Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 Will Byers.
It isn’t a secret. The fans know it. His team knows. The press knows. If you google the Hawkins Hearts, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that the leading website will be some hot gossip article about their most recent fight on the ice, shouting taunts at each other before, during, and after a match.
And he loves that. He positively adores it. He likes watching Will get flustered, effectively missing what could have been a winning hit as his face turns crimson with frustration. He likes when Will furrows his brow in irritation, a true blue sign that Mike has really gotten under his skin with a snide comment.
So when he slings his duffel bag over his shoulder and closes the door to his hotel room, he relishes the idea that in just an hour, he’ll be skating over blinding white ice across from the Lenora Lions team.
The December chill of New York isn’t lost on him as he walks to the car, skin prickling with gooseflesh even under his fleece sherpa. Nancy leans impatiently against the hood while she waits, typing away on her phone like her life depends on it. Her checkered pea coat is buttoned to the very top, making her look a little bit like an agitated pink penguin.
“What took you so long?,” she snaps.
Mike shrugs, shiny skates in one hand and black bag in the other. “You know, I had to talk myself up in the mirror for about thirty minutes before getting ready. ‘You can do it, Mike!’ or ‘It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun!’”
She shakes her head. “You’re really fucking annoying, did you know that? Get in,” she says, gesturing to the car. He goes around the other side of the black Range Rover, laying his bag and skates in the back seat before climbing into the passenger side. The heaters are on full blast, instantly providing comfort to his bitterly cold, pinkish fingertips.
Nancy gets into the driver side, pulling on her seatbelt and shifting gears into drive after tossing her phone down in the center console. She pulls out of the hotel driveway, still looking vaguely irritated by Mike’s very existence.
“What?,” he prods.
“Just promise me you won’t spend too much time worrying about what Will Byers is doing instead of focusing on your own team today.”
He scoffs, looking out the frosted window. “Are you kidding? The whole game is about focusing on the other team. I can skate and talk shit at the same time.”
“You’re unbelievable. My job is literally to keep you out of trouble, did you know that? I’m literally getting paid to make you look good.”
Nancy is the manager of his media team, and, more unfortunately, his older sister. And with those two very important roles combined, she thinks that she’s always right. (She usually is, but he won’t admit that).
“Let’s chill, okay? I won’t get into any stupid fights today,” he says, mostly for her benefit, now staring at himself in the rear view mirror. She flashes him a look out of the corner of her eye that screams, ‘I don’t believe you, Michael.’
In all honesty, their team hasn’t been doing very well lately. They aren’t bad, per se, but they’re all distracted, and it’s costing them. Their three year long rivalry with the Lenora Lions has spanned through multiple games, tournaments, and hockey seasons, but the Lions still have crushed them in the majority of games they’ve played together.
That doesn’t mean Mike won’t taunt Will as if they’re winning, though. Quite the opposite. It almost makes Will more angry that Mike’s ego is as high as it is when they’re losing, and he won’t waste that fact.
When they pull into the parking lot of the stadium, crowds already have begun gathering by the entrance to be checked in, handing over bags and pocket-contents to security guards. Erica and Steve meet them just inside, a mostly unnoticeable security guard trailing behind them just in case.
“Please tell me you have your jersey underneath that jacket, Mike,” Erica says, rolling her eyes. “We’re fifteen minutes off schedule.”
“I know, I know. I’ll change fast, promise.”
Steve hands over Mike’s hockey stick and Nancy hands over his skates. He practically books it to the locker room, in which the air feels particularly too damp for his liking.
The front row of lockers holds four things: a haphazard amount of discarded clothing, a terrible cold draft that raises gooseflesh on Mike’s skin, the overpowering smell of cheap cologne, and Will Byers.
His locker is at the very end of the row, and Mike eagerly rushes over, nearly giddy with his luck of catching Will alone.
He slams Will’s open locker door shut, causing Will to jump and Mike to grin with satisfaction.
“You ready to lose, Byers?,” he says, leaning up against the unoccupied locker to the left.
“You wish,” Will says, pulling on his yellow jersey over his head and ruffling his hair in the process. (Will’s number is seven, by the way. Not that Mike cares).
And, look. Mike hates Will with everything in him, but he has 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴, okay? Mike may not be gay, but it isn’t a crime to look. He also happens to have a nasty case of lactose intolerance, but that doesn’t stop him from walking down the dairy aisle every so often.
Will is gay, though, and the Lenora Lions are sparkling in the publicity it’s gained them. People of all ages, men, women, and children have piled in groups of four, six, eighteen just to see Will play today. Which, honestly, would be sweet and a little bit heart-warming, if it wasn’t for 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘉𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘴.
Will glares at him. “Why are you still standing here?”
Mike shrugs, peeling himself away from the side of the locker. “Just relishing in your defeat. I can already taste it now.”
