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Will placed his folder on Mike’s bookshelf and walked away, tears running down his cheeks. Mike swallowed and took his place. He promised himself he wasn’t going to cry tonight. Not again, not after months and months of crying. But his eyes swelled with tears anyway when he saw their folders side by side, always side by side.
Hopper’s words swam at the back of his head along with the story he told their friends. Their happy endings.
He had spent the last months trying to… trying to explain to himself, to understand El’s choice. Trying to hold onto her, keep her with them in the only way he knew how, because Mike was, first and foremost, a writer. Coming up with happy endings for other people was as easy as breathing. El’s had slipped through his fingers again and again and again, and every time was like losing her for the first time. Until today, at graduation.
His thumb brushed Will’s folder.
Something had settled inside him after the story unfolded behind his eyelids. Mike wasn’t stupid. Hope came easily to him, but he wasn’t naive, not after everything they went through. El was gone. El was gone, and he hadn’t said goodbye. In the past months, he had imagined it a million times, tried to make himself tell her he loved her one last time. He couldn’t. Not even inside his own head could he tell her what she so desperately had wanted to hear, because every single time he opened his mouth, the memory of her voice stopped him: friends don’t lie.
So Mike stopped lying. He stopped lying to his imaginary El. To the real El. To himself. And then the guilt had slammed into him like a truck, and he spiralled. The last three months of his life were blurry. He couldn’t recall a single memory that wasn’t about him in his bed, him watching Will from afar, him in front of his typewriter, him crying.
His room was full of crumbled paper, crumbled finales, crumbled stories. His grief was scattered all over his bedroom floor.
In the end, the story came to him when he had given up hope for it to ever come up. Fitting for El. In the end, Mike knew it couldn’t change anything; it couldn’t fix the gaping hole her presence had left. In the end, Mike knew that her happy ending wasn’t even about her; it was for him.
Mike had always been good at writing happy endings for his friends.
And the storyteller? What about him?
He had never learned how to write them for himself.
“W-will,” he tried to call him, but his voice cracked.
His heart tumbled inside his chest, suddenly filled with a fear so paralysing it made him dizzy. He took a shaky intake of breath and turned around, stumbling his way to the bottom of the stairs. Will was almost at the top, one last step away from leaving Mike behind.
For some reason, it felt final.
“Wait. Will, wait!”
Will stopped. Mike was heaving, clinging to the railing as if his life depended on it. Will turned around slowly, a light frown on his face that promptly turned into concern once his eyes landed on Mike.
He must look like a mess because Will rushed down the stairs without thinking twice. He went to grab his shoulders, but hesitated, his hands twitching in the air before he let them fall at either side of him. The gesture seemed automatic; Will’s worry did not oscillate once. It made Mike sick to his stomach.
That was his fault, too. So many things were his fault.
“Mike, what–?”
Mike took a deep breath and closed his eyes. One last time, he begged the eight-year-old version of himself that lived at the back of his mind. Help me one last time, Mike, the Brave.
Young Mike smiled at him and gave him a playful shove. Mike let his body fall against Will’s.
Will’s breath hitched with surprise, but his arms wrapped around his waist as if they had never left. Mike buried his face in the crook of his neck and breathed him in, tears burning against his eyelashes.
He felt Will swallowing against his cheek.
“Mike?”
Mike's hands pressed against Will’s hips, pulling him closer.
“I don't like the ending.”
“W-what?”
“My ending. The story… the story I told of- of myself, of my future. My ending, I hate it. I don't want it. I don't want it, Will. I don't want to end up alone. I want to be happy, but I don't know how. You have to help me. Please help me rewrite it, please help, please–”
“Okay, okay, shhh. Mike, you need to breathe, okay? Breathe with me.”
Mike bit his lip until he tasted blood. Slowly, Will guided them to the couch. Mike grabbed the front of Will’s shirt as soon as they sat and refused to abandon his hiding spot.
Will seemed hesitant at first, but his hands gained confidence as soon as they were running up and down Mike's back, soothing him.
“Please,” he begged, one last time. Always wanting more, always demanding more of Will, even when Will had nothing left to give him.
