Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler had a serious staring problem. At first, he’d chosen the seat across from Will because he didn’t want to seem too eager to sit next to him, but it was proving to be an altogether more dangerous arrangement. From this side of the table, he had a perfect vantage point. He couldn’t even remember what the conversation was supposed to be about, but the way Will’s lips moved as he argued enraptured him. It was the cherry-flavoured Chapstick that did it, no doubt. Mike had found it the day the Byers had moved in (he wanted to see what Will deemed important enough to put in a box marked ‘ESSENTIALS’).
“No, look,” Will ran his finger down the page of the dictionary, “F-E-R-E, meaning companion.”
Nancy scoffed, “Oh, that doesn’t count, it’s marked as an archaic word - no Middle English bullshit!”
It seemed as if every game night brought about new Scrabble rules. The original pamphlet of regulations that came with the game was in the garbage. In several pieces. It was surprising that the booklet even lasted 3 game nights in the first place.
These heated debates were something Mike could always count on. As well as the fact that he was losing. Badly.
“I’m sorry, ‘at’? That’s your word?” Jonathan rolled back in his chair and practically doubled over with laughter. His heavy red eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t like Jonathan was doing much better - everyone had simply decided it wasn’t worth the effort to explain to him that no word he’d played so far actually existed.
“Do you even know how to play, Mr. Writer?” Will stood abruptly with a smirk, leaning over the table with an eyebrow raised.
“I- I know how to play. It’s just boring,” Mike whined, planting his face in his hands (which were hopefully a fit cover for his ever-flushing cheeks).
Every night after dinner, after Holly had gone to bed and Joyce had slipped out to Hopper’s cabin, the kids of the house gathered around the kitchen table. And although Mike had complained about his boredom every night thus far, he never found himself elsewhere.
Everyone around the table held back an eye roll as Jonathan carefully laid down his tiles.
P-O-R
Jonathan lay back in his chair and sighed, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve won again.”
Will folded his arms in front of him, defeated. “We should try a Jonathan-free game night if he refuses to play sober,” he mumbled under his breath.
Mike studied the exasperation in his eyes, hooded by heavily furrowed brows. “At least my words are in English,” he smirked.
“Jonathan is high as a kite. What’s your excuse?” Will countered playfully. The eye contact sent daggers of crystal into Mike’s chest. Painful, but sparkly. Something Mike couldn’t quite decipher.
Hurried footsteps down the stairs redirected the group’s attention.
“Unfortunately, it appears a little relocation is in order,” Mrs. Wheeler emerged from the bottom of the stairs with a sigh. “Poor Holly seems to have caught a bug.”
“Relocation? How sick can she possibly be?” Nancy asked.
Karen gave a small laugh, doing little to conceal her evident concern. “I suppose that was a dramatic way of saying it. I just meant, surely I shouldn’t have her sharing your room, Nancy. So she’s back in her own bed,” she gave a nod to the Byers boys, “and we’ll have to do a little shuffling with you two. Will, I think we’ll move you to Mike’s room, and Jonathan, you’ll have to take the couch for a few nights. Will that be okay?”
Jonathan gave a stiff nod, obviously avoiding Karen’s eyes. Mike couldn’t bring himself to gauge Will’s reaction, and instead found his own eyes glued to the floor. Any normal kid would’ve been ecstatic at the prospect of a spontaneous sleepover with their best friend, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Mike was no normal kid.
Karen gave an extended apology about the amount of relocation the Byer boys had been subject to - their time in the basement had been cut short by some minor flooding a few weeks into their stay, and now Holly’s illness had forced them out of her room. The speech seemed to blend into the background.
“Mike?” Karen’s voice brought him back to reality.
“Of course, yeah… yeah, that’s fine,” Mike stuttered.
Karen frowned at her clearly out-of-order son, “Thank you for your permission, but I was asking if your floor, in its current state, has room for the air mattress?”
“Oh, um… probably not,” he admitted. He took the opportunity to escape from the table and raced up the stairs to his bedroom, probably shutting the door behind him a little too hard.
