Root canal operation went fine. Never felt so much pain when the dentist filled the root canals with the filling they use. Was so weird when he took those small files to open the canals and then put these inch-long sticks into them to disinfect them.

But, enjoy this one :)

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters and I write for my own pleasure and that of the readers.


"Calm." he advised, moving in slow, deliberate motions, El trying to follow his lead.

'Calm, he says!' El though to herself, thinking about putting her hands around his throat and throttling him.

The last few days have been a torture for her. Five days ago, mother nature had begun the process that excluded sexual intercourse but what she hadn't expected was how horny she would become during that time. Before she had lost her virginity to him, she had periods before but she had never felt like this, even when he had already been living here. But since they got together, they had done it at least twice a day, more often than not even three times. Every time it felt better than before but it made the lack of it even more pronounced.

Now she understood why Max had always been like that. She had used to smirk when Max was climbing the walls in her desire for Lucas, a desire she couldn't fulfill due to nature interfering. It didn't help El that Mike was always doing his morning exercise topless, wearing only his gym shorts. She had retaliated by choosing to wear tight gym shorts as well, along with a very short crop top that left little to the imagination, especially since she didn't put on a bra.

To distract herself, she had thrown herself into work. Doing two hours of Tai Chi training with Mike, even adding some self-defense techniques into the mix, walking or skating with Bella and also, writing long hours on the project she would have had to hand in with Simon, something she would usually work on for several weeks but she wanted to get it done during this week, especially since she got the confirmation from Stanford that she could start courses there after summer break.

"I think we should stop with the Tai Chi." Mike said after a few more minutes. "You're quite off this morning."

"Gee, you think?" she grumbled but felt satisfaction when she noticed his eyes roaming her body. "Lets get to self-defense, I need to hit something."

"What's going on?" he asked. "I know that you usually get grump during your... special time but I've never seen you like this."

"I don't think you have any idea how horny I am." she complained. "I feel like I'm about to jump out of my skin."

"Were you that horny when we weren't together yet?" he wondered, getting into position to attack her.

"No, I think it's because I now know how great sex with you is." she sighed. "Maybe it's because it's still so new. I see Max climbing the walls when she's having her period and she can't have sex with Lucas but she seems not as bad as I feel about it."

"Well, there's one thing we could do about it." he chuckled.

"Mike, while I don't rule it out completely for the future, I won't have anal sex with you today." she gaped at him. "Also, your cock is so big that I already feel filled to the limit when you go into the regular hole, I can't imagine it fits back there."

"What?" he looked at her shocked. "No! I'm talking about training."

"Oh." she blushed but was spared further embarrassment when he charged at her, causing her to reflexively take a step to the side and put her foot out to trip him, using her arms to shove him further.

"Very nice!" he congratulated her, impressed by her quick reaction, as he got back up. "Use your opponent's momentum against him."

"Learned that from my dad." she grinned.

"So, how else would you take down a guy who's attacking you?"

"Kick him in the testicles." she shrugged.

"Imagine I'm the attacker." he said and stepped right in front of her. "How would defend yourself now?"

"I could lift my knee into your groin." she suggested.

"Okay, but what if the angle doesn't fit." he continued, his body only two inches from her making her feel heat pool in her abdomen.

"So, what do I do?" she asked, trying to distract herself, otherwise she really might offer him her ass.

"The shins." he smiled. "Kick a person in the shins hard enough, and that person drops to the ground."

"So, always kick with the tip of the shoe." she nodded. "But what if my attacker grabs me from behind?"

"Alright, lets test it." he winked and stepped behind her, lifting her off the ground. "How would you get out of my grasp?"

"I could wriggle?" she suggested, trying to do just that but Mike simply tightened his grasp.

"You may not have much time to wriggle if your attacker is choking you." he said. "So, what would you do?"

"I can try kicking you." she suggested, feeling his grip not lessening. "Jesus, you're strong."

"Honey, you weigh less than Bella." he laughed.

"Hey, I'm not that tiny." she moped. "Okay, what do I do?"

