She could still feel his hand in hers...
Okay, that might not have been possible. It had been three hours, after all. But still! Every mark he'd made on her had been indelible, so maybe it wasn't a huge stretch of the truth. The simple fact was that she couldn't shake it, and in the darkness of her car, she finally let herself sink into that feeling that had been reverberating through her chest for hours. A smile, so painfully large, broke through her control and splashed across her face. She dropped her head back and rolled her eyes with an unrestrained giggle.
She had only been cradled within Mike's embrace for the briefest of moments. It had been a sheer and complete accident. They had literally been trapped that way, tied together by actual strings. It was a simple hazard of her job.
Yet still. He felt perfect.
The press of his body against hers had imprinted itself onto her skin. Her waist still burned from where he'd clutched to her, his fingers gripping into the small of her back to hold her steady since her body was off balance, her leg wrapped and trapped tight around his hips. She had lost the knowledge of how to breathe lying in the crook of his shoulder, the beat of his heart heavy in her ear as he gazed down at her and said her name, his lips so close that he'd only had to whisper to be heard.
The intimacy had been so abrupt, so dizzying, and so perfect that she wondered if it had actually ever happened at all. If any of it had happened at all. The late afternoon sun, orange and blinding near the horizon, had splashed into her eyes when Max had pulled back the parachute, drowning her in hazy hues that had matched the buzz within her body, leaving her with a sense of blinded punch drunk overwhelm. It was an overwhelm so thick that she hadn't realized she was still holding Mike's hand after she'd pulled him up, and she definitely hadn't processed his question as it had floated aimlessly past her ears. Before his question and its potential meaning had dawned on her, voices had chimed in around them. Plans had been made. The day had wrapped up. The boys had left with a promise to meet them at Thelma's, and the night had arrived.
She hadn't given herself much time to dwell on her confusion, what with wrapping up the day. Equipment had needed inventory and return. Final paperwork had had to be processed. The plane and classroom had required a reset. They were all excellent things to distract her from the question that was bubbling louder and louder within her as each hour passed. Yet finally, as she waited for Max to join her in the car, the question creeped up to center stage.
Was this a date? Or not?
There was evidence pointing to each eventuality! The chief piece of evidence, however, was lost to the world: she hadn't been able to see his face when he'd spoken. The sunlight behind him had been so bright, and she had been so utterly gobsmacked, that her focus in that ever-important second had simply been lost.
Her stomach dropped a bit at the repeating realization that he really could have just been talking to Dustin. It all could have been just a silly misunderstanding on her part.
However, she reminded herself with a light slap to her cheek, it was a mystery she needn't try to unravel. For truly, she shouldn't be going on a date with Mike regardless of the circumstances. The current outcome was probably for the best.
"Why the hell did you just slap yourself?"
El jumped, her hand gripping at her heart as Max spoke beside her. How or when she'd arrived, situated in the passenger seat of the car, El did not know.
"How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me! It's dangerous!" El cried, her breath short as she reeled in the threads of power back in. It was lucky she'd learned to control the impulse of fear years before, for her car would have otherwise ended in a pile of rubble from Max's scare.
"How is it dangerous?!" Max countered with a confused laugh, "And Ellie? I've been sitting her for like ten seconds. I didn't magically appear. I opened the door and crawled in like a normal human being. You're just distracted."
"Yeah, I guess I am," she admitted. El was grateful for near darkness, for it worked well to conceal the heated blush that was made its way down past her neckline.
"You're adorable," Max teased, poking El in the ribs, "Look at you with your starry eyes! You're not even on this planet! You know, I clearly should've just left you underneath that parachute."
"Shut up, Max," El groused. She jammed her keys into the ignition and started the car.
"Well, you can continue whatever you were doing tonight," Max said wryly.
El steered her way out of the parking lot and toward Thelma's down the road. "You weren't looking at Mike when he asked about doing something tonight, were you?"
Max snorted a laugh, "No. I don't stare at him endlessly when he's around. That's your thing."
"Maaax."
"Sorry. I'll stop teasing. No, I wasn't looking at Mike. I was trying to untangle the parachute. Why?"
"I just… I couldn't see him," El admitted, "The sun was in my eyes when he was talking and I couldn't… Max, I think he was talking to me. Not Dustin. About tonight. I don't know. It all happened so fast and I'm – ugh, it doesn't matter."
"The hell it doesn't matter!" Max squealed in an instant. She shifted in her seat, facing El directly. "Tell me exactly what happened."
El bit her lip, fighting back a bubbling smile, "Okay. I pulled him up from the ground after we were… anyway, I swear he looked at me and said, 'Are you free tonight,' but I could hardly see him and I was kind of a mess. Then, before I could answer or even understand what was going on Dustin chimed in and then you did and then, well, here we are."
"Ooh, Ellie!" Max cooed in a single song manner, her hands drumming on El's thigh with excitement. "That does sound like he asked you out!"
"Maybe," El groaned, almost laughing at herself for the idiocy of it all. "I could've read it wrong, though."
"You should just go talk to him about it."
"Are you kidding me?!" El snapped. "Absolutely not."
"Okay, well…" Max replied, settling back into her seat, "It does sound like he asked you out. So, that's good, right? I'm glad he took my advice."
"I don't know. Maybe – WHAT?!"
