Claire Keane
★
if i look back, i am lost
Fai_Ryy
occasionally subtle
sheepfilms
hello vonnie
JVL
No title available
NASA
shark vs the universe
$LAYYYTER
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
No title available
KIROKAZE
almost home
No title available
d e v o n
noise dept.
Noah Kahan
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Estonia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Russia
seen from Australia
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Türkiye
seen from Colombia
seen from France
seen from Bangladesh
@wheelrsgrl
♡ brianna maeve ♡ twenty ♡ she/her ♡ bisexual ♡
( irl creative writing major, mike wheeler apologist, ethel cain & fiona apple enthusiast, big fan of yearning )
ao3 II wattpad
minors do not interact! requests: open asks: always welcome :)
“to be known the way you should is to put yourself through hell”
masterlist !
college!mike wheeler
such a funny way. . . (part one)
. . . of saying i love you (part two)
oh honey how you kill me! (part three, headcanons)
college!mike wheeler x anxious!reader
head full of poison. . . (part one)
. . . heart full of doubt (part two)
stoner!mike wheeler
those eyes, that mouth (part one)
love's easy tears (part two)
love's easy tears (extended ending)
just watched the first two episodes of anya taylor-joy and drew starkey's new show and wow. . . i missed having that beautiful man on my screen. . .
lowkey makes me want to unabandon my rafe cameron x oc fic on ao3
you single handedly saved the mike wheeler tag
haha this made me lol. while there are definitely some users who are doing their big one in the mike/finn tags imo (@vurbenaa @gleekluver @starcrossedl0vv just to name a few), i agree that it is DRY over there. like where's the love for my boy </3
but thank you i'm glad that you're here to read my silly little mike fics <3
i’m loving mike x anxious reader!!! they’re so cute and your writing is so detailed i’m obsessed 🥲🥲🥲 ty 4 your service 🥹
yayaya! i'm so glad you're enjoying! i'm super excited for part three and i hope you guys all are too <3 but always happy to provide for my fellow mike lovers
omg can I just say I love your writing DOWN, ur amazing queen!!
omg thank you that is so kind <33333 it brings me so much joy to know that people love what i write! you are the sweetest!
. . . heart full of doubt /// college!mike wheeler x anxious!reader wc: 6.8k
part one
warnings ! reader has a fundamental misunderstanding of mike and that is on purpose (she does not know this man), fellow trichotillomania baddies rise up!, spiraling per usual, probably completely inaccurate coffee shop descriptions but i cannot look up 'coffee in the 90s' one more time.
author's note ! oh, reader my mirrorball. this part is very dialogue heavy and takes place literally over the course of a few hours, just to show how codependent these two are gonna get (I PROMISE THEY ARE GOING TO BE HEALTHY EVENTUALLY OKAY. it's just impossible for me to not make a fucked up dynamic before mike pathetically confesses something). not much to say other than my usual please ignore any typos and i hope you enjoy :)
****
For the last four years, your Saturdays have been sacred.
They are the one day of the week that you have no obligations. You don’t have to worry about getting to class on time or clocking in for another monotonous shift at work. You’re free to sleep in as late as you want, lounge around in week-old pajamas, and if you accidentally make it through the entire day without washing your face, you don’t have to feel guilty.
You are someone who thrives on routine. On sameness. These lazy days are, regardless, familiar. Any wrench in your plans of having no plans has a way of unsettling you for the rest of the week - even just having to go to the grocery store on a different day than usual makes you sick to your stomach.
Despite this, that Saturday finds you awake at eight o’clock, pacing slow circles across your apartment and glancing at the clock every thirty seconds, waiting for Mike to call.
Because he said he would.
He just didn’t say what time.
And you’d rather die than risk missing his call.
The weather, in typical Indiana fashion, has spent the last week fluctuating wildly between cold and sunny and cold and rainy. Today falls somewhere in between. Yes, there’s sunlight pouring through the windows, bright enough to make the hardwood floors glow, but the chill still seeps through the walls, saturating the tiny place with a crisp frigidity.
Your apartment - an overglorified shoebox, if you’re honest - came with exactly one phone, bolted to the kitchen wall. Since being built sometime in the 70s, none of the several landlords have put in any effort into dragging the place into the 90s. The faux wood paneling lining half the kitchen walls has somehow survived three decades untouched, and the linoleum floor curls slightly at the corners no matter how many times maintenance insists they’ve fixed it. The cabinets don’t quite shut all the way unless you slam them, the faucet drips incessantly if it isn’t turned right, and the drafty windows rattle softly whenever the wind picks up.
The place is also perpetually cold in the winter and perpetually too warm in the summer. The ancient baseboard heater beneath the living room window sputters and clanks whenever it’s feeling particularly ambitious. If your upstairs neighbor decides to pace after midnight, you can follow his footsteps from one end of his apartment to the other without much effort.
All that being said, there isn’t any real reason why you haven’t bought a cordless phone yet - or at least one you could keep beside your bed. Every time you have to take a call (which isn’t often), you can be found sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor or leaning awkwardly against the counter because the cord isn’t nearly long enough to reach the couch.
(You’ve never liked talking on the phone very much. There’s something unnerving about conversations you can’t rehearse beforehand - about having to respond immediately without carefully choosing each word first. Any beat of silence is an opportunity for awkward interruption.)
By eight forty-five, you’ve chewed all of your fingernails down to the quick, and by eight fifty-five, you’re considering starting in on your eyelashes. It is exactly nine o’clock when the phone rings, and relief blooms so suddenly in your chest that it makes you lightheaded. You reach the phone before it can ring again, your hand trembling just enough to notice as you pull the receiver from its cradle.
There are butterflies in your stomach as you bring the phone to your ear. Or maybe it’s something stronger than butterflies. Full-blown birds, perhaps. Or maybe it’s just the peculiar ache from realizing you’d been worried he wouldn’t call at all.
“Hello?”
“Hello, yourself,” crackles Mike’s mellifluous voice through the receiver.
It’s a ridiculous thing to be relieved that he called, considering he promised that he would, but people change their minds all the time, right? Plans get disrupted, things come up out of nowhere, people decide they’d rather not call at all. In fact, it’s probably a statistical miracle that Mike called at all.
(There’s no need to fact-check that, you decide.)
“Er, good morning,” you offer weakly. Your mouth feels suddenly stuffed with cotton, and you squeeze the phone so tightly that you’re fairly certain you can hear the plastic creak beneath your fingertips.
“Good morning,” he chuckles softly. “Are you usually up this early?”
You sink to the floor in your usual phone-call-taking position, back pressed against the wall, closing your eyes as you loop the garish green phone cord around your wrist. The coldness of the hardwood bleeds through your thin sweatpants, making you shiver. It’s easy to picture his face in the darkness behind your eyelids, just based on his voice. He’s smiling - you know he is. It’s there in the warmth of his words. You can imagine his dimpled, lazy smile gracing his lips and wonder if he’s bothered to shave that morning, or if the beginnings of stubble are dusting his jawline again. You’ve even memorized the shape of his saucer-sized brown eyes, right down to the kindness in them.
“Not on Saturdays,” you admit finally. “It’s my day off.”
There’s a brief pause on Mike’s end and your heart rate quickens, suddenly overcome with panic that the call has dropped or Mike has hung up. Sure, you could easily go dig out the note he left you and call him back, but that’s only if the two of you got disconnected. If he hung up on you-
“You should’ve told me that. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t wake me,” you blurt out hurriedly. “I’ve been up since eight.”
The explanation leaves your mouth before you can stop it, and you are punished with another short lull.
“You have? I thought you said-
“Well, yes, I did say that,” you laugh nervously, twisting the phone cord tighter around your wrist. “I usually sleep in on Saturdays, but I just couldn’t today. Insomnia, y’know?”
It’s not technically a lie. It’s not a lie at all, actually. You do have insomnia. . . sometimes. . . and you do usually sleep in on Saturdays. You were just too preoccupied with what time Mike might call to relax for more than an hour at a time. Several times throughout the night, you managed to convince yourself that Mike was calling - as if he’d call at 4 AM.
“Still,” Mike continues softly, “I could’ve called later in the day.”
You shake your head, knowing that Mike can’t see you. Grateful that he can’t see you, actually. The idea of spending another four or five hours waiting beside the phone sounds like torture.
“Are you usually up this early, then?” you ask quickly, redirecting the conversation before he can insist on apologizing.
“Not on Saturdays,” he echoes cheekily. “Not on any day, actually. Except for when I get to see Professor Frost.”
And me, you finish for him. You tip your head back against the wall and stare up at your hideous (yet, somehow, not outdated) popcorn ceilings. “His class isn’t that early.”
“No,” he agrees thoughtfully, “but it’s early for me.”
“What time do you usually wake up?” you ask, fiddling with the drawstring of your sweats, tucking the phone between your ear and your shoulder. It slips a bit, and you barely catch Mike’s answer.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether I went to bed before or after two in the morning.”
You laugh softly. Somehow, that answer doesn’t surprise you in the slightest. “And when do you usually go to bed?” you press, almost teasingly.
“Depends,” he answers sheepishly.
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
“What does it depend on this time?”
“Whether I was writing or not.”
“So, it sounds like you never go to bed before two.”
“You would know,” Mike chirped back. “Since you’re a writer, too.”
There’s something impossibly easy about talking to him, which is strange, considering you’ve known him for less than a week. Five days, if you wanted to get into semantics. Stranger still, considering you’ve spent the entire time trying not to embarrass yourself in front of him.
People like Mike - charming, intelligent, handsome - are usually the types that you steer away from. You learned long ago that when a charmingintelligenthandsome man (boy) talks to you, it’s usually a trick. Some cruel playground dare with you as the butt of the joke. With Mike, you don’t feel that way. Maybe your 20s have made you optimistic, or maybe you can sense something genuine in Michael Wheeler, even if it’s just. . . friendship.
You can hear Mike breathing faintly through the receiver, alongside the quiet sounds of movement somewhere in the background. Is he the type to live alone, or are there roommates bustling around just out of earshot? Is he sitting on his couch or lying sprawled across his bed, one arm behind his head while the other holds the phone to his cheek?
You wonder entirely too many things about Mike Wheeler these days.
“So,” Mike says, clearing his throat, and you realize you never responded to his little quip about being a writer. “What do you usually do on Saturdays?”
“Nothing,” you insist, stretching your legs out in front of you. There is a bug of some sort scuttling underneath your kitchen table, and you hope you don’t have to call the landlord to fumigate the place again.
“Yeah? More nothing?”
“I mean, I try not to do anything.”
“And what does that entail exactly?”
“Sleeping in. Reading the most kitschy books I can find. Watching The Simpsons.”
“The Simpsons?” Mike repeats eagerly. “You watch it?”
“From time to time, yeah,” you reveal. “Well, no. I watch it every Saturday. It’s a routine, I guess.”
“Are you upset that I interrupted it?” Mike asks softly. “Your routine?”
“No,” you answer immediately.
“No?”
“No,” you repeat, quieter this time. “I couldn’t be upset with you.”
You wince instinctively. Again, there is silence on the other end of the line, and you hope you haven’t ruined things five days in. While Mike is processing your confession (or debating whether to hang up), you press the receiver against your chest and open your mouth in a silent scream. Why the hell had you said that?
“I’m glad,” Mike admits the moment you place the phone back to your ear. “In that case, would you be opposed to doing something today?”
You blink in surprise.
“Depends on what it is.”
