Work Text:
Snore….
Snore…
Snore…
“Michael!”
Snore…
“Michael, get up!”
Mike jolts awake. “Jesus, Allison..what...” he mumbles groggily. “You need to take your daughter to school, I told you yesterday, were you even listening?” Allison, Mike’s wife, stands in front of the La-Z-Boy Mike was sleeping on. Her arms are crossed and she’s agitated with him, as she almost always is. “Alright Ally, whatever..” he replies. “You can’t be late for work again, Michael, get going!” Mike sighs. “I get it, you don’t need to nag me. Why can’t you take her?” She seethes, rolling her eyes. “I told you last night, I picked up some extra shifts at work” Mike vaguely remembers this conversation, he wasn’t really paying attention though. “You know you really don’t need to do that, it’s ridiculous. I have a perfectly steady job.” She just looks more annoyed when he says this. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, I need to leave. Will you just round her up already?” “Ok, ok, fine..” Absentmindedly, Mike picks up his phone and unlocks it to check the weather, and then hastily turns it off again after he sees that what he was doing last night on his phone is still up, embarrassed.
He’s had this really stupid, pathetic habit lately of stalking Will’s Facebook from a burner account. He hasn’t even talked to him in 32 years, not after they drifted apart when Will went to college in New York and Mike just…stayed in Hawkins. He was the only one who had stayed. Since stalking Will’s account, Mike has learned a lot of new things about his life. He’s now a thriving artist, married to some ridiculously attractive guy who makes a lot of money, and they live in a gorgeous house. Every third or fourth post was them together looking all lovey-dovey. He even managed to stay closer with Dustin and Lucas than he had. He couldn’t understand it. Why was he still so hung up on Will even though he hadn’t seen him in decades? He could almost guarantee Will didn’t think this much about him. It was probably for the best that he didn’t. Mike was a shitty friend and now he just works a boring office job in their hometown. But all he thinks about now is how things used to be, how close they were, and how now it’s just gone. Everything around him just feels so empty, that’s the worst part. A part of him he’s tried to push down for so long feels so jealous of Will’s life. He can’t linger on these thoughts for too long though, he still needs to get his daughter up for school.
“I don’t understand why mom is making you drive me to school today anyway.” Mike’s daughter says, getting into the car. “Neither do I, Willow. Your mom seems to want more hours at this job of hers.” There’s an undercurrent of passive-aggressiveness in his tone. Willow is Mike’s teenaged daughter. She’s in that phase where she’s starting to push away from him. At least he hopes it’s a phase. Mike supposes he can’t blame her for being distant, he knows he could be there for her more, but for whatever reason he just can’t connect with her. “Could I at least pick the music? Mom always lets me.” Willow asks. Mike has no idea what kids today even listen to. “The driver is always in charge of the music, Willow.” She groans. “Dad, c’mon! I don’t want to have to listen to your music, you always just play the stupid Butthole Surfers!” She says, clearly disgusted. “What kind of name is that anyway? It’s gross!” Mike sighs. This seems to be weirdly important to her. He guesses he should at least make an attempt to bond with his daughter. “Alright, whatever. Fine. But whoever it is you play I won’t have any idea who they are.”
Willow messes around with the bluetooth on the car’s screen until she eventually gets it to work. A song title displays on the screen. Something called “Good Luck, Babe!” By some artist named “Chappell Roan”. Mike furrows his eyebrows in confusion. “Chappelle Ro-wan?” Willow rolls her eyes at the way he butchers her name. “It’s Chappell Roan, dad. And she’s way better than the Butthole Surfers.” Mike sighs, listening to the synthy intro of the song. “Whatever.” The voice of this mysterious “Chappell Roan” begins to flood through the speakers. Mike glances at the lyrics popping up on the car screen.
“It’s fine, it’s cool”
“You can say that we are nothing but you know the truth”
“And guess I’m the fool”
“With her arms out like an angel through the car sunroof”
“I don’t wanna call it off”
“But you don’t wanna call it love”
“You only wanna be the one that I call baby”
It’s not half bad so far, Mike thinks. Sonically, it reminds him of some of the songs he used to listen to when he was Willow’s age. When things were better, when he had Will in his life. Why the hell is he thinking about Will now? Just listen to the song, the chorus hasn’t even happened yet.
