Chapter Text
Mike isn’t spiralling.
It would be pretty embarrassing if he was, seeing as he’s been through this thing what feels like a hundred times over already. Since Nov 6 1983, the day Will went missing—and onwards.
The demogorgon. Will’s possession. The shadow monster, the demodogs. The mindflayer. Vecna himself. Mike has seen it all, witnessed all horrors that there are to witness; enough to last at least five lifetimes. He’s met the trauma quota by now, right?
The world seems to disagree.
But Mike isn’t spiralling, and it’s because the horrors never happen to him. Sure, he lost his best friend for a week, but at least he wasn’t the one who got kidnapped to an alternate dimension. He was never brought up in a lab to be a super weapon for the Cold War. He’s never been possessed or eaten or zombified. He’s never been blown up, captured, and taken as a war prisoner to Russia. And alright, sure. Mike certainly has been thrust headfirst into a supernatural disaster, and he’s watched his best friend scream bloody murder on a gurney; a sound which has since been drilled into Mike’s subconscious, and he’s had his face slammed into metal pipes so he’s bled down his nose and chin, and he’s just lost and lost and lost again. But he never gets the worst of it, so the answer is no. Mike isn’t spiralling.
He is, however, slouched over the kitchen bench of his godforsaken family house, in his godforsaken seemingly intact neighbourhood, in his godforsaken monster-riddled hometown. A town which, by the way, managed to get ripped four ways down the centre in the one week or so he spent away. But it’s not like things would have been better if he never went to California. Things certainly could have been worse.
Mike watches his mother pace and groans into the meat of his palms.
She’s making sandwiches; an anxious sort of coping device in which she scours every inch of pantry space for ingredients with which she can feed people. By the looks of her progress thus far, ‘people’ seems to be at least twenty.
Mike counts everyone on his fingers as she opens their—thankfully—still working fridge to look for bologna and cheese. Joyce, Jonathan, Nancy, Mike himself, his mom, his dad, Holly… That’s seven people, so there are definitely too many sandwiches. But seven doesn’t… Oh, right, and Will.
Will.
“Michael, honey,” his mom says. She’s stopped moving about the room to stand and face him.
The Byers have nowhere in Hawkins to live. Will is living with the Wheelers.
Okay.
“Sweetie?” Mike blinks when his mom waves a hand up in front of his face. It becomes apparent she’d been talking to him for much longer than he’d registered, and he winces in apology.
“Sorry, uh… ‘Spaced out. What was that?”
She huffs at him, but it carries no bite. “I was saying the sleeping arrangement might be difficult, what with the Byers here, you know? We have four bedrooms in this house, plus the basement-“
“Wait- the basement?”
Karen Wheeler stares at him. “Yes, Michael. It’s got a couch, and plenty of floor space for the spare mattress. We can fit three people down there if we have to.” She stops to consider the bologna packet on the bench, then picks it up and turns it over in her hands to read the label. “But there are only three Byers and we can’t have them all in the basement. It’s better if we don’t have any of them down there. I don’t know, Michael. You might have to give up your room.”
This certainly knocks Mike from his daze.
“Wh- My room?” he flounders. “Mom, that’s- I haven’t slept in a proper bed in a week and you want me on the basement floor?”
“Basement couch,” his mom corrects. “You’d be perfectly comfortable but-“ She puts down the bologna and holds up her hands in casual surrender. “If it’s important to you, then you and Will can just share.”
What.
“Share what?” Mike tries.
“Your room, Michael. If you don’t want him in your bed…” and she sends him an odd look, “we do still have sleeping bags in the broom closet.”
Mike frowns at the cheese and thinks this over. He doesn’t let the question of ‘does he want Will in his bed’ be considered, because that’s not a thought that’s healthy for his brain. Besides, Will’s more the kind of person to insist on taking the floor. Mike isn’t sure that Will knows what the word ‘selfish’ means. If Mike were to ask him if he wanted the bed, Will would politely refuse and retire to a sleeping bag and pillow for the night. But if Mike suggested they share- oh shit, now he’s gone and thought about it.
“Yeah, we can share,” Mike says. “My room, I mean. Not the… you know. I’m fine if he crashes in my room. That’s cool.”
His mom watches him for a moment. Really watches him; the whole once-over that moms do when they’re checking their child for a scratch or a fault. She appears to reach a satisfactory conclusion, so nods her head and returns to her mountain of sandwiches. “Very good. You can go fetch the sleeping bags and blankets.”
Mike makes a hasty retreat for the kitchen. “Sure, yeah. Are the Byers gonna be back from the cabin soon or..?”
