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There are no words for how good it feels to be kissing Max Caulfield, Chloe thinks.
No song has lyrics to match the elation bubbling in her chest or the rush of heat thrashing under her skin as fingers weave through her wind-tangled hair and rake against her scalp.
No stupid Shakespeare romance could put to stage any passion matching her own as she breaks away from the kiss for a single second she wishes could be rewound, only to bring her lips back to Max’s with twice the excitement as before.
Nothing in this life or any alternate life out there could make Chloe feel as happy as kissing Max at the end of all their struggles does. Finally kissing Max without choking back goodbyes.
It’s not the first time they’ve kissed. Third, probably, if Chloe’s remembering right. The first one reeked of chlorine and adolescent inexperience, her heart nearly leaping up her throat in surprise at Max’s sudden boldness, and she’d wish later that she’d never stepped back.
The second one, maybe, could have been passionate to some, but for all the wrong reasons. After all, no one—hell, not even Chloe… especially not Chloe—would feel this ecstatic about a fucking goodbye kiss.
And those were the only two kisses Chloe got to remember for two whole years. Hella lame.
So it’s no wonder this kiss feels so tempestuous, so unhinged, messy and salty from tears of relief and interrupted every other minute by dopey smiles and grasping hands never letting go.
Chloe Price has never been so fucking in love before.
It’s not the most romantic setting, tucked away on an old mattress in a musty hotel with all the old incandescents buzzing above and around them. She hasn’t showered in days, and Max smells like a wet dog, and she’s pretty sure she still has the taste of cigarettes on her breath, but none of that matters when her fingers dig into Max’s soaked-through sweater, wringing rainwater between her knuckles, nor when she feels Max’s teeth just barely graze the rise of her kiss-swollen lip as she pitches forward for a deeper, longer kiss.
It’s real. She’s real. They’re real and they’re together again.
There’s nothing Chloe wants more in all of reality right now than her Max.
Max moans into their kiss—a small, almost delicate sound totally fitting her, somewhere between a whine and a gasp—and Chloe’s chest clenches, her hackles rising with a shudder that wracks her body.
Okay, so maybe there is one thing she wants more.
Emboldened and maybe a bit drunk on lust and euphoria, Chloe returns the favour (and more) with a playful nip to Max’s lower lip, which she follows up with with a low, breathy chuckle at her surprised yelp.
“Is that how you want it?” Chloe teases, easy as it’s always been despite how new the situation is to both of them.
“Fuck yes,” Max says through a shaky breath, moving from sitting in Chloe’s lap to pinning her against the mattress, her knees saddling either side of her. “I’ve been wanting to jump your bones for two years.”
Chloe rolls her eyes; there’s no doubt about it that Max is back. No one else would say something like that in earnest. “Your bedroom talk could use some work.”
“Don’t lie, you love it,” Max rasps.
Chloe scoffs. “I love you, Max. Which I guess means, by default—“
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence, what with Max’s lips back on hers and another minute spent making out.
When they finally break, Max pulls back with a sweet, salacious smile, her fingertips idly trailing up and down the back of Chloe’s neck. “I love you, too.”
Chloe knows she should be touched by the affection, should find her smile adorable in its lopsided imperfection, but instead it twists her stomach in knots and chokes her breath to a halt.
She looks so different from how she remembers, but she looks all the same as when she left. The Max Caulfield straddling her, locking her fingers together behind her neck is an entirely new person that Chloe is so fucking turned on by, but she’s also the Max Caulfield who cried at an injured bunny until Chloe got her dad to nurse it back to health when they were 8. She’s the Max Caulfield who made Chloe bawl for days when she left her in the worst point of her life, who she wished for years she could yell and scream at until her voice collapsed into ashy rasps. She’s the Max who stood over the collapsing Arcadia Bay on the edge of a once-in-a-lifetime tornado and let it all die, only to one year later regret every life she swore she and she alone had taken.
It’s impossible to pin her Max down right now. Once, stark white frames would’ve told Chloe everything she needed to know about her, but now?
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but more than that fly through Chloe’s mind.
Chloe’s hand hovers in trepidation over Max’s thigh, fingertips just barely grazing the seam of her shorts. She can’t deny that she’s wanted this too for the last two years, dreamed of nothing but locking lips with Max, tasting her, feeling her, hearing her name moaned in tones ranging the spectrum of turned-on to infatuated.
And she’d dreamed of giving all of that back to her, too. Her dreams weren’t all E for everyone, and she’d sure as hell be taking that secret to her grave, but every want of hers was real, is real, rattling around like a pent-up ghost in the back of her head. When all she had was time too long, a vivid imagination, and her trusty left hand, all she could think of was every way she would want to show just how much she needed her after all these years.
