Chapter Text
To be needed was to have a place – a purpose. To belong.
It meant you were valuable, significant, to someone. It meant you had a place to go when you were lost, like a second home. It meant you had a place you belonged, even if it felt like you didn’t, like you were out of place and a misfit.
And to Michael Wheeler, being needed was the best feeling. It was something he craved, something he needed to survive. But he hadn’t felt very needed recently.
Sure, he had his friends, but they were barely around now, off with their own things. And his – now ex – girlfriend had moved miles away two years ago, along with his very best friend of ten years. They were the only people he’d really felt at home with, and now they were gone and he couldn’t do much about it but try to forget, because forgetting was better than remembering and being stabbed every time a memory popped up.
“Why is it so hot in here?”
Dark curls sticking to the back of his neck, Michael is pulled out of his thoughts, leaning against the sticky checkout counter.
Maxine’s thighs stick to the cool counter she’s sitting on and as she tries to get up, grimacing down at the uncomfortable stick when she moves her legs, her damp hair falls into her face, making her groan furthermore.
Giggles and chatter fill the echoey ice cream shop, either from the children in the arcade just across from Scoops, or from Erica and her little friends talking in hushed whispers in the corner of the shop.
Max eyes them, narrowing her eyes at them in warning in case they are, in fact, talking about them as it seems they are. She hates those little girls — the kind that stare and giggle, talking about who knows what.
She continues to complain to her unfortunate co-worker, his face flushed from the heat and fanning himself with his Scoops Ahoy hat, looking quite stupid with his hair all messed up and damp. She would have to guess that was what the girls were giggling about. She just had no idea why — sure, it was funny but not quite entertaining. Maybe it was just one of those boring summer days, the kind where there was nothing to do so literally anything seemed incredibly interesting.
Mike seems oblivious to this, continuing to fan himself and glare at the girls, who had yet to order. They’d just been sitting at that empty but now crowded table, giggling and talking incoherent through their laughter.
He bit down hard on his jaw. “Are you guys going to order anytime soon?” His eyes drifted to the service hours list beside the menu— they closed in roughly ten minutes. It would take at least five minutes for Max and Mike to finish making all the ice cream for all those girls, and more than another five minutes for those girls to finish their cones — if they ever did, with their tortuously slow licking at the ice cream, doing it just to purposefully waste time.
Erica lets out another high pitched giggle, nearing the sound of a chipmunk squeak. “Give us five.”
Max unsticks her bare thighs from the counter and jumps off the surface, fixing her navy blue shorts as she does so. “Five what. Seconds? Minutes? Cones?” She rolls her eyes, annoyed at this usual ritual the girls continued around this time every day this summer. “Be specific.”
Mike puts his hat back on and wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He opens up the ice cream case, the cold air hitting his face and making him sigh in temporary relief. He starts to clean off the serving utensils — getting out the scooper and half of their stock of sample spoons (Mike knew they’d want to try around ten flavors before finally picking the flavor that they’d gotten the day before.)
Erica, with another flick of her wrist and eye roll, makes her way to the counter, her pack of friends following behind her. “Can I try the strawberry?” She says this with a sly smirk at Mike.
“You literally got that yesterday,” Mike points out.
“And I’d like to try it again.”
Max comes over and puts on a strict expression. “There is literally three minutes left on our clock. Pick a damn flavor or we will be filing for loitering and employee harassment.”
“Not if we file for refusal of service to innocent customers," Erica retorts, waving around a ten dollar bill.
Max puts a hand on Erica’s shoulder in a firm grip — not so hard that it hurts her but enough that it sends a message to the little girl. “Pick a damn flavor.”
Erica scowls at Maxine. “I’m thinking.”
“Think faster. Two minutes.”
While Max and Erica are snarling at each other, Mike’s eyes drift to the rest of the girls and at one of them in particular. She’s younger looking, with short brown hair curled over her shoulders. Her mouth is slightly parted, looking like she wants to say something. Mike makes it obvious that he’s paying attention to her and smiles softly at her — she looks kind enough.
“Um, may I order?” She asks, returning his smile with one of her own.
He nods, urging her on — it’d been about time someone would order.
“Okay,” she says, squinting up at the menu. Not quite reading it, maybe just recounting her order. “Can I get. . . Two strawberry scoops in a bowl,” she starts to list off her order on her fingers, mentally listing it. “. . . Or, actually, can you change that to half and half?”
