for therein lies true strength

by batterytriplicate

Max, of course, has heard of soulmates. In a world where nearly every movie ends with a person happily ending up with their soulmate so they could go off into the sunset and do happy soulmate things, it was kind of difficult not to notice soulmates. Or: Fang and Max are soulmates, how they meet, and what comes next.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

Vincent van Gogh

---

Max, of course, has heard of soulmates. In a world where nearly every movie ends with a person happily ending up with their soulmate so they could go off into the sunset and do happy soulmate things, it was kind of difficult not to notice soulmates. They were reading the old fairytales about them and Max is just about sick of the other girls in their grade obsessively drawing on their own arms with neon markers to see if their soulmate would write something back. Max doesn't really care if she had a soulmate or not. She's eight. She has more important things to worry about—like making sure that nobody picked on Ella or any of her friends, and getting the best spot for reading time, and making her mom laugh. She hasn't done that much lately.

She's climbing a tree when she first noticed the little black marks forming on the inside of her arm, but ignores it. It might be dirt, it might be a smudgy mark left by the sidewalk chalk Ella had been playing with before she'd started climbing. It wasn't until she was sitting near the tip-top of the tree, where the branches swayed and bent ever so slightly under her weight, when she turns her arm over and nearly stops breathing.

Someone has drawn an inky black feather on the inside of her right arm, resting over the delicate bridge of her veins, touching from near the bridge of her arm to the middle of her forearm, where the green vein faded into skin. It's... pretty. It looks like it was done with the fancy acrylic paint that Mrs. Palmer never ever let them touch, but when she runs her fingers over it, the paint doesn't smudge. It was intricate, and careful, and Max knows deep down that this was her soulmate.

She sits in the tree, tracing over the lines of it, until her mother calls her in for dinner. Max is careful to keep her arm facing downwards throughout the entirety of the meal, fidgeting until her mother lets her go to her room.

When she gets there, though, she had no idea what to write. What to say. This was her soulmate, and, yeah, Max hadn't cared all that much before, but... this was it, right? That's what all the movies and books and fairytales said. But right now, it just felt like a wonderful secret that is all hers. Something she couldn't really get, anymore, with just her mom and two baby siblings. And Max gets that, she really does, she was being mature and adult about all of this, this being her dad leaving for a grocery trip two years ago and only coming back last month to drop off baby Ari before leaving without a word to her or Ella.

She really hates her dad, sometimes. But only sometimes. She wishes that she hates him all the time.

She shoves thoughts of her dad away. This was hers. All hers. Hers alone. What would she say? She isn't that good at drawing or painting, not like her soulmate seemed to be. She has pretty nice handwriting, when she tries. She twists her arm back and forth under the light, admiring it, her own personal little art piece. Someone was walking around with this exact thing on their arm, too. A boy or a girl, she doesn't really care. Boys are kind of icky and if she ended up with someone like her dad she'd pack up her red suitcase and run away. Girls seem okay, though. Most of them are nice and they smell good, except that they all seem so focused on finding their soulmates right now.

She falls asleep before she can write or draw something back, but not before snapping a picture of it with her disposable camera leftover from when they'd driven for almost four hours to the Grand Canyon.

---

Like most eight-year-olds dealing with serious issues, Max's thoughts of her soulmate faded when the ink did, too preoccupied with her times tables and beating Omega in recess races and helping look after Ari. After all, her soulmate would always be there, probably, but she needed to figure out how to multiply her sevens, like, now. She'd taken to wearing sweatshirts, though, as the weather grew slightly colder—well, as cold as it could get in Arizona, anyways. They learn more in their soulmate unit during classes, though, like how nobody really gets how it works and soulmates go way back to the times of the pyramids. She considers, briefly, drawing a pyramid or maybe a hieroglyph for her soulmate, before Iggy-not-James tugs her into a game of tag. She finds more drawings on her right arm, sometimes, which means that her soulmate's probably left-handed, which means it'll probably be easier to find them. Her dad had told her a long time ago that left-handed people were less common than right-handed people.

She spends a long time trying to figure out what to write or draw back to her soulmate, something appropriately pretty or nice-sounding or just cool, really. She doodles lots on her notebooks during class, little galaxies and pyramids and pretty patterns she copies from posters around the room. She reads a lot, trying to find a good quote to place on her skin, the first hint of herself that her soulmate will ever see. But what if they don't even speak English, if she picks a quote? What if they don't like space like she does? What if they don't get it if she draws a pyramid or a hieroglyph?

She ends up not deciding at all, instead watching as the drawings changed with the seasons. Leaves change to snowflakes, change to delicate flowers, change to cartoonish images of popsicles and watermelon slices and all back again. She watches their drawings improve with time and she is still delighted by her secret, by the lovely surprises of the drawings on her skin.

It is the morning of her twelfth birthday. Her mom and Ella and Ari all wake her up with breakfast in bed, birthday pancakes, and a card that Ari and Ella both made that Max proudly pins over her desk, when her eyes fall onto the book that Nudge had left over—some two-dollar soulmate fic, the ones that are housed right by the magazines in grocery stores that say things like LOSE WEIGHT FAST! and CELEBRITY DIVORCE TELL-ALL! and THE PRESIDENT IS SECRETLY A LIZARD! that she and her mom laugh at. She hesitates, before she picks up a pretty blue marker on her desk and draws a little birthday cake with twelve candles on the inside of her left knee and hastily tugs on her jeans and a sweatshirt for school before she can see any sort of response. It isn't nearly as good as her soulmate's work, but it's appropriate for the day and her soulmate's going to have to deal with it.

She has a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich and potato chips for lunch, sprawled out on the driveway with Ella and Ari. She drinks lukewarm lemonade and Ella and Max bounce a bouncy-ball between them as Ari grabs for it, before they give him his own that he bounces firmly against the pavement. Magnolia, their basset hound, wanders over, turning pleading brown eyes for chips and bits of sandwich. Nudge, Gaz, Iggy, and Angel all bike over, so Max makes them sandwiches, too, dumping out healthy helpings of chips onto napkins she shoves towards them. She feels warm and happy and forgets about the small knot in her chest about contacting her soulmate today.

Her mom comes home from work and they end up ordering greasy pizza for dinner, spending the evening sitting out on the driveway, scratching Magnolia behind the ears and busting out the sidewalk chalk, drawing patterns and flowers and little cartoons. Her mom brings out mint chip and sherbet ice cream from the back of the freezer, and Max delightedly eats her combination as everyone else made noises of disgust, except her mom, who just fondly smoothed her hand down her hair before settling with her bowl of sherbet. It was a lovely, warm day, and Max felt full and sleepy and sated by the time everyone had to bike back home, sitting with Ari in her lap, watching the sunset. Her mom and Ella sit, sandwiching her between them, and Max smiles, leaning her head on her mother's shoulder.

"Best birthday ever," she murmurs, and her mother smiles at her, kissing her on the forehead.

"Until the next one, huh?"

Max smiles drowsily. She ends up staying outside while her mom takes Ella and Ari back inside—both of them smacking kisses on her forehead, too—and she tilts until she's lying on her back, staring up at the sky.

She takes in a deep breath, and closes her eyes, before she starts her private birthday ritual. She isn't entirely sure why she keeps doing it.

"Ursa Major, Draco, Hercules, Ursa Minor..."

After she's done counting off the stars, the way dad had taught her, she takes in a deep breath before she stands, not bothering to dust off the chalk dust that lingers in her hair and on her clothes and hands.

When she changes into her pajamas, she catches a glimpse of the near-forgotten doodle she'd drawn on her leg. She then caught a glimpse of the black ink spanning both her feet: HAPPY, on the left, BIRTHDAY, on the right, with doodles of balloons arching up her calves. She smiles before she takes a red pen on her desk, and sits carefully on the bed, writing on her arm.

It was.

---

Oddly enough, they don't start writing back and forth every day, like they seem to do in the books and movies. Her soulmate still doodles every day, more varied than they were as kids, and Max jots down the occasional I hope you're having a good day today or the occasional riddle or joke, which is normally followed by either their guesses or a little ha ha, depending. The occasional story, the occasional math equation with a question mark beside it when they both seem to be doing homework. But mostly, it's still images, which, yeah. Makes sense. It's how they communicated for three years, and they don't seem particularly bothered by her silence. Days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years, and Max still doesn't know if her soulmate is a boy or a girl, or their name, or where they live. She still hasn't told anyone, when she's fourteen. They're still her secret to keep.

One day, though, there isn't any new drawing to greet her. She even strips down and checks her back and the backs of her calves, in case they put it into some new location, but there's nothing. Her skin hasn't been this bare since the day before the feather showed up. She hastily tugs on her clothes, throws her backpack over her shoulders, and scrawls out a hey are you okay? against her left arm. She frets throughout all of school, keeps peeling back the sleeve of her sweatshirt to see if they write a response against her right arm, but nothing shows. She worries some more, and checks again, and worries even more. She draws galaxies spiraling on her legs. She draws the pyramids and hieroglyphs and something that looks a bit like the Arc de Triomphe. She draws and writes, like she's trying to convince herself that her ink will take over theirs, replicate the same warm feeling she gets when she sees a new doodle. It doesn't. It isn't the same, and, for the first time, she regrets not telling her mother about her soulmate, because what if that was it? What if there weren't any drawings anymore?

She keeps writing. you okay? are you all right? do you need help? what can i do? how can i help? are you okay? are you okay? are you okay?

She's in the hall during passing period when Omega, always oddly dull and unmoved about anything, bumps into her shoulder.

"Saw you writing on your wrist," he sneers, still looking oddly blank. "Looking for your fucking soulmate?"

Max's shoulders tense. She isn't a stranger to school bullies—she's the kid of a single mom, her dad left, her friends are all younger than her, she wears secondhand clothes and doesn't pass the archetypical girly girl, which is so ridiculously patriarchal and ingrained into gender roles that it's really mostly ridiculous. But Max has a thick skin, and scowls right back.

"Everyone knows you're soulless, Omega," Max sneers right back. "It'd be a shock if you had a fucking soulmate."

Max will testify that Omega is the one who starts the fight, but Max won't dispute that she's the one that finishes it. They go for it in the hallway, and Max is a good fighter, she's taken the occasional free self-defense class and has been told she has a natural talent or whatever, but the fight ends when Max dislocates Omega's shoulder and he pops it back in when the teachers are separating them, pinning her with his eyes the whole time, and Max has to fight a shudder. Seriously, who even does that?

They call up her parents to school, and Max can tell her mom is mad and disappointed in her, even though they both end up just getting a detention and being sent back to class, well, Omega to the hospital, where she subtly checks herself. Nothing. No response. Max's stomach sinks even lower even as she writes I dislocated some asshole's shoulder today fighting for your honor and covers it with her sweatshirt.

It takes her three more days of rewriting her messages as the ink fades before black ink comes through saying

holy shit, you sound like a badass. you dislocated someone's shoulder?

and Max almost sobs in relief from where she's working over her math homework, and shoves up her shirt so she can write on her stomach, because her arms and legs are basically covered in ink, and writes

he's always been a jackass though, he's had it coming since we were in kindergarten. where the fuck have you been? are you okay?

She waits with bated breath and watches their response bloom up, the words on her stomach so she could read them if she craned her neck at the right angle.

yeah, i'm fine.

And that was it. Max practically exploded, scrawling angrily on her stomach.

you're FINE? that's it?! you didn't write or draw anything for three days! you've never gone that long without checking in! i thought you were—

She cuts herself off, though, but they seem to get her gist.

shit. sorry for worrying you. i mean. i didn't really—i didn't get the chance to, i was kind of in the hospital? my mom's always kind of been in trouble but her boyfriend of the week has turned into boyfriend of two years and he's a dealer, so, we're kind of into some deep shit.

