Chapter Text
The bell dings.
It dings again.
And again, but this time with another five dings in rapid succession.
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck, dipshit?”
The eighth grader looks at him expectantly, pressing the button again. Today, it’s just Derek, Holly, and Mary. Mike knows what they’re here for because they only ever come here to exploit him for his employee access to the other stores. Holly waves at him from behind the counter, a wide grin on her face.
“What’s it today? My Little Pony? The Care Bears?” he asks sarcastically. Mary giggles at his comment and nudges Derek, who throws up both his middle fingers. Mike rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue in a momentary lapse in maturity.
“What are we, four? We’re sneaking to watch Day of the Dead. It just came out. But it’s not at all your business, gramps,” Derek finally snaps.
Mike makes a face at the title. “The one with zombies? Geez, are you guys even allowed to watch stuff like that?”
“No, of course not.” Holly looks at him like he’s stupid. Sue him for being concerned about the mental development of his sister and company! “That’s why we’re sneaking in.”
He’s definitely being hypocritical with his concern considering he was watching movies like Day of the Dead, and arguably some worse stuff too, at their age. Look at him! He’s not developmentally hindered in any way. Sure, there’s a foggy gap in his memory from the ages of fifteen to sixteen, but that just comes with being grossly traumatized by fighting hellish monsters at that young. God knows what would happen if these kids were involved.
Mike sighs, finally unlocking and swinging open the door connecting the customer area to the employee room. The kids shuffle past him, Derek purposefully bumping him with his elbow. He watches the door to the hallway connecting Scoops Ahoy with the theater next door open and close, making sure they’re not doing anything unnecessary like slamming the door or drawing a dick on it. Kids their age think it’s funny to vandalize company property by doing that. But mostly, he’s watching to make sure they make it through safely.
“Remember, anyone hears about this outside of your group and you’re dead! I’ll get fired!” Mike yells after them when Holly files out last, already disappearing into the hallway. She waves back at him dramatically, as if she’s dismissing his claim, ending with a hair toss as the door finally swings shut behind them.
“Swear to god, these kids are gonna kill me,” he seethes to himself. He pointedly ignores the human-shaped being sitting and doodling at the break room table while he returns to the front counter to no new customers.
Max comes out from the break room that’s unfortunately connected to the hallway, meaning she did just have to experience another bout of middle schoolers sneaking into their staff room and out of it. She doesn’t look angry, just mildly exasperated compared to the downright, plain-faced annoyance from the first couple times.
“How many children are you friends with, Wheeler?” She snarks as she kicks him in the shin—his sign she’s gonna take over the counter. He buckles.
Cradling his (essentially undamaged) leg on the ground, Mike huffs as he responds,“Not even that many. They’re all my sister’s friends.”
Max doesn’t have a response for him at that, just rolls her eyes and nods slowly. She nudges him, still on the floor, with her foot, eventually kicking him at his hip when he still doesn’t get up. He yelps, not really injured, and picks himself off the floor to hang out in the break room.
It smells like diabetes in there now that he’s lingering to take the scent in, but he’s more used to it now than he was at the start of summer. There’s nothing really to do back here other than doodle on the whiteboard (that Max has covered in obscenities against him) and eavesdrop on the front, which essentially means that he’ll be secondhandedly working the counter anyways—if only to make sure Max doesn’t screw up by calling someone a dickwad or something.
He drags a hand across some of Max’s writing (“you suck, wheeler!”), not quite fully erasing it to rub it in her face. He’s not really sure that it’d count as a victory, considering the fact that the entire board is covered in slander. Whatever. He draws a penis on top of it, having it stretch over the words “you suck” just for fun. It looks a little like his last name is getting shot out by the dick, some sort of fucked up Wheeler jizz, but he digresses.
Leaning back, he squints at the whiteboard, eyeing the mini-Mike getting beat up by a mini-Max that she probably drew while his sister and company were fooling around. At least Max has her cassette player and Kate Bush. What does Mike have other than the vandalized whiteboard? So much for your favorite artist being there for you in times of need.
