Lost Between The Notes (Working Title)

A Life Is Strange Two-Shot by ChronicLegCramp-Since'99

Pairing: Caulscott

*Disclaimer: All characters and places belong to Dontnod Entertainment, respectively*

Spiking her drink had been the easy part. It was the next part, the follow through that always had tremors shooting through his clammy hands to the tips of his fingers and ice-cold sweat crawling its way down his spine. He'd gone through the paces, done this exact same dance what felt like a thousand times, when in reality it can't have been more than ten; and yet every time it felt like the first. Ten...or was it sixteen...?

Forget best friends, he and frustration were a married couple, sticking it out together alone. It didn't help that she was different. He wanted her; he hated himself. Out of an entire town practically living out of the pockets of his asshole father, she was the one thing- the one person- who would never belong to him. She had been His the second He'd laid eyes on her. He could feel the smouldering anger rising up his throat, setting his teeth grinding against it.

She reminded him of Her, except whereas She had always seemed unattainable, untouchable, this new girl was unbearably close for comfort. She could see him, he knew it, hated it, needed it. She was Samantha, the sunlight in his eyes. A Samantha with something off about her, a weird gleam in her eyes and in having this flaw ceased being Samantha altogether. She stopped being a discount Samantha doll and became Max Caulfield, someone ethereal and, he sensed, even more fleeting than Samantha had ever been.

"Better enjoy it while you can, Nathan."

She looked like an exotic animal, blissfully unaware she was about to become the prey to his predator. Florescent reds, pinks and purples bathed every inch of her exposed freckled skin, her head thrown back in almost literal ecstasy, all-too-observant eyes thankfully shut and her arms flung up haphazardly in the vibrating air. She couldn't keep rhythm to save her life but her body moved with such a wild abandon that he couldn't help but watch transfixed, hard, nose flaring under the difficulty to control his breathing. He itched for his camera, adrenaline pumping through his veins in anticipation for the night ahead. Perhaps if he asked nicely, he would be doing more than observing this time around. She could be his for the capturing. He allowed himself the delusion, flexing his arms and fists where they rested nonchalantly along the back of the sofa he'd claimed. He wasn't the only one who had noticed the hipster either, he realised belatedly, eyeing Dana's familiar figure and her dumb new skater boy toy. Dana with her regular auburn pony-tail shimmied over to Max, the two crowding into the petite girl's space, cheering her on and spinning her around. His lips pealed apart as her eyes flew open, landing hazily on her new dance partners. Her giggles and laughter were lost in the music pounding into Nathan's eardrums as he leant forward, elbows on his thighs, hands dangling between his knees. He took a long puff on the cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth, exhaling an agitated gush.

Dana was behind Max now, gripping her hips to help her sway in time to the beat, while the taller girl herself started wining back on her boyfriend, coaxing Max in tighter against her in response to the skater's drunken grabby hands. Nathan could see Max getting into it, see the way she was slowly leaning back into the other girl more and more, a nymph-like grin quirking up the corners of her mouth. His leg had started bouncing again, his gaze drifting down to his little bird's gyrating hips and staying there, the ache in his pants throbbing. He hadn't hated the formless twee, corduroy pinafore she was wearing more than he did in that moment.

His dove blue eyes, bloodshot and blurring at the peripherals from toking up with Hayden when he'd arrived earlier, flickered back up to her face. Her head turned in the same moment, dazed eyes stumbling across his where they froze, widened, focused in on him. Even through the mist of inebriation, the vibrancy of her eyes seared into him as though her purity could scourge away his taint. Time seemed to slow down and he absently plucked the cigarette from his mouth, wetting his chapped lips and noting the barest tang of iron on his tongue. He dropped his gaze, time speeding up again.

"Don't scare her off, Nathan. Don't scare her off!"

