man, are you cereal?

hi guys! this post is a long time coming (and I’m so sorry for that!), but I was waiting for things to kinda fall into place before I said anything.

this blog is on a semi-hiatus.

that means I might still pop in here every now and again, but probably not very much. I just got a new job (!!!) which I’ve been in training for for the last week. the hours are pretty long, so that’s gonna make it difficult to get back into the groove of posting, which I kinda fell off of earlier this year due to planning a trip+going on said trip.

Chloe feels like the worst person alive as Max pulls away from her. The other girl should be mad–mad at her, not herself. She’s the one who’s always fucking up. Who Max had to put the fuck back together again and again because she fell apart, and backslid, and almost gave up in the most explosive ways possible. So, how was it Max’s fault?

It’s hard not to do anything. Not to touch or kiss or hold her when all she wants to do is comfort her. Shifting onto her own stupid ass, Chloe gives her a moment, but at least scoots closer after that.

“I don’t understand,” she agrees with that much. “You should be pissed at me…” Swallowing, she continues, “So, help me understand. Because all I remember is you being the reason I’m not piss-drunk in some ditch right now.”

As a matter of fact, she remembers Max taking the damn bus after she’d drunk-texted her not long after her dad died… How she’d taken care of her throughout the whole, frankly disgusting ordeal, including the hangover. How she didn’t hate her after all that shit and then some, Chloe didn’t know, but she didn’t.

Even now, when she’d almost rather she hated her instead of turning it all inward.

@n0irangel

Max wants to tell her. She wants to unload the fuck-ton of guilt she’s carrying on her shoulders, in her heart, but she knows it wouldn’t be fair. Unloading her guilt means somebody else has to carry it -- namely Chloe, who never asked for any of this. 

And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? Chloe never asked Max to do anything, Max just assumed she knew what Chloe wanted and ran with it. She had the best intentions in mind, of course, but what difference does that make? The truth of the matter is that Max decided to fuck around with time and now she’s found herself in a shitty timeline where nothing’s really better -- William is still dead and Chloe’s still miserable. She may seem happier, but the bags under her eyes and the little plastic ones inside that damn metal box tell a different story altogether.

It’s like all Max can do is hurt her: hurt her by not talking, hurt her by staying in her life and needing her so much she’s so overworked she has to resort to drugs just to keep her eyes open.

“I’m the reason you’re doing this to yourself, Chloe,” Max tells her, gesturing harshly towards the open metal box. “That’s not much better, is it?”

Max smiles, smiles without all of the bullshit that’s been plaguing them both and Chloe feels her heart warm and loosen in her chest.

It’s so much easier to accept things when Max looks like this–when she seems happy with her stupid ass. She’ll do anything for more of those smiles. All of the complicated shit can wait. They have a trip ahead of them and fuck if she’s going to make Max miserable during it. Chloe lets that look of Max’s wash over her and it feels so fucking good to let it happen.

“Then we keep it all,” Chloe says, squeezing her hand. “We keep it all and every moment will always be ours,” she swore, looking deep into her eyes.

@n0irangel

It always brings a chill to Max’s spine when Chloe unknowingly quotes herself from another timeline, but this time, it’s not just a chill. A wave of emotion washes over her and before she knows it, her eyes are glassy with unshed tears again. Max can hardly believe it’s possible that there are still tears left that she could cry.

She refuses to let them fall, though. She blinks them away and when she throws her arms around Chloe, she discreetly wipes at her eyes.

“I guess we’ve got quite a bit of planning to do,” she says with a small, but sweet smile. Her hand descends down Chloe’s arm before it drops off her, like she’s trying to keep up the physical contact as long as possible. “Anywhere in particular you wanted to see between here and...” Max pauses, diverting her gaze to the side as she tries to recall the tour itinerary. “...What’s the last stop of the tour again?”

As much as she knew that it was the probable answer, hearing Max say that she hadn’t said anything to anyone kind of hurt. There was a small amount of hurt that flashed against her face while she listened to her. Of course, she hadn’t really told anyone about them either, but it was more that she had no one to tell. She hadn’t shared intimate details of her life with Joyce since her dad had died. Step-Dick could fuck off. Trevor and Justin were probably as close to that level of friendship with her, but the last thing she wanted to do was get poetic about Max to two stoners who probably never kissed a girl let alone got a little handsy. And Rachel… Well, even if Rachel was alive she probably wouldn’t be who Chloe confided in about her various activities with Max. 

