Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She was shockingly tall and astonishingly lovely, with skin the color of finished oak, dark green eyes, and long, straight hair that had been dyed the same reds, oranges, and yellows as the autumn forest leaves all around them. She had an emerald green long-sleeved shirt, with ruffles around the neckline like a Romantic poet, a flowing skirt the same color, and no shoes that Max could see. The lack of shoes was quite clearly the problem.

The woman - her age was hard to judge, but Max didn’t think she could be much older than 25 - was sitting on a fallen log, staring in horror and frustration at the sole of her right foot, where bright red blood oozed out of a vicious wound. After a moment, Max saw that there was something sticking out of it: an ancient, rust-covered iron nail, almost a quarter-inch thick and a minimum of two inches long, just going by how much was visible beyond the woman’s skin. It made Max’s stomach twist just looking at it.

“Holy shit!” she gasped. The woman jerked in surprise, clearly unaware that Max was there until that moment. Max shoved her camera into her satchel and moved forward. “That’s… we need to get you to a hospital, that’s…”

The woman shied back and Max stumbled to a halt. “Who are you?” the woman asked, her voice tight with pain.

“Max, uh, Max Caulfield,” Max answered, trying to sound harmless. “I’m a student at Blackwell. I just came out here for some pictures but…” She gestured at the nail. “I’ve got my phone, I can call someone-”

“No!” the woman said sharply. Then, more calmly, “I can take care of it myself, but I can’t… touch the nail to take it out.”

“That’s going to get so infected!” Max protested. “And you need to get a tetanus shot for sure!”

The woman shook her head. “This wood holds everything I need to recover once the nail is gone.”

Max frowned. That sounded like some weird homeopathy stuff to her, but then, she’d been bitten in the ass by getting a flu shot, so what did she know? There could be something to it. She studied the wound and the nail protruding from it. It still made her gorge rise, but… “I think I can take it out for you,” she said, trying to sound confident. “If you want me to, I mean.”

“At what price?” the woman asked, her eyes narrowed. Max felt her jaw drop.

“What? No… no price. I just want to help.” Who would charge for something like this? Other than, like, an actual hospital or whatever. Maybe that was why the woman was so insistent about not going to the doctor? Maybe she couldn’t afford it.

Warily, the woman stared at Max for long enough that Max was about to start backing away and apologize. Just before she did, though, the woman said, “Very well. If you wish to try…” She gestured. Max nodded and began to approach, swallowing. She’d never had a real problem with blood, but she’d never seen gore like this in person before either. She could hardly blame the woman for being too squeamish to touch it. It was hard for Max and it wasn’t even in her foot.

Heedless of the mud and grass stains she was likely getting on her jeans, Max knelt next to the log. “I don’t know if slow or fast is better,” she muttered.

“Do not rip it free,” the woman advised, with remarkable calm, “but once you begin, try not to stop either. If at all possible, draw it directly out of the wound so it has the least amount of chance to catch on anything else.” Max swallowed again, braced herself on the log with one hand, and reached for the nail.

It was somehow both slick and rough in her hand at the same time, cutting a little into her skin even as her fingers tried to slip off of it. Focusing on the instructions she’d been given, Max set her jaw and started to pull.

The woman’s grip on her log went rigid and Max heard her repressing sounds of pain. Try not to stop, she told herself. Stopping will only make her hurt worse. The nail eased out, seemed to get stuck on something for a moment, and then with a twist, came free entirely. The instant it was gone, the woman stood up, heedless of the injury, and hobbled over to a muddy patch of moss at the base of the closest tree. She leaned against the trunk, scooped up some moss and mud together, and began to coat her foot in it. The instant she did so, the tension and pain in her body seemed to melt away. She sagged against the bark in relief. Max realized her mouth had fallen open again and closed it.

“Wowser… You really know your, ah, natural healing stuff.”

The woman smiled for the first time, and Max thought her heart might have skipped an actual beat. She had never seen a woman so beautiful, and to have her smiling at Max… She realized she was smiling foolishly back, very nearly simpering, really, and tried to get her expression under control. She was pretty sure that she merely managed to look like she was having a seizure instead, but the woman’s smile only broadened.

“Caulfield,” she said, considering. “An Irish name.”

Max blinked, not having expected the discussion to fip around to genealogy, but gamely tried to keep up. Anything to keep the woman smiling. “Oh! Uh, yeah. On both sides, actually, at least according to the family stories. My grandfather and great-grandparents on my dad’s side immigrated after the war, and my mom’s family apparently came over during the famine. Her maiden name was O’Sullivan, so I’m about as legit as you can get for someone who has, you know, never actually left the Pacific Northwest.”

The woman returned to the log and retook her seat. She showed no sign of discomfort in walking on what should have still been a freely-bleeding wound. “I suppose so.” She tilted her head slightly. “An féidir leat teanga do shinsir a labhairt?”

“Uh, what?” Max said uncertainly.

The woman chuckled. It was a friendly, teasing sound, not a mocking one. “Evidently not. You may call me Darach, Max Caulfield. You helped me today; you may have saved my life, in fact. I would like to reward you.” She gestured for Max to sit next to her. Hesitantly, feeling her skin heat at their proximity, Max did so. It was only as she tried to steady herself on the log that she realized she was still holding the bloody nail. She looked around, trying to figure out what to do with it, then used her free hand to dig some notebook paper out of her bag and wrap it up.

“No, really, you don’t need to do that,” she told Darach as she folded the paper around the nail and wiped her hand through the grass to get the blood off. “I just did what anyone would have done.”

“You are wrong, Max,” Darach sighed. “There are so many who would not, and so many more who would have demanded something in exchange. Your selflessness is rare, and deserves to be honored with a gift. And so I shall.”

Max colored. “It was nothing. I’m just glad I could help.”

“My life is far more than nothing,” Darach chided, “and I will reward you for it.” Max opened her mouth to protest, but Darach raised a hand and the words did not come. “Thrice now have I offered you a gift. You must take it or give me great offense.”

“I… Okay,” Max conceded. She certainly didn’t want to offend Darach. Offended Darach would probably stop smiling at her. “Thank you,” she said, and Darach laughed.

“You cannot thank me yet. I haven’t given you anything,” she pointed out. She tilted her head again, that same considering gesture she’d made before, and said, “What is it you wish, Max? If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?”

“To be a great photographer,” Max replied at once. “I’ve wanted that for as long as I can remember. I want to make art, I want to show people how beautiful the world can be if you just look at it right. Mr. Walker - he’s Blackwell’s photography teacher - calls it the closest thing we can ever get to telepathy, the ability to see through someone else’s eyes. I want to make that happen.”

Darach glanced at Max’s camera satchel. “That is what brought you out here this morning, you said?”

“Yeah! Not everything I shoot is nature photography, but sometimes you just have to get away from people to really see the world for what it is, you know?”

“I do indeed, even more than you may suspect,” Darach agreed. “May I see some of what you’ve taken today?”

Max hesitated, but only for an instant. Her instincts for self-deprecation and criticism of her own work were helpless in the face of Darach’s loveliness, so Max’s hands were pulling Polaroids out of her bag almost before she knew what she was doing. She handed them over, and only once Darach was holding the stack and looking through it did Max’s nerves come back, ten times worse than ever before. “They’re… I’m just practicing, honestly, they’re not supposed to be anything special, I’m really just learning-”

“Max,” Darach interrupted, pausing on a photograph of morning sunlight cutting through the last traces of the forest mist, weaving between the shadows of the trees and adding layer after layer of brilliance. “This is no gift I can give you. I cannot make you what you already are.” It took a second for Max to remember what this was supposed to be about, but then she blushed furiously. Darach went on, merciless. “You have a rare eye, to see the truths hidden in the quiet and the everyday. We would not have met, else.” She held the stack of photos out for Max to take back.

Speechless, Max could only accept them and put them away. Eventually she found her voice enough to mumble, “Thank you…”

“Now then,” Darach continued, waving the thanks away, “what else do you long for?”

“I… I don’t really know,” Max admitted. “Photography has been my whole life. It’s why I came to Blackwell, mostly. They have one of the best high-school-age photography programs in the country.”

Darach’s eyes sharpened. “Mostly?”

“...Oh.” Max looked away. “Yeah. I also… I used to live in Arcadia Bay, actually. My family moved to Seattle when I was 13. But before we moved, there was… a girl. Chloe. My best friend. We were… We were really close. But her dad died almost the same day as the move, and I got so tangled up in freaking out over my new city and my new school and losing William - that was Chloe’s dad’s name - because he was practically a second dad to me too, and I just… I couldn’t keep in touch. Every time I wanted to call, I’d start thinking about what I was going to say, like, ‘Oh, hey, sorry your dad’s dead, let me tell you all about my awesome new life,’ or whatever, and I just… froze up. And then it had been days since I’d called her, and I felt like a horrible best friend, and then it was weeks, and then months, and I just felt worse and worse, and I just… didn’t call her. Or email her or text her or anything. I just stopped talking to her.

“But I never forgot her. So when I got the chance to come back here, I jumped at it.”

Darach studied Max with a kind of gentle intensity Max had never seen before. “I know the sound of love when I hear it, Max Caulfield.”

Max colored again, and this time it was shame, not embarrassment or attraction, that made her cheeks hot. “...Yeah, I guess so,” she said, just barely above a whisper. “But… she’s got a girlfriend already, her name’s Rachel and she’s perfect and flawless and everyone loves her, even me really, and I…” She trailed off. “I’ve never even been kissed, and Chloe’s awesome and she’s forgiven me, or at least she says she has, but she’s got Rachel and I don’t have anyone and it’s… pretty terrible, honestly.”

“You don’t want to tear Chloe away and make her your own?”

“What?” asked Max, shocked. “No, of course not! Chloe’s happy! And Rachel… anyone would be thrilled to be with Rachel, probably commit actual murder or something to have that chance, so why would I want to take that away from her?”

Darach’s smile turned ironic. “Again, you overestimate your fellow humans. Many would do exactly that in your situation, if they could.” She tapped a thoughtful finger on her lips. “Is there no one else who has caught your eye? No student you would lay claim to if you could?”

“Why do you have to keep making it sound creepy? I don’t ‘lay claim’ to people, not even my best friend,” Max grimaced. “But yeah, okay, maybe a few. At Blackwell, it’s mostly girls; the guys there all seem to be asshole jocks, too young and too clingy, or high all the time.” She paused, then found the courage to add, “I hope the ‘liking girls’ part doesn’t, like, upset you or anything.”

“Such things are far older and run far deeper in our natures than any human culture, living or dead,” Darach observed. “No pious mouthing of priests nor harsh judgments of elders has ever, nor could ever, change that. But I understand how that can make things more… complicated.”

“It doesn’t matter,” sighed Max. “I’ve never asked a girl out before and probably never will. If I couldn’t get up the guts to ask Chloe out when we were practically living together as kids, I sure as hell won’t manage it now.”

“I know what gift I will give you,” Darach announced abruptly, making Max start. “Would you accept your first kiss from me?”

Max’s mouth went dry.

“Is that… you want to… with me?” she stammered. Darach’s smile suddenly looked both mischievous and wolfish.

“I would not have asked otherwise.”

Her hands were gripping the log for dear life, but there was only one answer Max could give. “...Yes,” she breathed.

The kiss was gentle and yet somehow also electric. Up close, Darach smelled of loam and pine needles, and though nothing of them was touching beyond their lips, somehow Max’s entire body felt like it was on fire. She had no idea how long it lasted. It could have been moments. It could have been years. Her feet might not still be on the ground; she had no way to tell and did not wish to know. Sensations flooded her, soft and sweet pleasures she had only ever imagined, and how those imaginings had paled as compared to this reality. She ached to reach for Darach, to close the distance between them so they were touching, but somehow could not - she had been granted a kiss, only that and nothing more, and so she stayed still save for her lips and tongue.

A timeless eternity later, Darach pulled away. It took a few moments for Max to react, to open her eyes and pull herself unsteadily upright. Darach was still smiling at her, but rose smoothly and gracefully to her feet. From the way she moved, she might never have been injured at all. Standing her full height, not hunched over in pain, she towered above Max, seeming almost as much a part of the forest canopy as any tree. “I must go,” she announced. “But I have greatly enjoyed our time together. Thank you again for your tender care, and please, if you would, take that with you,” she gestured toward the paper-wrapped nail, “so that it cannot threaten anyone again.”

Max got awkwardly to her feet too. The top of her head did not even reach Darach’s collarbone. “Oh! Uh, yeah, of course.” She clutched at her camera bag convulsively. “Will I… see you again?”

“Perhaps,” Darach allowed. “If you walk these woods on some future day. Until then, Max Caulfield.” And to Max’s utter astonishment, Darach took her skirt in hand, bowed her head slightly, and sank into a perfect fucking curtsey right out of a fairy tale. She rose again, gave Max a wink, and turned to walk into the woods. She’d been gone for most of a minute before Max even managed to move. When she did, it was just to pick up the nail and begin making her way back to Blackwell in a daze.

It wasn’t until the next day that her life started getting kind of strange.

Chapter Text

It took a while for the strangeness to actually register. Max had spent most of the previous night and basically the entire day wrapped in a vaguely loam-and-pine-needle-scented fog. Kate had given her a rather odd look when she’d made it back to the dorms and, to be fair, it wasn’t unearned; she had mud and grass stains on her jeans and blood on her hands, she probably looked like she’d taken a rather bad fall while out on her hike. But Max had just smiled at her and continued on to her room, where she spent most of the evening looking through the pictures she’d taken and remembering the way her body had scintillated at the feel of Darach’s mouth on hers. She very nearly forgot to eat dinner and wound up having to get delivery Chinese from the only place still open when she finally remembered.

The school day had been a little clearer; she’d at least been able to mostly pay attention in her classes and had gotten breakfast and lunch at something close to the right times. Still, it wasn’t until her last class, Photography with Mr. Walker, that anything was able to penetrate the haze and drag her out of her head into the real world.

“To misquote Shakespeare,” Mr. Walker was saying, “it is the purpose of art to hold a mirror up to nature, to reveal virtue, expose iniquity, and document the times and world in which we exist. Every photograph we take is a single slice of eternity, an opportunity to expose the truths of a moment for all the world to see. That applies to artistic and commercial photography as much as it does to photojournalism, because every image is a message, and every message reveals something about the person who composed it and about the person who receives it.

“In many ways, however, the things we as humans want most to expose, to learn about and understand, are ourselves, which is why depictions of people are literally as old as the creation of art itself. From cave paintings in Spain and France to humanoid burial figurines in Asia, every ancient site we have uncovered from the very dawn of our species has included images of ourselves and each other. We are our own favorite subjects - we always have been, and we always will be.

“Obviously, photography came relatively late to this party, but when it did, it dove in with abandon. Portraits composed the vast majority of photographs taken throughout the nineteenth century, and even today, I bet that, if you did a survey of all the digital photographs being snapped with smartphones around the world, selfies would be, by far, the most common choice of subject. Show of hands: who has taken a selfie today?”

Somewhat surprisingly, Max realized that she hadn’t. In fact, she hadn’t really used her camera all day. She really had been out of it, hadn’t she?

She, Daniel, and Kate were the only people who didn’t raise their hands, though Victoria waited until almost everyone else’s was up before raising hers as well. Walker didn’t quite manage to conceal his surprise when Max didn’t put her hand up, and well, that was fair. She’d usually taken one or two selfies at least by now. All she could do was shrug at him, though.

“As I expected,” Walker went on as his students began to lower their hands again. “So many of us want to see ourselves from the outside, as everyone else does, rather than stay locked in our own heads. Now: who can tell me the name of the photographic process that enabled the first wide-scale use of photography, especially portraits?” Walker raised an eyebrow in Max’s direction, and a horrible sense of panic blasted away the remnants of her pleasant Darach-induced fugue. She had been planning to review the reading for today last night, but instead, she’d spent the whole time staring at her Polaroids with a goofy look on her face. She had absolutely no idea.

“Uh…” she stalled, wracking her brain. Walker’s eyes narrowed.

Suddenly, a small movement to Max’s left, just behind where Walker was standing, caught her eye. Victoria was leaning on her table, staring fixedly at a point directly above Max’s head, while her pencil tapped rhythmically on the top of her journal… a journal that was open to a mostly blank page but for the word “DAGUERREIAN” written across it in large, dark letters. Max stared for a second, then, just before Walker turned to follow her gaze, she blurted out, “The Daguerreian process?”

“There we are,” Walker nodded approvingly. “Took a second, but you got there in the end. Yes, the Daguerreian process, invented somewhere around 1839 by Louis Daguerre in Paris. He found a method of using silver-plated copper, exposed to a halogen gas such as iodine or bromine…”

Max stopped paying attention. She was staring in utter confusion at Victoria while Victoria herself kept her eyes rigidly focused on Walker. Victoria had… helped her? Victoria never helped her. Victoria never helped anyone. Why the hell would she give Max the answer instead of taking the opportunity to demonstrate her superiority? Was she sick?

The bell rang then, making Max jump, and suddenly everyone was scrambling for bags and books before heading out the door. Mr. Walker began calling for the students who had not yet turned in their entries for the Everyday Heroes contest - a list of students that included one Max Caulfield - to do so before the deadline on Wednesday. He pointed directly at Max. “Come on, Max,” he said before turning back toward his desk at the front of the room. “I know you’ve got it in you. All you have to do is know it too.”

By the time Max had gathered up her things, only Kate and Victoria were still in the room with Mr. Walker. Kate was hunched over a drawing pad, sketching furiously. One of the things Max had noticed, despite being out of it, was Victoria and Taylor giving Kate shit again, like always; Taylor had thrown a balled-up piece of paper at Kate, and when Max scooped it up and flattened it out, it read, “EVERYBODY KNOWS ALL ABSTINENCE MEANS IS YOU TAKE IT IN THE ASS.” Max found herself actually growling as she crumpled the paper back up again. Kate had never looked at it, thankfully.

Kate had apparently not heard her approaching, because she jumped at the growl and slammed her drawing pad closed. “Oh!” she said, her voice unusually squeaky. “Um, hi, Max! That.. that was a great answer about Daguerre.”

“Oh, thanks,” Max blushed. She liked it when Kate complimented her, but it felt wrong to take the credit when it wasn’t really hers. “I, um, I actually forgot the answer, but for some reason, Victoria tipped me off? I have no idea what that’s about.”

“She… what?” blinked Kate. She looked as stunned as Max had been.

“Yeah, it’s weird. But anyway, I just wanted to check in on you. I know she and Taylor have been giving you crap, but I wanted to tell you I'm here for you.”

Now it was Kate’s turn to blush furiously. “That’s… that’s so sweet of you,” she said, sounding a bit breathless. “I really appreciate it.”

“Of course, Kate! We’re friends, right? So I will always stand with you, you can count on it.” Max smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring fashion, but it apparently didn’t work: Kate looked a little crestfallen for some reason.

She rallied quickly though. “Yes, of course we are. I’m so blessed to have a friend like you.” She gave an odd little nod, as though she were affirming something to herself. Before Max could chase the thought down, though, Kate continued, “Are we still on for… for our tea date on Wednesday?”

“Of course! I wouldn’t miss it!”

