Chapter Text
Let the record show that Max Mayfield never claimed she was a good driver. She said she could drive. Those are two separate things. Besides, the only seemingly competent adults in this shithole of a town had fucked off to some secret lab, and the next closest thing they had to a competent adult is passed out in the back seat of Billy’s car.
She can still hear the shattering of the plate against Steve’s head, see the way he’d crumpled like one of the ragdolls her Mom had finally given up on getting her to like. Max glances into the rearview mirror, eyes seeking out Steve’s face. She just needs to make sure he’s still breathing. Make sure Billy didn’t do something she’ll have to live with.
She doesn’t hear Lucas’s scream quick enough. There’s just the sound of metal on metal, the car twisting and lurching, steering wheel bucking beneath her fingers like a horse still untamed, and her neck twists sideways. Whiplash. Pain.
She opens her eyes to a car full of boys screaming and a looming black figure pounding its fist against the glass of her window. She shrieks, vaulting backward into Lucas’s spot, bumping her hip painfully into the stick shift, seatbelt stretched to its limit.
“Are you okay? Fuck!” The figure shouts, wrenching the door open. He shoves his head into the car and looks over at her, eyes wide in his manic face. His hair’s wrecked – it’s a wild curly curtain clouding his face. “Shit, you’re a fucking toddler!”
Max, having finally decided that this weirdo is not at all a threat, lurches forward, slams her hands against his chest, and shoves the man out of the open car door. “I’m thirteen!” she replies, sneering. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, we’re kind of in a hurry!”
She pointedly doesn’t look at Steve still crumpled in the back seat, but it doesn’t seem to matter; the man turns his head, pupils turning into pinpricks as he takes in the limp form sprawled across Mike and Dustin’s laps.
“Is that Steve fucking Harrington?”
“What’s it to you?” Mike asks snottily. Max turns toward him, already snarling in protection, but Wheeler’s got Steve’s head cradled in his lap, and he’s got his arms raised like he can shield him from this nameless threat.
“What’d you do to his face?” he demands, almost whining, like Steve Harrington having his face bashed in is an affront to him personally.
Max lunges through the still-open window in an attempt to stop him, but it’s too late. The weird guy’s already opened the back door and has pushed his way in past Dustin to peer down into Steve’s face.
“Don’t touch him,” Max hisses just as the guy reaches out to press his fingertips gently against Steve’s cheek.
Steve hadn’t woken up as they’d dragged him to the car. It’d taken all four of them pulling his limbs into strange shapes and probably giving him a wicked roadburn. He hadn’t woken up as all three of the idiots around her had screamed unhelpful directions in her ear on the assumption that being louder would make them more intelligible. He hadn’t even woken up when Mike and Dustin started clutching at him as the stranger climbed inside.
But one touch of this guy’s trembling fingers against his cheek, and Steve’s eyes slit open.
“Nancy?” he asks, voice slurring around the name.
The guy laughs, all shaky past whatever bravado he’s lightly veneered on. “Guess again, big guy.”
Steve squints, making his barely-open eyes even smaller. She’s not sure how he can see anything at all, but he says, “Munson?” all soft and confused as he looks up at the other guy. “What’re you doin’ ‘ere?” he asks, voice slurring alarmingly.
The guy, Munson, laughs again, and uses his free hand to tuck his wild hair behind his ears. Max can see his face now, and he might’ve just been laughing, but he’s not smiling as he asks, “I could ask you the same thing,” in a tone of voice that doesn’t hide the worry behind all that forced nonchalance.
She can feel their window of opportunity closing. This guy’s going to commandeer the car, whisk Steve to a hospital, and that’ll be the end of her night. No more quests. No more delay of the inevitable.
Her palms are sweaty, and her windpipes shrinking in on itself like it’s one of those milkshake straws that gets stuck together if the shake’s too thick.
Billy’s going to kill her when he sees her again. There will be no Steve Harrington and no inexplicable bat full of nails between them. He’s going to kill her, and that’s not something she can fight.
But this? This is a plan with steps they can take to make sure everyone comes out alive. She’s a dead man walking, but Will doesn’t have to be.
And that girl with superpowers could probably use all the help she can get, no matter how cool she is.
She steps on the gas pedal, careening past the guy’s van where it’s still blocking the road, and continues on her chosen path even as the backdoor shudders with each turn of the wheel, trying to shut on mystery guy’s legs.
Everyone’s screaming, and she has no idea where she’s going, so she utilizes the lessons her family’s taught her on being heard and screams, “shut up!” at the top of her lungs until the car’s catching crickets in its silence.
“Lucas?” she asks, something churning in her stomach as he squeaks with what sounds suspiciously like fear. “Where next?”
Still, he reaches out and puts his hand on her knee, squeezing comfortingly as he says, “turn right here.”
Max turns.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the guy, Munson, hisses. “The hospital’s back there!”
And the guy must’ve made some sort of gesture that jostled Steve because he makes a small, wounded sound deep in his throat. Max adjusts the rearview mirror just so she can glare at Munson threateningly, barely avoiding careening into a mailbox.
Munson’s looking down at Steve with sad, worried eyes from where he’s crouched half overtop him, using the hand not holding up his weight to pet Steve’s bloody hair back from his head. “Sorry, Stevie.”
