Work Text:
Summer, 1995. Reykjavik
El slowly opens her eyes, the morning sun doing its best to stream past the heavy blackout currents that hang in the bedroom during the summer months. She turns her head to the right, instinctively seeking out her husband, but Mike isn’t in their bed. She lets out a soft sigh. The rich aroma of coffee is in the air, carried all the way from the kitchen, and El thinks to herself that he must be up and working already.
There was a time when El was the early riser in their relationship; back when they lived in the apartment, she would wake up at five o’clock every morning to get to the bakery before it opened. But the success of Mike’s novel has led them to buy a house just outside the city, and El now works part-time. Although it was nice to walk to work, she doesn’t mind her short commute by car two or three days a week.
Mike had told her to take things slow. She’s been using her extra free time to figure out what she’s passionate about; the idea of going to college has been swirling around at the back of her mind ever since they got married, and with her husband's steady support and gentle encouragement, El has finally reached the point where she’s ready to take the next step.
For the past several months Mike has been the one to wake first, the deadlines from his publisher for his next novel looming over him. She hears the clacking of the keys of his word processor as she walks down the hall, pausing to knock at the door to the office room where he works.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“Yeah, of course,” comes Mike’s response from the other side of the door.
She pushes the door open to find her husband facing her, his chair swiveled away from his desk. The two windows in the room are open, a pleasant breeze coming in. From this side of the house they can see the ocean in the distance, the rich brown and green cliffs of the fjord standing out in stark contrast to the deep blue water.
El remembers how she had gasped when they first toured this house, amazed that they could look out the windows and see the ocean. She had called it her dream house. They had made their offer the same day.
Mike is smiling up at her, still dressed in cotton pajama pants and a grey t-shirt.
“You don’t ever have to ask, you know,” he says, amusement in his voice.
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m distracting you from your work,” she explains. She knows he has another fifty pages due at the end of the week, and he’s only about halfway through.
Mike shakes his head at her as she steps closer to him, standing between his legs as he wraps his arms around her middle.
“You’re a very welcome distraction.”
He rests his head against her chest and she runs her fingers through his dark, curly hair. It’s a bit on the longer side, coming down just past his ears, and El loves it. He breathes deeply, content to be held by her for a little while.
“Did you sleep well?” he asks her.
“Mhmm,” she answers.
“Good dreams?”
It’s a question he’ll ask her every so often. She still gets nightmares from time to time, horribly vivid, playing out the horrors of her childhood as her body thrashes in their bed.
“I don’t remember,” she says. Always a good sign. “There was one… I think… I was riding a bike.”
The memory of the dream is hazy, just little snippets of imagery that her brain struggles to fully grasp, but she remembers the feeling of biking downhill, the wind rushing in her ears and through her hair.
“You were on the back of my bike,” Mike says softly.
El looks down at him, and he looks up to meet her questioning gaze, his arms loosening around her.
“Did I pull you in?” she asks. He nods and smiles at her.
She looks into his deep brown eyes and suddenly she remembers more of her dream; she’d been on the back of Mike’s bike, her arms wrapped tightly around him. They were teenagers, around thirteen she thinks. And the rest of the Party had been there, Max and Lucas riding up ahead, Dustin and Will closer but still a ways in front of them.
“Where were we going?” she asks. Her voice is quiet. Mike will remember. He always remembers their shared dreams.
“To that big empty church parking lot. Dustin had those super snap fireworks and you practically jumped into my arms when he threw some on the ground,” he says with a laugh. El hums softly and closes her eyes, a smile stretching across her face.
“A memory dream. A good memory dream.”
She leans her head down to kiss him, her lips moving lazily against his. He tastes like coffee. She sees Mike and El at thirteen kissing, in her memory and in the dream. They had snuck off from the rest of the group at some point, around to the back of the empty building, and he had kissed her repeatedly as the rough brick pressed against her back.
El smiles as they break apart, resting her forehead against his. So few of her childhood memories were happy ones, but Mike was featured in almost all the ones that were.
“I wish I knew what it is I’m doing when I pull you in like that,” she muses.
Mike just shrugs.
“I’ve never minded it.”
They were sixteen the first time they dreamed together. It was during the time when El was hiding out from the military at the cabin, and her time with Mike was so limited. She’d gone to bed, exhausted after a long day of training, and missing her boyfriend so much it felt like a physical ache.
