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It’s around ten am when Mike leaves to pick El and Will up. There’s no need to look across the street as he’s climbing into his Ford, he knows Lucas’s pickup is still in the driveway. Lucas always sleeps in as late as possible, especially when Max is over, which is a lot these days. Mrs Mayfield's sobriety is a roller coaster, and when she’s in one of her drunken periods Max tries to not be around. Max has the worst insomnia of anyone in the Party, even worse than Lucas. If she’s actually sleeping, Lucas isn’t waking her up, whether it’s for school or plans with friends.
Max doesn’t always camp out at the Sinclairs. The Byers house is a good place to couch surf, Mike is fully aware of that. He’s had nights where he needs to leave his suburban hell or he’ll end up clocking his dad in the middle of the dining room where Mom has laid out his food for the twentieth year running. Joyce Byers is the only sane adult Mike knows, besides maybe Mr Clarke. He trusts that she’s as kind to Max as she is to him. And God knows El can provide Max a kind of comfort no one else can. It’s one of the things he and Max have in common; just how much El means to them.
Still, there are cons for the Byers-Hopper house. It’s hard for Max to be under so much scrutiny, even well meaning. Nancy’s fucked off, now that the Upside Down is obliterated. Steve and Robin are nosy nellys, but removed enough that you have to actually seek them out to interact with and be coddled by them. But Jonathan is just always there, in the background of his brother’s life. Will's calming presence is Max’s hovering older male, something she doesn’t have a good history of. Not to mention Hopper, who is great in an emergency but has a core of self-granted authority no one in the Party can really tolerate too well. Better for Max to escape to the Sinclairs with parents who are generally out of the house with work or social clubs, and treat Max just like their son’s girlfriend, not someone fragile.
Call Mike a shithead, but he doesn’t want Max and Lucas to sleep the morning away. It’s August, there’s only two weeks left until junior year starts, they need to get in their fun while they can. Plus Dustin will throw a shitfit if they don’t show up. If it comes down to it, they can always nap on their towels later. Before he peels away for Hickory Avenue, Mike lays his hand on the horn long enough that Maple Street rings with it. It should be enough to rouse them, get them going.
El knows he’s coming. Swimming has been on the books for a week, Dustin determined to make the most of Suzie’s time. Even if Dustin hadn’t shoved a literal drawn out calendar into everyone's hands weeks ago, Mike confirmed it last night before he had to go home for dinner. El’s beyond calling it one zero one five when looking at the clock, but Mike knows she’s still watching the electronic, because as he parks the front door opens with no one in reach. Unlike Max, Mike can be trusted to be punctual.
Mike lets himself in without yet calling hello. He’s not getting out of here without checking in with everyone, and he knows everyone is here. Joyce is working mostly evenings. Hopper is riding on an Owens provided retirement fund. Jonathan doesn’t work at all, is taking a correspondence class and is getting by on the pittance he’s making displaying his photography at a gallery in Indianapolis. They’re all always here, and after so much abandonment and peril that’s what Will and El need. Mike’s happy they’re always here, but he’d like a minute or two with his waiting girlfriend before making his rounds.
There are two kind of people in the world. Those who assume love, and those who need it demonstrated. The Wheelers are very much in the first category. the last time his mother hugged him was at Christmas, and the time before that was when Argyle’s van pulled up in front of the house. Mike can’t remember the last time his father said something kind, or proud, or uplifting. Mike knows his mother loves him, knows Nancy loves him, they don’t need to talk about it. But his girlfriend and his best friend are both built differently, need constant reassurance about that kind of thing. That difference almost destroyed everything when they were in Lenora. These days Mike goes out of his way to be dramatic about it. Even gives Will a hello hug, after his morning make out in the living room gets interrupted by all of the other Byers-Hoppers trickling in.
After explaining their itinerary for the fifth time and promising to keep the radio on, Joyce and Hopper finally let their children go. El takes passenger seat of course. Too many bad memories of being stuck inside a back seat. Pretty much whomever she gets a ride with, she gets shotgun, excluding Steve’s immeasurable codependency with Robin and their inability to be out of hand holding range. To even out the passenger privileges, Mike tosses the bag of cassettes into the back and lets Will pick. There’s something in there for everyone. El and Max are into pop and female vocalists, Dustin and Lucas both love metal in Eddie’s memory, and Will’s mostly into Jonathan’s alt. Mike doesn’t care, as long as it’s something his dad would refer to as noise with a scowl behind his humongous fucking glasses.
Mike’s next stop is at Dustin’s. Mrs Henderson is at work, so Mike doesn’t have to go extract his release, can just hammer on the horn. On drop off at the end of their hang out Mike might park and go in, give El a minute to play with Tews while Will talks to Dustin about the comic they’re developing, but on the way out, no need to delay.
