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It was the early hours on a gloomy Saturday and in Jim Hopper's cabin, El and Mike were asleep. El on the couch and Mike, who somehow rolled off the pillows he was laying, was on the floor. They had fallen asleep after watching a movie, a regular occurrence for the two lately as the rest of the Party already had plans with their significant others, leaving their two single friends to maintain the Party's Friday night tradition.
It was about one in the morning when all of a sudden El and Mike awoke to the sound of rain and hail hitting the windows of the small cabin.
"What the hell?" A drowsy El said rubbing her eyes and turning on her phone to see the time.
"What's wrong?" Mike said, immediately sitting up to make sure his friend was ok.
"I don't know." El said turning around on the couch and looking out the window with Mike doing the same thing. "Wow. It looks really bad out there."
Mike grabbed his phone off the coffee table and sat on the couch next to El. He opened the weather app and read his disturbing findings.
"It says that there is a tornado watch in Boone County. Hawkins and our houses are right in the middle of it." He said showing her the radar map.
"Come here." She said grabbing his hand and dragging him over to the little closet.
"What are these?" Mike said pulling out two E.P.K's as directed by El.
"They're emergency preparedness kits and to think I used to give Hop a hard time for going on about them, I just hope he has one at the station." She answered dragging him back out to the living room.
When they got to the living room, El pointed for him to sit in the middle of the floor.
"It's safer than anywhere else in the room. if it gets worse, we'll move into my closet."
Mike opened his mouth to say something but El gave him an 'if-you-say-anything-I'll-throw-you-outside-and-lock-you-there' look. She got up again and grabbed the TV and set it on the floor so it wouldn't fall over on top of them. Mike grabbed two oversized cushions from the couch and put them on the floor to sit on. About a minute went by when Mike began drumming on his knee, El had known Mike long enough to know this was his not so subtle way of being bored.
"Mike! It's only been a minute!" El said stilling his hands before returning to braiding the strings on the cushion she was sitting on.
"I know but I can't take it anymore!" He grumbled.
"Hold on." El said getting up and jogging back to her bedroom. When she walked back out with her iPad, Mike's face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning and she couldn't help but smile a little bit at his reaction.
He grabbed the iPad from her before she even sat down and clicked on the 'Toy Story Drop' icon.
"Hey!" El yelled. "That's only a one player game!"
"Not even!" Was Mike's reply. "I'll play and you can watch! There! Two players."
El just rolled her eyes and said "There's like 20 other two player games on there! Why couldn't you have just picked one of those?"
"Well, I can if you want. Ooh! New high score!" Mike said in victory.
"Give me that." El said annoyed, snatching the device away from Mike who had regressed into a ten year old sitting next to her. "How about Battleship or Trivia?"
"What else do you have?" Mike said taking the iPad away from El again, who snatched it right back.
"What about... Fruit Ninja? "El asked hopefully.
"Anything for my little pineapple." Mike said goofily whilst bowing dramatically. "Sounds like fun!"
After playing one game, Mike paused right in the middle of El slicing through a pineapple.
"Mike!" She exclaimed.
"I'm hungry." He blatantly declared.
"It's 2.15 in the morning, how can you be hungry?!" El exclaimed
"What I'm a growing boy" he replied extending his gangly arms and legs to emphasise his point.
"Fine. C'mon." El said pushing herself up off the floor and walking toward the kitchen with Mike not far behind. The storm still raging outside, El took a deep breath and welcoming the distraction, opened the fridge.
"Alright... What do we have?"
"We?" Mike said smirking.
"It's a figure of speech and you know it!" She said blushing lightly. "There's leftover pizza from earlier, Chinese, chocolate-"
"You have Chinese chocolate?" He asked curiously.
She gave him a you-have-got-to-be-kidding look and said "Noooo, I have Chinese food that me and Hop had Thursday and American chocolate. Ugh. Never mind. What about the pizza?"
