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The older Mike got, the more he learnt about his family.
Growing up, he’d always known his parents weren’t in love. They had a ring, of course, but the sentiment was lost after his father came home for the third time without his. They’d had a small wedding, with only friends and family invited. His mother had dressed up for the occasion, his father had not.
Mike had known, since he was capable of forming coherent thoughts, that his parents did not love each other. His father forgot anniversaries the way he’d forget to switch the TV off, his mother would sigh more in his presence than she would laugh, Nancy watched them skeptically at every turn as if expecting them to finally drop the shoe.
Mike had silently watched Mr and Mrs Sinclair interact; had watched the way their eyes would light up when the other entered the room, the way Charles Sinclair watched out for his wife when she overworked, the way Sue Sinclair rubbed soothing circles on his back when Lucas would come home with scraped knees and busted lips. Mike’s parents did none of those things.
Instead, Karen worked alone in the kitchen, Ted worked all hours he possibly could and the two spent as little time as necessary in each other’s presence. The only times they were regularly found together was during family dinners.
Mike hated his family dinners.
His parents thought they were discreet about it, thought they hid it under the rug, but Mike saw it. He was sure his sisters saw it too. The quiet spats between the two were poorly disguised with fake smiles from Karen and mutters made through a mouthful from Ted, but Mike heard them nonetheless.
“The meat could be juicier,” his father would comment without an emotion in his voice.
“Maybe if you could bother staying home and helping out for once, it would be,” Karen would mutter back while smiling sweetly at Holly.
“Don’t be dramatic, Karen,” Ted would say whenever Karen brought up a rule she intended to instate around the house.
“You’d know about it if you ever bothered to talk to them, Ted,” Karen would snide whenever Ted inquired about a school function, or an upcoming event.
It was a tireless game of imitating civil conversations while desiring nothing more for the other person to not be in the room. Mike never understood why they had family dinners if no one involved wanted to be. Nancy always said something about presentation, about seeming perfect to the outside. Mike didn’t understand the point to this either.
Then there were the closed doors.
Frankly, this scared Mike more than the not-arguments his parents would have in their faces. There was rarely screaming, rarely a thing to suggest anything of the sort, really. The moment his parents would drift slowly into their room together, the moment their door shut, a visceral, irrational fear would build up in his gut, twisting and churning until (finally) they’d open the door. And nothing would happen. He thought that maybe it was his mother’s offhanded comments that frightened him.
“You're the one who didn’t clean your room,” his mother would say under her breath, thinking he wasn’t listening, “yet I’m the one paying the price? Why does he think I can control you kids?”
“If you don’t pick that book up and study, Micheal,” she’d say when he was more interested in planning a campaign than his homework, “your father is going to ask questions. I already lied to him for your sake!”
She would often lie to him for their sake. Tell him simple lies that Mike knew neither Sue nor Charles Sinclar would ever tell the other. Lies of omission — forgetting to mention that one failed paper Mike had come home with, that one vase Holly had dropped in her excitement, that one night Nancy had spent at Jonathon’s. White lies meant to not “anger” their father — lies of how Mike had most definitely been studying for that test he’d mentioned a few days ago, that Holly had finished all her greens that day, that Nancy’s grades hadn’t slipped following the fall of ‘83.
All lies meant to keep Ted more in the dark than the man already was. It frightened Mike more than he’d ever been willing to acknowledge. Point to this; he hated closed doors.
But as a kid, he’d been able to remain ignorant by— figuratively and sometimes literally —clapping his hands over his ears and singing. As a kid, he’d never let himself think too hard about how his father hardly smiled in their presence, about the angry looks his mother would shoot his way. He was easily able to muffle out the occasional screaming matches with his wakemen and pretend they never happened. As a kid, he chose ignorance over reality.
As he got older though it got progressively harder to do so. His parents hadn’t changed, hadn’t gotten worse. It simply became harder to ignore it. Mike grew and the veil of ignorance he’d draped over himself as a kid, in defense against reality, had been ripped off— or ripped apart, Mike thought. He stopped wanting to hide.
After the Demogorgangs and the Upside Down, Mike didn’t feel the need to hide from the small mundanes anymore. He stopped letting himself choose ignorance, fought to see the forest for the trees.
(A part of him knew that it wasn’t a choice, that he saw things clearer because he’d seen things far worse than hushed arguments and closed doors and defensive lies, that he’d never be able to fit under the blanket of ignorance anymore, he’d grown too big for it.)