He frantically scanned the room for the usual dirty laundry or scrapped paper, most likely in the typical, crumpled-up form - Mike had been struggling with a case of writer’s block lately. Will’s drawings practically wallpapered the room, and he wondered if he had time to take them all down (without ripping them, of course). There was not, in fact, time, but Mike decided it wasn’t an issue; there’s probably nothing weird about your best friend’s art making up the entirety of your bedroom decor, right?
He tried to look at the room with fresh eyes. It was only now occurring to him that in the three months the Byers had been living there, Will hadn’t spent any time in Mike’s room. Mike wondered how different he would find it - had his room changed as much as he had? Had either of them changed much at all?
God, why couldn’t anything just feel normal anymore?
Mike began shoving every loose ‘floor-dweller’ into his closet. Crouched over, he noticed the box under his bed would be right in Will’s eyeline from the air mattress. Or more importantly, the label, “WILL”, would be right in his eyeline. He grabbed it, panicked, and shoved it under the pile of laundry he’d formed.
Nothing felt the same after Will moved to Lenora. Mike wrote at least one letter every week. He had every intention to send them, but addressing them to Will’s new home in California made everything feel too real. He didn’t stop writing them, though. And over time, they became less and less sendable - too honest.
A small knock sounded at Mike’s door. He forced the closet door shut, every incriminating sentence hidden deep beneath a pile of clothing. “C-come in,” he squeaked, a little more hesitant than he would’ve liked.
His door creaked open, revealing Will with a bright pink sleeping bag around his neck and the air mattress under his arm. “Roomies,” he gave half a smile and a shrug.
“Roomies,” Mike laughed back. He tried not to stare as Will’s eyes studied every inch of the room. The walls suddenly felt overbearingly blue, not that they’d changed colour since Will had last seen them, but they felt outgrown.
Once they’d gotten everything set up, they sat facing each other on their respective beds, a little out of breath from wrestling with the world’s most stubborn inflatable mattress.
“So, I take it The Wheelers don’t do a lot of camping?” Will gestured to the sleeping bag, its pink hue untainted by dirt, or anything outdoorsy for that matter.
Mike smiled, “Holly was in Girl Scouts for a couple months… we bought her everything for the ‘big camping trip’ just for her to chicken out and quit the day before.”
“Ahh, and here I was thinking this was yours.”
Mike scowled, “Yeah, no. No camping for me.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. The quiet never used to bother Mike; it had always felt natural to just exist in each other’s spaces. Yet now, Mike felt himself searching for something he could say to fill it. Silence left too much room for thinking.
His eyes flitted around the room, taking in a scene that hadn’t played out in years. Holly’s trundle bed belonged to Mike first; he wondered if it felt nostalgic to Will to be sleeping in it again. Of course, the bedding was much less vibrant and floral-y then, not like the sheets that now resided on the air mattress. If Will wasn’t sitting directly on it, the glaringly feminine bedding made it look more like Eleven was the one staying over.
Mike winced at the thought.
No more thinking.
“How’s El doing?” Great topic choice, Mike. Just wonderful.
Mike couldn’t help but notice Will’s visible discomfort as he shifted on his bed.
“Really great, I think. I mean, not too great, just normal, I guess. Or, I don’t know. She’s fine...”
He should’ve expected the awkward, rambly response. It had only been a couple weeks since El dumped him - the group had been walking on eggshells not to mention her around Mike, as if he was some miserable loner without his girlfriend.
The truth is, and Mike knew it was cowardly, he’d been waiting for her to break up with him. When she finally did, it was a weight off his shoulders. They both knew their relationship had run its course - though Mike was nervous he’d misinterpreted their detachment when Will showed him the painting - the very one hanging above his bed.
Mike fiddles with his hands in his lap, “You know I want her to be great, right? I’m not some psycho ex-boyfriend; she can be happy even though we’re not together… happier, even. I think that’s how it is for both of us.”
