Chapter Text
Fifteen.
He was fifteen, almost sixteen, and his hair was the same as it had been. His face was more defined, though, and his cheekbones actually stuck out in stark contrast with his nose. His lips were fuller, not so thin, and he was still skinny, but he was tall, now, too. Dustin always complained that he was too tall, and so was Lucas- he and Will were still little things; compared to the boys in their grade, anyway.
His teeth finally came in, and his hair hung as loose and low and curly as ever. Lucas’ was on the verge of an afro, and he and Mike were always begging him to chop it, but Will seemed to like it. Admire it, almost. He admired Lucas, anyway.
They all looked different, but Mike was the only one who hadn’t changed despite his height. Lucas got charming and became a Hawkins sensation. Not that he ever hung out with anyone else, really, but everyone wanted to hang out with him. He played it off like he cared about the jocks and the girls who draped themselves over him but, in their basements, their bedrooms- his attention was reserved for Will. And Mike, of course, and Dustin, but mostly Will. And Will, a wallflower, basked in the whispers about him and drew dark things. Beautiful things, too. He became an artist.
Dustin got a girlfriend- Stace- and drove. He was the first to get his license, and Lucas and Will begged him for rides when they weren’t in Mike’s basement, when they wanted to be high school boys and do high school things- but Mike just wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.
“Come on, man, come to the movies with us,” Lucas would plead with Mike, who would sit at the card table and feign a headache or fatigue or whatever to get out of going wherever they were going. They all had people to go with- Dustin and Stace, Lucas and Will- and he was awkward, anyway. He didn’t like doing things if he could help it. Things that didn’t involve bike rides or board games; things that were different.
“No,” he said. “You go on ahead. I’m just going to get started on my homework.”
“But it’s Friday.”
“Just go, okay?”
“Mike,” Lucas sighed, looking helplessly at Dustin. Will was often left out of these conversations, not understanding just the complex dynamic of Mike and El’s relationship. The one that made it so hard for him to wake up to an empty basement and the smell of toasted waffles. The one that, really, just made him less excitable. When she left, she took his enthusiasm with her. That was how Dustin always phrased it, anyway.
That wasn’t to say that he was just one big moping mess. He still hosted their D&D campaigns, and he became surface-level friends with boys and girls in his science classes. He smiled, and he was happy. Content, at the very least. Because he could be. He had the best friends and decent grades and his life was good again. But he missed her sometimes- always, but sometimes so hard that he had to be by himself for a few hours or even days- and that made it hard to be happy all the time.
Lucas and Dustin didn’t understand, because they missed her in a different way than he did. He wasn’t sure how, but it was different. It was like they had moved on with their lives, missing her on the back burner, and Mike was still grieving over a girl he’d known for a week. Life just… went, for him, but it flew for them. He didn’t get it, but it just was.
Maybe it was because she kept stealing his dreams, crawling in through their windows like everything was the same. Because, in his sleep, she kept begging him to wait.
For what, he didn’t know.
And he wouldn’t know until his sixteenth birthday.
Nearly three years since she'd been gone.