As she’d fallen asleep she could see Mike in his bed, sleeping, almost like she was looking at him though the Void. But she wasn’t trying to, and the next thing she knew the scene shifted. She was in a shower, the water hot against her skin as steam filled the small space, and Mike was there with her.
And she knew this was a dream, not the Void, because Mike grabbed her and kissed her with a level of forwardness he had never displayed in real life. His body held hers against the cool, tiled wall, his tongue exploring her mouth as he held her firmly by her hips. Desire swept through her, rapid and all consuming.
One of his hands squeezed her backside. He kissed her neck and her moans grew louder, louder than the sound of the water and—
And then she had woken up, her body tangled in her sheets and a very distinct, insistent throbbing present between her legs.
Later that day, after a meeting with the rest of the Party at the Squawk, Mike and El hung back, desperate for a little time alone together. Their friends seemed to sense this, sending them knowing glances as they headed out. As soon as the door shut behind them, Mike was kissing her. Clearly he was just as wound up from the dream as she was. Still, she needed to confirm that they had, in fact, dreamt together.
“Mike,” she said.
“Hmm?”
“Did- did you have a dream about me last night?”
Mike abruptly pulled away from where he was kissing her neck. His face was bright red, confusion marring his features.
“What?” he nearly croaked. “Why would you- what-”
“About us?” she continued, trying to ignore the way her own cheeks were heating up. “In- um, in the shower?”
Mike looked equal parts shocked and mortified.
“Oh my God,” he said softly. “Can you read minds now?”
El let out a small laugh and shook her head.
“No, I- I had the same dream. I mean, I think I was in the dream— your dream— with you,” she tried to explain. “Sort of like the Void except-”
Mike’s eyes were growing wider.
“Except I didn’t do it on purpose!” she quickly clarified. “I didn’t mean to…” she searched for the right term, “invade your privacy.”
“Holy shit,” he breathed. His face grew even redder, his hands coming up to cover his mouth.
“I’m sorry, El, you must think- Jesus, you must think I’m like, the world’s biggest pervert. I didn’t mean to dream about that, I—”
“Mike!” she said, used to having to interrupt his nervous rambling.
He closed his mouth, eyes still wide as he looked down at her.
“You don’t have to apologize,” she said slowly. Feeling bold (like dream Mike, her mind whispered), she wrapped her arms around his neck, placing a lingering kiss to his lips.
“It was a good dream,” she said, and then he was kissing her back, and it was a while before they would discuss how mind-blowing it was that they could dream together.
El sits in the living room, sipping her coffee and reading through a thick brochure on the different degree programs at the local community college. Using the yellow highlighter in her hand, she circles the one that stands out to her most: Early Childhood Education.
As El grew from a girl into an adult, she realized just how much she loved being around children. Their natural wonder and curiosity for the world around them was something she had always related to, and the nature of her childhood gave her the strong desire to be the type of adult in a child’s life that she hadn’t had in her earliest years: someone safe, loving, and nurturing.
When she first came to Iceland, her neighbor in the apartment below her was a woman named Anna who had an eight-month-old son, Magnús. El had been enamored with Magnús’s chubby cheeks and little giggles. She and Anna became fast friends, and the older woman was always grateful for El’s desire to watch her son every so often when she couldn’t find last-minute childcare.
Even at the bakery, any time a child came in with their parents, El always took the time to smile and interact with them in some way. Her boss, a middle-aged woman named Pála, had told El she should consider working with children. El had taken the advice to heart, and it had lingered in the back of her mind, along with her desire to go to college.
When Mike came, he had encouraged her whole-heartedly to prioritize her education, but at the time she had been worried about how it would impact her job and, by extension, their finances. And then Mike published his novel, and suddenly they didn’t have to worry nearly as much about money.
So now, at the age of twenty-four, she’s ready to pursue higher education. She can’t think of a better path for herself than one that would allow her to care for children.
El flips to the back of the brochure, where she reads that she can send the college a letter to request them to send her a full application to fill out. She retrieves an envelope from what Mike calls the “junk drawer” in the kitchen, then carefully writes out the address of the college’s admissions department.
“Mike?” she calls, making her way back to his office.
