Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE: MONDAY MORNING
Morning of December 22, 1986. Hawkins, Indiana
Mike slowly opened his eyes and rose from his messy sleeping position. Right as he was about to turn off his alarm, he realized he didn’t hear the beeping noise that he was so accustomed to.
He looked over at his alarm clock and saw the numbers that immediately set panic into him. 10:53 A.M.
“Oh shit, shit!” he whisper-yelled to himself as he realizes that he’s already missed four periods of the school day.
He hurried to get dressed, picking out a basic pair of jeans that his older sister Nancy bought him at Starcourt Mall last summer before it was destroyed by what the rest of Hawkins called “The Big Mall Fire.” He threw on his Hellfire shirt without even noticing, he hadn’t worn it to school since Eddie’s death, but he was rushing too much to care. And even if he got pushed around today, Dustin would probably be there with him.
As Mike slipped the shirt on, he winced at the pain on his shoulder from what had happened the night before, but he didn’t have enough time, as he had to go to school to make up for his half-absence.
Mike hurried down the stairs. Maybe I’ll be able to eat a granola bar or something. He thought, as he felt the need to cure the overwhelming hunger that he felt in his stomach.
He rushed to the kitchen, and for some reason, his older sister Nancy was still standing at the kitchen counter, making pancakes. She would normally be off at work already by this time, but she didn’t look like she was rushing at all. Mike, confused by her calm expression, called out: “Nance! It’s late as shit! Why didn’t you wake me up? I missed HALF of the school day! HALF!”
For some reason, Nancy just started laughing. “What? This isn’t funny, I’ve got school!”
Once she calmed down, she said: “It’s winter break, idiot. I got off work on Friday.” Mike just stood there, feeling a bit foolish for getting up and actually trying to get to school, something he would never do.
He honestly didn’t know why he was so eager not to miss school, he had straight A’s, despite being incredibly tired and unmotivated the whole month. This morning, he had completely forgotten about the heavy fatigue he had felt. “O-oh, um, sorry.” He said, not even knowing why he was apologizing.
“Don’t you want a pancake or two? I haven’t seen you eat anything in two days.” Mike’s sister asked with concern in her voice.
Mike, who had earlier been craving a granola bar, lost all his appetite as soon as someone else pointed out his recent eating habits. “Uhh, no thanks, I’m not hungry.”
“Okay, but they’ll be out if you wanna reheat them later.”
When Mike acknowledged this with a nod, they both heard messy footsteps coming down the stairs. “G’morning!” Mike’s younger sister Holly had come down for breakfast. “Hi Mikey!” She said as she wrapped her arms around her older brother.
Mike lifted Holly up in the air and spun her around, while giving Nancy a smirk that said: “I’m her favorite, take that.” Nancy decided to ignore him though.
Mike suddenly realized that his parents were nowhere to be seen. “Where are mom and dad?” He asked.
“Uh, well, they’re out of town today, they said it was… private.” Nancy answered with a stutter in her voice.
Holly was too busy eating pancakes to listen to their conversation. Mike on the other hand, had more questions, but decided to save them for later since Nance seemed a bit on edge now. “Okay well, I’ll be up in my room.” Mike said, ready to leave the awkward situation.
“Wait, there’s something else.” Nancy called out. “Hopper called. He asked me if he and El can spend Christmas here with us along with Jonathan and Will.” Mike stops. El. After they had broken up a few months ago, Mike and El had decided to stay friends. Mike wasn’t really sad, he felt as if a weight had been lifted from him, actually. He had known that he only loved El as his friend. Will on the other hand…
Will.
Oh Will. Mike’s best friend. Mike’s favorite person. They had been best friends since they were five years old. They had met on the swings at kindergarten. Ever since then, they had been inseparable. They would sleep over every weekend, have late night talks, and knew everything about each other. Sometimes Mike’s father had judged their friendship, saying it was “strange”, but he never cared about what his dad said.
Mike realized that he had been standing there, zoned out for about fifteen seconds, so he finally responded to his sister: “Oh, cool!” Mike then walked up to his room, feeling Nancy’s knowing stare drilling into his back. His sister always knew what was wrong, no matter what.
She knows. Mike thought, suddenly feeling the sting on his shoulder that he had blocked out earlier. And once he felt it again, it stung. It stung because last night he had brought this upon himself by dragging lines across his shoulder with a small knife he found in the kitchen. Lines that went red, purple, even white once. Mike was no doctor, but he knew that it was probably not good for him to be doing this. He didn’t care though. He hadn’t cared about anything for a month. Except he did care about one thing: Will. Mike cared about nothing but Will’s safety, his happiness, and Will getting everything he ever wanted.
