Archive of Our Own

OCTOBER 1985

Mike wants to go back in time and kill himself for ever badgering his mom into letting him get a job at Family Video. Dustin could probably help him do it, too— build some weird-ass machine like his Suzie radio— but that would probably create a paradox, and the last thing Mike needs in his life is more of the supernatural.

What he also doesn’t need? Steve and Robin acting like actual children through the entirety of their shifts, then getting pissed at him when he forgets to rewind the returned tapes. It’s not his fault he forgot; they were singing some stupid song by The Cure, the one about Friday even though it’s only Wednesday, all day. They kept singing and laughing even when Robin had to ring people up and it was all just nauseating if Mike’s being honest. He guesses they’re probably in love or something— nobody acts that stupid unless they’re in love. Anyway, the point is the whole thing annoyed him so much he forgot to rewind the tapes. Like, how is that Mike’s fault?

So when he gets home, he’s tired and ignores Nancy’s irritated huff when he drops his jacket on the couch instead of hanging it on the rack. She’s doing her homework there, but it isn’t like he’s dropped it on top of her. She’s just been even more easily-annoyed— and annoying— ever since the Byers left. Mike tries not to think about that, though. If he doesn’t think about it it can’t hurt. It’s just like all the other shit: losing Will the first time, seeing his body being lifted out of the lake— then losing El, the darkness and the monster eclipsing her, then losing himself the year after and wrecking the Party. Yelling at Will in the rain like an asshat. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes on the way upstairs. It’s late and the sky looks dark and hungry outside. He just wants to sleep.

Mike’s room looks wrong in the cool blue darkness, the moonlight from his window slanting too-bright over everything— his unmade bed, the homework packets and flashcards scattered over his desk, the overflowing laundry basket in the corner. It doesn’t feel like home. The basement doesn’t, either; it’s too clean now that Will and El are gone. They don’t play D&D anymore. Dustin and Lucas and Max only ever come over to burn cookies in his kitchen and talk shit about their high school teachers.

Not that Mike minds. He likes spending time with them, he just misses how it used to be. But if he doesn’t think about it, it can’t hurt.

If this is how Will felt over the summer, Mike was even more of an asshole than he originally thought. And God, was he an asshole. Dating El because it was all she knew, lying to himself for months when he couldn’t pull his eyes away from Will and those stupid fucking shorts he always wore in summer and his hair, which was getting kind of long, and… Mike knew. He knew what he felt for Will wasn’t what Dustin or Lucas felt for him, that he liked him— and not as a friend. He knew and he was ashamed so he pushed it down, down, down, kissed El and pretended her head was still shaved. He always liked her hair shorter. God, it was there all this time in him, and he just didn’t want to see it. He isn’t afraid of it anymore, not like he was over the summer, but he still feels like a liar. He knows El still loves him, or thinks she does, knows Will has been trying to get in touch with him since a couple weeks ago because Dustin’s been getting calls from him on that dumb fucking radio. But Mike isn’t ready to talk yet, because if he talks to either of them, they’ll see right through his everything’s-fine act. And he isn’t ready for them to hate him yet.

Mike just needs a distraction. He needs to clean his damn room.

He’s organizing all the school shit on his desk when he hears it.

A tiny tap on his window, like a tree branch hitting the glass. It still sends his heart into his stomach, though. Everything does— Christmas lights, the smell of chlorine in the locker rooms, flickering bulbs in their living room lamps his mom forgets to change out.

Mike breathes in deep and forces himself not to look. Index cards go on top of his Bio review packet. Pencils go in his desk drawer.

But then it happens again. Louder this time, insistent. Taptaptap.

Taptaptap.

Mike’s chest goes cold. At least he knows it’s not a damn demogorgon. Those bastards aren’t polite enough to knock before entering. It’s this thought that gets him to approach his window.

“Dustin, if that’s you, I swear to God—,” he says, peering out of the dark glass, and Jesus, it’s not Dustin at all.

It’s Max.

“Mike, I’m really sorry about this, can you please just let me in?” she says.

What the shit.

Mike squints at her like if he does it hard enough she’ll go away. He’s not being a dick, he just—

“Mike, please.”

Max has never said “please” to him in her life. Her voice sounds high and strained, and he… he can’t see her very well in the inky darkness, but fuck, he knows there’s something off about her face. There’s a dark spot above her brow that’s freaking him out. God, he hopes it’s not blood.

When he pulls his window up, hands shaking, she tumbles inside in a red blur, and Mike scrambles to turn on his lamp. Warm yellow light sweeps over them, and shit, she’s bleeding.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” she’s saying, holding the sleeve of her sweatshirt over her brow. She’s sitting on the floor in front of him, her legs crossed like she’s a kid. Someone’s hit her. Her lip’s split. Mike doesn’t know how he was tired a second ago, because he feels like someone’s poured ice down his back now.

“Max, what’s going on?” he asks, kneeling down to get on her level. Her eyes are wild in a way he’s never seen them, not even when they trapped Billy in the sauna and he was looking at her like he wanted to kill her. He thinks he smells steam and sweat and chlorine for one terrifying second, but no. No, Mike is in his room, and Max is hurt.

“It’s—,” she sucks in a breath, and he moves back to give her space. She’s cradling her left arm to her chest, and Mike tries not to think about why. “It’s not anything… it’s not anything to do with the Upside Down, nothing like that—,”

“Max.” Mike says. He tries to make his voice gentle in the way that comes naturally with Will and El. She looks scared and it’s making his stomach twist. “I need you to tell me who did this.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t. I… I just need antiseptic and a couple bandaids, and then I can go. I’m sorry. Dustin’s house was too far and Lucas’s family doesn’t know me and… we’re dating, so if they caught us they’d assume— I… you were the only option. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, stop saying you’re sorry,” Mike says. “And you’re not leaving, you’re not okay and it’s cold as shit outside. Just… wait here, I’ll get some stuff from the bathroom. You’re okay, just… sit here and breathe for a minute, okay?”

She nods mutely. Mike races to the bathroom in the hall, rummaging half-blindly through the medicine cabinet. He knows his mom keeps it stocked with neosporin and band-aids and shit like that— he grabs bandages and ointment and gauze and makes a beeline back to his room.

Max is staring at nothing, still sitting on his floor. Mike doesn’t know what the fuck to do. Stupidly, he wishes Will were here— he was always good at making people feel at ease. Mike isn’t— he doesn’t— he can’t help Max this way. He can put bandaids over the cut on her brow and clean her split lip, but he can’t… God, he’s an idiot.

“I can do it myself, if you just give me the stuff,” Max says. She’s looking at Mike expectantly, a hint of her usual fierceness still present in the set of her jaw, but her posture is still different. Wrong. She’s curling in on herself. Afraid, his mind supplies through the half-haze of panic.

Mike kneels down again and inches towards her. “No, I got it,” he says. “I mean… if you don’t want help, that’s fine, but… I wouldn’t mind. It’d probably be easier that way.”

She searches his face for a moment, and deflates a little. “Fine.”

Mike moves closer, trying to gauge a safe distance that would still allow him to dress everything properly. Max tilts her head and he applies the neosporin, the gauze, and the spot above her brow is covered. He uses some kind of towelette thing to try to clean her lip, and she winces so hard he nearly drops it.

“You okay?” Mike asks.

Max blinks hard several times. Her hands are digging into the carpet. Mike doesn’t know what to do.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“You’ve gotta stop saying that. Here, just hold still.”

He applies bandaids to cuts on her hands he hadn’t noticed before— and what the fuck caused them? His brain cycles through images, Max getting vases hurled at her, porcelain shattering—

“Glass,” Max says, like she’s read his mind. “He— Neil threw a bottle at me. I tried to duck out of the way and fell. Caught myself on my hands.”

Mike’s hand stills on Max’s. He looks up at her and feels something in his chest tighten.

“Your step-dad?”

She nods. Her eyes are on her lap. “He just… ever since Billy, he’s been worse. He used to just… yell at my mom, make empty threats. But now—,” a shudder rolls through her, and Mike instinctively moves to put his hands on her shoulders. To comfort her or ground her, he doesn’t know which.

“He hits her and throws shit and— and I get in the way,” Max says, her voice tight and quiet, like saying the words hurts her throat. “I’m sorry,” she says again, and Mike hates himself.

He’s been treating her like shit for two years, even after they looked death in the face together too many times to count. All the little jabs, the petty fights. And in the beginning, when he first met her, she’d been nice to him. And he’d still hated her. And here she is on his bedroom floor, crying because she’s—

“No, don’t say that,” he says stupidly. She’s wiping furiously at her eyes and Mike wants to kick himself. Instead, he cautiously tugs her closer to him. Max crumples, a little, falls into him, her head on his shoulder, and it loosens the knot that’s been in his chest since the Byers and El left. He wraps her in a hug, a real one, and Max just starts sobbing.

Shit. Shitshitshit.

He has to pretend she’s Will or something, and then he’ll know what to do. Mike tightens his hold on her, and she quiets, stills.

“You’re safe,” he tells her. “It’s okay, you’re safe.” The words feel wrong in his mouth. Friends don’t lie, El’s voice echoes in his head. But are he and Max even friends? If they aren’t, it’s his fault. God, he’s such an asshole.

He must stiffen or something, then, because Max does, too.

“I– I’m so sorry, Mike,” she chokes out, pulling away a little. The curtain of her hair sticks to his sweater. “I can leave, I–”

“No, I told you you’re staying and I meant it,” Mike says. He isn’t going to let her go back to that piece of shit. Not tonight, at least. He needs to make things right with her, to make sure she’s okay. “My sheets are clean, you can take the bed and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

She stares at him, open-mouthed, eyes still gleaming brightly. “I… I can’t, Mike. You already hate me, I can’t—,”

Mike reaches out before he can stop himself, grabs one of her bandaged hands carefully. She looks at him like she’s never seen him before, and it makes something thorned in his chest twist painfully.

“I don’t hate you,” he says quietly. “I don’t…” Mike shakes his head at himself. He’s a fucking idiot. “I don’t know why I was such a dick to you when we first met. I would say it was because I missed El, but… I don’t think that’s it.”

She shifts a little closer to him, eyes curious. A hint more trusting. Mike counts it as a sign to keep talking.

“I think…” he blows out a breath. Looks at his hands. He can feel Max’s eyes burning holes in him. “I think it was because Dustin and Lucas both liked you, and I didn’t… and I thought it was because of El. But then she came back, and things were great until I yelled at Will like a fucking asshat, and then I realized—,” He has to stop again because suddenly his chest feels like it’s constricting and, God, he’s about to tell Max about Will. Shit. He has to, anyway, he practically owes it to her—

“Mike,” Max says. Her voice is softer than usual. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Something in his throat catches. He meets her eyes and sees that she already knows.

“You… you like Will,” Max says carefully.

When he doesn’t respond, she continues, “And I reminded you that El was just someone you were projecting your feelings onto. I mean, it’s clear you care about her, but… it never really made sense to me. You knew her for a week.”

Mike huffs a sad laugh. He feels great, all of a sudden, like this heaviness that’s been weighing down his chest is gone.

“I didn’t even know that I liked him until… until after he got possesed, I think,” Mike says. “But even then I just pushed the feelings down. Blamed them on El being gone. And… I didn’t understand how Dustin and Lucas could like you when they’d only known you for a week, and that’s when I realized I knew El for the same amount of time. And now she thinks we’re in love. God. Like, how did I fuck things up this badly?”

He drags his hands over his face, and Max leans forward and tugs them away. “Hey. It’s not the end of the world. El isn’t… she’s probably not as attached as you think.”

Mike levels her with a look. “She kissed me before they left. And then she told me she loved me.”

Max blinks at him, slowly. “Yikes.”

Mike nods self-deprecatingly. “Yeah,” he says. “Yikes. Now c’mon, get off the floor before your legs fall asleep.”

It’s like Max remembers, then, that she isn’t there because Mike wanted to talk to her about The Will and El Problem, and Mike wants to kick himself for the third time today because her whole body sags like a puppet with its strings cut. She sits completely still for a second and then vaults herself to her feet, stumbling a little.

“Whoa, easy,” Mike says, reaching for her on instinct. She flinches back, and shit, he’s fucked up.

“I’m not totally helpless, y’know,” Max snaps. She breathes out harshly and wipes at her face. She’s turned away from him now but he thinks she might be crying. “Sorry,” she says quietly. “Sorry, I don’t know why I—“

“It’s okay,” Mike tells her. He fluffs up the pillows on his bed and grabs the one he normally sleeps on, setting it on the floor a safe distance away. “We have blankets and stuff in the hall closet, so I’m just gonna go get some. You can turn out the lights, if you want.”

Max nods, sniffing a little. “Thanks, Mike.”

He looks at her for a long moment, something clawing at his throat. “I never hated you, okay?” He says finally. “Even though I acted like it. I need you to know that.”

Mike can’t look at her for any longer or his eyes will start to burn, so he turns and slips into the hall. Nancy’s bedroom door is cracked open slightly, and a thin column of yellow light pours over the floor. Mike steps over it like it’s lava, a game he and Will played when they were kids. He opens the hall closet and cringes when it creaks, but Nancy doesn’t come flouncing into the hall, so he grabs as many blankets as he can carry and rushes back to his room.

Max is on top of his covers, looking appropriately uncomfortable. Mike should make a joke or something.

“So. What do you and El talk about at sleepovers? Guys from school? I’m sure I can keep up.”

Max rolls her eyes at him, and yeah, good call on his part. Some of the tension melts out of the room, and Mike lets the blankets hefted in his arms fall unceremoniously to the carpet.

“You are so not a sufficient substitute, Wheeler.”

Mike presses a hand to his chest in mock-offense, staggering backwards onto the nest of blankets on the floor. He lands flat on his back and gets the fucking wind knocked out of him, and then Max straight-up laughs, and even though Mike can’t really breathe right and is scared shitless that Nancy will hear them, he can’t help but feel a swell of relief at the sound. It’s warm and reminds him a little of Robin when she laughs. Except Robin is more annoying. God, Mike hates his job.

