Chapter Text
The demogorgon falls to the ground, and Mike looks across the yard and sees Will.
Joyce is the first to reach him. She sinks into his arms, head pressed against his neck, shoulders wracked with silent sobs. Then she’s holding his face in her hands, eyes jumping across his face, lips moving with a thousand questions and pleas and reassurances Mike can’t hear from across the asphalt yard.
He can’t hear, because all he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears, and his own heartbeat, pounding so loud he thinks it might burst.
And there, across the torn-up road, knelt atop those metal plates still lit from below with the uncanny red of the Upside Down, blood trickling from his nose—Mike can’t tear his eyes away, and yet at the same time he feels like he’s seen nothing at all.
His shoes catch on the lip of the asphalt below, and he nearly slams face-first into a dead demogorgon. He curses, arms going out instinctively to steady himself. One palm skins itself on the asphalt, the other goes straight into the demogorgon’s stomach, spine split in two.
When Mike looks up again, Will is looking back.
Mike forces himself to stand, wiping the blood and intestines absentmindedly on his pants. The world is still swimming as he stumbles the rest of the way towards the two Byers, and he can barely hear himself as he says, stupidly, “Will.”
Will’s eyebrows do a complicated dance before his expression settles on a paper-thin smile that looks just a little too much like a painful grimace.
“—don’t understand,” Joyce is stumbling over her own words. Mike understands. “I just—how is that possible. You—?” She shakes her head, eyes wide and wet. “B-before, you didn’t… But you did, you really did, you—”
“You saved us.”
Mike sinks into a crouch. Suddenly, both Byers’ dark eyes are on him. He feels it again, like the world is tipping under his feet, like maybe he hit his head just a little too hard when Vecna through him, or maybe it’s a sign and this damn metal bandaid is about to split open right under their feet.
But he doesn’t fall unconscious, and the Upside Down doesn’t swallow him whole, and instead Will looks at him with something akin to dread. Mike’s hand is digging into his shoulder before he ever made the conscious decision to touch Will. But then he’s feeling the reassuring warmth of a body alive under his palm, and if he inches his fingers up just a bit more he might feel Will’s pulse through his neck.
Mike wonders briefly whether it’s as fast, as loud as his. But he forces that thought away fast in lieu of repeating, louder, more insistent, “You saved us, Will. You—Holy shit. That was amazing.”
You were amazing.
But the words get stuck in his throat as Will blinks, slowly, eyes going just a bit wider, as though Mike’s words were only just sinking in, as though he had expected Mike to say something wholly different. Suddenly the idea of Will feeling just as disoriented as Mike isn’t an unlikely possibility anymore, and Mike’s heart twists just a little and he opens his mouth to say something, anything—
But then Joyce is chiming in, calling Will brave, incredible, a hero, and all Mike can think to do is hold on to Will’s shoulder like a lifeline.
What feels like hours and hours later—but in truth must only be twenty minutes at most—they’re almost through the tunnels. Lucas is leaning on Mike despite his muttered ‘I’m fine’s that spin out like clockwork every thirty seconds, wincing with every step though he tries to hide it. Mike feels for him, he really does.
However, it’s difficult to support a hundred and something pounds of injured high school athlete and simultaneously keep an eye on the two figures trailing a constant ten steps behind.
When he nearly trips yet again, Lucas finally snaps, “Mike, Jesus. Eyes ahead.” Then, with a hiss of pain: “Fuck, that hurts.”
Mike ducks his head, turning his attention away from where he’d been glancing over his shoulder, watching Joyce and Will talk lowly to one another. He’d been smiling, Will had, the first semi-real smile since everything had happened. It was small enough, barely anything but a flicker. He looked pained, Mike thought, and back was that dull ache again.
Then he’d tripped.
They surface on the other side of the tunnels, and Murray and Robin aren’t there.
“Maybe they got away?” Lucas says, breaking the long, somber silence. “Maybe they took the kids and ran?”
“No,” Will says, tone leaving no room for argument. “He took the kids.”
But Lucas is already saying, “We should just wait. If the kids are…gone, Murray and Robin know to come back here.”
Mike watches silently as Will folds his arms. Opens his mouth, closes it. Rolls his lips between his teeth and rocks back on his heels and then says, quite definitively, “I think we should keep moving.”
It’s Joyce who breaks the silence. She reaches out, brushing a hand against her son’s cheek. But then she flinches back, as though zapped. Will winces as he leans further away, folding his arms even tighter.
