Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not like orientation week has ever been Mike’s favorite part of working at a summer camp, but still — Mike wasn’t expecting this.

The thing about orientation week is that it’s an amalgamation of everything Mike hates: five grueling days of team building exercises and safety courses, first aid training and activity rundowns, spending all day outside in the sun just to turn down for the night in a room that doesn’t even have air conditioning. It’s a sensory nightmare, is what it is — and granted, these things would still be true if it wasn’t orientation week, and it’ll probably be worse then, actually, once the cabin and campgrounds are teeming with kids, running around all over the place. The point is, though, that Mike doesn’t really mind the kids, that the high energy and chaos of camp are what he lives for, year after year. He didn’t, however, sign up to work here for this — a week of learning about heatstroke treatment and watching his fellow counselors suck face with the CPR training dummies. Mike has already taken the damn CPR training course, and he’s already gotten the certification, and if he has to crack some poor dummy’s ribs open to the rhythm of Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees one more time, he might actually lose it.

The other thing about orientation week — the better thing, the actually good thing — is the lesser-known Camp Whiteman tradition that brings it to a close: getting sloppy drunk in the trails neighboring the campgrounds with the rest of your senior counselors, then spending the next day nursing an illicit hangover, trying to pretend like your head isn’t pounding and that you have not suddenly become very sensitive to bright lights and loud noises.

Mike likes drinking as much as most eighteen-year-olds, probably — likes the slightly rebellious air to doing it when you’re not supposed to, enjoys feeling, for once in his life, like he is not a terribly awkward mess of a human being with limbs that are too long for his own body and a propensity for rambling when he gets excited about something. It’s not like his own high school experience has provided him with many opportunities to be a partier, but it’s fun, overall. It’s fine. It’s—

In all honesty, is he about to explode with excitement over the booze Dustin got Steve Harrington to buy them? Not really, but that’s because Dustin just had to spring for the universally shittiest alcohol known to mankind, the stuff that’s essentially a lab-manufactured hangover-in-a-bottle. Seriously — Malibu? Steve said he’d get them absolutely anything if they paid him back in full, and Dustin had to go and tell him Malibu? And — Mike is gagging just thinking about it — flavored vodka. Moral of the story is to never let Dustin say he’s going to handle something ever again. And also, he’s going to drive to Steve Harrington’s house and smack him upside the head. He’s been in their shoes. He knows better. He should’ve put his foot down and been the mentor figure Dustin is always talking him up to be.

Mike is not really sure which one of them he’s going to kill first — Dustin for being an idiot, or Steve, for enabling him to be an idiot — but the first issue arises when Google Maps informs them that the trails are no less than a fifty minute walk from the Camp Whiteman parking lot, a feat that would already be pretty dangerous to carry out in the dark, but made downright impossible by the fact that there is no sidewalk on the main road. And, like— Mike is down to break a rule or two, but he’s not trying to be turned into roadkill.

“Can we go somewhere else?” Max implores.

They all exchange an identical, uncertain glance. It’s one thing to carry on the long-standing tradition of getting inappropriately inebriated while technically on the clock, but it feels sacrilegious to actually do it on Camp Whiteman property. Mike would probably get drunk and start crying out of fear of the Camp Gods seeing everything. “It’s got to be the trails,” Will tells her. “It’s tradition.”

Mike rolls his eyes. “Since when do you care about tradition?”

“Since I decided I don’t want to get fired for drinking on property,” Will shoots back immediately.

“Please,” Mike scoffs, crossing his arms. “You’re not going to get fired — both your parents literally work here. Ever heard of nepotism?”

“You did not just say that,” Will seethes.

“Okay!” Lucas interjects. “No biggie, it’s cool— I’ll be DD.” He points to the Hellcat, damn near glowing fluorescent under the streetlights. “Everyone get in.”

Mike squints at it, suspicious. “Can it fit all six of us?”

“Sure,” Lucas says, then pauses. “Well— if someone sits on someone else’s lap, then yeah.”

Mike has never heard an idea get shot down so quickly in his life. Maybe it’s his own fault, then, for not keeping his own mouth shut, but suddenly, he’s saying it — “I can drive too” — and then pointing to where the Mustang is parked on the other side of the parking lot. The only thing worse than being sober in a group full of drunk people is probably being the only person sober in a group of drunk people — at least with this crowd, anyway. Mike loves his friends, but he’s not putting Lucas through that. “You and me, dude.”

Dustin raises his eyebrows at him, then holds up the loot, one glass bottle in each hand, heavy and filled to the brim and sloshing audibly. “You don’t want?”

In all honesty, there are few things Mike can imagine to be worse than throwing up coconut rum into the toilet of the Blue Cabin’s singular bathroom. Does it make him a little sad to be missing out in such a quintessential Camp Whiteman Counselor experience? Yeah, a little. But there’s no way Lucas can handle five tipsy people on his own — even Mike alone has proven to be a little much for him. At the very least, it’ll be entertaining. “Yeah,” he says definitively, then shrugs. “There’s always next time.”

Dustin looks like he wants to protest, and then very wisely does not. Mike notices that he hadn’t been about to offer himself up as the designated sober friend anyway. “Thanks man,” he says, visibly grateful.

Will throws a hateful look in the direction of the Mustang as he makes an immediate beeline towards the Hellcat. Mike isn’t really sure why Will decided to make it his own personal mission to glare Mike’s poor car straight into an early grave, but he really can’t be fucked enough to care. Plus, he thinks, not at all bitterly, wrenching the passenger side door open for Dustin to climb into — Lucas drives a fucking Hellcat! That thing is a bona fide monstrosity — a glorious monstrosity, sure, because Mike is above lying to himself about it — but it’s still objectively a total eyesore, and somehow it’s Mike’s car Will has gotten all hung up on? 

Whatever. Probably a good thing Mike isn’t drinking, then. There’d be nothing stopping him from calling Will out on his hypocrisy so hard that he bursts into tears.

☼☼☼

Luckily, Mike does not call Will out on his hypocrisy so hard that he bursts into tears — even if it’s only because Will sucked it up long enough to squeeze into the backseat of the Mustang for the ride back, and did not say a single word about how much he hates Mike’s car. It’s probably because he’s actually drunk now, or sleepy, or some combination of the two, but Mike isn’t about to forget the look on Will’s face when he’d driven the car into the parking lot earlier that week. The double take that ensued had been downright comical — a result of Will actually seeing the Mustang for the first time, then realizing, in the span of one and a half seconds, that he’d finally found something that pissed him off even more than Mike did.

Will does not seem capable of pushing the front seat far enough forward for anyone to climb out, so it looks like everything is going to be left up to Mike again. Dustin has been rambling for the last ten minutes about how field sobriety tests are a scam, and that he could probably pass one right now if he tried, because it’s all about willpower and mental strength, and how hard is it, even, to walk in a straight line and touch one hand to your nose? El jumped out of the passenger seat the second Mike parked the car, teetering towards where Max has done the same with the Hellcat, and Mike helps Dustin out of the backseat, letting him spill out over into the gravel just as Lucas is locking up his car and walking over to them.

Lucas looks at El and Max, who are meandering slowly and unsteadily towards the Big House — the direction exactly opposite to where they need to go — and then at Dustin, who is still trying very hard to prove his point about the field sobriety test by wobbling around the lot. The line he is walking in is very decidedly not straight, and his fingertips are very decidedly missing his nose, and it’s not until he’s veered off-course in a full semicircle that he lets his arms fall to his side and comes to a stop.

“Okay,” Dustin admits. “I think I’m drunk.”

“No kidding,” Lucas snorts, then starts slowly pushing him towards the cabins with one hand on his back. “Let’s get you to bed before you do any more damage.” Almost as an afterthought, he turns to Mike, who’d slid back into the driver’s seat of the Mustang to reach for his things, then nods in the direction of the backseat, where Will is still slumped against the passenger side window. “Do you think you can—”

“Yeah,” Mike says hurriedly. Considering the way El and Max have not yet changed course to their cabins, and are now sitting on the steps leading to the Big House, doubled over giggling, Lucas probably has plenty on his hands already. “Yeah, I got him. No worries.”

Lucas gives him a grateful look, and then Dustin groans, slumping his head onto Lucas’s shoulder. “Don’t feel good.”

“Yeah, well,” Lucas says, pushing at him harder. “That’s what you get for asking Steve to buy the shitty stuff.”

“The shitty stuff is cheap,” Dustin insists, but lets himself be led away from the gravel lot anyway. The sound of their footsteps fades from something irregular and loose into something equally uneven but steadier, grass brushing against the soles of their shoes. Lucas turns to give Mike a small wave goodnight, then sets off towards the Big House.

