Chapter Text
Will doesn’t have a change of clothes.
See, the thing is, all he brought with him on his impromptu trip back to Hawkins was a backpack. There were more pressing matters that prevented him from packing a suitcase, and even if he could’ve at the time, he wouldn’t have, because he had no idea he’d need it.
He does need it, though, because it turns out he’s moving into the Wheeler house indefinitely. That’s where he finds himself now. He and Jonathan have been assigned the basement, but it’s just Will down here right now, glancing around and wondering how long this is gonna be his home.
If Will were to observe this from an outside perspective, outside of himself and this situation, then he’d think that it would be fitting for him to stay here. After all, the walls are still adorned with his drawings from years ago. He can’t ignore them. It’s as if he’s walked back in time and into his childhood—and yet, now standing here all alone carrying just one bag and the weight of the world on his shoulders, he feels separate from that child. It’s foreign, these feelings. These drawings. Mike.
There’s a humming sound here that Will just can’t figure out the source of, buzzing in his ear at the same volume no matter where he stands in the room, but he oddly doesn’t mind it. It’s a harmless presence that, so far, he can count on to stick around. At the moment, he doesn’t have a lot of those sorts of things.
The couch has been fashioned with a quilt and a lumpy old pillow. As not-quite-comfortable as it looks, the bedding calls out to Will like a beacon of light in a sea of darkness. Join us, the blanket whispers, lay down in your daytime clothes, it’s fine. As one might predict, nothing’s actually speaking to him, he’s just so tired that his thoughts seem to be blending into the real world without distinction.
It really is best that he changes out of his button-up and pants. He can’t stand the idea of sleeping in the rough texture of his jeans or the tight clasp of buttons against his throat, so he makes the difficult decision to lug himself over to the stairs and, begrudgingly, up them.
“Oh, hi.”
The door opens when he’s halfway up, and Mike’s on the other side, apparently startled to see Will right where he’s supposed to be.
“Hey,” Will replies, voice slow with exhaustion. It makes his tongue loose. “Not gonna knock?”
Mike’s eyebrows raise. “Right, yeah, I should probably do that if you’re gonna be, y’know. Here. Staying here. You could’ve been changing, or something.”
“I mean, not really. I don’t have any other clothes.”
“Oh.”
Wood groans as Will shifts his weight on the step.
Will doesn’t say it. He waits for Mike’s next words, testing the limits of his hospitality by staying silent and letting the question hang between them, unsaid.
“Well, I, um.” Mike swallows. “I have clothes.”
“I see that,” Will teases, giving Mike a once-over.
For some reason, it’s been awkward between them since it was decided that the Byers would be living here—which, to be fair, was only agreed upon this morning. This day has provided a shift in their dynamic, something that was already so fragile from new repair. It’s way better than fighting or avoidance, though, so Will is going to take what he can get.
Mike huffs a laugh. It’s stilted. “You know what I mean. I have some, uh, you could borrow. If you want? I think they’d fit—I know compared to you, I’m, we’re not like—yeah. But I think they’d work.”
There it is, the offering. It’s something that makes Will’s heart stutter in his chest so viscerally that he almost wants to say no, for the sake of his own mental wellbeing. But what other option does he have? He needs to sleep, and he’s not going to like this.
“Sorry, I don’t know why I sound like a bumbling idiot right now,” Mike tells him. “Maybe I’m tired.”
Will can empathize with that, even if he’s not bumbling in turn. “No, it’s fine. And yeah, I’d borrow some—but only if it’s totally okay with you, I don’t wanna, like, steal your stuff. I’m already kinda intruding on your house.” Maybe he’s bumbling just a little.
A smile spreads across Mike’s face. He’s framed by the doorway so that light shines in from behind him, contrasting the dimness of the basement that Will’s eyes have already grown accustomed to. It makes Mike soft against the background. Will wants to paint the scene.
“You’re not. If anything, I don’t think you’re being intrusive enough. I wanted you to stay with me, but apparently I’m not capable of making that decision.”
Leaning against the railing, Will replies, “Well, no offense, Mike, but I’d rather sleep on a couch than in a sleeping bag on your floor.”
Mike looks confused. “You wouldn’t sleep on the floor.”
The heart stuttering is back again, this time with a vengeance. Is he implying what Will thinks he is?
