Work Text:
Mike spends too much time on his phone.
It’s a problem he’s perfectly aware of, thanks very much, so there’s no need for his mother, or Nancy, or Max to remind him of it (especially the latter, seeing as she really has no room to talk– she peruses depths of the internet that even Mike hasn’t reached yet). If he’s being honest, though, he doesn’t think it’s gotten that bad. He makes good grades, pursues plenty of hobbies that don’t require an internet connection, and has (by his standards) a decently active social life. Besides, it's not exactly his fault that, ever since going off to college, staying in touch with the majority of his friends entails texting or calling or hopping on a game together.
And, fine, OK– sometimes he just wants to turn his brain off.
Today is one of those instances. Wednesdays are particularly busy for Mike, with a wall of block-to-block classes that hardly leaves him time to eat lunch. To make it worse, he slept through his alarm in the morning and had to skip his usual coffee to make it to his lecture on time, so by the time class is over he’s hungry, and tired, and harboring an ache at the front of his temples that may or may not have something to do with caffeine withdrawals. Naturally, the moment he gets back to his dorm he changes into sweatpants, grabs a granola bar and a Red Bull, climbs into bed, and opens up Instagram Reels.
(Another thing Max bullies him for. OK, Mike will be the first to agree that the app is a cesspool, but Dustin sends him about twenty videos a day, so what kind of friend would he be if he didn’t check it? Besides, when he needs something truly mind-numbing, it gets the job done.)
Mike isn’t sure exactly how long it’s been, but definitely far past the thirty-minute timer he set and then promptly ignored when it went off. By now, his head is starting to throb again from staring at a screen for so long, which is probably a sign that he should put his phone down and get started on his chemistry problem set. Or switch to Reddit. He’s not even really watching the stupid reels anymore, really, only letting them play for half a second before he scrolls again out of sheer mindless habit.
And then he stops. Scrolls back up.
There it is, in the bottom left hand corner with that little heart indicating a like– Will’s profile picture.
And this– well, this is enough to capture Mike’s long-fried attention span once more.
The thing is, Will doesn’t use Instagram. He’ll respond to messages, sure, and watch what other people send him, but for doomscrolling purposes he would choose TikTok, Pinterest, or his secret Tumblr over succumbing to Reels. It’s even more rare for Will to publicly like something; Mike, unfortunately, wastes enough time on this soul-sucking app to recognize certain people’s profile pictures from liking so many videos, but Will isn’t one of them.
The point is, it’s out of the ordinary, enough so for Mike to stop and actually watch the Reel in question.
The background is one he’s seen before in other videos, an illustration of a soldier with wide, haunted eyes giving the camera a thousand-yard stare. Over it, the text reads:
when someone asks me about that one gut-wrenching situationship i can’t move on from (deep down i know it’ll never go anywhere)
…Oh.
Mike’s heart drops.
Lucas, Dustin, El 💜🦋, and Maxine 👎:
Mike
Attachment: 1 image
Guys?
Dustin
??
Mike
Look at who liked it
Dustin
Oh
Huh
Mike
Why did Will like this???
He never told me he was talking to someone
Did he mention anyone to you guys?
Maxine 👎
did you make a new gc for this 💀
Mike
It’s important?
Clearly this is upsetting him
I just want to know
Dustin
He never mentioned anyone
Will seems upset?
Mike
No but read the screenshot
It’s implied
So we don’t know who this “situationship” guy is? Lucas Maxine 👎 El 💜🦋
El 💜🦋
He hasn’t told me anything
Lucas
dude
it’s an instagram reel
i don’t think it means anything
Mike
Why would he like it then
He relates to it so it has to mean there’s someone
Someone we don’t know about
Why wouldn’t he tell us??
Dustin
Maybe it’s old?
Mike
No it was posted a few days ago
Wait a second
Right now Will has 543 followers
Last month he only had 539
Maxine 👎
…hey so WHY do you know that
Mike
Idk
I just remember
Dustin
Reacted ❓ to your message
Lucas
mike
with all love and respect
wtf
Mike
He’s my best friend? I remember these things
Maxine 👎
brother.
Lucas
what’s my follower count?
Mike
Why would I know?
You guys are missing the point
Maybe it means something
Like maybe one of the new followers is the guy
Dustin
Yeahhh I think that’s a bit far
Lucas is right it’s probably just a stupid reel
I like random stuff all the time
Mike
Yeah but that’s you
This is Will
Dustin
Ok…
Not sure how to take that tbh
El 💜🦋
Maybe I am confused but aren’t “situationships” usually longer than a month?
Wouldn’t that just be a “talking stage”?
That is what Max told me
Maxine 👎
Reacted 👍 to a message
Mike
Oh
Yeah I guess you’re probably right
I just can’t think of anyone it could be
Maxine 👎
and remind me why this matters so much again?
Mike
Because this guy has clearly been bothering Will?? And also why wouldn’t he tell us?
If Will has been talking to someone shouldn’t we know?
I thought he would at least tell me
Dustin
Ouch ok
Lucas
right right because the rest of us are chopped liver
Maxine 👎
so will has to get your permission before he starts talking to someone?
Mike
No? That’s not what I’m saying at all
Maxine 👎
you’re crashing out over an instagram reel
please be fr
Mike
I’m the only one acting normal here??
It’s like I’m the only one who cares about Will
Mike can practically see his life flash before his eyes the moment he sends that. In preparation for the onslaught of messages he knows he’s about to receive, he hurriedly types out something to take it back, thumbs flying over the keyboard.
Mike
I mean I’m kidding obviously lol
But I feel like this is kinda important?
Is anyone free to facetime rn?
Dustin
Uh
About this?
Lucas
mike
if it’s bothering you so much why don’t you just ask YOUR roommate about it
Mike
Well he’s not home yet
Maxine 👎
or
here’s an idea
yk that thing in your head called a brain
you could try using it
Mike
Huh? Wdym
That’s literally what I’m doing
That’s why I asked you guys to help me figure out who it is
Maxine 👎
and if you send me this many texts about will’s instagram likes again i am blocking you fr
Mike is in the middle of typing out a response when he hears the doorknob turn, followed a second later by the sight of Will Byers himself, hair mussed by the wind, thrifted jacket that’s barely too big hanging off his shoulders, a harried look on his face.
“Hey,” Mike says, flipping his phone face-down on the mattress.
“Hey,” Will greets with a small smile, a little out of breath. He toes his shoes off, sets his bag by his desk, and drapes his jacket over the back of the chair. Glancing at Mike, the corners of his mouth twitch up. “I see you’re hard at work.”
Mike throws the blankets down the bed and sits up, swinging his legs off the side. “Totally. My chem assignment was to rot in bed for two hours, so, y’know, I think I’m acing it.”
Will doesn’t laugh, though, doesn’t even seem to have heard his retort (which is concerning, because Will always likes Mike's jokes). He’s standing by his desk staring off into space, eyes glazed. One hand comes up to rake through his hair distractedly.
Mike frowns. “Hey. You good?”
“Hm?” Will looks up. He sighs. “Yeah. I just… I have my presentation tomorrow.”
Right. The presentation Will has been freaking out over this whole week, the one that’s worth a third of his grade in his art history seminar, the one he’s recited so much under his breath that Mike could probably deliver it for him.
And if he could, he would– Will is, to put it mildly, not the biggest fan of public speaking. Back in elementary school, when teachers would cold call on him, he would freeze up, eyes wide and barely stuttering through a single word before Mike blurted something out to take the attention off of him. That always got Mike’s clip moved from green to yellow, to which he would argue that he wasn’t speaking over Will; he always knew what his best friend was going to say, anyways, and if Will didn’t want to speak, then he shouldn’t have to. (At which point, the teacher would move his clip from yellow to orange for talking back. Mike didn’t care; it was worth it.)
It’s gotten better since then, of course. Now, Will can speak up in class just fine, but he still gets understandably anxious about presentations, and Mike can’t exactly step in for him this time.
He can still find other ways to help, though.
“Do you want to practice it?” Mike offers.
Will chews absently on his lip. “I mean– I already rehearsed it a couple times.”
“Yeah, but have you rehearsed with an audience?” Mike stands up, crossing the room and picking up a couple of Will’s stuffed animals off his shelf. He sits on the edge of Will’s bed, sets the stuffies down, and turns them so they’re all facing forward. “Maybe it’ll help you feel more prepared if we listen to it.”
“Oh.” Will’s teeth dig into his lip, but now it looks like he’s biting back a smile. “You don’t have to do that, Mike, I’ll be fine–”
“No, come on,” Mike brushes off his concern with a wave of his hand. “Give it to me. I’ll be your professor. I’m gonna ask some really hardball questions, too, so be ready.”
