Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Thursday has always been Mike’s least favorite day of the week. Apparently, even after the end of the world, this fact remains the same.

It starts when he’s creeping down the stairs for a glass of water. It’s late– must be two or three in the morning. Sleep used to come easy to him; he’d be the last one up in the morning at sleepovers, trudging to the breakfast table after all the good maple syrup was already used up. Always running late to school and stressing his mom out, pissing off his dad, exasperating his teachers.

But things have been a bit different lately. There’s the fault lines running jagged and chasmic through the city. There’s the spores. And the fires. There’s El with her hair buzzed close to her scalp where it used to be long enough to braid and throw back over one shoulder. And there’s Max Mayfield alone in a hospital bed somewhere in the middle of Hawkins Center, hooked up to a machine to keep her breathing because her lungs can’t do it well enough on their own. 

And also, Mike can’t sleep anymore. So he figures that maybe this is what really signals that normalcy is now a thing of the past, if the rest of it weren’t enough.

Anyways, back to Thursdays. Because Thursdays suck.

His first sign that something is wrong is that the TV light is off, and the recliner is empty. Mike doesn’t remember a night in the last seven years where his dad hadn’t fallen asleep in front of the TV, even just turned to white noise static on an empty channel, stretched out across his La-Z-Boy and snoring. He catches this by the time he gets down the third step.

The second thing is that his parents bedroom door is open, and it’s empty. Mike frowns. He’s not really sure where his parents would be, because they’re not really the type to have an evening life, much less a night life, much less a night life in the middle of the– hello– end of the world, so.

He’s down to the bottom of the stairs, nearly turning the corner around the banister, when he hears it:

“No, Ted,” Karen is saying, louder than he’s ever heard her talk without flat-out yelling, especially in the middle of the night. “I’m not going.”

His father’s problem, Mike thinks, leaning against the banister with a sour curiosity building in his gut, is that Ted Wheeler is the kind of guy that assumes people always care about what he has to say. No matter how mundane, no matter how irate, or whatever else in between. So he hasn’t ever really learned how to talk to people– like, how to actually make a point without just yelling the same words louder and louder until the other person just gives in. And that’s, like, the sort of repetitive pattern that makes you think you’re good at things you’re actually really shit at.

Right now, Ted Wheeler probably thinks he’s winning this argument. “It’s my family, Karen!” he’s shouting, and Mike frowns harder. “You think I’m going to let my family rot away in this hellhole of a town? Earthquakes and fires every day and the military can’t do a damn thing about it. Three years of chemical leaks and kids going missing and government cover ups and– and all that nonsense with the Russians.” He pauses, and Mike can hear his breathing even from his spot on the stairs. “We’re going,” he says, like his word is finality, and there’s something very cold and sharp settling to the bottom of Mike’s gut, “we’re going. My brother’s in Ohio. Your sister in Missouri– doesn’t matter. We’re getting the hell out. I refuse to pay for water, taxes, and electricity in a town that can’t even patch me into the pharmacy to buy Tylenol–”

“No,” he hears his mom say, loud and insistent enough for Ted Wheeler to, once in his life, go silent.

Mike sits down on the last step, waiting. Listening.

“No,” his mom is saying, in the same voice she’d use when he plagiarized his essay that one time, or when he’d asked to visit El and Will in California over Thanksgiving, except no one told him that his great-aunt had just died, so it wasn’t insensitive to ask if he didn’t know, okay? “No,” she says again, “Nancy’s eighteen. You can’t make her go. And she won’t– I know it, she won’t. Jonathan’s here. Her friends are here. Everything she’s worked so hard for is here–”

“What about her family,” Ted shoots back, “you don’t think she’d move to be with her family?”

His mom is probably thinking the same thing Mike is: how Nancy’s been working her ass off for all of high school on the off-chance of escaping to Boston and not having to be with her family anymore.

Mike leans his forehead against the bannister, head throbbing. He’s thirsty, and tired, but there’s not much he can do about either of those things now, apparently. “Not with college starting in the fall,” his mom gets out at last. “She’s not going to do all this six months before. Not after everything she’s been through.”

“Holly,” his dad says immediately, and there’s a noise like he’s suddenly banged his fist down onto the table. “Holly, then. What about her? You can’t– you can’t just keep her here, Karen. It’s not safe.”

“Of course I want her to be safe, Ted.” There’s a sound like a chair scraping against the ground, and then a barely audible sigh. “But what are you going to do? Take her with you to God knows where? When the rest of her family is still here? On your own?”

Mike waits for the second half of that thought, the part where his father goes, ‘Well, what about Michael? He’s Holly’s family. What are you going to do with him?’

Instead–

Silence.

A heavy silence, perhaps, but silence all the same.

Mike’s still thirsty. He’s still tired. He’s–

–he’s starting to think that maybe drinking out of the bathroom tap would be fine, actually. There’s something settling weird and low in his stomach, like the gravel that would sink down to the bottom of Nancy’s old fishbowl– scattered, floating aimlessly, rolling with each small movement of the water.

He stands back up and the floorboards shift beneath his feet, creaking gently. Mike takes a cautious step to the left. He’s lived here for his whole life; he knows where the beams of the house have settled and where the wood of the stairs has gone malleable and forgiving with age. This time, when he moves, it’s silent. 

There’s a sound like a second chair being moved back, and another bereaved sigh.

“Karen,” Ted is saying, with all the compassion and tact of a goddamn mortgage collector, “let’s talk about this. Let’s be reasonable. There’s no reason to tear this family apart for nostalgia’s sake.”

“It’s not nostalgia, Ted,” Karen bites out, “it’s my family. It’s my– it’s our kids.”

My kids, Mike thinks, rubbing at his eyes with one hand as he makes his way back upstairs. Our kids. 

He doesn’t stay behind long enough to hear the rest of the conversation.

“I heard about your dad.”

Mike turns around, halfway up his porch with a sleeping bag under his arm and three pillows shoved under his other. He frowns. “What?”

Will’s standing there, at the other end of his driveway, duffel bag slung over one shoulder and suitcase handle grasped in the other hand like he’s just pulling in from the airport to visit over a school holiday. “I heard about your dad,” Will says again, eyebrows tilting up in apology, taking a few tentative steps forward. “I’m sorry.”

Mike looks down to where the gravel is crunching softly under Will’s feet. He shrugs– he’s not going to lie and say it’s like, okay– but Mike would be lying if he said he didn’t see it coming. Not Ted Wheeler running off to his asshole brother’s place in Ohio, the one that’s got a fancy lawyer job in a city where a lot less could get you a four-bedroom house with a three-car garage and a pool. That part was a bit unexpected, Mike’s got to be honest. But the leaving– and, more importantly, Karen Wheeler not trying to make him stay– that’s been a long time coming. 

“It’s fine,” he says at last, watching the careful hunch of Will’s shoulders towards his ears, even with two giant bags in his hands. He shuffles his feet carefully against the tan bristles of the Welcome mat and looks away. “It’s– good riddance, right?”

Will frowns, almost immediately. “Mike,” he starts, making a stilted, half-motion towards Mike like he was going to maybe put his hands on Mike’s shoulder– or worse, try to hug him again, which is something Mike still can’t bring himself to actually think about since that entire fiasco at the airport. And then he stops midway, thank God, hand lifted off the handle of the suitcase and just standing there, in the middle of the porch.

“What?” Mike snaps, maybe a bit harder than he needs to, because Will’s frown immediately deepens. But look, it’s not his fault, okay? None of this is his fault– not his dad, not the Byers moving back to Hawkins, not that weird way Will is looking at him: with the air of someone who’s known Mike exactly as long as Will has, and who’s probably able to read Mike as accurately as Will is. Will, who’s giving Mike the sort of look that makes him want to say, Well, actually– and then immediately spill all his deepest darkest secrets while Will Byers nods on in front of him.

Will shifts the bags in his hands, glancing towards the door. And, oh, right, he can’t exactly go in the house because Mike’s totally blocking the door. “Nothing,” he says at last, “thanks for having us. Forget I said anything,” and then pushes past Mike into the entryway, the duffel bag hitting the door jamb with a heavy thud on his way in.

It’s a Thursday, because of course it’s a Thursday.

The Byers’ stuff is dumped all over the hall, dusty shoe prints from the walk up the driveway stamped over the used-to-be-pristine carpet of the living room. Three weeks ago, this might have been the sort of thing to set Karen Wheeler absolutely bouncing off the walls in an anxious frenzy, but now, when she comes running in from the kitchen, she’s got her shoes on and steps right through a patch of dirt someone’s tracked in, and she doesn’t even blink. And, to be fair, the Byers don’t have a lot of things, but it’s enough for Mike to expect his mom to, like, start ushering people up to their rooms and whip out a broom.

She doesn’t do that. “Joyce,” she’s saying, smiling, holding her arms out for a hug, “how are you all? It’s been so long.”

Mrs. Byers looks a bit embarrassed. “Hi, Karen,” she says, returning the embrace, “so sorry about the mess,” and then, as his mom waves her off, “we’re, uh– we’re good,” she says. “We’re doing alright.”

More out of instinct than anything else, Mike leans back in his chair and glances over at Will, the way he always used to do when people would say shit they weren’t allowed to laugh at out loud. ‘We’re doing alright,” Joyce Byers had said, as if they weren’t currently fighting off the end of the world, as if she hadn’t just broken into a Russian prison to rescue her supposedly-dead boyfriend and former Chief of Police. As if Mike and Will hadn’t just barreled across half the country via I-80 a few weeks ago, in a pizza van no less , to keep a small town in the Midwest from becoming the harbinger of the apocalypse. 

As if things were actually fine.

He’s half-expecting Will to be looking at him already, the way he used to– fighting back a smile with so much intensity that his mouth would get all tight at the corners and his eyes would almost water up with the force of it. Of that half-expectation, Mike is only another half correct– so he’s, like, a quarter correct overall, if you’re trying to do the math. Will’s looking at him, sure, but his expression is so carefully blank that Mike doesn’t think you could get it that way unless you were really trying to not look like anything at all. 

And then he’s so busy thinking about that, about the entirely alien phenomenon of Will maybe not wanting Mike to know what he’s thinking, that he frowns– very visibly, he realizes, just a half-second too late– and then Will quickly looks away.

Mike frowns harder.

“–you can take the guest room, Joyce,” his mom is saying as she surveys the people scattered throughout the first floor, because she doesn’t know any of that, of course– about the Russian prisons or doomsday or why Maxine Mayfield is tucked away in a hospital bed in a medically inexplicable coma. “And Holly and I can share the master, now that– well. And Jonathan and– sorry,” Karen pauses, frowning, “who are you?”

“I’m Argyle,” says Argyle. Thankfully, he doesn’t really seem high anymore, just maybe a little generally out of it. Which is fair, honestly– Mike’s been feeling generally out of it for the better part of the last nine months at least, so.

Karen looks to Joyce like who the hell is this in my house, and Joyce shrugs and says, “That’s Jonathan’s best friend,” and his mom must come to the same realization as the rest of them: that Jonathan Byers hasn’t really had best friends before, so this, coupled with Joyce Byers’ approval, must count for a lot. 

“Okay,” Karen continues, “Jonathan and Will can take Mike’s room, if that’s all right, and– sorry, Argyle– do you mind if we put you in Nancy’s?”

“That’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Wheeler,” Argyle says, looking a little less out of it now, “I mostly sleep on the sofa back at home anyway.”

His mom shoots Joyce another puzzled look, but must eventually decide that it’s not worth asking about. “Mike and Nancy, you two please move your things down to the basement,” she says instead, already leaning down to grab the bag closest to her and heading up the stairs.

Years ago, maybe, Mike would’ve put up some giant fuss about having to live with Nancy for the foreseeable future. But in the grand scheme of things, not having his own room anymore isn’t, like, the worst thing that could be happening. Like, their house is still intact. His family’s still alive. Will is here– and the rest of the Byers too, of course. And Argyle.

Plus, Nancy’s kind of snooty but at least she doesn’t demand lights off at nine-thirty anymore, and she’ll probably still snore– and deny it– but that part doesn’t really matter. It’s not like Mike’s sleeping much these days anyways.

“I’ve never been so happy to have a couch and a spare mattress,” Nancy says, yanking on the sofa cushions until they start unfolding with a soft creak. Mike doesn’t know why she’s making the bed, because it’s barely four in the afternoon, but alright. She nods towards the extra mattress their mom had already tugged out from storage. “Never, ever thought I’d be so happy to see that, either.”

Mike hums, eyeing the layer of dust covering the bed with mild trepidation. But, you know, he has a bed. And an intact house, and living loved ones, so he can’t complain. “Who gets what?”

Nancy eyes him, and then the pullout couch, and then the twin mattress on the floor, and then lets out a sigh. “You can have the couch,” she offers, with a long-suffering roll of her eyes, as she makes her way over to the mattress and dusts it off. “Your freakishly long legs won’t fit on this bed anyway.”

Mike should probably be offended, but he decides to maybe keep his mouth shut for now. “Probably,” he agrees gratefully, sitting on the edge of the sofa bed so the springs shift under him. He watches Nancy for a few minutes, watches the methodical way she pulls the corners of the fitted sheet over the mattress, watches her smooth out the wrinkles and dump the spare blankets on top. He’d offer to help, but one of the hallmarks of having an older sister is knowing when to shut up and back away so they don’t immediately take your head off for saying the wrong thing.

“Don’t you want to room with Jonathan,” he tries at last, as Nancy flops down onto the bed with a soft grunt. “He’s your boyfriend, isn’t that something you do? With– with significant others?”

Nancy peers up at him. “Mike,” she says, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“Uh.” Stop talking, Mike. “You know,” he says, instead of shutting the hell up, “don’t you guys want some space? Some alone time? Wait, no, not like that!” he adds after a second, waving his arms frantically in front of him as Nancy’s eyes widen. “Ew, no, I meant to, like, talk or something–”

“Mike,” Nancy says again, except she’s narrowed her eyes a dangerous amount and he’s starting to think he’s going to get his head taken off after all. “Stop talking.”

“Right,” he says weakly. “Sorry.”

Minutes pass by where neither of them say anything, where they just look around the basement as if it isn’t a room they’ve been in almost every day for most of their lives. “I do want to talk to him,” Nancy says at last, eyes still a bit narrowed. “But I don’t– well first of all, Mom would never let us stay in a room alone together,” she says, rolling her eyes, “it might be the end of the world, but it’s still mom. But also– I don’t know, I haven’t really seen him for nine months now, and there’s– you know– when you’re apart that long, you might– we have some things to talk through. And I don’t think the answer to that is shutting ourselves together in my childhood bedroom for an indefinite amount of time. I feel like we have to go slow for a bit. Not overwhelm each other.”

“Sure,” Mike says, not feeling very sure about it at all. Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. What he does know is that Will had been standing in his driveway earlier, looking at him as if that week in California had somehow driven them further apart than eight months away from each other had ever managed to do– which was a lot to begin with. And that made Mike feel– well he didn’t know exactly what it was that he was feeling, but it sure wasn’t good. 

He’d been about to take the bedding inside and come back and say Hey, do you need help with those bags, and then Will had opened his mouth and said, I heard about your dad, with his shoulders all hunched up and standing hesitantly in the driveway like he thought he had to be invited inside, or something. 

Mike hasn’t invited Will to come inside his house since the second grade.

And that was kind of the whole point: that sometime between last October and now, something had settled between them, tangible and significant enough so that Will had started hearing things about Mike’s life from other people. Meaning that for the first time in ten years, Mike wasn’t the first one to tell Will something. And now Will is doing things like waiting for Mike to ask him to come inside the house, as if he’s one of his parents’ work friends or Nancy’s study date and not Will Byers. As if he’s not Mike’s best friend anymore, but someone else entirely. And that’s making Mike feel–

His head is starting to hurt.

“Did you miss him?”

Nancy blinks. “What?”

Mike waves a hand around in the air. “You know,” he starts, “when Jonathan was gone. Did you miss him?”

Nancy’s face softens. For a moment, she looks less like Nancy Wheeler– badass who’s handy with a shotgun, machete, and for some reason, according to Dustin, a molotov cocktail– and more like Nancy. “Of course I missed him,” she says quietly, picking at her fingernails, “I thought about him every single day. Every day, like, all the time. It was kind of ridiculous.”

“Right,” Mike says. He thought about Will a lot when he was gone. Probably also every day, now that he’s really stopping to consider it, but it’s a little hard to tell because it feels like thinking about Will when he was gone was pretty much his resting metabolic state for the better part of a year.

Nancy’s watching him now. “Did you,” she starts, very carefully, “you know. Is this about Eleven? About you missing her?”

Mike looks down, and then shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says, and Nancy frowns. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “We– we broke up, actually.”

If Nancy is surprised, it doesn’t show. “Oh,” she says, eyebrows raising almost imperceptibly, and then her face goes back to normal. “Why?”

With most other people, Mike probably would make some sort of excuse– like, oh, it’s too much right now, or we’re too young, or she’s not actually into me like that– and maybe those are all a little bit true, but that’s not really the glaring issue here. “I just– I couldn’t say I loved her,” he admits, falling backwards onto the bed with a loud, creaking thump – and this is Nancy, who’s kind of weird and a pain in the ass and irritatingly aloof most of the time, but at least she has enough tact to keep her mouth shut about it if he needs her to. “She wanted me to tell her I loved her and I couldn’t– I couldn’t say it. I don’t know why.”

That’s a lie. He does know why. If someone’s begging and crying and pleading with you to say you love them– throwing every single letter you wrote them back in your face, your own panicked, half-hearted scrawl of a signature staring up at you from the floor like it’s an accusation and admittance at the same time– if they do that and you still can’t just say it, then there’s only one reason why. Only one reason why Mike couldn’t.

He’s expecting Nancy to scoff, maybe, to roll her eyes and say something about ruining a perfectly good relationship with a perfectly badass girl. Instead, her expression softens almost immediately, and she leans forward. “Yeah,” she says, eyes wide and a bit surprised, “no, I get it. That sounds– that’s a really tough situation to be in, Mike.”

“Oh,” Mike says simply, because Nancy hasn’t been this, like, nice to him in a very long time. “Okay. Um. Cool.”

“Okay,” Nancy repeats, looking a bit caught between smiling and saying something else. “Well. Are you– okay?”

Mike takes another deep breath in. The basement smells a bit musty, unfamiliar somehow. He hasn’t been in it much in the last few weeks, but it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that. “Yeah,” he says at last. He blows a soft cloud of dust off of the side table and sighs, watching the particles drift away in the lamplight. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

“Will?”

Will startles, probably harder than he should have, but Mike can’t blame him for being a bit jumpy. He’s rifling through his duffel bag, a few t-shirts folded neatly on the bed– Mike’s bed– but not much else to indicate that he’s pretty much moved in for the time being. He spots Mike in the doorway, eyes wide, then visibly relaxes.

“Oh, Mike,” he says, laughing a little nervously, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I know.” Mike offers a small smile, still dawdling with one hand on the door jamb. “I mean, I know where all the creaky spots on the stairs are, so.”

“Oh,” Will says again, hands stilled from where they’re folding the last of his clothes. He watches Mike walk from the door to the edge of the bed, unmoving and kneeling on the floor.

Mike gestures to his bed. “Can I– can I sit?”

“Oh, please,” Will nods, “I mean– it’s your room.”

“Yeah, well,” Mike shrugs, eyes darting over the small pile of Will’s belongings. “It’s yours for now.”

Will looks at him, unmoving except for the slow drag of his teeth against his lower lip, looking very much like he wants to say something but is holding himself back. “Yeah,” he says, finally putting a shirt down onto the bed and smoothing down the folded collar. “Yeah, I guess.”

“You have a lot of flannels,” Mike remarks. He spots the blue one Will was wearing the day he arrived in California, remembers that first moment walking out into the terminal like it happened just minutes ago– how he’d been looking out into the crowd and it had been like his eyes had spotted Will before his brain could properly catch up. It had been a whole lot of nameless faces and moving bodies and the dry scent of warm California air. And then, before he could even process, his vision had tunneled in on Will Byers in his blue plaid shirt, tucked neatly into his pants with his sleeves rolled up his arms, his eyes wide and searching, searching. He reaches out, rather absentmindedly,  to touch one of the buttons on the shirt. “Did it get very cold there?”

“Um. Not really.” Will reaches out to touch the button right below Mike’s hand, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it either. “It got a bit breezy during– during wintertime, but it was alright.”

Mike was supposed to visit over Christmas. He was supposed to visit over Thanksgiving, before that, but that didn’t happen. So then he was supposed to visit over Christmas, and that didn’t happen either, and then before he knew it, it had been eight months and Will Byers hadn’t written or called for almost six of them.

And Mike hadn’t– well, Mike had tried. He’d tried, really, but then the words had come out all weird and pleading as soon as he’d gotten them down on paper, like he was asking a lot more than Will surely had the capacity to give. And it had all been fine in his head, when he’d been thinking it– things like, I miss you, and It’s not the same here without you, and I’m counting down the days until I get to see you again, and the casual Love you he’d scrawled at the bottom without even thinking about it, even when it had made him feel all funny inside to try and write the same thing on El’s. And then he’d seen it all down on paper and Will’s letter had been three times the length of El’s and ten times as real, and Mike had ended up just shoving them all into a box in the corner instead. Out of sight, out of mind– or whatever.

It was fine, he had told himself then, dropping the singular letter into the mailbox and trying to ignore the swooping burn of guilt growing inside him, ugly and parasitic in its persistence. He’d written in El’s letter to say hi to Will from him, and that– that had to be enough, right? Will would be able to tell that Mike missed him. Will had always been able to tell– he’d always been able to read between Mike’s lines in a way that no one else could. And it would be fine, because Mike would call as soon as the line was finally free, and then they’d talk, and then it would be–

Will’s saying something. Mike’s totally spaced out.

He blinks. “What?”

Will raises his eyebrows. “Is that why you came in here?” he repeats, looking back down at the blue flannel. “To ask me about the weather in Lenora?”

“Kind of,” Mike says, and then, “well no, not about the weather specifically. I just– I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” And Will looks a lot more surprised at this, actually, than the idea that Mike might have just wanted to come to his room just to make small talk about unseasonably frigid California winters. “Okay. What about?”

“Anything.” The response is embarrassingly immediate. “Everything. I don’t know. I missed you.”

“You saw me just a few weeks ago,” Will laughs, “remember?”

“Well yeah,” Mike flails, “but– I don’t know. It feels weird being back, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it.” Will stacks his shirts carefully on top of each other, folded with the collar at the top like they have them in the good department stores. He makes to get up, before pausing. “Sorry, I didn’t want to assume– should I put these in the–”

“You can take the dresser,” Mike nods, “or the closet, or the– I mean, you’re taking this room now, so you can put them wherever you want. Wherever Jonathan doesn’t want, I guess.”

“Oh.” Will’s been saying that a lot today. He doesn’t get up though, just sets the clothes back on the bed. “I’ll figure it out. It’s not like I have much anyway.”

“You can borrow some of my things,” Mike blurts out, before maybe stopping to properly assess the sort of damage that seeing Will in his sweatpants and jeans and sweaters might cause. “I mean, if you– you know. You need to.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Mike taps his fingers against his bedspread– these sheets he’s had for most of his life now somehow seem so alien compared to the quilted cotton of the Byers’ new house or the smooth leather of the backseat of a pizza van.

And then: “Why are you really here, Mike?” Will asks, watching him a bit warily, with a polite but entirely unenthusiastic smile. He looks tired. “What do you– what is this?”

Mike gets hit with the most sudden and intense deja-vu of his entire life– sitting on the bed while Will Byers packs his clothes on the floor, trying to work up the courage to say something– anything– that’s actually significant. Watching Will duck his head to look away, like the eye contact is physically hurting him to maintain. Stealing skating glances at Will’s frame, still new and unfamiliar to him from what it was nine months ago: his hair shorter in the back than before, revealing the solid curve of his jaw and the slope of his neck. His slight tan. The soft lines of his shoulders broader now where they didn’t use to be. 

It’s all so familiar: how that day, Mike felt like maybe if he stared hard enough, he’d be able to see right through this new Will– the one that barely talked to him his whole first day in California, who snapped at him about El and couldn’t even look at him at dinner– and he’d be able to find his friend.

And now it’s like this, right, like Will is here– he’s here and physically present and he’s making small talk with Mike and asking him about his family, but that’s not stuff Will does. Will’s never made small talk with him in his life.

“I wanted to, you know– I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Mike starts, and the weird deja-vu feeling only grows. “For snapping at you earlier, when you got here.”

Will just keeps looking at him. “What?”

“You know,” Mike says, “you were trying to be nice and I was being totally rude–”

“Mike.” Will lets out a small, incredulous laugh. “You’re apologizing for that?” Mike nods, and Will  laughs again.

“Don’t,” he says, “it’s okay, seriously. I ambushed you–” he didn’t– “and it was totally insensitive–” it wasn’t– “and you don’t need to apologize for that. You already– we’ve already had this conversation, remember,” he adds, turning a bit pink.

So maybe Mike isn’t the only one dealing with some deja vu, here.

“Yeah,” Mike smiles weakly, “but– after that I was so preoccupied, you know, with, uh– with El and the– all of that. That wasn’t fair to you.”

Will’s fidgeting with the buttons of his shirt. “You had every right to be preoccupied,” he says, looking down again, “your– El was in danger. Real danger. You wanted to keep her safe. I wasn’t– it wasn’t about me.”

“There’s no reason it couldn’t have also been about you,” Mike insists, something like that weird sinking feeling fluttering around his gut again at Will’s sudden insistence that he, what, shouldn’t be a priority in Mike’s life anymore? “I just feel so far from you now, is that weird? Even though you’re here and we’re together again, I’ve never felt so far away from anybody. Like, what is this? Small talk?” He huffs out a laugh. “We’ve never made small talk before. Ever.”

“That’s true.” Will’s smiling a bit more now, which feels like a pretty big victory. “Yeah that was– please don’t ever ask me about the weather again,” he says, which makes another laugh start to bubble up in Mike’s chest.

“Deal,” Mike agrees, “and uh.” He hesitates, plucking aimlessly at a loose thread on the sheets, wrapping it around his index finger and letting it fall slack again. “I know I said this before, in California, but I don’t think it really stuck– you’re my best friend Will,” he says, trying to sound as earnest as possible because it’s felt like best friend hasn’t really been cutting it lately, but Mike isn’t sure what else to call it or how else to say it to convey the entire, heavy truth of the fact. “I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you weren’t.”

Will takes in a breath, barely audible even in the quiet of the room. “Mike, you already– I already said it was okay.”

“Yeah, you said,” Mike points out, “and then I was an asshole all over again. Not about the thing earlier, about my dad, but all the parts in between California and, like, coming back here. You wouldn’t even look at me the entire time we were driving through Iowa. And El wouldn’t either but that’s– you know. I’m sorry I upset you.”

“It– that wasn’t you,” Will shakes his head, “you didn’t do anything wrong. That’s on me. I was just being–”

He stops. Another deep breath.

And then Will gives a minute shake of his head and looks up, a pleasantly surprised smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you, Mike. For saying all that. It means, uh. It means a lot. To me.”

Mike heart does a surprised ba-bump in his chest. “Of course,” he says, nodding rapidly, “yeah, of course– and I meant all of it, I hope you know, I wasn’t just, like, saying it for the hell of it–”

“Yeah,” and Will’s nodding too, and then, “I’m– I’m really glad to be back here with you.”

With you. Mike’s heart trips over a second beat. He grins. “I’m glad to be back too. With you, that is,” he adds, “because, like, come on. There’s really no reason I’d want to be here otherwise. Now, especially.”

Will blinks. “Oh,” he says, and then the slow implication of what he’d just said dawns on Mike in a flush that’s surely spreading from across his face right down to the hem of his socks. 

Will is looking a bit stunned. “Um,” he says, ears turning steadily more pink by the second, “you–”

“I didn’t–” Mike starts, “I mean–”

There’s a soft knock on the door, and Mike startles, pitching himself back fast enough to almost topple over the long side of the bed. He gets it now, why Will had jumped so hard when he’d come in.

And the door’s actually already open, but apparently Jonathan Byers finds it necessary to knock anyway. He’s holding a sleeping bag and a pillow under one arm, and a small bag of his own in the other. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, not looking very sorry at all. “Mom was asking for you, Will,” he says, still looking right at Mike.

“Oh,” Will says, scrambling up from the floor, “yeah, okay, is–”

“Everything’s fine,” Jonathan says. He narrows his eyes, almost imperceptibly, and Mike figures maybe that’s his cue to haul ass out of here.

“Sorry,” he says for good measure, and climbs off the bed, making his way towards the door. He feels oddly flustered for the interaction in question, dusting his pants off as he turns back to look at Will. “Um,” he says. “Let me know if you– if you need anything. Or, you know, if you remember where something is just feel free to, like, get it. Um.”

Will looks caught somewhere between amusement and mortification. “Thanks,” he says, smiling a bit, still standing awkwardly by the bed with his body angled towards Jonathan. “I’ll– I’ll let you know, yeah?”

Mike nods again, backing slowly out of the room.

Jonathan hasn’t stopped squinting at him.

Things are…

Well, Mike isn’t going to lie and say they’re great. The sky is kind of falling down around them in showers of ash and mysterious spores. The town is kind of split four ways by chasms running straight through concrete and dirt and brick. The world is kind of ending. A little, maybe.

But relative to everything else, things are pretty good in the Wheeler household right now. The Wheeler household, minus Ted, plus the Byers, and also Argyle. And also Will is here– so even if it were just the two of them sitting in a leveled field watching the sky catch on fire, it could be worse as far as Mike is concerned.

Time passes slowly.

It’s like when Mike was little, and he’d try to walk along the bottom of the Hawkins Community Pool from one end to another, spending seemingly forever with his muscles straining and lungs aching, fighting buoyancy with every molecule in his body, just to come up for air four feet away from where he began. It’s crazy how much time seems to go by without actually passing at all.

On Saturday, they help make dinner. On Sunday, they reorganize the bathrooms so everyone’s things can fit. On Monday, they discover an old VHS tape of Snow White and watch it with Holly. She watches it another two times after that, but Mike and Will have both exhausted their daily quota for princess movies by then. On Tuesday, they find a VHS of Robin Hood, but Holly decides she likes Snow White better.

And on Wednesday, Will helps Mike clean out the garage. Some of the stuff they have can definitely be donated, but mostly, Mike just needs something to do. And Ted Wheeler took the car with him when he left, so there’s a lot of empty garage space and not a lot of things for Mike to keep himself occupied with. Other than Will, of course.

“I’ll help,” Will had declared twenty minutes ago, when Mike had poked his head into his– Will’s– room to see what he’d been up to. He’d been sitting on Mike’s– Will’s– bed, sketchbook open to a blank page and twirling a pencil absentmindedly between his fingers.

“You sure?” Mike had frowned, “you’re our guest, I don’t want to, like, put you to work or anything–”

“Mike, please,” Will had said, eyes wide, “if I have to listen to Jonathan singing The Smiths for one more second, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.”

“You love The Smiths,” Mike pointed out as they made their way down the stairs.

“Yeah,” Will had scoffed, watching Mike jump the last step and laughing as he skidded a few inches across the hardwood floor, “but I don’t love Jonathan’s singing.”

The garage is mostly full of junk: Holly’s baby clothes that they never got around to handing off to relatives, old water-stained books and moth-eaten shirts that are probably older than he is, even. Mike isn’t sure whether the people at the donation center would even want this stuff, whether it would be, like, offensive to show up with a box of his mom’s stuff from the literal fifties.

“Ew.” Will wrinkles his nose, holding up a ball of black fabric by the very tips of his fingers. “What is this?”

Mike prods at it with the end of a metal rod from a disassembled shelf. “I don’t know,” he frowns, “but the real question– why is it damp?”

They make their way through the boxes slowly, most of the stuff they find getting tossed as trash. Mike isn’t really sure if the trash services are even running at this point, but honestly, who even cares? And some of the other stuff they find– spare towels, old blankets– gets set aside. Mike finds a whole bunch of cheesy old romance books that Nancy swore she never read, even though they’re in a box marked Nancy, so he’s definitely remembering that for later.

It’s also just kind of disgusting work. Things are dusty and dirty and they find multiple dead mice in the corners of the garage, the parts that really haven’t seen the light of day since his parents moved into this house. Mike, though he’d have to have this tortured out of him before he told anyone, might have screamed like a little girl when he saw the first one. And then Will had to run over to make sure Mike hadn’t gotten, like, cornered by a Demogorgon somehow, and then– after he finally stopped laughing– he’d grabbed a broom and dumped the poor thing on the lawn.

Plus, Mike definitely smells horrible. He’s probably sweat through this shirt three times over, because it’s mid-afternoon on an April day in Hawkins, and the garage door is kept tightly shut (except for the mouse incident) so they don’t, like, let in any more of the noxious maybe-spores than strictly necessary. “Okay,” he says, maybe three hours after they’ve started, when the garage is spic and span but that’s also probably because Mike’s attracted all that dirt onto his own body. “That’s probably good.”

Will doesn’t appear to be faring much better. Or– well, he’s just as sweaty as Mike is, but it looks better on him, somehow. Can sweat be worn as an accessory? Mike isn’t sure, but it seems like Will’s doing it anyway. “You sure?” Will puts down the last of the boxes he was moving. “I can help some more if you need me to.”

“I don’t care about that,” Mike says, gesturing down at himself and pulling a face. “I need a shower.”

“Yeah,” Will snorts, looking him up and down,  “you really do.”

Mike throws his dirty rag at him, which Will dodges much too easily for his liking. “You’re not looking that much better yourself,” Mike grumbles, which is a flat-out lie. Will is– he’s looking a lot better, actually.

Will wipes at his brow with the back of one hand, and sighs. “I haven’t been this gross in– well, not since our cross-country drive,” he says, contemplatively rubbing at a stain on the thigh of his jeans. 

“Oh, God,” Mike lets his head fall into his hands. “No. I don’t want to talk about that.”

It’s weird, now that Mike’s thinking about it, that this is the first time Will’s bringing that up. Their drive across the country– and Mike hadn’t wanted to push, because Will had somehow managed to speak a grand total of maybe fifteen words across six states, so he’d figured maybe that was enough of a cue to shut up and let Will talk when he was ready.

Except Will hadn’t talked; he’d almost disappeared entirely in the weeks between their return and moving into the Wheelers’, when Hopper’s cabin got too big for six people– two of whom the government presumed to be, like, dead– and they’d decided maybe it was a bit too conspicuous to have the other four people going to and from the same abandoned spot in the middle of the woods all the time.

“Yeah, well.” Will drops his hand, coming to sit down next to Mike on the threshold steps. “Sometimes– maybe this is totally off, but there were times I’ve been thinking– maybe we should talk about it. The trip, I mean, not the– not the grossness.”

“Oh,” Mike says simply, watching Will lean forward with his elbows on his knees. He’ll talk when he’s ready, he’d told himself. “Um. Okay. What’s up?”

Will doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Mike watches a bead of sweat make its way down the back of his neck, disappearing down the back of his not-so-white-anymore shirt. He’s got a smudge of something dark gray right behind his ear. Mike wants to– he wants to maybe reach out and rub it off. 

There’s something about Will that Mike can’t put his finger on, the strange magnetism surrounding him that Mike is sure hadn’t been there before. The way Mike can feel his own body gravitating towards Will when he’s nearby, the sudden urge to press his hands firmly to Will’s arm or shoulder or neck or cheek, even if just to confirm that what he’s seeing is real and in front of him. Mike is sure none of that was there before Will moved away. He would’ve noticed if it had been.

“You were apologizing to me the other day,” Will starts, “but that’s not– you didn’t have to do that.”

Mike frowns. “Of course I did, are you kidding? I upset you, I must have hurt your feelings because I was being a total asshole, and you didn’t even say anything to me, like, the whole drive back to Hawkins, and you wouldn’t have done that if you weren’t–”

“Mike, stop,” Will gets out. It comes out a bit strained. He’s closed his eyes, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Can you please– can you stop that?”

Mike stops. “What? What did I do?”

“You’re– you keep saying sorry,” Will says, “but it’s not your fault. You said sorry back in Lenora, in my room. And that was– that was fine. You said best friends, so we– so we’re best friends again, that’s fine. You say, like, one maybe-rude thing to me in your driveway and then you’re in front of me apologizing again, saying we’re best friends again, and it’s–”

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, leaning forward so he’s level with Will’s face. Will’s saying a lot of things, but– “I’m– I don’t think I get it,” Mike shakes his head, “sorry, what’s– what’s the problem here, exactly?”

Will’s still got his fingers pressed against his temples, looking away into the opposite corner of the garage. They’d cleaned that one last, leaving behind mostly an empty shelving unit and a few copies of X-Men that Mike thought maybe Lucas would get gross and sentimental about. “I get it, okay,” he says at last, “we’re best friends. I get it.”

What? “What?” Mike’s head is spinning, something tugging sharply at his gut. “Will, what– you were the one who was stuck on it, remember,” he gets out, watching Will watch the far corner like there’s something there Mike isn’t seeing. “At the– at the roller rink place,” Mike points out, “what happened to ‘we used to be best friends,’ I mean, I thought this was what you wanted. I’m trying to apologize because I was an asshole, but–”

“It was,” Will responds, “I mean, it is. It is what I want. It’s–”

Sometimes, Mike thinks he’d like to grab Will by the shoulders and shake. As it is, it’s a close thing because his hand is already moving, not even bothering to maybe consult the motor skills region of his brain first, and it lands somewhere on the top of Will’s knee, right under the unidentified stain on his jeans.

Will jerks back, like Mike just took a swing at him.

“Whoa.” Mike pulls his hand away. Shit, shit– he’s messing this up. He’s really messing this up. Will is upset, upset at him– and Mike doesn’t know why Will’s upset at him but it’s putting something bitter in his chest and sour down the back of his throat to think about either way. “I didn’t– sorry, are you–”

Will stands up, fast. “I’m fine.”

“Will, what is this? Everything was– we were good a second ago. We were better than good, we were–” 

Maybe it’s a bit desperate, but he doesn’t even have enough of a grasp on the situation to yell. He doesn’t know what’s going on enough to get mad about it. He might have, if this hadn’t happened so fast– if Will hadn’t gone entirely zero to a hundred faster than Mike could even process his first protest about it, he might have yelled. Might have called bullshit, maybe, except he doesn’t know what the hell Will is yelling about, so maybe he can’t really call bullshit in the first place.

It’s just like back at the roller rink, Mike thinks, watching Will tap nervous fingers against his thigh. It feels like Will is always doing this to him. It’s like the roller rink, and that entire mess of a night last summer in his garage, rain coming down in sheets outside and the soft clicking of Will’s bike chain as he pedaled away. Will’s always doing this– this thing where Mike thinks they’re okay, and everything is fine, except apparently they’re not. And he never catches on until things are really not okay, and they’re really not fine, and by that point, he’s gone and put his foot too far in his mouth to take it out again.

Why can’t Will just– why doesn’t Will just talk to him anymore? A year and a half ago, Will would have told him the second something was wrong. And it never would have grown into this– words boiling over on a hair trigger that Mike never even knows about until it’s too late.

When Will finally meets his eyes, his expression is very carefully calm. “We’re still good,” he says, trying for a nonchalant shrug. And his voice has mostly gone back to normal, but the giveaway is written all over his face: the set of his jaw, the tightening of his lips. “It’s just, sometimes I think– Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

He’s right about that. It’s barely six and Mike feels like it’s been Wednesday for at least a week. “Are you sure?” Mike tries. “You can– if I did something, you can tell me. You should tell me, because you’re kind of stuck here with me for the foreseeable future, so.”

Will seems to come to this realization at the same time Mike does. Still, he shakes his head. “No,” he says, and tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It’s– nothing. It’s nothing. I think I’m just a little tired.” He glances towards the door to the house, and then back at Mike, unmoving.

Mike waits.

“Do you– do you think I could shower first?” Will says at last, “I might go lie down for a while.”

“Oh,” Mike frowns, and then steps out of the way of the door. “Yeah, of course– sorry, I hope I didn’t make you, like, overexert yourself.”

Will shakes his head again. “No,” he says, a bit more earnestly this time, “no, it’s not that, I promise.”

“Okay,” Mike says simply. He doesn’t know what else to say. “Okay, um. Yeah.”

Will’s got one hand on the doorknob when Mike says it– because he’s sick of it, so sick of that look Will gets on his face when he’s trying not to say something, so sick of wanting to grab him by the shoulders and yell, Talk to me!

So sick of this repetitive ebb and flow– having Will and losing him again. Fixing things and breaking them again. Things falling into place and then apart again. He’s so sick of messing things up, of Will’s inexplicable magnetic pull being countered by nothing but parallel repulsion, like every time he tries to get closer, they just end up farther apart than when they started.

He’s so sick of it.

“Will,” Mike blurts out, still standing there by the garage steps, arms hanging by his side. He curls his fingers up into fists, lets them slacken again.

Will doesn’t turn around, but he does pause. “Yeah?”

“Are we- are we okay? Actually? Because if we’re not– you need to tell me. Just tell me right now if we’re not okay,” Mike says, all at once, watching Will’s shoulders creep up towards his ears, something hammering away in his chest. “I don’t– I can’t do this with you again. Not now. So if there’s something I need to do, something I didn’t say–”

Will takes in a deep breath, then looks over his shoulder. “You don’t need to–” he says with a small smile, but it’s not quite reaching his eyes. “Seriously. I’m just tired.”

Mike doesn’t believe him in the slightest. But Will Byers is stubborn and resilient and he’s standing at the door like every muscle in his body is tensing with the effort to not throw it open and run inside. And that was the whole reason Mike hadn’t even said anything in the first place– because you’d be hard-pressed to get Will to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about, so Mike knows that this conversation will end the second Will turns the doorknob.

“Okay,” he says at last, because there’s nothing else to say, really. And his head is spinning so rapidly that he isn’t sure he could form words if he tried. 

They were– they were good, just a few minutes ago. They were better than good, even. Mike had been thinking, just now when he’d been tossing his dirty towel at Will and watching him dance out of the way to avoid it, that it had been nice to see Will laughing, to see some of the tension slough off his shoulders from where he’d been carrying it around for weeks. Mike had thought– well, Mike had felt something go loose and pliant in his stomach watching Will work, making easy talk about their moms’ cooking or Holly’s Snow White tape. It had felt, for a while, like the world wasn’t crumbling to ash around them. Like his best friend had come back to him. Like they were Will and Mike again.

“Okay,” Mike repeats, “sorry, yeah, you can have– you can get dibs on the shower.”

Will nods, turning back around, and then steps inside the house without another word.

Will’s always been good at hiding.

That’s been great for Will, given the whole Upside Down thing, but it kind of sucks for Mike. He isn’t sure how Will’s managing to make himself scarce in a house that’s packed to the brim with seven people, but he’s doing it. When Mike checks the dining room, he’s in the bathroom. When he checks the bathroom, Mrs. Byers says he’s in Mike’s– Will’s– room. And there, Jonathan’s already fixing him with the sort of look that makes Mike think maybe it’s time to give up for the day and go back to the basement.

The next day is a Thursday, because of course it is. 

Mike hates Thursdays.

It used to be because he’d wake up every Thursday thinking it was Friday, get excited, then have to do it all again the next day before the weekend arrived, dragging his feet through the halls and trying not to fall asleep.

Now– well, it’s probably just a subconscious nostalgia thing, because Wednesdays, Mondays, Saturdays, Fridays– time’s running all over itself until Mike can’t really make sense of days anymore, much less, like, hours or minutes.

He knows today is Thursday though, because his mom’s trying to fight through the battered phone lines to have her weekly settlement call with his dad. Another reason to hate Thursdays.

“Why is mom yelling at the phone?” Holly’s sitting on the living room floor, peering up at him.

“Uh,” Mike starts, because he’s not really sure how to get into the intricacies of separation and loveless marriages to someone who was ordering off the kids menu at a restaurant a month ago. And then their mom’s voice carries in louder from the kitchen, and Holly frowns, and Mike quickly says, “Hey, do you want to watch Snow White again?”

That was a mistake. Mike is so fucking sick and tired of this movie, but Holly must be on her tenth rewatch by now and still going strong. “That’s weird,” Mike points out, when the kiss scene is about to come up again, “don’t kiss someone when they’re passed out in the woods. That’s weird, okay?”

Holly slowly chews on another cracker. “But it’s so romantic,” she protests, which it’s really not, “it’s true love. I wish I could have a prince.”

Mike snorts, reaches for a cracker himself. “That’s not romance, Holly,” he says, with the air of someone a lot more knowledgeable about this topic than he really is. “Kissing an unconscious stranger in the middle of the forest is not true love. It’s just weird.”

And it’s not like Mike’s some expert on grand romantic gestures or anything but he knows this much. Mike had told the girl he was dating that he loved her– which was a complicated enough thing on its own– and then the next thing he knows, one of his best friends is in an irreversible coma, the world is ending, and Will Byers is currently avoiding him in his own house. 

So maybe it’s best Holly ask someone else for dating advice in the future.

There’s a sudden creaking on the stairs and Mike looks up, teddy-bear-shaped cracker halfway to his mouth. 

“Oh,” Will is saying, “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Mike frowns. “It’s my house,” he says, but it doesn’t come out nearly as sharp as maybe it should have. As sharp as he maybe wanted it to be, a little. “Where else would I go?”

“Right.” Will shakes his head. “Sorry, I meant– here watching the, uh, the Snow White movie again.”

That’s fair. Mike didn’t expect himself to be watching it again either, but here he is. He darts a quick glance over to Holly, who’s entirely enthralled by the screen, and turns back to Will. “My mom was on the phone with my dad,” he offers, and Will’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Ah,” he says, like he understands immediately, and then falls silent.

“So,” Mike starts, feeling weirdly nervous. “Are you–”

“I just came to, uh, get some water,” Will says, nodding quickly towards the kitchen, and then gesturing back to the stairs. “And then I’ll–”

“No!” Mike blurts out and, and Will’s eyebrows climb even higher up his forehead, if that’s even possible. “I mean,” Mike continues, the weird nervous feeling heightening, “water is important, you should– you should do that. But don’t go back upstairs. Please?”

Will looks unsure, and Mike sighs, gesturing to the TV. “I really don’t want to watch the rest of this,” he admits, lowering his voice so Holly can’t hear, even though she probably wouldn’t care. “And I’m so sick of sitting inside,” he says, “do you– do you want to go for a walk, maybe? Or something?”

Will shifts his stance, sticks his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Oh,” he says, “I mean, I thought we weren’t supposed to spend a lot of time outside–”

“Ten minutes,” Mike promises, “fifteen, tops. It’s calm out right now. I just– I need to get outside so bad. I think we’re all going a bit stir-crazy and it’s only been a week.”

