We Are Not Alone, Part 1: Somebody there to break your fall. PG-13, friendship/romance, post-S2, Mike/Eleven + party antics.
And just like that, the library at Hawkins High had become a war room, a strategy session where all the members of the party devised a plan to protect one of their own. Because that's what friends do.
Note: This is a direct sequel to What Makes You Different. Be sure to read that one first if you haven't yet, otherwise there will be aspects of this story that will not make sense.
Another Note: The length of this thing got a little away from me, so instead of posting it as a one-shot, I will be uploading it in two parts, with the second one coming tomorrow. Stay tuned for that!
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Mike was waiting for her by the entrance when Hopper parked the Blazer in front of Hawkins High some ten minutes before eight. El did not miss the way Hopper glared at him through the rearview mirror.
"...What?" her adoptive father asked when he looked away from the mirror to find her giving him a deadpan stare.
"He was cheering me up," she reminded him pointedly. She'd already told him the whole story the day before when she explained how she got detention in the first place. He'd seemed worried about her at first, angry that some kid from school was being an asshole to her, and then relieved her friends had been so supportive.
Evidently, though, he'd woken up on the grumpy side of the bed that morning. "And he couldn't do that without having his hands all over you?" he asked, eyebrows raised high on his forehead.
Her stare didn't waver. "We were just kissing," she stated, enunciating the words carefully. She'd also explained this the previous day, too, because her disciplinary note had made it sound worse than it was.
"Right, just kissing." He rolled his eyes, ran a hand through his hair, then leaned forward against the steering wheel, forearms hanging over the dashboard. He was quiet for a few seconds before turning toward her again. "So, you think you'll be able to keep your lips away from his for the entire detention period?" he asked then, in a too-casual tone, which was betrayed by the corners of his mouth quirking up.
Her stare turned into a glare.
It must've been a hilarious sight because he couldn't stop himself from outright laughing. "Hey, it takes two to tango," it was his turn to point out, amused. "You got yourself into this mess, so now it's my prerogative as a parent to tease you mercilessly about it."
He stretched out a hand to pull on her ponytail, and she begrudgingly let go of her indignation. Even if she didn't like being teased, she could take it from Hopper, because he did it out of affection. And she did land herself in detention, after all. "It's almost eight," he pointed out with a smile on his face. "Go on. Wouldn't want to keep Romeo waiting."
"Stooooop," she groaned in a long-suffering tone, covering her face with her hands. He showed no remorse; if anything, it made him chuckle even more. Dodging his gaze, she grabbed her backpack from the back seat of the truck.
"I'll pick you up at three," he reminded her as she opened the door and shouldered her bag. She closed the door behind her and gave him a nod and a wave through the window before turning toward Mike, who was waiting somewhat awkwardly by the corner.
She pulled him by the hand toward the school before he could say anything more than a strangled "Hey," and ignored the nervous look he shot at the Blazer as Hopper drove off.
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Saturday detentions at Hawkins High took place in the library. This time around it was just the six of them and Bobby Hastings, who had conked out about a second after responding to Ms. Sanders' roll call when detention period started.
It was kind of funny for two reasons: 1) They weren't supposed to sleep during detention— the rules as stated by their English teacher were for them to do "something productive" with their time, and 2) the reason Bobby Hastings had gotten detention in the first place was for sleeping in class. It was an irony not lost on Ms. Sanders, as she had given up on waking him after a few failed tries, muttering under her breath that "he'll be here again next week, anyway."
Will couldn't help but stare at the boy snoring lightly on the table next to his. Bobby Hastings was a bit of an odd duck: a sophomore, he hung out with the jocks because he was in the wrestling team, but his so-called friends still treated him pretty awfully, calling him nasty nicknames like "Lardass" just because he was a chubby guy, and teasing him because he was always falling asleep in class.
As someone who'd been teased and bullied, Will felt for the boy; he thought he'd probably be a fairly good-looking guy if he lost a little bit of weight, but the popular crowd wasn't going to give him that chance. He was also curious about the whole sleeping-in-class thing; it kind of reminded him of Eleven when she pushed her powers too far, except he was fairly sure Bobby Hastings wasn't out fighting interdimensional monsters on a regular basis (...well, he hoped so, at least). Will wondered why he was always so tired.