“Night,” Mike calls after them. There’s no response from Will in the back, either to echo his goodnight or to tell Mike to quiet down, and Mike sighs, twisting in place to glance into the backseat. It’s not improbable that Will has fallen asleep, in which case he’s going to be impossible to rouse, and then downright insufferable about it when Mike finally does manage to do so. He hadn’t even been drinking that much — not that Mike had been, like, watching him or anything — so maybe he’s just tired in an ordinary sort of way. It’s pretty late, after all. Mike glances down at his phone; the lock screen display reads 12:46 in bright white, then changes to 12:47 before turning off.

“Will?” Mike says.

Will shifts in place, opening an eye and glaring at him. Even in the dark of the car, even with only one eye open, the look is almost withering. “What do you want?” Will snaps.

Mike rolls his eyes. The glare might be withering, sure, but any semblance of threat disappeared the second Will opened his mouth, one word slurring faintly into the next. Good to know he’s just fine, then. “Come on,” Mike says, twisting around until his entire torso is peeking out from behind the driver’s seat. “We’ve gotta go. Everyone else just left.”

“Hm,” Will hums. “No.”

Jesus. Leave it to Will to be the world’s most insufferable drunk. He does sit up, though, leaning away from the window just long enough to slump against the seat, head tipped back against the headrest. “Yes,” Mike says, and then, again, “come on. Let’s go,”

No response. Will just stares up at the Mustang’s roof. “Will?” Mike tries again, frowning. “Are you okay?” 

He bites back the second part, about how if Will throws up in his car, Mike will actually kill him, because he’d been uncharacteristically quiet the entire drive back. Whatever — maybe Will is a sappy drunk alongside being a tired one, and maybe he gets all weirdly introspective and quiet and emotional about it. That’s fine, and Mike isn’t one to judge, but he really does need to get Will out of this car right now. Will can be sappy and drunk onto the lawn as much as he wants — or, better yet, in the bathroom of his own cabin — but if he gets a single drop of puke on Mike’s meticulously vacuumed car floor, he’s going to be waking up to a Zelle request for exactly the price of one deep-cleaning from the nearest auto shop.

Will still doesn’t respond, but he does look vaguely put off by the question, like Mike had interrupted a very deep and restful sleep just for the sake of annoying him. As if Mike is poking and prodding just for the fun of it, solely to ruin a perfectly good night out with friends — as if Mike hadn’t offered to be designated fucking driver, as if he hadn’t hauled Will and El and Dustin’s sorry asses into the car and buckled them in, as if he hadn’t avoided every pothole on the way back to camp, tried to go around every speed bump so as to not cause an errant case of the spins. Seriously — Will might be drunk, and he might be tired, and he might even be bummed out by whatever is causing his petulant expression to turn into something more akin to that of a kicked puppy, but this is Mike’s night out too, okay? It’s his summer just as much as it is Will’s, and the nerves of impending counselor-hood have getting to him for all of orientation week, and if Will is upset at him for something, he really doesn’t want to start this summer off with a one-sided argument in the middle of the parking lot.

“Yeah,” Will says, what feels like an eternity later. “I’m fine.”  

He doesn’t look fine. In fact, he looks kind of upset. Mike feels curiosity tug gently at him, the urge to push a little harder now that there’s a moment where Will isn’t baring his teeth and hissing at him, a brief opening. It’s the same weird curiosity that’s been eating away at him all summer, ever since their encounter in Indy; it’s the same curiosity that kept his gaze drifting over to Will earlier, when Dustin had been passing the bottle of Malibu around, watching Will raise the red cup to his lips and cringe in the aftermath. Will’s been a little weird ever since Mike drove him home that day, a little off in a way that Mike can’t quite put his finger on. Maybe he’s too nosy for his own good, but he wants to push, is the thing. He wants to ask Will why or what or who he’s mad at, because it can’t be Mike. If he were mad at Mike, Will would have made it clear from the very start. If he were mad at Mike, he wouldn’t have gotten in the goddamn car.

So Will isn’t mad at him. Whatever. Best to let sleeping dogs — or drunk nemeses — lie. “Okay,” Mike says, grabbing his keys out of the cupholder. “Can you get out of the car now?”

Again, no response. Will hums once more, soft and noncommittal. They’re approaching the land of no return, where Will is in real danger of actually falling asleep in the car, and Mike definitely has not been hitting the gym enough to be able to haul his dead weight back to the Yellow Cabin all on his own. “Oh my God,” Mike mutters, then pushes the door open, stepping out of the car.

Gravel crunches dissonantly under his feet as Mike shuts the door, making his way over to Will’s side of the car. For someone who claims to hate Mike’s car — for someone who threw a loud, obnoxious fit over Mike’s car upon first seeing it this week, for someone who rolled his eyes and groaned and sighed up a storm when Mike had shoved him into the backseat earlier — Will is doing a very bad job of not being in it longer than he has to. “Come on,” Mike says, wrenching the passenger side door all the way open and squinting at Will over the top of the headrest. There are no doors to the backseat, so Mike reaches down for the lever to pull the passenger seat forward, tugging at it until it gives way, creating just enough room for a person to squeeze comfortably through.

It’s probably a good thing that the lot is almost empty, no cars beside them for Mike to bang up, because he needs the space to wriggle fully into the gap he’s created between the door and the frame of the car, resting one hand on the roof in a pose he hopes says I’m not leaving until I drag you out of here. Maybe he should’ve just handed him off to Lucas, then — maybe Will should’ve just watched Lucas and Max canoodling in the front seat and dealt with the consequences of his actions. He isn’t sure if Lucas would be able to haul Will’s dead weight across the field either, but he’d definitely do a better job of it than Mike would.

“I’m serious, Will,” he says. It’s getting late, and it’s warm out, still, but it’s cooler now than it had been when they’d been drinking. “Don’t be difficult. We’ve gotta go.”

He can’t see all of Will from here, not with the way he’s standing and the way Will has slumped over himself, but he can see Will’s arm catch the light as he rubs at his face with one hand. “I’m not being difficult,” he insists, and then he tips his head to one side, enough for his face to finally come fully into view. His cheeks are a little pink from the alcohol, eyes slowly sliding shut before he blinks them open again.

Mike frowns. Maybe Will isn’t upset at him, exactly, but it’s clear that there’s something, some unknown threat, a source of distress that Mike can’t quite make out. Will is being difficult, but when has Mike ever known him not to be? “Fine,” he sighs, trying to tamp down his frustration. He clenches one hand, the one resting on the car door, into a tight fist. “You’re being perfectly rational and reasonable and sober and normal—”

Will’s face falls, just a little, almost imperceptible in the shadow.  “You’re making fun,” he scowls. “Never mind.”

Guilt is not a new feeling in relation to Will, but it is one that Mike has never fully learned how to navigate. By no means is he a stranger to it — the way it burrows down deep, past his throat and his chest, settling somewhere along his stomach. The sour, acidic shame of it, rising like bile. Mike has been a little frustrated all evening, because Will has been acting weird, and he’s been quiet and a little closed-off, and he’s refusing to meet Mike’s eye, and he’d complained about Mike’s car and now he’s refusing to get out of it — but Mike also knows what it’s like to feel vulnerable when you don’t want to be. To lose the upper hand when you’re not ready to relinquish it.

“I’m not,” he tries. If it were him, drunk and in the backseat of a car he supposedly hates, talking to the guy he supposedly hates almost as much as the car, what would he want Will to say? “I promise,” Mike adds. “I’m not making fun, I’m just— can you get out? Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine,” Will insists. “Can you just…”

He doesn’t look like he’s going to throw up, which is the only thing keeping Mike from attempting some kind of fireman’s carry up the path. He waits for Will to finish the sentence, leans more of his weight into the hand he’s bracing against the car’s roof. “Can I just— what?”

Will groans softly, then closes his eyes again. “Nothing,” he says.

Mike pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers, and takes a long, deep breath in. Will’s refusal to ask for the things he wants is downright infuriating — how he’ll skirt his way around the subject, get passive aggressive about it, always expecting Mike to read his mind and getting upset when he can’t quite figure out how. Even when he does get the things he wants, when they’re offered up to him, within his grasp, Will never reaches out to take them. He stands down. He retreats. If it’s a glass of water he wants right now, Mike is ready to bet his entire college fund that Will would start spasming on the ground in a fit of acute dehydration before he asked Mike to bring him a glass of water.

“Water?” Mike asks. There must be a bottle of it in the car somewhere, but he’s a little worried that if he closes the door to go look, Will might fall asleep right there across the backseat. “Are you thirsty?” 

Will shakes his head. “No.”

“Hungry?” Mike offers. “I mean, it’s late, but I’m sure there’s something in—”

“No,” Will says, more emphatically this time, and Mike doesn’t know why he’s getting pissy with him, like he’s expecting Mike to know something he is literally not saying on purpose— but Mike does know that he’s never volunteering to be designated driver again. For all he cares, everyone can pile into the backseat of the Hellcat and deal with Lucas and Max canoodling up front. Mike is going to stay home.

