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Mike Wheeler is sinking.
Figuratively, of course. It’s all just figurative. His parents’ growing ignorance is figurative. His relationship with El slipping away from him is just figurative. Hell, apparently his worry that the Party is growing apart is just figurative. It’s figurative. It’s fake. It’s not real and it never will be.
Will used to be the one who seemed the least ready to move on from long nights of D&D and sleepovers with Cheeto bags and watching Star Wars. But now it’s Mike, wondering why he let it fall apart in the first place. It’s Mike. It’s Mike who started the whole mess, really, and now he’s the one trying to fix it. Lucas says it doesn’t add up. Dustin says he’s overreacting.
El helps. She isn’t allowed out very often, as Hopper is as overprotective as ever, but when she is she and Mike make the most of it. They spend their time looking at stars and laughing over dumb jokes and it makes Mike feel alive. It makes him feel real, it makes them feel real, and considering he’s constantly being told his feelings are invalid and nothing more than paranoia, it feels nice. He wants to stay that way forever, but he knows they can’t. Everything is changing right before his eyes, and there’s nothing he can do about it. No matter how hard he tries, how much he wants it—everything is falling apart. And there’s nothing he can do about it.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
Starcourt is a disaster. It destroys bonds, strengthens old ones, and creates new ones all simultaneously, but Mike thinks all it did was create lifelong trauma and burn a hole in their hearts that will never be replaced. A Hopper-shaped hole. An Alexei-shaped hole. A happiness-shaped hole, if he’s being perfectly honest and dramatic, and for that he’ll never forgive whoever’s idea it was to force El to open the gate. It took Barb from Nancy, almost took Will from Mike and the rest of the Party, and now three more lives have been stolen from them the way a cat eats a bird without hesitation. He’s not sure how much more he can handle before he crumbles.
He finds ways to cope with the nightmares. Picking at his nails. Biting his lip. Anything that’ll be a distraction from the horror that awaits him every time his head hits the pillow. Pain is usually a good strategy for that, right or wrong, and it works. It’s morbid, and Mike hates how chapped his lips look all the time and how his nails got so disgusting even his friends noticed (since when do they care how his nails look?), but it’s worth it. It’s worth it, and it works. So he’ll keep doing it until he finds something better.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
When the Byers move away, everything turns to shit. Taking Will and Jonathan away was bad enough, but now El is going too, and Mike feels himself start to crumble. It’s piece by piece, mind you, the process so slow you almost don’t notice it, but it’s there. Mike knows it. Mike feels it. A piece of him dies inside every time someone mentions their names. A piece of him dies inside every time he sees the picture of the Party winning the Science Fair on his desk. A piece of him dies inside every day, and Mike’s tired of it. He’s tired of it.
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why Joyce did it. Sure, Hawkins is a shithole, everyone knows that, but at least they were together in the shithole. They had each other. They had each other, the only ones who truly knew what was always eating at them, and Mike thought he’d have that forever. Will was his best friend. Will wasn’t something you could take away and not expect anyone to care. Will was Will, and now that that was gone, nothing would ever be the same.
He watches Jonathan slam the trunk of their car shut, hopping back into the drivers’ seat and giving a sad smile in their direction. Mike isn’t sure whether it’s to something or someone in particular, whether it be Nancy or their house or whatever, but he feels a lump form in his throat.
He picks at his nails as they drive away, making a left at the intersection and disappearing from sight.
They’re gone. They’re really gone and they’re not coming back.
He doesn’t even realise he’s crying until someone—he thinks it’s his mom—is wiping the tears off his face with her thumb, and he shoves her hand away. He doesn’t want to be touched right now. He doesn’t want to be seen right now, not after what they just witnissed, and he wonders if this is how Max felt after Billy died, how El felt after Hopper died. Defeated. Tired. Broken. Anything but okay.
So he’s mad at Joyce. Undeniably, unquestionably angry at her, no matter how unfair it seems. And he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to forgive her.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
They visit the Byers for Christmas. Mike sleeps on a leaky air mattress in Will’s room with the same sleeping bag he uses every time they have a sleepover, and Mike feels a pang shoot through his heart as he takes it out of the bag. Using it for something like this—sleeping in Will’s room, in his new house in his new room with his new bed and his new everything—feels wrong. It feels utterly wrong, but he knows Will wasn’t happy about the move either, so he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to make it even worse for him than it already is. Doesn’t want to make it feel worse than it already does.
