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The soft candle light crashes against the walls of Mike Wheelers bedroom. Casting an array of shadows, decorating the room with intricate shapes and patterns.
The most recognisable shadow being that of Mike, as he sits atop his bed, spine slightly arched as he holds his head in his hands. Roughly rubbing his calloused palms along his face, slightly dragging at his under eyes as his fingers roll off the slightly damp eyelashes.
After being awoken by another terrifying nightmare he contemplates heading downstairs, in search of the only comfort he's been able to rest his weary head on since his sleepless nights had begun.
As the teenager makes his way down, relying heavily on the railing of the staircase, keeping his head low and eyes trained against the ground, he merely missed bumping into something walking towards him on the opposite side of the stairs.
"Mike-?"
Will's voice comes out in a hush, a slight jump indicating his surprise as he gazes across the darkness and into the presence of his best friend.
Mike raises his eyes in the direction of the voice, taking in a couple quick blinks, as if making sure this wasn't another one of his nightmares.
He stares at Will, a small smile forming at the corners of his lips. Clearly the two boys had the same idea.
"Yeah, don’t worry it’s just me”, Mikes voice broke out into the darkness followed by a deep exhale.
The space between the boys offered very little light, making it hard to notice the replicated smile breaking onto Will's face, though Mike knows it’s there, he knows that look very well.
Mike and Will continue to stare at each other in awe for a few minutes before finally, Mike breaks the silence, "Couldn't sleep?".
Will's response was a slow nod, almost forgetting Mike likely wouldn't be able to see his answer he mumbles an embarrassed "yeah.”
"Me too, you want to talk about it in my room?" Without needing a response, Will follows Mike the rest of the way up the stairs, grabbing a small hold of his loose shirt as he's guided through the darkness.
A small blush litters itself upon Mikes freckled cheeks, distracting from his sharp cheekbones, giving his face a softer look. He stifles a silent shaky breath, grateful of the fact its too dark for Will to notice how flustered his small action had made Mike feel.
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The air in Mikes room felt intimate, wrapped in a quiet warmth, the candle casting a low but comforting light. Mike carefully shuts the door in order to preserve the sleeping figures in the next room, he takes a seat beside to Will on his bed.
Their bodies slightly sinking onto the crinkle of the blanket, having to steady themselves slightly.
Will speaks first, "Did you have another nightmare?" his voice was laced with a twinge of concern, with how often these conversations had been had over the past few months that Will and his brother, Jonathan had been staying at the Wheelers house. Anyone would expect the pair to be conditioned to the regular disturbances of sleep.
Yet they both still find themselves worrying for the other as if the nightmares were a new thing.
"Mhmm", mike nodded, swinging his legs anxiously as they dangles ever so slightly off the ground. His hand lay on his thigh, lightly gripping it as if in an attempt to stay in control of his wandering mind.
Will notices how Mikes nails dent his skin, inches away from drawing blood, he doesn't hesitate to place his own on top, prying each finger softly off of the damaged skin. Mike winces at the sudden contact, as if Wills warm hand on his, hurts more than the grip he'd had on his thigh.
"Hey, you're okay, Mike." The brown-haired boy hesitated before continuing with:
"I'm here."
Mike relaxed, Wills touch reminding him that the nightmares weren't real. Will was here with him, he's okay. Mike directed his gaze to Wills soft green eyes, flooded with a pit of butterflies as Hazel meets brown.
How does he look so perfect? Mike draws a deep breath, "I'm okay now, I'm okay," he mumbles, more as reassurance for himself rather than for Will, but his words seem to be convincing enough to evaporate the worry that had made its way into Will's face.
The boys continue to sit side-by-side in a comfortable silence, Will's hand still hovering over Mike's. Only the shiver erupting from Will's shoulders is enough to drag Mike from his daze. With a subtle tilt of his head, Mike questions, "are you cold?".
Will, to distracted by the loose curls that now enthralled upon Mike's face, delays his answer, earning a small squeeze as Mike curls his fingers over Will's, snapping him back to reality, "What..?".
"I asked if you were cold."
"Oh, uh yeah...a little, its probably just from being down in the basement," Will shrugs.
"Is it cold down there? what about the heater?" Mike inquires, feeling bad for having Will sleep in his frosty basement, not like he hadn't offered Will his pullout bed when him and Jonathan had first arrived.
"Broken."
