:

Explosive Decompression

altunderscore

3


Despite the firm chill of the floor under her toes, Max felt as though she had stepped off a cliff and into open air.

Air that smelled like lavender and sweat, and tasted like cinnamon and old blood.

She was in freefall.

Ten little pinpricks of heat across her back; thin like fingertips (because, as she vaguely remembered, that's what they were ), burned through the thin cotton of her shirt and lit across her skin in a way that only made the rest of her feel colder for their absence.

She felt herself lurch forward, unsteady. Uncertain.

She felt something on her lips; warm and soft, but above all cautious in the way it ('they', she realized, 'those were lips too' ) pressed against her own.

Hesitation.

Rejection.

They pulled away.

'Oh, God..', she thought while the floor dropped out from underneath her feet and took the pit of her stomach with it, leaving her hanging-

-gutless-

-breathless-

-in the mouth of the void.

And then something soft touched her cheek.

At once the ten tiny pinpricks she felt against her skin ignited as she was pulled, forward and up, drawn into the curve of something warm and firm and suddenly the lack of solid ground beneath her didn't matter at all because Victoria's fingertips traced fire down the slender slope of her spine and up to the crown of her head, raising hair and goosebumps and need in their wake.

'Oh..' She thought hazily as her mouth fell open on its own. Victoria's furtive hold on her shifted into something solid and secure enough that she could feel the blonde's heart -steady and slow- beating against her chest and pulsing over the split skin of her lips.

She became acutely aware of her own flyaway heartbeat only by the contrast of the girl across from her, strong and relentless and something like glacial in the way she moved against her. The way a hand crawled into her hair; fingers, long and soft and unyielding, splayed against her scalp and cast little hot star-bursts into her head. The other hand carved a river of heat across the small of her back on its way to settle skin-to-skin and almost molten on her hip.

Something volcanic lapped against her lip. A gasp would have escaped her at the sudden sting of it if Victoria hadn't captured it along with the rest of her.

She felt the slick ridge of teeth rasp against raw flesh and a whimper died before it could fully form as the pain was replaced by the warm envelope of Victoria's mouth on hers again.

Max's eyes, heavy and hooded, slid open and she was trapped.

She'd never seen green fire before.

Victoria pulled away with a hiss that made something in her belly writhe at the sound of it. Max's eyes flicked from Victoria's dilated pupils to the mottled knots around her pale throat to the faint sheen of red smeared across her lips and something possessive and primal thrashed awake inside of her.

Marking Victoria felt good.

Her tongue danced inside her mouth like a hungry flame.

She was starving.

The slick cinnamon sheen she could still taste on her lips only fueled her searching surge forward and up back towards Victoria's warmth.

Max's forehead brushed against the taller blonde's own as she canted her head downward to meet the brunette somewhere in the middle-space between them, but at the last moment shifted so that Max's torn lips slid and streaked a path along Victoria's delicate jaw and down into the crook of her neck.

'Max..' Victoria hissed from somewhere above her, voice raw and heavy and charged.

It sent an electric jolt into Max's spine, sharp and hot like lighting.

Her mind clouded and her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Something feral worked its way out of her as a mewl at Victoria's tone.

She'd give anything to hear her name on those lips again.

Her tongue flicked out and found the soft skin of Victoria's neck and her teeth followed behind it.

'Bite' Something inside her said.

'Claim-'

Her lips sealed over bruised skin and her teeth slid together, taking as much of Victoria into her mouth as she could-

"Max." Victoria gasped, and this time there was an urgency in her tone that wasn't present before.

"Max, we need to stop." Victoria panted, and a part of Max -the part that wanted to eat Victoria Chase alive- snarled in response.

The rest of her became aware of the state she was in.

The cold tile under her feet.

The blood on her lips that she had streaked across Victoria's own.

The salt and metal she tasted on Victoria's throat under her tongue.

The fingertips just underneath the waistband of her pantyhose.

