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The party is silent as they ride, having run out of things to talk about hours ago—or maybe it’s been days; Mike isn’t sure.
He’s spent more time with Will, Lucas, and Max the past couple of weeks than he has with some of his family members in the past year, and with no school, no bullies, no upside down, and—unfortunately—no Dustin, there just isn’t much left for any of them to say.
It’s not unpleasant, though. It’s a nice, safe sort of quiet, filled only by the rush of their pedals and the far-off hum of cicadas. It pairs nicely with the sun-sleepy feeling buzzing through Mike now, the warmth of El’s body pressed against his, her dirty white Converse on his back-wheel pegs.
It’s been a good day, and it’s a nice night, and every time they fly over a bump, El tightens her hands around his stomach, sending tiny jolts of electricity through him.
Mike doesn’t realize they’ve reached the clearing until he hears the whir of Will’s bike easing to a stop, followed by Lucas’, and the low whistle Max emits from where she’s perched behind him with her hands on his back.
El leans forward to hook her chin over Mike’s shoulder, and her hair—frizzy from a day outside—tickles the side of his neck. He laughs softly, cheeks warm with sticky summer heat as he slows his own bike and turns to face her.
Her eyes go wide at their proximity, flicking all around Mike’s face for a moment before she smiles sweetly and hops off the bike to engage in a brief conversation with Lucas (Mike quietly relishes in how immediately uncomfortable this makes Max, who’s still yet to say more than two words to El directly since their initial meeting).
“Hey, Mike,” Will says casually.
Mike only slightly flinches as he’s pushing out his kickstand with the toe of his shoe.
When he doesn’t say anything else, Mike figures he better offer him his full attention, so he swings his leg over the seat on Will’s side and meets his waiting gaze with an attempt at a relaxed smile. “What’s up?”
His voice lowers before he asks, “You sure you wanna walk her the rest of the way alone?”
Mike raises an eyebrow, as if to say: What, are you crazy?
Although he’s much more subtle about it than Max, it’s clear Will hasn’t warmed up to El yet. He won’t admit it, but Mike can tell, though he’s very bravely not letting it get to him.
Lucas says they just need more time, and he’s right. Will hasn’t gotten to know her yet! And he hasn’t seen all the super cool stuff she can do. It doesn’t help that Hopper never lets her out of the house for more than a couple of hours, but—whatever. It’s really fine.
“We’ll be okay,” Mike says, softening, because he understands why Will gets nervous. “There’s nothing—y’know—to worry about anymore. And even if there was, El—”
“Right, I know,” Will cuts him off. “That’s not what I mean.”
Mike frowns. It’s not even late. The sun has just barely started to descend, casting the street in soft, orange light. It still won’t be dark by the time they make it to the cabin. It probably won’t even be dark by the time Will gets home.
An inkling of what Will might be insinuating makes its way into Mike’s head, settling uncomfortably just behind his left eye. He squints, shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulders and ignoring the ridiculous-sounding laugh Lucas emits from somewhere behind them.
Still, he asks, “What do you mean, then?”
“You’ve just been—” Will’s mouth presses thin. His eyes drop to the ground between their shoes. “You seem—”
Mike hates the way his blood immediately goes cold at the confirmation. He opens his mouth to argue, something sharp and icy piercing his gut, and Will must sense it because he takes the initiative himself, shaking his head.
“Never mind.”
Something urges Mike to push back, to really banish the thought before it can grow into something tangible—but it’s interrupted by El’s return, her arms looping gently around his waist.
“Mike,” she mumbles, lips to his shoulder blade. “We have to go.”
Will is watching their exchange wordlessly, and Mike avoids his eye by spinning around in El’s grip, attributing the dizziness that whips around him to her soft giggle, the feeling of her fingers dancing over his hips.
“Yeah,” he agrees, glancing unapologetically down at her mouth. He can feel Will boring holes into the back of his head. “Let’s go.”
“Bye, Will,” she says politely, over his shoulder.
“Bye,” he replies, slightly less so.
Mike and El offer twin waves to Lucas and Max as they walk backward, hand in hand, into the woods. Max rolls her eyes when El isn’t looking, and Lucas hollers, “Mike, if you’re not home by midnight, I’m calling the cops!”
Will laughs, seemingly despite himself, and then Lucas splutters. “Wait, no—who are you supposed to call when your best friend is murdered by the chief?”
Mike relaxes a bit as they walk.
The trail’s uneven, roots breaking through the dirt, but El traverses it expertly. She keeps bumping her shoulder into Mike’s, grinning when he bumps back and steadying him as he stumbles.
