Chapter Text
Meet Will Byers.
He’s a freshman at the University of Santa Cruz.
Nineteen years old, chronic insomniac, medicated for two separate mental illnesses, and currently obsessed with mixed media art.
Will was a fan of horror. Horror movies. Horror games. Horror soundtracks. Occasionally gore.
His favorite movie is Donnie Darko, amongst others. He carries his GameBoy around in his backpack and enough pre-owned CDs to annoy his loved ones. His free time was spent scrolling through disturbing internet forums, and doomscrolling on his laptop.
He’d spent part of his childhood growing up in Southern California, where people were sometimes weirdly spiritual or weirdly tan, often both.
Still, Will had always felt like he belonged somewhere colder. Maybe in a small town, surrounded by clouds, something like Forks, Washington. If he were dropped into the Twilight Saga - he probably would’ve adjusted within the hour.
Sometimes he even caught himself fantasizing about being dramatically carried away into the woods by some tall, terrifyingly pale vampire.
Nothing weird obviously.
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✰
“Dude, DUDE- behind you, behind you-”
"I can literally see him, shut up,” Lucas snapped into the headset, leaning so far forward on his bed his knees nearly hit the floor. His voice echoed through the tiny dorm room over the sounds of gunfire and distorted explosions from the PC screen.
“Let’s go,” Lucas yelled, throwing one fist up.
Through the cheap headset speakers came another voice, crackling with stat and laughter.
“You went negative, Sinclair.”
“Scoreboard doesn’t matter.”
“That’s literally the whole point of this game.”
It was 11:47 PM on a Thursday night.
Lucas had the following due: a human anatomy test tomorrow and basketball practice at 7 AM.
But what he had at that moment were just three empty beer cans on the floor.
Will still hadn’t figured out how he was alive, or worse, how he was thriving.
Some people, through either genetics or witchcraft, were capable of functioning perfectly on no sleep, and caffeine alone. Lucas was one of those people. He was pre-med, on a basketball scholarship and somehow still spent most evenings yelling at people online through an Xbox headset.
Honestly, if he weren’t so objectively attractive, Will would probably find him disgusting.
Unfortunately, Lucas was built like a Nike ad.
Which made it difficult to stay judgmental when he kept wandering around their dorm shirtless all the time.
Will Byers had two majors, which sounded impressive until people realised both of them guaranteed unemployment. It was hard work, and college had only started a couple of weeks ago.
Biology paid for college and Digital Art explained why he was awake at midnight on a school night gluing cut-out magazine eyes onto black cardstock while listening to Lucas threaten murder over some Halo game.
UCSC had apparently decided this combination made him “a promising interdisciplinary student,” which was their way of saying here’s some money - stop emailing us.
Not enough scholarship money to avoid shared housing, unfortunately.
Hence his new roommate.
Not the worst outcome, honestly.
There were definitely worse people to share a dorm with than an insanely attractive athlete who occasionally shared his mozzarella sticks and always brought home a form of snack after his workout.
Especially considering Will was, against his better judgement and several years of failed denial, extremely gay.
Still, he’d judged Lucas too quickly at first. Mostly because he arrived looking exactly like the kind of guy who’d call him slurs in the school hallways.
But Lucas turned out to be weirdly open about basically everything. Surprisingly smart too, he was less of a jock and more a gamer who happened to be good looking.
And yeah, maybe the bar for male roommates was lower than people thought.
Across the room, Lucas swore violently into the headset.
The project Will was working on was for his class - Intro to Film Composition, which sounded significantly cooler than it actually was. So far he'd spent almost an hour glueing magazine clippings onto cardstock while pretending it represented fragmented emotional identity in modern media.
“OH, COME ON,” Lucas yelled suddenly.
Will flinched hard enough to smear glue across his thumb. While Lucas shouted, he could hear a faint voice scream through the headset back at his roommate.
“You literally drove the Warthog off the map.”
“It lagged!”
“No it didn’t.”
“It absolutely did.”
“Lucas, your internet isn’t even that bad.”
“Shut up, Wheeler.”
Will had heard that name before.
Mike Wheeler.
