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Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again.
The strangest part:
After everything, Max is still into storms.
Max is still into storms the way some people are into sky diving even though they're deathly afraid of heights. Only deathly is probably a fraction more applicable in Max's case. She thinks. She hopes.
It's the beauty and the horror and the reminder that this reality she's left with will always be a little bit of both.
So. It's the middle of the night, they're cooped up in a tiny motel room, and she's still into storms so it makes sense to Max, in some cosmic way, that Chloe's... suggestion comes to light when they're sitting in the dark, quite literally, on account of the thunderstorm-inflicted power outage.
Max and Chloe sit on opposite ends of the same windowsill. Their limbs overlap as they often do now, always touching in one way or another like it might be the last time. Max swallows. She's looking out at the drenched parking lot, sky opening up and sea falling from it so violently that Max can almost feel it pounding underneath her shivering skin.
Max is watching the occasional guest sprint from their rooms to their cars, and Chloe is watching Max, has been since the lights went out. Max doesn't know if it's because the dark makes people brave, or if Chloe's afraid Max might just up and vanish.
Again. Max stares down at her hands, knows they're shaking.
She hears Chloe clear her throat, even over the sound of the pouring rain.
"Have you thought about, like." Chloe's voice is hoarse from hours of disuse. "Seeking—ugh." Max can hear the eye roll. "I'm a fucking hypocrite for even trying to suggest that you get some professional help."
"I've thought about it, though." Max says eventually, when Chloe's gone quiet again. Thunder rolls through the walls and Max lifts her eyes, follows the shadow of rain falling down Chloe's cheek. "But I don't know if I want to chance getting locked away in some padded room when I tell the doc I've been to my best friend's funeral at least a thousand times."
Lightning strikes someplace close, and Max can see the flash of it in Chloe's damp eyes.
It stings, but Max holds Chloe's gaze for a second longer than she can stand, just because Chloe's still here, just because she can.
"Max, I'm so—"
"Chloe," Max warns, hearing the break in her own voice.
Chloe takes a breath like she's going to say something anyway, but the lights flicker on, and then off again, and her hand finds Max's bent knee. Max itches for her camera, breathes deep when she realizes it's been weeks since she's felt that way at all.
"I left my bag in the truck," Max says into the stillness. She's usually more careful than that. She knows it and so does Chloe.
But Chloe doesn't comment on it. Instead, her thumb twitches over the skin of Max's knee. Somehow Max can feel it underneath layers of heavy blue, a calmness only Chloe's touch can provide. "I could use a smoke," says Chloe, flashing half a grin when Max nearly rolls her eyes.
The truck is parked close and the rain does eventually die down, but that doesn't stop Chloe from taking off her jacket and throwing it at Max, claiming, "if you catch a fucking cold, I swear to god I will kill you."
Max is too tired to argue it, too tired to say she feels safer in Chloe's clothes than her own anyway. Together they leave the room, Max settling in Chloe's passenger seat and Chloe on the blacktop with a freshly-lit cigarette between her fingers.
From outside Max's window, Chloe says, "I'm no shrink but I got ears, hippie."
"I appreciate what you're trying to do, Chloe, I'm just—" Max closes her eyes and breathes in the familiar scent of Chloe's truck. Feels the slightest bit steadier here. "I can't dump all my shit on you like that."
"Look, Max." Chloe pulls from her cigarette. Max watches the ash grow out of a warm glow, the frustrated crease of Chloe's forehead, the water dripping off the roof of the truck and onto the toe of Chloe's boot.
"We can go back and forth on this for the rest of our lives, or you can accept the very real fact that that's exactly how long you're stuck with me and act like it."
A slow thump in her chest calls out to Max. "I'm trying," she says, voice breaking again, and Chloe's right there, leaning against the door and reaching in to press one palm against Max's arm. "I don't know what I'm doing, Chloe. I don't know how to just be when I'm carrying all these....memories that aren't really mine at all."
