Hi Everybody! I got done with reading Suspicious Minds (the new Stranger Things book) a few days ago and I just HAD to explore the following tale once complete. A fair warning: this fic contains some light spoilers from the book, specifically in the introduction of one very important character, so if you still plan on reading the book I'd recommend doing so before you venture onward with this fic.

Now that fair warning is out of the way! I'd like to introduce you to my brand new fic which explores our dear Mileven "as it should have been". In a world without Brenner, a world without the lab, a world where Jane Rich, the unexpected yet totally loved daughter of Andrew and Terry Rich, was allowed to thrive in the way that life should have allowed.

September 1989

Mike sat in the stiff chair wondering if he should have waited outside. The secretary had waved him in, hadn't she? To be honest, he hadn't really been paying much attention. He was too fidgety and distracted to pay attention to much at all. His eyes darted around the foreign office, filled with personal effects of a person who was now three minutes late, if the off-kilter clock on the wall was reading the correct time.

The basics were there. Three degrees, mounted from bottom to top, a Bachelors, a Masters, and a Ph.D. Below them a cardboard box sat on the floor. Haphazard magazines peeked out, along with a seemingly broken desk lamp and a pair of ratty combat books that seemed too small for men's feet. The desk held the personal effects. Three framed photos stood in slight disorganization, pointing this way and that. Glimpses of a woman, a man, and a small girl in each of them. Candid shots. One at the beach, one at Disneyworld, and one clearly at a zoo with a zebra in the backdrop. Mike's eyes lingered a bit as he noticed the smiles. It looked like a happy family. Nothing at all like the stuffy posed veneer of the Wheeler family photos.

Eyes darting to the right, the source of his mood returning to his mind, Mike looked at the clock. 4 minutes late.

Mike let out a tight sigh. This should have been exciting! It was a new city. A new school. A new life filled with the potential for new opportunities. Yet, as he looked down at the printed schedule that had been handed to him by the secretary, his eyes zeroed in on the problem.

Sure, the classes looked right, or at least some of them did. It was the letterhead that felt all wrong. It didn't say MIT. Instead, it said something absolutely ridiculous: Indiana University.

Not that Mike had anything wrong with Indiana University. In and of itself, it was fine. That wasn't the problem. It was the long clinging grip of his father that reflected from the university's letters on the paper that made him frown.

Mike had never been shy about his college aspirations, and his applications had proven that. MIT, Brown, and so many others in between. He'd been successful, too. Acceptance letters had come from five schools. Yet, four of those schools had something in common: none of them came with a scholarship.

Indiana University, however? That damned acceptance letter came with a full ride scholarship.

At that moment, Mike knew his fate had been sealed. Ted Wheeler, an Indiana University alum himself, had refused to hear another word regarding college options once that letter had arrived in the mail.

Truthfully, Mike wished he had intercepted it at the door and thrown it away before his dad could've ever gotten his hands on it.

He'd tried to take solace in the fact that he would at least know someone. It was a silver lining, after all. Indiana University came with an obvious dorm mate. His longtime best friend, Will. It was something to lean on and he was trying to do his best, but he couldn't deny that this place, with the same green grass and the same types of trees and the same temperature in the air, simply felt like an extension of Hawkins.

Boring suburbia had followed him with ease, despite his attempts to escape.

"Sorry, I'm late!" Mike startled as a friendly yet rushed voice cut from behind him into his thoughts. "Got too chatty at the coffee cart."

Mike spun around to face the man who was striding into the office. His first thought was odd and unexpected: Was this man even his advisor? He couldn't have been any older than in his late 30s or early 40s, cup of coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other, brown hair just a bit too long for professorial norms, his shirt sleeves unstarched and rolled up like he was home after a long day of work, even though it was only a little after 9am on a Monday on the first day of classes.

There was absolutely nothing stuffy about him. Nothing at all.

He kicked his chair lightly to make is swivel for easy access, dropping his pastry on the desk as he looked up and caught Mike's eyes with easy attention.

"Have you seen A Fish Called Wanda yet?"

"Um…" Mike stuttered, completely taken aback, "I saw it last weekend? John Cleese… um… he's hilarious."

"Right?!" the man exclaimed, dropping into his seat, "My daughter dragged me. I didn't think I'd like it, but you can't say no to your kid, right? She was right though. It was great. Anyway, that's what I got stuck talking about with the coffee girl. Bad excuse. Michael Wheeler, right?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I'm Professor Rich," he said, wiping his pastry hand on a napkin in a hurried fashion before he reached out and offered Mike a handshake, "but if you see me outside of campus, please call me Andrew. I'd prefer you don't out me as a nerdy academic in public."

