Max feels eyes landing on her like a relentless fly. Swat, it comes back. Swat, it comes back.
They've all been looking at her ever since at the school. To be fair, if one of them just found out they were cursed by a wizard or some shit and were going to die horribly tomorrow, she'd probably act weird about it too.
Her friends occupy every seat in the Wheelers' basement, all kicking around plans for what to do about her as she sits there jiggling her knee and chewing her nails.
It's nice that so many people care about her. She loves them all. And right now, she can't stand them.
They're scared for her, and they all feel on the hook to comfort her with no idea how, and she's on the hook to react with no idea how. Spending the night in a cluster had seemed like the safest thing at first, but now it's smothering, and her fuse is growing slowly shorter, and the stress of it all has her head throbbing.
If this were a normal night, a year ago, Max would love to spend it surrounded with her friends. Just hanging out, doing whatever. If it could be like that, like a time instead of the last time, then it would be great. It's not like that. It can't be. Not on their part, and not on her part.
She presses at her brow to try to relieve her headache, and to her surprise, it seems to work really well; the pain fades way back, and she feels suddenly off kilter without the weight of it.
Suspiciously she looks to her side, where El is just returning her attention to the debate going on between the others. Max knocks her knee gently against El's in thanks, and she smiles a little without looking and knocks back.
El is honestly the only one here not contributing to Max's agitation. Quiet as always. Not staring. Hasn't tried to pull her aside and offer little plans and empty optimism and bullshit promises, even though she's the only one here who almost sort of has authority to.
"Max? Are you okay?" El had asked, hurrying up behind her in the darkened hallway.
"It... it wanted me to look."
"What did?"
Max had shone her shaky flashlight beam at the clock. And then she had startled awake in her counselor's office, with El sitting on the desk sporting a nosebleed, hand in hers, surrounded by the worried faces of their friends.
Since that, El has stayed close by her side, and nobody has challenged her place.
Lucas has added his voice to the debate now, and Max clenches her jaw, wishing quiet could drown out loud instead of the other way around.
Heat is creeping up her neck and her headache is already beginning to stir again. This is too much pressure and attention, and she's at risk of making some of her last words to her friends snippy ones that she'll regret.
Don't cry.
Max gets up abruptly and goes for the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" Steve asks.
"Need some air."
Lucas stands. "Do you want-"
"No."
"But you shouldn't be alo-"
"I'll be three feet away. It's fine."
She shuts the door on any possible replies and lets out a breath.
The chilly air is refreshing. She draws in a huge lungful of it, leaning against the bricks beside the door and looking into the clear night sky.
That's one thing Hawkins has on California - from a small town in the middle of nowhere, you can see a lot more stars. She has no particular affinity for space or whatever, but pretty is pretty. Sometime it'd be nice to make a real thing of it and lie out stargazing wi-
Oh.
There are no sometimes left.
She wouldn't have expected the stars to be what makes it all suddenly catch up with her like a cannonball to the chest. The zillion little dots go watery at once.
This is the last time she'll ever see them, most likely.
This is her last night. Like, ever.
Oh God, I don't wanna be alone. I don't want to die alone.
No, shut up. She tries her best to blink it away and stuff it back down. The longer she can put off dealing with it, the better, right? Ideally never?
Part of her thinks she ought to go out and do something crazy. Have a wild night, cram as much life as possible into her last hours. But what does that actually even mean - "life"? Everything that comes to mind is stuff people would say: go on a spree, get wasted, lose her virginity, steal a Ferrari! She doesn't want to do any of that. Nothing sounds good, and even if it did, she wouldn't be able to have any fun. She's tired. She's sad and scared and so, so tired.
Zeke, their old terrier mutt, comes to mind. She was little when he had to be put down, but she remembers how Dad wanted to make him happy before it was time to go, and cooked a whole steak just for him. He didn't want it. She knows now how he felt.
Movement in the window beside her catches her eye - Dustin and Lucas bump into each other, scrambling out of the way of being spotted peeking through the blinds.
She turns away and sighs out a big steadying breath, eyeing the tree line a street over.
What if you just started walking? What if you disappeared into the woods or something and just waited it out?
That's selfish, wanting anyone with you for this. It's gonna be so bad. You heard what happened to Chrissy. They'd all be pissed, but really, it'd be a kindness to them, wouldn't it? To spare them seeing that?
