"Max you literally took a bullet for this girl. How many people would you do that for?"
Max scrunched up her eyes and shook her head.
"The question isn't whether I love her, it's how I love her."
Steph tried not to sigh.
"Well, it isn't anybody's place to tell you your sexuality but…that all sounds pretty fucking gay. You said yourself you have already kissed twice."
"…people kiss their friends."
Steph didn't bother trying not to sigh.
"Do you?"
"What?"
"Do you kiss your friends?"
"….no."
"How many guys have you kissed? You don't exactly strike me as a party girl."
The knot of tension that had been sitting in Max's stomach since the conversation moved from Steph's interests to her own tightened.
"….none. But you are right, I'm not really….social."
Steph rolled her eyes at that.
"Forget the excuse, Max. You don't need to be Dana or Rachel to pull. Even Samantha Myers wound up with a boyfriend and she was the shyest person I have ever met. Besides, I still have friends at Blackwell. You think I didn't ask around about the girl who took a bullet for Chloe? Warren would have given his left leg to go out with you and I know of two other guys who would have jumped at the chance."
W hat? Who?
"And it's not hard to see why. If Chloe hadn't staked a claim I would be seducing your hipster ass right now. That bitch always beats me to the hot ones…."
Max licked her lips, fingers drumming on her leg nervously as she tried to ignore the fluttering in her stomach at the compliment. Something she had only felt before when…when Chloe had given her similar compliments. But not as strong.
"You didn't have a single date, a single boyfriend, a single kiss. And it wasn't from lack of opportunity. It was by choice. You spent most of your teenage years avoiding all that. Why?"
Max hadn't even opened her mouth to reply when Steph held up a hand to stop her.
"The only person you owe that answer to is yourself. And you do owe it. Wherever you land on this you need to get it figured out for your own sake."
Yeah you didn't need to help me on that one.
"Years of avoiding everything connected to sex or romance, then a few days back with Chloe and you are already making out with her. That means something Max."
"Ok, ok, but fucking what?"
"You are sharing a room with her," Steph grinned. "Just crawl into her bed and find out."
Max's mop of hair bounced about as she shook her head wildly.
"I can't…. experiment with her.
"Max, as someone who has seduced a lot of "straight" girls, especially since starting college, I am going to need you not to talk shit about experimentation. It has been very good to me."
Smug triumph practically radiated off her.
Chloe had returned with a great bounty. Too great a bounty, it turned out. The precocious punk's prodigious, particularly petty pudding plundering probably went too far, her arms were too overloaded with cups of dessert to open the door.
Luckily Steph came to the rescue, opening it from the other side as Chloe glared at it.
Man am I fucking glad she is back. Even If it isn't for long.
"What up, Steph?"
"Oh you know, just drove all fucking day so a friend could con me into being someone's lesbianism mentor."
Chloe tried to shrug, but couldn't quite manage it with her loot.
"Well, you are so good at it…"
"What was the point of helping you get your shit together if you were just gonna turn around and fob the next one off on me to me too? It was totally your turn, Chloe."
"I…yeah sorry but….with Max it…..it would've….shit "complicated" doesn't even fucking begin to describe it."
"Relax Chloe," Steph said gently. "I was just fucking with you. If you just wanted to get laid it would be one thing but….You really love her, don't you? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. It takes me longer to order a burger then it takes you to fall for a girl."
"Dude, that's because it takes you forever to order. Mum kicked you out last time."
"She kicked out all of us! And it was because Rachel set Mikey's salad on fire!"
"Honestly, she was doing him a favour. I have never seen someone order a salad at the Two Whales, and that place is basically my second home. I didn't even know they served them. Should a salad even be flammable."
"Probably not. But speaking of Rachel did she ever…I know she never came out as bi but did she admit what you were, just in private?"
Chloe looked away. "No. Never. Usually as soon as she sobered up…"
Steph groaned with the frustrated patience of someone who had seen one dear friend hurt another far too many times.
"That's awful, Chloe. You deserved better from her." She sighed. "And she deserved better from herself. I'm sure she loved you."
"Yeah well, can't bitch about the dead, can we? If…..if we had had more time…"
"I'm so sorry about what happened to her. It's…Jesus, we were supposed to be safe there. Poor Rachel. I couldn't believe it when I heard."
