Hello everyone, welcome back.
First off, we have three new followers: MarinaMango, brainy-brownie123 and SophieRock; thank you for showing interest in the story! I'm glad to have you guys here.
I apologize greatly for the huge wait for this chapter, but to say that I've been busy over the last two weeks would be an understatement. School has been an absolute bitch, and it's really taken a chop out of my writing time. But this was the last day of class before the break and I cranked this entire chapter out in a twelve hours.
It's extra long, over 5000 words (without the beginning and end author's note). I tried to make it worth the wait. We're getting closer toward the "move" soon, so brace yourselves for that. I know exactly how I'm going to plan it out, and how everything is going to happen. After the move, I have a completely clean slate to work with, and I have a bunch of ideas that I hope you guys will stick around for. I hope you enjoy the chapter!
MarinaMango: No problem! I enjoy your story. Thank you following mine, too! (Everyone check her out! She's got a really good Mileven story going on right now!)
39CluesStrangerThings-Star: Thank you for checking the channel out! Also, I'm glad you're enjoying the multiple perspective-thing. My favorite to work with are Mike and Eleven, but I like to include other characters too.
Gil: Thank you! I hope this chapter is interesting too.
Luna0603: Yeah, I knew that Dustin and Mike would reach an agreement quickly. That's the type of friends these guys are. I guess we will see if Joyce ever finds out about things, but I can tell you that I have an idea of how everything is going to play out. As for Will's story, we will see. And haha, Mike and his 'emotions not logic' stuff XD I think that I might try to add some growth for him in that area, because you're right, it is growing quite tiresome. Great work on TTWAS with the last chapter, by the way!
Vader115: Thanks! I hope you like this one as well.
"So how mad is El, exactly?" Dustin asked as he popped a potato chip into his mouth and chewed, staring at Mike intently.
"Really mad," Mike replied, rubbing his eyes. He hadn't gotten a very sound sleep the previous night. It wasn't like he had been crying; he had already done so much of that it felt like he had nothing left to give. Right now he just felt empty inside. Like whenever he closed his eyes, all he could feel was this anxiety eating away at him. He couldn't think about anything else but El. "Maybe we should just call Will. He's been with her for the last couple days, he can probably help us out."
"Yeah, but what if he just goes back and tells El what we said?" Lucas pointed out. "They are siblings now. He probably feels kind of inclined to tell her."
"Shit, you're right," Mike acknowledged, racking his brain to try to plan out the next step. "Okay, what if we call him and ask if he can just come over? And then when he gets here, we get him to promise that he won't tell El. Will has been our friend since kindergarten. Besides, they might be siblings but they don't have to like her. Last I checked, Will didn't even like El."
"Touche," Dustin added, moving toward the chip bag again.
"So give him a call, Mike," Lucas said. "See what he says." Mike nodded and slid out of his chair toward the phone. He picked up the telephone and found that he was feeling nervous for some reason. Why? He was talking to his best friend, not some stranger. But this best friend of his might be on El's side with all of this. What if he just ended up getting screamed at because he had been such a dick to his sister. Sister. God, that was weird to say now. Either way, he had to make this call in order to make any kind of progress in mending their relationship.
With a finger that was shaking more than he was comfortable with, he punched in the numbers and put the phone to his ear. It was ringing. The line picked up and a female voice came through.
"Hello?"
It was El. Mike's eyes shot wide open and he sat there, not knowing at all what to say. He started mouthing the word 'shit' over and over again. Lucas and Dustin looked at him with confusion and started mouthing back to him, but he didn't understand what they were saying. He covered up the microphone and stage whispered across the kitchen. "It's El! Someone else pick up the phone!"
Lucas darted out of his chair, nearly causing it to fall over and immediately grabbed the phone. "Hi, El? It's Lucas," he said quickly. Before waiting for a response, he added; "Can we talk to Lucas? I mean Will? Can we talk to Will?"
Mike and Dustin stared at the phone Lucas was holding intently. Mike's heart seemed to be beating furiously, although he still couldn't really figure out exactly why. "Okay, thanks, El," Lucas said. He beckoned Mike over with his free hand and he snatched it out of his hand. He heard Will's voice on the other end.
"Lucas? What's up?"
