306Hello, all! I know it's been awhile since I last updated and I apologize. Got some bad writer's block, then a poorly timed power outage, then more writer's block. Oh well. Enjoy chapter 11!
Mike awoke slowly and gradually the following morning. It was a lovely process. Subconsciously, his sleeping brain somehow remembered that it was a weekend, and as such, the waking up process was not sudden and frantic as was the tendency on school-day mornings. So instead of jerking awake with the dread that came with school already weighing on his chest, Mike was able to gradually, luxuriously slide into consciousness.
He first became aware of soft sunlight. It was trickling in through his bedroom window and pressing, ever so lightly, against his closed eyelids. It wasn't bright enough to be annoying, though, so he kept his eyes closed and took pleasure in allowing his mind to power on at its own gradual pace.
He next became aware of just how comfortable he was. He was so warm. His room was a perfect temperature, warm but not hot, and his blankets were comfortable but not crushingly heavy. And the girl sleeping next to him radiated a blissful heat from her small body—
Wait.
Mike's eyes flew open as memories of the previous night flooded back to him. The nighttime drive with the chief. Awkward but nice dinner. El, cute as hell in her pajamas. Going to bed in the guest room. El, sneaking in, suddenly all Little Miss Mischief. Inviting her to the Snowball. El, falling asleep with her head on his chest, vanilla-scented curls spilling across his torso. That had been nice — really nice. And the only downside was—
Shit.
Mike sat bolt upright. The movement was so sudden that El, jerked from her sleep, let out a little cry of surprise. He rubbed his eyes and turned to squint at the old analog clock on the nightstand. 7:31.
"El," Mike whispered urgently, grabbing his girlfriend's shoulder.
She groaned and turned over, shoving her face into a pillow.
"El, you have to wake up," he begged. "The chief'll be awake any minute."
She mumbled something into the pillow.
Mike frowned. "Huh?"
She mumbled again. Muffled by the pillow, it sounded vaguely like "uhguhs".
"Uhguhs," Mike repeated blankly. Then his eyes lit up with recognition. "Eggos?"
A nod. The pillowcase bunched and un-bunched with her head movements.
"You can have all the Eggos you want," Mike promised. He was starting to panic. He glanced at the clock again. Was Hopper awake yet? Mike couldn't hear him in the living room. Then again, maybe he was reading a newspaper or something quiet. He turned back to El. "Please, El, go back to your room for a few minutes. Just until Hopper's awake so he can see us come out of our separate rooms. Please, El, or we'll both be busted."
"Bust…busted?" El murmured, rolling onto her back. She blinked up at him blearily. "Mike?"
"Yeah, uh… hi." El was clearly not a morning person. Under any other circumstance Mike would have found this fact adorable, but he was currently stressing quite a bit about getting gunned down by an angry policeman.
"Busted…" El repeated, her voice distant; she almost sounded like she was still dreaming. "Busted… Shit!" In an unknowing parody of Mike's own reaction, she sat bolt upright, eyes wide with alarm.
Who taught her that word? Mike thought. It was immediately followed up with, duh, what other friends does she hang around? But, jeez, it sounded wrong coming out of El's mouth, for some reason.
"Yeah, shit," he agreed anyway.
"Gotta go, gotta go," El muttered frantically, wriggling free of the blankets. She jumped from the bed, sleep-tangled curls bouncing. One of her pajama pant legs had rolled up to the knee in the night, but she didn't notice. She started to bolt to the door, then stopped in her tracks, turned, trotted back to Mike, and kissed him quickly on the lips.
"Liked that," she said, smiling shyly.
He had to smile. "Me too."
She turned and twisted the doorknob, taking great care to make it slow and silent. Then she tiptoed out into the living room, allowing the door to quietly fall shut behind her.
Mike rushed to the door and pressed his ear to it, straining his ears. Was Hopper there? Were they found out? It didn't seem like it; he couldn't hear thing.
