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Explosive Decompression

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10


Max studied the girl next to her in a moment stolen as her laptop's screen faded to black.

She'd heard Kate's laugh more in the last hour or so than she'd had since the end of September. The way her chin was propped on Max's favorite pillow (folded double) pushed her cheeks upwards just enough that her eyes crinkled at the corners around the edge of her smile. Kate had pulled the pins out of her hair at some point and it fell a bit past her shoulders- curling towards the ends, just a little. It suited her, she thought.

Max laced her fingers together and dropped her head back into the cradle of her hands with a sigh she felt down to the tips of her toes.

Contentment.

Something precious.

Her view drifted back upward towards the shadowy ceiling overhead even as her eyes slid slowly closed. She took a moment just to breathe, filling herself with the smell of heavy rain and faint citrus shampoo. There was a murmur in her head or somewhere deeper, like voices behind a thick curtain. Similar moments, dredged up from elsewhens and elsewheres.

She heard her father over the thunder, reading a story at a bedside that hadn't been hers since she was small.

She felt her mother's fingers brush the hair away from her brow, sticky with fever. The lullaby she hummed was her favorite, but Max had been too sick or too young then to hear the worry the notes had hidden.

Raindrops pattering at both ends of a monologue, spoken from the television on the table near the bed and whispered, somewhere above the top of her head, by the girl pressed against her back.

" .. will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to- Wake up , Maximus. Jesus."

She smelled cheap floral conditioner and bubblegum toothpaste. Her eyes flicked open long enough to see the hurt on Rick Deckard's rain-slicked face before they slid closed again.

She flinched as something flicked her on the nose. The weight against her pulled up and away with a muffled creak of bedsprings and she groaned as she rolled back into the now-empty warmth beneath the blankets. She opened her eyes and saw blue above her in the dark.

Chloe grinned.

"You're really tapping out already? It's like ten-thirty, tops. "

Max didn't answer her with words.

Instead, she reached up and looped both arms behind Chloe's shoulders and pulled, and didn't stop until her face was buried in a damp tangle of strawberry-blonde hair. She felt Chloe push against her for a pair of seconds and then, with a humid huff, go limp.

Peace lasted for a heartbeat afterward, until Chloe pressed her lips into the hollow just north of Max's collarbone and blew .

Immediately Max jerked upright at the loud noise, sending the older girl sprawling towards the foot of the bed in a laughing jumble of knobby knees and stolen blankets. She groaned wordlessly as she pawed at the wet spot on her neck, shivering.

Chloe's blue eyes were on fire in the flickering light of the lava-lamp; her grin glittering in the dark.

Max swallowed, dry and heavy. Somehow her heart had broken loose from her chest and clawed its way up to stick in her throat. Words boiled on the back of her tongue but turned shapeless as they came to her lips and passed as mist that stung her eyes.

She pushed herself backward up the length of the bed until her shoulders met the headboard.

Chloe's expression softened some as she paused for a moment, though her smile didn't completely fade.

"We've seen this movie a dozen times and it still makes you cry," she said, shaking her head.

Max sniffed and turned her face toward the window, letting the scene play out behind her. In her periphery, she watched as Chloe's eyes traced over her for an instant before seeming to focus on something. In the span of a second her grin was back.

"You're such a weenie , Mini-Max," she prodded, and Max was confused until she followed Chloe's gaze down, coming eye to eye with the Hawt Dawg Man posed happily on her too-big bedshirt.

She sputtered -a sound caught halfway between a sob and a laugh- and reached beside herself on reflex, swiping at the now-giggling blonde near her feet with the first thing that came to hand. Chloe smoothly ducked the old goosefeather pillow arcing towards her head and flung herself forward, using the extra bit of reach her growth-spurt had given her to wrestle her struggling friend safely onto the squeaky mattress before she needed to dodge a second swing.

Chloe's knee dug into her kidney as she maneuvered around and Max bucked sideways trying to get away, but there was only so much bed to work with and nowhere to run to.

It had only been a few seconds but Chloe already had her pinned; one arm trapped behind her back and the other caught at the wrist, smushed between her own hip and Chloe's thigh. The surprisingly bony girl sat smugly with her knees on either side of Max's waist.

Chloe still had a hand free, and it hovered dangerously close to Max's nose.

"What's the first rule of the Code?" she asked, as sternly as she could while trying to keep a straight face.

Max had no such obligation.

She smiled even though it hurt.

"No mutiny," she answered guiltily, her voice soft in the darkness of the room.

Chloe immediately flicked her on the nose again.