The mercurial boil somewhere in the bowl of her hips.

..

Maybe Victoria had a point..

Max's lips unsealed from around their chosen span of Victoria's throat with a pop she felt more than heard and she leaned back, her heels touching the ground for the first time in she didn't know how long.

She searched out Victoria's eyes as the taller girl relaxed her hold and shivered somewhat as the blonde's hands moved from their earlier positions to places a bit less intimate.

Max could still feel the flush on her face and the haze in her head as her heart tried to settle into a more appropriate rhythm, but Victoria's thumbs idly resting on her hips and the rake of her green eyes from the tips of her toes to the freckles on her cheeks made the process more complicated and agonizingly slower than it really needed to be.

The faint blush on Victoria's cheeks and the wet sheen on her lips didn't completely offset the sting of her smug smile and raised brow, but it did help.

And then Victoria opened her mouth.

"Cold in here, Caulfield?" Victoria asked rhetorically as she visibly swept her eyes across Max's figure.

Max tried her best not to focus too hard on where the blonde's gaze happened to linger. She'd need all of her self-confidence to get through this without Victoria just running over her.

'Hmm..'

An idea began to take shape.

Max smiled.

"A little.." She said shyly, making a show of smoothing down the thin fabric of her tee shirt. "How can you tell?" Max asked in the most innocent tone she could manage.

She might have batted her eyelashes and bit the corner of her bottom lip for dramatic effect.

It was harder than it seemed, given the situation.

Victoria's mouth opened, but no words came out. The flush on her cheeks deepened a shade and the beginnings of a defensively snide comment started to form judging by the way her eyebrows had begun to pinch together towards the middle.

'Perfect.'

Max gasped in faux-shock and interrupted whatever it was that Victoria was going to say as she stepped forward and swiped a finger across the uncharacteristically stunned girl's lips.

"Oh my Dog Victoria, what have you done to yourself?" Max looked at her fingertip and back to Victoria's face positively aghast. "You're an absolute mess! "

Max could almost hear Victoria's nerves fraying, but she wasn't quite finished with the other girl just yet.

"Wait a sec', 'Tori, let me get that for you-" Max offered helpfully, every syllable calculated for maximum damage.

She casually reached for the hem of her shirt, looped a corner around her fingertip, and lifted it up towards Victoria's face-

"No."

A hand locked around her wrist before she could raise it -and her shirt along with it- too far above her navel.

Victoria held Max's wrist with one hand and pinched the bridge of her nose in mild frustration with the other.

"Not a chance in hell, Caulfield."

Victoria exhaled in a huff and opened her eyes, placing both hands on Max's shoulders at either side of her neck to keep her in place. Max started to open her mouth to continue teasing the flustered blonde but was stopped short when Victoria placed her whole hand over the freckled girl's mouth.

"No." Victoria reiterated.

"Here's what's going to happen-" she said authoritatively. "When I let you go, I am going to turn around, go to my room, get my first aid kit, and come back here. When I come back I am going to wash my face, and then I'll bring you to your room. We are going to sit down, I am going to unfuck your face, and we will have an adult conversation about tonight. Nod your head if you're with me so far, hipster."

Max thought for a moment and then nodded. It honestly wasn't too bad of a plan.

Victoria's tone softened.

"Alright." she said as she turned towards the door. "I'll be right back so don't wander off and get kidnapped or something."

The click of the shutting door echoed through the mostly empty bathroom forcefully enough to jar Max into motion towards the sinks. The warm water in this part of the dorms usually took a bit to turn on, but Max needed all the time to collect her thoughts that she could get if she was being honest with herself.

The last hour or so rolled over her like a wave and she staggered as her head spun and her knees turned to jelly underneath her.

'Holy shit..'

Her shaking hands came up to her lips and brushed across the swollen and bruised skin they found there before sliding gently across the the long, angry scratches down her cheek.

Victoria had punched her in the face.

