꧁꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜɪʀᴛʏ-ᴇɪɢʜᴛ: ʟɪᴋᴇ ʏᴏᴜ'ʟʟ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ

"Max? Hey?" I furrowed my eyebrows as the girl collapsed into my embrace, arms wrapped so tightly around me I was almost worried for the blood circulation. "What's going on?" Holding one hand on Max's cheek, I pulled her head out of the crook of my neck to get a better look of her. "Max?" Oh God.

The doors of the office slammed open, Robin and Nancy both stood there, out of breath as they looked from person to person. Whatever the fuck that was, I didn't like it, and I did not want to see Max go through it again.

"It was here." Maxine pointed at the wall with her flashlight as we all stood behind her, staring at the wall, of which had no clock in it. As the girl had picked herself up from whatever nightmare that had just occurred, she'd insisted on showing us what she'd seen, but it wasn't even there. "It was right here."

"A... grandfather clock." Nancy repeated the red head's words as we all stared at the painted wall.

Max nodded without even looking back at us, her voice cracking slightly as she spoke. "It was so real...and then, when I got closer, suddenly I just...I woke up."

"It was as if you were in a trance..." I murmured, stepping towards her to try and keep her with me.

"... Exactly what Eddie said happened to Chrissy." Dustin then added on.

What the fuck. No. Absolutely not. I could lose anyone in this world, but Max? No. I am not losing Max to this Vecna asshole. No fucking way. I would fight to my dying breath to keep Max alive if I had to.

"Max..." I murmured, stepping closer to her as she turned.

When she looked at me, it was dead in the eyes, dried up tears around her own eyes. "That's not even the bad part." Well, time to get every weapon I know and send it in the mail to this Vecna fucker, cause I am not losing Maxine. No. Way.

⊹˚˖⁺

The group of us stood around the office desk, looking between the two files as Max spoke and explained what I was worried about most. "Fred and Chrissy, they both came to Ms Kelley for help." She says. "uh... they were both having headaches- bad headaches that wouldn't go away." I don't know what part of me thought this, maybe it was the idea that Max had previously been in a trance, but I got the feeling I wasn't going to like whatever she was about to say. "And then... then the nightmares..." Every time she added something else to the list, the more worried I got and the harder it became for Maxine to speak.

"Trouble sleeping..." She continued. "They'd wake up in a cold sweat... then they started seeing things... Bad things." Glancing away, I did my best to keep myself composed. No. We're not losing Max. We're not. I can't. "From their past... and these visions, they just... they kept on getting worse and worse, until eventually..."

"Don't finish that sentence." I tell her, arms crossed. When she looked up at me, tears continued to build up.

"Vecna's curse..." Robin murmured, looking between both of the files. Shit.

"Chrissy's headaches started a week ago..." Max carried on, looking down at the pages. "Fred's, six days ago... I've been having them for five days." Shaking my head, I couldn't bare to even look at the girl in my jacket. Dear God, what the fuck? "I don't know how long I have, but all I know is that... for Fred and Chrissy, they both died less than 24 hours after their first vision." Fuck. Shit. No. No. We're not doing this. Not today. "And I just saw that goddamn clock so-"

"Max," I begin, looking straight at her. "stop it. We're gonna work this out-" Before I can even finish my sentence, she shook her head.

"There was no hope for-" Max was so sure of herself, but I couldn't bare it.

"But they didn't know all the shit that we know right now." I point out. "We could-"

"Park." The girl tilted her head and shook it while her voice broke. No. I was not accepting such bullshit. "It looks like I'm gonna die tomorrow."

"No you're not-" Moving around I found myself engulfing the red head into a hug. "You're not gonna..." I couldn't find the power or energy to even finish the sentence as tears left my eyes silently, with the girl not moving away until a noise was heard in the distance.

All heads turned to look out the office door, alarms raised in our heads at this unknown noise. "Stay here..." Steve murmured to us all, giving us a cautious look as he walked towards the door. Before leaving, his head turned to one of the tall lamps, grabbing it before walking out the office and into the hallway. Okay, Steve, I know we talked about American Heroism last summer, but this is being ridiculous.

The five of us followed after the boy with the puffy hair, watching the cable trail along the floor as he walked, holding the lamp up right as he walked. Feeling a hand entangle with mine, I held Max close to me, not daring to let her go. I couldn't. She wasn't going to leave me. Never.