"Fuck," Max breathes out. Her neighborhood isn't exactly straight out of Mr. Rogers, but it's nice enough, and she's never had any experience with any of that stuff. Her mom did a good job of raising her. She writes out fuck. that's intense. are you okay? how bad are you hurt?

i mean. bad. tell me about this guy whose shoulder you dislocated, though, i want to hear more about this badass fight of yours.

So Max writes it all, in tiny little print, and adds at the end,

okay, so for like four-five years i've been thinking of you as a they, and i'd like to know whether you want to go by he or she. or they. people go by they sometimes, right? and then they write

he, you?

and max writes she and her soulmate is a he. It's a ridiculous thing to get happy about, but she is, damn it, her soulmate's a he and even though she doesn't even know his name she knows a pronoun which is a hell of a lot more than before. She's grinning down at her stomach, t-shirt balled up in her hands, and then her mom walks into the room. Max hastily tugs her shirt down, but the damage is done—the sprawl of color along the rest of her skin screams out the picture too clearly. Most of it her own, but he'd doodled the occasional thing when she'd been writing.

Her mother's eyes light up, and Max feels about a thousand times worse about not telling her mom than she ever did about her detention, suddenly feeling very small as her mother exclaimed, "Max, did they just—?" and fell silent at the look in her eyes. Max shifts ever so slightly, and her mother sits down, staring at her and saying nothing at all, before she simply stands and walks out of her room, shutting the door with a precise click.

Max feels paper-thin.

---

Max slumps low in the bus the next day, still feeling like she is about two inches tall. Ari and Ella had caught on to their frosty not-talking attitude with ease and exchanged a loaded, curious glance that Max ignored. But now she watches the stark, black, spidery lines draw sharp, flattering faces on her forearm, and his writing underneath puts 1 and 2 and says which is closest? so Max circles 2, the one with what was pretty close to her nose and jawline and writes that to him, can practically feel his brain absorb it.

you should draw faces more. they're good.

well, the only person i want to draw isn't here to model, so.

Max practically stuffs her fist in her mouth to keep from giggling. He wants to draw her. She disguises her delight and writes you're a sap instead, and he draws a very accurate anatomical representation of a hand flipping her off. She doesn't bother to hide her laughter, then. She draws a corny smiley-face and writes that's the best self portrait i got and he draws a frowny face right underneath and writes

there's mine

and she laughs again, giddy and delighted.

The bus shudders as it stops, and she doesn't look up as Iggy plops down heavy in the seat beside her, instead staring at the faces, both looking back over nonexistent shoulders.

"So," Max says, "I kind of have my soulmate."

Max watches in silence as a half-hearted, abstract sketch appears, in the same stark black ink that doesn't smudge. Iggy doesn't watch, mostly because he's blind.

"Okay then," Iggy says. "Did you freak out?"

Max bites her lip, hesitating, and he looks at her closely.

"Max..."

"I mean," Max mumbles, "I... kind of just took a picture. When I was eight."

Iggy's head thumps back against the bus seat. "Christ, Max!" He looks over at her, and demands, "Were you going to tell me?"

Max shrugs. "Didn't tell Mom, either," she says, picking at an imaginary piece of lint. "I don't think she took it too well when she walked into my room last night to see us writing each other."

"Christ, Max," Iggy repeats, but he sounds more tired. More quiet. Hopefully, more sympathetic. Then his eyes sharpen, and he said, "Eight? Like—"

"Yeah."

He let out a breath through his nose and directs a look out of the window over her head. He remembers as well as she does how hard eight was for their family.

They don't talk much through the rest of the ride, but that's okay; Iggy and Max have never needed inane chatter to fill up the space between them. She thinks it might be part of the reason they became friends in the first place, but, like with most things, the memories of meeting him have fuzzed with age. Her soulmate sketches more along her arms, little stars connected with lines that aren't based off of actual constellations, a skull with a crown of daisies. She likes that one, and taps Iggy's arm to describe it him, inordinately proud.

"He sounds good," Iggy murmured, then looked sideways at her. "Are they a he?"

"He," Max confirms fondly. The beginnings of a frame of what might be ivy was forming, now. Iggy tilts his head, and asks, "What do you know about him?"

"He's tough." Max says. He had to be, she figured, considering the shit he'd put up with, and added, "He was impressed that I dislocated Omega's shoulder."

"The principal was probably impressed by that," Iggy says. "He's a creepy little fucker. I don't think I've ever seen him laugh, not even when we were kids."

Max nods in agreement, and the bus trundles to a stop in front of their school.

They depart to their classes, and he's finished the frame of ivy, now coloring it in with delicate, watercolor-type shades. Max finds herself fishing out her phone and snapping a picture of it, smiling with pride, like, hell yeah, look at this badass design my soulmate made.

She folds herself into her chair at class, and doesn't think of the lesson or her mom or apologies at all, instead watching him shade in his art.

That afternoon, after a long, awkward, and emotionally uncomfortable conversation (for Max) and a long, necessary, cathartic conversation (for her mother) the soulmate situation gets smoothed over with some residual bitterness, which Max ignores it with her usual aplomb. She got the soulmates-and-intentions talk, the importance of stranger danger even if they're you're soulmate, just because people were your soulmate didn't mean they were good people, et cetera, et cetera. She informs him that she and her mom have made up, and he responds by drawing more faces.

He's been doing that more often, lately; the same spidery sort of style, occasionally drawing some sort of gargoyle/monster type to be a dick, which Max will circle, to be a dick right back. She writes back that she wants a self-portrait of him, and he responds easily, you'll have to wait until we see each other. She rolls her eyes. They don't exchange numbers or anything; why should they? They can talk on their skin. An oddly sentimental part of her wants to get his number, just to hear his voice, and then she realizes how sappy that sounds and buries the idea.

They write more about their personal lives; Max tells him about her mother and her siblings and her Flock, but not about her father, and he tells her about what he calls his gang (they aren't really a gang, they just think they're funny. you'll see, i guess) and his mom and bitches about his mom's boyfriend, writing to her in the dead of night in blurry, slanted writing that Max worries and fusses about even after he writes an I'm fine back.

He draws more after those nights, Max notices. Anatomical hearts and skulls and flowers, the spidery faces and things that might just be around him, with sharp flattering angles. For him, it is a gradual worsening.

For Max, it is a sudden tailspin into uncertainty and chaos when she walks in from school just after she turns sixteen and drops her backpack on the chair near the door, like always, and walks into the kitchen to grab a snack, like always, except it isn't like always, because her father isn't always there calmly sipping coffee out of the mug he'd always used but had vanished with him.

He observes her with cool, pragmatic eyes, and Max can feel her jaw slackening. "Max," he says.

"What the fuck," Max spits out at last.

"Language," he says. He stares at her, and apart from a few new wrinkles and some touches of gray around his temples, it's him, exactly as she remembers. She is frozen in place, her brain stuck on a loop of whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck and she says, "What are you doing here?!"

He lifts his mug. "Coffee."

Max could strangle him. Her fists clench, and he continues, blandly, "I needed a place to stay."

"After eight years?" Max hisses.

"The length of time I was gone doesn't dispute the fact that I need a place to stay. Besides, my name is on the lease."

Max blinks, actually thinking. Mom always locks the door, because she's the last to leave, and normally someone is home before Max—

"How did you get past the locks?"

He lifts a key.

"Where—"

"You didn't think I was just going to spring this on your mother, did you?" he says.

Max grits her teeth. "Gee, Dad, I didn't think you were coming back at all."

"No, nor did I," he says, almost agreeably, and nods to a framed photo of the four of them. "How're Ari and Ella getting on, then?"

"Like you care."

"They're my children."

"Doesn't mean that you care. They've barely met you."

"And what about the child that has?" Her father asks, tilting his head up to meet her eyes evenly. She wants to scream at him; how dare he look her in the eye? How dare he act as if he's done nothing wrong? How dare he? "I see you've gotten a soulmate."

Max feels like she can barely breathe. How dare he? How dare he?

"How long has it been, then?" He muses. "That you've been able to write each other."

"You don't have the right to know," Max spits out.

He sighs, as if she's being the unreasonable one, and says, "Once you've stopped your teenage histrionics, I hope we can have a civil conversation."

"Histrionics?!" Max snarls. "You left, without a word, for eight years, and I'm not supposed to have any emotion about it? Well, sorry, Dad, but the rest of the world isn't as emotionless and cold as you! Sorry if it isn't nearly as convenient, but you're going to have to deal with a lot more than me if you're going to stay here!" Max whirls on her heel, and shouts, "Tell Mom that I'm going out!"

"Out where?" He demands, but it's not the impassioned declaration of a parent post-fight. It's like he just wants to know to know, without any sort of consequence.

"OUT!" She screams, and slams the door behind her. She feels like collapsing on the stoop, but she composes herself, and sets off at a brisk walk down the street, and then just keeps going.

Actually, she keeps going until she hits upon Ella, surrounded by three bozos, and her blood runs wild as she snaps out the first punch.

The fight devolves, and her blood sings, and she is reckless and wild but free in that moment, no worries or cares beyond the next punch or kick or elbow. She keeps fighting until the last of them falls and nearly giggles, full of adrenaline to the point that she wants to keep going, run until she finds the next fight and conquers that one, too, but she sees Ella face and stops.

Ella stares mutely at the boys on the ground, ten at Max, face twisting with anxiety. "Don't tell Mom?"

"I won't if you won't," she says. "And I'm not going home. Not today." Ella's face twists more, until Max draws in a deep breath and says "Dad's back."

Ella's eyes widen, and Max continues bitterly, "He needs a place to stay. Apparently." She takes a step forwards, and nearly crumples, looking at her ankle in shock. It triggers the rest of the pain in her, everything slamming forwards, and she has to squeeze her eyes shut and take a deep breath before taking a few more steps, limping all the while. Ella tucks herself under Max's arm without her asking, and they walk together, wordlessly, to Iggy's house.

"Get Ari from soccer practice," Max tells Ella, once she reaches the front stoop. "I'm not letting him near D-Jeb."

The demotion from father to Jeb feels good, almost as good as the fight. Ella nods, too, and Max limps her way up to Iggy's door, noting that his parent's cars are gone. She knocks. Iggy opens the door, Max says "I got in a fight" and Iggy lets out a long stream of curse words.

"What the hell happened?!" He demands at last, grabbing her by the shoulder and tugging her into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Well," Max says, running her tongue over bloody teeth, "Ella was cornered. I took care of it."

He sits her down at his kitchen table and takes out a first-aid kit, then frowns at her. "Why aren't you home? Your mom—"

Something in Max's chest tightens. You didn't think I was just going to spring this on your mother, did you? Which meant that Mom knew. Without any sort of warning, or conversation, or anything. Just let him back into their lives like he hadn't done anything wrong. "No."

"Whoa, okay," Iggy says, sightless eyes staring at her, a disinfectant wipe in his hands. "What sort of fight did you have with her?"

"A fight," Max says. "Yeah. Wrong parent, though."

It takes Iggy a moment to get that, and then he curses some more, before he says, "Fuck, Max—"

"Yeah. Just sitting there, sipping coffee. Said he needed a place to stay. Tried to ask me about—him. Said I was having teeange histrionics."

"Fuck him," Iggy says immediately, and warmth swelled in her chest. Iggy was the friend to go to to scream at the sky together, to cuss and bicker and snipe at each other until they suddenly weren't anymore, a sudden swap to the closest thing to emotional as either of them were capable of. He got that anger grounded Max more than anyone, maybe even more than herself. "Fuck him, why the fuck—after all these years—"

"Beats me," Max says, and snorts, gesturing to her face, Iggy leveling her with an unimpressed look as he runs the wipes over her cuts, checks over her (just twisted) ankle, and pauses as a bit of ink blooms up on the same ankle. Like he could see it. Max's eyes close.

Iggy pauses, before he asks, "Did you tell him about it?"

"No."

Iggy leaves it at that, finishing wrapping up her ankle in silence instead, and the door slams open.

"Max, Iggy! Oh, my God—"

Iggy and Max share a wry look. Here comes Nudge, jabbering away the whole while.

