Max's triumphant return to the land of the living was a quiet, slow thing. No jolting out of bed with a big gasp. Just reality gradually reasserting itself. The unnatural stillness of her features finally disrupted as her brows drew in, her lips twitched. The steady rasp of her breathing interrupted with the occasional muttered word or gasp.
Her eyelids fluttered. Blinked. Opened.
Chloe watched her from the other bed in the hospital room they shared, Max's side overflowing with get well notes, flowers, balloons with obnoxiously up beat phrases on them and the occasional stuffed toy. There was not a trace of shame or guilt on her face at being caught watching Max sleep. In the unlikely event she ever felt any, there was no way it could have shown through the overwhelming joy at her awakening.
Chloe's smile was so bright in the moonlight filtering in through the thin curtains that Max couldn't help but answer it with one of her own.
"Watching people sleep, Chloe? Getting kind of creepy in your old age."
"Just making up for lost time. Haven't been able to see much of you for a while now." She tried to keep the lingering resentment from her voice, Max had done so much – proven her regret in countless ways, but five years of pain doesn't go away quickly. No matter how eager to forgive she was. Or how amazing the person seeking that forgiveness has been.
Judging from the look on Max's face she had been beyond unsuccessful.
"Chloe I…I'm so sorry. You deserved a better friend. I can't prove it, apart from the bullet I guess, but I have done so much to….. to get back to you. Be here for you. I know it's going to take time and maybe we will never get to go back to…. what we were."
Chloe scowled. Max didn't know. Of course, how the fuck could she?
Max thought that Chloe had forgotten everything, that she had gone back to the lost, angry creature Max had found on her return to Arcadia Bay. All those moments between them, lost. Chloe's expression was feeding that impression, she could see. Max had to be going out of her mind.
I have got to fuck with her!
"Max, it was so terrible when you left. I would spend all day just….staring at my phone. Waiting. Hoping. Praying."
Too much? Nah I'm still good for now.
"I would walk along the train rails, wishing I had someone to hold hands with. But without someone there to steady me I fell, again and again and again."
Max's eyes were wide, her bottom lip quivering.
"Every time I went swimming, I would lie back and float, wishing I had someone to splash around with….."
There were tears in Max's eyes now. I can't believe she is buying this.
"I would go out on the roof and throw up my hands, shouting out "Why, WHY GOD WHY, why did Max, the most important person in the world, have to leave.""
Suspicion had finally crept onto Max's face, the tears that had been rolling across her cheeks had stopped and Max had tilted her head like a puppy trying to understand some baffling new human behaviour.
"I swore to myself, I would never forgive you. No matter how many times you saved my life, no matter how many different kinds of hell you put yourself through. Not even facing down a serial killer because of me could get me to forgive you. Not even tearing apart the fabric of time and remaking reality purely for me could ever make up for things."
Max's movements were angry as she wiped the tears away, but her smile couldn't be contained.
"Really, Chloe? Nothing could do it?"
"Well…maybe…."
"Maybe?"
"Maybe…if you were a really good kisser."
"….kisser?!" Max squeaked.
"And were willing to indulge my homoerotic dares."
It was good to see Max had enough blood to blush like that. Red as a tomato. Her tiny freckled tomato.
Max's tongue darted out, wetting her lips. "Dares? Like, plural?"
Chloe smiled and licked her lips. It wasn't an unconscious little flick like Max. It was deliberate. Knowing. Teasing.
Max shivered.
Whimpered.
It was such a deliberately lewd gesture. But it also reminded her of the way Chloe would lick the ice-cream off herself, after one of their binges. This was a level of cognitive dissonance she just wasn't ready for.
She was saved from having to respond by a nurse bursting into the room in a panic.
And that was how Max and Chloe learned that the equipment monitoring Max's heartbeat would alert the nurses if there were any…irregularities.
Max glared at Chloe as the nurse gave them what was halfway between a relieved explanation and a scolding about getting "needlessly excited". Chloe pasted on a contrite expression, but it died after a few seconds. She was just too fucking proud for it to last.
Max examined the various gifts and mementos left behind or sent by well wishers, casting about for something to throw at her intolerable friend. Maybe Victoria had given her a signed brick. That seemed like a Victoria thing to do.
Max's best friend shrugged. "About Eleven days, Maximum Nap Time."
Max's eyes widened in shock. "I have been out for eleven days? Are you cereal."
"Super cereal. Alight, important shit first. Life has been normal. No snow, dead birds, eclipse, two moons or fuckoff murderstorm. I don't know how or why, but we dodged the timefuckery."
