Chapter Text
Mike- December 5th 1987
Snow falls over Hawkins in slow, steady sheets. Weeks of winter have leeched the color from everything, burying the town beneath layers of white and gray until it feels half-asleep, frozen in place.
Mike Wheeler sits in the back of his mother’s van, knees pulled in close as ice crunches beneath the tires. He watches her through the rearview mirror, tracks the tight set of her mouth and the way her eyes stay fixed on the road. She looks tired in a way he hasn’t seen since her divorce.
Mike knows where they’re going. He knew the second she said they were “going for a drive.” He’d seen the glossy flyers stamped with Hawkins Inpatient Facility on his mother’s bedside table, tucked between the pages of a book. Some nights, when she wasn’t in the room, he’d look at them, noticing how their edges curled like they’d been handled too many times. He always put the book back exactly how she’d left it.
Part of him has already given in. Part of him is relieved, like this might finally give his mother room to breathe and heal without him dragging her down. Another part of him is coiled tight, every instinct screaming to run from it all. Running had always been his answer to everything. It’s what landed him here.
He hates that he hurt her. Knows, somewhere deep and ugly inside himself, that he’s selfish. But there’s a heavier truth beneath that is worse: He doesn’t care the way he knows he should. He hasn’t cared about much of anything in a long time. It feels like winter has settled into his bones, like he’s become the kind of cold that drains the color from everything around him and leaves it buried and unmoving.
The van slows as wrought-iron gates rise ahead of them, framing a brick building that looms against the pale sky. The brakes squeal softly before the engine cuts out. Mike swallows, the sound echoing loud in the hollow silence.
Karen twists in her seat, finally facing him. “Mike… this is for the best,” she whispers, her voice cracking. Mike can’t bring himself to meet her gaze. He stares past her, letting her existence linger only in the corners of his vision.
He picks at the bandages on his arm, fingernails scraping the edges as if the motion could distract him from everything else. “I know. It’s okay,” he mutters, the words hollow even to his own ears. “Really, it makes sense..” His shoulders lift in a half-hearted shrug, a feigned nonchalance that doesn’t reach his eyes.
A cascade of events happen very quickly.
He’s in the car, then in the lobby. The fluorescent lights overhead smear across his vision, he tries to blink them away. A man at the front desk speaks to him and he thinks he hears words, but they’re gone before he can grasp them. His mother’s hand presses against his back, gentle but insistent. His legs carry him forward, but he isn’t driving them.
A woman with a clipboard waits in the small metal doorway. He can’t remember how he got to her. His heartbeat drowns out everything, blood rushing loud in his ears.
The doors lock behind him with a dull, mechanical click. The sound reverberates through his skull, shattering the fragile dreamlike haze that had lured him here. Suddenly, everything is sharp and unbearably real. The building exhales around him, and he feels it decide: Mike Wheeler belongs here now.
Mike turns back to the textured glass window. His mother stands in the hallway, arms folded across her chest, a hollow look in her eyes. From this distance, she seems impossibly small, as if her existence is fading away from him by the second. He stares, expressionless. She nods, offering a faint, fragile smile of reassurance.
“This way, please,” The nurse’s voice echoes beside him. Her voice sounds tinny and foreign in the large facility.
He tears himself away from his mother’s gaze and turns down the hallway, following the woman without looking back again. Mike tells himself it’s for the best. If he doesn’t look back, he doesn’t have to see her standing there, doesn’t have to remember the way her face looked. Maybe then she was never really there at all.
The smell around him starts to crowd his thoughts, strong disinfectant with something sweet underneath, like artificial air freshener that's stuck to the wallpaper over the years. It makes his stomach sick.
He tugs the hood of his jacket down, squinting up at the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. They hum like an angry hive, impossible to tune out once he notices them. Mike's sneakers squeak against the linoleum as the nurse leads him forward, a clipboard tucked under her arm. She stops at a door labeled INPATIENT BOARDING and pulls it open, stepping aside to give him space to pass.
Mike keeps his head down. His hair falls in loose collections around his ears and across his forehead as he ducks inside.
“Change into this, please.” She hands him a folded grey hoodie and pants, a pair of black slippers resting neatly on top. The pile feels like lead in his arms, like something designed to weigh him down and brand him.
She pulls a curtain between them. Mike peels off his clothes, his hands moving on autopilot, and catches himself in the mirror mounted on the wall. The reflection is almost a stranger. His arms are a mess of stained bandages, pale skin stretched tight over collarbones and ribs pressing sharply against each inhale. He looks smaller than he remembers, hollowed out in ways he hasn’t fully felt until now.