"I wish I could say the same. But no way does this fucking world let someone as cool as Rachel be. It had to fucking twist and warp her until she was starting to become everything she hated about her father. But that wasn't fucking enough, was it? Had to keep going, tear her down completely. Take away the last of her dignity and even her goddamn life. This world has to crush everything beautiful."
Chloe paused in her rant as her friend laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. Her eyes bored into the wood of the door that had closed behind Steph.
"But Max, she's…Jesus Steph I wish I could tell you how amazing she is, how strong. The thing everyone is worshipping her for, taking that bullet? Hella fucking badass but just the tip of the goddamn iceberg. She can't…make anything feel okay with two words and a smile, the way Rachel did, but she can ride out every wave of bullshit this pit sends. Under all the adorable hipster fluff there is this…iron core of badass. When the world tries to break her she doesn't just remain unbroken. She breaks it back."
Finally finishing, she stopped trying to blink the tears from her eyes. And simply let them flow while Steph awkwardly hugged her around her overflowing arms.
Max had been hoping her nervousness would fade when Chloe came back, but when Steph opened the door once more to let her in before waving to Max and leaving the young photographer found her mouth bone dry and her stomach fluttering.
"Hey pudding, want some pudding?" Chloe said, holding out her stash of stolen desserts.
Even through her nervousness, Max couldn't help but giggle.
"Sure, Chloe."
She watched the punk dump the loot onto her bed, before fishing out one pudding cup for each of them and tossing Max's to her.
"Uhm, spoon?"
"Yeah, in a little bit. I am still too keyed up from Steph's visit to get back in bed yet and…. you meant an actual spoon, to eat to pudding with, didn't you? Damnit, I forget to grab one. Shit I had this whole plan where we were gonna, like, share the same spoon, pass it back and forth and maybe feed each other with it a bit. Was gonna be so sweet. Guess I fucked that up."
Chloe shrugged off her awkwardness, opening her pudding and licking the lid clean before sticking in two fingers and pulling out a big blob of pudding, sticking it in her mouth.
"Not completely, Chlo. We can share your fingers."
Chloe coughed and gagged as she tried to swallow, laugh, pull her fingers out of her mouth and make twelve different perverted jokes, all at once.
"Oh you ass," she finally managed to get out. "You timed that deliberately didn't you?"
"I have no idea what you are talking about." Max scooped up some of her pudding and smugly popped it into her mouth.
"Bitch please," Chloe fired back by sticking two fingers into hers before pulling them out and splitting them into a V shape, sticking her tongue between and licking up the pudding along the sides of her fingers.
Max blushed and threw her empty pudding container at Chloe, her giggle dying on her lips as it fell off her friends face and left pudding splattered across it. Turns out it wasn't empty.
Chloe glared as she threw her own pudding cup, almost half full.
And so began the Great Pudding War of 2013.
There were heavy casualties, including but not limited to two sheets and four pillow cases, the patience of several nurses, the repainting of one hotel room and forced Max to spend three hours cleaning her photos.
As the long-suffering nurses left with a glare and most of the bedding, Max sat up in her new clean sheets. Moving as far back as she could and patting the spot in front of her, she smiled contently as Chloe settled in facing Max and crossed her legs.
"So, uhm, C-Chloe. I…..uhm."
"You had a talk with Steph?"
"Yeah."
"And it made a lot of things clearer?"
"Yeah."
"And now you need to have a serious talk with me?"
"Yeah."
"C'mon mumble Max, I can't do the whole conversation myself."
"Yeah…..s-sorry. Okay. Remember how earlier I was talking about how…..after everything we have been through we owe it to each other to be honest? So long as we have that we can….we can get through anything."
"Yeah Max." Chloe's hand was warm on Max's arm as she rubbed up and down.
"Steph and I talked about, about my feelings. And you. That is, my feelings for you. And, and how they are….really complicated. I just keep switching between flirting back and hiding from my feelings and….."
Max was babbling now, nervousness back in almost full force. She couldn't bring herself to meet Chloe's eyes.
"Max, you need to stop dancing around and say it. Okay, complicated feelings. But what complicated feelings."
"I think I might want to be more then friends – more then best friends - with you. When you flirt with me, when we kissed….nothing's ever made me feel that way and I want, I want so much more. I'm…attracted to you."
Chloe released a shaky breath.
"Okay, cool, I haven't really been quiet about being hella into-"
"But it, it's all so new Chloe. I can't. We can't."
She grit her teeth.
"Why the fuck not!"
