who: Max Goof & Aria Montgomery when: Backdated to the start of the Toon Town plot where: Max and Aria's room at Team America House What: Max is a cartoon. Aria is startled. Max panics. warnings: Nah status: Complete.
Aria has always slept better when someone else was with her. It wasn’t a matter of intimacy, not really. It was that she felt safe, secure- like she didn’t have to watch her back even ages later. Rosewood was far behind her, but the remnants left from the trauma hadn’t faded.
All this to say that Aria was a light sleeper. She was awake before she could really figure out why, the arm wrapped around her tightening as she breathed out in that distinct way that said I’m up. Her hand reached to her waist to grab Max’s hand, lacing their fingers together and- “that’s not right,” she mumbled, turning to face him.
She blinked once. Then twice. Then her eyes adjusted to the light in the room and she let out a startled yelp and jolted back and out of their bed, panting heavily. “Uhh, sorry.” she hedged a moment later as her heart slowed, popping up so she could see him. “You surprised me.”
--
In some ways, Max was entirely the opposite. He likely could sleep through a demolition derby or a high speeds car chase happening outside of his window. He certainly slept through multiple alarms each morning and had a variety of them set every night with different ring tones for each just to try to be up at a decent hour. But he was fairly accustomed to noticing Aria's movements. If she woke in the middle of the night due to any memory or fear of the life she'd lived before Blackpoint, and now before Tumbleweed, he'd want to be able to rouse quickly so he could comfort her. Most of the time, when she woke before him, he'd mumble into his pillow a question that roughly translated to 'you good?'
He shifted, holding her close, with his fingers flexing overtop of her shirt. He gave a quiet nod to the unspoken cue of her being awake. "Mmm?" He mumbled, nuzzling his face deeper into his pillow. He'd half turned his hand to meet hers as expected, but felt her turn to face his direction.
The yelp, however, was enough to break his determination to sleep longer. Eyes flew open and he caught sight of her tumbled backwards. "Aria!" He jerked upwards, the blankets falling down from around his chest to his lap. He reached out push the covers back and caught sight of his hand. He blinked.
He was wearing a glove. And he was --- missing a finger.
His eyes grew and he flashed his gaze back to her for a moment, torn between wanting to make sure she was okay but a slight flash of dawning panic. Helping her won out and he extended his hand out to her to help her off the floor. "Tell me I'm dreaming," he sputtered out, eyes distinctly avoiding looking at the black fur covering his arm.
--
“I can’t?” she asked, reaching upwards in order to take his hand. “I- um.” She knew that some people in this world came through looking as they did back home, but she really didn’t know it was a possibility for it to happen months later. “You’re okay, right?” Aria sat on the side of the bed, her hand loosely in his. “Everything where it should be?”
--
He focused on her. If he focused on her, he didn't need to think about what had caused her reaction or what he was afraid to acknowledge. A cold chill ran up his back and he helped hoist her up. His frown grew at her statement and he waited until she'd sat back on the bed. In response to the final question, he just began to chuckle, nervously. A bit uncontrollably, in fact, as he pulled his hand away from her and rolled off his side of the bed. His hands moved to press against his bare chest and he looked down.
"Okay, okay, okay, okay..." He began chanting, almost as if that would make it okay, and he began moving for the mirror that they had in their room. As soon as he stepped in front of it, his shoulders slumped.
--
“Hey, no.” She was up before she had time to think that maybe he needed a second to compose himself, her arms wrapped around him as she hugged him from behind. “It’s going to be alright, Max, I promise. You’re here and you’re safe and it’s going to be okay.” They were words that had been uttered to her a hundred times over, a mantra that made things seem a little less terrifying when they could be so overwhelming.
“Talk to me. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
--
There was half a second of standing there trying to anchor himself and his thoughts. It wasn't that he didn't like his original form. In a world where his appearance was a norm, it was just fine. He had grown out of his awkward stage and he was a decent height, though not nearly as tall as his Dad, and he was largely content with who he was. But here?
Here this wasn't a norm. In Blackpoint, everyone was transformed into what was considered normal: a human body. He had been living that way for years, with a few bumps in the road from being sent back and forth, but still. Long enough that he was content with it. Of course, he knew he was sent back before the portal was closed in Blackpoint, but what did that mean anymore? Tumbleweed's portal had dragged people here. And he had looked the way he had in Blackpoint, even though others were gifted their original bodies.
He hadn't thought he would be in this position.
Gloved fingers moved to touch his nose and he opened his mouth, pressing his fingers to his accented teeth. He shut his mouth and it was just as he was moving his hands to brush against his ears that he felt Aria's arms.
His throat clenched up instantly and he froze. They were already still trying to navigate how to fix the portal cruelly separating them on a repeated basis, and how it created an unstable foundation, so here was another wrinkle. And he wouldn't be surprised if it was the final one.
He let his hands drop and they rested against hers, with his eyes staring into the mirror and back at her. She looked completely normal, embracing him, in his incredibly animated and canine appearance. He swallowed and just let his focus stay on her. "This can't be happening. This...it isn't…" It wasn't fair. Not to him and not to her.
--
It wasn’t as though they hadn’t been trying. Aria hadn’t expected to see Max again after he’d been sent back the second time and she knew from asking around that she’d gone not too long after. It happened in droves, the leaving and her sadness hadn’t faded by the time she arrived on that cruise ship months before. Aria didn’t consider herself a very bitter person, but the whole situation had left a sour taste in her mouth.
But they were both here and working on it, and she wasn’t about to let this be what did them in. She’d known about his original body before. Spencer had never understood how Aria could look past it, but Aria had never considered it a dealbreaker. It was part of Max, that was all, in this case literally, and while she had never seen him in his original body before, it didn’t change the fact that Max was still Max.
“This isn’t anything that we can’t handle.” It was said without any hesitation, her voice sure. “There are worse things.”
--
The confidence in her voice made him give a gentle squeeze to her hand and the slightest flash of a smile. If it weren't for the confidence, he would have begun in the sudden list of reasons where it might be a problem, but she sounded so sure.
It made him calm to a degree.
"There are," he agreed. He didn't necessarily feel like he could name many of them but he knew it was true. He shifted, turning so he could face her.
"We should see if it is just me." He had been familiar with Blackpoint long enough to know portals were tricky. He didn't want to get his hopes up but if others were affected, maybe it meant that this was temporary.
--
She pressed a kiss to his chest absently, nodding st his plan. “Okay, we can do that,” Aria promised with one last hug. “But no matter what the outcome, we’ll be alright.”