El slammed on the brakes, both of their bodies racking against their seat belts in a painful fashion. El didn't notice that pain, though. She turned to Max, her eyes narrowed, her voice shockingly quiet as she spoke.
"What do you mean 'your advice'?"
Max cringed in a way that made El absolutely certain that she was going to hate the answer.
"Max," El repeated, her voice wavering in a tendril of fear, "What did you say to him?"
"I just – I just gave him a nudge in the right direction," Max said quietly, her eyes fixated down on her nails as she picked them.
El's heart began to beat frantically. She turned fully toward Max, their car sitting in the center of the empty road, and stared at the girl head-on. "What does a 'nudge in the right direction' mean?"
"Don't worry about it!" Max bit back. She wiped her hand through the air casually as though that would make it all go away before she tried to smile through a grimace. "He asked you out didn't he? That's what you wanted, right?"
"I don't know if he asked me out because there's six of us going out tonight, and I never told you I wanted that - "
" - Yes you di - "
" - It doesn't matter! What did you say to him?!"
Max rolled her eyes and squirmed in her seat. "I just told him he needs to get his head out of his ass and ask you out."
"YOU WHAT?" El bellowed. "When did you do that?"
"When we were gliding down."
"Oh my God, Max," El groaned as she dropped her head into her hand. "Why the hell would you do that?!"
"Because you're both being – "
"You know what! Don't answer that question. It doesn't matter," El barked abruptly. Revving the engine, she shot down the road in an instant lurch, her car making the final quarter of a mile toward Thelma's in record time.
"Ellie…" Max said carefully, "I was just trying to help!"
"Help?!" El exclaimed, wrenching the steering wheel into the gravel parking lot of Thelma's. She veered into a spot and stopped hard, her tires throwing gravel from the impact. "You didn't help! God, this is embarrassing. I - I shouldn't even be here!"
"Why the hell not?"
"Because I – "
El's jaw clamped shut as though it was controlled by an outside force. The real answer had come frightfully close to her lips. In an instant, reality rushed in on her with the intensity of a hot lava spill, burning her insides in the worst way, every pain another glaring reminder of why this was all a terrible idea.
"Because I'm not you, Max!" El finally cried, tears threatening the edges of her eyes. She ripped the keys out of the car and dropped her hand on the doorknob. "This shit is easy for you, but it's not for me. None of it."
"That's why I was trying to help!" Max cried back, her jaw tight as she held El's gaze.
"I don't need your HELP –" she threw her keys in her purse. "I don't need you abandoning me with people at lunch! I don't need you threatening people to ask me out! I don't need you making me a pity case to the one guy I actually like."
"I didn't! That's not – !"
"Stop thinking you know what's best for me!" El threw the car door open. "You don't!"
"Wh – "
"Have a good night, Max.".
"El!"
Max's voice muffled through the freshly slammed car door. Heat radiated from El's face as she stalked through the gravel parking lot into the deepening dark, leaving Max as far behind as she possibly could. What had seemed like a fun, if potentially ill-advised, evening now felt like an instant nightmare. While there was no way for her to truly piece out what the hell was going on, her mind tried all the same. Its concoction left her wanting to run the entire way home. Yet she found herself forcefully pulling the door of the bar open instead.
Thelma's was hot, stuffy and abandoned but for a few old-timers at the far in the front. Garish red lights, all turned a bit too low, lit the space only enough to splash red shadows across everything it touched. She felt grateful for the dimness as it allowed for her immediate escape. Her lungs seemed to clamp shut with embarrassment as she stalked through the bar at full speed, the sensation of Max following her the only thing stopping her from turning on her heel and bolting right back out of the front door. El bee-lined straight through the main bar and into the back game room stuffed with old arcade consoles. Voices hit her ear when she entered, unaware of her presence against the shadowed. They were voices that she recognized. Ones that made her blush with even more embarrassment. Their presence made her move faster, spurned on by a desperate hope that she would go unnoticed.
She succeeded, or so she thought, and burst through the back door into the black of night.
The darkness and the cool night air hit her like a refreshing splash as she stepped out into the familiar empty field behind the bar. It was a trusty escape; one she had taken endless times throughout the last couple of years when the bar had gotten too hot and loud for her liking. No security lights followed her, allowing her to move with full freedom through the dark. The music from the bar fell to a muffled hum as she trudged through the ankle-high grass in search of her favorite spot: an abandoned Cadillac, ancient and partially rusted out, laid forgotten in the field behind the bar. She suspected it had been Thelma's back in the 80s, left for dead in the back when the engine had died, never to be thought of again.
Pulling her hoodie sleeve over her fist, she wiped the first dots of evening dew from her regular sitting spot on the hood. She toed herself up with help from the metal bumper and let herself fall back against the cold metal. The chill against her back brought her a minute sense of grounding and, as though she was granted some form of miracle, she found herself able to breathe a tiny sigh of relief.
Brain laced with hot anger and unearned embarrassment, she stared up into the sky. The night was dark with no moon in sight, rewarding her with a shockingly clear sky smattered with stars. She lost herself in it instantly as she always did, the space above her so vast and endless that, after a second, her petty protestations and nerves faded away, making space for her true worries that lied beneath.
The challenges that El faced were so much bigger than miscommunications and nosy overbearing friends, she knew. A whisper of that heaviness seeped into her chest. El's breath hitched painfully as a tense prickle bit fresh at her eyes.
