The Everglow. PG-13, romance/fluff/humor, post-S2, Mike/Eleven.
The night of their senior prom was the first time Mike actually got to spend the night with Eleven and wake up with her in the morning, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.
Schmoop ahoy, Captain!
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Here's a night, and it shines,
and it calls us on and on. So be here by my side
and watch the stars; they're ours.
Make a wish or just take charge.
The moment comes; get lost and go far.
I think that we've got what it takes
to get this heart start beating again,
so take it all the way.
Whoa... and our hearts are on the everglow,
so just let go and fall into it.
~Mae, "The Everglow."
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Mike stirred when the sunlight streaming in through the window hit his face. It was dim because it was coming in through the window shades, but it was unusual enough to pull him out of sleep; in his room, the sunlight wasn't in his face in the morning, so it was an immediate reminder of where he was and why he was there.
With a sigh, he snuggled closer to the soft body of his girlfriend lying beside him, not quite willing to open his eyes yet. The bed was comfortable and they had nowhere else to be at the moment, so he could afford to take some time to just enjoy this little cocoon of perfection with the girl he loved in his arms.
Their senior prom had taken place the night before, and in the spirit of experiencing what everybody and their mother insisted was a teenage rite of passage, the party had gotten dressed up and ready to jam. Even though proms and their associated rituals were ostensibly designed to be the popular kids' moment to bask in the spotlight, the group had a lot of fun dancing and joking around among their classmates, and even the most cynical of them (*cough, cough* Maxine *cough, cough*) had to admit that it had been a cool way to say goodbye to Hawkins High, if only symbolically.
Even though the actual prom had wrapped up at midnight, there had been about seven and a half afterparties all over Hawkins that the rest of the senior class eventually gravitated to. Their close-knit group of friends, however, had decided they'd rather spend the rest of the night on their own rather than having to deal with a crowd of rowdy teenagers they didn't even talk to on the regular.
And so they'd all ended up in Hopper's cabin; it had only taken a little bit of convincing from Will's mom to have Hopper handing over the keys. After spending a few more hours drinking, chatting, laughing, and reminiscing about their high school days, the rest of the group crashed for the night in various states of sprawling around the living room. El got to sleep in her old bed due to home turf advantage, and Mike was not about to complain when she pulled him along into the only private room in the cabin, even through the jeers and catcalls of their friends, who were obviously a bunch of immature little assholes.
Joke's on them, anyway: he got to spend the night making love to his girlfriend while they had all probably passed out midsentence at some ungodly hour of the morning and had to deal with massive hangovers now that the sun was up.
With a satisfied sigh at this thought, he finally opened his eyes, blinking slowly as he adjusted to the soft brightness of the room. Then his gaze fell on Eleven's profile, and his breath caught.
El was always beautiful. Even when she was wearing comfy overalls and her hair was a mess, even when she cried so hard that her nose was runny and red, even when her face was streaked with blood and she was angry beyond measure and wielding a level of power that would terrify a grown-ass adult— even then, Mike thought she was the most beautiful creature on Earth. But there was something about seeing her completely relaxed this way, the diffused sunlight coming in from behind the window shades casting a kind of glow on her soft skin, that made her seem almost... ethereal, and it took his breath away.
She was lying mostly on her back, hair spread around her on her pillow, mouth just slightly open so that her even breaths came out with a quiet "poof" sound whenever she exhaled. Mike was on his side, one of his legs thrown in between hers, an arm wrapped around her waist. Her right hand was draped over said arm, while her left hand was lodged between his face and his pillow, almost like she'd reached out to cradle his cheek in her sleep.
At some point during the night she had picked up his discarded white dress shirt and put it on. It was really big on her, and she hadn't bothered to button it all the way to the top, so the collar fell open giving him an enticing view of her collarbone that had every molecule in his body urging him to just lean in and press his lips against it over and over again.
