Chapter Text
April 18th, 1981
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die’..”
Mike had tuned out the pastor by this point, his focus locked in on his hands rather than the altar where the man is speaking.
Church, at least to him, was always the most boring part of his week. It was his family's excuse to get out into the community and act as normally as possible. Within those four walls, his parents weren’t constantly on the verge of a divorce and only staying together ‘for the kids’. He wasn’t a kid with a passion who got tripped over onto rocks every afternoon before biking home. His sister wasn’t a teen who hides in bathrooms with whoever that Steve Harrington is before putting on the best ‘good girl’ facade she could. His other sister wasn’t the catalyst of the aforementioned verge of divorce his parents were tiptoeing around.
Within these walls, they were nuclear. Two parents who love each other. Three kids who got along nicely. Five well-meaning Christians who put their faith into the man they spend their days believing in, their afternoons praying to, and their evenings silently doubting.
The preacher, every Sunday, would deliver passages and stories and parables that almost entwined with each other, each conveying the same theme: ‘You are loved, because He loves you.’ He preaches that whatever is up there is a father figure to all, is a man who guides those who believe every step of the way in their life, is a man who supports and believes and loves unconditionally. Unconditionally, because adherents are asked to “Love your neighbour as yourself” as Jesus had so beautifully done, and that is exactly what Hawkins did.
But he knows. He knows to put an asterisk beside every use of the word unconditional, because there’s always a condition. No matter how many times the preacher stands there at his altar and says that whatever is up there loves us equally, he is still a man at an altar, and he is a boy in a pew, and imbalance is not a word reserved for power.
His fingers twist and turn together as the preacher goes on and on about Jesus and the Resurrection and the importance of Easter in the Church’s Calendar. The Church is getting stuffy, especially since each pew is filled to the brim with others who Mike assumes also wants to appear as normal as possible. He wishes they didn’t, though, because now the button-up his father made him put on is single-handedly the worst choice he could have made for today. He reaches up to adjust the collar, but his mother slaps his hand away gently, never once taking her eyes off of the preacher.
With a sigh, he curls his fingers into his lap and focuses back on the man elevated in front of them, holding his tongue between his teeth and his boredom under the pretence of interest. He listens to second-hand words of wisdom as the man reads from the Bible, listens to stories of an impossible action and the fate of those who believed versus those who dared not to, listens to prayers that he repeats back without hesitation. It’s all a repeat of last week, and the week before, and the year before- save for the passage chosen. But, even then, the passages follow the same themes disguised under the pretence of unconditional* love.
His eyes shift towards his parents. His mom, who sits directly to his right, and his father, who sits beside her. They look so much like the perfect couple, it’s almost uncanny to him. His mother’s hair is perfectly curled and pulled back from her face, showcasing the very light makeup she’s applied. Her dress is modest, monochrome, and covered by the white cardigan Mike’s recently (and not very creatively) dubbed her ‘Church-igan’. It’s all tied together by a simple pearl necklace that hangs from her neck. His father looks even more bland- cream shirt, brown striped tie that matches the brown in his pants, square-shaped glasses. They’re too perfect, he thinks, while he stares at them for the next few seconds, trying desperately to decipher why appearances are so important.
He only realises that his eyes have shifted to chestnut hair a few pews in front of him when the preacher begins his spiel about ‘loving one another’.
Mike doesn’t know when the Byers started attending Church. He didn’t even know that they believed in what his family did, to be completely honest. It didn’t seem like something they would believe in. From what Will had told him about his home and the way they operated, Mike didn’t think that Mrs. Byers would have liked to hear someone else say that everyone should love everyone the way they are. But here he is, staring at the back of Will’s head, Mrs and Mr Byers sat on either side of him.
There’s a nagging that begins deep in the pit of his stomach. It’s only faint, something that he can push down with even the slightest bit of focus back on the preacher. He’s only able to get through the next few words before his eyes are back on Will, and that nagging starts again, a little more noticeable this time.
Mike doesn’t exactly understand where it’s coming from. He doesn’t exactly want to understand where it’s coming from. So he simply ignores the feeling and goes right back to tuning into every fourth word that the preacher speaks, because it’s nine o’clock on a Sunday, and he’d much rather be sitting in the basement with his friends, a new campaign staring them directly in the face.
But he’s here, itching to pull at the thread in his stomach until the contents are spread out across the Church floor for him to ignore and the people around him to scrutinise, listening to a man five times his age speak on life and the impossible and a figure that Mike will never know the true existence of.