“Yeah?” he calls back.
She pushes the door open, popping her head in.
“Can I use your typewriter?” she asks.
“Sure,” he says, “it’s just on the shelf there. Do you need my help?”
“I’ve got it,” she says cheerfully, walking over to the bookshelf and hauling the typewriter into her arms. Mike always wrote on his word processor, the machine enabling him to send pages to his editor on a floppy disk. El has used the typewriter a few times, and though she’s far slower than her husband, she can type out a letter without much difficulty.
She carries it to their kitchen table, loads up a sheet of paper, moves the carriage into place, and begins to write.
Mike comes into the kitchen just as she’s finishing. She pulls the paper from the machine and lays it flat on the table, letting the ink dry.
“What are you working on?” Mike asks as he opens the refrigerator.
“I’m writing a letter to the community college,” she says, “so that they’ll send me an application.”
Mike shuts the fridge, walking over to her.
“You’re doing it? You’re applying?” he asks excitedly.
El nods, a smile blooming on her face. Mike cups her face between his hands and kisses her forehead.
“I’m really proud of you,” he says.
“I haven’t exactly done anything yet,” she laughs.
“Yeah, but you just took the first step. That counts for something,” he says. “You still thinking about the early childhood program?”
El nods, and his smile grows wider.
“I can already picture you as a preschool teacher,” he says, wrapping his arms around her and swaying her playfully from side to side.
“Man, all of the kids are going to love you,” he says. “It’s going to be a problem, actually. Their parents will come to pick them up and they won’t want to leave. They’ll be clinging to your legs.”
El laughs at his words, at the image he paints. He has always believed in her, more than anyone else. More than she believes in herself.
El leaves the house a little while later, after she has showered and dressed for the day. She clutches the envelope in her hand, determined to enjoy the sunshine as she walks to the post office.
She passes their neighbor’s house, and is pleased to see Sólveig, the elderly woman who lives there, sitting out on her porch.
“Góðan daginn, Eleanor!” she calls. El returns the greeting, walking over to where the woman sits.
Sólveig had showed up on their doorstep the day after she and Mike moved into their house, a small basket of food in her hands as she welcomed them to the neighborhood. She had been tickled to find out that her new neighbors were a young American couple, and was even more amused when she quickly discovered that one of them was fairly fluent in Icelandic.
“Where are you headed this morning?”
“Post office,” El replies, holding up the envelope.
“Ah, very good. And where is that husband of yours?”
“He’s working on—” El starts, but Sólveig finishes for her.
“His book, of course. How is it coming along?”
“It’s coming along fine,” El answers. “He’s working very hard, but he always tells me he enjoys the work.”
“Well, that’s good,” Sólveig says, then adds, “as long as he’s not neglecting his wife.”
El’s eyebrows furrow, her head tilting to the side.
“Some men work so hard and so much,” Sólveig explains, “that they don’t pay enough attention to their wives, even when they’re as pretty as you.”
El grins and shakes her head.
“Oh no, that’s not Mike. He pays plenty of attention to me,” she says, then feels a blush heat up her cheeks. In more ways than one, she thinks to herself. Sólveig chuckles.
“Nýgift,” she says with a fond shake of her head. Newlyweds. They’re coming up on their second wedding anniversary, but El doesn’t correct the woman, who once told her, “Less than five years of marriage means you are still nýgift.”
El has always felt a maternal warmth from the woman, who seems to like her and Mike very much.
“Oh, I have a loaf of bread for you,” El tells her. She and Sólveig are in the habit of exchanging baked goods with one another.
“Excellent! Bring it when you get back from your errand.”
El bids her farewell, then continues on her way.
After she has completed her task at the post office, she takes a different route home, slowing down and taking in the beauty of the place she gets to call home. A pleasant warmth fills her, growing more intense as she takes in the sound of the ocean and the feeling of the warm breeze against her skin. It is so very different from Hawkins, and for that she will never stop being grateful.
The deep sense of dread and paranoia that she had experienced during her last months in Hawkins has slowly dissipated over the course of her years in Iceland. She remembers December of 91, glued to her TV the day after Christmas as every news station broadcast the same story: the fall of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War. She felt herself breathe a little easier then, and told herself she would wait one more year before contacting Mike, just to be absolutely certain. When Mike had come to her and told her he was staying, the weight on her chest was finally gone.