Still, Joyce’s tone is light as she says to him, “Will. Baby. You got them all. We’re fine here.”
Mike watches, and sees the way Will’s eyes jump over his mother’s face. There are so many unspoken words there even Mike can read from feet away. Surely Joyce must see it too. How it isn’t about that.
Will’s entire body feels a bit like a live wire, electrically charged and full of pent-up power. Mike can feel it even ten feet away, the hairs on his arms raised, Will’s presence a warmth he could pinpoint even with his eyes closed.
He looks more jittery than Mike has ever seen him, like standing still is causing him physical discomfort. And Mike doesn’t know whether that’s because of the tunnel system that reeks so horribly of the Upside Down, or the power apparently thrumming through his veins, using him like a conduit, lighting him up.
But before he can decide, Lucas speaks up, wrenching Mike from his thoughts, “Yeah, I agree with Joyce.”
A small frown is already forming across Mike’s face. But before he snaps at Lucas, he catches the spasm of pain across his friend’s face, sees the muscles in Lucas’ jaw twitching as he grits his teeth and swallows down his hisses.
“Then we’ll split up,” Mike finds himself saying instead. Then all eyes are on him and he just has to go on. “Meet them halfway. Joyce, you should stay here and make sure Lucas doesn’t rip open his wounds any further. Will and I will go meet up with Robin and Murray. Bring them back here to pick you guys up.”
Lucas looks like he wants to protest. But Mike sends him a sharp look and Lucas quickly relents—likely to keep Mike from pointing out how the blood from his wound has already seeped through his clothing again and currently coats Mike’s right hand.
Rolling his eyes, Lucas sinks dutifully to the ground, leaning against a tree with a tight ‘happy now?’ sort of smile.
No, Mike thinks. No, he’s really not.
When he turns back towards the Byers, Joyce is worrying her lip between her teeth, gaze pinned on her son.
“I don’t know about this,” she says. Then, catching the way Will’s eyebrows dip, she hastens to add: “I just mean, what if Vecna felt you…do that? Should you really be going off into the woods, unprotected? Alone?”
Mike tries not to take any offense, but he would be lying if her words don’t make him stand just a bit straighter.
He thinks Will must notice, for his eyes land briefly on Mike before turning back towards his mother. His tone is gentle as he says, “Mom. Please. Trust me.”
Joyce sighs. “Of course I trust you, honey—”
“Then trust me to take care of myself.” There are no tears in Will’s eyes now. Nothing but steely determination. “Let me be the one doing the protecting for once. Okay?”
Mike is sure Joyce will argue. She opens her mouth, and he already knows exactly what she’ll say, well-meaning as it all is. Will can to, by the look of his frown.
But Mike can also see how tense the line of Will’s shoulders is, the way he never really uncurled his fingers for more than a few seconds since snapping bone, the way they’re still white at the knuckles.
And, surprisingly, shockingly, thankfully, Joyce says wetly, “Okay.”
They walk in silence.
Mike isn’t sure whether their silence is an awkward one, or whether it’s as comfortable as it is necessary. He knows Will needed the space, needed the time alone, to think, to process, to feel. Mike could read it on his face as easily as he read the apprehension earlier on the metal plates, before Mike had spoken and reacted in a favorable way instead of calling Will a monster for twisting bone and rupturing skin.
And yet, as they trudge along the gravel road, the moon still high, Mike can’t read him. Or maybe it’s worse than that—maybe Mike can’t read himself.
“Did it hurt?” he says all of a sudden, and that’s it, the silence is broken, comfortable or not.
Will glances up at him like he had forgotten Mike was there at all. Then his eyebrows lift and a cold shudder of horror shoots through Mike as his own words register. Fuck, of all the things to say—
“Oh,” says Will. He doesn’t sound affronted. “Oh, uhm, no. Yes?” Even in the darkness, Mike can see him flush. Will rubs his nape and adds quietly, “I don’t really remember.”
Mike’s surprise is enough to momentarily make him forget his massive blunder. “What? As in, nothing?”
“Of course not,” Will says with an eye-roll. He’s grinning slightly, and Mike can feel a smile tug at his own lips, and maybe the blunder wasn’t that massive after all. “Obviously I remember. I just… I wasn’t exactly in my head, you know. I wasn’t feeling what I felt, what Will felt, I was—”
“In their minds,” Mike finishes when it becomes clear Will won’t. “Like Vecna.”
