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For the first three days after the gate to the Upside-Down is closed, he sleeps. The days pass in a blur of cold washcloths pressed to his head by his mother’s hand, Nancy murmuring quietly into the phone in her room, staggering to the dinner table long enough to eat and then taking a trip up the stairs he never remembers to fall into his bed again. His nightmares are sparse but vivid, and utterly suffocating, and his sleep is fitful, but for the most part, he sinks into three days of blessed darkness and turns his brain off.
On the fourth day, when the house is still empty but it’s not quite time for dinner, Mike tosses a handful of clothes into his backpack and leaves a note on his bed. “Gone to Will’s, sleeping over. Don’t be mad. Love you!” He’s sure Joyce will have to field a furious call later from his mom, but he can’t bring himself to care.
It’s November 9th.
The ride to Will’s house is muscle memory at this point, and Mike grits his teeth hard as he takes each turn, heart pounding in his ears not from the exertion, but from the thoughts racing through his mind that he can no longer escape. They turn his blood to ice, make his heart swoop painfully in his chest.
Four days ago, the world almost came to an end.
A year ago, however briefly, his world did come to an end. He watched state troopers drag the body of his best friend out of a lake, and he actually felt it end. Any hope he had ever felt, any dream he had of the future, every ounce of happiness in his body, all of it was gone within seconds; it had drained into the placid, black water that held Will’s body like a secret, and dissipated. Anything good he had ever felt was reduced to molecules.
Clinging to Eleven made it feel like some of his hope reformed itself, repaired its broken bonds, but that was because she held the key to Will. She kept him alive, coaxed his voice out of that horrible place for Mike, kept them all on the path to saving him. The only way back to Will was always through Eleven, and yeah, in typical Mike Wheeler fashion, it took him way too fucking long to realize that, but he’s here now.
He’s here, in the Byers’ front yard, leaning his bike against the porch with his heart between his teeth.
There are clear sounds of dinner being eaten inside already, the ring of fork against plate, Jonathan’s voice breaking on a quiet laugh. He’s always so fucking late.
Mike has probably known for a long time that his feelings for Eleven are what Nancy, in her most irritating voice, would call a result of “projecting.” Ever since she signed up for psychology as a senior year elective, she’s been insufferable. Any negative emotion in the Wheeler household must have infinite layers of psychological torment behind it, and they’re all just “projecting” on each other instead of “confronting how they really feel.”
She’s right this time, of course. Mike would literally never tell her that, or her ego might grow so expansively that he’ll be forced to move his bedroom to the basement so she has an extra room upstairs to be a smug asshole in, but she is sort of right.
It’s not that he doesn’t like El, he really does. He doesn’t regret kissing her, or calling her on the Supercom for an entire year, or inviting her to the Snow Ball. She’s important to him, and she’s brave and generous, and she’s beautiful. His feelings about El are mostly platonic, and the ones that he’s less sure about are all tangled up in other strong emotions, mostly around what they went through with the Demogorgon and losing Will, around the loneliest and most terrifying time of his life up to that point. It was too easy to slap a “romantic” label on that box of feelings and kick it under his bed than to actually think too hard about any of it.
It was much easier than the day he threw a lock on the mental box marked “terrifying feelings for Will,” and backed away from it like he had just trapped a rabid animal inside. The one subtitled “general feelings for boys I can’t ever consider having,” “disappointing my father,” and “marking myself a freak for life.” That box was, in the fashion of the TARDIS, much bigger on the inside than the outside, and he’d hidden so much inside.
It contained so many dreams, passing thoughts, nights spent stuffing tears down his throat instead of sleeping, brushes of Will’s hand against his at their gaming table, years of memories. It was in constant danger of exploding, and so Mike just did what his father called the sensible thing: he completely ignored it as much as he could.
And then the Mind Flayer possessed Will, and he almost died. Again.
It’s incredibly fucking stupid that it took a whole year and a second near-death experience to smash the lock off of Mike’s mental trap, but he never has been very quick to the draw on anything. He’s never once managed to beat Nancy playing slap jack, and when he’s not the dungeon master, his decision-making process is so notoriously long that Dustin and Lucas often use his rolls to take bathroom breaks or replenish their snacks. Once, Dustin managed a micro-nap in the time it took Mike to decide whether or not he was going to attack a goblin, or try to run past it.
So yeah, his timing is shitty, and Eleven is important to him, but the thing is, Will is everything to him. There’s no comparison.
