( meleven; fem!user; hurt/comfort; tw )

Eleven wasn’t thin, but her cheekbones still seemed protruding and angular, her cheeks — deeply hollowed, and her nose — barely sharp and slightly upturned. Maybe it was from the stress she had been through — Mike isn’t sure what exactly had been going on in her life, but maybe it was something dark. Overwhelming. A sad, complicated story.

She had said that bad people were looking for her.

Mike couldn’t sleep because of Eleven. He frowned, remembering his conversation with her, her hoarse voice, the wet gleam of her large sunken eyes (resembling bottomless salt mines), and couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that had arisen in his chest — so vague to the touch, instantly melting beneath his fingers. She had superpowers — just like Master Yoda or any other Jedi — and she knew where Will was. She knew where Will...

There was a stirring in the makeshift fort, and El’s voice came through (he could barely make out anything, but the fragments of words sounded like “no” and “papa,” sewn together with raw grief), before everything went quiet. The silence began to pulse around, filling the dense air, and the basement suddenly felt cramped. Worry tightened his lungs inside his ribcage — he jumped up, anxiously pushed aside the hanging blanket that blocked the passage and hid her in safety.

Eleven sat hunched over, as if hiding the nightmare images sprouting from her chest, among her lungs beating against her ribs; her eyes gleamed feverishly, and droplets of sweat ran down her pale face, tracing the deliberately blue-green veins visible through the translucent skin beneath her eyes. She was shaken — and she had probably had a nightmare.

“Oh my God,” Mike exhaled in relief, having expected something else — something strange and unsettling. “I was worried that...”

He trailed off under her heavy gaze, nervously twitched his eyebrows, which were hidden beneath his curly hair, and felt her anxiety, distress, and fear as a tingling in his nerve endings. And it all tasted like licorice — dusty and forgotten at the back of kitchen cabinets.

“Are you okay?” he suddenly began, trying to be as gentle as possible. Mike didn’t want to pressure her at all. “You had a nightmare, didn’t you? Maybe you can tell me about it?” It probably wasn’t a good idea — El barely spoke, throwing out clipped phrases instead of full sentences. But it was worth a try.