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If there’s one thing Mike knows about himself, that he can take to the bank without question, it’s that he is really, really good at annoying people. So he knows Jonathan is going to give in; it’s just a matter of when.
“Come on,” he says, trailing Jonathan through the halls of the Byers’ new house. He’s been working this one project for weeks, and he’s so close to victory he can taste it.
“No way. You’re a baby.”
“I’m fifteen. Eddie was going to let me but—“ He doesn’t need to fake the wobble in his voice. “He’s not around.” He and Eddie never actually talked about smoking together, but he’s pretty sure it would have been fine. They were at least sort of friends, and if he’s wrong about that, then Eddie was still a businessman and wouldn’t have turned down his money.
“Eddie Munson, R.I.P., was literally a drug dealer and not someone I’m interested in emulating.” Jonathan pauses halfway through pouring himself a bowl of mid-afternoon Froot Loops. “Uh, sorry for your loss. But seriously, Mike, I’m not going to give you weed. Drugs are…bad. Just say no. Like, D.A.R.E. and stuff.”
“Are you serious?” Mike hears his voice climb several octaves but can’t stop it. “You’re high right now. I literally watched you get high.”
“No, you didn’t.” Jonathan looks genuinely hurt. “I wouldn’t smoke weed in front of a baby.” This is accurate, if offensive. Mike came over pretending he didn’t know that El was visiting Max and Will was at one of his three weekly therapy appointments. Jonathan is nice, in a sort of dopey way where it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him not to be, so he let Mike hang around. After listening to two-and-a-half dreary songs together, Jonathan kicked him out of his room saying he needed to get changed, then emerged wearing the same clothes and smelling skunky. “I don’t see why this is such a big deal.”
“I just want— I just feel—“ Mike makes himself hold still, resists the urge to pace or grab at his chest. How he feels, all the time, is like he’s having a heart attack. Jonathan puts a hand on his arm. His skin is clammy, but it’s nice anyway, to be touched without expectation or pressure. “I just want to stop thinking,” he admits. “And it seems like weed does that for you.”
Jonathan blinks at him, slow the way Mews used to before Dart ate him. Half the time that blink meant Mike could pet him, and half the time it meant he was about to try to open a vein.
“Ouch,” he says finally.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Mike says, even though he kind of did. Jonathan was never like Nancy, whose intelligence is prickly and showy, but he was smart about the things he cared about, liable to go off on a lecture about obscure bands or shot composition. This new Jonathan is distractible and dull. Mike kind of hates him for it, but he’s jealous too. He looks tired all the time, but less sad than he used to. Not happy, just like he doesn’t have the energy to feel much of anything. Mike wants to climb inside him, to know what that dead calm feels like.
Jonathan shovels a spoonful of cereal into his mouth and waits until he’s done chewing to ask, “Have you talked to anyone about how you’re feeling?”
“Oh yeah, I’ll just tell Will how awful the worst thing that ever happened to him was for me. Or El, or hey, maybe Max when she gets out of her coma. That makes sense.” Mike drums his fingers against the kitchen counter. He hates this, hates the way Jonathan won’t stop looking at him. “Look, I’m fine. I just need a break. For like, one second, okay?”
He can tell Jonathan’s going to give in even though his expression doesn’t change as he sits hunched over his cereal. He’s known Jonathan practically as long as he’s been a person, just a couple weeks less than he’s known Will. For some of that time, Jonathan was Will’s cool older brother, but somewhere along the way he became a vague, Nancy-aged non-entity.
Jonathan makes him wait, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of cereal. Only after he’s scraped his spoon along the bottom of the bowl does he sigh, “Fine.” He fixes Mike with an unexpectedly piercing look. “But don’t tell Nancy.”
Mike scoffs. “Obviously.” Then, in a sudden burst of nerves, “And you won’t tell Will?”
Jonathan rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to tell anyone I gave drugs to a fifteen-year-old. Now come on before I change my mind.”
The Byers didn’t exactly have a chance to pack up their house in California before moving back. Mike brought over some of Will’s old drawings so that his room wouldn’t be so blank and miserable, but Jonathan’s looks like he just moved in yesterday, like he might move out tomorrow, the only personal touches his camera and a tape deck in the corner.
“Let me just—“ He gestures vaguely in a way Mike thinks means he should sit down. His bed has all the charm of a park bench, but Mike doesn’t complain like he ordinarily would, reminds himself that Jonathan is doing him a favor.
Jonathan busies himself with something on his dresser with his back to Mike, stopping the one time Mike gets up and tries to look over his shoulder.
“So it’s okay if I smoke weed, but not if I know how to—“ He stops, because he didn’t absorb enough of the terminology from Eddie to be sure he isn’t about to embarrass himself.
“Exactly. Give a man a fish, or whatever. This is a one-time deal.”
Mike goes back to the bed and sits down to wait, his whole body thrumming with nervous energy.
When Jonathan finally turns around, he’s holding a thick glass pipe, mostly clear but struck through with strands of blue and purple. There’s a shallow bowl at one end stuffed full of what Mike has to take on faith to be weed. Jonathan shows him how to hold it, then hands it over, watching carefully like he thinks he’s going to drop it. He checks all his pockets, then turns and digs a lighter from a pile of laundry.
