CHAPTER FOUR


She'd never been around so many people her own age. The assembly they snuck her into didn't count; she had been in disguise and had gotten out of there as quickly as possible. Now though she went as herself. As Eleven. Or maybe as Jane. She paused outside the doors, watching others rush in. Blue light filtered through the windows up top, and muffled music blasted into full sound whenever someone opened the doors. She shivered. The circumstances had been so different the last time she entered this gym.

Rallying her courage, she entered the building. The friendly man who took the modest fee Hopper had supplied her gave her no suspicious looks, though she recognized him as the only adult at this school who had ever spoken to her. He didn't seem to remember her at all. Just as well, she decided, and walked through the second set of doors.

She felt immediately intimidated by the swarm of people - mostly clustered together in the middle of a blue-white sparkling sea. She scanned them, a tight knot in her stomach.

But then she saw him.

In flesh and blood, whole and safe and real. Not a figment in the Void. Not teetering on the brink of deadly disaster. Real and waiting. For her.

She didn't remember moving towards him, but suddenly they were together. Shy and eager all at once.

He thought she looked beautiful. Warmth bloomed in her chest and on her cheeks. That sounded so much better than 'pretty.' He asked her to dance and she hesitated, seeing how the others moved. It looked very specific, like they all knew what to do. But his eyes on her drew her attention back to him, and no one else seemed to matter anymore. Even when he took her hand and led her into the midst of them, she forgot their existence. Only he mattered. Mike, and his dark eyes and his soft smile. He guided her hands to his shoulders and wrapped his around to the small of her back. He gently tugged them into a sway, like everyone else.

This...this was more touch than she was used to. Especially with him. He'd held her hand, and twice hugged her, but this felt like something else entirely. She decided she liked where his hands were. She liked being this close to him.

Mike. Her first friend. She had missed him more than she knew was possible. She had learned that you could miss someone you didn't know, as had happened with Mama and Kali, but it was a different thing altogether to have someone in your life, to love them, and then to lose them. Mike had been that person. He had been kind to her from the beginning, championed her when his own friends doubted him, kept her safe from the Bad Men and believed in her ability to use her powers for good. He had taught her about friends, about trust, about the feeling of home. His absence in her life had left a rift as wide and gaping as the Gate she just closed. But now he was here, and she never wanted to be without him again.

She could feel happiness radiating from him as well. Peaceful happiness. And there was a look in his eye that made her heart trip. She'd seen it once before, only back then she didn't know what it meant. This time she did, and met him when he moved in.

His lips found hers again in a sweet, brief kiss.

A kiss that, though anticipated, still surprised her with the feeling of it. Her body stiffened and didn't know if it wanted to lean into it, or lean away from it. However brief, it was like electricity sparking through her. She let out a shaky breath and smiled when he pulled back to see that she was alright. He rested his head against hers, grinning in the glow of their togetherness.

For the rest of the dance, they were never far from one another. Even when the slow song ended, the couples around them broke, they themselves finally parted, and the group gathered again as if pulled by Mike's leadership and gravity, they remained side by side, never more than inches away.

"Elle!" Dustin exclaimed at the sight of her, weaving through the crowds. "You came!"

She looked at his hair and smiled. It wasn't him, but it also wasn't the wildest thing she'd seen. It made him seem older.

He saw her gaze and his hands strayed to the nest of curls self-consciously. "Do you like the new do?"

"Yes," she decided.

He illuminated. "Really?" Turning to Mike and Lucas he puffed out his chest. "See? The ladies love it."

Mike smacked Dustin's arm and gave him a pointed look, inclining his head towards Eleven.

"Oh, right, how rude of me. Elle, you look very pretty." He laughed. "It's still so weird to see you with hair, though."

"Good weird," Lucas amended.

She glanced at Mike who still watched her with that warm, adoring expression. She blushed again.

A fast song started up again and Dustin broke into confident dancing. The others teased him for his moves, but his energy was infectious and soon they joined him. Mike's hand found hers, and Dustin's found her other. Together they moved her about to show her how to give in to the feelings of joy radiating through her. It was fun and wild and so refreshingly carefree.

She laughed. The sensation of it bubbled up through her body and escaped in breathless peals. It was the first time she'd ever laughed like that, and it felt so good she thought she might burst. At the sound of her laughter, Mike grinned his biggest grin yet and pulled her to him, briefly placing his head against hers as he did during the slow dance, and then took her hand to spin her into a twirling circle.

She laughed more, and it was glorious.

The lights through the Snow Ball flickered and glowed noticeably brighter. The air seemed to crackle with energy.

"Uh, Mike," Dustin observed, motioning to the lights.

"Is she doing that?" Max asked, glancing from Elle to Lucas.

