Chapter Text
Mike’s laptop screen stared back at him, bright in the darkness of his bedroom. His eyes flicked to the time–11:27 PM. He shook his head, moving his mouse to the search bar.
His hands found their spot on the keyboard easily. Holding his breath, Mike typed four simple words: am i gay test
The first link is a wikiHow article. Mike clicks on it.
The first thing he sees on the page is an image of two men dancing with each other, right underneath the “Start Quiz” button. He holds his breath, starting the test.
“Have you ever had feelings for a same-gender close friend?”
Okay, Mike thinks, starting off way too strong. Mike breaths deeply as he selects “I think so. That’s why I’m taking this quiz.”
Question two. “Have you ever kissed someone or wanted to kiss someone of the same gender?”
An image flashes through Mike’s mind against his will: his best friend’s lips. Sure, he’s always wondered what they felt like, and yes, he has the image of them engraved in his brain at this point from how much he’s looked at them, but that has got to be normal best friend behavior. Right?
…Mike clicks on “Yeah, and I’m not sure how I felt about it.” Not the best answer for his…situation, but this is wikiHow.
His screen changes to the third question. “How do you feel about queer characters in TV shows and movies?”
Oh, this one’s easy. After Will came out, Mike proclaimed himself (in his own head) the world’s biggest ally. He answers with “Oh, I’ve totally watched shows just for the queer ships and storylines.” And he has! Mike has watched plenty of stuff with either canon queer characters or just heavily queercoded characters to try and learn more about the community. For research reasons, obviously.
The next question is a bit more tricky for Mike to answer. It states, “When someone asks who you’re crushing on:” and the options are “A name comes to mind immediately, and it’s someone of the same gender; I make up a name or pick someone random; I literally don’t get the big deal about crushes; I talk about someone of the opposite sex who I’m genuinely crushing on.”
The first option is the one Mike’s brain tells him to pick first, but to select that option feels to bare his entire soul to wikiHow. The second and third options are what he usually answers with if someone in person asks him about having a crush. After he and Jane broke up a few months ago, Mike either minimizes the idea of crushes or picks a random popular and conventionally attractive girl, with hopes that her popularity will steer the Party away from trying to set the two of them up.
Mike picks the first option.
“Has anyone ever asked if you were gay?”
Yes, Mike thinks, I’m asking myself right now. That isn’t an option, but no one else has ever asked him if he’s gay. And he could be wrong about this, but Mike doesn’t think anyone else has ever thought he’s gay, either. So he picks “Never. People assume I’m straight.”
Okay, question six out of sixteen. Only ten more to go. This question reads, “When you imagine being in a relationship, what do you picture?”
Mike thinks about this question. There are levels to this one.
He was dating Jane for a while. A long while. And she was a girl–the opposite sex to Mike. He says he was happy while he was with her, but after the two had their mutual breakup, they both have been much happier as just friends. This idea has been growing in Mike’s brain for a while now, but he’s thinking that maybe he just liked the idea of having a girlfriend more than actually having one.
But the options he has to select from for this question are more broad than that. Mike thinks up the most amazing, perfect partner of a girl his mind can create. She would have brown hair, hazel eyes. A little bit shorter than him. Mike thinks she looks pretty. Now, he thinks about being the boyfriend of this girl. Taking her on dates, hanging out. Doesn’t seem too bad. He thinks about cuddling her. Kissing her. Maybe doing a little more than kissing. Mike immediately stops, because he gets a weird feeling inside him, like his stomach is upset and he wants to crawl out of his skin.
Okay, weird. Ignoring the fact that that is how he felt when he kissed Jane, Mike thinks about growing old with this girl. Marrying her, living out his future and the rest of his life with her. Waking up everyday and the first thing he sees being the girl, going to bed and the last thing he sees being her. Raising their kids together, even.
…Mike feels like he’s going to throw up.
Okay, but that has to be normal. He’s a teenager. He hasn’t even been sixteen for half a year yet. The idea of settling down right now must disgust everyone at this age.
He feels hopeful about that idea until he thinks about everything he imagined doing with the girl, with a boy. A boy who looks suspiciously similar to a genderswapped version the perfect girl he thought up. And this time, his chest doesn’t close in. His stomach doesn’t hurt. He feels…a little excited. Happy.
…Fuck.
As much as he wants to pick a different answer, he’s been honest up until this point, so he selects the first one: “I can only see myself with someone of the same sex.”
Next question. “How would you feel about identifying as gay?”
Mike’s first thought is “cool.” His second thought is “I’m not gay, that’s a- that’s a-” but he can’t seem to finish the thought. He gulps. Will is gay, and Will is Mike’s bestest friend ever. So being gay wouldn’t be that bad. Because Will isn’t bad. Not at all. Will is good. Will is so good, and Mike thinks he may just be perfect-
Okay, shut up, Mike tells himself as he clicks on “It honestly makes me a little nervous, but also kinda fits.”
The following question makes Mike feel a little better about his answers so far: “Have you ever felt attracted to someone of the same gender?”
Now, the question alone would send Mike into a bit of a spiral, but the answer choices of “Yes,” “Yeah, but everyone has, right?” and “People of the same gender are just objectively more attractive,” make him feel better about his feelings toward…someone. He selects the second option, because boys are really pretty. So everyone must feel attracted to them, right? At least, that’s what Mike has been telling himself since middle school.