There was a moment of silence. A pause so heavy with unspoken secrets that bile rose in Mike’s throat.
“I'm not a good writer, Mike,” he said, his voice shaking but his hands steady as he kept caressing him. Physical was always an easier language for them to speak. “Will, the Wise only knows how to create illusions.”
Mike fisted Will’s shirt until his knuckles turned white.
“I d-don't– I don't need Will, the Wise.” He swallowed back the knot in his throat and fought past the sick feeling in his stomach. With a last breath, he rose from his hiding and faced Will. “Just you. I just need you.”
Will’s eyes widened slightly, his mouth falling open in a tiny o. Mike looked at him, really looked at him. Will’s cheeks were tinted rosy, his eyelashes long and wet by tears. A dim sadness had found its home in his eyes the moment he was taken and never truly left them, and yet, they were bright and beautiful and always open for wonder.
Another piece of the puzzle settled into place inside him. His fingers itched with the need to write, to go back to the story he had started the day he asked a shy little boy to be his friend. To keep adding chapters until he couldn’t write anymore.
“Mike? What– what do you mean?”
He swallowed and let go of Will’s shirt, raising his trembling hand to his cheek. Will’s breath came out shaky.
“I hate your ending too.”
Will blinked a couple of times, a light frown pulling down his eyebrows. Mike smoothed it with his thumb.
“My ending? You mean–? You don’t want me to find happiness and… acceptance?”
“What? No. I mean Carlton.”
Will stared at him.
“Who is Carlton?”
“Your boyfriend.”
“My– what?” Will pressed the back of his hand to Mike’s forehead. “Are you getting sick?”
Mike pushed his hand away and pressed closer, even if they were already too close. Will’s eyes flickered across his face, resting on his lips for a second too long before he looked away. Mike's heart hammered against his chest.
“Your future boyfriend. I don't– I hate him too.”
“... I don't know any Carlton, Mike.”
Mike groaned, throwing his head back and covering his eyes. How could he be a writer who didn't know how to use words?
“Do you hear a clock?” Mike’s eyes sprang open, looking around the room with panic. Then he turned to glare at Will’s teasing smile. The gall of him to just… joke about that. “Then why are you hallucinating?”
“I'm not hallucinating! I invented him!”
He deflated, his body sinking into the couch’s back with a defeated sigh. Will shook his head, a fond smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He was used to Mike’s weirdness when it came to him and his stories. He had always been to only one who took him seriously, even when he was babbling about Paladins and Dragons.
“You invented me a boyfriend?” Mike nodded. Will’s smile widened. “And you hate him. Why?”
Mike opened and closed his mouth. How could he explain? How could he tell him that the thought of another man holding Will’s hand made him sick? How could he say that thinking about Will falling in love with a stranger, smiling at him the way he was smiling now, drawing for him, laughing with him, kissing him, living with him made Mike’s chest constrict with pain? How could he tell him that just the thought of an imaginary boyfriend felt like his heart was turned inside out?
“Because it's not me.”
Will’s sudden intake was loud enough that he heard it over the wild beating of his heart.
“I don’t understand.”
Mike’s hands were shaking as he took Will’s, interlacing their fingers just like he had done countless times when they were kids. Their hands weren’t as small now, but they still fit perfectly against each other, and the warm flutter inside Mike’s chest was like coming home.
“What I said before is true. I want you to… I want you to travel and find a place far away from this shithole where you can be happy and find a community that loves you for who you are. And you will. I know you will, because…” he laughed, tears rolling down his cheeks, “who wouldn’t love you? And I always imagine you finding a good guy who treats you right and shows you how much he loves you every day. Someone who would sit still for hours while you paint them, and who would share a coffee with you every morning. Someone who– who would keep the little doodles you scribble on napkins like they’re small treasures. Someone who- who sees you– But— but every time I picture you with– with him I just, I–”
Mike pressed his fist against his mouth to muffle the sobs, but they kept coming in waves, one after the other, and he couldn’t stop. Will’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him against his chest, but Mike needed to say it. He needed to push past the knot in his throat and say the words that had been stuck there since… forever.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad with words, after all. Maybe he had just piled them up at the back of his throat until they started to choke him.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I’m too late. I know I’m too late and you don’t– you don’t want me like that, not… not anymore. But I– I’m so selfish, and I love you so, so much, Will. I don’t know how to be that person for you. I don’t know how to be your boyfriend, a good boyfriend. I don’t even know how to be a good friend. And I don’t— I don’t want to stay stuck and alone, and, and miserable, but I– I can’t think of another ending.”
