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Four months after they kill Vecna, Will gets sick. Nice and normal sick, though, or so Hopper tells Mike outside of Will’s bedroom door.
“Drop the face, kid,” he says. He’s in loungewear, and his beard’s grown in. He’s big, tall, and in the fucking way. “It’s not an emergency.”
Mike can tell that he’s glaring because he’s glaring nearly sixty-five percent of the time Hopper is involved. Seventy-five percent if nothing life-threatening is actively occurring. They've been on a lucky streak recently.
“Don’t have a face,” he says.
Hopper raises an eyebrow. “Oh, you most certainly do.”
“Whatever. What are you anyway, his bodyguard?”
“Funny, always thought that was your job.”
From somewhere deeper in the house, Joyce’s voice saves him. “Hop,” she says, “Stop antagonizing teenagers.”
“Won’t be teenagers much longer,” Hop grumbles, but he starts stepping out of the way before adding, low enough for only Mike, “Looks like a spring flu or something. Keep it light.”
Mike glares some more. “Duh.”
Inside Will’s room, the blinds are drawn. What streaks of light peel through the shades catch on dust and tinier, more immediate details: dirty clothes tossed into the corner, the neglected coffee stain in the middle of the room, a pile of loose sketch paper drifting out from under Will’s bed.
Will’s room is the kind of place that’s clean until it’s not, always a barometer of something less obvious and more sinister.
“Geez,” Mike says, “don’t tell me it’s the plague.”
Will is small and pissed-looking under his duvet. He's got it tucked up to his chin like a kid that’s scared of the dark, eyes peeking just enough to make out any monsters creeping his way. No monsters, if just this once. Only Mike.
Will says, with a voice turned stuffy and petulant, “People don't get the plague anymore, Mike.”
Mike says, “That's what they want you to believe.”
“Who’s they?”
Mike waves a hand. “The people at large. The Man. You know.”
Will huffs, but nods. You don't defeat an interdimensional demon without meeting The Man once or twice along the way.
“What is it, then?” Mike asks after Will continues to silently watch him from across the room, narrow-eyed and squirmy.
“Not a big deal,” is his answer.
“Sure. Hop vetted me on that part already.”
“Did you guys argue?”
Mike takes real and genuine offense. “What? No, why? We don’t exclusively argue, you know.”
“Yes, you do,” Will states, and flips onto his stomach so he can sulk out of view.
Mike busies around for a bit. He kicks the clothes into a more manageable looking pile. He fiddles with the homework open on Will’s desk. He peeks into Will’s cup - full of water - and the bowl on his nightstand - half-full of soup, and cold-looking. He feels Will watching him as he completes these little tasks, sneaking looks that he shoves back into his pillow when Mike moves.
Mike’s not an idiot.
“Lucky the weekend’s almost over,” he says.
“Unlucky.”
“Uh, hardly, dude. You get to miss school.”
Will grumbles something into his bed.
“Come again?”
Will turns his head just enough so the words aren’t completely and immediately absorbed by pillow. “I said I’ve missed enough school already.”
Mike and Will are different creatures: their rendezvousing with and eventual destruction of Vecna upended a hefty chunk of their junior year. Mike doesn’t mind this upending, because why the fuck would he. Pre-calc loses approximately all of its value once you’ve survived the apocalypse and saved the world. Will does mind this upending though, because “just one normal year of high school could be nice, Mike.”
Mike usually finds this opinion boring; today, he finds it sad more than anything.
“It’ll be fine,” he says, shooting for casual. “I’ll take notes for you, and you’ll sleep all day anyways. And you don’t have to eat shit cafeteria food so, actually, I’m jealous of you.”
Will pokes more of his head out to narrow his eyes up at Mike. His hair is fluffy. His cheeks are pink. His lips scrunch in a frown. “You can finish my soup then.”
Mike looks again at the tepid green of it and winces. “Point taken.”
“Why are you here?”
It’s abrupt in the way Will’s always been abrupt: skittering and not saying until, all at once, it bursts out of him. He’s looking at Mike, which is annoying. It’s harder to bullshit around The Will Thing when Will’s staring right at him.
He chooses honesty, or, well, partial honesty. “I wanted to check on you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not an asshole.”
Will looks at him for a few seconds longer. His skin is a bit pale, his eyes a bit red, but he looks fine otherwise. A little tired, a tad sweaty. But his eyes are more green than brown. His voice is his own. He’s Will Byers; nothing else is going on here.
“Well, I’m fine,” Will says, and turns into his bed again.
“I’ll take notes for you.”
“You already said that.”
“I’ll bring you cafeteria leftovers then.”
“Ha.”
It’s past noon on a Sunday. Will had missed their weekly party breakfast - waffles and eggs at the cheap diner down the street - and El had said, “He was coughing all last night,” and Mike had tracked him here. He’s gathered his intel. He’s answered his own questions. There’s no excuse to linger past that.
Has there ever been, though?
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll call after school.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Fuck off, I am.”
Will makes a noise; it’s tired sounding, but when he glances again at Mike, his expression is bad at hiding its gratitude.
Sometimes, Mike feels as if he is talking to a wall, just to let Will know he’s not alone.
Joyce sees him out with a warm hug and a meaningful little, “Everyone gets sick in the spring.”
“Yeah, that’s what my mom said too.”
“And she’s right. He’ll be fine.”
If he had a dollar. Joyce’s face is reassuring, but Mike has seen Joyce’s reassuring face before in varying degrees of hopeless, Will-related situations. His stomach tightens.
