Chapter Text
“Love. Mike, it is not hard of a word. I can say it! You say it!”
El takes a breath, face all screwed up, trying to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling outwards, trying (and failing) to make eye contact with Mike. They’re in El’s room in the cabin, door cracked. Eleven is standing, occasionally pacing, but mostly just looking at Mike.
“El, I do! I do. I promise, okay? Friends don’t lie.” Mike says, his hands moving up and down, as if to try and calm her from away. Hes sitting, legs dangling off her bed, and one knee is bouncing like crazy. He adjusts the collar of his light blue sweater, as if he were sweating from the conversation alone.
“Then say it! It is not a scary word.” Eleven says, pleading, almost begging, like a kid desperate for a toy in a toy store. Her chest hurts, each side pulling apart from one another, ripping all her muscles, heart crying inside her. Mike scoots off the bed and stands in front of her, his hands resting lightly on her hips. He doesn’t say anything, just stares, but not at her. Past her. Towards the wall, and almost through it. As if Eleven is some sort of ghost.
Eleven stares at him for a few moments, the silence thick with tension and guilt. Her heartbeat begins to take up all the space in her ears, each thump growing with resonance, so even if Mike was speaking, she wouldn’t be able to hear it anyways. Mike plants a kiss on her lips, and when he pulls away, she can see that he’s crying.
“Are you…alright?” Eleven asks, her head now thick with confusion. That, mixed with the deep, burning aching in her chest, throb of her heartbeat in her ears, and the tears she’s trying not to let escape, so she feels lucky to be able to speak. Why is he crying? She told him she loved him, he didn’t say it back, and now he kissed her. If anyone should be crying, it’s her.
“El…” he says, soft. She thumbs a rouge tear from his cheek. “I can’t….I don’t know why. M’ sorry. But you’re…..I do care about you. So much. I just….i can’t.”
Eleven can’t control her facial muscles anymore, and her tears spring up and immediately begin to roll down her cheeks. Luckily, the burning in her chest is gone, but has been replaced by a pit in her stomach, bound to swallow her whole. Mike places one hand on her cheek, and it’s warm. Too warm. But Eleven doesn’t care. She leans into the contact, desperately reading his eyes for a sign that what she thinks isn’t what’s true. But that sign isn’t there, and doesn’t come. It’s just Mikes eyes, blurred by tears. His awesome, stunning, always loved filled when he’s looking at Jane Eleven Hopper, eyes. Except this time, they’re sad, unmoored.
“You do not want to be my boyfriend.” El says, a question in nature, but she phrases like a statement, as if the truth has already begun to settle in her bones, and take over her.
“I…..I don’t think so.” Mike says, swallowing. His words are quiet, but rhythmic, almost like forbidden words he’s desperately trying not to say, but fall out out of his mouth anyways.
“Oh.” El says. “Why?” She asks plainly, and so matter of fact. But El needs to know. Mike kissed her. Mike sits them both down, still looking past her, through her. “Look at me, Mike.”
Mike at looks at her, and lets out a small sob, almost whine. Eleven lets her tears fall. There’s no words shared, just a crushing, guilty silence, that neither can take the blame for. It blooms across the two of them, and Eleven puts one hand in his hair, and he flinches for a split second.
“El….” Mike starts, his voice strained and quiet.
“No…no.” Eleven repeats, begging, again. “Just, just say you love me.”
“El.” Mike says, quiet, soft. He places a hand on her back, rubbing a soft circle. “I don’t…not love you…like I care about you in the same way I care about Lucas. Or Dustin.”
Eleven’s eyebrows furrow. “But you do not kiss Lucas. Or Dustin.” She says, squeezing her hand into his.
Mike sighs. “Yeah…..I don’t.”
“You kiss me.”
“Yes El, that’s true.”
“Do you want to kiss Lucas and Dustin?”
