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Sometimes Lucas felt like a boy Max could love. Like, really love.
He was a good boyfriend. He never pressured her to do things like kiss him or hold his hand which yeah, is the bare minimum but it was nice nonetheless. He was gentle but not in a condescending “you’re a girl so I have to treat you like you’re made of glass” way but more of a “I like you so much and I never want to hurt you” way which again, was nice. So it wasn’t like Lucas was a bad guy, he was a great guy really, any girl would be lucky to have him as a boyfriend. So yeah, sometimes Max felt like she could love him.
When he would give her flowers or when she felt the comforting feeling of his hand on her shoulder. When he shared his lunches with her because the lunch he packed was better than the shit at school. When he was a silent, nodding presence when she got heated about something and just needed to vent. Those times she thought she could love him. She thought life wouldn’t be so bad if she was stuck with Lucas, there were much worse people to be stuck with. But that’s the thing, Max didn’t want to be stuck with anybody.
Max knew ultimately that love was supposed to be this freeing thing that shouldn’t ever feel like work. She read books about it, seen movies about it ( Sixteen Candles is one of her favorite movies), so she knew how love was supposed to be but she didn’t feel that way with Lucas.
Sometimes she thought maybe she made the wrong choice when she chose Lucas. Sometimes she thought that maybe she should have chosen Dustin. So during one of her and Lucas’ many breakups Max did try to see where her feelings with Dustin lied.
She went to his house and they just hung out. They fed his turtle and played with his cat (Max thought they were far better pets then Dart was). He even let her have free rein of his comics and once she picked one they read it lying side by side. She liked it, she liked the feeling of his body close to hers, he was very soft and very warm. He smelled nice, like cinnamon and vanilla. He had asked her to teach him how to skate after they finished reading, which she did. He fell a lot but the fact that he kept trying made Max’s chest glow with happiness. They then walked to Melvald’s and Dustin bought two ice cream sandwiches which they ate under the shade of a tree, laughing about this and that.
By the end of the day Dustin had walked her home (not all the way, Neil would sure have yelled at her for getting walked home by a boy) and bid her goodbye with a wave. Max had decided that Dustin Henderson was a boy she could love. He was smart and soft, funny and good looking. She liked the feel of his curls under her fingers and his thigh pressed against hers so yeah, Max could imagine loving him. But she felt the same way she felt about Lucas, she would feel stuck.
Max had started to think that maybe she was the problem. Like, maybe because her parents weren’t together she somehow got fucked up and she couldn’t love. Maybe it had to do with Neil’s assholeary or Billy’s total lack of romance. Or maybe when she was down in the tunnels with the others the air down there messed up her brain chemistry or some science shit like that. Wherever the case, Max thought she couldn’t love someone, not romantically at least. She loved her mom, her dad, Billy (even if he was a dick-head), and her friends. She loved plenty of people, she just wasn’t in love with anybody.
Of course, that’s what she thought.
Eleven was weird, an anomaly. She had this energy around her that made Max both uncomfortable and intrigued. When Lucas told her about what had happened to them all the year before she moved to Hawkins Max immediately took a liking to Eleven, though in the moment she thought that Eleven was just a character Lucas made up to impress her or something. If she’s being honest, it kind of worked. Max thought she was badass, like Wonder Woman. Though she then wondered why a badass like Eleven would like a loser like Mike Wheeler but whatever.
When she saw the first Demo-Dog on the bus she had realized that Lucas had told her the truth which meant Eleven actually existed. It was like finding out Wonder Woman was real (also terrifying because of the large rabid dog thing that was trying to kill them).
When she actually saw Eleven she was completely awestruck. Her hair was dark and slicked back and her eyes were blackened with eyeshadow. She looked like one of those rock stars Billy was so obsessed with. Eleven looked badass but the whole rockstar thing was almost ill fitting on the girl. Her face was too rounded, eyes too big and soft for the look to really sell but she looked cool nonetheless.
Max had tried to introduce herself but she was met with the cold shoulder. For some reason, instead of coming up with a snarky reply, Max actually felt hurt by Eleven’s dismissiveness. The rejection stung in a way that Max didn’t understand, it felt like a slap in the face. Max didn’t care about what people thought about her, she didn’t . But for some reason, she cared about Eleven, she wanted to be her friend.
Max saw Eleven again a week after the closing of the gate. She had looked more like herself, or she seemed more like herself, Max really didn’t know her. Her brown eyes were devoid of the dark makeup that she had on the first time Max had met her and her hair (which Max had thought was black) was actually curly and brown. It was different from Dustin’s, less curly, lighter. Max wondered if it would feel different as well. She was wearing a large brown flannel and jeans. Max thought she still looked pretty fucking badass.
Her brown eyes were soft and golden which was different then Lucas’ more dark, coffee colored eyes. Max found she liked them without all the makeup because the makeup hid them and she liked seeing Eleven’s eyes. She liked looking at them, probably more than she should’ve.
Lucas, Dustin, and Will had been beside her while Mike was next to Eleven and they were all talking. Max didn’t really pay attention to the boys because she found she liked the way Eleven talked. She liked the thoughtfulness and care that Eleven put behind each word as if they really meant something. She liked how she sounded out unknown words with her brows furrowed. She liked the softness of her speech, the rise and fall of each consonant. Max thought she could listen to Eleven talk forever.
