Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler's house was chronically silent and neurotically clean. He was always unbelonging in there. Nancy played it off well, Holly didn't know anything else. But Mike... he was afraid the next spec of dirt his mom scrubbed off the house would be him.
He's felt like that a lot recently. He's always felt... out of place, but lately it blossomed into something heavier. It doesn't help that Will has been all closed off since he moved in. Mike thought it would give them the opportunity to catch up. Something they couldn't do when they were thousands of miles apart. But it hasn’t been like that at all. When he flew out to California, he thought it would be the same as before they left. But when he exited his gate and saw Will again for the first time it was like his brain just stopped functioning. It wasn't that he was afraid Will had changed. Of course he had changed. His fear was that Will wouldn't like how Mike had changed. High school... it hadn't been easy. Dustin and Lucas were great, Max was all loner mode, but it just wasn't the same without Will. But trying to describe how his absence felt was the heaviest of it all.
Safe to say, when the Byers’ moved back and were forced into the house on Maple Street, a new light of hope shone onto Mike’s face. An excruciatingly short-lived light of hope.
The Byers’ have been living with them for a couple months now. It has been a welcome disturbance in Mike's eyes. Too many people cramming into too small spaces. The chaos of it all. The lack of oxygen had given Mike his first breath of fresh air in years. Carefree air. Sure, he's got a mouth on him, and he had never been too shy talking back to his parents. But being on the defensive all the time is exhausting. Now, he can just observe. He's good at that. He might not always know the right thing to say - in fact he usually says the exact wrong things - but he knows how to take in.
It’s his own little superpower. Well, it used to be. Now it feels much more like a curse. Because what do you do with all your observations if you have no use of them. Mike's ability to scout every miniscule shift in Will's demeanor was the foundation of their relationship. That's how he got Will to open up to him. Because Mike knows better than anyone that it's a lot easier to talk about how you're feeling to someone that already knows. When they don't already know... it just becomes a whole thing. But they know each other. They did at least.
Will doesn't talk much anymore. To anyone, though Mike takes it personally. Because fuck everyone else. This is him and Will. So, Mike just thinks a lot. Thinks about how Joyce is constantly hovering over Will. How Jonathan doesn't sleep in the basement, he sneaks up to Nancy's room instead. How Will flinches every time Karen jokes about Mike being 'possessed' by some helpful cleaning demon, because Mike's attempt at quieting all this thinking has consisted of never giving himself the time to think, even if that means doing chores. He thinks, most of all, about how Will is so reluctant to share a damn room. Its hard for Mike not to internalize that.
He and Will used to have sleepovers all the time. He mastered the art of sock puppetry because it helped Will fall asleep. They would create complex worlds that Will would meticulously illustrate as Mike rambled about fair maidens and daring knights. Now those worlds are empty. And honestly it pisses Mike off.
"Do you want some cereal with that milk?" Mike asked, mouth full of bacon, as Will was seconds away from starting a flood of dairy in the kitchen.
"Huh? Oh- Yeah sorry."
"You don't have to-" Will fumbles for the box and knocks it onto the floor. "Apologize." Mike moves to help clean the mess of multi-colored flakes off the floor, but Will quickly shuts him down.
"I got it, it’s fine." He shuts Mike down a lot these days. He refuses to accept any form of help.
"Right... sure you do." He slinks away, defeated. If Will doesn't want him there... Well, Mike’s never been able to say no to him.
So, Mike did what he always does. He takes to the basement. Will and Jonathan have done nothing short of make the basement their home over the last couple months, but Mike just discards the blankets on the couch to the floor and takes a seat. He never does anything productive down there. He mostly just stares at the walls and hopes by some miracle Will decides to come down and keep him company. He never does. and Mike has accepted he never will.
Once the sun sets, he can’t really justify sitting all alone in the basement doing seemingly nothing, so he has no choice but to head back upstairs. Dinners have been getting later and later now since it’s so hard to trap everyone in the house at the same time. Nancy and Jonathon are typically off trying to get military intel with half-assed journalist identities. That's going about as well as you think it would. Will's never home anymore either, though, Mike has no idea where he runs off to. That's another thing that lingers in his mind 24/7. And Joyce spends all her time with Hopper. Following a very mutual and necessary break up, he and Eleven managed to stay friends but even she spends all of her free time with Max. So, Mike occupies a relatively empty house. And it's driving him insane.
When dinner finally gets called, Mike is all but running to take his seat at the table. Hunger is the last thing on his mind. He spends his dinners analyzing every detail on Will's face, trying to figure him out. He doesn't chat with everyone else because every conversation topic he wants so desperately to start dies on his tongue.
