mike and will fall together in college. it was inevitable, really — letters read by the warm glow cast by nightlights and phone cords wrapped delicately around fingertips. they tighten like a noose when will gets nervous, or flustered; they straighten completely when mike takes the phone to his fire escape outside his window and shuts the glass behind him, feet dangling off the edge and will’s voice his only tether to reality.
it’s inevitable, then, that they break up, too. college degrees hung proudly on joyce’s wall at home, shitty starter apartment in new york city with just enough room for the two of them. there’s no home in the world big enough for the guilt that lives with them, silent as a ghost, footsteps creaking on the hardwood floors that sounds so similar to the ones will memorized for the first time in lenora.
mike thinks it only affects him, sometimes. will’s creating art — fingers perpetually dirtied with his chosen medium, and sometimes smears of it end up on mike’s neck or hipbone or in his hair — and all of it includes her, hair curling around her shoulders, grin so wide her dimple shows. landscapes include a figure wearing a dress over a flannel button up; stills of the fruit on their counter are accompanied by a quick sketch of an apple cupped in a slender hand, bite taken out of the skin so big juice would have run down her chin.
it’s her, everywhere, and after those first few months of trying to keep her alive — teeth marks in the stories he told, bruises on his fingertips from holding on — he stopped trying completely. his hands still burn from letting her slip out of his fingers, the rope that had been tethering her to him, to life — gone.
will hates when mike leaves. physically, he’s there — always there, always sitting on their ratty couch they bought for twenty dollars on the corner and staring out the window, or laying on the floor in the kitchen with his head propped up against a cabinet, fingers propped in the architecture of either intense thought or a complete lack of thought at all — but sometimes he’s gone, where will can’t reach him, and it takes a while for him to come back. will can wait — has waited for longer — but sometimes he doesn’t want to; sometimes, he wants to talk about her without it ending the conversation for days, he wants to have fresh flowers on their kitchen counter that don’t end up blooming and then rotting in their trash can, he wants to hang his art in their apartment without having to watch mike avoid the room until he takes it down.
will snaps on a thursday.
“you’re not the only one who loved her, mike,” he says through tears. mike’s sitting there, just sitting, and will has never seen more of ted wheeler in his son in his entire life. “you don’t get to decide how i grieve. i’m tired of acting like — like she didn’t exist!”
mike’s eyes slide away. the unfinished sketch lies between them — el, a portrait, a gift for hopper’s birthday — and it’s getting crushed by the weight of mike’s words.
why do you have to draw her all the time? why can’t we just…move on?
will shakes his head, grabbing the sketch and his pencils as he goes. “come and find me when you’re ready to talk about her,” he says, and he’s wiping his eyes as he turns around. lucas’ clothes will fit him; the room is too suffocating right now to think about packing a bag.
he pauses, hand on the doorknob. when he turns back to mike, he sees the scared little boy hopper told him about in a hushed, rushed tone, the one that sat, numb, between lucas and dustin on the couch that first day will was missing — his best friend, the heart. he’s hurting, and will has tried so desperately to make it stop, to make it better, but this — this is something mike has to do on his own.
“i need my best friend back,” will says on a sob, and mike flinches away, the only reaction he’s gotten out of him this entire conversation. the door shuts behind him with a click.
mike and will fall back together seven years to the date.
it’s cold in november in new york, but not the same kind of cold as hawkins; november in the city means scarves wrapped tight around necks and warm drinks in hand, leaves burning bright orange and jazz spilling into the streets.
they sit in the park, silent as birds land and skate across the water in front of them, ripples reaching towards them for an answer.
“i want to remember her,” mike says quietly. his hands are planted firmly in his lap and it’s taking all of his energy not to fall apart right here, right now. “it just — it hurts.”
he’s crying. the tears are catching in the scarf his mom knitted him, once she got settled into her new house, smaller and without a basement. the night before she moved mike sat at the bottom of the stairs in the empty room, palms to the concrete floor, trying to feel her there, when she was cold and in need of protection. he wanted to remember when he could still protect her.
there was so much change, all of it at once. his childhood home, gone; his father, dead; the looming presence that had been keeping him sewn together, vanished, and he fell apart like a puppet without strings.
of course, she was gone, too.
“it hurts me, too,” will says, and when mike looks, he’s crying too. “she was — she was my sister.”
“i’m sorry i’ve been so awful,” mike says, and his breath is hitching on a sob now. “i just — i don’t know if i can do this, will.”
a warm hand in his. the soft, gentle pad of a thumb wiping the tears from his cheek. “you have to,” he whispers into the space between them. mike cries harder. “you have to do it, but you don’t have to do it alone. you can’t — mike, i can’t lose you too.”
when mike feels like he can breathe again, the sun is setting, bright oranges and pinks flooding the horizon. they reflect on the pond, and the ripples have settled, leaving only the barest trace of them in mike’s memory.
he inhales. a beat. “she would’ve loved it here.”
that’s how it starts. the healing. the remembering.