Joyce’s expression slackens in brutally-earned understanding. “It’s just a cold, Mike,” she says.
He forces a smile, nods, tries to hold the mostly-chill attitude he’s faking, because Joyce is right. People get sick. Normal people get sick. Less-than-normal people get sick. People who have been possessed and unlocked secret powers and banished assholes to the void get sick; Will Byers gets sick.
Back at the house, Mike lets himself get sucked into TV With Holly time. Then dinner prep, and dinner eating, and a call from Nancy updating their mom on her summer plans, and blah blah blah. The evening feels bland. Holly says, “You have a stink face,” and he says, “I don’t.”
“Not always,” Holly clarifies with a sniff. “Just sometimes. Like right now.”
“Terrific.”
He stares out his window until he falls asleep; Hawkins looks like Hawkins, the tree by his house, the diligently manicured lawn across the street, the tips of shingles and weathervanes, perfect little homes and perfect little lives.
There is no monster. Not anymore. It’s a spring flu. It’s a few days of missed school. It’s just a cold, Mike.
.
He dreams of the night it took Will. Not the first time, on Mirkwood, or the second time, in the middle of the football field, but the third time. The last time: Will speaking with a voice that wasn’t his, eyes black marbles that spun in their sockets, grin wicked as he traced his own nails in gouging lines down his face. Blood everywhere. On his cheeks, in his eyes, down his neck.
“You think you can have him back?” Vecna’s voice had said from Will’s mouth. “How have you not realized it yet? He has been mine from the beginning.”
Mike wakes up in a cold sweat. He nearly bolts for the door, just to call the Byers’ house, to make sure Will’s in his bed, asleep, here, with them.
It won’t help. He knows it won’t help, because he knows this is the sort of problem he needs to be able to fix on his own. He can’t run for reassurance every time. It’s silly. It’s impractical. It’s immature, and it’s more legwork for Will, who can’t turn a fucking corner without someone checking to make sure that he’s still alive, and still himself, and still ok, maybe, somehow, despite it all.
Mike stares at his alarm clock this time, watching the red digits tick tick tick until he falls back to sleep.
.
Dustin’s feet are propped up on the desk seat in front of them, and his hands are behind his head, and he speaks with the grandiose ease of someone who’s coached fucking Steve Harrington of all people through his emotional woes when he says, “Mike, you know she’s got a point.”
Max is sitting backwards in her desk, head resting in arms crossed over the seat back, and she sticks her tongue out at Mike in triumph. He glares at her. He’s good at glaring at Max.
“No she doesn’t,” he says, because it’s true. “I’d do the same thing for you, or Lucas, or -”
“Well, yeah man, you’d take notes for us,” Lucas says, shrugs. He’s the only one standing, and it gives him the air of judge and executioner somehow. “But you wouldn’t dip out of breakfast -”
“I didn’t dip out, I just -”
“-to drive to our house and personally check on us.”
“I can hear it now,” Max says, grinning awfully. “Oh Will, should I fetch a tissue box? Oh Will, are you cold? Do you need another blanket? Maybe if you scooted over some there’d be room for -”
“Fuck off,” Mike says, and Max laughs some more. El laughs too, the traitor. When Mike shoots his glare to her next, she just puts her hands up, the picture of innocence.
“Mike,” she says, all apologetic about it too. “I’m only laughing because it is true.”
Wonderful.
“Listen, man,” Dustin says, putting up placating hands. “It’s not like it’s exactly shocking. I mean, you’ve always been like that.”
“Like what?”
Dustin gestures vaguely, then looks to Lucas for help. Lucas, for his part, just shrugs. Other students are starting to filter in; they’ve got three minutes ‘til homeroom.
“Like, extra attentive, I guess,” Dustin lands on eventually. “With Will, I mean.”
Mike can feel his face heating up. “I’m the normal amount of attentive.”
“Sure, ok,” Dustin agrees. “I’m not saying it’s not normal. I just mean, uh.” He scratches his head, looks again to Lucas, who shrugs again in a you’re on your own type of gesture.
Max rolls her eyes, makes a put-upon sighing sound, and says, “What Dumb and Dumber mean to say is that you’ve got a soft spot.” She tilts her head, and quick as anything she drops the teasing and lands at face-value sincerity. “It’s sweet, and it’s not something you should change. I just like hazing you about it, is all.”
“Soft spot!” El repeats, apparently delighted by this new phrase. “I like that.”
Max smiles wider. “Why thank you.”
“I’ve got a soft spot for you guys,” El states, like this is a bold and frankly heroic proclamation. “Even you, Mike!”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Yes,” El says, at the same time that Dustin says, “Nothing ever makes you feel better.”
“I know something that would,” Max says, and dons her shit-eating attitude again. “Or should I say, someone.”
“Ok, ok, let the guy breathe,” Lucas warns, and Max rolls her eyes again but allows the lean-down peck on the cheek from Lucas, satisfied that she’s done her part, apparently.
Mr. Carver walks in with an, “Ok, alright, quiet down, I know, it’s Monday, so exciting,” and the conversation wraps up. Mike stews through English, and stews through physics, and stews through pre-calc. He stews, and takes much more diligent notes than he normally would, and Max offers her extra chicken nuggets like a peace offering during lunch. Mike turns it around in his head: soft spot. He thinks of Halloween night, years ago now, shoving the rest of them away to take Will to his house instead, to put a hand on his arm and say crazy together with a feeling like cotton bursting out of his ribcage.
He eats the extra nuggets and stops thinking about it altogether.