"Jeffershit is where he belongs, behind fucking bars. Prickscott said some interesting things about him during his little rant, oh so thoughtfully captured on camera by your sweet self. Combined with Step-Soldier's files, the cops had more then enough to find a nice roomy cell for him. I heard they literally blew open the door to the creepy ass rapebunker, fucking explosives and everything. Wish I could have seen it. Wish they blew the whole fucking thing up. Needed fucking evidence I guess."
Chloe paused to take a breath and compose herself before continuing.
"Dark Room led them to….to Rachel, just like it did us." She reached out to pick up one of the very few cards she had received, labelled as being from "Rose and James Amber." Sighing, she put it back down and continued.
"Prickscott wound up exactly where he belonged, too." Nathan's fate brought back the smile that talking about Rachel had chased away.
Max raised an eyebrow.
"Jail?"
Chloe shook her head, her smile shifting from predatory to savagely cruel. "Remember Step-Soldier bursting in? He punched Prickscott so hard the little shit went…..well, where shit is supposed to. Wound up with his head in the toilet, face down."
"In…..in the toilet?"
"In. The. Toilet. Fucker drowned, Max. Goddamn shitwater in his mouth. Splashing around his tongue. Up his nose. Down his throat. In his lungs. Fucker was finally the same on the inside as he was on the outside. Soon as you are up to walking we are tracking down the poor bastard who did his autopsy. Gonna be the best fucking interrogation ever."
Max was reeling. She had started to hate Nathan, but she couldn't take joy in anyone suffering such a humiliating death. Except maybe Jefferson, she admitted to herself.
But she couldn't bring herself to judge Chloe for the depth of her hate. After what he did to Rachel, to Chloe herself…..
It was actually rather comforting. Knowing hatred this pure would be waiting for anyone else who hurt her. Like Jefferson had.
Max forced her mind away from that particular agony.
"So, what about your memory? Im not complaining, but…"
Chloe grimaced. "Best I can tell it was your blood."
"Blood?"
"Yeah. We were rubbing our gaping wounds together like some fucking gross parody of tribbing. Got a big dose of time traveller blood. Maybe that…triggered something? We need to figure out how this timefuckery works."
Max frowned. She agreed, but there was one thing she didn't understand. 'Tribbing?"
Max had learned, from hard won experience, to fear the familiar mischievous glee spreading across Chloe's face. It always ended with her angry or humiliated and, one time, hiding in the bushes together in their underwear while they both tried very hard not to giggle.
"Max. Max Max Max. Maxmaxmax. Oh Mild Max, I have so fucking much to teach you. So fucking much."
She reached forward, with her phone in her hand, "Here, look it up."
Max could feel the jaws of a trap closing around her. But she never could deny Chloe, could she? Especially when her partner got that playful gleam in her eyes. And, as awful as Max had felt while in the midst of the chaos Chloe caused, in the years that followed they wound up being some of her favourite memories.
Max accepted the phone and started typing, somewhat comforted when the word came up as a suggestion, as if it were something Chloe had searched for frequently. Chloe would have used incognito mode for anything too bad, right? There was a video that had apparently, been viewed by this device seven times.
Max clicked it.
Max watched some of it.
Max winced. Cringed. Gasped. Rubbed her thighs together.
Startled by the surge that brought for from her body, she jumped, phone shooting from her hand to slide across the floor, stopping right before the door with the video still playing and the overly enthusiastic moans of the impressively uninhibited young women continued loud and clear.
Which was when the door opened and David took a step in, looking down in confusion. His eyes widened. Moustache bristled. Blushing, he stepped back. Closed the door. And walked away.
Chloe's laughter woke people up all across the floor and it wasn't long until Max joined in. They heaved in air as best they could, wounded bodied on fire from the exertion as they lost control completely. The doctor and nurses who rushed in were as irritated as they were concerned. And confused.
A male nurse watched the phone on the floor with a fascination that put the lie to any rumours about men in such a traditionally feminine profession being gay, and the scolding he received undid any composure Max and Chloe had been able to achieve.
The pain in Max's chest was getting worse, and she was pretty sure she had opened her stitches. When the irritated doctor gave them both a little something, she found herself slipping into a dreamless sleep. The broad smile on her freckled face remained.
And the doctors and nurses working that night got to add "Sedation due to Pornography Induced Hysteria" to the list of reasons they would trot out, years later, to explain why they would never again work in "Arcadia Fucking Bay".