Chapter Text
1st of November 2003
Mike Wheeler was a writer, and a damn good one at that. At 32, he had finally hit the big leagues. Of course, for the last ten years or so he had had a slowly growing fan base for his sci-fi series about a girl growing up in a lab and saving the world, but it was this book - the first in a new series, about four boys growing up in a small town with something supernatural chasing after them that had driven little lonely Mike Wheeler into the mainstream. In a matter of a few years, he had gone from writing when off from his substitute teacher job to living completely off his writing. He was speaking at conventions, he had book signings every week, and his father had even nodded at him and said a soft, well done son.
So, he had everything he had ever wanted. Career-wise.
Of course, neither his father nor his readers knew that his stories were not mere stories, but rather a rewrite or a retelling of the adventures of his youth. The adventures he had never seemed to escape. His twenties had been spent wondering what Eleven's childhood had been like, wondering how she had felt as a little girl facing Henry. And now, his thirties seemed to start completely focused on him and his friends.
He would spend long days and nights in his apartment in Boston writing, made easier with the Dell Dimension 4600 computer he had bought when his book suddenly landed on a bestselling list. It had been a big purchase, the one and only big grown-up purchase he had ever made. It sat on his old desk, facing the window, and he had got a mouse pad with the Statue of Liberty on it when he had been invited to speak at a convention in New York.
Other than the computer by the window and the bookshelf next to it, the apartment was sparse. Practical. An old, yellow couch he had gotten when his grandmother had passed. The old TV from his childhood home, a cabinet for the VHS next to it. Next to that was his DVD player, and the few DVDs he had acquired in his short time owning it. He had spent the entire payout for his fourth book on it the moment that the Lord of the Rings was released to DVD, and the Fellowship as well as the Two Towers in their extended editions were proudly displayed for no one but Mike himself. Of the few DVDs he owned, the others were things he had seen the few times he had dragged himself to the movies: The Matrix, Space Oddysey, Dark City, Mullholland Drive and his very favourite - Fight Club.
The kitchen was small, with the white paint peeling off the tiles and the fridge making a loud humming sound. The coffee machine was by far the most used part of the kitchen. Mike wasn’t much of a cook. He didn’t enjoy it, and to be honest didn’t really see the point of it. He much preferred living off sandwiches, or on occasion, cheese and bologna rolled into tubes with a crisp soft drink beside it.
The bedroom was the least decorated, with just a bed with white sheets, an old wooden closet with his clothes and his very favourite thing in his apartment hanging over his bed - the painting El had commissioned for him, back when she was still here and not wherever she was now.
It wasn’t much. To be honest, with his new-found fame, Mike could absolutely afford to spruce it up, get a new couch or a new TV. Hell, he could afford to move somewhere slightly better. But Mike didn’t really see a point. He rarely, if ever, got visitors. He went home for thanksgiving and Christmas, if he saw Nancy he went to her place just a short bus ride away, and Holly much preferred meeting him at restaurants or cafés where Mike could pay for her, since in her own words, she was a broke college student and it was his duty as her brother.
He didn’t have many friends. His old ones were off living their lives. He would visit when he was in their parts of the world, which wasn’t very often. And they would get together when they were back in Hawkins for Christmas or Thanksgiving, which was less and less for the others. Lucas and Max were living in Chapel Hill, with Lucas coaching the team at North Carolina University and Max getting her doctorate in psychology and raising their two girls. He’d been there a few times, for the wedding and the christenings and two times just to visit. Dustin was off in New Mexico putting his nuclear physics degree to use doing something he couldn’t tell them about. He’d been there three times, once with the whole party and twice on his own to try and get rid of his writers block. And Will was off painting in New York. Mike liked New York. In another life, he might have even lived there. He liked Williamsburg, he liked all the artists, he liked Will’s little apartment with the green walls and the little art studio in the spare bedroom. He had been there quite a few times. He tried to go to as many of Will’s exhibitions as he could, but with the years there had been more and more of those.
But the party rarely came to Boston. Of course, they had been, once, when Mike first moved. They had all crammed themselves into Mike’s apartment and made fun of his undecorated apartment, which Mike had defended by saying he had literally just moved in. This year, it would only be Mike and Dustin in Hawkins for Thanksgiving. Will spent it, like always, with his mother and Hopper in Montauk, and Lucas and Max had invited their folks to North Carolina. Nancy and her husband would be staying in Boston preparing for the birth of their first child (which Nancy was not freaking out about, and not working obsessively at her journalist job out of fear of being fired if she had to take a longer maternity leave like the doctors had been begging her to do). Holly would be back as well, he supposed. Dustin was bringing his girlfriend to meet his mother, and Holly would probably be hanging out with her friends the entire time, so it would probably mostly just be Mike and his mother and father in the old house.