Shaking his head, he returned his focus to the sketch he'd been working on— a landscape for his mother's upcoming birthday. In the table directly in front of him, Lucas and Max had started out the morning quietly working on some Algebra homework they both had to turn in on Monday. They'd worked on it for an hour or two, but around 10:30 they'd given up on it. Now, Max had pulled out her Walkman and was listening to music, bobbing her head to some rhythm Will couldn't quite place. Lucas was reading one of his dad's old issues of Popular Mechanics.
Seated beside him at the table, Dustin had spent most of the morning reading comics, but Will could tell even he was starting to get tired of it, as he'd been staring blankly at the same page for the last five minutes, his eyes glazed over. If even Green Lantern couldn't keep him entertained, that meant he was really bored.
On the table situated diagonally to his, in front of Bobby's, sat Mike and Eleven. Mike had pulled out his D&D binder as soon as detention started, and was still diligently working on a campaign. El was reading The Old Man and the Sea, which was kind of fascinating to Will because she'd make all sorts of funny faces as she read. He'd taken to doodling cartoony versions of her face on a clean page of his sketchpad, a sort of catalog of El's funniest expressions. He'd show it to her after detention was done; he was sure it'd make her laugh.
The two of them were the only ones allowed to talk to each other, because the book El was reading was for Ms. Sanders' class and so she'd given El permission to ask Mike questions if there was anything in it she didn't fully understand.
Somewhere around eleven, however, Ms. Sanders stood up from where she was sitting behind the librarian's counter, putting her purse, folder, and the stack of papers she'd been grading on top of the desk. The sound startled them all except for Bobby (who was still asleep) and Max (who didn't hear it because of her headphones, but she did notice Lucas jump like three feet in the air so she realized what was happening fairly quickly).
"Alright," Ms. Sanders started as she approached them. "I have some matters I need to attend to, so I will have to leave you alone here for a short period." She put her arms on her hips, trying to appear authoritative. "You all will stay here and behave appropriately. The door to the library will remain open at all times, and I will be in the Teacher's Lounge just one hallway over, so if I hear anything out of the ordinary, I will be right back here before you can blink."
Lucas raised his hand. "Can we talk to each other now?"
"Yes," she nodded at him. "Quietly. As long as you keep working on your respective assignments." She looked at all of them, clearly deciding that whatever they had in front of them at the moment looked close enough to schoolwork as to fit that description. "You can eat lunch now if you want."
"Here?" Dustin asked without raising his hand as he leaned forward, a grimace on his face like he found it offensive to eat lunch anywhere but at the cafeteria.
"Yes, here," Ms. Sanders retorted with a pointed look in his direction. "Unless you'd prefer not to eat lunch at all, Mr. Henderson."
"No, ma'am," Dustin replied right away, sinking back into his chair.
"Good. Now," she glared at each of them individually, "no funny business." With that last warning, she spun on her heel and walked out, not without checking that the metal arm that closed the door was in the locked position, so that the door remained open permanently.
A collective sigh sounded in the room the moment she walked out of view. Most of them (the ones who were awake, at least) reached for their bags to get their lunch. Max pushed her headphones down to her neck and leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. "This blows," she exclaimed with a huff, somehow summing everyone's mood in two words.
"Tell me about it," Lucas muttered as he pulled out a bagged lunch his mother had packed for him. "I've read the same article like twenty times already. It's literally the only good thing in this issue, and it's the only one I thought to bring with me."
"I think my eyes are going to stay permanently crossed," Dustin added, dumping the contents of his own lunch— a wrapped sandwich with the crusts cut off, and a ton of assorted snacks— on the table in front of him. A bag of Reese's Pieces hit Will's arm, and he resolved to ask Dustin for some when he opened it.
"I've re-started this campaign three times already, and it still sucks," Mike intervened with a groan as he dropped his head against his binder on the table.