Fuck, she’d have torn through reality herself if it meant letting Max feel just how much she missed her, how much she wanted her.
Better late than never, she supposes, but on the cusp of dreams entering this reality – her reality, their reality – she hesitates.
“Max,” she says, low and quiet, careful not to chase her away yet again by ruining their moment, “are you sure you want this? Like, right now?”
Max stops, locking her gaze in Chloe’s. Her lips remain parted as her chest heaves. She’s got to be doing this to make Chloe eat her words, but that won’t stop her from just making sure. The last thing she wants is for their reunion after two years apart to be rushed and ruined. God knows it’s possible with her involved.
“Why?” Max asks, her brow creasing in concern before her eyes fall from her gaze; Chloe can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or shame in those baby blues, but she does know she hates how it looks in Max’s already demure expression (and hates herself even more for being the one to put it there). “Do…do you not want this?”
“No!” Chloe blurts out, making Max jolt a bit and forcing a grimace across Chloe’s face. “No, I do. I really, really fucking do.”
“But?”
Chloe stops, tries to wrangle any reason behind her own hesitation from the flurry of thoughts thrashing in her mind. Max is at least patient, but she can’t help but mentally kick her own ass for the way she looks, the way she must’ve hurt her; after she spent the last two years trying to find her way back to Chloe, the least she can do is let Max have her way with her.
Old Chloe would never have cockblocked herself this bad , she reprimands herself, though she does find solace in the growth she can look back on. Old Chloe didn’t have Max to worry about, after all.
But Chloe, now, doesn’t have to worry about Max, either. Instead, she gets to see her smile, pitch down to press a chaste kiss to her cheek, only to follow it up with a more passionate series of kisses along her jaw, the brush of her lips and graze of her teeth leaving fire in their wake just under Chloe’s skin. The Max straddling her is an entirely different portrait than the one that left for Seattle, or the one that came back at the lowest point of her life, or even the one that phased out of her life by a universe tired with happy endings.
Max is older. Wiser. More confident in how she kisses her, more sure in how she touches her, and damn if it doesn’t make Chloe hate herself for being so nervous about this.
Max shifts anxiously on top of her, making Chloe’s stomach twist once again. “Am I…different from how you were expecting? Chloe, I’m still the same Max Caulfield. Your Max.”
Chloe’s fingers brush against her knuckles before she takes her hand, tenderly stroking her thumb across its back. “You’re perfect. You’re as beautiful as I remember, right down to the last freckle.” At least that earns a small, bashful chuckle from Max as she averts her gaze, trying to hide her blush to no avail. “You’re my Max,” Chloe reaffirms, “I just don’t want to ruin this. Us. After two years,” her voice dips below its typical tone, the most unsure of herself she’s ever sounded in front of Max, “I don’t want to give you another reason to leave.”
Max worries her bottom lip between her teeth before gently squeezing Chloe’s fingers between hers. “Why would I want to leave?”
“We haven’t done this before,” Chloe muses. “What if you’re suddenly like ‘wow, maybe I’m not totally head over heels in love with my best friend’.”
“So I have changed…”
Chloe looks away with a weighted sigh, not able to bear the worry swimming in Max’s eyes. “You’re fucking incredible , Max, and you’ve done so much. Seen so much. What if…what if I’m still the same idiot from Arcadia Bay?”
A heavy, nervous air blankets the two of them, the only solace Chloe can find being the softness of Max’s hand under the pad of her thumb. Chloe’s no stranger to hating herself, and she’s equally intimate with the idea that other people might hate her, too. Even she knows the snapshot of her life in Arcadia Bay is a coffee-stained, weed-reeking, frayed-edged disaster smeared in grease and dried blood, and she wouldn’t blame Max if, after two years of exploring space-time itself, the Chloe she sees now matches that image.
Chloe’s tried to change, really. She’s tried to make amends with herself and others who survived, tried to turn her life around so that Max could come back to a better Chloe, one that deserves to be loved the way she’s currently keeping herself from. The black oil she rinses from her palms every day is a testament to her work, but she doubts she can really scrub the rest of it away.
Grieving after the storm was easy enough, but it’s still incomplete. After all, she wants to think a part of her died in its aftermath– this part of her that makes her sick to reflect on–but that’s a bit of a challenge when it keeps haunting her from beyond its grave.
No rest for the wicked. Maybe she really doesn’t deserve Super-Max, or any Max.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a soft brush along the bottom of her jaw, sweeping along to her chin before tilting it up. She catches Max’s longing, loving gaze and her breath halts at the reverence she regards her with.
