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Mike almost never stays over at Jonathan’s now that they’re together. It feels too much like a statement, like it means something, even though he spent plenty of nights on the couch before they ever kissed. Sometimes though, if it’s late enough, Jonathan nags him about the dangers of driving tired, and sometimes, if it’s late enough, he listens.
Jonathan’s alarm—inexplicably, horribly, unforgivably on Mike’s side of the bed—screeches in his ear, dragging him from a dream that wasn’t pleasant but was certainly preferable to this. He reaches out, misses, reaches out, misses, and finally just pulls a pillow over his head.
Through the insulation, he can hear Jonathan laughing as the alarm goes silent. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. Mike makes a noise that’s supposed to be “I hate you” but doesn’t come close.
Jonathan’s shift doesn’t start for hours—he works at a Sears across town doing family portraits, but he wakes up early to take artsy photos of abandoned warehouses and graffitied overpasses and whatever else draws his eye in the dreary early morning light.
He laughs again, but he gets ready quietly and with the lights off, so Mike has mostly forgiven him by the time he falls asleep again.
When he next wakes up, the curtains are open wide, the sun shining directly on his face. Jonathan’s alarm clock blinks at him—11:43 11:43 11:43. He groans and forces himself to sit up. He’s never had to deal with the insomnia that plagues so many of his friends; even after everything, he sleeps like the dead.
Breakfast is a doughnut from the box Jonathan brought home a couple days ago, stale and bursting with over-sweet jelly. He forces down the last few bites and chases them with a swallow of instant coffee. It doesn’t feel as strange as it should to be in Jonathan’s apartment without him, to gesture at living a life of his own inside it.
He takes his coffee with him as he heads back to the bedroom to get dressed. More than half of the dresser used to hold Nancy’s clothes, and Jonathan has done a pitiful job of spreading out to occupy it, a thin layer of t-shirts lying unfolded on the bottom of each drawer. Mike digs through the paltry offerings, lids heavy with sleep, until his fingers land on something temptingly soft, which he tugs on. He sets the mug on the bedside table and sits down, thinking he might make some progress on the essay he’s been putting off for weeks.
He wakes up when the front door clicks shut behind Jonathan. His shift starts at nine and ends at two—not enough hours to live on, especially now, when there’s no one to split the bills with. He has another job, but it happens during the week when Mike is haunting his own apartment, so he doesn’t know more than the vague outline of it: a position at a local newspaper, trips to photograph small ethnic festivals and the early rounds of children’s baseball tournaments.
He thinks about getting up to meet Jonathan in the kitchen; he has a minute, maybe a minute and a half, in which he might avoid another gentle conversation about how he’s doing, about trauma and depression and other words Jonathan picked up to help people he likes better than him.
When Jonathan finds him in the bedroom, he’s still in his boxers and the t-shirt he unearthed this morning, but he’s upright, which sometimes feels like an accomplishment.
Jonathan still has his camera bag slung over his shoulder, one hand fiddling with the zipper. Mike rolls his eyes. Jonathan only ever wants to take pictures when he’s in a weird mood. It shouldn’t really matter; he just follows Mike as he moves around the apartment reading or heating up takeout or watching TV. But he hates having his picture taken, hates seeing the uneasy lines of his face replicated.
Jonathan doesn’t go for the camera now, eyes laser-focused like he is, for once, seeing Mike and no one else. “Mike,” he says, staring at his chest. “Seriously?”
Mike looks down at himself then, reads “Emerson” spreading in crisp white across his torso. For a second, before he comes to his senses, he’s surprised that Nancy left it behind. The Nancy who will always be Nancy to him, the teenager he knew without question and had long since stopped recognizing, was obsessed with the school and what it said about her. The Nancy who exists now, the one who left Jonathan, who left school with 18 credits to go because it was distracting from the story she was working on—all she has in common with the person he used to know is her ability to let things go when they no longer suit her.
He could say it was an accident, but there is no reasonable, non-depressive explanation for the fact that he’s only just realized what he’s wearing at nearly three in the afternoon.
“What? You don’t like it?”
Jonathan sighs. “Where did you even find that?”