Will shrugged. "At least some of us have found ways to be productive," he said as he unpacked his own lunch. Jonathan had packed him a container of soup and a bag of Oreo knock-offs, along with a chicken-scratched note that read "Eat up, jailbird," which made him chuckle. As he put the piece of paper back in his bag, he turned to Eleven. "How's the book, El?"
She turned to him and the grimace on her face said it all, though she still explained it with words. Well, a word. "Boring," she said, then turned to Mike. "Who's DiMaggio?" she asked, pronouncing the name slowly.
Mike shrugged as he pulled a bunch of Tupperware containers from his bag. "I dunno. Some football player, I think?"
"Baseball," Max corrected from the opposite table. "He's from San Francisco, but he played for the Yankees." Will had been about to ask how Max knew that, since she'd never mentioned liking baseball, but it made sense if he was from California. El nodded, probably recognizing the Yankees because Hopper did watch baseball.
Dustin nudged him with his elbow. "Did you finish your drawing for your mom?" he asked, signaling at his sketchpad with a nod of his head.
"Almost," he replied, showing him the sketch. Dustin gave him a thumbs-up. "It still kinda sucks, though," Will added as he closed his sketchpad and set it aside for the moment. "I could've been home playing Defender II," he finished with a sigh.
"Lucky you," Dustin retorted with a scoff. "I'm grounded until summer vacation, but all you have to do is bat your lashes and go 'Mommy, I was only skipping class because I was trying to help El' and Mrs. B lets you off the hook just like that!"
Will shook his head at his histrionics as he carefully opened his thermos of soup. "You know your mom would've let you off the hook, too, if you hadn't burst into the girls' locker room," he pointed out smartly. Dustin's mom thought everything he did was the best thing ever. Well, almost.
"We were trying to keep Max from killing Stacey!" he retorted, signaling at himself and Lucas, who had turned around in his chair and was following the conversation intently. "What were we supposed to do, wait outside and pray?"
"I wasn't going to kill her," Max intervened in her defense as she split a piece of her PB&J sandwich. "I was just going to make sure she needed to put way more makeup on than she already does if she wanted to leave her house looking like a normal human."
Lucas winced and Dustin just stared at her, muttering "Mental" under his breath. El tried to laugh around the Eggo she'd just bit into, and Mike scoffed, even though he was still sorting out the million and one Tupperware containers his mother had packed for him.
"And anyway," Max shrugged, as if she hadn't just admitted to attempting to disfigure another person, "it's your own dumb fault for getting grounded. I just told my mom and stepdad I was looking for a friend who wasn't feeling well, and all I got was some extra chores."
"Wait, you didn't tell your parents you got all up in Marcie and Patty's faces because they wouldn't tell you where Stacey was?" Dustin asked, frowning lightly.
"Are you insane? Neil would murder me if he knew I almost started up a fight in school," Max retorted with a scowl. "Like, I know that you're all really into the whole 'friends don't lie' thing, but these are parents. They don't exactly count."
Dustin's frown did not abate, and Will knew he'd just come to some sort of realization. It was dawning on Mike and Lucas, too. "Um, you do know that a parent or guardian has to sign you out when detention is over, right?" Mike asked, unsure.
Max shrugged again. "Yeah. So?"
"So, what they have to sign is your disciplinary note," Lucas explained quickly in a no-nonsense tone, looking kind of surprised that Max didn't know this already. "You know, the one that details exactly why you were given detention."
It took a few seconds for his words to sink in Max's mind, but Will knew when they did because she went really pale and her eyes went really wide. "What? No." She looked at each one of them as if hoping they'd tell her they were just pulling her leg. "It's not like that in California!"
"Well, welcome to Hawkins," Dustin muttered, gesturing around them as if the library was Exhibit A of how different Hawkins was to the West Coast, as if Max hadn't been living in town for over a year and a half already and could tell that on her own.
"So, you have to 'fess up about lying to your parents," Lucas started again, trying to minimize the situation, obviously, to get Max to relax a bit. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. "So you get grounded or something. Welcome to the club."
