Chapter Text
It had been a month since Eleven had vanished. A month since Will returned from the Upside Down. A month since you’d seen Mike acknowledge this little fact. The very thing he’d been so determined to search for, and he was also mourning the loss of someone who had quickly become so special to him. You hadn’t seen Mike smile or go anywhere other than school or his basement. The rest of the Party was worried about him, especially Will, who’d never seen this side to his best friend before.
“Could you talk to him?” Will had asked you earnestly one night when you had been tasked by Joyce to babysit Will.
“Of course I can,” I told him, gently ruffling his hair.
“It’s not the same,” he said, quite sadly.
The tone of Will’s voice made you all the more determined to get to the bottom of Mike’s feelings.
The next night, you knocked on the door of the Wheeler house. Mrs. Wheeler smiled when she saw you. “Y/N, hi!”
You smiled back. “Hey, Mrs. Wheeler. I was wondering if I could talk to Mike?”
Her smile dimmed at the mention of her middle child. “What’s going on with him? Ever since those government people showed up, he’s been quiet.”
“Have you tried talking to him,” you asked even though you knew the answer to that question.
She shook her head. “Can’t get anything out of him.” She widened the door to let you in. “You know where to find him.”
You gave her a shaky smile before you went downstairs, where you found the dark-haired boy talking to his walkie-talkie like his life depended on it. He was curled up in El’s old fort; he hadn’t taken it down since she’d left. You could almost picture the wide-eyed girl the boys had introduced you: a scared little doe who relied on you and the Party to keep her safe. Especially Mike. “El? Can you hear me? It’s Day 30 since you’ve disappeared. Please answer me.” He stopped, waiting for a reply only to come up with nothing but static.
You knocked on the wooden staircase. “Hey.” His head whipped up. “Your Mom told me I’d find you down here.”
Mike didn’t answer you, only looking down at the walkie-talkie in his hands. “Mike, we’re all worried about you,” you told him, sitting beside him. “I’m worried about you.”
“Why?” he asked curtly, still refusing to look at you.
“You haven’t been the same since El disappeared.” You scooted closer to him. “Come on, talk to me. Or anyone for that matter.”
Mike only clicked the walkie-talkie on and off in response.
“Mike, please. Come on, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.” You gently pried the walkie-talkie from him, only for him to cling on and snatch it from you.
“What else can I do, Y/N?” he asked, losing his temper.
You reeled back at the anger in his words; rarely had you been at the end of them. But if there was one thing you learned about Mike is that he wasn’t very good at voicing his emotions. He always let his actions do the talking. And when pushed to boiling point, everything could spill over. Now was proof of that.
El was the closest to Mike and the young boy had developed a crush on her. But what Mike was feeling seemed more than the vestiges of a pre-teen infatuation. If it were just that, he wouldn’t be spending his days stuck in a basement, waiting for someone who would never answer. “Did anything happen? Between you and El?”
Mike glanced up at you, his cheeks red. He fiddled with the walkie-talkie in his hands before whispering, “Before she…” His breath caught but he skimmed over his words. “At the school, when we were alone, I asked her if she could stay with me.” His eyes grew soft, his voice distant as he recalled what seemed to be his last happy memory with Eleven. “I asked her to the Snow Ball.” His cheeks grew red as he mumbled, “I might’ve kissed her.”
You sat back, the embarrassed boy’s eyes on the ground. “Oh.” You knew what that meant. At ten years old, first kisses were kind of a big deal. You should know: you could still remember yours. But that wasn’t important right now. A first kiss was something to you gave to someone you had big feelings for; a moment that could bond two people for life. Just like it had for Mike and El. But it was one moment. A great moment but just one moment in this little boy’s life.
“Mike, you can’t just stop living your life because of one girl.”
Mike groaned. “But El isn’t just some girl, Y/N. She’s special in so many ways. I don’t want to forget about her.”
You tapped Mike’s knee, finally getting him to look up at you. “Mike, I am not saying that you should forget about her. Hell, none of us are going to forget her any time soon. But don’t forget that there are other people in your life. Come on, when was the last time you’d hung out with the rest of us? When was the last time you went to the arcade? Rode a bike? Played D&D?
“Mike, you and the boys spent days searching for Will. And now that he’s back, the thing that worries him the most is you.” Mike’s brows furrowed as your words began to sink in. “He missed all of you when he was in that place, and now that he’s back, he feels like he’s lost one of his best friends.”
Mike met your gaze and though there was guilt in his expression, he glanced at the walkie-talkie in his hand.
“But what if I stop calling?” he asked, his voice fearful.
You chewed your lip. “I might have an idea.” You glanced at the clock. “It’s 8:30pm right now.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, why don’t you set this as your El time? So that you don’t forget about her, but you don’t spend all day here.”
Mike sighed, squeezing the walkie talkie in his hand, afraid to let go. But one look at you, at the plea in your eyes and what you’d told him, he set it down.
You smiled at him. “How are you feeling now?”
“You can rest if you want. But please, Mike, for the love of God, do something tomorrow.” You ruffled his hair and he pushed you away though there’s a smile on his face.
“Okay, okay.”
You both stood up, but before you left the basement, you said, “Also, keep the fort here. Just in case. You never know.” You shrugged.
The smile he gave you was the brightest one you’d received since Eleven’s disappearance. Both of you went upstairs, and you stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching as he went up to his room.
Mrs. Wheeler thanked you, bidding you goodbye as you left the house. You didn’t want to go home just yet, afraid of what would happen if you were alone.
There was a bang and you turned around to find none other than Steve Harrington making his way out of Nancy’s window. “Thought you’d given that up by now,” you told Steve.
“It’s romantic,” he protested.
“It’s trespassing,” you said. “You’re lucky I don’t call Hopper right now.”
“For what? Visiting my girlfriend?” he said, drawing closer to you. You and Steve had floated around each other all your lives. Being in Hawkins, you grew up within the vicinity of each other, always the same school and sometimes the same class.
“For breaking and entering.” You crossed your arms as you regarded him. “There are other romantic gestures you can try.”
He raised an eyebrow. “This coming from the expert?” he asked sarcastically.
“Hey! I’ve had my fair share of romance,” you chuckled, although it died in your throat the minute you locked eyes with Steve. The memory arose in your mind: a boy and a girl, ten years old, swinging on a playground, talking about kisses, lips pressing together in a very undignified smooch.
Steve ran a hand through his hair. “You know, it’s really dangerous to be out this time of night.”
You shrugged. “What’s there to be afraid of?”
“Don’t you live like 10 blocks away?”
“Yeah, so? It’s a nice night for a walk.”
Steve shook his head. “There’s no way that I’m leaving you alone in the dark.”
“Being chivalrous, aren’t we?”
“If it means keeping you safe, then yeah,” he said.
“Come on. I’m pretty sure Wheeler wouldn’t want you walking alone in the dark either,” he said, glancing at the window that hastily slammed shut.
You chuckled. “Fine. For the free ride.”
He led you over to his BMW that was parked in the corner. He opened the door and you slid in, glad that Steve’s company kept your thoughts from wandering down dangerous paths.