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Today was the day! The most-awaited one. 22nd March.
It was going to be the best day of Will’s life; he just felt it in his bones.
The Lenora Hills airport was a miserable place to be. Will hated going to it. He’d been here a couple of times before when Nancy came to see Jonathan and a few of their friends needed favors to pick someone up. Will loathed the experience every single time.
It constantly smelled like stale tobacco, just like Joyce’s ashtray and floor cleaner, the same brand as El’s bathroom and the baking heat of the outdoors was just a cherry on top.
Will wondered why this shitty place even had an airport? Like, which dumbass in their right mind would willingly visit Lenora? Today the dumbass was none other than the famous Mike Wheeler and Will had forgotten in a blink that he had crippling hatred towards this ass place.
What he saw was not what he expected. He expected Mike to have grown, be handsome, maybe a bit buff, but what he didn’t expect was him growing up to be a dumb fucking ass, especially when it came to fashion.
This is what living in Karen Wheeler's house and having Max as an enemy does to a motherfucker!
His outfit was trashy and stupid and so flashy, it had Max’s name all over it.
Mike stood by the baggage carousel wearing a pair of stiff, electric-purple denim dungarees that jumbled on his knees every time he took a step, paired with canvas sneakers the exact shade of a lemon drop from those dishwashing commercials.
Without even talking to him, Will knew that Max must’ve looked him dead in the eye, patted his shoulder with terrifying gravity that Mike must’ve questioned at least once and sworn on her life that "You look like a total Cali guy now, Wheeler."
He looked like an abomination of humanity. A sick individual. A social suicide.
Across the terminal, Eleven broke away from the group. She decided that she didn’t want to walk to Mike, so instead she charged at him. Her sneakers squeaked violently against the linoleum, earning a few glances from other people. They were mainly trying to figure out why this weird girl was so happy to see the weirdest boy ever.
Mike braced his legs, expanding his arms just in time for forty-five pounds of adrenaline to smash into his sternum.
"Mike!"
"El—whoa, hey!" Mission failed as she threw herself at his weak limbs, which were certainly not designed for all that.
El went in instantly for his lips, leaning up on her tiptoes, but Mike caught the shift in trajectory a second early. He jerked his head back to dodge an oncoming luggage cart, throwing his face sideways. Her mouth slammed firmly against the corner of his cheekbone with a wet sound. The luggage saved him; otherwise, El was so close to thinking he dodged her on purpose.
She pulled back an inch and her dark eyes narrowed, blinking through the confusion of the near-miss, a sudden flicker of heat flaring behind her pupils. She hadn't missed the angle, even if she didn't know the word evasive maneuvers. It was so confusing.
"Hi. I brought—uh—I got stuff," Mike stammered, his voice dropping an octave as he shoved his hands behind his back. He pulled out two wildly asymmetrical and slightly crushed bundles wrapped in brown grocery paper. "Fresh from Hawkins! Picked them myself."
He thrust the first bundle into El’s chest.
"I went kinda heavy on the yellow; I’m seeing that now," Mike blurted, his tongue catching on his teeth as he tracked the flat look on her face.
Abort. Abort. Abort.
He just remembered El doesn’t like Yellow. She doesn’t even like flowers that much, just roses and the color purple. Mike never knew what she liked and that was solely because she never got a chance to explore her interests, so as a good boyfriend, Mike didn’t urge her to explore that either.
"I thought... I mean, I remembered you liked yellow? Or maybe it was purple. I went for a seventy-thirty split to be safe, because the florist had those carnations, but then the stems were kind of crushed in the overhead bin—"
El looked down at the paper. A mass of neon-yellow marigolds stared back at her. Her lips thinned into a hard and razor-straight line. She hated yellow. She had always hated yellow and Mike knew this.
"Shit," Mike muttered, dropping his shoulders. "It’s too much yellow, isn't it? I knew it was too much."
Before El could form the word no, Mike scrambled to turn toward the slender figure standing three feet behind her.
Will was wearing a muted plaid shirt, his hands tucked loosely into his back pockets, watching the disaster unfold with a soft and cautious curve at the edge of his mouth. Mike shoved the second bundle toward him like a shield.
