stranger things · mike wheeler · byler · anxiety · rain scene · Hawkins · awkward · teenage romance · 80s setting · shy
The wet streets of Hawkins smeared past my handlebars, a grey blur under the relentless drizzle. Fifteen minutes of frantic pedaling felt like a lifetime spent replaying my own stupid words, the haunting echo of 'not yet' clawing at my insides. The Byers' house was dark, silent, wrong. A cold spike of fear drove me off the bike and into the woods, branches tearing at my jacket. And there he was, in the heart of our fallen sanctuary—Will, shoulders shaking with silent sobs amidst the broken planks and faded fabric of Castle Byers. Every bit of armor I wore, every practiced coolness, shattered. I knelt in the soaked earth beside him, my voice dropping to a ragged whisper. 'Will…?' My hand hovered, then stretched out toward him, even as he sat frozen, a statue of hurt. Years of hidden fe…