Disclaimer: Still waiting on that call, Duffers. In the mean time, in between time, enjoy.

"So, you didn't even get her number?" Will asked on mile 2 of 4.

"N-no", I got out. He was barely breaking a sweat and here I was, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

"Or her name?"

"I already told y-you. No. Why-why are we running so far? This is dea-death."

"Like I told you, we have to balance out all the calories we drank last night. I have the marathon in a few months and you're the one who promised to train with me."

"On your short runs!"

"This is my short run!"

"This is torture! If these are your short runs, I'm doing all the training on my bike," I had been biking during Will's long runs to make sure he didn't run out of water. Dustin and Lucas weren't runners, and I had joined the cross country team and track in high school because of Will.

Back in middle school, Will had gotten really sick for a while. There were a couple times that we had been terrified that we might lose him. He had always been a sickly child, but it got worse in middle school with some serious infection. Thankfully he pulled through.

After going through all that, though, Will had decided he wanted to work on being healthy and making sure he'd be around for a long time. The doctors had recommended running for him, and he jumped at the option. Me, being his best friend that wasn't into sports that involved having contact with another sweaty, gross human being (again, all Steve's influence), decided that it was my responsibility to join him in his endeavour.

I'll be honest, I hadn't hated it. However, I did learn that: longer distances? Not my thing. Not my thing by a long shot. But Will has always been the best of the best of us, so when he decided this past summer that he wanted to do a marathon, guess who caved pretty quickly and agreed to help him train? Hence why I'm here, currently thinking about how he's actually the worst.

"This might be torture, Wheeler, but now you have a girl to impress," he laughed while slowing up his pace a little for me, making sure I wouldn't keel over.

This reminder served to make me suddenly feel extremely nauseous and I let out a loud groan. "Why do you have to remind me what a loser I am?"

"Hey! None of that. That's not what I'm saying at all. C'mon man. You play the guitar, you're tall, you have that whole brooding musician look going with your hair, and you're the smartest one of us all," Will tried cheering me up.

"Dude, maybe I have those thing going for me in like a twisted, sucky way, yeah. Either way, you are forgetting that I'm the Dungeon Master for us for D&D. That makes me like, top nerd. And probably biggest loser in Eleven's eyes."

"Eleven?" Will looked lost.

Blushing and trying not to literally trip over my own two feet, "Uh, yeah. So it's the nickname I decided to give her. She didn't give me her real name and I can't continue to just vaguely call her The Girl or whatever."

Rolling his eyes at me, Will quipped back, "Ok, but why eleven? Why not just My Angel or My Heaven and Stars?" God, even my nicest friend was still an asshole.

"You know, if I wasn't afraid of falling, and not wanting to hurt you because that's what good friends do," he was laughing over me, "I'd push you over right now."

"Ha! In your dreams, Wheeler. Besides, you know I'm right! But ok, ok, in all seriousness, why Eleven?"

"Because," I let out a huge huff. Whether that was from not really being able to run and talk, or from mortification, I wasn't sure. "Because she had el-eleven books with her. Wa-water. Water," I signaled for him to hand over his water bottle, since mine had already run dry. Yeah, that was on me not hydrating correctly after last night.

Chuckling and passing the water my way, Will kept on, "Well that's weird." I shot him an incredulous look, trying very hard not to lose my pace in fear of landing on my face. "I meant, like in a cute way, I guess? More weird that she had that many books in a cafe, but no yeah, actually giving her that nickname is weird too, dude."

"Oh my god," I grumbled, swiping my hand over my face dripping in sweat. I'm surprised it hasn't melted off yet. Are we done yet? This is agony. "Well, I'd already settled on it, so too bad," I drank down half his water. "How much further?"

"One mile," he responded after a quick glance at his fitness tracker. "Race you to the library!" he gave a wiggle with his eyebrows.

"What?" not comprehending anything, just pain. He took off, practically sprinting. "Dipshit! Suck some dicks, Byers!" I yelled after him as I forced myself to pick up my pace.

"With pleasure!" he threw back over his shoulder. Goddamnit. Tapping into the use of my long limbs, I stretched to catch up with him.

As we sprinted the final bit across the quad, I was stuck 10 paces behind him. He was always way better at long distance anyway, I try and tell myself to feel better. We get to the side of the library where he finally stops in the grass. When I reach him, I find the nearest tree to puke a little bit at its base and then fall over in the ground, holding the stitch in my side.

"Never-never again, Byers," I gasp out between lungfuls of air. "I'm dying. This is death. My soul is leaving my body."

