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The alarm blared in Max’s room. It was way too loud. Not exactly the way she’d like to get up in the morning, but it’s what worked. Max gently pulled her arm out from under her still sound asleep girlfriend and giggled a bit to herself. She’s so beautiful when she’s sleeping. So peaceful. So happy. Max quickly got up and turned off the alarm, a peaceful silence returning to the room. She crawled back into bed and wrapped her arms back around Victoria, who still showed no signs of waking. Max rolled her eyes in amusement at how heavy a sleeper Victoria is. Max gently planted a kiss on her forehead and Victoria begun to stir a little.
“Mmmm… What time is it?” Victoria said, sleep filling her voice, making it sound out a bit deeper and bassy than it usually is.
“It’s 9 am Tori, I know it’s the weekend, but you have to get up,” Max smiled gently as her girlfriend yawned and stretched in her arms, “We still have plans for today.”
Victoria nodded slightly, but from the look on her face, you could tell not all of it was sinking in. She curled back up to Max, her face buried in the pillow, “Oh yeah?”
“Remember we had a photo shoot today?” Max said, a little bit worried that she may have gotten her days wrong, “We were gonna take some shots at the lighthouse, you promised.”
Victoria nodded a bit more confidently this time, definitely remembering her promise about that. She sat up a little bit in the bed, staring at the wall of pictures next to her. When she first met Max, some of these pictures were different. There had been a lot of landscape shots, a handful of pictures of Seattle and the surrounding areas. And sure, many of those pictures were still there. She still recognized shoots clearly taken at Pike Place Market, the busyness and hustle bursting though the medium, and a shot from Seattle Center, near the base of the Space Needle. She still saw picture of Max with her family, smiles nearly burst off their faces, but there were lots of new ones as well.
Victoria smiled as she looked towards the bottom of the photo wall, the ones that Max keeps closest to her when she sleeps. There were various shots of Max and Victoria doing various things, there was a shot from the night that they went stargazing, the flash being too bright the first time, so Victoria was trying to block her face from the flash and even block the flash. But the smile was still clearly there. She looked happy in a way that was almost too pure for her. If she had to pick, that was her favorite picture Max had ever taken of her. It showed the raw emotion of the joy that Max brought her more than any other picture on that wall.
“Victoria…” Max chimed up like she had been waiting for a reply for a while, “Earth to girlfriend, come in girlfriend.”
Victoria laughed, feeling her face heat up from her blushing. “Sorry, I just got caught up in your photos,” she said, grabbing the photo from their stargazing date, “I forgot how much I loved this one. Sure, the lighting is awful, and it’s probably because of that retro trash you use that decides blaring light everywhere is a proper flash-.”
Max giggled a bit and shoved Victoria gently, “Hey, you said you’d stop picking on my camera!”
Victoria continued, mostly unfazed, but an even bigger smile on her face, “Anyways, as I was saying, it just captures how happy I really was in that moment. It’s more than the smile. It’s the playfulness in the pose, knowing you’re gonna take the picture whether or not I actually block the flash. I just look happy. Purely happy. You do that to me.”
Max couldn’t exactly find the words to reply. She knew she had to reply, but the only way she knew how to reply was the dumb happy smile on her face. She was pretty overcome by emotion, not really expecting that. She knew Victoria looked noticeably happier these days, but she just kinda chalked it up to luck more than anything. Max never made the connect that made Victoria could be happier these days because Max herself made her happy. Emotion flooded into Max in a rush, almost overwhelming her with this joy that filled every inch of her being. She wrapped her arms around Victoria and softly whispered, just loud enough so Victoria and only Victoria could hear, “I love you, Victoria Chase.”
The silence almost felt like hours, when it was just seconds, if even that. It took Victoria a bit to compose herself. Despite being together with Max for about three months at this point, she still wasn’t used to it. Max loved her for her. She loved hearing Victoria’s opinions, she loved hearing Victoria talk about the things she loved, she just loved being around Victoria. But it never really set in for Victoria that she might love and care for Victoria herself. Max had never really said I love you before to her, so the thought of that never even crossed her mind. But she knew how to respond, she knew exactly what to reply in this moment. “I love you, Maxine Caulfield.”
The words came from her lips with the grace and elegance of a nervous teenage girl, but what else could she say? Victoria did love her, and she knew that she loved Max. She just never had the guts to say it before. She was nervous, but ecstatic, but she could see this happiness spilling from Max’s gaze. She knew what she had to do. She grabbed Max’s camera off the bedside table.
“You know what they say,” Victoria grinned and held the camera up so they would both be in shot, “a picture’s worth a thousand words.”