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This is what Mike Wheeler knows: it’s July 28, which has turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year, but even the sickening feeling of drowning in his own sweat all day pales in comparison to the discomfort heralded by having a dinner discussion with Ted Wheeler.
Really, Mike should’ve known better than to attempt any sort of conversation with his father – in general, yes , but even more so this week. Nancy is still at Emerson, taking summer courses because she’s insane , and his mom is on a “ladies’ road trip” (whatever that means) until Friday or so. Holly’s here, at least, but she’s only seven and can’t really act as a buffer between the two men of the house. If Mike can even be considered that.
Tonight’s problem in the Wheeler house, as each often does, bubbles to the surface around the dining table. For the past four nights in a row, they have eaten the same dry chicken, runny mashed potatoes, and too-sweet corn. Mike wishes he could go back in time and punch whoever invented frozen dinners in the face, if only because his dad seems to love them so much.
Bitterly, he thinks it’s because Ted doesn’t have to try – and, given that option, his apathetic old man will always take it. Though she grates on him at times, Mike’s sorely reminded that he misses his mom. He misses the crisp sound of her slicing through vegetables, he misses her firm embraces, he misses the rose scent of her hand soap, and he misses the sound of her humming under her breath, convinced no one else can hear.
Bracing himself to dig into another lifeless, half-thawed excuse for a meal, Mike tugs a purple elastic (borrowed from El) off his wrist and ties his hair up in three crisp twists. Ted scoffs.
Wonderful .
Mike looks up expectantly, not even deigning to vocalize any question; his request for clarification is obvious enough without words.
“You wouldn’t need to bother with all that if you would just cut your damn hair already, son,” his father grumbles, tactless as he’s always been.
“Well,” the unstoppable force shoots back, altogether unconcerned with the immovable object, “it’s not a bother because I like my ‘damn hair.’ Which, by the way, has been true the last six thousand times you’ve commented on it.”
“If you want to be spiteful, Michael , then by all means, wear yourself out. You’ll come around.”
Mike just barely suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, shoving a scoop of mashed potatoes into his mouth. It’s somehow too watery and too fluffy in his mouth at the same time. The only thing stopping him from spitting it out and throwing the entire plate away is his sheer determination. Mike is not going to back down, no matter what gets thrown at him tonight. He’s too bored, too hurt, and too damn lonely to even consider other options. He forces himself to swallow the all-encompassing mush before he answers.
“And if I don’t come around?”
“You will.”
“Why’s that, Dad?”
“No self-respecting young lady will want to go out with a guy who looks like one of her girlfriends . Is that really what you want, son? To be passed up by women because they think you’re indistinguishable from them?”
The sneering in his voice is so thinly veiled that it’s practically transparent. It’s Mike’s turn to scoff, now – from the manner in which his father is talking to him tonight, to how the past few days have been with no one else around – he can’t keep a lid on his irritation any longer. Rolling his eyes, he bites back,
“Yeah, well what if I don’t care what they think?”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
Ted leans back, straightening in his chair. His eyes roam over Mike, searching . The man is the spitting image of deadly calm, but then he rather harshly sets his fork down on the table. The metallic clang of the tines against the hardwood leaves Mike’s ears ringing.
“I mean, like, when I find the right girl, she won’t care about that kind of stuff, right?” he tries, floundering. All Mike’s efforts are in vain, though – his voice and his body are shaking where they previously were not; hard as he tries, he can’t get a foothold in the irreverence that was shielding him up until now.
It’s silent for a long time. Father does not dignify Son with a response, and Son no longer attempts to plead with Father.
Mike is the king, on his last leg with nowhere else to turn, no saving move to make. His father is the rook, relatively innocuous if you’re smart enough to land in a diagonal, but terrifying when faced head-on. They sit across from each other at the dining table, finishing up their frozen dinners. Mike thinks he might actually throw up as he waits for the other shoe to drop. He takes a couple of breaths after he’s cleared his plate. But as soon as he stands up to wash it off:
“Take your sister upstairs and put her to bed.” Shit, Holly’s still here.
“My plate,” he replies, rather uselessly.
“What did I just tell you?”