Kate beamed. Max felt a warm glow in her chest. Chloe was still her best friend, but of the people Max had met since she’d returned to Arcadia Bay, Kate was probably the most dear to her. Not only was she sweet, kind, charming, and funny, but she was also beautiful, even if she didn’t always let herself see it - or show it. Max tried not to focus too hard on that last part, though. She didn’t mind having a little crush on Kate, but she refused to let it get in the way of their friendship, something that had already come to mean a lot even just since the start of the semester.

She did need to go, though, so Max regretfully made her farewells and started heading for the door. She was surprised to see Victoria - previously leaning very far across Mr. Walker’s desk, though if she was attempting to show off her cleavage she definitely needed to have picked a different shirt and sweater that morning - quickly straighten up and even take a short step away from the desk. “Okay, well, thanks, Mr. Walker, I appreciate all the… things…” She trailed off, still backing away, then spun and made a beeline for the door.

Max really had no idea what Victoria thought she was going to accomplish by trying to seduce their photography teacher. Mr. Walker was, to all appearances, quite happily married. To his husband. (Max had heard that they frequently went on double dates with Nurse Barenchi and her wife, who coached the Blackwell Otters, the school’s swim team. Max found the idea of the four of them out on the town somewhere absolutely adorable.) It was more than just simple frustration that Victoria would try to cheat that way, though. It angered Max because she knew damn well that Victoria didn’t need to do anything of the kind; every painfully awkward seduction attempt was just another moment Victoria was selling herself and her talent short. Victoria was going to be a phenomenal fashion photographer one day. It made Max’s stomach burn to see her reducing herself to just a pair of tits.

(Though they were, ah, very nice. Max had eyes, okay?)

“That was… odd,” noted Mr. Walker. He didn’t dwell on the matter, though, turning instead to Max. “I don’t suppose you were rushing up here to turn in your entry for the contest?”

“Uh…” Max replied elegantly.

Walker sighed. “Look, Max. I know putting yourself out there is scary. It is impossible for the art not to reflect the artist in some way or another, and no one likes being judged. I get it. But if this really is your dream, if this really is what you want… you’re going to have to make that step. Sometime, somewhere, you’re going to have to stand up and say, yes, look at me, see what I have to say.” He hunched over a bit so she was forced to meet his eyes. “Have some faith in yourself and what you have to offer the world. That’s the only way to win in this game.”

“Thanks, Mr. Walker,” Max mumbled. “I’ll… I’ll try.”

“Just make sure you try by Wednesday, okay?” Walker prodded, but then nodded toward the door. “Go on, off with you. Some of us have papers to grade.” He grinned, Max found herself grinning back, and she left the room with a much lighter mood than she’d had when the conversation started.

By the time Max reached the hallway, Victoria and her Mean Girls cohort were nowhere to be seen. She put in her earbuds and started up a playlist on her phone. Nodding along with the music, she started down the corridor. As she went, she offered a quick smile to Stella, then one to Brooke, and then to Alyssa, and to Dana, and… wait. Why was everyone looking at her? Dana and Stella smiled back, Brooke looked away as soon as she met Max’s eyes, Alyssa gave her a considering nod, but they had all been looking at her. Juliet was too, Max saw, and seemingly ignoring her boyfriend Zach, much to his visible annoyance.

Suddenly Max felt very self-conscious. 

She’d been planning to head to the dorms and maybe get started on her homework, but now she felt a definite need to get away from all those eyes, so she veered off to duck into the restroom. As soon as she was in, she shoved the door closed behind her and leaned against it for a moment. What was going on? She glanced toward the mirrors. Was she going to look in one and discover she had something on her face?

Well, she couldn’t just keep cowering against the door. She straightened up and made herself head over toward the sinks. Her eyes met her reflection… and she looked utterly normal. Nothing peculiar at all. Max shook her head, absolutely lost. What was going on?

The restroom door banged open, making her jump. Two giggling voices followed right behind the noise, and Max turned to see Chloe and Rachel, arms wrapped around each other and bodies pressing close, stumbling in. Chloe had her back to Max, walking mostly backward; Rachel was the one steering, but she was paying much more attention to Chloe than she was to where they were going.

“-could catch us!” Chloe was saying, half laughing, half scandalized. 

Rachel only chuckled. “That just makes it better,” she purred, and pulled Chloe down for a kiss.

They obviously hadn’t realized the room was occupied - or, based on what Rachel had just said, maybe they just didn’t care - but Max still felt trapped by indecision, unable to determine whether she needed to dive into a stall to hide or make some sound in hopes that they noticed her presence. Frozen, she couldn’t even take her eyes away from them, feeling an all-too-familiar, all-too-unwelcome warmth under her skin. She might have a crush on Kate, she might in fact be surrounded by attractive girls from one end of the dorms to the other, but Chloe and Rachel were, separately and together, the most beautiful women Max had ever seen… Darach excepted, anyway. (For some reason, Darach didn’t quite seem to exist on the same continuum as the rest, as though Max’s encounter with her weren’t entirely real.) Max had indeed been in love with Chloe since before she moved to Seattle, and since coming back… well, Rachel stole hearts as easily as breathing, and if anything, Max was more vulnerable than most.

She hated how she understood all too easily how they could choose each other over anyone else. Over her. She couldn’t even manage to feel jealous about it. She wouldn’t have picked herself either.

She hesitated too long. Rachel’s eyes slipped past Chloe for a second, then widened as they fell on Max. She smiled warmly. “Max!”

Chloe blinked in surprise, but she too was smiling as she turned around. Actually, in her case, it was something more like a salacious grin. “Hey, Maxilicious! Sneaking in to watch us? Always knew you were a voyeur.” She snickered. Max blushed furiously.

“I was here first!” she pointed out, trying to sound offended and not to think about the idea of spying on the two of them or any of the times she had fantasized about doing exactly that in the past few weeks. “And besides, this is a bathroom, not a boudoir!”

Rachel’s chuckle was warm and throaty. “She has a point, Chlo’. This is no fit place for a proper show. If she wants to watch us, she’ll have to follow us back to the dorms, I guess.” She winked and Max thought her knees might give way.

To her relief, Chloe seemed to notice that Max was on the edge of passing out, because her expression became more serious, if no less fond. “Hey, hey, breathe, Super Max. We’re just giving you shit.” She let go of Rachel with one hand and stepped closer so she could put her hand on Max’s arm. “Didn’t mean to overwhelm you there. You okay?”

Max managed to nod her head, still feeling like her skin was on fire with more than just embarrassment. “I… it’s all good.” It wasn’t quite a lie. “I was just already kinda having a freakout when you came in. It’s my fault.”

“Bullshit,” Rachel snapped, not angrily but with a finality that did not even acknowledge the concept of contradiction. “Never apologize for taking up space, Max. You deserve to be here. We’re the ones fucking around where we, technically, shouldn’t be.”

“If only because I’m banned from campus,” Chloe put in, snickering again.

Rachel had let go of Chloe with one hand too, and though their arms were still around each other, each now also had a hand on Max, Chloe’s on her arm and Rachel’s on her shoulder and Max thought she might start hyperventilating at any moment. “Okay, yeah,” she said, too fast, too high-pitched. “Still, I should…” She pulled free of their hands, feeling the loss like a physical pain, and began edging toward the door.

Rolling her eyes, Rachel stepped forward, grabbed Max’s shoulder again, and held her fast. “Don’t be ridiculous, Max. We’ll get out of your way. If you’re still having trouble, text one of us and we’ll come back and help.”

“Yeah,” agreed Chloe. “Hell, you should come find us later anyway, just to let us know you’re okay and hang out for a bit. We’re getting too mainstream - we need a hipster infusion.” Rachel nodded, smiling, and the light in her eyes as she pressed herself into Chloe’s side made Max dizzy again. Chloe gave her a side-hug and Rachel brushed a bit of Max’s hair back over her ear and then they were gone and Max was slowly sliding down one of the stall doors.

Dear god, why was she like this?

It wasn’t like Chloe and Rachel hadn’t teased her before, separately or together. They both teased like they breathed, and yeah, it usually completely flustered her, but she didn’t normally fall apart quite so thoroughly. Although, in her own defense, she wasn’t normally already stressing out over everyone staring at her, and Chloe and Rachel weren’t usually quite so… touchy-feely. That really had been weird, if only because both of them knew that Max wasn’t always great with physical contact anyway. Obviously, they’d been trying to reassure her, and maybe the touches would have, under ordinary circumstances, but today, they had only added to her arousa- er, that is, her stress. Yes. She was feeling very… stressed.

They were gone, though, and no one was staring at her now, and she could breathe normally again. Well, she would be able to eventually, anyway.

Max put her headphones back in and closed her eyes. It took her about five minutes of just sitting on the floor, listening to Foals sing about the Spanish Sahara, before she felt something closer to her regular self. She climbed back to her feet then, pulling out the earbuds and splashing a little water on her face. Hopefully, everybody who had been looking at her had found someone or something else to look at instead. She scooped up her bag and headed for the door.

David Madsen was lurking outside. He glared at her as she walked out. “Is Chloe in there?” he snapped, and Max felt her jaw tighten.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Madsen, but I’m not in the habit of telling older men whether teenage girls are using a public bathroom,” she shot back, just short of a snarl. “I think it’s kind of creepy, frankly.”

“Now you listen here, little missy,” said David, taking a step forward to loom over her, but Max just ducked around him without pausing. “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He reached for her, but was cut off by a sudden harrumph from Principal Wells, standing further down the hall.

“If you could refrain from assaulting our students, Mr. Madsen, it would be greatly appreciated,” Wells said sharply, surprising Max to her core. Wells never had her back; on the contrary, he was usually one of the people breathing down her neck. Maybe he disliked David more than he disliked her?

David subsided, growling, before stomping off. Wells smiled gravely at Max, who returned it awkwardly before she darted out the front doors and into the bright afternoon sunshine, hoping against hope that the weirdness of the previous fifteen minutes was done.

She was destined for disappointment.

Chapter Text

The uncharacteristically warm October day had led a number of students to hang out on Blackwell’s front lawn. In the time Max had hidden herself in the bathroom both Stella and Brooke had relocated there, along with Hayden, Daniel, Evan, Luke, and a dozen or so more students Max didn't know the names of. On an average day, Max might have stopped to talk with some of them - well, probably not Brooke, given all the drama between her and Warren - but today, she was unsettled enough that she really just wanted to keep her head down and get back to her room.

“Max!”

Or not.

She didn’t usually want to be rude anyway, but Max’s stumble to a halt was driven this time not by courtesy so much as it was by surprise. The voice that had called out to her belonged to none other than Brooke Scott.

Brooke had a tablet out, dangling from one hand, and on the ground in front of her was a small quadcopter drone. She pushed her glasses up with her other hand, looking a bit nervous, but offered a tentative smile as well. It looked more like a sneering smirk, honestly, but Max was fairly sure that was just how Brooke smiled.

Hesitantly, Max began to approach. She and Brooke weren’t enemies, exactly, but Brooke had clearly had her eye on Warren for a while and Warren had been crushing on Max pretty much since she’d started at Blackwell. Rather than confront Warren about it, though, Brooke had been taking it out on Max via snide, passive-aggressive comments. It was annoying, but also frustrating. Max liked Warren, but had absolutely no romantic interest in him, and was pretty sure she’d like Brooke too if she were given the chance. They had a lot of the same nerdy common interests that she and Warren had. Brooke, though, seemed determined to see Max as a romantic rival, no matter how much Max tried to put Warren off.

Now, though, Brooke didn’t look pissy. She looked… uncertain. “Hey, Brooke,” said Max, trying not to sound too wary. “Everything okay?”

“Uh… no, actually,” said Brooke, grimacing. “I need to say something. Look. I… owe you an apology. I’ve been behaving like an asshole and like things that have been bothering me are your fault, and they aren’t. I get salty when things don’t go my way, but that’s my problem, not yours. You’ve been nothing but nice to me all year and I’ve been kind of a selfish bitch. So… I’m sorry. I’m over it.”

Part of Max really wanted to say, “Seriously? Just like that?” but the rest of her recognized how bad an idea that was. “Thanks, Brooke. I would like to think I’m your friend. Or at least that I have the chance to be.”

“I’d… really like that, I think,” said Brooke, looking a little flushed. “Do you want to take my drone for a spin? It’s not a privilege I offer very many people.”

Blinking, Max took a second to process that, but then nodded. “Uh, yeah, actually. That sounds really fun.”

And it was. Brooke gave her a quick rundown on the controls; it was a lot like a video game, though it quickly became apparent that the inputs didn’t produce quite the same responses as they would have on a game controller. Still, she had a good time zooming around the lawn, seeing everything from a bird’s-eye view, including herself and Brooke. It reminded Max of what Mr. Walker had been talking about, the power of seeing oneself from the outside. She asked Brooke how to get a screenshot and asked her to email the one she took to Max when she had a chance. “I have some photography ideas I want to mess around with,” she explained, and Brooke readily agreed.

After a few minutes Max regretfully turned the controls back over to Brooke. “This was awesome, though. Maybe we can do it again sometime?”

Brooke’s smile was as bright as Max had ever seen it. “Let’s make a drone date soon,” she agreed, and then suddenly started coughing.

“You okay?” asked Max, putting a worried hand on her back, but Brooke waved her off.

“Fine, fine, just, um, swallowed wrong. Don’t… don’t worry about me.” Brooke’s face was bright red but she was breathing okay, so Max just frowned and nodded 

“Okay, cool. Um, see you around.”

This time she almost made it to the gate connecting the front lawn to the breezeway that ran along the north side of the dorms before someone caught her. Or, rather, caught up to her, because Stella just kind of fell into step with her. “Hey, Max,” she said brightly. “I was wondering if I could pick your brain about something?”

“Uh, sure?” replied Max, uncertainly. Stella was one of the hardest-working and highest-achieving students at Blackwell, and she and Max had hardly exchanged two words before today. Max could not, for the life of her, imagine what Stella might want to pick her brain about. Especially not when she had all of Blackwell to choose from.

“I still haven’t decided on a photo to submit for the Everyday Heroes contest,” said Stella, “and everyone knows Mr. Walker respects your eye better than just about anyone in the class. Would you be willing to maybe give me a hand? I know I’m the competition, but I’d be happy to sweeten the deal - say, by buying you dinner?”

God, did she have to make it sound like she was asking Max out? Stella was fairly open about her “work hard, play hard” philosophy, and she’d hinted at half a dozen people she might have “played” with already since the semester started, though never in direct terms or with any detail. She didn’t seem to consider these potential liaisons as either anything to be ashamed of or anything to brag about; they were just something she did, like admitting to having a fondness for bowling or something. A couple of the names were girls, though, and there had been more than a few moments of envy on Max’s part, both of Stella, that she could be so open and fearless about such things, and of the girls she had hooked up with. Stella’s vitality and energy were magnetic.

Max could definitely do without the temptation to pretend Stella wanted a date, especially today.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” Max hastened to assure her. “I’m happy to help, no bribery required. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, though. I haven’t even picked my own photo yet. But sure, I’ll do what I can. Maybe at lunch tomorrow, after Mr. Walker’s class?”

Stella pursed her lips, a look in her eye Max couldn’t quite make sense of. “I suppose that will work,” she said, “but Max - you should maybe be careful about accusing people of bribery. Sometimes people want to do things for you or with you just because they want to, you know?”

That sounded all too much like Darach’s insistence that, after three offers, Max would be rude to refuse a reward. She blushed, dropping her gaze for a moment. “Yeah, I’m… I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I have trouble accepting that. Or accepting things from other people in general.”

Just like that, Stella’s smile came back. “Better. Next time I invite you to dinner, I expect you to accept,” she winked. “I’ll catch you tomorrow. See you, Max!”

Stella was all the way around the corner that led back to the Blackwell lawn before Max managed to get her jaw up off the ground. God! How in the world was she supposed to survive when girls talked to her like that? Didn’t they know what they sounded like? Didn’t they see what they were doing to her?

Obviously not. It was just up to Max to stop being so hopelessly, helplessly bisexual around her friends. Sure. That would definitely wind up working out perfectly.

Max sighed and resumed her trek to the dorm.

When she reached the lawn in front of the dormitory building, she saw that Kate, Alyssa, and Victoria and her bitch chorus had all found spots to hang out there. Kate looked to be drawing again, her back to Max as she sat on a bench on the far side of the grass. Alyssa was sitting on a nearer bench while reading some kind of oversized paperback, but she looked up to meet Max’s eyes again and even smile before going back to her novel. Victoria, Taylor, and Courtney had splayed themselves across the dorm’s front steps, Victoria leaning back on her elbows as though she herself were a model. She was beautiful enough she could have been, Max thought, then made herself put the thought very firmly away. She was also what freezer burn would be like if it were a person, and that wasn’t attractive at all.

As flustered and overstimulated as she was right then, Max did not feel up to dealing with Victoria’s attitude just yet. Instead, she hesitantly veered off toward Alyssa. As one of Max’s classmates who didn’t live in the dorms, Alyssa was still something of a mystery to Max, even now, several weeks into the semester. She had an intensity, a sort of understated self-assurance, that Max found she respected and admired quite a lot, but the nod she’d gotten from Alyssa in the hall earlier that day had really been the first time Alyssa had ever seemed to directly acknowledge Max’s existence.

“Hi, Alyssa,” she said, a touch gingerly, but was rewarded with another smile at once.

“Hey, Max,” Alyssa greeted her, scooting over a little and offering Max a spot on the bench. “How are you?” Her voice was a confident drawl, filled with a quiet certainty that seemed to suggest that the world just wasn’t up to the challenge of knocking her off her game. She also said Max’s name as though they talked all the time, even though nothing was further from the case.

It was enough to send a new flush of redness through Max’s cheeks. She never expected people to see her - indeed, could be quite uncomfortable when they did, as proven just minutes ago - but discovering that Alyssa had apparently done so made warm flutters float around in her chest. They shared a photography class, of course, so it made sense that Alyssa knew Max’s name, if only because she’d heard Mr. Walker say it when calling on Max during a lecture. The way she was being welcomed to enter Alyssa’s space felt like more than that, though. Like she was more than just a name and a face in the class.

Trying to maintain some chill, despite her utter lack of exactly that at any point in the past half hour, Max took the offered seat and replied, “I’m good, actually. Just trying to, you know, enjoy the day.”

Grinning, Alyssa nodded. “It’s lovely out here. Perfect reading weather.” She gestured with her book. “I’ve seen you with a novel in hand once or twice - what do you read?”

“Oh! Uh, photography books, obviously, but I also like 20th century poetry and, um, science fiction, especially pulp-era stuff like Heinlein and Bradbury. I don’t know if you know-”

“Bradbury’s Mars trilogy is incredible,” Alyssa interrupted her, “but Heinlein’s more of a mixed bag. Brilliant writer but I’m not sure we share all the same kinks.”

That made Max burst out into scandalized laughter, something that appeared to please Alyssa greatly. “Yeah,” Max admitted, “he had some… interesting views on sex.”

