#they thought they could hide the real problem behind her cutout pants

[ali-yona]

i think instead of talking about rearmed lucina's uglyass (lack of) pants we should be talking about the fact that the binding shield is just a png they shifted the perspective of

[moonlitwings1]

Icing on Top

Christmas cookies were a tradition in the Mayfield house, and Max isn’t going to let two obnoxious Hargrove men ruin it this year. They didn’t do it the year before because someone thought that cookies would be bad for his cholesterol. Old man problems, Max thinks. If Neil doesn’t want his cholesterol to increase or whatever, why doesn’t he just not eat cookies. Seems simple enough to her. 

Thankfully, Neil’s not here right now. He’s with her mom going last minute Christmas shopping. She could’ve gone with them, but she doesn’t have anymore money to buy anything, spent it all on the arcade last week. She’s just going to give Neil and her mom cards, same as last year. Thank you for being the best mom! Max internally cringes. It sounds so fake every time she writes it. It’ll be even worse to write one for Neil. For Billy...well, she doesn’t know what he likes besides music and being an asshole, so he’ll get a card too.

She doesn’t believe in Santa anymore. Stopped believing when Billy ruined that for her literally the day they met. Laughed in her face and told her she was stupid for not realizing her mom’s the one who puts the presents under the tree. She remembers going to her mom and crying because the new boy just told her Santa’s not real. Turns out, when you stop believing in Santa, you also stop getting gifts from him. So for a couple years now, Max has only gotten one gift under the Christmas tree instead of two like she used to. No more presents from Santa, but at least Neil was happy about that. He said that he never thought this Santa business was any good for kids. False idols or whatever. Religious shit she doesn’t care about. Neil acts like he’s oh so religious, but they go to church about five times a year, and the entire time Neil’s only focused on Billy, who is doing everything in his power to annoy Max.

Well, tomorrow’s Christmas and her mom bought a horrible red dress with little white fluff across the edges, the same kind she’s seen too many little girls wear. She’ll have to convince her mom not to let her wear that. Later. Right now, she has a different focus, cook book stuffed underneath her arm as she searches for the ingredients. 

“Flour, sugar, baking soda, butter, eggs,” she mutters under her breath, repeating the ingredients to herself over and over again. Sounds easy enough. She’s never made cookies by herself before, but wherever Neil is, her mom is, and she doesn’t want Neil to get in the way of her Christmas festivities, as he likes to call them. So for now, she’s going to have to figure out how to do this by herself. She’s definitely not allowed to use the oven without an adult, but tonight, she’s planning to prove that she’s not a fucking child. 

She had just gotten started on the wet ingredients when she hears the back door slam shut, making her flinch hard. You’ve got to be fucking kidding. They haven’t even been gone for ten minutes. Neil must’ve forgotten something. She thinks she’s screwed and frantically starts hiding the bowls when she realizes those steps were far too heavy and obnoxious to be Neil’s. Max almost lets out a sigh of relief when Billy struts into the kitchen. He’s an asshole, but at least he’s not Neil. 

She doesn’t know where he went, probably went to hang out with some girl like he always tells Neil, but she swears the cologne he’s wearing smells vaguely similar to the one Steve had on the other day. Maybe they’re friends now? Nah. Must be some new popular teen cologne, she thinks, rolling her eyes. She won’t give it much more attention. 

“The fuck are you doing?” he asks, the scarred eyebrow lifting. He sounds more interested than angry.

“Making cookies. Go away,” she spits before turning her back to him and bringing her focus back to the wet ingredients.

He hums, amused like he always is when he’s annoying her, “Don’t think you’re supposed to be making anything by yourself, Maxi.”

She pauses what she’s doing, closes her eyes, and lets out a long sigh, tries to control her temper. “I’m not a fucking child, Billy. Go away,” she repeats. “I can handle it. And don’t call me that.”

He peers over her shoulder to look at what she’s making. She tries to ignore him, but she can literally feel him breathing down her neck, and he’s standing way too fucking close to her. She knows he’s doing it on purpose. 

“Maaaax,” he whispers. 

She continues ignoring him, mixing the bowl furiously, but after another minute of Billy just standing behind her, he snorts like somethings funny. And that pisses her off because nothing’s funny right now. He’s just an asshole who’s ruining her Christmas. 

So without warning, she spins around, slams two hands into his chest and pushes him as hard as she can (which isn’t saying much, but she’s not going to admit that). Billy didn’t see that coming. She can tell because he actually stumbles a little bit. So she doesn’t stop there, tries to push him out of the kitchen completely before he regains himself. She wasn’t fast enough.