The ire simmering underneath his father’s façade of indifference is enough to make Mike set down his plate immediately. Holly takes his hand as they walk upstairs. Mike feels Ted’s eyes burn into the back of his head every step of the way.
Rook to H1. Check.
--
“No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly—slowly. Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight. She was standing inside the secret garden.”
Mike slips the purple bookmark back in between the pages of the novel and sets it back down on Holly’s nightstand. Holly sighs, altogether exhilarated from story time and disappointed at chapter’s end, and Mike ruffles her hair.
“Are you sure you can’t do another one? You’re so good at doing all the funny voices.”
“Sorry, Hol. You have to go to bed, plus Dad’s waiting for me downstairs.”
“He can wait a little longer, can’t he?”
Mike’s throat feels incredibly dry, heart racing in spite of how much he’d calmed down since getting to his sister’s room. All he manages is shaking his head in a weak no .
“Is Daddy mad at you?”
“ No , no, he’s not mad, he just gets grouchy sometimes,” he lies, breaths painfully shallow, “so don’t worry about it, okay? Just get some sleep.”
“Okay,” Holly replies, believing him enough to be appeased, and sits up to throw her arms around him. Mike tries not to cry, squeezing his sister in return and rubbing her back gently.
“Goodnight, Mike. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” he choruses back, but the words feel chalky in his throat.
“I love you,” Holly says right as he begins to close her door, already having slipped out of the room.
“Love you too,” he chokes out, and prays she doesn’t notice the tears that burn their way down his face in the dim lighting.
Mike rubs at his eyes furiously and waits to begin his descent down the stairs until they feel dry enough. Each step feels like a death sentence. No, Ted hasn’t been the best father in the world, but most of Mike’s feelings of resentment towards him have come from his emotional, and sometimes physical, absence.
Mike’s never seen him like this before. Angry . As terrified as he is to meet whatever fate (a “talking-to” that will leave him sobbing into his pillow like a little baby tonight, he assumes) waits for him on the main floor, something about this feels uncomfortably familiar. The sneers, the repressed intensity, the dismissive antagonism – the writing is on the wall. Mike doesn’t know if he’ll be able to live with himself if he grows up to be that .
Mike doesn’t know if he’ll be able to live with himself at all, at this rate.
He supposes he doesn’t have much of a choice now, and completes the rest of his journey downstairs.
When Mike turns the final corner, the kitchen is empty. His father is nowhere to be found.
“Dad?” he calls out weakly, and cringes at how high-pitched and frail it sounds.
“Living room,” resounds a few moments later, so Mike dutifully follows the noise.
Typically, Ted is sitting in the recliner and staring at the TV. Atypically, the chair is in its fully upright position, and the TV is off. Though the screen is dark and vacant, his father’s eyes bore into it, intense and unyielding. He doesn’t look at Mike when he speaks.
“Not in my house.”
Mike furrows his eyebrows, not quite understanding.
“I’m sorry?”
“You should be.”
“I don’t, I don’t really understand, what is –”
“Not. In. My. House,” Ted repeats, and something weighty and dreadful settles in Mike’s stomach. His mouth drops open minutely, eyes darting all over the living room before landing on his father again.
“You – you can’t be serious ,” he cries, indignant, and cringes immediately. He’s never been able to control his temper, always failing at keeping a lid on the storm brewing inside him. Now, in the moment of truth, nothing has changed. As much as it would benefit him to not be Mike right now, he is powerless against his own faults. He has too many fatal flaws to be a tragic hero – he’s just tragic .
With an excruciatingly slow turn of his head, Ted finally looks at his son. Stares him down, even. Mike tries not to waver under his father’s gaze, holding it with all his might. He tries to be strong, even though he knows whatever comes next will be the final blow, the rug swept from under his feet. He knows it.
“I did not raise a goddamn queer , and I will not continue to have one in my house. Is that serious enough for you?”
His voice is so low that Mike almost misses it. The words sink in.
“Dad, please ,” he begs, too devastated to care how desperate he sounds.
“I don’t care where you go, but you can’t be here.”
“What about Mom, can’t we wait until she gets back, we can talk about it with her, can’t we,” Mike pleads, and it’s not so much a series of questions as it is mindless babbling. He thinks he might be losing his mind.
