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The house is quiet in the way only late nights can be.
Not peaceful, and not soft. Not the kind of quiet that wraps around you like a blanket.
This kind of quiet just sits there, heavy and unmoving, pressing against the walls and the windows and the inside of Mike’s chest. It hums faintly in the absence of everything that used to live here. No birds outside. No television murmuring from the living room. No laughter spilling down the hallway. No voice leaning over his shoulder asking what he’s writing, or teasing him about the way he chews the end of his pen.
Just… nothing. Just the low buzz of the lamp and the hollow space where life used to be.
Mike sits at his desk, elbows braced against the wood worn smooth by decades of homework and half-finished stories. His weight sinks into the chair the same way it always has, like the furniture itself remembers him better than anyone else ever will.
It’s the same desk he’s had his whole life.
Same dent in the corner where he dropped a hammer trying to help Dustin make his robotics project for senior year, same scratches from when Lucas tried to carve his initials in it with a pocketknife, same faded marker streaks from when Will leaned across it once, years ago, a smile in his words and colors bleeding through the paper. Smudged, from where Will licked his thumb and tried to scrub it out, eyebrows furrowed in worry, looking up at Mike.
The desk moved with him when he moved down the street.
A sifferent cul-de-sac and a different house number, but still in the same town.
Same walls painted the same dull shade of blue he never bothered to change. Same rug spread across the floor, threadbare, flattened, stained with years of crumbs and muddy footprints and broken crayon chunks ground into the fibers from when Holly used to crawl in here when she was little and had a habit of breaking Will's things. He never cleaned it before the move. Just rolled it up and dragged it with him.
He keeps telling himself he’ll clean it eventually, but the truth is he hasn’t cleaned it because he can’t bring himself to erase the evidence that someone else used to exist here.
The lamp beside him casts a tired yellow glow across the room. Always yellow. The bulb has been dying for months, but he hasn’t replaced it. The light is dim enough that the corners of the room disappear into shadow, like the space itself is slowly retreating from him. Dust floats in the air, suspended in the glow. Tiny particles drifting slowly, lazily, like they’ve forgotten how to fall. Mike watches them sometimes when the nights get too long.He kind of wishes they would drop already, just so they can settle with the rest of the lifelessness in the room.
Across from him, on the wall above the dresser, is the painting.
He doesn’t have to look at it, not when he knows every inch of it. Every brushstroke, and every imperfect line. Every place where the paint thickened because Will’s hand had trembled. Every place where the color softened because he’d blended it carefully with the edge of his thumb.
Mike could probably redraw it from memory, if he had the talent. He’s spent enough nights staring at it to where it's burned into his retinas.
Still, he looks, because Mike has never been very good at doing what’s good for him.
His father’s glasses sit heavy on his nose. The frames are thicker than he needs. The prescription isn’t quite right. They slide slightly crooked down the bridge of his nose because they were never fitted for his face.
Mike started wearing them sometimes after the funeral.
At first it had been a joke, something to make Nancy roll her eyes. But eventually he realized something about them, the lenses blur the world just enough to take the edge off things.
Edges of objects and the edges of memories. Edges of people who aren’t here anymore and even the edges of people who were. He understands why his father wore them so often, now. How he could look past his struggles, the desperate clawings for attention he used to do as a child.
He wears them on nights like this, when everything feels too sharp to touch.
In the reflection of the dark window beside his desk, the glasses make him look older. Not older in the good way, and not like someone who grew into himself, not like the Polaroids stuffed inside his drawer.
He looks like a man who stayed too long somewhere he should have left years ago, and a man who settled into the grooves of a life that slowly hardened around him like cement.
That’s all Mike does now.
He sits, and he stays. He thinks. Sometimes, he writes, and then he crumples it all up and throws it away. Pages scatter across the floor around his chair like pale little ghosts, half-finished paragraphs, broken sentences, ideas that collapsed halfway through existing.
He used to think he’d write something important someday, something that would matter. Something that would carve his name into the world in a way that wouldn’t fade. But the older he got, the more he realized something awful and quiet, a fact that's been eating at him from the inside out.
He’s not remarkable or brilliant at all.
He’s just a man sitting alone in a dim room in the same town he grew up in, writing stories no one will ever read.
Meanwhile there are people out there who can sell their souls with a paintbrush. Pretty men in bright galleries in New York, surrounded by strangers who lean close to their work and whisper about how beautiful it is, who sometimes, even, take those men home if they're funny enough, interesting enough, good enough.
Mike swallows.
He knows exactly what those galleries look like because he’s seen the pictures, he's studied them, the little earring hanging and the gloss on his lips, shirts small enough to show a mid-drift, tight pants, a flannel tossed over top of it all like that made sense at all. Colors smudged around his eyes, once, blue and green, making them pop and his eyelashes look longer. Trying something out, Lucas has mentioned offhandedly when handling them over, his palm on Mike's shoulder.
He had to stop looking eventually.
The painting on his wall is framed in simple wood. Nothing ornate, because Will had never liked ornate things. He used to say fancy frames distracted from the painting itself.
Mike reaches up slowly and pushes the glasses higher on his nose.
He knows what it looked like when Will was painting, hunched over the canvas, hair falling in his eyes, chewing the inside of his cheek while he worked like the act of putting color on a surface might somehow split him open.
Mike had watched him once, during the end of the world. Not speaking, and not interrupting, just watching the way someone watches a storm roll in when they know they can’t stop it. El was busy with the crawls, and Will was stressed, so he'd asked, voice soft and sweet, if it was alright if he'd used Mike's old color pencils to pass the time. Mike had bought him as many colors as he could find that afternoon, all the money from Nancy's piggyback stuffed inside his pockets. When he'd dumped the change back onto her bed, trying to ignore her yelling, she had snapped out a threat about killing him if he stole her things for his girlfriend again.
He remembers glaring at her, his face hot, and storming out while screaming loud enough for his mother to yell at him to keep it down. Will had been sitting on his bed, expression worried and a little amused, all before Mike pulled the little acrylic tubes from his jacket, the words dying on his lips before he could say anything. He has that painting on his wall too, in another full little wooden frame, Will's signature in the bottom right corner.
His chest tightens, a sharp little twist beneath his ribs.
Maybe El didn’t like ornate things either, or maybe, she would have liked something big and gold. Or purple. Maybe a seventy thirty split of it, or maybe just nothing all together, no frame at all.
He doesn’t know.