Will’s whole face softens, the tension draining from his shoulders as his eyes go all big and round and grateful. It makes Mike's stomach do something that might aptly be described as a somersault. A flip. A flutter, if he was being flowery with his prose.
Will drags a chair into the center of the room and sets his laptop up so Mike can see his slides. As he starts off on his monologue about American Realism and switches slides from one vaguely recognizable painting to another, Mike stares intently, putting on his best performance of a teacher who needs to grade this thing.
Perhaps a little too intently, because at some point he becomes so focused on staring at Will and listening to Will that he stops paying attention to the presentation entirely, and just starts thinking about the Will of it all.
And again, it’s all hypothetically speaking, but if Mike were feeling a little flowery, a little verbose, he might try to capture:
The lilting cadence of Will’s voice, more confident now but still soft-spoken, still occasionally stuttering mid-word before finding his footing. The glint in his eye when he gets to a slide on Edward Hopper, and Mike couldn’t for the life of him say who that is, but he can be sure that it’s someone Will feels passionately about, because he’s making that excited face, like he’s trying to tamp it down but it surges through anyway, kind of lights him up, kind of makes him glow. The way his hands twist as he talks, his sleeve riding up to reveal pencil smudges all the way up to his wrists. All his other features– chestnut hair and floppy bangs, mole above his lip, hazel eyes, curved nose– things Mike sees on a daily basis, but enjoys looking at anew from every angle as Will speaks, like a shiny thing he tilts in the sun to see how it catches the light.
And it’s not weird to look, to notice these things, because Will is talking, and Mike is simply practicing active listening here by keeping his eyes fixed on his face. Not that it would be weird, anyways– Will is an objectively attractive guy, so it’s only natural. He’s easy on the eyes, as old people say, which is why Mike’s eyes must constantly find themselves drifting in his direction. It’s not Mike’s opinion, but a fact, scientifically tested and proven by years of Will getting noticed and flirted with by strangers in public.
Which brings Mike back to the situationship problem.
In high school, it made sense that Will had never dated anyone. Not that people didn’t try, of course; ironically, Will got asked out by more girls than any of them, enough so that Mike could probably make a whole group chat out of the bunch and ask for their opinion on the matter (a thought he entertains for half a second before dismissing it). Will inevitably turned them down every time, in that polite, sweet way that left all parties genuinely unoffended, and Mike finally understood why when Will officially came out during their junior year, but even then, the gay dating pool in Hawkins didn’t exactly offer a plethora of options.
But now– now they’re in college, midway through their second semester, and Will still hasn’t dated anyone, hasn’t even had his first kiss yet. And now that Mike is thinking about it, it doesn’t make any sense.
Fact #1: Will is, objectively and scientifically speaking, attractive. Very attractive, if Mike were to insert his slightly more subjective judgement.
Fact #2: Will’s dating pool is much, much larger here than it ever was in Hawkins. Though Mike doesn’t have any personal experience with it, he knows that there exists a sizable queer scene at their university, and that Will is at least somewhat involved, has made friends and gone to club meetings and taken Mike to the occasional party where girls were kissing girls and boys were kissing boys and no one batted an eye.
There’s only one conclusion Mike can draw from these facts: there must be guys who are interested in Will, guys who have possibly already made a move on him. And when Mike adds in Fact #3, the stupid Instagram Reel– well, it’s painting a pretty clear picture for him, one that makes his chest pang.
The reason Will hasn’t dated anyone must be because of this mystery guy. Because someone, some total jerk out there, is leading him on, giving him just enough hope to ignore other people’s advances, to hold out for the possibility of something real, but never following through.
“Mike?”
Mike jumps. His eyes dart from Will’s curious gaze to the laptop, which is now on the last slide of the presentation. This one features a painting of a frumpy couple in front of a house, the man holding a pitchfork and looking directly at the viewer.
When he’s still been quiet for a second too long, Will coughs. “Do you… have any questions?”
Mike frowns. Pitchfork Man stares back at him, his lips pressed thinly together as if to say that Mike isn’t going to get any answers out of him.
“Have you ever been in a situationship?”
Will blinks. “Um– what?”
“I mean–” Mike says hurriedly, heat rushing into his face as he looks back up. “That doesn’t have to do with the presentation. It was great, I can't even think of a question, so– good job.”
“Thanks?” Will stares at him, eyes wide. “But what– why did you ask–”
Mike leans back on his elbows, an attempt to make the question seem casual, chill, not something he’s been torturing himself over. “I was just kinda wondering, I guess.”
Will laughs awkwardly. He brings a hand up to rub his elbow. “Mike, you know I’ve never dated anyone.”
“No, yeah, but have you ever…” Mike hesitates for a second, then decides that yes, this is an issue he wants to push. Their friends are wrong– if this guy is ruining Will’s dating prospects, then as his best friend, Mike needs to know about it. “Talked to anyone? Been in a– you know. Situationship?”
Will takes a long moment to answer, too long, and in that space, Mike’s stomach lurches unpleasantly.
“No,” he admits finally, shrugging halfheartedly. “I guess it depends on how you define a situationship. But– no, not really.”
The tension ebbs marginally out of Mike’s shoulders, but not entirely, snagging on that I guess. Because, if Mike’s being honest, he’s not entirely sure what exactly a situationship is, either. Despite his doomscrolling habits, he’s really not in touch with stuff like this, mostly because he just doesn’t care that much about some made-up online dating terminology. But if the definition would change Will’s answer–
“How would you define it?” He asks evasively.
Will hesitates, seeming to consider the question before speaking. “It’s kind of like the name says, right? It’s when you’re not dating, but there’s something going on. Not a relationship, just… a situation.”
Mike furrows his brows. “Huh. So how would you even know when you’re in one, then?”
Will shifts from foot to foot, looking at Mike and then away. “I mean, that’s the problem, I think,” he says slowly. “You might not know if you are. If there really is something, or if it’s just your imagination.”
For a long moment, those words hang between them. Mike gets the vague feeling that he’s supposed to do something with them, but he’s not sure what, so he lets them go.
“Well,” he says finally, breaking the silence crackling like radio static between them. He holds up one of Will’s stuffed animals, a tiger that Mike won for him from an arcade claw machine a few years back. “We think your presentation is great. You’re going to nail it, OK? Don’t stress about it.”
Will blinks. Something flashes across his face, there and gone too quickly for Mike to identify it. Then he offers up a small smile. “Thanks, Mike.”
Later that night, when the lights are off and they’re both scrolling on their phones in their respective beds (well– Mike is on his phone, and Will is absorbed in his laptop, likely looking over his presentation slides one last time), Mike pulls up the group chat pinned to the top of his messages.
Mike
Guys
Everybody wish Will good luck on his art history presentation tomorrow
Within a few seconds, both of their phones buzz in a series of rapidfire bursts.
Lucas
you’ve got this will!
Maxine 👎
good luck will!!
Dustin
Good luck! 🫡
You show them art history
El 💜🦋
Good luck Will! You're going to knock their shoes off!
Mike
* Socks
But same sentiment
Maxine 👎
“socks” 🤓☝️
Mike
Shut up
This is about Will
And how awesome his presentation is going to be
From the other side of the room, Mike hears a quiet huff of laughter. He turns to see Will gazing down at his phone, the small smile dancing over his face illuminated by the pale glow of his laptop.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Will says softly, thumbs moving as he types out a response.
Mike shrugs, setting his phone down. “Yeah, well, I did.”
Will only rolls his eyes in response to that, but it makes something warm burst in Mike’s chest anyway.
Their friends were probably right, he thinks– not that he’s going to admit that to them. He would know if Will was talking to someone; they’re best friends, they tell each other everything, so of course he would. It was stupid of him to freak out over nothing. Will is right here, overthinking his presentation like he always does, wearing a hoodie to bed because he runs cold and claims there’s a draft in here, absentmindedly toying with the strings in a nervous tic he’s had since they were kids. His front teeth poke out as he smiles at his phone, and it’s not some dumb guy he’s texting, but their friends.
It’s Will, just as he’s always been.
And, naturally, just as single as he’s always been.
The last thing Mike registers as he’s falling asleep is the odd wave of relief that washes over him at the thought.
・・・・・
When Mike wakes up the next morning, the memory of the Instagram reel and their whole conversation about situationships is just a little wisp at the back of his head, something he easily bats away as he gets ready for the day. He really does need to work on his spiraling problem, Mike decides as he watches his reflection brush his teeth in the mirror.