Chloe leans back enough to blow her smoke away from Max. Then, thoughtfully, she says, "tell me about one."
Max blinks the wet of her lashes away, sees Chloe looking back at her with that special reserve of patience.
"I-I don't know. There's too many, and most of them are fucked up and—"
"Just one," Chloe tries again, eyes softer now. "If it doesn't make you feel even a tiny bit better after you share it, I won't ever ask again."
She shuts her eyes on flashes of Chloe lying on the bathroom floor.
"It's just me, Max," Chloe's voice drifts in through the cracks, soft and warm in a way that pulls a different set of memories forward. An early morning in Chloe's bedroom, the ledge of a swimming pool, train tracks and an arm around her waist. Those do belong to her.
To them.
"You kiss me at the lighthouse," Max breathes, that wound more horror than beauty to her. "Right before you sacrifice yourself for Arcadia Bay."
If Chloe's still looking, Max can't look back, not if she's really going to do this. So she focuses on the sound of Chloe's breathing and keeps going. "Jefferson puts a bullet in your head... right in-fuck, in front of me. You take too many bullets, all right in front of me."
Max's throat is too tight already but something in her shoulders starts to give. "I know what it's like to say goodbye to you, and what it's like to never get the chance."
"Sometimes I'm the one who tells Joyce. And sometimes Joyce isn't there to tell," Max continues, visions burning through her skull. "Sometimes I'm the one that goes missing." She hears Chloe shift closer, makes Max's pulse spike. "Sometimes you end up on Rachel Amber's arm."
Chloe's breathing stutters and Max's body pushes, makes her say, "you make that sound when your frustration gets the best of you and you think you might cry. But you also make it when you wanna get off but can't quite get there."
A sharp inhale. "Have we—"
"Through other doors," Max says quickly, feeling the heat in her cheeks and in her eyes. "Not this one."
Chloe's nodding at the pavement when Max finally tries to look at her. "Sometimes I don't come back to the Bay. Other times I end up in countries I couldn't name right now if I tried."
Chloe gets through half her pack of smokes by the time Max finishes, and even then she's only put a dent in that universe-sized boulder pressing on her spine. Max goes quiet for a moment, waits until Chloe finally gives her gaze back. The outer motel lights buzz to life and briefly, Chloe's mouth curls up at the corners.
"Through another door, you're the sun and I, the moon."
Chloe's responding boot-scuff feels farther away than the pavement. "That supposed to be romantic, Caulfield?"
"No," Max whispers into the half-light of Chloe's truck. "It's lonely, mostly. Knowing you're right there and I—we can't."
"Better or worse than the doors that ship you off across the world without me?"
The sun'll rise soon. It's pink and blue wherever Max looks, sky-sea-chlorine-tinted roots of Chloe's hair that will always look better around Max's fingers than dug up fresh from the earth.
"We never meet in those."
Chloe looks sidelong at Max, blows smoke out through her nose. Perfect circles dissipate, the grey of reality nothing more than a smear in the air. But underneath her skin, mourning and relief weigh exactly the same where it settles in the marrow of Max's bones.
Nothing matters at all and everything matters too much.
"Worse," Chloe mutters, nearly-silent under the weight of Chloe's boot as it stomps out the last of her cigarette.
Max frees her camera from the depths of her bag and leans out the window a little carelessly, catches the hard sound of Chloe swallowing as Max snaps a photo of that fighting, dying spark.
On this, through every door and in every life, Max would agree.
Max dreams of two moons in one sky, and no sign of the sun.
"Seeing you after all these years feels like—"
"Destiny?"
They're sitting on a shoreline, overlooking a roaring lake instead of stretching their legs like originally intended. Chloe watches Max bury her fingertips in the sand, lost in thought. She wonders about Max's other realities: if boats have wrecked on this lake, if this sun has set in a bluer sky, if another version of Chloe has the guts to just fucking kiss Max like she wants to now.
If Max has ever had to sit here alone.