Once he works up the courage to knock, Joyce lets him in immediately and folds him into a tight hug that smells sharply of tobacco and white musk perfume, exhaustion ringing her eyes in dark purple circles. Jonathan gives him a friendly tilt of the chin from the dinner table. Will isn’t with them. Another terrifying swoop of his heart toward his toes.
“Are you hungry? Can I grab you a plate?” Joyce is already fluttering her way toward the kitchen, but Mike shakes his head quickly, forcing a polite smile that he would absolutely mean if he wasn’t so fucking terrified.
“No, thanks. Can I— see Will?” Mike’s voice catches a little, and the Byers both take on a sympathetic air like they’re pulling on tangible cloaks made of it. Jonathan visibly deflates a little, like maybe they’d managed to forget for a few seconds, like maybe he’d distracted his mom with a joke moments before Mike had knocked, and now they were right back to trauma mode.
“Of course, sweetie. He’s, uh— he’s tired, hasn’t really woken up except to take his meds, but he’d love to see you.” Joyce is very clearly on the verge of tears, and Mike feels terrible both for not coming sooner, and for coming at all. His eyes burn with the effort of not producing tears, and he wasn’t even here to see the Flayer forced out of Will, only heard about it secondhand from his sister, but it’s clear in Joyce’s crumpling face that it’s taken a massive toll on all the Byers.
Will has been asleep for three days, too. It figures. Being possessed by a mind-controlling demon from a hellish alternate dimension and then having it forcibly burned out of your body would probably make anyone tired.
Mike escorts himself down the hallway to Will’s bedroom like he has so many times before, but his feet feel heavier, like he’s wading through water to get there. He didn’t manage to formulate any sort of plan on his way over here, and he’s afraid of what he’ll say, what will happen, so maybe that’s why he hesitates with his hand on the doorknob.
But Will is inside, and alive. That’s all he needs to propel him through life these days. He falls through the door as quietly as he can and closes it behind him, sealing himself inside.
The room is dark, all the blinds drawn, except for a few errant shafts of fading sunlight coming in where the blinds are missing a few slats. Mike could find the bed without a single drop of light in the room, he’s been here so many times, but it illuminates Will lying in a heap in his blankets, and Mike just looks, for a while.
He doesn’t look like he just went through a terrifying demonic possession. He looks like Mike remembers from a million sleepovers; peaceful, a little sweaty, lying half on his side with his limbs piled on top of each other haphazardly, sort of like he did a cannonball into his bed and didn’t let go of his legs. His hair is flung around his pillow in a messy halo. He’s alive.
Mike’s backpack slides quietly onto the floor, somehow. He crosses the room and slides into bed next to Will like he’s done so many times, suspending gravity from his body long enough to get under the blankets without disturbing his best friend or shifting the mattress. Will smells predictably like sweat, and that warm earthy scent he always has, something like a field of clover in the sunlight. Mike can see the distinctive birthmarks on his throat now that he’s close, a constellation of freckles he could probably draw from memory, and the soft movement of his eyes under his eyelids. His mouth is fallen open against his pillow, and he’s drooling a little. Okay, a lot.
He’s breathing.
Mike slips his arms around Will’s middle before he can stop himself, so gingerly that the boy barely stirs, and presses an ear to his chest. His heart beats strong and clear. There’s nothing demonic or broken or dead about it.
Mike sucks in a shaky breath, and promptly bursts into tears.
It takes Will a minute to wake up, coming to with concerned, slurred noises at first as he paws at Mike’s shoulders to identify what’s clinging to him. “Mike?” he mutters thickly, fingers first catching on the other boy’s curls, and then his hand settles into Mike’s hair as he properly wakes up and realizes what’s happening.
“Mike, hey, Mike, what’s wrong?” he whispers, managing to sound urgent and sleepy at the same time.
“You’re alive.” He sounds absolutely miserable about it. Mike hauls himself up off of Will’s chest to his elbows, not far enough to lose the hand in his hair or the solid contact between their bodies, but enough to look at him. “You almost died, I mean. We all went home and knocked out for days because we fought stupid monsters again, and you almost died, and I haven’t seen you, and you already almost died once, and I love you, and your mom let me in, and I had these dreams again, and I had to make sure—”
It’s all coming out in a torrent thick with snot from his tears, which probably looks about as attractive as it sounds. Will has an unreadable expression on his face that is mostly exhaustion tinged with something else, something brightening his eyes in the dark room. His hand shifts in Mike’s hair a little, tickling in a good way.
“Mike, it’s okay.” His voice sounds a little tear-logged, or like it’s about to be. “I am alive. I’m fine, honestly, just tired.”
