Chapter Text
Whistling, Dustin spins on his heel slowly as he leads the way into the cabin, craning his neck to take in the rafters. “I still can't believe that Hopper had this cabin the whole time we were in high school and you never threw us one wild party.”
“I didn't think you liked wild parties in high school,” Jane teases, shoving her hands into her pockets since Dustin's loitering has caused such a pile-up in the doorway that she doesn't need to keep her arms outstretched for hugging. She's wearing jean shorts, which Max thinks is very cruel to choose on the one day they wouldn't be alone in the cabin, and the pockets are so small her scabbed knuckles are still visible.
“Oh, you should have seen those D&D sessions before we met,” Max says conspiratorially, grinning at her girlfriend over her shoulder as she scoops up Mike's overnight bag and carries it over the threshold just to annoy him. “Women and booze everywhere.”
The party laughs, but Max's whole world is taken up by Jane's laughing eyes, burning with the ever-expanding universe of their shared constellations, and their friends's laughter fades away with the rest of the real world.
Chief Hopper, tempered by both the unavoidable fact that Jane and Max already live together in California and his now-wife Joyce's influence, has allowed the girls to stay in his hunting cabin in the woods when they visit for holidays and summers. Max is silently grateful for this, because she couldn't bear the thought of being away from Jane while her girlfriend visited her adopted father but had vowed to herself that she would never see her step-father again after she'd finally escaped for college, so she's glad for a place in Hawkins so secret even the government couldn't find it. They'd introduced the boys to the cabin Christmas break of their freshman year, and it had become the unspoken party headquarters whenever they were all in town at the same time on school breaks. The party has visited each other in their new cities over the years of their college careers, but it never felt more like an official party gathering than when all six of them were together in the cabin in Hawkins.
And now, four years after they'd scattered across the country to begin their separate adult lives, they're finally back together to celebrate the boys's and Max's college graduation.
Max thinks to herself that there should be much more of a transformation after this milestone, a distinct change that would make the party unrecognizable, but she still sees the same awkward, excitable boys she'd somewhat-reluctantly befriended almost a decade ago as she watches them fall effortlessly into yet another heated debate about nothing as they drag their luggage into the living room. She has to take a long moment to really notice the differences; Will has colorful original tattoos peaking out from beneath each T-shirt sleeve, Mike's hair almost reaches his shoulders, Lucas holds himself more confidently in his thick-soled basketball sneakers that he'd bragged had cost more than all of her shoes combined like it was a good thing, Dustin has a deep farmer's tan bordering on a sunburn from hours of field research. When she looks at them, really looks, they're strangers, these young adults with their wildly-differing styles and chiselled facial features and life experiences she isn't part of, and she has a moment of breathlessness watching them, missing them while they're right in front of her.
And then they all turn to her and Mike, Lucas and Dustin shout over each other demanding she side with them on their ranking of the most dangerous monsters from Lord of the Rings while Will smiles at her ruefully, and her boys are back and she takes a deep, grateful breath.
This doesn't mean she'll go easy on them, of course. “Okay, well, hugs rescinded, I don't want to get your nerd all over me,” she says, making sure they see her eyeroll as she turns away from them with a swirl of her long hair towards Jane. Those deep, star-filled eyes meeting hers almost does make her forget herself and start eagerly in Jane's direction, but the boys laugh and trample towards them, and she's dragged out of her girlfriend's tractor-beam powers by four pairs of arms surrounding her. The party hug as a group, Jane trapped beneath Dustin's strong arm regretfully on the other side of the circle from her, and Max laughs too and lets herself lean her body into the tangle, basking in one of the few things in her life that she can depend on to stay the same.
“Says the girl wearing the Super Mario shirt,” Dustin teases, and it takes her a moment to remember what he's talking about. She still reaches around the circle to punch him in the shoulder Jane's not attached to, though, and the party laughs and breaks their huddle to start individual hugs. She's immediately scooped up from behind, and she shrieks Lucas's name as he spins her around by the waist without bothering to look over her shoulder, kicking her feet in the air as he pulls her away from the group.
“What are you even doing, you already got your hug when I picked you up from the airport,” she complains, wriggling in his iron-clad hold.
“Sorry, didn't realize you were sick of me already,” Lucas laughs. He plops her down on her own two feet, loosening his hold on her waist, but she turns in his arms and hugs him tightly, pressing her face into his chest, and his arms fasten around her again without question.
