holee fucc you guys
i'm posting chapter y right now but z is coming right after bc it's been done since before christmas and i'm just,,
this fic is officially done? wow..
also please let it be known that for the purposes of this chapter, mike is not as uncoordinated as we all know finn is lol
Y is for Yes
May 1989, Hawkins, IN
Mike's really hoping this doesn't go to shit, and that involves trusting the cheerleading squad. Will has told him that Jennifer Hayes is trustworthy, but he isn't sure about the rest of the cheerleaders. They aren't exactly the fondest of him and his group of friends.
Nevertheless, he works up the courage to talk to Jennifer after school one day, and she agrees because she feels like she kind of owes him after his help in chemistry class (also because Jennifer is generally a nice girl, and who is she to keep a boy from asking his girl such an important question?). Now he's literally spent an hour with four of them for the past three days so he can learn to do a cartwheel. Except Jennifer wants him to do more than one?
He's lying on the school field, panting, hair sweaty and shirt rumpled, as a group of cheerleaders surround him. "Come on, Mike!" Says Jennifer. "You've done a bunch of good ones, now you just have to do them in a row."
He groans. "I'm gonna die before that happens."
Silvia Gillespie snorts from his right, offering him a hand. "Get up, wastoid, it won't look cool if you only do one, and then there would've been no point in us helping you."
"Jesus, you guys are aggressive."
A week later, Jennifer, Silvia, and the other two have deemed Mike stable enough in his cartwheels that he doesn't need to practice with them every day. Now it's down to keeping them stable and working out the kinks of the rest of his plan with the remaining members of the squad. The last pep rally of the year is in two weeks, so Mike has exactly fourteen days until he has to execute this plan perfectly.
One of those weeks is spent fighting with El, which takes half his morale away when he practices outside of his house because this is for her but she doesn't get it. She thinks he's cheating on her instead, which is literally the complete opposite of what he's doing, and it makes him so mad that he trips on every other cartwheel. He's losing it and Lucas tells him so when he catches Mike doing some half-assed practice.
"She's literally mad at you and you're out here doing cartwheels instead of making up?"
"You don't get it, Lucas! Just let me practice in peace!"
Lucas snorts. "That's a level of commitment I don't know if I've seen anywhere else. Or maybe it's regular old Stupid Michael making an appearance."
Mike stands up, huffing. "It's for prom, okay? We'll just have to make up before the pep rally next week, but I think we will because I don't know how much longer I can keep telling myself I'm mad at her. Like, I am, but also not."
Lucas leaves him alone after that, simply going inside to grab the jacket he'd left accidentally on Saturday.
The couple does make up, but then everything goes to shit on the Friday before the Monday pep rally when it seems like they've broken up. Fuck college, he thinks as he lies on the basement floor in tears, I won't even go if it means we don't have to break up.
It's Lucas who finds him again, but Mike doesn't offer an explanation this time, just a heartbroken look that tells his best friend enough. However, when Will calls later that evening, and Mike makes up with El once more, he's back to his plan with renewed fervour. He even enlists Holly to help him paint out some signs and cover them in pink glitter (she has a lot of it, and El likes both pink and shiny, glittery things).
By the time they finish, both siblings are covered in hot pink glitter and their mother yells at them for getting the carpet full of it too, but Holly and Mike high five at their accomplishment (Mike's also just proud it doesn't turn out half as bad as the time El made Christmas cards and got glitter all over him and then everyone else, somehow).
Sunday afternoon, Mike brings Lucas with him to the school field for the last practice with the cheerleaders so he can watch how the plan will unfold, and Lucas commends them all on this fine orchestration. Mike can't really tell if he's being sarcastic or not, but he thinks it's pretty cute and so do the girls, so he decides he's gonna take his shot anyway.
On Monday, just before the rally is due to start, Mike runs up to Lucas in the hall. "Lucas!"
Lucas turns. "What?"
"You and Will are the only ones who know what I'm planning but I don't know where he is, so I need you to, like, distract El, or something," he says, out of breath. "Or make up something so that she doesn't wonder why the hell I'm not with you guys."