Will bites his lip, unsure. “I don’t know,” he says, hesitating. He’s looking over to the kitchen like he might be able to make a break for his water when Mike isn’t looking, then run off and hide again.

Mike’s not letting that happen. Not today. Not again. Not when it’s this or more princess movies with Holly. But, if he’s being entirely honest, he’d choose Will over a lot of things. He’d choose Will even if no one was asking him to make a choice. 

“Please?” Mike scrambles to his feet from where he’d been cross-legged on the floor. Will watches him move, expression unchanging. “I know you probably want to get out for a bit too,” Mike says, “I’m sure you’re getting a bit antsy cooped up in here.”

Will bites at his lip some more. Mike’s giving him an out– whatever he was feeling yesterday, he can just chalk it up to confinement, isolation, agitation. And Will’s not an idiot– he’ll take the offer while it’s on the table. Mike knows it. 

“Okay,” he says at last, and Mike grins, pleased. Will takes his hands out of his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. “Yeah, okay, maybe for just a little while.”

The nervous thing inside Mike’s chest swells. “Okay,” he echoes, smiling back. “Yeah that’s– we don’t have to go far,” he adds, “just, like, down the block, into my backyard, wherever, anywhere–”

“O-kay!” Will lets out a startled laugh. “Yeah, I get it, we’ll go, just, uh– just give me a second, okay?” And then, turning back to the TV, “Do you want to, uh. Finish your movie?”

“No,” Mike snorts, “God, no. No, let’s go. Now, please.”

Will comes back downstairs with a backpack and a Walkman in hand. Mike’s already waiting by the door.

He blinks. “Is that my sweater?”

Will looks down at himself, turning the faintest shade of pink. “Oh,” he says, “sorry, it was still hanging in the closet and I don’t– it’s not like I had a lot of stuff to bring with me, you know?” And then, at Mike’s responding pause, he frowns. “Sorry, is that not okay? I thought–”

“No,” Mike shakes his head, “I mean, yes, it’s okay, no it’s not not okay–”

“So it‘s good?” Will smiles, hitching his backpack up higher on his shoulder. He presses the Walkman into Mike’s hand. “Here,” he says, “this is for you.”

Mike stares at it, frowning. “Why are you giving me this?”

Will looks a bit incredulous. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”

Mike rolls his eyes, watching Will bend down to tie his shoes. “I didn’t forget,” he says, “but why do I get one and you don’t?”

“Mine’s in the bag,” Will says simply, tugging hard at one shoe. “And it’s good to have a backup. You know, if one breaks.”

They’re both thinking the same thing at that moment. Mike can tell it even without seeing Will’s face– that Max might still be here if her Walkman hadn’t broken, ribbing them and teasing and beating their asses at Pac-Man instead of being hidden away in some understaffed hospital wing, with the fiery red of her hair all washed out in the cold blue of the hospital lighting. “Right,” he manages, slipping the Walkman around his belt, “okay, yeah. Good plan.”

He reaches out a hand without really thinking about it, just as Will moves like he’s going to get up from the floor. Will pauses. “Oh,” he says, slowly reaching up and gripping at Mike’s forearm, letting himself be hauled up most of the way. “Thank you?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, arm gone weirdly warm and tingly where Will had been holding it. He’s pulled Will up right in front of him, close enough to see the tired smudge of purple under his eyes, the slightly rumpled collar of his t-shirt poking out through Mike’s sweater, and simultaneously starts to feel a bit dizzy. He wonders if that’s a symptom of a stroke– the arm thing and also the dizziness– or if maybe that’s a heart attack. He can’t quite remember. Is he about to have a heart attack right now? “Yeah, let’s– let’s go.”

It’s strangely calm outside, just like it had been fifteen minutes earlier. And on any other occasion, this might have been a given, that the sky wouldn’t start raining down spores and hell-debris in the ten minutes it took for the two of them to step out for some air and come back, but historically, they haven’t had a lot of luck with givens, have they?

“You know,” Will says, kicking aside a loose pebble, “this isn’t as apocalyptic as I imagined it would be.”

Mike picks his way carefully past an overgrown bush. They’re walking to the old park a couple blocks away. “Don’t jinx it,” he says, shaking a particularly thorny bramble out from where it’s caught in his jeans. “Please don’t jinx it.”

“I’m just saying,” Will insists, “it’s a weirdly nice day. I thought that if the world ended, there’d be more, I don’t know. Fire.”

“Will,” Mike gets out, “please stop talking. Please.”

Will throws his hands up in the air, but he looks like he might be fighting back a smile. “Fine,” he says. “It’s a nice day. Full-stop.”

“That’s better.”

Mike used to laugh when his mom would say all that stuff about going outside– like how fresh air and movement and sunlight would be good for a growing body. He’d thought that was ridiculous back then, just like how eating a certain amount of vegetables per day was supposed to make you live longer or something. Now, though, after spending even just a week inside, stuck in the same repetitive cycle of having to find infinite ways to kill time– Mike’s starting to get it.

And he’s not about to go, like, backpacking across the East Coast, but this is nice. Outside, with Will. It’s nice.

“So,” he tries, as they approach the clearing of the neighborhood park. It’s nothing fancy, just a slide or two off in the distance and a few benches next to them, but it’s empty and open, blessedly bramble-free. “How are you?”

Will turns, looking a bit baffled. “How am I?”

“Yeah, you know,” Mike waves a hand in the air, “how have you been?”

“You’ve been stuck in a house with me for a week, Mike,” Will says, sitting down on a bench. “You know how I’ve been.”

Does he? Mike thinks he does, sometimes, thinks he’s getting better at reading Will, like he’s finally bridging the ever-growing gap between them, and then Will does things. Things like pulling away. Things like– like exploding at Mike and not telling him why. Things like–

–things like going back to acting as if everything is fine between them when it’s clearly not.

“Well, tell me anyway.” Mike slides in next to him. “It can’t hurt.”

Will takes in a breath. “Okay,” he says, “I’ve been– I’ve been fine, I guess.”

“Fine,” Mike repeats, shifting so they’re facing each other. “What’s fine?” 

“It’s just– fine,” Will repeats, wholly unhelpfully. He’s looking off somewhere in the distance, into the trees. “I mean– it’s a lot. Everything just feels like it’s happening at once, you know?”

Mike knows. “Yeah,” he nods, thinking about how Will hadn’t been here for so long and now he is; how Mike had gone eight months trying not to forget about the way Will’s eyes crinkled up when he smiled and now Will’s borrowing his clothes and eating dinner with them every night; how it had been radio silence and two thousand miles and now Will’s sitting next to him on a park bench in a wide-open circle of trees, doing something that’s just a half-step up from making small talk. “Things are a lot right now.”

Will takes another deep, steadying breath, fingers fidgeting with the strap of his bag. “Yeah, you could say that.”

There’s a heavy pause, which is the first thing that strikes Mike as weird. Him and Will– they don’t have heavy pauses. At least they didn’t before Will moved away. “I feel like,” Will starts, hesitant, “I feel like I should apologize. For yesterday.”

Maybe that’s true. But that’s the thing– Mike doesn’t even know what the problem was. He doesn’t know what to fix. “You don’t need to apologize,” Mike shakes his head, and Will looks up. “Just– just talk to me. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Will looks like he’s about to protest again. Watching him frown, something climbs up and out of Mike’s throat, frenetic and hot and desperate. And before Mike can even think about it: “No more apologies, okay?” he blurts out, “we’re– we’re done with apologies. You and me, this is it.” He gestures between them. “Just tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it, okay? And then we’ll be good again, for real. But this is it. No more apologies.”

“Mike,” Will starts, stiff around the edges. “You can’t just– there are some things you can’t fix, okay? Sometimes, that’s just how it is.”

And maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t mean Mike likes thinking about it– about the possibility of something that’s making Will’s mouth curl downwards and and his shoulders tighten that he can’t make disappear with a wave of his hand. He wants to. It’s scary, almost, how immediately willing he is to shoulder this burden on Will’s behalf. “Maybe,” he says quietly, “but it doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a long moment. It’s very quiet outside; the wind is rustling the tree branches a bit, but it’s almost silent other than there. There aren’t any birds around, Mike notices, a bit absently, as he looks up into the trees. The absence of the usually constant chirping is almost startling. The ash and soot must have driven them away, or something.

“Did you mean it?”

Mike looks down from the trees, back at Will, who’s studying his shoelaces with unyielding fascination. He frowns. “What?”

“You said– you told El, back at the pizza place, that– that your life began the day you found her. The day I–”

Oh. Oh.  

“Will,” he starts, the guilt settling over him in an acrid wave, “you know I didn’t–”

“I don’t know, actually.” Will digs the toes of one shoe into the soft dirt and grass at their feet. “That’s the problem, since you– since you want to know so bad, for whatever reason. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Mike says, and it comes out pleading, “you have to– you have to know that. I was just trying to– she was going to die if I didn’t–”

Because he didn’t mean it– how could it be possible, in any variation of any universe in which Will exists, that Mike’s life without him could be anything more than miserable, unfulfilled, and heavy with the sort of longing that nothing else could possibly satisfy?

And maybe Will would believe him if he knew about the bike ride home after that day at Sattler’s Quarry– how Mike had been crying too hard to see even two feet in front of him, how he’d swerved off the road twice, how his knees and palms had gotten scraped up and bloody but the grief had numbed his entire body too much to feel any of it. How he’d been fighting back the swell of bile up his throat the whole way up the driveway. How he saw Will every time he closed his eyes for months after that, how he still does, sometimes– the dragging weight of his waterlogged clothes, the vest he wore every single day during the cold stretch of weeks before Thanksgiving, the unnatural blue-white of his hand, dragging limply along the water’s surface.

Will sounds tired when he answers. Resigned. “I know,” he says softly. “I’m not– I get it, Mike. You were saying what you thought you had to. It’s just– I guess I’m just a bit confused.”

“Confused,” Mike repeats. “About what?”

Will looks up at that, eyes darting briefly between Mike’s, something flashing across his face in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it beat, and then it’s gone. “We should go,” he says at last, looking away again, as disappointment swoops low in Mike’s chest. “We’re not supposed to be out here too long.”

“It’s been, like, twelve minutes,” Mike protests, “Will, just– just wait a second–”

“You said fifteen tops, Mike.” Will’s already standing up. “I’d prefer to keep it on the lower end. We should go.”

“Will,” Mike presses, reaching a hand out to grab Will’s wrist on instinct, just below the hem of his borrowed sweater, “seriously, one more minute won’t kill us, just wait– you can’t just–”

Will stops, looking down at Mike’s fingers curling into the bones of his wrist, and then back up. Mike holds his gaze like it’s a challenge– talk to me. Come on, talk to me. Don’t run away.

And then Will tenses. 

“Mike,” he says, urgent, eyes darting over the treeline. Mike’s grip falls slack. “We really need to go. Now.”

There’s alarm in his voice that wasn’t there before, and Mike frowns. “What? What’s wrong?”

He looks up. The sky looks normal, and there’s nothing immediately barreling towards them, which are two of the immediate signs of danger he’s gotten used to being on guard for. And then, after another quick survey– no smoke, no fire, no chimes of a grandfather clock in the distance. Mike stands up too, one hand drifting towards the Walkman on his belt on instinct.

“Will,” he says again, watching Will watch the trees, tension carving his face into something set firm and stiff. “What are you looking at?”

A moment passes, the clearing still and silent around them. Mike shivers slightly. Even though the breeze has died down, it suddenly feels colder than it should be. A lot colder. The sun hasn’t even dipped behind the clouds, he notices vaguely, letting his eyes dart over the canopy of gold-dappled green.

Then–

“There’s something there,” Will says, voice dropping low into a whisper. “Mike– I think there’s something there.”

Great. That’s– that’s great, really. “Okay,” Mike starts, “what– what kind of something?”

Will shakes his head slowly, but he takes a careful step towards Mike, one hand twitching slightly at his side, the other going immediately to the strap of his bag. “I don’t know,” he replies, still whispering, which is– that’s really great, actually. Awesome. “I don’t know, it could be anything.”

“Anything,” Mike repeats flatly, “like– a bear, or–”

There’s a sudden rustling in the bushes surrounding them, maybe twenty feet away, right in the direction Will had been facing. Simultaneously, they stiffen, Mike’s hand curling around the hard plastic of his Walkman.

“Will,” he starts, “do you have–”

“It’s in my bag,” Will says immediately, without turning around, eyes fixed straight ahead. He takes in a shaky breath. “My tape and my headphones. If you– if you need them. And my walkie. Jonathan has the other.”

“Okay,” Mike whispers, feeling a bit nauseous thinking about it, the possibility that Will might–

No.

He gives his head a minute shake. “Do you– do you think we could leave before it notices us?” 

It might just be a deer. It might be.

Mike’s not trying to take chances today.

“Maybe,” Will whispers, but he seems to be thinking the same thing Mike is. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

“Okay,” Mike repeats, “should we, like, turn and run, or–”

Will shakes his head. “Back away,” he says, “and then we can– we can book it to your place.”

“My place,” Mike echoes, “yeah, okay. We’ll book it.”

Will takes in another shaky breath. “On three,” he says, as they both start to take slow, careful steps backwards, over the yellowed grass of the clearing and towards the opening in the trail they’d come in from. “One. Two–”

In the second pause before Will says three, Mike realizes several things at exactly the same time.

One.

It’s cold. Way too cold. It had been warm enough when they’d left, but now Mike’s shivering hard, even through the heavy denim of his jacket. 

Two.

It’s quiet. Way too quiet. Mike had been trying to clock it before, what it was that had been feeling a little off, but it doesn’t hit him until now, with time slowing to a near-stop around them: the birds have stopped chirping. There had been birdsong ringing through the air on the way here, reminiscent of any other spring day in Hawkins. But now– nothing. There’s nothing. Not even the breeze.

Three.

As if in slow-motion, he hears the heel of Will’s shoe come down on a twig. A snap! echoes sharply through the air. The sound is much louder than it should be for something so small.

Four.

The thing in the bushes is big. It’s really big. And it’s definitely not a deer.

“Shit,” Will hisses, panic creeping audibly into his voice. The rustling gets faster, closer, and is one hundred percent moving in their direction. Mike can make out the vague shape of it, hunched over and stumbling with a crawling, sinuous movement that’s distinctly unlike any human or animal he’s ever seen before. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Mike figures they have maybe twenty seconds to make a move, if they’re lucky. And, because they never are, he figures it’s probably more like fifteen.

Fifteen seconds. They’ve got fifteen seconds, tops.

“Get behind me,” Mike says without thinking, barely half-aware of his own body and trembling like a livewire. It’s too late to run. They’re too exposed. It’s forty feet to the nearest cover, then a thirty second sprint to get out of the foliage and back into Mike’s neighborhood. And then– and then what after that? They run all the way to Mike’s house? And after that? What if it tries to get inside? To his mom? To Holly?

Mike can barely think over the panic. He moves one arm out to his side on instinct, like he’s halfway to an attempt at bodily blocking Will from harm’s way. His hand might be shaking. “Will,” he says again, trying to sound calm and collected and self-assured, even if it comes out sounding anything but, “get– get behind me.”

Why Mike says that, he doesn’t know. He’s not even holding anything, save for the headphones dangling limp around his neck and the cold plastic of the spare Walkman jutting into his hip. He has nothing. Not a rock. Not even a really sharp stick. Nothing.

Not that it makes a difference. Not to him. Because Will’s next to him, wearing Mike’s sweater with the sleeves draping down over his fingers where they’re too long for his arms. Because Will’s next to him, eyes wide and looking like a mirror image of himself three years ago, scared half out of his own mind. Because Will’s next to him– and that’s it. That’s all that matters.

His hand is definitely shaking.

And then, with his eyes fixed steadily ahead, Mike feels fingers brush against his own– cold and a bit clammy, but surprisingly still. Will takes in a sharp breath as his hand finds its way to Mike’s wrist, squeezing gently. Grounding.

“Mike,” Will says, voice laced with fear but still steadier than Mike would have expected. He hears the soft sound of a zipper coming undone, the thud of Will’s backpack dropping against the grass. “I'm going to do something. And– and you’re going to need to trust me, okay?”

Five seconds.

“Of course I trust you,” Mike gets out, still trying to angle his body towards the line of bushes, trying to coax Will’s hand off his wrist so he can wedge his shoulder in front of him, “but–”

Mike doesn’t get to finish his sentence.

The thing crashes out of the bushes, momentum sending it skidding a couple feet into the open air, stumbling a bit over its own legs. It’s– 

It’s–

“What the fuck,” Will whispers next to him, “is that?”

Honestly, Mike couldn’t have summed it up better himself. It looks like a Demodog– it could be a Demodog– except it comes up to the middle of Mike’s chest, its usually dark hide gone a pale white-gray. And these– whatever these are, they live in the depths of desolation, so it’s not like they see much sun as is, but this one– this one looks sick. Diseased. Starved and hungry, the corded muscle of its torso drawn up taut as it turns its head towards them.

There’s something crawling viscous and thick across Mike’s skin looking at it– looking at it looking at them– and then it moves, almost imperceptibly, weight shifting onto its hind legs like it’s–

“Will,” he hears himself say, “it’s going to–”

It’s funny how the heartbeat between one second and the next can stretch into something this long, long enough that Mike starts to wonder whether he can even trust his own body to tell the passing of time. Human physiology is a fascinating thing, fight or flight instantly making an unreliable narrator of him– his synapses firing so fast that realization doesn’t come down over him until later. The flooding of his arteries with adrenaline in a rapid, sour rush, the juddering beat of his heart as it contracts, much more instantaneous in reality, surely, than it feels. He’s frozen in place, watching. One heartbeat, then the next.

Maybe it’s not scientifically possible for a sequence of events to happen simultaneously, stacked one on top of each other like a deck of cards– but the laws of nature never seemed to apply to Mike Wheeler.

It seems simultaneous, at any rate: the quick, jolting movement of the Demodog in front of them, the way it seems to be there one second and then vanished the next, caught unseen somewhere in the wide-open space between the green line of trees and where Mike is standing, shoulder-to-shoulder with Will, feet rooted and unmoving in the ground. A flurry of movement, the sudden feeling of cold air against his wrist where Will’s fingers have lifted away.

The shape of something big, moving through the air barely five feet in front of them. A slight glimpse of blue out of the corner of his eye. Mike’s sweater. Will, in Mike’s sweater, one hand coming up to push Mike bodily away from him. Mike falls backwards, the heel of one sneaker catching on an errant tree root, and watches Will raise an object up to the stiff line of his shoulders in one fluid motion–

Of course, it’s at this moment that Mike finds his voice. “A gun?” he hears himself say, voice gone high and panicked and on the verge of an embarrassingly delicate crack, “you have a gun?”

“Mike,” Will says, still somehow loud enough for Mike to hear over the cyclic repetition of words in his head, “ Mike, not now.”

“Will,” Mike starts, mind reeling, snagged on this one fact– a gun. Will has a gun. Will, with his gentle artist’s touch and hands that were made to create, never to hurt or bruise or take away. Will, with a–

And then, in the half-moment where Will looks over at him, the hazel of his irises visible to Mike even from here, it all happens at the same time.

Will’s eyes snap back in front of him, one crucial beat too late.

The sound of flesh colliding firmly against something else– earthier, slick, inhuman. And then, louder– a bang ringing through the clearing just as Will lets out a startled yelp, the Demodog falling away with a cut-off shriek as Will stumbles backwards, catching himself on one foot. The end of the gun lets out soft white smoke as one of Will’s hands comes up to press against his side, just under his ribs.

Mike feels as if he’s watching the whole thing from somewhere vaguely outside his body, screaming at his feet to move, move! Physiology is a funny thing, how helpless it’s rendered him, how his muscles have all locked up and his neurons are all going rapid-fire against his own will–

Until now.

Until now, when Mike sees Will’s fingers come away streaked in red, mouth dropping open in soft shock, the dark blue of Mike’s borrowed sweater going almost black around the midriff. The fabric torn open in a sharp gash from teeth or nails or something else entirely, the pale sliver of Will’s stomach underneath quickly being overtaken by red, red, red–

It’s this, strangely enough, that propels Mike into action, brain caught on a staggered loop of these last four facts– Will wearing Mike’s sweater, standing there, red blooming rapidly over the curve of his fingertips, wearing Mike’s sweater, all torn up and almost not blue around the middle anymore.

The gun slips out of Will’s slackened fingers, landing softly on the ground.

“Will!”

Mike feels himself scream it more than he actually hears the sound, feels the rough rasp of his throat forming the words, feels his lips moving around the shape of Will’s name, feels his legs finally get kick-started into action, stumbling once, twice, catching himself on his knees in the soft layer of grass and dirt before he’s there, grasping at Will’s bicep like this touch alone might be enough to snap him out of it. “Will, what the hell– what– are you–”

He’s babbling, he knows it, because Will’s not okay, and Mike’s sweater is getting darker and darker by the second, and Will is still staring down at his fingers with a shell-shocked expression, like he hasn’t fully processed what happened– and Mike hasn’t either, you know, so it’s not unexpected, but–

“Mike,” Will says, and just that– just his name, once, voice cracking halfway through, hand still held out in front of him in stunned silence.

There’s a rustling movement behind them.

Mike whips around, one hand still holding onto Will’s bicep. The Demodog is climbing to its feet, slow but steady, black blood spilling from its side where Will’s shot had landed, its hulking silhouette gone asymmetrical and awkward from the missing chunk of flesh above the joint of its shoulder.

Mike’s heart stops.

It’s not over yet. And Will’s hurt.

“Mike,” Will says again, eyes wide, “I have to–”

He makes a movement towards the ground like he’s about to reach for the gun again, but then he gasps– pained and sharp and all the blood draining so visibly from his face that Mike’s stomach lurches, immediately catching Will over the other bicep with his other hand– “Whoa,” Mike says, glancing back and forth between the Demodog and Will. “Don’t move,” he says, hands fluttering nervously, “Will, you gotta– just stay still, okay, just– just hang on, we’ll–”

Here’s the thing, right– Mike doesn’t know how to shoot a gun, and he’s sure as hell not about to learn now, not with Will leaning all his weight on him like his own legs are halfway to giving out, turning paler by the second, with Mike’s sweater going darker, darker, darker–

“Wait,” Mike says desperately, the Demodog crawling closer out of the corner of his eye, “Will, can you hang on for just– just one minute, okay? Just stay here, just– just stay still, just stay out of the way–”

Will nods, apparently putting some kind of blind, trusting faith in Mike, who doesn’t actually even know what he’s going to do or what it is that Will has to stay out of the way of. “Okay,” he says simply, taking in a soft, sharp breath as Mike maneuvers him back upright, “okay, just–”

Physiology is a funny thing. The same heady chemical rush that had him so frozen minutes ago now has Mike moving with a sort of decisiveness he couldn’t have mustered up through conscious thought, even if he tried. He grabs the gun by the smooth metal of the barrel, turning on his heel and swinging it just as the Demodog clears the two feet of space in front of him, the butt of the gun colliding harshly with leathery flesh and gristle in a sickening crunch of a sound. The creature is heavy– two thirds of Mike’s height and definitely weighing more– but the gun is heavy too, weighted and solid in his hands from where he’s gripping it so tight that it’s leaving indents in his palms. It can do damage even without Mike pulling the trigger.

“Shit,” he pants, watching the Demodog reel back, the petals of its mouth unfurling in a high-pitched shriek. He raises the gun as it comes back again, “shit, shit–”

Mike’s never been an athlete, but he’s starting to think maybe he shouldn’t have skipped gym every day of the softball unit. As is, he’s not trying for aim and accuracy, not trying to hit the ball as far away from home plate as he can, not trying to do anything except keep this thing away from Will– Will, somewhere behind him, wearing Mike’s sweater and bleeding right through it, and the singular thought on replay in his head is just that. Will. 

The gun meets twisted flesh again and again, dark blood and dirt spraying down the front of Mike’s shirt, the sleeve of his jacket, all over his hands, but these are all things he’s noticing secondhand, moving on autopilot now. The heel of the gun cuts sharply into the corded muscle of the creature’s throat and it lets out a yelp, strangled and awful in the disrupted peace of the clearing, falling over its own legs as it stumbles back.

But Mike’s not done.

It’s funny, he thinks faintly, as the gun comes down– again, again, again– how he’s supposed to be the paladin of the Party. The paladin, the fighter, the heart was what Will had called him, all those weeks ago in the back of a van hurtling through state lines at top speed. A master of combat, a source of good, the protector. 

And Mike Wheeler isn’t a lot of things– he isn’t the bravest, maybe, and he isn’t the kindest and he isn’t a very good friend– he hasn’t been a good friend in a very long time– but he’s a protector. If there’s one thing he is– one thing he has to be now, it’s a protector.

His next hit lands directly against the gaping wound Will’s shotgun blast left, and the creature goes down with a rattling shriek.

But Mike’s not done.

He’s older now, bigger, taller than he was all those years ago, but this Demodog is larger too. Meaner. Hungrier. Suddenly, Mike is thirteen years old in the hallway of a hospital again, frozen in shock and too unaware of anything except Will’s fragile, sleeping form in his paper-thin hospital gown to do anything but listen to Mrs. Byers scream. He knows what these things are. He knows what they can do.

Some protector I am, he thinks bitterly, far off in the depths of his own head. What a joke. What a fucking joke. 

If he were a protector, Eddie would be alive. If he were a protector, Bob would be alive. If he were a protector, Hopper never would have been taken. If he were a protector, Max would be here with them. If he were a protector, Will wouldn’t be–

The gun comes down, again, again, again– until the creature goes limp and unmoving under him, until Mike’s hair has gone matted and sweaty against his forehead and the back of his neck, until he’s clutching the barrel of the gun hard enough for his knuckles to flash white up at him from under a layer of dirt and blackened blood. Until his breathing is coming out uneven and catching on each inhale, chest heaving, the white soles of his sneakers unrecognizable under the grime.

He waits for the rush of pity to come, looking at the maybe-once-living thing at his feet, no longer twitching and no longer breathing and the white-gray of its skin gone bruised and grotesquely mottled from impact. He waits for the pity to come, like dissecting frogs in fifth period biology right after lunch– the formaldehyde-soaked guilt of putting them under and cutting them open before they can come to again, the twinge of seeing a leg twitch when he hit a nerve in the right spot, even when his teacher assured him they were gone long before he even made the first cut. He waits for the pity, breathing heavy and open-mouthed as he takes in his surroundings: crisp air, clouded-over sun, silence. One dizzying breath in, then out again.

It never comes.

Mike probably could have spent hours standing there, coming to with the adrenaline slowly leaving his system, but it’s a small noise behind him that snaps him out of it. “Mike,” Will is saying, taking a tentative step forward as Mike turns around, face gone deathly pale and clutching at his side with both hands. He looks up, eyes impossibly wide. “Mike–”

And then he stumbles, pitching forward.

“Will,” Mike gets out, more on an exhale than anything else. “Are you–”

Maybe it’s strange that it’s coming to him now, but Mike remembers this much from physics class, in between midday hours spent droning on about coefficients of friction and constant force– objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Bodies in motion must work the same way, because Will makes no move to right himself; he just keeps falling and falling and falling–

The gun drops from Mike’s hands, dented all down the barrel and across the heel, the wood and metal gone dark with blood and sweat and dirt. “Will,” Mike says again, crossing the distance between them to catch Will under the arms just as his legs give out under him. “Holy shit,” Mike gasps, stumbling slightly under the combined weight of their bodies. Will is a lot more solid than he looks– which is already pretty damn solid– but it’s not until now, until the warm weight of him is leaned entirely against Mike’s torso, that it hits him just how much momentum a body in motion carries. “Holy shit,” Mike says, “holy shit, holy shit–” and it’s a litany of this, of stifled curses on the off-chance that maybe hearing them will make Will start to panic. Mike’s brain isn’t exactly working at peak capacity, so any semblance of eloquence beyond this is immediately off the table.

“I’m fine,” Will is saying, except he’s white as a sheet and looking on the verge of throwing up or passing out or maybe both, and there’s blood all over his hands and the sleeves and front of Mike’s borrowed sweater and down the tops of Will’s jeans– “I’m fine,” he’s saying, except his breathing is starting to get faster and his eyelids keep fluttering, and Mike– and Mike is–

“Hold on,” Mike presses, dizzy, “Will, please, just hold on a second–”

“I’m fine,” Will insists again, even as Mike lowers him to the ground with as much grace as he can muster. “Mike, I’m–”

“Yeah,” Mike nods, “yeah, you’re fine, you’re– you’re okay.”

“Not like that,” Will gets out, even as he follows Mike’s gentle nudge and leans back against the grass, “not like how you’re saying it– not ‘you’re okay’ like I’m not okay. I’m actually fine–”

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, “I think you’re a little–”

He doesn’t finish that thought, because it was going to end in something like out of it, or entirely delirious, and both of these would mean acknowledging the way that Mike’s hands have started shaking, a bit, where they’re hovering over the now entirely black midriff and hem of Will’s– Mike’s– sweater. He presses a tentative hand to the fraying edges of the ripped cloth, and Will lets out a stilted, punched-out exhale of a groan.

“Shit,” Mike says, staring down at the red coating his fingers now, too, “shit, shit, just– just hang on, Will, just–”

Will’s craning his head downwards. “What? Is it bad?”

Personally, Mike doesn’t think it’s so great that he can see any blood at all, but maybe that isn’t the most tactful thing to say. Nancy had donated blood at the high school a couple weeks ago and there had been signs everywhere– about how there’s maybe about five liters of blood in the human body, affording you a couple pints of wiggle room to generously give away to those in need. 

And this doesn’t– this doesn’t look like a couple of pints, but what does he know? He’s no doctor. Mike Wheeler is fifteen years old, and he knows math and Newton’s Laws and how to DM damn near the best game of Dungeons and Dragons you’ve ever seen, but he doesn’t know what the hell to do with Will’s blood running all down his hands.

“No,” he says at last, looking around for Will’s bag, “no, it’s– it’s okay. You’re okay.”

He’s not sure if it comes out convincing, but it doesn’t matter. He’s never been a good liar, and he’s especially never been good at lying to Will Byers. “Okay,” Will says anyway, the same unyielding faith from before hitting Mike full-force with the weight of it. He leans his head back against the grass. “Okay.”

“Do you– we have to get you to a hospital,” Mike starts. He spots Will’s bag ten feet away, and scrambles to his feet, grabbing for it. “We have to– can you walk?”

That’s a stupid question. Will can’t walk. He can barely even move without his face twisting up all in pain. But Will Byers is stubborn and he’s resilient and Mike knows immediately as the words leave his mouth what Will’s answer is going to be.

“Yes,” Will says immediately, still unmoving, “just help me up– I think I can walk, your house isn’t far–” and then he twists, like he’s about to get up, and the sound that comes out of his mouth has Mike’s heart squeezing in on itself so tight that his stomach lurches with sudden nausea.

“No! Oh my God,” Mike says, placing two frantic hands on Will’s shoulders, “Will, don’t actually move, oh my God, this is so– you’re so– why would you move, that’s so stupid–”

“You were just saying– you can’t call me stupid,” Will interjects, but he’s stilled, at least. “I’m the one bleeding out, remember?”

Mike’s hands are shaking so hard that he almost can’t undo the second zipper on Will’s bag. “You’re not– you’re not bleeding out,” he says, a shocked laugh escaping him anyway, even though– well, Will’s bleeding but he’s not– “you’re fine,” Mike insists again, thrusting a desperate hand into the bag, searching, “just hang on, you’re fine, you’re fine–”

Will’s watching him with a vaguely amused expression that Mike thinks no one but Will Byers would manage to have on their face in a situation like this. You’re fine, he thinks, as his hand curls around the cold plastic of the walkie-talkie at last, you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. And Mike doesn’t know who he’s thinking it about, him or Will, but his mind is stuck on the limp, lolling motion of Will’s fingers as he adjusts the angle of his arm so it’s resting against Mike’s knee, grasping lightly.

You’re fine, he thinks, you’re fine, you’re fine. Will’s hand, as pale and cold as it is now, reaching out of the water at Sattler’s Quarry as they lifted him onto the gurney. He’d been so pale– that had been the first thing Mike had noticed, even as far away as he had been standing– the shock of Will’s hair, water-darkened and plastered across his face made even more vivid by the bright red of his vest and the startling, translucent white to his skin. He’d known it was Will immediately. He’d know Will anywhere– even on a stretcher in the middle of the water, already blue and cold and gone.

He blinks, hard. You’re fine. You’re fine. “Are you okay?” Will is asking, fingers clutching at Mike’s knee. He frowns slightly as Mike looks away and down, flipping desperately through the channels.

“I’m– you’re hurt,” Mike says, incredulous, “and you’re asking if I’m–”

“Mike. I’m fine,” Will says, even though his breathing is picking up even faster and his eyelids are fluttering like he’s trying very hard to keep them open. Mike keeps missing the channel on the dial; his hands are shaking, shaking, going too far past and then not far enough– and then he’s there, heart in his throat as he waits–

“Code red,” he bites out into the mouthpiece, all but yelling, “code red, someone come in, please!”

Will’s pulse is going a bit thready. Mike presses his fingers in harder into the line of Will’s wrist, like this touch might be enough to single handedly revive him. “Will,” he says, desperate, “just hold on for two minutes, alright– code red!” he says again, this time not even trying to keep the panic out of his voice, “anyone, come in, code red!”

There’s another moment of awful, crackling static, where Mike’s thinking that maybe he needs to pull Will to his feet and somehow haul him the entire walk home without either of them passing out, and then–

“Mike? Is everything okay?” Jonathan’s voice comes through at last, laced with concern and barely audible, but there.

“Jonathan,” Mike all but sobs, clutching at Will’s hand in relief. “Oh my God, Will– Will’s hurt, we need– he needs help, can you–”

Maybe it’s a Byers trait, to be able to decipher Mike’s incoherent stream of words without any further explanation, or maybe Jonathan Byers has some kind of hyper-affinity for things where his younger brother is concerned, because Mike hears a sharp intake of breath on the other line, and then a rustling noise like Jonathan is moving around very fast with the walkie still in hand. “Where?” he says simply, “where– where are you?”

“The park down the block,” Mike gets out, “bring– bring a car, he needs–”

“I know,” Jonathan says, and then there’s the faint sound of a door slamming, “I know, I’m coming, I’m on my way, just hang on–”

“Yeah,” Mike says, rolling his eyes down at Will and trying for a smile like, see? “Just hang on,” he repeats, walkie still held up to his mouth, “Jonathan– he’s on his way. Just two minutes, okay?”

Will clutches at his hand and nods weakly in response, eyes trained, unmoving, on Mike’s face. “He better not be going the speed limit,” Will scoffs, and it’s this– not the shock-filled delirium of anything else– that makes Mike finally start laughing. Real, surprised laughs, dropping his head down into the hand still grasping onto Will’s and shaking softly.

“You’re unbelievable,” Mike gasps, but there’s a tendril of hope there, beneath the words, that he clutches at like a lifeline. Will’s fine. He’s going to be fine.

You’re fine, he thinks, squeezing Will’s hand in steady intervals until the screeching of Jonathan’s tires is audible around the corner. You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.

Chapter Text

“Mike.”

Mike blinks. Lucas is peering down at him, backlit in the blinding fluorescence of the hospital lights. He’s got a paper cup of coffee in one hand, the kind they brew and keep for days in those big metal dispensers down the hall.

“Mike,” Lucas is saying, holding out the coffee cup and frowning, “here, man, you look like you need this.”

Mike sits up straighter in his chair. “I hate coffee,” he says, but he takes the cup anyway. It’s pleasantly warm under his hands, offsetting the chilly, recycled air in the hallway. Everything in the hospital feels cold– the hard plastic of the chair under his back, the blue-white of the lights, the soft, high-pitched beeping of the countless machines and generators in the building. It’s all so cold, too detached for a place of healing. Too cold for somewhere that’s supposed to coax the warmth and life back into someone’s body, ease the red flush back into Will’s cheeks from where he’d been blinking, pale and dazed, up at him in the grass.

He’s felt a little out of his body ever since he got here, since Jonathan’s car pulled up out front and the whole awful series of events that followed. Hauling Will onto a stretcher, slipping an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, watching him get paler and paler by the second. Yelling, shouting, and then Will being turned around the corner and vanishing from sight.

It’s like the world’s most cruel form of deja-vu, this scene that Mike had been watching replay itself, as if it had been happening to a different version of him. An older, taller version of him, in different shoes with different hair and Will’s blood smudged onto the sleeves of his jacket– but it’s still him. Still the same hospital, still sitting in the same waiting area of the same emergency room in a cold plastic chair, trying to stay awake when he’s simultaneously sure he’ll never be able to fall asleep again.

Next to him, Lucas eases himself down into a chair. “I know,” he smiles apologetically, “it’s awful. But you’ve been here for hours and I think I’m right when I say there’s no point in trying to convince you to go home?”

Mike lets out a dry laugh, then takes a sip of the coffee. He pulls a face. “You’re right,” he says, “this is awful.”

“Told you.”

They fall quiet then, for a few minutes, nothing but the soft beeping of the intercom and the slow click of the AC turning on in what’s already a very cold room to cut through the silence. And this coffee– it sucks, and Mike’s not even a coffee person to begin with– but it’s bitter and hot and gives him something to do with his hands instead of sitting there and twiddling his thumbs, so Mike sips at it, slowly.

“Listen,” Lucas starts. It comes out hesitant, like he’s trying to say something without scaring Mike away completely. “It was– wait, what are they telling people it was, again?”

Mike leans his head back against the drywall, staring straight up into the sharp white of the light directly above their heads. “Animal attack,” he says, feeling his mouth curve up into a smile even though it’s not funny– nothing about this is funny. Mike’s sitting here, with Will’s blood caked under his fingernails, and he’s drinking coffee. Black. Nothing about this is funny. “Like– like a bear, or a coyote or– or something.”

“Animal attack,” Lucas repeats, mirroring Mike’s movements to lean back in his chair, looking up. “Right.”

“As if there are bears and– or whatever else in this part of Hawkins,” Mike goes on, entirely unprompted, “but I guess this is the same city that bought that Barb died because of a chemical leak. Or that– or that Will got lost in the half-mile stretch of woods behind his house for a week and then– and then some kid’s body that looked just like him was found in the lake, and–”

He trails off, feeling Lucas’ gaze come around to land on him at last. He takes another sip of his coffee and falls silent.

“It wasn’t a bear, was it,” Lucas says, but he’s not asking a question. “Well, of course it wasn’t a bear, because a bear would be way too easy.”

“Way too easy,” Mike agrees.

There’s another pause. Down the hall, doors open and close as people slip in and out of rooms, silent. The whole place is so eerily quiet. Mike hates it.

“Listen,” Lucas says again, angling his body towards Mike in the chair, “you should– I know I said it was pointless before, but you should really go home. Get some rest. Take a shower, maybe, eat something–”

“No,” Mike says immediately, “no way, I can’t just leave him–”

Lucas sighs, like he was expecting the protest even as he was saying it, and shakes his head. “You’re not leaving him,” he says, “you’ll come back, but you need to– you need to take care of yourself too, Mike.”

“I’m fine,” Mike says. It comes out a bit clipped, which maybe isn’t fair to Lucas, who’s been practically living in the hospital for the better part of the last few weeks and is also Mike’s best friend– but the half-cup of coffee is turning Mike’s blood into something jittery and anxious, and the AC has started blowing cold air down the back of his neck, and it’s really fucking depressing sitting here with the whitewashed drywall caging him in, and yet– 

And yet, there’s nowhere else Mike would rather be. “I don’t need– I’m fine, Lucas.”

“You have blood on your clothes,” Lucas points out, which is very true and has been earning Mike a few weird looks whenever someone walks by. “Just go shower and grab something to change into.”

“I’m fine,” Mike says again. “It’s not uncomfortable and I’m– I can deal with not showering for a while longer–”

“Oh my God,” Lucas mutters, “sometimes I wonder why I’m still friends with your stubborn ass,” which makes Mike crack a reluctant smile over the rim of his paper cup. “Here,” Lucas says, a moment later, unzipping his sweatshirt and sliding his arms out of it. “At least take this. I’m serious, man, please just change out of the bloody jacket. It’s depressing as hell.”

“Okay!” Mike throws his hands up in defeat, putting the cup down to take Lucas’ sweatshirt. “Okay, I’ll take the jacket off, God, are you happy now–”

“No,” Lucas gripes, rubbing his arms, “because now I’m just in a t-shirt and it’s cold in this room.”

“You’re the one who–” Mike starts, and then declares it a lost cause. “Never mind. Forget it.”

Lucas doesn’t say anything for another minute, just lowering himself back onto the chair as Mike struggles with the zip. And then– “Mike?”

“Hm?”

Lucas waits until Mike sits down, watching him fiddle with the denim of the jacket collar clutched in his hands. “You know he’s going to be okay, right?”

Logically, yeah, Mike knows. Will’s going to be fine. He’s in a room somewhere down the hall, slowly shaking the last vestiges of anesthesia out of his system. He’s fine. But–

Mike pulls one knee up to his chest on the chair and sighs. “Yeah, I know,” he says, “I know he’ll be okay. But it was– it was really scary, Lucas. Between when I called Jonathan and when he got there it was maybe– maybe, like, two minutes, but it felt like I was waiting there for hours. And it was–”

“I know,” Lucas says, soothing and sympathetic. He reaches over, clasping a firm hand on Mike’s shoulder, squeezing. “That’s the worst part– waiting, I mean. Because you– you’ve already done everything you can and after that it’s, like, out of your hands. And all you can do is just– be there.”

“Oh,” Mike says, sitting up, “Lucas, I’m so sorry, Max is–”

“Her room’s down the hall.” Lucas looks away. “Which I think is kind of– well, maybe funny isn’t the right word, but–” 

Mike follows his gaze down the hallway, which looks a bit familiar, now that he’s thinking about it. He’d come in through the other entrance, whenever he and Dustin would visit, and he’d been so keyed up the whole time that he hadn’t even– 

“Well, it is kind of funny. In a twisted sort of way,” Mike offers, which makes Lucas crack a small grin in response.

For a moment, everything feels normal. Like maybe Lucas came over and they’re reheating pizza rolls in the microwave, and things are good and normal and simple and normal, and the biggest issue in Mike’s life is his math homework due the next day and not Will Byers hooked up to a machine with an IV drip in his arm.

“Compromise,” Lucas offers. “You– you stay until Will wakes up, and then you go home. And you take a shower and you maybe eat something if you can, or take a nap– anything. Just– I can’t have you spending every second of the next few days hovering around his bed, okay? I can’t watch that.”

“You do it.”

“Yeah,” Lucas says, a bit sadly, “exactly.”

“Lucas,” Mike starts, thinking about IV drips and tubes coming out of Max’s arm, the chapped paleness to her lips, the flowers they’d all take turns bringing when the previous ones died out–

–and then, too suddenly, Max’s face morphs into Will’s in his mind, the blunt sweep of his bangs tousled and limp against the papery pillowcase, and it’s at this moment when words fail him entirely.

And Mike doesn’t cry– he’s not a crier– but as it is, it’s a close thing. It’s instantaneous, how quickly the wide-open expanse of the hallway turns bone-crushingly claustrophobic; the white light reflecting off the white walls and the white chairs and the white of the patients’ gowns should have been making the whole place seem much bigger than it is– but then why is it suddenly so hard for Mike to breathe?

“Whoa,” he hears Lucas say, voice gone muffled like Mike’s listening to him talk with both hands over his ears, “Mike, you’re okay man, come on, just sit up for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike gasps, squeezing his eyes shut as Lucas rubs a soothing hand over his back. “About Max, I mean.”

“It’s okay.” It’s placating, the way he says it, like he’s cleaning up a skinned knee, a superficial playground wound. “She’ll be okay.”

Mike shakes his head, pressing both hands to his face. “I know,” he says, frantic, “but I’m supposed to be telling you that, and you’re already–”

Lucas huffs out an incredulous laugh, somewhere to Mike’s right. “Don’t worry about that now. Just– just take a breath in, okay?”

Mike tries. It’s embarrassing, really, just how much he has to try to do something as simple and mundane as breathing. It takes him a second, fighting against his body’s instinct to squeeze up and resist, but he does it. Lucas makes a pleased sound next to him. “Good,” he says. “Now another one.”

“Sorry,” Mike gets out again, a few minutes later. “I didn’t mean to–”

“Stop,” Lucas says firmly, one hand still grasping Mike’s shoulder. Mike doesn’t look up, head still in his hands, palms pressed to his eyes. “Stop apologizing, okay? Something really scary just happened to you, and you’re allowed to be scared about it.”

“I can’t,” Mike insists, “because Will is going to be scared and one of us has got to be the not-scared one or else–”

“Bullshit.”

Mike blinks and looks up, frowning. “What?”

Lucas shakes his head. “Don’t do that. You almost died.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t.”

“But you could have,” Lucas says, tightening the hand on Mike’s shoulder and making a strange, stilted motion like he was about to just grab him by the other shoulder and shake. “And I’m sorry about Will, and I know you want to camp out here until he wakes up, but I’m glad it wasn’t both of you. I’m glad you’re okay. Independently of him.”

“I,” Mike starts, and then sees the way Lucas’ jaw is set and the crease between his eyebrows and then promptly gives up. “Okay. Thanks, Lucas.”

Lucas laughs once, a little relieved, a little bit choked up. “Come here,” he says, then Mike is being pulled into a hug, sweat and dried, caked-up blood he damned. The zipper of Lucas’ sweatshirt snags on a loose thread somewhere between them, but Mike can’t find it in him to care.

“I’m glad you’re okay too,” Mike mumbles, then hesitates. “I mean, in general, because you haven’t–”

Lucas laughs again, squeezes his arms around Mike, once. “I know. It’s okay. Save your words.”

Mike doesn’t have very many left in him, so he just nods. Silence fills the hallway again, filled only by the soft whirring and clicking of the AC as it stops then starts again. For a hospital packed to the brim with post-earthquake victims, no one walks by. No one goes in or out of the rooms at all.

“Hey,” Lucas says after a moment, pulling away. “At least now I know how you felt.”

Mike frowns. “What?”

“When Will was gone,” Lucas clarifies, “the first time. And you just sat there in the waiting room for hours until he woke up, even though they said it might not be for a couple of days. You refused to go home. And I’ve just been sitting here, waiting for Max to–”

He trails off. “I– you guys were there too,” Mike says. Something’s tugging at the periphery of his brain, and he doesn’t quite know what it is, but it feels familiar. Something about the way Lucas is saying it feels familiar. 

