Chapter Text
What else is there to do but lie on your back in your bed at the end of your day, staring at the ceiling, letting the emptiness under your skin consume you?
Mike hates the way that he caught himself getting Deja Vu with his current routines to a time when El was still his girlfriend. He hates it. Every moment, every second, he thinks, I should miss her more. This should hurt more. His face would burn with heat he didn’t understand, tears streaming. He couldn’t even say I love you back, in that final moment.
Will’s gone off to college, months ago now. There’s not a lot to do anymore except lay in bed and pray he doesn’t slip up and give away that El’s death isn’t as painful to him as he wants it to be. It doesn’t hurt him like it should. The guilt is always there, it eats at him, the same way the fear does. Mike hardly understands it himself, what he’s fearing.
His mother is starting to worry. Ted still doesn’t give a fuck, and Mike sobs at the thought that he is slowly becoming more and more like the man every day. It hurts. It’s knives through his chest, it’s grief, but not only for El. It’s for something he was so close to reaching, his fingertips could brush its warmth and the light of it would shine on his face whenever he had gotten close. He knew when it was there, just didn’t know what had put it there, no matter how hard he thought.
He watches days pass, and people rarely check in to see how he’s doing. He watches crocuses bloom when spring comes and then watches them die. Feels like all he’s ever done is watch things without the ability to comprehend them in a meaningful way, that’s how he lost Will. And El, too, if he thinks about it.
He misses Will a lot. Too much. Always too much or not enough with Mike Wheeler, he never got anything just right. Will was too much. He missed him so much that, shamefully, he had tucked Will’s D&D folder under his bed, so that he could trace over the little drawings he kept in the margins, and so that he could wallow. He cried, and cried, and cried, unable to shake the feeling that he’d lost something. He’d lost something he’d never even realized he’d been holding onto. Mike must be an idiot.
He thinks a lot about where Will might be. Probably off at ISU, getting his BFA, but Mike hadn’t talked to him much in the time after graduation. It hurt him how he didn’t really know anything about Will anymore. He ran a thumb up the spine of the binder cover, lingering on the handwriting as he sniffled. Will, Will, Will. It was all he thought about. He wondered about the types of men he was seeing, and always tried to hold back as much of the tidal wave of disgust that always came when he did it. It’s not fair, he thought. Not fair that you get everything.
Mike shoves his face into the pillow, trying to pretend he’s eight years old again, trying to pretend they’d never grown up. When they could be close without the shame. Mike wonders how Will ever got past the shame.
He brings the binder close, and in a gesture so stupid, he lets his lips brush it. He feels a shiver up his spine, and for a second, Will is there again, in bed, and everything is perfect. But it’s not, because Will should be all that is imperfect to him. Bile rises. He feels warm, in a sickly way, remembers the night after graduation when he had stared at this binder and cried quietly, because he knew it would slip through his fingers. He was just like his father. Everything he had hated.
It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.
Mike curls in on himself. His hair has grown, it’s just past his shoulders now, black, inky curls that do a lot to keep him plunged in darkness. He misses Will, and he will never have him back, and it aches. And he cries because he knows it shouldn’t, and because he doesn’t want it to. He pictures Will’s face again and closes his eyes, a tear slipping through. He tremors through quiet sobs as he tugs his duvet tightly around himself.
Mike Wheeler has been selfish his whole life. To a fault, he is selfish. He realizes this, but doesn’t care enough to change it. He knows it’s true. He wants too much, and not enough.
He could call Will.
He won’t. He won’t touch that phone. He plays out the scenario in his head, indulges in the later hours, pretends he’s normal and imagines Will’s voice on the other line, but the dream turns sour quickly. Will doesn’t remember him, he’s pissed because Mike took so long to call, or he’s telling Mike about whoever his boyfriend is.
He rolls that word around in his mind, and it feels bitter. It’s soured since El’s death. Like there’s no other connotation of it for Mike, other than to be the boyfriend of another man, and he can’t take that. Can’t bear it. He sits in his puddle of misery and forces himself to enjoy it, because that’s what a queer like him deserves.
Karen calls Mike down for Dinner, a last ditch effort, and by some miracle, Mike trudges downstairs, bags deep under his eyes and looking skinnier than usual. She makes a nervous face in his direction, and he ignores it. Ted is judging him silently. Holly seems to feel the oppressive air as well, because she’s quiet, barely even fidgeting.
Karen says grace, and Mike feels the words scar into his back. He wants to cry again, as his mother utters ‘amen’ softly.
Mike looks up, and it’s a mistake, because the seat across from him, the empty one, is where Will used to sit. He tears his eyes away. “I’m gonna eat in the basement.”
Karen lets him go. She always does, and so does Ted. He hates that sympathetic glare.
Mike stumbles his way down the stairs, blinking away tears. He’s shaking, for some reason, and his tongue is dry. He yanks open the old trunk that the party once used for costumes, and pulls out Will’s ‘Will the Wise’ getup. His hands shiver. His lip trembles. He looks around the basement, as if expecting him to somehow be there, but no, he’s alone. The drawings left to collect dust on the walls and the desk, left by a boy he once knew so well, are now only here to judge him. He pulls a blanket away from the couch, letting out a small sob before tucking himself in and sinking back into the warmth and isolation of the basement closet. He went to the closet more than a lot these days, when the lights in even his own bedroom got too bright. He didn’t want to be seen.
Terror sank into his bones. He gripped the tiny purple costume, brow drawn up while he furiously wiped away tears.
It’s too small for Will now. He grew up.
You left me behind, do you know that?
Or you were tired of waiting.
Mike doesn’t have a plan. His plan was El. Now he’s floating through space, unable to cling to her for security. Will had a plan, and now he was off at art school with all the other fairy art kids.
Mike takes the thought back the moment it escapes him. He doesn’t want to think like that anymore.
He feels unwanted, wholly. Mike wasn’t enough for Will. It wasn’t realistic to want to be able to play D&D in his basement forever, and it wasn’t mature either.
He wants to sit in the basement closet forever. He wants to let himself be alone forever, until he finds some girl to settle down with and become his father properly. He dreads it, but maybe that’s what’ll fix him. He could dream about will. If he tried, that could be enough.
He holds the little costume close to his chest. When you come back I’ll still be here. If you come back.
He imagined calling Will. Johnathan had given him the number ages ago. He dials it in, he waits, and he tells Will one thing.
Come back to me.
And after that, he hangs up, because he’s too scared to say a word else.
If Mike ever feels particularly daring, he might one day imagine the feel of Will’s lips against his own.