Chapter Text
It’s a beautiful morning in Arcadia Bay: sun shining, birds singing, the whisper of wind through pine needles and the distant crash of waves weaving an intricate tapestry of sounds and sensations. The warmth of the sun on Chloe’s skin is a pleasant contrast to the infrequent gusts of crisp autumn wind that bite right through the thin cotton of her hoodie. She breathes in deep, feeling the cold air catch in her lungs and fighting back of a wave of nausea.
Yeah, okay, all this fresh air bullshit is definitely making her hangover worse.
Chloe groans, scrubbing a hand down her face and pushing out a lungful of air through her nose. She shoves a hand into the pocket of her borrowed hoodie, digging around through gum wrappers and tangled earbud wires for something to take the edge off her headache. Rachel had been on her period when she left the sweatshirt in a crumpled ball in Chloe’s truck last week; she almost always had something on her for cramps.
The search yields a pair of copper tablets. Chloe barely takes the time to pick off the blue pocket fuzz that clings to them before she swallows them dry, gagging and wishing she’d brought a bottle of water with her.
In her defense, she never expected to be dragged out of bed any time before noon on a Saturday.
Chloe closes her eyes, listening for the distant click and whirr of her dad’s old camera.
Even after all this time, Max is always throwing her for a loop.
“Hey nerd,” she calls out, embarrassed when her voice cracks from disuse. She clears her throat, and continues, “You almost done? I’m freezing my tits off and you promised me breakfast…”
Chloe’s dismayed by the lack of immediate response, twisting around to peer behind her, catching a flash of Max’s grey sweatshirt among the branches.
Chloe sighs, shuffling out of the patch of warm sunlight she’d been standing in at the cliff’s edge, missing the heat the nearer she draws to the trees.
“Max?” she tries again.
“Shhh,” Max’s voice is sharp, though not unkind. She’s hunched over in the dirt, stock still and dead serious, camera poised in front of her face, pointed at something Chloe can’t make out. There’s a leaf in her hair and Chloe wants to laugh but then Max shifts just slightly, jaw set hard enough to strain the muscle in her neck and Chloe has to bite down hard on the feeling that the sight stirs up in her gut. She catches it between her teeth, and swallows it back, almost too big for her throat, heavy and warm in the pit of her stomach when it lands.
Something to deal with later.
Or, y’know, never.
There’s a moment of perfect stillness, the whole world is the wind in the trees and the flutter of Max’s eyelashes and then--
The snap of the camera’s shutter and the quiet, proud huff of Max’s breath when she falls back onto her butt in the dirt, twisting around to grin breathlessly up at Chloe.
“Got it!” Max announces, eyes alight, lifting the camera up over her head like a trophy.
Chloe’s eyes lock on Max’s panting face and she hates herself for the way the weight in her gut melts and spills over, warmth filling her up from the tingling tips of her fingers to the heat high on her cheeks.
Chloe takes a step closer, catching the bushy tail of a squirrel darting up a tree out of the corner of her eye. She drops to one knee next to Max in the dirt, feeling her stomach lurch nauseatingly again, grateful when Max fails to notice.
She could probably be playing up the hangover for sympathy. It’s what she’d be doing if Rachel had the balls to drag her out of bed this early on a weekend. But for some reason, the thought of Max knowing how wasted she was last night sticks in her throat worse than the pills from before.
“Look,” Max says, leaning back and angling her body so that Chloe can see the picture over her shoulder.
Chloe can feel Max’s eyes on her face as she peers down at the photo, dappled with the shade of the trees overhead. Chloe forces her eyes to focus on the picture in Max’s hands, counts in her head to keep her breathing even, and tries to share Max’s enthusiasm for the admittedly gorgeous shot of an otherwise painfully unremarkable woodland animal.
“This is hella good, dude,” Chloe tells her, pleased that she can say it and mean it. And it's not like she hasn’t known all this time that Max is an amazing photographer, but there’s a quality to her art that couldn’t be communicated through a screen.
Before Max returned to Arcadia Bay, Chloe hadn’t been able to understand why Max always insisted instant film was her favorite medium. Even with her limited knowledge, Chloe knew that it was outdated, impractical, and super fucking expensive. Everything Max shared on social media was ridiculously good, Chloe couldn’t understand why digital photography wasn’t her focus.
And then she had spent an hour just lying on her back on the floor of Max's dorm room, staring up at the wall of Polaroids above her bed. With Max sitting behind her on the couch plucking away at her guitar, Chloe had been relaxed and barely stoned at all, content in a way she'd forgotten she could be. It wasn’t an epiphany so much as an acknowledgement of something that had been apparent all the while. Like spending half the day running errands with your mom before you recognized she’d gotten her hair cut. Max Caulfield wasn’t just the girl she’d grown up with anymore. She was like a legit artist. The kind of talent that was going to be blowing up on the Internet in a few years. Someone whose gift was too real, too immense for Arcadia Bay.
Still, she couldn’t say that Max’s talent had ever really surprised her.
Max was always just obnoxiously, effortlessly good at photography.
Chloe remembers the trip their families took to the beach when they were kids. She remembers the crisp five dollar bills their parents had given each of them when they stopped at the drugstore for more sunscreen. She had tried to get Max to follow her lead, blow the whole thing on candy. She’d been so frustrated when Max had refused, tiny hands wrapped determinedly around the cheap plastic of those shitty disposable cameras that had been everywhere in those days. Chloe had liked best when they did things the same, so scared even then that Max would get too far away from her.
