Work Text:
In the dark of a sewer, Mike really wants to kiss Bill, in front of everyone, one big celebratory kiss, we all made it, we all lived, we’re all alive.
He doesn’t do that. Instead he holds Bill’s gaze, presses their foreheads together and just breathes, in and out, for a moment. Holds that breath.
For a moment they are one.
*
At the hospital, they wait for Eddie’s prognosis, sleeping in shifts, two by three—Ben and Bev and Richie all wait together and now, at ass o’clock in the morning, it’s Bill and Mike’s turn. Mike had to put his hands on Richie, grabbing him by the shoulders and gently usher him out ( take my bed, take my car, get some rest, Richie, please ) to get him to leave, so determined to stay near Eddie. We all love him too, you know.
Not that the losers aren’t all tired. Not that he didn’t catch Ben with his head tipped back, snoring loudly. It’s just that Richie was that manic sort of tired, that was going to explode or collapse, the longer he kept running. Mike knows it. Mike’s been there.
They all collectively agree not to call Eddie’s wife, feeling a strange sort of possessive curl around their old friend. Privately, Mike thinks that’s a bad idea, sure that Myra Kaspbrak will storm in any way, biting them all in the ass, but oddly enough, she is not listed on Eddie’s emergency contact.
Mike gets Bill coffee from the shitty hospital cafeteria, the kind you get in those old machines that come in three flavors— mocha, french vanilla and hot chocolate —that mostly tastes stale and bland.
“I don’t know how you take it,” Mike says, apologetically handing Bill a cheap styrofoam cup. “I’m sure you get fancier stuff in LA but Derry doesn’t even have Dunkin Donuts.”
Bill laughs. It’s a nice sound, rolling over his skin, lighting up his wane eyes; tired, but warm, and content. Mike would like to see Bill laugh more, a real life, a private laugh just between friends, between them. He doesn’t want to tell him that he’s followed every interview he’s given, from magazines to publications to television joints. Followed him around for every book tour, keeping track of him. He doesn’t tell him that he never looked very happy; put together, charming, coherent, yes but happy...well you can’t tell what someone is really like from an interview, can you?
He had to know where all the losers were. He had to. But Mike knows it looks bad, admitting to internet stalking. Town lunatic and all.
“This is fine,” Bill says, taking a sip and wincing.
“Sorry,” he says, and a laugh bursts out of his chest as he sits down. “Finest espresso at Derry General, so they tell me,” Mike smirks.
“Just burned my tongue,” Bill mouths, words muffled, sticking it out at him in a familiar gesture and—
Suddenly Mike remembers being kids again, splashing around in the water on a hot summer day. Bill stuck out his tongue at him and mumbled does it look ok, because Bill’s tongue had turned bright green from his popsicle.
Mike stared for a little too long at the red of his lips, and before he could answer, Richie threw a blow up beach ball at him. DID YOU MAKE OUT WITH AN ALIEN? He asked Bill, before Eddie dunked him under the water.
“You okay, buddy?” Bill asks, leaning forward, closer, messy hair falling in his face, and no, Mike is here, in the present, peering too closely at his eyes. Mike staring for a bit too long than needed.
Mike, simply relieved his friends all came home and survived, is trying not to think about how they’re all going to leave again.
“Yeah,” Mike says. Once again, they’re close enough to share breath. Mike wonders what it’d be like to get just a bit closer and press his lips against Bill’s, to cross that last mile into the great unknown. “Just tired.”
*
Later, at the Derry Inn, Mike can’t sleep. He finds Bill at the bar, taking a sip of his drink, some dark amber liquid.
“I hope you paid for that,” Mike quips and Bill laughs, a little drunkenly. His voice seems heavier and warmer. His face is all red and splotchy. Mike aches, thinking of all the years he missed.
“Of course, I paid! I am leaving a very handsome tip,” Bill says, head cocked, winking, looking absolutely ridiculous. “Who do you take me for?”
Mike can’t help but laugh. Something infectious about Bill’s smile and laughter.
“Is getting drunk the best idea right now?” Mike asks gently, stepping closer. Eddie is still in the hospital. He’s going to be okay, according to all the doctors, but perhaps they should stay more alert.
“I’m celebrating,” he says, and there’s a slur in his voice that worries Mike. He takes a step closer to him, until they’re side by side, and hands Mike a glass of what looks like very fine brandy. Stuff Mike generally cannot afford.
“Our lives? Eddie recovering?”
“That!” Bill shouts. Mike winces. He wants to celebrate with Bill but worries they’ll wake up the landlords here. “Of course that!” He takes another swig of the overly priced liquid. “But mainly my divorce.”
