Chapter Text
If you had asked Mike Wheeler what his ideal version of life looked at 16, he would say it was this.
Vecna is long gone, all of his friends are alive and thriving, he’s in New York City pursuing his English degree (despite judgement from his dad), and most importantly, Will is his roommate. He gets to wake up and spend every day with his best friend of over a decade. When Will had decided to go to NYU with Jonathan, it only seemed right that Mike followed suit. If their friendship could survive monsters, fake deaths and some evil, power obsessed prick, then having college be the thing to split them up just didn’t seem right. As far as Mike was concerned, he and Will were a packaged deal. It worked out almost perfectly. Hopper and Joyce moved to Montauk not long after the start of their Freshman year, and El joined them after she finished her year-long backpacking trip through Europe.
Sure, it’s not always easy. Apartments in New York aren’t cheap as it is, and their two bedroom shoebox requires them both to work part-time jobs so they’re able to afford rent. Despite the fact that they’re only a couple hours away by train, he constantly misses Dustin, Lucas and Max. But it’s an adventure, and it’s home, and it’s with Will. What more could Mike want, really?
His last class had ended early that day and he wasn’t scheduled to work his shift at the comic book store until the next morning, so he headed back towards the apartment, determined to finish an essay for one of his classes before Will got back.
His sudden motivation lasted for all of 15 minutes before he gave up and crashed on the couch. The transition back into classes after a break always leaves Mike needing to push himself harder to finish any of his classwork. He’s still caught in that fuzzy place in between sleep and awake when their front door opens. He listens as Will’s footsteps get closer, till he drops onto the couch next to where Mike’s head is laying with a sigh.
Mike cracks his eyes open to glance up at Will. “Long day?”
This has become one of Mike’s favorite rituals of theirs. He knows it’s probably stupid that the best part of his night is when Will gets home and they tell each other a full recount of their entire day, start to finish, but, after years of always being in a rush to find solutions to interdimensional problems, Mike enjoys these slower moments—especially when they’re happening with Will.
“Yeah,” Will sighs again, his hands coming to rub at his eyes. “Do you remember that guy I was telling you about? The one in my Art History class?”
“Um yeah, his names…” Mike trails off, trying to pretend like he doesn’t remember the exact day, hour, and minute that Will let him in on his crush on this guy. “Petey?”
“Peter,” Will corrects.
Mike likes that Will feels comfortable enough to talk with him about things like this. When Will first came out, Mike had worried that it would be awkward. That they would never get to have those conversations about crushes and love interests like he did with Lucas and Dustin. But the longer they’ve been out of Hawkins, the more comfortable Will has become with being open about his sexuality, and Mike thinks it’s the most amazing thing ever—even if it sometimes leaves a strange feeling deep in his gut to hear about Will’s potential prospects.
“Right, right. Great guy.”
“You’ve never even met him.”
“Well no,” Mike draws the last letter out for longer than necessary. “But you like him, so he must be doing something right.”
The smile on Will’s face vanishes, quickly replaced with a grimace as he sighs again, sinking deeper into the couch. “Yeah, well that’s the thing. I think he may like me back, but he refuses to actually ask me out, and I can’t tell if he’s really flirting with me or not.”
“Is he— you know? Gay?” The words sound almost hesitant as Mike tries to find the right way to say it.
“I don’t know,” Will says, and he has that look on his face that causes his eyebrows to scrunch up. “Maybe? I think so. But it’s not really like I can just walk up to him and be all, ‘Hey, do you also like kissing boys? Wanna get together sometime?”
Mike laughs, his lips quirking up in a playful smirk. “Wow, we really need to work on your flirting skills.”
“My flirting skills are great, thank you very much,” Will grins, shoving Mike's shoulder back against the couch.
“Okay Casanova, why don’t you ask him out then?”
Will’s eyes fall to his lap as he begins twisting his fingers—a nervous habit of his that he’s had since they were kids. “It doesn’t work like that. I mean I know we’re out of Hawkins, and it’s much easier to be open here, but accidentally asking out a straight guy is still so humiliating.”
Mike hates that even now, Will still has to be careful. Even after leaving Hawkins and moving to New York, Will has that added pressure when it comes to asking people out. It’s vastly different for Mike. He could go out and ask any girl out without fear of being judged for who he was. Fear of rejection, definitely. But not the same kind that Will faces.
Not that Mike would even want to try and ask a girl out. He had tried his hand at dating when they first moved to college. It had been a few years after the breakup with El, and he had assumed he had been ready to put himself back out there. Apparently he had been wrong. It’s not that all of his dates had been absolute disasters, but they definitely hadn’t been successes either. After a couple bad hookups that ended in him being promptly kicked out almost immediately after, Mike had decided to make peace with the fact that he might just die single.
