Chapter Text
Will jolts awake suddenly. He’s always been a light sleeper, but even worse when he was sick, waking up in fits and starts. Though one of his nostrils is currently out of function, his head feels clearer than before, only muddled with the remnants of sleep. His fever must have broken. On the bedside table, he can vaguely recognise the outline of the water bowl and cloth Mike had used for his compress. Next to it, the clock blinks an angry red 3:02AM at him.
As much as he wishes he could settle back under his comforter and go back to sleep, his body forced him awake for a reason. Much to his chagrin, the reason is a heavy pressure in his bladder. He needs the bathroom— badly. He mumbles a string of curses under his breath as he forces himself out from under the warmth of the blankets and swings his legs over the side of the bed.
Where Will expects his socked feet to touch the frigid floorboards, however, they instead collide with some soft mass in the dark and he shrieks, nearly pissing himself right there. There is a frantic shuffle from the unidentified pile, “Will? Are you okay? Should I call Mrs Byers?”
“Mike?” Will whispers bewilderedly as the boy tries— and fails— to emerge from his cocoon of blankets, “I’m fine! Why are you on the floor? Actually, what are you doing here?”
Mike finally manages to escape his blankets and mumbles, “I was here… the whole day… you don’t remember?”
“No, not that,” Will rubs a hand across his eyes, unsure if this might be a hallucination resulting from his half-asleep state. He would not forget that he and Mike had spent the day together. “I just… I thought you would have left by now.”
“Your mom didn’t want me driving at night, something about the roads being too icy,” Mike answers, sounding almost embarrassed.
“You stayed till the night?” Will asks quietly, feeling something in his chest tighten at the knowledge that Mike had stayed long after Will had fallen asleep. Though, that didn’t necessarily mean that he had been by Will’s side. It was more likely that he had spent that time with El, talking about whatever the hell it was that those two talked about.
While that was all well and good, it did not explain why Mike chose to sleep on the ice-cold floor next to him when there was a perfectly good pull-out couch in the living room. This, Will decides, is a question he does not want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Not right now, at least.
“Yeah, I wanted to keep you company.”
“Yeah, you said that.” While Will was asleep? Honestly, Will is barely awake enough to form any coherent thoughts other than the fact that he needs to go to the bathroom, so he relents, “Okay, that’s fine, I just needed the bathroom.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mike asks again, his eyes already slipping closed again.
“I’m okay Mike, go back to sleep,” Will shakes his head as he gets up and scooches past Mike to the door. He hears a rustle as Mike settles and lets himself breathe out. He feels disoriented, though he’s not sure why. Probably the tail-end of his sickness.
The hallway is dim when he steps out of his room and the air here is cooler against his skin— it’s a welcome salve over his flushed skin. As he shuffles toward the bathroom, a soft glow emanating from the kitchen catches his attention. Curiosity getting the better of him, he reroutes.
He finds El standing at the dining table in a flannel that’s a little too oversized and a little too familiar, holding a glass of water in her hands.
“Is that my shirt?” Will asks without preamble, quirking an eyebrow as El looks up at him.
“You’re awake.”
“Unfortunately,” he mutters, reaching up to rub the sleep from his eyes, “I had to go to the bathroom. You’re awake too.”
“I am,” El nods solemnly, setting the glass down and pulling the sleeves of her— his— shirt over her hands.
“Okay. And why are you awake?” Will moves closer, and his eyes settle on the puzzle that is laid out on the dining table. It’s incomplete, stray pieces left in disarray where she and Hopper had decided to give up. Or rather, take a break, as Hopper insists. To which Joyce always replies, breaks are supposed to end. It’s a routine that ends with Joyce clearing the pieces back into the box after a day or two of them laying about, despite Hopper’s protests that they were just about to get back to it! Will lets out a scandalised gasp, “Jane Hopper! Are you cheating?”
“I am just ending the break,” El responds, unashamed, “Breaks are supposed to end.”
Will laughs, swaying a little from the remnants of sleep. El studies him for a second before saying, “You should rest. A lot of people would be unhappy that you are out of bed while sick.”
The corners of Will’s mouth twitch upwards despite himself, “Is that why Mike is on my floor?”
El rolls her eyes, “He wouldn’t leave. Not even to sleep on the couch. He said he would not hear you from there.”
His gaze drops to the puzzle, the air suddenly feeling stale and warm. “Yeah, he can be… stubborn.”
