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"I'm never getting drugged by evil Russians ever again." Mike groans, planting his face on his knees.
Max sighs out what could be a laugh, "is that one off your bucket list, dipshit?"
"Shut up." He mutters, voice hoarse from vomiting. They'd spent the past five minutes puking their guts up, but Mike supposes it's better out than in. He swipes a hand across his dry lips.
The bathroom settles into silence, soundtracked by the hum of something Mike can’t identify. His back slips down the wall: he’s never been drugged before, and right now it feels like every possible surface in the room is spinning.
It’s not as bad as it was a few minutes ago, the throbbing in his head deciding to take a couple hours off. It feels like someone's taken their hand to a model globe of earth, spinning it so fast it tilts off its axis, sending Starcourt catapulting into orbit and dragging Mike and Max along for the journey.
His face aches in a distant way, one eye partially swollen shut, a cut snaking from his chin to his lip. He feels nothing and everything at the exact same time.
The ceiling keeps spinning.
“What do we do?” Mike asks, “are- are we waiting for Holly?”
Max hums in agreement. “Yeah. Yeah? We’re supposed to be in the movie theatre.”
Mike sighs, arranging his upper lip so the air he huffs out makes his bangs flutter.
“Do you wanna talk?” Max asks. She sounds distant, like she isn’t a few feet and a red plastic wall away from him. Mike can see her feet beneath the stall barrier.
“What about?” Mike says. He and Max aren’t exactly close, despite their summer spent working together. They’re both firmly weaved into the structure of the Party, but they’ve more so bickered and existed alongside each other, never exactly clicking properly. He loves her regardless, because they’ve been friends for five years, but still.
“I dunno!” she sounds exasperated. “You got a better idea?”
Mike hums in agreement. A question nags on his mind, wretched from his subconscious, something that's been bugging him without him even noticing. He thinks it’s been planted there since they were sitting in the movie theatre, watching a love story unfold on screen. Mike doesn’t know how long ago that was - minutes or hours. Drugs make time fold in on itself.
“Have you… ever been in love?”
The words feel hot on his tongue, like they could burn him. That doesn’t change once they’re out in the open, like a humidity spell has been cast suddenly on the washroom.
“Wow, Wheeler. Personal.” Max mutters.
He groans, already feeling much too vulnerable. Fucking drugs. “Just answer the question, Maxine.”
Max takes a moment, sounding resigned, like she’s gearing herself up. Mike can’t understand why; he figures the answers are yes and Lucas, things he already knows.
“Yeah. Twice.”
Mike perks up at that, his insistent curiosity amplified by whatever-the-fuck is currently coursing through his veins. “Twice? Lucas and… who else?”
He can practically hear her stiffen, the way she bunches her shoulders, the crinkle of moving fabric as she adjusts her sailors collar. He knows all this without even seeing her, and instantly knows they’ve spent far too much time together at this summer job.
“Just some… boy. I knew him when I was little, out in California.” She supplies.
“Did you love him more than Lucas? Or less?” Mike asks, a hand subconsciously threading in his curls. He twists the strands of hair around his slender fingers.
“Doesn’t work like that. It’s not… a competition. It’s not like choosing a favourite song, Mike.” She sounds oddly sincere, as if she’s reminiscing. It’s a tone that doesn’t suit her voice. “I loved him when I loved him, and now I love Lucas.”
“You still love Lucas?” Mike wonders aloud. Max and Lucas’s on-again-off-again pattern that they’ve assumed this summer is exhausting, especially when Mike had somehow ended up intercepting both ends of it. Max on her bad days stomping around the back kitchen at Scoops, Lucas when he was feeling particularly lovesick and deadset on winning her back.
Max murmurs something of agreement, her head landing against the tile with a soft thump.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” Mike responds.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asks. Her voice has returned to its usual teasing tone, like when they're working behind the counter and a cute girl will walk in and she’ll say, much too loudly, ‘Stop, ogling, Mike.’ even when he is doing no such thing. He only ogles when one person walks into the shop, when he leans his elbows on the counter and makes steady conversation, when he hands out more free ice cream than he knows is allowed just to see the way his eyes light up.
