That night Max went home and locked herself in her room, thinking about Mike again. She hated the fact that she had fallen in love with him but she couldn't bring herself to stop no matter how hard she tried. She found herself thinking more and more about him everyday.

She felt like her brain was going to explode from trying to keep up with all the thoughts in her head. She felt like she had lost the ability to speak, to anyone. Whenever asked a question or spoken to it felt like her tongue got tied up and she lost her breath. She would have too many other thoughts going on in her head that she wouldn't be able to understand what someone said to her and most certainly couldn't think of what to reply with.

She didn't believe in fate but she didn't think this should be happening. How could she, Max Mayfield be falling in love with Mike fucking Wheeler?

It seemed so wrong and out of the ordinary that she just felt there had to be something off, a flaw with her destiny or whatever. If she knew how to she would have controlled her feelings and made sure this never happened but she couldn't, so here she was, quickly falling in love with him with absolutely nothing to stop her.

Until she thought of an idea. She could get back together with Lucas and maybe that would distract her from her feelings towards Mike and she would fall for Lucas again. She seriously doubted it would work but she was desperate. She couldn't let herself be hopelessly in love with Mike. Especially since he had El.

She didn't want that type of pain, a pain called heartbreak. She hadn't ever experienced it before and she didn't want to though she felt it was a little too late for that. She just didn't want to continue experiencing it. It was truly awful, always getting a heavy feeling in your heart and feeling so sad just to even think about or talk to Mike when she didn't want to feel sad. It was like a different type of depression in a way, something she couldn't fully explain or even understand herself. Besides, this would be best so she wouldn't mess up Mike's relationship with El.

A part of her felt like she knew those two were only puppy love and weren't going to last much longer but she always reminded herself that was the part of her that wanted to be with Mike that thought that. She reminded herself that the two loved each other very much and were inseparable.

So one day she decided she would talk to Lucas. She spotted him at the arcade and approached him cautiously, already failing at trying to think of what to say. "Oh hey Max," he greeted with a small smile as he looked up from the game he was playing, he had just lost his last life causing the game to be over. She gave him a nervous smile back which Lucas thought was very odd.

Max was someone who hardly ever seemed nervous or anything of the sort so this was new and he didn't know what to think. Before Lucas could ask her if she was okay she just straight up asked him, wanting to get right to the point before she would chicken out, "Can we get back together again?"

Lucas gave her a bewildered look, definitely having not expected to hear that question come from her mouth. "Why?" He asked curiously. He genuinely wanted to know since this all seemed so random and sudden and he thought they had agreed they were better off as just friends.

Max tapped one of her feet impatiently, feeling her thoughts starting to go wild again and getting a headache. "I just would like to try again," she answered back, hoping it would be good enough for him. She was usually a good liar but at the moment she couldn't think of anything sustainable or believable.

Max gave him a hopeful look, really hoping he would say yes. She wouldn't know what she would do if he didn't. Luckily he agreed that they could try again and she nodded and smiled, feeling very relieved. "Thank you," she told him earnestly. He nodded back in return and gave her a small, still slightly confused look. He just found it hard to believe she wanted to try again with him.

In that moment Max realized she would probably end up hurting him. If he started to actually catch feelings for her or love her she would only break his heart by telling him why she had wanted to date him again. She hoped it would work and that she would fall in love with Lucas so that wouldn't have to happen. She didn't want to break anyone's heart, she didn't want to be that heartless and cold.

Max hated Mike for making her fall in love like this.

She felt like life just kept throwing shit at her. She knew this would make her life harder than it was and that was really the last thing she needed right now. She felt if anything else happened it would push her off the edge, she was already barely keeping hold of it anyways.

***

The last week Mike definitely noticed how Max tried to avoid him a lot and barely spoke with anyone anymore. He knew something was up with her but he didn't know what. He wanted to help and offer her advice but she wouldn't let him.

He had even offered for her to be able to come to his house again for safety if she ever needed but she declined and he couldn't understand why. He really felt like she needed safety like that so he just couldn't get why she had turned it down.

He kept finding it harder and harder to get Max off his mind and couldn't help but to worry that him slamming the door on her a while back had upset her. He of course never wanted to upset her in any way but in that moment he just didn't want to deal with her, especially after the comment she had made even though it had been true.

He wasn't sure why he was so damn worried about her and he was wracking his brain to try and figure that out because it was driving him insane, keeping up at night and more.