Sometime after lunch, his phone pings with a text from the Party’s group chat:
Will 💛🌟🔮
the presentation went well!! my professor said she really liked it!
That– OK, Mike can explain that.
Back when he and El first started dating, Hopper wouldn’t let her have anything but a flip phone because of government tracking or whatever, so she used to play on Mike’s from time to time, mostly when they were hanging out and had run out of things to talk about. She had been particularly fascinated by emojis, and on one occasion, went through his contacts and assigned a string of them to every person she knew based on what she felt fit them. Later, Mike went through and changed the names back, except for El’s, because she was his girlfriend, and Will, because–
Well. Because Mike had opened Will’s contact, and stared at that stupid little string of emojis, and couldn’t bring himself to delete it. They just kind of suited Will, in his opinion. And it’s fine, because Will is his best friend and already knows that story and it’s not like– it’s an inside joke, that’s all. Just because there’s a heart doesn’t mean–
Anyways.
Dustin
Nice! Told you not to sweat it!
Mike
That’s great!!
I knew you could do it Will :-)
Will 💛🌟🔮
you and those dorky noses
thanks mike :)
Mike
Hey, they’re not dorky!
They’re cooler with noses
Will 💛🌟🔮
mm sure grandpa
Mike realizes, distantly, that he’s smiling like an idiot at his phone right now, showing off all thirty-two teeth. It’s another old inside joke; Mike has always preferred his smiley faces to have noses, and Will always teases him about it, and it always makes this warm, fuzzy feeling bloom somewhere in his chest, so he keeps using them knowing they’ll provoke a response.
Mike
:-(
Can’t believe you’re calling me a dork
After I tried to help you out
Will 💛🌟🔮
noooo not you
just your emoticons!
but thank you for that really
it was good practice
Mike
Of course
I’d help you anytime
You know that
Mike bites his lip as he reads that back and realizes it sounds a little too– something. He doesn’t know what, exactly, but suddenly he feels like he needs to pivot, quickly say something else to lighten the tone.
Mike
I mean I’m very helpful yknow
Some say the most helpful
Will 💛🌟🔮
hmm
Mike
What, you disagree?
Will 💛🌟🔮
well
i didn’t say it…
Mike
You didn’t have to
I can read the tone of that “hmm”
Will 💛🌟🔮
what tone?
:)
Mike
:-(
Then his phone pings again. Mike’s smile flickers with confusion as he realizes it’s from the other group chat, the one he created yesterday with all the Party minus Will.
Maxine 👎
why do i feel like i’m interrupting something rn…
And then, just as quickly, the message vanishes, replaced by Maxine 👎 unsent a message and the appearance of her typing bubble.
Maxine 👎
oops wrong chat
that was meant for
my mom
Mike frowns. He can’t imagine what circumstance would have Max texting her mom something like that, but whatever. Max’s family drama isn’t really any of his business.
He switches over to his private chat with Will, which is pinned before anyone, even the Party and his family.
Mike
Hey
I was thinking we should celebrate your presentation going well tonight
Do something fun
Will 💛🌟🔮
that’s so nice of you but i’m kinda tired idk if i want to go out :/
Mike
Then we don’t have to
How about we stay in, get takeout and watch a movie in the dorm?
Only if you’re up for it
We could make popcorn?
Will 💛🌟🔮
ohh yeah that sounds fun!!
i’m in
Mike
Cool!
It’s a date
For a long minute, Will’s typing bubble pops up, then disappears, then pops up again, repeating this cycle at least three times before he finally responds. Mike frowns. Huh.
Will 💛🌟🔮
ok!
cool!
・・・・・
“Will, are you ready to–”
Mike glances towards the opposite side of their dorm room and snaps his mouth shut, halfway through asking if Will is ready to go pick up takeout from the Chinese restaurant around the block.
Will is slumped against his pillows, eyes closed and head lolled to the side with his earbuds still in, his chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm. His laptop is balanced on his lap and still open. For a moment, Mike watches him, a smile playing on his lips, and the thought comes to him unbidden that Will looks so cute when he sleeps, like a kitten or a bunny or something. If he lets himself look for a moment longer, well– it’s not like anyone is around to witness it.
Fact #1, Exhibit A, right here.
Sliding off his bed, Mike pads over as softly as he can. He touches the top of the laptop, ready to shut it off and put it away, when his eyes catch on what’s on the screen.
Will has it open to a split-screen with two windows. The one on the left is clearly an outline for an assignment, filled with a bunch of notes and links and bullet points. The one on the right, though, is opened to a Spotify tab.
It’s not like that’s unusual; Will is always listening to something while he draws or works, whether it’s one of his carefully curated playlists or the D&D podcasts that he likes. No, what catches Mike’s eye is that this particular playlist, despite the account owner being Will himself, is one that Mike has never seen before.
And that is weird, because Mike knows all of the playlists that are on Will’s profile by heart. He always gives Will the aux in his car, and Will is one of the only people he bothers to follow on Spotify, so he’s given his playlists a look-through before, out of curiosity. Maybe listened to them, once or twice, here and there. A few times. It just makes him feel closer to Will, that’s all, especially whenever he posts a new one, like it gives him a window into what’s going on in his best friend’s head at that moment in time.
Unlike Mike, Will’s Spotify playlists are organized to be aesthetically pleasing. They’re all several hours long at minimum, and he knows from experience that Will spends a disproportionate amount of time picking their names and cover photos. This one, though, is left untitled– My playlist #26. The cover is equally enigmatic; it’s a picture that Will must’ve taken himself of the sky sometime after sunset, the dark silhouettes of trees and power lines standing against a deep melancholic blue.
Mike frowns. If he’s never seen this one before, that means Will must have chosen, specifically, to remove it from his profile and keep it private. Suddenly, he’s filled with a gnawing tug, a need to know what this playlist is and why, and he knows, he knows this is skirting into a violation of privacy, but the urge is overpowering, like he’s dying of thirst and there’s a glass of water right in front of him.
He could just take a sip.
Mike glances furtively at Will. He hasn’t stirred, chest rising and falling evenly. He really shouldn’t, but after yesterday, he can’t get the thought out of his head that maybe there’s something important he doesn’t know about his own best friend.
Slowly, careful not to jostle the laptop, Mike reaches down to the touchpad and scrolls, looking through the contents of the playlist:
▷ 400 Lux- Lorde
▷ Lovesong- The Cure
▷ Head Over Heels- Tears for Fears
▷ The Only Exception- Paramore
▷ Fade Into You- Mazzy Star
At that moment, if you listened carefully, you could hear Mike’s heart fall out of his guts and shatter into a million pieces on the floor.
These are love songs.
Love songs, Mike thinks, unable to tear his eyes away from the screen as he scrolls, but also some that are decidedly sadder:
▷ All I Need- Radiohead
▷ Cool About It- boygenius
▷ Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want- The Smiths
▷ I Want You to Love Me- Fiona Apple
A sickening lurch rolls through Mike’s stomach, so potent he has to take a deep breath in through his nose.
He was right.
The stupid Instagram reel had meant something; there was someone who was making Will feel this way, strongly enough that he made a playlist for them, and he had made the playlist private, which could only mean one thing.
Fact #4: Will was keeping this a secret. Keeping it a secret from Mike.
As if on cue, two texts pop up in the righthand corner of Will’s screen, flashing quickly enough for Mike to read them without consciously meaning to.
robin
no i don’t think you’re delusional!
i just don’t want you to be waiting around for him forever ya know?
Mike stumbles backwards. For a moment he just stands there, catatonic, and then turns on his heel, throws on his jacket and shoes, and shuts the door behind him as quietly as he can.
He makes it all the way down the stairs and out the building before realizing that, without meaning to, he’s been holding his breath. Mike lets it out in one big whoosh and takes a fitful inhale, letting his lungs fill up to capacity with the crisp spring air. He blinks, hard, like he’s trying to get something out of his eye, telling himself it’s a dust mite even though he knows it’s not.
This is so much worse than he thought.
Will talking to some college guy– OK, sure, Mike knew that would come at some point. Will being in a situationship, being led on by said guy– that’s a little more serious, and the thought makes his stomach squirm, because obviously he doesn’t want his best friend to waste his time on someone who doesn’t deserve him. But this doesn’t seem like some little weeks-long crush. Mike knows that Will pours his heart and soul into constructing these playlists, builds a signal tower of his feelings out of the songs he picks, and My playlist #26 was brick upon brick of longing and devastation and devotion, and when he takes a step back and looks, it all seems to amount to–
Love.