Question nine. “How do you feel about dating someone of the opposite gender?” Mike already thought about this earlier, when he was on question six. When he came to the terrifying conclusion that his mind and body reacted better when he imagined himself dating another boy instead of a girl. He winces and thinks about his time being Jane’s boyfriend as he moves his mouse to click on “I’m not interested. That would feel like a chore.”
“Do you ever fantasize about being with someone of the same gender?”
Shit. Mike squeezes his eyes shut and breathes heavily out of his nose as he thinks about the things he’s thought and dreamt of in relation to his best friend. He thinks back to question two, and how badly he’s wanted to kill Will Byers on the lips. How badly he wants to hug him tight and let it be normal like it was when they were younger. How badly he wants to spend forever going crazy with Will.
Oh, fuck, he’s starting to daydream (nightdream? Is it still daydreaming if it’s basically midnight?) about Will again. Mike lets out a low sigh as he selects “Yeah. Pretty often.”
The following question’s generally vague answers allow Mike to breathe a bit after the double whammy that was the past two questions. “When you imagine kissing or being intimate with a future partner, how do you feel?” His selection of “As long as I’m with someone I really like, that sounds great,” seems general enough that he clicks on it without any added guilt or thoughts.
Next. “If you scroll through your feed or FYP, do you see content from queer creators?”
Uh, duh, obviously. Do people not? In Mike’s journey to be the best ally he could be, he not only started watching more queer-inclusive media, but also started following a lot of queer creators online. They helped him learn more about queerness and the community, and a lot of them he found out about by going through the accounts Will follows. And unfortunately, some of the videos led him to think a lot, and that thinking led him to be sitting in his bed with his laptop taking a test to find out if he’s gay. “Yup. You got me.”
“Flash forward 5 years: how likely is it that your partner is the same gender as you?” Mike thinks about this one, but not as long as some of the others. After he and Jane broke up, he felt tired of dating. For a few weeks, he felt like he didn’t want to be in a relationship ever again. That feeling started going away when some repressed feelings of his came back into the limelight.
Mike’s brain helpfully supplies the thought that if a certain boy he was really good friends with who also happens to be the best person Mike knows and also is really really pretty asked him to be his boyfriend tomorrow, his immediate thought would be to say yes. But then again, he still feels some dating-related doubt caused by his and Jane’s falling out, despite the feeling being mutual. He decides on answering with “Possible, but not super likely.” He also decides that answer may not be entirely accurate.
Question 14. Only a few more, then Mike gets his long awaited answer. “Would you be comfortable using an LGBTQ+ dating app?”
…Okay, for how specifically broad some of the answers on this test have been so far, there’s no I would not use a dating app answer. Mike is only sixteen right now, and he lives in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. Even if that “middle of nowhere” has actually been subject to years of terror by literal demons, there are probably no people here on queer dating apps.
But Mike thinks about it, and if he were of legal age and had to use a dating app, he figures he’d be comfortable using an LGBTQ+ one. He selects “I’m open to giving one a try.”
“Are there a lot of LGBTQ+ individuals in your friend group?”
How does the amount of gay friends someone has tell if they themself are gay? Mike looks incredulously at his laptop screen. He lives in Buttfuck, Indiana. As far as he knows, Will is the only gay friend he has, maybe even the only gay person in all of Hawkins. He’s had suspicions about Robin not being entirely straight before, though, based on some random slip-ups and out-of-place references, but he’s never inquired. It’s not really his business.
Despite only really knowing one gay person, Mike clicks on “A few good friends of mine identify as LGBTQ+.”
Last question. Mike is shaking slightly as he reads it: “What inspired you to take this quiz?”
Easy enough. No scary introspective thinking needed. The first answer, “I think I might be gay, but I wanted some extra validation,” scares him, so he sticks with a safe answer and clicks on “I’m just curious about the result I’ll get.” His hand is shaking as he moves the mouse.
And…an ad pops up. Great. Mike’s fear for his result dissipates as his hatred for pop-ups takes over. The ad closes automatically after a few seconds, with the result screen appearing and saying…
Mike shuts his laptop closed. It’s loud, but he doesn’t care right now. The words he read flash in his mind like a warning label.
You might be gay!
Mike hates that exclamation mark. He opens his laptop back up slowly, the words still staring right at him.
You might be gay!
He is so fucking scared.
Here he is, sitting straight up in his bed on a random summer night (morning, actually–it’s 12:22 now), taking an am I gay test because thoughts of his best friend were keeping him from falling asleep. The glow of the laptop is the only light visible in his dark room, taunting Mike as he repeats the words over and over in his head, like a calming mantra. Only the words don’t calm him, they just make him increasingly more terrified.
What would it mean for Mike to be gay? What would that mean for his time dating Jane? For everything he’s felt and thought about Will? If Mike is gay, like this quiz suggests, then surely not all of his thoughts about his best friend have been as platonic and normal as he thought, right? Does Mike like Will? …He thinks he has an answer for that one.
Most importantly, how is he supposed to go to bed now? Being kept up because he was spiraling about his Will-thoughts was manageable–even if it led him to this moment. But being kept up because he’s experiencing an identity crisis and huge waves of existential dread? Not so funny anymore.
But it’s late. It’s also Sunday now, and Mike’s mom always makes the family have breakfast together on Sundays. Mike doesn’t want to be the one to miss it because he stayed up late having a sexuality crisis, and he doesn’t want to have to explain to his parents that that is why he missed breakfast. So, closing his eyes, Mike wills himself to fall asleep, and prays to whatever higher power there may be up there to let his brain have all this shit figured out by the time he wakes up.