Chloe digs a small rock out of the sand, chucks it at the water like it's wronged her somehow.
"Gimme a timeline deet that doesn't make me wanna obliterate another town to pieces."
Max's eyes go wide. There's a heaviness there, on her face and in the air around them, like there has been for months. But then the slightest of scowls slips through and for a moment Chloe's grateful; it's a reaction that doesn't break Chloe's fucking heart the way Max's silent 2am sobbing does.
Max's scowl fades almost as quickly as it appeared, and then she does something unthinkable; she snorts, experimental and disbelieving. Chloe's lip threatens to curl, and then Max actually starts to laugh.
Chloe's grin blooms so hard that she's scared her face might break.
"That's not funny," Max says with one hand flying up to cover her own mouth, like they're ten and Chloe's interrogating Joyce about her toe-hair at the dinner table, instead of trying to survive the aftermath of a real live shitfest.
"You're the one who laughed!" Chloe reminds, grinning impossibly wide at the flicker of light in Max's eyes. "That's fucked up, Caulfield."
"God, I know." Max's laughter slows, like a boat steering away from the rocks. The color lingers high in her cheeks even when it's clear the heaviness is pulling her back in again. "I know," she repeats, smile gone now, and Chloe thinks it really fucking sucks that someone as good as Max ever has to hurt so bad.
"I was serious," Chloe tries again, gently bumping her shoulder against Max's. "Tell me something that doesn't suck."
Max goes quiet for awhile. It's not like she's ever been a chatterbox, Chloe knows. Max Caulfield is introspective and shit, thoughtful and considerate and patient in ways Chloe isn't always sure how to be. But this new quiet has an air of silent suffering, and too often, and just—fuck, man.
"I know what you look like with pink hair," Max offers, cutting into Chloe's thoughts.
"Yeah?" Waves push up onto the sand, then retreat quietly as if to give them privacy. "What'dya think?"
"It looked good. Any color looks good on you," Max says, chancing a glance at Chloe before redirecting her gaze to the horizon. Chloe decides she'll wait until later to give her shit for flirting. "Well, except this like awful shade of green you kept in for an entire summer."
Chloe narrows her eyes. "Define awful."
"Like... someone had a kale smoothie, puked it up, and you used it to dye your hair."
"What the hell, dude. Was I into it?"
"You hated it." Max says, letting out this dry sound that Chloe suspects was supposed to be a laugh. "But David hated it more, so."
Chloe barks out a laugh. "God. Is there any timeline where I'm not an asshole?"
Max glances at her. "There are varying degrees of assholery, but no, I don't think so."
When Max looks away, Chloe hears herself asking, "Are there any timelines where you don't like that about me?"
Their gazes meet again, and it's sharp and real in ways life just doesn't feel like much these days. But then Max gets that faraway look, like she's remembering. And it's as fascinating to Chloe as it is fucked up — to be in love with that barely-there smile Max is wearing over a memory that's theirs but isn't.
"In the ones where we meet, I guess," Chloe clarifies unnecessarily.
There's a twitch at the corner of Max's mouth, like she wants to smile, but ultimately she doesn't and Chloe kind of wants to scream.
"No," Max says simply, softly. Her eyes drop.
"None?" Chloe asks, just for the noise of it, for the escape of her own disbelief.
But Max leans her head on Chloe's shoulder, whispers, "none" and Chloe's heart skips and slows all at once.
Chloe slides an arm around Max, careful not to hold her too tight.
They sit like that, quiet and together, and for a second Chloe thinks about telling Max how much she fucking misses her.
"Kale smoothie," Chloe says instead, and laughs. "Hipster scum."
Max doesn't meet Chloe's gaze. But she snorts again, and that feels like a win.
"We should probably get going," Max says after awhile. "I wanna cover some more ground before the storm comes through tonight."
"One more question?" Chloe asks.