He has to resolve himself to the front counter. Kicking open the door, he whacks Max in the back of her head with his palm. Her Scoops Ahoy hat falls off her head, and he snickers as she fumbles to catch it. She flips him the bird as she turns towards him. “Real funny, man. You’re lucky no one’s around to see you hit a girl.”
“Please,” he drawls, rolling his eyes. “That didn’t even hurt.”
Suddenly, she slaps a hand to the side of her head and plasters a crying face on. Cradling the point of contact, she cries, “How could you, Michael? After all I’ve done for you, taking over the counter, letting your little coalition of kids pass, not even making fun of you that much? This is how you treat me?”
Mike raises his eyebrows at that, specifically the part where she claims she doesn’t make fun of him. He vividly remembers the tallies on the whiteboard—before they declared it no man’s creative space—zero in “You Rule!” and six in “You Suck!” She drops the act immediately, keeling over with laughter at his lack of amusement.
Max gets back up, wiping tears from her eyes, at the perfect time to see—
“Oh shit, Jane?”
A short brunette enters the ice cream parlor. Mike’s been kind of avoiding her for the past few weeks, so it immediately grabs his attention when he sees her hair’s been cropped a few inches shorter than it was after she grew it out. She waves at Max, hurriedly walking to the counter and engaging in a very rapid conversation.
A wide grin splits open onto Max’s face at the sight of her, and she’s positively beaming at El while they speak. Which, what the fuck? Since when were they friends? Mike thought that Max was still jealous about El being the designated Mage of the party when he wouldn’t let her in as the “Zoomer.” Whatever that means.
At the same time, cold, gut-churning dread fills his body. Their breakup was nothing short of absolutely amicable, with no definitive fight. One day, El invited him over the phone to the cabin. Upon entering, past Hopper’s moody-ass glare, she looked up at him. Not a glance, but a look. As if she was trying to get a read on his soul, or something. She scanned his face, searching his eyes with a furrow in her brow, only relaxing when she found what she was looking for.
“I dump your ass,” she stated flatly, no preamble.
Mike, of course, had felt incredulous at the bluntness of it. After hardly any sputtering came from his mouth, El pressed a finger to his lips. “You are not a good boyfriend to me. You lie, you avoid me, and you do not like me.”
“I do like you,” he mumbles around her finger. She presses harder, eyes hardening, telling him wordlessly to shut up and let her speak.
“Not in the way boyfriends do. Like a friend. Do not lie to me, it is…bullshit.”
She says it like she’s tasting the feeling of the word in her mouth. Mike probably makes a face at it, because she offers a shy grin that does not feel very endearing at the moment. El finally drops her hand, instead placing both hands on his arms, grabbing him and steering him towards the front door.
“Bye,” she says. He doesn’t wave when he walks out across the porch and leaves, but he does look back just once. She’s smiling to herself, softly, and he can see Hopper get up from where he was monitoring them. He shuts the door with his foot.
It definitely feels like he’s more hung up on the breakup than El is. She’s laughing with Max from in front of the counter, both girls ignoring him in favor of their gossip. El looks happy like this, compared to the mute smiles she’d wear when they were together outside. Max is practically overflowing with joy; some kind of gleeful light is pouring out of her. She’s basically glowing. Since when did Max get so happy at the sight of El? Damn. Is that what they’ve been doing since Mike and El broke up? Sleepovers and hanging out and other girl shit?
Which—yeah. Max’s nails are painted a deep maroon that compliments her hair color, and El’s are a light, foresty green that goes with her outfit. They pause their chatter to compare nails. The polish on Max is chipped and scuffed, while El’s is well cared for but messy. It spills out onto her fingers like the person doing her nails wasn’t exactly familiar with the motion of applying it.
Mike’s got better shit to be doing than looking at his coworker’s and his ex-girlfriend’s nails. He clears his throat, catching the tail end of their conversation.
“—and like, god, I don’t even get the hype around him. What’s so desirable?”
El chuckles at Max, who softens and smiles at the sound. It’s weird, seeing his prickly, bitchy coworker (and friend, but he’d never say that) genuinely enjoy talking to someone without cracking a joke at their expense. It makes her look like any other girl. Which she is, obviously, but she’s Maxine Mayfield from California, not Rebecca Adams from Hawkins, Indiana.
