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“Mike!”
The soles of Max’s Vans squeak against the hardwood as she trips over herself. Her arm shoots out, fingertips grazing the fold of Mike’s shirt sleeve, the raised hair on his arm, then the cool, empty air when he lunges forward, out of reach.
“Mike, wait—”
He hears her skid to a stop somewhere behind him, grumbling beneath sharp, heaving breaths.
“Stupid—fucking—”
Mike makes a hard left and slams his body into what he sincerely hopes is the bathroom door.
The effort does nothing but jostle and embarrass him. A surge of pain rips through his shoulder, and the door only vibrates against the wall for a moment before settling, still firmly shut.
“Mike—”
Some strange, awful noise escapes him as he tries the doorknob instead. He jostles the cool metal violently, which doesn’t work, and then twists it like a normal, well-behaved human being, which stupidly does.
He manages to stumble into the room just in time to fold at the waist and projectile vomit over the toilet seat and part of the wall.
Mike blinks.
Yeah, his brain supplies.
Of course this is happening.
Max’s body thuds softly against the doorframe.
“Your legs are, like, freakishly long,” she’s saying, voice thready and punctuated by her panting. “Someone as out of shape as you should not be able to move that fa—”
Mike coughs to fill the awkward silence while he waits for Max’s brain to catch up to her eyes. The motion brings him further forward with a second wave of something once sweet and bubbly, a violent concoction Dustin had referred to as ‘Purple Passion.’
“Oh, shit,” she manages eventually. The door clicks shut behind her, followed by the twist of the lock. “Jesus, Mike.”
He spits in response. It misses the toilet entirely, landing in a thick string across his knuckles.
“Okay,” Mike startles when Max’s fingers close around his elbow, her voice close to his ear now. “Okay. How about we just—”
It’s embarrassingly easy for her to push him onto his knees. So much so that she doesn’t even gloat about it, just winces at the crack of his bones against the tile.
“Sorry,” she mutters, reaching around him to lift the soiled toilet seat. “I’m sorry.”
“S’okay.”
A horrifying feeling pulses through him, then: something akin to gratitude, maybe even affection.
Because Max has been an uncharacteristic angel all night.
She entertained his stupid, poorly written campaign, and she helped him fix his hair before Dustin dragged them all here, and she let him cling to her and Lucas’ sides all night, like a desperate, wide-eyed puppy dog—without calling him socially inept, even once.
Most offensively, she’s still here now, in the inevitable aftermath, tilting his head to rest against her thigh and murmuring, “Pull back a bit. I’m gonna flush this.”
He watches her do it, then immediately scrambles forward and throws up again.
Mike blinks awake to the sound of Holly’s favorite song. It’s muffled by the closed door and distance, but he’d recognize it anywhere.
The bass beneath the poppy beat is rattling the ground, and someone nearby is singing the lyrics off-key.
“Sh’t up,” he says without thinking, lips moving against something sleek and cool.
They do, though only to say, “That is so disgusting.”
The beige room comes into focus in slow, disorienting fragments, square tiles and too-long mirrors, and—this is Stacey fucking Albright’s bathroom.
Because he’s at Stacey fucking Albright’s party.
With Max fucking Mayfield.
She whistles from the counter she’s perched on. Her back is to the mirror, dirty shoes in the sink. “Some mouth on you.”
“I—” Mike thinks, What the actual fuck? His stomach gives a low, uneasy gurgle that feels in line with his displeasure. “I fell asleep…?”
“More like…” Max drops her head with her eyes closed and her tongue out, then rights it to say, “I sort of thought you died of alcohol poisoning."
“Unfortunately not.”
“Unfortunately,” she agrees, but the air has stilled the way it tends to do when he says stuff like that now. Her heart clearly isn’t in the retort, which feels like a sword straight through Mike’s.
That kind of thing never bothered her before, when the Byers-slash-El were in Lenora and she and Lucas had broken up, but she’s changed. Moved on. Healed. Done whatever it is you have to do to stop wishing you were dead instead of whatever the miserable alternative is.
He supposes she’s earned it.
“I’m—I’m drunk,” is his attempt at damage control.
“I know.”