"Exactly. You know better," she said sternly, her voice equal parts reproachful and amused.

"Now," she continued, "I'm going to sneak down to the kitchen and commandeer some ice cream. Your mission is to rewind Blade Runner and pick something else out by the time I get back, capische?"

Max looked at the clock on the nightstand for a moment and then back up to the girl hovering above her expectantly.

She nodded.

Chloe grinned and squeezed her legs together as she hopped off of Max and onto the floor with a single quiet motion.

"Great," the gangly girl said as she stretched, "We've got enough time for one more, so pick something good- and no falling asleep this time, right? "

Max bobbed her head mutely as she crawled over to the VCR.

"You promise?" Chloe asked, turning back.

Max could almost look her in the eye.

Almost.

"I promise," she said softly as she pressed rewind.

Chloe smiled and was gone, her footsteps trailing off down the hall until Max could no longer hear them.

She watched the screen in silence, the room filled only with the sound of a tape-deck spooling backward, pulling raindrops back upward and blue eyes back open, for a time.


Then darkness, again.


A knock came; soft, but enough to be heard over the sound of the speakers. Max rolled tiredly to her feet and stood, stepping gingerly over the curled shape at her side, careful not to jostle the sleeping girl awake if she could help it. She unlocked the door and pulled it open, wincing at the sudden light of the hall broken only by the figure of the girl just beyond the doorway.

Victoria's hair was wet and her button-up shirt hung limp against her, sleeves rolled up halfway towards her elbows. Damp, but not quite soaked. She must have taken off the knit blouse she had been wearing over it earlier to save it from the storm. She looked sharp . Not professionally in the way a woman in a business suit might, but.. naturally.

Like a tiger in rain.

Her makeup was minimal enough to not have run much at all despite the weather, from what she could tell.

Max could feel herself smile as her eyes took in the pale-haired girl over the course of moments.

" 'I can handle a little rain,' huh?" she teased quietly, flicking her gaze up towards Victoria's messy hair and back down towards her eyes. Victoria's cheeks pinked uncharacteristically and she turned away, staring out towards the window at the end of the hall and the storm beating against it.

"I had an umbrella.. " she said, trailing off towards the end. Max raised her eyebrows leadingly and waited.

".. in the trunk." Victoria finished, defeated. Then she huffed and turned to look back towards Max, gesturing towards her with the plastic bag she held in her off-hand.

"Look, what matters is I got you food and nobody died, right?" she asked quickly. Evasively.

Max nodded emphatically as she reached out to take the bag, then reconsidered; her hands went instead towards Victoria's wrist, tugging forward and downward just enough so she could-

- there-

Max's kiss was brief but firm, lasting only as long as the pendulum-swing of her body from heels to toetips and back.

"I've been wanting to do that all morning, you know?" she asked with a modest curl of her lips.

Victoria laughed mutely through her nose and swept her damp fringe back with the hand Max wasn't holding.

"You couldn't wait for me to un-fuck myself first? I look like garbage."

Max's brows knit together and she leaned back a bit, using her hold on Victoria to keep herself balanced as she made a show of looking the taller girl over again. Victoria was pulled forward half a step or so before she could adjust; bracing herself against the doorframe with one long arm.

"I dunno," Max murmured as she stepped closer, "You're kinda making this whole look work for you, I think."

"Bullshit, Caulfield." Victoria said lowly. "I have Courtney and Sweet T to tell me what they think I want to hear. I don't need that from you too."

Max stilled for a moment; the hold she had on her wrist tightening abruptly in a way that pulled Victoria's attention back down to the brunette's face. In the moment she had looked away, the freckled girl's smile had hidden itself somewhere in the darkness behind her. What remained was a thin, focused line as Max's eyes swept over her again. Just a few seconds ago her stare had been slow- almost indulgent. It was different now. It raked against her in precise, rapid slashes; taking her in completely -head to toe- in a heartbeat. Dark and sharp, like volcanic glass.

Surgical.

Max exhaled calmly through her nose and stepped forward, letting go of Victoria's arm long enough to dive directly into her handbag, finding her keys faster than Victoria likely could have herself.

"What are you-" she began, but Max cut her eyes upward and Victoria paused.

"Don't talk." Max said, holding Victoria's gaze. "Don't move."

Max took a second to set the bag Victoria had been holding on the floor just inside the doorway and stepped under her arm out into the hall, barefoot and clad only in her oversized teeshirt.

Victoria's eyes traced along the inside of the room Max had left in her absence. The blackout curtains had seemingly been drawn and the only light came from the flickering screen of a laptop laid at the head of a pallet on the floor, covered in pillows and blankets and Kate fucking Marsh.