God, what she wouldn't have given to live like Max, free and easy and devoid of life altering worries, for just one night.
"Dude! I had NO idea this place existed. This is awesome!" Dustin cried as the four men stepped into the back room of the dilapidated bar where Max had demanded they meet them.
Lucas was less impressed. He toed against a dark Dig Dug console. "I don't know, man. These could be money pits. Look how ancient they are."
"Well, we'll know soon enough. I call Ms. PacMan!" Dustin quipped back without missing a beat. He fished through his pockets for a quarter to start the game and crossed toward the second to last console.
Will walked up to a dark Contra console and tested out the buttons in an attempt to make it come alive. He turned back to Mike with a shrug. "How did we end up here, anyway?" he asked.
Mike took a swig of his beer, sighed, and shook his head, "I honestly couldn't tell you. This uh, this wasn't my plan."
Will chuckled. He bent down around the machine to look for the plug in. "Yeah, I gotta say I wasn't expecting an invite out from you tonight. I thought you'd be somewhere else, with someone else. Not with your friends."
"Yeah, I attempted that. Somehow…" he grimaced, tossing Dustin a secret glare, "it turned into this."
Will looked up, a knowing look on his face, "Say no more. I get it. Do you think this thing works?"
"I don't know, I – "
At that moment, movement caught the corner of his eye. Someone cut through the side of the room and disappeared out of a hard-to-see door at the back, moving at full speed. Mike blinked in surprise. There was no doubt in his mind who he had seen. He'd paid much too much attention to her in the past couple of weeks not to recognize the swish of her hair or her stature within a split second. The way she was walking, as though she was trying to escape, sent a sudden chill of worry up his spine.
Max let out an exasperated sigh as she entered just a short moment afterward. Her eyes landed instantly on Mike.
"Is El in here?" she asked, squinting around the shadowed room.
"I think she just went out that door…"
Max's shoulders dropped. She leaned against the the peeling wood paneled wall and sighed. She avoided Mike's eyes as she spoke.
"I'm uh… Look, I'm sorry I threatened your life while we were diving," she grumbled. Finally, she looked up at him. "We're not here because of what I said, are we?"
"No? And… thank you? Is El okay?"
Max huffed and rolled her eyes. "She's pissed at me. Listen, I'm not going to tell you to go after here. I'm not going to tell you not to, either. I guess I'm not going to share my opinion at all anymore. Do what you want."
Max pushed herself off the wall and returned to the front before Mike could even attempt to understand what in the hell she had meant. Slowly, his expression the dictionary definition of confusion, he turned back toward the closed door where El had disappeared. Something tugged in his chest. Not a need to be near her. Not that ache or that urge. Rather, a worry. In a split second he found himself moving his feet.
"I'll be back in a minute," he said to Will as he pushed the door open and took a step out. Closing the door quietly behind him, Mike was met by nothing other than pitch black night. The night was gloriously clear. He hadn't seen so many stars in years. Not with the naked eye, at least. The light pollution was so much less near the airfield where the city descended into farmland. It reminded him a bit of home. It would have been absolutely breathtaking if not for the fact that he had something more important on his mind.
Squinting into the dark, he could just barely make out a shadow of El's movements. She disappeared, a slight shadow being swallowed by a larger shadow at the center of what seemed like a field. Mike stepped out into the damp ankle-high grass and made his way carefully to where she had vanished. A streak of silver shined ever so dimly as he neared the source of the darkest shadow. It was just enough for him to make out the presence of a huge old car. His eyes adjusted just enough to spy El's silhouette lying against the hood. He slowed his movements, hoping not to scare her.
"El?"
El shot up with a gasp. Her body rocked the car, it's creaks breaking the silence of the field.
"Mike?!"
Mike jumped back, hands shooting into the air in an invisible surrender. "I am so sorry! I'd hoped you'd heard me coming! I um… I saw you leave the bar. Are you okay?"
"Um," she stuttered, a slight thread of sadness in her tone, "Yeah, I just needed some fresh air. It's really stuffy in there."
"Tell me about it," Mike replied, "I was sweating the second I walked in there."
Great attempt at conversation, Wheeler. Talking about your sweat. Nice.
His voice trailed off, leaving him with nothing but a sudden embarrassment, darkness and her. Crickets trilled in the air, mixing with hints of an old Johnny Cash tune that warbled softly from the bar. Mike bit his lip, desperate for something, anything to fill the void.
"Jupiter is visible tonight," he finally offered.
"Huh? The planet?"
"Yeah, it's visible most of this month."
Another silence stretched out between them. Mike shuffled his feet against the ground, his trek out to her seeming like an instant mistake.
"I'll just g–"
"H-how can you tell?" she interrupted. Her voice softer, a bit more welcoming. "It all looks the same to me."
"Oh," Mike said in surprise. "Well, I can show you. If you want?"
"Um," El paused, "Okay."
Mike breathed a quick sigh of relief and took a step toward the car. "Can I sit?"
"Sure."
Mike took El's invitation. Finding the old bumper with the soles of his chucks, he slid himself easily up onto the hood of the car beside her. Leaning back onto his hand, he angled toward her and pointed up at the sky.
"You can tell it's a planet because it doesn't twinkle like stars. Can you see it off to the left there? Not far from Sirius?"
"Sirius?"
"The brightest star. It's in Canis Major. Do you see it?"
"Um…" El tilted her head, trying to follow his pointed finger. "Canis Major?"
