Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler was halfway down the stairs, desperately trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes, when something clattered in the kitchen. It was loud enough to echo up the stairwell, but mornings at the Wheeler house were always full of random noise, so he didn’t think much of it.
He tugged at the hem of his shirt, not bothering to check if it was on straight, and raked a hand through his hair which only made it worse. Whatever. It was too early for him to care.
“Mom, have you seen-”
He stopped in the doorway.
Will sat at the table, shoulders curled in like he was bracing for impact, a spoon half-submerged in a bowl of cereal that looked… honestly, kind of tragic. Milk was splashed everywhere, his sleeve still damp from wiping it up. And he looked- god. He looked like he hadn’t slept. Again.
Mrs. Wheeler packed Holly’s bag for school, humming as if everything was normal. Mr. Wheeler was in the living room “reading” the newspaper, which really meant he was eavesdropping on the dinner table conversations so he could complain later.
Will muttered something about being fine when Mike’s mom asked if was tired. He always said he was fine. Even when Mike knew he wasn’t.
Then his mom said it.
“Or you could ask Mike to share his room during the winter. It’s much warmer on the second floor.”
Mike’s heart lurched so low he actually coughed. She said it like it was nothing, like it was no big deal, as if she hadn’t just dropped a nuclear bomb in the middle of breakfast.
From the living room came the same, predictable grumble from Mr. Wheeler: “Grown boys shouldn’t sleep in the same room.”
Of course. Of course he said that, said it like that.
He could practically feel Will shrink at the sound of his dad’s voice. And Mike’s jaw clenched, because he hates that- hates that his dad can make him fold in on himself with just a sentence. Mrs. Wheeler shot his dad a look that intended to merely shut him up, but it couldn’t just undo the damage.
Mrs. Wheeler took Holly to school, and when the door closed, the entire house went dead quiet. The sort of quiet where you could hear every tiny movement, every breath, and every little secret whispered into the confidence of winter. Will kept staring into his cereal like the answers to life were buried under the soggy whole wheat grain.
And for a second, Mike thought about turning around. Going back upstairs. Avoiding… whatever had been going on between them lately.
But the stairs creaked on his way down. Will knew Mike was there.
So he stepped fully into the doorway, trying to look casual though he felt anything but so.
When Will finally looked at him, he froze.
“Oh… hey.”
The words came out too stiff, too tight, like his voice forgot how to work. Because what he really wanted to say was something else. Something like:
“You know you can stay upstairs with me.
You can still talk to me.
I want you to.”
But instead, Mike simply stood there like an idiot with a crooked shirt and ruffled hair, watching Will stare back at him with those tired, lost eyes he felt so safe in.
“Morning,” Will said softly.
It hit harder than it should. Not because of the word, but because it was Will, and because Mike knew that tone all too well. Cautious. Neutral. Like he was bracing for dismissal before it even occurred.
Mike kept his eyes moving. Anywhere but him.
He crossed the room, grabbed his backpack from where he left it last night, then drifted over to the kitchenette and poured cereal he wasn’t even sure he wanted. The routine kept him busy, gave him something for his hands to do. Kept him from thinking too hard about the fact that his best friend, Will Byers, was right there, and he didn’t have anything to say.
He hesitated with the bowl in his hands.
There was an empty chair across from Will.
For a split second, Mike almost sat.
Their eyes met.
It was awful how heavy the silence felt, how it weighed down on his chest like a sleep paralysis demon, how breathing felt like a chore. Mike could practically hear the question his old friend Will didn’t ask. He knew Will well enough to hear it even when unspoken.
And that made it all the much worse.
Mike did want to sit. He wanted to pretend as if things weren’t weird at all. He wanted to talk about something- comics, D&D, damn it, anything that wasn’t this quiet ache between them.
But wanting something and knowing how to get it were two very different things.
He shifted his weight, suddenly hyper-aware of how awkward he must’ve looked just standing there, pondering aimlessly.
“I’m, uh,” he said, hating how unstable his voice sounded, cracking his facade. “I’m gonna eat in my room. I’m kinda obsessed with this new comic book series, so…”
The excuse felt cheap even to him. He didn’t look to see if Will read through it.
“Cool,” Will said.
Mike knew that tone too. Too practiced. It reminded him too much of himself that day in the van with Will.
He lingered anyway, half a second longer than necessary, because maybe he would gain the courage to turn around and sit down. Maybe he would fix whatever was broken. Maybe he would say something, anything, that didn’t make everything feel so… strange.
He didn’t.
The stairs creaked beneath his feet as he travelled up the stairs, and he hated that he noticed when the house swallowed the sound of his footsteps. Like it was, erasing him. Like it was erasing them.
In his room, he set the bowl down untouched.
He told himself that this was easier. That giving Will his space was the right thing to do. That they just… grew apart. It happens.