That got a laugh out of Mike and, if he'd been aware, it melted a bit of the nervous tensions that had been winding up his shoulders.

"Okay. Well, welcome to IU, Michael. We've got…" he turned around and squinted toward the clock, "…11 minutes to talk about your future. Doesn't seem like enough time. How are you liking it here so far?"

"It's… it's fine." Mike said, trying his best to put on a positive face. "I've only seen the dorm so far, but so far so good."

"Which dorm are you in?"

"Lancaster."

"Oh, you got lucky," Professor Rich said with a groan, "I was in Monroe my freshmen year before I convinced my parents to let me live off campus. Nightmare. What about your classes? How do you feel about your schedule?"

"It's… they're fine? I think," Mike replied, handing his schedule to the professor across the desk.

Professor Rich plucked it out of Mike's fingers and took a look, "'It's fine? I think' doesn't sound like it's actually fine. What don't you like about it?"

Mike wasn't sure what the hell possessed him to answer honestly, but the truth slid easily off of his tongue, "My dad made the schedule."

"Ohhhhh," Professor Rich replied with an understanding tone. He reached for a red pen at the edge of his desk and pulled the cap off with his teeth, looking up to Mike as he did so. "What do you want to change about it?"

Mike's world stopped at his words. "Really?"

Professor Rich regarded Mike for a moment, "Michael, I think I've seen your file. You're here on a full ride, right?"

"Yes?"

"Well then, I'd say you've earned the right for this schedule to reflect whatever you want. Your prior academic performance paid for this. So, what do you want to change?"

Mike's jaw was on the floor. The words pounded in his ears like a drum that had been there for months but he had only just heard.

Professor Rich was right.

Conspiratorial grin rising to Mike's lips, he pulled his chair closer to the desk and leaned in over the schedule, "My dad is going to kill me if I change this," he moaned as he pushed his shaggy dark hair out of his eyes.

Professor Rich chuckled, "If he has any issues have him call me. I revel in helping parents understand that its time to loosen the reins." He had leaned forward as he talked, red pen in his hand seeming to carry so much weight that its presence hovering over the print made Mike's stomach tight. "Okay, so let's start with the major," he said, tapping his pen against the top three classes on the schedule, "Do you actually want to major in mechanical engineering? I promise I won't be offended if you say no, even though you'll be taking about a third of your classes with me."

"No, I mean um… yeah," Mike stumbled, "That's actually what I wanted to major in. That part is right."

"Great, so we'll leave those classes alone." His eyes scanned down the paper. "So, that leaves Intro to Business, Poly Sci 101 and Business Theory. How do you feel about those?"

Mike snorted, "You want my honest answer?"

"That's what we're doing here."

"Sounds like a nightmare."

"Okay then," Professor Rich said, making red ticks beside each class, "What would you like to fill them with instead?"

"Really?" Mike said breathlessly, "Creative writing. I want to double major."

"Ah," Professor Rich replied with a knowing look, "So that's where dad stepped in?"

Mike rolled his eyes, "Obviously."

"Well, you'll have to start with introductory English classes. What do you like to write?"

"Fantasy, mostly."

Professor Rich looked up, his eyes suddenly bright. "Cool! Like Lord of the Rings?"

Had his college advisor just said 'cool'? Had he just mentioned Mike's favorite books?

He couldn't believe how much his luck had turned around.

"Yes! Exactly."

Professor Rich smirked as his pen made contact with the paper once again, "I had a hunch I liked you from the moment I laid eyes on you." He crossed out Intro to Business and Business Theory as he spoke, Mike's chest feeling lighter with each damning stroke. "Lets kick these two business classes off the list, then. I can probably still get you into Professor Lyle's English 101. He'd be a good fit for you. He's got a soft spot for the same genre. And Intro to Creative Writing. We might have to sweet talk you into that one, but I bet we can make it happen. I've got some special connections in English admissions. Sound good?"

Mike forced the words off of his dry and shocked tongue. "Th… that sounds amazing."

He nodded and scribbled in the changes, cross referencing the class roster beside him as he did so. Finally, he looked up, his pen stopping on the final class. Poly Sci 101.

"Can I give you one piece of advice, Michael?"

