Chapter Text
Friends? No thanks.
Friends don’t lie. At least they never used to. Friends also didn’t move to college and leave Mike completely alone and behind and yet here he fucking was. Alone, behind, and, well, still himself.
Still by himself.
He didn’t know which one was worse.
Mike’s temple pounded away in a sickly sort of thrum not too far off from the sound of a reaper’s call. He itched at his tender eyes, still crusted over from lack of sleep. It felt like he had two swollen meaty masses floating inside his skull. Sometimes if he pressed the sheet of his comforter against them hard enough, they felt a little less heavy. Not being able to see anything at all was always a little less burdensome.
The blinds to his room were snapped completely sealed and shut. But that didn’t stop him from tracing the golden lines of light leaking in through the cracks of the blinds across his ceiling with his eyes. He’d lay on top of his bed, tongue dry, dead, and heavy in his mouth, staring at the lines of light flickering and fading in and out as the sun came and went. He’d think of the rifts to the upside down. He’d wonder if it’d ever be possible to melt into the lines of light and forget about the rifts, about Vecna, about El. About himself. About everything.
Suddenly, a loud knocking and shout stirred Mike from his bed covers.
“Mom says your dinner’s already cold, Mike!” It was Holly.
“It’s just pizza, it doesn’t matter if it’s cold!” Mike shouted back. He yanked his blanket tighter around himself and slammed a pillow over his face. That didn’t stop Holly from shoving his door open though. It never did.
“Oh my god, it smells like ass in here,” she said. “Take a shower, at least. You do know what a shower is, right?”
“Holly, close the door. I’ll be down in a minute,” Mike groaned.
Holly only scoffed. Mike heard her footsteps march closer to his bed and quickly felt her try to yank his blanket out of his grip. But Mike only tugged back in response. Soon they were in an intense battle of blanket tug-o-war. Which, to Holly’s benefit, was super fucking embarrassing for Mike to be losing.
“You said you’d be down like an hour ago. And the hour before that and–”
“Holly, give me back my blanket–”
“You smell like a skunk got trapped and baked in an onion pie–”
“Holly–”
“And you haven’t left your room in weeks!!!”
Mike lost.
His head slammed onto the hardwood floor with a loud thunk as he lost balance and fell off his bed. He laid there for a moment. Face down on the floor, ass in the air, one sock on, the other off. And he really thought about how he must have looked like a crumpled-up muppet without its operator right about then.
When he looked up, he was surprised to see that instead of pissed off, Holly almost looked lost. Maybe it was because a year ago, Mike probably would have been up on his feet chasing her out of his room, ending the fit in messy laughter. Maybe it was because now Mike only lamely reached out for his blanket and wrapped it back around his boney shoulders.
Holly only sighed before turning to Mike’s dresser and picking up a glass plate of pizza she must have placed there earlier. She sat it down in front of his feet with a hollow thunk and turned to leave. But before she closed the door she said,
“Pizza doesn’t always have to be cold.”
The door shut. His room was dark. The pizza stared at him. Mike stared back.
____________
Mike wasn’t sure how many days passed. His mom would come in, food in hand. Or sometimes it was Holly. Or maybe Nancy? But Nancy hadn’t been home in months. Nobody really had. Not since graduation almost a year ago. So it had to have been Holly. Leaving plates of cold stews, meatloaf, fruit, all by his bed when his back was turned. Sometimes she’d take plates from the previous day, completely untouched. Sometimes she’d leave them there, probably hoping Mike would nibble at something.
When Mike heard a usual knock at his bedroom door, he assumed it must be lunch time. But this time, after the knock, Holly didn’t come in like she usually did. Mike shifted a bit, craning his neck over to watch the door in suspiscion. It still didn’t budge.
There was another knock.
“Mike?”
The voice that called out wasn’t Holly’s. It was deeper. Rich like a gravelly velvet, but still soft in its hesitancy.
Will.
Mike almost jumped out of his skin. He tumbled out of bed, blanket tangling his legs as he stumbled over to the bedroom door.
When the door opened and all he saw was Will Byers standing there with caramel eyes and a shocked frown, Mike was certain he was going to probably throw up. All over Will’s shoes. Which was probably not a great long-time-no-see first impression.
“Will?” Mike breathed more than said. They stared at each other long enough for Mike to do a double take across Will’s face, charting freckle to mole and even to the faint scar he carried above his eyebrow ever since California.
“Mike!” Will’s smile was soft. But Mike knew it was also laced with something else. Something akin to pity. And he kind of hated it. “How..are you?”
Mike wished they could both ignore the fact that Mike was actively wrapped in his comforter like a forlorned Russian grandmother, and yet here they were.
“Oh, you know! Just. Been workin’ on my book,” Mike replied. Will glanced above Mike’s head where he still had his blanket wrapped tightly around himself. “You just, caught me during one of my breaks. Sleeping breaks, that is.”
“Right, right,” Will said. Which meant, you know, he knew Mike was spewing utter bullshit. But that wasn’t any of Mike’s buisiness. “Well, can I come in?”
Mike’s head felt fuzzy for a moment. Like the kind of fuzz that made his ears ring and the skin around his lips go numb. When was the last time he had even cleaned his room? Fuck.
