A/N: Hello! So, I'm switching it up with this one. This wasn't inspired by or based on any song that I heard. This idea was actually sent to me by UnoPeso22, and I agreed that it would be super fun to write. (I have some requests from some other reviewers too, and I haven't forgotten!) I hope you all have fun with this one : )
OdoMango: Thank you! I hope you think this one is sweet and fun too, as that's what I was going for haha.
Guest124: Aww thank you. I hope you like this one too!
Disneyprincess315: Sassy El all the way! And I'm glad you liked the different route rather than the predictable jealousy route. Though jealous Mileven can be fun too…
Niko: Exactly!
Shrike176: Thank you. I'm glad you've liked this so far, and I am glad that chapter 3 specifically spoke to you. I hope you enjoy this one too!
UnoPeso22: Thank you for your thoughts on all 4 chapters! I'm glad that you're enjoying this so much. I'm looking forward to writing Mileven in a bunch of different situations. Gotta do something to pass the time until season 4 lol. Thanks for this idea, I hope it was what you had in mind and that it lives up to what you envisioned!
Setting: June 1985, a few weeks before the events of Season 3. Canon divergence: Hopper pulled some strings to get El enrolled in Hawkins High, so she needs to get caught up academically over the summer.
Disclaimer: I do not own Stranger Things or any of its original characters.
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The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the light summer breeze was rustling the leaves, causing the woods to look like green waves against the clear blue sky. It was mid-June in Hawkins, and surely every kid was outside enjoying the beautiful summer day. Some were probably riding their bikes, some were probably playing frisbee with their friends in the park, some were maybe even having a picnic.
But not El.
The closest that Eleven Hopper was to the gorgeous weather outside was the remnants of the breeze that blew through her window which was cracked open just a few inches. She inhaled as the breeze crossed her skin, closing her eyes and appreciating the smell of summer. El decided that summer just had its own smell. It smelled like flowers, even though Hopper didn't have any flowers planted around the cabin, and it smelled like grass and sunshine. El knew sunshine itself didn't really have a smell, but to her, that's how summer smelled.
And she was cooped up in this small cabin every day of it. Well, almost every day. Hopper let her leave maybe once every couple of weeks, and even then, she had a strict curfew to follow. El had recently convinced him to let her accompany her friends to Dustin's house in two weeks when they would be surprising him with a welcome home party on the day he was to return from Camp Know Where. Needless to say, El spent the overwhelming majority of her days inside, just like the first year Hopper had let her live with him.
Well, maybe not exactly like that year… After all, this time she wasn't as big of a secret. El was allowed to take phone calls from her friends, and Hopper did let her go hang out with them on occasion. But the main thing keeping her sane these days was currently seated cross-legged across from her on her bed.
Ever since the Snow Ball, Mike had made it a point to see El every single day. Part of him still couldn't believe that she was really back, let alone that she was really his girlfriend, and some days when he was riding his bike to Hopper's cabin, Mike felt a tight panic in his chest that this somehow wasn't real; that he would arrive at Hopper's door and be greeted by the confused look of the town's gruff police chief, wondering why this boy was on his porch because El had never returned. Of course, this never happened. Mike was always greeted by his smiling girlfriend throwing the door open and jumping into his arms as soon as he reached the top step of the porch.
In the beginning, Mike would only stop by for about thirty minutes. Hopper was still concerned with El's safety, and having unessential visitors to the cabin put both El and the visitors at risk. Although, as time went on, Hopper let Mike stay a little longer. Thirty minutes became an hour, which became two hours, which became the afternoon, and now Mike spent practically his entire days at the cabin with El. Hopper was less than thrilled about this, but he knew it made El happy, and he honestly did feel bad about leaving her all by herself while he was at work. Hopper knew Mike feared him enough not to try anything with El right now, especially under Hopper's roof. But Hopper wasn't appreciating how mouthy the kid was becoming toward him.
One day a couple months ago, Hopper had walked into El's room and dropped a stack of textbooks on Mike's lap.
"What's this?" Mike had asked, looking up at the chief with a confused expression.
"If you're gonna be spending every day here, you might as well do something useful," Hopper had grunted in response. "Doc Owens was able to help me get El into Hawkins High this fall."
Both teenagers instantly perked up, eyes widened and smiles on their faces. El squealed in delight at the idea of starting high school with her friends and being around other kids her age, learning new things, making more friends, and seeing something other than the walls of this cabin.
"Really?" she had asked, thinking this news was almost too good to be true.