So he doesn’t say anything. He lets it build, a ball of white hot anger bottled up inside of him, and he feels bad. He feels terrible, really, but what can he do? The Byers aren’t coming back. They’re happy here, he finds himself thinking. They’re happier when they’re away from the place that took so much away from them.
And it’s probably true, really, but that doesn’t mean he has to be glad about it.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
His grades start to slip. He eats less. Frowns more. He bites his lip so often he wonders how much more damaged they can get, raw, scarred skin having become the norm. He feels distanced from the Party, from his friends, his world. It feels wrong, just like everything else does, and every day he feels like he’s fallen even further down. Even further away from himself. And he hates it.
Nothing is the same anymore. Not since the Byers moved, not since the Mind Flayer took control of Will, not since that dreadful November night in 1983 when everything changed for good. It’s not the same. Mike misses it. He misses the comfortability, the sheer magic of those ordinary days where all he had to worry about was their next D&D campaign and whether nor not he was going to pass his math test. He misses being a kid, being so blissfully unaware of the bullshit going on around him. He misses it. So much. More than he can ever express in words.
Lucas and Max pour their insecurities into each other, suffering and traumatized but not alone. Dustin has Suzy, now that Mike knows she actually exists, and Will has Jonathan and El and Joyce. But Mike? Mike doesn’t have anyone. His dad hates him just as much as he hates Mike’s mother, and Karen is far too busy trying to raise Holly practically on her own to listen to any of Mike’s pathetic problems she probably wouldn’t even believe.
And Nancy? Nancy is Nancy. She’s hurting, too, he knows, having lost so many things thanks to the Upside Down, but Mike isn’t sure how to talk to her. He doesn’t know her anymore, not that he ever did, but he feels secluded. Cut off from everyone, even his own sister.
But she’s all he has left, he supposes, so he better try.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
He talks to Nancy. Sheds a few tears, wipes them away, and picks at his nails. She listens. He’s grateful.
“Oh, Mike,” she whispers once he’s finished, engulfing him in a firm embrace. “You know you’re not alone, right? You have your friends, you have me—so don’t feel alone. We’re here.”
Mike cries again. Nancy cries with him.
——
Mike Wheeler is sinking.
It gets worse. He fights with Dustin over something he can’t remember and he cries about it in his room, biting his lip so hard it starts to bleed. When did it even start? When did any of this truly start? Was it when Will was taken or when he thought El was dead? He’s not sure, he’s not sure of anything anymore, and that’s what scares him.
“I’m sorry,” Dustin spits the next time Mike sees him. “I didn’t mean to, uh, get so mad.”
Mike thinks Dustin is expecting him to refuse to shake his hand or start cursing at him, but instead he pulls him in for a hug, tears spilling from his eyes. He can’t lose what little he has left. Not now. Not after everything.
He wants to turn back time, go back to when Will and El were here and Hopper wasn’t dead and Barb was still alive and to somewhere, some time when everything didn’t hurt so much.
“It’s okay,” Mike manages to croak, not letting go. “I’m sorry too.”
He thinks that’s the first time the rest of his friends saw Mike without his facade, his mask of passion and love and stability. They saw how broken he was that day, how much this has truly affected him.
Lucas and Max join the hug too, and they’re there, together. And even if Will and El aren’t there it’s alright because these people are still here, supporting him and there for him every step of the way. Just like Mike is there for them.
——
Mike Wheeler is stabilizing.
He smiles more. He opens up to Nancy again and she does the same in return, and it feels good. A warmth he hadn’t felt in months blooms in his chest, and it’s as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, finally allowing him to breathe.
He and the Party are more honest with each other. They devote time every weekend to talking about their problems—usually trauma related—and as sad as it is, as much as he wished they didn’t have to do it, it’s good. He knows it is. They’re helping each other because that’s what friends do. Mike likes it. He’s happier.
Someone has pulled him from the quicksand just as he was about to fall through. It’s not just one person, no, it’s many—Lucas, Dustin, Max, Nancy,—even Will and El, who he calls from time to time. They’re all there, they’re all together, even if it’s just in spirit.
Mike Wheeler is stabilizing, and although it’s far from perfect and they’re far from going back to the way things were, they’re getting there, and that’s all that matters.