"What? since when?," Without a heater, as Mike reminisces all the nights he'd fallen asleep down in his basement while in the middle of writing new campaigns for D&D, he winces, sure that if it had become even a degree lower he'd imagine icicles could have formed.
"About a week," The nonchalant tone of Will's voice confuses Mike, unsure if his best friend was joking or not, he hoped the latter. Mike searched Will's expression for any signs to show that he was lying, yet he remained stoic.
"Will, you're not serious."
Now it was the brown-haired boy's turn to look confused, "What do you mean? what's wrong?" Will tilted his head, not understanding why this was making Mike so upset.
"Why didn't you tell me?," Mike searched Will's gaze, his eyes scanning each line of his face, as if they were clues to the map of Will's mind.
"I didn't want to be a bother.." Will's voice was hushed, as if he was just now realising how pathetic he sounded.
"So you mean to tell me, you and your brother suffered in near freezing cold for an entire week, just because you didn't want to bother anyone with fixing the only source of heat we provided you with?" Mike's voice was harsh, bordering a yell.
Will knew he was just worried, he'd expected this reaction when he'd imagined Mike finding out. Although he'd planned to tell Mike after the first night, and even then expected this kind of reaction, now it was amped, having spent almost seven more nights in the tundra that was Mike's basement.
He didn't even attempt to add the fact Jonathan had moved to sleeping in Nancy's room, in fear Mike would explode.
"Oh my god, Will. You need to stop focusing on pleasing other people, you could have gotten seriously sick. You're not feeling sick, are you?," before giving Will the chance to answer, Mike takes his hand from under Will's and places it gently on the boys cheek, feeling for any signs of his temperature dropping.
Will trembles slightly at the touch, which doesn't do anything to ease Mike's anxiety.
The raven-haired boy rapidly places the back of his hand on different spot of his best friend’s face, its here that he notices the lack of colour on the tanner boys skin.
Without hesitation, Mike leaps off the bed and scrambles awkwardly over too his wardrobe, pulling out the top draw and rummaging his hands through the abundance of clothes, his fingers finally landing on what he'd been searching for.
With a few large bounds, Mike makes it back to where Will is sitting on his bed, a mixed expression of confusion and amusement appearing on his soft features.
"Here," Mike hands Will his thermometer, their fingers brushing for a split second. "Mum likes to keep it in my room incase I ever use the excuse of feeling sick, to skip school just to prove whether I was lying or not."
As Will inspects the glass tool, Mike adds, "Don't worry, it's clean".
Mike watches intensely at the red line of the thermometer as it dangles from Will's lips.
Mike can't help but admire how attractive he looks right now, haloed by the flickering golden light of the candle, his face dappled in the shadows of his fringe, where the light can't reach.
How did you get to be so pretty? The question invades his wandering mind before he can stop himself, though unlike most times when these kinds of thoughts slip, he doesn't take it back or try to justify that it's a normal thought to have in regard to your best friend.
Because Mike can't seem to imagine any alternative for how the sight of Will is making him feel in this very moment, no friendly words can capture the essence of how Will looks right now, bathed in tones of yellow, Will looks pretty, Mike thinks Will is pretty.
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Mike blinks like he's struggling to surface a dense wave, Will’s chest tightens. He reaches out with the thermometer, his fingers curled around it, careful and hesitant, afraid of startling him, holding it out like and anchor.
"You alright in there?" Will half jokes with a chuckled tease to his words, studying Mike intensely for any explanation in his behaviour.
"Y-yeah, yeah all good. Let me check what it read," Mike turns his focus to the tool in his hand, inspecting it closely in order to read the numbers correctly.
He frowns at the results, Will's temperature reads borderline concerning, and Mike makes it his mission for the next few hours they are awake to keep Will from getting to that point.
Before Will could protest, Mike holds a firm, but gentle grip on either side of his shoulders, swiveling the shivering boy so that his whole body lays on the bed. Then with a soft push, he moves the brunette towards the headboard, stopping just before his back hits the pillow in order to fluff it up.
It takes Mike a few extra seconds of admiring Will, before he takes his hands away from the boys shoulders to join him on the other side, wasting no time before engulfing Will and his own body under the quilt.
A low chuckle escapes from Will's lips as he rolls his eyes, letting the taller boy get to work on warming him up, he knew better than to disrupt or refuse Mikes desperate desires to look after him, plus Will likes being fussed about when its coming from Mike.
Heaving himself out of the covers abruptly, causing his foot to get entangled in its grasp, loosing his footing, Mike faceplants onto the carpet.