“Any minute now- Micheal.” Karen Wheeler snaps her fingers. “You just passed it, honey, they’re in the broom closet. Yep, right there. Sleeping bags and blankets, Michael.”
“Got it, Mom,” Mike calls from the closet. He has one hand already stuffed into a box of linen sheets. “Sleeping bags and blankets.”
—————————
So, this is weird. It doesn’t compare to the god-awful dinner in Lenora after El broke Angela’s nose. Murray isn’t here rocking a mom apron, Jonathan’s acting normal; not high as a kite, and Argyle isn’t here either. El is safely tucked away with Hopper at the cabin. Mike hasn’t been an asshole in days. Will isn’t, as he usually is, seconds away from crying. He’s not.
So yeah, this is weird, but at least when they returned to Hawkins everyone was alive and well. At least the Wheeler’s were fine to let the Byers crash at their place. Will thinks, vaguely, as he spoons tomato soup into his mouth, that things could be a whole lot worse.
He’d better not jinx it though.
“Will!” Karen says brightly, and Will stops his hand midway to knocking on the wooden table. Just for good luck, you know? Karen clears her throat. “I heard, um, that you’re enrolled to come back to school here? Continue high school with Dustin and Lucas and Michael? That sounds nice!”
“Um, yeah,” Will says, just as Mike mutters under his breath, “it’s not that nice.” Will and Karen both look to Mike, where he’s hunched over his soup, then back to each other. Will tries for a smile.
“Yeah, Mrs Wheeler. It should be fun.”
Jonathan promptly snorts, apologises, and then reaches to his side to pat Will on the back. “Aw, buddy… Hawkins high is a lot of things. ‘Fun’ is not one of them.”
Will frowns. Mike nods profusely. Nancy is all the way across the dinner table, and she stops buttering her toast to crack a smile.
“I’m sure Will knows what high school is like, you two. He did go to one in California.” She scrapes her knife across her toast again, then adds, “but Hawkins… I mean- Hawkins High isn’t that bad.”
Jonathan swallows a mouthful of soup. “Yes, it is. I hated that place.”
Mike nods again. “I currently hate that place.”
“But that’s fine, right boys?” Will’s mom pipes up. “Spring break lasts a couple more weeks and hopefully-“ She holds up a placating hand. “Hopefully school will continue as per usual, despite the uh…”
“Fracture lines?” Karen tries.
Joyce catches herself on what is clearly the edge of stating the truth, because hey, those massive gorges of hellish light in the town aren’t exactly your average earthquake casualty. Will watches his mom paint on a slightly less-than-convincing smile. “Yeah. Yeah, the fracture lines. I’m sure they’ll get to fixing those soon.”
“Nothing a little tar and elbow grease can’t mend,” says Ted Wheeler. Mike rolls his eyes. Will finds himself biting back a grin.
It takes about five whole seconds for Karen Wheeler to single-handedly decide she’s changing the subject of the entire table. “So! Sleeping arrangements!”
“Oh, yes!” Joyce says, just as Will catches Mike sinking into his seat and looking properly nauseated.
“Joyce,” Karen says, sounding incredibly sincere about it. “Honey, I know you took a long journey to get here- The plane ride must have been awful… Look. I don’t want you in the basement.”
“Karen- Look at me.”
Everyone looks at Joyce when she says this, and they watch her gesture to herself like there’s something wrong. Will knows his mom has always been a tad scrappy, rough around the edges compared to everyone else’s moms. She smokes, she swears, she’s small and she’ll bite your head off if you’re mean to her sons. She wears old clothes and brushes her hair a lot less than she means to. She’s beautiful. She’s so so perfect.
Will also knows that when she says ‘Karen, look at me’ she’s referring to the fact that she, Joyce Byers, could not give less of a shit about sleeping in a damn basement. And the Wheeler basement, as basements go, is the best one in all of Hawkins. If you were to ask Will, he’d say best in the world.
“I like the basement,” his mom is saying with a shrug. “I’m pretty tired, so the option of a couch or a mattress? Sign me the hell up.”
Despite himself, Will argues against it. “Mom, wait. I can take the basement-“
“I’ll take the basement too,” Jonathan smirks. “Mrs Wheeler, I’m sure you don’t want me up in Nancy’s room.”
Nancy nearly chokes on a mouthful of soup.
“That’s correct,” Karen nods. “But- Three people in the basement won’t work. You aren’t kids, you won’t fit.”
Will supposes that’s true enough, but maybe if he and Jonathan tried hard enough…
“That’s why Will is staying with Michael.”
