Chapter Text
Mike has died in his sister's arms, blood soaking through his shirt and filling his lungs as Nancy’s fingers dig into the hollow in his chest, as she tries and fails to save him. Mike has died in his sister's arms, but he doesn’t have a fresh scar carving apart the space between his ribs. He doesn't have a jagged pink swirl across his neck from the one time he stumbled, and a bullet caught him right in the throat.
He’s died in Will’s arms too.
It doesn’t matter though, because the loop always ended at 4:06 AM on the dot on the third day, right as Max flatlined in the hospital on their first go round. Max died, and it wasn’t El who restarted the world; it wasn’t Lucas either, or Mike, half a country away and fucking useless. They didn’t do this, they still don’t know what exactly did.
Dustin had whispered about time distortion, distillation, the fucked upness of the Upside Down, an entire dimension stuck on November 6th, 1983. He had also whispered about time travel, subconscious powers, and helpful semi-sentient entities, so Mike stopped listening halfway through. Instead, he had focused on the sound of Will breathing, the weight of his head against his outstretched arm, the press of El’s feet against his legs because she was holding Max’s hand. (Lucas got the other.)
They were all tangled up in the basement then, in the tentative, terrifying days that followed Vecna/Henry/001’s death. The last loop, the first time they had won, truly won with no bodies to bury, to grieve over, to scream yourself hoarse because it’ll just reset soon enough, but that doesn’t stop the agony of loss. They won, and Mike doesn’t think any of them know what to do now.
Max is sick of Kate Bush, and honestly, that may be the worst thing to come out of the loops.
(She knows the sound her bones make as they shatter, she knows what Lucas sounds like when she dies, when Erica’s head is cracked too hard on the ground and she goes limp. She’s heard Nancy Wheeler shriek over her brother's bleeding, bleeding, bleeding body. She’s felt - music is the least of her concerns, but she has to focus on that because if she doesn’t, her mind will break just like she’s done a dozen times.)
She’s listened to Running Up That Hill enough times to last a lifetime, and somewhere along the way, the familiar hum of come on baby, come on darling, let me steal this moment from you now had become her own personal dirge. A funeral song or tune, or one expressing mourning in commemoration of the dead, right on the fucking money.
Maybe that’s why she breaks her Walkman, shatters the plastic and tape on the ground, crushing it further with the toe of her shoe. She needs it gone, gone like all the times it couldn’t save her, or Lucas, or Dustin, or Mike, or - Gone, gone, gone, gone. She needs it gone for reasons she can’t articulate without losing her goddamn mind.
It’s a primal sort of satisfaction, the spark of anger dulling just a bit inside of her at the sight. Maybe she is more like Billy than she’d like, to find peace in destruction, to revel in any breaking that’s not your own. But before another crack can form inside of her, before Max starts shattering again, there’s a strangled sound from the door.
She has two seconds of gut-wrenching fear before she remembers, before her head snaps to the side and she finds the shape of him instinctively. Lucas was supposed to be coming over, because they practically lived at each other’s houses these days, because he’s her Lucas and she’ll never be sick of him.
He’s in her doorway, face a shade of gray as he stares down at the destroyed Walkman. For a moment, there’s nothing but silence, but a stillness that terrifies her. Then he’s making a horrific sound, a warped cry escaping from his throat as he practically falls to the ground to grab at the Walkman. Max is frozen, like she always is in the seconds before she’s gone and going, and Lucas is on the ground by her feet staring at the pieces of her Walkman like it’s her floating corpse.
Then her fingers twitch, warm and straight and unbroken, and Max remembers, so sharply it hurts, that she is not dead. Vecna does not have her, she is not in the shattered Creel House wrapped up in vines as she’s broken apart, as her Lucas and her El watch. She is not there. They got out.
She took an ax and cut down Chrissy and Patrick while El threw Vecna around like a ragdoll. El disintegrated him, not even bones left, before Nancy shot him eight times and Robin doused him with fire. Then Dustin ran him over with the Sinclairs’ battered Cadillac with Eddie bleeding in the passenger seat. They got out, they broke the fucking loops, they lived.
Max is not dying because of a broken Walkman; she just has to remind Lucas of this because he’s making a keening sound now - like the stray dog Neil killed once back in California. It was missing an eye, its back legs broken as it dragged itself through the side alley to their house. He had snapped his neck just like Vecna had hers a few times.
But that’s not important, not right now, not when Lucas is breaking at her feet, and she needs to get a fucking grip. She needs to stay grounded and here, for his sake.
She drops to her knees, hitting the ground so hard it makes a little cracking sound that is both nothing and everything like the sound of her radius splitting in half. “Lucas,” His fingers are scrambling across the broken plastic, not even pausing when they catch on a jagged edge, beads of red crawling across his fingertips. “We got out, we won, we fucking won. The Upside Down is disconnected; it’s gone. We won.”
Lucas is panting, he’s hyperventilating, he’s having a panic attack on her bedroom floor, and Max still really hates Kate Bush.
