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Jonathon has been aware of Will’s ongoing crush on his best friend since California and the world ended for a fourth time. He was attuned to its existence for as long as he’s known Mike Wheeler; Will, as a six-year-old, was not exactly subtle in his heart-eyes and helpless cheer around the kid. Jonathan has known, but has not entirely been aware, of it for years now.
The moment he’d put the pieces together, all laid out and presented to him neatly, was in a van in the buttcrack of nowhere, Ohio– or maybe it had been Nevada, Jonathan did not care enough to remember. What he’d cared to remember was the solemn look on his brother’s face, the way Will had turned away from Mike, and the quiet way his shoulders shook and he refused to make eye contact with anyone thereafter.
Mike Wheeler, for his part, looked entirely dazed, then entirely unbothered by anything and everything around him. The switch from one to the other had happened so abruptly that Jonathan hadn’t been sure if he’d actually seen the former. Except, no, he’d most certainly seen the gooey, doe-eyed awe on Mike’s face as Will went over all the ways in which El (read: Will) could never hate Mike.
Jonathan, at the time, resented Mike for it. Will had cried over him, while sitting not three inches away, and Mike had not noticed, or if he had, had not given enough of a shit to say anything about it. Jonathan liked Mike, genuinely, but that scene had played out like the nightmares Jonathan used to get, before he found out that there were worse things out there than playground spats and name-calling. He’d never dreamt of Mike Wheeler in the role of instigator — he was usually a protector of Will, where Jonathan could do nothing but watch.
That night, they stopped at a local motel, citing the need for a good night’s sleep as they were meant to face whatever new horrors the Upside Down had presented them with. Mike had not been a fan of the idea, but Jonathan saw the way Will had sagged his shoulders, so he counted the stop as a necessary evil — was it evil, really, if he were doing it for both himself and his brother? El would have wanted them to rest, anyway.
The look on Mike’s face as they booked the rooms, vacant, glassy-eyed, and thin-lipped, had almost worried Jonathan. Mike was rarely quiet, and those occasions when he was quiet had never been a good sign.
“He goes quiet when Dad yells,” Nancy had once told him. “I think he doesn’t know how to react, so he just doesn't.”
Jonathan wished he didn’t understand where Mike was coming from on that front.
It was later in the night when Jonathan got up, groggy from sleep and only half aware of the world, to use the washroom. It had been a habit of his for years to take a wee in the middle of the night, so he maneuvered easily out of his and Argyle’s shared room, slipping out the door and into the hallway. He didn’t realise, upon first glance, that the bathroom light was on.
Light seeped out under the door. Jonathan got to it and pushed, almost with his full body weight because, again, he was still half-asleep and only half his brain was functioning coherently.
“Fuck!” The curse, along with a distinct yelp and a clatter of something on the ground, had Jonathan straightening up, shooting his eyes around the room. They landed on one Mike Wheeler, frozen; eyes wide, mouth agape — a deer in headlights — watching Jonothan from his unceremonious perch on the closed toilet seat lid.
“He doesn’t know how to react, so he just doesn't." A distinctly Nancy Wheeler-sounding voice in his head had told him.
Jonathan, though, was not on pause and was able to roam his eyes around the room. They widened upon spotting the blood on Mike’s shirt, the arm clutched to his chest as he could protect it, and the sharp-edged, blood-stained blade lying strewn on the bathroom tile. A million thoughts raced through Jonathan’s head, and the one he was most inclined to listen to sounded a bit like Argyle, calling him back to bed so they could pretend to be cuddle-bros again.
Upon shutting that particular train of thought down, because this was definitely the type of situation where Jonathan could not run from, his eyes swivelled back on Mike and found that the boy had hit his unpause. His eyes were wide in quiet terror as his body shook, though from what Jonathan couldn’t tell you. Jonathan watched, almost as if from a different body entirely, as Mike clenched his jaw and furrowed his brow. His eyes narrowed now, his body shaking still. Watched speechlessly as Mike uncurled, reaching down for the blade on the floor with his good hand while watching Jonathan all the while, sharper gaze and quiet contempt keeping the older boy in place.
Mike did his best to hide his arm from Jonathan’s view, but he got a glance nonetheless— long, thin slashes formed at the base of the boy’s inner elbow stretched down, not meeting his pulse point but a few inches above it. There were several that were actively bleeding, but from Jonathan’s near-second glimpse, he thought he’d seen several more from days long past. The sight of blood trickling down the boy’s pale skin was enough to catch Jonathan’s brain up.
“Mike,” he started, feeling oddly out of himself.
“Don’t,” Mike said back, sharp and quick. His eyes were still on Jonathan, boring holes into his very soul; like they could see into him; like they knew that Jonathan had no desire to be in this situation, like they both hated him for it and loathed him for still being there.
