Chapter Text
Chloe and Max do not talk.
Not in the same way they did hours, maybe ages ago, fingers clasped around her wrist and coaxing her to don the carefully-woven bracelet. Not that it took much persuasion in the first place.
They do not talk. It exists simply as a fact; there is no negotiation in this shared statement. No, the silence stretches, pulled taut like a tightrope, and they are the two aerialists balancing on their unspoken agreement. One wrong move could be catastrophic.
They do not talk, after their adrenaline-drenched argument underneath Wonderland’s Royal Vault, but it was too easy then. The girl standing between them, her presence unknowingly acting as a catalyst, letting them spit venom out like curses. Reopening stitched lacerations that had not even been scratched raw the night prior. Not one of them says a word, when it should’ve been so easy—too easy—for Chloe to throw herself back in Red’s arms, to let her composure slip and fall around her shoulders, and forever leave it on the ground, bury it like another secret in their vault. But Chloe doesn’t, not really, and Red doesn’t stutter, but the air does, charged with a changed quality.
So it goes: Chloe sheds her bracelet, and the metal shatters, but she tucks the cerulean crystal away, slides it in Max’s palm and makes his fingers curl around it in acceptance. So it goes—her hair returns, no longer matted down with magic, instead curly, but noticeably darker. Like she couldn’t scrub the remnants of her decision out, no matter how blurry or clear-cut the lines were between artifact-inflicted choices and those of her own volition. So it goes, and continues, and the Pocketwatch is thrown, drowning down, down, down, into the deep depths of a never-ending descent.
Here is the difference: Red and Max talk, if only then. Chloe lets one thought slip beyond her fixation of not now, not now, not now, and it is to commend Max for having the courage to do something she couldn’t. To bear his vulnerabilities out at the core—that he is hurt, and it is because of his father, and their failed reality. The life he could, should have lived, if not for Red. And, really, he has a better reason than Chloe does, even when Red promises him that she’ll try her best. That they will help and save his father.
Chloe has nothing to say to Max. He who helped, but made it worse, who made her stare down her hurt straight in the eye, and allowed her to believe that she deserved better. Which should be better.
Chloe should be better.
But she isn’t. And they aren’t, neither her and Max nor her and Red. So, she forgets, and tries to, and loses herself in all the ways silence can be filled without words.
Wonderland is nothing but quiet, and she thanks this unfurling, constantly unknown kingdom for all the mystical ways it can surprise everyone else, distract them from the way she’s trying to distract herself, when she grabs Max’s hand on their way back. It is a slow, lonely sort of walk, the kind of solitude that can only be felt when you’re alone with someone who has known nothing but to be without—someone who only knows to avenge, to anger, to hurt—
And never to want, so Chloe’s other hand comes up to his face, thumb against his cheekbone, and kisses him.
Max is still with surprise, if only at first, but quickly recovers, pushing against her mouth. Harder. Nothing in this land is tender, neither the flora nor fauna, so, neither should she be. Nothing they have experienced was gentle, merciful and forgiving, so she doesn’t need to find it in herself to forgive the way his teeth scrape against her lower lip, hands grasping at her waist to hurt, the way they kiss hard enough to bruise.
She can feel her blood coursing under her skin, both desperate and unyielding. Her stomach twists, and so does her head to bite at his neck. Max inhales, sharp, but apparently can forgive it too, because his fingers only clench tighter, hard enough for Chloe to feel the dull, blunt press of his nails through her fabric. She’s trembling, grasping for purchase on his presence like a lifeline, trading everything she knows for everything he doesn’t, and the entire nature of their embrace feels wholly transactional.
But it is nothing like emptiness, so she lets him pull back, just for a second to catch his breath, and she closes their distance again, hard enough to forget, soft enough to pretend it pleases.
“Chloe,” Max breathes out, and she’s caught off-guard enough to realize the frantic, unrelenting rhythm of her pants, but the last thing she wants is to be aware.
She kisses him like she still has this power inside of her, fragmented and carefully manufactured, designed to rule, to bend both her environment and those caught in it. She kisses him and whispers his name out like it’s second nature, tries to convince herself of it, too, gets used to shaping her mouth to hold space for the syllable. She kisses him like she doesn’t want to think anymore, doesn’t want to breathe, to hurt, and she gasps when they both finally pull away, and even still, a flicker longs to return, to chase after it again, and if she does, she knows that he wouldn’t stop himself from reciprocating. She burns, flushed with the knowledge of everything she longs harder to forget.
There’s a fever lit under her skin, and she huffs, catching her breath, every part of her warm in what could have been. Max just looks at her, simply, eyes undiscernible, until his brows draw together in concern and he raises one of his hands to come to her face, and his thumb that swipes across her cheek comes away wet.