“You need a way to figure it out for sure. Like make him jealous or something,” Mike suggests.
“Yeah, right,” Will scoffs. “How am I supposed to make him jealous? You were literally just making fun of my flirting skills.”
Mike shrugs, wracking his brain for any useful information he has on gay dating, or dating in general. “You could pretend like you’re dating someone else.”
The only response this earns is an eyebrow raise, so Mike continues on with his explanation. “We had to read this book for my creative writing class, and this girl had a huge crush on a guy, but she didn’t know whether or not he liked her back, so she got this other guy to pretend to be her boyfriend. It totally made the first guy jealous and he realized he liked her and asked her out.”
“What are they having you read in that class?” Will asks.
“It’s fake dating, Will,” Mike waves his hands around as he tries to make his point. “It’s a very popular trope.”
Will snorts, his nose crinkling as his hand flies up to cover his mouth. “Oh my god, you know way too much about fake dating and tropes.”
“Whatever,” Mike rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “You can't tell me it’s not a somewhat good idea. If he saw you with someone else you’d probably be able to tell whether or not it bothers him.”
“Where am I supposed to find some guy willing to pretend to be my boyfriend just to see if I can make someone else jealous?” Will asks.
Mike didn’t really think that part through. In theory, it’s a good idea for a book, but it definitely seems much harder to put into practice. And while he’s sure that it would probably work, Will does have a point. He can’t really trick some poor sad sap into being his pretend boyfriend. Mike is just about to suggest they look for a new idea when a light-bulb goes off in his head.
“I could do it.”
Mike thinks that if Will’s eyes went any wider they would’ve popped out of his skull.
“What?” His words come out sounding half choked.
“I could pretend to be your boyfriend,” Mike shrugs. His voice has a layer of casualness to it that almost shocks him, considering all of his confidence in this plan has been steadily removed by the look on Will’s face.
“You don’t want to do that,” Will’s voice has gone quieter, reasoning.
“What's wrong, Byers? Am I not good enough to be your fake boyfriend?” The smirk has returned to Mike’s face, and he watches as Will’s lips move to form his own slow smile.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Will says. “I just meant like, wouldn’t it be, um- weird?”
“Why would it be weird?” Mike frowns in confusion.
Will fixes Mike with a look of exasperation, clearly trying to insinuate that Mike should understand why it might be weird.
“Because you’re straight, Mike.”
Oh, right. That. The thought hadn’t really crossed Mike’s mind when he suggested this. He and Will are best friends, basically attached at the hip ever since they moved to New York. They already do everything together, so it wouldn’t be too unbelievable to someone random that they could be dating. And it’s not like Mike necessarily dislikes the thought of others assuming they're boyfriends. It shouldn’t be weird, it was just Will.
“I mean yeah, but-” Mike cuts himself short, having trouble trying to articulate his thoughts. “Peter doesn’t know that. And it’s not like we’d actually be dating, Will. This is just friends helping friends.”
Will stays quiet, and Mike can practically hear the cogs turning in his head as he weighs the pros and cons.
“What would this whole fake-dating thing look like?” he finally asks.
Mike couldn’t help the smile that overtook his face, pleased with himself that he was able to get Will to at least consider one of his schemes.
“I could pick you up from your Art History class. That’s the one you have with him, right?”
Will nods.
“And maybe I could like, I don’t know. Hold your hand or something. Just to really sell it.”
“Do you really think that would work?” Will’s voice is hesitant.
“Yeah, totally! It worked in the book at least.” Mike chooses to leave out the part where the girl and said fake boyfriend actually fall in love. It seems like irrelevant information, and it’s not like any of that would actually apply to Mike and Will’s situation anyway.
Will nods again, eyebrows still scrunched in thought, and Mike can see the exact moment he decides to take part in Mike’s plan. “Yeah, why not? I mean the worst that can happen is I find out he doesn’t like me.”
“Perfect! I’ll pick you up tomorrow then, babe,” Mike wiggles his eyebrows at Will.
“Ew, Mike,” Will clutches his stomach as he laughs. “Do not call me that ever again.”
The reaction has Mike wanting to say it again, just to hear Will laugh harder. The sound never fails to make him feel so fucking giddy. He refrains himself, barely.
“Fine, fine. Whatever you say,” Mike holds his hands up in surrender.
Once their laughing dies down, the sound of Mike’s stomach growling cuts through the air of their small apartment.