Kate fucking Marsh, who was looking at her .

Victoria's stomach spilled like ichor towards her toes as Dread Pirate Roberts bantered away on Max's shitty laptop.

Victoria swallowed, and a part of her hoped that her shock had been muted by the shadow of the doorframe. The rest of her hardened, not leaving Kate's odd stare even as she heard her own key slide into the lock on her door. She shunted as much of the emotion she felt away from herself in a heavy, rolling current towards the only part of her Kate fucking Marsh couldn't see.

Victoria's perfect fingernails bit waning crescents into the shitty trim of the doorway as she tried very hard not to think about the stale rainwater pooling underneath her feet or the limp, tangled mass of her hair.

She still hadn't moved.

Behind her she heard her door click shut and the key roll into the lock and back out smoothly. A second later Max ducked back into the darkened room beneath Victoria's arm and turned on the ball of her foot to face the other girl.

Max glanced over her again and stepped forward, sliding Victoria's right arm a bit farther up the doorframe, somewhere towards the top corner. The smaller girl then brought Victoria's other hand up and pressed her fingers into the damp hair just above the nape of her neck.

"Close your eyes." Max said. "Gently."

Victoria did.

She felt thin but certain fingertips against her cheek and forced herself to relax as Max pushed her head to the right and down, as though she were looking towards the elbow that had been lifted upward to her side.

Victoria felt Max's fingers leave her for an instant before she was pulled forward at the waist by the narrow belt she wore. She schooled herself as she felt Max press a hand against her belly and slip it down, guiding the hem of her blouse between the front of her tailored slacks and warm cotton.

Victoria refused to breathe. Refused to focus on the familiar snakes coiling low inside herself or the prickling of eyes against her wet skin.

There were a few careful tugs at fabric just above her hips and then she felt Max pull away. She heard the soft padding of bare feet against carpet and then silence, aside from Max's quiet but perfectly measured breathing and the muffled clang of swords.

Then there was the snap of a shutter. Just once.

Victoria had time enough to hear two hurried steps toward her before she felt an ungodly sting on the tip of her nose. She flinched, hissing as her eyes snapped open in time to see Max's hand pull away from her face; the one that wasn't holding her camera.

Victoria opened her mouth to speak but Max was faster, pushing the black mass of her camera forward and into her chest as though it were made of ice. Victoria peeled her hand away from where Max had placed it and took hold of her camera by the strap, letting it swing downward to thump against her navel as Max let go.

It took whatever spell had come over Max with it as it did; the almost glacial edge of her expression melting away to bare the naked mix of discomfort and resolve beneath.

She watched as Max's hands clenched and unclenched, physically shaping her words before she spoke them.

The brunette swallowed as their eyes met.

"You're amazing," Max said plainly. "Look at that picture and tell me I'm lying. I dare you."

The rain pounded against the window behind the curtain, heavy and hard.

Victoria glanced down at the outlined figure on the screen in her hand and made to speak.

"No." Max continued. "Even fresh out of a fucking monsoon in some slacks and a collared shirt you look like Bowie's Thin White Duke. It's unfair. "

Max exhaled, casting her eyes off to the side somewhere for a moment before collecting herself.

She pulled in towards the blonde, her voice softer.

"I'm sorry I'm making this a whole thing, but it.. it hurt, that you thought I'd lie to you about how I felt."

"It hurt when you flicked me on the fuckin' nose too, Caulfield," Victoria grumbled before she could stop herself. She winced internally at her slip, but relaxed as Max giggled quietly- her face flushing with embarrassment.

"Please, you've had that coming for a while," Max huffed, fluttering a lock of tawny hair that had settled against her nose as she did. She shook her head and smiled.

"I don't want to be all serious out of nowhere or anything," she continued, "It's just.. you do this thing sometimes where you start picking at yourself, and I'd like to be able to help you through stuff like that.. like you've helped me."

Max was quiet for a breath, content to let the moment be. Her eyes broke from Victoria's own before she spoke again, her voice quiet but steady.

"I.. can't do that though, if you don't trust me to be honest with you."

She tilted her head towards the camera Victoria held in her hands.

"This one time though, you don't need to take my word for it. Show that picture to anybody and I'm absolutely certain they'll think the same thing I do when I look at you," she blushed, ".. more or less."

Victoria arched a single skeptical eyebrow up towards her hairline.

"Oh?" she asked, "And what exactly would that be?"

Max's eyes narrowed theatrically and she kicked towards Victoria's foot.

