Chapter Text
It was very late on a Saturday, and Mike was supposed to take Aurora to bed and read to her because he was the world’s best father, if that phrase on his treasured ceramic mug was meant to be believed. Instead, he was standing in the middle of his room with his hands on his hips, surveying the mess he had created.
His manuscript was gone. Vanished.
For the past two hours, Mike had pulled every article of clothing free from the miniature walk-in closet, had dug through every commemorative box filled with treasured memories, had scattered his books in the hopes that his own was tucked behind them, all to no avail.
Aurora spun idly on his desk chair, completely and blissfully unaware of the cataclysmic predicament Mike was currently in.
“So you lost paper?” She asked with disinterest. Mike had learned the last five years that Wheeler snark was definitely hereditary.
Mike ran his hands through his hair, exhausted. His grey cable knit sweater was uncomfortably hot with sweat from his frantic searching. “Yes,” he said, “but it was very important paper.”
“So then why did you lose it?” His daughter asked with a giggle.
“Rory, I didn’t lose it. Daddy doesn’t lose things.”
She snorted. “You lost me.”
“You gotta put that story to rest, Rory,” Mike sighed. His daughter had a penchant for bringing up the time when she was three and had begun to walk - nay, flee - from him whenever they were out of the house. This specific time, they had gone to a grocery store, just the two of them, and when he was examining expiry dates on the milk, she sprinted off. Mike had panicked so terribly his vision had blurred, and he had made the store call for her search over the speakers.
It had turned out she was hiding inside one of the circular clothing racks. Mike had promptly made her a leash-kid when they went out, much to her chagrin.
“Then the paper ran away?” She was teasing him, cheeks pink with delight. A mischievous energy took hold of Mike at the sight of her, with her blue eyes narrowed and a smile full of awkward little teeth.
“You better start running away, because in thirty seconds I’m gonna put you to bed,” he said, holding a finger up to mimic an air of authority. Not that he had much authorial sway over his daughter, but they both got a laugh out of it.
She hopped off his desk chair with a shriek, running out of the room, her socked feet making a popping sound on the hardwood (child safety sticky soles for accident prone Wheeler children) as she ran from Mike’s sight.
He chased after her, willing to abandon his search for his manuscript in order to have a moment with her.
Across the hall from his room was her own, a smaller space that felt like a pocket of whimsy in the otherwise bland house. Her room had pink floral wallpaper, a canopy, and an impressive collection of children’s books lined neatly on the shelf under her window. A collection of Batman comics had begun, as she had become obsessed with the caped vigilante. Little toys and trinkets dotted the chest of drawers and window sill, and even when her room was messy, Mike smiled; how happy he was for her to be so carefree and imaginative, for the greatest pain in her life to be told to pick up her socks.
He could hear Rory stifling a giggle from under her bed, hoping not to be caught.
“Well,” he sighed dramatically, “I guess I’ve been foiled. That’s too bad.” He came over to her bed, and sat down heavily. “I was really looking forward to reading tonight.”
From underneath, Rory inhaled sharply.
“Maybe, I would have even told a story. But, there’s no one here that will listen.” He frowned, hoping the expression would colour his voice.
A great success that move was, because not a moment later, his daughter peeked out from where his feet were planted.
“Really?” She asked, elvish grin wide, her dark hair a halo around her head where she lay on the carpet. “A new story?”
Mike scrunched his face up as if he were in deep consideration. “I might have something in the old cap.”
“Will you one day be so old you won’t be able to tell any new stories?” She asked, with a note of genuine fear in her little voice. Mike picked her up from under her arms, and helped her settle into bed.
He smiled at her. He could feel that the quirk of his mouth was the mirror image of the one that she had.
“Not possible.”
An hour later, Mike took to sitting on the stoop of his front door, his company a cigarette on a California November night. It was a sordid affair, one he had been trying to quit ever since Rory was born. He could have thrown out his last pack when they brought her home, he should have never felt the need to light another one when he had the light of his life to dote on and fret over and spend every moment thinking about.