He didn't want to disturb her sleep, though. She was tired— not just for the obvious reason, either— and moreover, they rarely got moments like this. They'd woken up together after naps, of course, or even sometimes when he'd sneak in and spend the night with her or vice-versa, but the interlude was always cut short because whoever snuck in eventually had to to sneak back out again to avoid getting caught, and that wasn't really conducive to this relaxed kind of intimacy.
This was the first time he actually got to spend the night with her and wake up with her in the morning, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.
There was something about holding her like this, Mike mused as he nuzzled his face into the palm of her hand, that filled him with a sense of serenity that was hard to define. You would think the mood would be different, given their current state of undress and the urgent passion of the previous night, but he was just content to have her in his arms, feeling like this closeness was all he needed, all that mattered in the world. He couldn't wait until they got to wake up like this every morning.
He only became aware that she was awake, or at least starting to wake up, when her hand started to stroke his arm that was wrapped around her torso. Her eyes were still closed and she had not stirred otherwise, but the caress seemed deliberate.
With a mischievous smirk he decided to give into his earlier urge and, pulling the collar of his shirt ever-so-slightly further to the side, he leaned in and kissed the sensitive skin of her clavicle. She let out a barely audible gasp and arched her neck to give him more access as his lips trailed up to her jaw and toward her ear.
"Mmm," she sighed, eyes still closed, though the corners of her mouth were lifting up. "Feels good," she whispered in a breathy tone, lifting a hand to the back of his neck, where it got lost in his thick dark hair.
"That's the idea," he mumbled before he lightly tugged at her lobe with his teeth. Her fingernails scraped against his nape and he could feel the mood starting to shift rather quickly.
She bit her bottom lip to muffle a moan and finally opened her eyes. "Don't start something you won't be able to finish," she warned him, returning his devilish smile with one of her own. Clearly, despite her words, she wasn't really complaining.
His arm tightened around her waist. "I wasn't planning to start anything," he murmured against her skin as he kissed his way down her cheek. The tranquility he'd been experiencing just a few minutes ago had evaporated as the all-too-familiar feeling of desire started boiling inside his veins. "But if you insist..." He pushed himself up on his elbows so he could hover over her, leaning down to drop a kiss on her forehead, then each of her eyelids, then the tip of her nose...
Just as he was about to descend on her lips, a series of three (freaking loud) knocks on the bedroom door snapped them right out of the moment. "Hey, lovebirds!" came Dustin's voice through the wood. "We're going to Benny's for breakfast. Get a move on, or we'll leave without you!"
Mike let his head fall against her shoulder with a frustrated groan. "Ugh. Seriously?" he hissed, something in his dejected tone obviously amusing to her because she started laughing.
"We can come back to this later," she assured him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and patting him lightly on the back. His only reply was a series of aggravated mumbles that ended up getting muffled by her shoulder. She snickered. "Stop pouting. Come on, we have to get dressed. You know he'll knock again."
He complied but made a show of his reluctance as he pushed off of her and moved to the edge of the bed, picking his pants up from the floor where he'd kicked them last night and putting them on one leg at a time. His back was to her when she handed him his shirt back, and he put it on almost absentmindedly, but then he turned to ask her something and caught sight of her as she went to pick her dress up off the floor in the opposite corner of the room.
She stood in her underwear front of one of the windows, the dim light coming from the outside through the shades shrouding her silhouette in shadow, the edges of her form bathed in a golden halo. He'd been rolling up his sleeves at the moment, but his movements subconsciously started to slow down as he drank in the sight of her.
But of course, it turned out that she was right, and he was rudely pulled away from that breathtaking visage by more (freaking loud) knocking. As much as it pained him to admit it, he knew their friends wouldn't leave them alone until they showed signs of life, so he gestured to Eleven to move slightly to the side while he dealt with Dustin.
He opened the door only about the width of his body, making sure to hold it in place so El could stay hidden behind it as she got dressed. His curly-haired friend greeted him with a bright shit-eating grin. "Good morning, Michael," he said in a sing-songy tone. "So? How was it?"
