Chapter Text
El still wasn’t sure what Christmas was.
She understood the concept. It was a ‘holiday’. Before, a holiday meant that there’d be less people at the Bad Place. They weren’t at work, because they were at home. Since everyone was not working, they were ‘celebrating’ - people coming together to have fun and be happy. Holidays happened once a year so they were special. Like a birthday, but for a day and not a person.
Mike had of course explained more things about holidays to her, so they were more than just a day where people didn’t work. Mike said holidays had ‘traditions’ - things you did only sometimes but they were very special and meant a lot, so they were like holidays in that way. They were things you did as a family.
She and Hop had some traditions, she realized. Like watching Miami Vice every Friday or having Eggo Extravaganzas on Saturday mornings. They were things they didn’t do every day, but they did them together and they meant a lot to her. They made her feel good. Comforted. They were all something she’d miss if they didn’t do them anymore.
But Christmas traditions still seemed...strange to her.
A fat man with a beard who you believed in depending on your age (‘only babies really believe in him’ Mike had said) would sneak into your house when everyone was asleep and would bring presents, even if you didn’t believe in him because you weren’t a baby? But that wasn’t really what Christmas was all about, Mike had said. He said it was more about being together and happy that you were all together (‘all’ being your family and friends). It was for celebrating.
El used to wonder where she would’ve gone, when she was still at the Bad Place and all the adults would leave and she would stay. At the time, she was home. But she knows now that that wasn’t true. That wasn’t what ‘home’ was supposed to mean. It was a place where you lived, yes, but she’s come to learn that people could also be a home. Good people, who cared about you, who made you feel safe. People like Hop. Like Joyce. Like her friends. Like Mike. It was a concept of her own that she came up with and she was rather proud of it.
Her first Christmas party was good. At least, in all her inexperience with them, she thought so. More so, she’d guess she’d say she had fun, which must mean that it was good.
She was nervous about it at first, but also excited, like she felt before the Snow Ball. Especially when they were exchanging presents for ‘Secret Santa’ - a tradition where you got a present for someone and the person you got the present for didn’t know that it was you who was getting it for them or what you were getting them. Until you opened it. El was excited to be a Secret Santa. She was also excited to receive a present, because ‘presents’ in the Bad Place were a complicated thing that usually meant in order to get one, El had to do something she really didn’t want to do.
She ended up getting Mike for the Secret Santa, so she really didn’t need to be so nervous. He would’ve liked whatever she got for him, ‘even if it was a clump of dirt,’ Hop had said and El had to admit, she also thought that too a bit too. Not meaning that she thought of getting Mike dirt because that would be stupid, but that Mike would like anything that she got him. It was really lucky she got Mike (though a part of her didn’t think it was really just luck. More like it was Dustin, since he ‘winked’ at her when he handed her the little slip of paper with Mike’s name on it - which meant he had a secret that he couldn’t tell her at the moment).
Mike liked her present, she thinks. Hop offered to go out and buy him something (though the look on his face told her that he’d rather not have to but he would, since it was important to El). But El thought she had something good in mind.
Last year, before Hop had found her in the woods, she had found something too. It was a tiny car. It was dirty and brown in some places that wouldn’t wash off - ‘rust’ she later learned - but she thought it was interesting. Meaning it momentarily distracted her enough, that is. She remembered Mike having a lot of stuff like this in his bedroom. Little tiny interesting things. ‘Toys’.
Mike liked it when she explained it to him. He gave her a hug and said it was the best present he’d ever get. Everyone at the party seemed to agree too. Hop also liked it especially, he said, since he ‘didn’t have to spend any money on it,’ though she could tell he was making one of his jokes again.
The party was also fun - not the Party, with a capital ‘p’ (though her friends were fun in general too). The Christmas party at Steve’s house, she meant. They ate really good food and watched lots of movies and ‘just chilled’, as Lucas put it.
She thinks Hop had fun too. Joyce was there and Hop liked being with Joyce from what El could tell. He said he’s known her since they were about El’s age. She was ‘an old friend,’ he had said, though sometimes it seemed to El like Hop didn’t really want to be ‘just friends’. But Joyce had a boyfriend while she was away, El had been told. But he was gone now, because he protected Will and Mike and Hop and Joyce.
