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It was 3 am when Will got the call. He thought about not answering, about turning over, shoving his pillow over his ears and going back to sleep. But the ringing didn’t stop. Then it did, finally, and Will sighed in relief, only to jump when it started again a second later. He had grunted, gotten out of bed and dragged himself over to the telephone line. “Byers?” he answered irritated, his eyes immediately shooting wide open when he heard a young woman sniffle on the other line. “Hey, Will, it’s Nancy,” she had said, and he asked if she was okay without hesitating even a second.
“Uhm.. it’s Mike. He passed some minutes ago.”
If someone asked Will to explain the sensation he felt in that exact second, he would not be able to tell you. The way his heart dropped right out of his ribcage and hit the floor with a wet splat was something he never thought he could physically notice happen—he heard the sound of it, felt the way his pulse slowly died, and Will had to actively fight against his vision fading to black. It is the scariest thing that ever happened to him, and he barely remembered what happened after other than Nancy quietly asking him to fly out. That she would pick him up from the airport, that she’d help pay for the flight if he didn’t have enough.
He barely packed anything before he left.
The way to the airport was a blur. The memory of the flight hazy. The car ride with Nancy was mostly silent despite a thousand questions hanging in the air. She said they would talk when they arrived at the hospital.
So they did. And god, Will wished he would wake up from this nightmare so he could call Mike, tell him he’s coming over and spending the rest of his life with him.
Will found out that Mike had been sick for around two months. His condition worsened rapidly and doctors had never seen anything like it, and there was no way of saving him.
Mike never told Will about it. Told his parents that Will visits him whenever he can while telling Will on the phone that he’s fine and having fun working on his projects.
During Mike’s stay in the hospital, they had called his sickness “Hanahaki Disease”, and it is the first documented case of its kind. The cause for it remains unknown, no one knows if there’s a way to slow the progression, and there’s no cure as of yet.
Mike succumbed to it not even four hours before Will arrived.
Now he sits there, at Mike’s bed, with Mike’s eerily cold hand in his own. Mike was never cold—he was always warm, heating Will with every singe touch they exchanged, sending a pleasant flush over his body that made his nerve endings tingle and the hairs on his arms stand. He is cold now. His fingers stiff, his skin pale.
He does not look like Mike anymore. This is not Will’s Mike.
Will keeps praying that this is some fucked up hallucination, that Vecna somehow survived and is out to get him. All of the bad things that happened to him back then do not even come close to what he’s feeling right now.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, holding Mike’s hand while caressing his face. It feels like seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each passing moment a faded, lesser copy of the one before.
Will is not mentally present when they have to leave. The last present moment he knows for sure he experiences, is when he tells Mike goodbye. He watches him get taken away, he watches him leave his line of sight.
Will watches as the love of his life leaves him. Leaves him forever.
The ride to the Wheeler house is quick. Will feels unreal, zoned out, like he sees everything through a dense fog with no way out. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t even make a single sound, and he himself is unsure if he’s even still breathing.
The Wheelers don’t crowd him. Don’t ask him questions. They are simply there with him, mourning the loss of a loved one, hurting together.
Will floats after Nancy like a ghost as they make their way to Mike’s room. It looks the exact same it did when Will last visited three months ago. It’s weird being here, without Mike. It doesn’t feel like he should be here.
“Uhm,” Nancy starts quietly, “Mike wrote you a letter last week. Told me to give it to you when he passed.”
Those words make his gut twist in a disgusting way and he has to fight the sensation of bile climbing up his throat. They stand there, in the middle of Will’s childhood best friend’s room, both destroyed and in pain. Nancy holds out the envelope and it takes Will an excruciatingly long minute or two to lift his heavy hand—the one he can still feel Mike’s cold touch against—to grab it. His own hand feels icy ever since he let go of Mike, and it mortifies him how the letter in his grip freezes his fingers furthermore, making him wonder whether they will suffer from frostbite and fall off any second.
“You can sleep in here if you want, or in the basement.. if you need anything, please tell me, okay?” Nancy whispers as she hugs Will tightly, knowing how difficult this must be for him, especially after finding out that Will never knew about Mike’s disease. He nods weakly and wraps his arms around her, squeezing her just as tight before letting go, watching her leave the room—the door echoing an unsettling click through the quiet room.
Will decides to stay in Mike’s room. It hurts, it hurts so much to be here, without him. Without his Mike. It shreds his already bleeding heart to pieces.
