Chapter Text
Mike
Mike has been in the hospital since the morning, sitting and creeping around for the past four hours. He insisted he absolutely doesn't mind the wait when Joyce discovered him in the hallway on her way for a cup of a vending machine coffee half an hour ago. He also knows the Byers want to see their son and brother just as much as he does, and technically have even a greater right to, but that doesn't in the slightest keep his mood from getting worse with each passing minute. Even the ever-present staff bothers him now, as they block his view of a vaccine poster he's been hypnotising for the past ten minutes.
He's seriously fed up with the advert's doctor's toothy grin as well.
He's fed up with everything and everyone.
"Hi."
"Hey," he says, not taking his eyes off the syringe. Maybe objects will be less annoying now.
El rustles with a backpack and pushes a comic from a seat on his left before sitting next to him. It's the same volume he's been bringing with him for the past three days. He feels her gaze on him, inspecting his face, his empty eyes. He turns his head slightly away from her. He knows about the eyebags, he knows he should drink and eat and sleep, and he certainly doesn't need another talk from a worried basically-family member.
"I'm fine. Mom packed me lunch."
"Well, did you eat it?"
He digs into one of his pockets and presents a sad half of something that might've been a sandwich seven hours ago.
"That's all you've-"
"I'm fine, El," he snaps. Can everybody stop worrying when he's clearly all in one piece?
She thins her lips impatiently. "Even Hop is starting to get worried," she breathes out, making it sound like a joke. Deliberately, Mike realises. She reaches into the backpack, rustling for a bit before putting a small, slightly open lunchbox in his lap, revealing neatly diced fruit and a sliver of a utensil. Both families seem to be desperately trying to find solace in feeding their members six years' worth of nutritional meals. It somehow became a means of affectionate communication, especially with their moms, amongst other, similarly painfully ordinary things, habits and activities. No one prepares you for the pointlessness of a peaceful life when you've had to live in a literal apocalypse for years. Now, nobody seems to know what to do with themselves. Nothing seems to be a priority. Nothing seems to be that important. Mike understands, but is also sick of it.
He pushes the lunchbox to the side of his chair.
"Well, maybe Hop should worry about his son," he mocks through clenched teeth.
"We all worry, Mike," she bites back.
It's not just you.
They've had a few snappy dialogues over this already. All Mike still wants to talk about with everyone over and over is Will, Will, Will and how he messed everything up, while El wants to talk about... at this point, everything else. Not that she doesn't care as much, or the pain and fear for her brother cooled down. She cares and hurts, all the same. But while she understands everyone experiences pain differently, Mike seems to have... trouble with this kind of tolerance. He almost takes everyone's experience personally. It might be the years of stress slowly releasing, leaving the survival mode behind all of them, that's making them all act a little out of character. But considering even Lucas told him he's been a bit overreactive lately, after he got snapped at as well ("Well, he's not Max!"), she decided to take better care of her friend. Even if it might take him some time to be a tad nicer back.
She leans into her chair, letting a few minutes pass during their diplomatic timeout, before fishing up the utensil from the lunchbox.
"Mike," she breathes in, swirling the spork in her left hand. I know you're trying to punish yourself because you think you're to blame. I know you blame me, too. She stabs a few pieces of fruit. "I know you don't believe me, now that I have no powers left. But trust me when I say that he's getting better already. He's gonna be okay. I can feel it," she gently bumps their shoulders together. I know you're upset that I can't contact him anymore. But I also know you're trying not to be. "But you won't be here to see it if you starve."
She offers him the spork.
Mike takes it and bites off a banana with his teeth, but doesn't say anything back. He feels like he's said plenty enough already, to everyone who listened, even though he knew no one would have a satisfying response for him. *You weren't there. You didn't see him writhe on the ground. You didn't hear him scream until he passed out from pain.*
He did.
He did and couldn't do anything about it. He didn't do anything about it.
