Chapter Text
In 1992, Mike and Will were still friends. Neither of them had ever really doubted it, but after moving to two different cities for college, Will had worried for a brief second that maybe, just maybe, their paths would drift apart. Fortunately, none of that happened.
They saw each other every single weekend since they didn't live too far from one another.
Sometimes the rest of the gang would join, but most of the time it was just the two of them, and they had never been closer.
Now that they’d finally managed to leave their trauma behind in Hawkins, they were finally living the life that had been ripped away from them years before.
Will sat on his bed in the small dorm room he paid for with a scholarship—one he’d won because, apparently, he was much better at drawing and painting than he thought.
He held a nearly finished sketchbook and a piece of black charcoal.
Without even having to think about it, when he’d gotten comfortable to draw a few hours earlier, he had started sketching Mike’s outlines; it was a completely spontaneous gesture.
Lately, it seemed like he was drawing Mike more than ever.
The second he picked up paper and colors, Mike's was the first face that popped into his head, and even when he tried to depict someone else, that person would always end up looking like Mike.
Mike didn’t mind; in fact, he had sprawled out at the foot of the bed, deliberately facing Will. Knowing about this tendency, he wanted to make things easier for him by posing as his model, all while pretending to be completely oblivious.
“So I swear to you, Will, he just froze right in front of everyone, and the professor started tearing into him… I’m dropping the class, I’m telling you.”
Will chuckled without looking up from his drawing. “You can’t just drop a class because someone else messed up,” he replied, trying to talk some sense into his friend.
“Messed up? Fine, but that guy chewed him out in front of the whole class. If he did that to me, I’d completely panic.”
Will set the charcoal down on his nightstand and looked up at Mike, his expression serious yet sweet.
“Mike, that’s not going to happen to you. You love public speaking,” he tried to reassure him as best he could.
But Mike wouldn’t back down. “No, I know, I know, but now that I’ve seen what he’s capable of, I think I might just freeze up,” he tried to explain.
“Unless you come with me and hold my hand—then maybe I could actually make it through.”
Will’s heart skipped a couple of heavy beats in his chest, so hard he could almost feel them against his ribs. Lately, Mike had started saying things like that a lot more often.
He’d talk about holding hands, hugging; he’d talk about how soft Will’s skin was and how much he liked sleeping together.
He never implied anything more than simple friendship, but Will couldn’t help but read into those words with an intensity they probably didn’t actually have.
“He’d mock you even more if I held your hand,” Will said, trying to steer the conversation back to banter, or anything that wasn't the actual prospect of holding hands.
“Maybe, but then you could just throw him out the window with your powers.” Mike raised his eyebrows as if to say it was a foolproof plan, and Will rolled his eyes.
“For the millionth time, Mike, I haven’t had those powers for what, three years? Four?”
They both laughed because Mike seemingly refused to let the powers thing go; over all the years that had passed, he kept bringing it up.
“I know, but come on, how sexy were you that day?”
The comment was innocent, and Will knew it, yet a jolt of electricity surged through his body from head to toe.
It was rare, but it had happened a few times before—Mike calling him openly sexy.
Will didn’t quite know how to interpret it, and now, sitting on the bed just inches away from each other, that word stuck to his skin, refusing to wash off.
“Sexy, huh? What would your girlfriend think about that?” Will joked.
Mike didn’t have a girlfriend; it was a miracle he even had friends left, considering he spent the entire day cooped up studying, hunched over books like a nineteenth-century poet.
But Mike didn’t laugh.
He didn’t seem to catch the joke, so Will looked at him, his brow furrowing in a silent attempt to prod him into speaking.
“I have a date tonight,” Mike announced, shifting his gaze to the bedspread beneath him. With his hand, he smoothed out a few creases that had formed when he sat down.
For a moment, Will said nothing, taking a second to process what Mike was actually saying.
He had a date, which meant he was going out with someone.
But it didn't necessarily have to mean anything, right?
“Who’s the lucky girl?” he asked when the silence started getting too suspicious.
“A girl from my class—” Mike explained, still not looking at the other boy.
“Nothing serious,” he added, this time locking eyes to gauge the reaction to his admission.
Will was relieved to hear those words, and it made him feel guilty.
He should have been happy for his friend if his life had improved to the point where he allowed himself to date someone, but a part of him was dying of jealousy.
So knowing it was no big deal comforted him.
“Good, I’m happy for you,” he said, though he didn’t really mean it.
