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ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ sugar talking

⊹ ︶⏝⭒ ⊹ "you having these epiphanies... aren't you tired of saying a whole lot of nothing? you tell me that you want me, but baby if you need me..." ⊹ ⭒⏝︶ ⊹

part one

content warnings: angst (apologies in advance), canon-typical violence/trauma, ptsd, grief, depression, religious symbolism word count: 5k additional tags: slow burn, friends to lovers, season 5 finale fix-it, mutual pining, will byers deserves better, mike wheeler loves will byers, reconnection a/n: hiii everyone!! this is my very first byler fic, so any and all feedback is welcomed! will byers is my baby and he is so so so special to me. i grew up as a lesbian in a super conservative part of the midwest, so the duffer brothers better watch their mf back after the mess that was season 5. this fic is also cross posted on ao3, if anyone prefers that format. there will be more chapters. anyways, love ya - uh!

Will's face was smashed against his unmade bedspread, his hand tucked under the pillow, which was beginning to loose feeling in his fingertips. His eyes shot over to a geranium full of life on the windowsill, a promise of things that once were. The soft flowers reminded him of her hair — of the softness of her flushed cheeks when she smiled.

Looking past the plant, the grayness of the clouds infuriated him. He wished it would rain, that the sky would open up and drown him in it. For the reluctance to swallow him whole, that night beginning to fade from his memory. He sighed softly, his throat still raw from the intense panic an hour before, the death-grip his mother held on him still lingering on his limbs.

And then, it started; the rain began. He felt himself give in.

The rain gathered strength quickly, fat drops striking the window in uneven bursts. The sound filled the room, loud enough to press against his ears, loud enough that he didn’t have to listen to his own thoughts for a moment. He curled in on himself, fingers tightening in the fabric beneath his face, as if he could anchor himself there.

He thought of her again — not the way she’d looked at the end, not broken or bleeding or still, but the way she’d laughed when she beat them at cards, the way her nose crinkled when she concentrated. The way she’d stood in front of him without hesitation, like fear was something that happened to other people.

Jane.

He hadn’t said it out loud since. The name felt too fragile, like it might splinter if he tried to hold it. El had always been stronger than him. Everyone said so. Everyone had believed it so completely that her dying felt impossible, like a rule the world had broken by accident. His chest hitched, sharp and sudden. He pressed his face harder into the bed, muffling the sound that tore out of him anyway. The grief came in waves; hot and choking, then hollow, then sharp again.

The rain blurred the window until the world beyond it disappeared completely. Hawkins reduced to water and shadow.

Good, he thought distantly. Let it all wash away.

His door creaked open somewhere behind him. He didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. He knew the shape of his mother’s footsteps, the careful way she moved when she thought he might break.

“Will?” Joyce said softly.

He didn’t answer. The bed dipped as she sat beside him, her hand hovering for a moment before settling between his shoulders. Her touch was warm, grounding, real. This time she didn’t pull him close. She just stayed.

“What's wrong sweetheart?” Joyce whispered.

Will sucked in a breath that felt like it scraped his lungs raw. “She was just a kid,” he said, the words thick and uneven. “She didn’t get to—” His voice fractured, refused to go on.

Joyce’s hand tightened. “Oh, honey.”

The rain kept falling. Harder now. Relentless.

Will let himself cry once again, quiet at first, the sound swallowed by the storm outside and the steady presence beside him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a terrible thought settled in and refused to leave: If someone like her could be gone, then surely he didn't deserve to still be here.

And the world, soaked through and uncaring, kept moving anyway.

Joyce left eventually. She didn't say much, just pressed a kiss into his hair, told him she’ll be in the kitchen if he needs her. The door clicked shut behind her, careful as always.

Will rolled onto his side and stared at the wall until the shapes stopped swimming. His gaze drifted back to the desk in the corner, to the sketchbook half-hidden beneath a stack of old papers. He hasn’t opened it in weeks. Maybe longer. He pushed himself upright, head aching faintly, and crossed the room on unsteady legs.

The pencil felt strange in his fingers at first, like he’s forgotten how to hold it. He flipped past old drawings — monsters, faces, places that don’t exist anymore — and turned to a blank page.

It starts messy. Words crowding each other, slanting downhill.