It’s a good thing Will doesn’t have food in his mouth, because he’d choke on it. It’s a good thing he isn’t holding his spoon, because he’d have dropped it on the spot.
Instead, he stares down at the bright red liquid in his bowl. “What?”
“Mhm,” Karen affirms. “Michael and I decided this morning. It was between sleeping in the basement and rooming with you, Will. It’ll be fun, right? Just like old times, when you were little. Another sleepover.”
‘Sleepover’ is a funny word. A nice word that doesn’t quite cover the mental gymnastics Will is currently having to perform. He’s already calculating how not to invade Mike’s personal space or his privacy, while desperately trying not to think about pyjamas and washed hair and blankets and murmured words in the dark. He’s very pointedly not looking at Mike, who hasn’t said a word, but is for sure at least two inches lower in his seat than he had been before.
Okay so maybe Will stole a glance at Mike once or twice in the past moment. The point is, he looks mortified. And it’s all Will’s fault. He really should just sleep in the basement, because that way he wouldn’t have to worry about being creepy or invasive; he’d just blend right into the walls down there and pray that Henry Creel doesn’t reach through the plaster and-
Mike loudly clears this throat, and Will’s head whips around to look at him so fast he feels something pop in his neck.
“Seriously, it’s cool if you- share my room,” Mike tells him, but his eyes are darting around and he’s looking literally anywhere but at Will.
Will looks at Jonathan, who’s sitting in between him and Mike. His brother meets his eye immediately, like he’d been waiting for him, and raises his brows in a way that says ‘are you good with this?’ Will throws him a look that he’s sure means ‘yeah I’m fine so stop micromanaging this, but also thank you for your concern’. The message doesn’t seem to translate because Jonathan promptly turns to glare at Mike. Will bats him on the arm.
“That’s great, Mrs Wheeler,” he says, regrettably, a bit too cheerfully. “Yeah, no, that’s nice of Mike to, um-“
Jonathan elbows him in the side. “Great! Good to see you two back in the swing of it, you know?”
Will and Mike frown at this, but the rest of the table all nods their heads in agreement. Ted Wheeler, a little begrudgingly, but Ted Wheeler all the same.
“Swing of it?” Will tries, but Mike is already on his feet, empty bowl in hand, and woah hold on. When did he finish his meal so fast? Mike sends his family a tight smile and marches to the sink to wash out his bowl. It’s clear, he’s over this conversation, and to be honest, so is Will.
Will takes a moment to assess just how fast it would take to down the rest of his soup. The answer is: about three seconds tops, which he accomplishes by drinking the last gulps directly from his bowl. Spoon be damned. This only earns him a few bewildered stares, then he’s thanking Mrs Wheeler for the meal and joining Mike at the sink.
Mike flinches a little when Will nudges up beside him.
“Hey,” Will whispers.
Mike’s lips quirk up a little at the edges. His shoulders drop down again as he relaxes. “Hey.”
They stand there for a bit; Will wordlessly passing his bowl and spoon to Mike, who washes them in warm water and soap suds, then hands them back so Will can towel them dry with a tea towel he found hanging off one of the cupboard handles. Everyone else continues their chatter at the table, but it blends into the background a little, faint against the ‘slosh’ and ‘ting’ of the dishes. Will is drying his second spoon when he finally clears his throat.
“Hey… You don’t have to, you know.”
Mike runs the scrubbing brush in a circle around the rim of the bowl. He doesn’t need to be so thorough. “Hm?”
“Your room,” Will adds. “It was nice of you to offer that we share, Mike, but you can kick me out if you want. Now that your mom isn’t listening.”
Mike stops scrubbing. He turns and looks right at Will—like, right into his eyes—and knots his brows together like Will has just told him something horrible.
“What?”
Will shrinks a little under the eye contact. For some reason, he can’t find it in himself to look away. “You haven’t slept properly in days, so you probably want your room to yourself.”
“What- No.” Mike shakes his head. He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Will. We’re back in our murder town with a crazy otherworldly serial killer on the loose, and you’re the number one candidate for unspeakable horrors around here. It sounds like Lenora was chill, but now that you’re back-“ Mike leans in a little, his smile gone, and he drops his voice down to a whisper. “We need to stick together, okay? We’ll do better this time. I’m not leaving you alone.”
Oh. Okay. That’s a totally normal thing to say. Will is definitely not going to lose sleep thinking this moment over. Nope. Not a chance in the world.
“Yeah,” he breathes. “I- Okay. Thank you.”