"Oh! Right. Sorry. I forget that's not always common knowledge. You see the Big Dipper? We can orient from there."
El followed his hand as it shifted to another point in the sky. She was silent for a long moment before she hummed timidly. "Okay… I've heard of the Big Dipper, but I – I don't really know what I'm looking for."
Mike's hand fell from the sky.
"Y-you don't know the Big Dipper…?"
Mike was instantly ashamed by his tone, yet... who didn't know how to find the Big Dipper?
El was silent for a long moment, her reaction to his callousness lost in the darkness. When she finally spoke, she was desperately quiet. "I wasn't let out… much… growing up," she said, her voice possessing a timidity that he had never heard from her before. "I've never really looked at the stars with anyone who could teach me."
Mike froze at the heaviness of her words. The brief mention of her childhood issues from lunch the past Thursday drifted back, mixing with this new information in a way that made his heart break.
He bit back the million rude questions that sprung to his lips.
"Would you like me to show you?" he asked instead. "You showed me your sky today. I can show you mine."
His eyes had finally adjusted to the dark, so he could see the softest hint of her shining eyes as she turned to him, her smile just barely visible, though still somehow highly contagious. "I would love that," she said softly.
The reality he had fallen into dawned on him in an instant. Her closeness, the dark, the blanket of stars. He swallowed hard as he indulged in an instant and secretive smile. Mike didn't know how to tell her that he'd been waiting, hoping, and praying for a moment like this the entire day. He didn't want to dwell on his growing realization about her past, her vague assertions here and there bleeding together to point toward something dark lurking beneath her surface. So instead, he gave her what she'd asked for; what her childhood had somehow missed.
A walk through the stars.
"Okay, so…" Mike said, clearing his throat to focus himself. He stretched his arm over himself, and almost over her, in an effort to point at a spot up and to their left. The position set him so close to her ear that he dropped his voice to a whisper. "Do you see the stars there that look like a ladle? With the four stars of the bowl and the three stars trailing off for the handle? That's the Big Dipper."
El followed where he pointed. She turned just so, leaning back an imperceptible amount, just enough that her hair fell softly against the side of his cheek. He traced the sky slowly in the shape of a ladle, hoping she'd never find it so he could simply stay in this exact spot as long as possible.
"Oh!" she said with a tiny excitement entering, "Yes, I see it."
"Okay, great! So, if you draw down from there and then cut over a bit to the right, you're going to run into a very bright star." El leaned in closer to his hand, trying to line her eyes up with where his finger traced. She was quiet for a moment, tilting her head this way and that as she sought it out.
"I think I see it," she said ever so quietly.
"And then..." Mike added, sweeping his finger to the right, "Then, you'll get to a bright non-twinkling spot. That's Jupiter."
Worried she might lose the spot, Mike left his finger pointing in the air for a few extra seconds, yet he wasn't looking anymore. His eyes had dropped shut as a wave of unexpected relief crested over him. She didn't seem nearly as angry or upset as she'd seemed storming through the bar just a few minutes earlier, and, judging by the short amount of moments that had gone by, it didn't seem like she had ever been angry or upset with him at all. It had been a worry he'd known had no merit, but it had been a worry all the same.
"I see it," she said finally.
"Great," Mike whispered. He dropped his finger from the sky, but he couldn't bring himself to pull away.
They sat there like that within the dark for an indeterminable amount of time, the stars above them seeming as still as everything else in the black night. Mike let his gaze go hazy, the scent of her hair and the rise and fall of her breath heavier on his senses than the sparkling infinity above.
"Thank you," she said softly, breaking a few moments of silence, "And um… thank you for not treating me like I'm stupid. A lot of people aren't this kind when I don't know something obvious."
"Oh, you're definitely not stupid," he said easily. "A stupid person wouldn't be able to explain terminal velocity the way you did today."
She turned toward him, so close he could feel her breath catch in the air between them. "You thought that was good?" she asked.
"Really good," He replied with a nod, "Ground school was great. You're a really good teacher. I mean, I can tell someone how all of that works, but you were able to show it with just your body. You made it make so much sense in relation to what we were actually doing. It was really cool."
"Thank you," she breathed, her voice almost cooing with gratefulness in a way that made Mike blush against the night.
She leaned deeper back into her hands and let her head fall into the cradle of her shoulders, looking straight up. "Can you tell me some more? About the stars?"
The pattern of stars above her resembled a map for the very first time. Tiny landmarks were scattered here and there, each labeled by Mike. He seemed completely at ease as he rambled on about constellations and planets, black holes and supernovas, pulsars and binary orbits, all in the most adorable way. It was so crazy to think that she had run from the building, hoping that the black of night could hide her away from it all. What she had received was the exact opposite. The dark now felt like a blanket of thick privacy around them both, shrouding El away from the rest of the world so that she could experience Mike, and only Mike.
The only worry she possessed was that the relative silence had made audible her increasingly purring heart.
It was overwhelming, how absolutely Mike had flipped El's mood. She wouldn't have expected it possible, the way he had helped to calm her down, especially after the shame had mixed in. It was a familiar foe, but one that hurt like hell all the same. Blindspots. Facts that all kids had naturally seemed learned, but had never found their way to her. Her dad had tried to fill in the blanks as best he could, but some things had slipped through the cracks. The stars were one of them. It was a horrible feeling. The last thing she wanted was for Mike to think she was stupid. This scientist sitting next to her learning that she, a grown woman, didn't know the stars she suspected were taught to children.
