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Her thoughts raced around as always, a hundred words a second. Across from her is Mike, slumped in his seat, his words spewing out. She didn’t mind his rambling usually. She couldn’t recall when his voice started stinging. when her eyes naturally drifted away from his. when their hands no longer pulled together.
She couldn’t recall when the love stopped being felt.
She can only remember when it was last written. The fourth letter, sloppily written on thin, printer paper. A single creased sticker of a puppy to muffle the hurt of a letter being “from mike.”
“I’m not sure about this pineapple pizza anymore, el.” He shot his hand up from beneath the table, he always paired the nervous crack in his voice with hand gestures.
“I mean, I’ll try it but it’s still fruit on-“ Mike swallowed. “the best food in the world. Objectively. It’s already perfection.”
Eleven hated how his words were muffled and quiet like he was underwater. She couldn’t pay attention, her inner voice too insistent, too loud. Overpowering her wish to listen to her boyfriend.
“But.. I don’t know. What do you think, el?” He caught her. His gaze flickered between her eyes, fully pulled away and idly scanning the menu.
Cursive.
“El?” She jolted as their fingertips brushed against each other, pulling her hand back, not even sure why.
When did his touch stop feeling like a buzz, and more like a shock?
All the love is gone between them by now, she can’t feel it anymore. It had slowly seeped out of her, like she had filled her glitter pen with all of her love while wasting hours drawing pictures she knew his eyes would only gloss over.
“What do you think?” His tone lost all hints of softness as he repeated himself. She hated that furrow in his eyebrow, the furrow that only showed itself every time she did something.
“I think..” Her eyes avoided his again, she couldn’t understand why they did. She couldn’t understand any of this. She couldn’t remember what was lost and what was still left between them. “I think it’s not fair.”
His eyes widened in confusion, the lazy slouch in his back she had grown to dislike was slightly straightened. Like he was making himself bigger, forcing himself to be defensive.
“The way you act like nothing happened, and that we are happy.” She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her. She didn’t meant for that harsh tone to come out along with them.
Silence filled the room. At some point, the silence between them had stopped feeling comfortable. It felt suffocating.
“..What? What do you mean?” That tremble in his voice. He was being suffocated by it too.
“I’m not happy.” The look on his face, she knows that stung.
All air was slowly wrung out the room, replaced with that awful silence. Clinical quiet. The kind of hush you only hear in Hawkins lab. She held back tears. Not everything bled back to the lab, despite her imagination.
“What are you saying, El?” The tremble in his question made her heart ache. Whatever bravery she had left in her to confront him vanished almost immediately.
“I-“
“What is this, are you still upset with me about the letters?” He cut her off, desperation clinging to every syllable.
That wasn’t all of it. The letters were the cause, what’s that word? Catalyst. When she thinks about the letters now the thought trails off into a hundred other grievances.
The letters grip on her are looser than ever, yet the pain they caused are stuck at the back of her throat, scratching and itching. Blocking her airways.
Eleven silently nods either way, telling mike every mistake he’s made would be too cruel. And it would give him the opportunity to remind her of her mistakes. The many she’s made.
“Yes. I’m still upset about the letters.” Lying to him felt weird when it came from her own vocal cords and not the tip of her pencil. Even if the lie was only partly a lie.
“I already..” He sighed, avoiding el’s gaze, clearly annoyed. That was obvious even through whatever filter in her brain that made it impossible to understand body language. “I’m sorry about the letters okay.”
Each vowel laced with force, not sarcasm, but something adjacent.
“Can’t we just go back to normal, El? I’ll fix my letters.” He mumbled the last sentence, like a child would. Under his breath and dripping with frustration.
Mike looks up at her quickly enough to catch her shaking her head. Gaze glued to the menu screens again. All the text was written in a cursive font.
“What do you mean no? What did I do wrong besides the letters?”
Can’t read cursive.
“You made me feel like a monster, mike.” She pushed the words out of her throat, even if she now knows the real monster is papa, it hurts.
Mike might not know the real monster is papa.
The expression on mike’s face, unreadable. As he stares at eleven, his dark eyes distinctly cold.
“El, you’re not a monster, you’re a superhero.”
“Well I don’t want to be a superhero!” She raises her voice at him. Tears welling up in her eyes. “I want to belong! In Lenora!”
He keeps staring, that damned furrow just getting more pronounced.
“Every time you say I’m a superhero it just makes me feel different. From everyone else.” She clenches her eyes shut, feeling a single, cold tear roll down her cheek. Her hair felt too short, too close to the curve of her scalp, her hands trembled as she ran her fingers through it.