“Chloe,” she begins softly, patiently, saintly even, “I want you. Whether you’re the Chloe I left behind or you’ve grown like I have, I want you. I will always want you. I will always love you.”
Chloe stutters as her breath comes back to her. “Did…did I tell you everything I was feeling and then you just rewound to make me feel better before I said anything? Cause it’s scary how spot-on that was.”
Max giggles and pitches down to kiss her; Chloe feels every worry melt away between their lips, every doubt and insecurity fade into the past to let better memories and dreams take their place.
“No,” Max murmurs warmly, inches away from another kiss, “I just happen to know my Chloe.”
“Your Chloe…” It’s repeated in a hushed tone several times, and Chloe swears she never wants to hear any other name for herself.
She feels fingers squeeze hers comfortably again, and the butterflies resume their fluttering in her stomach. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this. I tore through space and time just for this chance, and I want it–want you –no matter how.”
“So we’re getting kinky then, huh?” Chloe teases, earning a light slap on the shoulder. It’s easy to get lost in herself when she’s nervous, but at least it’s just as easy to fall back into familiarity with her best friend.
“Sure, whatever you want,” Max says through a snicker, “as long as it’s with you.”
Chloe falls for the contagious laughter for a moment as her fingers find purchase at the base of Max’s head, tangling into her wind-swept hair as she pulls her close with a reassured confidence and barely-contained excitement. “Then jump my bones, Super Max.”
Max acquiesces with an enthusiastic grin that meets Chloe’s lips, chaste and tender at first but quickly breathless and passionate all over again. Chloe takes her all in, smelling of rain and tasting of coffee, and commits every second of it to her own album of memories. Her heartbeat rattles in her chest, crashing cymbals and beating drums in her ears as she feels Max’s fingers slip beneath the hem of her shirt, grabbing for her back to pull her closer, a chorus of finally and fuck yes and please echoing between every beat.
Desire, relief, affirmation, and the feeling of Max’s careful touch lightly brushing the seam of her bra embolden Chloe even further, stoking heat under her skin that burns away any remnant anxieties that might have festered. She reaches across, taking her fingernails over Max’s side and palming the hem of her sweater before deftly tearing it up Max’s torso, over her breasts, over her shoulders. Finally, Max slips herself free of the sweater with a tug and a slight wobble, and Chloe carefully catches her with one splayed hand while carelessly tossing the sweater beside the bed with the other.
“Fuck,” Chloe breathes, her eyes scanning Max’s torso as she regains her balance. Her eyes train on every freckle both familiar and new, mapping the soft contours of her body while admiring the faintly golden tan she’s sporting, before her attention is drawn to her breasts—Max wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted this, Chloe thinks. Otherwise she would be wearing a bra.
Max smirks sheepishly, her fingers pulling carefully from her back as she lifts a hand to skim the fringe of auburn just above her shoulders. “You, uh, like what you see?”
“Uh huh,” Chloe nods enthusiastically. “Gone are the days of ghost white Max, it seems.”
“Chloe Two said I needed a tan before I went back,” Max says, and it works to make her hand ease down to her collarbone, hopefully a little less nervous to be baring herself for Chloe. “Guess she knows what you like.”
Chloe’s mouth tilts playfully as her nails glance slowly up her thigh. “Chloe Two, huh?”
“Well, you are my number one. Chloe Prime.” There’s a familiar twinkle of mischief in Max’s eyes, and it’s all too easy to make Chloe’s stomach fill with butterflies, especially when she’s giving her that look and also half-naked on top of her. Confidence is a much better look on Max than modesty, after all, and Chloe doesn’t waste a second indulging in the sensations it evokes.
“God, you’re adorable,” she murmurs earnestly, her fingers finding purchase on the small rise of her hip as her eyes drift back down to her breasts.
Max shudders beneath her touch, and Chloe just barely makes out a faint sigh above her eyeline. “You, um…like those, too?”
Chloe can’t stop staring, can’t stop thinking about where she is and what she’s doing right now. Every inch of her is ablaze, prickling with want that grows with every breathless second. “Fuck yeah.”
“Do you want to touch them?”
Chloe trails her hand up Max’s side, her palm gliding smooth over her soft skin, leaving fire in her wake. “Fuck yeah.”
Her hand is guided the rest of the way by Max, whose fingers wrap gently around Chloe’s wrist until it rests inches from her breast. There’s a moment of hesitation, a second where she has to collect herself, tell herself to breathe like a normal person, before she reaches up and cups her breast, skating her thumb over the russet nipple. Her eyes dart up to catch Max shudder, a moan hidden behind her teeth, and so Chloe brushes again, scraping the tip of her fingernail against the sensitive bud for good measure.