Max clearly hasn’t noticed that, otherwise she wouldn’t be asking.
She hasn’t noticed the way he lights up around him.
Cool. Good, even. He can work with that. He can trust his stupid high brain won’t fuck everything up.
Everything is fine, completely and utterly fine. She has no idea, so there’s no need for him to say-
“What? No. Why would you think that? Why- what did I do that made you think that? If-if that’s what you were thinking. No.”
Actually, he doesn’t say it, he snaps. Words hard and fast like he can will truth into them out of pure spite. Shit.
Max splutters out a laugh. “Dickhead. What’s she like?”
“There’s no she, Max.” Mike says, pathetically. It’s not exactly a lie. He draws his legs into his chest, propping his head up like suddenly his brain is too heavy. Weird, considering how empty-headed he feels at that moment.
Max suddenly shifts, her shadow under the stall wall moving, one of her legs partially poking into Mike’s stall. He reaches out, clamping a hand around her ankle and tugging with surprising strength, pulling her across the floor until she crosses the partition and appears on the tiled floor beneath him.
Her braids have unravelled, red hair curling and clumped in places with blood and sweat. The Russians had been more harsh on Mike than they had on Max, so all she has to show for it is light bruising around her face. Her freckles are few and far between in the bathroom lighting, the stark white light showing off the texture and grooves of her skin. Thin shadows sit beneath her heavy eyelids, a gentle trace of mascara that’s been either cried or sweated off after their tumultuous day.
“Asshole.” she huffs, straightening up, propping herself against the opposite wall so they face each other. Blood clings to the collar of her uniform. Mike doesn’t remember at what point they lost their signature hats. “This floor is fucking disgusting.”
“Yeah, well, we already have, like, a ton of blood and puke on our clothes.” Mike says, glancing down at his own navy uniform. His neckerchief is wonky, his name badge half hanging off, blood sticking to his shirt from where it dripped from his face. There are scarlet spots on the toes of his blue sneakers.
“Maybe you do. I have more class than that.”
“There’s a chunk of vomit in your hair.” Mike says, not missing a beat.
Max glares at him. “Do I know her?”
“Are you gonna drop this?”
“No. Are you still in love with El?”
The question hits like a blow to the chest; he hadn’t even considered that would be an option on her mind.
“No. No, not even a little bit.”
“Good.” Max presses on, settling one of her feet on the wall near Mike’s head. “You were awful to her.”
“I know.”
“Good.” Max says, bite behind her words. She’s grown to be very protective of El. More silence passes, the world starting to waver instead of spin, the cold wall beneath Mike’s back grounding him to planet earth. The ceiling swims above him.
“So, what’s she like?” Max pries. “Your mystery girl?”
Mike wants to bury his head in his hands and never emerge. He can’t - if he does so in front of her, she’ll know something's up. She’ll know his lie is weakening,
“Oh my god.” she mutters, after a few silent moments, “please please please don’t do that douchey thing and say you have a crush on me right now-”
“Ew!” Mike interrupts. That snaps him right out of his daze. “Ew, Max. What the fuck?!”
“You started it! You’re the one being all evasive about the girl you’re in love with!”
“You’re the one asking too many questions!” He bickers, indignant, gesturing with his hands.
“Oh, well fuck me for being curious when I’m high as shit! Screw you, Wheeler!”
They’re back to not talking, giving each other matching glares from where they sit. Sometimes, Mike thinks he and Max are too similar to ever be real, good friends. He thinks they mirror each other, short tempered and passionate and much too caring with no good way of showing it.
Mike decides he hates being high, his internal monologue ranting about how he can’t understand why anyone does this willingly for a solid minute before he realises that people who smoke weed are definitely not on the same level as the Russian truth serum that’s been added to his blood stream.
Then, he feels a confession weighing on his head, invading his subconscious in a way he’s sure won't go away until everything is out of his system. Until the carefully constructed walls within his mind are back up, when he can go back to pretending.
“When did you stop loving El?” Max asks. She drags a hand through her hair, trying to rid it of the clumps.