Mike stops typing on the register and nods, deleting the order. “Sure. Flavors?”
“Strawberry and mint chip, please.”
Michael pauses.
Strawberry and mint chip.
He feels an ache erupt in his chest. Mike urges himself out of his thoughts and to continue listening to the girl’s order.
“. . . whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and oreo bits.”
Again, he feels an ache in his chest — but it’s worse than just an aftershock now. It’s like he’s been stabbed.
This girl is ordering his usual. Mike’s gaze sweeps over the girl’s face again — she looks nothing like him. It wasn’t possible she was related to him. It was entirely possible, however, that it was just a coincidence; out of all the people in the world, there had to be at least two people who didn’t know each other and enjoyed the exact order of ice cream. But why did it have to be his order? The order that Mike dreaded — not because it seemed overly too sugary and random. Because it belonged to a boy he used to know.
But he wasn’t just any boy.
His name is William Byers. He was Michael Wheeler’s best friend since kindergarten — or at least, until eighth grade. Mike, slipping into his thoughts, subconsciously listens to the girls’ orders and rings them up, but in his head he is entirely somewhere else.
In his head, Michael Wheeler is there with his best friend in California, and maybe there they’re working in an ice cream shop together and giggling while they eat ice cream in the back of the shop on their lunch break. In his head, Mike and Will are still friends and they have been since that one day of kindergarten— the day Mike has deemed forever the day his life began — and they are closer than they have ever been. In his head, Mike never fucked up and let Will leave, and in his head they are conjoined at the hip. But that is only in his head.
After the chaos has died down and the girls have left without further trouble, Mike is still floating aimlessly around in his mind.
“Wasn’t that Will’s usual?” Maxine’s sudden question scares Mike out of his thoughts.
He finds himself wondering why Max had picked up on Will’s usual ice cream order. It was something that he’d gotten damn near every day of summer ‘85, yet something so minuscule that it was usually very easy to miss or just not pick up on. But Mike had memorized it, every day when they came to get ice cream from Scoops and annoy Steve and Robin. So, then again, what did that make Mike for knowing his best friends exact order? He hoped it just meant he was an observant friend. Mike nods absentmindedly. “Yeah, um. It was.”
He doesn’t want to talk about Will right now. He doesn’t want to think about him right now. He doesn’t want to think or talk about him ever. Yet his mind finds a way to betray him yet again.
It’s not like he hates or dislikes Will. No, he couldn’t hate him, with those big hazel fawn eyes and that sweet smile, cinnamon tinted hair falling over his forehead in wisps. Michael couldn’t hate Will — it was damn near impossible.
Max nods, picking up on Mike’s discomfort on the topic. She switches it to something similar — her own lost best friend. But Mike knows she’s just trying to get him to talk about Will, because it’s healthy to talk about feelings or something along those lines.
“I miss Jane,” Max says, filling the silence of the now closed ice cream shop. She’s hopping over the counter and locking up the front doors. “I miss her a lot. Sometimes we send letters, you know.”
Mike knows what she’s implying by this. Write Will a letter, she’s saying.
He doesn’t want to talk about Will. It physically hurts him to do so. “I’m not writing a letter to Will.” His chest aches at the feel of his ex-best friend’s name on his tongue.
“Well, why not? I know you miss him.”
You don’t know the extent of it, Mike wants to say. Instead, he bites his tongue to refrain from it. “I do. But I just don’t want to, okay?”
“You won’t get anywhere with that attitude, Mike.”
“Yes, mom,” he side eyes Maxine and gets to work wiping the sticky counters.
While closing up the doors, Max takes a few backwards steps and something crunches under her foot. She slowly lifts her shoe and scowls down at the floor. Someone had dropped their cone and not even bothered to clean it up. “You’re fucking joking,” Max slaps a hand to her forehead. “I do not get paid enough for this shit.”
Mike can’t help but crack a smile at that. But he agrees. They absolutely do not get paid quite enough to be dealing with such horrible conditions, plus such horrible customers. God, was it hot in here. “No, we do not. I swear, only $3 an hour?”
“Well, what do you need to pay for? Worrying about rent already, old man?” Max retorts, smiling playfully at him and wiggling her eyebrows.
“What do you need to pay for, then?” Mike challenges.
Maxine shrugs. “Shopping.” She says simply.
