
  
    is 
  
  reading his mind, a little. She squints. “You don’t 
  
    suck, 
  
  Will.”

  “Hey!” he yelps, “stay out of my head!” And then, with another sinking feeling in his gut— “do you, uh, do that a lot?” Because there’s a lot of stuff in his head he wouldn’t want her to see: i.e., regarding one Michael Wheeler, so.

  “No,” she frowns, “that would be invading your privacy. You were just thinking that part a lot and it was very loud. Why do you think you suck?”

  “No reason,” Will says weakly, and then, quickly, and probably against his better judgment, “El, do you think I’m a bad person?”

  “What?” Her expression quickly turns to one of genuine bafflement, and she squeezes his knee again. “Of course not. Why would you even think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Will pauses, drawing his legs up to his chest. “Sometimes I think I’m— I’m really selfish. Like, what if I hurt people on the way to— to get what I want? Or I want something even though it might hurt someone if I get it?”

  El squints at him again. “Are you a serial killer?”

  Will chokes out a startled laugh. 
  
    “What?”
  

  “I’m serious,” she presses. “Because I can’t imagine you being a bad person otherwise. You are not selfish, Will. I think you’re actually the most selfless person I know.”

  Coming from anyone else, he might’ve called b@llsh@t. But El’s been taking that thing seriously for years, that stupid thing Mike said to her years ago about friends not lying— even though, apparently, there are exceptions to boyfriends and girlfriends lying so Will is 
  
    sure
  
   that there’s an exception for brothers and sisters— and she’s still the most earnest person he knows, like she’s afraid that anything bigger than the littlest of white lies will get her smote by an all-knowing cosmic power of friendship.

  He blinks back tears, eyes turning hot and heavy as he presses his hands to them. “Really?”

  “Hey,” El says, “are you okay?”

  Will nods. He’s not going to cry. Not today. Not today. Not— “Yeah,” he says, but of course, because he can’t have nice things 
  
    ever, 
  
  it comes out a bit blubbery, and then El is already there, wrapping her arms around him.

  “Will,” she says softly, “you shouldn’t feel bad for wanting things.” She smells like their fabric softener, and she’s wearing one of Joyce’s old t-shirts from years ago, a bit moth-eaten around the shoulders and collar but worn and soft. “No one should feel bad for wanting things, but especially not 
  
    you.”
  

  “El,” Will gets out, muffled into the crook of her shoulder, 
  
    “what
  
   is that supposed to mean.”

  “It means,” she laughs, pulling back just enough to run her eyes over Will’s face— and there’s definitely, like, 
  
    one 
  
  tear making its way out but she has the good grace to not say anything about it— “I know how hard you were trying to make me happy. And Mike too. Even if it— even if it didn’t make 
  
    you 
  
  happy sometimes, and bad people don’t do that. Selfish people don’t do that.”

  “Oh,” Will starts, and he’s about to tuck his head back into her shoulder when it hits him. “Wait— what do you mean it didn’t make me happy?”

  “I think you’re a good person,” El says with a smile, ignoring him entirely, “the 
  
    best 
  
  person. And I love you, and you should— have the things you want.”

  “I love you too, El,” he says, pulse picking up again, “but what do you mean—”

  “I 
  
    told 
  
  you that Mike and I talked,” which is kind of cryptic and a little unnecessarily vague, Will thinks, but this is El, who likes to do things with an air of mystery and a bit of dramatic flair, so Will figures he’s better off dropping it. She pushes the remaining waffle pile in between them. “And things are good between us now, so are you going to help me with this or not?“

  “Yes,” Will decides, because he’d been saying that thing about sugar and carbs being a hallmark of a breakup, and 
  
    he’s 
  
  not the one that’s going through one but he feels weirdly emotionally drained either way. “I’m a culinary genius,” he remarks, digging the side of the fork into the now-soggy waffle. “This is amazing.”

  El, whose mouth is already full, just nods. “It is,” she says, and then, smiling down at her fork with a curious quirk of one eyebrow, “and I think you should wear green to prom.”

  “What?” Will frowns. “Why? I thought Mike was already—”

  “You look good in green,” El says hurriedly, “and two people can wear the same color, you know,” and then she promptly stuffs her mouth before Will can say anything else.

  Will’s got a choice to make. Possibly the most important one of his life. Possibly one even more daunting than when he had to choose a college to commit to.

  Okay, that’s maybe a bit dramatic. But he’s beginning to think that a tendency towards drama and hyperbole is something that runs in the family— blood or not, in El’s case— because there’s no other reason such a mundane choice should be so 
  
    difficult. 
  

  “Will,” Joyce titters, running into the room with a comb in one hand, “you’re not ready yet? El’s been ready for 
  
    ages 
  
  and you two are supposed to be at Mike’s in 
  
    twenty minutes—”
  

  She stops dead in her tracks in front of the doorway. 
  
    “Will,” 
  
  she says again, but this time with a giant grin spreading across her face. She presses her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, you look so 
  
    handsome—”
  

  “Mo-om,” Will groans, but he’s smiling too. Being wheedled over is probably an irrefutable rite of passage, along with uncomfortable prom photos and spiked punch bowls and awkward slow dancing in a room full of adults—

  —actually, scratch the dancing. He doesn’t want to think about the dancing.

  “There is 
  
    no
  
   way you’re my son,” Joyce is saying, putting the comb down on the table and reaching up to fix Will’s lapel, “because last I remember, my Will was a little boy, not this handsome young man standing in front of me.”

  “Okay,” Will says, laughing even as he rolls his eyes, “I get it, I get it, I look good— Mom, my collar isn’t going to get any better than that, okay— and I’m almost ready!” He holds up his hands, one tie in each, with a sheepish grin. “I just can’t choose.”

  Joyce studies the two ties, frowning. “I think either one would look so 
  
    handsome 
  
  on you,” she says at last, hands still pressed to her cheeks as her grin grows, and Will groans again.

  “Mom, you’re so not helping right now!” He flings his hands up in the air. “Fine, I’ll ask El.” He sticks his head out the bedroom door. “El!”

  She pokes her head out of her room a second later. “Yeah?”

  “I need— hey, your hair looks so good!”

  El grins, bringing a hand up to her intricately braided updo. “You like it?” And then she flattens a hand over the purple fabric of her dress. “Max is going to kill me because this isn’t glittery and it doesn’t have a big bow on the back.”

  “I still think you could pull off a bow,” Will adds, “but, I don’t know, this is really 
  
    you. 
  
  I like it.”