Clattering could be heard from further down the corridor as we stepped closer, slowly and surely. As footsteps were then heard, I raised an eyebrow at the rapidness. Someone was running. Watching as Steve gripped the lamp tighter; he went to get ready to throw it at this person before they ran around the corner to us.

As Lucas nearly crashed into Steve with his lamp, the whole lot of us jumped back with a yell. "Fucking hell-" As I moved back for a second, I pulled a face and shook my head at the boy. While the others yelled and shouted, Lucas did the same back. Rule number sixty-six: don't hit Lucas with the lamp, even though it was tempting.

"IT'S ME." He shouted over all of the yelling.

"LUCAS?!" Nancy shouted back, shining her light over his face.

"Are you even breathing?" I asked, looking over at a Robin in front of us of who might as well have collapsed in the school corridor.

"IT'S ME." The boy repeated, letting out a heavy breath.

"JESUS, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, SINCLAIR?!" Steve shouted over at him, still clutching his lamp. The poor lamp...

"I'M SORRY..." The boy apologised, hands on his hips as he tired to let in and get out a breath.

"I COULD'VE TAKEN YOU OUT WITH THIS LAMP!" Steve continued his shouting. Okay, Steve, sit down. It was a miracle you took out our Russian friend back in Starcourt Mall...

"I'm sorry... you guys..." Lucas said, panting. "Sorry- I was- I was biking for... eight miles." Oh. I don't usually have sympathy for the boy, but... eight miles... He then put his hand out, asking for a moment to breathe, still. "Give me a second... Shit- Uh... we've got a code red."

Well, I'm glad he's all caught up... and now for the weather-

Dustin glanced back at me and Max, hands still clasped together while we stared at the boy. "What?" A pissed off Steve Harrington and his office lamp asked.

The boy walked pass Steve and continued to speak. "Dustin, I've been with Jason, Patrick, and Andy- and they've gone like totally off the rails- they're trying to capture Eddie, and they think you know where he is-" The boy took another deep breath. "You're in terrible danger."

"Alright..." Dustin murmured. "Yeah, that definitely sucks... but we've got bigger problems than Jason right now." Dustin continued, reading my mind. I don't care about whoever that Jason motherfucker is. I really couldn't give less of a shit.

Eyes and heads turned to the girl next to me, and I gave her hand a tight squeeze. Fuck you, Vecna...

⊹˚˖⁺

"Okay... uh..." I threw the paper onto the table before reading over the next one. Victor Creel claims ancient demon killed family. Sounded like any other plain old Tuesday in my house... "Be honest... Uh..." I threw the next sheet on the table. "You guys understand any of this." I glanced up from the sheet while Steve spoke up, looking at the back of the red head as she sat at the desk, still.

"No." Lucas said honestly.

"Pretty straightforward..." Dustin murmured in return. Well, take a guess at which kid helped find out about a secret Russian base last summer...

"Oh? Straightforward, really?" Steve questioned, pacing back and forth. I sat back in the chair silently and tried to focus on reading, but it was impossible. What was Max doing?

"Well, what's confusing to you?" Dustin asked back at the boy. "So far, everyone Vecna has cursed has died, except for this old Victor Creel dude Nancy found. He's the only known survivor. If anyone knows how to beat this curse, it's him."

"Yeah, that's assuming he was cursed, Henderson." Steve says, still looking down at his own print of a newspaper article, really helping my current mental state. Max can't die. She can't and she won't. This Vecna creep can go suck my dick, because there was no way he was taking her away from me. "Which we don't even know."

I kept my eyes on the back of Max's head, watching her do whatever the hell she was doing. Max... "How can Vecna have existed in the '50s? It doesn't make sense..."

"As far as we know, Eleven didn't create the Upside Down." Dustin continued to repeat the same group of facts to Steve to try and help him. "She opened a gate to it. The Upside Down has probably been around for thousands of years. Millions." He shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised if it predated the dinosaurs." Max...

"Not- Dinosaurs? What are we-" Steve waved his hands around, not agreeing with the topic.

"Okay- Okay- but if a gate didn't exist in the '50s, how did Vecna get through?" Lucas asks.