He supposed he was just kind of sad that they didn't seem to be friends anymore after they had seemed to have started a friendship. He wasn't sure what had happened that drove Max away from him. He didn't think he had done anything wrong.

He actually missed talking to her. Sure they hadn't gotten to talk much or anything but from the conversations they did have he found her to be pretty cool. He was curious about her, she had a sort of mysterious aura to her that drew him to her, to wanting to find out more about her and getting closer to her.

But it seemed he had lost that that opportunity. He wasn't going to give up so easily though, he would always try to talk to her whenever he could or ask Lucas or Dustin about her just to see how she was doing, so he knew she was okay at least. He knew she was actually never okay but okay in the sense that she was alive.

Mike admired her, truly. Because of how strong she is. With all she deals with at home she is still able to keep up a badass, tough facade and pretend like she was fine when she wasn't. He wished she wouldn't do that since it was probably bad to herself but he did admire that she had the strength to do that at all.

El knew nothing about what was going on between him and Max and still thought they hated each other. That of course couldn't be proven wrong to her since Max had seemed to go back to hating him. He always pretended to hate her still whenever El brought her up because he still wasn't sure what El would think of everything that happened between them.

***

It was late at night when the Wheeler's house got a phone call. Karen had answered and called for Mike who was downstairs in the basement. Once she said it was for him he went over to the phone in the basement and picked it up, answering, "hello, who is this?"

"Mike! This is Lucas! You won't believe what happened when I was at the arcade today!" His friend replied, sounding way too excited which just made Mike curious to what had happened. Lucas rarely got this excited about things.

"What happened?" Mike barely got out before Lucas told him, "Max asked if we could get together again and I said yes of course!" Mike blinked, he certainly had not been expecting that. Why would Max do that? He knew her and Lucas' relationship was also very unstable whenever they were dating so what made her decide to try again?

"Wow," he said back in response, not sure of how else to even reply. He was in shock. He knew Lucas still liked Max a lot but the last time the two of them had broken up they both agreed that remaining friends would be best. So what happened to that? Max just threw that out the window? Why?

That was the question that kept going through Mike's head. Why. Why. Why. He of course couldn't ask Lucas that since he probably didn't know Max's reasons either but he couldn't stop himself, "do you know why she asked?"

Lucas let out a sigh at that question. He himself had been trying to figure out what had made Max decide to date him again. He really thought last time was the actual last time and that they would remain friends for now on. "No I really don't," he answered honestly.

Mike nodded to himself as he thought for a moment. What on earth would trigger Max to do such a thing? He figured maybe she was doing it for comfort, so she could have someone to lean on. But he knew that Lucas wasn't the best support for her as he didn't understand her that well at times. If all she wanted was comfort why couldn't she have just accepted his deal of letting her come over still?

He was trying to wrap his brain around all this, desperately wanting to figure out why. He knew Dustin and El would be just as surprised as he was because no one had seen this coming. Not even Lucas since he was clearly still surprised about it.

"Mike?" Lucas questioned after Mike hadn't replied in a minute. That snapped Mike out of his thoughts and he knew he needed to give it a rest. He wasn't going to add this onto the list of things he thought about that had lately been keeping him up at night, making it nearly impossible to shut off his brain and fall asleep. "Still here sorry, I'm just really surprised about this," he said back, being honest.

"Yeah. At first I really thought she had been joking with me but she was being serious," Lucas answered. Mike heard him let out a breath and could just imagine how the boy on the other side of the line was shaking his head out of pure disbelief.

"Yeah, well I'm happy for you two. I hope you're actually able to work it out this time," Mike said supportingly even though for some reason he actually hoped the opposite. Lucas thanked him and then he hung up, being left to his thoughts. He didn't want them to work out. He wasn't super happy about this and he couldn't quite understand why.

He told himself it was just because he was worried about Max and that she had made a wrong decision in dating Lucas again and even though that was part of it, that wasn't all of it.

It would take a good while for Mike to figure out the real reason why he had been so upset about Max and Lucas getting back together, about why he didn't want them to work out.

And god, when he did find that reason out it would cause way more problems than he would like. Problems he wouldn't need. Problems that would start driving him closer to the edge.

Making him only a few feet away from the edge just as Max had been for a while.

***

Okay so here's this chapter! It sucks really badly because I had like zero inspiration for it but I needed to get something out! Sorry it took so long to publish this!