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The blue glow of the television screen faded into a stark, empty black as the credits rolled, casting the Sinclair living room in deep, heavy shadows. On the screen, the names of the cast and crew scrolled upward in absolute silence. It was late—past midnight—and the rest of the house had long since gone to sleep.
Max sat on the edge of the sofa, her legs tucked beneath a heavy wool blanket that Mrs. Sinclair had knitted for her. Right next to her—so close that his shoulder brushed hers every time he took a deep breath—was Lucas.
For the last two hours, they had been watching Ladyhawke. It was supposed to be another one of their "domestic movie dates," a gentle routine they had fallen into over the last few weeks since Max had finally been discharged from the hospital and moved into the Sinclair home.
She couldn't go back to the trailer. Even if the valley where the trailer park once stood hadn't been completely scarred by the massive rifts, there was nothing left for her there. Her mother was gone. Susan Mayfield had been one of the many tragic casualties of the terrifying "earthquake" that had torn Hawkins apart the night the world almost ended. Caught near the epicenter when the ground fractured, she had vanished into the chaos. Despite weeks of search parties and official reports, she was still listed as missing—a painful, open-ended word that everyone knew was just a polite substitute for dead.
With no family left and her home destroyed, Max had been left entirely alone in the world while trapped inside her own comatose body.
The Sinclair family hadn't even hesitated. The moment the doctors mentioned discharging her, Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair had stepped forward and declared, without a single shred of doubt, that Max was coming home with them. There was no agonizing discussion about logistics or finances. To them, Max wasn't Lucas's friend or a charity case left behind by a tragedy. She was family. And the Sinclairs would never, under any circumstances, abandon family.
So, they had rearranged their home. They moved furniture to make wide pathways, set up a temporary bedroom on the ground floor, and welcomed her into their daily rhythm.
The recovery, however, had been a grueling, exhausting mountain to climb. The first few weeks at the Sinclairs' were an agonizing blur of physical therapy sessions that left Max trembling, sweaty, and quietly furious at the limitations of her own bones. There were days when her muscles refused to cooperate, days when the phantom aches from where her limbs had snapped made her want to scream into her pillow. The grief of losing her mother, piled on top of the trauma of what Vecna had done to her, was a heavy, suffocating weight.
Navigating this new reality had been a delicate, unspoken dance between her and Lucas. They had developed a language of small gestures. Lucas had become an expert at reading her shifts in mood; he knew the exact line between when she needed a hand and when she needed to be left alone to stubbornly try and grip a glass of water herself. He spent hours sitting on the floor beside her while she practiced moving her toes, offering steady, unblinking encouragement. They shared quiet jokes, lingering touches on the porch at sunset, and sweet, quiet words before bed. He would tell her how proud he was of her progress, his voice dropping into a soft, vulnerable register that always made her throat tighten.
But they never said I love you and they never defined what they were.
The heavy silence around their relationship status had become a suffocating elephant in the room. They had broken up before the attic—before she had died in his arms and been dragged back by Eleven. Now, they were acting like a couple in every way that mattered, but the line remained uncrossed.
Lucas was terrified of pushing her, hyper-aware that she was a recovering patient who had lost everything, living under his parents' roof. He didn't want to make her feel cornered or pressured into a romance just because he was helping her heal.
Max, on the other hand, was being eaten alive by her own deep-seated insecurities. With her mother missing and presumed dead, and her own body broken, she felt like a massive, fragile burden. She had been convincing herself that Lucas's endless affection was born out of profound pity—that he was just being the ultimate gentleman because he felt obligated to take care of the orphan girl who had nowhere else to go.
Tonight, Max had reached her limit with the silence. She had been the one to suggest Ladyhawke. It wasn't her usual go-to choice—normally, she’d drag him through a gory horror flick or a sci-fi thriller—but tonight, she had a deliberate, desperate agenda. She had chosen this specific movie from the premium cable guide because she knew it hit a very precise, agonizing note. It was a story about two tragic lovers cursed to be perpetually near each other but completely separated by an invisible, magical barrier—one a wolf by night, the other a hawk by day, desperately longing to finally touch.
It was a silent, pointed plea to help them finally cross the unbreakable line between them. She wanted a catalyst. She wanted him to see the parallel, to take the hint, and to realize that they were done being separated by the ghosts of the past.
Throughout the entire film, that built-up tension had reached a fever point. When the curse was finally broken on screen and the two lovers finally collapsed into a desperate, sweeping embrace, Lucas had shifted. His arm had slid along the back of the couch, his fingers lightly brushing the fabric right above her shoulder. Max’s heart had hammered against her ribs, loud and frantic. This is it, she had thought, her body going rigid with a mix of anticipation and terror as the ultimate true-love reunion played out. The movie is winding down. He’s finally going to do it.
But the movie ended. Lucas simply stretched, gave her a warm, familiar smile that didn't quite reach his anxious eyes, and picked up the remote to turn off the TV.