“Lamp on or off?” Max asks him. She’s got a hand outstretched over his nightstand to turn it off, but there’s something uneasy shifting in her eyes. Mike hasn’t needed his lamp on for a couple of months, not since August, but he thinks Max might need it after the night she’s had.

“Can you leave it on?” He asks. “I still get nervous sometimes when it’s, like, pitch-dark.”

She smiles tentatively at him. “Yeah. Me too.”

The light makes his eyes water for like, three hours, but Mike doesn’t really care.

—

Mike is no stranger to letting girls (read: El) stay in his house without his parents knowing.

He knows what time his mom gets up— around 7:00, after Mike’s dad has left for work but before Nancy’s left for school— and what time she’ll be downstairs in the kitchen, flipping pancakes over the sound of Holly whining about the button-down polo she hates wearing and Nancy having an aneurysm about whatever test she has this week. Mike knows this because every morning, without fail, he wakes up first.

It’s been happening since ‘83, since they lost Will the first time. He doesn’t know why, but every morning Mike wakes up at 5:00-– he doesn’t think adrenaline is supposed to stay in your body that long, or that it’s supposed to wake you in a cold sweat even on the weekends, but he can’t stop it. And it’s better than the nightmares that plague El and Will and his sister, so he doesn’t complain, even when he has to go to AP classes on five hours of sleep.

And in times like this, it allows him ample time to plan how the hell he’s going to get Max back out the window without alerting Nancy.

Every morning, at precisely 6:15, the already-thin veil of peace in the Wheeler household is shredded by the shriek of Nancy’s god-awful alarm clock. Mike has tried to sneak into her room and confiscate it, but her door creaks insanely loudly and she’s always home these days, anyway. After she shuts it off, she gets ready for the day in maybe fifteen minutes, flies down the stairs to eat a cereal bar, and returns to her room to look over her notes before she leaves for school at 8:00. This means, for most of the morning, Nancy will be in her room. And since she’ll be awake, Mike and Max will have to be nearly silent if they want her to escape undetected.

Which, knowing himself and Max, Mike guesses is fucking impossible.

He hasn’t ever seen a reverse-heist movie before, but he imagines it would go something like this:

At 6:03, Mike shakes Max awake urgently. She squints blearily at him, looks over at his digital clock, and whips her head back to face him with murder in her eyes.

“Mike, it’s six in the—!”

“I know,” he hisses. “Which is why we need to get you out of here before Nancy wakes up. At six fifteen.”

Max’s eyes widen, and she leaps out of his bed, scrambling to finger-comb her hair. “Your sister is a psychopath!”

“Shhh!” Mike says. Then, with feeling, “I know.”

They make his bed, re-bandage Max’s brow, and make it to the window, and then—

“I thought I heard voices.”

Mike’s heart stutters in his chest; Nancy is leaning against his doorframe, her eyes lasered in on them. Her outfit is impeccable if incredibly stupid-looking (in Mike’s opinion, okay? Who the hell wears loafers to school? Or a knee-length skirt?), and her jaw is jutting out stubbornly, and her arms are crossed over her blazer. She looks like a very small business-woman, which isn’t that intimidating if he thinks about it, but in this moment Mike is deathly afraid of her.

Max swallows hard beside him. One of her sneakered feet is balanced on his windowsill, and she’s halfway out the window. Nancy narrows her eyes, and Mike pulls Max back inside his room. She glares at him.

“What’s going on?” Nancy demands, her eyes ping-ponging between them. “Is something happening again?”

“No, nothing’s—,” Max starts.

“Because if there is you should have told me before now,” Nancy says over her, addressing Mike. She uncrosses her arms and pulls herself up to her full height, and somehow that’s worse even though Mike’s taller than she is now. “We made a deal, Mike. If something EVER happens again, and one of us knows, we HAVE to tell the other—,”

“Neil freaked out on me and Mike let me stay over!” Max says. It’s like all the air gets sucked out of the room, even though they’re all shivering. The window’s still open and cold autumn air is leaking in. Max’s face is pale and her eyes are bright like little stars. Mike can see a cut on her right palm that he forgot to put a band-aid over; something like a hook pulls deep in his chest. “Mike didn’t do anything wrong. The world isn’t ending, everything’s fine.”

“Oh,” Nancy says. She exhales it, her eyes moving over Max’s state; the gauze taped to her brow, her cut-up hands, the purple bruise that’s just now showing up on her jaw— her jaw, Mike thinks, sickened— and resting finally on Max’s face. “That’s… I’m so sorry, Max.”

Nancy looks, for the first time, like she’s at a loss for what to say. Mike knows the feeling, knows that because it’s Nancy she’s probably boiling with rage right now because out of all the shit they’ve been through, this is a problem she can’t solve. Nobody can. No amount of late-night sleuthing or screaming into walkie–talkies or Christmas light decorations will fix the punched-in holes in the walls of Max’s house. Space heaters and Joyce’s love can’t burn the angry out of her step-dad like they did with Will. They can’t strap him to a chair and shove a truth-serum needle in his neck and ask him why he did it, either. Sometimes you don’t get a reason why when shitty things happen. Mike knows that, and he knows Nancy does, but he sees her shift her weight like she’s about to break into a run, like she can grab Max and hold her here, keep her away from Neil. It makes him want to hug her, a little.

“It’s okay,” Max tells Nancy. It’s a lie, and it makes Mike feel sick. Something in her face has closed like she knows they’re hurting for her and she doesn’t want them to. “I’m gonna go now, is that alright with you?”

He used to hate when her voice got all stubborn, used to get pissed when she snapped at him just like this. Now Mike thinks her annoyance was never directed at him at all. She isn’t pushing them, she’s protecting herself in the only way she knows how— lashing out, running away.

“Um, uh, yeah,” Nancy stammers, and holy shit, Nancy never stammers. Mike thinks maybe El isn’t the only one in their party with superpowers— Max is a force. “Just… you can always come here if you need to, okay?”

Max nods. “Thanks.”

And then, she’s turning to Mike with this weird unreadable look on her face and saying, “And thank you for being there, Mike. I’ll see you in Algebra.”

She’s out the window as quickly as she tumbled in, red hair flashing like autumn fire, and Nancy and Mike watch her climb carefully down the tree beside his window, grabbing her skateboard when she reaches the ground.

Mike and Nancy just stand there for a second, a weird tension buzzing in the air. He can still smell the cleaner he used to patch Max up last night. It makes his throat sting.

“You can get out of my room now,” Mike says finally, with half-hearted annoyance. Nancy rolls her eyes, but she looks more fond than irritated now.

“Stop letting girls stay over and then I’ll leave you alone,” she tells him on her way out.

It’s a joke, but it still makes Mike itch.

And then he thinks about Will, which hurts. It’s a physical pain now, like the feeling you get when you’ve been in class for too long without eating, and all you can think about is the lunch bell ringing. Except the bell never rings, because Will’s in California, and— fuck it. Mike can’t even make metaphors work anymore.

He just feels empty. There’s a Will-shaped hole in his chest and he feels it expand every time he breathes. And he knows he could tell Nancy, that she’s progressive because of these New York Times articles she pores over (she wants to major in journalism, and she’s started reading more than the Hawkins Post), but a larger part of him wants to keep The Will Problem to himself. And Max, too, he guesses, because she knows now. Mike wasn’t planning on telling anyone, but it’s fitting that it’s her: they’ve both seen each other at their most vulnerable. The score’s even.

When he gets to school, Dustin and Lucas are arguing by Mike’s locker. Their lockers are across the hall, but they meet up by his to hash out whatever stupid debate they’re having each week because they always want him to play mediator or pick a side. Like usual, they’re in the middle of a fight about their AP Biology class— they made the mistake of signing up as lab partners this year, and now they want to kill each other all the time.

Mike would think it was funny if they didn’t obstruct the one place he needed to be in the morning.

“Guys, move,” Mike says over the fight. When they ignore him to keep arguing, he shoves them out of the way and flings his locker open. It’s bare this year; no pictures of the Party because seeing Will and El with everyone makes something in Mike’s throat close, and it would be weird to take new pictures with just Dustin and Lucas and Max. He grabs his Algebra textbook and shoves it in his bag as Lucas shrieks, “The lab’s due THIS Wednesday?!”

“Yes, dumbass,” Dustin grits out. “That’s why I TOLD you to finish your part of the data analysis—!”

“Hey, asshats,” Mike says flatly. They turn and blink at him. “Which one of you gets me and Max in the divorce?”

Lucas glowers at him, and Dustin rolls his eyes so hard Mike’s surprised they don’t get stuck that way.

“Shut up, man,” Lucas says. “I have a girlfriend. Where is Max, anyway? She’s usually here by now.”

“I have a girlfriend, too!” Dustin bleats indignantly. Lucas looks at him like, ‘sure you do, pal.’

“I do!” Dustin insists. “Suzie and I talk every weekend!”

“You lug that massive-ass radio up the steepest hill in town EVERY weekend?” Lucas asks, kind of awed, and their previous argument is forgotten long enough for Mike to do a quick scan down the hall for Max. She’s not here. Shit. Shit, okay, that could mean anything. She’s probably fine. It probably just took her a while to get home, and then she had to get ready, and—

“Earth to Mike,” Dustin’s saying, waving his hand in front of Mike’s face. He grins toothily when Mike glares at him. “What, are you brooding again? C’mon, man, we’ll see them at Thanksgiving.”

He thinks Mike’s sad about El and Will. Which is fair, Mike guesses, because he always is, but still. They have other things to worry about. Max is Lucas’s girlfriend, and he’s not even looking for her. He probably knows, right? Max probably told him about Neil. He’s who she would have gone to if there wasn’t the risk of being caught by Lucas’s parents, so he has to know. Why isn’t he freaking out?

“Hey, losers.”

Mike turns, and there’s Max striding towards them from the double doors that lead into school, her brow unbandaged— she’s put makeup over it, Mike guesses— and her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. She’s grinning at them, like everything’s normal, and Mike realizes with a wave of nausea that this kind of thing probably happens to her a lot. And she just comes to school the very next day like it hasn’t, and flashes them all a smile, and… and Mike insults her or some shit instead of just saying good morning like a normal fucking person. Oh, God.

“Mike, dude, are you alright?” Lucas asks. He looks genuinely worried, and Mike schools his expression back to something neutral. He thinks maybe he looked horrified for a second.

“What, you're that disappointed I showed up?” Max says jokingly. Mike tries to come up with a clever retort but finds that he can’t. This is a problem because when Mike can’t think of something to say, he says nothing.

There’s a beat of awkward silence, wherein Lucas glares at Mike, and Dustin presses his lips into a thin line, like, ‘yikes.’ And then the bell rings.

Thank. God.

Mike’s halfway down the hall before he remembers he and Max are headed to the same class. Her hand comes down hard on his right shoulder, and then he’s being yanked into an empty classroom while Dustin and Lucas bicker their way to Bio, blessedly oblivious.

“Alright, what the hell was that?” Max asks him, shutting the door behind them. The classroom is half-lit by the gray light sweeping in from the windows; it’s overcast today, that apocalyptic kind of gloomy where the clouds are so dark the sky looks almost black. The wind is making the trees dance on a livewire, and the air outside feels charged with the electricity of the coming storm. Mike kind of wishes he were outside, right now, though. Getting electrocuted would probably be better than facing Max’s wrath.

“Mike, did you hear me?” She snaps her fingers in front of his face and waits for him to glare at her for it, but he can’t.

“I… Sorry, I don’t know what came over me earlier,” he says.

Max crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows, unsatisfied.

“Well if it’s what I think it was, you need to stop feeling sorry for me. Because I don’t want your pity, it would mess up our dynamic, and then Lucas and Dustin would find out about—,”

“Lucas doesn’t know?” Mike asks, incredulous. They’re dating! How do you date someone and not tell them your step-dad’s an abusive asshole?

Max’s face shifts, something dark passing over it, and she uncrosses her arms. “No, and I don’t want him to find out, got it?”

Mike’s brow furrows. “But you said… you told me you’d have gone to his place if—,”

Max sighs over him, and he shuts up. “I lied, okay? I don’t want Lucas to know. I… I guess I went to you because it would hurt the least if you didn’t care.”

And oh. If Mike felt guilty before… shit.

“Max,” he says, so soft she recoils like he’s slapped her. Mike shakes his head at himself. “Right. Sorry. I don’t pity you, that’s not what this is,” he says.

“Then what is it?”

Mike looks down at his shoes. They’re beat-up Chuck Taylors from a year ago, the white rubber inked with drawings and arcade game cheat codes and inside jokes between him and Lucas. “I just feel guilty. For… for treating you the way I did, even after everything. And all this time, ever since July, Neil’s been— God, Max, I’m sorry. And not because I pity you, I know you’re a strong person, it’s— I don’t know. I just feel like shit that you’ve been going through all this and none of us even noticed.”

He looks up, and Max’s face has softened.

“It’s okay,” she says. “And that’s the last time I’m saying it. I forgive you, seriously. And I was a dick, too, even before Billy died. We both fucked up, but… we get each other now. And that’s all that matters.”

“Do we get each other?” Mike asks skeptically. Max rolls her eyes. “Sorry, not the point, I know… thank you. For forgiving me, I mean.”

“What can I say? I’m a saint,” Max says, and this pulls a laugh from Mike. The air in the room stops buzzing so loud. “Now come on, we’re gonna get counted absent in Algebra.”

Mike follows her out the door, griping, “You say that like you aren’t the reason we’re late.”

And things aren’t perfect— Max is still holding her left arm a little weird, and Mike can feel the exhaustion of last night in his bones, and Nancy’s definitely going to force him into a long talk about what they can do for Max when she drives him home from school— but right now, things feel almost normal.

And after the summer Mike’s had, almost normal is good enough.

“Oh my God, Henderson, USE the STEPLADDER!” Steve shouts from behind the counter of Family Video.

