the palpable desperation that both will and mike feel upon realising the (entirely possibly avoidable) cruel passage of time... the soft, unsure touches they exchange, the lingering looks full of longing, the blurring of lines between 1. estranged friends who have not been in each other's lives for three years 2. best friends from age five who could never (and would never want to) forget details about each other 3. the undefined place of awareness they're currently in, tinged with possibility and fuelled with years worth of yearning leading to unspoken acknowledgement and recognition of them as tentative soulmates.... mike kept saying: "you're here. you're really here" as if trying to reassure himself that will was actually there and not a figment of his imagination and his wildest repressed fantasies that have never even seen the light of day. will's gentle loneliness that permeates despite his resounding success, how you get the sense that, for him, all of it pales in comparison to touching mike and being held by him. the ludicrous happiness they both feel as they are understood without words and known without explanations. how one confession, one conversation could have tilted the world of its axis, changing EVERYTHING for both of them. mike's ENTIRE life.
honestly, who else is doing it like peachstatic? she handed us a 43k masterpiece of an update that I legitimately cannot stop thinking about
This captures how I feel about this fic entirely. It's breaking my fucking heart and healing me at the same time. I think about it all day.