Then he walks away with a turn, not looking back to see Will’s reaction. He makes his way over to his own locker, where he pulls on his own (blue) jersey and dark pants as quickly as possible. He sits on the light wood bench in the middle of the row as he hurriedly laces his skates, adrenaline pumpkins through every inch of his blood, heart beating in his skull.
None of his teammates are even in the locker room anymore— he’s later than he thought, and Nancy is going to be pissed— so he doesn’t bother putting his bag away, instead praying that none of the Lions get the slick idea to steal his (admittedly embarrassing) bag contents. (A package of ritz crackers and a hoodie with a huge hole in the sleeve. Mike lives simply, he likes to say. Really, he’s just a huge slob).
He slips on his helmet as he rushes out the door and into the stadium, where the crowds have all already sat in their rightful spots. His teammates are out on the ice in their starting positions, and so are the Lions. Will stands center on the other side of the ice, already giving him a shit-eating grin.
Mike furrows his brow, putting his middle finger up at Will as quickly as he can without getting penalized before the ref even blows his whistle for the game to start.
The people in the stands are practically deafening, but Mike has gotten used to it by now. He doesn’t bother looking for his team in the stands— it’s a distraction, anyways— because with the rate of attendance today, there would be no way for him to pick them out from the crowd.
Mike stands on the left of their side of the ice, a left wing player. Jersey number six.
Beside him and to the right stands Lucas Sinclair, number 5 and the second best winger on the team. (He’s probably better than Mike, actually, but Mike won’t let him hear it. Lucas is his best friend, and at times, biggest hater. It’s all love). Behind them is Dustin Henderson, the goaltender.
Left and right defensemen take the names of Edward Munson, their oldest player, and Fred Benson, who Mike can honestly say he’s never talked to before outside of the team.
Their center is Max Mayfield, the only girl on the team and a terrifying force to reckon with. He’s pretty sure that she’s blackmailed just about everybody to ever give her an ounce of bad media coverage, and he honestly gives her kudos for it. They get along okay, though their conversations usually take either the form of banter and insults aimed at Mike specifically, or gossip so nasty that they dare not involve anybody else for fear of implicating them.
Opposite to them, on the Lions, is Will, Chance, Jason, Argyle, Patrick, and Andy.
Meathead jocks. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘺 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦, he thinks, and yet, it never is. They always kick his ass. Mike actually feels a little bad that Will has to be teammates with such assholes, because as much as he hates the guy, nobody deserves to be ragged on publicly by their team.
Argyle and Jason actually got into a fight outside of a hotel a few weeks ago after they played the Red Wings because Jason had thrown a tantrum about Will’s coming out story, causing a nation-wide spike in article coverage about the Lion’s inter-team tensions.
The ref blows his whistle and Mike snaps his head back into the game for the face off.
The ref drops the puck between Max and Will. Mike’s heard pounds out of his chest. Max dives for the puck first, with Lucas close behind her. Will tries and fails to take the puck from her, but Andy succeeds, causing Max to curse under breath.
Mike darts forward, nearly colliding with Will and Andy both. His shoulder brushes past Will, and Mike almost wants to shove him down and wipe the smug look off of his face.
Will hits at the puck and sends it soaring past them all, skating with ease across the ice and right past Dustin into their goal.
“Damn it!,” Mike shouts, flashing a look at Lucas. Lucas claps him on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, man.”
The next faceoff is in the back corner dot. Will’s eyes are unreadable at he starts at Max, waiting for the puck to drop again. This time, Will gets to it first, but Mike springs into action, at Max’s side in seconds. He sweeps the puck out from under Will’s feet, who shouts at him in exasperation.
He passes to Lucas, with Chase close on his tail. Lucas is home free, racing towards the goal. Max follows him, blocking Will from getting back to the puck.
Argyle— the Lions goalkeeper— nearly stops them, but ultimately fails, staring bereft at the huck of rubber as it slides into the back of their net.
The Hawkins Hearts cheer. Eddie high fives Dustin in the back, who laughs manically.
The ref blows his whistle, yelling, “That’s time!”
Still reeling from their current tie, they all step back for the intermission so that the field crew can resurface the ice.
Mike leans on the edge of the wall as he tries to regain his breath. It’s a little hard when Will keeps starting at him across the field.
The next period goes less smoothly. The Lions score themselves two more points, to Will’s joy and Mike’s detriment. He hates when he gets like this during a game, anger clouding his rationale. It’s like he has tunnel vision towards Will, a magnetic force of gravity that draws out any semblance of coherent play from Mike’s psyche.
He and Will make eyes at each other across the area during the second intermission. If he wasn’t so damn scared of his team being down a man, he might trip Will last second and potentially score them a point in his absence.
Will doesn’t even glare at him. He just stares. Will is so obsessed with him that it’s almost embarrassing to watch.