He never asked, not once. He doesn't know if anyone else did, either. Will might know, if they were so close back in Lenora. Maybe Hopper. Maybe Max, most likely. Maybe no one knew, and she died with that information tucked to her chest.
A strange, aching pressure spreads through his stomach, slow and heavy, like something sinking through water. He wonders how many small things like that exist now, tiny pieces of people he loved that he never bothered to learn.
Little facts and little preferences, truths that disappeared quietly while he was busy being young and stupid and certain that everyone would always be around long enough to answer later.
Mike’s eyes sting behind the glasses.
He lets himself imagine it the way he always does, the same way someone presses a finger into a bruise just to feel the pain bloom again. He imagines the future the way it’s always appeared in the back of his mind, slowly, stubbornly, like a shadow that refuses to move no matter how much light you shine on it.
Him, older and grayer, still sitting in this room.
Still sitting in this same chair that’s already a little too small and a little too hard, its wooden edge digging into the backs of his thighs in the exact same place it always has. Still hunched over the same desk that was never built for a grown man’s body, his knees knocking the underside whenever he shifts.
Still staring at that painting. Alone.
The word doesn’t come to him dramatically. It doesn’t arrive like a thunderclap or a revelation, because he's already had that before. This is nothing new, nothing he's figuring out now, just another part of a routine, a dull certainty that settles into his bones the way winter cold settles into the frame of a house, like ice in a tub. Alone because he can never be true to himself, and because he chose this path. Or maybe, because he was too afraid not to.
He’s known it for years now, and the truth sits inside him like a small, smooth stone he keeps turning over in his pocket. Always there. Always heavy. Always impossible to ignore for very long. He's never going to have anyone else.
He could never fall in love with a man who isn’t Will.
The thought had tried to form before, and tried to stretch its limbs and become something real. But, every single time it got close to existing, it short-circuited. Every time he tried to imagine another man’s face, it dissolved, replaced by Will’s hands. Will’s laugh. Will’s quiet, patient eyes that always seemed to see too much.
He remembers sitting across from someone once, years ago now, some guy from work who’d smiled at him too long, who’d leaned closer over a drink and asked him questions in that careful, curious way people do when they’re testing the ground between them. Mike had tried. God, he had tried. He’d tried to imagine what it would feel like if that hand reached across the table.
If those fingers brushed his wrist, if someone leaned in. The second the image formed, it warped. The hand wasn’t that man’s hand anymore, it was Will’s, and the moment that realization hit, Mike’s stomach dropped so violently he thought he might be sick right there at the table.
His throat had closed up, and the world had tilted, because it wasn’t supposed to be Will. It wasn't supposed to still be Will, and if it wasn’t Will, then it was nothing. He could never fall in love with another man. He'd have to keep his eyes closed, his hand over their mouth, muffling them as he slid inside because he'd go soft the second he'd heard their voice, heart pained when he loses his little illusion, fingers threaded in short brown hair and pushing it into pillows, keeping their faces away from him, scratching the itch just to make himself sick afterwards, scrubbing their scent off of his body. Will or nothing, always Will or nothing.
The thought doesn’t comfort him, it just traps him deeper in this cycle. Never another man.
And worse, even, he could never fall in love with a woman.
Not really, and not the way he was supposed to. Not the way a Wheeler should. Not the way a man should.
He tried to want it, he tried so hard it hollowed him out from the inside. He told himself it would come naturally if he just kept pushing forward, if he just ignored the nausea clawing its way up his throat. If he just smiled enough. If he just held hands long enough. If he just closed his eyes and forced himself through the motions.
Awkward firsts and moments where his palms were slick with sweat and his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, moments where someone looked up at him with soft, hopeful eyes, waiting for something he couldn’t give them, waiting for him to feel something, body soft and sick. Mike felt the same horrible thing blooming inside his chest looking at them, the folds between their legs, the awful sensation of acid rising up the back of his throat, like his own body was rejecting the lie he was trying to live inside.
He’d pull away eventually, mumbling excuses, fingers wet and back covered in goosebumps, leaving people confused, looking after him with that same wounded expression that haunted him for weeks afterward.
He couldn’t do it.
Every time he got too close, the feeling attacked him from the inside, relentless, like his lungs were being filled with something corrosive, something in him was screaming wrong, wrong, wrong.
Dating was easier, no pressure to perform until you hit the time limit and dump them anyway, but in every woman he meets, he sees her.
He sees El.
Not really her face, he didn't remember each line, or the shade of her eyes, so not perfectly. Just pieces, like the way she used to look at him. The sparkle in her eyes when he did something right, staring as if he was the sun, like if she stared hard enough, if she believed hard enough, she could create warmth where there wasn’t any. She tried so hard to pull something out of him that wasn’t already claimed by someone else. He remembers the way her smile would stretch just a little too tight sometimes, the way her fingers squeezed his hand just a little too long, expression determined, pretending she could press the feeling into him by force.
Pretending love was something you could transfer if you just held on tightly enough. Something you could borrow. Something you could make permanent, even.
Mike presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to swallow around the sudden pressure in his throat. He loved her. He did.
He loved her so much that losing her had felt like failure. Like he had personally lost something sacred, even after everything was over. Even after Vecna was gone, and even after the world had finally stopped ending. He had loved her enough that he would have killed for the chance to bring her back. But, he didn’t love her the way he was supposed to.
Not the way she deserved, and that knowledge sits inside him like rot, because no other woman could ever be her.
No one else could understand the things he’s lived through. No one else could stand inside the wreckage of that world and still look at him like he was something worth saving.
It’s wrong, and he knows it’s wrong. He knows it’s sick, but no one else ever had the power to bring him back home.
And… he tried to repay that. He tried to repay her devotion with something that looked like love. He gave her everything he could scrape together from the hollow parts of himself, but there was nothing left for her, nothing that hadn’t already been claimed years before he even understood what was happening.
Maybe that’s why he ended up like this, cursed to sit here. In this uncomfortable chair. At this desk that’s too small. In this quiet house that echoes with everything he lost.
Alone.
Alone and sinful.
Wrong in a way that feels carved into the structure of his bones. Made wrong by God. Made wrong by the world. Made wrong by the way his stomach twists every time he passes the wrong kind of person on the street.
Every man with soft brown hair, every pair of green eyes, and every familiar smile that hits him like a ghost of something he never had the courage to keep.
Maybe that’s the worst part, actually. Instead of staring at the picture frame on the desk beside him, the one he tells himself he should be focusing on, his eyes drift up instead, to the little acrylic shield on his wall, smudged from fingerprints.