After Mike snapped back to reality, he realized that leaving a wound open was probably not a good idea (El learned this from Max, and told this to Mike multiple times.) So Mike got up, walked to the bathroom, and grabbed a bandage. As he wrapped it, he thought about how he was excited for Will and Jonathan coming over. Especially Will.
He had already planned to go out tomorrow to buy the Christmas presents he hadn’t gotten yet. And then he remembered.
The painting. When Mike had gone to Lenora to visit Will and El, Will had gifted him a painting of the D&D party, with Mike as the focal point. “You’re the heart” he had said. Will had told him that El needed Mike when he was having doubts about their relationship. He told him that she had commissioned the painting from Will to give to Mike. At the time, Will’s words encouraged Mike to help Eleven and tell her he loved her, even though he knew it was a lie.
But Mike wasn’t the only one who lied. When he and El broke up, he had said: “Well what about the painting? If you ‘knew’ I didn’t love you, you wouldn’t have asked Will to paint it for you!” El had no idea what Mike was talking about. They didn’t talk about the painting again, but Mike was left very confused. He knew that El hadn’t commissioned the painting, so why did Will paint it?
In her letters, El had mentioned that Will was painting something for a girl he liked. For some reason, when Mike read this he had felt something like jealousy. Not of this mystery girl of course, but he was just upset that Will was moving on from Hawkins, from him. It had always been Mike and Will, Will and Mike. Mike hadn’t wanted to fade into irrelevance in Will’s life. He wanted to be his best friend, nothing more. Obviously he wouldn’t want to take the place of whichever girl Will liked, because that would be a little weird. It would be weird to say or think that, because that would mean—
“Mike, hurry up in there! We only have one bathroom, you know?”
Mike heard his older sister knock on the door. “O-okay, be right out!” He realized that he had been in the bathroom wrapping his arm for longer than he thought. He shoved the bandage under the cabinet, pulled down his sleeve, and opened the door. “Sorry Nance, I think I ate something bad.”
He quickly realized how stupid of an excuse that was, because Nancy had mentioned that she hadn’t seen him eat in days. And it was true. But she didn’t seem to want to push him, so she accepted it, even though Mike knew that Nancy could smell his bullshit.
“Okay, just let me through.” She walked in and shut the door behind her.
Six days.
Nancy had lied. It had been six days since she had seen Mike eat anything other than buttered bread for dinner. She had told Mike that it had only been two because she knew her brother. She knew he would freeze up and start acting even weirder than he already had been for the last three weeks.
When Mike opened the door and nervously excused his long time in the bathroom, she knew something was up. She just had to figure out what. She washed her hands with the freezing winter water that ran out of the sink and walked out of the bathroom.
She wanted so badly to tell Mike what was happening with their parents, but he was clearly too fragile with whatever was happening with him to be able to handle it.
Nancy would have to solve this by herself, as always. Not telling Mike all of this wasn’t because she didn’t care, because she really did care about her brother. For the last week she had been kept up late at night worrying about Mike. She wanted to say something, she really did, but something stopped her. Holding this in for all this time was getting more difficult.
To get her mind off of things, Nancy decided to go downstairs to see if she could call Jonathan and ask when they were getting there, since he and Will had been staying at the training camp with the rest of their family for the last three weeks.
When she walked downstairs though, Holly was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Nancy, what’s wrong with Mikey?” Now it seemed that Holly was noticing something too.
At least she hasn’t asked about their parents. After hesitating for a moment, Nancy settled on her answer: “Mike is okay, Holly. Just be nice to him, okay?”
“Of course! Mikey is my favorite!” Nancy sighed. Maybe Mike really was Holly’s favorite.
“I’m the one who makes you pancakes!” She humored, glad that the conversation had turned away from Mike’s recent distance. Nancy didn’t want to worry her sister.
“Yeah, that’s true!” Holly snickered. “When is Willy coming? I miss him!” “I’m not sure, I was about to call Jonathan to ask, but they’ll be here soon, okay?” “Okay!” Holly accepted the simple response and ran off.
Nancy was about to walk to the phone and call the Byers when she heard the phone ringing first. She picked it up immediately. “Hello?” She heard the voice of Will Byers, the sweet but fragile boy who was Mike’s best friend.
“Will? Hi! It’s Nancy!”
“Oh, hi Nancy, is Mike home?” At the sound of her brother’s name, Nancy felt caught off guard, but of course, Will would ask for his best friend.
“Yeah, I’ll get him. By the way, when are you guys heading over? I can’t wait to see you both.” Nancy was obviously more enthusiastic at the thought of seeing her boyfriend than his little brother, but she felt it would be impolite to say this.
“We’re leaving in about an hour actually! I’m so excited to see you guys too.”
“Great! I’ll get Mike.” Nancy put her hand over the phone and called for her brother.
“Mike, come downstairs! Will’s on the phone! Mike!”