Talking clearly won’t work, so she grabs his face, firm but gentle, always gentle, and makes him look at her. Her unbroken thumb brushes against his cheekbone, only the faintest hint of a bruise there from Jason. Lucas’s eyes are wide, pupils so dilated they’re just black. She aches again. “Look at me, look at me. I’m okay. We’re okay. We made it out, we’re alive. We’re okay.”
He leans into her head in a way that reminds her painfully of that stray dog, how it had whimpered and nearly sagged against Neil before he - Lucas is not a stray dog and Max is not dead.
“We’re okay, we’re okay.” It’s barely a whisper, and this time she’s not sure who she’s trying to reassure, him or her. But it works, or maybe it’s the touch that does it, because Lucas surges forward. He nearly bowls them both over with the force, his arms wrapping around her, and his face shoved into the crook of her neck. They somehow end up on the floor, one hand cushioning the back of her head, the other gripping her waist so tightly it’ll probably leave bruises but Max does not give a flying fuck.
Her walkman is long forgotten as she wraps herself right back around Lucas, tangling the two of them further and further. Maybe if she tries hard enough no one will be able to unwind them, separate them, kill one without killing the other. Maybe if she digs her fingers into the tough cords and muscles of his shoulders, leaving her own set of marks, she can meld right into him.
On some level, she’s aware of how fucked up they are, how unhealthy all of this is.
But she can feel Lucas’s tears dripping against her neck, and she’s watched him die, she’s watched him die for her over and over and over again. Max doesn’t give a rat's ass if this is unhealthy; this, this is the only thing keeping her sane.
Steve pisses him off a lot these days. More often than not, it’s for no reason at all, or for the stupidest, littlest things that Dustin can’t even mention without looking insane. He flips his hair, he bumps his hip against Robin, he smiles at Nancy and Eddie the same way, and Dustin has the strongest urge to punch him in the face.
Here’s the thing that sucks about being smart: Dustin knows exactly why Steve’s presence makes him want to start throwing things. (He’s died in his arms about a dozen times; he’s died about fifty times in total that they know of. Every. Single. Time. It was for one of them, for someone else, in place of someone else.)
Steve Harrington does not know how to die if he’s not playing the part of a martyr.
Eddie’s not much better. He plays the hero, for Dustin, because it’s always for him even if he never asked for it, and he dies more often than not. They both kept dying for him, and he's absolutely, positively sick of it.
That’s why Robin is his favorite now, even if it means Steve gives him a wounded look when he can’t spend five minutes alone with him, even if it means Eddie stares at him sometimes like he’s a feral stray. Robin has died plenty of times, but she’s only died for him twice.
Dustin also knows that she’d die for him every other time too, because she and Steve are so in sync, because he believes in soulmates solely to think those two are, but the key part is that she doesn’t. She never really gets the chance to die for him, so a week after they win, he finds her eating waffles at two in the morning in the Wheeler's kitchen. They always end up back here despite the fact that Mrs. Wheeler only knows half of what went down.
She doesn't say anything when he slides into the seat next to her, or when he grabs half of a waffle and starts eating with his bare hands. All Robin does is raise her eyebrows and kick up her feet until they're braced in his lap, until her heel is digging into the muscles of his outer thigh, until she's grounding him and reminding herself that he's annoying and a pain in the ass and alive. Dustin thinks he loves her like he loves Steve for that alone, or maybe it's because she drenches her waffles in butter and takes them exactly like he does.
"You," She says, breaking the silence when he reaches for another slice, "Are a fiend." But notably, she doesn't even half-heartedly swat at his hand. He almost hates her for that very Steve-like action on principle, but refrains because too much teenage angst might actually send him to an early grave.
Instead, Dustin smiles, sure there's food sticking to his braces, and takes a big bite. Is the power move slightly ruined when he chokes on the waffle and Robin has to thump on his back until he can breathe again - yes, yes, it is. But then, when he's breathing around waffle-free lungs, and Robin's knees are pressed against her chest from where she awkwardly leaned over to save him, Jonathan Byers walks in.
He's wearing a mixture of Steve and Eddie's clothes, because the torn to hell rock shirt is definitely not his, and he looks like he hasn't slept in weeks. Although, to be fair, none of them have. Jonathan takes one look at the two of them, blinks twice, and then promptly turns right around.
Their laughter follows him as he stumbles back to Nancy's room because the world almost ended, and they fucking wo,n and now the Wheeler's house is being haunted by a bunch of traumatized, sleep-deprived teenagers.
Dad keeps giving her looks whenever she's with her friends. Except he doesn't give her these looks when she's laughing with Nancy or ducked under Steve's arm, and they're both her friends, she's sure of that, so maybe - Dad keeps giving her looks whenever she's with her Party, and El knows why.
Despite popular belief, El knows she's odd. A little fractured, dusty, and cracked, a piece of old technology shoved into the modern world and unable to comprehend the change that's occurred in such little time. She knows she's not normal, so she knows that this too isn't normal.
