Chapter Text
Mike considered wearing sunglasses, or pulling the hood of his too oversized hoodie closed to hide his fresh blooming black eye, but he knew that somebody would notice in a heartbeat. His little ragtag trauma bonded group would notice even the smallest changes in his attire and ask about it. It’d be better to just get the worry and concern they’d absolutely show for him out of the way quickly.
Nothing particularly bad had happened. There was no mouthbreathing too-tall-for-high-school mega jock who had fought him or anything (Mike knew that’s exactly what the first question would be about), it was as simple as a slip, fall, and slam of his face into the side of the bathtub while he was towelling off. Still, even getting the story straight in his head in a way that would avoid all the suspicious side-eyes and “are you sure’s” that suggested he was lying was nerve wracking. Being around that many people who cared about him was nice, but it was overwhelming from time to time.
The first person to say anything as he descended the stairs into the basement was Robin, the eternal motor mouth.
“Jesus Wheels, get into a fight with a freight train?” She inquired sarcastically.
Mike laughed humourlessly and glared at her. “Do you call Nancy ‘Wheels’ too?” He shot back, just as sarcastically.
Robin just shrugged. “Nah, I have reserved nicknames.”
Mike let it drop with an exaggerated eye roll, knowing Robin could out-sarcasm him any day, and hoping to get his words in before the others in the room started with concerned inquiries of their own. “I just fell in the shower and smashed my face on the rim, you probably heard. Yes it hurts a bit, yes I’m fine, no I don’t need to go to the hospital. Can we watch the movie please?” He let out in a single breath, trying to cover as many bases as possible.
Steve, Nancy, Will, and Lucas all looked at him with slight concern but said nothing more, while Eddie, Max, and El all seemed to want nothing more than to start the movie as Mike had suggested. He watched as El all but ripped the tape for The Witches of Eastwick out of Eddie’s hand to put it in the VHS.
Robin wasn’t quite done with him, though. “Mike, if you want for people not to bug you about your injuries so bad you need to learn to cover them up.” She said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and somehow didn’t know.
“Yeah, I’m aware, but dark sunglasses or a tightened hoodie would have rung even more alarm bells and given me way more questions to answer.” He answered with a bit less bite, sensing that even through the sarcastic sheen, Robin was genuinely trying to help.
“There are other ways.” Robin responded simply. She looked for a moment like she was questioning something in her head before snapping her fingers and shaking her head slightly.
“Ok Wheels, come on.” Robin stood up suddenly, still taking advantage of Eddie and El arguing over the movie.
Mike got up with her but didn’t move towards the stairs like Robin was. She looked back at him and jerked her head up the stairs, clearly wanting him to follow her. Mike glanced slightly at the TV and all his friends gathered around ready to watch the movie together. “Shouldn’t… we’re gonna miss the movie.” He whispered to her.
Robin just rolled her eyes. “Mike, you don’t seriously think I believe you actually want to watch The Witches of Eastwick do you?” She whispered back, a challenge.
Mike didn’t. He really didn’t. It was concerning how easily Robin seemed to read him like a book. He hung his head in a gesture of faux-exasperation before following Robin up the stairs.
Robin led him up to the second floor of his house and quickly dashed into Nancy’s room and returned with a small mesh bag with flowers on it. “Come on, let’s do this in your room. It won’t take long.” Robin said to him, ushering him towards his bedroom.
“Uh huh,” Mike muttered as he watched Robin set down the bag on the top of his dresser and began searching through it. “What is it that we’re doing exactly?”
Robin turned towards him, having pulled out a skin coloured tube with a blue cap and holding it above her head triumphantly. “I told you, we’re gonna cover that up. If you’re gonna be getting injured and want to hide it from people, it’s a good skill to learn.” Robin motioned for him to sit down on the floor in front of the full length mirror on the back of his door. “Trust me, I know what it’s like to feel those eyes on you.” She said, quieter than the rest of her explanations.
Mike didn’t question her any more. He sat down in front of the mirror while Robin positioned herself in front of him and just off to the side. She uncapped the tube and revealed a small stick on the end of the cap that was coated in a thick, skin coloured liquid.
Mike flinched back at the sight. “Woah woah, are you gonna put makeup on me?” He asked, somewhat incensed.
