Chapter Text
Will takes a moment, wondering how exactly he’s ended up here, in the bed of the boy he loves.
Mike is lying unbothered beside him, eyes half-lidded with sleep as he wiggles around under their shared sheets, getting comfortable.
“You’re ok with this, right?” the lanky boy checks in, now seemingly comfortable as he’s settled down. “I just don’t want you sleeping on the floor. We don’t just deserve a good sleep, we need it if we’re going to figure out how to actually stop Vecna.”
The Byers had only just moved into the Wheeler’s house after months of cramped, shared military housing, having spent countless nights on too hard, creaky twin beds. Mike has a queen bed for some ungodly reason, and of course it was a no brainer for everyone that Will would bunk in his room, but when he’d asked Mike about a sleeping bag that night, his friend had scoffed.
“You moved to improve your living situation, not go from a cold twin bed to the floor, Will,” Mike had admonished him like this was obvious. Will had just stared at him blankly, and eventually Mike patted the space beside him on the bed as he sat down and started to untie his shoes, eyes trained on the laces and away from Will when he said what he added next.
“You’ll sleep here- uh, I mean… if you, like, if you’re ok with-“
“Are you sure?” Will interrupted him, scanning his best friend’s face for signs of discomfort or regret, but all Mike gave away was the anxious twitch his lips did when he was waiting for something. “Yeah- ok. Cool, thanks,” he replied after Mike nodded.
“Of course,” Mike replied, tossing his shoes across his room and flopping over his sheets fully clothed.
“Ugh,” he added, moving on like it was nothing, when to Will this new arrangement was everything, all he would be thinking about until they went to bed. “I do not want to shower.”
“You will if we’re sleeping together,” Will half-joked, realizing too late how that sounded. Mike went beet red, face half hidden by his long waves of black curls.
“Uh, I didn’t mean-“
“It’s fine, Will,” Mike laughed, and it only sounded slightly forced. “Shower it is.” He got up languidly, stretching like a cat and avoiding Will’s eyes as he picked up some pajamas and headed for the bathroom.
Great going, moron, Will chided himself. How have you made it weird already?
He tried to busy himself while Mike showered, unpacking his clothes and leaving them in a neat pile at the end of Mike’s bed. Though he practically grew up at Mike’s house, he rarely went into his best friend’s room- the basement being the Party’s safe haven, and Will’s too.
He let his eyes wander around the room, indulging in a small ironic huff at the “one way” sign pointing directly to the boy’s closet- something that surely would torment Will for the rest of his indefinite stay here. He found pajamas of his own, sighing when he found a hole just under the right armpit; it would leave a section of his torso exposed. It wasn’t bad enough to justify getting a new shirt, not with their budget now and everything else going on, Hawkins having turned into a military base after suffering the consequences of being Vecna’s playground the previous year, but it would be obvious, and he flushed in preemptive embarrassment.
Mike came out a while later, hair flat and damp, skin flushed from the heat of his shower.
“Made sure to leave to leave you some hot water, so if you wanna…” he trailed off, waving to the door that was open to the hallway.
“Oh, thanks,” Will replied, offering a small smile that Mike didn’t return. He did, however, nod, and Will didn’t miss the way his eyes had softened.
“Of course,” he said again, infuriatingly casual as ever.
When Will had returned, warmed from his own shower, Mike was already under the covers, leading him to the situation he currently found himself in: under the covers in Micheal Wheeler’s bed, the boy in question laying comfortably beside him, a safe half a foot between them.
The covers were pulled down to their waists as both boys tried to cool off, and Will’s body heat was no longer solely from his shower.
“Yeah, totally,” Will answers his friend’s question about their sleeping arrangements, reassuring him that it’s alright. “We have another meeting at Hopper’s cabin tomorrow, it’ll be nice to be actually rested for it for once,” he says, going for a lighthearted attempt at humor.
Mike just frowns, his long fingers finding the edge of the covers and playing with it.
“I just- I- I wish it hadn’t taken so long. I’m sorry you had to stay in those shitty quarters for so long.”
Will shrugs, trying to suppress the warmth that blooms at Mike’s worry.
“It wasn’t that bad, really,” he lies, uncomfortable already with how much Mike knows. He had tried to skirt around it, leaving out most of the details when they had first settled in the temporary housing after moving back from Lenora, but Mike had managed to get the truth out of him somehow in the way that he’d always been able to.
“Will…” Mike starts, admonishing but trailing off, not pushing it.
El has been staying with Hopper- it wouldn’t be safe for her to be living in town right now with the military still after her. She and Mike had ended things properly after that awful forced profession in the back of Surfer Boys’s Pizza, or, more accurately, after their three day silence during the drive back home following the stilted confession.
Will was there for El when it had happened, of course he was, but she hadn’t been too hurt, simply shrugging and stating that she knew she deserved better. There was lingering animosity between her and Mike, but the breakup and time (and a little effort on Mike’s part) had smoothed all of that away, the pair falling back into something they hadn’t shared since they were twelve and lost: friendship.
Will had tried to be there for Mike, too, though that was more painful. He had spent the first week bringing up the breakup at every chance he got, getting dangerously close to driving Will crazy by the end of it, his usually endless patience running dry.
