So this fic's mostly going to consist of short stories, and since Life is Strange is only at episode 3 right now I'm just going to assume that after the events of the game Chloe and Max will still be alive and living a more or less normal life in Arcadia Bay, otherwise it'd be really hard for me to write. Anyway, here's the first one.
Piano Fire
"Dude!"
The door slams shut behind Chloe. Max is only realising this now, she'd forgotten, but Chloe always had a habit of announcing herself whenever she entered a room. She still has it. With most people, Max would be annoyed, but when Chloe does it it's okay for some reason. It's… very her.
Right now though, Max would just like to focus on finishing this stupid paper.
Behind her she hears, "I just took…" - dramatic pause - "The biggest shit!"
Saying something like that is also very her, but not in a good way.
"Thank you for letting me know, Chloe." says Max, not bothering to turn around.
"Hey, no problem."
Max taps a few keys on her keyboard. She copy-pastes something from a Wikipedia article, reads the sentence a few times, then erases it and writes it again 'in her own words.' She changes the words "many people" to "a lot of people." That's two words closer to the minimum word count of two thousand. Max looks at the bottom left corner of her screen.
Words: 431
Goddamnit.
"I remember this!"
Max looks over her shoulder to see Chloe propping herself up on the bed with Max's butterfly guitar in her lap. Chloe has been in her dorm room a few times now. Did she really not notice the instrument until now?
"When you're playing this in front of a crowd millions, Max" Chloe says, strumming a few stray chords. "Remember it was me who taught you."
"I remember." Max says absentmindedly. She's trying to scrape up from the gutter of her mind whatever she can remember about the industrial revolution, and trying to sew those pieces together into something with some substance.
She sighs.
The chords turn into a song, and Max recognizes the melody, though she can't place it. It really was Chloe that taught her how to play. Chloe had been letting Max practice on her guitar, calmly giving instructions and moving Max's fingers with her own to form the right shapes, until mom and dad finally had bought Max her own.
That was just before they moved to Seattle. She'd always think of Chloe when she sat in her room there, practicing.
Chloe starts humming lyrics under her breath, and Max finally recognizes the song. They were dancing to it in Chloe's bedroom just a few weeks ago, the day of their reunion. Chloe told her the name of the song and the band, but she can't remember it, and she's too embarrassed to ask about it again. But she likes it.
She's not going to get anything done like this, not with Chloe here. Then again, if Chloe wasn't here, she'd probably be doubled over her desk with her head in her hands, thinking about Kate.
She turns her head to look at Chloe again. It's a weird image, Chloe with her blue hair and ripped black jeans, cradling that cutesy guitar. Siouxsie Sioux's cat eyes on Chloe's shirt are peeking up at her from behind the wood and the butterflies. The lights over the bed are on and Max thinks this would make a cool photo. But she's always thinking that.
"I didn't see your guitar in your room." She says, not thinking about 1800s child labor anymore.
Chloe stops humming, but keeps playing, going into the chorus. "Nah." She says. "I pawned it."
"To pay off Frank?"
"Yeah," Chloe's hands stop moving and she looks at the wall in front of her with her lips slightly parted, like she's thinking about something. In the corner of the room, Max can hear Kate's bunny rustling in its cage. "You know, I bought a Fender from that place. Had to sell it back, though."
Max can picture that, Chloe with a Fender. It's very her, and would have looked better with Ms Sioux. She imagines it was red, that it complimented Chloe's hair. "The pawn shop downtown, next to the old comic book place?" she asks.
Chloe starts playing something else. It must have been a while since she last held an instrument, Max thinks, but her fingers still move so quickly and easily over the neck. It looks so natural, like it's locked into her memory. "The very one. The guy there's still got that same gross beard too."
Max smiles. She remembers that guy, with the beard and the long hair and the sunglasses, she always thought he looked like a roadie. Then she remembers who gave Chloe her first guitar. She wonders if she's thinking about William right now.
"Are you done yet?" Chloe whines, "You said we were gonna rip shit up."
It was Chloe who said that, not Max. She just agreed to. And "rip shit up" probably just means getting a burger or something, and then going to the junkyard to kill time, or maybe to the lighthouse.
But Chloe makes stuff like that fun, somehow.
"Almost." Max lies. There's no way she's finishing this now, and that it is due tomorrow isn't doing anything to motivate her. She could blame her lousy work ethic on her friend's influence, but that would be a big fat lie. She just doesn't want to do this.
Still, she could do herself a favor and try to get a couple more paragraphs down for when she's tearing her hair out trying to finish it at 2 AM later tonight.
She's gonna need coffee. And sugar.
She gets up and closes the window that's been open for a while now. It's gotten pretty cold. She sits back down.
Chloe keeps playing. In the corner, in her cage, Kate's bunny has fallen asleep, ears folded down the sides of her head.
Max stares at the bright, white screen, trying to make words magically appear, blinking when her eyes start to hurt. Chloe gets bored, lays the guitar aside, but Max doesn't notice this. She doesn't notice restless Chloe pacing around the room, poking through her shelves and drawers, until she hears an unidentifiable, choking sort of sound.
Chloe's crouched over Max's dresser, looking down at something in the top drawer. From where she's sitting Max can't see what it is she's looking at. Chloe's body is blocking her view.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"I didn't know you had this." Chloe says after a moment.
Max isn't sure what she has in that drawer. Some clothes and maybe some books… oh, and that picture.
Max gets up, walking over to where Chloe's sitting on the floor. Chloe pulls her arm quickly over her face when the floorboards creak behind her. Max peeks over her shoulder.
It's that photo alright.
"That feels like forever ago now, doesn't it?" she says.
"Yeah."
They look at the photograph, at themselves smiling back. Little Max and little Chloe, pirates.
"Remember how you kept saying you were too old for trick or treating, and I pretty much had to hold you down and force that eye patch over your head?" Chloe asks.
"I'm glad you did." Max says. "Remember how much candy we got that time?"
"My stomach's cramping just thinking about it."
Chloe doesn't seem to realise how long she's been staring at it, but Max doesn't want to snap her out of her spellbound state. It's kind of funny, and kind of sweet, so she watches the back of Chloe's head stay completely still while she's gripping the photograph with both hands. She's smudging the corners, but Max doesn't mind.
Suddenly, Chloe returns to the land of the living. She throws the photo back in to the drawer and stands up almost comically fast, slamming the drawer shut, breathing out.
"Can we go get that burger now?" she says.
"Yeah, okay."