Though Joyce seemed sad still, whenever she dropped off food for Hop and El or Hop went to check on her and pitied El enough to take her with him (but ‘no being seen by anyone but the Byers,’ another new rule that El didn’t really mind). El suspects that’s why Hop hasn’t said anything about wanting to not be just friends to Joyce. Because she was still sad.
But at this party, Joyce seemed to be having fun. She and Hop sat in the kitchen, talking and laughing quietly as they drank a drink that was ‘for adults only’.
Mike’s sister Nancy was there too, and Will’s brother Jonathan. They reminded El a lot of Hop and Joyce. Except if Hop was a girl and Joyce was a boy. Nancy was loud, but in a smart way and tough. Jonathan was quiet (also in a smart way) but tough too in his own way and very protective.
Nancy looked really pretty at the party. Her hair was all curly like El’s usually is, but it looked better. ‘Styled’. And her lips and cheeks were a rosey pink and her eyes had a light pink smudged on them. It reminded El of Dottie’s ‘make-up’ a bit, with all the colors. Kali liked her make-up very dark and while El liked that too sometimes, she liked Nancy’s a lot more than either of the other girls she’s known to wear make-up, for some reason.
Nancy’s make-up seemed more...controlled. Neat. She didn’t know. She just knew it was very pretty on Nancy and Nancy was very pretty. She’s the first person El’s known to be pretty. All the women at the Bad Place were too mean to be pretty, but Nancy was pretty inside too, El had realized. She hoped she’d be like that too, when she got older.
She had told that to Mike, when he had asked why she liked his sister so much after barely knowing her. He accepted the answer, she thinks. He got all quiet before he got really talkative again, the way he got when El said something that made him kind of sad, but he didn’t want her to know it.
She liked pretty women, El has come to discover. They were people to look up to. People El could hope to be. She’s compared herself to all kinds of women since she escaped the Bad Place. Nancy, Joyce, Aunt Terry, Mama, Kali...Max, too.
She was more troubling, that Max girl. El looked up to all the other women in her life, because they were all older than her, she realized. But Max, she was El’s age - she thought - and because of that El just...couldn’t like her. She didn’t hate her, she just...felt hurt whenever she saw her with Mike and the others.
At first, El felt like they replaced her. She knows now that that isn’t true but still...being at the party and being reminded that even Max can be all dressed up and pretty - as pretty as Nancy - still hurt, she thought as she looked at the other girl’s long red hair that looked like it was woven together. The sight of it caused her to tug on her own short locks. ‘Self-consciousness’, she deduced.
El knows she can’t go on not liking her. Max was the rest of the Party’s friend. Lucas and Dustin really liked her and El could tell that Mike did too, but in a different way.
And, El had to admit it, she gave a good gift.
El liked music. She and Hop listened to it a lot. It was one of their little traditions. But as she’s come to learn, people of different ages and backgrounds tend to like different music.
As she has noted before, Max is El’s age. A girl El’s age. If El wanted to go to school one day, like Hop promised, then she needed to learn what other kids liked. At least, that’s what Lucas had said.
He said knowing the material for class was one thing, but knowing how to ‘fit in’ was equally as important. That meant that the other kids couldn’t think she was weird or different because she didn’t know the things they did, things like movies or TV shows or music.
So, Max’s gift should’ve been great. But as El riffled through the tapes - not the sticky kind - and didn’t recognize a single name or song title, it was just a sore reminder that El was the one in the Party who didn’t fit in.
If they all went to school together, Max would be the normal girl in the group who knew things like dating and celebrities and ‘pop culture’ and El would be the weirdo who didn’t know anything and was too stupid to be in the same class as them.
But you went to school to learn. To have a teacher to teach you things. Maybe El needed a teacher to teach her things about…life? About life as a teenager?