El might have had her hands over her ears for a second, pained by the noise, but it works. Within a minute Dustin is coming out full handed. In his left, he’s got a cooler he’s jerryrigged wheels to. In his right, Suzie’s left. She’s been here since August first, and Mike has barely ever seen them not touching. If she wasn’t Mormon they’d be fucking, no question.
Mormon belief was what got Suzie here, halfway across the country. Walter Bingham thinks Suzie and Eden are both on a volunteering mission. It’s been a year and a quarter since One won the skirmish of Spring Break, and parts of Hawkins are still broken. The final battle didn’t do the town any favours. The lie plagues Suzie’s soul, Dustin reports, but her love for him eeks ahead just enough to have her keeping up the sin. If she doesn’t tell on herself, no one will. The eldest daughters are capable of taking each other down, Suzie lying about her interest in being here, and Eden lying about even being in Hawkins, because why would she be here when Chicago is half a day’s drive away and has a great goth scene? Suzie won’t tell Walter Eden only bussed back to Hawkins the day before the flight back to Salt Lake City, Eden won’t tell Walter Suzie spent the summer making out with Dustybun and allowing a few hands up shirts, and Walter will stay yet another ignorant adult in their lives.
Suzie tosses the bag of towels in the trunk, Dustin hefts his cooler of everyone’s snacks for the day alongside it and Mike’s own bag, and the couple climbs in beside Will. El flicks a glance at the dashboard and the volume dwindles a few notches down, so it’s easier to hear Dustin’s first monologue of the morning. In lieu of attending Camp Knowwhere, the geeky couple have challenged themselves to learn one new thing each day, and have the pile of library books in Dustin’s bedroom to prove it. Some of it’s been interesting, some incredibly niche. All of it he’s attempted to pass on to others. If any teachers in Lenora explained things as passionately as Dustin, maybe El wouldn’t have been close to failing all her classes.
By the time Mike gets them to the quarry, Lucas’s truck is parked as near as he can get it. There’s no official parking on the low side, which is baffling considering it’s a decent place to swim. Only stone to lay towels out on, but how is that different from the concrete surrounding the community pool. It’s open air, no accommodations, but that’s no different than Lover’s Lake. Sure, maybe a body was fished out here, as far as the public knows, but as devastating as that felt in the moment, it ended well. The same can’t be said with Max having to try to torture the mindflayer out of Billy at the community pool, or Lucas and Robin’s battle at the Lake Gate. It’s the only safe space to swim left, apart from booking a hotel room just to get to the pool.
Mike parks beside Lucas, happy to see there’s no other cars in the vicinity. It bodes well for his secret goal of the day, the one Dustin would understand far less than ‘thrill and entertain Suzie’. He lets Dustin struggle with the cooler over the uneven ground, but is enough of a gentleman to scoop El and Will’s bag out of the trunk. He carries it to the water’s edge, accompanied by Dustin’s wild cursing in the back, and music getting louder with each step.
The source, is, of course, the last of the core Party. Max’s bleary eyes are hidden behind large sunglasses, but there’s a smile as she bobs along to the boombox. Lucas is beside her on a shared sleeping bag. It’ll take days to dry hanging on the line, once it gets wet, but it’s more padded, and as their formally most critical condition battered warriors against Henry, they deserve any cheat for comfort they can find.
“I will get revenge, Wheeler,” Max opens the conversation with.
“Hey guys. Hey Suzie,” Lucas says far more congenially.
“Revenge for what?” Mike feigns.
“Don’t insult either of our intelligences. Hi El.” Max’s tone switches from lightly annoyed while optimistic about what pranks can be pulled and considered just by the Party, to completely besotted. But who could blame her for it, for smiling when El pulls out of her handhold with Mike to envelope her in a hug? Certainly not Mike. He knows exactly what that kind of attention feels like.
“Oh, revenge. Spicy. What for?” Dustin asks.
“Can we talk about this in the water? I want to go in,” Mike requests.
“Speak for yourself. I wanna finish this first,” Lucas gestures with the slush puppy they must have gotten from the gas station on the way.
“Did everyone do sunscreen before they left the house?” Suzie asks. It’s part of being parentified for numerous younger siblings, the exact shit Eden’s in Chicago trying to escape from. It would make Mike want to gnaw his hand off to escape the trap, dating someone who wants to parent every moment. But Dustin just sees it as prepping, and he appreciates someone with a full methodology. Mike might be pleased she’s leaving soon, but he’ll be kind when Dustin is upset about it. Try to angle most of the bitching towards Steve and Robin, maybe, but still support him. Everyone deserves to find love.