"—saw Ella heading back up to the school, and she says we should have a night all together here since your parents are gone on vacation, Iggy, if you're okay with that, except you don't have a choice because—oh, my God, Max, your face!"

"How bad is it?" She asks curiously, turning towards Nudge, who grimaces and says "Bad" and just flops down on the couch, talking about her day and the idiots that cornered Ella and everything except for the glaring elephant in the room. She spots Max's soulmate, writing more on her leg, above the wrap, and Nudge squeals.

"Can I write him, Max, can I?" She begs, and Max laughs, before she says, "Don't say anything too embarrassing, okay? I have a reputation to maintain."

"No, I'm gonna write him about the fight," Nudge says back happily, grabbing a Sharpie from the counter, and settling down next to Max. "And about me, of course."

"I've told him about you, though," Max says. Nudge gives her another smile and starts writing on her leg. Not long after that, Gaz and Angel walked in, Ari between them, and they settle to listen to Nudge muse about what to write to her soulmate, and they cluster close to read his responses. Ella comes in last, adding, "Mom knows where we are" and not saying anything about the Jeb situation.

They write all up her legs, and they all cluster together to watch a movie, Ari drawing a Wolverine-looking creature on her arm, and it's just... nice. There's no awkward silences or pauses, no uncertainty over the Jeb situation; it was as if he hadn't come back at all. It was like they were all just hanging out, like any other day, except with the new aspect of them writing Fang and the aches Max grimly resigns herself to over the next few days. They fall asleep in a cluster, too, laid over with blankets, bowls of popcorn and chips littered throughout, legs and arms thrown all over each other.

If only that sort of ease would last.

---

The days following the sleepover, when the three siblings eventually had to return home, were not easy. Max sticks to her stance of calling him Jeb, Ari's uneasy around him and crowds to her side, Ella takes Max's side and defends her fiercely if Jeb makes any sort of comment. Her mother's face is tight and tense and drawn, the more her father stays, and no matter how often Max asks, she won't reveal why she is letting him stay. Jeb, however, seems to take no issue with any of this, continuing with snide comments and picking fights with Max alone, talking about potential and irritating her about school and her future and destiny, which Max thinks is a load of bullshit, especially coming from him.

He sits up late at night in the kitchen with the lights drawn low when he thinks nobody else is awake and works on his laptop, or paperwork. Whenever one of them asks where he's been all these years, the most informed answer they get is California, and when they ask what he's doing, he says, my job. He never answers what the job is. He never explains the paperwork, or why he has a burner phone, or why he had to go shopping for new clothes as soon as he came back to Mesa. To her, it just kind of screams bad news, especially when she asks him pointedly about it at dinner, where there are witnesses.

It's a particularly bad fight, and she storms out of the house as Jeb makes a comment that if he was in charge, she'd be sent packing. He had gone incredibly pale when Max asked, and blustered and stormed and said that it was top secret, which was just so incredibly suspicious that she could have screamed. Well. She had. But after she sits in the same tree that she first saw him draw for her and writes out the whole explanation in the crooks of her arms.

He responds by writing more detail than she's ever read about his mother and her boyfriend. It's getting worse, he says. It's getting worse. He's hitting his mom and they're squatting in a house, now, because they've been kicked out of their apartment, and he stepped between the boyfriend and his mother and that's why he was in the hospital that day and Max's blood runs cold, and she just wishes she could send that boy a hug. And that's when something in her head clicks.

I'm about to suggest something crazy.

what sort of crazy are we talking, here?

like. i steal my dad's credit card, drain it of cash, we buy bus tickets to meet midway, and figure out life from there sort of crazy.

He doesn't write back for a long time, so long that Max sort of worries that he's decided that he doesn't want to associate with her anymore and is capping up his pens forever. Then:

I live in Washington, D.C.

Max laughs, near giddy, and writes Mesa, Arizona. So, like, somewhere Midwest?

yeah. okay. holy shit, are we really doing this? are we really—

running away to meet each other like in some dramatic soul-mate chick flick? you bet your ass.

holy shit

HOLY SHIT

And they write back curse words, back and forth, Max giggling and wild with the exhilaration of it. Not for the first time, she wonders if she's some sort of adrenaline junky. Probably.

Then they get to planning. Max digs out her phone and writes out plans for them to meet in some tiny town in Arkansas, and decide to leave in three days' time.

Max is buzzing with it, with the secret, even as she goes to school and chats with Iggy and her mother and everyone else, not telling a soul, not telling anyone the meaning of the bright red THREE that spans the back of her right hand. He draws buses and cars and maps, now, not his usual doodles, and she hopes he's excited as she is. She remembers, now, the thrill of keeping his very existence a secret, except this is more. She packs her things up in her school backpack, bare minimums for clothing and toiletries, and just has to lift her dad's wallet.

That night, he has his back turned, and is talking very low and intense with whoever's on the other line, so Max, with feather-light fingers, opens the wallet he's left on the kitchen table, nabs the card, and slips out of the window to the nearest few ATMs.

She buys the tickets with some of the money she put into her account, password protected, and puts the rest of the money into a Ziploc bag, stuffed to the very depths of her backpack. She hopes he doesn't check his account.

The next two days pass by with the speed of molasses, and the script on the back of her hand is replaced with TWO and ONE. They won't meet the day they leave, sadly; but they'll arrive in Arkansas on the same day, so it shouldn't be too long of a wait. Post-bus ride.

She wakes up that morning, and eats breakfast like always. Hugs her mom goodbye like always. Sees Ella and Ari off to their buses, pretending that she's going to catch a ride with a girl she has a "group project" with when Ella questions why she isn't getting on the bus. Instead, she changes tracks, and heads for the Metro stop, presenting her ticket to the woman, and steps aboard the bus, carving out a spot by a window, towards the back.

She writes I can't believe this is really happening. I'm on.

Then she turns off her cellphone, wary of the calls that will inevitably come through, and waits for him to write back. He does a half hour later, after Max's bus has set off.

On. This is surreal.

They write back and forth, about the things they see, where they'll meet when the buses stop, (a Starbucks, just across the street from the stop, Max had looked it up on her phone when they were planning and thought of the overpriced latte she'd promised to buy him) about the things on the bus, play hangman and tic-tac-toe. A woman passing smiles fondly at her scribbling on her arm, and Max accepts that. She'd rather be adorable than be that suspicious teenager on a bus.

The bus drive is the longest experience she's ever had. She sleeps fitfully and can't keep her concentration on any of the distractions she'd brought with her, and knows that she can't open up her phone, lest she be bombarded by worried texts, and calls, and voicemails. The only thing she can focus on is her arm; is his writing, his sketches, wide and expansive now, covering her. She thinks it's so he can tell immediately who she is, which is also a common theme in cheap soulmate flicks, though normally they have a friend write something on their foreheads instead. She's glad that they aren't getting that cliché. She draws stars back, mostly, which is the extent of what she can do that actually looks somewhat decent, actual correct constellations; Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Hercules. She draws them in a silver Sharpie, and they look rather pretty, if she says so herself. The bus keeps going, and a few people see her drawing and ask the obvious question.

"Going to meet them?"

Max grins at them, unable to help herself, then looks back at all the drawings. "Yeah."

The responses range from as brief as "I wish you both the best" to long-winded tales of how the person met their own soulmate. Eventually, when it feels like everyone on the bus has congratulated her in some way, she is left alone, and she writes him about the flood of well-wishers. He responds in kind, and Max hesitates, before she writes, do you know what you'll be wearing when you get off the bus? just so I know.

all black and a scowl. you?

Probably a lavender sweatshirt and a horrible yet kickass attitude.

She can't believe how slowly the bus ride is going. She wishes she had someone else with her to distract her from it, from all the what ifs of a situation. what are we going to do then? what if he doesn't like me? what if someone's been running some really long scam on me and that's why we've never talked on the phone or exchanged pictures? what if my soulmate is actually a kidnapper? It would be just her luck, she figures. She hesitantly clicks on her phone, sees it come alive with buzzing, and hastily composes an I'm safe, please don't call the police text to send out to everyone before shutting it off again.

Occasionally, the bus driver will point the occasional thing out, they'll stop and someone will get off while someone gets on, but for the most part it's just boring. She tells him as much and he responds in kind. They end up mostly whining to each other.

A day passes, and Max is practically vibrating as they pull up to their stop. She's one of the first off the bus, running across the street, straight into the Starbucks, where she scans her surroundings. Her heart sinks.

She's the first one there.

There's nobody in all-black. People are in green and blue and have black jeans, but nobody is decked out in all black. She deflates slightly, and goes up to order a coffee, where she settles in at the bar in front of the window, tapping the bar impatiently, heart catching in her throat every time she sees a bus pull up, feeling it inevitably fall whenever someone doesn't cross over to the Starbucks, and when they do, to see that they're wearing color.

She's draining her coffee when she hears the door open, and looks over and immediately stands, mouth opening.

He's wearing all black.

There's a peek of silver on his forearm. The same place hers is.

The first thought in her head is holy shit, this is him. The next is there's no way I could be this lucky.

Because he's, well, he's hot. He has olive skin, and black hair, and near-black eyes. A strong jawline, and Max can tell by the way his shirt fits is that he has to be muscular, with broad shoulders that narrow down to a v. He has to be over six feet. Basically, he looks like a male model for Sulky Artists Anonymous.

She steps forwards, her heart jackhammering loud, and his eyes land on her. They blow wide, but that's the only indication she gets that he knows that it's her.

They walk until they're just standing in front of each other, staring at each other. Max has always thought of herself as rather plain; hair somewhere between blonde and brown, brown eyes, maybe a bit taller than normal but still with a pretty average stature. But the way his eyes are flying over her face, she feels heat build behind her cheeks. She's never needed attention to feel validated, but the way he's looking at her makes her feel... pretty.

Max clears her throat, and sticks out her hand. "Max." She says breathlessly.

There is the slightest twitch of a smile on his face, until he sticks out his hand and says "Fang."

"No way, your name isn't Fang," she scoffs, before she can help herself.

He grins, and removes his hand from her grip, before taking his finger and pushing up his lip, leaning forwards. His teeth are shockingly pointy, especially his incisors, and he shrugs, letting his lip fall. "Apparently, they were there when I was born. So. Fang."

Max laughs, and he smiles slightly at the sound. "That's the weirdest name story I've ever heard."

"Yeah, well," he says. They lapse into awkward silence, before Max says, "I think I owe you an overpriced coffee and a pastry."

"You remembered?"

"Yeah, you kinda went out cheap on that one," she says, and they go up to the register together. Indeed, he gets a ridiculously sugary coffee and an equally ridiculous pastry, and Max goes with another coffee and a bagel. It's still awkward, even as they're sitting beside each other at the bar and Max kind of hates it. They've been writing each other for years.

That is, until he looks at her face, and frowns, ever so slightly, before tilting his head, and his eyes went decidedly dark. He spins in his chair, and cups her face in his hands. Max feels her breath catch in her throat, and also is sure to clench one of her fists in case she needs to punch him.

"Who did this to you?" He says, and his voice is a distressingly sexy rumble in the back of his throat. She realizes, belatedly, that his thumb is stroking over one of the healed scratches from her fight.

"I mean, I knocked them all out," she says, breathlessly. Their faces are very close. "It was kinda awesome."

He looks at her, and Max levels her with her own. "C'mon. I told you I dislocated a guy's shoulder. You think you're the only one who can throw punches?"

He blinks, startled, and then seems to realize how close they are, too, and lets go of her face. Neither of them leans back. "I mean. Do you... fight a lot?"

Max shrugs. "If there's a fight, I can stop it or I can end it. I don't go looking for trouble—well, no, that's a lie. I don't go looking for trouble all the time."

He laughs. His breath smells like expensive-ass coffee and strawberry pastry. Then he seems to realize how close they are, too, and lets go of her face, but doesn't stop leaning close.

"God, I can't believe it's you," he says. "After all this time..."

