❛ HOW TO STOP LIKING BOYS! ❜
STEP ONE: Don't think about his smile or the way he looks you in the eyes when he talks to you or his laugh
FAILED STEP ONE.
S1 - 2
MULTIPLE CHAR/MULTIPLE OCS
WINNER OF BEST MIKE WHEELER FIC
IN @EZRAMIIIERS...
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"C'MON BOYS!" Karen Wheeler's voice rang down the stairs the morning of November 7th. "Breakfast!"
The boys were already up and getting ready for school, rushing up the stairs at the mention of food. Daniel, who never bothered to brush his unruly curls, looked like he just rolled out of bed (to be fair, he did), but he was wide awake. Although he and Mike had fallen asleep rather quickly, both pressed against each other, they woke up with their legs piled on top of each other. They laughed it off, but Daniel's heart fluttered nonetheless.
"Daniel!" Karen said in a scolding tone as soon as they reached the ground floor, "Your hair is a mess!"
"He looks fine," Mike defended, taking a seat at the table. Daniel settled in on the extra chair they placed next to the Wheeler boy, in between him and his baby sister. Nancy came down too, dressed and ready to go as she sat down at the table.
"Hey, Daniel!" she greeted. She always seemed to be a little kinder to him on account of her being somewhat friends with Heather. "Morning, loser." That statement was directed towards Mike, who's only response was to stick his tongue out. Karen defused the situation by placing scrambled eggs down in front of everyone at the table.
"Dig in."
Daniel's mom was never around to make breakfast. She left for work around five in the morning, way before her children woke up, and their dad was still on a business trip for another month. They never addressed it, but everyone in the house knew "business trip" was code for rendezvous with his mistresses. No one liked to talk about. Heather and his mother thought Daniel didn't know, that he was too young to figure it out, yet he still knew. That was why he found himself at Mike's house most nights when his dad was actually home. Then their house was filled with yelling and accusations and no love. He didn't like to think about it.
Everyone at the table went to town on breakfast, scarfing it down like they hadn't eaten in days. Karen laughed endearingly, ruffling the boys' hair. The moment was ruined when the harsh ringing of the phone.
"That's disgusting," Nancy pointed out as he drowned his breakfast in syrup. Although Daniel secretly agreed, he let out nothing more than a giggle.
"You're disgusting," was Mike's oh so genius retort.
With a dopey grin, he dumped syrup onto Nancy's plate, earning the response of, "What the hell, Mike?"
"Hey!" Mike's dad, Ted, spoke up in an attempt to pull back the kids. Daniel wished his mornings could be like this all the time.
Most of the time, it was Heather yelling from downstairs that his ass needed to be out of bed or he was walking to school or it was him sprinting down the stairs and forgetting his lunch or something like that. He never got a moment to breathe at home. The Wheelers' house was his home away from home. Mike was his home away from home. Whenever he walked into the house, it just felt warm. It felt like a family lived there, not four strangers. Heather was the only family member Daniel actually got along with. Not that his mother wasn't amazing, she was just never around. With their dad up in the air with another woman by his side, she worked twice as hard to support them. She partnered with a law firm up in Boise with a friend from college, but she had to work twice as hard to get the credit and pay she deserved as a woman of color. Daniel pretended not to understand the prejudices his family faced, but he knew he was the lucky one. He hated that he was the lucky one.