The L rests on the tip of Mike’s tongue, tasting putrid and sour. He swallows it down, shakes his arms out, and sets off down the road.
At the Chinese restaurant, Mike stands at the counter with his arms folded, tapping his foot anxiously against the tile. He tries to tell himself that it’s nothing. He must be reading into things. Will isn’t in love with someone, because– because that’s big, that’s important, and Mike knows everything big and important in Will’s life, always.
An insidious little voice at the back of his head chimes that Will kept the playlist private, so clearly there are some things they don’t know about each other. The thought only makes Mike antsier, foot tapping faster until another patron gives him a dirty look.
Mike digs his phone out of his pocket and pulls up his messages, ready to tell the rest of the Party (minus Will, obviously) about this most recent development. He’s got the text halfway typed when it strikes him that in order to tell them about the playlist, he would have to admit to scrolling through Will’s laptop while he was sleeping, which… out of context, certainly doesn’t sound great.
He hurriedly deletes it and swipes back to his other messages. Then, while he’s still waiting for their food, he clicks on his chat with Will, as though there’ll be something new he can uncover– but there’s nothing. Mike reads back two weeks, three weeks, and it’s all business as usual, no hidden heartsick anguish Will appears to be hiding under his words.
For some reason, what Mike’s eyes snag on is not any of Will’s messages, but his own from this afternoon:
It’s a date.
Huh. He hadn’t really realized that was how he put it. The phrase just kind of slipped out– but it’s normal, right? It doesn’t have to mean a date date; it’s something friends say to each other, too, when making plans. Probably. He’s pretty sure. In his parent’s generation, at least.
Anyways.
By the time Mike walks back and shoulders open the door of their dorm building bearing two bags of takeout, he’s already formulated as cohesive an explanation as he can come up with.
Maybe it’s not love per say, but certainly feelings. Strong feelings, at that. So it must be someone Will has been talking to for a while. Someone who is giving him just enough to make him feel like there’s something between them, but not enough for them to actually be dating. Someone who is hurting him, Mike thinks, a sharp twist in his chest at the thought of some of the songs on that playlist. And when Will is hurt, he withdraws. That’s not only a fact, but a fundamental law of Will Byers as a person, one Mike usually knows in the context of angry fathers and bullies at school, eldritch possessions and interdimensional villains. It makes sense that this law would hold here, too.
It also makes sense, then, that the others don’t know about this. But the one thing Mike can’t understand, even feels a little hurt about if he’s honest, is why Will wouldn’t tell him. Mike has always, always been the one exception to this law, sometimes even before Jonathan or Joyce. All he can think is that, for some reason, Will doesn’t think Mike can help, not with something like this.
Well, Mike thinks, setting his jaw– Will is wrong about that. And Mike is going to prove it.
He enters their room quietly, just in case, but Will is already sat up in bed, bleary-eyed and texting someone on his phone. His laptop is shut and set to the side. Mike glances at it and feels a flash of guilt, like if he looks close enough he can see his own grubby fingerprints all over it.
Will squints at Mike’s entrance, blinking slowly, before his eyes widen with recognition at the sight of the takeout bags. “You went out already?”
“Yeah,” Mike says, aiming for casual as he sets the bags down on his desk. He grapples with the tied handles, tugging uselessly at the knots before he gives up and grabs a pair of scissors. “I got your usual, asked for extra tofu the way you like. Oh, and earlier I stopped by CVS and picked up Milk Duds, Reece’s, and microwave popcorn, so we should be all set.”
When Mike looks up, Will is staring at him, a faint pink flush across his cheeks which must be from his nap. “Oh. That– um, thank you! How much was it? I can–”
“No, Will, c’mon,” Mike waves him off. “I got it.”
Will opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but he hesitates, closes it. Maybe after all these years he’s finally learned that Mike isn’t going to budge on this.
As they eat, Mike tries not to seem too distracted, though the memory of the playlist buzzes in his head like a hovering fly he can’t swat away. He nods and smiles along as Will talks about how his presentation went and a digital art commission he’s starting this weekend.
“The greatest risk is not taking one,” Will reads aloud from the note in his fortune cookie. He purses his lips, staring at it for a long moment, his eyes a little glazed. He looks up. “What does yours say?”
Mike wrinkles his nose. “You will be hungry again in one hour.”
Will snickers at that, teases that it’s probably true, which Mike can't refute. When he gathers up their empty cartons and plastic bags to throw away, he pauses for a second before setting their fortunes to the side.
“For safekeeping,” he says by way of explanation, shrugging and looking away. “I might want to use them for a collage or something.”
Mike nods and turns back to his own desk. He frowns. “Shit, my laptop’s dead. Can we use yours?”
“Sure, but I don’t have a lot of streaming services,” Will says sheepishly.
“It’s fine, I'll log into mine.”
Will grabs his laptop and settles onto Mike’s bed, gently knocking their knees together. He passes it over. Mike opens up a new tab and types in his login information.
“Is– is your password my birthday?” Will blurts out, staring at the screen. He blinks, coughs, and hurries on, “Um– sorry, I didn’t mean to look–”
“Oh. Yeah, it is.” Mike laughs, a little awkwardly, and scratches the back of his neck. “I mean, I can’t use my birthday. That would be too obvious, so.”
Will must recognize the logic here– it’s basic cybersecurity, really– because he slowly nods and settles back against the pillows.
The bed is narrow, so they have to squeeze in, arms and legs pressed together with the laptop propped on Mike’s lap and the popcorn bowl propped on Will’s. Will leans over to peer at the titles Mike is scrolling through, and gets so close that his chin is almost hooked over Mike’s shoulder.
“What do you want to watch?” Mike asks, shifting as heat rises to his cheeks. Will swears up and down there’s a draft in here, but right now it feels very, very warm, like maybe they need to turn on a fan or open a window or something, actually.
Will hums in consideration, and they’re so close that Mike can feel the vibration of his chest. “I don’t know. Something funny, maybe?”
Mike nods wordlessly and clicks the Comedy tab, his throat feeling oddly tight.
They scroll and bicker for nearly five minutes, one of them pointing out an option and the other swiftly finding a reason to turn it down. Mike wants to watch something they haven’t seen before, and all these movies look kind of dumb, or are cheesy rom-coms, or star some annoying actor. He’s about to give up and suggest they just watch The Lego Batman Movie for the thousandth time when he spots something.
“Hey, is that Andy Samberg? You and Max like him, right?”
Will tilts his head. “Oh, yeah, it is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before, though.”
Mike clicks on the title– Palm Springs– and skims the description, something about time loops, which is enough to pique his interest. “Let’s watch this,” he decides, and presses play.
About halfway through the movie, Mike notices movement in the corner of his eye. Will is shifting, one hand coming up to pull his sleeves down, even as his eyes stay fixed on the screen. That’s when Mike notices the goosebumps on the back of his neck, right at the nape where his hair looks particularly soft.
Mike could not, in a million years, explain what drives him to do what he does next. It’s like when he was a kid and would stick crayons in his mouth or pebbles in his ear, and his mom would drop her head in her hands and ask him why on earth he did that, and Mike truly had no other explanation except that he was struck with an impulse and mindlessly followed where it led. Like now, when Mike doesn’t even realize he’s bringing his hand up and setting it right there on the back of Will’s neck, until suddenly he feels soft skin and short, silky hair under his fingers.
And then, in some sort of bizarre overcompensation, Mike’s synapses firing in all the wrong directions and telling him he has to move, has to do something else before it gets weird, he gently pushes Will’s head to come to rest on his shoulder.
Mike snaps back to reality.
He opens his mouth to explain, to say I have no idea why I just did that, but no words come out. He can feel his shoulders stiffen under the weight of Will’s head, and Will is still looking at the screen but in their close proximity Mike can feel him freeze up too, and then they’re just kind of sitting there in a charged silence, unmoving.
“Uh,” Mike croaks, and clears his throat. “You seemed cold.”
He wants to crawl in a hole and die, actually, what a way to make it not weird– but then a second passes and he feels Will’s muscles relax beside him, melting against his side. “Oh. Thanks,” he says quietly.
Another minute of the movie passes before Mike feels him move again. Slowly, almost tentatively, Will brings his closest hand up and wraps it around Mike’s bicep, hooking their arms together like he’s trying to capture the body heat through his hoodie.
Mike smiles to himself. It’s nice, is all– reminds him of being a kid, too, Will falling asleep on his shoulder on field trip bus rides and whatnot. They don’t do the platonic cuddling stuff so much now that they’re older, but clearly Will doesn’t think it’s weird, either, so– that’s a relief.
