:
Explosive Decompression
altunderscore
7
The ocean fog had mostly boiled away under the late morning sun, but the outside air was cool enough in the early coastal fall that the orangish streamers slipping through the rear window did nothing more than cast the brunette at her side in a soft light that made the tips of her fingers itch for the familiar weight of her camera.
The camera in her bag in the trunk of the car, hopelessly out of reach.
So Victoria stole glances, every chance she could, at the sleeping girl just inches to her right. In moments snatched away from watching the road, she studied every strand of tawny hair washed in sunlight.
Every freckle cast in shadow on a cheek framed under long, dark eyelashes.
Every subtle twitch of pale-pink lips slightly parted in sleep.
The cabin of the car was quiet aside from the low hum of the engine and the soft acoustic twang of a guitar coming from the stereo. It was a song she'd heard Max play on Sunday mornings just like this one.
Well, maybe not just like this one.
Victoria's lips pulled together as she forced herself to look away from the girl at her side, and back towards the road.
Those other mornings had been spent either curled into a miserable ball on her bed with a pillow over her ears, or trying maybe a just a bit too hard to stay quiet enough that she could hear the brunette's voice from across the hallway separating their rooms.
She'd spent -this- morning kissing Max Caulfield before driving the two of them to their first real date at some heretofore undecided restaurant in Portland, and she wasn't nearly as nervous as she thought she should be. A bit shocked at how well things seemed to be going, certainly, but oddly enough not nervous at all.
Victoria's ever-present confidence -bordering on arrogance, really- was usually a front to cover some underlying insecurity.
Not here.
Having someone relying on her, strangely enough, reinforced her. It was a pleasant sort of pressure, like a heavy blanket, or falling asleep with someone's head on her chest.
It was usually Taylor's, but still.
Victoria shook the cobwebs out of her own head as best she could while still keeping her eyes on the road, but couldn't get rid of the feeling that she was missing something. She shouldn't be this confident; this comfortable, considering everything that had happened.
The other shoe had to drop sometime, right?
Victoria stole another glance at the sleeping girl at her side and remembered the hopeful shimmer in red-ringed eyes when she had told her everything was going to be okay.
Max had believed her. Max had believed in her.
The nervousness that Victoria was expecting to be there, the crush and weight of the other girl's expectations and hopes, just.. wasn't.
Instead, the more faith Max put in her, the fuller Victoria felt.
It was a good feeling, to be needed.
Victoria inhaled, filling her lungs with a wash of warm leather and cheap apple shampoo. Even a week ago, she would have been irked to find out that -yet again- Caulfield had to go and make 'bargain-bin' work in ways it had no right doing.
The girl was a witch. That had to be it.
Victoria stole another glance out of the corner of her eye, idly imagining what Max would look like in a stereotypical witch's costume; a wide-brimmed hat cocked a bit off-center over a frilly black skirt and a pair of dark tights. She could probably bribe Taylor into doing Max's makeup; just enough to be provocative, without completely crossing the line into outright slutty.
Somewhere between Lydia Deetz and Morticia Addams. Definitely stopping short of something overtly lewd like Elvira-
Victoria, watch the fucking road.
Victoria collected herself just in time to not miss their exit, the splash of pink on her cheeks deepening at the sound of a voice from her right.
"Why's y'r face red, 'tori.." Max asked, her voice heavy with sleep as she rubbed at her eyes with the palms of her hands.
Victoria swallowed automatically and her left hand tightened around the steering wheel as she stalled, flatfooted.
She dropped the Miata into 4th gear maybe a bit more forcefully than she'd intended, but the pull of deceleration was enough to knock her loose of her embarrassment at having been caught staring like a creep.
She used the sudden shift in momentum to her advantage as she spoke, only slightly changing the subject.
"We're doing a Halloween party next Saturday. I want you to go with me." Victoria said, her voice tinged with more confidence than she really felt.
She could almost feel Max's eyes on her; her focus something like a sunbeam through glass in a way that made Victoria feel like a particularly interesting ant.
Her face was on fire.
That's not how this was supposed to go at all.
Victoria faltered a bit.
"I mean, you don't have to if you don't want-"
"I'd love to, Victoria."
They spoke at the same time, their voices running into each other somewhere in the middle-space. As soon as Max's words registered in her head though, a relieved laugh escaped her in a way she couldn't quite disguise as a sigh before it had fought its way free.