They lost. They lost and then El woke up in Nina, drowning and burning and realizing. They lost, and then they did it all again, over, and over, and over again. She had watched Max die more times than she could count, had felt the breaking of her bones, the tearing in her mind as Henry consumed her. She had restarted her heart every time, the flood of memories coming so easily it might as well have been breathing, loving Max back to life.
(It never occurred to her to let Max die. That maybe that was the way out of this loop. Either they all lived or they all fell together, that's what Parties do.)
They lost. Max died. Lucas and Max died. Nancy and Steve and Max died. Eddie, the boy in her dreams, in their memories bleeding over into the next life, died and died and died. In one loop Mike and Will had made it back to Hawkins, El knew because she saw Will snap apart from half a country away and heard Mike's scream just as clearly.
She had torn apart the world in that loop.
Dad doesn't understand, and El is thankful that he doesn't. She's not sure he could have taken it, watching her die over and over again, because for a while she had been sure that was the price left to pay. Save Max, die in her place, die taking Henry down, die finishing what she started, what Papa started years and years ago. She had torn him apart, melded his bones into the boards of Creel House while her heart burst from the effort. Then she woke up in Nina again.
It would have broken him, her deaths, all that suffering, all that pain over and over again until they eventually got it right. El is grateful he doesn't understand, but annoyed that he keeps looking at her like something's wrong with it, with them. He doesn't understand and El doesn't have the right words to explain it, not without telling him everything and that isn't only her story to tell.
Because the truth is this -
She intertwines her fingers with Max, and in the next heartbeat lets her body sink against Mike, trusting him to hold her up every time.
When they watch movies at their, the ByerHopper half-made home Lucas sits at her feet, his back pressed against her legs while Max rests her head in her lap, leaning down to draw patterns against the back of his neck.
On their worst nights, she and Will always end up sharing a bed, curled up and pressed back-to-back like two mismatched parentheses.
She does not flinch away when Will rest his head against Mike's, eyes shut as his body unwinds, years of tension slipping away for at least a few heartbeats. No one flinches away when Max jumps on Mike's back, demanding a - piggyback ride? No one says a word when Dustin storms into their open arms, away from Steve and Eddie, hiding within their ranks.
The truth is this -
There are too many unmade graves and undead bodies between them for normal to be a thing. There is no going back, no survivable way to turn back the clocks and rewind, to be unbroken, to be young again. No one else will ever understand the exact shade and ache of her pain beside them.
El is perfectly happy with that. If she must trust her everything to anyone, it would be them. They will catch her when she falls, and she will catch them, no matter how far apart they are. Their minds ring in her head, a steady, lovely symphony of humming and buzzing. They form a melody in her thoughts, and if she wanted to, she could reach out and tangle her fingers in their minds, their essence, them. They'd welcome her too, humming back as Max projects a familiar song or Will shows her a particular shade of blue that reminds him of her.
They are not okay. But they will be, eventually.
She'll just have to put up with her Dad's looks for a while longer. (Secretly she loves them, in the safety of her mind El knows that she'd bear that look for the rest of her life as long as it meant he was there to give it, as long as it meant he cared enough to disapprove, that he loves her.)
Lucas wakes up to watch every sunset. Erica does not understand.
He thanks the God he has not prayed too since they pulled out not-Will from the Quarry that she never will.
Eddie jokes so easily these days, a retort always on the tip of his tongue while he and Steve - do whatever it is they’re doing. Max envies him, not for his cheesy jokes or pathetic attempts at flirting, but for his ignorance.
He's died almost as many times as she has, usually to those damn bats, and he doesn't remember a single thing. He doesn't remember choking to death on his own blood while Dustin crawled across the ground, dragging his mangled legs behind him that time. He doesn't remember dying in front of her once, Jason being a little too trigger-happy and utterly surprised at the way his head caved in with the force of the bullet. He doesn't remember anything, and yet Max has the memories of all her loops and then some.
Because they share dreams now, share loops, share deaths and grief as easy as breathing.
Max has died more times than she can count and Eddie Munson, cleared of all charges due to the weight of the federal government once they finally showed up, is waggling his eyebrows at Steve and utterly failing at flirting. She wants to break her skateboard over his head; she wants to drag him by his lapels and ask him if he really, really doesn't remember dying - the pain, the burning that always fades into ice cold nothingness as you drift, as you go. She wants to ask him how he can keep smiling when Chrissy Cunningham broke apart in his living room.
She wants to fight him just to see if he'd bite back. He's not Billy, he's not, he never will be but some part of her just wants to see if they bleed the same. It won't fix her, it won't fix anything, but Max is all shaking energy these days, vibrating with her guilt and fear and grief and the anger that won't ever quiet. She wants to see if Eddie will snap, just to know how he'd react.
