Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Bad Boyfriend
Vecna had torn Hawkins in half. The air tasted like chemicals and ash. Schools shut down so families could crowd into gymnasiums for safety, and soldiers patrolled the streets like the world had tilted just past survivable. Everything was wrong; Hawkins broken open, futures suspended, danger lingering like a storm cloud refusing to pass.
But Mike Wheeler wasn’t complaining.
His days were overfull, helping Hopper and El fix up the cabin, volunteering at the high school, spending hours buried in research with Dustin, Lucas, Nancy, and Jonathan as they tried to shape the crawl into something that didn’t look like a suicide mission. There was always work to do, plans to mend, fears to swallow. He didn’t spend much time at the cabin with El; his mom was paranoid about the lockdown, and Mike was already pushing curfew every night for planning sessions. He would sometimes skip school if there was an important meeting, because communicating on telephones would be plain stupidity; they needed to figure out a way to talk to each other.
And yet, none of it felt as heavy as it should have, because two months ago the Byers had moved in with the Wheelers.
Everything became easier after that.
Mike had (loudly and repeatedly) insisted on sharing his room with Will, an idea vetoed immediately by the parental committee. But the rejection didn’t matter; the boys still wound up in Mike’s room every night anyway. After school, Will migrated to Mike’s room as naturally as breathing. At night, he staged a dramatic return to the basement, only to circle quietly back once the house settled into silence.They’d sprawl across Mike’s bed long after lights-out, reading books to plan the missions (of course) or talking about everything and nothing in the soft, drifting way conversations go when both people are fighting sleep but don’t want the night to end. The only witnesses were Nancy and Jonathan, who had no moral ground to stand on because Nancy slipped down to the basement just as often. It was a perfect balance in its own strange way: Nancy got nights with her boyfriend, and Mike got… well. Mike got Will, his best friend. Regularly.
“Your lamp buzzes,” Will said one night, tapping the bedside table with his knuckle. They were sitting on the bed, tucked in the blanket, reading a comic Mike insisted would change Will’s life.
“No it doesn’t. Now pay attention, an important scene is coming up.”
Will clicked on his tongue. “It absolutely does. It’s like—” Will made a faint static sound.
Mike snorted, resting the comic on his lap. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You asked,” Will said, nudging his socked foot lightly against Mike’s in a casual-automatic way.
"I didn't." Mike didn’t move his leg away. “And,” Mike said, “if it bothers you, you could bring one of your lamps.”
“I have no lamps, remember the time when we fled from my home because the government won’t leave us alone? You were there.”
“Compared to this trashy lamp?” Mike bumped his knee with Will’s. “Jonathan and you can probably make better things. In fact, I need more paintings for my room too.”
Will went silent for a few seconds at the mention of the painting, then huffed a quiet laugh. “You just like having excuses to drag my stuff in here.”
Mike shrugged, eyes back on the comic. “You are literally my favorite artist. Who’s Picasso? I don’t know, I don’t care.”
Will paused before whispering, “Then maybe I’ll paint one for you.”
“Good,” Mike answered, a little too fast, then, more casual, “Yeah. Good.”
They fell into silence again. And without thinking, Mike shifted so their shoulders rested against each other. He just kept reading, steady and easy beside Will before speaking. “You’re paying attention, right? Look at that speech bubble, it’s very important.”
A sleepover that never really had a beginning or an end. And in a world cracked open by monsters and military checkpoints, that small, secret constant kept Mike warm in a way he didn’t examine too closely.
It all changed when one day, El said, “Mike, we need to talk.”
In all sincerity, it began before that. But for the sake of Mike’s sanity, for the sake of pretending he hadn’t sensed the slow tectonic drift between them, let’s acquiesce it catalyzed there. With those five words.
Fucking finally, Mike had thought in relief, not being able to predict the downhill nature of the conversation. He’d been meaning to talk to El for a while now, but she would manage to avoid the conversation every single time Mike tried to talk.
