Chapter Text
Holly had put up a pretty good fight to retain her control of the basement, but in the end, Mike had won, in what he might once have described as a campaign of persistence and subterfuge, but played out mostly through yelling and name calling, the kind that would wear any mother down.Mrs. Wheeler had promised Holly that it was just one night and then she could have full reign of the basement again. Now the original party occupied a space that almost felt like their own.
The furniture was the same, so was the musty smell of the basement and the hum of the ceiling lights. Scuffs and stains and threadbare patches of upholstery cataloged a childhood full of adventures both real and imagined. But now there were new marks on the floor and knicks on the formica. Unrecognizable campaign paraphernalia sprawled across tables and peaked out of drawers.
Mike anxiously checked the shelf where their binders rested and felt reassured by the layer of dust that Holly and her friends had enough sense not to touch his things. Well, their things. He bit his inner lip to hold back a nostalgic smile, but his eyebrows knit into a frown as he realized an uncomfortable and urgent silence had taken over the room. His head whipped to Lucas, who was currently sitting on the couch with Max laying across his lap. Mike had the vague sense that Lucas had asked him a question. Mike’s bangs hung slightly over his eyes as he looked over. His hair was just as short as he had worn it senior year of high school, in that sad side part that his friends teased made him look like his father. He hadn’t gotten taller (thank God) or broader (curse the Gods) in the past few years. He was wearing a scratchy, red Christmas sweater that prickled his arms. He distractedly picked at the pilling wool.
“What?!” Mike questioned defensively, noticing that all eyes were on him expectantly. It felt oddly claustrophobic for a room sorely missing two people.
Will had tried his first winter break to come back to Hawkins. He really had. Even though Joyce and Hopper had moved out to Montauk for a “fresh start” and as an excuse to be closer to Joyce’s sons, Will had taken the greyhound across the gray skied, cornfield dotted route from New York to Indiana. He had politely stayed in the Wheeler’s basement. A parody of their time during the occupation.
Everyone had noticed how uncomfortable Will seemed, even Mike, and that was a feat considering how caught up in his own bullshit he was at the time… all the time. Will never voiced disapproval at anything or vocalized his discomfort, but his actions were reactions, like he was playing a role in a scene he didn’t know the context for. Will wore the clothes he had in high school, but they had looked off in some unquantifiable way, like he had brought them just for this trip, and his hair was left purposefully unstyled so as to further distract from himself. It was a dishonest improv and when he wasn’t performing, he made himself small. He barely left the basement and was gone before Christmas Eve, despite Mrs. Wheeler assuring him he could stay and she would even stuff him a stocking. A promise Mr. Wheeler was not around to shoot down.
When Will had called Max to let everyone know he wouldn’t be home for winter break this year, no one was surprised. Well mostly no one was surprised. Mike couldn’t understand why Will had chosen Max to contact. Were they not best friends? Did best friends have an expiration date? Did he have a new best friend in New York City? Had what Mike said two summers ago broken their bond?
Long distance phone calls were expensive and so weekly letters made up the bulk of the party’s communications to each other. Mike and Will kept up a dry discourse of classes and minor amusements that happened in their daily lives. If one or the other sometimes missed a week, it was nothing to have a meltdown about. Mike had been hoping that these letters were proof that Will had moved on and that they were okay again.
Max had explained it away as convenience. She was still at home catching up on the school she had missed while in a coma and Will knew her home phone by heart. It was easier to call her then find the dorm floor phone number for Lucas and Mike, though Mike was certain that one of them had shared it with Will in a letter or something.
It was Max’s actual graduation that Lucas had been attempting to ask Mike about at that very moment. Max had been ceremonially allowed to walk with the rest of her class, but she was finally graduating this spring. She had early acceptance into Caltech for biology and Lucas was planning to transfer as well to follow her out west. Government hush money had opened up the opportunity to attend virtually any school they wished. Will was at Pratt in Brooklyn and Dustin at Cornell in upstate New York. Only Lucas and Mike had chosen a state school, with the understanding that Lucas wouldn’t stay. And now Mike wasn’t going to either.
“I asked if you submitted your transfer paperwork already,” Lucas reiterated. He crossed his arms to meet the defiance Mike showed. Lucas also had not gotten taller, but he was more built, spending his free time in the gym on campus. He had ditched the flat top for a much shorter cut, which he complained was a concession to Max. She didn’t disagree.
Max was also looking stronger, which months of physical therapy were bound to do. Her complexion was no longer sallow and her red hair gleamed. Her time stuck in Vecna’s mental prison had not left her physically unscathed though. She now wore glasses to combat her vision loss and she hadn’t been on a skateboard since before everything that went down. She had pivoted to swimming and looked forward to the year round sunshine and sea of the west coast.