Will’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and a soft smile launched itself on his features that melted something inside Mike.
"Oh my God, Mike. I love yellow," Will said softly. He took the bundle, his fingers brushing Mike’s knuckles for a fraction of a second as he brought the stems to his face. "Thank you. Truly."
El’s face changed three colors in three seconds because, of course, Will liked yellow and Mike didn’t even bother to pick more purple from the florist and just went with what came to his mind on the first try. Of course what came to his mind on the first try was Will’s favorite color. It had a weird connection that El didn't want to explore in that moment.
"Yeah?" Mike exhaled a massive breath, his whole frame visibly unknotting like a breath of fresh air got into his lungs in this sewer place. "Yeah. Good. Cool."
El glanced down at the tiny card taped to her bouquet. It read, in Mike’s scrawled cursive: From Mike.
She peered around Mike’s shoulder. Taped to Will’s stems was a square piece of binder paper: Love, Mike.
A sharp hiss escaped El’s nose. She slammed her body back into Mike’s chest, wrapping both arms around his ribs in a grip tight enough to crack a vertebra. Mike stiffened, his arms hovering awkwardly in the air like two wooden planks before he awkwardly tapped her shoulder blade twice.
"Okay—whoa, El, easy on the ribs—" He wiggled out of the vise lock, taking two full steps back and wiping a bead of sweat from his temple.
Will stepped forward then, a rolled-up sheet of thick and heavy canvas tucked firmly under his left elbow. He stopped right in front of Mike, the noise of the crowded airport dropping away into the background buzz of flickering fluorescent lights.
Mike looked like he really wanted to hug Will. Like a soul-crushing kind of hug, so he went for it. They didn't do the quick, awkward shoulder-tap hug that was expected (fuck u duffers) Mike stepped into him, wrapping his arms fully around Will’s shoulders, burying his nose against the curve of Will’s neck, where the scent of laundry detergent and cheap oil paints hung warm and familiar. Will’s arms came around Mike’s waist, holding on with a quiet and desperate force that made Mike’s breath hitch.
Mike whispered right into his ear, his fingers digging into the fabric of Will’s shirt. "I missed you so much."
Yeah, these are the kind of intense words one should say to his girlfriend, not his homeboy. No matter how out of the loop El was, she knew this very clearly.
"You have no idea." Somehow Mike dared to continue his whisperings to Will, despite El turning three shades heavier with every second.
"I missed you too," Will breathed back, his eyes closing tight, his nose pressing into the rough collar of Mike's God-awful shirt.
Mike pulled back just enough to look at him, his hands resting naturally on Will’s upper arms. "Happy birthday, man."
Will froze. His eyes shot open, shiny and wet as a disbelieving laugh broke out of his throat. "You remembered?"
"Of course I did," Mike said softly, his thumbs brushing against the cotton of Will's sleeves.
"Well, you’re the first one to." A single tear tracked down Will’s cheek, but he wiped it away so fast with the back of his wrist that it almost didn't happen.
Mike’s eyes melted.
Behind them, El stood with her fists clenched so tightly her knuckles turned white, contrasting with the red on her face. Her chest heaved up and down.
They were standing too close. They were always standing too close, talking in those quick and overlapping sentences that left no room for anyone else to breathe. She hadn't let a single letter through in three months. She’d intercepted the mail, tore the blue-lined pages into tiny confetti and threw them into the brush behind the garage. She’d told Mike every single time he called that Will was out, that Will was busy, that Will didn't have time to come to the phone.
Yet here they were, leaning into each other like two sides of the same damn frame.
"Yo, bro."
A tall figure floating in a cloud of cheap woven fabric and pot smoke drifted into their perimeter. Argyle stopped three feet away, his head tilted so far to the right his long black hair dragged across his shoulder. He pointed a slow finger at Mike’s lower half.
"Why are your legs purple?" Argyle asked, his voice sounding like it was traveling through several feet of water.
"Ambulance. Call an ambulance." Jonathan was leaning against a concrete pillar, holding a paper cup of water, having a very serious discussion with Argyle.