She returns home, grabs the loaf of multigrain bread, and takes it to Sólveig’s. The older woman is inside now, and her two little granddaughters are there with her. El greets them excitedly. The six-year-old Sigrún gives her a wide smile, showing off a missing tooth, while the three-year-old Dagmar smiles shyly. El notices they are playing with dolls, so she takes the time to join them, asking about the little details of their play.
“You are so good with them, Eleanor,” Sólveig tells her as El gets up to leave. El smiles.
“And I’m sure it won’t be long before you have little ones of your own,” the woman says with a knowing smile.
El’s heart squeezes in her chest at her neighbor’s words, and she isn’t sure how to respond. She just smiles, somewhat tightly, then bids the woman and her granddaughters goodbye.
Though she knows Sólveig was well-meaning, El can’t help the pit that forms in her stomach as she walks back to her house.
Though she adores children, thinking about having kids of her own fills her with worry, a swell of anxiety sitting heavily in her chest at the thought. How can someone like her be a mother? What if her child is born with the same abilities as El? El uses her powers so sparingly now, only ever when she is at home, only ever around Mike. But how would a child understand the need to keep their powers hidden? How would they go to school and play with other children?
The thought of having to keep a child locked up at home fills her head with thoughts of the cold, sterile rooms at the Hawkins lab, no matter how different the circumstances would be.
No, it wasn’t something that she could even think about. The topic had come up once with Mike, after he’d proposed and before they’d gotten married.
“Do you want to have kids?” she’d asked him directly. “Because I- I don’t know if I do. Most of the time I don’t think I do.”
“I’m not sure either,” he answered honestly. “I’ve never really imagined having kids. Maybe having a family one day would be nice, but…”
“But what?”
“It’s just, you’re my family. And if it’s not something you want then that’s fine with me. You’re always going to be more than enough for me.”
El had hugged him, feeling understood in a way that only Mike was capable of.
Yet as El goes about her day, she can’t help but wonder what it would be like to have a baby of her own, a baby that looks like her and Mike, with her button nose and his deep brown eyes.
It storms that evening, the downpour starting as El and Mike clear their plates from the dinner table. The noises have put her on edge; her shoulders hold a heavy tension in them, her breathing has become shallow, and her side of the conversation has become brief and stilted, like she can’t give it her full attention. She’s putting a bowl in the sink when a loud crack of thunder rattles the walls of the house. She visibly jumps, clanging the dishes together as a sharp gasp involuntarily escapes her.
She takes a deep, steadying breath. Thunderstorms don’t bother her nearly as much as they used to, but they still make her think of being alone and cold in the woods, of being chased by the bad men and—
Mike’s arms wrap around her middle from behind, his chest pressed to her back.
“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” he says against her ear. El realizes that her hands are shaking. She places them on top of Mike’s arms and breathes deeply, trying to will herself to calm down. It’s been a while since her body has reacted this way, acting out memories from the past without getting permission from her mind first.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
“You don’t have to be sorry, sweetheart,” Mike says, his voice so very gentle.
He’s always known how to be gentle with her. She remembers him as a teenager; blunt, sarcastic, with a stubborn quality that often got him in trouble with authority figures. He’s softened over the years, like life has worn away some of that sharpness, like water wearing away at stone. And still, he’s softest for her, only revealing the gentlest parts of himself when they’re alone. It makes her fall deeper in love with him every time she gets to witness it.
She turns in his arms so that she can press her face against his chest as a few tears escape her eyes. He rubs slow circles across her back.
“I wish I didn’t still… react like this,” she says.
“It’s okay, El,” he reiterates. He pauses for a moment, then says, “Sometimes I think you forget how far you’ve come.”
El looks up at him, her brows furrowed.
“You went through so much,” he tells her, “and plenty of people would have been destroyed by it. Or they would’ve grown up and not dealt with it, and hurt others because of it. But you took all of the horrible things you lived through and you- you came out on the other side. And you just… you love people. So fiercely. You’re so good.”
El stares at him, her lashes still wet, and cups his face with her hand, pulling him down so that she can kiss him. She wants to say thank you, to say how much his words mean to her, wants to tell him that she thinks the reason she loves people so fiercely is because he showed her how. But she isn’t sure she’ll get the words right, so she shows him instead, her body pressing against his as the rain outside falls loudly against the windows.
