she said she loved me
or: snippet from a smoking WIP i'll never finish
“She told me she loved me.” Mike murmurs, so low Will isn’t sure if he was meant to hear it.
“What?” He asked, because he's never been able to keep his nose out of it, not when it’s Mike. It’s never done him any good, but he’s already dedicated most of his life to Mike, so what's one more night.
“El. Right before she.” He says, like it's a complete sentence. It is, he supposed, because finishing it would confirm what they both thought; that Mike’s story had been a beautiful way to remember her and nothing more. That El was floating in dead space somewhere and that she would never make her way to three waterfalls because there was no more El to go.
Why were they talking about El again? Will thought they had already finished that, that Will had been able to fix their relationship again, even with one member of it gone. He wanted to stop talking about her; it just made him sad.
“She told me she loved me and I didn’t say it back.”
“Oh.” Will says. What he fuck was he supposed to say to that. He wondered if Robin had any advice on what to do after Tammy’s significant other killed themselves.
“I’m sure she knew.” Will says at last, because it seemed like the right thing to say
“I don’t know, man. I think she knew something, but I don’t know if it was that. I think that she saw what was wrong with me.”
“What was wrong with you?” Mike paused and Will silently handed the joint over, listening as Mike took a deep inhale and only coughed a little afterwards. He was getting better.
“Is.”
“What?”
“What is wrong with me. That’s what you should’ve asked.”
“Oh. There’s nothing wrong with you.” Mike scoffed under his breath and Will felt himself get irrationally angry. What right did Mike have to be talking about what was wrong with him, when he had never fallen in love with his childhood best friend and tried to steal him away from his girlfriend?
“Anyway, she knew. That I wasn’t—” He cut himself off and took a big breath, like was preparing himself for a race. A hazy idea was starting to form in Will's mind about what it was he was going to say, but he tried to breathe it out with the smoke.
“That I wasn’t in love—” “Shut up. Mike, shut up.” Will exclaimed at once, suddenly unbearably unwilling to hear Mike say one more word. Mike turned to him with such a face of surprise he looked stupid and Will wished he could laugh. “Don’t say that.”
“But it’s true.” Mike said, his befuddled face slowly twisting into anger. Good. Will was angry too, for once in his life.
“No, it's not. You’re wrong, okay? You have to be wrong.”
“Will, what the hell are you talking about?”
“You have to be wrong, Mike, because I swear to God I won’t ever forgive you if my sister died thinking that you weren’t in love with her.” Will couldn’t seem to stop the words from flowing out now that he had started and he barely wished he could yank them back at the drop-dead, deer-in-the-headlights look on Mike's face. The smoke had clouded his feelings and had brought things to the surface he thought he had let go long, long ago. Suddenly, all he could see was El’s face, quietly devastated as Mike screamed like a child, what did you do, what did you do.
“El loved you Mike, she loved you so goddamn much, she barely knew who she was without you. God, you didn’t see her in California, you didn’t see how much she craved your approval and your attention and-and, just you, Mike!” Will had seen how she had bent herself backwards seeking Mike's approval, how every new dress she would buy she would quietly ask Will if he thought Mike would like it, how she had nervously asked him if he could teach her how to draw Mike and nearly cried when she hadn’t been able to capture him perfectly.
“She didn’t talk to you at the end because she knew you couldn’t convince her to stay, or because she wanted to lie to you, she did it because was so fucking in love with you that she though it was true! She just wanted to see you one last time because you were her favourite fucking person in the whole world. So, yeah, you’re wrong because you have to be because she had to die thinking she was loved. She had to.”
Because Will knew she had died sad. But she had to have died loved. Will wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he thought she hadn’t.
Will had stood at some point and now nearly collapsed, panting over Mike with all the anger suddenly gone from his body and released back into the world. He felt dizzyingly guilty for a moment, having screamed on El’s behalf like they were her words when all he was doing, really, was speaking for her. But who else could? She was gone to somewhere they would never see her again and no one else was here to defend her to Mike Wheeler.
Mike seemed at a loss for words. Will was too, now. They stayed where they were for a moment, frozen like a painting—the condemned, lying at the prosecutor's feet, their shared joint burnt down to the roach and now gone cold and fallen to the floor. It was only when the silence welled so greatly inside of Will that he feared it would erupt out of him did he turn and flee towards the stairs, unaware of Mike's hand, reaching out towards him as he descended.