He wasn’t entirely certain what kept his mouth moving. Maybe a lack of sleep, or maybe the little voices of Nancy Wheeler and Will in his mind, but Jonathan continued as though Mike hadn’t said anything. “I need you to put that down,” he said with a short gesture toward the blade clenched unnecessarily tight in the boy’s hand.
Mike turned from watching and observing to angry and vicious within a blink. “Get the fuck out!” It would likely have been a louder demand had it not been the middle of the night. For what it was worth, though, Jonathan thought he got the effect anyway. “Get the fuck out, Jonathan! Go away! Go the fuck away! Are you deaf? I said go away!”
Jonathan stayed put, watching as Mike’s teeth ground and as he backed up further into the bathroom. Distantly, Jonathan thought he was eerily reminiscent of a caged animal, injured, frightened, and fending for its life.
“Mike,” he tried again, this time entering the bathroom, occupying a portion of the space Mike had vacated in his frenzy to get away.
And this time, Mike crumpled to the floor, back sliding down the tiled walls, knees coming up to his chest as he wrapped his uninjured arm around them. “Go away,” he said, weaker this time.
Jonathan watched the boy crumple in on himself with a quiet pang in his chest.
“Mike, come on, bud.” He didn’t know what to say, how to soothe whatever was aching so far deep in Mike’s chest that he felt this was his only option. Jonathan silently wondered if he’d made Mike feel as though this were the only option. “Bud, I know you don’t wanna talk to me right now, and that’s cool. Really. I just— I need to know that you’re not— that this isn’t— that you're—” God, how was he supposed to do this? Why was Nancy not here? She would’ve known how to help.
(Except she hadn’t, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten to that. Mike never would’ve felt like this was an option at all. Maybe it had been Nancy’s fault? For not noticing, for not caring enough. She was his sister after all. Jonathan would like to think that he’d have noticed if it were Will, except he doesn’t know if he would have.)
Then there was a quiet scoff, almost a snort, maybe a laugh choked down by a sob. Jonathan didn’t know. “I’m not dying,” he said with the air of someone who knew everything the world had to offer.
“Alright,” he’d offered back, because, as a rule, placating was always better than arguing. “How about letting me look at ‘em, yeah?”
Mike flinched at this, and Jonathan decided, only slightly belatedly, that maybe there were issues he didn’t see coming.
“Okay, alright,” Jonathan soothed, trying to reach out only to realize that with the way he was sitting, Mike was inviting zero touch. “Mike, I can’t just— you gotta at least— Mike.”
Mike didn’t say anything, choosing instead to bury his head in his knees, as if playing a game of peek-a-boo as a child. Jonathan watched the boy carefully; watched him curl around his arm, protecting it and averting it from prying eyes. Jonathan felt his stomach clench.
He was so far out of his depth, uncertain and frightened if he let himself be entirely honest. He'd never pictured himself in such a role, soothing such an ache. He'd never dared even fathom Will being the boy on the floor, curled up and trembling, not from the cold but from fear. Fear of Jonothan and what he entailed for the kid.
“Mike,” he tried to come up with words, but he found that they wouldn't form, not in his head nor on his lips.
“Go away,” Mike said, and this time Jonothan heard it for what it was: a frightened plea from a boy backed into a corner, to be left alone, to not be seen.
Jonothan thought maybe his words were running away from him. He usually felt like they were trapped, clogged in his mind's processor, not yet complete and likely never would be. Then, he didn’t think his brain realised it was meant to be churning out anything resembling words. Instead, he tried reaching forward again. He managed to touch one of Mike’s knees, brushing his hand against it before Mike flinched and curled away.
A soft, muffled noise came from the lump that was Mike Wheeler. Jonathan unbiddenly recognised it to be a sob. This urged him forward, willing out words that hadn’t formed and weren’t put through the processor.
“Mike,” he said for the umteenth time – he wondered abstractly if the kid was growing tired of hearing his own name at this point, if the word was losing its meaning now. “Bud, come on. You can’t just– you can’t let that just bleed out.”
A louder, more indignant noise left Mike at that. A scoff, Jonathan thought. “Like you’d care,” he said, sounding for all the world as if he meant it. Like he thought Jonathan really couldn’t give less of a shit.
That sent a sharp spike through his heart, and Jonathan was left briefly dumbfounded.
Mike wasn’t exactly Jonathan’s favourite person right now, not with the way things have been going between him and Will recently, but he didn’t hate Mike. Not in any way that mattered. Didn’t think he had it in himself to hate someone he’d known since they were a toddler wobbling around his house. Jonathan had known Mike that long, and MIke has known Jonathan his whole life, practically. And yet, here he was, telling Jonathan that he thought Jonathan couldn’t care less. Like you’d care.
