Chapter Text
JULY 1988
MIKE
Micheal Wheeler had lived in Angel Fire New Mexico for as long as he could remember. He'd always lived in that same two story town house, rode the same rickety subway to and from his stupid dirty high-school that stopped at the same place every day.
Don't get him wrong, it was cool, you know. You live somewhere long enough you know just how to get the temperature of your room right in the blazing summer heat. You know the shortcut to the field for lunch after being shoved in halls plenty of times while en route.
He wouldn't call it a charming town, but it's home. And it's familiar.
And familiar was good.
Mike would consider himself a simple guy. Or simple enough
I mean, he dressed a little much. With his long, curling black hair (that his father always complained made him look like a girl, especially in the summer when he ties up his hair to play with his sister holly outside while his mom gets drunk).
He usually dressed about the same every day. It usually consisted of his baggy jeans, sweater or t-shirt, and raggedy old vans and converse being held together by the grace of God and whatever advice he can give them from Bon Jovi's "living on a prayer".
Mike also had a big personality, which might explain his small circle of people if he wasn't so cocky.
He often got told he was being too loud, or too headstrong. Even by his best friends. And he didn't mean to be, he was just very particular, and usually correct. He couldn't understand when people didn't agree with him and would usually try to argue until they did.
Mike also considered himself cursed.
His family consisted of his awful dad who never did anything but go to work and sit watching tv, his usually wasted mother, his innocent little sister Holly, and maybe the only person in the world he could talk to, his older sister Nancy. But she was gone off to some smart school now, so Mike was alone.
And it was dangerous for it to just be Mike and his thoughts.
You see, about a year or so ago, Mike had realized after maybe his 100th rewatch of Star Wars with his best (and only) friends - Lucas and Dustin- that he was in fact bisexual.
Before that he’d had a really hard time accepting himself. sure, hed known, but it was easier in the kind of town that he lived in to pretend it was something that didnt matter, or that wasnt there. But it always haunted him. Expecially after being told as a kid thats what he would end up as if he did something wrong in life. Or after being shoved in the hall and being called exactlly what he knew he was but couldnt admit.
But, allas, after months of denying it, as soon as Anakin Skywalker appeared on the shiny silver screen he was a goner. Big time. He'd actually had to get up and rush to thr bathroom, feeling quite ill.
well shit
Mike hadn't been homophobic or anything before his crisis, but he couldn't say the same for his dad. The look Mike was aware his dad would give him was enough to send him spiraling for months after the fact. Mike was in no place mentally or financially to be kicked out of the house. Nor was he ever in the mood to be sent to conversion therapy, So Mike shut down.
A month before final exams, Mike was out for two and a half weeks. His friend alternated days to check on him, which was sweet and all, but it didn't give Mike as much time as he'd have liked to process his new feelings. After all, it wasn't like they could fully understand Mike's twisted and sick mind anyways.
Even if they could, he'd never given them the chance.
But all together, Mike thinks he's a pretty rad dude, if he just ignores all his bullshit. The people in this shit ass town are all just boring.
No one here understands his style. And yeah, maybe it does sound a little bit stupid and basic of him, but it's true! Everyone here is either old and republican or young and just an asshole. Sometimes he has to remind himself during these thoughts and tell himself that college will be better. only 2 more years now. Two years till he can go see Nancy, go make new friends, go be out.
2 years too many
Living in a small town gets you used to the norm. The same neighbors, the same quiet streets, the same faces on the trains and stores and classes.
And it fucking sucks most times.
Especially when you know everyone and you made lasting bad impressions on pretty much each one exept your 4 friends (not to mention that two of his other friends that he doesn't count are grown adults working as a drivers ED teacher and at a local bookstore).
Mike just can't seem to help himself. He stutters and over shares back and talks too much. he never can seem to bite his tongue. Or at least thats what his mother used to say to him when hed bicker with her about bed time.
So in towns like this, the norm is what you have to settle with. And Mike had.
Mike had accepted the norm
That was until a month ago.
It was mid July, school was almost starting. He'd taken Holly out to get ice cream in the downtown area of the city against his will. It was a little nicer than his side of town, but not by much. Just more people and more buildings. This was his job now. Not that he could do much about it.
every day he took his little sister out on adventures or sat around watching her at their busted up townhouse. Fun.
