Work Text:
Before everything, before marks of feathered wings against shoulder blades, before delicate flowers growing up two boys’ biceps, before flames on a delicate wrist and then circling waves just above another wrist, Mike thinks he’s in love with a gentle touch and the warmest brown eyes a thirteen year old has ever seen and he’s not thinking about their marks because he knows what he feels.
His parents never got the chance to tell him, never got the chance to sit him down and tell him the truth. His grandfather never tells him either, he is an old man who is rough around the edges and does not do serious talks such as this. He is not told: You were not made to be loved, but he learns...eventually. His grandmother tells him it doesn’t make him any lesser than someone with a mark, but he is not so fast to believe her, instead humming in agreement so she will leave him be.
His skin is all negative space, his body empty and rough, and people ask of the absence of his mark before they ask of his name; people deem him less worthy, less human and he is the boy the universe forgot.
He grows, never trusting his own body. He grows to hate the curve of his shoulders, hates callousness of his hands and darkness of his skin, hates that his skin is filled with small and ugly pink and brown scars from work on the farm rather than the clean, beautiful lines and colors of marks everyone else has. Rather, he learns to distract himself, learns to plant flowers with patience and remains quiet at the dinner table, learns to never look at himself in the mirror too long and fills his room with the quiet company of beautiful green plants which bloom with brightly colored flowers.
Somewhere along the line, he falls out of the childish affections he had once felt for Eddie. Now he listens to him talk about Richie like he hung the stars in the sky. The two of them, they make sense, with their flowers growing on their arms, and they seem to look at each other as if they could not imagine a world without the other. Of course, how could they not? The two of them were meant to be. Two flowers growing. They would never need anyone but each other.
He watches the same happen when Bill and Stanley are together, both of them with birds soaring on their shoulder blades, beautiful black lines which come to life with each movement. It seemed Bill came to life with Stan and as the months passed, they became inseparable. Bill was different after he met Stanley, Mike noted how being around Stanley seemed to calm him and he stuttered far less when Stanley was near, and rarely ever when Stanley’s hand was in his. Stanley was different around Bill, too. Away from him, he was a nervous boy, he’d wring her wrists together and file his nails until they were all perfectly even, but around Bill he was able to let go of his anxieties a bit more.
Mike being near them makes him long for that love, that sense of belonging. He feels it, in a small way, with his friends, who all have marks which are, in some way, a form of nature. They’re all meant for each other in that way, except Mike. He feels out of place with them. He has no mark, he does not belong with his nature-marked friends. This, Mike learns as he grows up. They would, at some point, leave and no longer need nor want him. He learns to live and accept this truth, just as he learned long ago that he was forgotten and unworthy of that eternal love.
True loneliness is a feeling Mike discovered the first night he is sixteen. They are all at his farm, it’s nearing two in the morning and they’re gathered around a fire to beat back the cold of the summer night. The stars are beautiful. The stars are beautiful and Beverly is laying, sprawled out on the grass with a cigarette tucked loosely between her delicate fingers. Eddie and Richie had gone inside the moment it got cold, Bill and Stanley going inside not long after them.
“Happy Birthday, Mike,” Ben whispers, finding his hand under the blanket Mike’s wrapped up in and squeezes gently. The boy smells of honey and old books and he is the warm and Mike leans into him and they’ve always been like this, but something feels different, with more meaning, with a deeper meaning somehow. He’s holding Mike’s hand and Mike’s head is on his shoulder and Mike wishes this moment would last forever.
Moments later, Beverly hums from where she is beside Ben, smoke swirling around her. “Happy sixteenth, Mikey boy.” She sounds as if she’s making a joke with a soft laugh on her lips, but her tone is soft and quiet in a way that’s so unlike her it shocks Mike. Her bright eyes are closed, as if she doesn’t care about the beautiful stars above them, only about the smoke in her lungs and feeling of the cold ground against her back. She shifts so her head is resting on Ben’s lap and her free hand is tangled in his. For a moment, Mike imagines what it would be like to be with them, but then he thinks oh and Beverly has stopped laughing, but Mike may as well begin to.
