eggos | (no subject)

Monday, Feb 8, 2021
tw for allusions to anxiety, claustrophobia, bullying, and jealousy

It's Monday, which means she has to go to school. She almost doesn't want to. When her alarm goes off, two hours early, she lies in bed and stares up at the ceiling. It's Hopper's ceiling. She'd stayed the night here, after finding him yesterday. It'd been... strange, to meet Beverly. To see this other girl who was in Hopper's life. But she hadn't had much chance to dwell on it last night, and now it's the morning, and all Eleven wants to do is stay home with Hopper and do his lessons.

Like normal.

But school is important. It has opportunities for her. That's what they'd said at the Home, anyway.

So she eats breakfast, and she gets dressed in her own clothes, that she picked out, and she grabs the things that the Home and Stan had helped her get together. And she reassures Hopper, again, that she'll be okay.

It's less okay than she'd expected. The hallways are crowded, nearly to the point of cramped. For a moment, she feels like she can't move, and she feels her joints lock up. She breathes, slowly. She's okay. Just like she told Hopper, she's alright.

She's shown to first period, and listening to the morning announcements has her frowning up at the speaker. The voice on the other end... It could almost be Mike. But she knows it's not him, because she'd looked for him. And because of how he sounds. The voice is right, but the words he's saying, the way he's saying them, they're all wrong. It makes it difficult to concentrate on the rest of first period.

And then the rest of the day continues. It's a busy, overwhelming blur. Gym class feels easiest, because she gets to run out some of the nervous energy. She's used to running, at least.

At the end of the day, while the rest of the students pile out of the school and onto the bus, Eleven sits down on the steps. Her backpack is beside her, and her elbows are on her knees, head in her hands and fingers curled into her hair and gripping tightly.

She's not crying, but she feels like she wants to. It'd been so busy, so intense. Everything had been going on, and she's supposed to remember it all, and how do other kids do this? How?

Eventually, the cold stone of the steps seeps into her pants enough to be bothersome. She has to check in with the Home, too, so they know she went to school and that she's okay. She has Hopper, now, but there are rules, laws, that he has to follow, too. So for now, she has to check in with the Home.

She pulls her phone out as she walks, but she can't remember the number, and she can't remember how to find it again. How is anyone supposed to remember so much? With an annoyed scream that she bites down into a growl, she drops the phone onto a bench along the sidewalk and sits heavily next to it.

The phone jolts down between the slots of the bench and clatters against the concrete underneath.

[ Come one, come all! Residents of the Home, students of Darrow High, Stranger Things and Stranger Things Adjacent pups! No matter who you know or how you know El, feel free to find/feel/hear/See this overwhelmed psionic baby at any point during her day! Towards the end of the post she gets a little crankier, but she'll behave all the same. Open until this says otherwise! ]

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She takes it from him, swallowing down the urge to throw it again. She offers him a wan smile, though, acknowledging the joke behind the remark — even if he's not actually joking, she gets the sense he's trying to make her feel better.

"It's okay," she says, then reaches up to wipe the corner of one eye. She isn't crying, yet, and she doesn't want to. "I... didn't like today," she admits.

"High school's bullshit," Fraser said, even though hit hadn't really occurred to him to drop out. While he hadn't decided if he actually wanted to bother with design school, having a diploma would at least give him more options.

"We should do something. I mean, fuck school. From eight until three we're their... fucking brainwashed hostages, but now? We can do whatever we want."

"Brainwashed hostages," she echoes seriously, speaking under him as he continues before echoing "Whatever we want?" She's not allowed to do whatever she wants. She never has been. She has too much power in her. It would be an unfair advantage.

"I have to check in with the Home, first," she adds. "They said it's a rule. But I don't know the number."

He felt like she was missing something about his very passionate declaration, but he wasn't going to give her shit about it.

Secretly, he'd always kind of wish his mom cared more about where he was and what he was doing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered to call to tell her he was going to be late.

"Here," he said, opening and closing his hand for her to give over her phone. "They programmed it in, right?"

She places the phone in his hand, brow furrowed. "How do I know that?" she asks. She hasn't learned how to 'program,' and she isn't sure if the staff at the Home did, either. But if Fraser does, then she'll gladly accept his help.

"Um, let me look," he mumbled to himself, opening her phone, which he wasn't surprised to find had no passcode. Opening up the caller app, he scrolled through her few contacts.

"Here, see," he said, leaning in close to show her one that was labelled Children's Home. "You can go here and all you have to do is press this little icon to call them."

"Easy peasy," she whispers, because it's ridiculous how easy he'd made that look. A tap here, a tap there, and there's the number, waiting for her to call. It isn't at all like the phones she's used to. She takes it back from him, staring at the screen a little like it's betrayed her.

"Thanks," she tells him, then presses the button he'd indicated so she can place the call.

"Sure," he murmured, sitting down on the bench while he watched for her to make the call. With his luck, they'd make some big deal out of it and make them both come home. Or try, at least.

He wasn't exactly making a reputation for doing what the people at the Home told him to.

While he waited, he hummed to himself, tapping his palms on his knees like drums. He was restless, but he was always restless. They were shuffling around his meds at the Home, but it was all bullshit. How were they supposed to know him after only a few weeks?

The dialer rings in her ear, and on the second ring, someone picks up. She tells them her name, and that she's done with school, but she's going to spend the night at Hopper's again.

She looks at Fraser, then points at the phone against her face with her eyebrows raised in silent question. Does she want her to check him in, too?

Fraser was quick to shake his head no.

He didn't plan to stay out all night, and even if he did, he wasn't going to check in, just on principle.

He motioned for her to hurry and hang up.

El pulls the phone away from her ear; the screen lights up and she sees the different call options, including the big red phone symbol. She taps it, without so much as a goodbye to the staff on the other end.

Once it's back on her home screen with its generic wallpaper, she looks at Fraser again.

"Now what?"