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She caught him at the foot of the basement stairs, jacket draped over his pyjamas, socks scrunched up above his sneakers and backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Michael! Where do you think you’re going?”
His eyes were wild when he turned to her, huge and slightly red-rimmed but far more alert than they should have been at two in the morning. He set his jaw, pushed his shoulders back and declared, “El needs me.”
Karen wasn’t surprised, which she thought was vaguely troubling. She hugged her arms around her waist and said, “Mike, if you think I’m letting you out at this time of night -”
“ Mom, ” he said, waving his SuperCom at her. “She called me. She needs me. I’m going.”
“Why can’t Hopper -”
“Hopper isn’t there!” Mike exclaimed, what little patience he had already evaporated. “He got called out to some emergency and she’s all alone, and she’s crying, and I can’t leave her there, Mom, I can’t leave her again.”
He went to storm over to the door, but Karen reached out to him. “Mike, you can’t ride your bike in the dark.”
“I’ve done it before,” he snapped over his shoulder.
Okay, she was going to have to talk to him about his tone. Later, though. Now was not the time.
“Let me get the car keys,” she said simply, “And my jacket and shoes. And I’ll meet you in the garage.”
Mike froze. He slowly spun on his heel to face her. “What?”
“If you really need to go see El right now, then I’m going to drive you.”
His arms fell limp by his sides, some of the tension leaving his body. “But…”
“Don’t make me change my mind,” Karen said, starting up the stairs to get her things. “Garage, go.”
The drive was tense. Mike wouldn’t stop fidgeting in the passenger seat, bouncing his leg up and down and pulling the antenna of his SuperCom up and down repeatedly. Karen warned him to be careful or he’d break it, and he rolled his eyes and curled both hands around it protectively instead.
“Has something happened?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level and calm as they drove down the dark streets on the edge of Hawkins. “To El, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Mike replied tersely. His gaze was trained stubbornly on the road ahead.
“You don’t know ?”
“No, but El wouldn’t call unless she really needed me. Turn here.”
Karen glanced at her son, features sharpened and shadowed in the dim light filtering through the car windows, and wondered where he got this loyalty from. He shoved his SuperCom into his backpack and got out his flashlight instead, but he didn’t reveal any more information. She followed his directions until they reached a small clearing at the edge of the woods and he told her to park.
“I’ll get Hopper to drop me off when he gets back,” Mike started, already unbuckled and opening his door.
“Uh, no.” Karen unbuckled herself. “I’m coming with you.”
He glared at her, which was so unappreciative. “Mom, it’s a hike through the woods. You’re in your pyjamas.”
“So are you. I did not drive you all the way out here just to leave you to wander through the woods alone in the middle of the night, Mike.”
“Hopper won’t like it.”
“I’m sure Hopper would much rather you two have some adult supervision than coming home to find you there unannounced and alone,” Karen countered.
Mike clearly didn’t have a come back for that. He scowled but exited the car without another argument, and Karen hurried after him.
“Just hurry. And be careful,” he muttered, shining his flashlight over the underbrush.
The walk was almost worse than the drive. Now that he had the freedom to move, Mike was rushing through the woods as fast he could, and it took all of Karen’s concentration to not lose her footing as she tried to keep up. He’d grown so much now and his legs were so long that she was almost taking two steps for every one of his, and the amount of nervous energy radiating off of him wasn’t helping calm her nerves, either.
She couldn’t believe that this was where Mike had been disappearing to every weekend last year. The amount of times he’d walked through these woods showed in the way he stepped over the scrub with practiced ease, following a path that Karen couldn’t see until the beam of his torch illuminated a solid wood structure ahead of them.
He held out an arm, stopping her in her tracks.
“Tripwire. Watch your step.” He lifted first one foot and then the other over the barely-visible wire strung between two trees, and then held a hand out to help Karen step over it, too.
As soon as they were on the other side, he bolted up the steps to the front door and knocked in a rhythm that must have been a code. Karen thought she’d heard it before, somewhere.
Some lights flicked on and the door opened, but there was no one on the other side. Mike ran inside instantly, dropping his backpack and flashlight to the floor with a loud thud, but Karen was cautious as she stepped over the threshold and into the small cabin.
It was homelier than she’d expected. The kitchen and lounge were connected, and both were tidy and cosy, but she didn’t have time to linger on the details of Hopper’s furnishings.
