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The bible’s pages caught flame in an instant. Paper curling in on themselves. Turning the clean paper as ashy and dark as the words contained inside its leather binding. It laid there, in a world of destruction, showing him no golden path to heaven. No help to save him from this hell. Only damnation, only death reeked around him.
Perhaps that was how it had to be. Mike was entangled in an ungodly world, in a line between reality and illusion. Where the demons they spoke about came to life to haunt him, though these were so, so different. He was a boy, a rough-housed, tired, boy and he loved another boy. A boy who seemed more likely to have hung the sun up in the sky than God. Maybe the church ladies had been right about people like him, about God’s love only able to accept so much, only able to go so far. Maybe they were right about this damnation; maybe they would smile when he died. Knowing he deserved it.
Oh, that was another thing, Mike Wheeler was going to die. He wasn’t quite sure when he figured it out, when it clicked that headaches and nosebleeds and hallucinations were signs of Vecna. They weren’t things he could ignore anymore.
He just had to hold out a little longer. Make it to the end of the week and they would either all be dead or they would live. The plan was a thing of too many moving parts. Banking more on anger and revenge and hope than a tangible solution. It was all they had left, those emotions.
Because this monster had ruined them all. He’d taken the little healing his friends' bodies had and torn away their stitches. Letting them bleed out once again. Mike didn’t think they could sew up their wounds anymore.
The thoughts involuntarily filled his mind back up; Max died. Eddie died. Dustin’s a shell of himself. Lucas won’t speak. Nancy’s half dead already, pushing herself into every feeble plan. Jonathan’s shaking himself apart and floated away with weed. Steve’s hardly held together with stitches and prayers. El doesn’t think she’s good enough to save them all. They couldn’t find Holly’s or Mom’s or Dad’s bodies in the wreckage.
I’m going to die, I’m going to leave him behind.
Mike took another swig of the vodka bottle he’d been nursing. The thing was half empty making him a little hazy, a little light on his feet, and a hell of a lot more impulsive. Thus the half charred bible.
He poked the end with the stick so the flame spread around it evenly. The edges of the leather blackening and curling into itself, as though trying to preserve the words of God. The smell of burnt hair added to the stench of sweet death he was choking on. Adding to the taste of vodka and electricity in his mouth.
Standing on the edge of the Quarry as he had so many years ago, Mike looked down into the bottomlessness of the drop. The water long gone with the Upside Down leaking into their world. Leaving only the scarred earth below. Could this be the same place they pulled out Will’s fake body? The same place Mike tried to jump off and contemplated it a dozen times more? It seemed that those were the only memories the Quarry would hold.
Death.
Mike may not be jumping off but he wasn’t wearing headphones either. He couldn’t force them over his ears, couldn’t get himself to admit that this was the end. That even those hadn’t saved Max from her fate. Without them he could accept the fact that he would do anything to keep them safe, to save them. He would run into the flames knowing he was only going to die in a couple hours more. Saying he had a chance at life was only a disappointment when he didn’t make it. Saying that he’d see the end of the week was a far off hope that could never succeed.
He kept drinking to settle the thoughts in his head. Kept tilting the bottle over his chapped lips to hide the fact that he was going to die. That he was shriveling and couldn’t tell if he was running towards or away from death’s doors.
The leftover pages floated in the red streaked sky. Swirling in the too cold air. Flames still alight as they desperately tried to float away. Burning them in the air, turning the words to falling ash right back to the ground. Not even God’s words could find heaven in a place like this.
Mike didn’t think he believed those words anymore. Those mornings where the Wheelers were all stuck in a pew, forced into nice clothes and smiles to look presentable seemed so miniscule to everything else. How could they sit there and believe God would save them? God hadn’t saved Will, Joyce and Hopper had. God hadn’t saved Max or Eddie, no one had been able to save them. He hadn’t saved any of them, leaving children to save his precious creation.
Even the apocalypse was a little boring compared to what the saints and preachers had written and shouted and prayed.
The sky wasn’t on fire. The world wasn’t flooded. No famine raged the land. No drought killed all living things.