Will seemed to let out a sigh of relief. “It’s not that you two weren’t good together…”
“We weren’t,” Mike cut him off, matter-of-fact.
Will’s laugh made his stomach churn. “I didn’t say it,” he smirked.
Mike thought back to their talk in California. “You didn’t have to,” Mike replied. It really did feel like they could read each other’s minds, sometimes.
Oh, God. Actually, that would be terrible.
“I hope Holly feels better soon, poor thing.” Will flopped onto his back.
It felt wrong to feel gratitude towards your little sister’s stomach flu for forcing the change in room assignments. But Mike had felt so distant from Will lately, even though they’d been in the same house for months. It was like putting two magnets together by their same poles: you can’t really close that last bit of distance. Maybe this was the rearrangement necessary to fix that. Will was his best friend, after all. It’s not right to feel weird around your best friend.
Will’s words sank in a little longer, and Mike felt a surge of panic in his chest. Will didn’t exactly seem thrilled about the change of scenery.
He attempted to stop the inevitable spiral of his thoughts. It was best not to overthink those kinds of things. Will was worried about a sick kid, practically his own sister at this point. No, not his sister. But some close, non-sibling relationship that would warrant that kind of concern. And Will is just a caring kind of person.
“Yeah,” Mike’s attempt at grounding himself had proven unsuccessful. “Sorry you’re stuck with me now.”
Will shook his head against the pillow, still gazing up. “Just like the good old days - I can’t seem to get rid of you.”
Mike leaned back on his bed, mirroring Will’s contemplative position. They were practically inseparable then. He considered being “Will’s best friend” his greatest accomplishment in life - and he wore that friendship like a badge of honour. Somewhere along the way, that pride got quiet. It was unclear whether anything really changed between them or if the world simply dampened their dignity, the way the world seems to do.
He could see the outline of the glow-in-the-dark stars that used to live on his ceiling. They’d been taken down years ago; once he started middle school, Mike decided he was too cool for that kind of thing. They’d already faded a great deal, anyway. Sticky things, those stars. He remembered washing his hands for nearly an hour straight to get the glue off his fingers. Yet some quality of the stars remained burned into the roof, just enough that it couldn’t be entirely ignored. No matter how hard he tried.
Mike remained motionless as the sound of Will leaving his room echoed around him. Holly had the immune system of a walnut, so there was no telling how long she’d need to be quarantined from the rest of the house. Meaning: Mike needed to figure out how to act like a normal person, stat.
Will’s re-entrance was noticeably hesitant. “Uh, Mike? Your sister is dead asleep… and I forgot all of my stuff in her room.”
Mike sat up and tilted his head at his friend leaning against the doorway.
“It’s fine, I’ll just sleep in this,” Will shrugged.
As if anyone could manage a good night’s sleep in jeans and a button-down shirt.
“Find something of mine,” Mike gestured to his closet. “Most of it should be clean… maybe steer clear of anything touching the floor?”
Will nodded a thank-you, and Mike ventured out into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Aside from Will in his room, the house was silent. With Jonathan assigned to the living room downstairs, Ted couldn’t fall asleep in his recliner with the TV on. No doubt he was singularly populating the master bedroom while Karen slept with her sniffling daughter.
He yielded to the muscle memory of his typical nighttime routine. Every step down the hall felt like an interruption of the house’s solitude, the dimly lit walls threatening to close in on him. He went through the motions of brushing his teeth, letting the flow of the tap create a soothing ambience. His eyes glazed over as the minty foam materialized in his mouth.
I wonder if Will tastes like his spearmint toothpaste or his cherry Chapstick.
He almost choked on the toothpaste he’d been working into his teeth for god knows how long. Splashing his face with water, he attempted to cleanse his mind of the things he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about. But he couldn’t shake the gnawing image of Will in his room, changing into his clothing.
Will. Rummaging through his closet in search of something to sleep in.
Shit.
Rummaging through the closet.
Shit.
