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Max stumbles through the door, sniffling as she wipes blood from her nose. Grabbing the sink for stability, she giggles through spit, hair gathering at the corners of her mouth, and is pinned by sweat across her nose. Blood streaks under her nostrils, smearing where she’s tried—and failed—to wipe it away.
“Oh no,” she laughs to herself, words slippery. “This looks like a crime scene.”
The bathroom door hits Mike on his way in, a groan falling from his lips.
“What- what the fuck—“ His hands hold his head in pain, just another sharp ache to add to the wounds covering the rest of his body. It wasn’t from the Russians, but rather his own fawn-like limbs.
Another short laugh escapes Max’s form as she slumps towards a stall, falling near the toilet. A gag tumbles from her mouth, quickly scurrying away from the urinal.
“Oh my god, Mike, it smells like regret in here.”
He rolls his eyes and limps to his own stall, picking the handicapped one for a room. His head hurt more than anything he’s experienced— that says something considering he’s been physically bullied by Troy and his lackey for most of his life.
“Sorry for my gender?” Mike doesn’t know what to say, but he feels like he should say something.
She grins, then pokes her head under the stall divider, upside down, hair sticking to her face. Mike flinches.
“Jesus, Max.”
“What? I’m bonding,” she says. “Near-death experiences bring people closer.”
“Well, stop bonding near my feet,” he snaps, then immediately sighs. “I just— I don’t get what’s so funny.”
She goes still for a second, then rolls onto her back, staring at the ceiling. “This about Eleven?” Sure, it might be a superficial thought, but Max has always deemed Mike a superficial person.
Mike stiffens.
“Is this the part where you yell at me for stealing your girlfriend?” she adds, lighter now. “Because, heads up, I didn’t know she was gonna actually dump you.”
“What? No, that’s— I’m really not that mad about it. We are fine now.”
“She didn’t tell me you guys got back together?” Max crawls to the stall door, her head sticking out near the hinges. Eyes wide as they focused on Mike’s lanky build.
“Because we aren’t.” Mike huffs out, peeved by the conversation. It was getting too personal, even while her tone was light— he viewed it as accusatory. Like she was poking at him mockingly through every word.
“You were literally all over her for most of the summer. What do you mean?”
“I don’t like her like that.”
It went quiet, too quiet.
“I don’t understand…”
“What’s so confusing?” His brows furrowed, annoyed.
“Well, you must’ve been compensating for something, basically drooling over her. So what is it? Who do you actually like?” Her own brows wiggled.
“No— no girls.“ Mike rushes out, but this was his mistake. It wasn’t exactly a slip of the tongue, just a phrase with double meaning.
A double meaning he so foolishly missed.
“Boyfriends?” she sings out, jumping to conclusions to tease lightly.
“What- no, why would I have boyfriends?”
‘Girlfriends?’ Eleven questions.
‘No.’
‘Boyfriends!’ Nodding to her own answer, as if she had found a NASA-level breakthrough.
‘No!” Mike answers with panic.
It comes back to haunt him; even Russians with multitudes of guns haven’t scared him as badly as his earlier fumble.
“You’re right, you don’t have game like that.” She thinks for a second. “So just a boy?”
This time, he doesn’t deny.
Everything hurts; his emotions blur the line of physicality. Every angsty feeling transforms into a silent sting. And the liquid they were given has fully set in now.
“Yeah.”
Time passes, not like his painful separation from the party during break, and definitely not as bad as the week of Will’s disappearance. But it finds a place between all those tragic moments, clinging to the back of his ribcage, ready to stab when needed.
Max slides in front of him, now serious.
“Boys.” She tries it out on her tongue, and while it swirls oddly when integrating the concept of it coming from Michael Wheeler, she doesn’t dismiss it.
“Yeah,” His voice cracks, “A boy.”
“That’s…that’s chill.”
“Thanks.” Mike’s gaze strays away from hers.
A beat passes before the girl’s curiosity gets the better of her.
“Will?” Max moves on to the next topic.
Mike coughs out, placing his hands on the ground, “What?” He responds with.
“Will.” She concurs.
“Yeah... yeah.” Mike settles down, too tired to argue.
“He likes you, too.”
And for the 50th time today, he yells out, “What?” This time with more surprise in his expression than he has had all year.
Max shrugs, as if this was supposed to be obvious, like Mike was an idiot for not even considering it as an option to be loved by the Will Byers.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Mike, yes, I do.”
“Whatever.” He deflated.
Reciprocation had never occurred to Mike because he had always believed Will to be untouched by romance. His friend existed, in Mike’s mind, outside the hungers that ruled everyone else— aloof from girls, ‘unaware’ of boys, desire written in a language Will had yet to read.
It was an easy belief, cruel in perspective. An assumption made in Mike’s consciousness during those nights, just to add to his suffering like a penance.
That summer, Mike perfected absence. He ignored Will the way one ignores homework after school— left to lie on his mind every day but never completing it.
When silence grew too heavy, it curdled into sharp remarks, small cruelties flung without aim yet always hitting their target. The argument they’d had before everything unraveled lingered like a mother, turning every glance into an accusation, every word spoken into a falsified guilt-trip.
Mike had been acquainted with cruelty long before he learned how to wield it. He saw how the world had taught him early that softness was a liability, that Will’s gentleness and quiet queerness were invitations for ridicule.
He wore that knowledge the way some boys wore armor— ready to use in battle, clinging to his body and only remembered once settling in for the night.
And by some private, pitiless law of the universe, true love seemed especially determined to avoid him. Not as punishment, but as inevitability. For a boy like Mike, the affection he wanted was never denied outright— it simply never arrived in a world without postage service.
Does Will feel this way, too? Maybe he’s never expressed having a crush because he’s like Mike.
That realization carved a new emotion out of him.
Doubt readjusted itself in his heart.
There was no refuge left. Eleven no longer stood between them like a shield, and the space where Will and Mike’s friendship once lived had grown thin, frayed by neglect and misunderstanding. What had been safety now felt like exposure.
He had cast away every small mercy without noticing, until there was nothing left to reach for. No forgiveness waiting in those nostalgic swings, no familiar shoulder to lean onto. Only the slow, sinking certainty that some mistakes do not ask to be fixed— they ask to be endured. And Mike has endured all his life.
So he sat with it, this loss, like a sentence with no clear end. Certain that exile was permanent. Certain that some loves do not end in confession or absolution, but in silence.
He didn’t deserve someone like Will anyway.
“You’re an idiot.”
Mike sniffs, “Yeah.”
The pair had a different understanding of what Max meant.
She went to pull him in for a hug, but a loud thud interrupted them. They nearly break their necks to look in the direction of the sound.