If you really cared about them, you'd do it. Just hole up somewhere where you won't be a burden on anybody and they won't be on you. Where nobody has to try to protect you from the inevitable.
They'd never forgive her. She almost does it.
She thinks about what she'd do when she got there, and the answer is: she'd curl up, shut her eyes, and try to draw up a memory to comfort herself while she waited for the end. And only one comes to mind. The only real comfort she's felt in ages: the other night, with El. That's how she wishes she could spend tonight. Quietly, with El's arms around her.
But why settle for a wish when it's something she could have for real? El would give her that happily, if she asked. And being with El doesn't have to mean burdening her with her protection. She could keep the morbid shit to herself. Pretend she's optimistic. Pretend she's not that scared.
She's sorry if it makes the others feel snubbed, but... hey, isn't she entitled to a dying wish or whatever?
Hand on the doorknob, Max wipes her eyes and tries to steady her voice and braces herself for drawing every pair of eyes in the basement. At least that'll make it easy to catch the one pair she wants.
Opening the door draws every pair of eyes except El's. She almost laughs.
"El." Immediately she gets them. "Quick question?" she asks, tilting her head like come, and ducks back out.
The door opens and shuts a moment later, El appearing silently beside her. Not taking her eyes off the stars, Max reaches out until she finds her hand.
El squeezes once.
Max spends a minute waiting for her going-to-cry-meter to ease back down before she asks, "Will you do something for me?"
"Anything."
"Can I stay with you tonight? Just you. But! -" she turns and adds when El is already answering yes, "I don't want you to stay up for me again."
Oscar-worthy, she'd say, if that sounded half convincingly like she isn't scared out of her fucking mind and doesn't want to cling to El's leg like a toddler and beg for protection. And it's not a lie; she doesn't. Honestly. It's not fair to thrust her life into El's hands like that. She doesn't want her to have to do these huge horrible things for people all the time.
El's brows rise in an unimpressed sort of way. It's a sassier expression than Max is used to seeing from her, and in another circumstance she might laugh.
"Why not?"
"I'm not asking for your protection. I just really.. really would like your company."
"I want to give you both."
"El... this might not be something even you can protect me from. I don't want you to feel responsible. I'm not putting that on you. That's not what this is. And besides, it'll probably be fine-"
"I am not the one who needs protecting tonight."
Max frowns. "What?"
"You want to protect me from how it will feel if I fail you. But do you think I will feel better if something happens in the night, and I know I didn't even try?" El asks, her voice calm, but looking at Max very directly. "Do you think I will be happier that I slept?"
Max falters, her eyes jumping away from El's. She hadn't considered that it could happen as soon as tonight, and Hey, can I come over and maybe die gruesomely in your bed? isn't the favor she meant to ask.
"I am not really asking permission to watch over you," El turns back to the stars. "I am going to do it. And I can do it from anywhere. But it would be a lot nicer to be with you."
Max stares at her. Instinct says to launch into a whole thing where she pretends to be mad, tries to insist, tries to hide. But she quite literally has no time for that, nor the energy. And she can't hide from El any more than she can hide from Vecna, which is a weird combination of a threat and a comfort. It would feel a lot better to hide with her than from her.
"You're so.." Max shakes her head and sighs. What the next word was going to be is a mystery even to her. She tugs El in by the jacket and hugs her, and El hugs back really, really hard, but Max ends it soon and a little stiffly, her emotions too close to escaping.
"Okay." She takes a huge breath. "Steve will drive us."
Again she puts her hand on the doorknob and pauses, faced with the task of telling a room full of people she loves that she doesn't want to be around them.
"Look - I'm gonna tell everybody that I want to stay with you because you're the only one who can really protect me," she says quietly. "But I want you to know that's not the real reason. The real reason is just.. you're the only one I feel like being with. Alright?"
El smiles and nods.
They sit on El's floor up against her bed, door closed so the light doesn't shine into the hallway. Max is exhausted, but too wired to lie down. The floor seemed like the only right place.
It's a relief just to sit in the quiet here. She still catches herself clenching her jaw for the millionth time, adding to the oppressive ache in her temples.
"Will you fix my head again? Please?"
El smiles warmly, like it makes her happy to be asked. She puts a hand behind Max's head, pulling them gently together, temple to temple.