He brought his smoke back to his lips, inhaling deeply as he peered up once more from beneath his blond lashes. He couldn't help it; she was the moth to his flame- he had to draw her in. Or was it the other way around...? She was clearly distracted now, moving less certainly against Dana and yet there was the hint of a timid tipsy smile gracing her features. It was inevitable that her eyes would wander back to his and the second they met and held, her cheeks appeared to darken, an inquisitive look twinkling in her gaze before it shyly skittered away from his. Something akin to relief but significantly more euphoric flooded his system and he sensed a triumphant smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You got this, you got this. You're doing great, Nathan. Now you just gotta talk to her- get her to trust you."

"I can do it, I got this..."

He ran his shaky left hand through his dark champagne blond hair a couple times, carelessly breaking it out of its perfectly gelled shape and causing more tufts to spring out against his forehead, joining the most stubborn of them. Sticking the cigarette back into his mouth, he began to fiddle with the tufts, pressing them back against his skull over and over until he managed to catch himself, huffing and dragging on his smoke again.

"Whatthefuckever," he muttered to himself as he expelled another cloud of smoke into the humid air. If he did his job properly and he knew he would, pretty soon she would hardly be able to see let alone notice the state of his hair. Pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket, he checked the time before briefly scanning through the messages in his notifications.

"Jesus, Vic. There goes your chill right out the window...and mine...Whateverthefuck I had left of it...Shit, Victoria! I gotta get this done before she gets here-"

"Whoop-whoop! Bigfoots in da house~!"

"Yeahhh, fuck the Razorbacks!"

"Bigfoots! Bigfoots! Bigfoots!"

"Yo, Zach!"

"Zach-a-ray~!"

"You go, Mr Badass Football Hero!"

Nathan glanced up at Blackwell's encroaching football stars, rolling his eyes half-heartedly and squashing down uncomfortable fragments of memory from his time on the team. Stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the makeshift table in front of him, he swapped his phone out for his half-finished pack, lighting up afresh.

"Okay, what's the plan, Nathan, how do we go about this..."

He dropped his head low, scraping his chewed nails up and down the nape of his neck before a voice snatched his attention through the lull of the song switching.

"Damn, girl. Hey, Dana, how'd you get Max Saintfield up in here?" Zachary was shouting over the music, hands cupped around his loud mouth and his eyes appraising Max's form with amusement and obvious interest. Nathan's head had shot up so fast he'd almost strained himself. Max was grinning dopily up at the quarterback, only encouraging the latter to start dancing with her, touching her arm here, squeezing her hip there.

"Hey, don't thank me, Zach! Max was already here soloing it up when we got here!" Dana answered him with a proud smirk flashing upon her features.

"Yeahhhh! Show us your sweet moves, Maxwell!" Dana's boyfriend joined in. "We ain't putting you in the corner tonight!" The Prescott heir's blood was boiling beneath his skin, his eyes glaring dangerously at the dumb jock as the scene unfolding before him hit all his ticks at once. Leg bouncing, his lips pulled hard on his smoke, unconsciously letting it hang from his mouth as his hands squeezed into skin biting fists on his thighs. The tempo kicked up and the sea of sweating bodies created waves as they all started jumping to the beat, throwing hands up in the air and cheering.

The faint echoes of gleeful screams, laughter and water splashing reached beyond the black velvet curtains for an eerie moment as he sat and watched Zachary throw Max up above the crowd, pulling her legs around his torso where they locked in place. He could plainly see her giggling, enjoying herself, clutching Zachary's shoulders while continuing to move to the music. Through the red haze and strobe lights, Nathan's eyes zeroed in on the thick fingers gripping the petite girl's bare thighs, making him feel sick to the stomach. His teeth clenched reflexively, almost biting clean through the butt of his cigarette and he immediately took it from his mouth, smashing the unfinished smoke down into the ashtray.

He was on his feet, hunched and stalking over to the bar before his chaotic thoughts could catch up, slamming his palms on the counter top and pressing down hard to conceal how his hands were trembling.

"Calm down, Nathan. Calm. The FUCK. Down."