Max laughs, too. "I know," she says. "I can't, either."

This particular turn of phrase seems to alert the patrons of the Starbucks that they're first-meeting-soulmates, which immediately comes with a round of applause that makes Max blush a little and Fang duck his chin. A barista ducks out from behind the bar and offers them a free refill on their coffee, which Max agrees to, and tells him, "I can't bankroll you all the time." Fang rolls his eyes in response.

So they sit back at the bar, and feel eyes on their back, and Fang says. "So. What now?"

It makes Max stop. What now, indeed. She'd been so caught up in the whole running away from home! thing that she hadn't really thought of what came after. She doesn't think she wants to stay away forever, and she tells Fang as much, who nods, looking slightly downtrodden. That's when Max notices he has more bags than she does, and when the idea comes.

"Stay with me."

He turns to stare at her. "What?"

"Stay with me," she repeats, the idea gaining traction, a bit like how a bus with its brakes cut does while rolling down a hill, but hopefully with less screaming and injuries. "We have a spare room, and a couch. My mom's a sucker for kids who need help, my siblings are kind of little shits but they'll probably love you. The Flock's wanted to meet you for forever. Come with me. Get on a bus back to Mesa."

He stares at her some more, and he can tell he's mulling it over. Max takes a deep breath in, before she says, "I don't want to leave you."

"I don't want to leave, either," he says, and his eyebrows pinch together. "I mean... I don't want to be a burden."

"You're my soulmate," she says. "Listen... if it'll make you feel better, we can call my mom. I kind of didn't tell anyone I was leaving."

He groans, tilting his head forwards, black hair falling into his eyes. "Oh, of course you didn't. I've been shackled to a lifetime of trouble, haven't you?"

"Yeah, but it's trouble with me, which means it'll be way more fun," Max reasons, fishing out her phone, and dials her mother's number, leaning back against the bar as she hears it dial. Her mom picks it up almost immediately.

"Maximum—"

"Hi, Mom, I'm in Arkansas and totally, one hundred percent safe," she says in a rush, and tilts her head to grin at Fang. "I kind of went off to meet my soulmate."

Her mother's bluster stops, all at once. "Your...?"

"Yeah," Max says. "He's..." She puts her hand over the mouthpiece. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"—sixteen, like me, and I want to bring him back to Mesa, Mom, he's from D.C."

Her mother is silent, for a worringly long time, but Max doesn't say a word, either. At last, though, after Fang has been staring at her for what feels like hours, "Let me talk to him."

Max holds out the phone. "She wants to interrogate you."

Fang hesitates, then takes the phone, holding it cautiously up to his ear, as if it would bite him.

"….hello?"

Fang pauses, then grins, suddenly, a sharp slice up his face showing a few of his pointy teeth before it smooths over into the carefully constructed apathy he'd been wearing for most of the day. "Yeah, hers. She have 'em often? I feel like I should be given fair warning."

Max's eyes narrow at him.

He is silent for a while, before he glances at Max, and starts, "Well." He pauses and clears his throat again. "Well—my life's kind of shit, so I'd... appreciate it a lot? I mean, if you have a couch or something. Or the floor. I've slept on worse." He pauses, and then tacks on, "Ma'am?" like a questioning afterthought.

More chatter from her mom, and Max wishes she could tap into the phone just to figure out what she's saying. She doesn't need much when the slightest flush touches Fang's cheeks, and that's just not fair, when Max blushes she looks like a fire engine and for him it just makes him look... oddly coquettish? She doesn't know how to describe it, other than fuck, he's really hot, I hit the fucking jackpot with this one, didn't I? Fuck yeah.

"Uh, no. No. Ma'am." He says, and Max presses her lips together to keep from laughing at him. It's pretty obvious that they're going to be staying in separate rooms, but that's okay, they can sneak out whenever Max isn't grounded, so probably when they're forty.

Fang's face breaks out in relief, and she thinks, for the first time, that he expresses his feelings with minutiae of expressions. She seems oddly in tune with them, which makes her chest burst with a pride that pretty much went fuck yeah, soulmates! and then she told herself to dial it the fuck back, they'd just met.

"You won't regret this, I swear," Fang says happily. "Thank you. Thank you so much—oh, yeah, she's right here. Thanks." He passes the phone to her, and she winces before putting it up to her ear.

"Hello?"

"You're so very, very grounded," her mother informed her severely. "But he can stay."

Max sighs in relief. "Yeah, I kind of figured," she admits, before she grins and says, "Thanks, Mom."

"When are you getting back?" Her mother says, sounding stern, and Max falters. "Um," Max began, "we'll get tickets? I don't really know yet. I'll text when I know. Um—love you."

It's a dirty trick, Max has to admit; her mother is normally the one to initiate the whole "Love you!"/"Love you too!" thing, even via phone. She hears her mother's very slight intake of breath that indicates that she notices.

"Love you too," her mother says. "Hurry back."

"I will." She says, and hangs up, before she grins at Fang. "All right then, roomie," she cheers, putting up her hand for a high-five, and he looks amused as he smacks it.

"I'll have you know, your mom threatened me with bodily harm if we ever spend the night in the same room," he says.

"She's really a huge marshmallow," Max says reassuringly. "The person you've got to worry about is my Dad, Jeb, who's an asshole. We get into screaming matches every dinner. It's super fun."

Fang grimaces, and says, "Why?"

"He fucked off before you wrote for the first time, dropped off my baby brother with just a note, and has now fucked right on back, complete with skeevy paperwork and suspicious phone calls," Max says, with a breeziness she doesn't feel. Fang grimaces, but drops it, and says instead, "So, tickets?"

"Right," Max says, and opens up her laptop.

Tickets bought, coffee drunk, and with five hours to go, they're stranded in Middle-of-Nowhere, Arkansas, and they glance at each other.

"So," Fang begins, before shrugging. "I dunno about you, but I don't want to spend the next five hours in a Starbucks."

"Me neither. Do you just... wanna walk around, for a while?"

"Sounds good," he agrees, and hefts his bags all up onto his shoulders, and Max takes her own, and they do indeed walk around for a bit.

"D.C., then," Max starts off, after they've been walking for a few minutes.

Fang slants a look at her. "Arizona." He continued, dryly, "Must've been hot."

"You must've met a ton of politicians," she fires back, and he grins back, before he pauses, tilting his head, and Max follows his gaze to a gas station. They both fall into step, walking in, and Fang says, "We could just get a ton of food. Find a grassy area somewhere, have a picnic."

Max's lips twitch. "A picnic," she agrees, and fuck, this sounds like a date?! and just asks him about what chips he wants to get.

They do end up getting a ton of food, to the point where the tattooed woman at the checkout counter has lifted her eyebrow, piercing adding the whole incredulity of the situation, and when Fang plunks down his share she mutters "Seriously?" under her breath. Max just smiles blandly at her in response. Fang pauses, before he fishes two Ring Pops out of the bin at the front, and Max fronts the bill.

When they get outside, they find a little area under a tree, and Fang tugs out an all-black blanket to spread on the ground, and Max dumps the food between them. He plucks up a Ring Pop and waggles his eyebrows at her, and says, "You think your mom will let us share a room if we've got these to show for it?"

Max's heart thumps unevenly in her chest. She tries to summon up a witty retort and fails miserably, instead taking one of them with a badly-hidden grin on her face, sliding it on her left ring finger, or at least, as far as it'll go.

"It's too small, dear," she drones, and he rolls his eyes.

"Sorry, honey, I'll get it taken to the jeweler."

Max snickers, and grabs a Dr. Pepper, and they both wordlessly lay back on the blanket, staring out on the street, silent as Max takes sips of her soda and Fang tears into a bag of Cracker Jacks. He leans back and tosses it into his mouth, and Max grabs for the bag.

"I'm gonna throw 'em into your mouth."

"I get to do it to you too, then," Fang says, and they both sit up, reaching for the bag, and end up emptying. They catch it, more often than not, but they both laugh obnoxiously at the other person when they miss it. Once they empty the bag, Max pauses, before she says, "So, if you're living with me, you should probably know everyone," and pulls out her phone, scrolling through photos to show him and tell him about everyone and occasionally interrupt herself to laugh and tell him a story, then glances at him and realizes that he isn't looking at the phone, he's looking at her, with black eyes wide and this is not fair, he's too hot, how is she supposed to focus on anything—

He leans forwards, and Max basically just freezes, eyes wide open as he presses his lips against hers for the first time, and it's... well, really, cringe-y, honestly, because Max cannot get it in her to move and Fang is kind of receding every so slightly and she's still staring at her. They break away, and Max laughs, awkwardly, heart still thudding loud anyways.

"Um," Max says, "can I try that again?"

He blinks at her, and Max is the one to lunge forwards, this time, not at all suave and smooth like he'd done it, but enthusiastically and with her hands twining up in his hair, God, it's really fucking nice hair, what the hell, and her teeth clack against his but it's still awesome, anyway, and he kisses back, too, and God this is really fucking amazing—her brain can't really seem to come up with any explanation, everything's shorted out except the parts of her brain that are shouting about how hot he is and how amazing this is and she would gladly do this all day—

They have to break apart to breathe, and yeah, his eyes might be near-black, but Max can tell his pupils are blown wide and feels her pride inflate with it.

"Um," he says, and pushes back his hair.

"Wow?" Max guesses.

"One way to put it," he agrees. "So, I mean, we're... pretty obviously not platonics, are we?"

Platonics were a pretty rare breed of soulmate; someone with all the bells and whistles of a soulmate, but basically with the insurance of having the best friend you'd ever had, ever, is the way she remembers it from the soulmate unit they'd done in school forever ago.

"Yeah," Max agrees. "Not platonics."

He let out a low, whistling breath. "Okay," he says, and leans forwards again.

Max thinks she would gladly spend the next few hours making out with him, and also the majority of the bus ride, but when they break apart, Fang says, "We should probably... get to know each other, or whatever."

"Right," Max agrees, breathing heavily. "That." She waggles her phone. "I was showing you people, but..."

He rolls his eyes, and pulls her closer so she's nestled in his arm, head resting against his chest. "Tell me 'bout 'em."

Mollified, Max does.

---

They end up eating a vast majority of their food, and take the rest on the bus five hours later, settling, wordlessly, near the back. Fang claims the window seat, tucking away their bags, and they settle together. During the past five hours, there had been more kissing, true, but mostly just talking. Max figures out the whole Fang's Gang thing, with his friends Kate, Ratchet, and Star, who he hadn't told that he was running, and Max tells him about the Flock, and a bit more about her family situation, and Fang immediately agreed that the whole Jeb thing sounded weird, and "I've spent most of my life around dealers and other criminal shit, okay, I know when I see it" so Max figures she has backup that is a bit more intimidating than her little sister.

They end up just watching an old movie Max has on her laptop for a while, and then talk a bit more, which is more Max's area, apparently. His silence from this morning wasn't just nerves, and wasn't that bizarre? It feels like they've known each other longer, which, in a way, she guesses they have. He then grabs her arm and a pen, narrowing his eyes in concentration, and starts drawing on her forearm. He is left-handed, like she'd thought all those years ago, and fights off a grin as she sees the familiar skull-and-daisy-chain design.

"I'd get a tattoo of this, you know," she tells him. "You're really good."

He smiles down at her arm, and Max grins even wider, because this isn't the barely-there tilt of his lips that she's seen most of the day, it's a smile with teeth.

"I think that's what I want to do."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He says, and this time it's him that looks up to Max staring at him, and the same blush briefly touches his cheeks, and he clears his throat and continues drawing, the same design blooming up on his arm.

Once he's finished the design to his satisfaction, they settle in to watch another movie, Max dimming the lights above them as it's become night in the bus and several of their fellow passengers are folding up their sweatshirts to sleep on. Max nudges up the armrest and rests against his side, to better see the movie, and also to touch him, shamelessly, and the way his arm wraps around her waist seems to show the same motive in him.

Max falls asleep without realizing.

