Who: Cole & @elevcnhops​​

𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙸𝙴 𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙽𝙽𝙴𝙻 #𝟶𝟶𝟼: cole & max

MAX: sorry. i'll try again.

MAX: [clearing her throat]

MAX: dickwad, are you there?

MAX: geez, sound more excited to see me.

MAX: it's gonna take me a second to skate there from downtown.

MAX: are you like, good?

COLE: i could lock the door

COLE: if i'm leaving the door open, assume there's some excitement

COLE: sorry i'm not like singing the doxology or something

COLE: [sigh]

COLE: i'm in a shitty mood. it's not your fault

mmuscles​:

WHO: thad bradshaw & @loverboymontgomery​ WHAT: it’s like, collateral. WHERE: the meteor shower 

thad was ashamed to admit he’d thought about cole since he cornered him in his garage. he wished he could say it was a time or two, but when he laid on the hood of his car outside of the motel 6 and moping about his life soundtracked to elvis each night, he found his thoughts drifting to cole, kissing cole. fuck, this was bad. he knew he had to say something next time he saw cole, and not kiss him this time, actually say it. there was no accounting for when he would see him next and secretly thad hoped it would be never, but of course the cookie just didn’t crumble.

he had gone to nancy to the meteor shower the next time he saw cole. he was there with some other guy and thad knew he had to act. quick. he told nancy he was going to take a leak and walked up to cole, who was newly alone and looking in the direction of the boy he was walking off, “hey, pretty boy.” he greeted, gesturing with his head to a less congregated area of the field, “wanna walk with me? i gotta talk with you.” 

xx.

Being in public with Adam again was weird. Good weird, but weird. After they’d spent the last few days alone, making up for lost time, Cole found it difficult to keep his hands off Adam now. Not in a trashy way-- all he wanted to do was hold Adam’s hand, brush the same pesky hair out of Adam’s eyes, press a reassuring kiss to his shoulder. But Cole knew Adam was already on edge given, well, everything, so he was on his best behavior. Besides the two sharing a blanket and a few stolen glances, an innocent bystander would hardly know Cole and Adam were together.

When Adam left to go catch up with a friend, Cole’s eyes followed him. The fear that Adam would disappear still hadn’t gone away. He’d long given up trying to reason it away, because there was frankly nothing reasonable about anything in this situation, and sat lost in thought until he was approached by a familiar face. At Thad’s customary greeting, Cole couldn’t help but laugh. He figured this was coming, at some point, but he still didn’t know what he was going to say. The fear Cole had felt after Thad kissed him came rushing back; he was grateful they were in public, because he wasn’t sure what to expect-- anger, shame, aggression, even. “Uh, sure, guy,” Cole said, hoping his nerves weren’t apparent in his tone. Pushing himself off the ground, Cole followed Thad to a more private corner of the field. “What’s up?” he asked, glancing anywhere but Thad’s eyes. Instead, Cole skimmed the crowd and took momentary comfort in seeing the back of Adam’s head. 

@goldenboyrichards

Sufjan Stevens | Fourth of July April Base Version

Cole hadn’t retained anything that anyone in the last... ten minutes? Thirty minutes? Hour? since the vision. He vaguely understood that Officer Callahan wanted them gone, and that Tessa had agreed, and that now they were going. So, he shuffled towards the front gate like a zombie, falling behind everyone else. His mind was a loop of Adam bursting into flames. 

When Lucas clapped him on the back, Cole jumped. Embarrassed, he swiped at his still-wet eyes and turned to Lucas. “Hey, man,” he flashed a pathetic smile. Something about being stuck in an empty grave together made Cole feel like he could trust Lucas, even if they’d never spoken much before tonight. With a nod, he walked with Lucas towards his car. “Probably should. And your shoulder, too.”

Casting a sidelong glance at Sinclair, Cole tried to read his expression. “So, that was...” he paused throwing his hands out in an I-don’t-fucking-know gesture. Cole knew that Lucas was friends with Will, and that Lucas was at Starcourt when it caught on fire, so he wondered if Lucas was somehow better equipped to handle these things. Or at least, maybe he had some answers. Worth a shot, anyways. “What the hell was that?”

who: lucas sinclair & @colemontgomeryx​​​ where: outside the cemetery when: 5 minutes after escaping a grave💙

lucas’ shoulder throbbed. it was strange how he hadn’t really noticed it during the night, but as soon as all of the excitement died down -and the group was safely out of the cemetery gates- it hit him like…well, like falling into an open grave. he’d left his bag behind, but callahan was probably still hanging around. that was definitely the reason he’d left it behind. 

at least he still had his car keys stuffed in his pocket. lucas tugged them free and spun them on his keyring. he was sober enough to drive. something about being scared out of your mind did that to you. he couldn’t even feel the shot he’d taken ten minutes ago. the group began to disperse, back to their own little worlds, and lucas felt panic creeping up his spine and making his lungs feel like they couldn’t get enough air. he didn’t really feel like being alone right now. not after what he’d seen. and besides that-

“hey,” lucas said, relieved to find that cole hadn’t wandered off too far and jogging over, lightly clapping him on the back with his good arm. “don’t you think maybe you should go get that checked out?” he pointed to his own head and gestured to his beat-up honda, parked edge of the grass. 

zccming​:

don’t cry. max’s heart screamed in her chest, but she didn’t say anything, merely kept holding cole’s hands while he digested. while he processed. she was acutely aware of the fact she was forever altering his perception of reality, she didn’t take it lightly. she watched his expressions play out across his face like she was watching a movie, curious as to what was going to happen, trying to absorb all the information she could. “the mind flayer, yeah.” max echoed, confirming he’d said it correctly. she had fully prepared herself for cole to push back against what she was saying, the first time lucas tried to tell her, she resisted. but he’s surprised her. i don’t think you’re crazy.