It’d been two months since El and Hopper settled back in their cabin. Two months since Max went into a coma, and Eddie died, Vecna lost (kind of), but decided to disappear in the depths of his own hell. Two months of El’s friends and family throwing themselves into recovery efforts; handing out supplies, rebuilding what they could, until the government imposed a full lockdown. El, for all her power, could do nothing except hide. Hide in a wooden cabin or in damp tunnels, pacing like a caged storm with nowhere to break open, her chest tight with the slow-burn pressure of vengeance she wasn’t allowed to enact. Every day that passed, the weight inside her only grew heavier. Two months was barely a cooldown for everyone, barely a moment to breathe, to process, because now they were supposed to be the heroes again. They were supposed to hunt Vecna, and concoct plans, and risk everything, and pretend that everything was normal again. In the middle of all of this, in the middle of wanting to rummage and kill Vecna with her bare hands, in the middle of feeling the pressure of the world’s well-being on herself, El couldn’t bring herself to think about something she’d been avoiding.
But now, it was ineluctable.
She did not want to kiss Mike.
She hadn’t wanted to kiss Mike in a long time, not in the way she was supposed to, not in the way that made her chest warm instead of heavy.
Which was very confusing, because she still wanted to share every thought she had with him, laugh at his stupid antics, and hang out with him. But she also wanted, more than anything, to do the same with Max, and it was driving her insane that she couldn't. Or to do the same with Will, Lucas, and Dustin, for that matter, like they used to—back when they didn’t know about Vecna and they weren’t always on the verge of a crisis.
She had realized so much more in the past two months.
For starters, she hated when she didn’t pick her own clothes. She hated the bangs she used to have. She hated D&D, or anything fictional that involved monsters who looked like, or had the names of the ones she fought. She hated that Max couldn't advise her on which colors went with her, or on her current situation with Mike. And she hated pretending that she and Mike were fine, because they weren’t.
It was the little things at first. In the summer when she and Max became friends and she dumped Mike for the very first time, she realized there was a world beyond Mike—who still was one of the best people she had ever met, but that did not mean her world must revolve around him. The world was so big, full of comics about women who beat people up, and colorful makeup, and bright clothes, and ice cream with a hundred different flavors, and music that Hop and Mike hated, and the fact that dancing with your girl friends was so much more better, and… she couldn’t even remember them all; the vastness of the world that overwhelmed her. That same summer, she noticed the difference between Mike as a friend and Mike as her boyfriend. Friend-Mike was truthful to her; for him, all his friends were equally important—well, all except Will, maybe. Will was always a bit more special to Mike. But then he became boyfriend-Mike, and… something was supposed to change. She didn’t know much about relationships; all she’d seen were the couples on TV, and Lucas and Max. But she knew boyfriend-Mike was supposed to be much more than them making out all the time. If she loved Mike, then wasn’t he supposed to love her too? Wasn’t he supposed to be smitten by her? Wasn’t he supposed to beg for forgiveness after getting dumped? That’s what TV couples did: cry, declare love, chase each other dramatically through airports. Wasn’t she supposed to feel bad that he wasn’t doing anything he was supposed to?
Then Hop disappeared, and she moved away with the Byers, which just worsened everything. She forgot everything about her summer realization, and went back to Mike, accepting their relationship as it was, for he was her source of comfort. He was the first person to show her kindness, and he would always be someone she wanted to talk to whenever she was down. Yet, parts of their relationship bugged her in the back of her mind. She started to wonder what if she only loved Mike just a bit extra because he was her first ever friend? She knew for a fact that she also loved her other friends, and was much closer to Mike in a sense Dustin was closer to Steve than the rest of the party. Then… why was she exhausting herself fighting with Mike because he couldn’t say “I love you”? She wouldn’t want any of her other friends to profess their love for her all the time, she only wanted Mike to say it because he was supposed to say it. He was her boyfriend, and if he didn’t love her, then who would? It did not make sense. She fought with him because he was boyfriend-Mike, and he was supposed to bring her flowers, and treat her nicely, and kiss her, and tell her that he loved her. But he really couldn’t adjust to the boyfriend-Mike role, and she wanted nothing but her old friend-Mike back, the Mike who loved her and was vocal about it. She did not want to fight with him. She just wanted to have fun with him at Rink-O-Mania, and show him her project, and laugh with him because she missed him.
