Geek on Fleek. PG-13, romance/fluff, modern-day AU, Mike/Eleven.
"You are never going to find someone if you just sit there and wait for Mr. Right to come in through the door, Jane. Sometimes you have to take the initiative, you know? Put yourself out there. Grab the bull by the horns."

Note: This is a modern-day AU, and thus completely unrelated to any of my previous stories in the Quiet Moments series. Just wanted to make sure that's clear so there's no confusion. Also, El's powers, as well as any Upside Down elements, do not exist in this story.

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El took a deep breath as she raised a hand to knock on the door, hoping against hope that this was the right dorm room.

She knew Mike lived in Levy Hall because he'd mentioned it during one of their phone conversations, and that he was on the ground level because he often complained about drunk people making noise outside his window while he was trying to sleep or study. There were four units in that floor, though, and she wasn't sure which one was his, so she was going to assume the one that was labeled "Party Central" right under the unit number was theirs, and hope for the best.

(Because "party" as in a Dungeons & Dragons party. Get it? Because that was apparently a thing in the game the four of them loved to play.)

She knocked and waited, praying that it would be Mike on the other side, but just hoping that if she got it wrong, whoever opened the door wouldn't yell at her. It took a bit, but after a minute or so, a guy about her age with brown hair parted to the side and a polite smile opened the door. He also had a cast on the lower half of his right leg and was propping himself up on crutches.

"Hi, is Mike here?" she asked tentatively, though admittedly a bit less nervous since the guy didn't seem to mind her knocking at his door. "Mike Wheeler?" she clarified, just in case there were any other Mikes on this floor.

"Ah, um, he's not home right now," the guy replied easily, not seeming bothered by her sudden presence at his dorm. "He's probably on his way back from work."

"Oh," El said, taking her cell phone out of the pocket of her bookbag to check the time. It was 5:37. She knew Mike worked until 5 pm on Thursdays, so she figured she'd find him home if she stopped by a little after five. Clearly she'd underestimated the time it took to get from the electronics store to his dormitory, or maybe he just had to make a pitstop somewhere along the way. Either way, she would have to stop by later.

The guy, who she now assumed was Will, Mike's third roommate, was still staring at her, his smile now slightly warmer. "You must be El," he stated with a grin, and she was about to ask him how he knew that, but then she remembered that Dustin and Lucas had told her that Mike spoke about her all the time, so it should be no surprise that Will knew about her, too.

She nodded, hoping she wasn't blushing. "You must be Will," she retorted, giving him a warm smile right back. She had now officially met all of Mike's best friends, and she thought that was really cool. She liked to tease him that he had met all her friends (aka, just Max) before he met her. Now they were even.

Will laughed. "I am. What gave me away?" he asked, lifting one of his crutches slightly in jest. After all, how many other friends of Mike's were there out there with broken legs? There could only be so many bicycle accidents around Mike before his life started looking like a Final Destination movie.

"If you want, you can just wait for him inside," Will suggested helpfully, pointing behind him with his thumb. "He should be back soon." El accepted his offer, relieved both because Will seemed like a nice guy and because she wouldn't have to go elsewhere and come back later. That would have been a pain.

As Will led her inside she took notice of the layout of the place. It was bigger than most dorms she'd seen when she first visited the campus with her dad before her freshman year, more of a dorm suite than a room, although she didn't know if she would characterize it as big, per se, because even though it had something of a "common room," it was still tiny compared to the living room in her own apartment.

On each side of the common room there was a door, two of them total, which she assumed led to the bedrooms. Directly in front of the front door, pushed up against the window, there was a desk, which apparently came with one of those cheap ergonomic-in-name-only chairs. In the wall between the desk and the door to El's right there was a minifridge on the floor and a small three-level bookshelf right beside it. On the opposite wall there was a small table that looked like it was supposed to be for eating, but she didn't think they used it much for that purpose, given that the tabletop was cluttered with a small microwave oven, an electric kettle, and a 4-slice toaster. A bright red bean bag was shoved under the table, and two plastic chairs were stacked together and pushed against the wall beside the table.

"You can wait for him here," Will said, signaling to the table. "Would you mind pulling out a chair? It's hard to do with the crutches—" El hurried to help him out, not wanting him to bother on her account. Soon enough they were both sitting down by the table, El looking down at the time on her cell phone again as Will played with the electric cord of the water kettle.