Except, it didn’t all happen at once.
They’d been drifting long before Will moved away. Before California. Before everything made the atmosphere toxic and heavy and full of things Mike didn’t know how to say or couldn’t say without breaking something. He remembered telling Will that they’d be a team. Best friends for life. He meant it when he said it.
He just didn’t know how to bring his words to life.
When Mike wrote his stories, he always kept them on sheets of paper. When he played D&D, it was all cosplay, he had control. But him and Will, that- that was real. He couldn’t just erase and rewrite, or depend on the dice to seal his fate.
Living in the same house only made the distance cut sharper. Every avoided glance, every empty chair between them, every quiet meal was a reminder of how close they were before.
Mike remembered sleepovers that felt like magic. Staying up too late, whispering about campaigns and monsters and stupid dreams, daring to imagine a future where nothing could possibly pull them away from each other. They used to joke about one of them getting adopted by the other’s mom, like it was the most obvious solution in the world.
Now, being under the same roof felt like walking through ruins of battle.
It’s one thing to screw things up, to miss the point. To realize too late that someone was trying to tell you something important. It’s another thing entirely to wake up every day knowing the words were still lodged in your throat, and that saying them now may only darken the bruises.
Mike heard Dustin’s voice in his head, sharp with frustration. “What did you guys even fight about?”
Nothing. And somehow, that was worse.
They didn’t explode, they didn’t break up loudly. They just… paused, stopped. Stopped talking. Stopped choosing each other the way they would. Mike remembered the movie night, how he sat between Lucas and El, eyes glued to the TV, aware the whole time of the empty space beside Will. A space he couldn’t bring himself to fill.
“Just drop it,” he’d muttered.
He regretted that more than he would let himself think about.
Lucas still looked at him like he was waiting for Mike to do something. To apologize, to fix it. As if there was some clear mistake to point towards.
But there wasn’t.
There was nothing to forgive, nothing he knew how to explain. No argument to resolve.
Just a persistent absence.
They were close once. Now they aren’t.
But Mike didn’t know how to bridge the gap between those two truths.
______________________________________________________________________________
Mike noticed the cold first.
Not in any dramatic way, just the quiet kind of cold that settled under his ribs and made him pull his sleeves over his hand like a habit. The kind that reminded him that the house was bigger than the people in it, and somehow emptier, even with everyone still inside.
He sat on the living room floor with Nancy, feeding logs into the fireplace, nodding along to whatever she said as he only half-listened. His attention kept drifting. To the stairs. To the hallways. To the closed basement door.
Will disappeared down there without a word.
Mike told himself to stop tracking Will like that. It was weird. It was invasive. It was- something else he didn’t want to name. So he focused on the fire instead, on the way the flames curled and crackled, on the fact that it still wasn’t enough to warm the room fully.
He kept thinking: He said he was fine. Why should I worry?
But Will always said that.
Lucas’s voice crackled through the Walkie, tight and shaken. Mike forced himself to sound steady in response. He was good at that. Being the calm one. Being reassuring, the one to help when no one else can gather themselves. It was always easier when the fear belonged to someone else. When it was about Max, about generators, and hospitals, and things that made sense to worry about.
When the call ended, Mike set the Walkie down carefully, as if it might shatter if he wasn’t gentle.
He looked up just in time to see Will heading down the basement door, blanket tucked under one arm.
Mike almost said his name.
He didn’t. Again.
That was something that had been happening a lot recently- “almost”s. Almost speaking. Almost reaching. Almost fixing. And every time, something tightened in his chest that told him to back off. Don’t make it awkward. Don’t make it worse. Don’t make it look like you cared too much.
Especially not that much.
Because the truth, the part he kept shoving down, is that when he worried about Will, it never felt the same as worrying about anyone else. It never had. And that difference scared the hell out of him.
Mike learned over the past year to keep a close watch on himself. Firstly on his thoughts, his reactions. Then on how long his eyes lingered on a spot, on who he sat next to, on whether his concern could have been mistaken for something else. Something people may look at sideways. Something his dad would definitely notice.
Something Will might notice.
So instead of calling after him, Mike stayed where he was and let the basement door close.
Later, upstairs, the quiet got worse.
Mike lit a candle in his room and sat on his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the flame as if it could enlighten him with what he knew all along. There was no TV noise. No distractions. Just thoughts that echoed too loud.
He thought about the basement again. About concrete, drafts of wind, and dead heaters. About Will constantly insisting he was okay because that was what he did when he didn’t want to be a burden.
Mike pressed his palms into his weary eyes.
You’re not responsible for him, he told himself.
He has Jonathan. He has his mom. He has-
He put a period at the end of that sentence.
He had me.
And wanting that back felt dangerous.