“And had no shame in putting them on the page, right there for everyone to see,” Alyssa nodded. “Points for owning it, I guess, and I’m not here to yuck anybody’s yum, but…” She gestured with her book again. “Honestly, I don’t really read sci fi for the naughty bits anyway. That’s what chick lit is for.” Judging by the cover, which showed a breezy, cartoonish drawing of a woman in professional-looking clothes surrounded by a swirling cloud of icons like hearts, baby toys, calendars, and pencils, “chick lit” was what Alyssa was reading that very moment. She confirmed as much a moment later. “Just started this one this morning. Pretty classic love triangle so far: the main character has to choose between the hot new girl running the IT department of her company or her ex-boyfriend from college who just moved to the city.”

That made Max blink. “It’s… she’s into women too?”

Alyssa nodded again. She seemed to be studying Max with unusual focus. “So it seems. She’s just now kind of figuring that out, though. So far I’m rooting for IT girl, but I guess we’ll see how it goes.”

“Ugh,” Max shook her head. “I hate love triangles. They’re such bullshit. They’re either forced drama, because there’s an obvious couple that’s going to get together in the end and all the ‘will they won’t they’ stuff is blatantly fake and a waste of time, or the main character has real feelings for both of the others and some asinine deus ex machina imposes the decision on the character rather than just letting them work it all out. If she wants to kiss them both, let her kiss them both! God forbid women have active sex lives with multiple partners, right?”

“Right,” Alyssa agreed slowly. She seemed to be thinking quite deeply about something. “Say… Brooke’s been trying to get a sci fi book club together. ‘No boys allowed,’ I’m afraid, so if you were wanting to invite, say, Warren-”

“Oh, no, absolutely not,” Max put in quickly. She’d love to talk to Warren about sci fi all day long, but not until he found someone else to obsess over… or at least until he stopped obsessing over her. Otherwise, it would just be unending awkwardness.

Alyssa’s eyebrows went up a little, but all she said was, “Okay then. Well, if you’re interested, I’ll let her know. I think it would be fun to have you.”

Blushing again, for no damn reason other than because a woman she admired was expressing a desire to spend time with her, Max nodded. Alyssa smiled warmly. “Sounds like a date then. I’ll be in touch.”

That word again. Why, God? Why?

Rather than attempt to make noise come out of her mouth, an effort she could already tell was doomed to failure, Max just got to her feet and staggered away, trying not to look like she was fleeing for the safety of Kate’s presence while she was, in fact, doing precisely that. Alyssa watched her go, still smiling, that same air of confidence still radiating out from her and heating Max’s skin.

Since she was facing away, Kate once again didn’t appear to notice Max’s approach. This time, Max actually caught a glimpse of what Kate was drawing; to her astonishment, it appeared to be a portrait of Max herself, Polaroid camera in hand, taking a selfie in Mr. Walker’s photography class. The style was unusual: Kate normally drew very cartoonish, exaggerated characters, but this was as close to photo-realistic as Max had ever seen Kate attempt. “Oh wow, Kate!” Max burst out without thinking. “That’s fantastic!”

“Ah!” Kate squealed, loud enough to make heads turn across the lawn. She leapt to her feet as well, spinning toward Max and pressing the pad tightly to her chest. “Max! I- I didn’t- I mean- Hello!”

“Kate?” Max said, frowning at her curiously. “Are you okay?”

“Yes! I mean… you just surprised me, is all.” Kate licked her lips nervously. “Did you… need something?”

“Not really, no.” Max certainly had no intention of confessing that she’d been drowning in the riptide of her own overactive hormones for the past forty-five minutes. “I just realized that getting into the dorms would mean dealing with Queen Victoria and her court of Mean Girls and I’m not sure I’m up to that just yet.”

“Oh, right,” Kate sighed, her expression and body language settling back into something rather more normal, if also somewhat depressed. “I see what you mean.”

“Yeah,” Max said, sitting down on the bench. After a brief hesitation, Kate sat down next to her, though she seemed unsure about how close to sit and where to put her free hand. “You probably have it worse than me. I don’t know why Victoria’s always so rude to me, but she and Taylor have really been going at you over the Abstinence Club, haven’t they?”

Kate looked away. “They have,” she admitted quietly. “It’s like I said, ‘Sex is best when it’s done with someone you love, under the auspices of a spiritually-fulfilling relationship with both your partner and God,’ and all they heard was me calling them sluts. Abstinence isn’t anti-sex, but I guess the nuance is too much trouble for anyone to grasp.”

“It isn’t?” Max blinked. Kate looked up at her, brow lowered in dismay. “No, no, Kate, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to- I mean, I just… never really thought about it beyond the obvious myself. ‘Abstinence’ seemed pretty straightforward. I just also didn’t think it was a big deal - people are allowed to not have sex if they’re not into it.”

“Well, yes, there are different ways to approach it,” Kate conceded, “but frankly, I think sex is great. Or, rather, I imagine it will be,” she hurriedly corrected herself. “I’ve never had it, obviously, but I want to. I want to find the person I love and then have that kind of closeness with them. That sort of intimacy. To feel desire and give and receive pleasure…” Kate’s voice had dropped about half an octave and taken on a new, breathy quality. Max’s head was starting to swim a little. “Lovemaking is holy within God’s eyes, as long as He has first blessed the union. We weren’t given sex drives or the capacity for physical ecstasy by mistake. We are meant to love one another.” A warm red heat flushed Kate’s cheeks. Her eyes were glassy. Max discovered Kate had taken her hand and was stroking a finger along the back, from wrist to the first knuckle of her middle finger, over and over.

It took everything she had, but Max managed to get words out. “That sounds… really nice,” she said, her voice strangled and tense. Kate abruptly jumped, as though only just then realizing what she was doing, and she let go of Max’s hand and scooted back the length of the bench.

“Right!” she said, and now her voice was as pitched up as it had been pitched down just moments before. “That’s… that’s the idea. A sex drive is a healthy thing. That’s… that’s all I’m trying to say.”

Max reached into her bag and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper she’d scooped off the floor in Mr. Walker’s room. She hadn’t even fully realized where she’d shoved it after she’d finished reading it before, but here it was, back in her hand. “Somebody needs to say something to them,” she muttered, staring at the ball of paper. Kate eyed it, confused, but Max did not explain. There was no reason she needed to see what was on it.

Deciding to do this before she lost her nerve, Max got to her feet and began stomping across the lawn toward the dormitory’s front steps and the three girls chatting on them. Kate made a small surprised squeak and called her name, but Max ignored it, staying focused on her target. First Victoria, then Taylor and Courtney saw her coming and all three fell silent, watching her approach with what looked surprisingly like wariness.

She stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, maybe three feet short of where the others were sitting, and threw the paper ball at Taylor. She flinched away and it bounced off the side of her head. “You dropped that,” Max said acidly. “Figured you should have it back.”

To Max’s absolute astonishment, Taylor colored, embarrassed, and she snatched the paper up and shoved it into the pocket of her jean jacket without looking at it. She obviously knew what it was. Courtney’s brow furrowed in confusion. Victoria was attempting to keep her cool mask of disinterest in place, but she licked her lips once, the movement a quick flick of a nervous tongue. “Hello, Max,” she said, striving to keep her voice even, and the absolute absurdity of the response made Max burst out into disbelieving laughter.

“That’s… Hello? Seriously?” She shook her head. “Rachel’s right, you really do live on another planet.” Victoria’s countenance darkened at the mention of her rival. “Look, Victoria. Taylor. I don’t know what your issue with Kate is, but it needs to stop. She has done nothing to you, either of you, and whatever you think you understand about her beliefs I can practically guarantee that you don’t.” Max focused her attention on Victoria. “I know you’re better than this, Victoria. You helped me in class today, right when I needed it, and that proves you’ve got a heart in there somewhere. All you have to do is-”

“Help you?” Victoria interrupted, speaking just a touch too quickly to sound normal. “I didn’t ‘help’ you. I don’t ‘help’ anybody. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Max stared at her. “...Of course you did! I was completely blanking on Daguerre and you saved my ass. And I really appreciated it, seriously. All I’m asking is for you to extend that same kind of-”

“I’m telling you,” interrupted Victoria again, “I didn’t help you. You’re hallucinating or something.” Taylor and Courtney were both frowning at her now, in between exchanging perplexed looks with one another. Abruptly, Victoria jumped to her feet. “I need to… go change,” she announced to no one in particular before darting into the dorm, just short of actually sprinting.

“What has gotten into her?” Courtney asked, bewildered. Taylor didn’t answer. Instead she stood up, making her tower over Max, and put her hand into the pocket of her jacket where the crumpled note was.

“You… you’re right,” she said, slowly descending the steps until she was right in front of Max, right on the edge of violating Max’s personal space. Suddenly Max was very aware of their proximity to one another, the cloudy blue-gray of Taylor’s eyes, and the long legs revealed by the jean shorts Taylor almost always favored. “I feel shitty about how I’ve treated Kate. I don’t even really know why I was doing it. Either way… I’m stopping now.” She reached out and put her hand on Max’s upper arm. “Thanks for calling me out, Max. I mean that. You’re… you’re a good person.” She ventured a small smile, one that seemed to make the rest of the world dissolve, so it was just the two of them looking into one another’s eyes and the warmth of Taylor’s hand that Max could somehow feel even through the sleeve of her hoodie. “I promise, I’m going to try to earn back your respect.”

“...Taylor,” Max started, but she had nothing to follow it up with, no words in her head. Her voice sounded breathless even in her own ears. Taylor’s smile widened, but she let go of Max’s arm and stepped back.

She gestured toward where Kate was sitting, watching all of this with an expression of befuddlement. “Gotta go,” said Taylor. “Have to go eat some crow. But if you don’t mind, I might text you later, let you know how it went.” Numb-tongued, Max nodded. Taylor strode purposefully away.

“That was… something,” Courtney said, shaking her head. After a moment, though, she paused and gave Max a thoughtful glance. “But then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It is you, after all.”

It took a second for that to process, but when it did, Max turned around to stare at Courtney in utter confusion. “What does that mean?” she asked.

Courtney smiled, getting to her feet and smoothly descending the steps until she was on the last one, making her just a couple inches taller than Max. Her eyes wandered over Max’s face, her hair, and then, with shocking frankness, down the rest of her body. Max had never been so thoroughly or blatantly checked out in her entire life. Courtney smiled wider.

“We’re about the same size,” she said. “If you’d like sometime, I’d be happy to offer you a makeover. There’s a lot of raw material to work with, but I think I might be able to come up with a few things that will enhance what you’ve already got going on and not simply gild the lily. There’s a Vortex Club party on Thursday - maybe then? We could play a little dress up and then go to the party together, if you wanted.”

Max’s mouth simply hung open. Her mind could absolutely not comprehend what was happening. Courtney giggled, leaned down, and placed a light kiss on Max’s cheek. “Just think about it and let me know, okay?” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She jumped off the last step and started to saunter off in the direction of Blackwell’s main building. Her path took her right past the bench where Alyssa sat, who eyed her curiously before turning to meet Max’s eyes, a quizzical look on her face.

Max fled into the dorms.

Chapter Text

To Max’s surprise, she passed a furious-looking Zach Riggins storming down the stairs from the girl’s floor on her way up. He didn’t really even seem to notice her, but Max still felt it prudent to press herself all the way over against the handrail and give him as much room as she could. His glare was thunderous and Max had plenty of stuff of her own to freak out about. She didn’t need to add a pissed-off meathead to her list.

He disappeared into the main corridor of the boy’s floor and slammed the door behind him. Only once he was gone did Max resume her own climb, double-timing it now. She couldn’t say for sure exactly what she was afraid of, but Zach had a temper and all the testosterone of a State All-Star quarterback. He could wreak a lot of havoc if he wanted to.

When she reached the girls’ floor, though, there was no sign of devastation. Indeed, Dana and Juliet were hovering in the doorway to Dana’s room, laughing together. When Max hesitantly eased the door to the dorm corridor open, they both turned to see her and brightened at once.

“Max!” called Dana. “Come say hi!”

It wasn’t that Max and Dana weren’t friends, really. Dana was, without question, the friendliest girl in the hall, with a warm smile and kind word for basically everyone who crossed her path. Juliet wasn’t nearly so outgoing, though, and Max had barely exchanged a dozen words with her since the start of the year. She’d wanted to - Juliet was an insightful, if merciless, reporter for the school paper, who’d written a devastating critique of the Vortex Club for the previous week’s issue, and Max found herself admiring both Juliet’s courage and her articulation - but there was an intimidating intensity to Juliet’s presence that Max had always struggled to overcome. Those piercing green eyes, the exact same shade as summer ivy in shadow, always made Max shiver… though not solely with fear.

Juliet wasn't trying to be off-putting or anything. Max knew that. It was just her own issues getting in the way of making friends, like always. That didn’t really change the fact that Max had sort of been avoiding Juliet all year, a little bit, and, well… since Juliet and Dana were almost always in one another’s pockets, that meant it had been hard for Max to really reciprocate Dana’s overtures of friendship as well, a difficulty that was only compounded by how unfairly beautiful Dana was and how utterly tongue-tied Max always became around her.

Now, though, both girls were smiling broadly - Dana was practically beaming - and Max felt herself drawn inexorably toward them. It wasn’t a completely unfamiliar sensation; there was something about Dana that always made Max want to move nearer to her, to let Dana’s arms curl around her shoulders and pull her close, and in that regard this was nothing out of the ordinary. What was different was that Juliet didn’t seem to be in the way this time and Max thought it might actually occur. Her face heated up so quickly she probably could have used it to boil water.

And, indeed, Dana bounced out of her doorway and pulled Max into a hug, as simply and as eagerly as if it were a thing that happened every day. It was as comfortable and inviting as Max had always imagined it would be, despite her usual unease about physical touch. Dana seemed almost uniquely able to overcome that. “How are you?” she asked. “You have this dazed look in your eye like you just won the lottery. Or your aunt just died.”

“Maybe it was an aunt she doesn’t like?” Juliet suggested. Dana let out a scandalized gasp that was at least half guffaw. She didn’t let go of Max, though, which meant that Max needed to be the one to do so, and quickly, before she did something truly ridiculous like let her head fall over and come to rest on Dana’s soft, comfortable-looking shoulders, or even softer and more comfortable-looking bosom. When that thought hit, Max actually felt herself get slightly dizzy and she quickly pulled herself free, leaning instead with one palm against the wall and her head down.

The teasing quality in both Dana’s and Juliet’s voices disappeared at once. “Seriously, Max,” said Dana, who indeed sounded quite serious all of a sudden, “are you all right? Do you need me to call somebody? Should you sit down?”

“No, no,” Max managed to say, waving the idea away. “I’m… I’m okay. It’s just been… kind of a strange day.”

“Everything all right?” Juliet prodded, but she too sounded concerned rather than simply nosy.

Nodding, feeling herself starting to settle down a little, Max replied, “Yeah, yeah. I’m good. It’s just, everything’s…” She shook her head.

“Strange,” Juliet finished for her. “Yeah, you said. What happened?”

“Victoria went crazy,” Max explained, “and then… I think Courtney asked me on a date?”

“Ooooh!” Dana squealed, excited. “Did you say yes?”

“I… don’t think I gave her an answer,” Max said, though she needed to review her memories of what had occurred first. “She told me to think about it and let her know.”

“So, dates with girls are not off the table for you,” Juliet said, peering intently at Max. Max blinked at her, uncomprehending, and then realized what she’d just done and blushed again, even harder.

“Oh fuck. I just came out, didn’t I?”

“Welcome to the queer club!” Dana enthused. “I’m a founding member here at Blackwell.”

“I’m not, but…” Juliet chewed her lip. “I’ve been… considering my options recently.”

“She means she just dumped Zach,” Dana stage whispered to Max.

Juliet scowled at her friend. “Hey! A little sensitivity, if you please? This is a very trying time for me!” There was a pause as they glared at each other, then suddenly they both started laughing again. Max looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out which of the three of them was the crazy one. A minute or two before and she’d been fairly certain it was herself. Now, though, she wasn’t sure.

Seeing Max’s expression, Juliet got her laughter under control. “Actually, I really am mad about it, but not at Dee. No, I dumped him because he’s been sexting with Victoria. I confronted him about it and he tried to get us to fight each other over him, only she just walked right by a second ago like he wasn't even there. Guess we’re all changing our minds about him, huh? Oopsy-daisy!”

“And… now you’re thinking about dating girls?” Max blinked. “Wow. He was that bad a boyfriend?”

“Well, I don’t know about girls, plural,” Juliet hedged, “but maybe one girl.”

“If Courtney’s not locked all of us out,” Dana put in, grinning.

“....What?” frowned Max, trying to figure out what Courtney had to do with anything.

“She means you,” Dana giggled. “Obviously.”

It took far, far too long for Dana’s meaning to penetrate. It felt like she was speaking some foreign language that Max barely understood and had to translate each concept, piece by piece, in her head before she could assemble it all into one coherent idea. And once she did, she very nearly passed out.

“W- what?” she stammered. “Me?” Dana nodded, almost giddy. Juliet’s nod was slow to start but seemed no less certain once it got going. Max stared back and forth between them. “Is- is this some kind of joke?” she demanded.

The excited, happy looks on both of the other girls’ faces faded into a mix of confusion and horror.

“What? No!” said Dana. “Max, I- we would never!”

“Never,” Juliet agreed fervently. “Especially not to you. I like you, Max-”

“So do I,” Dana put in.

“-and the last thing I’d ever want to do is laugh at you.”

But the words were nonsense. Their smiles were too bright, their eyes too wide, their words too affectionate. Suddenly, they sounded to Max less like friends and more like some kind of cult, like they were about to abduct her and turn her into a Stepford student or cheerleader drone like them. Max pulled back, stumbling away. Both girls’ faces crumpled; Dana started to take a step after her, but Juliet caught her arm and shook her head. Max barely noticed. She scrambled away, down the hall, fumbling her door open almost blindly, and slammed it behind her. After a second, she locked it too, something she hadn’t done even once during her time at Blackwell up until that moment. Then she stumbled to her bed and collapsed down onto it.

What in the world was happening to her?

All her life, Max had struggled with social anxiety. It was a long-familiar companion and she had the meds and the IEP to prove it. People paying attention to her always made her uncomfortable, with intensities that covered the spectrum from mildly avoidant to outright panic. It lay behind the issues with her photography that Mr. Walker had pointed out. In some ways it even lay behind her troubles dating, because approaching someone with an admission of attraction felt more like painting a bull’s-eye on her chest than anything anyone would ever call “romantic.” This certainly wasn’t the first time she’d had to flee somewhere and return to the solitude and safety of her room because the people around her became too much.

Still… this seemed different. Weirder.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the weirder it got. Victoria giving her an answer in class would have been bizarre enough, but to have her then lie about it? Ordinarily, rubbing Max’s nose in her superiority would have been Victoria’s move, wouldn't it? And then Courtney, Dana, and Juliet all three basically asking her out within minutes of one another? Juliet wasn’t even into girls! (Well, theoretically she wasn’t. The possessive, almost clingy way she acted toward Dana had given Max pause to consider on more than one previous occasion.) No one except Warren had asked Max out since the semester started and now, three at once?

