holding it together

✧

Dustin Henderson believed he had seen it all.

He had met a bald girl who could move things with her mind. His best friend returned from the dead. He had seen gates to alternate dimensions and fought monsters from said alternate dimensions. Dustin had burned a hive mind with his friends. He had discovered and broke into a top-secret Russian base in his hometown and witnessed things he could never unsee, all under the age of sixteen and in the span of four years.

It was safe to assume that living through that would put anyone on edge, constantly looking over their shoulder for any unforeseen threat.

There had been countless sleepless nights where old nightmares from Dustin's childhood resurfaced, and waking up to the news that someone from his school had been discovered dead wasn't far from his dreams. They usually started with something small, eventually unravelling themselves to be some of the worst horrors Dustin would ever endure.

It was understandable that alarm bells rang in his head while watching the news with his mother. Claudia Henderson was on the brink of tears while holding onto Tews, shaking her head. She would reach for her son, placing her hand on his knee to stop him from shaking.

He had zoned out through half of what the reporter had said, only catching brief mentions of how police were still investigating the scene and a woman claiming that the devil lives in Hawkins.

She wasn't far from the truth.

"My heart can't take it anymore," Claudia Henderson's voice trembled in worry after the reporter had finished. "it just can't take it."

The doorbell rang before he could console his mother. Dustin stood up to walk to the door, and the alarms in his head only grew louder when he opened it and saw Maxine Mayfield.

Her expression informed him that whatever she was about to say wouldn't be good.

Dustin's house is the last place Max would want to be on a Saturday morning. The two of them barely ever spoke, except the day before, when he asked her if she could fill in for Lucas at the Hellfire meet, and she made a fool of him. Dustin didn't bother to hide how surprised he was to see her.

Max was out of breath and pale, and her yellow bike was thrown on his lawn after rushing to Dustin's house from the trailer park. "We need to talk," she stressed, pulling her headphones down from her ears, and he realized he had never seen her without them and her Walkman since the Byers moved away. "Like, right now. Alone."

Code red.

Code red, he already decided. The alarms in his mind were going absolutely haywire. Dustin stepped out of the way and let Max into his house.

After entering, she appeared out of place and immediately hesitated, almost as if she were questioning her decision to be there. Dustin noticed and rushed her toward his room. His mother greeted Max sweetly for the short seconds she saw her before the two teenagers had disappeared behind Dustin's bedroom door.

The second Dustin locked the door, Max began to talk. Her words stumbled out of her mouth like word vomit, and her brows furrowed deeply as she spoke. Max told him about her suspicion of Eddie Munson, the leader of the DnD club Dustin was a part of and also a man he looked up to greatly. Eddie had always been kind to Dustin, and the boy had grown awfully attached to Hawkins's local freak as he had with Steve Harrington.

Dustin paces back and forth as Max tells him that she reckons Eddie of being the one who had killed Chrissy Cunningham.

He staggers after hearing Max drop the name belonging to the body that was found. He struggles to believe her, Chrissy would be the last person on earth to be seen with Eddie Munson. "Chrissy Cunningham? You're sure it was Chrissy?"

"Yes," Max nods, and she toys with the wire of her headphones. "In her cheerleader outfit. Same thing she was in when I saw her with Eddie."

Dustin throws his hands in the air and sighs. "Did you tell all this to the cops?"

"No," Max says, "No, but I... I can't be the only one who saw them together. I mean, they stood out."

Dustin continues to pace around his room, processing the new load of information that had been dumped on him. He shakes his head while nearing his closet, "Eddie the freak with Chrissy the cheerleader?"

"Exactly," Max sticks to her story. "his name's not on the news or anything yet, but I guarantee you Eddie is suspect number one for now."

Dustin scoffs, "That's crazy. Eddie didn't do this. No way." When Max looks away from him, clearly in doubt, he raises his voice and speaks sternly, "No way!"

Max threw her hands in the air. "Well, we can't rule it out!"

"Yes, we can."

"Dustin!"