Yes, she is extremely self-aware of how fucked up she is. She's heard it enough from Billy-Vecna, seen it in the murky water of the Upside Down, seen it in her blood spilling across the Creel House floor. Max knows, but still, that guy can't be all smiles all the time. It's unnatural. It's wrong.
It has her vibrating on the edge of her seat because El had wanted to try out DND and she could see the longing in Lucas and Will's eyes, how they badly they wanted to pretend to be kids again, to be young again. She couldn't have said no without being a dick, and Max is trying to be kinder these days, to be softer, to cradle the life she has fought tooth and nail for with gentle hands. She's trying to be better and stay better so, "I want to kick him in the nuts."
Eddie's eyebrow twitches, and Mike opens his mouth to say something, probably a weak insult before he lets out a small grunt, glaring across the table. Will, the perfect angel that he is, just smiles back at him. Max loves and hates all of them in equal measures. "Okay, you gotta roll for it Mad Max."
She's had half her bones broken; she's felt her eyes pop inside her skull like jelly, if she wants to be a Zoomer and Mad Max she damn well will be.
She rolls the dice, letting it fly off her fingers and only half watching the numbers because El has taken to DND like a fish to water. Her eyes widen with excitement at everyone's turn, going even wider at hers, and the way she holds the dice, cradles them really, like they're something special, like they're holy. It's the same way she's held Max at the end of every loop, when they failed and the first time they didn't, like she's something holy, something revered.
Will's honest to God cackle tears her away from the shape of El's face and the curve of her fingers, and Max looks down to see a carved out 20 staring back at her. She flips Mike off, just because, and then stares expectantly at Eddie. Billy would have been pissed, his brows furrowed with a mixture of annoyance, rage, and something even more foul like pity. Billy would have been Billy, but Eddie is smiling back at her. He looks truly delighted, his eyes alight with a pure sort of joy that she didn't think any of them would ever have again.
"Well, Mad Max the Zoomer marches right up to the Drow and," He coughs just a little bit, still smiling like he's proud of her, ew, "Kicks him right in the nuts. He,"
The game continues, spilling out into the Wheeler's basement, which for the first time in years feels light, feels like home rather than a fortress to weather the upcoming war. Eddie seemingly has a permanent smile carved into his face, but it's real, it's worth something.
Max sighs, a little puff of air that's barely noticeable and yet half the table sends her a worried-questioning look before she waves them off. Eddie still pisses her off with every move, but maybe, maybe he's not that bad. Maybe, but he's still a nerd like the rest of her idiots. She swears she doesn't know why she puts up with them, really, totally, honestly.
"One of these you're gonna have to paint me." Will doesn't even look over at him, shoulders curving up towards his ears as he stares intently at the canvas. The painting this time is simpler, a blur of soft colors flowing into each other. He recognizes a few of the shapes, a burst of red and a matching pink shape that has the beginning of El's smile and Max's bright eyes. It's a painting of them, the Party, the new Party, because it hasn't been just the four of them in a while.
Mike loves him for the painting and the gentleness in which he paints El and Max, and for the way he doesn't have to look back to hit him square in the forehead with a rag he's been using to wipe off his brushes. He really is incredibly screwed, beyond reason, beyond any sense left in the world. "I already have, remember?"
It had taken him twelve loops and bleeding to death in Will's arms to realize what the painting meant. Mike couldn't forget if he tried.
He wipes off his forehead with the back of his hand, glaring down at the blue smeared against it, certain that he probably looks like an idiot. But the bathroom is so far away and getting up to clean himself off means leaving Will and his sun lit room that smells of paint and the detergent Mrs. Byers buys. He's warm and safe and tucked away in Will's bed and none of them have died for weeks. He's just going to have to be blue now.
"No, I mean me. Not the Party-me, Me."' Will stills, not a sharp, jarring sort of stillness, just a gentle stopping before he turns around to face Mike. There's a softness in his eyes even before he grabs a clean cloth to wipe away the paint on Mike's face. It takes a few steps to cross the distance between the canvas and the bed, and then he's there, towering over Mike and holding his face still with one hand while the other brushes against his forehead. It's somehow one of the most intimate things he's ever experienced.
If Will's grip wasn't firm, unbreaking even if it's as gentle as he always is, Mike might actually have lunged forward and kissed him until the world swallowed them both whole. Instead, he soaks up the feeling of Will holding him, the callouses that brush against his jaw, the slight roughness of the cloth and the furrow of Will's brows as he stares down at him. It's quiet for a long moment, the two of them breathing lightly as if a harsh exhale would somehow break this, then Will pulls the cloth away. He doesn't let go of his face though, and Mike leans into his palm.
Will inhales sharply, and funnily enough it doesn't break whatever had filled the room. His palm fits perfectly against Mike's face and that's reason enough to think that maybe there's a God somewhere out there. "It's always you, in every painting, it's you."
I love you, Mike thinks, I love you I love you I love you and I'm sorry it took dying to realize that you're beautiful, that you're holy, that even when you're crying over my bleeding out body you're still so fucking pretty. He blinks in shock when Will flicks his head with his other hand, "Stop looking at me like that."
