#trying to catch up on pnat again

[not-that-max]

MAKEOUT BESTIES ok that is my new term for any relationship I (an aromantic) have in the future I've decided. We aren't dating we're makeout besties it's different

[whythowastakenwhatisthis]

pnat secret santa present for @feministhotline​! it’s a couple days late for christmas but right on time for new years -- hope you enjoy!!!!!! also @pnatsecretsanta thank you for setting this whole thing up i adore u

[ao3]

At 8:30, Isabel turned up on Max’s doorstep, ponytail whipping in the wind. The scarf around her neck did nothing to stop the flush in her cheeks, and she offered Max a shaky smile. “Almost the new year, Max,” she said.

Max opened the door a little wider and she stepped in.

For his last couple New Year's Eves in Baxborough, Max has not had Isabel Guerra by his side. This year, he does, along with some explosives.

At 8:30, Isabel turned up on Max’s doorstep, ponytail whipping in the wind. The scarf around her neck did nothing to stop the flush in her cheeks, and she offered Max a shaky smile. “Almost the new year, Max,” she said.

Max opened the door a little wider and she stepped in.

The second Max reached the top of the stairs, Isabel a step behind him, Zoey had leapt over the couch, shoved a Gatorade into Isabel’s hand tugged off her coat and scarf, and handed her a slice of pepperoni pizza. It drooped in Isabel’s hand, plateless, and Max watched the oil slide across the cheese. Zoey raced downstairs to toss Isabel’s coat in their closet, which was really the maintenance room behind the slushie machine.

Isabel leaned against the banister. “Um,” she said, “are you watching the Muppets?”

Max shrugged. “It’s a tradition.”

He got her a plate, and she followed him to the couch. They sat. Max watched the Muppets with one eye and Isabel with the other; Isabel seemed to watch the Muppets with both eyes. Zoey wedged herself between them and played on her phone.

“So,” Isabel said as the credits roll, “this is what you do for New Year’s Eve?” She had tucked herself up, arms wrapped around her knees and a blanket thrown over her shoulders, and the hairs around her ears were curling softly against her cheekbones. Max stood to put in another movie.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, this is the first time Dad left us by ourselves for any part of tonight, but we normally watch movies.” Pausing to look over his shoulder at her, he asked, “You?”

Resting a cheek against her knee, she shrugged slightly. “Stay up, mostly. Ed and I would sometimes go outside for a while.” Her bangs were falling into her eyes, and she wouldn’t look at Max.

Max decided not to ask anything else, and tossed the remote to Zoey. She scrunched up her nose at him, but as Max hauled Isabel up she didn’t say a word, and as Isabel followed Max back down the stairs, Zoey switched the channel to the Times Square broadcast and returned to her phone.

Max grabbed Isabel’s coat from the maintenance closet, two slushies from the machine, and the box he had hidden underneath the counter that afternoon. He handed her the coat and the blue slushie, kept the red one for himself, hefted the box underneath an arm, and grabbed his baseball bat. Isabel continued to follow him outside.

They hiked, past the grove of trees occupied by partying high schoolers, past the school, and through at least eight backyards, until they reached the very top of the middle school’s hill. Max dropped his box and leaned against the handle of his bat, and the winter air scraped against his lungs and bit at his nose.

For a few seconds, Isabel let him stand and watch the sprawl of Mayview: the hubs of sound and people, music spilling out windows and back doors; the empty houses; the lonely windows shining boldly by themselves. Then she crumpled up her slushie cup, hip checked him gently, and gave him a slight smile. “So, what are we doing?”

Max cleared his throat. “This is one of my New Year’s traditions.” He crouched to open the box, and Isabel squatted next to him as he revealed its contents: fireworks. He’d been stockpiling them for months, ever since last year, and although they’d gotten a little beaten up during the move, they were still usable.

“Every year,” he told Isabel, “-- well, the last two years at least -- my friends in Baxborough and I would set of all these fireworks, all across the city. It was legal to have them there, mostly, but if you can’t in Mayview --”

“Like that’d stop me,” Isabel said. She was grinning now, fiercely.

He stood, grabbed his bat, and started spinning it around his hand and arm.“You wanna try some boom-snaps to start?” he asked.

“The ones you throw on the ground to make a little popping noise? Amateur hour, Puckett.”

Max threw his bat into the air, let it twirl around three times, and caught it. “Nope,” he told her. “Toss one of those packets at me.”

