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Three months into freshman year, Mike punches Troy in the face.
It'd been coming for a while—years, really—he'd known eventually he wouldn't be able to brush it off any longer, knew that if it wasn't him that snapped and smacked the smirk off Troy's face it'd be Max, or Dustin, or Lucas or maybe even Nancy—alone in her senior year and more wary of her not-so-little brother and his friends. But somehow he'd managed to smother the burn of anger in his veins whenever Troy pushed him in the hallways, tripped up his friends or yelled crude things across the cafeteria at Max. Mike had never really been able to control his feelings very well, and he hates it, this intensity he carries around with him constantly. He feels so much or he doesn't feel at all and he doesn’t know how it could be a good thing (the way El once told him it was) when his feelings run so deep their roots are thick and gangly and poking above the ground just to trip everyone up when they least expect it.
But going through the things he had, the summer they'd just endured still fresh and bruising his skin and his heart all over, you learn to become subdued. To stop feeling so much, all at once, because all it ever does is poke and prod at the wounds til they'e searing and soaking his clothes in blood all over again. And besides, it isn't anything new—the bullying, Troy and his friends seeking them out and tormenting them. This is normal. This was life before it ended and came back all warped and marred with grief and things too horrifying to make sense of. Life, for normal kids, is exactly this; assignments and classes that go on forever and all that teen angst confined into one small little building for 6 hours a day. Only, on his first day he’d realized that high school is so much shittier than middle school, not because of bullies or harder classes, but because for months he’d let himself imagine what it would be like—him and El, holding hands in the hallway, walking each other to class and sneaking off to the AV room between bells.
But then she left. And the disappointment had hurt more than any ridicule he’d had to endure his entire childhood.
The day he finally snaps, the day all his teenage tarnished anger comes spilling out, is early November, when Mike is alone in the barely crowded hallways after school. He stops at his locker after school, going through his textbooks and vaguely wondering what he needs to take home for the night. He'd missed an Algebra assignment he needed to catch up on, and an English essay due the next week that he hadn't even started. But really, he doesn’t care so much about the school work--he'd find a way to catch up and get top grades, he always did. What he really wanted to do was stop by his locker to put up a postcard he'd gotten from El the day before.
The day he'd been assigned his locker, Mike had decided that if he couldn't see El at school everyday, he might as well be able to see her pictures in his locker to make it more bearable. So he'd sifted through his bedroom and found pictures of the two of them from that summer, stolen some magnets from off his fridge, and hung them up all over his locker door. His favourite is one of the two of them that May, before everything had gone to shit. He'd borrowed his Mom's polaroid camera for the day, and him and El had spent most of their time taking pictures around the cabin. The one he'd taken with him, the one hung up in his locker, is one of the two of them on El's bed: Mike with his arms around her waist, leaning in and kissing El's cheek, and El with her face scrunched up in laughter. The picture had come out a little shaky, seeing as El hadn't really used a polaroid before, and given the fact that she was laughing while taking it, but Mike loves it. It makes him smile to think of a time when things were less complicated than they are now, and the two of them were just happy.
The postcard, he figures, is small enough that it'll fit nicely on the locker door. And whenever he misses her, the way he always does at school, he can read it over and feel just a little less alone. Slipping his bag off his shoulders, he unzips the pocket and carefully looks through his books until he finds it buried at the very bottom. Cursing, he pulls it out carefully, breathing a sigh of relief when it comes out uncreased.
He's just about to put it up when disaster hits. Out of nowhere, a hand reaches up behind him and snatches the postcard from his grip.
"What's that you got, frogface?" He hears. Mike tenses, anger instantly flaring. Troy, he thinks, stomach dropping. He turns, clenching his fists when he meets Troy's mocking grin. He's holding the postcard in front of him, flipping it around and looking at the message scribbled on the back.
"Give it back, Troy." Mike spits out, gritting his teeth.Troy looks at him, raising an eyebrow at the bite of anger in his voice.