“He can also be a good friend,” El say, a little quieter, then adds, “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” Will repeats, picking up a puzzle piece and turning it between his fingers. El steps closer, until they are shoulder to shoulder, both examining the puzzle with an interest that Will doesn’t really feel.
“He kept checking if you were breathing, you know.”
Will chokes out a laugh, before turning his incredulous look to her, “What?”
“Yeah, like…” El attempts to demonstrate, furrowing her brow in concentration and cocking her head to the side as though listening for his heartbeat.
“He was just worried. You all were.”
“I guess,” El makes a face Will can’t quite decipher, before shrugging, “He worries a lot about you, though.”
Will doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he decides not to. El lets out a sound of protest as Will jams the piece unhelpfully into a random gap. He grins toothily at her as he turns to finally finish his journey to the bathroom, “Sweet dreams, El.”
He dodges the piece she throws at him and responds, “I hope the bed bugs bite you.”
When Will returns to the room after giving his bladder its much needed respite, he sees that Mike has propped himself up in a seated position, leaning against Will’s bed. “Mike?” He whispers, a little worried. The boy answers with a soft snore. He huffs a laugh under his breath before poking Mike’s shoulder gingerly, “Mike, wake up, I need to get to the bed.”
A second passes, then Mike jumps awake with a snort. “Will?” He blinks owlishly, eyes adjusting to the dark.
“Yep, still me,” Will deadpans.
“Sorry… I wanted to stay awake till you came back. In case something happened.”
“I was in the bathroom, Mike. I really don’t think I was in much danger.”
“Well… did you throw up?”
“No,” Will fights a smile, “Now will you grant me safe passage to my bed?”
“You have answered my riddles three,” Mike yawns out, and as he shifts to let Will pass, his fingers brush against Will’s ankle, just where his pyjamas end.
“Jesus, Mike!” Will yelps, lifting his leg away, “Your fingers are freezing!!”
Despite the heaters being cranked up to their maximum, the cold winter draft still seeps through the wooden floorboards. Will can feel the icy bite through his socks, and he can see the goosebumps that prickle wherever Mike’s skin is exposed. He figures he should probably stop staring fixedly at where Mike’s collarbones peek out above the collar of Will’s borrowed nightshirt— he should also ignore what the image of Mike in his clothes is doing to his mental state. Mike draws the blankets up to his neck and glares up at him, “It’s fine, it’s not that cold.”
“You’re going to freeze down there,” Will repeats, watching Mike feign nonchalance, even as his lip trembles.
“I’ve dealt with worse.”
“That’s a terrible argument,” Will snorts, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as the cold begins to creep through his socks. He can’t help but feel guilty, knowing that Mike could be warm and cozy in his own bed or at least on the couch one room over. Instead, he’s curled up on Will’s bedroom floor, pretending he isn’t immensely uncomfortable.
Will curls his fingers into the hem of his sweater, his eyes darting around the room. The silence stretches and Will is painfully aware of how his heart is thudding in his chest. “Look, Mike, just… why don’t you sleep up here on the bed? There’s enough space.”
For a second they just look at each other, and Will suddenly feels like he’s misstepped. Pushed even further past their carefully built boundaries and made it irreversibly weird. Which is ridiculous because Mike and Will have shared a bed before. Multiple times, in fact, when they were children. So why should this be different?
Mike’s eyes seem to search his face, warm and so, so… open. It’s so unnerving that Will immediately scrambles for a way to backtrack, “But I’m still sick so maybe it’s better if you don’t, actually. I don’t want you to fall sick as well.”
He’s giving Mike an out, and part of him hopes that Mike will take it. Please don’t say yes, please don’t—
“I mean, if you don’t mind?” Mike says, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, “I’ll probably fall sick anyway if I stay sleeping down here.”
“I thought you said it isn’t that cold?”
“Fine, nevermind! I’ll stay here, if you’re going to be an ass about it.”
“No no, I’m sorry,” Will laughs, hoisting Mike up and letting him gather the pile of blankets, “Please, I don’t want to be the one to explain to Mrs Wheeler that you died of hypothermia.”
Mike grins at him as Will climbs into the bed, following closely after, “Just get Jonathan or El to break the news instead.”