They don't have to be touching for this, Max knows, so El must just want to do it this way. She feels a faint pressure, one she wouldn't notice if she didn't know to look for it, and when it abates, so does the pain. She exhales, suddenly aware of the wincing tension in her face that no longer serves a purpose, and tries to let it relax.
El doesn't take away her hand, which is nice because Max doesn't want to move apart yet, or else El is going to see how close she suddenly is to crying.
Don't.
She wishes the world would stop right here. That she could hit pause and just stay like this. Stay and heal and maybe unpause someday when she's rested and strong and ready to fight for her life (yeah right).
"Thank you," she says, and it's small and unintelligible from how hard she's trying not to let tears slip out along with it. Not Oscar-worthy.
She lets her head bow until her eyes are hidden against El's shoulder and it makes her start to cry exactly how she meant not to, her fists tightening around handfuls of El's shirt.
El's arms lock around her, sighing.
Oh, go ahead. You're not fooling anyone.
It's not misery this time, it's just fear. She cries into El's shoulder like a scared little girl, although she guesses, in the scheme of things, that's all she is. People a lot tougher than her have cried the night before their executions, probably.
She meant to really sell the stoic thing right to the end. Not to seem brave or something, but because the more afraid she looks to die, the worse El is going to feel when she does. But she isn't strong enough to pretend. It just comes out. Not all of it, but much more of it than she meant to.
Good job, you lasted almost a whole hour.
"I know you're tired." El unknowingly says the exact thing to intensify Max's silent tears.
She nods. It's been months since she slept regularly, and she was desperately tired even before all this curse shit. So it's not only true, it's sorta the scariest part - the possibility that there is a chance, but she might be too tired to try hard enough. Whatever trying even means.
"I want you to rest," El says. "If there is any fighting to do, I will do it. Max, I promise I..."
Wary at the word altogether, Max quiets, sniffing, waiting for the rest of the sentence. El seems to take a moment to choose her words.
"I will try my hardest to make you safe. I promise you are not alone. I will be with you every minute until this is over. Anywhere I can follow you, I will. And any way I can fight for you, I will. With everything I have."
Max lifts her head to look at El, stuffed up and tearstained, to give her a look that she hopes says it all. It's hard to decide which force is stronger: how much she trusts El, or how much she expects this to go down the shittiest possible way, as things in her life tend to do.
She examines the little smile El gives her, wondering whether El is a far better actor than she is, or far stronger than she understands.
"Aren't you afraid of this guy?"
El's smile fades. "He should be afraid of me."
Max's brows rise a little. She didn't think there was a single truly reassuring thing anybody could say, but that right there wasn't half bad.
There are no guarantees here, but being best friends with possibly actually the strongest person in the world is, well. Something. She would be less safe in some bunker guarded by the whole army than on El's messy bedroom floor.
She sighs, resting her head against the side of El's bed. "Thank you." That feels like a weird thing to say in response. Nobody says stuff like what El just said except in comics, and Max can't recall any fitting replies.
El smiles, so she guesses it's okay. They sit silently for a while, until El is the first to speak again.
"What would you do if you could do anything? After this?"
Max exhales, not in the mood for that sort of question. There is probably no such time, and if this were anyone else, she would say so.
"I don't know," she mutters after a long pause which she hasn't truly spent thinking.
"You like California," El suggests.
Max has always acted like she's being held in Hawkins by shackles, and the second they unlock at 18 she'll run right back to the coast, and that will fix everything. But the truth she's never let herself acknowledge comes easily now.
"California's a time. Not a place," she says with quiet resignation, a warm drop leaking across the bridge of her nose. "There's nowhere to go back to."
She tries to focus on the sensation of El's thumb moving on her hand, rather than the dread simmering in her chest.
"Would've been nice to see the ocean again, I guess," Max says, a small smile taking root as she looks to El. "You'd really like it. All you've seen is Hawkins, right? It'd blow your mind." She turns so sad so abruptly it hurts her face, fresh tears streaming hot from tight-squeezed eyes, which she covers with her hand. "I would've liked to see you see it."
"We will-"
"You'll get there sometime. If I'm not there too, um," she quavers, "remember me, okay?"
"Max," El says warningly, squeezing her hand. "I want you to show it to me."
"We both know-"
El goes still. "Wait," she says thoughtfully.
"What."