.
He doesn’t bike straight to Will’s house. That’d be crazy. Will doesn’t need the notes until he feels better, anyways.
He calls instead. Joyce answers with an, “Oh, hello, Mike!”
“Hey, Ms. Byers,” he says. He’s aware of Holly thrown over the back of the couch, observing this conversation with a conniving sort of expression. He shoos her away with his hand, and she doesn’t so much as budge.
“You’re calling to check on Will?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes.” Then, like it helps, “And also, I took notes for him. I thought I’d let him know, and see if I need to take more tomorrow.”
“Well that’s very nice of you.” Holly blows a raspberry his way. Mike glares and mouths gremlin! at her.
“Sure, it’s no problem.” He hesitates. “So, Will?”
“He’s asleep right now,” Joyce says. “But he’s doing fine. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Except that he’s sick.”
“Some would consider that an ordinary part of life, too, Mike.”
“Right.” Mike almost asks if she would mind waking him up, just for a second, just so Mike can hear his voice, before deciding that would be certifiably insane. Also, Holly. The news would spread like wildfire. “Will he be absent tomorrow too then?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“Ok.” A beat. Mike swallows. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Of course Mike.” Joyce sounds like she’s smiling while she talks, on the tail-end of amused; Mike’s not sure what to make of that, exactly. “I appreciate your concern. Will will too, I’m sure.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
“No need for thanks! See you soon, Michael.”
Mike hangs up and immediately chases Holly around the living room. She laughs and laughs, but surrenders quickly enough and offers to paint his nails as payment for her general horrid-ness. He politely declines and helps her with her math homework instead. Reducing fractions? Please. Mike’s an asshole, not a moron.
.
School is boring on Tuesday. School is boring all the time, to be fair, but Tuesday drags like a wet fucking towel, pulling behind him and getting stuck on everything imaginable.
At lunch, he presses his forehead to the table and says, “How many weeks ‘til summer?”
“Gee, let me just get out my calendar,” Max says.
“Why is the meatloaf always cold in the middle?” Dustin says, poking his lunch with a fork.
“Probably seven? Six?” Lucas pauses, thinks some. “Eight?”
“Mine is cold too,” El says, “but I don’t mind.”
“I think I’m gonna lifeguard this summer,” Max says, shoveling her peas into her mashed potatoes. “Get nice and tan.”
“You don’t tan, baby,” Lucas reminds her.
“Don’t call me baby in public, geez,” she says, “And yes, I do.”
“You burn.”
“I burn in the process of tanning.”
“Yeah, same as Mike,” Lucas snorts. “Some real tan individuals.”
“Hey! Mike and I can tan just fine!” Max turns to face Mike with an expression of solidarity. “This summer, we’re going all in, alright?”
Dustin says, to El, “Can you use your powers to heat this up?”
El shakes her head solemnly.
Mike closes his eyes and misses Will.
.
When he calls that afternoon, Will answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Will! It’s, uh, it’s Mike.”
“I know.”
“Right.” Holly isn’t on the couch, and Mike’s parents are who-the-fuck-knows-where. He scoots closer to the wall, holds the phone a bit nearer. “How are you?”
“‘m fine. Having so much fun sleeping all day.”
He sounds fine. Mostly fine. A little stuffy, a little hoarse, but he speaks with his own voice. He sounds like himself. Mike pictures his face and doesn’t imagine inky black marbles where his eyes should be. These are all good things.
“I can come over,” he offers, “Then I’ll also get sick, and I can see if it’s really worth the hype.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I mean, I could.”
“I’m telling you not to.”
“Hm.” Mike says nothing for a while, and neither does Will. He listens to Will breathe instead, and the garbling sound of a cough he tucks somewhere outside of the receiver.
“Is your mom home?” he asks.
“No. She works the late shift tonight, couldn’t move it around.”
“And tomorrow?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re sick, Will, you shouldn’t be home alone if you’re sick, and -”
“She was here all morning, and El’s here, Mike, relax.”
But Mike doesn’t really do relaxed; it’s not a skill he’s particularly known for, anyway. His fingers feel tingly, and his heart prominent where it’s wedged up his throat.
This isn’t helping; Mike isn’t helping. Will is fine. He swallows, and says, as casual as he can, “Well, school’s been sucking, if you were curious.”
“Really?” Will says, like this is at all shocking news, coming from Mike. “Tell me about it.”
So Mike does. He talks about the cold meatloaf, and the pop quiz in physics, and the video Mrs. Mallory played in history instead of actually, ya know, teaching. Will makes the occasional sound, a hum, a laugh, a something to show Mike he’s listening. Mike talks until he’s out of stories, and then says, “You’ll tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“If it gets worse.”
There’s a stretchy sort of pause, full of things impossible to voice. Will says, “Of course,” but it’s a lie. Mike knew it’d be a lie, anyways. He asks because he has to, even if he knows this about Will too: he’ll never tell, until it’s too fucking late.
“Well, hopefully I’ll see you Thursday, then.”
“Yeah. Thursday.”
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
I miss you. It’s been two days and I miss you. Everything is boring without you. I can’t stop thinking about it. I would rather be sick. I would rather be sick with you than be apart.
“Bye, Mike,” Will says.
“Bye, Will.”
.
Mike dreams again; this time, of that argument. The one from that summer, when he was an idiot, and an asshole, and irredeemable in so many ways that seemed so out of his control at the time; he yells at Will in the middle of a storm - it’s not my fault you don’t like girls! - and Will bikes away into the rain. He searches Will’s house, and all of Castle Byers, but in the dream, he doesn’t find Will. He looks everywhere he can think of, but Will’s nowhere to be found. He’s lost him again, for good this time.