He folds himself into the grey hoodie and pants, the fabric stiff and unfamiliar against his skin. For a moment, it all hits him at once: the hum of the lights, the scrape of the fabric against his skin, the ache in his chest. It’s unbearably sharp, a sudden clarity that plagues him before receding back into a dull, muted calm.
He pulls the curtains back, holding his discarded clothes against his chest, and hands them to the nurse without meeting her eyes.
She takes his phone, his shoelaces, his belt. He watches his things disappear into a small plastic bin with his name scrawled across it, filed away like the last pieces of proof that he exists beyond these walls. The nurse doesn't speak when she does it, which somehow makes the whole exchange worse.
“Okay, vitals first, Mr. Wheeler,” she says gently, her voice sounds rehearsed like this is an exchange at a dentist’s office and not a locked psych unit. “Then we can get you settled.”
Settled. Mike almost laughs at the thought. “Yeah, sure,” His voice comes out tired and small, as he offers her a smile that doesn't meet his eyes. She wraps a blood pressure cuff around his bicep, tightening around it too tight. He stares at the wall instead of saying anything, counting the tiny cracks in the paint.
“Any thoughts of harming yourself today, Mike?” she asks, her voice still soft.
The question hangs in the air between them. For a moment, he can’t tell if she’s unaware or just cruel. He gives her the benefit of the doubt, choosing to believe she hasn’t noticed the bandages on his arms or the reason for intake printed neatly on her clipboard.
Mike shrugs, then nods. It’s easier than trying to explain that those thoughts don’t feel like thoughts anymore. They’re more like a static that moved in one day and never left, humming low and constant beneath everything else.
“Okay,” she says, jotting something down on her clipboard. Her face is impassive towards his silent admission. That might be the worst part.
The pen scratches softly as she writes more, the sound too loud in the small room. Mike watches the tip move and can’t help but imagine how many times she’s written the same thing about different boys with different names.
She reaches for a plastic wristband and slips it around his arm, snapping it into place with a quiet click. It’s gray, with his name and a room number stamped in a sterile, blocky font. Mike turns his wrist slightly, watching the letters curve around his skin.
He briefly wonders if this is what prison is like. The thought doesn’t scare him as much as he thinks it should.
Then she hands him a paper packet, the rules of the facility printed in small, unforgiving font. He doesn’t read it, not really. His eyes drift across the pages, catching only the words that seem to scream at him in capital letters:
OBSERVATION CHECKS EVERY HOUR. GROUP THERAPY AND MEALS ARE MANDATORY. QUIET HOUR AT 12PM. LIGHTS OUT AT 9PM.
Mike listens as she explains the packet. Her voice reaches him dulled and distant, like it’s traveling through layers of cotton or across a room he isn’t really in. He nods at the right moments, the way he always does when people expect him to be present. He’s always been good at that.
He’s led into a small, aggressively neutral room with two beds, though the other one is empty for now. A narrow window, reinforced with wire, lets in just enough light to faintly illuminate the cramped space. He tells himself to be grateful for it.
The room goes silent for a moment as the nurse finishes her speech that Mike hardly heard a sentence of. Mike blinks, like he’s surfacing, and scrubs a hand down his face.
“They’ll be in to check on you every hour, Mike.” Her voice rings softly in the small room.
He turns on his heel and looks at her, nodding in acknowledgment. She stands in the doorway, framed by the hall light, her expression worn thin and devastated all at once. He wonders if she sees boys like him every day here, if this look is something she carries from room to room. A part of him wants to ask how long this will last. The other part of him doesn’t want to know.
The heavy door swings closed behind her, the lock sliding into place with a dull finality.
Mike stands there for a second, unsure what to do with himself now that no one is watching him. It’s the first time he’s been alone since he made the decision to swallow a handful of pills and hurt himself badly enough that everything stopped for a brief, blissful moment.
The last twenty-four hours of his life had been lived under a microscope, and now… There are no ambulance lights washing over him now, no sirens screaming in his ears, no nurses moving in and out with urgent hands and practiced voices. No one telling him to stay awake. No mother perched beside a hospital bed, eyes sharp with fear and exhaustion, refusing to sleep. Just him, and the suffocating stillness filling the room.
He moves to sit on the small bed. The mattress sags beneath his weight, thin and unwelcoming. He drags his fingers over his forearm, the ache there serving as a reminder that his body survived something his mind didn’t intend it to.