And why weren’t they more upset about the possibility of competition? Dana and Juliet had both been practically cheering over the idea of Max going out with Courtney, even though they then immediately turned around and confessed to liking her themselves just minutes later!

The only thing that made sense was that they were playing some kind of incredibly cruel joke on her. If it had just been Courtney, Max could have accepted that answer, though only with regret; she’d really started thinking she and Victoria’s right-hand fashionista were getting long. Thinking the same thing of Juliet and especially of Dana, though? That was harder and far more depressing. Dana had been a kind, gentle, reassuring presence in the dorms since the day Max had first moved in. The idea that she would have turned on Max so thoroughly felt both wrong and like a deep betrayal. It didn’t seem like something she would do. Max desperately wanted it to be something she wouldn’t do.

Maybe… maybe it wasn’t meant to be cruel? Maybe it was supposed to be a confidence boost of some kind? It was producing the exact opposite of that effect, but Max could maybe believe that. Dana and Juliet - and perhaps even Courtney, who knew - could be trying to make Max feel better, more attractive, more welcome at Blackwell by making some light-hearted passes at her? Maybe Max wasn’t even supposed to be taking them this seriously. Maybe Juliet had just been joking. “Oh, Max, you’re such a great person, you’re turning me gay!” Not actually all that funny, but it could have been an accident. Noble intentions, panic-inducing execution.

She could believe that. It was far better to believe it than to listen to the still-panicking corners of her anxiety, at least, the parts that were continuing to insist that everyone hated her and she was nothing to anyone except a useful target for ridicule.

There was a knock at her door. “Maxerator?” called Chloe’s voice. “You in there?” The handle jiggled.

Wiping away the tears that had begun to leak from her eyes at some point, Max rolled out of bed and moved over to unlock her door. When she opened it, Chloe was standing there, alone, looking deeply worried.

On the one hand, Max was getting a little tired of people looking at her with worry in their eyes. On the other, worry was almost certainly the right emotion for anyone to be directing at her right then.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself,” Chloe replied. She glanced down the hallway at something Max couldn’t see for a second before looking back at Max. Her penetrating gaze scoured Max from head to foot. “You good?”

“I… don’t know?” Max replied honestly.

Chloe chewed her lip for a second, then said, “I was thinking about taking a drive. You feel like heading out to the lighthouse with me? You can bring your camera, see if we can catch some of that good golden hour light you’re always on about.”

Frowning, Max asked, “Weren’t you and Rachel… um… busy?”

“She’ll keep,” said Chloe. “You’re important to me too.”

Max’s eyes narrowed. “Did Dana or Juliet say something to you guys?” Without waiting for an answer, Max leaned out of her doorway and, sure enough, Juliet and Dana were still hovering in Dana’s doorway, but now Rachel had also joined them and all three were looking right back at Max. As soon as Max made eye contact, Rachel straightened up and hustled the other two into Dana’s room, shutting the door swiftly behind them.

“Okay, yeah,” Chloe admitted, “Dana came to Rach’s room and said you were freaking out. But I volunteered to come check on you. We told you to come find us if you were having a bad day, remember? You are important, Max, to both of us. I wanted to make sure you were okay and so did Rach.”

For a moment, Max scowled up at her best friend, but it faded quickly. As little as she liked the sensation of being handled with kid gloves, part of her thought maybe it was a good idea right then - and no one in the world could make her feel quite as safe as Chloe did. Chloe held out an arm and, after only a tiny amount of hesitation, Max let herself step into the embrace and be pulled, with the unique kind of gentle roughness that somehow only Chloe seemed to possess, against the taller girl’s side. “I’m having a really weird day,” she said finally.

“Come on,” said Chloe, giving her a little squeeze. “I’ll drive and you can tell me all about it.”

Despite Chloe’s suggestion, they actually didn’t really talk during the trip itself. After a quick stop at Chloe’s place to refresh Chloe’s weed supply and grab a toolset from David’s garage so Max could do a little maintenance on her camera (something that usually helped calm her down), they headed up to the lighthouse on the bluff overlooking Arcadia Bay in a comfortable, almost cozy silence. It was something for which Max was exceedingly grateful. After five years of absence, driven in large part by that same set of anxieties that had nearly resulted in a breakdown today, Chloe had surely had every right to never speak to Max again, let alone offer any kind of forgiveness - and yet she had, almost without hesitation, as soon as Rachel had brokered a reunion between them.

It helped, Max suspected, that Rachel herself had seen one of Max’s panic attacks on her first day at Blackwell, the direct result of Max meeting the girl who was arguably the most attractive and inarguably the most popular girl on campus. Rachel could overwhelm just about anyone; Max she had literally sent gasping to the floor with one flirtatious comment too many. (Honestly, it wasn’t really Rachel’s fault; Max had been on edge already from a full day’s worth of social interactions among entirely new faces, all while both dreading and anticipating seeing Chloe again. Rachel just happened to be the gorgeous, blue-feather-adorned last straw.) No doubt seeing Max’s collapse had earned her a little bit of Rachel’s sympathies, which were then passed along in due time to Chloe as well. Certainly Chloe had behaved with unexpected solicitousness and care when they did finally encounter one another again.

Still, there was some real guilt about getting in the way of Chloe’s quality time with Rachel. Max was incredibly envious of both of them; there wasn’t much she could imagine wanting more than to be the girl who got to kiss Rachel unless it was to be the girl who got to kiss Chloe. But they were so blissful together, so blatantly in love, that all Max could do was wish the both of them well. The two of them breaking up would be devastating, and not only to them. However it played out, Max knew it would break her own heart too, because she cared so much about seeing both of them happy. So being here, in the way, was upsetting, even as much as she couldn’t deny that she probably needed it.

When they at last reached the lighthouse, Chloe parked the truck at the base of the bluff and they took the short hiking trail through the woods up to the lighthouse proper. It was a warm day, unusually so for early October, and for a moment Max felt a pang at the time that was already passing. In just, like, seven or eight months, something like that, Rachel was going to graduate and she and Chloe would be leaving Arcadia Bay, probably forever. This year might be the last Max ever spent with Chloe. How had she let herself waste so much time already?

There was a bench near the edge of the bluff - not close enough to be dangerous, but close enough to give a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean and the sun setting slowly down into it. It was indeed the golden hour and the light carried with it a luxuriant, honey-amber warmth. When Chloe paused to lean on the bench and look out over the water, Max couldn’t keep herself from taking a picture. It was the first thing she’d seen that might actually qualify as a worthy entry for the Everyday Heroes contest. Chloe was certainly one of Max’s heroes, and right then she looked it, shining and bronzed in the sunlight. Goddess of Punk, she could call it. Max found herself smiling at the thought.

“Have a seat, Pete,” said Chloe, dropping down onto the bench and gesturing for Max to do the same. If she’d noticed Max’s pause for a photo op, she was probably too used to such things by now to see any need to comment.

Taking the offered spot, Max turned sideways on the bench so she could face Chloe. Chloe didn’t quite reciprocate; she just twisted around so she could put her elbow on the back of the bench and lean on it. “Okay,” she said. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything.”

For the most part, Max did just that, starting with Victoria’s entirely unprecedented generosity in Photography and on through the rest of the afternoon, only really skipping over her semi-breakdown in the wake of Chloe and Rachel’s teasing in the bathroom. After all, while it had certainly contributed its piece to Max’s general sense of being overwhelmed, she didn’t want to make Chloe feel bad. Also, the truth was, it was probably the most normal thing that had happened that afternoon anyway. It wasn’t like it was the first, or second, or even the tenth time Chloe and Rachel had ganged up to reduce Max to a flustered, babbling mess. As mortifying as it was, Max also kind of liked it, if she were being honest. Even if it wasn’t quite the way she wanted it, the attention felt good. Made her feel good about herself, even if it also always came at the price of a little heartache too.

Chloe listened intently, just letting Max spill out her feelings. She’d always been good at that. It didn’t honestly take all that long - the afternoon had certainly felt longer than it really had been - and when it was done, Chloe tilted her head to one side and studied Max with a small smile on her face.

“How are you doing now?” she asked.

“Better,” Max admitted. “Just talking about it helped a lot.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” Chloe reached out and put her hands on Max’s shoulders. “Now, look me in the eye. Captain Bluebeard’s got some orders for her first mate.”

Grinning, Max obeyed, trying not to think too much about how utterly gorgeous Chloe’s sky-blue eyes were. “Aye aye, cap’n. Long Max Silver, reporting for duty.”

“I know it’s hard for you to be the center of attention,” said Chloe, “but I want you to start trying to get used to it. Today’s probably not the last time it’s going to happen.”

Max blinked. “What? Why not?”

“Because you’re you, dummy,” Chloe laughed, “and people like you. I like you. Rachel likes you. Dana and Juliet and Courtney like you. That’s not weird. It’s pretty damned ordinary, actually, seeing as you’re totally awesome. You have a big heart and sexy eyes and incredibly kissable freckles and people are going to notice.”

Her voice dropped a little, became husky. “In fact, most of us already have.”

In that moment, Max’s world ripped in two. In one part, the girl she’d loved what felt like her entire life was just inches away from her, her hands on Max’s shoulders, her eyes unmistakably on Max’s lips, illuminated by the setting sun in a way the gods must have designed specifically to make her look as beautiful as she could possibly be. In the other part, Max could practically see Rachel Amber staring at her from a spot just over Chloe’s shoulder, an expression of unspeakable pain and betrayal blazing in her hazel-gold eyes.

“Stop!” shouted Max, throwing herself backward. Chloe jerked back, stunned. “Chloe! What- what are you doing?”

“I thought…” Chloe suddenly looked horrified. “Oh shit, Max, I thought- I thought you wanted to- oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Not me!” Max cried, cutting her off. “Rachel! You have a girlfriend! You can’t just go around kissing whoever you want! You have- you can’t cheat on her!”

Chloe’s mouth hung open. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But Max…” she said, shaking her head, “Rachel wouldn’t mind. Not when it’s you.”

“What?”

“I told you,” Chloe said, still seeming not to understand Max’s outburst. “She likes you too.”

Max stared at her. “Rachel?” she repeated blankly. “She… what?”

“Rachel likes you too. Pretty sure she’s gonna ask you out when we get back.”

Max spent about ten seconds trying to process that and then did the only thing that seemed to make any sense at all. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she passed right the fuck out.

Chapter Text

She wasn’t out very long, though still long enough to have a brief, deeply unpleasant nightmare about running through the woods in a storm, calling for Chloe and only hearing laughter answering her back. When her eyes fluttered open again, though, the sunlight still held the honeyed luster of the golden hour, and Chloe was bending over her, looking just a hair short of terrified. “Max!” she cried. “Max! Are you okay?”

Shaking her head to clear it, Max sat up slowly. She’d stayed on the bench when she passed out, apparently, or Chloe had moved her back up onto it. Chloe was kneeling next to it; she’d been shaking Max’s shoulders, but she let go and scooted back a little as Max levered herself upright.

“I’m… I’m okay,” Max mumbled. “Sorry, I didn’t… I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” Chloe scowled. “I should have known better than to say anything when you were already on edge like that. I’m hella sorry, Max, seriously.”

“It’s… it’s fine,” Max reassured her. She wasn’t entirely sure it was fine, actually, but she really hated seeing that expression on Chloe’s face. Anything to make her stop looking so sad and angry with herself. “I’m the one who’s so oversensitive that just the idea of…” She paused, still having trouble putting the concept into words. “...of people liking me is enough to make me pass out.”

“Max,” Chloe said chidingly, and weirdly, the fact that Chloe’s attention was back on Max’s foibles rather than her own made Max feel noticeably better, “you have an anxiety disorder. That’s nothing to be ashamed of and it doesn’t make you ‘oversensitive.’ I’m the asshole who wasn’t thinking about you and what you needed right then. You didn’t do a thing wrong, you hear me?”

Smiling a little and not needing to force it this time, Max looked up at Chloe for a second before looking away again. “Yes, Captain,” she agreed, and Chloe’s grin made the whole thing worthwhile.

“Good. Tell you what. I know you said you were worried about me breaking Rachel’s trust. I promise you, she’s not gonna be mad about what happened - except maybe for me pushing you to the point of passing out - but if you want to hear it from her directly, we can go back to the school and you can talk to her. How’s that sound?”

“Yeah, okay,” said Max, but then almost immediately she continued, “no, wait.” Chloe squinted at her. Max decided not to care for a second. “You’re seriously telling me that none of this seems weird to you at all?”

“The Victoria thing definitely sounds weird,” Chloe said at once, “but the rest of it…? No, not really. I’m telling you, Max, you’re selling yourself short here, like you always do.”

“No, no, don’t- I mean, forget about me for a second,” Max waved her hand. “Leave me out of this. Just think: how often does one girl get…” she paused, trying to find the right word, “uh, get hit on by, um… oh, Dog, Stella probably counts too, doesn’t she? Okay. How often does one girl get hit on by, like, six other girls in one day, including at least one girl who says she’s straight but is willing to make an exception just this once?”

“I mean, that’s probably every day for Rachel,” Chloe drawled, but her brow furrowed all the same. Max wanted to cheer. She was getting through!

“Look, no matter what you think of me,” she said dryly, “I am not Rachel. And that’s not even all the weirdness. Because even if it is true for Rachel, would you really be okay with it if she said yes to all of them?”

“...No, I wouldn’t.”

“So why doesn’t it bother you that I’ve suddenly got all these potential dates lined up? If you… if you really want to, um, kiss me?” God that last sentence was so hard to say out loud. Max couldn’t help feeling like Chloe was going to start laughing at her at any second. If it had been anyone else but Chloe, she would never have been able to get the words out at all. But, well, it was Chloe, and fear of mockery and rejection notwithstanding, Max could never feel unsafe around Chloe Price.

Chloe smiled a little, and it was smaller than before but somehow infinitely more fond, more affectionate, and more caring. “Because it would make you happy,” she explained. “Rachel doesn’t need to know how many people love her. Trust me, she already knows.” Chloe’s smirk was sardonic but not unamused. It quickly shifted back to that softer look of a moment before, however. “You don’t, though, and you should. So no, it doesn’t bother me. I’d be thrilled for you to be getting kissed by everyone on the planet if it meant you knew how special you are.”

Well, that certainly managed to utterly derail Max’s train of thought.

She… really needed to get back to Blackwell and at least talk to Rachel before she did something very… foolish.

For a second they just looked at one another, Max’s sense of folly rising faster by the second as she looked at Chloe’s gorgeous eyes, muscled arms, beautifully-tattooed skin, and incredibly inviting mouth, but then Max tore her gaze away, so that she was blinking into the dazzle of the sunset instead. “We… should get back, you’re right,” she said, her voice sounding strange and tense even in her own ears.

“Yeah,” said Chloe, and even Max’s anxiety couldn’t convince her that she was imagining the reluctance in Chloe’s voice. With a tug of her hand, Chloe had Max back on her feet, and together they began the walk down to Chloe’s truck again. Chloe didn’t let go of Max’s hand as they went, though, and Max opted not to let go either. It just felt too good to do anything else.

They drove back to Blackwell in silence, but it was a mostly comfortable one, as each would occasionally glance at the other, meet the other’s eyes, realize they’d been caught looking, and start laughing (in Chloe’s case) or giggling with embarrassment (in Max’s). It was silly, absurd, it was something out of a middle school first crush… and Max wouldn’t have traded it for anything. By the time they reached the school, Max’s nerves felt a million miles away.

They came back a little when Max saw Brooke again out on the lawn, watching them curiously. As good as she felt right then, there was still a part of her that felt the need to second-guess everything, and now she was wondering what had actually happened in that conversation with Brooke earlier. Brooke’s smile was hesitant, almost shy, but grew as she saw Max looking at her, and it produced a warm flutter in Max’s belly that seemed almost traitorous when she was holding Chloe’s hand. She’d been seconds away from kissing Chloe on the bluff just, like, five minutes earlier, and yet here she was, feeling heat and a strangely pleasant tightening of her skin when she realized Brooke’s eyes were on her.

For a moment, a surge of self-loathing went through her. Selfish. Greedy. Never satisfied. Why would she be thinking about Brooke that way with her fingers still interlaced with Chloe’s? Brooke’s smile faltered and she looked away, suddenly focused on her drone again. Max made herself look away too, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk as they headed toward the dorm. She didn’t even realize she’d let go of Chloe’s hand and stuffed her fists into the pockets of her hoodie until she heard Chloe say, “Hey, Maxipad. You okay?”

Max could only shake her head. Whatever the real answer to that question was, she had no idea how to say it.

They encountered no one else on their climb back to the girl’s floor. Music coming from Dana’s room and lights seeping around each of the closed doors suggested most of the other girls were back in their rooms, studying or hanging out, but no one was lingering in the hall this time. Chloe led them right to Rachel’s door; she knocked twice, got a “It’s open!” from Rachel somewhere on the door’s far side, and escorted Max in.

Rachel’s room was Rachel in microcosm. Max had never understood why people thought Rachel was so inscrutable, when her every facet was there on her walls and bookshelves to see. Posters of movie adaptations of great stage plays ( West Side Story with Natalie Wood , the Baz Luhrmann  Romeo + Juliet, A Streetcar Named Desire with Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando) adorned one wall, while star charts and maps of the surface of the moon faced them on the other. Her bookshelves were filled with play scripts and handbills, along with one brightly-colored series of annual astrology guides for Leo, from 2006 all the way to 2013. There was a tightly-ordered chaos to it, where every available surface seemed to have something on it - homework, notes, decorations, music and entertainment system - but nothing seemed actually out of place. Every time she entered, Max felt enveloped in Rachel’s essence the same way she felt wrapped up in Chloe’s as soon as she walked into Chloe’s bedroom. They lived as themselves so completely that it left Max a little breathless every time she crossed the threshold into their space.

Rachel herself was sitting on her bed, an open textbook next to her and what looked like a hand-written outline for an essay in her hand, but she tossed it aside as soon as she saw who had just entered her domain. “Max!” she said, surging to her feet and snatching for Max’s hands. “How are you feeling?”

“Easy, Rach,” Chloe cautioned. “She’s still a little on edge, I think.” She rubbed a soothing hand in a few slow circles low on Max’s back, which only sort of helped. Her nerves were calmed by it, but other… tensions… arose in their place.

Rachel nodded acknowledgement, taking a step back to give Max a little room to breathe. “Yeah, of course. What do you need, Max?”

“I… have absolutely no idea,” Max admitted. “Can we… sit?”

“Oh, yeah! One moment, if you please.” Rachel hurriedly gathered up her homework and gestured for Max to sit on the bed. Max couldn’t help but notice that, even moving quickly and her focus on Max, that Rachel actually reshelved the textbook in an open gap in her bookcase and tucked the outline into a folder rather than just tossing it onto the desk. In seconds, though, she was curling up on the bed too, leaning against the wall, her legs tucked under her. She pulled Chloe down with her so she could slip an arm around Chloe’s waist.

Hazel eyes peered deeply into Max’s blue. “What happened?”asked Rachel, gentle but insistent. “I’ve never seen Dana so upset in quite that way before.”

Max opened her mouth, then looked helplessly at Chloe. She felt so ridiculous saying it out loud, even now that she was maybe starting to accept the reality of it.