  “Mom said that too, actually.” And then El nods towards his hands, held behind his back. “Did you need help with something?”

  “Ah—” Will clutches the two ties harder in each hand. In one hand is Jonathan’s old one— dark gray satiny fabric to match his suit. And in the other— well, he and Lucas had gone shopping, and then Will had blinked and the next thing he knew he was in the passenger seat of Lucas’ car with an emerald green tie box in his lap.

  And somehow, he still hasn’t 
  
    decided. 
  
  “Right or left,” he says at last.

  El squints. Will isn’t sure if he wants her to be psychic or not in this moment, isn’t sure which choice he’d be more disappointed by. And then El squints a bit harder, smiles, entirely impish and a bit evil, and says, “Left.”

  Ah. Okay.

  “Cool,” he says, trying to keep his hand from shaking as he turns back to his mom, holding out the tie in question. “Help?”

  “William Byers! Looking good!”

  Will hears Lucas’ wolf-whistle a good ten seconds before he sees him, even as he steps out of the car with El shortly in tow as she untangles her dress from the seatbelt. Lucas, followed by the rest of them, are already gathered by the side of the Wheelers’ house, no doubt waiting for them to arrive before taking pictures.

  “Lucas!” Will calls back, making his way up the lawn. Max is right behind him, wearing the blue satin dress from their day at the store and her hair in some sort of twisty situation that’s making Will feel a bit dizzy looking at it for too long. “You guys look—”

  “No need to tell them again,” Dustin pipes up, “Mrs. Wheeler has been fawning over their matching tie and dress nonsense since they got here.” And then, “Looking good, Byers,” he says, grinning. “The Party’s resident lady killer hath arrived.”

  “Hath?” Max snorts, “what are you, twelve?”

  Dustin scowls. “Need I remind you who was freaking out two minutes ago about a little bit of dirt on their shoes?”

  “Hey!” Max snaps, “these are 
  
    good shoes, 
  
  Henderson. You 
  
    know 
  
  I don’t give a sh@t about dirt on my sneakers, but these are 
  
    good shoes—”
  

  “Who has dirt on their shoes?” El says, finally having made it up the driveway, and then she’s engulfed in another round of cheers, and teasing bereavement from Max about, indeed, the decided lack of glitter or bows on El’s dress.

  “I’m just saying El,” he catches from Dustin, “I 
  
    know 
  
  Mrs. Wheeler still has Nancy’s dress in there somewhere, and it was 
  
    giant—”
  

  Speaking of Nancy. Will glances around the group and, with no correlation to the sudden quickening of his pulse or the sweatiness to his palms, notices a face missing. “Where’s Mike?”

  Lucas peers at him from over the huddle and rolls his eyes. “The idiot’s still inside,” he says, “he was fussing over something in the bathroom.”

  “I’ll go get him,” Will says quickly, ducking out of frame as his mom sneaks in a quick picture of Lucas and Max, and another with El and Dustin.

  He crosses around to the basement door, knocking where it’s been left slightly ajar. “Mike?” he calls out. “Are you still here? We’re all outside!”

  There’s a small shuffling noise, and then a rustling of footsteps, and then Mike is throwing open the basement door the rest of the way. “Yeah, I’m here—” he starts, and then falls abruptly silent.

  Oh, okay. This is fine. This is great, even. Because Mike looks— actually, he looks so far beyond 
  
    good 
  
  that Will’s not sure they’ve invented a word for it yet. His hair is curling softly around the bottom of his jaw in a way that’s making Will want to, like, thread his hands through it and never take them out. And the bottoms of his fringe are brushing softly against his eyelashes, moving every time Mike blinks. And, come on. When has anyone not looked good in a suit? 

  Honestly, this is just 
  
    so
  
   unfair. At this point, Will is one hundred percent sure that the universe is f@ck@ng with him just for fun.

  “Hi,” Will offers with a small smile, trying his hardest— and failing miserably— at keeping his pulse rate somewhere that’s still considered relatively safe by the medical community. He sticks his hands inside the pockets of his dress pants so he doesn’t do something stupid, like reach out and tuck Mike’s hair behind his ears— 
  
    again. 
  
  Oh, God. This is fine. 

  His hands are so sweaty.

  “Oh,” Mike is saying, fiddling with the lapel of his suit jacket, other hand still frozen on the doorknob, “hi. Hi, hey, you look— wow. You look great.” There’s a strange pink flush spreading across his cheeks.

  Will grins, despite the weird loopy thing happening inside his stomach. 
  
    Calm down, Byers, 
  
  says the voice in his head. 
  
    One word at a time, you can do this.
  

  “You also— wow,” he blurts out, and then the voice in his head goes silent— probably from shock at how Will could, apparently, reach entirely new levels of incompetency. And the bar was already pretty low, so.

  Mike rubs at the back of his neck with one hand. For some reason, he’s turning even more pink, and is not immediately jumping on the opportunity to poke fun at Will for literally the rest of eternity about his sudden amnesia regarding the English language. He looks— nervous, almost? “Thanks,” he says, with a small smile, and then his gaze lands somewhere around Will’s neck and the smile slips off his face. “Your tie,” he says simply, voice caught somewhere between serious and the smallest touch of awe, and then his gaze flickers back up to Will’s eyes.

  Oh, yeah. “El told me to,” Will says hurriedly, and then, at the small crease forming between Mike’s brows, “like, she suggested it the other day, after you guys, uh— you know. And I was just going to go with gray, but apparently she thinks I look good in green, even though you were already— you know, so—”

  He needs to shut up. He needs to shut up 
  
    now. 
  
  He looks away, instead making perfect eye contact with the green bow tie around Mike’s neck, a little bit off-center, but matching his own tie shade for shade.

  Christ. Okay.

  “She— uh,” Mike clears his throat, eyes widening ever-so-slightly. “Did El say anything else? After we, uh. Broke up?”

  Well, the honest answer would be yes. 
  
    ‘I think Mike likes someone else,’ 
  
  El had said, but that’s something that puts a funny taste in Will’s mouth and all down his throat to think about, so he just swallows it back down. “No,” he says, maybe a bit too primly, and then shakes his head for good measure. “Nothing else.”

  “Oh, okay.” Mike shuffles his feet against the rug in the doorway, clad in shiny dress shoes, and then says, “It was a good call though. El was, uh, she was right— it does look good on you.”