But, he remembers exactly when he got it, and suddenly he’s not looking at the shield anymore.
He’s remembering a smile, a hand squeezing his, a laugh. Young love. First love. A lie that Will finally felt safe enough to move on from. There hadn’t been a fight, and there was no screaming, no dramatic confession shouted across a rain-soaked street. No desperate moment where someone ran after someone else, not like before.
It had been quieter than that. So quiet it almost didn’t feel real, almost. Will had just stepped forward slowly, like he was afraid of breaking something fragile between them, and he placed his palm on Mike’s shoulder one last time. The last time it had felt normal, almost.
Tears clung to Will’s long, long lashes, but he was smiling. That soft, sad smile that always made Mike feel like he was being forgiven for something he didn’t understand yet. And then, Will had said something Mike will probably hear for the rest of his life.
He thanked him.
Will Byers had looked him in the eyes and thanked him.
Thanked Mike Wheeler, of all people. He thanked him for letting him know what it felt like to love someone, and even worse? He thanked him for being kind about it.
For not minding, or being mean, and for letting him move on. For letting his feelings bubble down and evaporate.
Mike closes his eyes, and his chest tightens until breathing hurts the way it always does, because if he had known, if he had known back then, when Will still looked at him with that shine in his eyes, when Will understood perfectly well that Mike wasn’t brave enough, wasn't the way he wanted him to be but wanting him anyway, maybe he would have done something. He used to be angry, and he was angry in the moment, past all of the shock, because if he had known, if Will hadn't have lied, maybe things would have been different. Maybe if he didn't say what he did that night in the rain, maybe Will wouldn't have felt the need to.
He wanted to yell, but he couldn’t, not when all Will had wanted was one small thing. One kiss, and his first kiss, with someone he cared about.
Mike had given it to him. Of course he had.
Even though the wounds inside him were still raw and bleeding, and even though he didn’t understand why his heart had felt like it was tearing open when Will stepped away afterward.
Mike gave it to him anyway.
Because that’s the cruelest thing about Mike Wheeler, he knows. He can give pieces of himself away, he just can’t ever say what they mean, and he leaves them wondering, and wanting, and he just… never does anything about it.
He never told anyone. Not Lucas, not Dustin, not Nancy. Not his mother, not even when she begged him, crying in the kitchen, asking him what had happened to him, why he was so quiet, why he didn't reach out anymore.
He never said the words, and he never named it.
He never gave it shape. He couldn't tell them when he's already lost his chance. There's no point being… that way, if he couldn't get what he wanted.
And because of that, it never had the chance to become something real.
His friends tried, and his family tried, but there was no point. Little nudges, scattered gently through the years, like people tossing pebbles at a window and hoping he might eventually look outside.
Nancy had mentioned someone once, when he was no longer a senior in high school but the summer hadn't ended yet. She’d leaned in the doorway of his room while he was pretending to write, mind adrift, arms folded, trying to sound casual about it.
“She’s sweet,” Nancy had said. “Artistic. Funny. She paints, actually. I thought maybe you two would-”
Mike had stood before she could finish, gripping the door, asking if she was done. Her eyes watched him like a hawk, though, and he knew she got what she wanted. Nancy had watched him for a moment longer than necessary, like she was trying to see through him, like she knew the answer before he even spoke, and she never brought it up again.
His mother had been subtler about it. She’d leave brochures on the kitchen table when he came home during the breaks. Community events and book clubs. Art fairs, volunteer groups when she got desperate. Little colorful pamphlets fanned out beside the salt shaker like invitations to a life he was supposed to want, back when he was still in college, using classes as a way to push everyone further from him.
He’d glance at them while pouring his coffee and then fold them absentmindedly. Sometimes he would take one with him so she’d think he might go, but they always ended up crumpled in the bottom of his bag, waiting to be thrown away.
Dustin’s girlfriend had even tried too, once. She’d cornered Mike at a barbecue, waving her hand around like a flag. “I have a friend,” she’d said brightly. “You’d love her. She’s weird in the exact same way you are.”
Mike had laughed politely, said that sounded dangerous, and promised maybe someday. Dustin clapped both hands on his shoulders, squeezing and guiding him out of there, apologizing. Saying he knew that wasn't up his alley. As if he understood.
Will would've, if Mike had it in him to speak to him more than their hesitant greeting, Will's face shuddering before his arms wrapped around Mike's shoulders, Mike squeezing the roundness of his hips, overwhelmed by how there was enough that his fingers could dig in, a little, and it could pudge right back out. Instead, Mike was a coward, stuck at the grill while Steve spoke at him, not to him, focused on the way Will’s thighs, fattened up by the way he sat on the deck, had a slight gleam of sweat on them. Feet swinging, a gap between his legs and a flush on his cheeks, shoulders bare and shorts riding up. Dimples visible on the small of his back. Lucas laughing next to him, his hand pushing at Will, Will's hair bobbing in front of his face as he shakes his head, shoving back, overly close, shorts pushing higher and higher up on his thighs, into the little crease there, so tight and cherry red with a cute little yellow stripe on the band gripping into the dip of his waist, skin flushed and warm-
Dustin had prodded, expression knowing, and he'd averted his eyes instead, asked Dustin’s girlfriend for that number, and never ended up calling.
Lucas was the most straightforward, but Lucas had always been like that.
He didn’t hint, and he didn’t dance around things. Sometimes when they hugged goodbye, Lucas would slide something into the back pocket of Mike’s jeans. A Polaroid photo or a flyer, a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it.
“Group meetup,” Lucas would murmur quietly near his ear, voice low enough that no one else heard. Then, softer, “he might be there.”
Mike would freeze every time. Lucas never said Will’s name, not directly, but he didn’t have to. Sometimes Lucas would tell him little things, like he was feeding breadcrumbs to a starving animal.
“He cut his hair again, said he'd been looking too much like Jonathan.”
“He’s teaching art classes now, I signed up for one and I sucked. I don't know how he does it.”
“He laughs a lot these days, even at the stupidest things. It's nice, you can really tell he's put it behind him, you know?”
And once, quiet, and careful, “he asked about you. It's been six months, Mike. You're his best friend. He misses you. Don't do this to yourself.” Mike had stood there with the photo burning in his pocket, the edges pressing against his skin like something alive. Lucas had squeezed his shoulder. “You could come,” he’d said. “Just this once. Please. Just to see him.”
Mike never went. That was almost a year ago, now. Eleven months. Eleven.