Mike didn’t pursue the subject; he just nodded and went back to complaining about his professors, who, according to him, were absolutely terrible.
A few days later, Will was walking across the college campus, trying to find the classroom for his next lecture.
He didn't really feel like going, but if he wanted to keep his scholarship—and he didn't exactly have a choice in the matter—he had to keep his grades up, which meant attending every class and studying constantly.
The campus grounds were beautiful, well-manicured, with freshly mowed grass and a few beds of flowers and plants. A lot of students were standing or sitting around, chatting; some were making new friends, while others caught up with old ones.
Will was alone.
The truth was, Will was always alone when he wasn't with Mike, and because of that, he often found himself staying up late into the night, waiting for a call from his friend.
That the call actually came was rare, usually happening only when Mike fell asleep and woke up for some reason—a nightmare that required comforting, or a craving for water that still required comforting because Mike despaired at the thought of having to get up to get a drink.
Will had tried telling him to keep a water bottle next to his bed at night, but Mike stubbornly refused.
The autumn sun was beginning to lose its warmth. Even though it bathed the quad in a warm, gentle yellow light, it didn't actually warm his skin.
Reaching down, Will grabbed the sleeve of the flannel shirt tied around his waist, untied the knot, gave it a quick shake, and slipped it on. It was seriously starting to get chilly outside.
Finally reaching one of the entrances to the main building, the first thing Will did was glance at the student bulletin board.
It was a habit he’d picked up a while ago; he often found listings for art supplies for sale or free from older students who had already graduated, discounted used textbooks, or flyers for concerts and parties he never went to but liked reading about just to know what people would be talking about in the halls over the next few days.
For the past few weeks, though, one specific flyer had remained fixed to the board, and if it ever got torn down, someone would put it right back up, ensuring everyone saw it the next day.
It was a small piece of paper with a red border and bold black lettering.
Right in the center, the acronym HIV always caught his eye and made him shudder.
Will remembered clearly the day he first heard about the virus on the radio.
He remembered being so shocked that he’d done so much research on it that he ended up giving himself a panic attack.
What he had gathered was that it was transmitted through intercourse or saliva, and that people like him died from it.
People like him, who were already marginalized enough as it was, were now looked at as dangerous even by those who had never paid them any attention before.
Fantastic.
In reality, Will had learned that the epidemic had been circulating long before '92; it had been around since he was a kid, but he’d been too busy fighting interdimensional creatures and trying to survive to worry about a stupid virus.
And above all, even if he had managed to catch the news back then, he never would have imagined it could one day impact his own life.*
With a heavy sigh, Will left the bulletin board behind and stepped through the main entrance. Inside the building, the air was thick, but in the best way possible.
It smelled of paper, books, and paint.
It was a scent that always calmed him down, that made him feel at home, maybe because it was the exact same smell that filled his own bedroom and lingered on Mike’s clothes after a weekend spent together.
Will wondered if Mike had heard about the virus too—the "gay disease," as some of his classmates in the hallways called it, people Will swore he would never speak to.
Mike had surely heard about it, and the fact that he’d never brought it up with Will worried him a little.
Did he not want to scare him? Did he not want to burden him with questions Will didn't have answers to anyway? What if he’d heard about the disease and was now disgusted by Will? No, that wasn't possible.
If that were the case, he wouldn't keep coming over every weekend.
Entering the lecture hall, Will took a seat right in the middle of the room.
He didn’t like sitting at the front and being targeted by the professors' attention, but he didn't like sitting in the back either where he couldn't understand anything being explained.
So, he’d made a habit of sitting right in the center, where he could hear everything without participating, and where nobody would talk to him because he just blended into the crowd.
He carelessly let his backpack drop to his feet and began to wait.
As time passed, the other students in his class took their seats, and soon the professor, arriving slightly late, started droning on in a lecture that felt like it would never end.
Will found himself wishing he was back in middle school or high school; he missed going to school with his friends, sitting next to each other, chatting, and secretly passing notes while trying to stifle their laughter.
But they were all grown up now, and every single one of them was sitting in a different classroom, listening to a different professor explain different things that they couldn't even talk about with each other because they didn't know enough to understand.
It was sad, even if it was just how things went.
For a moment, he felt a spark of anger toward his mother, who, by moving them to Lenora, had robbed him of a whole year of friendship and childhood.