  The breeze is carrying their friends’ voices over from the side of the house, where they must still be standing together. Will hears Dustin’s loud cackle at something, and then El’s offended protest, and there’s something very warm and large swelling up inside his chest. Prom night. Mike looks— he looks great. All his friends are here, dressed up to the nines, and the night is probably going to end with them falling asleep on each other on the car ride home. It’ll be good. Happy and light and full of, like, serendipity or whatever.

  So maybe, if Will can have this, it’ll be okay. Even if he can have only this, he’ll be fine.

  But because he’s a little selfish after all, despite everything El said, he awards himself this one thing. “Your bow tie is crooked,” he points out, and then takes the step up onto the threshold so he and Mike are face to face.

  “Oh,” Mike laughs, watching Will move closer, “I was trying to fix it in the bathroom this whole time but I guess it didn’t work.”

  “Apparently not,” Will smiles, reaching under Mike’s collar where the strap of the bow has gone a little twisted. “How hard can it be to adjust a bow tie, Mike?”

  “Hey, it’s harder than you think,” Mike mutters, and then, just as Will’s knuckle softly grazes the line of his throat, he takes in a sudden breath, barely audible even with their proximity.

  “Oh, sorry,” Will says, still concentrating on untwisting the strap without making Mike take the whole d@mn thing off. “Did I press too hard or something?”

  A beat. And then another. No response.

  Will frowns, looking up. “Mike?”

  Mike blinks, gaze shooting back up from where it had been resting somewhere around Will’s chin. “No,” he says, after another moment, with a minute shake of his head. His voice is barely above a whisper. “No, you’re good.”

  Oh. “Okay,” Will says back, voice also dropped to a whisper. He doesn’t know why. “I’m, uh.” He smooths out the creases with his fingers, folding the collar back over where it had been sticking up. “I’m done. It looks— better.”

  “Cool,” Mike says softly, still looking steadily down at Will. His eyelashes are— really long. Okay. This is fine.

  “Cool,” Will echoes, hands inexplicably lingering over Mike’s clavicle when he could just step away, thumb hovering somewhere over his sternum. He clears his throat, presses his palms down against the fabric to smooth it out too. “There, it’s just—”

  “Will?” Mike cuts him off so suddenly that Will looks up, hands still splayed across the dip of Mike’s collarbone under his crisply starched dress shirt.

  He frowns. “Yeah?”

  Mike takes a half-step closer, even though they’re already close enough for Will to smell Mike’s cologne, and under that, the lingering traces of his soap— oh, 
  
    God— 
  
  and sets a hand on the underside of Will’s elbow. “I need to— can I talk to you about something?” he asks, urgently, even with his voice still hushed.

  Will thinks his body might’ve entirely forgotten how to, like, operate itself. “Uh,” he says, as Mike squeezes, once, along the soft line of his forearm. He looks nervous— really, 
  
    really 
  
  nervous. He looks a little bit like how the inside of Will’s stomach is feeling, actually which is—

  
    It’s interesting, 
  
  a voice pipes up in his head. 
  
    It’s interesting, that’s all.
  

  He swallows. “Mike? What is it?”

  “El and I broke up,” Mike starts, which Will already knows— they 
  
    all 
  
  already know, because that was three weeks ago and it’s not like they really have other friends, so. Well, except Lucas, who’s got the entire student body wrapped around his little finger.

  “Yeah?” Will prompts, when Mike just keeps looking at him, entirely wordlessly and intensely enough for the bottom of Will’s stomach to feel like it’s dropping clean out of his body. They’re close enough for the toes of their shoes to be touching, still standing on the brown welcome mat the Wheelers have had at their basement door for as long as Will can remember.

  “Right,” Mike says, “it’s just, uh. I don’t know if she told you 
  
    why—”
  

  “I think there were a lot of reasons, Mike,” Will says with a small smile. He’s aiming for, like, 
  
    apologetic, 
  
  lighthearted, but Mike’s eyes widen just the tiniest amount and Will wonders, for a split second, whether he’s offended him. Sh@t. Fine, this is fine.

  “Right,” Mike says again, and then shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m not doing this right, I—”

  
    “Mike,” 
  
  Will laughs, “it’s just me, come on.” He squeezes Mike’s shoulder in support and Mike lets out a soft, sudden exhale. “Just say— whatever it is you have to say.”

  “Well there 
  
    were
  
   a lot of reasons,” Mike blurts, his hand flexing on Will’s elbow, and then he takes a big, grounding breath, and says, very fast, “but also— also, I really—”

  “Michael?”

  Mrs. Wheeler’s voice comes floating down from the top of the basement stairs, the door opening to reveal a sliver of her carefully permed blonde hair. “Michael, are you ready?” she’s asking, making her way down the stairs, “your friends are waiting for you!”

  Will and Mike look at each other, up at the stairs, and then back at each other. And then, simultaneously, they spring apart. “Sorry, sh@t, sorry,” Mike is saying, and Will hears himself stutter out something that sounds like, “No, it’s cool, it’s great, no worries!”

  And Will feels like he’s been caught doing something a lot more scandalous than what it actually was: just fixing Mike’s bow tie. And, okay, like, gazing longingly into his eyes while Mike spluttered out incoherent sentence fragments at him. But really, it was nothing.

  Then why the hell is his heart beating so fast?

  “Mom!” Mike is saying next to him, fingers twitching at his side like he expected Will’s arm to still be there, pressed against them. “You startled me.”

  Karen Wheeler makes a small 
  
    tch 
  
  noise, and then turns to Will, beaming. “Will!” she exclaims,“you look so handsome!”

  Will’s face feels about a million degrees, actually— in Celsius, too, so 
  
    really 
  
  warm— so he isn’t sure how 
  
    handsome 
  
  he could be looking right now, but he smiles back anyway. “Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler,” he offers, and she pulls out a camera.

  “Oh!” she says, putting a hand over her chest, “and you two match, too! Can I take a quick picture before we head out to the others?”

  Will looks back at Mike, who looks back at Will, and Mike’s face also looks to be at 
  
    least
  
   half a million degrees warm, and Will isn’t sure his own 
  
    won’t
  
   get any redder if Mike keeps looking at him like that, so he shrugs and looks away. “Sure, why not.”

  “I can’t believe you two are so grown up,” she titters, stepping back to get them both in frame. And then, smiling exasperatedly, “Michael, move a bit closer, I’m sure Will doesn’t have any— what is it— cooties?”

  Will chokes out a laugh, while Mike splutters, “I don’t think he’s got 
  
    cooties,” 
  
  but then he’s stepping closer anyway, slinging an easy arm around Will’s shoulder, and then Will’s brain promptly shuts itself off.

