WHAT: Mike struggles with having to learn Vallo from scratch, and Eleven commiserates WHERE: Foxway (the door's open THREE INCHES HOP) WHEN: Before Will disappeared WARNINGS: Nah, it's fluffy STATUS: Complete
Mike was used to school being hard in a social sense. He’d been a nerd all his life. Even before his interests started heavily diverging from his classmates, they’d known he was not One of Them. He didn’t know how, but they knew. Too passionate about dinosaurs at age five, maybe? Preferring the math blocks in the classroom corner to playing tag at recess? Maybe the popular kids could just smell nerds or had some kind of Star Trek alien sixth sense especially for spotting targets for bullying. He’d have to ask Steve about it sometime, since Steve had done his Vader-Skywalker good guy turn.
What Mike was absolutely not used to was school being hard academically. Not that his classes at Vallo High were terrible; it was just that for once, he actually had to study. Math was still the same, but physics had a few extra things to consider, and then history and literature were both just completely foreign. He couldn’t just pay attention in class and then stroll in for the test and destroy it here; he had to actually reread the passage to remember things, and it sucked.
“This sucks,” he announced, flopping back on El’s bed with a dramatic sigh. The door to her room was open its usual three inches, of course, but this time “studying” was actually studying. Studying was more fun when it was just making out with a book in the general vicinity.
“Mmhm,” El hummed out in response, doing very little to fight a knowing smile. There was no need to look up right away; she felt the mattress drip, and could already picture how exasperated he looked in her mind’s eye. She didn’t enjoy studying. It was a necessary evil if she wanted to acclimate to the world around her, though - so she tried. Some days required more effort than others but having everyone around her again was a good motivator.
This had been what she wanted - normalcy with her friends. She wanted to attend the same school and experience lunches in the cafeteria (with the fabled mystery meat) with them. She wanted locker visits, and to sit next to them in classes, and even wanted to know what it was like to do homework with them. She experienced that a lot with Katou and it was nice.
Was school still awkward sometimes and insanely difficult? Yes. El couldn’t undo almost an entire lifetime of lab upbringing by going to school for a few months. There were embarrassing moments she wished her friends (especially boyfriend) wouldn’t be there to witness but she trusted them, and they would never mock her for how she struggled.
After finding an answer for her homework in a textbook, she set it aside and tilted her head back against her bed to peer at him from the floor. “What class is it?” Wait, was that amusement? On her face?
It was.
“Literature and Composition.” Mike sighed dramatically and made another flopping motion–forearm over the eyes this time, his dark curls spilling behind him like a beautiful dead woman in a Renaissance painting.
A Renaissance he knew about at home, but which did not happen here, which was just one of many little issues of context that created problems when trying to keep up in a new world’s high school English class. Composition was no problem; Vallo did at least have more or less the same principles of grammar and language and research methods. Literature, though…
“So we’re supposed to do an analysis of this poem, right? But they’re making allusions to stuff I don’t know, with metaphors based on stuff I’ve never heard of, and I’m just fucking lost until I look up fifteen different things.”
Had the irony of whom he was complaining to set in yet? It had not.
Eleven was listening, and nodding, and acting like she was processing his words for greater understanding. She also hoisted herself up onto the edge of the bed for a better view of these theatrics - that arm over the eyes? Nice touch. The fight to keep the smile tampered down was also a complete failure, how could she hide it.
“Wow,” she breathed out. El rubbed her forehead as if just thinking about the situation made her sweat. The mattress bounced a smidge when she flopped down next to him, eyes blinking up at the ceiling. “That sounds like a lot, Mike. Coming into a world where you do not know much and have to start from scratch? Wild.”
Had she mastered some sarcasm and slang while living here? Why yes, yes she had.
Right, now he got it. Mike peeked out from behind his dramatically thrown arm and narrowed his eyes. “You know, you could’ve stopped me, like…halfway through that complaining instead of just letting me sound stupid.”
Because now that it was pointed out (with fake-innocent sarcasm that honestly made him want to ditch the books and kiss El about a million times), of course it was dumb. That was literally every class El had ever been in. Practically every interaction she had ever been in with anyone outside their group, come to think of it. In retrospect, if Mike was going to whine about school suddenly not being a walk in the park, Will would have been a much better choice of audiences.
“Sorry I was being a self-absorbed dick,” he sighed.
El was not upset. She understood the frustration, and there was a part of her that was a little relieved her friends were on a more level playing field when it came to adjusting - even if you could argue she had almost a year on them, it was still a lot to acclimate to. Her patience was thin. And with all this new exposure to Vallo she had gotten, there were times where she still felt dumb.
“You were not,” she argued back with a grin, cheeks dimpling. Her head turned to the side to look at him. “I like hearing you rant. But - I understand. It is hard to learn if you are new to it. You should not be so hard on yourself.”
Reaching over, El gave his arm a playful little pinch. “Learning about Vallo is a lot more fun than learning about America. I think you will like it better, eventually.”
“Probably,” Mike agreed with a chuckle. He might be way behind, but he was still a quick study. Give him a little time (okay, maybe a little more than a little) and he’d be as competent at navigating Vallo and its school subjects as El was. Besides, here the supernatural only wanted to kill them occasionally, not all the time, and that was an improvement.