He didn’t lean in. He didn’t cross the invisible border he had meticulously built between them over the last month. Her grand plan had completely failed.
Max felt a sharp, icy sting of rejection slice right through her chest. Instantly, her old defense mechanisms—the thick, thorny walls she had spent years building to protect herself from the world—slammed back into place.
"Alright," Lucas said softly, his voice a comforting, low rumble in the quiet room. "Time for bed. Let’s get you moved."
He stood up, stepping over to where her wheelchair was parked a few feet away. He wheeled it closer, aligning it perfectly with the couch, and locked the brakes with a familiar, mechanical clack. Then, he stepped back into her personal space, bending down to help her. This was a routine they had done dozens of times, a choreography born of necessity, but tonight, the proximity felt suffocating.
Lucas leaned over her, placing his hands securely around her waist to help guide her weight from the couch to the chair. His face was mere inches from hers. Max could smell the familiar, clean scent of his laundry detergent mixed with the faint trace of the outdoors. Her breath caught in her throat. As her feet found the footrests and she settled back into the leather seat, Lucas lingered. For a fraction of a second, his eyes dropped to her lips. His chest rose with a sharp, ragged inhale.
Then, as if he had accidentally burned himself on a hot stove, Lucas abruptly snapped his eyes away, pulled his hands back, and took a full step into reverse. He cleared his throat, adjusting his jacket, putting the wall right back up.
"There," he said, his voice entirely too polite, too careful. "You good? Ready for bed?"
That was the breaking point.
The contrast between how desperately he had just looked at her and how quickly he had thrown up his polite gentleman facade was too much to bear. To Max, it didn't look like respect, it didn't look like love. It looked like a boy trying very hard to manage a patient, like pure, unadulterated pity.
A hot, stinging wave of tears rushed to her eyes. Max hated crying more than anything on earth, and ever since she had woken up from the coma, she had been doing it a lot. The journey back to reality had been so incredibly tough on her, stripping away her armor layer by layer. She was slowly learning from her support system, from her friends, and from Lucas himself that it was okay to let her emotions guide her sometimes—that crying wasn't a defeat. But knowing that logically didn't make it any easier to accept. In moments like this, she still fought the tears, recognizing the growth but still fiercely resenting the vulnerability of it all.
The sheer frustration of losing control over her own emotions made her even angrier. She fiercely wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, but a tear escaped anyway, a hot track burning down her cheek.
"Stop doing that, Lucas," she snapped, her voice cracking under the weight of her exhaustion. "Just stop."
Lucas froze mid-motion, completely thrown off guard. He looked down at her, his brows furrowing with immediate concern. "Stop what? Did I hurt you? What’s wrong? Do you need me to get—"
"No!" she cut him off, her voice rising, thick with tears. "Stop doing … whatever this is that you’re doing! You hold my hand when we’re sitting on the porch, you watch movies with me, you stay up late to help me into this stupid chair... but you won't look at me. Not really. I don't know what we are anymore, Lucas, and I am so tired of guessing."
"Max, I'm just trying to be careful—"
"We broke up before the attic, remember?” The dam had broken, and months of suppressed fear, isolation, and insecurity came pouring out of her. She gripped the armrests of her wheelchair, her knuckles turning white. "Now I'm back, and I'm a mess, and I'm stuck in this chair, living under your roof because I have literally nowhere else to go. Are you just doing all of this because you feel bad for me? Because you feel obligated to be nice to the broken girl? If you just want to be my friend, Lucas, just say it! Because this—whatever this in-between thing is—it's driving me crazy!"
The accusation cut deep, straight to the bone. The careful, polite gentleman facade Lucas had maintained so rigidly for weeks shattered instantly. His jaw tightened, and a flash of raw, deeply wounded frustration crossed his face. He had spent months living in a state of perpetual terror, and hearing her twist his devotion into obligation broke something loose inside him.
He didn't back down. Instead, he dropped to his knees right in front of her, putting himself entirely on her eye level, trapping her in his space.
"Are you insane, Max?" Lucas’s voice cracked, thick with an emotion he had been burying since the day she woke up. "You think I’m just pretending? You think I am doing this out of pity? I am terrified, Max! I watched you die in that attic! I spent months sitting next to a hospital bed just praying you'd open your eyes, listening to a machine breathe for you, wondering if I'd ever hear your voice again. I want to kiss you so bad it hurts, but I didn't want to push you. I didn't want to make you feel pressured just because you’re living under my roof, I was just trying to be respectf—"
He didn't get to finish the word.
The moment the words I want to kiss you so bad it hurts left his mouth, Max’s brain completely short-circuited. She couldn't take the distance anymore. She couldn't take the talking, the analyzing, or the heavy weight of the past that kept them anchored an inch apart.
With a sudden, impulsive burst of movement, Max reached forward, fisted both of her hands into the collar of his denim jacket, and forcefully pulled him toward her.