“El!” Mike cried, disappearing through a doorway off the side of the small lounge. “El, are you all right?”
A sob answered him, and Karen carefully shut and locked the front door behind herself.
“El, hey, it’s okay,” Mike was saying, his voice drifting through the open bedroom door, quiet and soothing. “It’s okay, I’m here. They’re gone, they’re not coming, not ever. You’re home, now.”
Karen closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, trying to reconcile this Mike with the one who’d snapped at her to hurry up just moments before. Something about this girl brought out a side to him that no one else ever got to see. It was a strange experience for her to see her son so gentle.
Carefully, wary of startling El, she walked across the small space and came to stand in the doorway of her bedroom.
El was curled in Mike’s arms on top of her bed, wearing flannel pyjamas that had been rolled up multiple times at the cuffs, red faced and teary. Her arms were wrapped around Mike’s waist and her head was on his shoulder.
She stiffened as soon as she saw Karen, but didn’t pull back.
Mike must have felt the change, because he turned his head to glance back at Karen.
“Oh,” he said, as if he’d completely forgotten she was there. “Mom drove me. I hope that’s okay, I tried to come alone but she wouldn’t let me.”
Karen pursed her lips, biting back a reminder to watch his manners, and added that to the list of things she had to talk to him about later.
El sniffled. “Thank you,” she said, voice shaky and small.
Karen tried to smile, but even she could tell that it wasn’t convincing. “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need anything?”
“Mike,” was all El said, tightening her hold around his waist.
Mike’s cheeks flushed bright pink, and he quickly looked away.
Karen just nodded, trying her best to be understanding. “Okay, that’s all right. I’m going to wait out here, okay? But - but leave the door open.”
Mike rolled his eyes, but El didn’t say anything else. She just turned her head, burrowing her face into the crook of Mike’s neck, and sobbed so violently that her whole body shook.
Every nurturing instinct Karen had was screaming at her to give the girl a hug, but she knew that there was no way she was going to get the two of them to disengage anytime soon. So Karen just stepped back, retreating to the kitchen to give them a small amount of privacy.
The clock on the wall ticked over to two thirty and Karen stifled a yawn. She had no idea when Hopper was due back, but if she was going to stay awake she needed coffee.
She began rifling through the cupboards, and was immediately surprised by the variety of food inside them. There was plenty of junk and microwave dinners, but there were also far healthier options than she’d expected, too. Everyone knew that Hopper hadn’t exactly been taking care of himself since he’d moved back to Hawkins, but maybe El had given him the motivation he needed. Maybe Joyce hadn’t really been kidding when she’d teased him about that diet the other week.
Karen paused with her hand around a tin of drinking chocolate.
Mike’s voice drifted through the open door of El’s bedroom. “It was a bad dream, it wasn’t real.”
“It felt real,” El replied, unconvinced.
“They always do. But I promise, they can’t hurt you anymore. The Bad Men are gone, and you’re safe, and I’m not ever going to let anyone take you away again. Never.”
Karen’s throat constricted at his words. When Mike was little, around the time Lonnie Byers had skipped town, he’d had a recurring nightmare. The thought that families could be broken apart had never occurred to him before, but when Will’s dad left, Mike became plagued with worry that his family was going to leave, too - or that someone was going to make him leave. He’d wake up screaming at least once a week, thrashing in his sheets and crying that they were taking him away, that they were going to put him with a new family because this one didn’t want him.
Karen would cradle him in her lap and run her hands through his hair until he calmed down enough to breathe steadily. On the really bad nights, when she knew that sleep wasn’t going to come for him anytime soon, she’d take him by the hand and lead him downstairs to make hot chocolate.
He’d slurp up the dregs at the bottom of his mug and give himself a chocolate mustache, and she’d laugh as she wiped it away and reassured him that she loved him so, so much, and that he was safe and wanted.
She’d found out later, of course, that the bullying he was undergoing at school wasn’t helping things. If you’re told that you’re a loser who no one likes enough times, it’s bound to seep into your subconscious.
Maybe that bullying throughout elementary school was partly behind why Mike had stuck to Will like glue from kindergarten, and why he’d so quickly latched onto Lucas when he’d moved next door, and then Dustin when he’d moved to Hawkins in fourth grade. And El, when he’d found her in the woods.