She wakes up leaning against his shoulder, his lips pressed into her hair, and he might have been drooling on her a little bit. Which, normally, ew, gross, get off, but she figured she'd give her soulmate a pass, this one time. She can kind of see her own little drool puddle on his all-black shirt, one of his hoodies sacrificed as her blanket. Nice. She'd start squirrelling them away early; they seem big and soft, and also maybe smelled like him. It also sounds super-cliché, but Max could stand a bit of cliché when it came to these hoodies. She wakes up when his arm around her waist tightens protectively, and he let out a soft hmmm noise, then, "oh, nasty, I drooled in your hair."

"I drooled on your shirt, we're even."

"Mmkay. D'you think they have coffee on this bus?"

"Not a morning person?"

Fang shoots her a look with bleary, sleep-fuzzed eyes. Max snickers.

"There's a reason I requested coffee as my blood money, Max," he mutters, and sets his chin on the top of her head. "How close're we?"

"Um," Max said, clicking on her phone and plugging in her home address, "Couple of hours, not counting transfer from the bus to house. So—"

"Can we get coffee once we get off the bus?" Fang says. "And breakfast. We could go to, like, IHOP or something. Pancakes." His arms started wrapping steadily around her waist, and she could feel herself being tugged slowly closer. She would turn to lift her eyebrows at him, but his chin is still digging into the top of her head. She tucks her head instead, settling it on his chest, and she can hear his distant heartbeat.

"I'm funding this breakfast, I guess," Max murmurs. "Why not. Spends more of Dad's cash."

"Oh shit, yeah," Fang said. "He's probably gonna be pissed about that, right?"

"We're already pissed at each other, it was kind of a dick move on my part," Max says. "Get used to that, by the way."

"Dick moves, got it," Fang says, and his hand sweeps lightly up and down her side. It's very distracting, and Max leans into him further.

"What else?" Fang says. "Trouble, dick moves—"

"Chocolate chip cookies," Max murmurs. "They're my favorite food, and possibly thing, ever." She blinks at him. "Yours?"

"I dunno," Fang says. "Like... does coffee count as a food? Maybe pancakes. Cheeseburgers. I just eat a lot, whatever it is."

"A man after my own heart," Max agrees. "Mom calls me the Garbage Disposal."

"You're close, with your mom."

It isn't a question. Max nods against his chest.

"She was probably really worried when I didn't pick up my phone," Max mumbles. "The first big argument we had was when—well. I didn't tell her about you. Anyone, about you."

"Including me," he says. "Why?"

Max hesitates, shrugs. "I didn't know what to say to you," Max says. "That's the way it started, anyway. And then you kind of just... kept going. And I kept going. And then I realized that was a dick move—see, told you—and I wrote you, on my birthday. I was nervous, I guess. Destiny and all that shit. It's heavy for an eight-year-old whose dad just left, came back to drop off your half-brother, and then leaves again. Which is a shitty excuse, I know—"

Fang tilts down and presses his lips against hers.

"Morning breath," he mumbles. "And your dad sounds like an awful person."

"Basically, yeah. How about... you never talk about your dad?" She says, softly, and draws back in enough time to see his face tighten up.

"Yeah. My mom was a teen mom. So he wasn't willing to deal with that shit. Told her to get rid of me and basically ran off at the first sign of trouble." He sucks in a deep breath, tilts his head back. "He's married. Got a house and two other kids. Didn't want me lingering around his perfect little all-white, picturesque suburban kids."

Max can feel the heat of anger starting low in her belly, and she leaned forwards, pressing a fierce kiss to his cheek.

"Fuck him," Max snarls. "Fuck him. God, what a jackass, I can't—you are so much better than him. God. He's so fucking—" Max ground her teeth.

"S'okay," Fang murmurs quietly.

"No, it's not," Max said angrily. "Turn this bus around, I'm gonna fucking punch him in the nose—"

Fang's hand ran down her side again, tugging her in close.

"Really," Fang says. "I worked through all the teen angst a while ago. Mostly, he's a dick, screw him, and I'm gonna live my life as something other than an addict," he finishes, the words acrid. "And I'm not. It's a reasonable question that you haven't asked, and I've never actually—I've been around it, but I've never actually done anything."

"Well," Max says, scrambling for something light-spirited because she couldn't handle emotions, "that's just unfair. You have to have some sort of issue. I can't be the only fucked-up one here."

"I mean," Fang says, a small grin on his face, "I'm a teenage runaway, does that help?"

Max considers it. "I guess that's gonna have to work."

He brushes a light kiss against her hair, holds her around the waist tighter. "Good." He snickers. "Bad Dads club?"

Max laughs and clings tighter.

They end up talking a bit more, and they do go to IHop, the one that's really close to Nudge's house. Max hesitates, thumbs her phone. Fang glances at her when she hesitates saying how many at a table, and the hostess, an old woman named Marie that always calls Max sugar or hon in a broad Brooklyn accent, asks, "Everyone else coming, sugar? Should I combine some tables for ya?"

Max looks to Fang, who shrugs, his shoulders tense. "They're your friends."

Max pauses, before she opens up the group chat she has with them, and simply sends Flock assemble: pancakes. She hits send, and turns to Marie.

"They're coming," she says simply. Marie grins and drops off an entire carafe of coffee, and Fang might actually be moaning a little when he takes his first sip. Max flushes and takes a sip of her own, to hide her face.

Nudge, unsurprisingly, arrives first, and her eyes zero in on Fang like a target. Fang's shoulders are tensing, and Max quietly puts her hand on his thigh, squeezing once, before letting go and standing. Nudge slams into her with a hug.

"We were so worried," she gushes. "Oh, my God, I can't believe you stole Jeb's cash, he was so pissed."

"How pissed?" Max says, mind shooting to her mother and Ella and Ari. "Like—Nudge, how pissed?!"

"Oh!" Nudge says, and rubs her arm. "No, no, Ella just says shouting, I think he's saving most of the rage for when you get back."

Then she mostly pushes past Max, and, as Fang is standing and offering his hand in a handshake, Nudge bypasses that entirely and grabs him in a hug.

"You must be the soulmate," she says brightly, arms wrapping around Fang's neck. Fang blinks at Max, and Max smiles and shrugs.

"Um, yes," Fang says uncertainly. "That's, uh, that's me."

"Ella says you'll be living here," Nudge says, and draws back, scrutinizing him before nodding. "You'll do, I suppose."

"...thanks?"

"And if you don't, nobody will ever find you," Nudge finishes sweetly, before sitting down and ordering a hot chocolate.

Fang blinks, and sits down, too, mostly looking shocked, in the small way he could.

"The boys have a whole threatening speech planned, Max, it's really sweet," Nudge informs her. "I've been told to distract you so they can corner him."

"They?"

"Oh, Iggy, Gaz. Ari too, actually."

"Ari?!" Max blurts out. "He's nine."

"I know, that's why I said it's sweet," Nudge says, beaming, and her phone buzzes. "Smile," she commands Fang, and snaps a photo before Fang could do much, other than slightly lower his coffee mug and stare at her.

"What's that for?" Fang asks.

"Never you mind," Nudge says, tapping away on her phone. "Iggy and Ella are carpooling together, Gaz and Angel shouldn't be too far behind 'em." Marie drops off the hot chocolate, and Nudge beams at her. "Thanks, Marie!" She chirps, and turns to Fang again. "So, according to what I've found, you're a pretty decent student at your high school, except for the occasional report of a fight, so you should fit in with Max just fine—no juvenile record, that's good, but no driver's license or permit, really? I guess you lived in D.C., so there's more public transport, and I've heard it's really walkable. Have you been to the top of the Washington Monument?"

Fang blinks at her, before he says, "On a school trip when I was like, seven?"

"Cool," Nudge says, before Fang turns silently to Max.

Max shrugs. "Nudge is a hacker. We're not sure if she's going to be a cop or a criminal, but either way, stay on her good side."

Fang nods, and just takes a long gulp of coffee. Nudge keeps up the chatter, things Max has missed within the few days that have passed with her little road trip; had it only been three days?

Iggy and Ella enter, and Ella squealed and runs to Max, hugging her tight, before punching her in the shoulder.

"We were worried!"

"Sorry," Max says, except not really. It must have made it way into her tone, because Ella rolls her eyes and then surveys Fang. Her eyes make a very obvious trip up and down, and she shoots Max a thumbs-up.

Iggy, on the other hand, hovers protectively over Max's chair and Fang stands up, meeting his eyes.

"So," Iggy says, staring somewhere around Fang's chin. "You're the soulmate."

"Fang," he corrects. "But yeah."

Ella looks up at him. "Fang?"

Wordlessly, Fang bares his teeth, and then closes his mouth.

Iggy and Fang survey each other, and Max pipes up, "I've been told you've prepared a great shovel talk, Iggy, so, you know, when we go back to the 1950s, you can make great use of that."

It seems to break the tension, a little, and Iggy sits down slowly across from Max, and Marie casually drops off another hot chocolate for Ella. Max rolls her eyes.

Gaz and Angel wander in, Gazzy doing his own weird-alpha-male-staring-thing, and Angel simply surveying him in the slightly creepy way she did before nodding once and settling regally into a chair.

Raucously, they put in their orders; pancakes, french toast, waffles, eggs and bacon, hashbrowns, a smorgasboard of food they'll pluck off each other's plates. Marie jots it all down with a practiced hand, and winks and ruffles Max's hair and says, "Yours and your soulmate's is on the house, sugar, just this once." She fixes Fang with a serious look, and jabs her pen towards him. "Treat her right."

"Yes, ma'am," Fang says, and the Flock snickers as Marie smiles.

"He can stay," she tells Max, and Max laughs. "I'm planning on it."

"Ma'am," Iggy mutters, and Marie thwaps him lightly with the ordering pad.

"You could do with some manners, young man," Marie scolds him, and the Flock turns their laughter onto Iggy, who grins up at her sheepishly as she sweeps off to put in their orders.

"Seriously, though," Max says, grinning at Fang, "Ma'am?"

Fang shrugs and smiles. "Tends to win people over. Worked for your mom, works for Marie. Works well for me," he says, and, sure enough, a few minutes later Marie drops off a complimentary cinnamon roll for Fang, who grins at them all and shoves most of it into his mouth at one go.

They do indeed eat enough food to make them feel near-sick, and Max is pretty sure Fang drinks what's equivalent to an entire carafe of coffee. She should probably be worried about the crash of caffeine, but mostly she just feels happy in a way she doesn't think she's ever felt before; warm, and sated, and content with things around her. The food was delicious, as usual, and other than the posturing by Iggy and Gazzy, things didn't get weird. In fact, it felt like Fang belonged there, like this was the millionth time they'd all gone out for breakfast together, like he'd always been in their lives. Like he'd stay there.

Max takes his hand and squeezes it once before dropping it when they walk out, and he smiles down at her. Max absently reaches up and wipes off a smear of icing with her thumb. His eyes darken ever so slightly, and he takes her thumb into her mouth, sucking it off lightly, cheeks hollowing. The wet heat of his mouth combined with his tongue swirling casually around her thumb, pressing lightly and receding, kind of makes her feel a little weak in the knees. His eyes bore into hers the whole time, before he slowly releases her hand and let her thumb out of his mouth with a sinful noise. He stares at her even as he drops her hand, eyes dark and wanting, before slinging his arm around her shoulders. She thinks she can actually feel the Flock staring at them, but can't quite bring herself to care. Because holy shit.

"You should probably save that for later," she says, a touch breathlessly, and Fang smirks.

The Flock gradually splits off as they all walk home; Nudge first, Iggy tagging alongside her, Gaz and Angel next, until it's just Ella, Fang, and Max, Fang still having his arm wrapped around her shoulders. He swaps to holding her hand when Max says "Almost home."

The fear of her mother would probably be funny, if it isn't so justified.

Ari opens the door immediately and runs up to her, completely abandoning any pretense that he wasn't watching at the window. Max catches him with a huff, and hugs him tight.

