Magic between us || Fillie

Manic Monday

When Will and El reached the cabin, she wasted no time, dropped Mike's bike onto the ground and headed straight towards where she knew the 'entrance' to the basement was. The cabin was extremely messy, the remnants of her epic battle with the Mind Flayer evident all around her.

She wondered how come no one had stumbled upon the cabin in all this time. Sure, it was deep in the forest, not many people would go anywhere near here, but still... for nothing to be moved  for an entire year...it was strange.

Alas, she put her doubts about that aside as she tried to lift up a heavy wooden board that had fallen above the trap-like door leading to the basement. As soon as Will saw her struggling, he went up to her to give her a hand.

'Thanks... Uh...on the count of three, let's lift it up and put it aside', El instructed him, going around to the one side of the heavy piece of wood.

Will moved to the other side of it and grabbed it firmly with both hands, 'Okay... One... two... three'.

Both of them used up all the strength they had to lift the board up and almost immediately threw it aside as they couldn't hold it for very long. They had already felt like they had strained themselves too much.

'We really need to work on our muscles', Will grumbled whilst rubbing his arms up and down to ease the pain.

'No time for that now', El said in a serious tone, completely focused on the task at hand, 'Alright, there should be at least four boxes down there'.

Will watched her as she began rummaging through the things that were spread around in front of them. He wasn't entirely sure what those boxes she mentioned looked like, but he got down on his knees, a bit further away from her and started looking around as well.

Once he had gotten through a big spider web that made him cringe badly, he excitedly yelled out, 'I think I found one! It's got 'Hawkins Lab' written on it, is that it?'

'Yes! Great!', she said happily, then continued, 'Move it to the side and let's keep looking'.

It must have been about fifteen minutes later that they had found every box that was there.

'How are we supposed to take these back to Mike's?', Will asked, looking at all five boxes in front of them. El seemed to have missed one when she first saw this place back in 1984.

'We don't have to today. I can just skim through them whilst we're here', she replied, already kneeling down and opening the only box she was already familiar with, figuring that that one will go much faster and then she can be free to explore the others for as long as it takes.

'You 'skimming through' could last for hours, El', Will sighed, 'We can't stay here for that long. It'll get dark soon.'

'You're free to go. I don't even know why you're here', she told him, not even trying to hide her annoyance at his unwanted presence.

Will rolled his eyes before explaining himself, 'I'm here because Mike would kill me if I had let you come here alone, or go anywhere alone actually.'

'Right', she scoffed, 'Considering how he's been acting, I don't think he would care much.'

'Why? Did something happen?', Will asked, furrowing his brows in confusion.

El sighed in defeat, her eyes still focused on the documents she was looking through, 'Something did, but he won't talk to me about it, so I don't know what it is. I just know that he's been weird all day.'