"Really, kid," Hopper had replied, his tone softened by the smile on El's face. "I knew how much it would mean to you, so I made it happen."
"Thank you!" El had exclaimed, jumping from her bed and wrapping Hopper into a tight embrace. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"You're welcome," Hopper had smiled, squeezing her tightly.
When El pulled back, Hopper cleared his throat and turned back to Mike, his regular demeanor restored.
"That's where you come in," he had begun. "With the amount of time I spend at the station, I won't have time to properly prepare her for school. So, if you want to continue to be over here every day, I need you to help El get caught up. I guess I'm asking you to be her tutor on this stuff. Think you can do that?"
"Definitely," Mike had answered immediately.
El and Mike had thanked Hopper once more, and Hopper had left the two of them alone, demanding that they start the tutoring first thing the next day.
Now that a couple months had passed, the initial excitement had worn off. El was still thrilled about the idea of starting school with her friends, but the fun in learning new things was always clouded by the problems and exercises she had to solve. She liked listening to Mike talk and explain things to her, but she didn't like doing the schoolwork. So, she always found a way to divert his attention and initiate a makeout session every so often. But Mike always seemed to stop it after a few minutes and redirect her focus to their lesson, much to El's dismay.
Today, El was particularly disinterested, and Mike knew it. He looked up from the open English textbook in his lap to see El gazing longingly out the open window.
"El," he said, and El did not respond. "El!"
"Sorry," El sighed, turning back and frowning at the book he was holding.
"Come on, the quicker you get through this, the sooner we'll be done," Mike said logically. "Just try to focus."
"Can't we take a break?" El suggested.
"We just took an Eggo break forty-five minutes ago," Mike replied.
"Can we take a different kind of break?" El smirked, her eyes quickly flicking down to his lips and back up to his eyes.
"Umm," Mike blushed. "N-no-"
"No?!" El repeated, taken aback.
"I mean, not no-"
"So then yes?"
"No," Mike repeated firmly. "But not 'no' as in I don't want to. 'No' as in not right now."
"But, Mike, I'm so bored," El whined, falling backward onto her pillows. "And my head hurts from all that stupid math."
"Well, we're done with math now. We're doing English next. You like English," Mike tried to encourage her.
"Ughhhh," El let out a long groan as she sat back up to face him. "Why are you so stubborn with this?"
"El, Hopper said-"
"Hopper's not here," she grinned.
"No, but he will be, and when he gets here, he's going to want to check and make sure we got through the lesson for today," Mike said.
El rolled her eyes. A few weeks ago, Hopper suspected that El and Mike may not be actually studying quite as much as Hopper wanted them to. He knew that El starting school that fall was important to both of them, but he also knew they were still hormonal teenagers spending hours upon hours together. So, to make sure they got through an appropriate amount of schoolwork, Hopper assigned portions from each textbook for Mike to cover with El on a daily basis.
"What's today's lesson on?" El asked reluctantly.
"Parts of speech," Mike replied, looking at the unit in the textbook that Hopper had bookmarked.
"Stupid," El muttered under her breath.
"Come on, El, it's easy," Mike said.
"But why do I have to know what the parts of speech are? As long as I can speak, why does it matter? No one is going to ask me to identify verbs and adject… adject…" her brow furrowed.
"Adjectives," Mike offered. "And identifying adjectives is exactly what I'm about to ask you to do."
"Mike, I know what an adj-ect-ive is," El sighed, still struggling with the word. "But fine, if you insist… You are very cute. I think kissing you is fun. You not wanting to kiss me makes me sad."
"Well," Mike said before clearing his throat, the blush deepening on his cheeks. "Those, uh… those were all adjectives."
"See, I'm not stupid," El insisted.
Mike met her gaze, the blush on his cheeks quickly disappearing, and his eyes softened. El quickly looked away.
"El, hey, look at me," Mike said gently, reaching for one of her hands. El looked up at him. "No one thinks you're stupid. I think you're really smart. But if you want to be ready to start school this fall, you just have to get through this stuff so you're on pace with the rest of the class."
El let out a long sigh, followed by a nod, showing her surrender.
"But, I guess I could try to make it a little more fun for you," Mike said coyly after a moment.
"How?" El asked, perking up in interest.
"How about we make it into a game," Mike suggested. "Each time you answer correctly, we can kiss for one second. So, if you answer two correctly in a row, we can kiss for two seconds. Five in a row, five seconds. Does that sound okay?"
"Yes," El replied, nodding vigorously.