“God, I’m starving. Wanna order in? We can watch a movie or something.”
Will mumbles a few words of agreement, standing up and walking to their kitchen to find the extensive collection of take out menus they’ve gathered over the last two years.
They end their night sprawled across the couch, cartons of Chinese food stacked on the coffee table in front of them while the TV drones on in the background of their conversation. They catch up on the rest of their days, trade jokes back and forth, and it hits Mike suddenly that this Peter guy is awfully lucky that someone like Will has a crush on him. If Will is half as good of a boyfriend as he is a best friend, then Mike is sure their fake dating plan will have Peter asking Will out in no time.
He takes the time to mentally note how proud of himself he is for helping Will with something like this. When they had first moved to New York and Will started getting attention from other guys, it always left Mike feeling a little upset. Not because Will is gay—never that. His chronic fear of Will replacing him with a new best friend made Mike almost sick, but after a few heated arguments that Lucas always scolded him for, he learned to manage it. Besides, it’s not like anyone could compete with the years of friendship and trauma they all share. In a fucked up way, it makes Mike kind of relieved that their close circle are the only ones who will ever really be able to understand each other like that.
Mike’s pulled out of his thoughts when Will laughs at something happening in whatever movie it was Will decided to put on tonight. Mike can almost feel the fondness written all over his face as he takes in Will’s form. He’s got his knees pulled up to his chest and a blanket wrapped around his entire body as he shovels lo mein into his mouth. The hair on the back of his head is messy, probably from leaning back against the couch cushions. Mike silently thanks whatever it was that led them here—that got all of the people he cares about out of Hawkins alive, that allows him to spend his time with his absolute best friend. They’ll never be able to shake away all of the sucky memories that godforsaken town gave them, but now they get to make new, better ones.
When they separate for the night, both heading to their respective rooms, Mike can’t help but stop Will outside of his doorway.
“Wha-” he can’t finish his sentence before Mike is wrapping his arms around Will, tugging him closer.
“I’m really glad that you’re okay, that we get to do this every night,” Mike breathes. He doesn’t have to explain the sudden emotional display, Will always gets what he means.
“Sap,” Will tries to sound teasing, but his voice holds just as many feelings as Mike’s does. “I’m really glad too.”
Mike nods, hugging Will for a few more seconds before stepping back and turning in the direction of his own room down the hall. “Goodnight, Will.”
“Goodnight, Mike.”
Mike shuts his bedroom door and collapses onto his squeaky mattress. The easy smile on his face is still there, even as he drifts off to sleep.
Mike hates whoever decided to make 8 a.m. college classes a thing. He can barely hold his eyes open as his professor drones on and on about different writing techniques and the significance of establishing a tone. He knows he should be listening, this is probably useful information for someone who’s pursuing a fucking English degree. Still, all he can think about is the exhaustion that pulls at the corners of his eyes and the fact that he still has a morning shift at the comic book store after this. Mike loves his job, he really does, but it’s a gloomy day and all he wants to do is curl up on the couch with Will and watch some crappy horror flicks for a few hours.
Shit. Will.
Mike was so tired he had almost forgotten about their plan for later this afternoon. Will’s Art History class ends at 3:30, only fifteen minutes after Mike’s shift ends. He's supposed to wait for Will outside, grab his hand, flirt a little, and Operation: Get Will a Boyfriend will be in full swing.
The rest of the day moves by slowly. That was Mike’s only class, so he heads to work a few minutes early. It’s the same routine as always. Some teenagers come in and don’t put any of the comics back on the correct shelves, leaving Mike to rearrange it all. Some middle aged guy who looks like he lives in his moms basement tries to give back a copy of X-Men that definitely doesn’t meet the requirements for the store's return policy. Mike doesn’t even attempt to hide his grimace when he takes the book from the man's hands and feels some sticky kind of residue covering the surface. He had spent the last half hour picking at the chipped black nail polish on his fingers before it was time for him to clock out. Mike speed walks to the building that Will’s class is in, and sees him already stepping out into the chilled January air when he finally gets there. A man who Mike assumes is Peter steps out after him, laughing at something Will had said.
“Mike!” Will walks towards him waving and it’s almost stupid how quickly Mike feels the stress of the day leave him. Peter follows Will, and they’re close enough now for Mike to get a better look at him. He’s a few inches shorter than Mike, and has dark curly hair that swoops across his forehead in an annoyingly perfect way. His skin is unreasonably tanned for it being winter, and his bright blue eyes make Mike feel like he’s staring into the soul of one of those creepy baby dolls that blink.