In fairness, Max had called her a slut and attacked her over Nathan, but that was because.. why, exactly?

She couldn't really recall.

The last three days from her perspective had been an insane black whirl of awfulness that bordered on the surreal. There were times where she felt like a passenger in her own skin and even then those dissociations still managed to feel more coherent and put-together than the spans of time that she would just outright lose-

Steam from the faucet finally began to cloud up from the sinkbasin and she idly slid a hand under the stream before rubbing tenderly at her split lips.

Victoria had punched her and Max had gone blank.

She had felt a vague sense of pressure underneath her palms and her entire body throbbed with an aggressive blood-deep tension she didn't have a name for.

She remembered Victoria choking on the floor of the Dark Room strangely superimposed with Chloe-

-she remembered disgust and revulsion and grief and a soothing warmth and a soft susurrus being whispered into her hair that had felt like falling into bed after the longest day of her life.

She remembered all that in flashes.

She remembered kissing Victoria Chase perfectly.

Her fingertips lingered on her lips even after the blood had been rinsed away and only split pink skin remained.

'Max, what the hell were you thinking?'

She brought wet fingers up and swept her frazzled hair out of her face and winced when she brushed across a bruised span of scalp.

The sigh that escaped her as she turned towards her usual stall was a ragged, anxious thing. She absently shut and locked the door behind her, worked herself out of her pantyhose, and collapsed onto the toilet in an exhausted, grumbling heap.

She remembered kissing Victoria Chase perfectly.

Too perfectly.

She wasn't sure if the heat that Victoria kissed her back with made it all better or worse.

Her eyes idly scanned for patterns in the the ceiling, but there was no guidance to be found scattered across the waterstained tile above her head.

Another sigh.

She reached towards the dispenser at her side and a few moments later flushed the toilet.

'Mission accomplished, Max. Excellent work.' She thought sarcastically as she pulled her pantyhose up. Leave it to her to make going to the bathroom before bed into a black comedy.

The door to the bathroom brushed open as she stepped out of the stall and a quick glance confirmed that it was indeed Victoria. Max had a thought.

"Could you imagine if Dana walked in right now?" Max asked over the spray of the sink as she washed her hands. "Or basically anybody but Kate, I guess?"

She heard Victoria pause as the other girl reached into a shower stall and grabbed a showerbag that had been inside it.

"I'd prefer not to, honestly." came the reply. "And don't tempt Murphy while I'm close enough to get caught in the shitstorm, please."

There's the Victoria she knew and, well..

'Loved' was a strong word.

'Thought was cute, in a bitchy sort of way..'

Yeah. That.

'Her sensitive side is pretty adorable though to be honest..' Max thought, before mentally changing subjects so she wouldn't embarrass herself as she turned to face the blonde who was now leaning over her own sink.

The tilt of the blonde's head as she rinsed the red off her lips gave her a perfect view of the pinkish streak along her jaw and down the side of her neck before it got lost in the broad strokes of purple and red someone had painted her throat with.

'Not -someone-.' Max thought.

'Me. I did that.'

' Jesus..'

Max shook her head as she stepped over to the blonde girl and reached into the open shower-bag to grab a dry washcloth off the very top.

Victoria froze as Max neared the bag but relaxed when she saw what she had grabbed.

She still zipped it shut and dropped it under the sink immediately after, though.

Odd.

"You missed a spot.." Max answered Victoria's unasked question as she wet the end of the cloth and began dabbing at the taller girl's neck. Victoria tensed when the warm cloth met skin, but gradually loosened up as Max moved up and away from her throat and towards the underside of her jaw.

Max really had made a mess, huh?

She laughed, but it wasn't a completely happy sort of thing.

Victoria shook her head in response and stepped away from the sink.

"Come on, Lamefield. You can mope in your own room where there's less traffic." Victoria said as she gathered her pair of bags in one hand and took Max's wrist with the other. "I'll even let you play some of your emo music if that'll make things easier."