Lucas’s childhood best friend from Indiana who now attended some poser artsy school in San Francisco that his daddy probably paid for and apparently spent most of his free time online now. Will mostly knew him through overheard conversations that he had listened in on through the few short weeks he had been living with Lucas.
From what Will gathered - Mike played guitar and was in a band, had some weird internet following, burped a lot and talked like being obnoxious was a competitive sport.
“Will.” Lucas said, not looking away from the game. “Mike says your music taste sucks.”
Will blinked down at his collage like it had personally offended him, he was playing music in the background as he did his homework and apparently Michael was not a fan of it.
“I don’t even know him.”
“Yeah but he can hear it playing now. You have like forty-seven sad British guys on there.”
“They’re not all British."
Lucas snorted.
He pushed the finished collage aside and opened his laptop instead. The thing took almost a full minute to wake up properly, the fan whining loud enough to cause concern.
His desktop wallpaper was an old Silent Hill screenshot drowned in fog.
He proceeded to do his usual routine of finishing a piece and then either scanning it or taking a photo of it and posting it online.
The dorm WiFI dragged while MySpace loaded line by line. Will leaned back in his chair while the page struggled heroically to function.
Will mostly used the internet to post art nobody at school cared about anyways.
And to talk to Max, oh and his sister Jane.
He managed to open a new tab and a message notification blinked in the corner of the screen.
MaxDamage (1 NEW)
He tutted before opening the notification, he already knew what she was going to say.
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Max lived across campus in another dorm building after UCSC’s housing office decided apparently lifelong friendship meant absolutely nothing compared to randomized placement.
Last week she’d stopped by while Lucas was coming back from practice, Will had expected the interaction to last maybe thirty seconds.
Instead Lucas had spent the entire conversation looking strangely fascinated by her.
Which, to be fair, happened to most people after meeting Max for the first time. She had the energy of somebody moments away from either starting a fight or stealing something valuable of yours. And Lucas seemed to like her weird vibe.
Probably because Max insulted him with the confidence of a retired war veteran.
“WILL,” Lucas yelled.
“What?”
“Tell Mike to fuck off.”
“What?”
“He keeps sniping me!”
“Lucas, oh my God, MOVE.”
“I AM MOVING.”
“You’re standing in the doorway,”
“That’s because your fat ass is shooting me!”
Will pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you guys be quiet for like, ten seconds?”
Lucas glanced over immediately, not fully hearing him.
“What?
“You’re yelling.”
“HE started yelling,” Lucas said, pointing accusingly at his own headset and at absolutely nobody.
Through the headset, the other voice laughed.
“Is that your roommate?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “He’s pissed because you’re screaming at me.”
Will looked up from his laptop. “Actually. You’re the one screaming.”
“See?” The headset voice said immediately. “I’m not the one in trouble.”
Will scoffed, something about the guy’s voice was annoyingly easy to picture. Probably because Lucas talked about him constantly. Mike said this, Mike did that. Mike almost got arrested at Warped Tour one time. Mike threw up behind a Denny’s after a concert.
At this point Will knew more about Mike Wheeler than several of his actual relatives.
He could vaguely imagine him, probably some greasy loser whose only diet was energy drinks, beer and sandwiches. He probably had a receding hairline too, oh and he was probably an asshole since he was rich enough for his family to pay his way through college.
“Will,” Lucas said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“Nothing I wasn’t talking to you, it’s just - Mike asked me what your name was.”
Will Blinked.
“What? He did?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said, already turning back toward the screen. “My best friend from back home. We go way back.”
I know, is what he wanted to say. Lucas had only mentioned it a dozen times.
Will looked back down at his screen, he had scanned his piece through the tiny printer that sat on his desk near him.
The collage had finally uploaded.
A few likes already appeared beneath the post. Mostly random art accounts and people from school. One comment from Max that just read
Creepy <3
Fair enough.
Will refreshed the page again anyway.
Nothing new.
Then again.
Still nothing.
Which was stupid, because he wasn’t even sure why he cared. It wasn’t like MySpace art fame translated into actual human success. The most popular guy in one of his digital media classes exclusively made disturbing Garfield edits and had over twelve thousand followers.
✰
By the time Will got back from class, he could already hear Lucas yelling from halfway down the hall.
Will adjusted the strap of his satchel bag higher on his shoulder and kept walking.