The only one she could be excited about Max with was Max, and that was hard. Trying to approach the subject when they had their tongues tied together was more difficult than Chloe knew it was. Now they were in it, starting down a long roller-coaster they had purposely been avoiding all this time… Chloe listened quietly and nodded as Max started to talk about Blackwell’s least attractive quality of churning out more gossip than all the teenage girls within its halls combined. 

She did smirk when Max complimented her gay energy. “Damn right,” she said, eyebrow quirked, “I don’t want any punk-ass boys thinking they have a chance when their dick is too small for a microscope to pick up.” Of course, even if they were larger she still wouldn’t want any piece of it. Eliot had been enough. She’d sworn them off forever after him. 

She wanted to have more fun and make more jokes, but right now wasn’t the right time. Max was being honest with her and talking about it and, as much as the subject made her squirm a little on the inside, she knew it was important. “No, we haven’t…” she agreed, even as Max looked away. She kept her eyes on Max’s face and gently bit on the inside of her lower lip. She didn’t want Max to hide from her but knew that this conversation was probably even harder to do in the moment than the consent one they’d had earlier… Chloe gently scratched her nails on the inside of Max’s thigh, keeping her touch soft rather than heavy enough to tease or turn her on. There’d be time for that later. 

“I mean… I think we skipped a couple steps here,” she said with a small shrug. “We kinda went from kissing to banging in a single step, so… Our order’s pretty fucked up.” It would be funnier if she didn’t feel like her heart was just a few heartbeats from jumping into and closing off her throat. She continued to look at Max even though the action wasn’t reciprocated. “I mean… I don’t know about you…” she started, her gaze flitting away for a second as she tried to piece her words together while her cheeks started burning, “But, uh… I’m in if you are…” She paused so she could swallow and then continued, “I mean, if you just wanna fuck and not have any labels, I’m fine with that too—“ (That was a lie) “— But…” She trailed off and looked down at Max with a serious and sober expression. “I… Really love you, Max…” she said, possibly more earnestly than she’d ever said it before, “And I’d be down for us being more than just friends… If you want that, too…”

@n0irangel​

“We kinda went from kissing to banging in a single step, so… Our order’s pretty fucked up.”

Max could feel the rise of heat to her cheeks. Not only was she generally not quite as comfortable with speaking as... plainly as Chloe did, but she was also a small bit embarrassed by the fact that she had actually allowed herself to get that carried away. As cliché as that sounded, this really wasn’t her: hell, Max was a virgin up until earlier in the day. She’d had no issue being a virgin ever before, and hadn’t even come close to having sex before today. The thing was, though, Chloe always made her more daring, sometimes even reckless. Chloe was able to awaken parts of Max she didn’t even know existed. 

Max had gotten so caught up in her own internal questioning that the issue at hand temporarily faded to the background. Chloe brought it back, though, the change in her tone catching Max’s attention.

She looked very different from what she usually did, too. Luckily, it wasn’t as much of a surprise anymore for Max to see Chloe without the edge she usually had about her, but this was different: she looked almost coy, a light pink tinge to her cheeks as she spoke to her in earnest, either not bothering to or not able to hide her nerves.

“I... Really love you, Max...”

A small breath escaped Max: not quite a gasp, softer, though her lips parted slightly just the same. It wasn’t like Chloe hadn’t said that before, but the ‘really’ was new and so was the way that she said it -- even more like a confession than when she actually confessed. This was deeper, so much deeper, and it didn’t take a genius to deduce that the part about ‘fucking around and not having any labels’ was a complete lie.

Not that it mattered, anyway. When it came to Chloe, Max was too greedy to stop at that. She wanted more, needed more.

“I really love you, too, Chloe,” Max softly spoke, voice barely above a whisper. Her right hand rose and found Chloe’s cheek, tenderly cupping it as her thumb swiped over soft, rosy skin. A slow smile spread across her lips.

“So... will you be my girlfriend?”