“You don’t know shit.”
Max’s eyeliner is smudged across the bottom of both eyes, making her look sort of like a raccoon. Or a rockstar—though that’s not very in line with the way her hands are drumming over her own knees in time with Tiffany.
She lifts one to gesture vaguely at where he’s folded over the toilet, still speaking directly into the porcelain. “I think I know.”
“This is—” Mike swallows down the hot, attempted resurgence of Kool-Aid mix and Everclear. “‘S me on a good day.”
Max groans when she hops down from the counter. To her credit, though, she only sways for a moment before coming back over to him with renewed composure.
His hair isn’t long enough anymore to need holding back, but her hand settles at the base of his skull with a similar reassurance. “Don’t hold it back. If you have to, you have to.”
“Don’t have to,” he lies, purely for the love of the game.
“Okay,” she says, then repeats when Mike shudders, cheeks puffing with the roll of his abdomen.
She gently tilts his chin, correcting the angle of his face so all the puke lands in the bowl when he retches. He groans, spluttering around the violent clench of his body and the deeper pull—the reappearance of his dinner.
“Oh God,” Max whines, clearly affected. He can hear her breathing through her mouth. “I’m never coming over for lasagna night again.”
The toilet is still whooshing beneath Mike’s ear from the latest flush when Max admits, “I was joking, by the way.”
“Hm…?”
“About thinking you were dead,” she elaborates.
Mike’s right hand is in her lap, but it doesn’t feel weird like he thinks it should. She’d taken it to clean with a wad of toilet paper a few minutes ago, then sort of held onto it. Now, she’s pressing two fingers over the thin protruding bone in his wrist.
“I didn’t—I checked. I was checking.”
“Oh,” Mike says as he thinks it. “Thanks. But that’s—that’s a little extreme.”
Max flicks his palm.
Soft, delirious laughter fills the room. He’s not sure who starts it, but it feels good. To laugh. And to hear Max laugh.
Kindness between the two of them isn’t as rare as it used to be, but it still works a certain way. It’s still guarded, a bit transactional, and caring whether Mike lives or dies—and moreso, having a direct hand in pushing it towards the former—is objectively kind.
So now Mike’s in the red.
He looks her over, trying to think of something to say.
She’s still focused on his arm, cheeks flushed from alcohol and the balmy air between them. Summer has begun to darken and multiply the splatter of freckles across her cheeks.
Distantly, he wonders if it’s doing the same to his.
He doubts it.
Mike quickly looks away from her face and finds himself caught on the same aspect of her appearance he’s been eyeing since their graduation ceremony earlier today.
“Your hair looks nice,” he blurts, which would be such a stupid compliment if it hadn’t come out sounding so painfully sincere.
She looks up, then, glassy eyes wide. Her face pales so drastically Mike worries she’s going to throw up.
“I didn’t—I don’t mean—” he tries. “I’m not trying to—”
Max exhales hard through her nose. Her lips curl upwards, shoulders sagging with immediate and offensive relief.
“Okay, hey.” Mike scrambles into an upright position to scowl at her properly, even as the bathroom tilts around him, funhouse mirror style. “What the hell? You wish I was flirting with you.”
“I really, truly do not,” she objects.
Fortunately for what remains of Mike’s pride, the harshness of the sentiment is undercut by her bubbling laughter and slow cadence—the way each word comes out sounding just a little bit wrong and bleeds helplessly into the next.
“I’m taking it back.”
“No!” She shakes her head wildly, curls falling over her shoulder and resettling by her collarbone. “Tell me more about my beautiful hair, Mike.”
“I didn’t say beautiful.”
Mike does think Max is pretty.
He’s not blind.
Before he went to California himself, she was the only ginger he’d ever seen—which is not, like, his thing, but it’s sort of cool. He likes how she dresses and that she does boy stuff, and he can understand, if he stops being an asshole for longer than 5 seconds, why the party was so enamored with her when they first met. Why Lucas is enamored with her still.
But he would never say that out loud.
And he would definitely never use the word ‘beautiful.’
Not just because she’s Lucas’ girlfriend, but because she’s—well—
“Wheeler?”
