Chapter Text
Hopper was hiding something.
And Eleven knew it.
It wasn’t like things weren’t good. Things had really been great since Saturday night. She and Hopper had woken up early the next morning, he’d made Eggo sundaes for the both of them, and they’d talked through the plan, piece by piece, explaining every part to El in simple enough terms that they were on the same page.
She’d learned that, while, between the two of them, Hopper was adopting her, to the rest of the world, he would be her birth father (though she was a ‘surprise’ to him), and people would start knowing about her soon, because daughters don’t just appear out of thin air before the school year starts. They talked about the ‘new and improved “don’t be stupid” rules’—the door still stayed locked unless she heard the special knock, but going outside turned from “no” to “limited” (“limited” being with Hopper or other “specifically established circumstances”), and friends were only allowed over when given specific permission and advanced notice.
(Except in case of emergencies was the unspoken asterisk.)
Mike would be able to come by first, then once they’d ‘tested out the waters’ (a phrase Hop had to explain to her), Dustin, Lucas, Will and Max could start coming, too. Nancy. Jonathan. Joyce. (El couldn’t wait for Joyce to start coming by. She’d really missed Joyce.) And that thought was what had sparked an idea in her mind.
“If people are going to know about me, why can’t I go out?”
Hopper had rolled his eyes, cutting into another Eggo as he spoke. “Kid, the lab’s shut down, but we still don’t know—”
“—Not now. But after we...test the waters,” She replies, using the phrase she’d just learned cautiously, looking for some indication in his eye she’d used it correctly. “Safe places.”
And after a bit of light debate, he’d agreed, and a clause about going out in public was added to the ‘new and improved “don’t be stupid” rules’—when they decided it was safe, she could go out to a list of “to be determined” locations, only with a chaperone. (It was quickly established that Mike did not count as a chaperone.)
But after breakfast, Hopper went to work. On a Sunday.
He’d taken care of her over the past year, but that care went both ways. She worried when he was out later than usual on a shift, hated when he smoked more than his usual, and tried to keep the food warm until he got home. Weekends, which he’d pointed out to her as the beginning and end days of the week on the folded up calendar they kept on the kitchen table, he usually had off (because he’s the chief, and the chief is the boss, and unless something bad’s happening, the chief can take a break on the weekends, like her friends take from school). And when he had to work on a weekend, he’d always told her in advance.
But yesterday, he’d only let her know, waking her out of her sleep, that they needed to have their talk over breakfast, because duty called.
And there was something fishy about it.
Then, this morning, he didn’t go to work. Said he was ‘making it up to her’ for having to work the day before so last minute. So they’d spent the morning before lunch fixing up the cabin and making sure everything was ‘nice and tidy’ (they’d both been trying to do better at that, even though they never had visitors, though that was changing soon), and spent the time after lunch watching soaps while she asked him questions about why he hadn’t liked school.
(She wanted to ask him other questions, like when he was going to tell her friends about the new plan and about them being a family, and when Mike could start coming over to tutor her, but she’s asked once, when he came home from work last night, and he’d said he would the next time he was in town later this week—and while she wanted it all to happen faster, he’d given her a real answer and promised, so she was taking that as a win.)
All in all, though, the day had been good—until there was a knock on the door, and her blood went cold.
Knock knock.
Knock.
Knock knock knock.
Her eyes immediately lock on Hopper, a million thoughts rushing through her head—we’d just gotten safe, I’d just gotten a family, this is home, I can’t go back there, I can’t keep running, is everyone okay, did they get them first, Mike—
“Hey,” He responds softly, his eyes considerably less concerned than hers (she’s not sure if that makes her more or less worried) and his hands quickly but gently coming to rest on her shoulders. “Calm down, okay? Breathe.”
(He hadn’t expected her to panic this much. He was just trying to surprise her. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she’d take after him, immediately falling into defense mode at the first sign of danger. And while Wheeler using his knock let Hopper know that it wasn’t someone else at the door, El didn’t have the same warning. Shit. Well, she’ll forgive me in like, thirty seconds. )
“We’ve got a story now, yeah? Let’s...try and act normal,” He offers, getting to his feet and taking a fake glance out the window as he flips off the television. “I don’t see anything weird, so let’s...let’s give this a shot, Jane,” Hopper continues, using the name for emphasis, seeing her body relax just slightly as she gets to her feet. “I’ll be right behind you.”
And while both of them know that Eleven’s powers were far more powerful than the guns Hopper kept in the house, she always appreciated his reassurance. Because she did feel safe with him around. The fact that Hopper didn’t seem as nervous about someone knowing their secret knock would’ve felt fishy to El if she hadn’t just plunged into a brief but deep panic about losing everything. So she carefully unlocks the door, with her hands, bolt by bolt (Jane Hopper doesn’t have powers, she can hear Hop say in her head), taking a deep breath and glancing back again to see Hop a few feet behind her before opening the door.
Mike.
Before either of them can think, they’re hugging again, holding each other like they did that first night after the 353 days apart, taking in deep breaths and both trying to hold back the happy tears Hopper had explained to El. But it’s different than that night, because even though their hands are still clasped in the fabric of coats and plaid shirts, there’s no rush to let go, at least, not until—
“—Get in here, Wheeler, you’re gonna freeze to death and let all the warm air out.” And it all seems to start to click for El as she releases Mike from her embrace, tugging him in behind her and shutting (and locking) the door with her mind. “Hey, what were we—”
“It’s Mike.”
“Yeah, I know it’s Mike, I can see him right there. But you gotta start trying to do things without your powers before we start goin’ places, okay?” He looks between the two of them, the boy still clearly processing his surroundings and El, glued to his side, giving him a nod. “Mike knows the story we’re using and our rules, right kid?” Now, the taller boy nods, snapping back to attention.
El’s brow furrows, glancing back and forth between Hopper and Mike. “He does?”
“Yeah, that’s why I went into work yesterday. T’talk with him about everything.”