"Victoria, we both know you have Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary on vinyl in the box under your bed. You can stop playing coy about indie music whenever you feel comfortable." Max grumbled.

"Okay first off how the fuck do you know that?" Victoria asked, incredulous and blushing, then shook her head. "Secondly, Diary is a classic and I'm from Seattle. It doesn't count."

Victoria physically pulled Max the entire length of the hallway before guiding her into her own room, pausing only to turn on the light.

She still didn't let go of her arm.

Victoria brought Max to the edge of her bed.

"Sit." she commanded.

It seemed like a good idea so Max did. Only then did Victoria let her go.

Max watched the blonde girl turn towards her desk and grab her computer chair. Victoria dragged the chair as close to the edge of the bed as she could get it and sat down, her knees on either side of Max's own.

"Lean forward please." Victoria said as she reached into the bag on her lap and pulled out a pad of gauze, a cloth, and a small bottle of medical alcohol.

"This is going to sting, right?" Max asked, somewhat anxious.

"It'll only hurt once, dork." Victoria laughed.

Victoria was right.

"So." she began as she wiped the cloth down the scratches on Max's cheek.

How one syllable could be so heavy astounded Max, but she was spared from introspection when Victoria continued after a moment.

"Let's start at the beginning." she said.

Max nodded in response, careful not to disrupt Victoria's hand with the cloth.

"I'm sorry I punched you in the face. I'm less sorry about this-" she indicated the scratches she was now fixing a bandage over, "-given the circumstances, but I'd like to think that helping clean it up makes us close to even, considering everything."

Max wasn't so sure, so she spoke up.

"I can put a bandage on my face and hide in my room all weekend, Victoria. You-" she gestured at Victoria's neck and up towards her eye, "- are a lot harder to hide or explain away." Max said, her tone worried.

Victoria scoffed.

"Do you have any idea how many turtlenecks I own? Don't answer that." she interrupted when she saw a smartass remark begin to form on Max's split lips.

"Anyway, I can wear something with a high collar every day for a month without repeating anything once if I needed to. The only people with enough spine to ask about my eye will probably believe whatever I tell them about it anyway. I'm not too worried about them." Victoria said with more confidence in her voice than she showed on her face.

Maybe it was just because Max was so close that she was able to see through a bit of Victoria's facade.

The blonde's expression softened as she spread a smallish dot of antibacterial ointment across Max's lip.

"I'll protect you from Taylor if you keep Kate from killing me?" Victoria asked, only half joking.

Max couldn't fully speak, but her muffled "Mhmm-" was enough of an answer for Victoria as she gave Max's face one last once-over and began returning her supplies to her bag.

"Keep your cheek covered with that bandage until around lunchtime today and then take it off. Make sure it and your lips stay clean and moisturized and everything should be mostly normal in a few days." Victoria said as she set the bag in her lap at the foot of Max's bed and stood up, apparently only to turn the chair around so she could straddle the back of it when she sat back down.

Max felt heat rush to her cheeks but wasn't entirely sure why.

"Now then." Victoria began, her tone deadly serious. "We're going to talk about you taking advantage of me the way you did before this has time to get awkward."

Max's jaw dropped open. Victoria was really trying to put all this on her?

"Hold the hell up Victoria, I may have kissed you but you kissed me back! You even had a hand in my pantyhose when you told me to stop-" Max was halfway into a full rant when Victoria's firm voice brought her up short.

"I did kiss you back, Max. That's why I asked you to stop."

Max paused, her mouth still open in her confusion.

Victoria's expression was intense.

"I refuse to be an impulsive accident. I will not allow myself to be a fucking regret, Maxine. I'm better than that." Victoria said, her voice low and hot like magma.

"I never.. I wouldn't-" Max began, but was again cut off.

"If you can tell me this hasn't been the worst week of your life, I'll apologize." Victoria said. "Your best friend was murdered in front of you. My best friend lost his fight with his mental illness and killed someone, and I can't stop blaming myself for it because I should have seen it coming."

