Chapter Text
It’s nearly nine in the evening on December 23rd, Nancy’s put Rudolph in the VCR, and Mike is just about to set a new personal record in peppermint bark speed-eating when his mom calls him into the kitchen. He has a phone call.
“It’s from California,” is all the context he gets before his mom traipses off to the living room, her refilled glass of eggnog swirling precariously in one manicured hand.
As sugar-addled as he already is, Mike can’t begin to imagine who the hell is calling him from the other side of the country. He can’t think of a single person he knows in California.
“Hey, dumbass.”
And just like that, he remembers. “Hi, Max.”
“Shit, sunshine, don’t sound so thrilled to hear from me.” Mike can hear faint giggling in the background of the call, and his face heats a little. Is she prank calling him right now? “Listen, I need a favor."
“I’m not going to ask my mom if we know anybody named Harry Dix, Max,” he deadpans. “Or Jack Frost, or whatever, if you’re feeling seasonal.”
“No, I’m being serious! I’m writing down ‘Harry Dix’ for later, but I’m being serious.” Mike can still hear laughter on her end of the line, and he rolls his eyes. Max hisses something he can’t make out at whoever is with her, then tells him, “Sorry, my friend El is a menace.”
“Kind of a scary accusation coming from you,” he observes.
“Thanks.” She muffles her end of the call again and whispers more nonsense at this El girl. Nancy yells something up the stairs at Mike about how she’s going to start the movie, and Mike is seriously considering just hanging up the call when Max comes back on. “Okay, seriously,” she starts over, sounding uncharacteristically somber. “I need your address.”
Mike shakes his head, as if to reset his brain. “You need my address?”
“It’s for my friend,” she drawls, her eye-roll practically audible. “El’s brother.”
“Why does El’s brother need my address?”
Max huffs right into the receiver, sending a crush of static straight to Mike’s ear. “He doesn’t need it, okay, but he’s, like, the best person I know, and he apparently still doesn’t have any friends his own age, so I want you guys to be pen pals, because I think you would get along. He’s into all that nerd shit, too,” she says, then stops for a moment to breathe. “Okay?” she asks harshly, as if Mike’s just finished torturing her for information.
“Max.” Mike hopes his shit-eating grin comes through over the phone. “Are you doing something nice?”
“Shut up. Just shut up, Wheeler.”
“On Christmas?”
“They’re Jewish, so,” she mumbles, and Mike laughs—good-naturedly, not pettily. And maybe he’s feeling a little sappy about the holiday too, or something, because he wouldn’t ever be caught dead saying it, but he really does like Max. It helps that her humility is the best Christmas gift he could have possibly asked for.
He rattles off his address and gives her, in his opinion, just the right amount of hell for not knowing his ZIP code, considering everyone in Hawkins has the same one. It’s a delightful distraction from an otherwise typical Christmas break, but by the time he’s watching Rudolph face off against the Abominable Snowman with a fresh coating of peppermint on his tongue, he’s practically forgotten all about it.
It’s a nice surprise, then, when a letter shows up for him that next Monday, postmarked from California. The stamp shows an orange-and-white work of Navajo weaving, and Mike’s name and address are blocked out in neat, capital letters. It’s a light read, just one page of notebook paper covered in similar—if slightly messier—blocky handwriting.
Dec. 25, 1987
Dear Mike,
I hope this isn’t too weird for you, getting a letter from a stranger 1,000 miles away in the middle of your Christmas break. It’s kind of weird for me, to be honest, but I’m sure you’ve also seen Max’s bullying firsthand. You know I had no choice.
Anyway, Max said maybe we could talk about D&D or comics, which would be cool. Nobody I know here is really into that stuff. Max is into comics, I guess, but pretty much only the girly ones. (Do NOT tell her I said that.) I’m really into Web of Spider-Man right now, but I’ll also read basically anything with the X-Men. I think Cyclops is my favorite, but I go back and forth depending on the arc.
Max mentioned you run D&D campaigns and you’re in a club for it at school. That’s so awesome! I’ve roped my brother and sister into a campaign or two, but I like playing them a lot more than I like DMing. I really love getting to imagine all the cool different worlds and monsters. I’m really into drawing, and that was pretty much all I drew until, like, last year.
Aside from drawing, comics, and D&D, I’m really into music. My brother Jonathan got me into post-punk when we were younger, and he and my mom joke that he created a monster. My comic collection and my tape collection are constantly neck and neck. Right now I’m pretty into this Australian band called Dead Can Dance, who one of Jonathan’s friends from college told me about because I was talking about how much I liked Siouxsie Sioux. Their album called Spleen and Ideal basically hasn’t left my Walkman since I got my hands on it. That’s one of the cool things about living here, I guess, is it’s pretty easy to access good music.
Anyway, what do you get up to over in Hawkins? I technically lived there until I was five, but I don’t really remember it, obviously. Max says it’s cold, but you know Max. Always helpful.
Write back soon!
Sincerely,
Will
P.S. Merry Christmas!
Mike reads it, then reads it again, charmed despite himself. It’s not that he’d expected Max to be wrong, it’s just that he’s not exactly dying to make new friends, even at the best of times. Still, there’s something about the way Will writes about himself that makes Mike want to read more as soon as possible. He starts scanning the letter again, smiling, then sits down at his desk to fire off a response.