Mike sighs, clawing his hands over his face. He squeezes his cheeks together before replying, as if he can physically keep the words inside if his mouth is bent out of shape. “I don’t know if I ever loved her. Like that, at least.”
“Maybe that’s for the best.” Max says.
Mike agrees. He wishes that he could have loved El like that, could have felt something other than shame and guilt every time they laughed or kissed. He wishes it so strongly that he would let that want take the rest of him down, take everything that makes him him away for the chance to be normal, to think normally. He would strip himself down to bone, rebrand his brain and become a new boy entirely to not have to think the way that he does.
To think about Will the way that he does.
“She looked so much like…” Will. The word is on the tip of his tongue. The reason he ever felt obliged to love El in the first place. He can’t find the nerve to say it. “Fuck.”
Max raised an eyebrow, picking at a scab on her knee.
“I didn’t even know why she had to look like him, just that it was easier for me that way. It was easier if I could pretend.”
“Are you having a fucking episode right now?” Max says, furrowing her brows. She doesn’t understand and Mike doesn’t know how to make her. He can’t say it out loud, not in full.
“I didn’t love her because she wasn’t who I wanted her to be.” He admits in a rush of words.
Silence. Like the air has been sucked out of the room. “Did you want her to be somebody… else?” Max asks, cautiously, like she’s approaching a wild animal, like Mike will get up and bolt across the room. He hopes the drugs haven’t slowed him down enough to eliminate it as an option.
Mike nods his head without evening knowing he’s doing it. Max sucks in a sharp breath of air. Mike doesn’t know what exactly girls talk about, but he assumes El will be hearing every word of this at some point in the near future. It makes shame burn across his skin.
“They didn’t even look that similar.” he huffs out a humourless laugh, feeling limp as a ragdoll. “And when I was speaking to her, they were two separate people entirely. Well, they were anyway, but she didn’t laugh at my jokes or understand when I spoke about D&D. I couldn't love her properly because I only know how to love one person.”
It has to be obvious by now. Sickeningly, stupidly obvious. And he knows Max is too smart for her own good.
Mike didn’t know who he was for the longest time, a stretch of life that wrecked him and displaced his mind from his body. He hated not knowing. He hated it almost as much as the truth he denied.
Somewhere between November 6 1983 and this moment, the July heat still somehow making it into the cramped bathroom, Mike lost himself. To the girl he didn’t understand and the suppression, conforming like he would be gasping his last dying breath if he didn’t. He learnt that the way he felt was far from okay, that he was wrong and weird for feeling the way that he did. Carved out, empty, a hunger that could be filled only by swallowing the space between everything he’d ever said and everything he’d ever meant.
And slowly but surely, Will Byers had filled those gaps in his life, shame be damned.
The love outweighed the negativity where Will was involved.
It always had.
“Mike…” Max starts, eyes clouded with a combination of confusion and curiosity. “Who are you talking about?”
He looks at her. That’s all it takes.
Something in her face clicks. He knows with certainty that she knows.
He didn’t even have to say anything.
That’s how obvious it is.
“Oh.” she sighs, like the sound has been punched out of her stomach. “But Will’s a boy, Mike.” Max says with a small smile and a roll of the eyes, like he’s playing a trick on her. He wishes he was.
His eyes well up with tears. He’s never felt so vulnerable before. “Max…”
“Michael…” then her eyes lock on his, the distant glassy expression in them, the depth of the brown betraying his truth. Max visually stutters. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” Mike says, exhaling so loudly he feels like his lungs may collapse. The words - his truth - aren’t buried inside anymore, but now they weigh heavy in the air. Out in the open, they don’t dig into his organs and bruise him in places no one can see, they dangle like they could physically drop. Like they could shatter his bones.
He’s not sure which is worse.
He wants to shove them back inside, take it back. He wishes he had never clocked into his shift this morning, should have said he was sick.
He feels like he might be sick for the rest of his life.
Every passing second of silence feels like a warning beep on a bomb that's about to explode, some dumb action movie cliche polluting his thoughts.
Max won’t look at him.