“Yeah, but– you were so insistent he wasn’t gone,” Lucas goes on, waving a hand around for emphasis. “And everyone was like he’s missing, or he’s dead, and you were totally just– I don’t know. That’s how I feel. They’re saying she’s gone. That she’s brain-dead, like this is some sort of– I don’t know, some kind of medical thing. But she’s not. I know it.”

Mike feels at a peculiar loss for words. It’s not a medical thing. This much he knows. Max Mayfield’s coma is very much a pseudo-magical freak of science fiction, but it’s not medical. She’s not brain-dead. “She is,” he agrees. “She’s out there somewhere. We’ll find her.”

Lucas gives him a small smile. “That’s what I mean,” he laughs, and Mike feels his frown deepen. “Me saying that. It’s what you sounded like when Will was gone. And now I’m you and you’re me, and– I don’t know. It’s funny how things work out.”

“Yeah,” Mike echoes weakly, sitting back against the rigid plastic of the waiting room chair and staring blankly at the wall opposite them. Posters of warning signs for breast cancer. The dangers of smoking. Instructions for the fire escape, and how to pull the alarm. A different kind of alarm is going off in his head– quiet and far away and a little too faint to make out, but it’s there. “It’s funny.”

Will comes back late Sunday night.

Mike’s already down in the basement when the Byers’ car pulls up outside, the quiet rumble of the engine reverberating softly through the walls. Nancy’s coming down the stairs with a fresh set of sheets for the spare mattress, pausing as the car door slams outside. There’s a few moments of silence before the front door opens above them.

“Do you think–” Nancy starts, glancing up at the closed basement door as if this might grant her the ability to see straight through it. “Um.”

Mike tries not to think about it– Jonathan and Joyce helping Will up the stairs to Mike’s room, step by careful step. Mike hasn’t seen Will since the first time he’d woken up Thursday night, mostly because Lucas had taken it upon himself to personally enforce the Mike Wheeler go home and get some rest agenda, and every time Mike had come back after that, Will had either been in the middle of talking to a doctor, or his mom or Jonathan, or just asleep. And Mike is a lot of things, but he’s not the sort of asshole to, like, wake Will up just to talk to him when he’s fast asleep in a paper gown in a hospital bed. And he’d been willing to wait there, to park himself in a seat in the corner and simply not leave until Will woke up– if it hadn’t been for Jonathan Byers glaring at him the whole time.

And Mike is a lot of things, but he’s not an idiot either. He knows when someone doesn’t want him around. He knows how to make himself scarce.

So he hasn’t talked to Will since that day. Which is–

–well, it’s not fine. But it is what it is.

“Um,” Mike echoes, as the soft sound of footsteps echoes through the basement ceiling. There are voices speaking, hushed, but Mike can’t quite make out what they’re saying. “We should– we should wait, right? Give them some space?”

Nancy nods, looking a bit relieved. “Yeah,” she agrees, bounding down the rest of the stairs in quick succession, “maybe– yeah. Let’s wait until morning.”

She makes quick work of the sheets, dumping the old ones in a neat pile by the foot of the stairs. Mike has yet to change the sheets on the sofa bed– they’re definitely getting a bit gross, but he’s barely had the energy to make the damn thing, so. He watches Nancy from where he’s sitting, cross-legged and already in his pajamas, even though it’ll be a miracle if he falls asleep before three.

After a minute, he sighs. “Nancy?”

She looks up at him, a little confused. “What?”

Mike lets himself fall backwards, the springs of the sofa creaking perilously under the sudden force of his body weight. “Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“Will?” Nancy asks, as if there’s any other person Mike could possibly be referring to. He nods anyway, and the noise of the sheets being pulled against the mattress stops abruptly. “Yeah,” he hears Nancy say, quieter this time. “He’ll be okay, Mike. Will– he’s a tough kid.”

That’s the problem, Mike thinks faintly, as Nancy resumes her diligent turning down of the bed. Will is tough. He’s easily the toughest kid Mike has ever known, and that means, without a doubt, that this is the last thing he needs right now. The last thing that someone like Will deserves to have to go through.

“Okay,” he agrees, instead of saying this. Nancy lets out a noncommittal noise from the corner of the room, and Mike rolls over in bed. “I’m going to sleep now,” he announces, even though he knows for a fact he won’t fall asleep for hours.

“M’kay,” Nancy says. “Goodnight, Mike.”

Sleep does come for him eventually, anxious and dragging as the wait might be. It’s stuffy in the basement, warm and near-suffocating, even though it had been a cool enough day earlier. The sheets have wrapped themselves around Mike’s legs, the fabric of his pajamas bunching up around his shins, and it’s stifling– the way the sheets are trapping him, the closed-in walls of the basement.

It used to feel bigger in here, he remembers. When he was younger, the table seemed larger and the sofa seemed longer and the basement seemed like an unending expanse. Somewhere they could play through their campaigns, morning to evening, until someone’s mom came to get them for dinner time, and never run out of room.

Mike’s feet are almost hanging off the sofa bed now. He isn’t sure when that happened, but he wriggles them free of the sheets twisted there with a soft, impatient huff. Nancy’s asleep– actually properly asleep, no pretending, because there are light, rhythmic snores coming from her corner of the basement– and the house is quiet. No footsteps, no white noise. He catches sight of the clock on the far table, the red numbers reading out 2:36, then 2:54, then 3:02 in slow, drawling succession.

And then the red numbers aren’t there at all, anymore, and Mike is staring, instead, at the violent red glare of police sirens, all lit up against a midnight sky.

He must have fallen asleep, then, at some point, because this is a dream– this has to be a dream, because there’s no other way he could have gotten here so fast, crouched behind an ambulance at Sattler’s Quarry, with Will’s lifeless body somewhere in the water, a mere twenty feet in front of him.

Dream or not, Mike knows how this goes. He remembers this night like it was yesterday. It’s harder to forget it than it is to remember.

They’ve only just started dragging the bottom of the lake, search and rescue teams huddled off to the side, split up in their boats and waders with the police lights flashing mercilessly off to the side. Mike glances to his right, then left. Lucas and Dustin and El aren’t here this time.

So he’s definitely dreaming, then.

There’s a shout from the water, and Mike turns back around. “Here!” someone is yelling. “We’ve got something!” And then people are rushing by– men with stretchers and reflective gear– and someone up at the front, almost too far away for Mike to see, takes in a deep breath, the silhouette of his chest expanding stark against the flashing lights.

Mike hadn’t been here for this part. When they’d shown up, the four of them, Will’s body had already been halfway out of the water. Mike had imagined the rest, what it had been like when they had first found him, but it’s a different thing, to see it playing out in front of you. He watches them hoist the body up and out, the water sloughing off of Will’s too-pale skin, and fights back the overwhelming and immediate urge to keel over and be sick, right there on the gravel-covered pathway of the–

“Mike?”

Mike whirls around, and promptly feels all the blood drain from his face.

“I– Will?”

Mike doesn’t know why he asked. He would know Will anywhere, even like this– the sunken-eyed corpse he had just watched them pull from the quarry bed. His red vest is still waterlogged, his hair matted to his face, skin still tinged with an undead sort of blue, but unmistakably, undoubtedly Will.  

“Will?” Mike tries again, voice coming out shaky and uncertain. A dream, he thinks, curling his hands into fists, digging his nails into the tender meat of his palms. He doesn’t feel it at all. It’s a dream.

Will blinks, once, staring up at Mike with the same unerring gaze he’d looked at him with all those months ago, under the harsh white of his garage light’s glare– It was a seven. The Demogoron. It got me. It’s his twelve-year-old voice that speaks, when he opens his mouth– “You weren’t fast enough,” says this Will, expression unchanging, and the churning sensation in Mike’s stomach swells, fast.

It’s a dream, he reminds himself. He digs his nails into his palm harder, looks over his shoulder at the stretcher. They’re carrying Will out of the water now– he’d been there for this part. Dustin and Lucas had been silent, shocked. El’s face had been lit up red in quiet horror. Mike had– he hadn’t felt much of anything at all, in those first few seconds. He isn’t sure what his face had looked like when he saw it happen.

He’d yelled at El anyway. You were supposed to help us find him alive.

Will is still there when he turns back, arms hanging limply at his sides. “That– that’s not you,” Mike tries weakly. “We did get to you in time, Will, we saved you–”

“You should have been faster,” Will says, and then his face twists into a disgusted sneer. “You let that thing get to me. You should have found me sooner.”

“I–” Mike tries helplessly. It’s this expression on Will’s face that’s the most unfamiliar thing– this angry, ugly look on his face. Mike doesn’t think Will has ever worn that look on his face, not in all the years Mike’s known him. Not even now, when Will should maybe have every right to feel disgusted and angry with him, and certainly not then, at twelve years old and filled with nothing but an admirably unyielding kindness. “We tried, Will, we didn’t know how to find you.”

Will takes a step forward. The red light of the sirens catches on the hollows of his cheeks, sunken in and purpled where they should have been bloated from the water. “You did this,” he says, and Mike stumbles backwards, gravel crunching desperately under his feet as he moves. “You did this,” Will repeats, coming out of the shadow of the ambulance until the blue of his body is taken over in vivid scarlet. “You did this, you did this, you did this–”

“I didn’t,” Mike pleads. He’s in his now-body, fifteen and with more awkward length than he knows what to do with, but he feels twelve years old again, too small in his skin, unsure how to steer his own limbs. He stumbles, an errant rock catching under his heel, and he goes down, hard, palms scraped up and catching himself on his elbows as twelve-year-old Will looms above him. He throws his arms up on instinct, like he’s afraid that Will is going to try and– “Will, I– we tried–”

“You did this,” Will snarls. The light catches on his front in a particularly bright burst, red bleeding through blue, blue, blue, like blood on Mike’s old favorite sweater, navy blue until it wasn’t anymore. All at once, the churning in Mike’s stomach reaches a roaring crescendo, and he turns to the side and–

“Holy shit,” comes a voice to his left, and Mike throws his eyes open, gasping. It’s dark where he is, but it’s not cold, not raining– there’s a suffocating warmth in the air and something squeezing him tight, tight–

“Mike?” comes the voice again, and there’s a set of hands clutching at his shoulders that he doesn’t think are his. No, they’re not his– he feels the edge of a mattress beneath his fingertips, and there’s something red in his field of vision, but it’s not sirens–

The clock blinks 4:31 back at him, blood-red and silent in the dark of the–

The basement. He’s in the basement.

Right.

Mike takes a deep breath in. Next to him, someone’s pulling the sheets away from him, where they’ve twisted around his stomach, tight–

Nancy. “Mike?” she says again, worried. He can’t see her face in the dark but he can imagine her expression– brows furrowed, probably, lips pursed tight. “Are you okay?”

That’s a ridiculous question, and they both know it. If Mike were okay, Nancy wouldn’t be kneeling on the sofa bed next to him at four-thirty in the morning, waking him up from a– God. A nightmare. A nightmare.

Mike exhales, slow and quiet. “Yeah,” he says, and he’s surprised at how steady it comes out. “Yeah, why?”

A pause. Nancy pulls the end of the sheet free with a last, forceful tug, and the pressure around his middle immediately lessens. “You were making noises,” she says at last, quietly. There’s a soft rustling sound, and then the springs creak as she readjusts. “You were– you were moving around, too.”

Mike groans, and drops his head into his hands. So that’s fantastic. Not only is he having the most traumatizing dreams known to mankind, but he’s also waking up screaming like a baby in the middle of the night in front of his older sister. He probably woke her up, too, which is– “That’s– great,” he says, muffled by his own palms. “That’s great. Please never bring this up again.”

“Mike,” Nancy says again, more insistently this time. She sounds tired. “Are you– that sounded intense. You know you can–”

“–talk to you, I know,” Mike finishes, and Nancy falls silent. He sighs. “No, I’m– it was nothing. I didn’t even realize I was– you know.”

Nancy doesn’t say anything, but the silence feels kind of judgemental. Mike sighs again. “I’m okay, I promise.”

“Okay,” Nancy says at last. He still can’t see her, but he can make out the outline of her shoulders as she moves against the faint red glow filling the room. The bed springs creak again. “I– if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

Nancy hovers for a moment, there by the foot of the bed. “Okay,” she says again. It’s not worth pushing the matter. She must know that.

Mike waits, sitting half-up in bed. The sheets have been all kicked off to the side, but he still feels feverish, warm. His palms sting, phantom pains of gravel scrapes and crescent-shaped nail marks that aren’t there.

He closes his eyes. One breath in, then two–

Sattler’s Quarry at night. You did this. You did this. You–

“I’m getting some water,” Mike gasps, opening his eyes again and scrambling, desperately, for the side of the bed. “I– I’ll be back, just– go back to sleep, okay?”

Nancy makes a confused noise from the corner of the room, and he hadn’t heard her go back to her bed, but she must have, at some point. “Do you need me to come with?”

Mike shakes his head, even though she can’t see. “No, I– just go back to sleep.”

Another pause. “Okay,” Nancy says, a bit hesitant. “If you’re sure. Goodnight, Mike.”

“Yeah. Goodnight.”

It’s easy being quiet, going up the basement stairs. How many times had Mike done this, when he was younger? Sleepovers with his friends, sneaking to the kitchen for snacks without waking up his parents. Other days on his own, sneaking out of his room and back down to the basement when he couldn’t sleep.

It’s colder up here than in the basement, strangely enough. Mike remembers, vaguely and in a far-off sort of way, that heat is supposed to rise. It should be freezing downstairs if it’s this cold on the first floor, but the chill of the kitchen tiles is a shock against his bare feet anyway. He drains the first glass of water, then another, then fills a third up halfway before taking a sip and leaving the rest of it there on the counter. The kitchen looks mostly as it did when they left it the night before– some leftovers kept wrapped up neat and tidy on the kitchen table. Everything else in the fridge.

The house is quiet. Mike takes one last sip of the glass and puts it down, headed back to the basement door, then stops.

You did this. You should have found me sooner. You did this. You–

He’s at the foot of the stairs before he realizes it, climbing up towards his old room. He knows how to be quiet here, too, how to avoid the creaky spots on the stairs, where the house has settled. All of it. You did this, he remembers Will saying, as he stops in front of the door to his room. You should have found me sooner, Will had said. You let that thing get to me.

It’s four thirty in the morning. Mike stops dead in his tracks, one fist halfway to being raised, like he was going to– what? Like he was going to knock? What the hell is he doing? Will is– he’s asleep, and Jonathan is asleep, because it’s four thirty in the morning, and Will hasn’t talked to him in days, and he’s not going to– he’s definitely not going to now, because, again, it’s four thirty in the fucking morning, and Mike should really just turn down the stairs and go back to the basement. 

But–

But Will is in there, just a few feet away– safe and alive and breathing and so far removed from the little boy with the purple lips and the shadows under his eyes and the horrible blue tinge to his skin. Will is in there, and Mike remembers you let that thing get to me, and suddenly, his feet won’t move.

It’s four thirty in the fucking morning. Mike needs to go.

He doesn’t.

He’s sitting down before he realizes it, back meeting the solid line of the wall with a soft noise. Will is there, just a few feet away, and something is crawling under Mike’s skin– irrational and frantic but it’s calmed, just barely, by the proximity.

It’s so irrational, he knows, but it’s also four thirty in the fucking morning and Mike’s hands are still shaking, a little bit, and he can’t close his eyes without seeing red blooming over blue and hearing you let that thing get to me and you did this and maybe, just maybe, this is all he can do about it for right now.

Mike finds his way back to the basement at some point, just as the sun’s starting to come up, because he remembers that the Byers are early risers and he really doesn’t want to explain why he’d been sitting outside of his– Will’s– room in the dark. He doesn’t sleep much after he gets back, either, just listens to Nancy as she gets up and uses the bathroom, then hears the creaking of the steps as she goes upstairs, and then finally, finally, he’s alone.

It can’t be past maybe eight or so, and he’s slept for one measly, fitful hour the whole night, but Mike feels exhausted in a different way– limbs sore and aching like he’d done a lot more strenuous activity than just climbing up and down a couple flights of stairs. Plus, there’s no point in trying to sleep now. The house is coming awake, the soft pattering of footsteps bursting to life, a quiet hum of chatter. His mom and Nancy are up for sure, probably Mrs. Byers and Jonathan and Argyle and–

Mike rolls over and stares straight up at the ceiling. Is Will awake? Is Will– is he coming down for breakfast? Can he come down? What sort of condition is he in? Is he–

With a groan, Mike squeezes his eyes shut, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes until spots start to dance behind his eyelids. “Okay,” he whispers aloud to the empty basement, eyes still shut. There’s the creaking of floorboards somewhere above him, the sound of running water. “Okay, okay.”

He isn’t sure what he’s expecting when he finally goes upstairs, but it isn’t this– everyone huddled around the kitchen table like a seriously weird Sunday brunch.

“Michael!” His mom smiles at him over her mug of coffee. She looks relieved to see him, hair down and in a robe he hasn’t seen her wear in years. She must have dug it out sometime in the last couple of weeks. “Good morning!”

“Uh,” Mike starts, still a little caught off-guard by how full the kitchen is. He can feel Nancy staring at him from across the table, and very pointedly does not look in her direction. “Morning?”

His mom stirs her coffee a bit absentmindedly, then leans over to pour cereal into Holly’s bowl. “Did you sleep okay? I know it was a little chaotic up here last night.”

Nancy stares at him harder. Mike turns away, heads over towards the sink. “Yeah, I– I slept fine.”

For a couple of minutes, the kitchen is filled with the quiet sounds of forks clinking against plates, mugs hitting the table, chairs creaking. Mike keeps his gaze fixed determinedly on the wall behind the toaster and focuses very hard on tamping down the wave of nausea that’s been threatening to overtake him ever since he made his way up here in the middle of the night. He takes deep breaths– one, two, three– aiming for steady, casual. 

It feels like it could be any normal weekend day at their house, especially like this, if he makes sure to look straight down the toaster and not out the window, where the sky is an angry gray and the ash has started coming down again. If he makes sure to not make eye contact with Jonathan, who’s nursing his own cup of coffee next to Nancy and is definitely, definitely burning a hole into Mike’s back with the intensity of his stare too– but maybe that part isn’t that much different than usual.

As long as Mike stares at this toaster and takes even, careful breaths, then he can act like everything is totally and completely–

Ding!

Scratch that. People don’t startle this violently when things are totally and completely normal.

“You seem a little tense,” his mom notes as he sits down. “Are you sure you’re–”

“Mike,” Nancy starts at the same time, and Mike snaps his eyes up to meet hers, trying for his best not now glare.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” If there’s anything that doesn’t need to be brought up at the breakfast table, it’s dreams about dead bodies in lakes and undead dead bodies no longer in lakes, and certain people– people who are upstairs at this very moment, actually, probably sleeping or–

“I’m just saying,” Nancy goes on, “if you’re–”

“I said I’m fine,” Mike snaps, and everyone immediately falls silent. He sighs. Great. “Sorry,” he mumbles, staring straight down at his plate. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

Nancy opens her mouth like she’s going to say something else, but is cut off by Mrs. Byers’ voice from somewhere near the kitchen counter.

“Jonathan,” she calls, holding up a plate. “Hop just called, and I’ve got to run out for a second, but could you take this up to Will?”

Jonathan barely has time to react before Mike stands up. “I’ll go!” Mike says, almost knocking his chair over with the force of it, and all eyes in the room immediately fall on him. “Um. I mean,” he corrects, “I can take it up to him, it’s okay.”

Mrs. Byers looks a bit flabbergasted. “Oh, Mike, you don’t have to–”

“Please?” He drops his voice into a whisper, turns away from where his mom is frowning curiously at him. “I just– I haven’t seen him since, Mrs. Byers, I just–”

He’s not really going for a pleading sort of voice, but it must come out that way anyway. A look of understanding flits across her face, and her expression softens. “Sure,” she says, then smiles gently. “Thanks, hon, I’m sure he’ll feel better after seeing you.”

Doubtful, Mike thinks, but he takes the plate and the glass without another word.

The door to his bedroom is propped open. Mike can see it from the hallway, can see the corner of his bed even before he turns the corner, and for some reason, it’s this that makes him balk– 

Will is so close. He’s so close, and maybe he doesn’t even want to see Mike, actually, maybe he intends to hide out in this corner of the house until the world stops ending and maybe Mike should just–

Don’t be an idiot, he chides himself, then takes a deep breath and taps one knuckle softly against the open door. “Hello?”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting, if he’s being honest. Something like Max in her hospital bed, maybe, with tubes coming out of her arms and her neck held steady with a scary white contraption. He’s not sure exactly what they’d hook the tubes up to, considering that this is still Mike’s childhood bedroom and not a hospital by any means, but–

“Mike?”

–but it doesn’t matter either way, because it’s just Will. There are no scary tubes, no contraptions.

Just Will.

Will blinks up at him, frowning gently, from where he’s reclined against the pillows. Gray t-shirt and hair messed up in the back and looking a bit worse for wear, which Mike thinks is pretty reasonable, given that he’d gotten vaguely sliced open just a few days ago. Will doesn’t look upset to see him either, which is the second thing he notices. A good thing. It’s–

“Will,” Mike breathes out, and Will’s frown lessens. “How– um. How are you?”

“I’ve been better,” Will quips, lips twitching like he’s fighting back a smile, and that’s it, right there– the moment where it hits Mike all at once– that Will’s back, he’s here, he’s– he’s lying down in Mike’s bed and he’s making dumb comments about nothing at all, and then Mike’s vision is tunneling until it’s just brown hair and wide eyes and suddenly, he feels very unsteady on his own two feet.

“Whoa,” Will frowns again, making a weird movement with his arm like he was about to lean forward and then thought better of it. “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

“You’re the one that just got stitched back up,” Mike says, in faint disbelief. “And you’re asking about– yeah. I’m fine, I just– I brought you breakfast.” He holds up the plate of toast as if for proof. His hand is shaking, just a little. If Will notices, he doesn’t say anything.

Will looks at the plate, then back at him. “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, then stops, feeling suddenly very– okay, maybe anxious is a bit of a dramatic word to use, because it’s just Will, and he’s clearly okay, because he’s sitting up and he’s talking and he’s saying the dumbest things, but–

Mike swallows, drops his gaze to where Will’s gray t-shirt has gone a bit wrinkled around his waist before disappearing under the sheets. Where he remembers the red– god, so much red– and how it–

“Mike,” Will says again, a bit more insistent, a bit louder, and Mike takes a shaky step inside the room. “Are you sure you’re–”

“You need to drink water,” Mike blurts out instead, holding up the glass in question, and then he crosses the room and sets both dishes down by the bed, because it looks like his hands might start shaking again and Will overlooked it once but if the water starts sloshing all over the bedroom floor,  then–

“Right,” Will says, eyes following him carefully as he moves. “Are you on nurse duty today?”

Mike frowns. “What?”

“Nurse duty,” Will repeats again, looking up at Mike with a teasing smile. Mike’s stomach swoops, inexplicably and suddenly, because– wow, this is weird, okay? Will’s fingers twitch nervously over the hem of the blanket when he says, “You’re bringing me breakfast. Did my mom rope you into it?”

“Obviously not,” Mike says, before he can really think about what it is he’s saying. “She was asking Jonathan to and then I basically had to corner her in the kitchen and, uh. Take the plate myself.”

Will blinks. “Oh.” Mike watches him twirl a stray thread around his finger, around and around and around– “Why?”

“What?

And, okay, maybe not his most eloquent moment, but Mike thinks he deserves a pass, at least this once.

Will’s expression doesn’t falter. It’s dizzying, the intensity of it. “You don’t have to play nurse, you know. I’m fine. I’ll– I don’t need you taking care of me.”

Mike looks away, over to the far wall. It’s his own room, but it feels unfamiliar, somehow. The drawings Will made for him, for the Party, campaign after campaign and long evenings spent in their basement or Mike’s room, are still tacked up on the wall. Mike wonders, suddenly, whether Will looked at them, as he was falling asleep– if he drifted off with his depiction of Mike in crayon-rendered armor in the back of his mind. 

“I’m not trying to take care of you,” Mike finds himself saying, gaze still fixed on a drawing over on the wall. It was the last one Will made before he moved away, an especially tense summer evening, a week after he’d broken the news. I’m moving to California, Will had said, and then they’d reached some unspoken agreement– Mike and Lucas and Dustin– to play through as many new campaigns as they possibly could between August and October. It had, as expected, been weird.

Mike isn’t a total idiot, okay, he knows why it had been weird, why Will had barely been able to look him in the eye for those three months. And he still drew Mike like this: sword drawn, eyes blazing, charging into battle. He keeps drawing Mike like this, even after Mike keeps fucking up and fucking up. Like he’s still someone good. Someone worth remembering.

Something sour and unpleasant swoops low in his stomach at the thought, and he looks away.

“You’re bringing me breakfast,” Will reminds him, shoulders tensing, “and reminding me to drink my water. What’s next? Are you going to bring me my meds too?”

“I– no,” Mike says, still hovering, unsure, by the side of the bed. “I just wanted to see you.”

Will opens his mouth, then stops. “You wanted to see me?”

“I haven’t seen you since,” Mike says, and then he pauses too. Are they talking about it now? Is this something they talk about? “I– I waited at the hospital, but you were asleep whenever I showed up, or they’d be busy with you, and I didn’t want to–”

Mike trails off, and Will’s mouth snaps shut. “I was asleep,” he echoes softly, almost more to himself than to Mike. “You really waited?”

“Lucas had to remove me from the premises,” Mike says, then lowers himself onto his desk chair. “It wasn’t pretty.”

Will flashes him a small smile, shocked but a little pleased too, maybe. Or maybe Mike just wants him to be pleased. Maybe Mike wants Will to be selfishly overjoyed at the thought of him sitting there, in those stupid plastic chairs in the waiting room–

“So anyway,” Mike clears his throat. “I brought you breakfast. If you want it.”

Will glances over to the plate on the table, like he’d forgotten the entire reason Mike had supposedly come up here. “Oh, right. Um.”

“Toast isn’t too glamorous, I know,” Mike continues, watching Will sip at the glass of water. “But, you know, all things considered–”

“Toast is great,” Will interrupts. “I mean, they’ve got me all whacked out on these painkillers and stuff so, like, I’m not really gearing up for a five-star meal here.”

“Right, of course.” Mike balks for a moment. “Okay, I’ll just let you–”

Will frowns. “What? Where are you going?”

Mike gestures vaguely with his hands, half out of the chair already. “I mean, I figured maybe you wouldn’t want me to just– watch you eat?”

“No, I–” Will shakes his head. “I don’t mind. You should– I mean, if you wanted–”

So they’re not talking about it, then. Something seems to hang in the air between them anyway, unspoken. Ask me to stay, Mike thinks, strangely desperate. Will’s hands are moving again, nervous, flighty– flitting over the hem of the sheets, his own shirt, the ceramic lip of the plate. Ask me to stay. Ask me.

“If you wanted,” Will starts again, then looks carefully down at the plate in his lap. “You should– I don’t mind.”

So they’re not talking about it– about Will’s blood staining Mike’s jacket dark red or the car ride to the hospital or any of the rest of it, and it’s fine. Mike can compartmentalize, and this is clearly more of a priority than talking about it anyway– having Will in front of him, making his way through a plate of toast and breathing and smiling and sitting there in his gray t-shirt with his hair all messed up, and–

“Okay,” Mike breathes out, then settles back in his chair. This should maybe feel a bit awkward, just watching Will chew, voices floating up the stairs from where everyone is finishing up eating downstairs, but it doesn’t, somehow. It feels more normal than things have in a while. Mike lets out another deep exhale and feels his body relax. “Okay,” he says, and then, even though Will hadn’t even asked– “I can stay.”

It’s hot in the basement again. Mike doesn’t know why it’s so hot, because it had been maybe fifty degrees all day, but maybe the underlying theme of the past few days is that the universe has been out to get him, specifically.

The house is weirdly quiet again, which is unsettling enough on its own. He’s gotten used to listening for the faint hum of the fridge, the footsteps coming down the stairs, something– but the house is quiet. It’s just him and his stupid, rapidly derailing train of thought.

Nancy’s asleep already. Mike rolls over, the sofa springs creaking under him as he moves, and stares straight up at the ceiling. He thinks about Will, sitting next to him in silence, how it maybe should have felt weird and scary and tense, but mostly it was just hard to think about anything over the rush of relief he’d felt, the easy comfort of Will’s presence. He turns the image over in his mind like it’s a tangible, physical thing– gray t-shirt and plaid pajama pants and Will’s hair all messed up in the back. The gauze bandage on his arm where the IV had gone in, the bruising there that Mike had caught a glimpse of as Will had reached across him for his glass of water.

It had put a strange feeling in his throat, to see the mottled yellow and purple there. If Will had noticed him staring, he didn’t say anything. And maybe it was stupid, because it was just a bruise. It wasn’t even the worst part of the whole thing– the bandages that Mike knew were there, somewhere under the worn cotton of Will’s t-shirt, hidden from view. Did it hurt? Still? Did the stitches pull? Were the painkillers strong enough? Was it–

He could ask, he knows. All these questions, and he could just ask. Will might tell him– or maybe Will doesn’t want to talk about it.

Mike groans softly, then rubs his hands over his face. Maybe Will doesn’t want to talk about it. What does Mike know?

Not a lot, apparently. It doesn’t feel like he knows much of anything at all, anymore.

Sleep comes for him slow, just like before. Mike is expecting it, this time– the lethargic, strangely gravitational pull of it, being drawn into something you’re not so sure you want. He’s so tired, but all he can think about is Will, and all he sees when he closes his eyes is Will, twelve years old and waterlogged clothes and blue lips and angry, angry, angry–

When he blinks, he finds himself standing outside, in front of his garage. It’s nighttime, and maybe dreams have some limitations after all, because there’s no cool evening chill on his skin where there should be, with the wind rustling the tops of the trees like this. The ash and spores are nowhere to be seen. If this is real, if this is a memory, or some other kind of fucked-up trick his subconscious is playing on him, like Will at the quarry, twelve years old and angry– then it’s from before. Before.

“You shouldn’t have let me go,” comes a small voice to Mike’s right, and he feels his stomach drop. No, he thinks, turning around. No, please, no–

Will blinks up at him, clutching the handlebars of his bike. He’s dry, and there’s no blue tinge to his skin, no blood on the front of his vest, but Mike suddenly feels nauseous all over again. “Will,” he says, and then whatever he might have been trying to say after that gets caught there, in his throat.

“You should have made me stay,” Will repeats, voice sounding strangely tinny and far away, like it’s coming to him through thousands of miles of telephone wires. “You let me go. You shouldn’t have let me go.”

The Demogorgon, Mike remembers, it got me.

“Then stay,” Mike blurts out, watching Will mount his bike. He tries to reach out, tries to grab the handlebars, tries to step in front of Will, but his feet are rooted to the spot. He can’t– “Please stay. Don’t go, not again. I didn’t know then, but now I do. If you go–”

“You let me go,” Will repeats, looking straight at him. “You let me go, and it got me.”

“I know,” Mike tries, desperate, even though this isn’t real, it’s a dream– “I know, Will, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–”

If I could do it again, he wants to say, I would stop you. 

He would. Mike knows this. He’s spent the last two and a half years playing that night over in his head, watching Will’s silhouette disappear around the corner of the street and out of sight. If he could do it again, if he could go back to that night, he would grab Will and hold him tight and never let him go. He would lead him inside, he would make up a story to get his mom to let him stay the night– something, anything to keep him off the road.

And now Mike’s feet won’t move and his nails should be digging red crescents into his palms, but he can’t feel anything, and Will is getting ready to push off the ground and go, and Mike knows what’s going to happen– feels the sour taste of dread settle in his throat as Will holds his gaze. “Stay,” he insists, “I won’t let that happen to you again, Will, don’t leave–”

“You let me go,” Will says, and then Mike blinks and it’s older Will that’s standing in front of him, the one from a week ago– Mike’s sweater thrown on over the t-shirt peeking out through the collar. Backpack slung over one shoulder, Walkman in hand. “You made me go,” Will says, voice deeper now, taller, looking Mike dead on instead of up at him. “You made me go outside, Mike.”

“Will,” Mike pleads, reaching for him. “I’m sorry, okay, I didn’t know–”

“You didn’t know?” Will repeats, lips peeling back in a sneer. Mike takes an instinctive step back, and Will steps forward. “You didn’t know? You made me go, and then I–”

“Stop,” Mike whispers. Seeing twelve-year-old Will look at him like this– angry and vengeful and hurt– was painful because Will would never look at him like that, not back then. Back when Mike had been a good friend, before everything crashed and burned. But this Will–

This Will has been hurt by Mike before. Mike had hurt him. He’s fucked things up with this Will so many times. Standing here, in his own garage, for one. Across the country in a roller-skating rink. My life started that day, Mike had said, and Will had heard him, because Mike was an idiot who couldn’t think for one second before speaking. He’d fucked up over and over again, and then he’d gone and gotten Will nearly killed, so maybe it’s justified that Will look at him like this– malicious and spiteful and–

“Please, stop,” Mike whispers again, as Will draws closer. “You know I didn’t– I wouldn’t have if I knew–”

“You hurt me, Mike,” Will says, and then he’s there, crowded right up into Mike’s personal space like it’s nothing at all. “You hurt me here,” Will continues, one finger at his temple, “and here,” he lowers his hand to his heart, “and– here,” he chokes out suddenly, his hand coming away from his stomach streaked in dark red, the garage light throwing deep shadows across the driveway, turning it almost black.

It’s not real, Mike thinks desperately, squeezing his eyes shut. It’s not real. It’s not real.

It was real though, is the caveat here. It already happened. And Will was right, even as an apparition and a trick of Mike’s traitorous subconscious. You hurt me, Mike, he said, and Mike can’t even open his mouth to say anything, to defend himself, because it’s true. 

“You did this,” Will says again, stilted and thready and already fading away as Mike’s eyes snap open to the pitch-black of the basement.

He’s more ready for it this time around, the momentum of sleep propelling him straight into wakefulness with a small, cut-off gasp. For one terrifying second, he thinks he’s still outside, flat on his back and looking up at the sky, but no– it’s just the basement ceiling, barely even visible in the dark.

Nancy’s asleep. He hadn't woken her this time around, he hadn’t– Jesus– he hadn’t flailed around like a little girl having a bad dream, even though he had been having one, he supposes, but at least no one had been around to witness it this time. Will’s voice echoes faintly in his mind, like it’s reverberating off the basement walls– You hurt me, Mike.

And it was true. All of it– it was true. You hurt me here, and here, and here. 

And Mike had, and it was true, everything Will said, because Mike was a liar and a coward and even the things he tried to fix had just crumbled to dust under his fingertips, irreparable and ruined forever. El wasn’t talking to him– or anyone, really, but mostly him– because he was a liar and a coward and she knew both of those things. And Mike had lied about loving her, and she’d seen right through him but Will hadn’t–

You hurt me, Mike, Will says, the sound of his voice fading from the front of Mike’s memory, but not gone. Mike thinks he’ll remember that forever– the crack in Will’s voice as he said it, the blood on his hand, the startled look on his face, betrayed, like Mike had just cut the strings on his parachute and left him there to die.

Mike reaches a hand up to rub at his eyes, and his palm comes away wet. Cold.

Oh, he thinks vaguely, staring at the faint outline of his hand in the dark. So he’d been crying.

A really, really good thing that Nancy hadn’t woken up, then.

The dark, suddenly, is stifling, suffocating. The sheets feel claustrophobic and the walls, though Mike can’t see them, feel like they’re–

He’s out of bed before he realizes, already out from under the sheets where they’d gotten twisted around his legs, then he’s stumbling up the stairs and out into the still quiet of the first floor. Mike feels dizzy, disoriented, caught somewhere between sleep and the real world, and he’s not sure where he’s going, but he needs to get away– away from the sofa bed with the creaky springs, the low, cramped ceilings of the basement, the memories of sitting across from Will as he’d said I’m moving to California, not looking Mike in the eyes. All the ways that summer had crawled by, sluggish and hazy, the distance between him and Will already hundreds of miles wide before the moving truck had even pulled out of the Byers’ driveway.

It must be some kind of magnetic pull that’s brought him here, back in front of his room, the door propped open just an inch.

He can see the outline of Jonathan’s sleeping bag on the floor, but that isn’t the silhouette he’s looking for. Will is farther away, just out of view, but it’s good enough– it has to be.

Dream-Will’s voice echoes faintly in his head. You hurt me, Mike. 

Maybe Mike makes too many promises he can’t keep. What’s one more? No, he thinks to himself, settling down onto the top step of the stairs, back against the railing.

You hurt me, Mike.

He isn’t going to do that again.

“How’d you sleep?”

Will’s voice snaps Mike sharply out of his mid-morning reverie. It’s a strangely sunny day out, and the light is coming in muted and warm through the closed slats of Mike’s blinds. It feels like it could be any late spring morning, waking up after a night spent over, mustering up enough energy to go downstairs and make something to eat. Will has the same tousled hair, the same plaid pajama pants that he always used to wear, the same pillow creases lining one side of his face. He’d barely even seemed awake when Mike came in a couple minutes ago.

Mike shifts his weight on his feet, still standing a bit awkwardly by the foot of the bed. The way Will said it, the question seemed perfunctory. Nothing more than a courtesy, but Mike finds himself saying anyway, “Um. Fine. Why?”

“You look tired,” Will says simply, the end of the phrase slipping up into a quiet yawn. “Didn’t sleep well?”

He isn’t sure what to say to that. It’s been like this for a week, ever since Will came home. The dreams are different each time, but they always end the same– Will bleeding out right there in front of Mike, startled and afraid and hating him. You hurt me. You did this.

“I slept fine,” Mike lies, because he isn’t sure how to convey that he doesn’t know which is worse– lying awake for hours because he’s terrified of seeing Will like that, or finally falling asleep just to see Will like that anyway. “What about you? You’re the patient here.”

Will looks wholly unimpressed. “So you are playing nurse with me.” He nods at the plate Mike’s holding. “Did my mom put you up to this? I can move and stuff on my own, you know.”

Will probably intended it to be a lighthearted sort of jab, not really meant to be funny, but Mike can’t help it. He starts laughing, because the thought of that– of Joyce Byers passing up the opportunity to wheedle, is the funniest thing he can think of at the moment. And maybe he’s more tired than he thought, because he catches his breath a few seconds later, straightening, and Will is staring at him with a strange expression on his face, mouth slightly open.

Mike stops laughing. “What?”

“You–” Will starts, then shakes his head. “Nothing. What’s so funny?”

“That you thought your mom wouldn’t want to be up here with you,” Mike says, then walks over next to Will’s bed. “No, they had to– Jonathan and Nancy went to get groceries and your mom went to drop off some food for El and Hop and, uh, I guess you were asleep when she popped in on you earlier so I told her I’d bring you breakfast if you woke up. It’s toast again, because we were seriously out of food. Sorry.”

Will offers him a small, pleased smile. “Don’t be. You offered to bring me breakfast?”

“Well it was either that or run errands with Jonathan and Nancy,” Mike points out, and then Will makes a sympathetic face. He reaches for the plate but Mike is already there, handing it to him. “And I don’t really want to, you know– I don’t think El or Hop want to see me right now.”

Will chews thoughtfully for a moment, but waits until he swallows to answer. “Yeah? Why not?”

It sounds careful. To anyone else– from anyone else, it might have been able to be passed off as a casual question. But this is Will, and he’s looking down at his plate, away, instead of up at Mike, and he’s busying himself with another bite and picking crumbs off his shirt and his tone is just a little too light to be actually casual, so Mike just says, “Well, Hopper hates me, so there’s that.”

At this, Will lets out a surprised little laugh. “He doesn’t hate you,” he says, “he just– aren’t you going to sit down?”

Mike frowns. “What?”

Will looks at him, one eyebrow raised. “Are you going to sit down?” he repeats. “You’re sort of, um. Hovering, right now.”

“Right,” Mike says, “right, yeah. Sorry.” 

The desk chair has been moved to the other side of the room at some point, and Mike doesn’t really feel like maneuvering around Jonathan’s pile of blankets to get there. He must have gotten a bit of a distressed look on his face, because Will laughs again. “Sorry. I– it was easier to get out of bed without the chair in the way.”

“It’s cool,” Mike says, then just sits down, right there on the bedroom floor. He’s looking up at Will from this angle, and he moves over until his back is up against the closet door. The sun is hitting him right in the face like this, one of the beams scattered throughout the room, and he tilts his head away. “So you can– can you like, you know–”

“Walk?” Will raises his eyebrows, and Mike shrugs like well, yeah. Maybe Will doesn’t want to talk about it, but Mike wants to know– about the bandages that he can’t see but he knows are there, about the painkillers and the antibiotics that Mrs. Byers administers in careful, twice-daily doses. About if Will sleeps through the night, or if he spends it in fits like Mike does.

Maybe Will doesn’t want to talk about the other stuff, either– the blowing up, the anger, the way Will hadn’t even been able to look at him after their fight in the garage. Like deja vu, again, except the first time, the issue was that Mike messed up too big to fix it. He messed up too badly to smooth it over with a few words or an I’m sorry.

This time, though, he doesn’t know what to do, because Will won’t fucking talk to him.

“I mean, you don’t have to–”

“Yeah, I can walk,” Will interrupts, still looking down at his lap. “I’m not supposed to do it a whole lot until I get the stitches out, but– I can. Technically.”

Mike lets out a slow exhale. He doesn’t want to push, doesn’t want Will to get spooked, doesn’t want him to startle like a stray cat and bolt, but–

“Does it hurt?”

He has to know. He has to know, because the last week has been this on a perpetual loop: you hurt me, Mike, and maybe all that is true, and maybe Will doesn’t want to talk about it, but he needs to know.

Will takes in a sharp breath, then leans his head back against the pillows until he’s looking up at the ceiling. “A little, sometimes. Not as bad as– it’s not that bad anymore,” he corrects himself, and Mike frowns.

Not as bad as what? He wants to ask it, but there was a reason Will hadn’t said it, and Mike is trying to be better about this– about limits and boundaries and not pushing when he shouldn’t. At being a better friend.

So he keeps his mouth shut. Pulls his knees up to his chest, watches the long line of Will’s throat flex as he moves. He fights down the inexplicable urge to clamber up on the bed next to him, to grasp him by the shoulders and count his fucking blessings that what he’s seeing is real– that Will is in front of him, solid and steady and alive and real.

“Okay,” Mike says simply, instead of voicing any of this aloud. I’m sorry, he wants to say anyway, but that feels too mundane. Too small. “I– yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” Will echoes, still looking up at the ceiling. His eyes dart back and forth like he’s looking for something there– what, exactly, Mike isn’t sure, because it’s the same whitewashed drywall they’ve had the entire time they’ve lived here– and then finally, finally, they land on Mike again.

Neither of them say anything. 

“So,” Mike starts, fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt. “What–”

“Why do you think El hates you?” Will interrupts, and then promptly shoves the last bite of toast into his mouth.

“El– what?”

Will does not respond, because he’s chewing, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Mike like you heard me. 

“Um,” Mike says, rubbing his palms along his thighs. God, his hands are– they’re sweaty, suddenly, and they hadn’t been a minute ago. “We– um. We broke up. So– well, it went okay, actually, so I don’t think she hates me, but I don’t think I’m her favorite person right now, and I’m definitely not Hop’s favorite person right now, or ever, actually, so. Yeah. That’s why.” 

Will is still chewing, and Mike is sure it doesn’t take this long to chew a bite of toast, but Will is staring back up at the ceiling again so he’s probably not, like, actually–

“Oh,” Will says after a moment. It’s way, way too casual. Too careful, measured, even for the singular syllable. “Okay.”

Mike frowns. “Okay? That’s it?”

Will pauses. Picks a crumb off his t-shirt. “I just didn’t know how to– I’m sorry,” he decides, and he sounds like he means it. The corners of his mouth slant downward when he speaks. “About you and El, I– really, I am. Are you okay?”

It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. Mike likes to think that Will’s easy to read, but sometimes he’s really, really not. 

Are you okay?

And isn’t that the million-dollar question. A year and a half down the drain, Mike thinks, except it’s less bitter than it maybe should be because it doesn’t feel like a year and a half down the drain. There would have had to be something there to get washed away in the first place, and when he reaches out for the memories– some lingering trace of nostalgia to hold onto– he comes up empty.

What was it like to be a boyfriend? He can’t think of anything substantial, anything more than fumbling teenage kisses in El’s bedroom, which felt more routine and awkward than kissing was probably supposed to feel, if people were apparently so obsessed with doing it all the time. It was– well, if he’s being honest, it felt very much like someone’s mouth on his, which was extremely underwhelming after Lucas and Max and Steve Motherfucking Harrington just simply would not shut up about it.  

Maybe that was just him. Maybe he’s, like, defective or something.

And anyway, all the good memories he has of that one summer, warm and sticky-sweet around the edges, were made so because they’d all been together, the five of them. Lucas careening down the hill on his bike, almost toppling over as his wheel hit a rock. Dustin wrestling him for the TV remote. Even Max, chocolate ice cream smeared across her cheeks, and then the scowl that crossed over her face when Mike pointed it out.

And Will, of course. Will, who–

Mike swallows, and his throat feels suddenly very dry.

Will, who’s still watching him, waiting. 

Are you okay?

They never went on any dates. El wasn’t allowed out in public, anywhere that had anything entertaining enough for two people to do together, but Mike supposes it doesn’t really matter, because she didn’t like to do any of the things he did anyway. He’s not really sure what she liked to do anyway, and it didn’t really seem like she did either, so they usually came back to the kissing thing in the end.

Which was– well. You know.

“I,” he starts, a bit hoarsely, and then clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Will peers down at him a little suspiciously. “Are you sure?”

Is he?

“Yeah,” he decides, and Will leans back against his pillows with a soft exhale. “I mean, I wasn’t ever really– I don’t think–”

Will waits. “You don’t think what?”

This feels weird. Why does this feel weird? He’d talked to Will about El just fine, back in California, but now it feels like–

“It wasn’t like that,” Mike says at last, the words fumbling and awkward as they come out of his mouth. He feels a little like he’s trying to apologize for something, backtrack, which is sort of ridiculous because he’s the one whose relationship just ended, not Will, and yet– “I don’t think we were–” he tries again. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t working out.”

Will is silent.

Mike looks away, out the window. The sun has dipped behind a cloud, the harsh, near-blinding beams that had been spilling into the room now dimmed into a lazy, pale gold. The stifling suburbia of Maple Street looks deceptively peaceful today– no ash, no spores. Nothing to indicate that the world had been falling apart just a few weeks ago. Nothing to indicate that half the houses on the street are empty.

“It wasn’t– like what?”

