Chapter Text
He blinked his eyes open, his lashes feeling impossibly heavy and his eyelids scratching uncomfortably against his dry pupils. Mike’s entire body felt frozen and weightless. His vision came into focus as he realized he was in a hospital bed.
He licked his chapped lips and blinked a few more times. Sitting beside his bed were three boys, all staring down at their shoes. His eyes were drawn first to the one closest to him.
“Lucas?” he croaked out. The three of them snapped their heads up.
“Holy shit,” Lucas said. He let out a disbelieving laugh and lunged to hug Mike. “Holy shit, you woke up!”
“Ow, okay,” Mike said. His bones felt like hot sticks of dynamite.
“Mike, thank god !” said another one of the boys. Dustin. “Don’t ever scare us like that again, man.”
He sprinted out of the room, yelling, MAX! EL! HE PULLED A HAN SOLO! all the way down the hall.
“They’re at the vending machine,” Lucas explained. “They’re gonna shit their pants when they see you.”
Lucas patted his shoulder and Mike tried to smile, but even that hurt.
He looked to the third boy, who hadn’t said a word yet. He was tall, with tousled brown hair and hazel eyes. He had a mole above his lip and was wearing a blue sweater.
Mike blinked.
“Who’s that?” he asked. Lucas furrowed his brows and turned to the boy. The boy kept his eyes firmly on the ground - he hadn’t even stood up.
“That’s… Will,” Lucas said. “Can you not see that far?”
“No, I can-- I can see him,” Mike said. “But…”
The boy, Will, finally looked at Mike.
“I’m just a family friend,” he said. “El’s brother.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “She has a brother?”
“What the hell?” Lucas said. “Mike, it’s Will . Your--”
The door opened, and Max and El ran in with wide smiles on their faces.
The room was flooded with noise and celebration and unbridled joy as Mike’s friends welcomed him back to the living world. They told him that he’d been in a coma for five weeks, that they hadn’t been promised his survival, that they’d all been stuck in the dreadful in-between of hope and denial and grief. They told him that the summer of their lives was only a month away, that they couldn’t wait to bring him home and binge movies and eat greasy pizza and finally play D&D all together again. Dustin went to the phone to call Mike’s family, and cheerfully announced that his parents and sisters would be on their way shortly.
And in the chaos of it all, Mike hadn’t even noticed El’s brother slipping out of the room. He hardly noticed Lucas following him out.
When Mike’s family arrived, his mom broke down in tears and clung to his hand, sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder and gasping out phrases like “my baby” and “I really thought you were gone”. His dad stood by the bed and ran his fingers through Mike’s matted hair, looking at him affectionately and failing to be discreet about his sniffling. Nancy kneeled down and hugged Mike around his abdomen, while Holly laid her head on his knees and allowed a few tears to slip out.
His friends started filing out one by one, and once it was just him and his family left, he felt himself cry a little, too.
He tried to recall his last memories before he’d fallen into the coma. It was difficult to sort through his brain.
The only image that his mind could conjure up was a vast, rocky landscape, where the sky was a haunting shade of yellow and the atmosphere was filled with floating stones. The air smelled of burned flesh and fresh blood, and he was lying on the cold, sharp rocks, feeling lighter and lighter as he bled out and stained his own skin. He remembered screaming hoarsely for help, calling out a name that he couldn’t quite remember, and feeling utterly paralyzed in the center of it all.
What happened before that, he didn’t know. And it hurt too much to try and remember.
He had to stay in the hospital for three more days. On the first day, his mom and sisters brought comic books and his walkman to keep him entertained during the quiet hours. He begged them to bring a burger with fries and a milkshake, but they told him remorsefully that he wasn’t allowed to eat outside food until he was discharged.
His friends visited in the afternoon.
But something was deeply wrong that next day - they acted strangely, without that ecstatic cheer that had flooded the room when he first woke up. They were full of forced smiles and halted sentences and desperate attempts to cover up their awkwardness with laughter. The air in the room became so thick at a certain point that Mike just asked to be left alone to rest.
But Lucas lingered behind everyone, and after a few moments, it was just him and Mike. Lucas walked nervously over to the bed.
“Mike,” he said. His voice was quivering ever so slightly. “Can I… ask you something?”
“Yeah, what’s up?” he said. Lucas swallowed.
“Who… who would you say is your… best friend?”
Mike furrowed his brows. Lucas seemed truly scared as he asked the question.
“My best friend?” he asked. “I mean, I think all of you are my best friends, but… you know me better than anyone else in the Party. You’ve known me the longest.”
Lucas just stared at him. He didn’t seem to be comforted by Mike’s answer. If anything, he looked even more uneasy.
“The longest?” Lucas said, almost in a whisper. “Are you sure?”
Mike paused to really think about it. “Yeah,” he said, smiling slightly at the memory. “First grade, remember? We sat next to each other and you told me my pencil case was cool. It was the one with a lock on it.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. He forced out a laugh. “Your high-security pencil case. I remember.”
“You okay, man?” Mike asked. He couldn’t understand why Lucas was suddenly sweating.
“I’m fine,” he said quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, bye,” Mike said. He watched as Lucas walked away and closed the door shakily behind him.
Trying to shake off the airborne anxiety that had spread from his friends to himself, Mike reached for his walkman and the small box of tapes that his family had dropped off. He pulled the headphones over his ears and sifted through the clear plastic cases.
He smiled slightly as he saw several albums that he truly loved - Nancy must have been the one who packed this box. He saw Pixies, Metallica, and AC/DC. He saw more nostalgic bands as well, like Talking Heads and The Clash.
He saw mixtapes, too. Summer of ‘85 - the tape he’d play as he and El made out in her bedroom. He grimaced slightly at the memory, grateful that their off-putting and uncomfortable relationship had ended with mutual understanding and a strong friendship. He put the mixtape down, not wanting to relive the “Never Surrender” days.
There was another mixtape called Basement Beats - the new wave songs he’d put on as the Party played fierce games of Monopoly in the warmth of his house. That was a memory worth looking back on.
But his hands found one at the bottom of the box, called Autumn of ‘84 . He furrowed his brows - he didn’t remember making a mixtape for that season. He skimmed through the backside, reading the tracklist. Every song was by The Smiths. He didn’t even listen to that band.
But curiosity got the best of Mike, and his attention was inexplicably drawn to that tape. He inserted it, listened for the soft click, and pressed play.
The first track was called Back to the Old House. The echoey strings of the melancholy guitar made his heart swell. He leaned back in the bed and allowed the dreamy melody to fill his ears, coursing through his blood and lifting his soul above his body. He felt like he was floating, but in a comforting way. He was floating in the way that he used to ascend on the summer carnival’s merry-go-round, or the sky-high swingset, or the strong arms of his father when he’d spin a toddler Mike in the air. It was the kind of floating that felt safe and free and soft.
And it felt oddly familiar, too. It felt like a soft hand brushing against his, a puff of somebody’s breath on the sensitive part of his neck.
Mike fell asleep with the mixtape held gently in his palm. He dreamt of hazel eyes and freckled hands, but he woke up the next morning with no recollection of the mirage.