:
Explosive Decompression
altunderscore
12
Warmth, pulled in with every breath, even and deep.
It filled her, from the tips of her toes to her lips and higher, the overflow a smile honey-slow and sweet; gold as the view through the lashes of her eyes and soft, like sunrise through breath-fogged glass.
Her eyes slid closed and caught, a sleep-stuck blink coaxed wide by the rise and fall of fingers and the skin beneath. There was a weight against her; a pressure, pulled close and welcome, the comfort of a dream drawn back like a blanket's edge to bare the warmth below, waking eyes finding focus in the breath-broken quiet.
She pulled inward, the soft skin beneath her fingers furrowed up like garden-rows between them, the coaxing press sending ghosts of words dripping slow from sleeping lips just south of hers.
Victoria's nose crinkled as Max squeezed again, tracing the ridge of her shortest rib with a thumb. The blonde grumbled mutely and turned, a shoulder's edge brushing her chest as the sleeping girl rolled onto her back and stilled, the kink in her brow unknitting with a sigh. The motion had pulled her hand from its perch on Victoria's waist to a warm span between the girl's navel and hip, the slow movement drawing her tight against Max's fingers like wound string.
Or a coiled snake, she thought as the blonde's expression knotted again, her lips pulling thin as she fought wakefulness with tooth and claw.
The smart thing to do would be to leave, a part of her was saying- the part of her that jerked awake at raised voices- the one that shrank into the dark.
Instead she squeezed again, slow and careful, watching the movement of her hand across Victoria's waist through a gap in the buttons of the sleeping girl's shirt. She felt a hip curve up to meet her palm, a mix of soft and sharp. She laughed lowly at the breathy groan that brushed her ear as her fingers pressed in- at green eyes pulling open, unfocused and searching the gentle dimness between them, the low lamplight cradling them both in fingers of shadow.
Max's smile flowered in the dark room.
"Good morning," she said softly.
The bits of the bedside clock she could see through the mess of blonde hair inches past her nose said differently, but all of that mattered less than the sound Victoria made as she scrunched her eyes together and burrowed back into the pillow, or the small noise of confusion as she met resistance along the way. Max watched as Victoria lurched upward, turning to look at the pale intruder that had until that moment lain beneath her head.
An arm, traced from wrist to shoulder and farther, eyes sharpening to knives as they carved upward to meet her own. She could see the wheels turning as Victoria spooled awake, some instinctive barb forming behind her lips at the vulnerability she must be feeling in the moment. Even from a dead sleep it took her less than a heartbeat to find something edged enough to use, the twitch of her lips and the little half-breath she took giving her away a moment before she spoke.
Max giggled.
"You'd be a lot scarier without the bedhead," she said, drinking in the slow-blooming surprise on the blonde's face at the theft of tempo. Max's eyes flicked upward for a moment before unhurriedly drifting back down, a sleepy half-smile forming as she followed the other girl up as she rose.
"It's cute though. I could get used to it, I think."
A pressure at the back of her head throbbed as she sat up, the remains of a headache untangling even as fuzzy needlepoints dug jittery teeth into her now-freed arm. She blinked, taking in the flatfooted blush forming on Victoria's face; felt the phantom warmth at her side where the blonde had been until moments ago.
Totally worth it, she thought with an internal smile.
Or maybe not so internal, if Victoria's naked glance towards her lips and back was any indication.
The blonde took a second to collect herself, the language of her body shifting from reflexive aggression to something more subdued as wakefulness came to her more fully; spines and claws sheathing as the tension she carried bled away with every measured exhale. Her lips parted as she looked around the dim room; lingering on Max for a breath, tracing her silhouette through shadow- from the too-wide stretch of her tee-shirt's collar to the blanket puddled in her lap. Then outward, toward the foot of the narrow bed they shared, and the low-lit lamp on the table just beyond it. Along the far wall, to the shaded window; the distant amber wash of an old streetlight soaking through the cover like a stray sunrise.
Then back to Max, drawn like magnets through the dark.
The words came slow, their path less practiced than the oil-slick route of venom from fang to flesh; the girl's shoulders bowed with the effort of finding them.
"Are.. are you okay?" the blonde girl spoke- stuttered, swallowed. Her fingers knit together in her lap, her eyes drifting low from Max's own without ever really reaching her lips, lingering instead in the middle distance on something Max couldn't quite see.
Her head throbbed again; the distant thunder of a passing storm as it crept toward the far horizon.
"I will be," she said softly, finding one of Victoria's hands with hers, a gentle pressure in the quiet between words. "I'm really lucky you've been here, I think."
Victoria turned away, her face dipping behind a veil of shadow. She shifted in place as though burned, her reply coming after a pause,
"Well aren't you just a fucking charmer, " she whispered, her words striking differently without the heat to drive them deeper.
The fingers threading into Max's spoke clear enough alone.
Max reached forward with her free hand, slipping it around Victoria's far hip as she slid herself back, stopping only when her shoulders pressed against the bare wall behind her. Victoria followed along at Max's coaxing, pulled closer until she couldn't be any closer; an arm caught in the shallow valley of the freckled girl's chest, a knee rising at her back to steady her as the brunette's other leg snaked around her front and guided her into place.
It reminded Max of the way they'd been together outside of Portland; Victoria turned sideways in her lap as though she belonged there, sliding into the negative space as if she'd carved it herself. Max's head dipped low until her brow met the crook of the blonde's shoulder, her eyes slipping closed on their own.
Her breath was slow and deep, filling herself gradually with the moment until it was painted inside her head. Victoria's perfume was a whisper of itself this deep into the evening, washed out as it had been by the rain of the storm and Victoria's own soft scent. There was something else, too, Max realized as she pressed into the other girl again; a knot tied in her breath that came loose as she exhaled, a warmth blooming in her belly as she recognized herself on Victoria's skin.
The warmth became a smolder, stoked further with each breath she took, until the glow filled her completely - until the heat of it sent her spinning like a pinwheel in the sun.
She felt her lips pull back with half a mind, a restless ache twitching to life inside herself somewhere just out of reach.
She felt Victoria shift against her, the taller blonde turning to face her in a way that dragged herself along Max's teeth in a kiss that was half a bite.
She felt Victoria's eyes on her from above, the blonde's questioning expression causing her to answer with the first thing that came to mind.
"You smell like me," Max said, her head a little hazy, her voice thick with something strange. "Like us."
Victoria stiffened. She could feel it in the places they were closest- a tension, more than skin deep; their eyes meeting again as she stole a glance up at the blonde from beneath the open neck of her pale blouse.
Victoria's expression was impossible to read in the dim glow of the room, half of her face lost to darkness and her breath coming shallow and oddly paced. Max felt lost without a handhold; she pulled back until her head brushed the wall behind her, nervously hoping the new perspective would help her understand what the other girl was feeling in the moment.
"That's not weird, is it?" Max offered tentatively, her skin prickling at the exposure. A moment passed before whatever hold Victoria placed on herself faded and allowed her to move again. She spoke, sharp but steady in a way that would have sounded out of place coming from someone else.
"It's not weird," Victoria said pointedly, then seemed to reconsider, "Not out of the ordinary, at least. Not for you."
Max laughed, mostly from relief.
"Then why'd you freeze?" she asked, her voice teasing enough to cover the anxiety she felt underneath.
Victoria moved in her lap, crossing her legs over Max's knee as she leaned into the brunette's chest, a hum - almost indulgent - slipping from between her lips as she considered her response. The blonde's face was hard to see from the new angle- her head tucked almost under Max's chin, but her tone seemed reasonable on the surface.
"Maybe I didn't want to kiss you before brushing my teeth?"
Max's reply came without thinking, the heat in her belly speaking before she could stop it-
"Nobody said you had to kiss me-"
-and it was Max's turn to freeze, a nervous bubble swelling in her chest as Victoria's low exhale broke through the quiet, the urge to rewind spiking as one unanswered breath became two.
