Chapter Text
Mike didn’t want to go to college—at least not right away. But Will had begged him to apply to NYU with him. He’d been so excited about living in New York City and about sharing a dorm with his best friend. Mike had been hesitant. He didn’t know if he was ready to leave the only place that still tethered him to Eleven. But on the other hand, he was struggling with the idea of Will leaving him.
Eventually, that was what got Mike to say yes to him.
Will told him he was scared of being alone, scared of not having Mike there to make him feel safe. Mike agreed right after that.
Now, months have passed. It’s October 1990, and Mike and Will may be roommates, but that’s where their relationship ends.
Not for a lack of trying on Mike’s part. He tries to talk to Will—to ask about his art projects and assignments, to ask about his new friends. He still buys Will’s favorite snacks and drinks when he goes to the store to restock their room. Yet he’s always met with disinterested answers like, “Oh, it’s nothing important,” or, “They’re all great. Still really nice.” Will ignores the fact that Mike bought him anything at all, even while eating or drinking whatever it is Mike brought home.
He doesn’t know what to do anymore. He’s never felt more isolated. He’s never felt more guilty, either.
Back in August, when they’d first moved in, and Will hadn’t met his new friends yet, it had been even worse than it is now. Them coexisting, but not talking. Stuck alone together in their small dorm room, both of them walking on eggshells, not knowing what comfortable silence felt like between them anymore. Mike had tried to fix their friendship then, but the argument between them was still too fresh.
So Mike eased off. And Will started leaving the dorm more and more frequently.
Mike would lie on top of his bed with Will’s favorite mixtape on repeat, staring at the ceiling and wondering what he could do to fix the mess he’d made. The problem was that Mike didn’t even know where to start. He didn’t know how to apologize, because the truth was—he couldn’t even understand his own actions. And if he couldn’t explain them to himself, there was no way he could explain them to Will.
At first, Mike never knew where Will went when he started disappearing. It didn’t feel like his place to ask anymore, so he never did. He’d just watch Will leave and then stay awake long after, pretending to sleep, until he heard Will quietly shuffle back into the room each night.
About a month and a half into the semester, Mike was sitting at his desk, trying his best to type out a creative writing paper due at the end of the week, when he heard Will’s loud, happy laugh in the hallway. The sound pulled Mike out of his semi-concentrated state, his head snapping toward the door in something like shock. It had been so long since he’d heard Will laugh—especially like that, especially when it sounded so genuine.
A pit formed in his stomach, and the realization of what he’d lost, what they’d lost, had never been clearer.
That was how Mike found out where Will was going every day.
While Mike fought back tears, Will came into the room, grabbed some of his art supplies, and rejoined his friends waiting in the hallway. He didn’t even spare Mike a passing glance. Mike’s tears finally spilled over as he listened to Will’s laughter and his friends’ conversation fade, growing quieter as they moved farther down the hall. Farther from the dorm. Farther from him.
That was last month.
Since then, Mike has watched Will come out of his shell in a way he never thought was possible. Most of what he knows about Will’s life now comes from overhearing phone calls with Lucas or Dustin. Will is dressing differently. Going to parties. Walking with a new kind of confidence that makes Mike feel things he doesn’t know how to make sense of.
Will has also stopped walking on eggshells around him. They still don’t share more than a few words here and there, but it isn’t the suffocating silence it was during those first two months. It doesn’t even feel like they’re fighting anymore.
Now, Mike is suffocated by something else entirely, the feeling that Will has outgrown him. Outgrown their friendship. It feels pointless to apologize for what happened over the summer because Mike no longer fits into Will’s world. It’s an agonizing truth to come to, and it tortures Mike every time he thinks about Will.
Which is all the time.
Mike had learned that nights were the worst of it. Days at least came with distractions— classes, noise, people constantly coming and going. At night, there was nothing to hide behind. Just the small dorm room, the familiar shape of Will’s bed across from his, and the quiet waiting that settled into Mike’s bones as he counted the hours until Will came home.
He told himself not to stay up for it. Told himself it didn’t matter anymore.
He stayed up anyway.
The dorm room was dark except for the small pool of light coming from Mike’s desk lamp. He sat on his bed with his back against the wall, a paperback balanced in his hands, its spine already creased from being bent the wrong way. He’d been staring at the same page for a while now, rereading the same paragraph without absorbing any of it.
Classic literature was supposed to be easier than this.
The lock on the door clicked softly.
Mike’s eyes lifted automatically, his body tensing before he could stop it. The door opened, letting in a thin slice of hallway light, and Will stepped inside.
He moved slower than usual, careful, like he didn’t want to disturb the room or Mike. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright in a way that made something tight twist in Mike’s chest. He smelled faintly like alcohol, layered with something cleaner underneath. Soap, maybe. Or cologne. Not something Will usually wears.
“Oh,” Will said quietly when he noticed Mike was still awake. His voice had a slight lilt to it. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Mike replied.
Will shut the door behind him and shrugged off his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair. He lingered there for a moment, swaying almost imperceptibly before letting out a small, breathy laugh, like he’d just been told something amusing that hadn’t fully worn off yet.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Mike said quickly. Too quickly. He glanced down at his book, then back up again. “I was… reading.”
Will’s eyes flicked to the book. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. For Lit.”
“Right,” Will said, nodding. “That class sounds… intense.”
The way he said it, fond and amused, made it sound like he’d already talked about it with someone else. Like this wasn’t the first time the topic had come up tonight.
Silence stretched between them, familiar and uncomfortable. Will busied himself with his bag, pulling out a sketchbook and setting it carefully on his desk, smoothing his hand over the cover. Mike noticed the edge of a ticket stub sticking out from between the pages. He looked away before he could register what it was for.
“You have a good time?” Mike asked before he could stop himself.
Will froze for just a fraction of a second. Then he smiled. Not guarded. Not forced. Just… easy.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”
Mike nodded, like that was enough.
Will changed into a sweatshirt, movements loose and unselfconscious, humming softly under his breath. The tune was unfamiliar. When he finally climbed into bed, the room settled again, the quiet different now—full, instead of empty.
“Night, Mike,” Will said after a moment.
“Night,” Mike replied.
Mike stared down at the page in his book, the words blurring together. From across the room, Will shifted beneath the blankets and sighed, content and warm, like someone who had ended an amazing night.
Mike closed the book without reading another word. For a split second, Mike isn’t in the dorm room anymore.
He’s back in July, standing in the doorway of Will’s childhood bedroom, the air thick and heavy with something unsaid. Will had been talking too fast then, hands moving as he explained, like he was trying to convince Mike of something before Mike even knew what it was.
“He was just flirting,” Will had said. “I didn’t hate it.”
Mike remembers the way his stomach had dropped. The way he’d laughed, sharp and wrong, before he could stop himself.
“Seriously?” he’d said. “You’re freaking out over Chance?”
The look on Will’s face after that, hurt, startled, quietly furious, still makes something twist painfully in Mike’s chest.
Back in their dorm room, Mike clenches his jaw and forces himself to look back down at his book.