“‘m fine,” Steve slurs out.
Max rolls her eyes and focuses back on the road, ignoring whatever spectacle’s going on in the back seat. She’s got hours to live, and she’s going to make them count.
It’s a few short turns, following Lucas’s instructions until she’s careening off the road and bouncing to a stop on a grassy knoll, the boys in the back screaming as she slams on the brakes.
When she twists the keys and pulls them free, the headlights click off, bathing the clearing in darkness.
Max is the first one out of the car. The back door’s still open, Munson’s feet sticking out until he slides out, tumbling into an ungainly heap in the grass. He groans, flopping around until he’s on his back, messy curls covering his eyes.
Dustin’s out of the car next, stepping over Munson like he’s a log in his path, not even glancing down at him as he orders everyone around. “We have to hurry,” he says, squinting down at his watch. He turns back to the car, yelling out “Steve!” in a demanding tone, as if he hadn’t just been cradling Steve’s shoes to his chest like he was a dying baby bird.
Steve shuffles out at the sound of his name, much more graceful despite what she expects must be a wicked concussion. There’s a trail of blood starting at his hairline and trailing down his temple. “C’mon, Munson,” he says, holding out his hand to help the other boy up.
Munson peeks through his fingers up at Steve before flinging himself up on his own steam, eyes wide as he looks around the clearing like he’s never seen one before. “Oh, is this what hospitals look like now?” he asks, feigning shock. “Where’s the doctor?”
“What the hell are you talking about, dude?” Steve sighs, hands on his hips as he glares at Munson.
Munson screeches deep in his throat, loud enough that the rest of them wince. He gestures at all of Steve’s body which, yeah fair. “You’re fucked, dude!” he yells. “Your brain’s probably bleeding out your ears!”
Steve says, “no hospitals,” just as Dustin replies, “we can check his brain after,” and strides farther into the clearing without a backwards glance, like he expects everyone else to follow him without question. Max resists the urge to get back in the car and leave all these idiots to die.
After all, Steve and Lucas are still here. The rest of them can burn, for all she cares.
“I thought I made myself clear,” Steve says, hands on his hips like he’s someone’s beleaguered mother, even though he’s slurring, and Munson’s right: his brain’s probably leaking out his ears. “We’re on the bench!”
Dustin stomps back with a huff, clearly fed up with the delay. “Steve, you’re upset, I get it,” he starts. His flashlight’s on and blinding Steve as it’s shined directly into his eyes. “But the bottom line is, a party member requires assistance, and it is our duty to provide that assistance.”
Munson laughs, halfway to hysterical as he pulls a hunk of unruly hair taught in front of his own face and bites it like a dog. Max wrinkles her nose, disgusted, but then the guy says, “what is this a live-action D&D game? And I thought I was a nerd,” and she sort of starts to like him.
“Henderson,” Steve sighs, rolling his eyes when he’s immediately verbally bowled over.
“I know you promised Nancy you’d keep us safe,” Dustin says, finally pointing the flashlight away from Steve’s eyes, illuminating the ground between them. “So, keep us safe.”
Munson twitches beside Steve, inching closer to him as the silence lingers, showing exactly where his loyalties lie. But in the end, Steve sighs, shoulders slumping, and Max knows the plan’s back on.
“If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it right,” Steve says, turning back to dig through the contents of Billy’s trunk as if it was his own.
“Do what?” Munson cried, reaching up to pull his own hair by the root as he stomped his foot like a beleaguered father.
When Steve turns back, he tosses a bandana at Munson’s chest. He scrambles to grab it, but it falls into the grass, and by the time he stands back up, Steve’s got a red bandana of his own tied around the bottom half of his face, and what looks like a pair of Billy’s old swimming goggles strapped across his eyes. The pressure’s got to be killer on his concussion, but Steve doesn’t complain.
He never seems to when it’s his own well being in question. Max kind of wants to stuff him back in the car and haul ass to the hospital, or better yet, out of this spooky fucking town entirely.
Munson’s just standing there, bandana clutched in his hand as he squints at Steve like he’s an alien. With the goggles making him so bug-eyed, she can’t really blame him.
“Put that on,” Steve says, pointing down at the bandana. “The air in the Upside-Down is like, toxic or something. Hop had to be on some sort of breathing machine.
Munson takes two steps forward and waves his hand in front of Steve’s face rapidly. “Hello? Anyone fucking in there?” When Steve smacks his hand down, Munson takes a quick hop back and throws his hands in the air, letting the bandana flutter back to the grass. “What the fuck is an Upside-Down? Have you cracked?”
“Eddie,” Steve sighs. He sounds tired down to his bones. Probably happens to anyone who has to deal with Dustin for more than twenty minutes at a time, never mind this new guy and whatever his damage is.
He bends down to retrieve the bandana himself and steps forward. Munson – Eddie – takes a quick step back, eyes wide like he’s afraid he’s going to get his ass kicked. But all Steve does is brush Eddie’s messy curls off his shoulder and out of the way so he can tie the bandana around his face himself.
“Just trust me, okay?”
Max turns away, feeling suddenly like she’s seeing something she shouldn’t as Eddie shivers and shakes beneath Steve’s gentle hands.