Chapter Text
December, 2025
Mike Wheeler was living a perfectly normal life, full of conformity. He didn’t care. After running away from all of his problems, he deserved a little punishment. No friends, no DnD, no nothing. Just school and work, which was also technically school since he was a tutor.
Every day was the same. Get up, commute to school, tutor for a few hours, come home. In his free time, all Mike did was his homework and readings. If he had no homework, he tutored for longer or studied more. During the breaks, he studied for his upcoming classes and sometimes worked odd jobs. Three years of living in Arkansas, of attending UCA, and he didn’t have a single hobby. Mike wasn’t interested in friends or girls. Everything and everyone just reminded him of Hawkins. Of her. Of his old life.
Despite attempting to leave it all behind, his past was a constant in his present. He wrote his assignments about his friends, about Vecna, about everything he’d experienced and all the what ifs. One of his professors, Dr. Miller, had even told him that he had to stop writing all of his stories about the same concept. She’d said that his assignments were overly repetitive. Mike changed the names every time, but it was a bit harder to change the details.
An escape from the constant retelling of his past was his chemistry minor (Mike loved science too much to fully leave it behind), but his mind always found a connection. What was the scientific explanation for what had happened? Was Dustin learning about the same concepts as he was? He even questioned the chemical composition of Vecna, of the Upsidedown, of El. What reactions were happening to allow all of it to happen?
Every day came with more questions and more wallowing over his lack of answers. Every day he donned a different version of the same button up and the same khakis, and every day he mourned what could have been.
This is why he left. Everybody else moved on long ago, but he just can’t seem to force himself to forget. Mike checks up on them from time to time, looking at their social media or asking Nancy how they’re doing. Everybody else is fine. But Mike isn’t, and he probably never will be. How could they possibly forget about El? About the girl who changed their lives? Mike was an awful friend and boyfriend to her, and he’ll never get her back.
Maybe that’s why nobody else is as affected as he is. Because they were all kind to her. Treated her the right way, didn’t refuse to say I love you for some unknown reason, didn’t avoid her or start fights on purpose. Mike has so many regrets, and how can he ever get over them? There’s no way to atone for his mistakes. She’s gone.
Mike knows it’s… selfish, in a way, to assume he has the worst of it. Hopper lost a daughter. Will lost a sister. Everybody else lost a dear friend. But with Mike, it was just different, or at least he assumed so. El was something entirely unique to him. Not just a girlfriend, but a partner. It’s not like they were dating for long, but nobody would really understand the feelings that they had for one another. Nobody knew how they truly felt about each other. They didn’t have something as simple as a familial or romantic bond.
It doesn’t matter now anyway. The past is in the past, and Mike needs to leave it behind somehow despite every crevice of his brain being filled with nothing but memories, a reminder around every corner, a lookalike or a specific object which transported him back in time.
Today was Mike’s ochem final. He’d spent the morning revising (even though he knew he’d get an A regardless), and now it was time to take it. He’d already taken all of his other exams, as had everybody else at the school, so there was no need for him to go to the library for tutoring afterwards. He sighed, wishing he could still go if only to take his mind off of things before the excruciatingly long winter break that stood before him. It was hard to ignore the weight of his memories when there was nothing to distract him.
The walk to campus was nice. Cleared his mind. Mike could take the shuttles to campus and save himself 15 minutes, but most of the time they were packed. He’d rather walk in a thunderstorm than have to sit next to someone for 3 minutes, and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Today, it was perfectly sunny. Despite it being winter, it wasn’t chilly or windy. There weren’t even any clouds in the sky.
When Mike finally arrived at his class, he wished he’d left earlier or walked faster. The nice weather distracted him, and now he had to sit beside someone. Exam days were the worst. Not because of the exams (Mike could take them in his sleep, honestly, final or not), but because of the stragglers that showed up for once and messed up the seating order. Mike sat in the last seat of the third row every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 10 AM, but because of the presence of people who otherwise skip class every day, that seat was taken.
Mike ended up sitting in the front row next to a girl he recognized. This was the seat she always sat in, and Mike knew that the seat he took beside her was usually empty. The girl answered questions often and hadn’t missed a single day of class (Mike would know as he hadn’t either). Procuring a pencil and waiting for the scantron to be passed out, Mike mentally went over his notes when he was rudely interrupted.
“Hey! Michael, right? I’m Lana. Are you nervous for this exam? I’ve gotten fine grades on all the other ones, but this one really makes or breaks us!” The girl chirped in his ear, clearly not seeing his intentionally antisocial posture.
“Um, not really,” Mike cringed at his own voice, scratchy since it was his first time speaking today, and even more at his words. He didn’t know what to say. How long had it even been since he’d had a conversation outside of tutoring? Mike didn’t even speak to his own roommate if he could help it.
Lana persisted. “Wow, you’re probably really smart, right? I have a pretty solid B in here as long as I do well on this exam, so I’ll be fine unless I totally bomb.”
“Yeah. I have an A, so. It doesn’t really matter to me I guess.”
“That’s crazy! I see you tutoring at the library sometimes, maybe I should have asked you for help studying,” Lana said, clearly not getting the hint that Mike didn’t want to speak, “Hey, what classes are you taking next semester? If we have any in common then we could study together! Two heads are better than one, after all.”
Thankfully, the teacher decided to start passing out the exams at that moment, and Mike was saved from having to respond.
After finishing his exam, Mike quickly walked out of the classroom to try to evade Lana. They usually finished their exams around the same time, but if she was nervous about this one then maybe she’d take a little bit longer on it.
“Hey! Michael!”
No such luck.
Mike sighed as he turned around and saw Lana walking towards him and waving, a smile on her face. “Um, hey.”
“Michael, we never got to finish talking! I’m a chem major, are you? We probably have plenty of classes together if that’s the case,” Lana said as she continued to walk towards him, Mike making no move to walk any closer to her.
“I’m mostly taking creative writing classes. That’s my major. And some biochem stuff.” Mike was getting increasingly annoyed by Lana’s sudden persistence in trying to talk to him. Was she making fun of him?
“Oh.. that’s a shame. I’m not taking biochem.” Lana suddenly looked down, a strange expression on her face. When she looked up again, she had a slight blush. Probably embarrassed that she couldn’t further attempt to badger him into tutoring her for free. “Well, I’d still like to get your number! Maybe we could study together even if we don’t have the same classes.”
Mike sighed again, confused and somewhat agitated. She was definitely making fun of him. “I don’t see why we’d do that. I have to go.”
Mike turned and walked away without waiting for an answer.