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The first time it happens, Mike is six.
The morning sun is low in the sky, bathing Will’s bedroom in pale yellow. The box fan in the corner of the room stutters and rattles, failing to cut through the thick, humid air despite its best effort.
From where he’s lying on his stomach on the floor, Will looks mostly unbothered, if only a little shiny. He swipes a green crayon along the sheet of copy paper he has tucked under his palm, tongue poking out between his lips.
Mike rolls his own crayon around in his hands—scarlet—then surrenders it entirely.
He’s not in the mood to color.
He feels… off. It’s hot, sure—it’s July, and the Byers’ house is always sort of helpless to the elements—but there’s something else, too. The ground feels stiff and uncomfortable beneath his body, and his hands are sweating.
Will looks up from his drawing at the soft thud, lips pursed and brows furrowed as he looks Mike over.
Mike reads: You okay?
He opens his mouth to respond, then promptly snaps it shut. He swallows around a sudden influx of saliva before quietly admitting, “I feel weird.”
Will’s eyebrows pull closer together, and Mike shrugs.
He wants to explain but isn’t sure how. He doesn’t have a word that fits. His stomach isn’t hurting, exactly—it just feels weird. Prickly, almost.
He feels sort of like he’s floating.
“Like—” he realizes unhappily. He swallows again—this time, around a swell of panic. “Like I gotta—”
He doesn’t get to finish the sentence. He doesn’t get to do much of anything before he’s turning his head away from Will and throwing up on the floor.
“Oh,” Will says softly.
Mike’s face burns. His eyes sting. He’s already scrambling backwards, the friction between his bare feet and the itchy, soiled carpet sending unpleasant jolts up his spine. His hands are shaking over his knees. His breath is hitching.
He’s mortified.
“I—I’m sorry—”
Will blinks his wide eyes at the mess, then cranes his neck towards Mike, who’s managed to put a good amount of distance between himself and the evidence. He's trembling against the wall beneath the window, mouth flopping open and closed with words that aren't coming to his brain.
Timidly, Will tilts his chin towards his open door, which leads to the hallway, which leads to the kitchen.
“No, no—” Mike’s chest is heaving so hard he thinks his heart might rip right out of his shirt. “Oh, God.”
Mrs. Byers is going to be so mad. Mike’s mom certainly would be. The aftermath of Nancy’s last stomach bug pushes to the forefront of his mind, unwelcome, exasperating both his nerves and the resurging sick feeling.
“Will—” he pleads, but Joyce is there before he can even think of what to ask him for. There's a sharp, determined look on her face that instantly melts into itself when she catches sight of Mike.
His lip quivers for a second, and that’s all the warning anyone gets before he's crying, loud and desperate. His shoulders fly up to his ears, bubbling sobs wracking his hunched frame.
“Oh, honey,” Joyce crosses the room in two easy strides, crouching beside him and taking hold of his elbow. “Oh, Mike. It’s okay.”
She leans to the side, stretching her arm as far as it can go. Her fingers wiggle an inch from the wastebasket tucked under Will’s desk. Then, she grunts, pushing off Mike to close the gap. Her hand closes urgently around the rim, and she yanks it towards Mike's chest just in time for him to throw up again.
He blubbers hopelessly, tears blurring the contents of Will’s trash: crumpled-up pieces of paper, pencil shavings, a bright orange chocolate wrapper, and Mike’s partially digested Eggos. “I’m sorry—I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” Joyce repeats, shushing him. One of her hands is still holding the bin steady. The other is sprawled out against his spasming back. “It's nothing that can’t be cleaned up, alright? Don’t you dare worry about that.”
Mike sniffles. His hand curls around hers as his body pitches forward and he pukes again. Then again. Then a third time, all while Joyce is rubbing his back and saying kind things to him.
Will is watching silently, knees pulled tight to his chest. He doesn’t really talk much, Mike knows, and it’s almost a relief that this horrifying experience is no exception.
In a moment of respite, Joyce presses a kiss to Mike’s sweaty temple. The tips of his ears and the flesh of his cheeks go hot at the affection, but she doesn’t falter.