Mike tried not to let his panic thunder in his footsteps as he raced back to his bedroom. He paused for a moment at the door, aiming to regain composure, and tentatively let himself in. Should I have knocked?
The closet door was shut. And there Will sat, hunched over a piece of paper at Mike’s desk.
“What are you doing?” Mike immediately regretted the accusatory tone of his voice.
“Drawing?” Will turned around slowly, an exonerating pencil hanging loosely in his hand.
Mike forgot the dread that had been consuming him just moments ago. Will Byers was sitting at his desk. In his Hellfire shirt.
It was no secret that the group had all grown up a little since last summer. Lucas was slowly catching up to the athletes he’d started surrounding himself with, Dustin’s teeth were stronger than ever, and Will had really grown into himself. To provide a contrasting image - Mike had simply grown taller, resembling Jack’s gangly beanstalk more and more each day. He was practically obligated to take a moment to appreciate a physique he’d never personally achieve.
And what a physique it was. Mike studied the definition of his arms and the broadness of his shoulders until he could’ve painted a portrait better than the artist himself. Fiddling with the beltloop of his pants was all he could do to keep from drooling. Needless to say, Mike’s D&D campaign shirt wasn’t quite Will’s size.
He quickly snapped out of it, tightening his jaw to make sure it didn’t pop open against his will, as Will began gathering up his artwork. Mike immediately regretted having nothing in his hands to make himself look busy. What would Will think if he knew Mike had just been drinking him in like a man who’d been stranded in the desert?
“Sorry,” Will apologized sheepishly.
It was admittedly difficult to put together a coherent string of words, but Mike managed a couple: “What for?”
“I don’t know… you sounded bothered when you asked what I was doing…”
“Oh.”
Don’t worry, Will, I wasn’t bothered. Just worried you’d found my secret stash of letters I was too much of a baby to send you.
“I’m not bothered, I don’t know why I…” Mike trailed off, suddenly absorbed by the vague pencil marks on Will’s paper.
It didn’t last long before the paper tightened in Will’s grip, making the drawing entirely indistinguishable. Mike met Will’s eyes, noting the rosy appearance of his cheeks, no doubt a match to his own, which were getting increasingly warm.
“We should probably be getting to bed soon, anyway.” Will’s eyes tore away as he stood from the desk.
He nodded, but couldn’t bring himself to move as he pondered the last step of his nightly ritual: take off his clothes and slide into bed. At this moment, he deeply regretted not bringing at least a pair of pyjama pants to the bathroom to change into. Now, he had to decide between sleeping in jeans, a fate he’d just ensured Will wouldn’t have to suffer through, or stripping down into his tighty-whities in front of him.
The ruffling as Will got into bed paused for a moment as he asked, “Did I take your pants?”
Mike let out a chuckle at the question. If only. “No, no, I usually sleep without pants on. Or- I sleep in underpants, obviously, not just letting it all hang out or anything, that would be crazy. And cold. Super cold. No, I wear pants, just not those ones - you’re- you’re good.”
He had to resist the urge to slap his hand over his mouth to disrupt the word vomit. What the hell was that?
Mike heard Will let out an amused scoff as he settled further into bed.
Mike turned down the covers of his bed before ditching his clothing so he could wrap himself in the blankets as soon as possible. Minimal exposure to the air (and Will’s line of sight) was the goal. Breaths came out in exaggerated bursts from the effort of flinging himself into bed, like a child who’d just turned off the light and had to jump the monster-containing gap beneath.
“Mike?”
He’d been lying there, trying to gasp for air silently for minutes, now. “Yeah?”
“Want to, maybe, turn off the light?”
Oh, yeah.
He switched off the lamp and lay back down, squeezing his eyes shut. The room was uncomfortably silent, every breath and motion distinct. Hallucinations of shapes and colours danced across his eyelids, and he willed his limbs to stay rigidly still. If Will were drifting off, any movement could disturb him, and then neither of them would be able to sleep.
Because naturally, if Will didn’t sleep, neither would Mike.
He stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours, forcing himself to be immobilized, until Will’s breathing became slow and deep. He considered sitting up in bed to look, to see if his eyes were scrambling under his eyelids - to see if he was dreaming. The evenness of his breath comforted Mike and urged him to copy its pattern. It wasn’t long before sleep swept over him, and the room felt light with their parallel respiration.
Flashing lights and adults’ whispers slammed into Mike from every side, the air cutting his cheeks and the wind blowing his hair into his eyes. Maybe it was for the best - the weight in his chest told him this wasn’t something he wanted to see. The metal pole of the fire engine felt like holding onto a rod of ice, but his hands only gripped tighter as the body was drawn from the frigid waters, limp and lifeless.
It wasn’t Will. It couldn’t be.
“Mike-”
“Mike? Mike what? You were supposed to help us find him alive. You said he was alive. Why did you lie to us? What’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?”
Maybe he should’ve felt bad, but all he could think about was the water that dripped from Will’s body as they lifted him out. He wondered if the air felt colder than the depths of the lake, if he could feel anything at all. Maybe he was warm. Mike hoped he was warm.
But it wasn’t Will. It couldn’t be.
Mike usually ran at this point, his bike flying home to reach the comfort of his mother’s arms. But he knew it wasn’t Will, so he took a step towards the lake. The police and the medics stepped aside, creating an aisle for Mike to walk down, to take a look at the dead child floating on the lake’s surface and determine they’d misidentified him. Will was still alive.
Each step felt heavier as the mud gathered on his shoes, holding him back from the body. But he persevered.
Mike reached out and swept the hair from the child’s eyes. Even closed, they were unmistakably Will’s. He touched the birthmark on his neck.
He was so cold.
His lungs seized in his chest - the air suddenly felt too crisp and thick to fill them - if the air could even make it past his throat, which was closing quickly. He collapsed onto Will’s stiff body, willing his tears to freeze to Will’s shirt, willing his legs to freeze to the bottom of the lake, willing every inch of his body to mould to Will’s - maybe he could join him wherever he is now.
“Mike. Mike, breathe. Mike, look at me, please, just breathe.” Will’s voice was muffled by the ringing in his ears. His hand flew to his chest, breath coming in short bursts, rapid, never quite deep enough. It felt like he was dying.
“Mike, look at me.”
The weight of Will’s hands on his shoulders confirmed just enough reality for Mike’s vision to clear, just a little.
“It’s- it’s too dark,” Mike gasped, “I can’t see you.”
One hand left his shoulder, and the lamp clicked on.
Will’s eyes. Open. Filled with light. Alive. Thank god.
“Copy my breathing,” Will instructed, both his hands resting again on Mike. Grounding him.
Mike watched as Will’s shoulders moved dramatically up and down, every exhale releasing a wind of warm air on his face. Copy Will’s breathing - it was second nature.
“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
Their breathing fell into a matching rhythm, and air returned to Mike’s lungs. His eyes traced the outline of Will’s eyebrows, then moved freckle to freckle on his cheeks, counting. Unmistakably Will.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I’m right here,” Will’s thumb brushed over his arm.
“I thought I was too late,” Mike squeezed his eyes shut, sweat dripping down his forehead.
“You weren’t.”
Silence fell between them for a moment before Mike felt the weight shift on his bed. “Where are you going?” The words slipped out without a thought beforehand.
“Oh, um,” Will paused between their beds. “I don’t know, I just thought I’d let you get back to sleep.”
“Oh.”
Totally reasonable on Will’s end, of course. Mike couldn’t exactly expect him to give up an entire night’s sleep because he’d had a bad dream.
He hadn’t had one in a while, but they used to be constant. A couple of times, he’d woken up in the night screaming, waking his mom or Nancy.
“What do you dream about?” Will asked. He felt too far away on his mattress on the floor, but Mike noticed it was pushed closer to his own bed; the bottom of his sheets spilling over onto Will’s.
He wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘Losing you’ seemed like a lot.
