#andi i HATEEEE U FOR THIS I LTIKERALLY . SCREAMING AND GNAWING UR ARM OFF AND SHAKING MY HEAD LIKE UR A CHEW TOY GRAHARHGRAH

[wiseatom]

it's the first kiss, it's flawless, it's really something. it's fearless.

ok i am feeling fearless tonight, and thea byler first kisses are The Byler First Kisses so i am politely requesting a first kiss in the rain!

this was a VILE prompt to send in that i am so emotional about fearless (taylor's version) and byler and byler first kisses. i hate you so much. i hope you love it.

“Probably shouldn’t have taken our bikes, huh?” 

Will looks over at Mike, blinking rainwater out of his eyes – they’re standing under the awning of the entrance to the only bank in town, closed for the afternoon and completely free of any other miserable, rain-drenched suckers. The bikes in question are lying on their sides on the pavement, abandoned in their haste to get under cover. And Mike is completely soaked, dark hair plastered to his forehead and shirt clinging to hm probably just as uncomfortably as Will’s is sticking to his own skin, and he’s got this sheepish, guilty grin on his face. It had been his idea to take their bikes, hadn’t it? Something about we only have a few weeks left of this weather, Will and let’s enjoy the summer sun, Will and it’s only a twenty percent chance of rain, Will, we’ll be fine. 

Famous last words. 

“Well, it was only a twenty percent chance of rain,” Will points out, doing a bad job of suppressing a smile of his own. This one, though, is less in the realm of guilty, and more in the realm of, I told you so, idiot. "How could we have known?"

Mike shoves at him, a playful brush of wet skin on wet skin, and Will laughs. “Shut up,” Mike says, but he’s still smiling. He reaches a hand up, tangling his fingers in his hair as he brushes it up and off of his forehead, and Will immediately looks away, biting his lip – he shouldn’t think Mike looks cool right now. In actuality, Mike looks like a drowned rat; in actuality, Mike is the reason that they’re stranded here, soaked from the rain; in actuality, none of that makes Will want to kiss him any less.

“How long do you think it’ll last?” Mike is asking now, somehow heard over the sound of the rain hitting the pavement and the sound of all the blood in Will’s body rushing all at once to his ears. He crosses his arms over his chest, resolutely staring at the empty office building across the street, at the trees in boxed planters swaying in the wind – anywhere but Mike, willing his heart rate to go back to normal.

“Check your phone,” Will suggests, doing a very good job of keeping his voice even and steady. “Hot tip: if there’s a little rain cloud under the number, that means it’s still going to rain.”

He doesn’t have to look to know that Mike is rolling his eyes. “Really living up to your name, o’ Will the Wise,” he says, and then presumably turns his attention to digging his phone out of the wet, gross pocket of his jeans – or at least, that’s what Will guesses he’s doing. He still won’t look at him, so he wouldn’t really know, but there’s a lapse in conversation that Will can only attribute to looking at the weather app. “It’s only going to last for another half hour,” Mike declares, affirming Will’s assumptions. 

Will lets out a scoff. “Let me see,” he says, more aggressive than he intends to be, but he doesn’t trust Mike’s assessment of the weather at the moment, thank you very much. Good thing Mike has no interest in meteorology, because Will would have way too much fun bursting that bubble. 

In a feat that has taken years of a mixture of natural talent and diligent practice, Will manages to avoid looking at Mike directly, instead just looking at the raindrop-smeared screen of his phone.  Fortunately for Will, Mike is actually right – the app does show that the rain is going to clear in thirty minutes, the forecast free of tiny thunderclouds for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately for Will, his herculean efforts of not looking at Mike are thwarted completely by standing so close to Mike that he can feel the body heat radiating off of him, and he literally jumps back, cheeks burning.

Smooth. He still won’t look at Mike, but he can tell Mike is looking at him, now. Great.

“You’re jumpy,” Mike comments, sounding amused. 

“I’m not jumpy,” Will barks back, rocking back and forth on his heels, which is almost jumping. He plants his feet to the ground instantly, standing as still as possible. 

“You are,” Mike says, taking a step closer to Will, who immediately steps away from him in – well, in a jumpy way. Damn it. “You’re like a little rabbit.” 

Will flushes something violent, his cheeks burning with it, and this is not what he had in mind when he was urging his respiratory system to act normally around Mike Wheeler, please, for once in our pathetic life. 

“I am not,” he says haughtily, still refusing to look at him. 

“You are,” Mike insists, reaching out to grab at Will by the waist. Will yelps and hops away from him, out from under the cover of the awning and nearly tripping over a nearby parking block. Mike laughs at him. “See?” he says, sliding his phone back into his pocket and taking another step towards Will, who hops backwards out of his reach, involuntarily proving Mike’s point. “Bunny rabbit behavior.” 

“Because you’re trying to grab me,” Will seethes, no real heat to it, taking several steps back as Mike steps out into the rain after him. “Go away.” 

Mike only smiles wider, lunging for Will again with his arms stretched out. His fingers brush the wet fabric of Will’s soaked t-shirt, but on account of it being wet and Will once again jumping away from him, he doesn’t quite get a hold on him. 

“Bunny behavior,” Mike repeats, a gleeful sing-song, and Will flips him off. 

“I hate you,” Will spits out, dodging another grab attempt. 

“You don’t,” Mike says. 