All things considered it was mostly filled with moments like this. Places that existed in the inbetween of adrenaline and crashing. The peace before the storm, long enough that Mike could finally process all the fucked up things that were happening around him. The apocalypse was mostly sitting around, waiting and arguing over the plan to defeat Vecna. Patching each other's wounds and hearing muffled cries behind closed doors. Scavenging for any food left in the picked over town. Hiding from Demogorons that had traveled through the gates, finding the corrupted Hawkins an adequate home.
The apocalypse was Mike standing in the middle of nowhere Hawkins, Indiana, on a street that used to hold his childhood home. It was burning the bible he found in the ruins of his house with one of Jonathan’s lighters. It was drinking a vodka bottle by himself to banish all the fear inside him. To warm his insides from the ever present Upside Down cold.
Something to his left crunched- a broken branch, stepping on glass, dodging ruins. He spun around, a longsword in his free hand pointed to the chest of the attacker. He made sure his hand was curled around the bottleneck and his thumb placed over the opening. Vodka was a rare commodity he’d rather not lose over some Demo-creature.
Wil raised both his hands in the air in a sign of peace, “Whoa, it’s just me.”
The tip of the blade rested over Will’s heart. One wrong swipe, one gentle shove and it would have cut through skin. It would have pierced his heart.
Mike hurriedly sheathed the blade. He wasn’t sure where Hopper found the thing but Mike had taken it before it was offered to anyone else. A real longsword, like a knight, like the paladin he tried to be.
He offered the little remaining vodka with a tilt of his head. Watching in surprise as Will accepted it, taking a long swig of the acidic drink. Will never liked alcohol and neither did he, as kids they actively stayed away from the stuff, they promised each other when they were ten that they’d never drink. They promised each other they'd never become their fathers.
It seemed the end of the world changed things.
They were drinking just to drink, but drinking to cope with something bigger. In the hell that Hawkins had become there were so many things he could no longer have. He was a dying man being denied a last look at the world. But this was something, a little thing to take his mind off the fact he was going to die. The fact that his parents, his sister, laid dead in those ruins of his childhood home. That he was burning the family bible and standing here having what? Some sort of memorial? Funeral for those people he’d never really gotten along with but didn’t want to die?
He wondered if his Father went to heaven. If, as shitty of a parent as he was, he deserved to go to eternal paradise while he would go to hell for loving a boy. If his sister was watching him now, wondering why he was still around. Out of the Wheeler siblings she was the most deserving of life. She was still small and kind. She was a child who did not understand the horror of this world and its counterpart.
But Mike was still here and she wasn’t.
“It’s not safe to stay out here all alone.”
Mike scoffed at that, the words on the tip of his tongue. Burning a hole in his mouth like they were made of acid. Couldn’t he see it on him? Couldn’t he smell the near death on him? Couldn’t he see it in his eyes? Instead he said, “You’re by yourself.”
“I came looking for you, idiot,” He gestured to the rifle in his hands, “Besides I’m well armed.”
A little smile crept onto Mike’s face. One that shouldn’t be there, not with everything going on, not with the world about to end, not with him about to die. But it slotted into place as easily as it had when they first met on the swingset. Will had that effect on him, no matter what.
Will rested his head on Mike’s shoulder, sort of slumping into him. In turn he hugged Will close to his chest. One side of his coat covering them both, warming them both. Ever since the first Upside Down encounter Will was constantly cold, just slightly chilly to the touch. In the weeks they had been together they’d realized a great solution to this fact was holding the other close.
Despite everything wrong with their crumbling world he couldn’t deny that this particular privilege sent a thrill through him. Showing affection so openly without worrying about being caught was something he’d never imagined they’d have in their lifetime.
“Just because you’re a paladin doesn’t mean you have to face it all alone. Everybody’s here for you Mike. Lucas, Dustin, El, Nancy, me . Let us into that head of yours once in a while.”
“My dear wizard,” He couldn’t help the smile growing into a smirk as he felt Will’s cheeks heat. “I’m not all alone. You’re here. You’re right here with me.”
