#anyone who tags this elumax I'm gonna break into your house and replace your milk with another milk with a slightly sooner exp date

[givehimthemedicine]

It's not a competition // elmax (ish) ficlet

coma angst. Lucas and El both love Max. both are sure it's the other Max loves. (heads up this is very open ended. it's not supposed to be elumax)

--

At first, the party visited Max constantly and in groups, in pairs. After all she'd been through, no one wanted her to be alone. 

When the initial shock wore down, the visits split into shifts. Max would be just as not-alone with one person at a time as she would with two or three.

As days turned into weeks, the visits spread out even more, and settled into a pattern: 

Lucas is the one most often spending the whole of visiting hours with Max, trading off occasionally with shorter visits from the others. 

El doesn't visit very often - not in person. As the only one able, she spends all night, every night, at Max's side in the blackness of the void.

Over time, it's a serious drain on her energy and blood. Hop and Joyce try to get her to stop for the sake of her health, but there's quite literally nothing they can do about it. They buy her some supplements and try to keep the house quiet while she sleeps during the day. 

Eventually, it happens: a day when everyone's schedules clash and nobody can be with Max in the daytime. 

So El says she will go. And something in Lucas boils over. 

He tells El to stay home. To leave her be.

He says it's not the end of the world if Max spends an afternoon alone. He says she isn't even aware anyone visits her in the first place, and if she is, she might be desperate for time alone - she'd be snapping at them demanding space if she was awake, wouldn't she? 

And he isn’t wrong. Even if by some miracle Max IS aware of their presence in the daytime, there’s no way she’s aware of El’s company by night. El knows that.

She says it's okay for him to need a break, but that if he doesn't go, she will.

Lucas looks furious, like she meant that as an accusation, although she's pretty sure he isn't really.

He loves Max, but he does need a break. They both do. They are both exhausted, traumatized kids. But for El to refuse to take a break puts him in a hard position.

He has already said out loud that he thinks it's okay for Max to sleep alone for an afternoon, and now he's trying not to feel like that is an act of desertion, or a milestone in beginning to let go.

Defiant against absolutely no opposition, Lucas digs in. Says he will come as often as he can, but it won't be all day every day, and that he's not in the wrong for that.

El wholeheartedly agrees.

He digs in deeper.

He says El should take time off and rest, too. Says what if something happens, what if Vecna comes back and El is too weak to fight, then they're all screwed. He looks a little sorry as he says it; he's pressing a sore spot on purpose. It's not fair for that responsibility to be on El's shoulders, but it just kind of is.

She says he is right, and maybe he mistakes that as agreement.

Maybe he had done this thinking that El would follow his lead. But she doesn't.

This is not a competition. El isn't trying to win. She just can't handle the idea of Max being left alone. 

What if Max wakes up terrified and no one is there? What if she thinks none of her friends care? What if there's the tiniest sliver of a chance Max is trapped somewhere? Still hiding like Will once was, captive and suffering, and El is her only hope - how can she take a day off?

And if there's any fighting to be done while she's exhausted, well, she'll just have to do what she always does: fight anyway.

So when no one else goes, El goes. 

She sits and holds Max's hand, and the next thing she knows, a nurse is nudging her to say visiting hours are over, and she's furious with herself for having dozed off with her cheek smushed against the edge of the hospital bed.

Instead of "goodnight," she tells Max "be right back," and goes home and puts on her blindfold, and sits with Max that way for as long as she can stay conscious.

Before long, Lucas gives up and starts coming every day again.

It's not jealousy, it's guilt. He feels bad that El is picking up his slack when she's a wreck already. Using her powers for hours every night leaves her with that pale, blood-vesselly look, and a day isn’t enough time to recover fully, so she just looks like that all the time now. People think she's another patient, and if she keeps this up, she may need to be.

Lucas says it's for El's benefit sometimes that he sits with Max, so that she will please get some rest.

That isn't a lie, but she thinks it's also that he feels he has to match the standard El is setting.

Maybe someday Max will ask who spent the most time at her side, and he wants to be able to say it was him.

El understands because she wants it to be her, although she'll never say it was.

It’s not a competition, but neither wants to lose.

-

Lucas's steps ripple into the blackness around Max's hospital bed, signaling 8 AM. Beginning of visiting hours.