Mike turns back. Will is fussing with the covers thrown over his lap, picking at the threads again. “Hm?”

“You’re being so vague.” Will laughs, dry and a little forced. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t–”

“I’m not being vague on purpose!” Mike digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and groans aloud. “I just– I don’t know how to talk about this! I’ve never been broken up with before, and I’ve never broken up with anyone before, and she’s your sister and you’re my–”

He cuts himself off before best friend can fall out of his mouth.

You keep saying I’m your best friend, Will had said. A little bitter, a little angry, a little sad, a little something else entirely. I get it, okay?

“Well,” Will is saying. “You can tell me anyway. If you want.”

Mike cracks a smile. “I just,” he sighs, tucking his knees in even closer to his chest, squeezing until his arms get tense and sore with it, this weird frenetic energy that’s building up with his muscles trying to articulate to Will Byers why he broke up with Will Byers’ sister. “I don’t think it was the right time,” he says carefully. “For us to be together.”

Will’s expression is unreadable. “So if it were a different time, would you,” he gestures vaguely, “you know?”

Mike knows the answer to that before he even finishes entertaining the thought. “No,” he hears himself say, maybe more bluntly than he should have, but more honest than he’d expected. If nothing else, he can be better at this. The honesty thing.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Will falls silent again, looking at Mike and then away, and then at him again and then away again, and it’s starting to give Mike whiplash, even though he’s the one sitting there, unmoving on the floor. “But–” Will blurts out anyway, despite his careful silence, like he just couldn’t help himself. “You– love her.”

It sounds strangely choked, coming out of his mouth like that. Mike hesitates.

And he’d said it, hadn’t he? I love you. He’d said it over and over and over again and he’d been lying through his teeth the whole time, and he’d thought Will had seen right through him– he’d thought Will had seen him clench his hands into fists and grit his teeth and prayed that wherever El was, she couldn’t see the look on his his face when he’d said it.

Apparently Will hadn’t. Seen through him, that is.

So great. At least one person had believed him when he said it. A real pity it wasn’t the person he was saying it to.

“It’s complicated,” he settles on at last, and Will’s frown deepens. “But– she broke up with me too. It wasn’t just– it was both of us. I think we’re just better as friends.”

Friends. As if El’s spoken to him since that day.

He pushes the thought aside.

“Oh,” Will says, voice strangely small. “I thought you two–”

Mike feels his face turn up into a smile again, despite himself. It’s not funny, except it kind of is. “What? You thought we were in love?”

“Well, yeah,” Will admits. “Because you said all that stuff about– well, you said you love her. Sort of a dead giveaway.”

Mike closes his eyes. Drops his head so that his cheek is resting atop his knee. “Sometimes,” he says, a little muffled by the way his lips are being pressed together. “People lie.”

Even El. Especially El.

A pause. Mike doesn’t want to see the sort of face Will might be making right now. “Friends don’t.”

“Yeah, well. Boyfriends do. Girlfriends do.”

I do.

“What about me?”

Mike inhales. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “What?”

“We’re friends,” Will says evenly. “You’ve never lied to me?”

“Of course not,” Mike says without thinking. He stops. Shit. “I mean. I don’t think so.”

Lie.

“Really?”

Mike forces himself to look up, plasters a tight smile onto his face. “I mean, I don’t have anything to lie to you about.”

Lie.

Lies by omission, Mike thinks, with a strange sinking feeling in his stomach, are still lies.

There’s a contemplative expression spreading across Will’s face, and Mike closes his eyes again. Drops his cheek down onto his knee again.

It’s been a year, Mike. Meanwhile El has a book of letters from you–

Why am I the bad guy?

“I’m sorry,” Will says, voice dropping down into a whisper, even though it’s just the two of them in Mike’s room, in a mostly empty house. “That it didn’t work out, I mean. I’m here. If you need me.”

Mike just shrugs. “It’s okay.” Then, “Thank you.”

Will nods wordlessly, not meeting his eyes.

Mike wants to scream.

Are there things Will is holding back too? Words sitting on the top of his tongue that he’s swallowing, choking down like Mike is?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Will opens his mouth, and Mike’s heart starts to hammer–

“Could you pass me Jonathan’s sweater? I’m kind of cold.”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, hang on.”

He locates the sweater from where it’s folded neatly at the foot of the bed. Will hesitates briefly before taking it, shrugging it carefully onto his shoulders, and settling back against the pillows.

Mike wonders if that’s really what he had been about to say.

Mike likes to think he’s learned a few things over the years. Math, monster-hunting. The perils of navigating relationships with girls you stumble upon in the woods. His new range of skills, however, do not seem to extend to any semblance of proficiency in the kitchen.

“Michael,” his mom chides, as the bottom of the sorry piece of toast in the pan comes away charred black. “Stop burning the bread, please.”

“I can’t help it,” Mike groans in frustration, throwing his hands up and tossing the entirely unsalvageable piece of bread back onto the cutting board. It’s the third one that’s turned out like this, and they’re already trying to feed a full house of people off of the remnants of–

–actually, Mike isn’t sure where the money is coming from, because his dad’s fucked off somewhere and Hopper has no police-chief income because he’s supposed to be dead, and Mrs. Byers’ had a job back in California but Mike barely knows how taxes work, much less the United States banking system, so. The bottom line is that this fact, combined with the single, constantly under-stocked supermarket still standing in Hawkins, means that Mike needs to get his shit together. Now.

“Turn the heat down,” Karen suggests. “The pan is too hot.”

Mike turns the heat down. He’s not sure why they’re making sandwiches on the stove in the first place, because they’d be perfectly fine eaten cold, but again– he’s been rewarded with zero proficiency in the kitchen, and his mom had whisked him away from the basement and dragged him up here to help, shoved a package of ham and cheese into his hands, and told him to get started.

“Why can’t Nancy help,” Mike whines, fiddling with the stove. “She’s just sitting there!”

Nancy glares at him from the kitchen table. “And why do you think I should be helping out? Is it because I’m a–”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Mike grumbles, and Nancy rolls her eyes. “It’s because you’re sitting on your ass while I’m slaving over dinner.”

“More like burning–”

“Mike. Nancy. Please,” Karen sighs. There’s exasperation dripping from every syllable, but she doesn’t look annoyed about it like she might have used to– tired and a little mad about the constant bickering after a long day. Mike gets it. Goading Nancy like this feels normal. It feels like they’re doing something normal, and he isn’t waking her up in the middle of the night because he had a bad dream about his best friend literally–

“Oh, hi,” he hears his mom say, from where he’s got his back still turned to the table and hallway as he fiddles with the stove. The pan is cooler now, so it should be okay. He smears butter onto one side of a fresh piece of bread and tosses it onto the pan before turning around.

“What’s the–”

Mike almost drops the spatula.

“Will?”

Will waves at him from the other side of the counter, standing up with one arm gripping tight onto Jonathan’s bicep. “Hi.”

He sounds out of breath. A little tired. Mike frowns. “Why the hell are you–”

“Walking?” Will raises his eyebrows. “I told you I can, remember?”

“Yeah, but to, like, the bathroom and stuff,” Mike rushes, as Will lowers himself into a chair. His face twitches like he’s fighting back a wince. “Not down the stairs, isn’t that–”

“–I said it’s okay, Mike, seriously–”

“–you could pull a stitch, you could–”

“Mike.”

It’s not Will, but Jonathan that speaks this time, and Mike lets his mouth fall shut. Jonathan fixes him with an unreadable sort of look. A little bit curious, maybe. A little bit amused.

Mike frowns. “What?”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says, just as Will lets out a small huff and adjusts himself in the chair. “Some movement is supposed to be good. Blood circulation or something, I don’t know.”

“I’ve been mostly horizontal for, like, a week,” Will sniffs, as Jonathan pulls up a chair between him and Nancy. “My legs need practice before they turn to mush.”

“Yeah, but,” Mike tries hopelessly, and then Nancy fixes him with another look, eerily similar to Jonathan’s. Mike’s just starting to think that maybe he liked them better when they were on opposite sides of the country when Nancy frowns and glances behind him.

“Mike, you idiot, you’re burning the bread again!”

“Oh shit!”

This is a lost cause, clearly. Mike can’t even toast a fucking ham and cheese sandwich without it catching flame. He lifts the sad, rock-solid piece of bread off the pan and tosses it onto the toast graveyard.

“Well.” Karen peers over his shoulder. “You know what? Maybe we can eat these sandwiches cold after all.”

Personally, Mike thinks that’s maybe the right call. “Cool,” he says in relief, dragging the tray of fixings over to the table. “At least now Will can give me company.”

“Will can help,” Will chimes in, then motions for the loaf of bread. “Give me that.”

“Um, no,” Mike says immediately, yanking the plastic bag closer to himself. “Will cannot help, because he’s–”

“Too weak to move his arms and slap ham onto some bread?” Will motions for the bread bag again, and Mike tucks it into his lap, under the table and out of reach. “You have zero injured body parts and you still burnt four slices of bread on the stove.”

“I didn’t– how did you know that?” Mike splutters, and Will laughs gently.

“I could count them from here.”

“Oh. Well– I don’t know, okay, maybe Nancy and Jonathan can help instead.”

“Nancy and Jonathan,” Nancy says pointedly, “made dinner yesterday.”

Mike crinkles up his nose. Across the table, Will mirrors his expression. “Tuna noodle casserole does not count as dinner.”

“It counts as a war crime,” Will adds helpfully. He shoots Mike a glance out of the corner of his eye, and it’s weirdly hopeful, the way his eyes widen. Mike smiles back, tentative, and stretches his leg out to let his foot bump Will’s under the table. It feels like I’m here, but also a little like you’re here, and maybe also a little like are we okay?

Mike wants to say all of these things, a little bit, but it doesn’t feel like the place for it– not when Jonathan and Nancy are right there and his mom is also right there and Mrs. Byers is coming down the stairs with Argyle in tow. The kitchen feels like safely neutral territory, nothing like being tucked away into one corner of his bedroom as Will slowly comes awake.

So he doesn’t ask. That’s for later, maybe. “Thank you Will,” he says instead, and Will grins gently back at him.

Jonathan lets out an indignant noise. “You weren’t complaining when I was bringing it to you in bed,” he huffs.

“The room service was a six out of ten,” Will supplies easily, “I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” and Mike hears Nancy let out a small snort next to him and then he can’t help it either. He starts laughing– chest heaving, head falling forward into his hands, lungs burning something awful but good. 

“What?” Will is asking, looking between Mike and Nancy and Jonathan with a bit of a baffled expression on his face. “What’s so funny?”

Nancy has a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and clearly fighting back a bout of laughter too. And Jonathan– Mike doesn’t know if he’s one for loud, raucous laughter, but he’s shaking his head, beaming. “Nothing,” Jonathan says, and it’s fond, so fond that it makes Mike’s stomach hurt just hearing it. “We just think you’re funny.”

Will frowns. “Well, yes, obviously. But–”

“Fine,” Mike interjects, because they’re all probably thinking the same thing right now, even Nancy– that they’re just glad Will is sitting at the table and laughing and teasing and making bad jokes about Jonathan’s supposed bedside manner. He changes the subject. “You can make your own sandwich. That’s all.”

“I’ll make as many sandwiches as I damn well please,” Will mutters, but he flashes a grateful look up through his bangs as Mike finally slides the bag of bread over to him.

“One sandwich,” Mike repeats halfheartedly, but there’s no use. Will is Will, and the pile of fixings between them is steadily growing smaller and smaller. 

It’s anything but quiet or empty in the kitchen. On the contrary, it’s more crowded than Mike can ever remember it being in his life. Jonathan and Nancy are just a couple of feet away, his mom and Mrs. Byers are talking in the corner of the kitchen, laughing at regular intervals. Argyle is watching Holly’s Disney movie of the week with her– Cinderella, maybe– and Mike can’t tell if he’s genuinely enjoying himself or if he’s just absolutely stoned out of his mind again.

At any rate, it’s full and loud and busy but it feels strangely secluded, sitting across from Will like this. Their feet are still bumping together under the table, and maybe it’s just more comfortable for Will to sit like that, with the way he’s nursing one side of his body a little bit, reaching with the other arm. Either way, he isn’t pulling away, and there’s something strangely relaxed about Will’s posture, even with every movement going a little stiff at the edges as he smears mayo over one slice of bread and smushes it onto the other. 

Mike doesn’t pull away either. Just in case.

He studies the shape of Will’s hair as it falls into his eyes, the slope of his nose, the curve of his jaw. The beauty mark just above his upper lip that Mike stopped noticing years ago. It’s not like he’s spent a lot of time thinking about Will’s face or anything, but at some point, his features lost all semblance of individuality and just started being Will.

When did his jawline get so– defined?

“You tired?” he asks, instead of thinking about that any longer. Will glances up, blinking a strand of hair out of his eyes.

“Um. Not any more than usual. Why?”

Mike wonders if Will has been sleeping. If the purple lining his eyes had always been so prominent, or if that’s a more recent development. He brushes that thought away too. “Oh, just in general. After– you know. I was just wondering if you– if you’re sleeping okay.”

Will presses his foot in closer to Mike’s leg, ankle against shin in one firm line. There’s plenty of room, Mike thinks vaguely. Will doesn’t need to do that.

“I sleep alright,” Will admits, worrying gently at his bottom lip. “Not that I have a choice. I take a second dose of my meds at night and they knock me right out.”

“Ah.” The marvels of modern medicine. “I guess that’s good, right? Sleep is good.”

Sleep is good. A shame Mike hasn’t been getting any of it.

“Yeah,” Will says curiously. “Good thing.”

Mike looks down at his plate. “Oh no,” he says aloud, and Will’s head snaps up.

“What?”

“I put mayo on both slices of bread,” Mike laments sadly, holding them up and frowning.

Will’s lips pull upwards in a teasing sort of smile. “That’s not so bad. At least it won’t be dry.”

“Yeah, but this one was going to be for me, and I–”

“–don’t like mayo,” Will finishes for him, nodding. “I know. I remember. You said it tastes like, uh–”

“Sad,” Mike supplies, grinning. “It tastes sad. I just– I got distracted, and–”

“What were you getting distracted by?”

“Um,” he says, thinking about Will’s nose and his hair and the soft shadows under his eyes. “It’s just– I don’t know. It’s a little loud in here, I guess.”

A pause. In the background, Holly shrieks, “Run, Cinderella!” Mike looks down at his pathetically soggy slices of bread.

“Give me one,” Will sighs after a moment. “I’ll trade you.”

Mike slides the plate over, and Will swaps out one slice of bread for a blessedly mayo-free one. “You don’t like mayo either,” Mike says, a bit suspiciously, watching Will go back to assembling a sandwich. They’re all basically the same, because Mike hasn’t made a habit of memorizing everyone’s preferences, but this much he remembers.

Will shrugs, then winces slightly. “Ah– it’s okay. Not my favorite, but beggars can’t be choosers, so.”

Mike frowns at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, Mike, I’m fine.”

“It looked like you–”

“I said I’m fine, Mike,” Will snaps. Mike falls silent.

“I– sorry.”

“Don’t do that,” Will says, more sharply than Mike is used to hearing from him. He scowls, which is kind of a strange expression to see on someone who’s focusing so intensely on cutting a sandwich into evenly diagonal halves. “Don’t treat me like I’m some– I don’t know, some–”

“Somebody who went and got themselves sliced open?” Mike offers, before he can really think that through, and then Will’s eyes widen, just a little, and Mike immediately gets hit with the nauseating tidal force of guilt over what he just said. As if he wasn’t the one that went and got Will sliced open in the first place. You did this, dream-Will snarls in his mind, bleeding out on the grass in front of him. Your fault.

“I,” Mike starts, immediately backtracking, “I didn’t mean it like that, okay?”

But Will doesn’t look upset. He makes a small, startled little sound, maybe a laugh, maybe something a bit more indignant, and then smiles anyway. “I know,” he says quietly, more amused than Mike had thought he’d be. “Better me than you.”

A laugh rings sharply through the air. Mrs. Byers has her hands wrapped around an old ceramic mug that they’ve had ever since Mike can remember, the string of a tea bag draped over the rim. Nancy and Jonathan have slunk off to the living room with Holly and Argyle and the kitchen is louder and more lively than Mike can recall it being for months– not since the summer, when the Byers left and everyone stopped coming over like they used to. 

And yet, it feels like that’s fading into the background, just a little bit. Will’s voice is a steady murmur and it comes through more clear than anything else.

Mike balks, one hand already twisting the plastic of the bread bag closed when he says, “Do you mean that?”

“Hm?”

“That it’s better that it was you than me.” Twist, twist. He ties the back off maybe a bit more sharply than he should. Too tight. “That it’s better you got–”

“What,” Will tries, laughing weakly. “Sliced open?”

“Not funny,” Mike mutters. “Seriously, Will–”

Will points an accusing finger at him and says, “You were the one who started it,” as if they’re ten years old and this is some kind of schoolyard squabble over who pushed who onto the asphalt first. “And plus, it’s my giant scar, so I can joke about it if I want.”

“Your–!” Mike gapes. “I can’t believe you.”

“Well, you better,” Will says, with an air of finality. He glances over at the tray next to him and makes a contemplative face. “God, okay, let’s eat, because I’m hungry.”

It doesn’t get easier.

Mike thought it would, that maybe at some point the adrenaline-saturated shock would subside, that maybe he could wake up from these dreams without his pulse and blood pressure skyrocketing or trying to bite back the totally embarrassing sort of noises that woke Nancy up the first time.

He thought it would get easier, and that maybe seeing Will and talking to him and laughing with him and touching him would help, their legs pressed up together underneath the table like some kind of desperate, kinesthetic proof that things were okay.

Apparently not. 

The sky outside seems more black than usual, which is kind of ridiculous because it’s nighttime, and you can’t get darker than nighttime, but it had been a smoky, ash-ridden evening earlier, and Mike attributes the suffocating darkness to this. Everything feels heavier than usual, weighed down. He exhales softly, leaning his head back against the banister of the stairs.

You can go eleven days without sleep, apparently, and Mike isn’t quite there yet because he’s getting a couple of hours a day at least, which isn’t great but at least he’s not disintegrating and completely withering away. 

Emphasis on completely.

It never gets easier, seeing Will like that either. Hateful. Hurt. And the blood. There’s always so much blood.

Mike’s seen more blood than someone his age probably should have. But it still doesn’t get easier.

It’s quiet, up here. A little too quiet, maybe. The sound of the fridge humming quietly floats up the stairs, but that’s it. No wind, no rain, nothing to indicate that anyone else is even in the house. Mike presses his fingers into his eyes, rubbing until little sparks start dancing around behind his eyelids. He’s tired. He’s so tired, but the adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet, so he just closes his eyes. Pulls his knees up to his chest and waits for the inevitable pull of sleep to come to him again, so he can go back downstairs and wait for the rest of the house to come awake.

Creak.

“Mike?”

Mike’s eyes fly open.

His first instinct is to scramble to his feet, to tamp down the mild guilt and embarrassment of being caught sitting outside someone’s bedroom while they sleep, which is maybe a little weird on a good day and pretty damn stalkerish on a bad one. As it is, he’s tired and out of it and all his body manages to do on such short, immediate notice is to jerk backwards so that he hits his head on one of the rods of the banister.

“Shit, ow.”

Jonathan Byers blinks down at him from the doorway, entirely unamused at Mike’s plight. And what a plight it is. Maybe Mike is concussed, because holy shit, this hurts. “What are you doing?”

“It’s my house,” Mike grumbles, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. “A guy can’t walk around his own house?”

Jonathan does not grace him with a response. He just raises one eyebrow, and Mike doesn’t have it in him to fight, to push, to say much of anything at all, actually.

Jonathan opens the door a little wider and steps out into the hallway. Mike can make out the disheveled shape of his sleeping bag from here, and the bed a little further. He cranes his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of–

“Are you looking for something?”

“I– no,” Mike lies. “I was just– bathroom.”

This is maybe the most obvious lie Mike has ever told in his life. There’s a bathroom in the basement. Where Mike sleeps. He was also sitting down by the stairs with his eyes closed, very decidedly not walking to the bathroom.

Jonathan’s eyebrows creep a little further up his face. “Bathroom,” he repeats, deadpan.

“Yes?”

“Right.”

“What are you doing,” Mike blurts out, as the silence stretches out between them. Every second that passes feels like another glimpse right into his head Jonathan can snatch away for himself. Mike stumbles to his feet and crosses his arms.

“Keep your voice down,” Jonathan says, ignoring him. “It’s five in the morning.”

That answers the previous thing about the time, at least. “Sorry,” Mike says anyway, dropping his voice into a whisper. He motions over his shoulder with one finger, down the stairs. “I’ll just– yeah.”

He’s already turned around when he hears a shuffling noise behind him. Then–

“Mike,” Jonathan sighs. “Just– come on.” He gestures in front of him like let’s go. 

Being told what to do in his own house, by someone who is a guest here. Mike would be more offended if he wasn’t already mortified at being caught skulking outside the Byers’ room as they slept like some kind of deranged stalker-psychopath who really enjoys watching people sleep. And Jonathan already doesn’t like him, and it doesn’t take an idiot to figure out why, so Mike just sighs and trails after him down the stairs.

It’s just as quiet as before. Jonathan makes a beeline to the kitchen and grabs one of the glasses that had been left outside after dinner. At Mike’s questioning stare, he says, “Water. That’s why I got up.”

Mike nods. “Ah. Okay.”

After what feels like the world’s longest, most painful silence ever, with Mike hovering awkwardly somewhere between the kitchen and the hallway, he’s about to say something about finally being tired after all and then slink off back to the basement when Jonathan sighs and puts the glass down.

“I know you haven’t been sleeping, Mike.”

His immediate reaction is defensive, sharp, of course, because it’s never been anything less. He crosses his arms again. “I’ve been sleeping fine,” he huffs. “Maybe not, like, eight hours of quality sleep, but I make do.”

He doesn’t make do, but Jonathan Byers does not need to know this. He doesn’t need to know anything, actually, and maybe he should just go upstairs and–

“I’ve heard you,” Jonathan says simply, still standing with one arm leaning against the kitchen counter like he’s having a casual chat with Mike over his morning coffee. “For the last couple of weeks. You come upstairs and you sit outside our room and you go back down before anyone wakes up. People who sleep don’t do that.”

Mike opens his mouth, but for once, nothing comes out. “I,” he starts, the same mortified panic from earlier bubbling up inside him. Jonathan holds his gaze, weary and a bit exasperated, maybe, but steady all the same. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mike decides at last.

Lie. That’s a lie, obviously. Mike swallows, crosses his arms tighter around his chest, pulls his shoulders up next to his ears, and tries his hardest to look assured.

Jonathan does not seem fazed. He sighs, bereaved and tired, with all the air of an older sibling. “Mike,” he says, “it’s okay. I’m not mad.”

Just like that, Mike feels himself deflate. Like the anger he’d been trying to muster up had just dissipated altogether at the words, the fight-or-flight he’d been so used to expecting gone just like that. He relaxes his shoulders, just a little. “You’re not?”

“Why would I be?”

“I don’t know,” Mike mutters. It’s still dark and quiet and they need to keep their voices down, but– “I thought maybe I woke you or something.”

Jonathan brushes it off. “I’m a light sleeper. It wasn’t you.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Mike isn’t really sure what to say after that. Maybe I’m sorry. Maybe I swear it wasn’t like, in a weird way. Maybe I wake up every night with your brother’s blood on my hands, but that one sounds a bit morbid and dramatic. What comes out in the end is, “I just really haven’t been sleeping.”

Jonathan just looks at him. “I know.”

“I mean,” Mike gets out, wringing his hands, “I just– I keep seeing him, and– I don’t know what else to do.”

There’s a lot he’s leaving out, but he figures Jonathan is fully capable of reading in between the lines for himself. He’d been there, after all, in the hospital and the whole awful drive there, Mike yelling at him to go faster and for Will to stay awake and then there was blood all over the backseat of the car that probably still hasn’t come out and he doesn’t know if Jonathan Byers is, like, a genius or whatever, but it wouldn’t take one to figure out what he means anyway.

“He’s okay, Mike,” Jonathan is saying, but some of the wariness lining his eyes has softened into something else. Something more forgiving. “You have to understand that.”

“Yeah, but–” Mike groans. He tugs at the hem of his sweater, pulls the collar away from his chest where it’s still a bit damp with sweat, and looks away. “He almost wasn’t, and it was my–”

He stops. Your fault, Will’s voice rings in his ears, choked-out and thready and gasping. You did this. You let that thing get to me.

Jonathan frowns, then sets the glass down in the sink. “Mike–”

“I know you don’t like me,” Mike says quietly. “And I know this isn’t helping, because it’s my fault Will got hurt and you can add that to the list of shitty things I did to him in the last year, but I swear I–”

“I don’t not like you,” Jonathan interrupts, as if this is the part that shocked him the most, out of everything Mike said. “And it wasn’t your fault and he’s going to be fine. So no, I don’t not like you.”

“Are you kidding?” Mike scoffs. “You spent all of spring break glaring at me and you’ve spoken, like, five words to me since you guys got here and the logical conclusion is that you hate me, and I get it, I do, believe me, because on top of that I went and got him–”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Jonathan says, and Mike closes his mouth. “I don’t hate you, Mike. You’re fifteen. I have better things to do with my time than hate little kids.”

“I’m not a–!”

“I don’t hate you.” Jonathan says it sharp, insistent. It’s persuasive as it comes out of his mouth, and not hating someone shouldn’t feel like as big of a win as it does right now, but– “I just–”

“What?” Mike snaps, and Jonathan raises his eyebrows. “You just what?”

“I know you can be better,” Jonathan hisses. “You can be better than this, Mike, and I don’t hate you, because you’re a good kid, but you can be better.”

The words feel like a slap across the face, the way Jonathan says them. Better. You can be better.

It’s far from the first time he’s hearing it. Better. You can be better. If only he applied himself more, if he tried harder, if he wasn’t so–

“So what,” Mike gets out, jaw clenched. “I’m not good enough for you anymore? Not good enough for your little brother?”

“Not like this,” Jonathan says simply.

Oh. Mike blinks. Ouch.

He can feel his mouth turning down into a sneer, something bitter and hot threatening to boil over inside him. “Screw you,” he spits, shaking his head. “I don’t need this. I don’t. Screw you, man, I’m leaving.”

He turns, heading back down for the basement, blinking rapidly as a hot, prickling pressure starts building behind his eyes. Not like this, and you can be better, and god, he’s trying, okay? He’s trying except it’s really fucking hard when no one talks to you or tells you anything and it’s all just guesswork and walking on total fucking eggshells and–

“Hey,” Jonathan is saying, and then he’s catching up to Mike in four long strides, one arm wrapping around his bicep and stopping him in his tracks. “Come on. That’s not what I meant, Mike.”

Mike glances down at Jonathan’s hand, then back up at his face. “Let go of me.”

Jonathan looks wary, but he lets go. He holds his hands up in a placating gesture and says, “Just– hang on. That’s not what I mean.”

“No, I get it,” Mike says anyway, despite himself. “I fucked up and now you’re going all guard dog on Will except you don’t have to because he’s doing a pretty good job of that on his own, and you don’t have to tell me that he hates me because every night I see him bleeding out in front of me and telling me the same fucking thing and I–”

Mike falls silent.

Shit.

He should have stopped talking ages ago, but the adrenaline has long since taken over, skin buzzing and heart pounding and a roaring sort of rush reverberating through his skull. “I mean,” he tries, “I don’t–”

“Mike, you’re shaking,” Jonathan says, and puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s different than last time– the grip isn’t demanding or urgent or too tight around the fingertips. It’s just there. Present. “You should sit down.”

“I should sleep,” Mike says, but he doesn’t make any sort of attempt to leave. Is he shaking? Maybe he is.

“You should,” Jonathan agrees, voice laced with sympathy. “But you won’t.”

Mike looks at him. Jonathan looks back. He looks tired– exhausted, even– but alert.

He sighs. “What do you want?” It comes out more pathetic than he intended. More desperate. “What is this? I don’t need an intervention, okay, I’m–”

Jonathan butts in with “Do not say fine,” which makes Mike almost want to laugh, a little, but he doesn’t. And then, “Him getting hurt was not your fault.”

“It is,” Mike presses, “because he didn’t want to go and I made him and it was totally selfish of me because we were fighting and then he wasn’t talking to me and I thought oh, maybe if he’s forced out of the house with me, he’ll have to say something and then he didn’t and it was all for nothing anyway because–”

“Okay, you,” Jonathan says, squeezing his shoulder so gently that Mike almost misses it, “need to breathe.”

“I am breathing,” Mike sniffs, “and that’s not the point, the point is that he was mad at me and I thought I was fixing things and then I fucked it all up even more anyway.”

Jonathan frowns. He drops his hand from Mike’s shoulder and crosses his arms. Mike takes an instinctive step backwards, like putting six inches of physical space between him and the confrontation of his nightmares is going to help, or something. “Will was mad at you?”

“Yeah he–” Mike pauses. Squints. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Jonathan shakes his head. “What was he mad about?”

“I don’t know!” Mike throws his hands up, feeling more keyed up by the second, because that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? That Will just won’t tell him. “He was– something about us being best friends and me not being able to fix things and–”

And, he thinks suddenly, the gears in his brain winding to a painful, heart-wrenching stop. My life started the day I found you in the woods.

Jonathan was there for that. He’d heard it. He’d heard Mike say that his life started when his little brother went missing. 

Mike swallows. The guilt swells up inside him again, quick enough to be nauseating. It isn’t an unfamiliar feeling as of late, but it feels heightened with Jonathan staring at him like this, like he knows, even without Mike saying anything.

“It was about me being a bad friend,” Mike settles on at last. He holds eye contact despite the quiet burn of shame, somewhere deep and hidden away inside him. And Will hadn’t said that in quite so many words, but Mike has always been good at reading him. For better or worse.

Besides, it wasn’t exactly a secret.

Jonathan is silent for a long time. So long that it starts feeling a bit awkward, and Mike is wondering whether he should maybe just run away down the basement stairs while Jonathan is distracted with whatever he’s currently thinking when–

“That’s what Will told you?” Jonathan asks, a bit surprised. “That you were a bad friend?”

“Not exactly like that, but I could infer what he was getting at,” Mike mumbles, looking down at the floor. “Whatever. Ask him yourself.”

Jonathan raises his eyebrows. “Contrary to popular belief, he doesn’t tell me everything.”

“Well that’s great,” Mike says, “because he doesn’t tell me anything. And it’s like every time I talk to him I’m just screwing up again.”

“You’re not–” Jonathan sighs. “You’re not screwing up. You’re just–”

“Fucking up,” Mike corrects, and then Jonathan’s mouth does a funny twitching motion like he was about to laugh and then thought better of it. “He used to tell me things, and then I went and fucked up and now he– I don’t know. I get so close and then I say something wrong and he totally shuts down again. It wasn’t like that before.”

Before meaning: back when Mike was not the worst best friend on the face of this planet.

Jonathan exhales through his nose, long and slow, a bit exasperated and a bit like he’s thinking very carefully about what he’s about to say. “He doesn’t tell me everything,” Jonathan starts, “but I know he misses you.”

“I’m right here,” Mike says. “How can he miss me if I’m right here?”

But he gets it. He does. Mike knows what Jonathan means, and he misses himself too– some arbitrary version of himself from back before things got weird. Complicated. Before El and Will became El or Will, somehow. Like he couldn’t have them both.

Jonathan’s watching him, something like slow realization coming over his face– or maybe it’s not realization if he already knows. Mike gets that impression from him a lot– that he’s a fly on a wall, just watching. Waiting.

Through the window, Mike can see the sky start to lighten, so gradually that he’d missed it the whole time they’d been standing here. A different kind of tiredness is settling over him now– not the superficial need for sleep that he’d been desperate before, but something deeper. He feels tired from the inside out, down to the marrow of his bones.

“It’s late,” he says at last, looking pointedly away from Jonathan and straight out through the window. “I should go.”

“Right,” Jonathan says. “You need sleep.”

Mike hesitates. Jonathan is still blocking the way to the basement stairs. He gestures past him to the door and says, “Um, I have to–”

“Right,” Jonathan says again, then moves to the side. Then, as Mike pushes past him, he catches him by the arm again, quick like an impulse.

Mike scowls. “What now?” 

“You’re not a bad friend,” Jonathan says, voice low. Quieter than he’s been this whole time. “I know you, Mike, and I’ve seen you two together and I know how much you care about him.”

“You don’t know me,” Mike says, despite himself. It comes out weak anyway. “I’m not your brother.”

Jonathan ignores him. “I saw you with him when the Mind Flayer got him,” he says, and Mike’s breath hitches in his throat. “I saw you the week he was gone. I saw you in the hospital when we got him back.”

“I don’t–”

“He misses you,” Jonathan repeats, eyes darting between Mike’s. “I know you’re a good friend, Mike, so no, I don’t hate you. I just think you can be better.”

“I– yeah,” Mike says hoarsely. His throat feels strangely closed up, tight. He blinks rapidly, because crying in front of Jonathan Byers is maybe equivalent to a death sentence or some vague form of suicidal ideation, but– “I know.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says simply, then lets him go. “Goodnight, Mike. Get some rest.”

“Goodnight,” Mike says, watching Jonathan turn the corner up the stairs. He doesn’t look back.

Mike lets out a breath as he opens the basement door. It’s shaky, uneven. Be better.

Sweet fucking dreams indeed.

The issue with the whole be better thing is that back then– when Mike was better– he wasn’t trying to do any of that stuff. Which should maybe be reassuring, that he was apparently a good friend and a good person in some kind of inherent, effortless way, but it really just puts a weird feeling in his stomach to think about it, that maybe that Mike is gone now, and maybe there’s nothing he can do to get him back.

Because if he peaked at thirteen, even without knowing, this is what it means: that the damage control Mike has spent the last year desperately trying to do was actually the damage all along– erasing all the pathetic, childish parts of himself, wearing clothes he didn’t like and pretending to not like things he actually did enjoy and and spending his afternoons kissing El in her room instead of doing literally anything else. Losing out on precious time because of it, picking fights and digging his stubborn heels into the ground even when he knew he was wrong. Writing letters that made him feel like he was lying about something, even when he wasn’t– I’m excited to see you, and hope you’re doing well, and I miss you. Because none of those were lies, and they were just words, but it felt like he’d been leaving something out anyway.

Mike hadn’t ever lied in those six months. He’d been very careful about it. From, Mike. Finding the cards that said I like you. Sending El the pictures of himself that his mom took– a little awkward and more funny than romantic or cute– like he was trying to, what, keep El from getting the wrong idea? His girlfriend? Someone he was, you know, supposed to actively hold romantic feelings for?

Thirteen-year-old Mike wouldn’t have done that. He would have quit while he was ahead. He wouldn’t have tried so hard to keep himself from lying that he’d backed himself in a corner then gone ahead and done it anyway. 

He doesn’t sleep either, which is just the cherry on top of the whole ordeal that was being given a stern talking-to by Jonathan Byers in your kitchen at nearly six in the morning. When he stumbles upstairs, sometime around eight or nine, Jonathan and Nancy are in the kitchen, heads together and giggling quietly over something that Mike can’t quite make out.

“Gross,” he says, in lieu of a greeting, and they spring apart.

“Hi,” Nancy says, in an uncharacteristically sweet voice. She lifts up her mug and takes a sip. “Good morning.”

Mike squints at her. “Um. Good morning?”

Jonathan shifts slightly next to her, then reaches over to pour coffee into his own mug. His expression is entirely unreadable when he says, “Hey, Mike.”

Mike squints even harder. Apparently they’re pretending that whole thing didn’t happen, then, which is more than okay with him. “You guys are being weird,” he says, instead of greeting Jonathan back. That’s probably more normal for him to do anyway. 

Nancy scowls at him, and there we go, that’s more like it. “We’re just standing here, Mike.”

“Yeah. Weirdly.”

He feels Jonathan’s eyes on him as he crosses the kitchen and pulls a bowl out of the cabinet. Then the cereal, and the last remnants of the milk from the fridge. He frowns and shakes the jug. “Didn’t we just go grocery shopping?”

“Yeah, and there’s a million people in the house,” Nancy huffs. “Which means that you can’t have three bowls of cereal for breakfast anymore.”

Mike pulls a face. Three bowls of cereal for breakfast is one of the last simple pleasures left in this sorry, soot-ridden lifetime, and Nancy seems to be taking way too much pleasure in yanking it out from under him. “Fine. Two bowls.”

“One.”

“One and a half.”

“This is not a negotiation, Mike! The world is ending!”

Which is why, in Mike’s honest opinion, eating several bowls of Lucky Charms is more important than ever. For morale, or something. “One and a quarter,” he grins anyway, more to see the irritated look on Nancy’s face than because he actually cares about those last few spoonfuls. Well he does, but–

“We’re all making sacrifices,” Jonathan pipes up. “I’m drinking my coffee black.”

“You always drink your coffee black,” Nancy says, but she doesn’t say it in the huffy, smug way she’d been talking to Mike earlier. It’s all soft and a little giggly and, okay, gross. 

Mike watches them carefully, how the tension that’s usually slung across Jonathan Byers’ shoulders seems to ebb, a little, and how their heads are still a bit angled towards each other, like they’re waiting for him to leave so they can get back to their inside joke. He thought it would take them longer to get back into the swing of things, but they seem to be just as icky and gross as they were before the Byers left. If that’s even possible.

Something funny is happening in his stomach at the thought of it, of quiet, natural intimacy. Not showing off or keeping up appearances. The way they’d been leaning into each other and laughing before he’d got there– private moments even with no one around.

Mike wants that. He didn’t have it with El, but he wants that, someday. Even if Jonathan and Nancy are being all gross about it.

He looks away, and concentrates very hard on spooning cereal into his mouth.

“Plans for today?” Jonathan asks after a few minutes, and Mike immediately spills a spoonful of milk on the table.

Great.

“Um, not really,” he replies, as Nancy snorts and hands him a paper towel. “Just– the same old.”

Jonathan makes a contemplative noise. “Which might include?”

“Why does it matter?” Mike snaps, and Jonathan raises his eyebrows. It comes out sharper than he meant it to, meaner, and he feels bad almost immediately.

“Mike,” Nancy scolds, but Mike beats her to it.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, looking down at where the milk in his bowl is turning a grayish shade of blue. “I don’t know why I said that.”

Mike does, though. He feels strangely vulnerable, exposed, and he can’t bring himself to look Jonathan in the eye. 

For his part, Jonathan doesn’t look very bothered. “It’s fine,” he says easily, then sips his coffee some more. “Must just be tired.”

Scratch that, actually. Mike can look Jonathan in the eye– just long enough to fix him with what he hopes is a truly soul-destroying and completely withering glare.

Nancy glances between them, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” they say simultaneously, and then Mike drains the last of his milk and stands up, chair scraping loudly against the floor.

“Is Will awake?”

“He wasn’t when I came down.” Jonathan takes his mug over to the sink, rinses it out quickly under the faucet. “But he might be now.”

“Great,” Mike huffs, then turns and books it out of there before he can catch any glimpses of his sister and Jonathan Byers being gross in the kitchen again. “I’ll just– I’ll go bother him, then.”

Will is reading a book when Mike walks in.

“Hi,” Mike says, and Will looks up. His expression softens almost immediately.

“Hey,” he grins, and sits up a little straighter. Will looks better today, Mike notices. He’s got his legs pulled up to his chest, a sweater on over a white t-shirt, and a pair of socks that have a small hole right over one ankle.

He looks rested too, like he got a full night’s sleep. So his talk with Jonathan– in a loose definition of the term– didn’t wake him after all.

That’s good.

Mike leans against the doorway. “How are you?”

Will raises his eyebrows. “You saw me just a few hours ago,” he says, then stretches his legs out across the covers. “I’m good. A little stir-crazy, but good.”

“Feel like going for a walk?” Mike jokes halfheartedly, and, when Will blinks up at him in disbelief, lets out a weak laugh and says, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding, that was a– I was joking. By the way. Obviously.”

“I know,” Will smiles, after a brief pause. “I know that. I was just– well. You can’t be too careful.”

“I guess not.” Mike walks over to the bed, climbs into the chair beside it like it’s second nature now, and nods at the book in Will’s hand. “What are you reading?”

Will turns it over and glances at the cover like he needed to remind himself too. “Oh,” he sounds a bit surprised. “Um. Slaughterhouse Five.”

“Damn. Really?”

Will flips aimlessly through the pages before nodding. “Yeah, he, uh. Jonathan found it in the donation bins at the high school and thought I could use some entertainment.”

“I didn’t take you for a Vonnegut guy,” Mike wonders aloud. He supposes it makes sense. Will’s always had that quiet, artistic thing going for him, but he didn’t think anti-war sci-fi was really his thing. Or, on second thought, maybe that’s exactly his thing. Maybe Will is a reader now, something real and grown-up and smart, not X-Men any more. Maybe this is another change that California brought with it.

“It’s one of Jonathan’s favorites,” Will is saying. “I can see why, it’s totally his thing, and it’s good, but– I don’t know. I just can’t sit in this bed any longer, even if I was reading, like, the world’s most interesting book.”

“Holly’s watching Cinderella again,” Mike proposes, and Will’s face scrunches up into such instantaneous disgust that he can’t help but snort. “Okay, no Cinderella,” Mike says. “But, uh. We have some old movies in the basement if you want to maybe watch a different one.”

“Yeah?” Will raises his eyebrows, but he looks pleased. “Which ones?”

“Um. Star Wars, obviously,” Mike counts on his fingers, thinking, “because I’d never part with our box set. I think we might have given away a lot of the others but I saw Alien lying around the other day,” and Will’s face does another twisty thing in displeasure and Mike laughs. “Yeah, okay, not in the mood for Alien.”

“Not in the mood for Alien,” Will confirms.

“Well, uh. Did you eat?” Mike blurts out.

“I’ve been up here since I woke up, Mike. So, um. No.”

“Right,” Mike pauses. “Well maybe if you’re hungry then we can, like, head down for breakfast first. Um. I already ate, and fair warning, I might have finished off the milk, because there are, like, a hundred people in this house and apparently that means everyone’s pouring themselves six glasses of milk a day, and–”

Will folds down the corner of his page and puts his book aside. “Don’t blame this on the others, Mike. How many bowls of cereal did you eat this morning?”

“I– that’s not important!” Mike splutters, and Will grins smugly. “Only one!”

“How many were you going to eat before Nancy yelled at you?” Will asks, and okay, Mike hates him, actually.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he decides, and Will’s smug smile only grows. “But you should eat something. And, uh, there’s a lot of coffee but you’d have to drink it black which I don’t think is your thing.”

“It’s not,” Will says, giving him a bit of a strange look. “But that’s fine. I’ll stick with water. Um. Let me just–” he struggles with the sleeve of his sweater for a minute. “I’m kind of warm but– it takes a second to get out of this. I’ll meet you downstairs?”

“I’ll just use the bathroom,” Mike points out of the room and down the hallway, “and I’ll be back.”

“Sure,” Will laughs, and then the sound goes muffled as the sweater gets caught around his neck, and Mike watches, amused, as he struggles hard enough for his hair to start poking out of the neck hole in frazzled tufts. “Shit. Don’t laugh, Mike!”

To his credit, Mike tries not to laugh. He does! The mental image of it is too good to pass up, though. He washes his hands and tries to remember what movies they have in the basement– Alien is off the table, and so is any of Nancy’s cheesy romance movies, the kind she totally swears she doesn’t like to watch. He’d fought tooth and nail to keep the Star Wars tapes, and he doesn’t know what else they still have. And there’s Holly’s stash of Disney movies, but– no. Not after the Snow White debacle. Mike is putting his foot down.

“Hey,” Mike says, rubbing his eyes with one hand and fighting off a yawn as he walks back into the room. “I was thinking after we eat and everything that later we could–”

He pauses. Will isn’t on the bed anymore. He’s kneeling next to it, one hand on the floor by the bed like he’s just been reaching under it to get to something. Mike hesitates, peers around the doorframe and says, “Will? What are you doing?”

Will doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t look up. For a horrible moment, Mike thinks maybe he’s hurt– that maybe he fell, maybe he tore a stitch, maybe he– well, that doesn’t really matter, but he takes another step into the room anyway. “Will?”

“Mike,” Will starts, then finally looks up. He’s frowning, lips parted slightly as he looks down at whatever’s in his hand. “Was this for me?”

Mike frowns. “What are you talking about?”

That’s when Will turns around the rest of the way and holds up a rectangular piece of white paper. “This,” he says quietly, and then his eyes dart up to meet Mike’s. “It has my name on it.”

It has Will’s–

Mike freezes. Immediately, his blood goes cold, so instantaneously that it knocks the wind out of him entirely. No, no, no, no–

“Where did you get that?” he blurts. “What were you doing?”

“My book fell under the bed,” Will says, sounding more than a bit distracted as he looks back down at the envelope in his hands. Mike can’t make the words out from here, but he knows exactly what’s written on the front. Will Byers, messy scrawl and blue ink. An address for a home in Lenora Hills, California, scribbled underneath. Never sealed. Never sent. “I was trying to get it out and this was sticking out of one of the textbooks you keep under there–”

“That’s private,” Mike hears himself say, stomach churning inexplicably. He clenches his fists uselessly at his side, a dizzying loop of no, no, no– “You can’t just– you can’t look around at my stuff, Will, that’s private.”

Will ignores him. “It has my name on it,” he repeats, more like he’s talking to himself than Mike. “Why does this have–”

“Stop,” Mike says. No, no, no– “Just– put that back. That’s private.”

This time, when Will looks up, there’s something different about his expression. It’s smoothed out into something more resigned. Hurt, Mike thinks, swallowing back another wave of guilt. He looks hurt.

“You wrote me,” he says, lips pressed into a thin line. It’s not a question. “You– you wrote to me, and you let me think that you didn’t.”

Mike takes another step forward. “Will, it’s not like that–”

“No, no, it is,” Will insists, mouth turning down. His lower lip quivers, ever-so-slightly, and maybe no one else would be able to notice it, but Mike knows him– knows all his tells, whether it’s a conscious thing or not. He’s seen that look on Will’s face before, what it looks like when he’s fighting back emotion. When he’s fighting back tears because of Mike.

You hurt me, Will’s voice echoes in his mind. It comes through layered, like audio stacked on top of each other– young Will in a backlit dreamscape, but also the Will in front of him now, eyes steeled and jaw set like he’s trying his hardest to stay calm.

“I just– I don’t understand,” Will is saying, shaking his head. “You let me think you didn’t write. You didn’t even call and then you– why didn’t you send them?”

“I don’t know,” Mike tries, which is weak and pathetic and not an answer and also a lie. “I didn’t– I swear, you weren’t supposed to see them.”