“Uh, Max? You wanna take your ten right now?” Mike asks pathetically. Both girls turn towards him like they’ve just realized that he’s actually here and not a shitty cardboard mascot in the Scoops Ahoy uniform.
Max kind of looks at him weirdly before slowly replying. “Sure, Wheeler. You got it?”
Mike waves her off. “Yeah, yeah. Not gonna call anyone an asshole, unlike someone. Nobody even comes in here ‘cept for the occasional old guy or gaggle of middle-schoolers. Go hang out with her.”
He pointedly avoids saying El’s name.
Max glares at him incredulously, scoffing at his offhanded remark at her poor job at maintaining a customer service attitude. El’s eyes widened at his words. She turns to Max with a questioning look, who shrugs and angles her head to stage whisper a quick, “Tell you later.”
Voice returning to a normal volume, she waves at him. “Bye. See you in ten, don’t burn the mall down while I’m window shopping with Jane.”
El laughs at her joke. El didn’t laugh at his jokes the way she’s laughing now. Her current laugh is a quiet little puff of air, like she’s trying to make it seem she’s not laughing but finds humor in the statement. It’s weird how Mike notices all the little stuff about her, even after they’ve been split up for a bit. He attributes it to the proximity in which they used to orbit each other.
Beckoning El to follow, Max takes off her Scoops hat and runs her hand through her hair as she tosses it back at Mike. Curse her and her bullshit aim. It lands squarely on his face, both knocking his own hat askew and getting the rough feeling of fabric in his right eye. He rubs furiously at it because it itches and kinda burns. After rubbing constantly to no avail, he starts blinking rapidly to get rid of the feeling of lint (or something) drifting around on his eyeball. There’s probably an embarrassing amount of tears gathering in the eye he’s been blinking.
By the time he’s done struggling, Max and El have disappeared around the corner, their laughs echoing all the way down.
It’d been about five minutes since his coworker and her best friend (apparently. He doesn’t wanna think too hard about it) left together when a gaggle of girls that looked his age turned the corner. Mike’s been swinging Max’s Scoops hat around his finger while gazing blankly at the people walking past the entrance. He’s flung it across the room several times, having to ashamedly leap over the counter to fetch it. There hasn’t even been anyone there to see him.
He thinks he recognizes one of the girls from his AP Statistics class during senior year, but he can’t be too sure. After all, he shared that class with Will and Lucas. They’re all pretty, for lack of a better description. One of them is wearing a pair of annoying click-clacking heels, steps echoing loud and sharp on the tiled floor.
“Hey, ladies,” Mike greets. It’s the opposite of suave and cool; it sounds like he’s addressing his friend’s kid brother that he doesn’t have an opinion on.
“Hi,” one of them says—the girl with the heels. She bats her eyelashes at him, possibly flirtatiously, but it looks like she’s preparing for a sneeze. “Could I try out the mint chocolate chip?”
He wants to groan. If they end up like Holly and Debbie, trying every which flavor just to fuck with him and hold up the line, he’ll kick them out regardless of whether or not there’s people waiting.
“Okay.”
He grabs a little one-use spoon from a cup behind the barrier and scoops a small portion out of the tub. He has to awkwardly reach his hand over the glass to hand it to the girl, who takes it delicately and places the spoon in her mouth. It’s not at all hot the way she takes her time trying the flavor out. Mike almost rolls his eyes at the girlish squealing that follows heels-girl’s action. He needs them all to get the fuck out so he can go back to doing literally nothing in peace.
She finally finishes the sample, and sighs dramatically. Shit. “It’s too minty for me, how about the plain chocolate?”
Mike feels the need to make an excuse so that they don’t end up like Holly—trying every flavor and probably eating away half the Scoops Ahoy stock in just samples alone. Ned nearly popped a vein trying to force Mike to get the kids to stop. It hardly worked then, so it likely won’t work now. He really, really needs them to leave.
“Sure, yeah. Yeah,” he’s silent for a second, thinking about a believable lie. “But we have a policy that each person could only receive two samples at a time.”
