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Night 3.
This is how it always started: Laughter, soft and a little giddy, punctuated by flashes of light and a beautiful green.
Then, Mike would see Will. His lovely Will, bathed in sunlight, most times, or illuminated by the soft yellow glow of his bedside lamp. Mike could run his fingers through his hair as he pleased, curl his body around Will’s and breathe him in. They talked in hushed tones, whispered admissions, in this little bubble of theirs. It was a familiar kind of warm. A familiar kind of soft. They encased themselves in breathy kisses and games of their own. Movies when they wanted to be told stories. Drawing and writing when they wanted to tell them. The smell of Will, citrus and the freshness of his shampoo. When they laid in bed– talking or just looking or just being– the press of his stomach against the small of Mike’s back. Mike surrounded himself in all things Will, surrounded himself in things he knew and understood.
This is how it always ended: Mike awoke slowly, never initially remembering that Will was buried in the ground for the cold to take him. He never remembered until he realized the lack of a dip in his mattress, the lack of warmth at his back, the lack of sun in the gray of late morning. And once he did, it took his breath away, just as it had that first morning, and the next, and the next.
Mike had been without Will for three days.
Mike had been out of orbit for three days, thrown horribly off balance, and landed face-down on Will’s grave, trying to relieve the ache in his chest by pressing himself as close as possible to him. All he felt was grass and dirt.
So Mike resigned himself to his dreams. He’d hardly left his bed since Will left him, drifting between sleep and brief windows of waking, which made less sense than sleeping. And everyone let him. Plates appeared on his bedside table, ignored and thus taken back untouched. His room was tidied, almost imperceptively, by an unseen force. Nancy spoke to him, soft but unintelligible. She put a hand on his shoulder and sometimes laid down next to him. His mother opened his window every day for an hour, and sometimes he had the energy to make a small noise of protest. At that, she would tuck a blanket over him and leave.
Mike knew he was gross. He knew he smelled and was covered in sweat and that his hair was matted in places. But he just couldn’t bring himself to care anymore. Will didn’t. Will ran his fingers through his hair and kissed him softly. Will radiated warmth and made it all go away.
Mike stared at his wall, clutching one of Will’s shirts. His vision swirled, and spots bloomed at the corners of his eyes. Everything ached.
“I miss you,” Mike whispered into the nothingness. “I’ll be home soon.” He closed his eyes. Sleep opened its kind arms to him.
–
Night 4.
“Michael, you need to get out of the house. Even for just half an hour,” his mother begged him, faceless in the dark of his room.
So he did.
Mike walked, lazily, to the trailer park. His legs almost didn’t work when he rose out of bed and down the stairs. Late November made itself known in the way it bit at his nose and fingers, in the way the sky was dark gray at noon and the dry grass rustled in the wind.
Mike knocked on the trailer door he knew so well with a shaking hand.
“Hello, Wheeler,” Eddie greeted him. He opened the door all the way, and Mike stepped inside. “What can I do for you?”
Mike met his eyes, and already Eddie was taking in his appearance– his heavy eyebags, his perpetually tangled hair, his worn pajama pants and Will’s crewneck. Eddie eventually dragged his gaze back. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at Mike in pity, just understanding. “I haven’t been sleeping that well,” Mike said. “Melatonin pills don’t work.”
Eddie nodded. He walked to his bedroom and rummaged around for a while. Mike looked at the floor and wondered if he was going to fall asleep here. He wondered if Eddie knew about Will.
Soon, Eddie returned, with a bag of a few yellow pills. He handed it to Mike. “Ten dollars. Because you’re kind of cool,” Eddie offered.
Mike inspected the seven measly pills in the bag. “Is that it?”
“They’re pretty strong.”
Mike almost screamed in frustration. Again and again he’s been denied these simple mercies. “Whatever,” he grumbled, handing Eddie the cash.
–
The first pill worked.
It slid down Mike’s throat like honey, and he climbed into bed with sweet promises whispered in his ear. This’ll knock you out for a while, Eddie had told him. Mike wrapped his blanket around himself, smiling, maybe even laughing into his pillow. He felt so giddy that the tears surprised him when they leaked down his face.