This didn’t change the fact that Karen and Ted continued to treat them as if they were blind. They’d never been blind, kids have eyes more perceptive than adults gave them credit for, but now they were aware of what they were seeing and their parents refused to acknowledge it.
That was up until that fateful thanksgiving night. They’d spent it as just the five of them, as Karen had insisted. Thanksgiving has been a touchy time of year since ‘83, and somehow Karen had gotten it in her head that getting everyone together would lift either Nancy or Mike’s moods. It did not.
If anything, Mike felt more like throwing a plate at someone than he normally did as he sat at the dining table, picking at his green peas because eating was difficult right now, and deliberately tuning out the hushed argument his parents thought their kids were oblivious to. He heard Nancy sigh heavily and thought she was about to get up and leave.
“Why are you fighting?” Holly’s quiet, desperate plea was answered with absolute silence.
Mike lifted his eyes from his plate and stared dumbly at his younger sister. The rest of the table seemed to be doing much the same.
“What?” Karen asked eloquently.
The little girl shrugged her small shoulders. Mike noticed for the first time that night that her plate was just as full as Mike and Nancy’s. “You are always fighting,” she said simply. “I don’t understand why. Is it— is it because of us?” Because of me, was left unsaid but Mike heard it all the same. He suspected that the rest of the table did too.
Karen’s face absolutely crumpled as she reached out for her daughter. ”Oh, baby, no, no. This— This is not— no—” Holly shifted in her seat, effectively maneuvering herself out of the touch. Mike almost smiled at the familiar gesture; he’d likely been the one to teach her how to do it, he realised with only mild shame. This only led to more distressed noises from Karen as she attempted to soothe her daughter’s worries. All her words were empty, Mike knew, they always were.
He was caught off guard though at the look on his sister’s face as she watched Karen stumble through excuse after excuse. She could see the brittleness of their family, the part they all played to project an image of innocence and perfection. Mike had given up his part years ago, Nancy too he knew.
Holly, though? She’d been the perfect baby of the family for years, she’d played her part effortlessly. Or at least Mike had assumed it’d been effortless; less of an act and more a behavior molded into her. He’d thought that Karen had learnt from whatever mistakes she thought she’d made with her older kids and had adjusted herself accordingly. He’d thought Holly was the product of that; perfect, all-smiles and happy as can be. Mike had thought she’d been playing her role without realising she was performing, without noticing the audience. He’d bought into her act, he realised with a pang.
“No,” Holly said in lieu of halting her mother’s endless excuses. Her still-too-small arms were crossed on her chest and her eyes wouldn’t meet anyone else’s. Mike couldn’t help but compare this little girl to the little sister he thought he knew. He tried reconciling the two in his head but found that he didn’t know how. “You fight, all the time. We eat together and you fight and you fight and you fight. You think we can’t see, or something, but we do. We can see everything. We’re not blind!”
Mike, and the rest of the room, remained silent. He wasn’t sure if he should say something, back her up somehow. He sure as hell wouldn't be siding with his parents— he can’t remember ever doing that actually. A moment passed and Karen slowly turned her gaze away from her youngest to Mike and Nancy. She stared between them as if expecting them to offer up a rebuttal to their sister’s declaration. When neither did, Karen’s face crumpled.
“I– I hadn’t realised, I mean, of course we know—” she turned to her husband only to find him still eating as if nothing were happening. She clenched her jaw and watched him eat his mashed potatoes in a blissful bubble. Mike thought that maybe his own talent of ignorance had not simply been a coping mechanism he’d developed of his volition.
Nancy huffed next to him. “This is so stupid,” he heard her mutter. The fact that she was still sitting here and not up in her room told him that something was keeping her here. Likely the same thing keeping him there as well.
Karen turned back on her kids, tears filling her eyes. “Kids, I’m sorry but I promise you, your father and I are okay. We’re— we’ll be okay.”
Abruptly, Mike was reminded of that one idiom, the one that went something along the lines of “final straw on the camel’s back,” or something. Mike thought that maybe this was his last straw.
Mike pushed his chair back with a loud screech. “This is so fucking stupid,” he declared as he stormed off without another glance at the table. He distantly registered his mother’s cry of his name then Nancy’s name as she followed his lead— absently, he toyed with the thought that Nancy had followed his lead this time when it had always been the opposite.
That had been the last family dinner they’ve had in over half a year. A small part of Mike felt guilty for driving wedge into his family, but that guilt never lasted. His family had never been perfect, but Karen had always needed it to be and Ted had expected nothing less while often providing miniscule effort to keep it that way. They were both blind, neither having seen the cracks until it was gaping wide in the faces. There were no small-fixes, no bandaids they could slap on to pretend some more, no empty promises that could console any of them anymore.