“When your mother gets back from her trip, I will talk to her about…about this ,” he affirms, disgust in his tone. Mike doesn’t know what to make of it when Ted’s face softens slightly.
“It’s going to break her heart, you know. Her only son – the boy she raised and sacrificed for and loved for all the years of his life – and he turns out…it just isn’t right . It isn’t fair to her, Michael, can’t you get that through your head?”
“Dad, I’m only sixteen, I don’t know shit, I don’t know anything , I can –”
“Are you a queer, son?”
( Checkmate .)
Maybe it’s the shocking bluntness of the question. Maybe it’s the “son” tacked onto the end. Maybe it’s the way that Mike Wheeler has always been an awful liar, cursed to stand out on account of his own integrity.
He can’t answer his dad. His pale face flushes red, twisted with effort, and he finally starts to cry. Almost immediately, Mike’s hands fly up to swipe at his eyes, all over his face, desperate to stop the onslaught of tears, but he can’t.
It’s so easy, removed from any sort of conflict, to scoff at hateful people. He’s told his friends numerous stories about the weird comments his father makes, and almost all of them have been capped off with but he’s full of shit, so . Whenever anyone would try to say something malignant against Will, Mike would leap to his best friend’s defense immediately. Even if the rumors were true , he’d think to himself, no one should ever make him feel that way – it’s not right .
Mike can’t bring himself to take any sort of moral high ground right now. He’s sixteen, he’s being kicked out of his home for liking boys – even though he doesn’t even have the strength to say it – and all he feels is wrong . He feels so incredibly wrong , and he knows there’s no fixing the parts of him that are broken. At this point, he thinks it might be all of him.
--
Ted gives Mike five minutes to pack a bag. He loads clothing, essentials, and whatever miscellaneous items of emotional value can fit into the same green-and-white backpack he’s had since he was a kid.
His father is still sitting in the recliner when he leaves. As Mike hops onto his bike, feeling altogether aimless and lost, he hears the faint droning of the living room television.
--
Thankfully, the Byers’ new house is closer to – to the Wheeler house than their old one used to be.
It was a lot to get used to, at first; though Mike missed the coziness of his best friend’s old home, he understood the need for more space. After all, Hopper and El had moved in with them, rounding out their family in a way that made Mike’s heart ache. He made it a point to join in on some dinners whenever they’d have him, especially when Jonathan was away at school – Mrs. Byers would be making five plates anyway, he reasoned.
Just the thought of Joyce makes Mike want to start crying again. He’d made himself stop once he got up to his room to pack, and he’s fiercely determined to hold it together – to man up , though that scarcely seems to matter anymore (or maybe it matters more than it ever has) – so he refrains, letting tears prick at his eyes but never fall from them.
The closer proximity to Maple Street is, without a doubt, a major advantage. Embarrassingly, Mike’s legs are already burning ten minutes into the bike ride. He briefly wonders if he should even be going here – if he’d be bothering the family with his presence – but he doesn’t know where else makes him feel safe anymore.
It hits him, all over again, that his childhood home does not belong to him anymore. He is not welcome there.
It’s his own fault, too. Not just for – for being like that . Mike blames himself because he wasn’t able to keep his damn mouth shut. He never has been, so he’s learned to pick out the strained smiles and glassy eyes that worm their way onto others’ faces when Mike is being too much . He felt it from other kids at school, from teachers, and from his own family.
Fuck the people who say they miss the bubbly, vivacious little kid he used to be.
All they ever wanted was less of him, and Mike delivered on that. He made sure to shove bits of himself in drawers, under beds, and behind closet doors. Sometimes it was the trash can, the side of the road, or among the embers of a roaring fireplace.
He realized his mistake too late – everyone hated the parts that he’d kept, but he had no way of going backwards. The damage had been done, utterly irreversible.
Mike got himself into this mess by talking back, making an unnecessary comment when it should’ve been relatively effortless to do so. Then, when judgment day came, he couldn’t lie to save his own life. All he had to say was no – that he wasn’t queer, that he had a girlfriend for a handful of years, that he wanted to find another one – but Mike has always been frustratingly peculiar, even to himself.