“..I’m sorry, El. It’s just..” His voice softened, not out of love but guilt, fear, something else entirely that Eleven couldn’t grasp. “You are a superhero, to me. you have such amazing powers, you can do anything you set your mind to.” Heat pooled in her stomach, dark, sizzling, burning heat. It stung.
“I.. It just feels like you don’t see me for me. You see my powers , not el.” She balled her hands into fists, shrugging them into her sleeves.
“Of course I see you! It’s just..!” He sits up even more, openly flustered and annoyed now. “You..! How do you expect me not to pay more attention to your powers, they’re insane!” His eyes were wide, wild. The compliment left up in the air, nobody took it.
“Will doesn’t care about my powers, neither does Max.” The heat began boiling, small bubbles floating up and breaking surface tension.
“So?!” Mike was the worst when he got defensive. “I don’t get this, El! If you were this mad at me why did you commission that painting for me?! Did you ask for Will to mock me too?!” He was fully yelling now, he never yelled. Not like this.
But that’s when the heat stopped bubbling within her.
When did Mike get like this?
She huffed, letting her fingers roll out of her sleeves and hang loosely by her side. She turned away from Mike, spotted two heads in the kitchen. Recognizing Will’s bowlcut immediately.
What painting?
“What painting?”
“The one you commissioned from Will.” She hears it. She hears it in the way he says his name. “Did you tell him to say those things to me?” The softness. “To give me false hope? To lead me on? To break my heart?” The softness left as fast as it arrived.
“I didn’t ask Will to paint anything.”
“Bullshit” The softness sharpened and moulded into a weapon. But she hears his weakness somewhere behind it.
“He was too busy to paint me something, I told you in my letter. He was painting a lot.”
That silence again. White tiles covering every surface. Tight straps and wires around her head. The touch of a man she always dreaded and longed for equally. She fell back into the lab every time they ran out of noise to fill the space.
“But.. He said it was from you.” His eyes soft, round, half lidded. Like a kicked puppy. More upset over one lie from Will than an entire argument with El. Mike’s idiot brain. She hated it.
She hated how the way out of this mess was rewiring that idiot brain. Hated how the boy she loved was lost before her.
When was the last time he smiled back?
“Then he lied to you.”
When was the last time she smiled first?
Mike stared up, finally wearing an emotion El could read. Dread. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He just sat there, looking up at her through his bangs like she had just ripped his heart out and slammed it on the table.
Why did he only start caring once Will was involved?
“I don’t-“ Mike shot a look down at his hands, fidgeting with his watch now, mumbling under his breath. Wishing she was better at reading emotions so his face wouldn’t be such a mystery. All she could gather was nothing upset him more than knowing will lied, apparently.
It wasn’t fair, how he could endure this so easily. But the second Will does something he straightens he out, he fixes it. While he leaves Eleven broken.
What was the point in forcing this thing with mike anymore?
Suddenly a weight shifted, the entire world felt lighter. As if four tonnes had rolled off her back and crashed into a million pieces beneath her.
“I.. I think we should just be friends, Mike. Okay?” She forced a smile to her face, it ached as it stretched. She knew she overdid it.
He didn’t even look up, his eyes clenched shut. Mike was never good with emoting, and eleven was never good at deciphering his attempts. She was expecting some reaction, some shift.
It only proved that expecting things from Mike Wheeler was the worst thing she had done.
She lifted up from her seat, ankles suddenly lighter, easier to move. Has the answer always been there? She hesitated at the end of the table, she should stay with her friend during a hard time. Is what she’s heard. But it didn’t fit.
Walking away from the table she didn’t hear the slightest shift in the booth.
She joins Will and Jonathan in the kitchen, which smells like grease and bread dough. Will is holding a stick, stirring clumps of salt into tempered water until they dissolve.
Once he notices El he drops the stick, and she finds herself in his arms seconds after. She guesses he overheard most of the conversation before, she wasn’t exactly trying to be quiet. Her arms wrap around Will’s sides. He’s gotten so much bigger, and taller. Where her face met the side of his last year, she now finds a shoulder.
She doesn’t understand why Mike can be so ignorant when her brother notices her right away. He sees her.
The silence here is better. It’s a quiet composed of old lights buzzing, flowing water, relaxed breathing and soft fabrics colliding.
As she unravels the embrace she looks up at Will, his green eyes crease and fold over his soft smile. He rubs his thumb along the ridge of her back, Joyce would do the same. He then turns his head away, smile dropping, or fading. His stare fixated on something.
El matches his turn, finding Mike Wheeler. Through the small gap in the kitchen, still stuck at the now empty booth.
Mike was looking at him.