It really can’t get bleaker than this. Lying to customers to get boring alone time that’s paid minimum wage by the hour? Fuck’s he gonna do with a solid $21 dollars a day, watch a movie at the theater he can sneak into next door? How about paying for the Party’s next trip to the arcade? He hardly needs the money considering his dad’s unreasonably rich, but his parents insisted he take a gap year to,“Get a feel for the real world.” If working for a little over three bucks an hour at Starcout was getting a feel for the real world, he’s just gonna kill himself so he won’t have to experience bullshit like this for the rest of his life.
APStats girl gasps like she’s been personally slighted by his (false) recounting of company policy. “Are you kidding? Since when did that exist?”
Mike shrugs. “Recently. My boss notified me before my shift today. Something about kids eating the whole stock? I don’t know.”
“Awe,” heels-girl drawls, a stark contrast to her friend’s reaction. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
He puts his hands up placatingly. How much longer is this going to take? He can’t let a three-minute customer interaction end with Max making fun of him again. He won’t let her bring back the tally board. “Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m trying to keep my job, sorry.”
“That’s too bad,” a different girl says, poking her friend with heels in the side. “I’ll have a butterscotch, Casey’ll get a pineapple. Both in cups. Miranda, what was it you wanted again?”
The girl in heels—Miranda, probably—stops and thinks for a moment longer. She hasn’t even tried another sample, which is good, but really makes Mike doubt her actually wanting to taste test the ice cream.
“Cinnamon, on a cone,” she finally decides. Thank fuck.
Mike finally finds it within himself to plaster on the customer service face that he was just making fun of Max for. A wave of pure pirate-ness washes over him, almost like he’s playing Mike the Brave in a campaign. But instead of being a paladin, he’s a sailor with a shitty outfit. The worst campaign costume in the world, even more so than his paladin outfit from back when they were twelve. That’s a mean thought to have about his kid self, but it really was that bad. All of their fashion choices were! The whole party probably let out a collective sigh of relief when they finished their Halloween costumes in ‘80 and they were all cooler, upgraded versions of their original campaign outfits.
A wide—likely uncanny—grin splits open his face. “Coming right up!”
He does a flip of the scooper and finger guns for good dramatic effect. His shift in personality must be jarring for the girls behind the heels girl, who’s laughing at his ridiculous act, because they all look at him like he’s grown a second head. Knowing him, he might as well have.
The actual action of scooping ice cream in itself is more relaxing than it is annoying. Before he got hired, he kind of assumed that it’d be some sort of wrist or arm workout to wrestle with half-frozen milk, but it’s pretty easy when he’s not using his home dinner spoons in a gallon tub of vanilla. He does the cinnamon first, only because it’s the closest and he’d like to get the cone scoop over with. While he drops the scooper in the dip well after handing the cone to heels girl, he listens for a second to the conversation between the girls now that they’re waiting.
“—in my AP statistics class, he was that kid always talking with Zombie-Gay Byers and Lucas Sinclair from the basketball team.”
Mike’s blood runs cold. A peal of laughter follows APStats girl’s off-handed comment. He’s fighting for his life to not have a visible reaction to what they’re saying about him, about Will. What the hell kind of a nickname is that? Do they even know who he is outside of the rumors about him? Do they know what he’s gone through to make sure they don’t have to experience the nightmare of being face-to-face with death?
“What the fuck?” he asks out loud. The laughing stops and so does their conversation. “You know I can hear you, right?”
Heels girl gives a halfhearted shrug in response to his outburst. He knows, in the back of his mind, that he’ll look insane for the amount of mood swings he’s had throughout the span of their ordering at Scoops Ahoy. “Didn’t think you were still friends with him.”
“Why the hell not?” he asks, incredulous.
The girl that isn’t wearing heels nor the one from his class chimes in, “We kind of..you know. Thought you were hanging out with him out of pity or something. We didn’t know you were serious about being his friend.”
Which is weird to say, considering everyone in this small-ass town knows each other, and it’s basically common knowledge amongst everyone Mike has known ever that he and Will had been inseparable since kindergarten. They’re not as stuck to each other as they were in elementary school, but they’re still friends and Mike doesn’t take kindly to any of them being insulted. Especially Will, who’s been bullied for as long as he’s been able to talk.