She was turning five later this year, and Mike could think of five hundred things he would have done differently if he had another go at life.
Would have, could have, should have. In the bedtime story of Mike’s life (and what a terribly depressing story), that would be the most apt title for it.
Four years of battling interdimensional threats and saving the goddamn world at the age of sixteen was effectively bookended when the government paid Mike and all his friends to remain quiet. He tried early on not to think of that chapter, and now, at thirty two, it felt like vaguely recalling the plot of a knock-off Spielberg movie. Whenever he saw photos of himself from that time, there was an eerie disconnect that festered in Mike’s mind.
That’s not me, he always muttered. I don’t even recognize that kid.
That kid was once facing up to Bad Agent Men like Luke faced heartless agents of the Empire. That kid was swinging shovels at fleshy demogorgons like he was the Dread Pirate Roberts with his trusted sword.
That kid wouldn’t even recognize Mike now.
He was once a hero. Mike wasn’t sure he was anyone’s hero, now.
The exception to that should have been Aurora, but Mike couldn’t allow himself to indulge in such a fantasy. Fatherhood encouraged men to become their best and most capable selves. That was the age-old societal misconception, and Mike was flesh and blood proof that such a belief was false.
He had not chosen fatherhood. It had come to him by accident. What a winning origin story.
After graduating from Chicago University, he lived there in a crappy apartment being an assistant teacher for crappy kids for a year before moving out to California. California, to Mike, seemed saccharine and eternally technicolour. California was the space that breathed between the words of Steinback, Didion, and Kerouac. Twenty-three and optimistic, he envisioned with such clarity that Wheeler would be tacked onto the list of great names.
Lucas and Max lived in Southern California, and were a beacon for Mike to find his place there. Max was working as a youth worker while studying to become a counsellor. Lucas worked at the hospital while training to become a neurologist. Mike landed a job teaching new crappy kids at the high school not too far from his neighbourhood, while also writing on the side. He scrambled his name into a pretentious pen name, and funnelled his feelings through his pen and his computer.
H. Lee Remik became a secret alter-ego of Mike’s; definitely no Steinback, Didion, or Kerouac, but he brought in a little extra money while Mike finally won over his students. No one, not his friends or family, knew about his work. It was too sacred, like carving out his heart for them to analyze.
For four years, life transitioned into something new. He moved to a duplex in Hancock Park, rode his bike through the neighbourhood lined with palm trees, went to the beach with Max and Lucas, and wondered if he was someone his younger self would have liked.
Then came Amelia.
It was no surprise to Mike that Max and Lucas wanted to set him up with someone. It would be way more fun, Max reasoned. It’s getting sad, you hanging out with us by yourself.
What she means, Lucas had butt in apologetically, is that…maybe it’s time?
On one beach day getaway, Max had brought her friend Amelia. She worked in publishing, and had met Max at a running club that the other was a devout member of. Naturally, Max thought they would hit it off, because Amelia knows all that nerdy literary shit you like, she’s just way hotter about it.
She was beautiful. Mike didn’t need to convince himself of that. She had a full mouth, dark hair that always seemed to be perfectly tousled by a nonexistent wind, and a beauty mark by the corner of her right eye.
It was the first thing he had noticed about her. He was drawn to it the whole day they first met.
I’ve always hated it, she had sighed. Kids used to say it looks like a third eye.
Mike had laughed, but not at her expense. Those kids are mouthbreathers.
I haven’t heard ‘mouthbreathers’ in, like, fifty years. Are you secretly seventy years old?
People say it!
Old people say it, she’d teased.
Mike liked her instantly. He liked that she challenged him, he liked that she was confident in herself, that she looked up at him through her dark lashes like she was searching through him. He liked the beauty mark on the corner of her right eye, and when the sun had dipped into the sea and it was too cold for much anything else, he drove her home, and kissed that very spot.
Mike hadn’t dated a woman since college, and his past experience was no great fire of love - moreso, a spark that he always fumbled into smoke. There was El, but that was complicated, and nothing he could tell Amelia about. So talking about his past was a limited thing, and in the absence of facts and truths he devoted himself to being this new version of himself. Fun, outgoing, they even went dancing one time (he was terrible).