Everything in the air is heavy, like his bones have turned to lead and his blood has frozen within him. He’s going to melt into the floor.
“Hey Max, you OD over there?” he offers, shakily, dragging his forearm over where his eyes have begun to leak.
She shakes her head, drawing her knees into her chest and drumming her fingertips atop them. “No, just thinking.”
“Cool.” Mike says, even though it definitely is not. He doesn’t know the last time he cried in front of someone.
Max isn’t berating him, isn’t jumping up in disgust, isn’t screaming for help or calling him names. She’s propped her head up, tilted to the side, and now she just looks.
“I mean, I get it. Will’s a total sweetheart.”
Mike whips his head up so fast he hears his neck crack. Out of everything she could have said next, that was pretty low on his list of guesses. Max is handing him an olive branch, something she’s never done before. She’s offering banter and discussions about his feelings. She’s offering things he never dreamed he’d have.
He doesn’t wipe away the next tear that slips down his cheek.
“Sweetheart?” He asks.
“Yeah, dude. Will’s like the nicest person ever, this makes perfect sense.” Max runs a hand through her hair. “Besides, you’ve always been weird with him. I feel kinda stupid for not catching on.”
“I haven’t always been weird with him.” Mike says. Max is being so normal with him, treating him like this is entirely okay. Like maybe, just maybe, it’s not something he has to hate himself because of.
He thinks that maybe Max had to be the person to find out. That it helps that they aren’t very close, because it puts distance between him and the truth. But sat opposite her, he feels closer to her than he’s ever felt to anyone in his life.
“Dude, you don’t treat anyone else the way you treat Will. You’ve got, like, your own voice for when you talk to him. It's kind of insane.”
“It is not! He’s my best friend, how am I supposed to talk to him?”
“Not like that, unless you want him to realise you’re in love with him!”
Max’s eyes widen, realising what she’s said. In love.
“Holy shit.” Mike mutters.
“Holy shit.” Max agrees.
Max breaks the stunned silence. “They don’t even look the same.”
Mike groans, dragging a hand down his face. He spent most of puberty reasoning with himself, putting meaning behind the instant connection he drew between El and Will. “I know. That’s the worst part.”
“No, the worst part is that you haven’t done anything about it.”
Mike snaps his head up just in time to see a smirk stretch across Max’s face. “Do you-you think he… really?”
“I’ve never seen anyone look at anybody the way Will looks at you.” she says, and it's everything Mike’s ever wanted to hear. The good always outweighs the bad when Will’s involved. “I should have noticed this sooner, you’re so fucking obvious, Wheeler.”
“Obvious to him?” he asks meekly.
Max shakes her head. “No. Somehow, never to him. But- I don’t think you’re alone in this.”
“Are you trying to wingwoman me?” Mike says. The nicest thing Max has ever done for him before is drove him to work, and she did that begrudgingly.
“If you tell anyone, I will fucking gut you.” Max says with a glare.
But she’s being nice, sweeter than he’s ever seen her, and he can’t help but laugh at the empty threat. At the absurdity of it all. At the new feelings that contaminate his chest now that the shame takes up a little less space.
Max starts to laugh too, slowly at first, then full on hysterics as she kicks her feet against the floor and throws her head back. Maybe it’s the drugs, but in this space of time nothing has ever seemed funnier.
Mike laughs until he thinks he might never need to cry again, until his eyes well up for separate reasons and his throat aches. His upper arm aches as well, because Max keeps reaching out and punching him lightly, but maybe that's how she shows love. Maybe that's how she shows him she cares.
Mike’s still wheezing when the bathroom door crashes open, Holly stood looking incredibly frustrated, her eyebrows furrowed and mouth in a scowl.
“What the hell, you guys!?” She hisses, folding her arms across her chest.
Max takes one look at Mike and that's all it takes to fall apart, fall back into the rhythm of hysterics. Holly looks so unimpressed, it's ridiculous.
They laugh together and Mike thinks it might be the first time they’ve ever been truly united. It feels good to have someone on his side. It feels good to have Max.
At some point, the ceiling stopped spinning.