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The horrific battle at Starcourt Mall had happened three months earlier, but Mike Wheeler still never thought this time would come.
A time when he willingly had to say goodbye to El Hopper. His favorite person, his rock, and his best friend.
Sure, they would still see each other on holidays, and the occasional weekend, but Mike had grown used to spending every day with her. His greatest fear was that, one day, after the Byers' move, he wouldn’t hear El’s voice when he called on Cerebro. He never wanted anything to hurt her, and how could he be certain that she was safe if she was more than a ten minute bike ride away?
Throughout the last three months, he and El had spent every possible second together. Most days, they wouldn’t even do anything, just relax in the presence of each other, drawn to one another, and attached at the hip.
Some may call it clingy, but their connection almost felt…magnetic. Mike knew that sounded ridiculous, and he was aware that it probably made him sound like a complete hopeless romantic, but he knew for a fact that everything they had gone through had only made their connection stronger.
Mike almost always had a sixth sense when it came to El. He always knew when she was in pain or grieving. He knew when to give her space, but, more often than not, he knew exactly how to wrap his long arms around her shivering frame to shield her from her own feelings of despair. Mike also knew how to make her laugh, even when she felt like she couldn’t, and he promised himself he would always be there to catch her if she fell.
El couldn’t even sit next to Mike on the couch in the Byers’ living room without basically sitting on top of him. Not that Mike minded. El always found a way to make sure they were touching, like she always wanted to remain tethered to him. He was her anchor, keeping her grounded. If they were eating dinner together with Will and Jonathan and Joyce, she would play footsie with him under the table. If they watched a movie, her head was on his shoulder. If they were walking, their hands were linked together, her shoulder lightly bumping his arm every time they took a step.
When they were alone, they would kiss like they used to, in her old cabin bedroom with the door open three inches. Even when they were totally by themselves in the Byers house, with Joyce and Jonathan at work, and Will over at Dustin’s or Lucas’ house, she still kept the door open.
“Hop’s watching somewhere,” El would say.
But, the most profoundly different thing from when El and Mike had first come back together was the amount of time El spent making sure that Mike wasn’t disappearing beneath her fingertips.
Ever since their 353 days spent apart, El had developed a habit of holding his face, checking to make sure he was real, and that action had only intensified since Hopper’s passing.
Even in their most dire, horrible moments, El had always reached for him, fingertips running over his skin, trying to make sure he was really there, and not just in her imagination. The way she cupped his face in her hand, thumb smoothing over his cheekbone, made his heart feel like it was shattering into a million pieces.
“Mike,” she’d whisper.
“I’m here,” he would reply, wrapping his fingers gently around her wrist.
When they’d first gotten back, El had horrifying nightmares. At first, she tried to hide that fact from Mike, insisting to the entire Byers family that she was okay, even when she woke up screaming at the top of her lungs for Hop, imagining the Mind Flayer murdering her father and her friends before latching onto her, Billy’s voice repeating “We're going to end you,” over and over again.
Joyce would run into her room the moment she heard El’s screams, and shake her awake, speaking in hushed tones with her gentle, soothing voice.
Jonathan would come in next and sit with her, his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, telling her she was safe now, and that she was his sister, and he’d never let anything hurt his little sister.
Will would then softly enter the room, and, sitting on the foot of the bed, he would read her stories about superheroes saving the day, “just like you, El,” until she fell back asleep.
But there was one particular day, where El’s nightmares took a turn for the worse. She was standing in the Void, the water sloshing around her feet, when she heard a a cry of pain.
She stepped toward the source, trying to find where the terrible sound was coming from, when with a startling gasp, she realized that she recognized the young man’s voice.
She’d recognize it anywhere.
Mike.
She started running, tripping over her own two feet, and landing with a splash on the ground, only to pick herself back up as she sprinted toward the sound of the voice.
“Mike! MIKE!” El screamed.
When she finally saw him come into view, her heart stopped.
Billy menacingly stepped toward Mike’s crumpled body on the ground, and reached toward him. Only this time, El wasn’t there to stop Billy.
As she threw her hands forward, El remembered with a start that she had no powers.
Billy grabbed Mike and thew him against the wall.