“Too many girls, too little time,” Chloe snickered.

“That’s not- I didn’t- Chloe!” Max protested, making Chloe laugh. Her cheeks flaming, Max turned to Rachel. “Dana and Juliet and Courtney and I think Stella all asked me out or sort of said they were planning to in the space of about twenty minutes! And it was weird!”

“I… see,” said Rachel slowly. She looked at her girlfriend, a heavy glance that made Chloe sober quickly, before turning back to Max. “So you needed space. And Chloe helped you get it?”

“Yeah,” Max nodded. “But then…”

“It’s okay, Max,” Chloe said. “I told you.”

It took more effort. Chloe’s confidence notwithstanding, even sitting there right next to Rachel, Max couldn’t help but feel she was about to really hurt Rachel, break Chloe’s heart, and badly damage or even end the relationship between the two girls Max thought she might most care about of anyone in the world. “Then Chloe… said she wanted to go out with me too. And almost kissed me. And then she said… she said that you…” And that was the point at which Max’s nerve failed her entirely.

But Rachel’s mouth curved into a small smile as she said, “That I wanted that as well. Including the kisses.” She elbowed Chloe. “You were supposed to wait until we could talk to her together, though, you horndog.”

“I know!” Chloe said, squeezing her eyes shut in mock despair. “But she’s just… so… darn… kissable!”

“Don’t I know it,” Rachel chuckled. Her eyes kept searching Max’s face. “Are you okay now?”

Max put her face in her hands. “I… don’t know. I feel like I missed the White Rabbit and just tripped down the hole anyway, without any warning.”

“Only in Wonderland would people think you’re attractive?” Rachel’s voice held a sardonic edge. “It would take a magic mushroom for somebody to want to kiss you?”

Only spreading her fingers enough to let her peer through them, Max said, “It’s not just that. It’s all… so sudden. So out of nowhere. And…” Now she did uncover her face again, so she could spread her hands out and try to encompass the sheer absurdity of it all. “...and nobody seems upset that anybody else might also be asking me out! You!” She stabbed a finger at Rachel. “Courtney wants to dress me up and then show me off as her date at the Vortex Club party on Thursday. Are you okay with that?”

“Oooh, that sounds fun!” Rachel’s eyes sparked with excitement. “Courtney’s makeovers are the best in the business. You’ll be knocking them dead for sure!”

“But you just said you want to ask me out! You don’t care if Courtney and I go back to her place after the party and… and… and fuck on every horizontal surface in the apartment?” Max had no idea where Courtney lived, other than off campus somewhere, but that wasn’t really the point.

“You’d rather we were jealous?” Rachel blinked. “You didn’t strike me as the ‘make ‘em fight over me’ type, Max.”

“No! God no. That sounds… ugh, horrible.” Max shook her head. “But that’s how normal people operate, isn’t it? Isn’t that how the world usually works? You get asked out by one person and everyone else takes that as their cue to not ask you out?”

Rachel and Chloe exchanged looks, and again, Max saw traces of a frown on their expressions. “Yes!” she said, pointing. “You see it, I can tell! You hear me say it and it does sound weird!”

“Maybe… a little,” Rachel admitted.

Chloe nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s like, I know it isn’t an issue because it’s you, but I know it would be an issue if it were anybody else, and I don’t know quite how to say what the difference is.”

“It’s like…” Rachel scowled, clearly trying to articulate something that didn’t want to be articulated. “I know you being with someone else isn’t an obstacle for you to be with me or Chloe, but I can’t… I can’t find the words to explain why.” She frowned at Max. “Are we wrong? Are you going to sleep with Courtney and then not want to be with us?”

“...No,” Max admitted. “But I feel like I should. Like that makes me some kind of… shallow cad player person.”

Chloe snorted again. Rachel giggled. “Oh yeah,” Rachel nodded with faux solemnity, “you are definitely a shallow cad player. Person.” She shook her head, then disentangled herself from her girlfriend enough to crawl over the bed and snuggle into Max’s side. She gestured for Chloe to do the same and, in moments, Max was sandwiched between them, their arms wrapped around her, their legs tangled up with hers on the bed, and it was simultaneously the most comforting and most arousing thing she had ever experienced. She felt safe. She felt cared for. She felt like she was about to beg them to strip her naked and do literally whatever they wanted to her.

“Max,” said Rachel softly, her breath tickling Max’s ear in a way that made Max’s thighs clench together, “I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy and I want to see you happy with other people. I know Chloe feels the same.”

“I do,” Chloe nodded, her forehead pressed against Max’s temple. “Whatever makes you smile is hella good with me, as long as I get to be a part of it.”

“I admit, until Dana told us what she and Juliet had said, it hadn’t occurred to me that my feelings would extend beyond Chloe in that way, but it doesn’t seem that strange to me that they do,” Rachel continued. “I feel like you have a lot of love inside you, Max Caulfield, and there’s something inside me that says you won’t be truly happy unless you can share all of it.” She moved a little, shifting her position so she could look Max in the eye. “And besides. Are you planning to start making out with us and then try to break us up?”

“What?” Max stiffened, almost pulling away. “No! Absolutely not! I could never-”

“Exactly,” said Chloe, tightening her grip so Max couldn’t escape. “You feel the same way about us. Rach and I both figured out already that how we felt about you didn’t change how we feel about each other. And we both knew you’d get that us wanting you didn’t mean we were willing to stop wanting one another. You being a part of us will just add to what we’ve got, it won’t replace it.”

“It’s the same with Courtney or Dana or anybody else,” Rachel shrugged. “Love stacked on top of love. As much as you can handle.”

Right at this moment, Max’s confidence in her ability to handle anything was definitely at low ebb.

“Max,” said Rachel, brushing a strand of hair back from Max’s face, “do you want to go out with us? With me and with Chloe and with me and Chloe together?”

“I… I do,” Max said, hardly able to form the words. Simultaneous smiles began to bloom on Chloe and Rachel’s faces. “But…” The smiles froze. “I don’t… I still don’t understand what’s happening. I need… I need to talk to Courtney and try to understand what she wants and whether this - you two and me - will change her mind. And Dana and Juliet… there’s too much- too much I can’t wrap my head around yet. I still feel like something is… I don’t know if ‘wrong’ is the right word, but strange, at least. Weird. It makes me… I can’t trust anything like this. I can’t trust myself and…”

“You can’t trust us,” Rachel finished for her. There was hurt in her eyes, but also understanding. She slowly eased back from Max and Chloe, recognizing a cue when she saw one, followed suit. “I get it. You need something to grab hold of so it makes sense.”

“Yes!” Max almost sobbed with the relief of being understood. “I need it to make some kind of sense so I’m not just waiting for the floor to drop out from under me.” She looked down at her hands. “I spend too much time like that as it is.”

“No worries, Maxie,” Rachel smiled, caressing Max’s cheek once quickly before pulling back. She met Chloe’s eyes, who nodded. “We understand entirely. Tell you what. Why don’t you go get cleaned up a little. Change clothes if you want, get a shower if it would help, at the very least splash some water on your face so you feel a little more sharp and coherent, okay?” Max nodded. A shower would probably really help, actually. “In the meantime, Chloe and I will see what we can do about getting you some answers.”

“That- that sounds like a good idea.” Max slowly eased herself off the bed, ignoring the purely hormonal part of her that was crying out at not already having been turned into Rachel and Chloe’s erotic plaything. “I’ll… I’ll come find you in a bit?”

“Sounds good,” Rachel smiled.

Chloe did too, but there was a little more weight to it. “And Max?” she added, making Max turn back around. “Weird or not, we’re not going anywhere. When you’re ready, we’ll be here - and the floor’s never going to drop out from under you when you’re with us. After what we’ve been through, I know that down to my bones.”

Her eyes shone with sincerity, confidence, and something that Max dared not name but wanted so badly she could taste the word on her lips. “I know,” she said instead. “Down to my bones too.” Chloe nodded, satisfied, and Max slipped out, feeling warm and somehow protected, just because of the look Chloe had given her.

She went back to her own room, grabbed her shower caddy and towel, stripped down to her shirt and boyshorts, and headed back out to the showers. There was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot more sweat on her than usual, and getting the feel of it off her skin helped more than Max had realized. She really did feel refreshed.

There was also an ache between her legs that she was strongly tempted to do something about, what with the opportunity of the shower and all, but she resisted the urge. There was something deliciously satisfying about wanting like this and being wanted at the same time, to feel unfulfilled but also revel in the slowly-building certainty of fulfillment soon to come. (Er, so to speak.) Besides, at this point, she was so worked up and so confused that she had no idea whatsoever who or what her libido might conjure up in the middle of the act, and Max did not want this to be the way she found out she had a moose fetish or something.

Once she was cleaned off and felt more herself, she went back to her room and got dressed. There was no one in the hallway when she passed through, but she heard voices - quite a lot of them, actually - coming from the end of the corridor, where the stairwell and the TV Lounge were. Curious, when Max stepped back out of her room again, this time having somewhat boldly chosen to wear some of Rachel’s clothes that she thought she looked good in and that Rachel had been trying to get her to wear for weeks now, she turned her steps toward the stairwell herself, wondering what was going on.

Almost the entire floor, it seemed, had squeezed itself into the TV Lounge. Brooke, Kate, Juliet, Taylor, Stella, Dana, Rachel and Chloe were all in there. Only Victoria was missing. When Max stuck her head in, every girl there turned to look and smile at her and, with an effort of will Max honestly hadn’t thought herself capable of, she made herself smile back. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Floor meeting,” Dana explained. “Rachel called it.” She pointed. Everyone else was squeezed onto one of the two loveseats in the room or just sitting on the floor, where a variety of cushions - Max thought they might be Stella’s, she liked sitting on the floor - had been scattered around. The room’s one overstuffed armchair was empty, though, and it was the target of Dana’s pointing finger. “That’s for you,” Dana said.

“What? Why?” Max blinked. Dana didn’t answer, though, just wriggled off the couch where she was wedged in next to Juliet and pulled Max over to the chair.

“Stella called Alyssa and Taylor called Courtney; they’re on their way and should be here in just a few minutes.”

“Where’s Victoria?”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Being dramatic, as always. Don’t worry about her. She makes her own choices.” She got Max settled in the chair and then returned to her spot on the couch.

A few minutes went by while they waited for the last arrivals. Max, isolated from the rest of the room somewhat by her seating position, just looked around at the way everyone else was interacting with one another. Kate and Stella were both on the floor, having a quiet but animated discussion about something Max couldn’t make out; Rachel and Chloe were perched on one loveseat, sharing it with Taylor, while Dana, Juliet, and Brooke occupied the second, practically piled on top of one another. No one seemed to be paying Max too much specific attention, but all of them occasionally glanced her way and smiled. At least it didn’t feel quite so overwhelming as it had earlier in the main building hallway.

Finally Courtney and Alyssa arrived, the former basically occupying Taylor’s lap without a shred of self-consciousness and the latter taking Brooke’s place on the loveseat. Brooke got up to lean against the wall, something she often seemed more comfortable doing than she did sitting down anyway. Once they were settled, Rachel peeled herself off of Chloe and got to her feet as well, moving to stand in the middle of the room. The talking quieted and everyone turned to look at her.

“I think this is everyone who’s coming,” Rachel announced, “so I hereby call this meeting of the girls’ dorm second floor to order. We only have one item on the agenda this evening.” She took a step back and gestured toward Max.

“Max Caulfield. Who wants to date her?”

Chapter Text

For a very brief moment, no one moved. Then Rachel raised her own hand, followed immediately by Chloe, and then, one by one, other hands went up as well. Stella’s, almost as quickly as Chloe’s, and Courtney’s, right behind her, a look of smug satisfaction on her face as she did. Then Dana and Juliet in tandem, then Alyssa, her eyes sharp and speculative, then, with much more hesitation, Taylor’s. Finally, as though confessing great secrets, first Kate’s and then Brooke’s hands rose as well, until literally the entire room had their hands raised except for Max.

“All of you?!” Max burst out, and a gale of laughter swept through them.

“I got there first!” Courtney sang out, producing another round of chuckles, until Stella said, “Actually, I think I did, but tragically, I was shot down.” That earned her a chorus of sympathetic aww noises.

“I didn’t- I didn’t know you were serious!” Max protested, still baffled by her own eyes.

Stella, for her part, looked down for a second, then back up, so she was eyeing Max over the top of her glasses. She bit her lip, then slowly climbed to her feet and, hips swaying, moved across the room to where Max was sitting. (Rachel, Dana, and Alyssa all let out shouts of approval, while Chloe cut loose with a wolf whistle.) She put one hand on either armrest, then leaned in, very, very close to Max’s face. “Max,” she said, her voice low but still carrying to the rest of the room, “I have never been more serious about anything in my life.”

This close, the warm brown of Stella’s eyes, practically glowing behind her glasses, seemed to be all Max could see. A sudden fit of mad courage caught Max up and she lunged forward to press a quick, light kiss onto Stella’s lips. “My apology. For- for not realizing before,” she explained, breathless. Stella’s lips curled up into a grin, but there was a faint rush of color into her cheeks too as she straightened up and headed back to her seat. Applause greeted her and she collected several high-fives before she sat back down.

(Max was too busy reeling in the knowledge that she’d just had what could really only be quantified as her second kiss ever.)

“Okay then,” Rachel said, “next question. Now, to be clear, I’m not speaking for Max here and nobody is actually committing to anything, but for the purposes of this question only, I’d like you to all assume that Max is going to be dating us all simultaneously. Not simultaneous dates, just to be clear, simultaneous relationships. Raise your hand if you’re good with that.”

And everyone’s hands went up again. There wasn’t even really any hesitation this time. Max felt her jaw drop open slightly, even though it was what she’d more than half expected. She saw too that Rachel and Chloe exchanged looks that, even though their hands were raised, looked pretty serious. It must have been because they realized the weirdness too, Max thought, and she became sure of it when Rachel’s eyes moved to her for a second and she gave a very slight but meaningful nod.

The moment was broken, though, when Stella said, “Actually, I might have a problem with it. Well, more like a qualification, really.” Everyone’s hands went down and the rest of the room turned to look at her. She got to her feet and turned around to face the group. Max couldn’t help a twinge of respect and attraction when she saw how calmly Stella handled the attention.

“I know this might seem like me jumping the gun a little, but honestly, this is the right time for this topic to come up. I doubt most of you are thinking yet about the specific logistics of sex with Max.” Stella half-shrugged. “Call me ‘mission-oriented’ if you want, but I do have a particular goal in mind with Max, assuming she’s interested in going there with me. But whether you’re thinking about it now or it wouldn’t come up yet for weeks or months, it’s probably going to be an issue at some point for most of us. And when we’re talking about taking a sexual partner who might have as many as nine others at the same time, I personally need to know that we’re all doing what we can to be safe.”

There was an awkward silence. Max thought so much of her blood must be rushing to her cheeks that her head might explode. A few of the other girls - Rachel, Dana, and Taylor most visibly - were nodding, though, and Max was just barely holding onto enough sanity to follow their lead.

“...What would you need for that?” she made herself ask. Stella focused her gaze on Max and the heat there nearly made Max’s skin catch fire. That was the moment when the implications of having asked that - of specifically being the person who asked that in this situation - hit her. For a second, the room got a little swimmy.

“I would propose we all agree to get tested before any sex happens, including you,” Stella said, calm voice somewhat at odds with the desire in her eyes. “We turn those tests over to you. You can show us yours when the moment is right and you’ll know you’ve seen our results as well. If anybody takes a new partner, same deal. I’m willing to trust you to… I guess ‘enforce’ is the right word, even if it sounds a little fascist… I’m willing to trust you to make sure we’re all abiding by these rules.” Stella turned back to everyone else. “If you don’t want to mark ‘Max and I have sex for the first time’ on your calendars two weeks in advance like it’s an oil change you need to take care of, I recommend just getting tested now, or at least as soon as possible. Just get it done, get it out of the way, and then you can just let it happen when it happens.”

Rachel stepped forward again. “Awkward topic, I know, but I think Stella’s got a point. Can we all agree to that?”

“Even… even if we haven’t ever had sex?” Kate asked, her voice shaking a little.

Rachel’s look was sympathetic. “I don’t think anybody here would ever accuse you of anything,” she said gently, “but there are more ways to transmit STIs and STDs than just sex. An error made at a blood donation drive. A transfusion you received on vacation overseas. You could even have gotten it from something your parents did. I don’t think any of those are likely. I have every confidence that your tests will come back squeaky clean. But this way, we’ll all know.”

“Or you can just not have sex with Max,” Stella pointed out. “You are the president of the Abstinence Club, after all.” She didn’t say it with any harshness, but Kate still flinched.

“Kate’s beliefs are more complicated than that,” Max pointed out sharply. Stella raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I’m not judging. Just pointing it out. Nobody said fulfilling and loving partnerships aren’t possible for people who aren’t sleeping together.”

Kate looked at her lap. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, but the room was small so it still managed to carry to the rest of the group. “I agree that I won’t have sex with Max without being tested first,” she said, not raising her eyes.

That seemed to settle it for everyone. If the Christian abstinent wasn’t going to argue with Stella’s qualifier, nobody else was going to either.

“Okay. Last thing, then,” said Rachel. “We all know our girl’s not hard to overwhelm and she’s already had a couple of shocks today. Please don’t all rush her at once to ask her out, okay? Give her a little space.”

“Actually,” said Max, getting to her feet and trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. Weirdly, it felt easier to say this all at once than it would be individually. “Nobody has to ask me. I would be super lucky to go out with any single one of you, let alone all of you. If… if you want to go out with me, the only questions would be when and where. I’m going to say yes.”

That produced bright smiles, even from Kate, who finally looked up, blushing furiously. Dana clapped excitedly, while Alyssa’s quiet smirk took on a conniving look. She leaned over to murmur into Brooke’s ear. Juliet tapped her pencil against her lips thoughtfully, while Taylor looked almost panicked. The three girls Max had already sort of said yes to all wore some version of a satisfied grin, Chloe’s in particular having a rather chaotic energy to it. Stella mouthed, Lunch tomorrow still? and Max nodded back quickly.

“Before everybody goes, though, I do have a few questions of my own,” Max went on, and everyone quieted back down again. “If you don’t mind. Like Rachel said, it’s been a weird day for me. I’m not… really used to this kind of attention, let alone from so many people at once.”

“Get used to it, hot stuff!” Dana called, laughing.

“It’s a work in progress, I promise,” replied Max, blushing again but managing to laugh too. “But I just wanted to ask… um, how many of you decided to ask me out just today?”

Almost everyone’s hands went up. Only Chloe’s stayed down. Max fought not to goggle at the implications of that. “Ohhh… kay. Um, how many of you had thought about it before today?”

This time, it was about half the room. Dana, Rachel, Chloe, and Stella raised their hands almost at once. Then a couple of moments went by before Kate’s went up as well. She licked her lips. “Have you had a thought hit you so clearly that it felt new, but the moment you paid any attention to it you realized you’d been thinking it for a while in the quiet part at the back of your mind?”

Stella reached down and squeezed Kate’s hand. “Same for me, actually.”