Will can't help but burst out laughing, only managing to throw a small; "You okay?" before a thumb is struck into the air from behind the bed, setting Will's fluttering giggles off again.
Mike thinks its the best sound he's ever heard. Gripping onto the portion of the quilt that drapes off the edge of the bed, Mike raises himself back onto his feat.
Without wasting anymore time he resumes what he was doing, darting out of his bedroom door, and returning a moments later with a pile of spare blankets, throwing them over his shoulder with a grunt. Now its Will's turn to stare.
Mike’s chest heaves from the brief cardio, each breath uneven as he rakes a hand, shaky with adrenaline, through his slightly sweaty curls. The sound of it feels too loud in the quiet room, each inhale and exhale drawing Will’s attention whether he wants it to or not.
A faint sheen of heat clings to his skin, candlelight catching along his collarbones and throat, making everything look warmer, softer.
He drops his head like he’s too exhausted to keep it upright, and for a heartbeat Will thinks he might sway.
The curls he’d just combed away tumble forward again, falling over his face, brushing his eyelashes and shadowing his eyes.
Mike stays like that, breathing, shoulders rising and falling, unaware of how exposed he looks. Will forgets, briefly, how to breathe at all.
He stares in awe, his jaw slightly lowered, the stillness of him accounting for his mesmerised expression.
His chest feels tight, full in a way he doesn’t quite have words for, like the moment is pressing in on him from all sides. How does he look so handsome?...no, how does he look so...beautiful?
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Mike, on the other hand, is acutely aware of exactly one thing: how his lungs feel like they’re staging a revolt.
He sucks in another breath, dizzy and a little too warm, and belatedly realising he might’ve overdone it. His head is still tipped forward, curls in his eyes, mostly because lifting it sounds like a lot of effort and partly because the room has started doing this slow, unhelpful tilt.
He wipes his palm on his jeans and blinks, trying to focus, only to register Will sitting there staring at him like he’s just witnessed something profound.
Great.
Mike straightens a fraction, immediately regrets it, and thinks, not for the first time, that if he passes out right now, he’s going to be so embarrassed.
"Wow."
It's all that comes to Will's fleeting mind, but it catches Mike's attention, and with a slightly pained, "...what?", Mikes eyes are on Will again, a slight smirk tugging the corner of his lips as he catches the boys dazed look.
Mike lets out an embarrassed chuckle, wanting to escape the unreadable expression burned onto Will's face.
"You look..." Will's voice trails off as he searches for the right word to describe the view in front of him, throwing out more unfinished statements.
The vagueness of Will's words don't do anything to ease the embarrassed pounding of Mike's heart, positive he looks like a sweaty mess, filling Will with more disgust with each second that he spends staring at the breathless teen slumped at the end of the bed.
It only occurs to Mike what is going on in Will's mind, when the brunette attempts to conjure up what he's truly been yearning to say. "Mike...you look, so...so..", for a second Mike thinks he's going to be left in the dark once again.
Then Will breathlessly whispers; "breath-takingly beautiful right now."
For a long second, Mike wonders if the cold has taken over the trembling boys body, fogging his brain, but Will assures him that he's never thought clearer. "You look beautiful."
"I think the colds gotten too your head, Will," Mike chuckles, still denying that right in this moment, he looks anything close to beautiful.
Mike gazes back up ahead of him, meeting the forestry of Will's eyes, and they tell him all he needs to know. Yet, just incase, Will speaks again, a little different this time.
"You are beautiful, so beautiful."
Mike can't take it anymore. He crawls up the bed, each movement careful, like stepping on the fragile threads of a dream, the golden light spilling across his face and catching his brown eyes, turning them into molten pools of amber, rich and impossibly warm.
They cling to Will's gaze, refusing to look away, as if they fear the other boy might vanish from the room the moment they falter.
The air between them hums with quiet electricity, thick enough to make the room feel smaller, more intimate, as if the walls themselves are leaning in to watch.
As Mike edges closer to Will's bent knees, the brown-haired boy's breath hitches, a sharp little catch that makes his chest feel both heavy and light at once.
Mike pauses, letting his head hover just above Will's, the strands of his curls brushing like whispered secrets against the other boy's cheek.
Their flushed faces mirror each other, a living echo of the heat they’ve created. Mike’s eyes linger on the tiny mole between Will's nose and lips, and in that small, perfect imperfection, he finds an entire universe made for him to admire, as if it had been placed there by fate itself, for his lingering eyes only.