She deepens the kiss and his hands slide under her shirt, coming into contact with the smooth skin of her waist. He pulls back, his eyes intent on hers and containing a question: Is this okay? As if he’s asking if the abrupt shift from comfort to desire-fueled intimacy is too much, too soon.
But El just gives a slight nod of her head and kisses him again.
When they make it to their bedroom they’ve rid themselves of most of their clothing, now scattered through the hallway. He lays her down on their bed and kisses his way down her body, then does things to her with his mouth that make her forget the sounds of the storm still raging outside, her moans and gasps filling the room instead.
When she climbs into his lap, sinking down on him, her movements are slow and unhurried. She takes the time to shift her hips against him in just the right way, causing his mouth to drop open and his eyes to stare up at her, completely enraptured.
“You feel so good,” she says, her head tilting back, encouraging him to suck wet kisses along her neck. He’s sitting up against their pillows, his arms holding her against him as she continues her movement, quickly pulling him toward his release.
El moves deliberately, the angle of their coupling making it so that he’s hitting all of the right spots inside of her. Mike’s eyes are closed so she grabs his face, making him open them.
“Mike,” she breathes. “Mike, Mike—” her words become breathy, high-pitched moans.
“God, you’re perfect,” he tells her, his voice low and raspy. “So fucking perfect.”
“You’re so good. So good to me,” she says, repeating his words from earlier back to him, and her eyes are locked on his as she quickens her movements and watches him fall apart.
In the time between El faking her death and Mike reuniting with her in Iceland, there was one instance of them dreaming together. It was in the summer between Mike’s junior and senior year of high school, when he was still wracked with heavy, immovable grief.
It was right after El had arrived in Iceland, and her sense of loneliness after coming to a new country was disarming. She fell asleep thinking of him, and the next thing she knew she was in his dream. It was hard for her to even explain to herself how she could perceive the difference between having a dream with him in it and dreaming with him. There were subtle differences— the details and imagery of the shared dreams were so clear, almost like she was watching a movie, and the dreams never became nonsensical and absurd— but mostly it was a feeling in her subconscious.
They were at the quarry in Hawkins, sitting side by side, overlooking the water below. They weren’t right at the edge, but as El stared down at the water she felt dizzy, and made to stand up and move away. Mike’s hand reached out and grabbed hers, lacing their fingers together.
When he looked over at her his brown eyes were full of so much sorrow that her own eyes instantly welled with tears.
“Stay,” he said softly, his voice rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “Stay with me for a while.”
She nodded and stayed beside him, the wind ruffling their hair as they sat in silence.
Then El woke up, alone, in her apartment in Reykjavik, and she cried into her pillow. She spent months wondering if he knew that it was a shared dream. It was something she asked him about a few weeks after he came to Iceland. He told her that he hadn’t known.
That sense, of knowing when they were dreaming together, had grown in him over time, becoming much stronger once they started living together. Neither one of them ever really questions it, chalking it up to a combination of El’s powers and their belief that their connection to one another went beyond the physical laws of the universe.
Mike had phrased it that way once, then had laughed, saying, “Although it sounds kind of crazy when I put it like that. It’s easier to just say we’re soulmates.”
When El finishes showering she finds that Mike has already fallen asleep. The sound of the rain and thunder still echoes through the house, but he appears to be sleeping peacefully, heavily.
He’s been working so hard, she thinks, pulling the duvet up to cover his bare chest. She turns off the lamp and crawls into bed, turning onto her side and looking at Mike’s sleeping face. Her eyes trace along the lines of his brow, the curve of his nose and his cheekbones.
She is struck, like she so often is, by the impossibility of her life. When she thinks for too long about all of the incredibly strange and improbable circumstances that led her to where she is, it threatens to overwhelm her. So she reaches out to grab her husband’s hand, grounding herself, and quickly joins him in sleep.
She senses that they are dreaming together right away. Distantly, in her conscious mind, she thinks that he is probably aware of it, too. It is her dream that she’s pulled him into.
El and Mike stand on a familiar cliffside, the view of the waterfalls spread out before them. The roar of the water fills their ears, droplets of the powerful spray just reaching their skin. El vaguely registers that she is barefoot, her toes just barely sinking into the damp earth.