“And I have to catch up, if I’m gonna be any good for Project: Complete the Party,” he said. That was what he and Will had been calling their effort to reach Joyce, Jonathan, and Lucas and hopefully bring them to Vallo. If everyone they held most dear was safe on this magic island, they could all worry a lot less.
“How does…” Eleven’s brows furrowed in thought, attempting to use the whole context clues thing to piece it together. Complete the party as - their group? Their group that almost was complete aside from Lucas and the rest of Will’s family (her family, too). “How does Project: Complete the Party work?”
Could she help? She had spent the first few weeks in the forest stubbornly trying to create a hole in Vallo (lots of screaming, lots of telekinetic pushing) so she could open a doorway back home. It did not work. All she got were bloody noses, and a lot of adults trying to bring her food.
That last part was nice though.
“Mostly research, at this point,” Mike said with a grimace. “Will and I’re trying to learn everything we can about cross-dimensional travel. We know we don’t have the power to just rip open a portal and yank our people through, but we figure we can learn as much as there is to learn, and maybe find a way to apply it, or find a way that someone can apply it even if it’s not us. It’ll be a long haul, but we have to try, right? Lucas, Jonathan, Joyce…we aren’t the same without them.”
Oh. Research. Eleven didn’t consider herself smart enough to assist with research. She wouldn’t really know what to look for anyway; she was all brute force and impulse, the literal powerhouse of the group. But it was a good plan - even if it didn’t work, they were at least trying to do something to complete the group. “We are not,” she agreed with a deep inhale, lips set into a slightly serious line.
They all missed them but there were members of the party that missed them more. Lucas could have Max not confined in a hospital bed. Hopper missed Joyce a lot; he did not need to outright admit it. There was always a whole lot of – what was the word, pining? When it came to him with Joyce? Will’s family would be complete with his mom and Jonathan, and so would hers.
“Do you think it would take science?” El asked, nose twisting in thought. “Or magic? Or both. I know there are laboratories here, and libraries. There are the government people to ask, too. They seem nice. Not… murder-y like the ones back home. They never tried kidnapping people, I think.”
That meant they were okay, right?
“I don’t know what it’s going to take, so…yeah, probably asking anybody who’ll hear us out is a good idea,” Mike agreed. He flashed El a hopeful smile. “Want to help with interviews? You’ll probably think of some things to ask that I wouldn’t.”
He wasn’t worried about getting kidnapped here. They’d kind of already gotten kidnapped; what would be the point of a double-kidnapping? And if anybody here was murdery, they were hiding it really well. The main problem here seemed to be extremely capricious magic.
Mike had a lot more faith in Eleven than Eleven did in herself. She wasn’t sure what questions to ask, but having been here longer and being exposed to all sorts of new stuff (lots of magic, lots of science, all of it bitchin’) would have advantages. “Yes,” she answered, leaning in to kiss his nose. He had a lot of freckles on it; she made a mental note to count them all later. “I will also act as a bodyguard and threaten people if I have to. Not in a Bad Cop Way. In case someone tries to scam us. Pyramid schemes for Outlanders exist.”
Something about buying into - something that would eventually bring them back home. Someone tried to explain to her what it was before, and she didn’t really get it aside from the fact that it was, essentially, bullshit.
Mike hadn’t paid enough attention to the world of Tupperware, Amway, and Mary Kay to have any idea what a pyramid scheme even was. He was aware of scams as a concept, though, so he could appreciate the need for guarding against such things. Desperate people were good marks, and they were pretty desperate–and El was pretty great at seeing through bullshit.
The kiss on his nose made him smile, and Mike pushed himself up onto his elbows, finally abandoning his dramatic flop in favor of chasing a kiss. “You’re the best,” he said, giving her a quick peck on the lips. “And you’re really hot when you’re being scary.”
“You are the only one who thinks so and should think so,” El giggled, reaching up to push hair out of her face except - there was none to push out, it was just still a weird habit she wished she had. Most of her life with long hair and you’d think she would be used to this. But since that hand effectively did nothing, she redirected it to grab Mike’s hand so they could start getting up. “Come onnnn, we should get snacks. Our brains are very tired and I think we need cookies for energy. We can come back to this later.”
Or pass out on the couch, distracted by whatever everyone else was watching in the living room - she wouldn’t mourn not coming back in here to do the school thing.
“Good idea.” Mike didn’t have to be told twice—he got right up, holding El’s hand and pulling her after him. Cookies sounded a lot better than dragging himself through any more of this poem about the Dark Queen of the Winter Court. So did kisses, one of which he stole as soon as El was on her feet.
El kissed him back too, grinning against his lips since kissing wasn’t illegal at Foxway and the door was open three inches per her vow. “I did want to try these cookies Matthew recommended,” she said, happy and chatty - Mike always made her comfortable enough to where words spilled out, and even though her pronunciation was sometimes off he never corrected her condescendingly. “They are really weird, and I think one sleeve is supposed to taste like hot sauce, but…”
She tugged him along while their hands were locked, and she hardly let it go through the evening.