“Of course I am. We’ve been friends since kinder, why would I stick with him because I feel sorry for him?”
He’s not even scooping ice cream anymore, and the scooper is still in the dip well. He doesn’t reach for it, nor does he put any particular effort into trying to grab a cup for either of the other two girls without ice cream.
APStats girl, still without ice cream, gives him a look. “What are you, his boyfriend? Geez, it’s just a nickname. The entirety of Hawkins calls him that, it’s not serious or anything. Not like we’re calling him a fa-”
Mike reaches for the scooper and pulls it out of the well, pointing it at the girl. It’s not exactly menacing, the way he’s waving around an ice cream scooper while wearing a stained sailor costume for work, but ice cream water splashes from the spoon and the group all take a collective step back. “Don’t you fucking finish that. What is wrong with you?”
The other girl opens her mouth to say something—likely as bad if not worse than the shit that’s already been spouted out of their mouths—but heels girl stamps on her foot to shut her up. With a yelp and a glare, she closes her mouth to let someone else speak up.
“I’ll pay for my ice cream,” heels girl says, all hints of her previous behavior gone. “Jamie, Casey, we’ll just get ice cream another time when this faggot’s not working. Please just cooperate so we don’t have to spend more time here.”
She passes him some cash, shaking his head when he reaches for the coins in the register to tell him to keep the change. He’s glad he didn’t scoop ice cream for the other girls, because it’d take a hell of a lot longer to count the change if they insisted on getting it back. He’s exhausted and it’s only been his, like, fifth customer interaction of the day. They’re usually more relaxed and have less customer-server interaction, but he’s unlucky as shit today now that Max is out mall-gazing with El. The coalition of assholes spin around nearly synchronously and smoothly leave, the sound of heels again sharp and unnecessary on the floor.
Coincidentally, almost as if they planned it, Max and El stroll back into Scoops Ahoy. Mike rolls his eyes, but really does feel glad about their interruption providing normalcy back to his shitty day. Sure, he’s been called queer along with Will for almost as long as they’ve known each other, but it doesn’t stop him from getting a weird feeling every single time. It’s not like he hates gay people or Will specifically for being gay, it’s just that getting called gay throws him off. Because he’s not.
“What was that?” El asks casually. Mike squints at her suspiciously.
“Nothing.”
Max coughs out a laugh. “Are you lying to her, dude? We could hear you from outside the store, and we weren’t even trying to eavesdrop.”
He can feel his face flushing, and the telltale sign of embarrassment in the reddening of his ears. “Shut up. They were assholes, okay?”
Again, Max laughs. She waves her hand around limply, as if making fun of him. Mike knows he’s a hypocrite; he literally made fun of Max for bad customer service ten minutes ago.
“Yeah, yeah. Says you! What was it you said earlier? Not gonna call anyone an asshole? Swear to god, I should start betting with you. Imagine the amount I’d win.”
Mike’s gonna throttle her, but he really just does not have the energy for it after Casey, Masey, and Trasey or whatever their names were showed up and left. It’s probably clear on his face, because Max really does stop picking on him and begins to look him up and down. Nodding to herself when she confirms no visible injuries, she leans over the counter and nudges him in the shoulder. “What’s up with you?”
Mike stares straight into the sample spoon cup as he snaps, “Nothing. I swear. Are you done? I need a break.”
“Yeah,” Max says slowly. “Relax. I won’t do anything too incriminating. You take your ten.”
He nods, still not meeting either girls’ eyes. Mumbling a quick “Thanks,” he takes off his hat and sets it down on one of the tables near the entrance. He knows he looks tense now, stiff and weird and all too not-Mike walking out of Scoops Ahoy. He hardly cares—the interaction with the girls earlier offset him too much for him to return to normal for the rest of the day. It shouldn’t, considering he should be used to it, but it really did hit him deeper than he previously expected.
It’s the easiest thing for him to just exit Starcourt altogether and calm down in some corner of the parking lot where nobody goes. He’s near the external generators, emitting a low hum that thankfully drowns out the worst of his thoughts. He sits himself on the curb, pulling his legs tight to his chest and resting his head on his knees. Childish, he knows, but there’s nothing else he really can do. He hasn’t felt this exposed since the whole party was watching him blow up at the chief of police for keeping El’s whereabouts a secret.