“Let me buy you coffee,” Mike blurts out. “We can share our manuscripts, if you’d like.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” you assure. You’re positive that he’s only saying this to be nice. He’s probably hoping that you decline. Maybe, if he does have roommates, he’ll hang up the phone and laugh with them about how you - the awkward, quiet girl from his writing workshop - actually believed that Mike Wheeler wanted to take you to coffee.
“I want to,” Mike whispers. “I want. . . I want to see you.”
Your heart stumbles traitorously against your ribs. “You’ll see me on Tuesday.”
“I know,” he laughs nervously. “But I want to see you outside of class. We don’t have to bring manuscripts if you’d rather not talk about writing. I just thought maybe it’d make you more. . . comfortable if we had something to talk about.”
“I don’t really have anything to share,” you admit.
“No? What about all your earnest work?”
“Burned it.”
“Burned it?”
“Only metaphorically,” you reassure. “I wasn’t. . . happy with it.”
“But it still. . .” he falters. “Exists, right?”
“Yeah, but it’ll probably never see the light of day again.”
“Isn’t that everything you’ve spent the last four years working on?”
“Yeah, but I need a fresh start,” you murmur, suddenly ashamed. It feels juvenile to say all of this. “I need to be a good writer, and to do that, I need everything to be good.”
“I’m sure you are a good writer. Frost wouldn’t accept you if you weren’t-”
“No,” you interrupt. “I want to be great or nothing. What’s the point if I’m not?”
Mike says your name so gently that it’s painful.
You wish you hadn’t said anything - or at least taken a moment to soften the sentiment. Those words have been living somewhere inside of you for years now, the one thing that you truly know about yourself. That you’re not a natural at anything you’ve ever done, but you want to be. Every accomplishment you’ve ever had has been the product of hours spent rewriting and revising and trying far too hard.
You haven’t read anything of Mike’s yet, but you just know that he has that flawless sort of lyricism to his writing. The kind that high school English teachers used to fawn over and use as examples of artistry and genius. He speaks with the sort of earnestness people (you) have spent their entire lives trying to imitate on paper.
Perhaps it’s unfair to place him on a pedestal he’s done absolutely nothing to earn, but you’ve always felt you’re better at recognizing brilliance in other people than at finding it in yourself. You don’t know how to create something unless you’re suffering for it first.
“You don’t have to be great all the time, you know,” Mike says quietly.
“If I’m not great, then I’m mediocre.”
“And what’s wrong with mediocre?”
Everything, you almost say.
Instead, you shrug, even though he still can’t see you. Hasn’t been able to see you this whole time. “I’m sorry,” you mumble. “Er, what time?”
“What t- oh, for coffee?”
“Yeah. Unless you changed your mind.”
“No! Of course not!” Mike exclaims. “Um, what time is it now? Maybe noon? Or eleven?” His voice wavers a bit.
“Eleven works.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding relieved. “There’s a coffee shop downtown we could go to. I’ve only been a few times, but from what I remember, it’s pretty good. There are even smoothies. It’s called. . . Cup of Love? Or something equally corny.”
“Okay. Cup of Love it is.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then?”
“Yeah,” you smile faintly. “I’ll see you then.”
There’s a moment of hesitation before either of you hangs up, as though neither quite wants to be the first to end the conversation.
“Goodbye,” you add.
“Goodbye.”
The line clicks softly and goes dead. You remain seated on the kitchen floor for several moments, staring blankly at the phone still clutched in your hand.
You said yes to his offer so quickly that it feels as though someone else answered for you.
Slowly, you return the phone to its cradle. The apartment is quiet again - oppressively so now that Mike’s voice isn’t filling the space, and you find that you miss it already. The silence feels different from what it had been an hour ago.
Fear bubbles up inside you. Fear that you have ruined everything. Fear that you have messed up by exposing the ugliest parts of yourself. Fear that Mike has realized you’re far stranger than he originally anticipated. Fear that he hung up the phone and immediately buried his face in his hands before announcing to his roommates that the strange girl from workshop is somehow even stranger outside of class.
I mean, Jesus Christ, she’s been waiting by the phone since eight o’clock!
Fear that you will arrive at Cup of Love and discover Mike is nowhere to be seen. Fear that he’ll call right as you leave your apartment because something came up and maybe we can reschedule. Fear that he’ll realize somewhere between now and eleven o’clock that he’d rather spend his Saturday with quite literally anyone else.
The fear tastes like bile and for a moment, you’re afraid you’re going to vomit. With the state your apartment’s in, you wouldn’t be surprised if your stomach acid burns a hole right through the floor. Maybe then your landlord would renovate the place.
It's ridiculous really - the ease with which your mind creates catastrophes where none exist. Mike has given you absolutely no reason to believe he would do any of those things. If anything, he's spent the last week proving the exact opposite.
You know all of this logically, but logic has never had much sway over you.
You push yourself off the floor with a sigh, glancing instinctively at the clock hanging crookedly above your stove.
It’s 9:26.
If Cup of Love is just downtown, it will only take you about ten minutes to drive there, but you should probably factor in an extra five minutes for traffic. . . and maybe another ten for parking and walking to the café. That means you need to leave by 10:40, at the latest, but you should probably leave at 10:30 instead. Which means you only have an hour to get ready.
(Is an hour enough time to become someone worth having coffee with?)
The way in which you move through your apartment is like a choreographed dance. First, you start the shower, turning the knob as hot as it will go until the ancient pipes groan their familiar protest. Your bathroom is violently pink - that was the thing in the 70s, and growing up, your childhood bathroom had looked the same way, so you leaned into the pink tiles and pink rugs and pink shower curtain and the gaudiness of it all.
The pink makes the place feel softer somehow when the morning sunlight pours through the frosted window and reflects against the tile, casting everything in a rosy glow. It reminds you of lying on the bathmat in front of the shower on school mornings while your mother got ready for work, relishing the warmth spilling from beneath the curtains as she absentmindedly hummed along to whatever song was playing softly on the radio. There was something sacred about those mornings - the steam curling lazily through the air and the smell of lavender body wash lingering long after she’d left for the day.
As the water heats up, you tidily set out all your skincare and makeup in the order that you will use them. Moisturizer beside cleaner. Concealer beside mascara. Lip balm tucked beside your favorite perfume. You hang up clean towels alongside your plush robe before fitting a shower cap over your head, stripping off your ratty pajamas, and stepping into the glowing pink atmosphere of your shower.
(You don’t have nearly enough time to wash and style your hair, but thankfully, with a few butterfly clips, it should look just fine.)
The water is delightfully hot - just enough to have you swaying drowsily as you let it sluice down your body - and for a moment, you almost forget the events of that morning and why you’re in such a rush in the first place.
It’s only when you reach for your body wash that your thoughts betray you once more.
Mike Wheeler wants to see you outside of class.
There are cartons of milk in your refrigerator older than your relationship with Mike Wheeler, and somehow, you’ve spent the entirety of this morning reorganizing your sacred Saturday around a cup of coffee with him. It would be almost funny if it weren’t almost. . . embarrassing.
No one has ever treated you with the same kindness that Mike does. Not ever. And perhaps that’s why, beneath all the anxiousness swirling through your mind, there is another feeling blossoming quietly beneath it.
Excitement. It settles low in your stomach whenever you think about his dimpled smile. It makes your heart flutter whenever you remember him saying, I want to see you.
Simple. Concise. But was it honest?
You lather up your body wash between your fingers. You’ve spent your entire life believing that people merely tolerate your presence, that you’re not entirely sure what to do with the idea that someone might actively seek it out. There has always been a purpose attached to the people in your life - professors and classmates and coworkers and friends of convenience. People you’ve sat beside rather than people who’ve chosen to sit beside you.
Is it possible that Mike is. . . different?
You squeeze your eyes shut and dip your face beneath the water, almost in punishment. You were 22 years old, not 15. You were too old to believe that kindness equaled interest and interest equaled romance. You’ve known Mike for less than a week. It’s far too early to start crushing on him.
Even if he is the prettiest boy you’ve ever met. . . and his laugh makes your knees weak. . . and he noticed your bleeding, blistered heels on the first day you met. . .
Mike is kind. You know that much already. He’d probably invite anyone to coffee if he thought they needed a friend. You are not special.
But you want him to call next Saturday, too. And perhaps the Saturday after that.
You want him to remember how you take your coffee and ask you questions about the stories you metaphorically burned. You want him to continue smiling at you during Professor Frost’s lectures and to keep sitting next to you every day.
It is a painful realization. One that has you shutting off the water quickly and just standing there, breathing heavily, looking like a fool in just your bright pink shower cap.
****
The beginnings of a headache are throbbing in your temples, and you’re torn between whether the cause is dehydration or the miasma of perfume and incense hanging over your head. Even from a distance, sitting in your car with your absurdly oversized sunglasses obscuring your face, you can tell that Cup of Love is bustling with college students.
The café is tucked between a secondhand bookstore and an equally crowded record shop, all mismatched furniture and handwritten chalkboard signs proclaiming LOVE IS BREWING in looping pink script. There are hanging flower baskets framing the front entrance and enough ivy creeping up the brick exterior to make the place look as obnoxiously charming as possible. It is the kind of place only a college town would have.
People spill out onto the sidewalk clutching oversized mugs and dog-eared paperbacks. There’s someone who, after a bit too much staring, you decided wasn’t Mike sitting cross-legged on the curb smoking a cigarette and annotating a copy of Sylvia Plath. You can hear the soft music filtering out whenever the door opens, accompanied by the sound of laughter and clinking ceramic mugs.
It’s 10:54, and since parking, you’ve become suddenly incapable of moving. You are frozen in the driver’s seat, staring at your reflection in the mirror and scrutinizing the damage you did to your left eyebrow on the way here. The little hairs you ripped out with one hand are scattered across your lap, and you can’t even force yourself to brush them away.
Perhaps coming here was a mistake.
(You aren’t sure there’s a word in the English language that can describe the way you are feeling right now - the particular combination of excitement and terror that accompanies being known by another person.)
You’ve never been very good at firsts. Shockingly. First dates and first friendships and first impressions have always left you feeling as though you’ve somehow missed out on an instruction manual everyone else had been given at birth.
Are there rules to these sorts of things? Are you supposed to let him pay for your coffee? But what if he’s already paid for himself? It would be unfair to make him get his wallet back out. Should he insist upon paying? How many times are you supposed to say “Oh, no, that’s okay,” before accepting his offer? Once? Twice? Three times?
Would it be strange if you hugged him? Would shaking his hand be worse?
You imagine greeting him with a firm handshake, and immediately your headache worsens. “It’s lovely to see you again, Michael.”
Yeah, no handshake.
Maybe you’ll simply wave at him from across the café. If you can get your arms to work again, that is.
You glance again at the entrance. Is he already here?
The clock on your dashboard changes from 10:54 to 10:55. You still haven’t moved, and at this rate, Mike is going to have to tap at your driver’s side window and ask whether or not you died in the parking lot. Which would be mortifying, certainly, but at least it would spare you from having to decide whether or not you’re supposed to hug him hello.
Finally, your limbs do as your brain asks, and you reach for your purse.
The bell hanging above Cup of Love’s door jingles merrily every few seconds as students pass in and out. You pause briefly outside the large front window, more interested in delaying the inevitable than actually looking inside, but you see him instantly.