“Oh,” Chloe says, blinking. There’s something hot behind her eyes. She shakily raises the back of her hand to wipe her face, and that comes away wet, too. Oh.
Max stares at her, almost knowingly, like he can see the mess of a girl she tried to shape into control, and stares, burning, too, like he’s looking at the sun. Or maybe himself.
“Thank you,” is all Chloe says, simple, because if she doesn’t give it to him, leave open any entrance, he won’t take it, won’t force his way in.
Max nods, quiet, and takes his hand from her face, his mouth red and no doubt feverish, too.
If anyone else notices it when they return from their stroll, they don’t talk about it.
At least, not to their faces.
Here is the second thing: Chloe and Red do not talk. If they do, it’s never about the right things.
They laugh, and they joke, and Red still holds her chin, pinches her face a bit when they smile. But it’s different. They’re different.
Here is another thing: Chloe avoids mirrors. Her palms only tremble against the cold basin, and it’s never her face that stares back, but rather, hers. It is wrong, and a product from Wonderland’s mysterious rabbit hole, but she cannot let herself linger on silk-smooth blue hair, her dagger freely flourished and not banished, lest the could-be consumes her and she succumbs to all she still hasn’t regretted being.
Sometimes, Red just feels so far away.
She’s present, and Chloe isn’t being ignored, but there’s a thinly drawn veil of distance between them. Some days, Chloe wants nothing more than to barricade against it. Others, she wants to push hard enough to slip through. Most of the time, she thinks from afar, I miss you. I miss you, even though you’re right here, and I don’t know why you feel so far away. I don’t want us to change, but I think both of us already have.
Inside of her, there’s a constant churning in her stomach, twisting hard enough to make her sick. Unlike her fleeting thoughts, this one stays. It’s no less unwelcome than the others—but instead of longing for harmony, this one wants to hurt.
If Chloe wanted to pinpoint when it started, she doesn’t think she could realize. She could tell herself it was the chessboard; being used and sacrificed to a threat that, if Red’s unspoken plan had not worked, would have ended in tragedy or casualty. She could tell herself that it was the being disregarded, brushed aside and their relationship undermined, but if it really came down to it—she thinks of a boy, with curly dark brown hair and a muscular body, and a smile that must have charmed even Red’s heart.
That was all she wanted, wasn’t it? The bracelet, and her transformation, and her pocketwatch. At the end of the day, it all comes back to Red.
Chloe thinks of Luis and Red, and it hurts.
Chloe’s smart enough to know the difference between romance and what she has with him.
Their exchange continues as their school year does; even when the famously-known Auradon leaves fade into reds, and the cold wind bites at their faces just a little harder, but after all, Chloe’s been trying to chase that fever.
At least it’s a different kind of sick.
Sometimes, they can go back to what it was, before either of them knew, before either of them gave into the temptation of revenge. Pretending like before they were split cavernously down the middle—Chloe, hurt by this reality, and Max, knowing he could’ve had a different one entirely.
Sometimes, when they go back, they linger. Orbiting around each other.
With Fall comes Auradon’s expected academic performance. Parchment piles on parchment, and the tips of Chloe’s fingers seem to be left permanently marred with black ink from her quills, no matter how much she scrubs away in the sink, trying her best not to look up. It’s visible in everyone: Pink’s bubbly demeanor has whittled down behind a stack of books, and even Hazel has considerably less time to make sure the Smees are fed. Max disappears until he wants to be seen.
He doesn’t brush his lips against any tender part of her, neither her knuckles, face, shoulders, nor her hands. Chloe doesn’t either. They are there, and their touch doesn’t make any of it easier. Chloe doesn’t even want it.
But it’s a grounding constant to return to; the promise that they will always keep.
Chloe’s surprised when Max finally asks.
Chloe’s practically become a regular. She’ll keep her fists still the trek through her room to the hallway, her voice steady enough to throw out a “going on a walk,” behind her shoulder to a sometimes-occupied room, keeps her head level until she turns the corner into the boys’ dorm, raps her now-white-clenched knuckles against the door, and lets Max take a second or two to make sure they’re alone before she closes the distance.
Her hands are always firmly cupping his face, and she’s always tilting her head up to meet him halfway. They both know what they both want, and when Chloe storms over, Max is polite enough to give it to her.
Whenever Max is the one initiating their arrangement, rare as it is, he’ll find her through the halls, pull her down the midnight stroll to the courtyard and the gardens. Somehow, the sky always echoes their frustrations; it’s thundering, or beating down harshly, or the wind is reason enough for them to crave some type of temporary warmth.
