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Will trudges upstairs a little earlier than usual, on the 24th.
He wakes sometime before Jonathan’s alarm. It’s a sharp, sudden consciousness from a mercifully dreamless sleep, and he’s shaking—but it’s less of a petrified quiver this morning and more of a full-body shuddering.
The movements are different, weighted. His muscles are taut, and an ache spreads from the center of his chest to his fingertips and toes as he convulses again, shivers. His teeth clash together.
He’s just cold.
A wave of color catches the corner of his eye—yellow, red, green, blue, yellow, red, green, blue—and he turns his head to study the wires haphazardly entwined with the stair railing.
A steady glow, warm and unwavering.
Will stares at the Christmas lights until his vision blurs, just in case, but they don’t flicker.
It’s just December.
So, he trudges upstairs earlier than usual. The metal doorknob bites into the skin of his palm. The hinges creak and groan.
The kitchen is empty and a touch warmer.
Will’s hands are nearly numb as he closes them around the edge of the counter. The sheer orange curtains flutter, and sunlight washes over the paper-white skin of his knuckles. There are a few rogue dishes in the sink: a wine glass, a ceramic bowl, and Holly’s favorite purple plastic cup.
He turns the faucet, intending to give the water a few minutes to warm up before he starts to wash, when someone yelps.
Will whips around and finds Mrs. Wheeler at the bottom of the stairs, similarly startled, a hand on her heaving chest.
“Will,” she laughs softly, after a moment. She crosses her arms around herself as she descends the final step, tightening the belt of her dark, velvet robe around her waist. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry,” he mumbles, voice thick with remnants of sleep. Begrudgingly, he pries his fingers from the sun-baked countertop and shuts off the water so he doesn’t waste it. “I couldn’t sleep, then saw the dishes—”
“Oh,” she all but swoons. Her eyes are glassy, her cadence heavy—like she just woke up or never quite managed to get to sleep. “You don’t have to worry about those, honey.”
He opens his mouth to protest—it’s not a big deal, really—but his breath catches as he spots something glass tucked between her fingers. He tilts his head, trying to get a read on the numbers where the mercury is sitting.
Karen follows his gaze, then frowns. She waves the thermometer around solemnly, her adjusted grasp only obscuring it further.
“Never a dull moment around here,” she jokes.
Fondness squeezes Will’s heart. It gives a sharp throb of sympathy for the young girl who’s grown to be one of his favorite people in this house, then another for Karen, who looks like she would rather be doing anything else right now than taking care of a sick kid.
“Is Holly okay?”
“Oh—Oh, yes,” she exhales, thick and relieved. “It’s just Mike.”
“Oh.”
Will tries not to react too strangely to the name, nor the “just” that precedes it, even though the two words couldn’t sound more wrong together. He takes a measured breath, no deeper than the last. He swallows to combat the sudden dryness of his tongue.
“Not sure if he’s coming down with something or just in one of his… moods."
Will blinks.
“I never thought I’d see the day where my son enjoys going to school, but I think, sometimes, especially lately, he just—” Karen continues, rambling the way she does on the rare occasion somebody gives her longer than a couple seconds of their undivided attention. “—struggles—without the distraction…?”
“Sure,” Will says. He tilts to the side a bit, narrowly suppressing a grimace when his hip slams into the counter.
She catches the fumble anyway, glancing down at the thermometer like she might do something insane like stick it into Will’s mouth when it’s just been in Mike’s.
“I’m fine,” he answers, to a question she didn’t actually ask. Then, weakly, he offers, “Slippery… socks.”
She hums. Her face is folded with concern, but he spots the tiniest flicker of amusement at the corner of her mouth.
“I’m sure Mike’s just—” Will pauses. He’s not sure what the reassuring thing to say is. He’s not sure what the truth is, either. He settles on, “Stressed. Tired.”
Karen nods, her smile tight. She looks like she wants to say more, but, like Will, she settles. “Just be careful, okay?”
“Careful?”
“With Michael.”
Will doesn’t choke. He doesn’t splutter or cough, either. He just has something in his throat, suddenly, so he clears it. In a totally normal way.
“I’m sure he’s just worked up about something,” she dismisses with another sloppy hand wave. “But, just in case. We don’t want the whole house down for the holidays.”
“Oh. Sure,” he shivers, the word fuzzy on his tongue this time around. “I’ll keep my distance.”
It’s not a lie, so he’s not sure why it feels like one. It shouldn’t be hard, either. It’s exactly what he was planning on doing before this conversation ever happened.
He and Mike are friends again.
They bike to school together every day with Holly, and Mike makes small talk at their lockers and in lunch and homeroom. They’re cool at school, with the party, and during strategy meetings.
But—
At home—at Mike’s house—it feels different.
It’s not that they’re not cool here; it’s just that Mike is quieter, more reclusive. Sometimes, he’s sluggish, like he exhausts all his energy for the day just by being a person outside.
And Will doesn’t pry, even though he wants to. He stays respectful, considerate, mindful of how delicate it all is—his place in this house and Mike’s life.
He doesn’t let himself get greedy.
If Mike’s feeling chatty, they’ll hang in the living room, maybe talk comics or watch a movie with Jonathan and Nancy, but if he’s not—which is most of the time, lately—Will minds his own.
Which is fine. He’s good at that by now.
So, this shouldn’t be hard at all.
“Will?”
He hums, shifting his head slightly to look at Holly. They’re sitting at the breakfast table drawing—or rather, Holly is drawing. Will is beside her with his chin in his hand, avoiding both the tundra basement and Mr. Wheeler in the next room.
Ted is watching the news and nursing a cup of coffee, flicking through the paper and just generally being an intimidating presence.
“Is this better?”
He takes another look at her page, where she’s doodling a vaguely mannish figure in a fedora. This is her second attempt, after Will lightly critiqued the proportions of the hat in the first sketch.
“Much,” he confirms sleepily. The hand not holding up his own head is buried in the sleeve of his sweater, clenching the fabric to suppress the trembling in his fingers. The distant thought that he’ll look childish is the only thing stopping him from walking around the house with a blanket cape. Or, like, 20 sweaters layered on top of each other. “So, who is this gu—?”
Holly’s proud, toothy grin falls just as fast as it appeared. Her attention is drawn to the entryway, and she pales, her open mouth falling shut and her brows drawing together.
Will turns, nails sinking into wool.
“Mike,” he breathes.
At the sound of Will’s voice, Mike peels one eye open. He’s swaying, then collapsing into the side of the fridge, knocking a couple magnets off the door in his attempt to steady himself.
“Oh,” he croaks, lazily tracking the scribbled grocery list and old report card now floating towards the floor. “Hey.”
“Good morning,” Will hears himself mutter. He’s aiming for casual. His voice comes out slow, low and distracted.
"It's past noon," Holly acknowledges.