He's twenty seven, and she's still sixteen, and Will is the most beautiful man he's ever seen in his life, and the only time he'd ever called her pretty was when they were children pretending to be something they weren't and he was desperate to get his best friend back.
Would her hair be long now?
Dustin's was long, long enough that he wore it in a bun more often than not, wanting to preserve Eddie's memory. He hasn't seen him, either. Not for seven months.
Just Lucas, because he stole his key and got another one printed, and Mike hasn't had it in him to change his locks. He goes to work, sits in his cubicle, and then goes home and watches TV, not quite processing it, just waiting for Friday. Weekends off, and Will's voice in his ear.
Not a lot of time to get locks changed when you're so busy trying to look occupied.
He's missed a lot, he knows. He doesn't stop by like he should. He doesn't see Lucas and Max's sons nearly enough. It's all just years slipping past him like water running through open fingers. Sometimes it feels like that’s all his life is now.
Missing time and waiting. Just waiting, nothing else.
Waiting for something to happen, and waiting for something to end. Waiting for the clock to run down on a life he stopped living a long time ago.
Sometimes he tells himself a small, stupid lie to make the waiting easier. Maybe in the next life things will be different. Maybe in the next life he’ll be braver. Maybe he’ll learn how to open his mouth and let the truth come out without choking on it. Maybe he’ll learn how to reach for things instead of letting them drift away.
Because he knows, with a certainty that makes his stomach churn, he’s never going to fix this one. He’s never going to change. He can’t accept himself. It wouldn’t be fair to Will.
After a lifetime spent killing the honest parts of himself, smothering them, swallowing them, pretending they didn’t exist, how could he suddenly decide they mattered? How could he drag Will back into something he once denied? How could he look him in the eyes and say now it counts?
And even if he could, he could never move on.
Moving on would mean stepping over El’s memory like it was something small. Moving on would mean admitting the love she felt was real, and what he gave her was only half of something. Something borrowed, and something incomplete. Moving on would mean forgiving himself. Mike knows he doesn’t deserve that.
Not even a little. Not even when Will still calls every Friday night at exactly ten, the phone rings once, sometimes twice. Then it stops, and a voicemail appears.
Always the same soft voice. Always a small update about his week, a funny story from one of his students or something he saw at a gallery, a new painting he’s working on. At the end of the months when he's not too busy, it's about Nate and Harry. Lucas wants to put them into little league, but Max wants them to figure out their own hobbies first, and Lucas always agrees to what she wants, so now mostly what they do is just play. They love tag, Will had said, and they cling to Will when he's over.
Once, Will had whispered into the receiver that he wanted a child of his own, once he's fully happy and settled down. A child from the system who's had it rough, who needs someplace safe. Teenagers are less likely to get adopted, he had said. Mike's heart was in his throat, curled up in front of the phone, listening and imagining Will getting breakfast ready in the morning and driving them to school, fixing their hair for them while he sat in the driver seat. His tone was a bit yearning when he ended his voicemail that night, like it was something he wouldn't be able to get, and Mike wanted to bash his brains in as he replays it over and over, the way Will’s mouth formed the words “a kid of my own, I want that,” hypnotized by the sweetness there.
Will never asks Mike to call back, and he never pressures him. Never sounds angry, sometimes sad, sometimes whispering about how he misses him, and that he's here when Mike wants to reach out, but mostly he just… talks.
Like he’s leaving little pieces of himself behind. Crumbs, and Mike hoards those voicemails like they’re precious. He listens to them over and over again late at night when the house is quiet, but he never responds, like the coward he is, so he stays here. Suspended in this strange little limbo he built for himself.
His eyes drift back to the painting on the wall. It looks crooked again. It always looks crooked.
The left side dips slightly lower than the right. He could fix it in two seconds. All he’d have to do is stand up, place his hands on the frame, and tilt it back into place. But, he doesn’t move, he never does, because something about fixing it feels… impossible. Like if he straightened that one small thing, the rest of his life might demand the same effort, and he doesn’t have it in him. It’s stuck there, too, but no one would notice if it was tilted. Out of place. The words drift through his mind like a weight dropping into deep water.
There’s a rock sitting in the bottom of his stomach. It’s been there so long he sometimes forgets it isn’t supposed to be. His throat feels hollow, like words tried to escape years ago and got trapped there, hardening into something solid. A constant dread sits in his shoulders, tight and unmoving, like he’s bracing for a blow that already happened.
A strange thought crosses his mind. Quiet, and practical.
He could die right now, right here in this chair, and no one would know. Not for a long time. Weeks, maybe.
He isn’t supposed to see Lucas for another two weeks, and it’s not like he leaves the house much anymore. It's Friday, he wouldn't be out for the entire weekend, no one would be looking for him. He could die and no one would notice.
Two weeks if he’s lucky and Lucas doesn’t forget to stop by.
Mike lets out a slow, shaky breath.
Two weeks is twice the amount of time that Will was missing.
The thought makes something inside him twist. There’s something almost poetic about it. No matter what he does, his life really only existed between two points.
Age five and age sixteen. Five was when he met Will. Sixteen was when El died and took the future with her. Everything after that has just been… aftermath.
He only got to love Will honestly for seven years. Seven small, stupid, perfect golden years. Seven years of bike rides and sleepovers and laughter that spilled into the early hours of the morning. Seven years before the world complicated everything. Seven years before he learned how to hide.
Then came the nine years after. Nine years of pretending. Nine years of burying the truth so deeply he sometimes almost believed it wasn’t there anymore.
And now he’s just here. Waiting.
The room suddenly feels smaller. The walls closer. The air heavier.
Mike imagines what will happen when he dies like this. He can see the funeral clearly.
His friends standing in a small cluster. Lucas. Dustin. Nancy. Will. They’ll say kind things. People always do.
They’ll talk about his loyalty, his sense of humor, his imagination. Maybe even call him the heart one last time, if Will decides to be kind. Words floating into the air that won’t reach him, the same way he never quite managed to reach anyone else.
They’ll fill the silence and comfort each other, pretending it all meant something, and none of them will know.
None of them will ever truly understand the thing that hollowed him out from the inside. El might have died comforting herself with a lie, the lie that Mike knew her, that he understood her, that he loved her the way she needed, but deep down they both knew that wasn’t true.
And Mike realizes with a strange, aching clarity, he’s going to die the same way she did. Unknown and unseen. Never properly loved the way he wanted to be.
For a moment Mike can’t tell if the pressure in his chest is the house closing in or just the weight of a life he never learned how to live.