It’s a week after Max spent the night at his house, and Mike is on shelving duty while Robin rewinds tapes in the back room and the first rain of the season comes down in buckets outside. Dustin is here, as usual, to bug Steve for discounts on Leap in the Dark and act like a goddamn idiot, in that order. Usually Lucas is with him, but he’s stuck looking after Erica since his parents are at some Homeowner’s meeting until 6:00. Mike would gripe at Dustin to leave, but a small part of him knows he’s only here because he gets lonely now. They all do, and even being together isn’t enough to fill up the yawning hole Will and El left in their party, but it helps— even if it gets supremely annoying at times. Today Dustin’s climbing the shelves of the horror aisle to reach the tapes on the top shelf. Mike has had a migraine since lunch. He wants to kill everyone in the room.

“I’m FINE, Steve!” Dustin yells back, even though they’re close enough to hear each other at a normal fucking volume. Mike doesn’t consider himself a malicious person, but right now, he kind of wants Dustin to fall.

As if on cue, Dustin snatches Cat’s Eye off the top shelf and nearly loses his footing, and then Steve’s vaulting himself over the counter like he’s in some fucking action movie and grabbing Dustin by the collar, depositing him safely on the floor.

“I told you, dumbass,” Steve says, “If you do that one more time I’m never giving you a discount again. You’re gonna break your neck, or fuck up the store, or both. No more climbing shit. God, I don’t get paid enough for this.”

Dustin just grins toothily at him. “I just like testing your reflexes, Steve.”

Steve shoots him a withering look, snatches Cat’s Eye out of Dustin’s hands, and whacks him on the head with it. “The only thing you’re testing is my patience.”

“Hey, Dingus!” Robins shouts,— God, do they have a mute button? Mike doesn’t understand why they can’t just talk at a normal voice level— emerging from the backroom. “Did you know we have A Clockwork Orange? I just rewound it. Y’know, this would be a great chance for me to finally culture you. We could watch it for Friday Movie Night.”

Steve looks skeptical. “Is that the really weird black-and-white one where the protagonist gets brainwashed?”

“Yeah,” Robin says delightedly, waving the tape in front of his face. “And we’ve got a date with it now: this week. Your shitty apartment. Thai takeout.”

Steve sighs, half-exasperated and half-fond. “I thought it was my turn to pick the movie. Fast Times? Hello?”

Robin shakes her head adamantly. “No, because I did your dishes for you on Monday and you said I could choose this week as a repayment.”

“Hey, idiots,” Dustin interjects, earning a half-hearted glare from both of them, “how about you come watch a movie with us at Mike’s instead? We’re doing a scary movie marathon Friday night.”

To demonstrate, he swipes Cat’s Eye out of Steve’s hand and waves it in front of their faces. “This one’s Stephen King.”

Robin’s eyebrows tick up at that, and she sends Steve a look. They communicate almost solely through telepathy now, Mike’s pretty sure. He doesn’t know all the details of what happened to them in Starcourt, but he thinks it might have given them mind-reading superpowers, because Steve sighs and says, “Well, if little Wheeler will have us, we’re in.”

“Yes!” Dustin cheers, grinning over at Mike. “We’ll have room for them in the basement, right? Your mom won’t mind?”

She definitely will, but Mike guesses she won’t have to know. She’s going out with some of her friends on Friday— it’s something she’s been doing more regularly since he and Nancy started school this year, and he can’t blame her. The house is too quiet unless his friends are over. And his mom kind of deserves a break.

So Mike says yes, and Dustin does a weird celebratory dance that Steve inevitably joins in on, and even though he has a splitting headache Mike feels a little bit better than he did when he started his shift. He shelves the rest of the tapes as Robin chooses new music to play over the Family Video speakers. Some song by U2 blares through the store, and Dustin whoops loudly as Steve tells Robin to turn it off, he wants to listen to that song by The Cure— Mike is going to kill him if he has to hear them screech-sing “Friday I’m in love!” again, including the instrumental solo— but Robin shakes her head and yells, “We’re CULTURING you!”

“Robin, I have good taste!” Steve protests. “The Cure is good!”

“You only like it because Jonathan put it on that tape he gave you last Christmas,” Dustin says, and Steve’s face reddens to the shade of Max’s hair. Robin throws her head back and laughs, this bright sound that Mike’s never heard from her before. She’s giggly when she and Steve are messing around at work— so is Steve— and they’re usually pretty quiet. But now, in the empty store and the press of the music, she’s like a different person. Mike kind of forgets how annoying she normally is, laughs with her as Steve sputters out something about knowing The Cure before Jonathan forced it on him.

“Whatever you say, Harrington,” Dustin says, smiling smugly like he’s won an argument. Steve rolls his eyes and joins Robin behind the counter, asking her what band is even playing, God it’s horrible, and when lightning flashes outside Mike barely notices.

Nancy picks him up, honking from the parking lot, and when he gets inside the car she has a tape playing. Steve and Robin wave at them through the big glass windows, Dustin shoving more horror movies into his bag by the register. Nancy smiles at all of them as she pulls out of the parking lot, but it’s a little plastic.

‘Somebody To Love’ floats from the tape deck into the silence of the car. Nancy’s got the windshield wipers on, but they’re not really doing a whole lot; the rain is so constant that it creates a fog over the windshield, the wipers clearing the spray for just a moment. Gold headlights blot through the haze. Nancy squints like it’ll help as she pulls onto the main road leading to their neighborhood. Lightning spiderwebs across the sky above them, and for a second Mike sees crimson clouds, an interdimensional hurricane. He blinks and it’s gone, trapped in the past with Barb and Ben Newby and Billy.

Nancy’s thinking. Well, she always is, but right now she’s… spiralling. Mike knows what it looks like on her, when she’s stuck in her own head. Her hands are gripping the wheel a little tighter than they normally do; her face is carefully composed, like a mask. She doesn’t gripe at Mike to turn the AC down like she usually does when he puts it on full blast. He sits back in his seat and watches the raindrops race each other down his window, waiting for her to talk.

‘They say I’m going crazy,’ Freddie Mercury croons into the car. ‘They say I got a lot of water in my brain…’

“Barbara loved this song,” Nancy says suddenly, her voice kind of tight. Mike looks at her intently. She rarely mentions Barb. He’s been afraid to ask about it.

“We used to sing it in the car,” she continues, flicking on her blinker as she coasts through a turn. Water roars up Mike’s side of the car. “After school. On Fridays. We’d go to the bookstore, or just drive around. She used to—” she cuts herself off, her throat closing up, and Mike reaches across the console and puts his hand on top of hers. The stoplight ahead of them flashes to red, and Nancy lets up on the gas and presses the brake.

“She always closed her eyes when she sang, and she was always the one driving because I didn’t have my license yet, and I’d have to yell at her to watch the road.”

Mike laughs a little, before he can stop himself, and Nancy looks over at him and giggles. It makes something in his chest unwind.

The light turns green, and Mike points at it. “Watch the road, Nance.”

She smiles when he turns up the music, and takes them home.

As they get out of the car and head for the door, rain pelting the garage roof, Mike catches Nancy by the elbow.

“Hey, is it okay if Steve and Robin come over Friday night? Dustin roped them into it. We’re doing a horror movie marathon. For Halloween.”

A look of confusion passes over her face. “I mean, sure… you need my permission?”

“Well, I mean, uh,” Mike stammers. “Just… I didn’t know if you’d want Steve over, cause… y’know.”

Nancy huffs a small laugh. “Mike, Steve and I are fine. I’m dating Jonathan, and… well, he has Robin, I guess— they’re together, right?”

Mike doesn’t really know, but he says, “Yeah, I think so. They have kind of a weird relationship.”

When they get inside the house, Mike’s eyes have to adjust to the dim lighting. Usually, his mom has lamps in the living room switched on, or the TV going for Holly or his dad, but tonight it’s just the yellow warmth of the overhead lights in the kitchen. Nancy leads the way, her shoulders tensed. This is out-of-the ordinary, and if the Wheeler siblings have learned over the past three years, it’s that out-of-the ordinary happenings usually lead to apocalyptic showdowns with interdimensional monsters. Not exactly how Mike wanted his Wednesday night to go.

Nancy switches on one of the living room lamps, and the bulb flickers. Mike feels a rush of cold fear shoot through him.

“Just stay behind me, it’s probably nothing,” Nancy whispers. The house is strangely quiet.

They walk carefully into the kitchen, surveying it for signs of monster sludge or general struggle. Everything seems normal; their mom has left out a casserole on the stove, along with two plates and silverware, presumably for Mike and Nancy. Holly’s toys are still strewn everywhere chaotically, which is another sign of normalcy; for all the cleaning Mike’s mom does, she can never get Hols to keep her legos and dolls and Lincoln Logs in one place.

“Maybe Mom just went to bed early,” Nancy says. She spoons casserole onto both their plates, and they’re about to go sit at the table when the hall leading to his parents’ bedroom lights up. Nancy sets her plate down and steps in front of Mike, and for a moment it feels like they’re the only two people in the house. Thunder rolls overhead, and Mike feels a shiver run through him. It’s fine, it’s probably fine—

“Hey, you two,” their mom says, emerging from the hallway in her pajamas. Nancy heaves an audible sigh of relief, then covers it with a cough.

“Mom,” Mike says. “Were you already asleep? It’s barely eight.”

His mom laughs, and Mike notices for the first time that there are tiny wrinkles around her eyes. She looks older without her makeup on. He thinks, somewhere in the back of his mind, that she looks prettier this way, though— like she did when he was a kid.

“No, hon. I was— your father and I were just talking.”

Nancy pulls out a chair for all three of them, and Mike and his mom move to sit. The energy between all of them feels wrong, somehow, like half the air in the room has been vacuumed out.

“About what?” Nance asks gingerly. She and Mike haven’t talked about it, but they both know things between their parents are fragile. It’s like a bruise spreading over the walls, leaking into the doorways, blotting over their family photos on the mantle. But it’s a quiet kind of loss, so different from Nancy losing Barb, from Mike thinking he lost Will and then El, and then really losing them, if only to distance. It’s subtler and doesn’t take all of their energy to ignore, so they pretend it isn’t happening. But here it is in front of them, impossible to look away from. Mike feels his throat close up.

His mom inhales like it’s suddenly hard to talk. “Just— how things have been between us. We…” She bites her lip, looks between Nancy and Mike with something like regret in her eyes. And Mike knows, when she reaches across the table to place a hand on his shoulder and the other on Nancy’s.

“We’re thinking about separating.”

Translation: We’re separating.

Nancy breathes out softly like she’s kind of relieved, and Mike has to stop himself from kicking her under the table. This isn’t a good thing, even though he knows she thinks it is. Sure, it’ll be nice to not have to listen to his parents arguing over dinner or when they think Mike and Nancy are asleep, but in the long run it means a giant rift is splitting their family in half. His dad will be even more removed— physically, not just emotionally. They’ll feel the absence of him in the house, Mike knows, and even if Nancy doesn’t think it will bother her, it will. He looks at his mom and can’t be mad at her, though. She looks so sad.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he says, and even though it’s not in response to anything she’s said, she still nods like it is. She’s gripping his shoulder now, he can feel her nails through his shirt.

“I know, honey. I just… I don’t want to set a bad example for either of you, ever, and I feel like that’s what your father and I have done.”
“Mom, it’s not your fault,” Nancy says fiercely. Mike looks at her for the first time since they sat down and sees that she’s crying. He feels kind of sick. The kitchen lights are too bright, suddenly, the warm yellow turning their faces garish.

Mike’s mom nods, blinking her own tears back. “I love you both so much. Things aren’t going to change overnight, okay? We’ll all have time to adjust.”

She looks a little afraid of what she’s saying, and for a brief and terrifying moment it makes Mike think of El. He doesn’t know why, he just gets this flash of her as some overworked housewife, trapped in a relationship she thought was love because everyone else told her it was. And then Mike thinks about his dad, about spending his adult life in a loveless marriage just because he feels like he has to. And it’s like his world reassembles itself, all the unknowns about himself clicking into place. His relationship with El wasn’t just because of their shared trauma, or because he was using her as a substitute for his best friend (which he worried himself to death about after he figured out that he liked Will). It wasn’t just a way for Mike to hide, either. It was something Mike learned. Something he learned from his parents.

Mike is his dad and El is his mom. Or was, but El doesn’t know they’re a “was” because he just LET her kiss him and tell him she loved him and— holy shit.

Holy shit, Mike fucked up.

His kitchen chair’s screeching across the tile before he even realizes he’s stood up, and then Nancy’s yelling ”Mike!” all tearfully but he can’t listen to her right now, he doesn’t have time. He needs to get out of the damn house.

He blinks and he’s on his bike, somehow, and it’s still raining but Mike doesn’t care. He doesn’t love El like he thought he did, but he still cares about her and he can’t let her become his mom— wow, okay, weird wording. Mike needs to get a grip. He CAN’T let El go on believing she loves him and that they’re gonna end up in some sunny suburb one day, because it wouldn’t be fair to her. And it also wouldn’t be fair to WIll.

Will. God, Mike’s chest hurts.

He blinks water out of his eyes and pedals harder, his legs burning; he needs to find Old Cherry Road. Because the only person who could possibly understand? Mike wants to laugh, because it’s bizarre, but it’s Max.

—

When he throws the third rock at her window, Max finally yanks it open.

The rain has slowed to a drizzle, but Mike is pretty drenched from the bike ride to her house. Thankfully, her room is on the first floor, and there was a dim orange light shining out of her window when he rolled through the yard. He stowed his bike in one of the bushes lining the Mayfields’ backyard and started tossing pebbles at her window. He guesses he could have just knocked, but it wouldn’t have been as annoying, and Mike kind of wanted to annoy her.

“What. The. Fuck,” Max says, her eyes flashing dangerously, “Are you doing here.”

Mike should have just knocked. He swallows nervously.

“My parents are splitting up and it made me think about El and how she still thinks we’re in love and how I’m essentially lying to her by not saying we’re not, and I’m also lying to Will, and friends don’t lie, that’s like the BASIS of El’s moral code because it’s the first thing I taught her after she escaped from the lab, and I need to figure out a way to get to her so I can explain, and make things right, and—,”

“Whoa, Wheeler,” Max says, and then she’s pulling him through her window into her room and shutting it behind him. “Slow down. Jesus.”