Meanwhile, Will traces the constellation of freckles across Mike’s nose and cheeks, counting them silently, letting them anchor him closer, memorizing each one as though engraving them onto his very soul.
The warmth radiating from their closeness seeps into the room, an invisible fire that could melt the harshest winter and still leave the air tender and sweet.
Every shared breath and shivering sigh layers on top of the other, making the tension between them feel alive, pulsing, capable of igniting the cold basement into a sanctuary of heat.
Will feels it in his bones, Mike feels it on his skin, and together it is more than enough to drown out the world outside their little haven.
At last, the invisible barrier that had held them apart shatters completely, like fragile glass succumbing to too much pressure, leaving only the soft, dizzying closeness of them, wrapped around each other in a quiet, golden blaze.
Mike feels the warmth of Will pressed against him, and it isn’t just heat from proximity, it’s in the way Will’s body seems to hum under his fingertips, every subtle shift sending tiny tremors through his own chest.
He glances up, dark brown eyes locking on hazel-green, flecked with gold from the candlelight, and his breath catches at the intensity.
The bedroom has shrunk to just them, a small golden halo of light wrapping them in quiet intimacy.
He lets a hand drift along Will’s arm, brushing over the curve of muscle and the gentle slope of his shoulder.
Will leans into the touch almost imperceptibly, and Mike can feel the slight, thrilling warmth that radiates from the contact.
Their knees brush together, then slide slightly, almost as if drawn by some invisible magnet, and Mike’s heart flutters at the closeness.
He notices the soft sweep of Will’s dark-brunette hair falling over his forehead, and on impulse, he tucks it back behind his ear, fingers grazing Will’s temple.
The subtle shiver that runs through Will makes Mike’s chest tighten in the most delicious way.
Will shifts, just a little, bringing his knees closer to Mike’s, and Mike mirrors him, careful not to break the fragile rhythm they’ve fallen into.
Their arms occasionally brush, sending sparks up his spine, and Mike finds himself leaning slightly forward, just to feel the warmth of Will’s side against him.
He can’t help the quiet laugh that escapes, nervous and breathless, as Will mirrors it, lips twitching at the corner, eyes sparkling with a mix of amusement and something softer, more vulnerable.
Mike’s fingers wander just a fraction higher along Will’s arm, the movement slow and deliberate, as if testing boundaries he’s desperate to cross yet afraid to.
Will shifts again, and Mike feels the press of their chests, subtle and tentative, the kind of closeness that makes every heartbeat feel too loud in the room.
Every glance, every brush of skin, seems to draw them closer, taut with anticipation, until it feels like the space between them is only air, fragile, trembling air, waiting for the next movement.
Mike inhales sharply, and the small, shared breath makes his pulse stutter, as if the room itself is holding its breath for what’s coming next.
Before he goes any further Mike wants to make sure Will wants this too.
"Will?" Mikes voice is hushed, his eyes scan Will's own, then his forehead as if needing something easy to look at while thinking of his next move, then he studies Will's lips.
The way they open and close, how they curve slightly at each word. "Mike? What's wrong?"
The nerves in his voice are evident with the slight waver in his tone, but it's Will's eyes that give everything away.
The subtle squint and the way his iris's dart across Mike's face, collecting hints from his complicated expression, as if he were trying to find clues to a buried treasure.
Mike can’t help the heat rising in his cheeks, a bloom of colour that feels like sunlight spilling across his skin.
Butterflies ignite in his stomach, fluttering so wildly, so bright, that he swears they could be fireflies trapped in his ribs, their tiny wings brushing against his insides with electric insistence.
He wonders, fleetingly, if Will feels the same tremor, the same spark that twists through his chest and, almost instinctively, he lets a hand drift to Will’s abdomen, where his sweater has bunched just enough to reveal the warmth of bare skin.
The instant his fingers brush against it, a pulse of heat shoots up his arm, sharp and thrilling, answering every question his racing mind has dared to ask.
Will shudders under the touch, his inhale hitching, soft and unguarded, and it sends a jolt through Mike, like lightning chasing fire.
He can’t stop himself; the pull is magnetic, irresistible, and he moves closer, drawn into the gravity of Will’s reaction, the shared warmth, the quiet, devastating pull between them.
Mike draws circles along wills bare stomach with his finger, enjoying the gentle hum that escapes Will's throat.
"Can I-" Mike lets out a deep, shaky breath.
"Can I kiss you?"
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