Mike swallowed and took a deep, calming breath. Hopper's low-slung, homely cabin had never looked so intimidating. Somehow, even with the knowledge impressed upon him by his friends (specially Max, who claimed to be an eyewitness — earwitness? — source), he was more nervous than ever now. Rehearsing his apology to El in his head and preparing to do it in real life were entirely different things.
Get it over with, Mike told himself forcefully. He shook himself and marched up the wooden steps, stopping in front of the door. He took another deep breath and raised his hand to knock.
But before his fist even made contact with the door, it flew open. Mike jumped about thirty feet straight up, releasing a very un-masculine cry of surprise. Then, seeing who had opened the door, the surprise vaporized, turning into embarrassment at his reaction.
"Uh— hey, El," he greeted, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. She was standing in the doorway, framed by the warm yellow light from the cabin's interior so that each individual curl and frizz in her mass of chocolate hair was turned to spun gold. She was wearing a red flannel sweater. Mike thought (as usual) that she had never looked so beautiful — or intimidating.
"Hi, Mike," she replied quietly, and Mike was half relieved and half dismayed to hear that El's tone was just as awkward as his. It was dry and tight and scratchy, as though she had just swallowed too hard. She cleared her throat loudly. There was a moment of silence that stretched on far too long. Then, both teens spoke at the same time.
"Listen, I'm really sorry about yesterday—" Mike said. "I'm sorry I made you leave," El said.
They looked at each other. There was another drawn out pause.
"I totally gave you the wrong idea—" Mike started. "Wasn't right to get angry—" El started.
They looked at each other again.
"Do you want to go inside?" Mike suggested.
El nodded several times, relieved that they had gotten somewhere. "Okay," she agreed readily. She turned and led the way to the living room, where she lowered herself into her favorite squashy armchair and sat in her go-to comfort position: feet tucked up behind her, head on the right armrest, hands under her cheek. It felt wrong today, however; El frowned and adjusted herself, sitting straight up and rocking back and forth nervously.
Mike sat in the wooden chair facing her. The two met each others' gazes, then looked away.
"Okay, so I messed up big time—" Mike launched into his speech, but, for a third time, spoke in the same beat as El, who said, "I was angry because I was sad but—"
They fell silent for another few seconds.
"You start," they said simultaneously. They stared at each other, then, in unison, both teens burst out laughing. It was a warm sound, a sudden, braying symphony that cut through the palpable tension in the room. Mike took a minute to compose himself, then, finally, managed to speak uninterrupted.
"Okay, you start," he told El, wiping tears of hilarity from his eyes.
She nodded, but still didn't speak for another minute. She was giggling hard — far too hard to get words out — and, locked in her laughter, was doubled over in her chair. Finally she quelled the giggles and took a steadying breath. All at once, all of the nervousness and trepidation came flooding back to her. Her heart started racing and her throat tightened.
"I…" El began, then stopped, staring at the floor. She could feel the now-familiar creeping of embarrassment and awkwardness and she knew her face would be turning pink. She desperately wished she could control it.
"Go on," Mike urged. "The sooner we can both say sorry, the sooner we can be friends again."
That sentence was what did it. That line of encouragement left Mike's mouth, hit El's ears, and the soup of her pent-up frustration and awkwardness and confusion and sadness and teenage hormones just then hit the boiling point. Because maybe she was confused, maybe she was just an uneducated, awkward, lovesick and, frankly, horny thirteen year-old. But Eleven soon-to-be Hopper would not settle for "friends again". She took a sudden, sharp breath, and finally, all at once, the floodgate lifted in her throat.
"Max said I should talk to you when I asked her what to do because I really really like you as more than a friend like a boyfriend and when I see your face I get warm and when I am sad you make me happy and sometimes when I feel alone or bored or just don't know what to think about I think about you and—
"El—" Mike desperately tried to cut in, but now that she had gotten started, the words kept pouring out, so fast even El couldn't keep track of what she was saying.
