November Feels
AN: This story is a little glimpse into the future, but also back into the past. Happy Mileven week everyone!
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or storylines of the Stranger Things universe.
The sound of little feet tapping over the floor echoed through the room and without turning around El recognized the approaching girl just from the way she euphorically ran down the stairs. Still El tore her eyes away from the salad that she had been preparing for dinner and watched her daughter racing down the remaining steps onto the ground floor of the Wheeler household.
It was a late Sunday afternoon in November, and they had been invited by Mike's parents to spend the day with them. While the women had been working in the kitchen and continuously chatting with each other, Ted had retreated to the living room, and Sara and her dad had gone upstairs to Mike's childhood bedroom to play a little.
"Mummy look!", Sara exclaimed excitedly, waving a piece of paper in her hands, "Look what I drew!"
El opened her arms to halt her running daughter and with a swift movement she picked her up and placed her on the kitchen island so that her short legs dangled from the cupboard. With a huge grin on her face, Sara held up the drawing to show it to her mother, who took the paper and examined the row of figures on it.
"See, this is you.", the girl pointed at a figure with brown, shoulder length hair, "And this next to you is dad. He is the tallest of us all of course. And then there is me."
"Okay, and who is that?", El inquired with a loving smile, as she moved her gaze from the group of three figures in the middle of the picture towards the people drawn to the left and right.
Sara just all too happily obliged, "These are grandpa Hop and grandma Joyce right here.", she indicated the figures with her index finger, "And grandpa Ted and grandma Karen are over there."
"Did I hear my name?", Karen interfered, who had quietly followed the exchange of her granddaughter and daughter-in-law up to this point, while she had worked at the stove.
She moved around the kitchen island and took place next to her son's wife. "Sara darling, this looks beautiful.", Karen exclaimed, impressed with her granddaughter's drawing skills, despite the simplicity of it.
"This is you!", the little girl pointed at the respective figure on the paper with obvious pride in her voice, "And this is grandpa in his La-Z-Boy."
El chuckled upon the small stick figure sitting on some kind of chair next to the taller person drawn in a triangular dress and a big perm. Also, Karen smiled and looking over to the living room, she saw her husband in the mentioned armchair, lightly snoring. "You have captured his essence very well.", she noted with a hint of mischief in her voice, that surprised El a little, as it wasn't something she heard often from the usually very collected older woman.
"I give it to you.", Sara stated without much explanation and handed the drawing to her grandmother.
"Oh really? This is for me?!", Karen asked delighted.
"Yes, mum already has a lot of drawings from me.", she stated, while El nodded her agreement upon the huge collection she had at home, "So this one is for you!"
Sara's grandma smiled at her lovingly, "Thank you, darling. I will put it right here on the fridge.", and she moved over to the device to pin the drawing with a magnet onto its door.
Turning back to the pots on the stove, she quickly worked her routine, before she addressed mother and daughter again, "Sara, will you get your dad from upstairs and wake up your grandpa? Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."
El picked up her daughter once more to put her back onto the ground, while the little girl replied, "Dad is not upstairs, he went to the basement."
"When did he go to the basement?", El interrupted in surprise, as she hadn't noticed her husband passing them in the kitchen during any time.
"Dunno.", Sara replied shruggingly, "He went there a while ago. He wanted to look for his old Supercom."
Still a little puzzled over the fact that Mike had come downstairs and had gone to the basement without her hearing him, El suggested, "Okay, let me see what takes him so long then. Why don't you wake your grandpa, and I will check what your dad is doing."
The girl nodded in confirmation and walked in direction of the adjacent living room, while El threw a bewildered glance towards Karen, who looked just as confused over her son's vanishment, before she moved to the nearby door that hid the staircase to the lower floor. As she came closer, she realized that the door was ajar and pushing it fully open, she now saw that the light was switched on.
"Mike?", she called from the top and receiving no reply, El descended the stairs. "Mike?", she asked again, but still no answer.
When she reached the basement, El let her eyes travel through the room, that was a lot more packed than she remembered it. There were piles of boxes with unknown content, and sorted out furniture, some that she recognized from years ago and other that she couldn't place right away. Through the masses of unused things, she couldn't detect Mike immediately, but finally her searching gaze fell onto her husband, who was seated on a couch at one end of the room. Paving herself a way through the chaos, she approached him and coming closer she realized it was the same sofa, as the one she knew from her first week in the basement. Mike sat in the middle of it, his shoulders slightly crouched, and his eyes fixed on something he was holding in his hands; he very obviously was lost in thoughts and didn't notice his wife moving in his direction.