She thinks a moment, trying to process his words. She knew something had been fishy about him these past couple days. “...So, you lied.”
Great . “It’s not...I was trying to surprise you. Like a good lie.” She’s not entirely buying it, but he knows fully well that, with the Wheeler kid standing right there, she can’t stay mad for very long. (He wants to hate that, with every moment he sees the the two of them together, he gets softer on the whole thing , understands instantly what they mean to each other and knows fully well he’s going to be an outsider looking in on this for a long time, but he can’t bring himself to do it.)
“You might wanna take off your coat, kid, if you’re plannin’ on stayin’ a while,” He says, a hint of a teasing tone hidden behind his gruff voice. His eyes follow the boy as he reluctantly steps away from El’s side, putting his backpack on the ground and quickly tearing off his scarf and coat to place them on the hooks Hopper had installed near the door. “...So here’s the deal, you two.” He’s gotten so damn soft. “I’m gonna trust you in here while I go get stuff for dinner—Wheeler, you give your mom a call t’let her know I invited you to stay and eat with us as a thanks for your first day tutoring.”
Hopper had thought about the idea a lot over the last day. He’d known that he was gonna take the day off, but how the rest of the day would go… If he was being completely honest with himself, there was an underlying guilt that still pulled at him. Not just from keeping El quiet for the past year, no—he figures he and the Wheeler kid have at least started to reconcile on that front. But every so often, there’s an echo in his head, a reminder that El probably wouldn’t have disappeared in the first place if he hadn’t sold her out to that asshole Brenner from Hawkins Lab last year. It’d all only been made worse as he realized, over the year they spent together, that the man was a very specific and direct source of Eleven’s pain. She still hadn’t explained. He was still afraid to ask.
And while every fiber of his parental being was setting off alarms in his head at the idea of leaving a teenage boy of unclear relationship to El in the house alone with her, Hopper also had to rationalize with himself the kind of kid that Mike Wheeler was. Not just the fact that he and his friends spent most of their time at the arcade, or playing some nerdy board game, or that he was definitely the sort of kid Hopper would’ve give a shitty nickname to in high school like Bob the Brain —no, he remembered Joyce Byers’ stories over the last year, when he’d ask about the kids, about how poorly Mike had been doing. Falling asleep in school, hearing voices, getting thinner than he ever had been, sneaking out to the woods to look for the girl that Hopper had hidden a stone’s throw away—calling every night for 353 days.
He trusted Mike Wheeler.
These kids had a lot to talk about. And it felt like a bizarre intrusion of privacy for him to be there for it. Even if it was his cabin.
“No bullshit or messing around, okay? El knows the house rules, stay away from the windows and all, no answering the door unless you’re sure it’s me—I’ll get a couple errands done and grab food, and then I’ll be right back here. Understood?” His eyes directly meet Mike’s, whose face pales before giving him a nod—but Hop can read the grateful expression hidden behind the slight fear.
(A healthy dose of paternal fear is good.)
So he grabs his coat and keys, and with one last look at the two of them (you sucker ), heads out into the afternoon.
And then, they’re alone. Alone for the first time since she was in his basement and their friendship was new and her hair was shorter and how could he have guessed that she’d have these curls but that hardly matters because she’s right here, and they’re standing together in silence for only a moment, maybe two before they’re hugging again and finally letting the happy tears just flow. His hands grip tightly, balling up in the back of her plaid shirt as her smaller hands hold onto his sweater, their breathing, sobbing, heartbeats falling back into sync.
Because the first time he held her again, they cried, yes—but the moment was torn away, and the world spun around them like a whirlwind. Mike had hardly processed she was back until she was gone again. And the second time—anything beyond typical teenage interaction, anything that would appear out of place in the eyes of a few hundred students, well...they couldn’t.
They stay that way for a few moments, their embrace a reassurance that the whole thing isn’t a dream—for Mike, being near her after nights of calling into the a one way radio to her, and for El, a contrast to every time she’d try to touch him in the void and he’d disappear. El’s small hands eventually move from his back to his upper arms, still gripping onto his sweater as their eyes meet, and he’s suddenly at a loss for words.
“...Happy tears,” She whispers, the remnants of her own crying clear in the thickness of her soft voice. Her hands finally leave his arms, and while he briefly mourns the loss of her touch, suddenly her big sleeves are over her hands and begin wiping away the moisture on his face. He can’t help a small, stifled laugh through a sniff.
“Yeah, real happy,” He says back, his eyes just taking her in. El. “I’m sorry, I just—I can’t believe you’re here, you’re—” Breathe, Mike. Don’t act like a total idiot. It’s just El. (But that’s the thing—it’s just El. No one’s missing or hurt, the universe isn’t falling apart, they aren’t about to die, it’s just… El.) “—Your hair is so curly.”
Ugh, you wastoid. There’s so much to talk about, so much that’s important, it’s been so long, and he’s talking about her hair, and—
She’s laughing.
Mike’s never heard a better sound.
That’s when it clicks, again; they have time. They have time for him to gawk at her hair, for her to laugh, look at the trees, watch movies, try different food—she’s not going anywhere because there’s no way in hell he (or Hopper, or Mrs. Byers, or Lucas or Dustin or Will or Max or anyone) is gonna let that happen. So he’s grinning, too, her laughter purely infectious, his smile not breaking as she continues wiping the tears from his face with the long sleeves of her flannel.
She’s still smiling as her laughter dies down, a grin echoing his on her lips. They’re comfortable, just the two of them—it’s always been that way. And he’s grateful for it. No matter how awkward or dumb he gets.
“—Sorry, I—” He begins, reaching up to do the same with her face with the ends of the sleeves of his sweater. Mike was so nervous leading up to this, even if his excitement trumped his nerves—but now that he’s standing here with her, it all seems to wash away. Because she’s El. Things always had come naturally for them, even when it was far more difficult to communicate.
There’s a hint of nerves in her eyes, though, as her hands pull from his cheeks, toying at her hair. He’s worried, suddenly, But before he’s able to ask—
“Still pretty?”