"Sure."

"Keep Poly Sci." He slid the document back across the table toward Mike and capped his pen. "It'll be good information to know if you want to do creative writing. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if that choice on your father's part might backfire on him."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing," Professor Rich said, clearly amused with himself. He leaned back in his chair and picked up his pastry, peeling at the top sugary flakes, but keeping his eyes on Mike throughout it all, "You need anything else?"

"No," Mike said, a smile slipping to his lips in a foreign sensation, "You did… this is… this is amazing. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. It's my job to make sure you're on the right track, and I think that's what we did here. Looks like I'll be seeing you on Tuesdays and Thursdays for Principals of Design. That'll be a fun class, as far as boring classes with six hundred pages of reading goes. Go hand this to Tracy at the desk, along with this note," he scrawled on a new sheet of paper and handed it to him, "She'll put in the request for the class changes. Should only take ten or fifteen minutes. Do you have the time to wait?"

"Yeah, I don't have my first class until ten."

"Great. Well, Michael - "

" - Oh, it's Mike."

"Okay, Mike. Since I've got you in class, feel free to stop me before or after if you need more advisory time. Or, I have Tuesday office hours from 4-6pm, but I usually use that time to secretly catch up on my own fantasy book addiction, so interrupt me before or after our class."

Mike chuckled, "You got it. Thank you. Really, thank you. I'll uh, I'll see you tomorrow."

Mike sat in the lobby for a total of ten minutes, his nerves jangling with a fresh cocktail of sensations: relief, excitement, and an odd and thrilling sense of rebellion. The office seemed to have some sway in the English department, because Mike was able to get both of the classes without much fight.

His new creative writing-injected schedule in hand, Mike made his way across campus to his first class of the semester, his nerves ratcheting back up a few notches as he accepted which class it was. Poly sci.

Honestly, it had been the class that Mike had been dreading the most. Politics had never really been his thing. The droning of the nightly news coupled with his dad's approving hums and criticisms had been the main bulk of his exposure, after all. Maybe it would be worth his time? Hard to figure out how, though. Yet, Ted had been adamant about its importance.

"You need to be educated in the comings and goings of the country, Michael. It's important that you stand for something."

"You mean it's important that I stand for what you stand for,' he had almost retorted that day, though he had bit his tongue.

Hurrying along as the minutes ticked quickly away, he took long strides up three flights of stairs within one of the oldest buildings on Indiana University's campus. He made his way to the third floor and eyed the doors as he walked down the main hall, each number growing closer to his destination, room 353.

At the threshold of the door, a fresh wave of nervousness yelped within him. It was a surprisingly small classroom, and odd. The chairs had been arranged, fourteen in total, pointing in a circle.

Oh god.

…It was a discussion class…

…A discussion class about a topic that Mike knew almost nothing about.

His sense of self shrank within his stomach, and he jostled between two chairs as it did so, taking a seat a little too clumsily, a little too loud. A few people already in the circle looked up in surprise as his commotion. Cheeks flaring in a way that made him want to die, he looked up to see how much of a scene he had made.

Most of the eyes dropped from him in an instant, but for one pair. And when he met them, his blush doubled.

She was beautiful.

She sat directly across from him in the circle. Wild wavy brown hair, natural and devoid of the chemical products that wreaked havoc on all hair in 1988, fell softly with a tad bit of muss against her shoulders, touching against a slightly baggy pink t-shirt with a wide stretched neck. She seemed comfortable in slouchy overalls, rolled at the cuffs and hanging in loose denim clumps at the middle of her shin. Scuffed and well worn cherry red chucks peeked out below. They bounced from the movement of her foot.

Oh fuck.

He had just checked this girl out, completely, head to toe.

Wincing, Mike drew his eyes back up. Past her purple chipped nails and the ratty backpack in her lap, to her eyes. Hazel brown with the slightest bit of green shining in the sunlight. Her gaze still locked resolutely on him.

Shame froze him, the awkwardness strong enough to make him want to drop straight out of school before the first class had even started. It was then that she smirked, her eyes finally letting him free as they slipped from his and seemed to search for a location to look at that was anywhere else but on him.

Welp, he could die now. That'd probably be for the best.

"Looks like everyone is here on time. That's nice, too bad it won't last."

