The Long Game━ (l. sinclair)

max gaslighting sam and el for 5,708 words

She quickly faced the two lifeguards again, said, "Bye! Have a good day!" before seeing what El and Max (mainly El) were up to.

They'd walked over to a bulletin board which had flyers and American flags posted onto it. On the left side, there was a headline that read MEET YOUR '85 SWIM SEASON LIFEGUARDS. Pinned underneath, were six labeled pictures of the presumed lifeguards. Max and El were staring at it seriously.

First, Sam saw Adam, which was "pool manager's" name, so Sam was glad she could finally pin a real name on the dude. But, then, Sam actually saw what was important.

"Heather," said Max, eyes on the beautiful lifeguard whose picture was fifth. In the picture, Sam could note both her fanny pack and the whistle that had once been yellow but was now bloodied.

Sam sucked in a weary breath, because this was just fucking unnerving. She forced her eyes off of Heather's picture, and onto El. "Do you think you can find her?" asked Sam.

El precautiously looked back at where the pool manager (Adam) flirted with the other lifeguard (Sam still didn't know her name). They weren't paying attention to anything around them in the slightest.

So, El reached forward and stole Heather's picture from the bulletin board.

The three girls rushed to the changing rooms before anyone could notice what they had done. Although they didn't need to speak, Sam formed a plan for them quickly so as to get the job done in a swift and efficient manner.

"We need something to black out your vision," Sam told El. "You and Max, you need to find something to make that happen. I doubt the community pool has a blindfold, so... I'm thinking goggles and duct tape, like that one night in the middle school." Max looked confused at the reference, but didn't question it, because El clearly understood. "And there's no radio, so I think if I turned all the showerheads on, they'd do well enough for white noise. Would that be all right, El?"

El nodded.

"Okay, perfect," Sam returned the nod. "Then we'll meet back in the women's shower room."

"Go team," Max said lightly through an exhale; Sam's capabilities as a whole would always astound her.

Sam smiled back at her, kindly. "Go team," she repeated in amusement.

While Max and El left the changing rooms, Sam traveled deeper. There was another room, deeper into the changing rooms, where the showers resided. Sam saw about ten cubicles, showers in each, that she figured would work perfectly in drowning out the noise and allowing El to focus. She quickly got to work, flipping on all of the levers. The sound of her breathing was drowned out (ha, "drowned out," get it?) by the water droplets pouring from the shower heads and onto the shower room's ground.

Max and El didn't take long in what Sam advised them to do. When they entered the shower room, Max was holding a pair of scuba goggles blacked-out via grey duct tape, and El was holding Heather's picture. Sam smiled at them in approval as they walked over to where she sat on the end of a bench. There was a gap from the end of Sam's bench before another one was placed. El sat down, crisscrossed on the floor of that gap, while Max sat at the end of the other bench, to the left of El.

Max handed El the goggles, and El set the picture of Heather down before her to grab them. El fastened them on her head in the same manner that the rest of the Party had done before they entered the Upside Down tunnels; the difference between then and now was that the El's goggles provided no sight for her.

Sam and Max just watched her, giving El silence as she tried finding Heather.

After about a minute of nothing, Sam watched as El frowned in real life, meaning she saw something in the void.