When he realizes what she’s trying to do, he laughs. It’s not even the scary laugh that he made while beating up Steve last year. He’s laughing at her. The fucking asshole’s making fun of her, and it does nothing to soothe her frustration. This time, she aims a slap at his face, but he catches her wrist before she could do anything. She gasps aloud because ow that stung.

“Ouch, you jackass! That fucking hurt!” 

She starts hitting him with her left hand, gets in a few good hits before he snatches that one away too. If he were any closer, she would bite his wrist. She considers kicking him in the dick, but he must see what she’s thinking because he spins her around and bear hugs her from behind, trapping her arms to her side. They’re both panting now, but one from exertion and one from laughter. 

“Jesus Christ, Maxine,” he laughs. “I didn’t fucking do anything to you. The hell blew your fuse?”

“Stop laughing,” she huffs, struggling in his arms and trying to glare at him, because he still has a sleazy grin plastered on his face. She can fucking hear it in his voice. “And get off of me!”

“You cool?”

She’s totally not cool, but she’s not going to tell him that. “Yes I’m fucking cool.”

“You su-”

“YES IM SURE, BILLY.” 

He chuckles one more time before letting her go. “Whatever you say, Maxi-pad.” 

She decidedly ignores his comment and rubs her shoulder from where his arm pressed into hers. “Can you leave now?”

“Not until you tell me what you’re making.”

“I already said cookies.”

“What kind?” Max knows he’s not actually interested in her cookies. He just wants to find a reason to bug her longer. 

“Sugar. What else would I make for Christmas, dumbass.” She’s lucky he doesn’t immediately attack her for calling him ‘dumbass.’ She probably shouldn’t push it anymore. 

“I want you out of the kitchen in an hour,” he snaps, “And you better not burn this house down.” He strides out of the room before she can reply but not before giving her a stony look that warns of death. Asshole. 

Alone at last. Even if Billy’s home, it’s not like he’s going to leave his room anytime soon. He’ll lock himself in there and stay put for hours. She wonders what he does in there for so long and slightly winces when his music starts vibrating through the house. Max lets out a long sigh. She forgot about that. He usually doesn’t put it too loud when Neil’s home. 

She tries to block out the music and focus on the task at hand. Do they have any more eggs? 

---

Twenty minutes later, Max is staring at the oven proudly, hands on her hips. The cookies are currently baking, and she has a good feeling about them. They’re not pretty, and they’re oddly shaped (since they don’t have any cutouts), but she’s sure they’ll come out ok. She’s not, however, looking forward to cleaning up the entire kitchen. Its a mess, bowls everywhere, and the hand mixer is dripping onto the floor, but she can clean it up later, preferably before Billy comes out of hibernation and screams at her about it. But for now, she deserves a fucking break.

She heads off towards her room, and lounges around for ten minutes, looking through some comics, while waiting for the cookies to finish.

Things were going so well. So fucking well until the fire alarms starts blaring and makes Max jump out of her skin. She hears Billy’s music suddenly shut off. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

She’s too scared to move. She doesn’t move when she hears loud footsteps walking towards the kitchen, and she doesn’t move when the fire alarm stops ringing. She definitely doesn’t move when those loud footprints start getting increasingly louder, coming closer to her room. She’s going to die. She’s going to be murdered by her own brother. She shoots a quick prayer to whatever god out there that maybe she’ll survive this one long enough, so she can tell her mom goodbye. 

Her door bursts open. 

“MAXINE.” She recoils from his voice.“ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?”

When she doesn’t say anything, his voice goes deathly quiet. “I leave you alone for barely an hour, and you manage to fuck it all up.” 

Max still doesn’t say anything. She imagines she looks like a deer in headlights because she’s totally frozen, sitting on her bed just staring at him. It must piss him off though because he starts towards her. Thankfully, something turns on in her brain and she immediately goes and stands on the other side of the bed where he can’t easily reach her. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m not going to do shit to you,” he says, running a hand over his face. When she still doesn’t move, utterly unconvinced, he continues. “I just want you to see what a bang up job you did of making those fucking cookies, so get out here.”

She’s still not totally convinced, but if she stays there any longer, he might try to drag her out himself so she’s just got to suck it up. She moves cautiously towards the door, side-eyeing Billy to see if he’s going to pounce, but he doesn’t. 

Thank God nothing besides the cookies were burnt. If anything was actually damaged, she wouldn’t even be alive right now. 

“I-I don’t know what happened, Billy. I literally followed the recipe so don’t try to blame me for this,” she snaps, turning around to glare at him.

He scoffs at her. “What happened,” he growls, grabbing the open cookbook and stabbing a finger into the page, “is that you didn’t read the fucking directions correctly and set the oven at 450 degrees instead of 350 degrees.”

