Author's Note: I've watched Stranger Things 2 ½ times in 24 hours, so I decided to bless the world with fluffy Mileven fanfiction because we desperately need more of it in this world. It takes place after Season 1, but without Eleven going wherever the hell she went, and Nancy and Steve are NOT together. Let me know if any of the characters seem a little OOC, and I'll try to fix it. Please review/favorite/follow if you enjoy, and on with the story.
Eleven was fiddling with Mike's supercom in her fort, only kind of paying attention to the campaign Mike was running in the background. After the events of the Demogorgon, Joyce decided to adopt El, so the girl had somewhere to sleep for real now, not just in a blanket fort in the basement. But Mike kept her fort up anyway.
El liked Joyce, she was nice and she smelled like nutmeg and she taught El how to sound out words. It took El a couple of months before she called Joyce her mom, but the smile on Joyce's face when she did made everything worth it. Jonathan and Will called El their sister as soon as she came to live with them, and it made her very happy. Jonathan liked to show her photos he had taken, most of them were of trees or of Nancy, and Will liked to show her how to draw things, and together they listened to loud music that El didn't understand. But Jonathan and Will liked it, so she would hum along with them. She was happy in her new home, so Mike really had no reason to keep up her fort. He couldn't seem to take it down though, and El was happy about that. She liked Joyce's house, and her room, but the fort Mike made for her made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Sometimes she would pretend to fall asleep in it, and Joyce would let her sleepover. And on some nights Mike would come downstairs really late and talk to her while she pretended to sleep.
He talked about Lucas and Dustin and Will, he talked about Nancy and Jonathan and Steve, he talked to her about school and the mouth-breather Troy. But her favorite was when he talked about her. Sometimes he would talk about how scared he was when he thought she was gone. Sometimes he would talk about how much El meant to him, and how happy he was that she was back for good. He would blush a lot, but it made Eleven feel sparkly inside. She didn't really understand everything that he was saying, but it made her stomach all fluttery, so she didn't mind. It reminded her of when Mike had touched his lips to hers at his school. Nice, but confusing.
"Ew!" Dustin yelled. "Mike! Gross!"
El immediately looked up at the mention of Mike.
"What?" Mike asked.
"That's so disgusting!" said Lucas.
"That's what they're doing and you know it!" Mike shouted.
"I do not want to hear about what my brother and your sister might be doing right now." Will shivered in disgust. "I just want pizza."
"But, Will, then you're going to have to interrupt them kissing in the kitchen!" Mike insisted.
El perked up at the unfamiliar word. "Mike?"
Mike stopped and turned to El. "Yeah, El?"
"What's… kissing?" El asked.
A range of emotions flickered across Mike's face in quick succession: shock, anger, hurt, confusion, and finally embarrassment.
"You… don't know what kissing is?" Mike blushed and stuttered.
"Why don't you show her, Mike?" Lucas teased, puckering his lips.
Mike blushed harder. "I… um…"
Dustin clapped his hands excitedly. "Show her, Mike!"
El tilted her head to the side in confusion. "Mike? What is kissing?"
"Um… a-ask Nancy! Or-or Joyce!" He flushed and sat back in his chair. "Let's continue the campaign!"
The other boys sighed and sat down. On one hand, they really wanted their OTP to become really, but on the other hand, this was a really good campaign. Like, really good. And with the way that Mike and El made moon-eyes at each other, they knew it was only a matter of time.
"You feel at ease, having defeated the Demogorgon. You're about to enjoy your feast, when you hear a boom, boom, boom! It's...it's...it's…" Mike smiled.
"What is it?" Dustin asked, on the edge of his seat. All the other boys were watering at the mouth, ready to know what they were going to be up against next.
"It's… where are you going, El?" Mike stopped and looked up at the girl, who had started climbing up the basement stairs.
"AGH!" Lucas shouted in exasperation. "MIKE! WHAT IS IT?"
Mike waved his hand at Lucas dismissively. "El?"
"I'm going to ask Nancy about kissing." said El.
"O-oh. Okay." Mike's voice went a few octaves too high, and the other boys looked at him suspiciously.
El nodded and smiled at Mike, making his heart catch for a moment, and then she ascended the stairs and was out of sight.
Mike waited a moment before thumping his fist down on the table. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit."
"What?" Will asked. "Is everything alright, Mike?"
"No! God, I'm such an idiot…"
"What happened?" Dustin asked.
"Ugh… remember when you and Lucas were getting lunch lady Phyliss's chocolate pudding?" Mike asked.
"No." Will said.
"This was when you were in… um… the uh, bad place." Mike said. Will was still pretty sensitive around the topic of the Upside-Down, and no one wanted to upset him. "Well, uh… El and I were alone together and I, uh… I kissed her."
Dustin's eyes bugged out. "YOU DID WHAT?"
"I kissed her, like a total spaz, and I just know found out she doesn't even know what it means!" Mike groaned and banged his head on the table.
"So, you like my sister?" Will asked. His voice was cautious, yet threatening. He had come to be very protective of her, as El had of him. They really were like siblings.
