Chapter Text
Mike hated coffee. The bitter taste made his face wrinkle up, he couldn’t stand the smell and it was overall confusing why people drank it for pleasure.
He poured himself a second cup. Atleast it kept him from falling asleep in class. Again. Actually, it didn’t stop it, he just liked to convince himself it would.
Since getting home from California, he had noticed an uncomfortable shift in the dynamics of his family. It was probably to do with whole other family squished in with them. He can’t even leave the town. How unfair is that? It’s not his fault that hell decided to open up two streets away from his house.
It also didn’t help that his mind had decided to torment him every waking and non waking second since he got back. That every conversation he had with Will, his bestfriend, was short and stilted. Logically, he knew it was just the lack of sleep, it wasn’t good for him. But he was also aware of something he shouldn’t be.
And he didn’t know what to make of it.
Standing up from the table, Mike walked carried his cup and plate over to the sink, leaving it on the side. His thoughts, as always, started to drift towards what he now knew.
He and El- sorry, Jane, he corrected himself- had talked the night after they were all back in Hawkins. He had asked about the painting, not thinking twice about it.
“What painting?” Came the reply.
And, suddenly, he knew something. A secret, one he was maybe never meant to know.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel about it.
How is someone supposed to feel about that?
Especially someone like him.
He’s not like that.
It’s not like he has a problem with it, no, it’s not that.
Nothing could change the way he felt about Will.
That was the thing he had an issue with. Shaking his head to push away the thoughts, he groaned inwardly as he felt a headache start to develop. He’d been having those a lot lately.
-and with the “AIDS” , or “gay disease,” on the rise, who do we, as parents, turn to for the answers? What’s corrupting our young boys?-
He swallowed. He could hear his dad’s news program echo through the open door, the words entering his ears and falling into the pit of his stomach.
One more reason he hated coffee- it was his dad’s non alcoholic drink of choice.
The weather was unusually cold for may, the chill in the wind hitting straight through his bones as soon as he stepped outside. Although, he supposed, it wasn’t too unusual considering that the upside down was spilling out into the air. He shivered, regretting his descision to only wear a thin shirt , but found his bike and set off for school nonetheless. He’d got up early, (or, never actually went to sleep) which meant he’d left before Will and Holly.
—
By the time he got to school, he was regretting not trying harder to sleep. Even with the added caffeine, he could still feel his eyes drooping, his unable to focus as well on lessons. And, obviously, he had a maths test today. God, what was he, the lame protagonist of a coming of age movie?
As he started down at the paper, fully ready to just put his head down on the desk and give up, something red dripped onto his paper.
“Are you kidding me?” He cursed under his breath, earning a sideways glance from Dustin. Putting one hand to his nose, he raised his hand. Atleast he could skip out on most of the test now.
By the time he got to the bathroom, there was blood all over his hand and his face. What do you even do for a nosebleed? He didn’t actually know. When he was still dating Eleven. Jane. She would just wipe it off , but he suspected that normal ones needed a bit more than just a wipe, right?
Whatever. Grabbing a handful of toilet paper from a stall he attempted to stop the bleeding, roughly wiping at his face.
“Mike? Are you bleeding?”
“What?” He spun around, his gaze landing on Will. Of course. “Obviously?”
“Oh god, that’s a lot of blood- here, can I help-“ he walked over, reaching out to grab the tissue. Before he realised he had done it, he had jerked away from his touch, violently. “It’s fine,”
“Oh, I- alright,” The other boy looked understandably hurt as he walked off, glancing back once.
Why did he do that? Why did he do that? What what wrong with him? Slamming his head back against the wall- immediately regretting it once his headache from earlier came back in full force- he let out a groan. God, he was such an idiot. Why did he feel so… he couldn’t work out what it was, but whenever Will was around him he just felt like such an idiot, and got so mean and rude. Seriously, what was his problem? Whatever the feeling was, however hard it was to place, it made him such a dick.
Returning to the classroom, he stared at the blank test paper until the bell rang. He could feel Dustin’s eyes on him, uncomfortably scanning.
—
“Oh my god, is he asleep again?” Lucas reached over the table, prodding him in the arm. “Wakey wakey,”
“Fuck off,” Mike lifted his head off the lunch table, rolling his eyes. “I’m tired,”
“I could figure that out,” He responded, leaning back to where he was sat. The silence coming from Will’s seat was making the air thick and heavy. Nobody but him seemed to be noticing the tension though, Dustin staring off into space, the bruising around his eyes fresh from god knows when, Lucas copying out his notes from class into onrs he could read to Max.
Interrupting the conversation, he could hear a clock chiming. It was loud. Louder than the din of noise that suffocated his ears most days. “Huh?” He muttered, looking around in search of it. Mike stood up from the table, feeling something pull him out into the corridor. It was unexplainable, but something was drawing him towards the bathroom.
Sure enough, there was a clock. But it didn’t look like a normal one, one you’d hang in the wall. It was a grandfather clock, an old one. And it looked as though it had been thrown into the wall, smashed into the cheap plaster wall. He stepped closer, something in the back of his head screaming at him not to, yet he kept getting closer. As he reached out to touch it, the whole world around him shifted and spun, his knees hitting the cold ground.
“Mike?”
“Mike!”
“Mike?”
Three voices with varying levels of concern shouted his name as he came to on the floor, dazedly blinking up at his friends. The first thing he registered was Will’s face, talking to him. The second was that he had presumably fainted. The third was that everyone was most likely staring.
Embarrassing.
“I’m okay! I’m…how did I get on the floor?” He sat up, ignoring Will’s outstretched hand as he pulled himself up with the table.
“One second you were sat talking to us, then the next you’d fallen and passed out,” He explained, that stupid worried expression taking over his features.
“Right,” He started to walk off, deciding not to bother with the rest of the day. “I’m gonna see if they’ll let me go home,”