“okay.” max breathed out, nodding as a sort of thanks. she wasn’t shocked by the questions, but she definitely hadn’t prepared herself on how to answer. “i don’t know.” she told cole. there hadn’t been time when they were actively fighting off the mind flayer to do a deep dive into how it flayed. “and i don’t know. i wish i knew why hawkins, or how, but i don’t.” max added, starting to feel her throat tighten. “but i guess it started with will, when he went missing, before i moved here.” she answered him in slow fragments, knowing each piece of information would be a blow of it’s own. “there’s…like…this world under hawkins, or there was. it’s called the upside down and it’s where will went.” she looked down at her knees, staring for a moment as she tried to wrangle all her thoughts. “lucas told me, the year i moved. i thought he was full of shit.” she answered, making it sound much more simple than it was, “then i saw stuff from the upside down for myself, i went there. did you know that steve’s pretty mean with a baseball bat?“ she recalled vaguely. 

 “i watched the mind flayer kill billy.” she blurted, tears prickling in her own eyes, “at starcourt.” then as if it might help she offered a twisted assurance, “i’m sure adam’s death wasn’t painful.” she didn’t know if that was true, but she liked to believe that it was. “like…flicking off a switch. it was over.” there was no more sarcasm or jokes to be found behind max’s words, only the uncomfortable truth, and fear of how cole was going to take it. she let it linger for a long moment, then eventually let go of cole’s hands and ran her own over her face, stiff at the memories. stressed. hesitantly, max offered, “there’s more that happened, after the mall, if you want to hear about chrissy and all them.“ she held her breath, "and if you don’t, i guess, know that we avenged adam and the others. that stuff is gone now.”

xx.

Cole had to actively try to keep listening. He wanted to know everything and he had no shortage of questions, but his brain felt like a feedback loop, connecting: Billy was different before to Mindflayer to Will going missing to ‘I watched the Mindflayer kill Billy’ and back again. He felt like she might as well be speaking to him in Latin-- she was saying so many familiar words, but he couldn’t understand them. For a former gifted student, it was an infuriating feeling. 

“A world under Hawkins,” he repeated, slowly, desperately trying to conjure up an image of an underground world. He felt like his head was going to explode. “Lucas knows? And Steve?” he asked, half-listening for an answer and half-stuck on deciphering what any of this meant. If it wasn’t Latin, it was hieroglyphics. “What.... is the Upside Down?” It was horrifying to think of a young Will stuck in an alternate dimension alone. “How did Will get out?” Then, a more horrifying thought. “How did Will get in?”

He nodded, trying to find comfort in Max’s words. He hoped it was true, that Adam’s death hadn’t been painful or agonizing--not that he would ever know. He sat in silence for a minute, staring at the wall just past Max. Did he want to know? He figured it was best to hear... whatever it was from Max, anyways. “I... yeah. I want to know. I’m just in shock, I think,” he explained, though he was sure she already knew that. 

who: cole & @dvstybuns

where: the music center

Thursdays at The Music Center were predictably slow, and today was no different. Cole had already finished the new Stephen King novel, reorganized the vinyl and cassette tapes, and done inventory. Usually, he would pass the time by using the shop’s instruments, honing his piano skills or struggling on guitar-- but because of his broken finger, he’d not been able to.

Today, though, the boredom hit so hard that he abandoned his finger splint and carefully played a few scales on the electric keyboard. It didn’t hurt too bad, so he began playing through the song that had been stuck in his head for weeks now: Steely Dan’s “Third World Man.” 

He got carried away until he heard the door open. Cole glanced over his shoulder and a grin overtook his face. “Hey, kid,” he said, motioning for Dustin to come in. “What’s up?”

zccming​:.