“Oh, Bill,” Mike says sympathetically, stepping closer. He wants to—god, Mike doesn’t know, now with IT dead he simply craves so much he didn’t allow himself to do before. He wants to touch Bill, and pat him on the back, and say whatever he can to make him feel better. He wants to kiss the sorrow out of his mouth. He wants to run his hands all over his body and see just how much Bill has changed; but Mike doesn't know if he’s allowed. That moment back in the sewers, breath to breath, skin to skin, feels gone now, faded away. They are not bright summer kids anymore, but weary adults. “I’m sorry.”
Bill is different at this age. In his youth, he always had an effervescent, intense energy but he never looked so tired. So worn, red with too much alcohol consumption.
Bill shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I deserve it. I was never a very good husband.”
Bill’s stutter disappears drunk, even with a slur in his words. Was he always like that? Mike tries to remember.
“I can’t imagine you a bad husband,” Mike says. Bill smiles. It’s a sad, sad grin.
“You think too highly of me, Mikey,” he says softly, leaning in closer until he plasters himself against Mike, in an awkward, haphazard hug, pressing his small—when did he get so small? What happened to Big Bill? —body against his chest, head tucked under his chin. “You always thought I was the best and it’s really not true,” he mutters into his shirt.
Mike, drunk on Bill, perhaps, or urged on by the need to provide some comfort, kisses his temple, and buries his face in his hair. He smells like sweat and alcohol and fabric softener.
“Maybe,” he says. “But you’re our leader. We love you...I love you.”
Bill makes a noise that sounds like a sob. Mike wraps his arms around him and somewhere around them the glass of brandy shatters as it falls to the ground. What a pity, but Mike really needed to hold Bill right now. Bill is sweaty and warm and overheated and when he pulls away from him, he drops the glass of brandy ( shit, I guess I’m paying for that, Bill says), Mike kisses him.
Bill kisses back, without missing a beat, like this is just something they do now, some new phase in their relationship. It’s sudden and it doesn’t last long, teeth clicking drunkenly, but even when Mike pulls away, Bill is holding on to him, grabbing on to his shoulders, the fabric of his shirt balled up.
“You know,” Mike says, swallowing hard, swallowing heavy. He doesn’t get tongue tied often. He’s the local madman, the town loony, and other nasty things they’ve called him and he's’ given up on what people think of him. “I missed you.”
Bill’s face is blotchy red, eyes wet and teary. “I missed you and I didn’t even know that I did.”
Mike’s crying too, mouth tasting salty wet, when Bill kisses him again.
*
A week later, he and Bill visit Stan at his house in Atlanta. Eddie is still recovering, but more awake, alert, scheduled for physical therapy; he’ll be discharging soon. Richie stays at his side, and Ben keeps funding their hotel rooms in Derry, out of some endless CEO bank account. Mike thinks they’ll be okay while he and Bill take this detour.
Stan also had a hospital stay, recovering at his house now. Suicide watch is not a word his wife says, but Mike could tell she was thinking it, as they spoke on the phone.
When Stan sees them, he bursts into tears and Mike almost does the same, thinking of how he was the last person to have called Stan before he took his fateful bath.
You drove a man to suicide, the dark voice in his mind tells him. Mike tries to push it away, shove it in a little box in his head, but it doesn’t entirely work. He did this, repeats itself over and over.
Bill doesn’t waste time; he rushes over to Stan and hugs him, in front of his startled wife. He wraps Stanley in a tight hug, breathing into his neck. Mike desperately wants to hug Stan as well, hold and touch him, make it clear how much he means to him, to them all, grab onto tangible proof of life, but he is struck still by the sight of him—how strange it is, to see him like this, older, grey in his curls.
“I missed you,” Mike manages to spit out. He seems to be saying a lot lately.
There’s a lot he misses, really. Mike doesn’t think there was ever a truly carefree moment in his life; losing his parents, growing up black in Derry, growing up under Leory’s stern harsh life lessons will make sure of that. But with the losers, his soul was always light and free. Richie made him laugh and Eddie fussed over him and Beverly made him strive to be braver and Bill made him feel braver and stronger, they all did.
Stan smiles at him, specifically, waving him over. The bandages on his forearms and wrist stick out.
“Well...I’m glad I’m not dead,” he says, dryly. “Now that you’re all are here. And look, I didn’t even have to fight a clown.”
This is when Mike cracks, his chest caving in, eyes watering, and he finds himself clinging to Stan for dear life.
*
Mike sits outside on Stan’s back porch later, head in hands. He feels more than hears Bill come around, crack the sliding door open, sit down next to him. His presence is a heavy, warm comforting weight, the feel of Bill at his side again enveloping him.
“Hey,” he starts off, his voice in that soothing, easy-going cadence that he used to have as a child. “It’s not your f-f-ault,” Bill says, swallowing hard around his words. “It’s good he’s alive…they all are. We all are.”
Mike nods, acknowledging him but the words don’t quite hit, thinking of the chest wound that landed Eddie in the hospital, coughing up blood. The tightly wrapped bandages around Stan’s wrists, still recovering. The ring of scar tissue around his face.