Robin just rolled her eyes again. “Wheels, if you wanna hide it, this is the best way, trust me. You ever wonder how those guys on TV look so good for the camera? Well, this is part of how. Concealer.” At that, Mike silently acquiesced, closing his injured eye and waiting for Robin to do her work. He knew there was no getting out of it.
“Here, look. Watch with your other eye, so you can do it yourself if you need to later. There’s nothing to it.” Robin instructed as she quickly swiped the liquid around Mike’s black eye. Mike watched with vague intrigue in the mirror as Robin took her index finger and gently rubbed the concealer around his eye, almost like you would sunscreen, blending it into his skin until the black and blue area around his eye almost seamlessly blended into the surrounding skin.
Mike looked at himself in the mirror in awe when Robin finished. “Wow, OK. Yeah, that… that works well.” He said, feeling almost a little flustered at the sight of himself.
Robin chuckled at his reaction. “Yep. Like I said, nothing to it.” She said before absent-mindedly handing the concealer to him. Mike was confused, but took the concealer anyway.
“Don’t you need it too?” Mike asked sincerely. Robin looked confused for a moment before Mike held up the concealer to confirm what he meant. She shook her head when she realized what he was talking about.
“Oh, no no. I… uh… I’m not a fan of makeup. Kinda why I left my bag here last time I stayed over. I didn’t really feel like I needed it. But– but you might.” Robin fidgeted with her rings as she spoke, her cool confident demeanour vanishing in an instant.
Mike shrugged at her and pocketed the concealer. “But… I mean… I guess I’m not totally in tune to what makeup looks like, but I swear you were wearing some when you worked with Steve at the mall last year?” He asks, watching Robin’s expression to see if he was pushing somewhere she didn’t want to go.
Robin sighed at that, looking slightly forlorn. “Yeah, yeah I did. But… I only did it mostly because… I guess it’s kind of a girl's rite of passage. When you hit a certain age there are things that are… expected of you, and one of those things is learning makeup.” She explained, not fully looking at Mike as she did. “Like, I didn’t buy any of this.” She continued, holding up her makeup bag. “It was all gifts from parents, old friends, and I just learned how to do it because it was insisted by so many people that I did. It was... pushed on me.”
Mike could see where this conversation was going, because he had experienced some of the same things. “And you’re realizing now that you don’t want to do those things?”
Robin looked at him again and smiled. “Yes, exactly that.” She said, clearly happy to be understood so easily.
Mike shrugged. Clearly Robin wasn’t entirely comfortable with this line of conversation, and he felt it was necessary to end it quickly, no matter how intrigued he may have been. “Makes sense to me. Thanks for this.” He said, gesturing to the concealer in his pocket and then his eye.
Robin laughed and ruffled his hair. “No problem, Wheels.” She said, before leading herself and Mike back down the stairs to the waiting party.
There was a movie night at the Wheeler household nearly every week. Sometimes it was attended by every and all members of the party, and sometimes there were only three or four of them there.
One particularly sparsely attended movie night a few weeks after Mike’s black eye incident, Mike found himself chatting with Robin after Steve, Nancy, and Dustin had all gone upstairs after the movie had finished. At this point Mike had finally got to the point where he could stop applying the concealer to his eye, and he had nothing but many thanks to give to Robin for giving it to him.
“This concealer didn’t look well used when you gave it to me.” Mike remarked to Robin as he fiddled with the cap of the bottle.
Robin laughed at that. “Yeah, I never used it. S’why I was so keen to give it to you.” She responded easily.
“I thought you said you were, like, super clumsy. Surely you had your fair share of injuries to cover up yourself.” Mike said with a disbelieving squint.
“Most people use concealer for non-injury related covering up.” Robin said.
“Such as…?” Mike inquired after a moment of silence.
Robin looked up at him from where she was focused on toying with her rings. “Well, if you have eye bags, or a mole, or any kind of line on your face you want to hide, concealer does a good enough job.”
Mike didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the small mirror that was sitting unused on the table next to him and uncapped the concealer, running the brush under his eyes where there were dark, unsightly circles. He blended the concealer with his finger just like he had done with his black eye, and examined himself in the mirror. It was like night and day. His eyes, normally looking constantly dead and tired, looked bright and big without the horrible dark circles beneath them. It was amazing to him how much he could do with so little, he laughed a bit at the sight.
