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Max Mayfield is good.
The conclusion seeps into Jane's bones as the metal springs of a thin mattress dig into her right shoulder in a way that feels rather like the bed is trying to eat her.
Next to Max, though, she'll gladly sink right into the maws of this beast, let it gnaw at her deltoid until all that's left is a warm pile of bloody meat scraps. Max would not like that very much, though, so instead Jane lets a different monster have its way with her, one that takes its warmth from humans, from fleeting touches and electric moments of eye contact. This monster seems much less dangerous, but it is plenty more inviting, and its cruelty manifests not in gnashing teeth or sharp claws, but in slow, low-frequency vibrations, cruel words and small fights that turn your brain inside-out and only then does it start to eat. It's tricky, like that; this trickiness is one that Jane is familiar with.
Max is no such monster. Not in the way that her brother seems to be, nor in the way that Jane's Papa is. Not in the way her real father, Hopper, is, and not even in the way that Mike and Lucas and Dustin are.
Even though Max still calls her El sometimes, she never calls her Eleven. Max asks Jane what she likes, and when Jane cannot answer, Max does not get angry. Instead, she smiles and takes Jane's hand, excited to teach her things that she does not know, explain to her things that she does not understand. She finds Jane funny, even when Jane does not mean to be, and when Jane is afraid that Max is laughing at her, Max explains what she finds funny, and Jane laughs too.
Max teaches Jane how to make jokes.
Max puts hats on Jane's head and shakes her head when Jane chooses something girly at the mall, but blushes and tells Jane she looks pretty outside of the fitting room. Max brushes Jane's hair and turns on the radio and explains everything she knows about this summer's Top Fifty Pop Hits—she tells Jane that Will really likes the song I Want to Know What Love Is by a band called Foreigner. She tells Jane that Like a Virgin by Madonna is actually a really good song, and that women should be allowed to make art about lust without men judging them. Jane does not quite know what Max means, but Max looks happy to be talking about this, so she listens intently and watches as Max's arms wave around wildly with enthusiasm. Max's face sours when the radio plays a haunting song about wanting to rule the world; apparently Mike and Lucas really like this one, and today is not for them.
Jane starts to wonder if any day really has to be for them. This is much more fun than boyfriends.
She revels in how sunset casts its golden glow across Hawkins, leaking into the small room and setting Max's head ablaze, fiery red curls threaded with pure gold. Jane breathes in the humid summer evening and listens to the sharp tsssssk of Max turning a comic book page, watches her freckled arm reach out and turn the radio off with a sharp click. The crickets are loud, now, and the cicadas even louder; a different kind of music.
It feels like an eternity before the moon comes out, and Jane is grateful for the way the sun seems to hold on tightly to its place high in the sky. She wonders if it's because it gets lonely up there, and in these late summer sunsets, when its scalding rays scorch the dirt paths and dry crops on the outskirts of town, the sun is able to hold out just long enough to get a glimpse of the moon. She thinks it must be nice for the moon too, then, although the air is wet and heavy in the night, it is colder even in summer, and in their brief meeting, no longer than thirty minutes, the moon can take some of the sun's heat with it even after the light is gone completely. Maybe that is how the moon finds the courage to come out time and time again, even when the constellations have abandoned it and the clouds leave it frighteningly naked.
The sudden darkness of Max's lamp turning off snaps Jane back into reality. She jolts slightly and looks around, eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. The comic book she had been staring blankly at with her head on Max's shoulder as her thoughts ran wild now sat bookmarked on Max's nightstand, next to the radio and Max's hair brush, loose strands of hair tangled in its bristles shining bronze in the pallid moonlight.
"What were you thinking about?" Max asks, wiggling her shoulder in a way that Jane takes to mean get off of me.
So she does. To her surprise, though, as she sits up, an errant wooden rod rubbing uncomfortably against her spine, Max lands softly on her shoulder. "Nothing," Jane replies, quiet. "It is a beautiful night."
She feels Max's head crane towards the window further to Jane's left, soft cheek pressing against the base of Jane's neck, where the pressure of another body has pulled the collar of her loose pajama shirt low. Jane follows where she thinks that Max is looking.