He cast a volatile look over his left shoulder for a fraction of a second to see Zachary replacing Max on her feet and sending Juliet, his on-off girlfriend a guilty apologetic grimace. He turned back, breathing in deeply and exhaling slowly.

"Come the fuck on, Nathan...before someone else makes a move on her."

He refused to have another Kate Marsh on his hands. Not with the nuisance that turned out to be. Not when it was Max.

"You want a drink, Prescott?" He reopened his eyes, which he'd squeezed shut and sent the student tending the bar a withering look.

"What's it fucking look like?" He retorted sarcastically, rubbing his wan face brusquely. "Gimmie a shot." The guy hesitated, scratching his cheek.

"What kind d'you want?"

"Good lord, anything! Vodka!"

"Okay, man! It's all cool." The sorry excuse for a bartender attempted to placate him, holding his hands up in a weak show of surrender. He burned lasers of aggravation into the guys head as the latter scrambled to fulfil his demand with a wince. Leaning forward on the bar with crossed arms, Nathan took a moment to try and steady his pulse, resisting the urge to keep Max in his sights with great difficulty. He jerked slightly at the sound of a red and white plastic cup being dunked down beside him and quickly straightened up, shrugging off the remnants of unadulterated anger clinging to his shoulders. He tossed back the liquor with the ease that comes with infinite practise and grit his teeth.

"Another," he told the bartender dismissively, pausing momentarily to stare into space before he looked up again. "And a, uh, white wine."

"You got it." He could feel the alcohol burning and swishing around in his gut, mentally kicking himself for mulishly ignoring Victoria's advice earlier about eating before the party.

"Fuck it," he uttered under his breath, picking up his refilled cup but not drinking it just yet. Another cup was placed in front of him and he took it in his free hand before turning on his heel and beginning to weave in and out of the mass of writhing bodies. His dulled vision tracked his target to where she was once again dancing alone, now next to where DJ Doom was set up. He let out a quiet breath of relief that he wouldn't have to deal with getting rid of anyone vying for her attention. The last thing he needed was someone like Gayram showing up and slobbering all over her like the love-sick dog he was. He sneered in disgust at the image his brain had helpfully crafted for him, shaking it from his mind.

As he wound around Dana and her skater boy, lifting his drinks up and away from the jostling bodies, he did a double-take, eyebrows raising and scrunching together in incredulity. Dana's new fling- "Trevor or whateverthefuck"- had progressed onto doing his best impression of lame ass dad at a wedding and the cheerleader was actually enjoying it, letting out full-bodied laughter between swinging her hips and placing 'sweet' kisses on the guy's cheeks. The display was so cute and endearing it was sickening. Releasing a droll snort, Nathan twisted back on course and stopped at Max's side, leaning down to her ear.

"Thirsty?"

"Oh, God-" She swivelled towards him, reaching out to grasp the cup he was proffering. "Thanks so much!" He was so thrown off by her uncharacteristically brazen behaviour that he didn't say anything for a moment, only watched her neck as she gulped down the wine. To take a drink from a random guy without a second of rational thought, told him that she was a lot worse off than he'd expected- that and the major slurring she had going on. He didn't know why he was surprised by how much of a lightweight she was. Why he was expecting this to be so much harder than it actually was. He wet his lips as she released a satisfied gasp of breath and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

"My throat was soooo..." She trailed off when her eyes finally rose to his face, widening as much as they could under their current drunken, half-lidded condition. "...dry." There was a beat of silence between them, Max's face seeming to darken to an even deeper shade of red and smudging her freckles out of existence. He couldn't help but grieve their loss.

"Hey." He smirked mildly at the way she bit her bottom lip, failing to prevent a delicate grin lifting her cheeks and avoiding his gaze. "I'm betting you've heard my name around campus." Her eyes fluttered up to his and then away.

