i tried to be good. am i no good?

Will has felt this before. He’s felt it in basements and bike rides and hospital rooms. In late nights and shared looks and the way Mike always seemed to turn toward him, even when he didn’t mean to. He’d named it a long time ago, quietly, carefully, like you label a box you don’t plan to open. It fed everything else. The hope he’d already strangled. The recognition he’d buried. The longing. The wanting. The terrible, stupid belief that some things could be mutual without being spoken. That you could be seen without asking for it. That someone could know you and still stay. Understanding.

Maybe if he killed this one, the rest would finally starve.

or the finale rewritten because what the actual absolute fuck was that.