His pulse gives a responsive throb against the pads of her fingers, but the fold of her eyebrows indicates she’s still waiting on verbal confirmation that he’s not, like, having a stroke.
“It’s—” Mike clears his sore throat. “Normal—polite even—to compliment your friends when they get haircuts. Maxine.”
“I’m sorry, Michael.” She’s grinning now. “But friends don’t lie. And this—”
She reaches forward and musses the top of his hair where it’s fallen back into its stubborn side part.
“—is the worst haircut you’ve ever had.”
“Thank you, Max.”
“You look like a fifty-year-old man,” she continues. “You look like your da—”
“Stop,” Mike warns. “Or I’ll puke in your lap.”
She takes this for the serious threat that it is, raising both hands in quiet surrender. Then, she grunts, extending both legs until her feet hit the side of the tub and dropping her hands to massage her knees.
“You okay?”
“Nowhere I’d rather be,” she promises.
The air in the room thickens and waves. There’s a heavy metal song playing downstairs, something familiar. Mike can imagine Eddie jamming out to it—then, by proxy, Dustin.
“It kinda reminds me of El,” he hears himself say.
Max unfurls from her pained hunch. “What?”
“Your hair.”
She doesn’t respond for a long while. Long enough that Eddie’s song ends and another begins, nearing its own fadeout by the time she speaks.
“Thanks.”
Mike shrugs, staring blankly at the tile beneath his jeans.
“I think it was intentional,” she adds. “I mean, I didn’t, like, set out to do it. It wasn’t—I just wanted it gone. It was too long, too—I was tired of dealing with it.”
He hums, as if to say, I accept that explanation. You don’t have to tell me any more.
He knows exactly what Max looked like in Vecna’s mindscape when she found Holly. His sister has recounted every detail countless times, always between sharp, panicked breaths, tiny hands fisted in the fabric of Mike’s favorite sleeping shirt.
He shudders. Max continues.
“When I looked in the mirror after, all I could think about was that summer, and it felt like—oh. Of course. That makes sense.” She clears her throat. “I never wanted to think about it before, because—well, you know. But now I think about it all the time. Just—I think about El. I like remembering her like that. It feels—I don’t know. Better. Warmer.”
“Sure,” he says awkwardly. “Well, it looks nice. Suits you.”
“Thanks,” Max repeats. Then, because they’re both way past their usual get-along quota, she adds. “Should’ve asked me to do yours. Could’ve saved everyone the eyesore.”
Mike offers a breathy laugh in response before surrendering his heavy head back to the rim of the toilet.
This time, he has the decency to use his arm as a barrier between his face and the porcelain, at least.
One of Max’s hands returns dutifully to his back, the movement a direct contrast to what comes out of her mouth.
“You were, like, a really shitty boyfriend.”
“Holy shit, Max,” he mumbles, because nobody is allowed to say stuff like this to him anymore. Not even her. It’s some unspoken rule the party developed traitorously behind his back. “How drunk are you?”
“Like actually the worst,” she continues. “Worse than Lucas, and he was so fucking stupid back then. But I guess—I guess I should thank you. El and I probably never would’ve become real friends if you were, like, nice.”
“I was nice,” he protests weakly.
“You were controlling,” she presses factually. “And a liar.”
And, okay, Mike is starting to understand the reason for the rule.
He doesn’t want to be babied, but any effort to prevent this feeling is an effort he can appreciate, in hindsight. In theory.
“I—” He doesn’t realize how violently his chest is heaving until his voice cuts off to make way for a strangled breath.
The hand on his back stills. “Mike…?”
He remembers being so sure that he was in love with El that summer.
She was a fucking superhero, and she was beautiful, and kind, and caring, and his. She was his girlfriend, and he was in love with her.
Sure, he never managed to spit the words out to her face, but that didn’t mean they weren’t true. He wasn’t a bad boyfriend. He was just fourteen. He was scared.
“Mike?”
He was sure, though, that he loved her.
“Mike, hey, I’m sorry—”
He was sure.
“—I shouldn’t have said any of that. I didn’t even mean it. I was just messing around.”
He was also a liar.
“Mike!”
Because that’s what it was, really: a lie so deep-rooted and desperate that even he had no choice but to believe it.
