Chapter Text
Mike laid awake in his basement, tossing and turning in his sleeping bag. He had been having a sleepover with Will, Dustin, and Lucas when his mom called him upstairs just as everyone was settling into bed after the turn of midnight. When he went into dining room, his parents and Nancy were sitting at the table in their pajamas. No dead grandma, no dead grandma, Mike repeated in his head he took his seat next to Nancy. Dead grandma? He mouthed to Nancy. She rolled her eyes, I don't know, and slapped his shoulder.
"I just got off the phone with your Aunt Marge, and there was a sinkhole in Derry," Derry? Nancy and Mike shared a look. "Derry, Maine," She clarified. For some reason, they could never remember the town. He knew he had family in Maine, they visited Indiana for the holidays all the time, but small details like names and places always slipped Mike's mind. But hearing Derry, he remember what his cousin told him. It was some bumfuck town just like Hawkins, only further north and a reasonable drive to see the ocean. Wait a minute- sinkhole? Mike's thoughts caught up to him.
"Sinkhole? Like what happened in Hawkins?"
"No, the ground didn't split open to hell," Ted chimed it, "The sewage system under the town collapsed."
"Not to mention, kids were going missing-" Karen added.
"Holy shit, like Hawkins?!" Nancy interrupted this time.
"Nancy! But, um, no. These kids were found on Earth, but they were found, um, dead," Holy shit, Mike thought. What the hell was going on in Derry? He'd have to ask his cousin, who's name he couldn't quite remember just then. "Their house was one of the ones destroyed, and with all the murdered children, Aunt Marge decided to move her family out. I got off the phone with her, and they're going to be moving to Hawkins," Bad choice "but until they can find a place to stay, they'll be staying with us."
"Are you kidding me? The Byers just moved out last month," Mike complained, earning himself another slap from Nancy. "I mean, how many people will it be? Aunt Marge... Uncle um-"
"It'll be your Aunt Marge and Uncle Wentworth, your cousin Richie," Memories came flooding back. Richie looked just like Mike, like alarmingly so. He theorized they might be secret twins and one was handed off at birth, but Nancy had always told him this theory doesn't work. Mike was a year older than Richie. They have baby photos of a one-year-old Mike meeting a freshly born Richie. But still. Weird. Richie was fun. He was Mike's favorite and only cousin, but he'd like to think if he had more, he'd still favor Richie. They shared interests like comic books and arcade games, although Richie never had the attention span for Dungeons & Dragons. But for some reason, Mike felt deeply uncomfortable about Richie coming to live with them. He didn't know how to say this, especially without sounding like an asshole, but the idea of someone in Hawkins sharing his exact face while acting so... out there would be hell. "and Richie's friend too. I think his name is Edward? He lost his mom in the sinkhole and is staying with Richie's family, so be sure to be nice to him. Be nice to everyone."
"So a kid we don't know is gonna be living here too?"
"Mike, I don't understand. You were the one who suggested the Byers stay with us, but you have an issue with your family staying here?" Karen furrowed her eyebrows as she looked at her son. Mike felt... caught? He didn't understand it either, or maybe he did, but he didn't have the heart to put it into words even within his own head.
He sighed. "Nope. No issues here."
Now returned back to the basement, he still couldn't sleep. Will was sleeping on the couch (or at least pretending to be) right next to where Mike's sleeping bag was set. He always gave him the couch. Sometimes Dustin or Lucas would take it, but when it was up to Mike, he'd give it to Will. He had spent a year sleeping on it, Mike would reason to himself, so it's basically his anyway. No other reason.
"Mike," Will whispered, turning over to face to floor, "What happened? You've been rustling since you came back downstairs."
"My cousin and his family are coming to live with us."
"Oh, and you want your own space? I wouldn't blame you. A year living with us-"
"No, it's not that. I really don't mind others in my space. Besides, my cousin is great."
"Yeah?" Will's voice sounded sleepy. It was quiet and raspy, punctuated with soft hums. Mike cursed himself for being too eager to talk instead of sending the sweet boy off to bed. Then he cursed himself for thinking about his voice like that. Sweet? Jesus Christ, Michael. What does that even mean?
"Yeah, but he's...can you keep a secret?" Will gave a soft "mhm" and nodded into the couch cushion. "He's different. He's, he's got um, a little pep in his step?" Mike said, using the phrase his dad used when talking about male dancers in the nutcracker,
"Huh?" Will rubbed his eyes, oblivious.
"Jesus Christ, um, I don't know how to describe it. He's flaming? He's a pansy?" He thought about saying fairy. That would've gotten his point across, but he couldn't do that to Will. He wasn't a bully like those asshole kids from their childhood. He thought about saying fag, but again, he wasn't an asshole, and even if he was, it felt impossible to actually say the word. Gay didn't even come to mind.