He couldn't lie, even though he hasn’t even admitted the truth out loud to himself yet. He hasn’t even put the words together in his mind.
But he’s finally pulling into the driveway of the Byers’ house, and he’d rather not burst into tears to greet whoever opens the door to him, so he files away the self-loathing thoughts for later. He always knows where to find them, by any means.
By the time Mike dismounts his bike and throws it rather haphazardly onto the pavement, he feels like his knees might tear themselves right off of his body. He’s needed a new bike for a few months now, ever since he hit another growth spurt around his sixteenth birthday. He’s been avoiding asking for a new one, and instead just suffers with the pains of riding a too-small bicycle.
Mike isn’t sure that any guy has said this ever , but he hates being 6’2”. He hates feeling overgrown and out of place no matter where he goes, he hates how easy it is to spot him in a crowd, he hates how he still feels like a child, no matter how lanky or towering he becomes.
Mosquitoes nip at his sweat-soaked skin in the sweltering late-July evening. He bats a few of them off with more force than is probably necessary, then gives up entirely for the rest.
He hovers on the porch for a moment, unsure – but then rings the doorbell at last.
The door swings open seconds later, and Mike’s met with none other than Joyce Byers. When she sees him, her face splits into a smile, soft eyes crinkling with happiness.
“Mike, honey, it’s so lovely to see you,” she affirms, and something in his chest nearly cracks open at the kindness afforded to him. Joyce tilts her head, a question in her eyes.
“But Mike,” she continues, “I should tell you that Will and El aren’t here tonight. Will is seeing The Cure with Jonathan,” – something Mike knew – “and El is out bowling with her dad,” – something Mike didn’t know – “so it’s just me.”
“That’s fine, it’s um – it’s just me, too,” he responds, hating how shaky his voice sounds. Joyce leans back minutely, concern overtaking her entire expression. Her eyes flicker over Mike, taking him in (and if that doesn’t make him feel altogether too exposed, even though he’d willingly sought her out), and she grasps his hands gently, leading him into the house.
Although the Byers’ new house is thoroughly air-conditioned, the late summer heat still hangs thickly in the air. Joyce grabs Mike a cold glass of water, and he gulps it down, still a bit drained from the strenuous journey on his bike.
When she instinctively reaches over to take off his backpack, he flinches away, clutching tightly at the straps. She doesn’t push him further on the matter.
Joyce discovers rather quickly that Mike isn’t yet ready to discuss his abrupt arrival. She fills in the empty space around them with ease, recounting various anecdotes from her day. He doesn’t respond, and most of the time he can’t bear to even look at her, but he listens. He sips at the rest of his water until it’s gone, tries to mitigate his own restless jittering, and he listens. She takes his glass from him and puts it in the sink.
“Hey,” she says, re-entering the living room where Mike’s seated on their couch, “are you sure I can’t take that bag from you? It’s okay if you want to stick around, but I’m worried you’ll hurt your back if you keep it on the whole time.”
Joyce has given him far more than he deserves tonight, so he relents, standing to take the backpack off himself. It makes him feel a little more hysterical than he’d like to admit. She lifts it out of his arms with a sharp exhale, brows furrowing for a moment before they’re smoothed over with a pleasantly amused expression.
“What’d you pack in this thing? Feels like it weighs more than you do, kiddo.”
He can feel all the blood drain from his face, but tries to shrug it off nonchalantly. Please. As if he’s ever been nonchalant about anything in his life .
Joyce sets down the bag, crosses over to the couch, and sits down maybe two feet away from Mike’s spot. She peers over at him, looking altogether disquieted, and softly pats the couch, coaxing him to sit back down. He obliges.
“Mike,” she implores, compassion bleeding from every crevice in her tone, “I can tell you’re not in a chatty mood tonight, but I need you to talk to me a little , okay? I want to know how to help you, sweetheart. We can – we can start small, alright? Can you do that for me?”
“Okay,” Mike replies weakly, almost soft enough to go unheard. Joyce smiles faintly, whispering back a thank you . He feels guilty for putting her on the spot like this – it’s clear she doesn’t quite know how to handle what he’s throwing at her. Joyce is trying, though, and his chest aches with a mixture of guilt and gratitude.