Sleep took him gently, making the rest of the world pleasantly hazy and the heaviness of his body less achey.
It took him to Will.
Hi, Mike, Will whispered to him, cradling Mike in his arms. Mike breathed him in, pressing his nose into the familiarity of his skin. Will rubbed his hands up and down Mike’s back, and the warmth of him seeped into him, blooming in his chest.
Will, Mike murmured into his neck.
Will sat down, still holding him. Mike cracked an eye open and saw the soft yellow of Will’s bedroom, felt the cushion of his blankets. Will leaned back onto the bed, Mike resting on top of him, content. How are you? Will asked.
Mike closed his eyes again. I like it here. Will laughed into his hair, pressed a soft kiss there that made Mike melt, a little. I would hope so.
You’re the only thing that feels real, anymore, Mike told him.
I am real, Will whispered, sliding his hands into Mike’s hair.
Mike exhaled. Yes, he said. I know.
They basked in each others’ breathing for a while, in sync like waves. Mike soaked in Will’s presence; entangled their fingers and kissed the underside of his jaw and held onto him.
But, as always, Mike woke up.
The first thing he felt was a lack of pressure from where he should have been pressed against Will. Then a lack of warmth. Then a lack of a voice in his ear telling him that everything was okay, and that he could rest.
Mike made a small noise with the pain of it. His room was so dark it was suffocating, the silence ringing in his ears. Mike gasped into his pillow. The crash was as unbearable as it was every time, but now he felt Will’s touch linger on his hand. Mike scrambled up out of bed, legs tangled in his sheets, to his desk. He fought with the shitty drawer that always jammed, finally wiggled it free, and searched through the junk for the pills.
Choking on his sobs, he found the baggie and took the pill dry, desperate. It settled in his stomach like certainty. Mike could breathe again. He laid back down in his bed and waited for catharsis.
–
Night 5.
The seventh pill didn’t work.
Flashes of light and warmth danced across Mike’s vision, tauntingly. Green eyes found his and then closed again, warm skin encased him and then went cold again, like the suggestion of a memory. Lips shaped breathless words that never reached his ears. The wonderful chime of a laugh and the smell of clementines floated impossibly close. Sweet, unintelligible sounds were whispered into his neck. His shirt was tugged, playfully, by something unseen and warm. Mike saw hands and clothes and smiles, far away, flickering and blinking out like the end of a film.
The cold and the quiet settled into Mike’s bones. He reached out his hands and screamed for Will, because he always came when Mike called. Will never came.
When Mike awoke, shaking with the force of his cries, something was still tugging at his shirt. He batted it away. “Stop,” he choked out.
“Mike,” Nancy sighed, sitting on the edge of his bed. “What happened?”
He stayed silent for a minute. Futiley tried to grapple control of his breaths and watched his curtains sway side to side. Nancy’s hand remained still on his arm. “This is not real,” he told her, voice hollow.
Nancy’s face was dark, but Mike could tell she was frowning. “This is real. I’m real.”
“No,” he insisted, hoarsely. “Please don’t say that.”
Nancy just laid down next to him. “Okay,” she said, and watched him relearn how to breathe.
–
Night 6.
“I need more.”
Eddie pursed his lips. “Did they work?”
“Not really,” Mike said.
“Oh,” Eddie sighed. “Fine, I’ll give you twenty. Do, like, two per night or something.”
Mike tried his best not to laugh and handed him the cash.
–
Mike returned from outside and laid down in the comforting silence just as the sun set.
He swallowed two pills like a promise and placed the baggie under his mattress. Tension started to leave him, slowly, as Will came to him. His head spun. Mike turned onto his stomach and planted his face in his pillow, making it all disappear. He was falling through the floor, falling endlessly through space and time, through possibilities and impossibilities.
He fell through his bed and into Will’s arms. Mike grabbed the first thing he felt, which was Will’s sweater. He clung onto him, his lifeline, his Will, with shaking hands.