"Mike, just say it. I don't know what you're talking about." Although if Will was more awake, he would've caught on.
" He's a queer! And it's, like whatever! Whatever, right? I don't care. But he has my face. Like my exact face. And people can tell that he's, ya know. He wears these dumb shirts, makes these dumb jokes, stares at guy's with this dumb face, and he's great, really. Doesn't bother me. But people are such assholes, and I know it's gonna come back to me. He can't tone it done or shut it up--'beep, beep, Richie' is what his friends say to him--and now that's gonna be my problem."
"Jesus Christ, Mike," Lucas said, stirring awake in his sleeping bag. Shit. Mike hadn't realized how his voice climbed from a whisper. At least Dustin was a heavy sleeper. "It seems like you do care."
"What? No I don't."
"Mike, we're seniors now. We defeated monsters, for fuck's sake. People don't mess with us like when we were twelve anymore."
"Yeah, us. Rich is a year younger, and how ever bully-able you're imagining him, it worse."
"Bully-able? Worse? You just described him as gay. I don't care that your cousin's gay. You can protect him. We can protect him." Mike's breathing seemed to stop as Lucas talked. Gay. He said it so easily. It made Mike shutter, like there were bugs on his skin he just wanted to push off.
"Did he say he's gay?" Will asked, noticeably more awake now.
Mike shuttered again.
"Well, no. But you can just tell. And I've known him my whole life. And when it comes up, he never denies it." Will rolled his eyes. He knew what Mike meant because he was just describing him. No one knew Will was gay, but also, you could just tell. Childhood bullies picked up on it. Police picked up on it. Mike standing in the rain yelling it wasn't his fault he didn't like girls picked up on it, and when it did come up, when Will was called a fag or when Mike said what he said, there was never a moment of "no, you're not". Did Mike forget he was right there?
"What's he like?" Lucas asked, fully sitting up now.
"He likes comics. Spiderman is his favorite. He loves arcade games. Street Fighter is his favorite. He's from some weird town in Maine, one that honestly seems a lot like Hawkins. Although he's, ya know, he makes jokes about fucking people's moms, or in my case, my teachers. He comes up with nicknames for people. I'm Nerd Wheeler, or Mike the Knight. I'm sure he'd come up with something stupid for you guys too. Oh, and he does these weird impressions," Mike was laughing now, "God, they're so bad and stupid, but so good. You gotta hear them."
"He sounds great," Lucas shrugged, "Gay or not, he'll fit right in."
"Yeah, he sounds really great." Will said, smiling. Smiling too much. He was looking past Mike like he was day dreaming. Excuse me? Mike wanted to say. He wanted to back track now. Richie wasn't that great, although he had just described him as a hilarious person with the same interests as the party who is also incredibly down to get with other guys. It was strange how Mike's mind worked. He was painfully unaware that Will was gay, but also painfully jealous over another boy.
Mike said none of that.
“Yeah, great,” He giggled, forcing the air up past the lump in his throat. “Well, goodnight.”
Shortly after everyone woke up the next morning, Mike had to rush his friends out of the house. The Toziers would be arriving sometime in the evening, and he would have to help get the house ready—mostly cleaning his room which had turned into a mess of clothes spilling out of the closet and comic books thrown across his desk.
As the rest of the party were biking back to their houses, Lucas fell behind as Will and Dustin rode in front of him, talking side by side. He couldn’t let go of how strange Mike was being last night.
He always tried not to think about it, because really it was none of his business, but he thought Will was gay for a while. Will was never interested in girls, not even the ones with muscles and flowing hair in their comic books nor the kick ass ones who beat their scores in arcade games; he was interested in Mike.
And Mike was confusing. He wasn’t interested in girls; he was interested in Will, until he wasn’t. They were broken up now, but El had been his obsession for years. And maybe Mike was just growing up and falling in love. Maybe Lucas wouldn’t have any suspicions about Mike if it wasn’t for Mike’s jealousy. God forbid Lucas tried to help Will up from a panic attack, or hold him as his vision went blurry. There’d be a look and a nudge from Mike that said “move over” as if Will’s skin had limited vacancy: room for one—or as Mike saw it, room for Wheeler. But again, Lucas tried to ignore it. It wasn’t his to find out about until one of them wanted to tell him. But Mike’s attitude last night changed this.
His thoughts were rushing about what this meant for the party. Lucas had no interest in being friends with bigots. He wanted to protect his friends. He wanted to protect Will. But Mike turning out like their childhood bullies? That just didn’t make sense. Nothing about Mike was making sense. Will would agree with him on that.