"What's this, Wheeler? A letter from a six-year-old?" He snorts, looking down at the scratchy mess of handwriting. Mike takes a deep breath, biting his lip to keep the rush of anger at bay. He's just about to ask Troy to give it back again, when all of a sudden Troy clears his throat, holding the card out in front of him and starting to read.
"Dear Mike," He says, voice all mockingly high-pitched. A few people standing around snort in laughter. "Someone—"
Mike slams his locker shut, the sound echoing down the hallways and making Troy jump. "I said give it back."
"Alright, fine" Troy sneers. "I'll give it back." He takes a step towards Mike, and for a second it looks like he might really hand it over, before he's holding it up and ripping it down the middle.
Mike doesn't really remember what happens next. All he knows is the sudden pain shooting through his right hand, ringing in his ears and the muffled sounds of gasping coming from the people around him. He's shaking, he knows that, and he think he might hear Troy yelling before all of a sudden a fist is his hitting his face. His head is thrown back, slamming against his locker before he's being hit again. He feels a trickle of blood running down his face, and even though it hurts like hell and his head is throbbing like it's being forced apart, all he can think about is the nauseating copper smell of fresh blood. It's so visceral and so strong in his memories, he forgets for a second he's being hit, and all he can think about is the middle school two years ago, the lab the year before that, the mall this summer. He's starting to panic, he can feel the thrum of anxiety rising up his throat, and the last thing he needs right now is for Troy to see him crying and struggling to breathe like a little kid. So he forces his arms up, blocking Troy's next hit and trying his hardest to take a steadying breath. He hears more yelling down the hall, only this time he thinks it might be a teacher, and suddenly the hallways are clearing out completely, and Troy bolts out of sight, and Mike is alone. Shakily, he lowers his arms.
He can tell the left side of his face is fucked up real bad, given the way it's searing with pain and still trickling blood. His hand is aching, too, and when he looks down he's surprised to see the skin on his knuckles split open and bruised in shades of deep reds and blues. He lowers himself to the floor, sliding down the lockers until he's sitting down on the ground. Shakily, he reaches for the halves of the torn up postcard, both of which are slightly dirtied and trampled from being on the floor. He doesn't cry, but looking at the card, all split in two and and torn up like the skin on his own bloodied face and hands, he thinks he could. Instead, Mike shoves both of them in his backpack, forces himself up, and pretends to ignore the sharp spike of pain in his head that gets worse with every step.
He takes the long way around to the bike racks out front. His friends are already gone by the time he gets there.
When he gets home, he makes sure to go in through the basement door. He doesn't think he could handle his Mom or Dad seeing him like this right now. Their concern and inevitable anger would just feel smothering, and all Mike really wants to do is sulk on his own.
At least, that's what he thinks, but when he steps foot in the basement, dropping his bag tiredly by the door, he's almost tempted to run back up the stairs to have them yell at him. The embarrassment of what he's just done is hitting him, and getting in trouble seems a lot more preferable to wallowing with his own self-deprecation. God, what was he thinking? Hitting Troy over a postcard? El sends him plenty of letters and notes, it's not like this is the only one he's ever going to get from her.
But still. Everything from El seems worth fighting for. Even if it means getting his ass kicked in the end. He knows all too well what it's like to be separate from her without even knowing if she's alive, and this postcard, just like all the other cards and letters and gifts and phone calls, is another way to remember that she’s really there. Another way to make all of this just a little easier. Because sometimes, Mike thinks he might be cursed. Sometimes, he thinks it might be him that forces the loss into all of their lives. He’s just not enough for anyone to stick around for. Not for El. Not for Will. Not even for Hopper (and he feels selfish thinking it, because he's not really the one who lost Hop, after all, not the way El has, but even on their worst days Mike had felt protected by him, and trusted, and respected in a way he'd never felt with his own Dad. And then he lost that, too.)
He feels selfish for all of it. For thinking that any of them should even stick around for him in the first place, for making it about himself at all. He knows his friends lost Will, and El too, but his loss feels so far removed from the rest. It hurts in a way he doesn't think he can share with Lucas, or Dustin, or Max. But he thinks knows someone who might understand.
