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The whole thing started because of Max.
Itwas a boring Saturday in November, rain hammering the windows of the Mayfield house, and Max had been sprawled across the living room floor doing homework when she'd muttered something sharp and short under her breath — something that definitely wasn't English.
Mike, who had been dying of boredom on the couch, sat up. "What was that?"
"French." She didn't look up from her textbook. "We have to take a language elective. I picked French because it sounded less stupid than everything else."
"Say something."
She looked up then, squinting at him like he was a particularly annoying bug. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I want to hear it."
Max held his gaze for a moment, then looked back down at her textbook with the air of someone making a decision they already regretted.
"T'es un connard," she said flatly.
Mike blinked. "Wow. What does that mean?"
The corner of Max's mouth curved up. "Nothing of importance."
He was quiet for a second. Then: "Can you teach me?"
"Why."
"I don't know." He settled back into the couch cushions, already losing interest in pretending he wasn't interested. "It sounds cool."
Max stared at him. Then she looked back at her textbook, turned a page with slightly more force than necessary, and said nothing.
She didn't say no, either.
That had been the beginning of what Max would later call the most annoying three months of my life — though if you asked Mike, he'd say she only complained about it about half the time, which for Max basically meant she enjoyed it.
Mike was a surprisingly fast learner. That's what Max told him, reluctantly, around week six, when he'd correctly conjugated an entire verb tense without her prompting. He'd been so pleased with himself she'd threatened to stop teaching him entirely.
But she didn't stop. And he didn't stop asking.
He practiced in the shower. He practiced on his bike rides home. He borrowed Max's textbook and read ahead, then came back to her with questions she had to look up herself, which annoyed her deeply and pleased him enormously.
He told himself it was just something to do. Something new. A way to fill the long, strange, hollow hours of his junior year.
He didn't examine it much more closely than that.
He didn't let himself.
Will found out on a Tuesday in February.
They were sitting in Mike's basement — just the two of them, which happened more now that Dustin was busy with Dustin stuff and Lucas had basketball — and Will had been watching Mike flip through note cards with that small, private smile he'd been wearing lately, the one that looked like it belonged to someone else's face.
"What are those?"
Mike looked up. Something flickered across his expression — caught.
"French vocabulary."
Will blinked. "You're learning French?"
"Max is teaching me."
"Max." Will sat up straighter, abandoning the sketchbook in his lap. "You're joking."
"Why are you surprised? Max is teaching me French "
"I'm not surprised, well iam , I'm just — Max?"
"She had to take it for school, so she knows it, so she's teaching me." Mike said it fast, the way he said things he didn't want examined. "It's not a big deal."
Will looked at him for a long moment. Mike looked back,
"Say something," Will said.
Mike blinked. "What?"
"In French." Will gestured at the note cards. "Say something."
"Will —"
"Come on." Will was smiling now, soft and easy, and Mike hated that smile sometimes, hated how it made the walls of things feel thinner. "Please?"
Later, Mike would blame the rain again. It was raining that day too, he'd notice. February rain, colder than November's, tapping against the basement windows like a reminder.
He'd blame the rain, and the particular way Will was sitting — sideways on the couch with his knees pulled up, sketchbook forgotten, looking at Mike with that full, quiet attention that he gave very few things.
He'd blame the fact that the words were already there, had been there for weeks, sitting in the back of his throat like something swallowed wrong.
He'd blame a lot of things.
But really, he had no one to blame but himself.
Mike looked down at the note cards in his hands. He shuffled through them slowly, not really reading them. The basement hummed with the sound of rain.
Then, quietly, in an accent that Max had told him was actually pretty decent:
"Je t'aime, et je ne sais pas quoi faire."
The words fell into the room.
Will's eyebrows went up. His expression did something complicated — moved through surprise and then something softer, something attentive, like he was trying to learn the shape of what he'd just heard.
"Wow," he said. And his voice was a little different. Careful. "What does that mean?"
Mike looked up.
Will was watching him with those eyes that saw too much, had always seen too much,Mike held his gaze for exactly one second too long.
Then he looked away, and shuffled his note cards, and shrugged with one shoulder , in a i- don't- care- about- this- shrug
"I'm not telling you," he said.
"Mike."
"It's just a phrase. I was practicing."
"Then why can't you tell me what it means?"
"Because." He flipped to a new note card. Stared at it. Read nothing. "Because you should look it up yourself if you want to know."
Silence.
He could feel Will looking at him. Could feel it the way you feel weather changing — that shift in pressure, that awareness at the back of the neck.
"Mike," Will said again, softer this time.
"Its nothing, just a phrase."
A long pause. Rain against the window.
"Okay," Will said, finally. Quietly.