“I'm sorry to have dragged you back to Derry,” Mike says. His chest aches. He can feel himself gearing up, ready to ramble, unable to filter himself. “I did it to stop IT, you know why, we all had to, it was your oath but I’m sorry I couldn’t stop you from being hurt, any of you—”
Bill grabs his hand, and Mike falls silent as he watches Bill bring his knuckles up to his mouth and kiss them, lightly and gently and reverently.
“I’m not,” Bill says.
*
Eventually, they go back to Derry. It kills Mike to leave Stan behind but Stan shakes his head before they go. I remember you, he told him. I’ll keep remembering you all.
Mike tries to let that comfort him.
Eddie is out of the hospital. It’s time for them all to leave.
Mike has some packing up to do, and a job to quit, a town to wave good riddance to.
When he’s done, he drags one suitcase down his library apartment. Waiting for him by his pick up truck is all the losers—Bill and Ben and Richie and Beverly and Eddie, all healed up, walking with a cane while he recovers. The only one missing is Stan, which makes his heart constrict in his chest, even as he tries to keep his last words in his mind.
Richie spots him first, which is evident with the way he loudly shouts, “MIKEY!” As if he never developed an inside voice, even after all these hears. “We came to help!” He says, grabbing his suitcase from his hands.
“Oh my god, stop,” Eddie says. “Stop. He can hear you! You’re gonna make him go deaf!”
“Well, just in case he couldn’t!”
“You’re gonna make me go deaf,” Eddie adds.
Mike laughs, warmth filling him. What a familiar old argument. “You guys didn’t have to come back,” he tells them, hefting his bag in the back of the pick up truck. “I could have done this myself.”
Ben shakes his head, going back inside to retrieve the rest of his stuff. “Losers stick together, man,” he says as he passes Mike.
“Yeah, even with my cane here,” Eddie says, half sarcastic. “I’m sure I can beat someone up with this.”
Bill steps forward, and throws in his own suitcase in the back. For a moment, Mike blinks, confused.
“Bill?”
“Where are you going?” Bill asks, arms folded over his chest, shifting from side to side. If anything, he was awkward. It was an odd look on him. “Any plans?”
“I just thought it’d outrun the daylight,” Mike says. “See some place not in this shithole.”
Bill leans over and kisses him; his mouth is dry, lips chapped, and he tastes vaguely like black coffee. All the same, it makes Mike’s bones ache, in the best way. He wants to grab Bill and tug him tightly against him, press up against him. He has horrible thoughts of fucking him in the trunk bed, with the stars above them. All kinds of terrible thoughts he really shouldn’t have, not about your oldest friend who just barely remembered you.
When Bill pulls away, Mike is gasping like a teenager who’s had his first kiss.
He may as well have.
“What was that for?”
“It means he likes you, Mikey! Mauh mauh!” Richie shouts at him, delighted.
Mike can feel his face heat up. He forgot the losers were watching and he has a brief flicker of embarrassment and shame, worried about how shocking kissing Bill of all people would be for them—but Beverly and Ben (when did he come back) are smiling at him, and Eddie is grinning like a mad man. Richie is clapping, which any other time would have felt sarcastic but his bright beaming eyes read as sincere to Mike.
Bill turns around, and flips them off. Well, actually, he just flips Richie off, he’s sure of it.
“I’m having a m-m-moment, guys, can you give us a bit?” Bill says. “You dicks,” he follows up.
Eddie and Richie crack up, even as Ben and Beverly pull them away, putting the last of Mike’s luggage in his truck. Ben waves cheerily at them, like an overgrown labradoodle.
Mike gets in the car, his skin burning hot. Bill sits in his passenger seat next to him, sliding in like he belongs there.
“Does everyone know about us?” Mike asks.
Us. Like they’re dating. Are they dating? Is that what a few kisses mean now?
Mike wouldn’t know. He’s never dated anyone.
Bill shrugs. “I didn’t tell them, they sort of just guessed,” he says.
“I don’t know if I can drop you off in LA,” Mike says, grabbing his prescription sunglasses from the glove compartment. “It’s a long way. I may stop elsewhere. See the sights.” This is his way of saying Bill can leave if he wants. He is under no delusions that Bill would want to stay with him for the whole drive.
“I don’t want to go to LA, LA is a s-s-shithole,” Bill spits out.
Mike cracks a grin, not daring to hope. “So what do you want?”
“I want to be with you,” Bill says, looking back at the losers. They’ve all gotten in their cars, and it looked like they were waiting for them.
For him?
“Are you all—”
“We’re following your lead,” Bill says. “Wherever you want to go.” He lowers his voice and bites down on his bottom lip. He reaches over to grab Mike’s hand in his, wrapping their fingers together, palm to palm. Bill is shockingly warm and Mike cannot help but gasp. “We’re not leaving you this time.”
Mike turns the engine on and grins.