Chapter Text
act one: realisation.
The thing about California is that it hardly ever rains.
It’s one of those once in a blue moon events that leaves the Golden State reeling. People act like it’s the end of the world, like those nutcases on the radio who talk about the impending doomsday were right all along. Like they’re all just waiting to be delivered their last rites.
Because the thing about California is that when it rains, it fucking pours.
Three weeks last Thursday, Will even heard Angela Shipman crying outside the girls bathroom because she’d had her hair permed the evening before and the rain had ruined it all. That’s what she said at least; he really couldn’t tell the difference. It always just looks frizzy to him. The neighbours were complaining that they couldn’t have the barbecue they’d been planning all week, and don’t even get him started on the Lenora Hills drainage system. Will thinks he could do a better job of keeping the roads clear with a plastic bucket and a half-decent raincoat.
So yeah, people out here hate the rain.
But Will? Will Byers fucking loves it.
It reminds him of home, his own little piece of Indiana. Which, sure, is the shittest part that life could have given him; he’d much prefer his friends, or the arcade, or the ice-cream shop that Steve used to work at in Starcourt. Though, that did ‘burn down’ so it’s not like the people of Hawkins can even get their weekend fix of brownie batter bonanza.
He never cared for the Indiana rain, it was cold and bracing and made the tips of his fingers sting - that’s before they went numb, which was arguably worse. But in California, it’s warm, like bathwater warm . One great outdoor shower for the whole of Lenora Hills. So Will can just run out into the storm in shorts and a faded T-shirt and revel in it, feel the water crowding his skin.
When he was younger, Will used to love the cold. He loved snowball fights out Maple way, his mom’s famous hot chocolate with a mountain of whipped cream, and sledging down Weathertop until his lips were blue and Mike was complaining about hypothermia. But ever since that happened, he flocks to the warmth like moths to a flame.
But, with a complexion more suited to the Midwest, the east-coast sun is too much for his porcelain skin. So those rainy days - the ones where everybody shelters inside and the streets are his, and his alone, until the sun decides to make an appearance - those are his favourite.
So it’s unfortunate that when Will woke that morning - to the migraine-inducing shrill of his digital alarm clock, the numbers 6:45 casting their modena glow across the room - the California sun cut through the gap between his curtains blithely. Which, really , should’ve been a sign of things to come.
March twenty-second, nineteen-eighty-six. Will turns fifteen - for the first and only time in his life - and it feels like the world has forgotten. Like he’s just been sucked into the void of eternal anonymity, doomed to be disregarded for the rest of his life. Will knows he’s just being a dramatic four - fifteen - year old, but it feels that way nonetheless.
Today is supposed to be his day. His and only his. Unless you count the twenty million other people who, on average, share the same birthday as him. He read that in one of his mom’s Britannica copies. But his mind is crowded with thoughts of Mike Wheeler.
Mike will be here in three hours and forty-seven minutes.
Mike would love the arcade at Rink-O-Mania.
Mike would make everything at Lenora Hills better.
Mike this. Mike that.
Mike. Mike. Mike.
He feels like he’s been waiting his whole life to see him again, though a hundred and eighty-five days isn’t even a discernible fraction of the five-and-a-half thousand he’s lived so far. But Mike had been there for each and every one, his brain cruelly supplies , the ones you remember at least.
He thinks about the one letter that had arrived in the interim - tattered and tea stained from all the times Will’s fingers had traced the pages - and the way the words slanted like they always did when Mike wrote something in a hurry. It’s the same font that filled the pages of his homework books, the kind that tells Will he only wrote it because he felt that he had to. Like he was obliged to. Will doesn’t know when their friendship became an obligation to him - he tells himself it’s California, he knows that it’s before - but it rouses in him a wave of resentment that is perhaps unfair to them both
Then Mike’s face appears in shards throughout the waves of people in the arrivals lounge - visor cap on, sunglasses perched haphazardly on the bridge of his nose, like he’s attempting to dress how he thinks a person from California would look which, in reality, is entirely the opposite - and the resentment is reduced to nothing more than a fleeting murmur by something far, far worse.
It’s not a steady thrum of anger, nor an aching lull of disappointment. It isn’t even that familiar hollow loneliness that has etched itself into the very edges of his soul.
It’s something else. Something far more primal. Elementary.
It’s the gentle unfurling of wings, brushing against his insides. It’s the volant thump of his heartbeat inside his chest. It’s the short breath that ghosts his lips, and the lack of those to follow.
It’s the realisation.
Fuck.