Although not without comment. “Wow, now I get two whole hugs in one vacation? It's almost like you missed me or something,” he teases, grinning into the top of her head.
“Not even,” Max mutters into his sleeveless shirt, squeezing his ribs as she listens to his familiar heartbeat. She and Lucas still talk at least once a week, whether by emails longer than their class essays or on their cordless landlines so that they could be part of each other's daily tasks, but she'd never realized how physical their friendship had been until it couldn't be anymore.
“I vote we go right to the creek,” Dustin's voice calls cheerfully from across the room. “I need to cool off before we even think about doing anything, Max's car was about a hundred degrees. Celsius.”
“You're welcome for the free ride,” Max snaps back, annoyed enough to emerge from Lucas's embrace to glare at him.
“I'm just saying, you live in the desert, I would have thought you'd have a car with A.C.,” Dustin says, while Jane smiles at Max's annoyance luminously in her distracting shorts behind him.
“I'm just saying, you're a grown adult with a science gig, I would have thought you'd had a car,” Max snaps back.
Even Dustin laughs at that, but when he opens his mouth to retort Mike jumps in, “All right, no more squabbling at our first official adult party gathering. I think we can all agree that we want to get down to the creek first thing. All in favor?”
“Aye,” the party choruses, raising their hands dutifully to vote. Max's heart warms as she looks around the circle at her friends, the overexcited middle-schoolers who lived and died by their Dungeons and Dragons-inspired rules shining through their matured faces as they all fell back into their party dynamics effortlessly.
As the boys start to chatter and root through their suitcases for their bathing suits, Jane meets her eyes across the room and starts towards her. Max grins, her skin already burning in anticipation of Jane's constellations of suns as she reaches for her. “I don't think the creek is deep enough for swimming,” Jane says in a low voice, galaxy-filled eyes concerned as she takes Max's offered hand.
Max laughs, leading the way towards their bedroom as every inch of her that's touching Jane crackles like a Tesla ball. “It's a little underwhelming after living by the ocean, but the creek is as good as it gets around here. It's just to cool off, anyway. Sometimes just getting your feet wet is enough.”
“Then why are we changing?” Jane says doubtfully, glancing behind her at the boys who have started stripping off their shirts, uncaring that the girls are still in the room.
“Because the guys stink, and Chief Hopper will never get the B.O. smell out of the cabin if we don't,” Max whispers conspiratorially. Jane snickers, and as she passes Max to open the bedroom door with the hand not entwined with Max's, the redhead's senses fill with her familiar, earthy scent, and she thinks dizzily that not all bodily smells were bad.
“We should change quickly, so that Hop doesn't change his mind about us staying here, then,” Jane says, glancing over her shoulder with a mischievous look so searing that Max's vision goes white for a heady moment.
Max, not one to turn down the opportunity to be alone with Jane, or to see her in a bathing suit, closes their cabin bedroom door behind them, their friends's voices muffled by the thin barrier.
Familiar, cool hands in her hair coax her back into her body from sleep. She hums, leaning into the touch without thought, and Jane's fingers become more purposeful, carding through the thick hair at Max's temple with gentle tenderness. They curl as Jane leans down to brush her addictive lips against Max's, and by the time Max is awake enough to do anything besides grin dopily into the kiss Jane has eased away and begun her hypnotizing strokes again. Max makes a throaty noise of protest, reaching blindly for her girlfriend when she sleepily blinks her eyes open and only finds darkness, and Jane snickers and trails her fingertips lightly over Max's cheek.
“Shh,” she admonishes, though her whisper is tinged with repressed laughter. Max closes her eyes and pulls the hand on her cheek over her mouth, partially as an apology but mostly to find some part of Jane to kiss. “Come with me,” Jane whispers, and uses the hand cradling her own over Max's face to lead her girlfriend to her feet.
Max doesn't bother to ask where they're going – Jane had already warned her to be quiet, and she'll follow Jane anywhere anyway – but she peers around them curiously as she steps out of her sleeping bag, blinking to try to acclimate to the darkness. In the faint moonlight through the cabin windows she sees the outlines of their friends, twisted into awkward positions in their own sleeping bags across the living room floor, but nothing that might have woken Jane. She can barely see Jane's familiar, breath-taking silhouette in front of her, but she follows the pull on the hand entwined with Jane's, keeping her bleary eyes on the floor so that she doesn't trip over a piece of furniture, or, worse, one of the bodies on the ground.