It wasn’t fair. He’d barely gotten to experience his adolescence due to the frequent, ever-imminent ends of the world, and on top of that, he hadn't even been able to enjoy that single year of fake peace that separated the disasters in Hawkins.
Maybe if he’d stayed with the others, he would have been the one to start a D&D club.
Maybe if he’d stayed, he and Mike wouldn’t have stopped talking for all that time.
Maybe everything would have turned out differently.
Maybe he would have given Mike a painting—a different one, too, without passing it off as a commission from Jane.
Or maybe, just maybe, he could have realized his feelings while being close to Mike instead of miles away, and he would have been a different person because he would have had his best friend by his side to talk to about it, facing that discovery together instead of alone, locked inside his own head.
Maybe that would have saved him from hating himself and struggling so much to accept who he was, and maybe Mike would have realized that the mystery boy he had a massive crush on was actually him.
Not that it would have changed anything; Mike was only attracted to girls, period.
But what if he realized it wasn't like that? Was it really so absurd to think Mike could be attracted to him?
After all, he’d called him sexy a handful of times over the last few years, and that had to mean something, right?
Maybe not, maybe so—Will would never get the chance to find out, even though lately he felt closer to an answer than ever before.
Because Mike came to see him every single week without Will ever having to ask, because he called him almost every day and sent him letters even when there was no need to, and once he’d even given him yellow flowers—his favorite color—saying he’d bought them so Will could paint them, and Will was almost certain it was just an excuse.
Mike, Mike, Mike. For years, Will’s mind had revolved around nothing but him, and for a long time, it had hurt—hurt like hell.
But now it was almost pleasant, now that there was a glimmer of hope, however small, that his feelings might be returned.
But Mike, Will had to remind himself, had gone out with a girl a couple of nights ago, even if he’d said it was nothing serious.
And sure enough, he was coming to visit again this weekend.
Will was certain Mike would tell him the date had gone horribly and that he needed cheering up, and Will would spend the next two days trying to make him laugh, and everything would be just fine.
Saturday morning rolled around relatively quickly.
The week hadn't exactly been easy for Will—someone on campus had started a rumor that he was gay. Will knew it was just gossip; he hadn't told anyone his secret, he had never gone out with guys, and he didn't even have friends, or at least none he was close enough to to confess something like that.
It was the same old rumor mill, born from the fact that he just seemed sensitive.
They’d probably seen him clutching his books to his chest in the hallways, wearing his backpack on both shoulders and setting it down gently instead of slamming it onto the floor, sketching with the tenderness of someone who actually loved what he did and didn't just want a piece of paper at the end of the line.
Will was used to bullying; he’d lived with it his entire life, and another rough patch wasn't going to change anything.
Of course, things got heavier on Thursday when, right next to the HIV awareness flyer, he found a poorly printed photo of himself with his name written across it in red marker.
Will tore the photo down the second he saw it, looking around with eyes stinging with tears he refused to let shed, trying to see if anyone had caught him.
Then he walked over to the nearest trash can, ripped it into tiny pieces, and threw it away.
That day, he sat near the back of the class, didn't pay much attention to the lecture, and retreated right back to his dorm room immediately after.
The moment he was safe and alone, his mind relaxed, immediately drifting to that familiar face that always got him through the hardest times.*
So, by Saturday, Will was just glad to be waiting for his friend.
He had already changed and tidied up the room.
He couldn’t wait to give Mike the drawing he’d done on Thursday; it was probably one of his best pieces, incredibly realistic, detailed, and packed with all those deep, confusing emotions that Mike made him feel without even trying.
It was a quarter after ten. Mike would arrive at ten-thirty, as always—honestly, he was supposed to be there at ten sharp, but Mike Wheeler wouldn't be Mike Wheeler if he weren’t running late.
Will was sitting at the foot of the bed, feeling strangely more nervous than usual.
A wave of anticipation was swelling inside him, and he knew he needed to get a grip on it before Mike arrived.
He stood up because he couldn't sit still, pacing over to his nightstand.
Inside the drawer, he kept a bottle of cologne he never used, but for some reason he didn't care to dwell on, he decided he might wear it today.
He pulled the small wooden knob, making the things inside rattle against the bottom of the drawer.
The yellow flowers Mike had given him—now completely dried up—jumbled together with the cluster of pens, pencils, and used tissues he kept in there.
Will reached in and immediately found the little glass bottle.
Just as he was about to spray it, he heard the doorknob click and turn. Mike was early—an absolute miracle—but it didn't change the fact that he was here.