He smiles, and yes, he is aware of how stupid he looks, "Like what?"
Will finally pulls away, and Mike chases his hand for as long as he can without falling face-first out of the bed. He, instead, watches as Will turns back to the canvas, engraves the lines that make him up into the back of his eyelids, the sharp edges smoothing out and sharpening again, will will will. His father would call him a disgrace; Lonnie Byers would break his face - Mike keeps looking.
It's Will, he'll never stop looking now that he knows he's allowed. He's seen those strong arms that lead down to those gentle hands break into pieces, he's seen Will die and come back and die again, he'll look for as long as Will wants him, as long as he'll let him. "Stop staring." He doesn't even bother to sound anything other than fond.
Mike scrunches up his face, "Hey, fuck you. You don't know that I'm looking. I'm reading."
Will snorts, already back to painting El and Max's linked hands, "Bullshit."
Mike, maturely, throws back the paint-covered cloth at Will's back, and someone is laughing. They're both laughing and sunlight is flooding Will's room that smells like paint and his detergent and Mike's cologne, like them. They're both laughing and the world did not end this time, they all lived and Nancy is out in the kitchen with Jonathan and El is learning how to fix a car with Hopper and -
They have time, they have so much of it. They can afford to be young and stupid for once.
They're back in the Wheeler's basement again, half the blankets and cushions in the house thrown about on the floor. It’s just the four of them this time, their original party. Max and El are having a sleepover, and even now, with their boundaries so stretched and worn they barely exist, that was sacred. Lucas can actually imagine what they’re getting up to, and it terrifies him a little bit - girls.
He yanks the blanket tighter around him, pretending like his hands aren't aching for a weapon, an ax, a gun, anything. He doesn't even have his switchblade on him because in the first few days After they had made a rule, no weapons in bed. You could have as many as you want on the bedside table or a foot away, but nothing was allowed beneath the blankets. They're all too trigger-happy, and they learned quick after Dustin got a knife up under Will's throat after a particularly bad nightmare.
Lucas gets it, he knows that it's the right move but his hands ache and the dark pit in his stomach won't stop squirming around, urging him forward with whispers of mad Jocks and demons they can't kill and MaxMaxMax dying while he's so fucking useless.
Enough.
He shoves off the blankets, giving up on any chance of sleep and carefully untangling himself from the pile of limbs that was Mike and Will. Seriously, it only took twelve loops for them to realize what he'd been swearing up and down was true since he was ten. Gay, and he meant that in a very loving way, they were so gay for each other it would be sickening if it didn't make the uneasy part of himself settle just a little bit because two members of his Party were breathing and at peace and alive.
He maneuvers around groups of pillows and blankets until he emerges on the other side of couch, stopping for half a second when he sees Dustin sitting near the stairs, shifting a bat in his hands. Despite how he refuses to be alone in the same room as Steve more often than not, Dustin is exactly like him. Judging from the glare he gives Lucas as he settles down on the ground across from him, he can read minds now.
"What was it this time?" He doesn't have to say a dream or a dream, the remnants of the loops bleeding over.
Dustin winces, hands tightening around the bat as he glances up the stairs. Once and only once they had lingered for too long and a Demogorgon had crashed through the house. Neither of them will ever forget what Holly's body looks like. Lucas shudders a little, red on red on red on pink as it swirls down the drain, "Both?"
He nods, rolling his shoulders like they're still sore from the one loop where the DemoBats had tossed him around like rag doll. "Nightmare about the Upside Down. Then a dream about the time Mike and Will made it back to Hawkins and," Dustin doesn't have to finish his sentence, that was - a bad loop.
It was the first time he thought, oh, so that's what I sound like when Max dies.
Bad, bad, bad loops and horrible dreams were all they seemed to get lately. Lucas reaches into the box by the stairs until his hands close around cool metal. The switchblade, not his but good quality, fits neatly in his palm. It's a good thing Mrs. Wheeler doesn't ask questions anymore, at least the right ones, because there are about four different types of weapons in the box.
He flips it open and close, open and close, open and - There's a sound coming from deeper in the basement that makes them still, their eyes cut across the darkness until they find Will, tense and stiff. Despite how stupid it is, how it's not possible anymore, Lucas tenses, waiting for Will to start floating, waiting for the crack of bones, for the drop of temperature as Vecna finds one of them. The bat raises a single inch, and he can feel the way Dustin is nearly vibrating with energy. Then Mike subconsciously drags Will closer, nearly slapping him in the face as he tries to soothe him like a baby. And it actually works, Will relaxes into Mike's clingy grip like it's the most comfortable place in the world.
Gay, so gay and so in love, it's sickening.
The bat lowers down and Dustin nudges him with his foot, "They're gonna sleep through the night, aren't they?" Someone else would think it was envy coloring Dustin's voice, but Lucas knows better, Lucas knows him better. It's not envy, its love, it's something closer to awe. They all get like that, every time they see something that should be impossible, every time they all instinctively know they should not have outlived this war and yet, and yet.
