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His casket was red.
He hated red.
They had left it open that day, had closed his mouth, and pushed Will’s fringe away from his forehead in a style he would have despised.
They dressed him in a shirt he never wore and tied his hands around each other to make him seem at peace. Closed his eyes, and put him in a stupid red casket.
Stupid. Red. Casket.
Joyce certainly didn’t coordinate this, nor did Jonathan. It was probably done on a whim by some mortician. A person who never knew Will and had never seen him as anything but a corpse. An empty carcass devoid of any warmth.
Will had always hated the cold.
Mike couldn’t help but be angry at them (whoever they were), at everything around him. Unending, silent anger. With the situation, with One, with himself. Because none of this was ever meant to happen—Will was never meant to leave so soon, to step into any place where Mike could not follow.
It got him thinking.
If grief was only love left unspent, then of course, this was the ending. Of course, Mike’s chest ached as it did, and of course, Will’s death felt like his own. Because…he had never gotten to love him. Not in the way he wanted to. He had never been bold enough to speak it aloud, to set it down in ink, to let Will feel the kind of love they had both so desperately needed.
Because that was Mike’s problem, his great, big, godforsaken dilemma.
A boy.
That didn’t even matter to him anymore. That felt so far from him. The queerness of it all. The regret and the guilt that surrounded the love he felt meant nothing. It was something that dissipated at Will's death. Flying away with the doves, transcending to the sky above, to never return. There was no one left to love now. No reason to fear the wrath of any divine creature. As it was soon to be buried. What was he to do now? Was he to die with Will's death, or was he to walk out and try to change?
Was he supposed to become something more than Mike Wheeler? More than the boy who fell hopelessly, but had neglected to speak it. Would he change himself? Replace every piece until the whole was so dissimilar to what he was now that the pain would end? Frankenstein's monster of coping. Living and dead. But so very different- different from the boy who had watched Will fall like sand between his fingers.
.
.
.
But the church did not look kindly upon monsters. And it had a message for them, for him, etched into one of those white walls in a font far too angry to ever be considered something of God’s love:
“This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.”
A possession. That’s where it came from. The day a man ran to Jesus Christ with a son thrashing below him, tainted and consumed by the mark of the devil. And Jesus, in his ever-knowing wisdom, did not call upon his father to spare the child, but had instead uttered those words. To pray. To ask. To wait.
Mike was sick of waiting and had prayed far too much.
For if this God of theirs had wanted him to stop loving, he would have done it—he would have removed all want from his body. But instead, God left him to suffer. Suffer through long, awkward silences that held too much. Suffer through gentle touches that could have meant nothing. Suffer through loving somebody so very much, but never being able to speak those words aloud. For fear was stronger than anything else. Much stronger than God’s love, at the very least.
At some point, Mike did not know when. That feeling had begun. And after he had recognised it, it became incredibly hard to stay quiet.
It was like trying not to swallow in a silent classroom. The clock on the wall, ticking, the only noise filling the room. A teacher sat on a desk, saying nothing, expecting silence.
And you’re surrounded. By the quiet, by your peers, all of whom would find it disgusting if you did. If you swallowed.
Because it was disgusting. The sound of it. Wet and sticky and far too vulnerable for sensitive ears. So Mike would keep his mouth closed, as they had closed the mouth on that…thing in the coffin. He would stop himself from swallowing, only to find that the water was building up. Rushing, expanding, dripping. Salvia, filling faster than he could have ever predicted. And in that moment, he would finally wonder…‘had it always been like this?’
When not looking at it, when decisively ignoring it, had Mike always made this much spit? Had he stood there, unconsciously drinking words unsaid, without noticing it? Was he truly that mindless? Ignorant.
It was a question Mike preferred not to have an answer to. But the answer was always there. He had always known.
‘Yes, yes you did’
Mike had been swallowing his entire fucking life. Short, on autopilot. Like pulling your car into work, and not recalling how in the hell you managed to drive there. Choking down the words that he had always wanted to say. Something that had existed since...forever.
“I love you.”
Those words, so simple on their own, but so very complicated when put into action. Because it meant something. It would define him. His life forever altered, forever labelled, because Mike loved him and he had waited—he had waited, and prayed, and abstained until his mouth was full of spit. A second away from drowning while sitting in the pews, letting the feeling engulf him in the same cold Will had always despised—until the dam broke. Until Mike was dribbling, then standing, then moving toward the podium to throw up a speech no one had asked for.
Full to the brim and pouring out at the altar.
Wretching like a damn fool. A eulogy that probably made a mockery of himself and the dead. Faces both saddened and affronted watched him—just watched him as he dragged his eyes away from that awful red coffin and allowed himself to be honest.
Vulnerable in a quiet classroom. Disgusting. The sound. The bible. God.
God meant nothing when everything had died.
"I knew. I always knew."
That was all that really mattered. The fact that Mike had always been aware of it. Inevitability. Since, of course, Will was always his end. Because Mike quite liked to think that he knew Will better than anyone else, that he could see him transparently. And from what Mike had seen, from a long look that held no noise, he had always found an answer. The known truth that was said in every action.
"I love you too."
The room was silent, the sound so vulnerable. Judgement. It was far too late to declare it, but even so, that had forever been the case. Because, of course, Will had always loved him back. Will had told him every single day, without ever needing to shout it. It was in his eyes, it was in his smile, in his...everything.
Mike knew Will better than himself. The only thing that stood between them back then (back when an answer was possible) was the lack of saying it. But now, there was a chasm. There was a deep hole of eternity that held them apart. The finality of death. Too cold, too uncaring to ever be forced upon somebody as warm and loving as Will Byers had been.
"I loved you so much, so fucking much- and I'm...I'm so-"
When it ended. When those words—that love, had been spewed onto the pulpit. He had taken his coat and placed it over Will’s body, in hopes of keeping him warm, though honestly, Mike would much prefer to lie there with him.
He left early—dramatically even. Taking one final moment to spectate the casket. To look at Will one last time before everything ended. Committed to nothing but a memory of gray skin, a hated shirt, and a red coffin.
“-I’m so sorry.”
It would never be enough.