Chapter Text
Tomorrow.
Max and Lucas’ wedding is tomorrow.
But why is Mike nervous?
It’s the first time the party’s meeting up again after 5 years. 5 years. Mike almost can’t believe it. It feels like just yesterday they were 12 in his parent’s basement. And now suddenly his friends are getting married? God he feels old.
He knows 23 technically isn’t old, but he doesn’t mean it in the literal sense. Old as in, he has to wear glasses now to see properly. Old as in, he has to drive himself to his office every few weeks to review his work. Old as in, the words he types matter so much more in actual published books. Old as in things have changed.
At the same time not everything. He still needs that morning coffee on his desk. Still watches reruns of Star Wars: The Last Jedi any chance he gets—with buttered popcorn. The Smiths still blasting in the walls of his apartment. How he still runs out of bed in the middle of the night to jot down new ideas.
Intentionally or not, every word he types, every draft he writes, still dripping in guilt and want. Regret. He’s tried everything, everything—looking at nature, reading different genres, listening to new music—but nothing works. All he does, it all comes back to only one thing. One thing that also hasn’t changed since his childhood. His muse.
Unchanging and constant. Lurking behind every click and clack of his typewriter. Hiding under each metaphor and analogy used. Lacing behind character profiles, background descriptions. Hell even his own choice of colours or flowers, even simple minute decisions made in the novels he’s written, all interwoven with his muse.
Will Byers.
What he was too afraid to even name before, now living together in this space. Floating about, reflected off these empty walls just to strike his heart again and again and again. Love.
Never fading, only growing stronger with each passing day. Each night lying awake thinking what he could’ve done differently—whom he could've spent these lonely nights with. Standing by the balcony together, gripping the cold railing, as their windows fog over with the cold air. Just them.
Some days when he feels a rare surge of confidence, his fingers linger on the dial button, numbers he has memorised to no end, but never being able to just dial in.
Though, there are other days the ache burns harder. The day when silence lingers just a little too long. Sun sinks under the horizon too fast. The rip in his chest stings too much.
March 22nd.
At 2, 3, 4 in the morning, he presses the dial button. Standing. waiting, heartbeat drumming in his ears. “Hello?” He freezes. There’s so much he wants to say—apologise, beg for a second chance, anything—but he just freezes. Stands frozen as Will’s voice echos.
He thinks that’s enough. Just being able to hear his voice, a mere word. Silence stretches. The line on the other end clicks shut and Mike stays holding the telephone. Pressing it as deep as he can to his face, hoping Will’s voice bleeds through his ears and enters his heart, painting his soul. He stands just like that, for so long staring at nothing until his legs get tired and his eyes blurry. He slides down the wall and sobs. Heavy, ugly sobs.
He doesn’t sleep those nights.
One word enough to last him a year. He repeats the ritual the following year.
One time, just once in these 5 years, after the usual beat of silence following Will’s greeting, he hears “Mike?” His heart drops into the deepest darkest parts of his being. His eyes pool with unshed tears from a single word. The voice in his ears dripping with question, and doubt, and hope.
Mike slams the telephone down. The only time he has ever hung up first. And he cries. He cries and cries, sobbing, rubbing his face, promising himself to never call again.
He still does.
Still, the one time his name was uttered tattooed in his brain like an oath.
And Mike’s love still lives on. As the colour of his curtains. In the random rock mixtapes amidst his indie ones.
As the painting on his wall. Haunting him. But he can never take it down. Ever. A painful reminder of his own mistakes, what he could’ve had. What they could’ve been. It torments him when he sleeps at night and wakes up in the morning. When he writes and erases and writes again. Right there in front of him. And there’s nothing he can do about it.
To think 10 years, 10 long years of friendship and so much more, all reduced into mere ink on pages.
And it’s all his fault.
Tomorrow he’s gonna meet everyone again. He’s gonna meet Will again. The nerves of it all buzzing on his skin. How much would Will have changed? Would he have changed at all? What work he does. Does he still listen to The Cure? Or has he found a new band. Does he still sleep with a nightlight on or has he grown out of it.
Does he think about me at all?
Tomorrow.
All of it, tomorrow.
But for tonight, Mike can’t sleep.