He shakes his head again, "You don't know him like I do, Max, okay?" he tells her. Dustin was certain that whatever happened to Chrissy, Eddie had nothing to do with it. It would be insane to think that his Eddie would even want to hurt anyone. Max rolls her eyes at him, and Dustin feels his face grow warmer as he scoffs. "When we got to high school, Lucas made all his sports friends. Mike and me? I mean, no one was nice to us. No one except Eddie."

Stubbornly, Max didn't let her argument falter. "Okay. Well, I mean, they said the same shit about Ted Bundy. Yeah, he's, like, a super nice guy but then he's murdering woman on the weekend."

Dustin's eyes widened, "So you're saying Eddie is like Ted Bundy?"

"No, I'm not saying—I'm saying we can't presume anything, okay? But it doesn't look good for Eddie."

He rolls his eyes and sits on his bed, defeated. Dustin sighs and thinks everything over, but then he realizes something and looks up at Max. "Why haven't you told the cops this?"

Max crosses her arms, "I... I don't know."

"You don't know?" He repeats, almost mocking her.

Max's mouth opens and closes for a moment, and she hesitates before sitting next to Dustin on his bed. She stares blankly at the floor and finally turns to him. There's a look in her eyes, almost as if she's painfully trying to remember a bad dream. "After I saw Eddie and Chrissy go in the trailer... something else happened..."

Max tells Dustin about the lights flickering in her trailer a few minutes after she saw Eddie and Chrissy. Then she mentioned Eddie screaming and running out of his trailer and into his van, trying to get away as fast as possible while running over trash bins on his way out of the trailer park.

"Nothing that weird or anything. I mean... Eddie always drives like a maniac, and the power goes off at my place all the time. It's a piece of shit. But... this morning, I started to think back and... I don't know. The look on his face. He was scared, Dustin. Really scared. Maybe he was scared because you know he... he just killed someone or... maybe um... maybe be—because... I don't... I don't know, maybe..."

"Something else killed her?"

Dustin stared at his shoes and shook his head slowly. He didn't want to believe it. He really really didn't want to. But the way Max couldn't finish her sentence, he already knew. This was a major code red.

When he looked at Max again, she had been chewing on her nails. "The body... Chrissy... she... she looked a lot like Billy after... you know. Just broken bones and stuff..."

He curses.

"But that's impossible," she tries to stay in denial. "Right?"

"I don't know," Dustin shrugs, "It should be. There's only one person who knows what actually happened."

"Eddie."

The two of them made a plan of action. Simple, but the best they could work with on their own. Step one: find Eddie. They can go to Steve and Robin for help with that. Step two: uh. . . still in the works. But that doesn't matter, for now.

Dustin packs his bag if a number of flashlights and hurries out his door. Max follows him closely, and they rush down the hallway of his house. "Have you talked to anyone else?"

"No," Max tells him, "I can't find Lucas or Nancy. Alex and Mike are in—"

"California," Dustin finishes. And then he freezes in his after mentioning the state. Max runs into his back and curses.

"What the hell?"

"California," Dustin says again, and his face brightens with an idea as he turns to Max. A single name pops in his mind, "Rue."

Max pales and stutters, "What? W—what?"

"Rue!" Dustin repeats, and he grasps Max's wrist and leads her to the house phone in the hallway. "Rue, Rue Newby." He continues to say the name and slaps himself on the forehead. Dustin pulls the phone out of the receiver and hands it to Max. "If we're right about this. And if whatever killed Chrissy is what we think it is, we can't do it without help. Chrissy's death will most likely lead to something bigger. It always does. We'll be needing more help and El doesn't have her powers. Trust me when I tell you we're gonna need Rue. Call her."

Max stares at the phone in her hands. Her eyes grow wide to the rim, and she chokes on her own breath. "I... I..." She struggles to speak, and her face scrunches up as if the mention of Rue Newby crushes her. "I can't."

Dustin's eyebrows shoot up to his forehead. "What do you mean? Did you forget her number? I think I have it written down somewhere..."