“I’d sleep on the floor and you’d take my bed,” Mike clarifies.
Oh.
“Anyway, um.” Mike’s eyes dart around, searching for something to land on. His nervous energy hasn’t left. “We’ve been standing here way too long. Come with me.”
Will lags behind for a moment as Mike starts to walk back into the rest of the house. After following Mike up the stairs and through the hallway—not without stopping to say hello to Mrs. Wheeler—they arrive at Mike’s room, where Will realizes he hasn’t been in a long time.
The first thing that Will notices is that despite how different it looks, it smells the same. That may be a weird thing to take note of, but the truth is that as soon as he steps inside, the scent takes him back to a time when they did share the room, and even the bed.
“Ignore the mess,” Mike says. The mess isn’t horrible, but it’s present in the form of random shirts on the carpet and schoolwork littering the desk, just things that wouldn’t take long to clean up but were left there anyway.
Opting to look at the walls instead, Will discovers a Conan the Barbarian poster. Nice. There’s also a picture of… a buff dragon? Not any dragon in particular, it seems, just a generic jacked dragon. Alright, then.
“Alright, what do we got here?” Mike opens his closet and scans the contents. “You just need something for tonight, right? Is it cold down there?”
Will continues surveying the space. “I guess it kind of is? Not super bad, though.”
The clickity-clacky sound of hangers being flipped fills the room until eventually Mike pulls something out and tosses it on his bed. He moves to his dresser and rifles through a drawer with no regard to keeping it neat, and does the same as before when he finds what he wants.
Just this once, Will’s allowed to join in on this familiar nighttime routine and the quiet intimacy that comes with it. He knows he’ll never experience this again, so he cherishes it, how comforting yet electrifying the moment is.
The long-sleeve shirt is held up by Mike. “This look okay?”
“Yeah.”
Next, he picks up and shows the pajama pants. “These?”
“Yeah,” Will says, “should be fine.”
“Cool.” Nodding, Mike quickly folds them up. “They’re clean, by the way.”
Will smiles. “I wasn’t worried about that.”
“Well, actually, I might’ve forgotten to wash the shirt—but it’s not, like, dirty, I think I just wore it for like half a day. But, um… I could grab a different one, if you want.”
“No,” Will responds, maybe too fast, “no, I don’t mind.”
Mike shrugs. “Okay, well…” He steps closer and then holds the clothes out to Will. There’s a finality to the movement. It says, as soon as you take these, we’re done here. Will doesn’t want this to be over, whatever it is, but his body and mind and soul are begging him to get some rest, and he’s sure it’s the same for Mike.
Will reaches out and takes the clothes from Mike, eyes glued to him to preserve this picture in his head. For just a second, so brief that it hardly exists, Mike’s hand brushes against Will’s. Will’s nerves are set alight.
That touch is almost too much to bear.
He pulls away from Mike. “Thanks. I… don’t know what I would’ve done otherwise.”
“Suffer, probably.” Mike smiles. “Really, though, we need to go shopping ASAP. We can’t have you living like this.”
Will hums. There’s a pit in his chest that’s been around for a long time now, and it keeps swallowing the emotions he can’t cope with, taking the impossible feelings into its abyss. The problem is that they never actually go away. They’re there, taking up space deep in his ribcage, and they fight tooth and nail to come back to the surface. Will puts what he’s feeling now into that pit.
“It’s nice that you care so much about my quality of life,” Will jokes.
“‘Course I do,” Mike says, “you’re my best friend.”
Deep into the pit.
Will goes back into the basement and changes into Mike’s clothes. It’s a routine he’s done countless times here, but it’s different now. For one, it’s quiet. In the decade that Will has known the Wheelers, their basement has been anything but quiet. Two, he’s alone. He knows that Jonathan will be joining him down here soon, but it’s not Jonathan he’s thinking about as he’s laying back on the old sofa.
He thinks of Mike. The way they would curl their sleeping bags besides one another, their hushed laughs and whispers that would carry them far into the night, and Mike’s gentle voice as he would mumble, ‘Goodnight, Will.’
Will falls asleep in that silence feeling like a stranger, surrounded by his childhood, alone.
Will jolts back into the waking world with a gasp.
His heart is hammering so fast he can feel it in his throat—even in his mouth, like he could hiccup his heart onto his tongue and spit it out.
