Chapter Text
It was evening, and Max and Mike were eating cereal.
This was a common norm for them in the evenings, when it was too late to eat a full meal and too long to wait for breakfast. They didn’t always eat together, but this evening they did. Mike at the table re-reading a book on Greek Mythology, and Max on the kitchen counter.
They had the radio on. Neither of them knew the words of the songs playing, so they just listened and ate in near silence, pondering their own private thoughts.
The purple handled spoon, Max’s favourite, scraped along the bottom of her bowl as she shovelled Lucky Charms into her mouth. She was deep in her thoughts. Deep in one primary thought actually. A Thought about an email that had come through that afternoon.
She finished her cereal and tilted the bowl up to her mouth so she could drink the remaining milk. Right on cue Mike shot her an irritated scowl. He thought the milk at the bottom of the bowl was icky. Max thought his leftover milk was wasted.
Max made her slurping louder just to make him roll his eyes back to his own bowl. She smirked at the back of his head. Then the smirk drained away.
She needed to tell him about the email. Soon. Now really. It would become such a big thing if she left it too late.
She took a breath before she could lose her nerve. “Hey Mike?”
He replied with his mouth full. “No you can’t finish mine, get your own.”
“No it’s…” She rubbed her arms, then crossed them. She looked up at the ceiling as if truly unbothered. “You know how you’re driving up to see Nancy in a few weeks?”
“Yeah.” Mike said. Max still was staring up at the ceiling but she could hear him getting up and moving across from her to put his dishes in the sink.
“Could you drop me somewhere on the way?”
Max heard him pause in his putting things away, his attention now on her. “Um maybe…where are you going?”
Max looked down at the floor now. It was filthy, she really needed to give it a sweep. “To see my dad.”
Mike turned off the radio with a click. He slowly leaned up against the counter beside her. “I thought he left your mum after…after Starcourt?”
“That was my step-father. My dad lives in some town by a big lake sort of on the way to where Nancy lives. I didn’t know anything about him, I still don’t really. My mum left him when I was really little. I wasn’t even trying to find him, it’s just I forgot about my letter.”
She looked at Mike now. He fiddled with the worn sleeves of the ugly pink and orange cardigan he wore. Other than that, his expression was unreadable.
“When I wrote my letters for everyone while Venca was…anyway I wrote a letter for my dad. I hoped my mum would at least try to get it to him, but I didn’t have that much real hope.” Max combed her fingers through her hair as she spoke. “After…just everything that happened, I forgot about it. But then I got this email from him.” Max’s breath began to shake a little, but she was smiling. “My mum did find him, somehow. Through an old mutual friend or something. She’s now clarified that I’m not dying and now he’s asked if he could meet me.”
Max laughed a bit, her skin tingled with a nervous excitement. It felt more real now, now she had told someone.
Her dad actually wanted to meet her. She hadn't had any room in recent years to even imagine it.
Mike’s eyes were still on her, but he wasn’t really looking at her anymore. He was rather still. Whatever he was thinking he was keeping contained behind his face.
Max noticed this but still asked again, “So could you drop me off on the way to Nancy’s?”
A few seconds passed before Mike broke out of his trance and nodded mechanically at her. “Sure. Whatever.”
He pushed away from the counter and walked off in the direction of the stairs.
Max frowned. She followed him to the kitchen doorway. “Mike? Mike, is something wrong?”
Mike paused halfway up the stairs, he moved his head towards her but didn’t meet her eyes. “No, just…I’ll drop you off ok? Just leave it alone, Mayfield.”
He ascended the rest of the stairs and out of sight. Max was left alone in the kitchen doorway.
Her eyebrows were furrowed and her hands were limp by her sides. She shook herself and huffed. The previous tingles in her skin were replaced by an unpleasant prickling. She stomped away from the stairs, back into the kitchen to wash up her bowl.
~
By this time, Max Mayfeild and Mike Wheeler had been living together in the Wheeler’s house for almost exactly a year. Arguably, Max didn’t ever officially move in, rather there came a point where she just stopped returning to her house.
In the years following the final battle against Vecna there had been many such changes.
Nancy moving out was one of the first. Later on Mike’s parents decided to move. His mother in particular wanted a new start. They took Holly with them, but Mike stayed. Him staying was not the original plan.
Mike had pleaded with his parents for them to not leave Hawkings, then he pleaded for them to leave him behind. When his mother told him they were planning on renting out the house to new owners he jumped at the idea and told them he would pay the rent just like anyone else. It had been a long negotiation, but eventually it was agreed Mike could stay behind until he went to university.
Mike Wheeler. The sole Wheeler of the Wheeler Household. Or so he would have been.
Max had been coming over to the Wheelers more and more frequently for years, even more so after Nancy left as she could sleep over in her room. At the time, especially with everything going with The Upsidedown, it had felt safer to be at the heart of everything.
Even before Max’s mother left Hawkings to try at school again, Max had made herself a regular. Though her mother leaving certainly helped solidify the fact.
Mike first truly realised that Max wasn’t just going to be over for DnD anymore when she arrived with a trash-bag full of old cuddly toys which she arranged in the corner of Nancy’s old room. A few weeks later she had nonchalantly asked how much her share of the rent was over breakfast.
It wasn't that Mike didn’t notice she was around all the time, but his house really did become quite a hub for the group. Friends were around all the time, more often than not without even announcing themselves. He could walk downstairs into the basement and be completely undeterred to find Lucas sprawled out on the sofa, Dustin with his hands in the guts of what used to be a computer, or Max strumming out a song on a guitar they found in a neighbour's bin.
Or Eleven giving Will a haircut. The two of them giggling in sync. Their eyes scrunching the same way in the corners.
As each member of the party left for University or College or a new town or a job or to travel, it felt like one day Mike looked up and it was just him and Max left in their neighbouring bedrooms.
Max was taking a gap year and was working. She was up early on weekdays to skate to the local gas station. Mike worked part time at a fast food place and also was taking creative writing classes which he didn’t always show up to. He spent a lot of his time writing at his desk in his room by the window. Max would be scoffing toast and orange juice for breakfast before Mike had even woken up.
(Max liked orange juice with bits in it. Mike hated it with bits in. He told her so often.)
And so Mike and Max came to live side by side. It seemed that it didn’t matter that they had befriended each other last out of everyone in their group.
~
In the weeks leading up to the trip, Mike didn’t visit Max’s room once. Not even on Saturday mornings.
Max wasn’t deeply worried. They argued all the time, they’d move past it soon enough.
They didn’t usually eat all their meals together, but at the end of most days they would find themselves at the dinner table exchanging complaints about idiot customers and boring class assignments. Or they would sit in the living room, Mike on the couch, and Max in what used to be Mike’s dad’s armchair, eating as they watched TV. Max had started forcing Mike to watch her favourite romcoms. He wined about it to no end but never left until he had seen how the film ended.
In these weeks however, Mike started avoiding when Max was in the kitchen making herself food, either eating way earlier than usual or clearly waiting for her to be finished before leaving his room.
Though Max had never minded eating by herself, her food now sat funny in her stomach at the repeated sight of Mike’s empty chair.