pairing: mike wheeler x female!reader
summary: you find out your boyfriend is cheating on you, and can't think of anything but asking your best friend to pick you up.
word count: i just wrote :D
warnings: college au, drunkenness, vomiting/puke (caretaking), cheating (ex), emotional breakdown, mutual pining, heavy caretaking, soft/protective mike wheeler. english is not my first language.
it's the kind of heavy, humid heat that only settles into towns in late august, the air thick with the smell of cheap beer. mike finds you sitting on a curb three blocks away from the party, your heels discarded in the gutter and your head hanging between your knees. you look small. smaller than you usually do, which is a feat, considering you've always been the loudest person in any room he's in. he kills the engine, and walked towards you feeling upset, hates that he can tell you're crying just by the way your shoulders are hitching, make his own chest ache in.
he's just being a good friends. that any guy would drive twenty minutes at two in the morning with his hands holding the steering wheel a little harder and agilely reaching for the gas pedal as fast as he could, because his best friend sent a text that just said come get me please.
"hey," he says softly, as he walking closer to you. the humidity hits him like a wall, but he doesn't care. he's at your side in three steps, crouching down so he's not looming over you. you smell like a heady mix of your favorite perfume that you always brag about every time you buy it and some liquor. when you look up, your mascara is a blurred, jagged map down your cheeks, and you're eyes are glassy, struggling to focus on his face.
"mike," you breathe, and the way your voice breaks on the 'k' is almost enough to make him want to go back to that party and find whoever did this. you don't even wait for him to reach out, you just collapse forward, your forehead hitting his collarbone. "mike, he's an asshole–he's fucking–"
"i know," mike murmurs, his arms winding around you—pulling you into the familiar heat of his chest. he doesn't care if you get makeup on his favorite hoodie. he doesn't care that your breath smells like a drink that mike always avoids whenever he hangs out with dustin, he doesn't care because it's you, he just likes everything about you. "let's just get you home, okay? i've got you."
mike had asked—carefully—how you were even planning to get back into your dorm looking like this. it wasn’t exactly a great time to be sneaking into a dorm room. you’d answered dramatically, crying, saying mike didn’t want to be with you, that none of it mattered anyway, that you’d figure it out. you’d spiraled so hard that eventually mike had given up on taking you anywhere near campus.
it helped that he and dustin had moved out of the dorms at the beginning of sophomore year, renting a house still close enough to campus to walk if they had to. dustin had said goodbye to him earlier, mumbling something about staying over at a friend’s place—or his girlfriend’s. he’d developed this weird habit of sleeping all day and waking up in the evening, but mike barely registered it. he was already rushing around the house, digging for his car keys, rereading your text like it might change if he blinked hard enough.
now you’re slumped against the passenger door—knees tucked up to your chest, mascara probably ruined, cycling between quiet, hiccupping sobs and bursts of energy where you launch into colorful, creative insults. your ex’s character. his fashion sense. the deeply suspicious size of his ego. mike keeps his eyes on the road, jaw tight, ribs aching, pretending it doesn’t hurt the way it does to hear you say his name like it’s something you need to scrape out of your mouth because you love him so much.
"and his shoes!" you wail, gesturing wildly with one hand while the other clutches a crumpled napkin. "who wears those–those stupid? he looked like a shit."
you let out a wet, jagged cackle that turns into a sob halfway through. "right? and he's not even that good at anything! he's have no good sense of humor! and.. and.. he's like a trash, mike!"
you nod aggressively, your head lolling back against the headrest. "fuck that guy," you mumble, the words slurring into each other as you blink up at the street lights.
“yeah,” mike says, “fuck that suck guy,” and it comes out a little fast. because what kind of asshole thinks they’re allowed to treat you like this, to cheat on you and leave you folded in on yourself in the passenger seat of his car.
it changes quickly, the way it always does when the alcohol start to lose its shimmer and just leaves the sickness behind. and you drink so much. by the time he gets you inside his house, the bravado is gone. you're pale, your hand clamped over your mouth, and mike just leads you straight to the bathroom, kicking the door open and guiding you down to the cold tile floor.
he's lived through this before, but it never gets easier to see you like this. he sinks down behind you, his movements practiced and right—gathers your hair in one hand, pulling the heavy stands away from your face and holding them back with a firm, steady grip. whit his other hand, he just pats you back, his palm flat and warm against your spine, rubbing in slow, grounding circles while you lean over the porcelain.
