Chapter Text
Will’s shoulders and hips ached. With every step and turn of his body, he felt like an old building–creaking and groaning, barely holding himself together.
At first, the Wheelers’ couch in their basement had been a welcome comfort compared to the hard, half-broken couch he’d slept on in Hopper’s cabin for the first few days being back in Hawkins. But, eventually, it sagged under him just the same.
The entire ordeal took a toll on his body and mind.
He’d been staying with the Wheelers’ for 2 weeks, it’d been 3 weeks since the massive gates in the ground overtook Hawkins. Will knew better, but everybody across town was convinced that Satan would rise from the cracks at any moment, in the places where the gaping red cracks were still visible, at least. After some failed military investigative attempts, the town had decided to cover the gates with steel. Will, and everyone else who knew what the cracks really were, didn’t think the steel would be a lasting way to combat them, but temporarily, it seemed to be working.
In all honesty, other than the lingering feeling of him in the back of Will’s mind, the Upside Down and all the shit going down in Hawkins was the least of his worries. Every single day for the last 2 weeks, Will had spent most of his day with Mike. Nearly all 24 hours were with Mike, save for the few and far between visits Will had made to Hopper’s cabin to check in with El, which Mike entirely avoided.
Being around Mike this much for the first time in nearly a year, in such a domestic setting, was killing Will. Every time their hands brushed, it burned. Will learned how to live with the ache years ago – but this time it felt heavier, more substantial.
Now, he begrudgingly opened his eyes to see the dim sunlight streaming through the few tiny windows in the Wheelers’ basement. The first thing he acknowledged was the ache in his body. The second, was Mike’s quiet breathing on the floor next to the couch.
That’s another thing that was becoming more common, Mike falling asleep in the basement with Will. They’d be watching a movie, playing a game, and one of them would be dozing off, and decide to just spend the night in the basement together. Once, Mike didn’t bother using the excuse of being tired, and simply said he wanted to keep Will company. There were only a handful of nights that Mike slept in his bedroom, and Will had only been in it once, briefly.
Will wasn’t sure if it was making things worse, or warming his heart.
Faintly, Will heard the dull sounds of breakfast being made upstairs and the quiet squealing of Holly. Will twisted his eyes shut, entertaining the idea of falling back asleep and waiting for Mike to wake him, or Holly come downstairs to get both of the boys for breakfast.
Instead, he forcefully threw the blanket off of him and onto the back of the couch. He got up, his movements slow and careful not to make a great amount of noise. He tip-toed to the tiny basement bathroom, and began brushing his teeth.
Will heard shuffling on the other side of the door as he was finishing brushing his teeth. He opened the bathroom door to see a sleepy Mike sitting up from his pile of blankets on the floor.
“Mornin’.” Mike rubbed his face in an attempt to wipe the grogginess away. His bedridden hair stuck up in multiple places it shouldn’t have.
Will mumbled a quiet ‘hey’, before crossing the room to his small duffle he’d been living out of for the last weeks.
They shuffled around each other as they got ready for the, admittedly uneventful, day.
Karen’s voice broke through the quiet haze in the basement, calling them up for breakfast.
Will hesitated halfway up the stairs, waiting for Mike – the same half-second pause that had started to feel like routine.
At the dining table in the Wheelers’ house, Ted was sitting still, not helping Karen who was trying to wrangle Holly to sit down while simultaneously putting food on the table. Joyce was half sitting, half trying to offer help to Karen who refused. Nancy and Jonathan weren’t present, Will seemed to recall them saying they had plans with Steve and Robin today.
Mike and Will took a seat next to each other. Without Nancy and Jonathan joining them, there was no need to pull up an extra chair or two to squeeze in.
Karen plopped two eggs onto each of the boys’ plates. Will said a quiet ‘thank you’.
Will reached up to grab the bottle of syrup at the same time that Mike did. Their knuckles bumped. Will forced himself to let out a small laugh despite the slightest amount of contact made him short circuit and simultaneously need more of it and also run away from Mike forever. Mike pulled his hand back like he’d been touched something hot and been burnt.
It was weird, everything Mike did nowadays confused Will. Mike should’ve made a snarky comment, argued over who got to use the syrup first, something. Not pull back like Will had hurt him.
He cleared his throat and let Will pour gooey syrup onto his eggs before handing the bottle to Mike.
— — —
Will and Mike retreated back to the basement after silently being on dish duty together. They passed dishes back and forth from the sink to Mike, drying them with a soft towel. Their hands brushed more than once.