Mike’s hair is damp, overgrown bangs falling over his eyebrows and curled ends sticking to his neck. He angles his head towards his sister before he shuts his eye again. “Holls.”
“Hi.” She doesn’t seem as startled now, just somewhat concerned and a little unamused—a very Nancy-esque expression.
Will watches Mike gear up to speak again. He swallows, then runs his tongue over his cracked lips. Still, his voice is weak.
“Where’s Mom?”
Holly shrugs, despite the fact that he can no longer see her.
“Errands,” Will supplies.
Ted crinkles his newspaper in the other room.
The sun is lower in the sky now, and it catches the look of disappointment that crosses Mike’s face like a gentle caress. “Oh. Okay. Cool.”
Holly must notice it too, because she does a double take, then sets down her brown colored pencil.
“Are you okay, Mike?”
“Yeah,” the response is so immediate it makes Will’s stomach tighten. “Yeah! Just—Nancy…?”
“Left with Jon, like, an hour ago,” Will frowns. His own mom is with Hopper and El, so she’s out of the picture, too—but Mike must know that already.
He blinks both eyes open this time. They’re cloudy, veering slowly to the right of Holly’s face. Unfocused. Distantly panicked.
Will’s hand is on his skin before he even registers getting up from the table.
“Jesus, Mike,” he says. Holly is standing, too, peering cautiously at her brother from behind Will, who tries to quickly school his concern before she latches on to it.
“I’m fine,” Mike grumbles.
Will half expects him to shrug him off. Instead, he sags into his palm like he’s expecting Will to hold him up by the forehead. Despite his words, he shrinks, collapses. He opens his mouth and holds it there for a moment, then shuts it.
“Right,” Will chokes.
He doesn’t say, “You’re burning up,” afraid the words will sound too soft. He cages them in his mouth, letting them dissolve on his tongue like sugar.
He also doesn't say, “This is the first time I’ve felt warm since I was 12.”
He just stands there uselessly, listening to Mike breathe as sweat pools between their skin.
Eventually, Holly breaks the silence by jabbing Will in the spine. She perks up on the tips of her toes and hooks her chin over his shoulder.
“Look, Will,” she huffs. “Your hand finally stopped shaking.”
“Sorry,” Mike murmurs.
Will is wrist-deep in a bowl of cool water, his fingers wrapped delicately around a piece of flannel. The water laps around him as he moves, licking traces of Mike’s fever from his skin.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He pulls the rag from the water, wringing it out over the bowl while the skin over his hands dries and chills. His index finger twitches. “It’s not like Holly was going to do this.”
“I could—” Mike pauses. Will glances up and finds a deep flush painting his cheeks. The color rushes from ear to ear, over his nose, swallowing freckles. “I should do it myself.”
Will shrugs. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah, but—” Mike fumbles around the Ted-shaped elephant in the room, that subdued, resentful voice that Will knows to live in the back of his head. “I’m—”
“Sick,” Will finishes.
He turns to face Mike, who’s sitting awkwardly, fingers flexing over his knees, precarious at the corner of the bed like it doesn’t belong to him—like his pillow isn’t dented in the center, like his sweat and drool aren’t coating the sheets. “You’re sick, and I’m here. I can help. It’s not a big deal.”
It’s not the first time Will’s been in Mike’s room since Lenora, but the number does land somewhere he can count with one hand.
It’s messier than Will remembers, surely a symptom of Karen’s resignation, and there are new posters on the wall. The closet door is open, and clothes are spilling out onto the floor, mixing with the various blankets Mike must’ve kicked off in the middle of the night. But Will’s not really paying attention to any of that, because it’s not a big deal—him being here.
It’s not.
“Okay,” Mike says.
It kind of sounds like, “It’s cool how you just lie all the time now.”
Will touches the cool cloth to his brow. “Is this okay?”
A drop of water rolls down the bridge of Mike’s nose as he nods. He hardly reacts to it, just presses his lips into a thin line and blinks slowly.
“Can you—” Will’s palm itches with the urge to reach out. He tightens his grip on the cloth to suppress it, and this time, Mike does wince as some water gets into his eye. “Sorry. Can you move your hair?”
Mike’s obedient arm trembles as it rises. His fingers brush fabric, Will’s knuckles, and—
“Will, uh—” he splutters. Will’s hands are tense, numb. “You’re—”
He blinks at the pale expanse of Mike’s forehead and the thin fingers pulled into his own hair. There's something precious about it.
“Will.”
He can’t loosen his grip, not even when the entire left side of Mike’s face is wet, cold water dripping down his chin and neck.
“Will—!”
Mike’s hand closes around his wrist, fingers digging lightly into the bone. The skin there is warm—hot.
All at once, feeling returns like fire.
Will startles. The damp cloth drops into Mike’s lap. His face is soaked, the collar of his ratty old shirt darkened and wrinkled against his skin. “Shit! I’m—I’m sorry—”
Mike doesn’t respond. His hands are occupied, one still holding his hair back and the other wrapped around Will, middle finger tapping anxiously at his pulse point.
He glances at his lap expectantly.
“Sorry,” Will repeats pathetically. He grabs the flannel by the corner, careful not to brush Mike with his free hand as he does. With a lighter hold, it’s no longer dripping, so he draws it along the sharp curve of Mike’s jaw, pausing in a few spots to absorb stray droplets. “I’m so sorry.”
“Stop,” Mike begs, sounding more annoyed with the apologies than the impromptu sponge bath. “It’s fine.”
“You need a new shirt,” Will cringes, then reaches for a ball of fabric on the floor by his foot. He doesn’t smell it, exactly, but it’s not, like, emitting some foul boyish odor, so it’ll do. “Here.”
Mike finally releases his wrist so he can catch the shirt as Will tosses it.
“This is—” he starts, then he pulls it close to his face and inhales deeply. Either he’s too sick for a sense of smell, or he comes to the same conclusion Will did. “Never mind. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Will stalls as Mike’s hands wrap around the hem of his current shirt—faded yellow, stretched and worn.
He doesn’t know if it’s more incriminating to leave or stay.
He’s seen Mike shirtless before, obviously, but summers at the pool are long behind them now. In those memories, Mike’s face is still soft and round, his voice high-pitched and saccharine. It would be different now.
It would mean something different.
He settles on turning around, wringing his hands together in a futile defense against the frigid air. He stares intensely at a piece of dust in the corner of the room, trapped beneath a single, unlaced, black Converse shoe.
Mike scoffs loudly. It catches, stuttering into a cough.
“You okay?” Will asks the dust bunny.
“Mmhm,” he answers.
Nobody normal would think twice about seeing their sick best friend shirtless. That must be what he’s thinking, why he sounds so displeased.
Abnormal as he is, Will can hear the slide of the shirt against Mike’s skin. His soft, labored breath. The tilt of disappointment—maybe repulsion—in his voice.