“Jesus, how much did you drink?” Mike frowns. He hadn’t been counting them up or anything — he’s not Will’s keeper — but he’s sure it couldn’t have been enough for him to be acting like this. They’d been out on the trail for just a couple of hours, and whatever shitty booze Dustin had managed to wheedle off Steve probably didn’t surpass an ABV of 20% anyway. Will holds up a clumsy hand and, squinting in concentration, puts up four fingers. He lowers one after a moment, frowns, then puts it back up again. “Okay,” Mike says, after four does not turn back into three. “So you’re kind of a lightweight. Good to know.”

Will huffs, a sharp, irritated noise. “I’m not that drunk,” he says — a blatant lie. “Why are you always—”

He waves a hand in Mike’s direction, angling his knees towards the door and slouching against the seat. That’s closer to the end goal than they had been a few seconds ago, one step closer to getting him out of the car than when Will had been almost horizontal across the middle seat. Mike is not a patient man, but Will is the only person Mike has met who’s more stubborn than he is.

“Why am I always what?” Mike asks.

There are a thousand different ways he can think of to complete the thought, but he’s sure that Will hadn’t been going for kind and compassionate and generous in regards to the whole designated driver thing, even though Mike has displayed all of those qualities tonight, and a little recognition would be nice, thank you. Likely, it’s more along the lines of annoying or loud or annoying, again — repeated for emphasis, because Will takes grand, luxurious pleasure in calling him such, and Mike is sure this fact will not be anything but amplified in the face of Will’s current state of intoxication. It’s late, and Mike is tired, and he wishes Will would stop looking at him like he has been all evening — openly, a little soft around the edges, a little curious. It’s not mean, and it’s not hostile, but it’s been slipping out in bits and pieces, brief glimpses of this unreadable expression before Will catches himself again — before the mask goes back on, before the windows get boarded up and sealed.

It’s been dragging out, though, longer and longer intervals between when the shutters come down, and Mike isn’t really sure how to react. Even now, when Will blinks up at him, it’s with the same hazy curiosity, brows furrowed a little and lips parted, like he’s noticed something that Mike has yet to see — like he’s absolutely enthralled by it. Maybe it’s the liquor (if Malibu can even really be counted as such), or maybe Will is trying to be difficult on purpose. Maybe this is some kind of game for him, and maybe he finds this amusing, but Mike has had just about enough.

“Okay,” he says, lifting his hand off the roof of the car. He doesn’t exactly know what he’s trying to do, but it’s clear that Will is not about to move unless Mike starts pushing at him a little, like Lucas had done to Dustin. He’s trying to calculate in his mind the exact angle and grip strength needed to haul Will out of this car — factoring in Will’s approximate mass, what is the force needed to cause a low enough acceleration to prevent either of them from tumbling to the ground? — when Will sits up straighter, a strange expression on his face. Mike starts to relax in relief, an automatic response to thinking that maybe they’re finally getting somewhere, and then Will’s hand darts out, reaching into the space where the front seat has been pushed forward, and he grabs for the front of Mike’s shirt.

Will’s grip is firm, more so than Mike would have expected, and he’s so caught off guard that his first thought that Will is trying to fucking fight him, or something — that maybe he’s so royally pissed off at whatever Mike unknowingly did that he’s going to actually try to deck him, right here in the parking lot. His second thought is that Will is drunk, sure, but it would probably still hurt very much to get punched by someone, even if they are not in full control of their limbs; his third thought, as Will’s grip on his shirt tightens further, pulling him forward, is that he’s about to hit his head on the roof of the car unless he corrects course in time. He does, thankfully, although not without a killer blow to his shin on behalf of the front seat, which will no doubt result in a pretty impressive bruise a few hours from now.

His fourth thought, as he tumbles into the backseat with a shocked gasp, is that Will is very, very warm under him.

The summer air is cooling rapidly as the night goes on, but traces of the day’s sun still linger. It had been cloyingly warm today, the kind that always turns sneakers to flip-flops, or afternoons spent doing archery on the field into a day at the lake. This warmth, in all the places he and Will are touching — where their legs are all twisted up, knees against knees, bumping against ankles and thighs — is a lot more organic than that. A lot more dangerous, for lack of a better term, and a lot more distracting, enough for Mike’s fifth, sixth, and seventh thoughts to consist of only this. 

“What are you doing?” Mike gets out. It comes out a little choked, with the way most of the wind has been knocked right out of him. If Will is trying to fight him, he’s doing a pretty shitty job of it, but he is doing a good job making Mike wish he could curl up into a little ball and die of embarrassment. Mostly, Will is just making things very difficult for Mike as he tries to untangle himself, tries to get some leverage, tries to find a few inches of the backseat to plant his palm down and push himself off —  all things that are being made very difficult by how much of the seat is currently occupied eighteen-year-old boy.

“Shit, sorry,” Will mutters, although he sounds more frustrated with himself than apologetic about the situation. And then, quieter, although his grip is not abated in the slightest by the words: “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Reflexively, Mike opens his mouth, maybe to say it’s okay, or no worries, or what the fuck is your problem — his brain-to-mouth pathway hasn’t quite decided yet — and then Will blinks, the lamp in the parking lot streaming in warm and golden through the window, eyelashes casting long shadows against the tops of his cheekbones.

Instantly, Mike forgets what he’d been about to say.

With graduation behind them and freshman year of college just around the corner, it’s no surprise that Will had been more pleasant than usual tonight, even before being plied with alcohol — inhibitions lowered enough to have graced a few of Mike’s terrible one-liners with a genuine laugh before remembering that he is not, under any circumstances, supposed to acknowledge that Mike is hilarious and witty with a top-tier sense of humor. He’d passed Mike the bottle, after, easy, sipping at his own cup around a smile, before remembering the designated driver rules of the night and reaching around Mike to hand it off to El instead. And then, at the end of it all — quiet and suddenly sullen — Will had allowed Mike to load him into the backseat of his car and ferry him back to camp without really saying a word, staring out of the window as Dustin and El queued up Top 100 Karaoke Hits on Mike’s phone for the ten minute drive back, and not once asking for his usual request of something right out of Spotify’s British Alternative Rock Mix.

Weeks ago, Will wouldn’t have allowed him to do any of those things — there would have been no amicable joking, and Will wouldn’t have sat next to him in their huddled circle, enough for their knees to bump absentmindedly as he chatted with Lucas in the opposite direction, and he probably wouldn’t have allowed Mike to put his hands on his shoulders to steer him into the car either. Knowing Will Byers means having compartmentalization down to an art, or risk exiling himself from his friend group altogether out of sheer frustration. Mike does, thankfully, have this skill down pat, which is the only reason he even finds the presence of mind to anchor one hand on a blessedly free square of leather on the seat, right by Will’s head, before pushing himself up to put a meager few inches of space between them. 

Something is better than nothing, even though it’s not nearly enough distance to let him cool down, to let his body return to homeostasis. Every instinct in Mike’s brain is screaming at him to get away; alarm bells are ringing, sirens are sounding at top volume. Historically, neither of them have known what to do with proximity, how to handle that lack of space cordially, without taking it to one extreme or another — but Will, drunk and tired and clearly privy to something Mike isn’t, does not seem to remember this key detail. His hand is still holding on to Mike’s shirt in a death grip, like he is afraid to release it, and Mike — momentarily distracted by how green Will’s eyes look in the lamplight — hisses, “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” Will says, in lieu of a response, a crackling request from somewhere high in his chest, unexpectedly earnest. “Come here— ”

Mike is being pulled down again, forcefully enough for the space he had fought so hard to put between them to get immediately obliterated. He zeroes in on that heat again, the solid shape of Will under him, and the scent of sunscreen rapidly overwhelming his senses. And then, under that — where gravity has finally gotten the better of him, where Mike’s face has fallen forward and is pressed into the side of Will’s head, nose tickled by strands of wavy brown hair: the scent of coconut rum and what Mike is pretty sure is Old Spice Fiji, and the sounds of Will’s breathing, heavy and shaking on each exhale.

He doesn’t know what Will wants, but these do not seem like the ideal circumstances under which to find out. If it’s something bad — although it no longer appears as though Will is going to punch him in the face — then he’s going to wake up tomorrow hungover and pissed off. If it’s not something bad, though— if it’s something good—

Mike takes in a sharp inhale of his own. Will’s other hand is clenched tightly by his side, caging him in, and the metronome of his pulse is quickening by the second. Mike can’t quite bring himself to form the thought that’s hovering there, just in the periphery, because to think it would be to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge it would be to have to place it firmly in a category: either as a good thing or a bad thing, and nowhere in between. Mike can’t do that now — not when Will smells like the cheap booze he’d been drinking — drinking —  and he is closer to Mike than he has been in a very long time. Maybe that’s why, then, when he opens his mouth to say something, that it comes out like a question after all— “Will?”