Mike talks stupidly with his hands, doing his best to explain any inside jokes that went over her head earlier. El laughs, bright and unguarded.
Every few steps, she stops to point something out—the blurred figure of a fleeing rabbit, the sound of a really crunchy leaf beneath her foot, the way the light catches in a puddle from this morning’s rain—and whatever has wound so tightly around Mike’s ribs loosens, just a bit.
That’s the thing about it—about her—that Will doesn’t get. The world softens around the edges when she’s around. Mike feels lighter with her hand in his, his entire body tingling with eager affection.
That feeling only intensifies when the cabin comes into view. El squeezes his fingers as she helps him over the tripwire, then announces, clearly pleased, “Hopper is working late.”
Mike’s stomach gives a low swoop at the implication, the guided step feeling suddenly like a freefall. She steadies him—again—and he has to detangle their hands so he can wipe his sweaty palm against the denim of his shorts.
It doesn’t really help, just spreads the dampness around.
“Stop falling,” El says lightly, the determined look on her face receding some. Then, she wipes her own hand on his shirt, nose wrinkling. “And sweating. Gross.”
Mike opens his mouth uselessly. Everything seems louder now than it did a second ago. The fading sunlight streaking through the trees burns his eyes. His clothes are tight against his skin, sticky with sweat. El has her pouted lip pulled between her teeth, and it’s really—it’s a lot.
Weakly, he attests, “It’s summer.”
“It is hot,” El agrees, cheeks swelling with the close-mouthed smile she gives him. Then, before Mike can recover from the sight, she pointedly adds, “So, we should go inside.”
Mike is barely over the threshold before El is kissing him.
She pauses only to kick off her shoes without ceremony. Mike watches, inhaling stale coffee and cigarette smoke and briefly wondering if her shoes are too big, concerned by the ease with which they slide off her socked feet, still tied, and then—
El is kissing him.
She pulls back only to say, “You can stay until I receive the signal.”
“Cool,” he grins.
One of her hands closes around the one Mike had been using to absently rub at his jaw, forcing it down and replacing it with hers, guiding his head forward so she can reach him easier. The other slots back between his fingers, pressing his knuckles against the closed door as she kisses him again. Gentle, at first.
Mike is not thinking about Will, because that would be weird.
He is, however, thinking about what Will said.
Or wouldn’t say.
He’s thinking about the way his stomach is still flipping and the hollow feeling there. The building headache. The tense lower half of his face.
He’s also thinking about the sour grape flavor of El’s recently reapplied chapstick and how it’s getting really difficult to hide the concerning amount of saliva filling his mouth from her.
Stale coffee and cigarette smoke.
No, Mike decides firmly.
No.
He swallows, focusing on moving the way he’s supposed to. He pulls away just to surge forward again, closing his eyes and dropping his free hand to the curve of El’s waist. She smiles approvingly against his lips, and he thinks: See? I’m fine.
It actually works, for a while.
Her fingers find the front of his shirt, and—unlike the times they’ve done this before—she doesn’t hesitate. She tightens her grip with budding confidence, and Mike’s heart kicks up a notch. The buzz returns to his limbs, and he allows himself to melt into her soft exploration.
The floor feels solid beneath his feet. Good. Normal.
And then his stomach sort of… lurches.
Mike pulls back an inch, swallowing again.
“Okay…?” El asks, slightly dazed.
“Yeah,” he says automatically. “Yeah, sorry.”
He’s the one who leans forward again, once the feeling settles some. El goes along with the change in rhythm easily, moving slow and sweet against his lips. The hand on his shirt crawls up his neck and slips into his hair.
Mike shivers. El bumps the tip of his nose with hers curiously.
“Are you cold?” she questions, then parrots, “It’s summer.”
Mike exhales hard through his nose, trying to ignore the slow, ominous roll of his intestines. He doesn’t feel up to explaining any of the involuntary bodily reactions that are caused by kissing her, nor does he trust himself to open his mouth. He just shakes his head, using the hand on her waist to spin them around so he’s no longer cornered against the door.
His relief is audible, released in a warm puff of air that fans over her mouth. She flinches back a little at the feeling, blinking, before she decides that she likes it and does it right back to him.
He gives her a real laugh this time—he can’t help it—and her cheeks go pink.
“Was that weird?”
Mike shrugs. He doesn’t actually know. “Maybe, but it’s okay.”
With a little distance between them, Mike is vulnerable to the cabin’s open air. Goosebumps raise on his arms, and he twitches a little at the feeling of his sweat cooling against his skin.
El is quick to offer up her body heat.