He was so entranced in his look that he forgot Robin was still with him. She had gotten up and sat down in a chair much closer to him.
“Maybe… do– do you want the rest of this.” Robin offered, holding out her small flowery makeup bag to Mike. “Like, I don’t need it. If you like that as much as you seem to… maybe there’s more you’ll enjoy?” She looked nervous, like she wasn’t sure she was saying the right things. It always baffled Mike how Robin could go from this all confident I-don’t-care-what-anyone-thinks-of-me demeanour to all shy and nervous seemingly with the flip of a switch.
Thankfully it was easy to put Robin out of her misery. “I’ll see what I can do.” Mike said, taking the makeup bag from her, if for no other reason than to calm her obvious nerves at offering makeup to a young teenage boy. Mike could imagine essentially all of his other friends scoffing and making fun of her for offering them such a thing.
Come to think of it, it was interesting that Mike wasn’t reacting in any vitriolically negative way to being offered makeup. He was known for being maybe the snippiest and most judgemental of the group, so why was it so easy to accept Robin’s offer to take her makeup of all things?
Before Mike could think too much about it, Robin cut in and interrupted his thoughts. “It’s not, like, a weird thing. You can do whatever you want. Like, I don’t wear makeup, I don’t wear skirts… I’m still a…” Robin hesitates for a moment. “I’m still a girl. So you can be a boy and wear a bit of makeup. It’s no big deal. I won’t tell.” She’s doing the nervous rambling that Steve mentioned once, Mike can tell.
He puts his hand on her shoulder to ease her out of her spiral. “It’s fine, I know. And… yes, I’d like to just… keep this between us, if that’s OK?”
Robin’s look of relief is very comforting to Mike, knowing that they’re both just as nervous about this line of conversation. “Good, good, yeah.” Robin stutters out.
They both thought about how nice it was to have another new thing to bring each other together.
One day a few weeks later the party sat outside a small pop-up ice cream truck near a park, all conversing about different things while slowly eating their melting ice cream in the early afternoon heat.
Robin and Mike were the only two not amongst the main group, having elected to sit closer to the river that flowed just nearby to have their own conversation. Robin couldn’t help but notice a somewhat new brightness in Mike’s face that she’d been passively taking note of for the past few weeks.
“The concealer does your stupid face wonders, Wheels.” Robin remarked, not a hint of meanness in her tone.
Mike gave her a playful shove on the shoulder at her remark. “You don’t need to tell me, I wouldn’t be putting it on otherwise.” He shot back with a bright smile.
Robin also couldn’t help but notice that Mike’s eyelashes looked a little darker and longer than normal, at least now that she was seeing him up close. “I think you’re wearing some mascara too, am I right?” She asked.
Mike blushed a deep red at that question. “It was the only thing I actually recognized what it was for.” He said, almost defensively but not quite, before dropping his guard, remembering who he was talking to. “You have no idea how long it took me to get it to look right. There were so many clumps of it in my eyelashes the first few times I tried.” He complained, throwing his head back in exasperation.
Robin laughed at that. “Ugh, I know what you mean. Shit sucks. Feels good to abandon it.” She said, hating the recollection of a time she had to deal with the same thing.
Robin ran her hand through her hair at the back of her neck, seeming to try to keep it from sticking to the beads of sweat that had accumulated. She had been doing it for the entire time they had been outside, and Mike was starting to notice.
“You should cut your hair.” Mike said without a second thought.
Robin nearly choked on the bite of ice cream she had just taken at Mike’s sudden suggestion. “What?! Why would I do that? It’s already so short.” She said defensively, running her hand through it more frantically.
Mike rolled his eyes at her. “It’s obviously causing you trouble, you’re running your hands through it like a maniac. Trust me, I have thick hair too, and I’m not fussing with it nearly as much as you are Robin.” He says to her, breaking through all her excuses she might have tried to make.
As Robin tried to stutter out some kind of excuse, Mike soldiered on. “Robin. If I can be a guy that wears a bit of makeup, you can be a girl with shorter hair.” He stated with finality.