“Fuck,” Mike mumbles to himself. “This is bullshit.”
He can’t even be angry at them for assuming. What has he done to disprove them? Or any of their rumors or speculations? It’s not like he’s purposefully acting queer or something, just that Will’s a genuinely nice guy. He wants to stay friends with Will, and doesn't want to let the rest of this town take their friendship away from him when they’ve already taken so much from both of them.
The clouds overhead pass gently with the breeze. They curl and fold over each other, forming shapes and masses that disappear within seconds. Clouds are a constant in Hawkins, always on the cusp of rain yet never fully falling. It’s like the sun is perpetually taking away enough water from them to ensure they don’t downpour. He doesn’t hate the rain—really, he used to prefer it—but would enjoy it if the sun could just clear a hole in the clouds enough for its rays to shine down upon him.
It’s almost merciful, the way the wind just happens to blow the clouds away from blotting out the sun. The rays hit his face and fill him with a satisfying warmth. Small mercies, he’s settling for. He’ll take what he can get right now.
There’s another few satisfying moments of idyllic cloud-watching before they once again swallow the sun whole. Its radiance behind the window of water vapor illuminates a ring of constantly shifting silver linings, and he lets his gaze be transfixed on the movement of its waves. When the thickness of the clouds overrides the glow of the sun, he takes it as his time to get back to work.
Mike’s feet feel leaden as he trudges back inside past the crowd of people exiting Starcourt. It’s hardly late in the day. Someone bumps into his shoulder, but he makes no effort to turn and apologize as they glare at him and call him a prick. Bodies file around him, suffocating him in a current of people. He feels like he’s in a school of fish or something, their slimy bodies pressing against his skin. His head hurts, and the skylight that’s constantly above his head isn’t helping. Why does the sun feel punishing when he’s inside?
The route to Scoops Ahoy is practically coded into his legs as he steers himself blindly through the atrium. Walking into the ice cream parlor genuinely drains every ounce of a good mood he had after his break—or maybe it was already gone by the time he stepped foot into the mall. Max gives him another funny look when he walks in and fetches his hat from the unoccupied table.
“How do you look more dead than earlier?”
He groans. “I don’t know. My head hurts like a motherfucker right now.”
She nods empathetically, then gestures to the employee-only room with her head and beckons him closer. He wordlessly follows her signaling into the back room, collapsing onto the rickety wooden chair that desperately needs replacement. The legs creak threateningly at his sudden movement, and he braces his legs on reflex just in case it decides today’s the day it finally falls apart. Max eyes him and his ever-changing demeanor warily. “You sure you’re okay? You could totally just clock out right now. I’ll cover for you, it’s always dead in here anyways.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be in tip-top shape in a couple,” Mike murmurs sarcastically while lifting his hand and waving her away. At the sound of a bell ringing, he gestures at the door. “Go back to the counter, someone’s waiting.”
With one last long stare, Max acquiesced and pulled open the door. He feels like he’s melting into the chair. Maybe when she comes back to check on his status, he’ll be Mike Chair-ler. Or Chair Wheeler. Or Mike Wheel-chair. Mm. No on the last one. Is he going insane? It feels like he’s going insane. This is what working a summer job before college does to a man. He doesn’t hate it that much, but there are infinitely better things to be doing. Like hanging out with the original party! He would probably give up a two-gallon tub of vanilla (his favorite!) ice cream for a single day free of girls and middle schoolers.
He kind of feels like a piece of shit for leaving Max to fend for herself for so long, so he begrudgingly pulls himself up and away from the chair that might’ve been fusing with his shirt. The ghost of its nails grab onto the fabric and he has to use a little more force than necessary to pull himself free from its grasp. He braces himself as he, too, pulls open the door.
Max has already dealt with whoever was there when she left, so she turns around and smiles. “Feel better?”
Mike gives an overdramatic sigh, muttering, “Not really.”
She gives him a thump on the back. “Shit happens, always will. Let’s get back to work, yeah?”