But he hadn't made her feel stupid at all.
Instead, he'd complimented her.
If Mike could've seen the smile that had lit up El's face in that moment, she was certain he'd have been able to read her entire heart.
Mike's delightful monologue continued, shifting from the orientation of the night sky to the deeper things beneath that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. She looked away from the sky then. Her eyes had adjusted as best they could to the dark, and as such she could just make out the dim outline of Mike's profile beside her. His eyes were arched toward the stars. A serenity had settled into to his expression as he spoke.
El smiled to herself, simply watching the shadow of his lips move.
His words faded off after a moment and he turned to her, catching her staring.
"Am I boring you?" he asked nervously. "I'm sorry, I just really love talking about this stuff. I could go on for days if you don't stop me."
"No!" she exclaimed, "This is great. You study this, right? Or do you just really love this stuff?"
"Oh, good. Thank god. Both," Mike said, his eyes arching back up to the sky, "Astrophysics isn't my focus but I have studied it a lot. Most of the stuff I'm talking about, though, I learned when I was a kid. My sister and I were obsessed." Mike laughed to himself, "Nancy, that's my older sister, she'd gotten really into horoscopes and astrology. I was maybe nine? Anyway, she was convinced that she'd be able to tell her future if she knew more about the stars, so she got me, being the nerd that I was, to help her with the telescope. We set it up out her window on clear nights and we figured out the constellations together. I guess you could say her trashy obsession with astrology accidentally made me fall in love with astronomy."
"That sounds nice," El mused, the idea of tiny Mike an adorable thought springing through her mind.
"Yeah, I loved it. I still love it, but I really loved it back then." Mike arched further back, searching for something that El couldn't discern within the pattern of stars. "That was one of the last things we did together for a long time. She became a teenager and then there was no time for a dorky little brother anymore."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
He shrugged it off, "Oh, that's just siblings. Do you have siblings?"
"No."
"Oh. Well, sometimes you're close and sometimes you don't want to have anything to do with each other. That's what siblings are like. At least that's the way it was with Nancy. Holly, my little sister, we've been close since she was born. Holly's a lot younger than me. I'm pretty protective of her. We went through some heavy stuff together after Nancy moved out. We uh -" he paused for a moment, his voice lower than it had been, as though he was lost in thought, " - anyway, Nancy and I were always flipping back and forth between liking each other and hating each other. We're pretty close now. Shit, I'm rambling. Yes, astronomy. I love it. It's awesome. Sorry."
El giggled. "What do you like about it? I mean apart from the fact that this is beautiful?"
Mike considered her question for a moment, his eyes still on the sky. In the silence, a tiny glow began to emanate from his skin.
"The moon's rising," he said. He looked over to her and El froze. With each second, he became a little more visible. Shadow swept away, revealing the lighthearted expression in his eyes, the calm of his brow, the curve of a soft smile on his lips.
Only then did she truly realize how close they were sitting. He was only a breath away.
"S-sorry," he stuttered, shaking his head in a way that made his puffy hair dance, "I got distracted. What did you ask me?"
El bit her lip to contain her smile, "Um, I think I asked what you love about it?"
"Oh, right," he finally said. He turned back toward the moon then. The growing light caught his pale skin in a way that accentuated the sharp cut of his jaw. "Honestly? Now I love it for a totally different reason. It's like, no matter what happens here; good day or bad day or really the worst day or best day. All of that up there?" he said, pointing vaguely at the sky, "That just keeps going. For millennia. We can't control it. Honestly, it controls us. We're just tiny infinitesimal parts of all of that. When I get really really anxious that thought can sometimes calm me down." He smiled to himself and shook his head. "I mean, sometimes it can be calming," he corrected himself, "Other times it scares the shit out of me. The vastness of it all. It can also be completely terrifying. But maybe that's just me. I'm afraid of everything."
"You don't seem like you're afraid of everything," she said, the words slipping easily from her lips.
"Me?" he asked, pointing to himself. He sighed. "I'm terrified all the time. All the time. So much so it's embarrassing."
"Really?" she asked, "You don't seem like that."
Mike turned to her then. Confusion laced through his features as he seemed to study her. His voice was hesitant when he finally spoke, "I don't?"
"No," she shook her head and smiled at him softly, "You're impulsive. Plus,Iknow what fear looks like. My job is basically helping people face fear. A person that's terrified all the time wouldn't choose to surrender to an scary experience, enjoy it, and then come back more. But you did."
"They wouldn't?" he asked.
"No," she replied with a hint of surprise. "There's a difference between being afraid of something and having your life owned by fear. Sure, you're afraid of stuff, but don't you seem like your life is owned by fear."
"That's because you calm me."
"What?"
Mike's eyes widened in surprise as his own words. He looked away from her and was quiet for a moment. He bit his lip and took a deep breath, his voice thick with admission. "I don't seem that way around you because I feel calm around you."
"What does that mean?"
"I am kind of terrified all of the time," he said with a helpless shrug, "Well, I have been for the past few years, at least. I have this scared voice that's always bouncing around in my head. It drives me crazy. But it uh, it goes quiet when you're around."
"It does?" she asked, her words tentative, her heart picking up speed.