Mike is sitting alone at a small table tucked into the corner of the café, fingers tapping rapidly against the ceramic mug in front of him. He’s dressed simply today - a faded black sweater with the sleeves pushed haphazardly up his forearms and a pair of worn jeans - and his curls look no more tame than they ever do in workshop. Did he spend the last hour attempting to smooth them down only to ultimately surrender to their unruliness? Or did he even care to style them at all?
Mike Wheeler - all gentle smiles and easy conversation - is nervous.
He glances down at his watch before reaching absentmindedly for the sugar packets scattered across the table and arranging them into a neat little pile, disrupting it moments later. One of his legs bounces anxiously beneath the table as he glances toward the door every few seconds before quickly looking away again.
There is a small bouquet of flowers placed beside his coffee mug, and your first thought is that they couldn’t possibly be for you.
Maybe he stopped at the florist on his way here. Maybe they’re for his mother or a friend or some beautiful girl waiting elsewhere in town. A girl who doesn’t change her outfit four times before leaving and spends twenty minutes debating whether or not she’s supposed to hug people hello.
They couldn’t possibly-
Mike looks toward the window this time, and his eyes widen with recognition. You watch his entire face soften as soon as he notices you standing there.
He smiles.
He lifts his hand in an awkward little wave.
Something unfurls itself within your chest, and it gives you the much-needed push to step inside. You don’t realize how hard you’re smiling until you reach Mike, your cheeks aching from the wideness of your grin. He rushes to stand from his seat, scraping the legs of the chair back and knocking his hip into the table in his haste to greet you.
In the time you spent wondering if Mike was looking forward to seeing you, you didn’t notice how much you’d been looking forward to seeing him.
“Hello,” he says, clearing his throat. “Um, here. Let me get that.”
Mike lunges forward and pulls out the chair opposite himself, nearly sending it toppling backward in his enthusiasm before catching it at the last second. You have to bite down on your bottom lip to stop yourself from laughing at the horrified expression that momentarily flashes across his face.
“Thank you,” you murmur softly as you slide into your seat.
He waits until you’re comfortably seated before lowering himself back into his own chair. The silence that settles between the two of you is not uncomfortable as much as it is bashful. It’s different than the silence over the phone, somehow. Inexplicably. Now, sitting across from you, sunlight spilling through the café window behind him, you’ve forgotten every coherent thought you’ve ever had.
He looks pretty today. Prettier than usual, if that’s even possible.
Up close, you can almost convince yourself that he did put in more of an effort. His curls aren’t nearly as unruly as they had been during Thursday’s workshop - though one particularly stubborn piece still falls across his browline - and he’s shaved since you’d last seen him. There’s also a faint flush coloring the tips of his ears.
“These are for you,” Mike blurts out, sliding the bouquet across the table with pink cheeks. “I know flowers are sort of cliché, but you said Saturdays are sacred, and I was feeling guilty about stealing yours away, so I thought I’d bring you something pretty in exchange.”
You’re afraid that if you open your mouth too quickly, you might begin crying in the middle of Cup of Love at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.
“Oh,” is all you’re capable of saying for several moments. “Mike, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he smiles sheepishly. “I wanted to.”
I want to see you.
I wanted to.
“Well, thank you. Really. They’re beautiful,” you say, clutching the flowers between your hands and inhaling deeply. They are sweet in a way that isn’t too overpowering. “I hope they weren’t too expensive.”
“Not at all!” Mike exclaims. “Even if they were. . . it would be worth it. For you.”
Oh, Mike Wheeler, you’re going to be the death of me.
“Did you want to, um, anything to drink?” he asks suddenly, as though he only just remembered why the two of you are here in the first place. “I already got a coffee, but if you tell me what you want, I can order it for us. They have smoothies, like I said, and hot chocolate - I think that’s what I’m going to get this time - but if there was something else-”
“You don’t have to buy my drink,” you interrupt.
“Oh.” His cheeks grow pinker somehow. “No, I know I don’t have to. I just wanted to.”
“I feel bad making you pay.”
“I invited you here, so I should probably buy your drink. Um, I mean, I can. Not that I should.” He clears his throat again. “You know what I mean.”
“Okay,” you relent. Twice. You gave in after he insisted twice. “Just a latte is fine, then.”
Mike nods. “Okay. I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t,” you promise with another small smile.
It’s not long before Mike is carrying your latte back over, holding it carefully with both hands as if he’s afraid of dropping it. He looks oddly out of place, even though Cup of Love seems like it attracts the tortured poet type. He’s beautiful in that unfair sort of way artists always seem to be, yes, but he doesn’t have that dark, gloomy disposition that so many of them cultivate. There is nothing brooding about Mike Wheeler - not in the way he laughs too loudly at his own jokes or buys flowers simply because he felt guilty about asking for two hours of your time.
Looking at him, you can tell that, if tragedy ever touched him, it has done so gently.
Mike is soft edges hidden beneath the sharp ones. He’s perpetually ink-stained fingertips and dimples and nervous laughter. Even the scar across his face softens him. It’s as though he never learned the cynicism is somehow considered more sophisticated than kindness.
And watching him now, carefully weaving through the crowd with your latte, it’s difficult to imagine Mike has been anything other than happy and unabashedly kind.
He smiles as he reaches the table, setting your drink carefully in front of you before immediately apologizing for the foam sloshing slightly against the rim, even though not a single drop has spilled.
“I wasn’t sure if they did latte art or not,” he admits, “but there’s a heart on yours.”
(For someone who writes almost exclusively about monsters, Mike seems far too soft to have ever met one.)
Your eyes flicker down only to discover that there is, in fact, a slightly lopsided heart floating atop your coffee.
“I thought you’d like it,” he adds.
“It’s great,” you say sincerely. “Thank you. You didn’t get yourself anything?”
“What? Oh, no. I changed my mind,” Mike waves off. “Unless they can put espresso in my hot chocolate, I don’t want it.”
“I’m sure they would if you asked.”
“Maybe,” Mike hums. “But that’s too much work.”
You hold your mug between your hands, giving them something to do other than sweat profusely or tremble against your thighs. Gently, you blow on the steaming liquid.
“You didn’t bring any manuscripts or anything, did you?”
You freeze, mug halfway to your lips. “No,” you say. “Was I. . . Did you want. . .?”
“No, I was hoping you didn’t,” says Mike. “No offense to Professor Frost, but I’m a bit sick of talking about writing and characterization and all that nonsense. I’d rather talk about things that matter.”
“Things that matter?” you repeat, finally taking a small sip of your latte. It’s good.
“Y’know. Politics. Economics. The inevitability of climate change,” Mike lists, counting each item on his fingers. You stare at him for a moment, and the expression on your face must be extraordinarily amusing, because Mike bursts into laughter. He is, again, the Mike that you met on that first day. “I’m kidding, obviously. I want to know about you.”
“I’m not a very interesting person,” you say, practically echoing the sentiment you told him on Thursday. “I’m quite boring, actually. I told you - I watch The Simpsons every Saturday.”
“And you think I don’t?” Mike frowns. “Here, how’s this? We can make it a game. You ask me five questions, and then I get to ask five in return.”
“Okay,” you agree quietly. There’s nothing you hate more than answering questions about yourself. Well, no, there’s plenty of things you hate more than that - but right now, talking about yourself is taking the cake. “I can ask anything?”
“Anything,” Mike confirms. “Just don’t get too philosophical on me.”
“Okay. Well, what’s your favorite color?”
“Come on. Don’t go easy on me,” Mike groans dramatically. “It’s blue.”
“Um. . . favorite author?”
“Kerouac. No more asking my favorites.”
“When’s your birthday, then?”
“April 7th.”
“April 7th?” you repeat. “What? That’s soon. That’s like. . . on Thursday!”
Mike nods. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal. There’s not really anything to celebrate about turning 22.”
“But it’s your birthday.”
He shrugs, fiddling with the collar of his sweatshirt. “Birthdays just. . . they remind me of home. And I don’t really like to think about home.”
“And where is home?”
“Is that one of your questions?”
“Yeah, sure. Yes, it is.”
“Hawkins,” Mike reveals. “Hawkins, Indiana.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” you say.
“It’s a small town,” Mike says with another dismissive shrug. “Lived there my whole life until I moved here. I don’t go back, if I can help it.”
You nibble on your bottom lip, debating whether it would be better to use your last question on why he doesn’t go back, or if you should just leave it alone.
“I don’t go home much either,” you settle on. “I didn’t have a great time there. . . mostly in high school. Which, I know I’m not special for having a shitty high school experience, but it still was just. . .” you trail off, shaking your head, ridding yourself of the memories. “My point is, I get it. I try to forget about where I came from, too.”
Mike smiles gratefully at you. “One more question,” he reminds you.
You chug down the rest of your latte, trying to decide what to ask him. You could ask him about his scar, but that might be too personal, especially since asking about his hometown seemed to dredge up bad memories. And as much as you want to know what those bad memories are. . .
“Do you have a favorite band?”
“The Cure, probably.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting?” Mike repeats. “What does that mean? Who did you think I listen to?”
“I don’t know. Metallica?”
Mike bristles a bit. “I’m not really a metal fan,” he mumbles. “More into rock, I guess.”
You frown, overcome again by the feeling that is slowly becoming familiar. The feeling that you have, somehow, fucked things up.
Mike suddenly brightens. “Okay, my turn. Do you have a favorite band?”
“Fleetwood Mac, maybe,” you decide, feeling like you’ve suddenly suffered from whiplash with how quickly Mike’s mood changed. “Or Mazzy Star. They just released an album in October, and it’s really good.”
“Yeah? I’ll have to give them a listen. What’s it called?”
“So Tonight That I May See,” you recite. “The first track, Fade Into You, it’s practically perfect. She Hangs Brightly is probably still my favorite album, though. I have it on vinyl if you wanted to borrow it. You don’t have to, though.”
“I would like to,” Mike responds immediately.
You blink. “Really?”
“Yeah, why not? If you like them, I’ll give ‘em a listen.”
You nod, face heating up. “Right. Um, okay. Next question?”
Things continue like this for a while, Mike asking his next four questions (which are entirely about your favorite things, by the way), with brief interludes in between questions for him to grill you on your answers. He seems genuinely interested in learning more about you, something you’re not used to, evidently.
And he seems genuinely interested in your answers, too. Your favorite authors and books and foods and more trivial things that you can barely even remember about yourself. The small details of your life that have never felt important enough to say aloud.
He asks follow-up questions. He remembers things. He laughs at your overly passionate explanations, and for once, you don’t feel ashamed at your enthusiasm.
You don’t even realize how much time has passed until you glance toward the window and notice the sunlight has shifted. The café is quieter now.
The students who had filled every table earlier have slowly disappeared, leaving behind abandoned coffee cups and plates. The music playing softly overhead feels louder without the constant chatter, and it leaves you and Mike swathed in an echoing ambience.
“I thought you said you wanted to talk about things that matter,” you say after a second round of asking questions.
“These are things that matter,” Mike defends.
“My favorite color is not something that matters.”
“I think it does. Now I know to buy you pink flowers next time.”
“Next time?” you repeat, heart fluttering.
His eyes widen slightly. “I mean. . . if you wanted to see me again. Well, you’ll have to see me again, unfortunately, for Frost’s class. But outside of that. I’d like to see you again, if that’s okay.”
You nod so frantically your headache returns. “I’d like that.”
Mike lets out a tiny breath. “Okay. Yeah. Cool.”
Even though the two of you haven’t run out of things to talk about, there seems to be a mutual understanding that the day has ended. That you have to save some fun facts for next time. Because there will be a next time.