Isabel didn’t just toss one; she tossed three, and Max carefully lined his bat up and swung. All three connected, one of them a little shaky, and the packets glided through the air for a few glorious seconds before exploding in a tiny riot of neon color and sound.

“Alright,” said Isabel, dutifully impressed. “Gimme a go.”

It took a few swings for her to get it, but when she hit one at last she whooped and whirled around, bat in hand and hair flying. Max tossed another.

Eventually, they ran out of the little fireworks, and Max took back his bat and opened the box again. When he stood with an armful of catherine wheels Isabel hip checked him again, hard enough to nearly knock him over, but he elbowed her back and handed her an explosive.

They set off two or three quickly, all at once, and took off running. To the other side of the hilltop, where they carefully lit eight Roman candles, all in a row, and Max started on his slushie; down the back of the school’s hill and around to the front of it, pausing to watch a couple of black snakes writhe and glow; to Isabel’s front yard, where she stood resolutely and stared.

When she had been watching her house for too long, Max asked, “You wanna light something enormous on fire?” Isabel shook her head, took one sharp breath in, and marched to the back of her house. After several small pinging noises and some rustling, she rejoined Max with Ed trotting at her heels.

“Hey, man!” Ed told Max happily, and they stood back to watch Isabel light the wicks of a truly gargantuan amount of fireworks. She stood, dusted her hands off, and sprinted to the lake. They followed.

While groves of trees in well populated neighborhoods were the high schoolers’ territory, the lake, it seemed, was the middle schoolers’. Isabel and Ed led Max to the north beach -- the rocky one, where you either wore shoes or suffered sore soles -- and into someone’s backyard, filled with kids Max knew the faces of, if not the names.

“Look inconspicuous,” Isabel told him as she lead him into a brightly lit kitchen, and snatched his empty slushie cup. Max, juggling his baseball bat and a box of possibly illegal fireworks, nodded and tried to blend in with the butter yellow backsplash. Lisa eyed him apprehensively, but handed him a soda.

Ed tugged Max out of the kitchen, across a crowded patio, and back into the mostly deserted yard. In the soft light of a bonfire, Isabel grabbed a few bottle rockets and ran off; Violet sighed, seemingly asleep as she curled into a chair next to the fire. Max didn’t sit; neither did Ed.

“You come here often?” Ed asked Max, smiling. The light of the fire made his blond hair look golden, and the curve of one round cheek was rosy. Soft music came from the house, the patio spread chatter across the yard, and Violet hummed a frantic melody.

“Are you two gonna have to stay at mine tonight?” Max asked him instead of answering. Ed tilted his head to the side, considering, before shrugging, slow and broad.

Three consecutive cracks filled the air, and the kids on the back patio oohed. Max and Ed watched in silence, until the fireworks faded and Isabel rejoined them.

“How was that?” she asked, and shoved her bangs out of her eyes. “With it over the water?”

“Truly stupendous,” Ed told her, and she gave him a mock curtsy.

Their last three fireworks were used a street below the corner store. Max could see the glow of the television streaming out the front window, and he snapped a picture on his phone to show Zoey later.

Isabel lit them up as he was watching the store, and only poked Max to turn around when they began to whistle through the air. “Hey,” she said, and didn’t look at him. “Thanks for the pizza, and for… this, I guess.”

“It’s almost the new year,” Max told her. He rested his bat against his shoulder and shrugged, watching the fireworks, and turned his head to catch her eye.

“Yeah,” she said.

When their fireworks had finally faded from the sky, she told Ed that they were leaving and took Max’s crumpled box. “I’ll see you soon, yeah? For my scarf.”

“Yeah,” Max said, and shoved his hands in his pockets as the two of them left. The winter air filled his lungs as he breathed, and the metal of his bat was freezing against his arm, even through his thick hoodie. He took the short way back home, climbing through someone’s yard and up the steep grassy hillside, until he could unlock the door of the corner store and climb back up the stairs.

His father was back, sitting on the couch with Zoey and cold pizza. “Hiya, son-boy,” he said, and Max dropped his bat in the umbrella stand. “Zoe-toes said you went out with some friends?”

“Yeah,” Max said, and climbed over the back of the couch to join him.

His father handed him two slices of pizza, somewhat lukewarm, and smiled at him. “Glad you’re back for the countdown,” he said, and Max leaned his head into his father’s side, ate cold pizza, and watched TV until the ball dropped.