Max was still looking at her, and after a glance in her mirrors to make sure she wasn't about to kill anyone, Victoria looked back.
She followed the trail the brunette's blue eyes traced over her, smirking as she caught a quick flicker down to her lips and back.
Victoria idly caught the edge of her lip between her teeth and brought her hand up from the gear-shifter long enough to sweep a stray lock of hair behind her ear, feeling something inside her swell at the way Max's lips parted in response.
This was much more familiar territory.
"Take a picture, Caulfield. It'll last longer."
Max's eyes widened, and Victoria saw a multitude of emotions cross the freckled girl's face before she finally found one she was happy with: mischievous.
Max's hand darted into Victoria's purse inside the center console, found her cell phone, and with entirely too much confidence, unlocked it.
How the fuck does she know my password?
Victoria's dumbstruck and borderline scandalized expression was quickly captured in a snap of her own camera, but all Victoria could parse in that moment was how smug Max's grin was from under the edge of her phone.
There was a war being fought in Victoria's head in the small moments immediately following the click of the shutter. It was quick and it was bloody and in the end, she just barely managed to keep her hands on the wheel.
She instead opted for a smirk and did her absolute best to push down every emotion that wasn't the specific flavor of measured aggression she needed at the moment. Her right hand drifted down to the shifter and she dropped the car into second gear; just enough for a steady prowl through Portland's outskirts.
Max's smug expression had dialed back somewhat at Victoria's momentary lapse of composure, and was completely melted away by the subtle jolt of the car coming to a stop just off the slow back-road's shoulder.
Finally able to move without having to worry about killing both of them, Victoria made quick but precise work of her seatbelt and turned to face Max fully for the first time in a little over an hour.
Before she'd stopped the car, she'd had an entire scene planned in her head. She'd poke at Lamefield for a minute or two to remind her of the status quo, then make her blush somehow, snap a quick picture to even the score, and then they'd be on their way.
Now, though?
If the autumn sun had been doing magical things to the pale brunette on the bland stretch of highway they had driven so far, then here, under the auburn sway of maple trees; broad leaves catching and scattering the sunlight in ways that left little halo'd pools of amber and shadow puddling warmly around the two of them, well..
-Fuck, those half-second glances didn't do her justice at all-
Victoria's frustration didn't abate so much as it condensed, sharpening as it did so into something less easily discernible, but all the more lethal for it.
Green eyes met blue, and Victoria's hand reached out and tugged her phone from Max's unresisting fingers, noticing idly as she flipped the screen around to face her that the other girl hadn't needed to adjust the focus or lighting at all to capture Victoria's red-faced embarrassment perfectly.
Typical.
Victoria channeled that feeling, using it as fuel as she leaned forward, drinking in Max's flush as the smaller girl tried to shift away.
"Victoria, I-" Max stammered, but faltered into silence as Victoria firmly cupped her chin with the hand that wasn't flickering through her phone's camera settings in a practiced blur.
Victoria could feel Max's uncertainty in the small tremors underneath her fingertips and the brief but instinctive resistance against her hand as she tilted the girl's head just so, catching part of her face in the shadow of a pair of broad, burgundy leaves that had fallen against the glass of the windshield in only the last minute or so.
Victoria looked out past her camera, noticing how the soft sunlight seemed to catch on the last remnants of the trail of marks underneath one of Max's eyes. Her thumb pulled back, brushing gently but deliberately over a crack in the surface of Max's lips, the resulting blush across the girl's freckled cheeks making her have to tilt her head just a bit deeper into the shadow of the leaves to compensate.
The new angle pushed the delicate profile of Max's face out of the shade and into a ray of sunshine that soaked into a lock of chestnut hair, framing it in a way that set the amber strands within alight.
Victoria froze, an involuntary reaction to keep herself steady while her heart tried to turn itself inside out.
She swallowed again, and gathered enough of herself to slide her hand up from Max's chin and into the almost-dry hair above the nape of Max's neck, until all that was visible of Victoria in the viewfinder was the ridge of her thumb resting along Max's sunwashed and freckled cheek, and part of the wrist that held the two of them together.
She sensed some of Max's tension unwind against her palm, feeling more than hearing the soft warmth of a sigh slide across her skin.