Nobody gets it. The helplessness, uselessness and guilt. If it weren't for pretty much a miracle, he just would've stood there and watched his best friend of ten years die. And to top it off, he's behaved like a complete idiot for the past two years. Not only these past two years. Ever since Will... told them, he's been replaying every interaction he remembered. He's made Will upset so many times. It's not my fault you don't like girls. He said all the wrong things. And half the time, he doesn't even know why. But now he knows why some of them were so significant.
Will would die in his company. In the company of a stupidly oblivious guy who hurt him so many times.
He's had too much time to think. He's so angry with himself.
It would be a waste of time to try to put it all into words for a brief conversation.
So instead, he takes a few more dice of the fruit. The occasional sting of kiwis is a welcome sensation in the otherwise numbing Tuesday.
"It's from mom. She's worried, too."
Mike stops chewing for a few seconds and glances at the salad. A new wave of guilt washes over the old one. He snapped at Joyce four days ago. He doesn't exactly know what made him so mad prior. But when she suggested he take a break for a few days from visits, after seeing him get up from the hard hospital chair with the energy of an old man, he felt as if he was about to lose the last bit of control he had left. As if slowly developing scoliosis and some form of sleep disorder simultaneously would help the situation.
That's when he decided he's gonna try being passive, rather than aggressive... at least with their mothers.
El adjusts a walkie on her hip. They've been keeping them close, even as almost a month had passed since... the mission, in case someone from the army managed to trace their footprints back to the crime scene. Hawkings willingly embraced the quake narrative, not exactly mourning the base that happened to be so unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you asked) in the epicentre. The city had basically gotten over it with an honouring statue within the second week.
"El?"
"Mm."
"Are you okay?"
El blinks in mild disbelief before a smile tugs on her lips. "I will be."
"Promise?"
"Friends don't lie."
Mike offers a half-smile back. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He bonks it with his whole head, freely falling onto it. She scoffs and pushes him away, now fully smiling.
The atmosphere between them, brewing like weak, impatient poison for weeks, lifted.
A swing of door from the right side collides with Mike's chair, making them both jump. "Oh, sorry- El, hi! Wheeler." Jonathan's head pokes from the side, nodding at Mike before walking out, followed by his mother. She looks poorly rested, chronically stressed and sad, but smiles at both children she considers her own, despite them not being of the same blood. Both Mike and El get up immediately, Mike still awkwardly clutching the box.
"Hi, El, sweetie, did you wait long? I'm sorry-"
"I just got here mom, no worries."
She looks towards Mike, who, despite her warm smile, can't help getting overwhelmed with shame over last week's outburst. "Thank you for the salad, Mrs Byers. I needed it. Th- the vitamins," he hands her the lunchbox too quickly, trying to look grateful, but averting her gaze at the last second.
She blinks before fully registering the words. "Oh, honey! Of course. It's nothing," she smiles as she takes the box, lightly patting a few knuckles of his left hand.
She started calling him "honey" at some point. He gets chills every time, feeling undeserving. He doesn't understand why she's acting like he saved her son somehow, when he so obviously failed to do exactly that, in every aspect. And still, even Jonathan looks at him differently now. Almost sympathetically. Maybe a little pitifully. Right now, it's so unbearable he wishes they'd just scowled at him instead.
He dries his cold, slightly sweaty palms on his jeans. "Can we...?" He blinks at Will's room before looking back at the Byers'.
"Absolutely, he's all yours, kids. We're going to get some lunch, Karen insisted on cooking today. We'll bring yours as well." Joyce pats El's cheek as she and Jonathan walk away.
Mike doesn't exactly wait before they even turn around the corner before speeding into the room, in need of reassurance. That his best friend is still there, alive, waiting for him to fix all the messes he made.
Will has woken up for the first time on Thursday. Unfortunately for Mike, he stayed awake during Byers' visit for around twelve minutes before drifting off again into such heavy sleep, he should've spared them the excitement and stayed in the supposed coma until he was fully charged up (Dustin received a not-at-all playful push from Mike at this remark). Not that the doctors have a clue.
Yet, Joyce has been holding onto every bit of positive information she gathered from the near quarter of an hour nontheless, beaming and talkative towards everybody since. Will managed to greet her and Jonathan, ask a few questions, smile, even through mostly closed eyes. He seemed to be getting better, even in the nurses' opinion.