Nancy, he thinks. Quickly, he goes up the stairs, being careful not to make too much noise. He slips past the living room where his Dad is watching the news, and the kitchen where he can hear his Mom and Holly talking. Luckily, both of them are too tied up in whatever they're doing to notice anything, and he's able to run up the stairs without drawing attention to himself.
He doesn’t know if she’s home. She usually is these days, with no one really waiting around to hangout with her after school—making friends, it turns out, is nearly impossible when not everyone you know is working through inter-dimensional related trauma. But she’s been spending more time with Steve and Robin lately, so he can’t be sure.
Luckily, when he knocks on her bedroom door, he hears a muffled, “Yeah?”
He’s barely a foot into her room before he hears a gasp and the sound of a book snapping shut.
“Mike?" Nancy says, alarmed, scrambling off the bed to get a better look at him. "What happened to your—“
“Do you wanna go somewhere?” He blurts, cutting her off.
She stops halfway across the room, furrowing her brow. “What?”
“I’m bored. Let’s go get food or something, I don’t know. I...” He trails off. I miss hanging out with you, is what he thinks he might say, but it feels a little too much like honesty, a little too sad when all he really wants is a distraction. “I’m just bored.” He says again, shifting awkwardly on the spot when Nancy continues to stare at him.
"Mike, what's going on? What the hell happened to you?" She says again, looking over him with concern.
He scowls, patience wearing thin. He's too tired to argue or explain anything. "Look, do you wanna do something or not?"
She stares at him for a little while longer, eyes flitting back and forth from his hand to his eye, before she sighs, nodding.
“Okay...” Nancy says slowly. “I’ll go ask Mom for the keys.”
They end up at the diner after driving around aimlessly for 20 minutes, Holly—who their Mom had forced them to take along—complaining loudly in the back seat and reaching up every little while to fiddle with the radio dials. The three of them argue back and forth, neither him or Nancy really sure where there is to go in Hawkins that won't kick up ugly memories, and Holly concerned only with the music filtering through the speakers.
Finally, Nancy put an end to the chaos by suggesting they all come here—which is how he ends up sat next to Holly in a booth in the back corner, her colouring book and crayons spread out on the table, while Nancy is off ordering milkshakes. The diner is relatively empty, aside from the the three of them there’s one couple sitting at a table in the middle, and a man off to the side reading a newspaper.
There’s a plate of fries in front of the two of them, mostly cold and greasy, which Holly reaches up to eat from while she colours. After a little while of staring around in boredom, Mike picks up a crayon of his own and starts helping her colour. He’s careful to use his left hand, not the one currently nursing a mirage of deep purple bruises splayed across his knuckles that throb uncomfortably every time his fingers move. His colouring ends up sloppy and all over the place, but he doesn’t think Holly can see it’s any different from her own.
“Did someone colour on your face?” Holly says suddenly, pausing from her drawing to look up at him.
“What?” He scrunches up his faces in confusion.
“You have crayon on your eye, silly," She says simply, eyes going wide like she can't believe he hasn't noticed. She reaches up to poke him lightly on the face. "And on your cheek too."
"Oh, no, that's not crayon Holls—" He starts, not really sure how to explain. Only, Holly isn't paying attention to what he's saying. She has his face in both of her hands, eyes staring determinedly on the bruise colouring the left side of his face.
"This is a nice blue." She frowns, cutting him off, brushing her fingers against his cheekbone. She drops her hands and turns toward the table again, pouting. "I wish I had that colour blue." Holly says sadly, looking down at her collection of crayons and pushing them around half-halfheartedly like food gone cold on a plate. Mike grins, ruffling her hair and picking up the Crayola box. He looks through it for a little while before shaking one out onto his hand.
"Here," He says, holding out the colour: nautical navy. "This one’s pretty close." Holly eyes it skeptically, tentatively taking the crayon and colouring lightly on an unused corner of the page. It draws blue, deep, navy starry sky blue, the same blue blooming on his skin, and Holly squeals in excitement.