  “Uh,” he says, and just barely remembers that you’re supposed to, like, 
  
    smile 
  
  for the camera or something.

  “Say cheese,” Karen is saying, and then Mike’s hand slips from the top of his shoulder to somewhere around his side, squeezing lightly, just as the shutter goes off.

  Will doesn’t even need to see the picture to know two things: One, he was probably smiling like a straight-up idiot. And second, his face was definitely redder than Vecna’s apocalyptic hellfire glow, so.

  That’s great. That’s really great.

  “What does 
  
    prom 
  
  even mean,” El wonders aloud, tapping her fingers on the entirely over-decorated table they’re sitting at. They’d arrived late, but Will’s pretty sure that’s the fashionable thing to do anyway, and far be him from being an expert on social norms but he’s not sure how many people showed up here on time 
  
    and 
  
  entirely sober, so.

  “It’s short for 
  
    promenade,” 
  
  Dustin responds, as Lucas wanders back to their table with several cups of punch.

  “I only got three because that’s all I could hold,” he says, setting one down in front of each of the others, “and I’m pretty sure these are the last ones from before the cronies spiked the rest, so enjoy. Sucks for me, Mike, and Max, but whatever.”

  Will cranes his neck to look over Lucas’ shoulder where, sure enough, a few guys from the basketball team are huddled over the punch bowl, one pulling a flask out of his suit jacket and the rest trying their hardest, surely, to keep from giggling. “I guess it 
  
    is 
  
  late enough in the night for it to be kind of cool to drink at school events,” Will muses, “instead of just mostly lame.”

  “What does 
  
    promenade 
  
  mean, then,” El’s asking Dustin, leaning in with wide eyes like this is some big conspiracy of nomenclature instead of just some uppity high society thing from probably a million years ago.

  “It’s like— you’d parade around outside in front of people?” Dustin tries, “like you’d look all nice and then you’d— walk around?”

  “That’s weird,” El frowns. “Why would you walk around in a prom dress? It would just get all dirty.”

  Will thinks El makes a fair point. “I guess that’s why they have it inside now,” he says, sipping at the watered-down punch. It’s kind of gross and mostly tasteless, but it’s hot and stuffy in here, and he’s already parched, even though they’ve only been here for maybe an hour. “Where are Mike and Max anyway?”

  El stifles a laugh behind her hand as Lucas rolls his eyes. “She dragged him out to dance a couple songs ago,” he says, but he’s grinning as he says it, “because Madonna’s playing and Mike hates Madonna, so.”

  “Mike doesn’t hate Madonna,” Will finds himself saying, “he just hates 
  
    Material Girl. 
  
  But I caught him dancing to 
  
    La Isla Bonita 
  
  the other day when he thought no one was watching, so.
  
    ” 
  
  And then he trails off, looking up to find the rest of the three of them staring at him. He frowns. “What?”

  “Oh man,” Lucas is saying, his grin growing impossibly wider. “Oh 
  
    man, 
  
  oh I’m 
  
    never 
  
  letting him live that down.”

  “Wait!” Will splutters frantically, as they erupt into laughter, “wait, you can’t tell him, he’ll 
  
    kill 
  
  me!”

  “He wouldn’t,” El chirps, and then she holds a hand out to Dustin. “Do you want to dance?”

  “Yes, please.” Dustin brushes something off of his vest and stands up. “I’ve got some moves I’ve been 
  
    dying 
  
  to try out.”

  Personally, Will thinks that Max had dragged Mike out dancing less so because of the 
  
    dancing 
  
  of it all, and more so because she likes doing things that generally end up with Mike glaring daggers at everyone in the room. He spots them over on the far side of the gym, Max looking exuberantly gleeful, Mike looking resigned, one hand grasped loosely between Max’s fingers, but an undeniable sort of happy. Will’s caught him with his head thrown back mid-laugh, smiling so wide that Will can see his eyes crinkling up even from here. He looks— 
  
    radiant, 
  
  is the only word Will can think of to describe it. Something very fond and very warm and very helium-balloon-like is swelling up around his heart.

  “You’re smiling pretty big,” Lucas remarks, “someone caught your eye?”

  “Oh,” Will clears his throat, tearing his gaze away with unnecessary difficulty. “Uh. No.”

  “Mm,” Lucas says, not sounding particularly convinced. “Seems like both our dates got stolen away from us, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Will says, a bit absentmindedly, watching Mike twirl around to 
  
    Where’s the Party. 
  
  And then, a moment later, “Wait, what?”

  There’s a pause for a moment, and then Lucas turns away from where Max is giggling and ducking under Mike’s extended arm. “Listen,” he starts, and then leans in like the two of them are sharing a secret. “I don’t mean to overstep, but— I’ve known Mike for a really long time, and I’ve never— I’ve never seen him look at someone the way he’s been looking at you tonight.”

  Will blinks. “Lucas, 
  
    what—”
  

  Lucas throws both hands up in the air. “You can tell me if I’m totally off base,” he says, but Will’s getting the sinking feeling that maybe he 
  
    isn’t 
  
  totally off base, “but I’ve known Mike since, what, his family first moved into that house? And I’ve known you basically ever since then too. And— I don’t know. I’ve never seen him look at someone like he was looking at you on the car ride here. And maybe I’ve known you a couple years less, but I’ve never seen 
  
    you 
  
  look at someone like you were looking at 
  
    him, 
  
  so…”

  There’s a couple seconds that pass where Will thinks he can still get away with denying it— because he knows Lucas won’t press if he tells him not to— and then he can go back to staring at Mike from across the gym like an idiot. But then he lets that moment stretch on too long, just 
  
    half a beat
  
   too long, and Lucas’ eyes start to widen.

  “Will,” he starts, holding out a placating hand, “I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything— I drank, like, 
  
    one 
  
  cup of the boozy punch earlier so I’m probably, like, way overstepping. I’ll never bring it up again if you don’t want me to—”

  “No,” Will groans, letting his head drop into his hands. “No, you’re right. You’re totally right. It’s just— oh, God. Am I being really obvious about it?”

  “No,” Lucas smiles easily, a little smug, “probably not to anyone else,” and before Will can ask him what the hell he means by 
  
    that, 
  
  Max is slumping into the chair next to Lucas, grinning.

  “My feet hurt like a 
  
    bitch,” 
  
  she gripes.

  “Must be from all that dancing to a 
  
    Spanish lullaby,”
  
   Lucas says, far too gleefully, over Will’s shoulder where Mike’s just walked up.