"—and sometimes I feel like I can't even talk to you because I like you so much and I wanted to tell you but I didn't know how because I think to you I am only a friend and that's okay because it's not your fault but that makes me sad and sometimes when I'm sad I get angry so that's why yesterday I made you leave but I'm sorry—"
"Eleven!"
"—really really sorry and—"
She seemed to not even hear him. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut, the words flowing from her mouth like steam from a geyser. Mike stared at her, waiting for her to finish, but her rambling only increased in speed, the individual words becoming indiscernible. Her face matched her flannel sweater almost exactly; Mike wasn't even sure if it was from embarrassment or oxygen deprivation. At this rate she was going to talk until she passed out. So Mike did the only thing he could think to do. He leapt from his chair, grabbed the front of El's sweater, and kissed her hard on the lips.
She stopped babbling. The relentless tidal waves of words ceased all at once, the gesture stunning her into abrupt silence. Her eyes went wide as saucers. After a second, they closed, and she fell hungrily into the kiss, pushing her face up against Mike's own. One hand went to his shirt collar, drawing him closer, silently denying him the ability to pull away. As if he would dream of it.
Eventually, though, after what could've been ten seconds or ten minutes, they had to come up for air. When they did, both teens fell back, breathing hard, faces pink with a jumble of emotions. Mike collapsed back into his own chair. A moment of silence passed between them. It was one of many that had already occurred that day, but this one, unlike the others, contained not a grain of awkwardness. Both El and Mike were in a daze, and, for once, embarrassment was the last thing on either of their minds.
It was Mike who finally broke the silence. "El?" he said.
She blinked slowly, still stunned. "Yes?"
"Me too," he told her.
She blinked again. Then, as though she was realizing what had just happened for the first time, her eyes opened wide. Mike, not for the first time, reflected on how enormous and dark they were. "You too?"
"Yeah," he confirmed. He had gone a little pink again, but El noticed that, unusual for when he was blushing, her eyes were fixed on hers. "Since the beginning. Since last year. I never… never found someone new. I never gave up on you." Mike swallowed hard, suddenly finding it difficult to continue. He pushed past the lump in his throat. "And ever since you came back, I was too nervous to talk to you about it. I guess I also thought you wouldn't like me. I didn't… I didn't want to lose you again." He realized with some degree of annoyance that his voice was shaking a little.
El shook her head. "Stupid," she chided affectionately. "Of course I like you. Waited three hundred and fifty-three days to like you."
He nodded mutely.
"Mike," El said. She sat up straighter in her armchair and looked right at him. "I want to be your boyfriend."
He stared at her for a good five seconds before bursting out into gales of laughter. She stared back, hurt.
"No?" she said in a small voice, biting her lip.
Mike struggled to catch his breath guiltily. He knew very well what it felt like to have friends laugh at something dumb that you had said. "No, no, El. I mean, yes. Definitely yes."
She looked relieved for a moment, but then tilted her head in confusion. "Funny?"
Mike smiled, restraining more laughter. "Girlfriend, El. I would be your boyfriend and you would be my girlfriend."
"Oh." El considered this, tilting her head. "Girlfriend. That… makes sense."
"Yeah," Mike agreed.
"Mike?"
"Yeah, El?"
"Can I kiss you again?"
"I, uh—" Mike stammered. "S-sure, if you want." Then a nervous thought struck him. "Wait, do you even know what kissing is?"
El blinked. "Of course. We just kissed. And last year, after the bath. Remember?"
Oh, yes, he remembered. "Well, yeah, but I meant— you know what it, you know, means?"
She nodded. "You said boyfriends and girlfriends do couple things. You said kissing is a couple thing."
Mike chuckled nervously, unconsciously raising a hand to mess up his midnight curls. "Y-yeah, that's the gist of it, I guess."
"So I can kiss you now?" El pressed. Her feet tapped impatiently.