“Mike, honey,” she murmurs. “Think you might be done for now?”
Will eyes him warily. His stomach flips. “I dunno.”
She doesn’t look the way grown-ups are supposed to look. She seems torn. Her limbs are twitchy, her face pinched with fear and urgency. She turns her body to look at her son, then quickly angles it back to Mike.
When he doesn’t immediately vomit, she pulls away from him.
The high, desperate whine he emits makes her pause for a moment, stricken, but it's not enough to make her stay.
“I’ll be right back,” she promises. “I’m just gonna call your mom.”
Her movements are quick and clumsy. Mike’s chin settles on the edge of the wastebasket as he watches her go.
The world has narrowed to the plastic between Mike's legs and the awful, relentless heave of his body. His throat is on fire, and his stomach does hurt now—a hot, furious cramping like nothing he’s ever felt before.
He’s empty, which somehow makes it worse.
His body doesn't stop convulsing. The gagging doesn’t stop, either; it’s just dry now and twice as painful. His hands are clenched so tightly that his knuckles are white, tears dripping off his nose and into the mess below him.
At some point, Will crawled over, assuming the place his mom had previously occupied. He doesn’t hold Mike’s hair back or whisper reassurances, though. Instead, he leans close, pressing his cheek to the damp fabric of Mike’s shirt where it’s pulled taut over his back, unfazed even though Mike jostles him with every sharp inhale and wet cough.
“—Karen—” he catches, the sound of Joyce’s tense voice muffled by distance and Mike’s waning focus. “—now—it’s not—”
A string of saliva catches on the corner of Mike’s mouth, dangling over the lining of the bin. He whimpers—a broken little sound that Will mirrors.
When Joyce returns, she’s breathless and pale, her mouth set in a thin line.
“How’s it going?” she asks quietly, leaning against the door frame.
Mike can tell she’s talking to Will and not to him, which is good, because he doesn’t want to talk anymore.
Will shakes his head sadly, hardly wincing when Mike heaves again—hot, yellow bile.
Joyce makes a startled sound, and then she’s back at his side, brushing sweaty curls off his skin.
“It’s okay,” she assures. “You’re okay. Your mom is coming to get you.”
Mike shakes his head weakly. “I wanna go home.”
“I know.” She presses the back of her free hand to his forehead, and her frown deepens. “I know.”
Time moves strangely after that. Slow and sticky.
Mike loses track of how many times he gets sick and where it ends up landing. For a while, he’s not even sure where he is, but then there’s a knocking sound, and he's blinking the world back into focus, vaguely aware of Joyce’s thigh beneath his head and the scratchy armrest of the Byers’ couch.
The air smells like vomit and syrup and Will's dad's cologne.
Will stands up from his place on the floor and patters over to the door, twisting the knob without looking through the peephole, which Mike's mom says you're never supposed to do. Joyce doesn’t reprimand him for it, though—and, funnily enough, it's none other than Mike’s mom standing on the other side.
She rushes in with a familiar… muchness, her eyes skipping right over Will and going straight to Mike, who's shaking and drooling into Joyce’s pant leg.
Her face crumples.
"Oh, Michael," she breathes, arms extended in his direction. "Baby."
She's kneeling in front of the couch, then, her palms against his cheeks.
"He's been throwing up for hours," Joyce fills her in gently. "Can't keep anything down. We tried water and ginger ale, and it all—"
Karen's hand flits over Mike’s clammy forehead, then his neck, then his wrists. Her head tilts, brown ringlets falling over her shoulder. "He's not hot at all."
Joyce shakes her head. “No fever.”
"Mom...?" Mike manages.
He feels all the attention in the room flick towards him instantly, Karen's expression softening.
“I don’t—I don't feel very good.”
“Oh, baby,” she frets. “I know.”
“Like ‘m gonna—” Mike’s jaw works against Joyce’s knee. He makes a guttural sound without really meaning to, his throat spasming. “—again.”
It’s Will who thrusts the wastebasket under his chin this time. Mike hardly needs to do any work; he just drops his jaw, and a fresh wave of bile comes spilling out.