He’s here, lit up by a fire not unlike the one on Beverly’s wrist, only a few hours after he’s turned sixteen and thoughts of how he will never feel this way again swarm his mind. Thoughts of how he will never feel alive if he is not with them fill his mind and he may as well start laughing. There’s nothing but the crackle of the fire and them and then Ben pulls their hands from beneath the blanket and presses a soft his to the back of his hand. Or maybe he should be crying. He doesn’t know anymore.
There’s learning to drive and skipping classes to go swimming and then skipping classes to sit by the water because the water’s too cold now and there are his hands and there are their hands and there is the way they all seem to fit so perfectly, even Mike who doesn’t belong with them, who isn’t supposed to be with them.
There’s thoughts of a world where he was not forgotten, where he is not filled with the deep set loneliness he cannot even shake when Beverly holds on hand and Ben holds the other. He stays up most nights thinking about this, wondering if a world exists where he is not lonely, where he is meant to be with them and not left on his own; he wonders if there exists a world where soulmates do not exist, not like this, a world without marks, where everyone’s skin is as empty as his and he is not filled with the constant feeling that they will leave him, will realize he is not meant for them. He thinks, perhaps, in that world he is happy.
They’re skipping class again, at the lake again. Beverly drove Ben and Mike out to the lake after lunch and Eddie and Richie are with Bill, who will all be coming when Stanley finishes the test he has that class.
Beverly is skipping rocks, or rather she’s trying and failing at skipping them across the water’s surface. Ben is laughing as they sink beneath the surface and Beverly keeps turning around and saying: if you think this is so funny, why don’t you give it a go and Ben keeps telling her he will but never moves from where he and Mike are sat on the bed of her truck.
Mike wonders why he is always left with the two of them, as if the universe has now remembered he exists and is now playing a cruel joke on him, showing him what he is missing. As if the universe wants to remind him he will never have what he wants most in this world, to shove it down his throat.
“The rocks are rigged!” Beverly shouts from the lakeside, throwing a handful of rocks with all her might and they break the calm surface of the lake. Ben laughs harder at this, leaning on Mike as Beverly walks back to them, rolling her eyes at him.
“Rocks can’t be rigged, Bevs,” Mike says. He’s still looking at the water, pretending he’s focused on the water, his eyes are unfocused.
There’s a beat of silence, then Ben. “You okay?” he asks, his voice soft and quiet and Mike isn’t sure it was any louder than a whisper. He hums affirmatively in response.
“You sure, Mikey boy?” Beverly asks.
Mike shifts uncomfortably and for a moment he wants to tell her not to call him that, but instead pulls a knee to his chest and shifts his weight forward slightly, away from Ben slightly. He wants to move back, but knows it would make him seem more nervous than he already is, he is so nervous. He closes his eyes and speaks: “What do you think my mark would be?” His voice is so quiet the rustling wind in the trees could have drown him out had Ben and Beverly not been paying so close attention to him. He waits a beat before lifting his eyes to look at them, bringing his calloused hand to brush against the back of his neck. “Forget I said anything,” he mutters. “It’s not like it matters anyways.”
“What would you want it to be?” Ben asks softly.
Like yours.
Instead, he shrugs. “Flowers maybe? I like flowers.” He pauses. Thinks of his mother for a moment and adds, “A rose, I think.”
“Flowers makes sense,” Ben softly agrees.
There’s shuffling around him and Beverly’s on his other side, warm against him and her hand comforting against his back. Her voice is quiet and soft and unlike her, but like the night he turned sixteen. “Flowers make sense,” she echoes, but continues. “We all have nature marks, that’s why we all fit together so well.” She sounds a bit out of place, like how Mike always feels.
