Mike wheeler one-shots

everything's made to be broken

ALL CREDITS TO: sweetpotatoTM
SUMMARY: "Freak!"
A fist hit him in the nose, and Mike gasped, tears shooting to his eyes. He could taste blood, warm and coppery, and felt it trickling down his face. His head dropped forwards, only to be caught by a hard blow to the cheekbone. Mike bit down on his tongue hard at the impact, blood starting to pour from that as well as he coughed and gagged.

TW: BULLYING

Mike was biking on the sidewalk, something he didn't normally do, but the streets were crowded with a steady stream of people driving away from Hawkins.  He didn't blame them.  Leaving Hawkins sounded great just about now.

Of course, Mike couldn't leave Hawkins—and he didn't actually want to, no matter how much he might think about it.  He had to help fix this, to stay with Will and El and everybody else and make sure this would actually end.   Thinking about it was strange—the Upside Down had come back so many times.  After the whole Mindflayer thing with Will, he'd pretty much lost hope that this would ever actually end.  But if Vecna was in control of all of this, and they killed Vecna... it might actually end.  They wouldn't have to be constantly on guard for whatever fucked-up thing might come next.

He biked past the hardware store, Melvald's, Family Video, all of them shut and some even boarded up.  It was unsettling to see the town like this, so empty and ruined.  Mike swallowed heavily, looking back ahead.

Then he hit the brakes hard, swerving his bike to the side and tumbling onto the pavement.  The knees of his pants tore, and his hands skidded over the rough ground, skin tearing.  Ow.   As fast as he could, he stood back up, staring at what had blocked his path.

It was the basketball team—or at least, which of them were still here.  Shit.   Nancy had told him to avoid them, that they had it out for the Hellfire Club (which was nothing new, but now they were apparently bent on tracking them down and killing them?).  Mike slowly zipped his hoodie up the rest of the way, covering the logo on his shirt.

"What's up, freak?"  Andy Schubert said, baseball cap tilted back on his head, and Mike tensed up.  He'd had enough altercations with Andy at school, and didn't want to see how much worse it would be with the added excuse of thinking Mike had caused an earthquake and been part of a Satanic plot to kill fucking—cheerleaders and stuff.

Mike's stumbling steps backwards were blocked by rough hands on his shoulders, and he spun around, jumping back from the second boy.  It was... Mike thought his name might be Chance? He looked around frantically, but the only people around were driving away from Hawkins, unlikely to stop for one teenage boy.  Then they were closing in around him, five or six of them, and Mike backed up more, inching down the alleyway.  Slowly, he reached a hand behind him, trying to unzip his backpack without turning around and grabbing it.  If he just got his walkie, someone would come. 

"Take his bag," Andy said, staring coldly.  "Who knows what he might have in it."

Mike tried to hold onto the straps, but they were wrenched off of his shoulders by somebody considerably stronger than him.  No.   He could... What could he do?  Yell for help?  No—nobody was around to hear.  Hope that El could see him?  But El had better things to do than just watch Mike fumble through his life all day, especially when the Upside Down was coming into Hawkins, really this time.  He watched as some random guy—who wasn't even on the basketball team!  And he looked, like, thirty—started to rifle through his stuff.

"So, Wheeler, tell us."  Mike's eyes snapped back to where Andy had gotten uncomfortably close. And why was Andy their spokesperson now?  It was like a—a wolf pack or something, choosing a new leader immediately after the last one died.  Mike turned to press his back against the wall.  From his experience with years of bullying, he'd at least learned a few things, such as 'it's better if they can't come up behind you' and 'telling an adult doesn't actually help' and 'it's a bad idea to shove them down and then humiliate them in front of the whole school'.