Chapter Text
Hawkins, Indiana
July 1, 1985
“This isn’t gonna work.”
“Of course it’ll work. It has to.”
“This isn’t gonna fucking work, and you know it!”
“It won’t work with an attitude like that! It has to work or else we’re screwed and stuck here. You really want to be stuck here and watch mom and dad conceive us!?”
“Well, when you put it like that .” Mike sighed, twisting around to check through the bushes again.
It was still dumbfounding. There, right across the Star Court Mall food court, at the legendary Scoops Ahoy ice cream parlor, was his very young teenage mother. Young, happy(ish), and less stressed than the version Mike had come to know and grown up with.
The one thing he could say was really familiar was that Aunt Robin still looked more or less the same. But his dad had always said she was a witch and she’d be young forever because she bathed in the blood of innocents.
“So, what’s the plan? We’re not gonna be able to fix the time machine sitting here in the mall.” Mike hissed back to his brother.
“Well, it’s 1985. If our parents are here then it has to mean Murray is here too, right?” Dustin suggested. They just needed to hunt him down.
“Great. But finding him means we have to drive to him, genius.” Mike rolled his eyes. “And I’m pretty sure we’re still too young to drive in 1985!”
Dustin shook his head, “And here I’ve been told that I was the dramatic one.”
“Only second right behind mom.” Mike assured.
They were so screwed. So incredibly screwed, screwed times thirty years! This was why Mike didn’t bond with his big brother, he gets freaking sent back in freaking time!
“Damn.” Dustin mumbled under his breath, and Mike caught him actually trying to use his cell phone.
“Are. You. Kidding. Me?” Mike was sure his brother was just as screwy as Murray now, it’s why Dustin hung around him so much!
“I was just checking!” Dustin defended, “Wouldn’t it suck if we thought we were stuck here and we could have called someone the whole time?”
Mike literally facepalmed. If and when they get back home Mike was officially going to file for being an only child. This was too much. He didn’t care if their mom and his lawyer were still trying to find his dad somewhere in California to get child support. Mike just couldn't deal with this family anymore.
“In this day in age, I think we’re stuck with those, Einstein.” Mike pointed to the payphones near the restrooms shortly down the way from the food court. And they came complete with the old fossils that he believed were called ‘ phone books’ . Hopefully they’d have Murray listed there.
“Oh, gross.” Dustin wrinkled his nose when he spotted them. “Who knows how many hands have touched those, how many mouth breathers have spread all their spitty germs all over them!”
Drama Queen.
Mike was going to start trying to shake some sense into his brother, “Dustin, its either be stuck here forever, or call Murray on the freaking payphones!”
Dustin sighed shoulders dropping like he knew he had been defeated. “Alright, alright. Jeez. You got any quarters because I -- Shit!” Dustin gasped and ducked behind the bushes again.
“Wha?” Mike tried to ask before Dustin was grabbing him to pull him lower too.
“What the hell, Dustin?!” Mike hissed,moving leaves and branches out of the way to try to see what his brother was gawking at.
The first thing that caught Mike’s attention was the god awful mullet walking into Scoops Ahoy. Okay, so he understood that it was the 80’s and that was the style, he really questioned the Man Bun back home in their own time. But, wow. Then there was the stupid shiny earring that just complimented the mullet.
But the tiny bitty red shorts -- Lifeguard shorts Mike knew for a fact thanks to some family photo albums full of pictures from around this time. You couldn't even say no one was topless, because that shirt was barely even buttoned, it was just enough to be considered decent. And all of it seemed to bring a huge smile to his mom’s face from across the front counter when he caught sight of Billy Hargrove.
“Dad.” Dustin and Mike breathed in unison.