Somehow ten hours passed like twenty and was still not enough time for Mike to get everything cleaned up.
His desk was cleaned off, and he finally got around to hanging Will’s painting above it. The floor was cleared, but it had been a mess for so long that the closet doors still couldn’t shut all the way. They hung the slightest bit open, gently swinging out every time Mike pushed them shut.
Mike was hauling up his second load of laundry when his mother called up, “Kids! Your cousins are here!”
“Shit, shit,” Mike mumbled, running into his room. He threw the bag of clean laundry into the closet, shoving it under some shelves so it wouldn’t spill out.
“Micheal!” His dad called up. “Your family is here!”
“Coming!”
When Mike got downstairs, his mom and aunt were talking while Holly talked to Richie. “You could be Mike!” She said to him. He could be.
He stood there dressed in blue jeans that were slightly too long, sagging over his red converse and almost touching the floor. He wore a t-shirt, also too long, with Spider-Man comic panels on it. The only fitting piece of clothing he wore was an unzipped red jacket. Mike had no idea how Richie always managed to find clothes that were too long. They were the same height and Mike was more accustomed to sweaters that stopped on his forearm and pants that leave his ankles exposed.
Mike looked for differences between the two of them. Most noticeably, Richie had his coke bottle glasses, and they looked less awkward than they had when he was younger. He grew into them and their largeness was less comical now. His hair, although the same curliness as Mike’s, was shorter. And his freckles were more prominent. Must spend more time outside.
“Hey, Rich,” Mike cut off Holly, pulling Richie in for an awkward long-time-no-see cousin hug.
“Hey,” Richie smiled, but not like he meant it. His eyes were drifting to the floor and his hands kept finding their way in and out of different pockets.
It took Mike a while, after some forced hello’s to his aunt and uncle, to notice the new face.
A shorter boy stood by the door, awkwardly shifting around. He reminded Mike of a younger Steve. He wore jeans and a dark green bomber jacket. He had nice hair, mostly stairs until it curled at the back of his neck and around his ears. His eyes also drifted to the floor. His hands also fiddled in his pockets.
Mike waited for Richie to say something, to acknowledge his friend, to introduce the two, but nothing. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head in the boy’s direction. “Oh right. This is um Eds- Eddie. He’s my friend from Maine,” Richie turned towards him. Eddie took a step forward.
“Hi,” He reached out and shook Mike’s hand. “Thanks, by the way, for letting us stay here.”
“Oh um yeah, of course,” Mike said as if he wasn’t lying awake last night over it.
There was something strange. Mike had been dreading this, but Richie should’ve been thrilled. He should’ve been in his space, making dumb jokes and asking what they’d be doing tomorrow. And he should’ve been all over his friend too, excited for a who-knows-how-long sleepover and for everyone to get to know everyone. Maybe it’d make sense if he was sad. But this was just…tense?
At dinner, Mike tried to set things back to how they should be. Ya know, with him being the one moping around all moody and shit. “So how does it feel to trade one shitty town for another?”
“Can’t be shittier than Derry,” Rich shrugged.
“Hawkins can be shitter than anywhere,” Mike faked a laugh. No one else did. What was this torture?
He stopped trying, finished his dinner as soon as possible and headed up to his room. Richie and Eddie would be sleeping in the basement, but still, it was expected they’d spend quite a bit of time in Mike’s room. Maybe keep some of Richie’s stuff there and away from the mildewy basement, or at the very least “Hey Mike, go show your cousin your room.” All of that cleaning for nothing, Mike thought, as he pulled back the covers and got into bed with a comic book. He had already read it before, but he just needed something to pretend to do as he thought. Just as he was settled in, there was a knock on his door.
“Shit…” he whispered. He expected it to be Richie, or his mom telling him to go hang out with Richie. Maybe even Nancy. He didn’t expect to see Eddie. “Oh, hi.”
“Hey,” Eddie looked around like he wasn’t supposed to be there, “Could I come in?”
“Sure, yeah.” They stepped inside his room. Mike sat on his bed while Eddie stood in the middle of his room, looking at the walls.
“Cool room.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen, I need you to invite Rich to sleepover here tonight.”
“He is sleeping over here.”
“No, like here. Your room.”
“Oh, sure,” Mike waited for an explanation. Nothing. What the fuck was wrong with everyone. “Why?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Yeah,” Said the boy who spent the previous night outing his cousin.
“Can you also believe me? Like about weird shit that doesn’t seem real?”