And isn't that all a mother needs to know to feel better herself?
It's Friday, and Mike is massaging Will's left arm, from shoulder to fingertips, a habit he's picked up from Joyce on one of their first co-visits.
"If we ensure a proper circulation, the muscles won't undergo such drastic atrophy," she explained, "and it warms him up, too. He would hate the cold."
He asked Lucas about it, and he confirmed it had helped Max with her own recovery. Apparently, he himself had become a skilled masseur thanks to it, but Mike isn't sure if they were still talking healthcare, considering the smirk he'd shot Max right after.
The first time he'd done it, he felt like an absolute creep anyway, even though Joyce asked him to help from her own volition. Or maybe she couldn't bear his fidgeting, not knowing what to do with his own hands. He was reluctantly copying her then, working on Will's right carpal on the other side of the bed, while Jonathan read Hawkins Plate, a brand new journal that had sprung in the past weeks, an independent source. The conspiracies were entertaining enough. They oftentimes wished, with a sigh, that they were the reality.
In the end, the domesticity and familiarity of that particular visit fell flat for Mike, who grew increasingly uncomfortable, especially under Jonathan's gaze and gave up at the elbow with a bathroom excuse, never returning to the task that day.
He did realise it's a good excuse to hold Will's hand eventually, though. Which surely helps the anxiety here and there.
Now, lightly squeezing in between Will's left knuckles with both thumbs and index fingers, looking nowhere in particular, he's alone in the room. And that means more time to think.
Which is all he does these days, anyway.
He's acted borderline- no, actually full-on hysterical after Mind Flayer's defeat and is not ashamed to admit it.
He thought Will died. He looked like he did anyway.
And he also thought that he watched it all happen.
So, naturally, he doesn't understand why everyone thinks it was and continues to be such a weird behavioural response.
"Nothing's wrong with it. I've just never seen you... like that, Mike. It was off-putting," Nancy told him over dinner the other day. At that, Holly shot him a she's right y'know glance, bolder and more present than he's seen her in years. She's really changed so much since Vecna took her, incredibly, all for the better.
Well, he's never exactly had the opportunity to test such a scenario to pre-adjust his emotional responses. What the hell are they all on about? Why is him being explicitly worried to any extent considered weird? His shutting down because of the attack on his parents wasn't?
How is it different?
It isn't. If anything, he stubbornly thinks, this is worse.
He's been spending whole days in the hospital, even when he's not visiting his parents or Will, sitting around on the chairs and sofas, sometimes joined by Lucas, Max, Robin or Vickie. The staff lets him roam around freely, thanks to him being the "poor kid with massacred parents", with Christmas basically around the corner, sparing coffee, tea and an occasional cookie, treating Mike with a fondness you spare for a homeless cat. But what if he wasn't? What if he were the "poor kid who wants to see his friend"? Would they let him stay then, or would they wave him off?
Muscles in his jaw become visible as he clenches his teeth. Why does every person involved treat this whole mess as if he shouldn't care as much, as if it's not that big of a deal? Why do even the nurses, some of whom are on a first-name basis with him by now, dare to imply the same?
Will is more than some friend. Hell, he's more than a family most of the time. He's one of the most important- He is the most important person in Mike's life, and yet it's like nobody believes it when they hear and see it. He is sick of it.
The most important person in his life?
That's... that's a significant statement. It came to him so easily, and yet it feels... heavy? Is it heavy?
Mike blinks a little, staring at their hands. Why did he never put it- their friendship, bond, or whatever into words, like that? Did it feel different before? Surely not. It comes naturally to him. It's written all over the past weeks.
Surely he thought of Will all these years like that. He's damn certain of it.
Didn't he?
Mike startles when Will's breath hitches a little, causing the sleeping boy to frown a little. Mike doesn't move or breathe for a full minute, staring at his best friend, before briefly checking the heart rate display, then turning right back at him. He doesn't let go of Will's hand.
The most important person in my life.
Mike will have to show him. Him, and everyone else, too.
Will's eyelids flutter.