The reality of what he’s done finally settles in. Not regret, because that would require caring about tomorrow… but a hollow awareness of the distance between the boy who made that choice and the one sitting here now.
He presses his knuckles into his thighs, grounding himself in the pressure, and stares at the opposite bed before looking away.
Useless.
You’re stuck here now.
You really think these people want to help you?
Like you’d let them. You’d rather tear yourself apart than accept anything you don’t deserve.
Mike scrubs at his eyes, trying to push back the thoughts closing in around him. He lies back and stares at the ceiling, the welcome packet still clutched in his hand. Sleep tugs at him, heavy and insistent, the closest thing to escape he’s allowed, and he thinks, in the quiet corners of his mind, that he might vanish if no one is watching.
Mike- December 6th 1987
Mike blinks awake before the lights come on. There’s no nightmare or sudden jolt of panic, just a slow and reluctant return to being. His eyes open to the same beige ceiling they closed on hours ago, like he never fully fell asleep in the first place.
For a second, he forgets where he is. The thin blanket scratches against his skin, twisted around his arms, and his body aches where the mattress dug into his hipbones. The air smells sharp, not the warm and familiar scent of his mother’s house. Apple cider, faintly lingering in memory, replaced by this sterile heaviness that gnaws at his lungs. He inhales slowly, trying to force himself to take a full breath.
The door clicks open for the hourly check, hinges squeaking softly. Footsteps linger in the doorway, the scratch of a pen marking him present. He doesn’t move, hoping his stillness gets mistaken for sleep. The door shuts as quickly as it was opened. From the other side of the wall, Mike hears another door open. A voice small and careful drifts through.
Mike turns his head into the pillow and tries not to listen, letting himself toe the line between sleep and consciousness until the building finally wakes up.
The lights flicker on above him, washing the unit in a flat, unforgiving brightness that makes him feel like an animal frozen in place.
A metallic taste sits heavy on his tongue, sour and wrong, lingering no matter how many times he swallows.
He swings his legs off the bed, the thin blankets slipping down after them. He drags his hands through his hair and steps up to the sink, cupping cold water in his palms and splashing it up over his face until it stings, water dripping between his lips and down his chin.
Mike stares blankly at himself in the plastic mirror on the wall- dark shadows line his cheekbones and his eyes. His curls cling damply to his forehead, uneven and unkempt. He looks gaunt, hollower somehow than he remembers being just yesterday.
Slowly killing yourself, Mike?
No one’s gonna notice anyways.
They’re better off without you.
Mike squeezes his eyes shut, fingers gripping the edge of the sink until it digs into his palms. He breathes in shallow, uneven pulls as his thoughts buzz out of control, a dull pressure blooming behind his eyes and spreading through his skull.
A knock at the door cuts through it. Then another before it opens quickly. Mike stills, lifting his head just enough to see the young orderly standing in the doorway.
“Breakfast is in five minutes, Mike.” Her tone is flat and practiced, her expression unreadable in a way that makes his skin prickle.
He nods, murmuring something that might pass for an answer and pushes off the sink.
She steps farther into the room, balancing two small white cups in her hand. “This is your morning medication.” Her eyes stay on him, sharp and watchful.
For a moment, Mike considers whether she’s bracing for a fight or some kind of meltdown. Neither comes as he takes them without hesitation, pills tipped into his mouth and swallowed dry.
She nods, satisfied, and leaves without another word. Mike stays where he is, eyes following her until the rattling of the med cart fades around the corner.
He pulls a folded hoodie from the open-faced cabinet on the wall and slips it over his head. The fabric is stiff where it brushes against his skin in a way that makes him suddenly aware of every inch of his arms and shoulders. He drops the old one into the small basket tucked in the corner, the soft thump echoing faintly in the quiet room. For a moment, he just stands there, looking down at the crumpled pile, letting himself register that nothing in this routine is really his.
Mike shifts his weight from one foot to the other and starts moving out the door, falling in behind the slow trickle of patients heading toward the cafeteria. They shuffle along like cattle, heads down, arms wrapped around themselves, and the thought puts a pit in his stomach. He tries to keep his gaze on the linoleum, focusing on the pale green tiles and the occasional scuff mark.
The cafeteria smells like eggs and disinfectant, enough to make his stomach turn. Conversations overlap around him, laughter that doesn’t quite fit the faces it comes from, whispers he can’t place. A chair scrapes nearby, too loud, and his shoulders tense on instinct. His head feels stuffed with cotton, every sound bleeding into the next.
