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The truck makes a cracking sound as they keep going through and through, to the lab, to the beginning of the end. The road. The fog. The air, thick and greasy. Will counts to ten a few times.
It feels odd to be there, among people who heard him saying I don't like girls. Saying he was in love.
The truth is plain and simple, like rereading the book you've loved. A crush he said because talking about love is strangely painful.
Love is for people who get their happily ever after. He thought there could be a chance—butterflies, the clearness of the sky, skin to skin, the brush of a finger—but he was wrong. Not in this lifetime.
He remembers the look on Mike's face. The pause. Unmourned, he stopped blinking, traveling back to his little inner world, and all because he understood.
You will be happy, Will wanted to tell him, humbly. He would lurch back with his hands covered in the ink of all the paintings he'd finished and crumbled. I wish it was with me. But it's okay, I'll be okay with it. It just ended.
He didn't get a chance. They rushed to the truck with guns and shots. Fierce love for life. Frantically engraved line: happiness awaiting us.
“Hey,” Mike is quiet and kind when he comes to him and sits incredibly close. Will shivers. He feels naked and exposed, yet Mike tilts his head. Their knees brush and then touch, the warmth on skin. “Just wanted to check if you're okay.”
“I'm okay,” the voice comes out unnatural and distant. Will winces. Falls into silence.
Mike fidgets a bit. There are a few curly locks lying on his forehead, curiously sneaking at his temples. Will is terrified that he'd spend all his life trying to find a perfect imitation of Mike just to realise, through despair and grief, that there's no second Mike. Every other guy would be flawed. A severe wound: your love lives and you'll witness it.
“Okay,” Mike clears his throat. He rubs the palm of his hand, conflicted. There's a wrinkle between his eyebrows, the one Will used to stare at while playing a game, making a countdown:
Mike's going to speak in three… two…
But it was long ago. Days, folded like airplanes, crashed against the cold, frozen ground. Once Mike—smartness in details, already sixteen, a promised Neverland—told him a legend about cranes.
You have to fold a thousand for your wish to come true, Mike said hopefully and looked at Will. That look of unraveled conviction Will couldn't grasp properly. He couldn't, so he said it's cool, and Mike's shoulders fell in defeat. He clearly wanted to say something else. His mouth half-opened. Words, soundless, between his lips. Like grapes, they popped on his tongue without a chance to exist.
He hummed. Then smiled, exhausted with something Will couldn't understand and had no clue about because Mike stopped talking about his feelings with him in that clear, distinctive manner.
Are you sending me a signal? Will wanted to breathe out. All these metaphors and analogies—why are they here in front of me as if you're a cat hunting mice and bringing them to the owner?
But then Mike blinked. The smile was devouring his real emotions. He said he found the cranes cool, and the legend is also fascinating, and he wished it could work.
Is Mike not his because Will has never tried to fold even one crane?
No, it doesn't matter anymore.
And yet Will counts, as he's been doing his whole life:
Mike is going to speak in three, two…
—knowing it's not going to…
“You know, it was really brave.” Mike bites his lower lip, an attempt of a smile pressed to his mouth.
Will freezes.
“Really brave,” Mike repeats, looking at the floor. People around talk. Vague figures with unimportant voices. “I was… I am proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Will says, cautious with his tone and his hands. Mike hums.
“I'm happy,” he clearly struggles, and Will can't understand why. “I'm… It's cool. You've always been… courageous. Bravery I've never had.”
Mike is brave.
Will knows it better than anyone. He fights back at school. He's gentle with memories about Eddie. He's holding a gun like it's a chess piece because he was a quick learner, and even Nancy was impressed. He hisses at his father for being ignorant. He— he's just—
Will blinks.
“I learnt it from you,” he tries, yet the words are dry and colourless.
His father wasn't nice, so Mike tried to compensate with his loud voices and games and hugs.
“Yeah, no,” Mike lets out a weak, fragile laugh. He doesn't sound like he's going to cry; even worse, he sounds like he's going to break.
Will is lost and confused. Is it the moment Mike announces they can't be friends?
“I wouldn't be able to do what you did,” Mike's words fall between them. Gems. Stained-glass pieces without a pattern.
Will remembers the way Mike rested his head on his shoulder just a month ago. They got comfortable with each other again. Yet Mike moved like he was scared. His shoulders tense. Sharp line. He was breathing relentlessly. It hurt a bit how awkward and guarded Mike was.
The sun was a high, white, and burning circle, and Mike was quiet and distraught. Yet he didn't move his head. Will thought it was stupid—to make himself stay when he clearly struggled.
What confused even more, Mike was so, so clingy. With his hands around Will's shoulders late in the morning. The breakfast—the lunch—with Eggos and coffee. He would brush over and stay. A smile, a pressed to Will's back hand, a moment of comfort. Lingering feelings around him.
And then Mike would flee. Clingy yet distant. Will saw a lot of things, suffered, and cried, yielding his voice and breaking his heart; but Mike's behaviour was the most amusing thing ever.