Mike flicks the lighter’s wheel until he can feel its grooves carved into his thumb. The flame sparks and sputters out, sparks and sputters out.
Jonathan doesn’t laugh, which is a relief. Mike is pretty sure he would explode if Jonathan laughed at him right now.
“Here,” he says, and without waiting for Mike to respond, he pries the lighter from his grip, their fingers briefly tangling. “Just, look. Breathe in when I tell you to, okay?” He flicks the lighter and the flame comes to life. He doesn’t try to show Mike the trick of it; if Will were here, it would be a teachable moment, but he probably wouldn’t let Will smoke weed, so that doesn’t matter. Mike adjusts the pipe in his mouth and waits. Jonathan leans in, his limp hair swaying with the movement. He doesn’t smell like himself, which sets Mike’s teeth on edge in a base, animal way. He’s known Jonathan since he was a kid and he’s always smelled the same, like sweat and soap and the cheapest laundry detergent at Melvald’s, but all of that is overpowered by the scent of weed. He holds the lighter to the bowl, says, voice gentle and very close, “Now.” Startled, Mike breathes in sharply, and smoke fills his lungs. He folds forward into a coughing fit, eyes watering.
“Oh shit,” Jonathan says. After a moment’s hesitation, he reaches out and pats Mike’s back, once and then twice. As the coughs peter out, he says, “Sorry, the first drag can be rough. You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Mike clears his throat and manages, a bit less raspy, “I’m fine. Let me try again.”
The pipe landed in the folds of Jonathan’s blankets, and Mike grabs it before it can be confiscated, though he still has to wait for Jonathan to light it again, which he does with significantly more hesitation, and with his other hand at the ready to catch the pipe if Mike drops it again. Mike takes a smaller breath, doing his best to hold it in. The taste is horrible, and the smoke feels sharp and unpleasant in his chest, but he manages not to cough, to execute something like a controlled exhale.
Jonathan breaks into his version of an exuberant grin, which is basically a straight face. “Yeah, just like that.” He plucks the pipe from between Mike’s fingers and takes a hit, then hands it back. Because he doesn’t have anything better to do, and because Jonathan is still there with the lighter at the ready, Mike does it again, inhale, hold, exhale. One of Will’s therapists is always telling him about the importance of taking deep, calming breaths, which Mike has always thought sounded like bullshit. This he can see the appeal of.
He can still feel the outline of Jonathan’s hand on his back, even though his touch was anemic and barely-there through his shirt. Jonathan takes the pipe away eventually, saying,“Enough,” which people are always saying to Mike and which is never true. He’s never had enough, has never been enough.
Jonathan puts on some of his pretentious music, the music Will is always insisting he likes just as much as his cool older brother. At the wise old age of fifteen, having seen horrors beyond most people’s comprehension, Mike is certain that Jonathan has never been cool for a second in his life, but the one time he said this aloud, Will got very sad and then very mad, so now he leaves it alone.
Jonathan’s mattress feels like a piece of cardboard draped over a slab of rock, and Mike fidgets trying to get comfortable, pulling his legs up beneath him, then sprawling out. Jonathan is clear on the other side of the room, messing with his tape deck.
“Will would want to know how you’re feeling,” he says without looking away from what he’s doing, which is shuffling the same three tapes around and around. “He wouldn’t think it was selfish.”
Mike pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his head on them. He takes stock of his body and his brain, trying to determine whether he feels high. He concludes that he doesn’t. “He has enough going on.”
“I’m sure he’d rather talk about your feelings than have you running hot and cold all the time.” Mike doesn’t think he reacts to this in any real way, even as his gut roils, but Jonathan looks over at him and apologizes anyway. His voice is soft when he says, “Seriously, I think he’d like to be able to help you.”
This is the problem, fundamentally: Mike is pretty sure he’s beyond help, that he’s doomed to feel like this for the rest of his life. When Will first went missing, it brought out some despair that had always been hidden inside him. Standing at a cliff’s edge, two bullies and one of his best friends behind him, he had known he was going to die, and that had seemed noble and good, and also like something of a relief, because he knew by then that something had happened that could never be walked back. When they told Will the story after, he treated Mike like he’d done something brave, and that felt right and like the worst kind of lie.
“I won’t tell him anything,” Jonathan says when Mike doesn’t respond. “But you should think about it.” He ejects one tape and pops in a different one, the new song indistinguishable from the interrupted one. “You’re going to have to, because I’m not doing this again, and I can guarantee that no one’s selling Nancy Wheeler’s little brother weed. Everyone who doesn’t think she’s a narc knows she’s a fucking terror.”
Mike can’t help a laugh. Jonathan smiles a crooked, dopey smile, clearly pleased with himself. It makes Mike want to hit him.
“I don’t feel anything. There’s something wrong with your stupid weed.”
Jonathan laughs. He has a nice laugh, Mike thinks, and this just makes him more irritable. “A lot of people don’t really feel it the first time.”