It’s always a messy amalgamation of teeth and collision, kissing and licking in between to soften the genuine aftermath, to mistake whatever they are doing for passion, intimacy, even lust. It’s vindictive, and leaves Chloe’s mouth stinging, trailing cuts and indents in their wake. Scrabbling at him, mashing their lips together until she needs to pull back to gasp for air, or when the urge to take it out finally crumbles into a smoother resolve.
Today starts the same.
Since she’s returned, Chloe tries not to pay attention to Red. She’s there, or she isn’t, and she tries not to recognize the difference.
She tries. Of course, she fails.
It’s pathetic how she can stomach sleepless nights and hungry practices, manage to converse and conceal from a dozen students. And Red is all it takes to tip the balance over.
Chloe barely remembers what spurred on this particular incident, but Max is faintly reaching behind him—and missing—to click the lock shut on his door, hands coming up to wind around her neck, and it’s warm and it’s soft and—not at all painful.
She’s stunned, but tries to recover, returning and biting with a fervor. She doesn’t get anything out of hurting Max except for his reciprocation, and if a reminder is what it’ll take, she can live with it. And he presses back, if only a little, but doesn’t act—doesn’t cut, doesn’t make it sting—isn’t unkind at all.
She recoils, almost as if burnt, and searches his face. She looks to find the reason for a question she doesn’t know how to ask. Didn’t know it existed.
It’s when Max decides to ask one of his own. It’s not very eloquently phrased, but both of them have gotten good at filling the silence, if only for the sake of living without it.
“What does this… I mean,” Max starts, clearing his throat, his hands falling away to his sides. Chloe should probably do the same. “Why are you doing this?”
For the first time, Chloe isn’t sure what he wants. It’s not like she’s never thought about asking him before, but has assumed there was no point. She found no need to question his intentions, even less to make assumptions. But maybe neither of them are good at living with guilt on their conscience.
Chloe feels too stiff all of a sudden, shifting her weight onto the other foot. One of her hands is still half-tangled in his hair. “I don’t know,” she begins. “How else to, um… deal with it.”
You’re not the one I want to hurt.
There’s a beat, and Max nods, and standing this close without their mouths pressed together reminds Chloe of that first time in Wonderland, his hand coming to wipe at her tears. Their proximity is less uncomfortable than she’d remembered.
“I just—” Chloe falters, fumbling. Everything unsaid blooms in her mind. “It just hurts, so much, sometimes,” she manages pathetically, finally releasing her hand to cradle her other, twisting her fingers as she drops her gaze to the floor. “And when it happens, I want it to. But I’m not—I don’t—”
“Me neither,” Max breathes out, relief softening his features.
For the first time since Wonderland, a smile spreads across Chloe’s face, unsteadying but familiar, and a weight she hadn’t realized lifted off her chest.
Max smiles back.
They’ve been through thunder cracking above them, and a torrential downpour pattering onto the cobblestone. It feels out of place when they finally do talk on the clearest night of Fall.
“It’s not really good, I mean,” Chloe kind of blurts out one day next to him, sitting on the floor against the wall. “This. You doing this to yourself.”
Max’s face barely inclines towards her, voice soft but expression deadpan. “You do the same thing.”
“I know that,” Chloe grumbles out almost defensively, hands coming up to pull her knees to her chest. “But when it’s about myself, it’s—”
“Different,” he finishes, head lowering. “Yeah, I understand.”
“Max.”
“No, really, I get it.”
Chloe huffs, letting her head tilt back until it thuds gently against the wall. “I know you do,” she says softly.
There’s a sound of shuffling beside her. “But if it’s between this and anything else…”
“Yeah. It’s why I do it too.” Chloe watches herself fidget with her hands when she insists, “But it doesn’t mean it’s sustainable.”
“It is for now,” Max returns stubbornly, but there’s no real fight in it.
“Up until something dangerous.”
“We’re not even dangerous to each other.”
“I don’t want this,” Chloe forces out, and hates the way her voice cracks raw. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I did it in the first place. I—I guess I was trying to be selfish, or something, and I wanted to forget. And it just became easier. But I don’t like hurting you.”
She’s not watching him in her periphery as he opens, closes his mouth. And yet.
For the first time since they’ve met each other, they don’t try to fill the quiet.
Chloe hears Red come home late that night.
There’s a lilt to her voice, and a different one outside the door. Luis.
It’s so stupid. Childish, even. She’s so selfish. Red was allowed to find happiness elsewhere. Chloe wasn’t entitled to her. But—
It’s so hard not to hate Luis. His smug grin, and a name she can’t believe she defended, stories full of accolades and a presence more welcoming than hers. The object of Red’s attention.
Maybe Chloe didn’t deserve it anyway.
She shifts deeper under the covers and buries her ear into the pillow.
It doesn’t help, so she bites her lip hard enough to bleed.