He picked up his sketchbook. Mike stared at his note cards. Neither of them said anything for a long time.
Will lasted four days.
Four days of drawing things he couldn't finish. Four days of starting sentences in his head that had no good endings. Four days of sitting next to Mike in the basement watching him flip through note cards, waiting for something. He didn't know what. Something.
On the fifth day, he went to find Max.
She was in the arcade parking lot, sitting on the hood of her bike, eating chips and reading something that she immediately flipped face-down when she saw him approaching. A reflex.
He didn't comment on it.
"Hey," Will said.
"Lucas is inside if you're looking for him."
"I'm not looking for Lucas." Will stopped a few feet away, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets. He had rehearsed this exact conversation
Max looked up at him from under her hood. Her eyes narrowed slightly. The way they did when she was already three steps ahead of something.
Will's rehearsed approach evaporated completely.
"Mike said something to me," he said. "In French."
A beat.
Max's expression didn't move. "Okay, he's annoying right?"
Will continued"And I don't — I couldn't find it."
He'd tried. The library dictionary, the one he'd sat next to for two days hoping Mike would notice — he'd looked, but French spellings made no sense, the sounds didn't match the letters, and he'd been working from memory and there was every chance he was looking up completely the wrong words. "I don't know what it means."
Max tilted her head. "What did he say?"
Will opened his mouth. Closed it. This was the embarrassing part.
"I don't — it's French, so I'm probably going to say it completely wrong, but —" He pulled his hands out of his pockets. Took a breath. Tried to hear it the way Mike had said it, quiet and looking-away, like the words were falling out of him accidentally. "It sounded like — Je t'aime. And then something like — je ne sais pas... quoi faire?"
He said it badly. He knew he said it badly. The sounds felt wrong in his mouth, clumsy and rearranged.
Max muttered the jumbled words to her self, then her eyes snapped up at him. Max stared at him.
She had gone very still in the way that Max specifically went still when she was processing something she hadn't expected. Chips forgotten in her hand. Head slightly tilted.
She was quiet for long enough that Will started to feel nervous.
"Max —"
"He said that." Her voice had shifted. It wasn't a question. "To you. He said that to you."
"I mean — I think so? I might be remembering it wrong, the pronunciation is —"
"No." She sat up straighter. Something was moving across her face that Will couldn't read. "No, you've got it right."
Will's heart did something irregular.
"What does it mean?"
Max looked at him.
In the years Will had known Max Mayfield, she had been approximately forty different versions of herself — furious, grieving, cutting, soft, brave in ways that made his chest ache. He'd seen her cry exactly twice. He'd seen her laugh until she fell off a chair. He knew the specific way her mouth went when she was pretending not to care about something she cared about enormously.
She was doing that thing with her mouth right now.
"Max." His voice came out smaller than he intended. "What does it mean?"
She looked at him for another long moment. He watched something move through her eyes — something that looked almost like finally —
Then she pressed her lips together and looked away.
"You should ask Mike," she said.
"Max —"
"Will." She looked back at him, and her voice was firm but not unkind. The particular firmness of someone who has decided something. "You should ask Mike."
"He told me he wasn't going to tell me."
"Then maybe" — she picked her chips back up, turning to look at the middle distance with the practiced casualness of someone absolutely doing a bit — "you should be more convincing."
"That's not —" Will made a frustrated sound. "You clearly know what it means. You could just tell me."
"Yes," Max agreed serenely. "I could."
"So —"
"But I'm not going to." She ate a chip. "Because this is not my thing to tell, and also because watching you two be like this has been genuinely exhausting for longer than I'm going to admit right now, and I think you should have to work for it slightly."
Will stared at her. "What does that even mean? Max you're so cruel."
"That's love, Byers." She pointed a chip at him. "Go talk to him."
Will stood in the parking lot for a moment longer, the February wind cutting through his jacket.
Je t'aime.
He'd looked up each word separately, eventually. He'd thought he might have found it. But it seemed too — it seemed like too much. Too simple and too much all at once, and he'd told himself he was probably wrong, probably misremembering, probably —
"Max," he said, and his voice came out strange.
She looked at him.
"Am I —" He stopped. Tried again. "Am I right? About what I think it means?"
Max held his gaze. Her expression did something complicated and private, moved through something that she clearly had no intention of showing him fully.
Then, so small he almost missed it —
She nodded.
Just once.
Will got on his bike.
He rode across Hawkins with the cold air in his face and his heart doing something enormous and terrifying in his chest, and he thought about Mike in the basement with his note cards and his one-shoulder shrug and his" I'm not telling you" —
Je t'aime, et je ne sais pas quoi faire.
He thought he understood that last part too, now.
