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Max wakes up sometime when the sky is still saturated with darkness, the sheets clinging to her damp skin. The rain is pounding against the windows, demandingly, like its begging her to let it in. For a moment she’s almost sure the window is open, because she can feel the rain pelting her skin, soaking through her clothes. It’s just the ghost of a storm from the past.
She takes shallow, gasping breaths, struggling to breath. Everything is hazy. She has the startling thought that maybe she isn’t awake, and for some reason it scares her. Her dreams are the last place she’d want to be stuck.
It’s so hard to breathe, so she gives up and lets the rain into her lungs for a moment- just one, crushing moment. She closes her eyes. She’s swimming in a sea of black, black water and swirling images, ugly things that she doesn’t want to see.
Deep breaths, Max. Count to ten. Ten deep breaths. One, two, three… That’s what her mother used to say, to chase away nightmares. It’s just that the problem here is that she can’t breathe.
She has a town’s worth of blood on her hands, and she’s drowning, drowning.
“Max.” Chloe reaches a hand across the bed, clasping their hands together.
This is almost routine now.
Max clings to Chloe like a lifeline. She should let her sleep. Let go. (This thought has a tendency to creep up on her in the middle of the night. Let her go. Maybe it’s too late now, their hands bound together their hands bound together by a thousand sleepless nights and haunting images, the rope too thick to cut.)
But she’s so cold. She moves closer.
Chloe wraps her arms around her. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay.”
Max can feel her flinch at the next clap of thunder.
“I’m fine,” Max whispers, just so Chloe can say she isn’t, because maybe it’s better if they take turns. Her voice is surprisingly steady, even as she realizes dully that she’s shaking. Funny how she never notices these things until Chloe’s there to mend them.
“Are you cold? I can get the other blanket from the couch.”
“Please don’t-“ There’s another boom of thunder, roaring as it rolls across the sky. The rain comes down harder. Max buries her face in Chloe’s shirt, the soft fabric brushing her skin. She can feel Chloe’s hand on her back, tracing spiraling patterns across her shoulder blades. Her voice breaks. “Please don’t go anywhere.”
“Shh, I’m not going anywhere. Is it the weather? It’s okay. It’s just a little rain.” Her voice is thin.
It’s more than rain. There’s water clinging to her eyelashes, and she’s there, breathing in saltwater air. The photograph flutters in her hand, and she looks at Chloe, and she makes the right choice.
She made the right choice she made the right choice she made-
Max presses one hand to Chloe’s chest, rolling onto her stomach.
“Jeez, your hands are so fucking cold, Max,” Chloe says, shivering. She lays her hand over Max’s. Her hands are warm. “You good?”
Max can feel her heart fluttering under her fingers. She breathes. One, two, three…
Chloe’s here. Breathing, alive. (living or surviving living or surviving living or-)
Nothing else matters. Not the fighting when Chloe does something reckless, not the fact that their apartment is shitty and the windows don’t close all the way, not Arcadia Bay, not Arcadia Bay, not-
“Max?” Chloe tangles their fingers together.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, but it’s just so hard to lie to Chloe. The practiced voice that fools her parents and her Seattle friends and everyone else always has her girlfriend shooting her concerned glances.
Chloe tilts Max’s chin up to look her in the eyes. Chloe’s eyes are still cloudy with sleep, her hair falling in her face, and Max feels a pang of guilt for waking her up.
Max bites her lip, looks away, silently admits that maybe she’s just a bit less than fine. But she won’t fall apart, not now, not because of some stupid thunderstorm. It barely even qualifies as a storm. She’s seen storms. This is… nothing.
Chloe flicks a tear off Max’s cheek with her thumb, and Max silently curses.
She just can’t stop seeing it. Every roar of thunder, every gust of wind, every rain drop on the window takes her back to that cliff. Arcadia Bay appears behind her eyelids, a little seaside town stripped back to its garish skeleton. Her hands are bleeding, torn apart on the wreckage of the buildings she destroyed. It’s vivid, it’s overturned cars and buildings with their guts spilling into the streets and houses whose ravaged frames are burned into her mind, houses that Chloe couldn’t look at. It’s so real that her hand instinctively flies to her nose, waiting to feel spilling blood, her payment to the universe for what it’s given her. She wants the fucking gift receipt.
“This is so pathetic. I’m such a…” Her breath rattles in her lungs. She’s shaking again. She’s cold. It’s the rain, but whether it’s the rain outside the window or the rain in her head, she’s not sure. “I’m such a mess.”
“It’s just so fucking unfair,” Chloe says, her voice sharp enough that Max gives her hand a tight squeeze, and she knows what she means without having to ask. “That you have to deal with this shit.”
