strawberry fields forever [for Max]

[because_thesky]

The apartment's walls are no thicker than Jude's head; he can still hear the television and the shaggart that carted it in, the two things most deserving of his girlfriend's attention and least deserving of his own.

You'd think a girl with Lucy's conviction could understand the difference between not caring and caring too much, but he's not the

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[because_thesky]

He ought to be used to this, Jude thinks--maybe not being sticky and covered in sand, or staring up at his best friend steady and helpless as if Max were holding his head instead of handfuls of sand--but the way Max can turn his life (and now his stomach) upside down, shake him up and pin him down at the same time just by saying a few unexpected words.

But that's Max: you can know him like you know yourself and still be surprised. He's like the blank canvas, the sheet of paper; Jude looks at it and can see how he's going to fill it, knows what he wants to put there, but he never knows how well his hand is going to express what's in his head. Max gives him the same paradoxical sense of certainty and uncertainty.

And sometimes, Max says I'm in love with you and he's just a blank page, no inspiration, no actions Jude knows to take. It's like a game, three unbelieveable things and he has to pick the one that's true. He can't decide if that's the first or last one he'd pick. "I think the war's gone to your head Max," he starts, corner of mouth and brow arching like he isn't the one gone out of his head, "Been away so long you forgot most of us only speak English."

He's not shoving it away, not quite; he heard every word, understood them, understood what they meant, more or less, but what is he supposed to say? They're a blank canvas and a brush that probably isn't even loaded, in this metaphor, and he doesn't know what to do with them.

[so_heavy]

"Yeah, well," Max easily concedes and rolls off of Jude and onto his ass as if he hasn't just dropped not one but three emotional bombshells on his wayward best friend. He wrestles a pack of cigarettes and his lighter from his pocket, lights two between thin lips and passes Jude one of them with red-streaked fingers.

"What the fuck were you doing, man?" he asks, then looks away with a jerk, taking a long drag from his smoke to still the erratic thrum of his heart that wanted to start at the sight of Jude laying in the sand covered with something that could have been blood but wasn't.

[because_thesky]

The cigarette's welcome even if he'd only just spat out the one that...came with him, he supposes. He needs something to do with this hands in the face of everything, and maybe that had been the point of throwing himself into his art--not drowning, but trying to swim.

Lots of swimming to do here, he can see. Lots to drown in if he doesn't. "I was...painting, you might call it. Hence the paint." He could tell Max, obviously, about the pot and the hurt, about Lucy outside the door--

Lucy's dating some jock--

His mind can supply it's own smartassed replies to questions like Lucy's here, then, but it can't do much with the information but turn itself inside out and tied in a knot over some new boyfriend. "Lucy can't have been here long enough to date anyone," he protests around the cigarette. "She was in the apartment when everything went sunny and covered in sand."

[so_heavy]

"Welcome to Pink Punch island," is Max's lofty reply, and he figures that if Jude considers it, that's enough said; the perfect encapsulation of a fucked-up experience. "She's been here at least a year, man. I've been here at least a year. You were here before, but obviously you don't remember that. People just fucking appear and disappear, like this is all some kind of joke." Somebody up above is having a really good time with it, Max is certain.

[because_thesky]

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together; side by side with sun on their faces, smoke curling around them, it seems as good an explanation for it as any. "I've heard worse ones," he answers, light as he can. "From you, mostly." They're still close enough that he can reach up and settle his hand on Max's shoulder, clutching the fabric more than he manages any sort of reassuring squeeze. Still no real clue what the fuck this is, or what it means that he's been here, that he left, but he's here now.