Chapter Text
Mike stirs as his worn-out college mattress dips under his arm.
It's not quite enough to drag him all the way into consciousness. Not when the motor of his typewriter is barely cool. Definitely not when Will's alarm is yet to go off at some unholy hour before his shift.
He shoves his face deeper into the pillow and exhales
A minute later, a spring groans in protest under the unfamiliar shifting weight.
Mike cracks open one eye.
The room is dark. Moonlight peeks through the gap in the curtains, splitting the room in two and providing Mike with just enough contrast to squint at the bed that's pushed against the opposite wall.
It's empty.
His sluggish brain takes a few seconds to process that.
He shifts his gaze across the room and finally notices the figure sat at the edge of his bed.
Morning-Mike— well, Midday-Mike at least— might have connected the dots there a little faster. In his defence against his more competent daytime counterparts, his glasses are still on the nightstand.
Mike blinks, one eye then the other. Like a frog, his sleep-addled brain supplies vaguely.
He squints.
He doesn't need his glasses to recognise the mop of chestnut hair, or the slope of shoulders trying to take up less and less space, or the widened neckline of the New Order T-shirt exposing one collarbone.
"Will?" he croaks.
Will gasps softly. And freezes.
"…Sorry."
Mike blinks again. He pushes himself up onto one elbow, his back cracking unpleasantly at the shift, and shakes his hair out of his eyes. He fumbles blindly for the glasses on his nightstand and shoves them onto his face.
Will, properly in focus now, is perched awkwardly on the edge of the mattress, hunched over himself like he got halfway through committing to the action of sitting down before realising that he probably shouldn't have. He's clutching his pillow against his chest with one arm, like a shield.
"What happened?"
Will doesn't answer straight away.
In the watery moonlight, Mike registers the damp strands sticking slightly to Will's forehead, and the tear tracks shining faintly on his pink cheeks. Something tugs in his chest at the sight.
"Nightmare," Will says eventually, voice tiny and hollow.
Mike's eyes flick across his delicate features. "Bad one?"
Will's eyebrows twitch up in the middle as he heaves in a shaky breath. "…Yeah."
Mike's had enough sleepovers with Will, from his own basement to sketchy Midwestern motels to their cramped freshman dorm, to have developed a pretty watertight bank of nightmare protocols. He tries to shuffle up against the headboard, but the question of milky hot chocolate or Game Boy dies on his tongue as quickly as it had formed.
The fabric of his shirt pulls tight with the aborted movement.
Mike frowns, glancing down.
Will's fist is tangled in the front of it. The cotton is bunched between his fingers, knuckles pale with how tightly he's holding on.
Mike stares at the hand distorting the lightning bolt across David Bowie's face on his old shirt. Slowly, Mike's chin lifts, then his eyes follow.
Will is staring down at his own hand too, like he wasn't aware of it until Mike tried to sit up.
He blinks, eyes glassy, then his fingers open all at once. He yanks his arm back as though Bowie's face had burned him.
"Um. Sorry," Will mutters, blinking rapidly and pushing himself up off the mattress. "I— I didn't mean to wake y—"
"You didn't," Mike leaps to reassure him.
Will stops in his tracks, confusion blooming across his wide-eyed stare.
Mike scrubs a hand over his face in an attempt to wake up the rest of his brain, his fingers bumping awkwardly into his glasses. "Okay, I mean— you did," he amends, "but I don't care."
Will hovers beside the bed now, still clutching a pillow. "I— okay. I'll just…" Will trails off, taking a small step back. Mike looks him up and down, mussed hair to too-short pyjama pants and one socked foot, as he starts to turn around.
A hand darts out from under the duvet before Mike's brain can fully catch up, and wraps around Will's wrist, long fingers encircling it easily.
When he speaks, he can't quite explain why he says what he says. Especially not when his bed is a twin at best, and Will's own is three paces away, to be exact.
"You can stay."
Will's eyes snap from their hands up to Mike's face and down again. His eyes look huge, his head is cocked to one side in confusion. It's cute, he thinks distantly.
"Here," Mike adds for clarity when Will makes no motion closer or further apart, nodding his chin at his own mattress. "If you want."
The soft light catches on his Adam's apple as he swallows. "It's fine," he says automatically, in the same cadence as someone might say sorry she's out, this is her son, or perhaps your total is eighteen bucks, cash or card. "I didn't mean to—"
"Will." Mike squints at him through crooked frames. "Dude. Just stay."
Will hesitates.
"You sleep better next to someone after a nightmare, right?"
Will sighs, a little defeated, and shrugs one shoulder.
"… I mean, yeah, I guess—"
"Cool. Problem solved," Mike smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he looks up at Will.
Will's teeth bite down on his bottom lip. "But you don't need to—"
"And I'll sleep better knowing you're not over there shaking like a leaf.
Will huffs softly. Stubborn to a fault when it comes to— in his mind— inconveniencing someone. He is yet to grasp that Mike wants to be inconvenienced by him. They're best friends, that's his job.
"I'm not shaking."
"You are."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are." Without really deciding to, Mike lets go of Will's wrist to scoot closer to the wall until he feels it pressing against the ridges of his spine. He yanks his pillow across and lifts the edge of the duvet invitingly. "C'mon, Will. I won't bite."
Will stares down at the empty space, feeling the warmth radiating from under Mike's covers. He throws his head back for a moment in some sort of silent plea to whoever might be listening, sets his jaw, and climbs in next to Mike.
Flat on his back and stiff as a board, staring at the ceiling.