It was all so domestic. It pained Will, it was the type of quiet thing that ate him alive. It made him feel weird that the act of doing dishes together pained his heart, but it was something Will imagined sometimes. A life with Mike, doing household chores together, cooking for one another, coming home and shouting ‘you home?’
It was an unattainable dream he indulged himself in every now and then.
It was a stupid thing to get worked up over.
Will sat down on the couch, and Mike followed suit. He sat next to Will, little space between their shoulders and thighs. This didn’t affect Will, it rarely did. Mike was notoriously in his bubble, it was completely uncommon.
Despite their touching conversation in California, things were weird between Will and Mike. Things were weird everywhere. Nobody knew what to do in this pause of the chaos, there was little they could do.
Mike put his head in his hands.
“I don’t know what to do,” He grumbled.
Will glanced at him from across the couch, “About what?”
“Everything is going to shit–it has gone to shit. And we just, what? Sit here? It feels so weird to be sitting in my basement watching movies or playing video games and not doing anything to change things. It feels so weird.”
“I know. And, I can still feel him, he’s still there. It–it’s normal, though, I think. To sit and feel useless. We have to wait it out. What…What can we do at this point?” Will paused, let Mike marinate in the question with his twisted mouth, “If we tried to march in there now what good will it do? We need time to feel things out, figure out what his plan is. So… this is a necessary part of our progress, okay?”
Will turned to look at Mike, and he was looking at Will with parted lips, soft eyes, and subtly nodding.
Will turned away, looking at Mike nowadays was a lot.
“Yeah.” Mike repeated it, more confidently, “Yeah. Thank you.”
Will nodded instead of saying you’re welcome.
“If…” He paused, unsure if he should continue on, “If you wanted to try and change things, you could, maybe, go visit El? I think she wants to hear from you.”
Mike didn’t say anything, he didn’t nod in agreement. He stared at the floor.
“Maybe, um, you could write her a letter?” He swallowed, the words coming out softer than intended. “I could take it for you if you wanted too!”
Mike didn’t look up, only mumbled, “Maybe.”
From across the room, Mike’s walkie-talkie crackled on the floor before picking up Dustin’s voice, loudly speaking into it asking if anyone was there.
They looked at each other, slightly confused, before Mike got up to grab it.
“Mike here, over.”
“Hey! I assume Will is with you. Listen, guys, I finally got Lucas to agree to hang out for a day and leave Max at the hospital. We should, like, do something? Over.”
Despite Will’s advice from earlier, Mike began rambling about the state of Hawkins, “Yeah. Yeah, if we can all get together we could start forming a plan and–”
Dustin interrupted Mike, “No, man. We need to let Lucas have some down time, do something fun. We’ll be over in five. Over.”
Will could see it in the way that Mike paused and opened his mouth without any sound coming out that he wanted to argue, one way or another, but instead he agreed and put down the walkie-talkie.
Will and Mike looked around the basement for a moment, realizing it was a bit of a mess.
“Should we–” Will said at the same time Mike started;
“It’s–”
“Sorry,” Mike said immediately.
He waited expectantly for Will to continue, “I was just gonna say, should we clean up?”
Mike nodded, “Yeah, me too. I’m sure Lucas doesn’t want to feel like he’s rotting in the basement like we’ve been,” He smirked at Will. Will returned it with a grin.
Will began tidying up some of his clothes that were laid astray next to his duffle bag. Though most of them dirty, he shoveled them into the bag. He was running out of clean clothes despite Karen washing most of them for him when the invite to stay with the Wheelers was extended.
Mike folded the blankets around the room and piled them into a pile on the floor.
Will grabbed empty pop cans and a few greasy plates, putting them in a pile on the table.
Mike put away piles of DVDs and games that were all over the room from multiple days and nights spent in front of the TV in the Wheelers’ basement.
As Will was putting some discarded socks into his bag, there was insistent knocking at the door upstairs. They locked eyes, smiling, a telltale sign Dustin had arrived.
They heard Holly answer the door, telling the boys that the two of them were in the basement.
The first thing Dustin said when he got down the stairs was, “Holy shit, it’s so clean down here.”
Lucas paused and looked around, his eyebrows wound tightly together, “It is. I haven’t seen Mike’s basement this clean since we were kids. It’s kind of unsettling, I think I was looking forward to the nasty comfort of messy, slightly smelly basement.”
Mike scoffed, “Smelly?”
Will withheld a laugh.
