Hey everyone, welcome back! This chapter is a little on the small side, but I didn't really want to take it much further. The next things that happen I feel should have their own chapter. I try to not make chapters based off length, but content. So I hope you guys don't mind. I really like how this chapter turned out, a lot of Mileven fluff :)
Jullauk: Yes, I'm glad they're back together. I couldn't keep them apart for too long, haha
HyperSushi: Thank you! I hope you enjoy this one, too!
Luna0603: You're reviews are amazing, thank you so much! Yeah, I had to make sure to show both sides of things with this fight. I feel that sometimes in stories, the shit men go through is kind of understated. It's important to show that Mike is still a vulnerable boy who's in love. I like that El was able to be there for him, too. I'm glad the smut was good! Doing stuff for the first time is always awkward and kind if hesitant, so I tried extra hard to capture that element. Glad it paid off! The ending was really sad too. But don't worry, this is Mileven we're talking about. They can make it through anything :) Great work on TTWAS, as always!
With a finger to his lips, Mike beckoned through the door to his basement from his backyard. El scurried quietly past him and he delicately closed the door, careful to make as little noise as possible. "You can stay here for as long as you want," he whispered to her.
El nodded and sat down on the couch, glancing up at the open basement door. "I don't know when I will go back to Joyce," she wondered aloud.
"It's fine, you can figure it out here," he replied. "Look, my aunt is going to be here any minute. Just camp out down here until she leaves, and I'll be back soon. You know where the books and stuff are, right?" El nodded. "Okay. I'm going to go around front and get through the door so she's not suspicious. Okay?"
"Okay," she answered. Mike smiled and scampered over to give her a quick peck on the lips. He almost said 'I love you,' but quickly resisted. It wasn't a good time. He exited quickly through the backdoor where they had come in from and crossed the yard to get into the house.
Will and Jonathan came through the front door of their house to see their Mom sitting on the living room couch, cradling her face in her palms, looking very forlorn.
Jonathan immediately came to her side, with Will in pursuit. "Mom, what's wrong?" he asked.
Joyce looked up. "I told El about the move." Will's faces fell. This was not good. He wasn't sure if Jonathan knew about the situation with Mike and El, but he probably didn't.
"You did what?" Will repeated.
"I told El that we're moving in a month or two," she repeated.
"Why would you do that now?!" Will came close to yelling, but bit back his frustration and anger. "I told you to wait!"
"Will, it's too late already! We should have told her ages ago! She had to find out eventually! You kept telling me to wait with telling her, but you never told me why, so I just bit the bullet."
"And how did that go for you?" Will spat through gritted teeth.
Joyce was quickly losing patience. "Why are you being so snarky with me?" she said, her voice flaring. "Is there something you're not telling me, Will?"
His temper was hammering. "Yes, there is, Mom," he answered venomously, adding an extra sarcastic tone to the last word 'Mom.'
"Do you want to spit it out this time, or are you just going to keep hiding things from me?" she answered in an equal tone.
"El and Mike are currently broken up. I didn't want to tell you because I didn't think El would want you to know, and I really think that it would have been better if they were in a more stable point in their relationship, so that Mike could have helped her through it, but I guess that won't be an option now, will it?" Will exploded, releasing about a week's worth of pent up anxiety and frustration.
Joyce looked frozen for a second, as if realizing the mistake she had made. "Why didn't you tell me?!"
"I told you! We live with El, and I didn't think that she would want you knowing unless it came from her! And now we're in this mess with El! Where is she?"
"She… she ran out of the house when I told her. I don't know where she is."
Jonathan had been watching the whole conversation unfold in front of him, as he had not known about the situation with Mike and El, and he also had not known that Will had been advising their Mom not to tell El. But he felt like it was his time to step into the conversation.
"Okay, well, we have to find El and get her back here. She's probably losing her mind," he inputted.
"Where could she have gone?"
"Could she have been with Mike? He called earlier," Joyce asked.
Will perked up at that. "He called? What did he say?"
"He wanted to talk to you, but I told him you were out with Jonathan." He probably wanted to talk about El. And then, when he wasn't home, he must have decided to just chance it and come. But El had left the house… could they have met up somehow?
"Did he ever end up coming? Mike?"
"No, I never saw him. He never came to the house." So maybe they did meet up.
"I think that Mike and El might have met up. Because if he was coming here, and El was running out, they probably crossed paths."
"Didn't you say they were broken up? Wouldn't they just end up fighting?"
"It's Mike and El, Jonathan. They can't stay mad at each other for long, it's impossible for them."
"So where would they have gone?"
"If they met up, probably Mike's house, no?"
"That makes sense," Jonathan agreed. "But how do we know if that's what happened?"
"We could call Mike, maybe," Will suggested.
"Okay, I'll call the house," Joyce announced, and walked toward the kitchen phone.
It occurred to Will that if Joyce called the Wheeler house, there was a chance that Mike would pick up. And if that happened, there was also a strong chance that he was going to give his mom an earful. He thought about maybe advising her against it. You know what? She created this mess. She can deal with it.
