I'm glad to see you guys liked that last chapter! I have a feeling you guys will like this one just as much :)


Once everyone was changed out of their costumes they all picked out a movie from the bookshelf. Max and Jane claimed the air mattresses, Dustin and Lucas the recliners, and Will shared the couch with Mike until it was time to go to sleep when he would move to the floor. The first movie they put on was Halloween, chosen by Max. She hardly flinched and even laughed a few times when everyone else got scared.

By the time they started the third movie it was already 3 AM. Mike could see Will starting to nod off when Dustin put the Exorcist into the VHS player so he moved to sit on his sleeping bag. Though the space between the bottom of the stairs and Jane's air mattress was small he didn't mind. He hardly moved once he fell asleep anyway. Mike couldn't help but sneak a glance at a sleeping Jane once he sat down. Her hair was curly once more and she looked even cuter than usual in her baggy sweatshirt that seemed to swallow her.

As the credits for the movie started to roll Mike looked around the room and discovered that he was the only one still awake. He got up to shut the movie off before returning to his sleeping bag and lying flat on his back. Mike was wide awake so he simply let his thoughts run wild, most of them ending up at the same spot; kissing Jane only a couple hours before. Had he completely messed everything up? His first instinct was to say no. She had kissed him back. But they'd hardly spoken since it happened, the only exception being the car ride back. So maybe he had ruined everything. They'd both been trying so hard to convince their friends that they could be friends and nothing more and he'd gone and proven them right. As he lay wide awake only inches away from her he realized that Nancy was right.

He wanted to be more than friends with Jane. So badly. He wanted to be able to kiss her like that whenever he wanted. Or to know exactly what she meant when she held his hand. He wanted them to be a real couple, not just dressed up as one. He didn't want to feel so defensive when his friends teased him for his very obvious crush on her. Being friends with Jane was so easy that it was effortless. But still he wanted something more. Mike pulled his sleeping bag over his head as if to hide from how much he wanted her.

It must have been an hour that he was lost in his own thoughts when suddenly a sharp breath cut through the silence in the room. He pulled his sleeping bag down so he could somewhat see. Through the darkness he could sense movement next to him, followed by a quiet groan. Just as he was sure that Jane had woken up he could see her hand sticking out next to her before landing on his shoulder.

"Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"Did I wake you up?"

"No." Her air mattress groaned as she moved to sit up and turn to face him. He struggled to see her in the darkness and was able to make out her form. "You okay?" he whispered.

"Nightmare." She answered just as quietly. "I was going to take a walk and try not to step on you."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

There was a beat of silence before he heard her voice again. "Can you?"

"Yeah of course."

They both got to their feet and held onto each other as the maneuvered around the room to get to the door. Mike managed to find his keys and stuck them in his pocket before they went outside. Thanks to the bright moon and a few porch lights scattered across the street he was able to see her a bit more clearly. She had her arms wrapped around herself and wore a slightly worried expression. He had to hold himself back from reaching out to her. Since neither of them had shoes on they settled for sitting down on the lawn towards the street. Mike was struck with how similar the circumstances were to only hours earlier when he had kissed her.

"Are you still drunk?" he asked her once they were sitting.

Jane shrugged, making her sweatshirt hang lower off her shoulders. "A little." She admitted. "My head hurts like hell but at least I don't feel sick anymore."

He knew exactly what she meant about the head pain. A headache of his own has settled in at some point in the night. "That's good." Mike pulled his knees against his chest and propped his chin up. "So you had a bad dream?" In his peripheral vision he saw her nod her head. "You wanna talk about it?"

Jane shook her head. "Not really."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." She answered. "I don't wanna cry."

Mike picked his head up and looked over at her, searching her expression. Since she was staring straight forward he couldn't read her very well. Not that he excelled at reading her in the first place. "Do you want a hug?"

Jane nodded a few times before moving closer to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. She had her forehead pressed against his cheek and he could feel her breath once more ticking his neck. They stayed like that for a while, neither of them moving. Although Mike was now fully aware of his feelings for Jane he was able to hold himself back surprisingly well. Perhaps even more than before. At least he knew exactly why he was always itching to touch her so bad.

"You sure you don't wanna tell me about your dream?" he asked, curios about what kind of things her subconscious could concoct that would scare her.

"I don't know." She admitted.

"Why don't you tell me and if you change your mind you can stop?"