He gulps in a breath, and then he sees that Max is looking at him with something soft and unguarded like kindness in her eyes. There’s still the familiar undercurrent of irritation, but she seems more worried than pissed.

“Mike. I need you to explain to me what’s going on at, like, a normal rate of speech.” She smiles a little, and it calms his rising nerves. Mike nods. He can do that. He can talk normally.

He takes a minute, looks around at her room. It’s bright, and there are posters for Depeche Mode and The Goo Goo Dolls and Madonna, and books everywhere: on shelves, on her dresser, in stacks on her floor. Mike didn’t know Max read this much.

“Have you read all of these?” He asks finally. Max looks at him like he’s Steve or something.

“Mike. You can’t just come to my house in the middle of the night having a crisis, and then derail the conversation because you suddenly don’t wanna be vulnerable. Tell me what’s going on. I don’t bite.”

She crosses the room and flops down on her bed, putting her hands up in a gesture of peace. “Start from the beginning.”

So he explains, or tries to, about his parents. About the way his mom had looked when she told them they were separating, about how it made him realize that he’s doing to El what his dad is doing to his mom. Trapping her. He explains that he doesn’t want to be that way, like his dad, that El doesn’t deserve to have some fantasy of them in her head that Mike can’t give her. She deserves someone who can really love her, and Will deserves answers.

“Which is why I’m gonna ask Steve to drive me to California. And I want you to go with us.”

Max has been listening attentively through his entire spiel, nodding supportively in all the right places, but now, she gapes at him. “You're serious?”

Mike doesn’t say anything, and Max’s eyes widen. “Shit, you’re serious. Okay. Okay, I get why you want to do that, Mike, but… what makes you think Steve would drive you all the way to California? That would take, like, three fucking days.”

Mike has thought about this. Well, not in detail, but in the time it took him to ride his bike across town, he was able to come up with a working plan: Step one was to talk to Max, which is in progress. Step two was to corner Steve the next day at Family Video and blackmail him into agreeing to make the drive to Cali. The thing about working with Steve and Robin is that Mike is like, the only one who’s paying attention at any given moment, which has allowed him to overhear, and see firsthand, a lot of shit. Namely shit that Steve has done that’s against company policy— given discounts to pretty girls in hopes they’d give him their numbers; broken a whole stack of Fast Times tapes he was supposed to rewind and then blamed it on the packaging; knocked over the TV in the backroom and lied to Keith about it; pretended not to notice when Dustin never returned Twilight Zone, Wrath of Khan, E.T., or Dead Zone. And Mike knows Steve needs to keep his job. Really, it’s a win-win for both of them: Steve can take a vacation, and Mike can finally make everything right with El and Will.

He tells Max as much, and she nods slowly. “O-kay,” she says, drawing out the last syllable. “I guess that could work. Not that I’m endorsing blackmail.”

“But you’re all for spying,” Mike says flatly. She shoots him a health-hearted glare, and he breaks into a grin. “Kidding, sorry.”

“So you really wanna do this?” She asks, her voice suddenly gentle. Mike crosses the room and pulls up her desk chair, sitting across from her.

“I mean, yeah,” he says. “I have to. I have to make sure they both know how much they mean to me, and in which ways.”

“I get that,” Max says. “But… Mike, you know you’re not like your dad, right?”

He stares intently at the floor. There’s a bright blue knitted rug on her carpet that matches her eyes. “I know,” he says, but it feels like a lie. Shame twists somewhere behind his ribs.

Max kicks out at his shin, and he looks up at her. “Mike. You’re nothing like him. And I know he isn’t… like Niel, but it’s still shitty to act like your kids aren’t even there. But YOU don’t treat people like that, okay? You never have. You’re, like, the most overprotective person I know, you’d do anything for El, or Will, or any of us. Because you care about people. And you’re a good person, I promise.”

Mike nods, a little floored. It’s a lot to take in, but so is everything else Max says. She has no filter, which is how he knows she believes every word she’s just said. “Thanks, Max. I needed to hear that.”

Her mouth quirks up in a tentative smile. “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

Mike gapes at her. “Did you just quote Star Wars at me?”

Max kicks him for real this time, and he pulls both of his legs up onto the chair to evade her. “Ow! Jesus Christ, Max—,”

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of knocking on Max’s door, and a deep, gruff voice shouts, “Maxine!”

Max turns to Mike, fear bright in her eyes, and then she’s grabbing him by the shoulders and shoving him towards her closet— which, come on, really? —and Mike lunges inside and pulls the door shut just as the door to Max’s room flies open.

Mike can barely see anything in the dark, but he feels Niel’s presence in the room. His footsteps practically shake the floor. It feels like all the air in the room (and Max’s closet) is vibrating with it.

“What are you doing?” Niel asks, his voice already accusatory. “Your mother’s been calling you down for dinner for the past five minutes.”

“Just putting away laundry,” Max answers easily. She sounds unperturbed, but her voice is way higher than normal. Jittery and too chipper, like the girls she makes fun of at school. “I’ll be there in just a minute, I’m sorry.”

There’s a sigh, and Mike thinks they’re in the clear, but then: “Sorry isn’t good enough. Your mom’s been slaving away to cook us a nice homemade meal, and you can’t even be bothered to yell down the hallway when we call. It’s extremely disrespectful.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Max says. “I said I was sorry, I’ll—,”

There’s a sound like Niel’s grabbed her, and Max breathes in sharply, and God, Mike wants to clock this bastard in the face.

“Let go,” Max pleads. Mike wants to fling open the door, needs to, but he can’t because then they’d really be fucked. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, that hurts—”

And Niel’s saying, “Stop blubbering. Wipe the snot off your face and be at the table in five minutes.”

And then Max’s door shuts with a force that rattles the walls. If Mike’s house is bruised, Max’s is an open wound.

Mike waits a beat and then opens the closet door slowly and carefully, and Max has her head in her hands.

“Just go, Mike,” she says quietly. “We’ll talk about California tomorrow, okay? I’m sorry, I have to go eat dinner.”

Mike reaches out, eases his hands around her wrists, pulls them away from her face. She looks at him like she’s seeing him for the first time, and it makes something in him ache.

“Fuck that,” Mike says fiercely. “We’re getting you out of here right now.”

So Mike’s plan gets derailed a little. They still go to Steve, but they end up at his apartment that night instead of Family Video the next morning. Because Max needs somewhere to stay and Mike needs to make sure she gets there safely. She rides on the handlebars of his bike for half the distance across town, and then they switch off because Mike’s legs are tired and Max has a bunch of nervous energy that she needs to get out. The rain has stopped completely, so that’s a plus, but they’re still tired as hell when they knock on Steve’s door. Mike knows what room he’s in— 303— because he’s heard Steve tell Robin enough times. She forgets it almost every two weeks even though she’s over at Steve’s, like, all the damn time.

When Steve answers the door, his hair’s messed up and he’s wearing these incredibly dorky Star Wars pajama pants and a giant green sweatshirt that Mike thinks he’s seen Robin wear once or twice. He looks at both of them like he thinks he might be dreaming, then says, “What’s going on? Do I need to get the bat?”

Max and Mike shoot each other a look.

“Everything’s fine,” Mike blurts out. “We… we just needed a place to stay.”

Steve blinks at them, then raises his eyebrows. “What?”

“Just let us in and we’ll explain,” Max says. Her anxiety must show on her face, because Steve heaves a long-suffering sigh and steps aside, pulling the door shut behind them. Robin’s in the kitchen eating cereal straight from the box.

“Steve, why are your children here?” She says.

Steve turns to face them in the foyer, crossing his arms in a way that Mike thinks he means to be menacing but actually just looks ridiculous. “I don’t know, Rob. Guys, why don’t you clue us in?”

Because it’s Steve, and because Mike sucks at explaining things, it takes a while to relay all of the information to them without screaming in frustration at least once, but eventually Max takes pity on him and takes over.

“Which is why Mike needs to go to California, to explain to El that she needs to be her own person and make things right with her and Will. And… and if you don’t say yes, we have leverage,” she finishes, pointing threateningly at Steve, who sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose like a stressed-out parent.

“What do you mean, leverage?” he asks. Robin shakes her head at him, like, let’s not open that box, but Mike smiles and rattles off Steve’s many offenses anyway, and that’s enough to seal the deal.

“Alright, okay, fine,” Steve relents, throwing his hands up. “But you twerps are paying for half the gas. And Rob gets to go with us.”

“Wait, hold on,” Robin interjects. “I still don’t understand. Mike, I get that you want to explain to El that you’re not in love with her, but… what did Max mean by ‘make things right with Will’?”

Shit. They’d gone over what they were planning to say on the bike ride over, and Mike told Max he wanted to keep the Will Problem under wraps for now. He’s still figuring himself out, and he trusts Steve, sure, but he doesn’t want him blabbing to Robin or Nancy or anything. And Will doesn’t need that, either. But… something about the way Steve’s looking at him makes Mike want to tell them the truth. He DID just agree to drive Mike and Max all the way across the country, so… Mike kind of owes it to him.

Max, oblivious, looks at him apologetically, then turns back to Robin. “He… he wanted to—,”

“Tell Will I’m in love with him,” Mike says all in one breath. The room goes quiet, and Robin slowly sets the box of cereal down on the kitchen counter. Max whirls to face him, her eyes wide. Steve just nods, like he half-expected it.

“Cool,” he says, and— wait, what? Mike glowers at him. “What?” Steve says. “It’s no big deal, little Wheeler. I’ve seen monsters from another damn dimension made out of people’s SKIN. This is nothing.”

“It is so NOT nothing,” Mike says, and Steve realizes his mistake and backpedals immediately.

“No, of course not, I just meant— it doesn’t change how I see you. You’re still the same irritating dork you were last week at Family Video. I mean, seriously, man, you’ve gotta stock the tapes in alphabetical order—,”

“You GAVE Dustin thirty dollars’ worth of movies,” Mike shoots back, earning a cackle from Robin. “That’s like, actually illegal.”

Max rolls her eyes at all of them.

“Alright, that’s fair,” Steve says. And then, as if it’s just occurred to him, “Wait, so Mike, your parents don’t know where you are? Like, at all?”

Mike shakes his head.

“Shouldn’t we call them? And Max’s?” Steve asks. He puts both hands on his hips, turning to Robin. “We have to, right, Rob?”

“Oh, my God,” Max groans. “Did you not hear a word we just said to you, asshat? Mike’s parents are caught up in their own drama, they probably just think he’s brooding at Dustin’s or Lucas’s or something. We can just have him call Nancy and say he’s spending the week at one of their houses.”

And hey, that could work. Steve seems to think so, too, because he shrugs and goes, “Okay.”

“We never tell them when the world’s ending, why start being honest now?” Mike quips. This pulls a laugh from Robin, and the energy in the room relaxes. Steve motions for Mike to follow him into the living room, where a phone sits on a side table next to a flea market sofa.

“Call Nance and have Max dial up her mom, too. I just want your guys’ families to know you’re safe, okay?”

“Got it, Mom,” Mike says. Steve musses up his hair— bastard— and joins Robin and Max in the tiny kitchen, where they’re improvising breakfast-for-dinner: Robin’s pouring pancake mix into a bowl with milk and stirring it aggressively, and Max is trying to get Robin to let her do it herself. Steve turns on the stove and starts heating up a pan for them while the dial tone rings in Mike’s ear.

After two rings, Nancy picks up. “Mike, where are you?” She asks instantly. She sounds out of breath, like she heard her phone ringing from downstairs and ran up to answer it.

“I’m at Dustin’s,” Mike says, half-guiltily. He knows Dustin will cover for him if Nancy calls to make sure he isn’t lying, and what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. It’s not like doing a roadtrip with Steve amounts to the same as some of the other situations Mike’s gotten into without his sister knowing. And besides, he needs to do this for El and Will. And Max, really— he needed to get her out of that house. That outweighs everything else, as far as he’s concerned. The tough part will be getting Nance to buy it. “I just needed to get away to clear my head, y’know? We were making dinner before you called.”
Here, Mike yells in the direction of the kitchen, “Dustin, stop banging the damn pans together!”

Taking the hint, Max grabs the pan Steve’s holding and whacks it against the kitchen countertop. Steve mouths a string of curse words and Robin claps a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Uh-huh,” Nancy says, sounding only partially convinced. “I didn’t know Dustin could cook.”

“Oh, yeah, he can’t,” Mike tells her. “But it’s fun for him so we all just kind of play along. I’m sorry for running out on you guys, though. Is Mom okay?”

Nancy breathes in a little sharply, and Mike feels a pang of guilt in his chest. “Yeah, she’s… she’s okay. She feels guilty, I think, though. She’s worried she really upset you.”

“Oh,” Mike says softly. He didn’t really think about that. “I… I’m not upset about her and Dad,” he says honestly. “Like, I knew it was coming. I just… I guess I’m more worried that I’ll end up in a relationship like theirs one day. That was why I freaked out.”

There’s a quiet pause, and then Mike hears Nancy put the phone down and walk across the room, shut her bedroom door. It creaks extremely loudly. He kind of misses it, for a second. When she picks the phone up again, her voice is quiet but firm. “Mike, you’re not going to end up like that.”

“How do you know, though?” Mike asks. He didn’t plan to say it, but now he realizes he needs Nancy to reassure him. No matter how annoying she can be sometimes, Mike’s sister is never wrong.

Nancy sighs. Mike can hear Max and Robin bickering quietly about the number of frozen blueberries the pancake recipe calls for. He hopes the sound doesn’t carry over the line.

“Mike… you care about people in a way Dad won’t ever be able to understand. You treat your friends like they’re your family, you make everyone feel included… Dad can’t do that. You’re not like him. And you’re not like Mom, either. You’re not… passive. You stand up for people, and yourself. You’re not going to end up with someone you don’t really love just because it’s what the rest of the world expects of you.”

Mike swallows hard. He wishes, for a strange moment, that he could see Nancy’s face right now. He imagines her in her stupid satin pajamas leaning against her headboard, her eyes worried but her jaw set in a sure, certain line.

“Thanks, Nance,” he says. He cringes at the wobble in his voice, but if Nancy hears it she doesn’t say anything.

