The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

the spared group

"Hey!" Hopper ground out, turning around and grasping the boy's collar, pulling him close as Mike struggled and slapped his arm. He nodded towards the hallway, said, "Let's talk. Alone."

Corey kind of wanted Hopper to beat his ass.

He looked to see Sam sending him a disapproving look, already knowing what Corey was thinking by the look on his face. Corey grumbled to himself and mumbled a half-assed apology to his little cousin. Did she have to know everything?

Mike and Hopper stared at each other for a few moments, Mike glaring and Hopper holding firm eyes. Finally, Hopper goaded Mike out of the room and down the hall, where angered yells and defensive cries soon echoed from.

It was Sam who turned from the hallway to Eleven with a brightening look on her face.

"El!" she exclaimed in glee, running forward and practically throwing herself onto Eleven.

"Holy shit, El, I missed you!" Sam continued. Her arms were flung around Eleven, throwing her chin over Eleven's shoulder. He was met with Sam's back, but Corey knew she was beaming for the first time in a while.

How could Corey hate her? How could he hate Eleven? She was an angel, and she made everyone happy, and there was no reason to.

He just wished his heart didn't break every time he thought of her and Mike.

"Missed you, too," Eleven nodded back, smiling weakly as her shoulders relaxed. But then, as she squeezed, Sam let out a hiss, and the smile was fading fast from Eleven's face. She forced Sam to stop hugging her, hands planted on her shoulders, searching her face for any sign of injury. Eleven realized, "You are hurt."

Sam choked out an incredulous laugh.

"I don't give a fuck!" she exclaimed gleefully, ignoring Joyce, Steve, Jonathan, and Nancy's reprimanding shouts at her language. "You're alive!"

"Are you... okay?" Eleven's eyebrows furrowed, still not convinced.

Corey watched Sam shake her head; watched her lie, "I'm fine. And I told you that you would rock the grunge look!"

Lucas and Dustin were chuckling quietly from behind the friends, and Corey knew it was an inside joke he hadn't been present yet to witness. Eleven turned from Sam, clutching onto Lucas and Dustin tight at the sight of them. The three of them stood in a solemn quiet until Eleven pulled away and was heading straight for Corey.

She hugged him, and oh. Corey had not been expecting that.

"You are still here," Eleven mumbled, surprised yet grateful, face buried into his neck.

Corey tried not to flinch too much in the embrace of Eleven, tried to return it so that no one would send a double take his way. His hands came sliding up her back.

"Of course," Corey huffed sarcastically. "I couldn't leave these idiots on their own without you."

Eleven laughed out fondly at that, stepping back with a fragile smile. Corey knew then that she deserved the entire word. It seemed that she only wanted Mike to give it to her, and if that meant having to deal with that stinging pain in his chest when he saw the way they looked at each other — the way Mike would never look at him — then so be it.

He had been ignoring his own feelings for years, one suppressed, childish affection was nothing he wouldn't handle.

It was unfair to fall for someone who belonged to someone else in the first place, he forced the words into his mind a hundred times as Eleven shifted her attention, and then a hundred more times until the pain became an odd sort of bearable.