When she stood right in front of him, El addressed Mike in a whispered tone, afraid to startle him, "Mike?"
At last, he looked up in astonishment over her sudden appearance. "El!", he exclaimed with confusion laced in his voice, "I haven't noticed you."
"I've thought so. ", she replied with a grin and moved to take a seat next to him. "What have you been up to down here?"
"I have been looking for the Supercom, as I wanted to show it to Sara, and while searching for it, I stumbled across this…", Mike mumbled, gesturing with his hand, which held something that looked like little snippets of paper.
With her interest aroused El inquired, "And what is that?"
Wordlessly Mike handed her two small cards and El studied them. In black letters it said:
Hawkins Middle School
Snow Ball '83
Entry Ticket $5
For a moment she thought these were the tickets for the Snow Ball, Mike and she had been to, but then she remembered that these were safely stored in a box at home, in which she kept things that held special memories or were dearly to her, like old Sara's hairband (the one Hopper gave her), a lot of letters from Mike, the promise ring he gifted her, multiple drawings from her daughter, but also some of her own ones and some that Will had made for her, Sara's first socks, a postcard from every vacation she had been on with Mike, and a lot of tickets to events such as prom or her first cinema and theatre visit.
Realizing this couldn't possibly be the same tickets as the ones she had at home, El studied the ones in her hands again, and after staring at them for a while, she suddenly gasped in surprise. "Mike…", she whispered, "These tickets are from 1983."
Her husband nodded and replied in an equally quiet tone, "Yeah, I have forgotten that I had those."
El looked up into his face, his dark eyes staring right back at her with an old sadness reflecting in them, that was engraved into the young man's being; deeply buried, but never gone. She was not entirely sure what to make of that, so she asked hesitantly, "I thought you only went to the ball the year after, the one that I went to as well."
"That's right.", he sighed. "But this little boy once hoped that the girl he liked would magically return to him, so he naively bought two tickets in case she would be back, and he could take her out just as he had promised. However, as it turned out she didn't return that year and so this little boy never went to that dance.", Mike explained as if he was telling a fictional story and not reciting some true events.
Understanding was dawning on El, as she pictured a lot younger version of the man next to her, buying tickets in hopes to keep a promise he had made to her. She put the tickets on the coffee table to take Mike's hands in hers instead, "I'm sorry…"
"Don't be. I got the chance to keep my promise; a bit later than anticipated, but I'm just glad you came back, and we shared this special night."
"Still, I wish you hadn't had to experience all this waiting, uncertainty, hoping for something that might never happen.", she mumbled, intensifying the pressure on his hands a little.
For a moment Mike didn't say a word and only looked at her, before a small smile graced his features, "It's part of our story, the good and the bad things, the ups and downs, every separation and reunion. But it all brought us here, to this place right now, and I wouldn't want it any other way."
Hearing his words, El smiled back at him, "Me neither. It wasn't always easy, even horrible at times, but I'm grateful for the chances we got and all the experiences we could share, including the Snow Ball… the one that we went to."
He lightly squeezed her hands in return, silently sharing her gratitude for the life they got to spend together. For a little while they sat there wordlessly with joined hands, purely enjoying the presence of the other one, before Mike asked, "Was there a specific reason you came down here?"
With his question El remembered, that the rest of the family was waiting upstairs, "Uhm yeah, actually I came to let you know that dinner is ready."
"Then we should better go before mum comes after us. It's not good to keep her waiting.", Mike sighed and rose from the couch.
Following his example, she stood up as well, but before she walked after Mike towards the stairs, El quickly picked up the tickets on the coffee table and stored them in her jeans' pocket; she wanted to put them into her box at home, where she kept all the little precious things.
They might not have gone to that dance, however, these two little papers symbolized a promise; one that had been made on a November night over a decade ago while she had been lying on a desk and he had held her hands, similar to the way she had held his hands the past few minutes; because that night he had not only promised to take her to a dance, but he had also promised her a life, and both promises he had kept.