"Your kicking suggestion is good, if you get the angle." he nodded. "Lift one leg forward and smash it backwards, or try bending your knee and push your foot back with force. You'll either hit the attacker in the shins or on the kneecap, hitting any of those areas will drop him."

"What if I don't have space to swing my leg?" she asked.

"Ah, the good question." he chuckled. "If you can't swing your leg to get force behind your kick, you put the heel of your shoe against your attacker's knee and push down as hard as you can."

"Does that hurt?" she wanted to know.

"Very." he confirmed. "Put a hard object hard against your skin and drag down and you'll see."

"So I could only use my legs?"

"If you can lean your body to the side, you can try to hit your attacker's head with your elbows." he suggested. "You lean to the right and snap your left elbow backwards or lean left and hit him with the right elbow. But that's not always doable. The leg is usually better to reach."

"Thank you." she smiled and kissed him once he had put her down. "Jeez, how do you deal with not being able to have sex?"

"I'm used to it." he chuckled and pulled her towards him, pressing his body against her back where she felt his erection through his shorts. "I felt aroused by you pretty much from the minute I moved in, especially when you wore shorts and tank tops. And don't get me started on the day I got back from Hawkins when you were flaunting your sexy body in your underwear."

"Believe it or not, I didn't do that on purpose." she grinned as they walked back into the house. "At least not in the beginning. Once we were in your room, I became aware of it but I decided to simply stay dressed like that, since you had seen me anyway. And of course, I wanted you to become aware of my body so you maybe make a move."

"I was aware of your hotness from the very beginning." he winked at her. "But there's one thing I wanted to ask you."

"Shoot."

"During that drunken night, when you put my hand between your legs..." Mike began.

"Yeah, I have remembered that since then." she laughed. "That was a weird thing I did."

"Before you fell asleep, you asked me to do something."

"Do what?"

"I don't know." he chuckled. "You said, quote, Mike, can you..., end quote, and then you were asleep."

"Ah, I don't remember that." she hummed. "But best guess, given that I pressed your hand against my pussy and you were rubbing it with your thumb, I probably wanted you to kiss me. Or touch me. Or do something similar."

"Alright, doesn't really matter, it happened a day later." he shrugged.

"Yeah, it did." she grinned broadly.

"How far along are you with that project for your old class?" he asked.

"I think I should be done in two days." El guessed. "One good thing about not able to have sex is the need to distract myself. And writing a rather interesting project is a good way to distract myself."

"It's interesting?"

"Very much so." she nodded. "It's an essay evaluating the validity of studying a person's use of words to ascertain if he or she is lying."

"Because someone who's making up a story sticks to the details without ever changing them, while someone recalling a true story sometimes adds details or leaves some out." Mike nodded. "I heard of that."

"What do you think about it?" she prompted him.

"I think it's good field. If law enforcement officers learn to recognize those tells, it completely mitigates the need for things like polygraphs." he told her. "Not that polygraphs are admissible in court anyway."

"But think about it, detectives interviewing suspects and able to tell if they're lying to them just by their stories." she said. "If a suspects story stays consistent but each retelling has a detail or two more or less, it's usually the truth. If the story is completely consistent without any changes in the amount of detail, it's a prepared story."

"Honey, I'm agreeing with you." he grinned.

"Oh." she realized. "Okay."

"Well, off you go, you have project to finish."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?" she pouted. "And here I thought you loved me."

"Nah, I'm just in for the sex but since that's not possible this week..." he sighed, trying to maintain a straight face when seeing her incredulous expression.

"You jerk!" she gaped. "I almost believed you!"

"You should have seen your face." he laughed and stepped in front of her, giving her a kiss on her still moping lips. "Love you."

"Yeah, yeah." she huffed.

Still shaking her head but unable to prevent a chuckle, she retreated into her room and sat down at her computer. She opened the primary copy of the project file, scrolling down to the last point she had written and reading it over to get back into the groove, so to speak. She read it over, then began typing again. Much like Mike, she kept typing for hours, the pages filling with words while he kept her fed with a delicious lunch when the time came. Only when the Real Housewives were coming on did she stop, returning into the living room to watch it on the big screen.