"That you're a beautiful pain in the ass, apparently. Now go straighten yourself out so you can stop worrying about other people not liking your sex-hair look as much as I do."

At this point Max was physically pushing her into the hallway, having taken only a second to slip her keys back into her bag.

Victoria allowed herself to be guided the whole six feet to her door before she paused, turning her head towards the brunette staring at her so intently. She spoke;

"You sure you don't need more company?"

Max shook her head, causing a long bit of her fringe to come untucked from behind one ear.

"Totally," she said, then amended, "For now, at least. Find me after class?"

Victoria thought for a second and nodded.

"I have to go over some Vortex stuff with Courtney later, but if I haven't escaped by five or so then find Taylor and come rescue me."

At Max's questioning look, Victoria continued.

"Oh no, I mean that. You might actually have to drag me out. Taylor knows how Courtney gets this close to big social events; it's an actual fucking nightmare."

Max's eyes widened a little as the blonde girl spoke.

"Is the Halloween party really that big of a deal?"

Then she paused as something else occurred to her.

"Are you sure something like that is how you want to introduce 'us' to our friends? A hostage situation?"

Victoria shrugged nonchalantly as her hand went for the doorknob.

"Technically it'd just be my friends. Kate already knows about us."

If Max's eyes were wide before..

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked hurriedly.

How could-

"She's been awake this whole time. Honestly thought you knew, with the show you were putting on and all," Victoria said plainly.

The pink edge of her smirk dripped schadenfreude.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I was told to make myself presentable and that won't happen on its own. Ciao, " Victoria said, bending down to kiss Max quickly on the cheek.

Her door clicked shut with a finality that echoed in the otherwise vacant hall, and Max turned to look back at the yawning black doorway leading into her room.

She stared down at the palm of her hand and slowly curled her fingers inward, feeling her fingertips catch and drag against something she couldn't see but that stood the fine hairs at the back of her neck on-end regardless.

The urge to rewind came as reflexively as breathing at times like this.

Max swallowed the mix of embarrassment and anxiety she felt and mentally forced her hand to open, releasing the phantom strings it had caught along with the breath she had held.

It was best to face things like this head on. No better time to do that than the present, she thought.

Accepting that fact didn't make the handful of steps between Victoria's room and what awaited her in her own any easier, though.


Max wobbled a little as she settled into the pallet on the floor. Across from her, just outside of arm's reach, was Kate. The other girl was laying on her side, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were open, but she didn't move to speak immediately- instead choosing to let Max start whenever she felt comfortable.

Well, 'comfortable' by some definition of the word.

Her toes curled into the nest of blankets below her.

"So," she started, but stalled.

Smooth, Max.

She cleared her throat and tried again.

"I think I'm dating Victoria," Max said plainly. She wasn't together enough mentally to beat around any bushes, and she'd dodged this particular conversation too many times already in any case.

".. you 'think?'" Kate asked, only slightly deadpan.

Max rolled her eyes, as invisible as it was in the dark.

"Either that or I'm really misreading our dynamic," she joked nervously, bringing her hands into her lap. She spent a few seconds rolling the silk border of her quilt together between her fingers.

She paused, a very real fear bubbling up inside of her, rising from somewhere deep.

"That's not a.. problem, is it? Me being with a girl?" Max asked, her fingers tangling in the fabric of her blanket. The glare of the screen bled pale onto the far wall as the movie mutely changed scenes, but she couldn't bring herself to look at Kate's face, scared of what she might see.

She heard a low rustle of cloth as the blonde girl shifted, her comforter falling away as she pushed herself up onto her knees. Kate crawled forward, closing the gap between them and coming to a stop by Max's side. Max felt a tug on the quilt in her lap and didn't resist as Kate slid herself under it with her.

Something heavy and soft pressed against her shoulder. Warm.

"Matthew 7:1," Kate said quietly, her voice low and close. "You being happy is all that matters to me."

Max exhaled, sinking forward as a knot tied inside herself came undone at once. In its wake a wash of.. something coursed through her; a restless, nervous warmth spreading out from the center of her chest, pooling in hollows between the ends of herself and back.

Her fingers shook against the silk (unseen and bunched in her lap), but a weak smile pulled against her lips all the same.

"I haven't been to Sunday school since I was little, so I'm assuming that's good news?"

She felt Kate's quiet laughter where the blonde rested against her. When she spoke, her voice was playful.

"It means you're above my paygrade, Max. Even if I wanted to be preachy, all I'm supposed to do is ask if you want to come to church with me sometimes, and I already do that."

