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To Will, it's more dramatic than what really happens.
The burnt umber surrounding him, an engulf of fire and singed flesh in the air like a canary’s song in the morning. Except it’s dark now; the blooming of night and the cloying ash turning the sky into a filthy smog.
There is no clean way for Will to put it, so he doesn’t: his bloody fingers in his mouth to wipe away the red, hair in wet strings in front of his eyes, an ache between the fibres of his bones, all before he collapses to the floor. He can’t recall if he’s ever felt like this before, but he can see the shape of Mike’s mouth haloed from the lights behind him.
“Will,” he says, grasping onto the syllable like a tongue scraping the back of his teeth.
It’s in poor taste to pass out after this, right now, Will knows; the ground tilts like it’s stuck on an improper axis and the asphalt is heavy on the press of his head. He can feel the ringing in his eardrums, the soft sound of the world going quiet before it goes black.
“Baby,” his mom says when he wakes up, briefly, just enough to feel her hands in his hair and palm to his neck. “Oh, god, baby.”
“‘S fine,” he tries.
It doesn’t work very well: he sees behind his eyelids before Joyce can get another word out to him, fingers tightening between the threads of his haircut.
“It’s not bad,” El once said, back when they hid under the covers in Lenora, and Will asked how it felt. “It hurts, but not so much.”
She’s a liar, or something like that, because Will tries to sink into the soft expanse of the heat beneath him. Still, instead, he’s being pulled back, warmth sliding across his jaw from where it had cupped the back of his head and tugging gently, enough to have him raising his chin to look up, half-lidded dazedly. There’s a bump in the road and Will falls back into Mike’s thighs.
Then, his nose squishes against the bone of Mike’s knee, and he must make a sound when Mike cups his cheek, bracing his fingers between the scratch of his denim jeans and the soft skin of Will’s face. His whole face– oh, it fucking hurts.
The air is knocked out of his chest through a heady exhale and rolls into the back of his eyes in a dizzy manner. He’s never felt like this before, this stuck and kept and frozen. Not even back before with the Mind Flayer.
He’s sharply aware of his position, curled up like a dormouse, hands clutching any rough fabric he can find – the car seat, the hem of Mike’s sweater – and shit, he thinks he says out loud, fuck, shit, Mike–
“– we’re close, we’re almost there, just hang on, okay?”
They’re on a street he doesn’t really recognise, which means they aren’t going home, back to the Wheelers, which Will wants to protest against. But he can’t, not with his mouth stuck and his tongue thick between the rows of his sour teeth, tangy with the taste of blood still on his lips.
He keeps dipping in and out of consciousness. That’s all he knows: the edge of the blurring world zooming past as his mom drives like a fucking maniac, cutting the corners just so they can get to where they’re headed faster.
He feels the car swing, his head lolling with the motion and cheek dragging across denim before Mike catches him again– hand sliding under his jaw, guiding him back like Will’s something fragile. Like he’ll break if Mike lets him roll an inch too far.
“Whoa– hey, hey, Will, stay with me,” Mike mutters, voice thinned by fear he seems to be trying hard to swallow. Will can hear it. He can feel it, vibrating through Mike’s thigh where his ear is pressed. “We’re almost there. Just– keep your eyes open for a sec, okay?”
Will tries, god, he tries; his eyelids flicker with the effort and the outline of Mike’s face smears into shadow, the dark sweep of hair and hand curled too tight around Will’s shoulder. He can feel it when Mike leans in, forehead pressed against his temple for the briefest second.
“You’re okay,” Mike whispers, “you’re okay.”
A nod, or something akin to a jerked movement of his head, because of each bump in the road sending stars fluttering across the black of his vision; it clogs every thought.
Mike shifts, steadying him, the warmth travelling straight to the dip in his sternum. Neck, cheek, forehead, shoulder. Every inch Mike touches feels like it might hold him together if the world outside the windshield wants to pull him apart.
“Don’t– don’t drift off, okay?” Mike breathes, just close enough that Will can hear the raw tremor in his voice. “You can do this. Almost there–”
The stop is abrupt.
It yanks him forward, body pitching before Mike’s arm snaps tight across his chest and holds him in his seat, spread out over the back of the car.