Oh. Oh.
“—The prettiest.” He’s speaking before he’s thinking, but if he’d thought about it, he still would’ve said it, because he means it. He’s happy to have her back because he wants this normalcy for her—but a part of that normalcy, he’s justified to himself, is… Liking someone. Like-liking. But Mike hates saying it like that, because it just doesn’t sound right. He likes El. He definitely likes El. But he doesn’t just like El.
(He’d thought about it over the year she was gone, on his worst days, the days where he let himself believe she was truly dead. He’d thought about what she really meant to him, after he’d fight with Dustin and Lucas and they’d try to tell him that he was overreacting , that they’d all lost someone. After the first time, he’d yelled that it had just been different. Because they were, and even though he was only twelve then, he knew, he knew—)
His words create a warm feeling in El’s chest—it always had, when he’d called her pretty. But before, she didn’t entirely understand. A part of her had always attributed it to the fact that Mike had been the one to really step up when it came to keeping her safe. She had stayed in Mike’s basement, ridden his bike, worn his clothes, he’d given her food and safety and loyalty and a home —not a home like a place, not like the cabin, like what Hop had given her, but every place where she was with him, even the void, when he didn’t know she was there and her only lifeline was the sound of his voice and the tears she couldn’t wipe from his cheeks, felt like home .
So Mike had, somehow, become her most important friend. Her favorite. It meant more when he stayed to walk beside her, or called her “pretty”, or took her hand, or defended her. It wasn’t that Dustin and Lucas weren’t important to her—the opposite, actually. They’d become her family, even over the short week they’d spent together. But with Mike, it was different.
(This was all not to mention that it was Mike she’d saved at the quarry, Mike she’d called for when Papa came for her, Mike she’d said goodbye to when she thought she was never coming back, Mike’s house she’d ran to, and Mike she’d cried, begged, pleaded to see for nearly a year. Always Mike.)
She hadn’t been entirely sure what the feeling was—she’d learned a lot over the last year with Hopper, but it took a lot for them to reach the point of really talking about their feelings. Neither of them were any good at it, so they avoided it. They were trying more, though, in the last month. Hop had described it as a “breaking point”, and that they couldn’t (and shouldn’t) just keep going on like nothing had happened. So while they were still taking it one step at a time, they were trying.
The only thing close to talking about it she’d gotten had been a couple of months after she came to live with him, one afternoon Hop had been home and she’d been watching her soap operas, as he’d told her they were called. A man had pressed his lips against a woman’s lips—and El remembered the night not so long ago when that had been her and Mike, in the cafeteria.
She’d asked him what it was, and he’d gotten a bit red and huffed something about it being called kissing, and that it was something that people who loved each other did, people in romantic relationships, like boyfriends, people who are special to each other, who were each others’ most important person—but sometimes family, too, which was he would kiss her head sometimes before he left for work or put her to bed. She’d slept comfortably that night knowing fully well that she knew she loved at least two people.
1—Hopper, in a family sort of way, even if they weren’t family (yet).
And 2—Mike. In a romantic sort of way, the way you loved someone you were in a relationship with. Like a boyfriend.
(She’d learned later that you could love friends, too—that there were a lot of ways to love people, and things (like Eggos, or Days of Our Lives), and it was up to you who (or what) you chose to love, and how you loved those people and things.
“Do you love Joyce?” Her question came out of the blue one day—Hopper nearly choking on his morning coffee at her words. It was innocent enough. He’d been telling her about how he went with Joyce and Will every week to Will’s sessions. She’d asked once why he was going, and he had explained to her that he cared about them, wanted to help take care of anything they needed—and the feelings sounded familiar enough.
“—Yeah, I—I guess, kid. Like a friend,” Hop had replied. He’d seemed embarrassed enough that she’d stopped asking questions about love from that point on.)
But kissing, like she saw on television—that was reserved for the person you loved in a romantic sort of way. And when Mike had kissed her the first time, the second time, the third time, saying goodbye at the end of the Snow Ball, it gave her the same warm feeling in her chest she had when they held hands, or when he called her pretty, or beautiful. So unlike before, she understood what the feeling, the warmth, meant. At least in a very basic sort of a way. (There were still so many questions unanswered— why do people kiss, when do you kiss someone—that she had stored away in her head for the right time.)
The warmth remained in her chest as she took Mike’s hand, her delicate smile still covering her face (the prettiest) as she brought him over to sit on the couch with her, needing to sit and introduce him fully into her space, the space that had become her home, that she hadn’t shared with anyone. She sits, tucking her knees up closer to her body as he comes and sits beside her—and El doesn’t need anything more than this, really, the reassurance that he’s not going to disappear into a cloud of smoke.
(It’s partially why she hasn’t broken physical contact with him since he’d gotten here.)
“—I missed you,” Mike breaks the silence again, turning to look at her as they sit, their sides still touching because she’s so close and he’s not about to fight it.
“Missed you, too.” Her reply is instant, and he’s grinning like an idiot, again—or maybe his last grin still hasn’t faded from his face. “—But not anymore. Not again.” It’s a statement. A promise, without a mention of the word. “Never again.” Because she’s not going anywhere, and they’re starting this new phase of her life together—but his side of it is a promise to never let anything happen to her again.
Mike nods in response, a pink tint developing behind the freckles on his cheeks as she pushes a bit closer to him. He doesn’t mind at all, but it’s unfamiliar (and there’s an itching in the back of his head that’s hoping the feeling becomes familiar soon). “So this is...where you’ve been?” His eyes look around the cabin properly, taking in the little details—the kitchen behind him, the room he’s sure is El’s...he’s still not entirely past Hopper keeping her from him, but he’s glad she had this.
“Mhm. Since…” She’s clearly thinking, trying to remember the word. “Day before Christmas.”