It felt selfish. Wrong. Like crossing some invisible line he has been pretending wasn’t there. Like if he let himself act on it, even something small, like checking on Will, it would confirm something he’d been trying very hard not to stare in the face.
Maybe caring about Will wasn’t just a habit.
Maybe it wasn’t guilt.
It wasn’t something people like him were supposed to feel.
Mike laughed quietly to himself, sharp and humorless.
Man, get a grip, he thought. You’re overthinking. He’s cold. That’s all
But his chest still felt knotted.
He remembered Will’s hands, always cold when they were kids. How Will would complain about it, half-joking, until Mike would grab them without second thoughts and try to warm them up. How natural that used to feel. How unremarkable.
How complicated it felt at that moment.
Mike stood abruptly and paced once across the room. Twice. He stopped in front of his closet, staring directly at his reflection in the mirror on it.
He didn’t leave the room right away. He stood there, arguing with himself in a way that felt stupid and exhausting and very familiar.
You’re just being nice.
This doesn’t mean anything.
Normal people check on their friends.
He winced at that final thought.
Friends. Right. Simply friends.
Eventually, he grabbed the lantern.
And even as it clicked on, even as the warm light flooded his room, a part of himself was already bracing for disaster- afraid not of Will saying no, but of what it would mean if Will said yes.
The lantern felt heavier than it should’ve in Mike’s hand.
He told himself it was just because he was drowsy. Because it was late. Because the house was cold and quiet and weird and putting everyone on edge, not just him. He told himself it didn’t mean anything if his pulse sped up as he approached the basement door.
He listened.
There’s no sound coming from downstairs. No movement, no footsteps. Just the low, empty quiet of a space that shouldn’t have been that still when someone was supposed to be sleeping.
Mike swallowed.
He knocked.
The sound almost echoed down the stairwell, dull and hollow. He almost turned around right then and there, almost convinced himself that this was a bad idea, that if Will didn’t answer it meant that he was asleep and Mike could go back upstairs and forget this ever happened.
Then the door opened.
Will stood there wrapped in his blanket, the candlelight behind him weak and flickering. His hair was messier than usual, his face pale in a way that made Mike furrow his eyebrows instantly.
Jesus, Mike thought. He’s freezing.
“Sorry,” Mike said too fast. “Did I wake you?”
“No.”
It was the same banal answer Will always gave. Immediate. Automatic. Mike hated how easy it was for him to do that now.
The lantern casted shadows across Will’s face, sharpened his cheekbones, and made his eyes look darker than they were. Mike looked away almost immediately, scolding himself for looking so close.
“Mom asked me to check on you,” he said instead.
It was a lie, technically. Or at least only half true. He latched onto it because it gave him cover. Made this normal. Acceptable.
“I’m fine.”
Mike nodded, even though every instinct in his body told him that it was complete bull. The basement was colder than he expected. The concrete floor radiated it. The air smelled like dust, metal, and something faintly stale.
“It’s freezing down here,” Mike acknowledged.
“I said I’m okay.” Will insisted, like he was offended by the implication. Like being cold was some sort of personal failure.
Mike pursed his lips. He recognized that too. The way Will didn’t want to be seen as fragile all the time. As a burden. As something that needs extra care.
As different.
“I talked to El,” Mike said after a moment.
That got a reaction.
Will stiffened, his shoulders pulling closer together beneath the blanket. Mike immediately regretted it, not because it wasn’t relevant, but because of the way Will’s expression shifted. Embarrassment flickered. Something raw.
“She said you’re… scared.”
Mike chose the last word carefully, keeping his voice soft, though it seemed to be that way with Will. Neutral. Like he’s putting a baby to sleep.
“I’m not scared,” Will snapped, “I’m not a baby.”
“I know,” Mike apologized quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He really didn’t, but everything seemed like it came out wrong lately. Like no matter how he tiptoed, he kept stepping on invisible landmines.
“She just thought Jonathan was down here with you,” he added.
“He is.”
Mike nearly chuckled. “Will. I hear him sneak into Nancy’s room every night. I’m literally next door.”
Will looked away.
Mike watched him do it, and something twisted low in his stomach. This was the part that always caught him, the avoidance, the quiet retreat. The way Will would put up barriers when he felt cornered.
“I don’t believe you,” Mike said quietly. “I think you just don’t wanna cause trouble.”
“Can you just go?” Will replied abruptly. “I want to be alone. I don’t wanna talk to you.”
There it was. The line in the sand.
Mike felt it anyway, even if he never showed it. He let the silence stretch, joining them in the cold of the basement, because part of him didn’t want to give up after he’d come so far. But he simply nodded.
“Fine.”
He looked past Will, at the dim candle burning on the far side of the room, at the dead heater beside the mattress. At how thin the blanket looked against all that cold.