“Yes!” Dustin backed Lucas up.
“I’ve never thought that it smelled bad?” Will offered.
Dustin was continuing to argue before Mike could open his mouth in rebuttal, “That’s because before you moved to Lenora, you spent more time here than you did your own home, more than the rest of us at least. You’re used to it.”
Lucas nodded along like that was concrete evidence.
Mike rolled his eyes, “My basement doesn’t smell.”
Dustin went from his spot at the bottom of the stairs to plopping down on the couch, “Does too.”
Before they could get in a back and forth of ‘does too’ and ‘does not’, Will spoke, “It smells a normal amount, okay?”
Mike guffawed, “I thought you said it didn’t smell!”
“Well–It is a basement.”
“Whatever.”
The room was quiet, momentarily. Dustin was grinning. Lucas had the tiniest sliver of a smile on his face, which Will silently declared a win. Will dared a glance to Mike, his eyes were slowly darting across the room at each of their friends.
He cleared his throat before quietly saying, “I missed this.”
Lucas nodded, “Me too.”
“Mike, are you getting soft on us?” Dustin, lightheartedly, picked on Mike, but they all knew he agreed, maybe most of all.
Mike rolled his eyes again.
In all honesty, maybe Mike was getting soft.
Will noticed it in the way he slept on the floor next to Will nearly every night. In the way his gaze would occasionally linger on Will when he thought he wasn’t looking. In the way he noticed every little thing, became worried about Will when he had a headache.
Will assumed it was all because of El. Mike and El hadn’t spoken in 3 weeks, he was sure Mike was just missing her and feeling guilty about it.
Lucas moved to sit down on the couch next to Dustin. Will took a seat in the chair opposite the couch. Mike sat on the floor next to the chair. His presence was welcome to Will, but he found it peculiar that he chose to sit on the floor rather than on the couch with Lucas and Dustin. Admittedly, it would be a little tight, but still comfortable. And, surely more so than the floor.
The way Lucas squinted at Mike a moment too long told Will it hadn’t gone unnoticed by him either.
Will chose to break the comfortable silence, “How’s Max?”
Will knew it’d dim the mood, but when he said it, it was almost like a somber wince came over the room. Genuinely, he wanted to know. He knew if there’d been any major updates, he would have already been told, but still.
“Um.” Lucas pinched his face close before exhaling, “Yeah, yeah. She’s–well. She’s the same. No,” a cough, “No updates.”
Everyone just nodded.
And then, Mike, “Well. No updates is better than bad news.”
It made Dustin chuckle and mumble a quiet agreement. Then, he slapped his hands onto his knees. “As long as we’re catching up! Mike, how’s El?”
The silence and hesitation from Mike spoke volumes, and after a second of everyone knowing Mike had no response, Will jumped in, but it practically went unheard.
“She’s okay, recovering. I think she’s adjusting though–she feels guilty about, well–”
“You haven’t gone to see her yet? Are you two still fighting?” Dustin guffawed, “Aw man, my longest fight with Suzie was no more than a few hours! And that’s just ‘cause she turned off her radio to ignore me and I kept trying ‘til she listened to me!”
Mike became flustered, tripped over his words, and tried to start a sentence about a hundred times.
“What’s stopping you, man?” Lucas asked, not dogging on Mike, but with genuine wonder and softness.
Mike's mouth twisted and twitched, he was quick to defend himself. Will couldn’t make out why Mike was feeling so defensive; it wasn’t like Dustin, or more so Lucas, were doubting his relationship. All three of them knew Mike and El were practically a power couple.
“I– I just think she needs more time. She needs more time. She can come to me, ya know? I don’t want her to think I’m not respecting her want for space.”
“Did she tell you she wanted space?” Lucas asked.
“Well–no, but–”
Dustin laughed out loud. At Mike. It made Will a little angry that Dustin didn’t realize it’d make Mike shut down and not want to open up. Mike never opened up to Lucas and Dustin except in sudden outbursts. Maybe he would’ve in a calmer manner if Dustin took a minute to listen.
“You gotta stop avoiding it, dude! She’s gonna dump your ass again,” He laughed through the sentence.
Will could see Lucas grimace at Dustin’s words.
“Listen, Mike–”
But, as soon as Lucas opened his mouth, Mike cut him off as though he never heard him. “Let’s play a game! We should play a game.”
No one argued.
Will forced a smile as he grabbed Uno from the table. Maybe this was all they’d ever do – find games and excuses to fill the silence between things they didn’t want to say.