“It was in your drawer.” Mike plucks at the hem. It fits him, so it must have swamped Nancy. “It’s not like I had a lot of options. When was the last time you did laundry?“
“It’s been a busy couple weeks,” Jonathan says, irritation flashing across his face before melting beneath a placid mask. He never fights back, no matter how obnoxious Mike is being. “Can you just change? I’ll mail that to Nancy’s new place.”
If Jonathan weren’t going to make that face at him, the I’m worried about you older brother face that reminds Mike of being twelve and vaguely, directionlessly jealous of the relationship between him and Will, he’d tell the truth, admit that the day got on top of him and it was all he could do to get dressed at all.
“What’s the problem, does it remind you of the Wheeler you wish you were dating?” This line is satisfyingly unpleasant and also, he realizes instantly, a miscalculation; Jonathan’s face turns soft and concerned.
It’s not, like, a thing. He likes himself fine, all things considered. He failed his friends, failed his family, failed his town; he was selfish and small and mean when he should have been brave, but he could have done worse. Self-worth is not his problem, exactly. But the fact is that Nancy turned her anger and grief into something hard and defensive while he lashed out and broke down. And it’s weird now, being with Jonathan, who keeps insisting he likes Mike for himself when the truth is that he exists at the nostalgic intersection of Nancy and Will.
“You’re not a replacement for Nancy. You know I care about you,” Jonathan says, which means nothing. Mike knows Jonathan cares about him. Jonathan can’t help but care about him the same way he can’t help but care about Jonathan. Even if they never speak again, he’ll care about Jonathan like he still mourns Palace Arcade, which never reopened after Hawkins’ localized apocalypse. The problem isn’t that Jonathan doesn’t care about him, it’s that Jonathan doesn’t take him seriously.
He knows he isn’t doing himself any favors in that department, but it drives him crazy that Jonathan always backs off, goes soft or gives in. He got invited to dinner plenty in the last days of Jonathan and Nancy’s relationship—Nancy wanted to get to know him better, a doomed effort he’s repaid by claiming her sloppy seconds—so he knows Jonathan is perfectly capable of fighting.
“Ugh, Jesus, we don’t have to actually talk about it. I was being an asshole. It’s just a shirt, Jonathan.”
The bags under Jonathan’s eyes look somehow starker than they did a few seconds ago. He rubs his temples like Mike’s very presence is giving him a headache. “Fine. Forget it. I’m not— Forget it.” He sets his camera bag down on the dresser and pulls off his sweatshirt, dropping it on the end of the bed. “So what have you been up to all day?”
This feels to Mike like an unnecessary dig, so he crosses his arms so that they underline the Emerson emblazoned on the front of his new shirt. “Did some reading for class,” he lies. “Talked to Lucas for a while. Made pasta for lunch. I was going to save you some but then, you know, I didn’t. How was your shift?”
“Kid threw up on me. First thing in the morning. I’m having a great day.”
Mike notes the discolored patch on his abdomen, still vaguely damp. “Gross.”
Jonathan scoffs. “Yeah, I know. Look, I’m going to shower. I’d appreciate it if you were wearing something different when I came back.”
Mike does think about changing as he listens to the weak drip of the shower; Jonathan just looked so exhausted, and while that’s not a deviation from the norm in any notable way, it did make him feel shitty. Wearing Nancy’s shirt isn’t going to prove anything or fix anything, isn’t going to spark the fight that will make Jonathan see him properly or end things entirely, either of which would be more bearable than waiting for this to collapse on its own. But taking the shirt off feels somehow like losing, like giving up.
Jonathan doesn’t say anything when he gets out of the shower, just sighs once, in a quiet way that makes Mike feel like the biggest asshole in the world. He looks less bone-deep exhausted, more the standard Jonathan Byers miserable. He pushes his wet hair out of his eyes and squints at Mike with an intense focus that makes him sure he’s about to say something penetrating.
“If I made burgers, would you have one? I know you ate earlier, but it’s going to take me about an hour to get everything together.“ There’s something about his face that makes Mike sure he doesn’t believe the lie about the pasta, and that makes Mike want to scream that he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him.
He takes a breath and manages to say, “Yeah, okay,” and since it really is uncomfortably cold in the apartment, the heat down as low as it can go without the pipes freezing, he snags Jonathan’s sweatshirt as he follows him out of the bedroom.