"Thank you Mikey!" Immediately, she begins running the crayon sloppily so blue ends up streaked all over the page.
Nancy joins them then, dropping down into the seat across from him and placing two milkshakes, vanilla for him, strawberry for her, on the table.
"Thanks," Mike says, pulling the drink toward him and taking a sip. He looks at her briefly across the table, notes the concern in her eyes when she sees how fucked up he looks again, before dropping his eyes down to focus on the drawing. They sit in silence for a while, the occasional slurping and the scratch of both him and Holly colouring on the paper the only sounds shared between them. Until, Nancy turns to look at him, clearing her throat. Mike's stomach drops, nerves sending goosebumps down his arms. No more hiding, he thinks. Only, how the fuck does he explain this?
“So are you gonna tell me what happened to your face?” She says, bluntly, and his face burns red. No bullshit with Nancy. Mike stays silent, leaning in closer to the paper and pretending to be fully invested in colouring in the page. He feels her eyes on him though, and he figures he might as well stop avoiding it and confess. Nancy isn't the type to give up easily, and he owes her an explanation after dragging her out unexpectedly like this, anyway.
“I punched Troy in the face and he maybesortakindapunchedmeback,” He mumbles, the end of his sentence tumbling out in one nervous breath. He's still focused on the paper, colouring like his whole life depends on filling in this shitty children's cartoon. He's not even sure if she heard him properly, but it's easier to admit to getting his ass kicked when he doesn't have to look at her while he says it.
"You punched Troy in the face," Nancy echoes, surprise lilting her tone.
Mike coughs awkwardly. "Uh, yeah,"
"And he punched you back."
He nods. "Repeatedly."
"Mike," The concern in her voice is enough to break him. He sighs, finally dropping the crayon and meeting her eyes across the table. She's not mad, like he partially expected her to be, but she is confused, and still worried from the way her brows are furrowed together and her mouth is hanging open slightly.
"Why the hell would you punch Troy in the face?" Nancy questions. Mike takes a deep breath, reaching up to nervously push his hair out of his eyes.
"Because," He starts. "He deserved it."
She rolls her eyes at him, annoyance seeping through her concern. "That's not an answer."
Mike scowls. "Yes it is."
Nancy kicks his leg under the table, hard. "No, it isn't."
"Okay first of all, screw you," He seethes, reaching down to rub his shin where it's aching. "Second of all, yes it is."
"If people deserving to be punched in the face qualified as a reason to actually do it," She says, crossing her arms and leaning back in the booth, "Then I would've done it to you at least six-hundred times by now."
"Haha, very funny." He deadpans, glaring at her.
"Mike, I'm serious." Nancy says softly. "What happened?"
He shrugs, looking away. "Troy was being an asshole."
"He's always an asshole," She states, raising her brow. "Why was it different this time?"
"I don't know," He lets out an exasperated sigh. "I just snapped, I guess. He pissed me off."
"Quit it with the half-answers, idiot."
"Jesus," He scowls. He fiddles with the straw in his milkshake for a little while, stirring the drink around while he figures out how to explain it all. He knows it sounds stupid—even now, going it over all in his head, he can feel the embarrassment making him wish he could just disappear. It's the same predicament over and over—he's always doing too much, feeling too much at the wrong time. His heart is always spilling over with emotions and forcing him to drown everyone else with them, too. He wishes it could stop. He wishes he could be any other way only he doesn't know how.
"There was a card." He mumbles finally, face burning red. God, I'm pathetic, he thinks.
Nancy tilts her head. "A card?"
"From El." He admits, voice quiet. Nancy lets out an "Oh," across from him, and he suddenly feels like a little kid again—like he's seven and desperate for his big sister to help him, to take a look at his scraped up knees from where he fell on his bike and take him in, clean off the dirt and bandage him up. Desperate for her to understand his hurt. He hopes she doesn't think he's a total idiot, even if he is.