Max let Kate have another moment before asking her last question. “Final one, then. How many of you probably wouldn’t ever really want to date another girl except for me?”

Alyssa, Juliet, and Brooke raised their hands immediately. Taylor’s was last, and slower; she was chewing on her lip. Chloe chuckled. “Knew it was kinda gay in here. Steph’s fault, I’m sure of it.” That got several people to chuckle. Max made a note to ask who the heck Steph was later.

Rachel tossed Max a look. “Anything else?” Max shook her head. “Okay then, everyone, thank you for your time, and good luck on your dates!” More laughter, then people started getting to their feet. Max took the opportunity to grab for Kate’s hand.

“Hey,” she said quietly. Kate looked at her, eyes shining, and for a second she forgot what she was going to say. Then it came back and she shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “That was a little rougher on you than on everybody else, I think. Are you okay?”

Kate’s smile was warm and bright. “This is why everyone wants to date you,” she said, reaching up to stroke Max’s cheek for a moment. “No matter what happens from all of this, I want you to know I’ll never forget how welcome and cared for you’ve made me, from the moment you arrived.” Stepping back to a more normal conversation distance, she nodded. “It was a little difficult, but… I think it was good. Honestly, being here with everyone else helped, I think. I didn’t feel like nearly so much of a…” She swallowed. “...Of a freak.”

“You’re not!” Max started to protest, but Kate shook her head firmly.

“I know you don’t think so. I guess most of the girls here don’t. But it’s different for me. The way I was raised, the beliefs my family hold… The realization I had this morning about how I feel for you, how I’ve felt for you for weeks now, and really how I think I’ve been for years without ever accepting it… Everything I’ve ever been taught says that it’s wrong, it’s sinful, and if I give into it, I will go to Hell. But I just… I can’t make myself believe it. It doesn’t feel wrong. I know what sin feels like, I’m no saint and I’ve done bad things, and this… It isn’t that. So until it does feel like that, I’m going to trust my heart, and my heart says it will be safe and treasured if I give it to you.”

Max discovered she had absolutely no words to say to that. Kate’s smile became a little devilish. “You’re a romantic, Max Caulfield,” she grinned. “Now I know your weakness. You’ll never be safe from me now.”

“I… don’t think I want to be,” Max said before her brain could stop it. Kate smiled wider, touched Max’s cheek again, and headed for the door. Rachel and Chloe watched her go, both grinning like maniacs.

“You are gonna rock Church Girl’s entire world,” Chloe said once everyone else was gone.

Rachel looked speculative. “I’m not so sure it won’t be the other way around,” she mused, and Max could only nod.

“You… might be right about that.” She rubbed her face for a second. “So… what do you think?”

The grins faded. The other two girls exchanged looks. “Yeah,” Rachel said after a moment. “You’re absolutely right. Something weird is happening.”

“Hella weird,” Chloe agreed. “I don’t think I would have noticed if you hadn’t said something and, now that I’ve realized that, that seems weird too. I’m pretty sure no one else noticed, even with the same evidence staring us all in the face.”

“Ten different girls with ten different attitudes on monogamy and fidelity and not a single one of us blinked at sharing you,” Rachel summarized. “And it still feels like it’s perfectly normal, even though rationally I can tell it isn’t. Brooke’s whole issue with you and Warren has been jealousy, Juliet dumped Zach over sexting with Victoria, there’s no way Kate’s upbringing would have ever prepared her for this, and…. Yeah. Nothing.”

“Especially after Stella’s, what did she call it, her… qualification?” Chloe put in. “You want to talk about things Kate shouldn’t have been okay with? Kate was worried about herself but the president of the Abstinence Club didn’t have a single fucking thing to say about all the rest of us potentially sleeping with you. I don’t think it even crossed her mind.”

“And the thing about the timing, too,” Max added, and the other two both frowned at her.

“What about the timing?”

Max’s brow wrinkled. “You didn’t catch the timing?” They both shook their heads. “Everyone but Chloe said they’d decided to ask me out today. Nine different girls, all independently saying, ‘today’s the day!’ about asking me out?”

“That’s not really what happened though,” Rachel objected. “Chloe and I have been talking about this off and on for a couple weeks now. The fact that-”

“No,” Max cut her off, and the surprise of Max actually interrupting her probably had more to do with why Rachel stopped talking than the interruption itself. “You’re rationalizing again, just like you were doing with sharing me. Think.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes at Max, but she also started thinking. Max could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. In some ways, Max was incredibly lucky that these two women were literally the two smartest people Max had personally ever met. She wasn’t sure if she’d have had a chance to convince everyone else.

And then… “Shit,” Rachel swore. “You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense. I know why I decided to today and I’m sure every single one of the others has a reason too and it still doesn’t make sense that it would all happen today.”

“Actually,” Chloe put in, eyeing Rachel curiously, “what did change? I admit I was wondering.” And that by itself was interesting, Max thought. Why would Chloe notice that this was weird when Rachel didn’t? Was it because she’d already decided to ask Max out?

To Max’s surprise, Rachel moved closer to Chloe, sliding her arm around Chloe’s waist and leaning her head against the taller girl’s chest. She was still mostly facing Max but her eyes weren’t really focused on anything. “I stopped being scared,” she murmured.

“Scared of what?” Max asked. Chloe was frowning in a way that made Max think she guessed the answer and didn’t like it.

“Chloe and I,” Rachel began, “we’re good now and we’ve been good for a while, but… it wasn’t always like that for us. When we first got together… I wanted her. God, I wanted her so much that it terrified me. I hate being reliant on other people, I hate being vulnerable, and Chloe…”

“She makes you want to let her take care of you,” Max put in softly, and Rachel grinned, suddenly looking at Max again.

“Yeah. Of course you get it. That’s exactly it. Everything about her made me want to open up and expose my heart and I… I fought it. As hard as I could. And even though I lost that fight eventually and my life has been infinitely better for it since… I put us through so much hell on the way. So much more than Chloe should have ever had to put up with.”

Chloe shook her head, “Rach, this is all ancient history,” but Rachel wasn’t having it.

“It’s not. I feel shitty about it every day and I will feel shitty about it every day for the rest of my life because I will never, ever allow myself to take you for granted again. Never.” She looked at Max. “That’s part of why I encouraged her to forgive you when you came back. Because I know how devastating losing Chloe can be and I could see all the things I was scared of in you. I thought… I thought if Chloe could forgive you then there was probably hope for me too.”

Tightening her arms around Rachel, Chloe turned her face away a little. It did nothing to hide the wetness shining in her eyes. “Fuck, Rach. You know I’m never going to leave you. You know I’ll always forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Rachel said firmly, “but that’s an argument for another time. The point is… Max, Chloe was mad at you for like thirty minutes and then has spent every minute after that wanting to kiss you. But you know how loyal she is. She would never do anything about it on her own.” Max nodded. That had been why she’d been completely shocked at the lighthouse earlier. “But I could see it and I could see what wanting you was doing to her. So I called her out on it, got her to admit it, and then told her I was crushing on you pretty hard too. We talked about it for a while and eventually she decided she would go for it, when the time was right, when she thought you were ready and might go for it. She told me I should too, but I said I didn’t want to.

“It was a lie.” Rachel squeezed her eyes shut. “I just… I was too scared that dating you would take me back to those places I was in before, where I was just stringing Chloe along. I didn’t think I could handle nonmonogamy, and I thought maybe I didn’t deserve to.”

“But then you changed your mind today,” Max finished. “Because something happened to make everyone in the dorm suddenly okay with… with nonmonogamy. At least when I’m involved.” She said the word awkwardly, never having used it before; she’d never even heard it until Rachel said it, but the meaning seemed clear enough.

“Yeah,” Rachel nodded. “I think that must be it.” She shook her head. “Which is weird to say and weirder to think but…” She let out a breath. “I think I’m grateful for it. Not only for the chance to date you, which I really am excited about and looking forward to, but because all that fear before… It sucked. And it probably wasn’t actually good for me and Chloe.”

Blinking a few times, Max said, surprised, “So you agree that something’s messing with your head, but you’re… okay with it?”

“I mean, I guess I probably would be anyway,” Rachel shrugged, “but yeah. Look, Max, whatever’s happening here, it’s obviously affecting me and Chloe too. We might be aware of it now but that doesn’t mean that the knowing has changed anything for us. I still just feel excited and happy that you’ve got a room full of girls who get to kiss you and that Chloe and I are going to be among them.”

Chloe nodded. “I mean, yeah. What I said before at the lighthouse still feels true. You should get to have the whole world kiss you. You’re that awesome and maybe, just maybe, all that hot kissage would get you to realize it.”

“Right,” Rachel said. “So you’re the only one who can really be objective here. Does it seem like it’s hurting us? Is it dangerous?”

Max had to sit back down to think about that. “I… I admit I don’t see how,” she said finally. “Maybe if someone really liked feeling jealous, but that seems… weird and maybe not okay. But otherwise… As long as I’m not hurting any of you, I guess it’s not.” Max’s eyes went wide at a sudden thought. “But what if I do hurt you? Are you just going to let me?”

“Oh hell no,” Rachel said firmly. “Max, you’re sweet and adorable and I might well be in danger of falling in love with you by the end of the week, but if you break my heart - or worse, Chloe’s - then we’re done. I promise you that.”

She sounded serious and vaguely threatening. Max wondered what was wrong with her that she found serious, vaguely-threatening Rachel so intensely sexy.

“I don’t think you’re gonna do that,” Chloe admitted, “but…” She let out a breath. “Look, I’m not saying this because I’m holding it over you, Mad Max, I swear. But I do remember what happened after Dad died. If you do something like that again… I don’t know if I could forgive you a second time.”

“I won’t,” Max rushed to say, her heart suddenly pounding. “I swear to god, Chloe, I won’t. Never again. I’m not wasting the chance you gave me.”

“I know,” Chloe smiled, and she let go of Rachel enough to ruffle Max’s hair. “I know. I mean that. All I’m saying is, I can imagine something like that and I know what I’d do, so I don’t think whatever’s going on is, like, forcing anybody to want to be with you or stay with you.”

“Oh… okay,” Max breathed.

Rachel disentangled herself from Chloe and moved over to the chair where Max was seated, crouching down so they were eye-level with one another. “Hey.” She gestured behind her for Chloe to follow, though she kept her eyes forward. “Did you get your questions answered? I noticed that you decided things were settled enough you were willing to agree to date us all.”

“You were all right here in front of me,” Max pointed out, giving Rachel a sharp look. “How was I supposed to look ten amazing girls in the eye when they’ve all said they like me and just blow them off?”

“Easy,” Rachel grinned. Chloe knelt down next to her. “You weren’t.” And she leaned in, took Max’s face in both her hands, and pressed a firm, sweet kiss onto Max’s lips. It didn’t linger, but as soon as she was done, Rachel scooted to the side so that Chloe could do the same thing. Chloe did take a little more time, teasing at Max’s mouth with her tongue until Max moaned. Only then did Chloe draw back, looking very pleased with herself. Rachel’s eyes were large and dark and Max did not think she was put off by watching her girlfriend… her girlfriends?... make out a little.

Indeed, her voice was warm and low as she said, “We’re dating now. That means kiss privileges.” Max could only nod. She probably would have nodded at anything.

“Do you…” she found herself asking. “Do you want to… We could go to your room…”

Her meaning was apparently not lost on the other two. “Oh, fuck, Max,” Rachel groaned. “You would not believe how much we want to, but… We had a deal with Stella, remember?”

Oh. Right. Suddenly Max hated Stella a little. (But then, as soon as she got the tests done, she could get Stella to make it up to her…)

“Besides,” Chloe said, kissing her again and making her eyes flutter shut, “you just had your first kiss tonight. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe you want to slow down just a little.”

Her first…?

Max’s eyes snapped open.

Chapter Text

It was raining the next day, which was entirely inconvenient for Max’s sudden and intense desire to go walking in the woods again.

She hadn’t really explained her potential revelation to anyone, not even Rachel and Chloe; accepting the proposition that Max met the sexiest woman on the planet in the woods and said sexiest woman on the planet cast a spell on her with a kiss felt like too much to ask, even from them. Indeed, Max was still struggling to buy into her own idea in a lot of ways as well, but she couldn’t deny the sense of otherworldliness that had clung to Darach like a wizard’s cloak throughout their encounter. Given all the other otherworldly things that had come after…

…She just really needed to take a walk in the woods again, that was all.

The rest of the previous evening had proceeded much more normally than the earlier parts had, at least once you adjusted for what Max’s new “normal” was. There had been quite a bit of additional making out in the lounge before Max had, very regretfully, called a halt to the proceedings, knowing she had to do so before her resolve about sticking to Stella’s plan crumbled entirely. Chloe and Rachel, despite agreeing at once, showed equal reluctance to stop or even slow down all that much and Max didn’t work too hard not to enjoy the ego boost.

Instead they’d headed to the cafeteria for dinner and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a fair percentage of the rest of the dorm joined them. The vibe was less of “orgy” and more “slumber party,” though, with teasing, laughter, an absurd number of innuendos and bad puns, and general high spirits on just about every side. It seemed unreal that all these people - wonderful, smart, funny, and yes, terribly attractive - would be paying attention to someone as plain and uninteresting as Max, but the sincerity and the affection were relentless. Even Max’s anxieties couldn’t handle this level of positive feeling.

It wasn’t just her, either. The sense that they all had this thing in common, that they were all in this together, seemed to be bonding the rest of the dorm in a way as well. Brooke’s decision to join them had all but floored Max, just because Brooke was such an outsider fixture and apparently determined to stay that way. That evening was different, though, as Max watched in astonishment while Brooke and Juliet had an animated debate over the limits of privacy through much of the meal that both of them seemed to enjoy immensely. Perhaps even more surprising were Kate and Taylor, sitting together at the end of the table and speaking quietly to one another for several minutes before allowing themselves to be drawn into the larger conversation. Right before that happened, Max gaped (before quickly looking away to keep from further intruding) to see Kate stand up and lean across the table enough to place a quick, chaste kiss on Taylor’s forehead.

Back in the dorms, Max surprised herself by heading to Taylor’s room, right around the corner from her own, and knocking. When Taylor answered, she looked surprised too but invited Max in at once.

Before today, Max hadn’t much reason to get to know Taylor. She was a photographer, of course, Max knew that because they shared Mr. Walker’s class, but beyond that and being Victoria’s… friend? Minion? It was hard to say… Max knew almost nothing about her. That was part of why Max looked around the room with such interest as she stepped over the threshold.

The first impression Max had was “girly.” The dorm-standard twin bed had been replaced with something quite a bit larger, large enough that it took up about half the floor space, with a frilled bed skirt, quilted coverlet, and what seemed to Max to be an excessive number of pillows. There were also several stuffed animals, all in the cat family. Taylor’s desk was crowded into the one remaining corner that wouldn’t block her closet, while the closet itself was supplemented by a freestanding armoire that stood perpendicular to the wall, its back to one end of the bed. The result was something of a private nook behind it, hidden from view even from the doorway. Most of the wall decor was framed photographs, but a cork board mounted near the door held about a dozen printed pictures pinned to it. Those all looked like Taylor’s own work and reminded Max a fair amount of her own photo wall in her room.

“Um, hi,” said Taylor, retreating almost at once to the bed. “I… it’s good to see you, obviously, but I wasn’t expecting…” She grabbed for a few stray bits of paper and a couple socks that weren’t really making the place look untidy but served as some kind of distraction all the same.

“I can come back later?” Max offered, but Taylor shook her head immediately.

“No, please, it’s… it’s nice to have you here.” She looked around, then patted the bed next to her. “Would you… like to sit?”

Max would and did. Entirely unexpectedly, she felt much less nervous than Taylor seemed to be, and she decided to try to do something about that. Carefully, she took Taylor’s hand and held it, settling it into her own lap as she got nestled into the pillows. They turned out to be more comfortable than Max had expected. Taylor, her cheeks pink, did the same, letting her hand in Max’s guide her to closer proximity.

Now that she was on the bed, Max could see the back of the armoire had another corkboard on it, probably half again the size of the one by the door, and it was covered in more personal shots: selfies, pictures of Taylor together with Victoria, Courtney, or both, as well as several more that featured an older woman with many of Taylor’s features sharpened into age. Max thought she was beautiful and said so unthinkingly.

“Thanks,” said Taylor, brushing her hair back over her ear with her free hand. “She’s my mom. We’re… really close, but things have been really hard these past few months.”

“What’s wrong?”

“She had a seizure over the summer while she was driving,” Taylor explained. “Nobody seems to know why yet, but the accident… The doctors have basically been rebuilding her spine, piece by piece, for the last four months. She’s had six surgeries and she’s still not done, though she’s getting close. Even when they finish, they have no idea how much she’ll be able to recover. The nerve damage was… There was a lot. At the moment she’s paraplegic and no one knows if she’ll ever walk again.”

“Oh, god, Taylor,” Max breathed, “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s… it’s not so bad,” Taylor shook her head quickly. “She’s alive, you know? I didn’t lose her. And Vic’s been driving me over to Portland to see her in the hospital once or twice a week since school started. I’m so, so grateful for that, for both of those things. But this semester… it’s been hard.”

Max studied the other girl. “Can I kiss you?” she asked, and Taylor’s eyes widened before she started nodding, slowly at first but then more eagerly.

It wasn’t a kiss meant to arouse; Max just leaned in, let their lips brush against one another, and then again, more firmly, before easing back once more. Even so, Taylor’s eyes fluttered closed and Max found that her own had done the same when she had to open them again a moment later. Taylor’s fingers were touching her own lips then, a look of wonder on her face.

“I’m, um, still getting used to the idea of having kisses available as an option for comforting someone,” Max explained, hoping she hadn’t offended.

That earned her a smile from Taylor. “I’m still getting used to being comforted by them,” she admitted. “That was my first kiss from a girl.”

“Verdict?”

“Good,” Taylor said, blushing. “Nice. I… hope it’s not the last.”

Max grinned. “I guess we’ll have to see how our date goes.” Taylor grinned back. Max felt a temptation to push the matter a little further, not helped by the sense that Taylor would all too happily go along with the idea, but she resisted. It wasn’t why she was here. “I, um, I had a couple of reasons for stopping by. The first one is, you didn’t tell me yet how things went with Kate. I saw you two at dinner, so I think I might have some idea, but I wanted to hear it from you directly.”

Taylor did not look surprised. “I thought maybe that’s why you were here. We talked and… I think it was good. I apologized and she accepted it. She’s so…” She shook her head, unable to find words. “I want to be the sort of person that lifts people up rather than tearing them down, but Kate showed me what that’s really like and how far I have to go.”

“Why did you do it?” Max asked. “I don’t understand. If you want to lift people up, how does accusing Kate of ‘taking it in the ass’ fit into that?”

“It doesn’t,” Taylor said quietly, no longer meeting Max’s eyes. “That’s what you made me see this afternoon. I’ve admired you pretty much from the moment we met because…” She laughed quietly, though still with her eyes on the quilt. “...Well, because you intimidated Victoria. Nobody does that, and you weren’t even mean about it. You just didn’t let her bully you and you let your talent do the talking for you. I was impressed, even if I didn’t ever say anything in front of Victoria. Then today, when you stood up to us again and, this time, for Kate’s sake…

“I think there’s a thing that happens when a bunch of people all say the same thing is okay and there’s nobody arguing with them, even when it’s obviously not okay. When all you hear is the same idea just repeated over and over, like it’s obvious, like you shouldn’t even need to be told, you just… go with it. Like, this is just how it is. You adapt. You conform. You forget that there’s a bigger world out there that would be horrified by what you’re doing.”