Those words are clearly the wrongest words Mike could have chosen, for Will flinches so hard he actually recoils from Mike, taking a full step back. Mike stumbles to a stop, his stomach dropping.
Will doesn’t look at him as he whispers, “I know what I did.”
The sound of those bones snapping isn’t something Mike ever thinks he’ll forget, demogorgon bodies or not. Then he thinks of Chrissy and Fred and Patrick and Max, and he tastes bile rising in the back of his throat.
He can only imagine what Will hears.
“Hey, no,” Mike says lamely, reaching out. But Will clearly doesn’t want to be touched right now, and understand as he might, Mike pretends it doesn’t hurt at all. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. You aren’t him. Okay? You aren’t Vecna.”
Will stares at the ground for another moment. Then he tips back his head, looking up at the moon, wipes his nose and straightens his shoulders. He’s walking again before Mike realizes he has to catch up to him.
“Those demogorgons weren’t people, Will,” Mike says, sounding breathless even to his own ears. It has, of course, little to do with the few hastened steps he took to retake his place by Will’s side as they walk. Mike’s legs were always longer anyway. “They’re monsters.”
Will’s head whips towards him so fast Mike’s heart momentarily stops. Chrissy, Fred, Patrick, Max—
Will stares at him, hard. “Then maybe, Mike, we should consider I might be a monster now too.”
Mike is shocked enough he momentarily forgets how to speak. Instead, he just watches stupidly as Will trudges up the road, the moonlight painting his skin, casting a shadow on the road below that reaches far across the dirt path and beyond.
“Mike.”
El’s face swims in front of his eyes, and he can’t tell whether it’s from tears he can’t feel on his cheeks or based in the odd feeling of vertigo making his whole body feel off.
“Mike, I’m sorry,” she continues. Her tone isn’t angry, or sharp, or even apologetic. If anything, she looks determined, so sure of what she’s about to say he can’t help but envy her certainty. “But I don’t need you.”
“When you found me in the woods…I needed you then. But I haven’t in a long time. And I don’t think it is fair for you or for me to…to lie.” She shakes her head, voice momentarily breaking—the only crack in her certainty. But then it’s back, stronger than ever, and she grabs his hands. “Friends don’t lie.”
“Mike.”
He wakes up gasping.
It isn’t El sitting at the foot of the couch in the Squawk common area. Of course not. El is with Hopper in the Upside Down.
It is Will, however, and the moment that fact registers to Mike, he’s sitting up much faster than his still reeling head might like.
Will’s mouth twitches into what might have been a grin. But then it’s smoothed over just as fast, and he hands Mike a steaming cup. “I was just bringing everyone coffee. Seems like you really needed it—about half an hour ago.”
Mike feels mortified. Not that he dozed off, necessarily—one glance around the room proves he wasn’t the only one to succumb to his exhaustion, judging by Joyce’s curled up form on the armchair across the table, or Lucas barely keeping his eyes open where he lays on the other couch, or Murray snoring with his face smushed against the desk.
But Will has the most reason to be exhausted. And he clearly is; the skin under his eyes is purple, his complexion pale as the early rays of sunlight filtering through the window. More than that, his shoulders are hunched, like he’s trying to fold in on himself, like he wants nothing more than to crumple like the newspaper articles Lucas is halfheartedly vaulting into the trash across the room.
And yet he’s offering Mike coffee.
“Oh, thanks,” Mike says, taking the mug from Will. Their fingers brush briefly, and Mike is shocked how cold Will’s skin is. His hands have always been cold, Mike knows this, and his own always a furnace. But still the touch burns.
Mike puts the mug to his lips and promptly chokes on the scalding hot coffee burning a new esophagus down his throat.
“Fuck,” he wheezes, ignoring Lucas’ unimpressed look or the way Robin does a horrible job at hiding her laughter from above her own mug. “Fuck!”
Will takes the mug right out of his hands again, thumping Mike on the back as the latter attempts to breathe again. It hurts like hell, but the pain is hardly as bad as the embarrassment that runs even hotter than the scalding coffee.
He can’t look Will in the eye, though he can sense Will’s gaze on him.
“Be right back,” is all Mike manages to say before he’s fleeing across the room. Robin, who must have been stifling her laughter after all, lets out a loud bark just as the door shuts behind him.
Will comes to find him a few minutes later.
