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Chloe tries not to think about it when she passes Rachel’s old dorm.
Instead, she uncaps Max’s whiteboard pen and (very studiously) starts to give the lonely little stick figure on her board a mustache, kicking lightly at the door.
“Maxine,” she calls upon the resulting silence. “Helloooo .”
It takes a few seconds, and she’s about to start headbutting her way through, until eventually Max opens up with the rattle of a door-handle. She looks kind of flushed, half-frazzled. Her hair’s all ruffled, like she’d just run her hands through it.
Her face perks up into a smile once she sees her, brow relaxing, teeth coming up from her lip where she’d bitten down. “Hey, Chloe.”
Said Chloe swallows. “Took you long enough. What, you require a password or something?”
Her head tilts in mock shock, tone of voice only playful in response. “...Well, you know, you can always leave-”
“Wha- no! Come on, lemme in, you brat.”
“I could. Depends,” she holds a finger up, putting it to her chin. “Do you come bearing gifts?”
“Pocket lint,” Chloe scratches at her head. “And I... think I might have a couple of cigarettes left.”
Max squints with a, “Hard pass,” and laughs. There’s a brief stretch of silence that lingers between them, a smiling Max looking up at her, and it’s only when Victoria’s door slams shut behind them that Chloe remembers she has a mouth to say things with.
“Sorry,” She bends at the knees so she can match her height. “So. May I?”
“I guess,” Max opens the door, wider, to let her in. “Since you asked so nicely.”
Walking in, she finds that her room is so painfully, quintessentially Max Caulfield that she wants to cry. Everything’s slightly disheveled. There are clothes all over the carpet. She has posters and poetry books and pictures everywhere, paper lanterns lighting up her walls. There’s some pussy indie song playing lowly from her speaker, and, God, she’s even got a fucking graham-cracker candle burning in the corner.
She nudges her with her elbow. “Nice digs.”
“Thanks.”
“Although,” Chloe goes on, nudging the little pair of denim shorts by her foot. “It still looks like you torpedoed through a Baby Gap.”
“Mean.”
“Maybe so,” she plops herself down, lengthwise on Max’s couch against the wall. “Am I the first lucky lady to have had the honor of being invited into this charming little love nest of yours?”
With a kick of the door, Max gives a mumbled, “Far as you know.”
And that’s that. It’s as quick as it ever was for the two of them to just sit down, settle back into each other’s company. Max wraps Chloe in a comfortable sort of quiet without really meaning to as she gets back to work, picking up this thing and packing that, letting Chloe just hang back, kick her feet up.
It’s something Chloe still isn’t quite used to- being able to have her best friend back. She can have her pick up when she calls. She can make last minute plans and hear that familiar affectionate gripe come from the other end of the phone again. She can do nothing other than sit in the same room as her and have that be enough, listen to the way she sings under her breath, file through her overdue library books, stare at the stick-on stars on her ceiling. She can nearly knock her guitar over with her foot.
“Shit,” She sits up, letting it fall into her hand. “You still play?”
Max shakes out a t-shirt. “No. Just put it there for looks.”
Chloe rolls her eyes, as if that’s so below her, and puts it into her lap so she can inspect the old thing. It’s clearly been well-loved over the years, a little nick in the neck here and there, stickers peeling up at the edges. She remembers, vaguely, the memory of a tiny Max Caulfield at the age of twelve, already strumming out a handful of chords on a Christmas morning the very first time she picked it up.
“Shit, you suck.” Max glances over when Chloe tries to replicate what little she can remember of the movement in her head. “Curl your wrist a little more.”
“Like that?”
“Yeah,” she squints. “And, um.. move your last finger a little further down.”
She tries, though it’s a little awkward on her untrained hands. “Uh..”
“Hold on,” Max laughs, putting the task at hand on hold so she can make her way over on her knees, one willowy hand reaching over so she can loosen Chloe’s grip. She adjusts the position of her fingers on the neck, spreads them out, gentle as she encourages, eases her digits apart. “Try again.”
