moved 5/6/16. originally written 8/18/15.
written post-episode 4 because i was really fucked up. dedicated to my friend because not only was she also incredibly fucked up (we played ep 4 together), she also titled this fic and gave me encouragement as i wrote.
Despite Chloe's "I can't sleep" graffiti on the wall of her room, Max is entirely certain that there is no one on the planet who can fall asleep faster than Chloe. For as long as they've been friends - or, well, for as long as they've been sleeping over at each other's houses - Max has always been the last one to fall asleep.
It's not that it's a problem, really, because Chloe seems so much happier and younger when she sleeps - it looks like the normal, childlike innocent happiness is adorning her features and they're seven years old all over again.
Max misses that. She misses when life wasn't so difficult for Chloe, and, as much as she has grown to love the blue hair and pissed off attitude, she misses when Chloe was just a little blonde girl that wanted to make Max laugh all the time. Nowadays, with how things have been for Chloe, it's understandable that she doesn't exactly feel up to running around giggling - but even Max doesn't want to do that anymore, no matter how fond the memories are or how much she misses it.
Because people change as they age, along with times and culture and just about everything else, really.
But with all of Chloe's changes, and with how she presents herself, Max has always thought that Chloe would fit in with that whole punk thing and gain some kind of insomniac personality - it would certainly explain her "I can't sleep" graffiti. (But then, Max thinks, maybe the night that was written was a night where Chloe really couldn't sleep and that makes Max wish she had been there to lie awake with her.)
So Chloe falling asleep just as fast as Max remembers the night they break into Blackwell comes as a bit of a surprise to her. It's not an unwelcome one, though, and it actually almost placates that worry she has for Chloe and her drastic changes.
Almost. (Except, not really.)
Chloe has been rather eager (it would almost be too eager if Max hadn't felt the same amount of excitement right back) to spend time with her lately, but even if Max hadn't left years ago, and even if they had been hanging out every day like they used to, Max could never ever turn down a movie night with the blue haired girl.
Chloe picks some sort of weird action flick that they've probably already watched before, years ago (because Max sort of remembers the weird opening scene), and plops in close to Max.
There's blood and loud noises and action scenes with the clinking of swords, a scene where a guy loses a hand - a little reminiscent of Star Wars, Max thinks in the back of her mind - but no matter how gruesome or loud or action-packed a scene is, no matter how excited Chloe gets beside her, Max just can't keep her eyes open. She can feel them blinking closed sometime towards the middle of the movie, when they're setting up some kind of sexual tension scene between the two main characters.
And before she knows it, she's dead asleep on Chloe's shoulder, snoring softly as the characters on the screen in front of her pretend to hate each other. Max sleeps for the rest of the duration of the movie, during the intense plot points, during the flashy final fight between the hero and the big, bad villain, and the final scene where the two main characters finally have a heavy make out session.
But when she wakes up, the title screen flashing on and off and playing the same music over and over again (god why didn't Chloe just turn it off), she feels Chloe's head on top of her own, her eyes closed as she peacefully snores on top of Max.
She stifles her laughter in fear of waking the other girl up. After shutting off the movie to shut up the annoying title screen, she snuggles closer to the dead weight that Chloe has become.
"I guess not everything changes," she mumbles, quietly, to herself. With a smile, she goes back to sleep.