After his episode during the school year, his dad insisted he stop being a "lazy ass" or he'd end up a sissy. Then hed usually follow that up with that he just concered about his 'only son' didnt want mike ending up 'queer', “like they talk about on the news, micheal".
How fucking ironic
But when he whined to his mom like he always did to get out of things, his drunken mother stated that it would be good for him. To connect with his sister. To get out of this house that he always complained about anways. And now he definitely couldn't not do it.
great
So here he was, being drug though the town by a little girl with pigtails who couldn't even reach the sink to brush her teeth without a stool. The girl whom Mike loved dearly but was beginning to not be able to stand.
"Miiiike" she wines, cotton candy cone in hand, the merging colors melting onto the cracked and dirty town sidewalk. Everything in this godforsaken town just needed a damn power washing. "I don't wanna go back home yet!" She complains.
Mike sighs. Neither did he. But the longer he was in public, the more risk he took of someone from school seeing him. He couldnt risk that.
"Can't we just go to the arcade? Or anything at all? Marsha's babysitter takes her wherever she wants!"
This ticks Mike off a little. He wasn't just some babysitter, he was a teenager with a life who just so happens to be stuck in thr shittiest predicament someone can be in.
"I'm not your fucking babysitter, Holly."
"That's not what mom and dad say"
"Well they're fucking idiots, don't listen to anything they say. And shut the hell up, I already paid for your ice cream. Next time you want to go to the arcade to, make some money first. I'm not exactly overflowing with cash."
This shuts Holly right up.
So he leads her to the subway station. They take the familiar route from downtown to their little stop on the edge of their forgotten street where the wind made the stop-signs squeak as they tried to hold fast to their posts and the streetlights were a strange shade of yellow that felt almost suffocating on those hot, humid nights.but it was a comforting place all the same. Charming, in a way. If he pretends hard enough.
Which would need to be really, really hard.
Mike had found peace in staring at the subway advertisement above the rail he held onto. He liked the familiarity of how they somehow never changed them out. How he could always see the same things, like the dental add and the number to call in case of a law emergency. He liked that. He liked the norm, the familiarity
He thinks
Maybe part of Mike only enjoyed the norm of his town because he wasn't considered part of the world’s norm. But by living by what he knew he was supposed to here, it felt like he could blend in anywhere. Like he wasn't an outsider in his own home. But he knew deep down it wasn’t true. That no matter how familiar things were, he still lived in a shitty home with a shitty family and went to a shitty school with shitty people. Denying always was the easiest opt-out though.
When Holly pulled him off the train and up the wide stairs that led from dark, bleak, yellow-lit underground of the train station to the familiar road where the wind blew sour from the now distant city, he saw someone. Not just anyone. Not just someone he could recognize from daily passing and run ins. Not just another empty town wash-up.
It wasn't Mrs. Phillips on the way to bookclub on Tuesdays at 3:00, nor Mr. Edison on his path to get more cigarettes after he and his wife got into another argument (if it was the whole block would know by now).
It wasn't any of the kids on his street that he knew so well from fetching the ball they'd kick into his backyard. The ones that giggled and could be heard through the thin walls and shitty windows of his town house. It wasn’t any of the kids his age that went to his school. Not that he talked to any of them at all unless provoked to do so.
This was someone, someone new.
Mike got a shitty glimpse, barely one at all. All he truly saw was a blur. But an unfamiliar blur. And like unfamiliar things usually did, it set something off in him. Something hungry
All Mike could get was a flash of a leather jacket, slightly faded as if It had been passed down, a whif of a scent of flowers and wood, and a blur of the prettiest shade of hazel hed ever seen. A glowing halo that felt like staring strait into a pot of honey.
He wanted to follow, find out who they were, find a way to add him to the still-standing roster of people he surrounded himself with. Or maybe even get a name, or maybe even….
But alas, he was being led by a sugar-powered, ponytailed machine who had managed to get Mike all the way to the edge of their old, run down city street without Mike actually moving himself or his feet at all.
damn he'd been deep in thought
Also when the hell did Holly get so strong??