You and Mike clean up your table, gather your things, and together, make your way toward the door.
The temperature has risen ever so slightly, now that the sun is overhead, but as you brush Mike’s shoulder walking through the door (the door he holds open for you), you can’t help but shiver.
“Okay, well, I’m parked over there,” Mike says, pointing down the street. He keeps tugging down his sleeves before rolling them up again.
“I’m over there,” you say, nodding your head toward the parking lot across the street. The bouquet he brought for you is clutched tightly to your chest.
“I can walk you to your car?” Mike offers.
“No, that’s okay. It’s not too far,” you assure.
Mike nods. “Right. Well, um, I’ll see you on Tuesday?”
You look down at your feet and toe at a pebble on the sidewalk. “Yeah, I’ll see you on Tuesday,” you echo. After a pause, you add, “Thank you for today, Mike.”
He flushes again. “Yeah, no problem. I really like talking to you.”
“I like talking to you, too.”
Mike smiles like you just told him he won the lottery.
You take a few steps backward toward your parked car. “Okay. Goodbye.”
“Yeah, goodbye,” he says, raising his hand in a wave, similar to the one he greeted you with.
Before the departure can become any more stilted, you turn on your heel and begin the short walk to your car. You’ve only just crossed the street when Mike calls your name.
You turn, entirely unprepared to see him striding toward you.
“I can’t watch you leave without kissing you,” Mike declares. “Can I? Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” you say breathlessly without a second thought.
And he does. And he tastes like coffee and the promise of a future.
tags: @wrenwiththeblues , @lilyyyyy08
i hate to be THAT person but could we possibly get some hcs for the stoner!mike series? i literally can't get enough of your writing it's cocaine to me btw :) <3
oh trust me stoner!mike will be making a reappearance because that is my MAN. i've already been toying with the idea of doing headcanons (like i did with college!mike) or doing just a collection of little vignettes of what mike and reader's relationship looks like.
but sincerely so grateful that you enjoy that little series so much <333 stoner!mike is coming back eventually.
a copy of gravity's rainbow that she probably didn't readddd (sorry mb)
omgggg i love love love TV Girl. I saw them in concert when I was a senior in high school and it was so much fun
the friend that i went with thought the song said 'take it west nine yards' instead of 'taking what's not yours' and i literally think of that every time i hear it lmaooo.
part two of the anxious!reader series deadass has me looking up the history of the telephone (it's for a single throwaway sentence btw).
Are you a byler shipper 🤞
indeed! i am still on the byler bus. in fact i've lowkey been sitting on a 'will never found' au inspired by dante's inferno. . . maybe one day i'll finally publish it on ao3, but i am just so addicted to writing mike x reader that i can never find the motivation to write anything else.
i loved the Frank O’Hara reference in stoner!mike x reader! lmaoo it inspired me to get back into reading outside of tumblr. any reading reccs?
you being a creative writing major makes so much sense now because your writing is amazing!
omg i could genuinely talk about books and give book recs for hours. i’m such a pretentious classics reader and so i just finished east of eden by steinbeck which i HIGHLY recommend. i also just started reading gravity’s rainbow by pynchon.
in terms of authors (of all genres) though, i love anything jane austen, brontë sisters, toni morrison, james baldwin, jeanette wintersen, barbara kingsolver, and sally rooney
my favorite books that i’ve read so far this year are probably geek love by katherine dunn, sunburn by chloe michelle howarth, penance by eliza clark, and how high we go in the dark by sequoia nagamatsu
hopefully this was helpful but please i would love to talk books with anyone who’s willing. i love reading ❤️❤️❤️
head full of poison. . . /// college!mike wheeler x anxious!reader wc: 5.7k
part two
requested by @wrenwiththeblues
warnings ! set in canon technically, it's the 90s, fem!reader, mike has ptsd, reader has anxiety and depression (they're both undiagnosed as fuck), reader mentions skipping breakfast from time to time, reader is kind of an unreliable narrator because she thinks every one is out to get her, eventual codependency but it kinda starts here, please ignore any typos :), pt 1 of 4???
author's note ! hi so this took me much longer than i expected. idk if it's just because mercury is in retrograde or what, but i just could not figure out how to write this in a way that i liked, so i figured splitting it up into several parts will make it easier for me. i know this part is kinda boring but i promise things will start to pick up. if you can't tell, this is inspired by olivia rodrigo's new album so there will be a lot of references and character traits pulled from her songs :)) as for reader, lowkey she's annoying and maybe her anxiety is a bit heavy-handed but this is exactly how i thought and acted in high school before i started lexapro. hopefully you guys enjoy this little series :)
****
It is a cold, sunny day in March, and the blisters on your heels are bleeding cherry red through your socks when you step into the air-conditioned classroom.
You’d known the shoes were a bad idea the moment you put them on that morning, the leather rubbing raw against your skin before you’d even limped halfway across campus. But you wanted more than anything to make a good impression, knowing damn well that, in a week, you’d be waking up 30 minutes before you had to leave and throwing on whatever clothes were scattered across your floor.
You are five minutes late, fashionably, and every head turns to look at you as you make your belated arrival. The attention leaves you feeling dizzy and acutely aware of everything all at once: the backpack strap digging into your shoulder, the barely-buttered piece of toast sitting uneasily in your stomach, the throbbing pain in your feet, and the beads of sweat collecting beneath your arms, despite the aggressive air-conditioning.
The expressions on people’s faces differ to an alarming degree. You catalogue them to the best of your ability, taking in the inquisitive stares and disinterested glances; the faces of those you recognize from prior classes, from campus, or not at all. What are they thinking? Did they see the artificiality behind your outfit? The wincing way in which you shift your weight, trying not to think about how you’d definitely have to throw these socks away when you get home (which was a shame, they were your favorites, blue with little lace ruffles). Had they noticed something you hadn’t? Toothpaste at the corner of your mouth? Mascara smeared beneath your eyes? A run in your tights? Were you in the wrong room? Had you gotten the time wrong?
“Ah, looks like our missing students have finally arrived.”
The professor is a middle-aged man with graying hair and eyes that are perpetually squinting beneath his glasses. His name is Professor Frost, known both locally and nationwide for his bestselling debut novel. In the decade or two since his success, he has returned to his alma mater to teach a coveted spring workshop for seniors. It is well known that he only selects the best.
Supposedly.
“Sorry, sir,” says a voice behind you. You jump, completely unaware that someone had appeared at your shoulder in the first place. “I would blame traffic, but I walked here.”
He is tall, the boy, with one hand still on the classroom door as it swings shut. Dark curls spill across his forehead and into his eyes. There is a worn messenger bag hanging from one shoulder, weighed down by far too many books to the point that the strap is splitting at the seam. Wire-framed glasses are hooked in the collar of a faded black T-shirt (on it is a grainy version of the poster for Eraserhead). There is a casualness to his demeanor - slouched shoulders, Walkman headphones around his neck (still faintly leaking music), and a slowness to his words that makes you wonder if he even cares about being late at all.
(Meanwhile, you are actively enduring your worst nightmare. A humiliation ritual, if you will. You want nothing more than to just sit down and be out of the spotlight).
“Mr. Wheeler, is it?” asks Professor Frost, glancing down at the attendance roster on his desk. You can picture it vividly - all the names marked as present except yours and his. “You have quite the reputation amongst the English department.”
The boy - Wheeler - grins innocently. “Do I really?” he asks, feigning surprise. “All good things, I hope.”
A few students chuckle to themselves. You feel left out of whatever inside joke accompanies his reputation. If your memory serves you correctly, you’d never had a class with this mysterious, smart-mouthed boy. What exactly had he done to earn a reputation? Be late too many times? Get in fights? You just hoped he wasn’t dangerous, considering you were standing just half a step in front of him. He could easily grab you and snap your neck before anyone could react.
(Not that he’d actually want to. Still).
Professor Frost sighs heavily through his nose, adjusting his glasses. “Take your seats. Both of you.”
Wheeler gives a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
You knew, going in, that the workshop was small, but you’re still surprised by just how few people are in the room. Maybe fifteen students, including you and Wheeler. Two long tables have been pushed together in the center of the room, manuscripts and notebooks scattered across the surface alongside coffee cups and pencil cases that suggest everyone else has already settled in.
Luckily for you, most of the chairs are occupied except for two that just so happen to be right next to each other. Of course.
You keep your eyes fixed on the floor as you make your way over, trying to ignore the hot embarrassment creeping up your neck and the sharp stinging in your heels. Don’t limp. Don’t limp. Don’t limp. It is appalling that you have to place so much focus on walking.
Wheeler reaches the chairs first, sliding into the one closest to the door before noticing you’re hesitating beside him.
“Oh.” He stands halfway back up. “Sorry.”
He steps into the aisle, giving you room to pass, as you begin to apologize, assuring him that it’s okay. An awkward silence follows as you duck into the chair beside him, swinging your backpack off your shoulder. . . and promptly smack him in the knee with it.
“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, briefly wondering if you’d have been better off just not getting out of bed at all that morning.
Wheeler blinks down at where your bag hit him, then flickers his gaze to where you have unceremoniously dropped it at your feet. He nods solemnly and then, in a gravely serious tone, says, “I think I’ll pull through.”
It catches you off guard, so for a second, you can’t do more than stare at him. Then, despite yourself, you laugh. It’s barely a laugh, honestly. Just a small little smile and a little sound of amusement that you couldn’t swallow down. But Wheeler notices, and the corner of his mouth lifts sweetly.
“Well, it seems we can finally get started,” Professor Frost says, beginning to pass out colorless folders with each student’s name already written in the upper-right corner.
As the man meanders his way around the room, Wheeler has begun to empty the contents of his messenger bag in an unceremonious heap in front of him. Out spill ragged notebooks, their spines barely holding beneath layers of tape and dog-eared pages. They’re all swollen with loose papers and colorful Post-It notes that stick out at impossible angles, filled with cramped handwriting and rough sketches that you can’t make out without making it obvious that you’re looking.
You accept your folder from Professor Frost with slightly trembling hands, slightly mortified that he knows your name, not because of your standout stories or willingness to participate in class (as if), but because of the ungratefulness you showcased in showing up late to the first day of class. Inside the folder is a syllabus, an intimidating five-page document listing assignments, schedules, required materials, and other class policies. Immediately, your eyes snag on phrases like mandatory peer critiques, weekly manuscript presentations, and individual conferences.
You suddenly feel mildly nauseous. Maybe more than mildly. The only way this day can get worse is if your toast decides to make a reappearance, and then you might just have to-
“As you look over the syllabus, I advise each of you to look ahead to the final page, and you will see that you have all been assigned a workshop partner for the next ten weeks,” Professor Frost says, ambling back to the front of the room. “I’m only experimenting with this model - as some of you may be aware, I usually aim for an all-encompassing peer review with rotating sets of eyes on your work - but I received feedback that it may be beneficial to have a more focused set of eyes. This person will be responsible for reading every draft you produce this quarter. They will annotate your work and provide developmental feedback throughout, which means I expect you to be meeting with your partners outside of class. After reading your submissions, I attempted to pair you with someone whose work differs most in genre or form. I hope that this new model will be helpful, but if you find yourself unhappy with your partner after this first week, please feel free to speak to me during office hours, and we can arrange an alternative pairing.”
The room is drowned in the sound of pages turning, everyone eagerly seeking out the list of names. You follow, flipping to the back of the syllabus, unable to delay the inevitable for too long.