.. Maybe she wouldn't take it like that?
Even in the dim lamplight, Max could see shades of rose at the nape of Victoria's neck where the collar of her blouse pulled away from skin. Her embarrassment ground against the heavy mass of something inside her, the friction sending jolts through the places they pressed together, enough that she almost missed when Victoria spoke a moment after.
".. I'm not a shrink, but I think I'm starting to notice a pattern here, Caulfield."
Playful - Max could hear the smirk in her voice - but blunt enough to send ripples of warmth onto her cheeks regardless, her heartbeat loud in her ears. There was a tingle on her skin, almost electric as she dug for a response; anything to vent the tension before it could overflow.
"Sorry, my filter's the last thing to turn on when I wake up," she began, but paused as she felt more than heard Victoria laugh against her chest.
"That's a little more obvious than you might think," Victoria said, smug- as though she'd worked out something important and was waiting for Max to catch up. She could feel Victoria shifting against her; soft blonde hair brushing her chin for a moment as the other girl leaned forward just slightly-
Confusion gave way to realization too slowly, clarity coming only in the moment before the pressure did; the warmth, as Victoria's chin dipped low-
-Oh, fuck-
Distantly, Max felt Victoria's breath against her skin, hot even through the thin cotton of her shirt. There was another pull, something sharp enough to part her lips as Victoria's weight moved against her firmly, the blonde doing something in the moment that saw her twisted deeper between Max's knees, her words stolen with her breath as Victoria's mouth found her again, the heat--Wordless, but not silent; strange notes spilling out of her as smooth fingers searched for handholds- found them, slipping like grasping vines into the gap between the fabric of her shorts and her skin, riding them upward until they dug against her, tight; a moment of heady weightlessness as Victoria lifted her just enough to press herself into the new opening beneath her, until the blonde was left kneeling between her thighs.
Something between her head and her hips had burned out as the heat spiked; trying to push away from the wall at her back did nothing but crush her further against the girl between her knees- knees that stopped supporting her weight as the hem of her shorts worked high enough to bite. Magnified, as all of her weight fell onto the hands holding her from below, fingers digging deep as they pulled her closer- her breath leaving in a stilted rush as Victoria's hold shifted, her thumbs slipping up and around into the groove where hips met thigh, pressing her down-
She tried to breathe-
-couldn't-
-as lips pulled away from her chest, the air near-painfully cold even through damp cotton, the shock lasting only a moment before the warmth returned, bringing with it a bolt that sent her rigid as something sharp dragged against her.
There was a sound in her head. A roar, a pounding of blood in her ears. She could feel her pulse in her skin, a full-body throb that rocked through her as Victoria's teeth pressed into her through the fabric of her blouse; a split second of mindless thought dragging her backward, stealing just enough space to hook her fingers beneath the hem of her shirt- to tear it up and over her head-
Shock, again. In the cold air clawing at her skin, and in the green eyes staring up at her through the dark.
Max couldn't -didn't- think as her fingers found their way into a nest of blonde hair, working themselves scalp deep point-first, her grip tight as she pulled Victoria back into her. She felt resistance only briefly before the heat came again, but hollow- breath against her, but nothing more; the haze in her head morphing- twisting- as the ghost of a kiss pressed against her skin and stoked nothing in her but frustration. She rocked herself forward, forcing the girl below her to hold her or fall back, her fingers curling tighter as the blonde made her choice, the hands against the bare skin of her thighs sinking deep as her grip shifted beneath her and she was dragged up and in-
-her breath ripped through her clenched teeth in a hiss as the scorching peak of her frustration met the frigid metal of Victoria's belt, a jolt spearing through her like a lightningstrike at the grinding contact, the blonde between her legs seizing the opening and driving forward-
Max's shoulders hit the wall behind her as Victoria pressed her backward without ever loosening the hold below her waist. It left her off balance- forced her to wriggle and writhe to find purchase against the wall at her back, her reward another lance of heady static as her weight again fell slick against Victoria's hips; turned blinding as the blonde pushed up and into her- only barely able to catch her gasp between her teeth as lips found her again at last. Soft and scalding and sharp; every press a willowisp against her aching skin that puddled heat within the empty space inside herself. Smoke and cinder in her breath-
-in her blood-
-as lips carved a path across her chest, and hung like foxfire above her heart.
Her heart.
Victoria's breath came in a shudder, warm for only a moment before the chill of autumn pressed in at the edges. She felt the hands below her move; drawing together underneath her hips to hold instead of dig, cradling her weight against the blonde beneath her as another breath spilled free, slow and jagged.
".. I can feel your heartbeat in your skin. Everywhere."
Quiet, but heavy.
She sank forward until her brow met the pale ridge of Max's collarbone.
"It's.. too much, so soon since-"
Max felt her frustration boil over, a flex of her core pressing her forward, the leverage driving the blonde back and down against the bedtop without resistance. She rocked backward, the hands that had held her until moments before now pinned between them, trapped. Her heart raced, her veins coursing with a heat she could feel leaching into the dark even then. Her head swam-
-Something sharp throbbed behind her eyes-
-and she crushed them shut, until stars bloomed in her vision and copper flowered on her tongue.
A voice in her head. Hers.
Breathe.
She did. The air was cold in her throat, trickling down to pool in her lungs, heavy and still. She held it there, feeling as more and more of the heat inside her bled itself away with her heartbeat.
Her eyes slipped open, and only then did she breathe out.
Shadow and smeared ink greeted her, shaping into dim silhouettes as her waning pulse rode through her, the haze in her head clearing as the pressure inside of her drained away into open air.
Victoria's green eyes met hers from below, concern and resignation plain enough within them even in the cooling dark. Max's heart missed a beat in the silence- she felt her pulse stutter in the tips of her fingers as guilt swept in to fill the void the heat had left behind.
Shame, too.
She began to say something- anything, but there was a sound from beneath her; a hum of wordless denial as Victoria spoke first, her voice subdued but clear.
"Don't," she said plainly, shaking her head. "I fucked this up myself."
Max fought the urge to laugh, but some of her disbelief must have slipped through because Victoria continued a moment after.
"It was stupid of me to push you like this. Even more stupid to let it go as far as it did when I was supposed to be taking care of you. I.. "
She trailed off, shaking her head forcefully as she turned toward the far window.
"The last thing I want is to push you away, but if we kept going- if the stress did something to you, I don't know what I'd do."
There was another beat of heavy quiet before Victoria turned to her again, finding her eyes and holding there as the moment drew long.
".. That isn't true," she admitted softly, as though her voice couldn't betray her if she whispered. "If something happened to you now, I know exactly what it would do to me, and it's ugly. It's not something I could accept. Not after everything that's happened."
Victoria's eyes closed for a moment before she spoke again, opening them only when she'd found the words. Her face was stone, but her voice-
".. I don't want to hurt people anymore, Max. You or anyone else. I'd rather-"
Max laughed wetly, unwilling to let Victoria finish.
"I never should have told you your knight in shining armor thing was cute," she said through the weight in her throat.
She pawed at her cheek. Tried to disguise it as a scratch, but it probably didn't work. Her eyes stung when she spoke a moment after.
"I mean it is, but it's a pain in the ass, too."
Max sniffed unsubtly, her bitter smile curling in the dim lamplight.
"You really don't have to worry so much, you know?" she offered lowly, her shoulders rolling inward. "You don't need to take the blame for every bad day, either. Not when you're doing so much to make things better."
Her lips parted just slightly, the miresome air failing to keep a sliver of warmth from finding her voice as she spoke.
"If you knew how much just being here meant to me, even like this-" she gestured between them tiredly, "-you wouldn't be nearly as hard on yourself as you are."
She swallowed, her expression softening as she pushed on. "This time I've spent together with you has been the most at peace I've felt in.. what feels like forever, really. You don't have to feel guilty about moments like these not being perfect when the only reason I've been happy at all since then is because of what you've done for me."
