Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018- Monte Carlo, Monaco
The Penthouse
Max hadn't really known what he'd expected to find waiting for him in the apartment once he'd gotten himself pulled together just enough to accurately enter the code into the security mechanism that prevented unwanted or uninvited guests from just letting themselves in through the elevator, because he hadn't really had the facilities to play a little game of what if this morning, too focused on staring at his feet while trying desperately to ignore the lurch of the lifts upward motion.
But, when the elevator doors gilded open, the customary ding of arrival is swallowed up, the high, crisp bell lost in the solid wall of sound that slams into him, overwhelming him instantaneously like a well-aimed auditory assault of his senses.
He tries to announce his arrival before he just comes strolling into the apartment proper, as has become customary in the months since you'd moved in but only following two straight weeks of Max getting home and startling you, neither one of you accustomed just quite yet to living together, but there's no use, his voice doesn't even make a dent.
Even though the apartment is very much still his, since legally he's the only of the place's three residence that has any legal claim to it, Max can't seem to shake the feeling that he's intruding on someone else's home as he walks slowly down the hall that leads to the living room, only after giving way to the kitchen first, not wanting to cause any unnecessary disruption to what, by all accounts, seems to be a toddler's dream of a morning.
It's cliche and more than likely falls on the creepy side of the tracks but Max can't help himself, his hangover momentarily forgotten, taking with it the dark cloud of the events of night's prior that's lurked above his head since he'd woken, as he comes to halt in the arched doorway to the kitchen, already smiling as he leans against the wooden frame, taking in the scene that greets him with greedy, envious eyes that refuse to miss a single thing.
Blaring through the Bluetooth speakers built into the ceiling of every room of the apartment is what Max takes a good minute or two to identify as One Direction, which wouldn't have been his personal choice if he were dj-ing but it appears that he's alone in this opinion because Kaia seems to be enjoying it, not nearly as much as you are but still, it's the most he's seen her respond to music in two months.
He has a sneaking suspicion that her response has far less to do with the songs themselves and infinitely more to do with your happiness, which somehow, in the year the two you hadn't been friends, Max had managed to have forgotten just how contagious your particular brand of happiness was but that had taken him a little under just 48 hours back in your company to remember.
The kitchen looks like a bomb has gone off in it, the mess and clutter all appears to be radiating out from one central, localized spot which is easily identifiable as the exact place where Kaia sits in the center of the kitchen island. His daughter is grinning and babbling loudly at an attempt to sing the song along with you, her little frame swallowed up in a random t-shirt that looks to be closer to his size than hers, and her hair brushed and pinned up out of her face, her two tiny pigtails are easily the neatest thing in the entire room.
Surrounded on all sides by an explosion of colors, a riotous array of sprinkles, tiny pots of food coloring, and piping bags of icing in every shade imaginable, you bounce around the space with excited energy that he's never seen in you before but that Max can't deny seems to be your element as you flit around, unconcerned by the chaos that's consumed the kitchen, utterly oblivious to the fact that the two of you have company.
The marble countertops of the entire room are littered with dishes- baking sheets, bowls, utensils, a few that he's never even seen before, each item seemingly put down at random but which he learns in quite quick succession that he'd been incorrect in assuming. There is very clearly a method to the madness since you have no problem finding whatever it is that you need but which Max cannot, for the life of him, make sense of.
Max comes to two primary conclusions rather immediately- the first of which is that what he's just stumbled upon is a cookie decorating extravaganza that has to have been going on for hours, if the wide array of decor options and absolute calamity are anything to go by; the second of which is that you must really, really enjoy baking when you aren't at work because you're just too at ease as you show Kaia how to ice the cookies using a piping bag, your patience is unflattering as you demonstrate again and again, happy as a clam all the while.
He wants so very badly to go back to the day before and undo everything that had been done, he wishes he'd never been stupid enough to pick up the phone when Cassandra had called, that he'd hung up the very instant she'd started talking about how good she was for him, how he might be happy for now, while you're still here, but that the day would come, likely soon, where you were allowed to leave and you would... and he'd be better off if he wasn't alone when that happened.
And he'd fallen for it.
In the moment, it had all made sense- as far fetched plans always seem to do before reality has had the opportunity to poke holes in them- and Max, who'd only ever wanted to not have to be alone, had yielded like Cass had known he would. Never, not in a million years, had he ever expected that she would have shown up last night, that he wasn't going to have time to fix the mistake he'd made before you ever had the misfortune to find out what he'd done.
And now? Now Max was exactly where he'd never wanted to be, knowing every single thing that had happened, that had gone wrong, was his fault- and his fault entirely.
"Whoops!" His head snapped up, the reaction to your voice wholly involuntary.
"That's alright! You didn't mean to," you say gently to Kaia, who looks to be on the verge of tears as she takes in the new mess she'd made, the front of your shirt now decorated in hot pink icing, the culprit being a ruptured piping bag that had split after being squeezed with too much force.
"Sorry," the toddler's bottom lip trembled.
"It's okay, baby, it's an easy fix," you tell her reassuringly, turning down the music before smoothing a hand over her head, "I'll do what we did for you and then we can match! How about that?"
"Okay," she mumbles back, not sounding entirely convinced but well on the way to being won over, "we match."
"Since it's just us girls here this morning," you wink at her, "and your daddy had a sleepover with Uncle Dan," that was certainly one way to describe where Max had spent the night and one he preferred infinitely to his daughter knowing the truth.
"I miss Da," Kaia interjects, earning her a consoling nod of understanding.
"I know you do," momentarily side tracked you pause, leaning forward until you're at eye level with the two-year-old, you rest both arms on the marble countertop, "between you and me, vlinder," his heart lurches at the sound of the nickname on your lips, his chest squeezing painfully when you press your forehead to Kaia's and continue, "I miss him too. But sometimes, even daddy needs some time to himself. Okay?"
"Okay," she nods solemnly.
"But like I was saying, since it's just you and me, I'm just gonna take this off," before Max even has a second to process what's about to happen, it's already happening, you're pulling your sweatshirt over your head and dropping it on the kitchen floor, his mouth gone suddenly dry at the sight of you standing in nothing but your bra and leggings in middle of his kitchen, "and I'll just borrow this," you pluck an oversized t-shirt from the laundry basket in the far corner closest to the laundry room, and pull it on, "from Max for now."
Like the fucking dumbass that he is, Max drops his phone, and suddenly, everyone is very, very aware that he's home.
"Uh, good morning?"