Sort of, Max thought, like suddenly having a room full of girls saying it was totally fine to have ten girlfriends at once and not being able to resist going along with it.

“So Victoria and Sarah and Logan and Zach all started talking about how Kate was acting like she was better than everyone else because she was-” Taylor stopped, then visibly changed what she was going to say. “Because she refused to have sex, and that just meant she was probably a freak who had to hide it, and I guess… it just took off from there. Everybody in the Vortex Club was either saying stuff like that or not saying anything at all. And I just… got caught up in it.” She let out a frustrated breath. “I haven’t even really- I mean, I’m not a virgin, but there have only been a couple guys total, and nobody at all since the semester started. So I don't know why I cared. She wasn’t even really talking about me.”

“I don’t think she was talking about anybody,” Max agreed. “I think she just wanted to put her ideas out there.”

“I guess, yeah,” Taylor said after a moment. She chewed on her nail. “I didn’t like finding out I could be like that. That much of a follower.”

Max squeezed Taylor’s hand. “Now you know. Now you can do better.”

Taylor nodded vaguely, almost like she hadn’t heard, but then her eyes finally tracked up to meet Max’s again. “Thanks,” she said quietly. “For calling me out, for giving me a chance. For… whatever this is going to be.” She gestured between them. “It feels like a fresh start, and I think I could use one.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Max said, and it was just the truth. Already tonight she’d seen so many more layers to Taylor than she’d ever imagined might be there. Taylor smiled, a little shy but with a spark in her eye that suggested there were some specific things she was looking forward to in particular, and Max had to blush.

“I did have something else I wanted to ask,” she said before the blush could spread further or any of Taylor’s ideas could take root. “Victoria. She’s been acting really strange today. Do you know what’s going on?”

“No,” Taylor shrugged. “I wish I did. I know she and Zach were doing… something… behind Juliet’s back, but I don’t know what and I don’t think it’s still going, based on what I’ve heard about how he’s been acting tonight. Other than that, though? She hasn’t said anything to me, and I’ve texted, like, a dozen times. I know something’s up but whatever it is, she’s not sharing.”

Max considered that, then nodded. “Okay. If she hasn’t surfaced by tomorrow morning, though, we might need to stage an intervention.”

“Yeah,” Taylor said decisively. “We’ll get her out one way or the other.”

Climbing to her feet, Max squeezed Taylor’s hand one last time. “I want you to know that I appreciate you taking responsibility and apologizing to Kate. You didn’t have to, especially since we hadn’t talked about you and me yet. I think that shows you’re already learning.”

Taylor’s shrug was noncommittal. “Trying, anyway.”

“Thank you. For trying.” And Max kissed the back of Taylor’s hand, making Taylor blush again in a way that Max decided she liked a whole lot. “Do you… want to figure out a time for us to go out?” she asked, making Taylor blink, surprised. Then she laughed.

“Oh, I get it. You were, uh, ‘too busy’ in the lounge with Rachel and Chloe to check your email. I mean, yeah, of course I would, but I don’t want to jump my place in line either. Just… text me and let me know.”

Her place in…? Max stared in confusion. Taylor laughed again, then got to her feet as well. “But before you go…” She put her arms around Max’s shoulders, drew her close, and kissed her, a much deeper and more thorough kiss than what Max had gone for before. She was good at it too, and Max felt a little light-headed when it was done. Taylor bit her lip as she stepped away. “Definitely seeing the appeal of girl kisses,” she said. “Text me soon. I’ll be waiting.”

When Max, still a little wobbly, finally did make it back to her room, it was to find that she’d been added to a text group and an email list, both of which seemed to have been set up by Dana and both of which were labeled “Max’s Harem.” To Max’s shock, none of the people in the groups, which is to say everyone who had been in the lounge earlier, objected to the names; most, in fact, seemed to find them funny rather than slightly terrifying, which is how it felt to Max. She could not imagine being cool enough, attractive enough, or even organized enough to have a harem.

And yet she had been the subject of a straight-faced and entirely serious conversation only a few hours earlier that focused on the possibility of her having as many as ten sexual partners at the same time sometime in the next few weeks or months. It wasn’t a harem, really, but it sure was something.

Skipping past the teasing and dirty jokes, which were thankfully remaining low-key enough that Max (and Kate, probably, now that Max thought about it) didn’t feel too put off by them, there seemed to be two important messages in the groups. The first was an announcement that Courtney would be renting a van for a drive over to Portland the following evening to permit the girls in the group to get tested together. There were no clinics in town that performed STI tests directly and Courtney reasoned, probably correctly, that at least some of the girls would not want to use their usual physicians for the purpose. Most everyone seemed to have signed up, including Kate. She’d felt the need to explain herself, though, which made Max’s heart squeeze a little in sorrow.

Having realized I’m gay, I’ve also realized I need to shift my approach to abstinence and redefine what it means to me and to my God. Once I find a path forward, I’ll know how to handle the idea of sex with the woman I love - but I can’t wait to do that if it means passing up this chance. I have no prayer of being able to request this testing from my regular doctor and not have it get back to my family. I might never need it, if I never find a way for God to bless my union with Max or whoever I wind up choosing, but as they say, better to have and not need...

To Max’s astonishment, every girl who responded did so with encouragement and support. Moreover, Dana’s reply in particular made her jaw drop.

Look, if what Stella said before was *maybe* jumping the gun, I *know* this is, but I wanna get it out there all the same. I’m not gonna pretend I can’t see myself maybe wanting to spend my life with Max someday - and please don’t freak out Max, I don’t have a ring hidden away somewhere I *swear* - but marriage doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you, Kate. So here’s the deal: obviously, I can only speak for me, but if we’re both still dating Max when it’s legal and cool with your church or whatever, then you get to marry her. Promise. I don’t wanna stand in the way of you and Max getting to be as close to each other as you want to be, especially since I’m *not* gonna wait for a ring to tell me it’s okay for me and Max to do that. Is that cool?

And then Rachel, Chloe, and (maybe most shocking of all) Brooke had all responded with some variation of “yeah, me too.” Max had the dizzying experience of having to actually wonder if she’d just been the subject of an arranged marriage.

The other announcement that seemed important was a spreadsheet put together by Stella that seemed to be a listing of the times all the girls in the group would be available for potential dates. Max’s eyes widened, though, when she saw a checkbox for “open to group dates” and then a dropdown for indicating which other members of the group the respondent was willing to have such a group date with. Chloe and Rachel had chosen each other, which Max had to admit came as no real surprise and might have even been the reason Stella put the option on the sheet, but Dana and Juliet had also chosen one another, as had Brooke and Alyssa. (That last pairing caught Max by surprise, until she remembered the book club. Then she had to get a drink of water to cool down when she realized what Alyssa had already been proposing, even before the meeting in the lounge.) Stella had chosen everyone, and Max could almost picture Stella’s self-satisfied smirk as she went down the list.

Courtney, Max saw, had selected Taylor, but Taylor hadn’t reciprocated. God, Max hoped that Stella had thought to set things up so the other users of the sheet couldn’t see one another’s responses.

No group dates before individual ones, she decided. Whatever she and these women were going to be to one another, she didn’t want anybody getting lost in a crowd. She was already contemplating dating almost a dozen different women; the last thing she wanted was to make anybody feel ignored. They all deserved her undivided attention.

Hesitantly, but with more confidence as she went, Max began sorting out a timeline for her first dates with everyone. Stella would be lunch the next day; Courtney would be Thursday night, for the Vortex party; Chloe and Rachel got Friday and Saturday nights, respectively. She already had a tea date for Wednesday afternoon with Kate scheduled, so that just went straight onto the schedule as well, just without the “tea” part. Then the next week would be Taylor on Monday, Brooke on Tuesday, Alyssa Wednesday, and Juliet and Dana on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Everyone agreed, though Dana did reply with a “Halloween she’s mine or I will cut a bitch!” along with a kissing emoji, to the amusement of everyone but Chloe, who did not care for artistic text character renderings. The whole dorm knew how seriously Dana took Halloween, though, and giving her priority on time with Max for her special day seemed to be getting roughly the same level of respect as Kate’s need for marriage vows before sex.

When she was done, her suggested times and days texted out and the confirmations back from everyone, Max leaned back and stared at her laptop screen in wonder.

She’d never been on a real, honest-to-God date before. Never asked anyone out, not once in her eighteen years on the planet, and only been asked out a handful of times. And now she had ten dates lined up over the next two weeks. With ten incredible women, any one of whom Max would have unhesitatingly counted as out of her league earlier today.

Magic, she thought with no small amount of irony, is the only explanation that makes sense.

Despite the rain and Max’s frustrated ambitions toward getting back out into the woods to find Darach, the next morning started out pretty well. The big thing was, as Rachel and Chloe had said the night before, the general consensus of the dorms was that “Max and I are dating” meant some level of kissing privileges, even if no actual dates had yet occurred. Alyssa, who didn’t even live in the dorms, was actually the first; she was hanging out in the hallway, reading through some of the flyers up on the notice boards, when Max headed out to get her shower. Alyssa turned and saw her coming, giving her that same, confident smirk she’d worn the evening before when Max had agreed to the book club meeting. It made Max a little weak in the knees, something she thought Alyssa might have picked up on.

“Morning, Max,” said Alyssa, stepping a little closer. “How are you doing today? Last night was a lot, I know.”

“I’m… adjusting?” Max said truthfully. “I never really imagined myself being in this position, but I’m… well, I’m not really complaining either.”

“Good,” Alyssa nodded. She studied Max’s face intently for a moment. “Don’t worry,” she said, leaning down and pressing a gentle, warm kiss on Max’s cheek. “You’re doing great.” Max immediately turned beet red, and it did not help that, when Alyssa straightened back up again, she gave Max an extremely saucy wink. “And just so you know, the character from my book? Totally hooked up with the hot IT girl.”

“...Lucky girl,” Max managed to get out, not a little breathless. Alyssa laughed aloud, then stepped back and gestured for Max to continue on to the showers.

Taylor and Kate were in there, chatting about Mr. Walker’s class, and both gave Max a bright smile when she entered. Kate gave Max a tight hug and, with adorable boldness, a quick peck on the lips, earning her applause from Taylor that turned Kate’s and Max’s cheeks alike into tomatoes. “But really, Kate,” Taylor said as Kate released Max and stepped back, “you gotta really go for it if you want the best results,” and she pulled Max into as scorching a kiss as Max had yet had. Max’s toes curled and she let out a decidedly indecorous moan, not that either of the other two women seemed to object. She also literally dropped her shower caddy, making Taylor laugh and even Kate giggle, though they both helped her pick everything up again.

After her shower there were more of the same: warm kisses from Juliet and Stella and something a lot steamier and more meaningful from Dana. When it was done, Dana also whispered, “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks,” into Max’s ear, which left Max little short of a quivering mess in the corridor afterward.

The last two kisses were the most unique in their own ways. Brooke, watching Juliet’s kiss from a few steps down the hallway, reached out and took Max’s hand as soon as Juliet let go, dragging Max bodily the length of the hallway. This was where Max’s room was, along with Victoria’s and Brooke’s, but no one else lived down here and all the activity in the hallway was at the other end. They had as much privacy as they were likely to get without actually going into one of their rooms, which Brooke, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to want to do.

“I… I don’t know how to do this,” Brooke said, swallowing hard. “I’m not- I mean, I’ve never-”

“You’ve… never been kissed?” Max said, and Brooke scowled.

“It’s not- I just never found the right guy, that’s all-” but Max shook her head, cutting Brooke off.

“Neither had I, until last night.” She opted to leave Darach out of it for now. Let Brooke think what Chloe and Rachel did until there was reason to do otherwise. “You were there for it. When I kissed Stella.”

“...Oh,” Brooke blinked. “I just… I just assumed you must have.. I mean, you’re…” She chewed her lip. “God, I don’t even know how to talk about this. I’m not into girls! Except… except you, for some fucked-up reason.”

Max frowned. “Are you having second thoughts? Brooke, we don’t have to-”

“No!” It was almost a shout, but then Brooke moderated her tone quickly. “No. I’m not. I don’t… get it, but I’m not going to deny what’s right in front of my face. Be a pretty shitty scientist if I did. I do want to kiss you, I am… I am attracted to you. I think you’re… fuck, ‘pretty’ sounds so shallow and pathetic… I think you’re…” She took a breath. “I think you’re sexy. You turn me on. I hadn’t realized that before yesterday, but I can’t pretend it’s not true. So I want this. I want to kiss you, and do… all the other stuff with you. I’m getting those tests Stella talked about, even if I’m as likely to have anything come up from them as Kate is. Because I want that too, when we’re ready.”

Max reached out and put her hand on Brooke’s cheek. Brooke was actually shaking a little, and she looked paler than when they’d started the conversation. “Brooke,” Max said gently, “I want all of that with you too. Truthfully, if I’d had any idea you might be into it, I’d have probably been crushing on you since we met. I don’t care if it is shallow, I’ll happily tell you that I think you’re pretty. And sexy. Plus you’re so smart and insightful and, well, I’m one of those weirdos who thinks nerds are hot. So yeah, I’m looking forward to our first date and to hopefully lots more after that one.”

She looked down the hall, to where the rest of their dormmates were going about their morning. A couple glanced their way every now and then, but everyone seemed to be willing to give them the privacy they were seeking. “Are you upset because of all the other kisses I’ve been getting this morning?”

“No,” said Brooke, a little too quickly. Max raised an eyebrow. “...Maybe.” Brooke looked away. “I just… I don’t know why you’d be interested in me, when I have no experience in the things you’d want from a girlfriend, when you have all these other people to date instead.”

For a moment, Max just stared in confusion. Then she remembered something Rachel had said at the start of the year about Victoria: Jealousy is nothing but insecurity turned outwards. If you feel like you’re enough, you don’t worry about what other people have. If you don’t, then everything someone else has is either a threat or an obsession and everything you have you could lose at any moment. And Brooke had shown Max nothing but jealousy until yesterday afternoon.

She didn’t think she was enough for Warren, Max realized. And now she doesn’t think she’s enough for me.

“Brooke,” Max said, “I know I said last night I was just accepting everybody’s date requests, but I didn’t just do it that way without thinking about it and I didn’t message you last night about our date out of obligation or just because I was checking off the list. I’ve genuinely spent this whole semester wishing we could be closer. I’ve wanted to be around you all year.” She paused, considered for a second, and then took a breath. “Brooke Scott, I’d really like to go out with you. Would you do me the honor of having dinner with me sometime?”

Mouth open, Brooke stared at her for several seconds. Then her lips twisted into a familiar and welcome smirk. “Well, when you put it that way,” she said, “it seems mean not to say yes.” The teasing tone faded a little. “And I’m trying to be less mean to you. Mean’s the opposite of what I want to be, actually.”

“In that case, could I also kiss you?”

That made the smirk disappear entirely. Brooke licked her lips, quick and nervous, but then she nodded. Max tried to take everything she’d learned in her last 24 hours of kissing crash courses and put it into the kiss she gave Brooke, starting with a few light brushes of lips on lips, then slower, deeper, sucking a little on Brooke’s lower lip before running her tongue over it. She sought entrance and was granted it as Brooke began to relax and welcome her in, their bodies pressing together as their mouths did the same. Max let her hands roam too and did her best to encourage Brooke’s to also, drawing every quickened breath and luxuriant moan out of the other girl that she could. When at last they began to run out of air and had to separate a little, Brooke’s glasses were fogged and a little askew, while Max was breathing like she’d run a mile.

“I think,” Max panted, “that we’re going to be just fine.”

“...Fuck,” Brooke said. “I… fuck.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.”

They just held each other for another moment, then Max stepped back and straightened Brooke’s glasses for her. “I want you too,” she said quietly. “If you need reminding, let me know and I will happily give you a refresher.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brooke said. Then she vanished into her room.

Max had gotten dressed and mostly recovered from her encounter with Brooke when she got her final good morning kiss. It was Courtney, who knocked on Max’s door just as she was gathering her things for school. Mrs. Hoida’s English class was set to start in about ten minutes. When Max answered it, Courtney just leaned in and kissed her on the lips in a way that felt both affectionate and businesslike, like a spouse greeting their partner at the start of the day after years of marriage and ever-deepening love. It felt so comfortable and assured that Max almost didn’t recognize it had happened. When the reality of it did set in, though, it made Max’s heart start pounding in her chest. It was her first real taste of something that felt like more than just dating or making out.

It felt like a relationship.

Seemingly oblivious to the way Max’s world had been rocked, Courtney just took Max’s arm and pulled her into the hall, plastering herself up against Max’s side. “Morning, Max! Taylor told me you two were planning an intervention on Victoria. Well, if you are, I think it’s time.”

“It.. it is?”

“Yes,” Courtney blew out a breath. “She’s still not answering my texts or Taylor’s and she’s supposed to be in class in ten minutes. It’s officially an emergency.”

Taylor appeared then, coming out of the bathroom with her makeup freshly done. She took Max’s free hand, lacing their fingers together, while nodding at Courtney’s words. “Yeah. We gotta do this or she’s going to get in trouble with the school and she doesn’t need the shit from her parents.”

Max slowly nodded as well and they moved over to face Victoria’s door, right across the hall from Max’s. Courtney shifted so she had her arm around Max’s waist but Max’s arm was free again. Max knocked. No response. She knocked again, harder. Still nothing. Max tried the door but it was locked.

“Victoria,” Max called through the wood, “either you come answer this door right now or I’m getting Chloe and letting her practice her lockpicking skills on it. So if you don’t want this to become The Chloe Price Show so everyone hears about it-”

The lock clicked open.

“Just you,” came Victoria’s voice from the other side. It was low and rough and sounded dangerous. Max exchanged worried looks with the other two girls, but then they let go and stepped back so she could turn the handle and step inside.

At first she couldn’t even see anything: the lights were off, the curtains were pulled over the window, and the only illumination came from the set of white fairy lights that surrounded three tall, narrow portraits of Victoria on the wall over her bed. Max had never before been in Victoria’s room, but peering through the dimness, she could make out a loveseat, a coffee table in the middle of the room, a desk on the far wall, bookcases, and even an entertainment stand featuring a large flatscreen TV. She couldn’t see Victoria, though.

Until, that is, a hand came out of the shadows behind the door and shoved the door closed, throwing the lock. Max spun.

Victoria was there. She looked like utter hell.

She was still in the same clothes she’d been wearing the last time Max had seen her, on the porch of the dorms. Her hair was a mess, though, and her eyes were so bloodshot that, in the darkness, they looked almost black. Dark circles surrounded them, drawn into sharp contrast by skin that was much too pale. Her mascara and eyeshadow were smudged with what looked like tear tracks smeared down her cheeks.

“Victoria?” gasped Max.

Victoria’s hand seized Max’s arm.