Mike can practically feel his heart stop. She’d come here Christmas Eve, which meant— “Christmas was...was over a month after we lost you.” I lost you. “Were you…” His voice is shaking, riddled with concern as he finds himself reaching for her hand again. “ There, or…”
She shakes her head. “Not in the Upside-Down,” she confirms—Mike letting out an audible exhale at her words. He had nightmares about her being there, stuck there—he hadn’t been there, or seen it, but Will had said enough. He’d been convinced for so long that was where she was, trapped. He’d even tried to get into the lab to check for a gate, once. “I was there at first,” she continues. “Got out.” El pauses, an almost guilty look on her face. “Came to look for you. At home.” She frowns. “The bad men were there first.”
Mike’s lips part slightly, his eyes widening as he instantly makes the connection, squeezing her hand. “I knew I saw you,” he breathes. “I knew it, I knew even when they went to look for you outside and couldn’t find you—” She could’ve been safe, could’ve had a home so much faster if it weren’t for those fucking bastards , if they’d left sooner, or he’d gone to look himself…
“Ran into the woods.” It’s like she’s read his mind. “Hid there until Hop found me.”
A month. He can feel the color draining from his face, his whole body begin to shake as the images flash through his mind of her he’d feared for so long, feared every time he snuck out the basement door late at night to search the woods; El, cold and alone, without food, nothing but Nancy’s old dress and his old shoes and Hopper’s shirt and— He snaps out of it. He’s got a lot of questions, but he’s letting himself get carried away. As upset as the thoughts make him, he can’t even begin to imagine how she felt.
He wants to change the topic, change it to something happy, something better, something—
“Wait.” She looks up at him as he gets to his feet, eyes confused at the sudden change, hand still gripping his. “Let me get something from my backpack.” He’s expecting her to let go so he can go grab the bag, but she instantly jumps up, too. (And there’s a tug at the back of his thoughts that reminds him that this is forever now, that she’s not going anywhere. It’s hardly occurred to him that she might be having the same thoughts or fears. He feels like he should be blushing at all the hand holding, all the contact, but it just feels right. Like a lifeline. For both of them.)
He brings the backpack back to the couch with them, zipping it open as they sit facing each other, and pulling out the bag from inside he’d packed that morning at breakfast—for a moment, he thinks it’s a dumb gesture—but then her eyes light up. Quickly, she’s ignoring the plastic bag with the Eggos in it and she’s hugging him again, a bit awkwardly with the backpack still stuck between them, but it’s nice. “Thank you, Mike.” And while it seems like it’s for the waffles, there’s a weight to her voice that insists it’s for so much more.
So she pulls back, settling in beside him, their sides pressed against each other as she begins eating the cold Eggos from the bag in a content silence. It’s when her head tilts to the side, resting on his shoulder, the cabin around them quiet besides the ever-present and excruciatingly loud pounding of his own heart in his chest, that Mike decides he could live in this exact moment forever.
“You grew,” El murmurs after a while, her voice quiet—and he can’t tell if she’s happy or sad about the fact. It’s true. She felt smaller in his arms when they’d hugged, despite her having finally reaching a healthy weight. He’s always wanted to protect her. She’d protected him enough for a lifetime, and paid for it. And while he didn’t have any sort of superpowers like her, he was loyal to a fault. Lucas once joked it’d get him killed. It was funny back then, when he was just a Paladin in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Now, it was a little more scary.
“Nancy says I got taller but skinnier,” He replies with a small frown.
“...You wouldn’t eat.” It’s not a question, but a statement. Almost an accusation. She’s still tucked against him, but he can feel her big, brown eyes staring at him. And for a moment, he doesn’t want to meet them. Because she heard. He’d always had a feeling, always hoped that she’d listen here or there, that somehow, his messages to her over those 353 days had gotten to her. He hadn’t stopped, hadn’t missed one—not Christmas, not New Year’s, not his birthday, not the day Lucas and Dustin insisted on holding a funeral for her— not once had he given up on her.
But he hadn’t counted on what had really been going on—that she’d been listening to him the entire time. That she knows about his slow but sure deterioration, physically, mentally. She’d heard him weep, scream, shout over her. A manifestation of his heartbreak.
“I didn’t know—”
“—Mike.” Her hand’s found its way to his cheek, forcing their eyes to meet. He feels guilty, guilty for the way he acted. But this is El. Her face is innocent, but determined, and though Mike hardly knows a fraction of what she’s really been through, he’s constantly amazed by her strength. “—I’m not going anywhere. Promise.”
And she means it. Despite the nagging at the back of El’s head, the “what if” that came with what the man in Chicago had said about Papa, the knowledge that, even if the gate was closed, the Upside-Down wasn’t gone… This is her home. The cabin and Hopper are her home. Hawkins is her home. Mike is her home.
And despite not having gotten a chance to ask any of her questions on when the right time was, it felt like the right time.
So she leans in, and kisses him; working only from the brief, chaste experiences she’s had the three times he’s kissed her in the past.
Mike’s mind, for a moment, goes blank—because oh shit, he wasn’t expecting this, and Hopper could come back at any moment even though he really just left and he’ll kill Mike but El kissed him, not the other way around, and he’s still not entirely sure she knows or understands what it means, but her hands are holding his face, and it’s a longer kiss than any of the three that came before it and like hell was he gonna be the one to break it.
It’s still innocent, but neither of them pull away for a few moments because they don’t have to. And El’s chest is warm again, warmwarmwarm, and Mike feels like he’s going to pass out because this is his life now, he thinks, arms wrapping around El’s back just to hold her as they finally pull from each other, eyes meeting with the dumbest grins plastered on their faces.
“Promise,” He agrees on an exhale, very aware of the fact that his arms are still wrapped around her, very aware of her hand still on his face, her thumb now moving along the bridge of his nose.
Mike doesn’t initially understand her next words, still somewhat in a daze from the kiss and trying to figure out why she’s so focused on his face. “I could see you.” His brow furrows a bit. As the high of the moment slowly wears off, he’s realizing how comfortable El seems to be with their contact—it had always been his main concern, never wanting to push anything that she wasn’t comfortable with or didn’t understand. So he’s taking cues from her, pressing down at the blush crawling up his neck.
