Work Text:
Historians will call them anything but.
“Hey, Will,” said Mike as he passes him, a bare acknowledgement that is merely a greeting, but it sends a fuzzy feeling into Will’s chest, warms his body up and keeps his heart pumping the circulation of blood to buzz around his body. The two words are enough to cause such havoc, the comparison of that one notation worth more than dozens of meaningless sentences Mike says as he fumbles over his words and throws out useless vocabulary. Will acknowledges enough to brush off as much of that as he can, fingers tucked against his palm and his nails digging into his skin, but he relishes in the idea that he is still considered a person worth liking on Mike’s opinions. A positive review from Mike was enough for Will to be able to hold onto.
“Hey, Will,” said Mike as he greets him. It hits him like a memory that he wishes would replay continuously, a momentous occasion before his stumbling into the woods, and he kicks his foot against his bed as he leans backwards, carefully engulfed in a warmth he regrets not reaching to feel earlier. Will remembers the way he had cowered, shy with his own differences, and Mike had opened the door to a million colours visible to only the two of them, painting a bright image of what life is like without thoughtless insults and broken apart vases of lifeless words. Will pushed away the nagging feeling that something is wrong with him when he was greeted with those who found what was wrong with him to be a normal, right thing. Will finds a comfort as Mike lets themselves be closer, and considerably, he enjoys the euphoria he receives as he lunges into the capturing of their companionship. As they become a label of best friends, the only one that Will feels is worth the title; the only one he feels is worth to be his first, and if careful enough, be the one that lasts forever.
“Hey, Will,” said Mike. Lifeless, a habit, no meaning wrapping it in a sweet bar of candy nor enveloping it in a seal that is marked with a kiss. Will feels his life torn away, brittle and sacred, scarring him as he hears the rumbling of thoughts bustle in his head. He feels naked and exposed, a raw emotion of nothingness that tears him apart from the inside.
“I love her.”
Will finds it in himself to not react outwardly, to not flinch or run away. He does not sulk as Mike admits and confesses and fools himself, and he does not break apart the walls that confine them as they discuss the troubles of the domestic love that Mike experiences with a person Will himself does not particularly understand. A person he sees as a close friend, but he knows well deep inside that Mike is his best friend. Was his best friend.
Now Will sees himself in a smile, a frown, a rotating clock that is flashed by the own trauma of his entire life. “My life started…” He wishes he was not there, listening, watching, hearing, seeing. Particularly, he does not wish he was there feeling.
Wishing to be able to cry, to be able to douse himself in flames and let himself burn the way his heart was rotting beneath the cores of his skin and his flesh. A bone of unnecessary cracks began to work its way to damage that day, broken and premature, his brain flooding with negatives he understood were not the things he would normally experience when in the state of being within a conservative presence of Mike. Suddenly, he feels himself.
And he feels abandoned.
The next time, he feels, he knows that no longer is Mike going to say a greeting to him with such passion or rarity anymore. He does not get to feel special, under the way he stares at Eleven and journeys into the void with his pockets filled with overestimated love. He does not understand why, but he does not question why when he realises that his best friend is no longer his. Nor a best friend. Nor, perhaps, a friend.
Will accepts it all.
The way he wishes Mike would still accept his differences, and once again, open up those doors that led to colours only they could see, painting an image of life just as the two of them. Perhaps it was not that originally, but Will is sure that he can see it smile upon him.
Its smile is sad.
But history hates lovers.