“Alright. I’ll start off with a couple of simple questions, okay? Where did you come from, where were – where were you before you stopped by?”
“My, um, my parent’s house.”
“You didn’t want to hang around there anymore,” she infers, and it’s not a question.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you were hoping to pay a visit to both of my youngest?”
Mike shakes his head slightly. Yeah, it would’ve been nice to see Will or El, but he supposes that was never really the point of it.
“I wanted to go somewhere safe.”
Joyce stiffens. Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly, a deep and empathetic sadness brewing within them. It reminds Mike so much of Will that he almost has to squeeze his own shut.
“You didn’t feel safe at home?”
Home? He doesn’t have a home, not anymore, not since his own father saw all that he was and felt so utterly repulsed that he –
“Not really, I mean, it was just me and my dad and Holly, and then my dad and I, um, got into an argument, and then I left. It’s not – it’s not a big deal, it’s fine, actually. Yeah, it’s – it’s fine.”
“You and your dad got into an argument?”
“Yeah, but it was just dumb and insignificant, really, because it was just about my hair. I already knew he didn’t like it, so I’m not sure why I even responded. I guess I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t – I couldn’t stop myself.”
Mike’s on the verge of tears again , and he scrubs at his face furiously, thoroughly exhausted with the threat of having a nervous breakdown looming over him constantly.
“Oh, it’s just hair, honey, there’s no need to worry. I’m sure your dad will apologize, or at the very least, learn to live with it, because he loves you –”
“No.”
“Mike, I know he seems difficult right now, but I promise your dad loves you. It’s just that different people have different ways of expressing it, and sometimes we get frustrated by things we don’t understand, but you should never doubt that –”
“He kicked me out, Mrs. Byers.”
Joyce falls silent immediately, body tensing like she’s been slapped. The air around them dips with the weight of his words. When she speaks again, her voice is tight and softly irate.
“Did he hurt you, Mike?” she asks, but there’s no leeway in her rigid tone for a typical question’s inflection.
“He didn’t – no, he didn’t hit me or anything. Didn’t even touch me,” he recalls, feeling hollow.
“There are multiple ways of hurting someone, sweetheart. What you can’t see on the outside can hurt just as strongly on the inside.”
“I know that,” Mike protests, because he’s not, like, five , but something in his chest feels a bit tight anyway.
“Besides,” he continues, “it really sucks what he did – getting thrown out of your house isn’t exactly convenient – but I wasn’t surprised , or anything, I mean, I knew what kind of guy he was.”
Joyce’s eyebrows draw together.
“ What kind of guy …?”
Mike swallows. He isn’t sure how he thought they’d get through this conversation without talking about it . When he doesn’t answer right away, she scoots a hair closer on the couch, eyes firmly fixed on him.
“My dad is…he’s the type of guy to say stupid shit – uh, sorry, stupid stuff – so I usually tune it out pretty easily. But this time, I couldn’t, because he was saying stuff to me, so it felt different, I guess? I said – I said something I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did, and I could tell he was upset. I couldn’t make it better, though, because I could already feel his eyes on me. Like he was waiting for me to mess up again…or like he didn’t need to, because I’d already disappointed him enough.”
Joyce takes his hand, gentle but firm. The care in her touch is enough to make Mike’s eyes sting. He keeps getting caught in this cycle of nearly crying, but suppressing the feelings enough to avoid a full breakdown. The love being shown to him is, admittedly, making it harder to loop back around each time he gets close to the edge. When it’s clear Joyce isn’t interjecting, just offering silent support, Mike finds it in himself to continue his rambling, haphazardly stumbling towards an acceptable explanation.
“I’ve never seen him so angry before,” Mike admits quietly. A coppery taste trickles into his mouth, and it’s only then that he recognizes he’s been gnawing on his lower lip. He forces himself to stop, embarrassed by the shaky breath that lets itself out of his lungs when he does so.
“My dad’s never been an A parent, you know? I’m used to him not caring. I’m used to him not engaging with us at all, so I guess it caught me off-guard when he said I should cut my hair, because when has he ever even looked at me enough to notice how my hair looks? Maybe that’s what really pissed me off – I mean, I could’ve just said, okay, sure thing, Dad and moved on because he’d forget about it – but I didn’t, I talked back, and I think it’s because I was upset that he only took interest in me to criticize me.”