“You look” —Will takes another juddering breath in, and shifts in place, hair brushing against Mike’s cheek— “good.”

Mike closes his eyes, as if the lessened sensory input will help him make more sense of this situation, but all it does is heighten every other sensation in its stead. The scent of coconut and sunscreen and clean laundry is almost overwhelming. Mike had only put on another t-shirt and pair of shorts before heading out this evening, one of the innumerable pairs that make up his summer camp wardrobe, a combination that is wholly unremarkable and entirely forgettable. “I look good?” Mike echoes, dumbfounded.

“Mhm,” Will says. “The color. It’s— really good on you.”

They’re still horizontal, and the door is still open, and their legs are still sticking out of it, entangled from shin to thigh. A breeze blows by, only warm summer air, but Mike shivers regardless. It would be relatively easy, in all honesty, to get up and clamber out, to haul Will out of here now that he has stopped going limp like a stubborn little rag doll, and has started veering into sappy drunk territory instead. Mike has been friends with Dustin long enough to know the pitfalls of sappy drunk territory, and one of them is that you become pretty easy to steer around. Hypothetically, it should be the simplest thing in the world, but in actuality, Mike’s arms and legs have become lead, and he finds himself rendered utterly incapable of doing anything but lying there and taking deep breaths in and out through his nose. Coconut and laundry and sunscreen. “Okay,” Mike says. “I mean— that’s nice, but we should probably—”

“Wear it more,” Will says, almost like a demand, as if he has any leverage to be making negotiations.

“Okay,” Mike says again, muffled into Will’s shoulder. His palm has gone a little sweaty where it had been planted down on the seat, and he readjusts his grip, making to push away. “And you’re more drunk than I thought. Can you get up?”

Will makes a soft, pained sound, one that Mike would have missed if he didn’t have an ear practically pressed up against Will’s throat. “Wait,” Will says, and then the hand that has been gripping the front of Mike’s shirt — a dark blue one, Mike remembers suddenly, and then promptly does not think about this piece of information any longer — is moving up to cup the back of Mike’s head, holding him in place. Mike, ever the diligent listener, waits; he waits until Will’s hands have settled again, happy with their position, and the hand in his hair has begun carding through the strands there. Will takes a deep breath in, and Mike braces himself— “Your haircut is so stupid,” Will whispers.

Mike shouldn’t be disappointed, but there it is anyhow — the swoop of it low in his stomach, unwanted and more than a little embarrassing in the grand scheme of things. He doesn’t know what he expected Will to say, and it’s probably his fault for thinking it would be something kinder, more forgiving. Will is drunk, after all, and people get honest when they’re drunk. Maybe this is Will with his walls down. Maybe Mike needs to take him back inside now.

“Okay,” Mike says, for the umpteenth time. “Sorry?”

Another frustrated noise from Will, as if it’s Mike’s fault he’s talking in circles. His fingernails scrape gently over Mike’s scalp, almost apologetic, but not quite there, then he runs his fingertips over the hair at the nape of Mike’s neck, recently shorn, shorter than it has been in quite some time. Will has seen it before — Mike had it cut this way when he had picked Will up in the city, an incident that feels like it happened forever ago — but Will hadn’t said anything about it in the car, when he had been sober and awake, at 100% full menace power, and more than capable of delivering a cutting blow to Mike’s ego if he really wanted.

“Not like that,” Will corrects himself, and then his hand changes course, ghosting down the side of Mike’s neck and back up again — and over, and over, and over. “It looked good when it was long. You—” Another frustrated noise, then Will’s hand drags back across that same spot, like a loss that he is physically mourning.

On instinct, Mike lifts one hand off the seat, sending him falling a little further onto Will, then he reaches back, trying to feel out the spot that Will is apparently so fascinated with. His fingers land squarely on top of Will’s, trapping their hands together there; Will’s hand twitches, clearly caught off-guard at the movement, but he doesn’t try to pull away. Mike’s throat is unexpectedly, embarrassingly dry when he prompts, “I what?”

Every second that passes like this must be lending Will some bravery, because this time, the response is immediate. “You look really good with it longer, so you should— I think you should keep it that way,” Will replies quietly. Mike drops his hand, but Will does not — only runs his thumb down the edge of Mike’s jaw, underneath his ear, and then goes silent.

Will is drunk, and he is upset, and for all his unexpected kindness, for his endearingly earnest compliments, he will still wake up tomorrow disoriented and confused. He will definitely be embarrassed, and — Mike’s heart clenches in his chest — probably regretful of the things he has done and said, no matter how true they may have been. People get honest when they’re drunk, but sometimes the things they say remain unsaid for a reason. Will has extended kindness to him before — if he wanted to compliment Mike’s choice of clothing, he could have; if he wanted to make a note of the way Mike wears his hair, he could have. 

Maybe in another life, this scenario would have played out differently — a universe where Mike has been absolved of guilt, and Will is equally blameless. Maybe in another life, Mike would find the courage to do something other than close his eyes and allow Will to pull him down, tucking his nose into the crook of Will’s neck at last, properly, this time, letting his own body weight drag him in — coconut and sunscreen and clean, fresh laundry.

This is not another life, though — it’s this life, and in this life, Mike is a bit of a coward, so he allows their breathing to fall into sync with one another, feeling Will’s chest rise slowly under his own and then fall, keeping track of where the pulse in Will’s carotid is beating like a living, breathing thing against his skin. He imagines, for a moment, the possibility of turning his face, of letting their lips brush, so softly that it might be an accident; of Will’s fingers in his hair again, but intentional, purposeful. In this life, unfortunately, Will and Mike are nobody but themselves, but it doesn’t mean Mike can’t pretend — just for a moment, before it’s over.

“Will,” Mike says, and Will hums noncommittally, still staring up at the dark ceiling of the car.

“Yeah?” Cheap coconut rum. Mike swallows, and it must be audible. He can’t do this.

“It’s late,” Mike says. Pushing himself up and away — for real this time — takes every ounce of willpower he has and then some, but Will is tired now, more appeased than he had been thirty minutes ago. Will clearly hadn’t been expecting Mike to move so abruptly because his hands fall away with no resistance. He blinks his eyes open, a little blearily, then watches as Mike scrambles backwards out of the car. “Come on,” Mike says, gesturing. “Let’s go.”

Will makes a discontented noise and slowly begins to peel himself off the seat. He doesn’t say a word as he gets out, one foot out of the car and onto the gravel, and then the other. If Mike were in a more clearheaded state of mind, he would be cheering at this victory — a small action that took approximately ten times longer to complete than it should have — but as it is, he is mostly watching Will sway lightly on the spot as he rights himself, grabbing onto the car door with one hand and Mike’s shoulder with another. “Easy,” Mike says, when Will still remains silent. “You got it.”

“Ugh,” Will says, aloud this time, then promptly careens forward, forehead coming to rest against Mike’s shoulder. “Just” — two deep breaths in— “just give me a minute.”

Mike eyes the top of his head warily. “Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” Will says, muffled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” comes the reply, a little irritated. “I’m just never drinking again.”

Will’s head is still pressing into Mike’s shoulder, but the point of contact is heavy with force, reliant on Mike to hold him up. His arms are dangling at his sides, making no move to actually grab at Mike to anchor himself, but it feels weird to just stand here like this otherwise, makes Mike feel strangely off-balance, somehow, like he’s the one who’s drunk and incapable of standing upright on his own. He cups the back of Will’s elbow for leverage, where it meets his upper arm, and says, “I can’t believe you peaked before you even turned legal.”

There’s a soft huff of warm breath, like a laugh. “I don’t think my parents will be complaining,” Will says.

“Well,” Mike says, turning his face decidedly away from the soft brown hair brushing against his chin, and towards the open night sky. “At least with you out of the picture, my title as reigning shotgun champion will go unchallenged.”

This is, obviously, a lie — Mike had held that title for about three seconds last summer before he lost it to Dustin, and, recalling the gastrointestinal repercussions of the fallout, has had no desire since to make an attempt at challenging him for the throne.  

Will pushes up and away from Mike, blinking as he opens his eyes again. “Well, let’s not be too hasty,” he announces, still swaying slightly on the spot. “I could still take you.”

Pick your battles, Hopper’s voice says in his head. 

“Sure,” Mike tells him, then gives his elbow another sturdy pat before he drops his hand. “Sure you could.”

Will frowns, lips turning downwards into something resembling a pout. “Don’t be condescending.”

“Who, me?” Mike asks innocently. “I’d never. Come on, let’s go before you barf all over the gravel lot.”

“I’m not going to throw up,” Will insists.