"Will, it's Mike. We've got a code pink."
"What does that even mean?"
"It's a new code. It means 'El's mad at me and we need to figure out how to make her not mad and we need your help.'"
"Okay. Do you want me to come over or something?"
"Yeah, but we need you to promise something first."
"What?"
"If you come and help us, do you promise not to tell El anything we talk about."
"Yeah, sure."
"Okay, great," Mike sighed in relief. "How soon can you get here?"
"I can bike over in like fifteen minutes. I'm assuming you don't want El to know that I'm going to your house?"
"No. Tell her that you're going to Lucas' or something."
"Okay, I'll see you in fifteen."
Twenty minutes later, the four boys were seated in the basement around the Dungeons and Dragons table. Except instead of playing their beloved childhood game, they had a much more serious issue at hand. Will acknowledged this; as much as he would have rather been spending his time playing something fun with the guys, ever since he and Mike had that fight, he had grown to respect their relationships more. He had realized that they were, in fact, older now, and some things faded away with age. And he was okay with that now. At the moment, all that was on his mind was fixing up El and Mike, because he knew that his sister would be in a really tough place as well if this wasn't fixed soon.
On top of this, the fact that they were moving was still dwelling in the back of his mind, and he really wasn't looking forward to telling everyone. But it was the middle of August, and he knew that sooner or later, it would have to be disclosed. He licked his lips and folded his hands.
Before he had left, he had told El he was going to Lucas', as per Mike's suggestion. She had not seemed suspicious at all. Even if Mike hadn't told him, he still probably would not have told her he was going to Mike's, given the circumstances.
"Will, what do you know about El?" Mike asked. "How is she doing?"
"I mean, I can't really be sure," Will replied, furrowing his brow. "All I can really tell you is that she's locked herself in her room and has only come out to eat since it happened. She seems really upset."
"Upset with me, or upset with herself?" Dustin clarified.
"I don't know," Will replied. "Probably both. I doubt El feels good about hitting you like that."
Mike winced. "Don't remind me," he muttered. Not that it wasn't justified, because from her point of view it probably was. But it wasn't something that he wanted to hang onto for very long. He would have preferred to just jam the memory of out of his head.
"If you want my honest opinion," Will announced. "I think that you should talk to her yourself."
"That's a no-go," Lucas shook his head, leaning back in his chair. "We need more information to do that."
"Yeah," Dustin agreed.
"Well, how do you guys want to get more information?" Will asked incredulously. "Do you want me to spy on her or something?"
The other three boys in the room looked at each other. "Well, maybe spy isn't the right word, but…"
"Are you kidding me?" Will responded as his eyebrows shot up. "I'm her brother, isn't that kind of weird?"
"Okay, no," Dustin interjected. "You guys aren't even technically siblings yet."
"Not even that," Lucas put in, "but I think that you put a lot more stock into sibling relationships than anyone else in the world. I hope you know that most brothers and sisters aren't as good as you and Jonathan."
"Yeah, it's completely normal for siblings to hate each other," Mike agreed.
"I don't hate El," Will raised his voice a little to get that point across and rolled his eyes. "I hope you guys know that."
"We do," Dustin said quickly. "We just want you to know that, for Mike's sake, it would be completely okay for you to ask El some questions and then report back to us about everything she says."
Everyone else nodded in agreement. Will exhaled and realized that there was sense in what they were saying. Because not only were they right, he realized that this cause was as good for Mike as it was for El. "Alright, so what do I need to know?"
"What?"
"What sorts of questions should I be asked her? What do you guys want to know?"
"Ohh," Lucas replied, snapping his fingers. "Okay, don't worry, I know everything that we need to do. Get me a piece of paper."
"Really? That much?"
"Yes," Lucas repeated. "This is going to be a complicated process. Luckily, my experience with Max has made me the ideal person to sort this issue out."
"Uh-huh," Dustin sighed, cracking his knuckles absent-mindedly.
Lucas twirled a pencil in between his fingers and tapped his knuckles on the table as Mike handed him an empty sheet of lined paper. "So, on this paper, we need to write down everything that we need to figure out. All of our questions, all of the answers we need, it's going on this sheet of paper."