Max smiled, heavy but genuine.
" Everything you've done for me."
She slid forward slightly, her head bowing as she looked away. Her eyes traced patterns in the blankettops as she finished, her cheeks warm enough to blunt the air's chill teeth against her skin.
"Every single smile I've managed to find since that night is something I owe to you, Victoria. Don't worry about hurting me by being here when losing you is what would hurt me the most."
The vulnerability Max felt deepened as she spoke, sincerity edging into embarrassment in the quiet seconds after she'd run out of words. Her stomach rolled as the moment stretched long, fresh nerves coloring her expression as her eyes found Victoria's again, more by necessity than her own choice.
"Not that you.. couldn't leave, if you wanted to, I mean."
Max felt fingers creep into the tangle of hair at the nape of her neck as anxiety simmered in her belly and made knots of her tongue.
"I.. know this is a lot, Victoria. If you decided you didn't want to do this anymore, I'd.."
Her throat stung. An arm hooked beneath her chest, fingers biting into skin as she dug for what she needed to say.
"..'Okay' is a strong word, but I'd live. I'd miss you, miss this, but I'd survive, you know?"
Her breath hitched as a laugh hit the lump in her throat and shattered, the result a sound, an emotion that was alien even to her, bleeding into her words in a way that bent the notes of her voice around itself, thickening them with schadenfreude or something close.
"How do I tell you I need you without making you think I need you? Does that make sense?"
Blue eyes sought green through the lamplight. Found them, after a moment.
Holding them was harder, as naked as she felt, but she managed.
She watched as Victoria's lips parted to speak, slow enough she could see where they'd stuck together, peeling apart like grapefruit flesh in the breath before she spoke- her face a mosaic of frustration and concern painted plain from the lines furrowed in the corners of her eyes to the shadowed curl where mouth met cheek.
"Telling me not to worry about you- about what I've been doing to you - only goes so far when this keeps happening. " Victoria swallowed. Her jaw strained as she fought and failed to keep the emotion from washing out her voice. "It keeps happening and I don't know why and I'm fucking scared because I don't know how to fix it."
She felt Victoria's knees rise up to press against her back, holding her the only way she could with her hands pinned between them as they were.
"I don't know what's wrong and I don't know how to make it better and I can't fucking stand the thought of sitting here for one more useless fucking second just watching while you fall apart."
Victoria's eyes bored into her own, restless worry rolling within them for a moment more before they stilled, a shell of anxious focus forming as an idea took shape behind them.
"Just- My mom knows every doctor worth anything between Vancouver and L.A. Fuck a waiting list- we could get you in anywhere by noon tomorrow with one phone call - I'll drive you myself, and we can leave in the morning-"
Her words came in a rush, like her tongue could outrun her heart.
Max felt her stomach twist, her teeth locking in and grinding around the first thing she'd meant to say as Victoria's half-hidden panic hit her and turned her frigid.
The doctors won't find anything. They won't find anything, because there's nothing wrong.
The words boiled up inside her, tickling at the back of her lips like butterfly wings.
There's no point in worrying. This is how things are supposed to be.
Temptation. Her fingers curled around air and felt tension beneath them, the indulgence of confession so rich it curdled on her tongue.
Telling Chloe had been easy after all, when it had still been a blessing.
It'd be simple enough to do again, she thought. Less than a breath, and Victoria could understand. She could stop tearing herself apart trying to fix something that wasn't broken-
A noise came from below, sharp. It jarred her back to the present in time to feel a jerk beneath her, the pressure in her head slipping back like tidewater as her eyes found focus in the dark, tracking downward toward the source before she'd had a chance to realize what was happening herself.
The sound came again; a muffled, choking hiss that set Max's teeth on edge as Victoria's chest seized a second time, almost crushing the air from her lungs as she fought to keep herself quiet and still. Her eyes were too wide, her focus on Max's face too tight. Her breath came forcefully, tearing through her teeth in a shaking cadence too measured to be natural.
The realization struck her, jagged- something inside her freezing slick as she recognized what she was seeing. Like catching a glimpse of herself in a carnival mirror, familiar and foreign at once. Instinct moved her more than thought, pulling her through the curtain of oily panic that unfurled inside her head, guiding her hands forward, easing the shake in her fingers as she reached out-
Victoria jerked as Max touched her cheek, green eyes slashing from face to wrist and back at the contact; a breathless, ragged gasp clawing its way free of the desperate grip the blonde held around herself.
Max spoke, the need to fill the air with something almost unbearable-
"Victoria, it's okay. We're okay-"
-Something dark gave way behind Victoria's eyes. Something brittle, clutched tight and crushed like a wineglass or the bones of a bird; cracks dripping heavy, emotion welling up like red beads through split skin.
"-I fucking can't, Max."
Victoria's breath shook, her voice pulled tight and sharp by the tension she carried in her throat. Her eyes stitched shut, her hands clenching and unclenching; restless, desperate.
"I can't-"
It came as a cough, or a drowning sputter; choking as much on words as water as her breath hitched again. Her head wrenched to the side violently enough Max felt the stress of it pass beneath her like a wave, rocking her like a ship against a breaker. The room's thick murk swirled as her heartbeat knifed upward, the dark air twisting grey at the limits of her vision as something like strings bit into the tips of her fingers and drew the second long and thin and airless.
Dread.
Go back.
"You don't fucking get it- "
Victoria's voice dragged against her like wire, in pieces but whole like a jigsaw puzzle, held together by the pressure at the edges.
Too much, Max realized.
Too late.
Go back.
Victoria's chest stuttered, a sob caught and smothered before it could tear free with her voice.
"You don't-"
The room stood still, everything within dragged to a halt by the curl of shaking fingers. Memory flowered in her head, cloyingly sweet; she remembered waking up only an eye-blink ago, the warmth so fresh she could feel the ghost of it against her skin even now in the cooling afterglow.
It was still there, just past her fingertips.
Go back.
The voice was hers, pleading.
Around her, the room felt too empty- too exposed despite the dark; anxiety gnawing at her through the greyscale haze in her head. It throbbed, hooking a knot of panic inside of her and dragging it into the open. It would be easy, going back; a gentle pull, like tugging the blankets up to her chin and sneaking back to sleep through the wake of a passing dream.
-She remembered waking up-
-and her fingers splayed wide, driving into the bedsheets behind Victoria's head deep enough to raise little hills in between her pale knuckles. Dizziness took her in a whirl of vertigo and for a moment she was ten years old again, jumping off the merry-go-round, saltwater and rust and the girl beneath her just as real as they had been back then. A blink and blonde hair and woodchips became blonde hair and tangled linen, the screech of the playground fading into the sharp song of a migraine as she fought to keep herself in the present, even if everything inside of her was telling her, begging her -
Go back.
Max's teeth sank into her cheek, the sharp spur of the molar she'd broken twinging a livewire buzz as a nerve was teased, fresh nausea blossoming alongside a feeling now intimately familiar; her fingers digging into the bedtop as fire crept back into her veins, coursing through her from skull to spine as the tension spiked with her heartbeat. It was a welcome discomfort; the pain an anchor to the moment, a mooring in a storm of memory that bound her to the present; to the girl beneath her, to herself, to-
"Victoria-"
Green eyes flashed like knives in the lamplight, the girl behind them bucking like something inside her had torn from the pressure, her lips caught and skewered on her teeth to stop the emotion from ripping itself from her as anything more than a pained hiss that slid through Max like the tongue of a razor, desperation and anger and hurt folded back on itself in the shape of a girl on the floor of a dark room blanketed by plastic sheets, scared to death but so prideful she'd rather shatter than fucking scream-Max pushed the lash of heat lancing through her head back into the dark, the need to use her power to -fix this- twisting the muscles of her hand like something electric. Instead, she unhooked her deadened fingers from the blanket beneath them and reached out, forcing them closed around something soft, channeling the heat, digging in like claws around it-
(There was tile underneath her now, cold against her knees and slick. Someone was choking-)
"-It's okay," she whispered into the darkness, the body below her writhing at her voice, her words. The flash of fire in her head as her teeth slid together like porcelain chips beneath the flesh of her cheek cast shadows across the bedtop, catching the figure upon it in a black net as it twisted violently against itself, a swell of sound rising from it smothered but sharp through the fog between them, like breaking glass, breaking-
"Let go," she said, and there was quiet for a moment as the ocean rolled umbral beneath her, pitching her forward and down as ozone boiled on her tongue.