"No, it's not that," Max tells him.

"Then what is it?"

She hesitates, "I haven't spoken to Rue since January 11th."

She speaks slowly. Her voice dropped lower and lower with every word until it was no louder than a whisper. Max stares at the floor, embarrassed to admit it.

"What?!" Dustin nearly screams. Out of all the times Max and Rue could be fighting, they had chosen now? "What do you mean you haven't spoken since January? That was, like, three months ago!"

"Yeah, I know. I can count." Max scoffs. She grips the phone tightly and sighs, "I was going to call her last night. As soon as it happened but... I couldn't. I froze... like I always do," she adds, clearly annoyed with herself.

Dustin pulls his hat off his head and groans, "What happened?" As Max opens her mouth to explain herself, he cuts her off and shakes his head. "You know what? I don't even wanna hear it. We don't have time for that. There's bigger things to worry about. Just call her."

Max looks at him helplessly and shoves the phone to his chest, "Why can't you call her instead?"

"Because, Max," Dustin says with a falsely sweet tone in his voice. He pushes the phone back towards her and smiles sarcastically, "if anyone is going to convince Rue to do anything, it's you."

Max frowns and stares at the phone, "It's like six in the morning over there... and she probably hates me," She mumbles to herself before glancing at Dustin again, "Well, what do you even want me to say?"

"Just ask if she can come here."

"Here? Hawkins?" Max asks, and she nearly laughs at him. "Are you insane?"

"Max," Dustin reaches for her shoulders, and he shakes her a little bit as if it reminds her of what she had witnessed. "We're talking about the..." Dustin drops his voice, hoping his mother wouldn't hear him. "the Upsidedown. Possibly the Mind Flayer. We can only get so far without her help."

She shrugs his hands off her shoulders and rolls her eyes, "She's more than just a weapon, Dustin. She has feelings."

"Right, and you did so well validating her feelings when you stopped talking to her three months ago."

"That's... not what happened," Max winced.

As if it were a way to say fuck it, she grumbles and says, "It's not like she can hate me more than I hate myself."

Max finally begins to dial the number into the phone. She put it up to her ear and shifted nervously in her spot. Max sighed and put the phone down, "No answer."

"Try again," Dustin tries to encourage her.

She leaned on the wall and dialled again. Max began to fidget with the wire of her headphones again, curling it around her fingers. Dustin could hear someone finally speak on the other side of the phone, it sounded like mumbles to him, but he could tell it was Rue from the way Max stiffened.

Max's grip on the phone grows tighter until her knuckles turn white, and her chin trembles once she tries to speak. Glossy tears cloud her blue eyes when Rue speaks again.

"Max," Dustin whispers, hoping to pull her out of the frozen trance she had gotten into. He places his hand on her shoulder, and his gentle touch shakes her out of it.

Max blinks away her tears and holds the phone closer to her ear. She smiles at Dustin thankfully and eventually speaks. "Rue, is that you?"

Dustin hears more static mumbles, but he sees it as a good sign as Max smiles sadly and sighs in relief. "Rue, thank God. It's me." She says. There's a shaky rasp in Max's voice as she speaks, and she swallows thickly as if she were trying to hold back a sob. "It's been a while, huh?"

Everything seemed to be going well until something bitter flashed in Max's eyes. Rue's voice was louder on the other side of the call after Max had scoffed and said, "Come on, that's not fair."

Dustin begins to panic, "What's going on?"

Max pulls the phone down briefly, "She's upset." she tells him. There was no surprise in her tone. Max seemed as if she expected that reaction from Rue and nothing more. She blinks away her tears, "I told you this was a bad idea."

He shakes his head, "What is she saying?"

Max puts the phone up to her ear again. She blurts out before she can help herself, "Lucas is sending you letters?"

Rue's voice is angry, something Dustin had never witnessed from her before.

Max handled it better than he would have, "Okay," Max closed her eyes, "I didn't call you to fight." She steals a glance at Dustin for a second before sighing again, "I... I don't think I can say it over the phone."

