Come On Mess Me Up

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/33069241.

Rating: Not Rated

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/F, F/M
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Relationship: Steve Harrington/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Steve Harrington/Nancy
Wheeler
Character: Steve Harrington, Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Nancy Wheeler, Billy
Hargrove
Additional Tags: Porn With Plot, Alternate Universe - Normal Life, Billy Hargrove &
Maxine "Max" Mayfield Have a Good Relationship, Aged-Up
Character(s)
Stats: Published: 2021-08-06 Words: 4339

Come On Mess Me Up
by Scumprince

Summary

I don’t relate to you,

I don’t relate to you, no,
‘cause I’d never treat me this shitty,
you made me hate this city.

Notes

I wanted 2 thank a really sweet person on discord for helping me build the spinal column
for this one shot. momma u a rare breed - no comparinnnnng

See the end of the work for more notes

Life was good.

They had moved from California in the spring of ‘82 and getting settled was a challenge but Max
had gotten accustomed to the mundane life Hawkins’ bought its residence and for some reason,
Max slowly began to fall in love with the boring, the emptiness.
She loved Hawkins and its lack of a skate park, even loved the fact the closest beach was three
hours away.

When her and Billy had been enrolled at the local highschool, she had made friends with Nancy
Wheeler and Nancy’s friend Barbara Holland. They had three classes together and grew close as
the days slipped by into months and eventually years; everything in Max’s life slowly fell into
place and she loved it.

Her week days were spent at school, Friday nights she would spend at Nancy’s with Barb and they
would teach Max how to braid her hair, about makeup and the things that boys liked but there was
only one boy Max had eyes for.

Steve Harrington.

They had started dating a year after Max landed in what Billy liked to call, the backwater town full
of hicks . They had common interests and helped to ground one another; Steve was one of the only
people that could calm Max down when she was angry and Max helped Steve with the anxiety that
came along with his parents never being around much.

Max had fallen into the suburban life most try to avoid, she had a popular boyfriend, kind friends
and a life that finally, finally felt good.
Even Billy was slowly coming around to everything Hawkins had to offer.
“It's the girls.” He had said when Max bombarded him with an interrogation. “That’s all I care
about.”

Even if that were true, Max knew Billy was happy with the idea of how their parents, more so his
father , had grown kinder over the years; he’d barely taken a belt, fist, or feet to either of them in
months, he had even stopped talking to their mother like she was an invalid, and treated her like an
actual person. Max was on cloud nine, no, that was a lie, Max was driving cloud nine.

“Hey underachiever.” She jokes, approaching Nancy’s locker.

“Hi disappointment.” Nancy throws back, laughing.

Max leans against the metal door of the locker next to Nancy’s, holding her chemistry textbook and
notebook to her chest. “Are you going to study tonight for the mid-term?” She asks.

Nancy nods, pulling out her own books for her next classes and dropping them into her shoulder
bag. “Mike is going to be out tonight, and my parents have some cocktail party or something so I
will be taking full advantage of my empty house. You wanna come over?”

Max yawns, she was everything but a morning person. “Yeah, sure, Mrs. Slaindoe will be on my
ass if I fail.” Max scrunches up her nose and impersonates her teacher, “ You’re smarter than this,
Miss Mayfield, pick up your act.” Both girls laugh.

Barbara waves them down as they pass her locker, she joins them on their walk, they all have
Chemistry together.

“Good morning.”

Max nudges her with her shoulder, “Hey, God’s girl, we're studying at Nance’s, you coming?”

She shakes her head, “I have bible study tonight with my parents.” She shrugs, “I missed the last
one and they made it seem like I was defecting to become a Satanist.”

Max cackles, throwing her head back. “I remember that, I picked you up and the minute they heard
my engine, your mom was clutching that cross on her necklace.”

“It probably didn’t help that you used to dress like a lesbian.” Nancy adds.
Max pushes her playfully. “Hey! I’ll have you know, my sense of style was very progressive.” Max
had only started wearing dresses and skirts over the last year, she only wore jeans and shorts when
she went skating.

“Need me to bring anything tonight?” She asks Nancy.

“Only your pleasant self.” She answers.

“No promises.”

*****

Max loved Nancy’s house, it reminded her of the one she lived in back in Cali, two storey’s and big
enough for her to muck around in.
Nancy had her textbooks and pencils on her bed, and snacks in the middle for the both of them.
Max sits cross legged across from her friend and they spend the next few hours studying and
practicing their knowledge with the flashcards Nancy had made during free period.