The unfettered moonlight in the clearing spills over Jane when she opens the front door silently with a little nod of her head and leads her outside. Her perfect legs are bare, pale and glowing blindingly in the dim light, and the hem of the oversized, baggy t-shirt she's wearing as a nightshirt flutters in the slight breeze. Suddenly no longer half-asleep, Max feels her mouth go dry, and she stumbles slightly as she follows the other girl across the porch, no longer watching where she's going. She almost ploughs into Jane's back when she pauses at the railing, and Jane tosses her a smirk over her shoulder before she hops up onto the rail weightlessly and drops Max's sweaty hand. Silently she hauls herself upwards and out of Max's sight without even a glance at the other girl to make sure she's following, and Max's lovesick heart stutters in a panic for a split-second at the loss of her before she gets ahold of herself and scrambles onto the railing after her girlfriend.
Max glances upwards at the dizzying circle of sky above them before she lets her eyes follow the draw of the much more captivating universe of stars in front of her. Jane smiles at her as their eyes meet, reaching both hands out to her as she approaches, and Max's fingers spark as they weave through Jane's. “We didn't have to let the boys stay the night if you want to be alone, you know,” she grins, teasing, and then pulls Jane towards her and muffles her laughter with a deep kiss.
Jane sighs and presses closer. Even after years of this, of being allowed to exist in Jane's orbit, of willingly surrendering the heart hammering at her ribs to get to Jane, of knowing every inch of Jane's heavenly body so intimately her grateful hands know where to land to make Jane's breath catch, kissing Jane is just as impossibly, gloriously world-tilting as it had been the first time. If anything, now she had more to be in awe of, the desire burning through every inch of her now from the memory of Jane's body beneath her giant shirt instead of the idea of it. She slides her hands up Jane's back, pulling her so close that the warm, lithe body she knows so well is flush against her own, but Jane presses the heels of her hands into her shoulders when she tries to ease those irresistible lips apart with her own. “Max,” she says breathlessly.
“Ellie Jane,” Max exhales, because they're the only words she's capable of thinking right now, besides I'm so in love you, and that was more syllables to say when she could be kissing Jane instead.
Jane smiles lopsidedly and kisses her again softly, but draws back before Max can continue what she'd been trying to start. “Yes,” she whispers, lifting her hands from Max's shoulders to stroke her blushing cheeks. “You know me. You're the only person who has ever known me, who has ever really tried to. You trust me, and I trust you. I didn't think that would be possible for me until you.”
Max opens her mouth, caught between blurting out a much less eloquent speech about what Jane means to her and trying to kiss her again, but Jane puts one of her hands over her mouth like she had in the living room, shaking her head slightly. “I thought a lot about what to say,” she says seriously, and Max closes her mouth behind her girlfriend's hand with only a small kiss against her skin and meets her sunlit, earnest eyes to show she's listening.
“I have been listening to our friends and Joyce talk about how college ending means you all have to start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. I'm not graduating, but if your life is changing, mine is too, because we're binary stars. I know how I want our lives to change. What I want our barycenter to be.” She takes her hand away from Max's mouth, and Max's stupid, lovesick heart tries to escape through her throat both from the loss of contact and the spike of worry at the seemingly-prepared speech about changing their shared universe of binary stars.
And then Jane smiles lop-sidedly and sinks to one knee, both hands grasping one of Max's.
Max feels two things so quickly one after the other that they almost occur to her simultaneously.
First, all-encompassing joy, too big and radiant and good for her mere body to contain as it almost brings her to her knees at the idea that Jane, her brave, kind, incredible Ellie Jane, wanted to marry her.
Then, even more overwhelming, a cold, debilitating horror at the realization that she was going to have to be the one that broke Jane's heart.