A single tear falls, and Mike swipes it away rapidly with his free hand. Tough it out, Mike. C’mon, man, just keep it together.
“I wasn’t careful enough when I responded to him. I was angry, and I slipped up, and he saw through me,” and Mike winces at how desperate he sounds, “but I tried , Mrs. Byers. I tried so hard to appease him, to reassure him, to be a good son, to be what he wanted me to be, and it still didn’t matter . I felt like a dead man walking, because it was too late, he was already staring at me like that, and I knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, and I already knew I messed up, but it still felt so terrifying that he wouldn’t even acknowledge it. And then he told me to take Holly upstairs –”
Mike’s voice cracks then, some resolve breaking down at the mention of his younger sister. He continues lower and softer, attempting to regain some control.
“He told me to take Holly upstairs, and I really didn’t want to go back down, because I knew whatever was waiting for me down there wasn’t going to be fun. I honestly thought I was going to pass out just from being scared or something, which I thought was stupid at the time, because my dad doesn’t hit me or anything. I just kept thinking I could’ve avoided all of this if I just let him say my hair made me look…girly, or whatever. If I acted like I cared about him as little as he cares about me, then maybe I wouldn’t have been in that situation. But I had to say something, because I do care. Sometimes, I think I care too much about everything.”
Mike slips his hand out of Joyce’s grip and runs his palms over the knees of his jeans. They’re becoming mortifyingly clammy. Besides, he’d rather create the distance now then have it happen to him when she finds out what crimes are stacked against him. All he can hope for is that Mrs. Byers might not redirect him to the door like his father did. It doesn’t seem like her to turn someone away – especially a child, being that he still is one, legally – in their time of need. Maybe he subconsciously took advantage of her kindness by coming here, knowing deep down that Joyce would let him stay, even if she was repulsed and horrified by his very existence.
Maybe Mike is just an awful, awful person for burdening her and her family with all of this – with all of him . Maybe he’ll always be a leech, sucking all the love right out of every last person he knows until they’re all sad, empty shells, thoroughly exhausted with nothing left to give.
There’s a riotous, unruly beast that thrashes about in the recesses of his heart and has lived in him always. It feeds and it feeds on whatever he can glean from the people around him, but it is never satiated. It spurns him on, setting his being ablaze for better or for worse, not caring if his lungs remain filled with an ashy guilt or if he’s cursed to leave behind wildfires wherever he goes.
When the flames die down, when his loved ones turn away at last, Mike is invariably alone and crushingly insufficient. The beast roars in anger, tearing away at his insides with an unshakable fervor.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that he is currently sitting on the couch in the Byers’s house, with Joyce at his side and likely wondering what the hell he’s talking about. He has to get it over with. She deserves at least that much.
“When I got back downstairs, he was just…sitting in his recliner. He wasn’t even watching the TV or anything. He was just sitting . It was so unlike him – I think I knew then that things were maybe even worse than I thought they were. And then he told me to get out. That he couldn’t – he couldn’t bear to have me in his house, and I knew he figured it out. I pretended like I didn’t, but I knew he figured it out. I knew. And – and when he asked me, I couldn’t…I couldn’t lie to him. It would’ve been so easy to lie! Maybe then I could’ve salvaged something, maybe I could’ve convinced him to let me stay, or wait until Mom got back – which I asked him to do, but he wouldn’t have it, shit , I was crying in front of him and everything and he didn’t even care , he just wanted me gone. But it was when he asked me directly that everything went to hell. He had me trapped and he knew it.”
“What – what did he figure out, honey?”
Her voice is incredibly soft, and were there anyone else in the house, none but Mike would have been able to hear it. The question still makes his breath catch – he’s thrown off his rhythm, and the walls come crumbling down at last. He can’t hide from her anymore.
“I like boys, Mrs. Byers.”
Joyce’s arms are around him, quick as lightning. The admission is shameful, almost overwhelmingly so – it’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud. Before he knows it, he’s openly sobbing, having cracked open a part of himself that can never be sealed again.