Sometimes I’m convinced I can feel you. Does that sound crazy? It’s probably the denial, the intense guilt clouding my brain.

I scared mom the other day after mentioning briefly that I was having a hard time. Is this what it’s always going to be like? Constantly worrying my relatives about my well-being because you died? Cannot for a moment let others in on the rainstorm ravaging my thoughts. You would be scolding me, yelling at me to tell you how I feel. But you’re not here. And I can’t talk to Jonathan or Lucas because they’ll just give me a frown, followed by a subsequent “if you need anything I’m here.” How do you respond to that? It's been almost two years, I just don't understand why I can't let this go.

I find myself wishing to go back to sleep as soon as I wake up. The only time I feel relief is when I’m unconscious, when my eyes first flutter open and take in my surroundings; when the morning is hazy and it takes me a few seconds to reorient; when I recognize the birds on the trees outside my window and begin to recount everything. And then I remember. And the cycle continues.

He closes the book.

The cabin is quiet again, but it’s a gentler quiet now. The smell of coffee drifts down the hallway, warm and familiar. Will wipes his face on his sleeve, takes one last look at the window, at the rain-streaked glass, the geranium still standing. He opens the door.

The kitchen light is on. Joyce is at the counter, mug in her hands, staring out at nothing in particular. She looks up when she hears him and her expression shifts immediately, softening, relief flickering across her face.

“There you are,” she says. “Karen said Mike’s home for the weekend.”

A pause.

“You should see him.” Will nods, noncommittal. Joyce watches him over the rim of her mug. She doesn’t push. She’s been careful like that lately, like every question might bruise if pressed too hard.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” she adds, gentler. “I just thought you might like to know.”

“Okay,” Will says. His voice sounds like his own again. Thinner, maybe, but steady enough.

He drifts closer to the counter, perching on one of the chairs by the dining table. The coffee pot clicks as it finishes brewing, releasing a smell that wraps around him, familiar and grounding. Joyce pours him a mug without asking. She always does. He accepts it, hands curling around the ceramic, letting the warmth seep into his palms.

Mike’s name sits heavy in his chest. Not sharp like grief, but something duller. Complicated. He thinks of California, of long stretches of quiet, of words he never found the right shape for. Of letters folded too many times. Of the day he came out. And then that night on the radio tower. Joyce moves around the kitchen, wiping an already-clean counter, straightening a stack of mail.

“I might,” Will says finally, staring into the dark surface of the coffee. “I don’t know. I just—” He stops, exhales. "After our last campaign, when everyone left for college, we just kind of stopped talking again."

“That happens,” she says carefully.

“Yeah,” Will agrees, though it doesn’t feel that simple. “But it didn’t feel like drifting. It felt like… like I missed something. Like there was a moment I didn’t realize mattered, and then it was gone.”

He thinks of Mike’s speech to El that spring break in California, carried through a lie and fear. The words, while not directed towards him, had meant everything. They still do. Maybe that’s the problem.

Joyce comes to sit across from him, folding her hands around her own mug. She studies him the way she used to when he was small, when fevers came on too fast and she was afraid of what she couldn’t see.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says.

Will’s mouth quirks, just barely. “I know. Everyone keeps telling me that.” Joyce isn't sure what else she can say that will soothe her son, stuck between wanting to hug him again and giving him his space. She's always struggled with that, with knowing when she was being too overbearing.

Will finishes his coffee slowly. It goes lukewarm in his hands before he notices, the surface gone still and dull. Joyce stands, rinses her mug, sets it upside down on the drying mat. The sink gurgles. She excuses herself once more, mumbling something about checking on the laundry. Will stays where he is, elbows on the table, staring at the knot in the wood. His reflection swims faintly in the dark window — older than he feels, thinner than he remembers.

He thinks of the way Mike used to lean too close over their campaign notes, their shoulders knocking together, the smell of pencil shavings and basement dust. Of how Mike talked with his hands when he got excited, knocking over miniatures without noticing. Of how he used to look at Will when he explained things, really look, like the rest of the room had gone fuzzy.

He stands, carries his mug to the sink, rinses it. The water runs too hot. He doesn’t pull his hand away right away. In the living room, the recliner still has Eleven-shaped memories pressed into it.

