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"How am I even supposed to trust this is real?" Mike asks, his voice cracking with emotion as he stares at Will, exhausted. "F-For all I know-" Mike sniffs, cutting himself off as he swallows back tears. "I... don't want this to be... I don't want you to be fake," he ends in a whisper, begging unconsciously to whoever is listening. "Will, I can't-"
"Mike," Will interrupts, voice stern, solid, enough to latch onto. "You're real, I'm real, we both exist, okay?" Will grabs his arms, digging his fingers into the flesh enough to further ground the fog surrounding Mike's head through it, his jacket not on for once.
Voices still whisper in his head, but Mike focuses on Will's fingers, the pressure of them, and imagines the balloon his head is being pulled down from where it was in the clouds.
"I promise, Mike, okay?" the other boy continues softly. Pulling a hand back, he holds out a pinkie. "I swear to you, all of you, that this is real and we exist, and you never have to go back there."
Mike's eyes drift to Will's held-out finger, to his eyes, searching, then back. He feels entirely too shaky, body tense with fear from narrowly escaping death in the middle of town, everything about him spilling out, seams ripping too much to hide now. Too much to hide how sick he is, how his parents see him, treat him, because of it.
It almost breaks him, finding this out, knowing he's not alone. The fact that he does not exist singularly, but as a part of something.
And he wants to believe it so badly, that he can escape them, how they made him, but the whispering in his head serves as a reminder he can never truly get away. Even so, he reaches his own pinkie out, curling it around Will's, desperate for something.
"Please," Mike mutters, voice giving out halfway through.
Will surges forward now, arms wrapping around Mike as the whispers get louder, clearer, closer. Mike loses himself in them, eyes closing, exhaustion catching up.
"Rest, Mike."