Karen’s hand comes up to her mouth, trembling against her painted, pink lips. “Oh, my—”
“It’s alright,” Joyce hums, fingers brushing his ear. “Just let it happen, Mike.”
When the feeling eases, Will retracts the bin, and Karen hoists him abruptly upright by the shoulders.
"Woah," he mumbles, eyes crossing as the room tilts around him.
Joyce's palm is cautiously outstretched, stopping him from collapsing into her, so he aims forward instead and topples straight into his own mom.
Her waiting arms close protectively—if only a little suffocatingly—around him. Her heartbeat is strong in her chest, a steady rhythm that makes Mike feel safe enough to sob openly, snot and spit and sweat seeping into the fabric of her blouse.
"I—" As her hand sinks into the messy hair at the base of Mike's skull, Karen leans over his shoulder to address Joyce. "This really isn't like him."
“I know—”
Mike starts to tune them out after that. He can feel his mom’s throat moving against the side of his face, so he knows she’s still talking, but he’s just too tired. His breaths are coming in shaky little bursts against her neck, and every muscle in him feels sore—wrung out and tingling.
Karen rocks him mindlessly as she speaks, like he’s much younger than six.
Occasionally, when it's Joyce's turn to talk, she leans in and whispers things like, “You’re okay, baby,” into his ear.
Mike wants to believe her. He really does, but then his stomach twists again, and a thin whine slips past his lips.
He can tell that Will is the only one reading the warning for what it is, judging by the small hand that settles over the back of his neck—but there's not much else he can do before Mike is coughing up more stomach acid, all down the front of his mom's shirt.
She yelps, breath catching, and Joyce reaches out a sympathetic yet firm hand to grip her bicep. "Karen—"
Mike continues to retch without reprieve. His fingers clutch weakly at chiffon. For the second time today, a vivid memory of when his sister was sick last year assaults him—the displeased scrunch of Nancy's nose, her vomit all up the wall, their mom's tight, frustrated voice in the middle of the night.
"Mom," he whimpers miserably. "I'm sorry."
Will parrots, "Mom."
“It’s okay,” they’re both saying.
Mike deflates a little, relieved. His dad had defended Nancy that night because she's his favorite, saying things like "It was only an accident, Karen," and "She doesn't feel well," his voice thick and exhausted.
Nancy says that it's fair that Dad loves her more because Mom loves him more. She says that it's the whole reason he was born, and now he sort of gets how it works—if she's really letting him off the hook for this.
His crying tapers into quiet, uneven hitches—lashes fluttering precariously, limbs heavy and warm.
“I’m taking him in,” Karen decides.
Mike shifts, writhing with the sense that he’s missing something important. The adult conversation has gone strained, words flying over his head. His left hand slips free, fumbling until it finds Will’s wrist, fingers curling weakly around the bone.
Will flips his hand underneath Mike’s so they’re palm-to-palm.
“Joyce, can you grab me his things?”
She obliges, moving fast and purposefully.
Will doesn’t let go until, eventually, Karen stands, and their sudden difference in height causes Mike’s hand to slip from his. She takes it and positions it around her own neck before adjusting her grip beneath Mike's knees.
Still, he stays close, trailing awkwardly behind the pair as they move through the house, pausing just before the front door so Joyce can slip Mike’s new Velcro sneakers onto his feet without socks and sling his backpack over his mom's shoulder.
Karen carries Mike out of the house and down the driveway, jostling his uneasy stomach with each of her short, hurried steps. He groans sleepily, bleary eyes latching onto the sight of Will over her shoulder. He’s stuck in the doorway, looking smaller than ever. Joyce’s arm is slung across his chest, keeping him inside as she speaks in a hushed voice.
Karen lowers Mike into the backseat of the car. She's folded over him, struggling to lock his seatbelt in place with her trembling hands, while he continues to watch Will.
After a long moment of listening to Joyce talk, he nods dutifully. Then, just as the buckle clicks, he turns and offers Mike a solemn wave.