“I wanted to show you this,” she tells him.
Mike furrows his brow and smiles down at her, looking adorably perplexed.
“What do you mean?” he asks around a laugh. “We’ve been here dozens of times. I literally proposed to you here.”
El just smiles and takes his hand, pulling it towards her until it rests on her stomach. She glances down and notices there is a distinctive bump there. Mike gasps, looking between her stomach and her face with wide eyes. In an instant he is overwhelmed with emotion, awe and elation and love filling his expression as his eyes fill with tears.
The setting shifts around them, and a new scene of the dream unfolds. El and Mike are at home, sitting side by side on their living room couch, staring down at the baby in El’s arms in wonder.
“She looks like you,” Mike says softly.
She looks into the child’s eyes and finds that his words ring true, and she is filled with the deepest feeling of love she can remember ever experiencing.
El wakes up with racing thoughts and a pounding heart. She turns to find that Mike is already awake (of course) and is looking right at her.
“Hey,” he says softly.
She can’t read the look on his face. It looks… cautious, guarded. She isn’t used to that.
“Morning,” she mutters sleepily, her heart rate slowing back to normal as she becomes aware that it was just a dream.
“El,” Mike says tentatively. “Are- are you pregnant?”
“I… no. No, I don’t think so,” she says haltingly.
He lets out a breath. Is it relief? Disappointment? She can’t tell.
“I have a phone call in fifteen minutes with my agent,” he tells her. He kisses her, his lips soft and quick, and then leaves their bed.
El ponders the dream for the rest of the day. Had it just been the result of Sólveig’s comment? She heads to the bakery for a shift and finds herself distracted for most of it. Pála gives her a worried look when she manages to burn an entire batch of bread.
For the next several days, Mike doesn’t bring up the dream again, and neither does she. She’s happy to let it be forgotten, to sit at the back of her mind, perhaps to be picked apart at another time.
A few days later, her college application arrives in the mail. She spends the next three days filling it out, recruiting Mike’s help with editing and revising her essay, which he offers eagerly. When everything is complete she has Mike read it over, double-checking each line. She attaches a copy of the transcripts from the education course she’d completed years ago, with Pála’s help, to earn the equivalent of a high school diploma.
“I think everything is ready,” Mike says as he hands the paperwork back to her. She puts everything in a large envelope and they walk to the post office together, hand in hand. As they leave the plain, brick building, he stops, turning to her and wrapping his arms around her.
“I’m so proud of you,” he says. He’ll say it again in a month, when her acceptance letter arrives in the mail, and again when she signs up to begin classes in the fall.
El wraps her arms around his waist, letting herself get lost in the feeling.
At the end of the week, when Mike has sent off another fifty pages to his editor, they relax by going to the pub with several of their friends.
Jón and Lilja are a couple they met at a pub trivia night, and Jón’s love of science fiction and comic books meant he and Mike had become fast friends. Lilja reminds El of Max, with her red hair and quick wit, so naturally they get along. Emil is there, a young man who used to be their neighbor, and Katrín, a sweet, soft-spoken woman who works at the bakery who El had befriended easily and early on.
They all chat about their weeks, drinking and laughing together with a natural, easy sort of way that always makes El wonder about the lives of the friends she had to leave behind. She lets herself drift away from the conversation for a little while, getting lost in memories that impart a certain wistful longing in her. Her melancholy is broken when Lilja brings a round of shots to the table, exuberantly telling everyone to drink up.
El laughs and excuses herself to the restroom, not sure she wants to be downing any hard liquor tonight. When she sees that she’s gotten her period she is so relieved she laughs aloud in the stall.
Just a dream, she thinks to herself with a shake of her head as she fishes in her purse for a tampon.
When she rejoins the group at the table she grabs a shot, throwing it back with a thought of, why not?
When they get home she is only tipsy, not drunk, her head resting on Mike’s shoulder as they sit on the couch and half pay attention to Say Anything playing on the TV.
“Did you see the way Emil and Katrín were talking tonight? They looked very cozy,” she says.
“Oh yeah?” Mike asks, sounding surprised. El smirks and rolls her eyes.
“They have this whole flirty, will-they-won’t-they thing going on,” she tells him.