"Take me there. Tonight."
Max scoffs. El must not understand how far away California is. "Even if we got on a plane right-"
"No. From here. If I can come with you to your dreams, maybe I can come to your imagination."
"Really?" Max wipes her cheeks. "What do I do?"
El shrugs. "Build it in your mind. Concentrate on how it looks.. sounds, feels. Everything. Focus."
There's nothing to lose by trying. Max shuts her eyes. El takes both her hands.
It's easier said than done. Desperation isn't helping her focus.
There are lots of different oceans. Calm clear day ones, where the whole horizon is just blue and blue and a line. Choppy misty gray gloom ones when there are almost no people. Pinky orangey sunset ones that make her want to sit by a fire and listen to music. She tries to choose the perfect one.
She thinks hard about hot dry sand on her feet and endless breezes tickling her face with her own hair. About the sound of kids and seagulls, the rush of waves coming in and the hiss going out, of tinny pop songs playing from radios lodged in the sand.
"Can we still talk?" she whispers.
"Yes."
"Is it working?"
"Kind of..." El answers slowly. "It is... in parts. Not all at once. You keep changing the sky. It's-" she makes a soft little gasp, and Max's eyes fly open.
"What?"
"I saw you," El grins, opening her eyes. "You were small. Playing with the sand. You were so cute."
"Oh," Max blinks. "Why wasn't I now-me?"
"I think you took me to a memory and not a... imagination."
"How do you imagine something without building it out of memories?"
El looks stumped. "Practice?" she shrugs, shutting her eyes. "Try again."
Max looks at her, almost ready to go along with it, but doesn't close her eyes. El is just trying to do something nice for her, something special that literally nobody else could, and not doing it now means never doing it at all, but she still can't quite muster it. Practicing an unmasterable skill isn't how she wants to spend her time.
"You're sweet, El," she says quietly.
El's eyes open and her shoulders deflate just a little as she sees they aren't trying again.
"I really hope, um.. future, you know.. not-dead-not-cursed me can go with you someday. But.. now-me isn't really up to it," she smiles apologetically.
El nods understandingly. "What do you want to do?"
Max bites her lips together.
"I..." Her eyes, going warm again, skirt the room out of habit. But she should quit doing that. It's a waste. She picks her wet gaze up like a wayward kitten by the scruff of the neck and puts it back on El. "I just want a soft place."
The smile El gives her is so loving and so sad at the same time she's surprised a face can show all of both. "Max." She gives her a soft tug, moving them up to get on the bed.
El opens her arms, and Max gratefully crawls up alongside and fills them, wrapping herself into El even more tightly than the other night.
She exhales, spending a few long moments doing nothing but savoring the feeling of El's arms wrapped securely around her, and trying to convince her body to relax into it. It does no good to be on guard anyway.
Cool and soothing fingers move up her nape, starting to massage lightly at the base of her skull. Her eyes slide shut.
This feels so nice. Nicer than the other night, because this time she knows it's intentional, and it's just for her. It touches something in her, a want of tenderness which she hadn't realized she felt so badly until getting it makes her lashes brim with tears.
And it would be okay if she cried. She doesn't have to speak. She wouldn't have to hide it. And if it made her hurt, El would fix it.
El slides off Max's scrunchie and begins brushing her hair down her shoulders with a hundred lazy strokes of her fingers. Max focuses on the sensation, halfway relaxing in the quiet. No tears fall.
"What would you do?" Max asks after a while.
"What?"
"If you could do anything."
"Hm." El thinks for a minute. "See places, maybe. You're right, I have only seen Hawkins. There are such different looking kinds of places.. mountains and islands and big cities. I would like to see some of that."
This girl spent twelve years looking at tile walls and she pronounces the s in "island" and she deserves the world. Max smiles. "I hope you get to."
"Will you come too? After the ocean? It would be more fun with you. Everything is."
Her smile is a complicated one. "Totally."
El's fingers trace a dozen more paths through her hair.
"I meant to write you a letter," Max murmurs.
"You did."
"A long one. With feelings and stuff."
"You wanted to spend tonight close to me. I would not rather have the best letter."
Max smiles, a real one, and is quiet for a while.
And it's easy now. It's so easy:
"I love you."
El's chest moves in a little bit of a labored way, Max thinks, and tightens her hug before she responds. "I love you, too."