“I know but I saw you after the last time, the fake you, but we didn’t know it was fake and you were dead and cold, and I’ve been dreaming about it for a year and I didn’t see you this time, so my brain inserted the dead you into new dreams and— I know you’re tired but I just had to see you,” he finishes miserably, his voice finally faltering and shrinking. He isn’t the one who almost got possessed to death, then almost roasted to death, so he probably shouldn’t be crying this hard, but Will doesn’t seem to mind.
“I wanted to see you, too,” he says softly, moving his hand in Mike’s hair again, rubbing his fingertips in a circle. “Mom said I couldn’t go anywhere for a few days and that you were all pretty much totaled, but I was thinking about making a break for it tonight and riding to your house.”
“You were?” Mike lets out a huff of laughter tinged with tears, and wipes at his nose with the back of his hand. Will’s gentle smile makes a pleasant buzz start up in his stomach.
“Yeah, I was gonna swipe some dinner and go out a window, but I fell asleep again. Figures demonic possession would cramp my style.” They both laugh this time, more exhalation than noise, and Mike feels it passing between their chests where they’re pressed together. Will’s smile falters, then.
“You’ve been dreaming about me for a year?”
Mike doesn’t expect that to be the thing that Will latches onto, out of everything that just came stupidly tumbling out of his mouth, and his blood suddenly feels like snow cone syrup again.
“I, uh— yeah. We were all there when they pulled your fake body out of the water, we were close enough to see that it looked just like you. We didn’t know it wasn’t.” Will just nods. He knows this part already. Mike licks his lips and continues, his eyes unfocusing a little as he speaks.
“There were a million cops, so I turned around and left in real life, but when I dream about it, I— I just shove right through them so I can get to you, and nobody stops me. I kneel down, and it always feels so real, like the gravel is digging into my knees. You’re lying on a- a stretcher, a gurney sort of thing, and you’re soaking wet and your skin is all gray, but your lips are bright blue. Like that video we had to watch in health about giving the Heimlich maneuver, the one where the lady’s lips turned blue because she couldn’t breathe? Yours look like that, but a million times worse. I start shaking you by the shoulders, hitting your chest, trying to turn you over so I can hit between your shoulder blades, anything to make the water come out of your lungs and I’m screaming your name, but you’re just dead. You’re freezing. Someone says you’ve been dead for a long time and nothing will bring you back. One of the cops tries to drag me off of you, but he stops, or El blasts him away sometimes. No one tries to stop me from giving you CPR even though I don’t know what I’m doing, and your lips are wet, and they feel like ice. It feels like I try it for hours, but nothing happens, you just get colder and colder, and I usually wake up in the middle of pushing on your chest because— because one of your ribs breaks—”
Mike is sobbing. He doesn’t know when it started up again, but tears are coursing down his face and dripping down his neck, soaking into Will’s sleep shirt. Will looks eerily similar to what he was just describing, like all the blood has drained from his face, and he’s crying, too.
“ Mike.” The apology is already in his mouth but he doesn’t get a chance to say it because Will is grabbing at him, flinging his skinny arms around Mike and pulling him up into a real hug. Mike doesn’t hesitate, he just stuffs his face as hard as he can into the crook of Will’s neck and holds him back just as tightly. The smaller boy is shaking violently, and Mike lets his weight settle and tries to envelop him with his entire body, take some of the pain back by osmosis.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” he cries, about more than bringing up the dream. He feels Will shaking his head, and a hand slides back into Mike’s hair, clutching possessively at him.
“I dreamed about you, too. That thing— that thing was controlling me, but I could still recognize you. Just my mom, and you. And even when it had full control, I was still inside my head, and I wanted you.” Will is crying almost too hard to speak, his voice hushed and choked with tears in Mike’s ear. “The shadow monster couldn’t get rid of me completely yet so he pushed me into a little corner of my brain, and I heard Nancy saying something about you going to the gate with everyone, and I— if you didn’t make it back, or if they didn’t get the monster out of me, I realized I was never gonna see you again. They started up the heaters and I just screamed your name over and over until they got me free.”
Mike pulls back then, his lip trembling, feeling like he took the shaking out of Will’s body into his own. He pulls back just enough to look at Will properly. He needs to see his best friend’s face, needs to understand. They’re both shining with tears and snot and, on Will’s part, drool in what appears to now be the beginning of moonlight coming in through the windows. Will has snot on his mouth. He looks beautiful.
“I heard you, before. You love me?” If Mike’s blood was frozen to ice before, now it’s all one solid mass that he can feel shatter inside him, one long wave of pain through every vessel in his body. Will heard him. And then his heart starts up again, flooding him with warmth, because he realizes the look on Will’s face that he couldn’t identify before isn’t bad. It’s not bad.