When they'd gotten home, his mom pestered about the outing, ushering the two to the couch. But Mike maneuvers this conversation. He gets up and leaves Holly to share her testimony alone as Mike escapes to his room to think. he considers writing about his experience, but that felt stupid, and too much for just seeing someone passing by quickly. Someone who'd probably just been visiting this town. But then again, who visits "middle of nowhere" USA? Maybe Mike had hope, maybe his life was turning for thr brighter,
maybe this town isn't so bad.
For the rest of the summer, Mike would watch Holly and occasionally hang out with his friends. As he usually did.
But every afternoon, he'd come home ans think about the same thing. And it was so strange.
It freaked him out because it was like the whole world he'd carefully crafted out of delicate, breakable pieces of this never-changing town, had just came crumbling down with just a brush past it. And it made Mike wonder if he'd just been living life wrong this whole time. Because nothing should fall that easily.
So now he sits at night, cradling the shattered bits of what he knew was safe while truly wanting to reach for the blurry pieces that he could hardly make out. It's like he knows they exist now but he doesn't know how to get to them.
One day, as he sits with Holly in the living room of their "house" watching some MTV music video with her, Mike decides he can't take it anymore.
"Hey holly?"
"Hm"
Mike scratches the back of his neck "do you like living here"
Holly shrugs "sure"
"No, like really Holly. Do you ever want to leave."
Holly looks up, eyebrow raised "why? What happened? Are we moving? What's going on?"
Mike sighs and shakes his head, letting an 'i wish' be muttered under his breath before looking back at the TV.
"Nevermind, just, forget i said anything at all."
Holly huffs and shrugs "whatever dude."
Mike can't stand the stupid song that's playing, and there's far too much going on in his head. It's all enough to make him feel honestly a little ill. So he stands up and ruffles Holly's hair, earning a grumble.
"I'll be in my room. Hollar if anything happens."
And with that, he trudges the short distance from the living area to his room.
It was a small room. Almost a shoe-box that Mike had just become a custom to after living in this room since birth. He's just lucky he never had to share a room like Nancy and holly did for a while.
The rooms blue walls and dark wooden floors might be more welcoming if the walls weren't scratched up and the floor wasn't almost completely hidden with Mike's stuff, which consisted of mostly clothes and random shit.
He'd had the same bunkbed since he was in the 2nd grade and begged his mom for it so Lucas could sleepover. It was made of white wood and decorated with a green and navy quilt that was unmade and clearly old. His sheets were black and his pillows were forest green. He's not sure how he ended up with the colors he did, but he never really thinks to question it.
He had posters on almost all of the walls. They ranged from "the replacements", "radiohead", "deftones", and "The Beatles" to "IT", "E.T.", "Ghostbusters", and "The Sandlot". He had DND posters decorating around his window, most of them being small collectable posters that came with the matching figurines that lined his shelf. He had a light brown rug, bought by his mother, beside his rickety old wooden desk that was also almost fully covered by paper and pens.
His window was usually cracked open, causing the black curtains that adorned it to billow into his room carelessly. Just being moved by the gentle petrichor-smelling wind in a wondrous dance that made Mike want to beg for that kind of freedom.
The freedom jellyfish have, where they don't do anything themselves but let the tide take them where they may. And they don't fight it, they just go.
And Mike often thought about that. A life where he could live carelessly. A life where he wasn't trudging his big boots though a life he barely gave two shits about anyways. He didn't care if he got good grades because he didn't care about college. And he didn't care about college because he didn't care about a job. And he didn't care about a job because he couldn't see himself with a future. It was a never ending rabbithole and he was stuck in it's loop.
So yeah, he wished he didn't have to make choices. Or decide things for himself. Because he didn't care what happens to him anyways. He'd always just been going through the motions.
Mike groaned as he flops down onto his bed, which creaked in unison. And immediately, his head became swamped.
All he wanted was to go back to normal. He didn't understand why seeing someone random had set off a timer in his brain. And the worst part was he didn't know what it was ticking down to. He'd never been so lost.
But nonetheless, he drifted asleep slowly as he thought about a new life.
One built not on fragile parts, but a steady rock.
He just had to figure out what that meant.