Lucas leans his head back, flipping the switch blade open and shut, open and shut. Dustin is still staring at the bat, like if he could just memorize the woods pattern, he'll be able to save them all. God, whatever therapist his parents find is going to have a field day with them. "Want to keep watch until Holly wakes everyone up with the Flintstones?"
Dustin finally looks away from the bat, smiling just a little bit. He's not okay, neither of them are okay. They won't sleep through this night, or the next, or any for the next month. But they can keep watch and make sure nothing, nothing harms Mike and Will while they sleep. It's something.
They have school, because of fucking course they do. The world almost ended, it actually did end more times than he could count, all of them died and - Mike has a geometry test that he hasn't thought about in months. Fuck his life, fuck everything, fuck Mrs. Peters again because why was she so cheerful about circles, who cared about circles?
"Yes, Mister Wheeler?" She even sounds happy, kill him, kill him now.
"Can I go to the bathroom?" Mrs. Peters gives him a look like she knows exactly what he's doing, but maybe the shadows under his eyes or the way he's been on the edge of his seat and eyeing the door since he came in earns him a little pity because she nods. Then she goes right back to talking about circles like they're her holy grail.
The door shuts gently behind him, and he doesn't waste a moment before walking as far away as he can from that class. Mike's debating on smoking the cigarettes tucked into his bag, a habit picked up halfway through the loops, or just skipping school and dealing with his mom's worry later when a clatter stops him dead in his tracks. His hands fly to his bag, to the heavy pipe that perpetually sits at the bottom because none of them can go unarmed anymore even though the Upside Down is fully sealed off, even though Will and El still regularly go patrolling to make sure it stays that way. He stills and -
There's a strangled, cut-off scream from the girl's bathroom. Two weeks and a couple hundred loops ago Mike would have walked away, but he knows that scream, he knows that girl, he knows what Max sounds like when she's terrified and breaking so he doesn't think twice before charging in.
-
She hadn't even been trying to skip class, really. It had been a good day; it was a good day. Lucas had walked her to her classes and El was going to be enrolled next year and they just had a few months before summer. It had been a good day. Then she ducked into the bathroom in between classes and when she had gone to wash her hands the walls were too familiar, so were the stalls.
She had a few seconds to wonder what Chrissy had seen here, what nightmares she was introduced too as the ticking clock of her life unknowingly was set, before she's choking on her own fear. It's a good day until it isn't, until your back is pressed against cool tile and your hands are clamped over your ears because you can hear the tick ticking of your death. It's a good day until it isn't.
See here's the thing nobody outside of the Party will ever know, even if they end up spilling everything about the fucking loops and their personal hell, dying stopped seeming so bad about halfway through. You do it enough times and wake up three mornings earlier and slowly it loses its meaning, it's weight. It's like a sharp, jagged rock being worn away by the crashing waves, it's inevitable, it's unnoticeable until you drag your hand along it and suddenly, you're not bleeding.
You die enough times, and you stop being afraid of that empty, painless nothing.
This, this is the one thing they don't really talk about unless it's in the darkest hours of night, unless they're tangled together in a mess of limbs and fear on someone's floor. They don't talk about it, but they whisper it in between sobs, the fear, the grief, the pain, the lightning bolt moment of realization, the thought i don't have to keep living with this, i can just restart. It's the quietest thing in the world, the details, the bodies they've left behind in loops that fade into oblivion at 4:06 AM halfway through spring break.
The first time she did it, Lucas was dead. A bullet to the head because Jason was a horrible fucking shot with his mad eyes and shaking hands and yet he always landed true. His brains and blood were splattered across the wooden boards at her feet, the red almost pitch black against the blue lights. It was crawling towards her feet while Running Up That Hill screamed in her ears.
Lucas was dead and Max was still breathing. There was something fundamentally wrong with that.
There were few constants in these loops, but her death was almost always one of them. Lucas was dead and Max was still breathing. She couldn't even scream, couldn't find air in her lungs to weep or curse or howl. She couldn't do anything but stare at the scrambled mess that was Lucas's head. His eyes, the eyes that stared at her with such warmth, with a love she didn't deserve, were gone, shattered apart and covered in gore. She couldn't see him; she couldn't see him.
Jason was gone, she didn't know where or how or when, he was just gone. But his gun wasn't. The sliver of it glinted in the blue light, taunting her from its place in the middle of the room, a few feet away from the corpse it had made. Lucas was dead and Max was still breathing, and they had three hours until it all restarted, it was too fucking long.
In the three hours it took, Erica would see the mess of her brother, maybe the Sinclair's, the kind, too good to her just like their son Sinclair's would find out he was dead, shot by Jason Carver who'd probably get away with it. The others would come back, and she'd have to see them see her, the blood staining her vans, and they'd know he was dead by the sound of Erica, strong, brave, unbreaking until she breaks Erica screaming and screaming and screaming.