The next day was a copy the one before. Training in the morning, then running with Bella with breakfast on the way, both again meeting her father and his assistants in the same cafe they met them before. The more Jim joked about Mike being his future son-in-law, the more El thought the notion to be a great one, imagining herself being married to Mike and having children with him.

More writing on her part followed, Mike again making a delicious meal for lunch and when she needed a break, she found her sweetie stretched out on the couch, his arm under his head while his eyes were glued to the TV where a space battle was currently happening. She knew enough to recognize that it was the final battle of the Return of the Jedi.

"You know, some things always bugged me about this particular battle." she said, standing close to his head.

"What?" he asked.

"Well, the rebel fleet has, what, four of these cruisers?" she pointed to the ship before it was blown up by the Death Star.

"Actually, according to background information, they had fifteen of these and smaller ships as well." Mike told her.

"How big is the Imperial fleet?" she looked at him.

"Again, according to background information, Death Squadron at that time consisted of just over thirty Star Destroyers plus the Executor dreadnought." Mike replied.

"Even with the Emperor ordering his fleet not to engage, once the rebels engaged by themselves, they should have never won that battle." she argued.

"Don't forget the fighter complements of the ships." he shrugged.

"How many of those does a Star Destroyer carry?"

"The regular ones have six squadrons of twelve fighters each, the Executor has twice that." he told her.

"So, lets say thirty times six plus twelve, so a hundred and ninety-two squadrons times twelve, that comes to..." she tried to calculated in her head.

"Two thousand, three hundred and four." he helped her, having had this discussion before on fan sites and with his friends.

"That number of fighters." she nodded. "Shouldn't their number alone be enough to destroy a large rebel ship? And why the hell are they always bringing these unarmed transporters into battle?"

"I think it's usually best not to think too much about these things." he laughed and pulled her down, El shrieking at the surprise before laughing too, enjoying the physical contact. "God, I would love to have sex with you right now, you speaking Star Wars got me so turned on."

"I see." she giggled and turned around on him to straddle his groin, feeling his growing erection below her.

"That feels nice." he hummed as she ground on top of him, the friction making him painfully aware of what they couldn't do, though she didn't feel much better.

"Well, I'm off to my room to finish this project." she said as she suddenly got up.

"Wait, you can't leave me here like this." he whined, his erection pronounced under his clothes.

"I just have you for the sex but it's not possible yet, so..." she shrugged and left.

"Touche!" he called after her, laughing.

She sat down at her desk and started her laptop again, opening the file and skimming the words she had written until she had reached the end. She was only the final chapter away from being done, and it was more an afterword than actual facts having to be put down. Not that she needed to do the best job, but it wasn't in her to simply do some halfhearted things.

"You're so mean." Mike's voice startled her, her love standing behind her chair, putting his hands on her shoulders.

"You started it." she chuckled and leaned her head on his right hand. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Always." he nodded.

"Can you proofread this once I'm done?" she asked.

"Of course." he agreed. "How much is it?"

"Um..." she looked closer. "Forty-eight pages."

"No problem." he shrugged and began massaging her shoulders.

"Mh, that feels nice." she hummed and let her shoulders loosen.

"By the way, are you going to tell the professor that you wrote this?" he wanted to know. "Otherwise, this Simon might take all the credit, not that it would probably bother you since you're not there anymore."

"You know what?" she looked up at him. "You're right. I'm on good terms with the assistant professor, I'll call her, send her what I wrote per email and tell her about me leaving."

"You should also tell her that she shouldn't tell him that she knows, so she can see how much of your combined work actually comes from him." he suggested.

"Good idea." she giggled. "That jerk would probably take my work and produce it as his own."

"Do you have to defend it orally or give a report?"

"Yeah, but he'll have to do that alone." she confirmed. "I won't go to defend it."

"Well, you have fun with this, I'll go out with Bella on her run." he said and kissed her cheek.

"No, no, I wanna do it." she quickly stopped him.

"I thought you wanted to finish this project?" he wondered.