“Shirt’s on, Will.”
He doesn’t whirl around like he wants to. He does a slow—not too slow, perfectly timed—turn. A very typical turn. A casual movement.
Mike speaks again before he can. The navy tee he’s wearing now is haphazardly thrown on—wrinkled, hardly settled around his waist.
“I’m kinda tired,” he says. “I think I’m just gonna go back to sleep.”
“Oh,” Will doesn’t mean to whisper; it just comes out that way. He clears his throat. “Of course. I’ll—”
He starts toward the bowl, ready to take it back down to the kitchen sink and scrub it until his hands bleed, when Mike surprises him.
“You can stay,” His voice is raw, words rushed like he’s trying to get them all out in a single, painful breath. “If you want.”
Will feels his eyebrows raise. “If I want…?”
“I just mean—you’re cold, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t say “always.” He doesn’t even nod.
“It’s warmer up here,” Mike continues anyway. He looks toward a comic, open and face down, on his nightstand. Will’s eyes follow the movement as his brain follows the thought. “And I’ve got, like, stuff, if you’re bored. You can play music. I’ll just sleep through it—”
“Mike,” Will says, mostly just to stop him from talking because it sounds so excruciating.
“I mean, you don’t have to.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll stay,” Will promises. In a way that only seems to happen around Mike, his words precede his thoughts. His brain freezes like his frigid limbs, emptying out past his lips. “Not a big deal.”
Will falls asleep on the floor, his back flush to Mike’s mattress, limbs outstretched beneath discarded blankets.
His fingers are still curled loosely around Mike’s newest Superman edition when he wakes up to sunlight shining straight into his cornea and something slamming into the back of his neck.
Will grunts, disoriented.
He locates the pain point and waits for the goosebumps—that sick, weightless feeling—but they don’t get a chance to rise before Mike kicks him again, harder.
This time, his sock-clad heel collides with Will’s shoulder bone.
“Wha—Mike—”
Mike whines, a piercing sound, and he’s not kicking—at least, not on purpose. He’s thrashing, limbs flailing wildly between short, quick breaths and pained groans.
It doesn’t take much longer for Will to spring to action after that.
He expects to find Mike in the throes of a nightmare, but when he detangles himself from the blankets and scrambles onto his knees to see over the bed, he’s already awake, eyes dark and wide.
His eyebrows are twitching in time with his panicked breathing. His hair is matted to his forehead, cheeks pink and damp with sweat. His body flexes against the mattress, another heartbreaking sound ripping from his throat.
“Mike,” Will squeaks. His hand lands on Mike’s forearm, and he squeezes. “Woah, hey, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m right here.”
The only sign that Mike recognizes Will’s presence at all is the way his gaze flicks to their sudden point of contact. He whimpers, writhes, then—
“Will—Will—”
“I’m here,” Will vows. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s really—hot—”
He can feel it, then: the warmth beneath his palm. No, something deeper than warmth, sharper. Will flips his hand, pushing the back of his knuckles up against Mike’s fringe. His cheeks. The side of his neck. “Fuck.”
Mike whimpers.
“Mike, you’re—” Will can’t sugarcoat it. “You’re on fire.”
He hardly registers his own movements. He’s sinking into the heat of the mattress. He’s choking, suffocating on the thick, torrid air that surrounds him. Mike’s hands are in his. He tugs.
Once Mike is upright, Will feels a little less out of control, but the movement only seems to sink him deeper into a delirious panic.
He blinks fast, but it does nothing to dispel the film over his eyes, and then—incredibly—his face pales.
“Sorry,” Will rushes. He settles Mike more gently against the headboard, then takes his face between his hands. Mike’s eyes take a beat too long to find his. “I’m sorry, I know. Just breathe.”
His attempts are weak, but they’re clear attempts. A sign of comprehension, at the very least.
“Good,” Will’s relief is more audible than the lie. His right hand slips under Mike’s chin, tilting upward. His left tucks a damp strand of hair behind his ear. “Just like that.”
It feels like hours before Mike’s hyperventilating finally slows to something resembling a normal breathing pattern. When it does, the rest of him slows with it, each blink a little longer than the last.
“Hey,” Will counts the seconds. When Mike’s eyes have been closed for longer than seven, he intervenes. “Stay up, please.”
Mike makes a quiet sound, but his eyes stay shut.
“Mike,” Will warns. “Please. You need Tylenol.”
A louder sound, this time.
“Mike—”
Mike raises his hand. It’s a barely-there movement, just an inch from his lap, but the motion is clear to Will.
“Okay,” he whispers, concern just narrowly outweighing his embarrassment. “Shutting up.”
Again, he starts to count. Another seven seconds for Mike to figure himself out before Will is going to have to pry his eyes open with his fingers.
At six, Mike lifts his arm the rest of the way, pressing white knuckles to his lips and inhaling sharply.
“Oh, shit—”
They almost make it.
Will has just managed to throw the bathroom door open when Mike heaves into the hands he has caged around his mouth, remnants of last night’s awkward family dinner seeping through his fingers.
A sympathy gag takes Will by the throat, but he manages to swallow it down in time to steer Mike by the shoulders, forcing a pivot towards the sink.
He winces at how productive the second heave sounds, at how Mike’s dirty hands fall limp on either side of the basin, the way his spine arches as he retches.
Will settles his hand there, finding a strange, gross solace in the movement.
“There you go,” he says, because it sounds like something his mom would say. He forces his hand to move in slow, circular motions, engulfed in friction and heat. “Just get it up, Mike. It’s okay.”
He thinks back to the conversation he had with Mrs. Wheeler this morning.
When they were younger, it wasn’t uncommon for Mike to work himself up into not feeling well. He was a happy kid, but a restless one, too, just as easily anxious as he was excitable. He was so small—his emotions so large.
There were a handful of times where the party would finish a long, epic D&D campaign, and Will would be the last to leave the basement, lingering just long enough to see Mike finally cave into his exhaustion, all full pink cheeks and hazy eyes, noodle-limp on his grandparents’ old couch.
And in the fifth grade, Will would get to school an hour early every single time they had a big test. He’d tell his mom it was because he needed the time for last-minute studying, to calm his own nerves, but really, it was because he knew Mike would be there, camped out in the bathroom stall farthest from the door, looking green and miserable.
It seemed so natural then—small hands on feverish skin, chubby intertwined fingers, shared looks and hushed whispers. Taking care of Mike.
There were no lines to cross or not cross.
No secrets.
No lies.
The sound of running water and the sight of Mike, hunched over but still towering over him, help bring Will back to himself.
At some point, Mike grew into his big emotions. He grew out of puking before tests, and then he outgrew Will.
Vomit circles the drain. Mike watches it go with a twisted mouth.
“Here,” Will guides Mike’s hands to the tap. He lets the water wash away the worst of the damage, then deposits a pump of Nancy’s peppermint-scented hand soap into his palms.
