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“Oh my god, what a bitch.”
“I know, right?”
“Wait, so what happened next? I’m invested now!”
“Oh, it was so badass!” Mike exclaimed with a grin, twisting to look up at where El sat on the bed. Rink-O-Mania wasn’t exactly a fond memory of his, but it was undeniable that Angela getting hit in the face was kind of amazing.
“I shmacked her,” El said proudly, and Will laughed. Mike found himself giggling too.
“Well, at least the wheels were ‘soft plastic’, remember?” He quoted Argyle with a grin, bumping his shoulder against El’s knee.
“In case people get shmacked!” Will grinned at him, and Mike felt his face go pink. He instantly averted his eyes, glancing around until his eyes settled on the candle currently burning on El’s desk. It was currently filling the room with an obnoxiously fake cinnamon smell, almost making his eyes burn, but he wasn’t about to comment on it. Knowing El and Max, they would probably fill his room with them or something.
“You guys know none of this makes any sense, right?” At Dustin’s bewildered tone, Mike burst into laughter once again.
“She—” he choked out, “She hit her with a roller skate!”
“Right in the face!” El and Will said in unison.
Everybody dissolved into laughter, even though it wasn’t that funny. But the Party had been in unusually high spirits for the last few months. Vecna was dead, Max was alive, the Upside Down was gone. With all that, it was no wonder they were all so excited by mundane things.
“You know what that reminds me of?” Lucas remarked once they had calmed down. Mike glanced over to where he was also on El’s bed, sitting against the headboard, holding Max’s hand. Then it was Max, then El, tightly packed together. He’d tried to get a spot on the bed, but El had pushed him off repeatedly, so instead he leaned against it, his head on El’s knees as she braided his hair.
“Oh! Oh, is it when Mike—” Dustin frantically waved his hands, broad grin stretching across his face, and Mike groaned.
“When he shoved Troy!”
“In front of the entire school!”
“Yes!”
Max leaned forwards, cutting off Lucas and Dustin’s excited babbling. “Wait, Wheeler pushed someone? With his noodle arms?”
“Hey!”
“Yeah, I didn’t expect it either,” Lucas immediately agreed, and Mike spluttered, reaching up and swatting at Max’s knee.
“Wait—when was this?”
Mike instantly turned over to where Will sat on the desk chair. “It was when you were missing…” he trailed off, and Will just nodded. Okay, that had sufficiently brought down the mood. There were a few seconds of solemn silence.
“Anyways!” Dustin said loudly, breaking the tension. “So, you know Troy, he was saying the usual stuff.” Everybody nodded, even Max. She had never been subject to Troy’s bullying, but the rest of the Party had definitely complained about him enough. So when Dustin gestured vaguely to Will, it was easy to infer what had been happening.
“And Mike—” Lucas cut in, the two boys talking over each other in their excitement to tell the story. “He just—”
“—shoves him right over! In front of the whole school!”
Mike went pink. “It wasn’t that cool.” Honestly, they were making him seem badass in their retelling, and he was most definitely not. He’d just stood up, for once, and then regretted it a day later.
“Mike, it was quite possibly the only cool thing you have done in your entire life.” Lucas spoke with a solemn tone, and Mike flipped him off as Max laughed.
“And then El made him piss himself!” El grinned as the attention shifted to her, laughter and compliments showering down. He didn’t have the energy to listen, instead trying to stave off his increasing panic. There was no need for him to get all worked up, it wasn’t a big deal.
“Wait, wasn’t he mad?” Will sounded concerned. He was always so thoughtful.
“Uh… well, if he was, I wasn’t there for it.” Lucas shrugged, though he looked pensive. “He kinda stopped bugging us, actually.”
“He was mad.” Mike’s voice startled himself when he spoke, and he almost wished he could take the words back.
Dustin glanced over, and they made eye contact. It felt heavy, and the gesture didn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the Party. He shifted uncomfortably, tightening the curl of his body.
“I broke his arm,” El said loudly, clearly trying to change the subject. Well, not exactly change it, more just skip over that one part of the story.
“Nice.” Max’s words lacked the earlier enthusiasm, she was able to sense the changed attitude even without seeing what their faces were doing.
“Why?”
Mike curled even tighter into himself, wrapping his arms around his folded legs and pressing his chin into his knees. This was not what he’d wanted to talk about today. This was not what he’d wanted to talk about ever.
A socked foot prodded against his side, and Mike startled, looking up and meeting Will’s hazel eyes. His brow was furrowed in concern, bottom lip pulled between his teeth, and the look was so probing that Mike had to look away.
“Uh…” Dustin started, and Mike snapped his head up to stare at him. They were really going to tell the story? Now? “Well, Troy had a knife…” Mike started to twist his fingers together. The smell of the candle was stifling.
“He said he’d cut out my teeth.”
The reactions that went through the room could only be described as shocked.
“What?” Lucas.
“Oh my God.” Will.
“What the fuck?” Max.