Then his thoughts wander to childhood sleepovers and high school slumber parties, and as he watches Andy Samberg take his shirt off onscreen, a memory snaps into place.
“Wait, you– you guys liked him, right?”
Will glances at him, questioning.
“I mean, you and Max,” Mike hurries to explain, “you guys said one time that he was… cute, right? Your celebrity crush?”
Will’s eyes widen. “Oh! I– yeah, I mean, he’s one of them,” he stammers, a faint pink flush spilling across his cheeks.
(It’s funny, Mike thinks– most people just look sort of like angry tomatoes when they blush, but on Will it looks quite nice, actually. Pretty, almost, the kind of color makeup companies try to bottle up and sell back to annoying little sisters named Holly who beg their brothers to buy $35 products. Inflation, Mike laments– if this were the 80s, it would only be, like, $10 at max. Will, though- Will gets it for free.)
Mike hums noncommittally, turning that thought over in his head. If he’s going to figure out who this guy is, he thinks, maybe this could be a first step in his investigation. “Why?”
“Why?” Will echoes, confused.
“Yeah, like–” It’s Mike’s turn to flush, feeling how odd the question sounds as it tumbles out of his mouth, “what is it about him you find attractive?”
Will blinks. He looks back at the screen, and Mike can see the line of his throat bob as he swallows. He seems to consider the question as he continues to watch the movie.
After a minute, he finally speaks, a little haltingly, eyes darting back to Mike from the corner of his eye. “I guess I like guys who have dark hair– brown or, um, maybe black. And big noses, strong facial features. And I like his eyes.”
Mike frowns. “His eyes?”
“Yeah.” The corners of Will’s mouth twitch. “Big brown eyes. Like a puppy.”
The crease between Mike’s brow tightens as he turns back to the screen. Dark hair, big noses, puppy dog eyes. That should narrow it down, hopefully.
Towards the end of the movie, he hears a quiet sniffle. When he turns, Will’s eyes are glossy, welling until a single tear trickles down his cheeks in an almost graceful manner.
Mike’s heart squeezes. He doesn’t say anything, but pulls the sleeve of his hoodie down over his hand and brings it up to gently wipe under Will’s eyes. Will lets out a quiet huff, something that might be a laugh.
“Thanks,” Will mumbles. “ I– I didn’t know this was going to be a rom-com.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Mike replies quietly. And it’s not really his genre of choice, but it’s actually a pretty good one, he thinks. Makes him feel this weird ache in his chest, a whisper of some confusing want that he doesn’t usually stop to listen to.
Later that night, with the lights off and both of them back on their respective sides of the room, Mike finds himself unable to sleep. He rolls onto his back and stares at a faint patch on the ceiling that he really hopes isn’t mold, but knowing their dorm, probably is. A shiver runs down his arms, and he pulls the covers up to his shoulders, suddenly thinking that Will is right, actually– it does feel awfully cold all of a sudden, with no one else’s body heat beside him.
Which reminds him.
Mike spares a look over at the boy in question just to be sure he’s asleep before he leans over and grabs his laptop off his nightstand. Lowering the brightness, he opens Instagram on his desktop browser, navigates to Will’s profile, and clicks on his follower count.
・・・・・
Mike doesn’t have classes on Fridays, which is good, because he’s up until 3AM stalking Will’s social media followers until his eyes start to physically burn. When he wakes up at 10:45 to an empty dorm room, he rolls over, grabs his phone, and opens the group chat he had made two days prior, typing furiously in between the steps of his getting ready routine.
Lucas, Dustin, El 💜🦋, and Maxine 👎:
Mike
I think I found the guy Will’s talking to
Maxine 👎
omg
uninvolve me ❤️
Mike
No I’m serious
Attachment: 1 image
Look
He follows Will from his main AND his spam
Maxine 👎
CHANCE??
chance from high school?
Mike
Yeah
Maxine 👎
no way
ok wait that actually is… interesting
do we even know if chance is gay/bi tho?
Mike
That’s what I’m trying to find out
Can you help me please
You’re way better at this cyberstalking stuff
Maxine 👎
first of all
will’s love life is really none of our business and we shouldn’t be getting this nosy, especially when it probably doesn’t mean anything anyways
second of all
send me the account
Mike grins around his toothbrush. He switches to their private text chain and sends Max the link to Chance’s public profile, along with a screenshot of his spam account.
Mike
His second one is private
And I don’t think he would approve me if I requested it
Maxine 👎
yeah definitely not 💀
Mike
But there is this
Attachment: 1 image
It’s a screenshot he found from Will’s tagged posts– one of his pieces which got featured in an art show last semester. And more importantly, one of the top comments underneath:
takeachancee_05: Fire 🔥🔥
Maxine 👎
WOW ok
i don’t even remember them ever talking in high school??
Mike
See?
I was right
Maxine 👎
ok i didn’t say THAT
still might be nothing
we need more evidence
Mike
Well I already went through his main profile but he doesn’t post much
Maxine 👎
wait call me
i have an idea
・・・・・
“How often do you do this, exactly?” Mike asks, squinting at his phone as he types in the required details to make a new account.
“Not much,” Max’s voice hums over speaker. “I mean, usually I don't think it would work, but in this case I think it will. Just request a bunch of other guys from Hawkins so it doesn’t look weird.”
Mike nods, forgetting she can’t see him, as he uploads a photo from Google as his profile picture. “And this is legal, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
A pause.
“I mean– I’m pretty sure it is. We’re not actually going to promise to give anyone anything. It’s just, like, maybe a little unethical.”
Mike arches an eyebrow. Max is helping him, though, so he’s not going to push his luck by questioning her ways. Once his new user hawkins_jordans_giveaway is officially created, he pulls up Chance’s private account first, hits Request, and then starts to spam request all the recommended accounts that pop up, too, just to be sure that he won’t raise any suspicion.
“Oh, shit,” he says, about two minutes later. “He accepted it.”
They switch to FaceTime. Mike shares his screen, scrolling through the posts he now has access to. At some point, Lucas gets out of class and joins in, crowding into Max’s frame and commenting on what he remembers from being on the basketball team in freshman year.
Chance’s profile doesn’t give much to go off in terms of sexuality speculation, but Mike does end up learning far more about his former classmate than ever wanted to. He doesn’t realize how tightly he’s clenching his jaw until his teeth start to ache, and he has to take a deep breath and remind himself to untense his shoulders. It’s just– he can’t for the life of him see Will being with a guy who captions his posts “didn’t need a gender reveal to know i was him” and “cut the crust off my sandwiches cuz nothing comes between me and my bread”.
New messages flash at the top of his screen.
takeachancee_05:
Hey
How do I enter
Mike ignores him, his jaw tightening again as he continues to scroll.
“Wait,” Max cuts in suddenly, “go back up.”
Mike does as asked, scrolling back to the previous post, which is some mirror selfie thirst trap. His eyes land on the caption: call me a pendulum the way i swing both ways 👀👅
“Huh,” Lucas huffs, “that’s kinda funny, actually.”
Mike doesn’t reply. He stares at that sentence, reading it over and over as his heart plummets as fast as an anchor hitting the seabed.
He barely manages to keep his voice from wobbling as he says, “So I was right. Chance is the guy.”
Of course. It makes too much sense. A years-long situationship, starting sometime before college. Dark hair, dark eyes, though Mike isn’t sure if he would describe them as puppy-like. Hell, he thinks, bristling– he’s got a bigger nose than Chance does.
(So why does it have to be this guy? Why couldn’t it be–)
Mike stomach does a flip so violent he has half a mind to run to the communal bathrooms and hurl.
No. He can’t accept the idea of Will with this guy. He can’t. Will, who is gentle and sensitive and smarter than people realize, who tears up watching Pixar movies and animal shelter commercials, who likes David Lynch movies and has every Clash record on vinyl, who calls his mom every other day, who always has dried paint under his carefully trimmed fingernails, who wrinkles his nose when he smiles extra hard, who has literally been to hell and back and survived and remained good through it all.
The best D&D player he knows. His best friend. His sorcerer. How could Chance be good enough for him?
“OK, hang on,” Max pipes up, after an awkwardly long pause. “I seriously doubt Will has been in a secret situationship with Chance this whole time. I’m just going to ask him.”
“What?” Mike sits bold upright, so fast he thinks he hears his spine pop. “No. Max, do not tell Will–”
Max rolls her eyes. “Relax. I’m not going to tell him you’re the one asking.”
