My Number One (001/Henry Creel/Vecna x Reader)

Long Night

Henry and I glanced at each other. Without any words, we indicated that we would go along with it.

"...Yes!" I said.

"We've come from the mainland," said Henry.

"Everyone else is dead!" I exclaimed. "We thought we were the last ones left!" ...That part was true, asides from the babies we'd saved.

"Oh, my God," said the man.

"Thank God is what I say!" exclaimed the woman.

They both ran over to us, their clothes dishevelled, ripped and muddy.

"So, how did you two survive?" asked the man, sounding almost out of breath with surprise.

"We were out at sea. We've come here by ship," I said.

"But the seas were crazy!" said the woman. "No one survived out there with those waves—they were higher and stronger than ever recorded in human history!"

"Yes, we've only just set sail since the waves have calmed down—I suppose whoever is behind this chaos assumes we're all dead, so they have let the seas rest," I lied. "Before that, we were in an aeroplane."

"But how?" asked the man. "The winds were so strong, too, stronger and higher than any hurricane! Aeroplanes were crashing all over the place!"

"That was when the winds had calmed enough to fly the plane. Before that, we had dug deep into the earth, and created a bunker as far down as possible," Henry corrected tactfully.

"Thousands of people had tried that, though, and none of them survived! What did you do differently from them?" asked the woman incredulously.

"Well, unlike most people, we came from the small town in the US called Hawkins where this all started. So we started digging our bunker as soon as the first disappearances started cropping up. Of course, the governments around the world tried to sweep the issue under the rug and find a solution before releasing the news to the general public with any sort of plan. So most people were too late to make sufficient bunkers deep enough to hide from whatever monster was causing all these killings. But Twel—um...Maggie and I had taken matters into our own hands from the start. When we noticed the first disappearances, we didn't waste a moment before digging our bunkers. We didn't take any risks," Henry explained. I liked how he'd remembered the name I once pretended was mine—Maggie.

I smiled at him. "To tell you the truth," I added, "we've always been massive apocalypse nerds. We have a whole shelf of comics about apocalypses at home."

Henry smiled subtly, and I could tell he was entertained by this act. "And another shelf for movies about them."

"Yeah, we've been preparing for the end of humanity since before we learned to read," I lied again.

"Not that we ever expected it to happen, but we were always prepared," added Henry, almost laughing as he said it now.

"Well, it sure paid off!" said the woman.

"How did you two meet?" asked the man.

"A comic shop," said Henry.

"The movies," I said at the same time as him, accidentally.

Henry and I burst out laughing, our drunkenness creeping back, and the man and woman looked at us confusedly.

"Well, technically we first saw one other at the comic shop, but each of us were too shy to speak to the other. So, our first official meeting was at the movies, where we were both going to see Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, an apocalyptic film of course, and the theatre was full that we were forced to take the last seats right beside each other," I babbled enthusiastically.

Henry continued my story. "And we were still too scared to speak to each other, but I, being the man, made the first move, so went to reach for her hand which was in her lap, and, would you know it, accidentally grabbed her fanny."

I laughed, and woman looked down uncomfortably, but humour was in the man's face.

"I only ask because it's a miracle two people with such a specific and fervent interest found one another," said the man, clearly unfazed and falling for our humorous act.

"Well, I think we brought it out in each other, really," said Henry. "But, anyway, how did you two survive, then?"

"We hid in Fort Knox vaults—we worked there. Then, of course, we fled here once things seemed to have calmed down based on the radio signals. Remote islands like this seemed to have the least amount of monsters because they had the least amount of indications of human life, according to the news...back when there still was news. Now, television exists no more. Everything electrical has shut down. There's no one to control it, of course," the woman explained.

I nodded. "Wow, a good time to be working at Fort Knox, I guess."

"Sure was," said the woman.

I yawned. "Anyway, as you can probably tell, my boyfriend and I are pretty wasted...and pretty tired after the journey, so..."

"Yeah, of course, we'd better get to bed as well," said the man, slinging his arm around the woman's shoulder.

"I don't think we told each other our names," said Henry.

"Oh, yeah, I'm Ron."

"I'm Sally," said the woman.

"I'm Henry and she's Maggie."

"So, have you two built anything out here yet?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Just a little something. A fort with a bed in it. We could show you if you'd like, but it's only a small hut with a small bed, so it would just be teasing you," said Ron.

Henry laughed. "It's fine. We'll get a fire going out on the beach."

"We'll see you tomorrow," I said. "Lovely to meet you."

*

Henry and I stumbled back through the woods and out onto the beach, all the while laughing at our own storytelling. We collapsed up in the dunes, surrounded by long, spiky grass, unable to walk any longer with drunkenness.

"What are we going to do with them?" I asked.

"I don't know, but let's keep them around a while longer. We could use the entertainment," Henry said with a smile. "We should've asked them how they survived before telling them how we did. That would've saved some hassle."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't have been as funny. But, Henry, on a serious note...if these people have survived, think about how many others probably have. I mean, what are the chances of us choosing a random island where there are inhabitants there. The odds are that there are way more survivors elsewhere than we think."

"True." Henry sighed. "But I'm sure there are nowhere near enough to do any sort of damage to our plan. I'll inform the Demogorgons and Demodogs in the morning, though, and they'll get it sorted."

About half an hour later into the middle of the night, while the Demogorgons tended to the babies, we ended up collecting wood and creating a fire on the sand. It had surprised me how unbothered Henry was about the survivors. All this time, he'd been deadly against letting anyone else live besides us and the babies. Truthfully, I believed, deep down, after him spending so much time alone in the Upside Down, and before that years of his life trapped in the laboratory, that Henry enjoyed the company of these people. I believed that he truly, secretly, enjoyed the thought of them being around.