“No, it’s in our bag,” Will answers.
“Then clothes off, sunscreen on. It takes fifteen minutes to absorb, if we want to get into the water any time soon,” Dustin proclaims.
With there being no changing rooms, everyone thought to do the same thing. The next minute is everyone stripping off their top layer of clothing to the swimsuits underneath. Mike mostly only has eyes for El, who’s in the only two piece, a pink floral thing. He wants to lick her stomach, lick down, down, all the way down. Max looks good too, in a red and neon orange colourblock suit. With her long red hair not yet tied up, she’s blazing, an inferno from crown of her head to the burgundy friendship anklet El wove for her. And Lucas’ forest green trunks are a great compliment to his dark skin. He’s taken his t-shirt off. Mike wasn’t sure if he would. Lucas followed in Steve’s footsteps, getting mangled at Lover’s Lake, and he’s still coming to terms with it. Mike would tell him he looks good, if it wouldn’t be weird in front of everyone. Suzie and Dustin are in matching teal suits, because of course they are, and Will removes his jeans to be in trunks, but doesn’t take his shirt off. It’s too hot for that, in Mike’s book, but each to their own.
As per Suzie’s orders, sunscreen comes next. Mike gets El’s back, and vice versa. Max practically gives Lucas a full body massage, coating his sensitive scars in high SPF. Will’s in his shirt, but Mike makes sure the back of his neck is covered. He’s a little red when Mike steps back, obviously a little embarrassed about being ticklish. Ever since they were kids, Will’s always been the first to lose a tickle fight, practically every inch of skin sensitive.
The day passes nicely. The cool quarry water is a nice contrast to the sunny day, and they’ve got enough batteries that the music never stops playing. Dustin’s choice of egg salad sandwiches is a weird one, but he makes up for it with the arrangement of junk food. Will brought his sketchbook, so around noon they get into a surprisingly vicious Pictionary game. It’s all great fun, and Mike firmly isn’t trying to manipulate anything, is just enjoying each moment for the future summer memory it’ll be.
Which isn’t to say he doesn’t immediately notice when the parameters finally fit his ideal. Lucas and Max and Dustin were in the water together, but Suzie, who’s been reading some new fantasy series Gareth recommended to Dustin, bellows out she just finished chapter thirty two, like that means something. Within thirty seconds Dustin is swimming to the shore and wincing as he scuttles across the pebbly surface to his towel beside Suzie’s. They’re eyeballs deep in arguing about some character’s choice in seconds, hands flying, ignoring everything around them. Contrary to Mike's earlier prediction it’s Will who’s having a sun nap, head propped up on a patio cushion Lucas got from the bed of his truck. With those three fully occupied, it’s easy to get El to put her thread bracelet in progress down on the towel, and wade into the water once again.
Mike swims out with confidence. He’s a suburban kid, swimming lessons were no more an option than church on Sunday or a shiny new bike every year. El’s close behind him. Being submerged in water from early childhood doesn’t leave you with much of a fear of water. It took a minute or five to teach her to float without salt, to tread water without bobbing under, but she loves it now. Today wasn’t their first quarry visit this month, and won’t be the last.
Lucas and Max are a fair few feet out already, and when they notice Mike and El coming they start swimming out themselves. It’s like a relay race where everyone’s in motion at the same time, and Mike knows what the winner’s prize is. It’s motivation to follow the couple out into the depths. Their friends are ants on the shore by the time Mike and El stop where Lucas and Max eventually do.
There’s a warm glow in Mike’s chest that has nothing to do with the sunshine beaming down on him as they form a square in the deep water. Max didn’t tie her hair back before dunking her head underwater to front crawl. It’s clinging to her face in dripping clumps that look like someone’s already desperately clutched it in the throes of passion. Lucas’s eyes are giddy, not the standard tired, like he has the energy to do whatever you ask of him. El’s got half a necklace of hickies, just barely visible as she treads with the sculling technique. They’re all so goddamn hot, and beyond that, they’re smiling. After everything, joy is an aphrodisiac.
“Hey,” Lucas greets them all.
Any DM would scoff at the unoriginal interaction, but Mike feels the word in his bones. It’s a hey that means hello, I see you, and it’s not always that they’re allowed to see each other like this. Beyond the various couples, the extended Party is all pretty codependent. Even Murray and Nancy and Argyle call once a week, and they’re the vagabonds. Mike spends every minute he can with all his friends, and can’t regret that, but it does mean there’s not a lot of time to be fully together. Dustin and Will don’t know, El didn’t tell hopper, no one went to Steve for advice. In front of anyone else, Mike is dating only El, Max is dating only Lucas, and if they want anything else, it’s only possible in moments away.