Mike hadn’t realised it until that night but they’d all stopped believing those words a long time ago. Karen and Ted included.
On some level, Mike could recognise that his parents had seen it too to an extent. He reasoned that that was why his father stared at the plate and chewed; a misguided belief that if he didn’t acknowledge it, it wasn’t really happening. Mike thought that maybe he’d acquired this particular trait of his father. His mother had always been the more vocal of the two, had always been the one to set the rules and the one that upheld said rules. She was also the one who spewed out half-truths with enough of reality blended in to make it hard to argue with. He thought that maybe she’d tricked herself into believing those half-truth as well.
“Mike?”
Mike looked down at his sister who was holding onto his hand with one of hers while the other cradled a teddy bear Mike had just won her. “Hm?”
Holly continued to stare at him. “You’re making a weird face,” she informed him bluntly.
That surprised a laugh out of Mike. “Yeah? What kinda weird face?”
“A weird one,” the little girl insisted, shrugging. “Your eyebrows are together, like this—” she demonstrated by furrowing her eyebrows— “and your nose was all wrinkly.”
“Wrinkly?” Mike asked, only mildly affronted.
“That’s Mike’s thinking face,” said Will as he emerged from the carnival crowd with two cotton candy sticks in hand. He passed one off to Holly who accepted gleefully then looped his arm around Mike’s free one, grinning. “What were you thinking about, Mikey?”
Mike made a face at him. “Ew, don’t call me that.” Mike leaned away from Will as he tried to stick the cotton candy in Mike’s face. “And nothing important.”
“You were thinking about Mom and Dad?”
Mike’s head snapped down at Holly almost comically fast. “What— How did you—?” He was cut off as Holly wordlessly pointed over to a family a few feet ahead of them.
Mike blinked as he registered the family in question; a mother, father and three kids in three different age groups wandering in their vicinity. The father was paying for hotdogs-on-a-stick for the family while the mother rummaged through her backpack frantically. The eldest of the three kids, looking to be around Mike’s age, was leaning up against a pole with his arms crossed and scowling down at his siblings. A twelve-year-old was bouncing about with her younger brother propped up on her back, squealing animatedly.
They were nothing special, just the run of the mill family in Hawkins. A woeful part of him whispered about how they’d been a run of the mill family at some point too. When had that changed? When had the Wheelers stopped being just any other family living up the street? When had Mike stopped being just any other son of a mother in Hawkins? Was it with the Demogorgans? Had he lost his family to the Upside Down on top of everything else he’d lost to that place?
He felt a pang hit him so suddenly he was left off kilter. He realised belatedly that he was breathing too fast, too quick, too much. He couldn't stop himself, but he needed to breathe; slower, calmer. He needed to but he couldn’t. (Panic attack; some part of himself recognised what was happening but that part couldn’t do anything but sit back and watch). He tried focusing on something else. He tried looking at his hands.
They weren’t his hands anymore, God, he didn’t know what they even were. They were shaking, whatever they were (on some level, he knew they were his hands; that they were attached to him; that he was moving them, but something about the way they looked made it hard for him to really believe it). He wrapped his hands around himself regardless. He was rocking back and forth, he realised distantly. He’d fallen to a crouch and now his eyes were closed because, God, he felt dizzy.
He couldn’t get his breathing working. It was still too much air in his lungs, in his brain (did air go to his brain? Is that how that worked? Is that why he was so lightheaded?).Too much, too fast.
“Mike, hey,” he thought he heard someone say, then he felt something on his back, (a hand, he thought. Will’s hand). “You’re okay, Mike. Can you breathe with me?”
He didn’t look up at the origin of the voice but he did bob his head in reply. (He should say something, shouldn’t he? Say that he was fine and that Will could continue doing whatever he was doing. He knew he couldn’t talk though, so he nodded instead).
“Good. Okay, Mike, follow me.” As the person breathed in, he followed it. In, one tap, out, one tap. It was a reflex to tap, he thought, because he’d forgotten about the tapping up until then. Then he took another breath (tap), and let it out slower (tap). In, (tap). Out, (tap). In, (tap). Out, (tap). In, (tap). Out, (tap).
On the sixth count, Mike’s breathing was at a relatively steady pace and looking at his hands didn’t make him want to puke anymore, so he counted that as a win.
“You’re okay, Mike?” Will’s soothing voice and gentle hand on his back brought him crashing back to reality, back to the carnival and to the worried purse of Holly’s lips.