“You can kiss a hundred boys in bars”
“Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling”
“You can say it’s just the way you are”
“Make a new excuse, ‘nother stupid reason”
“Good luck, babe (Well, good luck)”
“Well, good luck, babe (Well, good luck)”
“You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling”
Mike already begins to feel a lump in his throat. He doesn’t know why, it’s just something about these lyrics. He has to force himself to focus on the road. Everything always reminds him of Will, he can’t stand it. He’s done a fairly good job of pushing it down over the years, but recently the walls he’s built up are cracking. He tries hard to focus on the song, biting the inside of his cheek. The chorus plays again. He keeps looking at the lyrics as they come on the screen. He has to stop this. He just keeps thinking about it “You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling” The music swoops as the bridge begins to play.
“When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night”
“With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife”
“And when you think about me all of those years ago”
“You’re standing face to face with I told you so”
“You know I hate to say, I told you so”
“You know I hate to say, but I told you so”
Mike almost chokes at these lyrics. He can already feel his eyes start to swim with tears. This scares him even more. He hasn’t let himself cry in 30 years, he can’t start now. He can’t really focus on anything. Without warning, the car suddenly slips and crashes into the small ditch next to them. Willow screams. Panicked, Mike surveys the damage. Neither of them seem to be hurt, just scared. But Mike is scared by more than just the car crash as the song continues.
“You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.”
“I cannot fucking believe you, Michael!” His wife yells. Mike looks at her pacing in front of him helplessly as he sits on the La-Z-Boy. “You crashed the car? You seriously crashed the car into a stupid ditch? And you have no excuse?” Mike stammers for an answer “I-I’m sorry, I just..zoned out.” Allison scoffs. “Zoned out? Really? You know, I’m beginning to think you’ve been zoned out for your whole life.” That comment really gets to him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She glares at him. “Do you realize that last week was our 20th wedding anniversary?” A pit in Mike’s stomach begins to grow. All his words dry up. He remembers now, not that it matters. “Of course you don’t.” She says, shaking her head. Pointlessly, Mike tries to defend himself. “Look..I’m sorry..but you could’ve reminded me.” By the look on her face, he can tell instantly that he messed up. “Oh yes, I have to remind you about everything, I’m expected to do all the heavy lifting in this marriage.” She turns away from him. “C’mon, Ally-“ She suddenly explodes “Don’t call me that! You’ve practically totaled the car, you could’ve hurt my daughter, and you forgot our wedding anniversary!” He sighs, exasperated. “I don’t know what you want from me, I told you I’m sorry!” This angers her more “I want you to put in effort, that’s what I want!” She puts her head in her hands, exhaling deeply. “Look..I really don’t need to see you again for the rest of the night. I’m going to my room.” And with that, she walks away.
Mike still sits on the La-Z-Boy, feeling more conflicted than ever. He should be worried about his clearly doomed and dying relationship with his wife, but naturally, like always, he can only think about Will and the lyrics of that song. He gets the urge to look at Will’s account on Facebook again, that same stupid nagging urge to be able to see Will again, that has probably been there for almost his entire life. He knows how pathetic it is that he’s still hung up on Will when Will probably couldn’t care less about him. He hates himself for it. He opens the app and skims through Will’s posts until he finds that picture with Will’s husband. He stares at it. At their smiling faces, their arms around each other, the heartfelt caption. He can’t take it anymore, how it makes his heart throb with pain. His vision grows blurry again, the tears flooding his vision. Then he gets the most idiotic idea he’s had in a while.
He scrolls through his saved numbers on his phone. He doesn’t even know if he still has it. But lo and behold, there it is. He taps on the contact, looking at it intently. His thumb hovers over the call button. He can’t get the courage to press down. He needs to do this, he needs to try. He takes a deep breath and presses the button. Shakily, he holds the phone up to his ear. He hears the dial tone for a while but then he eventually hears something. “…M-Mike?” The astonished, somewhat upset, hushed voice of an older Will flickers on the other line. Mike’s heart leaps in his chest. He shudders, smiling. He feels a stray tear fall down his face. He hasn’t heard this voice in forever. He knew he missed it, but he couldn’t comprehend how much it really affected him. “Mike, why the fuck are you calling me?” His voice turned angry, all the shock gone. It just seems like he can’t believe Mike would have the audacity to call him. He feels all the warmth drain from his body, a crushing feeling in his chest. The line is quiet, Will waits for a reply. “I know you can fucking hear me, Mike.” All his words are caught in his throat, it’s suffocating. Will sighs. “Don’t call me again.” The line goes dead. Mike lets out a shaky sob. It won’t stop, the tears just keep coming. It all makes sense now, but it’s too late. Decades too late.