She still has a couple photos from that roll of film, tucked away in a shoebox under her bed. A pair of gulls on a rock, a blurry boat at sea, a heart drawn into slick brown sand, CHLOE + MAX 4EVER written in the center with painstaking care. She remembers dragging the stick through the sand until she got it to look just right, the frantic giggles she shared with Max as they raced to take the picture before the surf undid her handiwork. She hadn’t minded then when the waves had washed it all away, but something about the memory now makes her chest go tight with melancholy.
“Squirrels are such cool subjects,” Max gushes, ripping Chloe out of her memories and back into the present. “And they’re everywhere here. I forgot what it’s like to have nature right outside your door.”
“Guess that’s one area where Seattle can’t compete, huh?” Chloe smiles, charmed by Max’s enthusiasm. She reaches out before she can stop herself, plucking the leaf from Max’s hair, letting the backs of her knuckles brush down the chestnut strands along the way.
Which is, y’know, totally not a weird and gay fucking thing to do.
Max’s breath hitches and Chloe whips her hand back, waving the leaf back and forth between them.
“Sorry,” she blurts, hating the note of panic in her voice. Fucking stupid. “You had a…”
Max shifts on her rear, sliding around to face Chloe and leaning back into the dirt. She raises the camera and Chloe goes instinctively still until Max takes the shot. Dropping the leaf, Chloe reaches out wordlessly to take hold of Max’s arm and haul her back up into a sitting position.
Max delicately removes the photo from the camera, inspecting it carefully for a moment before passing it to Chloe.
She sees herself, pierced bottom lip drawn up between her teeth, brows furrowed in concern, leaf in hand. The angle is trippy, the background a canopy of leaves pocked with patches of sky.
“There are a lot of ways Seattle couldn’t compete,” Max says softly, smiling as she plucks the photo from between Chloe’s fingers. She ducks her head, blushing slightly, gnawing on her lip nervously, like she’s surprised by the words that just came out of her mouth.
Chloe’s honestly a little surprised too, and it shows in the silence that lingers between them before she can get her bearings back.
“Yeah, bet they don’t stack ‘em like this in the city,” Chloe shoots back cupping her tits through her shirt with a smirk, gritting her teeth against the stutter of her heartbeat when Max’s blush deepens. “You almost ready to go? Not trying to alarm you or anything, but if we stay up here too much longer without any food, shit might go full Donner Party…”
“Gross,” Max’s brows furrow, mouth curling down in disgust and Chloe can’t help but laugh. “Just… give me a few more minutes, okay?”
“Maaax,” Chloe whines.
“C’mon, Chloe,” Max rises to her feet, extending her free hand to help haul Chloe up as well. “I just need a few more shots, alright? Just chill for a little while longer, I’ll get you an extra side of hashbrowns. Deal?”
“Deal,” Chloe sighs, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. “Alright, you have fun freezing the rest of your already insubstantial ass off over here in the dark--”
Max widens her eyes comically, making a show of slapping a concerned hand over her rear, mouth dropping open in feigned offense.
Chloe grins, managing not to laugh as she continues, “I’m gonna take a page outta your hippie handbook and see if I can go, like, draw sustenance from the sun’s rays before I keel over and die...”
Max snorts, “God, you’re so dramatic.”
“You love it,” Chloe boasts, bold and alive, running the tip of her tongue along her top row of teeth.
“Yeah, yeah,” Max grins, shoving her shoulder. “Go eat some sun beams, Clover.”
Chloe laughs, making her way back toward the edge of the cliff. She follows a trail of beer cans and cigarette butts, kicking some of the debris back toward the fire pit along her way. The ash is cold when she kneels down in front of it. The last party was probably days ago. She remembers crashing some rich Blackwell asshole’s get together with Rachel last weekend. Maybe some of this garbage was even left here by them; it’s hard to say. Her memories of that night get a little fuzzy after the Cuervo and the blonde with the tongue stud got thrown into the mix.
The thought leaves her a little guilty. Max is all about the environment; there’s no way she’d be down with all those drunk idiots trashing the place.
She definitely wouldn’t appreciate Chloe being one of those drunken idiots.
Bored and curious, Chloe plucks a stick from off the ground, sifting through the ash to see what she can uncover. Shards of glass, more cigarette butts, bits of charred firewood, condoms, and a disturbingly intact pair of tighty whities.
It’s so ludicrously fucked up Chloe almost wants to laugh. Kids play here. Little kids. Hell, she and Max had made this place their stomping grounds back in the day, and she knows it couldn’t have been any different then. The parallel worlds of adults and children - things you can’t unsee in the corners of the room once your eyes adjust to the dark.
“Okay!” Max’s voice accompanies the sound of approaching footfalls, leaves rattling and twigs snapping as she trudges gracelessly back through the underbrush. “I’m all set. You ready to go?”
The need to protect Max from what she’d unearthed overcomes her, urgent and overpowering. Impulsively, Chloe draws herself upright, sweeping as much dirt as possible over the pit with the broad side of her boot.
“Chloe?” Max’s voice is closer now, a few yards away.
“Yeah?” Chloe shoves her hands into her pockets, turning around with practiced nonchalance.
“What are you doing?” Max asks, tilting her head inquisitively, as if the new angle would reveal some obvious truth she was somehow overlooking.
“Nothing,” Chloe says, jogging over to Max. She wraps an arm around Max’s shoulder, steering her to the path down the hill. “Starving to death.”
There are things that Max is going to discover, eventually; about this place, about these people, the world at large. Maybe not today, but someday. It’s inevitable. Chloe knows she can’t stop that, knows it’s probably not her place to try.
But she can’t deny the relief she feels when Max allows herself to be lead back toward the truck.