She presses back into him, that same push and pull they’ve been doing this whole time—only now, it doesn’t feel good at all.
His hand is trembling against her leg, a prickly feeling rising up from his fingertips. The pressure behind his eyes thickens and pulses. His mouth is filling again, rapidly, and if El tries to get his lips open, she’s going to feel it—
He shoves her back by the shoulders, rougher than he intends.
She blinks up at him, startled. “Mike?”
An apology drowns in the spit in his mouth, pressing hard against the back of his tongue.
“Wait—” His voice comes out garbled. He clenches his teeth. “I need—”
“To stop? That’s okay.” She recites what he’s taught her with ease, hand unfurling over his chest. “Your heart is beating very fast.”
Mike can only nod weakly, thanking God or the universe or whoever for El as she takes him by the wrist and walks him towards the couch.
They sink slowly into the worn cushion together, Mike’s palm pressed to his abdomen as the movement tilts the room. Clear recognition slips into place like a lock sealing his fate, undeniable now.
Distantly, he thinks, this is all Will’s fault.
El sits through a few long minutes of silence before it becomes apparent that she can’t keep from asking, “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” Mike says quickly. He chances a look at her, but her eyes are focused on the blank TV screen ahead of them. “No, of—of course not.”
“Okay,” she says quietly, kicking her heels.
“Really, El,” he tries, guilt boiling in his stomach. “It’s—it’s hard—to do something… wrong…when we’re—and I’d tell you, if you did. But you didn’t—”
The sentence is cut off by the painful clench of his throat.
“I’m so sorry—I think I—I need the—” Mike shudders. “—bathroom.”
He doesn’t get a chance to ponder why the literal fuck he would phrase it like that before he has to scramble off the couch and bulldoze his way there.
The room is small and stuffy.
The door slams against the wall. The sound of Mike’s knees hitting the ground is louder. Both are drowned out by the immediate, unmistakable sound of his puking.
“Jesus—” he heaves, startled by the force. “Christ.”
He doesn’t hear El follow him, soft footsteps lost to the rush of blood in his ears, but he can feel her hovering. Before addressing her, he drops his head onto the seat and wonders how much force he’d have to use to kill himself.
Ultimately, he decides it isn’t worth giving Hopper the satisfaction of finding his dead body.
“Please, don’t look at me.”
“Sorry,” she says. “Too late.”
Another gag tears out of him without warning, harsher than the last. He just barely manages to spare the side of the cabinet, righting his head just in time for more vomit to come barreling, very attractively, out of him.
The toilet water even ricochets very attractively against his face.
El steps inside, clearly unable to resist him.
“Stop,” he pleads. Her hand hovers, uncertain, before she pushes forward and sets it between his shoulder blades despite his protests. “Forget you—ever—saw this.”
If she thought his clammy hands were bad—oh, boy.
“I can’t,” she informs him matter-of-factly. “What’s wrong?”
Mike grunts.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Sick?”
He laughs humorlessly.
She tilts her head.
“Not, like—” he pauses, exhaling hard through his mouth. “—contagious. I mean—I’m—I’m pretty sure.”
“What?”
“Um,” Mike says intelligently. “I won’t get you sick, I mean. It’s not—it’s not like that.”
“Oh,” she deadpans. “Okay.”
“El,” he warns. “I’m gonna—”
She gathers his hair awkwardly, fingers fumbling in a way they definitely weren’t twenty minutes ago, but gentle all the same.
Mike breathes in and out in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to postpone the inevitable.
It’s almost more violent in retaliation.
To El’s credit, she seems genuinely unfazed. Her expression stays cool as she lowers to her knees beside him, meticulously keeping his hair out of the line of fire.
God, he thinks, a little pathetically.
Is this love?
After a particularly rough bout eases, El announces, “It stopped.”
“Mm,” Mike hums, wet lips curling upwards slightly in spite of—well—everything. Her optimism curls sweetly in his chest. Still, he has to let her know, “It’s gonna happen again.”
At some point, she pulled Mike’s hair into a spiky little ponytail with the elastic she keeps on her wrist, in favor of using her hands elsewhere. Right now, one is moving in circles on his back, and the other is reaching over him to flush the toilet.
“How do you know?”
“I can just tell,” he shrugs. “It always does.”
“When is always?” she presses, falling back against her heels. Her voice wobbles a little as she struggles. “I don’t understand.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you eat something bad?”
“No, no, I just—”
Mike pauses.
He doesn’t know how to explain this to her. It’s never even been explained to him—not really.