“Of course. When do you think you’ll be home?”

Mike has to think for a second. Three days to get to California, three days to get back to Hakwins… would she look for him at school? Shit. It doesn’t matter, he has to just bite the bullet and lie.

“Maybe a week,” Mike says. “I know that’s a long time, but… I just need to regroup. Like, fully. And Dustin and Lucas have been wanting to play this new video game that just came out, and they had the idea to do like, a week-long sleepover thing to beat all the levels. And they were so psyched about it I told them Mom wouldn’t mind.”

Nancy sighs, half-fond and half-exasperated. “Fine, dork. Just— do your homework and… don’t open any portals, okay?”

“No promises,” Mike tells her. “Love you, Nance.”

There’s a static-y pause, and Mike swears he hears her sniffle. “Love you too, Mike.”

Mike hangs up and feels the nerves drain out of him. In the kitchen, Max shrieks with laughter as Steve splatters pancake batter on Robin’s shirt. Robin gasps in faux-horror and lunges for Steve’s hair, sinking her blueberry-stained hands into it.

“ROB! Jesus fuck, not my hair!” Steve yells, distraught.

Mike gets up off the sofa and heads for the kitchen. He’s hit with the smell of pancakes almost instantly, and it makes him feel warmer, somehow.

“Hey, Max, want me to call your mom for you?” Mike asks over the chaos. She whirls to face him, still half-laughing; Mike hasn’t seen Max this herself in a long time. Maybe ever. He doesn;t remember ever seeing her smile this big. Or laugh so loudly, and not at his expense. “You can just give me her number, I don’t mind.”

Max flashes him a grateful smile. “That would be great, but… I should probably do it. She doesn’t know you, I think it’ll be more believable if I talk to her myself.”

So Mike follows her back into the living room, partially to make sure it goes okay and partially to get away from Steve and Robin’s food fight. They’re flinging flour at each other now, which Mike doesn’t even think they needed for the pancakes. He will never understand them.

Max dials her house number with shaky hands, and for a panic-stricken moment Mike worries that Niel will pick up, but when the phone stops ringing, Max’s shoulders instantly relax. “Hey, Mom,” she says. “It’s me.”

“Take THAT, Dingus!” Robin shouts triumphantly, caking wet flour— wet flour? Seriously, what the fuck? — into Steve’s hair. He stares at her in pure shock for a second, and Mike suddenly wishes he had Jonathan’s camera to immortalize his expression.

“Yeah, I just… went to a friend’s,” Max is saying, twirling the phone cord anxiously around one finger. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first. Is Niel mad?”

Mike holds his breath with her.

“...Okay,” Max says finally. “Okay. Yeah, tell him I’ll be home in a couple of days. I just need some space. You’re okay with him, though?” And then: “I’m sorry, Mom… I know. I love you, too. Okay, bye.”

She puts the phone down and exhales like all the fight’s draining out of her. Mike puts a hand on her shoulder and sinks down on the couch a safe distance away.

“Your mom’s okay?” He asks gently.

Max nods. “Yeah, she’s fine. He… isn’t always horrible. He just lets his anger build up. He took it out on me tonight, and it usually takes him about a week to get ramped up again, so… so it should be okay. It’ll be okay.” She nods like she’s trying to convince herself, and it makes Mike’s heart tug in his chest.

“It will be,” he says. “And right now it’s not your job to worry about it.”

Max smiles at him.

“But I WOULD be worried about idiot number one and idiot number two in there,” Mike says, gesturing to the truce in the kitchen. Robin is apologizing profusely to Steve, helping him wash the flour out of his hair in the sink. “They’re definitely burning the pancakes.”

Max nods solemnly. “We should go help them.”

“Beat you there, Zoomer.”

—

They leave at sunrise the next morning after Mike Walkies Dustin and Lucas and explains what’s going on. He wasn’t explicit about his feelings for Will, but judging by the oddly supportive tone to both of their voices when they wished him good luck, he guesses they got the gist. Honestly, Mike doesn’t need to make a big deal out of it. He really isn’t even that worried. Will’s only his best friend in the entire world. And El’s only the coolest girl he’s ever met, who’s saved his life, like, numerous times. Nothing to freak out over. Mike’s fine.

No, really. He’s fine.

“Mike?” Max says expectantly. He whips his head around to face her; they’ve been seated side-by-side in the backseat of Steve’s car for the past several blurry hours. Robin’s kept their moods up with a never-ending supply of mixtapes, with everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Def Leppard to The Smiths and The Cure on them. Steve’s got a duffel bag full of snacks for them to survive off of, and for the past hour Mike’s been staring out his window, watching headlights pass like fireflies. The sky has darkened to a deep shade of plum, an inky blackness that eclipses everything except for passing cars. The plan is to stop at a hotel for the night and do the same tomorrow and the next day. They’re all the bone-deep kind of tired that feels like it’ll last for years, and Mike feels kind of paralyzed. He can’t stop thinking about what he’s going to say.

“Mike, we’re at the hotel,” Max says. She’s looking at him with a twinge of concern, and Mike shakes off his nerves. They’re not even in California yet. This is fine. It’ll be fine.

Steve and Robin are weird about elevators, but they can’t find the stairs, so Mike and Max rope them into a game of Would You Rather while they’re carried up to the fourth floor. Robin still white-knuckles the handrail, and Steve paces anxiously, but they seem okay when the buzzer dings and the metal doors slide cleanly open.

Max shares a bed with Robin, and they force Steve to sleep on the floor because no way is Mike sharing with him. He feels a little guilty about it, but then he remembers all the times he’s done Steve’s job for him and the remorse dissipates.

Robin flicks off the bedside lamp and the room is bathed in cool blue darkness. Mike stares up at the popcorn ceiling and tries not to think about Will. Or El. Or talking to Will and El. This was a stupid plan, but he and Max have already pooled their arcade money to pay for gas, and Steve’s driven all this way, and despite how nervous he is Mike really needs to fix everything. He hasn’t even spoken to either of them in maybe a month. And he knows they’re probably making friends, and adjusting to a new school, but he also knows they’ve been trying to reach him.

God, he’s in deep shit.

The next day is a haze of driving and rest stops and crappy roadside diner food and then morre driving. Robin’s music— The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs and David Bowie— colors their route to the next hotel. Mike has to half-carry Max out of the car, because she didn’t get enough sleep the night before and stayed up for most of the drive to make sure Steve was going in the right direction. She’s the only one out of all of them that’s good with maps, they’ve realized. Robin thought she’d understand it since apparently she charted out her and Steve and Dustin’s expedition into the Russian base over the summer, but that was a map of a mall, which she explained was entirely different. By the time they’re all settled in the hotel room, a dingy place that Mike thinks was probably once the site of a murder, he’s too tired to be anxious. Whatever happens will happen, he thinks, watching the glow of headlights illuminate the wall across the room, over and over in a dizzying loop. He can hear Steve griping about the crick in his neck from his spot on the carpet, and Robin hissing at him to pipe down, and Max threatening to throat-punch the next person who talks, and in this moment, at least, he feels okay.

When they’re a couple miles away from the Byers’ house, the panic starts to set in.

Not just for Mike, although he’s freaking the fuck out for sure. As it turns out, Steve is the main offender; apparently it’s taken him the better part of three days to realize Ms. Byers might not want company, or have room for company, and now Robin is trying to calm him down by playing Cyndi Lauper, but it isn’t really working.

“Hey, Rob,” Steve says. “I’d really rather not have ‘She Bop’ be the last song I hear before I die.” Beside Mike, Max snorts out a laugh.

Steve glares at her in the rearview mirror and then runs a hand through his hair nervously. “I’m serious, what if she gets pissed at us? Like, what are we gonna tell her? Oh, sorry for dropping in Ms. Byers, our dumbass child suddenly realized he’s been leading on both of yours?”

“Hey!” Mike protests. “I wasn’t leading them ON, Jesus! I was confused!”

“Don’t say that, Mike, that’s a stereotype,” Robin tells him seriously. Then, to Steve: “You’re spinning out for no reason, that lady is a freaking saint.”

“You haven’t seen her angry,” Steve says. “What if she gets mad at Mike? What then?”

“I really was confused, though,” Mike cuts in. Robin turns and glares at him.

“She’s not going to get mad at Mike,” Max says frustratedly. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet through the entire conversation, but now, she leans forward in her seat, addressing everyone.

“Look. If there’s one thing I know about Will and El, it’s that they forgive easily. They’re understanding, and I’m, like, sixty percent positive they’re going to understand Mike.”

Here, Mike lets out a distraught groan, and Max silences him with a glare, continuing: “And if they’re not mad, Ms. Byers won’t be, either. She only gets pissed on their behalf, and even then it’s only at adults. She’s a good person, she’ll be fine with it. We might have to spend some time convincing her the world isn’t ending again, but after that she’ll probably be happy to have us. Now chill, and that goes for everyone,” she says, pointing at all of them.

“That’s actually a good point,” Steve concedes. And then, coasting into a right turn, “Plus, it’s too late to back down anyway. Alright, I think this is their neighborhood.”

Mike’s heart leaps into his throat.

Max doesn’t look at him, but she wordlessly places her hand on top of his in the empty seat between them.

“What house are they again?” Robin asks. She’s shading her eyes from the sun with one hand and pressing the other to her window. The houses rising up on either side of Steve’s car are tall and brightly-colored, so different from the Byers’ cozy one-story in Hawkins. It makes Mike kind of sad, that they’ll never live there again.

“Dustin said 177,” Max says.

And oh. It’s right up ahead.

Mike can’t look at the house because he’s too busy staring intently at his lap. He can feel Max’s steady gaze on him as Steve pulls onto the shoulder of the road near the Byers’ house and puts the car into park. It’s mid-afternoon, nearly four p.m., and there are two cars already parked in the driveway. Joyce and Jonathan’s, Mike guesses, which means El and Will are probably home from school.

Steve hops out of the car first, and then Robin’s on his heels. Distantly, Mike hears Max’s door shut, and then she’s pulling his open and saying, “C’mon, get out. You can do this, it’ll be okay.”

They stand clustered in the driveway for a few moments, hesitant, but then the front door swings open and Jonathan steps out onto the bright porch. He bounds down the steps and sprints over to them, his face oddly pale in the sun.

“What’s happening?” He asks Steve immediately. “Where are the others, what’s—”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Steve says, laughing a little. “Sorry, uh… nothing bad. I mean, the world’s not caving in on itself or anything. Um. Mike had me and Rob drive him here, it’s kind of a long story…”

Jonathan sighs in relief, and then his eyes drift over to Mike curiously. After a moment, he nods like he’s made a decision, gestures for them to follow him, and says, “Well, you should probably come inside. Will and El are upstairs, but Mom’s in the kitchen.”

They trail after him up the porch, Jonathan asking Steve about work, Robin asking Jonathan if he’s still listening to The Talking Heads, which they bonded over before the Byerses moved. Jonathan says of course he still listens to them, and Steve says The Cure is like, a million times better, and then they’re standing in a sunlit kitchen and Joyce is staring at them all wide-eyed, a baking sheet of cookie dough balanced in her hands.

“What’s going on?” She asks cautiously, her eyes flitting between Steve and Robin and Max and Mike. She reminds him of a hummingbird, suddenly, all nervous energy packed into a tiny frame.

“Mom,” Jonathan starts before she can drop the pan, “Everything’s fine, they just came by to— well, I don’t really know why, actually. Mike, do you wanna explain?”

Everyone in the room looks at him. “Uh,” Mike says stupidly.

“He’s just being a drama queen,” Max explains, saving him. “He’s been all upset about leaving things off on a weird note with Will, and he thinks El might be confused about how he feels about her, and… well, he convinced me to convince Steve to drive us here. We’re really sorry to drop in unannounced. We should have called.”

Joyce’s expression softens from worry to compassion, and Mike feels a swell of gratitude for Max. “Oh, sweetie, don’t apologize. I mean, Will and El have been begging me to drive them back to Hawkins to surprise you guys before Thanksgiving for weeks on end, they’ll be thrilled. And Mike, honey, whatever it is you want to say to them, I’m sure they’ll understand. They’re upstairs in their rooms, I can call them down or you can head up there whenever you’re ready.”

Looking at Joyce, Mike feels the weight that’s been on his chest for the past few days start to lift. Her eyes are warm and understanding, even though she doesn’t know the details, how badly he’s screwed everything up, and it’s making him feel like a little kid again.

And then Max nudges his foot with hers, and he realizes he’s supposed to say something.

So Mike breathes in deeply and says, “Thanks, Ms. Byers. I’ll just go up there myself if that’s alright.”

She smiles at him encouragingly, and then Max shoves him towards the staircase, steering him by his shoulders. Mike trips up the first couple of steps, swatting at her, and Robin and Steve and Jonathan laugh. Joyce just shakes her head, like this is all normal, and asks them to help her watch the cookies while they bake— Mike’s been over at Will’s enough times to know she almost always burns them.

By the time he reaches the second floor, he’s out of breath, but an odd blanket of calm has settled over him. The hallway that leads to Will and El’s rooms is brightly lit, and several framed family photos are tacked up on the walls: old, grainy pictures of Will and Jonathan through elementary school, Christmas cards of them with Joyce, landscape shots of Will with Mike and the rest of the Party every Halloween, and then new ones, too— full-color, glossy photographs of Joyce and El and Will and Jonathan, standing together as a family in front of their new house. Mike’s running a finger over one of the frames when a door further down the hall opens.

His breath catches in his throat.

He knows it’s Will’s door instantly: drawings are taped up in neat rows, from perfectly-proportioned sketches of comic book heroes to vibrant colored-pencil landscapes of Hawkins to pastel portraits of people Mike knows he’s made up.

And there, his hand frozen on the doorknob, his shining eyes blinking disbelievingly, is Will.

“Mike?” His voice is like a broken umbrella.

El’s door swings open by itself. Wait, by itself?

“What are you doing here?” Will’s asking, his tone a mixture of shock and something else Mike can’t quite name. It’s making his heart do somersaults in his chest.

