The signs had started going up all around school: Vallo High Junior/Senior Prom, coming soon! Soon was some date in May, which didn’t seem that soon to Mike, but it was soon-ish, and he guessed if you had to get a dress and stuff, you needed more time to plan, and maybe to save money for it. It was easier for guys—tuxedos were all the same, basically, and flowers…how early did you have to order flowers? And you were supposed to go someplace nice for dinner before the prom, which he would need money for, and…okay, maybe this wasn’t as easy as he thought.
But before he started worrying about any of that, he needed to find out if El even wanted to go. Back home Eddie had always said prom was lame, a party for people who didn’t know how to party. El might agree—or she might want to put on a nice dress and do something different than their usual idea of “dates.” Mike wasn’t sure what he thought; his instinct was simultaneously saying “prom is not for nerds” and “I want to dress up nice with my girlfriend and do a high school rite of passage.” He definitely wanted to do whatever El wanted to do, but he didn’t want to suggest one and then have her think he was painfully uncool for even thinking that was an option.
So he waited until they were hanging out in El’s room reading comics and threw the idea out in the most neutral way he could think of, barely looking up from Biotic Commando issue 197.
“Kamala said the prom theme is Among the Stars. Kinda makes me want to show up in Commander Spock’s uniform.”
“So you want to – cosplay?”
Eleven looked up from her nails, painting them instead of little miniatures under a magnifying lens. Her smile was amused and kind, not one of judgment. Lately she’d been going through the motions of having this big house feel so empty without their people, and she didn’t dare suggest they pick up in move. They could always come back, and she wanted to have their rooms ready for them when – if – they did.
The hope felt pointless in the scheme of things. It was more likely that they wouldn’t come back, and she was trying to keep herself from counting down the days until she was alone without them.
She dipped the brush back into the bottle before sweeping it over an unfinished nail. “You would look hot.”
“You think?” Mike grinned, momentarily distracted from the prom quandary. “Actually, better idea: we go dressed as Han and Leia. You could totally rock the cinnamon buns.”
Now he was starting to seriously consider the idea of cosplaying the prom. They’d probably get a bunch of shit for it, but only from people who would give them a bunch of shit anyway. It might be fun to just revel in their complete weirdness.
“Maybe,” she hummed, pinching the ends of her hair to look at it. El’s hair had grown well, out of that awkward short phase and passing her shoulders. She might have also cheated with some fast-growing hair product (courtesy of Vallo’s magically infused products), but she was happy to have a lot of it again. “I would have to go to a salon to make it perfect. It could be fun.”
There was a certain appeal to getting pretty and dressing up that Eleven liked. She didn’t often do it. But she liked it.
“We talked about prom when Dustin was here,” she then added, quietly. “A little bit, anyway.”
Mike sobered at that thought. For a little while, they’d had a lot of their friends here. One by one, almost all of them had vanished. There was something lonely about it, just the two of them and Nancy rattling around in this big house. Now they were looking at prom, one of those big events of high school—one of the things he’d always assumed they’d be doing with Lucas and Max and Dustin and Will. It had been bad enough when the party got split between Indiana and California; now they were in different universes.
“It sucks that he’s not here,” Mike said. “It sucks that all of them aren’t here.”
“Yeah,” was El’s reply, and by now she sounded more resigned and less choked up by her feelings. She had cried a good bit after the disappearances, but Hopper’s name on the list hit her the hardest. It was a sucker punch to the heart, and her initial instinct had been to hide away in their cabin.
Until she remembered some guy was living there, anyway. Fitz was nice, and now she was his… landlord? Eleven tried not to think too hard about that.
“Would you want to still go?” she asked, chewing on her lip for a moment before tacking on, “even if it’s just going to be us and not the whole party?”
“Would you?” Mike asked. “Because I don’t want to go if you think it’s lame, but if you do want to go, I want to go. And it doesn’t have to be in costume, unless you actually did like that idea and weren’t just joking around. We could do it normal with dresses and tuxedos and stuff. Or we can say ‘fuck prom’ and dress up to go for a walk in the woods, or–”
He realized just a little too late that he was panic rambling. When he did, he stopped himself and grimaced. “Sorry. What I mean is, I want to do whatever will make you happiest, because I’ll be cool with anything I get to do with you.”
Eleven liked the panic rambling. Her tentative smile grew into a fully-formed grin, teeth exposed and her cheek dimpling. “I think I want a normal dress,” she admitted. “But I may do the buns, because I could rock it. I want to keep having a good track record with dances.”