He watches Mike from the doorway of the recording booth before sitting down with his knees tucked in to his chest.
Mike watches from Robin’s turning stool before promptly moving to the floor as well.
“I vote we collectively forget that ever happened,” Mike says eventually, going for a joking tone.
He is immeasurably glad when Will smiles. “Hmm, sorry, I don’t think that’s how it works.”
Mike watches Will’s finger pads tapping a rhythm against his knee and wonders what song he has stuck in his head now.
“Oh?” Mike asks, eager to play along. This, this he can do. It almost feels normal, like a conversation they would have had a year ago, or two, or three, or— “As this party’s paladin, I feel entitled to at least some say here.”
Will shakes his head, eyes sparkling. “One vote doesn’t carry much weight, I’m afraid.”
Mike throws his hands up in mock frustration. “I thought this was a democracy. Turns out our fearsome cleric held the power all along.”
But instead of flattering Will as he had meant to, the words seem to have the opposite effect. Will goes abruptly quiet, that small smile vanishing. His expression turns pensive, and, shit, Mike can’t tell what he did, what he said wrong—
“You know it’s not my own, right?” Will says, much quieter. “It isn’t my power. It’s his. I’m not like El.”
The comparison blindsides Mike, and he feels like he needs a moment to recover, for some reason. But he sees in the curl of Will’s spine that he doesn’t have that moment, not if he wants to save the threads of lightness already phasing out of the room.
“No, you aren’t.” Will looks up, expression halfway between surprise and suspicion, but Mike powers on. “You aren’t El, and like I said before, you aren’t Vecna. But, Will, I don’t think you understand how incredible what you did was. Honestly, I think everyone’s reactions have been far too calm for what happened back there. Sure, Lucas was bleeding out, so I’ll give him a free pass, and your mom was pretty terrified, and I still don’t really understand Robin, and I’m a bit scared of Erica, and I think Murray’s already drunk again. But—Will. You lifted those demogorgons into the air with your goddamn mind, took out all three at once and freaking saved all our lives. Do you know how crazy cool that is? You’re a fucking miracle.”
Will’s eyes are wide as they stare at each other from across the booth. Mike only realizes then that his heart is drowning out his thoughts again and that he certainly thought out none of the words that just spewed right out of his mouth.
But in lieu of the expected embarrassment at speaking so freely, Mike feels elated, as bright as the sun dipping the room in golden morning rays. Because Will is smiling again, and this time it’s a real smile.
“You mean that?” Despite the smile, Will’s voice sounds strangled.
Mike is nodding before Will finishes speaking, his hands curling into the fabric of his jacket. “Of course.”
The first time Mike learned what truly missing someone felt like had been when El ‘died’ back in ’83.
He had talked to that damn walkie talkie every single night, obsessive like he’d never been before. He had missed El and he had loved El, and it was alright to admit because just a year later she had become his girlfriend.
The second time was in ’85, when El and the Byers moved to California.
He reverted back to missing El again, and it really ought to have been much more painful than before, he figured, now that they were a proper couple and everything. But, miss her as he did, it wasn’t much worse at all.
This time, he didn’t check the walkie talkie daily. This time, he didn’t go to bed fearing he might forget the way her voice sounded. This time, all he did was write a letter every month, ending it with a perpetual unassuming ‘From Mike’.
But this time, he did miss more than just El.
Mike didn’t miss El now. Perhaps it was callous of him to say when El was putting herself in such danger to save Hawkins, to save them all, irregardless of what it meant for her own wellbeing.
But when Mike thought of El now, all the memory of her face brought to his mind was hot shame—and then, much later, much duller, he missed her. Missed her like he missed Nancy, wherever she was now, missed her like he missed his parents, recovering in the hospital from something his own involvement in all this shit had brought about.
He loved her. Of course he did. He always would.
But when Mike thought of El, he thought of those words that had floated between them like helium balloons. The unspoken ones, that he in all his cowardice had never actually managed to say to her face, not more than once or twice, not in a way that ever made her believe him. And the very much spoken ones, the ones that sounded like ‘I don’t need you, Mike’ and ‘just friends’ and ‘you are supposed to put work into a relationship, Mike, not just call me your girlfriend and parade me around when it suits you’.
And going down that rabbit hole of emotions led him to think, sometimes, that maybe El’s ‘death’ in ’83 wasn’t the first time he had truly learnt to miss a person. Maybe you didn’t need to be gone for a year to deserve that award, and maybe you didn’t even have to be boyfriend and girlfriend for the pain to be genuine.