"These feelings are less then a week old Chloe! I'm not risking everything between us on something so new! I don't know if this is just a weird reaction to our reunion. What if I'm not actually gay, Chlo? People get curious, they go through phases."
"Max you will never figure this out if you are too scared to start something. You know me, trust me. Are comfortable with me. If you can't explore this with me then who the fuck will you be able to?"
"Chloe I can't just reduce you to some experiment. You deserve so much better than that from me."
"What the fuck are you on, Max?"
"Experiments end Chlo. They aren't meant to last."
"Everything ends, dumbass. Do you think the pain of Dad dying means I wish I never had such a great father? When you came back I didn't shit myself over how lonely I would be if you left again. I just enjoyed having you. Better to live while you can then hide from life because it might hurt."
"I fucking abandoned you during the hardest time of your life, even with all we meant to each other! I need to be more responsible, more careful, so there is no chance of me breaking your heart. I won't hurt you again!"
"Yes, you will. Do your parents never hurt each other? Never say or do the wrong thing? Never fuck up? Couples fight Max. It's healthy. They still love each other. Are still happy."
Chloe reached over and took Max's hands in her own before continuing.
"Ever since you came back you have been…a fucking light in the dark. You turned every thing in my shit life into gold, made good on every fucking childhood promise, made every moment of emptiness and pain worth it. And guess what? You still fucking hurt me. When you took Kate's call in Two Whales it was like a punch in the gut. But you were right to answer, no matter how much of an ass I was being. You are going to hurt me Max, even when you don't fuck up or say the wrong thing – and you are gonna do plenty of those. Life is rough, you fucking get hurt. For the longest time I thought it couldn't be worth it. But, if you get lucky, you can find the one thing that makes it all worthwhile."
Chloe blinked the tears from her eyes as she squeezed Max's hands.
"If…..if this is just a passing phase, or something you decide to never explore, or if you just…want someone else, then okay I will accept that. But the excuse you went with? Fuck off with that weak-ass shit Max. Because…I can't separate all the ways I love you, Maxine Caulfield. I can't even count them."
Chloe finally ran out of words, leaving her looking almost as pale and drained as she had when literally bleeding out. And even more vulnerable. If Max had a week to prepare, she still wouldn't be able to offer a suitable speech in response. Words were such crude and clumsy things, far too limited to ever express everything she needed them to. Perhaps that was why a single picture was worth a thousand of them.
She cast her eye along her photo wall in the vain hope that something there could shoulder this burden for her. It had always been so much easier to capture how she felt in her lens. But there was no salvation to be found in her art and Chloe was still waiting for a reply, heart and soul offered up in a display she would have considered intolerably mushy such a short time ago.
If neither words nor photography could provide a worthy response, she had only one option left.
Action.
Any hesitation now and Max would lose her nerve and never go through with it.
So Max didn't hesitate.
The hands still holding Chloe's pulled in, gently forcing the punk to lean forward at the same time Max did.
Chloe's pale face was finally cleared of anything resembling pain and anger, allowing her warmth and beauty to shine through, her usual cocky grin had transformed during her speech into an unsure quirk of the lips with her teeth worrying at her bottom lip, now being swept away by a disbelieving, eager smile. Her skin looked so soft, this close, and now her face was all Max could see. Her eyes, such a beautifully vivid blue they put even that butterfly to shame, wide with wonder.
It was far too much for Max to take in, so she closed her eyes as her nose bumped Chloe's, slid along it.
And then their lips were touching.
The kiss was long and deep, curious and unsure, but so very sweet and sincere. Without even the slightest shred of a pretence, no dare to hide behind or killer storm to force this moment, there was only Chloe and Max, the love she had spent five years hiding from.
A lifetime of cultural condition melted away, the little voice in the back of Max's head whispering that this was wrong, that she shouldn't be doing this with a girl, not standing a chance before a truth so self-evident. It died a swift, brutal death, unloved and unmourned.
There was only Chloe's lips against hers, the wetness of Chloe's tears against her cheek, the warmth of her hand in Max's hair. Two nurses came in to check on Max, the heart monitor she was still hooked up to shouting it's own celebration for the whole hospital to hear. They shared a look, and left without disturbing the girls on the hospital bed. They remembered what it was to be young and in love.
Max and Chloe never even noticed them come in. Locked in their passionate embrace, the entire world had fallen away.
Because nothing else mattered.