You find your name easily, and almost immediately, your heart stutters.
Next to your name, printed in black ink: Wheeler, Michael.
A strange sense of dread settles somewhere between your ribs. The likelihood that there’s a second Wheeler in the class is. . . very low (even though the boy next to you looks like his name should be something more sophisticated like Alexander or Theodore), and it’s not that being paired with him specifically is the problem. It’s the fact that someone is going to read your work.
As far as you know, Michael Wheeler is a self-assured, cocky twenty-something who likely writes heartbreaking, ineffable epics about heroes and redemption and likely hates heavy-handed metaphors and overt descriptions of vases. He’s probably never second-guessed his talent or whether he belongs in a room. He has a reputation in the English department. You wouldn’t be surprised if he’d won awards from lit magazines before he graduated high school. You wouldn’t be surprised if he read your messy, unfinished drafts and told Professor Frost that you definitely didn’t belong in such a highly regarded writing workshop.
Around you, people have already begun introducing themselves to their partners, snippets of conversation slipping through the ringing in your ears. Next to you, it seems that Michael Wheeler is putting the pieces together. He untangles his lanky limbs from where he’s draped them lazily across the chair and peers at the identical names printed on the syllabus and the one on your folder. He leans slightly closer, just enough so you can hear him over the din of the classroom.
“I think we’re partners,” he says, pointing at his name on your syllabus. His voice is warm, no trace of the cockiness he spoke to Professor Frost with, and it sends a sudden shiver down your spine. “That’s me. I mean, I’m Michael. Mike.”
You whip your head around to face him, regretting it almost instantly as you find yourself face to face with him. Unfortunately, literally. The two of you are now so close that your noses are almost touching, so close that you can smell the toothpaste on his breath.
Fuck. He’s handsome. Not even just handsome. He’s pretty.
His strikingly dark curls that fall across his browline are slightly flattened on one side like he’d rolled out of bed moments before arriving. His bone structure is also impressively sharp. Like, carved out of stone sharp. His chiseled jawline is softened only slightly by the beginnings of stubble, and his defined cheekbones are dusted with freckles that seem out of place against the severity of his features. His eyes are big, brown, and seemingly endless, framed by long lashes.
But what strikes you the most is the thin scar that runs from the prominent bridge of his nose, down beneath his left eye, and disappears into the shadow cast by his cheekbones. It’s clearly a few years old, healed enough but still tinged a faint red, and it cuts jaggedly across his face. You ache to know the story behind it - was it some sort of accident? - but know that you’ll never bring yourself to ask. It would be rude to, anyway.
Mike’s eyes widen.
“Oh. Sorry.”
He immediately leans back, knocking his elbow against the edge of the table.
“Fuck. I didn’t mean to, uh, like, invade your personal space,” he says, gesturing vaguely between the two of you.
“It’s fine,” you assure. “I’m the one who was in your space, really.”
“It suits you,” he blurts out. “Your name, I mean. It fits.”
“Thanks.”
The conversation dies there. How magnificent, you can’t even manage to hold a decent discussion with the person you’ll be baring your soul to for the next ten weeks (yes, it’s that serious). Briefly, you reconsider returning the compliment - “Your name suits you, too!” - but it would be an outright lie. You didn’t think his name suited him. Mike was too mundane for a face like his. So, instead, you begin to look around the room, hoping to kill time until Professor Frost brings the room back together. It seems that everyone is getting along with their assigned partner - some have already started passing manuscripts back and forth, others are deep in conversation about shared interests. Professor Frost is staring out at the room with parental pride. You doubt he’s going to cut this short any time soon.
“So, what do you write?” Mike asks, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
“What? Oh, nothing really,” you stammer, caught off guard by his question.
Mike arches an eyebrow. “Nothing? You’re not a writer?”
“No, I am. That’s not what I meant. I write about nothing,” you explain evasively, already preparing yourself for the shift in Mike’s demeanor when he discovers you prefer literary fiction above all else. It’s definitely not as highly regarded as fantasy or mystery. Even romance would be better. You want to put that discovery off until necessary. “What about you? What do you like to write about?”
“Monsters, mostly,” Mike replies, leaning back in his chair, the front two legs coming up off the floor. “Fantasy. Sci-Fi. Horror. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Like. . . real monsters?”
Mike considers this question for a moment, teetering precariously. “Well, kind of,” he decides. “They’re from. . . well, have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?”
You shake your head.
“Okay. Basically it’s this tabletop roleplaying game. Everybody makes their own characters, and then one person - the Dungeon Master - kind of builds the world. They tell the story, throw monsters at everybody, come up with puzzles and quests and stuff, and the players decide what they want to do, and you sort of. . . react to it.” Mike pauses. “It’s a lot more fun than I’m making it sound, I swear.”
“And you write about the game?”
Mike grins crookedly, cocking his head to the side. He sets the legs of his chair down with a thunk. “Not really. I take a lot of ideas from the campaigns I created growing up. I was always the Dungeon Master.”
You nod. “I guess I was just wondering if these monsters. . . if they’re like ghosts or zombies or. . . or people.”
Mike looks at his battered notebook for a moment, still closed on the table. “Sometimes they’re people. Or were people.” When he looks back at you, his expression is thoughtful. “Or did you mean serial killers? Because I definitely don’t write about them.”
“No,” you say quickly. “I was just curious.”
Mike rubs his thumb almost absentmindedly over his scar. “Is that what you write about? People who are monsters?”
“I don’t write about serial killers, either, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Good, I’d be a bit worried if you did. Probably wonder how you got such in-depth information.”
“Well, I’d do my research,” you mumble. “But no, I write about ordinary people. I don’t think they’re monsters. They’re just doing nothing. Living their lives. And maybe they’re a monster to other people. Maybe they’ve hurt someone, or disappointed someone, or they’re selfish sometimes, but not. . . not necessarily. . .” You wince. “Sorry, I’m not making much sense. I don’t really think it comes across how I want in my writing, either. Sometimes it’s too contrived.”
“Contrived how?” asks Mike, furrowing his eyebrows.
“I don’t know. Maybe I just try too hard,” you say before you can stop yourself. You don’t know how Mike’s managed to do it, but you’re spilling your guts to him in a way you’ve never done with anyone else. “I just want to come off as earnest, but I don’t know if I am,” you finish.
“You want to be earnest, or you want to be a good writer?”
Your stomach drops and something on your face must give it away, because Mike’s eyes go wide almost immediately. “No, shit, I didn’t mean it like that,” he insists, shaking his head. “That wasn’t supposed to be an insult.”
“Okay. It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. You wish you could rewind time and take back the last three minutes. This is what you get for telling someone you just met (okay, yeah, he’s your workshop partner) about your deep-rooted writing insecurity.
“I wasn’t trying to say that you’re not a good writer,” he says, turning his body to face you. Mike props his elbows up on his knees and stares at you intently. “I just meant that, in my experience, people mix them up a lot. Like. . . everyone kind of wants to sound like they know what they’re doing, especially when they don’t. And I don’t think sounding earnest is the same as. . . I don’t know, having good prose. I guess my point is that I would rather be a considerate person who understands my characters than a writer whose greatest strength is stringing a sentence together.”
Your lips part, but you can’t seem to get any words to pass through them. Mike’s manner is so genuinely sincere, so sincerely genuine, that it has your heart pounding in your ribcage. Your left arm starts to go numb, too. Are you having a heart attack? No one has ever said anything like that to you. Maybe you misunderstood - maybe Mike meant you weren’t considerate in your writing. Except, no, that wouldn’t make sense; he’d never read anything of yours. Right? Unless he had. Unless he really did know you and was playing a prank on you. Maybe Professor Frost thought your submission was so utterly laughable that he got everyone else in on it. Any second now, Mike was going to burst into laughter - she thinks she’s a real, bona fide writer, just because she’s getting a degree for it!
Mike snaps his fingers in front of your face. “Hey, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
Discreetly, you press the back of your palm against your cheek, making sure you’re not overheating. This whole situation was turning into a disaster. You’d known Mike for all of ten minutes, and already you’d started prattling on about being earnest. The only way you could make this worse is if you started crying - and that wasn’t even out of the question, actually.
“Um, are you going to pass out? Do you want me to get you some water?”
“No! Oh God. I’m fine.” You shrink down into your chair, laughing weakly. “I’m sorry. This is. . . I shouldn’t have. . .”
You smile. Or at least you think you do. For all you know, you could just be baring your teeth. Your heart is beating so hard you’re surprised that Mike can’t hear it over the conversations happening around the room. You are painfully aware of everything all over again: your damp palms pressed against your thighs, your left foot bouncing beneath the table (only furthering the pain of your blisters), the warmth spreading up the back of your neck.
Why are you acting like this? Why are you panicking? It’s just a class. Mike is just a person. Why didn’t you just say something normal? I write literary fiction. I like character studies. Now, you’ve come off as the kind of writer who talked in circles about authenticity because they didn’t have anything else to say.
Mike is still staring at you, waiting for you to say something, but your tongue feels too big for your mouth. You hear someone laugh and you’re certain that they’re laughing at you - they’ve noticed the way your conversation has ground to a halt.
You are miraculously saved by Professor Frost clapping his hands from the front of the room. Any longer and you probably would’ve just outright told Mike that you didn’t think you belonged in this class.
The rest of the hour is hazy. You spend the remaining time replaying your conversation with Mike, wincing over everything you said. The scraping of chairs and the zipping of bags is what alerts you that everyone has started to pack up. You just hope that everything Professor Fros said while you were zoned out is covered in the syllabus.
As you’re gathering your things, Mike wordlessly slides a folded piece of notebook paper over to you. He’s already put his headphones on and is slipping out the door before you even had time to react. Quickly, you stuff your own notebook and new folder into your bag and grab the paper, clutching it tightly between your fingers as you follow the stream of students out the door. The friction against the back of your heels worsens the moment you get to your feet.
It’s only when you’re safely out of view of anyone you can see you crouch down (an effort to take the pressure off your feet) that you unfold the note. It takes you a moment to make sense of the scrawling, messy handwriting.
Mike Wheeler
(underlined once, slightly uneven with a lopsided smiley face doodled beside it).
Below is what you presume to be his phone number. Under that:
Hope I didn’t interrogate you too hard. I’m glad that we’re partners. Can’t wait to read your stuff. P.S. Those shoes looked painful, so I thought you might need these.
Two Band-Aids tumble out into the palm of your hand.
****
The only thing that gets you out of bed on Thursday is the promise that you will stop and get yourself a smoothie before class. It’s raining by the time you drag yourself across campus, the condensation from your smoothie sweating into your hand and your heels still tender. You opted for more practical shoes this time - a more practical outfit, too.
You’re alarmingly early today, not wanting to cement yourself as someone who’s always late to class. You slip into the same seat you were in previously, not wanting to take someone’s unofficial assigned seat and risk a confrontation. Artfully, you begin to arrange your notebook and pens into little rows. One by one, your classmates trickle in, bringing in the smell of spring rain and steaming cups of coffee. The room fills slowly, you patiently sipping at your smoothie all the while, until someone drops into the chair beside you with a groan.
“Jesus,” Mike mutters, running a hand through his rain-soaked curls. “It’s gross out there.”
You glance over at him. His sweater is damp around the shoulders, his bag darker where the rain has soaked through the canvas. Like last time, he’s slung his headphones around his neck, the music still playing quietly through them. A lone raindrop drips from his curls and down the side of his face, and you track its journey carefully.