Karen’s heart broke a little as she realised that El had never had anyone to comfort her after a nightmare, not for all those years she was locked in that awful lab. No wonder she was so distraught by them.
Karen pulled down the drinking chocolate and the coffee, and set about making three drinks in the biggest mugs she could find.
Mike’s and El’s quiet murmurs filled the otherwise silent cabin as she worked, the occasional reassurance reaching her ears, but most of their conversation was lost to her. She did hear Mike say the phrase, “Anniversary Effect” more than once, and added that to the list of things to ask him about.
When the drinks were ready, she arranged the two hot chocolates on the small dining table with a plate of marshmallows in the middle, and left her coffee on the bench.
She cleared her throat as she approached El’s room, not wanting to embarrass them - or herself - by walking in on anything awkward.
Both of them were watching the doorway when she arrived. El’s eyes were still red-rimmed and her nose was almost glowing from the amount of times she’d blown it, but she wasn’t crying, anymore. She’d shuffled back slightly, so that instead of sitting in Mike’s lap she was sitting just in front of him, their crossed legs touching at the knees and their hands interlaced in the middle.
“I made you some hot chocolate,” Karen announced. She remembered Mike’s instructions to always make links and reasoning as clear as possible, so that El didn’t get confused, and added, “It always helped Mike feel better after a nightmare, so I thought it might help you, too.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Mike’s expression softened as he turned back to El. “It really does make you feel better.”
El carefully hopped off the bed, leaving one hand intertwined with Mike’s, and followed Karen back to the table. The two of them took the seats and Karen leant against the bench, cradling her coffee and watching as they dunked their marshmallows into their drinks. El tried to scoop hers out with her fingers, which made an absolute mess, until Mike showed her how to press it against the side of the cup with a spoon to get it out.
Karen helped her get all the chocolate out from between her fingers and congratulated her as she successfully ate her next soggy marshmallow off the spoon. El looked to Mike for approval, smiling around her gooey prize, and he smiled back at her like no one had ever done anything quite so magical as eating a marshmallow before.
When the cups were empty and they were wiping chocolate mustaches on their sleeves, Karen asked, “Do you feel a little better now?”
El paused, seriously contemplating the question. “Yes.” Another pause. “Thank you.”
Karen smiled sweetly, taking the cups to the sink. “When Mike was little, he used to say that drinking hot chocolate was like getting a hug from the inside.”
“Mom!” Mike exclaimed, mortified.
El, however, looked enraptured. “A warm hug,” she said.
Karen laughed, but it was a kind laugh. “Yes, like a warm hug. And that’s why it helps you feel better.”
She was so focused on rinsing out the cups that she didn’t notice that El had moved until she felt arms wrap around her waist. Startled, Karen almost dropped the dishes, but managed to carefully put them in the sink before shifting slightly so she could return the hug.
El’s curls brushed against her chin as she squeezed her, gentle but secure.
“Mike’s right, you know,” Karen said, resting her cheek on top of El’s head. “About the hot chocolate, and about the Bad Men.”
El pulled back, and Mike was instantly at her side, shoulder to shoulder.
Karen let her hands rest on El’s arms, and El didn’t flinch away. “They’re not going to hurt you anymore. You have so many people here to protect you, and we would never let them - or anyone - hurt you.”
El’s smile was small, but it was sincere, and she lunged forward again to give Karen another hug. “Thank you,” she said again, “for the drive, and the hot chocolate, and Mike.”
Karen laughed and ran her hand soothingly down El’s back, smiling over her head at Mike, who was stubbornly looking down at his feet. “You’re welcome, El.”
Mike yawned, and it triggered a chain reaction. The coffee hadn’t quite hit Karen’s system yet, and El looked exhausted enough to pass out on her feet.
“Right,” Karen said, pulling him into a quick hug and planting a kiss on the crown of his head. “Time for bed. You two should at least get some rest.”
“But, Mom -” he began arguing, but was interrupted by another yawn.
“No buts. It’s past three, and if Hopper comes back and finds El awake he’s not going to be happy.”
El worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
“What’s wrong?” Mike instantly asked.
“I’m scared. That the Bad Men will come back.” When Mike went to speak, she clarified, “In my dreams.”
“I’ll be right here with you, though, and I’ll wake you up if you start getting upset, so you can come out of the dream straight away.”
