It's almost March by the time Will calls Mike again. Sometimes, Will feels like he spends his whole life just waiting for his brain to process what it needs to for Will to catch up to the passage of time. It's not that he doesn't want to talk to Mike—on the contrary, he's actually looking forward to talking to Mike for maybe the first time in a very long time—but he wants to make absolutely sure that he's not relying too much emotionally on that conversation actually happening.

The time passes slowly, which is just as well. Will doesn't know if he's ready to admit to Jonathan's face that he's talking to Mike again.

When he finally makes the call, it's seven o'clock on the dot, and Mike personally answers the phone on the second ring. Will pushes aside the thought that Mike might be waiting at their usual time every night to see if Will is ready to call him. "Mike? It's Will."

"I was starting to think I was never going to hear from you," says Mike breathlessly.

"Sorry. I wanted to call. I just… I have to be careful."

"Yeah, I know."

Will feels like he could slice through the tension with a knife. He'd been looking forward to this conversation, but now that he's having it, he wishes he could hang up and avoid it even longer.

There's a lot they should talk about. Will knows there is. Instead, he just says, "When can I see you again?"

So Mike drives down again first thing Saturday morning. He doesn't want to see El, and Will doesn't really want to be around Mike in front of Jonathan, so Will leaves the house early to walk downtown and meet Mike outside the house. Unlike last time, Will realizes in advance that there's probably going to be some level of physical intimacy between them when they see each other, and he's not entirely sure how he feels about that—anxious, excited, maybe a little guilty for not having a proper talk about it ahead of time. It's probably not fair to Mike for Will to cuddle with him in a movie theater, ignore him for over a month, and then immediately try to do it again, but he can't help himself. He's been careful for weeks, and he wants what he wants.

As planned, Mike picks Will up in his Jeep at ten-thirty sharp at the corner of Harrison and Hamilton. "Do we know yet where we're going?" Mike asks as Will clambers into the car and is debating whether to give Mike's hand a gentle squeeze. In the end, he decides not to—at least not yet.

Mike looks on edge a little, but Will tries to ignore it. He's probably imagining it, he tells himself—or maybe it's just that they haven't talked properly since Mike was last here, and it's making Mike nervous. Will gets that. He's nervous, too.

He asks Mike, "Are you hungry? We could eat—or walk or drive or just sit and talk somewhere. I don't really care what we're doing as long as we're…"

So Mike drives to the parking lot of the high school Will used to attend before he switched to homeschooling, and they climb into the backseat. It feels like a lot of pressure, all of a sudden, and Will bows his head and stares into his lap.

"Will?"

His chin snaps up. "Yeah?"

Mike's mouth is open. He's backed himself against the driver-side back door of the Jeep with his feet on the seat and his knees drawn up to his chin. He's facing Will, the toe of his shoe butted up a little against Will's left knee. "We should talk. We have a lot of things to talk about."

"Yeah."

Mike opens his mouth, closes it, then bursts out in a rush, "Can we talk about them later? Can we talk on the phone tonight and figure it out then? Because I really just want to—"

Will wishes he could say that he isn't thinking when he does it. God, would it be nice not to have to so carefully analyze every move he makes wherever Mike is concerned. But the truth is, the only reason Mike manages to get out as many words as he does is because Will is thinking and analyzing and suffering, and it's not until he tells himself no, he's not doing this anymore, not when he's been good for weeks and he's sick of it all and Mike is right here, offering himself up to Will for the taking, that Will can just—

—snap. He lunges forward, cups Mike's cheeks in his hands, and kisses him.

Will doesn't really know what he's doing. His previous experience with kissing is limited to, first, that awful first kiss with Mike at Thanksgiving while Mike was still with El and didn't kiss back and, second, half a minute making out in a motel room in the same bed as a sleeping Jonathan who nearly woke up and caught them at it. Will's probably terrible at it, but Mike is available, and they're alone, and Will is sick of there always being something to interrupt them, whether it's other people or the timing or Will's own emotionally stunted inability to commit. He's not going to let any of it stop him, not this time.