Mike wakes up, and it’s three in the morning. He gets some water from downstairs and shoves his head under the pillow to fall back asleep. He wonders why he was such a dick that summer, and the year following, and he knows they’ve talked about it, knows Will has forgiven him, but still. It’s a sore spot he circles back to every month or so. Only sometimes is he brave enough to attempt peeling it back open, always with unproductive, unwilling fingers.
Occasionally, though, Mike thinks he knows the answers, thinks he’s discovered a name for the Will Thing. But looking at it head-on is a dangerous venture; he knows this too, for the skittery, out-of-control feeling it places in his chest. He wills his thoughts away, and counts up to three hundred and seven before falling asleep again.
.
El says, “Well, I know he has a fever. A high fever, maybe. Joyce said.”
Dustin whistles. “Fever’s do you in, man. That’s how you know it’s serious.”
Max slaps him on the arm. “Dude, having a fever is just part of being sick. Stop being dramatic and have, like, an ounce of tact.”
“Um, rude?”
“She’s right,” Lucas says, and Dustin makes a face.
“Favoritism,” he pouts.
“It’s not favoritism if it’s just true.”
“He’s ok, though,” El says, looking around like she’s not sure what part of her report on Will caused this little altercation. “We had breakfast together this morning. He said I should still go to the study date.”
Mike looks up. “What study date?”
El blinks. “The one tonight, for the history test.”
“That’s this week?”
“Sure is,” Dustin says, “And you can’t keep scraping by with C’s, Mike.”
“Sure can,” Mike shoots back, then turns to El. “But Joyce works tonight.”
El narrows her eyes. “I know that, Mike,” she says, a little solidly. “That’s why I’m not going. Even if he said I could.”
Oh. Right. “Stand down, soldier,” Dustin jokes. Mike flicks him off, but spends the rest of lunch thinking about it. And P.E., and physics, until he finds El at her locker before dismissal and says, “Hey, I can stay.”
She swings her backpack over her shoulder and makes a face. “Stay where?”
“With Will.”
She considers him for a long moment, a knowing sort of El Consideration that makes him shift his weight, fidget where he stands. Whatever she sees, it makes her smile, soft and pleased.
“Sure,” she says.
“So you can, you know. Go study.”
“Right, you’re staying so I can go study.” She smiles wider. “Thank you for making my grades such a priority.”
“Oh, come off it,” he says as she laughs. “I get it, I’ve got my stupid fucking soft spot or whatever and I’m fucking screwed for it and -”
“No,” El says, “It is not a bad thing.” She puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezes once. “It makes you better.”
Holy fucking hell below, but Mike needs to find new friends. These ones are too prone to knee shots and gut punches. “Sure, yeah, ok, just, call when you’re on your way back or something,” he manages.
“Sure thing! Thanks, Mike!” She gives him a quick hug, bounds away only to stop halfway and turn to face him again. “Oh, his medicine is in Joyce’s bathroom, and -”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”
She smiles some more. “Oh, I know!” And then she’s gone, tap tapping down the hall to no doubt alert the rest of the gang to this development. Mike watches her go, decides his life is already fucking stupid as it is, and stuffs the extra notes he’s taken into his backpack before anyone else can find him.
.
The Byers keep a key under their front doormat. It’s the sort of thing that would seem silly if their problems were the normal sort of problems: that being said, it’s not like a locked door would especially perturb the Mindflayer. The demogorgon certainly didn’t stop to look for the key under the mat. Or, at least, Will’s never told that version of the story.
Mike, on the other hand. Mike finds the key because he knew about it already; because he knows both too much and too little about Will Byers, and his family, and his life, and the rest of it.
He picks up the key - small, golden, brown with dirt and lack of use - and lets himself in.
The Byers’ new house is much like their last, but the feel of it is different. Warmer, softer, more green, less dusty. The insidious claws of Vecna, the demogorgon, Lonnie Byers - none of them have ever quite breached this house, and Mike thinks the difference shows.
The kitchen is clean, save for a few bowls cluttered in the sink. Mike spots a handwritten note, Joyce’s frantic, looping scrawl: dinner is in the fridge, just heat it up! call if u need, meds at 8, remember?? love you, mom.
There are photos on the fridge. Jonathan standing on the seal at NYU, he and Will and Joyce and Bob around the dinner table, Hop and Joyce smiling overlooking the Niagara Falls, their idea of a weekend getaway earlier this year. Will, when he was a kid, holding up a drawing of Castle Byers, before he and Jonathan had built it a few days later.
Mike opens the fridge: sure enough, there’s a tupperware inside, something brothy looking. The sort of shit you eat when you’re sick. He closes it, does a cursory sweep of the living room before heading down the hallway.
Will’s room is the last door on the right. He doesn’t knock.
When he pushes the door open, it’s immediately clear that Will’s asleep. His room smells stale, like clothes left at the bottom of your drawer. The curtains are pulled tight, and the covers are strewn halfway off of the bed, and there’s Will.
Mike’s seen Will sleeping more times than he can count: at sleepovers, exhausted over a textbook, drugged into unconsciousness to hide from the Mindflayer. Will slept for nearly a week after everything, sapped to the bone from defeating Vecna, a sleep so long they weren’t sure he’d wake up. Mike’s seen Will asleep, so there’s nothing to account for the way it feels so different now.