He doesn’t open the envelope for hours after it being handed to him.
When he—very understandably—can’t sleep, Will grabs the object and simply stares at it for a good thirty minutes. His expression is blank, his eyes sting, his hand still freezing.
His uncooperative, cold digits slowly pry the envelope open, and then he stares at it again for way too long.
Shakily, he pulls the letter out, puts the envelope aside and folds the paper open. Multiple sheets of papers, actually, written like it seemed like Mike was running out of time. Which, thinking about it—he was.
Fuck.
Will examines the lines and paragraphs before reading the actual words. The handwriting is uneven, making it obvious that Mike was shaking a lot when writing this, as if he used up his last strength for Will.
There are multiple warped spots on each sheet of paper, as if wet and then dry again. When Will realises what they are, the dam behind his eyes break. He tried so hard not to cry in front of the others—couldn’t have, actually, even if he wanted to. He felt empty. Still does. But it’s starting to hit him now. Mike is gone. Mike is gone, forever, and Will never got to tell him how he felt. Mike never knew just how much he meant to Will, exactly.
He sits there, on Mike’s bed, crying with the letter in his hands. Shaking hard, unable to catch his breath, light-headed and dizzy.
When he manages to somewhat breathe again, he begins to read the letter.
He wants to die the moment he starts.
When Will finishes reading, all he can do is crumble to the floor. His vision everything but clear, his body a trembling mess, his throat burning as continuos sobs rip out of him. His muscles contract uncontrollably as he cries, his screams bouncing off the walls and echoing back into his ears, making his head vibrate as agony seeps into every fibre of his body.
Will is a mess. Has never been this much of a wreck before in his life.
And yet, no matter how much he cramps and screams, no matter how much he feels like he’s dying and out of control, he ensures, determined, that the letter stays in pristine condition—even though his own tears have joined Mike’s on the papers.
At last, they get to be together that way. If not in person, then at least as their emotions, merging as tear stains. Forever.
Dear Will,
I wish you could tell me the date, because my calender stopped the day I think I lost you.
I don’t really know how to start this, or to say anything at all actually, so please forgive me if this is a lot. I guess I will just try to write every single thought I’ve ever had about you, because I think I owe you this. I should’ve said all of these things way earlier, not when it’s too late like it is now.
I’m also so deeply sorry for not telling you how sick I am. That I’m even sick at all. That I’m fucking dying. Why can’t I tell you? You’re only one call away, yet I dread telling you that I won’t be around some time soon. Fuck, who the fuck does this to their best friend? Will, please, I’m so fucking sorry.
I wanted to tell you everything I’m about to write the day you left for college. The thought of telling you these things and then there being some distance between us for some time soothed my fears and worries somehow, because I am was so scared to feel this way that I thought it was okay if I told you that way. At least I would’ve told you. But I backed out last second because then you stood there in front of me, all teary eyed but still smiling the way you smiled only at me, and all thoughts were wiped from my head. I couldn’t think about a single thing other than hugging you, rubbing your back and telling you that it’s okay and we’ll visit each other as often as we can. I should’ve told you anyway. Looking back, any method of telling you would’ve been fine. This is the last chance I’ll ever get, and I’ll take it. I’ll tell you because you deserve to know, I’ll tell you all of these things, even if it’s with my last dying breath.
I’m sorry.
Not a single day goes by where I ask myself, why am I so reckless with my time? Why did I not get my head out of my own ass to see what’s always been in front of me sooner? When it wasn’t too late, like it is now?
God I just realised how fucking hard this is going to be to read for you. I am so, so sorry Will, please forgive me for doing this to you. I’ve caused you so much pain and this is gonna go on top of that. I’m a terrible person. No, you have too good of a heart to let me say that, ever. But it’s true.
I’m trying not to drag this out, but it’s way harder to tell you these things in a letter when all I wish is that I could tell you in person. While holding your face in my hands, maybe. Yeah, definitely while holding your face in my hands.
Every time that I miss you, I feel the way you hurt. It’s like I’m not allowed to miss you, like I don’t deserve to be sad about us not being as close anymore as we used to be. Like I don’t deserve you, while you deserve the world. Does that make sense? I hopes it makes sense.
The thought of you You float around in my head every day so much that it made forget who I was before you. I can’t remember a single day where I didn’t see you somehow, let it be physically or spiritually. I don’t remember how I lived without your smile.
Am I even Mike with you? Am I Mike without my Will?