Will immediately brushes those intrusive thoughts away before he can spiral again. Instead, he busies himself by picking up the stack of mail Joyce had straightened. Bills. A postcard from Murray, all caps and no punctuation. Nothing addressed to him.

He tells himself he doesn’t owe Mike anything. Not a conversation. Not closure. The thought doesn’t bring relief.

Will moves to the window again, presses his forehead lightly to the glass. What would he even say? Hey, sorry I disappeared. Hey, I think about you more than I should. Hey, I think I still feel something and hate myself a little for it. I can't stop, but does that make me a horrible person?

He’s tried to kill the feeling before. Buried it under distance and silence and years that were supposed to fix him. But it keeps surviving, humiliating in its persistence, proof that there’s something fundamentally broken in him.

"Friends? No thanks. Best friends."

The memory is sharp and sudden, leeching onto his skin. Warmth floods his face, hot and nauseating. He remembers the expression on Mikes face afterwards, the relief flooding his shoulders. The thought twists ugly now, after all, how do you apologize for loving someone who never asked to be loved like that? He tells himself it would have been easier if Mike had been cruel. If he’d drawn a clean line, said something careless, given Will a reason to harden around the absence. Mike acting like everything was normal — like he was normal — was infinitely worse.

And still, if Mike stood in front of him now and smiled that familiar, unguarded smile, Will knows his chest would crack open all over again. Knows he would let it.

The clock on the wall ticks forward. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. The rain thins to a mist. Somewhere in the cabin, a floorboard creaks — Joyce moving.

He exhales, sharp and shaky, standing before he can talk himself out of it. The phone sits on the end table in the other room, heavy and stupid and ordinary. His hand hovers over it, fingers trembling.

Don’t, he tells himself.

But the feeling is already alive in him, already clawing at his ribs. Every thought invading his mind is Mike, Mike, Mike.

He picks up the receiver and the dial tone hums, the numbers clicking into place one by one. The ringing starts and his pulse is blaring in his ears. He considers hanging up.

“Wheeler residence,” Mrs. Wheeler says brightly.

Will freezes. His throat closes.

“H-hi, Mrs. Wheeler,” he says, forcing the words out. “It’s Will. Will Byers.”

“Oh! Will, honey,” she says, instantly warm. It makes his chest ache. “It’s so good to hear your voice. How are you?”

“I’m — um. I’m okay,” he lies. His fingers dig into the cord. “Is Mike… is Mike there?”

There’s a muffled sound of movement, fabric shifting, her voice turning distant as she covers the receiver. “Michael! Phone!”

The seconds stretch, elastic and cruel. Will stares at the floor, at a scuff mark he doesn’t remember making.

"Hello?" Mike asks, clearing his throat.

“Mike!” Will says. “I just—” He stops. Breath shudders out of him. “I didn’t know if I should call.”

They don’t say much after that. Not really.

Mike asks when he’s free. Will says today, then immediately hates how desperate it sounds. Mike says today works for him too, quick enough that it makes Will’s stomach flip. There’s a brief, awkward negotiation over time and place.

When they hang up, the silence is worse than before.

Will stands there with the receiver still in his hand, listening to the dead line buzz faintly, as if the phone itself is disappointed in him. His heart doesn’t slow. If anything, it gets louder, more insistent, like it’s realized what he’s just agreed to.

He goes to his room, El's room, and changes his shirt twice, then a third time, all of them wrong in different ways. Too familiar. Too deliberate. He settles on the least offensive option and tells himself it doesn’t matter. That this isn’t a date. It's just Mike.

Outside, the air is damp and clean, the rain having scrubbed everything down to softer edges. Joyce offers to drive him into town, ecstatic that Will is leaving the cabin for the first time since he came home for holiday break. He politely declines, digging his bike out of the shed, the chain clicking softly as he lifts it over a root. He has half the mind to check the brakes or tires, but his nerves cloud his judgment.

The bell over the door rings when Will steps inside. It’s sharper than he expects, bright in a way that makes him feel briefly exposed, like everyone might turn and look. No one does. There's a radio humming low, Will thinks it might be a Springsteen or The Cure song; something slow, reverb-heavy.

Mike is already there. He’s sitting at one of the worn wooden tables near the window, hands wrapped around a mug that’s probably been too hot for too long. When he sees Will, he stands immediately — too fast, chair legs scraping softly against the floor. For a second, he just stays there, half-risen, like he’s waiting for instructions that don’t exist anymore.

