Chapter Text
Mike Wheeler’s hand was mindlessly flicking from channel to channel on the radio as he sped along the freeway. It had been a day to say the least, and his shoulders tensed with each static channel that passed. Suddenly, a wave of some pop rock beat flooded the car, quickly dying out as a voiceover came in. Mike sighed, running a hand through his mop of curls, giving up and letting the voice and the breeze from his cracked window pass over him. His meeting—if he could call getting coffee, waiting 30 minutes for a 5-minute chat that quite frankly could have been a phone call—had not been what he had thought. Perhaps he had the ego of a writer, arguably part of the job, but he genuinely thought it would have been good news, namely that his book had sold. Before he left, he had assumed that was the only type of meeting that needed to be in person, news so great that his agent just had to see his facial reaction. Now, in retrospect, it seems courteous if not necessary to meet when telling your client that you’re letting them go, that you just don’t feel the story they’ve been working on for the better part of four years is good enough, that they are not good enough.
He drove on, a crushing weight on his chest, with no direction. He was the only one of his friends still in Hawkins. Mike was supposed to be a writer, sell his book before 25, find success, happiness even. He was supposed to have no regrets, and when he sold his book, a story about monsters, alternate dimensions, and a ragtag group of kids, he was supposed to finally see that everything was worth it. Instead, he saw himself suddenly as he was. Slowly not answering his friends phone calls, dropping out of Hawkins community college to work at a restaurant and focus on writing, moving out a few blocks from his childhood home to a shitty apartment, having the washing machine break in said shitty apartment and having to go back home so his mom could do his laundry-
He stopped, his thoughts racing ahead of him with every damned choice that led him here.
Stuck.
Alone.
He felt the urge to close his eyes and throw his head back, and before he knew it he was pulling over, cars speeding past him. He put the car in park and did then throw his head back, letting out a long, slow exhale. It was in that minute he heard a voice drift off, introducing a new song. He needed to calm down, so he reached over, turned the song up loud, and closed his eyes once again. The first line came in, and immediately he felt his shoulders untense a little. The singer had a beautiful tone, emotion carrying in her voice easily, and he felt himself listening to the lyrics.
You can say that we are nothin’ but you know the truth.
A love song, then. His mind tried to wander, but he stopped it. Reminiscing now, when he was already emotional, was not a good idea. He just wanted to feel the song.
With her arms out like an angel through the car sunroof.
Mike felt his shoulders retense. He felt the urge to look around, make sure he was alone. A woman singing about another woman? He knew he was alone, and it was a harmless song. It was possible he misheard too. And then the chorus came in.
You can kiss a hundred boys in bars
Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling
You can say it’s just the way you are
Make a new excuse, another stupid reason
Good luck, babe
Mike’s mouth was dry, a slight tremble to his hand. Why was he having this reaction? He thought of Will, then.
His friend. His best friend. That was one of their last conversations. His stomach churned with guilt and something else he couldn’t quite name. He thought of El then too, their last conversation a declaration of love he couldn’t reciprocate. How even in those last moments, he didn’t say it. He had thought about that for so long, rationalized it as shock at her choice, denial of accepting it. But he knew there was something else. The way his throat tightened around those 3 words, even in that moment, when everything inside of him screamed for her, those words didn’t feel right. He loved her, he did, but the way she said those words felt different. And Mike had never felt that feeling with her.
The song’s sudden switch up pulled him back to reality as the bridge came in.
And when you wake up next to him in the middle of the night.
With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife
And when you think about me all of those years ago
You’re standing face to face with “I told you so”
You know I hate to say it, “I told you so”
And suddenly his mind was reeling. Scenes flashed through his mind like a film reel, moments with each of his friends, moments he cherished. Playing dnd with the party, El introducing him to Eggo extravaganzas, AV club with Dustin and Lucas and…and… Will. Will on the swings, alone, him asking him if he wanted to be friends. Will saying yes. Will drawing, the little crease he’d get between his eyes when he was really focused. The painting, still hanging next to his desk. Will leaning over his shoulder, warm breath on his ear, as he pointed to the shield Mike was wielding. “You’re the heart, Mike. The heart.”
And suddenly, Mike was clenching his chest, his heart aching as if it was going to burst. His breaths grew shallow and maybe it was the pressure of the day, or the way his stomach churned to the singer’s words, but suddenly his shoulders shook, silent sobs racking his body. He rarely broke down like this and even now, on the side of the road, alone in his car it felt wrong. It felt like hours, as the years of grief, not just of losing El, but losing his friends too, losing Will. Soft, gentle Will, who looked at him with a tenderness no one had ever shown him. Will, who he treated like shit for years, scared of his own feelings, that different feeling deep in his gut that he knew he should be feeling with El. Scared, praying it was just late, that it would come if he stayed with her, but it never did. But he knew that feeling. He knew that feeling because he felt it with Will.
God, he was an asshole, and suddenly he was screaming, banging his hands against the steering wheel, that this was his life, that if he just hadn’t been so damn afraid he could’ve had everything.
Everything.