He told her in bed one night at his place in Hancock Park, four months into their relationship, I think you’re my first real person. He had meant it, in a way.
No way, she rolled her eyes. I read your stuff. That doesn’t come from nowhere, there was absolutely someone before me who was real for you.
Cross my heart, Mike had sworn, but his voice wavered slightly.
Then you’re a liar. Her dark eyes glimmered. And I don’t want to be with a liar. Amelia leaned in closer. What was her name?
No name, Mike stammered. No name at all, and if there was I can’t even remember it now. I only think of you. Amelia. Ah-meel-ee-ah. Happy? He grinned.
She kissed him. You’re such a bad liar.
It was late, and his mind was tired, and she was insistent that he was a liar. The word felt nasty and gnarled even in her light voice, like poking at an old wound hoping it would begin to seep the ugly truth. Liar, liar, liar.
So Mike had kissed her back, had rolled on top of her, and he ground his hips against hers to draw out something from her that wasn’t that word. She thrummed like a live wire under him, her nails anchoring into his dark curls, and he’d dutifully put on a condom, because they were doing this now. The slit between her legs was already slick like oil, and he kissed the mark beside her eye as he awkwardly thrust into her.
His body had felt her around him tightening like a coil, but his mind had been elsewhere. He kissed the spot beside her eye, and thought about where he had seen it before.
Kiss me, she whined.
He looked at her full mouth, parted to reveal her prominent two front teeth. He looked back at the beauty mark beside her eye.
He kissed the space above her lip where the mark should have been.
She shook into a climax, and then it was over. He pulled out with a hiss, then immediately went to the bathroom. He shut the door, flicked on the yellow light, and looked long and hard at himself. His face was flushed, there was stubble around his jaw and chin, his hair was unkept. His shoulders had broadened, his chest had gained more muscle, but Mike knew he was still the same scrawny kid who had lied to his first girlfriend about how he loved her.
What was her name?
Mike knew he couldn’t tell Amelia. How would he even go about it? It’s not about a her.
Two months later, Amelia was pregnant.
Max had threatened to chop his dick off. Lucas was in disbelief. Amelia was confused. Mike even more.
I’m having the baby, Amelia had asserted when she came to his house to break the news. Mike remembered that it was grey and raining that day, the droplets pounding against the window the way his heart pounded in his chest. I’m not close with my family. I want to have the baby, and if you don’t want to be there, fine. But-
I want to be there, he stated. I will be there.
Her mouth hardened into a line. Don’t be a liar.
Cross my heart.
Perhaps this was the Universe’s way of telling him that his great love would come from somewhere else, someone else.
It was the greatest mistake he had ever made.
The next morning, Rory came down the stairs, her black hair a matted mess. Mike was in the kitchen, a cup of coffee forgotten beside his computer as he typed out an email.
“Morning,” he said when she began opening cabinets at random in search of the cereal. “Hey-hey-hey, you know where the box is.”
“But can you make it?” She whined.
“Daddy’s busy right now.”
She huffed. “With what?”
“Emailing Mommy,” he lied.
“Mail Mommy later.”
He sputtered, then clapped his hands to get her attention. “If I make you a big breakfast, will you let me mail Mommy?”
Rory remained unconvinced.
“I’ll even let you watch T.V. while you eat.”
She instantly brightened at that, nodding vigorously. She sat on her chair, watching Mike make her grilled cheese with extra stringy cheese, scrambled eggs, and apple slices.
“When are you and Mommy going to get married?” She asked. Mike almost burned himself on the stove at the sudden question.
“What do you mean?”
“Julie told me her mommy and daddy were married for ten plus five years. They had a party about it. You and mommy need to get married so we can have a party, too.”
Mike handed her a small plate with apple slices. “It isn’t the kind of party where you get presents.”
She frowned. “Julie asked me why do you and Mommy not live together.”