“not physically under it.” max corrected, not thinking of how she was likely contributing to cole’s ever growing confusion. “it’s like, physics or something. it was another dimension, that looked just like hawkins, under hawkins…but it was …bad?” she sighed. even now, max’s grasp of logistics on the upside down were slim, there’s only so much of the unexplainable one can understand. but even then, what she knew was far more than cole did. 

max mayfield wasn’t one to be known for her incredible tact. if she was going to lay out the facts for cole, she was going to lay them out cut and dry, and she’d handle any questions that might come up as they did. “lucas knows, steve knows.” she repeated, then added, “and nancy, and jonathan, and hopper, and robin, and mike, and dustin, and–” max stopped herself, figuring he got the point. “and a lot of us.” she finished. the further they moved from talks of adam, the less gentle max felt she had to be, “a monster took him.” god, she really did sound crazy. “i wasn’t there but, his mom and hopper pulled him out i guess.” 

max waited, intensely staring at cole while he mulled over whether or not he wanted to hear the next part. static filled her ears rather than the sound of her radio, like her body knew before her brain that this next bit of information would be the most difficult to divulge. i’m just in shock, i think. “it’ll pass.” max promised, a familiar and distant look glossing over her gaze. she wouldn’t tell him the fear he might meet on the other side, the pain. if they were lucky, maybe cole’s journey with the hawkins curse would start and end with this shock. 

“remember when my arm was broken?” max sucked in a breath. i almost died felt a little too harsh, “there was this…i guess…” she let her head drop, afraid that if she even mentally revisit that period of time, vecna would somehow pop up in her mind. seldom did she talk about what had happened in the wake of it all. feeling paranoid, max wordlessly stood up and switched out the cassette in her radio to the hounds of love album, just in case. “another monster killed chrissy, fred, and patrick.” she said flatly, plopping back down and working overtime at picking the skin around her nails to soothe herself, “he would basically attack with like, your worst nightmare, he wanted to destroy hawkins, needed to kill four people to do it.” max broke her eye contact with cole, staring past him and at the wall, “i was supposed to be the fourth, but like i said, we killed him. avenged everyone. the end.” 

xx.

Cole could feel his mind stretching, trying to hold all of this information. An alternate universe was one thing, but an alternate universe that was an evil Hawkins? That so many people he knew had been to? That was entirely another thing. 

He thought back to when Will went missing, and tried to imagine Joyce and Hopper pulling him out of another realm. How had they even discovered it? And, once again, why Hawkins? Cole would think that if some supernatural force was going to replicate a place it would be somewhere like Chicago at least.

“Okay, sure,” Cole said, a pathetic attempt at affirming all that Max had said. At least he could take comfort in knowing that she was in his shoes too, so she knew what it felt like to be thrown into all of this. He winced when she mentioned her broken arm; He couldn’t imagine being hunted by some supernatural being... much less surviving and having to live with that knowledge. Even thinking about it made Cole want to get high.

“God, Max...” he wanted to apologize, but he figured she’d scoff at him. “How the fuck do you just, like, move on from that?” he asked, taking a puff and passing the joint to her. It sounded like she needed it more than him.

Despite the fear and the whirlwind of new information, Cole was fixating on one fact: Adam had been possessed. That’s why they’d gotten in that fight. That’s what had killed him. It wasn’t good news, per se, but it definitely helped explain the last week of Adam’s life. It comforted Cole in a weird way, almost like it gave him permission to grieve Adam as a lover and not an ex-boyfriend. 

An uneasy feeling crept down Cole’s spine. He tried to keep his tone neutral, not wanting her to think she’d freaked him out, but he couldn’t help asking: “Do you think everything is ... gone?” He was afraid he knew the answer.

THE END

𝚆𝙰𝙻𝙺𝙸𝙴 𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙽𝙽𝙴𝙻 #𝟶𝟶𝟼: cole & max

MAX: do you have windows? i'm pretty good with windows.

MAX: what are you talking about? you know im useless with science.

MAX: yeah i can tell.

MAX: well, you have like, fifteen minutes to tell me about it now, or you can wait until i get there.

COLE: it's not science, maxine. it's religion

COLE: or something...

COLE: i told adam...

COLE: we were going to that keg thing and Thad was going to be there and

COLE: i panicked and told him right before

COLE: i'm an asshole

Cole didn’t know Eleven particularly well. He knew of her, because, well, who didn’t? But they hadn’t spent too much time together. He knew she was a survivor of the mall fire, and he could imagine that she was feeling even more uncomfortable than he was. And, like him, it seemed she had been hitting the keg pretty hard.

“Hey, El,” he put out a hand to stabilize her, plucking the cup out of her hand so she didn’t spill more. “You were looking for me, huh?” he chuckled. “Anything in particular I can do for you?” he asked, putting her cup to the side and glancing around the foyer. He knew Max and El were close, maybe he needed to have a backup plan in case El was really not okay to be here. 

WHERE ; Blue Quarry Mall Protest

WHO ; Cole &. El

To say El was lost - happened to be an understatement. Her first time at StarCourt was it’s own experience but now… this was frustrating. “ Have you… ? “ trying to speak over the constant beat from the ‘ boombox ‘. Maybe that fifth red solo cup should’ve been enough. Now fully aware the appeal of this ‘ liquid fuel ‘ being passed around. Stumbling mildly, eyes trying to focus on something other than bodies swarming around them.

Pushing through the crowd, the distinctly sweet scent of the beer spilling over herself and the other. “ Sorry! “ El’s apology rushed with the sudden movements of trying to keep the liquid in the cup. Desperately failing. Finally peeking around for an escape, rushing towards a familiar face through blurry eyes. “ Hey! “ practically shoving as she approached. “ I’ve been looking all over for you! “