She types something out, a whoosh chiming as she sends it. A moment later, when her phone dings, she lets out a quiet huff and sends Mike a screenshot.
max
will why does chance’s spam follow you?
i just noticed lol
i didn’t know you guys even talked
will
huh?
ohh haha no we don’t rlly
he requested me a while back and i felt bad rejecting it
sometimes he replies to my stories but i’m not sure why? we’re not close at all
“See?” Max says with a raised eyebrow. “Will was just being nice. And completely oblivious to guys trying to hit on him. So, nothing new there.”
Mike doesn’t know why, but nothing in that sentence makes him feel better. How many guys are trying to hit on Will, exactly? And besides, this just means he has to go back to the drawing board, look at all Will’s other potential suitors, none of whom will be good enough for him, because the longer he thinks about it, the more he becomes convinced that no mortal man walking this earth is good enough for his best friend.
“Yeah, whatever,” he grumbles, swiping as he pulls up his list of the other candidates he identified last night. “OK, I’m gonna send you guys the next one.”
“Whoa– the next one?” Lucas interjects, frowning as he leans back into the frame. “Mike. Don’t you think this is kind of…”
“What?” Mike snaps.
Lucas pauses, his face twitching as he seems to war with himself. “Just– if Will wanted to tell us something, then we would know, y’know?” Another pause, even longer. When he speaks again, his voice is tentative, like he’s talking to a stray dog he thinks might bite. “And have you ever thought about, um… why the thought of Will dating someone bothers you so much?”
Mike’s reaction is knee-jerk, firing out a hot round of words before he can even really think to consider them. “What are you talking about? I told you guys a million times, this isn’t about me, it’s about Will. I don’t want him dating some asshole that’s just going to lead him on and disappoint him, and you guys shouldn’t either, and I don’t see why no one else seems to care about this when–”
“Dude, I get that, but I’m not just talking about now,” Lucas shoots back. “Remember the Snowball in eighth grade, when Hannah what’s-her-name asked Will to dance and you kept bringing it up for the next sixth months?”
Mike frowns. “That was, like, five years ago. How is that even relevant here?”
It’s Max’s turn to pipe up. “OK, what about when Will first made friends with Robin, and you wouldn’t stop making passive-aggressive comments about how she was too old for him?”
“That–” Mike sputters, “Will hadn’t come out yet, OK, and that was a legitimate concern! I was worried about him!”
“It’s just a little funny that that’s the thing you were concerned about while the world was literally ending,” Max says drily. “Like, you know that was one of the first things you told me after I had just woken up from an eighteen month coma? Also, you have a terrible gaydar, but that's a problem for another day.”
“What are you trying to–”
“Halloween,” Lucas interrupts. “Last semester, when you guys came up to visit us. We went to that party and that guy came up and started hitting on Will, and you spent the whole night moping around, and–” He makes air quotes, “accidentally spilled your drink on him–”
“It was an accident!” Mike yelps indignantly. “I was drunk! And that guy had weird vibes, and Will wasn’t even interested, so I don’t see what you’re trying to say.”
“But that’s not your problem,” Lucas sighs, rubbing his temple. “It’s Will’s, but you make it your problem, every single time. Look, sometimes it kinda feels like you wouldn’t be happy no matter who Will was dating.” Mike opens his mouth to protest, but Lucas continues, leveling him with a look, “Seriously– can you name one guy, just one, that you would want Will to be with? Even, like, a celebrity? A fictional character?”
Mike’s mouth hangs open, bobbing as he grasps at a response– and then he snaps it shut with a quiet click.
The perfect guy for Will. Someone with his preferred physical characteristics, obviously– dark-haired, strong facial features, big brown eyes. Taller than him, Mike thinks, because Will would like being able to rest his head on the guy’s shoulder. Someone with similar interests– not the exact same, necessarily, but enough for them to nerd out together and spend hours talking. Someone who is patient with Will, understanding of what he’s been through; someone who doesn’t push him, but doesn’t coddle or underestimate him either; someone who complements his personality, his softer nature, so maybe a guy who’s a bit more assertive, strong-willed and sarcastic like Will’s fictional crushes.
Someone who would count all his moles and the specks of gold in his hazel eyes. Someone who adores him and devotes themselves entirely to him. Someone who sees his magic.
The mere thought of this guy’s existence makes Mike feel sick to his stomach.
“Oh,” he says, a noise punched out of him by this realization. “Oh. Shit. I don’t know why that– I mean, I’m not– I want him to be happy with someone. It’s not like I’m homophobic or anything.”
Because Mike isn’t– ironically, he liked Robin a whole lot more after finding out she had a girlfriend. And when Will came out and Mike realized how ignorant he had been all those years to what his best friend was going through, he had made up for it by spending hours on internet rabbitholes, learning everything he could in order to be a safe space for Will. If Mike was homophobic, would he have cried so hard he almost threw up after reading Giovanni’s Room? Would he regularly get into keyboard fights defending Spirk on the Star Trek subreddit, to the point of receiving multiple warnings from the mods? Would he have watched the entire second season of Bridgerton with Nancy twice, despite finding the show cliche, just because he wanted to support Jonathan Bailey’s career?
…The answer is no, of course he wouldn’t, so it’s definitely not that.
Mike frowns, furrowing his eyebrows as though in deep concentration. “Do you think I’m, like… slutshaming him?”
“Um.” Max exchanges a bewildered look with Lucas. “Excuse me?”
“Like– you know, maybe this is some societal bullshit that I’ve internalized. I mean, I know Will hasn’t actually been with anyone, but it could be, like… preemptive slutshaming, right?”
“Preemptive–” Lucas pauses, closing his eyes for a long moment as he seems to gather himself. His tone is carefully level when he speaks. “Yeah, no, I really don’t think that’s it.”
Mike’s frown deepens. “OK… so then what–”
“Mike,” Max says, in a gentler voice than he almost ever hears from her, her expression softening. “Have you thought at all about– that thing you told us at Christmas?”
Mike shifts uncomfortably.
The thing Max is referring to is the incident in which, back in Hawkins over winter break one night, Mike stole a bottle of Baileys from his parents for the Party to drink in his basement, ended up drinking most of it himself, and accidentally, drunkenly confessed to them that he might not be quite as straight as he thought. It was a realization borne from a semester of living somewhere more progressive than their bigoted small town, re-examining certain reasons his relationship with El had fallen apart all those years ago, and finally admitting to himself that, OK, it was one thing to read a lot of Luke Skywalker x Han Solo fanfiction, and another thing when that turned into Luke Skywalker x Male!Reader, but writing it himself was really testing the weight of his already-flimsy heterosexuality.
So, fine, Mike officially re-labeled himself as questioning. Heteroflexible, if you will.
Homocurious, perhaps.
…OK, so Mike is probably, definitely into men, but college is busy, alright, and he just doesn’t have the time to think about it or examine it that much further right now. Sue him.
“Yeah, kinda. I guess– I feel like I was, uh, probably right about that thing.”
Even over FaceTime, Mike can feel the force of Max’s scarily blue eyes boring into him. “And do you ever think that these two things might be… connected?”
It takes Mike a belated second to understand what she’s implying. When he does, he sits up so fast that the force of it almost knocks his phone off his bed.
“What? I don’t like Will, that’s not– that’s a– that’s–” Mike sputters, far more loudly than he intends to. His voice resounds off the walls of their dorm room. And no, nope, Will is definitely wrong about that draft, because it is way too hot in here for a mild spring day. “I mean, what, just because we both like dudes means I’m into him? Do you hear yourself? That’s totally homophobic!”
He tries to laugh, but it comes out sounding oddly high-pitched and strangled.
Lucas’s voice comes from his phone. “Mike–”
Mike continues, steamrolling over him. “No, that’s a completely insane assumption to make. Can’t two guys just be friends? Can’t I just care about him because he’s been my best friend since kindergarten? If I felt like– that about him, it would– it would completely ruin everything! Will doesn’t see me like that, and he wouldn’t want to do all our normal friend stuff if he knew– I mean, if he thought I– it would make him super uncomfortable, OK? And he would try to hide it, but I would know, and it would change things, and it would suck.”
“Mike–”
“And would it be great if he did feel that way about me? I mean, yeah, sure, duh. It’s Will, who wouldn’t want to–” Mike’s words catch in his throat. “But he doesn’t. And that’s great too, because being his friend is the best thing in the world, and I would have to be a complete moron to try and mess that up. So I just– I just need you guys to help me find out who this stupid situationship guy is, OK, because I’m worried about Will, and I don’t know why he’s keeping this a secret from me, and I feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind over here!”