This time, Max’s breath hiccups as her chest flushes with a rosy shade, earning a smirk from Chloe as she circles the rising bud with reverent intensity. Every shuddering gasp and stifled moan it elicits from Max is proof enough that it’s her, that this is real, that she gets to act on the only impulses she’d repressed since she first realised how much Max meant to her.
“Chloe,” Max drawls, her grip on Chloe’s wrist becoming urgent, a moment of sobriety in what, at least to Chloe, feels like ecstasy.
“What’s up?” Chloe nearly whispers, not wanting for a single breath to break the magic of this moment.
“I’m— fuck, Chloe,” she gasps as Chloe teasingly traces her thumb around her nipple, “Chloe, I’m supposed to be the one…you know.”
Chloe halts abruptly, and when she speaks she makes sure the rasp in her voice is as deliberate and husky as it can be. “Did you want me to stop?”
“God, no.”
Chloe barely has a second to register the moment Max cranes down to take her lips again, entwining her finger’s with Chloe’s over her breast and kneading it with a renewed intensity that has Chloe’s mind spinning and thighs burning. Her mind races as fast as her heart, and between her legs she feels herself aching, wanting, desperate for more as Max pulls their bodies flush together, suffocating the space between them until nothing bars them from each other.
Hot breath mists against her neck as Max pulls away briefly, quickly returning to lightly sink her teeth into the soft, searing skin at the base of Chloe’s neck, nudging aside the wide collar of her tee. Chloe feels a whine break from her throat, stuck between surprise and ardent approval, and the hand cupping Max’s breast reacts in much the same way. She’d be surprised if the two of them didn’t walk away from their first time with a few temp tattoos of their own, if temp tattoos were another way of saying scratches and hickeys.
“God, I want you,” Max purls against Chloe’s pulse, her teeth grazing and her voice husky. “I want you so bad.”
Chloe’s head lolls back into the pillow, her hips rocking gently against Max; her thigh barely grazes her rear, and Max responds lifting herself from Chloe’s hips, her mouth not leaving her skin for even for a second, and settling one knee way too close to her crotch not to make her have to stifle a sure-to-be-too-loud whine. Not for the sake of whatever neighbours might accidentally listen in, mind you. Only because she doesn’t want Max to know just how desperately horny she is. Cool front and all that.
She pulls hers and Max’s hands away from her chest as Max lowers herself, her chest flush with her own in its heaving, rapid bliss. Chloe leads her touch to her waist, slipping her shirt up her stomach and grazing the strawberry blonde trail leading from her naval down with both their fingertips. “Then touch me like you do.”
Max does as she’s told with both a trepidation to her touch and an excitement in her breath, gently slipping her fingers beneath the waistband of Chloe’s boxers and following her treasure trail. If Chloe weren’t drunk on lust right now, she’d make some stupid joke about how they always wanted to be pirates or how X marks the spot; instead, she lets herself be treasured as Max traces a line down between her legs, dragging her fingertips along her slick entrance in languid deliberation as a shudder of pleasure wracks her body.
Chloe’s teeth grind together as her lips part, shallow breaths of anticipation breaching through. Max lingers and catches Chloe’s gaze, a wordless question asked and answered by a quick, shallow nod. Max starts slow for her (and probably for herself), but it’s not like she has to even do much to make Chloe bite down on her bottom lip; she’s been waiting, wanting this for so long, she only hopes she can last long enough to enjoy feeling Max inside her for the first time.
And fuck does she enjoy it. Her body screams with pleasure as Max pumps into her, rhythmic alongside her harsh breaths and the bucking of her hips. Pleasure surges through her, wild and hot and frantic, and Chloe first grasps at the bedsheets, white-knuckled at the thrill, before directing her attention to the back of Max’s head, scraping at her scalp as she drags her back down to catch her urgent breaths against her own mouth.
Still, even if it’s new to Max, and it’s half-new to Chloe, there’s a familiarity to how she fucks her, a confidence and tenacity in the way she makes her back arch and her hips buck. Max is attentive to each gasp that breaks from her lips and every rake of her nails through her hair, touching her where she wants her most, how she wants her most, and she hopes her bliss is everything Max has wanted from her after waiting so long to have her.
Max’s thumb idly brushes her clit, and Chloe’s entire world is rocked, her vision going white-hot as a rough cry tears through her throat. Her nails drag pale lines down the back of Max’s neck at the sensation, a wordless plea for more, more, more. Max gives it all to her, tracing around her clit between pumps of her wrist that grow faster and more frenzied with every second that passes.