“You made it clear earlier that you didn’t wanna sleep in my room,” Mike said, picking his words cautiously, like they might injure if he wasn’t gentle, “But… you can. If you want. It’s not warm, but it’s better than this.”
He braced himself for rejection, relief, or something worse.
“No.”
The words stuck the landing, clean and final.
Mike nodded again, his jaw tight. He stayed for a second longer anyways, like maybe Will would change his mind if he just stood there long enough. He didn’t.
“Good night,” Mike said.
“Good night.”
Mike closed the door behind him and forced himself to walk away, even though every step felt wrong. He barely made it back to his room before the doubt crashed in on him all at once.
He paced, sat, stood again. Blew out the candle, then relit it. His thoughts spun uselessly, in a cycle circling the same things over and over.
You did the right thing.
You respected his choice.
You didn’t make it weird.
But the image of Will standing there, wrapped in the blanket but still shivering, wouldn’t leave him alone.
And when the knock finally came- soft, barely there- Mike didn’t hesitate.
He was already on his feet when he opened the door.
Warm-tinted candlelight spilled into the hallway, soft and gold, like an invitation Mike didn’t mean to send. His eyes lifted to Will’s face, dark and uncertain, brows pulled together in that familiar manner that used to mean I care too much and don’t know what to do about it.
“I changed my mind.” Will said.
The words hung between them.
Mike didn’t answer right away. He just looked at him, expression glitched, unreadable in a way it hadn’t always been. For months now, he had trained himself to not expect anything from Will, not conversations, not forgiveness, not closeness. He learned how to keep his face neutral, how to lock everything down before it showed. So he just stared, confused, trying to figure out if it was real or if he misread things again.
After a beat, Mike stepped aside.
That was it. No comments, questions, or concerns.
Will stepped into the room, and the door clicked shut behind them. The sound was heavy, but it landed heavy in Mike’s chest. He didn’t fully realize how bad of an idea this was until the room fell silent.
Silence dropped into the atmosphere like a weight.
Mike felt it settle in his chest.
This was it. This was what they’d both been circling for months without naming. Alone, at night, in his room. He could almost hear himself yelling don’t be stupid in his head, but it was drowned out by his loud heart and how it wouldn’t slow down.
He stood there, hands drifting to the drawstrings of his sweatpants, tugging and fiddling with them without realizing it. He kept his eyes on the floor. On the bed. Anywhere except Will.
He told himself this didn’t mean anything. It was just cold. That was all. Just logic.
Still, the thought of Will being here, in his most intimate space, breathing the same air, makes something uncomfortable flow through his veins.
Will broke the silence first.
“Um.”
Mike flinched internally. He’d been hoping Will wouldn’t talk. Talking means thinking.
“Do you still have that spare mattress?” Will asks. “The one we used for sleepovers?”
For a second, panic spiked, memories crowding his senses uninvited, of flashlights under blankets, whispered jokes, and Will falling asleep every time. Of how simple things were before Mike learned there were thoughts he shouldn’t have.
But the question gave him an out, a task, something tangible and finite.
“Yeah,” he responded quickly, relief threading through his voice despite himself. “I’ll get it.”
He dropped to his knees and dragged the mattress out from under the bed, grateful for the distraction. For something that let him look busy instead of at Will.
When he was done setting it up, he sat on the edge of his bed, hands braced against the mattress. He listened to Will moving behind him, the soft sounds of fabric and careful footsteps. The room felt too quiet without electricity, like the walls were listening.
Mike laid down and stared at the wall, deliberately turning his back on Will.
If he couldn’t look, he could pretend this was normal.
“Do you want the candle on or-”
“On, please,” Will said, cutting him off.
Mike gulped. “Okay.”
He left it lit. He didn’t know why, maybe because complete darkness felt like too much. Like it would strip the last layer of control he had over his feelings and actions and thoughts and everything.
Will shifted under the blanket. Mike heard it all. Every movement. Every breath.
He kept his body rigid, afraid that if he relaxed even a little, something would slip. A thought, a feeling. Something he spent years convincing himself to ignore. This never meant anything, he repeated. This was just being a good person. Taking care of a good friend. That was all it was.
Minutes stretched.
“Well,” Mike said eventually, forcing the words out simply to break silence. He turns his body completely, facing the plaster wall as if it could protect him from the wall of confusion on his other side. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Will answered softly.
The house settled.
Mike stared at the wall, listening to Will’s breathing behind him. It was slower than his own. Steadier. He focused on it because it was easier than focusing on how close Will was, or on the familiar comfort that settled in his chest despite the situation.
He despised the comfort. How natural it felt. Hate how it lingered.
The next day, the power would be back. Things would go back to the careful distance they’d built. This would be an isolated occasion. Something Will did because he was cold.
That’s what Mike told himself as his breathing finally evened out.
And eventually, sleep took him away.