Will instinctively sprayed the cologne onto his neck, but he held it too close, creating a wet patch on his skin.
He didn't stop to think; he slammed the bottle back into the drawer, shoved it shut with way too much force, and whipped around toward the door.*
“Mike! You're early,” he said, panic bleeding into his voice.
Mike walked in, immediately letting his duffel bag slip off his shoulder and drop to the floor.
“Yeah? Sorry?” His tone was confused, completely missing why his friend seemed to be panicking. “Is that a problem?” he asked, closing the door behind him.
“No, no, I just wasn't expecting you for another ten minutes,” Will said, trying—and failing—to keep his cool.
“And what exactly did Will Byers have to do in ten minutes that was so important? Actually, wait... don't tell me, I don't want to know.” They both laughed, Will throwing him a look of mock disgust before his breathing finally leveled out to something resembling normal.
Unfortunately, distracted by the cologne and his own restlessness, Will forgot to hide his painting, which was lying out on the desk.
Mike noticed it immediately—he couldn't really miss it, considering it was a fairly large canvas and the only thing sitting on the desk.
“Will, wow, this is beautiful,” Mike said, stepping closer to the painting and picking it up without asking or waiting for permission.
Will’s eyes widened as he mentally cursed himself for forgetting it, quickly moving toward Mike to scan his face for any micro-expressions.
A shy smile crept onto Will's face at the genuine compliment, growing wider when Mike looked up to meet his eyes.
“When did you make this?” Mike asked, looking back down to study the details—the way his freckles seemed to be placed in the exact right spots, just like a photograph, and the softness of the brushstrokes that made Mike look much gentler than he actually was.
“Between Thursday and Friday,” Will replied. “I needed... I don't know, you, I guess.” He didn't hesitate to admit it.
It wasn't weird.
Mike knew Will needed him just like Will knew Mike needed him; there was nothing strange about it, even if Will secretly wished there were.
He wished it were more than just a platonic need—and for him, it was, it was so much more—but Mike seemed to see it differently.
But it was fine.
It amounted to the same thing anyway; it just didn't have a label slapped on it.*
“Did something happen?” Mike asked, a note of worry creeping into his voice, before quickly adding, “I’m gonna hang it in my room, right next to the flower one.”
He lifted his arms, holding the canvas up as if visualizing it on his wall.
And Will wanted to tell him.
He wanted to talk about the awful thing that had happened, the thing that was silently tearing him apart, so that Mike would put the painting down, wrap his arms around Will, and hold him tight, whispering that he wasn't broken, that he was perfect just the way he was, and that everyone else was a complete asshole.
But just as he was about to open his mouth—and his heart along with it—Mike set the drawing back on the desk and turned fully toward him.
“Oh, and remind me to tell you about the date,” Mike blurted out, a spark in his eyes that instantly snuffed out all of Will’s momentum.
The smile on Will’s face faltered, and he had to force it back up, desperate to hide the sharp stab of pain blooming in his chest.
“You were saying?” Mike prompted, urging Will to speak, to say whatever he had been about to say.
But those words never came out.
“No, no, nothing happened. I was just by myself and missed the company,” Will lied, not even bothering to make it sound convincing.*
“Will, are you sure? It doesn't seem like nothing,” Mike pressed, refusing to let it go, entirely confused by his friend’s sudden shift in mood.
“Mike, I told you, nothing happened,” Will practically snapped, turning around to sit on the bed, putting some distance between them.
“Now tell me about this girl.” He deflected, pulling his knees up to his chest and curling into himself.
Mike stood frozen for a few seconds, trying to process what had just happened, before following Will onto the mattress.
He closed the gap between them, invading Will’s personal space as if it belonged to him.
Mike hesitated, studying Will’s half-hidden profile for a moment, trying to figure out if he was angry or if he’d said something wrong.
But Will was impossible to read right then, so Mike gave up.
“I took her out for ice cream,” Mike began, his voice low, almost as if it were something he shouldn't be sharing.
“Her name is Sophie, by the way. But then it rained, obviously, so the second we got there we had to bolt. And since I don't have a car, we had to run through the rain. It was a total disaster.”
Will listened in silence, picturing the scene.
He could see Mike and this girl clearly in front of the ice cream stand, ready to order, planning to take a walk together while the ice cream melted down the cone and onto their fingers.
And then, the sudden downpour.