He reaches out without thinking. The movement is slow, almost absentminded, like his body is acting on instinct while the rest of him is still drowning somewhere deep inside his own thoughts. His fingers brush the edge of the painting’s frame. The wood is cool beneath his skin. Solid. Real. Something that hasn’t changed. He drags his fingertips slowly along the corner, tracing the line where two pieces of wood meet, feeling the faint ridge where the grain splits. His thumb presses into the edge like he’s testing whether it will move, whether the whole thing might shift if he pushes hard enough.
It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.
Still, he keeps tracing it. Over and over, like he’s memorizing the shape, like if he commits the texture to memory it might somehow stay with him longer than everything else that’s slipped away.
His hand trembles, and it’s subtle at first, just a faint vibration in his fingers, but it spreads slowly through his wrist, up the bones of his forearm, until his whole hand feels weak. Mike pulls it back, pressing his fingers under the bridge of his father’s glasses. He wipes roughly at his eyes, knuckles dragging against the dampness there.
The motion is irritated and sharp, like he’s annoyed at them for working. The frames shift slightly on his nose, tilting crooked again. He doesn’t fix them. Instead, his head drops forward. The glasses slide slowly down the slope of his face, slipping past the tip of his nose before falling into his lap with a soft, plastic clack.
He stares at them for a moment, at the thick lenses reflecting the dim yellow light of the lamp. They look older than they should. Like something that belonged to a different life.
Mike doesn’t pick them back up. His elbows slide closer together on the desk. His spine curls inward. Slowly, almost unconsciously, he folds in on himself. Both of his hands come up to cradle his skull. His fingers slide into his hair, pressing into his scalp like he’s trying to hold his own head together. His shoulders slump forward. The position is small, and protective, the kind of posture people take when they’re bracing against something that already happened.
No one would notice.
No one would know.
And, of course, it would be entirely his fault.
No one knows him, not really, not the way he used to exist. To the world he’s just Mike Wheeler, Karen and Ted Wheeler’s son, the kid who used to play Dungeons & Dragons in basements. The guy who used to argue over having to take photos during holidays for their shitty postcards, and the boy who once said he wanted to be a writer. The kid who used to wear blue all the time. Those are the pieces people remember, small things, harmless things, but none of them know the truth behind any of it.
No one knows that Will liked Dungeons & Dragons first. Mike didn’t even understand the rules when Will explained them the first time, sitting cross-legged on the floor with that careful, quiet excitement in his voice, happy to learn it together. Mike only started playing because Will’s eyes had lit up when he talked about it, and he threw himself into the motions, learning everything he could just to see Will giggle and laugh when his voice turned dramatic, his cheeks flushed with it all.
No one knows that Mike hates photos, he always has, but he only tolerated them because Will smiled when Jonathan took them, and because Will liked the way Jonathan framed things, because sometimes Mike caught himself in the background of those pictures and Will was looking at him like he was something important.
No one knows the truth about the writing either. They think it was always Mike’s dream, and they think he wanted to be a writer because he loved stories, but that isn’t how it started. It started because Will used to draw. Pages and pages of drawings. Characters. Monsters. Entire worlds spilling out of his pencil. And Mike had once thought, quietly, secretly, If I write the stories, Will can draw them. Like that was the most obvious thing in the world. Like that was the way their lives were supposed to fit together. Two halves of the same thing. No one knows that either.
Just like no one knows the truth about blue. People always think favorite colors are things you choose for yourself, but Mike didn’t. Will chose it for him.
He remembers the moment with painful clarity. They were young, too young to understand how small moments sometimes turn into permanent things. Will had been poking at the sleeve of Mike’s jacket, a bright blue windbreaker Mike had grabbed randomly that morning. Will’s eyes had been wide and soft, his face had still been dotted with fading bruises from hands that were too big and too angry for a child’s body. “You look good in blue,” Will had said quietly. “It suits you. It makes me think of when we first met- you were wearing blue then, too. Is it your favorite?” And Mike had decided right then that blue was his favorite color, just like that, because Will said it was, because Will had looked at him like that.
No one knows that Mike lost his first tooth protecting Will. They tell the story like it was just some playground accident, kids falling and kids fighting, but the truth is simpler than that. A bigger kid had shoved Will hard and Mike had pushed back without thinking. The bully had knocked him down so hard his face bounced off the blacktop, blood everywhere, a tooth loose in his mouth. Mike remembers Will crying harder than he did, holding Mike's head on his lap, refusing to move even when the teacher tried picking the two of them up and separating them, Will had kicked and kicked and Mike latched on extra tight. He gave Will his tooth that night, both of them cuddled up on Mike's bed, Will's hands gentle on his aching face. No one knows that either.
Just like no one knows that Mike learned how to patch up cuts when he was seven years old. He practiced with Band-Aids and gauze from the bathroom cabinet, watched Nancy wrapped his scrapped knees, and memorized how tight to tie the bandages, all so that when Will showed up with thin red lines across his arms, tiny cuts from shattered glass when Lonnie threw bottles at the walls, Will could come to him and not to a teacher, because they made his dad more mad when they got involved. Not to an adult, either, because they wouldn't understand how to make him feel better.
To Mike, because Mike would fix it, and Mike always tried to fix it.
His breathing stutters.
He tries to inhale.
The breath catches halfway down his throat.
His ribs feel like they’re folding inward, collapsing around his lungs. A quiet panic creeps into the back of his mind. Mike is going to die with all of it.
Every memory. Every stupid, fragile, precious thing.
He’s going to die holding them inside his mind and no one will ever know, not even Will.
Will is never going to know how Mike looked at him in that van, the sunlight pouring through the window, catching in his hair, turning the honeyed strands into something almost golden. Mike had stared at it too long, long enough that his stomach twisted painfully. Long enough that he had to look away before someone noticed, his eyes catching on Jonathan's in the rearview mirror, all before he was dragged back down to pretty pink lips and a mole, chapped and looking so plush.
Will will never know about the nights Mike stood in his garage listening to rain hammer against the door, heart racing, legs restless, all because the sound reminded him too much of that night in the woods.
The frantic searching. The way every snapped twig sounded like something terrible waiting just out of sight. The way Mike’s mind kept screaming the worst possible outcome.
Will can never know how terrified Mike was of losing him, and how that fear never actually left, because Mike buried it the way he always wanted to. The way he always had to. He hid it, locked it away, wrapped it up so tightly no one could ever see it.
And if he dies, they’ll move on. That’s what people do.
They’ll mourn him for a while, say nice things, share stories, and eventually the empty space he left behind will close, like a wound healing.
