Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

sixteen | the gate

With a nod of his head and a grin on his face, he said to her, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm safe." Then he started to mess around with the hair on her head as he said, "And so are you, and that's what matters, alright?"

It was only when he started to frown to himself that El's eyebrows furrowed as she said, "Matt?"

With a sigh, he said to her, "Sorry. I'm just, uh, still trying to accept the fact that you actually have hair on your head this time around."

In response to his words, the most El did was laugh to herself, shortly before she found herself being thrown into a hug by none other than Dustin Henderson and Lucas Sinclair.

While she had her arms wrapped around the two boys that were now hugging her, Lucas said to her, "We missed you."

El replied, "I missed you, too."

Then Dustin told her, "We talked about you pretty much every day."

After the three of them had pulled away from each other, Lucas took a quick glance back over at Matthew, who was pulling out an unlit cigarette, before he looked back at El and quietly said to her, "And don't let Matt know that we told you this, but, uh, he was sort of a mess after you disappeared." While El turned to look over at Matthew, who was starting to flick open the top of his lighter, Lucas quietly told her, "Yeah, he, uh, got really, really mad when you disappeared the way you did back at school and he apparently got in a lot more fights at school and spent his time either drinking or smoking away in his room and never even talked to us, unless he was yelling at us about something."

In response to his words, El quietly sighed to herself because of how her disappearance had apparently affected Matthew before she looked away from him, just as he brought the lit cigarette out of his mouth and let out a puff of smoke.

Then she looked over at Dustin and reached a hand out to his mouth before she said to him, "Teeth."

In turn, Dustin said to her, "What?"

El told him, "You have teeth."

With a grin on his face, Dustin said to her, "Oh. You like these pearls?"

While El simply blinked at Dustin after hearing him let out a purring noise and Lucas simply shook his head at Dustin, the red-headed girl started to walk over towards them as she said, "Eleven?"

El turned her attention away from Dustin and Lucas and over towards the red-headed girl that was walking towards her.

It wasn't until the red-headed girl was standing in between Lucas and Dustin that she said to El, "Hey. Um, I'm Max. I've heard a lot about you."

While ignoring Max's held out hand, El walked right past her and over towards Joyce before she started to cry into the older woman's arms.

And while Joyce and El talked to each other, Max looked over at Matthew, who only shrugged to himself with a mere raise of his eyebrows.

With a scoff, Max looked away from Matthew and looked over at Joyce and El, just in time to see them walk into another room.

* * *

With a sigh, Hopper said, "It's not like it was before. It's grown. A lot. And, I mean, that's considering we can get in there. The place is crawling with those dogs."

It was then that Dustin said to him, "Demo-dogs."

While Matthew turned to look over at Dustin with a blank look on his face, Hopper turned to Dustin and said with a sigh, "I'm sorry, what?"

Dustin told him, "I said, uh, Demo-dogs. Like Demogorgon and dogs. Like, you put them together, it sounds pretty badass—"

While staring at Dustin, Hopper asked him, "How is this important right now?"