If Mike had gone out with Will, Will would have told him that getting ice cream in the fall was a terrible idea, and he would have suggested a coffee shop near the dorms—a place that was always quiet, where they could have had something close to a real date.
Instead, Mike had gone out with this Sophie, and they had run through the rain together like something out of a romantic movie, probably holding hands and ending up kissing under some awning, soaking wet and laughing.
“She was so mad, Will,” Mike continued.
At that, Will lifted his head from his knees and turned to face his friend.
“Mad? You can't control the weather, it wasn't your fault,” he said immediately, rushing his words as if defending Mike against a felony charge.
“That’s exactly what I tried to tell her,” Mike agreed, breaking into a laugh.
“If I’d gone out with you, it probably would’ve actually been fun.”
Will felt his heart race. If I'd gone out with you. He hadn't imagined it; Mike had said those exact words right after complaining about a date.
Maybe, Will thought, he hadn't misread all the signs he’d been tracking over the last few months.
“If you'd gone out with me, I would've been the one taking you somewhere,” Will replied, trying to hide the emotion tying his tongue in knots.
“Letting you plan a date is a direct route to disaster.”
Mike laughed, and Will exhaled, masking his sigh with a chuckle.
The rest of the day in the dorm passed quietly.
Will never told Mike about what happened on Thursday, but he wasn't even disappointed about it anymore.
In fact, he kept it to himself specifically to avoid ruining the magical afternoon they were sharing. Mike’s date had been a flop, and he was looking to Will for all the affection he would never ask for directly, but clearly craved.
For most of the time, they lay on the bed, trading stories about parts of their lives they no longer lived together and could only share this way.
Before long, they ended up tangled together, the way they usually settled—legs casually intertwined, hands brushing against waists, holding on for a moment before letting go as if it were nothing, the warmth of their bodies blending until it felt like a single current of energy.
That was until Mike suggested going out for a drink, just the two of them, at one of the bars just off campus, and Will had to scramble for a thousand excuses as to why they shouldn't.
I have a headache didn't work. I’m tired was even worse.
“Mike, there’s a guy I like, and I don't want to risk running into him with you around.”
That worked.
Will regretted it instantly.
What had he done? Aside from lying—which he hated, and had already done once today—he had planted the idea in Mike’s head that he might actually be interested in someone else.
Maybe it would have been better to tell him the truth, to admit that if people saw him out at a bar with another guy, they’d hang a giant poster of his face with who-knows-what slur written in bold block letters.
For a second, Mike looked surprised, even taken aback by the news, but his mouth quickly curved into a warm grin.
“Oh, Will Byers has a boyfriend,” he teased gently.
“No, Mike, I don't have a boyfriend,” Will corrected immediately.
“And I’d really appreciate it if we never talked about this again, if possible.” The embarrassment was eating him alive.
Mike excelled at picking up on hints when they were this blunt, so he chuckled for a few more seconds before letting the subject drop.
“Wait, does this mean I can't hug you or sleep in your bed anymore? Because if I had a girlfriend, she wouldn't get jealous, but a guy definitely would.”
Mike was asking out of respect, and Will knew it, yet that simple sentence cut deeper than anything else Mike could have said.
Because it was just so painfully true.
If Mike had a girlfriend, it probably wouldn't change his behavior around Will at all, which made Will doubt everything he thought he’d understood from those cryptic signs he kept obsessively analyzing.
If Mike could keep sleeping in his bed, holding him close, even if there was a girl in the picture, it meant it didn't mean a single thing to him.
And if it meant nothing then, it meant nothing now.
That Saturday was a non-stop emotional rollercoaster for Will, and by the end of it, he actually did have a massive headache.
Just as quickly as it had arrived, the weekend passed with laughter, lighthearted moments, and teasing about Will’s alleged boyfriend—whom Will kept denying, sometimes nervously, was actually a thing.
On Monday morning, Will had to tear his photo down from the bulletin board again and pretend not to hear people whispering as he walked through the hallways.
Tuesday was the exact same story, but Will couldn't take it anymore and headed back to his dorm before class even ended.
On Wednesday, Will skipped class entirely.
He stayed in bed, sleeping until eleven, and when he finally woke up, he just wished he could go back to dreaming. In his dreams, he was safe.
For a year now, he hadn't had nightmares about the Upside Down, or Vecna, or the torture he and his friends had endured.
For a year, his dreams had been the kind that made him want to keep sleeping when morning came.