“MIKE!” El screamed. As she ran to him, she heard Billy’s voice.
“You can’t save him, Eleven. He’s already gone, and soon, you will be too.”
She reached for Mike’s face, only to have it vanish into dust under her fingertips. She moved her hands, trying to touch him, grab his arms, shake him awake.
She screamed at the top of her lungs.
As Joyce entered the room, her screaming did not stop.
“Honey, honey, wake up,” Joyce said comfortingly, but El was still trapped in her nightmare.
As she began to come out of it…
“That’s it! I’m calling him,” Joyce said with a huff.
Over the sound of her practically adopted daughter’s screams, Joyce pressed the button of the Supercomm that always sat on El’s bedside table.
“MIKE! Pick up now!” Joyce yelled into the device.
She waited for a few seconds.
“MIKE! This is Joyce, I need you to talk to me right this second!”
A moment later, a groggy voice responded.
“Mrs. Byers? Why are you calling so late?”
There was a moment of silence, only pierced by the sounds of El’s slightly muffled screaming as her face now rested in a pillow as Jonathan and Will attempted to soothe her.
The sound of Mike’s voice, now sounding both very awake and very terrified replied, “Is she okay? What’s wrong? Is she hurt?”
“She needs you,” Joyce hastily replied.
El’s voice alternated in the background and she screamed until she couldn’t breathe, and then sobbed Mike’s name over and over again until she began to scream again.
There was no hesitation in Mike’s voice as he answered, “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”
“Hurry,” she responded.
Exactly 10 minutes later, when Mike ran into El’s room, he was met with three distraught faces. El’s face was still buried in her pillow, and her screams reverberated off the walls.
Mike sprinted to her side. “El, it’s me,” he said, panting slightly. “It’s Mike.”
At the sound of his name, El’s face popped up from the pillow as she cried, “Mike, Mike, Mike,” over and over again.
“It’s me, El, I’m here…”
Her cries didn’t stop until he wrapped himself around her, shielding her, protecting her with all the strength he could muster from the terrible thoughts that plagued her own mind.
He ran his hands up and down her back, into her hair, pressing her as close to him as he possibly could.
Finally, her hand reached out and cupped his face gently, running her thumb along the length of his cheekbone, relishing the feeling of his smooth, freckled skin beneath her fingertip.
His deep brown eyes were full of concern, fear, and something else she couldn’t quite place, and the dark circles drawn prominently underneath those eyes suggested that he was also exhausted.
She thought about all the times she had visited him in the Void, and how something always interfered the moment she tried to reach out and touch him.
“Here?” she managed to croak out, her voice sounding scratchy and awful.
El watched Mike’s eyes soften as he gazed down at her. He was always able to understand the meaning behind her words.
“Yeah, it’s really me,” he said, moving his fingers up to lightly stroke over her own.
There was a brief pause as Mike’s hand moved down to cup her wrist, before he whispered, his voice hushed and full of so many emotions. “I’m here, El.”
“Please don't leave me,” El murmured, under her breath.
Mike responded in the only way he knew how, capturing her lips in a kiss, projecting all of his feelings onto her, his feelings of sympathy and care, and most of all, as much as he tried to hide it from his own terrified brain, love.
As her fingers made their way away from his face, and into his hair, he could feel her pressing back, her lips wrapping around his, finally beginning to believe he was real.
When they broke apart, Mike decided that he wasn't going to leave her side for the rest of the night.
Under the cover of darkness, some few hours later when Joyce had silently relented into letting Mike sleep there so they could all get some rest, El curled up against Mike's chest. She held on tightly to her anchor, and lightly brushed his cheek, feeling so much better than she had just a couple hours previously. El's night light turned Mike's skin a golden hue, and she loved how it looked underneath her fingertips.
“You do that a lot,” Mike suddenly blurted out.
He peered down at her, face quickly turning from golden to a rosy pink. She thinks it looks even prettier on him.
“Sorry,” he apologized quickly, “It’s just, you-you always touch my face.”
“I-I like it, it’s not bad, I just always wondered…why you do that?” Mike questioned awkwardly. He reaches for her hand. “ I don’t mind it,” he said quietly, his voice soft. “I’m just usually able to tell, you know, what you’re thinking about. What you need…” he tapered off uncertainly.