"Morning, Max." He settles into his chair and murmurs his usual, "Night, El."

El leans over to administer her little ritual outlet of affection.

"Goodnight, angel," she whispers, leaving a kiss on Max's temple. Same as every time she leaves.

Max would bristle at the name, but it reminds El of one of few truly happy moments in her life. She had liked the way Max's lips treated the word angel when she sang it.

It's the one indulgence she allows herself in here. She doesn't see any harm. Max will never know.

El lets go and slides straight into sleep without opening her eyes. Too tired to wipe the warmth from her nose even though the tissue is already in her hand. Her pillowcases are all stained anyway.

Not thirty minutes later, Hopper is waking her to relay the call he’s just gotten: Max is awake.

She tries to focus harder on being overjoyed than on being disappointed to have missed it. Or grieved that it must look like she doesn't care because she wasn't there.

What she wanted most was for Max not to be alone. And she wasn't. So that's a win.

But maybe it was a little bit of a competition, because she also kind of feels like she's lost.

She wishes there were rockets on Hop’s car to make it go faster. 

El bounds into the hospital room, still with pillow marks on her cheek and blood flakes on her lip - and her spirits fall.

Max looks exactly the same. Small and still and sleeping.

El looks questioningly to Lucas, who's in his usual chair at her bedside.

"She’s asleep," he whispers, which he doesn't usually. "Regular sleep." He stares at Max a few seconds and then smiles, almost laughs to himself. It's been weeks since she's seen his teeth. "Slept 34 days and she needs a nap."

El smiles softly, coming closer and sitting in the chair opposite him.

She looks at Max's pale fingers interlaced with Lucas's, and then at Max’s closer hand, free. She touches the edge of the cast just before where it reveals her fingers. She wants to do the same thing they're doing, but she can think of a couple reasons why she shouldn’t.

She stares hard at Max's face for any smidge of a difference from the way she's looked all these weeks. Nothing.

She thinks about ways she could wake Max accidentally on purpose. She's desperate.

"How was she?"

"She can see," Lucas answers. They share a grin, both happy for her, although after how long the mystery has plagued them, she wonders why the grin fades as quickly as it does.

There's kind of a weird feeling in the room. 

"Did she say anything?"

He looks across at her, but before he answers, Susan arrives.

Susan hugs Lucas and smiles hello to her. El didn't know they were on hugging terms, and doesn't know why she feels funny about that. (Yes she does.) She doesn't want to hug Susan, but - it's not important.

They leave the woman alone with her daughter and go out to the waiting room. 

Lucas goes to stretch his legs and brings back two paper cones of water. He drinks his in one gulp, then sits next to El and starts flattening and fidgeting with the cup.

"Your name was the first thing she said."

Her eyes dart to his, but she isn't sure what reaction to give, so she doesn't give one.

It's not a competition. She might be winning.

"Maybe she thought -"

"Her eyes work." His tone is of correcting her, but when he repeats it again, he is correcting himself. "Her eyes work. She's awake. It's great. It's amazing." He leans back in the chair so the plastic back squeaks, and rubs his face.

"It's great," El echoes. “I’m glad you were here.”

It was better for Max to wake up to Lucas. Had she awakened on El’s shift instead, she would have thought she was alone.

“Yeah,” he answers rather tonelessly. 

He isn’t sulking. It’s just that he’s won what he thought they were competing for and still feels like he’s lost.

El observes him half-secretly for a moment. "She loves you.”

He exhales, same tone. "Yeah."

He starts tearing his cup with absentminded precision.

"I can't compete with you," he says quietly.

"What?"

"I wish I could do all that for her. The stuff you do. I would if I could."

His cup is getting to be just one long ragged strip of paper.

By either biting or staying quiet, El gets to decide whether they are actually doing this. She kind of surprises herself by biting.

"That is the same thing I think about you," she says, and this is what gets him to look over at her.

"Don't worry, Lucas,” she adds softly. “She would not choose me."

She hadn't meant that to sound so sad. It's just that she realized how true it was while she was saying it.

Lucas is her friend, and she wants him to be happy. She smiles at him - sincerely, but kind of mechanically - and looks away again.

