Chapter Text
“Hey, sit down. Let your big brother take care of you.” Will pulled out a chair at the kitchen table for El to sit down and helped her roll up her pants to reveal two skinned knees. “Ouch,” he hissed in sympathy.
“How do you know you are older, huh? We don’t know what day I was born.” It was true. El knew she was probably 14 years old, but didn’t have a clue when her birthday was. Papa wasn’t big on parties, after all.
She hoped her birthday was sometime in the spring, when the wildflowers she missed so dearly bloomed outside of Hopper’s cabin and the world came back to life after winter.
Will rummaged around a cabinet and pulled out the first aid kit. “I guess you’re right. We don’t really know, do we? I mean, how would we figure it out?”
She supposed her aunt Becky would know, but El still hadn’t gotten over her betrayal when she had gone to visit her mama and didn’t really want to risk asking her for any favors. So for now, it was a mystery.
El hummed. She already had one older brother — Jonathan. She thought of the way he sometimes let Will drive his car around the neighborhood, teaching him the basics, even though he wasn’t quite old enough yet. She thought of the way he made her mixtapes with all her favorites and let her borrow his Walkman to listen to them.
She thought of the way Will had rescued an old bike from the thrift store down the street, fixing it up and attaching purple and yellow streamers to the handlebars — her favorite colors. She thought of the look on his face when he had presented it to her, his crooked little smile as he said, “Ta-da!” She thought of his patience and care as he explained how the pedals worked and showed her the brakes, and the way he had led her by the hand back into the house when she had crashed and scraped her knees.
Maybe this is what big brothers are like, she supposed.
“I guess we can’t really know for sure. But you can be my big brother, if you want,” she said shyly, then winced as Will cleaned her wounds with an alcohol wipe.
“Really?” Will’s grin split his face wide open. “I can?”
El nodded. “You take care of me,” she said.
Will’s grin softened. “And you take care of me,” he murmured, smoothing back a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail. He opened two band-aids and smoothed them over each knee, then placed a kiss on each of them in turn, just like El had seen Joyce do the time Jonathan burnt his finger on a frying pan.
“Maybe we can take turns,” she suggested. “One day you get to be the big brother, and then another day I get to be the big sister.”
“That’s not usually how it works,” Will remarked as he put the first aid kit away.
“But we’re not a usual family, are we?”
El’s family wasn’t like Mike’s or Lucas’s. There was Joyce, who wasn’t her real mom, but who took her in and treated her like her own. Then there was Jonathan, who was sometimes more like a dad to Will than a brother. There was Will, who never treated her like an outsider, even though she felt like one sometimes.
And there was her dad, too, even though he wasn’t around anymore. Hopper was the first loving parent El had ever known — infinitely more caring than Papa. He introduced her to bedtime stories and board games and kisses on the forehead when she was sick.
She felt his absence like a hole in her heart, and she knew Joyce and Jonathan and Will did, too. Their family would never be quite complete without him, but it comforted El knowing that there were people who loved and missed him just as much as she did.
“I suppose not,” Will conceded. “Plus, I don’t think I’d like being the middle child all the time. Mike always complains to me about how his parents pay way more attention to his sisters than to him.”
El had heard the same complaints, but wasn’t sure exactly what being the middle child had to do with any of it. She thought she’d rather enjoy being in the middle, with one sibling on each side to look out for her.
“It’s a deal,” she said, sticking out her pinky.
Will smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he laced his pinky with hers. “It’s a deal,” he agreed.
El rolled her pants back down, covering the bandages. Luckily, the fabric hadn’t torn when she fell. “Want to go out and ride some more?”
“I’ll race you out there,” Will challenged. He puffed out his chest. “And I’ll win, since I’m older.”
El took off, shoving past her brother with a laugh and sliding on the kitchen floor in her socks. She slid her shoes onto her feet, smooshing the backs down under her heels, and grabbed Will’s where he’d left them by the door, holding them just out of his reach.
“Hey! That’s cheating!” he protested, but laughed as El burst through the door to the garage and ran out to where they had left their bikes in the yard.
She held his shoes up in the air, one in each hand. “If you want them, come and get them!” she taunted.
Will couldn’t resist. He ran out onto the grass, hoping his mom wouldn’t be too mad at the grass stains on his new white socks. He tackled El to the ground, careful not to hurt her skinned knees, and the two of them rolled around for a while until Will finally wrestled his shoes out of her grip.
They lay there for a while, staring up at the California sky while they caught their breath. El’s head lay in Will’s lap, and he picked pieces of grass out of her hair.
“Mom is gonna be so mad,” he groaned when he saw that he had not only stained his socks, but one leg of his jeans and the elbows of his jacket. El hadn’t fared much better.
El twisted around so she could gaze at him with her most innocent, wide-eyed face. “Yes, she will. But as the older brother, you should be the one to take re-spon-si-bil-ity.” She sounded it out carefully.
Will smacked her lightly on the shoulder, but knew she was right. He extracted himself from underneath her, standing up and brushing off his clothes. He extended a hand to his little sister, and she took it, hauling herself up.
“Come on. Maybe we can scrub the stains out before she gets home,” Will suggested.
El raised an eyebrow. “Or we could just hide them.”