Mike was sitting quietly at the dining table, listening to his parents and grandparents drone on about something he wasn't even aware of. He idly poked his food, finding the thought of putting anything in his mouth near sickening. The thought of El moving away along with the rest of the Byers was lingering in his head. He had also been thinking about Will; he had been so caught up with El, with the fight and all, he had not even thought about the fact that not only was he going to be saying goodbye to the girl he loved, but also his best friend since fucking kindergarten.
"Mike? Are you okay?" Mike looked up from his plate to see the rest of his family staring at him. There was concern etched onto Karen's face. Mike knew that she had a gift of being able to tell when something was wrong.
"Yeah, everything's fine, I'm just not that hungry, I guess." It was a lie, of course, but right now he just wanted to get her off his back so he could go back downstairs and be with El. "Could I be excused?"
Karen sighed. "Are you sure? You've barely touched your potatoes and-"
"Mom, I'm just not hungry. Can I please go?" She looked around the table, and everyone shrugged absentmindedly. Mike wasn't particularly close to his Dad's parents, so he didn't expect them to object or anything.
"Sure. Leave your plate on the table," Karen nodded.
"Thanks, Mom," he replied, and quickly got out of his seat, pushed it in, rinsed the plate off in the kitchen sink and took off to the basement. He had barely gotten off the bottom step of the basement when the phone rang.
"Mike? Can you get that?" Karen called from upstairs.
"Yeah," he yelled back. He picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi, Mike? It's Joyce." Shit. He did not want to talk to her right now. But what was he going to do, hang up on her? He would have loved to do that. This was the woman who was responsible for Will and El being dragged away soon. He clenched his jaw.
"Hi, Joyce," he managed. He saw El out of the corner of his eye widen her eyes.
"Uh, we had a bit of a… situation at the house today with El," Joyce said. "She ran away from the house. Are you with her right now?"
Mike could feel his blood pressure rising exponentially. Joyce had the nerve to call him? The boy who was getting the love of his fucking life ripped away again, when she was the cause of it? How dare she. He had to bite back the urge to scream through the phone at her and tell her to go to Hell. Did she think that he didn't know what exactly was going on?
"Yeah, I saw her," he muttered through gritted teeth.
"Oh, thank goodness- are you with her still?"
What to say, what to say…. He looked to El covered the receiver and repeated the question to her. He saw his girlfriend rapidly shake her head no.
Mike mulled over what to say. He decided that he agreed. Why the fuck should he be honest with Joyce? In the next month or so, the person who met more than anything to him would be moving away, at which point he would only be able to see her a couple of times a year. And for what?
Right now she was sitting in his basement, feeling upset and betrayed by the person who had taken her in. And Mike wanted to spend time with her, and she wanted to spend time with him. After all, in the near future, that time would be gone. So why not make the best of it now?
Fuck Joyce.
"No, I tried to get her attention, but she just ran into the woods. I lost her when I tried chasing her."
Joyce cursed under her breath. "Where do you think she could have gone?"
"I don't know. Maybe Hopper's cabin? She likes to go there sometimes."
"Okay, I'll maybe go out. It's not too late."
"Okay, Mrs. Byers. Good luck."
"Thank you, sweetie. Have a safe night." The line went dead. After being called sweetie, Mike felt a pang of guilt for lying through his teeth to the person who had been almost a second Mom to him for the better part of his life, but when he looked back at El, who was staring blankly at the wall, looking like a lost puppy, whatever regret he had diminished quickly.
"What did she say?" El asked when Mike returned to the couch to sit beside her.
"She said she was going to go out looking for you in the woods near the cabin. It won't be dark for another few hours, it's August, after all."
El nodded, not at all concerned for her adoptive mother. She had always been thankful for Joyce and all she did, but it felt like this recent development had completely undone whatever feelings had been forged for her. She felt nothing but burning contempt. Not only toward Joyce, it occurred to her that the chances were high that Will and Jonathan knew.
And then it dawned on her.
All the weeks of her getting the feeling like she was being hidden from something… this was it. This was the secret they had been hiding all along. Her eyes started to sting as the feelings of betrayal and loss began to set in.
Mike, of course, noticed immediately and had her in his arms in an instant. "Hey, shhh," he soothed. "It's okay. What's wrong? What happened?"
"Mike, I-" she hiccupped. "Joyce, and Jonathan and Will… th-they lied to me. Th-they were l-lying to me," she sobbed.
"Hey, shh, don't be too loud. My parents can't know you're here," he began. "But what do you mean? What's going on with them? They lied to you?"
"Y-yes," she replied, trying her best to maintain a hushed tone. "The whole m-month, I kept getting the f-feeling they were hiding something from me. Th-they always said it was n-nothing when I asked, but they were hiding this. They didn't want me to know that we were going to move away."
Mike's heart felt like it was shattering. It was almost sickening to hear her tell him what had been going on. This whole time, the Byers' had been taking care of El, but they were really just hiding her from the truth, pulling the wool over their eyes. This couldn't have been a last-minute decision. They must have known for months before that this was happening. Why wouldn't they have told El? Why would they spring this on her only around a month before they were planning to leave? There had to be some reason. They couldn't have been that spiteful.