“I…” Mike says, his eyes skirting from Will over to El, who’s appeared in her doorway and is staring at him like she’s dreaming. She has bangs now. “I need to talk to you guys.”

And then, because it’s taken Mike a second to catch up: “El, did you open your door with your powers?”

Originally, Mike planned to talk to each of them separately first. He figured it would be easier, more contained, that way; if El got upset, he could talk her down and try to explain without the added pressure of Will hearing every word. But he decided, somewhere between El and Will dragging him into Will’s room by the shoulders, that it would probably be easier to kill two birds with one stone. Lay out all his mistakes and apologize to both of them.

So now, Mike’s sitting on the freshly-vacuumed carpet of Will’s room, El and Will cross-legged in front of him. They’ve formed a close-knit circle, and sunlight slants across their faces from Will’s window, bathing them in gold. Mike would be able to come up with something poetic to say about what the light is doing to Will’s eyes, but he’s too nervous to focus on anything but the carefully-practiced speech in his head. He’s been going over it since they crossed state lines.

“They came back when Sarah McCarthy poured sour cafeteria milk down my shirt,” El is saying in her quiet, I’m-a-million-decades-old voice. She’s explaining to Mike about her powers, which she wanted to surprise the Party with over Thanksgiving. “I got really mad. And may have made her fly. Temporarily.”

Mike looks questioningly at Will, and he explains, “She threw her halfway across the cafeteria. Nobody questioned it because apparently someone had spilled soup on the floor, and everyone just thinks she lost her footing and fell. But you don’t fall at the velocity this girl did, like, it was very clearly El’s powers. They’re coming back in pieces, so she’s trying to practice at home to build them back up again.”

“Look,” El says proudly, flicking her wrist at a pillow on Will’s bed. It flies across the room and whacks Mike in the head. She laughs brightly, unfiltered, and Will giggles, and Mike’s chest feels flooded with warmth. This isn’t going to be as bad as he thought it would be.

“Okay,” Mike says, imbuing his voice with seriousness. El straightens up, and Will’s expression sobers; they’re going to listen. They’re going to understand.

“I owe both of you a big apology,” Mike says, looking at each of them; Will in his striped collared shirt and overalls, his gaze soft but penetrating, and El in her oversized flannel and slacks, her smile tentative but still so kind. He wants to hug them, suddenly, and he’s hit with a wave of gratitude that they’re even hearing him out.

“I know I haven’t been calling as often as I should. And… a lot of that was because thinking about you guys being here, it hurt. But… It was also because I think I really messed up. With both of you.”

El leans forward, blinking inquisitively. “How?”

Will just sits stock-still, his eyes flicking comfusedly between Mike and El.

Mike looks at El, and hopes she can see the remorse on his face. “El. I want you to know that… I really, really care about you. And I wouldn’t trade our bond for anything. But I think I might have confused you. Or, no, you’re smarter than that. I mean, I think I might have lied to you. Without really knowing it.”

El’s eyebrows knit together. She’s not mad, he knows that look— no, she just doesn’t understand. Mike takes a deep breath and barrels forward.

“When you overheard me say that I loved you… emotions were running really high. I had the whole Party plus Nancy and Jonathan looking at me, and I felt kind of cornered, like I had to justify why I wanted to keep you safe. So I just… blurted out that I loved you. And that’s still true, but I don’t think… I don’t know if I’ve ever been IN love with you. Like, romantically. And you deserve to be with someone who is, and I’m SO sorry because I know how much you’ve sacrificed for me, and you HAVE to understand I wouldn’t be here right now apologizing if I didn’t care, I swear, I—,”

“Mike,” El says softly. She’s looking at him with undisguised pity, and he suddenly feels like he’s the one in the dark.

“What?”

El’s mouth quirks up in a little smile. “I kind of figured you wanted to stay broken up when you didn’t answer any of my calls.”

There’s a heavy silence.

“I’m SO sorry,” Mike starts.

“Mike!” El says, louder this time; she’s grinning now, looking at him like he’s an idiot. “It’s okay! People get confused about their feelings all the time. Jonathan explained to me. I was upset for a couple of days, but he said you’re probably still figuring yourself out, and that after everything we’ve been through we should make being friends our…” she stops for a minute, trying to recall the phrasing, and then her face lights up: “Our top priority.”

Mike exhales, and it feels like he’s shedding selves. Thank God for Jonathan Byers.

“So… so you’re not mad?”

El shakes her head, grinning, and how the fuck did Mike get so lucky?

“No, Mike. Not mad.”

“You owe her a few phone calls, though,” Will says tentatively. He’s smiling nervously at both of them. “By the way, why do I need to be here for this? No offense, Mike, I just… feel like I’m intruding.”

Mike chews pensively on his lip. Stares at his hands in his lap. He’s in the clear with El now, he could just tell Will he’s sorry— really sorry— for their fight in the rain, for all the shitty things he said. They could just go back to normal: Will and Mike, best friends. It would be so easy, painless. But no, because Will’s looking at him with that weird expression again and Mike sees, recognizes, that it’s hope.

He takes a deep breath. He feels like half of this conversation has been him taking deep breaths, but it’s insanely stressful to bear your soul to the two quietest people you know. It’s dead freaking silent in here, and it’s making Mike sweat.

“Will, I…” Mike stops himself, looks back at El. “I got together with El when I didn’t even really know who I was. And our relationship paid the price for it. And… I want both of you to know that this—- what happened with me and El, and how horrible I was to you last summer, Will—- it wasn’t intentional. I was just… really confused.”

Will leans forward, his face drawn up in anxiety. “Mike, what are you saying?”

Mike twists his hands together in his lap. His heart is beating jerkily, with no real rhythm. “When you went missing, and we found El, I… I only really saw her as a way to get you back, at first. Which wasn’t fair of me at all, and I feel like shit for reducing her to that. And after I lost her, I… I realized that I’d committed to something, and that I needed to find her to keep that thing going, so that it would distract me from…” he looks up at Will, his voice going soft like it always does around him, “From what I felt for you.”

El’s eyebrows tick up, and Will lets out a disbelieving breath.

“Boys can love boys?” El asks, tilting her head to one side.

“That’s not what Mike means,” Will says to her, and okay, what the hell. Mike’s kind of annoyed now, because he’s really trying.

“Will,” he says sharply, and Will jerks his gaze back to Mike. “That IS what I mean. It’s exactly what I mean! Jeez, did you forget how to read between the lines?”

El’s eyes ping-pong between them curiously, and Mike studies her for signs of anger— it would be warranted, that’s for sure, but she looks more confused than mad.

“Mike,” she says slowly, like she’s sounding out a difficult word. “Did you know you loved Will the whole time?”

Mike is kind of reeling, to be honest, because El’s just accepted in three seconds what most people he knows would take more than three years to get over, but he swallows and says, “No, not the whole time. Since the Mindflayer got him, I think. But… I didn’t want anyone to know. I don’t think I even wanted to know. So I convinced myself that if we got you back, I’d stop feeling that way.”

“But you didn’t,” El says, her voice laced with understanding. Mike wants to hug her and not let go.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, lifting his gaze to gauge Will’s reaction. “I didn’t. I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. Which is why I said all those stupid things when we were fighting. And I never got the chance to really apologize. Will, I’m so sorry.”

Will looks at him, and Mike notices with alarm that there are tears in his eyes. He sniffles, and shit, did Mike say something wrong?

“I forgive you,” Will says. “I forgave you a long time ago. But Mike?” He takes in a shuddering breath. “You. Are so. STUPID.”

El cackles, throwing her head back, and then Will’s laughing, too, and Mike is lost. He just confessed his undying love to his best friend, and he gets laughed at? Steve drove a million miles to get here!

His annoyance must show on his face, because Will says, “Sorry, I’m sorry. I really do forgive you. I just… it took you THIS long to figure all this out?”

Mike nods indignantly. “Uh, yeah! It’s a complicated problem to have, Will!”

Will rolls his eyes, swiping his hand underneath them to get rid of his tears, and this is SO not as difficult as Mike thought it would be because they’re all just falling back into the kid versions of themselves, now; Mike being snarky and Will being half-annoyed and half-adoring, and El watching them with this silent, impenetrable seriousness that will eventually give way to laughter or an offbeat joke that’ll send them all into hysterics.

“Okay, so you’ve figured it out now,” Will says, Mike finally smiling at him, his worries forgotten. “What are you gonna do about it?”

His tone is playful, light, but there’s a quiet desperation on his face that Mike feels certain is mirrored in his own. El looks between them like they’re a new species of bird she’s never seen before, tilts her head appraisingly, and declares: “I’m going to give you two soem privacy.”

Will’s face goes beet-red, and Mike laughs despite himself. El opens the door with a flick of her wrist and walks into the sunlit hall, her hair haloed gold by the light.

“Oh, by the way,” Mike calls as she heads for the stairs, “Max and Steve and Robin are here, too!”

El gasps, and her footsteps quicken, and Will grins excitedly as exclamations rise up from the first floor; El and Max, reuniting.

Mike smiles back at him, and feels the weight of being alone with Will for the first time in months settle over him fully.

“So,” Will says finally, breaking the silence, “Are you sure you like me?”

Mike gapes at him. “You’re joking, right? Will, I BLACKMAILED Steve into driving me and Max here. It took three days. Three! Days! Let that sink in.”

Will laughs, and Mike drags his hands over his face. He peeks through his fingers at Will, tries to make his voice go serious even though whenever Will laughs Mike loses the ability to keep a straight face.

Will straightens up, going quiet. Waiting. Mike drops his hands to his lap and clears his throat.

“I would never lie to you about something this big. I’m dead serious, Will. I’m in love with you. For real.”

During the battle of Starcourt, Mike didn’t really fully comprehend why it was so hard to tell El to her face that he loved her. A small part of him knew that he was lying to himself, even then, but he wanted to be the person she needed in that moment, when she was hurt and probably scared out of her mind— they all were. He just couldn’t get the words out, not when she was staring at him so intently, her brow knitted in confusion. But now, with Will, it’s easy. It tumbles out of him before he can even stop himself.

The hilarity drains out of the room, and Will’s face rearranges itself into something more serious.

“Are you sure you don’t just… feel bad for me?” He asks, his voice like splintered wood. “It would be fine if that’s all it is. I mean, it wouldn’t, but I could get over it, really. I—”

“Will, no,” Mike says over him, his voice rising. “No, it’s not pity at all. I… God, how do I explain this without sounding crazy? You…” he swallows, his tongue heavy in his mouth.

Mike has so much he needs to say to Will, it almost hurts. He just doesn’t know where to start.

Finally, he says, “Do you remember that time you fell off your bike in fourth grade? Dustin was at summer camp, and Lucas was visiting his grandparents, so it was just us. We had your entire neighborhood to ourselves, and since it was summer we had the whole day ahead of us. We were taking this new trail in the woods, but it was hidden by some trees so we didn’t know how quickly it dropped off. You hit a rock or a tree root or something, and you went flying.”

Will laughs wetly, nodding. “And you just threw your bike down and ran after me like an idiot,” he says.

“I thought you had like, died,” Mike says, his voice serious. Will’s expression sobers, and his eyebrows draw together. “You were so little back then. You’d fallen into these bushes, but I thought you’d gotten thrown into the dried-up ravine, and… there were these huge rocks everywhere, and I was positive you’d hit your head and gotten a concussion or something. God, Will, I was so scared. But then you stood up, and waved me over, and you were okay. You just had these long scrapes on both your shins from the thorns in the bushes, and you were smiling.” He pauses, inhales shakily. “When you went missing a couple years later… I kept expecting it to be like that, y’know, before we knew about the Demogorgon. I kept… wishing you’d just come running out of the trees, grinning like an idiot, even though that’s the first place Hop looked.”

Mike has to take a minute, wipe his eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “And… And then when we found you, I tried to make all these deals with the Universe. Or God, or whatever. I promised that I'd never skip a prayer before dinner again, that I’d do the dishes without being asked, that I’d clean Nancy’s room for her, do Dustin’s English homework… anything if I’d never have to worry about losing you again. Anything. And then the Mindflayer got you, and it was like… Like I’d failed you. It was my job to protect you, and I couldn’t. And then we got you back again, and I just acted like you didn’t exist. I would do anything to take all of it back.”

He’s really crying now, the regret washing over him in full force, and Will’s lunging across the space between them and taking Mike in his bony, stupidly long arms, and it’s all wrong because Mike should be comforting Will, not the other way around.

“Mike, it’s okay,” Will is saying, over and over in his ear. His voice sounds far away, like there’s glass between them. “It’s okay, I promise.”

“I didn’t mean to say any of those things,” Mike says desperately. “I swear, I was just angry because El was like my hiding spot and I’d lost her again and I was worried I wouldn’t even be able to— to look at you without everyone knowing, I was so selfish, it wasn’t even about her…”

“Mike, you were just scared,” Will says, his voice suddenly firm.

He pulls away from the tangle of their limbs and puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders, his eyes steady and grounding.

“It’s normal to be scared when you’re… when you’re like us. I don’t blame you, and El had no way of understanding. She doesn’t blame you either. I had the whole town choosing my sexuality for me before I even knew liking boys was a thing, and you… didn’t. People assumed you were straight, so you tried to force yourself into the mold. It’s okay that you coped that way. And the fact that you’re this torn-up about it says much more about you than your screw ups ever could.”

He’s looking at Mike earnestly, his voice soft and open. “We’re not mad at you,” Will promises. “And… I guess it goes without saying, but I’m in love with you, too.”

Mike smiles, and he knows it must look weird and stretched and watery, because his whole damn face is puffy from crying, but Will doesn’t seem to care; he just grins back, his eyes bright like stars, and pecks Mike on the cheek.

After Mike’s washed his face in Will’s bathroom and they’ve raced each other downstairs, settling down at the kitchen table, Joyce sets two plates of only partially burned chocolate-chip cookies in front of them and says, “About time you kiddos got down here. Mike, honey, I called your parents. They’re not mad, they just want you home by tomorrow night.”

From the living room, El shrieks, “Sleepover!”