“I’m sorry I… didn’t…” Mike shudders, voice scratchy and low as he dutifully scrubs at his skin. “I’m not trying to act like a child. I swear.”
“I didn’t think you were,” Will tells him honestly.
“I—” Pink suds, down the drain. The artificial peppermint is a bit much, but it’s better than the sick smell. And festive, at least. “I didn’t mean to. I just—it caught me off guard. I was—I am—I’m so out of it. I don’t know—”
“Mike,” Will twists the valve, shutting the water off before capturing Mike’s hands between a dry towel. He feels for Mike’s fingers, holding them in his own, fabric like a shield between them. “I know. It’s okay.”
“Okay,” Mike parrots, just a touch disbelieving. “Thank you.”
“Not a big deal,” Will whispers, mostly to himself. Then, louder, “Do you feel any better, at least?”
Mike’s shoulders raise an inch. “I don’t know.”
Will studies him cautiously. It’s a small miracle that his fresh clothes are unscathed. He can feel Mike’s hands shaking beneath the towel, in tandem with his own.
He’s pale, still—flushed—not really looking at anything in particular.
Will brings the towel up to his face, willing himself not to look disgusted as he wipes the rest of the puke from Mike’s chin.
“Do you want to sit in here for a bit longer?” he tries.
“I don’t know.”
“Or head back to bed?”
Mike is slipping through his fingers again, fast. He hums noncommittally, sinking into the counter like his limbs are made of lead.
“Okay,” Will decides on a whim, tossing the soiled hand towel onto the floor and grabbing Mike by the elbows when he starts to sway. “Let’s sit.”
In the time it takes to get him situated—back to the wall, legs to his chest, toilet seat already lifted, just in case—Mike’s face has gone completely expressionless, vacant.
“You with me?”
Will’s hand lands softly atop Mike’s, over the material of his sweatpants and his knee.
“I need to take your temperature,” he narrates, hoping at least some of the words will get through the fog. “And then I really need you to take something, okay? Well, eat something first, then Tylenol. You can sit here—the toilet’s close if you need to throw up—and I’m gonna go grab—”
This catches Mike’s attention. His head snaps up, and the blank stare he’s been directing at the wall lands on Will’s face. His eyes are misty. His bottom lip wobbles.
“What?” Desperation claws at Will’s throat. “What’s wrong?”
Softly, Mike’s lips part, twitching in time with something he’s saying in his head but not out loud.
Skin on skin—fire and ice—Will squeezes his fingers.
“Where are you, Mike?”
It’s something he used to say when they were kids and Mike would have an off-day, retreating deep into his mind.
Will never had a problem with silence; most of the time, he preferred it, but it never seemed quite right on Mike. So, when he’d hide, Will would seek, crawling around in the labyrinth of his brain until every path and dead-end was committed to memory.
The question became synonymous with “What’s wrong?” and “I’m here for you,” and most of the time that was all Mike needed to hear. That was all it took for whatever was plaguing him to come rushing out.
Some days, it was nothing, and it would be easy to shake him from his thoughts and help him refocus. Other days, it was everything, and the words would spill with bubbling sobs and trembling shoulders, his hands in a tight fist around the clothes on Will’s back—their bodies chest-to-chest, heart-to-heart.
Today, his face doesn’t indicate any sort of recognition, save for the minute twitch of his lash line.
“Mike,” Will pushes when he can tell he has his fleeting attention again.
His lips purse and start to slip into a grimace. His eyes narrow—warning signs Will chooses to ignore. If he's mad, if needs to yell, that's fine. He can take it.
“Talk to me,” he urges.
Mike’s eyes are rapidly filling with tears, but he doesn’t let them fall. He stops blinking entirely, even as his left eye continues to twitch precariously.
“I don’t know,” he answers slowly, as if the fever has melted down his vocabulary to nothing but these three words.
His teeth are sinking into the already raw skin of his lower lip, his jaw tense.
“Mike.”
Will waits, counts the seconds.
Mike flails his arms, and, even though Will was waiting for it, the sudden burst of energy still makes him flinch. His hand feels cold the second Mike rips his out from underneath it.
“I don’t know, Will.” Frustration is bleeding into his voice. Exasperation. It’s low, jaded, almost a growl. Mike almost never talks to him this way. “I don’t—know. What do you want me to say?”
“The truth?”
“That’s rich,” he spits.
Will freezes.
“What?”
He loses his footing completely. Cowers. Stumbles. Panics.
Mike's eye twitches once, twice.
“I just want to know what’s going on with you,” he rushes, eager to change the subject before Mike can elaborate on why the truth should be a foreign concept to Will. It’s a bit cruel, maybe—a sick and desperate act of self-preservation. “Why you’re so—so—”
“So—?” Mike urges.
Will finds that he doesn’t have a word for it.
“I’m not ‘so’ anything,” he mumbles. As quickly as it came, Mike’s anger is fading, mutating—turning into a different beast entirely. Will thinks he would have preferred yelling. “You’re the one—you, Will. I thought we were okay. That we were gonna be a team again.”
A violent shiver racks Will’s body.
Twitch, twitch, twitch.
Mike can’t hold off anymore. He blinks hard, and a thick teardrop rolls down his face.
He wipes it away with a harsh fist.
“We are okay,” Will says evenly, because they are. Something cool rushes down his own cheek, but he doesn’t bother with it. “What are you talking about?”
He’s expecting Mike to ramble, for his words to fade into some sort of delirium that Will can brush off and hide from, but when he speaks again, it’s perfectly clear and pointed.
“Do you hate living here?”
Will inhales sharply. He’s not even sure what conversation they’re having right now, let alone why they’re both crying about it. “Of course not.”
There was a time when living together would’ve been a dream—for both of them. It’s basically the opposite now, but Will has lived through much worse nightmares than this house.
“Why—” Mike starts. He pauses between his words, blinking confusion from his face. He’s struggling to regain control, lucidity on a tightrope, but this—whatever this is—is important to him. He strains his neck, shoving his head back into the wall. “Then why do you hide out in the basement all the time?”
“Mike, that’s where I slee—”
“Why do you spend more time with my baby sister and my—my freaking mom—than with me? Jonathan is up here all the time with Nance. All the time! And you never—you don’t—and you lie—”
“Mike,” Will croaks.
“I just don’t understand why you’re still pushing me away.”
“And if she was mean to you or—or she seemed like she was pushing you away—”
"Did I do something wrong?"
“I don’t—” Will’s first instinct is to hide. His next, to fight. He wants to say that Mike is wrong, that it’s not true. But it is true, isn’t it?
Don’t get too close, lest Ted spit some smart remark and freak Mike out. Don’t get too close, lest he get sick of you. Don’t get too close; he’ll figure you out.
Don’t get too close. He will figure you out.