Did Lucas ever study?
Seriously.
He was in one of the most difficult courses and on a scholarship and somehow still spent approximately sixteen hours a day online yelling at computer screens. Will had watched him skim an entire chapter of notes once in maybe twelve minutes, get anA on the quiz, and then celebrate by drinking way too many beers and attempting to ollie off a picnic table.
As soon as Will pushed open the dorm door, warm stale air hit him directly in the face.
“Oh my God,” he said immediately, dropping his bag by the desk. “Dude, have you even left your bed today?”
Lucas glanced over briefly, headset around his neck now instead of over his ears.
“Yes.”
“Liar. Crack a window, it smells like farts in here.”
From the headset came loud laughter.
Lucas pointed accusingly. “Shut up, Mike.”
Will frowned a little. “Have you forgotten my name already?”
“No, dude I’m on call.” He tapped the headset like Will was the stupid one here.
Right
Through the speakers, the familiar voice cut in a gain, cracking slightly through bad connection static.
“Is that your roommate again?”
Lucas leaned back against the wall beside his bed.
“Yeah.”
“Cute.”
Will stared at him.
Lucas shrugged. “He’s okay. Got that geeky look to him.”
“Are you literally talking about me in front of me right now?
“What?” Lucas said innocently. “You are a geek nerd. But like, in a nice way.”
“Actually geeks and nerds are two completely different things I-!
“Yeah you would know.”
Ugh.
Will rolled his eyes and behind him, Mike laughed again through the headset.
Lucas disappeared for maybe twenty minutes.
Long enough for the dorm room to stop sounding like active warfare.
Will sat at his desk once again scrolling aimlessly through MySpace with one earbud hanging loose around his neck. His collage post had gotten a decent amount of attention, at least by niche internet art standards.
A few reposts.
Some comments.
One guy with an anime profile picture had called it “hauntingly raw,” which probably meant absolutely nothing but still made Will weirdly pleased.
The door opened again with a bang.
Lucas walked back carrying two vending machine chip bags and a gatorade.
“Peace offering.” he announced, tossing one of the chip bags toward Will.
Will caught it. “Thanks.”
Lucas flopped back onto his bed. For a second the room was quiet except for laptop fan noise and distant shouting somewhere outside across campus.
“So what’s up?” Lucas asked.
Will shrugged slightly without looking away from the screen.
“Just checking my profile.”
Lucas leaned over enough to glance at the laptop.
“I saw what you posted yesterday.”
“It was weird as hell,” Lucas said. Then, after a beat “Kinda liked it though.”
Will looked over finally, suspicious.
“You don’t have to pretend to understand my art.”
“I don't,” Lucas admitted easily. “Still looked cool.”
Which, honestly, was probably the nicest possible version of criticism Lucas was capable of giving another human being.
Lucas opened the Gatorade and took a long drink.
“Do you mind if I hop back on the game?”
Will snorted softly.
“I wouldn’t keep you from your man.”
“Dude.”
“Just saying, you guys spend more time together than actual couples.”
Lucas pointed at him lazily. “You’re jealous because nobody wants to play XBOX with your creepy horror game ass.”
“PS3 and GameBoy” Will corrected automatically.
“Whatever.”
Will rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket for his iPod, which was scratch to hell from years of use, the click wheel slightly sticky on one side because he’d spilled on it once and never properly cleaned it.
Across the room, Lucas was already dragging the headset back on while the console hummed loudly beneath the screen.
“Mike,” Lucas said into the mic, “you still on?”
Static crackled.
Even through the headphones he could still hear Lucas intermittently yelling.
“Mike, dude, you’re lagging.”
Static crackled violently from the game.
“It’s not me,” Mike’s voice came back warped and robotic. “I can’t fucking hear you.”
“Yes you can.”
“No, I literally- hold on-”
The audio cut out again.
Lucas groaned loud enough to shake the room.
“Oh my God.”
Then the game froze completely.
Lucas stared for a second before throwing the controller dramatically onto the bed.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“What?”
“The game’s fucking broken.”
“Well maybe you played it too much”
“That’s not how electronics work.”
Through the headset came a burst of muffled static before Mike’s voice pushed through again.
