Work Text:
Listen, Max has always known Lucas is sweet. Far sweeter than she deserves. Who in their right mind would go to the hospital every day just to play the same old song for the same old comatose patient whose brain activity was so low, not even a girl with literal superpowers could find her?
Lucas Sinclair would. And did. And never gave up on Max.
Which is something she still can’t quite fathom. She was unresponsive for over a year and a half; she found out when she woke up. Time had been slippery in Vecna’s mind prison. It felt like it had either been years or seconds. The only moments she could point to as markers that time had passed at all were her almost-escape and Holly’s arrival. But for more than eighteen months straight, Lucas was at her side as much as he was allowed by his parents and hospital staff (all of whom were surprisingly lenient with him, he’s said).
So yeah, Lucas is sweet. Really sweet. And yet Max is always caught off guard by it, somehow.
It’s when he drives her home after school one day that she first notices something different. Really, he’s driving her to Steve’s, but that is home for her, now. (Her mom is god knows where, has been since Max was put into a coma and the town was torn apart by violent “earthquakes”.) So she’s living with Steve and Robin in an apartment that’s small enough that it sometimes feels like they’re living on top of each other, but also enough to make sure she never feels lost or alone, even if nobody else is home.
She’s in the passenger seat, with the window rolled down and her hand stretched out to glide through the air. The Squawk is cranked up on the radio, some godawful pop song probably requested by Steve playing through the tinny speakers as Lucas drives with one hand on the wheel and the other gently holding her own. (The rest of the Party always teases him about how cautious of a driver he is, but how he’ll still “risk it” to hold Max’s hand while he drives. She loves it.)
The breeze whips her hair every which way, and she knows it’ll be a pain to brush out all the knots it’s making, but she can’t quite bring herself to care. Not when she gets this, Lucas’s hand in hers as he drives through a patched-up Hawkins. Not when the wind against her face and hand and in her hair reminds her that she is alive and free. She’s allowed to have this, to giggle over comic books with her best friend, to go on cheesy dates with the boy who never gave up on her, to dance around the kitchen with Steve and Robin, to have movie nights with her friends, to be sixteen and alive.
When they reach her apartment, Lucas walks her to the door, as always. He double-checks that they’re on for movie night with the Party, as always. He kisses her goodbye, as always.
But this time, it’s different. Because this time, his kiss tastes like strawberry Mentos. Like her favorite candy. And it’s so brief that she’s already made it inside by the time she realizes what the familiar taste was.
It could mean nothing, of course. It could be a coincidence. But it’s not, and it starts happening more often.
Almost every day, now, when Lucas kisses her, she gets a taste of the same artificial strawberry flavor. Sometimes it’s stronger, sometimes it’s just a whisper, but either way, Max picks up on it. She never comments on it. She’s not entirely sure why. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, the opposite, in fact, but she thinks she’d rather just… let it be whatever it is. If Lucas is getting into strawberry Mentos, good for him! She’ll just enjoy the benefits of it.
And he really does seem to be enjoying them. There’s always a pack in his car, and she’s not sure if it’s for her benefit or his, but it doesn’t stop her from snagging one every now and then. (She knows Lucas notices every time. It’s obvious by the way he smiles at the road ahead of him.) He starts carrying them around in his jacket pocket, too, something she only notices when he drapes it over her shoulders one evening as they sit outside.
The others start picking up on it, too. After a movie night at the Wheelers, Lucas drives Max, El, and Will home. For once, Max has relinquished the passenger seat in favor of sitting in the back with El, and the two of them are sort of dozing off. Up front, Max hears Will go through the glove compartment for a new tape, only to pause.
“Strawberry Mentos?” Will asks Lucas.
“You want one?” Lucas asks.
“Nah, I don’t like them that much. Thought you didn’t, either.”
“They’re growing on me,” is all Lucas says. And Max bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling, unwilling to alert the boys up front that she’s awake.
After that, she supposes, it was only a matter of time. She’s grocery shopping with Steve and Robin and finds herself in the candy aisle. She’s not really thinking; her mind is running a mile a minute, so she doesn’t fully process which colorful bag she grabs before running back to her family. She doesn’t quite realize until they’re checking out and Steve is handing the clerk his card that she didn’t pick up a bag of M&M’s, like she was planning. She picked up a bag of black licorice.
“Thought you didn’t like black licorice,” Robin asks, nudging her side.
“I don’t,” Max tells her.
“Sweet of you to get it for Lucas, then,” Robin says, somehow landing on a perfectly reasonable explanation for Max’s absentminded decision. Max just nods, trying to hide her confusion at her own choice.
Because seriously, she is not a fan of black licorice. It’s too bitter, and the aftertaste lingers far too much for it to be a pleasant experience. But Lucas loves it, for some weird reason. And the Party is forever teasing him about it.
When she gets home, she tries a piece, knowing damn well she won’t enjoy it, but wondering if maybe, this time, she will.
She doesn’t. It’s still bitter. So she puts the bag in the pantry, deciding she’ll give it to Lucas when he comes over later. But when he does come over to work on their science project, she completely forgets about the licorice in her pantry.
When he kisses her goodbye, he pauses for a second, a slightly confused look on his face, before he kisses her again.
“Someone’s feeling affectionate,” she teases in an effort to distract him from the blush she feels rising to her cheeks.