“I don’t,” he mutters and for a second, hopes they haven’t heard him. This is it, this is the end, he tells himself. This is the moment they out him for what his is, an outsider, someone who isn’t and never was supposed to be here with them; they are all pieces of the puzzle he’s the piece that never fits, the extra piece that accidentally ended up in the box, and they all know it.
“Mike,” they say together, both in a tone he knows all too well, a tone he’s been hearing his whole life, that tone of pity.
“Forget it,” he says. Loud. Clear. He wants them to think he’s serious, but doesn’t know himself if he is or not. The other four show up before anyone can press the issue any further and Mike is thankful for this.
They’re around the back of the school before classes start, Beverly, Richie, and him, smoke escaping their lips as they speak. Richie’s fingers are wrapped in bandages from a fight and Beverly keeps forgetting to flick off the ash and Mike keeps reminding her, as if it’s important at all, and she simply smiles back at him. She mentions skipping last class and throws back her head to brush red curls from where they had settled in front of her eyes. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to stop himself from thinking about her soft hair and her kind eyes and her bright smile and –
And it’s wrong of him to think of her like this. She has a soulmate, she has Ben. She does not want him, she will never want him, and he will never be wanted. He’s only here now, filling space and borrowing her cigarettes so he can spend an extra twenty minutes with her despite the burn the smoke leaves in the back of his throat, wishing he was made for them, for her, for someone, anyone, but he’s not and he needs to accept that.
Graduation is nearing and all they can talk about is escape plans. Drawing out maps in college applications and scholarships and tickets out of this town, drawing out paths that, somewhere along the way, stopped leading to each other to somewhere around New York, stopped leading them back to him because he was never meant to be with them.
When he starts listening again, they’ve moved from the subject and he doesn’t know what they decided. They probably decided not to. They’re all talk these days. With graduation so close, no one wants to risk their chance at leaving this town. This town has nothing left for them, it never did, and no one can wait to be free. He closes his eyes, breathes out, and tosses his cigarette at the trashcan beside Richie.
“Mike, you suck,” Richie says when he bends down to pick it up and toss it out with his own cigarette. Beverly tosses hers away as well and starts walking back inside and Mike follows.
“You suck,” he answers as Richie catches up and falls into step with him.
It’s still dark out when they show up at his window at one in the morning on a Monday.
“Sneak out with us,” they say. Or rather Beverly says it while Ben stands quiet beside her.
“If my grandfather finds out, he’ll kill me,” Mike is saying as he’s grabbing his jacket and slipping on his shoes and pulling the window up more so he can climb out.
They end up driving around, like they had when they skipped classes when they were sixteen, and Mike thinks they’ll end up at the lake like they did when they were sixteen.
“I didn’t think you’d agree so easily,” Ben says from the passenger seat. The radio is off and silence surrounds them. Mike hopes they won’t turn it on.
“Neither did I,” is his quiet reply. Ben looks as if he has more to say, but he stay quiet, instead opting to gently brush shoulders with him as his hand dances around Mike’s. Beverly speeds up and her hand has slipped from the gear shift to flickering between touching Mike’s hand and his arm and his shoulder and his leg.
They keep doing this. They keep coming to his window and taking him driving at night. They keep touching him, brushing hands with him, sitting so close their legs touch. They keep inviting him places. They keep picking him up in the morning and driving to school with him sat between them in Beverly’s truck.
And Mike keeps getting lost in it, in all of it. He keeps thinking about them, about him, about all of him. He keeps thinking about how alive he feels with them and that night he was sixteen and first felt this way. He keeps wanting to say: Stop, stop before I fall too far in love, before I can’t quit you and you break my heart, but never does. He tells himself it’s far too late anyways, it has been too late since he was sixteen. After all, he was never good at accepting the fate the universe handed to him; he was never good at giving up things he wants and he wants this – them – more than anything else in the world.
It’s raining and he’s sat on the windowsill in Ben’s room, cigarette in his hand. Beverly joins him, plucking the cigarette from his hand and taking a drag. Mike doesn’t protest her, only watches the serene look on her face as she watches the rain fall outside.