"No, you don't get it," Max shook her head, looking absolutely terrified. "Neil can't know. I'm not kidding when I say he'll kill me. You remember Billy, right? Why do you think he's the way he is?"
"Steve says he was dropped on his head as a child one too many times," Dustin supplied with a shrug, looking as lost as Will felt. Nobody liked getting grounded, sure, but Max looked seriously spooked. Were they missing something?
"No, he was beaten as a child one too many times," Max threw back and that was around the time when it dawned on all of them that, yes, they were missing kind of a lot. Even Eleven, who'd mostly stayed quiet the entire conversation, seemed shaken by the revelation.
"What?!" Dustin was the first to break the silence, aghast.
"Are you serious?!" Mike asked, slackjawed.
"Yes!" Max responded frantically.
"That's crazy!" Lucas interjected, wide-eyed. Then something occurred to him, and he frowned. "Wait, but has he ever— to you—?"
Max shook her head emphatically. "No. Usually he just yells a lot, but he's never hit me." She bit her lip, nervous. "But it's not like I want to try him, either." She wrapped her arms around herself, almost defensively. "What am I gonna do, you guys? I'm so dead. I'm fucked."
"Maybe not," Mike said, his features schooled into the expression Will had come to recognize through the years as his "thinking face," his Paladin face. "There's gotta be something we can do to stop your stepdad from seeing your disciplinary note."
"Maybe we could steal it," Dustin threw in a suggestion.
"No, what we need is to replace it," Lucas corrected, and just like that, the library at Hawkins High had become a war room, a strategy session where all the members of the party devised a plan to protect one of their own. Because that's what friends do.
"Okay, does anyone know where the notes are?" Mike asked.
"Ms. Sanders is carrying them in her folder," Will pointed out, happy to have something to contribute to the conversation. Sometimes being observant came in handy. "That's where she put them after she called roll. And she took the folder with her."
"To the Teacher's Lounge," Dustin added, and Mike nodded. "Do you think she's doing anything important in there?"
"She's probably just watching Punky Brewster reruns or something," Lucas retorted with an eye roll and a shake of his head.
"It doesn't matter what she's doing; all that matters is whether we can get her away from her folder or not," Mike reeled the conversation back to the point before turning to Will. "If we manage to get hold of Max's note, do you think you can forge the writing?"
Will hated being put on the spot like that, but... it was for Max, so he had to do it. "I can try," he replied. He'd had to forge his mother's signature a few times in the past— not for anything bad, but because she sometimes forgot to sign permission slips even though she'd already told him she would. It happened sometimes when she had to work double shifts and came home really tired, and Will didn't have the heart to wake her up just to get her to sign stuff. He was pretty good at it, if he did say so himself.
Mike nodded. "Good. So we need to find a clean pad of disciplinary notes. Do you think Sanders brought hers, too?"
"I don't know, but I'm sure the librarian must have one somewhere around here," Dustin informed them. "Steve told me once that he got detention for talking too loud in here." He mock-shuddered. "Harsh."
"If we're going to look for it, we're going to have to close the door," Lucas pointed out before everyone could get too excited. "Our voices don't carry as far as the Teacher's Lounge, but if we're going to start rummaging around here... that's risky."
"You're right," Mike nodded. He looked at the door for a moment, then back at the group. "We could just loosen the screws of the stopper or something, but that would be too obvious. Anyone would know just by taking one look at it that we sabotaged it. Any other ideas?"
He'd barely finished speaking when there was a loud snap and the door of the library swung closed. The metal arm had snapped in half— literally in half; the solid metal part, too, not just the joint. The five of them simultaneously turned to stare at it wide-eyed, then at El, whose nose was bleeding... and then at Bobby Hastings.
There was a tense moment of silence.
"I think... I think he's dead to the world," Will declared, still keeping his eyes on the sleeping boy for a second longer, just in case. The others took his stillness as a triumph and breathed a sigh of relief.
