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In the cool waters of the quarry, Bill cleans the blood off Mike’s face.
Mike stands in the shallow water up to his chest and Bill’s hands are slick across his face, thumb on his cheek bone, fingers sliding across his skin. Mike shivers, and it’s not from the cool temperature. The water is dirty, Eddie won’t stop complaining about it, but it doesn’t stop any of them from washing off the blood from the fight here—washing off their pain, their hardships, wash off all the last few decades in the water—like maybe they could go back in time and be the kids who played around in the quarry again.
Bill’s hands are warm and gentle and it makes Mike feel a little weightless, letting Bill touch him, his hand and fingers down his neck and face. Mike can’t remember the last time he’s been touched like this; calmly, gently, lovingly.
“You okay?” Bill asks, one hand on his shoulder, looking up at him. Mike didn’t expect to get so much taller than Bill, for Bill to be looking up at him, when Mike was always looking up to Bill growing up.
“I’m sorry,” Mike says, and this isn’t the place for it—dark confessions belong in dark places, not under the bright light of the sun, the cleansing water, their friends’ laughter, but it spills out. The guilt. The pain. The years of loneliness, distilled, all over Bill. “I’m sorry for lying, I’m sorry about drugging you, I’m—"
“Hey,” Bill says, still gentle yet firm, meeting his eyes. He cups his chin in both hands now, Bill’s thumb resting just under his lip, and a shiver goes down Mike’s spine, through his insides, a heavy warmth filling his guts. This isn’t the place for this; they both desperately need a real bath, and some privacy, but it doesn’t matter right now. Bill’s eyes are a blue you could drown in, even after all this time. His hair greyer, and more lines across his forehead. He’s aged in a way Mike couldn’t have dreamed, but he still looks at him and sees his boyhood crush.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Bill reassures him, and Mike thinks that can’t be true. You’re a madman, Mikey, the clown used to say to him in his dreams and if he’s honest with himself, he’ll keep saying it, long after Pennywise rests in peace.
“I do,” Mike says, voice heavy and low. His eyes burn and then—
Bill kisses him. Soft, sweet, yet burning. Mouth against his mouth. It’s not the best kiss; they both taste like nature, algae and moss and whatever else lurks in the quarry’s waters—but it’s not awkward. You think it would be but it’s not. Bill pulls away, mouth half parted, tongue in between his lips, cheeks flushed. He is still cupping Mike’s chin, holding him still between his hands, and he leans forward and closer to him, resting his forehead against his.
Mike waits for his friends to say something but he doesn’t hear them. It’s just him and Bill now, in the moment.
I love you, Mike thinks, I love you, I love you, I love you and he feels like he shouldn’t say it, like he couldn’t, like it’s too soon even though he thinks he’s loved Bill and all the losers for his whole life; he just wants to touch Bill again.
*
You're a madman, Mikey.
Mike can’t sleep. It’s beginning to be a problem.
He oddly didn’t have this problem back in Derry. Nightmares were rampant; long, slow moving dreams filled with clowns and sewers and blood. The threat of Derry closing in around him, suffocating him, ever-present—but he always slept through them. It was a part of life. Mike endured the nightmares, and the loneliness, and the hallucinations, knowing he was losing his mind slowly, but that was the price of staying in Derry. Mike learned to endure.
Take the boy out of Derry and it's a different story.
It’s different here, in Los Angeles...in Bill’s apartment, with the sound of street lights humming and cars honking in the background, a constantly alive city that doesn’t sleep and him with it. He doesn’t know how Bill can sleep through this.
He doesn't ask. It seems judgemental, country boy judging city boy, despite their shared roots, and he's not trying to, grateful for the place to stay. Bill's gracious enough to let him stay in his bachelor pad with him, after his wife served him divorce papers. Mike feels a little guilty about that as well, as if, if he hadn't dragged Bill across the country, this wouldn't have happened.
It’s not your fault, Bill told him, with a kind, self-effacing voice. She would have left anyway. I’ve been a shit husband.
He leaves his bedroom and pads his way over to the kitchen, debating whether to turn the light on or off or not. He can see fine; his eyes always well adjusted to the dark.
He doesn't expect to find Bill in the kitchen, sitting in the dark at a small kitchen table, gazing out into nothing.
“Bill?” Mike asks, squinting his eyes.
“Hey,” Bill says. His voice is quiet yet strong in the haze of Mike’s mind, standing out from all the rest of the noise. “Bad dream?”
Mike wonders if he’s still dreaming. The kitchen is tinged dark blue at this time of night, and Bill doesn’t look entirely real to him. Like he could disappear into this kitchen. Like Mike could turn around and see red balloons.
That’s bad, if he starts to think things aren’t real when they are, or real when they aren’t.
Mike shrugs his shoulders, feeling exposed, and vulnerable.
“I can’t sleep either,” Bill says, standing up and reaching into the fridge. He pulls out a beer, two of them—one for him that he opens up, and another for Mike, handing it out to him. Mike laughs as he takes it.
"What?" Bill says, his voice rising, teasing and a little playful. He missed this. He likes Bill playful. He loves the boy he grew up with but the man before him is newer to him, and he’s still feeling him out a bit.
"We're getting drunk already?"
“It’ll help you sleep,” Bill says, swallowing down some. Mike watches his throat work, the Adam’s apple bob and gets hit with a strange sort of longing so fast and hard it feels like a suckerpunch to the belly.
“Not in an alcoholic way!” Bill clarifies. “I’m past my hard drinking times. Think of it as a glass of warm milk.”
Mike grins, despite himself. “Hey Bill,” he asks, swallowing hard. He sips the beer, slowly at first, until it turns into a lot, half the bottle in one go. He could do the whole bottle, he thinks, all at once, if he really tried.
“Yeah, Mikey?” Bill says. There’s warmth in his voice, like a fire on winter’s night. The beer brings out a flush to his cheeks that makes him look brighter, or maybe Mike is imagining it. The longer Mike looks, the harder it is to remember what he’s supposed to be worried about.
“You’re real, right? This isn’t a dream.”
Bill blinks, taken aback. He steps forward, closer to Mike against the counter, until he could reach out and touch him. Bill chuckles, glancing down at the floor, running a hand through his hair; it’s started growing longer since Derry, getting a little wilder. Bill called it slipping into his feral writer phase . “Well, if I wasn’t real, I wouldn’t tell you, would I?”
Mike swallows. “Oh, that’s very reassuring of you,” he says, and Bill barks a laugh.
When Mike finishes his beer, Bill reaches out for his hand, sweaty palm on the back of his, and sliding up his arm.
“Bill?”
“Do you still think I’m not real?”
Mike takes a moment before answering.
“I don’t know,” he says. He laughs, rubbing the back of his head. It’s not very funny but Mike has to laugh. He has to, the alternative is worse. “I guess I’ll find out.”
Bill nods and takes his hand, wrapping his warm palm around him, fingers interlocking.
“Come with me,” he says.
*
Mike can’t sleep, but Bill drags him back to his room, and together they slip into bed. If it’s odd or weird for two grown men to be sharing a bed, well, Mike thinks he doesn’t care, and neither does Bill.
It’s just what losers do; they’re there for each other, whatever they need to be.
With Bill, the nightmares don’t go away, and the inability to sleep in such a large town, in such a large space, doesn’t entirely pass.
But Mike doesn’t lie awake in bed anymore. He rolls around and wraps his arms around Bill when he wakes up, and settles into a dreamless, soothing sleep.
Sometimes Bill wakes up, and kisses him softly in the middle of the night. Mike’s never had a dream like this, so he thinks it must be real.