"Uh… yeah. Yeah, you can."
She stood from her chair and moved to his, where she lowered herself unceremoniously into his lap.
Well, she wastes no time, Mike had time to think randomly, lost in her gorgeous eyes, before her mouth was on his.
It was a chaste, clumsy, poorly performed kiss — predictably, given that it was the first El had ever initiated. It only lasted a second before they broke apart. Mike didn't care. Her lips were pink velvet: not too dry, not too moist, just perfect, warm, and sinfully soft. They kissed again. This time it lingered, and Mike was able to detect the scent of vanilla coming off her curls. She tasted a little like vanilla, too.
A number of seconds later — like the first one, Mike wasn't quite sure how long the kiss had gone on for — the two teens broke apart. El moved her head back enough that she could look into Mike's eyes. She smiled. He smiled. She pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes in bliss.
This. This is good. This is… this is yes. El wasn't sure if that was — what did Hopper call it? Proper grammar? Well, whatever it wasn't, it felt right, so she didn't care. She snuggled down further, pressing her face into the crook of Mike's neck. She felt his arms wrap around her shoulders and lower back, drawing her closer. He was very warm.
"I like you a lot, El," Mike whispered. There was a word he really wanted to use, a word he felt he should use, but he felt that maybe he was supposed to wait. Just a little bit. For her sake.
"I like you a lot too, Mike," she murmured back, her voice muffled against his neck. "More than any other person."
"Me too," Mike told her, and he was surprised to find that he was unsurprised that he meant it. He cracked a grin. That was a damn line right there.
Minutes passed. A thought struck Mike, and he grinned again, poking El on her back gently.
"Hey," he said. "Do you like me even more than Eggos?"
The question was, obviously, a joke, but El appeared to consider it for a second. Then she nodded seriously. "Much more than Eggos."
He smiled. If Jane "Eleven" Ives put more value on him than on Eggos, then Michael Wheeler figured he could die right then and there a happy man.
Woo! About time, right? Also, since that chapter was a little on the shorter side, I'm including a little blooper below for some cheap silliness. Thanks for reading! I'll try to get the next chapter out ASAP.
AU:
"And then I hit him so hard with the hockey stick he went flying down the storm drain," Dustin said. Lucas and Will cheered and clapped. Max opened her mouth to say something when the ring of the telephone cut her off.
"One sec, guys," she said, and bolted out of the room. She grabbed the phone off the wall and brought it to her ear.
"Hello?" she called into the mouthpiece.
"Max?" The voice on the other end was high and plaintive.
"Hi, El," Max greeted. "Did he come?"
"Yes," said El.
"How did it go?" Max prompted excitedly.
"Bad," El replied. "I was angry so I threw him out the door. He ran away." She sounded depressed.
"Oh, my God…" Max groaned. "El, it's not that hard to just not be a dick. I thought you liked him."
"He made me mad."
"Guess so," said Max dryly. "Listen, just try again tomorrow, okay? Try to be a little more forgiving."
"Okay," said El. "Are you leaving?"
"Yeah," replied Max heavily. "I kind of have a promise to keep. See you." She hung up the phone and sighed, rubbing her forehead.
Well, best not delay, she thought, and headed back to her room. She opened the door.
"Hey," Lucas greeted. "Dude, listen to this joke Dustin just told me—"
"Just wait a second," Max told him. She turned to Dustin. "Listen, man, no hard feelings, okay? It's nothing personal. I just take my promises pretty seriously."
He stared at her, confusion written all over his broad face. "Max, what—"
She descended upon him in a furious blur of teeth and nails. Lucas and Will screamed, too shocked and horrified to move. Gusts of wind blew out in a tiny hurricane from the snarling, writhing, ginger-haired mass in the center of the room. Within a few seconds Dustin was completely gone and Max was sitting in the spot he had previously occupied. She nonchalantly reached up and picked a piece of bone from between her teeth.
"So, Lucas, about that joke…"