She thought it was a good idea. The only trouble was she needed to decide on a teacher. She ruled out Mike pretty quickly, only because she’d be too embarrassed to ask him for any more than he’s already taught her. Mike’s been teaching her things ever since they met and he was a wonderful teacher but…hadn’t she been enough of a burden to him already? She ruled out Dustin and Lucas too. They were her friends. She loved them, but she thinks their understanding of life may be too similar to Mike’s, which also ruled out Will. Besides, she wanted to impress the group with her popular knowledge. She wanted to show them that she could know things about music and TV. Like Max did.
That left her with little options. Hop was too old, apparently, according to the others’ opinions based on his taste in music (not that El didn’t like Hop’s music or his little dances).
And then it came to her. Music. She needed someone who knew music. That’s what got her thinking about needing a teacher in the first place wasn’t it? She thought back to Max’s gift, of the tapes she gave her. El bets those are popular. They could be a good start?
…but then why did Jonathan say that one of her’s was bad? The one called Corey Hart?
Maybe she should just ask someone who might know? Will seemed to have similar taste to Jonathan, since his brother is the one who showed him all the songs he liked, according to Will, he would think it was bad too, wouldn’t he? But even though Jonathan thought the tape was bad…Steve didn’t. He seemed to take personal offense to Jonathan’s quiet “really?” when El’s eyes landed on the tape with Corey Hart.
“Look Byers, I take a lot of your shit, but if you ever come for Corey Hart again, I’m disowning you.” Steve had said, sounding very hurt-but-not at the same time. There must have been a word for it.
El would have asked what ‘disowning’ Jonathan meant too, had someone not answered her previously unvoiced question for her.
“Drama queen.” Max had huffed, and El supposed she trusted her judgement there, since the rest of the Party agreed, much to Steve’s further annoyance and everyone else’s amusement.
Maybe El should ask him? Maybe he was a ‘drama queen,’ but Steve seemed to like music too? They were in his house, after all, and there was lots of music playing all night long during the Christmas party.
So that night, El decided to go and do just that, when the Party was occupied chatting over the game board after dinner. Despite the fact that El never really got the chance to speak with him before. The others liked him and El trusted him. He protected her - their - friends all the time, after all.
Steve, though he seemed a bit ‘zoned out’ when El approached him, perked up and answered her questions. He even offered to lend her some of his own tapes, which El thought was nice.
Steve was nice, El decided. A bit jumpy, and he had a habit of saying a lot of things that El didn’t really understand because he talked too fast sometimes and made references a lot before he backtracked and tried to explain again - but didn’t that mean he’d be a good teacher? Since he knew a lot of names for popular things? He said so himself, he liked popular things, and just because they were popular didn’t make them bad (that made them bad to Jonathan, apparently, but not Steve. El still didn’t really understand why).
Besides, Mike was chatty a lot too and could talk the same way, and El never minded that (though later she would learn that both Steve and Mike would take great offense at being considered even remotely similar).
El left the party that night with some ideas stirring in her head. It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when Hop returned from work one night only to need to leave again, did El’s stirrings come back to her.
Hop’s job was demanding, El figured out. He did his best to make time for her, and he had gotten better after this year, even allowing her phone calls with Mike and her friends regularly (not to mention their secret car trips). But he still had to leave sometimes, and his rules were strict. But, since he planned on signing El up for school eventually, actually seriously planned to since she was now Jane ‘El’ Hopper, he was becoming more ‘lax’.
They made new deals now. Staying up later. Talking to friends on the phone when she wanted (but only people she knew). Going to the Snow Ball. Going to the Christmas party at Steve’s. Their latest deal involved El ‘lasting’ till the summer without any more big breaches of trust. If she could do that, then Hop would put her in school. But it was a slow battle and the winter crawled on especially slow. Especially when El was left on her own. Like tonight.
Sometimes El still got angry at Hop when he had to leave to go to work after just coming back, interrupting their time together, the time they spent making traditions. But she understands better now how he can be so busy.
It didn’t make her time alone in the cabin any less lonely though. Maybe she could call Mike? But that was only so interesting for so long and he wasn’t always regularly available since he had school and clubs and tests…
“Believe me, kid, I hate leaving you too.” Hop said as he put his jacket on. “If I could trust your dopey friends to be subtle when coming over here, I’d have them. But remember, we’re doing baby steps right now, so just hold out a little longer, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can. You know I will.”