And he knows that’s why he never said it at fourteen, or fifteen, or sixteen. Because El would’ve snuffed out the dishonesty the second the words left his lips. Hell, she probably would’ve been able to smell the lie in the ink on paper had he ever even written it.
“Mike.”
His face is in her hands.
Max’s, not El’s.
He knows this because El is dead—but it feels sort of the same. Her hands are soft, thumbs stroking the hollows of his cheeks. Her hair is in soft, delicate waves around her face, a little frizzy. She’s a girl, and she’s touching him, and he’s not in love with her at all.
“I’m gonna throw up,” Mike says, and then he does.
Max turns his head with both palms on his temples. It’s harsh and disorienting but effective enough. She’s talking as he retches, low and sweet beneath the splatter of his insides.
“That’s it,” she’s saying. “It’s okay. Let it out.”
At first, he assumes she’s talking about the puking, but as it tapers off, he realizes he’s crying now, too—so it could be that.
Either way, he obliges, and when the nausea tapers, he turns to her desperately.
“Woah, hey—”
“You—” He shakes her off, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. “You’re right… ’m a liar.”
“Mike,” she frowns. “I was just talking about being a stupid teenager. I didn’t mean that you’re, like, inherently dishonest, or something—”
“No,” Mike interrupts. And he’s serious. He doesn’t even laugh at all at how badly she botches the word ‘inherently.’ “I’m a liar.”
Her head tilts.
“You don’t like my hair, then?”
He dodges the joke. His blood pulses hot, burning beneath his skin like the alcohol had. His tongue feels dry and loose, too big for his mouth.
“When El left for California, I thought it’d feel like—like I got a hole ripped out of my chest, or something. Like I’d just—I don’t know—like I’d lost the—the love of my life. Again.”
“It didn’t?” Max asks incredulously.
She knows about the hole in Mike’s chest very well, because she had been the one to find it freshman year.
Because they both had one—matching, almost—like their pale skin and their freckles and their attitude problems and the random nosebleeds they both started getting when the air in Hawkins turned dry that winter.
She never tried to help, and she didn’t want to be helped. She just understood, so he understood in return.
They skipped class together to sit by the payphone. She let Mike into her trailer when he didn’t want to be home, even though she was too embarrassed to show Dustin or Lucas the new place. She even helped him pick out a bunch of California ‘cool guy’ attire right before spring break.
It had felt really nice at the time—running through various department stores with her and carelessly swiping his dad’s credit card—even if Mike now suspects her clothing choices were a prank.
“No, it did,” he confirms, and Max makes a face sort of like, Yeah. Thought so. “But it—I don’t know. It wasn’t like what I… expected.”
Max blinks slowly.
“Joyce had that—” Words are not passing through Mike’s brain at all. They’re just pouring out of his mouth without permission. This one escapes him. “What’s it called?”
“The phone job,” she supplies.
“Yeah, that. So, we had to write letters. And, at first, I thought it’d be cool—and, like, romantic. I’m a writer, you know?”
“If you say so.”
“I was excited. But when it came down to it, like, pen to paper,” he pauses to sigh heavily. “They were so hard to write. Like, stupidly hard. I never knew what to say. Nothing seemed interesting enough. Like, oh, hey, Dustin and I joined a new D&D club—no way, lame—”
Max hums her agreement.
“—or—oh! Max and I watched a new movie last night. It was terrible. Also, we’re, like, friends now. Nope, who cares?”
She makes a wounded sound, this time, which he ignores.
“The point is, life was so boring. And shitty. And I didn’t want to tell her. So I just wrote about random bullshit, and I never asked the right questions or signed off the right way, and it was all just stupid. Like, I couldn’t even be properly sad because I was just annoyed—”
Max’s head is flicking around, dramatically following the senseless waving of Mike’s hands.
“It felt like homework,” he finishes, dropping them into his lap.
“Oof,” she winces. “Mike.”
“Sorry,” he mutters, in case El can hear him, wherever she is. “I’m, like, a bad person, I think.”
“Probably.”
“It gets worse.”
Max is a psychopath, and her eyes light up at this.