Ari glowers at Fang when Max lets him go. "Watching you," he says gruffly, and Fang nods somberly.

Her mother is standing in the doorway, and Max steps forwards tentatively.

"Grounded?" Max asks.

"So grounded." Her mother confirms, catching her in a half-hug, but staring down Fang.

"Max, Ella, Ari, upstairs," she says, and Max goes to protest but both her mother and Fang are looking at each other appraisingly. So they all go by, Max mouthing sorry behind her mother's back at Fang.

Fang's responding glance is only a little desperate.

When her mother calls everyone down for lunch, Fang is sitting by a plate of—

"Chocolate chip cookies?!" Max demands, and Fang gestures to the plate.

"I saved you one."

"He's a keeper," Ella says, as Max grabs it and basically inhales it.

"We can make some later," her mother adds, and Max beams at her.

"You're still grounded," her mother continues, and Max pouts at her playfully. Her mother squeezes her shoulder, and Fang looks at them, an oddly sorrowful look in his eyes before he turns to help Mom with the plates.

Fang takes off his hoodie before they eat, and Max feels an unsuspected rush of, well, she could really only describe it as power: there was the design he'd drawn on her skin, resting in the same place on his. To see it, to actually see it reflected on the other person...

Max begins thinking about anything else lest she jump her—boyfriend? she'd assume—at a family meal.

They eat in mostly silence, her mother asking Fang the occasional thing about whatever; foods, weather, the trip back. After the meal, Max has to wash the dishes, and she does so with minimal complaints.

During the afternoon, they watch a movie, Max between her mother and Fang, who gives the little smiles Max has mentally equated with laughter for normal people in her mind, and the whole rightness of it settles over her again; here are the people she loved most in the world. Of course they're all together. That's the way it's supposed to be.

During the movie, Fang absentmindedly starts doodling with a pen, and Max ends up watching her own skin in delight as she watches the same spidery, sharp, flattering angles illustrate the little tchotchkes that her mother's placed throughout the room; the little figurine of the Eiffel Tower a coworker had given her mother, the little porcelain dog Ella had taken and promptly made her imaginary friend as a child, named Total, and the decorative candle holder sitting on the coffee table. Total also gets a speech bubble, filled with tiny little words Max can't even read, giving the impression of the dog yapping away. Honestly, that's what Ella seemed to think of it as a kid, so talkative that it had started fraying her nerves.

She doesn't know how Fang seems to know that, intrinsically.

Maybe it's because, out of habit, Max still kind of glowers at it whenever the long, exhausting afternoons of playing with Total enter her head.

But when the movie finishes, they just load in another one, and Fang continues to draw. Either Ella and her mother don't notice, or they're just giving them time to adjust. Whichever way, Max is grateful as she watches the drawings fill themselves in, but this time, she can see who's creating them.

After the second movie, Mom stands up, and stretches.

"Well, I'd better get down to the school and file in your information, Fang, so you can start on Monday."

Max blinks at him. "You're... going to school?"

Bizarrely, this hadn't entered her mind at all.

He shrugs. "It's either that or getting my GED online. I figured school would be... nice."

He looks back to his arm, and then up at her mother. "I've got my ID stuff in my bags—" He stands, and they walk together to where the bags are, Fang passing over a manilla envelope and her mother nods, tucking it carefully into her purse.

School. Riding with Fang on the bus. Meeting in the library. Eating together at lunch. Complaining about teachers and the people and the drama. Everyday, domestic sorts of things. They'd probably be in classes together; they were in the same grade, after all, and her school wasn't very large. She'd always imagined them meeting; she'd never really thought of what happened after.

It's funny; she's supposed to be his soulmate, but she doesn't even know what day his birthday is, or his favorite animal, or any tragic childhood pet stories. She didn't know very much about him at all.

"Yeah," Max says, staring at him. "Yeah, I guess it will be."

Their mom leaves, and Ella starts whistling innocently as she stands, leaving the room.

"I'm not ready to be an aunt," she says, pausing to pin Fang with a glare, before she resumes whistling, going up to her room.

Fang grins. "I'm not sure if I want to be a Dad, either."

"Mmm," Max agrees, leaning across to kiss him, gently and softly, before pulling back. "School, though?"

He shrugs lightly, and chases after her lips, too, and Max laughs a little against his lips. They know how to do this just fine.

---

Mom insists on taking a "first day of school" picture for Fang, and Fang looks inordinately pleased by it; he stands alone, with Max, with Ella, with both of them, with her mom, and looks curiously at the bus.

"I walked to school," he explains, jostling the straps of his new backpack against his shoulders. "Wow, this is, like, an actual yellow school bus. I only took those on field trips."

Max grins a bit, ascending the stairs, and graciously allows him the window seat when they sit at the bench. He peers interestedly at the neighborhood, then looks back at her. "What should I expect, here?"

Max shrugs. "School?"

"Thank you, Captain," he says dryly. "Teachers? Homework level? People who—"

Omega steps onto the bus, and blunders past, taking a moment to glower at Max. Fang silently offered up his hand.

"Good job."

Max has a hard time stifling her laughter as she slaps it, and he continues, "I'm guessing that's—"

"Omega, yeah," she agrees. "We've kind of been in competition since, like, kindergarten. His mom's this super-creepy PTA mom and he's basically been groomed to believe he's the best at everything."

Fang scowls towards him. The bus isn't very crowded yet, so either nobody's really noticed Fang's newness in their early-morning haze or they didn't care. Max hesitates, before she reaches to lace her fingers through his, quietly narrating as people step onboard the bus. When Sam steps onboard, Max sighs and begins, "Okay, so, I was fourteen—"

"Oh my God, seriously?" Fang asks, staring at him.

"It was, like, one date," she says. "We went to a movie and got ice cream. Ari sort of crashed it. It was kinda funny."

To be exact, Ari had stared at the creepily from the outside window, hands pressed against the glass, mouth hanging open slightly. Max had thought it was hilarious, Sam had kissed her at the door, and they didn't last for much longer after that.

Fang snickers a little at that.

"Should we have the exes talk?" Max asks, tucking slightly into his side. "Sam's the significant one, really. It was before we started talking in-depth."

Fang hesitates, shifts, shrugs.

"What is that face?" Max demands, sitting up to stare at him.

Fang grimaces. "I didn't, um. They weren't really dates. Or girlfriends. I had, like, one girl that I saw regularly—Lissa. Red hair. Same school, same parties—"

"Parties," Max repeats. "You were a party boy?"

"Sorta, I guess," he says, with a shrug. "Before I started thinking this really sucks, I want to leave. It was a way to deal—not deal," he says in a rush. "But deal with there."

"How many?" Max asks, and Fang shrugs.

"Lissa was the serious one. The others were just—looking for a fun time, I guess—?"

"How fun?"

"So you know the base system," Fang begins, and Max rolls her eyes.

"Of course I know the base system, we're not twelve."

Fang pretended to wield a bat, swung it, and let out a soft, whistling sound effect.

"Oh my God," Max says, as it settles. "Oh, my God. You—" have had sex. oh my god, he's had sex, he knows how to have sex and is probably good at it—

"Are you, like... mad?" Fang asks, and she sighs a little, shifting.

"As long as I'm your endgame? Then I can handle it." And she would handle it, without freaking out. They were all across the country.

"Endgame," Fang repeats. "I like the sound of that." He shifts, looking at her seriously.

"You always were," he says. "Even before I met you, you always were. I just wanted—well, yeah, to deal with it, but I just wanted to be sure I was... good for you."

Max sees a little bit of red touch his cheeks, and feels her own respond in kind. She carefully examines her shoes.

"Can't say I had that same logic," she says, at last.

"Lucky for you," he says, in an affectation of an airy, uncaring voice, "I was enough of a slut for the pair of us."

Max has to stifle her giggles against her hand.

Iggy comes on the bus, so they nix that conversation, and Max lets her mind turn it over even as she drops him off at the front office, dropping a quick kiss on his cheek, and goes to her first class.

Did it bug her that he'd had relationships even when he knew? Not particularly; she'd gone out with Sam, after all. But Fang had gone out with an inordinate number of people, which brought out a bit of her possessive side. But they were all across the country, she reminds herself. Things had changed. It was all ancient history. She just had to keep reminding herself of that and she'd be fine.

Fang manages to get himself into her second hour, and promptly goes to sit next to her, smiling in the small way he did.

They'd be fine.

The word was starting to spread quicker than Max expected, but she supposed seeing a new kid holding her hand added up pretty fast.

But Max, since the fight with the boys who'd dared to fuck with Ella and since she and Omega went at it in the hallway, has gotten a bit of a reputation as someone not to be fucked with, so people were (attempting) to be discreet about it. But as far as Max knows, she's the first in her grade to meet her soulmate, let alone bring them home. She feels her shoulders tense at lunch, and as Fang's listening intently to Iggy explaining something, she feels a foot run its way up the underside of her calf.

Her eyes narrow at Fang across the table, and his foot continues to run up and down, without looking away from Iggy.

She carefully extends her other leg, slinging it across his lap, and his eyes dart over to her before returning to Iggy, pressing more purposefully against her free calf.

She's thankful for her long legs as she runs her foot up and down his thigh, and he runs his foot up and down her calf, and they basically just become more competitive about how aggressively they can play footsie—play footsie, when did her life become like this—when she ends up pushing her foot slowly down his thigh, from his knee, pressing firm with her heel, running up his thigh, until she gets—

He lets out a little gasp, and Iggy glances at him. "You okay?"

Fang clears his throat. "Fine."

Max grins into her water bottle.

---

"So," Max says, sitting in a tree, arms crossed—it's a tree of significance for them, she supposes—"that was Dad. Real charmer, right?"

Fang settles carefully on the branch next to her, and eventually looks over at her. "I feel like there's some sort of nursery rhyme I should be singing right now."

It takes Max a minute to get it, and she snickers, smacking him on the arm. "Casanova."

"That wasn't a no," he teases her lightly, and leans in carefully, cupping her face in his hands, pressing his slightly chapped lips against hers. It was sweet, and soft, and something oddly intimate about it even though his hands don't stray from her face.

They break apart to breathe, and his hands drop to her shoulders, and they press their foreheads together.

"You know," he murmured, "the Max I know seems like she'd go back inside and kick his ass."

Max tries to fight the grin. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You should probably give me something for luck, then," she says, grinning as she leans slightly away, batting her eyelashes coquettishly.

He laughs and leans in again.

Eventually, hands intertwined, they walk back in together through the back door, Max's spine straight and stiff.

Jeb's eyes are cool and analytical as he looks at her, then at their hands, and his mouth twists into a near-delicate sneer.

"I've no idea why you continue with this... charade," he says coldly, and Fang tenses besides her.

"Charade," Max repeats.

"The science behind it," he says, with a soft sigh, as if to say I've explained this before, why must you be so difficult and Max glowers at him.

"It's simply a reaction between your skin and your brain," he says. "If you believe that you are meant for each other, then you're a fool."

"It's love," Max says viciously. "More than you could ever say—"

"It's an unfortunate incident," he says, as if the whole conversation is tedious, "that's brought a drug addict into our home—"

"He is not," Max snarls, jerking forwards, "a drug addict—"

"—into our home—"

"Our home?! Our home?!" Max snarls. "You haven't been around for eight years! You don't have any right to tell me what to do, you gave that up when you walked out of here, twice!"

"—and you're suffering under the delusion that you're in love—"

"Delusion!" Max shrieks. "That's rich, from someone who's never felt love in his entire life—"

He steps forwards, and Fang does too. Max grabs Fang's arm, pulling him to her side.

"Get out," Jeb says, and Max just... stiffens, trying to beat down the part of her that still wanted to follow his commands, to be a good little soldier.

"No," she says, coldly.

"GET OUT!" He screams, and Fang jerks, and Max snarls out, "What, so you can conduct your new sketchy business here without anyone suspecting anything?!"