"Oh- and- how's he getting through now?" Steve then added, pointing over at Dustin like he'd proven the point of the century.

"And why now?" The other boy then added onto Steve's words. Jesus, someone get these two a juice box, or something.

It was sending Dustin over the edge, though, with the boy rolling his eyes. "And why then?" Steve asked on. "Just pops out in the '50s, just kills one family, and he's like, 'I'm good'. And poof, he just disappears... just... gone? Only to return thirty years later and start killing random teens? No... I don't buy it." He muttered, glancing back down at the print. "Straightforward my ass..."

"Honestly, Henderson," He continued, looking back up as he paced. "a little humility now and then, it wouldn't hurt you."

"Sorry..." Dustin murmured, watching Steve sit down in the couch, one leg crossed over the other as he sat. Silence went on as I stared over at Max, thousands of questions running through my head. "Any idea what she's writing?" Dustin asked, making me turn to look over at him.

I shook my head. "I wish I did know..." I muttered, looking back, along with the others now following what I was doing.

"Did she sleep?" He then asked. Haha. Had I?

"No..." I say blandly.

"I mean..." Lucas says. "Would you?" For once in a long while, Lucas had a point. The door of the basement opened loudly, with two girls filing down to see us, causing all eyes to tare off of the girl in my blue zip up.

"Okay... so..." Nancy began, then glancing at the girl stood next to her, getting a nod in reply before they both looked back at us. Just date already... "... we have a plan."

Opening up one of the files the girls had brought down, I raised an eyebrow at all the words in front of me. Wow. Okay... "Thank to Nancy's newspaper minions," Robin began. "we are now rockstar psychology students at the University of Notre Dame."

"I am now Ruth." Nancy says.

"And I'm Rose." Robin continues.

"Ruth?" Steve asks, looking over at Nancy behind my armchair. It's not that big of a deal, Steve, please calm down. Handing the file over to Dustin for his own look, I smiled.

"Nice GPA you have there..." I say, glancing up at the girl.

"Thanks." She smiled in reply, looking back at the boy of who was still unsure. "So, we called Pennhurst Asylum, told them we'd like to speak with Victor Creel for a thesis we're co-writing on paranoid schizophrenics-"

"To which they said no." Robin then added on.

"Oh..." I murmured; eyebrows furrowed. Rude.

"But we landed a three o'clock with the director." Nancy says. Okay... that could work... The boys swapped files like it was them who was going to have to recall this information.

"Now, all we have to do is charm him and convince him to let us talk to Victor." Robin says, like it was that simple. Robin really hadn't done enough of these Upside Down horror shows to know that it was not going to be that easy. It was never gonna be that easy.

"And then..." I felt a hand shake my shoulder. "maybe we can rid Max of this curse." I glanced back over to the girl in my blue zip up, still at the desk as she wrote.

"Uh... yeah, about that..." Steve murmured. "We've been doing our Victor Creel homework, and, uh... we got some questions."

"Lots of questions." Lucas emphasised. Okay, LucASS, maybe later.

"So do we." Nancy says, like it wasn't obvious. "Hopefully, Victor has the answers."

"Wait- wait- wait a second-" Steve asked, looking at one of the files in hand. "Uh..." The boy looked up at Nancy behind me. "Where's mine?" Oh, for fucks sake, he was not for real?

⊹˚˖⁺

Time passed as I stared out to space, overthinking as if it could be a summer job for me. I couldn't lose Max. Robin and Nancy both knew that after multiple discussions that had gone down. I mean, of course it was obvious to Nance, now, it was just as obvious as it was to me that Robin had something for- just kidding- I am not ending that sentence. 

"I know you guys are staring at me." Glancing up, I looked over at the three boys on the couch, of who had definitely been staring. Suddenly they were all doing their own thing, Lucas reading the paper, Dustin staring down at his lap and Steve throwing a baseball up in the air. Anything but staring at her. Was I meant to be staring at her? I don't know if I could even do such a thing right now.

"What? Sorry?"

"You said you needed something?" Lucas asked, looking up from the paper as Dustin picked up a scrap book off the side.

While I blankly stared at them, I raised a singular eyebrow before looking back at the same spot of the coffee table I had been staring at prior to what had been said.