Max slowly moves out of Chloe's hold, runs an absent hand through her hair. They've been on the road long enough that it's almost past her shoulders. She nearly asks if there's a version of Chloe that gets to run her fingers through it whenever she pleases. But it's fucked up and bizarre as hell to be jealous of yourself, so.
"Do I ever get those nipple piercings?"
Max shoots her a wide-eyed gaze that's so unmistakably her that Chloe's eyes dampen with near-tears and laughter.
But as they're walking back to the truck, Max hums a low, "you did." And with a quick glance over her shoulder, the sinking sun catches the barest hint of something alive wrestling behind those eyes of hers. It instantly fucks up Chloe so much that she almost doesn't hear Max's steady, "fortunately."
It takes two weeks of picking Max's brain and sleeping exclusively in Chloe's truck—pulled into rest areas and unattended parking lots and open fields, sort of bathing in public restroom sinks and secluded stretches of creeks—for Max to start feeling something more overpowering than her constant guilt and sadness; the kind of exhaustion that goes bone-deep and, right now, feels like it can only be cured with a hot shower and a firm mattress.
Thirty minutes into thrift store browsing for something to wear that isn't the same three outfits and all Chloe's tried on is a beer guzzler helmet. It's still sitting on her head, covering her sandy roots and leaving just the fading blue in sight, when Max says, "Let's spring for a room with good water pressure tonight."
Chloe's goofy smile turns sharp, like the teeth she flashes. "Got a hot date, Maximus?"
Max glares good-naturedly. "With better hygiene, sure."
Chloe's laughter kicks at something in Max's chest. "Anything else, boss?"
Max cracks a smile, doesn't miss the responding sparkle in Chloe's eye.
"Yeah, actually." Max holds up a pair of clippers she found in a bin of used hair appliances. "Gonna need your help on this one."
Chloe's eyes go wide, comical when paired with that beer helmet she still hasn't removed, and inevitably purchases. "Oh hell yes."
-
When they check into the nearest hotel, the concierge does a decent job of not totally sticking her nose up at them. Max can guess what this looks like, the two of them grunged out and paying for a king suite with the cash Chloe makes a show of pulling out of her bra. Through another door, they're small-time bank robbers. In this one, Max isn't sure what they are.
For the first time since hell froze over, it finally hits home that she and Chloe have the chance to find out.
When offered the courteous "enjoy your stay," Chloe winks and says, "oh, we will."
On the elevator ride up to their floor, Max wrestles with her desire to blush or punch Chloe.
Incidentally, she does both, all the while keeping one hand in Chloe's.
Chloe chuckles her way into the room, the smarmy look she's wearing so wonderfully and terribly familiar that for a second Max almost feels...normal. But then she releases Chloe and her back hits the mattress and there it is again, that bone-deep exhaustion.
"Yo."
Chloe drops what little they have on the floor and sits on the edge of the bed, fingers skating over Max's upturned wrist.
"You're not looking too hot."
Her hand finds its way to Max's forehead.
"Speak for yourself," Max says around the smallest pout, because it's easier when she's too tired and floating away.
Chloe grins down at her, eyes flitting as she touches her palm to Max's cheek. Briefly, she strokes the pad of her thumb across the skin. It's a series of movements that calm Max right down to her toes. "Need something, Maximillion?"
Chloe's voice is so, so soft.
Max closes her eyes, hears the slow thump of her pulse rising in her throat. She has a thousand answers, but Chloe's pushing her fingers through Max's hair now and don't be so sad, I'm never leaving you turns the watery grey of her mind just the slightest bit blue, like moonlight on the water's surface of an early morning rainfall.
"I'd do it again," Max whispers into the dark.
She feels the pause in Chloe's hands, but falls asleep anyway.
-
Chloe's sitting in the window when Max stirs. It's dark except for the moon shining in, sneaking by some rain clouds.
"Hey."
Chloe turns her head, looks a little dazed like she isn't really there. And Max isn't quite awake yet so her eyes well up a little without express permission. "You look like a dream," Max says, voice light even if her heart isn't.
