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Max felt her cheeks flushed red with that sort of anger-humiliation that arguing with Mike always brought out of her. She crossed her arms tight across her chest, pulled them tight against her ribs and tried to find comfort in the pressure as he stared back, just as annoyed.
“What are you even talking about?” He said, voice scornful, and sometimes she really, really hated him.
There was a reason that they didn’t tend to hang out one on one, like, ever. She wished, once again, that she had had her walkie talkie on to hear Will and Lucas say they couldn’t make it until later, for varying reasons. But no. Instead she had arrived at the door of the Wheeler’s with their house that always seemed way too pristine-perfect-shiny in a way that made her more angry than envious (because why should Mike get his perfect family?) and his mom had said, “oh, Maxine! You’re the first one here!” and she felt her heart stutter in horror.
Now she was stuck in Mike’s gross basement with nothing to do other than shoot sharp insults back and forth.
“Oh, just—just jump off a cliff, or something.” She hissed, running a jerky hand through her hair and pushing it back from where nervous-sweat stuck it to her forehead. It was one of her weaker insults, one that she had frequented back when she was—what, eight? (She said it so much to Billy in those early days that he had grabbed her by the shoulders and put his face too close and said to her that if she kept saying that, he would shove her out into open traffic on their walk to school.)
Mike grinned at her, and it was not a happy look. It was teeth bared, lips pulled apart tight and angry.
And the worst part was they were arguing for no reason at all. This is how it always was with the both of them, and it made her even angrier that he would be so stupid, so petty, not just let it go . (Even though she knew she was doing the exact same thing.) There was something in them that clashed and swirled and built the energy up until somebody was breaking them apart.
“What, again?” Mike laughed, without any joy.
She paused. Something in her stomach felt a bit too tense, a bit just off. Again? “What?” Max asked slowly, carefully, and something in his eyes shifted from the familiar irritation into—colder, jagged, a little bit afraid.
“I—nothing,” Mike said in a scramble, trying to take back his words, tuck them back away like they had never even happened. “It’s nothing.” He was lying, that much was clear from the slight waver, the fluster and pitch.
Shifting her elbows to lean forwards on her knees, she frowned. “No, dude, what did you say?”
“God, Max, can’t you just drop it for once? Why are you so fucking pushy?” He spat, angry eyes squinted, arms flinging up in the air before coming back down because he always was annoyingly physical when he spoke.
Max narrowed her eyes at him, cool and judgemental. He was trying to hide something from her. And Max did not like being lied to. Back at the beginning of the school year, when they all fumbled around trying to talk around the Upside Down and mentions of Eleven? It made her just feel so strange and out of place, the squirming words in the back of her mind that ‘nobody wants you here, they’re all lying to you, look, look’. So she was not letting Mike Wheeler hide things from her again.
“Why won’t you just tell me?”
Mike had somehow paled significantly, going from his already light tone to the coolness of skim milk before her eyes. His freckles stood stark against the white, jaw working back and forth silently. She saw his nostrils flare as he sucked in a breath.
“It’s none of your business,” he clipped out, each word short and panicked and using only as much air as it needed.
There was something strange in seeing his anxiety shown so clearly, his emotions painted on his face rather than just his usually snippy smugness. Especially strange that her words had gotten to him so easily, all she’d said was—was—jump off a cliff. And then— “What, again?” Her stomach twisted low and sick, eyes going wide.
“Wait, Mike, what—”
“Just shut up!” The words were sharp and angry, he had jerked a bit forwards, his hands balled into tight fists. Max forcibly calmed the jump in her heart rate, eyes wide.
But she shut up. She shut up because Mike Wheeler told her to, which was stupid and not something she had imagined happening in a million years. But she was very uncomfortable. She was very very uncomfortable with the fact that Mike seemed like he might be crying.
Because the thing was, the thing she had tried to deny over and over and over yet had never truly been able to was—and she hated even thinking it—they were similar. They were similar in the fact that neither of them were soft, or kind, or vulnerable. They definitely didn't cry in front of each other.
Except Mike looked like he very much may be crying, and she wished she was anywhere but here.
And he was crying about being told to jump off a cliff.
“Mike,” she said, voice just stable enough, “what do you mean, again?”
And Mike threw his hands out to his sides, face twisting tight, eyes damp and red. “Take a fucking guess, Max!” He near-shouted, and all of his sadness had been forced into anger (just like hers).
What, again?
In the section of her brain labelled Mike Wheeler it was like a huge sphere had been dropped on the neat-stacked memories and thoughts, pushing them all out of place, and she had no idea how to rearrange and balance everything together with what she now knew.
Because: “Oh, just—just jump off a cliff, or something.”
And then: “What, again?”
Max felt sick. This didn't make any sense—why would Mike, of all people, jump off a cliff? He was surly, and annoying, and sometimes his eyes looked a bit too faded and sad for the occasion, but—
Why?
He had—his family, and he had his friends, and he had his girlfriend, and “What, again?”
Max felt sick. Stomach twisting, eyes wide, and she didn’t understand anything at all.
“Mike,” she said. She didn’t say anything else.