  “What?” Mike says, frowning. Will drops his head back into his hands. And then, a second later, “Will, you 
  
    told 
  
  them? Come 
  
    on, 
  
  man!”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Will protests, and then Mike is cupping a hand around the back of Will’s neck as he leans in to hit Lucas on the shoulder, the touch so casual that Will doesn’t even think he knows he’s doing it, and his brain just cuts him off mid-sentence and he falls silent.

  “Mhm,” Lucas says, grinning pointedly in Will’s direction. 
  
    “Never
  
   letting you live this down,” he says, but Will’s not really sure which of the two of them he’s talking to.

  It’s not until an hour later, as the night is winding down, that Will realizes he’s lost Mike. Again.

  He’s not really sure 
  
    where 
  
  he’d be, because pretty much all of Mike’s friends are already in this corner of the gym. Will’s danced with Max and Dustin and Lucas and El, and even one courtesy dance with Jennifer Hayes because her date had tripped over a table leg and broken his foot and he’d felt a little bad seeing her standing there alone, even though that had ended up being the most terrifyingly awkward three minutes of probably his entire life.

  Will’s scanning the room when he spots them— Mike and El— over by the punch bowl, heads leaning in together and lost in conversation.

  Oh.

  And it’s probably nothing— it’s probably 
  
    nothing, 
  
  Will reminds himself, even as he feels his body deflate. Lucas had probably been wrong about whatever it was he’d been saying— about Mike 
  
    looking 
  
  at him in the car ride here, or whatever. El’s waving one hand around rapid-fire, gesturing at the DJ stand and then back at Mike, but she’s laughing, and Mike’s got his face in both hands and is shaking his head rapidly, and even from here, Will can see his ears have gone a bright red, so he really wants to know what the hell El just said to make Mike 
  
    blush
  
   like that.

  And then, simultaneously, they both lift their heads up and look right at him, in the direction of the group’s table, and Will freezes. El grins, waving. Mike— Mike kind of looks a bit like he wants to sink right through the floor of the gym and pass away. His face is bright, 
  
    bright 
  
  red.

  “What do you think that’s about?” he asks Dustin across the table. He’s helping Max slip a pin back into her hair and they both look up. El waves at them too, and Mike drops his head into his hands again.

  “Oh,” they say in unison. And then: “Nothing,” Dustin says, grinning, just as Max goes, 
  
    “Oh,” 
  
  and then also grins, and Will’s starting to get the feeling that everyone knows something except for him.

  “Guys,” he presses, “what is it? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” Lucas chimes in, which is entirely unhelpful and also Will doesn’t believe him even a little. Then he holds out a hand to Max: “Dance?”

  Max looks at Dustin, then Lucas, then over to El and Mike, and then back to Lucas, and then finally to Will, and she grins even wider. “Yes,” she says, and then they slink off.

  “Can you believe this bull,” Will huffs, sitting back in his chair. “I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other. I thought we were—”

  “Yeah, hold that thought,” Dustin says abruptly, looking over Will’s shoulder at El, “I’ve, uh— I’ve got to go,” and then he’s disappearing off into the abyss of students milling about.

  You’d think after all they’d been through, Will’s friends would be less awful, but no dice, apparently. He leans back, crossing his arms and scowling, casting a quick glance over to where El and Mike are standing, thinking maybe he’ll go bother them for a bit.

  But El and Mike have disappeared too, which is— great. That’s great. That’s so—

  “Is this seat taken?”

  The room is already very loud, so there’s no reason for Will to startle as hard as he does. As it is, Mike sits down in the chair next to him very tentatively, like he’s scared Will is going to jump right out of his seat and run away if he does it too fast. He’s still very red.

  “No,” Will rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He gestures over to the corner where Mike had been standing. “Hey, so what was all that about?”

  Mike taps his fingers against the table. “Right. You know, it’s funny how El and I are talking more now that we’ve broken up than when we were, you know. Together.”

  “Right,” Will echoes. “So what were you guys—”

  “—and I know you guys have been telling me for ages that my brain is full of, like, cotton fluff,” Mike rambles on, ignoring Will completely, “and, you know, I’m starting to think you all were right about that.”

  “Okay,” Will says, “I don’t—”

  “Basically,” Mike says, fidgeting with his cufflinks. “Basically, I’m an idiot, Will, okay? And I’m sorry it took me so long to get some sense, like, knocked right into my head but, you know, I was trying to tell you earlier and—”

  “Whoa, Mike, slow your roll,” Will says, reaching out to still Mike’s restless hand. “What’s up?”

  Mike takes in a deep, shaky breath, and then stands up, biting nervously down on his lower lip. He holds out a hand. “I don’t suppose you’d want to dance?”

  Will blinks up at him. 
  
    Dance? 
  
  “Dance?”

  Mike jerks his head in the direction of the dance floor. “Yeah,” he says, and it comes out a bit tremulous. And then, steadier, “dance. Do you want to— to dance with me?”

  Oh, God. 

  
    Yes, 
  
  screams the voice in his head, 
  
    yes! 
  
  His heart leaps immediately into his throat, and he opens his mouth– 
  
    yes!–
  
   but what comes out is: “To Pat Benatar?”

  “No, you idiot,” Mike laughs, but it sounds a bit nervous still, and then he extends his hand farther. “El’s taking care of that. But do you— I mean, you don’t have to—”

  “No, I do,” Will blurts, feeling simultaneously very giddy and very aware of his own body. “I really, really do.”

  He slips his hand into Mike’s, and Mike visibly relaxes. “Cool,” he smiles, relieved, like a thousand-pound weight just got lifted off his chest. “And I feel like we should get this out of the way now, but I’m a horrible dancer.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Will laughs, focused too intently on the feeling of Mike’s fingers threading through his as they weave through the crowd to really be paying attention. “I saw you earlier with Max.”

  “I was trying my best, okay,” Mike groans, but he’s laughing a bit too, “she just moves so fast!”

  “For the sake of transparency, I should probably tell you that I had to practice with my mom earlier,” Will admits, as Mike turns to face him, “so I’m not— this isn’t really my thing either.”

  “That’s okay,” Mike says, with so much conviction that Will immediately believes him. “We can suck together, it’s cool.”

  He flounders for a second, trying to situate their hands, and Will bursts into laughter. “Shh,” Mike says, but he’s also giggling. “Here, put your hands 
  
    here,” 
  
  he says, guiding one of Will’s wrists to his waist, “and I guess we can, like, hold hands with this one, kind of?” His other hand comes up around Will’s neck, and that’s when this all starts to feel very, 
  
    very 
  
  real.