It was so obvious that he wanted to be friend-Mike too. The only things they did after becoming a couple were make out and fight, and both of those things weren’t so hard to give up if it meant going back to the fun times she’d had with Mike.
She did not want to do this anymore. She wanted her first, and best friend back.
“What is it, El?” Mike asked, looking up from the map he was reading.
El took a deep breath and shifted closer to him on her bed. “It’s about you and me.”
Mike’s brows creased. He waited for her to continue.
“I want to break up.”
At that, he sat up straight, his eyes widening. ‘Break up? What— How—”
“I’ll explain,” she interrupted him with the straight face she usually had. “I don’t want to kiss you anymore.”
Mike felt his face getting hot. “Huh? You don’t want to kiss— El, what does that even mean?” He asked, confused out of his mind.
She stared at him with wide eyes. She really thought she’d want to cry while saying this, but she did not feel sad at all. “Let’s break up, please,” she insisted again.
He kept his map aside on the bed, and rubbed his forehead. “Is this about when you lived away? Is this about those letters?”
She shook her head. “This is about us. I don’t like to be in a relationship with you. I want to be friends.”
“But we are friends,” he said, throwing his hands in the air. “But we’re also boyfriend and girlfriend, that’s a bonus! It’s good!”
She shook her head again. “No. It sucks. We fight, and you don’t love me, and I don’t love you.”
Mike leaned back. “You…you don’t love me anymore?”
“Not boyfriend-Mike.” She took his hand in hers. “I love friend-Mike. This is hard, Mike. I love you…but I don’t want to be your girlfriend. I don’t want a boyfriend. Maybe ever. I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t know that yet.”
The world spinned around Mike.
“Plus,” El continued. “I want to train myself. I want to practice outside, I just have to convince Hop to let me do it. Have him com-promise.”
He knew that his inability to profess his love was one of the reasons El wanted to break up, yet he couldn’t say it to save his relationship.
When El and he became a couple, Mike was relieved. For him, it felt like a task was checked off the list, and he wouldn’t have to worry about girlfriends anymore, which would allow him to focus on other stuff he enjoyed. El and him were supposed to be forever. So why wasn’t he feeling the ever so famous pain of a heartbreak? He’d heard that breakups hurt the most, that after a breakup, people felt heaviness in their chests, hollowness in their stomachs. That people cried for weeks, and didn’t take showers, and started smoking cigarettes. That people grew desperate to try to win their partner back, and angry at their partners for refusing to be with them.
Mike, on the other hand, could not feel it.
He was supposed to feel the ache in his throat, and buzz in his head, and he was supposed to have tears in his eyes while he begged El to not leave him. Why couldn’t he just do that like a normal person?
Instead, he nodded and said, “I understand.”
El took a breath of relief, a biggest smile spreading on her lips. “Are you sure you will be okay?”
Mike pursed his lips in a small smile, and nodded. “I think so.”
Hearing that, El jumped towards him and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you, Mike!”
He embraced her back. “Jeez, El, I was so bad that you have to thank me for agreeing to break up?” He couldn’t help but smile as he joked.
It was so weird, like a weight was lifted from both of their shoulders.
El giggled. “You are a good friend, Mike.”
Mike smiled. “And a bad boyfriend, I’m guessing?”
She froze at the statement before breaking the hug. She leaned back and settled back on the bed, her hands sliding down from Mike’s shoulders to his palms so she could hold them.
“About that…”
Mike stomped inside the Wheeler house with the steps of a bigfoot, making loud thumps and huffing with a red face.
“Oh, you’re back,” Karen addressed him when he passed the dining area, but he could not make himself meet his eyes with his mother at this moment.
“Huh. I forgot what you looked like in daylight,” Ted commented somewhere from the sofa.