Suddenly, Mike finds himself feeling a lot less tired.
"You can relax, you know," Mike teases, reaching over to nudge Will's arm with his hand.
Will turns his head to the side, cheek squishing slightly against his pillow where his face lays much closer than Mike had expected it would, and swallows.
"I am relaxed," he murmurs.
Mike is about to argue, but within seconds of looking Mike's way, Will seems to nestle into the mattress with a little more ease. He tugs the duvet up and tucks it under his chin.
So Mike smiles instead. "Good."
Will smiles back.
He shifts, curling ever so slightly closer. He smells like the laundry detergent his mom had sent him to college with a box of, a hint of turpentine from the studio, and something so inextricably Will, something he doesn't catch very often any more. Mike only notices it now because of how close Will is, closer than he's been in… a long time.
His eyes are darting around Mike's face, like he wants to say something. He shivers.
Mike tries to wait patiently. Instead, in trying to mirror Will's shape and settle his head fully on one side, he jams the frame of his glasses into his nose.
He winces, hisses. "Stupid things," he grumbles, tugging them off and instantly missing how the lenses had granted him permission to notice the way the muscle jumps in Will's jaw, or how his pupils grow to envelop the pretty hazel around them.
He's not so farsighted that he can't make out the corner of Will's mouth twitching up, though. Unfocused, he smiles back.
"Uh, sorry, could you just—" Mike cuts himself off as he pushes up onto one elbow again. He reaches across Will, intending to place his glasses down on the nightstand in a calm and normal way. In doing so, his arm manages to buckle underneath him, causing him to practically fall on top of Will. Will squeaks and stiffens at the sudden weight led on top of him.
Mike drops the glasses down gently and brings his other hand down by Will's side for stability. Before he can fully shift off and apologise, he drops his forehead to Will's chest and chuckles, feeling his head rise as Will take a sharp breath in. He lifts his head after a moment and rests his chin in the same place, blinking at a now slightly-fuzzy Will once again.
"I could probably have just, like, handed them to you," Mike murmurs, grinning at the way that he can still make out form and colour, specifically Will's face and the climbing blush across it, "instead of laying on top of you. Sorry."
Will doesn't say anything, just keeps breathing a little shakily, chest rising and falling and taking Mike's head with it.
Mike heaves himself off of Will and flops back down on his side, slightly closer this time, so that he doesn't shiver with his back flush against the landlord-special dorm wall.
Will is still staring out at their room, at the empty space where Mike had been leaning on him. He shivers again.
Come to think of it, regardless of having shuffled away from the cool plaster, Mike is a little cold as well.
Before his sleep-deprived brain can weigh in on how weird this might be, he stretches an arm out. He scoots his hand between his duvet and Will's shirt until his fingers wrap around Will's upper arm.
"You cold?" he adds, because something feels missing.
After a beat, Will murmurs back, "Yeah," though it sounds sort of far-away.
Mike hums in agreement anyway. Something about doing this with Will feels distantly familiar.
His arm is a little too stretched out to be comfortable. His fingers flex against Will's shirt sleeve automatically. Not to pull him over exactly, just— to encourage him. Giving him an option. Should he choose to move.
Will shifts, barely, but it's enough that his shoulder bumps into Mike's chest instead of hovering a few inches apart. He may have been cold, but he certainly feels warm now. Mike seeks the heat out instinctively, his knee bumping against Will's leg, his arm settling heavier across his chest.
"This okay?"
"Yeah." Will's voice is softer now, hardly more than a whisper.
It is nice, Mike decides, to feel the steady in for two, out for two rise and fall of Will's breathing through the thin cotton. He punctuates the thought with a smile into the few-inch gap between his head and Will's neck.
He's almost asleep again when Will speaks, tone flat.
"He got you."
Mike cracks one eye open.
"What?"
"In the dream."
"Oh."
Mike exhales slowly through his nose. He plays with the hem of Will's sleeve as he consults which nightmare protocols he could initiate without letting go of Will.
"Well, he picked the wrong guy. I happen to know this sorcerer and his magical twin sister who took him down."
Will lets out a soft huff of air. Almost a laugh.
"Maybe that should be my idea for my next creative writing brief. Move over Avengers. I'm gonna make a much better comic. Called…" he takes a deep breath in, "the Wonder Twins!"
That gets a giggle out of Will, and Mike is delighted. His eyes drift closed again.
Very slowly, Will lifts a hand up under the covers, the tips of his fingers just brushing Mike's arm at first. When Mike doesn't react, or shove him off, or whatever insane reaction Will's worried about, he holds on to Mike's forearm properly. Squeezes once, then once more quickly.
Thank you, it means, in their long-dormant code. Mike isn't sure when they had stopped adding new entries.
Mike cracks an eye open and can make out the moonlight glinting on Will's front teeth where they bite down on his bottom lip, in a poor attempt at suppressing a smile. Warmth curls in Mike's chest as a grin spreads slowly across his face.
Will tips his head to the side slightly, and rolls his eyes.
"Go to sleep, you dork," Will whispers, the smile evident in his voice. "I have to be up in, like, four hours for work."
"Okay, okay," Mike laughs. His eye falls shut and his thumb slips inside the short sleeve of Will's shirt. "Night, Will."
"Goodnight, Mike."
The room settles, rejoining the quiet of the night on the other side of the window.
Mike’s arm is still draped loosely around him. Will's hand is still warm against Mike's arm.
It feels nice. Feels right.
Mike drifts off before he can ask Will if he agrees.