Jeb's face goes pale, and Max presses her advantage.

"What, you don't think that I'm onto you?" She laughs, humorlessly. "There's a reason I drained your account, other than putting a thorn in your side. You think I was blind to those late night phone calls?"

Max only starts processing what happened when she's on the floor, her hand already rising to her cheek, Fang yelling out "HEY!" and Max calmly pushes herself to her feet.

And she punches him right back.

Jeb, seemingly not expecting it too, rocks back so he lands on the ground, holding his nose.

"You broke it!" He shouts, blood coating his fingers, and Max tries really, really hard to have an appropriate response.

She giggles anyways.

"You don't have the power to kick me out," Max says, still grinning. "Great way to cover your tracks, Dad. What, was this supposed to make me less suspicious?"

Jeb scowls up at her, opening his mouth, but there's the sudden thud of steps down the stairs and Fang tugs her back, pulling her close and away from her dad, and for the first time Max thinks about Fang's difficult past and feels her stomach bottom out a little.

Her mother appears in the doorway of the room, with Ella hot on her heels, and her mother takes action so immediately and cleanly that Max has to think over it later.

Max and Fang are sent up to Max's room while her mother drives Jeb to a doctor to look at his nose. Fang's face is tense as he examines her reddened knuckles, his thumbs running carefully over her hands.

"I'm okay," Max murmurs, and his face goes a little tighter.

"That doesn't exactly help. When I said to go back inside and kick his ass, I didn't think that literal, physical ass-kicking would go into it."

"Yeah, but I totally won," Max says, trying for levity, and he lets out a short, humorless bark of laughter.

Max pauses, still trying to think of something to say, before she says, "Wanna make out?"

He stares at her, face going completely blank.

"I'm not good at this," she says, and her voice cracks on the last word. She clears her throat, swallows, and he tightens her grip on her hands.

The conversation is interrupted by the buzzing of her phone, and Max clears her throat again, reaching for it.

"Hello?"

"It's me," her mother says, voice the sort of smooth calm that meant that a storm was about to go down. "I'm coming home."

Max hesitates, glances at Fang. "Okay...?"

"From the police station."

Max blinks, and Fang holds her hand. "Oh."

"A restraining order's been filed."

"Oh." Max says, and clears her throat. "Oh," she says again. "Do you, uh, do you need me to go down there or—?"

"You and Fang aren't going to school tomorrow," she says. "He's a witness, you're, well—"

"Yeah," Max says, feeling her throat go a little dry. "Yeah, okay. Um. Are you okay?"

Her mom lets out a shaky breath. "Let's wait on that one."

"Okay." Max says. "Love you, mom."

"Love you too, sweetheart," she says, and Max tries hard to pretend she didn't hear the shakiness in her mom's voice before she hung up the phone.

Max stares at her phone, twisting it over and over in her hands. Fang is still silent, waiting for her to talk.

"Mom's getting a restraining order," she says, voice a hush. "We're skipping school tomorrow, because. You know."

"Oh," he says, shifts a little.

Max takes a deep breath in, and says, softly, "When I was a kid, I thought he was a superhero, you know? He had to do something big and noble and had to go stop a bad guy. And when I got older—when he dropped off Ari—"

Fang shrugs, leans forwards, and murmurs, "Yeah. Me too."

"Bad Dads club," Max murmurs, and leans forwards until she's slid into his lap, arms wrapped around him, and his chin is resting on her head.

He laughs a little bit, bleak and dark. "Yeah. Bad Dads club." She feels him press his cheek into her hair, and Max presses as close as she can.

She takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and whispers, "Neither of them have a soulmate," Max murmurs. "At least, Mom doesn't. Never had one. They met because they were both attending a conference about animal experimentation—Dolly the sheep and everything, right? And, well, he didn't seem—I guess people never seem awful when you first meet them—"

"I dunno, that Omega guy," Fang says with a shrug, and Max laughs against his chest.

"Wanna make out?" She repeats, with less desperation and more intent, and he looks at her, before glancing around.

"Your mom said that she'd kill me if she caught me in your room, you know."

"Please don't talk about my mom when we're about to make out."

Fang tilts his head, and Max cranes up, trying to wait until he meets her halfway but ending up just impatiently leaning forwards, pressing her lips firmly against his. The kiss was slow, and soft, and gentle, and less of a single kiss than many. They melt into it, simultaneously, and Max feels like she's never really been kissed like this before; slow, and consuming, stealing her breath and making her fists curl into his shirt and pressing ever closer.

They roll, shifting without breaking their kiss, Max's hands still fisting at his shirt, Fang holding himself so he was balanced over her without crushing her under his weight. One of Max's hands drifts up to twine in his still fucking soft hair, the other grabbing at a fistful of his shirt, and he pauses, shifting, kissing at the corner of her mouth, her chin, her larynx, to the point where her pulse met her neck and he sucks.

Max's eyes fly open as she feels a little curl of heat burst open in her stomach, her fists tightening and pulling him closer. He laughs, the noise rumbling across her neck, and Max lets out a little whining noise, tugging him closer. He hums, and resumes kissing at her neck; up, and down, lazy and slow and sensual that makes Max's fists curl and uncurl, like spasms. She eventually forces one of her hands flat, running it up and down his back, until her hand brushes up against the warm skin, the divot of his hipbones, and he freezes, opening his eyes and staring at her. Max pauses, before she lets her hand skitter up his shirt, feeling more and more at his skin, lifting her eyebrows in a silent is this okay?

Fang hesitates, before she sits up, forcing him to sit up, too, and grabbed at the hem of his shirt, waiting for his nod before yanking up, and staring wordlessly at his chest. He's toned, certainly, his skin olive and warm to the touch.

She runs an appreciative hand over his sternum, down over his stomach, resting her hand with a slight but definite pressure over the trail of hair leading down from his belly button and he lets out a low noise, before Max runs her hand back up his chest and twined both her hands in his hair, surging in for another kiss, pressing herself against his chest, feeling the heat from his skin press against her shirt.

Fang lets out a strangled noise, and Max presses, so she's sitting on his lap, leveling them so they're at least a little even, eyes squeezing shut as she sighs against his lips, before experimentally nipping at his bottom lip, a silent question, a silent query. He lets out a huff, and Max takes that as a yes, breathing a little into his mouth, worrying a little too late that her breath may smell bad, but that thought is immediately replaced by something along the lines of holy shit.

The kiss is deep, and Max feels him clenching at her shirt. Without breaking the kiss, she reaches down with one of her hands and takes on of his, pressing it firmly against her hip and not letting go until his hands curl there, instead, pulling her close, squeezing tightly when Max tries something with her tongue against his that makes him let out a small, appreciative-sounding noise, so Max does it again and is rewarded by another, louder noise. Max presses closer and oh, there's that, there's definitely no doubt that he likes this, and she grinds her hips experimentally. He lets out a choked moan, pressing his face against her shoulder, and Max wriggles a little, taking his hands in hers and placing them at the hem of her shirt.

"Good?" He pants against her shoulder, and Max nods, and he tugs up carefully. Max is thankful she's wearing a new-ish bra, even if it's just plain black t-shirt one, but he stares at her, transfixed, dropping her shirt back on the bed. His eyes are even darker than usual, and his hair is all fluffed up from where Max's hands have grabbed at it, and Max puts her hands on his bare shoulders and grinds down again, ducking her head back with a gasp, as he moans again and clutches at her tighter, meeting her circling hips with his own. He leans forwards and starts kissing at her neck again, while Max lets out a moan of her own and keeps writhing on her lap, not really knowing what she was doing but knowing it felt good, and his hands skimmed up from her hips, up and up, and he squeezes, gently.

Max lets out a choked noise, stopping momentarily in her grinding and digging her nails into his shoulders. He presses forwards until she's laying back against the bed, again, and he dips forwards to lick a bead of sweat from the hollow of her throat. His lips chase lower, and lower, and Max throws her head back against the pillow with a gasp, and his hands start skimming down her stomach, touching at the waistband of her jeans—

"OH MY GOD," She hears Ella screech, and Max blinks in bemusement but Fang is already scrambling, picking up his shirt and dropping it over her as he clutches Max's shirt to his chest. Max sits up abruptly, trying to blink the glassiness from her eyes, and Ella's hands are clapped over her eyes.

Max yanks on her shirt, and Fang stands, holding Max's shirt over his issue, and says hastily, "I'm, um, I'm gonna shower—um—"

He pauses, dips to kiss Max's temple, and then hastens out of the room, shoulders tensing, Max watching the play of his muscles as he left.

Ella peeks out through her fingers, peeking at Max before glancing away, and Max belatedly pulls on Fang's shirt and says, "It's fine, I'm good."

Ella hesitantly peels her hands away from her face, looks between the doorway and Max, and squeaks, "Um?"

"Please, let's attempt to imagine that you never saw that," Max says, her voice rough.

Ella hesitates, nods, and leaves, before she walks back in the room.

"But, like," she says, "seriously?"

"Oh, my God, go," Max says, getting up from her bed, pushing Ella out of the doorway, and shutting the door behind her.

She hesitates, flushes when she realizes why Fang went to take a shower, and picks up a marker, hearing the rush of the water going, and shimmies out of her pants. She writes on her upper thigh, thinking of me?

She pauses, then continues, writing things that make her blush, things about what had happened, things she sort of secretly hopes will happen, before she hears the water shut off, and then she writes a chain of xo's around her wrist. She tugs on a pair of pajama pants, and is about to go to bed when she sees

I'll get you back for that

bloom up inside her wrist. She smirks, writes back under, payback pranks don't intimidate me.

Wasn't talking payback like that, princess.

Max flushes, and actually goes to bed this time.

---

The whole debacle the night before had wiped the whole I'm getting a restraining order situation from her mind, which she guesses was the whole point. But Fang holds her hand in the car, and pulling her into the station, and while they wait in the uncomfortable folding chairs. Max can see the string of xo's on his wrist, and instead of the sense of power she'd felt before, it calms her. She thinks of her words on their thighs and refuses to blush.

It isn't that big a deal. Fang gives his statement as a witness, Max just has to point to the slight bruise on her face (the much more enjoyable bruise Fang had left on her throat is resting safely below the collar of her polo shirt, layered over with a sweater) and tell her side of the story, and then Mom handles the rest of it.

They end up walking out for lunch, and they're sitting in the parking lot of a McDonald's, waiting for her Mom to finish all of it up, when Max says, "So, um, last night."

"Right," Fang says.

"It was... a very fun time," Max says hastily. "Don't get me wrong. I liked it. I liked it a lot."

Fang snorts, resting a hand casually on her thigh, where her writing rests. "Yeah, I could tell."

Max smirks, and says, "Yeah, I could tell you liked it lots, too."

Fang snickers, before he sombers. "I sense a but coming."

"You do realize I could make some sort of joke," Max points out, "but, yes. I think—you know, you're, like. It. Right?"

Fang sombers even further. "Yeah."

Max hesitates, shrugs. "So, I mean... that was about... we should probably take it slow, from there. Right? Get, um. Get comfortable with... everything."

"Sex," he says, dryly. "Yeah, no, last night was... very good," he says, nodding, "but you've got a point."

"Right," she says. "Okay."

They resume eating, and Fang wastes time by uncapping a pen and doodling on her arm, the one without the xo's and the writing.

Mom comes to get them, and they go home, before her Mom goes off to work, and Max and Fang exchange glances.

"She, uh," Fang says cautiously, "she does realize that she just left us alone for two hours, right?"

"Whatever will we do," Max says, sarcastically, heading for the stairs and casually taking off her sweater as she goes, and then Fang jumps up a step, bends swiftly, and picks her up around her middle, slinging him over her shoulder, and Max squeals, smacking a hand against his ass.

"Fang!"

Fang, however, was too busy laughing to pay her much mind. He carries her all the way to her room, no matter how much Max hit at him and kicks her feet, and he distributes her soundly on her bed, leaning forwards to cup her head and kissing her, deep and intense, before moving to unbutton her shirt without breaking the kiss, as Max sighs into it, helping him by shrugging her shoulders, shaking out her arms as he pulls it off.