Mike rolls his eyes. “Yet another reminder of how I don’t understand girls.”
“That much was obvious with Jane. We’re just another species, isn’t that right?”
He bursts out laughing at this. It wasn’t the fact that what she said was all that funny, it really wasn’t. He was just delirious from the heat and honestly, he could feel the electric tension in the air and would like to stay away from Maxine’s bad side. Otherwise, he’d be stuck on the duty of scooping gum off of the bottom of the tables. He scrunches his nose at the thought of that.
Max gets on her knees and starts to scrub at the ice cream mess, her Scoops Ahoy hat falling into the puddle. She scowls at it and picks it up pinched between her fingers and holds it out in front of her. “Ew.”
Michael giggles again and comes over to help clean the floors. After, he decides to go back to his spot behind the counters, perched in between the corner where the checkout counter and toppings counter meet. It’s his usual spot because he likes the feel of the cool surface up against his ribs — the sharp pressure is a calming one, the coolness offering the slightest bit of comfort towards his constantly overheating self. This time, though, he does not stand there.
He grabs out two bowls and fills them with ice cream as Max tidies up the shop. His full eyebrows are furrowed in concentration as he works on the treats, floating back into his subconscious.
Will is the only thing on his mind. And Mike, no matter how much he’d like to deny it, knows that he’s the only thing that’s ever been on his mind.
Mike grabs the cold bowls of ice cream and hands one to Max. She immediately digs in, corner of her lips coated in a chocolate mess as she speaks her gratitude to her coworker. He shortly does the same, slowly picking at the sweet and minty mess of quickly melting strawberry and mint ice cream.
It’s no wonder why Will would like something like this. Will always loved anything strawberry. And they did say ‘you are what you eat,’ or something along those lines; Mike didn’t care to be accurate. He guessed that was why Will Byers was just the sweetest boy on earth. He swore that boy had to be a fallen angel, sent to earth and gifted to Mike from Heaven itself.
Max pulls Mike out of the shop from the back door and out they walk, side by side, to the front of the mall where they would wait to be picked up. Mike’s sister would be late again as she always was, probably busy with work and friends, and then finally remembering that she had to pick up her baby brother from his job because he couldn’t drive yet.
But Mike is silent today. Maybe it’s because he’s still slowly working on finishing his ice cream. Maybe he’s just ran out of things to say that are in any way interesting. He decides it’s the latter and looks around at his surroundings. A new flier has appeared on the Mall’s front doors. Mike makes his way over.
It had caught his eye with its brilliant colors — a teal-ish sky blue and summery yellow. The paper itself was the yellow color, poppy blue text in a bold font. A picture of a surfer riding a large wave is on the top — it’s eye-catching. It's a good advertisement tactic, Mike notes.
California State Surfing Competition.
California. His heart skips a beat. Mike reads on, skimming past the match times and dates.
Where: Lenora, California.
Final tournament: July 4th.
Offering up to $40k for the final winner.
Mike blinks. Forty thousand dollars. He could use some of that, he thinks.
Maxine comes up behind him, scaring him out of his thoughts. “You know how to surf, right, Mike?”
“Yeah. . .?” He looks at her out of the corner of his eyes. Mike already knows what she’s going to say.
“You should sign up.”
“No. I couldn’t. I’m not that good, like, at all.”
“Don’t undersell yourself. I’ve seen how good you can do.”
“Yeah, right.” He laughs sheepishly at her and she smiles back. Mike watches her sit back down on the curb, eating the rest of her melted ice cream. But he stays perched at that spot in front of the front doors, reading over the flier.
Maybe those surfing classes in middle school weren’t so useless, after all. He sighs. Fuck it. Might as well make this an interesting summer.
He grabs the pen provided and writes down three letters in loopy handwriting.
M.J.W.
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Love.
Love was an addicting feeling, a warm and fuzzy one that could melt even the toughest people’s hearts, like a popsicle on a hot day. Love was like warm rays of sunshine wrapping around a happy child’s body during summer, spending the easy-going day giggling with friends until their stomachs hurt, drawing with chalk and not a care in the world.
Love was something William Byers had been craving his entire life, yet hadn’t yet experienced, though he so badly wanted to. And once, he’d gotten pretty damn close. But now that chance was miles away, in the state of Indiana, and he was sure he’d never get that close again – or at least, surely not hanging around a pizza dough freezer.