"But that will only take a few hours, I still need more distractions for today." she retorted and got up, changing into some more proper street clothes, some loose shorts and a tank top.

"Gah, you're mean." he groaned. "Changing clothes when not wearing a bra, knowing how that turns me on. Especially after what you did on the couch."

"Just more you can look forward to tomorrow." she winked and gave him a deep kiss before going back to the living room to take Bella's leash, the dog quickly coming to her and sitting down to allow El to put it on.

"Have fun." Mike chuckled.

"See you in an hour." El waved.

With a shake of his head, Mike walked into his room to sit down at his laptop to work on a pet project he had started a few months ago.

Meanwhile, El skated down the street, Bella running beside her, her tongue wagging out of her mouth to shed the excess heat the physical exercise was building up. El felt her heart rate go up as well, reveling in the exertion but keeping herself from speeding up too much, otherwise Bella might not be able to keep up for long.

"There she is." Simon said to Andrew, pointing his beer at El.

"With that damn dog again." Andrew nodded. "Any progress with your plan to get her?"

"Actually, what we're doing here is the plan." Simon chuckled.

"What, us drinking beer at various times during the day in this bar is part of that plan?" Andrew looked at him confused.

"When they go out with that dog, they're usually at least an hour away." Simon explained. "So the only thing I need to do is wait until her boyfriend is leaving with the dog without her and then I just need to knock on her door, tell her that I want to prepare for the oral report on our project and then I can make my move."

"And text me, so I can join you." Andrew clinked his glass. "I like it."

"Remember, I get her asshole first." Simon laughed.

"We still can't force her, her dad will kill us and make our bodies disappear." Andrew cautioned.

"There are ways for us to do this without her remembering." Simon winked, as an unaware El rolled on, not having noticed the two guys.


"Hey guys." Mike greeted his friends, their faces clumped up on the screen. "Are you home already?"

"Yeah, just arrived." Lucas nodded.

"How was the drive?" Mike wanted to know.

"Loooooong." Dustin wailed. "I thought we would drive off the edge of the world."

"Yeah, we all drove four hours each before changing drivers." Will nodded. "That let us drive through the night."

"Easy for you to say, you can sleep during a rock concert." Mike chuckled, remarking on Will's ability to take naps practically everywhere.

"Tell me about it." Dustin groaned. "Of the eight hours of break between drives, I maybe managed two hours of sleep."

"So, we're home." Lucas shrugged. "How about you?"

"I am home." Mike wondered what Lucas meant. "The girls aren't back though."

"Except El." Will grinned.

"Well, yeah, but she never left in the first place." Mike shrugged, seeing El exiting the bathroom in that moment.

"Not what we mean." Will chuckled.

"Then what do you mean." Mike smirked, knowing what his friends were referring to.

"Did you finally get your head out of your ass." Dustin clarified and in that moment, El sat down on the couch between Mike's legs, leaning back into his chest.

"Hey guys." she greeted them and leaning into Mike's chest.

"Yes!" Dustin gave a fist pump. "So you did get your heads out of your asses."

"Yeah, we did." El nodded and gave Mike a kiss on the chin, even though it hurt her neck to turn it so much. "In retrospect, we realized that we should have done it a lot earlier."

"Yeah, we all saw that." Will smiled. "Mike, when will we do the return game?"

"Poker or Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Both, actually." Will said.

"Well, the girls are supposed to be back in two days, we can play poker again then." El suggested. "Since it's still summer break for a while, we can do it during the week."

"Well, I don't have summer break, I begin my active duty in two weeks." Lucas said. "I'm getting a proper uniform and will be partnered with a veteran to learn the ropes on the street."

"Nice." Mike nodded. "Will you earn more money?"

"Yeah, I get a pay increase to what a usual first year police officer gets." Lucas nodded.

"Hey Mike, did you and El have sex yet?" Dustin threw in.

"Why would you care?" El gasped at his directness.

"I don't but my penis wanted to know."

"Seriously, Dustin?" Mike gave him a glare.

"Hey, I'm the only single in the party, I need to live vicariously through you and Lucas." Dustin argued.