"Perfect," Victoria said quietly as her thumb found the mock shutter-release on her phone's camera, taking only enough time to confirm the picture had saved before carelessly dropping the phone into the dark space between her seat and the central console.
Max's eyes shot open in surprise at the noise, but by the time Victoria felt the other girl had realized what position she was in, the blonde had already reached her other hand around and behind the smaller brunette, using the passenger headrest as leverage to pull herself across the low console and into Max's lap.
"Absolutely perfect," she said with complete certainty as she looked down at the girl pinned underneath her, acutely aware of the way the inward slant of the seat drew her knees unexpectedly downward and behind Max's hips.
Max's doe-in-headlights expression coaxed a smile that was all teeth onto Victoria's face, a content noise escaping her as she felt the brunette tense momentarily and then -after a brief brush of their lips together- finally relax against her fingers again. Overwhelmed, Victoria pulled Max impossibly closer; the soft, tentative brush of the smaller girls tongue over her lips caused her breath to tangle in her lungs before bleeding into a heady groan she smothered in the back of her throat as she shifted off to the side, letting the weight of her center settle directly against the firm ridge of Max's hip.
'Slow it down, V..' A familiar voice warned inside her head, carefully tracking the way Max's eyes had widened and the warm puff of a surprised breath against her cheek.
Apparently she wasn't as subtle as she thought she was.
Victoria prepared to adjust her strategy a bit, rocking her weight backwards and towards the softer surface of Max's thigh in a way that was a touch less aggressive, -a touch less intimate-, but suddenly there was a warm resistance snaking around behind her, low and firm, and then she was being pulled back downward.
A surprised glance down at Max's face revealed that in the moment she hadn't been looking, the small brunette's expression had morphed from one of shocked embarrassment into something flushed and nervous and eager in a way that made Victoria's knees weak and caused something deep in her belly to flutter. Without thinking she slid back down -as deep into Max's lap as she could go- and barely managed to catch her lip between her teeth in time as the smaller girl pulled her downward at the same moment she pressed her own hips up and in.
Victoria's knees locked on either side of Max's hips as she hungrily searched the face of the girl underneath her. The freckled girl's eyes were closed and almost pinched towards the corners in focus, even as her face burned from her chin to the tips of her ears. Her lips, normally a pale shade of pink, were cherry-red and slick and just the slightest bit parted. The two of them were pressed so tightly together, chest to chest, that Victoria could feel each hitch and shudder in Max's breath every time one of their movements pulled a gasp out of the blonde that she couldn't bite down and swallow in time.
Her fingers bunched in Max's hair almost desperately as the brunette's hand that wasn't busy guiding Victoria against her crept underneath her sweater and around her back to rest skin-to-skin against her ribs on the underside of her arm.
Victoria pried her fingers off the headrest, groaning shamelessly as the new lack of support allowed her to sink a few more starved millimeters down onto Max. Her now-freed hand quickly made its way next to its twin in Max's hair, staying there only long enough to pull the brunette -her eyes still screwed tightly shut- up, close enough to crush their lips together.
She felt a pointed tug on her bottom lip at the same time Max's hold on her tightened, the sharp pressure of Max's fingernails digging against the sensitive skin of her thigh and the tense span of her back coupled with the fervor in the way the smaller girl rolled her swollen lip between her teeth tore a moan out of Victoria that was nothing short of lascivious.
Victoria pulled their lips apart even as she ground herself down against the ridge of Max's hip through the denim of the brunette's jeans, panting open-mouthed and flustered as the freckled girl's lips found a familiar spot against the side of her neck, having pulled the flare of Victoria's turtleneck to the side in her haste. Max huffed wordlessly as Victoria shifted back and away from her only moments later, but eased when she realized Victoria was in the process of pulling her sweater up and over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin camisole and her tights.
Victoria's first attempt at speech died with a whimper, all the breath in her lungs leaving her in a rush the instant Max's teeth pressed against her naked throat.
"F-uck, Caulfield.." Victoria gasped, trying and failing to keep the heady wash of emotion out of her voice as she spoke.
"How far-" she bit her sentence off with a hiss as Max's hand dove south and squeezed, "-how far were you wanting this to g-aahhh!"
Her only answer was the soft -pop- of Max's mouth unsealing from the hollow of her throat for just long enough to slip downward to her collarbone and for lips and teeth to meet skin again.
