Alexithymia | STRANGER THINGS [ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

sixteen | the gate

While Mike and El quickly wrapped their arms around each other, Matthew slowly looked down at the floor with his eyebrows furrowed and a bit of a frown on his face.

And while Matthew kept his eyes solely on the floor, Nancy simply put a hand on his shoulder without even saying anything to him.

And while Nancy started to lightly pat Matthew on his shoulder, the red-headed girl looked between Lucas and Dustin as she asked them, "Is that...?"

While the two boys wordlessly nodded their heads in response to her question, Mike pulled back from El and told her, "I never gave up on you. I called you every night. Every night for—"

With a shake of her head, El said, "Three-hundred and fifty-three days. I heard."

Mike asked her, "Why didn't you tell me you were there? That you were okay?"

It was then that Hopper told him, "Because I wouldn't let her." After Mike turned his head to look over at Hopper, Hopper started to make his way over towards El and asked her, "The hell is this? Where you been?"

In turn, El asked him, "Where have you been?"

It wasn't long after that that Hopper wrapped his arms around El, shortly before Mike said to him, "You've been hiding her. You've been hiding her this whole time!"

After being shoved at by Mike, Hopper turned to him with a hand held out towards him as he yelled, "Hey! Hey!" After grabbing Mike by the front of his shirt, Hopper said to him, "Let's talk. Alone."

It wasn't long after the two of them had walked into another room and the door was closed behind him that they could hear the faint sound of Mike yelling at Hopper.

And even while hearing the faint voice of his brother yelling at Hopper, Matthew continued to keep his eyes on the floor as he continued to try and process the fact that El was actually alive and wasn't dead, like he'd been thinking she was for about a year now.

It wouldn't be until he felt a pair of arms suddenly wrap around him and could hear the muffled sound of someone crying into his chest that he slowly looked up from the floor and up at El, who had her arms tightly wrapped around him as she cried into his chest.

Rather hesitantly, Matthew slowly wrapped his own arms around her, due to the fact that he still believed that if he were to put his arms around her that she would simply just disappear right in front of him, like she did a year ago and similarly to what she did during the dreams he had of her after her disappearance at the middle school.

However, as soon as his arms were wrapped around her, they only seemed to tighten and he tried to pull her even closer to himself, while resting the bottom of his chin on the top of her head.

While the rest of the people in the room— excluding Mike and his two friends— silently eyed Matthew and wondered just why the tension Matthew originally had in his body was starting to slip away, El pulled back from Matthew and said to him, "Matt is safe."