As time moved on, Eleven became El and she and Max became friendly, not yet friends but not not friends. Max didn’t mind because at least El didn’t didn’t look at her with pure disdain (some small, weird part of Max kind of missed it).
Along with becoming more friendly with El, Max found herself breaking up with Lucas more and more often over small, trivial things. Like once, he didn’t say thank you when she passed a comic to him and she blew up, dumping him by the end. She didn’t really know why she kept breaking up with him. Sometimes, he just annoyed her to no end. He made her want to tear her own hair out and scream until her throat was raw and filled with blood (she understood Billy in those moments).
Then there was that fateful day, the start of the end as she would come to call it. The day where El went to her, her , for advice about Mike. Obviously, Max told her to dump him. Come on, someone like Mike with someone like El? She was way out of his league. They then proceeded to have the time of their lives.
They went shopping, ate ice cream, listened to music, watched TV, spied on the boys (they were really gross), tried to find a girl named Heather who Billy was with (that part wasn’t really fun) and then they went to Max’s.
Max and El had laid in Max’s bed, reading Wonder Woman comics (which Max had introduced El to). It was different then reading comics with Dustin. El was smaller, not as warm, but she made Max’s skin buzz in a way that she never felt before. She smelled like the woods and mint toothpaste and the fruity perfume that she had spritzed on herself at the mall. It was nice, Max really liked it.
They had slept in Max’s bed, side by side. El was quick to fall asleep and Max found she snored softly. Max stayed awake for a while, just watching El. It was weird to see her asleep. El was always on guard, looking for the “bad men” that were supposedly still after her and seeing her asleep, completely off guard, was special to her. She admired the way El’s chest rose and fell and how she would mutter incomprehensible things periodically.
In the dead of night in her room, she could admit to herself that Eleven/El/Jane was beautiful but beautiful didn’t even compare . She was like that one goddess Dustin had told her about, Hestia, the goddess of home, hospitality, and hearth. In El’s presence, Max felt safe, at home. To see El was to be at peace.
That of course was ruined when she and El were rudely awakened by Lucas’ irritating voice. The one good thing about waking up was seeing El’s hair all puffed up and mused from sleep, it was endearing. Then the phone rang (fucking Mike Wheeler) and with that one phone call, everything went to shit.
They found out Billy was possessed like Will was the year before but it was worse, so much fucking worse. Billy was hurting people, killing them, creating a giant flesh monster set out to kill them, specifically El. When she had seen him his skin was covered in black veins and his eyes, oh his eyes were the worst part, his eyes were empty, devoid of emotion, of life. He didn’t recognize her, he didn’t even recognize himself. It terrified her.
The monster was there at the mall and they couldn’t run from it, there was nowhere to go. And Billy had El in his arms, he was carrying her like a husband would carry his bride, as if she was getting married to the monster, to death. Max couldn’t do anything to save her, she couldn’t move, she could hardly breathe. She watched as Billy laid El down softly and leaned towards her ear, it made her skin crawl.
After a long moment, he stood up and faced the monster. She watched him adjust his feet like she’s seen him do a million times when he surfed or skated. The monster let out a horrid screeching noise as El moved back and suddenly, a tentacle shot at Billy which he caught in his hands. Billy screamed and tentacles kept shooting at him, feasting on his flesh. It felt like eons before it pulled away, dropping dead.
Max wasted no time after the monster fell and ran to her brother, crouching before him. The blood was warm, it pooled around Billy and seeped through Max’s clothes, through her skin. She doesn’t remember what she said to him but she remembered begging him to stay alive, bartering with a god she didn’t believe in to let her brother live. She remembered the foul stench of blood mixed with sweat and bleach. He didn’t smell like he usually did, there wasn’t that familiar smell of cigarettes, sea salt, and that stupid fucking cologne he stole when they lived in California and Max felt like dying.
He had told her he was sorry, Billy never said sorry, Billy was never sorry. Max had wished so many times for him to say those two words to her but now, she didn’t want him to be sorry, she wanted him to be alive. If it was her choice she would rather have him never be nice to her again then die but it wasn’t her choice.
Billy took his last breath on July fourth 1985 and with it, he took Max’s heart.
Max remembered falling into El’s arms after her brother died. At the time, she couldn’t even appreciate the warmth, the softness, the smell of her. Max felt like she was dying, like she was the one who had just been feasted on by a monster.
The Byers’ leave Hawkins and they take El with them. It hurts watching their car drive off so she finds comfort in Lucas who is standing tall and steady beside her. They weren’t back together but Max needed someone in that moment and she couldn’t have her brother or El, so Lucas it was.
A part of Max was glad that El was leaving because at least she couldn’t taint her. Eleven/El/Jane was innocent, pure in a way Max could never be with her curses and fists, her sins and her anger. El was free from the disease that festered inside of Max, the one that got to her dad, to Billy, because if loving Max wasn’t a death sentence then her loving you certainly was.
Three days after El and the Byers’ moved Max broke up with Lucas for the final time.
Sometimes Lucas Sinclair felt like a boy Max could love, so did Dustin Henderson, but Max didn’t, couldn’t, love them. The person she loved now lived hundreds of miles away. She loved the girl with many names. The girl with soft brown eyes and even softer brown hair. The girl who spoke with so much care. The girl who was a real life superhero. The girl who found everything in the world fascinating. The girl she could imagine growing old with. The girl she could imagine loving forever and never feeling stuck.
But in classic Mayfield fashion, she fucked it up. Like mother like daughter she supposed.