"Yeah," Mike smiled to himself as he continued, almost as though he was embarrassed, "It's just when I'm around you everything feels… I don't know. You have this way of making everything feel exciting, and like no matter what's going on its going to turn out just fine. That probably sounds really weird and I'm probably saying way too much right now… but I feel like myself when I'm around you, or who I used to be, for the first time in a long time."
"Maybe that is who you are," she offered softly, "but you just forgot?"
"Or maybe you're just amazing."
Mike's gaze drifted up to hers in an instant, deeper than the night sky above, wide and locked upon hers with nothing left to hide. His words burned away the oxygen in the thin sliver of air between then, making it hard for her to breathe.
"Can I kiss you, El?" he asked gently, his request tickling her lips.
"Yes."
He moved slowly, his breath staggered in its mingling with hers, so close, so painfully close that she felt she might burst. El's eyes dropped shut and her heart leapt as she searched for him in that final fleeting space. Tenderly, he found her. His kiss was earnest yet slow. His hand reached her, gliding across her jaw with a delicacy so light, as though he thought she might break.
Which, little did he know, she was extremely close to doing.
That spark. That undeniable instant spark. It shot through her in a rush of pure raw electricity at the touch of his lips. It felt so jaw-droppingly fantastic that she almost didn't care what she might ruin next. Aided only by the quick warning of his request, she found the strength within herself to contain the surge for the very first time. Restraining it like something wild on a leash, El sighed deeper into his lips. Her hand found its way to steady herself, her fingers wrapping around his wrist as he weaved into her hair at the nape of her neck.
It was one thing to control herself within anger or fear. It was another thing entirely to control herself within bliss.
That's what kissing Mike was proving to be.
Bliss.
Utterly perfect unraveling bliss.
She was soft in every sense of the word. Soft lips and soft skin and soft sounds. Soft in the way she shifted and pulled herself closer to him. Soft in the way her cold fingers weaved between his.
Soft on his heart in a way that he could hardly contain.
Kissing El Hopper was nothing like the first time. Unlike then, Mike wasn't kissing a beautiful stranger in a highly ill-advised sense of thanks. No. In this quiet moment, beneath a brilliant blanket of stars, Mike was kissing El. Radiant, vulnerable, kind, amazing El. A woman who had just, with only a few words, had made him question everything he thought he knew about himself. A woman so astounding and alive that he felt electricity shoot through him as though she were emitting it herself.
The entire universe could have frozen above them and he never would have known. For in that moment the only thing that felt real was her.
Mike gave into it all then. His need for her made itself known as he shifted, his arm wrapping around her back and leading her slowly down. She followed him willingly until her back met the cold metal. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him close, his chest falling against hers with a sense of closeness that made him ache for more. Yet, her lips slowed, growing sweet in small pecks, her fingers tracing his shoulder, passing through his hair and finally rest upon his jaw. He pulled away just an infinitesimal amount, daring to open his eyes for assurance that this was, in fact, not a dream.
If it was a dream, it was a good one. El's smile beamed softly in the light of the moon.
Mike, simply starstruck, could no longer control his honesty. "I've wanted to kiss you again since the second I stopped last time," he whispered, his fingers knotting into her hair.
El emitted the sweetest breathy laugh. Her eyes closed as her smile grew. "You asked this time," she mused.
"Ugh," Mike's forehead dropped against hers, his face flushing in an instant. "I should have asked last time. I'm still so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I – I wasn't thinking."
"You're forgiven," she whispered with a light giggle, her fingers still grazing lightly against his jaw. "I do like it when you ask, though."
Mike looked up, catching her eye, "Yeah?"
She nodded, a hint of mischief filling her gaze. "Mmhmm. I like saying yes to you."
Mike's breath caught.
"Can you kiss you again?"
"Yes."
Hot chills traced down Mike's body as El's fingers climbed into his hair, pulling him into her in a way that rendered him completely helpless. Her lips were still wet from his as though they had never parted at all. In an instant rise of heat, they collapsed deeper into each other, the hood of the car creaking from strain beneath them in a way that made El laugh against his kiss. Her hands twisted tight around the back of his neck pulling herself tighter against him as she sought to deepen the kiss. Her tongue danced across his lips in a way that woke up his senses with an intensity that overwhelmed him.
She made him feel wanted.
It was hard to believe.
This woman? This perfect woman? Pulling him into her in the moonlight, her fingernails running tracks through his hair?
How?
"You're incredible…" Mike hummed involuntarily as his lips left hers, aching to explore other avenues that she contained. He traveled her jaw line, ending at her ear, her hand tightening into his hair at the contact. He couldn't help but find himself smiling into her skin. His kisses grew hotter, goaded on by her increasingly staggered breath. He traced the length down her neck until he stopped in the crook of her collarbone, lips pressing in such a way that she gasped and her whole body flinched –
"Mike!"
It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
...Yet it was the last thing heard before the music drifting from the bar screeched to a halt and a loud and bizarre static replaced it in the air, punctuated with screams.
Mike pulled away in an instant and looked up toward the building. The static was so loud that it sounded like it could be emanating from directly over him. Yet, as quickly as it started, it stopped, disappearing into the night as though it had never existed at all.
Something else, or rather, someone else, had disappeared as well.
El had leaped from the car without warning. Her feet hit the ground hard as she trampled toward the building through the tall grass. Mike, lips bruised and senses shocked, shot from where they'd laid and was quickly on her heels, his long legs making quick work to fill the gap between them. She threw the door open and he sped up, catching it directly before it closed, easing himself inside.