Chloe drinks in Max’s ‘forever’, doing everything she can to immortalize it on her lips. Her touch solidifies the moment in her mind–only Max can be this gentle and still seep so deeply into her heart. She’s not sure how the fuck she’s going to let her go if she has to, but then again, she knows now more than ever that she’d do anything for her.

The way her eyes hold hers settles the matter in an instant. Anything, anything for her.

Her lips part as Max’s thumb brushes over one and Chloe doesn’t resist the urge to kiss her yet again, deeply. “Every moment with you counts,” she murmurs as their lips part. She squeezes the hand in her own and adds, “I wouldn’t trade any of them.”

@n0irangel

There are few moments in Max’s life that compare to this one, right here; in intensity and in how it makes her feel. The storm, watching it obliterate their hometown and so many people in it as she sobbed into Chloe’s shoulder, feeling small and safe within her arms even though everything else outside of them isn’t, comes to mind. She’d known then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she loved Chloe more than anything in the world and that she’d sooner die herself than have to watch her demise, and she feels the same way right now for another version of the very same girl. 

And the way she kisses her is the same, the way her voice sounds is the same as she whispers between them words that mean everything, that soothe Max’s troubled heart at least for a little while.

Max’s smile for once leaves the bitter out and all that remains is sweet, as she looks into the beautiful blue of Chloe’s eyes. Her favorite shade of blue.

“Me neither,” she tells her honestly. 

Chloe nearly argues, her brain on the verge of using her science major as a point, but then Max’s voice cracks. Chloe’s heart does too. The newly formed words die on her tongue as she watches tears spill over her girlfriend’s cheeks. As if that wasn’t enough to signal how badly she fucked up, her gentle-ass girlfriend signals it in harsh motions.

The slap Max gives to her own thigh breaks Chloe out of her trance–she drops to her knees beside her, taking her girlfriend’s hands in her own as she settles on the floor next to her. “No,” Chloe says firmly. She places Max’s hands gently back to her lap, squeezing them before letting go. Cupping her face, she wipes away her tears gently.

“You didn’t know…you wouldn’t have let me. I didn’t ask you and I’m so sorry, Max…” It hurts to see her this sad. “The only thing you’ve done is make my life better. Do you think I would have even made it out of high school without you? Because I don’t. I was ready to give up…”

Her thumb moves back and forth, gently, over her cheek.

“I…listed one of the grants as rejected on our spreadsheet, but honestly, Max, I just fell the fuck asleep,” she admits, voice colored with guilt. “And I knew other people managed to squeeze more out of a day. So, I asked. And got those…”

One of her hands drops to her girlfriend’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. “You didn’t do this, okay? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me…”

@n0irangel

Max’s hands don’t really feel like her own, just like this life doesn’t really feel like her own -- even though undoubtedly it is, contradicting all logic. She feels distant as Chloe grabs her hands, squeezes them before setting them down much more gently than Max had done so herself.

Chloe’s hands on either side of her face are warm and Max wants to lean into her touch so badly, but she won’t let herself do it. She doesn’t deserve it.

Chloe explains to her that she’d been good for her, actually, that she’s the reason why she ever got to see the end of high school. It’s supposed to comfort her, Max knows that, but Chloe’s words end up having the opposite effect. After all, that... wasn’t even really her, was it? It was some other version of her that’s completely separate, has to be, because she has no memory of anything from this timeline prior to a few minutes ago. 

Maybe that Max is a good person. A good friend, and a good girlfriend. She isn’t.

Max, this Max, is a fucking trainwreck who unwittingly brings chaos wherever she roams. She tries to help, desperately, but nine times out of fucking ten ends up making everything worse.

What does it say about Max that the best version of her out there is the one she doesn’t share a brain with?

“You don’t understand,” Max tearfully argues, shaking her head. Part of her wants Chloe’s hands to drop from her face, and part of her wants them to stay there forever. “You don’t-- you can’t. I can’t...”

Max places a hand over one of Chloe’s and gently pries it from her face as she moves backwards and away from the other girl, putting her knees up to her chest like a barrier between them. She hugs herself tightly, her small body curled up as she sobs into her knees.

“I did this,” she says again. “I did this. I... fucked everything up.”