“Oh, hey,” Mike says.

“Hey,” Will answers.

Mike glances at the chair across from him, then back at Will, then straightens his jacket for no reason at all. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to hug him or wave or sit back down, and the hesitation sits between them.

Will fills the space by walking closer. Mike exhales, something like relief passing over his face, and finally sits again. Mike gestures vaguely toward the table. “Uh, so. I, um.” He clears his throat and points at the second mug sitting across from him. Steam curls up from it, thin and patient. “I ordered you a coffee. I-I remembered you don’t like sugar. Or, not much. If that’s still—” He stops himself, wincing a little. “Sorry. You don’t have to drink it if it’s wrong.”

Something tight in Wills chest loosens slightly. He knows he might regret having another caffeinated drink later that night, he has trouble sleeping as it is.

“It’s fine,” he says. “That’s… yeah. That’s right.”

He pulls out the chair and sits, careful, like sudden movement might break whatever fragile truce has formed between them. The table wobbles slightly when he rests his elbows on it. He folds his hands together to keep them from fidgeting.

Mike watches him over the rim of his own mug, eyes flicking up and away too quickly to be subtle. He nods once, relieved, then immediately looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that relief.

“Cool,” Mike says. He takes a sip of his coffee, winces when it’s clearly too hot, then pretends nothing happened. “So. Uh. How long are you in town?”

“A few weeks,” Will says. "Classes start the second week of January."

“Right. Yeah. My mom said something about that.” Mike nods again, like he’s checking boxes off in his head. “She’s — your mom’s doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Will says. “Better.” He hesitates. “She worries. Still.”

Mike huffs out a soft, familiar laugh. “Yeah. That tracks.” There’s a beat of silence. Will isn't sure it's the comfortable kind. He grimaces slightly, taking a sip of his drink.

Mike sets his mug down and rubs his thumb along the handle, eyes fixed on the table. “I’m really glad you called,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want to… I mean, I thought about reaching out, but I didn’t know if you—”

“Me too,” Will says, too fast. He reins it in. “I mean. I thought about it.” Mike looks up at him then, really looks at him, and something shifts. Recognition, maybe. Or just the weight of guilt pressing in all at once. Will is convinced that his feelings are plastered all over his face, so much so that he regrets this whole interaction. He wants to scurry away, to retreat back to Hopper's cabin, and continue sulking until well into the New Year. Better yet, to hide under blankets until the world stops asking him to feel.

“So,” Mike says finally, voice careful. “How’ve you been?”

Will opens his mouth. Closes it again. “I don’t know,” he says instead.

Mike nods like that makes sense. He leans back in his chair slightly, like he’s trying to make the space between them feel less loaded, though it doesn’t. The mug warms his hands, the steam curling up between them like a thin, temporary barrier.

“You look… different,” he says finally, hesitant. “I mean… not different, different. You know what I mean.”

Will shrugs, but his stomach twists. Of course he knows what he means. He’s always known. He doesn’t need Mike to spell it out.

“Oh,” Will says quietly. “I guess… I don’t know. Growing up, I guess.”

Mike hums, noncommittal, like that explains something and nothing all at once. He stirs his coffee absentmindedly, eyes flicking to the window and back to Will, trying to gauge where this conversation can even start without detonating.

“Yeah,” Mike says back, like repetition might make the moment easier to handle. “Growing up.” The word hangs there. Will watches it drift between them and dissolve.

Will stares down again, the surface of the coffee has gone still again. He furrows his eyebrows, tongue caught between his teeth. “I keep thinking,” he says suddenly, surprising himself, “that it’s supposed to feel different by now.”

Mike’s hand stills around the spoon in his hand. “Different how?”

“Lighter,” Will says. The word tastes wrong in his mouth. “Like everything that happened should’ve… settled. Like grief has an expiration date or something.”

Mike doesn’t answer right away. His eyes stay on Will, but softer now. “Does it?”

Will lets out a breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt so much. “Apparently not.”

Mike shifts in his chair once again, the wood groaning in response, his anxious jitteriness not going unnoticed by the boy across from him. “I—” He stops. Starts again. “I think about her a lot.”

