#𝔹𝕒𝕕 𝕂𝕖𝕪 𝕄𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕖 [ MAXWELL ]

[recklessinventor]

These are very sketchy but my point still stands: Jeff and Maxwell’s friendship needs to be talked about more. Guy was the older brother figure that baby Jeff deserved.

(yes, the dialogue in the bottom right is from st/ranger things 😔)

[recklessinventor]

Tony getting taken by the starman?

Send me a scene that happened in canon and I’ll write in detail how my muse felt in it - No Longer Accepting

It was hard to remain calm when you knew the world was ending.

When Tony had helped Jeff break out of Snow Wood Boarding House in the middle of the night, Jeff had told him that he had to leave or the world was going to end. For whatever reason, maybe it was because he could tell that Jeff really meant it when he said it, Tony believed him. Now he had proof.

The changes came slowly, but they were noticeable to those looking out for them. The sun always set early in Winters, but the sky seemed to get darker and darker by the day until it felt like everything outside was drenched in darkness. There were things outside that no one could really describe. Curfews were set and windows to every building in a five-mile radius were boarded. 

It had an effect on people, too. Tony had always thought he was good at telling when people were upset, and the tension everywhere was palpable. The professors - most adults Tony spoke to, actually, including his parents - seemed irritable. A couple concerned mothers had even pulled some strings and had their boys sent home until whatever those robotic things outside were sent away for good.

Tony was tired, tense, but most of all, worried about Jeff. He hadn’t heard from him since he’d called Ness when they were in Summers - and that had been by chance. Knowing how things had changed back home, he hoped Jeff was okay. He knew it was impossible to want his friend safe when he was out there saving the world, but Tony wanted Jeff to at least know that there were people out there rooting for him and his friends. That people believed in what they were doing.

So Tony went to his desk, got out a pen and some paper, and began to write a letter.

An hour later, Tony walked up a couple flights of stairs until he got to the floor where the senior students lived, then knocked on a door marked with sticky notes detailing chemical equations. 

“Maxwell?”

There was a muffled reply, then the sound of something hitting the floor and breaking, then a much louder muffled string of expletives, then the door swung open. Maxwell Labs peered out at him, chemical goggles on his head and looking, like always, as if he’d lost a fight with a bunsen burner.

“Tony? What’s up, buddy?”

Tony started fiddling with the letter in his hands. “I need help breaking out. Like how you helped Jeff.”

“...I’m guessing you know that if you got caught, you’d be in a hell of a lot more trouble than Jeff would have been, but you don’t care?”

Tony nodded.

Maxwell grinned. “I hoped you’d say that.”

Maxwell had really wanted to steal supplies from the chemistry lab and make a few Molotov cocktails, but Tony turned that idea down quickly, partly because all signs would have pointed to Maxwell, as a chemistry prodigy, helping him, and partially because he was a lot less used to things that explode than Maxwell or Jeff. So they’d snuck into the shop classroom and Maxwell had handed Tony a sledgehammer, then his coat.

When they were out in the Winters air, by the big iron gates, Maxwell boosted him over and then handed him the sledgehammer through the bars. 

“Okay, go mail your letter and then call me as soon as you get to the drugstore, alright? If you don’t and you get eaten by those creatures, I’m gonna find you, bring you back to life like Frankenstein’s monster, and then kill you again.”

“Then you’d have to cope with the moral ramifications of playing god.” Tony chuckled. “Thanks, Maxwell.”

Maxwell stuck his hand through the bars and gave him a fist bump. “Go for it, bad boy.”

The hammer heavy in his hands, Tony started to walk towards the drugstore. Maxwell’s coat was much too big for him and smelled like sulfur, but it kept him warm and kept his mind off the fact that he was terrified. But Jeff had to do this too, and he made it, and he’s still making it, he told himself. If he can do it without a coat on and while wearing a stupid Sherlock Holmes hat, you can. 

It was he’d almost reached the drugstore when something phased into existence right in front of him, like magic. The creature in front of him toward over Tony and didn’t move, it just... teleported closer and closer, like a kid trying to make a stopmotion movie and not moving the clay figure’s limbs. Tony’s breathing quickened and his heart dropped into his stomach as it got closer, and he could hear it humming and whirring like one of Jeff’s robots. Then he heard a boy’s voice coming from the creature like it was coming from a radio.

“Nah, that’s not one of them, just kill him.”

One of them? Did he mean this thing was looking for Jeff and his friends? Tony scowled and gripped tighter on the hammer, then closed his eyes and swung it over his head at the creature, hitting it with a loud metallic CLANG. 

“You’re not gonna get Jeff! Now get out of my way, I’ve got a letter to mail!”

When he opened his eyes tentatively, they widened in shock. He hadn’t even left a dent in it, and the boy’s voice from the radio had started to laugh in a way that made shivers run down Tony’s spine.

“I changed my mind, I changed my mind, this one’s a friend of the Chosen Four! You’d draw them like Belch to Fly Honey if you kept him alive!”

The creature in front of him fired a beam that hit him square in the chest, and then everything went black.