It was too long. It was too much.
And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God, And I'd get Him to swap our places
The gun weighed more than she thought it would. Maybe she should have, maybe she was damned in a biblical way, but that time Max didn't hesitate before she pulled the trigger.
It's a good day until you're hearing clocks and remembering the smell of Lucas's death and the weight of a gun in your hand. It's a good day until you don't know what's real and what isn't, but you know you can stop this, you know how to make it all stop. It's a good day until it isn't, until you're the sort of fucked up teenage girl who treats death like a restart button at the end of a round of Dig Dug.
It's a good day until you're Max Mayfield and you carry your shitty, dead stepbrother's knife on you at all times.
That's how Mike Wheeler, because of course out of anyone in their Party it has to be him, finds her - having a panic attack in the girl's bathroom, clawing at her ear with one hand and blindly reaching for a knife with the other. Max barely has time to breathe when she sees Mike, her heart pounding so fast she can't hear him even as she sees his mouth move. Mike is standing in the doorway, and the clock is still ticking and Lucas is dead, or is it Dustin this time? She doesn't remember, she doesn't know what's real or not, but she can feel her body breaking and she needs it all to stop.
Her hands close around the knife. It barely has time to glint in the light, to even faintly point towards her throat before she's practically being pinned to the wall by Mike. He grabs her wrist hard enough that her bones grind together. If she had any more sense, if she wasn’t running on panic and pain and the sound of her body shattering, it would be enough to jolt her back to reality. But instead, she thinks, Vecna, and fights like a cornered alley cat.
She thrashes in his grip, lashing out with her legs as the clock ticks and ticks and ticks, as blood pools on the floor and vines creep out from the edges of the stall. Vecna-Mike is saying something, or maybe he isn't, she can't tell, in her panic she's half-blind. Maybe she really is, maybe he popped her eyes this time too, maybe maybe maybe -
The knife clatters to the floor after maybe Mike squeezes her hand so hard she can't grip anything. Max tries to lunge for it, fighting until the end like she always does, because she's not allowed to give up, she can end a loop, she can make Lucas give her those devastated-grieving eyes, but she does not get to let Vecna win. It works against her because Mike has a foot on her and muscles he gained out of nowhere. Somehow, he ends up behind her, arms a steel band around her, trapping her own and keeping her far away from the knife as he drags them back and down to the floor.
She tosses her head back, suffocating, drowning because she started sobbing somewhere along the way and the fucking clock is still ticking and she can't - she can't break apart again. Better steel than vines, better the biting edge of a knife and her own blood spilling across her unbroken fingers, better her than him. Except, even as her heartbeat blurs in her ears and she tenses, waiting for the pain that starts and never ends until she's dead, nothing hurts.
Her arm does not bend back within maybe Mike's grip; her legs don't jolt out of their socket before crumpling up like a thrown-away paper straw. Her body does not break, and her eyes don't pop like jelly. Max can still see the graffiti on the bathroom walls; can see the cracks from the last time the Upside Down was here that have yet to be patched up. She can still see, she can still feel her body, unbroken and trembling.
She can hear Mike Wheeler's voice in her ears, her name repeated over and over and over again. For once, it's the most reassuring thing she's ever known because somehow Max knows it's real, he's real, this is real. She goes limp in his arms so suddenly her name turns to a curse, but Max just lulls her head back his shoulder and shudders a little.
Reality hits her like a train.
The loops, the deaths, the final one, the war they won. It was over, they did it, they won, Vecna/Henry/001 was dead, the Upside Down was sealed away, El would kill anything before it touched her again. Max was safe, she is safe, and she had almost slit her throat for real. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
"You back with me?" Mike's voice is tentative, a note of weariness in it. He's loosened his arms ever so slightly, but they're still keeping her trapped, keeping her pressed against him and far away from the knife. Her eyes instinctively find it, the jagged metal, the sharp point, the leather handle with B.H. carved near the bottom. Mike must notice the subtle change because, without jolting her in his arms, he kicks it halfway across the bathroom with his foot. It makes a slight screeching sound that has them both wincing, but it's out of reach and she's still breathing.
"Shit." Max shudders again, because she almost killed herself, for real, not even a fucked-up restart but a real death. Fuck, Lucas was never going to let her out of his sight once he heard about this. Hell, she was going to practically be living with the Party for the foreseeable future. Not that she could really say anything at the moment because fuck, she almost.
She nearly spirals, down and down and down to the place where Vecna had found her, when Mike opens his mouth like he always does. "You know if you wanted a hug so damn bad, you just had to ask, Mayfield." It's so stupid and obviously an attempt to get anything out of her, any reaction that is better than her animal-like panic or tears, because God knows Mike cannot do tears, and yet it actually works.
Just a little bit.
“Fuck you, Wheeler.” Her voice is raspy, probably from screaming, or maybe making the odd little keening sound that goes beyond a scream. How the hell no one had come in to investigate only to see both of them freaking the fuck out, she didn't know.
