Chapter Text
For the past half hour Will has been looking for a sketchbook. He’s pretty sure he shoved it into the closet months ago during a half-hearted attempt at reorganizing, back when he’d told himself he was going to start drawing for himself again. He sits on the floor and drags the closet door open the rest of the way. The smell hits first: dust, old cardboard, and the faint mildew of things that haven’t seen daylight in too long. He squints into the back of it and starts pulling boxes out, stacking them behind him in uneven piles. He finds boxes of old winter clothes, unfinished paintings, and old books he never actually got to read.
By the time his hallway is buried in boxes, his back is starting to hurt, and he’s questioning why he didn’t just go buy a new one. He leans forward and reaches into the far corner of the closet, fingers brushing against something different, smaller, and lighter. When he pulls the box out, he realizes that it doesn’t have a label. The cardboard is soft at the edges, like it’s been moved too many times. The lid is taped shut, but when he finally manages to open it, he sees it. An old comic book he and Mike made when they were kids. He sits back against the wall without really meaning to, the box forgotten. For a moment, he just holds it, staring at the cover. The title is written in thick, uneven letters. Too confident for two kids who were just playing around with their imagination. The panel on the first page is a bit uneven, with dialogue crammed in wherever it fits. The lines wobble where his hand wasn’t steady yet, where he’d pressed too hard with the pen while outlining the drawings. And the handwriting. Mike's handwriting.
He remembers the sleepovers when they got an idea for that comic. "We should start in the forest. It’s creepier." Mike had said. "It’s boring. The castle is way cooler." Will had argued back. But they finally settled on starting the story in the forest. Will knew that he could do a lot to please him, he thought that it would make Mike like him back. But it didn't. The story comes back to him in fragments, he remembers drawing out each panel just as Mike had described them. Four boys on bikes. A dark forest. Something watching them from just out of sight. Some pages are better than others. Some feel rushed, like they’d stayed up too late and just wanted to get to the end of the scene. There are notes in the margins: "fix later," "this sucks," and "ask Will?" Each one makes his chest tighten a little more. When he reaches the last page, he stops. The scene cuts off in the middle of a moment. Mike’s character’s mouth is open, like he’s about to say something important. The speech bubble hangs there, unfinished. He feels an ache in his chest.
He closes the comic and lets it rest in his lap. The apartment feels very still around him, like it’s waiting for Will to finish that panel. But it's not Will's part of the job, he just draws. It's Mike who didn't finish his part. He tells himself this doesn’t mean anything. Anyone would feel weird finding something like this. It’s just a memory. He’s moved on. He knows he has. Will presses his fingers into his eyes and exhales slowly. Images surface without his permission: Mike pacing while he talked through plot ideas or when he was explaining what he wants Will to draw for each panel. Mike watching him draw like it mattered, like he mattered. He sets the comic on his desk, smoothing the curled pages carefully. It looks small there, out of place among paintbrushes and half-finished sketches. He flips through it again, faster this time, and something about it won’t let him go. The idea comes slowly, unwelcome but persistent. "I could write to him."
He doesn’t have to make it a big thing. He doesn’t have to talk about the past or say anything dangerous. He could just mention it. Ask if Mike remembers.
The day drifts by strangely after that. He eats without really tasting the food. He tries to draw and keeps sketching, but he never finishes them. When it’s dark, the thought still hasn’t gone away. Will sits at his desk with a blank sheet of paper and stares at it, not knowing how to start the letter. He picks up the pen and writes "Mike" at the top of the page. Stares at it, crosses it out, and tries again. "Mike, this is probably strange, but I was cleaning out my closet and found something we made a long time ago." He stops there, pen hovering. The sentence looks forced. He adds another line. "I don’t know why I kept it, but I guess I just didn't have the heart to throw it out." That feels too honest. He crumpled the paper and threw it across the room, he didn't even try to aim for the trash can. He starts again on a fresh sheet, slower this time. "Mike, I was cleaning and came across that old comic we worked on when we were kids." His chest tightens at the word "we," but he keeps going before he can talk himself out of it. "I didn’t know if you’d remember it, but I thought I’d ask. I know you're still writing books, and I was wondering if you would want to work together again on this comic or maybe something entirely different. If you do remember it, I’d like to hear what you think about it now." That feels safer than just straight up asking, "Did it mean anything to you?" even if it’s close enough to hurt. He signs his name at the bottom and folds the page slowly, like the act itself might change his mind. He slides it into an envelope and writes Mike’s address from memory, surprised again by how easily it comes back to him. The last time he visited Mike in New York was shortly after graduation when Mike was moving into his apartment.
After walking into the street, he hesitates with the envelope balanced against the slot of the mailbox. For one second, he thinks about taking it back upstairs and pretending this was just another almost. They had many moments like that in the past. But finally he dropped the letter inside. When he finally lies down when he thinks he might be tired enough to get some rest, he can't sleep because he keeps thinking about the letter and Mike's reaction to it. So instead, he reaches for the comic again and again until he actually falls asleep.