Maybe that's all this is. A dream where Chloe's alive and they're together, body count be damned.
Any minute she'll wake up, alone. And maybe that's exactly what she deserves.
Chloe's eyes flash, like she can hear something Max can't.
"Chill, Sofia Coppola," Chloe says, voice softening as she slips into bed with Max. "I'm right here."
Max closes her eyes, listens to Chloe breathe as she thumbs at the tear tracks on Max's cheeks.
It starts to rain then, and Max can hear every bone in her body resume negotiations with her brain chemicals.
"This late-night crying shit really fucks me up," Chloe tells her eventually, something caught in her voice. Max knows it isn't meant to make her feel guilty, but it does anyway, makes another tear or two slip through. "I know you gotta process on your own time and all that but fuck, Max, tell me there's something I can do. Anything. I'll get up and do a jig right now if I have to."
Max opens her eyes and releases a watery laugh, tempered by her sniffling and Chloe's steady gaze. "I don't think I would even summon your dance moves in a crisis."
"Right." Chloe's grin startles Max, in the best of ways. "Wouldn't want you busting a nut on your way to the grave."
"Oh my god." Max's laughter strains for freedom, catching in her throat despite the way it bubbles in her chest.
When it fades away along with Max's smile, she can see the way Chloe's body sinks into the mattress.
"It's okay." Max gently pulls off Chloe's beanie so she can properly stroke her hair, light and measured, hearing the blood in her ears when Chloe's eyes flutter shut for the quickest of seconds. "I'm—I'll be okay."
"I know." Chloe blinks slow. "But you aren't now and that's okay but I..." Chloe sighs, and they're close enough that Max can feel it pass right through her, like a ghost.
Max knows what it's like to feel helpless, and hates more than anything that she can hear it in Chloe's voice now. "You're here," Max whispers, bravely tugging at Chloe's necklace. "That's—god, you're everything to me, Chloe. Tell me you know that."
Pressing closer, Chloe's hand falls on Max's hip. "No way it's enough," she grits, pad of her thumb twitching over Max's skin where the shirt rides up. "No fucking way."
This conversation never gets them anywhere, she knows. Still, Max has to try.
"Chloe?" Max cards her fingers through the little hairs on the back of Chloe's neck. She can hear Chloe swallow.
Max remembers, when they were kids playing pirates in the forest, the way Chloe looked when Max fell and scraped her knees so bad that it took weeks for the scabs to turn into scars. Like it was her first real scrape with horror, seeing Max bleed.
Max hadn't forgotten that look. She pairs it with a cliff and a lighthouse, a storm and a butterfly, Chloe's cracking voice and glistening eyes. A gun going off and Max's own sobs, stifled by the bleeding heart on her sleeve. The horror's unquantifiable, but so is Max's love for Chloe, and it hurts all the same.
If this is just a dream then Max is going to cling to it with all her might. "Just—kiss me, okay?"
She's met with shining, sharp eyes.
And it figures, Max thinks, that the cautious slide of Chloe's mouth against hers is all it takes to finally ground her in the moment.
-
Chloe cuts Max's hair in the yellow lamplight.
It's a quiet endeavor, mostly because Chloe insists she'll fuck it up otherwise. It gives Max time to focus on just being here. She lets herself feel it—every purposeful swipe of the clippers against Max's head, every thoughtful hum when Chloe moves to accommodate different angles, the burn of Chloe's fingertips when they brush away stray hairs. The cool sheet wrapped around her body, the light bouncing off Chloe's necklace, and the flaking desk chair she's sitting on. The snip of the scissors when Chloe trims her bangs, and the full smile she flashes at Max afterwards.
The relief that blooms inside her with every fallen lock, like letting go without the loss.
"How do I look?" Max asks, any trace of anxiety gone when Chloe grins smugly at her.
"Like Furiosa if she had a fauxhawk and fronted the world's gayest riot grrrl band."