But sure. He was excited. He should be. He had always liked Thanksgiving.
The point was. Mike was finally a successful writer, and he was in the midst of writing the second book in the series, where one of the characters gets possessed by an evil entity, and he owned a really expensive computer, and people wanted him to sign their books, and he didn’t need to decorate an apartment no one visited.
And Mike didn’t mind that no one visited. He liked his life. He liked writing all day about his youth at the new, expensive computer and he liked doubletying his shoelaces at the bench overlooking the ocean and he liked walking by the tourists doing the walking tours and he liked that the barista knew his regular order and he liked going to the movies alone and not finishing his popcorn and he liked not talking to anyone for days on end.
It suited him.
Tonight, Mike was eating a delicious roll of bologna and american cheese standing at his kitchen counter and looking at the clock hanging over the apartment door, waiting for the time when it was appropriate to leave for the book signing. Not that he had nothing better to do than eat ham-and-cheese rolls in his better jacket. He had just. Gotten ready slightly earlier than he needed to. And the bookstore for today’s signing was only a few blocks away. He didn’t want to be too early. No, all the cool writers were fashionably late. He knew this, because he had read it in a magazine.
He had eaten six rolls so far. He was getting dangerously low on cheese. He must remember to buy some more. Maybe, he should just leave now and stop at the store on the way? No, Mike thought to himself, I can’t show up to a book signing with a bag with just american kraft singles and cheap bologna.
Mike didn’t have much to think about these days, other than the second book and his bologna and cheese rolls.
Finally it was time to head out. It was getting cold, but the proper writers didn’t wear scarfs. He also learned this from a magazine. There were a lot of people on the streets, going home from work or stopping by the store. He liked looking at the people that passed and wondering what their lives were like. Did they have children? Were their wives or husbands waiting at home? What did they do for work? Where did they grow up?
That woman in the acid green jacket and short black skirt, Mike thought, is probably the lead singer in an up-and-coming grunge band. Mike liked grunge music. Maybe he should find out what the band was, and see if they had any CDs for sale. Mike didn’t go to concerts. He never had anyone to talk to there. The man over there in the grey suit is probably an executive at a big company, and bankrolls his wife’s career as an almost-good watercolour artist. They probably have a little boy, maybe a seven year old, who probably just got in trouble for bullying someone at school, but that man doesn’t get why it’s a big deal. He is probably getting in a fight with his wife the moment he walks through the door. Maybe Mike should tell him to buy some flowers for her.
The bookstore is an independent one, in an old house with big windows and a poster in the window with a photo of Mike’s book advertising this very signing. The signing isn’t supposed to start for another half an hour, but the queue is already forming. Mike probably won’t ever get used to the fact that people like his books. Well, at the very least, people like his book. Singular. His first series had had its fans, most of them men around Mike’s own age or older. But this one, it had hit a whole nother (much bigger) demographic. Of course, there were all the men in their thirties, but there were also women in their thirties, women in their twenties, teenagers, kids dressed like punks and goths, teens with homemade shirts saying The Vanishing of Evan Walsh in rocky felt-tip handwriting.
And people might have liked the series about Eliza Kane, known to the lab as Eleven, but they LOVED the story about Evan Walsh. The teens at his signings would give him drawings of the characters, their own stories about them, they would tell him about their theories of what was really going on. A lot of them had even read Eliza’s (Elevens) story and would start drawing comparisons between them. A lot of them asked him with big eyes how he got these ideas, how he started writing, how he made the characters so compelling. And every time, Mike would smile and say, I just write what I know, and people would reply, you know children raised in labs and interdimensional monsters?
The chattering spread through the queue that was about to reach outside the store when Mike weasled his way in to talk to the shopkeeper. Mike liked that people were talking about him in a nice way, for once. The table was already set up, with stacks of books, the checkout counter armed with three young women already looking overwhelmed. The shopkeeper was an older man in a suit, who shook his hand.
“Must be quite a whirl to see all these people here for your book!” the nice man said.
“You bet. Last january, I was about to accept a full-time position.”
“Well, would you mind starting right away? I know it’s not for another half hour, but—”
“Of course.”