The middle aged man's voice called up from the back of the classroom. He stood up from where he had been perched against a short bookcase and walked toward the circle and took the final empty chair. He was a classic teacher, much more aligned with Mike's stereotyped view than Professor Rich had been a few minutes prior. He pushed up his wire rimmed glasses, pushed back his thinning hair, and straightened his sweater vest over a crisp light blue oxford shirt as he spoke.

"Welcome to intro to political science. I hope we can end this semester with all of you having a better grasp upon the world around you and the machinations that make it move. I'll only do roll call today. Everyone pay attention because you'll be spending a lot of time talking in this circle. It's good to know each other's names. It keeps the bloodiest arguments at bay. Caitlyn…"

Mike looked down at his hands to find them trying to rip each other apart. His fingers picked at his nails in supreme fidgety nervousness. He attempted to pull his focused in order to follow the names and faces as the professor called them around the room.

Mia …

…Robert…

…Jane…

"Present."

Mike's eyes traced back to the girl across from him. She raised one finger in the air as she spoke, and then leaned back casually into her chair. Her fingers entered her hair, combing the strands back into a ball that she bunched up within a plastic accordion-like tie that had been around her wrist.

"Ahem - Michael?"

Mike blinked, the sound of all three attempts to get his attention blaring in his ear all at once. Jane's eyes were on his once again with some kind of baffled amusement.

"Um, yeah," he said, wrenching his eyes from her. "Here."

"I can see that," the professor said, unamused. "Moving on. I'm Professor Barnes. For the next semester we'll be exploring the ins and outs of political discourse. We will be covering history, current events, and theory. This class will be taught discussion style, so if you are a person who is attached to your books and tests, take this process as a learning experience. We will have two tests that will account for 30% of your grade. A partnered project later in the semester will also account for 30%. That remaining 40%? That is contingent on your attendance and participation in our discussions. And with that out of the way, let's get started." A slightly evil grin painted itself upon Professor Barnes's face as he leaned forward on his knees and regarded the circle. "Let's start off with a little get to you know. An ice breaker, if you will. See where we all stand; where the demographics of this class lie. I'll just throw this in the middle. The merits and demerits of the War on Drugs."

The scoff across from him was instant, like whiplash. And for the third time in 5 minutes Mike found his eyes drift back to the girl, Jane, right as she opened her mouth.

"Ridiculous. Absolutely useless policy."

"Care to elaborate?"

It seemed that she, if fact, did care to elaborate. She straightened as she looked back at the professor with an overwhelming sense of confidence, "The war on drugs is a corrupt attempt to control the masses. Even in its most generous reading, it's not working as intended. It's starting to show itself as a scape goat policy in order to racially profile minorities."

Her eyes were tight as she talked, arms crossed over her chest as though she was protecting the next wave of evidence in case she needed it.

"Anyone else care to chime in?" the Professor asked, looking around the room.

Mike surely didn't care to chime in. He had never thought about the War on Drugs once in his life, and he didn't seem to be the only one. The whole class seemed wide eyed, staring in Jane's direction as though they were waiting for her to give them the answer.

"I'd love to smoke weed but they're making a really big bummer out of that. So, I'm with that girl," some beefy guy with thin blonde said on Mike's right said.

The class snickered in reply.

"I think it's good policy," a prim girl with permed red hair said, next to Jane. Jane whipped around, her brow furrowing in the girl's direction. The girl shrunk beneath Jane's pressing gaze, but she pushed forward nonetheless. "It's uh. I mean, Drugs are bad and dangerous. They can kill you. And it's not just that, President Reagan made it really clear that drugs were bad for national security."

Jane snorted, "You're going to base your opinion on what Reagan thought?"

"What was wrong with Reagan?"

Mike almost gasped.

That had been his voice. Oh God, those had been his words, coming off of his lips.

The second the question slipped from Mike's lips he knew he'd fucked up, for Jane's attention darted to him with an intensity that made him certain that she could snap his neck with nothing more than her eyes if she wanted to.

"Did you really just ask that question?" Mike gulped as Jane unfolded herself from the chair, leaned forward on her knees like a mechanic at a bar, and stared right into his eyes. She dramatically titled her head and scratched her chin. "Let's see? Hmm. What's wrong with Reagan? Oh, how about the fact that he not only continued the American war machine after Vietnam, but he ramped it up to the point that he was selling weapons to both sides of a war, one of which was on an embargo? Or, how about the fact that he was totally fine with overthrowing the leaders of democratically elected governments using American force? Or maybe the blood of thousands of gay men that he has on his hands for doing absolutely nothing about the AIDS crisis. You know, basically treating them like they were dispensable despite the fact that they're, I don't know, Americans? And human beings? What's wrong with Reagan? A lot. A lot is wrong with Reagan. I could definitely keep going but is that good enough for you?"

