A/N: Floofy one shot based off Taylor Swift's Red. Set before El goes to the school to see Mike in Season 2.
Can you find love at 12 or 13? Can you find true love? All encompassing love? Heart-breaking, heart-stopping, gut-wrenching love? And what was love? She knew what like was, Mike taught her that. But he said "more than like". Was love more than like?
All the shows she would watch on the TV while Hopper was away, ones that would use words like "aghast" and "impetuous", talked about being "madly in love". Their love, though, didn't seem like whatever she was feeling whenever she thought about Mike and thought about their few days together a year ago. But it was the closest word she had in her limited vocabulary.
Words. Words were hard. Remembering words, the right words, was exhausting. She preferred colors. She wished she could open the blinds more, and just stare out into the world, full of colors. They looked prettier than the ones on TV, more alive and vibrant somehow (Hopper taught her that word one of the few times he talked about Sarah).
Summer time was beautiful, full of all the different greens, the trees looking alive and less scary than they did in the winter. She didn't like the winter because it reminded her of the Upside Down. It was cold, and most of the time it was dark. But the summer. The summer was warm and bright, even warm at night. Everything in the Upside Down hated warmth, so she loved summer, even if it got too hot (sweltering, Hop called it) in the cabin sometimes.
As much as she liked summer, her favorite time was fall. As much as she liked the greens of the trees, she much preferred the reds, oranges and yellows they showed as the heat ebbed a bit. Fall reminded her of freedom, of happiness, of friendship, of...of...of… home? It reminded her of Mike. Whenever Hop said home, she thought of Mike, of the fort in his basement, of the grin of his lips as he talked about her coming to live with him and how happy he was that she came home. Mike must be what home was.
She would think and dream of those few days last year when she felt scared of all this new, but free from that place, the Bad Place. She knew what is was to be happy, fully happy, as well as terrified and sorry that she hurt Mike. She knew she hurt him, she could hear it in his voice when he would speak into the super com. She saw it on his face when she would watch him through the Void.
She thought of all the times riding on the back of Mike's bike: the feeling of wind in her hair, the rush of adrenaline as they flew down the hill on one of the streets, the encompassing rightness when she would put her arms around Mike so she could hold on. Whenever they made hairpin turns or quick stops, the swooping in her stomach followed by the butterflies was the same feeling she got whenever Mike would smile at her, like when he told her she was pretty, really pretty. Scary but exciting.
When she thought of how he jumped of the cliff and was flying through the free fall, it always terrified her. It had felt like her heart was in her throat. If she hadn't had her powers, or hesitated even a split second, she knew there was a high chance she would have jumped too. Was that love? The feeling of the most important person in your world being gone, and you don't care but you have to be with them? She wasn't sure, but she knew she had to save Mike because he was meant to save her. He kept on saving her.
Being close to Mike was comfort, like the heat of summer on her skin. The smell of him was like the smell in the air that would rush through the open door when Hop came back every night just as summer was turning to fall; warm, crisp, woodsy. It was a smell she refused to forget, it was a smell she wished she could wrap herself in, like one of the many blankets Hop had given her.
His smell, his freckles, his smile, his chocolate eyes. She could never forget those things about him. The way his face would scrunch up and he would roll his eyes when Dustin and Lucas started arguing or fighting about something stupid. She memorized as much as she could about him from those days together and from the 353 days he called to her as she watched and listened from the Void.
She remembered how one of the worst feelings was when he was screaming at her in the junkyard. She didn't know the answers to his furious questions. Her only answer was to run, because if she was running, he wouldn't be mad any more, she wouldn't be there to upset him. Wandering in the woods, alone and unwanted, was the worst she had felt outside of the Upside Down. But sometimes the worst feelings can lead to the best. Like how after she saved him from his inevitable death in the quarry and he held her and told her that she wasn't the monster.
She regretted the precious hours she missed out on with him. Hours, which now have been days, weeks, months, etching forever on to a year now. But that time lessened nothing. At 13 could you find a love that instead of getting weaker without two-way communication and seeing each other, could actually grow stronger? Was it something that could even be possible?
She tried following Hopper's advice and tried to forget him for now. Hopper didn't keep promises like Mike kept promises. Hopper's "soon" seemed never ending. She knew it would be better to let go, but moving on from one Mike Wheeler was impossible. The temptation to visit him everyday, knowing he called out to her everyday without fail, kept her from even trying to forget.
Dark blues and greys were the shades that painted across her memories when she thinks of how she left him that night. They were the colors that engulfed the Upside Down. The colors that drenched her nightmares of losing him, him losing her, being stuck for at least hours in that place where there is no such thing as happy existed. Greys and blues canvassed the winter woods as she fended for herself for a month. A month that she could have been wrapped in Mike's arms if it hadn't been for the Bad Men that surround his house when she made her way back. She saw the pain on his face that she felt inside her core. He lost her, she lost him. One year of missing him, like a gaping hole inside her chest.
You must be able to love, truly love, at any age. There is no other way to describe how she could feel like this about Mike. No other word, because when she thought about Mike and being with him and being happy, truly fully happy, of loving him, it was red. Earth-shattering, sunset-blinding, beautiful red.