Chapter Text
The cafeteria smells like smelly teens and fried grease, the kind that seeps into clothes and never quite leaves. Mike barely notices. He’s too busy watching Will flick a pea across his tray with the careful concentration of a wizard lining up a spell.
“So,” Mike says, leaning back in his chair, rocking it onto two legs. “You guys ready to come over later?”
Dustin looks up, chewing loudly. Lucas doesn’t.
Mike grins anyway and presses on. “Because I just want to remind Will the Wise that his patron’s boon is still active. And that may just come in handy very soon.”
Will snorts despite himself. “I’m just waiting for the right time to use it.”
“Mhm,” Mike says. “Just be honest and say you forgot you even had it.”
There’s a pause. A look passes between Lucas, Dustin, and Will. It’s quick, practiced, and unmistakable.
Something ugly unfurls low in Mike’s stomach.
Lucas clears his throat. “I can’t make it.”
Mike blinks. “What do you mean, you can’t make it? It’s Friday. We always play D&D on Fridays.”
Lucas shrugs, not meeting his eyes. “Max and I already have plans.”
Mike scoffs. “You mean you’re going to Lover’s Lake to suck each other’s faces off.”
Lucas finally looks at him, a slow, self-satisfied smile spreading across his face. He doesn’t deny it.
Mike exhales sharply through his nose and turns to the others. “Okay. And you two?”
Dustin answers with his mouth full, shovelling mystery meat onto his fork like it might escape. “Steve just got back from college, so we’re working on his car. Something’s wrong with the engine, and he knows I can fix it cheaper than those assholes at the auto repair shop.”
Mike grimaces. A piece of lettuce, wet with spit, clings stubbornly to Dustin’s lower lip.
Will, at least, looks apologetic. “Robin’s back too,” he says quietly. “She convinced me to see Pillion. It’s the only screening in Hawkins while she’s here, so she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Mike nods. Picks at the congealed mess on his tray. Let’s it sit.
“Oh,” he says finally.
He forces a smile onto his face. It’s a thin brittle thing, the kind everyone can see through, but no one comments on.
“Well. I need to talk to Mr. Clarke about my assignment before class.” He stands, tray in hand. “I’ll see you guys on Monday.”
Echoes of “Bye Mike!” And “See you later dude.” Follow him as he dumps his tray into the trash and walks away without looking back.
As he walks down the school hallway, he tells himself it’s fine.
Senior year is like this. Everyone knows that. People get busy. People change. People start orbiting things that aren’t basements and character sheets and plastic dice. Girlfriends. Jobs. College applications. Futures that don’t fit neatly around a folding table and a Dungeon Master screen.
Mike knows that.
He knows he can’t expect them to keep choosing him, not when the world keeps offering them bigger, shinier things. Not when Friday nights stop being open and start filling up with plans that don’t include him. He knows that’s how growing up works. Mr. Clarke practically gave a lecture on it last month, framed as “time management” but really meaning learning what to let go of.
And it’s selfish, really, to be upset about it.
That’s the part Mike keeps circling back to. The idea that his disappointment is something to be ashamed of. That wanting people to show up, to sit down, to roll dice and pretend for a few hours that nothing has changed, is childish. Immature. Something he should’ve outgrown by now.
He tells himself he should be better than this.
They didn’t say no to him. Not really. They just said yes to other things. To Max, and Steve, and Robin. To fixing cars and movie theatres and lakes that don’t smell like his dust filled basement. And that’s fair. That’s normal. That’s allowed.
So why does it still feel like he was abandoned?
The thought makes his chest tighten, sharp and sudden, like he’s done something wrong without knowing what it was. Like there’s a rule he missed, a cue he failed to read. He wonders, and not for the first time, if this is what being left behind feels like before you realise it’s happening.
He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts that he doesn’t see Troy coming.
The impact slams the breath out of him, a sharp whoosh as his back hits the lockers. Metal rattles. His vision swims.
Troy looms over him, smug grin firmly in place, his two cronies laughing behind him.
“Watch where you’re going, Frog Face.”
Mike snorts, still catching his breath. “You’ve been using the same insult since kindergarten. Please try to be a little more creative.”
He tilts his head. “But I know all that thinking would probably hurt you, so don’t stop on my account.”
Troy’s face flushes red.
“You’re dead, Wheeler,” he spits, shoving Mike again before stalking off down the hall.