Before he could answer, they heard a loud crack outside the window and then the fierce rumbling of the thunder. Both Mike and El grabbed each others hand and cautiously went over to the window. They found that a branch had broke off the tree and hit the window, shockingly not breaking it.
"It looks like the storm's getting worse." Mike said while examining the torrential downpour outside.
El went back to the kitchen grabbed two pieces of pizza, heated them up in the microwave, and suggested they go in her closet in case any really bad weather were to occur.
"You grab the iPad and the pillows and I'll grab the pizza and drinks and the phones, oh I have toasted a couple of eggos too." El said slipping the phones in her back pockets and reaching in the fridge to grab two bottles of water while Mike grabbed what he was told.
When she got to the closet, El's hands were full and Mike was already sitting and playing with the iPad.
"Mike." El said grabbing Mike's attention away from the game.
"Yes?" He answered distractedly.
"Grab the phones out of my back pocket so I don't sit on them." El said turning around so her back pocket was facing him.
"Uhh... I'll grab the food and drinks instead." He said his ears turning red as he quickly got up to take the things out of El's hands, where he was greeted by a stunned facial expression.
"What?" She said slowly, disbelief in her voice. "You would've done that if it was Jennifer Hayes asking. What's going on with you?"
"I-I thought it would be easier to just grab the food instead." He lied.
"Oh. Yeah. Ok." She said not really believing him.
After they finished their food, mainly in silence, El fired off a text to Hopper to make sure he was ok. After confirming that he was hunkered down at the station and that her and Mike should keep themselves as safe as possible, they decided to rotate, with El sleeping for thirty minutes while Mike stayed watch and Mike sleeping for thirty minutes while El kept watch. After this had been going on for about an hour and a half, it was El's turn to sleep again for the second time. She found sleep failing her because of one question, just begging for an answer.
"Hey, Mike?" El said quietly.
"Yea?" He said.
"Why didn't you get the phones out of my back pocket?" She asked hesitantly.
Mike sat for a moment before he said anything.
"Because El, you must know you mean way too much to me and I didn't want to screw anything up." He answered more truthfully than he had ever answered anything else in his entire life. "I would never want you to think I was trying to cop a feel and make you not trust me."
"I don't think there is anything in this world that you could do to ruin our relationship. I mean friendsh-." El replied, stopping short from correcting herself, her words coming directly from her heart; something that she rarely let happen, but with Mike, it had always been a different story.
Though neither wanted to admit it, she knew there was a chemistry that just wasn't there with Will, Dustin or Lucas. Just Mike. She also knew that by saying the word "relationship" in the context of both of them, it had brought the concept of them being 'something more' than just friends to the front of the conversation at about a thousand miles an hour.
Mike sat in shock not knowing what to say. Never in a million years, he would've thought that El might felt the same way for him as he did for her. She did, right? Didn't she just admit it?
"Mike?" El said for the third time to the unresponsive being sitting next to her.
"Huh? Uh... yea. Sorry Um. Did you just admit that-?" He began to say.
"Yea. I think..." She said looking up at him through her eyelashes, whilst desperately hoping he felt the same way.
He didn't even have to think about what to say this time.
"El, this might sound cliche, but I promise I mean every word." he repositioned himself directly opposite her so their knees were touching. "You have been one of my favourite people since I was ten years old and then the last couple of years I had all these feelings for you that burst out of no where and were more than friendly and the thought of you finding out and hating me made me the most scared that I'd ever been in my whole life. I honestly don't know what I'd do without you. El, you mean more to me than you could ever know."
El was speechless, and all she was able to say was a faint 'Mike.'
"I'm sorry." Mike quickly said when he saw El's watery eyes.
"What? Why?" El asked, wiping her eyes.
"I made you cry." He said apologetically.
"Yes but not for the reason that you think." She smiled at Mike's confused face. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to tell you how much you mean to me."
They began inching closer, their lips just millimeters from touching, 'Ding!'
El jumped backwards startled as Mike groaning grabbed his phone and read what the alert said.