Then came the bolt, splitting the gulf between them even as the thunder was swallowed and lost in the grey-bellied cloud she held in her fingers, pressed down like gauze on the gasping mouth of a wound.
Victoria's hips drove upward once more, her heels digging quilt-square trenches through the field of blankets tangled at her feet. Her wrists ground together like brittle kindling, sparks trapped and dying in darkness like stars in the sky of a midnight sea. She screamed again, or tried; a wretched thing that scraped her raw as it left her, joining its twin in the airless grave above. Airless and quiet, a fragile mercy - her shame caught beneath cloth like skin under rouge.
She poured herself out into the silence- until the shell of her that remained was empty, falling inward like cicada's skin beneath the weight of the pillow and the blankets and the girl above her.
Max fell with her; followed her down, until the ridge of her brow brushed the plain surface of the mattress and her chin settled in the groove of the blonde girl's shoulder.
They laid there in the soundless dark, breathing in the same air at what felt like the bottom of the sea. Time passed at a drip, the rise and fall of their chests stilling, smoothing unhurriedly into a placidity that belied the depth of their sinking; the weight of everything above, the soft black comfort of the bed below.
Neither of them knew how long they lingered there - neither had watched the clock - but it was Victoria who eventually broke the quiet, her voice rough and low.
".. You don't get it, Max," she said, her tone lacking the knife-edged anxiety it had held in the time before. The gates had been opened, the dam had burst, and now she was empty.
Max's reply was a wordless murmur half lost in cloth- giving Victoria space to continue, telling her she was heard.
"You don't get it, and I can't make you understand."
There had been a sense of desperation before, but now it was gone.
Absently, Max felt herself fraying like weathered rope on a weathered ship, the itch in her head gnawing at her like time itself for choosing to see this path through to whatever end it found.
"You're scared," she answered instead, her voice soft and resigned. "You're scared, and you're not used to being scared. Not used to showing it, or being able to."
Victoria squeezed her eyes shut; Max could feel it in the rise of the cheek against hers, hot with old emotion and half-dried tears.
"I make you happy," Victoria said, a note of skepticism brushing against Max in a way that twisted at something inside her. "You like me, but people like a lot of things they shouldn't. That's not what scares me most, though. It's that-"
Victoria swallowed, a breath bridging the distance between one long moment and the next.
"It's that.. Max, I've hurt a lot of people. On purpose, mostly, but I'm such a fucking wreck of a person that even when I try to be kind, I hurt people just by being near them, too. That's.. not something I think I can change, and.."
Max felt Victoria's chest sink as she exhaled, lingering in the breathless space at the bottom of her lungs while she pieced herself together. She inhaled just enough to speak, her voice a sliver of itself when she'd found the words to continue.
".. And I'm scared it's just a matter of time before I hurt you too. Even more than I already have."
The fist in Max's chest tightened its hold, just a little. Denial seeped through its fingers, spilling into her voice as it dripped from her, "Victoria.."
She felt the girl beneath her draw tight, an edge building within her at the opposition even as her pace quickened,
"I could do the wrong thing- say the wrong thing- and put you back in that place and it keeps getting worse and I-"
The hand within her clenched, the words crushed from her before she could think to stop them-
"-Tori, it really isn't that bad-"
Victoria seethed, her voice a rasp against her skin,
"You were bleeding from your fucking eyes, Max."
Victoria's face was a rorschach from above, veiled in the room's dark gossamer and amorphous as molten glass. She glittered at the edges, where saltwater beads caught and swallowed the light, what little there was.
Max was cold, in the dark.
Victoria's voice was cold too.
".. I didn't let Kate see, but I've never been more scared for someone else in my life. It's.."
She exhaled, audibly pushing through a knot in her throat.
"Kate said it started when the two of you were talking about something important. It happened in the clearing in Portland when we were talking about something too, and it keeps getting worse."
Exhaustion bled into worry, coloring her tone towards the end. The unsubtle undercurrents of anxiety and fear lurking like a riptide beneath her words.
There was another crush of pressure inside Max's head, leaden and cool and new as fresh guilt weighed itself upon her. As long as Victoria was with her, every word she spoke would be one step deeper into a minefield, and every misstep would draw blood.
That burden..
Agonizing.
Max's chest ached, needles of conflicting emotion chewing at her like teeth, grinding her raw and thin.
She was letting this happen.
But telling Victoria the truth would-
The blonde girl coughed, choked on a tangle in her throat that hadn't yet been cut. Her voice was heavy; ragged as an old lion when the pride had gone.
"I.. want to be a better person than I am, Max. I want to help you through this however I can, but anything I do could be what sends you back there again, and I'd rather fucking die than have that happen one more time."
She sounded so tired
"I can't make you understand, and you're so fucking detached you have the audacity to tell me not to worry when I was wiping your own blood off your face just a few hours ago-
She was letting this happen.
"-and I can't make you come with me to an actual doctor so we can figure out what the fuck is going on with you-
She was letting this happen.
"-and it's just a matter of time before I hurt you again because I'm so fucking selfish I couldn't let anyone help you but me and now you're-"
Enough.
"-I already know what's wrong with me," Max said quietly, unable to keep the words inside her anymore.
Victoria stilled, lips still parted but stuck as her breath trickled over them, slow and shapeless.
Max swallowed as butterflies boiled into her throat. Speaking through them made her voice thin- insubstantial, like mothwings and lace. She felt that thinness bleed into herself, made translucent by it; glasswinged and naked and cold there in the dark.
"I.. I'm sorry," she whispered, pulling away from the girl below her to sit something close to upright. "I didn't think that this would eat at you the way it has."
She felt Victoria laugh weakly, an incredulous scoff that tightened her stomach the only indication that she'd been heard at all. It hurt her- stung, like the half-healed scratches on her cheek had when they were new.
"Don't," Max said softly, blinking away the sudden blur. "Please."
There was a sharp exhale from beneath her, but no barb as Victoria bit through what she'd begun to say, the edge of her tongue blunted against her teeth. She tried again, her words like a cat's paw against Max's skin when she spoke, unpointed but rough.
"You didn't think this would eat at me? Was watching you collapse supposed to be easy-"
"-None of this is easy!"
Max said at a near shout, a nerve run raw. "None of it!"
Her fingers bunched in the tangle of hair at the nape of her neck, her knuckles white.
"Feeling miserable because you can't stop hurting the people you love isn't something you're dealing with alone! I've seen too many people I care about die because I couldn't help them to not feel fucking gutted that I've been doing the same thing to you, Victoria-"
The words gushed from her. She couldn't stop them if she tried.
"I'm hurting you- you're doing everything you can to help me and I'm hurting you, all because I was so scared of being alone with my failure that I latched onto the first person to come close and dragged them down with me instead of just -drowning- like I should have!"
Victoria's teeth flashed in the low light, her voice a snarl, "Is that what I am to you, Caulfield? Fucking collateral damage? Just some idiot that got too close to the wrong person and couldn't let go before it killed her?""Victoria-"
"-Bullshit! I can worry about killing myself enough for the both of us! I've been living on borrowed time since that fucking bathroom and if I can't manage to be a decent human being to the one goddamned person who deserves it the most, then I don't deserve your fucking pity either!"