She can feel him studying her the way people do, sometimes, when they are trying to figure out whether she understands what she has just said. 

"I think she already has."

El’s mouth twists. “She needs friends, right now, I think.”

Lucas nods quickly. They are not going to burden Max with any of this. 

Max has not been in the mood to be in a relationship for a long while, and she probably feels even less ready now. She does not need romance right now, she just needs love. 

And for as long as Max is looking for that kind of love, she might choose El.

But in the long run, she will choose Lucas.

She chose Lucas in the beginning and she will choose him again in the end, as soon as she is well enough. Because no matter how important El's friendship is to her, Max is still a normal girl and Lucas is a normal boy, and... normal people go together.

It's terribly selfish of her to be thinking about how her own happiness factors into this, anyway. It's Max's that is important. Whatever makes Max happy, that's what El wants for her.

"I don't want us to be.." she isn't sure how to say.

"Me neither,"  Lucas adds.

She rests her head against his shoulder to make sure they aren't fighting, and is glad when he leans his head on hers.

.

She's never been so happy to see two crystal blue eyes land on her. 

El grins huge, her own eyes wet as she walks into the hospital room ahead of Lucas.

Max can't move her head because of the neck brace, but she manages a weak smile, watching El come closer. That smile fades a bit as she gets a good look at her.

El realizes how different she must look since the last time Max saw her.

It feels like Max is not just seeing her, but seeing into and through her. She knows what El's overexertion looks like. What bone-deep exhaustion and weeks without sleep and pretending to be okay looks like.

Right before her eyes, Max is putting together all the things El was not going to tell her. She isn't sure she hopes Max puts everything together.

"Hi," El says, whispering without having planned to, like a full-strength greeting might jar her bones loose again.

Max's "Hi" is so small and weak, but it’s the best thing El has ever heard.

After how desperate she's been to talk with her for weeks, she finds that she has no idea what to say. 

She carefully takes Max's fingers and is overjoyed at the sensation of them squeezing back. They just look at each other for a minute.

The corner of Max's mouth turns up just a little, and El grins because she knows something witty is coming, and that alone is priceless.

Max manages a very raspy, "You look like shit."

El chuckles her way gradually into a laugh that gets bigger and bigger until she's keeled over against Max's arm, laughing so hard she's crying. And then there isn't really any laughing involved at all anymore, she's just plain crying, really hard.

The reaction confuses her. She's been so acclimated to crushing pressure that she doesn't know how to handle the release.

She looks up and finds Max watching her. Her eyes are glazed and tired, but they're clear and blue and beautiful and aware and leaking tears. It’s so good to see her cry pure, clear, harmless tears. 

El knows that she herself is bloodshot and snotty and probably the worst she's ever looked in her life, and she isn't bothered in the slightest that Max is seeing her, because Max is seeing her. And smiling.

She dries Max's tears before her own. Max's lids look slow to reopen, like she’s fighting sleep. 

"You're tired."

Her brows dip for an instant, with a faint noise of protest. 

El gets it. The idea of her going back to sleep is kind of scary. 

“We’re here,” El assures her. “You can rest as long as you need. We will still be here.”

Max's eyes check the room in a way that makes El turn and look, too. Lucas isn't there. She guesses she appreciates him leaving them to their moment. 

She wonders whether it was as good a moment as his and hers. He probably said something sweet to her that he spent all that time preparing. Something better than hi.

It’s not a competition. 

"Get some sleep.”

Max's fingers twitch in hers. "You."

El smiles softly, nodding. She curls her fingers around Max's.

"Wake me. Okay?"

"Hmh." It might mean yes, or no, or it might just be a noise.

El lodges her head against Max's shoulder.

"Mmnighngel," Max murmurs under her breath.

El's head snaps up, as if staring at Max's lips for a full minute will help clarify what she already said.

Her breathing and the beeps of the monitors are slowing. It might have just been a noise.

El puts her head back down, and for the first time in weeks, surrenders to a guiltless sleep.

#this is elmax really but I don't feel like actually writing an elmax resolution because then I'd be sad for lucas #anyone who tags this elumax I'm gonna break into your house and replace your milk with another milk with a slightly sooner exp date #elmax #ficlet #fic #mine #this has been kicking around my drafts forever and it aint gettin nobetternis