Victoria's grip shifted in Max's hair as she leaned down, her breaths coming fast and deep and accented with needful pants and whimpers she wasn't even attempting to disguise anymore.
Instead, she clenched her fingers in Max's hair and grinned at the hiss she earned from the flushed brunette.
Her voice was clear and searing.
"Then fucking look at me, Caulfield." Victoria gasped achingly into Max's ear.
She felt Max jerk underneath her, and the instant the brunette's lips were off of her neck she was kissing her, careless of the way her bruised lip throbbed at the pressure or the way her head swam from lack of air.
Victoria abruptly pulled their lips apart, hardly able to breathe anymore, and mewled helplessly as she raised herself off of Max only long enough to claw the waistband of the softly panting brunette's jeans down below her hips, desperate to feel the freckled girl's skin against her.
Victoria shuddered as she lowered herself back down onto Max mindlessly, the moment they had been apart being enough that the scorching span of Max's skin gliding and pressing against the damp cloth crushed between them tore up her spine and into her head like a bolt of thunder.
Victoria pressed herself against the brunette below her, forehead to forehead, and the blatant, shameless need in the other girl's clouded blue eyes drove the last rational thought out of the blonde girl's head.
"Fucking look at me, Max. I want you to see-"
A pair of lips found Victoria's and the blonde moved against them by raw instinct as something burst somewhere in the back of her head and poured through her like an electric wave, throbbing and writhing and pooling in boiling knots inside her as she ground her starving core down into the girl beneath her, coming completely unwound in a shuddering, wordless cry that began against a pair of warm, soft lips and ended buried in a tuft of tawny hair that smelled like apple shampoo.
There was something pressing down on her, warm and heavy. There was breath in her hair, and every long brush of it against her skin pulled her more fully into the present.
The weight in her lap was Victoria Chase, and the way the girl was holding onto her- unguarded and vulnerable- pulled at something inside of her. Over the span of moments marked only by the slow ins and outs of their breathing, Max studied their situation as best she could.
Her face was buried somewhere between Victoria's chest and chin, and she couldn't move without disturbing her.
That wasn't an option.
So Max sat, and sensed.
Both of her hands were pressed directly against skin; the fingers of her left fitting into the subtle grooves of Victoria's ribs like they had been shaped to fit there, while her right hand dipped under her tights to rest somewhere around the blonde's outer hip. She pulled Victoria closer on impulse, and was immediately fascinated by the sudden flutter underneath her fingertips and the jittery breath against the crown of her head.
Max smiled, slow and soft, into the side of Victoria's neck as a realization began to take shape. She let her eyes drift shut as she tilted her head slightly to the side; just enough to brush her lips against a tender spot in the hollow of Victoria's neck.
The parts of the taller blonde that weren't helplessly limp squirmed against her slightly in response, and Max's suspicion was confirmed. She felt Victoria's throat bob under her lips as she swallowed as if to speak, but Max kissed her again and whatever Victoria had meant to say came out as an almost pitiful noise of frustration instead.
She felt Victoria fidget again and after a grumble of protest Max couldn't quite make out, she slid sideways off of Max's hip and came to settle in her lap.
A moment passed before she felt Victoria try to speak again.
Her first attempt was muffled and got lost somewhere in Max's hair, but her second was much more clear, if not uncharacteristically reserved for the blonde girl.
"You were supposed to tell me to stop."
Max giggled.
She had to pull her face out of the crook of Victoria's neck to respond, but with a little effort she managed it.
"You looked like you had everything under control. From my point of view, at least." Max conceded, taking careful note of the way the autumn air seemed to be reacting with Victoria's flushed skin.
Max wiggled in place, sighing as she felt circulation return to her legs as Victoria adjusted her position.
Victoria's expression betrayed her nerves, but before Max could open her mouth to speak and try to ease some of the tension the blonde was feeling, Victoria had spoken again.
"I just.. fuck, Caulfield." Victoria said, her voice conflicted as she nervously brushed her fringe away from her eyes.
Her hand was shaking.
Max pressed her lips together briefly in thought before she moved, her right hand quickly finding the release for the passenger backrest as her left arm hooked up and underneath Victoria's shoulder, pulling the taller girl down as the seat slid back the handful of inches the coupe would allow.
