The Tubular Moments // Lucas and Max (Lumax)

A Tubular Slip-up

At school, Dustin and Mike had noticed that their two friends seemed a lot... closer. If they thought Lucas and Max were joint at the hip before, it was nothing to how they had acted in the past week. Something had changed. Something big. They just couldn't quite put their finger on it.

Not to mention, every time the four of them attempted to hang out, Lucas and Max always had an excuse for why they had to leave early, arrive late, or not come at all. That wasn't how the party worked. There was a rule that members would not ditch the other members. They were a group. Hell, they were more than just a group, they were best friends. That's why Mike and Dustin were getting so pissed off at the sudden distance between them all.

They were all sitting at their usual spot in the Cafeteria. Max and Lucas had finally decided to join them after 20 minutes of lunch had already passed.

"Well look who finally decided to show up!" Mike said, voice laced with annoyance.

"So glad you could join us!" Dustin added.

Max and Lucas rolled their eyes as they sat down.

Lucas spoke. "Give it a rest you two. We had to return some books to the library." But obviously that was a lie. The truth was that Max had spent the first few minutes of lunch hunched over a toilet bowl while she threw up. Thankfully their school had a disabled toilet so that Lucas could hold her hair back and provide her with some support. Unfortunately, they were learning that 'morning sickness' did not just occur in the morning. That was just a cute name the doctors gave it, to provide girls with false reassurance that their nausea would pass. Max hated them for it.

"Do you have a ginger candy?" Max asked Lucas. He nodded pulling one out of his bag and handing it to her. Mrs Sinclair has suggested it to her and it had quickly become Max's secret weapon. It was pretty good at controlling her extreme nausea.

As Max unwrapped the candy, Mike raised his eyebrows. "What is your sudden obsession with those things?"

She shrugged. "They're good."

Dustin was quick to shake his head. "If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my extensive knowledge about candy. I'm pretty much the Einstein of it all. And let me tell you Max, ginger candies are the inferior candy. Why would you have them when you could have a jolly rancher? A lollipop? A goddamn mint? Anything... and I mean anything is better than a ginger candy."

"Just let me enjoy it, Dustin." Max complained.

"Anyways... you two coming to Cerebro tonight?" Mike asked before he let Dustin get carried away.

Max and Lucas looked at each other, their eyes having a full conversation. Mike and Dustin rolled their eyes, they had been doing this a lot lately.

"Hello? We're still here." Mike sighed.

"Uh... probably not tonight guys. We have to look after Erica because my parents have gone to Chicago for the night. Dad has an awards evening for work." Lucas said. Part of that was the truth. His parents were gone for the night, and technically he had been told to look after her. But Erica would've been happy to be dropped at Steve's to see him and Robin, so that Lucas and Max could go to Cerebro.

The main reason why they weren't going to go was because Lucas was extremely overprotective of Max, especially when she found the climb to Cerebro so incredibly tiring. Max wasn't exactly complaining. As much as she wished she could talk to the entire party at once, she was having a pretty tough time with her pregnancy. In fact, when she went to her first doctors appointment (which was in Chicago seeing as the entirety of Hawkins Hospital had been destroyed by the flayed in '85), her doctor had told her that because Max was so small, she would have more extreme symptoms. It had proven tough so far, but she was managing it with the help of Lucas.