“Hm?”
“When you called.” She’s speaking to him, but her eyes are still fixed on the workings of her fingers on his face. “I heard you in the void. Saw you. In the basement.” El’s voice is soft; still as cautious as it was when they’d first met, but more confident. She was smart. Mike’s so caught up in the swell of pride in his chest that it takes him a moment to realize what she’s saying, his swell of pride almost instantly overtaken by a swell of embarrassment at the mess he knows he’d been on more than one occasion calling her. “You disappeared, though. When I touched.”
The feelings he’d had of a breeze flying through the basement, or a ghost of a touch on his face—it was her, always her. There was a sense of reassurance, that he hadn’t been crazy. That, despite having only really known her for that week, their connection, whatever it was, had been something, been real enough that he’d sensed her near him from another dimension. Now isn’t the time to think about all the goddamn times you cried and she saw, Mike.
He quickly moves to take her other hand, bringing it to his face, too. Mike had noticed she hadn’t let go of him once since he’d arrived, but the more he was learning about her side of the last year, the more it made sense. “—I’m not disappearing. Promise.” They don’t break promises. “I’m gonna be here all the time after school—and then the rest of the party will start to come, and things—things’ll start to be normal. It’s not in my house, like we talked about…”
“It’s okay, Mike. I’m happy.” It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, and it’s true. Her hands still hold their place on his cheeks, having lost count of his freckles more times than she can remember, still smiling at him. He’s here, and he’ll be here. She’s going to slowly start to be a part of the real world. Soon was a word she’d grown to hate, but if this was the way she got to spend waiting for soon to come...maybe it wouldn’t be half bad.
“—Then I’m happy, too.” Mike means it. Hearing the words coming from her mouth are like a breath of fresh air—it’s all he’s ever wished for her. “You’re safe, we’re gonna get to see each other all the time now, we won’t have to keep you a secret—and the lab’s closed, so we don’t have to keep worrying about the bad men coming after you.”
That’s not entirely true, and they both know it. Yes, the lab’s closed, but Mike’s sure he’ll never stop worrying about the idea of them coming back to get her. He can see the look in her face shift, the wide, doe-eyed look she’d been giving him gone, replaced with something he can only attempt to describe as guilt. Before he can even ask, she’s talking.
“...Papa might still be out there.” Her tone is haunted, and Mike’s mind immediately snaps to the white-haired man from last year who’d tried to take her away. That’s what he’d called himself. Papa. He remembered seeing him for the first time when they’d been running from the vans, then again at the school—but even more so, he remembered the look on El’s face when she’d seen him. Terrified. There’s a part of him that doesn’t want to press—but if she doesn’t want to talk about it, she’ll let him know, he thinks. The more he knows, the more he can help her.
“He’s...that’s the guy from the school, right?” She confirms his suspicions with a nod. “He was there when the demogorgon came, El. It got him.” His voice is shaky at first, but confident. His faith in her is unyielding, and he wants to show her the same strength she’s always shown him. “It got him, and then you killed it. Remember?” There’s a part of him that’s chalking it all up to how tired she’d been that night, even if logic reminds him that she remembered his promise about the Snow Ball, and the kiss and—
“A bad man in Chicago said he’s still alive.” El’s voice is no greater than a whisper at this point—and if Mike hadn’t been listening closely, he’d be sure he’d misheard her. Wait, Chicago? How had she encountered more of the bad men? Did Hopper know? But right now, she doesn’t need questions. His heart breaks as he hears her voice crack. “I can’t go back—”
It’s his turn to interrupt. “I’m never gonna let that happen, El. Never.” He reaches up to take her hands from his face, tucking his feet beneath his body so he can face her completely, squeezing both of her hands tightly. “Lucas, Dustin, Will, Max , Jonathan, Nancy, Steve, Mrs. Byers, Hopper—you’ve got a family here, now. And none of us, none of us are letting them take you again. I don’t—I don’t know everything, still, and—and you don’t have to feel like you need to tell me all of it, not until you’re okay with that, but they hurt you. That’s enough. They’re the reason you had to hide away all year. They treated you like you weren’t a person when you’re—” He takes a breath quickly, hardly noticing the look of slight awe that’s developed on El’s face. The words are just pouring out of him at this point, all of his fear washing away at the slightest hint she might be hurting. “—You’re my favorite person, El. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you ever again. I promise.”
And when she hugs him after that, her face buried against his chest, Mike finally notices how small she is. She’s the most powerful, strongest person he knows—and maybe that’s why he hadn’t realized it before. She seemed so big, in a way. He might not have abilities or anything, but he can hold her close and try to make her feel safe. He can let her cry into his sweater, even if it breaks his heart.
El’s not weeping out of fear. She’s not weeping because of a memory, not thinking about Papa and how she never looked for him because maybe, somewhere deep inside, she knew. She’s not thinking about the lab and its cold floors and walls or the bad men who hurt her there. She’s not weeping because of despair, or regret, thinking about everything she’s missed and everything that’s happened to her.
No. These are happy tears.
Happy tears that come with a whirlwind of emotion she’s been repressing for the past month or so, getting bits and pieces of things off of her chest. But happy tears. You’re my favorite person, El, he’d said. She wasn’t mourning what she’s lost, but finally, finally processing what she’s gained. Family. Friends. Mike.
“—Love you, Mike.”
The words are muffled against him, but he hears them. He hears them clear as day. The questions and axieties that’d been scrambling around in his brain all day try, briefly, to convince him he’s made it up—that the words he’d considered so often in his head were coming from her now.
Mike’s known he loved Eleven. Loves Eleven.
(He’d gotten into the habit of using past tense when talking about her on the walkie, because that’s how Dustin and Lucas would talk about her, and he hated it.)
