Strawberries and Cigarettes // Max Mayfield x girl OC

Chapter Three: The Monster and the Superhero

After successfully finding Eddie—and confirming that they were, in fact, dealing with the Upside Down, yet again—the group decided to call it a night. They made sure Eddie would be set until the next morning, and then Steve dropped everyone off at their respective houses, except for Max.

Max ended up staying the night with Chris at the Wheeler residence. The redhead didn't really want to go back to her house which was twenty feet away from where Chrissy died, and Chris didn't really want to be alone after everything that happened that night.

By the time Steve dropped them off, Mrs. Wheeler had already gone to bed, which meant she wasn't there to enforce the Max-sleeping-in-the-basement rule.

"Do you think we're gonna be okay this time?" Chris asked Max, barely above a whisper, as the two of them lay together in Chris' bed.

Neither girl had spoken since arriving home, and honestly, Chris didn't even know if Max was still awake.

"Yeah," Max replied, lacing her pinky with Chris'. "We have to be. I mean, we've handled this before, we can handle it again."

Chris let out a long sigh as she stared at the ceiling. She wanted to believe Max's words, she really did, but she knew that there was no certainty behind them.

"I'm scared, Max. I'm really scared," Chris confessed. "Yes, we've beat this before, but each time it was El who came through in the end. It was El who stopped the monster. And we don't have her this time."

Chris was never great at expressing emotions, especially fear. She didn't like the idea of people seeing her as vulnerable, so she typically buried it deep down. But something about being alone with Max made Chris forget all of that. When she was with Max, Chris felt like she could express any and all of her feelings without fear of judgment.

"I know, babe. I know," Max shushed her softly, running her hand—the one that wasn't intertwined with Chris'—through the brunette's hair in an attempt to calm her. "We'll figure it out, okay? Just... one step at a time. Why don't you try to get some sleep, okay?"

Chris nodded and kissed Max quickly before wrapping an arm around her waist. Within a few minutes, Max's breathing had evened out and soft snores left her lips.

Chris, on the other hand, didn't get a wink of sleep that night.

•••

The next morning, Steve picked everyone up bright and early, and they ran to get some food and hygiene supplies for Eddie. About an hour or so later, they were back at Reefer Rick's shed, their arms full of bags.

Before Chris could stop him, Dustin was barging through the shed's door without so much as a knock or a warning.

"Delivery service!" he yelled to Eddie, who let out a sigh of relief as he realized it wasn't the cops.

"Just so you know," Chris spoke as she entered the shed, setting the bags on the floor. "I was very against him barging in here. I think he should have knocked or, at least, let you know it was us and not someone bad."

Eddie muttered a quiet thanks before digging into the bags of food, grabbing out a box of Honey-Comb cereal and ravishing it.

"So we got, uh, some good news, and some bad news," Dustin told Eddie once they were all settled in. "How do you prefer it?"

"In the ass," Chris joked before she even knew what she was saying.

Almost immediately after, Max whacked Chris in the arm. The latter looked up to see everyone staring at her as she realized she had, indeed, made that snide comment out loud.