“Always,” he murmurs with a wink. “I thought you didn’t like licorice,” he says.
“I don’t?” Max says, incredibly confused.
“Hmm,” Lucas says, kissing her yet again.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing, just… I dunno, you taste like licorice.” He shrugs, but he’s smiling. And then she remembers the licorice waiting in her pantry. But rather than come clean and tell him about it, she just hums in response.
After that, she starts eating more black licorice when she knows she’ll be seeing Lucas. The more she does it, the more the candy starts to grow on her. (It helps that he smiles like that every time he kisses her after she’s had a piece.) Through it all, he keeps tasting like strawberry Mentos.
She finally asks him about it, even though she’s sure she knows the answer.
“Since when did you get so obsessed with these?” she asks, waggling a packet of them at him when he’s driving her home from Mike’s one day.
“Few months ago, maybe?” he says, eyes still on the road.
“Okay, yeah, I know that-”
“Then why’d you ask if you know the answer?” he teases, shooting her a quick glance and a smirk.
“Give me a break, Stalker. I meant, why did you get into them all of a sudden?”
“Well, they’re your favorite, right?”
“Why’d you ask if you know the answer?” she parrots his words right back to him. He laughs and reaches over to squeeze her knee. (It’s unfairly attractive.)
“Point taken,” he says. “I dunno, I figured I’d see what all the hype was about.”
“Mhm, that’s it?” she asks, clocking the way he’s biting the inside of his cheek the way he does when he gets flustered.
“Yep. That’s it,” he says. Max takes his hand where it’s still resting on her knee and interlaces their fingers.
“You sure?” she presses.
“Playing dirty now, are we, Mayfield?” he sighs through the smile threatening to split his face in two.
“I’m not doing anything,” Max says.
“You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Am I not allowed to hold my boyfriend’s hand?” She does know exactly what she’s doing. Lucas lets out a small laugh and shakes his head, squeezing her hand.
“Fine,” he says. “I started buying them cause I know they’re your favorite. And… god, this is gonna sound weird, isn’t it?”
“Tell me.”
“You have to promise not to laugh,” he warns.
“You know better than that,” she says dryly.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Promise to keep it to a minimum?”
“Sure, I can do that. Seriously, it’s just candy, is it really that embarrassing?”
“Maybe? Um, I… Fuck this is really weird now that I think about it.”
“So you have to tell me!”
“Okay, I didn’t mean for it to become a whole thing, but I bought a pack instead of the mint ones once, cause I thought, hey, maybe it would taste like strawberries when I kissed you instead. But they’re also just good, and they remind me of you, so I kept buying them.”
And oh. Max hadn’t thought he meant for his kisses to taste like her favorite candy, she thought it was just a coincidence, but… wow.
“Too weird?” he asks, and she realizes she’s been quiet for a little too long.
“No, not at all,” she rushes to say. “Or maybe a little, I guess, but um. I like it,” she admits.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I noticed it a while ago, I just didn’t want to say anything in case that made it weird or… yeah,” she finishes lamely.
“You noticed?” he asks, sounding positively thrilled by the revelation.
“Yeah, course I did,” she mumbles.
“So… you wouldn’t mind if I kept doing it?”
“You could say that.” She makes the mistake of looking up at Lucas when they roll to a stop in front of her apartment. The expression on his face is so unbelievably fond that she almost wants to look away, but she can’t.
“Keep looking at me like that, and I’m gonna get a sugar high,” she mutters, trying to make a joke of it. It kind of works; it makes Lucas laugh.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“Just… I dunno, you’re sweet,” Max says. Which is apparently the right thing to say, because she can almost see the breath catching in his throat as he bites the inside of his cheek to hide his smile. (It doesn’t work.)
“Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat, and god Max wishes it was more obvious when he blushes, because she knows he is. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Where is this going?
“You’ve started getting into black licorice,” he says. And oh, how the tables turn, because now Max is sure she looks like a cherry.
“Yeah, I guess,” she mutters. “What about it?”
“Thought you hated it, is all,” he says with a shit eating grin. “You’ve only been making fun of me for liking it for what? Three years now?”
“Something like that.”
“And I’ve been trying to convince you that it’s really good for just as long, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s with the change of heart?”
Max opens her mouth to make some stupid joke in response, before she freezes and tilts her head. He totally knows why.
“Why are you asking if you know the answer?” she asks, smiling.
“Maybe I don’t know the answer, did you think of that?” he says. She raises an eyebrow at him. He laughs and leans slightly closer. “Well, then maybe I just want to hear you say it.”
Max bites her lip to try to stop the smile growing on her face, but fails spectacularly. She leans closer to him, too, brushing her nose against his.
“Well, then,” she says, “Guess you’ll have to wait a little bit longer.” And with that, she gets out of the car, laughing to herself as her boyfriend scrambles to get out as well and walk her to her front door.
She’s still laughing when she unlocks the door, and when she looks up at him, he’s looking right back at her, a fondly exasperated grin on his face. He cups her cheek and leans in to kiss her, the familiar taste of artificial strawberry once again on his lips. And, as he kisses her, she absentmindedly thinks that licorice and strawberry go really well together. But she knows that, no matter what, Lucas will always be her favorite. No candy in the world could compete with how sweet her boyfriend is.