They were older now. Less awkward, more comfortable in their own skin and more comfortable with each other. She wasn’t some secret that needed to be hidden immediately afterwards, and they could keep indulging in being normal teenagers in between Vallo’s moodswings. It was exactly everything she needed now.
“We can ride something cooler than a limo to prom. Like a wolf. I know people.”
“Oh man, that’d be cool as hell,” Mike said, already matching her grin. If El was happy, he was happy–and if they were riding a wolf to the prom, he was even more happy. And they did have a good track record with dances. Why not get one more in?
“Yeah, let’s do prom. Let’s do prom to the max. And, um…I’ll find someone who knows man fashion to help me figure out what I’m supposed to wear so I don’t embarrass you.”
That made El laugh. “You could wear a banana suit to prom and I would not be embarrassed,” she promised, although she did admittedly look forward to Mike dressing up all pretty for her too. She nestled in closer to him, shoulders touching, and her nails were surely dry enough to safely reach for his chin to shake. “You are a handsome string bean. Or a handsome banana if you go the banana suit way.”
They might not be the most popular kids at school, and that was fine. Prom wasn’t going to be some kind of super social event for them. It was just going to be their fun cliche night, and she was excited about it.
Mike laughed at getting called a handsome string bean and/or banana. El had a way of saying stuff like that so he didn’t feel self-conscious about it. She was always so sincere about it, clearly meaning the ‘handsome’ part as much as the ‘string bean’ part, and that made it work.
“Oh no, no banana suits here,” Mike insisted. “I’m doing this right, complete with James Bond tuxedo.” Then he remembered El wouldn’t know who that was and added, “He’s an English spy who’s always wearing a tuxedo for some reason.” Then English reminded him of Eddie’s old boss and his husband, and another thought popped out. “Maybe I can ask Mr. Laurence about clothes. He always looks sharp.”
“And I will ask Nancy,” El decided, and then a thought crossed her mind. “Unless she tells me to wear something that is from our decade.” Starcourt Mall definitely wasn’t going to be her prom dress shopping destination and she liked the more modern options. “And we can go to dinner before prom, right?”
It could be somewhere fancy or casual, El didn’t care. Happy Meal dinner or steak dinner, she’d be thrilled.
“Definitely, yeah,” Mike readily agreed. “Maybe we can go to that cat restaurant? The Canteen? That place is cool, but I think we can still afford it.”
Game shop money only went so far, especially if he was going to have to figure out tuxedo money on top of dinner. He thought he could swing The Canteen, though, and that place was undeniably festive. It was impossible to go there and have a bad time, he was pretty sure.
The Canteen was definitely a better option than a steakhouse and McDonalds when El really thought about it, and the more they tossed ideas around the more she was able to envision it. There was a lot of making out tossed in between what she was picturing which made it even better.
El linked her arm with Mike’s, squeezing it. “This prom’s going to be way cooler than what we’d have back home. If we even get a prom back home.”
Bringing up scenarios like we could die or Hawkins will probably be swallowed whole were things that would kill the mood, so - being extra for prom it was. Riding some kind of beast and then eating at a restaurant where the chef’s were all some kind of cat people were awesome experiences all around.
“Yeah, let’s not think about prom back home,” Mike said with a grimace. He leaned into El’s shoulder a little, working to banish the mental image of a vast crevasse of darkness and fire opening down the middle of Main Street. If they started down that road, they’d never come off it, and then they couldn’t go to prom because they’d be too busy worrying about the mess back home. They just had to believe that time was stopped back home and they could pick back up with saving the world whenever their time in Vallo was done.
…which was another thing he didn’t need to be thinking about. That someday, judging by what they’d seen of everyone else, their time in Vallo would be done. Mike didn’t know if he wanted that or not, but it was another thing to worry about that was so far beyond their ability to address. Worrying about it was a pointless exercise, so it was time for some more distraction.
“Actually, you wanna work on Vallo Village some more? We could paint the tavern and the general goods store today.”
Eleven was good not thinking about it. She’d take some moments of blissful ignorance, otherwise she’d drive herself mad with guilt, and despite missing their people they had a lot to look forward to. Prom was a serious deal. Maybe in a few years she’d think it was a little silly, but to experience the milestone meant a lot to her. And to experience it with Mike made it all that much better.
“Yep,” she answered him, pressing a kiss against his cheek. Working on their project was a good idea. El liked having a calm activity to do with him, and they’d done a lot of progress. “My nails are dry. You get paints and I will get drinks.”