“You're not like me.” Will tries to smile. Mike stiffens.
“You don't hear me,” he croons. “I… wouldn't be able to do what you did, Will.”
“And you don't have to,” he says.
“Will,” Mike closes his eyes. His eyelashes flutter. “Hear me.”
“I do,” Will hesitates and then carefully places his hand upon Mike's shoulder. “I just… I had to give it away, the secret. You heard me. Vecna would use it. Jesus, he's still going to, but… you accepted me. Right?” Mike doesn't nod, and Will has a sinking feeling in his stomach. An iceberg. The Titanic. “Mike?”
“I'm proud of you,” his words shaky, unstable. Will tries to remove his hand, yet Mike, ferocious and swift, grabs his wrist. He still looks at the floor. Will takes a deep breath.
He wouldn't be the one to head off this wreck of a friendship. He's a whipping idiot with his grip tight on their happiness.
“I want to be like you,” Mike continues, pushing his words out of his mouth. “I want to have this courage to speak one day but… but… I wouldn't be able to do it. Do you hear me?
“Mike…”
“I can't say it,” Mike glances over his shoulder to meet Will's gaze. “I… I'm not brave, Will. Do you hear me?”
It sounds so similar to did my confession reach you?
And all of a sudden it slaps him in this astonishing, breathtaking manner. The world is numb and bleak, yet Mike's eyes are wide and bright. He's shaking a bit. As if his body is a cell for all those speeches that he almost said but never could.
“Mike,” Will repeats, and something in his face must tell Mike all he wants because his face crumples like paper. “Oh, Mike.”
“I tried,” he giggles in despair. “I tried to tell you, but… but you never listened.”
Now Will, the library of fused lights, the box of warmest flickering moments, lowers his hands and reaches for that Pandora's box opened.
You know there was once a poet, Tennyson, and he wrote grief poetry for seventeen years! All because he… loved his best friend and lost him. What do you think?
Actually my favourite part in “Troy” isn't that stupid bullshit about Helen. I loved that… that bond between Patroclus and Achilles. Don't they remind you of us? And… listen, I have a theory. The weakest spot of Achilles, right? It never was his heel. All this time it was Patroclus himself.
A thousand cranes. I would wish… wish us two to stay together, stick together like… I haven't created a good simile, sorry. Like us. Let's say this.
Love is scary. Did you read what happened with Oscar Wilde? I think… I think it's worth it, right? But scary. If I were sent to prison, I don't think I would write anything. And his Dorian Grey? He's fantastic.
All those times Will thought it was just facts. Little jewels Mike brought to him because he had always done that. A collection of amusing things. A collection of honest things decorated as literature pieces or legends.
It never changed.
Mike was talking. They just couldn't hear each other.
“I hear you,” Will says, pressing his body into Mike as much as possible. “I'm sorry.”
“It's a fair mistake. Don't apologise,” Mike blinks a few times, still miserable. “I just… El has been telling me to be… honest and fair with you. But I…”
“It's okay,” Will has a second of doubt and then grabs his hand. Mike stops breathing but doesn't push him away. He's just there. And then he squeezes Will's hand three times. “It was… it was cool. The facts. The confessions. I… I loved it. I loved all the words.”
I love you.
“And then,” Mike sniffs, “you just… just said all those things, and I swear I wanted to hug you and kill you. Sorry,” he shakes his head carefully looking around. Gulps. “It sounds horrible. I just… I wanted to be just like you. Or… or… sit next to you,” it's barely audible, yet Will's heart is squeezed with invisible force. The red string.
“It's okay,” Will reassures him. He desperately tries to find any words. “You told me a thousand times.”
“Barely,” and finally Mike locks eyes with him. Will doesn't flinch and prays his hand isn't hot and sweaty, and it seems to be. Then he realises Mike wouldn't mind. “It's not even… I still…”
“You know it was about you, right?” Will whispers, and Mike sheepishly nods. A small nod of understanding and acceptance and…
“But you said…” Mike blinks twice. Then licks his lips. “You don't…”
“Sometimes I lie,” he says simply and witnesses how hope fills Mike's eyes. “Love is scary, isn't it?”
Mike realises a small laugh smothered with something great and vulnerable and priceless. A thought-to-be fragility.
“It's always been mutual,” Mike says, tilting his head. “And… and one day I'll do better. For you.”
Will thinks about how Mike pressed his head upon his shoulder and stayed. And he thinks about countless confessions too subtle to understand immediately. He thinks about the beauty of love.
“I know,” Will answers, and the truck stops. They have things to do and a monster to slaughter.
Then they will return home, and Will will celebrate the day Mike Wheeler was brave in his own peculiar manner.
Now he says, “Let's live a happy life after everything ends.”
And Mike beams at him with a short yet hopeful “Okay.”
(everything beautiful, Will says one day, had already started back then, and I was happy it had, and I was happy Mike was there, and we were there together; love is beautiful, isn't it?)