“Give them a break, Ted…”
His parents’ argument faded away as he stomped up the stairs.
When he opened the door, he froze.
Will was laying on his bed, a bunch of maps sprawled across the mattress. He looked up at him, the late-afternoon light catching in his eyes, turning them impossibly bright. “Oh, hey! I thought you would be staying at the cabin till the evening.”
Mike felt his face getting hot again, but for a completely different reason.
“I–I thought you were at Dustin’s for the frequency test?” Mike managed to say.
Will sat up, making space for Mike to sit in front of him. “Yeah, I was. But the system overloaded, and suddenly the lights were out. Mrs. Henderson was convinced it was the military. There was no point in staying anyways. We’re thinking of testing it at middle-school tomorrow. The AV room.”
Mike swallowed, trying to control his breaths. He somehow had to get through this conversation without having a creashout over what El said. “Uh…yeah, man. But it’s medical- checkup-monday tomorrow.”
A smirk stretched on Will’s lips. “As if we have never broken the rules.”
Taking long, deep breaths, Mike gave his best shot at pretending to laugh. It was so hot in this room that his brain felt foggy.
Why wasn’t Will leaving the room? Mike was a breath away from losing it.
Will took that breath, and Will’s chest rose and fell, and his cheeks were rosy pink, and his lips were moist and glowy, and why did El have to mess with Mike like this?
Why couldn’t she break up with him as normal girlfriends do? Instead, she requested they stay friends, and the moment he agreed, she did the most ‘friend’ thing that can ever be done, and now Mike was losing his mind.
What did she say?
“About that... I don’t think you are meant to be a boyfriend. Not to a girl.” She had said, which was the biggest slap on Mike’s face.
A real, heavy silence took over. Mike didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. The words hit him too accurately. His chest dropped, an instinctive recognition he shoved down so hard it hurt. Then the panic hit.
Not to a girl? Who else was he even supposed to be a good boyfriend to anyways? A boy?
“What are you talking about?!” He had almost yelled at El.
El didn’t flinch. She actually smiled, but it was small and kind. “I’m not being mean. I just…see things.”
The horror that appeared on Mike’s face did not help him deny any allegations.
“You thought about him, didn’t you?” She asked, poking Mike’s cheek playfully.
His entire body recoiled. A flash of Will’s smile, which was absolutely traitorous and uninvited, shot through his mind and made his stomach twist.
“What—do you want me to date Will?! El, none of us are ga–” he blurted, and immediately winced.
“Never said a name,” El smiled apologetically.
“Oh my God, you’re being insane right now, you know?” He stood up, collecting his maps and stuffing them in his bag. “Absolutely. Insane! You do not know what you’re talking about! Stop it, I’m serious!”
“Don’t yell, Mike! The military is after me, remember?” she said calmly.
“I’m not yelling!” Mike yelled. “I do not like Will! And now I’m gonna go! Good luck getting bored all by yourself while Hopper and Joyce come back at night!” He stomped out of her room.
“Shut the front door!” El yelled before he exited the house. Despite being pissed out of his mind, he gently closed the door, swung his leg on his bike, and pedalled aggressively, as if a demo was chasing him.
Stupid El, he thought the whole way. Stupid, perceptive, impossible El.
Mike? With a boy? Romantically? What was she even thinking?
Mike was never into boys, and he would never be into boys. That was a fact. Mike knew what he wanted, he always knew. His mom and dad had been talking about it forever! A girl who loved him, and whom he loved. He was supposed to start a family together, have a job, buy a house, get married, have kids, perhaps a pet. He’d known this his entire life. He’d fought enough battles with monsters, this was a battle he wanted to surrender before giving a fight. El was wrong. Because no. No, no, no, no. Mike strictly liked girls, and that was the end of the conversation.
But when Will looked at Mike with his wide eyes and parted lips, Mike wanted to punch his own stomach so the tickles would give him a rest.
“I was thinking,” Will said, leaning closer to Mike when Mike sat down. “We should do a sleepover at Dustin’s soon.”