It takes a pretty wild effort on his part, but Mike nods, manages to get his mouth open.
“Yeah, I love you.”
Will’s face crumples. It crumples because he’s still crying, but he’s trying to smile through it, and breathe through it, like when he falls off his bike and lands in a bloody heap, and he doesn’t want Mike to cry.
“Because you’re my best friend?” His heart dives to his toes again and tries to make a break for it, burst out of his body entirely. He ignores it, breathes through it, too.
“Yes. But I also love, love you. Like I don’t want to just be your best friend anymore.” Will’s face crumples more, but now he’s crying harder. He’s not smiling through it anymore. Mike’s heart flies all the way back up him and tries to crash out of his skull. He has to keep going.
“I understand if you don’t feel that way, and I know it’s weird, and— and if you want me to go away, I won’t hold it against you. I can’t even hold it against you if you hate me for it because I’m in love with you, Will.”
Will just cries, for what feels like a really long time. He doesn’t push Mike away, but he doesn’t seem capable of speech for a few very long minutes, and the longer it takes, the more Mike feels like he’s probably about to just spontaneously die of heartbreak, and he’ll crush Will if that happens so after what feels like hours, Mike starts to disentangle himself from his best friend and sit up.
Will twists the hand in Mike’s hair, hard, and drags him down. With a freakish strength that Mike knows he can pull out when shit gets real, or when he’s losing a game, the smaller boy flips them over onto the other side of his bed, pressing Mike down into the pillow he was just crying and drooling into.
Mike doesn’t mind, because Will is on top of him, smiling so brightly that the moonlight surrounding his head like a halo and back-lighting him seems to be emanating directly from the force of his happiness.
“You’re an idiot,” Will says, as if it’s the best thing he’s ever vocalized, and kisses him.
Every inch of Mike’s body that was filling with cold, icy heartbreak sludge is suddenly burning hot, like his vessels are full of gasoline and Will’s been hiding a lighter in his mouth. It’s not his first kiss, obviously, but it might as well be. It’s the first one that matters.
It’s so clumsy. Mike tastes tears and snot on Will’s lips, and he knows his aren’t much cleaner. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so they’re still clutching at Will’s waist where they flew in surprise when Will flipped him over. He needs to breathe.
He’s absolutely not going to breathe until it’s a matter of life or death. Will’s lips are warm, and alive, and sweetly slotting into his, and he tastes just the way he smells, like sunlit clover. There’s no fucking way Mike is pulling back, not even if he goes as blue as Will in his dreams.
He stays true to his word, and Will pulls back first, just enough that they can suck in gasping breaths. Their lips are still touching, tripping nerve endings like little sparklers of flame dancing between them.
“I love you, Mike,” he says, sounding like sunlight. “I’ve loved you since before anyone explained what being in love means. I just thought—” Will’s voice is trembling. Mike is trembling, too.
“I know. Believe me, I know. It just took me a while to figure it out. I’m not great at dealing with stuff.” Mike kisses him again, brief. “Liking boys stuff.” He kisses Will again, closing his mouth over Will’s top lip and chasing the taste of salt with his tongue, less brief. “Liking you stuff.”
“Took you long enough,” Will huffs, but kisses him again, makes the softest noise into his mouth, and stars explode behind Mike’s eyes.
“Next time I have an earth-shattering revelation in the middle of the apocalypse, I’ll try processing it between getting chased by monsters instead of after.” He rolls his eyes, and kisses Will again as a balm, letting it linger as long as they can handle not breathing again. When their stupid lungs are near to bursting, he settles for pressing the tips of their noses together and breathing Will’s air. He’s suddenly so, so exhausted.
“Deal.” Will looks elated, and much more tired than when he had only been dealing with having been recently exorcised.
“We can talk more later,” he whispers, kissing Will’s bottom lip, and then his cheek as his best friend sways sleepily on top of him.
"Even better deal," Will murmurs, knowing it means Mike is staying with him. It takes a team effort, but they ease Will down next to him on the bed, and the smaller boy instinctively tucks his head firmly into the crook of Mike's neck, warming his skin with sleepy exhalations. Both of his hands find their way into Mike's hair, thoroughly tangling with his curls like he doesn't plan to let go anytime soon. Mike understands the sentiment, wraps his arms around as much of Will as he can comfortably reach, touching hip and shoulder, slotting their legs together so they’re an incomprehensible tangle of limbs.
He’s never letting go again.