And anyway, Will had been staring at that damned blue and yellow flier since that random passerby had hung it up outside the window. His gaze is fixed on it intently — it caught his eye immediately from where he sat on the counter, right by the phone. He made a mental note to go check it out later.
I wonder what it says?
Will had been staring at that damned blue and yellow flier since that random passerby had hung it up outside the window. His gaze is fixed on it intently — it caught his eye immediately from where he sat on the counter, right by the phone. He made a mental note to go check it out later.
The phone is ringing, but Will is too focused on the flier, squinting at the small print as if he could enlarge the teal blue text somehow. There’s an image on it, but he can’t decipher it from this distance, plus the dirtiness of the smudged window.
“Are you going to get that, Will?”
Will snaps his head up to see Jane, standing a few feet away from him and boxing a pizza. Will notes how good she’d been getting at working and in school. She offers him a soft smile, which he takes and in turn gives her a smaller smile.
“Will,” Jane says again, gaze drifting to the source of the annoyingly loud ringing — “are you going to get the phone?”
He snaps out of it. “Oh, right,” he mumbles and promptly grabs the phone, bringing it to his ear. “Surfer Boy Pizza, what can I get you?”
The person on the other side of the phone is barely audible for a few seconds until they get closer to the phone. They start to list their order and Will listens only subconsciously, scribbling down an order in quick, frantic, messy handwriting. He just nods and hums along with the customer. “And who will the order be for?”
“Maxine, please.”
Will pauses. He looks over at Jane, who he knows heard it too.
“Hello?”
“Yes, sorry,” he mutters. “Um. . a large pepperoni pizza, two bags of breadsticks, and a Diet Coke? For Maxine?” He goes over the order for clarity.
The woman over the phone confirms her order and Will passes it off to Jane, who starts immediately on the order. Will can feel the sharp tension in the air — something of sadness and grief. He hangs up the phone with his regular goodbye ritual and sets it down, letting out a long exhale as he does so.
When he looks over at Jane, he can see that same reflected pain in her brown eyes that he knows he has in his of honey. He stares down at his feet and swallows, collecting his thoughts.
Michael Wheeler.
Michael Wheeler was William Byers’ first friend.
Mike, he was better known as. Mike the Heart, to Will. His fearless paladin.
But Michael was not just Will’s first friend. He was his first love, too. Will loved him with all his heart, as you tend to do with your first real love. You put all your energy into them, all the love you have to give — all the love you wish to receive. Will loved Mike dearly.
So it really broke his heart when Will had to leave Mike — or better yet, Mike let him go — and had tried and tried with no avail to contact him. He was sure Mike was ignoring him, maybe he wanted no association with Will. Maybe Mike knew what a monster Will was. Maybe Will was too obvious about loving Mike and Mike caught on, though he was not usually the most observant.
But Will still loved Mike. Even if Mike wouldn’t reciprocate. Because Will has loved Mike for the entirety of his life; because he didn’t know what it was like to not love Mike. Sometimes he disliked Mike— maybe even hated him slightly in the moments where feelings were running high— but he still loved Mike during those times. Will had never not loved Mike and he will never ever not love him. He knew it would hurt him in the long run, but it was better for him to be hurt than for Mike to not be loved, because who could not love Michael “puppy-dog eyes” Wheeler?
And the flashbacks of memories that they would never share or create again still flashed through his mind. Like, the time when Mike took Will home after a scare during their seventh grade Halloween. Mike had told him he would take Will home, and instead of actually bringing Will to his house, Mike took him to his own. And, that one time when Mike slept on the uncomfortable hospital chair next to Will’s bed that whole night, refusing to leave his side. That grade year, Will had finally realized he loved Mike.
Will loved Mike. He still did, even if they were states and days away, even if they hadn’t talked in two years and even if Will was unsure he’d see him again. Mike was the only person Will had ever loved and would continue to be that only person.
He leaned against the counter and put his head in his hands, trying not to cry.
I want to stop loving you. But it’s the only thing I know how to do.
Loving Mike was like second nature to Will. Loving Mike was like breathing — easy, natural. Really, how could anyone not love him? With his dark curls, overflowing over his forehead, dark eyelashes framing his almond shaped brown eyes. Those eyes that Will could stare into for hours, find himself get lost in. Will could drown in Mike’s eyes. Will would drown in Mike’s eyes — Mike kept Will afloat, but he also made Will forget how to swim sometimes.