"We need to know if she would talk to me if I went to her," Mike suggested immediately. "Would she talk to me? Because that's what I would be doing right now, but the problem is I don't know if she would even look at me."
"Okay," Lucas said in concord, scrawling messy words onto the sheet of paper. "What else?"
"We should also know how mad she is," Dustin said. "Like, does she want you dead, or will she be fine if you just say sorry?"
"Okay, she's probably in the middle of those two," grumbled Mike.
"Yeah, but on a scale of one to ten, we need to know if she's like a two, or an eight. You know?"
"Yeah, Dustin is right," Lucas nodded, scribbling onto the paper again. "Remember, Will, we have to know all of these things. We're gonna give you this paper, and you need to write all the answers down. Then, we're gonna have another meeting and talk about what we are doing next."
"Why do I feel like we're doing some kind of top-secret spy mission?" Dustin huffed, walking toward the pantry to find food.
"Because we are," Lucas replied. "We need to be able to get Mike and El back together," he continued as he continued to write furiously onto the paper.
El sighed and threw the last Cosmo magazine onto the ground beside her bed. It joined the piles of others that she had ripped through in the last two days. She had found nothing better to do with her time since the night at Steve's. Plus, she had enjoyed reading them. But it seemed that now she was done, all she had were more questions. Mostly involving actually doing the things she read. Sure, she knew what foreplay and sex were, now in a lot more detail than she probably needed.
But what did it really mean? How could she do those things with Mike?
Shit.
She had momentarily forgotten about her current situation with him. The whole thing had been hanging over her head like a storm cloud, until she had finally decided to get some reading done to take her mind off it. It was a complete mystery to her, what she was feeling; half of her still wanted to slap Mike upside the head for being so stupid and selfish for lying to her, and then being so mean to her in the forest. But at the same time, the other part of her knew that he had been mean as well, and wanted to just run into him and apologize. But how was Mike feeling?
That was the real question. If she knew what was going on in his mind, knowing what to do would not be a problem. But it wasn't like she could just go up to his house and knock on the door and as him. She would have to find out some other way. Maybe she could ask Joyce for some help? Or maybe Will would be willing to see how Mike was feeling.
Max could probably give her some girl advice. However, she started thinking back to their first breakup that was arguably because of Max, and waved the idea off. Perhaps it was best if Max stayed out of this one. She could figure this out, right?
Her mind drifted off to think about all the times Max and Lucas got into a fight. It happened a lot; what did they do? She recalled that most of the time, Lucas would end up coming back to her and apologizing profusely, saying how stupid and dumb he was, and Max would forgive him. Then they would rinse and repeat the same thing a few weeks later. It was silly, really. She liked to think that her and Mike weren't like that. They had a much better and more serious relationship. She wanted to get back together with him, and maybe talk it out, but a little voice in the back of her mind kept whispering to her.
He lied to you. He looked you in the eye and lied to you about what they were talking about in the basement. Even after he said he would never lie to you. He lied about Hopper. Your Dad. He insulted you in the forest. He yelled at you. He deserves to be single right now. Let him come to you, he will.
At that rush of negative thoughts, she seemed to feel her blood almost start boiling again. How could she still want to be with him after all those things that he said? Part of it was because she knew she had said some nasty stuff too, but there was another bigger reason.
Because you love him.
Fuck! Her mind was spinning. She couldn't even make up her damn mind. Nothing was getting done. She felt like a dog chasing its own tail. It always led her back to the same place, never getting any progress.
All she wanted was to curl up next to Mike and tell him that she was sorry, and then he would say that he was sorry, and then they could go to her bedroom and do what they had been doing at Steve's before the fireworks. Lying in that bed, skin on skin, making out furiously. That's what she wanted.
But that couldn't happen. Not now. And her heart kept telling her that it might not happen again. And it was killing her.
Will found himself walking up the dirt driveway to his house, holding a folded up piece of paper in his hand, and not quite knowing what was going to happen in the next few minutes.
He had been assigned the task of essentially interrogating El about what she felt regarding Mike. There was a nagging voice in the back of his head that was telling him that this entire plan was going to backfire horribly, but he told that voice to shut up. He was doing this for his best friend since kindergarten, which was a damn good reason in his mind. And his sister, too. Because once they got back together, both of them would be happier.