"So," Will started pluckily after a minute or so of only slightly awkward silence, "Mike told me your dad is from Hawkins. Jim Hopper, you said?" El blinked, not expecting that to come out of his mouth of all things, but assented regardless. Will grinned. "You know, I think my mom knows him."

"Oh wow, really?" El replied, now grinning enthusiastically herself. Her dad didn't talk much about his childhood or his hometown, so it would be really fun if she could learn a little about the people he grew up with, his family, what he was like when he was a kid. "That is so cool. What's her name?"

"Joyce Byers," Will relayed, "although he probably knew her by her maiden name back then." He leaned forward as much as his outstretched injured leg allowed him to, stage-whispering to her in an almost conspiratorial manner, "I think they may have dated in high school."

"No way!" El retorted, sure that her eyes were as large as plates. "Oh, wait until I call dad tomorrow. I'm gonna squeeze him for all the details." She shook her head as she laughed. "I can't believe I didn't know about this!"

"Whatever you squeeze out of him, let me know," Will requested eagerly. "Mom got all babbly when I asked her about it, and she only gets like that when she's really flustered." He smirked. "I think whatever happened between them must've been really intense—"

Whatever words he'd been about to use to qualify their parents' teenage relationship got interrupted as the front door opened and Mike came in, a red beanie on his head and his messenger bag slung across his long torso.

"Hey, Will, are we running out of instant ramen? I could—" He cut himself off when he realized Will wasn't alone. "Oh. El, hey. I didn't... I didn't know you were stopping by today..." he said as he closed the door behind him, standing somewhat awkwardly in front of them.

El was just about to explain her reasons when Will spoke up again. "Geez, Mike. It's not always about you, you know?" he quipped with a teasing grin. "El and I were just working out our Parent Trap scheme to get our parents together."

She knew Will was just joking, of course, but just the mere idea of trying such a thing was hysterical, so she burst out into laughter. Mike obviously didn't get it, though, because he looked between them both with the most befuddled expression El had ever seen, and uttered, "What."

"It's a long story," Will said with a chuckle, "I'll tell you later." His intervention gave El time for her laughter to die down, and when she was able to breathe normally again, she was able to pull the DVD case out of her bookbag.

Mike's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh. Yeah, that's cool," he said, understanding her intentions straight away. He took off his messenger bag and set it down on the desk, El's gaze following as he moved about the room. "Um, well, Dustin and Lucas are at the library working on a project for their Mechanics class, so they probably won't get back until late, but Will—"

"—will make himself scarce," Will finished the sentence for him before Mike could, El suspected, invite him to watch the movie with them. Balancing his weight against the table, he pushed himself up to his feet— erm, to his good foot, at least— and grabbed his crutches. "I have to work on an assignment for Conceptual Drawing, anyway, so I'll just be in my room."

He made his way to the door of his bedroom and opened it with a practiced ease that El wasn't sure she would be able to manage were she the one on crutches. "Have fun, you two. It was nice to finally meet you, El!" he added with a bright smile, which El reciprocated before he tipped his door closed with one of his crutches.

Mike had been following Will's departure with his gaze as well, and when the door closed, he turned to El with a slightly embarrassed expression. "I swear I don't eat instant noodles for dinner every night," he said sheepishly.

El couldn't help but chuckle. "Mike, my favorite food is frozen waffles. It's fine." She looked at the door behind which Will had disappeared. "Friday classes?" she asked, nodding in the direction of Will's door curiously.

"Will? Nah," Mike shrugged. "But he's in Visual Arts so he's always got some kind of art project going on. He'll lock himself in there with his headphones on for the rest of the night while he draws." He grabbed his bag off the desk and signaled for her to follow him. "Come on. Watching movies out here is super uncomfortable, so I usually just watch them on my laptop in my room. We can do that if it's okay with you."

"Sounds good," she agreed, shouldering her bag and following him into his room, which she noticed was barely big enough to fit two twin beds, each one pushed against the wall opposite the other, and one large(-ish) dresser with two columns of drawers on the wall directly opposite to the door. There was no bathroom to be seen, as it was probably communal, one for each floor of the building. El could never wrap her mind around the idea of sharing a bathroom with a bunch of strangers; that was one of the main reasons why she begged her father to help her get an apartment off-campus rather than stay at the dorms.