“Can your little techno boy toy over there fix it or what?”
Will turned slowly in his chair.
“...What did he just call me?”
Lucas snorted.
“He thinks you’re a tech geek.”
“I’m not a tech geek.”
“He’s a biology major, dude." Lucas said into the headset. “Not some computer guy.”
Will frowned.
“Actually I know a thing or two.”
Lucas looked over.
“Oh my God, you do know how to fix it?”
Will stood reluctantly from his desk.
“I mean…. Probably.”
“See? Mike’s voice crackled triumphantly through the speakers. “Techno boy toy.”
“That’s not a real sentence.”
Lucas grinned while scooting over to make room beside him on the bed.
The setup looked horrific up close.
Dust everywhere, wires tangled together like somebody had assembled the console during an earthquake. One controller hanging half-off the mattress by the charging cable.
Will rolled his eyes and adjusted the cable carefully. The screen buzzed faintly while the console fan whirred loud enough to sound airborne.
Behind him, Lucas stood up, stretching.
“Alright, I’m showering while you fix this.”
“I’m not saying you reek,” Will said, “but you should.”
Lucas pointed at him dramatically. “That’s hurtful.”
“You smell like expired salami.”
Then the shower started running.
Will crouched beside the console for another minute, unplugging and reconnecting wires while Mike’s audio cut in and out unpredictably.
At one point he heard shouting somewhere faintly through the headset.
Music maybe.
“-nah dude put that song back on-”
For some reason he’d imagined Mike alone while gaming. Not… wherever the hell this was.
Another click.
Then suddenly the audio cleared.
“...Hello?”
Will blinked.
“Can you hear me?”
A pause crackled through the headset.
“Lucas?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Oh wait,” Mike said. “It’s the roommate.”
Will sat back slightly against the side of the bed.
“Yeah.”
“Bill, right?”
Will took offense.
“No.”
Mike laughed through the speakers.
“No wait, hold on. Will.”
“Congratulations.”
“To be fair, Lucas talks about you like you’re some cryptid living in the corner of the room.”
“That’s because I spend most of my time trying to survive his personality.”
“Good luck with that.”
The weird thing was Mike sounded kind of different now.
Somewhere in Mike’s background, somebody yelled:
“WHEELER, hurry up!”
Mike yelled back without muting - “SHUT UP.”
“Sorry my roommates are animals.”
Will looked toward the bathroom door where Lucas was loudly singing horribly off-key through the shower.
“...Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”
Will adjusted the cable one more time until the static finally settled into a fuzzy hum instead of full auditory violence.
“There,” he muttered to himself.
“Damn,” Mike said through the headset. “You actually fixed it.”
Then Mike spoke again, direct enough to catch Will off guard.
“So, Will.”
“...What?
“What do you do?”
Will angled his head in confusion.
“What do I do?”
“Yeah.”
There was something weirdly assertive about the way he talked. Like conversations were things Mike naturally grabbed onto and steered around himself.
Will glanced toward his screen.
“Uh. I’m a biology and digital art major.”
“Digital art,” Mike repeated. “Cool.”
Then he proceeded.
“Where’re you from?”
“Southern California.”
“Ohh,” Mike dragged out. “So you’re like, an actual Californian.”
He wasn’t.
“Well,” Will said, “I guess.”
He wasn’t remotely a real Californian. His family had moved here after a series of unfortunate events went down in his hometown of Montauk. The events included himself and his step sister Jane.
“Sometimes I think people from here are fake,” Mike said then continued. “You surf?”
“No.”
“Damn. Betraying your people.”
“You think everyone in California surfs?”
“I’m from Indiana,” Mike said. “You guys all seem beach - themed.”
Will rolled his eyes.
“Where are you now?”
“San Francisco.”
“Oh,” Will said immediately. “So you’re the fake California person.”
“Excuse you?”
“You probably own scarves.”
“...I own one scarf.”
“That’s one too many.”
It was.. Nice talking to him.
Which felt irritating to admit, even internally.
Will hadn’t really met many people yet at UCSC outside of classes, and mostly saw Lucas, and Max.
And his voice was nice.
Annoyingly nice.
Will was still thinking about that when the bathroom door swung open.