“I know.” El agreed. Hop had explained it all before after all. Every night she had to be left on her own, in fact. These ‘baby steps’ were happening so things would cool down with the lab people. So she could go to school without suspicion eventually. They meant one day soon she could have some friends over. Have Mike over.
But then El paused. Because something was stirring in her brain again. Something familiar… Something with potential.
‘Baby steps…’
“Baby…sitter?” El said, carefully sounding out the unfamiliar word, unsure if it was the one she was thinking of.
Hop laughed, like he did when El said something that amused him as he continued to gather his things to leave. “Yeah, honestly, if I could get you a babysitter, I would.” he said, as though he were making a joke that El didn’t quite understand.
But what El didn’t understand even more than Hop’s invisible jokes was…why not? “What if I did have one?” she asked.
Hop paused in putting his hat on his head. It seemed that something El had said had finally caught his attention. “One what?”
“A babysitter.” El answered.
Hop stared at her, then he laughed. Short, barely a breath, before his look turned confused. Alarmed. “I was joking.” he said plainly with that wide eyed look he sometimes got.
“So?” El responded. “That’s normal, right? Babysitters for kids?” she questioned. She remembered they watched something on the TV with a ‘babysitter’ somewhat recently. If Hop got nervous when El was on her own, and didn’t trust her friends to be ‘subtle,’ what if he got someone else he trusted to spend time with her? Just until the summer?
El reasonably stated her points as best she could, Hop’s eyes only getting wider as she went on. “C’mon, kid. It’s not like I can just get you a babysitter.” was the response he finally went with, looking slightly freaked.
El frowned. “Why?”
Hop gave her a look that said he thought she was being stupid. She quickly tried to show him that she wasn’t being stupid. That she had a good idea. “Yes you can. I know one.” El continued, remembering Hop’s rule about a ‘circle of trust’.
“You know one?” Hop said, actually stepping closer, something he did when he thought his ears were failing him. “Who? What babysitter do you know?”
“Steve.” she answered, the answer coming to her in a severe moment of clarity. That was right. That’s why that word had stuck out to her so much when they had watched that show on TV. Dustin had said that Steve was his babysitter now. That he came over sometimes and cooked for Dustin. That he drove him and the rest of the Party places. That he spent time with them. The whole Party called him a babysitter, even Mike. Why couldn’t El have that too?
Hop didn’t seem to like her answer though. He turned his head, his bushy brows furrowing. “Harrington? Steve Harrington?” he seemed to sound out very carefully.
“Yes.” she answered. She never did learn his last name, but who else could it be? “He stays with Dustin sometimes. Hangs out. And…in the circle of trust, yes?”
Hop made that face he made when he looked like he was about to get frustrated. When he was about to yell, in confusion and slight irritation. But he reigned himself in. A sign of their progress. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but ultimately let out a great big sigh. “Okay.” Hop said, grabbing his keys and turning to the door to leave, looking indecisive.
“Okay?” El said back, a little surprised honestly. “Okay like yes?”
“No.” Hop said as he opened the door and looked back to her, speaking up again before El could let her disappointment and own frustration wash over her. “Okay like not no, but not yes either.”
El tilted her head at him and furrowed her own brows, confused.
Hop turned in the doorway. “We’ll talk when I get back. And then make a decision about this, okay?”
El continued to look at him before she thought of something. Half-way happy. They wouldn’t decide anything tonight, but they would come to a decision eventually.
El gave her own sigh. “Not no.” she repeated back, which caused Hop to smile for a moment.
He nodded. “Not no.” Hop repeated, before he left. It seemed like he had some stirrings of his own, judging by his furrowing brow and heavy sigh.
Later on the next day, something had changed for Hop. She wasn’t sure what but that didn’t matter since they made a new deal that had El grinning and excited to call Mike. She had some questions to ask him. The chief one being; did this mean she believed in Santa Claus now, since she was a baby?
It ended up being one of their longer calls.