"Okay," Mike smiled. "So, they start easy and get harder as they go on. First, identify the adjectives in this sentence: The rusty truck has an oversized trailer."
"Rusty and oversized," El answered quickly, already grinning because she knew she was correct.
Mike leaned forward, and his lips met hers. He pulled back a moment later and was met with a pout from El.
"I don't think that was a full second," she stated.
"Seconds are fast, El," Mike chuckled. "Identify the verb phrase in this sentence: The tennis player is going to hit the ball."
"Is going to hit," El responded, and Mike nodded.
Mike leaned forward again, connecting their lips, and counting to two in his head. It was a little harder this time, but he pulled away and glanced back down at the book. There were ten of these sentences in this exercise, and after the first two, Mike was already wondering if he would be able to keep himself on track after all.
"Okay," he sighed. "Identify the nouns: Yesterday was the hottest day of the year."
"Hmm… day and year," El said confidently. Mike was still looking at her expectantly. "And… yesterday?"
"Good job," Mike smiled. "Three seconds."
This time, El quickly pressed her lips to his, gripping a handful of his hair as well. After (slowly) counting to three in his head, Mike gently leaned away, and El sat back and waited for the next question. Mike had to admit, she was doing a good job, and he had never seen her this excited to do English work before. The game was working, as long as he could keep it together.
"You remember pronouns?" Mike asked, and El nodded. "Identify the pronouns in this sentence: Although she lives next door, I rarely see her."
El cocked her head to the left and repeated the sentence in her head.
"She… I… her," she said thoughtfully.
"Great job, El," Mike answered, preparing mentally for their four-second kiss.
Their lips met, and Mike kept count in his head. After counting to two, he was startled when he felt El gently graze her tongue across his bottom lip for the remaining two seconds. When he pulled back, El let her hand trace slowly from its place in his hair down his jaw as she sat back.
"Um, okay," he shook his head and cleared his throat. "Identify the adverb in this sentence: The fire spread rapidly throughout the building."
"Rapidly," El answered immediately, a wide grin on her face. She could tell this game was wearing Mike down with each right answer.
She leaned in to kiss him, instantly pressing her tongue between his lips, and Mike almost lost count on his way to five.
Somehow, Mike was able to stick to the rules of the game he created as El answered correctly questions six, seven, and eight. Each kiss was longer and more passionate than the last, and Mike was torn between being proud of her for answering so many questions correctly, trying to maintain the self-discipline to stick to it, and wanting to throw the rules away and lose himself in the feel of her soft lips. Finally, Mike looked down at the book in his lap and saw that they were on question nine.
"Okay, two more," he sighed. "Then, we're going to need to take a break."
El giggled and waited patiently for her next question.
"Identify the nouns and pronouns," Mike read. "Volleyball is a fun sport, and I like to play it."
"The nouns are volleyball and sport. The pronouns are I and it," El answered.
"Perfect," Mike replied.
He took a deep breath and leaned in to meet her halfway. For nine seconds, their lips moved against each other's, their tongues meshed in each other's mouths, and El's hands wove through Mike's soft hair. He reached the number nine in his head and started to pull back as El began nibbling on his bottom lip. Mike stifled a groan and ended the kiss, opening his eyes to see a mischievous smirk on El's face.
"Last, uh… last question," Mike said, out of breath. He looked at the remaining question and frowned slightly, hoping it wouldn't be too hard and discourage her. "This one's kind of hard, so take your time. Identify all the nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs in this sentence: He told us to talk quietly in the library."
El scrunched up her forehead and thought about the sentence, deciding to take it one word at a time.
"He… pronoun. Told… verb. Us… pronoun," she began, Mike nodding along with each correct answer. "Talk… verb. Quietly… adverb. Library… noun." El smiled, looking genuinely pleased with herself, and Mike leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the lips.
"See, you're so smart," he said softly against her lips. "And your English work wasn't that bad, was it?"
"I liked the extra motivation," El smiled, wrapping her arms around Mike's neck. "And I'm ready for my kiss for solving the last question."
Mike moved to connect their lips once again, but El stopped him with a finger on his mouth and a smirk on her face.
"But only for ten seconds. Those are the rules," she teased with a shrug.
"Screw the rules," Mike murmured before crashing his lips into hers.
All of the pent-up desire that had been building over the course of their game came rushing to the surface, and El's tongue was granted access into Mike's mouth immediately. Her hands both caressed the sides of his face until finding their spot in his soft hair, and Mike gripped El's waist with both of his.