Victoria followed her down, but Max could feel the tension play across her body like pianowire under her fingertips. She brought her right hand back up and rested it on Victoria's far hip, relaxing somewhat as she felt Victoria unwind the slightest bit beneath the small circling of her thumb.
Victoria huffed, the brush of breath in her ear sending warm waves down Max's spine.
"This is going to sound stupid," Victoria said, "but I don't want to rush us. Rush you."
Max considered the situation for about half a second before she giggled again. She felt Victoria lean back a little and allowed their eyes to meet despite the sudden shyness that had begun to creep in around the edges.
"Exactly." Victoria said in response to Max's quiet laughter, her voice more certain than her expression showed. "It's fucked up for me to say that, especially with all of this-" She said, waving a hand around them as she spoke, "-but I really don't want to pressure you or make you feel like you have to do anything you aren't comfortable with."
Max opened her mouth to speak, but a firm look from Victoria was all it took for her to decide to stay quiet for a moment longer.
Victoria swallowed, her confidence withering somewhat as she gathered the things she needed to say.
"I don't want you to think I'm a slut, either, Max. I just.."
She swallowed again, then laughed under her breath.
"I've liked you for.. a while, Caulfield. It's unhealthy and pathetic, but when I look at you I fucking lock up from all the things you make me feel. You've always done that to me, from the day you sat down in that classroom with your bullshit polaroid and made Mark fucking Jefferson pay attention to you."
Victoria met Max's eyes again and Max felt the blonde girl's hold on her tighten as she continued.
"Before that, even. You've been fucking with my head ever since you moved into the room across from mine and started singing American Football and it makes me sick. I look at you and I freeze. I hear your voice and you're all I can think about. Until a few days ago I could keep everything mostly under control by telling myself I just hated you and that even if I didn't, it was just a stupid fucking crush and I was being a creep by letting it go on the way I was."
Victoria took a breath, audibly clearing some of her tension with a shaky but measured exhale.
"Except it's not a crush, Max. You mean something to me, and that means I have to worry about not using you, which is really hard when you're actually kissing me back and I.."
Victoria's grip loosened as she slid her hands down from Max's shoulders to her wrists, squeezing them briefly before letting them settle in the valley where the two of them were joined.
"Max, you're talented and cute and honest and you drive me insane and there are so many ways that I know could fuck this up, and one of those is by coming on too strong or too fast and making you think all I wanted out of you was.. you know."
She pointedly looked at her turtleneck, hastily tugged off and pooled in the driver's floorboard.
"What I'm trying to say is.. you're important to me. You're important to me, and you make it really hard to keep my hands off you, and I-"
It was very difficult to kiss Victoria while smiling as widely as Max was, but somehow she made it work. Max took a moment to drink in Victoria's wide-eyed expression before pressing their lips together again briefly, all the while dragging the blonde down to lie against her, speaking as she did so.
"I understand, Victoria." Max said through the butterflies in her throat. "It's hard to keep my hands off you, too."
A quick glance at the faint ring still visible around Victoria's neck had her hurriedly amending her statement.
"M-metaphorically, of course."
Victoria's laugh was quiet but genuine, and the sound of it pushed Max through her awkwardness well enough that she could continue.
"I'm not going to act like I have a bunch of experience with this type of thing, but I understand why you're worried."
Max sighed and relaxed against the backrest.
"I trust you, Victoria. I want you to trust me, too." She said, tilting her head to the side so she could meet Victoria's eyes.
"Trust me. I'll tell you to stop if you do something I'm not comfortable with, but until then just do what feels natural. We'll figure everything else out as we go along." Max raised her eyebrows questioningly, and after a moment Victoria's expression solidified into her usual look of casual confidence.
The blonde reached behind herself and to the side blindly, fumbling between the seats for a moment before smirking as she found her discarded phone. A glance at the screen had her rocking back on Max's lap, settling just above the brunette's knees as she shook her head with mock-solemnity.
"Where were you taking me for lunch again?" Victoria asked, meeting Max's eyes over the top of her phone.
Max considered the question for a second before she replied.
"I was told by a reliable source that there's a really good sushi place near the waterfront that we could try." She said, not sure exactly where Victoria was going with the question.