“I’ll have you know that people have asked me about you already. If we were dating.”

That statement was surprising. Although it also invoked a feeling of mild terror only because that meant that she hadn’t been keeping as low of a profile with Max as she wanted, the surprise was the first thing that she felt. Chloe smirked and bit her bottom lip. The thought of people noticing her with Max, noticing that she was hanging around her more, gave Chloe another dose of pleasure that tingled down her entire body. Maybe she did want people to notice them after all… Maybe she wanted people to notice them so that they knew that Max was hers. 

However, following up on the subject was put on hold for a moment as Max held her attention with their kisses. It was too tempting to keep her lips occupied. The only thing that might be better was seeing her with her mouth wide open… And it seemed like Max agreed. That made Chloe smile even more. 

“Mmn, I’ll remember to do that if that means we get a redo…” she hummed, her tone easily as suggestive as it was before, and then she leaned down and kissed Max gently. The touch on her cheek was soft and sweet, just like the girl beneath her, and Chloe felt the fight of sweet versus sultry in her gut. ‘Sweet. Stay with sweet.’ There was no rush to this. They would have plenty of time for a redo or four when Max was more used to a marathon-style of love-making. Right now, for her first time, she didn’t want Max to feel pressured to constantly go (especially since she’d already gone twice). 

She tilted her head and touched the tip of her nose to Max’s in a brief nuzzle. “Whenever you want…” she murmured, “In fact, I’ll jump at the chance to do this again…” She smirked and gently kissed Max a few more times. She was slowly sinking into how relaxing and wonderful the feeling was before a thought popped back into her head. She let their lips connect a few more times before she pulled away slightly to look at Max. “So… People’ve been asking about us, huh…?” she asked, eyebrow quirked, “What’ve you been telling them…?” They hadn’t had the conversation, the conversation, about what they were to each other yet, even though it felt like it might be unnecessary now. There hadn’t been a good way to bring it up before — they were always either apart where it was too awkward to bring it up casually or they were tongue-tied which was more preferable than talking. Now at least they had a comfortable segue into the subject… 

@n0irangel

“So… People’ve been asking about us, huh…?”

Max blinked slowly, not entirely ready to move on to proper conversation just yet after the round of sweet kisses exchanged between them. She could tell, however, by the tone of Chloe’s voice and the quirk of her eyebrow, that this was a topic she was very much interested in hearing more about, even though Max had brought it up quite casually and without too much thought. She was pleasantly surprised, though -- it made her giddy to see that Chloe actually seemed interested in the idea of other people assuming they were together.

“What’ve you been telling them…?”

“I didn’t really... say anything,” Max replied honestly. Although she’d undoubtedly be proud to call Chloe her girlfriend, Max also didn’t particularly enjoy people prying into her personal life (she didn’t fail to see the irony in that, though, of course -- how Max herself didn’t hesitate before prying into pretty much anything, yet wanted to keep her own life as private as possible).

Max adjusted her head on the pillow, her hand dropping from Chloe’s hair to her arm instead. She looked at it, rather than her face, as her fingertips trailed gently up and down it. “I mean...” She sighed softly, a residual amount of grief resurfacing as she recalled a painful time -- probably the most painful time -- in her life, “I guess people started wondering when... whenever somebody would come to see you in the hospital, I was there.” Max looked up briefly, meeting Chloe’s eyes. “I told them we used to be best friends, but I could tell some people didn’t really buy it. And you know how Blackwell likes to talk...”

Max paused, thinking, and after a few seconds, let out a small puff of air through her nose, amused. “I guess people already thought I wasn’t... into boys. Since I was very obviously not interested in Warren,” she said. “And you... well. You kinda exude gay energy.” Max chuckled, looking up again. This time, she didn’t look away. 

“So when you woke up, and immediately started showing your face around here pretty often, I suppose they took it as confirmation, even though I never said anything,” Max concluded. “A couple people asked me, but I never confirmed or denied. Kinda just changed subjects. I mean...” Now, Max looked away again. This part was a little more awkward. “I wouldn’t... know what to say, anyway. We haven’t really... talked about it.”