“We did live together,” Mike answered heavily. “For a year. You just don’t remember it because you were so small, but we all lived together.”
“Then why don’t we live together anymore?”
“Because we weren’t married.” They had done this song and dance before, because Rory was insatiable in her curiosity and Mike was infamous in his side stepping of the conversation. How could he explain to his child that he loved her mother, but he couldn't love her. He couldn’t tell Rory how living together was like watching some Frank Capra movie, how it almost felt real, Mike’s Wonderful Life, if not for the fact that it felt like it wasn’t Mike who was living that life. There was a disconnect between him and the unit they were trying to foster, a claustrophobia building in his chest and tightening his joints. It felt like being trapped, and trapping Amelia in the process, with Rory in the middle.
“Then just get married,” Rory said simply, like it was the most obvious answer in the world.
Mike closed his eyes and recentered himself. He was not going to chastise her.
“We can’t just get married, Rory. It’s a very long and hard process, and Mommy and Daddy don’t have that kind of time right now.”
Her bottom lip pouted and a crease made itself known between her thick brows. It didn’t let up even when he put her plate in front of her.
He ran a hand through her hair. “Just because we’re not married doesn’t mean we love you less than Julie’s parents love her.” Then, he added, “And stop hanging out with Julie, she’s a bad influence.”
Rory took her plate without a word and parked herself in front of the T.V in the other room. Mike watched her, his heart sinking like a rock into his stomach, but he knew if he said anything else she would throw a tantrum. So he brought himself back to his computer, taking a sip from his now cold coffee.
He stared at the recipient line until his eyes started to blur.
To: Will Byers
Subject: Hi
“Stupid,” Mike muttered, erasing the two letter word that seemed to mock him. “Stupid, stupid, so stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” Rory called out from the other room.
How did she hear that? Mike wondered. “Nothing! I mean, me!”
She laughed, but said nothing more. Mike glared back at his computer.
Subject: Catching Up :)
His teeth snagged his bottom lip and bit until it felt like blood would burst. The line would have to do. He was overthinking this, as he was wont to do when it came to Will.
It wasn’t that he and Will had exactly fallen out of touch after graduation. However, life finds a way, as Dr. Ian Malcolm famously stated, of making the impossible possible. Men walking on the moon. An interdimensional monster realm beneath their feet. Mike and Will becoming something unrecognizable in their distance.
It was partly his fault, that much he knew after fourteen years. There were the thorns of teenage angst and awkwardness that had pierced at them for a few years, and then Will came out, and Mike had been so stupefied, so tremendously taken aback - not out of judgement, but out of surprise. For lack of a better word. For years he had heard the nasty things small-minded people said about gay people. He had never listened, because he never felt the need to. When those same people said those same things to Will, Mike was adamant that they ignore them.
Then there had been The Incident the night of graduation, which was the most horribly wicked thing. That had undoubtedly been Mike’s fault.
Will, however, was too good of a person to cast him to the side like yesterday’s garbage. They kept in touch, they all did. Will had mailed Mike a gift when he had moved to California, several DVDs of famous films with Southern California as the backdrop, like Chinatown and Point Break.
When Rory was born, Mike had emailed his friends the picture of him holding her on the front steps of his house.
Will had emailed him back with: Wow. She looks so much like you. You should be very happy, Dad. :•)
It was three simple lines, but Mike’s stomach was twisted into nauseating knots. He must have stared at that email for an hour, must have sounded out the word ‘Dad’ on repeat, imagining Will’s face and wondering what he must’ve looked like writing it out. Wondering how the word would sound if Will said it out loud to him.
Life had taken them their separate ways, and while their communication was few and far between, Mike talked to Will everyday. In his journals, his notepad, in the outlines of stories he published. Every publication, whether he was conscious of it or not, was a message in a bottle he tossed out into the roiling sea of life, hoping that possibly Will would see between the lines the hidden message:
I think about you all the time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
He stopped when Rory was born. It wasn’t appropriate, having those grand flights of fancy, hoping against hope that Will would pick up a book written by some random guy and feel some sort of familiar tether to the words.