Karen made a small noise at the back of her throat, and Mike instantly rolled his eyes. She persisted, regardless. “You can’t sleep in El’s bed, Mike.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then seemed to remember who he was speaking to, and perhaps who El’s dad was, and wisely fell quiet.
El, however, had an idea. “We can sleep out here.”
She pointed to the couch. Karen and Mike followed her gaze, and when Mike looked at Karen there was such unabashed hope in his eyes that she felt herself melting.
“I suppose if I’m out here with you….”
She’d barely finished her sentence before El was running off to her room, yelling out for Mike to help her. They returned moments later with their arms full of blankets and the pillows off her bed, grinning from ear to ear.
“Okay, go ahead and get comfortable,” Karen instructed.
El practically bounced over to the couch, throwing herself onto the cushions with grace and lying on her side.
Mike followed, slightly more reserved, but paused before he sat down. “There’s not enough room.”
Karen frowned. Mike had certainly had a growth spurt, but she hadn’t thought that he’d be too tall to fit on the couch.
El propped herself up on her elbow, frowning. She glanced down the length of the couch and then tucked her feet up underneath herself, sitting up against the arm. “Better?”
“Yeah.” Mike grinned at her, just a little dopey, and settled down next to her. He draped one of the blankets over both their laps and put his arm over her shoulders, and she snuggled in close.
Karen turned away, wanting to give them their privacy again, but, to her surprise, Mike called out to her. “Aren’t you coming, Mom?”
She hovered at the back of the couch, unsure. “I was just going to sit over here -”
“The couch is way more comfortable,” Mike insisted, craning his neck to look back at her.
“Way more comfortable,” El echoed, doing the same. And then she blinked, and the television turned on. “We can watch a movie.”
Karen was secretly pleased beyond measure, but tried to salvage some of her parental credit as she came around to take the spare spot beside Mike. “I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.”
“Movies help me sleep. They talk over the memories,” El explained. The channel changed, and then changed again, until El realised all the stations were shut and gave up and changed it to the VCR, which still held Nancy’s copy of Grease .
“Urgh, how am I supposed to sleep with people singing?” Mike groaned.
El flashed him a look, but turned the volume down. Then she bent forward to look at Karen. “Okay?”
Karen smiled back at her. “Perfect.”
Despite Mike’s complaints, he was the first to fall asleep. They didn’t even make it to Summer Nights before his head lolled onto Karen’s shoulder and he began snoring softly. El giggled and snuggled in closer to his side, and Karen smiled serenely.
She expected El to follow not long after, but every time her head lolled she would wake up with a start, gasping. Every time, Karen would ask her if she was okay, and she would nod quickly, glancing from her to Mike and then back to the television.
The fifth time, Karen reached across Mike to gently clasp El’s hand. “El, sweetheart,” she whispered.
She turned to her, eyes half lidded.
“You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll wake you up straight away if you start having a nightmare, okay?”
El pursed her lips together. When she spoke her voice was even softer than usual. “How will you know?”
“Moms always know.” Karen squeezed her hand.
El’s eyes widened a little. “Like a superpower?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
She looked down at their clasped hands, and then to Mike, who was still leaning on Karen’s shoulder. “You’re a good mom,” she said, a little broken. “I think my Mama might have been good, too, if she’d been allowed.”
This was new. Although she’d learned a little from that first debriefing session about the sad fate of El’s biological mother, Karen didn’t know details about what she’d endured to put her in her catatonic state. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. So she’d never asked, and no one else had ever brought it up.
“I’m sure she would have been. Any mother would be lucky to have you as a daughter.”
El blinked. “Joyce said that, too.”
“Well,” Karen smiled, thinking of how obviously sweet on each other Hopper and Joyce were. “You never know.”
El wrinkled her nose, not completely understanding, but Karen didn’t think it was her place to explain what was going on there.
They went back to watching the movie, but after a few minutes El spoke again. “Can you and Mike stay? When Hopper gets back?”
Karen hadn’t considered that. It was a Sunday, so no one had to be anywhere, and she knew that Nancy would be fine to take care of Holly, at least for the morning, but she didn’t want to panic her or Ted when they woke up to discover them missing.
“Nancy and Ted might get worried if we’re not back,” she said slowly.