“And you’re just now telling me this?”
“Just relax, okay? I’m gonna go get us some snacks.”
Mike leans back. When he does, one hand slips between the mattress and the wall and comes up with a worn t-shirt. He shoves it back where it came from and wipes his fingertips against the peeling paint. His hair is sweaty and tangled; he hasn’t showered in two days, which no one exactly flinches at in this new Hawkins since the water is only recently reliable. He can’t use that excuse though; his parents got their plumbing fixed early on. He just hasn’t been able to bear it, being trapped alone with his thoughts.
Jonathan returns with a family-size bag of chips clutched rapturously to his chest. He tosses a can of soda, underhand, in Mike’s general direction, and Mike fumbles it badly, blushing as he retrieves the dented can from where it’s landed on the floor.
Jonathan grins. “Sure you’re not feeling anything?”
Mike takes stock. He thinks he might feel a little slower, but it’s impossible to say whether that’s the weed or the exhaustion. He shrugs. Jonathan shrugs back, still smiling at him. He looks nice when he smiles. Mike still wants to hit him.
He’d hoped the weed would shut something off in him, dull something, make his emotions easier to manage. If anything, he feels worse, like everything is closer to the surface than it should be.
He catches himself wondering what Jonathan’s lips would feel like, if he's as hesitant with Nancy as he was patting Mike's back. He and Nancy aren’t dissimilar; he knows that. They have severe facial structures and high-strung personalities. He sometimes thinks about what it would be like to kiss Will, which isn't really his fault and doesn't have to mean anything—Will is so obviously thinking about it that he can't really help but consider the same. Usually he's able to push the thought away, but now it’s intrusive, impossible to get rid of. He considers the possibility that he really is high. Jonathan's lips would be rough, probably, unbearably chapped. El’s were soft, and they tasted like bubblegum, which he liked okay. He’d been jealous of Nancy’s flavored lipglosses when they were kids, but he’d seen enough of how Will’s dad treated him to know to keep that to himself.
The music drones on, Jonathan rotating through the tapes in an order that must make sense to him. Mike sits with his head tipped back against the wall. Every so often he helps himself to a chip, making each one last by sucking the flavor off and then letting it go soft, piece-by-piece.
He's still busy with this when Jonathan says, “Will and my mom will be back soon."
Panic spikes in Mike’s chest, and he struggles to his feet. “Shit, I should get going.”
“No way, dude.” Jonathan pushes him back onto the bed gently but firmly, not even seeming to register when Mike pushes back. Mike’s face goes hot at the contact and the force behind it. Jonathan squints down at him. “Do you have a fever?” He plants his entire hand, palm-down, on Mike’s forehead.
“I’m fine, and that’s not even how you do it,” Mike grumbles, squirming free.
“Whatever. You’re my responsibility until you sober up. There’s no way I’m letting you bike home.”
“I’m not even high.”
“I just watched you take ten minutes to eat a Dorito. You’re definitely not sober.”
“I can’t be here when Will gets back.” Whatever peace Mike had achieved is gone, replaced by a mounting horror. He can’t be around Will right now, dopey and dazed, thinking about Jonathan leaning in to light the pipe, his voice smoke-rough. “He’s going to be able to tell.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
“Yes!” he nearly shrieks.
“Fine. Okay, here’s what we’ll do—“ Jonathan pauses, staring out the window at the sudden darkness for so long that Mike thinks he’s forgotten what he was talking about. Then he comes back to life, looking more like the Jonathan Mike remembers than the dopey stoner who showed up to meet him at the airport. “You’re not biking home in the dark after your first time smoking. But I’ll walk you.”
“It’s like, forty-five minutes. That’s so stupid.”
“Well, it’s what’s happening.” Jonathan pats him on the shoulder, and this time he doesn’t pull back right away. For a while when he was young, Mike was viciously jealous of the bond between Jonathan and Will. Even at their best, he and Nancy weren’t that close, and their best was maybe two months when he was eight. Nothing bad had ever really happened to him until Will went missing, not like everything the Byers went through, so he and Nancy had nothing to bond over, nothing to be together against.
He and Jonathan step out into the dark, the world quiet and eerie. He isn’t afraid to bike home alone, but he’s a little grateful that he doesn’t have to. A lot of families never came back, and the town feels more like the Upside Down than the Hawkins he grew up in. The Byers got their rental cheap because the real estate market isn’t exactly thriving in a post-apocalyptic town. They walk along the side of the road without bothering to listen for cars. Mike feels penned in, his bike on one side and Jonathan on the other.
They bump shoulders every so often. The first time is an accident, Mike’s feet trying and failing to carry him in a straight line in the dark, but Jonathan bumps him back and laughs, so the second time is on purpose, because he wants something he can’t quite name.
When the Byers house is long-gone but the lit-up windows of his own are still far in the future, he reaches out—and he isn’t high, still doesn’t think he ever really felt it—and grabs Jonathan’s hand. His fingers are stiff at first, but after a second he relaxes and squeezes back. It’s dark enough now that Mike can’t make out his expression when they’re between houses, so he decides to believe it’s a smile.