But Mike also knows he’s grown up in a world with adults who just don’t get it, who think because he’s only thirteen and just a kid that he doesn’t understand what he’s doing, that his choices mean less, that what he believes isn’t valid, and that he’s young— there’s no way he can really understand what he’s feeling. But he’s never been more confident of anything else. It just felt taboo to say, even to himself, in his own head. Because for so long, admitting he loved Eleven meant admitting that he’d fallen so fiercely for a girl he might never see again.
When she’d walked through the front door at the Byers’, though, he couldn’t deny it anymore. Because it’d been like the last year of being lostangrylonelyscared devastated hadn’t even happened. She was safe, alive, and when they held each other that night, he’d felt his mind confess.
“I never gave up on you.”
I love you.
It’d made its way into all of the questions ringing their way through his head over the last month, now. When she’d left for the gate, he knows he wasn’t hallucinating that she’d leant in, leaned like he had almost a year ago, like she was going to kiss him. (Now, he was even more sure of that.) But he wasn’t sure she understood what all of that was. He wasn’t even able to bring himself to explain it to her. She’d been living with Hopper for a year—an entire year—but he had no clue what that meant. What she’d learned. And while putting a label on them for the world didn’t matter to him, there was a part of him that wanted her to know what he’d meant when he asked her to go to the Snow Ball. When he kissed her. Why they were different.
“I love you, too, El,” He says quietly, right back, not hesitating for a moment—his words falling right into her ear as she remains pulled close to him, her sobs dying down into soft coughs and hiccups. Something about the words traded between them, and the massive weight seemingly lifted from Mike’s shoulders, makes him bolder, his hand gently rubbing her back to calm her down the way his mom had so many times over the past year he’d spent without her.
And El is warm again.
She’d worried. Worried the moment the words had fallen out of her mouth, having watched so many soaps and movies where people saying I love you for the first time was a huge deal, with a sweeping presentation and a romantic gesture. She worried that this wasn’t the right time and place, that she was doing everything wrongwrongwrong , or worried that it wasn’t what Mike had meant when he’d kissed her. (After all, Hop made a point of explaining that not everyone who kisses each other loves each other. Should be that way, kid. But it’s not always like that. The weight in his voice sounded like he’d been talking from some sort of personal experience. She didn’t push it.)
And her worries weren’t because of Mike.
No, Mike had given her everything. She had no real reason to doubt that he at least cared for her. But it all had felt far too good to be real. It had only been a year or so that she’d been out of the lab, away from the bad men in suits and masks and Papa, Papa, whose voice she always heard in the back of her head. Weak, sad, useless Eleven, Eleven, you must do better, Eleven, you must behave, Eleven, you are sick, you are unwanted, only we can care for you, fix you, help you, but you have to help us first—
And it was different than friends. Friends, at least, were easier for her to accept that she could have. People had many friends. Even if Eleven was sick, and broken, and a freak, it was simpler to understand that people could just stick another friend on their list. The concept was easier to break through the conditioning.
But Mike.
Mike was different.
She’d said it to herself a thousand times in her head, but it was true—and when Hopper had explained, when she’d realized that she loved Mike, it was hard. Hard, because romantic love was the one person you spend forever with. Sometimes it doesn’t work out (another addition from Hop that she hadn’t pressed much on), but that was the goal. You loved someone when you wanted them in your forever. She wanted Mike in her forever. However long that was.
What was harder to understand was why Mike would want her in his.
It wasn’t like she didn’t believe him when he’d said it; no, friends don’t lie. While she and Mike were… different than friends, she knows he wouldn’t lie to her. But since she’d learned that was the word for the way she felt about Mike, it’d become harder and harder for her to imagine he felt the same way. So when he says it back, she believes it. Her heart stops. There’s a part of her body that wants to shut down and happy cry again from relief , but she doesn’t, because Mike’s here and Mike loves her and Mike isn’t going anywhere—but Hopper will come back eventually, and she’s not sure how things will change, then, so she’s not wasting anymore time crying.
When El finally pulls back a little, her eyes are puffy and still a bit wet from her tears—though not nearly as wet as the patch on Mike’s sweater. He doesn’t mind. Because now she’s got his classic giddy smile on her face. “—You… you know what that—”
“—I know what it means, Mike—”
“—Not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that you don’t know some stuff, which is fine, I’ll explain anything to you that you want—” He’s gonna regret that one later. “—but I don’t wanna start anything or assume anything or do something you didn’t really want or whatever just because you never—”
“ —Mike.” She has this tone she gives him sometimes. I understand. It’s when he’s worrying too much, when he’s about to go just a little overboard explaining something or panicking over trying to make sure they’re both on the same page. This time, he can’t help blushing just a little bit when she replies. She understands.
“—O-okay. Cool.” Idiot.
“Cool.” She repeats, smiling—and maybe now he feels like a little less of an idiot.
The moment sinks in before he really notices her face—and how obvious it was that she was the last one crying. “Can I grab something from the kitchen?” She responds immediately with a nod, reaching down to take his hand before tugging him off the couch and guiding him into the kitchen area, the only sound besides their footsteps the crackling of the fire that was keeping the cabin warm.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a small towel near the sink, taking it with his free hand and running a little bit of cold water over it. He can remember all the times he’d cried just a little too loudly—and his mom had always taken to believing it was the aftermath of dealing with everything that had happened with Will. So she’d take him to the kitchen and get a cold towel—to make his eyes less red and puffy.
El’s face reads confusion as he carefully moves the cloth closer to her, her brow furrowing. “Oh, sorry, I—” Before Hopper, had anyone really taken care of her? “—It’ll help with making your face look less like you cried.” Wait. “I mean, you still look so pretty, just—I don’t want Hopper thinking I made you cry or anything. He’ll kill me.”
She laughs at that, giving him a nod, watching him the whole time, her face still practically glowing. The damp towel feels like such a relief on her warm skin, under her eyes, on her cheeks. “...I wouldn’t let him,” She insists after a few moments, squeezing his hand that’s still a tangle of fingers with her own.