Robin flushed a deep red at his words, not seeming to trust her own voice, but not wanting to argue Mike’s point.
As the party made their way home after they had finished their ice cream, Robin was lucky enough to be invited into the Wheeler household once more by Nancy. Mike was glad to see it, considering it wasn’t exactly a known thing that he and Robin had built up a stronger friendship at all.
Robin and Nancy had hung out together for a while before Nancy had insisted on working on her summer university coursework. Robin had taken the dismissal well, if that meant that she could ask Mike a favour.
She bounded upstairs and frantically knocked on Mike’s door, wanting to get the idea in her head over with before she chickened out.
Mike opened the door with a frantic energy. “What happened? What’s wrong?” He asked, poking his head out of the door to look around the hallway.
“Nothing, nothing, I just… Do you have clippers?” Robin asked him nervously.
Mike looked at her confused for a second before he caught on. “Oh. You want– you trust me to–”
Robin cut him off before he could finish his self-deprecating ramble. “Yes, Mike, who else would I ask? You’re the only one who won’t look at me like I’m–” She stops herself dead, thinking about what other people would think about her if they saw her appearance change so drastically. Nothing good she suspects.
But Mike is right there to pull her out of her own head. “Hey, Robin. We don’t have to do anything extreme. It’s not like you’re asking for a buzz cut or anything, right?” He says with a chuckle, like it’s a joke. He’s obviously trying to calm her, but it only serves to put one more question in her head that she can’t help but voice out loud.
“What if I… want that?” Robin asks quietly.
Mike looks shocked for a moment before he schools his face into something more neutral and understanding. “Then… that’s what we’ll do. C’mon, you can’t expect me to just take your makeup tips and run with it without repaying you somehow.” Mike says with a smile, leading her into his room to sit on his bed, before he briefly leaves to grab some scissors and some electric clippers left mostly unused by his parents, sitting gathering dust under the bathroom sink.
“Ok… uh…” Mike starts uncertainly, locking his bedroom door and sitting on his desk chair in front of where Robin is perched on the end of his bed. “I’ve… never done this.” He says with a nervous laugh as he flips on the clippers and holds them shakily in his hands. “But, you can’t fuck up a buzz cut right? And… you’re sure that’s what you want? Be– because, we don’t have to do this now–or ever–if you don’t want, like if you’re gonna regret this at some point and–”
“Mike.” Robin cuts off his rambling. “El had a shaved head right? That’s– that’s a normal thing. Everyone in our stupid friend group is used to it. I want this. I really do.” She says, leaving no room for argument.
“OK, alright.” Mike says, still seeming uncertain, but moving the scissors to the ends of her hair nonetheless to snip tiny bits of it off.
It doesn’t take long before all of Robin’s hair is in a pile on the floor being slowly swept into Mike’s garbage can. Robin admires her new shaven head in the mirror, running her hand over it and enjoying the texture. She felt like an entirely new person.
“It’s so much lighter.” She says with a reverence that reminds Mike of the first time he brightened his face with concealer all those weeks ago.
After taking a moment to admire her new haircut in the mirror, Robin rounds on Mike nervously. “Can… uh… when people ask about this–because they’re gonna ask–can you just… like, pretend nothing weird happened. That would… make me feel better.” She asks. Mike nods instantly, and he doesn’t need to say the words to know that he’s making a promise he’d never break.
God, how did this little twerp infiltrate such an intimate part of her life?
Despite her excitement about her new look, Robin rushed out of the house, not quite ready for anyone to see her just yet. As she biked home as the sun set, she couldn't help but feel like more than just the weight of her hair had been lifted off of her.
True to his word, Mike had acted like everyone in the party were all collectively the dumbest people alive for thinking that anything was weird or even different about Robin with her new buzz cut, proudly deflecting the uncomfortable barrage of questions and staring from her right onto himself. Robin could almost cry at the wonderfully selfless gesture of kindness and friendship from him. She wondered what she had done to deserve it.
Steve had been the most persistent with the questioning, but all it took was her telling him it was nothing more than her experimenting with some butch fashion, and he accepted that easily. Robin knew better than to believe herself though. She knew it was something more, but it was hard to admit even to herself.