"Nathan Prescott," she murmured so softly it was almost entirely smothered by the music. He would have missed it if he hadn't been subconsciously leaning down towards her, invading her personal bubble.

"I know your name too, New Girl," he said with a secretive upturn of his lips, stuffing his free hand in his jacket pocket as he clenched his fingers around the cup in the other, physically willing the tremors away.

"Or is it Camera Girl, Hipster, Crackfield, Max Selfie, Cockfield, Attention Whore- Christ, shut up, Nathan! Before you fuck up and actually let one of those slip!"

"Maxine Caulfield," he practically purred out just to get a reaction, eyes glinting with mirth when hers flew up to collide with his in evident surprise. The problem was that he finally got what he wanted; she didn't look away. Her deep blue sea orbs were sucking him in, drowning him and damn it if he'd ever been a good swimmer. He knew the intensity of his gaze had done a one-eighty by the way she was chewing nervously, fervently on her lip and her pupils were chasing away their iris'. Her eyes had darkened so significantly as a result that he yearned for his camera again, seeing her in black and white and red.

The spell was broken disjointedly when someone knocked into her, causing her to stumble forward, struggling to regain her balance in her state. His arm curled around her waist to steady her against him as he held his cup out, hand dripping vodka. His jacket sleeve had slid down an inch, baring the skin of his arm and she blindly reached out to clasp his wrist.

"You're all stripey," she laughed a bit drowsily, not at all comprehending what she was seeing and attempting to bring his arm closer to her face. He firmly, though not ungently tugged his arm away from her, hoping she didn't notice the jagged edge to his smile.

"And you're all spotted. We make quite a pair, huh?" He deflected effortlessly in a sardonic tone but she merely laughed some more and leaned into him, tiny hands braced on his chest inside his jacket. "Hey! Hayden! Take this shit, will you?" He passed the cup off to his friend as the latter was gliding past. Hayden's eyebrows shot up to his hair line when he got a better look at Max and Nathan had to suppress a sigh.

"Is that Little Miss Polaroid hanging all over you, Nate?" The stoner asked with a laugh and a silent question in his eyes.

"She's fucking wasted!" He called over the noise in reply with an eye roll before turning to the swaying girl in his arms. "You're totally tanked, you know that?" She'd been gazing up at him with a sleepy smile on her face but now she dropped her eyes in acute embarrassment, lifting a hand off his chest to cup her neck.

"I only had one drink...I think...?" She slurred sheepishly, resting her forehead on him as he automatically pulled her closer.

"Heeeey," Hayden broke in, placing a hand on his shoulder and regaining his attention. "Look after her, alright? Idiot didn't know what she was getting into." Despite the last quip, his voice wasn't unkind and he grinned down at Max as she belatedly registered his presence. Nathan tensed up however, the hand on the small of Max's back not yet rough but treading it's border with firm.

"'Course I will, Hayden. What the fuck d'you take me for?"

"Chiiiill, Nate. No need to get defensive, brah," the boy with the warm brown eyes replied in a stoned-out-of-his-mind kind of soothing voice, wholly unfased. His hand raised to give the back of Nathan's neck a playful tug. "I fucking love ya, maaaan!" Before Nathan could react his friend smacked a sloppy kiss to his cheek before dancing away in fits of maniacal laughter. The Prescott heir could only scoff.

"Hayden, I will END you!" He roared at his friends swiftly disappearing back but there was only fondness and humour glimmering in his eyes. The stoner half-turned, calling back over his shoulder.

"Better watch out for Victoria, oh Master of Monochrome!" Nathan scoffed again in feigned exasperation until the warning eventually registered.

"Oh shit, is Victoria here?!" He silently agreed as he took in the sudden panic furrowing the petite girl's eyebrows together beneath her tousled bangs. "She's gonna have a field day with this."

"With what?" He questioned lowly, her fear bleeding into him and sending his heart racing. He couldn't tell if it was her inebriation that kept her from seeing his instant unease and anxiety or if joining the drama club had truly paid off.

