18 Works by equifinal
Listing Works
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When they're home and they've shrugged off their outer layers, Helen turns to watch him unwrap the scarf from his neck and wolf-whistles, catching Max by surprise. He raises both eyebrows, but the crinkles at the corner of his eyes give away the smile he's suppressing.
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After the ambulance crash, Helen went through a round of IVF, which failed.
But what if it didn't?
(A canon-divergent rewrite of season 2 where Helen is pregnant and Max is still a complete idiot.)
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One-shots exploring the early days of Max and Helen's sex life.
(I set myself the challenge of doing sharpwin bingo entirely as smut prompts, and here we are.)
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safe and sound (and I swear that's rare these days) by equifinal for superoverdramatic
Fandoms: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
12 Dec 2021
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Helen gives him a look. "I said I'm spending it on my own, not that I don't have plans. I have plans, specifically with my bathtub and a bottle of 1989 Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”
"On Christmas?"
"That's the beauty of spending it on your own, Max," she rolls her eyes. "You don't have to justify your choices to anyone."
It's December 2020. Max loves Christmas. Helen hates everything about it. So, of course, they spend it together.
(canon-divergent: this is set after season 2).
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the only thing I've ever known is true by equifinal for needle428
Fandoms: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
30 Oct 2021
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Five times Max jokes about proposing, and one time he changes his mind.
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Maybe it's because she'd spent so long wondering what it would be like to care for Luna, and now that they're here she feels out of her depth and clumsy and full of self-doubt, the imaginary world where she'd slotted seamlessly into motherhood proving no match for the harsh reality of any of it.
Try as she might, Helen can't shake off the nagging feeling that she has something to prove.
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Smoothly, Max starts to lift the trays and empty boxes off the bed, stacking them on the floor and then moving their wine glasses to the windowsill. "What a coincidence," he says, once the space between them is cleared. "Because I distinctly remember you promising me this morning that when I told everybody I'd get dim sum and then some. And, well, as you can see..." He gestures theatrically to the floor and Helen can't help but laugh. "We've just finished the dim sum."
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"My grandparents used to live out here," Max says, softly. "South of where we are now, closer to Colorado Springs."
Helen raises a curious eyebrow. Apart from his sister's death, Max has never shared a single detail of his childhood or family with her, and—as a fairly private person herself—she's never really thought to ask why that is. It never felt like any of her business; he was never hers.
"You look like you need a distraction," he says by way of an answer, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
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gone for now (feels a lot like gone for good) by equifinal
Fandoms: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
12 Sep 2021
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The first kiss lands at the juncture of her hip and thigh, too gentle to be teasing. It's more of an 'I was here'; a hope that she'll run a hand innocuously over this spot while getting dressed tomorrow, remember this moment and blush to her core. Max doesn't want there to be an inch of her skin left that she can feel or touch without thinking of him there.
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Helen can feel herself getting upset, her throat tightening with that old familiar ache which hurts to talk through. "It's like at the hospital, when you come up with an absolutely insane idea and people have to bend over backwards to make it happen. You won't triage and you won't compromise, so someone else always ends up making compromises for you silently behind the scenes."
She takes a deep breath. "I would never question the fact that you have to put Luna first, and god knows I wish you'd put yourself higher up on your own list of priorities, but I need to know that when it matters, you'd be willing to give something up for me."
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let go of your heart (let go of your head) by equifinal
Fandoms: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
19 Jul 2021
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For a fleeting moment, Max feels physically torn in two, between memories of the deep rooted grief that sunk him so far into loss that he learned there is no other side—you just claw your way back up from the bottom of it—and the unshakeable love that he feels for the woman who’s raising Luna with him in the here and the now.
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- Part 2 of babylon
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Helen turns to leave, but as Max moves to follow her, she holds a hand to his chest to keep him in place. “Give it a minute,” she says. “Just so we don’t walk in together.”
He thinks about saying something then, something like 'would it be so scandalous?', but there’s a time and a place to have the conversation about how serious they are and whether they’re both ready to deal with the potential career fallout from this, and right now—when he’s about to plaster on a fake smile and be a walking sound-bite for three hours—is probably not that time. Instead he grabs Helen’s hand before she’s out of reach, kisses it and wordlessly lets her go.
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So, when Ryan, on one of their too-regular-to-be-just-good-friends FaceTimes, had whispered ‘meet me in LA the week before table reads start - I know somewhere private where we can just disappear,’ Freema had thought it over for a whole ten minutes before calling the airline to change her flight.
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“I don’t know how to talk about this without starting a conversion that we’re not ready to have,” she says, and the way her voice strains makes Max feel like someone’s just wrapped his chest in barbed wire.
“Who says we’re not ready?”
Helen gives him a small sad smile, and it’s like watching the wall she’s built around parts of herself get reassembled in real-time behind her eyes as she collects herself. “Me.”
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- Part 1 of babylon
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"How did it stack up against all the ways you’ve been dreaming of?”
Max can feel himself blushing, and oh god, she really can get him from zero to a hundred in about four seconds. “My dreams were strictly PG-13,” he deadpans. “Walks on the beach, sharing ice cream, holding hands at the movies. I seem to remember it was you who said in your message that you’d been fantasizing."
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just a great figure eight (or a tiny infinity) by equifinal
Fandoms: New Amsterdam (TV 2018)
09 Jun 2021
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Max doesn’t ask if he can come in.
He crosses the threshold and closes the distance between them like it’s nothing (when for as long as Helen can remember, it’s been everything) and then tilts his head, reaching for her.
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“But say if we could go back, back to before that time even. Say you were my first.” Mike can’t believe he’s doing this, and by the look on Harvey’s face, he’s caught on and he can’t believe it either. “What would you want to do?”
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Mike lets out a theatrical sigh. “Ah, so that’s why Donna told me you moped for days after I left the firm. The prospect of me becoming your client after all that time as your associate offended your delicate sensibilities and upset the balance of power in your life."
He’s pretty sure if Harvey rolls his eyes any harder this evening he’s going to do himself some damage.