"Yeah," Max agrees, "very pretty."
"Do you know any constellations, Max?" Jane asks quietly, as if being too loud might disturb the orchestra of insects whose late-night concerto floods the room.
Max does not miss a beat before answering a definitive "no." She is so certain and so determined that it makes Jane giggle with surprise.
"What's so funny?" Max sits up just enough to properly elbow Jane in the ribs; not strongly, not meanly, just enough to tickle. Jane can hear the smirk in Max's voice, sees her teeth glint in the moonlight where her lips are parted in an impish smile.
Jane curls into herself reflexively, giggling even more. "You are so sure about everything," she says, and though it is a fact, it escapes her mouth with an unmistakeable undercurrent of wonder and awe.
Max pauses for a moment, as if to weigh her options. Jane can hear that her breath does something funny, and her shoulders tense just a fraction—but the darkness has blanketed both of them in the intimacy of blindness, and Jane can only really see Max's silhouette, so she cannot be sure. She cannot be as certain about anything as Max is.
"Are you ticklish?" Max asks in a dramatic whisper, breaking the tension before it can build into something that cannot be excused by the delirium of summer heat. Jane shrieks as Max's fingers find her hips, wriggling into the sensitive meat under her ribs in just the right places.
It is different. It is funny. It is, in a way that Jane does not understand, very nice. She wonders how the first person to be ticklish found out that pressing the right spots makes a human being laugh. She marvels at how this, then, makes her human.
When Max pulls back for a moment, Jane has an idea. "Are you ticklish?" She asks, reaching for Max.
She pokes and prods at Max's abdomen, in much the same way that Max did hers (Jane is a good learner, after all), but to her surprise, nothing seems to happen. Max sits comfortably, shifting her weight from one leg to another.
"No," Max asserts, but her voice wavers. "I'm not."
Jane squints in the dark, hands resting low on Max's hips. She can see, now that her eyes have fully adjusted, that Max's eyes are closed, and she is smirking.
Jane tries to tickle Max again, and this time, Max quickly breaks, doubling over and pushing Jane off of her, laughter hissing out of her in wheezes resulting from an attempt to always be quiet. It is what this house does to her, Jane knows. What a brother like that does to her.
"Okay, okay," Max relents. "You got me," she gives Jane one last playful shove, pulling the thin blanket back over her and sinking back down onto her pillow. "I might be a little ticklish."
Jane follows suit. "More than a little bit," she observes as her shoulder brushes Max's and Max squirms.
"Yeah."
The silence that settles over them is comfortable. Heat is the one burden that is heavier when shared, and the sticky summer night does not loosen its grip on the back of Jane's neck as she shifts her feet back and forth, restlessly seeking out the spots of the thin cotton blanket that their body heat has not yet gotten to. Soon, Max will say good night, and their day will stamp to a close, be sealed like the envelopes that Hopper used to let her lick and fold shut, sweet and temporary.
Jane feels Max suck in a preparatory breath, feels the mattress shift and creak as Max turns to lay on her side.
"Max?" Jane whispers tenderly. The secrecy afforded to them by darkness suddenlt no longer feels protective, making way instead of unfettered vulnerability. If Max reached out and tickled Jane right now, in those same soft spots between her ribs and her hipbones, Jane cannot be sure that she would not cry.
"Yeah?" Max is facing her, Jane realizes when she feels Max's breath on her nose.
"You have taught me many things today," Jane exhales, feet still swishing under the blanket in rhythmic innocence. "And still, it feels like the biggest thing I learned is that are so many more things I do not know."
Max hums, and her breath smells like peppermint toothpaste and the vague remnants of Coca Cola. "Like what?"
A moment passes, and then another. The orchestra of cicadas outside crescendos.
"Like… Like how many countries there are in the world. Like what people mean when they say that alcohol burns. Like how it feels to the doctor alone and not be scared. Like how to kiss." Jane's words are always calculated. She never says anything she does not mean, so if she does not trust someone, she does not say anything. But she trusts Max.