Maybe seven days missing was enough. Maybe seven state lines and a complete lack of letters did the trick, too.
And maybe it was possible to miss someone—really truly miss someone, to the point that your heart hurt and your ribcage was too tight and your head felt like the whole world was spinning—when they were just across the room.
Mike doesn’t like Lucas’ plan very much.
He doesn’t like it at all, actually.
“I just think it’s reckless,” he says from where he’s sat atop the counter as he watches Will make a sandwich. “None of us understand your powers, Will. None of us. We need more time, to test this theory of a hive mind, to make sure that’s really what’s going on here.”
He ignores the look of exasperation Will sends his way, instead opting to take the grilled cheese sandwich triangle Will is offering him along with it. It tastes better than his mother’s, Mike thinks, and then realizes maybe he was a lot hungrier than he’d thought.
He pushes that thought away and goes on, “And, if these really are Vecna’s own powers you’re channeling, who’s to say Vecna can’t feel you use them? Who’s to say he won’t swoop in the moment you slip into that demogorgon’s mind, who’s to say he won’t—”
“Mike.”
Will’s own half of the grilled cheese sits uneaten on his plate, and Mike has half a mind to order him to eat it now, under his watchful eye, the word ‘fuel’ already sitting primly on his tongue, just like if he were talking to El.
That thought shuts him right up.
“Touching as your concern may be,” Will says, the corners of his mouth twitching into a grin, “I think if we tell Lucas now that we’re going with his sister’s plan instead of his, he might just blow a gasket.”
He chuckles, and Mike joins in easily. It’s so, so easy.
In just a few hours alone, they have made so much fucking progress, Mike thinks, because the Will from three days ago never would have looked so relaxed, or joked like that, or grinned at him so bright—no, they left that version of their relationship behind years and years ago, somewhere around California (or, if Mike is being brutally honest with himself, far earlier still).
Fuck, has he missed that. Has he missed them.
“You would tell me though, right?” he asks between bites of grilled cheese. Will rolls his eyes, eyebrows lifted in a way that effortlessly conveys ‘shut your mouth when you’re chewing, idiot’. Mike makes a conscious effort to swallow before adding, “You would tell me if you were at all worried? If the plan went bad after all and you were ever in danger?”
Will’s expression softens into something quietly fond. “Yes, Mike.”
“Promise?”
Will huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “You’re ridiculous.” At Mike’s expression, though, he relents. “Jesus, yes, okay. I promise.”
Mike jumps off the counter. The Squawk’s kitchenette is tiny, and he misjudges the distance slightly, and instead of taking Mike’s outstretched hand and shaking like he’s supposed to, Will just stares at him with too wide eyes, looking a little shell-shocked. And Mike realizes belatedly that they’re a little too close, that he can see the specks of green in Will’s eyes this close, and the lashes fluttering on top, and the mole by his nose, and he realizes also that he should probably take a step back, give Will some goddamn space—
Instead, he finds himself breathing out, “Hey, Will—”
“We’re good to go!” comes a shout from the other room, and Will jerks back so violently he slams right into the open cutlery drawer.
Mike winces in sympathy, hands already outstretched, an ‘are you okay?’ already on his tongue.
But Will ducks out of the kitchenette and more or less flees into the next room, and Mike is left with the sinking feeling he did something very, very wrong.
Once again, his vote seems to hold little weight. They go with Lucas’ plan.
So, he finds himself on the roof of the power station with the demogorgon, its limbs bent in all the wrong directions, nailed to the roof like some perverse crucifixion.
The Wheelers aren’t religious by any standards. Sure, his mom likes to drag them to church whenever she feels like the optics are necessary, and Ted likes to talk big about christian values and traditions. But Mike likes to think he has been mostly spared that specific concoction of moral superiority and quiet resentment.
But as he looks down at the demogorgon now, the image so uncanny it will surely be branded into his mind’s eye for weeks to come, he feels his stomach twist with unease.
“Mike, get down here!” Lucas shouts, and Mike hastens to climb down the ladder.
When he reaches the others, Will is already kneeling on the gravel, eyes closed.
Mike swallows, and it feels as dry as dirt. Selfishly, he wanted Will to wait for him. He would have pulled him in for a tight hug, told him to be careful, and Will would have grinned and rolled his eyes and told him to stop babying him, Jesus, he had his mom to do that. And Joyce would have squawked in mock distress, and they would have laughed, and Will’s shoulders would have been less tight than they are now.