Will’s shirt is in a heap by his nightstand, and sheets twist angrily around his hips, but it’s the length of his back that catches Mike’s eye: the pale breadth of it, the smattering of moles and freckles, the ridges of his spine and hollowing of his ribcage as he breathes. Will’s face is smashed into his pillow, the hair at the back of his head messy and curled with sweat, and when Mike approaches, there’s a noticeable heat radiating from where Will snores on, unaware.
He ignores the sirens in his head; he places a palm flat on Will’s back. The skin here isn’t cold, or vacant, or slimy from Upside Down exposure; it’s hot, sickly hot and sticky with sweat, but it’s Will.
It’s Will.
Mike leaves his hand here for a moment. Some of the static in his chest settles. Will’s back rises when he breathes, and Mike’s hand rises with it. He stares, until he can convince himself everything is mostly fine.
Everything is mostly fine.
Until Will blinks awake, and Mike is still standing at the side of his back and still touching the smooth warmth of his skin.
Will’s eyes are red-rimmed and foggy. They take some time to find Mike, but once they do, Will doesn’t even have the decency to look confused at Mike’s presence. He just lets out a long breath, a choppy thing that fights through his nose, and stares up at Mike without fanfare.
“Hey,” Mike says.
“Hi.”
“You look like shit.”
Will manages a half-smile at that, sleepy and off-kilter. He hums, which he seems to deem answer enough, because after that, he tucks the side of his face back into his pillow, away from Mike.
“Hey,” Mike says, and moves his hand to the bony ridge of Will’s shoulder instead. “Wake up. I need to do stuff.”
Will groans into his pillow. “Like what?” he asks, on the shy side of petulant.
“Like, I don’t know. Take your temperature, probably? Get you to eat something? Did you eat lunch?”
Will doesn’t answer him; Mike pokes his shoulder once, twice, and Will rolls back over to glare fuzzily at him.
“I’m trying to sleep,” he points out.
“And you can, after I make sure you’re not dying.”
Will rolls his eyes, but it’s a pretty heatless gesture in his current state. “I’m not dying,” he says.
“Then this shouldn’t take long.”
Will seems to realize arguing is not going to get him anywhere, not against Mike, anyways. He rolls fully over and tries to push himself up, but this only results in a bout of coughing, loud and sudden. Mike helps steady him against the headboard, and then hovers as Will coughs and coughs and coughs, not sure exactly how to help. His hands don’t move from their spots on Will’s shoulders, keeping him upright.
Eventually, though, the coughing stops. Will leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, spent. Mike watches him breathe and tries not to develop a stress ulcer.
“I’m going to find a thermometer,” he announces.
Whether Will hears this or not is up for debate; he certainly doesn’t acknowledge it. Mike rifles through the bathroom drawers and the closet in the hallway until he realizes Joyce’d left the thermometer by Will’s medicine in the kitchen. He returns, and Will looks mostly asleep again.
Dusty, dinnertime sunlight finds a home on his face, slanting lines across the familiar quiet of his expression; all the spots Mike’s known and lost and relearned along the way. Mike’s chest feels full. His fingers rattle. He says, “Ok, I’m back,” and Will opens his eyes in small, puffy slits.
“Cool,” he says.
“Super cool. Open your mouth?”
He hopes for protest, or at least a bit of sass; instead, Will closes his eyes again and pops open his mouth. Mike’s stomach squeezes.
It is overwhelming, sometimes, to be trusted like this. To be trusted like this, by Will.
He half-sits on the bed. His knee bumps into Will’s hip. Will closes his mouth around the thermometer, and Mike sits and fidgets and tries to be normal as he counts to four minutes in his head.
Three minutes and seventeen seconds in, Will opens his eyes again. He watches Mike, who is watching him.
He goes to say something.
“Don’t,” Mike says. “You’re gonna fuck up my reading.”
It earns him another eye roll, but this one seems at least a bit more amused than the last.
102.2. It seems high - right? Would his mom consider it high? Would Joyce? Mike’s suddenly, starkly aware of how little he knows about his information now that he’s got it.
Will says, “What’s it say?”
“102.2. Is that high?”
Will shrugs. Fantastic.
“Are you hungry?”
He shrugs again. He’s eyeing his bed like he’d very much like to go back to sleep, actually, if Mike would be so kind as to realize this.
“You can sleep in a bit,” Mike says. “Let’s eat some dinner. Did you have lunch or not?”
Will stares at his bed with increased longing; it’s Mike’s turn to roll his eyes. “Look, you and your bed can have some alone time in, like, thirty minutes. Come eat some food, and drink some water. You really want me bored at school for another fucking week?”
Will abandons looking at his bed to look at Mike instead, quicksilver and suddenly alert. “Why?”
“Why eat and drink? Well, you see, there’s this thing called basic -”
“No. Why would you be bored at school?”
Will has a bad habit of making Mike say the shit he’d rather not. He feels his cheeks flush and hopes he buries it in his glare. “Because you’re not there, asshole. Happy? Now that I’ve gone and bared my soul, would you like to -”
“You’re stupid,” Will says, but it’s hard to miss his grin, small and pleased, and the pink of his face. Fever pink, or something else, Mike’s not sure.
He swallows down the feeling and says, “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Ha.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
It’s easier, after that, to convince Will into a shirt and drag him into the kitchen. Mike forces him to sit at the table while he heats up the soup, and then he gets started on his homework while Will takes slow, measured slurps.