When they finished, they laid side by side and gossiped about school and their lives.

“Where’s Mike staying tonight?”

“Lucas’ place.” Nancy answers.

There’s a momentary lapse of silence before Nance asks the next questions.

“Do you miss him?”

“Lucas?”

“Who else?”

Max’s relationship with Lucas reached its end pretty quickly. They’d only dated, if you could call
it that, for a few short weeks.

After they ended things Max had begun to date Steve. It seemed like a lifetime ago when she was
with Lucas.

“It was so juvenile.” Max says.

“You were fourteen, of course it was going to be juvenile.”

“I thought dates were going to the Arcade and sitting by while they played D&D on the weekends.
When I started dating Steve it was like I’d moved up in the world. We went out, we did interesting
things. Lucas was nice but he was still just a kid.”

“I get it, but I asked if you missed him.”

Max sighs, rolling on to her back. “I guess? I’m not really sure. I miss how simple everything was,
you know?” She puts her arm under head to prop herself up. “With Lucas it was all so simple, so
childish. He didn’t care how I looked or how I dressed or worried about the things I would say. I
could just exist and not be so worried about it.”

Nancy doesn’t say anything, just listens to Max, she is rarely candid, so when she was, Nancy
would always savour the moment and let her friend speak.

“When I’m with Steve it’s like we have to keep up face, all the time. I love him so much , but he
can overdo it sometimes. Nancy?”

“Hm?”
“Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes.”

“Do they know?” Max rolls back on to her side and Nancy shakes her head.

“Not yet.” Nancy doesn’t meet Max’s gaze, “it’s hard you know, feelings.” She forces a laugh.
“Sucks I guess.”

“Well are you scared they’ll reject you?”

Nancy shakes her head “I don’t know, Max.”

Max thinks back to the first time she told Steve she liked him, she had taken charge because she
knew he’d be too chicken to do anything first. The guy talked a big game but he was always so
nervous when it came down to pure intimacy.

“Why don’t you just go for it? I mean, it’s the ‘80s, if you don’t live now, what will you have to
look back on when you’re as old as Mrs. Thistlemyer.”

Both girls laugh and Nancy adjusts her head on her arm. “You think I should just dive in?”

“The best way is to just do it, don’t overthink it. Don’t think at all.”

That’s when Nancy kisses her.

It lasts a second or two and Max pulls back in surprise. “Nancy, woah.”

“I’m sorry.” Nancy is off the bed and by her cupboard doors.

“No, I, that was.” Max stammers. “Nance, I love you, truly, but I don’t-”

“You should go.”

“Nancy, wait.” The redhead tries.

“Get out.” Her friend snaps, still refusing to even look up. “Get out, please.” Her voice strains.

Max obliges and leaves Nancy’s room, rushing down the stairs and out the front door.

She gripped the steering wheel of her car to the point her knuckles began to lose colour and she let
out a sigh, it felt like she had held her breath the entire way from Nancy’s room.

She’d kissed her, it was a surprise, entirely unexpected.

Max wondered if Nancy had done it by accident, but there was nothing that pointed towards her
accidentally kissing Max. She doesn’t start the engine of her car for a good ten minutes, too busy
trying to understand the situation in her head. It was all too much, she would pile rationalisation
blocks only to have them kicked down by the anxiety of the things she didn’t know, of the way she
couldn’t see inside Nancy’s mind to just understand the situation.
There was only one person that could explain it in a way Max could compartmentalise, and she
knew it wouldn’t be easy to get him to explain it to her.

*****

“So does that mean you prefer Taco Bell instead of Burger King now?”

“Billy, don’t be a jackass.”

He throws his hands up in defeat. “Hey, I’m trying to lighten the mood.”

“Wow, that’s so strange because you’re actually making it worse.” She flops down onto Billy’s
bed, her hair splayed out around her like an auburn crown. “I don’t know what to do, Billy.”

He curls his bicep, weight in hand. “Look, shit bird. I’m not that fruity cosmo mag you started
reading, but look at the signs. You told her to go for it and she kissed you, don’t take rocket since
to figure it out, Max.”

He was right, the puzzle pieces fit together so easily, but why did she kick Max out? They became
attached at the hip the moment they became friends, there wasn’t a secret between any of them.

So why couldn’t Nancy tell Max about her feelings?