  “Pat Benatar is still playing,” Will says softly, looking over at the crowd. This is all a little— very— overwhelming. Not because it’s Mike— that’s the weird thing, is that the thing that should freak him out the hardest is actually grounding him the most. But he’s suddenly aware that they’re in a room full of people, a room full of the same @ssh@l@s Will’s spent the last thirteen years of his life being surrounded by, and he probably shouldn’t care but he 
  
    does, 
  
  a little. He wishes he didn’t but that’s something that’ll probably take more than five seconds holding Mike Wheeler’s hand to shake.

  He must stiffen up or something, imperceptible to his own self but clearly not to Mike, because Mike frowns, the hand on his shoulder squeezing comfortingly. “Hey,” Mike says, tilting his head so he comes back into Will’s line of vision. “Just focus on me, okay? It’s just you and me.”

  “Yeah,” Will says, “sorry, it’s just— it’s a lot, with everyone here.”

  “I know,” Mike says, sympathy laced carefully into both syllables, “but— look, I don't care about these guys, okay Will? A couple months and we’ll be out of here, leaving this whole sh@tty place behind. They don’t matter. It’s just you and me.”

  “You and—” and, okay, if it had felt overwhelming before, it’s 
  
    nothing 
  
  compared to the head rush Will is experiencing right now. “You and me?” His voice definitely cracked on that last syllable. Oh, God.

  “Yeah,” Mike says, eyes wide. There’s something very vulnerable written across his face, the upturn tilt to his brows, the hopeful smile dancing across his lips. He takes in a breath. “Is that— is that okay? I don’t— not to, like, be too forward or anything, but I don’t 
  
    think
  
   I’m misreading this, so if I’m about to screw things up really, 
  
    really 
  
  badly, then you have to tell me, okay?” Mike’s eyes dart between his, dark brown and intense and totally, 
  
    totally 
  
  genuine. Will feels his heart physically skip a beat. “Am I about to mess this up, Will?”

  Will swallows, squeezes Mike’s hand. “No,” he says, barely audible over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Oh, God. “No, you’re not.”

  “Cool,” Mike says, and then he grins, so bright and relieved that Will wants to, like, lean in and kiss it right off his face. Or something.

  Christ. Okay.

  There’s a soft crackle of static over the speaker. Pat Benatar’s voice gets cut off mid-lyric, and the melody changes— softer, smoother. Will squints. “Is this Richard Marx?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Mike blushes brilliant red. “Sorry, you like this song, right? I saw the album open on your shelf a lot, and you’re always humming it, so I figured—”

  “No, I do,” Will says, nodding, “I do love this song, it’s just—” And then he catches a glimpse of El over Mike’s shoulder, flashing him a giant grin and an exaggerated wink. And then Max, next to her, with a slightly more evil version of that same grin. And Lucas and Dustin next to 
  
    them—
  

  “Oh no,” Will says, realization hitting him with the force of a pickup truck as he feels his face heat up for the millionth time tonight, “we’re going to get so much sh@t for this later, aren’t we?”

  “Probably,” Mike admits, also still pink. 

  
    “Oceans apart, day after day,” 
  
  Richard Marx starts, and the crowd around them rearranges, couples pairing off. 

  Will swallows. “Are you— is this,” he starts, and then, unable to deal with the full-on intensity of Mike’s questioning look, simply blurts out, “I really like you, Mike. I really, 
  
    really 
  
  like you.”

  Great. Bring on the eternal embarrassment.

  Mike laughs. “I really like you too, Will,” he says, and then his expression slips into something more solemn. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a really long time,” he says, like he’s confessing to a deep, dark secret.

  “What,” Will laughs, “dance with me?”

  But Mike just nods. “Yeah,” he says, dead serious, “ever since we were thirteen. At the Snow Ball.”

  Oh. 

  
    “How can we say forever,” 
  
  Richard Marx sings, as Will’s brain tries its hardest to play catch-up. 

  “Since the 
  
    Snow Ball?” 
  
  he squeaks out, “that’s— a long time.”

  “Yeah,” Mike laughs, a bit sheepish, just barely avoiding stepping on Will’s toes. “Sh@t, 
  
    sorry—
  
   and, uh, probably even before that, too. But— I don’t know— I got scared, I guess. Of what might happen if I asked you. And I— I thought about it a lot,” he adds, as they turn slowly in place, his hand coming to cup the side of Will’s arm, and then sliding around it to clutch at his shoulder blade, “what things might have been like if I’d made a different choice that night.”

  “Choice,” Will repeats, most of his cognitive function being rendered entirely useless by the solid weight of Mike’s waist under his fingers. “You mean— El?”

  
    “I will be right here waiting for you,” 
  
  Richard croons. 
  
    “Whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks—”
  

  Mike’s smiling apologetically. “Yeah,” he admits, “I don’t know— we were both too young to know what we were getting into. But that didn’t mean I felt any less awful about— about things.”

  Will lets out a soft snort. “Oh, believe me, I know the feeling,” which is only a little bit funny and is mostly kind of a sore subject, a bruise he’s been pressing his fingers into for years, just to see what would happen. And apparently what happens if you dig your thumb straight into a wound is that it 
  
    hurts, 
  
  so it’s like, who knew, right?

  “And I don’t know how I didn’t see it,” Mike is saying, swaying them in place, and Will’s heart 
  
    soars,
  
   “because you were, like, right there in front of me the entire time— but sometimes, just when I’d convinced myself that maybe you felt the same, and that I wasn’t just— just 
  
    imagining 
  
  things, you’d say something trying to, like, push me and El closer together and I’d psych myself out, figured maybe I 
  
    was
  
   imagining things after all—”

  “No.” Will shakes his head, determined, even as a hysterical laugh comes bubbling up out of his throat. “God, Mike, no, you weren’t. You weren’t imagining anything, I just— I felt like such an awful person— I thought you were happier with her. I thought it would be my fault if you guys broke up, I thought it would be so selfish of me to want that—”

  “You’re not selfish,” Mike says, gaping as if this is a personal offense to him, “are you kidding me? All of that and you were still thinking about me and El? Are you kidding me, Will? Sometimes you just make me 
  
    so— 
  
  I just want to—”

  
    “What,” 
  
  Will presses, because he’s pretty sure the next words out of Mike’s mouth were going to be something along the lines of either 
  
    kill you 
  
  or 
  
    kiss you 
  
  and he’s not sure which would be more likely to end with him dead on the floor, actually. And the dancing is kind of a lot already, he doesn’t think he could 
  
    kiss 
  
  Mike here, in the middle of their high school gym—

  Oh, God.