Then I ask myself how you were are without me. Maybe happier? More upset? Did you even exist before me or are you an angel I created?
Are you even Will without me?
I always smile when I think about you like that. I’m smiling right now, like a stupid fucking idiot. You are an angel. I don’t know. You’re just so pure to me, and I miss I miss you.
It’s like your voice is calling to me, but all I hear is the silence that you left behind in me. The silence that I created, because I was too big of a coward to ever speak my mind. The silence between us inside me is breaking our bones and there’s nothing I can do to change it now. I regret nothing more than that.
No wait that’s a lie. There are a lot of things I regret more than that, they just all stem from me not prying my mouth open years ago already.
I regret not having kissed you goodnight at least once in my life.
That feels so good to finally let out, you don’t even know. It would’ve felt better to get to kiss you goodnight, though.
I’ve imagined a lot of conversations and ways of seeing each other again ever since we saw each other last. I think I would’ve been prepared for any kind of scenario, because I went through every single possibility I could come up with. I imagined seeing you again and you’d be angry with me, you’d hit me in the chest while screaming at me and I would stand there and take it, I’d tell you that it’s okay and that I’m sorry. I’d be prepared to wipe the tears off your face, hold your cheeks, hug you, and rub your back the way you always liked back when we were still kids.
I would’ve been prepared for you to stand in front of me, face blank, and asking me where I have been all this time. This is the part that breaks me. Because I couldn’t even tell you where I was. You needed me and I wasn’t there. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I was scared, maybe I was a coward. Maybe I was too fucking pathetic to face myself and to just, I don’t know, accept myself? And you would stand there with that disappointment written across your face, and I’d see your pain which grabs my heart and presses it as hard as it can until all the life is squeezed right out of it. And I would let it. Because I feel like I deserve to I should feel a part of the pain that you felt for years.
I have too many thoughts and my hand is not writing fast enough to put the words to paper. I’m going to just write down a lot of things before I lose them, because losing you was enough already and I can’t have more getting lost. I don’t know if I’m doing this for myself or for you, I hope I’m doing it for you, please forgive me if this is never what you wanted.
My lips are burnt from never kissing your face. Because they always felt on fire around you and the only thing that seemed would soothe the pain was your skin. I thought I was weird for that.
Weirdly enough, my face also feels like it’s been on fire for years. And the only thing that seemed to extinguish the flames were your lips.
I wonder, every day of my life, what it would have felt like to put my lips to yours. And now I’ll never get to. Because I’m writing this letter instead of calling you, asking you to visit me. Please visit me
My eyes have been sore since the day I last saw you from not being soothed anymore by the beautiful sight that is you. God, Will, you’re so beauti the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I wonder what you look like as I write this, what you’re wearing, if you’re wearing that smile that I always tried to get you to wear every chance I got. I could never get tired of seeing you smile.
My hands burn and the tips of my fingers itch to touch and caress your face every minute I spend awake. When I sleep I dream of you, I dream of holding you and telling you all these things over and over and over again until all you do is repeat them back to me so I can hear you say them to me at least once.
My heart is a weird mix of frozen and molten, on fire with the amount of things emotions feelings love I feel for you while also being ice from you not being here with me, pouring your love into me. Fuck, I should’ve said something back then. When you talked about your Tammy. When, years later, I realised, I am was Tammy. Am I still your Tammy? Am I still your Mike?
So, once again, I sit here and ask myself why I am so reckless with my time when I’m in love. I don’t know. I’m so lost.
Somewhere deep within me, it feels like telling you these things might magically fix things, might save me, might save us. Like you might be the cure for this mysterious disease—but I think that’s just my mind making up things. Even if you were the cure, I don’t think I’m worthy of being saved by you. You’re so much more than I could ever be, I can’t ever compare to you. That’s why I admire you so much.
So, imagine I tell you all these things and then just—die? Open my heart only for it to stop beating anyway? I don’t think there’s a right way to do this. The right way would’ve been telling you that day back then. When you left for college. The day I didn’t do it.
That day is the day I think I lost you. Lost my chance with you. My chance of being with you, my chance of you being mine.
It’s just to kiss the empty lips that I lost, the only this that I want. It’s just a kiss. That’s all.
I’m in love with you, Will. I’m sorry I never said anything. Forgive me. I’m sorry, I hope we find each other again in another life, so I can love you properly there like I should’ve done here.
Because I know you could never love me back in this one.
From,
Crazy together.
Forever in love, Mike