Max has that look on her face she gets whenever she’s concentrating. That little wrinkle between her brows. It happens whenever she’s taking a photo, or trying to find the right focus, or the right angle, or the right yadda-yadda-yadda- and this close, Chloe can see that her makeup is all faded, reduced to that sort of after-school smudge underneath her eyes, pretty and tired. It’s difficult for Chloe to perform like that, muscles going tense again under her grip, gaze, producing a half-harsh twang when her thumb drags down the strings. She expects Max to laugh, or maybe to just tell her she sucks again.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she just keeps her right hand in place, her other around Chloe’s own, thumb brushing over the pop of her wrist, just once. “A little softer.”
Chloe looks down at her, producing a strum that’s more even, less cringe-inducing this time, and awaits a reaction. Nothing could prepare her for what she gets, though, for the sound of her voice too soft when she says:
“Perfect.”
Chloe doesn’t know how to follow that. It’s like the walls have suddenly closed in on her so that all she’s surrounded by are Max’s eyes, looking at her. There’s no room for her to even awkwardly squirm in.
So Chloe’s immediately grateful when Max stands, turns, provides a solid, sarcastically familiar place for Chloe to lean against as she adds, “Just a jillion more chords to go and you’ll be a pro in no time.”
This sort of thing keeps happening more and more lately. It isn’t something Chloe could ignore if she wanted to.
And she definitely doesn’t want to.
A “...So,” is all she can manage as she props the guitar back up into its place, laying back out on the couch, resisting the urge to punch something as she asks, “When are you gonna feed me?”
“Hm?”
“Food,” she points at her with one foot, accusatory. “You’re starving me.”
Max is on her side, halfway underneath her bed. She’s swiping for something far back against the wall, eyes narrowed in blind concentration. “Gimme a second.”
Chloe groans and stretches out, personally offended. Both at the fact that Max is neglecting her in favor of a pair of dirty old sneakers, and at the fact that there’s an oppressive lump she suddenly feels pressing into the back of her head.
When she reaches behind her to draw the opposing item free and turns it over in her hands for observation, her offense immediately melts into delight.
“Ooh,” she holds it up in both her hands. “Well, hello. Cute bra.”
“Shit,” She can hear a thump as Max comes up, head hitting the bedframe with her face mousy, the picture of embarrassment and fear. She just rolls her eyes, red up to her ears when she reaches up to bat it off her head as Chloe slingshots it in her direction. “Is this your way of helping?”
“I’m the comedic relief.” She shrugs, hands folding over her stomach. “Plus, I’m here to sit back and look pretty.”
Max whacks her with the shoes she’d been digging for. “Why don’t you look pretty while you’re getting my copy of Moby Dick from the top shelf?"
“Moby Dick?”
“I have a book report due.” A pause. “Don’t look at me like that!”
“You’re such a goody-goody,” She turns her head so she can groan into the pillow, making a point of putting on a show as she asks, even though she knows perfectly well how, “How?"
“You’re tall and lanky.” Max waves her hand dismissively. “You’ll figure it out.”
Chloe mumbles, “Lanky...” lingering on for a few more seconds before forcing herself upright, though not without a whine, and starts to shuffle through the shelf at the top of her closet.
A bunch of her other books have bent spines and underlines and highlights, little notes written in the margins. Always thinking. There are loose photos scattered on top of and in between them, science papers and neglected jewelry. She’s about to start wondering how this stuff even got up here in the first place if she really needs so much help getting her stuff down or if she’s just lazy- that is, until she tosses the book in her direction and comes face-to-face with Captain, sitting slouched on her bed. For a second, she has a brief flashback of Max at five years old, swallowing his eye on a dare.
It’s cute. Not to mention kind of comforting, knowing that Max held onto every stupid little token of their childhood, just like Chloe did.
Not like she’d admit that.
Chloe pokes the empty space where his eye should be. “You kept this little shit?”
“Careful,” Max grins. “He hears every single word you say.”
“I can’t believe you still have this. I thought..” She pauses, laying down on the mattress, arm behind her head. “..you’d’ve gotten rid of it. Like I did with all my kiddie stuff.”