“Jane,” she croaks. She shakes her head, and her eyes overflow with tears which blurs Jane's beautiful face, but even without seeing she knows it falls. “We can't – we're not allowed -” All of the liquid in her body seems to be pouring out of her, and she blinks away her tears and swallows the saliva choking her and grips Jane's hand with her sweaty one, trying to find the words. Jane was more aware of concepts like homophobia than she had been before she'd come to Hawkins, but now that Max thinks about it they've never really discussed the legal ramifications, beyond their promise to Chief Hopper to pretend to just be room-mates to their bosses and landlord, and her heart sinks to her bare feet as she thinks of Jane imagining their marriage like she has a million and one times, but without the knowledge that it would never happen. “T – Two girls can't -”
The blurry outline of Jane relaxes. “I know we can't get married,” she says gently, and Max's rambling, miserable explanation gets caught in her throat. “Legally. But Trevor told me about something else.” Trevor is their friend from the gay-straight alliance at Max's college, and Max frowns, curious, as she rubs her eyes with her free hand in her desperation to see Jane. “He called it -” She pauses, like she's trying to get it exactly right - “Civil union. Not marriage, but similar. It has most of the same protections for us as a marriage license, and it's recognized in every state. If one of us changes our name so we have the same last name, it will help cover up my identity even more. And -” She smiles, the most beautiful, blinding, genuine smile Max has ever seen. “I want to be with you forever. However we can.”
If Max had been losing fluid before, she can't possibly have any left in her body now. She shakes, from dehydration or happiness or the overwhelming gravity of this impossible new universe she's found herself in where Jane Hopper wants to be with her forever finally being too much for her simple human body and pulling her apart, and she's positive she's only still standing because of Jane's steady hands on hers. “That's what I've always wanted,” she manages, interrupted by her own sobs.
Jane beams, and the tears blurring Max's vision shine so heavenly bright it's painful, but nothing could make Max look away in this moment. “Max Mayfield,” Jane says, voice low and serious even as her own shining tears start to collect on her lower lashes like the stars are spilling from her eyes, “ will you civil union with me?”
Max's knees finally collapse, hearing those words in that voice, the way only her Ellie Jane could have worded them, and she barely manages to propel herself forward so that she lands on top of Jane instead of tumbling off the edge of the building. Jane catches her, and they both wrap as much of themselves around the other as they can. Max's strangled Yes is lost in the thundering of her own pulse in her ears, and she isn't sure if she doesn't feel the roof beneath them because Jane is holding her or because she's flying like every one of her senses tells her she is.
A great clamor of voices brings them back to themselves, and they peer over the roof's edge to see the rest of the party clustered together on the grass in their pyjamas, whooping and jumping in celebration. Max feels her whole body heat up, in a much less pleasant way than it usually does in Jane's arms, and she's almost certain that Jane has to use her powers this time to keep them from falling when Max turns and gestures rudely at them with both hands. “Didn't I tell you creeps that girls don't like boys spying on them?” she yells, like she isn't still bawling her eyes out.
Jane draws her closer protectively, glaring down at their cheering friends. “You're too early,” she snaps, and then turns to Max, galaxy-filled eyes wide and apologetic. “This is why it had to be tonight,” she explains, voice much softer than when she'd been addressing the boys. “A party gathering. Before the party, change meant leaving everything behind. I like having people to celebrate with.” She turns her head to frown down at their friends, and Max shakes in her arms at the loss of that tractor-beam gaze holding her worshipfully still. “They were supposed to wait until after, so you wouldn't feel pressured to say yes.”
“Pressured,” Max wheezes. She buries her burning face in Jane's neck, laughter bubbling inside her too-full chest. “Even if I didn't want this more than anything in the world, those losers could never peer pressure me into anything.”
Jane presses her devastating half-smile into Max's hair, but their moment is broken when Dustin shouts, “Are you two ever going to come down?”
“No,” Max and Jane yell together, not bothering to look up from their embrace.
“Fine, we'll just plan your wedding for you,” Lucas retorts, and Max's heart throws itself against where her chest is pressed against Jane's at the word wedding as the boys laugh obnoxiously. “I call Max's best man!”
“Brides don't have a best man,” Mike points out. “You'd be her maid of honor. Or bridesmaid, since the party is a democracy and we all make big decisions together.”
“Bridesman. Man of honor.”
“These brides don't have a man, that's kind of the point of the wedding,” Dustin says with a grin in his loud voice, and Max smiles as they all laugh together, although maybe she's never stopped smiling. Maybe she'll never be able to stop smiling.
“Civil union,” Jane says pointedly, although there's a smile in her voice, too.
“We know what it really is,” Will says, a teasing lilt in his voice, and even though Max squeezes her eyes shut, she's still blinded by their shared universe of stars, radiant and searing and so real she basks in it with all of her senses.
When she opens her eyes, Jane is wiping a trail of blood on her bare wrist, smile partially tender and partially apologetic and all for Max, and the cabin lights are fading from their supernova back into Jane's eyes.