Mike’s breath hitched. He cleared his throat. “Why?”
Will shrugged. “I know all of you were close to Eddie, but I felt that Dustin was affected the most by his death.” Mike really couldn't pay full attention. “And Steve is busy looking for jobs with Robin. We don’t hang out as a group outside of school, except maybe when we’re planning for crawls. You and I are usually together—” Mike’s stomach flipped. Will and him were together all the time. He saw Will’s face more than he saw his family’s. “Because I'm staying with you. Besides, we have our siblings with us. Even Lucas has Erica, and he lives next to us. But Dustin is a bit more alone than the rest of us. I think he needs support.”
Will was right. He nodded. “Dustin has been growing his hair like Eddie.”
“Yeah. And, I don’t know, but I think he acts like he’s fine, but… I can tell.”
Mike’s chest was full. The boy who was called sensitive, timid, and queer his whole life had a heart much bigger than Mike himself. “How do you have so much kindness in you, Will?” he murmured.
“What?” Will blinked, his rosy cheeks flushing to a deeper shade of pink.
“Wh–” Oh, shit, he said that out loud. “What?” He cleared his throat. “I just–I just mean that you’re, like, super awesome for being, you know? So empathetic and stuff…”
Will scratched his cheek, looking over his shoulders. “You help a lot.”
Mike tried to take a couple of quick breaths. There was something wrong with his lungs. “I do?”
“Yeah.” Will looked at him. He swore at himself when that familiar feeling washed over Mike again; the quiet pull that Will always seemed to carry with him, something steady and gentle but strong enough to drag Mike along before he even realized he was moving. Someone slap me right now. “When people trust in me…” WIll said, “I have hope. And I get strength. Not a lot of people trust me to stay strong…but you do.”
All Mike could do was smile weakly. “What–” He cleared his throat. “What did you do for the rest of the afternoon, then?”
Will’s face it up, and he leaned in closer in excitement. “You know I thought of a painting today, inspired by the night lamp by your bed…”
Mike’s breath stumbled in his chest. He didn’t understand the feeling, but some part of him did, the part he kept shoving down and shoving down because he wasn’t ready to let it take shape. A thought trying to bloom that he kept crushing between his palms.
He dropped his gaze first, heat flickering up his neck.
He tried to ground himself, tried to think of anything, anything, anything except the awareness of how close Will was (he was sitting at a normal distance from Mike), except the shape of Will’s mouth when he spoke (He was speaking something about his painting idea, but Mike really couldn’t focus). Maybe if he counted to ten, he could shake off whatever the hell this was instead of staring at Will’s lips like some sort of creep.
One… two… three… four…
When he lifted his eyes again, Will’s eyes were still on him, he was still talking, and he looked so alive.
Five… six—
Mike’s pulse thudded hard enough that the numbers broke apart in his head. The air felt too thin, his chest too tight, everything tilting just slightly off-center around the curve of Will’s smile.
God.
Fuck.
How would he share the room with Will tonight?
El, what the fuck did you do?
Mike did not want to leave the bathroom. What if he took the longest shower in recorded human history and stayed in here forever, and never had to walk into his bedroom where, like every night, Will would eventually slip in after lights-out?
He stood in front of the mirror (the steam from the hot shower fogging it up), towel low on his hips, hair sticking out in every direction. This was going to be a disaster of a night. It wasn’t like he could ask Nancy to sleep in her own damn room, or Jonathan could sneak into Nancy’s for once just so Will could reclaim the basement. She’d interrogate him until he was bones. What was he supposed to say?
Hey, Nancy, can you sleep downstairs? Because apparently my face heats up every time I look at Will now? And it’s been happening way before El said anything? Yeah, totally normal behavior, right?
Nancy Freaking Drew (a name he couldn’t dare to tease her with yet) would read him like a pamphlet. And how was he supposed to tell Will they had to sleep separately without Will thinking it meant Mike hated him? He couldn’t. He literally couldn’t.
A sudden barrage of knocks nearly made him bite his tongue.
