will byers is dead chapter 4 | byler fic
read on ao3 | word count: in progress!
summary | will byers drowned in 1983, but mike wheeler continues to receive phone calls from him every night.
preview:
Mike closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the walkie until it hurt, until it was leaving dents on his skin. “It’s not your fault. Do you think if I had just, I don’t know. Maybe if I’d walked you home that night, or if I made you stay over…There must’ve been something I could’ve done, and if I’d just figured that thing out, you’d still be here.”
“Mike,” Will said, his voice blurring briefly into static. “I am here.”
Mike wrapped both his hands around the walkie and pulled it down against his chest. Will used to give the best hugs, the kind of hugs that knock the air out of your lungs, that make your ribs ache, that make everything feel frozen in place. “I know. I know that. I just miss you.”
The static grew, and the most unsettling part of it was that it wasn’t really static. It just had the cadence of it. Mike always tried to ignore it, but when he clutched the walkie to his heart it couldn't be ignored anymore. The static was made up of a million voices, birdsong, metal crunching, water splashing all layered together. Will’s voice was just the loudest of the chorus.
“I miss you too,” Will whispered, and everything else was drowned out.