Meanwhile Mike will be gone.
Gone with the truth.
Gone with the fact that he loved Will.
Really loved him. In the quiet, desperate, lifelong way that doesn’t fade.
Will is never going to know that someone loved him who had seen everything. Someone who saw what he looked like when Vecna was in his mind.
Sweaty, shaking, seizing, eyes rolled back. Terrified. Mike had seen him like that. Seen him broken open in ways most people never let anyone witness, and his feelings never faltered, not once. Not even when Bob died screaming in front of them. Not even when Will started pulling away, building distance, protecting himself. They'll never see Will's eyes completely white, hand outstretched, blood poking at his upper lip, looking beautiful and strong and like everything Mike knew he could be, even with a monster in his mind. Mike still wanted him, still chose him, still loved him.
And the worst part, the part that twists deepest in Mike’s chest, is the truth he’s never been able to escape.
Without Will, he is nothing. He was never the heart. Never the hero. Never the brave one. He was just the coward who got lucky.
Lucky that Will said yes that day, lucky that Eleven stumbled into his life in the woods, lucky that he happened to be standing in the right place at the right time, lucky that people mistook his presence for something meaningful.
But really, he was just there taking up space.
The phone rings and the sound cuts through the house like something alive.
Mike’s body jolts so violently that his knees slam into the underside of the desk with a dull crack. Pain shoots up his legs, bright and sharp, but he barely registers it. For a moment he just sits there, stunned.
The ringing fills the room in harsh, repeating bursts. It echoes off the walls. Off the ceiling. Off the hollow place in Mike’s chest that suddenly feels too tight to breathe in.
It keeps ringing. It always rings like this.
Mike’s mind stumbles through a terrible thought. He could die right now, right here in this chair. He could slump forward and stop breathing and the phone would keep ringing anyway, because Mike has never answered it before. Not once. It would ring until it went to voicemail.
And then, Will’s voice would fill the quiet house. Mike could die listening to that voice. He could die hearing Will talk to him like he’s still there, like he’s still close. Like Mike hasn’t spent years hiding from the one thing he wants most.
The ringing stops. For half a second the silence is worse.
“Hey there!” The voice bursts out of the phone with an easy warmth that makes Mike’s entire body flinch. There’s a giggle tangled in the greeting, something light and something sweet. Mike feels it like a burn spreading slowly through his ribs.
“Sorry I’m calling a bit early today,” Will says, breath a little quick with excitement. “I just need to tell you about what I just saw, and I know you’re not going to believe me, but I don’t care.” Mike’s hands start shaking. His whole body feels unstable.
He pushes himself up too quickly and the chair legs scrape loudly across the floor behind him. The sound is harsh and desperate. He stumbles toward the hallway. The house feels crooked around him. “There’s this pumpkin patch down the road,” Will continues cheerfully, “and Jonathan wanted to stop by and grab a few for Mom, and I tried telling him there was no way they would survive the ride from the city all the way down to Hawkins-”
Mike reaches the bathroom. His fingers fumble on the knob before yanking the door open hard enough that it slams against the wall. The impact echoes through the small room but he barely hears it.
“-but Jon was really adamant that we could make it,” Will keeps talking, voice warm and animated, “so we decided to come home a bit early and carve some, and I kid you not, Mike-” Will laughs, and the sound is sudden and bright. It breaks through the phone speaker in a burst that almost chokes him off mid-sentence. Mike freezes in front of the sink. His reflection stares back at him from the medicine cabinet mirror.
He looks worse than he expected, paler, older. His hair sticks out in uneven directions like he’s been dragging his hands through it for hours. His eyes look hollow. He wonders suddenly if Will has laugh lines now. If all these years of that same warm laugh have carved small creases around the corners of his eyes. Or maybe they’re still smooth. Maybe he still looks the same. Mike realizes with a painful twist that he doesn’t know.
If he saw him now, would he even recognize him? Would Will recognize him back, in the flesh? “We went all the way down there, even though Jonathan would not shut up about this one scriptwriter he’s working with.”
Mike grips the edge of the sink. His knuckles go white. “And I love him, I really do,” Will continues, voice drifting into fond exasperation, “but I can only take so much, right? Like, I don’t understand why he doesn’t just partner with someone else.” Mike’s eyes drift downward. The medicine cabinet. His hand lifts slowly. Opens it. Inside, rows of small bottles stare back at him.
“His stories are great,” Will keeps rambling, “and his composition is beautiful, but I mean, I just don’t get why he keeps working with someone who changes the scripts behind his back.” Mike reaches in. His fingers close around one of the bottles. Cold plastic presses into his palm. “But anyway,” Will says, “it took ages to drive all the way down. Thank God I didn’t have to drive, you know I hate driving.”
Mike squeezes the bottle tighter. “You know that’s why I moved to the city,” Will adds with a little laugh. “Public transportation forever.” Mike’s eyes lock onto the white porcelain sink. Blank. Clean. “Sorry,” Will says, softer now. “I’m kind of talking a lot.” A small pause. “I just… I’ve had a really great day today, even though it's kind of insane, and I like, rushed to tell you about it, even though Hop is kind of annoyed that I took the phone and ran.” The words land like something fragile. “And I’m getting to the crazy part,” Will says quickly. “Just bear with me.”
Mike’s thumb slides against the cap of the bottle. He could open it now. The thought comes quietly. Simple. He could twist the cap. Swallow everything inside. Let himself fade out while Will is still talking. While that voice is still filling the room. If he dies now, the last thing he’ll hear will be Will laughing. “So we get back home,” Will continues, “and the second we give Mom the pumpkin-” Mike’s fingers stop moving. He can’t turn the cap, something in his chest refuses. He just stands there gripping the bottle like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. “-Which took us like an hour to find the perfect one,” Will says. “It was shaped kind of like a star, in this weird bloated lumpy way.”
Mike presses his forehead against the mirror. The cool glass barely steadies him. “But she just drops it,” Will says, voice lifting with disbelief, “because this spider crawls onto her hand.” Mike closes his eyes. “And Jonathan tries to catch it,” Will goes on, “but it falls right on his foot before breaking.” There’s a pause. “And then he grabs his foot and starts hopping around-” Will dissolves into laughter, real laughter, snorting at the force of it the way he always had. He remembers the first time he heard it, eight years old with Will's feet on top of his lap, hunched over a comic cook, Will's hands turning the pages while Mike nuzzles his face into Will's knees, hands holding onto his legs, reading out loud. He'd sneezed in the middle of a line, and Will had snorted and slapped a hand over his mouth, face pink and embarrassed, and Mike had tugged the book out of his hands to pounce on him, fingers digging into little ribs, making him laugh so hard he cried.