Max smiles again. "Can you get the light?" The dark would be a relief on her eyes.
El clicks it off without moving.
They don't talk anymore, but it's not really because Max expects to sleep. Just to rest.
It's the most lovely and most horrible night she's ever spent.
Heartbeat a battering ram against her ribs, that awful anxious sensation of hot and cold at the same time, the kind of bleary half-sleep that's only more tiring. She's both suffering and savoring every minute. Her jacket's still on and it's making her far too warm, but she doesn't dare give up the position. It feels like Vecna wouldn't be able to pry her out of El's arms.
For hours she bobs at the surface of consciousness, each descent towards sleep leading straight into the beginnings of nightmares that make her go twitchy and whimpery. Soft whisperings and soothing motions up and down her back wake her just enough to soak in a sense of safety, and she quiets and relaxes and slides under again. Repeat. Repeat.
It must be past the middle of the night when Max breaks the surface and sits up abruptly in El's bed, roasting hot and finally frustrated at the tease of sleep.
She unzips her coat and struggles out of it like it's a straitjacket. Her shirt is damp with sweat where they've been pressed together, and she tugs at it to fan herself. That couldn't have been pleasant for El, either.
Apologizing and excusing herself, Max pads down the hall to the bathroom. She pulls off her shirt, wanting to let the night air at her skin, and maybe splash some water on herself. When she turns to shut the door, she jumps at El's unexpected silhouette in the doorway.
"Oh-" she says awkwardly, but El doesn't turn the light on.
"Oh."
They both stand there for a second, Max wondering what she's doing here until she realizes that El is taking her promise to stay near quite literally.
"I was just gonna cool off a little," she whispers.
"Can I..?" El asks, and while Max tries to figure out what that means, El ushers her a step towards the tub and pats on its rim.
Max sits.
It's too dark to see practically anything, so it doesn't really matter about her shirt. Of course, El wouldn't even care if she was stark naked with the lights on. If she learned one thing in the Gap fitting rooms, it's that El has not a shred of shyness about that sort of thing.
There's the sound of El knocking something over by the sink and trying to quiet it quickly - a smile tempts Max's mouth - and then running the faucet for a moment, and the squishy sound of probably a washcloth being wrung.
Max holds out her hand for it when El sits next to her, but El pats out her location in the dark and puts it to her temple instead.
"Oh," she says at the pleasant coolness. She doesn't really need this done for her, but it's nice, so she sits still and lets El press the cloth around her face and her neck as if trying to bring down a fever.
But Max's focus falls to El's other hand - the one El rests on her shoulder blade.
It isn't anything, but simply there being skin beneath El's hand instead of shirt makes this the most intimately Max has ever been touched.
Or will ever be, she realizes.
Not that she had anything on her to-do list any time soon, but she guesses intimacy is one of the things she's disappointed never to experience. It intrigues her, because she's fifteen, and scares her, because she's fifteen. Someday it would have been nice to share everything with someone and have it not end in disaster. She's tried to believe that's possible, anyway. Maybe never finding out otherwise is as good as being right.
But maybe that's what all of this is. Not "intimacy" like how Mom's magazines mean it, but intimacy like how the dictionary means it - warmth and closeness. That's not scary. And she hasn't missed out on it totally.
She finds that she likes El's touch on her skin, in a calming way. Like those babies at the hospital that people have to volunteer to hold, who need to feel skin or hear a heartbeat or whatever it is. She's certainly not going to try to articulate that thought, but if anyone could understand, it would be El.
She wonders if anybody ever held El when she was a baby. It makes her eyes go wet again.
The girl's past is still so much of a mystery to Max. She stares at the dark shape next to her and wonders if she ever knew a moment's happiness as a kid. Ever laughed.
El's future is just as big a mystery. She's never asked her about it, because Max hates being asked what she wants to do with her own future, because she has no idea. Considering they're best friends, they actually know fairly little about each other. They've had so short a time together. And even of that, she's squandered so much.
El gathers her hair up and cools the back of her neck.
"I wish things were different."
"I know," El says softly.
"I mean for you," Max adds, met with silence. "Were you ever happy? Before?"
"For a long time I didn't know there was happy," El answers after a moment. "I didn't know to miss it."
Max sighs.