“What’d you get?” Mike asks casually, nodding toward your smoothie and interrupting your ogling. He begins to pull out his own slightly waterlogged notebook.
“Oh. A smoothie.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
“It’s strawberry peach, I think.”
“Cool. I didn’t take you for a smoothie person.”
You purse your lips, unsure of what to make of that. You weren’t exactly a smoothie person, but sometimes you skipped breakfast to make it to class on time, and a smoothie was better than nothing. Was it because smoothies were considered healthy? Did he think you looked like someone who drank soda all the time?
Oh, God. Was Mike calling you fat?
“I just figured you’d be a coffee drinker. Isn’t that, like, the writer stereotype?” Mike adds with a shrug. “In high school, I always drank black coffee - no cream or sugar or anything - because I thought I looked cool. How stupid is that?”
“What do you drink now?”
“I’m a milkshake man, myself. Hot chocolate if it’s too cold. But there’s this place in Seattle called Starbucks - I visited some friends there last year - and they can mix coffee into the hot chocolate. I can’t believe I’d never thought of that before. They’ll even add whipped cream if you ask and-”
Mike cuts himself off abruptly.
“Hey! Why didn’t you call?”
“Call?” you repeat incredulously. There’s about a minute left before class is due to start, meaning Professor Frost is bound to walk in at any moment.
“Yeah, I left you my number, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t know that you wanted me to.”
“It was implied.” He frowns, and for a moment, he looks like a sad little puppy. “We’re partners, aren’t we? Figured you’d call and we could-”
The door flies open violently, slamming against the wall hard enough to rattle the frame. Mike jumps in his seat, head whipping in the direction of the door, arms bracing against the table as if in preparation to lurch to his feet. There’s a sense that he’s about to bolt, if a situation arises.
“Sorry, folks!” Professor Frost’s cheery voice says as he saunters into the room, briefcase in hand. “Guess I don’t realize my old strength. Apologies for my late arrival, but it appears that. . . ah, yes, everyone seems to be here.”
You look down at your hands, worrying a hangnail just to avoid making eye contact with Mike. Your cuticle starts to bleed as you peel the skin away. You figure that it’s less embarrassing for him - his reaction to the door slamming - if you pretend you didn’t notice.
Mike lets out a slow breath, muttering something to himself, before finally relaxing back into his seat as if nothing happened.
At the front of the room, Professor Frost is writing out the day’s lesson plan on the chalkboard. A 10-minute free-write followed by a lecture on syntax and idiolect, rounded out by a brief workshop with your partner.
“For the first ten minutes, I’d like each of you to describe a character based on the way they talk rather than the way they look,” says Professor Frost, dusting the chalk off his hands. “As writers, we have the unfortunate burden of getting around the lack of speaking out loud, but we gain the advantage of sentence structure and word choices. This character can be a real person - perhaps one of your closest friends - or it can be a character you’ve worked with before. If you want to be especially daring, I urge you to create someone new. Give them an overly specific way of speaking. Perhaps they use words incorrectly. Perhaps they tend to pause between words - how would you convey that? You may begin.”
The blankness of your notebook is daunting. You didn’t come equipped to do such in-depth writing. You expected a quick five minutes spent describing all the things in the room in overbearing detail or maybe writing something based on your favorite song, things you’d done in other classes. This was too much for your brain, this early in the morning, and it sows another seed of doubt in your mind.
If you can’t even keep up with this simple free-write, who’s to say you’re cut out for the class at all?
Mike is already scribbling away, hunched low over his paper and pen clutched in his hand. He’s oddly holding his pen, you notice. He’s writing at a rapid speed, which explains his sloppy handwriting.
You take a sip of your smoothie and look at the clock. It’s already been a minute. You know that the golden rule of writing is to just write words, even if they don’t make sense, and soon your ideas will start to flow, but you’re paralyzed by inadequacy. How did Mike come up with something so fast? Maybe he’s using a character he already worked with before, or maybe a real person. You rack your brain for a character that has enough unique quirks to translate into her way of speaking, but nothing comes to mind.
Your strength was not in character work. If Professor Frost tasked you with describing the rain against the window or the way a room was laid out, then you’d be set. All your characters were. . . shells. They were nobody. It was exactly like you told Mike - you wrote about nothing. Your characters were nothing, and your ideas were nothing. You didn’t know anyone interesting enough, either. . .
Immediately, you shake the thought away. You can’t write about the person sitting six inches away from you. That would be way too weird.
You don’t know Mike enough to ascertain the way he speaks, especially not enough to put it on the page. You’ve had, what, two conversations? One about monsters and one about smoothies. Hardly enough to build a whole voice around.
How did he talk anyway? Sometimes it seemed like someone whose mouth couldn’t quite keep up with his thoughts, but how do you show that in writing? He had a habit of starting a sentence before deciding how it was going to end, interrupting himself constantly - how did he even get from whipped cream to phone calls, anyway? - and he was always talking with his hands, punctuating every other sentence with a shrug or an open palm, his pen waving through the air whenever he happened to be holding it. Every so often, he’d rake a hand through his curls. He never seemed able to sit still, either, but those weren’t things you can put into writing.
That was the problem.
“Time’s up!”
Mike slams his pen down like it’s hot to the touch, flexing his lithe fingers. You continue looking at your blank piece of paper. You didn’t even manage to write the date on it.
“We’ll return to those later,” Professor Frost reiterates, picking up the piece of chalk again. On the chalkboard, in big letters, he writes SYNTAX and IDIOLECT. “Can anyone give me a definition of either of these terms?”
Someone near the middle of the room raises their hand. “Syntax is grammar. Idiolect is personality,” they say matter-of-factly.
Professor Frost nods, content. Underneath the words, he writes GRAMMAR and PERSONALITY. “Correct. If I were to ask everyone in this room to say ‘sorry,’ all of you would say it differently. The issue is determining how to make that clear in writing. Do we change the dialogue tag? The punctuation? Your job as writers isn’t to tell me who your characters are, but rather to let them betray themselves through speech.”
By the time Professor Frost dismisses everyone into their pairs, your notebook contains exactly three pages of notes and one completely untouched free-write. You’ve been given fifteen minutes to trade notebooks with your partners.
Mike reaches for his notebook, then hesitates. “Um. . . you wanna go first?”
You look down at your own notebook and wordlessly turn it toward him. “I didn’t write anything,” you admit. “I just couldn’t think of anyone.”
“That’s okay,” Mike assures. “It was just a free-write. I doubt Professor Frost actually cares how much you wrote.”
You huff a laugh. “Easy for you to say.”
He glances at the paragraphs he managed to scribble down before the time ran out. The corner of his mouth twitches. “Okay, fair. But we can just make something up for you, yeah? A few sentences. Just so you have something to turn in.”
“Who did you write about?” you ask, curiosity getting the better of you.
Mike drums his fingers once against the edge of his notebook, subtly nudging it closer to himself. “Oh, just a character from one of my novels. He’s, uh. . . like, a sorcerer.”
“That’s cool. Will I ever get to read it? The novel, I mean.”
Mike scratches at the back of his neck. “It’s still kind of a mess.” Then, he quickly adds. “I mean, all first drafts are; that’s the point.”
You frown. “Okay. What are you going to submit for class?”
“Short stories, probably. They’re easier for me. The novel has been in the works for years,” Mike says, chuckling to himself a little. “It’s a shit show, honestly. I don’t really know if you’d like it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Mike looks genuinely caught off guard by the question. “I don’t know, actually. Maybe I will let you read it one day.”
“That would be nice. I’d like that.”
“Hey, about earlier,” he says, quickly changing the subject. “I’m sorry about the phone thing. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.”
“You didn’t.”
“I could tell I did.”
“No, really, I was mostly confused.”
“Confused?” he repeats.
“Well, yeah.” You look down at the desk before speaking again. “Like I said, I didn’t know you actually wanted me to.”
Mike blinks. “Why else would I give you my number?”
“I thought you were just being polite.”
Mike smiles. “I’m not polite enough to hand out my phone number for no reason.” The sentence is so matter-of-fact that you laugh. “Seriously. We’re partners! I figured we’d meet up a few times a week, go over our stories, get coffee, get to know each other.”
“I don’t think being friends with your workshop partner is in the syllabus,” you say. “I’m not a very interesting person, if I’m honest.”
“Bullshit,” Mike scoffs. “I’ve never met anyone who’d rather stare at a blank page for ten minutes instead of pretending to write something just because everyone else was.”
“And that’s interesting? You must not know a lot of people.”
“I know enough people.”
You shake your head in disbelief, heat creeping up your neck. You can’t decide whether to laugh or argue with him. Across the room, Professor Frost is pacing between tables as students murmur over each other’s drafts.
“I’ll call you on Saturday,” Mike decides. He pauses before adding, “If that’s okay with you.”
“Yeah, um, that’s okay,” you say. Saturday is your one day off - usually the day you sleep in until late afternoon and slink around your apartment.
Mike grins triumphantly. “Okay. Saturday it is then.”
hello my lovely followers, i have a question. hypothetically, would you guys prefer if i split my mike x anxious!reader into several, shorter parts (potentially 3 or 4 total) and publish the first one tomorrow. or would you rather i wait until i've finished it (which who knows when that will be </3) and then post it.
please lmk i know there has been a severe mike wheeler drought recently and i don't want to keep everyone waiting for so long
writer's block is kicking my ass but the mike wheeler buzz persists. my life is so hard.
love's easy tears (extended ending) /// stoner!mike wheeler x fem!reader wc: 4.8k
The aftermath of Mike's apology.
part one part two
warnings ! mild smut, p in v, unprotected sex, fingering, pet names, finger-sucking but briefly, aftercare, fluff, angst, love confessions, reader thinks about riding mike's nose, please ignore typos i'll fix them one day, happy ending :)
author's note ! as promised, here is the extended ending. i was not happy at ALL with the original ending for love's easy tears, but i'm glad that i took the time to write this instead of trying to come up with something better the same night i published pt 2. i am actively working on my requests! hope you enjoy :)
****
The trip had done exactly what you had hoped it would.
For the first few days, your mind constantly wandered to Mike. Every time Tara opened her mouth, you couldn’t help but imagine her lips pressed against Mike’s, a shared joint passing between them as they talked about real philosophical shit. You tried not to be heartbroken - as you’d repeatedly reminded yourself, Mike did have the right to sleep with her - but it was hard not to be upset at how easily Mike had swapped you out for another late-night rendezvous.
By the end of the week, something finally changed.
You laughed with your friends, stayed up too late talking about stupid things, and let yourself exist in a world where Mike Wheeler wasn’t the center of every thought. Even Tara’s mere presence stopped irritating you.
By the time you packed your bags, you felt almost normal again - a semblance of the girl you’d been before Mike.
As was always intended, you left a day earlier than everyone else. Vacations always left you burnt out, even when they were with people whose company you enjoyed. You inevitably missed your bed and the comfort of being alone.
The sun had set by the time you pulled up to your apartment complex and lugged your suitcase up to the fourth floor.
Someone was sitting outside your door. Someone who unfolded himself the second he saw you.
Mike.
His curls were longer than you remembered, a testament to the amount of time that had passed, and there were dark circles underneath his eyes. His complexion looked pallid.
“What are you doing here?” you asked, coming to an abrupt halt. The wheels of your suitcase struck the back of your heels.
Mike swallowed. “Your best friend, she, uh, told me you were coming home.”
“She called you?”