“Uh, yeah. I think so.” Mike muttered and looked at his feet. He didn’t want to have this conversation again and in front of everyone. His face warmed and he couldn’t determine if it was due to embarrassment or anger.
“How can you ‘think so’? What does that even mean?” Max chimed in, almost in defense of her boyfriend.
They had all been drinking from the half empty bottles of the Wheeler’s liquor cabinet and everyone was inebriated enough to be honest in ways they had been avoiding. Ways that could trip Mike’s anger like a bomb. Whether he would explode or implode was anyone’s guess, but the caustic seething that could flow from Mike was a new pitfall that all his friends had learned, the hard way, to avoid. Sure he would come back around and apologize, while leaving explanations hanging unsaid in the air, but he couldn’t keep it together. He was always ready to snap. He had snapped at Will and that he hadn’t smoothed over with an apology. Will had just pretended it didn’t happen. Maybe Will didn’t know what to do.
Mike was hurting and no one knew how to help him, but keeping him here definitely wasn’t the answer. He was like a tiger pacing his cage in the confines of Indiana. Everything was a reminder of her. So the rest of the party had all decided to push for Mike to go somewhere, anywhere, away from here when Lucas and Max left.
Will had actually suggested that Mike come to New York. New York rent always necessitated roommates and Will missed Mike, sometimes in spite of himself. For Mike’s part, he desperately needed to apologize to Will; something he had not been able to do during those handful of cold, winter days last December. But when Lucas explained that he was going to California, he personally offered to help Mike work on his own transfer documents and Mike seemingly went along with the idea. Now Mike would be headed to New York next summer in preparation for a fall semester at CUNY.
Mike had been just going along with a lot of things now. He assumed that was just what being an adult was - compromise. He started college with a plan to get a degree in creative writing, but when every story felt dull and flat, he compromised. Now he was majoring in technical writing, which was technically writing, a joke he had gotten A LOT of mileage out of. He just couldn’t find the inspiration to tell stories. How could he encompass the beauty, the pain, the meaninglessness of the world? His childhood campaigns were so naive. Heroes could save the day, defeat evil, and even bring back the dead. What was a knight who couldn’t save anyone? A cheap punchline for a major.
Back in the silence of the room, Mike raised his eyebrows and his shoulders slowly in a shrug of surrender. “It means that yeah, I submitted the application.”
Max sighed, “I wish you didn’t make it sound like we are forcing you.” The sentence held an honesty that felt raw. Max had mellowed out slightly with age, but she wasn’t going to stand by and take bullshit from any of these nerds.
Mike took a deep breath, he didn’t want to talk about it, about her. The other missing member of the group. El… She was gone but she lived in the shadows of his thoughts and the edges of his world. Mike knew everyone missed her, but only he had failed her. She had only said goodbye to him, that had meant something. That HAD to mean something. But if it meant what Mike believed it did, it meant he had failed.
“I just…I just. Maybe someone should be here, in case she comes back.” He winced as the words left his mouth.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Dustin, teary eyed but resolute. Dustin was a bit chubbier since college, a combination of genetics, a dining pass, and a focus on studying over sports. Steve would good naturedly tease him about whenever they met up by offering to let him join the little league team and run some bases. Dustin had kept his hair long.
“Buddy, I know what you are doing. I get it. I really do. But you cannot stop living just because she did.” The words stung them both. Mike was grateful that his vision blurred with tears and he could break eye contact with Dustin.
“You said you believed. You all did,” Mike spat accusatorily. This felt like an intervention. A fucking intervention.
Dustin pushed on, “if you really believed she was still alive, you wouldn’t be here right now.” He spoke softly and the words hung heavily in the room. “You never gave up on Will when he was missing. If you thought that El was out there, somewhere, you would go to the ends of the Earth to find her and instead you are sitting here, feeling sorry for yourself. Punishing yourself for a crime you didn’t commit. I have been there.” Dustin squeezed Mike’s shoulder, making Mike flinch away.
“You don’t know anything!” Mike was flailing. This wasn’t like Eddie. It wasn’t. Dustin’s job hadn’t been to protect people. Dustin hadn’t failed anyone. Eddie made his own choices. He missed him too, but it wasn’t like El. No one could understand.
“I know you,” whispered Dustin, in the exact way he had once said he believed El was alive.
Mike wanted to scoff. How could Dustin know him? Mike didn’t even know himself. He looked at Lucas and Max, who wore similar expressions to Dustin. Sympathy, no…pity. How could they judge him when he was doing what they asked him to do? He wondered if compromising was always supposed to hurt. If being an adult meant always hurting or if that was reserved for him, as his punishment, for failing. If the numbness of staying in place was the safer option than the sharp pain of moving forward without her. When had he become the one to choose the safer options?