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The letter feels like a heavyweight in his hands. It’s nothing but paper and words, light as a feather and equally as harmless. Yet, as he runs a thumb over the envelope he can’t ignore that there is a dryness in his throat and a churning in his stomach.
He isn’t supposed to read this until she is… until she is gone. But the thought of Max dying without him telling her how he feels, what exactly she means to him, it aches deep in his chest.
He doesn’t want a letter, words to read after she’s gone, as if that will somehow ease the hurt that he will feel. He just wants Max to talk to him, give him something other than shrugs and sarcastic remarks.
Lucas is right there and he will always be right there, will always be waiting with his arms outstretched to catch her if she ever falls— and she swears that she won’t, that she is fine, but he can’t help it. Everything in him says to catch her.
All she has to do is reach out to him, take his hand and accept his help. And Lucas will do whatever he can to be there for her, he will slaughter monsters, he will wipe away her tears, or just hold her.
Max just has to allow him to.
He takes first watch over Max because of course he does. Lucas is not willing to take his eyes off her for even a moment yet, lest she float up into the air and become unreachable.
His jaw clenches at the memory, the way she’d been in the air, eyes rolled in the back of her head, her face blank. And Lucas couldn’t do anything but call out for her, hoping and praying that Robin and Nancy were right.
Lucas takes in a slow, deep breath, attempting to rid himself of those thoughts. He shakes his head and turns his attention to Max. She isn’t sleeping, she has her headphones wrapped around her neck, and her eyes are on him.
Unlike a normal person Max doesn’t look away when she notices Lucas’ gaze on her, in fact, her stare only becomes more intent. Lucas holds his breath, his eyes never leaving hers, the both of them waiting for someone to break first.
Eventually, it’s Lucas who averts his focus elsewhere. It was inevitable, really.
“You should get some sleep,” he says to her, though most of him knows it’s useless. She won’t sleep until things are resolved, until the threat of her dying isn’t ebbing away at her.
She looks at him, cocking one eyebrow and tilting her head to the side. “Would you sleep? If you knew at any moment you could be trapped in some dark wizard's prison, would you sleep?”
Lucas sighs softly. “No, I- I probably would be scared shitless. And definitely handling this way worse than you are.”
Max laughs a little at that and he feels his heart skip a beat at the sound, the coil of anxiety twisting and twisting in his stomach unwinding just a little. She does that to him, he doesn’t know how or why, but somehow she makes everything better.
And it’s all Lucas wants to do for her, to soothe any worries, to alleviate any aches or pains. He just wants to make things better. But he doesn’t know how to reach her, to get it through her stubborn head that he is there for her, that, with him, it’s okay to be a little vulnerable.
He’ll keep trying though, for her sake as well as his.
“Lucas?” She asks quietly and he raises his eyebrows at her, letting her know he’s listening. “When I was stuck in that, that trance how- how did you know what song to choose?”
He runs a hand over his face, suddenly feeling very abashed, and his heart is racing in his chest for reasons he cannot understand.
(Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, despite their break up, she is always on his mind. His thoughts always seem to circle back to her, his brain can never seem to get enough of Max.
Or maybe it’s because sometimes he watches her from afar. He sees the look on her face, the way everything about her seems to be muted, suppressed under pain.
He doesn’t know.
But Lucas does know that he is not ready for Max to know that he is still hopelessly and pathetically stuck on her.)
“I,” he pauses for a moment so he can collect his thoughts. The words suddenly feel very hard to get out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to say anything stupid, doesn’t want to spook her into shutting down.
It’s taken months for him to get her to speak to him for this long and he'd be damned if his big mouth ruined it.
Lucas folds his hands in his lap, linking and unlinking his fingers, anything to avoid her eyes. “I hear it through your headphones sometimes,” he tells her. “When you’re walking through the hallways, I- I pay attention to you and I hear that song through your headphones.”
There is silence. Thick and heavy silence. Lucas bites the inside of his cheek as he awaits her answer, the anxiety in the pit of his stomach slowly coiling itself back up, twisting and twisting again.
He wonders if he’s said something wrong, if his confession had been too creepy or too many sticky and complicated feelings for her. And now he wants nothing more than to turn back the clock and prevent this conversation from ever happening.
Things are just too awkward between them now for a conversation like this. Especially in the late of the night when everyone else is asleep. It feels like they’re the only two people in the world—minus Dustin’s snoring—and it’s just too much.
(They have always been awkward but the good sort of awkward, the kind of awkward where she made his heart race.
But now all his heart does in the presence of her is ache.
Ache for things to change, for things to be better, for her to talk to him.
It just aches.)
Lucas slowly looks up at Max, feels his breath hitch at the sight of her, eyes big and blue, burning through him, searching his face for any trace of insincerity.
And he guesses that she doesn’t find any because she cracks a smile and says, “so, what? Are you, like, stalking me? I think you might seriously have a problem, Lucas.”
He laughs, hard, too big and too loud for such a quiet moment. But it feels good to joke with her again and he will do anything to keep it this way.
He hopes it will be able to stay this way.