Victoria's eyes flicked down to her phone again, then back up to Max. Her expression was an odd mix of amused and something more layered that Max couldn't immediately parse. Things were made significantly more clear when she turned her phone around, showing the display to Max.
2:37 PM.
Had they really been here for that long?
Max's face fell, her breath leaving her in a disappointed exhale.
She had only just begun to sulk when she felt a hand slide against the outside of her thigh and squeeze just forcefully enough to feel through the denim of her jeans.
She looked up and was met with an exceptionally sly grin, but Victoria didn't let her stew in her confusion for very long.
"I know the place you're talking about, and they close for lunch at 3:00. I've got a counteroffer, though." Victoria canted her head slightly, sweeping her fringe away from her eyes as she did.
"What's the plan, then?" Max asked, intrigued.
Victoria's smile curled up at the corner in a way that showed teeth. Max felt a weight lift off of her legs as Victoria wriggled herself sideways, placing her back against the car door, her feet in the driver's seat, and her butt firmly north of Max's knees.
"You have anywhere to be tonight, Caulfield?" Victoria asked as she idly paged through the contacts list of her phone.
Heat instantly sprang onto Max's cheeks as she considered the implications of what the girl in her lap was saying.
"I.. ah.."
-Fucking smooth, Max-
She was not about to be bullied by her own stream of consciousness.
She pointedly cleared her throat.
"I'm free until class tomorrow morning, if I go at all. What's up?" She asked.
Much better
Victoria shot a look up at her from the corner of her eye.
"How does dinner sound instead?"
Max didn't have to think very long before answering.
"That sounds amazing," she said honestly, unable to keep the mix of relief and excitement from her voice when she replied.
Max never had much of a poker-face to begin with, anyway.
Victoria murmured a quiet but pleased sound as she finished off her text message, nodding her head as the screen went black. She turned to face Max, her expression aloof.
"Now, the only question is how we're going to occupy ourselves, now that we've got a few extra hours on our hands." Victoria asked, demurely looking up at Max through the dark fan of her eyelashes.
She had almost formed a coherent reply when Victoria very deliberately slid herself farther into her lap, crossing her legs casually as she did so.
Max was speechless.
"I can think of more than a few ways we could stay busy, if you don't have any better ideas that is." Victoria said in a tone that was just shy of a purr.
Max saw Victoria's eyes glide across her face, noticing the instant Victoria recognized her flush for what it was by the predatory glint that immediately graced her smile.
She reached out and took Max's wrist in her hand, guiding it carefully behind her back so her palm rested on the blonde's far shoulder. Max's hold tightened automatically as she pulled Victoria farther into her on reflex.
Having Victoria pressed so close to her felt good.
Max was quiet, all of her focus going towards committing every inch of Victoria Chase's self-satisfied expression to memory.
The hand that wasn't toying with her phone reached out and took Max's left hand in hers.
"Two of the best photographers on the west coast stranded in Portland at this time of year? I'm sure we can find something to get into." Victoria said, confidence dripping like honey from her lips.
All at once Max saw a glimmer come into Victoria's eyes as the girl in her lap's smile became something keen and catlike. She heard the phone in the blonde's hand buzz once and looked away from Victoria's face long enough to see that the two of them were firmly in the camera's viewfinder.
They looked..
Wow.
Victoria peeked up at her, green eyes narrowed as she thought. After a moment's deliberation, Victoria reached up and gingerly brushed the freckled span of Max's cheek with long, soft fingertips.
Victoria whispered something to herself that Max couldn't make out, but the goading pressure against her skin was unmistakable. She relaxed and allowed Victoria to pose her for the second time that afternoon. After a few seconds of finework that ended with Max's head tilted to the right and looking out through the passenger window, she heard Victoria hum to herself in consideration.
Max did her best to look down at the girl in her lap without moving her head from where Victoria had angled it, but her periphery was only detailed enough to tell her that Victoria was staring at her, very deeply in thought. Max knew the moment Victoria came to a decision, though, by the downright aggressive noise she made before she spoke.
"You're missing something, Caulfield." Victoria said, but before Max could ask what it was, there was heat on her neck, right below the dip where jaw met throat.
Oh, fuck..
Max tensed as a shock rolled through her, from where her toes curled inside of her socks up through her tingling legs to dance, warm and coiling, somewhere between her belly and her spine.