"What'd he do?" She says after a brief silence, and he's relieved at how sympathetic her tone is.
“He tore it up. I got mad.” It's the simple way of saying it. He's not sure how to explain that watching that postcard being torn in half felt a little like he was being torn up, too. Losing El this time is almost worse than it was before. Because even if he can still talk to her and know without a doubt she'll talk back, even if he can still see her, it's so much harder losing her after spending eight months knowing what it's like to love her. That postcard had been just one more way he'd lost her, even more proof that she was gone, and all he has left are letters from her and pictures of her and notes with her words but not her.
“It’s stupid, I know." He adds, when Nancy doesn't respond.
“It’s not stupid,” She reassures him, shaking her head. “He’s a dick. It’s about time someone punched him.”
Mike smiles at her gratefully. He's so glad to have Nancy, he thinks suddenly. If it wasn't for her, he'd be alone right now, letting his wounds ache and burn the way he always does. Sitting through it without trying to make it stop, without knowing how, a part of him feeling like maybe he deserves it, anyway. He thinks this, right now, is a little more like healing.
She purses her lips sympathetically. “Sorry he got you back, though.”
Mike shrugs, taking a sip from his now melted milkshake. They go back to sitting silently for a little while, Nancy thinking with her chin resting on her hand, Mike finishing off his drink and watching Holly colour.
“That asshole,” She says eventually. Mike blinks, looking back up at her. “Sometimes I forget him and Steve are related.” She adds, dropping her hand.
“No, they’re both annoying." He scoffs. "I can see the connection."
“You know that I mean,” She says, rolling her eyes. “Steve isn’t a dickhead. At least not anymore.” She adds, thinking it over.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “Siblings don't really have to be alike.”
“You’re right,” Nancy grins. “Like how I’m a sensible genius and you're an impulsive idiot."
Mike glares at her, holding up a crayon threateningly. "I'm impulsive enough to hit you too, you know."
Nancy laughs in disbelief. "Yeah, okay, I'd like to see you try, stupid."
He throws the crayon across the table at her, ignoring her snort of laughter when he misses and it falls to the floor with a pathetic clamber, rolling underneath the table next to them. "Don't call me stupid, stupid."
Holly groans beside him suddenly, dropping her crayon down on the table with a dramatic slap. “You’re both stupid.” She decides, looking back and forth between the two of them.
Mike laughs, tugging gently on one of her pigtails. “You’re not allowed to say that.”
Holly shakes her head at him, frowning. “Stupid’s not a bad word.” She says, matter-of-factly.
“Yes it is,”
“No it isn’t,” She argues, crossing her arms defiantly. “Mommy says it about Daddy all the time on the telly-phone.”
“Oh my god,” Mike laughs. Nancy does too, reaching over to pinch Holly's cheek affectionately.
“Don’t call Dad stupid, okay Holls?” She says. Holly bats her hand away, nodding absently and focusing back on her drawing.
Nancy dotes on her for a little while longer, but he zones them out, the pain still lingering in his head making it hard to focus. He rests his chin in his hand, looking down at the table and absentmindedly fiddling with a spare crayon—sunshine yellow, he reads. El's favourite. Mike winces, squeezing his eyes shut, so hard he starts seeing stars like little flashing lights in the dark, rain flooding the forest and dissolving his clothes to his skin, and in the depths, her: glowing like starlight and looking through him, all soaked to the bone in a daisy yellow shirt. his heart stops.
"Mike," He hears Nancy saying, voice all muffled and hazy like it's coming from another room. Mike opens his eyes, breathing shakily. It takes him a second to refocus, his surroundings all blurry and hazy and fading in and out. Nancy, he thinks. Holly. Diner. Not the rain. Not the forest. Not El. Breathe.
Nancy just looks at him, eyes flitting back and forth between his own. If she notices anything off with him, she doesn't mention it.