Commotion met him the second he answered the door.
Lucas stood amidst a cloud of smoke, his mouth and nose covered with his t-shirt, a fire extinguisher in his hand. "- Thank God I saw it when we were walking in!"
"Well, son," croaked an ancient lady who Mike could only guess was Thelma, "I'm not sure this place would still be standing if you hadn't acted so fast. Next round of drinks is on me."
"But that doesn't explain how this happened?!" Dustin cried, his hands waving dramatically in the air. He looked up and saw Mike, his eyes going wide, "Mike! Where the hell have you been?! You missed the craziest thing. The lights flashed and then the radio cut out and then Contra literally caught fire!"
"We heard it outside and came running," Mike said, slightly out of breath, "It just burst into flames?"
Dustin sputtered a cough, his eyes wide, "I don't know! It was so weird! The lights freaked out and the music screeched - "
" - it was really weird," Will confirmed, "But everyone's okay and Lucas put it out instantly. Contra is toast, though."
Mike bent down and took a look at the machine, but he backed quickly away. It was still puffing out tendrils clouds of black smoke.
"Lucas, stay with the machine until the smoke is out," Mike directed, "Everyone else needs to get out. We shouldn't be breathing this air."
Mike turned around to find El against the wall. Her eyes were wide and glassy. Blood had pooled in a tiny puddle under her nose. "El? Your nose is bleeding again. Are you okay?"
"Yes," she said quietly, looking down at her feet as she rubbed her forehead. "Just… a migraine is starting. It's…," she cringed. "It happens with the nose bleeds."
"Here, um..." Mike gently took her forearm and led her from the back room into the main bar where cleaner air prevailed. He stopped at an empty table and tugged a few napkins from the dispenser, handing them to her.
She took the napkins hesitantly, her eyes skittish as she dabbed at her nose. "Thank you," she murmured.
While in the back of Mike's head he knew that the flip of El's mood was extremely odd, in that moment all he could seem to care about was her safety.
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked. "Do you need water? Pain killers?"
El sighed, looking up at him for the first time. "No, I - I should go home, though. Before the uh... before the migraine gets worse."
"Are you sure you'll be okay to drive?" Mike asked carefully.
"Oh, yeah. Yes," she said, waving off his worry. "I'll be fine. It's quick drive home."
"Can I walk you to your car at least?"
Mike's brow was knitted in the truest expression of worry as he fussed over her. El smiled despite herself at his offer to walk her to her car. She nodded.
It was painfully sweet, the attention he trained on her. Mike stepped forward lead her out of the bar. He shouldered the door open and made space for her to pass. They left the old doors behind and made their way into the moonlit parking lot.
"This is me," she said as she stopped near her car.
Heart full of a thousand warring emotions, she dug in her purse for her keys, but Mike's hand stopped her, dropping upon her forearm.
"Hey, I uh... I had a great night with you, El. An amazing night, really," Mike said with such sincerity that it made her avoidance impossible. Her eyes trained up to his and she was trapped. The moonlight cut straight through his darkened gaze, almost shining a light to its unreachable depths.
"I did too," El said, trying to hide the sadness from her voice.
Mike hesitated for a moment. His eyebrows pulled tight in an instant and off he went. "Can I – um – Can I see you this week? You know, not as a student and not as an accident and not with everyone we know inviting themselves along?"
"Is that what happened tonight?" she asked quickly, desperately hoping he'd ever so casually handed her the answer. "I couldn't tell."
"Ugh, yes," he groaned, rolling his eyes. "That was not my plan. Anyway, I just - I'd really like to take you out. Like, premeditated. Planned. Alone."
"Like a date?" El asked lamely, hopefully, treacherously.
"Oh, is that what that's called?" Mike teased with a self deprecating laugh. "Yeah, like a date. Actually, not like a date. An actual date. Can I take you on a date? Wow, I've said date a lot in the last ten seconds I'm going to stop talking now and let you answer me, sorry."
It was a quick calculation.
The lamps at her house, destroyed.
The electronics in the bar, destroyed.
His absolutely adorable presence, the culprit.
The answer was gut wrenchingly clear. It was practically written on the moon as it shined down upon them.
"Yes," she said quietly, defying the obvious with a rebellious rush. She smiled, "I'd love that."
"Great," he replied, almost laughing at himself in relief. "What night is good for you?"
Her heart screamed 'Right now?!' Her brain screamed 'Never! Stop this now, you stupid idiot!'.
And so, with a quick tabulation, she said…
"Thursday?"
"Thursday's good!" Mike said with an instant and excitable nod. "Yeah, that's good. Great. Awesome. Thursday, then," He rocked on the balls of his feet and bit his lip to contain a precious smile. He was quiet for a moment, his eyes off toward the grove of trees.
El's anxiety bubbled in her gut. It was an odd concoction, yet one she was growing bizarrely used to. A dizzying mix of satisfaction, yearning, and massive guilt. Selfishness and consequence. Worst case scenarios and best case scenarios all rolled into one. Bravery. Stupid reckless bravery. Leaving her confused, hardly knowing which way was up.
She was playing with fire without a guidebook. Dark on a brand new journey.
There was one thing she did know for sure, though.
She knew what she wanted, without a doubt -
"El?"