Jane pulled away from him and rubbed both of her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. He couldn't tell if she was just tired or if she was starting to cry. "Yeah okay." She said. "I had a dream that we were in the hotel from The Shinning and you got locked in the freezer like Jack did in that one scene. And I was running around the whole place trying to find something to get it open with. It felt like forever that I was looking. When I finally found a key it got really dark inside so I couldn't find my way back. And it was like my legs stopped working so I had to crawl through the hotel. I finally got to the kitchen and unlocked the freezer but when I went inside to look for you the door closed again and I was stuck inside with the key. And you weren't even in there."

"Wow."

"Yeah." Jane groaned and leaned backwards until she was lying in the grass with her arm draped across her eyes. "I'm really scared."

He gently bumped his leg against hers. "Why?" he asked. Something in her voice when she said it gave him the impression that it was more than just the dream.

"Because." She let out a long sigh before rolling over onto her stomach. If she didn't seem so distraught Mike might have laughed. "Ugh this sucks."

Mike turned towards her slightly, nudging him again. "Jane what's up?" he asked. "You can tell me."

Jane groaned, her voice muffled. "I'm scared because... because I really like you."

"What?"

Jane kicked his foot. "Don't pretend like you didn't know just to make me feel better it's not worth it."

Mike's head was spinning. "I'm not pretending. Seriously. I don't know what you're talking about."

She turned her head just enough so they could see each other. Even in the dark he could see that her face was a few shades darker than usual. "Really?" she asked. Mike nodded, too tongue tied to speak. Jane pushed herself back up into a sitting position and turned to face him. "It's not like I tried to hide it, you know."

"You could have fooled me." He managed to say.

Jane's face broke out into a grin, causing his stomach to do a back flip. Though he had a hard time believing she meant what he said he enjoyed hearing it none the less. Jane was spectacular and it seemed like a miracle that she could ever have any sort of feelings for him. He would need serious luck for that to happen, and Mike wasn't exactly a good luck charm. Probably the luckiest thing that had happened to him was meeting Jane in the first place. He didn't think he could ask for much more than that.

"Why are you scared?" he asked, remembering what she had said before.

She shifted slightly, clearly uncomfortable. "Um…" she began, her voice faltering slightly. "No one really knows this. I mean Max does a little bit. But not a lot of it."

Mike reached for her hand, gently pulling her towards him. "You can tell me."

Her eyes fell down to their hands, a nervous smile spreading on her face. Mike wished he could take a look inside her brain so she wouldn't have to say whatever was making her so uncomfortable. But instead he just waited for her to speak. "I knew this guy back in Chicago." She finally said, still not able to look at him. "We were best friends. Like inseparable. Then we ended up dating and it was… really bad."

"How?"

"Things with us were just really toxic." She explained. "We were too similar. At the end things were just really unhealthy. He cheated on me and I went a little crazy. Like keyed his car and threw a rock through his window crazy. We broke up right after that and haven't spoken since." Jane pulled their intertwined hands into her lap and started rubbing her thumb across the back of his hand. The feeling sent goosebumps up his arm. Just before she spoke again she reached up to wipe at her cheek. "I really like you Mike, you have no idea. But I'm so scared of ruining how good we are right now."

He was torn between the giddiness that she actually liked him back and the need to do something to make her feel better. Mike had to hold himself back from pulling her close to him again. "So what do you want to do?"

"I don't know." She admitted, her voice hardly above a whisper. If the whole neighborhood wasn't asleep he might not have heard her.

"Well I'll do whatever you wanna do." he said, gently squeezing her hand. "I really, really like you. And I don't want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable."

Jane looked back up at him, a smile once again starting to appear. "Do you think we can just figure it out as we go along?"

"Yeah, sure."

Her smile grew twice in size and closed the distance between them so she could wrap her arms around his neck. "You're the best, Mike." She said, her lips right next to his ear. "I really mean it."

Mike had his forehead pressed against her neck and his arms tightly wrapped around her waist. "I think you're the best."

Something about the unknown had always been scary to him, which was why nightmares involving space and the sea had always been the most frightening to him. Anxiety bumped along with his blood that things with Jane were so up in the air. But it helped that he knew where he stood with her. They liked each other. She liked him. And he was much more scared of Jane getting hurt than he was of the unknown.

He'd never taken the time to really think about what being with Jane would be like. They were very similar, which he figured was part of what made her so scared. Plus, Mike had never had a proper girlfriend before. He'd gone on a date or two, sure. But he'd never had an exclusive girlfriend. Yet another thing Mike wasn't a fan of was change. Why change the way things with Jane were when they were so good?