It’s hard to focus with Will so close, though. Mike keeps having to go back and re-check his math, ending up with different numbers each time, frustrated. Will alternates between staring at the wall, coughing into his soup, and looking over Mike’s shoulder, pointing out where he’s gone wrong.
“You’re sick,” Mike says, “You’re not allowed to still be better at math than me.”
Will laughs; it catches on a cough and deepens, a long, grating bout that ends with Mike patting on his back, trying to get him to work it out.
After his breathing steadies again, Will pushes his half-finished bowl away. “‘m not hungry anymore,” he declares.
Mike glances at him. Will’s not dying. He’s not possessed. He’s not unconscious. He’s not bleeding out of his eyes, he’s not speaking with Vecna’s voice, he’s not screaming Mike’s name.
He’s ok. It’s like everyone’s told him, even as Mike keeps forgetting it; Will’s ok.
But Mike is stuck in his ways. He blurts, “Are you sure you’re ok? Do you want some tea? I’ll wake you up later to take your medicine, but -”
Will just waves a hand in Mike’s direction, and then crosses his arms on the table, pillowing his face into them. He angles his chin so he’s facing Mike, bleary-eyed and hazy. “‘s ok.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Ok. Ok, fine. Well, drink some water, at least. Then you can go rest again, and I’ll finish my homework by myself, and then El will be back, and your mom, and it’ll be fine.”
Will continues watching him. “It’s already fine,” he points out simply.
Mike wonders if he imagines the unspoken: it’s already fine, because you’re here.
The feeling stirs and stretches its arms. Mike wills it back to sleep.
They sit like this for a bit longer, until Mike looks over and Will’s eyes are closed, his mouth slowly dropping open as he leans more heavily onto the table. The urge to move his hair out of his eyes is a physical thing in the pit of his stomach.
Instead, Mike puts a hand over Will’s, tapping their fingers together. “Will,” he says.
Will makes a noise of acknowledgment.
“Let’s get you back in bed.”
Will seems more out of it on the walk back. He wobbles and tips and falls easily into his bed. Mike adjusts his covers, but he doubts Will would notice either way; he’s asleep again before Mike’s even left the room.
There is a buzzing under Mike’s skin. There is the feeling with its long arms and persistent wakefulness. Mike aches like a physical thing, a hurt he’s never quite able to outrun.
He closes Will’s blinds and lights a candle, leaving the door open a crack.
.
El calls, mostly so Max can bust his balls in the background.
“And he’ll take his meds at -”
“Eight, yeah, I know, El, chill.”
Meanwhile, Max is swooning somewhere just audible: “Will, are you tired? Will, are you hot? Will, are you hungry? Here, eat my arm! No really, I insist!”
El makes a laughing sound over the line.
“Don’t laugh at that,” Mike says. “You’re encouraging her.”
He can hear her smiling. “I know. I want to.”
“Wonderful.”
“But really, is he ok? I can come back early if -”
“El, seriously,” he says. He glances down the dim hallway, out the dark windows, across the warmly-lit living room, at the round, hanging clock. 7:37. “I’ve got it under control.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
There is a whoosh of air, a hard-earned relief. For all their talk of Mike’s soft spot, he knows he’s not the only one who gets dialed up to a hundred when it comes to Will-related disasters, as frequent and awful as they are.
“Ok,” El says. “I trust you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Max’s voice: “-why would I need my arm anyway? It would be much better served nourishing you, Will, really, I mean it!”
Mike says, “I’m hanging up now.”
“Ok!” There is a pause, then El says, “Lucas and Dustin say hello and to stop thinking disaster thoughts.”
“What? I’m not -”
“Goodbye!”
El hangs up on him instead. Mike stews for a while, then finishes reading his chapter for Lit, then decides 7:40 is basically 8, and Will has been sleeping long enough.
But when Mike opens the door, Will is already awake. Wide, unseeing eyes peer through the dark, heavy and strange.
Mike’s hair stands on end; it’s just Will. Everything’s fine.
“Will?” Mike says, stepping closer. The sun’s well-past set now, and the candlelight makes unrecognizable shapes across Will’s sleep-stricken expression, casting it strangely in the dark. “Hey, it’s me. It’s Mike.”
Will’s eyes rove around some. Mike steps closer, closer again, and finally Will’s gaze finds him.
His eyes are glassy and pink. His expression is hard to make out. His skin is very, very white, and his cheeks are very, very red. At some point, he took his shirt off again, and the blankets are strewn across the floor.
“‘s so hot in here,” Will says eventually. “I’m hot.”
“You have a fever.”
“It’s hot.”
“Yeah, I bet. I’ll take your temperature again, see if -”
Will sits up in a hurry, hasty and rushed. Mike crosses the rest of the distance to his bed, and when he goes to press a hand to Will’s forehead, Will half-tracks the movement and flinches away.
Mike’s stomach plummets.
“It’s just me,” Mike says, pitching his voice calm as his insides start to squirm. “It’s just Mike. I just wanna see if you’re hot.”
“I am,” Will insists, but he keeps Mike’s hand in view this time, as Mike approaches slower, more carefully. Will doesn’t blink, until the back of Mike’s hand is on his forehead. Then, he sighs through his nose, closes his eyes, and leans into the touch.
“You’re cold,” he states. His voice is slurry and weak. Under Mike’s hand, his skin is so hot it burns. “Feels good.”
“It’s time to take your medicine,” Mike says. “And then water, and then - do you wanna shower? A cold shower, maybe?”