All he knows is that he’s been here before: bathroom floor tiles imprinted on his bare legs, trembling and numb, throwing up until he’s empty and then some.
And he’ll be here again, all too familiar with the unrelenting nausea, the burn of his raw throat—the fog that’s circling him now, making it hard to articulate something he already can’t comprehend.
He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling humiliatingly young all of a sudden.
“I just—I get sick sometimes.”
It sounds flimsy, but it’s all he’s got.
“Not sick sick, like we talked about. It’s not—I don’t—I just have a—” He stills, trying to remember the exact wording, “A ‘nervous stomach.’”
El frowns. “Why are you nervous?”
“I’m not,” Mike cringes. “Not really. It’s just a phrase. Like, stress. Excitement. Big emotions. Anger. I don’t know. They said I’m—I’ll grow out of it. Eventually.”
The hand on his back stills.
“So,” she says, calculating, then audibly displeased. “It is my fault.”
“What? No—”
“I was too much. We were… doing… too much…” She taps her chest in a quick, repetitive motion. “Your heart was beating fast, like when you say we have to stop kissing. Because you’re too—”
“No!” he yelps, heat engulfing his face. His heart stutters like it might show him some mercy and finally give out. “Not—not like that. El, listen. This just happens.”
“When you are excited.”
“Not all the time,” he rushes. “I’m—I’m allowed to be… excited, and it’s fine, most of the time. But, sometimes—”
As if to emphasize his point, his stomach rolls.
“Sometimes—” he grits. “I get sick. When I’m… really happy, like with you. Or really worried, like with Will, last year. And the year before last year…”
“Mike—”
“But it’s not you! Or Will,” he grimaces. “It’s nobody. It’s just me. Big emotions or—or, sometimes, for no reason at all. It just happens. And I think I was already—it was already—happening. Like, building. Before we… did… anything.”
He thinks back to his skipped breakfast this morning. His mom had given him a look, and he had blamed it on an eagerness to rush out the door and meet his friends, even though he wasn’t supposed to be at Lucas’ for another hour.
“Will,” El starts. Every time she says his name, it sounds like she’s feeling it out for the first time. “Will knows.”
“What?”
“Will knows about your nervous stomach.”
“I mean, yeah,” Mike confirms. The whole party does, sans Max (thank God). “Does that matter?”
El ignores the question, continuing to flesh out her discovery. She looks less upset now, more focused. “That's why he didn’t want you to come with me.”
“No,” he says, automatically. Then, after a beat, “I don’t know—you heard that?”
“He seemed scared. Should I be scared?”
“No,” Mike gulps. “Will worries too much. Like his mom.”
“You worry about him, too,” she says observantly, taking the diss that Will would’ve smacked his arm for saying and throwing it right back at him. “You just said that.”
The nausea resurges, crests.
A shudder rolls through Mike’s entire body. His cheeks puff outwards in time with his constricting throat. He blinks through blurred vision.
“You are going to throw up again now.”
“Yeah,” Mike nods shakily. “Sorry.”
The overhead light is off in El’s room, but the bedside lamp is still bright, and there are thin streaks of pink-purple sunlight seeping in through the curtains.
Mike is curled up at the foot of her bed with his head dangling over the edge, staring down at the inside of the bucket Hopper and El use when they’re mopping.
“Does it help?” she asks softly. She’s lying next to him, tracing senseless patterns over his arm as she flicks through a comic Mike knows she’s not reading. “When I touch you?”
He can’t look at her, but he whispers, “Yeah.”
“But not much,” she deduces.
“It helps, El,” he promises through the ringing in his ears. “But you can’t fix it.”
“Tell me, again, what is wrong.”
“El—” he groans.
“Please.”
“Right now,” he thinks. The vision of the empty bucket swirls before him, and his voice sounds strained. “It just hurts. Feels tight.”
“Tight?”
“Sore,” Mike suggests. He imagines she knows that one. She’s felt exhaustion much worse than this. Still, “I’m tired.”
“But you won’t sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Nightmares?”
“No,” he says, though that’s not always true. Quietly, he admits. “It’s—my head hurts.”
She abandons the flimsy book in favor of shifting closer, squinting at the side of his face. He imagines she’s taking in his pale complexion, the tense skin over his forehead, the way his bottom lip is twitching.
“What are you not saying?”
Mike turns begrudgingly, dragging his cheek over her soft, plaid comforter. Where his eyes are drooping, hers are wide and attentive, unrelenting.
He’s spun tight and tense. El is pulling at loose threads. If she doesn’t stop, she’s going to unravel him completely—and that will not be pretty. He can already feel the unshed tears prickling behind his eyes, clogging his throat.