Max didn’t believe her that she would have kept her quiet. A soft smirk brushed against the side of Max’s neck between her soft and intimate kisses. “Mmmn, you got me there…” she hummed, lightly scraping her nails on the inside of Max’s thigh as she heard the hum after she nipped her, “I do like you making noise…” She pulled her head back and looked down at Max. The girl beneath her had a confident look on her face with a smirk to match, but quickly Max distracted her by kissing her lips instead.

And fuck, the amount that her heart fluttered every time Max did that made her feel like some sort of sappy asshole, but she didn’t care. She would take al lifetime of kissing Max like this if she could have it… She didn’t think it would ever get old. It was a good thing, too, since she didn’t want it to get old either. Chloe hummed quietly as her lips continued to connect with Max’s and her hand went back to a light and gentle circling pattern on the inside of her thigh. 

“Even if someone did hear…” she said, eventually separating their mouths enough so she could look at Max and talk, “You definitely weren’t screaming… I won’t turn it down when we get to that part, but you were pretty quiet for the most part… And…” She trailed off so she could smirk and then wink at her. “If people were hearing noise, I don’t think that you’d be high up on the list of people your classmates would think would get getting some.” She let the slight insult hang in the air for a second before she leaned down and kissed Max again, this time taking her lip between her teeth and pulling on it before she gave a soft growl. “That works for me for right now…” she continued, her voice low, “Last thing I want is for someone to interrupt when I’m that deep inside you…” 

Was she being a little vulgar? Maybe, but she was still straddling Max’s bare leg and coming off of her own intense orgasm. It was hard to turn it off so quickly. “First thing that I’d want would be to see you make that face again, though…” she said, giving Max a fleetingly light kiss, “That also might be the second and third thing I’d want to… Eventually.” She chuckled before she lifted her face up again and looked tenderly at Max. “Not saying that we need to do that now…” she explained, wanting to make herself clear that she wasn’t trying to pressure Max into anything this second, “But I would definitely be okay with doing that again…”

@n0irangel​

“If people were hearing noise, I don’t think that you’d be high up on the list of people your classmates would think would get getting some.”

Max’s expression quickly went from something soft and sweet to a mix between befuddled, amused and offended. “Hey,” she said in protest, “I’ll have you know that people have asked me about you already. If we were dating,” she clarified.

Which they weren’t, officially -- which, given their current state of undress, lying against each other after Max had just lost her virginity to Chloe, was sort of preposterous and something Max would like to rectify. She just wasn’t sure how to do it in a way that didn’t seem so completely lame. 

That train of thought was briefly pushed off to the side as Chloe upped the heat from the kisses they’d been sharing, taking Max’s lip between her teeth. She was less gentle about this bite than the one to Max’s neck -- either because a switch had flipped inside her somewhere between then and now or because Max’s neck naturally bruised more easily than her lips, she wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason for it, Max wasn’t complaining about the way that it felt to be kissed in that way, or about the pretty detailed description of what they’d been doing just minutes ago. 

And although she was still tired and wouldn’t say no to a several-hour-long nap right therein her spot, lying in bed exactly the way she was with the girl she loved, there was no ignoring the way Chloe’s words and actions stoked a fire that had been burning lower since coming down from her orgasm. 

“But I would definitely be okay with doing that again…”

Redirecting her gaze from Chloe’s lips back to her eyes as Max detected the slightest shift in the tone of their conversation, she took a second to get herself there too. Naturally, she’d gotten distracted, but her body did need the rest and Max genuinely loved the more tender space they had found themselves in previously. 

In keeping with it, Max moved her right hand from Chloe’s shoulder to her cheek, which she sweetly cupped. “Me too,” she agreed in a soft voice, an equally soft smile blooming on her lips. “Hopefully one of us remembers to lock the door next time,” she joked, but the concern was real. While people hearing them was a risk she was willing to take and maybe even liked taking, getting walked in on wasn’t -- especially given Blackwell students’ penchant for taking videos when they shouldn’t. 

“But yeah,” Max added, moving her hand off Chloe’s cheek to instead brush some hair back and away from her eyes. She tucked it behind Chloe’s ear and to her surprise, it actually stayed there. Max smiled adoringly. “I... definitely wanna do that again.”