"Maybe they just… didn't know how to tell you. Or they didn't want to make you upset."
"That doesn't make a difference, Mike," she sniffled. "If I had known I was only going to have four or five more weeks with you, I would have just came to you earlier and told you I'm sorry. I didn't want to have this fight with you. I wanted to be with you the whole time."
"I know, El, me too," Mike replied simply, rubbing her back in a circular pattern, feeling her breath into his shoulder.
"Maybe we could change their mind?" El suggested, sounding like she was clinging to the final shred of hope.
"I don't think so, El," Mike replied painfully. "If you guys are leaving so soon, the house is probably already sold." She nodded back slowly, understanding what he was saying.
"I don't want to go," she cried.
"Me neither," he replied. "I wish you could stay."
"I'm going to stay here for as long as you'll let me."
"El, if it was up to me, I'd let you live here forever," he smiled, and she let out a soft, beautiful laugh for the first time in days. "It's still early. Do you want to put on a movie or something?"
She nodded, and Mike got up off the couch to find a VHS tape he could put in. His gaze fell on the three Star Wars cases, and a lightbulb went off in his head. "Hey, we never ended up watching Star Wars, did we?"
"No," she answered. "Can we watch them today?"
"I was thinking the same thing," Mike replied happily as he slid the tape into the VHS player. He silently thanked his mom and dad for investing in a second small television set to put in the basement. Within moments, the opening crawl was being shown on the screen, and Mike dimmed the lights. He threw a soft blanket over themselves and allowed El to cuddle in close to him, resting her head and hand on his chest.
They were able to get through the first movie without too much making out, mostly because whenever Mike tried, El would end up gently pushing him away after a few moments. She was genuinely interested in the film, which made him happy.
"How did you like it?" he asked as he grabbed The Empire Strikes Back from the shelf and took it out of the box.
"It was really good," she smiled, pulling the blanket up to her chin. "Can you get another blanket? I'm kind of cold."
"Yeah," Mike said, and returned to her holding a second fluffy piece of fabric. He threw it over El and then joined her underneath. With the footrests up and the backrests leaned far back, it felt like they were in a bed. Watching Star Wars, of all things. He laughed to himself, thinking back to when he was twelve years old, when he thought that such a thing would never happen to him.
"What are you laughing at?" El asked him, punctuating her question with a kiss on his cheek.
"Oh, nothing," he replied, wrapping one of his arms around her body and pulling him close. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. "I'm just so lucky to be with you."
After Mike's grandparents had left, they had resumed the Star Wars marathon. They plowed through the last two movies, El being utterly captivated the entire time. Mike was ecstatic that she actually agreed to watch them all. If she was a regular girl, she wouldn't have done that.
And after they had finished, she said that she had really enjoyed the trilogy, which made him even happier.
"Who's your favorite character?" he asked her as they were prepping the pull-out to sleep in.
"I really liked Luke Skywalker. He had powers like the ones I used to have," she replied. Mike detected a hint of sadness in her voice at the mention of her powers, but he didn't want to start with that can of worms. He continued the conversation in hopes to make her forget about it, for now.
"Yeah, Luke is the main character. Most people like him. I think my favorite character is either him or Han Solo."
"Oh, yeah," El nodded slowly. "I forgot about him… I think he might be my favorite, actually."
"Really? Why?" he asked. El looked at him with a toothy grin. Mike laughed. "What?"
"He was..." El remembered the word that Max used to describe that Ralph Macchio when they had that sleepover a couple of months ago. She figured that Han fit the word better than anyone. "He was hot."
Mike stood stock still for a second before breaking out into a wide grin, which quickly turned into a laugh. El crossed the room and playfully slapped his arm. "What? You told me that you like Carrie Fisher!"
"Yeah, yeah… I know. I just… wasn't expecting to hear that," he chuckled, bringing her closer to him for a long hug. He let his hand linger in her beautiful hair; it had grown a fair amount over the last two or so months. It was so long and soft… he loved to run his fingers through it.
After a few moments, he broke the embrace and placed a lingering kiss on her lips, letting them move together for a few seconds before letting go. "It's late. We should go to bed."
El nodded. "I'll go change in the bathroom."
"Okay." Mike watched her close the door. He slipped out of his clothes and threw on the pair of pajamas that were thankfully on the floor. They smelled fine enough to wear. He crawled under the sheets and waited for El to join him. He closed his eyes and after a few moments, he felt his girlfriend wiggle herself beside him, assuming her usual position of the "little spoon" in bed.
He felt her breathing, slowly and rhythmically, almost like music. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
El paused. "A lot better," she admitted. "It was bad this morning. But you made it better."
Mike smiled. "You made it better too."
And together, they both drifted off into a sound sleep in each other's arms.
Hope you guys enjoyed it! Next chapter should be coming within the next week or two. My apologies for that, life is always busy. Be sure to leave a review so I know what you guys are thinking :)