He looked back at her.
- Him.
She didn't say anything. Instead, her toes raised almost of their own accord. Mike didn't even flinch. He moved like he'd been fighting restraints that had finally been released. Hand skirting against her jaw, he leaned down to meet her lips once again. She arched up into him, her focus hell bent on controlling the raging sensation within her. Yet, she needn't have worried. His lips moved softly against her, his hand brushing against her cheek with a caring that stole her breath away almost more than the hottest possible kiss.
Mike pulled away after a short moment, his breath warm against her lips.
"Will you um, will you text me when you get home?" he asked, his hand still on her cheek, his voice the simplest of whispers. "It's late and you have a headache and I, um, I know you're an adult who can clearly take care of themselves but I uh, I tend to worry."
"Yes," she breathed, her chest blooming with an instant warmth. "I'll let you know."
"Thanks. I hope that's not weird."
"It's not," she said, failing to contain her smile. "I promise."
Her fingers fumbled against her keys, failing to unlock her car. Finally, on the third try, her finger found the tiny button and a quick beep echoed from her car, knocking them each a tiny bit back to reality.
Mike took a step back and shoved his hands into his pockets. With cheeks that even in the moonlight looked flushed, he smiled. "Goodnight, El."
She fought back a giggle, "Goodnight, Mike."
El wasn't sure how she had managed to get into her car and drive away, yet somehow she'd found herself on the dark road, giggling like a child breaking rules.
She had no idea what she was going to do. At this rate she was going to blow up the entire planet if he touched her in the wrong (right?) way.
Shit, she really needed to make this up to Thelma...
El caught her reflection in the mirror at a red light. Bruised puffy lips greeted her, complete with flushed cheeks, knotted hair, and a painfully ridiculous smile. It gave her heart. For, there was a truth was written in her dishevelment. She had gotten pretty damned far this time before she had fucked something up. In fact, every time she'd been around him she had been able control herself significantly better than the time before. Trip ups were becoming easier to avoid. A combo of staying sober and keeping her wits about her was hopefully all she needed. That, and maybe a little more exposure therapy, of course.
Then and there, as El drove back into the city, her eyes almost crossed and still seeing stars, she made a promise to herself. She could definitely, absolutely, figure this out. She had to figure this out. She would figure this out.
Because there was no way in hell that she was going to be able to talk herself out of Mike Wheeler now.
Mike watched the empty road in something akin to a trance long after El's tail lights had disappeared from view, his lips tingling almost as much as his heart. He walked slowly back across the parking lot toward the bar, his feet toeing against the loose gravel like a boy caught in a daydream. The smile on his face was becoming painful, pulling against muscles that usually didn't get used with such intensity.
Yet an interruption was imminent, and it came in the form of a red-headed blur running out of the door.
"Did El leave?" she called as she spotted Mike in the parking lot.
"Yeah," Mike said, trying to keep a straight face. "She just went home."
Max sighed. "Is she okay?"
"Yeah, she said she was getting a migraine."
"Oh, was her nose bleeding?"
"Yeah."
"Figures, okay. That makes sense."
"Does her nose bleed a lot?" he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
"Um, yeah," Max said with a shrug, walking closer to Mike. "Sometimes. Usually only after diving. Sometimes when she gets overwhelmed. She'll be fine. She always is. Did she's uh..." Max cringed, "Did she mention if she was still mad at me?"
"Um," Mike bit his lip that felt raw from El's kiss, "I can't say we talked about it."
"Oh!" Max replied with an instantly knowing look. "Say no more. I'll call her tomorrow. She was my ride though."
"We can give you a lift!" Lucas said as he came up behind her, lacing his arms around her waist. "It's still early. Want to come back to our place?"
"Ooh," Max cooed, turning in his arms, Mike quickly forgotten, "Does that mean I get to spend more time with the hero of the evening?"
Mike grimaced at the instant canoodling going on beside him and looked away toward Dustin who was coming up to join them. Dustin dug in his pants pocket and tossed his keys toward Mike's chest. "You ready to get us all home safe?"
Mike would have thought that nothing, absolutely nothing, could have plucked him from the cloud he was floating on. Yet, the keys that had crashed into his chest did the trick, dragging him like a deadweight back down to earth. He tossed them back to Dustin with such instant revulsion that Dustin almost missed the catch.
"Ignore him, Mike. I stayed sober. Don't worry about it," Will said, coming up behind Dustin. "Dustin, I'll bring you back in the morning to get your car."
"Fair," Dustin conceded, "but we're going on driving lessons this week, Mikey! That was the deal."
Mike's stomach crashed. That had been the deal... Yet, he couldn't lose himself in that terrifying truth in full because, at that perfect moment, his phone buzzed. Following his friends to the car, he fished his phone from his pocket.
"Home safe!" was all it said.
Mike bit his lip in a failed attempt to quell his smile, all focus suddenly on his screen. His fingers itched to tell her everything. They itched to tell her how beautiful she was, how he could still taste her on his lips, how he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her for weeks.
Instead, his fingers shook as he typed only, "Sweet dreams, El. Thursday :)"
"Thursday :)" was all he received back. An instant reply.
It was all Mike needed to render his momentary panic instantly forgotten.
Hi lovelies! I sure hope you enjoyed this installment! Let me know what you're thinking here or on Tumblr ( dancingskygreen) or on insta ( el_borealis).