(It takes a lot for Mike to not get lost in the idea of Hopper—who still, admittedly, scared him, even more so now that he’s sure there’s something more between he and El, something he figured they wouldn’t be able to keep a secret from him for very long—and El going at each other. Not in a violent sort of way, but the idea that his tiny, badass El could handle herself, using her powers for something she cared about, not because she was being forced to or used for was a good thought.)
“...How is it? Living with Hopper, I mean.”
“Good. —Better, now,” She admits, grimacing a little bit, her nose scrunching up. Things had improved immensely since she’d returned from Chicago. Maybe it was because she’d been outside. Maybe it was because she’d realized where she belonged. “We fight, sometimes. Hop says family fights, though. Says he’s not a great cook. But getting better.” The last part comes out as a bit of a tease—a warning to Mike about tonight’s dinner. Hopper had said it himself when she’d first come to stay with him. They’d eaten a lot of frozen meals—they still did—but she hardly noticed the difference. “Better than the food at the lab.” She pauses, a small frown on her face. “But not as good as Eggos. We always have Eggos.”
Weirdly enough, that was the sort of a thing that touched Mike. He wasn’t sure why El had become so attached to the food, but after he realized she’d liked them, he made sure she had them every day. It wasn’t like he thought Hopper would be a bad parent to her—but it was reassuring to Mike that he was paying attention to things like that, doing what he could to make her happy, even in the shitty circumstances they were in.
“My mom’ll probably start sending me here with food when I visit on days off school. I kinda told her last minute at breakfast this morning, so she didn’t ask too many questions,” He says with a shrug. His next words are a bit quieter as he finally sets down the towel back at the sink. “It’s pretty cool, that I’ll be able to talk about you.”
“About Jane.” She corrects him, her own face clearly not entirely convinced of the fact.
“—Do you want to be called Jane?” He’d almost completely forgotten. Hopper had brushed off his questions about El’s real name at the station, and it was something he wanted to ask her about. She’d never had any choice in the matter—not like any of them really had choices about their names, but she’d had even less choices in her life than anyone else. She earned this one.
“Not really,” El admits. (Mike’s silently relieved, in a weird sort of a way.) “Jane Ives.” She says the name like it’s foreign to her, like she’s still reading it from the case files she’d found under the floor. “Supposed to be me. Isn’t me, though.”
Jane Ives.
“Other people call me Jane. Eleven. El was my choice.”
He remembers that first night. Mike, short for Michael.
Maybe we can call you El, short for Eleven.
He hadn’t realized quite how significant the way he’d said that to her would become. Was it one of the first choices she’d been allowed to make? Every single one of these questions makes him just a little more sick to his stomach, imagining what her life had been like before this. “El it is, then,” He agrees, gently squeezing her hand back. “Maybe we can convince Hopper to tell people your middle name is Eleanor. Remember? Like we told Mr. Clarke. So your name can still be Jane, but the Party can still call you El when we’re out.”
Mike’s smart. El’s always been fascinated with how smart Mike is. But what she loved about him was that he’d always be using how smart he was to help her. He never got tired of answering her questions, not during the week she’d stayed with him. Every message he’d left her over the 353 days had countless explanations about what he was talking about— just in case she didn’t understand. When she’d woken up at the Byers’, after closing the gate, he’d filled her in on everything he could, explained what had happened.
He’d been her tutor long before Hopper had suggested the idea.
“Out,” she echoed from his words. “Fought Hop to get the chance at out .”
A smile spread across his face again, admiration. Of course. “It’ll be great. He said once we have everyone coming here and we really know it’s safe, you can come over to Will’s and stuff with all of us. Maybe other places, if he says it’s cool, too.” Silently, he hopes places like the arcade and the movie theatre and the pizza place and the ice cream parlour get the Chief Hopper seal of approval.
No real ulterior motive. None whatsoever.
No, Michael Theodore Wheeler had absolutely no interest in taking El out on dates like they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. Not at all. That’s crazy talk. Why would he be interested in walking down the street, holding her hand, sharing giant ice cream sundaes, seeing a movie, teaching her about video games, picking out the weirdest pizza toppings they could think of just to try it because—
This time, when she kisses him, he’s almost more off-guard that the first. Lost in his thoughts, he’s hardly processing that her lips are against his until they are, her hands firm on his shoulders to make sure she doesn’t stumble off the tips of her toes. So when she pulls back, he’s sure he’s a deep shade of scarlet—and he can tell from the mischievous smile on her face that she knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s not about to apologize for it.
This was going to get dangerous.
He exhales lightly, his head slowly stopping the spinning feeling pressing against the inside of his skull. Pull it together, Wheeler. He takes her other hand, though, their arms loosely hanging between them as he speaks. “—The guys and Max wanted me to say hi for them, by the way. They were a little mad at first that they couldn’t come yet. And… I mean, even though it was Hopper’s call—” He realizes, then, that Hopper, definitely knows there’s something going on between him and El, even if he’d said at their talk at the station that he wasn’t sure what was happening. Oh god. “—They were insisting that they were your friends, too, and didn’t get why they couldn’t come. I just told them we were—”
“—Different.”
She’d started using the word after she’d heard him use it time and time again talking into the radio. About how Lucas and Dustin had given up on her being out there, but he didn’t blame them (and neither did she), because they didn’t understand like he did. Because they were different. It’d become so common in Mike’s vocabulary over the year, like a placeholder for other words he didn’t want to say; so El held a lot of weight to it. She could feel that weight in his voice, see it in his eyes.
“Yeah. Yeah, we’re different.”
“ Good different.” Not different, like the freaks they’d both been labeled as over the years. Different was their class in life. But other people saw different as bad, as not belonging. El saw different as special.
“The best kind of different,” He agreed.