He’ll never outright say that he doesn’t believe in God or Jesus or whoever he’s supposed to see as the father figure he never truly had. It might be because he knows what his parents will say, knows what Hawkins will think of him, and in extension, his family. He knows what not preaching to the masses will get you, because he’s seen it too many times before, knows the conditions to unconditional love. But there’s a small part of his brain that knows he’ll never say it because he still believes there is something out there. Silently, he hopes that at least one of them turns out to be real, exposes themself to him so that he finally has someone true to listen to him and the problems he’s not allowed to say out loud. He hopes that one of them finds him interesting enough to listen to.
And so, he listens. He sits patiently in the pew, and he listens to the words of the pastor, and he pretends alongside his family. He pretends not to see the asterisk and that he completely believes in the words from that huge book, because he hopes for it all to be real. Hopes that there is, in fact, a figure out there to guide him in the right direction in life, to treat him like the son he wished he could be.
Eventually, the pastor speaks his final blessings, finally allowing the families to leave the sermon. Some families rush out as quickly as they possibly can, most likely late for previously planned events or just simply wanting to get home after putting on a front for hours on end. If Mike is honest with himself, he’d believe the latter over the former. Some families stay behind, chatting to each other or offering compliments to the pastor on another beautifully delivered sermon, to which he puts on his best humble facade and pretends not to accept them.
His mom stands and hurries her family out of the pew, making sure each of them kneel as they leave to show just how faithful they are to their beliefs. Mike’s knees hurt from kneeling while praying throughout the sermon, and his dad can barely get his knee to touch the floor as he takes his turn, but his mom simply offers cocky smiles hidden under tooth-rotting sweetness as other families watch on. Mike hates it.
He lets out a scoff, turning his head away from his family and, surprisingly, catching the eye of the Byers family walking down the aisle. Mrs Byers is the first to notice, offering him a truly sweet smile and a wave, almost an invitation to another belief- Mrs Byers (or Joyce, as she so often asks Mike to call her) could serve as his faithful figure, someone he could look up to and follow without a second word, put all of his belief and faith in and understand that she will love him no matter what.
Mr Byers comes next, sauntering down as if he holds the world in the palm of his hands. He shoots glances at every family, sizing them up to his own high expectations and silently judging each and every mishap. He passes Mike’s family as his mom unbuttons her cardigan from around her chest, and Mike watches as his opinion on them changes in a heartbeat, eyes going from typical ignorance to a disgust he’s only ever seen in Mr Byers’ eyes when he walks in on Will drawing. Or when he picks up Will from Mike’s place. Or when Jonathan mentions photography,
Maybe Mr Byers and his kids just have a weird relationship.
Speaking of his kids, Mike’s eyes are pulled to just behind Mr Byers, a head- more a bowl- of hair hiding behind his legs. Hazel eyes meet his own, and he finds that he can’t keep a smile off of his face. Neither can Will, apparently, because the church lights up as he flashes his teeth at Mike, lips pulling tight at the sides and revealing a smile that reminds Mike of a bunny, for some reason.
It was never the plan to make friends with the nicest kid in town. He remembers the swings, remembers walking up to the little boy dressed in a dirtied flannel and asking that simple question, remembers running to his mom and telling her all about the boy he met. In Mike’s young mind, he thought the boy was just going to be someone he could talk to at school to feel less alone, to have someone there when no one else could be.
He didn’t know it would be the best decision of his life.
Mike leans towards him just as Will is about to pass, whispering a small “Campaign tomorrow?” in his ear, just as Mr Byers’ hand reaches behind him and grabs onto Will’s wrist. He’s gently pulled forward, and Mike can feel his smile slipping off of his face at the sight. But then Will turns back to him, meeting his eyes, and nods. The smile returns twice as large.
His dad places a sturdy hand on his back, a signal that it’s time to leave, that his mother has stopped caring about appearances and they need to escape this place of worship before somebody realises that their roles in the family are merely that- a role. Mike sighs, but moves anyway, shoes catching onto the carpet beneath him and making it harder to drag his shoes across the floor in an attempt to diminish his family’s image.
The doors that stand tall in front of him serve as a reminder, his mother once said. A reminder that when they walk out of this building, they must still serve their roles. They must never take anything to do with the Lord in vain, must walk around as if they are the perfect image of a perfect family, must never deviate from what is considered normal.
And maybe that’s exactly what Mike needs. He needs that sense of normal in his life, a reminder that he is normal and all of the bullies who say otherwise are wrong. Ha, he’d say to them, The big figure in the sky says that I’m a normal kid, so you have to. He needs to know that his faith is true and real and unconditional*, because otherwise, what’s the point of showing up every Sunday with hope that will eventually be proven wrong and crushed in one realisation?
His mother reaches over and squeezes his hand. He pretends that hand has turned water to wine.