They’re called to get back into their positions, so they do, each of them on edge. The hair on the back of Mike’s neck stands straight up. This is the last stretch, twenty minutes that could make or break them.
Last faceoff. They start at the middle left dot. Everyone is on edge. The Lions know they’re winning.
Max snags the puck right away, making a break for the Lions net. Nobody stands in her way— they might actually have a chance.
Then things go wrong. Her skate slips underneath Andy’s (pure accident) and they both go tumbling to the ground. The puck slides away from her in what looks like slow motion. She’s back on her feet almost instantly, but the puck is gone.
Mike skates towards it fast, nearly pushing Will out of the way in his wake, who’s also in sharp pursuit.
“Back off!,” he snaps.
“Nah,” Will retorts, but Mike is faster, skating in front of Will and cutting him off.
He hits the puck hard towards Lucas, who narrowly avoids colliding with Chase.
His heart pounds in his chest. Lucas keeps going, hits the puck, and..
It lands out of bounds. Andy scoops it right out from underneath them, hitting it into the Hearts net and effectively winning them the game.
Mike tosses his stick down. Lucas pulls of his helmet, wiping his forehead and looking around at Max in defeat. She just shrugs.
Will and Chance shout in excitement. Mike leaves first chance he gets, slipping into a hallway to quickly curse himself for not hitting towards Max instead. If they keep this up, they won’t make it to finals. God knows they won’t win those, either, but at least they’d be there.
He doesn’t head straight for the locker room, instead going out to the lobby to greet people and talk to the interviewers who are eagerly lined up with their cameras and mics, hoping to pull himself out of his current slump in doing so.
He pushes through the crowd, whispering quick sorries until he reaches the middle, where Lucas and Max are holding hands and talking to a reporter with hair taller than Lucas’.
A few of the Lions walk through with Will at the tail end of their line, pushing past fans a bit more aggressively than Mike would recommend.
Will steps past him, not even giving him a glance, but the smile on his face says everything. His shoulder slams into Mike’s own, effectively almost knocking him down.
This is bold. Will doesn’t usually initiate these petty squabbles, but he must have gotten fed up starting with today.
“Loser says what?,” Will says under his breath.
Mike whips around, marching forward to pull Will back by his shoulder. “Fuck did you just say?”
Will turns to look at him, and he 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 smirks, looking Mike up and down. Mike’s heart drops to the bottom of his stomach, irritation bubbling in his blood.
“Jeez, Michael. It’s just a game,” Will says, and, oh, that does it. He grabs Will by the front of his shirt, pulling him close enough to feel his own breath bouncing back at him off of Will’s skin.
“Actually, it’s my fucking career. You would know that if you took anything serious for once in your goddamn life. Wipe that smirk off your face.”
He hears footsteps approaching behind them quickly, mingling with the sharp snaps and clicks of cameras flashing, but he doesn’t look away. Will’s eyes are hazel-flecked and shining.
Steve’s voice appears behind them, pissed off already. “Let go.” He already has Mike’s things, black bag slung over his shoulder.
Mike looks back, fingers still gripping tight into the fabric of Will’s jersey.
“Mike fucking Wheeler!” Steve warns. Mike huffs out one last breath of frustration before dropping Will’s shirt, loathing the satisfaction sparkling in his eyes. He gives him a quick shove as he does it for good measure, but Steve practically pulls him out by the ear.
“It’s really not healthy, the amount of time you spend on this guy,” Steve remarks as they go down the hallway to the parking lot, not even bothering to let Mike catch up to him. “Paps caught all of that, by the way. Expect more articles about how you’re 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 the worst sport ever to come out by morning.”
“Good!,” Mike retorts back. “I don’t care if people think I hate him, I 𝘥𝘰.”
Mike spends about half of his time talking about how much he hates Will, and the other half hoping somebody else will talk about how they hate Will so that Mike can talk about it even more. He’s publicly cemented himself as the Lenora Lions enemy number one, and he likes it that way.
“You’re really hard to work with, man, you know that? I could’ve gone into music..,”Steve says, exasperation laced into his tone.
“Whatever.”
The car ride back to the hotel is dead silent. Nancy drives with stress pooled behind her expression, not even asking Mike how the game went like she usually does. Steve sleeps with his temple pressed up against the cold window of the back seat. Erica sits with both earbuds in, white wire plugged into her rose gold iPhone 6.
Mike chews on his lip and stares out the front window at the sparkling lights spanning the length of the city. Normally he enjoys night drives back from games like this, but the atmosphere feels poisoned by the remnants of his fuck-up. Not that he thinks he fucked up— quite the opposite, actually— but Nancy and the others would stand to disagree.