“I just- she said I didn’t mean it! That I didn’t… you know?”
“Lover her?” Will had asked, biting back a sigh and just trying to be supportive, because he had thought that was what Mike wanted, when what he wanted to do was scream, ”But she’s right, isn’t she? She’s not even here and you can’t even say it!” Still, he bit his tongue as Mike nodded.
“Yeah! Exactly! Which is insane! Of course I do, why wouldn’t I?”
One day though, and Will still didn't know what had prompted it, didn’t know whose hand to shake or what deity to pay respects to, Mike had pulled Will aside and caved.
“She’s right; she has always been right, you know? I never really loved her. What am I even… What am I supposed to do with that, Will?” He had looked so lost, those puppy dog eyes melting a hole in the other boy’s heart as he cautiously placed a hand on his best friend’s shoulder.
“You do what you’ve been doing, Mike. You stay friends with her, go to school, go to crawls, and learn from this. Move on.” Will had long since stopped trying to enable what he finally realized was a fruitless relationship, Jane telling him it truly wasn’t what she wanted anymore the thing to finally push him to encourage Mike to leave it behind.
It had taken a while, but Mike had done just that. And once El had stopped taking up all of his brainpower left after their endless planning against Vecna, he had realized how badly he had stunted his relationship with Will. Once in person together and not running across the country, they had been able to settle back to a vague semblance of what they’d been before.
It was painfully obvious Mike was trying, even when he got in one of his moods and stopped talking to Will, or anyone for that matter, for days at a time. The Party never let him wallow, Dustin or Lucas snapping him out of it, or even Hopper on the rare occasions he was so in his head his bad mood came with him to a meeting. When he wasn’t letting himself spiral though, which was, thankfully, most of the time, Mike was relearning how to be himself; he was finding out who he was outside of “Louis Lane,” as he’d compared himself to in that awful van last year.
Will pushes the memory aside, turning to lean on his elbow as he faces Mike.
“I’m here now, it’s alright. I- We’re really grateful you and your mom and everyone are letting us stay. Really, it’s-“
“It’s nothing,” Mike cuts him off, “You should have been staying with us from the start.
Will doesn’t know what to say to that, but thankfully he doesn’t have to find a response, because Mike frowns again, hand reaching out to graze Will’s skin where it’s showing through the hole in his shirt that he’d just exposed by leaning on his elbow. Idiot, he chided himself even as Mike’s touch burned on the edge of his ribs.
“Your shirt,” he says, like that’s an explanation for his fingers lingering.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Will croaks out, and the noise seems to snap Mike out of his daze, his hand retracting as he got out of bed and walked across his room.
Had Will done something? He didn’t see how he could have; he’d hardly done anything, let alone something to lead Mike to spring away from him like that, but then his best friend turns around, navy top clutched in his fists as he moves back to the bed.
“I remember Joyce mentioning you guys had to downsize a lot in the shared space; you should have told me you needed stuff. I should have asked, actually, but- it doesn’t matter. You can take whatever you need, and you definitely don’t need to sleep in something torn.”
Will hadn’t thought it was that big of a deal, plenty of his clothes were torn, especially his hand-me-downs from Jonathan, it was just that Joyce usually had time to see them for him. But Mike is offering his shirt, his hand outstretched and waiting, and Will can’t refuse him, he never could.
He accepts the shirt, hoping nightfall is enough to hide his heating cheeks as he mumbles a “Oh, you didn’t have to- thanks.”
He knows what Mike is going to say before the words leave his mouth.
“Of course.”
Mike crosses the room again, walking back to his wardrobe and blissfully turning away as Will changes his shirt.
“I have a shirt in here I literally never wear, I think it would… I, mean, you can have that, too. For later. I literally just saw it,” Mike says, growing more frustrated as his search comes up empty.
“It’s ok, Mike,” Will reassures him, laughing lightly at the crumpled state of his best friend’s face when he turns back to Will at the sound of his voice. “You can find it in the morning.”
Mike nods, albeit reluctantly.
“Yeah,” he finally agrees, “Ok.”
The bed shifts under his weight, dipping to accommodate the lanky boy.
His shirt is a little odd fitting on Will, loose and too-big despite Mike having thinner arms, but it smells like Mike, and Will loves it. The fabric is soft, and comforting, and the long sleeves leave him coated in the welcome warmth.
Mike reaches out to play with the sleeve, twisting it between two fingers as he lays down again.
“There you go,” he says, not quite whispering but voice much softer. “That’s better.”
Will is just about short circuiting, and he makes a short of choked “mhm” sound, trying not to think about how Mike still hasn’t pulled away. Then, to make matters worse- better? Will hasn’t decided yet- Mike lets go, his hand moving up to curl around Will’s forearm, his own arm stretched across the foot of distance still between them.
“Goodnight, Will,” Mike mumbles, already succumbing to sleep.
Will is quiet for a long time, and when he finally breathes out a “Goodnight, Mike,” the other boy's chest has already started an even rise and fall, soft breathes escaping his nose as he sleeps.