“Hawkins split open to hell and the military put the town on lock down. I’m friends with government experiments. I’ve killed weird monster things. Trust me, I’ll believe you.” At that point, everyone in Hawkins had witnessed the supernatural phenomenons. It felt good not to keep it a secret. To say whatever and know if you’re questioned about it, anyone else could vouch for you.
“Right, yeah I heard Marge talk about that in the car,” He took a deep breath, “The weird thing is that I don’t quite remember it, but there was something supernatural in Derry. It lived in the sewers. Rich and I and our friends had spent the summer chasing it around. It spent the summer chasing us around too. And we ended up going to the sewers to kick its ass, and we did.” Another deep breath, this one more shaky. Mike sat up more and moved forward. “But when we were in the sewers, God it’s so stupid. Rich said ‘I really hope we don’t die. Especially you guys. Dying a virgin would suck’, which was a joke because he definitely is one. So I said ‘Rich, if you die, you’ll die a lip virgin’, and so he does a whole dramatic bit, with what I think was an Australian accent, I don’t fucking know, man. He’s all ‘Then we must prevail or else we’ll perished without so much as a smooch!’” Eddie spoke like a plug had been pulled and all his water was rushing out. “And one of our friends, she said ‘You could always just kiss each other’, and it was a joke. She was laughing, we were all laughing, and Rich was pulling me in and I was pretending to be like ‘oh no eww’, but I was laughing too, going along with the bit. And we kissed as a joke. It was like, a tiny peck and we made ‘Mwah!’ sound effects like…” Eddie demonstrated with the air, making a comical kissy face, hands holding an invisible face just by the palms of his hands, his fingers stretched out away from it like starfish, and then the ‘mwah!’ sound affect. “And it wasn’t awkward after. It was a funny bit, everyone was laughing, just the thing we needed before maybe dying, but I don’t know. It wasn’t awkward until we defeated it, whatever that thing was, and it made the sewers collapse, and my mom died.”
“Sorry about that, by the way.”
“Trust me, don’t be. I mean, I’m sad but, whatever. Don’t be.” He was finally calm again. Maybe Mike should’ve interrupted him a while ago. “Anyways, Rich’s parents said I could live with them, and we were so excited. Especially to get the hell out of Derry, but now that we’re actually living together, it’s weird.”
“Is it weird ‘cause he’s, ya know?”
“Huh? There’s a lot weird about him.”
“Well, is it uncomfortable living with him because he’s… or I guess does it make you comfortable that…like is it weird living with a queer?”
Eddie caught a lump in his throat. Then he started choking on it. It was like he couldn’t breathe, but on the outside, he was just still. “Invite him to sleepover with you. Please.”
And Eddie left.
Yup, Mike thought, he’s uncomfortable with it. He sighed. He was disappointed in Richie. It was clear to him he used the “bit” as an excuse to kiss a boy before he maybe died, like he couldn’t just keep it down. God damn it. Everyone in Hawkins would be able to see it. They’d see it with his face on it.
He waited a few minutes so it wouldn’t look coordinated, and then he went down to the basement.
“Rich, would you want to sleepover tonight? I have a trundle bed under my bed and we can catch up-“
“Yeah,” Wow. That was easy. He thought he’d have to do some more convincing to pull Richie away from a night alone with a boy. Then he told himself that was an awfully offensive thing to think. Jesus Christ, Mike.
“Cool, cool.”
Up in Mike’s room, when the lights were off and they were in their beds, he asked, “So what happened in Derry?”
“The weird part is I don’t know. I’m forgetting some of my friends’ names and I’ve only been gone a day. But there was something demonic maybe? It was making kids go missing all summer, but we killed it.”
“Eddie was there for that?”
“Oh yeah,” Richie smiled, “I mean he was maybe the most bad ass of us all. He took an iron fence post and stabbed the shit out of it. He was like one of the characters from your little dragons game.”
“Like a knight,” Mike nodded, imagining himself fighting Vecna.
”Hey, Mike? Can I close your closet door? Not to be a pussy but although I’ve killed Satan the ominous sliver of darkness freaks me out.”
”You can try. It doesn’t close.”
He tried. It didn’t close—creaking open after he pushed the door in. “Whatever. I didn’t even care about it,” He said as he got back into bed. Mike laughed and it was like old times again.
Then there was silence, and Mike couldn’t help but to fill it with stupid questions. “So do you like Eddie?”
Richie’s breath shook. “I liked all my friends, but yeah, he’s my best friend. Although I don’t know what’s going on with him now. Things are weird.”
That’s not what Mike meant, but oh well. I guess I just won’t know if he likes him, Mike thought.
That’s not what Mike meant, and Richie knew that.