Max's eyes go wide, grin teasing at her lips as she lets the sheet drop and heads into the bathroom. Her reflection catches her off guard, but then Chloe steps in beside her, smiling and running her hands over the fuzzy sides of Max's head like a child discovering moss for the first time, and Max can finally see herself again.
She can feel her eyes start to well up, and the concern is quick to find Chloe's face.
"Shit, you hate it."
"No! No, Chloe, I love it. I love it, thank you so much."
Chloe's expression shifts, softens just right. Her reflection stares back at Max, pinky finger curling loose around Max's. "So what's with the waterworks?"
"I don't know," Max says, feeling like that's not totally true. She brings a hand up to wipe her eyes, then spends a long moment brushing non-existent hair off her shirt just so she can gather her thoughts. "After your dad—after everything. When you chopped your hair. Do you remember how it made you feel?"
Chloe blinks, an understanding passing across her features. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
Max gives her a small smile. "I just. I feel wobbly? Almost all the time. Like I can't get my footing, trying to balance this fucked up high wire between apathy and misery and sometimes even..." she turns her head to look at Chloe, pulse slow. "Overwhelming gratitude."
"I think I just wanted to start over, somehow," Max tacks on. "At no one else's expense."
Chloe's thoughtful gaze drifts to Max's mouth for a moment, but when she finally moves it's to bring Max into her arms, holding her close and so tight that Max can feel the shift of Chloe's bones when they breathe against each other.
"I'm up there too, you know?" Chloe mumbles. "Tightrope walkin' pros right here."
"I know." Max's watery laughter finds the air again, fills her lungs but doesn't threaten to drown her in it this time. She knots her fingers in Chloe's hair, breathes deep. "I know."
"Thank you," Chloe says around a crack in her voice, and Max can hear the underlying pain there. "For giving me the chance to get this right."
She doesn't specify what this is, but Chloe kisses her with less caution tape, and Max doesn't have to ask.
Chloe dreams of swing sets and train tracks and the too-green grass of cemeteries.
"Maybe I'm just stumbling back and forth in time."
"You didn't stumble when you saved me, Max."
"Tell me something that doesn't suck," Max says, camera pointed out her open window.
They're crossing states lines, driving back into the sunset after a week of Max's parents, home-cooked meals and warm beds. Joyce and David are their next destination, somewhere in hick country with a promise of summer jobs. They even made some calls, arranged to reconnect with a few friends on the way.
It's not perfect, but it's all eyes forward now, and that's something.
"I've been thinking about giving college a try." The radio's on and Chloe's drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. "Think that'd make my dad proud."
Max gives her gaze to Chloe, smile warm, like the palm she presses to the bare skin of Chloe's arm. "He'd be proud of you no matter what, Chloe."
Chloe scoffs weakly, but a smile reaches her eyes when she glances over at Max. "It's annoying that I know that's true."
"What were you thinking of studying?" Max asks, snapping a picture when Chloe's focus returns to the road ahead of them.
"Well when I wasn't trying to blow up my entire life, I was really into the science shit I learned at Blackwell," Chloe tells her, mouth curling at the corner like she knows she's being watched. "I was thinking it'd be cool to be like, a professor, or something? Quantum physics, that real nerd shit. Put our life experience to use, right?"
When Max gives her a half-hearted glare, Chloe laughs, full and bright and alive, and everything inside Max lights up.
If nothing else, Max knows she'll always have this.
And it doesn't hurt—imagining herself visiting Chloe on campus, coffee and kisses in tow.
"Hey, check it out." Chloe gestures towards the far right of the sky, dark clouds rising off the horizon.
Max slides over the length of the seat, snaps a photo of the oncoming weather before resting her head on Chloe's shoulder. The treeline withers out, and the road opens up, long and seemingly endless in a way that doesn't scare Max anymore. She hears Chloe roll her window the rest of the way down, watches her fingers manipulate the volume skyward, and breathes.
"Smells like rain," Max whispers, and smiles.