Mike squints at him, angling his head to the left, then back to the right, putting on a little show of it. “You do look a little green,” Mike says. Now that they’re finally out of the car for good, on solid ground, now that Will isn’t touching him anymore, or shooting him weird looks from the backseat with those big sad eyes of his, this feels like the right thing to say. It’s going to be a hard thing to forget: the feeling of Will under him, hands fisted in Mike’s shirt, the sounds of his breathing, the fact that Mike can’t remember when they’d last been so close, if they had ever been at all. He won’t be able to forget this — no way, not really. Maybe he could drown this memory out, though, like throwing dirt over the last embers of a fire — pushing all of Will’s buttons until he’s so pissed off that neither of them can be bothered to dredge this up again. Giving Will an out, if he’ll take it.

Just like Mike knew he would, Will crosses his arms and frowns. “No I don’t.”

“How would you know?” Mike presses, feeling almost giddy with satisfaction at the instantaneous response. “You can’t even see yourself.”

“Mike?”

“Hm?”

“If you don’t stop talking,” Will counters, blinking heavily, “I really will throw up on you.”

Mike pauses, but it’s hard to tell if Will is joking or not. He looks a little put off, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still, Mike looks down at his shoes, decides that he would much rather prefer them to be puke-free, and says, “Yikes,” before wrenching the passenger side door open and reaching across the seat to grab his fanny pack from the center console. His keys are in the cup holder, and he slams the door shut and locks the car in one quick movement, sliding the keys into his shorts with a soft jingling sound. “Okay,” Mike says, before remembering that he isn’t quite sure how serious Will had been in regards to projectile vomiting on him, so he tucks his hands back into his pockets instead, gesturing with his head in the direction of the cabins like Shall we?

Will sets off wordlessly, with Mike in tow. It’s not a far walk, but every step they take brings with it an increasing fear that Will is going to trip over a pebble and wipe out, leading to a very embarrassing visit to Joyce in the middle of the night, and an even more embarrassing conversation about why her youngest son had gotten drunk enough to pull his self-declared nemesis into the backseat of a car to— to—

And the thing is that Mike doesn’t even know what Will had been trying to do, so he can’t even bring himself to freak out about it in an appropriate manner, because maybe Will is just a clingy drunk, and maybe he’d just been sad about something and Mike had been the nearest possible outlet, and maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and maybe he’s sobering up now and already regretting it. Maybe that’s why Will has requested that they walk back in silence, why he’s staring resolutely at the ground and clearly focusing very hard on keeping his steps steady and evenly spaced. He’s embarrassed, probably, which is cool, because Mike has done a lot of embarrassing things in his life, and he’s not one to hold a drunken faux pas over someone’s head.

What’s decidedly less cool, though, is that Will’s coordination is clearly not at a hundred yet, because he keeps drifting slightly to one side before righting himself again, and there is a real danger, suddenly, of him actually falling on his face and eating total shit. Mike really doesn’t want to deal with talking to Joyce right now — and he really, really doesn’t want to explain why he’s the one walking Will back to his cabin, long after everyone else had already gotten back to bed — and his immediate instinct is to bring his arm up, to tuck it around Will’s shoulders and pull him back on course. It’s not en egregious thing by any means, because Lucas had led Dustin away the same way, just a little while ago, and it’s kind of a universal gesture anyway — indicative of nothing more than an inebriated friend who poses a mild danger to themselves and their healthy, untwisted ankles — but still—

Something gives him pause, just as his hand is about to rest on Will’s shoulder. He can still feel the way Will had been pressed up against him in the car, all the places where they had been touching growing warm at the mere thought of it. It’s probably just self-preservation, then, that causes Mike to move his hand down to the small of Will’s back, nudging him back towards the correct direction with a small press of his fingers into the skin there — that same instinct that keeps you from sticking your hand fully into a flame. Even this feels weird, a little bit; Mike wonders if Will can tell that he’s tensed up, that he’s trying not to let this touch linger for longer than it has to, but also that it would be even weirder if he didn’t just commit, right? If he didn’t press hard enough, that would feel weird, too, and he’s sure Will can tell — he must be able to — until the Yellow Cabin comes into view, just a few feet away, and Will comes to a teetering stop, patting down his pockets with a frown, and Mike remembers that Will probably doesn’t give a shit if Mike is touching him weird, or whatever — he’s drunk, and he’s tired, and he probably hasn’t even registered that Mike has been touching him at all.

“Oh no,” Will is saying, suddenly concerned, running a hand repeatedly over the pocket at his hip, as if this will magically make whatever he’s looking for appear again. “I can’t find the key.”

For a moment, Mike thinks he’s joking, and then Will looks up at him with wide eyes, and Mike sighs. He clears the steps to the porch easily, then twists the doorknob, pulling the screen door forward then pushing at the wooden door behind it, letting it swing open with a soft creaking sound. “Probably a good thing it’s unlocked, then,” Mike says.

Will blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Right. I knew that.”

Mike feels a little awkward waiting at the door while Will fumbles his way up the stairs, but it would probably be more awkward to barge in on Will’s sleeping co-counselor when this isn’t even his cabin. He waits until Will’s come up in front of him, and asks, “So, like— is your roommate asleep, or—”

Will peeks through the gap in the door, then pulls away. “No. He’s probably out too.” He slumps against the doorway, upper body going limp as he closes his eyes. “I love orientation week.”

“I bet,” Mike says. “Um— as comfortable as the door is, I think your bed might be better?”

“It’s so far away,” Will groans.

His eyes are still closed, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that Mike is going to have to do quite a bit of the heavy lifting here. At least there’s no danger of an awkward half-asleep roommate encounter, which is what spurs him on to push the door open, nudging at Will’s shin with his foot. “Guess I have to do everything myself,” Mike sighs. “Inside you go, come on.”

“Stop herding me,” Will complains, stepping clumsily through the entryway.

Mike frowns. “Herding you?”

“Like sheep,” Will clarifies, before toppling face-first onto his bed. His feet are dangling off the sides of the mattress, shoes still on — thankfully not on top of his sheets, lest Mike scream in horror and wake up everyone within a one-hundred foot radius of the Yellow Cabin — but the thought of Will being ready to pass out in his daytime clothing, contacts still on, and dirty shoes on his feet is still making Mike feel weird and itchy under his skin. “G’night,” Will mumbles, clearly oblivious to the dilemma at hand, then closes his eyes again. 

Mike waits one second, then two, and then seven pass by with no movement on Will’s part, and it becomes pretty obvious that he really is asleep, or at least halfway there. A significant part of him figures that maybe it’s best to leave Will be, because he’s a big boy who can handle himself and the consequences of his poor drunken actions when he wakes up in three hours with crusty contacts and dirt all over his sheets and probably going out of his damn mind with thirst. None of Will’s decisions tonight were Mike’s fault, in fact, and he’d like that on the record — and then Will makes a small sound, clearly discontent despite his nearly unconscious state, and it hits Mike that if their roles were reversed, he can’t for the life of him imagine Will leaving him like this without making some kind of kerfuffle about it. A kerfuffle that would maybe be rooted in annoyance just as much as altruism, sure, and maybe he’d give some spiel about how Mike is weird and gross for not even bothering to take his shoes off before falling asleep — which is also kind of where Mike is at right now, anyway — but the point is that he wouldn’t leave without at least getting Mike out of those damn shoes.

With a long-suffering sigh, Mike walks over to the bed. “Come on,” he says, and Will makes another noncommittal sound. “You can’t go to sleep with your shoes on.”

“Watch me,” Will says, then buries his face deeper into his pillows.

Mike takes a deep, grounding breath in, trying to recall the last time Nancy had had to walk him through a breathing exercise over the phone. Every Wheeler is a little bit cursed to be perpetually high-strung, so Mike knows exactly what to do when the pre-test heebie jeebies get to him, or when the college application jitters kick in, but he has no idea how to react in a situation like this — what to do with Will’s surprising pliancy, what to do when his stubbornness stops being petty and irritating, and instead, has taken a turn towards something that’s almost—

Endearing is not the word Mike wants to use in this situation, but it does, unfortunately, keep floating to the forefront of his mind, no matter how much he tries to shove it back down and drown it out for good. A four-second breath in, four more seconds of his lungs burning with the urge to breathe out, and the world’s most composed exhale later — “Nope,” Mike decides, feeling blessedly less endeared by the whole situation than he had twelve seconds ago. “I’m not letting your hungover ass bitch at everyone tomorrow because you’re pissed off at your own poor decision making.”

Will turns, revealing just enough of his face to shoot a disgruntled expression Mike’s way. He blinks, slow and confused. “What?”

In regards to their current levels of cognitive function, Mike is clearly going to have to meet Will where he’s at. He gestures at Will’s leg. “Give me your foot.”

“Ugh,” Will groans, but he doesn’t protest when Mike grabs at the sole of his shoe, holding his ankle steady as he tugs it off, not bothering to undo the laces. His socks have little bumblebees printed all over them, and there’s that word again, resurfacing like the world’s most persistent buoy. Mentally, Mike ties a weight to it, and throws it back into the water. “So bossy,” he complains, even as he lifts his other foot halfheartedly off the bed, angling it clumsily towards Mike.