He knows that laugh more intimately than any other. He’s heard it in dark basements and quiet bike rides and whispered conversations late at night. It’s the laugh Will uses when he’s being a little mean. The kind of laugh he used when they whispered insults about bullies in the hallway. The kind of laugh Will used only with him. Mike’s stomach twists. Do other people hear that laugh now?
Do other people get to see that version of Will? Or is it still something he only gives to these voicemails?
“And he hollered so loud,” Will gasps between breaths, “and get this- you have to believe me, okay?” Mike’s grip on the bottle weakens, slack. “But this bird,” Will continues, voice cracking with amusement, “just starts cawing right back at him.” Another breathless laugh. “And it just- sorry, sorry-”
Will gasps for air. Mike can picture it perfectly. The way his cheeks would be flushed pink. The way his eyes would squint shut when he laughed too hard. “It swoops down at him,” Will says, “and starts pecking at his face, and Mom just- just slaps him!” Will is laughing so hard he can barely talk. “You have to believe me,” he wheezes. “You have to-”
The bottle slips from Mike’s fingers. It clacks loudly against the counter, and it sounds final. Mike’s body folds forward over the sink, and his hands burn as his chest jerks violently. For a second nothing comes out, his lungs feel locked. “I know you do-” a ragged, desperate gasp tears its way into his chest. The first real breath he’s taken in what feels like hours.
“I tried to tell Dustin,” Will is saying through the speaker, voice bright with the same stubborn amusement he’s always had, “but he’s convinced I’m lying, which I’m not. It really did happen.”
The phone on the wall crackles faintly with Will’s breath. “Even though Jon is being all sore about it and trying to deny it,” Will continues, “there’s even a scratch on his forehead and everything. Mom’s taking him to the ER tomorrow just to make sure it’s not infected or dangerous,” Will adds lightly. “You know. Wild animals and all that.” A small giggle. How pink were his lips right now? “So we’re staying here for a while longer.”
Mike’s head lifts slowly. The words sink in like something heavy dropping through water. Staying here. Here. In Hawkins. Not across states. Not hours away. Not tucked safely inside the distance Mike has hidden behind for years. “Jon’s my ride back and all,” Will says. “And I’ve got a few pieces I need to work on, but they can wait.” Will is here. A fifteen minute drive away. Ten minutes if Mike sped. Ten minutes if he didn’t stop at lights. Ten minutes if he drove like the world was ending. Mike’s heart starts pounding so loudly it drowns out the quiet hum of the house.
Usually Will never stays. He visits, drops by, places something at Mike's doorstep and knocks, calling out a greeting, something sweet, and then he leaves without waiting for a response. He’s always gone again before Mike can even process the fact that he was here. By the time Will calls on Fridays he’s already back home and back in the city, back in another life, in a place where Mike doesn’t exist. Never Mike’s.
“Oh!” Will says suddenly, voice lifting with a small burst of excitement. “And I tried this new type of almond milk.” Mike’s breath catches. “They added vanilla and pumpkin spice,” Will continues. “Can you believe that?”
Two years ago, October fifteenth, Will had called. Same voice, same soft excitement. He’d tried a pumpkin spice latte with Max as a joke and then he wouldn’t stop talking about it, about how weirdly good it was and about how unfair it was that something seasonal could taste that comforting. “I wish it existed year round,” he’d said back then. He liked it in tea more than coffee, and he always liked sweeter things. Mike had always taken his coffee black.
His feet skid slightly on the hallway floor as he pushes through the bathroom doorway. “I kind of want to try it in cereal,” Will is saying through the phone speaker, so distinct. “But I feel like it might be gross?” Mike reaches the living room and his hand slams into the doorframe as he steadies himself. “Maybe like some generic cereal without flavor,” Will rambles on. “I don’t know-”
“Will?” The word tears out of Mike’s throat, completely hoarse. He barely recognizes his own voice. His hand grabs the phone off the machine so hard the cord jerks tight. Will’s voice cuts off instantly and silence rushes in.
“…Mike?” Will’s voice is quieter now, disbelief laced through the single syllable. Mike presses his forehead against the wall beside the phone. The cool paint barely steadies him. “…Hi,” Will says after a moment, soft and careful. Mike doesn’t answer. His throat refuses to cooperate. “I wasn’t expecting- uhm…” Will stumbles a little. “Sorry. If I was being annoying.” Mike closes his eyes, licks his lips, pictures him and lets it take the stress off of his shoulders. “I know it’s… early,” Will continues nervously. “I never call this early.” There’s a pause, then another apology slips out quietly. “Sorry again.” Mike’s chest hurts. “If you had to like- I don’t know,” Will mutters awkwardly. “Sorry.” The word keeps coming out of him like he’s trying to fill the silence before it turns into rejection. “I just… wasn’t expecting you to actually…” His voice trails off. “Yeah.” Another pause. “…Uhm.” Mike hears Will shift slightly on the other end. “…Are you-? Are you still there?”
There’s hope in the question. Mike feels like he’s drowning in it. “What next?” he croaks.
“…What?”
“Your- your milk,” Mike stammers weakly. “What next?” He presses his palm against the wall harder. “What else happened in your week?”
The line goes completely quiet, not even the faint sound of breathing for a second, and Mike’s stomach drops. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe he should have stayed quiet, stayed in the bubble he built, rotting alone so the damage wouldn’t spread.
The silence stretches.
“Talk to me,” Mike chokes out.
The words come out desperate. A plea he can’t swallow back. And he knows, even before Will answers, that Will would never reject him. Not completely.
“…There weren’t any strawberries that looked good,” Will says finally. His voice is softer now. Careful, like he’s stepping onto thin ice. “But there were some pears.” Mike sinks slowly down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor beside the phone. “I can’t remember the last time I ate a pear before today,” Will continues quietly. “But it was pretty good.” Mike presses the heel of his hand against his mouth. “Pears are one of those fruits I feel like… are top five,” Will says thoughtfully with a small pause. “But, I mean, no one’s favorite fruit is a pear. Do you ever think about that?”
The question hangs there, open. Inviting Mike to speak if he wants. Letting him in, or letting him stay quiet. Taking the pressure off his shoulders the way Will always used to, offering him an exit and a kindness Mike doesn’t deserve. Mike doesn’t take it.