“No, he’s not dying”
“Constricted blood flow. I read it somewhere.” Jonathan took another look at Mike’s canary-yellow sneakers, attempted to swallow the water, but immediately blew a full jet of water straight out of his nose.
“Oh no. No. You can’t die Jon—”
He doubled over, clutching his knees, coughing so hard his face turned the color of a beet while Argyle held him.
“Are they high?” Mike asked, his expression souring. Will rolled his eyes and puffed a chest full of air while El was moping in the background, unaware of what the conversation was about.
"Dude!" Jonathan gasped, wiping his chin with his sleeve, his eyes bloodshot. "You look like a weird plant—"
“Bees are gonna come for him. It will be a tragic death.”
"My friend Max told me this outfit looks good and she is never nice to me—" Mike snapped, his face burning hot as he looked down.
"Max set you up, bro," Argyle said with tragic solemnity, shaking his head. "She put you in the gra—"
"Okay, leave him alone," Will said, stepping squarely between Mike and the two high men, though his own lips were twitching wildly.
Mike looked down at Will, relieved, until Will leaned in close to his ear and whispered softly, "We are definitely talking about the outfit later."
"What is wrong with it?!" Mike squawked. “Do you not like it?”
Will just looked at him with an expression of profound pity—like he was stupid, that he was! He slowly shook his head in disbelief, filled with love or whatever Will had for him, to not just leave him standing there in that outfit.
Before Mike could defend his dungarees further, El’s hand shot out like a grappling hook, sinking her fingers into his forearm and yanking him backward toward the exit doors.
"We go now," El demanded, her voice flat and hard as iron. "Today is all about us."
"Wait, El—" Mike stumbled over his yellow shoes, trying not to get dragged out into the parking lot.
Will fell into step right behind them, his chin up and expression sour. "It’s my birthday, El!"
"It does not matter," El said without turning around, her grip tightening on Mike’s wrist until his skin turned pale.
"It totally does! We planned this forever ago!" Mike argued, straining against her grip to look back at Will. "I was gonna go to the arcade with him, then the movies—"
“But you’re my boyfriend—”
"He’s been my best friend for more than a decade," Will said loudly, taking two quick steps to stay shoulder-to-shoulder with them as they hit the bright California sunlight. He leaned slightly toward El, his voice dropping into a sharp, quiet blade: "Unlike you."
El wanted to blow Will’s head off, but Will was thankful she didn’t have powers anymore.
"This is the longest we’ve ever been apart, El." Mike chimed in again.
El’s head snapped toward him, her jaw locked, but none of them flinched. Will just held her stare, his hand firmly resting over his rolled-up painting. If El knew better, she would’ve thought Will was Mike’s girlfriend, not El.
The ride towards the Rink-O-Mania and the whole setup was a disaster from the first minute.
El had insisted on dragging them to the middle of the floor, but within ten minutes, she was standing by the DJ booth in utter isolation while Mike and Will carved slow circles along the track of the rink. They were leaning into each other’s shoulders, laughing over some ridiculous story, their fingers occasionally lacing together at the turns to keep balance on the slick floor because Mike sucked at rolling skates.
When a group of girls led by a blonde in a pastel sweater began circling El, taunting her with mocking giggles, the air in the rink turned foul.
Before Mike or Will could even skate across the floor to grab her, El grabbed a stray roller skate off a bench, swung it back like a sledgehammer and cracked the girl straight across the bridge of her nose.
The crunch echoed over the disco music.
Ten minutes later, all three of them were sitting on the curb outside, ejected by a screaming manager, waiting for their pizza van.
The ride back to the Byers house was a quiet nightmare. El sat in the back, staring out the window with her arms crossed so tightly she looked like a statue. Up front, Argyle was steering with one knee while Jonathan stared at a stale corn dog.
"That girl took a wheel to the face, man," Argyle observed cheerfully, taking a slow drag from a half-burnt joint. "Direct hit. Beautiful."
"So much blood juice," Jonathan giggled softly into his palm. "It was like... plop, plop, plop on the hardwood."
“Jon, my guy, not funny—”
“It is funny. There was blood everywhere. We going to prison.”
“How are you still high?” Will shouted from the back of the van as El fumed even more.
