#before and during Mike’s monologue mike’s arm rests on her shoulder just like jonathan’s

[chirpsythismorning]

Something I noticed editing the other day was a contrast between El when she’s battling Vecna vs. when she’s saving Max.

They focus on El right before both of those instances, from a medium close-up, where Jonathan and Mike are both holding onto her shoulders for support.

But when she’s about to save Max, there’s a shift.

Instead Mike has moved his hand to join his other hand in holding hers. But near the end, they choose to focus on this medium close-up again, as opposed to a close-up with her and Mike’s hands joining.

For some reason they wanted to make a distinction from this angle specifically, with an almost before and after element, because this shot is literally followed by El sitting beside Max, meaning it's important. They are connecting these two moments together, ie. Mike and Jonathan's hands both there to support her, and then Mike's hand missing. It's almost as if they are separating Mike from what is about to happen.

It honestly feels like they’re acknowledging the fact that El never needed this grand love confession from Mike in the first place. In order for her to even focus on saving Max in the end, she had to ignore Mike begging her to wake up and acknowledge him, hence why he was probably not included in that shot.

[elshopper]

Something In Common

Fandom: Stranger Things

Rating: T, Canon Character Death

WC: 1,722

Summary:

The screams. The gunshots. The screeches. He heard Hopper’s voice; it was loud and booming. Reverberating off the cinder block wall and out to where he was holding Will up as best as he could. He couldn’t make out what Hopper was saying, but as loud as he was, Mike knew that Hopper, Mrs. Byers, and Bob needed to get out. Now.

OR

Mike’s reaction and internal monologue during one of the most intense, slow-but-fast scenes in S2. Canon compliant. Bob’s death is included, but isn’t too terribly descriptive. This is my first work to ever post, so please read and review if you wanna!

Read below, or on AO3

The second he heard it, he knew what it was.

The screams. The gunshots. The screeches. He heard Hopper’s voice; it was loud and booming. Reverberating off the cinder block wall and out to where he was holding Will up as best as he could. He couldn’t make out what Hopper was saying, but as loud as he was, Mike knew that Hopper, Mrs. Byers, and Bob needed to get out. Now.

And the even more sickening feeling – the one that had made a home in the pit of his stomach the second Bob Newby began his mission – told him that Bob wasn’t with them anymore.

That feeling turned into an assumption when he saw Hopper all but carry Mrs. Byers out of the lab. It was happening slowly, but all at once. Like a weird dream where he was running as fast as he could, but always seemed to get nowhere.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” he yelled at no one in particular, still struggling holding up Will’s dead weight. He was the first to admit he wasn’t the strongest person, at least not physically. But he was doing his best.

His question – the one that tugged on his vocal chords and made his eyes water – was only answered by Mrs. Byers’s indiscernible wailing.

Both Hopper and Joyce’s attention seemed to be on the doors to the lab. Just as Mike followed Joyce’s gaze, three or four of those… things… scared the absolute shit out of him. They crashed their full bodyweight into the doors, cracking the glass further with each sickening hit. The doors shuddered under their force. They wouldn’t hold forever.

But Joyce was still fighting Hopper to get back in.

“HE’S GONE! HE’S GONE!”

That assumption from before shifted to fact in his mind.

Shit. No he’s not. We need him. He was Bob the Brain.

Out of the blue it seemed, Mike heard a car horn. His head whipped around, and he breathed a tiny sigh of relief when he saw Jonathan (and his sister?) screech to a halt in front of them. Hopper was scooping up Will, and it was time to make a move to get in the car and hightail it away from this hell hole. With the quickness of things, he didn’t have time to think about Bob, or the loss of him. He didn’t have time to ask questions. He didn’t have time to scream (although he felt like it).

“Come on, get in!” Jonathan yelled from the driver’s seat.

It took him what seemed like ages, but Mike felt himself move. The first move he made was to steal a glance through the glass doors into the lab. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he felt as though he owed it to Bob. Or maybe because he felt it was time for him to man up a little. It was truly terrifying, this reality. It was one he could only dream up on a lonely Saturday, scribbling notes for their next campaign. But this one was real, and happening all around him. All of his senses engaged, it struck him that this reality would never leave him for as long as he lived. He glanced.

Inside was Bob, being mauled by at least six of those things. Maybe seven. He was lifeless, and bloody – the beasts taking everything from him. Disregarding the person that he was, or what he meant to the people outside the doors they were still fighting so hard to break down. It was a quick glance, and as he turned away he felt his eyes water, and he swallowed some vomit that crept up the back of his throat.

Breaking his terrifying brush with the gory scene, Mrs. Byers clung to Mike almost immediately after Hopper lifted Will over his shoulder.

“Come on!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Mike kept repeating to her, feeling a sharp shortness in his breath. Was it?

To the best of his ability, he pushed her in the direction of the car and helped her inside. Once he, Will, and Mrs. Byers were in the backseat, Hopper slammed the door and dashed off in the direction of his Blazer. Jonathan stepped on the gas. Mike stared numbly ahead at Jonathan’s headrest as Nancy tried to ask him a million questions, but he blocked them out. He was sure if he opened his mouth to say something, he’d color the backseat of Jonathan’s car with his lunch.

