Royal Pain || Stranger Things

twelve || bait

Hawkins, Indiana turned itself into a place of mystery within the course of a few weeks in the fall of the year prior, and as quickly as things got strange, they were swept under the rug and out of sight of the public.

Hawkins, in fact, had been strange for a very long time. The cases of Will Byers and Barbara Holland were just the few things that managed to escape the privatized operations within the national laboratory nestled in the seemingly safe woodlands of the area.

For a town that loved its gossip, they seemed to miss the mystery lurking just outside their homes.

The 'Russian spy' was born in Hawkins and snatched from her mother moments after her birth, and her mother's reaction of storming the lab with a weapon was pushed away as a mental break and she was swiftly removed from the town, along with the suspicion that there was something going on within the compound.

Throughout the late sixties and seventies, several experiments were done on willing and unwilling participates to scope out the pseudoscience of mind control, but if you ever asked a resident of Hawkins, they would know nothing of it.

If you asked a resident about the death of Jordan Rivers' first wife, Misha, you would immediately be met with a tragic story and a weepy retelling of the school teacher who had been lovingly embraced by the town only to be ripped away too soon and a young daughter left without a mother.

However, they never had the right details.

Her daughter didn't have the right details, either.

Tatum, far away from thinking about her mother as she peered through the slatted metal covering the bus windows, recoiled from the barely lit scene as one of the many children she had unintentionally ended up babysitting climbed the poorly supported ladder up to the roof. "This is insane," she murmured, her time with Max making her hesitancy about the whole situation grow.

It didn't help that Billy would likely be rolling up to her house, only for her to never show.

Fog had set in over the junkyard, hanging low to the ground. They had drastically misjudged the lighting situation and instead were left with the moon to guide their plans.

Steve was occupying himself with an old zippo lighter that had been left at his house after a party the year before, flicking it open and shut as he tried to push out his worry for Nancy, wherever she was.

Tatum sat down on the floor of the bus, letting Max keep her seat on the one remaining bench while Dustin paced.

"So," Max said quietly to break the silence, "you really fought one of these things before?" Receiving a nod from Steve, she continued with her doubt. "And you're like, totally one hundred percent sure it wasn't a bear?"

"Shit," Dustin expressed with folded arms, clearly on edge. "Don't be an idiot, okay? It wasn't a bear."

Tatum and Steve exchanged a confused look as he raged on.

"Why are you even here if you don't believe us? Just go home."

Max's brows lifted, recoiling. "Geesh," she said as she stood. "Someone's cranky. Past your bedtime?" She climbed the ladder up to the roof, leaving the three behind.

"That's good," Steve praised as Max was out of ear shot. "Just show her you don't care."

"That doesn't mean you have to be an asshole about it, Dustin," Tatum countered, her advice differentiating from Steve's drastically. "That was mean."

"I don't care," Dustin quietly said, still unable to settle down. "Why are you winking, Steve? Stop."

Tatum groaned. "You're terrible at love advice, Harrington."