He fished his key out of his shorts pocket and unlocked the front door. "El?" he called out. "Are you home?"
No answer came. He closed the door behind him and kicked off his shoes and let the cool air conditioning wash over his sweating body. A shower was going to be in his hear future. "El?" Still no answer. He noticed that her door was closed. He was about to just open the door but decided that he should knock first. He gently tapped his fingertips on the wood.
He heard a yelp in surprise come from the other side of the door. "El? Are you okay?" A couple seconds later, her reply came. "Yes, sorry," she said. "You just startled me. Give me a second."
"Okay," he said, sneaking a glance at the sheet of paper in his hand before balling it up and jamming it in his pocket. The door swung open and El stared up at him. Will noticed that her hair was slightly messed up and she looked a little bit out of breath. What had she been doing in there? He shook the question of his head and focused on the task at hand.
"Could I talk to you for a bit about something?" he asked tentatively.
"Yeah, sure," she replied, stepping out of the way and letting him into the room. He nodded at her in thanks and stepped in, looking around for a second. It had definitely been nicely decorated by her. She could see photos and drawings she had made up Mike, the dresser and closet with some of her new clothes draped around messily. The only lighting in the room was coming from the lamp that was placed on the night side table.
"What were you doing before I came in here? You seem… weird."
Her eyes went wide. "No, I was just… reading," she replied, seemingly unsure. Will decided not to push it.
"Look, I just wanted to see how you're doing," he began. "I know that Steve's night was shitty and I just want to know if you're okay." He was deviating from the script a little bit, but he knew that if he was going to get any real answers, he had to work his way into it.
El looked thoughtful for a second. Will was already questioning whether or not whatever she told him was going to be the truth. "I'm okay, I guess," she replied.
Well that's vague. "Are you sure? You've barely talked since that night, and you seem upset."
"I'm just tired," she said, clearly a lie. "I haven't been sleeping well." That might have been the truth.
"Why not? Why aren't you sleeping well?"
El shrugged. "I don't know."
Will sniffed and decided to just bite the bullet. "Does it have anything to do with Mike?"
As soon as his name left his mouth El's face seemed to freeze. Yup, he had struck a nerve. Now he just had to figure out what was really going on.
"Yes," she finally replied quietly.
"Okay," Will said. "What's exactly going on with you and Mike?"
El looked at the floor. Will could tell that this was not to be an easy conversation. Hopefully, it wouldn't end up with him getting yelled at, or being thrown out the window with her powers. He reminded himself that her powers were gone now, but she still felt slightly more intimidating than the average person.
"We had a fight," El finally said, and then sniffed. She crawled back into her bed and lay down, facing away from where Will was standing.
"What did you guys fight about?" he asked.
"You were there," she replied dryly, not turning around to look at him. "He lied about Dad."
Will mentally kicked himself for asking a question that he already technically knew the answer to. If he was going to do this, he had to at least sound half as smart as he was. He tried to cover it up quickly with a follow-up question. "Yeah, I know, but was there anything that you guys argued about after?"
"No," she said in a monotone voice, almost automatically. Will sighed. It was like trying to squeeze the truth out of a small child who didn't want to cooperate. He took a seat at the foot of the bed and El looked more upward to still avoid his face. "Are you sure?"
"Will, I said 'no,'" she snapped. "Can you go away? I don't want to talk right now."
Well. That was it. There wasn't anything else he could do. At least for now. Maybe later he could try to breach the subject again, but he doubted he would have much luck. He knew as well as anyone that when El made her mind up about something, little could be done to change it. "Okay, well, if you change your mind, you can always talk to me," he said, and stood up to leave the room. He turned around once more to look at her back, and then closed the door.
He leaned his back against it and blew a gust of air out his cheeks in exasperation. He supposed that there was some good that came out of it. If he was honest, he half expected her to start screaming as soon as he mentioned Mike's name. But she hadn't. Was that a sign of hope? He had no idea.
The phone suddenly rang and broke Will away from his thoughts. After getting to the kitchen, he picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Did you get the chance to talk to her?" Mike practically yelled into the phone.
"Jesus, Mike," he winced, bringing the speaker away from his ear slightly as he spoke. "Calm down. You didn't even ask if this was me! What if I was El?"