For just a moment the heat on her neck was gone and she whimpered until a hand rose up, half to cover her mouth and half to keep her still.
"Don't you fucking dare move, Maxine," whispered the voice in her ear.
The instant she stilled, the heat returned.
Victoria's breath traced along slick skin as she pulled away with a huff, and it was all Max could do to keep herself in the position Victoria needed her in instead of reaching down and-
"Take the picture, Max." the blonde girl asked from just below her. Distantly, she felt a phone being slid into the hand that wasn't holding Victoria against her. Another handful of seconds came and went as adjustments were made and Max felt a warmth settle against her chest.
'Now,' came a whisper, and immediately her thumb pressed against the mock release out of reflex.
The cabin of the car was silent save for the click of a shutter.
The pressure against her chest lifted and she heard Victoria make a sound too complex for her to decipher without context. She glanced downward briefly, testing the water, and when she wasn't met with any sort of protest she tilted her head to fully see what had happened.
Victoria was staring wide-eyed at the phone in her hand with the most open look of unguarded amazement Max could remember seeing on her face. She turned, and Max saw her mouth open, the beginnings of some boastful statement or other already forming on her lips.
Max kissed her instead.
They spent only a few minutes together before they parted, panting softly. Max's hand reached out and found the door handle after a bit of fumbling, and a with a short tug and a mechanical pop the door swung open.
Victoria sighed as she slid from Max's lap, her feet meeting solid ground with the crunch of leaves collected by the roadside. She pulled herself out of the passenger seat and stretched the moment she was able, high and grasping towards the canopy above them.
If Max paid a little more attention than was proper to the rise of Victoria's thin camisole above the waist of her tights, well, neither of them mentioned it.
Victoria still smirked knowingly, though.
Max reached up to take the hand the blonde girl was offering her and was unable to fight down a stretch of her own as she came upright for the first time in several hours.
Her legs appreciated having circulation again, if the pins and needles were anything to go by.
"Hey Max?" Victoria asked innocently enough from a few feet behind her.
"Hmm?" she answered as she rolled the stiffness out of one of her shoulders with a happy little groan.
"You mind popping the trunk for me? My real camera's in there, and I think we'll need it." Victoria said, gesturing towards the steering column on the driver's side of the cabin.
Max leaned over, careful not to bump her tingling legs against anything as she reached across the center console to grab Victoria's keys from out of the ignition. Her fingers had barely curled around the plastic keyfob before Victoria's voice came from over her shoulder again, her tone only slightly smug.
"And grab my sweater too? It's on the floorboard I think."
Max groaned internally, but resigned herself quickly as she reached deeper into the far side of the car to grab Victoria's discarded turtleneck.
She pulled back out of the car and righted herself, twin prizes gripped in her hands, and noticed Victoria's expression was a good bit more amused than it had any real right being. Her suspicion piqued, she took a stab in the dark.
"Were you checking me out just now?"
Victoria froze for only an instant, but the momentary stillness combined with the faint pinking of the taller girl's ears was all the indication she needed to confirm her theory.
Max's gaze strayed towards her feet as she considered things. She wasn't used to being stared at like that, but one look back up at Victoria's expression; half mortified and half offended, was more than worth the price of admission- even if she hadn't liked the gleam in Victoria's eyes the moment before she realized she was caught.
Which she did. Quite a lot.
Max laughed out loud as she turned quickly on her heel, stepping around the rear of the Miata and towards the trunk of the car.
"It's fine, 'Tori. You're allowed to look." Max said teasingly as her thumb found the unlock button on the keyfob. Victoria was sputtering something indignant from behind her, but Max was paying more attention to the treasure-trove of random stuff Victoria apparently kept stashed in the boot of her car.
Her camera gear -the lenses alone probably costing more than Max's entire scholarship was worth on the low end- was closest to the top, but just underneath that was a cold-weather sleeping bag of all things. The usual was present, too; a spare tire, jumper cables, and some weird curved metal thing people always got mauled with in movies, but right next to that was a messenger bag with what looked like a couple of changes of clothes sitting on top of what had to be her second first-aid kit.
'Victoria is such a boy-scout, geeze.. Kind of endearing though, honestly,' Max thought idly as she gathered Victoria's camera equipment, careful not to disturb any of the carefully arranged supplies around it.