“Mike!” Nancy yelled. “Come out!”
“Hold it, will ya?!” he shot back, voice cracking.
“What are you even doing in there? Don’t walk out with fart-smell—”
“Sut up, Nancy!” What the fuck? What if Will heard that? Or Mrs. Byers?
“Dickhead.” He heard Nancy groan on the other side of the door before her footsteps faded away.
He threw his head back, groaning. “I’m so fucked…” he murmured.
The door knob twisted again, and his anger bubbled up like lava. “Nancy, I swear to God I’m gonna—”
“Oh, I didn’t know it was occupied,” came Will’s voice. “Sorry…”
Mike’s heart went into defibrillation.
“No, wait!” Mike blurted. “You…you need to use it?”
There was a silence on the other side of the door before Will laughed under his breath. “I mean… yeah,” Will said. “But you don’t have to rush. Just come out when—”
Mike swung the door open faster than Will could finish his sentence, faster than he could think, or breathe. He didn’t realize how close Will was standing to the door, because now that was exactly how close Will was standing to Mike. The steam from the bathroom floated from behind Mike to Will.
Will froze, eyes snapping away from Mike, ears going scarlet. Mike looked down and realized he was still just in a towel.
“I— uh—” Mike pointed behind him like an idiot. “Clothes. Just. Gimme a sec.”
He ducked back inside, grabbed the fistful of clothes, and bolted out into the hallway like it was on fire.
Will passed him with equal speed, avoiding eye contact, shutting the bathroom door behind him.
Mike stood there in the hallway, clothes clutched to his chest, ready to dissolve into the drywall.
“A real dickhead, aren’t you?” Nancy’s voice floated from her doorway. He whipped around. She was leaning against her doorframe, arms crossed, eyebrows arched in judgment. “I literally begged you to come out.”
“Not now, Nance,” Mike said, grunting. He walked towards his room, cursing himself.
But, why was he on edge about this? He thought to himself, getting under the covers after he was dressed in loose sweats. It was just Will. He’d known Will all his life, hell, he couldn’t even recall a time when he didn’t know Will. He knew Will almost as long as Lucas, and he was absolutely, completely fine around Lucas. Lucas was like a brother to Mike, a brother he never had. So was Will…
Even thinking about that made his stomach twist.
Okay. Maybe Will wasn’t… brother material. Maybe Will was more… best-friend-shaped. Yeah. That made sense. Perfect sense. There were limits to how many “brothers” someone could have anyway. He already had two sisters, and now Dustin and Lucas being his two brothers, there was no need for another. Will was perfect as a best friend.
He’d had so many sleepovers with Lucas and Dustin and Will over the years that the concept should have been muscle memory by now. He’d had solo sleepovers with Will, too, so many that Mike had lost count. Jonathan used to drive Will over whenever Lonnie showed up unannounced, and those nights had always been easy.
They would camp out in the basement with their sleeping bags overlapping, determined to stay awake until dawn and failing every time. They’d talk about new campaigns until their imaginations blurred into delirium. Mike would read comics out loud in dramatic voices until Will laughed so hard he had to put his hands over his face. Sometimes Will wandered off into his own world, sitting cross-legged with colors or charcoal while Mike hovered nearby, enchanted without understanding why. He’d ask too many questions, like What are you drawing? Why that color? How do you make the shadows look real? while Will always answered them patiently as if he didn’t mind being watched so closely.
It used to be effortless. Sharing a room with Will should have been the easiest thing in the world, the one constant that had never failed him, and it was even now. But lately, his body had started reacting every time Will climbed into his space, every time their shoulders brushed, every time Will looked at him too long or smiled too softly.
It was ridiculous. It was just Will.
Just Will, his… best friend. Just Will, whom he’d known forever.
So why did his heart act like it was discovering him for the first time? Why was something that had always been normal suddenly impossible to breathe through?
Why, in God’s name, was he freaking out now?
It was just Will. His best friend. His… best friend.
Repeating it did nothing to steady him.