The world rocks once more, and then Joyce’s door flies open so fast it bangs against the hinges. Her shoes scrape against the concrete as she sprints to the back door, fingers fumbling against the handle.
Mike’s hand shifts, cupping the side of Will’s neck to steady his spinning head. The touch is warm, shaking, but there, at least.
He registers himself being carried, dragged along across the gravel as his shoes skate across the ground, arms lifted over a set of shoulders. He tries to move his own feet - fails with the pain shooting up from the tips of his toes. He knows he gets dropped off on a couch somewhere, a pillow placed delicately underneath his head, and the squish of it makes Will sink into this darkness, clawing at the frayed edges of his vision, tilting, tilting, falling, until it goes completely black once again.
That familiar swooping feeling in his gut that tells him he has to move, now- he wakes to a start. The room flashes when he pushes himself upright. His hands slip on the blanket's roughness, his breath catching in his throat.
“Will?” Mike’s voice is a rasp from the floor beside the couch, rough from sleep and instantly alert. “Hey, what-?”
“I just- bathroom,” Will mutters, already trying to stand. His legs wobble; the world swims. Mike is up before Will can fall, hands catching his elbows, steadying him with a soft, startled sound, palms to the jut of bone and fingers circling with a gentle shiver, "I got- I got you. I got you."
After shuffling on shaky feet, they're finally at the bathroom door, and Will turns around, grabbing the doorknob with a tight grasp, looking at Mike through his half-dry hair. "I need to pee," he mutters, even though he actually feels like he's about to throw up, but Mike doesn't need to know that.
Nodding, Mike steps back, lingering on Will's skin; Will shuts the door with a gentle click. He says, through it, "I'm fine, I'll be quick," clutches the porcelain sink with his hands cold against it, and looks at himself in the mirror, the reflection. Stares at it, really: the grime on the corners and the way it slashes over his face, along the deep set of his eyes and the thin line of his mouth pulled downwards into a frown - a grimace. There's crusted blood in the dip of his left nostril, from where it carried on bleeding, just a little bit after he passed out.
(There was red on Mike's sleeve from where he must've gently wiped it away without waking Will up.)
So he stares. Air knocked in his chest, he properly looks at himself, and doesn't know what he's looking back at.
Seconds pass by, or maybe minutes - Will doesn't seem to quite grasp time as a tangible thing, right now - as he watches himself breathe, stuttered, slightly ragged, puffing hot air into the mirror and fogging it up. His wrists are bent and aching from where he's leaning all his weight onto them, and he's about to press them to his mouth, tears blinking at the corners of his eyes-
"Will?"
He doesn't answer, but the door creaks open anyway.
Mike slips inside, shutting it closed so the sliver of light peeking through disappears except for underneath the door, creeping through like an open maw. He comes up behind, chin hooked over his shoulder, bony jaw digging into the space between the top and his neck, and his hands perched on either side of Will's, arms bracketing him in. He meets Will's gaze in the mirror. "You okay?"
"Clearly not," Will shudders, the feeling of Mike trapping him between the sink and the body behind him all too much and not enough at once.
So Mike says, maybe sensing something wrong - or he can just see it - places his hands on Will's hips, gently urges him back until he isn't desperately clutching at the porcelain anymore. Drags him to the floor, sits down next to him, too. Will draws his knees up, because the tiles are a little too cold for his legs; Mike follows suit, and they're knocking together on the ground, of the tight little space of the WSQK single-stalled bathroom.
"You didn't have to," Will says, but his eyelids are aching black as he squeezes them shut, blinking back tears, choking down a sob.
"I want to," Mike shifts them so Will is tucked underneath his chin and he's leaning back against the wall, fingers locking together behind the small of Will's back. Will could fucking cry. "I want to."
He almost falls asleep on the bathroom floor. But Mike picks them up, and he's lying back down on the couch, the side of his hand taken between his teeth and his mouth pressed against the chill of his skin.
Mike stays beside him: head leaning against the armrest, open-mouthed, just a little, sleep knotting his features together.
Will doesn't say anything, but he tangles his fingers with Mike's and feels him squeeze back.