The words hit Max like a spike through the heart, the air rippling under her fingertips at the revulsion she felt in the moment; the wrongness of it as her fingers curved to meet her palm-
-Go back-
-and her fist smashed into the pinholed wall above her bed. She wished for the first time in days that her polaroids still hung there- would have struck again if they had, drinking deep of the catharsis the fire in her bones brought with it.
This deserved to hurt.
Then from what felt like nowhere, the ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of her lips, bittersweet. She glanced at her fist- at the wet smear where skin met plaster.
There was more of Chloe in her than she'd thought.
".. You don't deserve my pity, Victoria," Max said after a shaky breath, the release having lightened her tongue enough to speak, a little. "You deserve the truth, but-"
"-The truth?-"
"-but dropping everything on you, just so I could have someone that understood- would be cruel."
Victoria twisted, "I'll be the judge of what's cruel to me and what isn't, thanks-"
Max's mouth snapped shut before she could speak, not needing her power to know exactly how well 'But you don't understand!' would be taken in the moment, valid or not.
Then help her understand, a voice spoke from within her.
How?
How do you tell someone that their world wasn't as real as they thought it was? How do you ask them to take that on faith?Her mind went to Kate, to her words in the hospital, to the slow smile on her face as she spoke-
'You're my guardian angel, Max.'
This would all be just another miracle to her-
"-Stop it, fuck!" Victoria gasped from underneath her, her entire body recoiling. Max blinked, the smell of antiseptic and linen fading as quickly as it had come.
Victoria's breath hitched, any pretense of a mask long since cast away, "Every time you drift off like that it's like you're not here anymore- like you're one step away from wherever the hell you go when you're gone, and every time you do I'm scared you won't come back!"
The blonde girl swallowed, unable to ease the burning in her throat. "How could you think that telling me what's wrong with you could be any more cruel than making me just watch like this while you fucking fade away?"
The pain- the unhidden fear in Victoria's voice clawed at something inside of her, biting deep and tearing. The words poured out of her before she could halt them, anything to make it stop-
But how-
"It's- it's memories," Max confessed, half-breathless; forming the words as she spoke them. "Something's screwed up in my head and my memories are too vivid and I get lost in them if I let myself- I get lost, and most of them aren't good places to be lost!"
A part of her felt Victoria shift beneath her, but her eyes and her head were too clouded to know what it meant. The rest of her pushed unsteadily forward, carried by the inertia of her tongue.
"It's awful- I fight it, and it hurts, but it's better than staying in the places my head takes me, alright!? That's where the nosebleeds- where everything comes from! I can see and feel and hear all this wretched shit like I'm still there and I have to cave my own head in to get out, and it hurts-"
She stumbled, bloodless; felt strong arms catch her, heard the cry of gulls from somewhere past the cliffs, this was too much-
"-It fucking hurts," she sobbed, too weak to do anything but let herself be pulled into darkness. The girl that held her spoke; she felt the words in her chest, but the voice that carried them had been stolen away by the roar of the wind.
"-It fucking hurts," she said, her voice muffled, needing to force the words, "but it's still better than the good memories; they're like dreams, where everything's whole again - perfect - and then I wake up and I'm here and she's not and not even my memories of her are safe anymore! It fucking stole her from me and there's nothing I can do-"
-'Liar,' the itch in her fingers said-
Her fist clenched, every ounce of loathing in her heart screaming that she lash out until her hand was splinters and she was free of it. Would have, but something caught her wrist, soft but sure, pressing it back and down before she could strike. The fury, the hurt boiled inside of her, scalding; the need to do something to vent the pressure almost overwhelming.
Her eyes tore open into darkness, caught in the hollow beneath Victoria's chin. It was Victoria's hand that held her own, keeping her from driving it into the wall until it broke. Her breath hitched and she shook, the fingers around her wrist cool and firm. She tried to breathe again, but the air wouldn't come; emotion's grip on her chest too tight.
It was a wonder her heart had room to beat at all.
She felt skin, warm against her cheek; the pulse beneath it steady and close, constant like the slow dance of a clock. It pulled at her, each beat another step further from the dizzying heat behind her eyes, each step a handsbreadth deeper into the airless present in front of her. Each sense, each memory both the anchor and the sea, the hold and the fall-
It pulled at her, like rope against her skin.
She couldn't breathe.
"Don't go."
Victoria's words, low, spoken slowly just overhead. Thin like kitestring; traced back to a pair of lips whose movement she could see without needing her eyes or light to look. The haze in her head sensed the familiar and seized-
'Please,' Chloe said, in a graveyard next to the sea.
'Stay-
-with me."
Something broke.
She felt it in slivers, coursing outward from the center of her chest. The shards of it spread wide, snipping the too-tight strings that held her upright and without them she fell, the mile of inches between herself and the surface made more stark by the howl of the wind in her ears and the sickening roll of her head. The impact, however, was soft; gentler by far than she'd thought it would be, though the recoil caught somewhere deep in her chest like a hook. It tugged at her - pulled her up just enough to taste air, for a moment, but enough for the haze in her head to boil away, and the fire in her lungs to sink low and dim. Enough of a breath to pull a thread of a scent into herself; a stitch of rain and old perfume looped around moments and memories like now, like-
-The bathroom tile was cold against her knees, her breath caught in her throat like thorns. Her hands shook, what had she done-
-Pictures pinned to walls like butterflies under glass; each one a siren that called in whispers. She couldn't bring herself to look- didn't know where she was, what she would see-
-Dry leaves broke beneath them as her head pitched sideways, a scarlet ribbon pouring onto the forest floor as her stomach fell away. Something warm covered her eyes-
-Their breath came heavy and slow, the low noise of the engine washing away everything beyond the glass as the shadows grew longer and the air grew thicker between them, the closest to comfort she'd come in days-
-Blood sat stale in her mouth, the carpet beneath her cold but soft. Fingers brushed against her cheek, wavering; as though unsure she were really there. A pressure wrapped around her middle, a voice of naked relief in her ear as she was pulled close, warmth and affection pouring into her secondhand, filling her with what she couldn't find herself-
Victoria held her, in the dark.
Max broke, and cried.
There was a helplessness that came with being empty, an exhaustion that sunk beyond bone. Something inside her had blistered and split, and in its place sat the raw well of a wound, red and weeping at the rim.
There was comfort though in that emptiness, in some strange way; a pressure in her chest now absent, the parts of herself that shared space with it now shifting, slow at first, but sure.
She could breathe.
She could breathe.
It stung, a little, but her chest rose and fell without catching, air moving like air in her lungs and not water. She inhaled again, feeling greedy, and breath passed her lips like a ghost.
Exhaustion sat upon her, binding and thick, but there was no panic as her arms hung heavy and her legs lay limp beneath her.
She couldn't run anymore, that was all.
The crown of her head brushed pinholed plaster, her cheek at rest on a cloth-covered shoulder as her chest rose and fell once more.
She could breathe.
Breath, along the nape of her neck, creeping down the furrow of her naked spine and into the sheath of blankets pooled around her waist. Each breath the quiet tick of a metronome, a constant thing to set herself against as she came back together, slow.
She was off-beat by half, but there were moments they would meet; an inhale shared, but held too long, half the breath passing past her ear in a warm slow puff before she'd let go herself.
That was fine.
She'd catch up, with time.
Her body relaxed, slipping sideways a little, til her shoulder found the room's edge and stilled. There came a sound, more vibration than word, from the body that held her; a careful, questioning hum that slid against her almost gingerly, its nature unspoken but clear.
".. I'm here," she answered softly, though there was more she'd thought she should say.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
I wish things were different.
But I think they'll be better this way.
The breath in her ear found a pause, a moment of tension in the body beneath her as she was lifted a little and moved, more of her weight falling flush against the girl that held her and less of it slumped dead in the corner of the room. It was good, she thought, as fingers found the curve of her head and guided it back into place, slipping her in beneath a pale cheek like a bit of old tile. More comfortable like this, less cold. The warm breath on her skin made her shiver some though, enough that it took her a moment to notice the words that it carried as the pair of them shifted position, bedsprings whining beneath them in smothered protest.
