Chapter Text
Mike lets out a sigh as he sinks into his uncomfortable chair. Palace Arcade used to be his favourite place, somewhere he could go with his friends to play games and forget about life, but now? Now it’s a child ridden hellscape where he gets paid less than the legal amount to deal with things he couldn’t care less about. Like broken arcade machines, sick children, and the goddamn prize counter.
He taps his fingers on the sticky counter in front of him, his eyes scanning the dim room. He squints a little as his eyes land on the bulb of the strobe light in the top corner of the room, mentally cursing himself for looking at it again.
A knock on the sticky glass counter shakes him from his thoughts. “I have 2000 tickets,” a squeaky voice says, and Mike doesn’t even have to look at the kid to know who it is.
“Jesus, Derek, again?” Mike’s voice drips with fake exasperation, his face molding from a blank stare to a small grin. “You gotta lay off the arcade man, this shit’s gonna run you dry.”
Derek shrugs and slams a pile of tickets on the counter. “You know what I want.”
“How do you not get tired of these things?” Mike asks as he bends down to open the glass cupboard under the counter. He reaches in, grabbing a handful of rubber dinosaurs. He tosses them onto the counter, watching as Derek leans in to inspect them.
Derek grabs two of them–notably a Velociraptor and a Pterodactyl–and pushes the rest back to Mike. “I have those,” he says as he holds the two dinosaurs he doesn’t have in his hands. “Grab more.”
“Seriously?” Mike murmurs as he bends down again, grabbing another handful of rubber dinosaurs. He drops them on the counter, gesturing towards them.
Mike watches as Derek surveys the selection of rubber goods, his eyes scrunching under his glasses. “Where’s the Diplodocus?”
“The what?”
Derek sighs and pushes all of the discarded dinosaurs back to Mike. “The Diplodocus. Tall guy, big neck?”
“Dude, I don’t know,” Mike says as he moves to grab the small tray of rubber dinosaurs from under the counter. “This is all we have.”
Derek rifles through the mound of dinosaurs as Mike watches from behind the counter. “This is bullshit,” Derek says, his fingers still moving through the dinosaurs. “No Diplodocus.”
Mike raises an eyebrow at Derek’s words. “Not finding it?” he asks, and Derek’s head snaps up, a glare on his face for the moment he looks at Mike before looking back down. Mike puts his hands up in mock surrender, deciding not to bother the boy and his dinosaurs.
He grabs Derek’s wad of tickets from the counter, pushing them into a counting machine. He listens as the machine counts the tickets one by one, the rhythmic sound almost making him feel like the Palace Arcade wasn’t a dimly lit hellscape–almost.
“How do you guys not have the Diplodocus?” Derek asks as he pushes the tray back to Mike.
Mike just shrugs. “I’m not in charge of the dinosaurs, Derek.”
“I’ll just get more of those stupid hands then if you don’t have any good dinosaurs.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mike mutters under his breath as he grabs the tray of dinosaurs and sweeps the rest on the counter into it with his hand. He bends down, putting the tray back in its spot before grabbing the tray of sticky hands. Mike begins to stand up fully, the sound of something clattering beside him catching his attention.
Magnets.
The magnets fell.
The world feels as if it stopped for a moment as Mike stares at the magnets on the floor. Two small star magnets that were once stuck to the metal on the small sliding door of the prize counter had fallen onto the carpet beneath his feet.
“How long does it take to get a tray?” Derek calls out from the other side of the counter, momentarily bringing Mike back to the present.
Mike pulls his eyes from the discarded magnets to give Derek his choice of sticky hands. “We’ve got red, yellow, blue, and purple. Take your pick,” he says as he shows the tray to Derek.
Derek makes a face at Mike. “Pick?” he asks.
Mike nods. “Yeah, pick,” he says and shakes the tray a bit.
He watches as Derek reaches for the tray, his grubby fingers grabbing one of each colour.
“I said pick, not take them all!” Mike yelps as he snatches the tray back. “Dude!”
“You ran out of dinosaurs so I’m taking more stupid hands.”
“Sticky hands, Derek, and you don’t have enough tickets for all of those,” Mike says as he looks at the ticket counter. “Two dinosaurs and four sticky hands is 2200 tickets, you only have 1800.”
“That’s a scam!”
“I’m gonna start calling you Dipshit Derek again,” Mike says as he puts the tray back.
“What did I do?” Derek asks as he holds his prizes close to his chest.
Mike can only sigh as he slides the door of the prize counter closed. “Fine, take them,” he says as he looks over at the clock. His shift is almost done, his boss can’t get mad at him with fifteen minutes left on the clock right?
Derek beams at Mike, a large toothy grin, before turning on his heels to run off to whatever group of friends he was with.
Mike laughs to himself as he remembers being just like Derek–a little kid at the arcade with his friends, watching Dustin play Dig Dug as Mike and the others cheered him on. This thought stays in his mind as he looks at the little bit of metal on the sliding door of the prize counter, the two yellow star magnets still stuck on–
Why are the magnets there?
Just moments ago, Mike swears that the magnets fell on the floor while he was grabbing the sticky hands for Derek to look through, but now they were back where they usually were. Mike studies the magnets, reaching out to grab one. He holds it in his hand, the plastic material of the star feeling cool against his touch. He hesitantly moves it towards the bit of metal that its twin star is currently stuck on, and he places it beside the other. The star attaches to the metal, and Mike feels like he’s finally gone crazy.
He can feel himself spiraling, thinking back to when he overheard Hopper and Joyce arguing about magnets two years after Will’s disappearance. The magnets didn’t work then, but why? Everything was fuzzy.
He pulls the magnet off of the metal only to stick it back on again.
What the hell?
“Wheeler,” a hand lands on his shoulder, making him jump. “Jesus dude, it’s just me.”
Mike turns around, forcing himself not to grimace at the smell of Keith and his bag of cheetos. “Keith, hi,” he says, trying to pretend that he hadn’t just been scared by a man with cheeto dust on his fingers.
“You’re done for the day, stop stealing my time man,” Keith says as he puts a handful of cheetos in his mouth. “Stealing my money,” he says around cheetos.
Mike just smiles uncomfortably and backs away, giving the metal and its magnets one last look before leaving the prize counter.