Max stops what she’s doing, turns on her feet in a pause before saying, “Uh-huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, it’s nothing,” She sits straight up. “What?”
“Nothing!” Max bounces onto the bed beside her. She has this look on her face she gets when she knows something Chloe doesn’t, this little sparkle of snark in her eye. Her fingers mess with one of the straps of Chloe’s suspenders and she says, “...I just could’ve sworn that I saw Mr. Sharkie in your closet, the other day.”
Chloe smacks her with her own pillow. Max gapes and smacks her back.
“God dammit,” Chloe’s about to start tackling her, but has to loosen up through a laugh when Max tries to start tickling her. “Don’t make me smother you.”
Max is laughing, and for a second she looks like she should, like a teenager, young and unbothered. These days she kind of exists looking like her soul has been around for too long, and at the same time, not enough- but right now her eyes are just crinkled into crescents as she laughs, light and melodic and in the moment underneath her. Like her happy goes all the way down to her core.
It’s like Chloe’s head is being pulled up from underwater when Max speaks again, only seeing, hearing in blurred shades of sweet browns, mild pinks. Trying to catch her breath.
“Okay!” Max is coming off the tail end of a laugh, gently hitting her in the chest. “If you quit assaulting me, I’ll get you a pizza. Deal?”
“What?” Max’s eyes are offensively blue. Their thighs are slotted alongside each other.
“ Food .” She singsongs, lips quirking, eyes flicking from one side to the other, expectant. “You still like pineapple on yours, right?”
Chloe can’t manage to keep their eyes matched up with one another without wincing, so she shifts her stare to sit at the bridge of her nose. There’s a cluster of freckles jeweling her skin.
“Right.” Chloe squirms, sliding off of her to sit at the foot of the bed. Her voice is a little too high when she says it, but if Max notices, she doesn’t say anything.
Chloe doesn’t really know what to do about this. Or if there’s anything to do. But she figures that a month or so from now, when she thinks about it in retrospect and things have died down, the sky will have cleared up, and she’ll find that it was nothing. Nothing more than Chloe just.. being Chloe.
And Max doesn’t pry. Which is kind of jarring, because Max always pries- instead she just tolerates Chloe when she whispers in her ear, on the phone, to tell the pizza guy to make a delivery to Seymour Butts.
Half an hour passes and there’s a box of pizza between them, a suitcase finally stuffed to the brim with Urban Outfitters, zipped up and ready to go. The X-Files is playing from Max’s laptop, though going ignored as Chloe finds herself rolling her eyes into the back of her skull over Max’s self-doubt for the millionth time.
“You won the damn thing. What the hell are you so worried about?”
“Everything,” a piece of hair falls from behind her ear. “I’m always worried.”
“Which is stupid. Cute girls like you are art-douche aficionado catnip. You’ll be fine.” Chloe reaches over. “I’m stealing your crust.”
“Should I be flattered?” She sits there, now holding onto nothing but air.
“What I’m trying to say,” she tries to say through a mouthful, bumping their elbows together without looking. “Is that I’m proud of you, dork. And you have no reason to be doubting yourself.”
She really doesn’t. She isn’t like one of those kids who decide to make a short film every time they fart. Max always does everything for a reason, and what she does always has meaning, depth, even if Chloe doesn't always get it. Max sees the beauty in everything, everyone else but herself.
When Chloe ends up staying over (because of course she does), she uses Max’s toothbrush, (because of course she does), and Max hates it just as much as she did when they were kids, (because, of course she does).
The thought of going home right now bears too much weight on Chloe’s back for her to even consider it. She doesn’t think she can handle the constant question of if she’s okay . She’s not. And here, with Max, she knows that. She doesn’t unload an armada of questions on her to try and fix things because she knows there’s no real way to, because she knows Chloe, because there’s something about her that just.. changes it. Everything.
Chloe doesn’t do the whole, dump your huge steaming shit out on the table, let’s talk about your feelings, sort of thing, and Max gets that. Gets her.
