Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler likes his layers. A shirt, a flannel, a sweater, a jacket. Any combination of those, and sometimes all four at once. Always pants, since his puberty growth spurt. Nobody needs to see his knobby knees, or the thick dark hair that started to cover him, blanket his legs like an extra pair of socks as soon as he hit fourteen.
Summer in Indiana, with its muggy near-hundred degree days, therefore, does not agree with him.
That’s not even to mention the crawls and the stakeouts, and the goddamn grocery trips his mom has him going on now that he has the ability to drive. (No license, but where would he get one anyway? Hawkins does not have a DMV, and he’s been stuck in city limits since his fifteenth birthday. It’s the apocalypse, it doesn’t matter.) Mike is in constant flux between puddle of sweat, sticky mess, and the ever-so-brief respite of the couple hours after a shower before he’s forced out of the air conditioning for something or another.
The last summer hadn’t been so bad. There had been almost nothing good about the giant cracks in the earth that split the city into four and oozed Upside Down pus until the government got the materials and manpower together to construct the ugly metal bandages overtop, but one positive? That summer had been cool.
It’s late June now, and Mike is suffering. So he begrudgingly sucks up his pride, grabs the kitchen scissors, and walks up to Nancy’s room.
When she opens the door, a single eyebrow raised, Mike sighs and holds the scissors out to her, handle first. “Cut it off,” he says. He almost says please, but his ego is already lowered to the ground, and he’s never been able to be anything but the annoying little brother to Nancy. He has to keep something.
Nancy flicks her eyes down to the scissors, up to Mike’s hair, then back to his eyes, assessing in that judging Nancy way of hers. She grabs the scissors and jerks her head to the hallway. “Bathroom.”
Minutes later, Mike sits on the edge of the bathtub with a towel over his shoulders, his knees jutting up at a truly inhuman angle, and he feels even more stupid than he expected as Nancy inspects him.
Nancy pulls at a lock of his hair next to his cheek, a bit of bangs that have grown out past recognition of the word, and says, “We should leave a little length, for the curls.”
Mike thinks of how Will’s hair has grown out just enough for a hint of his curls to peek through. He wills away a blush from his too-pale cheeks, hoping he’s successful even as he feels a hint of heat in his cheekbones, and says, “Yeah.” Nancy’s eyes narrow, considering, as if she’s read his mind, and Mike forces his face blank. Don’t ask.
Nancy scrutinizes him for only a second longer before seeming to let it go. For now, at least. She raises the scissors to the lock still in her hands, and without hesitation, chops straight through it. The curl falls to his forehead, hitting just at his eyebrows, and the cool air on the lower half of his face punches the air out of Mike. Exposed.
Nancy pulls her hands back and raises a brow, less judgy and more. Well, there’s no other way to interpret it. It’s concerned.
“Yeah?” she says, pointing the tip of the scissors at the hair she just cut.
Mike reminds himself that cool air on his face is what he wants. That there’s no way he’s surviving this summer without it. And anyways, the damage is done. He’s jumped the cliff already. Mike forces a breath in, breathes out an answering, “Yeah.”
Nancy nods, and raises the scissors once more.
Mike does not want to leave the bathroom. After Nancy leaves, he stands at the sink, looking at himself in the mirror for a truly indeterminable amount of time, decides to take a shower, then rushes rinsing shampoo out of his hair after Holly bangs on the door, demanding he stops hogging the bathroom. Mike thinks this is unfair, because Holly just discovered makeup, and over the weekends with friends over they will spend hours in the bathroom and leave a trail of glitter in their wake, but he can’t really be mad. Mike may be the most annoying younger brother to Nancy, but he has a soft spot for Holly the size of the indent in the chair of his dad’s La-Z-Boy.
Still he rushes the end of his shower, rubs his hair dry, and re-dresses in the same clothes he’d been wearing before, with the intention of changing them in his room. He’d stupidly forgotten to grab any clean clothing before he took a shower, though half of that was his reluctance to leave the bathroom post-haircut.
Mike finally opens the door and brushes past Holly, doing her best impression of Nancy’s get out of my way look—which is way too good for her only being ten—and en route to his bedroom he bumps squarely into Will leaving the guest bedroom where Joyce is staying.
“Oh,” Mike says, hating the way his voice goes high. “Uh, hi.”
“Mike,” Will says. He smiles as he takes him in, eyes going immediately, of course, to Mike’s hair. “You cut it?”
“Nancy did,” Mike says. His hands go up to his head, and he’s still somehow surprised at the lack of length he’s met with. It’s already drying at the ends, and Mike is reminded of how quickly his hair used to dry back when he kept it short. The way that he could wake up on a winter morning in middle school, take a shower, and not have to worry about his hair turning into icicles on the way to school because it had already dried completely during breakfast. “Does it look ok?” Mike asks, then bites his lip because he hadn’t meant to say that. Caring is a dangerous thing. Caring out loud is even more so. Mike had learned that young.
But Will smiles, because he’s Will, and he’s never been afraid to care as loud as the world will let him. “It’s great,” he says. “I can actually see your face now. Why, do you not like it?”
“I—well.” Mike falters, thrown off by the compliment. “I guess I’m not used to it anymore. Seeing my face. Have I always been so pointy?”
Will nods, smile taking on a teasing note. “Oh yeah,” he says. “The most pointy. Like a vampire.”
Mike rolls his eyes. “I’ve got the nocturnal part down,” he plays along. Will snorts, his nose crinkling.
“No, but seriously,” he says. “It looks good. You should thank Nancy.”
Mike has to get out of here. Because Will doesn’t know what he’s doing with these compliments, he really doesn’t. There are fire ants under Mike’s skin. He looks down.
“Yeah, uh. Maybe I will. Or probably not, she’d be really annoying about it but, uh. Thank you.” Mike looks back up, then glances over Will’s shoulder. “I should really get changed, so—“
“Right, yeah,” Will says, stepping to the side. “Um. Mom said it’s her turn for dinner, so.”
“Six-o-clock chopping vegetables? I’ll be there.” Mike and Will have been helping Joyce with meal prep lately, given her tendency to chop the tips of her fingers and fill the kitchen with smoke when left to her own devices. Will said she’d been much better at dinners in the past, but something about the number of people in the house, the Wheelers’ fancy kitchen, and Ted’s insistence on a meat option with every meal has her frazzled most of the time now when it’s her turn. Will had started to help out early on, and soon enough, Mike had joined him, because they’d been watching a movie together on one such night, and Mike was bored without him. Now it’s just become routine.
Will smiles, all bright eyes and dimples peeking out, and Mike moves past him with a touch of urgency, because oh my god. “See you then,” Will says from behind him, and Mike waves a hand over his shoulder as he walks into his room, then closes the door and covers his face with both hands.
Being normal around Will has never been Mike’s strong suit.
Being normal since Will went to California and got all tanned and muscled and confident has been impossible.
Mike has never been normal. But for the last year, since the Byers family officially moved back to Hawkins, since they’ve lived in the Wheeler house, since Will has been around near-constantly and Mike and El have finally called it off and come to a good spot in their friendship, Mike has felt the least normal he’s ever been. Because he’s in love with Will Byers, maybe has been for years. And he has absolutely no fucking clue what to do about it.