Whatever Will goes to decide is lost in another set of coughs, deep and gnarly. Mike keeps one hand on Will’s head and the other on his shoulder, holding him in place as the sound fills the empty space between them.
He’s only sick. He’s just sick.
Will says, “‘m gonna throw up.”
Mike says, “Ok.”
Will is true to his word. He throws up in the toilet as Mike rubs wide circles on his back, and then Mike makes efficient work of the rest: he convinces Will into the shower, keeps the water cold, sprints to grab a fresh set of pajamas, sprints back relieved to find Will hadn’t somehow slipped while he was away. He passes over a towel and gives the semblance of privacy, lingering with his back turned. His skin fills with goosebumps. His heartbeat is loud behind his eyes.
Will says, confused, “My shirt’s backwards?”
Mike turns around. It is, the tag obvious against the creeping flush of his neck. Mike says, “Can I help you?”
Will nods. There is no coughing, this time. It is quiet, and still, as Mike approaches. Will is pink and shower-soft, the skin of his arms cooler from the water. His hair is damp; his eyes are sleepy. He watches Mike with intent, with some unnameable thing so heavy Mike feels himself sinking into it, hands dragging as he helps Will tuck his arms into his shirt and then spins it around by the collar.
Will is so close. His breaths are puffy and short, right beside Mike’s.
“There,” Mike says, but he doesn’t move. He lets his hands drift, from Will’s biceps down to his forearms down to his hands, watching them as he does. He wraps their fingers together, and squeezes his eyes shut, and takes a long, deep breath.
“I’m crazy,” he says. “I’m insane. Tell me you’re not dying.”
“I’m not dying,” Will’s voice says in the dark of Mike’s closed eyes.
“Tell me you’re only sick.”
“I’m only sick.”
“Tell me I’m making a big deal out of nothing, and this is a fever, and sure you puked but, like, people puke all the time, that’s - that’s normal, that’s seriously, so normal.”
A beat. “‘s a lot to say.”
Mike opens his eyes again. Will seems small and tired beneath his gaze, but his fingers are squeezed tight in Mike’s, even as he lists a bit on his feet, bumping his hip against the bathroom counter.
Sometimes, Mike feels that his fear is selfish, that it’s an eternal condition that keeps Will close, always closer, always justified with the need to care, and watch, and watch out for. He’s not sure anymore who it benefits more: Will or himself.
Mike says, “We’ll take your medicine, and you’ll brush your teeth, and drink some water, and then you’re going back to sleep.”
“K.”
It is lighter, in the kitchen; more familiar, with Mike’s textbook still open and the smell of microwaved soup lingering in the air. Will is distant and mullish as Mike makes him drink some water, pop his pill. He takes Will’s temperature again - 102.9, higher, dangerous? - and then leads the both of them to Will’s bedroom.
They only make it halfway. Will beelines back into the bathroom and throws up water and bile. It sucks. Does that mean the medicine won’t work? Should he do another dose? Or would that be too much - can’t people die from too much medicine? Mike’s not sure if fever reducers count, though. His mind races with questions; as established, it sucks. He’s felt helpless a million times, the feeling from the quarry split and scattered across his life, splinters from that first moment he was certain Will was gone for good somehow turning in the least likely places. He’d always thought having such horrible things happen would make the smaller things feel just that: smaller. Instead, every moment is magnified, crystallized, just as sharp and awful and scary as the first.
Will’s puffer vest, bright yellow and red, pulled out of the water; Will’s eyes, foggy blue and trailing with blood, as Vecna took him that last time. Mike’s brain reverberates with it, the same, icy feeling seeping into his veins as Will tips over his toilet and shakes with the effort of his coughs.
Now is not the time.
Mike doesn’t stop touching him.
When Will is finished, he tips forward, spent. He says, “I don’t feel good.”
“I know. I know.”
“Can I go to sleep?”
“Yes, Will, that’s where we’re going.”
When Mike heaves him up by the armpits, Will is crying. These are the silent, unassuming tears of his youth, made to be his alone. Mike would catch him like that sometimes, after his dad visited, or after a bad day at school: by himself, in his room or Castle Byers, with tear tracks down his face that no one would’ve ever known about if Mike hadn’t found him, sat with him through it.
Half the time, Will didn’t even seem to notice he was crying. He certainly doesn’t now, exhausted, empty tears as he rinses his mouth and brushes his teeth and lets himself get wheeled around, back to his bedroom.
He seems content, at least, to crawl back into bed after they brush his teeth again. Mike runs back to the bathroom to wet a washcloth for his forehead, and when he returns, Will is on his back, staring at the ceiling, tears trailing down towards his ears and into his hairline.
Will says, thready, “I wanna sleep.”
“Great. Good. That’s what you’re about to do.”
“This isn’t - this is normal. Right?”
Mike stills. It’s the same question he’d forced Will to answer earlier, but hearing it in Will’s mouth is about ten million times worse. He watches Will’s lips dip, his shaky hands travel up to shove the base of his palms into the root of his eyes.
“This is just - ‘m just sick? He’s not - he’s not, is he -”
The feeling is fire, surging up Mike’s throat. He blinks, and he’s sitting in Will’s bed, the hand not holding the washcloth fastened around Will’s wrist.
“He’s gone, Will,” Mike says, unsurprised by the bite in his own voice. “You just have a fever. That’s all this is, ok? Just a stupid, dumb fucking fever, making you feel things that aren’t real.”
Will nods, but he doesn’t pull his hands away from his face. His breathing quickens, until one hitches, the well-known hitch of a quiet cry threatening to become something bigger.