It wasn’t always the same dream, but the general theme never changed. Finding Will’s body in the lake, watching Will be torn apart by demogorgans, Will in a Vecna-induced coma… the pattern was hard to ignore.
“Oh, you know,” he shrugged, “our lives have not been without good nightmare material.”
Will sighed, “Yeah, I get them too.”
And why shouldn’t he? He’d arguably gone through the most in the group. Even in Mike’s nightmares, Will was the real victim. Mike had never had to deal with the actual monsters, only losing the best friend they preyed on.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m back in the Upside-Down, a lot. I can hear you - everyone - but you can’t hear me. And it’s cold. Dark.
Sometimes I dream that you don’t look for me.”
An opening.
“I would always look for you,” Mike sighed, “but sometimes I dream I can’t find you.”
Will let out a soft laugh, “Maybe our dreams take place in the same dimension. Like if we stayed asleep just a little longer, there would be a happy ending.”
It didn’t seem worth the risk to stay asleep when the dimension Mike could wake up to would almost certainly have Will in it. Almost certainly.
“Maybe,” he returned.
He shifted on his bed, the springs groaning in protest. "It’s kind of weird, right? We haven’t, like, actually slept in the same room since… well, since everything."
"Yeah," Will agreed, his voice soft, almost a murmur. "It is."
He regretted acknowledging that fact. The last few months had been an exercise in maintaining distance, a quiet, unspoken agreement that their closeness needed to be curtailed for some reason Mike couldn't quite name.
Silence settled again, but this time it felt different. Not strained, but heavy, like a comforter pulled up to the chin.
“I’m sorry for waking you,” Mike mumbled.
The only sound in response was the familiar breathing indicative of Will’s deep slumber.
He lay in bed for a while, reexamining his ceiling, counting Will’s breaths. He was scared to go back to sleep - scared to end up in another dreamworld where Will hadn’t survived. He rolled over to look at the boy asleep on the floor beneath him. He was sprawled out in a funny way, as if he couldn’t decide if he was too hot or too cold; his hand was resting above his head, and the sleeping bag was unzipped, covering only half of his body. The steady rise and fall of his chest comforted Mike.
Without thinking, Mike reached out and touched Will’s outstretched fingers. He studied them intensely, free from any hesitation he should have been feeling. They were soft and smooth, except for the callus on the side of his middle finger’s knuckle; Will had constantly gotten in trouble in first grade for holding his pencil wrong - it was soothing to know he’d never corrected it. Mike wondered if he would be as good an artist if he didn’t have that quirk. He remembered Will’s constant ranting about how “his method” gave him more control over the pencil. Mike was never able to figure it out. He noticed the silvery remnants of lead smudged on the side of Will’s palm - another side effect of his misheld drawing utensils.
The warmth emanating from Will’s body crawls up Mike’s arm and settles in his chest. Simultaneously, a knot tightened low in his gut, a familiar, coiling discomfort that had no name. It wasn't a bad feeling, not exactly, but it was different, and it felt dangerous. This closeness, this quiet intimacy, felt like something he shouldn’t be indulging in. Especially not with Will. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. Best friends didn't lie in the dark like this. This was... he didn't know what it was, but he knew what it wasn't: it wasn't normal.
He needed a reason. He needed to make it okay.
This is fine.
His thumb barely grazes the edge of Will’s pinky finger. I just had a nightmare. He woke me up. I was crying. I thought he was dead. It was a physical reassurance that Will was real, alive, and right there. A necessary reminder. A pact. Like when we were kids. Will was his best friend. This was friendship. It had to be.
With that fragile justification, the knot in his stomach eased just enough. He let his thumb brush gently over the back of Will’s hand again, and then, slowly, deliberately, he wove his fingers through Will’s. They fit perfectly, a natural puzzle piece clicking into place.
His eyes drifted shut, the glow of the distant streetlamp just visible through the blinds. The cold air of the room was held at bay by the warmth of their joined hands, and the rhythm of Will's steady breath was the last thing Mike heard as sleep, unburdened by fear, finally pulled him under.