Mike’s “hey, man,” is the lone response. El’s already doggy paddled the last foot or two, to be face to face with Max. Ginger Max is covered with freckles this late into the summer, and El’s cupping her face, swiping her thumbs over Max’s cheekbones like she wants to count each one. Their legs must be thrashing wildly under the water, for them to both have free hands to touch each other. The water is clear enough that Mike can see Max grabbing El’s breasts just under the surface, as needy for contact as El. It’s the rotary kick, or El is using her powers to keep them floating.
“Get your hair out of your face,” Lucas instructs. Rather than struggle above water to move the hanks out of the way, inevitably painfully yanking on a tangle, Mike submerges, and pushes his head forward a little as he comes up, gravity pulling it down at a better angle. It’s going to be a bitch to comb tonight, he’ll probably have to have a conditioner only shower, but so much more than worth it.
He breaks the surface to Lucas watching his girlfriend make out with her girlfriend. Mike doesn’t break his reverie by demanding attention. It’s a sight worthy of single minded focus. Since the summer of ‘85 El and Max have been golden for each other, comfort and commiseration and femininity in ways that aren’t strangling and toxic. In the past Mike’s been jealous of it, even briefly hated it, but he’s never been stupid enough to claim it’s not real. When El told him, teary eyed, that she loved Max, Mike could lose her by hating their relationship, or he could accept the complexities of life and admit to what had always been there. Mid-apocalypse, losing even one more thing was just unfathomable.
Eventually, however, Lucas shies closer to him. He’s strong enough to support Mike’s weight, went beyond regaining his normal physique in physiotherapy to actually having more strength than ever. It’s not a fitness regime to sell a million videotapes, considering the side effects of heavy scarring and lingering nightmares, but it’s a silver lining to the trauma and Lucas has always been on the optimist side of the spectrum. Especially in the buoyancy of the water, it’s nothing for Lucas to allow Mike to curl his legs around Lucas’s waist and keep them both up with the speed of his sculling.
It’s been like this since the start, Mike and Lucas a beat behind El and Max, but finding their own resolution of the chord. It was weeks after El and Max started dating, turning their platonic sleepovers in the renovated cabin prior to the Hickory Ave house to overnights spent a little more handsy, before Mike was ready to confront this particular rejection of suburban rules for men. There’s never been an expectation for him from Ted that Mike hasn’t wanted to douse in acid, but some take more nerve than others. Dismissing monogamy was comparatively easy against admitting heterosexuality was more compulsory than a true stance. And then one night, departing from a group hang, knowing Max was staying behind in El’s bedroom, Mike offered Lucas the chance to come over to play on his new NES rather than drop him off at the door. No one but El and Max can ever know that that evening ended up with rolling around on the carpet, grinding against each other, but they didn’t hesitate a day in telling their girlfriends. Who better to get it?
The other angle of heterosexuality doesn’t work. Lucas and El aren’t overly attracted to each other, don’t want to be together like that. Meanwhile, Mike can admit Max is sexy, and thinks she thinks the same, no matter how casually insulting she is, but they’re both too barbed for each other. They’re sharp people who make each other more hostile without the presence of softening influences, ie: most of the rest of the Party. If they fucked as duo, one of them would say something while redressing afterwards that would have the fists flying. There have been the occasional threesomes and foursomes since El once again decided that girlfriends shouldn’t lie, and they’ve all been fun, it’s not like any of them are revolted by the person they’re not dating. It’s simply that Mike is never going to swim over to Max for a kiss when El or Lucas are in the same proximity.
Neck deep in the water, unwitting friends leagues away on the rocky shore, Mike plunges his tongue into Lucas’s mouth. He wishes Lucas was grabbing his ass, but one of them has to keep them afloat. He makes do with stroking all over Lucas’s furrowed back. Thankfully the scar tissue doesn’t take away from his boyfriend’s sensation. It’s be a piss poor reward from the universe for Lucas’s bravery at Lover’s Lake if he couldn’t feel his boyfriend massaging him, or pressing him into the sheets.
Beside him, Max and El are doing the same, enjoying the same deep kissing of the confidently uninterrupted. This isn’t the Wheeler basement, a two second kiss before Will comes back downstairs with a refill of soda. This isn’t a grope in the Hawkins High AV Club lasting as long as it takes for the doorknob to signal Dustin rushing into the room. Will is napping, Dustin and Suzie are enraptured in each other’s huge brains, and they’ve got time. Time enough for Max to push up El’s bikini top until it’s a lycra scarf around her neck. Time enough for Mike to adjust his position and get a hand down Lucas’s drawstringed trunks. Time enough for everything a bright summer day owes them, after all they’ve done for the world.