He had his hands on his knees, catching his breath, before he started walking around and doing his post-run stretches. He rolls his eyes at my over dramatic speech and kicks my foot. "You sound like Dustin, Mike. Calm your tits, you're fine."

"I'm not drinking for the rest of the year," I put one of my hands over my face to block out the sun.

"Ok, that I can believe," he chuckled back. "Man, you look like Scarlett O'Hara or some shit, lying like that."

"Who?"

This just caused him to roll his eyes so hard. "C'mon. Southern belle. Gone With the Wind. I made you guys watch it last year! It's a classic!" his hand were on his hips.

"Oh, c'mon Will," I whined. "You know I fell asleep 15 minutes in!"

"I need to stop trying to educated you uncultured swine."

"Not all of us have older brothers that are these huge film and art buffs!" I retort.

"You have Nancy," he wasn't buying it.

"Will, you've known Nancy for 15 years! When has she ever been able to convince me to do anything?"

"Ok, point taken," he finally conceded. "Back to Eleven or whatever her name is. How are you going to see her again?"

Somehow pulling myself up into a sitting position, I shot him a perplexed look. "Aside from stalking her out at Benny's next Saturday, your guess is as good as mine!"

"Well, you said she mentioned something weird about fate or whatever, right?" he noted.

I nodded the affirmative. "Yeah, I have no clue. She got all mysterious and whatnot. I don't know, man. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, but what if she's one of the crazy ones?"

"She's not," Will reassured me.

"What? How do you know? You weren't even the one talking to her!" I squinted back at him. Was he hiding something from me about secretly knowing her?

Throwing his hands up in defense, he ventured with a grin, "You're right. But I've always been great with body language and spotting the red flags." I bobbed my head in agreement. "She didn't have the crazy eyes."

"What the hell are the crazy eyes? And how do you know what they look like?" I inquired.

"Remember Jennifer Hayes?" I nodded. "Remember when Troy broke up with her senior year and she went all crazy trying to get him back?" I nodded once more. "Well, she always had this look in her eyes - almost from the very beginning - like she had to potential to go awol. And look what happened!"

"Ok, ok, I see what you're saying. But how do you know someone for sure doesn't have the potential to be crazy?"

"C'mon Mike, be realistic. Everyone has the potential to get broken and go off the edge. But the edge is different for everyone. What I'm saying is, those with crazy eyes, well it's easy to see that their edge is basically in front of them, so to speak."

I slowly inclined my head in agreement as I realized what he meant. His advice and observation truly made me feel better about all this.

"Is it still weird that she seems hung up on fate? Sure. But until you get to really know her, you shouldn't get hung up on it in turn."

I pondered over all this. "You sure you want to be an art major? You should be a therapist," I half jokingly tell him. He had always given us good advice, some of which we listened to and some of which we found out the hard way we should have listened to. He was also the best one to just sit and talk with because he could tell when you just wanted someone to listen, or someone to respond.

"Art is where my heart lies," he shrugged it off. "Anyways," he quickly glanced at the time on his fitness tracker, "I'm going to hit some weights before heading back to the apartment, you in?"

"After what you just put me through?" I deadpanned back at him. "You're on your own, Byers. See ya." He walked off towards the gym that was a ways behind the library while giving me a wave goodbye.

Pulling myself to my feet, I attempted to stretch out my muscles a bit so I wouldn't be regretting it in a few hours. As I stood in the shadow of the library, Will's advice and thoughts of fate rolling around in my head. Fate. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I was so confused as to what to do, as to how to find Eleven again. I know the nickname was stupid, but it also just felt… right.

Fate. Fate. Fate. Glancing up at the large building in front of me, it finally hit me. "The library, of course. I'm such a fucking idiot," I berate myself. She had mentioned how she goes to the library after Benny's gets busy. Dumbass. I am such a dumbass.

With new found determination, I do my best impersonation of a quick walk across the quad, back to the duplex apartment the guys and I shared.

When I finally reached the duplex, I shuffled my way around Dustin and Lucas who had already begun the festivities of drinking on the front lawn.

"Ya look like shit, Wheeler!" Dustin cackled as I passed.

"Hurry up and get your pansy ass out here!" Lucas yelled after me as I ignored them.

Thank god I had chosen the room on the first floor, because there was absolutely no way I could climb stairs right now. I slunk into the bathroom that Dustin and I shared, since he had taken the room in the basement while Lucas and Will had reign of the upstairs.

