brutal ━ mike wheeler

eleven. the creel house

ELEVEN━━━━
THE CREEL HOUSE

stranger things;
season 4    ep 5

ADRIAN SAT AT THE kitchen table with Max, Holly, and Ted Wheeler. After the whole thing that happened with Max, no one wanted to leave anyone's sight. They were positive that Vecna was targeting them now, so that meant the buddy system at all times.

Holly was messing with her lite-brite, grabbing the pegs that she needed from the palm of Adrian's hand, who was watching her piece together something. He wasn't quite sure what it was yet, but that didn't matter. Next to him, Max had a pack of crayons spilled out in front of her and a whole bunch of paper from one of Adrian's notebooks, scribbling a whole mess of reds, blues, and purples. It looked strikingly similar to that weird red parallel world he had seen briefly, so that's what he assumed it was.

Karen was in front of them cooking some food, humming a gentle tune to some ABBA song that Adrian hadn't heard yet. He yawned as he went to rest his head. "You alright, son?" Ted looked up from his newspaper with an eyebrow peaked.

Adrian hummed in reply, lifting his head when he felt Holly nudging him. "Oh. Yeah. I'm fine. Just didn't get much sleep." There's young girl waited until he had straightened himself up before she moved her toy in front of him, simply crawling into his lap.

"There's some coffee made up. You're more than welcome to have some." Ted went back to reading his newspaper, taking a sip of some of the soda in front of him. Adrian furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Karen, who was giving him an encouraging smile. 'Told you he'd come around.' She mouthed.

"Hmmm. . . Adrian?"

"What is it Hol?"

"Are you gonna come around for my birthday this year?" She asked innocently as she messed around a little more with her toy, before eyeing the crayons that were in front of Max. "Well, I don't see why not."

It didn't take long after that they all heard a bunch of footsteps running up the stairs, and Adrian had to purse his lips together to not laugh when he saw Mike almost trip over air. He watched as he looked around for a moment before his eyes finally fell on Adrian, who had now moved on to playing with Holly's hair. He let out a sigh of relief. "Good morning, hun." Mrs. Wheeler tried to give Mike a hug, and the boy awkwardly returned it from the side, quickly taking a seat next to Adrian. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah. Everything's okay." Nancy told her mom as she let out a sigh of relief at the sight of both Max and Adrian at the table. "I think it's so sweet that you guys are sticking together like this." Adrian could faintly hear the sound of Kate Bush from Max's walkman, deciding immediately that the song was quite nice. "Could try sticking together at a different house for a change." Ted spoke mindlessly from where he sat, his eyes not leaving my the newspaper he had in his hands. "You know you're welcome here anytime."

Nancy walked over to the table, taking a seat on the other side of Max. "Hey." Max paused her music and took of her headphones, giving a small smile to Nancy. "You okay?"

"Just couldn't sleep. People kept blasting music in my ears, for some reason." Max then turned to look at Holly, who was busy drawing some sort of stick figure family. "But Holly let me borrow some of her crayons. We've been having a fun morning, right, Holly?"