“Them?”

Mike’s stomach drops. Shit. “I–”

Will’s voice is small when he answers, smaller than Mike has heard it in a long time. “There are more?”

“I,” Mike starts, and then Will’s lip twitches again– just barely, and he cracks. “Yes,” he admits, and Will lets out a long, slow exhale. “I wanted to send them, I did, I swear I wasn’t trying to–”

“You’re never trying to!” Will exclaims, looking back down at where his hands are clutching the letter in his lap. “You never try to and you never mean it and it’s always an accident but– god, Mike, I spent six months thinking you hated me and this whole time you– and all you had to say was that I should have reached out more?”

“Stop,” Mike says again. Stop. Stop. Stop. “It’s complicated, okay, it’s not–”

“It’s not complicated, though,” Will thunders on, clutching the paper so tight that Mike thinks he might rip right through it. “El got one every two weeks, on the clock, and every time she came back from the mailbox I’d ask, and every time she’d look at me and shake her head and every time I convinced myself it was coming.”

Mike throws his hands up. “El and I broke up, okay! I sent her a million letters and we broke up anyway, so I don’t know why this matters because they’re just letters, Will. Apparently they don’t count for shit anyway, so can we just–”

“Why didn’t you send them then?” Will shoots back. “If they don’t matter and talking to me didn’t matter and– and I didn’t matter and it didn’t mean anything then why didn’t you just send them anyway? 

Mike freezes.

So he’s a liar, still, and not even a good one at that, because Will is putting two and two together faster than Mike gave him credit for. Which was his first mistake. Will’s smart. He’s intuitive. He picked up on Mike’s fumbling hesitation within the first hour of his plane landing in California and Mike was a fool to think he wouldn’t see right through him for this.

“You do matter,” Mike insists, instead of saying any of this. “Of course you matter, Will, of course you’re important to me, how could you–”

Will laughs in disbelief and shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Not again.”

“What?” Mike takes a hasty step forward, then another. “What am I doing?”

Will scrambles to his feet as Mike approaches, eyes wide, and winces at the sharp movement. “Don’t,” he says again, urgent and halfway to begging, then takes another step backwards, until he bumps into the desk. The glass perched precariously on top of it rattles with the force of it, and Will takes in a sharp, pained breath. “Don’t touch me.”

Mike stops dead in his tracks. He’s only ever seen Will like this once before, running to find him in the woods with a wild look in his eyes, jaw set and shoulders taut like he’s bracing himself for something. You did this. You hurt me, Mike. 

“You’re going to pull a stitch,” Mike pleads, “just– can you sit down, please–”

“I don’t get you,” Will says, “you’re– you’re always coddling me when it’s so clear,” he holds up the envelope, wrinkled and creasing sharply in his fist, “that you didn’t give a crap about me two months ago. I don’t get it. Why won’t you just back off?”

“Will–”

“You wouldn’t treat Dustin like this,” Will snaps, “or Lucas, or Max– you wouldn’t treat them like shit for six months and then turn around and hover over them and fuss about everything they do. Why am I different?”

Mike uncurls his hands slowly from where they’ve been balled up into tight little fists at his side. Blood is rushing through his ears now, loud, violent, tense– “You’re not–”

“Tell me,” Will presses, exasperated. “Why can’t you just back off and leave me–”

Waterlogged red vest. Limp fingers dangling off a stretcher and you let that thing get to me, and you did this. You–

The frenetic, manic thing inside Mike boils over in one tumultuous rush. “Because!” he exclaims, voice cracking on the cusp of the second syllable. “I already saw you die once, Will!”

The room goes silent.

Will opens his mouth once, then closes it again. His frown deepens. When he finally speaks, it’s so quiet that Mike almost misses it. “What?”

You hurt me. You did this, Mike.

Mike thinks he might be sick, right here on his bedroom floor. It feels like all the fight has been knocked right out of him, like the aftermath of a physical blow. “I was there,” he whispers. “When they pulled your body out of the quarry. I was there. It wasn’t you but I thought it was– I mean, it looked just like you, Will, and– I thought about it every day. I– I biked home crying so hard I couldn’t breathe, and just when I thought I was over it–”

Will’s eyes widen, just a little. Just enough for Mike to know that he gets it. That he understands. “Mike,” he starts. “I didn’t know.”

Mike feels, suddenly, very unsteady on his own two feet. He wishes he were still standing by the door, so he could maybe hold on to the wall for support because–  

“I know.” It’s embarrassingly shaky as it comes out, and Will’s mouth drops open just a little further. “I made Dustin and Lucas promise not to tell.”

For the first time since Mike came back into the room, Will seems to be at a loss for words. “I didn’t know,” he says again, quiet. “I just thought–”

“I can’t do this,” Mike blurts out, then takes a step backwards. Will makes a stilted movement like he wants to follow him, but thought better of it. “I have to go. I can’t–”

“Mike,” Will gets out, “where are you–”

Mike shakes his head. He really, really might be sick. “I– sorry,” he gets out, “I’m sorry,” and then he bolts.

He can’t go downstairs. The master bedroom is out of the question, and his room, obviously, is even further out of the question. Which is why Mike finds himself pushing open the door to the bathroom, slamming it shut behind him.

At first, he concentrates very hard on taking deep, even breaths. It’s hard enough as is, thinking about Will’s hurt and confusion and anger filling the room like a tangible thing. You hurt me, Mike, Will had said, and it didn’t matter if that Will wasn’t real. It was just as true now as it was in any sort of dream, and the real Will might as well have gone and said the same thing to him because it still would have been true.

“Stupid,” he says aloud, in between breaths, because he is. He is stupid, and he hadn’t thought about the letters, hadn’t thought that maybe shoving them in between the pages of a textbook and out of sight might mean that they might get dredged up at some point, somewhere in the chaos of moving people in and out again.

The deep breaths aren’t working. They’re coming out more uneven, cut off halfway, and Mike’s chest feels tight, constricted. Everything is starting to blur– the sink, the mirror, the shelves all going a little indistinguishable from one another, and Mike leans forward onto the edge of the counter with a choked gasp.

Here’s the thing, right, is that Mike isn’t a crier. Not usually. But now, his heart won’t stop beating like this, loud and insistent like it’s begging for attention, maybe loud enough for Will to hear it, across the hall and where he’s probably still standing by the bed. There’s so much oxygen in the room, and it feels like none of it’s going into his lungs, no matter how hard he pulls in his next inhale, and he’s getting dizzy with it, he’s– oh god, he needs to sit down–

The floor might have been a good idea. Even sitting on the toilet, maybe, would have been better, but Mike finds himself perched on the edge of the tub instead, breathing in and in and in, but nothing’s coming–

“Shit,” he whispers, “shit, shit, shit,” which is a waste of precious air that he doesn’t even have, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even feel like there’s anything inside of him anymore, like maybe everything that used to be there has just vanished entirely.

Maybe this is how Will felt, Mike thinks, vaguely and far off in the back of his head. Maybe this is how Will felt when he really was dying– the first time, the real time, all tangled up in vines and hunted like prey and tethered to the spot, unconscious. Maybe this is how Will felt the second time, cut up and bleeding all over Mike’s hands, and maybe he couldn’t breathe either, and maybe this is what Mike gets, for hurting him, for letting him go, for–

There’s a sound from outside the bathroom door– maybe a voice, maybe a knock, Mike can’t tell. He also can’t muster up the air to answer, to do anything other than squeeze his eyes shut and dig the heels of palms into them in a pathetic attempt at something grounding. The sound comes back, louder this time, and oh, okay, someone’s calling his name–

“Mike,” someone’s saying, and then something that might be, “are you okay?” 

He doesn’t answer. A noise bubbles up and out of him anyway, something wholly embarrassing, like a gasp or a sob, and then the door is opening and he lifts his head up just enough to see Will’s face entering his field of vision, mouth moving but no sound coming out.

Mike blinks. “Mike,” Will says again, and this time his voice sounds like it’s coming to him through a foot of water, distorted and weak but there. “It’s me, it’s just me. Are you okay?”

Yes, Mike wants to say, and also no, or maybe why are you here?

What comes out of his mouth instead is, “I can’t– oh god, I can’t breathe.”

“It’s okay,” Will is saying, making soothing, gentling noises above him, and then there’s a shuffling sound as he moves closer, lowering himself carefully onto the ground in front of Mike. His movements are slow, measured. “It’s okay, you’re okay, it’s just me.”

Mike squeezes his eyes shut again. “I can’t,” he starts again, lungs burning something terrible as he tries to breathe in, “I can’t–”

“I know,” Will says, and Mike thinks he sounds apologetic, but he can’t be sure. What would Will have to apologize for? He was the one that had been upset. He shouldn’t have to be comforting anyone.

A hand comes to rest on his back anyway, the pressure gentle but firm. Grounding, Mike thinks. There’s the tether he’d been looking for. 

“You’re okay, Mike, you’re– I didn’t mean to upset you,” Will is saying, voice coming in and out and in again as his hand moves in slow, intentional circles on Mike’s back. “I didn’t know –”

Mike shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, then reaches out blindly for something, anything. It snags on the front of Will’s t-shirt, white cotton and worn thin from use, but he fists a desperate hand in it anyway. Proximity, reassurance, anything. Will moves easily with the motion. Don’t touch me, he’d said, and Mike’s throat sours with guilt, but he can’t let go, he can’t move, he can’t do anything at all.

“Don’t be,” Will says, then again, and Mike hears his own voice come through as if from very far away, like it’s not coming from his body at all– I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry– “Don’t worry about that,” Will says, frantic, and Mike feels his hand tighten against Will’s shirt. “You’re okay. Mike, it’s just me.”

Just Will, Mike thinks. It’s just Will. It’s just Will. It’s just Will.

Will is here.

Mike turns the phrase over in his mind, runs his tongue over the once-familiar edges of it: Will is here. Will is alive. He’s okay, he’s solid under Mike’s hand and he’s warm and he’s here and he’s okay. 

His first breath of air feels like breaking through the surface of water– he’s fighting it and fighting it and suddenly he’s there, a choked-off sob giving way to a shuddering gasp and maybe there’s something inside him after all, maybe his lungs haven’t given out entirely, not just yet.

“I just need,” he gasps, struggling, “I need– oh, god.”

“There you are,” Will says, the panic in his voice undercut by audible relief. “There you go– Jesus, Mike, okay, you’re okay.”

Mike’s still got one hand clenching Will’s shirt for all he’s worth, and he could let go now, maybe, but he doesn’t want to. He can’t, because god, if he lets go, he feels like might start drifting off again. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says at last, eyes still closed. 

“I’m okay,” Will says, more gentle than he should be. “I can walk and everything, I promise–”

“No,” Mike says haltingly. “I mean, I hurt you, and now you’re– why did you– you shouldn’t be here,” he finishes lamely, then takes another deep, shaky breath in.

Will inhales sharply above him. “You looked upset,” he murmurs, “and I– I didn’t know. About the quarry. I didn’t mean to make you think about it.”

“I think about it all the time,” Mike gasps, “I– every night since you got back, I see you and–

He reaches out with his other hand, flailing, grasping, anything, until it lands on Will’s forearm. He holds onto this too, pulls Will in a fraction of an inch closer, and breathes. 

“There you go,” Will is saying. “Breathe, Mike,” as if he isn’t trying. 

“I see you,” Mike tries again, and his cheeks are cold and god, this is so embarrassing, because he’s crying now– maybe he was crying this whole time, which is even worse– “When I fall asleep, I see you at the quarry, and you– you’re–”

Among other things. It’s Will at the quarry most of the time, or some variation thereof. Sometimes it’s played back just how it was that night. Sometimes Will gets up out of the stretcher and starts bleeding red right into the pitch-black water. Sometimes Will makes it all the way to the shore, right up in front of Mike, before his legs give out. 

Will must understand what he’s trying to say, because he makes another soothing sound. Shh. “Dreams?” 

Mike nods and says, “I don’t sleep. I can’t.”

“They’re just dreams,” Will says softly. It’s quiet, and it sounds so stupid when he says it like that, that Mike can’t help but laugh, a sharp hiccup that forces its way out of his throat. Will lets out a noise that sounds vaguely pleased. “They’re just dreams, Mike. I’m okay.”

“I–”

“Here,” Will says, then gently uncurls Mike’s fingers from where they’re white-knuckling the front of his shirt. He presses Mike’s hand flat against his chest, palm laid against his sternum in one straight line. His heart is beating– Mike can feel it, he can feel it. “Here, I’m here. I’m okay,” Will says, and again, and again, and again. “I’m okay, Mike. I’m okay.”

“Oh god,” Mike gasps, and he’s moving forward, at some point, toppling frantically off the bathtub rim and forward, into the steady, unyielding weight of Will’s body. He’s here, and his pulse is right there, under Mike’s hand, and his arm is firm under Mike’s other hand, and the ceramic tiles of the bathroom are disgusting and cold and hard under him, and Will is okay. “I’m sorry, Will, god, I’m so sorry–”

“Don’t,” Will says, except it’s not like how he’d said it earlier. It’s not hurt or angry– just relieved. “Mike, I’m okay. You’re okay.”

Be better, Mike thinks, and he’s trying, he’s trying. He clutches desperately at Will’s shoulders, his back, hand brushing against the rough edges of the bandages Mike knows are there, under the white cotton of his shirt. Will tenses, briefly, and Mike thinks maybe he should pull back, even though he doesn’t know if he can–

And then Will surges forward too, meeting him in the middle. “I’m sorry,” he echoes, and Mike hears himself let out another embarrassingly cut off sob. Then– “I didn’t read it,” Will says, muffled into the curve of Mike’s shoulder.

Mike pulls back just far enough to finally, finally look at Will’s face. His eyes are watery, wide. Apologetic. “What?”

“The letter,” Will clarifies. “I didn’t– whatever was in there, whatever made you– whatever you didn’t want me to see. I didn’t read it, Mike, I promise. I just saw my name and our address, and– it doesn’t matter, okay, it– we’ll figure it out, I promise, but it’s not more important than this. You’re okay.”

“No,” Mike interrupts, “no, I didn’t mean to make this about me, I swear, and– god, I’m sorry,” he says again, despite himself, and Will laughs incredulously, eyes shining.

“I’m sorry too,” and the way he says it feels heavy. Important, if Mike could bring himself to believe such a thing. “I missed you. So much.”

Mike thinks back to Jonathan in the kitchen, saying he misses you, and he gets it. Finally, he gets it. “How can you miss me,” Mike gets out, “when I’ve been right here?”

Will laughs again, tightens his arms around Mike’s waist. It can’t be comfortable, this position they’re holding– all cold tiles and tangled limbs and knees twisted in ways that tall, teenage boys’ knees should not be twisting. “I don’t know,” Will says quietly. “You seemed pretty far away, even now.”

Mike’s chest tightens. “I’m sorry.”

“I should have reached out,” Will admits, and there’s a strangled noise like Will is biting back a sob, and Mike feels himself breathe out, careful and long. “I could have. You were right, I just– you didn’t call and you stopped writing, and– I took the hint, you know. I didn’t want to be that guy.”

“You’re not,” Mike promises, and focuses hard on the shape of Will against him– broad, solid planes, warm and alive. “I meant it, Will. You matter. Of course you matter to me, and I’m–”

“If you say I’m sorry again, I’m going to kill you,” Will says wetly, and Mike promptly shuts his mouth. Will lets out a small, triumphant noise. “That’s what I thought.”

“Oh, shut up,” Mike says, but there’s no bite to it. He thinks the fight might have been taken out of him, maybe forever.

He’s just tired. He’s so fucking tired. 

“It’s okay,” Will murmurs, rhythmic and insistent, over and over until Mike almost starts to believe it. He squeezes tighter, counts Will’s heartbeat as it ticks away against his palm. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

Silence settles over them, easy and unhurried. They sit there like that for a while, until Mike’s breathing evens out, and his inhales aren’t shaky anymore and his exhales are at least as steady. They sit there until Mike’s joints start to protest like he turned eighty years old sometime in the last hour, and they sit there until Will shifts uncomfortably but doesn’t make any move to get up, and then a little while longer.

It’s when Will shifts again and makes a stifled noise of discomfort, wincing slightly as he moves, that Mike remembers that he’s got a wound in his side, and Mike’s been forcing him to sit on the cold, hard floor for God knows how long. “Hey,” he frowns, pulling back, “you’re uncomfortable. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Maybe it’s a trick of the bathroom light, but Will, for some reason, flushes a delicate pink. His eyes are still wide, lashes damp enough for Mike to be able to tell. “This was nice,” he says, careful and quiet like he’s admitting to something more than he’s letting on. “I– I don’t know, I didn’t want to ruin the moment.”

“The–!” Mike stares, then scrambles away and to his feet. “Are you kidding?”

“No?” Will sounds confused, but he takes Mike’s proffered hand and lets himself be gingerly hauled to his feet. “I meant it, Mike. I missed you. And I’m– I’m sorry. About everything.”

Mike swallows. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he whispers. Will’s hand is still in his, and neither of them move to let go. He squeezes, once. “I mean that too.”

Will offers him a tentative, shaky smile. “Yeah?”

Mike nods. “Yeah.”

A beat passes, then two, then three. Mike should go. He should let Will eat, and get some rest, and–

“Stay,” Will blurts out, just as Mike starts to move backwards, away and towards the door.

Mike frowns. “What?”

“You’re tired,” Will says simply, and maybe Mike is imagining it, but he looks a little more pink than before. “I– you need sleep. You should stay. Up here with me, I mean.”

Oh, Mike thinks, but says, “I don’t want to be a bother.”

Will cracks a tentative smile. “You won’t be. Unless you really don’t want to, but– stay? Please?”

Mike waits another second, then two, before answering. “Yeah,” he hears himself say, barely above a whisper. “Yeah, okay. I’ll stay.”

“Cool,” Will breathes out, then glances towards the door. “Um. Do you want to–”

“Oh! Yeah, here–”

Will doesn’t let go of his hand until they get to the bed. The letter is lying, abandoned, on the floor by the bed. Mike pointedly does not look at it. No, his brain is saying, as Will pulls the covers back. No. Not now. 

It’s a quiet day. The sky outside has dimmed, and the room is darker than it was earlier. Will is a steady, solid weight next to him, and Mike hasn’t shared a bed with anyone in forever, and he thought it might be awkward, existing in the same space as someone like this– someone like Will, but it’s not. 

“Just be a little mindful of,” Will gestures to his side as he readjusts, “you know.” His eyes are wide when they meet Mike’s. A little scared.

Unfamiliar territory, Mike thinks, stomach fluttering. He wonders if he looks just as nervous. He nods anyway. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

A hand brushes against his under the covers, then stills, waiting. Mike lets out a slow, shaky breath, and cards their fingers together. It feels– important. This feels important, this moment here. The soft reassurance of Will’s pulse against his own wrist. The way Will doesn’t stop him when Mike leans his face into Will’s shoulder and closes his eyes. It feels like a step forward. It feels important.

Mike drifts off almost immediately. For the first time in a long time, he does not dream.

Chapter Text

The first thing Mike notices is that the room is dark.

He opens his eyes to something that’s almost black. Not completely, but it’s almost there. In the few seconds it takes his eyes to adjust, he can make out the outline of the furniture in his room, the faint light coming in from the windows. Not much more than that. 

The ash is coming down again, visible through the slats in the blinds, even from here, and it’s dark enough for it to be clear that it isn’t mid morning anymore. It doesn’t even feel like afternoon. It can’t be, because there’s a layer of sleep coating the inside of his eyelids and all along his body, a tiredly satisfied kind of ache, the kind that only accumulates after hours and hours of sleep. 

He feels groggy too, and, okay, so he’s been out for a hot minute. Mike frowns, glances around his room because Jesus, it’s his own room and there isn’t a single clock in sight. Surely he had one, right? Before? He had an alarm clock, he knows he did, it was right there on the table next to–

He rolls over, and freezes. The second thing he notices is that the bed is empty.

And then it hits him. 

“Shit,” he says aloud, and sits straight up in bed. The blankets fall away from his chest, and it hits him, why he’d been sleeping in his old bed after staying in the basement for weeks. Why the room is dark and the door is closed and he feels exhausted from the inside out– like someone’s reached down into him and wrung his organs out, one by one– why his head hurts and his eyes are dry and the bed is fucking empty.

Mike reaches a hand out to the other side. The sheets are wrinkled, the duvet pushed back haphazardly. It’s cold, is the next thing Mike notices, flattening his palm to the bed like this will make the mattress dip under the shape of his hand, like an emulation of when Will was–

“Shit,” Mike says, then again, frantic as he untangles his legs from the sheets– he must have been out cold, in order to get so twisted up– and scrambles to his feet. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Will. Where’s Will?

“Shit,” Mike whispers, heart pounding as he runs out of his room and down the stairs. God, he fucked up, he fucked up, he fucked up. He doesn’t know what he’d been thinking– breaking down like that was an embarrassing enough thing on its own without anything that followed. Trailing Will to his bed. Climbing in beside him. Falling asleep on him, clutching his arm like some kind of pathetic lifeline. Surely Will realized his mistake and left. He must have left a while ago, for the sheets to go cold like they were. He must have regretted it instantly, Mike thinks, taking the steps two at a time. Shit, shit, shit. 

Mike made it weird again. He must have, because if he hadn’t, then–

“Will?” Mike pants, clearing the bottom step of the stairs and careening slightly with the momentum of it, skidding slightly on the hardwood floor and stumbling to catch his balance again. Shit, shit– 

He’s not in the living room, and he’s not in the hallway. “Shit,” Mike exhales, glancing around, frantic and failing entirely at keeping the pleading edge out of his voice. “Will?”

“Mike?”

The voice comes from the kitchen, and Mike spins around the rest of the way, his heart leaping immediately into his throat. “Will?”

Will is sitting at the kitchen table, a spoon halfway to his mouth. Jonathan is sitting next to him, his body angled towards Will’s like they’d just been in the middle of a particularly engaging conversation, and Will is staring at Mike with an absolutely bewildered expression on his face. Bewildered maybe isn’t the right word to describe it. Flabbergasted, maybe. Gobsmacked, even, would be closest, with the way Will’s mouth has dropped open, the beginnings of a frown creasing the spot between his brows. “Mike?” Will says again, then sets the spoon down into the bowl in front of him with a soft clink. “What– why are you yelling?”

He doesn’t look mad. He doesn’t look upset. Despite these two facts, Mike’s heart does not slow down in his chest. “Are you okay?” he says, instead of trying to explain in front of Jonathan fucking Byers– who always seems to be around at the most inconvenient fucking times, mind you– why he’d freaked out upon waking up alone in his own bed.

Will’s frown deepens. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why? Did something happen?”

“No, I just– you were gone, and–” Mike trails off, as Jonathan and Will’s expressions do not lessen in intensity, and the initial adrenaline-fueled rush of panic ebbs. Embarrassment sets in in its place, warm and vulnerable. “You were gone,” he says, pointedly avoiding Jonathan’s gaze and turning to Will. “When I woke up, and I just– I panicked.”

Will’s expression softens. “Oh, shit,” he says, realization dawning on his face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think–”

“No!” Mike assures him, as Jonathan’s face cycles rapidly between confusion and something on the verge of realization himself. Mike does not look at him– he doesn’t. “No, it’s okay, I just– Jesus,” Mike breathes out, rubbing at his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Around nine,” Jonathan chimes in, popping the last bite of whatever had been on his plate into his mouth then standing up, walking over to the sink and putting the plate down. “Why?”

Mike stares. “Nine? At night?”

Will blinks over at him, still frowning. “Um. Yes?”

Christ. He’d slept the whole day away. No wonder it had been so dark when he’d woken up, why it felt like he’d been rousing himself from a coma, why his joints had gone sleep-stiff and lethargic. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

Will’s expression is steady when he replies. Unerring, unyielding, and unreadable. “You needed the sleep.” 

Mike tenses. “I was fine,” he says, quieter this time. The faucet is running, and Jonathan has been scrubbing at a single plate for over a minute and a half now, and Mike isn’t an idiot. He knows he’s listening. “Will, seriously.”

Will doesn’t move from his position in his chair. He spoons something from his bowl into his mouth, chews, and swallows before responding, “Okay.”

“I– you don’t sound like you believe me.”

Mike doesn’t say it, but they’re both thinking it. Will has no reason to believe him.

“Okay,” Will just repeats. “I believe you.”

He doesn’t. But for once, Mike lets it go. “Okay,” he echoes.

Jonathan turns the faucet off. “You hungry?”

Mike’s not really, but he figures he probably will be once the panic and the embarrassment finally leave his system. “Where is everyone?” he asks instead.

“Out. Or just– off doing their thing,” Jonathan says, drying his hands on a towel before turning around. He crosses his arms and asks again, “Do you want something to eat?”

“Um,” Mike starts, because it looks like Will and Jonathan had been having a bit of a moment before he arrived, and maybe running through the hall and shouting Will’s name and interrupting whatever brotherly bonding thing they’d had going on isn’t very good host of him, so his first instinct is to decline politely and run back down to the basement and, like, hide or something. But then he catches Will’s eye, and he looks– expectant, maybe, is the word Mike is looking for. Will glances at the seat across from him and raises his eyebrows wordlessly, before taking another bite of his food. “What’s Will eating?”

“Cereal,” Will says, and it comes out muffled by his half-mouthful of food. “Someone must have gotten more milk earlier.”

That makes sense, Mike supposes. He’d eaten cereal for–

Jesus. Was that only this morning?

“Um.” Mike hesitates. “Do we have anything else?”

Jonathan shrugs. “It’s your house. Look around. And it was me, by the way,” he adds, pulling a face in Will’s direction, “and you’re welcome.”

“Oh. Right.” It is his house, which Mike has been forgetting pretty on and off recently. It doesn’t really feel like his house anymore, he thinks, as he pulls open the pantry door and tries to ignore Jonathan’s gaze burning a hole through the back of his head. 

Mike slides into place across from Will a few minutes later, looks down at where his hastily assembled peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and then back to where Will’s bowl of cereal is almost empty. The intervals between his bites have stretched out, dawdling, like Will is finding a reason to linger. “Sorry,” Mike says, “um. You don’t have to wait for me or anything. I’m sure you’re tired.”

Will shrugs. “I slept all day.”

“Sleep some more,” Mike insists, ripping a chunk of bread off the corner. He supposes you can’t really mess up peanut butter and jelly, but Mike feels like he’s figured out a way to do it anyway, against all odds, in some great miracle of the universe. It’s an okay sandwich. It’s just okay.

“I only woke up, like, forty minutes before you did,” Will says, swirling the leftover milk in his bowl with his spoon.

“You still don’t have–”

“Well maybe I want to,” Will interrupts.

Mike looks up from his plate. “You– what?”

He expects Will to backtrack, to look away or get fidgety like he’d done before, whenever they talked. He doesn’t do any of these things though. Will’s jaw is set in quiet determination. He meets Mike’s gaze with an unyielding sort of stubbornness, and says, “Maybe I want to sit with you.”

“Okay,” Mike says, too tired to protest in any halfway efficient manner. He tears the crust off next, making it all the way down one side of the bread before it breaks down the middle. He sticks the smaller piece into his mouth and starts chewing.

Will makes a face at him. “Why can’t you just eat like a normal person?”

Mike grins at him, even though he knows it’s super gross because there’s food in his mouth, and maybe he has, like jelly on his chin or peanut butter in his teeth, but again– he’s too tired to find it in himself to care. “Because,” he says simply, stretching long and loose over the stiff wooden back of the chair. His limbs feel tired, weighed-down in a pleasant way, like he just ran a couple of miles and showered the sweat away. Not that Mike has really ever done so– the running thing, that is, not the showering thing– but he imagines this is what it’s like. All the other occasions of strenuous physical activity have usually been too doused in adrenaline, staying in his system even after the shock had long since worn off, for him to feel the full effects of exhaustion afterwards. Because running versus running from something are not as similar as people might think, which is also something Mike never thought he’d be able to say with as much conviction as he currently is, but you know. It’s funny how things turn out.

Mike rolls out his neck, then his shoulders, cracks his back with a relieved sigh. Will watches him, head tilted down towards the table, peering carefully up at him through his bangs. “What?” Mike prompts after a moment, letting his arms drop down back to his sides, because Will is giving him kind of a weird look and maybe he does have peanut butter on his face after all, or something– “Do I have something on my face?”

Will blinks, then shakes his head. “No,” he says, swirling his milk around with a spoon again. Around and around and around. Mike doesn’t know why he doesn’t just finish it off, but Will had also said maybe I want to sit with you, and maybe the ridiculous milk in his bowl– stained gaudy pink from his cereal– is acting like some sort of a buffer, in the same way that Mike is slowly picking the crumbs off of his plate, one by one, instead of scarfing down his sandwich and falling back asleep like his body is begging him to do. Because if Will lets his unfinished milk be a buffer, then he doesn’t have to come up with things for his hands to do, and he doesn’t have to just sit there and watch Mike eat either. “I’m just surprised you haven’t broken your neck.”

Mike grins again. “What,” he says, just to be difficult, “you mean like this?”

“Mike,” Will groans, disapproving, as Mike’s neck lets out an admittedly rather concerning noise . “Just– shut up and eat your stupid sandwich.”

He’s smiling, though. He thinks Mike can’t see, but he’s smiling.

Mike is smiling too, intentional or not. “Bossy,” he chides, before shutting up and eating his stupid sandwich.

Will shuts up too, but the silence, at least on his end, feels a little less expectant and a little more final. Mike gets it. He’d talk– because it’s Will, and Mike can’t really remember a time when he didn’t want to talk to Will– but it feels a little like all his words are used up for the day. All the big, heavy ones, like death and loss and I’m sorry, but the little ones too, the ones that he finds slotting into silent, unassuming place, sticking all along his molars and the roof of his mouth like peanut butter on white bread: friend and sleep and eat and cereal and maybe I want to sit with you and sandwich and bossy. He feels exhausted in about twenty different ways. Depleted, drained, washed away down the sink and gone.

Will leans back in his chair, pushing his bowl away, then hesitates. He could get up, Mike thinks, as he silently contemplates why the hell he didn’t put more jelly on this sandwich while he had the chance, because it feels like his throat is slowly gluing itself shut. Will could get up. 

Will doesn’t get up, though. He leans back too, until his foot presses up against Mike’s under the table, the worn-in wool of his socks scratchy against where Mike’s pajamas are sliding up his ankles. He leans back, keeps his leg still, and does not get up.

The change comes in increments, so gradually that Mike wouldn’t even notice if he hadn’t been so attuned to it. 

(Will. So attuned to Will, that is. He might as well be honest about it.)

It’s in the small moments that it happens, the quiet, nondescript pockets of simplicity that Mike grows used to. He finds himself watching Will’s face, sometimes, when he’s talking to his mom or Jonathan, how his body seems to relax from the inside out. A different kind of peace, one found in the way Joyce Byers rests a hand on her younger son’s shoulder or brushes the hair out of his eyes with ease. He notices the crease that appears between Will’s eyebrows when he’s surprised or confused or caught off-guard. Always in the same spot, always smoothing itself back over before it can linger. He notices the way Will’s hands are restless, restless, restless– tapping out absentminded patterns on the nearest surface, fidgeting with his clothing, coming away perpetually stained with something or the other. Ink, graphite– Mike doesn’t know the difference, but he finds his eyes drawn there anyway.

Sometimes the change isn’t so much a change as it is a regression, of sorts. When they were younger, Will had never been an abnormally touchy person, by any means, but he’d been far from touch averse. Mike knows what they’re like, the Byers, and they’re no stranger to casual touch. He’s seen it– the way Will clung to Jonathan in the back of the pizza parlor, the way he’d held El when they found her in the desert, the way the Byers had stood there in an embrace upon reuniting, slowly rocking back and forth on the soft mulch of the forest floor. 

Will had been waiting with outstretched arms for Mike too, even after everything, still eager and ready and willing. It’s this last part– the part Mike doesn’t like to think about, the part that ends up plaguing most of his thoughts on the subject anyway– that makes him think that maybe Will never stopped being like that. Maybe it was just him, actually– too distracted to pay attention, too eager to put distance between them, too quick to brush off anything more than a quick high five. Not reciprocating anywhere near the barest of minimums Will had been offering him, and now it’s too late to go back and fix any of that, even though Mike’s starting to think he should’ve just hugged Will that day at the airport, and he should’ve hugged him before that, too, on the day the Byers left. He should’ve hugged Will tight enough to make up for all the time he’d missed out on, and never let go.

He did let go, though, and now they’re here. And Will is still Will– meaning he’s curled up on the corner of the couch, situated neatly behind where Jonathan and Nancy are wrapped around each other on the floor– and Mike is being driven slowly out of his mind.

“Hi,” Mike announces, before draping himself along the side of the sofa, his face coming up right behind Will’s head. It’s not the most comfortable position to be lying in, but the whole point is that Mike has been feeling like this lately– a little keyed up, a little prone to doing ridiculous, impractical things, like contorting his body to twist along the wooden arm and back of the sofa where it’s pressed flat against the wall, just because it’s easier this way, to get close to Will. It’s something about the proximity, the ease with which Will accommodates him, that makes it so tempting. Another change, another step backwards into old habits. Mike, getting all up in Will’s personal space. Will, letting him.

Will doesn’t even startle. He keeps his eyes glued on the television screen– which is playing some grainy old black and white movie that Mike doesn’t recognize– but Mike hears him smile as he says, “Hey.”

“What are you watching?”

“No idea,” Will admits. “I’m just here to keep Jonathan and Nancy from having their quality couple time. Sorry guys.”

“Will, you know you’re always welcome,” Nancy adds from her seat on the floor. Mike frowns. She’s never this nice to him.

“That’s not what you say when I interrupt,” Mike points out, and Nancy twists around to pull a face at him.

“Because Will is nice and quiet and polite and doesn’t interrupt every five minutes to yell at the screen.”

That’s a damn lie. Will does all of those things and more. He’s more of a nuisance than Mike is, actually, which is why it’s extra frustrating that Will’s nice boy façade is going unnoticed here.

“Bullshit.” Mike pokes at Will’s shoulder with one finger. “You’re not nice, quiet, or polite.”

Will still doesn’t turn around. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he deadpans. “I’ve been perfectly civil.”

“You’re a menace,” Jonathan says, and Mike never knew the day would come where he’d be counting on Jonathan Byers’ support to back him up, but he supposes that it’s not the weirdest thing he can think of. “You’re only behaving because Nancy is here.”

Mike grins, says, “Thank you, Jonathan,” and pokes Will in the shoulder again. “So what are you guys even watching?”

Nancy looks at Jonathan, who looks back at Nancy, who finally shrugs. “No idea either,” she admits. “It was in one of mom’s old boxes. Some old romance.”

Mike frowns. “You’re watching a romance?” he says to Will.

At this, Will finally turns around. It can’t be comfortable for him either, craning his neck up and kind of sideways to meet Mike’s gaze, but he doesn’t say anything. “It beats just lying around,” he shrugs. “What are you doing up there?”

Mike ignores him. “You could have come to me,” he complains. “You’d rather watch a romance with your brother and my sister than hang out with me?”

Will bites back a smile. Mike half expects him to say something snarky back, something teasing, something like Yeah, exactly, or They’re more fun than you anyway. He doesn’t do either of those things, though. “You were still asleep,” Will says softly, then reaches a hand up to tug gently at Mike’s forearm. “Now get down before you fall off.”

The sofa isn’t that high off the ground, and Mike’s tall enough to have been able to rest one foot on the ground for balance this whole time anyway. Still, he goes where Will moves him, leaning forward and down, aiming for the vaguely person-sized space between Will’s thigh and the armrest.

Like with most things he attempts, he overshoots horrendously.

“Shit,” Mike mumbles, catching himself on the back of the sofa a split second before he topples over and onto his face entirely. Will’s got one hand on his arm still, which is probably what had thrown him off– trying to angle himself away from Will’s injured side without twisting his arm around too forcefully in Will’s grip– and the end result is that one hand comes down on the other side of Will’s lap, one is braced on the back of the sofa, and one knee is planted in the space he’d originally been aiming for all of him to end up in.

“Um,” Will is saying. He hasn’t let go of Mike’s arm, and his eyes are wide. “What–”

“Shit,” Mike says again, quieter this time, shifting his weight from his knee onto his hand. “I was just–”

Clumsy, he thinks, a little faintly. He was being clumsy. Mike has always had more limb than he knew what to do with, and maybe the whole keyed-up and prone to ridiculous, impractical things thing is really coming back to bite him in the ass right about now, because this is something that is both of those. Ridiculous, that is, and also extremely impractical. He definitely bumped his knee against the wooden armrest at some point, because it’s throbbing faintly, and his arm is also starting to hurt a little because he’s got his whole body weight propped up onto that one wrist, and– most pressing of all– Will hasn’t moved. He’s still staring up at Mike, frozen. 

“Um,” Will says again, eyes darting between Mike’s own. Mike hears him swallow, just barely, and then his fingers twitch on Mike’s wrist. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Mike breathes out. For some reason, he can’t move.

Behind him, the movie plays on. The dialogue comes in faint, almost indecipherable through the static, but Mike’s blood is suddenly rushing so loudly through his ears that he isn’t sure that he’d have been able to make it out anyway, even without the interference. Will keeps his eyes fixed firmly on Mike’s face, unblinking, and whispers, “Mike.”

“Hm?”

Will’s lip does a funny twitching thing. “Do you want to– um.”

“Do I want to what?”

Will swallows again. It’s more noticeable this time. Maybe because Mike finds himself watching the curve of Will’s throat as he does it. “Move,” Will says, sounding a little bit like he’s on the verge of a laugh, and a little bit something else entirely. “Do you want to move?”

“Oh,” Mike says, as it dawns on him what exactly Will is saying, and then it stops dawning on him, and hits him with the force of several freight trucks that Will is telling him to move. He snaps his eyes back up to Will’s. “Oh! Shit, yeah, let me– I’m so sorry–”

“It’s okay,” Will says easily, as Mike tries his best to untangle himself without kicking Jonathan in the back of the head. “That just couldn’t have been comfortable.”

It wasn’t. Mike also, for some reason, can’t find it in himself to care.

“It’s okay,” Mike says, trying to work out in his head the best way to move his arm, the singular source of support under his body, so that he doesn’t go toppling sideways– even more than he already is– fully into Will’s lap. “Um, here, can you just–”

“Oh. Oh!” Will seems to realize what Mike is saying just as Mike’s arm starts trembling with the full extended weight of all near-six-feet of his height, and he takes his hand off of Mike’s wrist. He brings his other hand up, then puts it back down, like he thought better of whatever he was about to do. “Here, you can– yeah.”

“Great.” Mike topples over onto the sofa on Will’s opposite side and rights himself to the best of his ability. He ends up facing Will, curled up with his knees tucked to his chest, feet pressed against Will’s thigh. “Minimal damage.”

Will’s eyes are still a little wide. He’s sitting very still, like he’d been afraid to move the whole time Mike was flailing around– arms pinned to his side, legs pressed together. “Nice. Now you can watch– um. Whatever this is.”

If Mike’s being honest, he doesn’t really want to watch whatever-this-is. But he doesn’t really want to move either, if he’s being just a little more honest with himself. This is nice. The proximity, for one, and the way Will just allows him to do this– tuck his feet up under Will’s legs, get closer than all laws of logic should allow, considering that half the sofa is left unoccupied on Mike’s other side. Will is still staring straight forward, eyes glued to the TV, and Mike might be imagining it, but he looks a little pink.

Sure, Mike is about to say, because he’ll take what he can get, and he’ll take Will’s simple allowances whenever he gives them out, and then Jonathan Byers clears his throat, and Mike’s suddenly fantastic mood dissipates into nothing.

“Everything okay back there?” Jonathan doesn’t turn around all the way, just shoots a cursory glance behind him, but even from here, Mike can see his eyebrows raised so far up his forehead that they’re almost disappearing into his hairline.

Will clears his throat. “Yeah,” he says, then louder, “yeah! Mike just, um. He just–”

“I’m just clumsy,” Mike cuts in. He watches, for a minute or two– watches Will look at the TV, down at Jonathan and Nancy, at his own hands, and up again. Everywhere but at Mike. Will can feel him looking, Mike is sure of it, but he makes no move to acknowledge it.

Mike’s fingers twitch. Look at me, he wants to say. The thought is entirely unbidden, but it arises in him anyway, the age-old urge to make Will look. Childish theatrics and dumb jokes and anything to get Will to smile. Look, he wants to say, and he doesn’t know where it’s coming from, but maybe it’s one of the so-called changes– just one more thing that feels like everything's falling back into place. Back then, touch used to be this easy too. Space was always shared, proximity second nature. Mike would do this all the time– sidle up next to Will, throw his legs over Will’s laps and his arms around Will’s shoulder, and it would be easy and simple and Will would look at him, and he would smile, and they would carry on.

Will doesn’t seem upset. He seems–

Mike has no idea.

Will doesn’t seem upset, but then again, what does Mike know?

“Hey, listen,” he says, after another moment of Will trying so hard to avoid looking at him that it’s toeing the line between hilariously amusing and outright painful. He wiggles his toes where they’re trapped under Will’s leg, and finally– finally– Will turns.

“Hm?”

“We never, um,” Mike starts, looking down at his sister and Jonathan sitting on the carpet. And this is nice, of course– but it could be nicer. “We never watched that movie. That we were going to. The– you know. The other day.”

It takes a moment for Will to understand, and then he does. The other day. Before–

“Oh,” Will says simply. He glances in the direction of the basement door and says, “Do you want to? Now?”

Mike shrugs. “Why not?” He’s playing for nonchalant, for casual, for coming across as anything as long as it doesn’t let on to the frantic, hopeful thing swelling up inside him now. “Might as well, right?”

Will gives him a small smile. “Yeah,” he says, and okay, he definitely doesn’t sound upset. “Basement?”

Mike nods. “I know it was a whole big deal, me sitting down, and now I’m going to have to,” he gestures, “get up again.”

Will laughs. Victory. It feels like one, anyway. “It might be easier if I go first,” he says, getting to his feet. He watches Mike crawl along the length of the couch for a second, mouth twitching like he’s trying to keep from laughing any harder. Mike supposes it’s probably pretty funny, watching someone as tall as him do something that’s best described as clambering. He plasters a scowl on his face anyway, for theatrics’ sake.

Jonathan is giving them a weird look. “You guys heading off?”

“Yeah!” Will says, gesturing over his shoulder. “We’ll be, um. In the basement.”

“Yeah, we heard,” Jonathan says. He glances between Will and Mike, then back to Will again. “Have fun, okay?”

Mike thinks that’s kind of a weird thing to say in that kind of tone, like there’s something he should know but doesn’t. He looks at Will, who’s doing some kind of sibling telepathy thing with his eyes in Jonathan’s general direction, squinting them then opening them wide again. Jonathan, in response, fixes him with an unfaltering look.

“Um,” Mike says. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Will mutters. The red is back, scattered across the tops of his cheeks where it had just begun to fade. He grabs Mike’s hand and marches them over to the basement door. “It’s just Jonathan being Jonathan.”

Will takes the steps one at a time, going slow enough that Mike has to really think about where he’s stepping before he does it, lest he catch his foot on the back of Will’s ankle and send them both tumbling. “So listen,” Mike starts, just as they reach the bottom. “It’s a little bit of a mess.”

It’s not that bad. It’s been better, obviously, but it’s also been worse. The bed is unmade, and there’s no real closet so his clothes are kind of all over the place. Mike feels suddenly very self-conscious. Which is ridiculous, because it’s just Will, and Will’s been around to see a lot worse than this. And still– 

“Sorry,” he apologizes anyway, darting forward to smooth out the sheets as best he can. “It’s kind of–”

He trails off, focusing on tucking the stray ends over and around the corners of the old pullout mattress. Will’s been down here after they moved in, of course. He hasn’t, however, been down here since the attack. Since Mike stopped sleeping. Since he started waking up in the middle of the night with the sheets twisted all around him, half-off the bed. Since he stopped keeping his half of the room clean and Nancy gave him grief about it, for a while, before she probably remembered that time he’d screamed in his sleep and woken her up and decided to cut him some slack about it– which, by the way, was embarrassing enough for him to want to open the basement door and leave himself to the mercy of whatever might have been waiting outside.

If Will notices any of this, he doesn’t seem to care. “I’ve seen worse,” he says, then perches carefully on the edge of the sofa bed. “My house got blown up, remember?”

“More than once,” Mike adds. “Sorry, by the way.”

Will laughs lightly, watching Mike root around in the corner for one of the boxes he knows he’d seen there, just earlier that day. “It’s okay. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but I never really liked that house.”

Mike pauses, cardboard scraping loudly against the floor. “What, really?”

Will frowns, contemplating. “Well, no, I guess that did sound ungrateful. I just mean– I didn’t feel anywhere near as attached to it as I did our house here, you know? Even though it was really nice. It was big, I mean. I didn’t know what to do with all that space.”

“I bet. You had a guest room,” Mike points out. “And you lived on a cul-de-sac.”

The Byers’ old house wasn’t on a cul-de-sac. Mike remembers thinking that was really cool when he was younger, all the space leading up to the Byers’ front door. How they didn’t have nosy neighbors like Mike’s family did, even if he had lucked out with Lucas on one side of him.

“It was– I don’t know. Quiet,” Will muses. “Really quiet.”

“Good quiet?”

When Will looks at him, his expression is a little hard to read. “Yeah, I guess,” he says softly. “It was– different.”

That feels like an answer, in a way, but it also doesn’t at all. Different. Mike knows different. He’s felt it in the absence next to him at the cafeteria tables and he’s heard it over the phone– through the suddenly dropped octaves of Will’s voice and the shrill ringing of the dial tone. He’s felt it, too, in a tactile, kinesthetic sense– hugging Will, who takes up a different kind of space now than he used to. Taller, wider, stronger. More hesitant in the embrace where he wasn’t before. Mike knows the way his arms wrap around Will’s torso is different now. He knows that Will can rest his chin on his shoulder, instead of pressing his face into it like he used to. 

Different. So many things are different now.

Mike looks away from Will’s gaze, and back down at the box.

“So,” he coughs lightly, and pulls out a tape from where it’s wedged down the side of the box. “Look what I found.”

Will squints in the dim light. “Is that–”

“Back to the Future,” Mike finishes for him, grinning. He blows a thin layer of dust off the top and waves it in the air. “Yup. You wanna?”

“Wow,” Will breathes. “I haven’t watched it since– um. Last summer.”