Mike simply took Will’s hand and squeezed once, then twice. El saw it and she tried very hard to fetch her dormant powers. Nothing was working.
All her efforts to disconnect these two went in vain the moment they saw each other’s faces again. All those letters that she tore, all calls that she dodged, it all just smacked her back in the face.
In the background of this very platonic interaction between Mike and Will, the driver and passenger seats were still talking.
“ —must’ve swung it like a broadsword.”
“No… It has to be like the whip!”
"Shut up, you two!" El shrieked from the back row.
Jonathan instantly clapped both hands over his mouth, his shoulders shaking in silent laughter.
By the time they hauled their bags through the front door of the house, El’s rage had solidified into an absolute wall of ice.
Joyce was standing in the kitchen, wiping down the counters with a dish towel, smiling warmly at the group.
"Mike, honey, it’s s good to see you,” Joyce said, enveloping him in a hug that Mike took more warmly than any hug El threw his way in the morning.
“It’s good to see you too, Mrs. Byers.”
“We set up the guest room—well, the sofa in the living room for you," Joyce started.
"No, Mom, he’ll sleep in my room," Will interrupted smoothly, setting Mike’s heavy duffel bag down by the hallway door.
El whirled around, her eyes wide with fury. "Why? Why not the couch? Why not in my room or-or Jonathan’s?!"
Mike rubbed the back of his neck, carefully avoiding El’s eyes as he shifted his yellow sneakers against the linoleum. "I just... I haven't seen Will in months, El. We have a lot of catching up to do—”
“Yeah, it’s just better this way," Will said, smoothly helping Mike out with his unnecessarily heavy bag.
El stared at him. A tiny tremor ran through her lower lip, but instead of screaming, she turned on her heel, marched into her bedroom and slammed the door so hard the framed prairie landscape on the living room wall jumped an inch off its nail.
The dinner was fine. Joyce asked about El and Will told her she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t bring it up again because she was too caught up in her other guest’s awful risotto. Argyle, Murray and Jonathan made conversation that no one else had any interest in. Will didn’t even have any interest in what fell out of Murray’s mouth either way. Mike just simply despised whoever he was because he was too loud and there can be just one person who’s allowed to be that way: Mike.
After the awkward and distasteful dinner was done, Will took Mike up to adjust him into his room.
The bedroom was just like what Mike expected. It smelled of paint, turpentine, Will’s favorite perfume and the cool evening breeze pushing through the screen window. It was covered in yellow paint and the walls had a lot of drawings on them. It reminded Mike of his basement back home.
Mike stood by the edge of the room, unrolling a thin foam camp mattress onto the hard floorboards. He dumped a thin pillow at the head and flopped down with a heavy groan, his long legs dangling off the bottom edge by a good three inches, but he was too tired to even care.
"The floor’s gonna ruin your back, Mike," Will said from the edge of the mattress on the bed. He had already kicked off his shoes and was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, watching Mike struggle on the floor like a dog chasing its tail.
"I’m fine," Mike muttered, wincing as his hip bone struck a knot in the pine floor from digging into the floor. "It’s... rustic."
"Mike. Get up here." Will patted the space beside him on the double bed. "The floor is hardwood.”
“It’ll help with the knots in my back!”
“You’ll be a cripple by morning."
Mike looked at the floor, then looked up at Will’s soft and steady gaze and knew that he couldn’t argue. Who could even do that to Will’s cute little face?
He gave up and pulled himself up, kicking off his stupid bright shoes and sliding onto the top of the quilt, lying down sideways so his head rested on the spare pillow right next to Will’s.
The silence between them was warm and thick, but it was and safe. Mike was avoiding coming to the bed because he was afraid all the previous months were a nightmare or maybe a daydream that he envisioned. He was afraid he might say or do something that he’d regret, or maybe he caught the vibes wrong. Maybe he was thinking some other way and Will had contradictory views.
He moved his face to the side and found Will already looking at him with a knowing smile.
Another wave of questions erupted in Mike’s mind. He didn’t misread it, right? The look on Will’s face was something out of this world and he didn’t want to ruin anything. God, he wished he wasn’t a coward.
He sighed, a full, puffed-out-chest sigh. It came deep from the depths of his soul.
