Chapter Text
Everyone always assumed that it was Lucas who noticed first. After all, he’d known Will and Mike the longest. It took everything in Max to not attempt to set the record straight every time that Lucas smiled his goofy smile, so happy that two of his best friends were happy and that he'd been the one to notice. She didn't want to burst his bubble, but Max had been noticing things since they were all in eighth grade and brand new to her.
The others might have tried hard to include her even from the beginning, but Mike Wheeler had made it clear that she would always be on the outside. Therefore, she did what any good outsider would do: Max watched. She knew somewhere deep inside that if she looked hard enough she would be able to see things that Mike didn't want her to see, and that gave her a thrill. She would do anything to piss that kid off, even if she had to admit that so much of her wanted him to like her.
He was stubborn. She was stubborn, and Max wanted so badly for her stubbornness to win out and for him to finally see her. She'd known crushes before, that antsy feeling of wanting a cute boy to notice her from across the room, but this was something different. This was how she felt standing in a room with her mother, stepdad, and Billy and longing to feel like she belonged, and that this was her family in a way that she never had before.
Max felt that feeling every time Mike tried to push her out of his stupid party. She wanted to be a part of all of this so bad that it was almost embarrassing. They were just stupid boys who thought they were better than everyone else after all, but Max wanted in. And for her to ever truly get in, she needed the approval of one Mike Wheeler, no matter how annoying it was. It only became more obvious the more time passed. Lucas and Dustin may already be vying for her attention, but they wouldn't truly cave unless Mike did. Will definitely wouldn't. He looked at Mike like he was the freaking sun. (Which Max thought was simply sad, if she was being honest. There were much brighter things in this world than Mike Wheeler.)
So, Max watched him, whether to look for a weakness to exploit or a compassion to appeal to, she wasn't sure. In the end, she found neither, or rather, she found compassion that she knew would never be directed to her. Max truly believed that you only needed to have eyes to see the way that Mike looked at Will, but she learned that that was definitely not the case when she made some offhanded comment to Lucas about it.
(He didn't see it, which was her point. How could he claim that he noticed first if he hadn't even managed to see anything different back then? He'd known them even longer than she had! She'd noticed in the first week of knowing all of them. Maybe the fact that it was all new to her was why she noticed, unlike Lucas who just saw it as "how they always were,” but that was besides the point. Max simply thought that she should get the prize for having noticed first. She was getting ahead of herself.)
Anyway, maybe it had been on Halloween when Mike was throwing his fit about having her along to go trick-or-treating with them, which just further proved her theory that she'd need his full approval to ever truly belong.
Maybe it was the way Will had stayed by Mike's side all night even as he pouted. Maybe it was the way that Will didn't even seem to mind Mike's bad mood, like he had expected it. Maybe it was the way that the only time she saw Mike smile that night was when he looked at Will.
Maybe it was the way that none of them had realized that Will was gone until they'd seen Mike alone, like they were already a pair in all of their minds at just thirteen years old. Maybe it was the way that Mike had run after him with not even a second's hesitation. Maybe it was the way Mike had held onto Will's shoulders as he crouched down there on the ground and spoke to them without annoyance in his voice for the first time that night, only panic. Maybe it was the way he corralled Will away like he was scared that any of them would just make it worse.
Maybe it had been that Halloween night that had made her notice first, or maybe it had been some intrinsic insight Max had seen the first time she'd glanced at them and known that they looked so right next to each other as they stood just a little bit closer than all the others did. Max didn't know exactly what it was. All she knew was that that night it had clicked in her mind that there was something there that registered as different from the friendly, borderline brotherly relationship between the rest of the boys. (It felt wrong to call it more, although she knew that was how some people would phrase it. She hated how people always seemed to want to think that other things were more than friendship when really they were just something with a different edge.)
Lucas and Dustin had gone on to explain as the other two scurried away. Will had gotten lost in the woods last year. They'd tried for a week to find him. They'd all thought he was dead. Mike had thought he was dead, but he'd never given up hope. Will hadn't been the same since, but there was probably nothing to worry about. Mike was just always worried because that was how Mike was, especially when it came to Will.
Oh, Max had thought. He's scared to lose him again.
She could see it now in every glance that Mike sent Will's way. In every glare that he sent towards the others when they so much as mentioned something he thought might upset the other boy. Mike Wheeler was scared of losing Will Byers, and that was the kind of open secret that Max could never find in herself to abuse. It was evident in everything he had done since she had met him, but she knew that there had to be something else there too. Something else that Max was scared to name because she knew that other people might see it as taboo. (Not that she did. She grew up in California. She took pride in the fact that she was leagues ahead of all these people in Indiana on many fronts.)
Even if she was scared to voice it aloud, Max knew what she saw. She knew what that kind of love looked like, even if she'd never seen it between her parents or her mom and step dad. She wanted someone to look at her like that someday, but she definitely hoped whoever it was was a hundred times cooler than Mike Wheeler. (Max hoped it was Lucas.)