Then: the unmistakeable sound of a door creaking open.
Shit.
El was in the middle of the living room — halfway to her own room — when the door opened.
She froze mid-tiptoe.
A yawning Hopper came slowly ambling from his bedroom. His hair was sticking up at crazy angles and his old ragged shirt had dark patches of sweat under the arms. Clearly, he had just woken up.
The burly chief's titanic yawn ended. He sleepily smacked his lips, blinked away post-sleep bleariness, and stretched. Then his eyes alighted on El, staring at him with the wide-eyed expression of a deer in the headlights.
"Morning," he grunted, voice gravelly from disuse.
"M-morning," El squeaked, trying and failing miserably to look nonchalant.
Hopper looked her up and down. "You're up early," he commented, frowning. "I don't think I've ever seen you get up without being tempted by Eggos first."
El shrugged, trying not to let her racing heart show in her expression.
"The Wheeler kid must be one hell of a guy, to get you out of bed before noon," Hopper said, a half-smile cracking across his heavy-browed face.
"R-right," El agreed eagerly, nodding several times. Should have thought of that.
Hop snorted, amused, and shook his head. "How long have you been up?" he asked, striding toward the kitchen. He opened the pantry, stooped low, and pulled out a bag of coffee beans. Beer with breakfast was a no-no ever since El moved in. It had taken awhile to adjust, initially, but after a few weeks, he had grown to love his wake-up ritual of putting on a pot of coffee. The process of grinding the beans and steaming the milk, the heavenly aroma; it was a far better way to start a day than alcohol, he had to admit.
"Um… ten minutes," El picked randomly.
Hop turned and frowned at her. "You've been standing in the middle of the room for ten minutes?" he said skeptically.
"Yes," El said. Then she mentally hit herself. Stupid stupid stupid.
Hop snorted and shook his head again. The grizzled policeman was many things, but dumb was not one of them. He knew exactly what it was to be a kid. He knew how a mind worked at that age, and he knew the stupid shit that it liked to pull. There was a sense of invincibility that came with the underdevelopment of the teenage brain, and with it, a complete lack of evaluation of risks. The previous night, he had lain awake, chewing the ends of his overgrown mustache, staring at the chipped wood on the ceiling of his bedroom and thinking. Not worrying, necessarily — just thinking.
Even with Mike's hurried assurances, Hopper knew that teenagers would be teenagers. Mike and El were no exceptions; El's rebelliousness the previous night was proof of that. So, reluctantly, he had to accept that they'd try the same things any other teenage couple did. Not sex, necessarily, not yet — but everything that preceded it, surely: the late night calls, the sickeningly romantic love letters, poems, declarations, and gifts, the pushing for sleepovers… the sneaking into each other's rooms.
Hop had his suspicions. He wasn't certain, not by any means, but he had his suspicions. And he made his peace with it. He figured he had to, at this point; the alternative was living in a Cold War state with the girl who had become his daughter. And considering her unfortunate tendency to throw psychic tantrums when she didn't get what she wanted, that was not a position Hop wanted to be in.
So his new philosophy was this: El and the Wheeler kid could do whatever the fuck they dreamed of… as long they they didn't let him catch them.
He couldn't blame them for trying; given his own experiences as a teenager, it would be hypocritical as all hell. But he also was a father now, for the first time in years, and with that came responsibility and obligation to keep his daughter safe. And to bust her boyfriend if the need arose.
But this time… this time he'd let it slide. Partly because he had no proof, and partly because he thought they were kind of cute. Just a little. A tiny bit. Barely. Not at all, actually. Nope. Definitely not.
The door to the guest room creaked open and Mike himself stepped out, already dressed. His hair, sticking up in a thousand different directions, seemed almost a mirror image of El's, apart from the color. He yawned hugely — implausibly hugely.
Almost looks fake, Hopper thought dryly.
"Morning, everybody," Mike said — though 'said' was perhaps being generous. It came out more as a croak, as if Mike had spent the night inhaling smoke.