Max started to open her mouth, to explain to Victoria all the ways she was wrong about herself and how if it was anyone's fault it was hers, but Victoria had already built up her momentum -had been building it for a while, if the heavy train of words spilling out of her mouth was any indication- so Max swallowed the platitudes for the moment and let the emotional blonde speak.

"After all of this bullshit, you are out of your mind if you think I'm going to let either one of us build up something that could just be thrown away as some heat-of-the-moment mistake."

Victoria's voice was venomous.

"So I hedged my bets. If the only kiss we ever had was going to be written off as an accident, I was going to put everything I had into every fucking second of it. If you decided in the morning it was all something that never should have happened, then I got my money's worth."

Victoria smiled. It was one of her old, predatory ones.

"If you wanted more, well, I left a good first impression."

There was a lot to pick apart from Victoria's diatribe, but Max focused on the easiest bits first.

"If anyone's to blame for Monday, Victoria, it's me-" Max continued speaking over Victoria's disbelieving scoff "- but where the hell do you get off thinking I'd just throw you away like an emotional tampon after crying my goddamn eyes out on your shoulder after almost killing you?"

Max's right hand itched. The dead girl on the bathroom floor in Max's mind had blonde hair instead of blue this time.

"This has been the worst week of my fucking life, Victoria. I've seen too many of my friends die and if one more stranger looks at me with some pitiful expression on their face and tells me 'It's not your fault, Max' like they have any idea what they're talking about I am going to lose my mind."

Victoria's toes dug into Max's carpet but the blonde girl stayed silent.

"I don't even remember most of the funeral, 'Tori-" Max said, her voice breaking towards the end. "I remember being so angry I snapped one of my teeth and was so fucking detached my first thought was about how to hide the evidence so nobody would notice! I have no idea what I did after that because the next thing I remember is sitting on my bed, completely dressed, at two in the morning."

Max ran a shaking hand through her hair.

"When I went to the bathroom the absolute last thing on my list of things to do was 'Black out and crush Victoria Chase's throat in a blind rage' but what do you fucking know? I managed to screw that one up too."

Max's fists clenched and she felt her jaw begin to tighten instinctively but a sharp, frustrated exhale was enough to snap herself out of one of her worse new habits. Victoria cleared her throat to speak but Max met her eye-to-eye and something in the brunette's gaze locked the blonde's words in her throat.

"Let me finish, Victoria." Max asked.

Victoria obeyed.

Max smiled.

"I haven't felt like the driving force in my own life this entire fucking week. At best I've been half-conscious in the passenger seat and at worst I've been passed out in the god-damned trunk." Max was fuming. Victoria had never heard this amount of pure, animal vitriol from anyone but herself.

"You letting me cry all this garbage out on your shoulder was like waking up from a nightmare. You could have walked away at any point in there. You could have called the fucking cops and been justified after what I did to you, Victoria."

When her eyes met Victoria's they were red and ringed with dark circles, but no tears had fallen.

"So when I tell you that kissing you was the first real choice I remember making since all this bullshit started, I need you to believe me."

Victoria swallowed hard.

Max grabbed the blonde girl's chair and pulled her towards her spot on the bed.

Their faces were inches apart.

Max smelled like soap and alcohol.

"So do you regret kissing me, Victoria?" Max's words were blunt and heavy and made Victoria dizzy.

"Of course not, Max-"

Max's lips pressed against hers in a slow rush that stopped her in her tracks. She felt the layer of ointment on them smear in a sloppy streak before Max opened her mouth just wide enough to catch the ridge of Victora's lower lip between them and pulled-

Victoria was left panting when Max pulled away.

Her blue eyes were steady and sharp like ice.

"I'm not asking you to marry me, Victoria. You were there for me in a way no one else had been and I thought if we were close enough that I could cry myself out into your nightgown or choke you badly enough blood-vessels burst in your eyes, that we were close enough for me to kiss you when it felt right."