"One hundred seventy-one," Max responds curtly, as if Jane had asked her. "You don't want to know what they mean, and it's okay to always be a little scared of the doctor's." Then, Max hesitates. "You kiss Mike all the time?"
Jane turns onto her back, arm dangling lazily off of the bed. There is no night breeze to cool it, the humidity makes her skin feel too-tight and quite loose at the same time, like that funny feeling in your fingertips after you stay in the shower for too long.
"That is what boyfriend and girlfriend are supposed to do." It is a simple fact of life. "But no one ever taught me how. I guess it is just something that humans are born with."
Max sits up and hugs her knees to her chest. The blanket slinks off of her and folds onto Jane, who casts her gaze towards Max, quickly realizing that her neck cannot crane backwards quite so starkly. Instead, she stares out the window into the sea of midnight blue, pockmarked with stars yet unmarred by gashes of clouds; it really is a beautiful night. "Then what do you still want to know?"
Jane ponders this for a moment. Perhaps there is a better string of words with which to convey what it feels like she does not know about something she has done dozens of times this summer alone, but she cannot find them.
Another thing she has learned today, though, is the importance of trying. Even if she struggles, Max will not judge her. Max will not go cold as the minutes tick by. Max will not get up and walk away as Jane sifts through her limited mental dictionary with painstaking care and slow deliberation. "I want to know," she starts again hesitantly, "how to kiss good." Jane sits up as well, shirking the blanket off completely and letting it fall to the floor. She moves to pick it up, pausing abruptly when Max's hand encircles her wrist.
"I—I can show you," Max breathes. When Jane glances at her, Max is staring at her knees, which are pressed to her chest. It is like she is trying to make herself very, very small.
Jane ponders this for a moment.
"Thank you," she replies.
Max finally looks at her. Jane does not know why she seems shocked. It is simply another thing for Max to teach her, no different from how to make instant Mac-and-Cheese or learning the bike path from her house to the mall. Besides, she is broken up with Lucas, and Jane is broken up with Mike, so that is not a concern to her. Not to Max either, it seems, as she had suggested this to begin with.
Max flicks on the lamp with her free hand, bathing them in yellowish light. She tugs on Jane's wrist, and Jane abandons the discarded blanket completely, turning to face Max.
Max swallows hard enough for Jane to see her neck tighten. She looks down and then up again, meeting Jane's eyes; Jane cocks her head leftward curiously. One hand finds its way to her waist. The other breaks its grip on her wrist and comes to sit on her shoulder.
"What you do with your hands," Max's voice wobbles, "is important."
Jane nods, taking mental note of how Max's thumb rubs circles into her hipbone. The hand on Jane's shoulder moves to the base of her neck, and she feels the tips of Max's fingers on the very top few bones of her spine. An inexplicable shudder wracks through her as Max puts the tiniest bit of pressure on both Jane's neck and hip, both rooting her body in place and prompting Jane to lean in as she scoots herself forward.
Max's knees bump into hers. Jane obliges, closing her eyes.
Kissing Max is nothing at all like kissing Mike. Mike is angular, hungry and toothy; he kisses like he is looking for something that he cannot find. Max kisses like she has already found it.
She pulls back for a moment and the hand that was on Jane's hip drags to rest on her lower abdomen, as if to hold her in place. It makes her blush, but Max's eyes are cast lower than Jane's. "It's important not to do too much at once," she whispers shakily, "so that—so that the person you're kissing wants more."
Jane nods. Max is correct. She does want more, and she is grateful when Max moves back in to fulfill her desire.
Pillowy, slow, and tender, Max's lips are soft, not chapped, all mint toothpaste and cherry chapstick. Her breaths are hot and sticky, like honey in tea. Her hand moves up to Jane's face, palm aligning easily with her jaw, holding Jane's face to her own in a way that is as certain as Max is about absolutely everything else. It is not commanding or bossy like Mike is.
Jane should probably kiss back. She is acting like Mike, shell-shocked into stillness. This kiss is good, and appreciation bears conveying.