“I like your socks,” Mike tells him.

“Hm,” Will says, yawning into his pillow, then saying, unmistakably pleased— “Thanks. They’re new.”

Mike makes quick work of the second shoe, which proves to immediately become more difficult when Will’s entire body starts to go limp, clearly on the precipice of sleep. Mike hadn’t really considered a singular human leg to be particularly heavy before, but Jesus — what has Will been eating? He sets the sneaker down next to the first one, both placed neatly at the end of the bed, and lowers Will’s bumblebee-sock-clad foot back down. For a moment, it seems like the jostling movement has woken Will up again, fully, but he just makes a small noise and shifts, readjusting his legs once they’re both safely out of Mike’s grip, lying prone with one arm dangling off the edge of the mattress. Mike is about to leave while he still can, to run back to his cabin and try his hardest to pretend tonight ended when Dustin took that last shot and turned an alarming shade of yellow-green, when his gaze lands on a water bottle on Will’s dresser across the room.

He bites his lip, pausing in his steps — it would be a nice thing to do to fill that up, right? It would earn him some good karma, that’s for sure, maybe even a favor he could cash in with the Camp Gods later. His feet make the decision for him, taking him across the room to the dresser then back over to the bathroom. The water from the sink is not the most delectable beverage ever, but it’s potable, and Mike knows that 3 a.m. pre-hangover stage of thirst all too well. Will’s not going to care if the water in his bottle is triple-filtered and electrolyte-enhanced; he’s just going to be thanking his past self for having the foresight to fill it up at all.

His past self hadn’t been the one to do such a thing, of course, but what are the odds he’s going to realize that? Mike screws the top back on the bottle, setting it carefully on Will’s nightstand, out of reach of his dangling arm. No one deserves to experience the 3 a.m. pre-hangover stage of thirst — not even Will. Almost as an afterthought, he roots around in his fanny pack, fingers searching, searching, before they close around what Mike had been looking for: two white paper squares, each with two pills enclosed within them — conveniently packaged for pain relief on the go, and a lifesaver for inconvenient body aches, cramps, and the occasional tension headache. Will probably has enough common sense to not take four Ibuprofen all at once, but still— Mike rips one of the packages open, tapping the two brown pills onto the nightstand, then tucks the other pack underneath the water bottle. Just in case.

That’s all there is to it, then — Will got back in one piece, and subsequently took about five years off of Mike’s life in the process, but at least Mike can go back to his own cabin now, maybe get that sleep he’d been looking forward to for the last hour and a half. He chances one more glance at Will’s motionless frame — should he pull the covers up over him? Is that too much? It’s not like Mike does this a lot, so he really doesn’t know where that line lies, between a responsible designated driver-slash-sober-friend and a weirdo who likes to overstep boundaries. Whatever, he decides. If Will gets cold, that’s his own problem. If it becomes a really pressing issue, he’s eighteen years old, and can probably figure out how to work a blanket just fine by himself. 

Mike is just turning away from the bed when the mattress shifts, a hand coming up to grab at his wrist. Mike startles at the touch, body visibly flinching away from it, and Will’s grip loosens, squinting up at Mike with barely-open eyes.

“Hang on,” Will mumbles.

Oh, fuck, Mike thinks. Not again.

Externally, he schools his face into a neutral expression, like Will’s hand on his wrist isn’t sending his nervous system into overdrive, and replies, “Yeah?”

“Thanks for getting me home,” Will whispers.

Probably a good thing, then, that Mike hadn’t bothered with the blanket, now that it’s been revealed that Will hadn’t been entirely asleep the whole time. Personally, Mike thinks it’s a little rude to psych him out like that — like, if you’re going to be too drunk and sleepy to take your own shoes off, you can’t also just watch someone scuttle around trying to do nice things for you and then jumpscare them as they’re about to leave your room. Mike laughs, partly out of hilarity at the situation as a whole, and partly because it just bursts out of him before he can help it, audibly nervous, painfully awkward.

“Thanks for not throwing up in my car,” he says, looking down at Will. It’s a genuine statement — he is truly, undeniably thankful that he is not going to have to rip the carpeting out of his brand new car anytime soon — but whether or not Will is actually able to pick up on that sentiment right now, he has no idea.

Will drops his hand, smiling softly as he reaches down to maneuver the blankets up over himself. Definitely a good thing that Mike hadn’t bothered, then. “I had fun with you today,” he says, wiggling into place — some weird, contorted position that Mike cannot for the life of him imagine being comfortable in the slightest, but Will lets out a small noise of contentment and lets his eyes fall closed, so it must be working for him just fine.

“Oh,” Mike says, and it comes out just as painfully awkward as before. “That’s good, I mean, I’m glad you…” He trails off, a thought suddenly occurring to him, and it feels like too much to ask out loud, but Will is obviously going to sleep now, like, actually, and Mike is opening his mouth before he even realizes it— “Did you mean you had fun with me?”

A nonsensical noise from Will’s direction, which doesn’t seem like enough to definitively call a confirmation or denial. “Or did you mean you, like— you had fun with everyone?” Mike tries. If he’s sounding a little desperate, whatever. Will probably won’t notice. “Or just—”

Crickets might as well be chirping in the resulting silence — or maybe they are, because the window is cracked open — but either way, Will does not respond. “Right,” Mike says aloud, before realizing he should probably be keeping his volume down, before realizing, on top of that, that it’s pretty fucking weird that he’s talking aloud to himself at all. There is a weird sensation in his stomach, and it feels suspiciously similar to disappointment — but that would be stupid. What does Mike even have to feel disappointed about?

He pats down his pockets for his keys and phone and wallet, zipping the fanny pack closed, then gestures towards the door— “I guess I’ll just head out, then” —before remembering the thing about talking aloud to himself, and how he should probably just shut up before Will wakes up for good. Mike lingers at the door for a moment, the word goodbye on the tip of his tongue, or maybe goodnight — because that wouldn’t count as talking to himself, because he’s talking to Will, so it wouldn’t be weird, probably — but then again, Will is asleep, and the one thing weirder than talking to himself aloud in a room with someone who is asleep is probably trying to talk to the someone who’s asleep.

The door to the Yellow Cabin closes behind him with a soft click. Blue Cabin is right there, just across the trail, and Mike could be in bed in the next ten minutes — contacts out, brushed and flossed, getting ready to be a little smug about his lack of a hangover the next morning — but suddenly, without explanation, he’s turning the other way, one step after another down the trail leading back to the gravel lot. He feels a little like he’s on autopilot as he wrenches the door to the Mustang open, sliding neatly and wordlessly into the driver’s seat. If the motions feel practiced, automatic it’s probably because they are; Mike can’t even remember how many times he’s done this same exact thing over the last month — how many times he’s felt anxious or overwhelmed and made a beeline for his car, the key sliding into the ignition and the seatbelt fastened, the roof lowered if the weather permitted, not relaxing until he was peeling out and driving away.

And okay — Mike isn’t about to leave Camp Whiteman in the middle of the night. He’s already been complicit in one violation of the bylaws tonight, and his phone is almost dead — and he has no idea where he’d even go — but even the simple act of sitting behind the wheel is doing something to calm him, corralling the tornado of thoughts racing through his mind into something more closely resembling a mediocrely-sized dust devil. The memory of Will glaring at him from the backseat, pulling him into the backseat, the solid feeling of him under Mike in the backseat, his hands in Mike’s shirt and his hair and— and—

“What the fuck!” Mike shrieks, letting his forehead come to rest on top of the steering wheel, white knuckling it with both hands. There is nothing more he wants to do in this moment than lay on the horn, to let the shrill noise of it convey what he can’t out of fear of permanently damaging his vocal cords. He can’t, though, lest the entirety of camp wake up and venture down to the parking lot to see why he’s making a ruckus at damn near two in the morning, so Mike settles for gripping the wheel as hard as he can, until the muscles in his hands are shaking with the tension, squeezing his eyes shut, and chanting— “What the fuck, what the fuck—”

Not the most eloquent thing he has ever come up with, but to say he’s at a loss for words would be an understatement. What just happened? What the fuck just happened? Mike doesn’t even know. All he does know is that Will thinks Mike’s shirt looks good on him, and he likes Mike’s hair better long, and he’s kind of a lightweight and he’s a little clingy when he’s drunk, and he absolutely does not want to kiss Mike. 

Whatever. It’s fine. Mike doesn’t even want to kiss him anyway — why would he want to kiss someone who’s stubborn and frustrating and so goddamn indecisive that they might actually hurt themselves if they tried to follow through on a singular course of action? He wouldn’t, is the answer — and Will is all of those things, so Mike does not want to kiss him. End of story. Thank God for his deductive reasoning skills.