Mike's face burned and he looked down at the table. "It-it doesn't even matter. She wouldn't understand what love like that even means. I don't want to push her boundaries and make it all awkward between us."
Dustin waggled his eyebrows. "Love?"
"You're in love with her?" Will asked, eyes wide in disbelief.
"Sh-shut up!" Mike blushed. "That's not what I said!"
"Um, yes it is. You said," Lucas' voice went high and whiny in an attempt to recreate the forlorn sound of Mike's voice. "She wouldn't understand what love like that even means!"
"You're wrong, too. She loves you, man." Dustin smirked.
"No, no, no, she doesn't, guys. She… she doesn't get it, and she isn't going to. And even if she did, she wouldn't like me in that way. We're just friends! Just… friends. Let's just… get back to the game." Mike sighed and pulled out a minifigure, which he placed on the board. "It's a Thessalhydra."
"Damn it!" Lucas yelled. "We're in some deep shit right now!
Meanwhile, Eleven was in search of Nancy, intent on getting the definition of kissing. She finally found Nancy in the kitchen with Jonathan like Mike had predicted. They were quite close to each other and were leaning in closer, El observed.
"Nancy, what's kissing?" El asked.
"GAH!" Nancy shouted, shooting away from Jonathan. She hadn't realized the younger girl was there. "What's...kissing?"
Jonathan looked at his sister. "Uh… I gotta go. Are you gonna stay here tonight, sis?" El's face lit up and she nodded. "Okay, cool. I'm gonna go get Will. Um.. bye, Nancy." Jonathan awkwardly hugged Nancy, his arms barely touching her. El held in a snicker.
"I'll call you?" Nancy said.
Jonathan smiled. "I'd like that." He hugged El goodbye, and told her to call him if she needed to come home. Then he went to get Will.
Nancy leveled the younger girl with a look. "You want to know about kissing?" El nodded. Nancy sighed. "Okay. Let's talk about it in my room, alright?"
El followed Nancy up the stairs, smiling at all the pictures that lined the walls. She liked the ones with Nancy, but she liked the ones with Mike more. Her favorite was the one where Mike first got his bike. He's smiling, all proud and happy. El liked that bike because she liked to ride on it with Mike, and it always made him smile.
Nancy sat on her bed, and El sat with her. El looked around curiously. She'd been in Nancy's room loads of times, but she still found it fascinating. El frowned though, because one thing was amiss. She pointed at the window, which was closed and locked, the blinds closed tightly. "No Steve?" She asked.
"No Steve." Nancy agreed. "So, why do you want to know what kissing is?"
"Mike and Dustin and Lucas and Will were talking about it. They said that you and Jonathan were kissing." El said.
"They said what? Oh, I am going to kill them…" Nancy growled. El looked shocked. "Not really, El. I'm just very mad at them."
"Why?" El asked.
"Because… because kissing is… special. Sometimes secret." Nancy tried to explain. "When you kiss someone, it means you like them."
"Like a brother or sister?" El asked.
"No, no, like… more. Like love. You can kiss someone when you like them, and it's nice. But you can also kiss someone when you love them, and then it's special. Like fireworks and butterflies."
"Was Steve like?" El asked.
"Uh… yeah. Steve was… was just like." said Nancy.
"And Jonathan, Jonathan is love?"
Nancy blushed furiously. "Uh… I don't know. Maybe. I… let's talk about something else."
"How do you kissing?" El asked.
"Well, you put your lips on the other person's lips. Sometimes you open your mouth. Sometimes you use your tongue." Nancy said.
"Like this?" El stuck her tongue out of her mouth and waggled it around.
Nancy laughed. "No, not like that. But you don't have to worry about that. At your age, it's probably just touching lips."
El flashed back to when Mike had touched his lips to her in the cafeteria, when the bad man were after her. "Mike kissed me once." She said.
Nancy looked at El, shocked. "What? Really?" El nodded.
She nodded and looked down at her feet. She liked her shoes, they were pink like Nancy's. "I don't know what it means."
"It means… I think it means he likes you." Nancy smiled.
"I like Mike." El said.
"Well, yes. But I means he likes you as more than a friend."
"Like a sister?" El asked.
"No… more like…um... how do I explain this? Liking someone more than a friend means...that their words mean more to you, you care what they think, you want to impress them. Whenever you're with them, your heart races and your face gets hot. And if they touch you, you feel all tingly. That's liking someone more than a friend."
El frowned. That was exactly how she felt around Mike. Did she… did she like Mike more than a friend?
"But what happens if two people like each other more than friends?" El asked.
"Usually they kiss. It's nice." Nancy smiled to herself.
El thought about Mike, twisting her dress in between her fingers. If she liked Mike more than a friend, and Mike liked her more than a friend, than what did that mean for them? Would they kiss more? El's stomach flip-flopped at the thought. When Mike kissed her before, she didn't know what it meant. Now that she did, could she kiss him?
To say she was confused was an understatement.
But she was also excited.
Author's Note: So ya'll… how'd you like it? I expect that this will be about ten chapters. I'm taking a break on some of my other stories because I'm currently too involved in Stranger Things to do anything else. Let me know what you think in the comments, and I'll see you next time!
Kisses,
Chattre