Eleven is in a particularly grumpy mood tonight. Despite how he tried, he could not snap her out of it, and she didn't seem to be up for offering an explanation.
"Alright," he finally groans, sitting down next to her on the couch. "Just tell me. What's the matter?"
He pauses, waiting for a response. "El," he presses, expecting to hear about some new crisis with Mike.
"I'm hairy," she finally admits after a minute.
"You're what?"
"Hairy. My legs. The other girls in gym class were laughing at me today," she says softly.
Hopper sighs. He loathes those little bastards at her school sometimes when she tells him stories like this. He knows how kids are, how he was, but now that it's his kid, he hates every second of it. And, for a kid who has saved the world, she still manages to get upset about what others think of her.
"Well those girls are bitches," he reflexively responds.
El nods.
"I know," she says quietly. "Bitches," she repeats with half a smile.
He sighs another heavy sigh. "And I guess…" This is hard for him. "Do you want to learn how to shave your legs?"
"What?"
"You know, like I shave the hair on my face. You can do that to the hair on your legs," he explains.
"That's why the other girls do not have hairy legs?" she asks.
He doesn't like her growing up. He liked it much better when she was just learning things like how to sweep or use the stove without burning the cabin down.
"Yeah, I guess girls your age do that."
"I want to learn," she tells him, her mood picking up a little.
"Um, alright. Go put some shorts on," he instructs. She eagerly runs to her bedroom and slams the door shut.
This isn't exactly what he had planned on doing on this Wednesday night, but fuck, someone had to teach her.
He goes into the bathroom and pulls out his razor. It wasn't super sharp, but that was probably for the best. He had no shaving gel that didn't smell like a man's product, but they would have to make do. She shows up in the doorway, and he nods for her to come in.
"Uh, okay. Let's see." He looks around the room. "Come here, and sit," he motions to the edge of the bathtub.
They both sit down, and he fills the tub with an inch of water.
"This is shaving cream. You start by putting a little bit on your legs." He rolls up one of his pant legs and demonstrates by spreading a little on his own leg.
He presses some into El's hand and she copies him on her own.
"These blades are sharp see," he warns her, even though they really weren't.
"So uh, you just put it against your skin like this," he explains, dragging the blade up his calf. The razor skips and misses a bunch of hair and he's left with a patchy hairless spot. "Well, it'll be a little easier on your own legs. You aren't quite so," he stops, looking for the right word. "Blessed with hair," he laughs, rinsing the blade before handing it to her.
"Try it on my leg first," he awkwardly suggests. If she was going to slice someone open, he would rather it be him.
"Like this?" El asks, dragging the razor carefully over the center of his leg. She rinses it in the water and does it again.
"Yeah, you've got it. Okay, why don't you try it now?"
El moves to her own leg. He gives her more shaving cream, and after a few minutes, she proudly finishes one side. On her second leg, she got a little eager and nicked her ankle.
"Gotta be a little careful around those places," Hopper says, getting up to find her a bandage.
He lets her finish, and she swings her legs to the other side of the tub, drying them with a towel. She runs her hands up and down her legs, enjoying the soft, smooth feeling. The cut on her ankle drips a little blood, but El is unbothered, and Hopper helps her apply the bandage.
"It doesn't even really hurt," she comments.
"Well, that's good. It's just a small cut, but sometimes they look like they are bleeding a lot when it gets mixed with all the water," he explains.
El nods, and he notices that she's eyeing his leg now. Though there was no one else home, Hopper unrolls his pant leg quickly, as if someone else was going to walk in and see his patchy, hairless leg.
"Why don't boys shave their legs?" she wonders out loud.
"I don't really know, kid. I guess, that's just the way it is," he explains, not getting into the fact that some men actually do shave their legs.
"Hm," El replies.
She rubs her legs together again, satisfied. "Wait 'til those bitches see me tomorrow," she smiles bouncing out of the room.
Hopper runs his hands over his face and stifles a laugh, wondering how he went so quickly from one-night stands and being somewhat of a heart-breaker, to letting a 14-year-old kid shave his legs in his bathroom.
Hopper supposed maybe he was finally growing up too.
Two nights later while in bed with Joyce, she runs her foot up and down his legs, pausing over the now short, prickly parts.
"Oh yeah. Right," Hopper laughs.
Joyce shifts to her elbow to look up at him, raising her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.
"So uh, El wanted to learn how to shave her legs," he begins.
"And so you showed her on your own?" she gathers, unable to hold back a smile.
"You know, uh, yeah. Yeah. Just a little spot."
"I would have taught her you know," she laughs.
"Sure, I know. It's just, I guess those little shits at school were teasing her, and she wanted to learn right away," Hopper explains, his tone accurately conveying his sense of disgust with the teenage population.
"I see," Joyce says slowly. Though he often came to her with questions as he struggled through parenting a teenage girl, she found his sense of dedication to be one of his absolute sexiest qualities.
She straddled his hips, running her hands down his bare chest and beyond, causing him to groan out loud.
Maybe, just maybe, Hopper supposed that if growing up meant he could spend nights like this with Joyce, well, perhaps it wasn't so bad after all.