“Shit!”
Will snaps his head up to look at Jane, who’s shiny eyes are focused on a pizza, which is now currently on the floor. Pepperoni dotted the floor and sauce and cheese coated it.
“Holy fuck,” William mumbles, staring in disbelief at the upside down pizza.
Jane shoots Will a sheepish smile; one that said something like, we’re so fucked and I’m so sorry and maybe even we should run.
Nonetheless, Will stays glued to his spot. The two siblings hear footsteps and crane their necks in unison towards the sound. Their manager, a much older man than the two — possibly older than the two combined — stood in the hallway with his arms crossed over his chest.
Well, shit. Maybe they should’ve run.
Their manager puts his head in his hands and stares at the two teenagers. “You two can go home now.” He says it so simply put that Will’s body lurches.
Are we fired? You can’t fire us, we just started to work here. Will wants to say this but bites his tongue to stop himself. He shouldn’t, but then again, he should. He should be stronger, braver; more masculine, less feminine— less weak. Or, that was what he was told repeatedly as a child. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he and Jane just stare at their manager like deer in the headlights. Well, Will is more like a deer, with his cinnamon tinted hair and big hazel eyes. Jane is more like a little brown bunny with big ears with her long curly hair and big brown eyes alike her brother.
“Well? Scram!” He yells at them and they both react with a lurch, scattering off just like their frightened animal counterparts.
Will and Jane rush out of the shop like the startled fawn and bunny they are, but as soon as their heartbeats have calmed, they are giggling. They are giggling so hard that their stomachs hurt and they are falling into each other from laughing so hard.
As they walk past the traffic light pole, Will stops Jane and they stand in front of the brightly colored flier, newly hung up. Will squints at the teal print, annoyed at the glare from the sunlight. He shadows it with his hand and stares at the outline of a surfer on a large wave.
California State Surfing Competition.
Surfing. . .
Will knew how to surf — he’d learned during the first summer of being in California. He’d done it because he thought that Mike would be visiting and wanted to impress him.
“I want to learn to surf,” he remembered Mike saying one day during a hot summer in Hawkins. Maybe it was around fifth grade.
“There’s no ocean in Hawkins, though,” Will tells him.
“Maybe we should visit California and learn how to surf together.”
Will smiles at this. Mike smiles back. And life seems to pause; stuck in time, with only Will and Mike staring at each other in complete comfortable silence.
“You should do it,” Jane echoes Will’s thoughts.
He turns to face his bunny-eyed sister. “I couldn’t. Mom needs me at home.”
“Jonathan and I will be there.” She says softly.
Will considers it. He can see himself, riding a huge wave as people — Mike and Jane, Jonathan and Nancy — cheer for him in the crowd. He smiles at the thought. Especially at the thought of Mike cheering for him. Or just seeing Mike. Will missed him, more than he could put into words; more than he could express. Oh, what he’d do to see him again.
Jane puts a gentle hand on Will’s shoulder. “Please do it. You could take me shopping. I need new pants.”
At the mention of shopping and money, Will’s gaze drifts down to look at the winning prize amount. Forty thousand.
Will smiles softly at his sister and pulls her into a hug. “Okay. I will.”
After a slow moment, Jane voices a thought. “Lenora? That’s in our town.”
“Yeah. They’ve held surf competitions in the cities a bit away . . . I guess they decided Lenora is a good spot this year.”
Jane nods and seems pleased, starting to walk off slowly, allowing Will to take a second to sign up and still catch up to her.
Will grabs the provided pen and starts to fill out a slip, signing off his full government name along with other personal information.
If you are accepted, you will get this back in the mail with another letter, stating so.
He breathes out slowly and moves his pen over to the signature part of the slip, looking over the information one more time to make sure everything is correct. Is he really doing this?
William slowly signs off his initials in messy-looking cursive.
W.J.B.
William Jacob Byers.
He replaces the slip in the turn in box before he can stall any more and lets out a deep breath, slowly stepping away. Oh, why did he do that? He couldn’t even change his mind now.
Will’s stomach twists. Why did he do that? He really wasn’t all that good. If anything, he’d just make a fool of himself. But, maybe this would make this boring summer a bit more interesting. He could use that prize money, too.
Whatever. It’s just for fun. It can’t be that bad, right?
Really. . . what’s the worst that could happen?
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