But it seems Mike is too late.
“Ready?” Robin shouts from inside the power station.
“Ready,” Will says, eyes still closed, and breathes in deep.
Things happen fast after that.
All Mike remembers is Will being thrown across the yard, body limp like rag doll as he crashes to the ground. Joyce screams, but Mike is already running, and it’s Mike who gets to Will first, who sees his eyes roll back, whose fingers bunch in Will’a shirt sleeve as his body convulses on the ground, who is shouting, begging for Will to wake.
“Get some goddamn music,” he shouts at Lucas and Robin, who are just standing there, staring. He knows he shouldn’t be angry at them, they’re just in shock, and yet he is. “The Smiths or The Cure or—”
It hits Mike in his panic that he doesn’t know Will’s favorite song anymore. It wouldn’t still be ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’, would it? Who still likes the same music they did when they were twelve? Especially after such a traumatic experience linked to it. No, it can’t be that, it won’t be that, and Mike doesn’t know Will’s favorite music anymore, he has no fucking clue, so he won’t be able to save him, all because he doesn’t fucking know—
He finds himself being pushed aside and only realizes belatedly that he’s breathing too fast.
Then there’s Robin in his face and she’s telling him to breathe with her, and he tries to, but instead he just counts the freckles on her face and tries not to glance just a tad to her left to where Will is still convulsing.
“Eyes on me,” she says, and he remembers saying the same to the children at the compound. God, that memory feels so far away.
He thinks of snapping bone and unnatural angles.
He doesn’t want Will to die.
What feels like an eternity later, Lucas runs back from the building, headphones in hand. He jams them on Will’s ears, and Mike crawls closer, ignoring Robin beside him. His vision is still splotchy, but when his fingers curl around Will’s ice-cold ones, Mike feels more grounded than any of Robin’s breathing exercises or freckles could make him feel.
Lucas presses play, and Mike prays to whatever is out there to save Will.
He’s done missing him.
Afterwards, when Will doesn’t wake up, it’s Mike who volunteers to stay with him.
Joyce is there, too, and she won’t leave her son’s side. Mike understands her fear, the obsessive need to check every thirty seconds that Will is still there, that his pulse is steady and his chest is moving and there’s breath in his lungs.
Unfortunately, while they both may feel that need, only one of them is currently seated at his side, because only one of them is has the type of relationship with Will that would deem such actions proper.
Mike, instead, is left pacing.
He stares at Will and he thinks, and his eyes are so heavy with exhaustion that he has to press the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars just to keep them from falling shut. When he opens them again, Will is still unconscious, and Mike wonders if Joyce would look at him weird if he sat down at the foot of the couch and counted the rise and fall of Will’s chest. He thinks it would make him feel better, but his limbs lock into place the moment he dares consider that notion.
Instead, Mike flops onto the armchair across the table, draws his knees to his chest and opts to counting from a safe distance.
They spend a long time like this, and Mike stays so buried in his own thoughts that he only registers how complete the silence had been when Joyce breaks it.
“It’s nice,” she says, voice thick with emotion. She isn’t looking at him, instead drawing gentle circles on the back of Will’s hand. “That you wanted to stay. I think…he would have appreciated it. Your friendship always meant a lot to him.”
Mike is too surprised to think of a better answer than, “Oh. Um. Yeah.”
Because the truth is Mike isn’t so sure. It’s not like he’s doing anything of assistance anyway. Not to mention, he and Will…Will and he…
Mike thinks of California. Of an awkward pat on the back instead of a proper hug at the airport, of Will’s hurt expression, clearly not understanding why Mike was acting this way. He thinks of a rolled up drawing and he thinks of a passionate speech, of Will turning away and crying silently out the window.
He thinks of how they never talked about it, and how Mike told himself again and again this was normal, this was just how friendships evolve, people grow up, people grow apart, it isn’t his fault.
He thinks of the months and months after, of over a year spent in the same house, of stilted conversations and Will always leaving the room just a moment before Mike entered, of occupying the same space but never feeling farther away from the easiness that had been their childhood friendship
How they never fucking talked, and how it really was Mike’s fault all along, wasn’t it.
Truth is, Mike isn’t so sure Will would have wanted him to stay, but he nods along to Joyce’s words anyway.