A/N: Porting this over from AO3. The first ten chapters were written post-season 3, and chapters eleven onward will have been written post-season 4. This fic starts after the events of season 3 and will go on to include an alternate version of season 4 set within the established canon-divergent universe.
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It's been two days since Will moved away from Hawkins, and he still hasn't heard from Mike. El has heard from Mike, of course: she's on the phone with him now, in her room, just like she was for hours last night. "Hey, Will," she calls when he passes her on his way to the kitchen, "Mike says hi—" and Will could just strangle the both of them, if he wanted to start something, but he doesn't.
It's been a week, now, since Will last heard from Mike. Lucas called on Wednesday for a long conversation, and Dustin has already set up a regular Monday-night phone call with him—Will figures that Dustin has gotten good at splitting his time between friends, with how he's used to spending part of the time with the party, and part of it with Steve, and part of it with Steve and Robin. Mike was never good at time-splitting, not even when he should have gotten practice at it when El wasn't allowed out after dark or able to come with the rest of the party to Starcourt or the arcade. The most contact Will has had with Mike has been secondhand, through El, and Will is starting to think that no contact would have been easier on all of them.
Will fishes out the torn fragments of a photo of the two of the together, from Castle Byers before he broke it down, and uses them as a reference to start a portrait of Mike. He keeps the lot hidden in his backpack, where Mom and El won't see it and ask questions.
Living with El is… weird. Will supposes he should be getting used to it by now, after more than three months of it, but he's not. He doesn't mind sharing a bedroom with Jonathan, who's always been Will's best friend, but El has morphed from somebody Will hangs out with by proxy into somebody Will just bumps into and says "hi" to awkwardly on the way to the bathroom or back from the kitchen. "How's Mike?" he asks her sometimes, hating himself for even bringing it up, and she always just replies, "Good," and smiles at him like they're not rivals and she's not winning the race.
It's been a month and a half since Will last heard from Mike, and three weeks since he last heard from Lucas. Dustin still calls every Monday evening, full of stories about the party and Steve and Dustin's drawn-out breakup with Suzie. Thanksgiving is coming up, when Mike is supposed to come here to stay with the Byerses, and Will honestly doesn't know how he's going to cope with it. Drum up a smile and tell Mike he missed him and not allow the conversation to move anywhere near the void Mike left behind, probably.
As far as he knows, Will is still supposed to go with El to stay with Mike's family for Christmas, and he doesn't know how he feels about that, either. Anxious, maybe. Sort of cheated, like staying with the Wheelers is supposed to be some hallmark of a relationship that Will thought existed, but which apparently doesn't.
At school, he meets a boy named Daniel who writes stories about Star Trek and invites Will to come with him to the local arcade. Will goes with him, pretends that Daniel likes boys and likes Will and that Will likes him back, instead of staying hung up on an impossible boy from Hawkins with a girlfriend who saved the world, because honestly, how is Will supposed to compete with that? But the truth is, Daniel doesn't like Will that way and neither does Will like him, and every time he hears Mike and El on the phone together, Will wants to scream.
It's Thanksgiving, and Mike looks—a lot older. More handsome, if Will is being honest with himself, which he tries not to be where it concerns Mike. Will feels like a stupid little kid in his too-big hand-me-downs from Jonathan with his drawings and his memories and his giant-ass crush, and he slaps Mike on the back with a "Miss you, man," and pretends it's that simple.
It's not that simple. Never was.