“Jesus, bud.” Jonathan couldn’t help it. The thought was so absurd, so far removed from Jonathan’s impression of Mike, that he couldn’t help letting his disbelief spew out. “Like I care? What does that mean?”
Mike, slowly, lifted his head just enough to see Jonathan and for Jonathan to see his eyes, red-rimmed and puffy. “You hate me,” he said, certain but quiet, like he didn’t want to admit it but knew it to be true regardless.
Jonathan took a second to simply stare into the boy’s eyes and wonder how his life came to this point. He licked his lips and breathed out deeply. “I don’t hate you, Mike. I can’t hate you.”
Mike shook his head shortly. “You do, don’t fucking lie.” His head lifted, eyebrows scrunched in frustration, and his mouth curved down. “You hate me ‘cause I’m an asshole to Will. To El. You hate me. Don’t lie.”
Jonathan didn’t know how to respond to that. Because there was that margin of truth to it that no matter how Jonathan approached this, he couldn’t ignore. As much as he would always deny it, Jonathan has had moments wherein he’d thought that maybe life for his siblings would be better off if Mike Wheeler weren’t a part of it. That had never been a desire for the kid to die or for him to hurt himself, but Jonathan wasn’t a believer in Mike Wheeler’s entire innocence. He’d hurt El the day she was taken away in a conversation Jonathan had not heard, had hurt Will the day before that by going about as if Will wasn’t there, had hurt them both long before that, too.
No, Jonathan didn’t think it was fair to outright hate him, not knowing what he does about the kid, but he couldn’t deny the truth in Mike's words either.
“I don’t hate you,” he reiterated because that was the part where he didn’t have to lie, not an ounce. “Believe me, if I hated you, you’d know.”
Mike grunted from the back of his throat, his eyes not meeting Jonathan’s. “Will says you don’t hate anyone. I know that’s a lie, though,” he added in the last part, quieter and mumbled.
Jonathan sighed. “Yeah, there are things— people I– I hate. You’re not one of them, Mike.”
Back in the late days of ‘84, after the second round with the Upside Down, Will had told Jonathan a rather interesting — and apparently useful — factoid about Mike. This was proceeding an especially debilitating panic attack of Mike’s, wherein he had passed out in his frenzy. Will had told Jonathan, quietly and in a voice Jonathan knew to take seriously, that Mike often forgot who he was in his panic. That he’d forget his name entirely, only registering himself in a vague sense. His understanding of where he was and who he was; those were lost to him in his haze. Will had also mentioned that repeating Mike’s name helped ground him. Jonathan hadn’t thought of that night in a while.
“You’re lying,” Mike had repeated, sounding no more convinced than he had been a moment ago.
“Wanna know who I hate most in the world?” Mike watched Jonathan still, eyes sitting stiffly on a little left of Jonathan’s eyes. “Brenner,” he said, the undercurrent of venom as he uttered the word must have been evident to Mike. He slouched further, cuing his shoulders inwards. “I hated— still hate Brenner more than— more than anything, probably.”
“Well, he sucked so,” Mike let his voice trail off, not bothering to meet Jonathan’s eyes still.
“He sucked,” Jonathan agreed easily.
Mike seemed to consider this. “He hurt El,” he acknowledged, his own voice layered thickly with disgust and no shortage of hatred. “He hurt El and kept her locked up for years and treated her like shit, but kept expecting her to return to him anyway. Even though he's a monster who never actually loved her. He hurt El. I—”
Before the conclusion of that awful, bewilderingly stupid declaration was said, Jonathan piped up. “Jesus, Mike, no!”
Mike flinched but clamped his mouth shut.
Jonathan, for his part, continued to stare at the boy. For what felt like the millionth time that night, Jonathan was left without words. His mind was whirling, reeling, and sending him for a loop.
Instead of finding words this time, he inspected Mike's profile. Hunched in on himself, knees to his chest, one arm wrapped around them while the other lay somewhere between his chest and his thighs. His cheek lay resting on the top of his knees, eyes cast downwards and away from Jonathan, hair ruffled not from a pillow but likely from his own hands.
His fingers were bitten, uneven, and dry; Jonathan hadn't noticed until then. The roots of his hairline were sore and a little red, only noticeable now that he didn't have the large mop of hair on his face curtaining it. His arms were slim, face a little pale, cheeks a little too hollow. If Jonathan didn't know any better, he might’ve thought Mike was sick. He certainly looked the part. Jonathan hadn't noticed it earlier though, and he wanted to believe it wasn't his own ignorance that blinded him.