Victoria was speechless.

"Look." Max said. "You're worried that I'll wake up tomorrow and 'realize this was all a mistake', right?" Max asked, and at Victoria's mumbled assent she continued.

"I don't know how closely you've been paying attention, but you're only the second person I've ever kissed, and you're the first one to ever kiss me back. That-" Max brushed her fingers across the deep bruise around Victoria's neck in a way that made the blonde girl shiver, "-was my 'heat-of-the-moment mistake' and that's what I'm worried about."

Max's fingers crept their way into Victoria's short hair like hungry vines.

Max's blue eyes burned.

"This-" she said as she leaned in, her voice a low whisper, "- is all me."


Sometime later they broke apart.

Max's face was flushed and her lips were sore, but the dizzy -almost drunken- expression on Victoria's face and the way her own lips, as pink and swollen and wet as they were, refused to close together made a warmth that was half pride and half complicated bloom in her chest.

".. thank you, Victoria." Max whispered.

The words brought Victoria out of her daze and she flushed as they sank in. She absentmindedly licked her lips and after a moment her eyes widened and her blush deepened. She looked at her toes because she couldn't look anywhere else, but her own whispered words were still loud enough to be heard.

"You looked like you needed a friend, Maxine.."

Max laughed and the high, soft sound drew Victoria's green eyes up to meet Max's own pair of blues.

"I'm not sure friends kiss each other quite the way we just did, Victoria." Max said as an uncharacteristic smirk grew across her face.

'Geez, whatever makes Victoria so -her- must be contagious..' Max joked internally but laughed out loud.

Victoria look like she was going to ask what was funny, so Max continued speaking.

"At least I don't kiss Kate like that." She said and watched as Victoria positively bristled in response. Max made a quiet mental note and kept on. "Every now and then she'll kiss me on the cheek, though."

Max adjusted the note she had just made.

Victoria apparently had a jealous streak the size of a small moon.

The girl was basically rabid at this point.

"And don't get me started on Warren-"

"-That fucking weirdo!?" Victoria gasped. Max stopped short.

"Huh?" she eloquently asked.

Victoria thrust herself up and out of Max's chair to better gesture wildly around the room.

"Have you seen the way he looks at you, Caulfield!?" Victoria asked, her incredulity matched only by her alarm.

Max looked at Victoria like she was crazy, shrugged, and fell back onto her bed with a sigh.

"No, Caulfield. That boy isn't right!" Max couldn't see Victoria anymore, but she could feel the tall blonde's irritation.

She spat the word 'boy' like it was a curse.

"You sure?" Max asked as she covered her eyes with an arm to block out some of the light.

"Of course I'm sure! He has a literal stalker-wall of pictures of you in his locker, Max!"

..

What.

Max lifted her arm enough to uncover one eye and raised a very skeptical eyebrow.

".. really?"

"Fucking YES. I had assumed the two of you were dating or something but 'recent events'" -Oh god Victoria actually did real airquotes that was precious- "have informed me that no, he's just a fucking weirdo."

"Victoria?" Max asked as she scooted back to place her back against the wall.

Victoria paused in her agitated pacing of Max's carpet to cut her eyes at the smaller brunette.

"Yes, Max?" she asked flippantly.

"Have you been stalking my stalker?"

To Victoria's credit, she only completely shut down for two seconds before managing a response.

"Fuckin' somebody has to! You're lucky he hasn't tried to drag you off somewhere in the back of his shitheap car by now!"

Victoria saw Max's embarrassed blush and noticed the way she tried to hide behind her knees.

"Max, that little creep hasn't tried to drag you off somewhere in his shitheap car, has he?" Victoria asked. She was unnaturally still, and her hands were folded primly in front of her waist.

".. No?" Max answered.

'.. not in this timeline, at least..' she mentally appended.