Lucas squints before nodding. "Don't worry. I got it, man."
"That sounds a lot more reassuring coming out of your mouth than Dustin's. Thanks, man!" He's off again, needing to get to the field before most of the school does so he can hide out near the cheerleaders without getting questioned.
A few minutes later, El is sitting down next to Max near the top of the bleachers at the end of the row, leaving a space on her other side for her tardy boyfriend. Lucas had said that Mike went to the washroom and should be back soon, and not to worry. However, as ten, then fifteen, then twenty minutes go by with no sign of him, El is definitely worrying. It shouldn't have taken him this long to use the washroom! What if he's hurt himself? Or worse, what if the bad men have come back and kidnapped him? That's the ever-present fear, one that will never really go away, that her friends and family will be taken away from her.
Just as she's about to get up and go look for him, Lucas reaches across Max and says, "Hey, the cheerleaders are coming on and they're more interesting than the athletes. Just wait until they're done and then you can go look for him, alright?"
El gives him a weird look, but she says okay anyway and sits down again. She watches as the group of girls does their usual combination of flips, tumbles, throws, and jumps that always mesmerizes her because how do they do that? It's literally one of the coolest things ever. The whole school is on their feet screaming and applauding them, but that means they're done so El gets up and starts walking down the stairs and Lucas doesn't stop her. She's at the bottom when Jennifer Hayes picks up the microphone that the coaches had used to announce athletes' names and starts to speak.
"Thank you so much, Hawkins High!" She yells, chest heaving as she smiles widely. "We love you! Now, we have another, special, routine we added on by request of someone who is insanely devoted to his girlfriend! The girls are just setting up real quick and it's a short routine, so we'll be done in no time!" She puts the mic back and runs over to her position on the field. The other cheerleaders are carrying some pieces of white bristol board onto the grass and getting into formation behind them.
El is intrigued now. What boy got the cheerleaders to help him ask his girlfriend to prom? That's all this can be, really. She wishes that Mike would just ask her already, and she decides then and there that if he doesn't do it in the next week she's going to ask him herself. She stands on the edge of the field next to the bleachers and observes as the group of four on the far left does a series of cartwheels and back handsprings, then one girl runs forward to grab the bristol board in front of her and her teammates hoist her up into the air. A glittery pink P shines in the sunlight.
Aw, this is cute! That girlfriend is lucky, El thinks. The next group does the same and lifts up a sparkling R. The third lifts an M, and with the last group of girls rises a question mark. There's one board left in the middle which must be the O, and onto the field comes running another person who is not in cheerleading uniform, so it must be the boy who's orchestrated this.
He does five slightly crooked cartwheels in a row (El counts), and almost falls at the end. He picks up the last board and it's a heart instead of an O, and in it there is a drawing. El's close enough to see that the drawing is of a picture she knows Jonathan took. It's a picture of her and Mike when the ball dropped at midnight on the first day of 1987. It's a picture she knows both she and Mike have a copy of, and that's when she notices that the boy standing under the heart is Mike himself, grinning wildly at her.
"EL!" He yells as loud as he can, voice cracking. "WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME?"
It's at this moment that it really, truly, hits home for her how in love she is. He went to all the effort of organizing this, convincing some of the most popular girls in school to help him along with what must have been her own brother, judging by the drawing, just to ask her to prom. If that isn't the definition of devoted, then she doesn't know what is, and she thinks Jennifer was quite right in using the word to describe him a few minutes earlier.
"YES!" She yells back, then runs over and tackles him to the ground, taking the sign with them. Their entire school is screaming behind them, because they've never seen anything so cute. It's a promposal for the books, and will remain legendary at Hawkins High for a long time. As she looks into his eyes and sees her very feelings reflected there, she thinks that there's never been a love like this.
so you really thought this was gonna be the proposal chapter? lol #fakenews
i mean i guess it could be considered a proposal but it's not a proposal proposal yknow
gimme a looksee on tumblr urdearestmom bc i am going to start writing new stuff soon and will be posting progress updates and also new friends are great? :D