One thing’s for sure, though: Mike is never volunteering to be designated driver again. He needs a fucking drink. 

☼☼☼

The Mess looks weird during orientation week. Empty, sparse, completely devoid of all the chaos that makes it such a distinctive part of the Camp Whiteman experience. Mike supposes he should probably be enjoying this peace while it lasts, before it becomes flooded with campers in a few days’ time — before every surface becomes tacky with syrup and spilled juice, before Mike spends the rest of the summer fighting his fellow counselors for the good coffee, getting to the machines before it gets dreggy and bitter, unable to be salvaged by even the most copious amounts of milk and sugar. As it is, there’s no one by the coffee right now, so Mike takes his sweet time pouring himself a mug — watching the steam rise from it, swirling into the air before dissipating. It’s a beautiful day: blue sky visible through the windows, the perfect balance between warm and breezy. For all intents and purposes, Mike should be in a fantastic mood.

For a moment, he wonders how Will is doing, if he’s awake yet — and then a drop of hot coffee splashes onto his hand from the spigot of the dispenser, and he winces, immediately banishing all thoughts of Will from his mind. He’ll be fine. Cranky, probably, irritable — but that’s not unusual. Mike sips his coffee, then instantly pulls away, making a face; he’d been too preoccupied to remember that he hadn’t actually added the milk or sugar yet.

There’s only a few people at the tables right now, and Mike spots Lucas at their usual spot immediately as he turns around to head back. A familiar redheaded form is slumped against his shoulder, unmoving, and as Mike gets closer, he grins at the disgruntled look on Max’s face. “Good morning,” he announces, all cheer. Another sip of coffee, which has been much improved by the addition of aforementioned milk and sugar. “What a beautiful day.”

“Shut up,” Max grumbles. Her hair falls the rest of the way into her face as she shifts position, obscuring it from sight completely. 

“Somebody’s a little hungover,” Lucas tells him in a mock whisper, not enough to really be quiet, but enough to convey the illusion of it. Even with Max’s face obscured, Mike can tell that she’s scowling.

“Shut up,” she says again.

“Yeah?” Mike asks, grinning at her over the top of his coffee mug. “You wanna try sitting up on your own?”

There’s a split second where he thinks she’s really going to get up, and then she readjusts, burrowing closer to Lucas. “No,” she says, muffled. “I could, but I just don’t want to.”

“Sure,” Mike says.

“Please talk quieter,” Max tells him. “For unrelated reasons.”

“Sure,” Mike says again. What a wonderful, beautiful, glorious day this is shaping up to be.

El and Dustin join them a few moments later, Dustin sliding into place next to Mike and wordlessly snatching the mug of coffee right out of his hands. Mike makes a noise of protest — “Hey!” — but the long sip Dustin takes from it, eyes closed and nodding appreciatively as he swallows, makes it pretty clear that he probably needs this a lot more than Mike does. Mike has been doing a lot over the last 24 hours to qualify him for Camp Whiteman’s annual Best Friend Ever award — not technically a thing, probably because Mike would sweep if it were — but this probably takes the cake. He pats Dustin — who is still yet to say a single word — sympathetically on the back. 

El comes back with a full plate of pancakes, drizzled in syrup and smothered in butter. She looks mostly normal, save for a slightly twitchy energy that reminds Mike vaguely of a snapping turtle. Probably best to not ask for a bite of her pancakes, then. She starts tearing into them, fork and knife scraping horrendously against the plate, and Mike winces. Probably also best to not ask her to cut that out — no matter how much the sound is making Mike want to curl up into a little ball and roll right out of the Mess. At the very least, he is going to need another warm beverage to carry him through the morning. “Hey” —he taps Dustin on the shoulder— “you want another coffee?”

“Black,” Dustin mutters, arms folded on top of the table, and head tucked carefully into the pocket of space there. “Please.”

“You got it,” Mike says, grabbing the old mug and pushing away from the table, walking briskly back over to the coffee dispensers.

It’s hard to ignore now, with everyone else there, that the only presence missing at the table is Will’s. Mike had gone into the morning resolutely determined to not let thoughts of Will ruin this perfect day, but that had been easier to do when it had just been him and Lucas there — and Max, technically, even in her semi-conscious state — carrying the conversation between them. Now, with Max rousing herself to make small talk, with Dustin’s mumbled grunts and El’s ferocious chewing sounds, it feels a lot more obvious that Will isn’t there. Mike pours coffee into a fresh mug for Dustin — again, everyone else had better hope that Hopper never implements that Best Friend Ever award, for their own sakes — and wonders if Will has already found the water bottle and the Ibuprofen, whether he’s accidentally taken all four of them at once like a moron, whether Mike is going to have to drive him to the hospital to get his stomach pumped or something, which probably would not need to happen after only four Ibuprofen, but leave it to Will to find a way to put a damper on Mike’s day anyhow.

He starts pouring coffee into the second mug, diluting the remnants of whatever was already at the bottom of it, then pulls it away to stir milk and sugar into it again. There’s no way Will forgot, right? He hadn’t been that drunk. He’d been operating at, like, the worst stage of inebriation: being just drunk enough to do something embarrassing, but not drunk enough to forget about it. Mike winces; he’s not heartless enough to not sympathize with that. Whatever — Mike will just never think about it again, and it’ll be fine. He’ll never think about the fact that he knows what deodorant Will wears now — clearly copying Mike’s Old Spice Fiji phase from last year, but whatever — or that he knows how many drinks it takes for him to get clingy, or that he knows how Will’s breath catches in his throat when he’s startled, or that he likes Mike in blue and his hair long, or that their faces had been so close, and Will could’ve done it — he could have, he could have done it—

Mike is so preoccupied with carrying the coffee back — staring down at the mugs, measuring his steps carefully so that nothing spills — that he doesn’t notice the new addition to the table until he’s placed one mug carefully in front of Dustin and taken a seat. Will is situated neatly on El’s other side, staring longingly at her plate of pancakes, and looking like he’d rather be anywhere in the entire world except for sitting at this table.

Will’s eyes snap up to him as Mike sits down, eyebrows twitching a little bit, almost subconsciously, before his face goes back to relative normality. There’s a long moment where Will is looking at him and Mike is looking back, trying his hardest to not notice all the things that he is definitely noticing — the tired droop to Will’s eyelids, where his hair is sticking up along the sides like a cowlick, mussy and rumpled. He’s wearing a different shirt than he was last night, at least, so he must have changed, and he has his glasses on, and he’s opening his mouth, and he’s staring at Mike, confused, and—

Oh. Mike blinks. El is giving him a strange look as she wipes syrup away from the corner of her mouth. Clearly Will had been saying something, then. Mike clears his throat.  “Sorry?”

Will frowns at him. “Good morning?” he says, like a question.

“Morning,” Mike says carefully. Suddenly, holding Will’s gaze feels like the hardest thing in the world. He looks down at his mug, takes another sip. “Sleep okay?”

Will purses his lips. “I guess,” he says. He’s speaking slowly, carefully, like he’s worried he’s about to step right into a trap Mike has laid out for him. He drums his fingers against the table, and after a moment— “You?”

“Like a baby,” Mike replies smoothly, which is not necessarily true, but there’s no reason for Will to know that. He’d tossed and turned for at least an hour after getting back to bed, eventually succumbing to the sheer exhaustion of another long summer day, and Mike isn’t laying a trap for Will by engaging him in conversation — honest, really and truly — but when he does finally look Will in the eye again, it does feel like a challenge, somehow. Did you mean it? Mike wants to ask. What you said, what you did — did you mean it? Would you do it again, now?

Would Mike want him to, if he did?

Will holds his gaze for one second, then two, then looks away on the third, a swift and nonchalant deference that Mike hadn’t been expecting from him. “Cool,” Will says, and that feeling is starting to come back, kind of — that thing that shouldn’t feel like disappointment but still does, just a little bit. Will pauses, then says around a wince— “Did I— ah, this is such an embarrassing question, but, like— did I do something horrifyingly embarrassing last night?”

Mike’s grip on his coffee mug tightens in surprise. Luckily, before Mike can say something awful and incriminating, like yeah, I think you tried to kiss me, you hyperconfusing freak, Lucas beats him to the punch. “Define embarrassing,” he says, calmly taking a bite out of his banana. “You were giving out a lot of drunk hugs.”

“Yeah,” Mike snorts, without fully thinking about it. “Tell me about it.” And then, a moment later — when Will’s eyes widen in horror, and everyone at the table turns to him — “Sorry,” Mike mumbles. “Just trying to support Lucas.”

“Appreciate it,” Lucas says, nodding at him.

Will still won’t meet Mike’s eyes. “That’s not too bad, I guess,” he says, then nods in Dustin’s direction. “So was Dustin, and he doesn’t seem embarrassed.”

“Well,” Dustin says. “I am generally very secure about these things.”

