Rhiannon // Max Mayfield

10: promise me this

They were all camping out in the Wheelers basement, one to keep an eye on Max so they could try to help if she got tranced or something, and the other to investigate Vecna.

It wasn't going well for any of them and the whole room felt tense. Max had been sat at the desk in the corner, head down as she wrote page after page of fuck knows what. The three boys were going over as many books or newspaper clippings of the Creel family, hoping they would stumble upon a gold mine of information. Alex was sat on the floor, headphones blasting Queen as she watched Max from behind, imagining everything was alright.

The whole thing reminded her of a few months prior, Max had a bunch of homework due in the next day but Alex insisted that they hung out. So Max just sat at her desk, scrawling over tests and pages upon pages while Alex sat behind her and watched lovingly while softly singing music and playing along, or she was right behind her, speaking into her ear in an attempt to distract the girl.

Max could feel Alex's eyes on the back of her head, but she opted to not turn around, in fear of her cheeks heating. She had begun to notice over the past few hours that the two couldn't hold a conversation without stumbling over their words.

She would never admit it too the girl but she regretted the breakup before it was even official, she knew it was self centred and stupid because they had both lost their brother sand were grieving in different ways. But it was like Max didn't know how to explain it but Alex had dealt with loss before, on a larger scale but Max hadn't and it felt like it was suffocating her so she just locked her feelings away.

But then the school year restarted and Max would see Alex with her friends, with all those boys and then after a few months she was always by the older brunette. And then they started kissing in public and Max felt her heart shatter, Alex had moved on like that so Max just never reached out and retried back into her shell.

"Okay, be honest, uh.." Steve paced the room, diffusing the awkward silence as he glared at the newspaper article, "You guys understand any of this shit?"

"No," Lucas sighed, looking defeated.

"It's pretty straight forward," Dustin then answers, making Alex hold back a laugh, before pausing her tape to catch the conversation in case one of them had found something. "So far, everyone Vecna has cursed has died, except from this old Victor Creel dude Nancy found. He's the only known survivor. If anyone knows how to beat this curse, it's him."

Steve huffed, "That's assuming he was cursed, which we don't even know," He argues, looking down at his paper and frowning, "how can Vecna have existed in the fifties? It doesn't make any sense."

"As far as we know, Eleven didn't create the Upside down," Dustin says slowly, making sure everyone was following, "She opened a gate to it. The upside down had probably been around for thousands of years, Millions, i wouldn't even be surprised if it predated the dinosaurs."

"Dinosaurs? what are we-" Steve began, not understanding how this was related at all to the threat at hand.

"Okay," Lucas cut in, knowing that Steve's point was going nowhere, and preventing an argument, "But if a gate didn't exist in the fifties, how did Vecna get through?"

"And how is he getting through now?" Steve added.

"And why now?" Lucas expanded.