"Tornado watch is over, but it says that there will still be lots of rain and lightning for a while. Good thing its the weekend, although fingers crossed the storm hit the school and it will be closed Monday."
"I guess a little rain never hurt." El said grinning, however hey heart was practically beating out of her chest over their almost kiss. "Do you wanna go sit on the couch and watch TV?" She asked shaking her head clear.
"Let me just grab the plates and bottles really quick and throw them away." Mike answered.
"I'll help." El said picking up her plate and almost empty water, following Mike into the kitchen.
They threw away the trash and made their way to the living room where El turned on her tivo'd episodes of America's Next Top Model.
"I could never go on this show. I mean apart from being to short, everyone is so fake and just out to get you it would be exhausting!" El stated about five minutes into the show.
"It's probably a good thing too, because if you were the other women wouldn't stand a chance with you in the same room. You're more beautiful than any of the contestants I have seen on there, smarter too." Mike said bashfully
El smiled and blushed. When she realized her face was turning a bright pink, she turned away, but it was too late.
"Are you blushing? The great unflappable El Hopper, blushing!" Mike chuckled.
"No." El said a little too quickly and looked at Mike.
"Yea you are! Your face is still red!" He said through laughter.
"It's not red from blushing. It's red because you're making me mad." She lied, and he knew it.
"Are you sure, cause uh..." He said looking down where El's hand lie on top of his.
She looked down and quickly pulled her hand away, trying to scowl at him, but not doing a very good job when she started to smile as a result of him shooting his signature goofy look her way.
"You're a pain." She said.
"See, I think that you like it when I smile like that because..." He began before he was abruptly stopped by El's lips on his. El quickly pulled back and started watching the TV again like nothing even happened.
"Wh-wha-what was that?" A shocked and flustered Mike stammered.
"Best way to shut you up quickly." She simply said.
"You know what?" Mike said regaining himself. "I think you liked it."
"I think you liked it." She said looking at him with a smirk.
"I think you're right." He said, causing her eyes to widen.
"What?" El asked in disbelief, although she really felt the same way too.
"You heard me." He said. "And I bet you liked it too."
Before El could even begin to say anything, Mike had a mischievous smile on his face. She opened her mouth to say no, but she nodded and a faint "yes" came out instead.
"Really?" Mike asked his grin falling slightly to make way for shock. Even after their heart to heart in the closet he was still not expecting her to actually say yes.
El knew that those were her true feelings, so why not just admit it? I mean he had made it clear earlier how he felt.
"Yeah, I did." She said, her heart fluttered as the same mischievous smile that he had plastered on his face just seconds before, began to reappear.
She leaned in at the same time as him, their lips meeting in the middle. For the past two years, he had only dreamed of kissing her and she had only wished she could kiss him, but neither of them knew that they had the same feelings for one another. Feelings that were pouring out into the kiss. Mike pulled El onto his lap, her hands tangled in his dark hair. He had one hand on the back of her neck and the other on the small of her back. Passionate was one of the many words that El thought could describe this kiss. Their lips entangled in the kiss they had been waiting for, forever. That first little kiss that El planted on Mike's lips to shut him up opened up a whole new world for the two of them.
They pulled back for not much more than a second to take a much needed breath before Mike pulled El back in for another steamy kiss. After a string of careless, lustful kisses, El and Mike pulled back again and looked in each others' eyes. They saw a feeling that neither of them had ever seen before. Need. Not want-need. They needed each other. They always made the other one happy if they were sad, always cracked a joke at the right time, always cared.
"Mike." El whispered.
Before she could say anything else, Mike gently put his finger on her lips.
"El, you mean the world to me and I don't want to mess anything up." He said holding her hands.
"I know." She said and kissed him lightly on the lips.
Mike grabbed a blanket and half laid down on the couch and motioned for El to lay down next to him. She smiled and laid down and put her back to his chest. He put the blanket on top of both of them and kissed the back of El's head.
After tonight's storm, the two of them could weather anything. As they both drifted off to sleep, Mike's final thought as he pulled El tighter, was that he could really get used to this.