Mike gives him another pat on the back. “Good for you.”

Will is frowning, though, clearly not appeased by Dustin’s apparent security in his displays of drunken affection. “I don’t know,” he says, contemplative, “I feel like there was something—”

Yeah, Mike wants to scream, you tried to—!

“Personally, I don’t know why you’re bringing it up,” El says, mopping up the syrup on her plate with her last pancake piece. Some life seems to have come back into her; she’s sitting up straighter, looking a little more awake and less reminiscent of that snapping turtle-sona she’d been wearing earlier. “Better to just hope no one noticed, right?”

Will worries at his lower lip. Mike takes another sip of coffee. “I guess,” he says, still sounding unsure.

“Well,” Lucas says after a moment, when it becomes clear that this is an issue that is probably going to follow Will to the grave if they leave it unresolved. He raises one hand, like he’s taking an oath. “I can personally vouch for you and say that none of your behavior was out of the ordinary. Well, for someone who’s as bad as holding their liquor as you are, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Will says flatly, but he does stop chewing on his lip. “I’m not that much of a lightweight.”

There’s a simultaneous “Well,” from Mike, Dustin, and Max. Will blinks in surprise, then scowls at them each in turn. “Leave me alone.”

Mike’s grip on his mug has apparently not gotten any looser since this conversation started. He bites roughly at the inside of his cheek, putting a physical obstruction between his tongue and saying something stupid and horrifying and awful — then promptly winces when he bites down too hard.

“Mike?” El is saying. “You’re making a funny face.”

“Yeah, Mike,” Lucas says, staring at him. “Do you have something to share?”

“Um,” Mike says. “No?”

“Maybe the embarrassing thing you did was that you threw up in Mike’s car,” Lucas tells Will.

Will looks nothing short of horrified. “I did not throw up in Mike’s car,” he says immediately, but he’s started to get a weird look on his face. “I didn’t,” he says again, after a moment, like he’s trying to convince himself of it.

“You definitely didn’t,” Max tells him — her first real contribution to the conversation in many, many minutes — “because Mike wouldn’t shut up about it if you had.”

Will looks at him again. “I didn’t,” he insists.

Mike taps his fingers against his mug. He probably shouldn’t be taking as much pleasure in prolonging Will’s suffering as he is (because Will did not throw up in his car, or outside of it, or anywhere in the vicinity of the Camp Whiteman parking lot), but with every moment that passes with Will looking at him like that — confused, almost pleading — the funny feeling in his stomach lessens, just barely. Mike is not disappointed — he is not disappointed — but if Will is going to do something like that, if Will is going to throw him for a loop and then get the blessing of not even remembering it, not having to think about it ever again, the least Mike can do for himself is have a little bit of fun.

Another few seconds, and then Mike puts him out of his misery. “You didn’t,” he confirms. “But it looked really close there for a second.”

Will’s face goes back to normal. Mostly. “No it didn’t,” he scowls. 

This part, Mike actually isn’t exaggerating. “I’m serious,” he says. “I thought maybe you were going to yak all over—”

“Okay!” Will exclaims, holding one hand up like he’s trying to put a barrier between him and Mike, and scrunching his eyes closed in disgust. “Okay, I don’t really need to hear all of that.”

“It was your almost-vomit,” Mike presses, because Will is not looking at him like that anymore, and the funny feeling is coming back, creeping down into his gut. “You can’t almost throw up in my car and not even want to hear about it.”

“Well, apparently I didn’t throw up in your car,” Will counters — and of course he’d miraculously become a lot less hungover when it comes to arguing with Mike — “so you can stop acting like I committed a fucking crime or something—”

“Oh,” Mike sneers at him, slamming his mug down to the table hard enough for some coffee to splash up over the rim. “So you want to go there?”

Will frowns at him, visibly baffled, visibly frustrated. “What? What did I do? Why are you so pissed off?”

“Oh my God,” Dustin whispers. “Will totally threw up in Mike’s car.”

“He didn’t—” Mike insists, and then he notices—  that everyone is looking at them, that Will has gotten so worked up that he’s risen half up out of his seat, that Mike’s heart is pounding in his chest, and his stomach is swirling from something more than the one and a half cups of coffee he’s consumed without having actually eaten yet, that he’d been so close to saying it that it’s not actually a joke anymore. You tried to kiss me, he’d almost said— I swear to God, you tried to kiss me.

He had, hadn’t he? Mike isn’t going crazy, right? After all, what other explanation could there have been for it? For Will touching him like he did, grabbing him like that, looking at him that way all evening, pouting and throwing a fit when Mike had tried to pull away. Mike isn’t an idiot, and he’s pretty sure Will had been trying to kiss him — but now Will is looking at him, and everyone else is looking at him, and Mike can’t just say it, not here, not in front of everyone, not like this.

“Sorry,” Mike mutters after a moment. “I guess I didn’t get as much sleep as I thought I did.”

He can see the movement of Will’s throat as he swallows, and then Will slowly lowers himself back into his seat. “That’s probably on me,” he says quietly. “Thanks for getting me back.”

It feels like there is something very small and very hard lodged in Mike’s throat. Embarrassment of his own, maybe, or shame — at allowing himself to be so affected, and letting everyone know. Some unnamed thing that is decidedly not disappointment. It’s not. He swallows roughly around it, then says, aiming for a teasing tone— “Well it’s good you remember that much. I’d be concerned if you’d blacked out over four drinks.”

Will rolls his eyes. “El is a heavy pour,” he says, to which El grins, guilty and unapologetic. “But yeah, no,” he says after a moment, looking away, “I remember, like— we were in your car, and then” —he taps his hands against his thighs, fidgeting, as Mike holds his breath— “and then we got out,” Will continues. Mike exhales, swallows again. “And you walked me back, and you—” The funny look is back on Will’s face, a momentary flash of recollection before it’s gone again. “Did you take my shoes off for me?”

“That is pretty embarrassing,” El supplies.

“That’s probably it, then,” Lucas offers, clearly grateful that they’re not about to start physically fighting each other in the middle of the mostly-empty Mess anymore. “No puke involved.”

“No puke involved,” Will confirms quietly, audibly grateful. He relaxes in his seat, leans over and rests his head against El’s shoulder, and closes his eyes. 

Mike’s coffee has gone cold, all of a sudden entirely unappealing. He swirls the liquid around in his mug, gazing into the depths of it. The obstruction in his throat has become too present to ignore anymore, too difficult to swallow around without dislodging something else, some other, even more unknown feeling. It’s not disappointment, Mike tells himself, except that he’s not even one of the four hungover people at this table and he still feels like he is going to throw up, kind of, and he needs to lie down, and the coffee is churning in his stomach, and it’s not disappointment, except the issue is that maybe it is, and Mike needs to get out of here.

He stands up, maybe a little too abruptly, and pushes his mug over to Dustin, where he has drained the remnants of Mike’s first, and also his own. “Here,” Mike says. “I’m gonna— I’ve got to head out.”

Lucas frowns at him. “We don’t have anything scheduled all morning.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Max peers up at him, brushing just enough hair out of her eyes to give him a suspicious look. “Was it all the puke talk? Because that was kind of your own fault.”

“No,” Mike huffs. “I just didn’t get my eight hours.”

Lucas does not look convinced, but who cares what he thinks? He’s the one that dumped Will Duty on Mike last night anyway. It’s all his fault Mike is in this situation — that his stomach feels weird and that his head hurts and that Mike doesn’t know which person at the table he wants to strangle first: Lucas or Will or himself, maybe, for letting himself react this way, for not hauling Will’s mopey ass back to his cabin the first chance he got, for letting himself get disappointed over something he’s not even sure he wanted to happen at all. 

Mike pushes the door to the Mess open as he walks back out. It’s the same beautiful day it had been when he’d arrived — the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the treeline against the picturesque sky might as well be straight out of the Camp Whiteman brochure — but Mike has never wanted anything more than how much he wants to be inside right now. It’s stupid, is what it is, this entire situation. Everything about it — Will and his stupid grabby hands, and Mike’s total inability to keep his mouth shut. It’s stupid, and it’s horrible, and—

The worst part about it, though, isn’t Will’s stupid grabby hands or Mike’s total inability to keep his mouth shut. It’s not the fact that Mike lost sleep over this or that Will likes Mike’s hair long and thinks he looks good in blue, or that Mike almost blurted the whole thing out to the whole fucking table ten minutes ago; it’s not that he knows how warm Will’s skin can feel, or what shampoo Will uses, or what it’s like when he seeks out Mike’s touch specifically, growing fussy and frustrated when he doesn’t get it, like Mike is something he could actually want, actively desire. It’s not even — oh, God — the fact that Will was maybe, potentially, possibly trying to kiss him.

The worst part — the thing that is making Mike’s head spin, his stomach churn, his hands grow clammy with discomfort — is that under any other circumstance, Mike probably would have let him.