analogthis | open rp/inbox

I don't know. ( and it's true; he doesn't. if max had seemed different to him lately, it's only because he's beginning to get to know her better. maybe there's some darkness to her eyes, but if there is, he hadn't seen it. he doesn't have the trained gaze of a practiced photographer. he's a rookie, an amateur. )

Different like... bad.

( or maybe jefferson is just a puritan. )

[If he hadn't gone with "do you feel bad now" she might have assumed he was trying to initiate more phone sex. Just talking about it had started getting her a little heated, but that dissipates, leaving her feeling confused.]

No. Are you worried because I had trouble remembering all of it? Because I remember enough, and I liked it. I'm...

[She glances back at the distracted couple in the corner, takes note how she's only a few minutes out from Blackwell now.

Her voice is softer, quieter, whispered into the phone:]

I'm glad it was you. Roller coaster and all... I'm glad it was you, Nathan.

[No, she hadn't always felt that way. But she does now. She's telling him the truth.]

( he's not worried about anything regarding the sex itself anymore. in the immediate aftermath, he'd panicked, but he feels like that's all been cleared up.

he's asking because he wants to see what jefferson sees, because he feels like an idiot for being blind to it. max doesn't seem 'ruined' to him, so maybe he just isn't looking hard enough. )

...Really?

( it's all so confusing. maybe it's a good thing that her first time was awkward and filled with pirate puns instead of in an underground bunker surrounded by cameras. but that would mean there's something seriously fucked up about jefferson's philosophy, and nathan isn't able to see how that's true. )

Do you have any dresses?

[Max still isn't sure about his line of questioning here or why, so the low-level confusion and mild concern remains.

There's some noise as the bus stops and Max gets up to step off of it.]

Yes, really. And... yeah? I mean I don't like to wear them every day but I have two for special occasions.

[Probably not fancy enough for any Prescott-class special occasions, but. They are indeed dresses.]

Also... I'm back at Blackwell now.

[Just walking across campus to the dorms, still dressed in Nathan's clothes. Braless. Gawd, it's a good thing she cancelled with Warren, actually. She should change clothes.]

What do they look like? Like, evening dresses?

( prescott-class check. also, only two dresses? max must really be slumming it... )

I'll come over and see. Gimme 20 minutes.

Not exactly...? [Not at all.] Alright. Deal. See you soon, then.

[This gives her at least enough time to change into a regular outfit: jeans, t-shirt, a different hoodie since her usual one still has nose-blood on it...

Then she pulls her two dresses from her closet to lay them out on the bed, feeling curious why Nathan wants to see them but also having the suspicious feeling it's about taking her out on a formal date. Which is exciting and nerve-wracking in equal measure. "Formal" is totally out of her comfort zone.]

( twenty minutes feels like enough time, at least in boy world, to get cleaned up and dressed. he showers, and brushes, and flosses. he uses cologne that costs more than this dormitory. he uses the hair products he only breaks out on special occasions.

when it comes to his outfit, he chooses one of those old-money displays of wealth, like his father taught him. an expensive maroon button-down and pressed slacks shows class way more effectively than gold chains. rolexes are fine, though. that's a reasonable, appropriate showing of $40,000.

it's afternoon time by now, so there's no hope of crossing into the girls' dorms unnoticed. he guesses there's no reason to be subtle now, anyway. everyone that matters already knows, so he knocks on max's door with only the mildest hint of embarrassment. )

[Max is really about to be smacked in the face with the reality of dating a Prescott. First, she also decides to shower, after like a second of sitting on her bed and feeling like she has a Hospital aura about her. Yeah, she has time to wash that off. She brushed her teeth and washed her face at Chloe's already, but still.

She's returning to her dorm in her normal clothes and her shower caddy on her arm, hair still damp around her face and cheeks a little red from the heat of the shower, when she sees Nathan knocking on her door. She gives him a small smile before letting them both into her room.

The dresses on her bed are pretty simple affairs. One is a casual blue sundress and the other is slightly more formal, but plain and black. They're classier than Walmart, but definitely not any kind of expensive label here.]

Judging by what you're wearing, I'm gonna take a wild guess that these aren't up to snuff for whatever you have planned.

[He does clean up really nice. Handsome and classy. Not that Max is knowledgeable enough about how to tell if things are expensive, or to tell how expensive they are. She'd probably be gobsmacked to be told the price of the watch alone.]

( the building agitation dissipates when she appears behind him. he relaxes, and doesn't seem to remember when he'd started to tense up. maybe this whole dating the hipster thing is making him more nervous than he'd realized.

once inside the privacy of her room, he feels better. between the two dresses, he opts for the black one. he flips it around, searching for the designer's tag. )

Is this an a-line or a basque?

( he holds it up in front of her, doing his best to imagine her in it. its style, it's like a strange, knock-off amalgamation of both shapes. )

It'll do. It's just dinner. Not like you're meeting my parents or anything.

