Time After Time (a Stranger Things fanfiction)

Flowers on the Wall

"Flowers on the Wall"

Countin' flowers on the wall, that don't bother me at all

Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one

Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo

Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do

- The Statler Brothers

"El, I brought pizza!" Hopper nudged the door open with his foot, balancing the pizza box on his arm.

She was at the table, teeth firmly fastened in a slice of pepperoni and mushroom, which had been brought by Mike. Mike, who had not been given permission to come over today.

Hopper stood in the doorway of the cabin feeling—and looking, he suspected—foolish, with his box of unnecessary pizza. The kids both looked at him with less contrition than he would have expected from two people who were definitely violating the firmly set rules.

Well. He had two options—look like an idiot, or look like an ogre. The old Hopper would have chosen ogre every time, and where had that got him? Idiot it was.

"Hey, Mike."

"Hi, Chief."

He dropped his pizza box on the counter, slid a few slices onto a plate, and settled down on the recliner in front of the TV. The kids watched him warily for a few minutes, but returned to their enjoyment of Mike's pizza ... although with very little chatter, he noticed. Good. He was getting a headache anyway.

*****

Hopper tapped on El's bedroom door. "Hey, kid."

She looked up from the worksheet she was doing. He was trying to get her up to speed so she could start school in the fall, and she was a pretty quick learner, but there was a lot to catch up on. "Hi."

"You've been hitting the books pretty hard recently. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you." There was a glimmer of a smile in her eyes. It was always tricky being too fatherly with her—sometimes she panicked, remembering Brenner, and Hopper never wanted to be comparable to that guy.

"I was thinking maybe tomorrow night we could rent some movies, popcorn, Eggo extravaganza? The whole nine yards."

"I ... kind of told Mike we could hang out tomorrow." Eleven looked up at him with a mixture of guilt and hope. "Is that okay?"

She had been better since the pizza incident about remembering to ask, Hopper had to admit. Technically she really shouldn't be making promises to Mike before she asked permission, but she really had been working so hard he didn't have the heart to scold her about it. "Sure, kid. Whatever you want."

He couldn't deny feeling bad that she wanted to spend time with Mike instead of him, though. Sure, the kid was her age and they clearly were into each other ... but he was here, too, and it hurt to think she didn't want to hang out with him.

*****

As he was flipping the pancakes for breakfast, Hopper glanced over at Eleven. "What do you say we go for a hike today, kid? Maybe go fishing? It's early yet, might not catch a lot, but—"

He knew that expression, the one that was half guilty and half hopeful. She didn't even need to say the kid's name.

A mature man would have calmly sat down with her and talked about how much he cared about her, how much he enjoyed spending time with her, and how much it stung when she preferred her friends to him. Apparently Hopper had a ways to go yet before he was truly mature, because a flick of his wrist sent the pancake sailing across the room over her head to splat on the TV screen. "No, you can't spend another Saturday with that kid!"

It was the wrong move. Eleven's eyes narrowed, her mouth compressed, and her arms crossed over her chest in the determined, stubborn look he had come to know. It was not his favorite of her expressions.

"Don't look at me like that," he told her. "We have rules for a reason."

"What reason?"

"For your protection. And his."

Her eyes narrowed further, telling him that particular line of reasoning, valid though it was, had gone stale and was no longer convincing.

"I'm not kidding! Those people are still out there. They would love to get their hands on you! Owens bought us some time and some space, but I don't know how high or how far his influence goes. Use your head!"

"We're careful," El protested.

"You are. What about him? Does he talk about you at home? With Nancy? Where his parents can hear?"

She rolled her eyes, and for a moment he was tempted to grin—it was such a natural teenager reaction. "He doesn't talk to his parents."

Hopper resented just a little bit the casual assumption that kids and parents didn't talk. Joyce talked to her sons, after all. Granted, Joyce was special, and not everyone was like her. "What about during D&D sessions? With the other boys? Where people can hear them, maybe?"

"They play in the basement," she said, with another withering look of utter contempt for all old people.

It was true that the Wheelers did seem spectacularly oblivious to the things that had happened in their house, under their noses, to their children. How Nancy and Mike were as sharp as they were, he didn't know. Unless there was more to Ted and Karen than met the eye.

Hopper realized he was still standing there with the spatula raised, and that the other pancake was burning in the skillet. Hastily he flipped it, and decided to take a stab at maturity after all. "I was just ... I like you, kid. I have to work a lot, and I'm not always available to take a day off, and there's not a lot of fun stuff we can do without putting you at risk, so I thought ... Ah, hell with it."

He dug the pancake out of the pan and dropped it on a plate, staring at it to avoid looking at her.

"Okay."

Her voice was so soft he wasn't sure he had heard her. "What?"

"Okay. Let's go fishing."

"Yeah?"

Eleven smiled at him. "Yeah."

And just like that, the day was looking up. Maybe there was something to this idea of maturely talking through one's feelings after all. Wait until he told Joyce; she'd be so proud of him.