Or, maybe, as if he was faking a groggy voice.
Someone would have to teach the kid that trying too hard only it makes it all the more obvious.
"Morning," El parroted, smiling at Mike a little too widely. Hop glanced at her in time to see her follow up her greeting by mouthing, big and obvious: I don't think he knows.
Hop heaved a sigh and started to grind the beans.
He had to go into the station after breakfast. The kids announced that their friends were coming over, leaving Hopper feeling oddly scandalized. His cabin was barely his anymore. He maintained a little dignity by gruffly making them promise to be good. Then he was off.
It wasn't a particularly intensive day. It never really was, in Hawkins, not unless some otherworldly demon had shattered the wall of reality and forced its way into the human world to eat some kids and ruin some evenings. But you know. Apart from that.
Hop mostly passed the time by playing ping-pong and shooting the shit with Powell and Callahan. He tried to hide a cigarette from Flo, but the woman apparently had superpowers almost akin to El's; she tracked him down and yanked the little roll of paper and tobacco from his lips with a disapproving glare.
He got home a little after eight and holed up in his bedroom, turning on the radio to block out the noise of the six laughing teenagers in the living room. He eventually managed to doze off. By the time he woke up, the kids were gone — Mike included, this time. At least he knew better than to try his luck two nights in a row.
He groggily trekked to the kitchen to get dinner ready, only to find El waiting for him. She was sitting on a tall rickety stool by the counter, legs swinging a foot above the ground. It made her look bizarrely young; more like a six year old than a thirteen year old.
"Hey, kid," he mumbled tiredly. "Hungry?"
She nodded, avoiding his gaze.
He frowned at her. "What's up?"
El opened her mouth, then closed it. Opened it again, closed it. Hopper was about to repeat his question when she finally spoke, the words tumbling out in a rush.
"Can I go to the Snowball with Mike?"
Hop blinked. "Can you— what?"
"The Snowball," El repeated. "School dance."
"Yeah, I know what it is," Hop told her, rubbing his jaw. He had gone every year in his own high school days. It felt like a lifetime ago. "No, you can't go."
Her brows contracted over her eyes and her jaw took the stubborn set he had become so familiar with. "But why?"
"You know why," Hopper said flatly. "It's a risk. Risks are stupid. And we're—"
"Nobody would see me," El argued. Her fingers were tapping angry, erratic patterns on the countertop.
"We can't risk it," Hop said. "Listen, kid, I already granted you permission to go out with your friends. I just let you have a sleepover. Don't push it." His tone said that was the end of the conversation, but El would not back down so easily.
"I went outside," she reminded him. "Alone. To the school. Walked past people. Nobody recognized me."
"Yeah, except that mother and her kid who called my department on you because you made their swing set do flips," Hopper said, his voice rising.
El had the grace to blush. "I was stupid," she admitted. "Won't use my powers this time." She tried a different tactic: lifting the glare, she instead made her eyes big and round and pleading. "Promise," she added.
Hopper looked away pointedly. No way in hell was he going to let her tempt him with puppy eyes.
"Mike said there's a lot of people," she said. "He said…" She screwed up her brow, trying to remember his exact words. "He said I'll just be another kid, so nobody will think twice when they see me."
Hop rubbed his jaw again. He had to admit that was pretty sound logic. After all, what were the chances government agents would show up to a school kid's dance? "Well…"
"Please?"
Goddamn her stupid puppy eyes. How the hell did she make them so big? "I'll think about it," he conceded reluctantly.
Her face broke into a wide, crooked-toothed grin. "Thank you!"
"Don't thank me yet," he warned. "I'm not making any promises, you hear me? I said I'll think about it."
"Okay!" she said, but her grin stayed.
El knew when she had him beaten. She couldn't wait to tell Mike.
Let me know what you thought! Thanks for reading and happy new year to all! Hope everyone had a great time last night, and I wish you all a fantastic 2018. See you next chapter!