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It was still dark out when Will woke up on March 22nd. Argyle would be picking them up at 7 to go to the airport and pick up Mike.
Mike.
Will hadn’t been able to sleep. A part of him was excited to see Mike and another part of him was slightly dreading it. It would be amazing, to finally see Mike after the last nine months apart.
But Will also knew how many letters El had gotten from Mike over the months. And how he hadn’t gotten a single one. A phone call or two around the holidays, when Mike had finished talking to El and she mentioned that Will was nearby, handing the phone off to him for a few minutes before Mike had to get back to his family.
Sometimes it felt like Mike had already given up on their friendship, and was just letting it die a slow, natural death.
And Will didn’t know what to do with that feeling.
So he painted.
But Mike was coming to visit. To visit him and El. And once they were together again, Will knew they’d be able to fall right back into their old relationship.
The drifting was natural, that’s what Jonathan and his mom had told him when they’d first moved, but if they all made an effort to stay in touch, he and his friends from Hawkins, they’d be okay.
They were too deeply bonded. Partially by the trauma of the past few years, but also by the years of friendship they’d had before that. Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will, they’d been the party, a band of brothers who would never turn on one another long before everything had gone wrong. The additions to their group, El, Max, were similarly close, something in the universe had brought them all together. And it had taken a while for Will to get used to it, but now that El was his sister, he could see why they had all come together, something deep had connected them all to each other.
But he and Mike, they’d always been closer than the others. Best friends. Like Lucas and Dustin, or El and Max. Their bond was different, special. Maybe not in the ways that Will sometimes wanted it to be. But special nonetheless.
And this trip, this trip was going to make everything okay, Will was sure of it.
As Will crept down the stairs to the kitchen he was greeted by the sight of his mom and brother standing behind the kitchen counter with a birthday cake alight with candles sitting in front of them.
“Happy birthday, Will,” Jonathan called out as Will approached them.
“Happy birthday!” His mom cheered as she skirted the table to pull Will into a warm hug.
“How are you both awake?” Will asked as looked up at the clock on the microwave in disbelief. Neither his mom nor his brother were morning people. They were never awake before nine unless it was for work and school. And even then that wasn’t always a guarantee.
“We had a feeling you’d be up early this morning,” Jonathan replies with a knowing smile. Trust his brother to know Will better than himself.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” His mom repeated as she squeezed him one last time before finally letting go. “Fifteen, I can’t believe the wonderful men you two are growing up to become,” She tells them both.
“Moooom,” Jonathan groaned.
Will just smiled.
The past few years had been hard for their family, and there were times when it felt like the nightmares would never end. That he was just too different. Too weird. And sure, life in California wasn’t perfect, but it was getting better. They were all adjusting.
Maybe everything would be okay.
Argyle and Jonathan were sitting on one side of Will, with El on the other. The early morning was already taking its toll on Argyle and Jonathan, the two were just about ready to fall asleep in the pleather airport chairs they were sitting on.
Will glanced over at El, seeing the same hopeful and excited smile he was wearing on her face as well. Will’s knee was bouncing as they all stared at the arrival gate. Eagerly awaiting the familiar figure that would be walking through the gate any minute now.
El was up out of her seat and racing forward to meet Mike the moment she spotted him.
Will hung back as he watched the happy couple reunite. Slowly making his way over as Mike explained his gift, a bouquet of flowers from Hawkins, to El.
“Hi,” Will breathed out when Mike’s gaze finally landed on him.
“Hey, man,” Mike greeted him though Mike’s half-hearted pat on Will’s shoulder as Will moved to greet Mike with a hug stung a bit more than Will wanted to admit as he awkwardly dropped his arms back to his sides.
“What’s that?” Mike asks him curiously as he points at the tube in Will’s hand.
“Oh, nothing,” Will says. “Just a painting I’ve been working on.”
“Oh,” Mike replies.
“I have the whole day planned,” El explained happily as she leaned into Mike, his arm now draped over her shoulders.
Will trailed behind the two with Jon and Argyle.
His hands clenched around the cardboard tube he’d forgotten he was holding.
Shit.
The breakfast burritos had been fine. I mean, they were almost as delicious as they always were, but there was a bitter aftertaste to them today. El had barely more than a few bites as she’d largely led the conversation for all five of them, only pausing everyone once and a while to take a bite and give Mike a chance to give the rest of them an update on what all had been happening in Hawkins recently.
When they arrived at the roller rink a part of Will wanted to stay in the car and convince Argyle to just take him home, but he knew Jonathan would never allow him to spend his birthday wallowing in his room so he swallowed down the neverending dread and anxiety that had made a home in the pit of his stomach beside his burrito and followed El and Mike towards the doors.
“Will!” Jonathan called out from the passenger seat of Argyle’s van. “Have fun.”
“Yeah,” Will muttered in reply as he turned to follow Mike and El into the roller rink.
Fun.
Birthdays were supposed to be fun. By now Will felt like he should have stopped holding out hope that he could really have fun. He wanted to give up on the idea that he was supposed to have fun, to be happy, four years ago when he’d been dragged into the upside-down.