Beasts
When Victoria glanced up, Maxine was smiling.
For one awful, horrifying moment, her cold mask slipped.
Later, she would think that the moment it did was probably not dissimilar to the moment someone realizes they are about to die. Maybe it was dramatic, but she couldn’t help it. Drama had been a part of her view on anything that happened to her within the past year or so, and she thought that this event had at least some reason to be thought of that way.
Feeling that mask slip was almost like feeling her life slip, sliding nearly out of her grasp.
She fumbled for it, in that moment of panic that comes when a glass nearly slips off the table and you rush to grapple with it and keep it from shattering. She just barely managed to grab it, but the damage was done.
Maxine’s smile had vanished, and she was staring with something too close to interest for her liking.
Her mask had slipped.
Fuck.
Fucking Maxine.
She just hadn’t been prepared, goddammit!
She was always so composed, too, it was always so easy to hide those little white-hot flares of feelings that she didn’t get, didn’t understand,couldn’t understand because understanding meant actually investigating those feelings and that was out of the question.
But she hadn’t been prepared.
She’d actually relaxed for a moment.
That was unacceptable.
But fucking Maxine.
Maxine fucking Caulfield just made it so easy to relax, with that soft, quiet, beautiful voice that was at once untouchable and obviously deferent. Pandering. Weak.
And she hated that.
And loved it.
Those were the feelings she was always most careful to not even touch. Not with a twenty foot, cold steel pole that let absolutely nothing seep through it.
The way that deference, that pandering, that vulnerability sparked something awful in her gut. Something selfish, and possessive, and white-hot in that insistent way that made it impossible to ignore.
It wasn’t even just average possessiveness. The wish to protect a vulnerable friend. No, that she could’ve confronted, even if she wouldn’t have been happy about it.
No, this was so much worse.
She knew, even worse, that those feelings - unlike normal possessiveness - weren’t interested in protecting Maxine. Not even a little.
They wanted something that she didn’t want to fucking know because the feelings were so goddamn strong and she knew that ignoring them would just be so much easier. So much better.
She had relaxed. Because something in that tone…
It wasn’t even a feeling, she knew. That thing she didn’t want to see. It was like… a great, awful beast in her gut. A feline, maybe. A panther, or lynel.
And Maxine’s tone was like a soothing balm for that awful beast. The kind of soothing that comes from indulging in an addiction. It helps so much in the moment, but it just makes the awful thing want more, in time.
Maxine’s tone seemed to almost be caressing that beast, running over it as it hummed and purred in contentment.
Maxine’s tone of absolute deference.
Of weakness.
Petulance.
Servitude.
And it felt so fucking good and she had just…
Relaxed.
And then she had glanced up, and Maxine’s smile was just there, from fucking nowhere, just sitting there on her face and lighting up everything about her - all her ethereal, untouched beauty suddenly in a spotlight below that happy, tiny, wonderful smile.
She had relaxed. Her guard had been down.
And her mask had slipped.
It felt wrong when she slipped it on again. She could tell it wasn’t quite right. Something in the lines of her face, in the corners of her mouth, felt just a little strained in a way they hadn’t before.
She-
She had to get the fuck out of here.
“Well, that’s all.” She said, trying to inject her usual utter confidence into her voice. Still wrong, stilted, strained. “I’ll be out of your hair.”
Maxine blinked. She turned away from it, already starting to leave.
“Are you… sure? I mean, you could… stay…”
The beast purred again. She had to get Maxine to stop that, to get that awful deference out of her voice - or she was liable to do something… bad.
Probably. She still didn’t want to know what the beast wanted her to do, but she probably wouldn’t like it much.
She didn’t feel quite ready to respond, so she just waved the girl off as she swept out. She just managed to pull of a half-hearted version of her usual flourish.
She leaned against the hallway wall for a while.