"She really thought she had us," Mike whispered, a wicked little grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Yep,” Will whispered back, eyeing the ceiling for once. “That is why she’s so mad at us.”
“I really couldn’t care. Not after what she did…”
"I know. She literally ripped bundles of your letters," Will whispered again, turning his head on the pillow again so they were staring right into each other’s eyes, only inches apart.
"I’m just… I’m glad you found the scraps..."
“Yeah, me too. If I didn’t… I’d think that you didn’t write me at all—”
“ —and I would think you didn’t want me in your life.” There was a deep, profound sadness in Mike’s words that Will fewlt inside his own soul.
This was the same feeling he felt when he wrote those words.
"I wish you’d just tell me what I did wrong, Will"
Will didn’t even know why Mike was saying that when he was the one who never sent anything. Then, after investigating for a few days, he found out the problem was something else entirely.
"She still doesn’t know about Mrs. Gable, right?" Mike chuckled softly, his voice a low vibration in his chest.
"No, she doesn’t have any contact with El. I helped her out with their garden a couple times…”
“Then you asked her to mail me your letters… yeah, I know. It was still weird though. Getting a letter from Mrs. Gable Martin. Mom thought some older woman was harassing me.”
“She thought what?” Will’s eyes shot up and a laugh bubbled out of him, fast and loose.
Mike smiled again. He loved watching Will laugh. He could look at him for all his life and never get bored.
“Yeah, then I told her that Will’s mailbox overflows with Joyce’s work mail, so our letters got misplaced; that’s why he sends from Mrs. Gable’s."
“Oh my God,” Will said, a tiny snort escaping his nose. "She loved forwarding those envelopes. I told her the same excuse about Mom’s job."
Smiles plastered on their silly faces. The room filled with giggles and soft breathing in a fit of a minute.
"We figured it out…" Mike said. His hand reached out under the dim light of the bedside lamp, his fingers sliding slowly between Will’s, holding tight. "...and I’m glad we did."
"Me too," Will murmured.
They didn't speak for a long moment. Outside, the crickets buzzed in the dry California weather, a sharp contrast to the damp summer nights of Hawkins.
Mike shifted closer, his hand coming up to touch the soft skin at the side of Will’s neck, his thumb tracing the jawline with agonizing slowness. Will leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut, his breath hitching in his throat.
“Did you mean it?” Will asked, locking eyes with Mike.
Mike stilled for a moment. Trying to ask what he meant by that, because Mike said a lot of things to him in those secret letters and he meant all of them.
“What—?”
“ —that you…”
“Pretending not to love you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Losing you was the worst thing that I’ve ever went thru, Will.”
“If I don’t stop running now I will forever be.”
“I want to kiss you the next time we meet.”
“I meant everything. No matter which one you’re thinking about right now.”
Will’s breath hitched in his throat; his heart grew three sizes, making it hard to breathe.
Mike smiled, looking at the changing color of his face and he slowly pulled him in. His lips found his in a rhythm that was too beautiful and heavenly for a first kiss.
It was quiet, soft and long overdue. It tasted like sweet tea and late nights in the basement, art all over the walls and tears that came with the love that sprouted in their hearts for so long. It was warm, familiar and electric all at once.
When they broke apart, Mike rested his forehead against Will’s, his breath warm against Will’s lips. Will’s lips turned up a bit, not quite grasping the fact that the love of his life had finally kissed him.
After years of dealing with internal conflicts, shedding gallons of tears and a bunch of nasty fights with a side of broken promises and El acting as a deceiver, Will never thought this moment would ever arrive, but it did. It did, most beautifully,
"I’m breaking up with her tomorrow," Mike whispered, his thumb resting gently over Will’s racing pulse. "I can't do this shit anymore, Will."
"Perfect." Will smiled in the dark, closing his hand tight over Mike’s shirt and pulling him back closer. "I hate my sister," he whispered.
Mike smiled again. "I get why you do..."
"Good." He kissed him again and again until they memorized the taste of each other’s lips. "Never wear that shit outfit again—" He said in between kisses.
"Why? What's wrong with that?"
"You cannot be serious, Mike—"