"Look, I just wanted to say..." She trails off, taking a second to collect her thoughts, sighing and fiddling with her drink. "When everything first happened, I was so angry. All the time. And I know you were, too, and we never really talked about it but it all just felt so...unfair. And I told myself that after everything that happened, I deserved to be mad. And I did, we all did. But it didn't help...it just got worse. Because once you start feeling like you owe it to yourself to be mad, you realize that there's so much to be angry about, and it just never stops."
She shrugs a little, looking at him. "Eventually you just have to let all that go. You have to stop being mad about it, no matter how unfair it is, because all that does is make it hurt even more."
"I know you're right, I just..." He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't even know why he feels the way he does, why he's so riddled with anger and anxiety. He could trace it back to the Upside Down, to the monsters and the blood and the loss, but hadn't they all experienced that? Why is it Mike that's still tripping over piles of clothes on his bedroom floor, burning up his hands and knees on the carpet and adding them to his tally of wounds, forgetting to leave his bedroom on the weekends, parading around with messy hair and bags under his eyes and clothes that still reek of the hospital, of the blood, of firework powder and sweet, sickly summer air. He's his own macabre memory of the past two years of hurt. He hates that he has the tendency of reminding everyone else, too, all because he can't learn to move on and grow up. He might not feel like a kid anymore, but he knows he's still a child in the way that he grieves.
"I know you miss her." Nancy says softly. And Mike realizes that it'll always come down to El. Losing her will always make him feel small again.
Mike nods gently, looking down at the table. “I’ll always miss her.”
Nancy’s eyes soften, smiling sadly. The recognition in her face makes his heart hurt all over again. He hates missing El, hates that she makes up so much empty space in his life, and he’s always twelve again, and thirteen, and fourteen, and she’s always leaving, leaving, leaving. It never stops. He thinks he’ll always love her like this, when she’s just one step out of reach. And he hates that Nancy knows exactly what it feels like. She lost someone too.
"Sap." She says, rolling her eyes and kicking his leg under the table again, gently this time.
"Jesus," He snaps, but he's smiling, and Nancy is too. "If I wanted to get hit again I'd go find Troy."
"Can we go now?" Holly pipes up beside him. "I don't wanna miss The Care Bears on TV."
Mike gasps dramatically, sliding out of the booth in a rush and pulling Holly along with him. He bends down and Holly jumps up on his back with a giggle. "Not The Care Bears!" He yells, spinning on the spot so Holly squeals. "We gotta hurry, Nance."
Nancy nods. "Yeah, okay." She says, smiling at the two of them. "Let's go home."
A little later, when the three of them stumble through the front door and Mike's Mom finally gets a good look at his face, he manages to escape her concerned questioning and slip down into the basement. He's exhausted, bruises still searing uncomfortably only his head is throbbing now, too, and all he really wants is to crawl into bed and sleep, but there's something he needs to do first.
He grabs his bag from where'd he dropped it by the door earlier, and a roll of tape off the desk in the corner, before sitting down on the couch. He opens up his bag and tips over its contents onto the table in front of him, shoving aside his books and his binders until he finds the torn pieces of the postcard. Sighing, he carefully picks them up, flipping the two halves in his hand and assessing the damage. He thinks, for an embarrassing second, that he might start crying. But he bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut for a second before opening them again, putting the pieces back down on the table. Carefully, he lines up the halves, bending down low and making sure the lines of El's scratchy hand-writing line up perfectly. Holding it carefully down the middle, he flips it over and checks the front too, smiling at the Wish you were here! slogan flashing up at him,
Then, he strips off a piece of tape from the roll, holding his breath and focusing all his energy on not accidentally moving and screwing it up. When he's all done, it's legible again, and he can almost convince himself that it never happened, that the glaring tear down the middle was there when he'd received it in the mail yesterday. Even if it's not true, he feels at home again, holding it in his hands and reading over the words.
Mike,
Someone I know once told me that a promise is something you can't break, ever. I promised you won't lose me, and I meant it. I know I'm far away, but I'm not really gone, and I'll see you soon (2 weeks!!). Promise you won't be sad while I'm away, and I'll try not to be too, okay? I love you.
El <3