Max shakes her head. This- the guilt gnawing at her stomach like her hunger left too long unattended, the raw skin on the backs of her hands from hours spent scrubbing invisible blood from beneath her fingernails, the sleepless, waking-up-screaming nights- this is her getting what she deserves.
Sometimes she wishes it hadn’t been her. When it’s dark, and it’s too much, and she’s watched Arcadia Bay turn to dust on repeat too many times in one day. More often she wishes it hadn’t been Chloe. Chloe should’ve gotten so much better than what the universe shoved on her.
“I’m the one who fucked everything up.” The words catch in her throat. It all comes back to her. No matter how she twists and tangles the threads, they’re still tied to her fingers.
Chloe traces circles on the back of Max’s hand. Unraveling, unraveling. “It’s not your fault,” she says firmly, fierce blue eyes locked on Max’s face. “Don’t say that.”
There’s a flutter of blankets and sheets, and Max finds herself wrapped in a tight hug, face pressed into Chloe’s shirt. She breathes in until her lungs are full of her. The rain water evaporates.
“You didn’t ask for any of it, Max.” She’s talking softly, in that voice she reserves for these sorts of late night conversations, this kind of comfort. “You’re the bravest person I know.”
“Funny, I think I’m supposed to say that to you.”
Chloe shakes her head and pulls the sheets up over their heads in a way that’s reminiscent of structurally unsound blanket forts, pretend pirate ships, dazed thirteen-year-old feelings, the rush Max would get when Chloe would lean in to talk to her like everything she said was the biggest secret, reserved for just her ears. “That week,” she says, exhaling the words instead of spitting them like she usually does, “I was fucking terrified.”
Max takes a long breath of stuffy, warm air. The thunder is muffled by the blankets. It feels safer underneath them, with Chloe’s arms wrapped around her, in a silly, childish way. “I know. But it was like… you would’ve charged into anything.”
“I guess some of the time I was too pissed to be scared,” Chloe says, and for a moment she’s all sharp angles and biting words.
Chloe, shouting at Nathan in a bathroom that’s burned into Max’s brain. (A bathroom that’s gone).
Chloe, dragging her through blaring music and flashing lights, fingernails digging into her wrist.
Chloe, scraping angrily, desperately, at the dirt in the junkyard, dirt that will remain under her fingernails for so long.
Then she softens, the faraway look in her eyes reflecting a ravaged town and a train moving in a blur and guns and rain. So much rain.
(But for everything she remembers, there’s something she doesn’t. A bullet in her side. Blood on her hands. Max keeps these things tucked away, out of her reach.)
“But when… when… Nevermind.” She stops suddenly, shaking her head. She drapes the blankets back around their shoulders. “Whatever. Come here,” she says, like Max can get any closer.
“Tell me,” Max says softly, whispering the words into Chloe’s shirt.
Chloe hesitates. Whatever words she’s afraid to say tremble on the tip of her tongue. “Before… before you tore up that photo-“
“No.” Max sits up, shaking her head vehemently. The tears prickling in the backs of her eyes are back. She can hear the wind again and the rain, and she wants to press her hands to her ears and scream to drown out the noise. It’s so loud. “God, Chloe, you really thought… You thought I wouldn’t choose you?” It’s unthinkable.
She doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but she knows that Arcadia Bay was damned from the moment she laid eyes on Chloe again.
“Why would you? I’m not… I’m not worth that.” She has this resigned look in her eyes like she’s possibly dedicated quite a lot of time to this line of thought, and Max hates it.
She hates it.
“You are. Of course, you are. You’re everything to me, Chloe.” Max grabs a fistful of Chloe’s shirt in one shaking hand, and she’d watch a thousand towns burn before letting go. She’d watch the whole fucking world burn for her, for God’s sake. She’s her everything.
Chloe blinks, and there are droplets of water sparkling on her eyelashes. “Nice going,” she whispers, with a shaky little laugh. “Now we’re both crying.”
“It’s not my fault you had to go and make me love you so much.” She leans forward and presses their lips together, roughly, messily, like if she kisses her hard enough she’ll finally know how much she loves her. She has to know, someday. She has to know that she’s worth every drop of blood spilled on Arcadia Bay’s streets, every inch of wreckage, every nosebleed and memory and mess. Someday.
Someday they’ll stand in the rain and let it soak them to the bone without pooling in their lungs, and they’ll laugh in that giddy, first time falling in love sort of way. It’ll be like when they were kids. She’d like to love the rain again, just for a day.
But for now, Max wipes the tears from beneath Chloe’s eyes, resting her hand on her cheek, and says, “It’s okay.” She still squeezes her eyes shut at the next boom of thunder, hiding.
“It’ll be over soon,” Chloe whispers.
Max lies in Chloe’s arms and lets herself forget, just for tonight. Just for now.
Sometime in the night, the rain stops.