Max looks at where he’s pointing and her spirit drops when she realizes that he’s right. It says right there, Preheat the oven to 350°F. She internally curses herself. How did she not see that? If she had just paid attention, she wouldn’t be in this mess. 

He watches her reaction and snorts. “Someone can’t read,” he says, and reaches out to ruffle her hair. She tries to slap his hand away, but it just makes him ruffle her hair harder. 

“Now clean-” But before he could complete his sentence, Max storms out of the kitchen, taking a wide turn around Billy so there’d be a smaller chance that he’d try to grab her. 

When she looks over at him though, it doesn’t look like he was going to anyway. She doesn’t know why he’s like this, why he always switches emotions every two seconds. Five minutes ago, he had barged into her room, murderous, and she was sure she was going to die. Now? Now he’s fucking joking with her. He literally just ruffled her hair like she’s his sister. She hates it. Why can’t he just be normal? 

She slams the door behind her and locks it as she walks in. Thankfully, Neil still hasn’t taken away her lock like he’d done for Billy, so she still has a semblance of privacy. She’s almost in tears, and she doesn’t know why. She’s just...frustrated. The sound of heavy footsteps come her way, and she immediately dives under her covers, pulling the duvet up and over her head. She’s embarrassed from her stupid mistake that Billy will inevitably make fun of her for. Thinking about it just makes more tears sting the corner of her eye. She wants to be left alone, but Billy’ll never let that happen. 

He pounds on the door. “Maxine, open up.”

She doesn’t answer, digging her head into her pillow harder. Maybe if she ignores him, he’ll leave. In the back of her head, she knows that that’s not what’s going to happen. 

"Hey shitbird, get your ass out here,” he says again, back to asshole mode and pounding harder on the door. “Did ya see the fucking kitchen? You better clean that shit up before Susan and Neil come home.”

She still doesn’t say anything. 

“Max,” his voice goes deadly quiet, “if you don’t get your ass out in the next ten seconds, I’m going to-”

“GO AWAY BILLY! I JUST WANTED TO MAKE COOKIES WITHOUT ANYONE BOTHERING ME FOR ONCE AND YOU JUST HAVE TO GO AND RUIN ANYTHING!” 

“You ruined that shit for your-”

“Leave me alone, Billy.” Her voice cracks when she says his name, and he must hear it because he does. She knows she’s going to have to clean the kitchen up eventually, but she can’t bring herself to right now. Maybe it’s because she’s going to start her period any second, or maybe it’s because Billy’s just a jerk, but she feels abnormally upset. Unreasonably miserable. Billy’s antics don’t usually put her in this bad of a mood, and she feels stupid for letting it. 

Ten minutes later, she hears him stomping around the house and the jingle of keys. The back door slams shut, and she knows he just left the house, probably to cool himself down before he actually murders her. 

She’s alone. 

----

Max wakes up startled from her nap with the sound of someone picking at her lock. She looks around widely for the time. An hour has passed, who’s-

The door burst open, and there stands a triumphant looking Billy. “HAH,” he shouts. “I’ve opened the door!”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. He sounds more stupid than usual. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t see him with a smile on his face very often. 

“What are you doing?” she asks cautiously because she doesn’t want to accidentally piss him off. 

“Come out here,” he says. Oh, not this again. She huffs and plops her face right back into the pillow, turning to her side so she’s facing away from the door. She’s not dealing with this again. If she wants to be locked up in her room, why can’t she?

“Max,” he calls, walking closer to her. “Get up, I’ve got stuff for you.” That peaks Max’s interests, and she raises her head a little, getting annoyed when she sees the smirk on Billy’s face. He knew saying that would get her to pay attention. 

“What?” 

“I’m not telling you until you get up,” he says, tugging at her blanket now. She smacks his hand away, and plops her head right back down. 

“Then I’m not getting up. You’re literally the fucking grinch so it’s not like it’s going to be anything good anyways.”

He laughs at that. “So if I’m the grinch, who are you? Cindy fucking Lou Who?” 

Max covers her smile with the duvet. “Just tell me what you got.”

“Nope,” Billy says and walks his annoying ass straight out of her room. 

She decides to stay in bed, refuses to give in to Billy’s obvious plan to get her to come out of her room. But curiosity catches up to her when she hears him banging around the kitchen, and five minutes later, she’s dragging herself out from under the covers and walking into the room. She stops when she catches Billy red handed, literally, with two of his fingers dipped into a small bowl of red icing. 