“Mike,” she pries once more, and that’s all it really takes.
“My head really hurts,” he emphasizes, and he hates the way it sounds coming out of his mouth, watery and petulant. So stupid.
This doesn’t always happen, but it’s happening now, and it sucks astronomically.
The little light in the room is too much. Mike feels like his brain is inflating, stretching against his skull, and every word his beautiful, perfect girlfriend is speaking sounds entirely too loud. His own breathing is too loud. The hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen that he can still hear with the door propped open three inches is too loud.
He wants his own room, with the dark painted walls and the thick curtains, and he wants Nancy’s soft hands, massaging the exact right points along his temples, and he wants his mom, knowing when he can and can’t tolerate water without having to ask—and he kind of wants Will. Even though that’s impractical.
“You were wrong,” El tells him, voice lowered to a merciful, barely-there whisper. Mike’s eyes are screwed tightly shut so he doesn’t have to look at her, but the embarrassment flares all the same when she reaches forward and catches an onslaught of his tears with her finger. “I can fix that.”
Mike allows himself a few minutes of pathetic, miserable sniffling and spluttering before he takes a deep breath and forcefully wipes the rest of the wetness from his face before he can make himself sick again.
When he blinks open damp lashes, it’s to the sight of El’s paneled green wall.
She’s gone, having escaped sometime during his temper tantrum.
“Oh, God,” Mike presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, flipping himself over with a force that makes the ceiling spin. “El—shit—I’m—”
He swings his legs over the edge of the mattress, and a small hand slams down on his shoulder.
“Ow,” he mumbles, just as El, now standing on the opposite side of the bed, asks, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for… you…”
“I’m still here, Mike,” she promises, a flicker of humor in her quiet voice. “I had to get this.”
She’s holding up a thick, folded piece of black fabric, like a scarf.
Or a blindfold, he realizes belatedly.
“What?” Mike says, slow and slurred. “Who are you—spying?”
“It’s not for me,” she explains, and before he can open his mouth again, she’s reaching out towards his face.
The material is surprisingly soft as it presses up against his eyes. El’s fingers form a loose knot behind his head.
“Oh.”
It carries a faint metallic smell, which would probably be enough to make Mike throw up into his lap if it didn’t feel so nice to be submerged in complete darkness.
He repeats, “Oh.”
“Good ‘oh’?”
The pain is still there, of course, but it’s significantly muted, backpedaled to more of a dull, bleeding ache than a feeling like Mike’s head is seconds away from detonating.
“Great, ‘oh.’”
“Here,” El is pulling the blue elastic upwards until Mike’s ponytail falls loose, his hair flopping messily over the blindfold. “Sometimes those hurt, too, after a while.”
“Mm,” he mumbles, reaching around blindly. “C’mere.”
His hand smacks lightly into what he thinks is her stomach, and she giggles, catching his fingers in hers to stop the movement.
Mike takes the opportunity to pull her hand to his mouth and press a grateful kiss to her knuckles. She trades her laughter for a small, startled breath, and he kisses her again, then again, flipping over to pepper his wrist.
“Thank you,” he says to the skin over her pulse, where the tattoo sits. He opens his mouth to add something else but stops himself at the last second.
“You’re welcome,” she responds slowly, pulling their hands back and letting them swing absently in the space between their bodies. “Outside, I saw Hopper’s signal. He will be home soon.”
And fuck Mike’s life, actually.
“That’s okay. I think I need a ride home.”
The chief is going to let him have it, but maybe he’ll take pity on him because he’s sick and let them sit in silence, just this once.
He’s glad his bike will fit easily in the bed of Hopper’s truck, if nothing else.
“Don’t be stupid, Mike,” El tuts, bringing him back from the void he’d slipped into. She shoves her foot between his and takes turns kicking lightly at each of his ankles, then says, definitively, “You’re staying.”
Mike doesn’t think that’s a good idea, but the feeling of El’s blunt nails against his scalp and the blissful dark are muddying the reasons why. As if sensing this, El stops kicking him, stepping forward with one leg still slotted between his and guiding him to rest his head in the space between her shoulder and neck.
Like a weak man, he nods his consent, sure somebody will call his mom and let her know. He hopes somebody tells Lucas, too, so he doesn’t stay up watching Mike’s bedroom window. He has half a mind to ask El to send him a message, but the blindfold is occupied, and he really doesn’t want her to move.
“Sorry, ‘m gross,” he murmurs, trying hard not to drool on her as he does.
El laughs melodically, then simply says, “It’s okay.”