[She laughs a little, sounding a bit self-conscious with one arm holding her other.]

You're definitely asking the wrong person.

[The term "a-line" sounds familiar, but she's never heard the other word before at all.

Her eyes widen at even the implication she could theoretically in the future be meeting his parents. God, no thank you. His sister? Sure! Parents? Check, please!

She puts her shower caddy away and takes her hairbrush from her dresser to run it through her hair a few times.]

Okay... So where are we going?

( he sets the dress down and can't help but laugh a little at her expression. meeting his parents is the last thing he'd do to her. over his dead body.

in a way, sean prescott and martha prescott are just two more people for him to protect her from. )

Where? Uh... Two Whales Diner.

[Oh, the relief is instantaneous, her body visibly relaxing.]

Good. That's seriously perfect. You do know I practically grew up there, right?

[She puts her hairbrush down and walks back over to her dress on the bed, already divesting herself of her hoodie, since it's just her top layer.]

( meanwhile, nathan had assumed some local diner didn't make for much of a date at all. it's so basic, even vic would say so. he'd like to take her somewhere nice, somewhere cool, maybe fly her out to all his favorite spots back home in florida... but it's a school night.

god, what a childish reason.

at least max looks genuinely delighted by the idea. )

Seriously? ( both in response to her enthusiasm and the new fact she's thrown his way. he walks over to check on lisa, but glances at her though that vanity mirror. ) I thought you just moved here, like me.

( nathan's been here for a few years now, but he hardly considers himself a local. max wasn't here last year, and now she is — therefore, she must be another newbie. or so he'd thought. )

You don't act like them.

[Either oblivious to the fact he's looking at her through the vanity mirror or just unphased by it, she starts changing out of her casual clothes to put the dress on as she talks. It's different from changing in the hospital, anyway... In that she has underwear and a bra on already.]

I was born here and grew up here. My family only moved to Seattle five years ago. I came back for the photography program here. But how don't I act like them? I'm not sure what that even means...

You're just different. I don't know. It's not like it's a bad thing—

( nathan goes from looking at lisa, hefting up her pot to admire her leaves in the setting sun, to looking up at max half-naked in the mirror... and he drops lisa.

in his defense, he'd neither meant to shatter the plant nor see a hot chick in a state of undress. but, a crime is still a crime, and lisa is now a victim. )

Fuck. Fuck.

[She quickly turns to look at him with the dress halfway up her arms, surprised by both the noise and his sudden cursing. Pulling the dress the rest of the way on, she hurries over to him, checking the damage.]

Her pot's broken but she may still be okay. [May. She'd probably be in better hands with her mom because Max is a very newbie plant momma. She looks back at Nathan with a friendly smile.] I'll buy another pot for her and move her there tonight. And... [She lowers her voice and leans in with a hand next to her mouth like she's making sure Lisa can't hear her.] If it makes you feel any better, I've killed like six plants since I started highschool.

[Lisa might be the first one dead since she started at Blackwell now, but still.]

( max is being strangely chill about him murdering her plant. he's mentally braced for impact, but nothing ever lands. she doesn't mention how he's a disgrace to the family name, or how dropping this plant pot is indicative of being a bad photographer - neither of which much logical sense, really, but he's stopped questioning the things important adults say to him.

he squints. )

You mean you're not gonna just, you know... ( he whistles and draws a spiral in the air with his hand, which must be the universal sign for time travel. )

Do you want me to? Then do I just not tell you what happened? The hospital was kind of a scare... I was thinking I should probably take it easy unless it's a life or death situation...

[Technically this could count as a life or death situation. Lisa's life. But it's really not that big of a deal to her. Yes, she names her plants, and does silly things with them in order to break the tension and get Nathan to smile, but... In the end, it's still just a plant.

Anyway, picking out a new pot with Nathan for her to move her to might be kind of fun?]

Fuck if I know. They're your powers, babe.

( but, if it were him, he'd be rewinding constantly. he'd rewind until his nose bled, and more. he'd fix every damn thing in the world, if he only could.

since max isn't nearly as wasteful with her powers as he'd be, nathan squats down to pick up the big hunks of broken porcelain. he still feels like shit about it, but max's even temper is helping to delay what may very well be an impending crash-out. )

[They are her powers, and she's certainly used them for frivolous things before. She's used them to her own advantage, to get information from people, to endear herself to them. She's used it when she's broken things, too. Which she does plenty. She's kind of clumsy and she knows it.

But it feels a little weird, now that she's in a relationship, to use it to just smooth every bump. She's not sure if that would actually be good for them, or if it would be better for them to work through certain things together. Isn't that supposed to help strengthen a relationship?

She picks up her small desk trash bin and brings it over for them to put the broken pieces into, then she kneels down to his side and presses a kiss to his cheek.]

"Babe" is cute. [Definitely better than Sugar Baby.] I just want to do what's best for us. And since we're together now, you should get a say in that. It's not all about me.