Mike shook his head. "At least warn us ahead of time if you're going to do something like that," he told Eleven with a frown as he handed her a napkin from his lunch bag. "In case we need to come up with an excuse or something. What if he had seen?"
She shrugged. "He didn't," she sentenced as she wiped her nose with the napkin. She didn't seem repentant in the least bit.
"Okay," Dustin spoke, continuing on from where they left off, "so how do we get Sanders out of the Teacher's Lounge?"
"And without her stuff," Will reminded them. This would all be for nothing if Ms. Sanders just took her folder with her wherever she went.
"We need a distraction," Lucas declared.
"Maybe we could knock out the power?" Max suggested. She seemed a bit less scared, somewhat back to her regular, confident self now that a plan was actually starting to take shape. "Could El do that?"
Eleven seemed unsure. "I think so," she admitted carefully. "But it's risky. Could blow the whole thing up."
"Yeah, no, let's not do that," Dustin refuted immediately, exchanging a glance with Mike and Lucas. Will remembered they told him about Eleven using the Heathkit to look for him while he was missing— and how it burst into flames. Probably not a good idea to pull something like that with the entire Hawkins High power grid.
"Right, so we do it old school," Mike switched gears immediately. "Someone goes to the distribution panel and flips the breakers. Sanders will go take a look, or go call someone to fix it or something, and that'll get her away from the Teacher's Lounge, so one of us can go in and get the disciplinary note. By the time she goes back to the Lounge, we'll already be back here."
"We can't just be wandering the halls completely blind, though," Max noted. "We need to know at least when she actually leaves the Teacher's Lounge, and when she starts heading back. Otherwise she'll catch us and we'll really be screwed."
"I can do it," El affirmed, determined, and once again everyone turned to look at her.
"In the void?" Mike asked, understanding straight away what she meant, as he usually did.
Eleven nodded. "I'll need a radio. And something to cover my eyes." Will still wasn't exactly sure how her powers worked, but he knew from experience that she could find people with her mind, so he took her word for it.
"Do you have your bandanna?" Dustin asked Lucas.
"I didn't bring it with me," Lucas admitted, his expression morphing into a scowl when Dustin groaned in disappointment. "What? I didn't exactly anticipate that I'd be going into battle today!"
"There's a supply closet for the janitors right next door," Mike broke in before the two of them could start arguing. "There might be some towels or rags in there that you can use," he told El, who nodded.
None of the boys had brought their walkies with them (why would they need them if they were all stuck in the same room for seven hours?), but Max's Walkman had FM radio reception, so that's what El would use. The range wasn't the greatest, but she didn't need anything too powerful since she'd only be searching on school grounds anyway.
"Alright, so we look for the blank disciplinary notes, then we split up," Dustin started once they'd shown Eleven how to work the radio on Max's Walkman. "El goes to the janitor's closet. Mike, you stay with her as a lookout." They both nodded. "Once El has a lock on Sanders, Lucas goes to the distribution panel and flips as many of the breakers as he can."
"Wait, why am I on my own?" Lucas protested.
"Because the distribution panel is on the opposite end of the school and you're the fastest out of all of us," Dustin retorted. They were familiar with the distribution panel from A/V Club. "All you have to do is flip the breakers and hide until she goes away. Then you just come back to the library and that's it. Even if she doesn't go straight back to the Teacher's Lounge, you'll see her before she sees you, dude," he explained, making it sound really easy. Will wasn't convinced it would be, but Lucas was crafty, so it made sense for him to handle that part of the plan.
"If I get caught, you're taking the blame," Lucas retorted, not entirely convinced, but going with it for the sake of the plan.
"I swear on my comics collection," Dustin promised, solemnly raising a hand in the air. "Okay, then once Sanders leaves the Teacher's Lounge to check the distribution panel, Max and I break in and steal her disciplinary note. You can pick the lock, right?"
Max nodded, already brandishing a bunch of hairpins Eleven had lent her for that express purpose. Dustin nodded in acknowledgment. "Good. So once each task is completed, we reconvene here, and it'll be like nothing's happened."
"Except for the door," Lucas reminded them.