Mike stays where he is long after they’re gone. He tips his head back, lets it knock once, softly, against the lockers.
Clang.
He knows what’s waiting for him after school. He knows he shouldn’t have talked back, that it would’ve been smarter to keep his head down, to swallow the comment, to let it pass like he’s done a hundred times before. But he didn’t, not this time.
His mouth has always had the ability to get him into trouble, it always moves faster than his better judgment, especially on days like this, when everything already feels unfair and too sharp. It’s like something in him refuses to stay quiet, even when he knows the cost. Even when he knows he’ll pay for it later.
He closes his eyes.
This day couldn’t get any worse.
--..--
Getting home with a busted lip and having to lie to his mother about it is never fun. Doing it when she very clearly doesn’t believe him is worse.
“I fell in P.E.,” Mike says, too quickly.
Karen Wheeler hums, unimpressed, her eyes lingering on the split skin and the faint swelling. Whatever concern she feels is quickly overtaken by irritation, not at the bruise itself, but at the obvious lie. Mike offers a tight, practiced smile, the kind meant to smooth things over, and takes advantage of her turning back to the counter to slip past her.
He doesn’t wait to see if she calls him back.
The basement is cool and dim and familiar in a way that makes his chest ache. He drops his bag at the foot of the stairs and crosses the room on autopilot, sinking into his chair without thinking, the one he always takes, the one that faces the table. The realization that he doesn’t have anyone to face makes him flinch, so he doesn’t linger on it.
The table is already set.
Folders with their names written carefully across the front are placed neatly in front of each chair. Dice trays. Character sheets. Everything is exactly where it should be.
Mike stares.
Something tightens in his throat, sharp and sudden, and he has to look away before his eyes burn.
God, he feels pathetic.
He’s sitting alone in his basement with a busted lip and shaking hands, his heart still hammering from Troy’s punch, and he hadn’t been able to stop it. Couldn’t then. Likely won’t the next time either. And now his friends are gone too, busy with better things, better people, people who don’t cling to imaginary worlds like he does.
Everything feels wrong. Too quiet. Too empty.
The anger comes fast, hot and ugly.
He surges to his feet and sweeps his arm across the table. The sound is violent in the enclosed space, dice clattering, figurines hitting the floor with dull clicks, folders scattering as papers bend and crumble at awkward angles. The noise echoes and then dies, leaving the silence even louder than before.
Mike drops to the floor among the wreckage, his breath coming too fast. His eyes sting.
Now he doesn’t just feel pathetic.
He is.
This didn’t make him feel any better. It just made the sight of his ruined basement even more devastating.
He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand and lets himself sit there for a few seconds longer than he should, surrounded by proof of how much this mattered to him. Then he exhales shakily and forces himself to move.
He gathers the folders first, stacking them neatly back on the table, smoothing the bent corners as best he can. Then the dice. Then the figurines.
His hand stops when he reaches the mage.
She lies on her side where she fell, paint unchipped, arm still outstretched as if frozen mid-spell.
He can’t remember why he painted her in the first place.
Purple robes. Long brown hair. A posture that suggests certainty, like she knows exactly what she’s capable of, like she doesn’t doubt herself for even a second.
He never wrote her into the campaign. She has no name. No backstory. No place on the map.
But in his head, she’s always been everything he isn’t.
Powerful. Confident. Someone who knows how to make a room listen.
Mike huffs out a quiet, humourless laugh.
As if he could ever be like that.
He curls his fingers around the figurine.
The sensation hits instantly. A sharp, wrenching tug deep in his gut, like something hooking itself behind his navel and yanking hard. Mike sucks in a breath that doesn’t quite make it to his lungs. The air feels wrong, thick and thin all at once, as if the basement has forgotten how to hold him.
The room shudders.
The edges of his vision blur, colours bleeding together until the familiar browns and greys smear into something indistinct. The shelves, the table, the scattered dice, all of it seems to pull away from him, stretching, warping, like he’s looking through warped glass. His feet leave the floor, or maybe the floor drops out from under him; he can’t tell which.
Panic flares, hot and immediate.
Mike tries to shout, tries to reach for something, anything, but his fingers close around empty air. The pressure tightens, dragging him forward and down, his stomach lurching violently as the basement collapses into shadow.
The last thing he feels is weightlessness.
Then everything goes black.