“He didn’t though!” Dustin’s hurried reassurances didn’t seem to be very reassuring, as the questions asked by the people not present for the occasion only picked up in volume and intensity. Mike squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t a big deal, it was years ago, they didn’t need to be talking about it.
“Because Mike jumped.”
Mike flinched hard, digging his nails into his legs.
“Jumped? What do you mean, jumped?”
“Well,” Mike started, before clearing his throat. “He said that, uh.” His voice was still shaking, and he swallowed hard. “He said that if.” He took a deep breath. “He’d cut out Dustin’s teeth unless I—I–” He gasped, unable to continue.
“Unless he jumped off the quarry.”
There were several seconds of stunned silence, the only sound Mike’s increasingly frenzied breathing. The artificial cinnamon scent hung thick enough in the air to choke on. Was he choking?
“What?” Will’s voice was quiet, shaking. Everybody else was evidently too shocked to speak. “Mike? You didn’t—you didn’t jump, did you?”
Mike just nodded, blunt nails pushing harder and harder into his thighs, shoulders heaving with the speed and force of his breathing. He nodded again and again, faster and faster, until he was just shaking all over.
“I caught him!” El said quickly, trying her best to calm the room, but it didn’t work. Dustin’s comment didn’t exactly help.
“Well, he didn’t know you were there.”
“Wait, so—” Lucas’s voice was choked, disbelieving. “You jumped off a cliff? On purpose?”
Mike didn’t reply, too busy shoving his panic down as hard as he could, but the non-answer was as bad as an answer. “It’s not a big deal,” he finally managed.
“Uh, I’m pretty sure it is.” Now even Max was worried, why was everyone so worried? It. Didn’t. Matter. And he did not want to talk about it. “Like, the definition of a big deal.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He already felt bad enough without Will’s comment, but the hurt in his voice burrowed straight into Mike’s heart.
“It was a long time ago.” Mike shut his eyes instead of having to look around and see the concerned stares of his friends. “I mean, I was twelve.” Everybody did dumb stuff as a kid.
“Yeah, you were twelve.” Lucas almost sounded accusing, which was ridiculous! He’d just been helping his friend!
Mike opened his mouth to speak, to defend himself, but instead a thin whine bubbled out from his throat, and he pressed his hands into his face. They were all talking talking talking, all ‘why would you do that?’ and ‘you would have died,’ and ‘didn’t you know you would have died?’ And Mike burst into tears.
His shoulders heaved as he sobbed, curling in on himself into a tiny ball. Why was he even upset? It wasn’t a big deal, wasn’t a big deal, wasn’t a big deal…
A hand came down on his shoulder, attempting to be calming, and he flinched away from it. The feeling of being touched was too much, everything was too much, El’s stupid fucking candle was too much. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, pretended he wasn’t surrounded by five people watching him break down.
“Will,” he choked out without even meaning to, threading his hands through his hair and pulling. “W-Will–” he gasped in a breath, rocking back and forth gently, back knocking against El’s mattress. God, he was being so stupid, he was overreacting, but he couldn’t stop.
Then he felt Will’s hand gently tap his knee, and Mike reached forwards, unravelling from his curled up ball and wrapping his arms around his best friend. It was a familiar routine, just holding each other until the panic attacks passed. He was too busy crying to really think about his friends seeing, but the thought still lingered in the back of his mind.
“One, two, three, four, five…” Will started to count slowly, whispering the numbers into Mike’s ears, and he latched onto the words, Will’s soft voice as he spoke them.
“Four, five, six, seven,” he whispered along after a few minutes of that, finally starting to compose himself again. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”
Slowly, he pulled away, scrubbing at his face with his hands and turning around to face the rest of the Party, still staying slumped against Will. Will’s arms came around his chest, and Mike reached up to intertwine their fingers.
Everybody had clearly been doing their best to avert their eyes—it wasn’t like panic attacks were a new thing in the Party. They just waited until it ended, doing whatever they could to help if they could.
“I knew I would die.” Mike said quietly, voice raw with tears. “Sort of.” He knew what he was saying wasn’t making much sense. Honestly, it wasn’t making sense to him either, it hadn’t even made sense when it was happening.
“Why, then?” Dustin asked, voice also hushed.
Mike swallowed. “It’s—I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Lucas was mad, El was gone, Will was—was—” He couldn’t finish the sentence, voice thick with tears.
“I didn't want to lose you too.” He looked up at Dustin, making eye contact for a second.
“That’s stupid,” Dustin whispered, eyes full of tears, and Mike just nodded.
“Mike, don’t ever do that again.” Max reached out one of her hands in his direction, beckoning him closer, and Mike stood up obligingly, sitting down on the bed next to her.
As soon as he did, Lucas, Max, and El all latched onto him in a group hug, and he wriggled his arms out until he could reciprocate. Will and Dustin also squeezed onto El’s twin bed, and it was a tight squeeze, but nobody cared.
Mike shut his eyes, letting himself sink into the warm embraces of his friends. “I won’t.”