Chapter Text
New York City.
April 20th, 1996
New York had a way of flattening people who arrived already tired.
Mike Wheeler sat at the far end of the bar, hunched over the counter like he could make himself smaller out of sheer will. The glass in his hand was cold and uncomfortable to hold, slippery where it had sweated through and dampened his palm. It contained some cocktail – too sweet, definitely too dangerous – that he hadn’t bothered to even read the name of, and which he had stopped actually tasting after the second sip.
The bar itself was dim and narrow, holding an almost industrial aesthetic to it that tried to look inexpensive – though the twelve-dollar glass of watered down whisky in the menu begged to differ. It bore exposed brick walls, low amber lights, too-small tables that made people’s knees knock together uncomfortably. The kind of bar one would find written up in the Lifestyle sections of chic magazines. The kind of place that screamed Evelyn in every corner.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
Mike hadn’t meant to drink this much. He hadn’t meant to drink at all, really. But the night had extended, congratulatory and bright in a way he hadn’t been able to internalize in years, and the thought of an empty and silent hotel room waiting for him made him restless with something he couldn’t name. Fight or flight, maybe. Or just plain cowardice.
It was amusing, all things considered; Earlier that day, people were lining up to shake his hand.
They’d raved about the rawness of his book. About how some unattended part of them related to the darkness of it, to the described loneliness and misery. They’d spoken of restraint, and symbolism, and metaphors that he himself had written down like reflex rather than active thought.
One woman had cried silently during the reading and apologized afterward, as though grief was somehow a breach of etiquette. Mike had spared her a too-tight smile, a mumbled thank you, and kept signing copies of the book with a deceptively steady hand, his signature practiced and hollow.
Now, the adrenaline was gone, leaving only the ache in its stead.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
Mike could have scoffed. As if overexplaining wasn’t everything he ever did.
With detached interest, he fished his phone from his jacket pocket, clumsily pushing his glasses from where they’d slipped down his nose. Three messages were displayed on the pixelated screen like a reprimand.
3 new messages
Marisol
8:47 PM
Made it through the 1st stop.
Proud of you.
Text me when you’re back at the hotel.
Evelyn
10:02 PM
Tomorrow: 7:30 AM car.
Don’t oversleep.
Dustin
10:11 PM
You’re in NYC and we have
to find out through the news?
Asshole.
Meet us for dinner?
He stuffed the phone back in his pocket, feeling weary.
The bartender glanced over, eyebrows lifting in a silent question. Mike raised two fingers without turning, and another drink was pushed his way a minute later. He took it automatically, as though his body was running on some type of grim muscle memory, and drank too much.
Around him, the world didn’t stop, though sometimes he wished it did. A couple danced too energetically to a jazz song he didn’t recognize. Someone at the other end of the counter slammed his glass with enough force to make Mike flinch involuntarily. He wondered, distantly, if any of these people recognized him. If anyone would care.
He wondered what Evelyn would have to say if she knew what he was doing, where he had wound up from his endless wandering. Probably would say something along the lines of damaging his image foolishly. Whatever that meant.
He thought of her pinched features, her demanding voice that seemed to echo in every room. She was all straight lines and marketing strategies. And she had seen something in Mike, though he couldn’t help but think she’d made a mistake every time her ever-permanent scowl was directed at him and Marisol had to jump in to redirect her frustration.
If she could see me now…, he thought bitterly. She’d berate me like I was a little kid.
Irritated, he shuffled on his stool and accidentally caught his elbow on the glass’ edge.
The damage was immediate: liquid sloshing over the rim and splashing everywhere, dampening not only his thigh as it fell, but also the white sleeve of the man beside him.
“Oh–shit,” Mike hissed, scrambling to upright the glass.
The man turned slowly. He was broad-shouldered, almost rugged. His jaw worked with barely concealed annoyance, and his eyes were sharp as they cut to Mike’s own widened ones. Liquor dripped from his cuff onto the floor.
“Are you kidding me?” he snapped.
Mike stared at the stain, brain lagging behind, trying to get his mouth to work. “I–yeah. I didn’t–”
The logical, smart part of himself knew this was the moment where he should apologize. It provided the correct, socially acceptable response–sorry. My fault. I’ll pay for the dry cleaning– that should have automatically spilled from his lips, like a reflex.
Before he could follow through, however, the man was interrupting.
“You didn’t, what?” The man scoffed. “You didn’t care?”
The unnecessary sharpness of his tone set alight something deep within Mike, something blistering and untamed, like a monster rearing its ugly head, familiar and so very unhelpful.
“I was about to apologize,” he hissed. “It’s just a shirt, you’ll live.”
The man stared at him, incredulous. “Just a shirt?”
Mike heard himself speak and couldn’t stop himself. He never could, not even when it mattered. “Well, yeah– unless it’s like, your only one? Which would be fucking weird, honestly, if you can afford twelve-dollar whisky–”
“Wow,” the man scoffed. “You’re an asshole.”
And that should have been the end of it, really. Any normal person – someone completely different to argumentative, headstrong, and unbearably annoying Michael Wheeler– would have left it alone, offered money or apologized profusely. The correct response to the situation flickered just out of reach, ready for Mike to grab it, let the acceptable words slip from his mouth like they should.
He would have, if he had been someone else entirely.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
So Mike wouldn’t.
Instead, he smiled. Too thinly, cheeks pulling taut with restraint.
“Yeah,” he said. “I get that a lot.”
The man stood suddenly, almost tipping over his stool. Somewhere behind him, a friend of his must have said something to try and deter the man from stalking up to Mike like an irate beast, but it didn’t land in time to matter.
Getting right up in his face, he repeated, lower, almost threatening: “apologize.”