Victoria relaxed, but only somewhat.

"Good. If he had, I'd have to dispose of him, and frankly that'd be a waste of resources. To be honest I'm still tempted. You know he tries to look in your dorm window in the mornings, right?" Victoria added, glancing at Max from over her shoulder as the blonde girl ostensibly looked at her wall of Polaroid selfies.

Max's jaw dropped.

"You have to be joking."

"I fucking wish!" Victoria said, her agitated voice in contrast to her careful actions as she gently unpinned one of the selfies from the wall.

"I run around the school grounds every other morning and at least once a week I'll catch that spooky little creep standing behind the corner of the dorms just staring at that window right there." Victoria pointed at the window behind Lisa, Max's pet tree.

Max paled.

"Look Max, I'm not trying to give you nightmares or anything this late at night-" she glanced at the clock "-early in the morning, rather- but just keep an eye on that boy. Please." Victoria looked dead serious, so Max nodded in response.

Victoria looked down at the Polaroid in her hand and then to Max.

"I'm keeping this, by the way." Victoria said as though if her voice was confident enough Max wouldn't notice the furious blush on her face.

Max just raised an eyebrow in response.

"Don't look at me like that, Lamefield. It's just a good picture is all."

Max wordlessly beckoned Victoria to come forward. She was way too sleepy for this shit.

Victoria closed the distance with the edge of the bed in two broad strides and held the picture out for Max to see.

Max shivered when she glanced at the Polaroid, looking at it only long enough to confirm which one it was.

"That was the morning of my first full day here.. " Max said, fighting down a yawn.

Victoria looked back down at the picture and did her best to hide a smile. Max still saw it, though.

"I was so excited I could hardly sleep the night before. That's why I look as exhausted as I do."

She had contemplated that particular picture rather often.

"You're really happy here too, though. Bedhead looks nice on you, Caulfield." Victoria admitted, catching Max by surprise.

Max tugged on Victoria's wrist until the blonde got the message and sat down on the edge of the bed. She rolled over onto her side and grumbled contentedly as she curled around Victoria's butt. Victoria caught on quickly and pulled one of the sleepy brunette's hands into her lap and, after a moment of hesitation, twined their fingers together.

Max giggled and yawned again.

"I meant what I said, 'Tori-" she trailed off. "I'm not worried about being 'Facebook Official' or meeting your parents or moving into your room or anything like that right now. Just being able to sit like this is perfect.." she mumbled.

Victoria just squeezed Max's smaller hand in hers.

"I like you a lot. I like making you blush just as much as I like pissing you off, and I'm kind of a big fan of kissing you too, if you haven't noticed.."

Victoria had noticed.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd like us to spend some time together more, Victoria. You make me really happy, in a lot of different ways."

Victoria looked down at the picture of Sleepy Max in her lap, and then to the real-life Sleepy Max at her side, and thought about what Max was saying.

They sat like that for a few minutes while Victoria thought to herself about everything that had happened.

The small hand in hers was warm, from the soft pad of her palm all the way out to the slightly calloused tips of her fingers. Victoria thought about all the sad love-songs that tiny little hand had played every morning since the girl had moved into the dorm across from hers.

She thought about all the time she had spent those mornings lingering as close as she could get to the origin to the sound, listening attentively as the brunette had tirelessly fumbled through the notes over and over until she could play each and every one perfectly enough that she could sing over them, too.

She ran her eyes over the fingernails, bitten short and ragged from stress and anxiety and so much bullshit that had been heaped on the girl at her side and refused to quit.

'Fuck..' Victoria thought as she looked at the ceiling and sighed.

She was in so far over her head.

She looked back down at the hand she held in hers, and thought.

Quickly, she came to a conclusion, over the sound of gentle snoring somewhere to her left.

She grabbed her phone, swiped over to the app she needed, carefully framed her subject, found her focus, and shot.

The soft snap of the virtual shutter echoed through Max's room, but the sleeping brunette didn't stir.