"I knew it was you from your voice," Mike replied. "Your voice is deeper than El's."
"Uh-huh," Will muttered. "And to answer your question, no, I didn't," he said in a hushed tone, not wanting to be heard by El.
"What? Why not?"
"Well," he kissed his teeth in slight frustration. "I did, but she didn't tell me. When I brought your name up she basically told me to piss off."
Will heard a loud slam in the background followed by a string of profanity from Mike. "Well that's fucking great," he deadpanned.
"Alright, well, it could have gone worse," Will tried to make him feel better. "She didn't tell me to 'piss off,' per say."
"What exactly did she tell you?"
"She told me that she didn't want to talk to me about the argument you guys had in the woods," he said. "She was pretty polite about it," he added.
Mike exhaled loudly. "Okay, well, if she tells you anything else, let me know, alright?"
"Yeah, of course," Will nodded. "I'll let you know."
"Okay. Thanks, Will."
"No problem. Try not to get any grey hairs, okay?" he joked.
Will heard Mike chuckle from the other end. "Okay, man. Take care."
"You too."
He hung up the phone feeling satisfied. It felt like some progress had been made, even if it was just a tiny amount.
After a quiet and rather uncomfortable dinner, Will had retreated to his bedroom where he was now doing some drawing. All of the guys were busy with stuff, and he had nothing better to do. Jonathan and his Mom were in the living room watching some television or something, which he didn't really have any interest in at the moment. So he had taken out some of the pencil crayons he had buried in his desk drawer and a blank sheet of paper.
He was just letting his hand wander across the page; he didn't have any ideas in his mind. All he could think about was El. She hadn't said a single word for all of dinner, and he could that his Mom was getting concerned, too. And it was nearing the time where they would have to tell El about the move. According to his Mom, she had already waited longer than she would have liked. But Will kept on telling her do it later.
He had gathered that El didn't want his Mom to know about the fight, so when she had asked him why, he would just say; "I don't know, I just want to make sure that she's ready to hear it."
Whatever that meant. He was stalling her, she knew it. And that meant that he had to sort this out quickly. He was about to scrunch the sheet of paper he was drawing on and start over, but he heard the door to his room quietly open and he turned around in his chair.
El peeked her head into the doorway and looked at Will. "Can we… talk?"
Will didn't hesitate. "Yeah, of course, yeah," he stumbled on his words, slightly caught off guard by the fact that it seemed like El was coming to him for help rather than the other way around. "Do you wanna close the door, or leave it open?" he asked.
El closed the door behind her. "Closed."
Will swallowed. "Okay," he replied. "What do you want to talk about?"
El sat on his bed and Will spun in his chair ninety degrees to face her. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Sorry?" Will repeated, confused. "Why are you sorry?"
"I was rude to you when you came to talk to me," she explained sadly. "Also, I lied."
Will chewed his lip. "Okay, well, first of all, you don't have to apologize, you weren't rude. And even if you were, it's okay, because most people are when they're upset."
El cleared her throat. "I'm not-"
"Second of all," Will cut her off, knowing what she was going to say. "You don't have to apologize for lying either. It's fine."
El looked like she was going to say something for a second, but then closed her mouth. Her lips curled into a small smile. "Thank you," she said.
Will smiled back. "You're welcome," he replied. "What do you want to talk about?"
El fiddled with her blue bracelet, which was a habit of hers that Will had picked up on a little bit after meeting her. It was something that she did when she was nervous. It was a bracelet from Hopper. According to Mike (who had been told by El), it was a bracelet that was made from Hopper's old daughter's hair tie that he used to wear. He gave it to her to wear at the snowball, and she had kept it.
"When you went to Lucas's today, did you see Mike?" she asked.
Will hesitated. Would it be good to tell her? On the one hand, she would know that he had seen Mike. She could interpret that in a couple of different ways, some of which might not be good. On the other hand, perhaps his honesty could open some doors to some answers. He decided to go with his gut instinct.
"Yes," he answered truthfully. Technically, he was staying consistent with his initial lie. He had told her he was going to Lucas', and Mike had just happened to be there. When he had left the house, he had never said that Mike wouldn't be there.