"I'm sorry," Victoria said quietly. "About all of this."
Max blinked, eyes heavy and salt-stung. Her whole head was slow, but that was probably better than the way it had been before. She tried to think of a response, but it was hard; her brain feeling like it had turned to slush.
".. I'm a little cold," she offered, the first thing that came to mind. It wasn't the best start, but she felt Victoria's breath flutter anyway, the barest shadow of a laugh sneaking out of her before she could stop it, surprised. Max felt the blanket at her hips move, an arm unwrapping from around her long enough to tug the heavy comforter up and across their shoulders before returning, low on her waist and warm. Victoria's other arm dipped beneath her for a moment, moving both of them around until they pressed together cleanly, overlapping in a way that by now had become familiar. Victoria sighed, and Max felt some of the stress she carried bleed out with it; a rigidity that had built and been building for days relaxing a little, enough.
It calmed her, too.
Victoria exhaled, slow and steady. "Don't change the subject," she prodded gently, a shade of feigned frustration warming her voice a touch. "And besides," she added, willingly swallowing the hook. "It's your room- nobody's touched the radiator but you."
It took a moment, but Max managed a reply, "You caught me," she said tiredly, then paused, conceding. ".. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, though."
Victoria's thumb traced a tingling circle on the base of her spine, pensive, "Do you want to tell me, then?" she asked, voice low. "About how it was supposed to go?"
Max had breath enough to answer, the words coming warm if not easy at the coaxing press of skin against her own, ".. It wasn't that different, really," she confessed, feeling the disbelief in the brief rise and fall of the chest against hers. Her eyes drifted shut; her picture of the room deepening, brushed with ink of scent and sound. "If the room is cold, then it's more comfortable like this, is all."
There was a flicker, then; a pull at the tip of her tongue. She grinned, slow and sleepy, "I thought you'd slept with people before," she whispered, something close to teasing.
Victoria stiffened, then relaxed, almost. "Maybe," she said softly, seeming to taste the words before she spoke them. Uncertainty, then resolve. "Waking up with someone is new, though."
There was a brief bloom of warmth in Max's chest, but she didn't feel comfortable holding onto it completely, instead letting it dance and waver like candleflame through loose fingers.
"They say first times rarely live up to expectation," she murmured, and felt Victoria laugh like she'd told a joke. A second more and the girl stilled, tilting her head to look down at Max through the distance between them. There was a moment of quiet then, drawn long and measured by heartbeats in the dark.
Max felt something warm against her cheek as the hold on her shifted, drawing her closer for a breath before parting only enough to speak.
"Who expected any of this to be perfect?" Victoria asked, her voice leading but light. "I'm just glad we could get through it only crying as much as I did."
Max's lips pursed, a shadow of a frown forming, "You're allowed to feel things, 'Tori," she said, her words pushing together at the edges. Her eyes pulled open, heavy, when Victoria pressed into her more fully, a warm exhale feathering her hair from a face now much closer to hers.
"And who says I don't?" Victoria said quietly, her voice a challenge even at a whisper. The words sunk through Max's skin before she'd had a chance to really feel them, driving into her center like a gentle knife. Scarlet splashed her face, lips working numbly to find words to reply, but- there'd been no hesitation, and even now Victoria's eyes held her, dimly glinting in the low lamplight, the slash of a smile across her face a vulnerability worn proud like a prize rosette.
Max felt herself warm, half from irritation and half from some wordless knot of feeling that caught and stuck her clumsy tongue.
"You- you can't just-" her hands boiled upward, no longer limp at her sides, instead finding homes on the blonde's silhouette, squeezing, "I'm serious, Victoria- you don't have to feel guilty for feeling something- You don't have to wait your turn to cry, either." Max swallowed, her throat still slow to move.
Her head rocked forward, heavy or homesick, "And trying to deflect by being affectionate isn't fair," she finished, finding a place for herself on Victoria's shoulder, "Because it's always going to work."
Victoria hummed then, low; Max felt the vibration of it pass into the cloudy space behind her eyes, calling her back to other moments like this. She smiled, conflicted but soft, the ache in her head almost pleasant, warm but raw like lips kissed too long.
Victoria spoke, a moment of quiet thought ended with a breath outward. "I let you dodge the hard things too, you know?" she said, sliding herself into the corner of the room until she was comfortable. ".. You're right though," she conceded after a pause, her eyes finding Max's for a moment before slipping back out into the dark, "Bottling everything up is wrong, but so is pretending everything is okay when it's not. I'm sorry- for only opening up about the good things, and a lot of other shit too."
There was a second of quiet before the blonde girl shook her head, her messy fringe swept out of her face with the idle motion of a pale hand.
"And thank you," Victoria said, embarrassed as though she'd forgotten something. "For telling me about what's been happening with you. It wasn't my place to push, and I've been trying to be better, but-"
Max sniffed, "Stop," she said plainly, and Victoria did, her lips coming together like they'd been stitched shut, all of the edges quickly fading from her expression as her full attention fell on Max, soft.
Max felt her face warm, but she trusted the dark to hide her enough to speak, ".. It absolutely is your place- I'm.. someone you care about, and you have a right to know things about the people that mean something to you, right?" Max asked, her tongue loosening a little as she spoke. "It was my fault I didn't tell you sooner, or in a better way, and it's my fault I didn't see that not knowing had been hurting you as much as it was. I just-"
Max sighed, for a moment feeling stupid and small, "I just.. didn't think you'd put as much into this - into us - as you have, and that's fucked up because you've been perfect-" Max said, her voice twisting, realization folding back on itself double, "You've tried so fucking hard, and I just-"
"-Didn't expect me to be so unhealthily, singlemindedly obsessed?" Victoria cut in pointedly, timed like the thrust of a dagger, catching her before she could spiral. Max sobbed, or laughed; something low in her chest aching from overuse. Victoria pulled the blanket around them tighter, hands trailing firm and warm along the groove of Max's spine, as though she could physically hold them both together. Max choked on a laugh again, so burned-out she'd lost any hope of the things she'd felt making sense beyond the present. She nodded her head instead, unable to speak, and the motion streaked saltwater along the cloth of Victoria's collar. She couldn't bring herself to feel any shame in the moment, though; the arms around her held her up- held her close, the slow breath in her ear and the heart beneath her cheek near and undeniably alive . She breathed in, or tried; the effort labored with as much time as she'd spent crying, but real or imagined a shade of the moment found its way into her regardless, rain and cotton and her own shampoo worked into Victoria's skin, into her. Something inside of her drew tight, sharpening as she lost focus-
She paused, the tips of her fingers at the hem of Victoria's shirt. Her pulse was heavy in her ears, anxious energy pooling dark beneath her skin, but-
She swallowed, her eyes stinging as something in her head crossed, overwhelmed. Her mouth didn't want to work, too full of unsaid words, but-
"I.." Max tried, the attempt catching on the back of her teeth, tangled. Her jaw worked soundlessly for a moment; she'd have to trust her eyes to do most of the speaking for her, but she wasn't very good at that, never had been. Her thumbs rolled the edge of Victoria's blouse against itself, pressed between them as it was, and anxiously and a little ashamed she looked up into the shadow the rest of the girl hid behind.
"Victoria, I don't.. ask if it's okay, enough, but-" Max blinked hard, upset with herself. She felt Victoria move a little, pulling a knee up at her back, drawing her that much closer. Her head tilted to one side, curious but not aggressively so, content to give Max space to speak on her own.
Max swallowed her nervousness, voice quiet but firm. "I want to touch you," she said softly, anxiety beginning to itch at her, embarrassed. Her eyes slid off the shadow that hid Victoria's face, but she saw the girl's mouth move in silhouette after a moment, shaping around the word she spoke in a way that seemed significant, though Max couldn't quite understand how in the moment.