“Oh, Mike, baby, it’s okay,” is all she says, and he just cries harder, hiding himself in the embrace as best as he can. Joyce holds him until his breathing slows to a comfortable, less erratic pace.
There’s something about the way she’s holding Mike that makes him feel small again. Vulnerable, but not in a bad way. He knows – he knows his mom loves him, and it’s not like she doesn’t initiate caring touches of her own, but there always seems to be an undercurrent of grief in Karen’s embraces. She hugs Mike as if she’d like to compress him, if she could. Her son’s growing up in more ways than one: now the tallest one in the house, he towers over her by a whole nine inches. When Mike feels her arms around him, she squeezes him with some sort of melancholic desperation.
Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but he never quite knows what to do with that, either. How could he possibly live up to someone he stopped being years ago?
Joyce is different, though. He’s come to her as so many different people, and she finds him worthy of her fierce protection every time. Tonight is no exception – though she’s shorter than Mike’s own mom, she still finds a way to envelop him, not a care in the world for his endless lank or sharp edges.
This is safety , Mike thinks briefly, and doesn’t need to wonder how he ended up on her doorstep. Hadn’t that been what he’d been after from the moment his father delivered the final blow?
“Do your friends know, honey?” Joyce gently inquires after a couple of moments, pulling back enough to look him in the eyes. Mike bites his lip and stares at the grooves in the floor, shaking his head. He meets her gaze, stomach turning a little at how watery his eyes remain.
“You’re – you’re actually the first person I’ve told. Uh, ever, actually.”
Her expression softens further, something Mike hadn’t even deemed possible.
“Oh, sweetheart, after the night you’ve had – not to mention all that time figuring things out, all that time hiding – you are so brave and so strong for letting someone in. I’m just honored that I was the first to know. Thank you for telling me.”
He smiles sheepishly at that, not quite sure how to respond.
“All this can be on your own time – you don’t have to tell anyone else any time soon if you don’t want to. I won’t say anything if you’d like me to keep this between us. But Mike, honey, you should know that nobody in this house would think any less of you for who you are. In fact,” Joyce continues, a small smile emerging on her face, “I’m a little surprised Will doesn’t know already. I would’ve thought he –”
“Will doesn’t know,” he cuts in.
It’s forceful, and sudden, and Mike isn’t even really sure where his voice came from.
“He doesn’t have to know, but seeing as you two are close, I thought maybe he did. Will would never ever have a problem with this, especially since it’s – well, you know he thinks the world of you, Mike. He always has.”
“I can’t tell him this. He can’t – he can’t know.”
There’s a hint of desperation in his voice that he prays isn’t too noticeable. The thought of Will knowing this about him is almost too much to bear. The irony of his own behavior during the summer before high school stands out in his mind, glaring and harsh. He’d berated Will for not bothering with having a girlfriend at the time, in spite of the fact that Mike doesn’t want one ever . Of course, he hadn’t really known as much at the time. Unintentional projection aside, though, he still has no excuse for the way he’d treated Will.
Then, his best friend confirmed that yes , he had envisioned the two of them staying in each other’s lives forever, no girls necessary.
Mike had been terrified .
The admission, regardless of its obviously platonic nature, struck way too close to something a fourteen-year-old Mike had only been starting to uncover: he wanted a life with Will, too, and that fact wasn’t contingent on either of them having girlfriends.
A part of him wondered if it would maybe be easier if they didn’t have them. Sure, they could still be close with the rest of the Party, but without girlfriends, they could devote nearly all their attention to each other, and –
That wasn’t something he should be thinking.
Mike had buried those feelings on the bike ride over to Will’s house, redirecting all his energy into apologizing. It had stuck with him, though, swirling around in the furthest corners of his mind and brewing beneath the waters of his tempestuous heart.
Truths emerged time and time again. El kissing him goodbye, the letters they’d exchanged in her absence, seeing everyone after six months, the entirety of California, and every day since then – these moments all served to remind Mike of exactly what he was, and what he never could be, no matter how valiantly or desperately he tried.
He’s taken back to the present when Joyce’s eyebrows tug upwards, mouth dropping open slightly. She quickly rearranges her features into a tentative smile.