Mike laughs.
“You sound like you’re talking about one of those soaps you used to watch.”
“Just you wait, they’re going to get together. You just can’t see it because you were convinced for so long that he liked me.”
“He did like you!” Mike says with a laugh.
“You’re probably right,” she says. Mike starts to interject, but she pushes on. “But! Then you came to town and he backed off after that. Helps that you asked me to marry you after just a few months of being here.”
She’s smirking at him, and he grins at her.
“Best thing I ever did,” he says as he leans forward to kiss her.
They make out on the couch like a couple of teenagers— like they did so many times when they were teenagers. He pulls her into his lap and kisses her neck, and El forgets about the movie and about their conversation entirely. When his hands slip under her shirt she remembers something else.
“Oh, by the way,” she says, her voice breathy, “I got my period.”
Mike pulls back to look her in the eye, his expression once again inscrutable.
“Oh, okay. That’s- that’s good,” he says, gauging her reaction.
“Yeah, I was relieved,” she says. Then after a beat, she carefully asks, “Are you relieved?”
“What? What do you mean?”
El looks down, her eyes landing somewhere near his neck as she continues.
“It’s just… well it’s stupid, but in the dream you looked so happy when I—”
“Yeah, but that- that was a dream, El.”
“I know. I know, but don’t you feel like our shared dreams are always more… real?”
She glances up at him. His brow is furrowed, like he’s really pondering what she’s saying.
“Sometimes I feel like I can control what I do and say in those dreams. More than in my dreams without you,” she adds, and she is acutely aware of how very strange this conversation is, and yet it also feels so natural, as if they are discussing a mundane detail of everyday life and not a metaphysical dimension of her supernatural abilities.
“Yeah, I feel that way sometimes,” he says slowly.
“When I woke up and you asked if I was pregnant… were you hoping the answer would be yes?”
“I wouldn’t say I was hoping for it,” he says, hesitant. “I just- in that moment the thought of you being pregnant didn’t make me feel panicked and I was surprised by that, I guess.”
El takes a moment to let his admission sink in, then makes one of her own.
“I’ve been thinking about what it would be like. To have a baby,” she says quietly.
“Yeah?” he asks, staring at her with warm eyes that contain a tender expression she can’t quite name.
“Yes. Sometimes I think that maybe- maybe I want that. A family. With you,” she tells him.
“But then something will happen, like,” she laughs, “like I’ll nearly have a panic attack from a thunderstorm. And I just think, ‘how could I have a child?’”
Mike’s face falls.
“El—”
“I feel like I still have a long way to go, until I feel—”
Normal, her mind supplies. She knows there isn’t anything wrong with her, knows that plenty of people also suffer from what her therapist called ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ and still lead normal lives. Yet at times she can’t escape the feeling that she’s only pretending to be like everyone else, and that eventually the things that still haunt her will overtake everything else, all of the progress she’s made, the life she and Mike have built together—
“Hey,” Mike says softly, cradling her face between his hands. It stops the thoughts that threaten to turn frantic. “No one has it all figured out, okay? If you want to be a mom then- then I know that you’ll be wonderful.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she says honestly.
“That’s okay,” he tells her. “I don’t really know what I want, either. Sometimes I think, yeah, it would be nice to have kids, some day. Other days I’m totally content with the idea of it just being the two of us.”
His words are like a balm, soothing away her worries.
“We’re twenty-four. We still have years to figure it out,” Mike says.
El nods, closing her eyes and taking a breath.
“I’m glad we’re figuring it out together,” she says, a whisper against his lips, and then kisses him again.
On Sunday, Sólveig, Sigrún, and Dagmar come over for lunch. El and Sólveig prepare sandwiches and salad in the kitchen while Mike entertains the girls in the living room. When El pokes her head out of the kitchen doorway to let them know the food is ready, she takes in the scene before her.
Mike is sitting on the floor with the girls, a book in his hands as he reads aloud to them. Sigrún and Dagmar are rapt with attention, their eyes wide as they take in every word that Mike says. He speaks in a dramatic tone, raising and lowering his voice, and using different voices for each of the characters. At one point, something he says surprises and delights the girls, and Dagmar giggles loudly as she scoots closer so that she is sitting right next to Mike, leaning into his side. Mike wraps his arm around her and continues to read.
