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Sometimes, it was hard for Merril to remember that alcohol didn’t quite agree with her.
Stumbling around the station at night- not that it was easy to tell the time of day- Merril braced herself against walls, nearly fell a dozen times, and asked far too many people if they knew where Max was. “I, I, I’m looking for someone,” she slurred more times than she could count, rubbing at her eyes and trying to keep walking as she talked. “Uh- Max Valera. Yeah, yeah, um...she’s the...the…yeah, the mechanic, thanks, where- where could I find her?”
It was almost a miracle that she ended up at Max’s door eventually, given how long it took and how half of the people she had talked to seemed to be sizing her up.
The door was unlocked. Merril stared blankly at the doorknob after the door opened as if to ask it why it had allowed itself to be twisted. It took a bit for her to look away, into the room, and straight at the rigid back of her former lover. She couldn’t look away, hand falling from the doorknob as she stood there, watching Max fiddle with something in her lap.
“Max,” she breathed out, leaning heavily against the doorframe. Max, Max, Max. “I...was told that you, you were here.”
“You were, huh.” Max didn’t turn around to look at her. Merril watched as her shoulders hunched over, a sudden and jarring movement that she watched with tired, half-lidded eyes. “What do you need, Witmer.” Her drawl nearly kept her standing there, drinking it all in, but the words processed fast enough for her to not get lost in the moment, thank fuck.
“Mm, I, I did have a reason to come here, fuck, what, what was it...oh, yeah.” She laughed, putting nearly all of her weight on the doorframe as she shook with a bitter, self-loathing kind of mirth. “So, so, the smugglers, the crew I was with, they- they left earlier today.”
“Hm.”
It was hard to tell Max’s emotions from just a hum, back turned to Merril and all, but she could just imagine the familiar curl of a lip, a stony gaze set on whatever was keeping her from turning to face her. It wasn’t the first time they had been on bad terms, but the last time had been so long ago-
It didn’t matter. She was- she was here for a reason. Merril shifted awkwardly on her feet at the thought of what she wanted to say.
“Fuck, I should’ve just gone somewhere else,” she muttered to herself, a hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose. She swayed there for a long moment, eyes squeezed shut. “Fuck…” A steadying pause. “Max, I- I need somewhere to crash, just, just for a few days or something. ‘Til, ‘til someone else arrives here and I can go, I don’t fucking know. Just tonight is fine, really-”
“‘Til you go?”
Merril swayed there, still in the doorway, people out and about in the hallway behind her. She blinked owlishly at Max as the other woman stood up from where she sat on the floor, putting a bit of machinery down on a table with an uncaring bang. “That’s not- not nice to the table, Max,” she started, but faltered when Max turned around to face her, lips trembling and eyes crinkling angrily at the corners, something close to tears barely held at bay.
“Fucking hell, Merril,” she said harshly, striding forward to grab a handful of Merril’s shirt and dragging her close, bringing her to the tips of her toes as she was pulled forwards, the door swinging shut behind her. She could see her eyes so clearly now, bright and betrayed and horrified, and oh, how she wanted to keen with guilt at making Max look like that.. “You come back from the dead and then say you’re leaving? You know, when family comes back from the dead, when a friend comes back, a lover-”
Max choked up, then, and Merril couldn’t hold back the quiet whine any longer, the torn noise pouring out of her throat like a broken record. “Max-”
“No. No, Merril, dammit. When somebody comes back, you’re not going to let them out of your sight again.” Max’s other hand came from behind to run through Merril’s hair, dangerously soft when the hand holding her shirt was so tight, so firm. Finally, she could see tears in her eyes, and her own caged fear trickled out in turn, breaths coming out in ragged bursts. “I’m not paid enough for this,” she could hear Max mutter under her breath, eyes closing for a long moment before they snapped open onto her.
“You’re staying here,” Max breathed out, just loud enough that they could both hear, hand tightening ever so slightly in Merril’s hair. Her only response was a shaky exhale, sober enough for her mind to capture every little frame of the moment. “You’re staying here, Witmer, where we can keep an eye on you until you’re not a ghost anymore. Either here or with Sol.”
Merril said nothing but let out a sob, leaning forwards until her face was pressed into Max’s dirty shirt, letting a patch by the shoulder grow damp with tears. Slowly, the hand in her own shirt loosened until she was steady on the floor, that hand coming back around to hold her close. Tender, quiet, a fragile hold that could be lost as soon as it was gained.
“I- I- It’d be, be better for you all if I left, I brought...so much shit here,” she managed to get out, arms shaking as she wrapped them around Max’s body. “You’re all doing fine, too-”
“Shut up,” Max said, voice stronger than it had been before, her hold tighter. “Shut up, Witmer. Merril. I’m not letting you go again.”
They stood there in the middle of the scrapped together room, holding each other as if they were both afraid that the moment would escape when they weren’t looking. Dumbasses, the two of them, crying and snotting it up and Merril just drunk enough to go there in the first place, caught half in the memory of a time long past and the here and now.
“I lo-“
“Not now,” Max murmured, pulling back to put two fingers on Merril’s lips and slip the other hand into hers, tugging her along to the bed- a studio apartment, of course that was what she had, just a little bathroom attached- and Merril could only let the sorrow of being interrupted slip away as she was pushed gently onto the small bed. “Not now, Merril. You’re drunk, don’t think it’s hard to tell. Get some sleep or some shit. I’ll be here.”
Merril snorted, sprawling out as Max tugged an old quilt onto her. “To keep...keep an eye on me, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she could hear Max murmur as she slipped away, brain fuzzily dropping into sleep. “I'm doin’ that too.”
Somehow, everything was...alright.
“Love you too, asshole,” Max whispered into the dim room, sat with her back against the bed and hands flat against the floor. “Never stopped.”
The space station hummed around them, a comforting background noise to their breathing.