He hesitates, touches at the fastens of her bra like a question, and she manages to extract herself with a small sigh.

"Let's keep it on, yeah?"

"Mkay," he murmurs, shucking his shirt as he pulls back. "Okay if I touch?"

"Please, please do," Max says, going for aloofingly inviting but mostly just sounding eager, remembering the way he'd touched her last night, and he moves forwards to kiss her again, cupping them carefully in his hands.

They don't go any further than they had the previous night, but Max has a few well-placed bruises and Fang has some nail marks down his shoulders by the time Ella gets home, Max's hair wet from a recent shower, Fang working on his math homework as Max pretends to read for English but really just hopelessly turning everything over in her head.

They'd started to figure out what the other enjoyed more than anything else; the neck kissing wasn't an outlier for Max, it was very much liked, and Fang liked it when she did a certain something with her tongue when they kissed. They both forced themselves apart, chests heaving, when they got too close to crossing any lines. But then they'd go back into it gentle, and learning each other, and Max was savoring it.

Max thinks of the sensation of Fang's mouth against her neck and her fingernails scraping down his back instead of the Victorian soulmates she's supposed to be reading about, and feels the warmth in her heart grow.

Time passes. Fang integrates himself so deeply into life at Mesa that it's difficult to remember a time when he wasn't in her life—stealing her food, reading over her essays, leaving notes on her arm to please go grab him a water, even though he's the one closest to the kitchen.

They go on occasional dates; breakfasts and dinners at IHop, Marie always looking after them whenever she was on shift, nights at the movies where they sit in the back and fulfill the stereotype of date night at the movies. There are occasional nights when they're home alone, which is when they explore, careful yet eager, and there's an occasion where Max grinds into Fang so eagerly that he has to stop and turns away and asks, flush clear on the back of his neck, if she has tissues. It takes Max a few moments to get it, but—

"Oh," Max says, and then, "oh, my God, um—"

"Please do not make this more awkward than it already is," he says, and Max hands him the tissues then turns, her back to him, looking down at her lap when she hears his flies unzip.

"No," Max says, and then, "no, it's, um—good," she says, and starts to feel a slow rush of power. She smiles, reveling in it. "Just, you know. I'm that good."

"Shut up," Fang groans.

After that, they're a bit more careful with letting each other know when it's too much—Max still feels inordinately satisfied when she manages that again—and they learn enough to know what the other likes and doesn't like.

Fang asks her to prom at IHop, grins into his coffee mug a bit when she says yes, and they have to pose for countless photos on the staircase, on the porch, Max in an indigo dress Nudge picked out for her, corsage on her wrist, Fang wearing a matching tie.

They dance through the night, spend some time after in the car they got to borrow for the night in the backseat, but they stop again before they go all the way.

"We're not that cliché, are we?" Fang pants, and Max nods, readjusting the straps of her dress and pressing lightly at her fancy updo that Nudge and Ella had done.

They struggle through senior year together—Max applies for college at her mother's request and wonders over what to major over, if she's going to even go, while Fang researches apprenticeships for tattooists, along with some courses and how to get a license.

Max gets in at the state university, and then she and Fang talk about arrangements—they end up applying for the special dorms for soulmates, as Fang's decided he's going to get an associate's degree in art to help compile his portfolio.

Her mom pulls her aside one afternoon in January, takes her to a clinic so Max gets some birth control, and Max tries valiantly not to suffer through the awkwardness of the whole situation.

"Just want you two to be safe, that's all," her mom says, on the way back, and Max puts the pills in her backpack.

It takes her until a weekend in March, when Mom, Ella, and Ari are out of town for one of Ella's soccer tournaments.

When Fang walks into her room, Max holds her blankets over her bare chest and clears her throat, nodding over to where she'd set out his painting supplies on the bedside table.

Fang stares at her, and licks her lips. "Um—"

Max clears her throat, and says, "I, uh, I thought you could do that thing. Where you paint a picture on someone's back?"

"Oh," Fang says, and nods, and clears his throat. "Um—yeah. Lay down, then."

Max does, shifting, her head tilted to the side as she laid down. Fang carefully brushes her hair to the side, dips down to kiss the nape of her neck, and runs a hand across her back, humming thoughtfully.

It tickles, a little bit, she won't lie, but overall it's just a soft sensation, spreading wet across her back. She lays there, and waits, and he says at last, "I think it's done. You can, um, you can sit up now."

She does, still holding the blanket to her chest, and is about to ask, before she says, "Take off your shirt and turn around?"

Fang blinks at her, before he says "oh!" and acquiesces, turning, and Max runs a wondering hand down his back.

He's painted a pair of wings on their backs, all black feathers, and she feels a little choked up, remembering.

"You remembered," she murmurs.

Fang's head ducks. "Yeah, well. Hard to forget."

Max hesitates, before she stands, and sits on his lap, leaning in to kiss him. His hands flutter for a moment, before he at last settles them on her thighs, clad in a pair of sleep shorts. Max sighs into it, and at last lets the blanket drop.

It doesn't hurt like she's heard it can; just the slightest pinch, but that may be from the fact that she was on top because Fang had been fussing about the paint smearing on the sheets, and he's more cautious about sex than she is. Mostly, she's just excited, and ready, and eager to stop the wait, while he's worrying about her first time being good and if he'll hurt her and, of course, the paint.

He takes a photo of it, and she prints it off and puts it in a photo frame next to the old photo of the first feather, and feels a little choked up each time she looks at it.

They graduate together; Nudge cries at the graduation, and Max thinks that they have more photos than will ever be necessary, but she mostly just had to grin and bare it (whenever she protested, she was shouted down by nearly everyone else, so she had to grin and bare it.)

Fang kisses her on the cheek once they both have their diplomas, and they toss their caps in the air together, laughing with the rest of their graduating class.

They go on a road trip with the rest of the Flock, this time with permission, the week after school gets out for everyone, and Nudge takes even more photos. It's ridiculous, and it's fun—they go stargazing, and they go to the Grand Canyon, and camping, and hiking, and spending the day lazing in the sun when they're too tired to even move.

The rest of the Martinezes help Max and Fang pack up for college, and Max spends the night before move-in day wandering the house, tracing her hands over the markings of how much each child grew, the tchotchkes scattered around the house, willing herself to not forget, to savor it while she's still here.

Fang's arms wrap around her waist, and he kisses her lightly on the temple. "We'll be back, you know," he murmurs, and Max sighs.

"Yeah. I know. It's just... we won't be here every day anymore, you know?"

Fang nods, and kisses her again, and then leaves her to wandering.

Max ends up staying up until the morning, and downs coffees as they eat breakfast, the rest of the Flock showing up to help pack things into the car. Max, silently shoving down all her emotions, threw herself into carting luggage down the stairs, and once it's clear that everything's packed away, it catches up to her.

The Flock is standing in a line at the door, and Max takes a moment to just stare at them, joking with each other, laughing, and watches as their faces turn to her.

Max feels something block off her throat, and Nudge is the first to walk forwards, more thudding into her and making Max lose a breath than a gentle hug, but that was okay—Max wraps her arms around Nudge's shoulders and hugs her tight, shutting her eyes in kind, and Nudge says into her chest, "You're coming to visit once a month."

"Of course."

"And we're all having a FaceTime session once a week."

"Promise."

"And you'll text me if Fang does something dumb."

"Expect nothing less."

Nudge sniffs, nods, and draws back so Iggy can tug her in for a hug—he's going to a different college, later in the month, so she sighs and hugs him, too, feeling her eyes start to sting.

"Kick ass, yeah?"

"Of course," Max mumbles, and he ruffles her hair.

Gaz next, then Angel, and then she has to hug Ella because she isn't coming, and Ari too, and she's pressing her fingers into her eyes because she promised herself she wouldn't cry, and Fang wraps an arm around her shoulder, tugging her into his side and kissing the top of her head.

"We'll be back," Fang says, and Iggy says, "You better" and they all laugh, Max's catching on a sob, and she gulped, opening her arms.

"Group hug," she declares, and Fang only rolls his eyes a little bit, but everyone crowds in, Ari hugging her around her waist, the Flock crowding her around, and Max shut her eyes and took in one, two, three deep breaths, and then they all laugh and break apart.

She, Fang, and her mother all get in the car, and Max stares at the Flock waving after them until they turn the corner of the street. Max turns back to the windshield, and Fang reaches forwards, puts his hand on her shoulder and rubs his thumb over her back, and Max sighs, catching his hand and turning to press a kiss against it.

They make the drive up to their university; it takes them about two hours, and from there, moving in is overwhelming and stressful; Fang serves as the go-between as Max's mom sits in the car, watching their stuff, and Max in the room, looking at their blank beige walls and the two little desks and their singular bed.

Their mom comes up once Fang carries up the last boxful of things, and helps as they struggle to put down the fitted sheet, and then fusses with the photos Max brought to put on the walls, and then once it seems like they can't do anything more, looks at the pair of them.

"Groceries," Max blurts out, unwilling to let her leave just yet. "We forgot to get any groceries. We should get some water, and some snacks—"

Fang nods solemnly in agreement, and so they trek out to where Dr. M has parked the car, and go to the busy Target, milling with parents and students. They end up buying water, and coffee mugs, and some snacks, and she helps them cart it all up to their room, packing some of the water away in their mini-fridge, fidgeting with the whiteboard between their desks, and she sighs, before she says, "Well. I don't think there's much else for me to do, is there?"

Max leans forwards, and hugs her tight.

"Study hard," her mom says to her, "and we'll call, okay? Every week."

Max nods. "Love you," she says, thick in her throat.

"Love you too," she says, and releases Max, before she tugs a surprised Fang in next. "Keep her out of trouble?"

"I'll try my best," Fang says solemnly, and her mom pulls back, smiles, cards her fingers through his hair, before she turns to the door, says one last, "Love you both," and waves as she closes the door.

Max stands there, feeling a bit clueless for a few seconds, and then Fang tugs her back onto the bed so they're both laying down on their sides, his arm wrapped around her waist. Max sighs, tucks her head beneath his chin, presses herself against his chest.

"It'll be okay," Fang murmurs. "Not the same, but it'll just be different. That's all."

"Yeah," Max agrees quietly, and sighs. "Just... you know."

"Yeah, I do," he says. "Leaving D.C. was scary, but I knew you were here. And it worked out okay, didn't it?"

"Okay," Max scoffs, pulling back so he could lean down and kiss her. "It turned out great—"

"I mean, my soulmate's a bit cocky, but—" he says, and Max rolls so she's on top of him, and says, "I'll show you cocky," and he laughs into her mouth as they kiss.

They don't get the chance to go much further, as a group of soulmates knock at their door to all trek out to a dining hall together; they do, and eventually have a floor meeting where the small group of people who actually went introduced themselves to each other, and Max fell bonelessly into their bed, Fang following soon after.

---

College goes well, for the most part; Fang's mom passed away in the February of their freshman year, so Max had gone with him to D.C. to help him arrange everything and as emotional support. It had been stressful, and difficult sometimes, but it got to the point where Fang got a partner and a studio.

Fang walks into his first appointment, ever, and sees a familiar face grinning at him, holding a piece of paper.

"So, you're probably really familiar with this design," Max says easily, grinning as he laughs at her, and adds, "I think that I probably want it somewhere discreet, like my back, and—"

Fang, smiling, leans forwards at last and presses his lips against hers, and she smirks against his mouth.

"Hope this isn't how you treat all your clients," she says.

"Only my soulmates," he says seriously, and she laughs, this time, before turning over the paper, and says seriously, "Speaking of, I think that I want this. Emotional significance."

Resting on the paper, and what would later rest on both their spines, an inky black feather, looking like it was done with fancy acrylic paint. It was intricate, and careful, and whenever the other one touched it, it just called to mind their soulmate.