“…but with this, it scares me, you know? I-I know I’ve said it before, but you’re the most important thing to me in the world. And I know you’re not a “thing,” you’re your own person, and I don’t need to know everything you’re thinking, but it starts to freak me out when I can’t understand why you’re looking at me like I’m going to evaporate, or like, turn into vapor, and float away, which of course, couldn’t happen, but hypothetically…”
“Mike,” El stopped him, a small smile gracing her face. “You’re rambling, my love.”
El had no idea where the “my love” part came from, probably one of the many soap operas she had watched while at the cabin, but it fell out of her as naturally as breathing.
His face turned an even darker shade of pink.
“Sorry,” he gasped out, still looking a bit awestruck at the nickname she had just given him.
“It’s okay,” El answered. She pondered how to explain her thoughts for a brief moment.
“During those 353 days when we were apart, I would look for you in the Void.”
Mike nodded, dark eyes intently boring into her own.
“But every time I would find you, I’d reach out to you, and you’d…e-va-por-ate,” she said slowly. "Or, right before I could touch you, something would interrupt and I wouldn't be able to."
El watched as Mike’s eyes took on a new expression, his face softening into some form of understanding, before slowly descending into sadness.
“I knew you could see me,” Mike said carefully, letting his words fade into an awed whisper, “but you tried to reach out to me too?”
El nodded, tears building up behind her eyes again. “You looked so sad, and I tried to comfort you. I would reach out to touch your face, but you were just…gone. On Halloween, you got up and walked away, and I didn't know what to do.”
“Oh, El,” Mike breathed out, tugging on her hand until his arms just folded her up.
She loved that about him. His arms were so long, she always felt like he was wrapping her into himself, like she was becoming another part of him, joining his orbit, or becoming another one of the many stars in his constellation.
Mike pulled back a bit after a moment, looking her in the eye. “I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel if the roles were reversed. I don't think I could handle watching you unknowingly walk away from me, or having you disappear when I tried to touch you. You're so strong, El. That must have been so painful.”
“Not as painful as you not even knowing if I was alive,” El replied.
“I knew,” Mike said with utmost certainty. “I knew you were out there. I could feel it.”
“That’s how I feel about Hop,” El said with conviction. “I know he’s somewhere.”
“Then we’ll find him. Together,” he answered, pulling her closer once again.
“Together?” El asked, voice small and pleading.
“Together, sweetheart,” he affirmed.
El’s face popped up from his chest to see a goofy smile painted all over Mike’s face.
“Sweetheart?” El asked, her lips quirking up into their own smile.
One of Mike’s eyebrows went up, as he attempted a suave voice. “Yeah, honey?”
El let out a laugh much too loud for that time of night as she buried her face into Mike’s shoulder, attempting to quell the giggles that continued to pour out of her. She could feel Mike’s body shaking slightly with silent laughter as he continued to talk.
“What’s so funny, babe?” Mike asked, as a fresh round of laughter overcame her.
Suddenly, El couldn’t stand it anymore, as she quickly removed her face from his shoulder and planted her lips on his, both of them smiling through the kiss.
Mike was the first to break away, as he gave her a peck on the cheek, followed by one on her forehead, then the tip of her nose, before she leaned in impatiently to properly kiss him again.
“I love you,” Mike thought, pushing past the fear blockading his brain as he attempted to pour all of his overwhelming emotions into this one kiss. “I’ll never leave you.”
After a few more minutes, El fell asleep against him, a smile on her face and her fingertips brushing Mike’s cheek, taking his whole heart along with them.
A small smile slipped onto Mike’s face as he remembered that night. As serious as their topic of discussion had been, they had still been able to turn it into a positive memory together.
She was only a few days away from leaving Hawkins, but she’d never leave his life. He would help her through all of her nightmares, even if he had to hike to the top of the highest hill in town just to talk to her through Cerebro, and they’d find Hopper, together, no matter what.
Mike just knew, in the depths of his soul, that they would always be ElandMike or MikeandEl. Even though the miles may have been threatening to separate them and cause cracks in their relationship, he knew they would never appear. Instead, their connection would only grow stronger as they waited to finally be together again.