Sometimes he’d have fantastic adventures in worlds that didn't make his blood run cold, but most of the time they were just everyday scenes with Mike—domestic moments he would never get to experience outside the warmth of his blankets.
And yeah, sometimes those romantic thoughts would turn into something more intense, until he woke up gasping Mike’s name in the middle of the night.*
Around two in the afternoon, Will was absentmindedly sketching for a project due the following week.
Even though he had absolutely no motivation or desire to work on a painting he couldn't care less about, his expression was focused as he swapped brushes, clenching the one he wasn't using between his teeth.
He loved what he did.
Even when the subject matter didn't make him feel anything, he was able to channel his own emotions onto the canvas, and somehow he always ended up telling Mike's story in a hundred different shades of paint.
In the hallway outside his dorm door, he could hear the distant, light footsteps of students returning from their classes. Will glanced up at the wall clock—it was two-thirty, classes were over.
He felt a small pang of guilt for skipping, worried that missing even a single day might mess up his scholarship, but rationally he knew that wasn't possible.
His grades were among the highest; he’d have to skip more than a month to see them drop.*
Voices outside his door were debating subjects way out of his wheelhouse.
Probably business majors, or something involving math—concepts he hadn't heard since high school and had no intention of paying attention to.
Until, that is, a barely muffled whisper forced him to freeze in his chair.
The brush slipped from his lips, landing on his lap and staining his black pants with white acrylic paint, smudging into a dark shade of blue.
“Keep your voice down, this is his room,” someone said outside his door.
“Like I give a shit if that little faggot hears me,” came the sharp reply.
“It was so nice today without him around,” the same voice continued.
Will didn't want to listen, and he knew he shouldn't.
There was nothing he could do to stop the comments anyway; he wasn't going to go out there and confront them, and he wasn't going to report it.
Listening would only hurt him, but he was hypnotized by those voices, as if some part of him were actively seeking out the pain.
“Do you know why he didn't show up?” the other person asked, their voice dropping so low the last word was almost lost.
“No, and I don’t care. Maybe he hanged himself in his room,” he laughed.
Laughed.
For a split second, Will pictured his own body dangling from the ceiling of his room.
It didn’t make him laugh. Not at all.
He tried to imagine Angela’s body too—the girl who used to torment Jane back when they still lived in Lenora.
Will hated that girl, yet even that didn't make him laugh.
He only felt a profound sadness at the thought of it.
But apparently, his own lifeless body hanging from the ceiling was hilarious.
Will didn't even bother fighting the tears that started rolling silently down his cheeks. He just let them fall as he went back to painting.
There was no trace of Mike left in the drawing now; the shades he began to mix all looked gray.
By around three o'clock, Will couldn't focus anymore.
He needed to talk to someone, to be heard—anything to distract him from the horrible things he’d just overheard.
So, without overthinking it, he picked up the landline receiver in his room and dialed Mike’s number.
After a few rings, during which Will nervously tapped his foot against the floor, a voice on the other end answered, practically shouting.
“Hello?! Will, is that you??” Mike asked over the line.
A deafening roar of background noise forced Mike to yell.
“Mike, I can't hear you very well,” Will replied, squeezing his eyes shut as if it would help him hear better.
“What's up?” Mike asked, completely ignoring what Will had said, or maybe he just hadn't heard it. “Is it urgent?”
Will could hear someone near Mike talking about getting a drink, and another voice—a girl's—laughing hysterically.
“Turn the music down, I’m on the phone!” Mike protested before Will could even answer his questions, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to his complaints.
“Yeah, no, I mean... I just needed to talk because...” Will kept hesitating, every word punctuated by uncertain silences.
The noise on the other end grew more chaotic.
“Come on, stop yelling!” Mike scoffed. “Cut it out!” he kept trying, but nobody was listening to him, and Will felt fresh tears pricking at his eyes, not entirely sure why.
“Will, listen, sorry, I'll call you back later when these dumbasses leave, okay?”
Will opened his mouth to speak, caught completely off guard by the attempt to brush him off.
“Mike, really, I—” he tried to say.
“I’m really sorry,” Mike cut him off before Will could finish his sentence.
“Talk to you later, okay? Bye.”
And as Mike pulled the phone away from his ear, Will heard him laugh—laugh with someone.
I really need to talk to you right now, Mike, because I can’t stop thinking that maybe I really should just hang myself from the ceiling.