“Hey, Will. Did you have a good class?” Mike knows he doesn’t need to ask, Will will tell him all about it later. Still, it helps push the image of the attentive boyfriend that Mike is going for. His hand slips down to grab Will’s, intertwining their gloved fingers.
The tips of Will’s ears go pink, still surprised by the action even if they had talked about it beforehand. “Um- yeah.”
Mike turns towards Peter, reaching his free hand out. “I’m Mike, and you are..?”
Peter, who had been staring intently at Mike and Will’s locked hands, looks up and shakes Mike’s hand. “Peter.”
As soon as he provides Mike with his clipped greeting, he’s turning his full attention back towards Will. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
And wow, okay, that’s a bit of an asshole move in Mike’s opinion. Not only was his greeting anything but warm, but now he was staring at Will like he wanted to fucking swallow him or something. Mike did not like that.
“Yeah, it’s more of a recent development,” Will stammers a bit as he speaks, and Mike mentally notes that they need to work on Will’s acting skills.
Peter’s wide baby doll eyes dart between the two of them. “I see.”
Mike decides that this first interaction with Peter has gone on for far too long already, and he’s just ready to get Will home so they can go through their nightly routine.
“Well, we better get going, nice meeting you.” Mike starts to drag Will away before Peter stops them.
“Hey, one of my friends is throwing a party tomorrow night, you guys should come.” Peter says every word directed towards Will, and Mike instinctively tightens his grip on Will’s hand. “You know, starting off the second semester with a bang.”
“Oh, um,” Will lets out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know. Parties aren’t really our thing.”
Mike knows that Will is only telling half of the truth. Parties were Will’s thing. They had gone to a few at the start of their Freshman year, and it had taken Mike by complete surprise at just how in his element Will seemed. Shy, timid Will Byers had become popular. He laughed, he threw back a few drinks, he danced to whatever shitty music was playing. Mike had let Will continue to drag him along, happy to see his best friend so carefree. Until, what Dustin grimly referred to as Mike’s Green Monster Incident happened. It really wasn’t Mike’s fault…at first. One of Will’s friends had pulled him away for something, and after ten minutes had passed and Will hadn’t returned, Mike felt it was only right to try and find him. What he didn’t expect to find was Will pressed up against the kitchen counter with some strangers tongue down his throat.
Mike had completely blown up. It was one of the worst fights he and Will had ever had, which says a lot considering all of the arguments they’ve gotten into over the years. He knew it had been wrong, but Mike couldn’t help feeling like Will was going to replace his presence in his life. They didn’t speak for almost a whole week, and it took an insane amount of begging for Will to forgive Mike. After that, they had a talk about boundaries where Will assured Mike that they would always be best friends, no matter what. It made Mike feel much better, but he still can't shake the uneasy feeling he gets whenever he sees Will with another guy. Mike has worked relentlessly on the boundaries they had set, and has since then stayed home from the parties that Will attends.
But, Mike had promised to help Will secure a date with his crush. He’d even concocted this whole fake dating scheme. He can't let Will miss out on this just because of his own problems, it just wouldn’t be fair. This was his chance to prove to Will that he was taking their boundaries seriously.
“We’ll be there,” Mike nods, absolute. He doesn't miss the sideways glance that Will shoots him.
“Perfect!” Peter exclaims. He fishes a pen and sticky note out of his backpack, scribbling the address down before handing it to Will. “I’ll see you both tomorrow then. Bye, Will.”
Will pulls his and Mike’s hands away from each other as soon as Peter rounds the corner. “Oh my God! This might actually work!”
“I knew it would,” Mike grins at him, ignoring that sick feeling that was creeping back into his stomach. “O ye of little faith.”
Will laughs, rolling his eyes. “Don’t let it get to your head, Mike. This is one plan that could succeed out of millions of your failed ones.”
Mike holds a hand to his chest in fake hurt. “You wound me, Will.”
They start the long trek back to their apartment, walking a little faster as the sky darkens above them. Their elbows bump together with every couple steps, courtesy of the narrow sidewalk.
“Were you being serious about the party?” Will asks, breaking the comfortable silence between them. “We don’t have to go.”
Mike doesn’t want to go, but he knows that Will does. He’d do anything if it meant making Will happy. Not to mention the thought of letting Will go by himself to no doubt be flirted with by Peter makes Mike feel kind of queasy, even if that is the whole point. “Of course we do,” Mike shrugs. “This is phase two of getting you a boyfriend.”
Will glances up at Mike, and the uncertainty in his eyes makes Mike feel like a total asshole. “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Will nods. “Okay then, we’ll go.”