"Ask if she can get here." Dustin nudges her shoulder.

Max rolls her eyes. She purses her lips and winces as if it pains her to ask. "Do you think you can catch the next flight to Indianapolis?.. Something happened. Here at home. And I have a theory, but it can be wrong. This can be so much easier if you're here because... you know."

Rue replies, and Dustin can't make out anything she said. Whatever it was, it caused Max to snap. A familiar fiery look flashes in her blue eyes and her voice raises angrily, "Rue, stop being so difficult, alright."

Dustin laughs nervously. He grows worried about how the conversation is going and slowly starts to wish he had listened to Max when she said it was a bad idea. Dustin could only hear one side of the conversation, but he already knew it was not going the way he had planned. "Okay, Max," He reaches for the phone, "let me try."

Max slaps his hand away, "God, what is up with you?" She spat into the phone, "I'm trying to tell you something serious, and all you can do is throw around insults and act clueless. Like, who even are you?"

She continues to push Dustin away from her while he tries to take the phone. "Okay. Fine. I understand but seriously, Rue-"

Max suddenly freezes up again, and it causes Dustin to trip over his weight. He lands on the floor of his hallway and groans. From his spot on the ground, he looks up at Max.

Dustin sees how she had paled again, and the anger immediately vanished. Tears had grown in her eyes again before she wiped them away with the sleeves of her jacket. Max sucks in a sharp breath and holds it. She nods frantically, silently answering whatever question Rue had asked.

When she finally finds the strength to speak, she chews on her nails again and says, "Can we not do this over the phone?" Max closed her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks, "Just... try to get the flight, okay? Call me or Dustin once you get it. Come home, we can fight here, if you want. I'll ask Steve or Nancy to pick you up from the airport, and we can figure everything out here. I know I fucked up, and of course I miss you. I miss you every day... it's that I get scared, and... after Billy, I've..." Max pauses, and she opens her eyes again. Her brows furrowed in confusion, "Rue? Hello?"

Dustin finally jumps up from the floor, "What happened?"

Max scoffed and slammed the phone back to its place on the wall. She wiped away her tears again, this time a lot more aggressive. "She hung up on me."

"Are you... are you okay?" He asks hesitantly. Dustin had never been the one to comfort most people, even less to be Maxine Mayfield, the most hard-headed person he knew.

She stares at her shoes but nods anyway, silently answering him.

Dustin changes the conversation, "Do you think she'll come?"

"I doubt it," Max looks up at him, "We're on our own."

Dread drowns itself in Dustin's bones. It makes him shiver. "Shit," He curses. He nods and decides that they will return to the original plan: find Eddie. "Let's go. We can't waste anymore time."

The two hurried into the living room, and Dustin rushed to unlock his front door after running past his mother. Claudia turns to her son, eyes wide with worry. God bless her. "Dustin, where are you going?"

Dustin grimaces and says, "To see a friend."

"You heard the news. It's not safe."

"Good point." He hums, and Max runs out of the house. She jumps onto her yellow bike and makes her way out of the driveway. Dustin winces and hurries to get out himself. "We'll be extra careful. Thanks, mom. I love you. Bye!"

Even after he and Max had gotten Steve and Robin in to help, the sirens in his head didn't stop blaring for the rest of the day. Even after spending the entire day dialling numbers and searching for Eddie Munson's whereabouts.

After they located Eddie Munson in Reefer Rick's house all the way by Lover's lake, the sirens in his head continued to ring. He wasn't sure how much his poor heart could take, especially watching Eddie almost kill Steve Harrington.

Sure, Dustin Henderson had been incredibly annoyed with Steve lately, but he still wouldn't have wanted him dead. If anyone were to kill Steve, it would be Dustin himself after strangling himself for being so damn annoying.

The ringing intensified in his ears as he learned Eddie Munson hadn't been alone the entire time but had also brought Richard Maguire along with him. The high school graduate had come into the shed, humming gently with a smile.