Mike, a lost naïve deer in headlights, tongue stuck dry to his mouth, simply nodded back to her.

Two things were clear:

1. Ronald Reagan, the man his father had practically worshipped all throughout his childhood, was a complete monster if what Jane had said was true.

2. Jane. Jane was the most intimidating girl he had ever met in his life.

What a shame, Jane thought as she looked the guy right in the eye and absolutely grilled him.

He had to fucking like Reagan.

Such a shame. He was cute.

Really cute.

So cute that she hadn't even minded all that much when he'd spent a very disrespectful amount of time checking her out.

She'd noticed him the second he'd walked in. There was something about his hesitancy that her eyes had been drawn to. Lanky and shy-eyed, draped in a threadbare blue hoodie, open, showing a simple dusty blue ring-necked t-shirt beneath. The colors all worked to make it seem like his pale skin glowed. He had fidgeted as he sat, clearly uncomfortable, and she'd felt for him.

Not that she knew what that felt like. Not here, at least.

Nothing felt out of her comfort zone at Indiana University. It had been her backyard for as long as she could have remembered. The green lawns had served as the location of her first steps as she played on a picnic blanket with her mom, waiting for her dad to get finished with classes for his master's degree. Her first successful bike ride with her dad had been on the sidewalks outside the building where her mom was finally beginning to finish her own degree with summer classes while her dad was on leave from his adjunct position before he'd gone tenure track.

Nothing about this place was foreign. The halls, the faces, the mentality? It had always been in her blood.

This guy, however. This Michael, as she'd learned from roll call, he didn't seem to have the same comfort. Far from it. Maybe that was why she hadn't felt the same raise of her feminist hackles at the attention he'd laid on her. He had seemed to have the decency to look embarrassed the one, or two, times she'd caught him staring.

That part was easy to forgive.

A comment like "What was wrong with Reagan," however? That was not easy to forgive. In fact, that was an instant deal breaker.

Maybe it was unfair, but that one comment had easily slipped him into a mold: Boring rich boy who had never had a unique thought in his life. Forgettable.

Didn't matter how cute he was.

Moving on.

The conversation continued around her, eyes from her classmates slipping to her every time someone talked for fear that she'd go after them next, but they were all lucky, for she had expended so much energy in her full throated rebuke of old Ronald that she felt done for the day. The class bled on quickly, poorly thought out and regurgitated from their parents opinion followed by an equally poorly thought out and regurgitated from their parents opinion.

The professor interrupted the conversation after about 40 minutes of simply sitting there and letting uneducated freshman babble about drugs and the government. "Okay, looks like this will be a fun and interesting class. Wednesday we'll begin our work in theory. See you all then."

Jane collected her things, stuffed them into her bag, and stood up, her eyes involuntarily sliding one last time toward Michael as he pulled his bag on. He puffed his shaggy dark hair out of his eyes as he situated his backpack, looking up and catching her attention with surprise.

It was so absolutely unfair how pretty his eyes were.

She quickly looked away and made her way out of the class.

He likes Reagan, she reminded herself silently, he's off limits.

Mike was incredibly relieved to find the interior of his dorm room. Freshly applied posters and drawings by Will were up on the walls, making it feel something like their new home. Will was curled up in the corner of his bed working on a drawing.

"Hey," he mumbled, not looking up, "how was your first day?"

"Better than expected." Mike dropped his bag by the foot of his new desk and stretched as he walked toward his bed. "My advisor is awesome and seems to dislike authority so he helped me change my business classes to creative writing."

Will's eyes whipped up in surprise. "That's great! Oh, your dad is going to be pissed."

Mike snorted and dropped to his bed, the springy mattress bouncing him as he fell, "Sure, but Professor Rich pointed out that since I got a full ride my dad doesn't really have a say. I feel like an idiot that I didn't really think about that. So when the fight happens I'll have that in my back pocket."

"Oh man, good point. Good classes?"

"Creative writing seems like it'll be good, yeah? But Poly-sci? Oh my god, it's terrifying." It bubbled back up within him then, his terrible interaction from the morning. It had taken him hours to shake it off and it had re-arisen with just as much discomfort. "I'm pretty sure I made an enemy. This girl completely grilled me for about five minutes in front of the whole class for not hating Reagan."