Mike was getting used to it. He liked the attention. But it was still nerve racking, and he could feel his heart beating against his ribs as he sat down. The first girl in line had a buzzed head and a leather jacket, and asked him to make it out to Jane.
“Jane? That’s a nice name.”
“It’s not for me,” the girl blushed, “it’s for a friend.”
“Well, tell your friend I have only ever known one Jane, and she was wonderful.”
The line moved quickly after that. Most people just wanted the autograph, maybe a little happy birthday. Two people gave him drawings. After forty minutes and two cups of coffee, the line was thinning out, with only about twenty people left in it.
“Is Mick gay?”
Mike choked on his coffee.
“What?”
The teenager standing in front of him looked nervous, looking around.
“Is he?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s just. I know they’re twelve year olds and they’re just kids and all but. Like, when Evan goes missing he is so set on finding him and I know Mick and Eliza kiss but people are always saying how alike Evan and Eliza look, like even the names are similar, and Mick’s dad says that thing about, you see what happens.”
“Oh.”
“It’s. I was just wondering.”
Mike didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, to keep the queue moving, he said, “I guess you’ll just have to keep reading to find out.”
The rest of the signing passed in a blur. Mike wasn’t sure what about that comment had upset him. The teen was probably reading into it. Actually, probably, the teen himself was…gay, and was trying to relate, even if he was putting the gay part on the wrong character.
Mike wasn’t sure why it upset him so much. Sure, Mike wasn’t gay. But he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Being gay. There was nothing wrong with being gay. Will was gay. When Mike had asked the party permission to write this story (of course, he would write it from the point of view of Mick, of Mike, of himself, the other stories weren’t his to tell) he had asked Will specifically if he was okay with him writing Evan as Will was, as…gay. If the teen had asked if Evan was gay, Mike probably would have just shrugged and smirked at him. But if Mick was gay? That was like asking if Mike was gay. And Mike was pretty sure that if he was gay he would have noticed.
Sure. The book was very Evan-centric. But that week in Mike’s life had been very Will centric. He was missing! Of course Mick would be thinking about him all the time and worrying about him. Mike had been thinking about him all the time and worrying about him for all his teenage years! And beyond! And Mike wasn’t gay!
Not that he had had very many relationships in his life. Romantic or sexual or platonic. He had his four best friends who he’d grown up with and his sisters for friends. And once upon a time, he had had El.
The simple answer is that Mike doesn’t need people. Not like that. During his college years, he had been…sad. That was maybe the easiest way to put it. Yes, he had been sad, alone in Boston with no friends studying English. He never went to parties during those years, never lived on campus and had a roommate. He’d just shown up two minutes late to class and run to catch the bus as soon as it was over, reading his homework during his shifts at the front-of-house at one of the theatres. He had really liked that job. He got two free tickets to every show, and once in a while he’d go alone and sit in the back and cry over whatever was going on on stage. He’d seen Shakespeare’s Cymbeline once, mid-march of 1992, and he’d started feeling this weight on his chest as soon as Imogene walked in in her beautiful soft dress with Posthumus looking at her like she wasn’t just right, and cried so hard the woman next to him had handed him a tissue when she flees her town and tries to be kind. It had stuck with him, this beautiful woman running away. He doesn’t remember what she says, not exactly, and he doesn’t dare to read it, but something along the lines of: I am nothing, and nothing would be better than this.
Anyways. Mike never really made friends in college. He preferred the books. He liked the books, and he liked the essays - he was good at writing essays. His professors liked him and his boss at the theatre liked him and he got to read while the show was going on as long as he swept the floors and stocked the fridge. And he saw plays and cried every time he saw one, but otherwise he never cried. And when he called his friends he told them he had some friends, but none he was especially close to. And he went home to his undecorated and couchless little apartment with no decorations except the painting El had commissioned.
Well. He had a couch now.
And Mike didn’t really mind that he didn’t have friends. Not really. He liked being alone. He did. He once went three weeks without speaking to anyone. And he could sleep as long as he wanted, and he could go get a beer at the bar down the street and read his book while he drank it, and he went alone to the movies and he read his books and he didn’t cry, because he wasn’t at the theatre, and he only cried at the theatre, and he hadn’t been to the theatre since they fired him in 1995 for missing six shifts in a row. That had been during his three weeks of silence. He couldn’t exactly call them and say sorry, I am doing a vow of silence. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I want to be alone in my little apartment and listen to my music.