She’s leaning her elbow on the toilet opposite him, chin in hand, and her fingers wiggle over her cheek before she urges, “Go on.”
“I lost my train of thought.”
“You were being an asshole,” she reminds him.
“Right,” Mike hiccups.
There’s a part of him that knows he shouldn’t be saying this to anyone, least of all Max. That he shouldn’t even be thinking about it.
Still, big fat loose tongue and all.
“The letters sucked, so—so I’d sit by the phone, dialing the Byers’ phone number until my hands were, like, numb, just waiting for someone to pick up—for Joyce to tell me to fuck off—literally anything but the busy signal.”
“I remember.”
“I think, maybe, a handful of times, El actually answered. And I’d expect to feel this… insurmountable… relief. This, like, wave of—of love. And happiness. And whatever.”
Mike’s voice has faded into something lower and more subdued as he stumbles towards the point. The closer he gets, the more afraid he feels. His chest rattles on the inhale and clenches on the exhale.
“I think I just felt disappointed.”
Max doesn’t slap him, so that’s something.
She just looks confused. “What, like, you didn’t actually want to talk to her?”
“No, I did,” he answers honestly. “I just—I think I—when I was sitting there, begging for someone to come through, I just—I don’t know if—”
“Spit it out, Wheeler.”
“El’s voice wasn’t the one I was waiting to hear,” he rushes to shut her up, then nearly slaps his hand over his own mouth. “I wasn’t—she wasn’t—”
Max’s brows are furrowed tightly together, her mouth dropped slightly open. “What?”
Mike realizes his eyes are starting to water again when the vision of her blurs and warps, like a rippling reflection of himself rather than a real, separate person before him.
“Max…” he breathes.
She’s searching his face. Her head shakes, eyes icy and piercing, and then—miraculously—softens completely.
Every muscle in her face relaxes at once, her voice barely above a breathy whisper when she speaks.
“Oh,” she says. “Holy shit.”
Mike’s lip wobbles pathetically.
“Holy shit,” he agrees.
“She wasn’t Will,” Max verbalizes, like they’re talking about something trivial, like math homework, instead of something that has the capacity to ruin Mike’s entire life—that has already ruined Mike’s entire life. “He’s the one who ripped the hole in your chest by leaving.”
“Yeah,” Mike borderline whimpers. “I guess so.”
He missed El, he did, but Will was the one he kept turning every corner expecting to see.
Will was the one he wanted to tell about Hellfire Club and Eddie Munson and Max Mayfield.
Will was the one he wanted every time he was sick.
Will was the one Mike kept seeing in his dreams.
It was his face. His voice. His lifeless body.
His name sobbed into the crook of Nancy’s neck on the nights she’d refuse to do anything but hold him until he’d stop pretending to hate it and just let himself cry.
Multiple minutes pass.
Mike spends each one trying not to throw up all of his internal organs.
Max’s face is back to its default, tense state, bottom lip pulled between her teeth. It quirks, though, when Mike reaches for her hand and makes a show out of checking her pulse.
“Still with me?” he croaks.
“Yeah,” she says immediately. “Just thinking.”
“Okay,” Mike nods, a touch too frantic. “Like… about anything specific, or…”
“I mean, you’re—” Max bites at her thumbnail, which is incredibly gross, given her proximity to Mike’s puke and general party bathroom filth. “You’re—”
At least twenty-five words flick through Mike’s head, to varying horrific degrees.
“You’re an idiot.”
“I am not,” he spits habitually.
“Yes, you are.” Max rolls her eyes so far back that Mike knows she’s made herself at least a little dizzy. “Will is—Will is gay. You do know that, right?”
“Of course I know that.”
“And he's totally—I mean, he’s practically—probably—definitely—he’s in love with you. Did you hear him at the Squawk?”
“Yeah, Max,” Mike chooses to answer the question and ignore the rest, for the sake of his rapidly constricting throat and the tears already pooling at his jaw. “I heard him. I heard him say that he had a crush on someone who wasn’t… like him… and that he got over it. A crush, Max. That’s nothing, and that was—that was over a year ago. And even if it wasn't, he’s—I’m—we’re—everyone’s grieving.”