Through it all, in the few instances where Chloe’s vision is her own again, Max is the picture of adoration; haloed by the lamp above, the light striking the crystalline cyan of her eyes, she regards her with reverence, holds her gaze with devotion, love and affection playing silently on her parted lips.
This really is new, Chloe barely manages to think, and she wouldn’t trade it for anything else. There’s nowhere else, no other timeline or version of reality or whatever, she would rather be than right here, right now, adored by Max and adoring her in return.
“Max,” Chloe breathes raggedly, gripping her tight like she did years ago when she lost her, “I love you.”
The faintest hint of a smile plays across Max’s expression, crinkling the corners of her eyes as pink blush dusts beneath her freckles. “I love you too, Chloe.”
In another life, Chloe would probably be hella embarrassed to come right after hearing those words, but in the here and now it buffets her climax as it surges through her, a weightless ecstasy that sends her mind spinning and hollows her chest. For a moment, it’s all fire and wind and the clattering of drums in her ears, a haze she’d happily stay lost in forever.
Max’s soft voice leads her back to her senses, and soon she’s sighing heavily against her bare chest, her grip slackening as she feels a wash of relief settle over her.
“There,” Max purls, “there we go. I’ve got you, Chloe. I’ve got you.”
“Fuck,” Chloe manages as Max lays her back down, brushing teal bangs aside to run her thumb over her brow. “Fuck, Max, that was—“
“Hella good?”
“Hella amazing.” Chloe’s expression settles as she sinks back into the wrinkled mattress.
Seconds tick by into peacefully slow moments as Chloe eases herself down from her climax and catches her breath, Max sidling up beside her and gently stroking lines along her hairline. As her heart rate slows, a calm peace blankets them both that she settles more than happily into. She doesn’t want to get so caught up in how good the sex was that she forgets who she’s with, not even for a second. If there’s any moment Chloe wishes she could capture forever, it would be this one.
“Max,” Chloe murmurs as she stirs, still breathless but sobering, “grab my phone.”
Max raises an eyebrow but complies, lazily wiping her fingers on the old duvet (hot, Chloe thinks privately and shamelessly) before reaching beside her to pick her phone off the side table. “What for?”
Chloe shakes her head when Max tries to hand it off to her. “I need a professional for this.”
Max snickers. “I mean, I might be good, but that was my first time. Hardly a professional.”
“What? Did you not get down and dirty with Chloe Two and Rachel?”
Max delivers her a very appropriate playful shove. “You’re so gross! And no, I didn’t. It wasn’t you, Chloe Prime.”
Chloe smiles playfully — she still loves the nickname as much as she loves making Max say it in that spirited tone she’s fallen so hard for —and makes no effort to hide her relief in knowing that Max saved herself for her.
“Yeah, well, it was sorta mine too. I’ve never actually, yennow, been with another girl.” Then, in a sweeter timbre, she adds while drawing a faint touch along Max’s knuckles bordering her phone, “I wanna mark the occasion. I never want to forget this.”
“Chloe…” Max begins softly, her brow furrowing, “are you…crying?”
“What? No!” Chloe lies, bolting up onto her elbow. Her eyes betray her, though, not unless she took a hit earlier and completely forgot about it; her eyes are definitely red and watery. “It’s the fucking onion ninjas.”
“You’re such a dork,” Max laughs before leaning down to press a chaste kiss to Chloe’s temple, then her cheek, and finally where Chloe wants her most (if only to make sure she doesn’t embarrass herself even further by saying something apparently dorky).
“Your dork,” Chloe whispers between their lips, and seals the statement with another kiss. “Yes, Max. You made this dork cry because the sex was that good. Now are you gonna take my picture or what?”
Max smiles, kisses Chloe once more, and settles in beside her, angling Chloe’s phone above them for a selfie. The picture staring back down at them gives Chloe a chance to see herself, pink-cheeked and smiling, in a new light she’d never have expected to live to see, eyes half-lidded and lips swollen. And Max? She’s committed her to memory already in all the ways a photo could never capture — her detergent-brand deodorant, her feather-soft touches, the slight rasp to her voice whenever she whispers — but for this moment she appreciates the picture of the woman she loves, has loved forever, will love forevermore, and thanks whoever’s listening up above that she’s not just a ghost in the back of her mind anymore.
Chloe smiles as Max encapsulates the memory, puts her lips to Max’s cheek for the second, abandons the phone quickly enough to be on top of Max and returning the favour before a third can be taken.
That doesn’t matter, though. For once in their infinite possible lives, they’re free to make more.
They have all the time in the world.