“I think I understand, honey,” she’s saying, but Mike doesn’t quite hear the rest of her sentence, or any that might have come after it. His ears are ringing, and it’s getting harder to breathe again. He hopes his face is schooled just enough to avoid suspicion – not that he’s ever been great at controlling his expressions, but he feels like the last threads of his sanity are unraveling in his own hands.
Okay, that notion feels exaggerated, but Mike’s always been prone to dramatics, anyhow. He tries to slow his breathing and hopes his fake yawn is convincing enough to look real.
“Can we talk about this tomorrow? I know I’m not really in a position to – you know , but my brain just feels kind of fuzzy right now, and I might be better with words in the morning.”
Joyce looks a little taken aback, but she nods.
“You can take Will or Jonathan’s room tonight, if you’d like. They won’t get back until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Actually, I’ll be okay on the couch,” he offers, absolutely mortified at the idea of sleeping in Will’s bed. Or Jonathan’s, for different and possibly Nancy-related reasons.
She concedes, but compromises by giving Mike a pillow and a blanket at the very least. He thanks her for everything, and the two go their separate ways for the night.
--
Mike can’t sleep.
It’s been maybe two hours since he’d settled down on the couch. El and Hopper haven’t gotten back yet, but he estimates they will soon. He imagines her confusion and his annoyance at seeing him curled up in their living room, as if he owns the place.
He imagines Hopper pressing Joyce for information, imagines her refusing to say anything at Mike’s request, imagines the confusion growing at the household’s extra resident. In his mind, he can see Will and Jonathan coming back from their concert, only to see Mike drifting through the hallways like some sort of lost soul.
No one except Joyce will know anything, because Mike’s put her in this position where her family has to accommodate another person, but she isn’t allowed to tell them why.
He imagines the others seeing through the situation – or, simply just through him – and catching on to the truth. To all of it.
Mike has invited himself into their home, intending to stay there for god knows how long, all while being what he is.
He doesn’t doubt Joyce when she says they’d accept him, but he also knows no one would expect it from him. After all he’d put them through during his relationship with El – and it was all for naught, because he doesn’t even like girls. And Will, he –
He’d almost forgotten. Joyce knows . She knows how he feels about her own son , and she’s still trying to make space for him in her home.
A wave of nausea rolls over him. It’s too much. He doesn’t deserve any of it, and he can’t, he can’t do this. He refuses to make anyone in this family have to pick up the pieces of his own bullshit for yet another time.
Mike’s on his feet before he knows it, scribbling something to Joyce on a piece of paper as he pulls his shoes on. Telling her he’ll be safe, and he’ll be smart, and he’ll be okay.
None of those things are necessarily guarantees, and they’re all probably wishful thinking, but he has to ease her worrying somehow.
It’s surprisingly cold when he shuts the door behind him with a remarkable amount of silence. The summer’s crushing heat has faded by this time of night, and his thin t-shirt does little to shield him from the chill. Goosebumps dot his arms and legs. He shivers slightly as he pedals away, facing the wind head-on and ignoring how the burn in his knees has returned with a vengeance.
He’s no longer welcome in his own home, but he can’t go back to the Byers’ house, either. Has the road been paved recently? The tires of his bike hardly seem to catch on anything; then again, that could be his relentless speed. Maybe, he thinks bitterly, it doesn’t matter what he is, because he doesn’t think he could stay in someone’s life long enough to love and be loved before he inevitably hurts them. Maybe he’s better off alone, where the beast can either live off of his own loneliness or starve, for all he cares.
There are no cars that pass him by on this back road, and everything is washed in a dark blue haze. He’s half-convinced he’ll wake up in his own bed in the morning, having dreamed all of this. The other half of him thinks he’ll wake up in a ditch somewhere, having fallen asleep during his endless journey. He tries to summon some internal strength – tries to think of the certainties, even though nothing feels quite real right now.
His voice feels shaky from the cold and from crying, but he has to stay grounded somehow.
“My name is Mike Wheeler, I’m gay, and I don’t know where the fuck I’m going,” he whispers to himself over and over again.
This is what Mike Wheeler knows. He isn’t sure of much else.