Mike jumps, as if he’s been snuck up on, caught. “Uh…well no….not…not Dustin and Lucas specifically, but it’s just….I just….” His voice falters off. The thick silence is back again, and Eleven thinks Mike can probably hear her heartbeat.
“You do not want to kiss me anymore.”
Eleven’s voice rings out, a dead echo surrounding her. Mike lets out a small, choked, strangled sound, which breaks the wall of impenetrable silence. Her heart stops thumping. The pit in her stomach grows, and her tears fall faster.
“Oh.” Eleven slowly says, processing. Her eyes somehow get wider.
“I’m…..sorry.” Mike manages to get out.
Eleven blinks, tears rolling, more forming, as if they’ll never stop. Her shoulders feel tense, and even though she’s sitting, it’s as if her entire body is going to give out, right then, right there. The unsteadiness is analogous to a fever, taking over her legs, stomach, chest, and head. The two are crying, sobs strained and quiet, and unable to look at anything but eachother.
“You do not have to be my friend.” El manages, quiet, between a choked sob and a sound made deep in her throat. Mike makes a light chuckle at her words, looking at her, his eyes light and full of love again. Eleven furrows her eyebrows at this. If he does not love her, why do his eyes look that? Why is he laughing when she is crying? What is so funny?
“El, I still want to be your friend.” Mike says, squeezing her hand. “Just not your boyfriend.”
“How does….how does that work?” Eleven asks, squeezing his hand back lightly. “Boyfriend has friend in it.”
Mike smiles, a few tears still lingering in his eyes.
“Yeah, it does. It’s like how Max and I hangout. Actually wait, no. Bad example, not like that all. It’s like how Will and Max are. Like they hangout together sometimes, but mostly with the party. And they’re friends and they might call eachother every once and awhile. Like that.”
Eleven nods, wiping a tear from her face.
“Like Will and Max.” She agrees, still not fully getting it, but understanding that her time of being Mike’s’ girlfriend is….over.
They sit there for awhile, and now, Eleven is wishing she could be anywhere else, when a mere half hour ago, this was all she wanted. Her, and Mike. The time passes slow, and she realizes the sun is setting, her window getting darker by the second.
“El? I gotta…I gotta get going. But I’ll see you tomorrow right? Party movie night. I still want you there,” Mike pauses “And if you don’t want to tell anyone, that’s cool. I can do that. I can do that. Except for maybe Max. Maybe it’s best if you tell her.” Mike finishes.
“I will tell Max tomorrow. And Will. He will be here soon.” Eleven says to him, and Mike stands up. Eleven doesn’t follow.
“That sounds good. Yeah. I’ll uhm, just tell them when I see them? Yeah.” Mike says, heading towards her door.
“Bye El.”
“Goodbye, Mike.”
Before long, Mike is out the door, and his footsteps fade. Eleven slumps down, and lays there, letting her tears crash and fall and fade into her pillow. The sadness is all encompassing, the anger blooming, the red hot across her face, and there’s this empty pit growing in her stomach, like she’s going to be sick. The sadness has washed over her, like a wave, the anger, like a sweeping current, knocking her off of her feet. All of it is too much.
However, what Eleven can’t deny, is that there is slight feeling, like a knot untying, somewhere deep inside her mind. Like maybe, it is a little easier to breathe. The heavy ache that has been sitting in her chest for weeks is slowly easing. Like the weight of weariness and fear has faded into a vague, ambivalent, gray like feeling, that isn’t all that bad.
What feels like a century later (but maybe just an hour), Will knocks on the door to her bedroom.
“El?" Will asks, slowly opening the door. “Mom said something about not seeing you yet. Dinners ready-oh my god El, are you okay?” Will asks upon seeing Eleven, face red and tear stained, still curled up.
Eleven nods, and then shakes her head, and nods again, sitting up. Will wraps her in a tight hug, and she hugs him, letting her cheek rest on his shoulder.
“I do not have a boyfriend anymore.” Eleven says into Wills shoulder. He rubs her back, holding her impossibly tighter, impossibly closer.