Chapter Text
The Brown University Lovecraft Society, or BULS, as insiders call it, concludes its final meeting before Thanksgiving break with a rousing discussion about whether Thanksgiving is terrible, H. P. Lovecraft is terrible, and each member of the club is somewhat complicit in that convergence of terribleness. On the affirmative side is Gina, club secretary and junior Philosophy major; on the negative side is Monty, club treasurer and sophomore English major.
Mike watches the discussion like a tennis match: fervently and with absolutely no understanding of the governing rules. Pretty much every meeting ends like this. He’s still not 100% sure what everyone is talking about, or whether they’re fighting, or if Gina is actually suggesting the club disband. It all inevitably ends with everyone agreeing to see each other at the next meeting. Gina and Monty, who are dating, usually leave together, fingers intertwined. Tonight is no exception.
As everyone trickles back to their residence halls, Mike shoulders his backpack and waits for his roommate, Jeremy. He’d initially distrusted Jeremy, who was at Brown on a track scholarship and had already hung athletic medals on their shared wall when Mike moved in, but now Mike feels more grateful for him every day.
A sandy-haired, tan transplant from New Mexico, Jeremy is well-liked rather than popular, the kind of guy who’s so unflinchingly nice that it’s impossible to feel alienated around him. Though he’s athletic and, at least in Mike’s opinion, perfectly nice-looking, he prefers the company of nerds and intellectuals. At first, Mike had warily believed this was somehow for his benefit — that he was a social charity case. When Jeremy engaged him in a gleeful conversation on Tolkein as he unpacked his bookshelf, he had finally unclenched.
Now, Jeremy ambles over to him, easy as anything, Cate from English 110 at his heels. Cate is sweet, small and blonde and Minnesotan. So Minnesotan that Mike could tell upon meeting her. She tries to sit next to Mike — specifically Mike — in class most days, which makes him nervous. He’s trying not to read into it.
“Lively one today, huh?” Jeremy asks, clapping one hand on Mike’s shoulder as they head for the lecture hall’s main exit.
Mike snorts. “Always,” he answers, projecting confidence so that Jeremy won’t be able to tell that he had no idea what was happening.
As the three of them walk back to Mike and Jeremy’s rez hall — and Mike tries not to think too hard about why Cate is following them, since she doesn’t even live in Andrews — they chatter about class and their ever-approaching finals, whether their Intro English professor will accept Mike’s paper proposal on the development of hero narratives in comic books from the mid-20th century.
They approach Andrews, and Cate is still very much there, so Mike and Jeremy turn to her. Mike tries not to scowl, because Cate is very nice and hasn’t even done anything wrong, aside from confuse him.
“What’s up, Cate?” Jeremy asks, perfectly upbeat. He’s so nice, Mike thinks. Someone should do experiments on him.
“Sorry, I was just, um. I’ve been meaning to ask Mike—” She turns to face him head on, and Mike abruptly worries that he’s going to throw up. “When we’re back from break, would you want to maybe, I don’t know, go to a movie sometime?”
Mike looks down at her — because again, she is small — and does his best to will away the violent blush taking over his face. Cate is pretty in a Swedish sort of way, all big blue eyes and wispy, white-blonde hair. She’s smart but unpretentious and always listens intently when Mike blathers on. She is the first girl who’s ever asked Mike out — something he had, in the not too distant past, been terrified would never happen.
And Mike just stands there, feeling like his dining hall dinner is about to crawl back up his esophagus.
Jeremy, Saint Jeremy, nudges him with an elbow. “He’s kind of private about it, but Mike actually has someone back home.”
Mike turns his head to look at Jeremy, expecting a knowing smile or the hint of a wink. But Jeremy actually looks sincere, which makes Mike’s eyebrows sink down, almost to the top of his nose.
“Will, right?” Jeremy supplies, forever trying to be helpful. “He’s at CalArts?”
Mike’s stomach does some complex, Olympic-level gymnastics move. “Yeah,” he answers, shell-shocked, and then shuts his mouth so hard his teeth click. He meant that as in, Yeah, Will goes to CalArts, but now two people who go to college with him, one of whom he lives with, are going to think he meant it as in, Yeah, I’m dating Will.
“Oh!” Cate says, sounding surprised and weirdly charmed.
Jeremy throws an arm around Mike’s shoulder. “They call each other every week. It’s really sweet.”
Mike wonders if it’s possible for his natural blush to escalate to maroon. Yes, he and Will do have a set day and time to talk on the phone weekly. Yes, the calls often go longer than an hour. Yes, sometimes they happen more than once a week.
No, they’re not dating.