She righted herself and turned, finding the still-recovering girl a bit more than arms-reach away from her, standing with a brow raised and a questioning look on her face.
"See something you like, Caulfield?" Victoria asked defensively as she finished pulling her turtleneck over her head.
"Mhmm." Max replied without any hesitation as she stepped closer, shortening the distance between them to a handful of inches. Being this close to Victoria gave her the best view of the expression that spread across the blonde's face as she was caught flatfooted.
"You're lucky your camera's still in the bag. Victoria. That would have been a cute picture." Max admitted, stepping around the taller girl and towards the grove of maple trees they had parked next to.
Victoria recovered more quickly than she had the last few times Max had teased her and managed to match Max's eager pace into the wooded copse after only a few strides of her longer legs.
"You've got all night to get me red-faced under your lens, Caulfield. No pouting." Victoria jabbed back, happily taking the opportunity to snag the black form of her camera from Max's loosened grip.
To her credit, Max recovered quickly, darting into the treeline after Victoria as fast as she could without snagging herself on a grasping branch or gnarled root. It didn't take her long at all to catch up to the taller girl, doing so after Victoria had come to a stop in a small clearing a couple of minutes away from the roadside. She was occupying herself fiddling with a lens fixture, humming contentedly when she had everything put together the way she wanted.
She turned to face Max and the brunette's breath caught in her throat.
There was something about Victoria with a camera in her hands that bled confidence almost to the point of regality, and Max wasn't sure she'd ever quite get used to the sight.
She cleared her throat quietly and averted her eyes towards the other girl's feet.
"The lighting here's, ah.." Max said, trailing off.
"Yeah. It's really good." Victoria finished for her, stepping back a couple of paces and kneeling, careful to lay her knee across the material of her camera-bag as to not dirty her leggings.
"Now," Victoria said, "you mentioned you'd been here once before, right?"
Max nodded. "When I was little, yeah. With Chloe."
She couldn't keep the smile off her face any more than she could fight down the immediate stinging in her eyes.
Victoria continued speaking, easy and low. The same calm tone she had used in the bathroom what felt like weeks ago.
"Tell me about the zoo?" Victoria asked, and immediately images came to Max's mind, spooling along like film.
A mischievous grin on a strawberry-blonde girl -all knobby knees and elbows- as she pulled a tiny brunette to the side, just out of earshot of her parents.
Conspiratorial whispers that smelled like watermelon lip balm.
A gap-toothed smile.
The back of a pirate hat and the steady tug of a warm hand on hers, pulling her down a side hallway and towards a push-bar door labeled "Employees Only" in big green letters.
A big hand on her shoulder and a bemused look on Dad's face as he realized what his two girls had been planning.
Mom reacting a bit too harshly, and the crocodile tears that followed.
Another gap-toothed smile; this one sharp towards the edges.
Screaming from the passenger seat as Mom reached into her purse without looking first.
Laughter from Dad and Mr. Price in the garage as she and Chloe raced each other up the stairs to the bedroom
...
Max swallowed as her teeth ground together on reflex. Her fist clenched as she missed a breath, and little black spots dotted the edge of her vision.
The picture was so clear in her head. She could see every strand of hair splayed out like an auburn fan on the pillow next to her. She could feel a pair of legs entwined with hers underneath the blankets in the dim wash of the lavalamp on the bedside table. She could hear the whispers of the girl next to her, and feel the rise of gooseflesh across her skin from the ghost-story that she was telling.
She could feel something on her face, hot and wet.
She could see Chloe's look of confusion as she brushed her thumb through the tears on her cheek.
She could see Victoria's look of concern as she tried to wipe away the blood streaming from her nose.
She screwed her eyes shut as tight as she could and reached out, pulling herself forward almost desperately as her fingers bit into fabric and caught hold of the girl underneath it.
It felt like cashmere.
It felt like cotton.
I miss you so much.
a/n|
No cliffhangers, I swear. Chapter 8: Curtain Call is complete as of right now and will be published after I finish Chapter 9. This one's got some fairly heavy parallels (pardon the wordplay), so brownie points if you picked up on that.
I'm sorry for the delay, but it's a strange time to be in healthcare right now and I didn't want any of that to get into the story. Next update should be significantly faster, and as always, check my bio on Ao3 every now and then for updates.
Love y'all, thanks for reading, and wash your darn hands.
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