Oh. Oh, Mike thinks, looking down at the tape in his hand. There’s still some dust on the cover; he swipes a finger through it, studies where it comes away gray against his skin. He’d bought the tape the second Steve Harrington had secured his new job at the video store; he’d barely had enough time to get his name tag printed out before Mike had marched himself through the front door. “Well,” he says, and clears his throat. “I mean– when I got this, I was thinking that maybe we could watch it together, before you left. Because we missed the first part of the movie, and the power went out and–”

He trails off again. Was this a bad idea? Maybe Mike shouldn’t have brought up Back to the Future, or the move, or last summer at all.

“Yeah,” Will laughs, and Mike breathes a sigh of relief. “Sure. I mean, after all, you were the whole reason we were late.”

“I was not,” Mike protests, even though he totally had been, and Will laughs harder and shifts backwards on the bed. The springs creak loudly under him, and he pulls one leg up to his chest as Mike amends, “Okay, only a little though.”

“A little? We’d all been waiting for, like, twenty minutes, and–”

Mike fiddles with the buttons on the TV, which is currently refusing to turn on. “Okay! Okay, I get it, and I’m sorry, and I’m trying to make amends, asshole, that was the whole point of me spending two weeks’ allowance on this thing–” He slams the TV hard with the heel of his hand, and it slowly flickers back on– “A-ha! Sorry, we haven’t used this in a while, with all the stuff down here, and– Will?”

Will is turning the VHS cover over in his hand. His expression is contemplative, and it’s quiet when he finally looks up and says, “Two weeks’ allowance? Really?”

Mike shrugs, making his way over to the sofa bed and gesturing at Will to move over. “I mean, what else was I going to use it for?”

“I don’t know,” Will says, watching Mike crawl over the haphazardly adjusted pile of blankets. If he notices the cereal milk stain on the corner of the sheets, he doesn’t, thankfully, say anything. “Turns at the arcade? Clothes? A going away present for El?”

“Well,” Mike leans up against the back of the sofa. Will is still sitting carefully on the edge of the bed, like he’s waiting for his chance to get up and run away. “One, the arcade was so busy that it wasn’t even worth it. Two, my mom still did all my shopping then. And three–” Mike reaches out, pulls Will gently forward by the wrist, “–well. You know. What are you doing all the way over there?”

Will hesitates, then moves closer. “I don’t know, maybe you didn’t want me crawling all over your bed. And what about, like–”

“Stop,” Mike interrupts, and Will’s mouth snaps shut. “Whatever you’re about to say. I would’ve bought the stupid movie anyway.”

“Wh– really?”

Mike doesn’t understand what the big deal is. It’s just a movie. Just a VHS tape. And they hadn’t even ended up watching it together anyway, because every time he had looked at where it was sitting on his shelf, trying to muster up the courage to bike to Will’s house or pick up the phone and call, he completely chickened out. Maybe Will won’t let me in. Maybe he’ll pretend he isn't home. Maybe he’ll ask his mom to tell me to go away. And then, in between hesitation and uncertainty and every other way you can sugarcoat the word cowardice, that small stretch of summer had been slowly whittled away until it was gone altogether.

Mike wants to say this, because Will is still looking at him, more perplexed than Mike thinks is probably proportionate for a conversation of this caliber. He’s not sure what kind of words to use to get that meaning across, though, so he just shrugs. “Yeah.”

Will seems to work it out, to some degree or another, because he shifts, crosses his legs on top of the sheets, and says, “Okay.”

“You’re still sitting so weird,” Mike points out, as the opening sequence starts playing. “What, are you afraid of me or something?”

“No,” Will snorts. “Why would I be afraid of you?”

“Just come here,” Mike says, before Will sighs and shuffles closer.

“Better?”

It is, actually, and Mike can’t find it in himself to articulate why. He watches the screen light up Will’s face, all along the silhouette of his profile, casting soft shadows across his cheeks; he thinks, suddenly and entirely unbidden, about sitting in a dark movie theater with Will just like this. The same movie playing, their arms brushing as Will pulled snacks out of his bag, trying to hide the crinkling of cellophane in the quiet of the room. How startled Will had looked when the power went out, the way Mike had caught traces of the summer heat flushed delicately across the bridge of his nose. The claustrophobic sensation that overcame him, as if all at once, not even the whole wide expanse of Starcourt Mall was enough to let Mike feel like he could breathe again. 

Deja vu can be a real bitch, because suddenly, Mike’s basement has never felt smaller, and the air has never felt warmer, and Mike is, once again, missing Back to the Future ’s entire beginning sequence. Will turns just slightly, catches him looking, and frowns. “What?”

Mike shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. His voice comes out a little hoarse, so he clears his throat. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

Will gives him a small smile, then leans back against the haphazard pile of pillows. “You’re going to miss the beginning of the movie all over again.”

And yeah, Mike supposes that had been the whole point of all this. “Right,” he says softly, then leans back against the pillows next to Will. And again, “Sorry.”

There are no smuggled snacks this time, and the power hasn’t gone out and the barrier of the arm rest between them is nowhere to be found. Mike could lean over and touch him, if he wanted.

If he–

It’s not the middle of summer either, but the same sun-warmed flush is dancing across Will’s cheeks.

Mike swallows and looks away. The movie plays on.

“Hey,” Mike says, already pushing open the door to his– Will’s– room a few days later. “Do you maybe want to–”

He stops dead in his tracks. “Mike, hey,” Mrs. Byers is saying, waving a quick, courteous hand at him as she fiddles with the end of a roll of gauze. “Sorry you two, I’m almost done.”

“Uh,” Mike says– intelligent of him for sure– as his gaze drifts over to the bed. Will shoots him a tight smile, a little bit awkward in the angle of it, because he’s reclined all the way back against the pillows and has to really crane his neck downwards to get a good look at Mike. There’s a small pile of discarded bandages on the desk, a tube of clear ointment that Mike can practically smell from the doorway, and a very embarrassed look on Will’s face. “Sorry, no, I should’ve knocked, um–” He points at the door behind him with his thumb. “I can come back in a bit, if you guys are, uh. Busy.”

Mrs. Byers looks like she might say something, but Will beats her to the punch. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, and pats the open space on the bed next to him. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“I don’t think I’ve– uh,” Mike gestures vaguely in the direction of the sliver of torso peeking out from under Will’s shirt. Mrs. Byers is clearly in nurse mode– gloves on, bandages out, and the whole room smells strongly of antiseptic. “I don’t know about that.”

“I meant that you saw me get cut open,” Will clarifies, and Mike sees Joyce bite back a smile. “Obviously.”

“Yeah,” Mike says faintly, pointedly looking anywhere but at Will and his stupid t-shirt. He fumbles his way to bed anyway, pulls himself up onto the mattress and crosses his legs. “How often do you guys do this?”

“They recommended we do it every few days,” Joyce says, snapping a glove cleanly off one wrist and then the other. “It really doesn’t take too long. How’s that feel, hon?”

Will twists gingerly one way, then the other, then stretches out, a little, until the little sliver of exposed torso turns into something resembling more of an expanse. Mike stares, very determinedly, out the window. The trees look lovely today. As lovely as they can while being mostly dead, at least.

“Good,” Will says at last, relaxing, and Mike lets out a long exhale. “Better, for sure.”

Joyce gives him a careful look. “Too tight?”

“No, it’s good.”

“Anything hurt?”

“Mom, I said it’s fine.”

“Fine is not the same thing as good,” Mrs. Byers huffs, but she seems pleased enough with the answer. “You’re sure?”

Will shoots Mike an amused look, which he barely remembers to reciprocate in time. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Joyce leans over, brushes the hair off Will’s forehead, and presses an easy kiss there. “I get it, I’ll get out of your hair. I can take a hint.”

Mike didn’t think he’d been throwing out any hints, necessarily, but he can’t say he minds when Will shoots her a quiet thank you. The door falls quietly shut behind Mrs. Byers as she leaves, and it’s just him and Will again.

“So,” Mike blurts out, fighting the urge to yank Will’s stupid t-shirt the rest of the way down himself. “Does it look cool?”

Will blinks. “Look– cool?”

“Unimpressive choice of words,” Mike amends. “I mean, like, how bad do you think it’ll scar?”

“I got stitched back up,” Will deadpans, shifting around in the pillows. “Literally stitched back up. Of course it’s gonna scar, Mike. Like, really scar.”

“Right,” Mike says, drumming his fingers against his ankle, where his sweatpants are riding up his shins. “Right. Of course.”

Will frowns at him. “You seem a little on edge.”

“Am I?” He most definitely is. Mike sighs, then rubs the heels of his palms over his eyes. “Sorry, sorry, I think I’m just– I just got a little caught off guard. Sorry. But I’m fine, I promise, I’m not even squeamish or anything, I really was just expecting you to be drawing in here, or reading, or something, not–”

“Wanna see?” Will interrupts.

“I– what?”

“Well, not actually,” Will says, like this is a totally normal thing, like he’s inviting Mike over to show him a new comic and not a literal fucking stomach wound. “I mean, fresh bandages and all, I’m not about to take them off, but you can still, like, look. If you want.”

Does he want?

Unfortunately for Mike, and also Mike’s psyche, he knows the answer to that question immediately. “Yeah,” Mike nods. “Yeah, definitely.”

“Fair warning,” Will tells him, “I, uh– I usually try not to look, so. If it looks really fucked up or something, even through the gauze, then just don’t tell me about it, okay?”

“Sure,” Mike says, “yeah, of course.”

Will tugs up the hem of his worn, heathered gray shirt– all the way, this time, properly– until Mike can make out the edges of the bandages underneath, stark white against where his skin has already lost the last traces of a California tan. It’s smaller than he thought it would be, the gauze and the tape and everything else condensed into a haphazard rectangle that would be just barely longer than his hand, wrist to fingertip, if he were to reach out and–

The wound had looked bigger before– something about the blood and the panic and the way the red had spread out across Will’s stomach and onto Mike’s own hands. It seemed bigger in the dreams too, the nightmares where Will was falling forward onto his knees in the grass, losing more blood and faster than Mike thought was possible. This feels different. It’s stitched up. Clean. Safe. Clinical and precise. Mike can’t help but think, admiringly, that Mrs. Byers really outdid herself.

Will shifts under his gaze, a little self-consciously. “What?”

Mike shakes his head. “I– nothing,” he starts, and then his gaze catches on something on the other side of Will’s torso– a shiny pink mark, flattened and so pale it’s almost white. Not much larger than a quarter.

His stomach sinks.

“Will?”

Will watches him, unmoving. One of his hands is still holding the hem of his shirt up, but his fingers twitch like he wants to put it back down. “What?” he asks again. “What is it?”

“Is that–”

Will follows his gaze down, and then tenses, ever-so-slightly. “Oh,” he says. “Yeah. The– um. The poker. Your sister, she–”

He doesn’t complete the thought, but he doesn’t have to. Mike knows what happened, about Nancy burning the Mind Flayer out of him with a hot poker. Will, with his hands wrapped around his mom’s neck. Mike studies the curve of Will’s wrist as he flattens a piece of tape that had been lifting up at the corners, and for the life of him, can’t imagine Will killing someone with those hands. Those gentle, kind, creative hands. He can’t imagine them being used to take something away.

“I know,” Mike reassures him. “You don’t have to say it.”

“No,” Will says suddenly, voice tight. “I’m not– I mean, I’m glad she did it.”

“You’re glad?”

“It was smart,” Will insists. “It was quick thinking. It saved my life. My mom’s, too.”

“I know, but–”

“You would have,” Will continues. There’s a steely, determined glint in his eye when he looks down, when he lets go of the hem of his shirt to rest his fingers against Mike’s wrist, where his hand is still hovering, unsure, over the patterned duvet cover. The touch is light, like Will is trying to reassure him about something he shouldn’t have to reassure anyone about. “You would’ve done the same, if you had to. You and Nancy– you guys are the same that way, I think. You’re smart and quick on your feet and– I don’t know. I’ve always admired that about you guys.”

If Mike’s being honest, he isn’t too sure about that– the smart and quick on your feet thing and also the Nancy thing. He’s seen Nancy behind a gun, he’s seen the resolve in her face as she’s pulled the trigger, and he doesn’t know if that’s ever something he’ll be able to pull off– the way he’s never seen that resolve give way to fear or uncertainty, the fact that she always seems so sure of what she’s doing. And it should be reassuring, Will’s vote of confidence in him, the fact that Will is clearly seeing something that Mike isn’t so sure is there anymore, but it just leaves a strange taste in his mouth thinking about it– if he really would have had the foresight to pick up a burning poker and stick Will with it in order to save his life. If it came down to it, if it came down to Will, Mike, and the Mind Flayer in a room– would he have been able to do it?

He doesn’t think so. The difference between him and Nancy, Mike thinks, glancing around at anything in the room except Will himself, is that Nancy would have– and did– hurt Will in order to save his life, and she did it without a second thought. Mike looks at the carefully taped rectangle of gauze on Will’s stomach and thinks about it– how he could barely find it in himself to see Will get hurt then save his life after the fact, much less combine those two into a single gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, split second life-or-death decision.

“I don’t know,” Mike admits. “I don’t know if I’m–”

Will’s fingers tighten around his wrist. “If you’re what?”

“Like that,” Mike finishes softly. “Anymore, I mean.”

Maybe he would have been able to, before, but even that is a tricky thing. What Mike does know, however, is this: Will clearly has some image of Mike in his head that he isn’t letting go of– a Mike that’s collected and resourceful and has the presence of mind to do the shit that needs to be done. And maybe he used to be like that– maybe– but the fact of the matter is that he isn’t, not anymore.

Forget burning the Mind Flayer out of Will’s body. Mike watches the stiff white of the bandages move as Will breathes, the flex of his ribs gentle and slow and intentional. Forget saving him. Mike is the one who went and got him hurt in the first place.

He trails his eyes over where the gauze and the tape end, and then over to the starburst of scar tissue on the other side of his torso. Metal. Fire. So much anger. Too much anger for such a small body, even if it hadn’t been entirely his own at the time– not really his own body, and not really his own anger either.

Mike is bringing a hand up before he even realizes what he’s doing, brushing a thumb over the soft cotton of the gauze there, picturing it– the stitches, the dressings, the red, spilling out over his hands, the–

Will inhales sharply, and Mike jerks his arm back. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to– sorry.”

But Will is already shaking his head. “No, it’s okay, you just– startled me a little.”

Mike pauses. “It’s okay? It doesn’t hurt?”

“No,” Will says, halting but determined. Always so determined. “You can. If you want.”

Mike doesn’t know which wound Will is talking about– the new one or the old, already healed over and dead and gone but nowhere close to forgotten. He moves his hand to the other side, fingers splayed out across angry pink tendrils of scar tissue, ghosting over Will’s stomach. Something rolls over in his chest at the sight.

Will shivers under him. “Mike.”

This time, Mike doesn’t pull away. “Hm?”

“That tickles,” Will murmurs. “Be more firm.”

“I don’t like this,” Mike whispers, thinking of how it must have felt to get something burned out of you. “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

“Well I didn’t think you would,” Will laughs gently, the muscles under Mike’s fingertips tensing with the sound. “It’s– well, maybe war is a bit dramatic, but. You know.”

“Sure,” Mike says quietly, gaze still trained carefully on the way the scar is curving out over his side, stopping just underneath his ribs. So angry. Such a violent thing for someone who’s anything but.

He blinks, something pressing hot and insistent at the hollow space behind his eyes, and traces the thin lines over where Will’s lungs would be. Here, the scarring has turned almost white. Thin, delicate.

“Mike,” Will says, voice laced with the ghost of a laugh. He twitches. “That tickles.”

It’s not fair. It’s not fair, and it’s enough to get Mike angry with just how unfair it is. Screw Will if he’s ticklish, whatever. He deserves gentle things after all of this. Gentle touch, gentle words, gentle–

Mike takes in a deep breath and glances up at Will, who’s watching him carefully. Eyes a little wide, lips pursed like he wants to laugh but he’s holding it back. He shifts, the sheets wrinkling under him. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking anything.” Mike shakes his head, presses his lips together. “I was just–”

“It’s not that bad,” Will whispers. “It looks worse than it is. Both of them.”

Bullshit. Bullshit. “No.”

Will frowns. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean,” Mike says, running the pad of his thumb over the raised scar tissue, watching Will tense up on instinct, the muscle going taut like he’s fighting back the urge to move away, then trailing over to the strip of white tape that’s peeling up at the corners again. “You don’t know how to say when something’s hurting you, Will. You never have. So I don’t think it looks worse than it is. I think it looks exactly as bad as it is. Both of them.”

Will goes quiet. 

“So,” Mike adds, most of the fight leaving his body all at once, even as he feels Will’s stare burning a hole into the side of his head. The air feels thick with it, the weight of the silence hanging low over them as he wipes his hands on his jeans, palms suddenly clammy. He can feel the warmth of Will’s skin under his hands, and if he paid close, careful attention, he could probably feel Will’s pulse ticking away there too, under all those layers of uncertainty and stubborn indignance and this sudden tension that Mike is sure he could probably cut through with a knife. He shifts, pulls his hands away. “Um. Let me replace this strip of tape for you, actually, I don’t want it to come off.”

Will still doesn’t say anything, but allows Mike to remove the offending piece of tape, holding the gauze firmly in place. Mike swallows nervously and rips off a fresh piece. God, maybe he fucked up. Maybe he hurt Will’s feelings. He smooths the new strip down, doesn’t say anything when Will tenses under his hand again, and takes a deep breath in. “Will,” he starts, stomach dropping, “I didn’t mean it like–”

“Do you really think that?” Will interrupts, and Mike lets his hands fall away. “That I don’t know when to say– what was it? I don’t know when to say that something’s hurting me?”

Mike worries at his lower lip, sits back on his haunches on the mattress. ”I didn’t mean that it’s a bad thing,” he says, as Will keeps his eyes trained carefully on him. “I think– I think you’re one of the bravest people I know. Probably the bravest person I know,” he adds, which isn’t even close to a stretch, as far as Mike is concerned. If he had to think about it– and he has– he can’t imagine what it must have taken to go through what Will has. He doesn’t know anyone else who would have even survived that first week down there, much less come back smiling and cracking jokes.

“That’s not answering the question,” Will says.

“I just think,” Mike says, haltingly, “you always say something when you’re upset. But when you’re hurt– like, really, really hurt– ”

He wonders if Will is thinking the same thing he is, about this invisible line that Will always seems to be toeing– the difference between an argument in the garage and the dilapidated remains of a fort in the woods, Will’s firm insistence that everything was okay. The difference between anything and everything Will had said to him in the back of a van and the way he had fallen silent for the entire stretch of drive after, the red tinge to his eyes.

“I just know you don’t want me to worry,” Mike finishes, staring down at his hands, the wall– anywhere but at Will– “but that doesn’t make this better. And I’m telling you– these both look pretty fucking bad.”

Pretty fucking bad is maybe an understatement. He doesn’t know how aware Will had been the first time, with the Mind Flayer, but it occurs to him that maybe it was even worse that way. Maybe the heat amplified everything, drove the pain up to ten and then some, worse that way than if it had just been him in there.

Will was plenty aware for the second time, though. Mike knows that much. 

“Well,” Will says at last, and Mike holds his breath, “if I’m being honest, I can definitely say that both of these sucked pretty bad.”

“Oh my god,” Mike breathes out, and lets his head fall into his hands. He can hear Will’s answering chuckle next to him, breathy and amused. “Sucked pretty bad– yeah, I would say they did.”

“You’re right,” Will says, and shifts, pulling his shirt down the rest of the way. The white rectangle of gauze slips out of sight. “About me not– yeah, it did suck, pretty bad. In a more serious, less hilarious sort of way.”

“Can I ask about it?” Mike blurts out, before giving any sort of thought as to whether this is, like, an appropriate question to ask your friend who has literally been to hell and back, but Will’s expression doesn’t convey immediate offense, so he plunders on. “Um. What it was like, I mean. But not if you don’t– sorry. That was a terrible thing to say.”

Will just looks at him. “Which time?” Which scar?

“The first time,” Mike says, wondering, again, what it must be like to get something actually and physically burned out of your body. “I wasn’t there. I just– I guess I’ve had sort of a hard time trying to wrap my head around it. What the Mind Flayer was like, I mean. But–”

“Oh,” Will says, and he sounds more genuinely surprised than anything else. He throws his legs over the side of the bed, turns his head to face Mike. “I mean, I probably can’t describe it very well, but I can try. Do you really want to know?”

Mike figures that if Will had to go through that all on his own– at thirteen– then the barest of bare minimums that he could contribute would be to listen to Will, to be there for him, to try and understand, even if he can’t. “I don’t want to make you,” Mike says again, and Will lets out an exasperated huff. “I’m serious! You don’t have to tell me, I was just–”

“Stop,” Will says, with enough conviction that Mike does, in fact, stop talking. “It’s okay. Of course I’d tell you, Mike, you’re my best friend. And you were there for all of it.”

Mike nods, still perched on the end of the bed. Will shuffles over until their legs are almost touching. “Okay,” he echoes. “Cool.”

“I guess,” Will starts, looking a bit contemplative, “at first it was pretty normal? After it really got me, I mean, like after Dart and everything. I just felt super out of it for a while. I think I told my mom that it felt like I hadn’t really woken up yet.”

Mike nods again, wordlessly. Go on, he wants to say, but he doesn’t want to push.

“And then,” Will goes on anyway, “when I was the– you know, the spy, or whatever– it was like, I was in my own body but I wasn’t the one operating it? Like I was stuck, kind of, in the back of my own head? So when I talked and when I moved, it was like– I could remember everything that happened and I was aware of it and I was trying so hard to get my mouth to, like, move the way I needed it to, and I just– it just didn’t work.”

“Jesus,” Mike breathes out. His words don’t seem big enough for what Will is saying– too diminutive, but what is he supposed to say to that?

Will, for some reason, laughs. “Yeah, tell me about it. And I could feel it in my head, just rooting around in there– like, I remember at the hospital they were asking me if I remembered who you guys were–” Mike nods– “and it– the Mind Flayer, I mean– it knew who you were almost right away. It knew you were my best friend. But Hopper and Bob– they were harder.”

“No, I remember,” Mike says hurriedly. “I remember– I don’t know, I remember feeling so proud that you knew me. Even if it wasn’t you after all, even if it was the Mind Flayer, I just felt– I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Will says immediately, smiling. He sits up a little straighter, sets a hand on Mike’s leg, right where his ankles are crossed over each other, and squeezes. “You’re very hard to forget. Even for a supernatural entity.”

“Oh,” Mike says weakly. “That’s nice of you to say.”

Will’s smile grows. “I mean, you are, but I meant it more like– I guess you were just in my head a lot? Probably wasn’t too hard for the Mind Flayer to find you in there.”

“Yeah?” Mike asks, heart stuttering, suddenly, in his chest. “You thought about me a lot?”

For some reason, Will turns pink. “You’re my best friend. I just remember feeling really safe around you, that whole year. That’s probably why.”

Makes sense, Mike thinks. He can’t help but feel strangely disappointed anyway. “Thank you,” he says, and Will pulls his hand away. “For telling me, I mean. You didn’t have to.”

Will blinks curiously up at him. “I know,” he says, like Mike is stating the obvious, “but I wanted to.”  

This has become a bit of a recurring theme over the last couple of weeks, Mike thinks– Will doing things because he wants to. It’s a good thing. Mike thinks Will should do it more.

“Come on,” he says at last, unfolding his legs and all but tumbling backwards off the bed. “I wonder where Jonathan and Nancy are. Maybe we should go bother them.”

Will grins, pushing himself up into a standing position. “I like how you think.”

Will has ink stains on his hands.

Mike isn’t sure how long they’ve been there, but they look like they’ve been settled into the skin for a while, the black splotches already gone almost blue around the edges. Will’s hands are stained all down the curve of his palms, and Mike doesn’t know how someone who’s right-handed could possibly get so much ink on his left hand too, but Will has always been a man of many mysteries.

He can’t make out what Will is drawing either. When he’d burst into the room five minutes ago, launching himself onto the bed, Will had flipped his sketchbook over on reflex. And he’s being weirdly secretive about it still, even with Mike craning his neck over Will’s shoulder, trying his hardest to sneak a peek.

“Just let me see,” he’d whined, and Will had laughed softly.

“No, and that also goes for the million other times you’ve asked.”

So that’s how Mike ended up here– searching for glimpses of whatever image Will might be carving into the rough white paper, and only catching glances of Will’s hands instead. Which he can’t be blamed for, because Will had clearly put them in the way of Mike’s line of vision for a reason, but Mike had gotten distracted from his original mission pretty immediately after the fact, because–

“You’re a messy artist,” Mike points out, and finally moves away. “You’ve done a lot of damage with that thing.”

Will’s mouth tilts upwards in amusement as he turns his pen over in one hand. It’s a black ballpoint, plastic on plastic and probably not more than ten cents from the nearest store. “It’s leaky,” Will huffs. “But I couldn’t find a pencil, so. It’s this or nothing.”

Mike hums in quiet agreement, then leans forward again. “Show me?”

“Mike,” Will laughs, then flips the sketchbook upside down. “You don’t want to see it, I promise.”

That might be one of the most ridiculous things Mike’s ever heard. “Of course I do. I mean, you don’t have to show me if you don’t want to. But I’m sure it’s so good.”

Will shoots him a strange look, then caps the pen and sets it aside. There’s a new smudge of black ink across the pad of his thumb, and Mike is sure it’s going to get all over his sheets, but he can’t find it in himself to care. “Not that it’s bad,” he says, then nudges Mike’s shoulder until he sits back, cross-legged on the other side of the bed. “It’s just– unfinished. Just a sketch. I’ll show you later.”

Mike wants to see now, but beggars can’t be choosers. “Fine,” he concedes, and then adds, “you weren’t here when I woke up.”

“My mom drove me to the hospital,” Will says, then proceeds to sprawl himself across the bed, propped up by a truly excessive number of pillows that Mike is sure hadn’t all been there when he’d been the one routinely using this room. “But that was super early, like, six-thirty. Why were you up?”

Mike ignores him. “The hospital? Is everything okay?”

Will waves off the question. “Just routine. They want to make sure nothing’s– you know. Gross.”

“Gross,” Mike echoes. “Very scientific. Very medical.”

Will groans, rubs a hand over his face. “You know what I mean. Hospitals freak me out, okay, I was in and out of there as fast as humanly possible.”

Mike shuffles forward on the bed until his thighs are bumping against Will’s shins, pulls his legs up against his chest and asks, as nonchalantly as he can manage, “Everything feeling okay?”

He’s trying to get better about it– the worrying thing, the fretting thing, the constant hovering thing– all those things that he’d been doing that had seriously been pissing Will off. And they haven’t talked about it, and Mike’s been trying, but sometimes it feels like he’s operating in a weird gray area, like maybe something isn’t fretting or anxious or constantly hovering to him, but it totally is for Will, and he’s just refraining from saying anything until it totally blows up in Mike’s face again.

He feels like this is a safe option though. Will did just admit to visiting the hospital that morning. Everything feeling okay? is a totally normal question to ask.

Thankfully, Will seems to think so too. “Yeah. I mean, relatively, I think.”

Mike doesn’t know what relatively means– he’s never been cut open and sewn back together again– but he keeps his mouth shut. “Cool,” he nods.

Will looks like he wants to smile. “You want to ask, don’t you?”

“A little,” Mike admits. “But I don’t want to– you know. Be annoying about it.”

A complicated series of emotions flits over Will’s face, like scrolling through every TV channel all in the span of about five seconds. “I’m sorry I yelled,” Will sighs, which catches Mike off guard enough for his whole body to go slack with surprise, his folded-up legs landing on top of Will’s with a soft rustling of fabric against fabric. Their knees bump together horrendously. Mike winces.

“What?”

“That’s why you’re apologizing,” Will says, like he’s stating a fact instead of asking a question, “because I yelled at you. About asking me– I’m sorry.”

Truthfully, yes Will had yelled, and yes that’s why Mike is trying to be better about the whole situation, but he figures that maybe it’s warranted, you know? He wouldn’t like anyone hovering over him like that. He wouldn’t like it if someone had been treating him that way. He shrugs. “It’s okay. You were mad.”

“And you were worried,” Will points out, then reaches a hand out, gingerly tugging at Mike’s wrist. Mike moves without complaint or question, just a slight noise of surprise as he unfolds his legs and collapses, face-first, into the pillow by Will’s shoulder.

“Okay, ow,” and a little bit of complaint, actually, for principle’s sake, “what was that for?”

Will ignores him. “I just,” he starts, and as Mike shifts his face to the side from where it had gotten all squished up in the pillow under him, he catches a glimpse of Will’s expression– a little bit pinched, brows furrows and mouth pursed in concentration. “You were worried because I got cut open– you saw me get cut open– and I yelled at you.”

All three of these things are true. Mike shrugs again. “It’s fine.”

Will groans, leaning back against his own tower of pillows. “You are so– why can’t you just be mad at me again, or something?”

At this, Mike pushes himself up onto one elbow and frowns. “You want me to be mad at you?”

“Well, I don’t know.” Will’s eyes dart between his own, the little furrow between his brows once again making an appearance. “I don’t want you to be mad at me, I’m just– like, you were worried about me. And I yelled at you.”

There’s an ink smudge on Mike’s wrist from where Will had grabbed it, the black going almost gray against his skin. “I don’t know,” Mike says absentmindedly, rubbing lightly at it with his other hand. “It’s been a rough few weeks.”

“Mike,” Will starts again, then cuts himself off. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry, okay?”

“And I’m trying to say that I don’t know why you’re–”

Will grabs his wrist again, the motion jolting Mike out of his lethargic, mid-morning haze. “Would you just shut up and listen?” 

“I– yeah,” Mike says, sitting up a little straighter– or as much as he can in this half-reclined position– because Will’s voice is toeing that line between fake-exasperated and real-exasperated and it’s been a second since Mike’s seen him like this: serious and urgent but bright-eyed, instead of a quiet kind of tired. “Sorry. What’s up?”

Will holds his gaze for one moment, then two, before sighing and looking away. “I mean,” he starts, “when I was mad at you, it’s not because you worried. Everyone worries, so that’s– it was fine that you did. It’s just– it’s always been different with you, you know?”

Mike isn’t sure he’s following, but Will seems to be on a bit of a roll, or at least getting close to one, so he just nods and says, “Sure. Yeah.”

Will shoots him a knowing glance anyway. “My mom always worries,” he goes on, “because she’s my mom, you know? She worries about everyone, but I’m– well, I’ve given her good reason. And Jonathan tries to give me space but I know he worries too. And I can’t blame them, because come on,” Will scoffs, even through a smile, “I haven’t been the easiest kid. I really put them through it.”

This just goes to further support Mike’s theory that Will might actually be a real life, honest-to-god crazy person, to have been through all of that and then some, and then lie in Mike’s bed feeling bad about making other people worry about him. “You’re crazy,” Mike tells him, “you’re– are you serious? That’s what you’re worried about? That you made it hard for them?”

Will gives him another exasperated look. “I just– my point,” he goes on, “is that it wasn’t like that with you. Back when the Mind Flayer had me, and even before that, right after I came back– you were the one person who didn’t treat me like everyone else. And everyone was smothering me and I just felt so– I don’t know. You made me feel normal. Like myself again. After the Upside Down, I just– I didn’t feel like myself for a long time. A really long time.” Will pauses, looks away. Fiddles with the hem of his t-shirt. “Sometimes I still don’t.”

“That’s okay,” Mike says, as the pause stretches on and it doesn’t seem like Will is about to say something right away. He hopes it comes out in somewhat of a reassuring voice. Mike is maybe not the best person to be giving this advice, or to be talking about this at all, actually – one, because he’s fifteen, but two, because sometimes he feels like that too. A little lost, a little adrift. Not anywhere near how he felt at twelve, and it’s rapidly becoming clear that maybe that was when he’d been at his best. Which is kind of depressing, to know you’ve peaked so soon, but also just kind of– sad.

It’s not in the same way as what Will is saying, probably, because Mike never has and also never will know exactly what happened to him down there, and he’s not pretending to. “That’s okay,” he says again, because he’s not very good at this and the silence is going on a little bit too long for it to be comfortable, and Will looks a little bit like he wants to sink into the sheets and allow the mattress to swallow him whole. He waves a hand in the air. “You don’t have to– you know. Shit, sorry. I’m not very good at this.”

Will shrugs. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to– that’s a lot to put on you. Just– there’s no pressure, I mean. I don’t want you to have to feel, like, responsible for me or something.”

“Okay,” Mike starts, “well, good. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I can’t–”

He trails off. Will tilts his head at him. “What?”

“Care,” Mike settles on at last. The word still seems to fall flat, but he can’t for the life of him think of anything else. Will’s eyes on his aren’t helping either– the quiet, expectant anticipation. “It doesn’t mean I can’t still care. Or worry.”

“I know.” Will sighs, a little apologetically. Mike is starting to think that this crease between his eyebrows might be a newly permanent fixture on his face. “It’s just– my point was that I’m sorry I got mad. Of course you were going to worry. It’s you. And you saw me– I just– of course you were going to worry. And just because it made me feel weird doesn’t mean you should have had to stop worrying.”

Mike stares. “What do you mean it’s me?”

“Mike.” Will lets out a small, dry laugh. “Come on.”

“What?”

“It’s– you’re you,” Will says incredulously, like this should explain everything, like Mike shouldn’t be as confused as he currently feels. “You worry about your people. You just care so much and I love that about you. I couldn’t have expected you to not do that.”

Mike opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and, instead of any of the things he’d been thinking– oh, that’s nice, or I don’t know how much of that is true, or you really think so?– says, “I– you love that about me?”

“I mean– yeah,” Will laughs again, a little more weakly this time. “Of course I do. You know that.”

Does he? 

“I–” Mike starts, then promptly interrupts himself to yawn widely into the back of his hand. “Shit, sorry.”

“Are you tired?”

“No,” Mike lies, “I’m just–” and promptly outs himself as the world’s most terrible liar by yawning again immediately after.

Will squints suspiciously over at him. “How much sleep did you get?” 

Mike shifts uncomfortably. “It’s– we don’t have to talk about this.”

Will’s eyes narrow impossibly further. “Is that why you were awake when I left this morning?”

“Maybe,” Mike admits, and Will lets out a long, slow exhale. “But it’s not that bad, I promise–”

“I thought the dreams were getting better,” Will says, corners of his mouth canting downwards. “Are they still– you know.”

“A little,” he says, because Will is on his trail now and Mike knows he won’t let up, and maybe it’s time to pay some mind to all that bullshit about honesty being the best policy or whatever. “But it’s not like that anymore,” he adds hastily, because it’s true, and it’s not. It’s not so much about Will, bleeding out and dying in front of him, so on and so forth, as it is just that something feels strangely, innately wrong. The room is too quiet when he turns in for the night, or his own head is too loud, or it feels like his entire body is hopped up on a never-ending stream of adrenaline and he just can’t turn it off. If Mike could take manual control over his own nervous system, he’s sure that he wouldn’t be dealing with half the shit he has to put up with on the daily. “It’s not as bad as before,” he says truthfully, because it’s not. “It’s just– yeah. I think it’s just going to be like this from now on.”

Will gives him a contemplative once-over, then says, in a tone that Mike can’t entirely discern, “You want some of my painkillers? They knock me right out.”

Mike’s mouth falls open. “Will!”

“I’m kidding,” Will laughs, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “I’m kidding! Never share prescriptions because that’s probably bad and also I think it might be illegal. Maybe. But seriously,” he adds, as Mike rolls his eyes. “You should sleep.”

The crease between Will’s eyebrows is, apparently, not a permanent thing. Because, apparently, laughing at Mike makes it go away. Again– if Mike could take the reins from his autonomic nervous system, his life would probably be a whole lot more straightforward. “Easier said than done,” he grumbles.

“You’re tired now,” Will says, “so sleep.”

It sounds so simple when he says it like that. “What, here?”

Will shrugs again. “If you want. It worked last time, didn’t it?”

Last time. Meaning, after Mike–

Yeah, it did. But that feels like an unfair burden to put on someone. All that talk about Will not wanting Mike to feel responsible for him, but here he is now. “I–” Mike starts, then cuts himself off. What if he said yes? Would that make him sound too needy? Too clingy? Desperate or incapable or dependent? Maybe Will doesn’t even want him to and he’s just offering to be polite.

Will waves a hand in front of Mike’s face. “Hello, idiot. I’m serious. Did it help? Being here?”

Mike swallows back the– admittedly dwindling– remnants of his pride, and says, “Yeah, to be honest. It did. But I don’t want to bother you or anything–”

“You’ll be the one sleeping, Mike,” Will snorts. “It’s cool. I mean, what else do you think I have going on anyway?”

Mike ignores him. “If that’s, like, weird for you– me being here–”

“For the love of God,” Will exclaims, then pats the open space on the bed next to him, “please just shut up and pass out.”

“Well, if–”

“It’s cool,” Will adds, then reaches over to grab the sketchbook he’d abandoned earlier. The pen is still leaking horrendously; Mike catches another new smudge of ink forming across the side of Will’s finger as he picks it up. “Believe it or not, I can keep myself occupied for a few hours.”

Despite himself, Mike smiles gratefully. “Thank you,” he says. Then, like maybe Will won’t notice if he moves fast enough, Mike darts his eyes up and over the curve of Will’s forearm.

Will, unfortunately, is too fast for him. “Hey!” he laughs, moving his sketchbook even further out of view. It’s still flipped over, the white paper marred with gray fingerprints. “No cheating,” Will says, following his gaze, “or I’m kicking you back out to the basement.”

Mike yawns again. “This is my room, asshole,” he gets out.

Will sighs. “Please go to sleep, Mike.”

Again, Mike thinks vaguely, lifting up the covers and burrowing underneath, that this should be easier said than done. Still, as he lowers himself down, tucks his head into the dip between the pillows, dangerously near Will’s hip and the flailing points of his elbows, he can’t help but think that it feels pretty damn easy anyway.

His eyes start to drift closed the second his head hits the sheets, even before he sinks into the mattress, even before Will shifts slightly to accommodate him, even before Will hoists his sketchbook up higher and entirely out of Mike’s line of sight. “I mean it,” Will murmurs, worrying at one corner of the paper with the tip of his pen, “no sneak peeks.”

“I’ll find out eventually,” Mike says through another yawn, as if Will hadn’t said he’d show him anyway. “Mark my words.”

Will shakes his head. “What’s the matter with you? I could swear you’re being difficult on purpose.”

“I’m not,” Mike says, even though he knows Will hadn’t meant it seriously. “I’m just a light sleeper, I guess.”

Mike can hear Will’s frown in his voice when he answers. “You weren’t before,” Will remarks. “It used to be such a pain in the ass to get you to wake up before ten in the morning.”

The concept of before is starting to lose all meaning to him. “I know,” Mike mumbles. “I was there.” And then, in a last-ditch effort, eyes still mostly closed, Mike cranes his neck upwards and asks, “Are you sure I can’t look?”

The last thing he sees is Will’s smile out of the corner of his eye, small and faintly amused. “ Sleep, Mike.”

It feels easier than it should, is the point here. Mike wonders where this ease had been last night, when he’d been tossing and turning well into the creeping early morning hours. Or where this full-body tiredness had been this morning, when he’d heard footsteps pattering about and the front door opening and suddenly, he hadn’t been able to fall back asleep.

A hand brushes against his forehead, so suddenly that Mike would maybe have startled if he wasn’t feeling so out of it. The touch is soft, almost hesitant; Will moves a strand of hair out of his eyes, tucks it behind his ear, and then his hand keeps going– carding through the hair at the nape of his neck, never using enough force to be anything more than so, so gentle, and always so hesitant.

It feels nice. Where was this when he’d been staring, wide-eyed, into the darkness of the basement ceiling?

Sleep comes in almost-waves, always a little too far out of reach to really pull him under, but Mike doesn’t mind. It’s warm here, and comfortable, and he can feel Will’s touch lingering a bit longer with every pass, fingers brushing over Mike’s temples or over his eyebrows or down the curve of his neck. Slowly, his world becomes reduced to this– the dip in the mattress next to him, the soft scratching of pen against paper, the quiet sounds of Will’s breathing, and Will’s hand in his hair. Over and over and over.

It’s not the touch that jolts him back into consciousness, but the lack thereof. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mike becomes aware of Will yanking his hand away like he’d been burned, the steady warmth that had been hovering somewhere over his cheek vanishing instantly. And then, secondarily, hears a shuffling at the door, a voice saying something he’d been too late to catch.

“No, it’s–” he hears Will whisper above him, then a cut-off sound and a quiet flurry of movement. The mattress squeaks softly under them, in time with the soft creaking of floorboards in the hall.

When the footsteps recede, Mike holds his breath. Will’s hand brushes against his forehead again, once, then retreats.

The touch doesn’t return.

Mike drifts off to sleep.

“Hey,” Jonathan says.

Mike nearly drops his glass of water. “Jesus Christ,” he starts. “Hello?”

Jonathan frowns at him, still hovering by the dining table. “Why are you so jumpy?”

“I’m not jumpy,” Mike hisses, staring down at the damp patch on his shirt where he’s definitely just spilled a bit of water. “I just– you’re so quiet. What are you sneaking up on me for?”

For some reason, this is what finally gets Jonathan Byers to smile. After everything, Jonathan is laughing at him because he spilled a little water on his shirt. God, Mike hates his life.

Jonathan shrugs. “I mean, I didn’t mean to, but I’d been standing there for maybe a minute and you didn’t notice.”

“Sorry,” Mike mumbles, dabbing at his shirt with a paper towel. “I’m just a little out of it.”

“I can see that,” Jonathan says, and then, before Mike can come up with anything halfway decent to say in response to that, adds, “so I wanted to talk to you.”

Oh, no. Mike tenses, setting the glass down in the sink. “Not this again. What could you possibly have left to say to me anyway?”

“Not about that,” Jonathan says dismissively. “But I did hear that you guys talked. You and Will.”

“I thought you said Will doesn’t tell you everything.”

Jonathan’s lips twitch. “He tells me most things,” he says, and then, correcting himself, “or maybe about half, actually. But he tells me enough, usually.”

“Great,” Mike says, because with his luck, everything he might not ever want Jonathan to know probably falls in that fifty percent that Will has chosen to be so generous about.

“So you guys talked,” Jonathan goes on, maneuvering his way past Mike and taking a seat at the table, “which is good, I think.”

“It wasn’t so much talking as it was– um,” Mike says, because he isn’t sure exactly how touchy-feely he wants to get with Jonathan Byers– or how touchy-feely Jonathan Byers wants to get with him– even after all that shit about I know you, Mike, and everything else. Jonathan has a very neutral expression on his face right now; it’s hard enough for Mike to gauge exactly what he’s thinking on a normal day, because he seems to always have a slight air of apprehension around him, but even that’s gone. Mike sighs. “Um,” he says, feeling unreasonably flustered as he watches Jonathan’s eyebrows creep steadily closer to his hairline, “it wasn’t talking so much as, um–”

“As what?”

“Crying,” Mike admits, and sinks down into a chair across from him. “A little.”

The intrigued look Jonathan is wearing gives way to total bewilderment. “Oh.”

“Why,” Mike frowns, immediately suspicious. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“Nothing,” Jonathan says, a little too fast for it to be completely believable. “Nothing! Was it, uh–”

“Yeah, it was me who cried,” Mike huffs, because this is probably not anywhere near the most embarrassing thing Jonathan has learned about him in the last couple of months. Cried seems a bit diminutive, but just because he’s decided to be honest about this doesn’t mean he needs to make it worse for himself than it needs to be. “But if you tell anyone I told you that I’ll– well, I don’t know what I’ll do but I’m going to be so mad, I can tell you that.”

“Who would I even tell?”

“Uh, my sister,” Mike says, because this should be really fucking obvious, thank you. He’s not sure how he would ever live that one down. “Nancy, maybe? Your girlfriend?”

Jonathan holds up his hands. “My lips are sealed,” he says. “But that’s not what I wanted to say.”

“And I’m saying,” Mike says anyway, “that I literally don’t know what else you could possibly have to–”

“You should move back into your room,” Jonathan interrupts, and Mike’s mouth falls shut. “With Will, I mean.”

“I– what?”

“Look,” Jonathan sighs, “I just think that maybe it would help you, if you did. I’ll move down to the basement with Nancy.”

“Oh, ew,” Mike says, crinkling up his nose in disgust, because up until now, he’d been able to think about his sister and Jonathan together in a very vague, abstract sense– like holding hands over their morning coffee or other gross shit that couples do, but– “ Ew. Oh, absolutely not–”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. Mike gets the vague feeling that he’s had a very similar conversation with Will. “Don’t be disgusting.”

“ You’re the one who said–”

“I meant it for you!” Jonathan exclaims, a little exasperated. “God, you and Will are a lot alike, you know? I’m trying to do a nice thing here and you both have to go and be total fifteen-year-olds about it.”

“We are fifteen,” Mike says, and then abruptly circles back to, “do a nice thing? For who exactly?”

“You sleep better up there,” Jonathan says, and it’s not a question. “And you’re there with Will all the time. It’ll be easier this way for everyone.”

“Yeah,” Mike gets out, “easier for you and Nancy to be–”

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” says Jonathan, which is maybe for the best.

“Right,” Mike says, fidgeting a little in place. And then, “Wait, you already asked Will?”

Jonathan shrugs. “He was thinking the same thing I was. Plus, the sofa bed might be a nice change from the floor.”

“It’s my room,” Mike mutters, not as antagonistically as he might have expected. “Asshole. Why haven’t you been sleeping in the bed?”

“Will has informed me that I’m a bit of a– well, I think the exact words he used were disturbed sleeper,” Jonathan says flatly. “Unfortunately, Nancy elected to wake up with my elbows in her ribs when she chose to date me, so there’s that.”

“Gross,” Mike says again, for good measure.

Jonathan’s face twitches. “So the offer is open, is all I’m saying. Might save both of us a lot of walking around.”

It’s not like Mike has anything to lose here. Cards on the table, this might actually solve, like, a good third of his problems. “Okay,” he agrees, just as his mom and Mrs. Byers round the corner into the kitchen. “Yeah, that might be– oh, hi, mom. Hi, Mrs. Byers.”

Joyce smiles at him, rests a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “What have you two been up to?”

Jonathan sits up in his chair. “Mike and I were thinking,” he starts, shooting Mike a quick glance through raised eyebrows. Mike nods in confirmation, and Jonathan continues. “We were thinking we might switch rooms. So he’ll stay with Will, and I’ll– yeah.”