Will's eyes flattened. His pencil dropped to his side. "You defended Reagan?"

"I didn't know!"

"Okay, that's fair," Will conceded, "You have only been out of your dad's house for what, five days? Well, she was right about that. Reagan was a nightmare."

Mike let his head fall back into his pillow, "Why didn't anyone say anything when he was president?"

"They did! Just not when they were around your family."

Mike looked up to his friend, a sudden flare of shame spiking his chest for his ignorance, "Did he really stop funding for AIDS research?"

"Oh yeah," Will said with a sigh, "And it's still happening under Bush. It sucks. They don't see gay people as worth the money."

"That's… Man, that's so fucked up."

"Yeah, it is." Will looked up at that point, a new look in his eye. A little bit of nervousness. "Speaking of, or… um… hey, can I get your opinion on something?"

"Of course."

"I uh…" he twirled the colored pencil quickly between his fingers, his eyes dropping back to his drawing, "I want to be out here."

"Out where?"

"No. Out. Here. I want to be out. Here at college."

Mike's eyes widened. "Oh."

"I was thinking about it all summer but I wasn't sure. But I mean, mom and Jonathan both know now. And you guys all know. I don't know, I'm just sick of feeling like I'm hiding a part of myself and… this just feels like a safe place to try it out. New life, new choices. You know?" Will bit his lip, "But I understand that might, you know since we live together, put you in danger."

"How so?"

"Because you'll be living with –" Will rolled his eyes as his fingers marked quotations, "- 'a fag'. It might put attention on you or make you unsafe and I just, I wanted to let you know before I did anything. You know, in case you wanted me to wait until we could live in separate places or – "

"Will!" Mike interrupted immediately, holding his hand up for Will to stop, "Hell no! If you want to be out, be out. Don't worry about me. I've got a pretty thick skin when it comes to being bullied. Not like it ever stopped."

"You're sure?" Will asked hesitantly.

Mike nodded fervently, "I'm completely sure. Don't take me into account on how you want to live your life. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, Mike," Will said, the nervousness leaving his smile. "I think I'm going to go to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance meeting tonight. I might not stay. I just to check it out. See if it would be a good thing to do, you know?"

"That's awesome," Mike replied, a bubble of resilient pride blooming in his chest for his best friend. "That's a great idea."

"Yeah," Will groaned, "I'm nervous though. I've never been in a room where people just expect me to be gay and be okay with it. You know? I mean, I've been in a lot of rooms where people expect me to be gay and they're not okay with it. But this? I don't know. I'm just nervous."

"I get that," Mike said, "But think about it. You're going to be in a room with a bunch of people who've had similar experiences to you, for the first time. And a lot of them, if they're freshmen too, are probably going to be feeling the same way. Plus, you'll probably get tons of dates out of it."

"Oh man, I don't know if I'm ready for that," Will said with a chuckle as he turned back to his drawing. "Thanks for being cool with it, though."

"Will, you're my best friend. What you want is way more important to me than some unknown piece of shit homophobic bullies. You didn't need to ask." Mike stretched out on his bed and let the final tension of the day bleed into the mattress. "Do you want to go to the cafeteria? I can't stop thinking about the fact that they have an ice cream machine there as part of our meal plan."

"Yeah, that sounds good," Will agreed, shuffling carefully to collect his art supplies from his bed, "My hand is cramping. I could use a break from this."

Mike and Will chatted about their first day as they walked to the cafeteria in the building next to theirs. It all felt normal for a minute as they rehashed their days. The places they'd gotten lost, the assholes and potentially nice people in their classes, the professors. All the normal things. With Will at his side, just as he had been since their first day of school when they were five years old, the campus felt a little bit less foreign, just a little bit more normal. Maybe, just maybe, Mike might learn to not completely hate this place.

"My little girl just had her first day of college and I cannot wait to hear how it went!"

Jane groaned, rolling her eyes as she looked up from the first chapter of her gender theory book, which she was reading for leisure.

It was hard to believe that this day was different in any way. It felt like every other moment in her life. She found herself sitting in her threadbare chair in the corner of the living room where she always was, curled up with her book as her dad came home, just like normal. The crack of the single beer that he drank every night after work echoed off the walls just like normal. He dropped lazily down onto the couch, just like normal.

However, today was different. For today they had both been at the same place: Indiana University.