Email was what normal, functioning adults did.
Mike backspaced the subject line again. Normal adults didn’t overthink opening lines for emails to their childhood best friends this severely.
He took a deep breath, and held it while his fingers flew across the keyboard, writing whatever came to his mind when he thought of Will. He held his breath for a minute, before he let go with a gasp as if he had ripped off a bandaid.
Dear Will,
I had a nightmare last night that we ran into each other at the Belvedere Palace and I waved to you and you came over to me with this funny look in your eyes and asked “do I know you?” And I laughed it off but my chest was in knots and then you snapped your fingers and said “oh yeah! It’s Mark, right?” And I think I wanted to die right then and there but I just smiled and nodded. I woke up in a cold sweat and I thought of calling you right there because I was worried the Universe itself was telling me that I didn’t matter to you anymore.
Mike read it over, nauseated. Clearly, he couldn’t send this. It was a plea from a lunatic.
He got rid of the email entirely. He would have to refine and edit a message for hours, and he didn’t have that kind of time. He had to locate his vanished manuscript.
Abandoning his computer, he took to the yellow landline hooked to the wall by the window, and dialled Amelia. After the third ring, the phone clicked.
“What?”
“Hey,” Mike began, sheepishly. “I-I don’t know if you saw, like, a bunch of papers at your place. A stack of them bound together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I had this manuscript, and, well. I lost it.”
“Our child is in your care and you lost track of paper?”
Mike rolled his eyes. “This isn’t about Rory, who is perfectly fine in the other room, this is about the manuscript, which is absolutely nowhere to be found in my house.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. Mike tried not to pester her, even though patience was not a virtue of his.
“Oh, yeah. Wasn’t it that one with the princess made out of light? Or something stupid like that?”
Mike swallowed. “It was not stupid, it was an early draft I let you look over.”
“Yeah, three years ago. And then you never remembered to ask for it back.”
“So you still have it?” Mike asked, relief pitching his voice.
“No."
“What do you mean you don’t still have it?”
“I wanted to get rid of it. You clearly didn’t want it, so I sold it.”
“You sold it?” Mike whisper-screamed, careful to not alarm Rory. “What do you mean you sold it? Why did you do it? Who did you sell it to?”
“There's thing called a college fund, Mike, which I would like for our daughter to have. Anyway, there’s this fanpage dedicated to you. Don’t you know about this?”
Mike was perplexed. “You sold it to a fanpage?”
“I said I had unpublished work, and then everyone bid for your manuscript.”
“Who won?” Mike asked helplessly.
“I don’t know. Nobody has their real names on there. Some guy named…RockyWriter.
“Who the fuck is that?” Mike cried, exasperated.
“Language! My god, Mike. You can go on there and see for yourself.”
Mike rubbed his face, as if trying to tear skin away. “Okay. Thank you.”
Amelia hung up without another word. Mike hurried back to his computer, aggressively booting it back to life. He had forgotten to ask Amelia what the fanpage was called, but, really, how many fan pages for H. Lee Remik could there be?
One, apparently. Totally not a hit to his ego.
REMIK RESEARCH : Your Source for All Things H. Lee Remik
He scrolled through the list of users, eyes searching for RockyWriter. Rocky, it seemed, was the most active out of all one hundred something users (again, totally not a hit to his ego), and the one who had broken the news of the unpublished manuscript with the same urgency as a prospector who had sifted heaps of gold.
An email was attached to RockyWriter’s account. Mike breathed a sigh of relief; he could just ask for it back!
He typed out a quick, formal message explaining that the manuscript was sold without his consent and that he would be elated to have it back.
Not five minutes later, RockyWriter emailed back.
Nice try, man. We’ve gotten impersonators before.
Mike threw his hands up in disbelief. “What the hell?”
He tried to email RockyWriter again to insist, yes, he actually was H. Lee Remik, but the email didn’t pop up anymore. The stupid guy had blocked him.
Mike scrolled through the blog helplessly, trying to find some other way to contact this fool, hoping that there was some way he could get his manuscript back.