Mike rubbed the back of his neck, averting his eyes. “Yeah, she did.”
Anger bubbled up inside you at the betrayal, and you pushed past Mike, unlocking the door with a shaky hand and shoving your suitcase inside. Mike didn’t follow immediately, just stayed in the hall like a vampire who needed permission to cross the threshold.
Maybe he was a vampire. All he’d done was suck all the joy from your life.
“Can I come in?” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“No, Mike. Go home,” you seethed, turning on the light. All you’d wanted was to come home, take a nice hot shower, and get cozy in your own bed. The last thing you wanted right now was to deal with this. “I’m done talking to you.”
“I needed to see you.”
“You could’ve waited like a normal person.”
“I did wait,” Mike stressed. “For days. You didn’t come over, so I kept calling you, and you didn’t pick up. I thought maybe something had. . . happened.”
“I was busy,” you said flatly. Mike looked pathetic standing in the doorway. “Fuck, just come inside.”
Mike obeyed, tentatively stepping inside. You could visibly see his shoulders slump, as if he was trying to make himself smaller in a place that didn’t belong to him. You shook your head and looked away, taking a deep breath and busying yourself with dragging your suitcase toward your bedroom. Mike trailed behind you like a lost puppy, keeping a reasonable distance between the two of you. There was a freshly-rolled joint tucked behind his ear, and you wondered if he’d already smoked one or if he was completely sober.
“What do you want?” you finally asked, exasperated. “Are you just here to annoy me until I sleep with you again? Because I’m not doing that anymore, okay? We’re done.”
Mike recoiled. “No,” he insisted, his voice crackling at the edges. “That’s not. . . that’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why, Mike?” you asked, crossing your arms tightly across your chest. You felt insecure standing in your bedroom - he’d never been to your apartment before, but Mike kept his gaze trained on you as you spoke.
“I want to apologize.”
“Yeah, you want to.”
“I’m here to apologize,” he corrected. “I want to fix everything.”
“What is there to fix?” you cried. “We were just hooking up, weren’t we? It’s not like we were exclusive or fucking dating!”
“I hurt you.”
“No, you made me sad, Mike.”
The word sounded childish on your tongue, but it was the truest way you could convey your emotions. You’d spent your entire college career coming up with clever ways to say simple things, but in that moment, the moment that truly mattered, it all boiled down to the fact that you were sad.
And it was almost as if Mike were the opposite, as if he didn’t know how to express real emotion outside of written words and thickened metaphors. As far as you’d observed, Mike was incapable of saying what he meant unless it was during sex. You thought back to him asking you to call him when you got home - had that been a plea to stay, and he just wasn’t able to say it? He bogged his own heart down with his inability to communicate, and it would be his ruin.
“I can’t even blame you,” you continued, tears welling in your eyes despite how badly you willed them not to. “You’re a fucking folk tale on campus, did you know that? A fucking celebrity. I knew who you were long before I met you that day in the library, and I still chose to sleep with you. I knew that you’ve slept with every girl you can get your hands on, half my roommates included, and yet I still went to your apartment. I want so badly to blame you, Mike, for how disposable you make me feel, but it’s really my fault, isn’t it? So, I don’t need you to come here and mindlessly apologize for something that isn’t even technically your problem, just because you think it’ll make me sleep with you again, or that it’ll make you feel better. Because it won’t make me feel better.”
Mike’s face crumbled at that. “I’m not here because it’s going to make me feel better,” he said eventually. “I feel worse, actually.”
Your lip trembled at that.
“I mean, shit, I didn’t come here to apologize so that you’d sleep with me again. I came here to tell you. . . to tell you how I feel. About you.” Mike tugged at his sleeves. “I know what people think of me, that I’m someone who just takes and leaves, and maybe I am that person. But I don’t want to be. Not with you.”
Mike drew in a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair.
“I know you think I don’t care about you,” he continued.
“You kick me out every time we have sex,” you argued back.
“Because I don’t know how to do this,” he said, motioning between the two of you. “This is what I’m bad at - the emotions and the fucking feelings. I’ve spent so long keeping everyone at arm’s length that I’ve forgotten how to feel. Everyone thinks I’m some asshole who gets bored, and maybe sometimes I am that guy, but I am so fucking afraid of letting people get close to me. I’m so afraid of the pain that comes with relationships, but I still wanted it. I wanted someone to look at me and know me.”
You watched Mike’s eyes grow glassy, his voice breaking every few words.
“Casual sex is a much easier way to pretend you’re not lonely,” he continued with a humorless laugh. “For one night, I could pretend that I had what everyone else seemed to have, and I didn't have to get hurt in the process. Eventually, I just. . forgot how to feel anything at all. I just wanted to feel something again, so I kept chasing it, trying to fill that fucking emptiness I’d caused myself. I would’ve rather been a campfire story than a real person, the guy who didn’t care and never got attached, because then at least I had a reason for being alone.”
He scoffed.
“But you. God, you. How could I not fall in love with you?”
“Love?” you echoed.
“Yes. Love. That day in the library, I had been building up the courage to approach you for weeks. Years, actually. Yeah, we’ve slept together, but we’ve also read each other’s writing: terrible rough drafts and vulnerable, poetic bullshit. We have seen so many versions of each other - you knew me when I was a pretentious freshman who thought I was better than everyone else. What’s more intimate than that? Of course, I fell in love with you.”
Mike just stood there, breathing a little unevenly. He looked like he regretted saying it the moment it left his mouth, but more out of embarrassment at his vulnerability. But, he didn’t take it back.
“You kicked me out,” you said quietly. “Every single time.”
“I know,” he said urgently. “I know how it looks-”
“It’s not how it looks,” you cut in. “It’s what it is.”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel expendable. I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”
“You slept with Tara.”
For the first time, Mike looked genuinely confused. “What? No, I didn’t?”
“She told me, Mike. Don’t lie.”
“No, I didn’t,” he assured, panicked. “Okay, yeah, I asked her to come over that night - after you didn’t show up - but I didn’t-” He shook his head hard. “I didn’t sleep with her. I thought that maybe if I. . . hooked up with someone else, I would realize that I was making up what I felt for you. I don’t know. But the second I kissed her, it felt wrong. She wasn’t you. It’s only been you since that first time.”
“She said-”
“I didn’t sleep with her,” Mike promised, taking your hands in his. “I kissed her, yes, I won’t pretend I didn’t, but I felt like shit after. The entire time, I was thinking about you. It will never be anyone but you.”
Your throat tightened. “That’s not fair,” you said weakly. You pulled your hands back on instinct, and he didn’t resist when you did. The loss of contact made the air feel colder, even after just a split second of his touch. “I have spent the last few months spiraling over you. One second, you were so sweet, and the next, you were acting like I was an inconvenience. How am I supposed to believe anything you say if you can turn that on and off so easily?”
“You don’t have to believe me,” he whispered. “But I need you to know. I need you to know that I don’t want to keep doing what I did before, even if you don’t choose me.” Mike paused and closed his eyes tightly. “All I want is a room up there and you in it.”
You sniffled. “Frank O’Hara.”
He smiled, just barely. “I’m not good at the part after,” he admitted. “I never have been. I don’t know how to let people matter to me normally. I always screw things up - I did screw things up - so I convinced myself that if I kept it physical, I could control it. Like, if we just kept hooking up, then I wouldn’t have to admit that I liked you so much it was actually making me miserable.”
“Mike-”
“Every time I told you to leave, every time I watched you leave, I wanted to go after you. So, I need you to know that I’m never going to ask you to leave again,” Mike finished. “I’m not going to leave.”
His voice cracked with the strain, and for a moment, the two of you just stared at each other. You imagined Mike taking in your tear-stained cheeks, perhaps really noticing you for the first time. At the same time, you took in his pink, trembling lips. In the grand scheme of things, the moment was insignificant - it didn’t matter to anyone but you and Mike, the two of you encased in your own tiny bubble. But you selfishly couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been waiting to say those words. How many minutes, how many hours, had he spent rehearsing this confession?
“What if I ask you to leave?” you whispered, wrapping your arms around yourself and staring at the carpet. “You say you won’t leave, but what if I ask you to?”
The silence was stifling, so jarring that it made your ears ring. You couldn’t bring yourself to look up and see his expression - those big, puppy-dog eyes that would make your heart melt. You wanted to stand up for yourself. You didn’t want to make a fool of yourself any longer, even if that meant losing Mike.
Three months ago, you would’ve rather trapped yourself in the humiliating hook-up agreement than even considered a world where Mike didn’t give you attention - even if it was for only a few hours. Now, you’d realized embarrassingly late that there were worse things than losing Mike.
“Then I’ll leave,” he said finally, his voice thickened with brimming tears. “If that’s what you want, I’ll go.”
You squeezed yourself tighter.
“I’m done being the one who walks away first, the one who tells you to walk away, but I. . . I care about you enough to want what’s best for you. And I realize that I’ve hurt you beyond belief, so I know that what’s best for you isn’t me. So, if you tell me to leave, I will.”
A shudder wracked your body, and you finally wrenched your gaze up to be met with the sight of his teary eyes.
“Don’t,” you said. “Please, stay.”
The words hung in the air between you, fragile as glass. Mike’s breath hitched, and something shifted across his face. Disbelief. Like he’d spent so many days (minutes, hours) preparing himself to hear the opposite that he didn’t know what to do with the answer you’d given him.
“Really?” he asked sincerely.
“Don’t act so surprised,” you murmured, swiping at your cheeks, angry at yourself for crying so much. “You can’t honestly believe that I don’t. . . feel the same.”
His eyebrows pinched together.
“Really?” he said again.
You couldn’t help but laugh a little. “God, yes! I’ve had a crush on you for like almost four years!”
“What? Why?”
“Mike, seriously. You said it yourself - we’ve read each other’s writing. You didn’t stop to think that maybe the intimacy that came along with that was two-sided? I’ve always admired your writing, especially your use of grief as a metaphor. You just do it so uniquely and I-”
Mike cut you off, urgently pressing his lips against yours, warm and familiar.
“Sorry,” he muttered against your mouth. “As much as I enjoy hearing you compliment me, I just, I had to kiss you.”
Mike’s hands caressed your sides, slipping under your shirt and waistband, seeking out each divot that remained untouched by anyone else. You’d come close to memorizing the feel of his fingertips, the shockingly gentle reverence with which he touched you.
And he kissed you like he was starving. Like you were the only thing in life that could possibly nourish and satiate him. And you let him, of course, but not for the same reasons. Not because you were holding onto the eagerness and counting down the seconds until you became unwanted, but because you knew that this was what it felt like to be truly desired by Mike Wheeler. That this kiss was the beginning of permanence.
“Is this okay?” he asked, kissing the corner of your lips.
“Yes,” you said, out of breath. “Yes. Please.”
“Okay. How do you want me?”
“Fuck. Shirt off first.”
You reached under the hem of his shirt, prepared to pull it off, when Mike suddenly flinched away. You recoiled violently.
“I’m sorry,” you gasped. “Is that not-”
“No, shit, I’m sorry,” Mike said quickly. “It’s just not quite healed yet.”
Healed?
His shirt and hoodie were soon discarded on the floor, exposing the flat, pale expanse of his torso. You let your gaze wander over his lean frame, prepared to see a new tattoo of some sort, but instead your eyes settled on his naval, punctuated by a silver barbell.
“You got it pierced?” you asked in awe, instinctively reaching out to brush at the slightly reddened skin of his stomach. His core contracted at your light touch.