Jane probably should've been across the street at her dorm, but it felt a little out of place when her own bedroom was only one block away, filled with her life and her comforts. So, almost by habit, she found herself wandering home to her parents' house to sit in her own chair with her own cup of tea, in order to read her new book in peace.

"I'm starving," her dad called from the kitchen, "All I ate today was a single pastry. Advisory meetings kept me chained to my desk. Want to make a frozen pizza? Mom won't be home for another hour so we can sneak it in before she can stop us."

"Since mom isn't here to stop us, can we add extra pepperonis and cheese?" she called, her stomach growling more from the idea of a treat than from hunger.

"Can we add extra pepperonis and cheese?" he scoffed dramatically, "Who do you think you're even talking to that you have to ask that? You couldn't stop it if you tried."

Jane laughed as she followed her dad's voice into the kitchen and found him unpacking the necessities from the fridge. He handed her the pizza while he pulled out the additional fixings.

"Tell me everything," her dad said as he worked, "Any classes you hate?"

"No," she replied, "I only had two today. Poly sci and gender studies."

"I am so happy they got that class approved," he said, "Linda worked really hard to push the board to add it."

"The class overview seems interesting. It's weird though. It's cross listed as an English class so there's some jocks in there taking it as their required English course."

Her dad snorted and took a drink of his beer as he took the pizza box from her hands, "Oh, they're in for a rude awakening. Make sure you give them hell."

"Oh, I behaved in that class. I didn't behave in poly sci, though."

Jane bit her lip to contain her guilty smile as her dad's eyebrows rose. "What did you do?"

"I eviscerated a kid who tried to defend Reagan."

"What'd he try to say?"

She stopped for a second, trying to remember, and ultimately chuckled to herself. "Maybe I came on too strong. He just asked 'what was wrong with Reagan."

"Well, I mean there's so much wrong with the Gipper that the kid probably deserved whatever you threw at him."

"I think I might have terrified him enough to drop the class. I think he swallowed his tongue."

"That's my girl," her dad said, smiling at her with that beaming smile that still, even though she was no longer a child, made her feel like a million bucks. Jane returned his smile, shaped so much the same as his.

"Guys, I told you I was making dinner tonight."

"Shit, we got caught," her dad whispered, pizza red handed in his hands. "It was Jane's idea!"

"Dad! Don't lie!"

"Don't worry, honey," her mom said, a look of amusement on her face as she stood in the threshold of the kitchen entryway, "I know it was your dad's idea. And also, before I'm done scolding you, Andrew, I have to say don't have your department secretary call me to tell me that you will owe me 'personal favors' if I find room in classes for your students."

"Dad!" Jane scoffed.

He shrugged, "What's the good of my wife being the head of admissions for the English department if I can't make the lives of parents everywhere miserable by helping kids change their majors?" He swept mom up in a hug, kissing her on the forehead as she playfully swatted him away. "He's the one this semester, Terry, I promise. I had to help the kid! He had to stick it to his dad."

"You and your bleeding heart."

"Hey, someone did it for me when I got here. I'm just paying it forward. Not everybody has such free-thinking parents as Janie here."

"Oh yes, such free thinking parents that you hid my combat boots because they're too 'pro-war'," Jane quipped as she spread an overwhelming amount of cheese on the boxed pizza.

"I'm telling you, I did not," her dad said with a poorly masked lie, his finger poking into her side and making her squirm as he walked by. "You lost them."

"They were by the door and then they were gone. You're the only culprit. Mom didn't do it. She'd never tell me how to dress."

"You're never going to let me live this down, are you?"

"I'll let you live it down if the combat boots magically reappear at the door," Jane said sarcastically as she pulled open the oven door and popped the pizza in. "Until then, you're the primary suspect."

"Okay, no more arguments before dinner," her mom said with a lighthearted laugh as she finally pushed her way to the counter and dropped her purse and keys. "Can you at least let me make you each a salad to go with your terrible eating decisions?"

A disgruntled murmur of consent echoed from both Jane and her dad, just like it always did. Jane basked in the normalcy of it all. The jabs and the jokes and the comfort of the tight unit that the three of them had. It was at that moment her confidence in her choice was clear.

She was so glad that she hadn't gone away for school.

I'm just so excited to explore the world that is Jane with her true parents who loved her and wanted her and it makes me so teary to even think about it. I can't wait to continue this one! Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear from you in that review box below. - L -