The look Mrs. Byers gives his mom is enough to make Mike want to sink through the wood of the chair, through the floor of the house, through the ground, straight into the Upside Down, and die. “Oh?” she says, and it looks a little bit like Jonathan might be feeling the same way. She’s smiling as she raises her eyebrows, more amused than anything else. “Well it’s up to Karen, but If I say I have a guess whose idea that was, then–”

“It was, like, at least half Will’s,” Jonathan says hurriedly, “don’t put this on me, okay,” which is precisely the moment Nancy comes trudging up from the basement, and, upon spotting everyone in the kitchen, stops dead in her tracks.

“Oh,” she says, glancing from Mike to Jonathan to Joyce then over to their mom. “Hi, everyone.”

“So,” Karen says, running a plate under the faucet and not turning around. “I hear Jonathan will be joining you in the basement.”

Nancy blinks. “Oh,” she says again, looking over at Jonathan. “You are?”

“You could try to sound a little less excited,” Mike grumbles. “Please. For my sake.”

Nancy, as usual, ignores him. “Where did this come from?”

Not a word about the crying, Mike thinks in Jonathan’s direction. He’s not sure if the attempt at telepathy works, but either way, Jonathan keeps his mouth shut. “Oh, they spend all their time up in Mike’s room anyway. Might as well.”

“Cool,” Nancy says, sliding into place next to him. And then– “Oh, this means I’m going to wake up at three in the morning with your knees in my face, doesn’t it.”

The caveat here, the thing that Mike should totally, completely have seen coming, was the simple fact that his brain has, historically, worked to make every moment he spends on this planet a waking hell.

Everything had been going fine the whole evening: Will had come down to join them for dinner, Holly had wheedled the lot of them into watching The Jungle Book, and Mike isn’t sure where she’s getting her expansive collection of Disney tapes, but maybe they could’ve afforded to donate some of those, instead of clearing Mike’s room of all his childhood memories. But whatever. It’s whatever.

The evening had been perfectly fine, is the point, and then he’d dragged all his stuff back upstairs, with a begrudging Nancy in tow– and it wasn’t even a lot, so he’s not sure why she’d been so fussy about it– and it hadn’t quite sunk in yet, what was about to happen. No, that realization came later– after he’d pulled his pajamas on, after they’d brushed their teeth, after he’d slid into bed, after his elbow had bumped into Will’s, after the room turned dark and quiet except for the sounds of Will’s quiet breathing–

That’s when it hit him.

Currently, Mike feels like he’s just downed a pot of coffee and gone several rounds with a demogorgon– which is to say, there’s no way he’s falling asleep any time soon.

He turns to the side, careful not to jostle the mattress too hard, and whispers, “Will?”

Will doesn’t stir. Maybe he’s asleep, and Mike is being a total asshole right now by even entertaining the idea of talking to him. Will needs rest. Mike needs to shut up.

He lets out a slow, quiet breath. Yeah. This is fine. He should just roll over and go to sleep too. He should just– yeah.

Mike shifts, sheets rustling softly under him. Will is warm, his body heat radiating easily through the six inches of space between them, even with no contact. It’s like a test of willpower, having to pull away from that, and towards where the other side of Mike’s bed is cold. Unforgiving.

It’s cool. Things Mike has gotten better at, over the months: being strong. Dealing. Pulling away.

Things Mike has not gotten better at, over the months: seemingly anything, if it concerns Will Byers.

“Mike?”

Mike freezes. “Shit,” he whispers, talking half into the fabric of his pillowcase. “Did I wake you?”

Will laughs next to him, barely more than a sharp exhale. “No,” comes his voice, and the soft squeaking of the mattress springs under them as Will moves. “I’ve been up.” 

Mike still can’t see him, but he feels closer, somehow, than he was before. He rolls over onto his back again, and yeah, Will is definitely closer now. “This whole time?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Mike admits. It’s weird, not being able to see Will like this. It feels a bit like he’s talking to himself. “I was just–”

He trails off. Will is still so warm, Jesus Christ, it’s like he’s a living furnace. It’s already pretty warm in here, and Mike should maybe be moving away, before it gets uncomfortable or stuffy or any or all of the above, but suddenly, mindlessly, his shoulder is bumping against Will’s and he’s leaning closer into the shape of his body, into where the mattress is dipped slightly under the weight of it. 

“You were just what?” Will asks quietly. He isn’t pulling away from the touch. He could, if he wanted to. There’s plenty of space on his side of the bed. Mike isn’t sure when he moved, but he must have, at some point, to get so close.

“Thinking.”

It’s not a lie. Mike was thinking. Just– not really about the kind of thing you can put into words.

Will makes a noise that might be a laugh. Mike can’t really tell, but it sounds like it’s a good sort of noise. “O-kay,” he says, dragging the two syllables out until they stretch, long and languid, to fill up the entire room. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I would!” Mike says. “I would, I swear, it’s just–”

“Oh,” Will stops. “I’m sorry. Did you have a nightmare?”

“Oh, no,” Mike says hurriedly. “I just– sometimes my brain won’t shut up, you know?”

“Yeah.” Will sighs in quiet understanding. “Yeah. Trust, I know the feeling.”

Mike drums his fingers against his leg, where he’s kicked the blankets around enough for them to start bunching up near his knees “Why were you up?”

“They lowered my dosage of meds,” Will says. “When I went in earlier. Since I'm feeling better and all so– it just takes me a little while longer to fall asleep now.”

Mike hums in acknowledgment. “That’s good, right? That you’re feeling better?”

“It is,” Will says, and there’s a movement by Mike’s eyes, like Will had been nodding before he realized Mike couldn’t see him. “Yeah, I go back to get my stitches and stuff out in a few days and then I’m– and then it’s over.”

“That’s good,” Mike says again. He thinks about the t-shirt Will is wearing, worn thin from use, soft around the edges. The scar he knows lies underneath, just inches from Mike’s restless hands. This isn’t something Will is ever going to be able to run away from, and the realization leaves something rolling in his stomach, frustrated and anxious. How Will’s body is going to remember this forever, in living, breathing muscle memory. Not just the attack, but everything that came with it– sleepless nights and distance and cold, linoleum floors. All the grief Mike gave him that he shouldn’t have had to deal with.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Will says. “I can feel it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike blurts out, and then, at the answering pause, adds, “that’s– not totally what I was thinking, but it’s close, I think.”

“Mike,” Will says softly. “I– you don’t have anything to be sorry for. We already talked about this.”

“Not really,” Mike says, because they hadn’t, technically, talked about it. Will had talked about it. Mike had broken down on the bathroom floor. “It’s just– I don’t have any big words or anything, I promise. I just missed you. And I’m sorry. And that’s it, and I’ll let it go, but– I just had to say it once. No theatrics.”

Mike’s known Will long enough, he thinks, to be able to tell when he’s smiling, even without looking at his face. It sounds like he is now, like he’s saying his next words through a dizzying, relieved grin. “Okay,” Will says simply, and Mike lets out a quiet sigh. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Tell me something,” Mike says, as the silence stretches on. He’s still looking up at the ceiling, and it’s so dark that his eyes might as well be closed, but turning– being face-to-face with Will– feels daunting. Even without eye contact, the idea is enough to make something swoop low in his stomach, dangerous and warm. “Since we’re awake anyway.”

The sheets rustle some more as Will shifts. “What do you want me to tell you?”

Anything, Mike wants to say. Everything. He wants to ask, Did you think about me when you were away? Was it better without me there? He wants to say, What the hell did they put in the water in Lenora, for you to come back looking like this?

Mike holds his breath. He trails his hand down along the line of Will’s wrist, until his fingertips brush against Will’s knuckles, and stops. Mike wants to ask, Is it okay? If I do this? Mike wants to ask, Have you thought about this too?

Will tenses under him, and for a second, Mike thinks that maybe this was a step too far. He’s about to pull away, offer up an apology, when Will’s hand turns under his. Palm side up. Waiting.

Mike slots their fingers together and breathes out. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem to matter that the room is pitch-black anyway. The touch is inexplicably disorienting. 

“Something nice,” he settles on at last, tracing the curve of Will’s thumb with his own – down to his wrist, up to the knuckle. Again. “Tell me something nice.”

Will is silent for a moment, then two. The third moment stretches out into something longer, heavier, until it’s almost like Mike could reach out and touch, if he wanted to. Like Will’s hesitation would be as firm under his fingertips as the shape of his hand against Mike’s own. 

Maybe he offended him, Mike thinks, closing his eyes for a second. It’s just as dark like this, staring into the back of his eyelids, but it’s less vulnerable. Like playing hide and seek as a little kid– if I can’t see him, he can’t see me.

Maybe Will can’t see him, if he does this. Maybe he won’t be able to feel Mike’s pulse against his own wrist, where it’s started fluttering, evading every desperate attempt at reigning it in.

Mike breathes in, then out. In, then out again. His heart does not beat any slower.

“What,” Will starts, and Mike’s eyes fly open, “constitutes nice?”

“Anything,” Mike says. “Something good.”

“Helpful,” Will laughs. His fingers tighten their grip around Mike’s, just barely enough to be noticeable. Maybe it wouldn’t have been, if Mike hadn't been so attuned to the touch. Hyperaware. God, are his hands sweaty? They feel like they might be. “Good can be very subjective.”

“Someone’s being a contrarian today.”

Will isn’t even, really. It feels like he’s stalling, more than anything else. Mike pauses, then adds, “You don’t have to. I was just–”

“Stop.” Will squeezes his hand again. “Stop that. I’m just– I’m thinking.”

“You’ve been thinking for a long time,” Mike points out. He doesn’t want to think about what this means – that he asked Will to tell him a nice thing, and Will has to think this long about it, has to really think about it, turn it over in his head.

He shouldn’t have to. Will should have enough nice things to be bursting at the seams with them, barely able to keep them in. Mike wants him to have so many of them that there’s never a moment of silence, much less a neverending length of it like this.

“I don’t know,” Will admits, after a second. It’s quiet. Almost apologetic. “All of my nice things– you were already there for them.”

Oh, Mike thinks.

“That’s–”

“Lame. I know.”

“No!” Mike shakes his head, then realizes Will can’t see him, but the emphasis feels necessary anyway. “It’s not! I was just– that’s just–”

He falters.

Will, ever so patient, prompts, “Just what?”

Just a lot of things, Mike wants to say. The concept sits bittersweet in his throat: being there for all of Will’s nice things, and being there for all of Will’s nice things.

He didn’t have nice things in Lenora? He must have, Mike reasons. Six months away and he’s sure there were some things– friends Will made that weren’t him. Hobbies he took up. Movies he watched, foods he tried. New clothes, new hair, new everything. 

“Not a single thing?” Mike says at last. “You were gone for so long, I’m sure you had something.”

“Sorry,” Will says, and Mike doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, exactly, but he finds himself frowning anyway. “I’m sure I have something, I just– I can’t think. It’s like my brain’s gone blank.”

Mike thinks about what he might ask Lucas or Dustin if they were catching up– sorts through these tidbits of information like he’s got them all filed away. Mike and Dustin had gone to see a Star Trek III rerun back in February, and it had been mostly fun and the movie had been mostly good, except they’d squabbled the whole way home about Star Trek versus Star Wars, and, more specifically, Star Trek III versus Star Wars III, which led to a whole painful thing about the cultural significance of Leia in the gold bikini. Mike was pretty sure his mom had overheard the tail end of the conversation when she picked them up to drive Dustin home, and the terrible silence that ensued after Dustin had been dropped off pretty much cemented the fact that he and Dustin were never going to watch Star Trek together again. At least not without Lucas there– even though Mike is mostly sure, to this day, that this would probably have made things worse.

Maybe they had Star Trek reruns in Lenora, is the point, and maybe Will went to them with his own friends– and maybe Will made lots of friends, friends who weren’t Mike– and maybe Will decided he liked Star Trek better, and maybe Mike doesn’t know his favorite movies anymore after all.

Maybe this would be a good question to ask him, something simple and inoffensive and straightforward. He runs his fingernail over a loose thread protruding from the duvet cover and thinks about Will sitting in a dark, quiet movie theater with another friend. He thinks about Will smuggling them in snacks like he’d done for him and Mike when they’d snuck in to see Back to the Future last summer; he thinks about Will glancing at someone else in the low light of the screen, Will’s elbow touching someone else’s over the armrest, brushing someone else’s fingers while reaching for popcorn. He thinks about Will seeing a movie with someone else and, entirely without thinking, blurts out, “I don’t know, were there any girls in Lenora?”

Will’s hand stills completely under Mike’s palm. When he speaks, it’s barely audible. A little hoarse, a little shocked. “What?”

What? What the fuck did Mike just say? “Um,” Mike starts, and immediately freezes. It feels like he’s not really in his own body right now, like he hadn’t been fully in control of his mouth or lips or tongue or even his fucking vocal cords when he’d spoken– where the fuck had that even come from? He’d started off with simple and inoffensive and straightforward and had proceeded to blurt out something that was not any of those three things. “I just mean,” Mike adds, “sorry, that was– you don’t have to answer that. Sorry.”

“What?” Will says again, and it doesn’t sound offended or angry so much as it does confused– genuine, authentic confusion, like he’s having just as much trouble trying to figure out why Mike would say that instead of absolutely anything else, for example.

“Sorry,” Mike repeats, then loosens his grip on where Will’s hand is still slack under his– from surprise, probably, or maybe– and then again, “You don’t have to answer that.”

Will exhales slowly. “No, that– it’s fine.”

Fine. Fine. Mike keeps his eyes trained on where he thinks the ceiling probably is and asks, “Fine as in– as in that’s not a weird question and you’re not mad, or fine as in–”

He trails off. Next to him, Will lets out a vaguely amused-sounding huff. “You dated my sister,” Will says. “I know you guys had trouble. We can talk about it, if you want.”

“No, it wasn’t– that wasn’t about me,” Mike says hurriedly, then turns his head to the side. Will isn’t looking at him. It’s hard to make out the details, but Mike can tell that much. “I wasn’t trying to start something, I swear. It’s not– me and El– that’s done, I mean. I’m not trying to circle back around to that.”

Will’s hand twitches, for the briefest of moments, under Mike’s own. “Oh. Then what–”

“Forget it, it’s not– I don’t know why I said that.”

“You were really asking me?”

“Yes,” Mike says, and it comes out half-laughing; he’s not really sure why, because it’s not funny– Will in a movie theater with a new friend who may or may not be a girl, who may or may not be– 

It’s not funny and it’s putting a sour, resentful taste in Mike’s mouth, but he feels like he owes Will something anyway. For all that time he spent listening to Mike and Lucas– and even Dustin after he and Suzie became a thing– talk about girls and dating and everything he so clearly did not want to talk about. Mike swallows down the rush of bile that comes with the thought, like a reflex; he thinks about Will, purple robes and hat and pieces on a board all spread out in front of him. Thinks about Will, who had been so desperate to just spend time with his friends– Will, whom Mike had punished for the utterly unforgivable crime of simply wanting to spend time with him– Will, who is unequivocally the bravest and strongest and best person Mike knows, who probably spent the better part of the last year feeling, for the first time in his life, like there was something he couldn’t talk to Mike about–

–It’s not my fault you don’t like–

The sour rush of it swells up inside him, and Mike swallows it back down, down, down. “Fine as in you’re not mad,” Mike repeats, questioning, “or fine as in–”

That seems like a good place to leave it, Mike thinks. If Will doesn’t want to talk about it, he doesn’t have to.

“Fine,” Will replies, turning to look at him now, too, “as in– you can ask me.”

Mike swallows. Is it warm in here? “So,” he starts again, and the single word comes out a bit more frail than he had maybe intended it to. “Were there any girls in Lenora?”

Mike can’t make out Will’s features in the dark, but he finds his eyes drifting to where Will’s mouth might be. He imagines the way Will might be smiling, a little hesitantly, lips curling up at the corners. It’s like he can see it now, clear as day, and when Will answers, Mike swears his voice sounds closer than it did before.

“No,” Will says, a little bit shaky but without a trace of hesitation. “No girls in Lenora.”

Mike swallows again. “Okay,” he gets out. “Um.”

It feels like Will is waiting– for what, Mike doesn’t know, but he maybe has a guess. The thought feels unfinished, like maybe Mike isn’t covering all of his bases, like maybe he’s allowing for a bit of admittance by omission by not saying what he’s thinking. It feels like there’s more there, but Mike can’t get it out– can’t even properly wrap his tongue around the sentence without it slipping out of his grasp.

There’s something there, there’s something there, there’s something there–

Were there, Mike thinks, all at once terrified down to his very core, boys? In Lenora?

This thought comes to him suddenly too, even more suddenly than the first, but somehow, it doesn’t feel as unexpected. It doesn’t catch him off-guard in the same way. It feels like– now that Mike is thinking about it, now that Mike is noticing the absence of Will’s steady, even breathing, how he’s holding his breath– it feels like something has shifted in the air around them. Falling into place rather than out of it, but shifting nonetheless.

It feels like maybe this is something Mike has known for a while, even if it hasn’t been in quite so many words, even if it had been a bit more of an incorporeal concept than a fact– not that there were boys in Lenora, per se, but the possibility of it. The possibility of boys in Lenora being a possibility– the possibility of boys anywhere being part of the equation, for Will. Boys in Lenora, and boys in–

God. Mike feels incomprehensibly lightheaded. If boys in Lenora were a possibility, then maybe boys elsewhere were a possibility too. Maybe they are a possibility, present-tense. Boys in Lenora, and boys in–

Boys in–

“Mike?” Will prompts, and Mike swallows for the third time in quick succession, his throat drier than he can remember it being in a long time. It doesn’t help.

“Yeah?”

There’s a long moment before Will continues. Boys in Lenora, Mike thinks, with a strange sensation settling in his stomach. Boys in Lenora, and boys in–

Maybe he’s known for a while, in that oddly intangible, formless way, but it doesn’t make the realization of the possibility any less jarring. Boys in Lenora, Mike thinks, turning back towards the ceiling. Facing Will, even in the dark, feels like too much. Boys in Lenora. And in–

“Were you,” Will whispers at last, “going to say something else?”

Was he?

He could. He could, if he wanted. Were there, Mike recites in his head, the words right there, right on the tip of his tongue, boys in Lenora?

“I don’t know,” Mike hears himself saying instead. “Why?”

“It just seemed like maybe–”

Will trails off. Mike is suddenly hyper-aware of everywhere they’re touching– the flat expanse of Will’s palm against his, their forearms tangled together in the sheets, the warmth of Will’s skin, noticeable even where Mike feels like he might be burning up in his own body. Maybe what? he wants to ask. Maybe what, Will?

Mike wants to ask, Did you think about me when you were away? He wants to ask, Was it better without me there? He thinks about how solid Will feels, the weighted warmth of his body; he thinks about how insubstantial Will had always felt in the years before, a little wispy, like if Mike didn’t have a tight enough grip on him, he’d dissipate into nothing right in front of their eyes. He pictures the slope of Will’s nose where it’s hidden away in the dark, the perpetually curious glint in his eyes, the faded California tan, and wants to ask, What the hell did they put in the water in Lenora, for you to come back looking like this?

What Mike wants to ask, more than anything, though: were there boys? In Lenora?

Suddenly, he’s not sure he wants to know.

If there were boys in Lenora, then maybe Will went to see a Star Trek rerun with one, and maybe he smuggled them in snacks like he did for him and Mike when they went to see Back to the Future last summer, and maybe Will looked at him in the low light of the screen, and maybe their elbows touched over the armrest and maybe their fingers brushed against each other when they reached for the popcorn. And maybe after the movie Will went home and thought about this boy, and maybe he smiled so wide that his whole family noticed, and maybe he laughed into his pillow before falling asleep and maybe he dreamt about this hypothetical boy from Lenora. And it’s this last part that makes Mike open his mouth– makes him think, with something burning a desperate hole through his esophagus, Were there boys? In Lenora?– and makes him say, instead, “Nothing. I’m just– I think I’m finally about to fall asleep again.”

“Oh,” and Mike doesn’t know why Will sounds like that, just on the cusp of surprise, or something maybe even closer to disappointment, but it makes him grow strangely warm all the same. “Okay. That’s good, I mean. That you’re tired.”

“Are you not?”

A pause, and then the slightest of rustling noises. “Maybe,” Will says, breath ghosting softly over the side of Mike’s face. He’s turned, then. He’s looking at Mike.

God.

Mike closes his eyes. “We should sleep. It’s late.”

“Yeah,” Will agrees quietly. “I guess it is.”

Will’s hand starts to pull away from Mike’s grip– presumably to roll over, go back to sleep, because that’s what Mike suggested, because he couldn’t open his mouth and say what he had really wanted to say, so now they’re going to sleep and it’s fine– and a panic rises up inside him where it had been so carefully quelled this whole time.

“Will,” Mike blurts out, instinctively tightening his grip around Will’s wrist. Will tenses next to him, pauses. “Just– where are you going?”

“Um. To sleep?” 

Mike is having a hard time reading him, if he’s being honest. “Right. I mean, just– could you just stay here? Like this, I mean?”

He hears Will inhale sharply next to him. “Mike,” he starts, then trails off. He sounds tired. “What are you doing?”

What is Mike doing? He doesn’t know. What he does know is that the space between them is rapidly cooling where Will has shifted away, and all at once, it’s unbearable. “Please?”

A moment’s pause, and then a sigh, long and drawn-out. “Okay,” Will says simply. No further questions. He shuffles closer, back to where he’d been before and closer still. Mike laces their fingers back together and Will doesn’t let go. “Okay,” Will repeats, quieter this time, the side of his cheek resting against Mike’s shoulder; Mike’s eyes are still closed, and Will’s got his head at least partially resting on Mike’s pillow, and Mike thinks that if his feeling in his stomach doesn’t go away, he might throw up or pass out or some ridiculous combination of the two.

It’s so much. It’s too much and not enough all at once. He presses his head back into the pillow anyway, and whispers, “Goodnight, Will.”

“‘Night,” Will murmurs beside him, then falls silent.

Will’s hand relaxes in his, after a while, long after Mike has lost track of the minutes ticking slowly by around them. His breathing evens out into something deeper, softer, warm puffs of air ghosting out over the side of Mike’s neck, which does absolutely nothing to tamp down the churning in his stomach or his rapidly increasing lightheadedness. If every body of mass has a proportional amount of gravity, then Will Byers is an abnormality of astrophysics. There’s no reason the slight dip in the mattress should be pulling him in as much as it is, no reason a body this size should be acting on him with a force so strong.

It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be, but Will is asleep, and he’s breathing soft and low across Mike’s neck, and his hand is trapped under Mike’s palm, and against all odds, Mike has drifted impossibly closer to him anyway.

When Mike wakes up, it’s a slow thing. It feels vaguely familiar: coming to in his own bed, with a strange warmth churning in his chest. This dizzying disorientation he hadn’t been able to sleep off after all. The weight of the blankets tangled around his legs, the weak morning light streaming in through the slats in the window, pale and watery. Mike feels like he’s slept through the whole day, and simultaneously like he’s gotten no sleep at all. 

And the most noticeable thing–

Will’s hand is still under his, relaxed. Through hours of sleep, they hadn’t moved enough for it to be consequential, and they still haven’t drifted far enough apart for their fingers to separate. Will’s palm is just as warm against his as it was in the dark. The tips of his fingers are curled up and out, like they’d been wrapped around Mike’s, reaching for him, before he fell asleep.

Mike doesn’t know what to do with this information, but it feels important to have.

“Shit,” he breathes out, to the still, quiet morning air. Will’s hand twitches in his, briefly and entirely unintentionally, and the warmth in Mike’s chest swells into a sudden, burning crescendo.

Shit, he thinks, eyes flying open the rest of the way in an inexplicable panic. Sleep be damned. Shit. Shit.

Mike braves a glance over to where Will is still asleep beside him– face turned upwards, into a particularly soft patch of light, hair splayed, tousled over the pillowcase. The easy, relaxed expression he’s wearing, the way it looks like all the tension and anxiety has been sloughed off his shoulders, every bad thought or feeling expunged completely.

This, Mike thinks faintly, glancing over the pillow creases lining Will’s cheek, is how Will should look all the time. Happy. Peaceful. Calm and safe and content and the embodiment of every other good feeling there is.

His lips are parted just slightly. Mike watches him breathe– in and out and in again– studies the way the corners of his mouth have gone slack with sleep, and thinks about it. He really thinks about it–

If there had been boys in Lenora, Mike thinks, in a vaguely wondrous, vaguely nauseous way– if there had been, that would be fine. That’s fine. If Will had gone to see a movie with one, that is, or even if Will hadn’t even done that much, that would be fine. If he had only just thought about them, if he’d only just talked to them on the phone, or after class in the halls, or in class– if he’d thought about them, and if that had been a possibility for him at all–

That would be fine, is the thing. It’s fine. Anything and everything would be fine, if it made Will happy.

But if it weren’t some stranger– if the boy next to Will in a dark movie theater weren’t some faceless, nameless stranger, existing only in the hypothetical–

If it were–

Mike swallows, hard, and lets himself imagine it. Looks at the way Will’s hair is falling into his eyes, and imagines what it would be like if he were the one to lean over and brush it away. If he were to graze Will’s hand while reaching for the popcorn in a dark theater, if Will talked to him in the halls between classes, voice low and elated. If he were to hold Will’s hand, if he were to reach out and touch the corner of Will’s mouth like he’s been thinking about for the better part of maybe four minutes now, every molecule in his body gravitating with unfathomable force to that singular patch of skin–

If he were to–

Jesus fucking Christ. “Shit,” Mike breathes out again, because he’s not an idiot, and he knows what this means, and whoever these nameless, faceless Lenora boys are, it doesn’t fucking matter. Because Mike is the one lying here, Will’s fingers laced through his own, Will’s hair tickling his neck, and a sickeningly euphoric feeling bubbling up inside him.

And Mike is no genius either, but Will makes a small noise in his sleep, fingers tightening around Mike’s hand, and that feels like something. It’s early in the morning, and the bed is warm, and Mike’s no genius, but it probably doesn’t take one to realize what it means if, all of a sudden– more urgently than he’s ever wanted to do anything else in his life– he really, really wants to kiss Will Byers.

Chapter Text

 “You’re being weird,” is the first thing Nancy says when she sees him.

Mike frowns, stopping dead in his tracks on the basement stairs. “I’m literally not even doing anything!”

“You’re here,” Nancy points out, “instead of hanging out upstairs with Will. By definition, that’s weird.”

“I,” Mike starts, immediately crossing his arms and going on the defensive. “Why is that weird? Maybe I just want to hang out here. With you.”

This definitely was not the most inconspicuous thing Mike could have said. He takes a quick glance around the room: the pullout bed is folded back up into its usual sofa form, blankets and pillows set neatly off to the side. Some of the boxes are missing too, from where they had used to be all piled up around the edges of the room. The spare mattress is nowhere to be seen. Mike rolls his eyes.

Nancy raises her eyebrows, pulls her legs up further into the cushions, and asks, “Do you really?”

“Sure,” Mike lies. “Why not?”

Nancy narrows her eyes. “Where’s Will?”

“I don’t have to do everything with him,” Mike tries weakly, and then, when her eyes narrow even further, he caves. “Fine. He’s upstairs watching The Aristocats with Holly.”

“Really? Holly finally got someone to watch it with her?”  

“Apparently, yeah.”

There’s a sharp clattering noise outside, and Nancy and Mike both spin around to stare at the basement door. It swings open to reveal one Jonathan Byers, a healthy layer of dust all down the front of his jeans, and a bit of a disgruntled look on his face. “Hey,” he says when he sees Mike. “Where’s Will?”

Nancy hides a smile behind her hand as Mike groans. “Why does everybody think we do everything together?”

“Because you do,” Jonathan and Nancy say in unison.

Mike makes a face. “I liked it better when you two were on opposite sides of the country.”

“Will’s watching The Aristocats with Holly,” Nancy tells him, ignoring Mike and folding down the page of her book. “Apparently.”

This much is true enough. Will is watching The Aristocats with Holly– her movie of the week, apparently– because he’s the sort of person that does stuff like this for his best friend’s younger sister. Maybe that makes him better than Mike, who sat through the first twelve minutes before bolting. Because Will is the sort of person who does this, the sort of person who engages Holly in her repetitive pleas for company, which Mike feels kind of bad about, because she doesn’t have a Will. That is to say, anyone even remotely close to her own age to talk to in this whole awful shelter-in-place situation. All her friends from school are either across town or across state lines, leaving Holly with absolutely no one else to guilt into watching The Aristocats with her, and leaving Will Byers, out of the goodness of his own heart, to immediately fall ploy to her schemes.

Maybe that does make him a better person than Mike. Which is fine. Mike can deal with that.

Privately, and much more realistically, the reason Mike bolted probably had less to do with The Aristocats– which is, for all intents and purposes, a fine enough movie, even if it isn’t super his style– and more to do with the cramped sofa, Will’s arm bumping against his, and the way Mike had, entirely unknowingly, spent the last couple of weeks digging his own hilariously metaphorical grave by consistently refusing to keep more than five inches of space between the two of them.

That last one has really been coming around to bite him in the ass, because it means, all of a sudden, that this is the new normal– because he’d kicked up such a fuss about Will sitting closer to him and lying down closer to him and, subsequently, staying closer to him, and now Will is actually doing those things, just like Mike had been intending for him to do earlier, just like Mike had been hoping he’d do earlier. Except now that he’s doing it, Mike is slowly but surely losing his goddamn mind.

And really, when he thinks about it, it’s probably his own fault. He wonders if it’s too late to ask Jonathan to switch back, because the last few days have been a slow torture like no other and Mike isn’t sure how much longer he can live like this.

“You didn’t want to watch?” Jonathan is asking him, 

Mike blinks, then glances rapidly between the two of them. “Sorry, what?”

“The movie,” Jonathan says, still brushing dust off his jeans, leaving light streaks behind on the dark blue denim. “Not your thing?”

“Uh, no,” Mike replies, which isn’t maybe the whole truth but it’s not technically not true. “No, I just, uh– needed a change of scenery.”

“So you came back to the room you’ve been staying in for weeks,” Nancy says flatly.

“Um. Maybe?”

Nancy looks at Jonathan, who looks at Nancy, who looks back at Mike, who looks back at Nancy. Mike seriously, seriously hates this stupid non-verbal communication thing they have going on. 

Something must give at last, because Nancy sighs and unfolds her legs. “Okay,” she says, setting her book off to the side and hauling herself up from the sofa, “you know what? Let’s go.”

Mike blinks again. “Um. Where, exactly?”

“The donation center,” Nancy says. “Jonathan was putting the last of the boxes in the car,” and yeah, okay, that explains why it’s strangely empty in here.

“What more do we even have to donate?” Mike asks, trailing Nancy to the basement door. “I thought we already cleared everything out.”

“There’s been junk lying around here for months, even before everything happened,” Nancy says, very matter-of-factly. “So if you need a change of scenery, you can help me lug it all inside the gym.”

“Um,” Mike says, because when he’d been thinking about a change of scenery, he’d been thinking something more along the lines of hiding in the deep recesses of the house, somewhere far, far away from Will and his insanely maddening magnetism. Somewhere far away and safe and preferably dark and quiet so that if Will did happen to walk in, maybe he wouldn’t even see Mike there at all. Manual labor hadn’t exactly been on the to-do list for today. “Why not get Jonathan to help?”

“I was going to,” Jonathan sighs, toeing off his shoes, “but you seem a little– um. What’s the word?”

“Stir-crazy?” Nancy offers, and Mike sticks his tongue out at her. She rolls her eyes. “Mature.”

“Fine,” Mike says anyway, because he can’t deny it– he is going totally and completely stir-crazy, and the only thing worse than being trapped in a motor vehicle with Nancy is being trapped on a couch with Will. Or, you know, the problem isn’t that it would be worse so much as how much better it would be. So, so, so much better– “Fine,” Mike repeats, “let’s go. But you’re lifting all the heavy boxes.”

“Do you see what I have to deal with,” Nancy says.

“Godspeed,” replies Jonathan.

The backseat is piled high with boxes, and Mike doesn’t even know where they got all this shit from, because some of them are dusty and broken-down and look like they’ve been sitting in the basement since before Mike was born. His seatbelt clicks quietly into place as Nancy puts the key in the ignition. “I can’t believe you had the nerve to call me weird,” Mike says, the second the engine starts running, “because you two are gross.”

“Please,” Nancy scoffs, peeling slowly out of the driveway. “We didn’t even kiss in front of you. We didn’t even hug.”

“Yeah, and I’d appreciate it if we kept it that way,” Mike says.

Nancy’s starting to get a certain look on her face as they start driving down Maple Street, and it’s one that Mike’s become quite familiar with. It’s Nancy’s older sister look, her take charge look, her editor-in-chief of the school news look. It’s the look she had on her face when she announced she’d be applying early decision to Emerson, and it’s the look she had when she announced, months later, that she got in. It’s a scary look, is what it is, but Mike also knows what it means– that Nancy is steeling herself to say something distinctly very Nancy of her, and since she’s got Mike trapped in a moving motor vehicle with no way out, he’s pretty sure what it’s going to be about.

(Him, probably. It’s going to be about him.)

He opens his mouth, ready to say something, anything, in a last-ditch attempt to avoid what’s surely going to be the most painfully awkward conversation of his life, but Nancy beats him to the punch.

“I just want to make sure,” she starts, not taking her eyes off the road, “that you’re doing alright.”

“Oh my god,” Mike groans, long and slow. “I should’ve known this was going to be an interrogation.”

“I asked you one question!” Nancy exclaims. “A very casual, simple question! Because I know you’ve been having a bit of a– a rough time, and–”

“We don’t have to do this,” Mike decides, mortified. “It’s fine. We don’t have to have the feelings talk.”

“It’s not a feelings talk,” Nancy says, looking a bit like this is maybe also the last thing in the world she wants to be doing. “I’m just– I know you weren’t sleeping, for a while, and you seem to be doing a little better now, so–”

She sounds like she’s choosing her words very carefully. Mike looks pointedly away and through the window, where the trees have gone barren and lifeless despite the fact that they’d usually be in full early-summer bloom. Probably every house they pass is empty too. Mike crosses his arms and slumps down in his seat. “Why do you even care?”

“Because I’m your sister?” Nancy says incredulously, the end of the phrase turning up into a question. “And I know we don’t do this a lot, okay, I get that, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still care.”

Her voice is rapidly losing its self-assured edge. Mike remembers her Nancy voice well– from when she’d marched into the living room with her Emerson decision letter and announced in the same breath that she’d already committed, and before that, when she’d told everyone she’d be studying journalism and their dad’s face had started to pull up into something ugly and mean. And from before that, too, even. Way, way before that: at the Byers, monsters swarming the house, announcing that she knew how to use a gun, and Mike thinking maybe there was hope for her after all– his uptight older sister with her sweaters and stockings and the stacks upon stacks of flashcards. If Nancy knew how to use a gun, then maybe anything was possible.

“I mean yeah,” he starts, “I know that.”

“And we don’t have to have a feelings talk,” Nancy agrees, her face starting to do a funny scrunched-up thing that perfectly emulates how Mike is currently feeling. “I promise we don’t have to have a feelings talk. Just– I just wanted to ask if you’re doing okay.”

“I guess,” Mike says, before he can think about that question too long, and maybe give something away with an unnecessarily awkward silence. “Yeah,” and doesn’t feel like a lie when he says it, somehow, even if it doesn’t not feel like a lie either. He is doing okay, that’s true enough, and it’s not like he can tell Nancy about the whole– well, he maybe could but he’s not going to, is the point, not when it feels so weird to even refer to the Will thing as the Will thing, like its own separate, conscious entity. He sniffs, and adds, “Yeah, yeah, you know– everything’s great.”

“That’s good,” Nancy says, sounding more than a little relieved. She doesn’t push, and Mike doesn’t blame her. “That’s good. I know you were having a bit of a hard time there, with everything– and Will, especially–”

“What?” Mike blurts out. Despite everything, panic seeps into his voice anyway as he turns to look at her. “What do you mean?”

Nancy gives him a strange look as they approach a stop sign. Leave it to her to follow traffic safety laws even when the entire town has been evacuated. “After the attack, I mean,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something to a very small child. “And I know you guys already weren’t really talking before that so I’m sure it didn’t help.”

“We were– it was fine,” Mike mutters. “Things were fine.”

“I have eyes, Mike,” Nancy sighs. “And it’s fine, I mean it, we don’t have to have a feelings talk.”

“This sounds an awful lot like a–”

“I mean,” Nancy says, a little louder this time, “I’m just glad you guys are good again. And you seem better too, so– that’s it, we can drop it now, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please,” Mike says, and then, a second later and definitely against his better judgment, adds, “wait, better how?”

“I thought you didn’t want to have a feelings talk!”

“This– it’s not a feelings talk,” Mike sputters, “but if someone’s saying stuff about you then you’re going to want to know where it came from!”

“Happier?” Nancy suggests, shrugging. “You seem– okay, well, you’re always on edge, a little, so that doesn’t say much, but you seem– I don’t know. More like before, you know? Less sulky for sure.”

“I don’t sulk,” Mike protests weakly. “Do I really seem– you know.”

“This sounds an awful lot like a feelings talk,” Nancy warns him.

“Nancy.”

“I’m just glad you’re friends again, is all!” Nancy shrugs. “I know you missed him. That’s all. Seriously.”

“Okay,” Mike says. He slumps even further down in his seat and tries his hardest to not think about Will. Will and his hair, and his eyes, and the way he always smiles kind of lopsided, like the feeling is too much to contain and it starts spilling out of him before he can reign it in. Will and his–

Obviously, it doesn’t work. “And,” Nancy continues, completely forgoing the point of that’s all, and seriously, “if there’s anything you ever want to talk about–”

“This is now definitely a feelings talk,” Mike announces, and Nancy’s mouth presses itself into a thin, unamused line. “Thanks, but I’m good. I promise.”

“Okay,” Nancy says, then falls silent.

The car sputters silently down the road. Mike can hear gravel crunching under them, the remnants of debris and dust scattered aimlessly over the roads and never cleaned up. Nancy keeps a careful ten-two grip on the steering wheel; she doesn’t spare a glance to the decimated buildings they pass by, the rubble and the abandoned recovery efforts, but Mike sees her lower jaw tense up anyway.

One thing’s for sure. If he were Nancy, he wouldn’t be in this predicament, because Nancy would never have let it get to this point in the first place.  Predicament meaning waking up a week ago to the not-so-sudden realization that he wants to kiss Will Byers. Predicament meaning feeling a little bit like his brain is leaking out through his ears. Predicament meaning running away– again. Just like he always is.

Mike feels like he’s been running for a very long time. If he’s being honest, he’s getting kind of tired of it.

And Will had been saying that thing, forever ago, about how Mike and Nancy were supposedly not that different, and it’s not often that Will is so catastrophically wrong about something, but Mike supposes the day had to come eventually. Because here he is, and here Nancy is, and Mike has never in his life felt less related to her than in this moment.

Nancy gets stuff done. Nancy has the presence of mind to burn the Mind Flayer out of a thirteen-year-old body with a hot poker. Nancy’s decisive and self-assured, and Mike is, like, eighty percent sure that if she woke up wanting to kiss someone– gross– she’d probably do it. Or at least she would maybe know what to do about it. Or at the very least, she wouldn’t abandon the person she wanted to kiss to watch an animated movie about cats with her little sister because she was too mortified to be within five feet of them.

Probably.

The point here is that since, apparently, Nancy goes out of her way to make it so fucking obvious that she knows everything, she’d probably know what to do here too, which is why Mike opens his stupid mouth and blurts out, “Listen, can I, um. Ask you something?”

That look on Nancy’s face, right there, is definitely genuine shock. “Sure,” she says, eyes a little wide, probably realizing that it was her own fault they’ve ended up here, given everything she was saying about their conversation-turned-feelings-talk. “Anything, Mike.”

Oh, no. “Well,” he says anyway, twiddling his thumbs, “how are you so– like you just always know what to do.”

“Uh,” Nancy says, as the movie theater whizzes by, “not really, but that aside– I’m not sure I follow.”

“You know,” Mike says, which is unhelpful, he knows, “you always seem to know what you’re doing. How do you do that?”

“Oh,” Nancy blinks in surprise. “Well, I don’t– not quite, like it’s definitely not– where is this coming from?”

Because Mike does not trust himself to answer– not when he has Will on the brain, not when he has kissing Will on the brain– he keeps his mouth shut and shrugs. “Just in general.”

“Well I don’t,” Nancy starts, “always know what to do, I mean.”

“You know enough,” Mike replies, “like with college. You always knew where you wanted to go. And you’re confident and you have, like, goals and stuff, and you love yelling at people and being in charge–”

“Okay, I wouldn’t say yelling at people, necessarily,” Nancy says smoothly, which is a lie if Mike’s ever heard one. “And– I don’t know. I guess I just had to be confident with that stuff, like the school news or at work. No one would ever take me seriously if I wasn’t.”

“Sure,” Mike concedes, waving his hands around, thinking about Will and Nancy and a flaming hot poker, thinking about Nancy shooting Vecna in the fucking face, “but other stuff too, I mean, like– like you’re good with a gun and you think fast on your feet and you don’t run away from your problems.”

“Well,” Nancy says again, a faint trace of amusement creeping into her voice, “I wouldn’t go that far. And I thought we weren’t having a feelings talk?”

“It’s not a– never mind,” Mike mumbles. Figures that Nancy would be difficult about this too. “Forget it.”

“Mike,” Nancy sighs, and then, “well, what problems are you running away from?”

“I said forget it.”

“Is it about El? I thought you guys–”

“Oh my god, I said forget it,” Mike groans, leaning his head back against the headrest. “How much longer to the stupid donation center anyway, we’ve been driving for forever.”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Great.”

After a moment, Nancy adds, “Okay, look–”

“Nancy, I said–”

“Shut up and listen,” Nancy snaps, and then, all at once, “so, Steve told me he wanted to have six kids with me.”

For a split second, Mike thinks he heard her wrong. “I– sorry, he what?”

“Yeah, you heard me right,” Nancy says woefully, looking about as miserable as Mike feels upon learning this fact– or, more specifically, at the sudden realization that Steve Harrington is now about sixty percent less cool than Mike had previously thought him.

Mike squints at her. “Six kids?”

“So we were fighting for our lives,” Nancy starts, “and this, apparently, is what Steve decides is the best and most appropriate moment to tell me he wants to have six kids with me. And a winnebago. Apparently the winnebago was crucial to the fantasy.”

Mike is still trying to pick his jaw up off the floor. “A winnebago?”

“Unfortunately,” Nancy sighs. “And I don’t want six kids with anyone, by the way, and you’d think he’d know that. You’d think anyone who knew me even a little would know that– and you’d think he’d know me a little, given that he was asking me about six kids and a winnebago, but apparently not. And he’s telling me about this, about– oh, and the exact term he used was six little nuggets–” which is maybe one of the most horrifying things Mike has ever heard, and he fights off a full-body shiver– “and all I can think about is my boyfriend. And how I don’t want six kids with anyone, not even him, and– Jesus, I literally haven’t stepped foot onto a college campus yet, so why are kids being brought into the picture? And winnebagos. Jesus.”

“Um,” Mike says, as Nancy pulls into the parking lot of the high school. It’s nearly deserted, like always, but there are a few cars scattered out front, the donate here banner still tacked up on the front doors, fluttering sadly in a stray gust of wind. “I feel like maybe we’re getting a little off-track.”

“I'm getting there,” Nancy assures him. “Anyway, my point was that– oh, I was so mad. Because here I was thinking we were friends again, and that I was making friends, and– and he turns around and whips out a line about six little nuggets. I was so mad. But my point,” she says, taking a breath in what feels like the first time in a very long time, “is that if Steve had the balls to say that to me, then you, Mike, can do anything.”

Mike stares. “Um. Excuse me?”

“If Steve,” Nancy says again, sighing and turning the car off, “found the confidence in him somewhere to say that to me– and he thought it was a great idea, by the way, I could tell, he really thought I was about to, what, drop everything and leap into his arms– anyway. Sometimes you’ve just got to do it. Sometimes you’ve just gotta have so much confidence that you aren’t scared of looking like an idiot.”

“With all due respect,” Mike points out. “I don’t think this is the most helpful example.”

Nancy groans, and lets her head fall forward until it’s resting against the steering wheel. “You had to turn this conversation around into feelings talk territory! I’m doing my best, okay Mike?”

Mike throws his hands in the air. “I didn’t say anything about feelings!”

“Not explicitly, maybe,” Nancy says simply, and then, before Mike can ask what the hell she means by that– “I’m just saying. In the most blunt way I can possibly think of to say this, sometimes you just need the– the–”

“Balls?” Mike suggests.

Nancy does not look impressed. “Fine. Sure.”

“Okay,” Mike says, even though he’s at least thirty percent more confused now than he had been before, but at least he doesn’t have to think about Steve Harrington telling his sister he wanted to have six little kids– nuggets, he grimaces– anymore. “That’s– a little helpful, I guess.”

Nancy gives him a long searching look, fiddling with the car keys with one hand as her eyes dart over Mike’s face. What she’s searching for, Mike doesn’t know, but after a moment, she sighs and says, “Okay, look. No one knows what they’re doing all the time. No one even knows what they’re doing most of the time.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike huffs, trying not to let on to his frustration, “but I mean more like– you shot Vecna in the face.”

Nancy’s lips twitch. “Technically yes, I did.”

“I mean that,” Mike says, waving a hand around in the air, thinking about Will’s thirteen year old body and glowing hot metal, “like– how do you just shoot Vecna in the fucking face and not even– I mean, when you have issues, you figure your issues out. How do I do that?”

“Well,” Nancy says. “Do the issues in question have to do with you shooting someone in the face?”

“Yeah,” Mike replies miserably. “Myself, because this is really starting to feel like a–”

“Mike.”

“Just,” Mike tries again, “I don’t know, how did you and Jonathan end up together?”

“Uh,” Nancy says, glancing away, “still not sure where this is going but, uh, Murray was there, and there was a– a pullout bed, and a guest bedroom, and, uh– why is this relevant again?”

“I don’t know,” Mike admits, then groans, leaning forward until his forehead hits the dashboard. “I’m just feeling– I’ve just been feeling kind of–”

“Descriptive.”

“I’m starting to realize why we don’t talk, actually.”

Nancy laughs, just loud enough for Mike to turn his head to look at her, still slouched over in his seat. “You know, I’m not– I’m flattered that you thought it was cool when I shot Vecna in the face–”

“Yeah, I’m actually really upset I missed that–”

“But,” Nancy continues, rolling her eyes, “I was also supposed to come with you to California over break and I didn’t, because I was too scared to see my boyfriend. So I guess I didn’t run from my problems as much as I sort of just– stayed still about it.”

“Oh,” Mike says. “Why were you–”

“It’s not important,” Nancy dismisses. “Not anymore, anyway, I mean– my point was that I wish I’d just had the– the balls,” she winces, “to see it through anyway. Wish I’d just– what’s the word?”