"How you guys think your eyes boring into the back of my head is protecting me from Vecna... I don't know." The girl says, collecting everything she had written up into piles. When she walked up to the group, she was met with three boys who didn't dare to look up at her, and me who now couldn't take my eyes off of her.

I let out a sigh as the two of us stared at the three, with Steve in the middle as he threw the baseball up in the air and caught it with the same hand repeatedly.

"You can look at me now." She eventually says through the silence, an atmosphere of relief falling around all three of them.

"Thank you..." Dustin answered, throwing the book on the side as the other two went on with their 'sorry' and apologies.

Max then continued and sighed, going through envelopes in her hand before holding one out in Dustin's direction. "For you." The boy stared at it for a second before realising she was talking to him, reaching out and taking it. "For you..." She then turned to Steve and handed one to him, then Lucas afterwards. "For you..." I glanced up at her hand and saw one envelope held out for me.

I didn't want it. I couldn't accept that my best friend was about to die any moment now. I couldn't accept that she was accepting it. She was the one I had been crushing on for so long. The one who had been- yeah, let's not go there, Parker...

Reaching out, I took it and stared at the writing on the front.

GOOD-LOOKING PERSON

Weakly smiling at the writing, I glanced back up at her. "Oh, and um... give these to Mike, El and Will..." She continued, still handing them over to me. I could do that, sure. But I wasn't accepting that any of this was happening. No way.

Taking them from her also, I stayed silent and leaned down to my bag, stuffing them gently in at the top of the bag. It was awkward now. "Hey- whoa- what are you doing?!" She asked, glaring over at two boys with curly hair. "No... don't- that's not for now." She instructed them. "Don't open it now."

"Don't- Okay..." Dustin nodded, understanding slightly as he folded the envelope shut again. "I'm sorry... what is this?" No, really, why does it seem I'm the only one with braincells sometimes?

"It's um..." The girl looked to the floor, fiddling with the other letters in her hands. "It's a fail-safe..." I leaned my head against my arm, staring right at the floor. No, I was certainly not holding back tears. "For after..." My vision momentarily went blurry, the sight of my sneakers going smeared as the girl continued. "If things don't work out."

Slyly wiping away the tears, I then leaned further back in the chair, now seeing more clearly. I was fine. I'm fine. Not crying. Woo! "Wait- whoa..." Lucas began. "Max, things are gonna work out-"

"No." The girl cut him off, the word scaring even me. "No. I don't need you to reassure me and tell me it's gonna work out. Because people have been telling me that my entire life and it's almost never true... It's never true." And just like that, I was done with the day. That's it. Day's over. No such thing as Vecna, have a nice and peaceful sleep because there's no such thing as the Upside Down- "I mean, of course this asshole curses me... Should've seen that one coming." We all sat in silence as the girl stood there for a moment, letting out a shaky breath before turning to the table behind my armchair. "If we go to East Hawkins, will this reach Pennhurst?" I glanced back at the radio she held in her hands.

Dustin nodded when she looked back at him. "Of course- yeah-"

"Wait- why are we talking about East Hawkins?" Steve asked, cutting the smaller boy off. Mother mode activated. Max gave him a look to signal that we were about to go on a little... field trip, causing instincts to kick in at a new level. "No... no- no!"

Standing up, I rolled my eyes, picking up my own bag and following after Max as we walked up the staircase of the basement and out of the Wheeler's house. "MAX- MAX- SERIOUSLY." As we continued to walk towards Steve's car, neither of us even dared to say a word to each other. "BYERS- GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE-" Telling Steve right where he could go with a friendly hand gesture, I continued down the pathway as he caught up. "Seriously, Max, I'm not joking." Steve tells her. "I'm not driving you anywhere." He says, with his jacket on... Okay, Steve, sure...

"Steve, if you think I'm going to spend what is likely the last day of my life in the armpit that is Mike Wheeler's basement," Max began, still not stopping. "then you're out of your mind. So: either take me where I need to go or you're gonna have to tie me down, which is technically kidnapping of a minor- AND if I live to see another day, Steve, I swear to God, I will prosecute." As we got to the car, the girl tried the door twice before realising it wasn't going to be opened by the boy.

"Steve..." I warned him with a glare.

"Open the door." The red head tells him.

"Uh- no." Steve tells her like it wasn't obvious.

"I know a good lawyer." The girl fired