They sped ahead as Jonathan honked at… Lucas? Dustin? Max? Well, shit. And was that Steve? They jumped out of the way. As Jonathan stepped harder on the gas, he turned to see them all pile in the back of the Blazer through the back window.

Once it hit him that they were free from the lab, he let out a shaky “Woah,” and Jonathan and Nancy nodded in silent agreement. Joyce, however, was anything but silent.

Mrs. Byers was frantic. He couldn’t imagine it – he couldn’t fathom losing someone you love like that. To see them, right in front of you, and then to see them be taken. Gone. And even though Mike knew Mrs. Byers couldn’t have done anything to stop it, she probably felt the guilt and stabbing pain that followed a gruesome loss like the one he’d just seen. It was all too eerily familiar, and seemed like an odd case of déjà vu until the realization hit him in the gut with the force of something like a train.

If Bob couldn’t even get out, there’s no way. No way Eleven survived a year with those… those things.

A terrifying image flashed across his mind – one that would come to haunt him for the rest of his life – and he doubled over in his seat, truly battling the vomit this time. He understood this. This loss and terror and guilt and pain. Because he had felt it himself, about a year ago. It had been growing – festering – inside him all this time. Hope was the only thing keeping him trudging forward, like a little candle still glowing amidst a dark room. That candle had been keeping those terrible, dreadful feelings at bay for so long.

Eleven was a miracle, the very definition of one. And she was capable of performing them too, he’d seen it. These miracles, to him, had meant that extraordinary light existed in the darkest of places. But just now, doubled over in the back of Jonathan’s car, that little candle extinguished with a dull hiss.

Eleven was gone. Long gone. He had known this for a while, too. How foolish he’d been, all those days he spent calling to her on the radio. Or riding his bike around Mirkwood last winter. Or planning out what he would say to her when she finally stepped back through his basement door. He had planned to thank her for everything she did for them. Introduce her to Will, finally. Show her back to the fort of sheets he proudly kept up for her return (despite his mother’s griping). Hug her as tightly as he could – or as she would allow him – and explain to her what he was too chicken to say in the cafeteria last year.

But all of that was a stupid waste of time.

Eleven was gone, and so was Bob. And now, he had to make sure Mrs. Byers was okay. So they could save Will.

“Mrs. Byers,” he choked out. She looked at him, but her eyes looked vacant and sick. He had no idea what to say. What would he want someone to say to him?

“I’m really sorry,” he whisper-spoke, his voice cracking.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she managed to say in between shaky sobs. The vacancy in her eyes faded just a little. She moved her left arm around his shoulders and hugged him as she wiped at the stale tears that wet her cheeks with her free hand. “I’m sorry. You should have never had to see that.”

Her breathing was still sporadic, and every now and again she closed her eyes and held back a quiet sob. But she was doing her best to comfort a traumatized Mike as his eyes started to cloud with tears.

It was like her to put on a brave face around her kids, around him. She was selfless that way, she could tell how broken he was.

The entire car ride back to the Byers’ house, Jonathan’s car was full of sniffles, shallow breaths, and the comforting and low pulse of the songs on the radio. Not many words were spoken, but Joyce knew she had people to be strong for. They weren’t going to be able to help her son (sleeping limp to her right) if she was a complete mess. So, she forced all of that unstable energy to focus on being something solid for Mike to hold on to for the time being. How could she forget? He had lost someone too.

Despite the murky circumstance, Mike did feel as warm as he had in a long time. Will’s mom had always given great hugs. He could remember scraping his knee in Will’s front driveway, and Mrs. Byers wrapping him up in a big hug despite his hysterics. She bandaged him up and sent him back out to play with Will again. Healed.

He wasn’t surprised she was trying to do the same thing now. Although this wound was different from a bloodied knee, and the stinging pain never seemed to die this time, they were bearing it together. They all were.

“Bob,” Mike started. Nancy stirred in the front seat to look at him through the rearview mirror. Mrs. Byers glanced over, her incessant arm-rubbing coming to a stop. She looked as though wasn’t ready to hear Bob’s name out loud just yet, but she endured it like Bactine spray on a flesh wound.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do this without him,” Mike concluded.

Mrs. Byers didn’t say anything – just a brief nod of the head - but she looked at Mike with understanding and solidarity. The look made him capable of taking a deep breath and swallowing that lack of faith that had just cracked the surface. She was with him.

They did have something in common, after all.

AN: 

Hi, thank you for reading!

I had this sitting on my computer for what seemed like forever, but I’m weirdly proud of it and thought it would be a shame if no one ever read it… so here it is! I know it’s sad, but thinking that Mike had lost all that hope only hours before makes El’s return all the more gratifying to me… idk.

I got the idea from the scene where Max is talking to Mike about El and he says, “Until that thing got her” (hence why I use the word things to refer to the demo-dogs in Mike’s mind) and it struck me as Mike seeing the demo-dogs killing so many people, including Bob, kind of confirmed to him that they may have gotten El too. 

To give complete credit, the idea for this struck me when I was reading an anonymous ask about this scene someone sent in to @themikewheelers a while ago. I wish I could find the exact post, but I don’t have any idea how long its been. I live for her analysis of the show, though, so its worth a mention!!

This is my first work in this fandom, and first one ever to actually post, so thanks again for reading, I really appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed!!!!

-M