She knew Mike and Lucas shared a room because Mike had told her the story of how they chose their respective roommates— namely that Dustin snored louder than a chainsaw and Will was the only one out of the three of them who was nice enough to be willing to share with him— so when Mike dropped his bag in a corner and sat down on one of the beds, she emulated him carefully. She didn't want to disturb any of Lucas's things.

She waved the DVD at him once more before she sat down. "Are you sure this is okay?" she asked him. "I know you have an early class tomorrow." She pushed herself back on the bed so that her back was resting against the wall as Mike set up his computer on Lucas's bed— his idea, not hers. He had one of those big laptops with the 15'' screen that were super expensive, but he was really into gaming, so she wasn't surprised.

"It's okay. I mean, it's just one movie, and then maybe we can go down and have dinner somewhere?" he asked her, and she nodded. "Then we should still be done early enough." She was surprised by how comfortable she was in this situation. With her limited experience with dating, you'd think she'd be a lot more nervous about being in a guy's room, but she'd been seeing Mike for a while now and they were a lot more used to each other's ways.

The weekend right after their first date he'd taken her to the planetarium, and it had been quite the experience. If she thought hearing his voice on the phone made her heart beat like crazy, well, it was nothing compared to hearing him whisper in her ear about quasars and supernovas in the darkness that accompanied the event's stunning visuals. They hadn't done anything as big as that in the two weeks since, but they'd hung out a lot; sometimes she would stop by the electronics store on days he had early shifts so they could have lunch together, and sometimes he'd be waiting for her outside after one of her classes so he could walk her home.

But still... this was his room. It felt strangely intimate, though not uncomfortable, she decided as he asked her to hand over the DVD, telling her to grab a couple of pillows so they would be more comfortable. Just the thought of sitting with him on his bed like this made her feel butterflies, but she loved that feeling, and she hoped it never went away so long as she could be near him.

Once he set everything up and the opening scene of Jurassic World started playing, he joined her where she was sitting, shoulder to shoulder, stretching his long legs out so his feet hung over the side of the bed. As they watched baby dinosaurs being born on screen, she felt one of his fingers lightly poke at the back of her hand. Her lips curled up unbidden into a smile, and without taking her eyes off the computer screen, she turned her hand over so she could entwine her fingers with his.

When Chris Pratt's character first came on screen, Mike nudged her with his elbow. "Hey, look, it's your boyfriend," he teased her. She did have to admit that Indiana Jones style looked good on Chris, but presently El's mind was elsewhere.

"Hmm, I don't know," she said, moving just an inch closer so she could rest her head against Mike's shoulder. Max had once told her she thought Mike's shoulder would be too bony to rest comfortably against, but El had to disagree; it was anything but. Or maybe she'd just found the perfect angle. "Chris might have to get in line. I think someone else might be vying for that title," she added, looking up at his profile.

He smiled— more butterflies fluttered in her stomach— and turned his head so he could gaze down at her. "Yeah?" he asked, and she nodded. "Well, whoever he is must be one lucky dude," he said, playing along.

She couldn't help it— she burst out in giggles. "You're such a sap," she said, hiding her face against his shoulder.

"Well, yeah, but I'm the sap you want to be your boyfriend," he replied, squeezing her hand, and even though she wasn't looking at him, she could hear the grin in his voice. It was one of her favorite things about him.

She looked up at him and smiled. "Well... yeah," she agreed. He smiled back at her before bringing his free hand up to her cheek and leaning in to kiss her softly. She sighed against his lips, enjoying the warm feeling his kisses always created in her.

"Does that mean I can tell the guys that we're official, then?" Mike asked as he pulled back— not too much, just far enough that he could nuzzle her cheek with the tip of her nose. "Not that they haven't been harassing me about it every day since they met you," he added, obviously referring to Dustin and Lucas.

"You can," she graciously accepted in a magnanimous tone, which made him chuckle. "You know, my dad's been calling you my boyfriend since Spring Break. It's only fair that you got some harassment, too," she said, poking him on the side with her free hand.

He pretended to cringe— not at the poke, but rather at her words. "Does that mean I'm gonna have to watch my back if I ever meet him?" he asked, frowning entirely too deeply for it to be real. "I mean, he does own a gun."

"A few of them, actually," she corrected cheekily, making him groan. She laughed. "Don't worry, I'm sure he'll like you," she added, wondering at the fact that they were already talking about him possibly meeting her father even though they'd just become "official" a minute ago. Should that feel weird? "As long as you don't steal any of his cookies, you should be just fine."