By the end of this speech, Mike is out of breath, his chest rising and falling in the long pause that ensues. His hand has come up to rake through his hair in agitation, leaving it disheveled and a little tangled.
“Mike,” Lucas says, staring at him through the screen, “I worry about you sometimes, man.”
“I worry about me too,” Mike groans, and shoves his face into his pillow.
Just then, he hears footsteps outside the doorway.
“Oh, shit,” Mike swears under his breath. He grabs his phone, and in one rush of breath says, “OKgottagonowbye–”
He ends the call just as the door turns and Will appears in the doorway.
“Mike? Is everything OK?” He asks, his eyes rounded with concern. “It sounded like you were yelling at someone.”
“Everything’s cool!” Mike says, his voice coming out an octave higher than he intended. He clears his throat. His ears feel like they’re on fire. “I was just on a game.”
This was possibly the worst excuse he could’ve picked, seeing as he’s quite clearly not on a game. Will raises an eyebrow and looks him up and down, but doesn’t call him out on it.
A few minutes later, once Will is at his desk drawing something on his iPad with headphones on, Mike opens up his laptop to finally start the problem set he’s been neglecting for three days. A series of missed notifications pop up in the corner of his screen.
The first two are Instagram messages.
[hawkins_jordans_giveaway:]
takeachancee_05:
??
Is this real?
I can meet u somewhere just lmk
Mike promptly ignores those and opens his other messages from the text chain with the Party minus Will.
Dustin
Shit sorry guys I was in class
There’s no way it’s actually Chance right?
Maxine 👎
def not chance
confirmed straight from the horse’s mouth
and also it’s not ANYBODY bc again this guy does not actually exist and mike is fighting imaginary demons
Mike’s scowl hardens.
Mike
He does exist
We can’t just give up after one dead end
I feel like I’m really close
Maxine 👎
wow
ok detective wheeler
Dustin
Sorry Mike I’m with Max on this
I’m pretty sure we would know if Will was dating anyone
Mike
You guys are totally missing the point
It’s not dating, it’s some dickhead leading him on
That’s why he hasn’t told anyone
I think maybe he’s embarrassed or something
Think about it, you guys don’t think it’s weird at all that he hasn’t dated anyone this whole time?
We’ve been in college for two semesters and he’s never told me about anyone, not even a crush
Lucas
i mean it’s will
he’s just shy
and he’s pretty private
Mike
Yeah but not THAT private
Maxine 👎
look i know for a fact will still hasn’t been on a date or had his first kiss or anything
so i really don’t think there’s anybody
we should just let it go
Dustin
^^
Mike types out about three different rebuttals to that before deciding it’s a losing game. If none of their friends want to help, then fine, he can go it alone. He doesn’t need Dustin’s opinion on the matter, and he certainly doesn’t need Lucas and Max to try and gentle-parent him through his own feelings. Mike is perfectly aware of his feelings, thanks, he just finds them extremely bothersome and annoying.
Because, hypothetically, if Mike did have feelings for Will? That would be terrible. Catastrophically, gut-wrenchingly, code-red-disaster-level terrible.
For one, it would mean Mike has spent years of his life torturing himself with something he can never have, harboring an ache that gnaws away at him a little more every day. For another, it would be a constant threat hanging over the head of a friendship he’s already scratched and dented a few too many times. Because if– again, hypothetically– those feelings existed, and if Will knew of their existence, it would ruin everything between them. He wouldn’t let Mike rub his back after nightmares, or pay for his food, and he wouldn’t want to rest his head on Mike’s shoulder during movie nights, or fall asleep on the phone together when they’re apart. Will would be understanding, of course, kind enough to let him down easy and want to remain friends, but that’s the problem– he’d be too considerate, too careful of giving Mike the wrong idea, and all of that easy closeness would be gone in the blink of an eye.
So it’s a good thing, just great, peachy in fact, that Mike’s feelings are those of a normal lifelong best friend who just happens to care a lot. Seriously, don’t platonic male friendships mean anything to people nowadays? There’s no need to make it weird, Mike thinks as he opens up his bookmarked tab of Will's Instagram followers.
For the next couple of hours, he goes back to the drawing board of finding potential candidates (he’ll get to that problem set one of these days, really), until he starts to feel that incoming-headache buzz in his forehead and decides maybe he should take a break. Recharge, as El would say, even if he's a little annoyed at her right now for ignoring all his texts about Will's mystery guy.
Ironically, he’s back to scrolling on Reels when he sees Will stand up from the desk in his peripheral vision. He takes his headphones off and turns to Mike.
“Could I borrow your laptop? I need to look up a reference, and mine is dead from class.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mike says unthinkingly as he scrolls to the next video.
And then freezes as he realizes his mistake.
One of Mike’s other bad habits is leaving his tabs open. On his laptop, he’s got at least 50, probably closer to 100 across different windows if he’s being honest, and right now those include:
- Will’s Instagram followers list.
- Will’s TikTok, Pinterest, Spotify, Tumblr, and Letterboxd accounts.
- A typo-riddled angsty Notes app rant Mike wrote before he went to bed.
- Mike’s photo album of the two of them, which he got sidetracked last night scrolling through all the way back to seventh grade, lamenting how Will used to tell him everything.
- Google search: how serious is a situationship
- Google search: how serious is a gay situationship
- Google search: is it normal to not want best friend to date anyone
- Google search: is it normal to not want best friend to date anyone reddit
- That work-in-progress list of all the guys he thinks might potentially be the one Will’s talking to, with columns cross-checking how well they fit Will’s preferred physical attributes and whether Mike thinks they date men or not.
And, frankly, Mike would rather Will find hardcore smut on his laptop than see any of those tabs.
Of course, he also has about twenty tabs related to schoolwork, and he cannot for the life of him remember which one he last left open, so it’s Russian Roulette in a way, except right now Mike would take his chances with the gun. His blood runs cold, and his brain screams at him to move, to stop it, but it’s too late, Will has already picked up the laptop and taken it over to his desk.
It’s like a slow-motion scene from a bad movie, a distorted voice in Mike’s head shouting nooooo as he watches Will’s thumb slip under the lid of the laptop, watches him lift it up, watches him type in the password that he knows because he’s borrowed Mike’s laptop a million times before.
And then, in an instant, Mike knows Will sees something, because his whole face shifts. His eyes dart over the screen, and then they widen, and his eyebrows raise, and his muscles stiffen and his jaw tightens and–
“Will– wait,” Mike blurts out, standing and crossing the room in a couple strides. He still can’t tell what Will is looking at, but his heart is careening so hard in his chest he can barely stand upright. “It’s– it’s not what it looks like–”
“Really?” Will’s voice is too quiet, too steady, which is the first sign. Then he turns in his chair, and Mike’s stomach does a nauseating flip.
Will’s eyebrows are knit together, his lips pressed with a miniscule tremor in his bottom lip, chin held purposefully high. It’s an expression Mike unfortunately knows all too well, the one that makes him feel like the hunter who shot Bambi's mom. It takes him right back to a fight in the rain outside his garage.
Mike’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
Will takes a slow breath. “Because it looks like you guys have a group chat without me that you use to talk about how embarrassing my love life is.”
Mike furrows his brows in confusion. He takes another step forward, close enough to see the screen, and– oh.
His laptop is currently open to his messages, and more specifically, the text chain with the Party minus Will. It’s scrolled down to display the most recent ones, cutting off all previous context and starting from Mike’s own message: I think maybe he’s embarrassed or something.
And without the knowledge that their friends are attempting to dissuade Mike from what is (he can admit it) essentially cyberstalking his best friend– Will is right. It doesn’t look very good.
“OK, I– I know it seems that way,” Mike says slowly, putting up a placating hand. “But I swear, Will, that’s not what this is. Come on, do you really think we would do that?”
Will stands up, taking a step away from the laptop, away from Mike, like it hurts to even be this close. “No,” he says lowly, “I didn’t think so. But obviously I was wrong.”
He blinks hard, and the worst part is that Mike can tell he’s covering his hurt with anger, lacing his words with venom so no one will get too close and see the wet shine in his eyes. Mike sees it, though, and it feels like a knife to the chest. His thoughts race ahead of themselves, scrambling to think of how he can fix this, and fast–
“I’ll prove it!” He blurts out before he can think better of it.
Will blinks again. Swallows unevenly. “What?”
Mike reaches into his pocket and digs his phone out, fumbling as he unlocks it and finds the text chain. He looks up at Will and holds it out. “Look, you can read through it, OK? I promise we weren’t trying to make fun of you, Will. I saw this stupid reel you liked, and it– it freaked me out, and I probably overreacted, and this whole thing is all my fault. If you’re going to be mad at someone, be mad at me. The rest of them were just trying to talk me off this stupid ledge.”