He sobbed until there wasn’t enough air in the room to fill his lungs. Panic blurred his vision and made his chest burn. Then the weight of Will’s hand over his heart pulled him out of the fog, and he started to breathe following the rise and fall of Will’s chest.
They stayed in silence for a long time, or that’s what it felt like for Mike. The weight of his confession hung in the air around them, but he was too tired to break the quiet. He had nothing left to say; he was finally an empty shell that Will could simply put on a bookshelf and forget about.
He hadn’t realised his eyes were closed until he felt the warmth of Will’s hand cup his jaw. He blinked, his eyes swollen and tender. Will had been crying, too, but he looked as beautiful as always: blushed pink, eyes bright, lips soft.
Mike let out a sigh as Will’s thumb stroked his cheek.
Then Will’s lips pressed against his.
It was barely a second, a short, tender press of lips against lips that stole Mike’s breath away and turned his world on its axis. He missed it as soon as it was gone, chasing its wonder with his mouth until Will huffed a laugh and gave him a short peck.
“There,” said Will. He was trying to sound casual, but his voice was weak, and Mike could feel the wild beat of his heart. “That wasn’t part of your story. Now everything…” he breathed in slowly, “now everything changed.”
“But I thought– you said–” Mike’s brain was trying to come up with words, but it felt like trying to grasp sunbeams. His mind kept repeating the heat of Will’s mouth on his over and over again. His skin was tingling. “You said you were over your crush. I assumed you meant me. I thought you didn’t…want me anymore.”
Will cringed, and it was his time to hide his face in the crook of Mike’s neck. Mike cupped the back of Will’s neck in pure instinct, burying his fingers into the smooth hair of his nape and pressing Will impossibly closer. The skin of Will’s face was hot against his throat.
“I… lied.”
“You lied?”
“Not to you. I didn’t even think you knew who I was talking about. I lied to myself. I’ve been lying to myself this whole time. Or, or, not lying but trying–” He gulped. “Trying not to love you.”
Mike pulled gently on Will’s hair and made him look up. The tips of their noses bumped against each other, the air between their mouths turning warm.
“Did you? Stop?”
Will let out a shaky sigh that tickles Mike’s parted lips.
“I thought I did.” His eyes sparkled when he smiled, sweet and a touch shy. “But then you put on those fake vampire teeth, and I couldn’t help falling all over again.”
Mike groaned, his face heating up with embarrassment. “Shut up.”
Will giggled, a sound he hadn’t heard in a while, and Mike… He couldn’t help himself. He kissed him.
This time it wasn’t a simple peck. Will’s lips parted in surprise, and Mike cupped his face between his hands, searching for that sweet heat that he had denied himself for so long. Kissing had never felt like this; he had never felt it in his entire body. Honey spread from Will’s mouth to Mike’s chest, dripping down his throat and pooling low in his belly.
Will grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him in, as if afraid Mike would push him away. Mike's hands fell to Will’s hips, and he squeezed them before running them up his chest and wrapping his arms around Will’s shoulders.
Will made a soft sound, a little whiny and soft miracle that Mike tasted at the back of his tongue.
The kiss broke with wet twin gasps. Will rested his forehead against Mike’s, his fingers playing with the loose curls of his nape. Mike had tried to brush his hair, make himself more… presentable, but Will’s hands had undone all his hard work.
“You used to know how to be… how to be my person before,” whispered Will. His eyes were teary but full of trust. “You'll remember or– or, you'll learn again, okay? We'll learn together how to be each other’s.”
A tear rolled down Mike's cheek. Will caught it with his thumb before it could slide into his mouth. He sniffed.
“We'll rewrite our endings?”
Will smiled, wide and sweet.
“We'll write a new beginning.”