Max giggled.

"You just want me to come play guitar so you don't have to," she teased.

Kate's hazel eyes found hers immediately, but she very tellingly didn't bother denying it.

"That's not the only reason, but it is a factor, yes," she said plainly. Then her voice changed, shifting along with her expression into something layered enough that Max couldn't decipher it immediately.

"It's also not what I wanted to talk to you about- not the only thing, I mean."

Kate's eyes peeled away from Max's own and wandered outward, eventually coming to rest in the shadows somewhere above where Alice's cage had been tucked away on the bed.

"I'm.. not sure how to say this. I'm sorry, if I get it wrong," she said into the dark.

Max felt Kate's hesitation in the pair of breaths she took before she spoke again.

".. Late last week, after everything finally started to settle down, a detective spoke with me, to.. to take my statement. To question me."

Max fought to keep her reaction controlled, her only movement being to take one of Kate's hands in hers. She felt a gentle squeeze in return, though if it were a conscious choice or just nervous reflex Max couldn't tell. When Kate continued, her voice was tense. Strained. Her eyes never left the dark stretch of wall in front of them.

"Nathan confessed to everything. When they searched the places he told them about, they found.. binders. Binders full of pictures. Dozens, each one of them labeled with a different name."

She felt Kate's fingers against the back of her hand.

"They showed me one of them."

Bile rose in Max's throat before she could consciously understand what she was feeling.

"They had to, to make absolutely sure it was me."

Fury, frigid and black. The same as the last time she had felt it, on the sunny afternoon they had buried Chloe Price.

"I didn't remember them being taken, but-"

Familiar; exactly as it was then.

"- just seeing myself in them made me sick, Max."

Somewhat distantly, she felt her jaw lock in and grind. An absent throb from where a molar should be.

"I couldn't force myself to look at all of them. Just the first was enough-"

Her vision swam, the hand holding Kate's an island in a screaming sea of sharp edges and hate.

"- that even now, seeing myself in the mirror brings it all back."

Kate's voice shook and Max's breath stilled, unable to spare the focus for anything but keeping the storm she felt inside of herself contained.

To keep the hand that held Kate's from turning sharp, too.

Kate sniffed, but she didn't bother to wipe at her eyes.

"They.. they said they didn't find them all. Knew they didn't because there were spots missing on the shelves. Gaps where there shouldn't be."

She felt as though she were watching the scene from somewhere else; floating like a wraith outside her own third-story window, bashing and clawing against the glass with the rain.

"They said to watch. To look. That he had been doing this for long enough that there would have been other girls, even though he hadn't been here very long. More than just me and Rachel Amber."

The storm wailed.

"They said there would have been signs."

Max saw the lightning, bright enough to light the room like a flashbulb even through the thick towel over the blinds.

Kate's gaze still hadn't left the darkness above her bed. The dozens of gaping pinholes on a blank stretch of wall.

"Max, where are your pictures?"

Her voice broke over the words.

"Where is your camera?"

Max felt something inside herself wrench sideways and tear with no warning, ripping her deeply enough she couldn't hear the thunder over the blood in her ears.

Kate turned from the wall to look at her, her eyes washing over her desperately like amber searchlights. They were all she could see through the rain, streaked and still as though the air between them were a misty windowpane.

She tasted metal, and felt arms around her tight enough to bruise.

Max watched from outside of her body as Kate crushed herself against her. She watched as the blonde girl's lips moved soundlessly, her words stolen by the storm in her head, as indecipherable as a book in a dream. She saw through shadow a pair of hazel eyes search hers, and watched them widen-

She looked down at herself from over Kate's shoulder; dark blue eyes gone grey in the weak light, black pupils blown wide and yawning like wrecked apertures. She watched, numbly, as a thin pinkish stream trickled past her lips and down over the crest of her chin, beading scarlet there a moment before falling to -splat- against the hem of Kate's pale gown.

One drop became three.

Max's hand reached towards Kate through the veil of rain, and passed straight through.


a/n|

Welcome back.

I'll keep this one short. For those of you that hate cliffhangers, this chapter was originally supposed to be titled Daylight and be around twice as long. Breaking it in half this way made the original title inappropriate, so we're saving it for the next one, due out mostly alongside LiS 3 in a few weeks. If none of this made sense, let me know and I'll change it or clarify; it's supposed to be weird, but not nonsense, and I'm not sure if I got it right this time.

As always, if you're interested in progress reports and things like that, check my profile over on Ao3 every now and then to be safe.

Thanks for reading,
alt_