Will glances at the phone, and back at Mike, then gingerly takes it. Mike watches with increasing dread as he scrolls up to the top of the chain.
Will's anger slowly ebbs away as he reads, features slackening, brows knit with confusion instead of hurt. When he reaches the end, he looks up with a question in his eyes.
Mike looks away, eyes roaming over the rest of the room to avoid his gaze. He wants to sink through the floor layers of their dorm until he’s buried somewhere so deep in the earth that only millions of years of tectonic activity will allow his fossil to be uncovered by whatever aliens will take over the world after humans are gone. He can read the museum plaque now: here lie the remains of the rare subspecies homo idioticus, known for their gangly limbs, inability to foresee long-term consequences of their actions, and poor digital hygiene habits.
Will passes the phone back. “Is, um,” he starts uncertainly, “is this why you were asking me those questions the other day?”
Mike nods wordlessly, bracing himself. He knows that Will is going to be rightfully mad at him over this weird invasion of privacy and boundaries, but it’s better than him feeling hurt, thinking his friends were talking badly about him behind his back. He just hopes it’ll be a fight they can get over and done without devolving into several days of uncomfortable tension.
But Will doesn’t start laying into him. Instead, he takes a step closer and looks at Mike through his lashes, his mouth twisting.
“I’m… confused,” he says slowly, like he’s picking his words carefully.
“Confused,” Mike echoes, nodding dumbly. “About…?”
“You said that this– thinking I was in a situationship with someone–” Will wrinkles his nose a little at the word, “it made you freak out. Why? And why didn’t you just ask me directly?”
Mike tips his head back to look up at the ceiling, fingers tapping restlessly against his leg to let out some nervous energy. He sighs, but he can’t see a way out of this. “Because I thought this guy might be hurting you, and it bothered me. A lot. I mean, obviously, you saw those texts. And I thought that maybe you hadn’t told me on purpose, and that bothered me even more, and I kinda spiraled about the whole thing. So I tried to get everyone to help me figure out who it was–”
“And that’s why Max was asking me about Chance?” Will asks, and if Mike didn’t know better he’d say there was a hint of a smile playing over his lips.
Mike releases a breath. “Yeah.”
Will nods. He glances away, an odd look of concentration flitting over his face, like he’s thinking about something. When he looks back, his expression has shifted again, something in his eyes that Mike can’t quite place. He takes another step closer, until he has to tilt his head up to look in Mike’s eyes.
“I’m not dating Chance,” he says softly. “Or talking to him, or whatever. Would… would that bother you, too? If I was?”
Mike’s face tightens uncomfortably, and once again, he’s cornered. He can’t lie, not when Will is looking up at him like this with those big eyes.
“Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah, it would. And I– look, I know I don’t have the right to say that, and I know it’s totally overstepping boundaries or whatever, but every time I think about that guy, I just, like, see red, Will. I know you haven’t dated anyone yet, and I know you want to, and that’s fine, but Chance is a total douchebag, and I don’t think it should be him.”
For a moment, Will doesn’t say anything, just lets that settle between them. He tilts his head, looking Mike straight in the eye. Suddenly Mike feels like it’s both very hot and very cold at the same time in their dorm, and he doesn’t know if that’s to do with the draft or the mold, and his hands are getting clammy, and his heart is beating all the way in his throat– is that supposed to be a symptom of mold poisoning, too, or–
“Then who should it be, Mike?” Will asks quietly, the words barely audible in the space between them.
“I– I don’t know,” Mike says, and he knows he’s talking too fast, but he can’t seem to stop, “but not Chance, and not any of these other guys, either, because– I think it should be someone you know better, who– who has more in common with you, and really cares about you and– and who’s gonna treat you right–”
Mike gets cut off midsentence by the press of Will’s lips against his.
The kiss is chaste, a little clumsy, and so quick that he’s hardly even realized it’s happening before Will is pulling away. Though realized might be a bit of a stretch, because Mike’s brain completely shuts off the instant they make contact. It feels a little like when he was a kid and stuck his fingers in a power outlet when his mom wasn’t looking; he’s hardly even in control of his muscles, his face going slack with shock, mouth falling open involuntarily.
Will sees whatever the look on his face is and freezes. He stumbles backwards, his expression falling.
“Oh,” Will chokes out. His eyes are huge and horrified. His words spill over each other, knocking clumsily. “Oh my god. I thought– because of Christmas, and you asking me all those questions about my type and all those things you just said, and this whole week you’ve been acting like– I mean, yesterday you said it was a date and then we watched a rom-com and I– oh god, I can’t believe I did that, I’m so–”
But Mike doesn’t hear the rest of what he says, because his brain has managed to give one final surge of power to deliver a series of realizations.
Realization #1: The Instagram reel did mean something, as did the Spotify playlist.
Realization #2: Mike Wheeler himself, as it turns out, is the man who has been unknowingly putting Will Byers through that so-called gut-wrenching situationship this whole entire time.
Realization #3: Mike has never seen his best friend look so utterly crestfallen and mortified before, and he never wants to put that look on Will’s face ever again as long as he lives.
So Mike does the only reasonable thing there is to do to solve that problem, really, and incidentally the thing he’s been suppressing his incessant desire for since at least eighth grade.
He steps forward, takes Will’s face in his hands, and kisses him back.
・・・・・
Will 💛🌟🔮
Attachment: 1 Image
hard launch?
Lucas
HOLY SHIT
El 💜🦋
OMG NO WAY
I’m so happy for you guys!!
Dustin
WHAT
DUDE
El 💜🦋
I thought I would have to do some psychic interference if this went on any longer!
Dustin
Wait
Is this real?
Are you guys pranking us?
Mike
Definitely not a prank
Hey El wdym psychic interference
El 💜🦋
Don't worry about it! 😊
Maxine 👎
UM
HANG ON
PAUSE
Lucas
fucking FINALLY
war is over 🙏🙏
Dustin
I think
I missed a few chapters
Maxine 👎
dustin you’ve missed a whole ass novel but we don’t have time for that rn
WILL
CALL ME
CALL ME NOW
El 💜🦋
Call me too!!
Will 💛🌟🔮
tomorrow :)
Maxine 👎
WITHOUT MIKE IN THE ROOM
Mike
??
Hello?
Maxine 👎
oh don’t worry wheeler
you’ll be subject to interrogation next
literally WHAT could have POSSIBLY happened in the seven hours since we last spoke
but that’s got to happen second bc no offense but i’ve been wanting this for will a lot longer
Mike
Wait what do you mean
Did you know Will liked me?
Maxine 👎
i think everyone here has known for a hot minute that you guys like each other
personally i called it since halloween of eighth grade
Dustin
Wait
WHAT?
Maxine 👎
ok besides dustin apparently
Mike
Hang on
If you knew then why did you guys let me go on that wild goose chase with Chance?
Maxine 👎
bc you were deep in the trenches of denial and i wasn’t going to spill will’s secret??
also i was bored so there’s that
Lucas
mike
i have literally dropped as many hints as i felt morally comfortable with over the past few months
you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink
El 💜🦋
I’ve never heard that one before
Mike is the horse?
Lucas
exactly
El 💜🦋
Yes that makes sense
Mike
Shut up no I’m not
Max
Dude
He’s STILL messaging me about the Jordans
Will 💛🌟🔮
???
Maxine 👎
LMFAOOO that’s hilarious actually
hey you’re still the one who lost your shit over will liking an instagram reel
i’m not taking responsibility for any of this
Mike
I did not lose my shit
That’s not an accurate description
Lucas
no i second this
bro was seething 😂
Will 💛🌟🔮
HAHA
aww
Maxine 👎
is it aww tho…
Mike
Screw you guys
Obviously it all worked out in the end ok
You’re just mad I bagged a 10
😛
Maxine 👎
oh boy
i just got the ick
Will did that not just give you the ick
Will 💛🌟🔮
michael…
Mike
Sorry Will :-(
Lucas
ayy join the club mike 😛
Mike
ayy 😛
El 💜🦋
😛
This is fun!
Maxine 👎
nooo el don’t let them get you too 😭
lucas if you use that emoji ever again i’m deadass breaking up with you
Lucas
/j? 😆
Maxine 👎
no.
/srs.
Lucas
☹️
Mike
Ok my boyfriend is telling me to get off my phone now
Talk to you guys later
Dustin
BOYFRIEND?
Jeez I am so out of the loop
Maxine 👎
oh will we are having a LONG debrief tomorrow