He didn't know what to do either.
But he was starting to think — pedaling harder now, turning onto Maple Street, the Wheeler house appearing at the end of the block —
He was starting to think that maybe doing something was exactly the point.
That night, Mike lay on his back and stared at the ceiling of his bedroom and thought about French vocabulary.
(Je t'aime.)
I love you.
Et je ne sais pas quoi faire.
(And I don't know what to do.)
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw colors.
He thought about Will's face when he'd asked what does it mean. The way he'd leaned forward slightly. The way his voice had gone careful.
He thought about the way Will had said okay when Mike told him to drop it.
Not fine. Not whatever.
Okay. Soft. Patient. Like someone who already knew how to wait.
The knock at his bedroom door came at half past seven.
Mike sat up. "Come in."
The door opened.
Will stood in the doorway still wearing his jacket, cheeks pink from the cold outside, like he'd come straight up the stairs without stopping. His eyes found Mike immediately. He didn't say anything for a moment.
Mike's heart dropped straight through the mattress.
"Will —"
"I know what you said”
"Shit"
" why dident you just say it "
"This is not how I wanted you to find out"Mike was on his feet now without quite deciding to stand up, one hand scrubbing through his hair, the way he did when he was panicking. "I wasn't — it just came out, and then I couldn't take it back, and I didn't know how to —"
"Mike."
"— I know it's a lot, okay, I know it's weird, and if you don't — if you can't —"
"Mike."
"— I don't want it to be strange between us, I swear, we can just forget it, I'll tell Max to forget it —"
"Mike." Will crossed the room in four steps and Mike stopped talking because Will's hands were on his face, gentle and certain, cupping his jaw the way you'd hold something you were afraid of dropping. Will was looking at him with those eyes that had always seen too much. Up close like this they were unbearable. "Stop talking."
"Okay"
"Say it again"
Mike blinked. "What?"
"Say it again." Will's thumbs were doing something devastating, tracing along his jaw like he wasn't even aware of it. "The thing you said. In French."
Mike looked at him. At the cold-pink of his cheeks and the careful set of his mouth and the way he was holding Mike's face like he'd been waiting to for a long time.
His heart was enormous. It didn't fit in his chest anymore.
"Je t'aime," Mike said, quietly. Properly this time. No note cards, no looking away. "Et je ne sais pas quoi faire."
Will's breath caught.
"I love you," Mike translated, because he was done hiding in other languages. "And I don't know what to do."
"Yes you do," Will said.
And he closed the distance himself, because he had always been braver than Mike gave him credit for — braver than Mike was, probably, when it came to things that actually mattered. His mouth was warm and careful and certain, and Mike stood very still for exactly one second like a person who has been waiting so long for something that the arrival of it doesn't feel real —
Then he kissed him back.
His hands found Will's jacket, gripping the fabric, pulling him closer, and Will made a small sound against his mouth that undid something in Mike's chest completely — something that had been wound tight for months, maybe longer, maybe since long before he'd ever learned a single word of French.
When they pulled back, they were still close. Foreheads nearly touching. Will's hands still on his face.
Mike laughed — a short, breathless, slightly broken sound. "I practiced that sentence for two weeks."
Will pulled back just enough to look at him properly. His eyes were bright. "The French?"
"I kept thinking —" Mike shook his head, still smiling even though his voice was doing something embarrassing. "I kept thinking, if I could just say it. Even once. Even if you didn't know what it meant. It would be — I don't know. It would be out there. Real."
Will was quiet for a moment, looking at him with that full, unbearable attention.
"It's real," Will said simply.
Mike looked at him. At his stupid face, his kind eyes, the red still sitting in his cheeks from the cold ride across town.
"Yeah," Mike said. "It is."
Will smiled then — slow and warm and completely unguarded, the smile he only ever wore when he'd stopped trying to protect himself from something.
Mike thought he would probably learn every language in the world before he found the right words for that smile.
He decided he didn't need words for it.
He kissed him again instead.
Across town, Max's phone buzzed once on her nightstand.
She picked it up.
Bitchass loser: snitch
She stared at it for a long moment. The contact name she'd given himself at some point, which she had never changed because it was accurate. The fact that he had texted her at all.
She set the phone back down. Stared at the ceiling.
Allowed herself exactly five seconds of feeling something warm and enormous and completely unbearable.
Then she picked up her French textbook, turned to the next chapter, and pretended very hard that she was a person who was not affected by things.
Her phone buzzed again.
Bitchass loser: thank you
Max looked at it for a long time.
Then she typed back — one word, sent before she could make it into something smaller than it was —
MadMax: obviously
She set the phone face-down on her nightstand. Picked up her textbook. Turned the page.