Don’t get too close.
He will figure you out.
“—it was probably just because she’s scared of losing you, just like you’re scared of losing her.”
“Just be careful… with Michael.”
“I’ll keep my distance.”
“I don’t mean to,” Will grits out. "You haven't done anything wrong."
Diffuse, he thinks. Honesty. Friends don’t lie, but omitting is different.
“I just don’t want to be… too much. I didn’t want to overstep or be in your space all the time, especially when you’re so—”
“‘So?’” Mike guesses, seeming somewhat appeased.
“Yeah,” Will deflates with a long exhale. He doesn’t realize how fast his heart is beating until it starts to slow, hard and vengeful against the walls of his chest. “So.”
It escapes him still, a name for the monster that’s been eating away at his best friend.
“I don’t mean to, either,” Mike says, after a long few seconds of staring at his own hands. They’ve settled back over his knees, and his chest is heaving with his own harsh breaths. “I don’t mean to be ‘so.’”
“I don't understand.” Will has never felt more useless and stupid. “Is it—what is it? Are you sad?”
Mike shrugs, somehow not offended by his juvenile interrogation.
“Sometimes. But it’s not—it’s different. It’s kinda like El’s battery, I guess, even though that’s a stupid comparison because El’s battery gets drained from doing superhero stuff and mine gets drained from—I don’t know. But food doesn’t help. And sleep doesn’t help. It’s just—it’s like it’s damaged. Stuck on empty.”
“You’re not damaged,” is all Will can say.
Mike shrugs again.
“I’m not trying to… give up…” he elaborates. Will’s not sure if he’s speaking literally, if he’s talking about Vecna or something more broad. “I don’t want to give up. I want to fight—we need to fight. It’s just—”
Abruptly, his mouth falls shut. His eyes are wide, like when he accidentally goes too far in an argument with his parents, like he’s afraid he’ll say something he can’t take back. Like he’s afraid Will—of all people—is going to punish him for the way he feels.
Will nudges Mike’s foot with his own. It does little to satisfy the craving, the unrelenting urge to touch, but it recaptures Mike’s focus.
He attempts to smile encouragingly.
“It just feels so hard, you know?”
“What does? The crawls?”
Will would be lying if he said he didn’t agree. It’s exhausting and discouraging and potentially pointless, for all they know, but—
“Everything,” Mike emphasizes. “Everything, except—”
A traitorous feeling rises in Will’s lungs, light and airy and completely inappropriate. Often elicited by the Heart.
“Except you.”
The feeling flutters and thrives. Will feels his own eyes go wide. When he blinks, he finds that he’s still crying even though Mike has stopped.
“Being with you, like old times,” Mike continues, heedless of the swarm of butterflies currently eating at Will’s organs. “Old times, like, not just before the Upside Down, but before Dustin and Lucas, and I really hate myself for feeling that way, because they’re my best friends, too, but—”
“It’s Hawkins. It’s not the same without you.”
“It’s different,” Will agrees. He barely manages to get the words out.
“Yeah,” Mike smiles weakly, and Will is reminded, by the warm breath that pushes past his teeth, of how sick he is. The butterflies die and start to rot. “It is different. It doesn’t—really—make it go away, but it does help. You help, because being with you—it’s like—it’s easy. When we’re—y’know—when we’re good.”
When Will was seven, he accidentally scratched Jonathan’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope record during one of their parents’ louder arguments. Every time it played it after that, it’d skip on “Cheapskate,” catching on the same lyric over and over again until one of them could be bothered to move the needle forward.
That’s what he sounds like now, repeating this, deflecting: “You need Tylenol.”
“And what ya’ can’t steal ya’ better not need.”
“I’m not delirious, Will. I mean what I’m saying.” Mike shakes his head, messy hair brushing over his shoulder. “I think the fever's going down, actually.”
Will presses the backs of his fingers to Mike’s cheek, then scoffs. “Liar. I could fry an egg on you.”
Mike winks—which resuscitates at least one dead butterfly—then wrangles his face into something more serious before Will can process the whiplash. “Okay, yes, about the fever, but not the other stuff… I guess I’m just trying to say that I miss you. And that I want to hang out with you, even when I’m… ‘so.’”
“And what ya’ can’t steal ya’ better not need.”
“Then, I guess,” Will manages, carefully. “I’ll say that I miss you, too. And I want to hang out with you. Too.”
“Even when I’m moody and, like, hurling everywhere?”
“Oh, yeah,” The fingers on Mike’s cheek unfurl, stretching out and around his jaw, thawing. He forces humor into his voice to dilute the raw honesty. “Especially then.”
“Ooh,” Mike sings, his head lolling against Will’s hand and his own shoulder. “Lucky you.”
“Now, please…” Will ignores him, for both their sakes. “Before I go full Joyce Byers and have an aneurysm or something, let me take care of you.”
“And what ya’ can’t steal ya’ better not need.”
Nighttime does Mike’s room many favors.
Most of the clutter is enveloped in shadows, a pale stream of moonlight from between the curtains highlighting a thin diagonal strip over his bed—the cuff of Mike’s sock, his hand around his own waist, the tip of his ear where it’s brushing Will’s thigh.
While they wait for the Tylenol and four and a half bites of toast to kick in, Will sits beside his head, running his nails across Mike's scalp whenever he starts to get too restless.
His finger snags on a knot, which causes Mike to groan low in his throat and continue to make various upset noises as Will detangles the offending strands of hair.
“Do you think you’ll cut it sometime soon?”
Unexpectedly, Mike laughs.
The sound is so loud and wild that Will wants to lean forward and kiss the tiny space between his furrowed brows—wants to whisper, “thank you,” to the skin there.
“What?” he asks incredulously, a little breathless. “You don’t like my hair?”
“No, I do,” Will is quick to say. The hair is an Eddie thing, or at least that's what Lucas told him, and he doesn’t really want to touch that while Mike is still so fever-sensitive.
Besides, he does like it. He really likes it. It’s just—
“I guess I’ve let myself go, huh?”
“Come on,” Will says softly, cautious as his renewed movements in Mike’s hair. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, it’s okay,” Mike assures. He doesn’t seem mad, just sort of upset—in the general, unnamed kind of way. Empty battery. “I have.”
“I don’t know if anyone has told you, Mike,” he jokes treacherously. “But it’s kinda the end of the world. And I wouldn’t judge you for growing out your hair, even if it wasn’t.”
He hums thoughtfully.
“But you like it better short, don't you?”
Will blinks.
Mike is glancing up at him, eyes round and attentive.
In the safety of his own mind, Will can admit that he looks really pretty like this, softened with sickness and the pull of sleep, his lips bitten and quirked, a deep blush covering his cheekbones like he's wearing Nancy's makeup.