Her mouth is too busy to speak, she thinks, so one of her hands feels its way up to Max's bicep. The other comes to rest on the inside of her shoulder; Jane's thumb caresses the pulse point at the base of Max's neck. It is thumping a frenzied rhythm, far too fast and erratic for how calm Max seems right now.
Max pushes onto Jane ever so slightly, causing Jane's thumb to dig into the soft divot upon which it is resting. Max gasps, stealing the air from within Jane's mouth and emptying both of her lungs at once. Jane pulls back, suddenly concerned.
"Is it not good?" She asks, trying and failing to meet Max's eyes.
"No—no, why would you think that?" Max's words bleed into each other, and her voice sounds panicked. Jane is not convinced. Not even by the deep red that tints Max's cheeks and ears and spreads down her neck. Not even by the way Max's pupils are blown wide enough for Jane to take notice despite Max avoiding her gaze.
Jane tilts her head curiously as Max looks up slowly. "You gasped suddenly," she notes plainly. "Usually, that means you are in pain."
Max smiles. It is sheepish and girly, a smile that Jane has seen in her soaps and rom-coms many, many times. It is not like Max at all, but it suits her. It is tender, and it is pretty. Max is pretty.
"I'm not in pain," Max clarifies. "That—um—" She looks as lost for words as Jane often is. "You're a good student," is what Max eventually settles on.
Jane shakes her head. "I have not done very much."
Max laughs, softer than the way she laughs with Lucas and Dustin and Will. Softer than the way she laughs at Mike. "D'you want to give it a shot, then? Consider it an end-of-unit quiz," Max teases, a mischievous glint in her eyes, which are now back to being more green than black.
Jane contemplates this for a moment. She evaluates the softness of Max's kiss, her grounding touches, warm and intimate, against the rough appetite of Mike's chapped lips; the way he crawls over her, traps her under him but never touches her, not like this. Not with any part of him that is softer than sandpaper. Surely she can find a balance between the two, tie together the strength of Mike's kisses and the tenderness of Max's in a neat bow.
Nodding her assent, Jane shifts to sit on her knees. Max smiles. "Let's see what you've got, then."
"What if I fail?" The thought comes to Jane suddenly. She does not want to make a fool of herself in front of Max. Mike is always a greater fool than she, and though to her it is endearing, Jane does not like to pretend that she misses how her friends roll their eyes when Mike is not looking and pretend to cover up an exasperated sigh with a sudden cough. It makes her sad.
A look of surprise flashes across Max's face, so fast Jane might have imagined it altogether, before melting into concern and confusion. Then, finally, after what feels like a breathless eternity, Max comes to smile again.
"I don't think you need to worry about that," she hums, taking Jane's hands in hers. "You have a really good teacher, y'know," Max licks her lips as they split again into a familiar mischievous smile.
Jane rocks on her knees briefly, feeling her ankles dig into her tailbone. "That is true," she nods again.
Max looks up at her and nods in return. Jane feels that she should not know what a gesture so feeble means, but she does. Leaning forward, she plants her palms on the mattress, arms suddenly encasing Max. She watches as Max's cheeks turn red. Jane is startled to realize that her eyes have wandered down to Max's lips.
She has seen Mike do this a few times. Now she understands why.
Jane closes her eyes and presses her lips to Max's. At first, It is something small. Awkward. Ginger. But not bitter. She recalls how Max had used her hand to tilt Jane's face slightly leftward, letting their faces slot together comfortably. This time, Jane does it herself, putting more weight onto her arms, pushing herself to a crawl as Max slings her arms over Jane's shoulders and leans back into her pillows.
Jane knows that Max does not mind doing the dirty work. She digs holes in the sand and bandages her own scrapes when she falls off of her skateboard (though it rarely ever happens). Max cooks her own meals and jumps out of her window to go see her friends; she lets Dustin copy her English homework and peels the skin of her sunburns before it can flake off. She steals her mother's credit card to buy Jane nice clothes and looks at Steve with a kindness that is not her own until he gives them free ice cream (this happens quite a lot). Max looks at Robin with wary adoration and worries about Mike while picking the dirt from under her nails. She does not let Lucas get near her brother, and carries a pocket knife to school just in case.
