Somebody Else | mike wheeler
summary: 1,5k. between the quiet ruins of post earthquake hawkins, mike and you, a former childhood friend-turned-petty rival, end up stuck sorting boxes together.
cw: childhood friends to rivals, petty teenage fighting, unresolved tension, teenage angst, mutual pining (in denial), awkward teens being awkward, english is not my first language xx.
currently playing: somebody else
The thing about Hawkins—now mostly stitched back together, but still carrying the shape of its scars—is that it never really went quiet. Not even after the gates closed. Not even after the ash settled. People kept pretending it did, carrying on with school and work and grocery lists, but underneath the normality, there was a hum. A memory.
Mike Wheeler felt it every time he biked past the old woods or the now-condemned Creel House, a low buzzing under his ribs like his bones remembered danger long after his brain tried to forget.
He felt it today too—but for a reason that had nothing to do with monsters.
She was standing on the Wheeler driveway when he arrived, arms crossed, expression sharp in that way he’d been trying very hard not to think about. She used to never look at him like that—not when they were younger, all part of the same messy group that played in basements and rode bikes until streetlights blinked on. But everything changed as they got older.
Everyone grew into different versions of themselves.
Somehow, she grew into someone who acted allergic to him.
And he—well, he tried not to think about her at all.
“What are you doing here?” was the first thing she said, like the driveway belonged to her.
He blinked. “Uh… I live here?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean out here. Your mom said you were going to help today.”
“I am helping,” he muttered.
“You’re not exactly my supervisor.”
“You’re late,” she repeated, stepping past him and heading toward the garage. Her shoulder brushed his as she passed—probably accidental, definitely irritating.
He stared after her, jaw tight. “Okay, great, we’re doing this.”
He followed her inside, into the clutter of dusty boxes Karen Wheeler had begged them to help sort through—old holiday decorations, forgotten toys, things Mike didn’t even recognize. The air smelled like cardboard and the faint hint of dust that rose whenever anything was moved.
She was already kneeling by a pile of boxes, tugging one open with too much force.
“You don’t have to tear the cardboard,” Mike said, crouching opposite her.
“I’m opening it,” she snapped.
He raised his hands. “Okay. Sorry. Opening.”
She gave him a look that could’ve melted metal.
And that was how it always went now. Petty, prickly conversations. Snide comments. A push-and-pull that neither of them seemed capable of stopping.
The thing Mike hated most—hated in a way that made his heartbeat stumble—was that they never used to be like this. When they were younger, she laughed at his jokes, even the stupid ones. She liked building forts and playing stupid lawn games the same way the boys did. They’d shared popsicles on summer afternoons after long biking trails. They used to get along without trying.
Now it felt like an electric fence between them.
“What’s this?” she asked suddenly, pulling out a worn cardboard tube.
Mike leaned in. “Oh. Old D&D maps. Will made those.”
She hesitated, her hand still on the tube. Something softer passed through her expression—nostalgia, maybe. He saw the exact moment she remembered being there when some of those maps were drawn, tossing dice onto the Wheeler basement carpet, arguing about spells, smearing Cheeto dust on character sheets.
Then she hid that softness again—pushing the tube toward him.
“You should put it somewhere.”
“You don’t have to be weird about it,” he said before he meant to.
“Yeah, like—every time you look at anything from before, you act like it’s radioactive.”
“That’s not—” She shook her head, annoyed. “I’m not the one who changed.”
“Oh my God,” Mike muttered, sitting back on his heels. “Seriously? That’s your angle?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said, voice sharper than intended, “you started hating me for no reason.”
She scoffed. “I don’t hate you.”
“And you act like you’re still twelve,” she snapped.
He blinked. That one stung. More than he wanted it to.
There it was—the sharp words, the unresolved feelings sitting beneath them like live wires.
He dropped his eyes to the floor. “Whatever.”
Silence seeped in—heavy, thick. She shifted, rummaging through another box, less violently this time. Mike found himself watching her hands instead of helping. He hated how familiar the shape of her knuckles was. Hated that he remembered her handwriting, her laugh, the way she used to knee him under the table when he annoyed her.
He hated a lot of things that weren’t hate at all.
“You did change,” she said quietly, without looking up. “After… everything.”
He exhaled, a small bitter sound. “So did you.”
That surprised her. She glanced at him, caught off guard. “Yeah. Well. Life happens.”
“You stopped talking to me.”
“You stopped trying,” she said—and there it was, the thing she’d never said before.
Her throat bobbed. “Everybody else was dealing with stuff. You were dealing with stuff. I didn’t want to be… I don’t know. Another thing.”
“You were never just a thing,” Mike said before he could stop himself.
The garage felt smaller suddenly.
She looked down at her lap, small frown forming, as if she wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
He cleared his throat, trying to ease the weird tightness in the air. “Look, we don’t have to fight. Just—we can get this done and not bite each other’s heads off.”
She snorted softly. “You’re the one who said I ripped a box.”
“That’s not—” She burst into a reluctant laugh, covering her mouth.
That laugh hit him like a punch. It was unfair how much he’d missed it.
She caught him staring and the laugh died, replaced by something more complicated. Her eyes flicked to his, and suddenly they were too close—knees nearly touching, shoulders leaning in without permission.
He felt the shift like the air thickened.
She noticed it too. Her breath hitched—barely, but he saw.
“You’re staring,” she whispered.
It wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t snark. It wasn’t even sarcastic. It was just real, stripped down to something raw and unguarded.
Her gaze dipped—briefly, stupidly, dangerously—to his mouth.
And Mike Wheeler, who could face monsters and dimensions and hell itself, forgot how to breathe.
“Mike—” she whispered, voice unsteady.
He leaned in without meaning to. Not a full move, just a slow tilt—like gravity, not choice. She mirrored it, barely, the smallest lean, like she didn’t notice she was doing it.
His heart thudded violently.
Her eyes fluttered halfway closed.
The moment stretched thin, fragile, stupidly breakable—
Then the garage door rattled open.
“Kids? How’s it going in here?” Karen Wheeler called, stepping in with a laundry basket.
They shot apart like magnets flipping polarity. Mike nearly tripped over a box. She knocked over an entire stack of Christmas lights.
“Oh!” Karen blinked. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No!” they said in unison—way too fast.
Karen stared, suspicious. “Right… Well. Your lemonade’s on the table if you need a break.”
She left, the door clicking shut behind her.
Silence slammed down again, but it wasn’t the same silence as before. It was charged. Embarrassed. Breathless.
She pushed her hair behind her ear. “We, um… should get back to sorting.”
They worked for another hour, barely speaking—but the tension sat between them like another person. Every time their hands brushed a box at the same time, they flinched. Every time they leaned too close, they froze.
And when they finished, standing in the driveway under the late sun, she hesitated before leaving.
Her voice softened. “We’re not actually still twelve.”
“And I don’t—” She faltered. “I don’t hate you.”
He nodded, throat tight. “I know that too.”
She looked like she wanted to say more—something important, something that would tip everything over the edge. Something he wasn’t sure he was ready for.
She just gave him one of those looks—complicated, sad, hoping he’d understand.
Mike watched her go, heart beating too loud in his chest, feeling that hum again—the one that meant something was starting, or maybe starting again.
Something he wasn’t saying out loud.
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