"Hey, you offered me those!" he retorted straight away, now his turn to poke her side instead. Unfortunately for her, she was a lot more ticklish than he was, and a squeal left her mouth immediately, only prompting him to tickle her more.

Their laughter mingled as he kept trying to tickle her and she kept trying to push him off, which went on for a minute or so until she had laughed so much that she could hardly breathe. Finally he relented, helping to pull her back into a sitting position from where she'd leaned back too far in trying to get away from his mischievous hands. In doing so, however, he pulled her in for another kiss, and El promptly forgot that she'd been gasping for air just a minute ago.

"We're missing the movie," she pointed out as they broke apart for a second, the bellows of several computer-generated dinosaurs on the screen just barely reaching her ears under the insistent drumming of her heart. The protest was half-hearted, though, as she leaned back in to claim his lips as soon as the words left her mouth.

"It's a DVD, we can just play it again later," he argued back very convincingly— or maybe it was just the haze his proximity induced on her brain that was making her very amenable to all kinds of things at the moment. She didn't particularly care which one it was, so long as he didn't stop kissing her.

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Since they weren't really paying attention to the movie anyway, they decided they should pause it and have dinner instead. Rather than going out, Mike ordered a pizza, which they also shared with Will; Mike figured it was only fair, since he had eaten the last of their instant ramen, and now there was nothing to eat in the apartment other than Dustin's "secret" stash of 3 Musketeers bars, which none of the others liked anyway.

By virtue of timing, Will was the first person they informed that they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend now. (This was also because Mike couldn't seem to stop repeating that fact now that he was allowed to say it out loud— girlfriend, El was his girlfriend now. He was her boyfriend. How was this his life?) Will was zero surprised but congratulated them anyway, then promptly took his two slices of sausage and pepperoni back with him to his room because, quoting, "I'm supposed to be drawing something ominous and sitting here with you two making heart-eyes at each other is ruining my forced dark mood."

Mike groaned. So much for lifelong best friends. Even the supposedly nice ones were jerks.

Once they were done eating they retreated back to his room and started the movie up again, promising that they were definitely going to watch the whole thing... or at least that they would try really, really hard. For the most part they managed it— not that the movie was bad or anything, but it had been a long day and they were both tired, so apart from a running commentary on how the creatures in question didn't really look like that at all and the pros and cons of sacrificing actual scientific facts for spectacle, they weren't as entranced by giant man-eating dinosaurs as they had initially thought they would be.

As the credits rolled, he looked at El to find her asleep against his shoulder, cuddled up against his side with an arm around his waist. Her even breaths tickled his neck and he had to hold back a shudder. Since his arm was draped around her shoulders, he could barely catch a glimpse of his wristwatch in the dim light of the room, but he thought it said 10:23. He probably should ask her what she wanted to do.

"El?" he nudged her gently, not wanting to wake her up abruptly. "Hey, El... it's getting late."

She murmured something under her breath that he didn't quite catch, but then her eyes opened slowly, and it was the cutest thing Mike had ever seen in his life. "What time is it?" she asked as her sleepy gaze roamed around the room as if she couldn't quite place where she was.

"It's nearly ten thirty," he let her know.

Almost seeming surprised by that, she lifted her head off his shoulder, motioning like she intended to get up off the bed. "I should go home," she mumbled, still sounding sleepy.

He was pretty sure she wasn't going to let him walk her back home just to come all the way back to his dorm, but Mike didn't think she should be making her way back to her apartment on her own at that hour. Especially not if she was still sleepy; it just wouldn't feel right to him.

He touched her forearm lightly to get her attention. "Hey, it's late. Why don't you stay here?" She let him guide her back into bed carefully. "You sleep here and I'll go bunk with Will or something, wake you up in the morning when I'm about to go to class."

"Yeah, okay," she mumbled, clearly too somnolent to protest, as he moved to the side to let her get comfortable. He handed her one of the pillows they'd been using for back support and she promptly laid down on her side, closing her eyes again.

He gazed down at her with a smile for a heartbeat before moving to get up. He carefully closed down the screen on his laptop, put it on the floor beside his bag, and turned off the lamp atop the dresser, intending to walk out quietly to let her sleep. Just as he was about to open the door, however, he heard her speak. "Mike?"

"Yeah?" He looked back at her over his shoulder.