Mike chuckled a little sheepishly. “Yeah, I um, got it done when you wouldn’t answer my calls. A bit of an impulsive decision, but it was better than shaving my head.”
“Never shave your head,” you insisted, reaching up to smooth down one of his unruly curls. “I like it. Very sexy.”
“You think so?” he asked, looking down between the two of you at the piercing. “It hurt like a motherfucker.”
“Poor baby.”
“Yeah, wish you had been there to kiss it better,” he said earnestly, his long eyelashes fluttering. Mike pressed his face into your hair and inhaled deeply, wrapping his long arms around your middle. “Missed you. I really did.”
You couldn’t bring yourselves to respond, knowing that, for the entirety of your trip, you’d been actively trying not to miss him. Instead, you pushed him backwards gently so the back of his knees hit the bed. He sat down on your mattress, brown eyes practically sparkling as you stood over him, his head level with your chest.
“Lie down,” you ordered. “I want to look at your piercing.”
Mike did as you asked, resting his head against your artfully arranged pillows. His dark curls contrasted with the lightness of your bedsheets, creating a halo around his head that made him look seraphic. His lips were reddened and full, slightly parted as you crawled onto the bed after him in just your shirt and underwear. He looked completely blissed out, cast in the dim light from your lamp. If possible, he looked even better in your bed than in his own.
You plucked the unsmoked joint from behind his ear and placed it delicately on your bedside table before leaning over Mike and pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the spot over his heart.
You continued down his abdomen like this, leaving glossy little marks where your lips touched his skin. You kissed at each tattoo, each blue-tinted vein, and at the jut of his hipbones. Mike writhed desperately beneath you, hips jolting slightly each time you looked up at him from underneath lidded eyes. Before long, his torso was scattered with lip-gloss kisses that sparkled in the lamplight.
Finally, content with your taunting ministrations, you hovered over the gleaming jewelry.
“I like it,” you decided, circling his naval with your fingertip.
“Well, I’m glad, I got it just for you,” Mike said, a bit breathless already.
You shook your head, a faint smile on your face, and began to kiss down the line of hair that led into his waistband. Mike let out a small gasp, dropping his head back further into the pillows.
“Enough teasing,” he insisted, pleadingly. “C’mere.”
You obeyed, swinging your legs on either side of his hips as Mike sat up and leaned against your headboard, your position a near replica of how it’d been that night the two of you smoked and discussed his tattoos. He hissed through clenched teeth as your stomach bumped his piercing.
The pain didn’t deter him from reaching between your legs, beginning to squeeze and pinch at your soft thighs. At the same time, you began his protruding collarbones. If you weren’t so desperate to feel him inside you, you would’ve been satisfied by just tracing the most mundane parts of Mike - you figured he felt the same, based on the way he was outlining the stretch marks that decorated your skin.
“Now you’re being the tease,” you said, grinding your hips down into him. Mike grinned cheekily at you, pressing his fingers against the center of your underwear.
Without breaking eye contact, he peeled the sticky fabric away and slid his middle finger inside of you with ease. Your breath hitched at the intrusion and the feeling of Mike slowly beginning to rub your clit with his thumb.
“I told you I wanted to take my time with you one of these days,” he explained, the eye contact between you absolutely erotic. Your faces were so close that you were breathing in each other’s air. “We have all night, don’t we? If I wanted you to sit on my face for the next three hours, you’d do it for me, wouldn’t you, baby?”
He finished his sentence by sliding another finger inside, stretching you out. You gnawed on your bottom lip, fighting the urge to collapse forward and rest your face in the crook of his neck. After a week apart from him, anything he gave you was a gift.
“I’d crush you,” you panted, although the idea was tempting. The thought of bumping your clit against his nose, chasing your pleasure, made you clench around Mike’s fingers.
Mike shook his head firmly. “No,” he said, not allowing you to argue. “We don’t have to tonight, but I told you, I wanna eat your pussy for breakfast, lunch, and-”
“Shut up!” you cried, face flushing as you pressed your palm over his mouth.
Mike was grinning as he extracted his fingers, pulling your bottom lip down to place them on the heat of your tongue. You let your own hand fall back to your side.
“You’re so cute when you get all bossy,” Mike said, entranced by the sight of you sucking lewdly at his fingers. He kissed you softly as he pulled his fingers out of your mouth, tasting yourself on your own tongue. He suddenly became serious. “I don’t, er, have a condom or anything.”
You took a deep breath. “Do you promise you haven’t been with anyone else?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then we don’t have to use one.”
“Are you sure? Because I can go buy a pack, or something. I’ll be quick, there’s a store just around the corner-”
“I know, Mike, I live here,” you said. “It’s okay. I’m on birth control, actually.”
Mike arched an eyebrow.
“It’s for my skin,” you explained. “Bad teenage acne. But it still does. . . what it’s supposed to. So, yeah, we don’t have to use one.”
“Only if you’re completely sure,” Mike said, kissing the inside of your wrist. You nodded.
“Yes. I’m completely sure.”
What followed was a scramble of movement from each of you, a desperate attempt to get naked as quickly as possible. It was comedic, truthfully. Mike almost hit himself in the eye trying to pull his belt out of its loops, and you got your shirt caught in your necklace as you pulled it over your head. It was giggly and sweet - Mike carefully untangling you, and you laughing in his face as he almost tripped over his pants.
Before long, you were up on your knees, lining yourself up with him. Coupled with the time the two of you had spent apart and the lack of preparation, you didn’t doubt that the stretch of Mike’s cock was going to burn. Holding onto his broad shoulders, you began to sink down onto him.
His eyebrows scrunched up in pleasure. “Fuck. You’re so tight.”
You’d never actually ridden Mike before. The two of you really only dabbled in the most basic positions and ones that allowed Mike to roll off you to reach for his joint dramatically. This angle was completely different, the length of him never-ending.
His restraint was impressive, but you could tell that your slowness was starting to break his resolve. You could sense the way he wanted to thrust up into you, but he let you stay in control. Your fingernails left little half-moon indents in his pale skin.
“Deep breaths, baby,” Mike urged, wiping away a stray tear. “Doing so good for me.”
Finally, he was all the way inside you, leaving you so full you could hardly breathe. Your thighs shook, and you could barely hold yourself up, giving in and collapsing into Mike’s chest.
His arms wrapped around you, cradling the back of your head as you breathe him in, lips pressed against his throat. To distract yourself, you lick and suck a faint hickey into his neck, one that will surely be gone in a day, but still there in the morning. Hopefully, just like him.
After a moment, when your head doesn’t feel all fuzzy anymore, you slowly begin to ride him. It’s almost painstakingly slow, your movements, but Mike matched your rhythm, rolling his hips in time with yours.
His arms remained wrapped around you, peppering sweet kisses against your hairline. However, it didn’t take long for the two of you to come in tandem; the feeling of being reunited after time spent apart was more overwhelming than the sex itself.
Mike took his time cleaning you up, kissing each spot where his own fingers left marks, even going as far as to bring you a glass of water before crawling into bed beside you.
Curled into his side, you felt undeniably safe. Undeniably taken care of. It was the feeling you’d been seeking for your entire life. Mike ran his hands along the curve of your hips, resuming the tracing of your stretch marks and tapping at each freckle and birthmark he stumbled upon. The smell of him was intoxicating.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured into your hair.
You tilted your head up. “You’re acting as if you’ve never seen me naked before.”
“Not like this. This is different.”
“Different how?”
“I get to look at you,” Mike said. “Shamelessly admire you.”
His fingertips dragged down the side of your thighs, and you flinched. “That tickles.”
“See, I didn’t know you were ticklish there.”
“That’s not that interesting.”
“I think it is.”
“You don’t have to compliment me so much. I believe you, Mike. That you’re sorry and that you. . . like me.”
“Love you,” he corrected. “I’m glad you believe me, but I want you to believe me about this, too.” He brushed a thumb over your cheekbone. Gone was the weed-fueled gaze that you knew, replaced instead by wide-eyed adoration. “I’ve never met anyone as beautiful as you.”
You looked down again at the tattoo on his collarbone. “Liar.”
“It’s true,” he insisted. “Every time you showed up at my door, you were always prettier. I learned your laugh and the way you use your hands to emphasize a point. I noticed the crease between your eyebrow - the one you get when you think too hard - the first time you ever came over, and I’ve noticed it every time since. And I’ve even learned the way you talk. You’re always so quiet, I swear I didn’t hear you talk for two years-”
“Says you,” you deflected. “All you ever did was sit in the back and brood.”
“Yeah, but it was a mysterious, sexy brooding. Right?”
“I plead the fifth.”
Mike tilted your face back up. “I learned how, whenever you’re excited about something, you talk faster and faster until you can barely form a coherent sentence.”
“How charming of me.”
“I learned the difference between your polite smile and your real one. I learned how kind you are. I mean, you brought me a lemon bar after I mentioned it once. After all I’d done was be a total ass to you. I gave you a hundred reasons not to care about me, and you gave me a thousand reasons to fall in love with you.”
“I do care about you,” you whispered. “Despite it all, I do.”
“I want to be better. I’m going to be better,” Mike promised. “For you. I don’t want to be some. . . what did you call me?”
“Mythical creature? Local legend? Folk tale?”
“Yeah, that,” Mike laughed. “I don’t want to be fucking Bigfoot anymore. I want to be yours. I want this with you every night. I want to go to sleep knowing the first thing I’ll see in the morning will be you. I want to make you laugh, and I never want to make you cry ever again. I want to learn everything about you, and I want you to learn everything about me. I want to listen to The Cure with you and argue about our favorite songs, and I want you to make fun of my tattoos when I get bad ones. I want to be the person you call when something good happens. When something bad happens, too. I want you to tell me about your day.”
His voice had gone impossibly soft.
“I want. . . I want a life with you.”
The boy in front of you, tears shining in his eyes, looked more vulnerable than you had ever seen him. More vulnerable than he’d been when he was sitting outside your apartment, waiting for you.
“You really mean that?” you asked shakily.
“Every word.”
A laugh escaped you. “You know, three months ago, if you’d said all this, I probably would’ve passed out.”
“Good thing I waited until now.”
“You idiot,” you said fondly, kissing his lips. “I love you, too.”
heyyy i saw your post on how you currently have finals rn and i know they can be a pain in the ass, but i was just wondering if when you’re done with all the exam stress you can write a mean!mike fic?? it can be like a college AU where reader is new and they meet at a party and through mutual friends (like they’re in the same friend group but aren’t that close at first). she’s an inexperienced lover girl while he’s a popular fuck boy (i YEARN for frat boy mike wheeler 😮💨) and although they’re polar opposites they somehow work?? but like i said he’s used to getting what he wants and is mean and almost like uses her (?) and she’s quite sensitive but is very much in love.
take your time with this and i’m super sorry if i caught you in a bad and busy time, love your writing 💕💕
frat boy mike oh how i adore you. absolutely LOVE this idea omg, thank you for the request anon. i am finally finished with finals so i will be starting on this as well, i again just wanted to respond to make sure you knew i saw your message <3 if anyone would like to be tagged in a frat boy mike fic please lmk! :)))
Will there be a college stoner!mike pt 3??
i am currently working on an "extended ending" for stoner!mike, so not quite a full part 3, but a bit of a longer scene after mike confesses. i'm ofc open to the idea of a real part 3 in the future (if i think of an idea or if anyone else has an idea!), but i will hopefully have that extended ending up asap :)))