Because it was so sudden, Lucas was caught completely off balance. His mouth was still open, trying to form the rest of the syllable, and their teeth clashed slightly in the clumsy, desperate rush of the collision. But the shock vanished in a heartbeat.
Lucas lost his footing entirely, his hands flying forward to catch himself on the cushion of her wheelchair, pinning his body directly into her space. He leaned all the way over her, completely giving up his posture, his gravity, just to be closer to her.
Max’s tears were still wet on her cheeks, mixing between them as she pressed her lips against his. The kiss was fierce, messy, and fueled by all the pent-up anger, grief, and longing they had carried since that horrific night in the Creel house. It was a release of a hundred unspoken words, a violent reassertion that they were both still alive.
Slowly, the desperation softened. Lucas’s hands left the seat of the chair and slid upward, his warm palms framing her jawline, his fingers tangling into her red hair to hold her steady. He kissed her with a deep, grounding tenderness that made the rest of the world completely vanish. For Max, the cold, dark void of the coma was officially gone.
This was real. This was warm. This was loud.
When Max finally let go of his jacket, they broke apart just an inch, their foreheads resting together. Both of them were breathing heavily, their chests rising and falling in sync.
Lucas was staring at her, his eyes wide, blinking in an absolute daze, his lips flushed red. He looked completely breathless, completely disarmed, the nervous energy entirely wiped clean from his face.
Max let out a shaky, watery exhale, a tiny, classic Mayfield smirk finally breaking through the tears on her face. Her fingers lingered casually on his collar, tracing the seam.
"You talk too much, Sinclair."
Lucas blinked, a slow, radiant smile spreading across his face as he leaned back in just enough to press his lips gently to her forehead, then down to her nose, before burying his face into the crook of her neck, holding her tight.
"Yeah," he whispered, his thumb gently wiping a stray tear from her cheek. “I guess you’re right.”
The silence that followed was entirely different from the heavy, suffocating quiet that had filled the room before. The tension hadn’t just broken; it had dissipated completely, replaced by a warm, grounding stillness that neither of them had felt in a very long time.
Lucas didn’t pull away into reverse this time. He stayed right there, kneeling on the carpet, his chest still resting slightly against her knees as his breathing gradually slowed. His hand remained soft against her face, his thumb lightly tracing the line of her cheekbone as if he were memorizing the shape of her all over again, making sure she was truly, undeniably solid.
Max let her eyes close, leaning into his touch. For weeks, she had felt like a ghost haunting the margins of his life, a broken pieces puzzle he was trying to put back together out of sheer duty. But the raw panic in his voice just a minute ago—the absolute desperation of his confession—had shattered that illusion. He didn't see a chore, he just saw her.
"I'm sorry," Lucas whispered into the space between them, his voice dropping into that quiet, vulnerable register she loved. "I didn't mean to yell. I just... I hated that you thought, even for a second, that I was only here because I had to be."
Max opened her eyes, looking at him through the lingering dampness of her lashes. The fierce, stinging anger was completely gone, replaced by a soft exhaustion that felt more like peace than defeat. She let one of her hands slide from his collar up to the back of his neck, her fingers tangling slightly in his short hair.
"I know," she said softly, her voice missing its usual sharp edge. "I’m sorry too. I’m just... I'm tired of being scared, Lucas."
"You don't have to be. Not about this," Lucas replied instantly, his gaze steady and unwavering. He took her other hand, weaving his fingers through hers, pressing his palm flat against hers. "We don't have to guess anymore. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere, Max. Whatever you need, whatever pace we have to go—I'm in. I've always been in."
Max looked down at their joined hands. The blue light from the blank television screen cast long, gentle shadows across the room, but the darkness didn't feel threatening anymore. It just felt like a shield, keeping the rest of the world out for a little while longer.
She let out a quiet, shaky breath—the first real, unburdened breath she felt like she’d taken since waking up. She was still broken, her legs still ached, and the empty space where her mother should have been was still a gaping wound in her chest. But looking at Lucas, sitting on the floor in the middle of the night just to be at her eye level, she realized she wasn't doing it alone.
"Okay," she whispered, her fingers tightening around his. "Okay."
A soft, genuinely relieved smile broke across Lucas’s face, the tight line of his shoulders finally relaxing. He leaned up, pressing one more slow, lingering kiss to the center of her forehead, letting his lips stay there for a long moment before he reluctantly stood up.
He didn't step back into the distance this time. He kept hold of her hand as he reached over to unlock the brakes of her chair, his touch casual, steady, and entirely devoid of the careful hesitation that had driven her crazy all night.
"Come on," he murmured gently, guiding her down the hallway toward her room. "Let's get you to sleep."
As they moved through the quiet house, Max looked behind her, feeling the solid, rhythmic pull of his hand leading her forward. The unbreakable line was gone. They hadn't fixed everything, and the road ahead of them was still a mountain, but for the first time since she had opened her eyes in that hospital room, Max felt like she was finally home.