Chapter Text
Max shivers as Chloe takes her hand. This is one of those things that they’ve done since they were kids that somehow still feels… electric. Like a spark that’s never gone out.
The flickering lights from the movie playing on Max’s computer wash over Chloe’s face and catch in her eyelashes when she blinks. She’s looking up at her with this sleepy, hazy look in her eyes, and Max smiles.
“What?” Chloe asks, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips.
“Nothing.” Max waits for Chloe’s little smile blossoms into a full, glowing grin before she leans into her, their intertwined hands sinking into the rumpled sheets. She rests her head on her shoulder and breaths her in until her lungs are full of her.
Chloe is warm in her pajamas fresh out of the dryer. She rests her chin on top of Max’s head, mumbling indistinct whispers into her hair.
“Hmm?”
“What are we doing tomorrow?” Chloe crosses her outstretched legs, her too-long plaid pajama pants rolling up over bare ankles.
“I don’t know.” Max stifles a yawn. “We could go to the beach, take some pictures.”
“You’re going to enter a photo in that contest, right?” It’s more of a reminder than a question, judging by the expectant look in Chloe’s eyes.
Max hesitates, the breath caught in her throat. She turns her face in to Chloe’s neck, her hair brushing her face, and sighs.
Chloe’s hand squeezes hers, the other coming up under her chin. “Hey. Aren’t you?”
“I-“
“Max Caulfield, you are entering that contest,” Chloe says, the way she does when she’s trying to convince her of something, where her voice is firm but her eyes go all soft, and it’s just a little bit hard to breath.
Max exhales the barest whisper of an, “Okay.” The protesting doesn’t start again until she’s regained her balance, and Chloe draws her hand back to her side. Then she spits out, “But I don’t… I don’t really have anything to enter.”
Chloe rolls her eyes, and Max sort of wants to scream and sort of wants to kiss her. “What about the one you showed me?”
“That one’s awful.”
“No, it’s good.”
“You say that about all of them.”
“Because they all are,” Chloe says, and it’s that steady, earnest tone in her voice that makes Max bite her lip and look away. “C’mon, don’t you think you could just give yourself some credit?”
Max wrinkles up her nose.
Chloe shakes her head. “Whatever. That’s what I’m here for I guess.” She nudges Max with her shoulder.
Max playfully shoves her back. She runs one hand through Chloe’s hair, grinning when she tilts her head down with a slight smile. “Okay,” she sighs. “I’ll enter it. Only because you’re so persuasive.”
“Thank me when you’re famous.” Chloe kicks at the blankets until she’s managed to tuck her legs beneath them. “Just don’t go too far away,” she adds, a hint of something heavier in her voice now.
“Do you really worry about that?” Max reaches down and pulls the blankets up over them, shoving her pillow beneath her head and lying down. She still clings to Chloe’s hand, tracing shapes over her knuckles.
Chloe lies down next to her. “Maybe,” she says noncommittally, like she could just reach her hand out and snatch the word back.
“Chloe…”
“Whatever, it’s fine. I just… can’t even imagine what it would be like without you. I mean, boring, probably.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.” Max reaches out and brushes Chloe’s hair back, her hand lingering just a moment too long on her cheek.
Chloe ducks her head with a faint laugh, her smile the loudest sound in the room.
“What? I’m just admiring my work.”
Chloe shakes her head, bright blue hair failing messily into her face. “Only took us five years to actually get around to it, but…” She shrugs. “Thanks.”
“Hey, better late than never.”
A breeze pushes through the room, sending the flag hanging across Chloe’s window fluttering into the air. Max shivers and clings to the blankets.
Chloe laughs, but she throws one arm around her and pulls her in close, and Max breathes in the scent of Two Whales pancakes and drugstore hair dye.
“Chloe…” Max whispers, but she doesn’t know what else she was actually planning on saying. Her name just barely escaped before the sentence, among other things, faded away on her lips.
“Max,” Chloe says back, her voice soft enough that the slightest breeze could sweep it away.
But that’s that, and Max lets the moment slip through her fingers. Sometimes holding on only gets your hands bruised. Then she starts working her courage up again from the bottom. She squeezes her eyes shut.
Chloe’s breathing slows somewhere in the darkness, and Max can feel her drifting off. Her arm loosens around her shoulder, fingers barely grasping the sleeve of her T-shirt.
Max opens her eyes and watches the steady and rise and fall of Chloe’s chest as soft breaths spill from between her half-parted lips. Max likes this, likes the gentle fluttering of her eyelashes, likes how she looks just as beautiful in the dim glow of fading nightlights as she would with moonlight splashed over her face.
Maybe it’s because she still remembers being woken up in the middle of sleepovers by Chloe crying out in her sleep, reliving accidents she’d never really lived through in the first place. She lived through the aftermath. Maybe that’s just as bad.
Max was with her when they got the news, and she didn’t know what else to do besides hold her tight and promise to never let go.
(She’s known for a long time that they’re meant to be each other’s constants, that there will be times when they have to grit their teeth and weather each other’s storms.)
That’s friendship. (And then some.)
“Max?” Chloe says again in her half-asleep murmur, and Max has another one of those sort of wanting to kiss her moments.
It’s becoming a bit of a common theme.
“Yeah?”
Chloe’s eyes snap open. Her hair makes her eyes stand out even more now, blue and blinking away sleep. She takes a breath like she’s going to say something and then silently breathes the words out.
Max feels them brush against her cheeks before dissipating into the air. “What?”
Chloe shakes her head. Her fingers slide up Max’s shoulder, trailing across her collarbone and her neck before tangling themselves into her hair.
Max’s laugh is the sound of the butterflies in her chest fluttering their wings. She bites her lip to keep them from spilling out in a mess of words.
There are rules that apply at night and those that cease to, and sometimes nighttime reaches out her dark, star-freckled finger and smudges the line between things like asleep and awake, content and restless, best friends and something more.
And Max knows that there are some moments worth holding onto, and there’s light from the moon spilling into the room. And Chloe’s hand is in her hair, and she tastes like the moonlight on her lips.