Since neither of them were tired they lay flat on their backs, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, and stared up at the sky. Jane told him more about Chicago and her old school, and even a touch more about her family. She said that she had an older sister who still lived in the city and last time she checked he was on the same drugs their mom was so they weren't in contact anymore.

"If she stopped taking drugs would you talk to her again?" he asked her.

Jane shrugged, her arm moving against his. "Maybe." She said. "We were never really that close. Not like you and Nancy or anything. I have my dad. He's enough."

Mike turned on his side so he could look at her, the smile she gave him when he did transferring onto his own face. "Do you ever miss her? Your mom, I mean."

"Honestly, this might sound awful, but I don't." Jane told him. "I have people in my life that really care about me and that mean a lot to me. My dad, Max, you, the guys. I don't need someone like that to ruin everything all the time."

"It doesn't sound awful." He said. "That makes a lot of sense."

Jane grinned at him, propping herself up on her elbows. "I can't believe you didn't know I liked you. I made it pretty obvious and dropped a bunch of hints."

He raised an eyebrow at her, though he doubted she could see. "Oh yeah?" he asked, "Like what?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, I don't know, like holding your hand in the movies and suggesting we do a couples costume. And giving you, like, a million opportunities to say that you didn't wanna just be friends."

"You could have said it too." Mike pointed out.

"I just did like twenty minutes ago."

She reached over to shove his arm but he quickly grabbed her hand and pulled her closer to him. Jane's grin spread even wider and before he knew what he was doing he was kissing her again.

He knew he probably shouldn't have. That logically speaking it would have been best until they walked about what was going on between them a bit more thoroughly. But the combination of the knowledge that she liked him and the way she was grinning at him through the dark made it impossible for him not to. Before he could consider pulling away and possibly start a somewhat serious conversation about where they stood Jane threw her arms around his neck with so much force that she sent him flat on his back in the grass.

She pulled away and he could feel her eyes scanning his face. "Sorry." She said. "I got a bit too enthusiastic."

"Your enthusiasm is appreciated."

He heard her let out a quiet laugh before inching closer to him and kissing him again. By their third kiss Mike thought he was getting used to the feeling (not that it didn't feel good anymore. It felt amazing. But it didn't come as an earth quaking shock to his body any longer). At least he had thought so up until Jane bit down on his lower lip.

Mike had never made out with a girl before. 50% of why he hadn't was because the opportunity had never presented itself to him and the other 50% was his own anxiety that he wouldn't be good at it. Mike excelled overthinking simple things and ending up ruining them. And he did not want to ruin anything with Jane. But their bodies were pressed tighter together than they'd ever been and her hands were lost in his hair so it wasn't like he was going to push her away.

Touching Jane's tongue with his own was a feeling so blissful it was like god himself had designed it by hand. Or maybe everything about her was personally designed. She was so remarkable it was mind blowing to him that he couldn't believe he had missed her for so long. Ever since freshman year when she moved into down she had been hiding in plain sight, always managing to slip through the cracks of the student body and avoiding him like a game of cat and mouse.

It felt like forever that they lay on his front lawn exchanging saliva and soft moans. A pressure started to build up in his head and his stomach that he felt like he could explode. He had no clue what time it was when her lips left his and he let out a quiet sigh.

"We should go back inside." She said. "You need to get some sleep."

Mike put his head against the cool grass and closed his eyes. "I need a minute."

Jane snickered as she rolled off of him, one of her arms draped across his chest while he took deep breaths to stop his heart from beating so fast. "What are you thinking about?" she asked him.

"I'm thinking if you do that again you might kill me." She laughed once more and he could feel her moving next to him. Only seconds later he felt her lips against his neck. His body sparked with electricity and his arms pushed her away on their own accord. "I'll have an actual heart attack if you do that."

"Buzzkill."

Jane pushed herself to her feet and pulled Mike up next to her. They tiptoed back into the basement of his house and let out a sigh of relief when they saw none of their friends had been awake to notice them missing. Mike crawled back into the sleeping bag while Jane curled up on the air mattress next to him, all while still holding hands. It was amazing how things could change in a few days. Or even in a few hours. When she had gotten to his house to get ready he was convinced that Jane was just a touchy person and that there was no hidden meaning to her suggesting a couples costume.

"Hey Mike?"

"Yeah?"

The mattress groaned as she rolled over onto her side to face him. "Do you wanna come to my house on Monday after school?"

His stomach did a summersault at the thought. "Yeah, okay."

"Cool."

It took a little while for him to fall asleep, his body still buzzing with electricity from the feeling of Jane's tongue against his. When he finally started to drift off he imagined what her bedroom might look like and wondered if they would be there alone.