#lucas drawing comfort from physical touch and max drawing comfort from words of affirmation they're perfect for each other your honor

[lucassinclaer-archive]

if that inspires you, can you do please lumax + 16 "things you said with no space between us" ?

helloooo nonny! this one's a few days late and i'm so sorry, but i finally got to finish this lil thing and now i'm having brainrot fr. (small cw for allusions to max's family situation)

lucas will NOT be seeing it (2017) in theaters.

16. things you said with no space between us

There’s this horrible quiet that comes with doom. 

Max knows it well at this point, actually finds some comfort in it now that she doesn’t have to drown out all her thoughts with music. It’s such a certain thing. The ultimate perspective on life, the knowledge of what’s important and what isn’t. Max maybe kind of likes it. 

Lucas, on the other hand, gets antsy. 

Silence, to him, isn’t a comfort. Maybe ever. Max understands it in a way – the Sinclair house is rarely quiet. Erica alone is loud enough to fill any room with life, but Sue isn’t far behind her either, a more comforting but steady stream of chatter she keeps up easy as breathing. Charles is the only reserved one but even he gets animated when the right subject gets brought up. Like planes or Lucas’ biology homework. (Erica once confided in Max that she’s 100% sure Lucas got his “nerd genes” from their father’s side of the family. “You should hear Uncle Jack go off,” she’d said with a long and meaningful look.) 

Spending time at the Sinclairs’ definitely shed some light on Lucas’ constant bickering with Dustin and Mike. There’s no fear in him that a simple argument can shift and shake in a single word. His parents built him and Erica a home where they never have to be truly afraid of their punishments. 

If Max had that, maybe she wouldn’t relish silence either. 

But she did, and so she does, while Lucas gets into his own head. He and Mike can give each other a run for the money in pacing.  

And sometimes, like now, Max can’t take it. She waits for him to pass her and stops him short, tugging at his sleeve. She’s sitting crisscross applesauce on the ground and at this point they’ve done this often enough, so he knows what she’s saying. 

With a sigh he abandons his route and lowers himself to sit in front of her. He spins himself so it’s his back to her and she uncrosses her legs so he can lean back against her while she brackets him, leaving little to no space between them. 

It makes her feel better, knowing that she's someone's resting place. Sometimes it's nice to feel relied on. 

“Do you want the Walkman?” she asks, hands hovering over it at her side. Sometimes that helps, to introduce sound into the dread. They’ve learned to communicate with the lights anyway, he doesn’t always need his ears. 

“No,” he says. “I just wanna get this over with.” 

Max laughs, a little bitter. “You know after this there’s just gonna be another one. And another. And another.” 

He tilts his head back. She’s already looking down at the top of his head, so their noses are almost touching now. The smell of him sits deep inside her chest, an automatic recognition of him. 

“Yeah, but eventually we’ll figure out how to get to the end,” he says and sounds wonderfully confident. Against her better judgment it warms Max from the inside out. His conviction is always so infectious, it’s hard to resist 

Still, she can’t resist challenging him just a little. “What if we don’t?” 

He shakes his head and she feels it against her torso and bumping against her legs. “We will.” He bumps his nose against hers. “And then I never wanna see a Stephen King movie again.”