"I've never actually told you I'm sorry about.. everything. 'Cause I don't know how to say that, and maybe you hate to be told that. So.. sorry if this isn't the right thing to say, but... I wish you got to be... some average kid, you know? You're awesome the way you are, but like... I wish you didn't have to be. I wish you never had powers and only ever heard of 'em in comics... and that the worst thing you had to worry about was homework. I wish you had embarrassing parents and annoying sisters and grew up playing tag on the playground..." She wipes her wet lashes. "And I wish we were best friends the whole time."
There's a sniffle in the quiet, and El hugs her.
The amount of contact takes Max by surprise for a second before she closes her arms tight around El.
She feels El rest her cheek on her shoulder, lift it, brush Max's hair away, and rest it again.
"But as it is.. I hope um. I hope you get to be happy, El. Really happy. Like, good stuff that's better than the bad stuff was bad."
"You're my favorite part of it," El says, her words warm against Max's collarbone. "The good stuff."
Max smiles, actually quite honored. Lots of people would say that just to be nice, but not her. "You're mine, too."
Max makes the hug a very long one. The warmth of El's shirt feels good on her chilly skin, as do El's palms pressed flat to her back. It's also a really uncomfortable position, but that's not important. This hug is for El, and Max is trying not to let herself start to shiver, not wanting to cut it short.
El knows soon enough anyway, running her hands down the backs of Max's goosebumpy arms. "Cold."
"Yeah."
El drops her rag in the tub with a splat. "Let's go to bed." She hooks Max's fingertips in her own and leads her back to her bedroom.
There's the wooden squeak of a drawer, and a folded shirt is nudged into her hand. She puts it on and it's big and soft and thin-worn.
"Hey, um," she pauses short of climbing into bed, patting in the dark for the space to El's left. "Can I be on this side?"
El moves over. "You sleep better on your right?"
"No. I wanted.. um," she gives her molars a squeeze for the nerve to admit it. "I wondered if I could hear your heartbeat."
"Oh," El lets her settle into her left shoulder. "But.. that is not where my heart is," she says with a twinkle in her voice, as if Max is endearingly stupid.
"Well, I.." Max scoots her head a little lower to El's chest, taking a couple of tries to get situated and smiling when she finds the soft thump beneath her ear. "Is this okay?" she asks, new to - well. cuddling. this is called cuddling - and hesitant about the weight of her head and whether El is comfortable.
"Very okay." El rests her hand across her head, pressing lightly to make Max entrust it to her.
Oh, that's the good shit. She closes her eyes with a silent sigh, sandwiched between comforts.
"Can you hear it?"
"Mm-hm."
"What is it doing?"
Max isn't sure whether she's asking, like, figuratively, but that's the only way she can think to answer.
"Saying you're here. We're both here."
No wonder babies like this. It's hypnotically comforting. Maybe it reminds her of being small. Of long enough ago that everything wasn't shit, or maybe it was and she just didn't know it yet, and she could still be made to feel safe this way.
"Like it when you do that," she murmurs.
"Do what?"
"Your hand."
"Mm," El presses softly. "I like it too."
The steady metronome of El's heartbeat has a calming effect on her jittery one. Like if she listens long enough, maybe they'll sync. For a long time, that's all she does is listen.
"I change my answer."
"Hm?"
"The ocean. That wasn't my real answer," Max confesses. "Can I tell you the truth? Even if it's kinda.."
"Always."
"If I could do anything, after. Like.. anything..." Saying stuff like this out loud doesn't come easily, especially not with the lump that rises in her throat, but El's fingers tracing through her hair help encourage her. "It would be this."
"Max," El sighs, pressing her cheek to Max's head.
"Just like this. Except you wouldn't have to protect me anymore. And we could both sleep. For as long as we want. I wouldn't have to get up and go home. I could just... sleep and sleep," she murmurs, leaking a hot tear onto El's shirt. It's not a very ambitious use of a wish, but she means it in all sincerity. How luxurious it would be if all nights were sweet and healing, and not just her last one. "I could sleep for a week every night, with you."
"Let's. Please let's," El answers into her hair. "You can always come. Any night. Every night. Just come. Or I can come to you."
"Okay," she sighs.
"Tomorrow night."
Max smiles wistfully. "Tomorrow night."
It's going to start to get light out soon, too late to really sleep. No surprise. She didn't expect to anyway.
But with El's heartbeat for a pillow, she finally does.