Mike pulls Will’s hands away from his face - careful careful careful - and presses the cold washcloth to his forehead, right under the damp of his hair. He says, “Hey, Will. Can you open your eyes?”
Will does. His face is tilted, weepy and sick and confused and sad. So sad it squeezes in Mike’s heart, as his brain yells: fix it, fix it, fix it.
“I’m here,” Mike says. “Ok? It’s ok. Everything’s ok.”
Will nods again, face steeling with effort, with holding it all back.
When will he learn?
“Will,” Mike says. “You don’t gotta - it sucks, alright? I know it sucks right now. You don’t gotta pretend it doesn’t feel shitty. ‘s ok that it feels shitty. I’ll be here until it doesn’t anymore.”
Will’s lip wobbles. “That’s - you don’t have to -”
“I want to, asshole. Scooch over?”
Will scooches over, and Mike settles into the bed beside him like they used to when they were younger, when sleepovers meant two on the floor, two in the bed. It’s different, this time. Every point of contact sears a scar on Mike’s skin, leaves marks he knows he’ll remember for days, weeks, months. That thing that lives in Mike, the feeling that peers out from the shadows, that vibrates under his skin, he knows there’s a name for it. But that name is not helpful right now; there’s not room for it yet, with Will sick and hurting and confused and not in any state to entertain Mike and his general bullshit. Mike looks at the feeling head on, without flinching - you’re here, great, I get it - and decides it can sit and watch, kindly, if it must. This isn’t about Mike right now.
Right now, it’s about Will, who Mike pulls closer with a hand to the elbow, a hooked ankle. Will is a furnace, sick-hot and wiggly, tears that come louder once Mike gets him closer, like he knew they would. His nose bumps against Mike’s collarbone. His tears stick to Mike’s shirt. Mike lets his hands wander, circling Will’s ribs, the knobs of his spine, the shower-fresh hair at the base of his neck.
The feeling screams; but the tension leaves Mike’s shoulders. Will’s here. He’s got him. It’s fine - it’s all going to be fine.
Will cries, until he’s all cried out. Stuffy and rife with post-cry clarity, he says, against Mike, “‘m sorry.”
“Shut up.”
“I - if you wanna.” He sniffs, scoots around some. “Go home?”
Please. “Do you want me to?” Mike challenges.
Silence. After a moment, he nudges at Will’s shin with his foot. The room smells of lavender and vanilla. Will smells of shampoo and sweat. “Do you?” he asks again.
Quietly, Will says, “No.”
“Then I won’t.”
“But - if you -”
“Jesus, Will, I don’t, ok? All I’m gonna end up doing is worrying about you anyway, so, really, there’s no fucking point.”
Will hums. It rattles against Mike, against all those touching points: hands and bones and words and hearts. Mike proves his point: he pulls Will closer still, warm and pliant in his arms, above the sheets, like two fucking morons.
Will says, “‘s a dream?”
“Sure, Will. It’s a dream.”
“Makes sense.”
“Sure does.”
“‘m I gonna remember it? Tomorrow?”
“Only if you want to.”
“I want to,” Will says. Mike lets his nails drag against Will’s scalp; Will shudders, and lets out a long, gusty sigh. “I hope I do,” he adds, wistful and trailing.
“Me too,” Mike says. It’s as close to a confession as he’s willing to get.
Time passes. Will starts to breathe deeper, easier. Mike’s certain he’s asleep, until he says, voice no more than a whisper: “Mike?”
“Yes?”
“‘m glad ‘s you. That you’re here.”
Mike’s chest swells. He tucks Will’s head under his chin, takes a breath of cold, stark bedroom air, lets it fill him with clarity. It’s as hard as it is easy, to be around him. Will, who he’s almost lost more times than he cares to count, more times than he’s capable of forgetting.
Mike says, “I’m glad it’s you too.”
Will says nothing else. The night quiets again, deepening, extending fingers that it wraps around the both of them. Will sleeps, but Mike stays awake, staring into the shadows, looking at the ache, here, in the safety of the dark, in the futile spaces between them.
.
He’s late for school the next day. Will’s still asleep when he leaves, open-mouthed and less warm than the night before. Mike’s bones shake to look at him.
“Morning, Mike,” Joyce says as he sneaks into the kitchen. El is laughing, open-mouthed and happy, into her breakfast.
“Morning,” he mumbles, and can feel the beet red of his face. Joyce plants a kiss on the top of his head, hands him two slices of toast, and gives him his repacked backpack before he scurries out, El hot on his heels.
“When I checked on you guys last night,” she’s saying, “when I got back, Mike. You looked so cozy! Max would’ve had a -”
Mike forces a glare, even as his chest swells at the memory. “Not a fucking word to the others,” he says.
El grins, but she mimes locking her mouth and tossing the key. Mike assumes he’s just gotta take her at her word, then; lovely.
Will is back in school by Friday, looking well-rested and normal and like someone Mike loves quite, very much. He greets them all with a sheepish sort of smile and a, “What did I miss?”
“So much,” Max informs helpfully, tossing an arm over his shoulder. “Dustin and Lucas are fighting.”
“Are not!” Dustin says, immediately adamant. “I just happened to observe -”
“Man, happened to observe my ass!” Lucas interrupts. “I don’t -”
Mike lets it drone on overhead. As soon as Max deposits him, Mike is on Will’s other side. Will glances at Mike. Mike glances back. He feels himself smile. Will returns it.
The bell rings. The world spins. Mike’s eyes follow Will; he doesn’t really mind it.