“Mike,” Will laughs, but it sounds clipped—nervous. He can feel a matching heat creep up his own cheeks. “I was just curious. I’m hardly an expert on haircuts.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It doesn’t matter what I like. It matters what you—”
“Oh my God. Okay, Max,” Mike huffs. The comparison seems to stumble out of him before he can think better of it, and he flinches, then clears his throat to aid in the recovery. “I know that, but I’m asking for your opinion.”
“Maybe we should visit the hospital,” Will tries. It’s another dirty play, but it’s as honest as it is distracting. He really does think Mike should go. “When you’re feeling better.”
“Sure,” he says casually, like he’s been back, even once, since the first time. “I should—we should do that.”
“Cool,” Will breathes. “I’ll tell Lucas.”
“Cool.”
For a moment, Will thinks he’s tilted, fallen headfirst off the tightrope he’s been walking on, but when his hand stills in Mike’s hair, he’s reprimanded with a high, playful whine.
They’re okay, Will thinks, or they will be.
He allows himself to believe that they’ve made some sort of real progress today, that Mike will really go see Max next week, and Will will really stop keeping him at arm’s length.
He allows himself to believe that he still has room to grow—that they can grow back together, intertwine and lean on each other again.
That it's not too late.
“Don’t stop,” Mike whispers, eyes slipping shut. Then, lazily, his words somewhat slurred, "Y'think your mom would cut it for me?"
“Yeah,” Will continues to pet his hair, trying not to overthink it. "But don't let her."
"Mm."
Occasionally, he’ll find a defined curl and pull it separate from the rest of Mike’s bird’s nest, twirling it around his finger. “Also, I do.”
“Hm?”
“Like it better short,” he admits. “Not because I don’t like it like this—I think you look great—but you just seem more… like yourself, I guess, when it’s shorter.”
Mike just breathes, so Will continues.
“Maybe that’s selfish, or like, presumptuous of me, to say that I know yourself better than you do—which, that’s not what I was trying to say, but—I mean. I don’t know. I guess, when I was in Lenora, I clung to this memory of you. Of how I remembered you. And then you showed up, and you were… different. Not a bad different—just different—and I sorta panicked over the feeling that I didn’t know this new version of you, and so, sometimes, even now, I can’t help but—”
Far too late, Will’s senses slam into him.
“Sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Mike doesn’t say anything. His hand twitches at his side. His chest falls with a long exhale.
A grateful laugh slips past Will’s defenses. He whispers, “Oh, thank God,” as Mike’s lips part, making way for a congested snore.
Midnight strikes with the sound of Mike’s bedroom door swinging open, the handle slamming against the wall hard enough to crack through the paint, but it isn’t enough to rouse him.
Will, himself, hardly stirs.
Distantly, he recognizes the loud noise and knows he should be springing awake—but he struggles, one foot in consciousness and the rest of him trapped beneath a thick, warm fog.
“Mike, it’s—” someone is saying.
Will can’t move. There’s something entwined with his legs, and he finds—once he opens a bleary eye and recognizes the blue that surrounds him, the dulcet draw of body heat, and a slow, thumping pulse—that he doesn’t want to.
Still, he has half the mind to understand how compromising this position is. Someone is watching as the rise of Will’s chest jostles Mike’s head. There are no blankets left on the bed to hide the way Mike's leg is thrown over Will’s hip. They’re tangled together like vines, Mike’s bare foot tucked between Will’s calves—and someone is watching.
Will blinks and notices that the blurry figure in the doorway is distinctly Holly-sized, her fingers wrapped tightly around the door handle. As she comes into focus, he deduces that her hair is in braids, and her eyes are huge, piercing through the unlit room. The rest of her expression is unreadable beneath the hand someone has clamped over her mouth.
Into the skin of a palm, she mumbles, “—Christmas.”
Sleep still has a tight grip on him, so it takes an embarrassingly long time for Will to place Nancy. The hand is hers, he realizes, once he follows it up the wrist and shoulder to her pink face. She looks equal parts startled and apologetic, flush to Holly’s back like she ran straight into her.
Her other hand is closed around Holly’s elbow, and it becomes clear that she tried to stop her from opening the door (ah, Holly being desperate and defiant, hence the extreme force, hence the loud bang).
The skin by her eyes crinkles when she spots Will, awake. Her shoulders are high up by her ears and shaking—she’s laughing—as she stage-whispers, “Sorry, Will.”
A pathetic noise escapes him.
He knows he needs to say something, come up with an excuse for why he’s asleep in their brother’s bed—even if it is, truthfully, not what it looks like—but he left all his words behind in whatever dream he’d been having. Nothing comes out when he opens his mouth, and any attempts to move only cause Mike to wind tighter around him, hair tickling his chin.
“Merry Christmas!” she giggles, pulling Holly by the face back out into the hallway.
Still unable to really speak, she nods eagerly to express her assent.
Mike makes a sad, high-pitched sound when Will tries to protest again, and that stops his attempts altogether.
Helplessly, he watches the girls leave, and when the door clicks quietly shut, the darkness that returns is far less comfortable and a lot more familiar.
He doesn’t realize Mike has shifted up towards his neck until he speaks, hot breath fanning over Will’s throat and the collar of his sweater. “W’ll.”
Will hums. If he opens his mouth, he’s going to do something crazy like throw up all over himself.
“Y’comfy…?”
“Mmhm.”
Will finds his words once Mike reaches down and takes his hand. The burn of his fever helps return feeling there and melts away some of the terror that's seizing the rest of him. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t stop himself from sounding pleased when their fingers slot together.
“Feels good,” he admits guiltily, certain Mike is more asleep than awake at this point. “You’re so warm.”
“I could... quit the Tylenol.” Mike decides this is the moment to start speaking in full sentences, completely shattering that theory. He was probably up this entire time—the little shit. “Be your personal heater ‘til the spring?”
Still delirious, though, it seems.
“Mike, that’s ridiculous,” Will coughs. “You’re so sick.”
He shrugs, the rise of his shoulders pulling at his entire body—and Will’s.
“It’s not so bad,” he says, incredibly gentle. Then, before Will can respond, he settles back over his chest and whispers urgently into his sternum, “But I don’t want to be awake yet. Go back to sleep.”
Later, while Holly is ripping ferociously into Rainbow Brite wrapping paper, Mike’s head finds Will’s shoulder.
Neither Joyce nor Karen bat an eye at the display—too enamored with the stuffed dog Holly’s unboxing—but Jonathan, Nancy, and Ted all flock to it.
Jonathan squints beneath furrowed brows, and Nancy offers a soft, close-lipped smile before politely shifting her attention. They’re sitting together on the floor across from the couch, fire crackling behind their bodies, and when Nancy bumps their knees together, Jonathan turns away, too.
Will feels like he’s suffocating when he finally manages to look towards the La-Z Boy.
The tree is casting an angry red glow over Ted’s distorted features. He looks repulsed, to put it simply, and Will briefly wonders if this is it—if this is the moment the Byers finally get kicked to the curb.