He follows the girl in front of him, grabbing a tray. The line moves him forward whether he wants it to or not. Food appears on the tray without his input: eggs and toast, with a spoonful of peas pressed into a corner. He pauses, staring like it’s something he’s been handed by mistake, then keeps moving. He can’t really bring himself to care. He probably won’t eat any of it anyway.
He looks for a place that feels invisible. Surveying the room, he sees a patient sitting by a large, circular window across the room from him.
Mike doesn't know what it is at first- just a tug of attention, like something in the room is calling out to him. The guy sits alone at a small table tucked beside the window, light spilling across his delicate features. He’s thin. Not sickly, exactly, but like he's been carved down over time. Dark chestnut hair falls into his eyes. His shoulders are held rigid, hands curled tight around his silverware.
He isn't eating.
His attention is fixed on his plate with a focus so intense it almost feels intrusive to watch. Mike slows his pace, the tray growing heavier in his hands. The fork doesn’t move the way forks usually do, instead it hovers, nudging peas into place with deliberate precision. They've been separated from the rest of the food and arranged into neat little lines along the edge of his tray.
Mike realizes, slowly, that he’s counting to himself. His mouth moves just enough to give him away. Mike looks away first, unsettled by the sudden, inexplicable awareness of the pink curve of his lips.
Across the room, a patient slams his tray against the table. He’s shouting something incoherent at an orderly and grinning like it's hilarious. The noise rings out in the tiled room.
The counting stops. It’s subtle, just a hitch in his shoulders and a brief break in rhythm, but Mike catches it anyway. One pea rolls out of line and he freezes. His hands come up, tangling in his hair, fingers tugging at the strands that fall into his face in clear frustration.
Mike’s chest tightens, and he isn’t sure why. Caring about the well-being of a stranger takes effort, more than he usually has to spare. He watches as the brunette stares at the stray pea like it’s a problem that has to be solved or something bad will happen. Slowly, carefully, he nudges it back into place with the edge of his fork, resetting the line before the counting begins again.
Mike sits down two tables away without consciously deciding to, setting his tray on the wooden surface quietly and settling into the uncomfortable plastic chair.
He looks scared. Not panicked or hysterical, just deeply afraid of doing something wrong. Mike recognizes that kind of fear. It lives in him too, turned inward instead of aimed at the world.
His gaze lingers longer than he intends, tracing the slope of the other patient’s shoulders, the sharp line of collarbone beneath a thin crewneck. Morning light from the window catches at the pale skin of his neck, and something unfamiliar twists low in Mike’s chest. He looks away, unsettled by the feeling and by how hard it is to name.
For a moment, the guy looks up. Their eyes meet from across the room, and it hits Mike like a drop in his stomach. There’s no challenge in the gaze, just a quick, startled awareness. As if Mike’s presence has been registered and quietly filed away.
Mike looks away too fast, heat creeping up his neck and settling at the tips of his ears. He exhales slowly, scrubbing a hand across his face as he forces his shoulders to relax. It feels, strangely, like he’s been caught watching something private and sacred.
Mike tries to make a mental checklist of things he knows are real, a coping mechanism he learned back when the anxiety attacks first started. He comes up empty, the list all unknowns and no answers. He doesn’t know this guy’s name. Doesn’t know why he’s here. Doesn’t know why his hands shake, or why the food on his plate seems to frighten him more than the place they’re both locked inside.
What he doesn’t understand most of all is why all he wants to do is look back and take in every detail his eyes can hold before the moment slips away.
Mike does know the room feels louder when he’s not looking at him. The sensation settles heavy in his stomach as he pushes food around on his tray, willing himself to keep his eyes down.
Breakfast ends as quickly as it began. A handful of orderlies guide the patients out in small, contained groups. Mike allows himself one last glance across the room. He watches the brunette stand carefully, frail, willowy limbs wound tight as if his body might collapse into itself at any moment. He moves cautiously through the room, like he’s afraid of bumping into something invisible.
Mike stares after him as he disappears through the doors of the cafeteria. He feels the absence like a missing sound. The room feels like it lost its charge- the magnetic pull of it contorted and twisted all wrong.
Forcing himself up, Mike collects his untouched tray and scrapes what's left of his breakfast into a nearby bin. It makes a wet, unappetizing sound- eggs sliding off plastic, toast thudding against the bottom. His stomach churns, the thought of eating making him slightly nauseated. He thinks briefly it might be the medication. Or maybe he’s just distracted by that guy. He tries to tell himself it’s nothing more than curiosity and boredom, that it's anything but what it feels like.