“Yeah, yep,” he said, more in an effort to comfort his sister than assure Will. He smiled and brought his hand up to cup her cheek. “Hey, Holls.” The nickname was not his but Nancy’s. It never mattered who created the name though because Holly loved it no matter who’s mouth it was coming from.
“Hi, Mikey.” Mike hated that nickname. Again, Nancy had created it when they were younger and Nancy liked being part of his and his friends’ games. Holly had picked it up by accident and now loved calling him by it specifically because he hated it. True little menace she was.
“You okay?” He asked dumbly.
Holly seemed to sense his dumbness as she raised one of her small eyebrows at him. She looked almost identical to Nancy when she did that. “I’m okay,” she assured him. “Are you?”
Mike laughed and shook his head. “‘Course I’m okay, Holls. Who do you take me for?”
Holly squinted and looked to be genuinely considering the answer. Mike huffed as he stood, taking Will’s hand as he did so. Holly followed suit, clinging to his arm more fiercely this time. He ruffled her hair and she didn’t comment on it— she’d always been less bothered about her hair than either Mike or Nancy. He often wondered where she got the carelessness for it from considering the fact that nearly every other Wheeler Holly’s ever interacted with is very particular about their hair, Mike included.
Will squeezed Mike’s hand, effectively garnering his attention. “You okay?”
Mike shrugged one shoulder at the other boy. “Mostly,” he offered up instead of an easy white lie, because he knows Will won’t believe it. “My mind’s been kinda all over the place today.”
Will watched him a moment longer before sighing. His shoulders were still somewhat tense, but it loosened ever so slightly. “Fine,” he concluded. “We’re talking about this when we get home though.” Mike didn’t doubt it.
“So, what was that?” Holly was staring up at the two, watching them carefully with those big, beady eyes of ers.
Mike tilted his head. “What?”
Holly crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes and pouting. She was infinitely harder to deny when she did any of those things, and she knew it. “Don’t play dumb! Just now, you were breathing super fast and— and you couldn’t hear us and…” he voice trailed off and her lips quivered, “and it was scary.”
Mike felt a pang of guilt hit him all at once then. “Oh, Holls.” He didn’t waste another moment to wrap his arms around her, as if doing so could protect her from the world’s hurt and pain. He knew well enough that it couldn’t but for two goddamn seconds, he could pretend. Holly’s hands came up to clutch at his shirt and he thought that maybe his heart had just shattered or maybe cracked. Another few cracks and he thought it might actually shatter but that wasn’t an issue for right now.
He pulled away. “Okay. I’ll tell you what it was, yeah?” He knew better by now than to pretend, to cover with half-truths. He wanted to be better than his parents were, for both himself and for Holly’s sake.
Holly nodded, not meeting his eyes.
That had been the end of that carnival for them. Mike had sat her down and told her what it was and she listened, and maybe she didn’t understand everything but she understood enough.
“So, you’re okay now?”
Mike bit down on the bitter laugh that nearly broke out. He was a lot of things but genuinely okay was not one he’d attribute to himself. “As okay as I can get,” he offered because truth was important to Holly and she was important to him, but she was also young and deserved the illusion of a mostly sane older brother for at least a few more years.
There was a part of him that was laughing at the irony of his life. He’d despised his mother’s half-truths, yet here he was. His mother lied to keep their kids as oblivious as she could to the world’s problems, and Mike’s offering up half-truths because Holly doesn’t deserve to find out about the particular demons that keep Mike up at night. If he looked at it like that, he supposed him and his mother weren’t so far off from each other. They’d lied — in a roundabout sort of way — to keep their family protected from the worst the world has to offer. On some level, he thought his mother’s words came from a deep desire to keep her family intact and together, and as happy as possible, no matter how that desire took shape.
The part where Mike could never understand was making them all lie to keep up her charade. Mike had had to keep up a mask most his life; a mask of a kid who was happy enough, a kid who’s biggest obstacles were his final exams and breakups. A kid who didn’t know life-and-death, a kid who didn’t know grief or loss, a kid who hadn’t watched his best friend writhe in agony as he was strapped down on a hospital bed. A teenage boy who was in love with a girl, and not his best friend. Mike had worn the mask well enough before the fall of ‘83, but even then, it had been exhausting.
So, in that context, Mike was not his mother and his mother was not him. He was happier now that he didn’t live under that same roof, and he couldn’t say he’d ever want to return.
“Okay,” Holly said, sagging against his chest, she laid her head down on him. She pressed her ears against his heart and smiled, small and gummy, the way seven-year-olds’ smiles always were.