Will nods. He expects the name to sting, for the pain of the morning to come crashing back at full force. He bites the inside of his cheek to still the swirling of emotions begging to be released. He can't cry here, not in front of everyone, in front of Mike. He palms his mouth instinctively, elbow hitting the edge of the table.

“I think about you too,” Mike adds quietly.

Will’s gaze falters, sneaking a glance up. His breath hitches, heart pounding roughly against his chest. He's been so good at pushing down the unnerving feelings, the guilt, the shame. Mike cannot say these things to him, especially considering he knows about Will.

Unfortunately, Mike seems to realize what he’s said a second too late. “I mean— not like— I just mean—” His words tangle over each other. He looks down, cheeks flushing faintly. “You kind of disappeared after… everything. And I didn’t know if I was supposed to follow or leave you alone.”

Will swallows. His hand drops back down to his lap, finding a loose piece of his sweater to fiddle with. He watches it twist around his skin, watches how easy it would be to pull it loose completely.

“I didn’t disappear,” he says, though the lie feels thin. “I just… didn’t know how to keep up with everyone.”

Mike looks up again, searching his face like he’s trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. He's had several conversations with Dustin and Lucas about the lack of contact from Will. At first he assumed it has just been him, given their awkward stint in the beginning of High School. But after the rest of the party confirmed his suspicions, he knew that Will had retreated.

“You didn’t just disappear from me,” Mike says quietly. “You disappeared from everyone.”

“I know,” he murmurs. If he stayed, he would have had to keep pretending he didn’t love him, and pretending had almost broken him.

Mike studies him, something conflicted in his expression. He’s not angry. If anything, he looks deflated — like someone had punched him in the gut.

“We kept asking you to hang out,” Mike continues. “Dustin, Lucas— even Max, before… before everything. You always said you were busy. Or tired. Or that you’d call back later.”

Will swallows hard.

“I didn’t want to ruin it,” he says.

Mike blinks. “Ruin what?”

“Everything,” Will says, too fast. “You guys were fine. You were laughing. Going to school. Talking about normal stuff. And I—” His voice falters. “I couldn’t do that. I didn’t know how to be normal anymore.”

Mike’s gaze softens. “You didn’t have to be normal.”

Will lets out a breath that sounds almost like a scoff. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?” Mike leans forward slightly. Will finally fully looks up at him.

“Because if I wasn’t,” he says quietly, “then everyone would’ve had to look at it. At what happened.”

Mike doesn’t interrupt.

“At me,” Will adds, barely audible. Sometimes, when he was alone, he wondered if the possession had changed him permanently. If the part of him that had been invaded had never healed, only learned how to hide. He learned to distrust his own body.

He never confided in anyone about this. Not Jonathan. Not Joyce. Not even Mike.

Especially not Mike.

Loving Mike felt too close to the same violation.

It wasn’t violent or cruel the way Vecna had been, but it was just as uncontrollable. It bloomed in him without permission, without logic, without any way to shut it off. He didn’t choose it, let alone ask for it. It bloomed inside him like a second consciousness, whispering things he didn’t want to hear, asking for things he didn’t know how to give. He tried to starve it, silence it, scrape it out of himself the way he used to scrape dirt from his knees as a child.

Sometimes he felt like his head was cut off from his body — his mind preaching rules and scripture and shame, while his heart screamed something entirely different. He felt split down the middle: half boy, half sin; half survivor, half contamination.

He wondered if Vecna had left something behind. If the monster had hollowed him out and filled him with something else entirely.

Church made it worse. He tried going a few times, to see if there was a way to get rid of the insanity he felt clawing at him.

The sermons about purity and temptation crawled under his skin. The pews felt like splinters pressed into his back. He sat with his hands folded, palms burning with imaginary crosses, imagining himself as an offering laid out for correction.

He wondered if love was just another kind of possession. He hated how, when Mike smiled at him, warmth flooded his chest in the same way cold had once flooded his lungs. Will's guilt stemmed not only because he loved someone he wasn’t supposed to love, but because the love felt holy and disgusting at the same time.

“You could’ve told me,” Mike whispers, bringing Will back to earth and away from his intrusive inner-monologue.

Will almost laughs. “Yeah. I know.”

The problem is that telling Mike things has always felt like stepping too close to a cliff edge.