"let it out," he whispers, his voice a soft anchor in the quite bathroom. "you're okay, just breathe."
you groan, leaning your forehead against the rim, your eyes squeezed shut. "i'm so gross. mike, i'm so sorry, this is so gross."
"calm down," he spoke again, this time helping to get some tissues and handing them to you, "it doesn't matter."
mike's room smelled of the detergent he brought from hawkins and the soft scent of his body, you never know how mike's body always has a fragrance that you can't explain how, but it's very good and makes you just want to curl up in the crook of his neck or shoulder, probably because he was so close to your face now. you sit on the edge of his bed, mike is kneeling between your knees, a damp, lukewarm cloth in his hand, moving with a focused, quite intensity as he dabs at the corners of your mouth and the sticky residue on your chin. he's being so careful, like you're made of something thin that might crack if he presses too hard.
his brow is furrowed, that little line appearing between his eyebrows that only shows up when he's overthinking a chemistry lab or, apparently, when he's trying to scrub the memory of a shitty ex–boyfriend off your skin.
he tells himself to keep his eyes on the task. to focus on the smudge of mascara under your left eye and not the way your breathing is starting to hitch again. or your eyes that feel like they are staring at him. he's spent years mastering the art of looking at you without looking at you—and here, there is no other choice but his gaze to land. because you're so beautiful, and mike is so upset that you're still beautiful even though you're a mess like this, you'll always like that, and he's so frustrated that he wants to punch your ex in the face for making you like this, because you're important to him, you're his best friend, he's your best friend—oh my, mike really needs to focus.
and mike was really more focused this time, the way he's so focused makes your stomach tingle a little, seeing mike wheeler, michael, your mikey, who's always so serious and stiff, wiping something off your face that he doesn't even understand why do all girls, including you, wear makeup like this every time they go out? even though in the end he will always compliment you with short compliments that seem indifferent, or tell you it's not suitable but will still defend you when max comments that the color is too flashy, mike is always like that.
making your eyes soften again with a meaningful smile seeing mike like this, turning back time where every big event in your life, mike will always be there. first bike lesson, telling stories and falling asleep in the basement, or at the funeral of your beloved cat that makes you cry and not want to eat all day. the memory brought a small, touched chuckle as you realized how important mike was in your life.
you stared at him while continuing to chuckle with watery eyes, which made him a bit confused whether he did something wrong or he was too harsh in cleaning the sensitive part of your face, "am i do something wrong? did i press too hard when cleaning your eyes? or—oh my, why are you crying?" he said a bit panicked, which made you chuckle even more and put your hand on his shoulder.
"no–” you shook your head and he still looked at you with a confused look, you looked down before looking at him again with a few tears already falling, "no, mike.. thank you." your words stuttered a bit stiffly because your throat felt a bit tight, you smiled again, then hugged him
mike reached for you too, he slides his arms around your waist, pulling you off the edge of the bed and onto the floor with him, tucking your head securely under his chin. you've always been the one who felt everything at a hundred miles an hour·the girl who cried at heart–wrenching commercials and laughed until couldn't breathe at stupid jokes.
he wishes could bottle up the version of you that's cheerful and loud, the you that argues about movies and makes him go on late-night taco runs—don't get wrong, he's always loved everything about you, but the thought of you curled up and crying like you did in the car has him a shaken. he wants to be the one who keeps you that way for a lifetime, if you'll let him. so whatever it is about the thought of having you that he might not be able to fulfill, he just hangs on to this, holding you, breathing in the scent of your shampoo, kissing the top of your head and whispering words like everything will be better tomorrow, he will make everything that is happening now better.
you sob harder at that, your fingers clutching his hoodie like it's the only thing keeping you from floating away. you're babbling again, he nods against your hair, patting your back, he just sits there in the mess of it all, anchored to the floor by the weight of you, waiting for the storm to pass so he can carry you to bed.
"hey take a breath, i'm not going anywhere." that's mike wheeler, your mikey.
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