It takes him a second to process where he is and what just happened. Feeling the cushiony press of the couch and letting his eyes adjust to the alarm clock’s light, Will reminds himself of the facts.
He is in the Wheeler basement.
Jonathan is asleep right over there; he’s not alone.
He is safe—as safe as his situation allows for, at least.
It was just a nightmare.
It was just a nightmare.
Will shrinks in on himself and takes a steadying breath, one that fills his nose with the scent of… Mike. He brings the collar of his shirt up to his face and inhales, exhales shakily, and then inhales again, and again, grounding himself further into the present each time. The sleeves are soft as he pulls them up his wrists, worn and thinned out in a way that makes it feel lived in.
He can hardly see anything in the dark, but his eyes can just barely make out the pattern of his pants. They’re plaid. His pants are plaid, and it was just a nightmare. His shirt smells like Mike, and it was just a nightmare.
His first night in a new home chose to show him that no matter where he is, he can’t escape the past. At least he can breathe in.
As his body reacclimates itself to reality, the dryness of his mouth catches his attention; he’s thirsty. Incredibly so. What ‘starving’ is to ‘hungry’, that’s what Will is to ‘thirsty’, but he doesn’t think there’s a word for that. Parched? Dehydrated? Whatever it is, he needs to go drink something now. He picks himself up off the couch and goes to the stairs where he drags his body up, his legs too heavy for the rest of him, clinging to fatigue like it’ll save him from panic. It won’t.
The kitchen is bathed in moonlight beaming in through the window, whose sheer curtains are no match for the brightness. There’s something calming about how the countertops glow, fuzzy with the air of midnight and so delicate, unobtrusive. It’s so quiet, and Will would really like to absorb that silence.
Mike is lingering in the corner, watching him.
When Will notices him, he flinches. “Jesus, why didn’t you say anything?”
Shrugging, Mike replies, “You seemed occupied.”
“Occupied by… what?”
Mike shrugs again. “I don’t know, your thoughts? You got a lot on your mind?”
Yes, he does. His thoughts run around corners and leap over obstacles, bumping into the walls of his brain like they could make their way out if they just shake his skull hard enough. Will lets them do their thing—historically, not a lot of good has come from entertaining them.
“Nightmare,” Will answers simply.
There’s a pause.
Mike’s mood is a mystery, as is the reason why he’s here—he doesn’t have any water or snacks, and he doesn’t appear to be doing anything. “Hold on, I can barely see you,” Mike says before going and switching on a lamp in the breakfast area, one that’s dim enough to not bother them too much at this hour. His footsteps are the loudest thing nearby.
Mike turns around and freezes in place, staring straight at Will from across the room that’s now lit up yellow. His eyes roam up and down Will’s body with a certain curiosity—a discovery, maybe, like he’s learning something new. His throat bobs as he swallows, lips parted, and his eyebrows twitch almost too subtly to see. Just a little flick upwards.
“I, uh,” Mike begins, “I can see you now.”
Will smiles. It’s a so-very-Mike thing to say. “I can see you, too.”
Will does his best, tries so valiantly to ignore the way Mike just looked at him. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s reading into it too much. Maybe Mike doesn’t like other people wearing his clothes, so he had a weird reaction to the sight. Will’s so far gone that he’s imagining things that aren’t there, stuff that would never happen.
He pushes it all into the pit in his chest.
“Wanna—” Pulling out a chair at the breakfast table, Mike asks, “Wanna sit?”
That sounds nice. Will’s had enough of standing. “Yeah, sure. But, uh, I need some water.”
He gets himself a glass—and chugs half of it—and then heads over. They sit right next to each other rather than on opposite sides, their seats close like they need to huddle together to share a secret, information no one else can know at any cost. The warmth of the lamp contrasts the cold light outside, but the combination creates a really peaceful image.
“So,” Mike says, glancing sideways at him, “Are my clothes getting the job done?”
Will snorts, but he’s nervous, so it’s breathy. “What, the job of clothing me?” Or the job of their scent calming me down when I’m on the brink of panic?
“I mean, yeah, but also keeping you warm and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah, they’re good.” He takes a sip to keep his mouth from doing anything stupid.
“Good.” Mike nods, a little smile tugging at his lips for reasons Will refuses to examine.
A ray of moonlight shifts in place on the floor.
“Do you, uh…” Mike sighs. “Wanna talk about your nightmare?”