Plus, Chloe doesn’t want this- whatever it is- to end quite yet.
Some of the girls kind of look at her in the hall like she’s a brand-new blue-haired stain on the Blackwell carpet. She’s pretty used to getting stares everywhere she goes, though, especially lately- but the disapproving mutter of, ‘Look who’s with her,’ and ‘Rachel Amber 2.0?’ is enough to make her grind her teeth. She figures she can handle it though, because with a glare, they at least leave Max alone- and she doesn’t want her to have to clean up the verbal vomit she’s about to spew all over the floor.
Chloe kicks off her shoes and borrows one of Max’s hoodies to sleep in- which Max had actually borrowed from Chloe- and they settle in, legs draped over each other, Max’s back to the wall. Chloe has her own head propped up on one hand, looping her finger around one of the blanket threads, over and over, watching and listening and aching with.. everything. So much that she doesn’t know exactly what to name it.
Max is talking about some project her friend back in Seattle had shot, and really, she’s trying to pay attention. Though how close they are, how fawn-brown fans out against her neck, how their bare legs brush together, shower-soft, makes that last part especially hard. If she were anyone else, it’d be so easy for her to just…
There’s nowhere to look where she isn’t. No refuge. The wall only greets her with a hundred other photographed Maxes, captured in time through a series of dazey polaroids. She’s all over the damn thing, and the stack of books by her desk, and the hand cupping Chloe’s knee.
It’s overwhelming her senses in the most pleasant sort of way. It’s the same sort of feeling she got at twelve, touching the ends of her best friend’s hair while she slept.
Chloe’s paying more attention to her voice instead of her actual words, sleek, soft, sheathing her in security. She still talks with her hands when she can’t find the right words. She still uses her sleepover-voice. She still jostles Chloe when she knows she’s not hearing her and says, “You still listening?”
She lets the question hang in the air for a second before nodding, looping the thread tighter, staring at the red tip of her finger. “Yeah.”
And she will. Chloe’s okay just listening. She never really had a way with words, anyhow.
It’s late when the two of them have quieted down, bodies shoved into the confines of her little school-issue mattress. Clue is playing from Max’s laptop. She’s already starting to doze off on Chloe’s arm and her heartbeat is humming, steady, as a reminder:
Max came back.
Max came back and just had to go and fucking wedge herself right back into Chloe’s life where she belongs, warm and kind and colorful and so goddamn real. The softest human. Magnetic. Made of half-muscle, half-art. And it doesn’t really hurt that she’s a total knockout.
It really is a shame that she doesn’t seem to realize just how unstoppable she is, unshakably kind. It’s kind of annoying. Max is like that girl in those coming-of-age novels they grew up reading that spend the entire time completely unaware of how much power they wield, what sort of effect they have on people.
And Chloe is only able to witness this, scrape against this vessel of breathing eternity because of her, herself, and she wonders, briefly, if it’s possible to see the future in another person’s face.
Chloe has spent the last five years of her life as a walking wound. And with the freshness of Rachel’s fate still festering, Max had gone right ahead, taken Chloe’s hurt into her heaven-strung hands and soothed, salved it without a second thought.
She remembers those last few months, everything leading up to them, winter trickling into spring. Chloe had felt herself going in reverse, going cold, wondering what in God’s name she’d done this time to cause the chasm to split even further between her and Rachel. She’d felt that familiar ache of an unanswered text, half-assed humor, weeks going by where they were only able to tolerate each other if they were drunk off their asses or stoned out of their minds or both...
It’d turned into fool’s gold. And her sticky fingers had grabbed onto whatever pretty thing was within her reach.
Fucking stupid.
Things definitely hadn’t been the same, but she’d never have guessed they’d have been like that. That she was fucking strangers. That she was making plans. And definitely, she’d never have guessed, in a million years, that her art teacher and some twitchy rich kid had introduced her to her demise.
Chloe remembers being told over and over again, that what she’d needed was closure. But she also remembers a few weeks ago, being sat down at the kitchen table, getting told the news and thinking, If this is closure, I don’t fucking want it.