This time, Jane resolves to do the work, though it is anything but dirty.
She opens and closes her mouth ever so slightly, timid and uncertain. Max seems to reciprocate, bringing a hand to the back of Jane's neck, and a bud of heat seeds itself and blooms in her abdomen. In a moment of thoughtless impulse, she runs her tongue on Max's bottom lip. It seems boyish, chaste, almost immature—too much? Too little? With Mike, nothing is ever enough.
With Max it is everything and more. She gasps against Jane, stealing the air from her lungs again, and Jane feels as a shudder wracks Max's body. They part for a brief moment and when Jane opens her eyes, she feels as though she has made a mistak— as though she is looking at something that she should not be allowed to see. Max's hair is tousled; her lips are a deeper pink than usual, shiny and slick with saliva. Her brows are furrowed ever so slightly, but she does not seem pained or worried. It is all too intimate an expression, but it is an intimacy of Jane's making, a product of her desire.
This moment bleeds into the next as Jane presses her lips back onto Max's and Max snakes her hand up the back of Jane's neck into her hair. She starts to run her fingers through it, but Jane's hair tangles easily and they have been laying on their backs for a few hours now, so the motion catches; the faint tug catches Jane by surprise. She gasps in surprise, and Max pulls away instantly.
Max's eyes are wide and sober. This time, her face betrays concern and regret, emotions that Jane does not find particularly applicable in the situation; Max had not caused her any pain.
"Are you okay?" Max asks, voice tinged with poorly suppressed fervor.
Jane's eyelids feel heavy when they flutter open, and her lips throb in a way that never gets less weird despite its familiarity. "How did I do?"
"What?"
"The end-of-unit quiz," Jane clarifies matter-of-factly. "Did I pass?"
Max blinks slowly. Jane can tell that she is working through the fog that has settled upon them, that makes the air thick and electric, like an unwashed fleece blanket prone to electric shocks. Her skin does feel rather prickly in that way. She wonders if Max's feels the same.
"Uh," Max starts and pauses again to swallow, a thick, dry squelch emitting from her throat. "Yeah, uh—with flying colors, yeah."
Jane is not entirely sure what this means, but a yes is a yes, and satisfaction waters the roots of warmth that have spread throughout her body and filled her stomach with an inexplicable contradiction of hunger and satiation.
"Thank you," she bows her head in a habitual show of gratitude and humility, surprised when Max hooks her fingers under Jane's chin and pushes up, forcing their eyes to meet. For a moment, Jane thinks that Max might lean in to kiss her again. But she does not, and Jane, once again, finds herself knowing something she thinks she ought not to—that the moment has passed. Tonight's lesson is over.
"It's nothing," Max shrugs, casting a satisfied smile that nearly convinces Jane that the night has passed quickly and made way for the sun to rise again. "Next time, I'll show you how to sit so your arms don't get tired." She pokes at Jane's trembling bicep, and Jane feels her face grow warm. She knows that Max is teasing, but her glossy eyes and the softness of her voice makes Jane wonder if next time is really part of the joke.
She dismisses the thought promptly. Max has helped her turn something she does not know into something she knows well, and that was what Jane had asked for. They have spent all day doing this, really, so the thought of asking Max for more strikes a chord of guilt in her, one that she is still growing accustomed to; one time, on the phone, Hopper had loudly accused someone of being given a finger and taking the entire hand. In the moment, she had found it funny, but now that she has friends who offer her things, the bizarre turn of phrase often serves to reign her in. It is frustrating, but that is the nature of parents who love their children.
"I would like that," Jane replies, and it sounds less like a joke than she wants it to. She does not know how to make it sound more like one.
Max nods, redness returning to the apples of her cheeks. She crawls over Jane with an unexpected urgency, hanging her torso off of the bedframe to reach for the long-discarded blanket.
"Almost forgot about this," Max laughs nervously as she spreads the blanket neatly over Jane, then tucks herself in as well.
Jane nods, laying down the rest of the way and turning to lay on her side, facing Max, who turns her lamp off with a click and positions herself to lie facing Jane.
"I had fun today."
"Me, too."