"But?" Victoria said simply, a quirk of her lips stretching the sound long.
Max reached for words, unsteady, ".. Your shirt is in the way."
She saw the dark outline of Victoria's lips pull apart, heard the quiet whisper of breath over them as if she were about to speak, but then silence; as though whatever she'd meant to say had stuck to the back of her tongue. Max felt the hesitation in the air, and wished again for just a drop more light between them; just enough to see Victoria's eyes, what she was feeling-
-Caution, in the fingertips against her; as though her skin were glass, the hesitance of a hand holding something delicate. The steady press of the thigh against her back, a stable pillar on either side of herself between it and the chest of the girl that held her. The cocoon of silk and quiltsquares woven around them both, warm and soft. She was surrounded completely; enveloped, encircled, cradled close and cared for.
The hesitance Victoria felt was caution, coming from a place of affection.
Max didn't need to see Victoria's face to know that. She could feel it, all around her, if she let herself.
Victoria's lips pressed into the crown of her head; whispered words shaped by a smile, crooked but genuine.
"Is that actual restraint I'm hearing?" she asked, half a quiet laugh. "Not just diving in hands-first?"
Victoria's words were warm, but the shame Max felt deepened, creeping up her throat like vines. An apology bloomed on her tongue, but Victoria's hands slipped low, the pads of her thumbs pressing into the peaks of Max's hips, firm- she felt Victoria's lips trail down to her hairline, their warm pressure guiding Max's face back up before it could really fall.
"I always just.. do whatever I want with you, without asking first, and that's.." Max paused, words pooling in her mouth unspoken. She shivered, uncomfortable, reminded of things best left in the past.
Another dark room.
Another Victoria.
"You deserve the chance to say no, is all," Max said, her hold on the blonde girl loosening. "To have that mean something."
A phantom numbness wormed its way into her limbs from an itch in her neck, pins and needles gnawing at her as though her whole body were asleep, for a moment. She blinked as she felt Victoria's weight shift against her, the wake of a heartbeat washing the ether from her tongue and clearing her head a little despite the dark.
Victoria was looking at her, pensive; Max could feel the brush of eyes against her skin even if she couldn't see them, little pricks of gooseflesh dotting the path they followed, as though she were on display. A chill had found its way through the tangle of blankets, just deeply enough to trace a finger of rime along the notches of her backbone, settling there at the base of her spine. Victoria paused at the bottom of a breath, caught in a net of something she was feeling, though precisely what Max wasn't sure.
There was quiet then, for a beat or two; it left Max feeling exposed, uncertain- though the weight of the blankets around her, the arms beneath them that hadn't once let her go - blunted much of the bite of the cold.
She was grateful. She only wished-
"You can touch me, Max," Victoria said, voice soft, leaning forward some as she spoke. The outline of her expression changed then, something in her tone shifting as she found Max's eyes, the dark hollows of them tucked behind a fragile veil of shadow and lamplight.
"And thank you, for asking."
She sounded like she meant it.
Max swallowed, relief mixing with a new kind of nervousness as what Victoria said settled in. Much of the heat that had driven her only a minute before had cooled, and here she was left with the consequence of letting her tongue run unchecked, without any of the heady emotion that had pushed her to act or to speak in the first place. Her cheeks flushed red, but from embarrassment- a sort of stage-fright, almost; eyes on her, watching- she didn't know what to do, aside from follow some clumsy impulse, floundering. She felt herself freeze, anxious-
Victoria's hands moved from her hips to her wrists, finding them as easily as though she could see them herself. She squeezed, gentle, in time with a mute puff of a laugh that fluttered Max's bangs from so close, warm. "Don't make it more complicated than it has to be," Victoria said, her voice calm. "You told me you wanted to do something, and I said it was okay. The rest is easy."
Victoria guided her hands up a little, to the lowest button of her blouse. Max felt the hard acrylic slide against the split skin of a knuckle and winced, the sting secondary to the flash of fear she felt in the time it took her to find herself again. She inhaled, pulling in the moment itself as much as she did breath; the steady, constant warmth of the girl beneath her thawing her frozen limbs secondhand. She felt Victoria laugh again- felt lips press into the crown of her head, reassuring; an embarrassed heat pooling in her cheeks and pouring south as she came loose enough to move once more.
I'm such a fucking wreck.
Her fingers blindly traced the button's edge, and after a moment pushed it through its loop. She couldn't see, but rather felt the tension lessen somewhat; habit and a shadow of muscle-memory guiding her hand up a handful of inches more, halting only at a sudden burst of heat as Max felt her fingertips brush blindly against skin instead. Victoria exhaled heavily, fidgeting a little at the contact, but smiled nonetheless. Max could feel it.
"That's one," Victoria whispered, tilting her head just enough to reach Max's ear. "Now do the rest."
Something deep within her bristled at the words; the fine hairs at the nape of her neck rising a little with her heartbeat. Her hand pulled away just enough for the tip of her finger to find the button it had pushed past only seconds ago, circling it as she built up courage to go further. It didn't take long, her body seeming to sense what she wanted; for once making things easier instead of harder and steadying her hand, a little. Her breath still shook however, fluttering against Victoria's chest like hummingbird wings, though if the blonde girl minded she didn't say; the only hint she'd even noticed what was happening at all was a subtle shift of her shoulders that gave Max more room to move without bringing the two of them too far apart.
Max was thankful for it, drawing on the contact between them as a sort of battery, finding within it the strength to press forward. The next button came undone beneath her fingers, this one just above the shallow crease of Victoria's navel, and Max had to push against herself not to slide into the gap she'd made too quickly. Instead she took a slow breath, trying to open herself to the smaller cues the girl beneath her was giving - as best she could, at least; it was hard to focus at the best of times and inexperience made reading things uncertain, but the way Victoria's breath froze for just a moment as Max's fingers bridged the gap between them again was encouragement enough for the remaining buttons to fall open quickly after, all but one.
Max felt it, pressed between her thumb and the end of an index finger. It was.. significant, in a way; a curtain drawn aside, something vulnerable, something new. Max flinched as the ridge of her knuckles dragged along the center of Victoria's chest and brought both of them to a stop; she'd only meant to change her hold, but the motion had pressed them both together- there'd been a burst of static as skin met skin, a tingle of restless energy in the heartbeats after.
In the back of her head she knew she was acting strange; she'd touched Victoria like this before, or something close. It was senseless that her pulse would run through her so heavy as it was now; a throb, slow but deep, made all the weightier for it. Senseless, to feel like this when she'd been right here before. But then-
-But she'd felt something, then; the breath of a ghost against her fingers, faint. She spread herself wide as though to capture it, pressed her palm flat against Victoria's chest to feel for it, searching.
She smiled.
Victoria's face could have been a painting in chiaroscuro, still and calm and constant, but her heart raced beneath Max's fingertips; stumbling over itself in little half-beats as it rushed ever onward, spilling away into something Max couldn't see.
A flicker came to life inside of her, her smile turning.
"You're more scared than I am," Max said quietly, her palm pressing more firmly, as though she could catch Victoria's heart in her hand if she tried.
Victoria's hold was low on her back, her breath coming measured and steady, but forcibly so- now that Max knew what to look for it was simple enough to see. Victoria hummed, a confident sound boiling up from somewhere inside of her, following a path well worn to the surface.
"Oh?" she said, needing to pause before she spoke. "What makes you so sure?" Victoria's hands slipped lower, underneath her hips and up, firm.
Masking insecurity with aggression, even now
Max laughed softly, a vindicated shiver rippling through her as she felt Victoria's heart beat faster at the sound. "I can show you, if you want," she asked leadingly, the edge of a challenge finding its way into her voice. She smiled, knowing without needing to look how the blonde would react to her words. Already she felt her fingers warm as the skin beneath them flushed, a heavy breath formed and left the taller girl in a rush that could have been called a growl if it weren't so restrained.