“Yeah,” Max says back, all-encompassing. “But you are like him.”
Mike’s stomach bottoms out, despite himself, at the implication. It must show on his face, because Max immediately reaches out to grip his shoulder threateningly.
“If you hurl again, I can’t promise I won’t join you.”
“Because you’re disgusted by me?”
“Because I’m drunk as fuck, Mike.”
He nods, determined.
“Also, a crush is not nothing. Lucas had a crush on me, and look how that turned out.”
Mike rolls his eyes, fist to his mouth. “Dustin also had a crush on you.”
She wrinkles her nose.
“I mean, I don’t—” he swallows. “I don’t know that… that I would say I’m, like—like him. Like that. I don’t know. He’s just—I’m—you know—and he’s Will. It’s—different.”
Max’s grimace deepens. “Mike…”
He drops his head roughly onto her shoulder, deadpan.
“I don’t like you.”
Her hand comes around to the back of his head, nails scratching lightly. “That’s unsurprising, seeing as I’m—you know—a girl.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he sniffles into her sleeve, followed by immediate, wet laughter. “Jesus Christ, Max. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to—I’m so fucking—I’m so fucking tired.”
“Alcohol is a depressant," she says, by way of explanation.
“Just what I need,” he grumbles.
The joke lands lighter this time.
She just doesn’t tense up beneath him or chastise him. Instead, she joins him in laughing, loud and breathy and uncontrollable.
Actually, she’s sort of giggling, which is very unlike her and very hilarious and very sweet and nice.
Mike opens his mouth to tell her as much, but he’s cut off by the sound of someone pounding on the door.
He freezes.
Max cranes her neck to screech, “Fuck off!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then:
“Max…?”
That’s Lucas.
Mike can tell, not by the sound of his voice, but by the dopey, lovesick grin that splits open Max’s face before she abandons Mike and their conversation entirely.
Her joints crack as she springs up, nearly crashing into the wall in her rush to get to him. Mike drops forward without her support, barely managing to catch himself with both palms on the tile.
“Ow.”
Max twists the knob. It unlocks with a soft click, and she holds the door open just wide enough to stick her head out without Lucas being able to see inside.
“Hey!”
Mike can’t tell if she’s exaggerating her slurred speech or not.
“Have you seen Mike?” Lucas asks. He sounds stern, but Mike can hear the matching smile creeping into his voice.
Gross.
“Um…” Max crosses one foot behind the other. “Nope.”
“Will is losing his shit.”
“Interesting,” she says.
“Yeah, he’s really freaking out. I think—are you okay? It—it stinks in here.”
He must be trying to push the door open further, because Max perks up on the tips of her toes to try and shield Mike with her head.
Lucas steps forward, and she stumbles back, steadied by one of his hands on her waist. His other closes around the top of the door to pry it out of her grip and all the way open.
Max flashes Mike an apologetic look, but he can tell she’s narrowly suppressing laughter.
Lucas’ eyes get comically wide at the sight of him.
There’s puke pretty much everywhere, sans the toilet, which has been flushed. And, of course, Mike is on all fours, face dripping with tears.
He lifts one hand to wave and nearly topples over.
“Oh, fuck,” Lucas says. He turns to Max, then back to Mike, then back to Max, each movement slower than the last. “Will is going to kill you.”
“Mmhm,” Max hums, then leans into his chest so he can’t see her face when she winks. Once she’s sure Mike has noticed her exaggerated efforts, she tilts her chin back up at Lucas. “You’ll protect me, right?”
“I don’t know, Max,” Lucas squeaks. “I’m strong, but you know these two are crazy, right? And Mike looks—Mike, you look horrible, man. Like, Will’s eyes might actually start going white and shit when he sees you like this—”
Max does the weird giggle thing again, then says something about how this isn’t their fault, to which Lucas replies that it absolutely is.
Mike drops onto his forearms, then settles on just collapsing sideways and curling up with his back to the base of the porcelain.
Lucas verbally protests each movement, but it doesn’t matter.
He’s content to drown them out, blinking hopefully past their intertwined legs and towards the base of the staircase, sporting a dopey, lovesick grin of his own.