“I do,” Will insists, letting out another yelp as Mike comes after him again. He does more than jump away this time, trying to beat the bunny allegations, and instead turns to run towards the other side of the parking lot. 

Mike makes a noise of protest, and Will glances over his shoulder to see Mike start after him. “Come back!” he calls out, following Will’s path through the parking lot, “I’m not agile enough for this!” 

“Not my fault!” Will yells back, though he’s not having much luck, either, the oil from the asphalt of the parking lot working together with the rain to make him slip and slide all over the place. Mike is working against the same conditions, but even with Will’s head start, Mike and his stupid long legs make the distance between them a lot closer than Will would like. “Oh my God,” he screams, jumping away from yet another close call, “get away from me, you freak!” 

“You’re just mad that I caught up to you,” Mike laughs, and then immediately slips in a puddle. It would be funny, except it sends him sliding forward, and his momentum is too quick for Will to react on time – which lets Mike crash right into him, grabbing at the clinging fabric of Will’s t-shirt for dear life. 

“Yes,” Will grits out, trying to squirm out of his grip, but Mike’s hold is firm, “I’m very, very mad. Let go.” 

“Nah,” Mike says, pulling Will closer and spinning them around, their sneakers sloshing with every step. Will grips onto Mike’s biceps, fingernails digging in for some sort of purchase on his wet skin, desperately trying not to topple over backwards and take Mike with him. “I like you right here.” 

They’re close – so, so close – but Will won’t look up, fixing his gaze on Mike’s bony shoulder and the way his shirt clings to it, almost transparent. The rain beats down on them, flattening Will’s hair against his forehead and sending a cascade of water dripping into his eyes, but he doesn’t care. It beats the alternative. 

“You’re an idiot,” he accuses Mike’s shoulder, furiously blinking against the onslaught of rainwater. 

“You like me, anyway,” Mike answers easily, fondly, hopefully. “You like me so much.” 

Despite himself, this makes Will tip his head back to look up at Mike, rain be damned, because that’s not the way a friend says those words. And that’s certainly not the way a friend looks at a friend, either. 

Will blinks, and the entire day restructures itself in Will’s head: Mike, calling him at noon, insisting he find his bike, because he’d be over in twenty; Mike, almost crashing into a fire hydrant, because he’d been too busy looking at Will to pay attention to where he was going; Mike, paying for his meal at the burger joint they’d gone to for lunch, a normal occurrence; Mike, constantly tapping his foot against Will’s beneath the table, brushing Will’s ankle with his toe, something that’s never happened before. 

And then there was Mike, insisting they go grab ice cream and share it, so that they could get the most bang for their buck; and there was Mike, offering his same spoon to Will, waving off Will’s halfhearted concern about germs; and there was Mike, lying back in the grass with him, his body angled towards Will as he let Will ramble about the portfolio he’s preparing for his college admissions; and there was Mike, who offered to bike back with Will all the way to his house, even though it was in the wrong direction from Mike’s own. 

This entire day has been a date. He payed for Will’s food, and played footsie with him, and shared his ice cream, and happily listened to Will rant, and chased him in the rain, and, and – Mike took Will on a date, and Will didn’t even notice until right now. 

Maybe they’re both idiots.

“I do,” Will says now, squinting up at Mike through the rain. He lifts one of his hands from Mike’s bicep to Mike’s hair, ignoring the way that it shakes in favor of pushing Mike’s hair back off of his forehead again. He lets his fingers card through the wet strands, traveling from Mike’s hairline all the way around his scalp so that his hand is resting at the nape of Mike’s neck, its tremor slight, but still there. His voice is steady, though. Braver than he feels. “I do like you so much.”

Mike’s hold on him tightens, pulling Will forward so that their torsos are pressed up against each other, and any and all nerves get washed away with the rain. Holding tight onto that courage and running with it, he uses his grip as leverage to pull Mike’s face down to his, stands on his tiptoes, and brings Mike’s mouth to his.

The first thing Will registers is that wet, the rainwater catching between them, but as Mike’s mouth moves against his, gently pressing for something beyond the static stack of lips on top of lips, the kiss bursts with new sensation. Mike’s mouth is warm, stark but welcome against the chill of the rain, and the strawberry flavor from his ice cream from earlier makes itself known in the next brush of their lips, bringing a sweetness Will hadn’t expected. It’s soft, slick, sweet, and somehow – shy yet fearless, all at once. 

Will lowers himself back to the ground, breaking the contact but bringing Mike down with him. He holds his face close and just breathes him in, all sweet strawberry breath and the fresh muskiness of petrichor and somewhere beneath them both, that same generic bath soap Mike’s mom has been buying for him as long as Will has known him. It’s a mix of old and new and Mike, Mike, Mike, and best of all, it’s his. It’s his. 

“For the record,” Mike says, his breath fanning out across Will’s face, and through the haze, Will wonders why he was trynig to get away from Mike earlier when this is so much better, “I like you so much, too.” 

Will smiles, big and wide and bright enough to banish the storm clouds, but he doesn’t want them to leave. He’s not ready to give this moment up, not yet.

“Good,” he says, bringing his other arm up to wrap around Mike’s neck. Mike’s thumbs brush at his hips through the soaked fabric of his t-shirt, and Will shudders, the feeling soaking him to the bone in a way the rain could never hope to manage. “Kiss me about it.”

And as certain as the rain falling down all around them – Mike does, and does, and does.