“Yes yes yes!” Max shouts. They come barreling into the kitchen, their eyes wild, and Will barks out a laugh at the sight of them: Max has about a million multicolored friendship bracelets on each wrist that definitely weren’t there before, and El’s hair is piled on top of her head in an elaborate braided bun— did they really have time to do all this? Mike has to hand it to them, they work fast. El’s hair is falling down, now, though, as she bounces around the kitchen, rattling off slumber party activities at full speed.

Mike watches Will watch her, his eyes shining with warmth, and as El moves around the open dishwasher Jonathan’s unloading plates from and the kitchen table Mike’s sitting at, he notices little things about the Byers’ kitchen that weren’t there in Hawkins: the walls are sundrop yellow, but most of the empty space is covered by drawings, some in Will’s practiced hand and other’s in El’s steadily-improving scribbles; there are different-colored glass bottles lining the windowsill above the sink, and they reflect a rainbow on the far wall of the kitchen; the fridge is covered with sketches and magnets and polaroids of Will and El and Jonathan at the beach; on the wall to Mike’s left, there’s a shining golden medal thing framed in glass, hanging above the table. It takes Mike a second to realize it’s Hopper’s police badge.

Steve and Robin, who are drinking coffee from pottery mugs at the kitchen counter, turn and smile all soft-eyed at each other, and Mike finds that their weird bond isn’t as annoying when Will’s sitting beside him, lacing their fingers together under the table. His hand is warm and smooth. Mike runs his thumb over Will’s palm and smiles when he blushes.

Later, when Joyce is one the phone ordering an extra-large cheese pizza (because El refuses to eat any other kind) and Steve and Robin and Jonathan are sitting on the porch talking, Mike and Max and El and Will pile onto the living room couch and finally catch each other up on all they’ve missed in their time apart.

“El got her powers back,” Will tells Max immediately.

To demonstrate, El turns her gaze on Mike and cocks her head to the right; a sudden force grips him, and he flies off the couch, landing a safe distance from the coffee table as Max and Will lose it, doubling over in laughter.

“Holy SHIT, El!” Max yells gleefully. “You’ve still got it!”

Will bounces onto his feet and helps Mike up, grinning warmly at him. “That’s your punishment for avoiding us forever.”

“Do it again!” Max exclaims, gesturing towards herself. “Knock me off the couch!”

El smiles proudly and looks over at Mike, a twinge of worry flickering across her face. “Are you okay?” She asks.

Mike nods vigorously. “Yeah, are you kidding? That was awesome!”

El beams at him, then turns to Max. She wipes at her nose and refocuses, a dark concentration reigniting in her eyes. Max grins broadly at her.

“Do it.”

El tilts her head less this time, but Max still goes tumbling off the couch, rolling a little when she falls. Will collapses into giggles beside her, pulling Mike down with him; El, feeling left out, leaps from her spot and lands like a cat in the middle of the pile.

They’re all laughing, their voices bright, when Mike catches a flash of discomfort on Max’s face: she’s moving her left arm gingerly away from the heap of all of them, scooting back from the jumble of limbs. She pastes on a smile when El catches her eye, but Mike can’t shake his worry off.

“Hey, dipshits,” Steve says from the foyer, his hands on his hips. Robin and Jonathan flank him on either side, like they’re all in some ensemble cast, and Mike rolls his eyes. “Get off the floor and come eat this pizza.”

Robin holds up two boxes, and El and Will vault up onto their feet, Max and Mike on their heels. Joyce watches from the kitchen with a warm gaze as they all file into the kitchen again, Robin setting the pizza boxes down with a flourish on the counter.

“Save some for us,” Steve reminds them, half-stern and half-amused, but it doesn’t register: El’s already eating a slice over the box while Max piles two pieces of pizza on a plate for herself, Will opening the other box for quicker access. Mike laughs when El pauses to inform them, “It’s good.” There’s marinara sauce smeared down her chin.

“Alright, everyone sit down, at least,” Robin orders them, looking perturbed. Mike guesses she and Steve are entitled to some irritation; they haven’t gotten a lot of sleep, and while the same goes for Max and Mike, the feeling of being with Will and El is draining away any negative emotions they had on the drive over.

Sitting in a loose circle at the kitchen table, arguing about whether AP Bio is harder than AP Literature or not, Mike feels the knot of hurt that’s been twisted in his stomach since July finally loosen, unravel. El and Will are like magic, a balm for all the stress and guilt that’s been festering in him these past few months. Mike watches Max, her eyes glittering when El hurls a paper-ball napkin at Will, and sees that she feels lighter, too. Her shoulders aren’t tense anymore, and her face is open in a way he’s only seen once or twice. She looks happy.

“Hey, twerps,” Steve cuts in, circling the kitchen table to sit at the bar. “I smuggled some tapes from Family Video if you wanna have a movie night.”

Robin, who’s sitting beside him, tosses her bag at them without warning. Max goes scrambling for it, but El stops it in midair with a twist of her wrist. Robin’s eyes bug out.

“You’re never gonna get used to that, are you?” Steve asks, nudging her shoulder playfully. She glares at him, but her lips are twitching like she wants to smile.

El grins and pulls at the air with her hand; the bag floats over, dropping down in the center of the table. They all lean forward in their seats and pull out the movies, Will waving Poltergeist in the air victoriously.

“It’s a classic, we have to watch it,” he tells Mike, who’s already seen it about four times. He smiles at Will and says, “Absolutely.”

They crowd back onto the couch in a tangle of limbs, El and Max on one end and Will and Mike on the other, their hands intertwining again under one of Joyce’s blankets. The contact sends a shock of electricity through Mike; Will is a warm line against his side, and he thinks maybe he could fall asleep right here if El wasn’t queuing the film up from her spot next to Max.

As the Poltergeist theme music floats into the room and Joyce washes everyone’s dishes in the kitchen, Robin and Steve and Jonathan all settle on the floor around the coffee table, passing popcorn around. Will moves closer to Mike as the movie starts, and it isn’t raining anymore because he’s in California, and El and Max are whispering quietly to each other, and everything feels okay again.

As the movie drones on, Mike’s thoughts wander. He’s still on the adrenaline comedown of spilling his guts to El and Will, and being met with unconditional love when he was expecting rejection. It’s making him light-headed, a little, thinking about it all. Especially with Will beside him; he’s focused on the movie, but every so often he shifts, cuddling closer to Mike, his breath warm on Mike’s neck. His hair smells like apples.

When they get to the halfway point of the movie, Steve and Robin and Jonathan are all asleep on the floor, and Joyce has retired to the sanctuary of her bedroom, away from the sounds of the violence on-screen. El is curled sleepily into Max’s side, her hair curtained around her face, and Max is blinking blearily at the TV screen, only half-paying attention. Mike shifts a little, and suddenly he feels a light pressure on his wrist; Will, tapping it, for varying lengths of time. Short, short, long. Short, long, long, short. Short short short. Mike inhales sharply when he realizes it’s Morse Code.

Will taps a couple more times, Mike following along with each letter in his head, until the message is clear: Upstairs?

A thrill runs through him. He taps back, muscle memory from two years ago (because they’d all had Morse Code burned into their brains that night,): Yes.

They slip out of the room quietly, but Max’s eyes still follow them as they get up from the couch. She catches Mike’s eye and raises her eyebrows. As Will leads him by the hand to the stairs, he flips her off as discreetly as he can.

Will’s room is bathed in darkness now, but he switches on an orange lamp that illuminates their faces in soft amber and makes Mike feel a little untethered from reality. Will’s rambling, saying something about not wanting to move too fast, he just had to be alone with Mike after all this time spent waiting, and it’s making Mike’s heart race. He can hear his blood rushing in his ears, blotting out Will’s voice.

“And if you don’t wanna kiss me yet, I totally get it,” Will’s saying, gesturing around anxiously as he talks. “Like, you only just figured everything out, and I don’t want you to feel obligated to—”

Mike reaches out and grabs Will’s face in both of his hands, and shit, now Will’s staring at him all wide-eyed and blushy, and he didn’t think this through but it’s too late now because they’re magnets, rushing towards each other.

“Mike,” Will says, so quiet it sounds like a prayer, and then Mike’s kissing him and it’s like finally remembering the words to his favorite song. It’s teeth clicking and coconut chapstick and Will sighing into his mouth, and God, if Mike knew this is what kissing was supposed to feel like, he would’ve saved El the trouble and let her down easy ages ago. One of his hands finds the back of Will’s neck, and they’re breaking apart for air, and Will’s clutching Mike’s shirt in both his hands like he’s trying to keep him from flying away. The air in the room feels shallower somehow.

“Is this okay?” Mike asks, running a finger along Will’s jawline. He doesn’t know how he automatically knows what to do now, because with El physical stuff always felt a little awkward, even at his most confident. He always felt like he was missing some manual on how to kiss her or hold her hand without feeling creepy or possessive. With Will it’s like… he doesn’t even need the instructions, because they’re already programmed into his brain.

Will shivers a little and nods. “Yeah,” he says, a little hoarsely, and Mike’s head swims.

“Are you cold?” He asks, like an idiot.

Will huffs a tiny laugh, and Mike does, too, and then they’re twelve again in Mike’s basement, giggling about some dumb joke in Star Wars or one of Dustin’s stupid puns. Mindlessly, Mike moves his hands up and down Will’s arms, trying to warm him. Will sighs involuntarily like he’s confessing something, then laughs at himself, and that sets them both off again.

“No,” Will says finally, breaking the spell. “Not cold.” His eyes find Mike’s in the orange half-light, and there’s a hunger there that Mike’s never seen before. “I just… God, Mike, it’s hard to believe this is real.”

Something tugs painfully in Mike’s chest, and he moves closer to Will, tilting his chin up so they’re eye-level. When he speaks, his voice comes out embarrassingly soft. “I promise, it is. Will, I… I really wanna kiss you again. If you’re okay with that, I mean.”

“Please do,” Will says.

It’s softer this time, less desperate. It’s rain on Mike’s basement window, it’s birds singing on summer mornings. Will stands on tiptoe to tangle his hands in Mike’s hair, and then they’re really kissing, and Mike’s pulling back, saying, “Holy shit,” all out of breath like he’s ran three miles. Will giggles again, and tightens his grip on Mike’s hair, and then he’s kissing Mike again, soft and slow and gentle. Mike melts, a little, and Will pulls back to press a kiss to his jaw.

“We can slow down if you want,” Will says, and Mike blinks rapidly to clear the pleasant fog in his head. “Or we can stop, whenever. I… I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep kissing me if you don’t want to.”

And God, Mike loves him, he really does. Because as amazing and world-shaking as kissing Will is, Mike can’t help but feel a little in over his head. He doesn’t know what Will wants, what he owes him after a year of denial and avoidance and mistreatment, but Will doesn’t seem to expect anything. He’s looking at Mike so earnestly, like he’d be completely fine if they stopped right now and went back downstairs.

Mike doesn’t want to go back downstairs just yet, though.

“I… I want you to know that this is, like, a spiritual experience for me,” Mike starts, and Will throws his head back and laughs, a bright sound. Mike breaks into a smile, his voice growing quieter. “But… I’m just. Still processing a lot right now, and I want to spend time with you, but… maybe we could just talk? For now, I mean?”

Will nods immediately, backing away out of Mike’s space, and the temperature in the room seems to drop a little. Mike exhales shakily and grins at Will again, because it’s really all he can do today; he feels lighter than he’s ever been. Will grins back and drops into his desk chair, gesturing for Mike to sit on his bed.

They talk about school first, about El’s classes and Will’s art club friends; about Mike’s AP Literature essay that got a perfect score and Dustin and Lucas’s lab partner problems; about Max and her obsession with beating all the guys during softball and dodgeball and the obstacle course they’re forced to do in P.E. Then it’s onto movies, and Will smiles to himself as Mike complains for nearly ten straight minutes about working with Steve and Robin, then apologizes for rambling and asks Will if he’s seen The Goonies yet. They never got the chance to watch it over the summer when it came out, but now, Will nods, smiling at full wattage: his patented only-for-Mike smile.

“It’s so good,” he says. “The kids remind me of us.”

Mike knows that the “us” Will’s referring to extends to their whole party; to Dustin and his mile-a-minute brain (and mouth), to Lucas’ unflinching honesty and bravery, to Max’s fierce loyalty, to El’s unwavering strength and protectiveness. Being with Will reminds Mike that he’s one of them, that they’re all bonded because of what’s happened to them over the years, the adventures and the tragedies. He smiles softly at Will and says, “I know, I thought so too.”

They get a little tired after that, and even though Mike’s the one that’s been in the sunlit car all day, Will falls asleep first. Mike moves him to his bed wordlessly, tucks one of his quilts over him. His features look almost angelic in the dim amber light, and Mike smooths his hair away from his face, feeling so, so lucky.

When he gets downstairs, Poltergeist is off and El is dead to the world on the couch, her head propped up carefully on a pillow instead of Max’s shoulder— she isn’t in the room. Steve and Robin and Jonathan are still sprawled in a blanketed heap on the floor, and Mike squints a little when he realizes that Steve’s got an arm slung around Jonathan instead of Robin. She’s got her head nestled into the crook of his neck, though, her legs tangled with his. Mike really, really doesn’t understand them.

He searches the kitchen for Max, but all he finds are the rest of the cookies Joyce baked and his and Will’s crooked place mats on the kitchen table. Mike’s pulse speeds up in spite of himself; it’s still instinct to panic at the slightest sign of trouble, and part of him has been worried about Max since they first left her place three nights ago. He moves quicker through the house, squinting into the grainy darkness, and is debating waking up Joyce when he sees that the front porch light is on.

When Mike shuts the front door behind him, Max flinches. She’s sitting in a big white rocking chair; there are two identical ones framing the front door, and Mike drops down into the one on the right. Max looks at him questioningly, like she isn’t the one outside in the middle of the night in just a T-shirt and shorts. It’s too hot in California for the sweaters and jeans they brought with them from Hawkins; Mike guesses she changed while he and Will were having their heart-to-heart earlier. He recognizes the shorts as El’s; they’re a little long on Max, but she’s still shivering in the night breeze. She’s got her arms crossed protectively over her chest, and her jaw is set in a firm line, a Nancy-level focus in her eyes.