Either way, it seemed safe to say that Max had noticed first. Good job, Lucas Sinclair, but you could take your seat on the second place podium. It had been her.
Sure, she had doubted it a bit throughout the years. First had been when Mike had gotten defensive about Eleven, and Lucas had told her the whole story. Then, Max had doubted it even more when El and Mike had started dating. (She hadn't doubted it on Will's part though. She saw the look on Will's face whenever someone mentioned how the two were dating or when they ran off together. Even if she hadn't known what love looked like, Max was very familiar with pain and jealousy and how they manifested on the face of a teenager.)
Even through the doubt, Max had always known something was up. Maybe that was part of why she'd tried so hard to get El to see the world beyond Mike Wheeler. Maybe it was why she could never bring herself to hate Mike, even as he hurt her best friend, especially during their freshmen year of high school.
Max could not find it in herself to truly be mad at Mike even as El reported in her letters that he wasn't saying that he loved her. She couldn't even be mad to the extent that she wanted to be when Will told her on the phone that he hadn't received a single letter from Mike. Max would never admit it to anyone, but she saw a lot of herself in Mike Wheeler sometimes. She saw that he was like her beyond his stubbornness, even if that was their leading similarity. Max couldn't really blame him for what he was doing back then because it would have forced her to address how she'd been pushing all of them away that year as well through her own pain.
When it came down to it, she'd always known that Mike was scared to lose Will from those first few days of knowing him. Then, she'd learned that the second fear would always be losing El. Mike had lost both of them to California in one go. Who was she to expect him to cope with that rationally? Max could dwell all she wanted on the fact that he never looked at El with the intensity that he'd looked at Will when they were thirteen, but she could never hate him for it as much as she wanted to. El deserved better, but somewhere deep down, Max knew that Mike still deserved to be loved too.
That was why Max never completely iced Mike Wheeler out that year, as much as she would deny it to anyone who asked. She'd always made sure to leave an empty seat for him next to her in their shared class. She had tolerated his attempts at being alternative more than she'd ever tolerated Lucas's attempts at popularity. After all, he had accepted her eventually, however begrudgingly. She might as well accept him where he was now, just like he was doing for her.
None of it ended up mattering anyway. Mike had been all the way in California, no doubt stirring up all kinds of drama, when Vecna had attacked. Max would never admit it, but she'd wished he was there in Hawkins even though she didn't know how he'd have helped. She didn't think he would have treated her like she was fragile.
Her noticing things had been then very much complicated by the fact that she was in a coma, and just because Lucas had been the one to fill her in on some of the happenings from when she'd been in Vecna's mind did not mean that she lost her first-one-to-notice credit. It did not!
All of the past wasn't even the thing Max truly felt most proud of herself for realizing. The thing she was really proud of herself for laid in the future. A year had passed since they'd all graduated. A year had passed since they'd really all seen each other, especially in the way that it had been. A year had passed since that night when they'd all played Dungeons and Dragons, and Max had seen that same old fear on Mike's face, the fear of losing Will that she had for a while believed had been completely overshadowed by the reality of losing El. A year had passed that had made her believe that there'd be, for once in her knowing of Mike and Will, nothing for her to notice.
They'd all been at college. Max and Lucas had gone to California. She'd always wanted to go back, and she'd always told him that. She had never wanted to hope that he'd so simply uproot himself to follow her, but he had. Max had fallen in love all over again.
Everything had changed for all of them. Dustin was off somewhere studying something that she didn't completely understand. Will was in New York City, following in his brother's footsteps in his own artistic way. Even Mike had gone to some little college to study creative writing and forever be insufferable with his imagination and way with words that never seemed to apply to the ones coming out of his mouth.
Safe to say, Max had thought they were past this. She had thought Will was past this. She'd heard his coming out speech. She'd seen him try (and fail) to peel his eyes away from Mike all throughout their senior year when the other boy never really looked back anymore. Max had seen him lose hope and think that Mike just would never feel that way, even as she knew in her heart that that was wrong. In the end, she had even more than observed as she finally got Will to open up to her post-Vecna in the way that she'd been trying for since the summer before eighth grade. Max had finally got to have her confirmation firsthand of half her theory even if it was in the past tense: Will Byers had been in love with Mike Wheeler since he was six years old and didn’t even know the words for it.
Max had watched and heard all of this, and she had known that Will needed to move on. She'd thought that he had moved on. If there was anything more painful than loving a guy who was dating your adopted sister, it was continuing to love that guy as he held onto her after her death.
She really thought Will had moved on. He'd chronicled it all to Max in his many letters throughout his first year of college. Will had met another boy, someone like him, and Max was happy for him. She was happy for him even when she learned that the relationship ended after only a few months. She was glad that he was getting to experience things outside the world of Hawkins and the world of Mike Wheeler. Max was glad that she'd never have to watch them dance around each other ever again.
Boy, was Max glad that she had been wrong.