You’re very warm, Will laughed. Mike sighed shakily in response and looked around from where he was stationed in a bed. The room was smaller than Will’s, but in it lived all the things he loved– posters and figurines and paintings and books.
It’s because I’m under your gigantic blanket, Mike said.
Well, once we get out of the dorms and into an apartment of our own we won’t have to put up with the shitty thermostat.
Mike pulled away as Will grabbed his fingers and started to plant kisses all over his hands. Mike giggled. And we’ll always have clementines in the fruit bowl, he said, as Will rolled his eyes playfully, and we’ll rent movies every night, and you will cuddle me all day and we’ll never have to work.
Will placed a final kiss on his lips and huffed a laugh. I’m sure, he said.
And you’ll never be mean to me like you are right now, Mike accused, shoving Will lightly.
Will grabbed his wrists, again, to stop him. I’m not being mean! Just realistic!
I think I’m being very realistic.
Will sighed. You can always hope, he allowed.
They laughed and rested against each other and made dinner together. Will was so tangible that Mike could forget everything. Could forget that this was a broken figment of a very nice dream.
And so he did. Will slipped out of his fingers slowly, almost unnoticed, until Mike came to and clutched at anything solid, his pillow, his blankets.
He’d been so close. He’d been so real.
It was dark outside, yet earlier than when Mike had gone to bed. His stomach dropped. Mike screamed in frustration into his pillow, tears streaming incessantly down his face and his chest heaving with sobs. It felt like being ripped apart, it felt so close to dying but without the promise of Will on the other side, without the relief. He pulled Will’s shirt to his face. “Please,” he begged, into the silence.
Once his tears left him numb and light, breathing shallowly into the pillow, Mike had an idea.
-
Night 7.
Mike placed the remaining twelve pills in his nightstand. In the gray of early morning, he slipped his boots on and shrugged Will’s jacket over his shoulders. He stepped out of the house and into the cold.
Eddie didn’t answer on the first knock, because he never did.
On the fifth, the door opened. “Hey,” Eddie greeted him.
Mike tried his best to smile. Eddie allowed him inside. “You’re getting a little co-dependent.”
“I need more.”
“Christ, Wheeler,” Eddie sighed. “I can’t do that.”
Mike huffed. “I have the money,” he insisted, trying his best not to seem desperate.
Eddie held out his hand, almost mocking. Mike handed him the cash. Eddie hesitated when it really was placed in his palm.
“I’m not crazy,” Mike said.
Eddie gave him the pills.
-
Thirty reassurances sat in Mike’s palm.
He stared at them, sat in his bed. The house was quiet except for the clink of the radiator, keeping out the cold and the silence of November.
Mike sat surrounded by Will, his art, his clothes, his blankets, memories scattered across the room.
Mike immersed himself. He allowed himself this mercy— just this, just this swallowing of as many pills as he could bear, of another handful, of a desperate gulp of water. He planted his head in his pillow.
It took him slowly. Mike’s breaths quieted for the first time in a very long time. The shapes in the corners of his vision swirled and blinded him as he breathed in the smell of Will’s shirt. The sun set achingly slowly, and the dark crept across Mike’s room at the pace of his heartbeat.
Then, he heard Will.
Mike, Will whispered, across the expanse of time and space. It felt impossible. Yet there he was.
Mike tried to make a noise, to call to him, to cry, but his voice failed him just as his breaths did. Stinging rolled over him in waves like Will’s breaths. Will’s fingertips ghosted across his lips, close, so close, so tangible.
Finally, time, like molasses, released its hold on him. Will grasped at his hair, his arms, his face. Mike gasped and held onto him like an anchor.
Are you real? Mike asked.
Yes, Will said.
The light swallowed them.
-
Michael James Wheeler died on November thirteenth, 1987. No one had been surprised. Where Will went, Mike followed, and so the resulting chain of events came like the tide. There had never been anything else.
They were buried side by side in Hawkins Cemetery, graves covered in matching asphodel and blue hyacinth for months before being replaced, by their friends’ gentle hands, with blooming heliotrope.