  “Do you think I could dip you?” Mike asks, all of a sudden, which makes Will let out a startled little laugh and, feeling a bit brave, he leans in to tuck his face into Mike’s collarbone.

  “Maybe,” he says, “but probably best to not try right now?”

  “Good idea,” he hears Mike say, somewhere above him, and he can’t see Mike’s face but he doesn’t need to look to know that a giant, brilliantly blinding smile is spreading across it. He presses harder against Will’s shoulder, pulling him in. And, because Will thinks he probably deserves it after all this, he just stays there, pressed up against Mike so that they’re not so much dancing as they are just sort of, like, rocking on the spot.

  Over Mike’s shoulder, El and Max are doing some kind of complicated waltz, and Lucas actually 
  
    is
  
   dipping Dustin, quite successfully, which is kind of really impressive. Lucas catches Will’s eye and, as Dustin rights himself, flashes him a thumbs up, as if to say, 
  
    ‘We got you.’
  

  “Oh, can’t you see it, baby,” Will sings along quietly, more out of instinct than anything else, “you got me going crazy—” 

  And then he’s thinking about that 
  
    thing, 
  
  that selfish, horrible fantasy he had that maybe wasn’t so selfish and horrible after all, about Mike barging into his room and pressing play on this song and then kissing all coherent thought right out of Will’s body. Not that there’s usually much to begin with, but.

  “I 
  
    knew 
  
  you liked this song,” Mike is saying, unabashedly gleeful, and Will groans.

  “It’s a good song!”

  “Uh huh,” Mike says. And then, as the closing notes play softly, he pulls away slightly to say, “Okay, so, I don’t know what your general thoughts are on dancing and stuff but I think I’ve, you know, kind of made my point by now. Unless maybe I haven’t been clear about being, like, totally, embarrassingly into you,” to which Will rolls his eyes, smiling. “So I could ask El to, like, 
  
    psychic 
  
  another song onto the setlist if you wanted, because this is pretty good— I like this—”

  “Or,” Will interrupts, thinking about that brief, fleeting moment where he’d thought Mike was going to say something about 
  
    kissing 
  
  him, even if he hadn’t, and feeling an uncharacteristic surge of confidence, “we could step outside?”

  “Yeah,” Mike nods rapidly, eyes wide, as Will begins tugging him towards the door, pink blooming quickly across his cheeks, “yeah, yes, that’s good— you know, fresh air, it’s good for you, and it’s 
  
    super 
  
  hot in here—”

  It actually isn’t that much cooler outside, because it’s nighttime in the Midwest, in what’s technically not early summer yet but it’s getting d@mn close, but it does smell a lot less sweaty, even if the infamous makeout alley behind the gym isn’t, like, the 
  
    most
  
   scenic spot Will can think of. 

  It’ll do. He’s not one to be picky.

  “It’s nicer out here,” Will starts to say, turning around to maybe, like, hold Mike’s hand if he could get away with that, but then Mike’s already kind of kissing him.

  
    Kind of 
  
  because he’s sort of caught Will mid-turn, and it’s probably not the best aim Mike’s ever had in his life because the kiss lands somewhere on the corner of Will’s mouth, but it’s close enough to the target— namely, Will’s 
  
    mouth, Jesus H. Christ— 
  
  for him to let out a startled sound and close his eyes on instinct.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Mike is saying hurriedly, already pulling away before Will can fully process what just happened, clapping a hand over his mouth, eyes wide and horrified. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, like, ambush you or anything, I was just thinking about doing that all night, ever since you showed up at my place, and, like, way before that if we’re being honest, which maybe makes me horrible and awful because I was dating your 
  
    sister, 
  
  but, you know, now that that’s all settled I thought—”

  “Mike,” Will says, not really having anything else to say after that, but just to get Mike to stop talking. That’s— that’s a lot of words, and Will doesn’t really know where to even start. He could start with 
  
    I was just thinking about doing that all night, 
  
  or 
  
    and way before that if we’re being honest, 
  
  or 
  
    which maybe makes me horrible and awful— 
  
  “Mike,” he says again, “can you please just shut up.”

  Mike shuts up. Or, mostly. “Yeah,” he nods, “sorry—”

  “Just— just give me a second,” Will says, wiping his— 
  
    gross— 
  
  sweaty palms against his pants and looking at Mike, who’s even redder than he was when they were inside, and whose bow tie is endearingly off-center again, his hair a bit rumpled and a slight sheen across his forehead. Mike nods again. 

  “Sorry,” Will says, hands flailing about, “you were just— and we were just, you know— and I’ve wanted to kiss you for, like, forever and— and I don’t even know where to start,” he finishes, laughing softly and dropping his face into his hands in defeat. “You look really good tonight,” he says, muffled by his palms. 

  There’s a beat of silence. Then, a pair of hands tug at his wrists. “Not to overwhelm you or anything,” Mike says softly, as Will lowers his hands, “but could I— you know, if you let me, I’d love to, like, try again. With better aim this time,” he says, with a nervous smile, and then any and all of the remaining tension immediately shatters around them.

  Will grins. “Yeah,” he says, stomach swooping, heady and pulse stuttering, “you can totally try again, thanks for the heads—”

  The word 
  
    ‘up’ 
  
  gets lost somewhere in the stale midnight air. And it 
  
    is 
  
  better this time— a 
  
    lot 
  
  better. Granted, all of Will’s experience with kissing is, like, that one half-kiss they’d shared forty seconds ago, but he’s probably got enough self-awareness at this point in his life to distinguish an objectively good kiss from a questionable one. 

  It’s still a little bit awkward, because Will’s got to, like, turn his face upwards to make up for the couple of inches of height Mike lords over him, and Mike isn’t really doing much more than just softly pressing their mouths together, but it’s nice. The way Will’s hands have already found their way to Mike’s waist, mirroring the way they had been dancing just a few minutes ago. The way Mike’s hand has already curved gently around his jaw, like he didn’t even have to think about it. Or, conversely, like maybe he’s thought about this 
  
    a lot 
  
  before. 

  Objectively, this is really, really 
  
    nice.
  