“My wizard?”
“Was that too far?”
“No, no,” Just as the flush had spread a smirk came onto his face too. “It’s just fine, my valorous paladin.”
He could feel his cheeks grow hot under Will’s stare, the tips of his ears burning in betrayal. He tilted his head down quickly, catching Will’s slightly parted lips. Deepening the smile on their faces.
By the time they pulled away from each other for air they were warm. By kissing, by vodka, by each other. They cradled each other in their arms. Holding the other tightly like Vecna would decide now was the time to rip him away from his love.
When Will was around he kinda wanted to live. He knew that was a selfish thought. He was dying and doing nothing to change that fact. He didn’t plan on walking out of the battle. But staring into Will’s eyes halted all those thoughts. They made him wonder, if only for a moment, what it would be like to live. A future they could carve from themselves in this cruel world. A life they might live.
How he had gotten so lucky as to have someone like Will Byers love him back he didn’t know. But he was grateful anyway.
“Now, my paladin, what can my magic assist you with?”
Mike felt his smile curl into something innocent again. Something like a child's smile, loud and unwavering as the dice clicked over the makeshift board their DnD session was laid out on. The triumph in their eyes as it landed a critical hit.
It was easier, then. When all the monsters that existed were of their own making. Those villains defeated by the end of the game. The celebratory milkshakes passed around after a completed campaign. Those kids who hadn’t known a true fight, who’d never picked up a gun or knife with the intent of using it, with the intent of protecting themselves, of protecting everyone they cared about. Because if they didn’t, if they lost, there was no coming back. There was no making a new character.
All that was left were memories and gravestones.
He hesitated, pulling away slightly as though he’d taint Will with his ruined soul. The air formed icy tendrils over his lungs, squeezing them for a moment. Choking his words out, “Stay with me through the funeral.”
Will didn’t push further. He didn’t ask how this was a funeral in any right. Didn’t point out that burning a bible was contradictory to a preacher's words as a casket was lowered. He didn’t tell Mike that there were no bodies left to bury. Didn’t offer reassuring words.
And Mike didn’t ask for such simple things. They were nearly sixteen, impossibly closer to adulthood than childhood. They were holding a funeral for Mike’s family, for bodies that would never be recovered and lived that would never live on.
The thing was, Mike didn’t even like his family that much. They rarely saw things eye to eye and when they did it was always with his Mom. There was his Mom, who tried her best despite not quite getting it. Who swallowed her comments most of the time and longed for a perfect family she could never have. Who shared Mike and Nancy’s fiery anger but had a talent all her own- her softness Mike could never conjure. His Dad was never really present, an odd detachment with the man who supposedly raised him. An odd feeling bubbling in his chest over the man’s death. On one hand, he was Mike’s father, on another Mike had never known enough about him to feel anything for him. Then there was Holly. Little Holly, like it was only yesterday she began to talk; only yesterday her older siblings taught her swears through closed doors after they woke from nightmares. She stumbled a little when she walked and she liked art and the sun. She was a kid and she didn’t have a future anymore.
Mike looked down at the smoldering bible. Little more than charred binding, the shiny golden lettering nearly burnt off. Suddenly a burst of hotness ran through him. An all familiar rage, a familiar feeling the Wheelers were all too good at falling back on. He let the flames consume him, char his organs like they’d charred the bible. Tangle in his long hair that his parents had hated and Holly had loved. Let it stream inside his bones, heating the sword at his side.
“Fuck you,” He screamed as the hot rage rolled down his cheeks. He raised the bottle high into the air in salute, releasing it just to listen to the satisfying shattering of glass underfoot. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you,” It grew rawer as he continued to speak. Louder or softer he couldn’t tell the difference if he tried. But it was there, angry and broken, rippling in the dead air around them.
Will laced his arms around Mike’s middle, tugging him close as the tears overtook the screams. As they turned to sobs slightly muffled in Will’s collarbone. As bible verses dusted their hair, reduced to ashes of Mike’s own flame.
He’d be joining them soon, if he got to heaven too. If he transcended to a place he didn’t really believe in.