"What about me?" Will interjected.

"Sorry, I don't get a spontaneous erection when seeing another guy's penis." Dustin shrugged.

"Fair enough." Will shrugged.

"But, if you really must know, yes, we did." El giggled.

"Mike, did you take pictures?"

"DUSTIN!" Mike shouted. "What's the matter with you?"

"He suffers from a combination of too little sleep and too many energy drinks." Will laughed. "Remember when we were kids and he ate half his Halloween haul that same night?"

"Jesus, yes!" Mike groaned.

"I wasn't that bad." Dustin defended himself.

"Dustin, you couldn't stop moving until three in the morning and then you commenced with your power vomiting." Mike retorted.

"Yeah, from then on it was known as the night the toilet cried." Lucas laughed.

"Shit, I totally forgot about that." Dustin palmed his face. "Thanks so much for reminding me."

"Our pleasure." Will bumped his back in sympathy.

"By the way, Mike, I'm invoking article four of our party rules." Dustin said.

"Buddy, there's no fourth article." Mike looked at him confused.

"You have party rules?" El asked all of them.

"Article one, friends don't lie." Lucas said.

"Article two, you draw first blood, you shake hands." Will took over.

"Article three, obey the rule of law or be banished from the party." Mike finished.

"Article four, if a lone party member stays single for an inordinate amount of time while the others are in relationships, the others must help him find a partner." Dustin added.

"When did that article get added?" Will wondered.

"Today, after I saw El sitting down between Mike's legs in a way that makes it seem they've been together for years." Dustin huffed.

"Uh hu." Mike deadpanned. "Any preferences?"

"Female, single, shouldn't be too much younger or older than me, not as heavy and not as tall." Dustin listed.

"Anything else?" Mike still deadpanned.

"Why the last two attributes?" El wanted to know.

"I wanna be able to carry her and when I hug her from behind, I wanna be able to still see something in front of us." Dustin shrugged. "For comparison's sake, imagine someone like Jennifer."

"My roommate Jennifer?" El looked at him questioningly.

"Yeah." Dustin nodded with a smile.

"If you say so." El chuckled, thinking about how much different Jennifer and Dustin were in their approach to relationships, at least she thought so regarding Dustin.

"Why not Stacy?" Mike inquired.

"I like straight hair more." Dustin shrugged. "Also, I thought it weird that when we played poker, El, Max and Jennifer had only a minimum or no makeup on while Stacy looked like she wanted to go to the opera."

"That's true." El laughed.

"Or like she was in the opera." Dustin added, causing El to laugh even more, her body bending forward and accidentally giving the guys a good look down her cleavage.

"Mike, you lucky duck." Dustin remarked as El lifted her body back up.

"What?" Mike wondered.

"El just gave us a peek at her goods." Will laughed.

"Shit." El gasped but still laughed at Dustin's joke, crossing her arms in front of her chest, her hands on her shoulders.

"Dustin, stop peeping at my girlfriend." Mike warned his friend with a smile.

"Hey, I can't help it, I'm a guy." Dustin defended himself. "Lucas looked too."

"Well, I'm a guy too." Lucas shrugged.

"I'm telling Max." El grinned.

"Oh god, please don't!" Lucas begged, panic settling into his eyes. "She'll kill me."

"Yep, she will." El laughed. "She'll probably rip your cock off with her bare hands."

"She'll rather gauge my eyes out." Lucas shuddered.

"Well guys, it was nice talking to you but me and Mike are going to enjoy our last evening alone before the girls come back." El said.

"Which means, you're going to have sex somewhere that's not either of your bedrooms." Lucas nodded in understanding, making El blush at the obviousness of her choice of words. "But please, promise me that you haven't done it in Max's bed."

"Why would we do that?" Mike shook his head in humor.

"Rest assured, we haven't done it in her room." El made it clearer. "Or in Stacy's or Jennifer's."

"Which means, you did it in every other room." Will grinned.

"Actually, we haven't done it in the bathroom yet." Mike laughed.