Not even when Victoria softy -very softly- brought the small hand in hers up to her face.

"You make me happy too, Max.." she whispered to no one as she brushed her lips across pinkish knuckles and smiled her own sleepy smile.

The clock read 4:45. The earliest-rising students would be getting up in an hour or so, even on a Saturday. Victoria sighed and glanced at the sleeping girl curled around her like some sort of hipster armadillo.

An involuntary smile crept across her face and a giggle bubbled up from somewhere inside of her.

Victoria Chase didn't giggle.

Max grumbled something completely incoherent in her sleep.

'.. Apparently exceptions could be made..'

Victoria looked at the picture on her phone: both of their hands twined together and held softly on Victoria's lap.

It wasn't a particularly technical shot; Victoria's nightgown was riding up a little high from where it had been torn off to give Max something to wipe at her face with back in the bathroom. The violet-sheer material was wrinkled and a stray drop of blood had rubbed off onto it somehow. Victoria's knuckles were bruised across the ridge from earlier, too.

Max could take a better picture in her sleep. As the Polaroid she held in her lap could attest, she had.

Still, looking at Max's delicate fingers tangled up in hers made something in her core do flips. Victoria felt something like butterflies in her chest every time Max made a sleepy little noise beside her and would have given anything at all to keep this memory of them fresh forever.

She saved the picture.

She set it as her wallpaper.

It was a little cheesy, but Max made her feel a little cheesy so that was fucking fine.

She turned to her side and groaned inwardly as she realized what she had to do.

She gently brushed her fingers through Max's hair, softly whispering the brunette's name until her eyes fluttered open.

Max's response was grumpy and only mostly completely incoherent this time.

"..-wuzzit'tori'm'sleeby-.. "

'Fucking. Shakespeare.'

Victoria's smile was soft and her voice was softer as she whispered to the exhausted girl at her side.

"Max, I need you to actually get under the blanket if you're going to go to sleep right now." Victoria said, before continuing. "Also unlock your phone so I can put my number in it. I've got a picture I want to send you."

Max fumbled blindly at her nightstand with the hand that wasn't currently busy holding Victoria's until she found her phone. She slid her thumb in some angular pattern and her phone clicked open. Max immediately flung it away from her like it was a live hand grenade and wiggled under the blankets like some sort of little dorky caterpillar or something.

She still didn't let go of Victoria's hand.

Victoria sent Max the picture she had taken of their hands together and waited for the brunette's phone to ding. She didn't want to snoop around when she opened the text she had sent, but literally seven unread messages from Warren was kind of hard to ignore. She filed that information away for later as she paged over to 'Contacts' and put her own number inside.

She thought for a moment and blushed.

'Think of it as a peace offering, Victoria.. ' she thought as she typed in her name and pressed Save.

'-Tori-'

It didn't seem so bad when Max said it.

She set the contact image as the cheesy little picture she had just taken, saved that too, and closed the phone.

Her blush didn't go away, but that was fine.

She reached down to her bag with the hand that wasn't currently occupied and placed the Polaroid she had asked Max to give her inside and stood up.

Max grumbled some more when Victoria was finally forced to let go of her hand, but the blonde leaned down and brushed her hand through the loose hair above Max's ear until she settled back down.

If anybody saw her like this she would probably die.

'It just might be worth it..' She thought as she stepped away from the bed and towards the lightswitch on the far wall.

It flicked off with a quiet snap and the room was washed in the indigo light of almost-morning.

It looked positively serene.

Max flopped around and adjusted her pillow.

"g'night'tori.." Max mumbled into the blankets.

Victoria still heard her, though.

She smiled, small and soft like Max's hands or a lullaby or the light slipping through the curtained window just then.

This all might not be worth dying for, but

It was definitely worth living for.

"Goodnight, Max." Victoria said.

'Thank you, Maxine.' Victoria thought.

She closed the door behind her.

'Thank you.'