In the next moment, though, Will is convinced of two things:
One: Christmas miracles are real.
And two: Karen has the same eerie sixth sense that his own mom does, because her head snaps in her husband’s direction the second he opens his mouth. She has a look on her face that Will has only ever seen directed at a bratty Michael Wheeler—sharp eyes slicing through his train of thought before it can be verbalized.
“Leave him alone, Ted,” she grumbles. Then, when Holly’s attention flicks toward her, she lightens her tone to something more in line with the Burl Ives song playing softly from the stereo. “It’s not too late for you to end up on the naughty list.”
“Gross, Mom,” Nancy comments, but she looks pleased.
Will lets Holly get through a few more presents before he deems the coast semi-clear. Under the guise of stretching his neck—which actually is a little sore from being kicked yesterday, thank you—he leans closer to Mike, checking in with a tender whisper. “You okay?”
If Mike had planned on feigning sleep again, his lopsided smile gives him away.
After gifts, the room feels much more peaceful.
It’s snowing outside—not hard enough for anyone to play in, but there’s a light fog rising over the windows and a familiar chill settling into Will’s bones, only amplified by the sudden loss of Mike beside him.
He’s still here, just on the opposite end of the couch, blinking languidly at his mom, who’s crouched in front of him, rubbing his arm soothingly as they wait what seems like forever for the mercury to peak.
It’s just the three of them now, so Will doesn’t bother to hide the way he’s staring at Mike’s profile. The thermometer hangs loosely from his lips, his jaw working around the uncomfortable feeling of sitting still.
He’s acting a little gooey, soft around the edges.
Part of Will wants to give Mike the privacy to just be a sick kid getting taken care of by his mom; a larger part of him is frozen still, limbs numb and eyes locked.
Karen swipes her thumb along her son’s temple before she pulls the glass out from beneath his tongue. She sucks her teeth at the reading. “How do you feel, baby?”
“Not great,” Mike admits, so quietly Will doesn’t think he was meant to hear it. He tilts his chin towards the thermometer. “No better, then?”
“It’s better,” she says, looking towards Will as she does. “Just not by much.”
Will hides from her eyeline, ducking his head and glancing towards Mike again. There’s a silent conversation Karen can’t be privy to: he’s not well enough to go with the Byers to see El and Hopper.
He looks a little disappointed, but not break-down-crying-on-the-bathroom-floor-level upset, so that's a win.
As if reading Will’s mind, as if knowing he’s wondering if he should stay behind, too, he flashes an “it’s okay” sort of smile. Between the lines of Mike’s teeth, Will reads, “Go see your sister.”
Motherly sixth sense—there’s a knock on the wall that separates the living room from the kitchen.
“Will, baby,” Joyce starts. Will’s ears go hot, and his heart stutters. There’s something sweet—embarrassing, but sweet—about being here with Mike on Christmas, the two of them still getting called “baby” by their mothers, despite everything. “We have to head out.”
It’s not easy to pull himself off the couch, away from Mike, but it is necessary. The gentle smile doesn’t leave Mike’s face as he waves his goodbye, and Karen presses a startling kiss to his cheek before he goes.
Joyce looks incredibly fond of the whole scene, even as she takes Will’s hand and pulls him from it.
When they return, Will stumbles out of the car like he’s drunk, tripping up the sidewalk in his urgency to get back inside the house.
Jonathan and his mom chuckle after him, like he’s being dramatic.
He spares a second to turn around and glare. Sure enough, they’re huddled together, noses pink, labored breaths making tiny clouds in the air.
“Yeah, it’s cold,” Will huffs from beneath the roof, feeling a petulant twinge of jealousy over how they’re sharing body heat and he’s standing alone. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“We’re not laughing, Will,” Joyce lies.
“Oh, it’s freezing,” Jonathan agrees. He’s struggling against the wind, looking about a second away from getting picked up and blown to the Sinclairs’. Still, he’s laughing. “But that’s not why you’re running, is it?”
He and Jonathan bicker somewhat often, now that they’re older and forced to share a basement-bedroom, but they’ve never gotten anywhere close to a physical fight.
Until now, Will thinks, before he’s interrupted by the front door peeking open, a rush of warm air slipping through the opening Karen pokes her head through.
“Phew!” she shudders. “What are you guys doing? Get in here!”
Will lets her take his hand and drag him inside, but not before sticking his frozen tongue out at Jonathan. He’s barely over the threshold before Karen is helping him shrug his coat off.
“Thank you,” he chirps, shy suddenly. He hopes his awkward smile does a decent job at conveying his gratitude. He’s not sure he could move his arms right now if he tried.
“Of course, honey,” she says softly, and yeah—the Christmas spirit is doing wonders for this house. She’s always nice to him, but not this nice. With the jacket around his wrists, she pauses. “Oh, and good news!”
The sun is low in the sky, painting the hallway in a soft orange light. Karen’s hair looks golden, falling in gentle cascades around her face. If they were in a cartoon, he imagines she’d have a lightbulb above her head right now, or a stylized exclamation mark.
“Yeah?” Will remembers to ask, the rapid temperature change making him feel a bit like he’s in a trance.
“Michael’s fever broke,” Karen announces, just as Jonathan is shouldering the door open for himself, a small bag of presents from El tucked under one arm and Joyce shivering around the other.
He gives a low whistle. Will refuses eye contact.
“That’s—” He takes a measured breath, no shallower than the last. “Great.”
It is.
Of course it is.
Will has spent every second of the last day hoping for that to happen, just wanting Mike to feel better. Still, he can’t help the sharp pang of disappointment he feels now.
It was just nice, he supposes, to be needed for once—instead of the other way around. It was nice to get to take care of Mike, like old times, and to spend time alone with him (in an extremely normal way, nothing to do with the accidentally-falling-asleep-cuddling thing).
It was nice to live in a bubble for a little while. It was an extremely messy and sort of sick-smelling bubble, but it was warm. And still nice.
“Will?”
“Sorry,” He blinks. His coat and gloves are all the way off, and Karen’s head is tilted, a small smile pulling at her lips. She must have asked him a question. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Michael’s upstairs.’” She’s analyzing him carefully, studying the way he toes off his shoes, and Will needs everyone to stop looking at him like this immediately. “I think he’s waiting for you.”
And maybe Will is starting to get sick, too, because any ounce of politeness he’s picked up since childhood leaves his body the second he hears those words.
He’s gone before he can overthink it, taking the stairs two at a time. On his way up, he hears Karen ask his mom, “So, what was the important thing you all had to go out on Christmas Day to do?” and decides dealing with that is her karma for ganging up on him with Jonathan.
“Mike…?” Will calls out, pausing once he reaches the top floor and hears how breathless he sounds. He takes a moment, steadying his palms against the wall and inhaling deeply, willing his lungs to behave.