“…Well,” Will says gently after a moment, filling the space himself, “I think about it.” Mike stares at the floor. The cord of the phone curls loosely across his knee. “No one drinks pear juice,” Will continues. “Or eats pear flavored candy, I don’t think.” I can’t think of a single person who would choose a pear over an apple.” Mike swallows hard. “Or an orange,” Will adds. “Or even a banana.”
He pauses again.
Mike can hear it, the faintest tremble in his voice, like he’s trying not to ask the question he really wants to ask, afraid of what the answer might be. Will keeps talking. Mike doesn’t know if it’s because Will thinks the call dropped, or because silence has always scared him more than anything else. Probably both. Will always did hate silence, hated the kind that meant someone had left, the kind that meant someone wasn’t coming back. So he fills it, the way Mike was hoping he would.
“Well… um…” Will clears his throat softly, the sound small through the receiver. “Okay, so pears, right? I feel like pears are kind of underrated. They’re like… softer apples. But in a good way. Like apples are all crunchy and loud and pears are just…” He exhales a little laugh that doesn’t quite land. “I don’t know. Gentle, I guess.”
Mike doesn't even know what a pear tastes like, but he wants to sink his teeth into one so bad that his jaw aches, just to understand. “…I tried to look it up at the library actually,” Will continues, his voice carefully steady, like he’s balancing something fragile. “Like, statistically. If pears are anyone’s favorite fruit. But I got distracted because I ended up reading this article about how fruit used to be a lot smaller hundreds of years ago? Like tiny apples and stuff. Did you know that?” Mike presses his forehead against his knees.
“Which is kind of weird when you think about it,” Will goes on quickly, like he’s afraid of losing momentum. “Because that means someone had to look at those tiny apples and be like, yeah, we can make this bigger. I don’t know how that works exactly. Selective breeding? I think that’s what they called it in science class. I should've paid more attention when Mr. Clarke was teaching, but to be fair, there were- a lot of more important things to focus on. You've always been better at science than me, anyway. And technology. I think I really just liked it so much because you and Dustin liked it, and it was so cool when we were little, like- what do you mean we could talk to Australia through a big version of a walkie talkie? That's crazy, even now. But, I don't know, I think I definitely liked comics more. Spider-Man especially, or- I don't know. Wolverine. I liked that one edition where he grew his hair out a bit longer- he was- well. I don't know. Handsome, definitely. Too bulky, though.”
Mike drags in a shaky breath through his nose, then another, each one hitching halfway like something inside him is rusted shut. “…Mike?” Will’s voice dips slightly. Still gentle. Mike doesn’t answer. “I’m, uh- I’m still here,” Will adds quickly, almost apologetically. “In case you… you know.” Mike’s eyebrows furrow hard enough to hurt. The phone trembles against his ear. “Well… um.” Will clears his throat again. “Jonathan actually likes pears. I asked him earlier after I bought them because I was thinking about the fruit thing. He said they’re okay. Which isn’t really the same as liking them, but… you know.”
Mike’s breathing comes in uneven pulls, his chest jerking slightly each time he tries to drag air into it. Will notices. Mike can hear the moment it happens, the slight shift in Will’s breathing, the careful quiet that replaces the easy rambling. “…Are you-” Will stops himself with a small inhale through the receiver, before he continues. “Are you alright?”
The worry in his voice is immediate and raw. It twists something deep in Mike’s stomach, something sickening and heavy that makes bile crawl up the back of his throat. He did that. He put that there. On the other end of the line, Will waits. Five seconds. Ten. A few minutes, maybe. “…Okay.” Will speaks again, quieter this time. “That’s okay.” Mike’s throat tightens. “If you’ve been drinking or something,” Will continues carefully, trying to sound casual and failing just a little, “you should probably get some water. And go to bed.” The defeat creeping into his voice is subtle, but Mike hears it. “We can just… forget this happened,” Will says gently. “You don’t have to worry about it. I know I called kind of early and-”
“Call me tomorrow.” The words fall out of Mike’s mouth before he can stop them. They scrape against his throat, dry and broken, barely louder than a breath.
“…What?”
Mike swallows. His voice feels shredded. “Call me,” he tries, even though it hurts to speak. “Tomorrow.”
There’s a long pause, long enough that Mike wonders if the call dropped after all. “…Why?” Will doesn’t sound angry, he sounds confused. Mike opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out. He doesn’t know why.
Because hearing your voice stopped me from dying tonight?
Because you’re fifteen minutes away and I still won’t come see you?
Because I don’t know how to live without this?
Nothing sounds right. Nothing would fix this.
His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He says nothing, like a coward, the same way he always does.
“…Okay,” Will murmurs finally. There’s something tentative about it, something cautious. “…Are you going to answer me tomorrow?” The question lands softly, and this time, it's the kind of silence Will always hated.
Mike can hear Will breathing faintly through the phone and hear the small hesitation in it, like he’s still deciding whether to keep trying. Eventually, Will exhales. “…Goodnight, Mike.”
“Goodnight.”
“…It’s nice to hear your voice.” There's fondness there, the same way there's always been, and maybe he should've stayed in that bathroom, or in his office, just- there. “You should drink some water,” Will coos, always caring, always too good. “It sounds like it hurts.”
Mike lets out a weak hum and it’s the only sound he can manage.
“…I hope tomorrow you sound a little more well rested.” Will’s voice is almost a whisper now, and then the line clicks. The dial tone hums softly in Mike’s ear.
For a long time, he just sits there on the floor with the phone pressed against his head, staring at nothing. He can't replay a voice message today. He hates himself for that, but- speaking with Will? It was better, almost. Eventually, his arm lowers. He places the receiver back onto the cradle with clumsy fingers and the house returns to silence.
Mike drags a hand over his face and inhales deeply through his nose, the breath shaking on the way out. Then he pushes himself up and his legs wobble as he stumbles to the sink, grabbing a glass from the rack without really looking and fills it with tap water, the faucet screeching slightly as it turns. The glass trembles in his hand. He drinks all of it in one go. Cold water spills down his chin and onto his shirt, but he doesn’t care. When the glass is empty, he drops it back into the sink with a dull clink.
The hallway is dark and Mike doesn’t bother turning on any lights, he just stumbles forward on autopilot, one hand dragging along the wall to guide him. His bedroom door creaks open. The bed waits where it always does, unmade and cold, empty. Mike collapses onto it face first, still in his day clothes, one arm trapped awkwardly beneath his chest. The mattress exhales under his weight. For a moment he thinks he might start crying, but he’s too tired.
His eyes close and within minutes, Mike is asleep.