Chapter Text
Hawkins, November 26th 1980
When he was younger, Mike was an avid fan of his elementary school newspaper. But it wasn’t for the reason you’d think. It wasn’t a form of school pride or supporting his classmates. He’d skip past the poorly written reports of class trips to Merril’s farm and skim the diary dates of the parents’ bulletin (his mother would read those); instead, he’d flip straight to the back of the paper, usually the seventh or eighth page. Amid the puzzle pages, among the word searches a kindergartener could complete and the sudokus that only Dustin could ever finish, were the spoils of his venture.
In this particular edition, the illustrations were festive to match the impending Christmas season. One being a bright green dragon donning a Santa hat with a comically large candy cane grasped in its claws. An elf that skirted the line between Santa’s helper and dwarven blacksmith with its ginger beard and short stature, which clashed with its striped red and green uniform. And of course, the signature embellishment of lightning bolts and squiggles drawn in coloured pencil. It was brilliant. Every single illustration. And he made his glee known to the illustrator.
"This is amazing, Will! Like the dragon— it looks so cool— we should one hundred percent add it to the campaign we’re gonna do.” He could feel his own excitement reverberating off of the walls of the basement.
Will sat next to him on the old, battered couch, and he seemed to soak up and glow with the praise. He didn’t say anything as Mike assaulted him with a barrage of enthusiasm, but he did smile – and it was enough for Mike.
He finally settled back down onto the couch, slightly out of breath with how much he had been jumping around, “I think this is your best one yet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the zombie from the Halloween edition was wicked— but this is just—” he’d run out of words to describe the drawings, flailing about with his hands. “It’s so colourful and vibrant, just— just— you get what I mean.”
Will laughed, his grin widening in a way that was infectious. “It’s not gonna be coloured on all the copies, Mike. Miss Harris lets me have the original copy when the paper is printed.”
Oh, Mike hadn’t known that. His gaze drifted over to one of the shelving units in the far corner of the basement and stack of at least a dozen of the previous editions of the school paper on top of it – all of which were in full colour.
“But I appreciate the compliment,” Will bumped their shoulders together.
Mike’s skin tingled beneath his shirtsleeve. Must be a draught in the basement, he thought absent-mindedly.
Much later, after Mrs Byers had come by to pick up Will, Nancy had stormed into the basement, the Christmas edition of his school’s paper in hand. She asked (interrogated) him about the ripped out pages in the back, where her beloved cross-word usually was. He’d shouted at her to get out, and that he hadn’t seen it (which was a lie), and the ensuing argument was only broken by their mother calling them to dinner.
Nancy stormed off, slamming the basement door behind her. Mike followed her soon after, but only after he’d promptly ripped up what remained of Nancy’s cross-word and finished cutting out Will’s drawings from the missing pages, and filing them away in a cardboard folder.
His collection would only grow in the following years, continuing well into adulthood. Mike thinks, the school paper was what had started it.
oO00Oo
Hawkins, April 13th 1982
When he had come back from school that day, he’d ignored his mother’s shouts from downstairs. His heart thudded in his chest, thumping against the cage of bone, whilst the frenzied beats pounded in his ears as the blood rushed to his face. Throwing himself upon his bed, his tightly clenched fists pummelled his pillows. They continued to brave his fury, whilst he imagined that it was a face deforming beneath his fists and not sacks of cotton, he imagined that James had a bruised jaw and Troy, a bloody nose, but the victory in his head was just that – imaginary. The blood that had been spilled was his own, and it wept dark rivulets into his sheets.
Later, his mom had coaxed him out of his pile of blankets, a puffy-eyed, runny-nosed goblin that stifled his sniffles as she tended to the grazes on both his knees.
“I need you to tell me what happened,” she’d said, for the umpteenth time. He shook his head. He was too ashamed to tell her. If you were going to start a fight, you had to win it, right? Instead, he’d failed miserably.
His mom gently dabbed at the raw, shredded skin with anti-septic. He flinched at the way it stung, and barely registered what she was saying.
“Mike, if those boys are bothering you, I could— I could talk to their parents.”
He snapped his eyes up from where they had been firmly glued to the floor.
Now that he had met her eyes, she seemed to become more sure of herself, “You know, I see Mrs Walsh at the monthly PTA meeting. I can make sure that Troy leaves you alone.” She stared at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.
Mike opened his mouth to speak, knowing full well that his answer would disappoint her, “I started it, Mom. I pushed Troy first.”
Her face stilled. She looked away, and said nothing else. He felt his cheeks redden from the shame of it.
After patching him up, his mom had swallowed and paused, before saying, “You’re grounded – for the weekend. No D&D or hanging out with your friends, okay?”
He would usually argue back. But he found that he didn’t have the energy.
Back in his room, he flopped once more onto his bed, wishing he could sink away into his mattress and disappear. But then the crinkling of paper caught his attention. He could feel a lump in his trouser pocket. Sluggishly, he pushed himself upright and sat against his headboard as he fished it out. Out came the crumpled ball of ripped up paper – along with a brief shower of candy wrappers.
Mike gently peeled the paper apart, treating it like a crumpled flower and not a rust and mud stained page. It was a short while until the pieces were spread out on his bed, a fractured, misshapen puzzle, drawn by earnest hands and torn by cruel ones.
It was one of Will’s drawings.
Mike had been able to see the drawing before Troy had gotten his hands on it: Will the Wise had stood tall and proud, like a spry, young oak tree, with Mike the Brave beside him, his pose equally auspicious and heroic. The paladin’s armour was a deep grey, with carefully erased highlights to show its silver sheen, whilst the stars on the wizard’s robes glistened from the glitter gel pen. Now, Mike the Brave’s face had been reduced to jagged, black scribbles, whilst Will had been crudely drawn over in pink highlighter with a pair of deformed wings to match. It had also been savagely ripped, several pieces were still missing, the two members of the party torn apart by the void between the crumpled edges.
Mike wanted to cry just looking at it.
He scoured Nancy’s room for sellotape and scissors. His vision blurred as he patched it up as best as he could. But it was fruitless. The drawing was still ruined. Irreparable. Broken.
He couldn’t possibly give it back to Will.
Walking over to his desk, Mike reached into the depths of the drawer, for the folder he had hidden his collection in – like a dragon and its treasure. The contents were nothing like the new addition, creased and stained where the rest were pristine and carefully maintained. Even if it was one of Will’s drawings – and Mike loved every one of them – it had been stained both metaphorically and physically by what had happened that day. In the end, Mike decided that he couldn’t bare to look at it, he resolutely folded it in half and shoved it among his collection of drawings.
A few weeks later, Mike would see that drawing again when he added a new one to the folder. He would throw the mess of paper and tape into the trash with as much venom as his eleven-year-old self could muster, replacing it with a fresh piece of paper, where Will the Wise and Mike the Brave stood together in unmarked glory.