Cold.
Dark.
Pain.
Scared.
So scared.
Lost.
It’s everywhere.
Everywhere.
“No. Not really, it just… it’s already kinda blurry when I try to remember it.” He runs his fingers across the fabric of his—Mike’s—pants. Plaid, smooth. “Now I sort of… I just feel it, more than anything. The fear, it, like, gets stuck in me. In my body. That probably sounds stupid, but.”
“No, no, it doesn’t sound stupid.” Mike shakes his head. “I totally get that—obviously not all of it, I didn’t go through…” Mike doesn’t have to finish that sentence. “But I mean, that feeling getting stuck in you? I feel it too, sometimes.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is it?” Will asks.
Mike blinks at him. “Where is what?”
“That feeling, where do you, y’know, feel it?” Will gestures over his body.
“Oh, um, I guess it’s…” Taking a deep breath, Mike presses his hand over his own sternum. “Right here? In my chest."
In that moment, Will instantly feels less alone. It seems the pit underneath his ribs has another side, that it’s carved its way into Mike as well. Maybe it isn’t neverending, but rather ends in someone else.
“Me too. That’s where mine is,” Will says.
It’s a bid for connection, the words reaching out with an unsaid question. Does this mean something? Is there a reason we share this burden?
“Huh.” Mike drums his nails on the table, pondering. “Maybe that’s just where fear likes to go.”
The answer is only halfway to what Will was hoping for, but he’ll take it and trek forward. “Or maybe that’s where our fear likes to go, specifically. Like we have… some freaky link to each other.” He smirks—it’s a joke. Sort of.
“Hey, or that,” Mike agrees. “We’ve always had… an unexplainable connection, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
And there it is, an acknowledgement of what they both already knew to be true. They’re tied together irrevocably. There’s something indescribable between them that was cemented the second they met, and that thing won’t ever be undone, no matter what happens from here on out.
“Me neither,” Will replies. “It makes sense.”
Mike smiles at him, his eyes crinkling and nose scrunching in the perfect combination to make Will’s heart flip over, which it does. He gives Will another once-over like before, and then he says, as soft as the window’s glow, “By the way, my clothes really suit you.”
Will stares at him. “You think so?”
“For sure.”
Will isn’t sure how to respond, so he just goes with a whispered, “Thanks.”
A moment passes. The silence envelopes them. Foolishly, Will lets the whites of Mike’s eyes become a beacon, and he’s entranced all over again—he is once more a teenager in the back of a pizza van. A preteen plucking splinters out of his rain clogged skin, and thorns out of his heart. A kid who once looked up to Mike and told him nothing but the truth.
Mike stands up, tapping his hands against his lap and pressing his lips together in that awkward smile he does, and he asks him, “Will you be okay?”
Will wants to shake his head, tug on Mike’s sleeve and ask, ‘Can we go back to when it was easy?’ But he knows the answer. Their moment is ending as darkness overtakes the light, and Will can’t see Mike anymore as his eyes adjust to the change. He feels that gnawing guilt as he hides within this veil and away from that child, away from Mike, so he can lie, “I’ll be fine.”
When did lying come to him so easily?
When did they start to change?
When Will finally heads back to bed, he tugs his shirt up to his nose and his sleeves over his hands, and he tries not to picture how Mike looked at him. He doesn’t let himself think like that kid he once was, because he knows that’ll only result in disappointment.
He won’t get to sleep on Mike’s floor or be the one to ask him why he was awake in the first place. He isn’t sure if he has that right. But—Will bites his lip and he presses his eyes shut. Mike’s scent brushes his nose as he tucks his face into his elbow, and if he thinks about it, Mike is still here. Even when he isn’t, he’s here giving him clothes and providing him an ear to open up to, and giving him that safety of home when he’s lost his own time and time again.
Will knows it deep in his soul. Mike is his home. Despite the distance and the tension, Mike always will be. He thinks about his smile and how he looked at Will and said, ‘...my clothes really suit you.’ The way he rubbed at his chest as if his heart were bleeding, just like Will’s. Maybe, in spite of that distance and change, they’re still the same.
Tonight Will felt like a kid again, just for a second, and he remembered the joy of being Mike’s best friend. Will tucks these feelings close to his heart, breathes them in, and smiles. He sleeps without dreaming.