“There you are.” It sounds too fond than Mike Wheeler has any right to be at 10 am curled up on the ground near the last stall of the girls' bathroom. Asshole.
This time when she strains against his arms, he lets her pull away, still watching her like a hawk as she settles beside him, curling her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them, shrinking into herself. "I didn't - I didn't mean to do that."
"Obviously," Max glares at him while he shoves his hand into his bag, grabbing for something - a pack of cigarettes, she realizes when he makes a small sound of victory. Mike pulls out a lighter too, with a case that is so obviously painted by Will she rolls her eyes. "Want one?"
Max used to smoke Billy's cigarettes out of pure fucking spite whenever he pissed her off. She made herself throw up a few times but the way his eyes twitched always made it worth. She's grown to like them more over the years, smoked a few times over his grave for reasons she really couldn't explain. God, she was fucking insane.
She grabs one, and Mike lights it on the second try before lighting his own. Maybe she should care about smoking on the bathroom floor in the middle of the school day, it's not even 11 but she had almost slit her throat, she deserved a cigarette. Max inhales, letting the familiar burn wipe away the taste of her own blood, or the rot that was Vecna's vines. Ugh.
She distracts herself from that horrifying thought by blowing smoke in Mike's face. He only rolls his eyes at her, taking his own drag. He hasn't said a word about - about what he walked in on, what he stopped her from doing. But he somehow migrated across the floor so they're hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, so he could grab her at a moment's notice and protect her from anything, including herself.
Nothing hurts, she thinks as a film of gray slowly forms around them, nothing hurts. There's barely a dull ache in her wrist from where he had grabbed it to force her to let go of the knife, it's already fading and it'll be gone by next period. There are no bruises forming around her arms, or her torso from his grip, Max would know, she's had experience. Nothing hurts because even while she was clawing and spitting like a feral cat, Mike was still gentle with her.
Now they're sharing his cigarettes and Billy's knife is out of reach.
He’s more of her brother than Billy ever was. Her fingers nearly crumple the cigarette pressed between them at the thought, and Mike tenses a little, eyeing her carefully. It's - It's an odd thought, but her already fucked up subconscious isn't wrong. Mike is an asshole and annoying and more like her than she'd like or ever admit. He'd also die for her in a heartbeat, even before they were grudging friends, because that's just who he is. Mike is an asshole, and he held her gently even when she was out of her mind.
He's more of her brother than Billy ever was. Fun Fact: she's watched them both die.
Fuck her life.
Then, because she really is trying to be better, because as she was so sharply reminded, they don't get do-overs this time. This is it; this is all they have and they better not waste it. Max looks over at Mike, the orange, burning tip of the cigarette between his fingers, the red mark forming along his jaw from where she must have knocked or hit him. Max looks over at Mike Wheeler sitting on the girls' bathroom floor for her, and she says, "Thank you, for you know, just thanks."
He gives her a fond, tired smile, "Fucking always, Max."
She could leave it at that, let it die like Mike had in Nancy's arms, like she had in Lucas's, in Dustin's, in Steve's. She could leave it, or, her voice is very quiet, "Thanks for being better than Billy. He wouldn't have," She stops, she grieves and hates him all over again, "Thank you."
Mike stills even more, the importance of her words weighing down the space between them. After a beat he carefully leans over, tangling their free hands together. Max, in all her vulnerable graciousness, lets him. He squeezes her hand, callouses pressed against matching callouses, "Always." It's softer than this time, and somehow it sounds like he means the same thing she does.
For a moment they hold hands, for a moment they're soft and gentle and sweet. Then they both pull away at the same time, taking an equally long drag and avoiding eye contact. Max squirms a little in the silence, flexing her hand, remembering the feeling of his, remembering nothing hurts, "If we ever tell anyone about this," She gestures to their hands, "We'll never hear the end of it."
She can see him nod out of the corner of her eye, "Agreed. Take it to our graves?" Then, because once Mike Wheeler decides he cares about you there's literally nothing you can do to get him to stop, he says, "We're telling everyone about what happened before though, they need to know." His voice is, for once, gentle, "You need help, Max. Maybe we can't find a professional or whatever, but we can help you."
It grates on her senses, the thought of telling everyone this, the thought of Lucas's grieving eyes and El's gentle hands drifting through her memories, seeing and hurting just the same. But he's not wrong, fuck him, he's not wrong. "Yeah, I know."
They sit in silence for another moment, and Max can feel the dark pit in her stomach swell up. It's dread and fear and anger and grief all wrapped together so tightly you can't tell them apart. She needs it to quiet, she needs to kill it but she can't, so she'll settle for shoving it down. "How many more do you have left?"
Mike stares for a second that seems to drag out for years and years, then he lets her run for a little while longer. He smiles, sharp and just like her own, "Who's saying you're getting any of them?"
Max glares at him and he glares back and the world is right, for just a second, just for them.