( another strange pang inside of him, the idea of being consulted in matter of what's good for him. it's not like his parents give him a choice. he was asked to move here; saying no wasn't an option. and now with jefferson, all of his question have wrong answers. maybe he's not being given a choice there, either.

he frowns.

max is a really weird chick. )

'K, whatever. Then... I guess we're going to the plant pot store.

( the store that sells plant pots and nothing else, that one that most definitely exists.

he stands once he tosses away the large shards. with the smaller ones, he'd be here all day if he went after those. they can have someone come in and sweep it up later, maybe. )

You look hot in that dress by the way.

[To be fair, the "Max is weird" knowledge is fairly well known at this school, even if lately it has been leaning a little more toward "weird but cool." And her giving him a say in how they handle their relationship probably should not be the thing qualifying her as weird. No, what's weird about Max is that she pats one of Lisa's droopy leaves and speaks to her.]

Don't worry, we'll be back with a new home for you, and you'll be just fine.

[Absolutely not a promise she can keep, but hey. Lisa's a plant. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.

She stands back up from her kneeling position and wipes any possible Lisa-dirt clinging to the dress.]

Uh huh. Thank you. And do you mean that or are you just trying to get it off of me so you can see me in my underwear again?

[She teases him jovially, though there's a pink to her cheeks from the compliment. And yes, that could be a reference to just a second ago or it could be a reference to the night she was high and lost her virginity. Who's to say?

Max grabs her usual bag with her journal, camera, pencils, phone, et. al, and pulls it on over her head and shoulder.]

( well, yes, talking to plants is also weird, but it's not the kind of weird that makes nathan reflect on his life up to now. seeing max baby talk a lump of leaves just makes him think that she's this nice naturally, that he'd be considerate even if he weren't around. it's dumb and dorky, but it's authentic. at least he thinks it's authentic. )

Uh, both. Obviously both.

( especially now that she's voiced the second option. he doesn't have to feel weird about adding that image to his mental photo album [right beside the picture of their first night together, and the image of her in his clothing]. she's the one who brought it up first.

but dinner first, then they can talk about getting his head under her dress.

once she's ready, he leaves first and he holds the door open for her. isn't it strange how liking a person makes you want to do things for them? )

...Was the photography program worth moving back to this place?

[She can't even be mad about his answer of "both," because honestly there's a self-confidence boost in the fact that the guy she's sweet on and who's sweet to her also finds her hot. And that the guy she had her first experience with is going to give her another eventually, this one that she'll be able to hold onto better than the one she was high for.

Dinner first. And procuring a pot for Lisa to give her even a fighting chance at survival. Max isn't the best plant mama but she does always try her best at it.

His chivalrous move of holding the door open for her gets him a playful curtsy, since she's already wearing the dress, she might as well.]

Well, it's admittedly pretty small, I guess. But I was so excited about it when I got accepted. And Chloe was a big contributing factor.

[Even if she'd been too scared to contact Chloe again after the way she'd just left her texts on read the year after she left. Once she'd arrived back in Arcadia Bay, she just kept putting it off. The same way she'd always put off talking to Chloe on the phone. It was terrible, but she'd never known what to say, and instead of agonizing over it, it had been easier to just focus on her life in Seattle. Chloe was always braver and more outgoing than she was, she'd easily convinced herself that she'd be surrounded with new friends once she started at Blackwell. Not thinking for a second about how everything might have changed her.

She'll probably have to hold onto that guilt forever now, considering everything. But she did manage to save her. More than once now, really. What with Frank and the stupid train.]

And what self-proclaimed photography nerd wouldn't be happy about getting to study under Mr. Jefferson?

[Surely Nathan's with her on that, considering he's apparently closer to Mr. Jefferson than she'd realized before snooping in his phone. He's got his contact information and everything!]

( he's been at this for long enough, he thinks, that a name alone shouldn't make him flinch. he hears victoria wax poetic about their dreamy photography teacher all the time, and his photographs are plastered all over campus. for those reasons alone, it's pretty shitty that his face chooses to frown when max brings him up. he didn't authorize that. it's like even his face is trying to fuck him over.

he recovers quickly. )

Yeah, Vic says you're a total fangirl.

( nathan had been one, too. he feels like he was more subtle about it, but jefferson must've noticed his desperation pretty fast. it didn't take long to end up at his side.

in some ways, it's still a dream.

if anyone in bustling through the girls' dorm catches sight of max and nathan all dressed to the nines like they're going to homecoming, they all do the right thing and choose not to mention this strange new couple aloud. at least not while they're still in earshot. )

I liked his stuff. ( he says it abruptly, picking up the conversation before it has a chance to die off. ) When it was time to bring on new adjuct and Jefferson was an option, I made sure he got in. My dad's on the board and all. He made it happen.

Edited (forgot a word 🤪) 2026-03-23 21:55 (UTC)

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