“What’s going on?” Mike asks, turning to watch the road. He’s noticed she gets cagey and tense whenever someone other than Lucas looks at her for too long. He wants her to feel safe, the need slamming into him so suddenly he barely has time to think before he says, “You don’t have to tell me the specifics, I just… I’m here for you, okay?”

Max looks at him, then, her eyes strikingly blue in the warm light. She swallows, fiddles with the hem of her T-shirt. “I don’t want to go back to Hawkins.”

Mike’s throat closes. He wants to hug her, just for a second; he’s never been touchy-feely, and especially not with her, but all he can think about right now is how Max looked cross-legged on his floor and trembling in her bedroom when he opened the closet door, how she projects this unshakable boldness when really she’s cracked-open on the inside just like he is. But Mike knows not to hug her yet, not when she’s hunched in on herself and watching him like he might shout at her if she breathes the wrong way.

“I know,” he says quietly. It’s almost a whisper, but he knows she still hears it; there are no cars out here, not this late at night. The only things keeping them company are the cicadas and the smell of the redwoods and the clear, open sky. Max swallows and says, “No, I mean I really don’t want to.”

She looks like a little kid; he towers over her even when they’re sitting down, and it’s never bothered him before but right now Mike feels a pang of guilt. He breathes around it and replies, “We’re going to keep you safe, okay? Nancy and I, we meant it when we said you always have a place with us. Anytime you need it, even if we’re arguing that week or if it’s a school night or if my parents somehow find out. And if you ever need me to come over there and get you, I can. Or Nancy can if I’m working. I—,”

“Mike,” Max whispers. She’s looking down at her lap, twisting her hands together like he does when he’s anxious. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much that means, really. But… it’s not going to make him stop. And I— I’m so tired,” she chokes out, her shoulders jerking up.

Mike’s out of his seat instantly, and Max doesn’t protest when he kneels down in front of her and places both hands on her shoulders. She’s crying in a way that’s quiet and practiced, and it’s making his eyes burn. He lets her fall forward into his arms, and she sighs shakily in a way that makes his throat hurt.

“We’re not letting him hurt you again,” Mike promises. “I’ve got you, you’re okay.”

Max presses her face into his shoulder and breathes in, composing herself. Mike rubs circles into her back on instinct, and she relaxes, her breathing evening out. The cicadas are humming around them now, a green-gold lullaby. Mike breathes exaggeratedly slow like he used to do for Will after nightmares, and Max copies him.

They stay like that, Max half-out of the rocking chair, the cold cement of the porch digging into Mike’s knees, until she pulls away. Her eyes are red and her hair is wild around her face, but she smooths her hands over her hair and wipes her eyes and it’s like nothing ever happened.

“Thank you,” she says, and it sounds robotic but Mike knows that she means it. He nods, watching her closely for any sign of hurt, but it’s all drained out of her. There are tear tracks on her cheeks, but she looks calm.

“Don’t thank me,” Mike says earnestly. “Really, Max. I promise I’m always here. Just Walkie me or call me and I’ll be there.”

She smiles a broken, watery smile at him. It doesn’t reach her eyes, but it’s a smile and he’ll take it. “You’re not so bad, Wheeler.”

He offers her his hand, and she takes it, standing and brushing herself off as he leads them to the door. “Yeah, that’s what I keep hearing,” Mike says. “If you’re not careful, I might start to believe it.”

Max laughs quietly as Mike holds the door for her, warm air leaking outside, and he feels his body finally relax. She’s okay; they’re going to be okay.

They’re halfway into the living room when Steve lifts his head from the carpeted floor and slurs sleepily, “Get outta my house, shitbirds.”

Jonathan stirs beside him, mumbling something incoherent, and Steve’s eyes widen when he realizes how close they are. From her spot beside him, Robin squints her eyes open and says, “Go the fuck to sleep, Steve.”

“Rob, OW,” Steve says loudly. “That’s RIGHT in my ear.”

Max laughs outright now, and Mike can’t help but snicker with her as Jonathan burrows his face into Steve’s shoulder and sighs contentedly, oblivious. Steve’s face is as red as Max’s hair. Robin rolls her eyes at him, like, you’re hopeless.

“Go to sleep, freaks,” she says, addressing Mike and Max, and they both look at each other and shrug, like, that’s fair.

Max settles back on the couch with El, who clings to her instantly like a koala. Max smiles soft-eyed at her in a way Mike’s never seen her look at Lucas, but they’ve had a hell of a week and he figures that conversation can wait until Christmas, at least. He grabs another blanket from the basket next to the coffee table and drapes it over both of them on his way upstairs.

Will is still asleep when Mike gets to his room, the lamp illuminating the small shape of him under his covers. Mike feels a rush of affection for him; he looks like one of his oil pastel drawings, his features soft and open in sleep.

Mike climbs onto the right side of the bed beside him, the place he’s always taken at every one of their sleepovers. He leaves a generous amount of space between them, because boundaries, but he still stays awake as long as he can memorizing the slope of Will’s nose and the smile lines around his eyes and the new freckles he’s gotten since moving to California. Tomorrow, Will will be a crackly voice over the phone, but right now he’s real and Mike wants to remember everything. His shirt is lavender, his hair is mussed up. His lips are rose-red and slightly chapped and there’s a tiny scar on his neck from one of the needles from two years ago.

When Mike’s eyelids start to droop, he rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars he helped Will pack up so many months ago are there, in the same patterns. Orion, the Nemean Lion, the Little Dipper, Ursa Minor. Mike’s still finding more constellations when sleep falls over him like a dark wave.

—

“I’m serious, slow down with the syrup,” Steve says to El, genuine worry in his voice.

It’s seven in the morning and Joyce has made them all “crispy pancakes,” which is an affectionate term Jonathan coined that really means “pancakes that Joyce burned but didn’t want to make again because they’re running low on batter.” To balance out the burned-pancake taste, El is drowning hers in maple syrup while Max eats hers plain, biting into them like toast, and Will and Mike wait patiently beside her. Joyce is cutting up fruit at the kitchen counter across from them, watching El with amusement.

“She’s gonna get a sugar rush from this,” Steve says, reaching out and snatching the bottle from El. She huffs at him but marches to the kitchen table, plopping down in the chair beside Jonathan’s. He’s sharing a box of plain Cheerios with Robin, who’s watching everyone with a quiet calculation that makes Mike feel like a kid again. He guesses that to her, he is.

“Hand it over,” Will says to Steve, grabbing for the syrup. He holds it jokingly out of Will’s reach, and Mike steps forward and swipes it from him, grinning at Will in victory. From the kitchen table, Robin says, “Steve’s just pissy ‘cause he doesn’t wanna drive you dweebs home.”

“Yeah, and what about it, Rob?” Steve retorts, ducking when she lobs a paper-towel ball at his head. “Sitting in the driver’s seat for a billion hours hurts my back.”

“Only because your posture is shit,” she says, laughing as he glares at her.

“Now, hold on,” Joyce says, pausing in her arrangement of the strawberries and peaches she’s cut up. “I have the weekend off, I could drive you guys back.”

“No, that’s alright, Ms. Byers,” Steve starts, looking at her kindly. “It’s a long drive, and—,”

“Wait,” El cuts in, standing up from the table. “If Mom drives Mike and Max back, can me and Will go, too? Just for the weekend?”

Mike’s so stuck on El calling Joyce “Mom” — it makes something in him hurt in the good way, and he looks at Max and sees it doing the same thing to her— that he almost doesn’t catch what Joyce says next. Will nudges him gently, and he tunes in, watching her hopefully with the rest of them.

“I think we could make that work,” Joyce says, her mouth twisting up into a smile, that cool-mom grin that Mike always loved when he’d go over to Will’s when they were little and she’d let them build a pillow fort that ran through the whole house, or when they asked for an extra dessert after dinner and she looked the other way as they raided the pantry. Now, he sees her watching them, looking for the light in El’s eyes and the brightening of Will’s face, and knows that she isn’t just cool; she’s warmer than any other person Mike knows.

“Yes!” El cheers, rushing forward to hug Joyce and then Max, who laughs and twirls her around. Will looks at Mike knowingly, and they both smile.

“Wait, how are they all gonna fit in Steve’s car?” Jonathan’s asking, and Joyce chews her lip thoughtfully.

“That’s a good point. Hon, why don’t you drive Steve and Robin back in my car and I drive the kids? You don’t wanna be here all alone for three days, anyway.”

Jonathan sighs, but Steve punches him lightly in the shoulder and says, “I’ll pay for gas,” and he smiles begrudgingly and says, “All right,” in a way that Mike thinks is supposed to sound resigned but really sounds adoring.

When the hell did he and Steve get so close? You know what, no, Mike doesn’t want to know. He turns to Will and grins broadly, because 1. Road trip and 2. They get the whole fucking weekend together PLUS a party reunion. Will’s smiling, too, a little glossy-eyed, and before he can stop himself Mike’s reaching out and brushing a happy tear from his cheek.

He can feel Max smirking at him, and Joyce’s questioning gaze, but Mike can’t bring himself to care. The kitchen is warm and Will’s coming home with him, and El is floating peach slices into Max’s mouth while Joyce laughs openly. The sun sweeps over them through the big glass window above the sink, and Mike feels like he’s finally home.

The three-day trip back to Hawkins is a blur of bad music (picked out by El, because she changes the station from the backseat with her powers every time it lands on a song that isn’t by Madonna or Cyndi Lauper), extensive Morse Code communication with Will (“Hate this song.” “I know, just five more mins before hotel.” “Let me brood.” “Only if you kiss me when we get to your house.”), and mediocre diner food with Steve and Robin and Jonathan, who are leading the way back since Joyce’s navigational skills are about as good as her cooking. Max calls Dustin and Lucas from the hotel phone on the second night while Will and Mike play tug-of-war with the comforter on their shared bed and El flips through TV channels from her’s and Max’s.

“We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” Max is saying. her voice tired but content. “Lucas, tell Dustin to stop yelling into the receiver, it’s giving me a headache. Well, let him hold the phone for a minute, then. God, are you two still fighting about your dumbass science labs?”

She banters back-and-forth a little longer with them before hanging up and flopping down next to El, her hair fanning out gracefully. They haven’t told Dustin and Lucas that Will and El are visiting yet, because they both insisted it be a surprise, and Mike knows it took all of Max’s willpower not to say anything to them about it. She looks completely exhausted. El settles on a rerun of ‘I Love Lucy’ and gives Max her full attention, brushing her eyes closed like she’s a doll. It’s such a sweet moment that Mike almost wishes he could pause time, replay it. Max sighs happily and El finally lies down against the fluffy hotel pillows, satisfied.

Will sees Mike watching them and smiles his small, I-know-everything smile, and Mike grins back. Joyce is in Steve and Robin and Jonathan’s room, which is connected by the bathroom, so she isn’t there to look curiously at them when Mike presses a quick kiss to Will’s temple.

“Lights on or off?” El asks, her eyes fluttering closed as the TV warbles on.

“Off,” Max mumbles sleepily. Will nods.

El lifts her hand and snaps her fingers, and the room goes dark. Mike is so tired his head feels like it’s filled with cotton, but he still says, “That snapping thing was bitchin’, El.”

“Go to sleep, Mike,” she replies, but he can hear the smile in her voice.

“Holy shit. Holy SHIT,” Dustin says when Will and El get out of Steve’s car. Joyce has parked in front of Family Video, where Dustin and Lucas told Max they’d be at four that afternoon. Steve and Robin are talking Keith down from his rage at their absence inside the store while Jonathan paces anxiously, waiting for the O.K. from Joyce to go surprise Nancy.

“What the FUCK,” Lucas concurs, and then he and Dustin are rushing forward and pulling El and Will into a group hug, Mike and Max elbowing their way in, too. El’s hair is in Mike’s mouth and Dustin’s elbow is digging into his side, but everyone’s laughing and the sky is vast and blue above them, and he feels like a kid again but in the best way possible.

“So are Mike and Will together now?” Dustin asks once they’ve all extricated themselves from the group hug. Will’s eyes bug out, and he turns to see if Joyce has heard.

She’s standing a few feet away, watching them with a knowing kindness that makes Mike feel warm all over. He looks at Will and sees that he’s smiling.

“Hello?” Dustin says in his I’m-surrounded-by-idiots voice, and Mike looks at Max across the circle and they both just fucking lose it.

“Yes, you dumbass,” Lucas says, rolling his eyes. “Just look at them!”

It takes Mike a second to remember he and Will are holding hands, and that sets them ALL off, El and Max falling into each other as Will snickers at Dustin’s baffled expression. Even Joyce is laughing, watching all of them like they’re her own.

They’re still recovering when Steve flings open the double doors of Family Video, Robin trailing after him, and marches into the parking lot.

“That bastard fired us.”

“Thank GOD,” Mike says.

Steve glares at him, but Robin’s mouth twists into a poorly-contained smile.

Dustin’s face falls. “Does that mean no more family discounts?”

Steve blinks rapidly, irate, as the party dissolves into laughter again. “Dustin, I am NOT your mother. We’ve talked about this.”

“I don’t know,” Lucas says with a shit-eating grin. “You’ve got the hair for it.”

—

They all end up at Mike’s house. Nancy greets them at the door and pulls him into a hug so tight he worries for a second that she’s fractured a bone in his shoulder, and then his mom is there, inviting everyone in with a smile.

The party parades into the basement while Steve and Robin and Jonathan follow Nancy up to her room. Joyce joins Mike’s mom in the kitchen to talk about boring mom stuff. The air is charged with the magic of everyone being in the same place, and when Max and El and Dustin and Lucas and Will are all crowded around the table in front of the basement couch, Mike drags the DnD kit out and declares, “Time to play a campaign.”

Under the table, as Lucas and Dustin fight over what moves to make and El levitates the game pieces for fun, Will finds Mike’s hand, taps into his palm: “Thank you.”

Mike looks at him in the soft light, taps back: “Always.”

Max catches his eye across the room and grins knowingly. He sticks his tongue out at her and she laughs.