“Billy, she kicked me out after she kissed me.”

“Shit, if I was a Sylvia Plath wannabe with creamed patties for my best friend, I’d be ashamed
too.”

Nancy was ashamed?

Max had decided to go to the Wheeler’s place and try to talk to Nancy. They were practically
sisters and this was something they would be able to work through, right?

“Billy, how do you know who Sylvia Plath is?”

He continues his work out, focusing only on his bicep bulge. “I learn what I need to, when I need
to, in order to pull as many chicks as I can in this lifetime before I die.”

*****

Nancy wasn’t home when Max dropped by, if Max knew then she was probably in bed right now,
telling her mother to turn away all visitors.

She thanks Mrs. Wheeler, and goes back to her car, if she couldn’t see Nancy she would at least
take the time to see Steve, they rarely had moments alone together.

She rolls to a stop in his driveway and climbs out of the car, he’s already outside by the time she
shuts the door.

“Hello, baby.” He kisses her, one hand on her cheek. “I missed you to bits.”

“Steve, I saw you this afternoon, actually, I saw you four hours ago.”

He kisses her again, “stop with the geometry and let’s go inside.”

She loved the fish tank in Steve’s room, the luminosity gave his room this soft glow, almost like an
angel was standing by the door, offering a peaceful light that wasn’t distracting when she tried to
sleep.

His sheets were satin, soft and always cool to the touch at first.

Steve softly bites her neck, a noise escapes her lips. Steve wasn’t her first, not by a long shot, but
he was her favourite.

He was always gentle, caring, and slow. So many of his friends assumed he was the conqueror of
all women.

The truth was, unlike them, Steve only cared about how Max felt, how she writhed beneath him.
He wasn’t satisfied until she’d come for him ten times over.

“Your skin is always so soft.” He takes a nipple into his mouth, sucking softly. Max was reactive,
her body was always sensitive. He rolls the other between his thumb and forefinger, pinching every
so often. “I miss being with you like this.”

It wasn’t like this was an uncommon thing. It was actually an everyday thing, but Max never got
tired of it.

He takes his hand away from her nipple and slides it down her abdomen and over the tuft of hair on
her moms, to reach her pussy, she’s already practically soaking. “My favourite thing about you is
that you’re always ready.” He goes back to suckling, spreading her folds and slipping two fingers
inside of her.

Max has her fingers in his hair, moving to the rhythm he’s set inside of her. There’s so many
sensations, his hand and mouth on her breast, his fingers inside of her, his warm shirtless body
pressed against her seemingly cold skin. They all swirled together into a cocktail she enjoyed.

Her head tilted back, she made as much noise as she wanted, nobody was ever home and there
wasn’t a beg out for a good two miles.

“Steve.” She gasps.

“Tell me, what is it?”

“Fuck me.”

He pushes into her slowly, savouring the moment before picking up a pace that meant he wouldn’t
finish too quickly and one that didn’t tire him out easily.

Max lifts one of her legs to give him more room to move.

Her hands are everywhere, in his hair, nails scratching down his back, holding his face while they
kiss. She wraps her legs around his waist, this is her way of telling him she’s close.

When she comes, Steve follows close behind, collapsing on top of her.

He pulls out of her and lays down beside her, kissing her softly on the nose.

“Do you have any plans this Friday?”

Max yawns, “No.”

“It’s Tommy’s birthday and he wants a party, and my parents are gonna be home for a while, so I
figured I’d throw him one here.”

“Remember what happened the last time you let Hagan run wild in your house?”

Barb had almost died, it was only Max, Steve, Nancy, Carol, Barb, and Tommy drinking that
night, but Tommy had thought it would be funny to push Barb into the pool. The one thing he
hadn’t bothered to ask was if she could swim.

“Nobodies going to be out by the pool, it’s too cold now.” He tucks some hair behind Max’s ear.
“Now let’s go and shower.”

*****

The party was good, Max couldn’t lie, there were more people than there usually was at one of
Steve’s parties but it seemed like a rare moment where everyone was genuinely having a good
time.

She moves against the sea of drunk teenagers to find Nancy. She was hoping that if she came
tonight, maybe they could talk.

She wasn’t in the kitchen or in the games room, and the bedrooms upstairs were only to be used for
‘private conversations’ so Max didn’t think Nancy would be in any of them.

She finally catches sight of her shoulder length bob, she’s talking to Lucas.

Great .

