WHAT: Eleven gets detention thanks to starting a telekinetic fight with a bully, and Mike walks her home WHERE: On the way to Foxway WHEN: Today, close to the evening WARNINGS: BULLIES STATUS: Complete
It wasn’t that she wasn’t trying. She tried. She really did. After enduring several conversations about her temper, about how she needed to work on articulating her feelings, about how violence wasn’t always the answer, she tried. Most students here weren’t too awful. It had taken a while for her to figure out the whole passive aggression thing, and she knew better than to seek out friendship with girls that to her consistently.
Instead, she focused more on her actual friends. Max, and Dustin, and Katou. Kamala was nice, too. Then there was Mike, and he was perfect, and she loved meeting him at his locker. She loved slipping notes into his locker (not the best penmanship still, but typing on the network and the gift that was autocorrect helped improve her writing tenfold). She loved having lunch with him and their friends, and sometimes there were bad, frustrating days with classes and teachers but she was not alone. That was important. This was the experience she wished she had back home.
But then, there was Tristan. He usually left Eleven alone. Her friends, though, were not spared, and she did not like that. “I’m just joooooooooking,” he would say after being caught using his telekinesis for a prank.
“It’s not a big deaaaaaaal,” he would add.
Then the infamous, “You can’t prove I did it, they’re probably just clumsy!”
But the one that was the most bullshit of all was, “Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out my powers! It was an accciiiddeeeeent!”
Eleven had tried. She had tried so hard and for so long to bite her tongue. To keep her hands to herself. Her last encounter with a bully did not end in her favor, and the experience kept her hesitant to intervene. What if she went too far again? If she got arrested–again? Who would be mad at her? Would she get kicked out of school? The concerns kept her behavior in check, until one lunch period when Mike was walking towards their table, and she just saw the sneer on Tristan’s face, and the next thing she knew?
Mike had ‘tripped.’ He landed on his face, and Eleven had even heard the impact. That was when she was done. That was when she stopped trying. Chin canted towards her chest, her eyes hardened and her hand rose.
Then her nose bled.
Lunch that day became a telekinetic brawl. Eleven flung Tristan across the cafeteria, and instead of cowering in submission, he fought back. Tables were flipped (one even went through the window), lightbulbs shattered, chairs were being tossed around. Things broke, and Tristan’s friends tried intervening but couldn’t–thank you, Katou– and then they were all separated by adults.
By the end of it, it wasn’t just Eleven’s nose that had bled. Tristan had thrown trays at her like disks and one hit her enough to bust her face up; a cut lip, a swollen eye. They’d been brought down to the office, interviewed, and what El thought would become a big thing turned out to be detention for a week.
(Vallo was used to teenagers with powers. Destruction was their norm, and a spell had reverted the cafeteria into tip-top shape again. Any injuries sustained were fairly minor and were offered treatment but Eleven was too snappy and stubborn and wanted to keep fighting.)
Hopper was not going to be happy.
“I think he is going to ground me,” she said with a deep frown, thumbs hooked underneath the straps of her backpack as they walked side-by-side. Mike had stayed to wait for her after detention (a punishment that began that day), and she was still very much in such a mood that it was probably best it was only Mike. “But I do not regret it. Fuck Tristan.”
There, she said it: Fuck. Tristan.
“Fuck Tristan from here to the ice planet Hoth,” Mike agreed. The black eye he’d gotten doing a facer on the cafeteria terrazzo had been healed by the school nurse, but he hadn’t forgotten what it felt like. It wasn’t like this was the first time Tristan had messed with him, either. That guy was an asshole every single time he remembered there were kids with no powers or magic at this school. As far as Mike was concerned, Tristan had that blowback coming and deserved every hit he took. Mike hated that El was going to be in trouble for it, but he was thankful nonetheless.
That continued to strengthen her resolve. Yes, Fuck Tristan, and he deserved what he got, which was a little worse than what she ended up with but she’d argue he needed another hit in the face after he tried to chalk it all up to accidents and clumsiness.
“I should have done something sooner,” she exhaled, shoulders slumping. “People always tell me that you should talk things out with your bullies. I do not think that is true in some cases. Does your face feel okay?”
“Yeah, Miss Penelope fixed it.” Mike stepped in to put an arm around El’s shoulders, hoping he could perk her up a little with that. “And people who say talk things out with your bullies never had any. It’s not like bullies just don’t get that actually, they’re being assholes. Trust me, we’ve had some bully or another since kindergarten. We don’t count as people to them, so they don’t care what they do to us or how we feel about it. Talking just makes it worse.”
Eleven could attest to that. One of her earliest memories with Mike was dealing with his bullies, and how they threatened him and Dustin at knifepoint and dared him to walk off the ledge. The other subjects back in the lab weren’t always nice to her. They had jumped her at one point and could have killed her. But that was also how things were there; she could understand why things were hostile there. There were consequences to disappointing Papa. Everything was a competition to get into his good graces.
In regular school, she didn’t get it much. People tried to explain to her the social hierarchy of school but that… also meant very little to her.
Abandoning her backpack strap, her arm went to tighten around his waist and she kissed his cheek. “I will fight all of our bullies,” El vowed. “Especially if they are like him. I think he is going after people who don't have any powers. They can’t fight back like he does.”
“Just remember sometimes it’s not worth it, okay?” Mike kissed the top of her head in turn. “Like, I get it, today he could’ve broken my nose with that bullshit, but when he’s just talking shit? Let it go. I don’t want to see you wear yourself out or get some kind of permadetention.”
“Talking shit leads to doing shit,” Eleven huffed, the muscles of her face all hardened and tense–until she felt the kiss. That softened her up. Mike was right. It wasn’t always worth it, but it felt good to be the one to shut them up. She sighed, all heavy and grumpy and relenting. “Okay. I will try. I just do not want to stand around and wait for them to… hurt you, or someone else either.”
“With any luck, you put the fear of El into him today and he’ll cut it out,” Mike said. A massive show of force could be pretty good for that, he figured. It didn’t always work, but hey, maybe Tristan had learned an important lesson about fucking with people without knowing who their friends were.
“I hope so. When I went up against other subjects like me–and won–that made them want to fight me more.” But she was older now, and her powers were more than they’d ever been. They also had parents and an actual school that would encourage them to not choose violence to settle their score. Eleven was sure she had to be on her best behavior now that the adults had their eyes on her; she did not want the attention.
Foxway was coming up, and with that came that dread about dealing with Hopper. He knew. The school had called him, and he was probably waiting for her so they could have a conversation.
El sighed again.
“Hopper is definitely going to ground me, isn’t he?”
Mike grimaced and thought it over. Would El’s cop dad loosen up on the cop rules for a case of a justifiable beatdown?
“...yeah, he’s definitely going to ground you,” Mike said. “But look on the bright side, at least we live in the same house now. He’s probably not gonna actually make you stay in your room or anything. Probably.”
Eleven’s face went through the phases of–what was that ‘gif’ people called? The Kombucha Girl? It was similar to that. The grounding part was not going to be fun. Being kept home would not be terrible because her people were there if Hopper went that route, and Mike was literally down the hall. It could be worse??
Maybe?
“Probably,” she echoed with a nod. El pulled away from him but only to hold his hand–she needed that as they approached the house. “I am going to go to my room. He will talk to me there. Wish me luck?”
“Good luck,” he said, “And let me know how it goes when you get out.”
Mike gave her hand a squeeze, then leaned down to give her a sweet kiss. If Hopper was feeling especially strict, it might be the last one they got without sneaking around for a little while. Or a long while. But for now, he’d just have to step back and hope El rolled a twenty.