"We can explain the door," Dustin assured him with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Wait, what am I doing while all these tasks are being completed?" Will asked, suddenly realizing that they hadn't given him anything to do in this grand master plan. Usually when that happened, that meant he had the worst task of all.
"You stay here in case Sanders comes by unexpectedly," Mike revealed, somewhat sheepishly. "Or in case Bobby wakes up." In either case, he knew Will wouldn't like that.
And, indeed, he didn't. He immediately felt dread starting to creep up his spine. "What? No, you guys," he pleaded, "you know I'm terrible at lying. And even worse at coming up with excuses on the fly! There's gotta be something else I can do. Maybe I can be El's lookout, instead?"
They all looked at him like the question itself was utterly ridiculous. Which it was, he admitted to himself, because there was no way Mike was splitting up from Eleven unless someone pried them apart with a crowbar. And anyway, if it came down to it, Will didn't really want to have to explain why he was hiding in a janitor's closet with a girl who had a piece of cloth covering her eyes. He was sure he would die on the spot.
"I mean, you could switch with Lucas, I guess?" Dustin offered. "But you're slower than him, and if you run into Sanders in the hallways, you'll be on your own."
Will didn't like those odds, either. "Hngh," he groaned, indecisive, before finally relenting. "Fine, I'll stay here. But I cannot be held responsible for anything I tell her. You know my brain just disconnects from my mouth when I get nervous."
"It'll be fine," Mike assured him, always trying to prop up Will's self-confidence. "She probably won't even come by here. The power outage will keep her busy, I'm sure." Will sure hoped he was right.
"Everybody's good, then?" Dustin asked, looking around at everyone. When they all nodded, he grinned, obviously excited. "Awesome. Let's do this!"
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Notes: As I mentioned in my note at the beginning, there will be a second part to this story, which I will be posting tomorrow (be sure to subscribe, follow or bookmark so you don't miss it!). I'm sure you can tell by now that this story is much more Party-centric than Mike/Eleven-centric, but Mike and Eleven will still get their quiet moment in part 2, so I decided to include it in the series anyway. Also, part 2 turned out quite a bit longer than part 1, because ~shenanigans~. What can I say; The Breakfast Club is one of my favorite movies of all time and these six children own me.
In case it wasn't clear from the chapter, the reasons the kids got detention: Max, for starting a commotion in the girls' locker room and threatening Stacey's friends; Dustin and Lucas, for bursting into the girls' locker room to stop Max and adding to the aforementioned commotion; Will, for running in the halls and skipping class; and Mike and Eleven, as detailed in What Makes You Different.
Bobby's nickname of "Lardass" comes from the classic pie-eating-contest scene in Stand by Me, another one of my favorite movies of all time. Sony's Walkman series of cassette players had been around since the 70s, but it wasn't until 1984 that they started including FM radio reception. Popular Mechanics is a science/tech magazine that has been in publication since 1902. The Old Man and the Sea is a novel by Ernest Hemingway that is widely recognized (by me, at least) as the most boring book in the history of the world. Joe DiMaggio (who gets mentioned a lot in that book) was a Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer who played for the Yankees his entire career; he was also married to Hollywood actresses Dorothy Arnold and Marilyn Monroe.
Defender II was an arcade game that was ported to the Atari consoles in 1984; the Atari version was called Stargate, but Will, being an avid purveyor of the arcade, would probably know it by its original name. Marcie and Patty were named after Peanuts characters. Punky Brewster was an NBC TV show starring Soleil Moon Frye about an orphaned girl being raised by a foster parent and, as far as I'm concerned, the best sitcom of the 80s.
The title of this fic, as well as the chapter titles, come from the song "We Are Not Alone" by Karla DeVito, which is featured on the Breakfast Club soundtrack. (People only think of Simple Minds when they think of that movie, but really the entire soundtrack is a masterpiece of teen angst and friendship and rebellion). I contemplated using different lines from the song instead because I already have a fic in this series that has the word "alone" in the title, but then I decided "We Are Not Alone" worked too well not to use it, and went with the other lines as chapter titles.