It was surreal, standing in the kitchen of Hopper’s cabin. Surreal that he was standing here, hand in hand with the girl he’d found out in the rain on Mirkwood, who he’d saved and who’d saved him in return. That she’d come back practically from the dead, and that she was going to be a part of his entire life now. The first girl he’d kissed. The only girl he ever planned on kissing ever again. They were young—he could hear the arguments from adults in his head—but they’d already been through more together, survived more together and apart than most married couples did in a lifetime.
So, just one more time, for now, he kissed her again. His hands held her face, her hair, just held onto her as he leaned down while her hands found a place pressed flat against his chest for support. It was like dancing. Neither of them knew exactly what they were doing, but they were figuring the whole thing out—everything about it, from the hand holding to the kissing to love itself, together.
Titles were technicalities. El loved Mike, and Mike loved El. Those were indisputable facts. Facts that would have them both sleeping a bit better through the night.
For the first time in their short lives, they had time.
Knock knock.
Knock.
Knock knock knock.
Just...not this exact second.
To El’s disappointment, after another moment or two held in place, Mike pulls away from the kiss—but immediately moves to hold her hands again. So, once more, she’s tugging him along with her as she goes to the door, her curls just a little more tousled than usual, his sweater still sporting a bit of a tear stain and a few extra wrinkles and his cheeks just a bit redder than usual—matching both their lips. She opens the locks, one after the other, by hand—Jane Hopper doesn’t have powers— and, like clockwork, on the other side of the door is the police chief, a few paper bags piled in his arms.
For a moment, Mike’s relieved. He shudders at the idea of world where El and Hopper’s secret knock isn’t in place—he’s pretty sure Hopper doesn’t hate him, but the look he’d given Mike before he’d left to go shopping was very clearly an I’ll be back sooner than you think, so don’t mess around look. And what had Mike done?
“Wheeler, you call your mom yet and let her know you’re eating with us?”
Well, for starters, not the one thing he’d been told to do.
“Uh, n-no, not yet, I—” He’s about to make up some sort of awful excuse about his mom having to do something with Nancy, or Holly, or god, even his dad to try to explain why, until Hopper’s already onto the next thing.
“El, would y’mind grabbing these and bringing them to the table? Couple things gotta go in the fridge.” She frowns up at him. “Got another box of Eggos.” He knows the way to her heart. After a moment, she reluctantly releases Mike’s hand, moving to grab the paper bags from him and moves over to the kitchen area. Mike’s about to follow her, when—
“I got a couple more here on the porch I couldn’t knock with, gimmie a hand, kid.”
So he steps out the front door with Hopper, and—well, there’s only one bag on the porch that Hopper easily pulls onto his wrist in a swift motion, moving to light a cigarette as Mike stands there, staring in a vague state of panic.
Just a little, healthy dose of paternal fear.
“Listen, Wheeler—” Mike opens his mouth to retort (and Jim’s really starting to learn over the past few days where El got a lot of her personality from), but he shuts that down instantly. “—No, no, this is me talking again, you listening. I left you two alone because I figure, at a bare minimum, I owe y’some sort of privacy to catch up with one another.”
This is already not going the way Mike expected—so he continues to listen.
“I trust you, kid. I wouldn’t be leaving you two alone if I didn’t. But at some point, we’re gonna have to have some sort of...talk. And it’s gonna be real uncomfortable for the both of us. We both want her happy, and as much of a thorn in my side as it’s been for the past year, you’re what makes her happy.”
He’s leaving out the details, the memories of all of the fights the two of them have had because of the word soon , and how it pertained to the phrase you can see him soon, and how soon was never really close enough for her to be satisfied. He’s leaving out the sleepless nights he had because she woke up screaming for the damn Wheeler kid, the times he’d find her unconscious because she was just listening to him, worried about him. He’d known for a long time that, like El, Michael Wheeler was going to become a fixture in his life.
He was leaving out how he’d decided that there were definitely worse kids he could be stuck with than El and Mike.
“—She makes me happy, too.” His words come out as a mumble, but Hopper can hear the pain the boy’s working to mask under his attitude.
“...Yeah, kid. I know.”
This time, he leaves out all of the details of every story Joyce told him when they’d take Will to the lab. How he’d casually ask how the boys were doing, all of them, and she’d say they were fine, who was acting weirdly in school and who’d gotten into some sort of fight with a bully, and then Mike, Mike, who never seemed to have a positive update. Who, in a different way than Will, never seemed to recover after the incident in the Middle School, despite never falling into harm’s way.
“—But that doesn’t mean you’re getting into all sort of funny business when you’re here and I’m not, you hear me?”
The sentimental part of the conversation’s over. Mike’s immediately snapping back, only getting a few words out. “—We only—”
“—Nope, no, I don’t wanna hear it.” He’s not an idiot. But he’d like to pretend as if he’s a blissfully ignorant father for at least another few days. “—I just want your word.” With most other kids, their word would mean bullshit. Words, promises, they had no weight. But as he’s reminded himself several times over the past few weeks, mulling his options, bargaining with El, making sure she got everything she wanted—and deserved—Mike Wheeler’s not most other kids. It’s probably why she likes him so much.
“—I promise.”
“...Good. Now go inside and call your mother—make sure you come up with some sort of bullshit on what you were working on that isn’t kissing.”
“—We weren’t just—”
“—You heard me.”
But Mike doesn’t immediately leave. He steps back to the doorway for a moment before looking back to Hopper, and the older man can tell from the look on the teenager’s face he’s about to ask for something. It’s the same look El had the morning before, when he’d agreed they could eventually talk about leaving the cabin.
“I, uh—I just meant to ask—” He glances back inside to make sure El’s still over in the kitchen, putting away the contents of Hopper’s first few bags. “—With Christmas being so soon, I just thought maybe we could do something for her.” The rest of his request comes out quickly, because he knows he’s breaking all the rules, but it’s El. “I know you said that she couldn’t go out yet, and everyone can’t come here yet, and I get it, she just told me about how you found her last Christmas, and—I just think it’d be good for her have the full holiday and to see all the people who love her.”
Jesus christ, how was he supposed to argue with that?
“...We’ll try to figure something out, kid.”