“In here!” someone calls.
Someone, decidedly not Mike.
“Nancy?”
“Mike’s in here!” she repeats. Then, in case he didn’t already recognize where her voice was coming from, “Bathroom!”
For a long couple of seconds, Will feels like the worst person alive.
Like an absolute freak, he was disappointed that Mike was getting better—and now he’s not. Now he’s throwing up again, which means the fever’s probably back, just like Will manifested with his stupid, sick, Mike-Mike-Mike-I-wanna-spend-time-with-Mike brain.
Yeah, he’s going to Hell.
Will takes another second to mentally prepare himself for what’s behind the bathroom door, but it isn’t enough.
“What the fuck?”
“Will!” Nancy startles, either at his profanity or the force with which he just swung the door open. Distantly, he thinks he could give Holly a run for her money. Then, he thinks, “Sorry, Mr. Wheeler,” because he totally just dented the wall.
“What the—” he repeats. “What?”
Mike still looks pretty sick.
He’s actively sniffling into the back of his hand when Will walks in, and his skin is waxy and flushed, but he’s not puking. Or crying. He’s also not dead on the floor, which was a real possibility Will considered.
Rather, he’s sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, looking sheepish but otherwise relatively fine.
None of that is alarming.
What is alarming is the open pair of scissors Nancy’s holding and the wild look on her face.
Also alarming: Mike’s hair.
It’s wet—not damp with fever sweat, but soaked through. Washed. It's also in clumps, all over his shirt and lap, Nancy’s hands, and the floor.
It’s short.
Not short-short, like Ted or Mr. Clarke, but there’s a good couple of inches of thick, dark hair on the floor.
Like—Mike has ears again.
“You okay, Will?” Nancy asks slyly, a chunk of Mike’s bangs between her fingers.
Now that she mentions it, he does sort of feel like he’s going to pass out. His vision is tunneling, and he’s pretty sure he dropped his stomach on the stairs somewhere.
“You—” he looks between them, like if he just keeps staring he’ll be able to make sense of it. “Nancy?”
“You told me not to ask your mom,” Mike shrugs.
“I wasn’t your first choice?”
As she speaks, Nancy lifts the blade closer and closer to Mike’s forehead.
“Hey, chill.” He slaps her hand away, and then they have a really creepy conversation with just their eyes—probably one about how Will’s mom is not actually good at cutting hair, like, at all.
Eventually, they come to what looks like an agreement. Nancy lowers the cutting edge, and Mike turns to face Will again.
“I love a good bowl cut,” he affirms. Will doesn't read into it. “Nance is good with curls, that’s all."
She smiles awkwardly before Mike continues.
"You guys got home earlier than I was expecting.”
“You also slept for, like, ever.”
“Sorry, I was sick and dying…?"
“Yeah,” Will says, electing to ignore them both. As Nancy snips, tiny pieces of hair fall into Mike’s eyes. He closes one, compromised, but keeps the other trained on Will. “El was tired. She sent presents.”
“Cool,” Mike says.
“Cool,” Nancy agrees. Then, “I think I’m done.”
“I feel ten pounds lighter.”
“What do you think?”
Mike looks good.
He looks really good. It could be something to do with him finally being clean and not, like, greasy and sweaty and pukey, but Will thinks it’s definitely more than that. As his bangs start to dry, the edges lift slightly to one side, a good amount of space between them and his eyes now. The back of his hair is curling a little more wildly, flicking around his ears in all directions.
Now, Will can really see his face—all pliant brows and inky, round eyes and hollow cheeks.
He has a sudden, feral urge to run his finger down the bridge of Mike's nose, to thumb at his bottom lip. To kiss him senseless.
He looks good.
He looks like Mike.
“Mike, I don’t think he likes it.”
“Wait,” Will swallows around his dry tongue. “You’re asking me?”
“Who else would I be asking?”
“I don’t know—Mike?”
“I like it,” he shrugs.
“I think it’s—” Will tries. Mike is watching him fumble around the words the same way Karen watched him take off his shoes, with that same intense focus; only, Mike’s gaze is softer, deeper, the new shape of his hair casting a shadow over the corners of his tired eyes.
Will looks cautiously at Nancy, then back at Mike. “Short.”
“Nancy?” Mike doesn’t miss a beat. He also doesn’t look away from Will, even as he addresses her.
“Yeah?”
“Get out.”
“What the hell?” is her immediate, shrill response, but she’s already packing up like she’s eager to go. She waves the hand still holding the scissors around vaguely. “Whatever, Mike. You’re cleaning this up. And if I get sick, I'm killing you.”
“Sure,” he mumbles. Then, his mouth does a little excited twitch. “Will, you’ll help me, right?”
It almost sounds like he’s making fun of him, but there’s a strange lilt to his voice, something sweeter, almost sticky.
“Absolutely not,” Will lies, trying to match the tone. He must succeed, because Mike’s smile deepens and Nancy rolls her eyes on her way past Will and out the door.
The second it clicks shut, Will steps forward from where he’d been cowering in the corner of the room. “Can I…?”
When Mike nods, Will slips his hand under his damp hair to confirm what he already knows.
He’s not hot to the touch anymore, but a jolt of electricity shoots through Will’s fingertips all the same. When Mike blinks up at him patiently, lashes brushing against his thumb, memories of that warmth from before blossom low in his abdomen.
“I feel a lot better,” Mike says slowly. Will allows himself to hope he’s talking about more than just the fever. “Thanks to you.”
“I didn’t do much,” Will dismisses.
“Yeah, you did.”
The moment feels heavy for a minute, but it's lost to Will trying to smooth out an unruly piece of hair. He means to tuck it behind Mike’s ear, but it comes right off in his hand instead.
And then Mike is laughing.
He’s laughing so hard that he doubles over—his shoulders are shaking and his short, panting breaths send loose hair flying everywhere—and then Will is laughing, too, borderline giggling, and Mike is laughing harder because he’s laughing.
Neither of them can stop until Will is swiping fruitlessly at tears and Mike’s choked laughter turns into a chesty cough. Even then, it takes Will a minute to pull himself together enough to thump Mike on the back.
“Jesus,” he says, sniffling.
“What?” Mike asks once he can breathe again. He’s crying, too, face splotchy from the strain. His mouth is pressed to the back of his wrist, and he can hardly keep from chucking into it as he asks, “You don’t like it?”
“You know I do,” Will admits.
They both stutter a bit, watery eyes locking. Mike lowers his hand and punctuates his laughing fit with an incredulous puff of air that bleeds into a crooked smile. Will’s heart does a somersault in his chest.
“I know,” Mike whispers, a confession. “I’ve really missed you.”
“I know,” Will parrots, because he does now. Then, the understatement of the century and the most honest thing he’s said since March: “I’ve really missed you, too.”