Lucas walked out in nothing but a towel draped low around his waist. Damp hair dripped water down his shoulders while a stream followed him out into the room.
Will’s brain stopped functioning briefly. Which was unfortunate considering this happened often.
Lucas, meanwhile, remained completely unaware of the psychological warfare he inflicted on others simply by existing shirtless near them.
There were, Will reflected, probably easier ways to be gay.
“Dude,” Lucas said, spotting the PC screen immediately.”You fixed it?”
“Yeah.”
Lucas disappeared back toward his side of the room to get dressed, still talking into the mic while pulling a shirt over his head one-handed.
“Are you still there?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Cool.”
A minute later, Lucas dropped back onto the bed beside Will - hard enough to bounce the mattress slightly.
“Thanks,” he said, grabbing the controller again. “You wanna play?”
Will looked down at the open laptop still resting on his bed.
“I should finish coursework.”
“And your bed has crumbs in it.”
Through the headset Mike laughed quietly again.
As Will lifted himself up from Lucas’s bed he heard a faint noise from the headset-
“Bye, Cali.”
What kind of nickname was that?
✰
Will lay under his blankets with his laptop balanced against his knees, one earbud in, his eyes burned from staring at the screen too long.
His MySpace dashboard loaded painfully slowly as he scrolled through blurry photography, reposted song lyrics. Reading through random peoples notes, giggling at a couple of memes. Time was flying by - it always does when you have somewhere to be in the morning.
A couple notifications came up, a few likes here and there.
Then another notification popped up near the top of the screen.
NEW FRIEND REQUEST.
Will furrowed his eyebrows and clicked it open.
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The profile picture was blurry and dark, half of his face was cut off and the other half hidden behind messy dark hair, leaving only his lips and jaw visible.
Handsome.
Very handsome actually.
Will had unfortunately always been weak to dark haired people who looked vaguely sleep deprived.
Still, for all he knew this could’ve been some forty-year-old creep pretending to be a college student online.
Will squinted suspiciously at the tiny blurry picture another second.
Then clicked on the profile anyway.
Black background, Dark purple and blue accents.
A song on autoplay immediately blasting through Will’s earbud loud enough to nearly kill him.
He yanked the volume down instantly before Lucas woke up.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered under his breath.
The profile played - cute without the e // taking back sunday and the page definitely had some deeply unnecessary HTML coding with the text was slightly hard to read on purpose.
At the top corner:
19, Mike
Mike?
This was Mike?
Not some greasy, bald, headset guy with bad posture and Mountain Dew breath permanently fused to his microphone?
Huh.
Okay.
ONLINE NOW.
It felt weirdly intimate at one-thirty in the morning.
Mood: Restless
Status: “awake again :/”
His About Me section read:
“san francisco state university. music. insomnia.“
Underneath sat the link to the band he was apparently in. The profile had an insane amount of views, Will blinked at the number for a second.
He scrolled lower.
The most recent photo alone had almost two hundred comments.
Two hundred.
A lot more photos.
Mirror pictures, band pictures, partying, drunk pictures, Mike with guitars, Mike smoking outside, Mike flipping off the cameras, Mike collapsed across random couches half-dead.
This guy uploaded a concerning amount of pictures of himself, which was maybe fair, because unfortunately he was hot.
Will clicked into another album tagged under: xoctobery
Loads of photos of himself again, this guy definitely knew people thought he was attractive.
Will rolled his eyes and kept scrolling anyway.
TOP FRIENDS
Of course Lucas was first.
After that, some Steve guy and a couple of girls Will assumed Mike had probably hooked up with at some point.
Will spent another five minutes stalking the profile before realising he was, in fact, stalking the profile.
Which was embarrassing.
He scrolled through blurry concert albums, badly edited webcam photos, cryptic statuses, and approximately four hundred comments form girls with usernames like BROKENxDARLING and acidtears.
Mike replied to each one, which seemed exhausting.
How had Mike even found his profile that fast?
Lucas maybe.
Or maybe Mike just added literally everyone he spoke to for more than thirty seconds.
That felt equally plausible.
Will hovered over the friend request another moment before clicking ACCEPT.
Connection established.
The page refreshed.
Not even thirty seconds later.
NEW MESSAGE FROM: Prettypoisonkid_
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