Mike doesn’t seem to mind that Will can’t currently form coherent sentences. He smiles again, clearly proud of himself, and keeps that smile as he turns back to the dishes to finish off the last bowl. Will watches his hands as he works; the back and forth and the turning and flip as he cleans every last morsel from the bowl. He’s always liked Mike’s hands. They’re slender and pale, and he has such long fingers. His knuckles are a little red and scratched. His nails are clipped short from where he’s been biting them.
Will is so zoned out that he almost doesn’t notice when Mike passes him the bowl to dry. He blinks, catches it in his own two hands, and gets to work at towelling it off.
Mike unplugs the sink and lets the water spiral down the drain.
“So, I was…” he turns to Will and rubs the back of his neck, suddenly unsure. “Are you good if I take the first shower? It’s just that I feel kind of gross after the road trip, so-“
“Mike.” Will almost laughs. “This is your house. Yes, you can take the first shower.”
“Oh.” Mike does actually laugh a little. “Yeah, that’s… Okay.” He points a thumb behind him, back at the stairs. “There’s a sleeping bag and a pillow and lots of blankets in my room already. I’ll uh… I’ll let you know when the showers free, yeah?”
Will doesn’t really know what else to say, so he just smiles at Mike, half dried soup bowl still bundled in the tea towel, and nods. “Cool.”
Mike smiles back in a way that scrunches up his nose, his eyes sparkling a little in the dim kitchen light. “Cool.”
Maybe this isn’t so weird after all.
—————————
Honestly, fuck these sleeping bags. Mike is so sick of them and he hasn’t even turned the lights off yet. Hasn’t even heard the rustling of that synthetic material. Shit, he’s not even the one planning to sleep in one tonight.
They’re just so… ugh. Uncomfortable, maybe? They’ve been the solid wall between him and Will sharing a bed since he turned ten and suddenly the idea of boys sleeping next to each other got weird. Sleeping bags are the reason he’s slept on the floor for so many nights of his life, when Will had a perfectly big enough bed the entire time. And he probably would have said yes if at any of those times Mike had asked to join him. But Mike could never quite shake the feeling that someone might be watching. Like the second he got between the sheets somebody could jump out and yell ‘ha! Caught you in the act, you creeps, and I’m telling the entire town!’
Yeah. Mike is pretty sure someone’s watching him now.
He’s standing in his room, showered and dried and dressed in some pyjamas he’d found on the end of his bed, all freshly cleaned and folded. Mike stands in his room, hands on his hips, and looks around.
Nothing’s changed about his room, really, but he’s not sure that much would have happened to it in the time he was absent. Ripped apart by the Upside Down maybe? Or torn through by Holly as she rummages through his belongings in pursuit of something fun. But it’s untouched really, like he was never gone. Holly must not have touched a thing, Nancy must have ignored it completely, his mom must not have even tried to clean it. No one’s been in here at all. Mike isn’t really sure how that makes him feel.
The water stopped running next door about a minute ago, so Will must be done with his shower already. Hopefully the water was warm enough. Hopefully, he found the towels just fine.
Mike is feeling a little numb, to be honest; a little hollow in the head. Just the sudden cleanliness after spending nearly a week in the same clothes has his skin feeling far too smooth and way too cool to the touch. He’d been feverishly dreaming under muggy desert skies and now that he’s back in his house and in his room, it all feels a little empty, a little too vast for his liking. It’s ironic, he thinks with a slow blink and a blank stare, that home doesn’t quite feel like home.
Mike has only just sat down on the edge of his bed when there’s a knock at his door. It’s quiet, and the door is already ajar so there’s really no need to knock at all.
It’s gotta be Will.
“Come in,” Mike calls.
Sure enough, Will nudges the door all the way open, sends Mike a very awkward smile, and then closes it behind him with a soft ‘click’. “Um. Hi. Nancy said she’s locking all the windows tonight, just to be safe. Can’t blame her, honestly. I mean, the gashes in Hawkins are big enough for an army of demogorgons to crawl out of. Not that they will, but yeah. Can’t blame her.”
That whole thing passes right over Mikes head. He’s not listening. He is however, frozen in place, jaw gone slack, hands balled tightly in his lap.
Will is… he’s wearing Mike clothes. His pyjamas, to be exact; the green long-sleeve shirt and the plaid pants with the ribbon drawstrings. They fit him loosely, albeit a little less loose than they do on Mike, but even Will with his broader shoulders manages to drown in the material a little bit. He’s washed his hair, too, and it’s a little tousled and damp still. Joyce Byers has yet to attack her son with a brush, thank god, so… well it’s safe to say that a bowl cut has never looked so good. And he’s wearing Mikes pyjamas. In case that went unmentioned, Will is wearing… Mike’s pyjamas.