“What you thinking about, darling?” she drawls in an easy accent and Mike laughs softly.
“Soulmates,” he answers, easy, unlike the last time.
“Bullshit,” Beverly replies, leaning her head against the glass to look at him.
Mike’s eyes follow a car down the street as he hums in response, though he wants to say: you and Ben are happy, you wouldn’t know.
Beverly is silent for a moment, smoke filling the space between them, before she gently fans it away and her serene look is replaced with one of seriousness. “I mean it,” she tells him. “Benny and I have each other, sure, but it’s not what everyone makes it out to be. It’s not some magical thing like everyone says it is, where you don’t have to try because you do. We’re still learning how to be together, how to do this, but every time I get something right, god, it’s the best feeling in the world and you shouldn’t miss out on that because you don’t have some bullshit mark. That’s not what it’s about, yeah? It’s about love, and some mark doesn’t change or affect whether you love someone or not. It doesn’t matter.”
Mike wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of her statement, he really does, but he swallows it down because Beverly has always meant best. Now she’s looking at him, and he’s thinking oh again and again and again like he had that night he was sixteen and the laugher is replaced with a want to cry, which he blinks back.
He swallows, then quietly, oh so quietly, he says, “I have to go,” but Beverly’s hand is on his before he even manages to move.
“Don’t,” she rushes out, followed by a soft “Please,” and she’s sounds so desperate that Mike can’t find it in himself to leave her. The desperation in her voice is the same desperation he’s felt for as long as he’s understood his place in the world and despite the fact that every bone in his body is yelling at him to leave before it’s too late, he can’t bring himself to leave her. He had always feared being left, had always been left, and there was no way he could ever leave her, not now, not ever. He breathes in, breathes out, relaxes, and Beverly’s hand is heavy on his, though she’s barely touching him.
They sit in silence, Beverly not moving her hand and Mike not pulling away. They both seem frozen in place, Mike carefully watching the door Ben left through while Beverly’s eyes never leave Mike.
The moment is broken when Ben walks in, a bowl of popcorn in his hands and a two liter bottle of pop tucked under one arm while a movie is tucked under the other. He unloads it all on his bed before looking to them, his eyes instantly catching where their hands touch. Mike instantly pulls his hand away from Beverly’s and looks everywhere except at them.
“Did you tell him about my idea?” Ben asks.
“Didn’t get that far,” is Beverly’s reply, though it leads Mike to look between them now, curious and confused.
Ben pulls his desk chair to them, sitting in front of Mike and pulling Beverly’s hand into his, his thumb gliding over where fire was printed on her wrist. Gently, he pulls Mike’s hand to his as well, gliding his thumb over the blank skin as he did with Beverly. “You don’t have to agree, hell I don’t even know if you feel how I…how we…feel,” he starts, nervously looking at Mike’s wrist, at the hand he’s holding. He’s stumbling over his words when Beverly interrupts, soft and bold, and so like her.
“We thought you’d like to get a tattoo,” she says, touching his wrist like Ben is. “One like ours, so no one would ever doubt that you’re…well, ours.”
Mike’s quiet, staring between the two of them, a smile slowly creeping onto his face. His voice is quiet, but they had never had trouble hearing him when he spoke softly, “You…you want me?”
Beverly laughs, throwing her arm around his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek and Ben’s kissing his hand and his wrist as she tells him: Well of course we want you, how could we not? For the first time in his life, Mike doesn’t feel that desperate loneliness, that anger at the universe and it having forgot him, because despite that, despite his empty skin, he is wanted. They want him, they want him, they want him. They’re not going to leave, this time he won’t be left, but they want him to mark himself as theirs, to mark himself as the universe should have the day he was born. Mike feels alive, he always has with them, but this time, there is no doubt in the back if his mind, no thoughts that they will leave him one day. They are his, and he is theirs, forever now.