A soft moan escaped El's throat as she raised up on her knees and leaned forward, laying Mike on his back and resting chest-to-chest without breaking their kiss. She felt as Mike's hands gently traced up and down her back, and she sighed into his mouth when he tangled a hand in her wavy hair.
El grasped the collar of Mike's shirt and rolled to the side, expecting to pull him on top of her, but not realizing how close to the edge of the bed they were. She broke their kiss with a shriek as she tumbled onto the floor, Mike landing on top of her.
"Oh my god! Are you okay?" Mike exclaimed, pushing himself up on his elbows and looking down at El beneath him.
El's eyes were widened in shock as she looked over at her bed, her top sheet hanging off the side due to their fall. She looked back up at Mike who was still waiting for her response with concern plastered all over his face, and El began to laugh. Mike let out a sigh of relief and let out a chuckle at their situation. Soon, they were both in a fit of laughter, Mike still on top of El as her body shook in laughs beneath him.
As El started to calm down, Mike brushed her hair away from her face and gazed down at her. Her cheeks were red and tear-stained from laughing so hard, she was panting and out of breath, her lips were swollen from kissing, and her hair was a tangled mess sprawled on the floor around her head.
"You are so beautiful," he whispered.
As Mike leaned down for another kiss, the unmistakable sound of gravel, sticks, and leaves crunching under the four tires of a rumbling blazer wafted through El's open window. Mike groaned, knowing that meant their time was up. El smiled up at him and pulled him down for one more sweet kiss on the lips before pushing upward on his shoulders.
"Quick, help me fix the bed," El said, scrambling to toss the sheet back to its normal position.
Mike stood and straightened the comforter on her bed while El smoothed down her hair. They plopped onto El's bed side-by-side, leaning their backs against the wall, and Mike opened El's science textbook, the next subject they were supposed to tackle today.
They heard the front door open and Hopper's heavy footsteps on the wooden floor.
"Kids, I'm ho-" Hopper's voice stopped as he undoubtedly saw El's closed bedroom door. "How many times do I have to tell you."
The heavy footsteps quickened in pace, and suddenly El's bedroom door was whipped open to reveal Hopper.
"Three inches!" he growled.
Mike and El jumped and snapped their heads in Hopper's direction.
"S-sorry!" El said hurriedly. "We stopped for some Eggos about an hour ago, and I must've just pushed the door a little too hard."
"Uh huh," Hopper grunted, his frame filling the doorway as his narrowed eyes landed on Mike. "How many of the lessons did you get through today?"
"We're just starting the last one right now," Mike replied, holding up her science book.
"Yeah. We did math, and then English. I finished my English lesson early, so Mike even threw in some French," El said casually.
Mike stifled a groan. Why did he openly antagonize Hopper on a daily basis? Clearly it was rubbing off on El. Mike risked glancing at Hopper's face to see the chief's narrowed eyes shooting death glares straight through him.
"French, huh?" Hopper repeated. "I don't remember getting you a French textbook… You know some French, do ya, Wheeler?"
Shit. Mike could feel the heat creeping up the back of his neck, and he knew his face probably had guilt written all over it. So he said the only thing he could muster.
"Oui."
Hopper held his gaze, maintaining his stern expression for a moment before chuckling and muttering "smartass" under his breath. Mike exhaled a sigh of relief; Hopper wasn't going to kill him.
"Stick to the textbooks," Hopper instructed. "And keep the door open three inches."
Hopper turned and headed toward his bedroom to change out of his uniform, and Mike turned to face El who was trying so hard to avoid bursting into laughter that her face was beet red.
"That wasn't funny!" Mike hissed, and El couldn't hold back anymore.
Mike watched her, trying to appear disapproving, but melting very quickly at how happy his girlfriend looked. He sighed and shook his head and flipped her science textbook to the page that Hopper had bookmarked.
"You heard what he said. Let's finish your lesson," Mike said.
"Just a second," El said.
She reached one hand to Mike's cheek and turned his face toward hers, planting one more kiss on his lips.
"Now let's finish the lesson," she smiled.
Mike chuckled and took one of El's hands in his, stroking circles on her palm while she laid her head on his shoulder and followed along in the science textbook. El still didn't love wasting her summer doing schoolwork, but if Mike was willing to keep making learning fun for her, she sure couldn't complain.
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A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this one! It was fun to write, and I think it turned out pretty cute. Thanks again to UnoPeso22 for the idea! Please remember to leave me a review.