“Oh, uh, well it’s kind of messy in here and I just woke up so–”
“Mike,” Will cut him off, but it was patient in its worth, “I just wan’t to talk.”
Mike stared for a second. Will looked earnest. But honestly, when didn’t he? He looked as soft and constant as he did when they were both nine and Will had confessed to Mike that he had accidentally squished a lightning bug between his fingers. Back then Will had been the one crying. But now Mike felt like he might just start, if nothing more than for his inability to hold onto light that could be smothered by raw skin and ignorance.
He stepped aside and let Will through. Mike sat on his bed, rapidly tapping his knee while Will settled for slowly scanning around the room. Dirty wrappers and dried snotty tissues decorated Mike’s musty carpet. The floor? Non-existent. And yeah, Holly was right, it definitely smelled like something died other than Mike’s flimsy ego. But Will didn’t seem to want to draw attention to any of that, which Mike was thankful for.
Instead Will finally stopped pacing and settled for looking at Mike with a steady, if still hesitant, look.
“How have you really been, Mike?”
Mike chewed at his already buzzing lower lip, wearing away at plump pink flesh.
“Fine,” Mike said.
Will laughed. But nothing was funny.
“Hey, so Mike. I’m not an idiot.”
“Yeah? Okay, well maybe I am,” Mike replied. He wrapped his blanket around him a little tighter.
“Mike–”
“No no, it’s fine. Just come in here and tell me what I don’t already know.”
“Mike!” Will was much closer now. “I did not come here to argue with you.”
“Yeah okay, then why are you here all of a sudden? I’m surprised you even remember which room is mine with how often you show up,” Mike said. It came out much more bitter than he had intended and Will definitely flinched. Fuck.
“You’re right,” Will said. And Mike felt his chest constrict. “I should have reached out more while I was in Milwaukee. That wasn’t fair of me. I just got so busy with school, and work, and–”
“Boys.”
Will looked at Mike with a familiar hurt crick in his frown, and Mike immedieately wished he could take it back. He hadn’t meant it like that.
“I mean,” Will swallowed, “yeah.”
The quiet that followed made Mike want to hurl himself out his closed window. What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d spent the last how ever many months wanting to see everyone, and this is how he reacts when his literal best friend walks through his door?
Will looked back to Mike’s desk, eyeing the abandoned typewriter. “Well, what’s the book about?” Will’s tone was lighter, “Nancy told Jonathan that there can only be one Wheeler writer, so you probably have your work cut out for you.”
“Yeah, well at least I’m not writing about what the mayor of Boston’s favorite dessert recipe is,” Mike replied. Will seemed to smile.
“Then what are you writing about?”
Mike went to reply but the answer choked him a bit on its way out. So he sat there with his mouth open before slowly closing it. To be honest, he hadn’t even touched that damn typewriter in weeks.
“I don’t really know anymore,” he said.
“What if you could?” Will asked. Mike looked up at him, frowning.
“How?”
Will stepped back and began to open one of the blinds as he spoke,
“Mike, you need a change of scenery. I mean, at least for a little bit.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked, noting how Will had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the top of the window to fix a stray blind.
“You’ve been stuck in Hawkins for like, ever, Mike. When’s the last time you even went on a vacation?”
It hadn’t been since they came back from California, and that could hardly count as a vacation. Getting shot at, burying dead bodies in the desert, and trying to track down a secret military base? It was practically like sunglasses and piña coladas by the beach, right?
But instead, what came out of Mike was,
“I don’t need a vacation,” he said.
“You actually need a lot of things, Mike,” Will said, “and a vacation is definitely one of them.”
“Did you come all the way back from Wisconsin just to berate me?”
“No, I came all the way back from Wisconsin to bring you with me,” Will said.
Mike’s grip on his blanket loosened. It slipped around his shoulders and down his back, and his head felt fresh air for the first time in what had probably been an embarrassingly long amount of time.
“What?” Mike asked.
Will went back to shuffling with items on Mike’s desk. Organizing, nit-picking, helping more by habit than anything else.
“I mean, if you want? I just feel like it could be fun. We never really got to do a cool post graduation road trip like a lot of other people usually get to,” Will turned back to finally look at Mike with a smile like warm kindled firewood, “I figured it’d be like old times. But with, like, adult money this time.”
Mike was surprised to find himself laughing. He was surprised by how his chest didn’t hurt with the beating of air dancing through his lungs and out his mouth through grinning teeth.
“We’re hardly adults,” Mike said.
“Yeah, but we’re definitely not kids,” Will replied.
Was it evil for Mike to quietly wish they were? Even though it was when they were kids that Will had endured more than any twelve-year-old should ever have to go through?
Because it was also when things felt so much more simple for Mike.
“Look,” Will sat down next to Mike, “just give me one week. One road trip. Even just like, one day if you have to. Come with me, get out of Indiana for a second, and see if that book gets any easier to look at, yeah?”
And Mike wasn’t sure if it was the way the lines of the window's light melted onto Will’s supple skin or how he suddenly and secretly wanted to trace them with his fingers, but he said yes.