Max had met her at the lighthouse that afternoon without question, held her when she cried on the bench, in the truck, when it got dark, without question. She seems to have a talent for saying the exact right thing at the exact right time, for being able to brush that perfect stroke of her hand up, down the length of her back.
She’d spent the whole time thinking, this is real. This is my absolute, worst fucking nightmare, and it’s real.
But then she’d starting thinking, this is real- Max is here. And she’s holding me and she’s whispering into my hair that everything is going to be okay again the same way she did before she left, and this time, I have the sneaking suspicion that she isn’t lying.
It’s hard to remember how long she’d been gone in moments like that. When it feels like she never left.
Chloe looks over at her, watching as the light flickers and fades and changes, credits starting to roll over her cheeks. Pieces of hair have fallen over face. Her eyes have fluttered closed. Her sleep-puffy lips are parted slightly, one of her cheeks all squished against her arm, her hand clutching at Chloe’s sleeve in her slumber.
Max makes her feel different. Like she’s not quite such a big piece of shit. She’s let herself go soft and yielding and has allowed her hands to help sculpt her into another version of herself that she never knew could exist. The calm after the storm.
But when she thinks about it too much, Chloe’s still mad. Still mad that Dad’s gone, that Rachel’s gone, that Max even left in the first place- she doesn’t think she’ll ever stop being mad. But even more so, she’s caught between wanting to tear the universe apart, and wanting to thank it. Because how in the hell can she hate something that gave this back to her? This miracle, drooling all over her.
So, it’s like this now- either throw caution to the wind completely, confess to everything while too vulnerable to know better, or just try to keep up this facade of total aloofness. Stay quiet, cool, completely unaffected.
Maybe it is better if she doesn’t find out. Too big of a risk.
Unless.. not taking a risk is the biggest risk of all?
Chloe rolls her eyes at herself. She probably knows better than to just sit here in the dark, staring her like a total creep- but there is something about it that makes Chloe feel braver. Less exposed. Which, of course- that’s just like her- the only time she’s brave enough to tell her about her stupid crush is when she’s unconscious.
Although, a quick glance at the suitcase in the corner quickly squashes that courage, causes a little clench of fear to twinge in her chest. Because Max is leaving again. Tomorrow.
She doesn't want to think about what might happen in the morning. What might happen when Max wakes up and realizes all the wonderful things awaiting her in a world far away from Arcadia Bay, far away from Chloe, just like...
It’s too quiet. Chloe has too much space to think. Too much room in her brain. This whole thing is kind of starting to get unbearable. Chloe feels too much. Too often.
Max is coming back on Monday. Max.. loves her? Now, in what way, exactly..
She turns her head back to the screen when she sees Max start to stir, sees her arm stretching out of the corner of her eye as she blindly shuts the lid of her laptop.
“You’re still awake.”
“So are you.” Chloe weakly retorts, a pale, quiet thing in the dark, pawing at the blankets to bring them up underneath her nose.
“What is it?” Max is using that voice everyone did when her dad first died- like if someone spoke too loud or said the wrong words, she would break into fractals. Chloe wants so badly to hate it like she did before- but it’s so soft and it’s so perfect coming out of her mouth, and it’s two a.m., and she’s too tired to fight back against it anyways.
Chloe squeezes her eyes shut, harder. “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Max opens her eyes just to roll them. “You’re a crappy liar,” and then she adds, softer, “Do you need me to do anything?”
“No.” She turns further in to face her, so tired it hurts as she wraps her fingers around Max’s wrist.
I never fucking learn, do I?
“...Alright.” It takes Max a second, but she just ends up putting a hand over Chloe’s own. “Have this crisis in the morning. Okay?”
Max is so warm. She smells like girl-shampoo and clean sheets and she’s all soft in her sleep clothes, and this feels like trust. All Chloe really wants to do is to let herself melt into it, no matter how much it might backfire, no matter how much she might not deserve it, because this thing is the best thing she’s felt in a long while, and she isn’t sure how long it’s going to last.
So.. “Yeah.”
Chloe can do that.