The bedsheets rustle as they work together to throw their combined supply of blankets over themselves, their fingers numb and clumsy. When they finally settle, Will lies with his back toward Mike, feeling like it’s the safest option. He is acutely aware of Mike’s presence beside him, the warmth radiating off his body, despite the healthy amount of space between them. In fact, he’s acutely aware of that space as well, how easy it would be to shift a little backwards so that they were touching. Get a grip, Will!
His body is thrumming with too much energy for whatever time it is. Neither of them say anything. Will thinks his breathing is wrong, too quick, and tries to match it to Mike’s.
Maybe Mike is asleep already.
“Will?” Mike’s voice is soft, hesitant. “Are you awake?
Or maybe not.
“Yeah,” Will risks shifting onto his back, his gaze trained on the ceiling, “Yeah, I am.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Mike’s breath brushes against his cheek, startling him.
Will ventures a glance at him in the dark. He can vaguely make out that Mike is already facing him, resting on his side. He also realises that they are a lot closer than he had initially thought. If he just turns his head, their noses would be brushing. He looks back at the ceiling.
Their knees bump against each other and Will’s voice catches in his throat as he answers. “Of course. Anything, Mike.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
Will swears his stomach drops out from under him and through the floorboard, burying itself six feet under the foundations of the house, “What?”
“When I dropped you off after Dustin’s. You kissed me on the cheek. You’ve just… it was unlike you.”
Shit, shit, shit. Mike had had the whole day to bring up the kiss and he hadn’t. So, foolishly, Will had let himself believe that the conversation would not come up at all. He should have known that Mike had just been waiting for him to recover so that he didn’t have to ambush him in the throes of a fever.
“Well-” Will tries to speak, his voice cracking as his mind scrambles in every direction for a plausible explanation. At the moment, every one of his senses is honed in on Mike, and the faded smell of cedarwood falls into the territory of suffocating rather than comforting. He clears the phlegm from his throat, shifts slightly, and tries again. “Well my friends in New York… they’re really affectionate so um… so I’ve gotten into the habit of kissing my friends to show appreciation. It’s a force of habit… I guess.”
The lie sounds unconvincing even to his own ears. He’d never been able to lie properly to Mike, never really needed to until they had moved to California. Until a wave had crested and the full force of his feelings for the boy had crashed into him.
Yes, he is a terrible liar when it comes to Mike. Yet, the thing is, Mike— sweet, trusting Mike— is even worse at being able to tell when Will is lying.
“Oh okay, that makes sense.” There is something in the inflection of Mike’s voice that gives Will pause, but he can’t seem to place his finger on what it is.
“I’m sorry, if it made you uncomfortable.” Will forces himself to speak, his cheeks burning with shame. “It didn’t mean anything.”
It meant too much.
The lies burn coming out, and he swears he can hear Mike suck in a breath.
“No! It’s okay, I didn’t mind. I was just… surprised. I don’t mind.”
They fall silent for a beat, but it feels charged, buzzing with some emotion.
Then, the mattress shifts next to him and Mike’s fingers brush Will’s wrist. His curls tickle Will’s cheek before Will feels it, and it’s so soft that, if Will weren’t so restless and awake, he could convince himself that he imagined it or that it was accidental.
He assumes Mike was aiming for his cheek, though it’s crazy to think that Mike had been aiming for anything at all. It’s a little misaligned and falls against his temple, just where his eyebrow ends. Despite this, the gentle pressure of Mike’s lips against his skin is deliberate and precise. All the air escapes Will’s lungs at once.
“Good night, Will,” Mike whispers, and he’s so close that Will can feel the warmth of his breath, smell the mint of the Byers’ toothpaste. After what feels like an eternity, Mike shifts back, his fingers leave Will’s wrist and cold air fills the space between them. Will exhales a shuddery breath, his fingers digging painfully into his palms to stop himself from doing something stupid.
“Night, Mike.”
He didn’t mean anything by it. He hopes Mike can’t hear the frantic beat of his heart. This means nothing. The words repeat like a mantra in his head as he forces his breathing to even out and match that of the boy next to him.
At the edge of sleep, his mind slips backwards through memories that shy away from his grasp. Until one settles down, uninvited: one of his last nights in New York before winter. A night like this, another boy pulling away while Will told himself it meant nothing. The night he broke up with Carlton.
At the time, it had felt as though the fight had started suddenly, an abrupt explosion stemming from something imperceptible. However, the more Will thought about it, the more he felt that the sword had been dangling over his head for some time, and the thread had finally snapped that night.