Her eyes were open again, and there was a certain amount of worry in her expression as she looked up at him. A little bit of vulnerability, or that's the way it seemed to him. "Could you... could you stay with me?" she asked him in a small tone. "Just to sleep," she added quickly, not leaving any chance for misinterpretation. "It's just... sometimes when I wake up by myself in unfamiliar places, it... it brings back bad memories."

He knew he was talking about the darker aspects of her childhood, and he mentally kicked himself for not thinking about it earlier. He would've offered to just sleep in Lucas's bed, but he didn't know if Lucas and Dustin were going to make their way back to their dorm tonight or if they were going to power through the night at the library— sometimes the former happened, sometimes the latter.

It's not like he minded sleeping in the same bed as his now-girlfriend or anything. He would've suggested it from the beginning, but he worried she would think it was too soon. If anything, he was touched that she trusted him that much. If she wasn't bothered by it... "Yeah, of course," he agreed then, letting go of the door handle and approaching the bed once again, sitting down once she scooted back closer to the wall to give him the space to lie down beside her.

As soon as his head hit the pillow, she cuddled up to his side again, an arm around his torso, pressed close from shoulder to knee so that the tip of her fuzzy socks teased his shin, and Mike felt everything inside him just soften. He let out a satisfied hum and closed his eyes. It was earlier than his usual bedtime, but he was tired, too; it took just a few minutes in the stillness of the room, pressed up against the warmth of her body, for him to start to drift off.

Come 7:30 am, Mike would be momentarily shaken out of this pleasant little cocoon by Lucas's comically loud stage whisper asking him if he was coming to Calculus class or not, which he would promptly ignore with a vaguely dismissive wave of his hand. Come breakfast time, they'd have to get out of bed anyway as El would inevitably have to respond to sixteen messages from Mama Max demanding that "Jane Ellen Hopper! Next time you intend to spend the night at your boyfriend's you are obligated to let me know— I've been freaking out all morning, missy!"

That would be later, though. For now, he leaned forward to drop a kiss on the crown of her head. This was the first time he spent the night beside this amazing girl— the first of many, he hoped— and he wanted to revel in the coziness of this embrace for as long as he possibly could. "Goodnight, El," he whispered into the penumbra as he wrapped his arms more securely around her.

"Goodnight, Mike," she replied softly, almost with a sigh, her lips tickling the skin of his neck as slumber tugged at them both.

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Notes: And the award for most improved due to period shift goes to... Will Byers' hair! xD Seriously, though, the bowl cuts are the one thing nobody misses from the 80s. And Artsy!Will is such a mood, a bowl cut would just ruin it, amirite?

Mike's dorm, Levy Hall, was named after director and producer extraordinaire Shawn Levy, whom I love with all my heart. Final Destination is a horror movie franchise from the 2000s where people died in a series of bizarre fate-driven accidents. The Parent Trap is a 1961 Disney film where long-lost twins find each other and then swap lives in order to get their divorced parents back together, although Will and El might be more familiar with the 1998 Lindsay Lohan remake.

A quasar is when the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy emits energy at very high levels of luminosity. A supernova is when a dying massive star explodes, creating a "new," much brighter star that is only visible temporarily. Mike complains about the way the dinosaurs look because scientists know now that many of the dinosaurs depicted in these types of movies actually were feathered. And while I'm at it, please don't take any of the commentary Mike and El make about the movie here as my own opinion— I haven't even seen Jurassic World, so I really don't have the slightest idea if it's entertaining or not. :P

Weird ending, I know. I was initially going to leave it at the PoV break, but I hadn't gotten to write them cuddling and I'm weak, so there you go. Also, you don't know how long I've been wanting to use "heart-eyes" to describe the way Mike and El look at each other— I kept holding back because it's not exactly period-accurate to the 80s, so I'm glad this fic finally gave me an excuse to use that term, because it's literally the perfect descriptor for these two dorks.

Anyway— look, Ma, I finished a multichapter! That almost never happens, so I think I deserve lots of comments on this chapter just for that, hmm? :3 Inspiration allowing, I'll probably go back to the Quiet Moments oneshots after this, so feel free to keep poking me over at Twitter at girls_are_weird or Tumblr at girls-are-weird if you'd like to see more of that.

PS: I talked about Stranger Things again in last week's entry of my vlog, trying to speculate about the latest pictures we got from the Atlanta set, so if you're into that, you might want to check it out.