Mike leans forward slightly, elbows on the table now, mirroring Will without realizing it. “You don’t have to, like… explain everything,” he says. “I’m not— I’m not asking for that. I just—” He hesitates, eyes flicking away for a moment. “I didn’t like not knowing if you were okay.”

Will’s chest tightens. There it is. The thing he’s been afraid to hear and afraid not to hear at the same time.

“I’m not,” he says softly.

Mike’s jaw tightens. “Yeah,” he says. “Me neither.”

Will looks up at him then, really looks at him. Mike’s hair is a little longer than he remembers, falling into his eyes the way it used to when they were kids. There are faint shadows under his eyes, exhaustion he never used to carry.

Their eye contact settles around the silence, a soft smile beginning at the corners of Mike's mouth. He missed his best friend, his Cleric, his Will. He felt so foolish for the way he handled things when he was younger, so stupid and oblivious.

He notices the way Will offers a nod in response, watches the slight tremor in his fingers, and something inside him twists — wanting to reach out, to steady it, even though he knows he can’t.

When they stand to leave, Mike hesitates as though weighing something invisible, then closes the distance between them. The awkward hug is stiff and overly careful. Will’s hands hover before settling against Mike’s jacket.

The hug ends too quickly.

Upon stepping outside, the winter air bites at their cheeks. Will fumbles for words, muttering thanks for the coffee, his voice small against the emptiness of the street. They begin walking, side by side, toward Mike’s car. How did he convince Karen Wheeler to let him drive?

Will teases him lightly about the station wagon. Mike laughs softly, and it’s enough to make Will’s chest unclench just a fraction.

When they reach the corner, Will gestures toward his bike. Mike pauses, hesitates, then offers another hug. This one is longer, worse, their bodies pressing closer than before. It leaves a heat behind in Will’s chest that he can’t quite name.

“I’m glad we did this,” Mike says, voice low.

“Me too,” Will replies

They mean different things.

That night, Will lies awake with his hands folded over his chest, feeling the slow, stubborn rhythm of his heartbeat beneath his palms. The house is quiet in the way it only gets after midnight, with Joyce working a night shift (Hopper was busy visiting Jonathan in New York, which took a lot of convincing on his mother's end).

He thinks about the hug.

About how Mike’s hands had lingered, just barely.

About the moment Will had felt the urge to turn back, to say something reckless, something impossible, something that might have split his life open down the middle. He lies there, counting the cracks in the ceiling, letting memory press against him until it becomes difficult to tell where the present ends and the past begins.

The phone rings.

The sound is sharp and sudden enough to tear through his thoughts, jolting straight through his ribs. His heart leaps violently, instinct screaming that no one calls after midnight unless something is wrong. For a moment, he just sits there, breathing shallowly, as if moving too fast might make the sound vanish, might undo whatever is about to happen.

The phone rings again.

He swings his legs over the side of the couch and reaches for the receiver, fingers brushing the cold plastic before curling around it. His hand feels unsteady as he lifts it to his ear

“Hello?”

There’s a breath on the other end. Familiar.

“Hey. It’s me.” Mike sounds different. Not steady this time. Like he’s been pacing.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” he says. “I just— I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said.” Will presses the cord between his fingers. “I just didn’t realize,” Mike continues, quieter now. “How much I… left unsaid.” Will closes his eyes. Mike exhales again. “I don’t want this to be… it.”

“What do you mean?”

Mike hesitates, then: “I mean — us. Talking. I don’t want it to just be today. I don't want to go back to how it was these past six months, back when you were in California.”

Will doesn’t trust his voice at first. “Okay.”

“I keep wondering,” Mike says slowly, “if there were moments I should’ve noticed. Things I just… didn’t.”

Will leans his head against the wall.

“There were,” he admits. “But you weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“That doesn’t really make me feel better.”

Will huffs out a quiet laugh.

“Yeah. I figured.”

“You know,” Mike says, “when everything ended, I thought I’d feel better. Like I could finally breathe.”

Will waits.

“But now it’s just… quiet,” Mike finishes. “And I keep thinking about stuff I didn’t have time to think about before.”

Will’s heart stutters.

“Like what?”

Another pause. Longer.

“Like you.”

Will waits for him to take it back, to stutter, like this morning. But he doesn't.

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