When he sees her watching, he grins at her, teeth stained red and gross. “Oh hey there Maxine. Didn’t see ya there. I’m really enjoying this lovely frosting,” He waggles his fingers at her for emphasis. “Better take it away from me before I eat it all.”

He’s about to double dip his nasty fingers into the frosting again before Max can’t help herself and has to cut in. 

She runs up to him and smacks his hand away. “Oh my God. Billy, that’s literally so unsanitary. Give it here.” She takes the can of frosting from him, and mumbles you’re so gross under her breath. The cover of the can features pretty sugar cookies all covered in red frosting and sprinkles. If only she still had her stupid cookies. Now they’re at the bottom of the trash can, all black and burnt. 

“Why’d you buy this anyway? Not like I’m gonna be using them anymore.”

Billy drums his fingers on the counter. “It’s so you can decorate your little cookies,” he says. “You’re lucky I’m craving sugar right now.” She hasn’t properly decorated cookies since California when she was with her dad. It might not seem like a big deal to him, but she’s getting excited over it. He can probably tell by the smile that has just spread across her face. 

“I’m giving you a second chance, so don’t fucking screw this up. You hear me?” he’s glaring at her now, all threats and ager. Of course, he immediately tries to ruin the moment. 

 “So you’ll let me make them again?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if they come out shit again, though. You can’t cook to save your life.”

She huffs. Totally not true. “We don’t have any more butter though.”

He pats the plastic bag on the counter. “’s all in here.” 

She looks over at the bag he touched. So is that where he went while she was sleeping? 

“You went to the store?”

He grunts in response. “Figured you’d need more shit after your first failed attempt.”

“Ok, thanks,” she says, already making a grab for the hand mixer. “You can leave now.” 

“Ungrateful ass,” he snorts. “Last time I left, you burnt the fucking cookies and set off the fire alarm so I don’t think so.”

Max sighs. “So what? You’re just gonna stand there?”

He smirks at her, leaning against the counter. “Hand me the mixer.” 

---

Apparently Billy’s good at baking because ten minutes later he has all the ingredients combined and the dough rolled out on the table. She didn’t roll out the dough during her attempt so it makes sense now why her cookies were ugly even before they got burnt. 

They only bickered a couple times. Once because Max questioned him about how he smells suspiciously like Steve. She didn’t expect him to get so defensive, but he immediately snapped at her and told her not to get into other people’s business. His defensiveness made her think that him and Steve were friends now, and he’s just embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe they’re...more? When she suggested that though, he nearly shoved her head into the dough so that’s going to be the last time she investigates on that. 

The second time, they bickered over whether or not they should add food coloring to the dough. I payed good money for this, shitbird, so we’re using it. They eventually decided to make different batches, some with dye and some without.  

“Do we need to cut them into circles now?”

“The fuck are you thinking? Circles are boring.”

Max rolls her eyes. “Oh I’m ever so sorry for offending you, master baker Billy,” she says sarcastically.  “What do you suggest we do to spice up this atrocious dough.”

Billy points his head towards the plastic bag. “Look in there, junior baker Maxine.”

She reaches out for the magical plastic bag. It’s already given her butter and red frosting. What else could be in there? Her entire face lights up when she sees a can of green frosting, four different cookie cutters, and so many sprinkles. 

“Consider this your Christmas present because you’re not going to get anything else.”

She gapes at him. He’s never done anything nice to her in her entire life. Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but it’s definitely a once in a blue moon occasion. 

“Thank you,” she says, still gaping at him. She doesn’t know what else to say. 

“Yeah well stop staring at me like that.” He reaches across and flicks her mouth shut. “And close your mouth. You’re gonna catch flies.” 

She doesn’t say anything to that, but stares down at the plastic bag again. She’ll decorate a cookie for her mom. A red one with green sparkles. She wonders if Billy’ll decorate one for his dad. Probably not. Guess he’ll go cookie-less. Better for his cholesterol anyways. 

Her thoughts are disrupted when Billy’s fingers smudge bright, red, frosting across her face. She flinches and tries to shove him off but he does it again, icing smeared across both cheeks now. 

“You asshole,” she laughs, reaching inside the plastic bag and pulling out the green frosting. “You’re so on.”

By the end of their frosting battle, they’re both covered in red and green icing. At one point Billy even started showering her with sprinkles. It’ll take forever to get it out of her hair, and there’s barely any frosting left for the cookies, but there was just enough to make it last. 

Their parents were appalled when they walked in on their children covered in sugar, but it was worth it. Neil wasn’t even that upset since her mom was seemed happy enough. Susan followed them around with a camera, trying to convince them to pose together. You guys look so cute! C’mon just one picture. They retreated to their rooms to hide. 

Max ended up with two Christmas presents under the tree that year.