He crowds Mike against the car door and strokes his thumbs against Mike's cheeks, kissing feverishly. "Will," says Mike between kisses even as his hands fly up to Will's back and clutch him close. "Will—" kiss "—Will—" kiss "—wait—" kiss "—what are we—?" kiss—

"Shut up," says Will darkly, and Mike actually shivers, shivers and presses his mouth against Will's again. Unlike Will, Mike has plenty of kissing experience. Will tries not to think about why, but he can't help it, even when Mike starts sucking on Will's upper lip and Will's brain starts screaming at him to do as he told Mike and shut up before this moment gets away from him—before he finally, finally gets to take.

It's perfect, it's everything that misguided first kiss was ever supposed to be, but Will can't turn his brain off and just feel. In the back of his mind, he's starting to panic about what this is going to mean when the hormones wear off and he's in his bed tonight dwelling on every mistake he ever made that brought him to the inevitable moment where he realizes he needs Mike again, needs him more than he'd care to admit, a lot more than he was willing to acknowledge to himself for all those days that Will didn't call him over the last month, and why can't he just have this? Why does Will have to ruin everything? Why can't he just do like he said he was going to do and enjoy one goddamn moment for himself?

Will can't turn off his brain, and yet Mike is driving him insane. Mike keeps giving Will's lip these gentle little licks that promise more more more, and he gets his hands underneath Will's shirt and drags his fingertips up Will's back, around to his chest, and over his—

"Oh my god, Mike," he groans, his whole body burning. He runs his hands down a few inches, letting his fingers slip underneath the collar of Mike's shirt to scrabble at his neck and collarbone. "Don't stop, don't stop, don't—"

"Not gonna," Mike grunts, tweaking his fingers.

It feels so good, Will could cry. He allows his tongue to poke out and slide instantaneously over Mike's bottom lip, and it tastes—Mike tastes—

This is happening. This is really, actually happening, and Will doesn't know what he's supposed to feel.

It seems to go on forever. It stays mostly PG-13—they keep their pants on and don't touch anything through their denim, anyway—but they've got their shirts rucked up, and Will could cut diamonds by the time Mike finally wrenches his mouth away and croaks, "Okay. It's okay. Just—come here."

He's got his eyes closed still, and he reaches blindly until his palms land on either side of Will's head and push it down against Mike's collarbone. Will goes down willingly, hating himself, wanting this, wanting it. He presses his face into Mike's shirt and drapes his arms loosely around Mike's waist.

Mike gingerly pulls Will's shirt back down to his jeans and starts stroking Will's back through the fabric. It feels nice—comforting. "Will?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know," says Will truthfully. "Are you?"

"I don't know, either," Mike admits. "I think we might be going too… at least, that's what I thought before today. I don't know anymore. If I really were just confused, the last twenty minutes wouldn't have felt so good."

The bubble in Will's chest starts leaking air. "You thought you were just confused?"

"No. I don't know. Maybe. I know I felt like I wasn't supposed to feel any of this stuff, but, I mean, I'm obviously feeling it if I can… I could have kept going, you know? I feel like I could kiss you forever."

Even while he holds on tight to Mike's waist and nuzzles his chest, Will mumbles, "We're going to have to talk about things now, aren't we?"

Mike doesn't answer. Will pulls his face out of Mike's shirt and tilts up his chin; Mike looks straight into his eyes, smiles ruefully, and leans down just a little to peck Will on the lips. It feels exactly as safe as Will knows he really isn't.

"Okay," Mike finally says. "You first. When you weren't calling, what were you thinking?"

Will steals another kiss. It feels good—makes him feel kind of like it's safe to have this conversation, even if Will knows it isn't really. "Mostly, I was just trying to be careful. I spent a lot of time trying to pick apart how I was feeling about you. I missed you, but I wanted to make sure I was okay at the end of the day if I went a while without talking to you."