Mike liked music. He liked OK, Computer by Radiohead and he liked Kid A and Amnesiac by the same band. And he liked Cohen and Nick Drake and Bowie and when he wants to be silent and look at his painting, he likes Sigur Ros. And he liked buying CDs off of kids in bands on street corners, as long as the kids looked sad.
But Mike wasn’t sad. No. He just liked the music. And he liked being alone.
And this he would not admit to anyone, but he hadn’t been in a relationship since he was a teenager, dating El. He had slept with a girl in college, in his freshman year, and halfway through the deed he had started crying, which is when he implemented his new rule: he only cried at the theatre, and he didn't go to the theatre.
The girl didn’t matter, but for some reason Mike told her friends that she did matter to him. He hadn’t even known her very long, and they hadn’t talked since. But he didn’t want them to…something. So, to Nancy, to his parents, to Holly, to Lucas and Max and Dustin and Will, he had an on-again-off-again casual thing with Sarah for almost a year. Sarah, whose last name he had made up, liked movies and her favourite colour was yellow and she was an art student and she had an older brother and the imaginary Sarah was the only relationship he had had in his adult life.
But Mike didn’t mind. He liked it this way. He liked waking up alone and playing his music as he brushed his teeth and drinking coffee and then writing until it got dark at his new, expensive computer and then eating sandwiches or, probably, ham-and-cheese rolls for dinner and then playing his music while he brushed his teeth and he liked thinking about which of his childhood memories he would commit to pen and paper - well, to the computer, while he tried to fall asleep.
He liked it. He liked being alone. He preferred it. Sometimes he imagined that he would buy a house in the mountains somewhere, maybe in Wyoming, and he would never have to talk to anyone and he would live out his days there writing his books and once a year he would make the trek to town and sign them and send them out around the world. He liked the thought of that. Being alone with the nature and the mountains. He liked the mountains.
But not now. Now, he was still, well, sort of young (he had had the i’m turning 30 panic very recently, thank you) and he was living in Boston and if he was good enough, he would write a second book which would make him even more famous and rich.
And he had a lot to look forward to. In 12 days, he would board the train to New York for a book signing, and he’d stay in the city to see Will’s art show opening on the friday, and then he would come home and write like there was no tomorrow until the 25th, when he would get the greyhound to his hometown and celebrate Thanksgiving and see his mother and Holly and Dustin and Dustin’s new girlfriend Lucy, who he had never met. And then he would come back and finish his book and then he would take the greyhound to Hawkins again to see his family over Christmas, and then he would see his parents, and Holly, and Nancy and her husband Richard, and Dustin and Max and Lucas and their little girls. And then he would go home and walk around with nothing to do while his editor read his book, and then on New Years he would go to Nancy and Rich’s place and cheer the new year in, and then he would go home and pace around his apartment for a few days until his editor would finally get back to him.
He’s got it all planned out.
The book signing in New York is a big one. A big deal. It’s at a huge bookstore, and apparently the book store had ordered a lot more copies in advance for it. He should probably start doing finger exercises if he wants to get through it. Oh god. What was he going to wear? What if too many people show up and he gets panicked? Or worse: what if no one shows up and the bookstore has all these copies of his stupid little book?
No. Will will show up. And if no one else shows up, Mike will just sign a copy for Will and buy it for him and Will will have two copies of the story of his own vanishing from Mike’s point of view.
They had only seen each other once, since the March publishing party, and it had been crowded and Will hadn’t been able to stay the night in Boston. So Mike isn’t sure what Will thought of it. Sure, he had called him after he finished it and told him he loved it. But. It was different. Looking into Will’s eyes and saying, this is how I felt when we were 12 and he took you. Even if it was a bestseller, this felt like the only recognition that really mattered. Because what if Will didn’t like the story? The story was Will. There was no story without him. Mike had promised Will, when he asked Will if he could write it, that if Will didn’t like it he would stop. He wouldn’t write another.
What was he going to wear? His nice black leather shoes, that was no question. Black slacks. He’d bring three dress shirts, four t-shirts, and wear his best sweater and a suit jacket there. He would ask Will, when he got there. Will would know. Will had good taste. Not because Will was gay. Mike had heard that. No, Will just had good taste. He was an artist.
Mike turned on Computer A and opened his fridge, only to remember his earlier thoughts about having to buy more ham and cheese. Oh well. A problem for another day.
Mike brushed his teeth and curled into bed with the music still playing, falling asleep looking at his painting.
He slept fitfully, like he always did.