“What… did you do… to me?!”

Chapter Text

“Holy shit, Victoria,” Max said, pulling her arm free. She almost immediately had to grab for Victoria’s arms, though, because the simple act of tugging out of Victoria’s grasp was almost enough to topple the taller girl over. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“No,” Victoria rasped. She tried to pull herself free from Max’s hands in turn, but succeeded only in staggering into the wall and forcing Max to hold her up again. “What did you do? What- why can’t I-” She shook her head, putting one palm to her temple. “What is wrong with me?”

“Come sit down,” said Max, quickly pulling Victoria over to the bed. She seemed to want to resist, but every attempt she made to do something else only resulted in her almost falling face-first to the carpet, so in short order, Max had her seated on the mattress. “I’ll be… just a second,” Max told her, darting for the door. She unlocked it again and stuck her head out. Taylor and Courtney were still there, waiting; both looked as worried as Max felt.

“Can you tell Mrs. Hoida that Victoria and I aren’t feeling well?” she asked them. “I’ll text you as soon as I know what’s wrong but I promise we’re not going to be in class in five minutes.”

They exchanged concerned looks, but agreed. “Call if you need anything,” Taylor said, squeezing Max’s hand. Courtney nodded, supplementing the sentiment with another quick but seemingly heartfelt kiss, before taking Taylor’s hand and turning with her down the hallway. Max locked the door again and turned back to Victoria.

She hadn’t moved; her eyes were fixed on the wall opposite her but she didn’t look like she was taking in anything. Max crossed back over to her, kneeling down and getting into her eyeline. There was a delay, not unlike a bit of bad lag on a computer, before Victoria’s gaze reoriented itself to fix on Max’s.

“Have you slept?” Max asked. Victoria made a sound that could have been a derisive snort or the beginning of a desperate sob.

“...Can’t,” she said finally. “I can’t stop- Every time I try to think about-” She shook her head. “Why are you everywhere in here right now?”

Having absolutely no idea what that meant, Max opted to ignore it for the moment. “What about food? Water? When did you eat last?”

“...Not hungry.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Max pushed. Victoria’s lip curled for just a second, but then she groaned again.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” she hissed, apparently to herself, her eyes squeezed shut.

“When did you eat, Victoria?”

Whatever was going on with her had apparently stripped Victoria of her ability to deal with it and lie at the same time. “...Lunch, yesterday,” she replied distractedly. “Made myself finish my salad.”

“And water?”

“Just…” A vague gesture toward her desk. It was hard to see in the dimness, but something that looked like a wine bottle was sitting worryingly close to the keyboard. Max shook her head.

“Victoria, we need to get a little something in you, and then you need to sleep. Whatever’s wrong, you’ll be in a better place to deal with it once you’ve gotten some rest.”

Slowly, Victoria turned to stare at her in the dark. “You’re only making it worse,” she said finally. There was a strange sort of exhaustion in her tone, as though she were running out of energy to fight whatever was wrong with her. It was starting to scare Max a little.

Trying to sound soothing, Max said, “I promise I’ll get out of here as soon as I know you’re okay.” She picked up her phone and sent a quick text to Chloe. She normally drove Rachel to class on days when they stayed off campus together (as Rachel had said they planned to do last night), so Max assumed she would be awake. It was just a simple request for a carryout omelet from the Two Whales; Max had no idea what Victoria liked for breakfast, but she struggled to imagine anyone not liking one of Joyce’s omelets unless they were allergic to eggs or something.

Although-

“Are you allergic to eggs?”

Victoria just sat there, still staring, which Max had to assume meant no. A few moments later, Chloe replied with a promise to be at the dorms with the food in fifteen minutes. Max thanked her, but chose not to explain who the food was for. Max was about ninety-five percent sure Chloe wouldn’t refuse to help Max with Victoria, but it was Victoria, so she saw no reason to test the limits of Chloe’s compassion right then. With a shake of her head, she made her way over to Victoria’s desk chair and sat down, turning it so they were facing one another.

Abruptly, Victoria’s voice cut through the dark like a knife. “I don’t care how nice you’re being right now,” she hissed, “how caring and kind or whatever. I don’t like you. We’re not friends. You’re… you’re pathetic. You have no sense of fashion, you use the world’s stupidest camera, and no one is buying your wide-eyed waif act. You might think you have Walker wrapped around your finger, but the rest of us see you for what you are. You’re nothing, you’re nobody, and I am absolutely not attracted to you.”

She all but snarled the last phrase. Max’s jaw was hanging open.

Wincing again, Victoria turned away to focus her glare on the thick curtain hanging over her window. Max closed her mouth, then took a breath and let it out. “Why did you give me the answer yesterday?” she asked.

Victoria’s shoulders tensed but she showed no other outward reaction. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Victoria. There’s no one else here,” said Max dryly. “It’s just us, and we both know the truth. There’s zero point in lying.”

“I-” Victoria’s voice faltered. “I- You were just so annoying, looking wide-eyed and lost, like a puppy that pissed on the carpet, that giving you the answer was the only way to wipe that stupid expression off your face. Don’t fucking read into it.”

“I wasn’t… planning to,” Max replied carefully. “It just wasn’t very like you. Kind of like how this morning hasn’t really been very like you.”

“You don’t know me.” The words lacked all of Victoria’s usual venom. They were flat, exhausted, drained of vitality.

Max couldn’t really deny it. “Okay,” she said, “but you’re not acting like the Victoria Chase I’ve seen around school these past six weeks either.”

For several heartbeats, the observation was met with only silence. Then, slowly, Victoria turned back to look at her again. “...Why are you still here?”

“What?”

“I’ve just called you pathetic, stupid, worthless, and a bunch of other shit that would have made most people either run away or slap the shit out of me. Why are you just sitting there?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Victoria’s mouth opened. Absolutely nothing came out of it. Eventually she closed it again. Max kept waiting.

“...No.”

With a well, there you have it shrug, Max said, “That’s why.”

“You don’t care about me. Why would you care about me? What does what I want matter?”

It took a little bit of time for Max to decide how she wanted to answer that. “I, uh, I sort of started dating Taylor and Courtney last night.” Victoria just blinked at her. Max had no idea how to interpret the response, so she just kept on. “I like both of them, a lot actually, and both of them are worried about you. They care about you. You’re important to them.

“I don’t mean that I care about you just because they do, though. What I’m saying is, I think they see something in you that is worth caring about, and I want to see it too. Besides, you did give me the answer in Mr. Walker’s class yesterday, and that tells me there’s more going on with you than just this shallow Mean Girl persona you’re trying so hard to convince everybody is the real you.

“And, sure, maybe you’ve been a real bitch to me so far this year, yeah. But you seem like you’re a bitch to everybody, so I guess I haven’t really been taking it personally. And besides… you kind of… don’t seem all that happy. Like, every time I’ve heard you laugh, it was bitter, even angry, almost. I think I’d like to know what a real laugh sounds like from you. I bet it’s beautiful.”

Silence. Then, the words only barely loud enough to be heard over the rain on the window, Victoria said, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

It was Max’s turn to blink.

“That’s not some fucking romantic line, it’s, like, literal. Every time I push you out of my head, you just come back, louder. All fucking day yesterday, all night last night, today it’s like you’re screaming at me. I don’t think about you. I never think about you. I have a policy about not fucking thinking about you. But I can’t stop it. It… it feels like I’m going crazy, like I’m having some kind of psychotic break.”

“...Yesterday?” Max repeated, eyes going a little wide. “This started yesterday?”

“That’s what I fucking said, how about paying attention for once, for god’s sake.”

Last night, when Max asked about when everyone started thinking about asking her out, only five of the girls - Chloe, Rachel, Dana, Stella, and Kate - had admitted to thinking about it before yesterday. But both Stella and Kate had gone a little further: they’d said they hadn’t really realized they’d been thinking about it until yesterday, only recognizing in hindsight that it had been on their minds for a while. In other words, whatever made everyone suddenly decide “today’s the day” sometimes involved prodding people who were already interested in her (still such a weird thing to think!) into recognizing it.

But what if they refused to do so?

How hard would this whatever-it-was prod?

“Victoria,” said Max, suddenly feeling like she was walking through a minefield, “when you’re… uh, not thinking about me… do the thoughts you’re, um, not having about me involve… going out with me?”

Victoria’s face screwed up in utter confusion. “What?”

Yeah, okay, that had barely been a step up from gibberish. Right. Different approach. “Look, I think I can maybe help you,” Max said, “but you’re going to have to be, um, really honest with me. Or at least with yourself.”

Victoria’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“I swear, nothing you say will ever leave this room. I will take it to my grave. You can bully me until the end of time and I’ll never say anything about it to anyone. I just want to help you and I’m really afraid this might be the only way.”

Deeeeeeeeeep breath.

“Are you attracted to me?”

No response. No reaction whatsoever. Victoria just sat there, not moving, barely even breathing.

And then, like a lion leaping on a gazelle, Victoria threw herself at Max, grabbing her head in both hands and kissing her with what felt like the repressed fury of weeks of lust and self-loathing. It was desperate, whiny, needy - Victoria tugged at Max’s arms, her hoodie, anything she could reach, trying to get closer or to get Max to close the distance with her. Initial shock notwithstanding, Max did her best to accommodate Victoria’s demands, shifting to make room for her on the chair so she could straddle Max properly, wrapping her arms around Victoria’s waist, running her hands up the back of Victoria’s sweater.

To Max’s great surprise, Victoria was a terrible kisser.

She probably wouldn’t have been if she would have just slowed down, but everything was going too fast, Victoria changing things up too quickly for Max to respond, let alone enjoy what was happening.

“Vic,” said Max, her mouth muffled against Victoria’s relentless lips, then again, louder, “Vic!” Victoria jerked back, eyes wide and suddenly terrified. “Just… take a second, okay?” Max continued, trying to be soothing. “I’m into this, I promise I am, but you need to give me a chance to savor it a little, will you?”

“...You are?” Victoria repeated, sounding dazed.

“I am,” Max repeated, easing Victoria back down to her. “I told you already, I’d really like to know what you’d look and sound like if you were really happy. If I can actually make you happy… I think I’d like that even better.” Victoria still looked on the edge of panic, but apparently the way Max was drawing her closer was smothering the fear because she started to relax. When Max pressed a slower, gentler kiss against her lips, she all but melted into it, letting Max set the pace now, reactive and pliable but entirely eager.

Oh wowser. Definitely an upgrade. Victoria was actually a sublime kisser when she got out of her own way.

They made out for several minutes, until Max’s phone buzzed. “Ignore it,” Victoria said at once, still kissing her, but Max pulled back.

“It’s probably Chloe with your food,” she pointed out. “And you need to eat.”

“This is better than eating,” Victoria countered, sending heat flooding into Max’s cheeks, but her resolve didn’t waver.

“Even if that’s true, you can’t live off of kisses. You’re going to eat, drink some water, and then get some sleep.”

Victoria continued protesting, but largely proved Max’s point by being unable to put up any real resistance when Max carefully maneuvered her off of the chair and back onto the bed. “I promise you, I’ll be back in just a couple minutes. I only have to run down to the front door.”

“Don’t- don’t lie to me, Caulfield,” Victoria said. It wasn’t an order. It was a plea.

“I’m not,” Max reassured her, giving her another kiss before moving away and toward the door. “Three minutes tops.”

Chloe was indeed waiting at the dormitory front steps, her jacket pulled half over her head to keep the worst of the rain off of both her and the carryout bag in her hand. As soon as Max saw her through the glass of the door, she hurried the rest of the way down the stairs and pulled Chloe in at once. “Thanks, Super Max,” said Chloe, settling her jacket back onto her shoulders where it belonged. “Not like I’m gonna melt but this tank top isn’t doing much to keep me warm either.”

“I really appreciate you doing this,” Max said, taking the bag and exchanging it for a quick kiss. “You’re the best.”

Chloe smiled at the peck. “Look who’s getting all confident now,” she chuckled - and then stopped, studying Max more closely. “Wait a second… Maxine Caulfield. Did you skip first period just to make out with somebody?”

Max’s jaw dropped, but then she realized what she must look like: hair mussed from Victoria’s hands, lips swollen and kiss-bruised, not to mention probably covered in lipstick that Max most assuredly didn’t wear. “Oh, Dog,” she muttered. “I, um-”

“I am so freaking proud of you!” Chloe crowed. “Damn but I’m a hella good bad influence! Quick, who is it? Is she still waiting around upstairs for you, all breathy and moaning and waiting for Max Kissage to swoop back in and finish her helpless ravishment?”

“...You are way too into this idea,” Max said, only managing to hold a straight face for a few seconds. After she stopped giggling, though, she shook her head. “No, I swear, it’s not like that. I was just- someone wasn’t feeling good and I’m taking care of them.”

“I just bet you are,” Chloe leered. “Well in that case, I better let you get back to it.” Her grin grew even wider. “Although, with all this rain coming down, I might just catch a cold myself. Will Nurse Max come and give me the special treatment I ne-”

“Get out!” Max cut her off, laughing helplessly even as she shoved the taller girl back toward the door. “Get out now, you perv!”

Completely shameless and utterly amused with herself, Chloe went. Max stood there, shaking her head for a moment, before heading back up to Victoria’s room.

Little had changed when she returned. Victoria was still sitting on the bed, staring toward the curtained window in the dark, but she looked… calmer, Max thought, at least as compared to when she had first walked in half an hour or so before. There was less tension in Victoria’s shoulders and the tightness around her eyes that had spoken of pain was gone. Small differences, but it made Max feel better to see them all the same.

“Here,” said Max, offering the bag. Victoria looked at it, then at Max, then sighed and took it. Her lip curled a little. “I know it’s not steak tartare or fruits de mer or whatever you’re used to,” Max said a little petulantly, “but you need something in your stomach. Please, just have a little, will you?”

“You don’t have to beg,” said Victoria, opening the styrofoam container and the clear packet of plasticware. “I’m eating.” And she did, putting the cheap knife and fork to use. Her eyes widened a little at the first bite of the omelet and she threw a sharp glance at Max before taking another, this one with much less wariness. “But it’s pronounced ‘free,’ not ‘froots.’”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Max had planned to warn the other girl to eat slowly, since she’d gone so long without, but it didn’t seem necessary. Victoria was very precise with her utensils, cutting perfect three-quarter-inch squares out of the omelet as though she’d pre-measured them. It was weirdly mesmerizing to watch. “How did you know?” asked Victoria suddenly. Max blinked.

“Know what?”

“That…” Victoria’s cheeks darkened. “That us… doing that… would help. My head.”

“I didn’t,” Max said truthfully. “I wasn’t, um, expecting you to react that way. I guess it still counts for what I was trying for, though, so…” She swallowed. “Do you really want to know? Because it’s… kinda weird.”

“You’re kinda weird,” Victoria pointed out. It didn’t actually sound like an insult. In fact it was almost… fond?

“I guess that’s true,” Max admitted. She chewed her lip. “I’ll tell you, but you’re going to have to actually hear me out, and when I ask you to really think about something, you need to actually think about it and not just dismiss me, okay?”

Victoria frowned, but then finally nodded. Max took a steadying breath. “I think a witch in the forest cast some kind of love spell on me. Not, like, an actual love spell, but something that, um, makes it a lot easier for me to get… girlfriends.” She swallowed. “A lot of them. And I think it was affecting you.”

For a couple of moments, Victoria just blinked at her, head cocked slightly to the side. Then she shook her head. “Only you, Caulfield.”

“You… you believe me?”

“Of course I don’t fucking believe you!” snapped Victoria. “I meant, ‘only you would come up with a story like that!’ A witch in the woods cast a spell? Did your fairy godmother have her mice bring you a new hoodie and make your Polaroid out of a pumpkin too? Jesus Christ, Maxine! What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

Max’s mouth hung open. “How… how are you this much of a bitch even after we were just making out?”

“Just because I’ve gone insane enough to want to suck face with you, that doesn’t mean I’m going to believe some inane bullshit story about forest witches,” Victoria shot back. “I may have lost my mind, but I’m not that fucking far gone.”

It took a second for Max to grab hold of her temper and rein it in a little. “Victoria. Are you surprised that I have, as of last night, ten girlfriends?”

Victoria frowned. “...Did the whole dorm lose their minds at the same time I did?” she asked, some of her superior tone fading.

“I promised I won’t say anything about you, and if that’s still true then that promise still applies, but do you want to keep making out with me sometimes?”

The admission appeared to sting a little as it came out, but after a moment Victoria said, “...Yes.”

“Do you care that I have ten girlfriends already?”

“Not particularly.”

“Okay,” said Max, leaning forward, “so when exactly did the Queen of Blackwell start sharing her, um, lovers?” The last phrase came out a little awkwardly, since it was definitely getting ahead of things here, but Max couldn’t really think of a better way to put it.

The awkwardness or presumption was apparently lost on Victoria anyway. Her mouth opened, then closed. Her eyes went wide. “I… I don’t,” she said, looking spooked.

“But you’re okay sharing me.”

“I- I-” Victoria’s eyes darted wildly. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“It’s not just you,” Max explained. “It’s literally everyone in the dorms, plus some. There was a floor meeting last night and everybody from Juliet to Brooke to Kate agreed they’d be happy to date me at the same time. There wasn’t a moment of disagreement. Hell, Stella put together a dating spreadsheet for me and the whole floor filled it out.”

“Well, Stella’s a slut and Juliet can’t even keep Zach’s eyes from wandering, so that doesn’t really surprise me, but Kate?” Victoria snorted. “I guess I was even more right calling bullshit on that Abstinence Club crap than I-”

“What the fuck, Victoria?” Max cut her off, leaping to her feet. Victoria jerked back, surprised. “How did I- How can you seriously just be sitting there, talking like that, and not hearing yourself?”

Victoria just stared at her, bewildered. It was as though Max had begun speaking in tongues.

“Fuck me,” Max muttered, rubbing her face. “I should never- dammit. I can’t believe I let myself- You were just sitting there looking so hot and so sad that I just- I completely let myself forget that you’ve been an unapologetic bitch for weeks now to one of my best friends, who is also now one of my girlfriends, and now here you are, just making it worse! God, I can’t believe I let you kiss me!”

Victoria flinched as though Max had slapped her.

“This was a mistake. You’re fine, your head is fine, we fixed that, you can- you can just do whatever you’re going to do now, but this? This isn’t happening. God, I’m such an idiot.” Max turned and took a step toward the door.

Seizing her wrist, Victoria stopped her. “Wait, Max, please-”

“No,” snarled Max, tearing her hand free. “You don’t talk to me. Taylor- at least Taylor had the courage to admit what she was doing was fucked up and went to talk to Kate about it. I didn’t even have to say anything, she just realized she’d crossed a line. But you? You just keep doubling down. So we’re done. If you want to talk to me, there’s someone else you have to talk to first, and she’s conveniently living in the dorm right next door. You talk to Kate and, if Kate likes what you say, then maybe you and I can talk too. But until then?” She stalked to the door and threw it open. She looked back just long enough for her gaze to flick up to the large self-portraits over Victoria’s bed and then back down to meet Victoria’s horrified expression.

“Go fuck yourselfie.” And she slammed the door behind her.