"So, you soiled the kitchen?" Dustin asked. "Next time we're visiting, tell us the surface you did it on so we can avoid touching it."

"Yeah, because we never clean the kitchen." El rolled her eyes.

"You'd be surprised." Dustin said. "In our kitchen, you can eat from the floor."

"It's that clean?" El asked.

"No, it's so much there to choose from." Dustin told her, all the guys keeping a straight face.

"EW!" El gagged after a few seconds of processing what she just heard before seeing the guys burst out laughing.

"You should have seen your face." Lucas guffawed.

"At least now I know where Mike got his twisted sense of humor." El huffed. "Bye guys."

"Bye El, see you soon for poker." Will waved before the screen went blank.

"So, finding Dustin a girlfriend." Mike hummed, his hands moving to El's chest, cupping her breasts. "You know someone?"

"Not really." El shrugged, leaning further back into his embrace. "Outside the girls, I barely interact with others, male or female."

"Lets ask the others when they return." Mike said and was about to pull up El's top when the door bell rang.

"Who could that be?" El wondered, getting up, so Mike could go to the door.

"Yes?" Mike asked the man wearing a courier uniform.

"Package for Mike Wheeler?" the man inquired about Mike's identity.

"That's me." Mike told him.

"Sorry, but I need to see some ID, it was mandated by the client." the man said.

"Alright, wait here." Mike shrugged and went into his room to get his walled, opening it to reveal his ID which he showed the courier after returning to the door.

"Thank you." the man nodded and handed Mike a package and held out his cellphone so Mike could sign for it with his finger.

"What did you get?" El asked, curious about the large box.

"A surprise for you." Mike smiled.

"For me?" El perked up.

"You and the other girls." Mike clarified and went towards his room. "Wait here."

He walked into his room and opened the box, revealing the four smaller boxes stacked on top of each other. Not opening the smaller boxes and hoping he wouldn't embarrass himself, he put a bow onto each box and wrote three identical cards for each, the only difference being the name he put on those.

He came back out and El was kneeling on the couch, her eyes following the man she loved while he carried four smaller packages with bows on top. She watched as he walked into the other hallway, entering the rooms of their roommates and reemerging from each room with one less box. He came back into the living room and handed her the last one, not letting go yet as she took it.

"I'm gonna tell you now the same thing I wrote on those cards for the other boxes." he said. "Under no circumstances are you allowed to talk about the contents of this package with anyone outside of the people living in this house. If anything of it shows up online, I will get into massive legal and also financial trouble."

"Okay." she nodded, the package suddenly something she felt the need to handle very delicately.

"Open it." he smiled and sat back down next to her.

She carefully pried the package open, using the prepared latch she remembered from the numerous packages she had received from Amazon in her life. Not knowing what was in it yet, she was hesitant to simply rip it open, not wanting to damage whatever was inside. When the package was finally open, it revealed a book, making her wonder why that was so important until she turned it around to look at the title and cover art.

"Oh my god!" she gasped, one hand over her mouth, the other starting to shake as if she was holding a delicate glass origami figurine.

"I had to work hard to convince Lisa to let me have four advance copies of it." Mike told her. "That's why it's so important you don't tell anyone and that you don't reveal details to anyone, especially online."

"The Mending Heart." she read the title. "By Marl Young."

"Yeah, the title is a bit too revealing for my taste but the publisher has the right to choose the title." Mike shrugged.

"I love it." she sniffed, feeling overwhelmed by the importance of the gift, the fact that he trusted her and their roommates enough to do this, making her melt inside.

"Well, read it first, then we'll see if you really do." he chuckled as she put the book down.

"I love you." she said, completely serious and took her top off before throwing herself at him, laying him out on the sofa and kissing him hard. "Listen, if you want to fuck my ass, feel free."

"Noted." he laughed, touched by her trust but deciding that he didn't need to do that today as his hand moved to her ass.

"I'm gonna ride you so hard." she promised and stood up to take off her shorts and underwear, Mike quickly getting rid of his own clothes when her glorious nakedness came into view.


Well, their alone time is almost over.

Review please :)