Mike knows exactly how he feels about that. He’d rather not share with the class.
Will only has to glance down to notice the sleeping bag. “Oh! You set it up already?”
Mike just nods. Screw the sleeping bag; he hadn’t meant to lay it out neatly on the floor with two pillows instead of one and a blanket draped over in case Will got cold. He hadn’t meant to do that, making it so comfortable. In the back of his mind, he’d had other plans, but autopilot had taken over and now Will is moving toward the sleeping bag so Mike’s gone and fucked up his chances. Hasn’t he?
“You’re wearing my pyjamas.”
“Oh.” Will immediately frowns down at himself, seemingly guilty, but Mike has no clue as to why. “Uh, yeah, your mom kind of shoved these in my face. ‘Said I should wear them since I didn’t bring pyjamas with me.” He looks back up to meet Mike’s eyes. “Is that okay? Sorry, I should have checked with you.”
Mike blinks. “Yeah, that’s chill.” Shit, he needs to say a little more than three or four words at a time. He nods again; tries for a smile. “I mean, I only use one set at a time, so the rest is, uh, free for the taking.”
Will’s lips turn up in a smirk as he furrows a brow, just looking for a moment; studying Mike. He blinks himself out of this and pulls at the fabric of his shirt. “You, uh… you wear such baggy clothes.”
“We should share the bed tonight.”
Will freezes. Mike does too. He’s still sitting on the edge of his bed, a little slouched, staring up at Will with wide eyes and a certain ‘oh, fuck me’ expression.
Will’s fingers tighten around the fabric. “What?”
“Um,” says Mike, intelligently. He needs to backtrack. “I mean, we spent so many nights cramped in a pizza van. You haven’t slept on a bed in almost a week, and the sleeping bag looks uncomfortable.” Fuck. That isn’t backtracking, that’s forward tracking, or whatever. And that’s a complete lie about the sleeping bag. It does look comfortable. It looks really damn comfortable and that’s because Mike’s an idiot and he made it that way.
What’s more, Will looks about one wrong breath away from sprinting the hell out of there.
Mike cringes, sighs, and then pats his bed covers. “My bed’s big enough.”
Will doesn’t look convinced. “You’re sure?”
Is he sure? Look, it’s just like another one of their sleepovers from when they were kids, and it’s not like anything different might happen. It’s not as if Mike might do anything weird, right? He’s not quite sure what ‘weird’ thing he might get up to in the night, but Mike knows himself well enough to be sure he’ll figure something out. Still, it wouldn’t hurt, right?
“Yeah,” he says to Will. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Will nods, but he doesn’t move, so Mike figures it’s probably best if he gets into bed first. How do they do this? Does he take the side against the wall, optimal for flattening himself against the blue paint, or does he take the outer side, where he can roll right off the bed and wallow in his own thoughts from the discomfort of the floor? Mike decides in the end to take the wall side. It’s for the best if he doesn’t cage Will in.
Mike climbs into bed, slips his legs under the covers. He leaves the blankets pulled back on his right for Will to join him, and it takes a moment, but Will does eventually find it in himself to move.
He steps up to the bed, a little awkwardly, and then sits down, pulling one leg up and then the next, and then he’s pulling the covers over both him and Mike, and then yeah. They’re in bed together. Okay.
Mike rakes his eyes all the way away from Will, and he clears his throat. “Um. We can leave the lamp on, if you want. I don’t know if you still sleep with a light on, but you did for a while after… you know.”
There’s a pink flush to Will’s face that hadn’t been there before. He considers the lamp on the nightstand for a few long seconds and then, still silent, he reaches over and switches it off. The room falls instantly dark.
“It was always a method to keep monsters away,” Will whispers. Mike hears him shift and lie down, feels the dip of the mattress when he moves. “I was pretty scared of the dark after being stuck… down there. I think I’ve grown out of nightlights though. I’m okay now.”
Mike blinks against the darkness. As his eyes begin to adjust, he can only just make out Will’s form. He’s lying on his back, it appears, with his hands folded neatly over his chest. Mike lies down too, and he makes a careful job of mirroring Will as he does, so they end up side by side, staring up at the ceiling with their hands held over their hearts.
“You’re okay?” Mike asks him. “You’re sure?”
When Will replies, Mike can hear the smile in his voice. “I know I’m safe. I have you.”