"And were you?"

"I think so. It wasn't anything like the times before when I had to cut myself off from you. I still hate that I have to be careful, though, you know? I just want to let go. I just want to feel what I feel and not be so worried all the time about it."

"Okay." Mike's voice is somber. "And how do you feel about—about what we did?"

Will doesn't respond immediately. He wants to make sure he's sure of what he says because if he's not—"When I touched you in that theater, I…"

Mike sucks in a breath. It does absolutely nothing to make what Will has to tell him any easier.

"It's just, I have to second-guess every thought I have about you. It felt good, and I wanted to think about it, but I had to keep asking myself, if I never got to do it again, would I be okay with that? Not that that's what I wanted, but would I survive? I just… I have to overanalyze every move I make. I have to because it could be dangerous if I don't, even now—even kissing you—even though all I want to do is turn it off."

Mike is watching him so intently that, when he finishes talking, Will has to hide his face in Mike's shirt again to get away from it.

"Your turn," he mumbles in a muffled voice.

Mike sighs low in his throat. "I don't blame you for anything," he begins, and Will's thinking, oh, jeez, because it sounds an awful lot like there's a but coming. "I think it wouldn't be fair of me to treat you like anything you're going through is your fault because it's not your fault. You didn't ask for any of this. You didn't ask to feel this way—to be this person."

When Mike doesn't continue, Will figures, may as well rip off the Band-Aid. "But?"

"But," Mike echoes. Will isn't looking, but he can hear Mike smiling, probably sadly, through his voice. "It's just… I guess I feel like I have to be the strong one, you know, like, be your rock through all of this so that you have a safe place to work through it, but I'm not your rock. I'm not safe. I don't even know what I… I don't know if I can ever…"

"Because I'm a boy?" says Will dully.

"Partly," Mike says. "Less now that we've done—what we just did—because that definitely answered some questions for me. No, it's mostly because… it's just frustrating. Everything with us is just so heavy and consequential all the time. I know it has to be, and I know that's what I signed up for, and it would be really shitty of me to back out because of something I knew going in, but…"

Okay, Will tells himself, that's not so bad. It's not like Mike said he actually is backing out, did he? "I'm not trying to pressure you to have all the answers," he says, barely believing that they're even having this conversation.

"I know you're not. Like I said, it's my own fault. I knew what this was. I saw what it was like for you, and I knew, and I did it anyway, and I don't regret that. I just… I don't think love is… supposed to feel… like this. I don't think it's supposed to hurt so much. It didn't with El, at least not when things were good between us."

Will's whole body has gone very, very still. He's still hiding his face in Mike's shirt, but when Mike says, "Hey," and puts his fingers under Will's chin and tries to angle it up, Will doesn't budge. "Will, come on. Look at me."

"No."

"Will—"

"I need a minute."

Mike sighs, holds Will close to his chest, and strokes the fingers of one hand through Will's hair while the other rubs circles into Will's back. It's funny how Will had no problem at all going nearly a month without talking to Mike when he was sure, absolutely sure, that they would see each other again once Will decided he was ready for it. Now that Mike's talking like they might not be able to be together—like they might not be able to do anything at all—that conviction is gone, and Will feels as unmoored as ever.

He should go home. He should go home, talk to El and Jonathan, and put Mike out of his mind. Mike isn't supposed to have a hold on him anymore, and if they're in trouble, Will needs to prove to himself that he can survive that.

He tells himself to ask Mike to drop him off back home, but Will does nothing of the sort. Long seconds pass there in Mike's arms as neither of them says a word. Will wonders what exactly is running through Mike's head right now. Is it as ugly as what's in Will's? That's a stupid question, he thinks a second later. Of course it isn't. Mike doesn't have Will's problems. He's not sick, and he has no idea what it's like to love somebody so much that you can't—

Will tries to tell himself that there's a difference between obsession and love—that just because Mike doesn't feel the one doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't feel the other as strongly. He tries to tell himself this, and he fails.