"With me!" She clarified, flustered and the way she looked right at him sent a jolt spiking through his gut that maybe she was starting to sober up. "I can see it now- 'Why don't you take a selfie to commemorate this preciously pathetic moment in your dull little life?'" Her impression of his best friend was so on point that it caught him off guard, startling genuine laughter out of him. He did his best to reel himself back in, coughing into his fist and self-consciously eyeing the pleased grin quirking up her elfin features.

"Christ, that was fucking creepy- you sounded just like her," he said wryly, coughing into his fist again. He regretted the choice of words immediately when her face visibly fell.

"Good job, dumbass. Remind her why she can't stand any of you privileged Vortex Club assholes when she's in her right mind."

"But, uh, yeah, what d'you say we go chill in my truck for a bit? Sober up, you know...I'll get you back to your room later, don't worry..." She was inching away slightly, straining against the hold of his arm so he reluctantly released her, mind buzzing furiously with ideas of how he could possibly fix this. Her eyes were darting about, uncertainty morphing her expression. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, clenching them into tight fists. "I, uh, I was thinking we could...you know, get to know each other-" He cut himself off, biting the inside of his cheek at how sad he sounded. He wasn't nearly drunk enough for this. Max peeked back up at him tentatively, wobbling on her feet.

"Nathan...everything's spinning," she told him hoarsely, stumbling over the words and bracing her hand on his forearm for balance.

"Hey," he began slowly, cupping her dainty chin in his hand to tilt her head back. She could barely keep her eyes open, lids blinking sporadically under the strobe lights. "You gonna yack?" He asked quickly, leaning in to hover his mouth by her ear so she could hear him over the blaring music.

"N-no, I don't think so," she stuttered out, clutching onto his jacket and looking increasingly lost and confused.

"It's all good, Nathan, stay calm- don't freak out. You've done this before, remember? Just get her to the truck."

His nose was flared under his gradually escalating breathing and he inhaled deeply, running a hand through his mussed hair.

"Can you walk? Max?" He prompted, attempting poorly to exercise his patience. Her gaze swerved back up to his, seeming uncomfortably doubtful. "Alright, come on, 'Super Max'." He sighed briefly before stepping forward to swing her up off the floor and into his arms, her tiny legs dangling helplessly over his arm. She scrabbled inelegantly to loop her arms around his neck, her flushed face millimetres from his. He wet his lips, catching the way her sluggish gaze dropped to his mouth, pupils blown.

"Don't even think about it, Prescott."

Tearing his eyes away, he affirmed his grip on her and started making his way through the swimming pool. As he approached the exit of the VIP area, trying not to look shifty, his eyes locked with a pair of familiar stern, murky green ones. His feet faltered as Victoria's fine spun silk brows pulled together in honest bewilderment, her eyes flitting between him and Max once. Her perfectly painted taupe lips parted as though to call out to him but he continued walking, scowling and gritting his teeth against the guilt and frustration gnawing away at his insides.

"You're an asshole, Nathan Prescott."

Thanks for reading!

This is my first attempt at writing for Life Is Strange and this pairing so I hope no one's too OOC. I was sitting on the bus going to work one day, listening to Radiohead and Jigsaw Falling Into Place came on and what do you know, this idea came to me from out of the ether. This scene basically started formulating and playing out in my head as I was listening to the song and I just knew I was gonna have to write it.

So yeah, this fic is inspired by that song and I continued listening to Radiohead in general while I was writing it. I hope I got the atmosphere right.

They'll be a second and final part but I thought since the first was finished I might as well put it up. I don't know how long it will take to write the rest but it shouldnt be more than a couple weeks since I don't have a lot of spare time or at least not in the kind of huge chunks that I need in order to properly write.

Also, yeah I realised I accidentally wrote Max as petite even though shes average height *face-palm* I blame Chloe for that and pretty much every other female character- seriously I swear everyone's taller than Max in this game? Or is it just me xD