They had been sprawled on the couch in Will’s too-small studio, some film that was too loud and had too many colours flickering on the TV. It was one of the weekly dates that Carlton insisted on. The initial excitement of getting a boyfriend had long since worn off and sometimes all Will could feel at that point was the weight of the performance, the act of touching and kissing and hugging he had to put on. He didn’t have it in him that night to play that part, so Will had requested they stay in.
Though he had made a point to sit on the opposite end of the couch, Carlton had managed to push his way into Will’s space during the movie, close enough that their knees bumped. Then, without looking, he had reached his hand out, fingers brushing Will’s. When Will didn’t pull back, Carlton let his hand settle, rubbing his thumb in small circles over the back of Will’s hand. It was meant to be sweet, but Will’s heart jittered uncomfortably against his ribs.
He could feel Carlton’s gaze on the side of his face, even as he pretended to focus intently on the screen in front of him. After a moment, Carlton shifted closer and Will knew it was coming. Even so, when he felt the brush of lips against the corner of his mouth he could not stop the way his body recoiled, pressing himself into the couch cushions reflexively.
Their fingers were still intertwined, and Carlton had squeezed lightly, forcing Will to look up at him. “Hey, are you with me?” The words had a teasing lilt to them, though Will could see the slight edge of frustration in Carlton’s eyes.
“Yeah, sorry, right here” he had replied, though his voice was flat and lifeless.
Carlton’s hands had finally fallen away then, “You’ve been acting off. Are you sure?”
Acid was burning up his throat. He knew it was unfair to use Carlton as a spittoon, but he needed to shove away the panic that shuddered through his body. He hadn’t meant to lash out, but he needed to blame it on someone else. So he snapped. “God Carl, why do you have to overanalyse everything I do? Have you ever considered that you might just be way too clingy?”
"What?” Carlton’s eyes had widened then, more confused than hurt. Then, he scoffed in disbelief, “You're angry at me?"
Will was almost glad for the hint of malice he could hear in the words. Not so much satisfaction at Carlton’s response, but relief at having redirected the focus. He needed Carlton to give him something ugly he could grasp onto and bring into the light. Proof that yes, Carlton was the problem. If Carlton was the problem, maybe Will didn’t have to be. But as quickly as it had arrived, the anger in Carlton's eyes had dimmed, his shoulders sagging in defeat.
When he spoke, his voice was infuriatingly patient, "Look Will, I don't know what's going on with you. But it doesn’t take overanalysing for me to see that my boyfriend—” Will had almost winced at the label, “ —doesn’t seem to want me around. Lately you’ve just been constantly angry at something, and I feel like you’re using me as some sort of scapegoat. You’re only half here, and it feels like any small movement I make will send you running off. If you just tell me what’s bothering you, maybe I could help.”
Will hadn’t responded, staring at his hands like a dejected child. Finally, Carlton nodded, his voice shaking, “Okay, I think it’s clear that you’re not going to let me in.” He paused, and Will braced himself for the inevitable, “You’re not ready for this relationship, and I don’t think I can keep doing this with you, Will. I’m exhausted.”
He had walked out then, and Will hadn’t stopped him. The movie had continued playing in the background. Just white noise.
He probably should have felt more than he did at that moment, because Carlton had been a good boyfriend. A little boring, maybe, but despite his faults, he would bring Will his favourite breakfast order every morning before class. He would carry extra sweaters without question because he knew Will always ran cold. He would learn about Will’s loved ones, ask El about any new recipes she had recently discovered.
He was kind and attentive. He was good and so Will had waited to feel some sort of remorse or heartache at his departure. Instead, anger and shame had coiled low in his stomach, sour and blistering.
When Carlton had returned the next day for his things, they had exchanged no words. The end had been despondent and anticlimactic.
Now, in the silence of his room, the truth that Carlton let fester in his absence wriggles its way out of the confines of where Will had tried to cage it.
He doesn’t miss Carlton, that much is obvious. What hurts is the absence of something vital, the gaping hollow that he has been trying to cover with the shaky foundations of feeble relationships.
Some things he can’t keep running away from. Some truths can’t be ignored. Tonight, the beast had found him. Now, it sits outside the clearing, watching him in the dark. He watches it back.
Dawn is still hours away.