She felt the points of Victoria's fingernails press into her through the soft cotton of her shorts, dotting the skin along the bottom of her thighs in halfmoon arcs, driven deeper as she wiggled herself down onto them, defiant.
"And how's that?" Victoria asked then, frustration hidden behind a question that was meant to be rhetorical. Max didn't answer with words, at least not at first; instead praying that impulse could outrun embarrassment as her other hand moved upward, finding the last button and pushing it through its loop.
The blankets that covered them shifted a little as Max drew her hand to the side, guiding Victoria's shirt from her shoulders, letting it slip down to pool around her elbows under its own soft weight. Then quiet, aside from the creak of bedsprings as Max leaned forward, a little. Quiet, aside from their breath.
Victoria didn't say a word, but Max felt her under her fingers, expanding and contracting- short and shallow at first, but deepening; every inhale finding the line where emptiness ended and she began and pressing against it, firm. She felt Victoria push forward almost gently, driving herself against Max's fingers as though they were spearpoints, impaling herself upon them skin-deep and flushed.
Max smiled, answering slow, "Because you always push yourself forward when you're scared."
Victoria froze, but only for a moment, the heat of a challenge quickly thawing her tongue.
"That doesn't mean shit, Caulfield," she said lowly, "I'm always pushing myself. "
Max's smile turned mournful, her hold shifting as she pulled closer; enough that she could brush her lips against the bare skin of Victoria's collar, wordless. She felt Victoria's heart keep beating beneath her fingers; felt the stiffness as realization settled, the rippling of edges beneath skin as she drew herself sharp. Then a quiet breath outward, tension spent into the air as she unspooled again.
Victoria sighed, soft. "I'm nice to you for one fucking week and you want to be my therapist."
Max felt the shell of a laugh slip through, following the furrow of Victoria's collarbone down into the nest of blankets that surrounded them. "It's nice to meet you, Kettle. I'm Pot," she whispered, a second before she could stop herself.
Victoria was still for a moment, but Max felt the tension return as the blonde girl's head twisted to look at her directly. Max felt the weight of Victoria's stare bear down on her like a tangible thing, pressure spiking so suddenly she thought she might ignite under it. Seconds passed; the silence marked only by the rise and fall of the chest beneath her fingers as Max felt heat pour into her skin, exposed.
Then it vanished, Victoria's laugh sweeping the tension away like the water of a flood.
"We've been over this before," she said bluntly, "Hypocrisy is for other people. I'm an expert."
Max was caught flatfooted by her own laugh, or as flatfooted as she could be while tucked into another girl's lap. She felt herself relax, a seed of relief taking root somewhere in her chest, but before she could reply she felt Victoria shift again, clearing room to speak.
"You're right though, you know?" the blonde offered, confessing. A shade of quiet sincerity colored her voice against the room's darkness; enough that Max could see the weakness laid bare in her expression despite the mask of shadow between them.
"I didn't mean it like that," Max began softly, reassuring. "Talking with you like this has been perfect, and I-"
"-Not about the talking. God knows we need somebody who actually gives a shit to listen to us, and for my part I'm glad my person is you," Victoria said plainly, stopping Max short with an affectionate squeeze of her hip. She paused then, feeling out her next words before voicing them.
"I am scared. Terrified, really," Victoria whispered. Her eyes trailed downward, tracing the pale outline of Max's hand against her through the gap in the blankets. "I've never done anything like this before, and.. I'm scared I'm going to do something stupid, or fuck it all up somehow. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's how I feel, you know?" she laughed, soft and undercut.
Max shook her head, disbelieving. "I'm pretty sure that's my line," she said, bumping Victoria's cheek, playful. "You actually know what you're doing here. I'm just.. clumsily winging it, I guess." Max let her hand drift down a little, brushing the bony ridge at the center of Victoria's chest for a moment before slipping off to one side, following the curve there until her fingers found the familiar grooves of the blonde girl's ribs. They settled there for a breath, but Max frowned, frustration blooming slow in the front of her head as she leaned forward, lips reclaiming the empty space her hand had left behind.
She felt Victoria's eyes on her from above, the shift of her shoulders; the question in them plain enough to know without looking.
Max felt herself redden, embarrassed, but didn't quite pull back.
"Your heartbeat felt too far away," she admitted, lips pressing in again, flush enough to feel the pulse beneath them, strong. She felt Victoria laugh, but her tone was strange when she spoke.
"Like this," the blonde girl said, voice curling. "Nobody's ever done anything like this but you."
Max paused, hesitant. She felt Victoria's heart speed up a moment before she spoke, working up to something, suddenly nervous but not wanting to show it.
".. Intimacy, genius," Victoria said, trying to scoff but failing. Instead the words came plain and unadorned, as though she'd stated a simple truth. In a way, Max figured, she had.
Max found herself smiling, though she didn't exactly know why. Her reply was wordless, a quiet hum as she turned her head to one side; deepening her hold, arms crossing as they met beneath Victoria's shoulders like vines on the skin of an oak. She heard the shake of Victoria's voice in her ear, crystal-clear and close.
"Max," she said, the word lingering. "Nobody's ever taken my shirt off so they could hear my heart better before . You're special, whether you know it or not."
Max exhaled, stifled a little by the blankets pulled up to her nose. "They didn't know what they were missing, then," she said sleepily, somehow finding space to press herself closer, the gaps between them filling in slowly, warm.
Victoria breathed in, Max's cheek following the gentle swell of her chest like the crest of a ripple in a pond.
"Neither did I," the blonde girl said softly, voice light enough to lose itself in the crown of Max's head.
Max felt.. a lot of things, in the heavy quiet that followed. Face warming, her eyes prickled as she fought a stupid smile, something in her chest changing shape as she found herself caught short. She laughed, quiet and low.
"And you said you weren't good at this," Max said, slow enough she wouldn't stammer. Any more than that would be a risk, something she couldn't take back.
She found her smile again.
This much was fine, for now.
Victoria's hands pressed into her once more, soft and searching. "Beginner's luck," she murmured as she brought them both downward, a half-spiral bounded by a pinholed wall on one edge and Max's weathered headboard on the other. They came to rest among pillows, a careful twist of Victoria's hips steadying Max before she could slip off to one side and away.
She felt Victoria's heart against her chest, nakedly nervous, tapping anxious rudiments between the two of them bare and pale like drum-skin. Max breathed in; linen and clover, citrus and far-away rain. The two of them, layered, borders blurred and bled like sunset through the gauze of coastal clouds.
They were close now. As close as they could be, almost.
Almost.
Max blinked slow, her smile slow as well as her head lowered softly, chin dipping until her lips and the girl's beneath her shared the same small shadow. A rustle of cloth and a feather-brush of skin against skin as Victoria grumbled something and slid herself away. Max's breath fell against a reddening cheek, her silent laugh coaxing enough for Victoria to try to speak again.
".. I still haven't brushed my teeth," she confessed quietly, anxious. Max's second laugh wasn't so silent, falling light like evening rain.
"Victoria," she giggled, nudging the blonde with the tip of her nose, "If you think that's bad, the first time my girlfriend saw me with my shirt off I made her cry."
Victoria turned back to face her then, a note of challenge in her expression lasting only as long as it took her to notice just how close the two of them had become, how they overlapped.
Max watched the other girl's tongue nervously break the dry seal of her lips. Could feel the warmth of it on her skin, almost. She grinned as Victoria spoke from beneath her.
"That's not how it happened at all."
Max smiled, angling herself better.
"Doesn't matter," she said, eyes and lips drifting low. "Now we both get to be embarrassed."
Max left the last sliver of space separating them for Victoria to cross herself, and for a moment nothing joined there in the emptiness between them but their tangled breath.
But only for a moment.
Victoria's heart knew she would move before she did herself, a stutterstep beat against Max's chest a half-measure before her chin edged upward, just a little.
Just enough.
What would come next, would come tomorrow.
Tonight their kiss was warm, and they were home.