Chapter Text
“We need to find Will.” Mike repeats, and it’s like the others aren’t listening. Lucas and Dustin have been arguing the last five minutes about what method they should employ, and how much they doubt the local police are going to do any better than the three of them could on their own.
“Which is why I brought this.” Dustin opens up his bag, and dumps it across the small, square table they usually play DnD on. Granola, chips, all kinds of snacks fall loose from the pack, and Dustin’s lips stretch as a smile overtakes his features. “Food, for us, and for Will. I figure he’ll probably be hungry after being gone for so long.”
“I brought this.” Lucas offers a couple flashlights from the corner of the room where he’d placed them earlier, when they had all first gotten together at the Wheeler residence. “We can take these with us to help us find him, we can search all night Mike.”
“Okay.” Mike’s shoulders sag with relief. “Okay.”
The boys clambered onto their bikes, riding into the nearby woods like it was second nature for them, walking through loosened leaves and fumbling their way through dips in the earth. They joked to keep smiles on their faces, but as the hours stretched by and by, and night began to overtake the woods, their expressions had become drawn, and exhaustion had chained their limbs down, making them slower and more groggy.
“I have a curfew.” Dustin sighs, once they make it out of the forest again, the sky a dark blue. “We’ll just try again tomorrow.”
So they had, they tried again the next day, and the next day, and the day after that, and then some, and when they still hadn’t found Will, they kept trying. For around two, three weeks they kept stumbling through the woods, kept shouting their friend’s name until their throats were hoarse and their parents suspected a cold rather than desperation.
Then, they had found Eleven, and everything had changed. She could control things with her mind, and she was just incredible, and she smiled just like Will had. The confused, slight tilt of their heads when they didn’t understand something, and maybe it was selfish, but Mike had relished in the reality he wasn’t gay, no, he had just been confused because, well, Eleven is perfect and she’s a girl. Mike didn’t anticipate the quick, growing fascination with her, the way limerence took hold, the way their eyes met and Mike knew better to stare so he’d look away but El didn’t, so she’d keep staring and the way her eyes practically burned into Mike, well.
And of course, they were kids, the thoughts were purely romantic. Mike was too busy dealing with the grief of losing his friend and battling the desire to take El out on a date, to go to the movies, to make her smile, to just keep making her smile. That’s all he wanted, to teach her DnD, video games, to introduce her to real food, because she obviously hadn’t ever heard of it the way she devoured Dustin’s snacks the way she had.
Was Mike guilty? He wasn’t even sure, his fingers gripping the edge of the porcelain sink as he stared at himself in the mirror. Nancy wasn’t home, again, and their mom was audibly upset about it, cussing the wall out. Holly was still too young to fully comprehend the entirety of the situation, all she knew was that Mike’s friend had gone missing, and their mom had now become overrun with fear that her own children were possibly going to be next. He couldn’t blame her, not when he was partially responsible for the disappearance of a different child, who was currently hiding in their basement. Would he be held liable for hiding her here? Would his mom get in trouble? A thousand questions had swarmed in his head, and for the sake of self preservation, he locked everything where he always locked it, in the Will box. The box where grief, despair, fear, all of it accumulated and threatened to overflow, sweeping him in the great flood of all his emotions, and yet never did. The box seemed to infinitely stretch to accommodate the new situations he found himself in, and although the sides were splintering and there were leaks at the hems, the box was holding for now.
Mike focused on the quickening of his heart when he thought of El, thought of the way someone like her could save Will, could protect him from whatever took him, could find him. Mike believed entirely in her ability, because she was simply amazing, and if anyone could save his friend it would be her, and with that, came such an overwhelming sensation of relief and, well, this had to be love right? The way his chest would swell with such overwhelming gratitude and relief, this had to be love, this was love, Mike had known it then, in the bathroom, with the cool tile sticking to the bottoms of his feet, sweat lacing his forehead, he was in love. He was in love with El, and El was going to save Mike, and then they would all get to be friends and play DnD again. Everything would return how it was supposed to, the room would stop spinning, he would be able to sleep at night, he wouldn’t have to lie to everyone, wouldn’t have to pretend to be sick every day just to stay home to be with her, no, no they’d find Will and then things would settle down, Mike would be able to tell his mom and --
Pound, pound!
“I really have to pee Mike, if you could get out of the bathroom already that would be amazing. Make sure you spray freshener.” Nancy’s agitating voice grates from the other side of the wooden door, and Mike presses his eyes closed and sucks in a breath through his nose, the air burning his lungs. He thought she wasn’t home, but mom’s voice calling her name in that rising anger suggests she was summoned rather than willing, and something about that cools some of the rage that was threatening to crush the carefully constructed box. The light overhead is buzzing extra loud, and once he hears Nancy’s shouting in retort to their parents, he slips out of the bathroom and down towards the basement.
He just needs to see her, needs some sort of familiarity, some sort of different feeling. El never knew Will, and something about that is calming. She’s completely removed from the situation entirely, and they can talk about other stuff and it still be productive, at least that’s how Mike felt. The more he understood about El, the more they could utilize her abilities to find Will, and that justification is all he needed to spend most nights secretly huddled beneath the makeshift tent with her, holding books and explaining science, stars, galaxies, nature, everything and then some. How they filled their evenings into the early hours of the morning with literature and knowledge, and how El seemed to absorb the information like it was everything, and something about that was so empowering, Mike had felt like the smartest person in the world.