Chapter Text
Crack baby, you don't know what you want
But you know that you had it once
And you know that you want it back
Crack baby, you don't know what you want
But you know that you're needing it
And you know that you need it bad
With wild horses running through your hollow bones
Wild horses running through your hollow bones…
March 7th, 1991
Mike wasn't sure what he was going to do with his life.
He wouldn't say he was satisfied at all - because he clearly wasn't, even though he tried running away from that reality shock for a while - He wasn't sure about anything anymore since everyone distanced themselves to live a whole new scary, distant and established life away from all the crazy memories they faced in their past in Hawkins, all of the fights, true and cruel cosmic beings, blood, sorrow and regretful years in Hawkins were still there, deep inside each one of the party members's soul, threatening to appear as subtly as their shadows once in a while. That wasn't the case for Mike. He would face them every day, no exception: while lying in bed trying to make sense of a future vision for his life, while trying to sleep and failing miserably, whilst he was having nightmares over and over again. He was not doing well. And believe him, he tried - he really tried facing this new truthful reality which his life had become. A new life in which he's all alone with his family once again, feeling as emotionally inexperienced as when he was six years old. Before meeting his first and best friend, Will. Before everything happened.
Before he met El in the dark rainy woods while looking for his missing best friend. Before he saw her scared eyes look over the whole party and slowly become one of them. Seeing El grow was one of the things that Mike felt like he couldn’t ever forget even if he tried really hard to. The kid who was never able to experience childhood properly like she deserved. The glimpse of El’s life which she was able to experience was extremely painful to remember now.
She and Max become friends at first sight, sharing deep conversations, Max helping El see the world through the lens of a teenager of her age. The whole party tried their best to make her feel like she belonged. Mike being the one she fell in love with. He thinks about how little choice she had for a moment, yet she still chose him. The way that this is what she got in the end. He truly missed El. Missing El so deeply made his thoughts spiral once in a while. His days felt like a blur after the time she decided to sacrifice herself for the sake of Hawkins and the party.
He still didn’t understand. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to, but he’s trying, just like he promised her he would in his head. Everyone misses El, but Mike feels like they all think he’s the one suffering the most through his grief, obviously, because Mike was El’s boyfriend. He was supposed to be the one closest to her. But he genuinely didn’t feel like that was the case. He doesn’t, still.
Even though he loved El, he fears he had never truly loved her that way, and sometimes that hurts even more than the loss itself. Not being able to at least love El in the way he promised he did while she was still alive. This is a weight he’s been carrying deep inside his chest. A thought that completely trails its way through his body every single day since then. He now wishes El could have had someone better by her side. Mike still thinks El deserved someone who could truly see her as who she really is. Someone who would listen to her, stay by her side. He hates that he couldn't be that person for her, that he couldn’t seem to play that part in her life in the way he was supposed to from the start. He hates that, if she was still alive, he would probably still avoid talking about this, like he had done many times before. But he kept waiting for it to feel real, and it never clicked. Not even now, after all this time.
Mike had always thought he would be the first one to leave this small town for ages. Now look where he's at, still. The one boy who wanted to start over. The one who wanted to experience a new life the most is now the one that stayed. The only one left. An NYU rejection letter stood between his longing dreams and his past, blocking the way in. He chose to assure everyone he would be just fine. Turns out that's not what reality feels like at all. This past year has been rough and he's never been more anxious.
He looked around his childhood bedroom for a bit: same old life. The same records are thrown around his messy desk table, which was also full of letters to everyone he's ever loved at the right side of the desk. That is an exercise he's been practicing a lot lately: trying to focus on good things through his writing by writing for the ones he loved, the ones who were able to change something in his life for good. But it does not work well when he feels like he's stuck in the same place he knows like the back of his hand without all the people that were there to support him, who grew up with him and showed him how it was still possible to be happy in a world that didn't feel very welcoming in the first place. The only ones left were his family, including Nancy, who was putting herself out in the world, getting to explore her new found identity and interests and always focusing on herself. And there was also Holly, his younger sister, who was growing more intelligent and kind as the days passed. Mike feels like he's the same old bleak nerdy asshole who doesn't know how to express himself at all. Even after all these years, Mike still feels the urge to do something about it. The urge to change. Yet he doesn't even know where to start. He can't even write letters to his loved ones without crying whilst writing the first few lines, for fuck’s sake.
His parents were also pretty much the same.
Ted still didn't care about their family dynamic anymore if it wasn't convenient to his world views of the perfect american dream. Neither did Karen care about Ted, at least not anymore. There's a part of Mike that feels like they should do something about it, even though all the scenarios that came up in his head were chaotic, extremely knotted and made him too anxious to function, so he just stops thinking about them.
Mike knows a normal twenty-year old shouldn't have to go through all the shit he experienced in his life. He was aware of that. But a part of his brain had to constantly remind him that besides everything that went wrong, all the trauma he experienced, all the lives he's seen that had been lost, the screams, kidnappings and disappearances, there was still something deeply wrong going on in his head. Like he was watching his life through a television screen. He kept telling himself a million times for the past year that this isn't how life is supposed to feel. It all got worse when Lucas and Max moved to Los Angeles to finally go to uni together, as they both longed for that to happen for so long, claiming they'd live a whole new life, meet new people and "get the hell out of this city", as Max used to constantly say, rightfully so. Then it was Dustin's turn, who left to study physics at New York. Mike had always known Dustin would have his moment. And there he was, shining through the lens of a physician. Mike would get letters from them sometimes. He would read them at least five times until memorizing each word and imagine how they all must feel. Fulfilled, he hoped.
And then it was Will’s turn.
Mike felt like that was the hardest thing he’d ever tried to overcome - if he’d even succeeded at all. He knew he hadn’t. Will had always held this quiet, unmoving place in Mike’s heart, not only because he was his first friend, but because he’d always been there. Always steady. Always close, even when Mike was the one pulling away.
Especially then.
When Mike first started dating El, he’d been a total asshole. He knew that. He pushed Will aside without knowing how to explain why everything suddenly felt so tangled, so wrong in his head — the shape of one relationship bleeding into another, the feelings sitting too close together to separate cleanly.
He never understood why Will drew him in the way he did. He thought that if what El felt was something he could truly return, it would feel similar. Familiar. It never did.
He didn’t really want to think about that.
Not today.