As Max gets closer, Nancy spots her and leaves immediately, Max tries to call after her but she
either can’t hear her over the music, or she’s feigning ignorance.

“Hey Max.” She hadn’t heard his voice in a very long time.

“Hey.”

“You look really nice.”

Small talk and slight compliments were Lucas’ social bread and butter.

“Thanks. Look, I gotta go and find Nancy, so I’ll-”

“Wait, please, I want to talk to you.”

They avoided each other as much as possible over the years, they’d taken two different tracks in
life.

Lucas chose to stay in the basement of Mike’s, rolling for initiative, and Max found herself
amongst the popular kids, alongside the people who everyone envied.

“Can it wait?”

“No.”

Max crosses her arms over her chest, “Lucas, I don’t think this is a good place for this
conversation.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

That’s true, “Okay then what is it?”

“What happened to you?”

“What?”

“When we met you were so patient and kind, now it’s like you’re in a big rush. You’re doing things
that people don’t normally do.”

“And what’s that?”

“Max, look, this isn’t important. It’s Joyce.”

This catches Max’s attention, and she finally meets Lucas’ gaze.

“What do you mean?”

“She went to the doctors with a cough and came out with six months left.”

“What.” Max’s heart fell into the deepest parts of her stomach.

She had spoken to Will or anyone from the party almost forever, but Joyce had always treated her
like one of her own. “What are they gonna do?”

“Hop’s moving them all out to D.C. in the next couple weeks, Jon says there’s some doctors out
there who might be able to give her some more time.”

Max doesn’t know what to say, what to think.

“The only ones left are gonna be Mike, Dustin, and Me.”

“Are they going to come back if…” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

“No. Will says everything about this place reminds him of her, so if they came back, it just. It
fucking sucks, Max, it sucks.”

She wraps her arms around him, hugging him for the first time in years. He hugs her back, she
wasn’t sure when Lucas had decided to grow so tall, and fill out more around his muscles, but this
hug still felt like they were both 14.

Where they never had to think about grown up worries like cancer and friends moving away.
Where it was all simple.

Where it was all juvenile.

She pulls away from the hug and tells him that she’ll always be here if he needs a friend, despite
the past.

They part ways again, this time on better terms than before.

Max returns to her hunt for Nancy, but can’t find her in the crowd. She notices Tommy by the keg
in the kitchen, he always knows the movements of the opposite sex.

“Have you seen Nancy?”

“She went upstairs.” He doesn’t even look at her, he didn’t like her as much as she didn’t like him.
There were four rooms on the upper floor, three were bedrooms and one was a study. She checks
the study first, nothing.

Steve’s parents room is locked so she moves past the door and notices noise and light emanating
from his own room. Max decided that Steve might know where Nancy is, so she opens the door
without knocking.

She can’t make it out and at first, she thinks she’s in the wrong room but then she sees the
barrette.

“Nancy?”

*****

“Do you want me to beat his ass in to next year?” Billy offers.

Max declines the offer, as nice as it sounded. “There’s no point.”

After she’d caught the pair in the act, she’d led the party pretty soon after and hadn’t returned any
of his calls, but a weekend can only last so long.

She didn’t even have the energy to be angry, all she felt was empty.

She and Billy climb out of the Camaro and Billy asks again if she’ll at least let him give Steve a
black eye.

“No, Billy.” Sometimes he was like a savage guard dog. “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m just saying, nobody fucks with my sister.”

She stops to look at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. He finally picks up the message.

“Except me.”

“Max!” She could pick his voice out of a million talking at once.

She nods for Billy to go and turns to watch Steve approach her.

“Can we talk?”

“What’s to talk about?” She sniffs, she looks everywhere but his face.

“You know what, Max.” He puts his hands in his jean pockets. “I just, I wanted to explain things.”

“You slept with my best friend, what’s there to explain?”

He scoffs. “Are you really going to act like I’m the sole bad guy here and I’m not talking about
how it takes two to tango.”

Max was confused. “Last I checked, I wasn’t balls deep in a girl Friday night.”

“No, but you were pretty cuddly with Sinclair.”

He had to be kidding. “It wasn’t like that.” Max defends.

“Then how was it? I saw you both hugging, you kissed him.”

“On the cheek! If you equated cheek kisses to cheating then I have some serious questions about
your relationship with your Grandmother.”

Steve shakes his head. “Don’t be such a bitch Max, just own up to it.”