"Did he talk about me at all?" El asked shyly, her wide, brown eyes looking directly into his.
Crap. Another conundrum. Should he tell the truth again? Or lie? He decided to trust his feelings again.
"Yeah," he told her truthfully. "He did."
"What did he say?" she asked in an instant. "Anything bad?"
"No, nothing bad," he replied. "At least, not about you."
El straightened her back a little bit more. She was looking a little bit more hopeful. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"He seemed really upset with himself," Will admitted, shrugging. That was also the truth. But the question was, should he tell her that Mike also thought that she did some bad stuff too? He knew that Mike thought that he had stepped out of line, and he regretted lying to El; that was a fact. But he also knew that Mike thought that El had also been out of line too.
In short, he wanted their make-up to be two-sided. He wanted both sides to acknowledge there were mistakes made, and he wanted that too. It was probably the best for their relationship too, so that's what he wanted.
"He regretted saying the things he said. He knows that he shouldn't have lied to you. I think that he just thought that he could save you from a lot of grieving," he told her softly, trying to sound as diplomatic as possible. He did not want to come off as rude or condescending. El looked deep in thought, pondering Will's words deeply.
She tore her eyes away from her bracelet and looked at Will. "I did some bad things, too," she admitted. There were tears collecting in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly. "I slapped him," she cried, the tears now collecting more profusely. Her shoulders started to shake and she gasped. "I told him that all he wanted from me was sex. But I know that's wrong."
"Why did you tell him that?"
"I don't know, Will," she broke down, and started sobbing. "I don't know," she repeated more quietly, almost to herself.
Will stared at her, having no idea at all what to do. He had never comforted anyone before. He had spent the majority of his life crying on someone's shoulder, with the Upside Down and all. This was completely new territory for him.
After snapping out his momentary trance, he got up out of his desk chair and sat down beside El on his bed. "Hey, shh, it's fine," she comforted her, wrapping his right arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him. "Don't be too loud, Mom'll hear you," he attempted a slight joke.
El sniffed. He couldn't tell it was a half-laugh or not, but he took it as a good sign. "You and Mike'll get back together, I'm sure of it. Okay? It'll be fine."
"How do you know?" she sobbed. "What if he just lied to you?"
"He didn't lie," Will reassured her. "Friends don't lie."
"But Mike lied before," she reminded him.
"Yeah, sometimes friends lie," Will replied. "Friends do a lot of stupid stuff. But then they apologize and make things right again. That's what friends do."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," Will said. "Friends make mistakes all the time. You know Mike punched Dustin in the head after you left Steve's?"
"Really? Why?" she asked incredulously, distracted from her own crying.
"Because he was upset with him for telling you about Hopper. He thought that he would never see you again, and it made him that angry."
Will noticed the ghost of a smile flash across El's mouth. He rubbed her shoulder and bicep. He was feeling great. He felt like an actual big brother. Well, slightly bigger. He knew that they were both technically the same age, but in terms of actual experience of being a person in the real-life world, he was way older.
It was almost automatic, the way he was handling the situation. Like some kind of invisible force had pulled him toward El and placed his hand on her body, and some spiritual force was speaking through his mouth for him. All the times that Jonathan had spent rubbing his shoulder and being a big brother to him had obviously transferred to him, and now he was able to be that big brother figure to El.
It made him feel amazing.
It made him feel that, for the first time, they could have a future where they could all be happy.
Alright guys, so we are at the end of the chapter. As I said, I'm on break now, so I'll have a little bit of extra time to get extra chapters out, but I also have a shitload of work to do over the break for school :/ I won't make any promises, but just know that I'm never gonna ditch this story on you guys :)
Also, let me know what you guys think of the chapter lengths. Do you prefer them a little bit longer like this, or shorter? Or do you even care? If you like them longer, the waits might be longer, but I'll try to make it worth the wait as much as I can.
As always, be sure to review! I love reading what you guys have to say, I will reply to all of them in the next chapter. Not to mention, the extra review motivate me to get the next chapter out quicker, so keep that in mind, lmao.
Youtube Channel: KMX Projects (first thing you see when you search it in YouTube)
Alright guys, enough from me. Take care and take it easy
PS. It's the next day, I just fixed some typos and stuff. Sorry about that the first time around lol