Mike and Eleven looked around. She winced. The lights cooled back to their normal shade. "Oops."

He grinned. "It's okay."

"You weren't doing that on purpose?" Will asked, in obvious awe.

Eleven shook her head.

"She's just happy," said Mike, unable to disguise his delight. "Really happy."

"Elle, we love you and we're happy you're happy," Dustin said, laughing, "Just don't explode the lights."

She bit her lip. "Sorry."

Mike tugged on her hand. "Come on, maybe we should take a break."

The group moved off together to the drink table where Nancy had resumed her chaperone duties after the slow dance. She grinned when she saw them.

"Elle, you're beautiful," she said with unveiled affection.

Eleven met her gaze and saw a conspiratorial look there. She grinned and looked away again quickly,

Mike grabbed a cup from his sister and handed it to her. "Here," he said. "You'll like this."

She sipped the sweet liquid curiously. Was it juice? Was it soda?

"The lights are sure acting up. That's not usually a good sign for us," said Jonathan, sauntering over to them. He tousled Will's hair. "Saw you dancing with a cute girl, big man. Way to go."

Will grinned sheepishly. "The lights are Eleven's doing, don't worry."

"Surge of power?" Jonathan asked, glancing at her.

Eleven shrugged. She was aware of Nancy watching them, a funny kind of smile on her face. At one point, she threw her brother a wink. Eleven wasn't sure why or what it meant, but Mike either didn't notice or pretended not to, so she didn't ask.

They took their drinks over to a table where they all sat together. While she said little, she basked in the euphoric flow of conversation around them. A fever seemed to burn through the group — the fever of youth, of relief to be alive and of being together in such oddly normal circumstances after such dire ones. The joy of feelings expressed and unspoken fanned the flames of their excitement. It felt so good to be with them.

Eleven's hostility towards Max even eased a little, though she couldn't quite understand why. Mike paid her no more attention than was strictly polite, which helped. Lucas and Dustin seemed as normal as ever. She loved them for it. Will acted a little shy towards her, and she wasn't quite sure how to behave towards him either. Their two fates had been so long intertwined, but they had never intersected like this - both on the same plane of consciousness at the same time.

It didn't seem to matter much, though, for most of her attention kept gravitating towards Mike. Their gazes would frequently catch, eliciting an abashed smile from him and a leap of her own heart within her. Her mind returned each time to that thing he did with his lips and hers, that kiss. She liked it, even though both times the strangeness of the act had startled her. She found herself wishing he'd do it again.

At the end of the night, she didn't want to go.

Outside, in the cold, Mike hugged her goodbye. The feeling of home swept around her in his embrace. She had longed for his company for so long, longed for this promised night and all its magic. It did not disappoint. She nestled into the comfort of this closeness and felt that nothing bad would ever happen to her again if only she could stay right here forever.

Their friends encircled them and bid her goodbye too. She felt another surge of love for them. Except that fire-haired girl. Although this evening had diminished some of the bad feelings, she still saw Max as an unwelcome interloper. Still, she was in too good a mood to be beligerant. Her friends were all safe - she had cut off the monster's access to them and protected them once more, just as they had shielded and protected her in the beginning.

She thought about Kali and the painful decision to leave her sister, to put herself between the monsters and her friends. She would make that decision over and over again, if she had to. She would do anything for them.

"Goodbye, Elle," Mike murmured as Hopper's truck pulled up behind her.

"Bye, Mike," she gave him a shy smile.

He rushed forward and gave her one last hug. "I'm really happy you came. I couldn't even go last year. I couldn't face it without you. And I really wish you could sleep in my fort in the basement again," he confessed.

"Me too."

"Hey, hey, break it up," Hopper said from the rolled-down window. "Get in, kid. It's freezing."

They parted reluctantly, and she climbed in the truck. She watched Mike and the others receding from view as they drove away.

"So," Hopper asked. "How was it? Your first dance."

Her mind supplied a word which she had first heard from the mouth of Lucas after flipping that van. She grinned. "Awesome."


When she went to bed that night, she closed her eyes and let thoughts of the evening fill her mind. It was getting much easier now. With almost no effort at all, she slipped into the Void.

Mike sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. He looked happy. His smile was that kind of lopsided grin she recognized as the one he reserved for her. She wanted to touch him, but knew that if she did, he'd vanish into smoke. Instead, she sat next to him on the bed, savoring the one-sided togetherness, until he eventually kicked off his shoes, crawled up to his pillow, and fell asleep.

Surfacing from the Void and rolling over, she too fell into a peaceful sleep, happier than she could ever remember.


Author's Note


There's something so pure and fun about writing tweens. I loved writing this chapter. We never get to see them be really happy on the show (of course, given all the crap they go through) so it's refreshing to explore some un-worried moments.