Mike fought the urge to roll his eyes. Somehow in the lead-up to Prom, their entire group friends had become convinced that such an occasion would be the perfect moment for Mike and Eleven to finally have their "first time" (hah!) like some kind of teenage cliche. They were wrong about that, of course; they just didn't know it. He had no clue how they'd even come up with that idea, but they'd gotten extra annoying and pushy with the innuendo over the last couple of weeks. Dustin in particular, because the others at least knew when to stop.
Mike gave the other boy a tight, wholly unamused smile. "We slept very well, Dustin. Thank you for being so concerned about our REM cycles," he responded, sarcasm dripping from his words.
Dustin's grin froze for a second before dropping entirely, leaving him to pin a discouraged stare on Mike. "...Seriously? Not even a hint?" He frowned and shook his head, but a hopeful smile bloomed on his face again as an idea came to him. "Ooh! Here: Blink once if it was great, blink twice if it lasted less than five minutes—"
"We'll meet you at the car, Dustin," Mike cut him off abruptly, already over this nonsense. He swung the door closed in his friend's face and did not feel one bit guilty about it, even when Dustin's shouted "Rude!" reverberated from the other side.
He turned around to find Eleven giving him an amused smile. When he finally unleashed the eye roll he'd been holding back, it made her laugh out loud. She'd put her prom dress back on, though it was hanging loose on her shoulders, so when her mirth died down, she turned around so her back was to him and pushed her hair over one shoulder. "Zip me up?"
He walked the two or so steps that separated them, but before doing as she asked, he took a moment to run his fingers softly up the creamy skin of her back. She shivered, turning to give him a heated glance over her shoulder. He pulled the zipper up slowly, pressing a kiss between her shoulder blades when he hit the top.
She was clearly about to turn around, but he stopped her movement by wrapping his arms around her waist. "You know..." he started, leaning in to tenderly kiss her neck before pulling her back against him. She rested her head against his shoulder comfortably. "We don't have to go with them," he suggested smartly. "We can just hang out here for a while and tell them to come get us when they're done. They'll tease us, but it's not like they won't do that anyway."
She crinkled her nose adorably, pretending to think about it for a moment before turning her head to look up at him. "Actually, I'm kind of hungry," she admitted with a sheepish smile. "Sorry."
"I'm taking that as a compliment," he retorted with a snort.
"It's definitely a compliment," she confirmed in a serious tone, finally turning around in his arms. She smiled at him as she lifted her hands to his shoulders and pushed herself up on her tiptoes to peck his lips. "Come on," she said, patting him lightly on the chest. "They're waiting for us."
As they were walking toward the door, El paused to pick up his suit jacket, which he'd left hanging on the backrest of the couch the night before. Mike extended his hand to her, assuming she would hand it over to him, but instead she put it on herself and took his hand in hers.
He found that curious because summer was starting to kick in, so it's not like she needed it to fend off the cold. When he asked, she told him it was because it smelled like him, and it made her feel like he had his arms around her all the time. He retorted that he could just hug her the entire time instead, but then she pointed out that he'd need to let go of her to eat at some point. He insisted that he didn't need food; he could subsist on love alone. At which point she declared he was ridiculous, and pushed him against the nearest vertical surface so she could kiss him into silence.
They got so into it that they forgot they were in full view of the windows at the front of the cabin. Well, at least until they could no longer ignore the (freaking loud) honking coming from the car outside.
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Notes: I have zero notes for this. It feels... odd.
(Oh, wait, actually I did mean to mention that the title of this fic comes from the song "The Everglow" by Mae, which is one of my favorite songs of all time and is pretty much an anthem of youth as far as I'm concerned. Give it a listen if you have a few minutes; I think it complements the theme of this story very well.)
My birthday is on Sunday, and the best present you can give me is a review! Tell me what you thought about this story in a comment below, or hit me up on Tumblr at girls-are-weird and Twitter at girls_are_weird. Also, my vlog entry this week is once again about Stranger Things, so if you're into that kind of stuff...
PS: I love that stupid cabin so much.