  “Good?” Mike pulls away by maybe, like, one millimeter, enough so that Will can still feel the sensation of their lips brushing together and the warmth of Mike’s skin near his. And— you know what— he takes back everything he said before, actually, about 
  
    settling 
  
  and 
  
    not being picky
  
   and 
  
    taking what he can get. 
  
  Because those things were someone else’s thoughts— a Will that didn’t know what it was like to feel Mike’s lips against his own, a Will that had resigned himself to being unselfish and forgiving and a little too pliant around the edges. A Will that hadn’t yet taken Mike’s hand and, like, swayed back and forth with him in the middle of a sweaty gym while telling him he 
  
    really really liked him. 
  
  Which, objectively, should have been a lot less romantic than it felt, but whatever. 

  “Idea,” Will manages to get out, his breath puffing out against Mike’s mouth, and Mike pulls back just far enough to nod, gaze flickering down to Will’s lips. “I have an idea, hold on—”

  “Ideas are good,” Mike offers, as Will fists both hands in the lapels of Mike’s suit jacket, “innovation is very important for modern society, you know,” and then Will backs up against the worn brick of the school, pulling Mike bodily along with him with a soft 
  
    oof, 
  
  so that Mike ends up bracing himself against the wall with one hand and hovering right in front of Will’s face.

  Mike grins a signature Mike Wheeler grin, wide and cheesy and enough to get his eyes all crinkling up at the corners. “Hey,” he says, which is just about enough for Will to let go of his jacket with both hands and tuck his face into Mike’s neck, groaning.

  
    “Hey?” 
  
  he parrots, incredulous, lips moving gently against the warm column of Mike’s throat. “You just— you just kissed me and you’re saying 
  
    hey?” 
  

  “This, uh, might be hard to believe,” Mike says, with a soft, sharp intake of breath, still leaning against the wall with one arm, “but my vocabulary isn’t, like, the most 
  
    refined 
  
  right now, so—”

  Despite whatever Mike just said, Will figures that if he’s using big words like 
  
    vocabulary 
  
  and 
  
    refined, 
  
  while Will’s own brain feels a bit like it’s leaking right out one ear and onto the concrete, he probably didn’t kiss him as hard as he should have. “Whatever,” Will mumbles, pulling him back in, hard enough for Mike to let out another soft, pleased noise of surprise and to bring his other hand up to catch himself, caging Will in entirely against the gray-orange of the brick.

  “Good,” Mike whispers, pupils blown in the dim light of the schoolyard, “you have good ideas,” and then he’s kissing him again, Will automatically leaning back against the brick, tilting his head up to meet Mike in the middle. It’s all very— 
  
    oh, 
  
  he thinks, as Mike bites down softly against his lower lip, nothing more than a light graze of teeth but enough for Will’s knees to go weak and shaky with it. On instinct, maybe to steady himself, maybe to close the gap between them that feels a lot more significant than it really is, Will slips his hands under Mike’s suit jacket and around to the small of his back, 
  
    pulling, 
  
  and Mike moves like putty in his hands, warm and pliant and letting out a sweet noise in an exhale against his lips—

  
    Oh, okay. 
  

  It’s hard and breathless and perfectly accomplishing all that stuff Will had been thinking about Mike running into his room and kissing him stupid to some cheesy love song— except less in Will’s room and more in the makeout spot behind the gym— and it’s maybe with a little too much teeth, but what does Will know, he’s literally never kissed someone before this. Not like he’s complaining either way.

  “Just to be clear,” Will starts, pulling away again, and then he laughs as Mike makes a minute, jerky motion chasing Will’s lips. “Just to be clear, you like me?”

  Mike stares, like he’s trying to figure out if Will is being difficult on purpose. Which, okay, it’s not entirely Will’s fault because his brain feels a bit like it’s existing between states of matter at the moment, so he thinks his cognitive function is doing pretty good all things considered. “You’re— are you joking?” And then, when Will’s only response is a questioning blink, he sighs. “Yes,” he says earnestly, leaning in and pressing a quick kiss to Will’s lips, and then backing away just as fast. “Yes, I like you,” he says, and leans in. “I really,” 
  
    kiss, 
  
  “really,” 
  
    kiss, 
  
  “really—”

  “Okay!” Will laughs giddily, exuberant joy flooding his chest cavity so fast that he gets honestly kind of lightheaded with it, tilting his head back against the brick which really just kind of traps him in place and also gives Mike the opportunity to press a kiss to his ear, and then his jaw, and then down his neck to where his shirt collar has gone a bit crumpled. “Okay, Mike—” 
  
    kiss, 
  
  “—okay, sorry, I’m an idiot, I’m sorry!”

  “D@mn right,” Mike agrees, looking far too pleased with himself for someone whose bow tie is knocked so obnoxiously off-center again. And, just because he can, Will threads his hands through Mike’s hair, and grins up at him.

  “Hi,” he smiles, something very alive and fluttery taking flight in his chest. “Hey.”

  “Oh, but when 
  
    I 
  
  stop kissing 
  
    you
  
   to say 
  
    ‘hey’ 
  
  it’s not allowed,” Mike rolls his eyes, but he’s leaning in to press a kiss to Will’s cheek so he can’t be 
  
    that
  
   upset about it, “but you get to do whatever you want?”

  “Yeah,” Will nods. And then, entirely on a whim, spurred on by the soft flush spreading across Mike’s face, the way his hand’s come up against the back of Will’s head to cushion it against the hard brick: “And you love me anyway, so—”

  There’s a beat that passes. 
  
    Sh@t, 
  
  Will thinks, eyes widening, 
  
    sh@t. 
  
  He’s maybe a hair’s breadth away from freaking out, but before the cold shock of panic can even start to set in, before he can even stiffen up, Mike’s face is falling back into a grin. “Yeah,” he says softly, tucking a kiss to the side of Will’s ear, “yeah, I do. I have for a really long time— a 
  
    really 
  
  long time. Is that— is that okay?”

  Will blinks. “Yeah,” he stutters out, and Mike kisses him right under the curve of his jaw. “Yeah, that’s— me too, but for you,” okay, 
  
    words, 
  
  Byers, 
  
    use them. 
  
  “I mean— I love you too. For a really long time.”

  Mike pulls back, preening. “Cool,” he says, “okay, awesome, that’s— that’s great, super,” and presses another kiss right over Will’s mouth. He hesitates, for a moment, looking over his shoulder. “Should we go back inside, because our friends are probably wondering where we are—” 

  “Oh, I think they know 
  
    exactly 
  
  where we are,” Will snorts, pulling Mike back in, “and they can wait a few more minutes.”'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
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