Thinking back on the past week that he’s been in Mike’s presence, he realised a little belatedly that Mike almost exclusively wore long-sleeves. Jackets, polos, overshirts, anything not displaying his arms. He had his hair in his face more often than not and the deep bags under his eyes were somehow less prominent out and about than they were in that dimly lit bathroom. Jonathan wanted to believe that it was on purpose.
Mike was hiding, and as much as it was Will’s innate gift to do so, Mike was good. They hid differently, and were as effective as each other in it, as much as Jonathan wished for the contrary.
While Will hid in small spaces — crouching low so his head wouldn’t peep out, curling into a ball to make himself as small and unthreatening as he could be — Mike hid in plain sight. He hid where no one expected him to because, generally speaking, his hiding spots weren’t ones really. And he had gotten away with it most of his life, so Jonathan figured he was pretty skilled at it.
He hid in the breaks between conversations. Hid in the unpleasant deposition he put up more often than not. He hid in the long sleeves and jeans and caps. He hid in the eyes that roved over him, hid in the way they chalked up his issues to untamed childishness.
Mike was hiding from Jonathan, from Will, from El— likely from anyone and everyone he could get away with.
Jonathan had failed to see through it, had failed to find the real Mike Wheeler hidden behind a veil of normalcy he put up. Mike was hiding, maybe even from himself.
“Mike,” he said, knowing entirely too well how repetitive this was getting. “You're not Brenner.” He felt the need to say it, to ensure that Mike knew that there was at least one other person who believed it. Jonathan was sure there wasn't a person who didn't believe this, but he digressed.
Mike snorted, his head bobbing momentarily with the motion. “Well, yeah.” He sounded like he believed the words as well.
Jonathan felt a quiet rush of relief seep through him. At the very least, Mike wasn’t ignorant enough to think something as absurd as that.
“I'm not Brenner,” he continued, seeming entirely oblivious to Jonathan's relief. “I'm not Brenner. I didn't hurt El like that. But I still hurt her. I hurt Will, too. I'm not that fucking monster, and I sure as hell am not as bad, but I do fucking suck.” That last part of the sentence didn't seem to be intentional; Mike clicked his mouth shut, brows furrowed in frustration.
Jonathan licked his lips. “Okay, sure. You hurt them, I won't deny it because it's true,” Jonathan started, watching as the boy's eyes skittered away from him. “You weren't the best, and sure, I kinda wish you’d treat them better; I think they’d deserve that much after everything they’ve been through.”
Mike pressed his lips together, swallowing as inconspicuously as he could manage.
“But I think you need to talk to them, instead of taking it out on yourself.”
At this, the boy flinched, pressing his forehead to his knees. Jonathan chose not to comment, worrying briefly if he was saying the right things.
“I don't think that’s what they’d want even if they hated you. Which, by the way—” he smiled then, reaching out tentatively to Mike’s knee— "there's no world where those two could ever hate you. Even if you were the worst person alive, even if you’d ripped off a limb of theirs, there's no way they could hate you.”
“You don't know that,” Mike retorted into his knees.
“Sure, I do,” he replied easily. “They're my siblings, remember?”
If he believed Jonathan, he didn't show it. He didn't show much, didn't do much for the next couple of minutes. In this space of time, Jonathan got to thinking about what he was going to have to do once Mike replied; once Mike uncurled and let Jonathan treat his wounds — if Mike let him treat his wounds. Nothing noteworthy popped into his head.
“You should hate me,” Mike uttered at last, almost hesitant in his words. “I kinda hate me.”
Jonathan chose not to comment on this either, not yet. “Well, I don’t. El wouldn't, neither would Will.” Jonathan smiled, squeezing Mike’s knees once. “You know that.”
Mike refused to meet Jonathan’s eyes, and his shoulder tensed up further. He didn’t acknowledge Jonathan’s words, choosing instead to fixate on a point on the titles a foot away from Jonathan.
Jonathan, for his part, decided that that was the end of that. “Alright,” he said, pushing up onto his feet. “I came here for a reason, and I think I might need to make good on that.” He nodded once to the toilet.
Mike followed the motion with his eyes and paused. His eyes darted back to Jonathan, and it was as if a switch had been flicked in his head; he sprang out of his ball of limbs. He got to his feet, injured arm still clutched to his chest, and made to leave. Jonathan took hold of his uninjured arm before he could.
“Are you sure you can treat it?” Jonathan had a lot more he needed to confirm before he let the boy go, but this was the only one he was sure to get an answer to.
Mike rolled his eyes, apparently affronted by the notion that he couldn't do as much. “Yeah,” he said, tugging his hand out of Jonathan's and making the rest of the way out of the bathroom.
The door clicked shut, and Jonathan was left with a lot to think about.