'Where’d you go last night, Will.' 'Why won't you stay in my room, Will.' 'How did you get so close with Robin Buckley, Will.' 'Who is she to you, Will.' 'When did I stop being your best friend, Will.'
At the dinner table Will can’t hide away from him. He has to sit there and deal with Mike’s interrogating gaze for at least an hour. After that he typically wastes no time retreating to the basement himself. This night isn’t typical though, because this night, Mike decides to go after him.
The basement stairs are perilously creaky. Mike’s presence is immediately given away within his first seconds of descent. He flinched, half expecting Will to tell him to go away. However, silence continues to flow through the air, and he takes that as a welcome. By the time he reaches the cold carpeted floor he has taken notice that Will probably didn’t hear the creaking of the stairs amongst his focus on the film he was watching. Mike stands still for a moment. Taking in. He takes in the sight of his best friend curled up on the couch alone, blanket wrapped haphazardly around him. He’s wearing mismatched socks.
The serenity doesn’t persist. Will has always been able to sense Mike’s presence, creaky stairs or not. He turns his gaze toward the lanky boy, holding onto the stair railing like he’s bracing to get physically pushed all the way back up. He opens his mouth in a way that makes Mike think he really didn’t want to. He ignores the sting.
In a panic-induce ramble, Mike’s signature, he beats him to it.
“What’re you watching?” The words come out slurred and much meeker than he intended. Will blinks like he doesn’t understand the context of the inquiry. With no reply, Mike takes it upon himself to meander over to the couch. “The Breakfast club? That’s so cheesy.” He smacks himself internally. Always the wrong thing.
The boy, who seems to have curled in on himself significantly more than he was before, glances up through his mess of hair. “I like it. It’s comforting.” It’s at this moment Mike’s internal monologue takes over.
‘Okay, sit next to him Mike. No sweat. Take the opportunity while he’s immobilized by the tangle of blankets.’ Instead, he continues to stare like an idiot. “What’s it even about? Do they… eat breakfast for every meal or something?”
Will laughs shortly, cutting himself off like he never meant to let it happen in the first place. “No, Mike. They’re a group of kids who all get stuck in detention together and form unlikely bonds and relation… ships.” He nervously picks at his fingers and Mike takes note of that inhumanly fast. “Why did you say that like it’s a crime anyways? Breakfast for every meal wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Are you kidding? There’s different food for different meals for a reason. Are you saying you wanna eat a buttery, syrupy mess at 5pm? That’s just wrong.” This back and forth came easy to him. He knows how to banter. He’s good at it. It’s familiar and comfortable and Mike rambles to keep from giving this moment any chance to die in the awkward silence he’s been living in for months.
“It’s not wrong!” Will retorts, cutting Mike off and giving him that crooked smile that he’s been chasing since Will moved in. It does wonders in shutting Mike up. “I think it sounds delicious. A delicious, buttery, syrupy mess.”
This conversation is a window Mike Wheeler refuses to let close on him this time. So, he scrambles to stand on the couch, his balance wavering with the dip of Will’s body in front of him and cups his hands to his mouth like a makeshift megaphone. “William Byers wants to flip the order of the universe upside down to eat pancakes for dinner everyone!” He looks down at him, takes in the gold of his laugh and admits defeat with a dramatic plop onto the cushions. “Okay, fine.”
Will’s tight-lipped smile falters. His hand reaches out just barely, like he’s trying to prevent Mike from leaving. “Okay fine what?”
“Let’s have pancakes for dinner.” Mike shrugs.
“What? We just ate.” Mike bows and shakes his head, his hair lightly grazing Will cheek, making him all too aware of how close they’ve suddenly found themselves. “Another night then. When it’s one of those ‘fend for yourself’ nights my mom does when she has scrapbooking. I’ll make us pancakes.”
“Can you even cook?” Will speaks it with no trace of offensiveness, but Mike notices the way he scoots away just slightly. Ignoring the pain in his chest at that miniscule movement, he feigns a bewildered expression. “I can cook!” This lends itself to an argument about what qualifies as ‘cooking’, but neither of their hearts are in it with any malice.
Inevitably, Mike, by the grace of God, manages to convince Will to let him cook him his very own breakfast for dinner. He does stay for the rest of the movie, careful not to move an inch and allow Will to remember his mission of avoidance he’s unexpectedly taken a leave of absence from.
By 9pm, Mike can barely keep his eyes awake. He manages his way back to his own bed and falls asleep with misplaced sugar on the brain, and the graze of Will’s fingers burning into his leg.