Mike was staring at his long thin hands where they lay limp in his lap, he didn’t reply, or even react. She spared a glance to the clock on the wall—still fifteen minutes until Will said he’d be dropped off, twenty until when Lucas would be done cleaning his room. Dustin was in camp half the country away.
Which meant this was up to her, alone, to deal with whatever it was that was going on.
So she stood up, slowly, and moved to the same couch as him. He eyed her warily as she sat, inched away, and it didn’t hurt her feelings at all. Because it was true. She didn’t really like Mike, she didn’t really want to be the one here right now. (There had been that phase where she wanted to befriend him so desperately—had shown him her skateboarding, acted cool and casual and did whatever she thought could help. But he didn’t like her, and Max wasn’t one to waste her time. Not when there was Lucas, and Dustin, and even Will.)
Most of the time, Mike Wheeler wasn’t occupying her mind at all. He was somebody she bickered with, somebody who she put up with who was very occasionally funny.
Definitely not somebody who she had to ask personal questions to, questions like ‘what they fuck do you mean, again? Have you jumped off a cliff before? Why?’ But that was what she had to do right now, and Max did what she had to do, always,
“So,” she said, her voice was very slightly hoarse. She cleared her throat, then spoke, “again?”
Mike scowled, his arms coming to curl around himself as he hunched over a bit more, staring steadfastly at the dusty floor of his basement. There was a nickel right by his foot, and Max resisted the urge to lean forwards and pick it up.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, finally.
“Like what?”
He turned to glare at her, the expression missing a bit of the regular sharp and snark. Instead he just looked… tired. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, or something.” Each word was grit out as if it was an entire workout to say.
Max nodded. She didn’t understand, but then again she didn’t understand anything that was going on right now. So she didn’t interject, didn’t sass him or throw in an insult, evne if it would probably get them back into their regularly scheduled bickering.
“Okay,” she said instead. It wasn’t meant to sound as doubtful as it came out, really, but it did, and Mike whipped his head up to glare at her.
“I had to, okay? They were gonna cut Dustin’s teeth out!”
That shocked her, maybe more than anything else she’d heard. (Well, maybe not, actually.) Because—what the actual fuck? Max could tell her eyes were wide, mouth open with shock and confusion. She’d thought the Upside Down was the weird part of this town, but now she was starting to feel like there was something deeply wrong with this place on multiple levels. Who would do that?
“Jesus,” she breathed out, shocked. Mike just glared at her with tight-pursed lips.
Then she paused. “So they—” and who were they , anyways? Who in this town was threatening Dustin and Mike like that—was the whole Party treated like that? Sure, she’d heard mention of bullying, but… wow. “—they were gonna cut out Dustin’s teeth if you didn’t jump?”
“Yeah.”
And something about that just wasn’t adding up. Jumping off the Quarry (because that had to be the cliff he was referring to, there weren't really any other cliffs in Hawkins) for Dustin’s teeth? That didn’t really make sense, for Mike to— kill himself— over his friend’s baby teeth. She wouldn’t do that. (Or maybe—maybe her issue was that she knew she would, she would give up anything for these friends she had now, and she knew she shouldn’t.) Max ran her hand through her hair again. Stared at Mike a bit more.
“…but Dustin wouldn’t have died.”
“You don’t know that,” he retorted, voice a bit cracked and blinking furiously and she could tell that he was lying to her, to himself. “You don’t know that,” he repeated. And maybe she didn’t—but she could tell he knew.
Max sunk her front teeth into the inside of her bottom lip, held them there until she tasted copper pennies. “You jumped off a cliff,” she repeated. Her voice was low and a bit shaky. This was affecting her more than it should. She still felt sick.
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” he said sharply, “El caught me!” He waved his hand like he could just brush it off. The tears he’d been holding back earlier were still there in the corners of his eyes. If El caught him—well, it had to be before she moved here, right? Because she was pretty sure she would know if an altercation involving a knife and a cliff had occurred in the last nine months or so, when she had lived here. Which only left about a week of time when it could have happened. (Crazy, really, that the Party had only ever known El for a week when they’d met her. That they thought she’d died in front of them.) So it happened in the fall of 83. When Mike was twelve.
Twelve.
“Okay,” Max said, quietly. They sat in silence, opposite ends of the same couch. She pretended that she couldn’t see Mike wiping at his eyes.
Time crawled by. The clock on the wall ticked out every second—she watched as the red hand made its lazy loop around the face. Thirty seconds. A minute. A minute and a half.
She broke the silence.
“Mike, I mean—if you ever—” Max stumbled awkwardly over her words, unsure of what exactly she should say. She was pretty bad with emotions, and she was definitely bad with Mike, and she wasn’t good at uncertainty, and all of those things were colliding and twisting her brain into a muddled mess of confusing emotions and words. “I just,” she tried again. Fell silent.
Then Mike stood up, a sudden jerky movement. His steps were quick as he crossed the room and ducked into the bathroom, door locking with a click.
Tap water started to run, shhhhhhhhhh, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the shaky sounds of Mike’s hitching sobs.
The clock ticked.
Max sat on the couch, feeling very small and useless and alone.