True to their weird friendship, Mike and Robin were once again left alone in the basement while the rest of the party did who knows what upstairs, seeming to finally be sensing the growing friendship between the two.
There was something unspoken between them. Something they were both aware of to a certain extent, but neither of them dared to say it out loud, not even to each other. As much as they both knew something was afoot with their identities, it was hard to even admit it to themselves, let alone someone else.
But, talking about it as if they had already discussed everything was surprisingly easy. Keeping it all under the rug and unspoken was the easiest thing for both of them at the moment.
“The foundation that’s in your makeup bag makes my skin look nice and smooth, but… I almost look like I’m one of those china dolls or something.” Mike said with a laugh, the words coming out easy as if he was discussing the weather. It was amazing to just be able to talk freely about all these new experiences, to have someone who listened and didn’t judge him. They were the same, and they both recognized how rare it was to find someone so similar to the other.
“You should use the setting powder, or maybe bronzer for that. It’ll make it look way more natural.” Robin said. Mike let out an “ah” of understanding.
“I also wanna, like, wear skirts and stuff. Maybe one of those nice sleeveless shirts I see some girls wearing to the gym?” Mike states, kind of like a question, continuously testing the waters of the things he could say that he felt would be so unacceptable to his friends, but that he hoped would be normal to Robin. There were still a lot of nerves around both of their gender-bending explorations.
Robin just nodded. “I have some old things you can borrow if you want. Maybe we could do a clothes swap? I know you have a lot of those big hoodies that I love. Maybe some… I don’t know, maybe cargo shorts…?” Robin asks hopefully.
Mike’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree at the suggestion.
The two silently sneak through the house, not arousing the attention of the rest of the party hanging out on the main floor, and find their way up to Mike’s room.
The two end up clearing out almost all of Mike’s old clothes from both his closet and his dresser. Robin didn’t take everything of course, but Mike was left with less than half of what he started with by the time the two of them were trying to find old boxes and totes in the basement to pack all of his old– no, Robin’s new clothes into.
Seeing Robin so unguardedly excited packing away her new clothes to take them back to her house to try on (no matter how close the two of them were, she wasn’t quite ready to change anywhere near Mike) made Mike tense with anticipation for him and Robin to give her wardrobe the same treatment.
The two were thankfully able to convince Nancy to take a break from her schoolwork to drive them back to Robin’s house. Of course, this having been the first time Robin and Mike had had to so openly disclose their new closeness to anyone in the party, it left the two with a lot of hard to answer questions from Nancy.
“Remind me why are you guys taking all these boxes to Robin’s house?” Nancy asked, more pointed at Mike as he was the one sitting next to her in the passenger seat. He and Robin had lied and said the boxes were empty when they loaded them into Nancy’s car, acting as if they weren’t breaking their backs trying to carry them.
Mike hadn’t had any time to come up with good excuses and was horrible when put on the spot, so he was glad when Robin came to his rescue. “I asked him for help cleaning up and we needed the storage space. Mike and I are similar, you know, why else would we be hanging out as much as we are? I figured there might be stuff he’d like around my house.”
Nancy seemed even more confused at that. “Like what? What would my little twerp brother possibly want that you have.” She said, trying to joke as if Mike wasn’t sitting right next to her. “And what’s that about you guys hanging out, I didn’t know that was a thing. Like, when did that start?” She continued, clearly not happy with being left in the dark about anything concerning one of her closest friends and her little brother.
Robin flushed a little at Nancy’s question, realizing her mistake in implying her and Mike’s greater friendship which was mostly unnoticed by the rest of the party. “I– I mean, I can be friends with anybody, can’t I? What’s wrong with freaks sticking together?” She stuttered out, trying to flip the tables on Nancy.
“It’s not a big deal, it’s just for a little while. I can even bike back if I need to.” Mike added, trying to slow the questions from Nancy that were getting harder and harder to answer cleanly.
“Who’s bike are you gonna use, idiot?” Nancy asked.
“He can use mine, it’s no big.” Robin responded quickly, saving Mike from the question.
All of their answers in combination seemed to leave Nancy more confused than ever, but Mike could sense that she knew she wasn’t going to get anything out of them, and they finished the ride to Robin’s house in silence.