Mike has assumed Jeremy not sweating their room phone being tied up so often was just a byproduct of his general unflappability. But apparently he’d thought… Mike chokes a little bit on nothing.
Jeremy and Cate don’t notice, because now Jeremy is trying to set Cate up with some guy he knows, because of course Jeremy is determined to find her love anyway. Mike makes some lame excuse about homework and ducks into the building. He needs to flop down moodily on his bed, stat.
Whoever designs dorm room beds was obviously prejudiced against tall people, though, a fact Mike still forgets after just two months in college. His ankles dangle over the bottom edge of the mattress as he flings himself onto his rumpled, navy blue sheets. He stares very hard at the ceiling, where a green sticky hand still dangles precariously, courtesy of orientation week.
He’s not dating Will, and a few months ago he would have just told Jeremy that that’s because he’s not like that. But now… Now, Mike has met people from all sorts of places. He’s in two theater classes. He’s compared his own experiences growing up with other people’s — the normal stuff, not the alternate dimension monster stuff — and thought about his life a lot. And so far the verdict is, there’s a distinct possibility that he’s actually not not like that.
Which apparently Jeremy had picked up on, telepathically, or something. Because Mike is pretty sure he doesn’t talk to Will any differently than he does any of his other friends. He’s just more consistent with him, and, yeah, closer. They’re best friends. He remembers how badly he’d messed up their friendship the first time Will moved to California, and he wants this time to be different.
Except lately, Mike has had this weird feeling about the calls with Will. It’s a little like how he feels before he’s about to take a big test in a subject he’s not particularly good at. His chest does this weird, tight, fluttery thing, and he usually ends up calling Will at, like, 8:58 instead of 9 p.m.
And then Will answers, and everything is normal and nice and okay, and Mike forgets he ever had any of those feelings in the first place. It’s fine. Everything is great, as long as Mike doesn’t think too hard.
And as long as his roommate doesn’t speak again, ever.
Those hopes are quickly dashed as Jeremy returns to their room. Mike flips over and faces the wall as soon as he hears the door opening, feigning sleep. Of course, the lights and Mike’s shoes are still on, so Jeremy attempts to engage with him anyway.
“Hey, man, you okay?” Jeremy asks, almost whisper-quiet, reminding Mike why it’s so annoyingly impossible to be mad at him. He tries anyway, tamping down his reflexive I’m fine.
“I didn’t think it was, like, a secret, or anything,” Jeremy continues. “If I did, I promise I never would have said anything. I can ask Cate to pretend it never happened.”
He’s so sincere that Mike almost wants to put him out of his misery. Almost.
Instead, he stares at the wall next to his bed, at the yellow thumbtack stuck into a drawing of Mike’s house that Will had given him that summer. He waits for Jeremy to give up and turn off the lights. And then he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling again.
He tries not to think, but he inevitably does, because the truth of his and Will’s relationship is far less adorable than Jeremy assumes. The reality is that he’s going to go home tomorrow and see Will and all the rest of their friends, and they’re going to have their belated Halloween party, and Mike is going to have to act completely normal. Dustin and Lucas are going to talk to him about girls, and he’s going to have to pretend he doesn’t see Will politely avoid their conversation. He’s going to have to pretend he doesn’t want to leave the conversation himself.
Mike is going to make a total idiot out of himself, because he doesn’t even know who himself is anymore, not really, and he’s pretty sure other kids had more time to think about this stuff way before college, because they weren’t busy attending fake funerals or running from the government or stopping the literal apocalypse. Sometimes he’ll see something that reminds him of those years, even all the way over here in Providence, and it’ll stop him dead. Some girl wore a black bandana to class in October and he’d nearly burst into tears, because the thing they don’t tell you about saving the world is that you never have time to mourn everyone you couldn’t save.
And you don’t have time to figure yourself out, or at least Mike hadn’t, because he’s only been away from Hawkins since August and he’s already questioning everything. Like, is he really interested in girls, or just in love with the idea of being liked? Why did he cling so hard to El after Will’s disappearance? Why does he feel some losses so much more deeply than others? Is his fascination with superheroes strictly platonic?
Why does Jeremy think he and Will are dating?
Mike squeezes his eyes shut so hard that he sees little bursts of color in all the black. He wants to power his brain off like a computer. His flight home tomorrow is at the crack of dawn.
He toes his shoes off and curls up under his covers, his brain still very much on. He writes a new campaign in his head to tire himself out, distracting his spinning thoughts with orcs and cursed objects and an unforeseen political coup.
He works hardest of all to try and forget that when Jeremy had first told Cate that he was dating Will, his very first, totally compulsive thought had been I wish.