“What exactly do I have to own up to?” She was thankful that he’d stopped her in the parking lot,
so that they weren’t so close to the entrance to school.

“You cheated first, I was just evening the playing field.”

She pressed her palm against her forehead, astonished at his sudden drop in I.Q. “What? Cheated?
Playing the field? Did you hit your head on Friday? I never cheated, I was consoling a friend. Not
that you’d know anything about that.”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Consoling?”

“Yes, Steve, consoling. Lucas told me some rough news and I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“But Nancy said.”

“Nancy said? Steve, you knew we were fighting, why would you believe anything she had to say?”
This couldn’t be happening, everything she had methodically put together, was falling apart. “Out
of everyone else, why did it have to be Nancy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you jealous?” She hugs herself, staring up at him through her thick lashes.

“What?” His hands are on his hips,

The temperature in the school parking lot must have dropped a few thousand degrees because she
couldn’t keep warm. “I said, when you saw me talking to Lucas, were you jealous?”

He scoffs. “NO! I wasn’t fucking jealous!” He clenches his jaw and looks at the blacktop. “It just
made me sad.”

She laughs, “Oh. You were so fucking sad, so so sad that you went off and you fucked Nancy
goddamn Wheeler! STEVE! What kind of a psychotic response is that!”

He reaches out to grab her, “Max-”

She steps out of his reach, putting her hands in the air, “No! You did this, you ruined this. You
fucked it all up. All of it! You do not get to touch me. You forfeited that right when you-. God, I
am so stupid. I am so fucking stupid to think I deserved anything good in my life.” She wipes a tear
from her cheek, full of fury.

He steps forward, “Max, I made a mistake.”

She sniffs. “Just fucking leave me alone, Steve.”

“No.”
This defiance pushes her over the edge, she looks down, moves towards him so they’re an inch
away from one another.

“Steve, you ruined everything that was good. All of it, it’s all over. I was starting to love everything
again but you made me hate this town.” She turns on her heels and leaves the parking lot at a quick
pace before she does something stupid like turn around and take him back.

She almost smacks right into Nancy.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I could see you were arguing, I wanted to come see if you were okay.”

Max searches her former friend's face, hoping to find the joke. “You came over to see if I was
okay.”

“Nancy, just go.” Steve attempts.

“No, Nancy, stay, Steve, you fuck off.” Max bites back. “Why would you wanna come see if I was
okay when you’re the one that made me feel like this?” She fights back tears. “Why, Nancy?”

She doesn’t speak right away, deliberating on the correct assortment of words to provide an
explanation. “When you rejected me, it hurt.” She starts. “I was hurting, I felt like you had broken
my heart.”

“You never even let me speak, you kicked me out. You can’t say I’m guilty when you never even
let me state my case.” Max responds.

“That’s not the point, the way you first looked at me, when you pulled back, it was like you were
full of… disdain for me.”

“That’s not true.”

Nancy adjusts her bag on her shoulder. “I wanted you to feel the way I felt, alone and rejected.”

“So you ruined my life?”

“Max, you’re acting like I killed someone.”

Max laughs in her face. “I never believed people when they said how much it hurts to have your
heart broken. Until it was me laying on my bedroom floor, with mascara running down my face
gasping for air. Crying. So don't you dare tell me that you have never killed anyone, because that
night. You killed me.” She says, her voice catching on the last words. She doesn’t give her the
opportunity to reply, she just barges past her old friend and finally heads into school.

*****

Lucas was always in the same part of the library during lunch, he liked to sit in the back close to
the world history section. It allowed him moments of solitary and silence so he could work on his
comic strips, or fine tune his D&D character; so Max finding him wasn’t difficult.

She sits next to him and watches quietly at first, as he colours in one of his original characters.

He’s the first to speak, only asking if she's angry at first, and she tells him that she’s tired and then
they return to the silence.
 Over the next ten minutes this becomes routine, he asks the question, she answers, they return to
the quiet. Max finally breaks the pattern.

“I heard that you’ll be down two party members soon.” She rests her head on his shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“Need any replacements?” She asks softly.

“I think we’re accepting applications.” He answers and she laughs, it felt good to smile. It felt good
to envelope the normalcy of Lucas again, even if this time it was in a platonic way.

She wasn’t sure what would happen now that she was no longer with Steve or hanging off Nancy’s
dress hem, but she did know that rebuilding came in so many stages but the first was the most
important.

She had to heal.

End Notes

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