El’s face fell. She turned away, and for a second Karen thought she was giving her the cold shoulder. But then she pointed to the phone on the wall, a brand new model. “You can call. Nancy likes talking on the phone.”
Well, she couldn’t argue with that. “Yes, she does.”
El waited patiently for her decision.
“Okay, I’ll call home in the morning and tell them Mike and I have gone out for breakfast,” she relented.
El beamed. “We’ll have the Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza!”
Her excitement was adorable. Karen heard herself mimicking it as she asked, “Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza?”
El nodded seriously. “Only 8,000 calories.”
“Oh, Mike’ll love that,” Karen laughed. She stroked the pad of her thumb over the back of El’s hand. “All right, well now that that’s settled, you really do need to get some sleep. Try to relax, and I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
El nodded, squeezing her hand and settling back into the couch cushions. She lay her head on Mike’s shoulder and he stirred, half-rolling over so that his cheek was resting on the crown of her head instead of Karen’s shoulder.
Karen put her own head back on the couch and resumed watching the movie, thumb still stroking a calming pattern on the back of El’s palm.
They were still like that when Hopper returned an hour and a half later, arriving with the dawn. He’d unlocked the door manually, obviously expecting El to be safe in bed, and his hand went straight for his gun when he saw the figures on the couch.
When Karen and El both propped their heads over the back, however, he exhaled and let his hands fall to his sides. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?” he asked, probably gruffer than he’d intended.
Karen yawned and gingerly stood as El nestled back into Mike, the two of them comically falling sideways into the newly empty space. Without opening their eyes, they lifted their feet onto the couch, Mike wrapped his arm around El’s back, and they continued sleeping.
She thought of a few different reasons to give Hopper, but decided to go with the simplest. “El didn’t want to be alone.”
He dragged a hand down his face, but his eyes were soft. “Geez, Karen, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t -”
“It’s fine.” She waved his concerns away. “We both know Mike was coming here with or without me, so this was for the best, really.”
He grumbled at that, a low noise in the back of his throat, and glared at the back of the couch. “What time’d you get here?”
“Two.”
“Shit. I’m sorry -”
“Hopper.” Karen used her sternest voice, hands on hips. “It’s fine.”
She didn’t think she’d ever seen him bashful like this before. “I’ve gotta pay you back -”
“Eggos,” came a small voice from the couch.
Hopper raised an eyebrow at Karen, speaking comically loud and slow. “Excuse me?”
“Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza,” El said without sitting up.
“You invite your boyfriend over in the middle of the night and you expect me to make you a Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza for breakfast?” Hopper said disbelievingly. “I don’t think so.”
That got El to sit up. Her curls were flattened on one side and her eyes were wide with panic. “I promised.”
“Promised what?”
“Triple-Decker Eggo Extravaganza. To Karen.”
“Did you really?” Hopper turned back to Karen, who nodded.
“You were just saying that you wanted to pay me back…”
“Unbelievable.” Hopper threw his hands in the air, and then pointed at El. “Fine. But only if you and Wheeler help.”
El shot off the couch instantly, but her legs were tangled in Mike’s, and the two of them crashed down onto the lounge room floor, pulling the blanket down with them in their half-hearted attempt to save themselves.
“Shit,” Mike muttered from where he sat in the middle of the mess, still sleepy. He pushed the blanket down off his head and blinked around the room. When he saw Hopper all the color drained from his face. “ Shit .”
“Michael,” Karen warned. “Language.”
“Sorry, Mom,” he said sheepishly, tugging down the sleeve of his pyjamas.
“Come on, Mike, we need to help with breakfast,” El demanded, grabbing his hand and pulling him to his feet.
“Breakfast?” he asked, still dazed, but followed her to the fridge anyway. “Yeah, okay.”
“And hot chocolate!” El exclaimed.
“Since when do we have hot chocolate with breakfast?” Hopper asked, waiting for them to get out of his way before grabbing some fruit from the bowl on the bench.
“Since Karen makes the best hot chocolates in the whole world,” El said earnestly.
“Oh, does she?”
“She does,” Mike and El said in unison, turning immediately to giggle at each other.
Karen was already reaching for the container, which was still out from the night before. She grinned at Hopper, who returned her smile with a familiarity that warmed her from the inside out.
“Well,” he said with an exaggerated sigh, “Can’t argue with that, can I?”