Mike thought of a hotel room, impersonal and cold. Thought of his phone pinging with unread messages from his publishers that he couldn’t bring himself to answer. Thought of the applause that had followed him out of the library earlier that day, and the words he had written in the dark while he ran himself thin with exhaustion. Most of all, he thought about the way Evelyn would rip him a new one if she somehow found out about the stupidity he was about to do.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
“No.”
The bar noise seemed to dip around them, sound itself growing wary of the tension. It might have been funny, if Mike’s heart wasn’t still trying to beat its way out of his ribcage.
And when it came, he was barely able to react in time.
Mike registered the intent first. A sudden pressure on his shoulder. The force that shoved him sideways, making him catch his side against the edge of a table. He stumbled, losing his balance as he tried to brace himself against the wood. His glasses slipped off his nose again, clattering to the ground and landing unlucky beneath a woman’s too-high stilettos.
Mike winced. holding his side like one would a shattered tea-cup to try and hold its shape before it inevitably fell apart.
“Hey,” he said, breathless and stupid, trying to look at the man through the blurring edges of his vision. “Relax, man.”
The punch came then. Not cinematic. Not in slow motion. It was a sharp, cracking impact to his ribs that made plain flare up white-hot all over his torso. Mike stumbled back unsteadily, releasing a wheeze as he tried to catch his breath, but the man kept stalking forward.
Someone shouted. A chair tipped. The world tilted and swayed violently.
Mike barely registered the rest. There were hands pushing him through an unsteady pace towards the door, and cold air slapped his face in the form of tiny pinpricks. He was shoved back against the wall of the adjacent alley, brick scraping the back of his head and making him wince.
The next blows blurred together.
A kick. A fist. The sickening crack of bone meeting bone. Mike had half a mind to curl into himself and protect his torso and head. Somewhere, distantly, he thought of the pathetic image he must have made– an idiot with liquid courage running through his veins getting pummeled into the ground because he didn’t know how to shut his mouth.
It ended almost as fast as it started.
Mike took a moment to stand there, lungs wheezing and pain flaring up every time he moved, listening to the retreating footsteps of the man. Music filled the street momentarily as the door of the bar swung open, and then it slowly faded into oppressing dread.
He slid down to the floor, legs buckling under his own weight.
“Okay,” he whispered to no one. “Okay…”
It took some time before the pain organized itself into something coherent, something he could pretend to push back into little boxes labeled ‘Michael Wheeler’s stupidities’, by now a seemingly infinite archive within his brain.
He laughed under his breath, regretting it immediately.
Mike Wheeler regretted a lot of things.
He let himself press his hands to the cold, dirty ground, grasping at the irregularities of the surface like they might ground him eventually, though he doubted it would work.
Get up, he tried to will himself.
He didn’t.
Instead, he fumbled with his jacket pocket, hands trembling harshly around a crumbled pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t meant to get back into smoking.
Mike Wheeler hadn’t meant to do a lot of things.
New York does that to you, he thought.
It took two tries before the flame caught on the butt. The first drag of smoke tickled the back of his throat, almost burning, and he held it there until his eyes watered and he was forced to release it.
He righted himself against the wall properly, one hand tensed around his ribs, the other lifting the cigarette again and again. The smoke curled upwards like a foggy screen, blurring the edges of the dumpster and the walls even further. Mike squinted. For a moment, the bricks looked older. Redder. Suspiciously like the ones in Hawkin’s towncenter.
Mike sighed, closing his eyes until static burst behind his eyelids.
Memories rose uninvited anyway: leaning towers of books; a dorm room illuminated by the sunlight streaming in through the window; Jane’s voice, muffled through the phone speaker, asking how his day had gone; and a small, velvet box stuffed deep into a drawer, a shameful secret.
He pressed his palms to his eyes until it hurt. The memories didn’t stop. .
The alley smelled like garbage and bad decisions. A rat skittered close to the dumpster, close enough to make him shudder. The city continued to hum around him, indifferent to his pain and regret.
Mike sat there for a long time.
He felt ridiculous, with blood drying on his lip, ribs screaming, sitting broken in an alley in a city that had never felt quite like home. Even in drastically different circumstances, New York was still a shithole, and yet he still felt irrevocably out of place.
He was famous now, apparently. Successful. The type of person people wanted to interview, to dissect in print.
For some I’m even less, he thought, almost amused. Like Evelyn.
He took another drag. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Mike didn’t look at it right away. He waited until the cigarette burned down to the filter to snuff it against the damp concrete. Only then did he fish his phone out of his pocket, surprisingly intact, and squinted at the screen, struggling to read without his glasses.
Marisol
12:34 AM
Please tell me you’re
back at the hotel
He imagined her face: kind, concerned, quietly professional and yet still too involved in his issues to seem acceptable for a publicist. He thought of Evelyn’s inevitable annoyance in the morning, and the car that would be waiting for him at 7:30. The questions. The undeserved praise.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
He imagined Hawkins and its quiet existence. His childhood bedroom. The dead wonder he used to hold when it came to imagining himself as a writer in the future.
Was it worth it?
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
He thought of bright green eyes and hands calloused by hours spent hunched over a sketchbook.
Don’t over explain. Ambiguity sells.
But at what point did a marketing strategy become too real?
He typed back slowly, every breath scraping against his ribs like shattered glass.
Mike
12:36 AM
Yeah, sorry.
I’m on my way.
He put the phone back in his pocket.
Tomorrow, Mike would put on that crisp, blue shirt that Marisol had picked out for him. He’d answer questions. He’d choose his words carefully. He’d play into that ‘reclusive genius’ narrative that the media had picked out for him like a fitted tux.
But today, on this night, he’d sit in this dirty alley, quiet and bruised, with aching ribs and quivering lungs.
And nothing if not miserable.
Mike pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly, and started the trek back to the hotel.