He felt his heartbeat suddenly, and opened the car door, tumbling out, narrowly avoiding the road. He stood, leaning against his car, learning to breathe again, the fresh air helping him to bring him back to himself. He stood like that for what felt like forever. When the burning feeling in his chest subsided to a dull ache, he got back in the car and drove himself home.
***
Mike turned the key to his apartment hearing the door creak on its hinges. He kicked off his shoes, dropped his bags and went to the bathroom. He felt his exhaustion from the car ride and this morning following him with each step, although it was only the afternoon, until he came to the sink. Mike quickly splashed freezing water on his face and felt the sharp sting of cold waking him slightly. He looked up then, the mirror showing a shell of himself. He saw his unkempt curls, his wrinkled shirt, two red rings around his eyes.
God, he was a mess.
He finished drying his face and suddenly that feeling struck him again. That void in his heart, every possibility before him, yet no will to do anything. Nothing pulling him forward. He tried to think back to the last time he really felt that drive.
His book was the answer his mind always gave, as if that was the only thing it was allowed to suggest. As if everything else was kept in a locked vault. That damned book, and suddenly there he was at his bag, pulling out the manuscript, slamming it on his peeling coffee table and plopping down.
Mike flipped through the pages frantically. What was wrong with it? What did his agent say? A self-insert? Well, Mike did relate to his main character, Mark, the paladin. They processed things the same, hid their emotions to stay strong for the group, the self-proclaimed leader of the bunch.
The heart.
A flash in his mind, leaving as quick as it came. He tried to shake it off, plowing on. There was Landon, the ranger, more jock-like than the others, but still pragmatic, brave. Then, Dylan, the bard, the comic relief, intelligent and kind. Finally, Lara. The mage. The power. More powerful than them all. That was the party, the core four that led a mission to defeat an interdimensional monster, succeeding, coming home and returning to normal life. The classic hero’s journey.
He stood up, started to pace, turning over each plot beat. He knew the story like the back of his hand. Of course, it wasn’t true, nothing like what they went through. He did let his mind wander now. Back to Dustin, Lucas, El, the upside down. Vecna.
He felt his heart quicken, and looked back to the pages, now strewn about below him. He saw the translation of his friends in his work. Mark was him, only better, never failing the party. And El, El was their mage. She saved them so many times, and she did in real life too, only in his story, she lived. She got the life she deserved. Dustin, smart and Lucas, strong both ending up back where they started, changed, but better. Here, with him. The party returned to normal life in Hawkins.
It was bullshit. His agent had told him in different words, but that’s what she was saying. She had said none of the emotion felt genuine. A half-assed self insert. He wanted to fight it, scream at her that she saw something in it, years ago, and said as much, but she only shrugged and said “things change.”
He crumpled once more to the floor, and began reading from the page he flicked too. He didn’t know how much time had passed, only that his stomach grumbled pulling him out of it. His writing, at least he thought, was decent. Immersive. But there was something missing. He knew what it was.
He always had. He had tried, so many times, so many different ways over the years to write the wizard. But that didn’t work.
So he wrote the sorcerer. It never stuck either. Mike brushed it off as not fitting into the story with the mage already there, or being too difficult, too many character arcs, 100 different reasons. Never equating it to the real world. To the tense feeling in his stomach.
That was the missing piece. There was no party without Will, but he couldn’t bring himself to write it. He felt the locked folder in his mind unlock and supply an answer. The last time he felt it, that drive, was when Will went missing. He knew he would’ve given the world, anything for him, to get him back, to save him.
And suddenly, he was back in the car, hearing Chappell Roan’s lyrics, he had learned her name from the host. Sweat beaded on his neck yet a shiver ran down his spine.
He had known this for a long time. He had hidden from this for a long fucking time. But to hear her sing it so loudly, so openly, it unlocked something that hadn’t been there before. An understanding. Maybe this was why he never wrote Will into his story. He couldn’t ever capture the real Will, words could not contain him, but maybe it was because of this. Their past. How he pushed him away. His guilt for doing it, when in reality Will was the only one who probably could’ve understood him. His fear of being like this, of being perceived as different. But mostly, it was the potential. Will had loved him. Told him as much that day in the Squawk, and Mike had pretended for years he was talking about someone else, that he was being narcissistic, stupid.
But late at night, he would think back, let his mind mull over those memories, those interactions. That day in the field, when Mike felt himself wanting to reciprocate, trying to. He felt that potential like a weight on his heart each day, dragging it with him from agent to agent, publisher to publisher. What could’ve been. What he could’ve had if only he’d heard this song 3 years ago. Or 5. Or 10.
Mike came back to himself, suddenly, a little lighter, as if admitting it to himself without the cover of night made it real. There was something, he had felt it, and he wasn’t running from it. And suddenly, Mike felt impulsive. No, not impulsive per se, but as if he was running out of time. He had spent the last 3 years without his friends, seeing them less and less, and more so than the others, he hardly talked to Will. Even in the group, Will never initiated conversation with him if he could help it. They went from best friends to strangers. And Mike knew, had always known, but really knew now that it was his fault.
He was the asshole.
He ran to his kitchen, rifling through drawers until he found it. A pamphlet. He called the number on the back. The airline picked up, and it only took him a matter of minutes to book himself on tomorrow’s flight to Manhattan. To Will.
He was going to make things right.