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Chapter 01 - Sanitary Concern
To Will, it feels simply uncanny that, in the middle of an earth-destroyer type of catastrophe, he would still have to find the means to fight against his fear of needles.
It’s not like he hasn’t faced creatures a million times more frightening - spine-chilling, horrendous monsters that would make anyone have a heart attack just in the case that they’re haunted by them in their dreams. However, regardless of the abnormal (or strange, one might say) events that Will had faced since he was just a little over his infancy, he was still a human, it seems. And the human fragility in him was still scared of needles.
Not just needles, of course. As a matter of fact, in the last months since he and the rest of the crew had faced their last challenge, a lot of more "mundane" things had been scaring him, to be honest.
First of all, they were not in California anymore. The sunny days seemed to be over, with him and his family being back to Hawkings. Eleven, his sister, was being trained day and night by Hopper, since they knew that the final battle against Henry could take place any time soon.
The battle, of course, was a concern. A deep concern. At least that should be. In the face of a disaster, it was expected that nothing else should matter to him as much as this final clash, the moment when everything could turn back to normal.
But that just wasn’t the truth. Something else mattered to him. A lot.
So much so that he felt like he was not in control of his body anymore, his thoughts running unsupervised to places he so much wished did not exist in his mind.
When he expected the least, the thoughts were back. It was almost like he was being possessed - and you better believe that, yes, Will Byers did know a thing or two about being possessed. But it was different. It really was.
The thing is, this time, that was nothing he could do to avoid being possessed. Not when the entity that was making him hallucinate while awake divided the same house with him.
But was it really a hallucination, though?
Sharing the house with Mike did not help him suppress his unwanted feelings. And yes, they were, indeed, extraneous for him. He had morals. Ethics. He had it all. He could not, in his righteous mind, consciously desire someone that was not his to take. Someone that was unattainable.
But none of it was conscious. It is not his conscience that responds whenever he sees Mike's deep black hair falling in his face in such an adorable, messy way, while he’s laughing at the bad jokes Jonathan tells when he's high on weed. It 's his heart. His lungs. His stomach. It's his spine that chills every time Mike hugs him. It’s his face that heats when Mike jokingly takes his shirt off to try proving a point that he is, in fact, gaining some muscles lately.
And, once again, Will had to ask himself if maybe - just maybe - this was not a hallucination after all.
Because he did remember. When the Squawk announced that the army would be conducting mandatory tetanus vaccinations with all of the high school students, the first thing Mike did was to offer himself to go with Will. “I know it can be hard for you…you know…after all that happened to you in the hospital back then… I can go with you, that is, if you want me to”.
And like that, it was settled. Mike would accompany him in the next morning, to make sure he would feel okay. Will suggested, at first, that he could just skip it, maybe simply not even showing up at his classes tomorrow. “Well, I don’t know… I mean, they might surely be unprepared to deal with the upside down, but I still think it would be best if you just take the shot”.
“Yeah…”, Will nervously replied, to which Mike responded with “you might be wise, but you’re still not immune to… I don’t know, falling in an infected nail or some shit like that. Well, just take it, okay? I’ll be there for you”.
Chances were he was probably, indeed, hallucinating. But about 10% of his soul thought that - well, hoped that, actually - he was getting it right. Because then why else would Mike care about his health? And why the hell would he have blushed when he noticed that Will was nervous with his proposal of accompanying him? He didn’t think Mike would blush by the thought of his fear of needles, so it really had to be something else, right?
When the morning came, they both left the house by bike. Before that, however, they sat together side by side at the breakfast table, eating cheerios while Mike’s father loudly complained about the politics in the news.
He could feel the smell of Mike’s perfume - fresh, somewhat mainly, alongside with the smell of the shampoo of his recently washed hair. And, when Jonathan told them about that one time where Will stood up against his older cousin Robert and pushed him to the ground for laughing at him, Mike tossed his right arm across Will’s back, pushed him closer to his own chest and said, amid chewing his bite of cereal “yeah, that’s how you go, Byers!”. When he took his arm off, however, the rest of his body did not follow its path back to the distance they were before, in a way that the two stayed close, knees brushing each other, until they finally left for school. The proximity felt almost like a thin layer of electricity was crepitating over their bodies, and the rush of blood Will felt going up to his cheeks could probably make a vampire out of their DnD campaigns pass out in a twenty-mile range.
When they both arrived at the school’s nursery, Will had been noticeably shaking, nervous just by the smell of the alcohol and the sterile instruments. As the nurse told them “you can come in boys, it’s your turn”, Mike responded that he would be taking his shot later that day, and that he came there just to accompany his friend.
The nurse, looking directly at Will, said “well, I can tell that you guys really are best friends”, with a tender smile on her face.
Mike sat in a small chair located outside the nursery, but still stood in Will’s eyesight. As the nurse took the needle closer and closer to his arm, Will swallowed hard, while shaking, but was brave enough to take the shot without breaking out of the place in a panicked and probably pathetic escape attempt.
When he was finished, Mike was standing outside - a whole palm taller than him -, and, while smiling, said “now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“Shut the fuck up, Mike. Seriously”.
Mike, seemingly without thinking for more than two seconds, intertwined his fingers with Will’s sweaty palm, for no longer than a moment. The gentle brush of skin alone was capable of making Will turn into a pink blushed mess.
“Hey, it’s just me, Will. I’ve got you. I always…” he paused, and the silence between them could pierce Will’s skin in a thousand different wounds.
“I mean, I’m here for you if you need me. You know that tetanus shots do give some fucked up reactions right? Tell me if you need anything during classes, okay?”.
“Yeah… I mean, yes. I’ll tell you if anything happens. Thank you, Mike”.
“Don’t worry, man. See you after school”.
“See ya”.
And, with that, Mike left on his way to the advanced calculus class. Will stood there, feeling like something fragile had just cracked inside his chest. “He does care about me”, Will thought, and it didn’t seem casual to him that friends, even best friends, would be so concerned about the possibility of a shot-induced fever. It certainly did not seem casual that the brush of thingers should be accompanied by such a charming smirk on his face, the lips curved upwards just enough to make his dimples peak out a bit.
He was doomed. Will Byers, most definitely, was doomed.