Taking the quickest possible shower I could, I stared at my reflection after toweling off. I grabbed some of Dustin's hair gel out of the medicine cabinet, determined to bring some semblance of tameness to my hair. Dustin has a hero worship thing with Steve, so when Steve had experimented with hair gel not too long ago, Dustin naturally tried to follow suit. I had messed around with his hair gel once before, but had thought it was too much work at the time.

Spending the next 20 minutes attempting to go for a classic slicked back look and realizing my hair was too long, I ended up with Kit Harrington's Jon Snow hair look, just not nearly as able to pull it off as the famous actor.

"I look like a fucking tool," I sighed at my reflection. Noting the time, I didn't have time to fix it, and rushed to my room to put on some jeans and a button down long sleeve. I knew she would probably be at the library by now since Benny's would be packed, but she hadn't said how long she'd be there.

As I was coming out of my room, folding up the sleeves of the shirt, Dustin was in the kitchen rooting around the fridge for a another beer. Closing the fridge door with said beer in hand, he turned to look at me.

The sight of me in all my glory almost caused him to completely drop his drink, "Holy shit." His mouth broke into a shit eating grin, "Going somewhere, pretty boy?"

Rolling my eyes and trying to get around him, I ran into Lucas. "Holy shit, Wheeler! What, did you shower in Dustin's hair gel or something?" His hands reached for my head.

Batting his hands away, I reached up trying to protect my 20 minutes of work, while Dustin looked on in laughter.

"So why are you all prettied up, Mike? We're just going to the football game," Lucas stated.

"Yeah, I'm not going," I grumbled.

"What? What do you mean you're not going? We always go!"

"I'm not going," I shrugged. I quickly explained the realization I had come to and how I was going to try and find Eleven at the library. I made sure to not mention the nickname I had given her though, because they would have ripped into me a hundred times more than Will already had done.

"I don't think that's fate, Mike. It's more like stalking," Lucas retorted while taking a sip of the new beer can Dustin had handed him.

I give him a hard eye roll. "Well what do you propose I do?"

"Not be a stalker."

Making an incoherent noise, I look to Dustin, signalling him for support.

"C'mon Sinclair, let him have this. You know we never let him have anything."

Lucas gave in, snorting and pointed at me, "Fine. But if this girl turns out to be crazy, I get to pester you for the rest of your life."

Man, today was the day of eye rolls. Sticking my middle finger up at him, I slipped on my shoes and grabbed my backpack so I had a viable reason to be in the library. "Don't get too wasted, yeah? You're only going to have Will with you guys, and while it's Will, he can't carry both of your drunk asses home from the stadium."

"Hey, we're not that bad," Dustin scoffed. I shot him a look and he threw up his hands. "Fine, fine, whatever you say, boss," he grinned with a salute.

"Whatever, weirdos," I waved at them as I headed out the door and down the porch.

I made my way back onto campus and across the quad, contemplating what I would say when I found her, if I found her. The guys could be right, and this could be a ridiculous plan, but she wouldn't have said that stuff about fate if she didn't mean anything by it, right?

Still feeling conflicted, confused and quite determined, I entered the library.

The library at Southern Tech was actually probably one of my favorite buildings on campus to look at. It wasn't huge by any means, since Southern Tech wasn't a large school, but the architecture was still a sight to behold. It was made up of three top floors and a sublevel floor. As you entered, it opened up into this atrium with a glass paned ceiling.

You could see the stacks which took up an entire half of the library, going from floor to ceiling. They were behind glass panels and divided into half floors so that there were really 8 floors of stacks for the 4 actual floors of the library.

The other half of the sublevel was taken up by small conference rooms that could be used when working on a group project, while the other side of the first floor housed the cafe and check out desk.

The rest of the second and third floors were taken up by the Grand Reading Room, which looked like something out of a Harry Potter book. It was full of long tables and chairs, with table lamps dividing the seating every other chair. I figured that this was my best place to start looking for her.

Listening to my gut, I climbed the flight of stairs - goddamn stairs - and entered the space, my eyes scanning over all the tables. There weren't many people here, it being Saturday and a home game, so it didn't take long.

There, in the far back corner by the windows facing out to the quad, I saw a head of softly curled honey brown hair, a strand being twisted around a finger.

Taking a deep breath to try and calm my nerves, yeah right, I strided towards her.

A/n: Ahhh, I loved writing major Byler!friendship interaction. I believe that with a supporting mom and older brother, and great friends, that Will would totally grow up to be a confidant heartthrob. I based him a bit off of one of my friends from college, sorry if anyone pictured him a different way.

Inspiration for the library description came from Ohio State's Thompson Library, if anyone is interested. It's my alma mater and I loved this place. Note: It's a condensed version since the actual library is 12 floors.

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