A new message popped up.
WiseRabbit: You all should be ashamed of yourselves!! It’s totally unacceptable and unethical to pick apart someone’s unpublished work for your own amusement.
It was the singular sane comment in the hoard of frenzied analysis of Mike’s most personal work. It was a lifeline reminding him that his work had value - real value, not just something to make a buck off of or extrapolate meaning from. What was a person like that doing on this page?
Mike typed out an email to WiseRabbit. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted them to know that he was thankful.
Dear user WiseRabbit,
Thank you for your kind words and advocating for the privacy of me and my unpublished work. No, I don’t frequently stalk fan pages (yes, I’m certainly overestimating myself with the use of plural pages), but I did catch wind of my manuscript being shared without my consent. Not that it’s of much use now, but I’ll be scheming on how to get my work back into my own hands.
I’d appreciate it if this conversation remained strictly between us…That fan page seems to have a pretty intense assortment of characters.
Many thanks,
H. Lee Remik
Before he could overthink his word chice or the insanity of sending a message to a total stranger, Rory was poking his leg, desperate for his attention. Startled, Mike clicked send, the tinny swoosh! of the mail following immediately after.
“My show is done,” she announced. “Can we go to the fish park today?”
It was a sunny, saccharine Southern California day, and what a waste it would be for Mike to spend the day inside his house fretting about an email. His back was sore just imagining being hunched over his computer, eyes burning with how close he stared at his inbox.
He smiled at Rory. “We sure can.” She toothily beamed up at him, rivalling the brightness of the day.
Hours later, they came back home, the sun now sleepily dipping into the horizon, the sky a brilliant and warm orange. Mike was careful to unfasten Rory from the car seat, for she had fallen asleep after the excitement of playing in the park, running through the sleek aisles of the grocery store, and watching hatchlings navigate the floral terrain of a church’s garden as they tried to learn to fly.
He scooped her up with little to no stirring from her, expertly unlocking the front door. One day, he wasn’t going to pick her up and carry her like this, and he wouldn’t even realize that the last time would be the last time.
Everything in life was finite. Mike had yet to make peace with that fact.
He took her to bed without waking her, and then he was left on his own - his least favourite time. When Amelia took care of Rory, Mike was left to his own devices. Work was certain like taxes and death, and when Lucas and Max had wine and dine evenings at their home in Mansfield Avenue. Outside of that, Mike seemed to black out, the days turning into murky water draining out of his memories.
The house was empty, the tiles cold under his socked feet. The shadows were high and the emptiness of the house was like being inside of a ribcage without a heart. He had his books, and the television, and - to his surprise - Amelia had stopped by today, and had brought him a tupperware of leftover lasagna.
I’m sorry about the manuscript. Lasagna truce? Call me ♥️
- Amelia
Tears pricked at his eyes as he took the lasagna out of the bin, heating it up on a plate. He watched it spin, and thought of calling her.
And it was so terrible that she had to write it on a note for Mike to think of doing it. Even after all these years, Amelia was not the first person that came to mind when the lonely hour came and Mike’s thoughts ate away at him.
The microwave dinged, and Mike quickly took his plate, sitting at the kitchen table.
He couldn’t call Amelia right now. Not when he didn’t think of it first. If he called her now, she would come. They would talk in low tones, the kitchen light and the darkness outside would highlight the curves of her face, the birthmark beside her eye, the swell of her lips. They would fall into bed and into that precarious place of more than friends and less than true lovers. They were not in love, but maybe they could be if Mike stopped thinking about a love story with knights and princesses of light and grand voyages and reunions.
Magic came and left when he was eighteen. Maybe he needed to face reality.
Well, it was too bleak to think about right now. He brought his computer close to him, booted it up mindlessly.
There was something new in his inbox. The email from this morning.
Mike clicked it, eyes wide. Had RockyWriter had a change of heart? Would he get his manuscript back?
NEW MAIL
NAME: WiseRabbit
SUBJECT: Manuscript
Is it really you?