“Rip off the bandaid?” Mike supplies drily, because apparently the universe is laughing right in his face today, and maybe it was a mistake to come here at all, and maybe he should have just asked his mom if she needed any help with the laundry.

“Bingo,” Nancy snaps her fingers at him. “Rip off the bandaid.”

“Fantastic,” Mike says faintly. “That’s it, by the way. We can be done now.”

“Cool,” Nancy grins, sounding relieved. “Now help me get these boxes out of the trunk.”

“Hey,” Mike frowns, the second the trunk opens. He grabs at something from the box closest to him, and waves it in the air. “Not my Star Wars box set! Nancy, you can’t give away my Star Wars box set!”

The confusion doesn’t clear itself up by the time Mike and Nancy get back home. He’s starting to regret ever having agreed to go in the first place, except then Nancy would have abandoned his poor, beloved Star Wars box set in a donation bin for it to go unseen and unappreciated for who knows how long. So maybe it was a good thing he went, even if now he’s thinking about how lame Steve Harrington actually might kind of be, because apparently he’s got it real bad for Nancy. Steve, with the cool hair and the cool car and the hair and the car and the reputation for doing at Skull Rock whatever it is he does at Skull Rock– that Steve somehow still has it real bad for his sister who snores like a freight train and organizes her clothes by color and used to be a closet Lord of the Rings fan.

Not that Nancy would ever tell him this last part.

“So,” Nancy says, as she collapses on the couch next to Jonathan, who apparently has not moved an inch since she and Mike left. “Does that help?”

Jonathan raises his eyebrows a little curiously, but doesn’t say anything. “Uh,” Mike says, fidgeting a little in place and shooting Jonathan a tentative glance. “The, uh– the Steve thing? Or the Jonathan thing?”

Jonathan’s eyebrows shoot up even higher. “Oh,” he snorts. “The Steve thing.”

“No,” Mike decides, before Jonathan can ask what the Jonathan thing is, “no, the Steve thing did not help. And neither did the– no.”

“You said no feelings talk!” Nancy exclaims. “That was the best I could do without a feelings talk!”

The basement stairs creak under Mike’s feet as he turns to head back upstairs. “Right,” he starts, “except it was still–”

“Jonathan,” he hears someone call out, approximately half a second before the door to the house swings open ahead of him, “have you seen– oh.” Will’s blinking face peers down at him. “Hey, Mike.”

“Hi,” Mike says, feeling suddenly and entirely disproportionately out of breath for how far up the stairs– barely three steps– he’s walked. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Will smiles, and the breathlessness increases tenfold. “I already said that.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know,” Mike stammers, “I mean– sorry.”

“Were you looking for me?” Jonathan calls from behind him.

“Oh,” Will says, eyes not leaving Mike’s. “I was just going to ask if you saw Mike around, but he’s here now.”

“You were looking for me?” Maybe Jonathan and Nancy were right about the codependency after all.

“Yeah,” Will says, fidgeting slightly. Half his body is still hidden from view by the doorframe, but it looks like he’s holding something behind his back. “Yeah, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. I can’t believe you abandoned me.”

Mike leans against the railing. “I wasn’t even gone an hour,” he says. “You’re telling me you didn’t enjoy the quality Holly time?”

Will doesn’t dignify him with a response. “Listen,” he says instead, “can I– talk to you for a second?”

Oh, no. “Sure,” Mike says, despite the sudden series of somersaults his stomach has just launched into. “Yeah, of course.”

“Jesus,” Jonathan mutters from the couch.

“So,” Will says, as soon as the door slams shut behind them. Mike trails him through the kitchen, through the hall, until they’re standing at the foot of the stairs. “Where did you and Nancy head off to?”

“Just for a drive,” Mike says noncommittally. “I started to get a little– I just needed a change of scenery.”

“Can’t believe you abandoned me,” Will says again. He’s leaned up against the bannister, still holding onto something behind his back, tucked out of view. “You said you were going to get water and the next thing I know, it’s been thirty minutes and I’m starting to think you’ve run away.”

Mike coughs. “Me? Run away? Never.”

Will give him a curious look. “Listen,” he starts, expression falling into something more serious.

“Listening,” Mike says, and, as Will shifts from foot to foot, frowns and adds, “hey, what is it?”

“So my mom and I are headed out soon,” Will says, instead of a real answer of any sort, “to the hospital, I mean.”

“Oh,” Mike says, and then– “oh!”

“Yeah,” Will nods, “and I was going to come find you later, but I just finished, and I promised I’d show you the second it was done, so.”

Mike isn’t quite sure where this is leading, but Will looks suddenly very antsy, a little nervous, and Mike doesn’t know what to make of that, doesn’t know what Will could possibly have to feel so nervous about. “Will? What’s up?”

“Um,” Will says, and then there’s a sharp rustling noise of paper against fabric as he thrusts something into Mike’s hands. “Here.”

It’s a drawing. More specifically, Mike realizes, glancing over the page, it’s the drawing Will had been working on earlier, the one he’d so rudely and adamantly refused to let Mike see. And Mike hadn’t seen it then, because he’d been a good friend and resisted the urge to peek inside Will’s sketchbook when he wasn’t looking, but there’s no doubt about it. The contrast of black ink against the white paper is offset by a burst of color, right in the center of the page–

“It’s not the exact same one I was working on,” Will adds after a moment, when Mike doesn’t say anything. He shifts nervously against the bannister, socks sliding across the wood of the floor. “That really was just a sketch, but I redid it and it’s still not much, but–”

The center of the page. The demodog’s five-petal mouth unfurling in rage, the crooked lilt to its posture. The unnatural gray tinge to its skin, shaded in ink. A figure stands next to it, brandishing something long and narrow over one shoulder. Mike can make it out just fine; he remembers how the gun had felt against his palms, cold metal turning warm with body heat and desperation.

“–You know, there’s only so much you can do when you’re stuck somewhere for so long and I was drawing one day and the idea just came to me, so I figured, I don’t know, I might as well–”

What Mike doesn’t remember is the rest, the details giving way to the adrenaline charged fog of it all. He doesn’t much remember the grass under his feet, doesn’t remember the trees in the distance, doesn’t remember standing like that– confident, tall, determined.

“Will,” he hears himself say. “Is this–”

“–what I was drawing earlier, yeah,” Will cuts in, and he’s definitely fidgeting for real now. “I told you I’d show you after it was done, and it’s kind of cheesy, and kind of a dumb idea, I know. But. Yeah.”

Will is talking very fast. Mike is starting to feel a little overwhelmed. “It’s–”

“–not much, I know, I’m sorry, it– I don’t have my paints with me and it’s not nearly as detailed as– I mean, Holly let me borrow some of her colored pencils the other day, so I– it’s really not much, but–”

Mike shakes his head, still staring down at the paper in his hands. He can see every stroke of the pen against the paper, all the quick, assured little lines Will made in sharp, bold angles. The jut of Mike’s elbow, the demodog’s hunched spine. And the softer lines too too, the places where the ink goes sketchy and gray, where Will clearly wasn’t as sure about what he was putting down: the curl of Mike’s hair around the collar of his jacket, the barely-visible hand curled around the barrel of the gun.

He feels, all at once, at a complete loss for words. “No, Will, it’s–”

“And it was kind of rushed too, so–”

“Would you shut up and stop interrupting me for one second?” Mike snaps. 

“Sorry,” Will says, a little sheepishly. “Right. Yes. Sorry.”

“Just give me a minute,” Mike breathes out. Will worries at his lower lip and nods silently at him. “I– is this–”

“Yeah,” Will chimes in, even though he’d just agreed to be quiet. Maybe a good thing, because Mike’s words, all of a sudden, simply aren’t coming to him. “Yeah, it’s, um. You and the demodog. Sorry, maybe you don’t want to think about that, actually, I didn’t even ask–”

Mike shakes his head again. “No, seriously, it’s– do you really remember it like this?”

If Will doesn’t remember, if this whole thing is a hallucination brought on by blood loss, that’s one thing. It would explain the grace Will’s drawn him with, a sort of ease that Mike can’t ever remember carrying around with him in actuality. It would explain why Will’s drawn him like he’s something important, something worth drawing. Something brave, confident– something like a protector.

“I mean, yeah.” Will laughs, but it’s a little tight. “Some of the details, they’re a little hazy, especially after you called Jonathan, and I don’t remember anything after he showed up, but– no, I remember this really well. I remember– well, it hurt like a motherfucker, for one, I'll tell you that.”

Mike laughs, throat tight. “But no,” Will adds after a moment, “I just remember that I was watching you and I was thinking, deep down, that I should be a lot more freaked out than I really was, but I just felt so– what’s the word– I don’t know, safe, maybe?”

“Safe?” Mike stares at him. “Really? While you were bleeding out?”

Will shrugs, like this is obvious, like Mike is the crazy one for even suggesting hesitation at the thought. “Yeah.”

“You really see me this way?” There’s no hiding it now, how choked-up he sounds. Thankfully, Will doesn’t say anything. Mike clears his throat and tries again. “I make you feel safe?

“Are you kidding?” Will laughs in disbelief, eyes a little wide. “Of course you do. You always have, Mike. Even– um.”

“What?”

“I just,” Will starts again, fingers drumming restlessly against the wood behind him. Mike takes a step closer, watches Will press himself up against the bannister to accommodate him, watches Will tilt his head up to keep eye contact. His next breath in is a little shaky, just enough for Mike to hear it in the proximity. “You have to know that you saved me, okay? You did that. And everyone else too, my mom, Jonathan, Dustin and Lucas– but when I was down there, especially when the Mind Flayer had me, and I was in my– um, my now-memories, I kept calling for you. I didn’t know if you could ever hear me but I kept trying.”

It’s a nice thought, and despite himself, despite the uncertainty and the rapid tightening sensation all down his throat and chest, the idea of it makes him feel warm all over– Yes, Mike thinks, growing warmer by the second, yes, it was me he was calling for. “Yeah,” Mike says, a little weakly, looking up to meet Will’s eyes, “yeah, no, I heard you. On Halloween, especially, I just– you disappeared out of nowhere and then I couldn’t find you and then I heard– yeah.”

“Oh,” Will says, shoulders hunched up by his ears. “Okay. Cool.”

“You–” Mike says, a little out of breath, “is this really how you see me?”

Will blinks earnestly up at him. There’s a blush blooming high on his cheekbones, a pretty pink. His hand falls from the bannister behind them, hanging limply at his side. “Yeah, of course,” he says softly, and then, kind of all at once, “but– I don’t think it’s a secret how I see you, Mike. I think I made it pretty clear with the first– um.”

He cuts himself off again, eyes going wide and lips parting in surprise. The pink dusting his cheeks rapidly gives way to a deep crimson, and Mike’s train of thought comes screeching to a halt.

That sounds like– that sounds like something, for sure, even if Mike can’t quite put his finger on it. I don’t think it’s a secret how I see you, Will had said, just now, and Mike feels his brain get caught there, snagging on the edges of the words and not letting go. It’s not a secret, Will had said, but whatever it is, it’s also not as obvious as Will maybe seems to think it is.

The first–

Mike thinks back to the backseat of a van, what feels like a hundred lifetimes ago– thinks about the feel of canvas flexing under his hands instead of paper, paint strokes instead of ink. The same blush adorning Will’s cheeks, the same wide eyes, the same steady gaze, watching for Mike’s reaction. It’s not a secret, Mike thinks giddily, eyes darting between Will’s. Realization nags at him, prickling and incessant. It’s not a secret. It’s not a secret. It’s –

If it’s not a secret– if Will made it pretty clear–

“…Will?”

“Sorry,” Will blurts out, eyes widening even further as he waves his hands in front of his face. He looks mortified. “Sorry, I should– I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, Will,” Mike shakes his head, voice already taking on a frantic edge, “wait–”

“No, sorry, I wasn’t–”

“No, seriously, it’s fine–”

“Just forget I said anything, okay, just–”

“Will, wait,” Mike presses, leaning in and grabbing Will’s wrist with his free hand, just to still him. Will freezes immediately under him, unblinking. It doesn’t seem much like he’s breathing, and Mike isn’t sure how he’s breathing either, but it feels a bit like he’s moving on autopilot– anything, everything to get Will to calm the fuck down. “Just wait a second,” Mike pleads, and Will tenses, before giving him a quick, barely discernible nod that Mike takes as a go-ahead. “Did you mean–”

“Mike,” Will says. He can’t seem to meet Mike’s eyes. “Don’t. Please.”

Mike opens his mouth to say something, anything, when footsteps sound at the top of the stairs. He drops Will’s hand and takes a quick step back, just as Joyce comes into view.

“Hey, you two,” Joyce is saying, smiling down at them with the car keys in one hand. “Will, you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Will says quietly, still frozen in place. And then, snapping quickly out of it, he steps out to the side and away, until Mike is left with cold, empty space in front of him. “Right now? Yeah! Yeah, let’s go.”

“Will,” Mike tries again, shooting Mrs. Byers what he hopes looks like a convincing smile, “hang on one second–

Will still won’t look at him. He tugs his shoes on in silence. “I’ll– um. I’ll see you when I get back, yeah?”

“Yeah, of course, but– yeah,” Mike says weakly. It’s no use. Will gives him a tight half-smile and a wave before slipping out the door.

Mike stares down at the paper in his hand.

I don’t think it’s a secret how I see you, Will had said. Mike traces over the outline of drawing-Mike, tall and proud and brandishing the gun like it’s a sword and not already a gun, like he had any real idea how to use it, like he wasn’t halfway to throwing up or passing out or both. He thinks about the feeling of Will’s blood on his hands, thinks about being the one to, somehow, make Will feel safe anyway. Thinks about the silence that had followed them from through state lines, the way Will had avoided him entirely after El woke up again. Thinks about himself, sword and heart-adorned shield in hand, taking down a dragon, leading the party, inspiring them, and making Will feel like he’s better for being different.

Mike thinks he might be getting it now. He smooths out a minute crease in the paper and leans bodily against the bannister, feeling a little like he got all the wind knocked right out of him. Mike thinks he might be getting it, and maybe it was on him for not getting it before, and maybe Will was right. Maybe, even after everything, it was never really a secret after all.

It’s a surprisingly pleasant evening.

That’s the first thing Mike notices when he gets up to his room. It’s not nearly late enough for the sun to start setting yet, not at this time of the year, but it’s actually visible for once, hovering just above the line of trees in the distance.

This, coupled with a sudden yet desperate need for fresh air, is how Mike finds himself here– window hoisted up as far up as it’ll go, both legs swung over the windowsill and planted firmly on the strip of roof protruding just underneath. He has to lean forward a little, in order to avoid clipping his head on the last inch of the windowpane– because it apparently wasn’t designed with last year’s growth spurt in mind– but it’s worth it. Finally– finally– he might actually be able to hear himself think.

Of course, the moment he gets up here is the exact moment when thoughts fail him entirely.

Here are the things Mike Wheeler knows:

At fifteen, it’s admittedly pretty limited. Mike knows math and he knows physics and he knows how to struggle through the original version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Mike knows about alternate dimensions, he knows about fighting monsters, he knows how to use a gun– upside down and without once pulling the trigger, but using a gun nonetheless– and he knows what it feels like to have someone’s blood running all over his hands. He knows what Max looks like in a coma, he knows how it feels to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to breathe, he knows what it looks like when his best friend dies in front of him. Twice.

He knows a million and one ways to hurt the people he cares about, he knows a million and two ways to hurt Will Byers.

He also knows, beyond a shadow of doubt, what this feeling is; Mike is a lot of things, but he’s not a complete idiot. Or maybe he is, to have gone so long without knowing, for having gone this long with Will right in front of him and still not parsing it together. 

Things Mike Wheeler doesn’t know:

Mostly everything else, if he’s being honest. He doesn’t know when the world will stop ending. He doesn’t know if he’ll live to see it, if it ever does. He doesn’t know if Will was saying what Mike thought he was saying– if the panic and the fear and the immediate backtracking meant what Mike thought it might mean, or if it meant something else entirely. He doesn’t know– even though he has an inkling, even though the hope is there, strong enough to make him feel sick on it– if Will was saying–

“Shit,” Mike says aloud, and closes his eyes. It seems too easy, after everything they’ve been through. This seems too easy for someone like him– after he went and fucked everything up, over and over again, after he put the distance and the doubt and the fear between them, after the hurting and the apologies and everything else. He shouldn’t get to have it this easy. He shouldn’t always get the things he wants.

Selfishly, the hope swells up inside him anyway.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring down at the paper in his hand, kicking aimlessly at the tiling of the roof under his feet, but all at once, the silence hanging over Maple Street is cut through by the soft hum of an engine. He hears the front door open a minute or two later, quiet conversation in the landing, and then footsteps, slowly ascending the stairs.

They stop just outside his room, waiting. “Hey,” Mike says, even before a knock can sound, even without turning around. “You can come in, you know.”

“Still your room,” Will says, and Mike turns in time to catch him leaning against the wall, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders pulled up to his ears. He looks about as on edge as Mike feels. “Don’t want to intrude.”

“You could never,” Mike says, truthfully and a little pleading too, desperate in its undertone– please intrude. Please always, always be there.

Will gives him a tentative smile in return, which doesn’t do much to quell the nauseating churning in his stomach. “If you say so,” he says, and, as Mike pats the open spot on the windowsill next to him, slides awkwardly into place. The height difference seems to be working in Will’s favor for once; he doesn’t have to hunch over like Mike does. There’s barely enough room for the both of them here– growing teenage boys, all limbs and stilted, uncertain movements. They’ve grown too much to do this, to be all squeezed into a space together, joints knocking awkwardly against each other, but Will doesn’t seem to mind.

Mike swallows, and looks away.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, partly in order to fill the silence, and partly because it’s true– he has been thinking, even if half of his thoughts are completely indecipherable and the other half are too mortifying to ever say aloud.

“That could be dangerous,” Will laughs, but it falls a little flat. He clears his throat. “Sorry. Go on.”

“I,” Mike starts, then it hits him– that Will just got back from the hospital. He spins around, and Will’s eyes widen in momentary surprise as Mike adds, “Wait, are you–”

“Oh,” Will says, and then his eyes clear in realization and he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I mean– the stitches are out. Everything looks good, so I guess it’s over.”

“Over,” Mike echoes. He feels strangely hollow, at the knowledge that it’s over, that they’ve made it through another terrible ordeal– even if it was mostly Will who had to make it through, but it’s the principle of the thing. They’re alive, and Will is alive, and he’s more than that, actually; he’s wide-eyed and a little pink in the cheeks and he’s fidgeting in place, like he can’t decide if he wants to lean into where their thighs are pressed together, where Mike’s hand is planted firmly on the wood of the windowsill and brushing against his, or if he wants to lean away. Will is more than just alive; he’s warm and real and his hair is tousled, and his white t-shirt is wrinkling up where he keeps toying with the hem of it. He’s beautiful, magnificent in the early evening sun, and the simple fact of the continued end of the world around them does not make Mike want to kiss him any less.

This isn’t about him, though. This isn’t about Mike or his pathetic inability to pick up on things that are right in front of him. This is about Will, and Will’s terrible ordeal, the one Will made it to the other side of. Will, who’s watching him intently, a little tentatively, like he’s scared Mike might up and bolt if he says the wrong thing.

“How are you feeling?” Mike prompts, when it becomes clear Will isn’t going to say anything on his own.

“Oh,” Will says again, and then shrugs. “I mean, pretty normal, I guess. Just the scar left. Wanna see?” he adds.

“Obviously,” Mike says, because obviously. Will turns so he’s looking Mike dead on and hikes his shirt up, just like he’d done before. Unlike last time, though, there’s a noticeable absence of the sterile white gauze, the medical tape, the air of uncertainty. Unlike last time, Mike can see it– the pink line cutting across Will’s torso, angry, sharp and jagged, but finally, finally harmless.

“There you go,” Will announces, shooting a cursory glance down at it himself, then looking back up. “Underwhelming, I know.”

Mike isn’t so sure about that. He hadn’t ever known that so much blood could come out of a wound this size, of a person this small. The first time Will had died, there had been no blood. And he’d seen Bob die after that, and Billy, and the agent from Lenora, but they were all big men. A lot more adult, a lot more grown up. Nothing like Will.

But then again, Will isn’t the same as he was three years ago. Things are different now. Will is more grown up now.

Mike breathes out, low and slow. “Wow,” he says, as Will lets his t-shirt fall back into place. Eloquent, he knows.

“Yeah,” Will says, in simple agreement. “So. That’s it, then.”

A breeze dances through the air around them, warm and entirely unexpected. Mike grips harder onto the paper in his hand, so it doesn’t catch and fly away. Will’s eyes follow the movement, and he shifts in place before glancing away.

When Mike opens his mouth, what comes out is, “You’re still thinking about it.”

It’s not really a question, but he hadn’t meant it as an accusation either. Will flinches slightly at the words anyway, leaning decidedly away from Mike after all, as if the meager six inches of space he’s just put in between them is going to amount for anything at all. “I– sorry,” Will says, sounding equal parts defensive and apologetic. “I shouldn’t have– any of it, I mean, and it was a dumb idea, I’m sorry, I just– I picked up my sketchbook and I didn’t mean to draw it, but it just sort of appeared on the page anyway–”

“Will,” Mike says, because Will’s voice is starting to pick up in both speed and pitch, the way it does sometimes when he’s upset. He goes to put a hand on Will’s shoulder, but immediately thinks better of it. He elects to put it back down on the wood of the panel underneath them. Safely neutral territory. “Hey, are you kidding? I love this. It’s insane, Will. Anything you ever make is insane. I can’t believe you– just wow.”

Will shrugs again. “It’s barely more than a sketch,” he says quietly. “I just thought– it’s selfish of me, I know, I’m sorry– I just thought that maybe it would make you feel better about the whole thing, which was a bit of a long shot, but I figured why not, you know? I thought that maybe if I got a do-over, maybe this time I could get it right, say the right thing–”

“You mean–”

Will’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what I mean, Mike.” He keeps his hands in his lap, ignores the empty space by Mike’s outstretched fingers. “And it’s fine, we don’t have to talk about it. I promise.”

No, Mike thinks, faintly and from what feels like very far away. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to him. Mike doesn’t get the things he wants like this– without fuss or turmoil or pain. Especially not Will– Will, his best friend. Will, who he’s hurt so many times before. Will, who keeps letting him back in, over and over and over again.

“Can you,” Mike swallows, “can you just– what are you trying to say?”

Will presses his mouth into a hard, thin line. “Mike,” he says, so, so soft, “please don’t make me say it.”

Mike doesn’t think Will gets it. Will seems to think it’s a game, or something– that maybe Mike is toying with him, or dragging this out for kicks. Will seems to think that Mike doesn’t want to talk about it, seems to think that Mike hasn’t been thinking about it. Seems to think that Mike is–

That he’s–

Mike shakes his head, opens his mouth, pauses, then promptly scrambles backwards out of the window. He tumbles onto the floor of his room with a soft groan of protest, and immediately makes for the bed.

Will twists to look down at him, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“Just wait.” Mike holds up a finger, rifling around underneath, fingers brushing against old boxes and textbooks and finally emerging, victorious, a moment later. “Here,” he says, throwing his legs over the windowsill and narrowly avoiding braining himself on the window above him.

Will’s lips twitch as he takes the proffered paper. It’s nothing special– just lined paper, folded into thirds– but Mike knows exactly what’s inside. How could he forget? He spent sleepless nights mulling these over, the guilt soaking deep into his skin. Will flips it over, catches sight of the address scrawled in messy blue ink over the cover, and his mouth drops open. “Mike, I–”

“I know you said you never read these,” Mike starts, as Will looks hesitantly over at him, “and I believe you. But I think you should read them. Or one, at least. I think it’ll help.”

“Help?”

“Just read it,” Mike insists, before he can chicken out, and tries his hardest to resist the urge to bury his head in his hands and crawl away.

As it is, it’s an excruciating thing. The original plan was to avoid all eye contact until Will says something first, because the idea of looking at him is, suddenly, on par with looking directly into the sun. Mike chances a glance over anyway, catching sight of Will’s parted lips, eyebrows upturned in confusion, eyes darting across the page. “I don’t–” Will looks up a minute or two later, looking even more confused than when he’d begun reading, “–sorry,” he adds, “I don’t think I understand?”

So he’s going to make Mike say it.

“I– you know El and I broke up,” Mike starts slowly, and Will nods. “Well, the big fight we had– back in Lenora, I mean, at your house, before she left– I couldn’t tell her I loved her.”

“Right,” Will says. The paper is getting creased in his grip, and he smooths it out against his leg. “Right, yeah.”

“Well,” Mike wrings his hands, “she was upset because I couldn’t write it either.”

Will’s eyes flick, almost imperceptibly, to the bottom of the page. “Right,” he repeats, quieter this time. “Okay, so–”

“And,” Mike goes on, “when I was writing to El– it was hard, thinking of what to say. I kept feeling like I was lying to her because I left so much out. About the Party, about everyone, about– how I was doing. I didn’t want her to know. It didn’t feel right.”

Will looks back down at his lap and asks, far too casually to really be all that casual, “How were you doing?”

“Not good,” Mike admits, rubbing his palms against his jeans. God, his hands are so sweaty. His heart might be beating loud enough for Will to hear when he adds, “But you already know that. Because I wrote about it. In that letter.”

“You did,” Will says faintly. “I just– I’m sorry, I’m just feeling a little lost.”

Will’s going to make him say it. Will is definitely going to make him say it.

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, “that I didn’t send these. And I’m also sorry I let you think I never wrote them. I guess–” Oh, god, his palms are so, so sweaty. The intensity with which Will is looking at him isn’t helping. Mike runs his hands over the denim covering his thighs, again and again. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was scared.”

Something in Will’s expression softens. He leans back, sets the paper down on the floor by the window, and leans forward again, towards Mike. He places a comforting hand on Mike’s knee and squeezes, once. “Scared? Of what?”

Will is going to make him say it. “Of how hard things were with El,” Mike says slowly, trying to think about anything but where they’re touching, “but how easy they were with you.”

Will blinks. “Oh. You mean–”

“I mean,” Mike interrupts him, head spinning in a way that has nothing to do with how high off the ground they are. He covers Will’s hand with his, winds their fingers together, and hears Will inhale sharply next to him. “I mean– fuck, I’m sorry, I don’t really know how to–”

“Mike,” Will says, voice ragged. “What are you trying to say?”

Will is going to make him say it. Mike glances down at their joined hands and takes a deep, steadying breath. “Sometimes,” he starts, “I feel like my brain is going at a different speed than everyone else’s. Like, sometimes it’s going too fast and sometimes it’s way, way too slow.” 

He looks up. Will nods at him and squeezes his hand. “Yeah?”

Oh, god. Mike brings his legs back over the windowsill until they’re planted firmly inside his room, then exhales, moving closer until the small semblance of a gap between them has closed. Until he and Will are facing each other, until he’s no longer holding Will’s hand, but gripping him loosely around the wrist. Until Will’s leaning up against the wall, eyes wide, faces mere inches away from Mike’s.

He’s definitely not breathing.

Mike doesn’t know if he is either.

“Sometimes,” Mike says. His voice is hoarse and his throat is drier than he can remember it being in a long, long time. “Sometimes I’m not good at seeing what’s right in front of me.”

“That’s okay,” Will says. He looks absolutely terrified. “What–”

“And I should have known before,” Mike continues. Will lets out a shaky exhale, warm as it ghosts over Mike’s cheek. His eyes flutter closed, just once, for barely a second, before they snap open again. “And maybe– I think I did, for a while, even if I didn’t know that I knew–”

“Mike,” Will says quietly. His eyes glance downwards, so quickly that Mike almost misses it. “You– I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to spell it out for me, okay?”

Christ. Jesus fucking Christ.

Mike is going to have to say it.

“I’m saying,” Mike says. His voice is shaking, which is entirely embarrassing on his part, and his hands might be shaking, and his whole body, actually, feels like it might be shaking. He brings the hand on Will’s wrist up, up, up, until it’s settled over his waist– over the worn cotton of the white t-shirt, over the scar, over the remnants of blood and shock and awful muscle memory– and tugs lightly at the fabric there. The shirt doesn’t offer much of a barrier; Will is warm under him, burning, caustic and a thousand degrees. He tenses slightly, but Mike doesn’t pull his hand away. “I’m saying–” Mike tries again, “I’m going to do something so stupid– so, so stupid– and I need you to tell me not to.”

Will’s always been a bit of a moral compass for him anyway, but now, with Will’s hand coming to rest on Mike’s thigh– gripping, like maybe the touch is as grounding for him as it is for Mike, like maybe he needs it just as badly as Mike does– it doesn’t feel like he’s guiding Mike anywhere near reason. “I can’t tell you that,” he whispers, eyes half lidded, like he’s fighting to keep them open, “until I know what it is.”

Mike bites back a smile, leaning in until their foreheads rest against each other. Will lets him– Will lets him, and this on its own, the simple allowance Will is offering him, feels like an answer. Will’s thumb is tracing small circles over Mike’s leg, and the touch feels abrasive, maddening, despite the hesitancy. “You’re being difficult on purpose,” Mike accuses him, and up close, he can almost feel Will’s answering grin, he can feel the resulting puff of air from his laugh, he can trick himself, maybe, into feeling Will’s pulse ticking away under his palm.

“Maybe,” Will replies lightly. Up close, Mike can hear him fighting to keep his voice even, catches the hitch of his breath as he slips a thumb under the hem of his shirt. He’s tense, Mike notices, a little bit, despite everything.

“Hey,” Mike whispers, bringing his other hand to Will’s other side, slips careful fingertips under his shirt there too, just barely– and he’s warm, so warm– “it’s me. It’s just me.”

Will nods, then relaxes. “Yeah,” he says, eyes fluttering closed. If Mike tilted his head just a little, if Mike moved a hair’s width closer, if he breathed out just a little too forcefully, they’d be kissing. “Just say it, Mike.”

“I love you,” Mike obliges, and Will’s eyes fly open in surprise. Oh, god. “And I– can I–”

“You– yeah,” Will gets out. It’s a little choked, a little stunned, and his restless hands have finally stilled, and he’s warm and he’s real and he’s so, so alive– he’s living and breathing and alive– and it’s for this last reason, mostly, that Mike leans in and kisses him.

He’s even warmer up close, is the first thing Mike thinks, immediately thrown by the warmth of Will’s lips under his, the warmth of him under Mike’s hands, the warmth of Will’s hands, where they’ve drifted over to clutch at Mike’s forearms. It’s followed closely by the entirely unreal knowledge and the instantaneous realization that he’s kissing Will Byers– kissing Will Byers– and Mike’s brain immediately stops forming words.

Will is kissing him. He’s kissing him– or, more accurately, he’s letting Mike kiss him, which feels like it should maybe be the same thing on paper but is nowhere close in real life. Will is letting Mike kiss him, because Will’s lips haven’t really started moving and they’re sitting at this strange, entirely impractical angle, but Will is letting him do this– Will is letting Mike have this– he’s letting Mike press him into the sliver of wall bordering the open window, he’s pressing back, all closed mouth and unsteady force, because he’s never–

Oh, Mike thinks, oh, all at once entirely out of his own head with how quickly the thought bowls him over. Will’s never kissed anyone, because there were no girls in Lenora– and Mike had never gotten around to asking about the boys in Lenora, but if there were, they weren’t important– and there was no one who mattered but now there’s Mike. Mike is the one who gets to do this– Mike is the one who gets to run a thumb along the scorching skin of his stomach; Mike is the one who gets to feel Will shiver underneath him. Mike is the one who knows Will like the back of his own hand, has the shape of him memorized by sight alone, the sound of his breathing as he falls asleep, the way he eats his cereal in the morning, and now Mike is the one who knows what it’s like to kiss him.

The thought is, all of a sudden, entirely too much. Mike presses in harder, and Will lets out a quiet noise of surprise, hands flying up to the sides of Mike’s face, the touch hesitant but wanting all at once. Mike slips a hand around to Will’s back, feels a sliver of raised scar tissue against his fingertips, knows how Will Byers is made of flesh and blood and scars and bone, knows how he’s California sun and ink stained hands, and he’s the sound of seventies rock playing over a radio and bicycle chains rattling down a driveway, and he’s Mike’s best friend; he’s a body that carries too much gravity for its size and Mike is coming to the realization that maybe he’s been falling into him for his whole life.

He pulls away for a second, just enough for their mouths to separate, until they’re breathing the same air, lips barely touching. Will is burning, burning, burning– flushed a deep red, eyes fluttering open. “Will,” Mike whispers. His voice is embarrassingly hoarse for how long it’s been, but it doesn’t seem like Will is in a place to say anything. He looks stunned, a little wondrous, lips parted in surprise. Mike takes in a breath, feels Will’s hands still against his jaw, and says, quietly, “Is this okay?”

For a second, Will doesn’t react, just taps careful fingertips against Mike’s face, like he’s making sure Mike hasn’t dissipated under him, that he’s still real. Mike is just starting to think he’s made some awful, terrible mistake– that somehow, he’s misread every sign leading him here, misinterpreted everything Will had been saying, even when he’d been all but spelling it out for him– when a sound tears its way out of Will’s throat, desperate and stilted, and he’s pitching forward and crashing their mouths together again.

Mike doesn’t have time to brace himself. The impact pushes him back, back, back, and his head makes immediate contact with the bottom part of the window. He lets out a small gasp of pain, feels it bloom sharp and bright at the base of his skull. By the time Will pulls away enough to get anything out, already threading a soothing hand through Mike’s hair– “Sorry, sorry, shit, sorry,” he says, wide-eyed and apologetic– Mike is already shaking his head.

“Don’t,” he gasps, tugging Will back in. “Don’t ever– don’t do that,” and maybe his brain isn’t running at top speed right now, and maybe he’s a little down for the count, but Mike doesn’t know how much of that can be attributed to a minor head injury instead of the simple fact of Will kissing him. Will, who’s everywhere, whose hands are fisted in Mike’s hair, who’s leaning his whole body weight forward and into Mike, like every inch of space between them is physically hurting him. Will’s grip on him turns insistent, reassuring and solid instead of tentative, and Mike hangs on for all he’s worth. It’s insane, this feeling– he feels like a sparking livewire, and everywhere they touch feels electric, alive, like Will is a conductor and Mike is just along for the ride.

His year and a half of adolescent relationship experience, Mike is realizing, has absolutely nothing on this. Kissing had been a weird, alien sensation, and he’d resigned himself to putting up with it because that’s what you do, when you date someone. But this is different– so, so different– and it’s never felt anywhere close to this before, because Will is Will, and he’s running his fingers down Mike’s jaw again, and he’s kissing him back, sweet and slow, hesitant but unashamed, and he’s got a hand on the back of Mike’s head so he doesn’t, presumably, give himself a concussion again. And it’s this, the last thing, the feeling of Will’s palm curled protectively through his hair, the solid weight of his body under Mike’s hands, the careless thoughtfulness of it all, that makes Mike pull away for a second time to stutter, “Wait– hang on–”

Will looks like he can’t decide whether to be pissed off or worried. “What?” he asks, breathless. His lips are so, so red. And then again, at Mike’s sudden inability to form words– “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, feeling inexplicably out of breath. Will’s hand is still in his hair, and his lips are still so red, and his shirt is all wrinkled up at the hem where Mike had been grabbing onto him. He clears his throat and manages, “Just– we should probably get out of the window, I don’t want to– um. Fall off the roof.”

“Oh,” Will says, and then, louder, “oh! Yeah, yeah, good call.”

Mike stands up, reaches a hand out, and hoists Will through, who stumbles onto the floor of the room behind him and gets awkwardly to his feet.

“Um,” Mike says, still holding one of Will’s hands. His heart might actually be going one million miles per hour, and he’s surely as red as Will looks right now, if not more. “So–”

“You kissed me,” Will says faintly, bringing a hand up to his lips– which are still, Mike notices distantly, very red.

“Yeah,” Mike hears himself say, “I did, yeah.”

Will blinks. “You said you love me,” he says, fingers still lingering at his lips. The disbelief in his voice is maybe the worst thing Mike can imagine– Will being told someone loves him, and not immediately accepting it as truth. “Do you– because if you’re kidding, if this is some sort of a joke and you don’t mean it–”

“Why would I ever joke about this,” Mike says, and he’d be more offended about it, about the fact that Will could ever think he’d lie about this, about wanting him, if Will’s eyes weren’t wide, scared, pupils blown in acute wonder. “Of course I do, Will, I don’t know how I couldn’t.”

“Really?” Will asks again.

Mike rolls his eyes. “I kissed you,” he repeats, and Will smiles, pleased.

“You did,” he agrees.

Mike doesn’t know how he managed to keep it in for so long. All this time he'd been so totally unaware, fighting so hard against something he hadn’t even known he’d been fighting, and he supposes this is what happens when you keep a secret too long, even without knowing: it starts fighting its way back out of you with fire and blood and fury. He feels hysterical laughter bubbling up inside him, bright and giddy, and he wants to catch Will around the waist again, he wants to press their lips together again, he wants to kiss him breathless until Will never says anything in that tone again– surprised, in shock, like Mike loving him was ever, ever in question. “I love you,” he says again, and for good measure, “I love you. I love you. I lo–”

“Oh,” Will laughs lightly, and it turns into a bit of a coughing noise. He sounds a little overwhelmed, in a way that Mike can’t help but be endeared by. “I love you too, Mike. Of course.”

He’d kind of been getting the idea, while Will had been kissing him, that his feelings might be at least somewhat reciprocated, but it does nothing to curb the rush of relief flooding his veins, sickly sweet and heady. “Yeah?” he asks, and the relief is seeping into his voice, too, now, and it comes out sounding a little like he might cry– which would be more embarrassing if Will’s face wasn’t doing something very similar.

Will drops his head into his hands with a soft groan. “I thought you knew,” he says, muffled by his fingers. He shakes his head, rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands, and groans again. “I’m so sorry, Mike, I thought you figured it out forever ago, and I thought that was why you were being– I don’t know. You really didn’t know before?”

“Not until you kind of told me,” Mike laughs. He reaches forward, tugs at Will’s wrists until he lowers his hands from his face. Will blinks up at him, eyes big and more green than usual in the evening light. “You were kind of giving me mixed signals, man.”

“You–!” Will stares, incredulous. “I was the one giving you mixed signals?”

“Yes!” Mike exclaims. “You started avoiding me and getting mad at me and–”

“You told my sister you loved her,” Will counters, “in front of me,” which, of course, shuts Mike right up, because yeah, right, yes, he had most definitely done that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, going for sincerity as well as he can manage, which is, admittedly, getting more difficult with every second that Will keeps looking at him like this, “about everything, I mean– that it took me so long to get it together.”

“That’s okay,” Will murmurs, taking a slow step closer. The floorboards of the room creak softly under them as he moves, bringing his hands up and around Mike’s neck, until their faces are only a couple of inches apart again. “You got it eventually, that’s what matters.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees, and then, spurred on by Will’s thumbs stroking down the nape of his neck, and the unabashed way Will is staring at his mouth, adds, “and I’m going to kiss you again, by the way, so if you’re not on board with that feel free to tell me to fuck off, or something–”

“No chance,” Will whispers, and meets him in the middle.

Mike finds himself stumbling backwards, and it’s definitely a good thing they got out of the window, because this would have been an embarrassing way to die– but fulfilling, nonetheless, because the cause of death would, quite literally, have been being kissed by Will Byers– but now the bed catches him right behind the knees and he falls backwards. The mattress squeaks in protest as Will tumbles over and onto him with a small noise of alarm, and Mike is just starting to wonder if Will got hurt when he smiles against Mike’s mouth, huffing out a bright, pleased laugh. That’s addicting, Mike thinks dizzily, it’s dangerous. Everything about this is dangerous: the eagerness with which Will kisses him back, how his hands are moving so fast they’re everywhere all at the same time, the noise that escapes Will’s mouth when Mike bites at his lower lip, wrecked and half-formed, entirely unbidden. Dangerous, dangerous, all of it.

Mike lets himself think about it, just how long Will has known he’s wanted this; how long Will has been thinking about putting his hands in Mike’s hair, how long Will has been hoping Mike might do this, how long Will has wanted this even before knowing he did, an innate sort of desire. Will, who kisses like he does everything else– stubborn and energetic, with all his attention. Mike can’t keep the smile off his face, even as it steers the kiss into something clumsy and uncoordinated, contagious in the way he feels Will start grinning against his mouth. He has to fight to keep them from drifting apart, and manages one, two, three chaste kisses to Will’s lips, all teeth and laughter and a helium-light euphoria in his chest, before the sound of footsteps floats up the stairs.

Will is off him in a flash. They’re laying side by side by the time a knock sounds and the door opens, and Mike tilts his head backwards on the mattress to catch sight of whoever it is. Jonathan Byers stares at them, looking thoroughly unimpressed even while upside down.

“Hey,” he says after a moment of painful silence. “Just, uh– dinner’s ready, whenever you guys are.”

“Cool,” Will says, his voice teetering on the edge of a crack. Mike bites down on his lip to keep from laughing, and promptly contemplates jumping out the open window.

He knows what this must look like. Will’s hair is a mess, where Mike had just had his hands in it, and his cheeks are flushed and his lips are kissed red, and Mike is sure he looks the same. Jonathan Byers is no idiot, and– unfortunately for Mike, whose sister Jonathan is currently dating– definitely no stranger to the just-been-kissed look.

“Hey,” Mike says anyway, still looking at him upside down. He waggles his fingers in the air for good measure. “What’s up?”

Will lets out a snort next to him, which quickly turns into a stifled cough. Jonathan opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then clearly thinks better of it. “It’s tuna noodle casserole again,” he says, instead of whatever he’d been about to say. “Sorry in advance, our mom decided to cook tonight.” He pushes the door all the way open before he steps out of the doorway, though, and shoots Mike an indecipherable sort of look which Mike can only take to mean one thing–

“Oh no,” Mike says, the second he hears Jonathan’s footsteps hit the landing of the first floor. “Your brother hates me.”

Will pushes himself up onto his side, on his elbow next to Mike with both legs dangling off the bed. “He doesn’t,” Will laughs, shaking his head, as Mike throws his head back onto the mattress with an exaggerated groan. “I promise.”

“Okay, well, he definitely knows,” Mike amends. He bumps a knee casually against Will’s, turns his head to catch Will’s fond gaze at full beam.

“Oh, yeah.” Will bites down on his lower lip, and Mike follows the movement with his eyes. “Yeah, he, uh. He definitely knows.”

“Great,” Mike says, reaching up to thread a hand back through Will’s hair, through where it’s still sticking up all along the back and sides. He runs his fingernails over the shorter, cropped strands at the base of his neck, and Will shivers, dropping his head onto Mike’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you guys talked about me.”

“We didn’t– oh, you’re insufferable,” Will says, muffled by the fabric of Mike’s shirt. Mike grins to himself and runs a hand through Will’s hair, over and over and over, reveling in Will’s answering sigh and the way his whole body relaxes, all at once. “I didn’t tell him. He just sort of– knew.”

“What, really?”

“I think he knew before I did, if I’m being honest.” Mike feels Will smile against the skin of his throat, and then Will lifts his head and adds, “About the boys thing, I mean– that I like boys, if that wasn’t clear by now– and also, uh. You.”

Mike can’t help it. He pulls Will back in, slips a hand around to his back to steady him as he teeters above Mike, and whispers, against Will’s lips, “So, the boys in Lenora–”

Another huff of laughter. “Definitely didn’t exist,” Will says quietly, and kisses him again.

It would be easy– too easy– to let himself get caught up in this, now that Mike knows what it’s like, because now that he’s gotten the most minute taste, he doesn’t know how he’s ever going to be able to drag himself away again. He allows himself a few precious seconds more, allows himself the chance to pull Will flush on top of him, allows Will the chance to bite tentatively at his lip, and then again, less tentatively– allows himself the chance to pull away and mutter, “Holy shit,” under his breath, and swallow Will’s answering laugh– allows himself the simple pleasure of kissing Will right over the beauty mark on the corner of his lips, and then, with no small amount of regret, leans back and away completely.

Will goes a little cross-eyed looking down at him, making an aborted movement like he’d been about to lean in, chasing after Mike. “What is it now?” 

“We should go,” Mike says mournfully. His hands are still on Will’s back, around his waist, and they don’t seem to want to let go, so maybe he really is the poster boy for mixed messages after all. “Before Jonathan comes looking again.”

“Oh,” Will says, and then, pulling a face, “oh, yeah, no. That would be bad.”

Will’s hair falls into his eyes as he moves to get up, clambering awkwardly onto his hands and trying to slide off the bed. Mike watches him move, still flat on his back, and kicks aimlessly at Will’s legs as he gets to his feet, just to see him roll his eyes and smile. It’s a contagious sort of smile, and it always has been, but even more so now that Will is backlit in gold light, now that Will is flushed and happy and radiantly, beautifully alive. None of these facts do anything to staunch the want in Mike’s chest as it spills up and over and out of him, until the room feels saturated in it.

It’s getting closer to sunset, and the light streaming into the room is growing heavy with impending dusk. The air is going thick and silent in the way it always seems to get during the summer months, because apocalypse or not, the world never tires of reminding Mike that he lives in Hawkins, Indiana, birthplace of sleepy suburbia. Any other year at this time, they’d be riding their bikes around with their friends until the sun set, or coming back in from a day at the lake, or building bottle rockets in a field, somewhere. Anything, anywhere; all these years, Mike had just been happy to have Will around.

He pushes himself up into a sitting position, watches Will stretch out by the open window, long and languid. “You’re staring,” Will says quietly, which Mike can’t refute, because he is, because he simply can’t help it, because a side effect of wanting someone is, unfortunately and tragically, the want itself, cloying and saccharine and so, so addictive. Mike thinks maybe he’d have a better chance of going another round with the demodog than ever taking his eyes off Will again.

“Sorry,” Mike says, and nudges at Will’s knee with his foot again. Will dodges him easily, pulls him up with one hand, rolls his eyes again as Mike groans, long and exaggerated.

“You’re not,” Will says, flushing an even deeper pink as he says it. This is true too; he’s got Mike’s fucking number now, and Mike would probably have a better chance of going another round with two demodogs than have Will give him an easy time about something ever again. Will tugs at the front of his shirt, takes a step backwards, and makes a frustrated noise when Mike’s hands immediately gravitate to his hips again. “Mike,” he huffs, and Mike can see the realization dawn in his eyes– that Mike is never going to give him an easy time about anything either– “we should really go.”

“Yeah,” Mike says. He tilts Will’s chin up for one last kiss, and lets him go.