His throat forms a terrible lump as he thinks of their loss— the second in a row this season— and he scorns himself for being such a baby. Truly, it is just a game, but it doesn’t feel that way when he’s out there. He met his best friend through this sport, and that fact means everything to him. So for their skills to take a sudden nosedive into constant losses is the worst thing that could happen to him, and he’s serious when he thinks that.
Nancy puts out a hand and rubs his shoulder encouragingly, but he just looks away and covers his face in shame.
They pull into the hotel parking lot and Mike gets out of the car without even taking his bag, walking out into the lobby before Erica or Steve can question him any. The elevator is thankfully void of people, so he goes straight up to his room and unlocks the door with shaking hands, remembering to double-lock it behind him. The television in the corner still blares with the sound of ‘Friends’ reruns, which he doesn’t bother to turn off because the remote disappeared yesterday morning.
He yanks the curtains over the large windows that open to the iron-rail balcony shut. He doesn’t feel very in the mood for city lights anymore.
He’s too exhausted to take off his jersey yet, so he sets down his equipment, pulls off his shoes and helmet, and then dives headfirst into the messy tussle of white blankets and sheets on his bed. Sure, Will got under his skin, but they still lost, which honestly sucks more between the two grievances he has. He pulls out his phone, hesitating for a moment before clicking on his search engine and typing ‘lions vs hearts game december fourth.’
He clicks on the leading article from a website called ‘www.thehockeycollectivenyc’, staring at the close-up shots taken by eager photographers who’d piled into the stands earlier today.
He scrolls almost zealously, as if he’s in the moment again. One photo shows him almost colliding into Will. Another shows them staring at each other across the ice like a stupid shot from some cheesy sports movie that Mike would’ve watched in middle school. He scrolls past a few pictures of Lucas and Max laughing together while talking to a reporter (they’re cute, but he sees them all the time) and back to pictures of the dreaded Lions team.
A few pictures taken after the game show Chance and Will laughing together, sweat dripping off of their foreheads and down their red flushed faces. Another shows Chance literally holding a water bottle for Will as he drinks out of it. Mike furrows his brow.
A sharp rapping on the door snaps him out of his stupor and he closes the article tab, turning off his phone and shoving it under his pillow. He stands up and goes to the door, squinting one eye to look out of the smudged peephole. Nancy stands outside looking impatient before knocking hard on the door again, phone in hand.
He unlocks the door and swings it open. She walks in without asking, having changed out of her coat and into sweatpants and a long sleeve pink henley.
“What?,” he asks, a bit more snappy than he intended.
“I got a talking to from the higher ups about your little stunt tonight,” she says, sitting down at the foot of his bed. He sits next to her, too tired for this.
“And what about it?”
“You aren’t gonna like this,” Nancy says cautiously. A million things run through his mind. Suspension. Being removed from the team.
“Okay, don’t do that Nance. Tell me before I puke.”
She sighs. “I guess they talked to Will’s PR team, and— well, you know Will came out a little bit ago— they’ve been trying to find someone for him to date to bring more media attention, preferably somebody from the hockey or skating world, right. And they were thinking, since our team has such a seriously bad rep lately, that they wanted it to be someone from our team to help us sort of get out of this hole.”
Mike’s anxiety fades at this. It’s interesting, sure, but it’s just drama. Nothing that he should be particularly worried about.
Mike scoffs. “Not Lucas, I hope?,” he replies, half-joking.
“Um, no. They actually.. they want you to do the job. That’s the part you weren’t gonna like.”
Mike stands up, staring at her in utter disbelief. “No fucking way. You’re joking.”
She throws up her hands in exasperation. “It isn’t my idea! You’re like, in love with him, Mike, so I get why they chose you out of everyone.”
Mike has a bad habit of cleaning when he’s upset, and thus, his frustration at this comes in the form of picking up handfuls of garbage from around the room and bringing them to their rightful place in the trash can. He’s silent for a moment— because who wouldn’t be after having that bomb dropped on them?— before marching back over to face Nancy.
“I’m not like in love with him! I hate Will. I’m not doing this.”
Nancy rubs her temples. “You think I like this, either? They’re already threatening to drop you from the team, Mike. You have a bad reputation and it’s rubbing off on them negatively. Just please do this one thing for me?”
Mike scowls at her. He 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 want to be dropped from the team..
“How long would I have to put up with it for if I hypothetically said yes?”
Nancy’s expression brightens at the prospect of Mike dropping the attitude and going along with the plan. “One month, maybe two depending on how much press we get in the first few weeks.”
Fine. 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘦. At least this will give him a chance to taunt Will behind closed doors.
“Okay. But I’m literally never acknowledging this again after our time is up,” he says finally, facial expression still sour.
Nancy smiles. “That’s fine.” She jumps up, hugging him and squealing with excitement. “You’re the best! You wont regret it, I promise.”
He sighs. “Yeah. I’m sure I won’t.”
Him and Will Byers. Happy couple extraordinaire.
Nice.