El smiles and lets him finish the page before she summons them for lunch. They all sit around the table together, chatting and laughing as they tuck in to their sandwiches. Afterwards, they go outside, and El helps the girls pick the tiny white wildflowers that are scattered throughout the grass.
“These are for Mike,” Dagmar announces proudly, holding up a fistful of flowers and running over to present them to him.
“Can you put some of these in my hair?” Sigrún asks, and El obliges, braiding the girl’s hair and weaving the little flowers into the braid. Dagmar notices and begs for the same.
“Oh, look at these two little princesses!” Sólveig exclaims when El is finished.
“El’s the princess!” Sigrún shouts.
“Is that so?” Sólveig asks as El laughs at the six-year-old’s conviction.
“Yes, Eleanor is the princess and Mike is the knight,” Sigrún says.
“Mike is a knight?” El asks her, grinning as she looks between the girl and Mike.
Mike shrugs, a crooked smile on his face.
“I may have made some alterations to the story I’ve been reading to them.”
El hugs him playfully and grins up at him.
“My knight in shining armor,” she says dramatically, making them both laugh.
They dream together again that night, only this time El is in Mike’s dream. El is standing in a meadow, surrounded by yellow wildflowers and tall pines. She is wearing a long, lavender dress with a fitted bodice and sleeves that trail past her fingertips. A dress suited for a princess, she thinks, and notices a thin, silver crown resting against her forehead.
She hears a rustling in the trees and turns to see a great black horse coming into the clearing, being ridden by none other than Mike. He dismounts when he reaches her. He is dressed in a dark brown tunic, adorned with a black leather belt and a sage green cape about his shoulders.
“My lady,” he says, taking her hand and kissing it delicately.
“Sir,” she says, bowing her head.
“I still have your favor,” he says, smiling at her shyly. He removes one of his riding gloves to reveal a bright green scrunchie around his wrist.
“I want you to have it, always,” she says. She looks at him, tilting her head and furrowing her brow.
“Where is your sword, sir? Surely a knight must have a sword.”
He looks at her with a secret smile and raises his eyebrows, as if to say she already knows the answer to her question.
El looks down and sees a sword affixed to her own hip.
“Indeed, he must,” he says.
El grasps the handle and pulls the sword from its scabbard, revealing a beautiful, gleaming blade. There are rubies and fine engravings along the hilt.
“It’s beautiful,” she says. “But I don’t have much desire for battle.”
Mike nods, staring deep into her eyes, his own filled with empathy.
“Do you wish to be with me?” he asks, a tentative hand coming out to lightly grasp her elbow.
She sucks in a breath. Her eyes study his face, taking in the cut of his cheekbones and the fullness of his lips.
“Yes,” she responds.
He leans forward, slowly, until his lips are pressed to hers, stealing her breath in a delicate yet searing kiss.
“Run away with me, then,” he says when he pulls away from her, and she grins and kisses him again.
He mounts his horse and pulls her up so that she sits snuggly behind him in the saddle, wrapping her arms securely around his waist. When his horse breaks into a gallop, she holds on tighter, relishing the feeling of the man in her arms and the wind whipping through her hair.
It feels like freedom.
When El awakes she is still smiling from the dream. She sits up and stretches, uses the bathroom and brushes her teeth, then walks down the hallway towards Mike’s office.
“Sir Mike,” she greets when she pulls the door open.
Mike turns around with a laugh.
“I guess I got a little too caught up in the story I was telling the girls yesterday,” he tells her. “It was about a princess running away with a knight.”
He stands so he can pull her into a hug.
El feels utterly content as they stand there, neither one pulling away just yet.
Eventually, Mike will go back to writing. El will leave the house to do the grocery shopping. By the end of the year, El will be a full-time college student, and Mike will have published his second novel. The future will still hold many uncertainties, as it always does. They’ll discuss whether or not it’s safe for Mike to travel to America for his book tour. They’ll revisit the idea of having a proper wedding reception and inviting their friends and family. And eventually they’ll revisit the topic of starting a family and all that it entails.
But for now, in this moment, Mike holds El, and she feels how she so often does— that she and Mike are bound to one another, destined to face everything unseen and unknown how they always have: hand in hand, with the certainty of their love for one another being enough.