Chapter Text
Chloe Price is used to nothing going her way - dead dad, best friend moves away, mom marries a shit bag, expulsion, missing other best friend. What she didn’t expect was coming out ending with her being fucking homeless and mooching off Frank Bowers. That last part had been surprisingly easy; when she’d told him the story three years ago, he’d practically exploded, ranting about how family was supposed to look out for each other. Guess not for people like me.
At least Frank always hooked her up with what she needs gratis, even pays for the fucking doctor. She’d never expected that from his hardass demeanor, but he’d also killed his boss to protect her, so what did she know. At least Pompidou likes her, on the bad days he cuddles her and tries to get her to play with him, provided Frank is in a mood where he even lets her into the RV.
At least there’s no snow on the ground yet, so it’s not so bad. Rachel got her a thick sleeping bag when the faculty had had enough of her sleeping in the dorms. Given what had happened Rachel’s parents weren’t about to let her into their house, so until the snow falls she sleeps under the bridge leading into Arcadia. Her few remaining possessions stuffed into her stolen backpack, her precious pills sealed away in the bottom and the solar panel on top keeping her phone charged in the day.
In a few weeks she’ll have to break into the hunter’s cabin again for shelter, not that he’ll notice. The place was so dusty with disuse that she’d spent days coughing as she cleaned. But she didn’t dare stay there in summer, the risk was too high.
Her whole body burned for her to escape to somewhere, anywhere but Arcadia Fucking Bay. Everyone here knows her as the dropout homeless freak who is the local dealer’s lacky. Nobody would dare offer her a job, and she’s not about to ask just to get rejected again like everyone else rejected her. The phone buzzes. Her eyes crack open from her mental pity fest and she looks at the display.
[Joyce|9:30 AM]
Cole please come home; we can talk about this. I’m worried about you.
The name is like a hot knife in her chest and her brain revolts at the label. It’s all she can do to not throw the phone and smash it on the concrete.
[Chloe|9:38 AM]
use my real name and maybe.
She won’t, like the last few fucking dozen times they’ve had this exchange. The reply is automatic. No peace can be had until they’re going to treat her like a fucking human being. She once tried to teach David what it felt like. She got a black eye for her trouble.
“Fuck, I guess I’m awake then,” Chloe says to nobody in particular. With more than a few grumbled words she slips out of her sleeping bag and fastens it to her pack. Step one, brush teeth at the fountain in the park. Step two, warm her cold bones in the library until they kick her out like usual, but not before she grabs a new book and returns the current one. Step three, try to get Frank to let her take a shower, then run his dumbass errands with the Blackwell assholes.
Just another fucking day for Chloe Price. At least the pills work, every day she is quietly thankful that she could start as soon as she did, before things started getting worse. Even back then Frank had been helping her out, getting her the shots she needed. She didn’t care to ask how or why, but another day to keep from coming out to her widowed mom was another day she was safe. Her dad had been cool with it, but she’d told him the day before he died.
She can’t shake the feeling that the universe just really hates her, with a passion. There were a lot of hard nights where she nearly ended her tenure as what ever god(s) plaything, usually Rachel had saved her from those. But there's no more Rachel now.
The park is blissfully empty this time of day, the old folks tend to avoid the times she’s usually around. She doesn’t bother them but they avoid her like the freak she is. Doesn’t help that she’s leaning into it with the blue hair and the butch dyke look. Showing off her bra is a special thrill of hers, almost nobody says the wrong bullshit now. The alarm on her phone goes off. First doses of the day. One to keep the bad shit at bay, another to make the good times roll.
The library is similarly quiet, the librarians keep their distances most of the time, they don’t know when she’s last showered but they’re not mean to her. They just don’t want her disturbing the other people, which is fair. Some of the more asshole people in the Bay make a fuss about her, the local embarrassment and failure of the community. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. She didn’t ask to be this way and she isn’t going to stuff herself back into any box for any shitstain with some dumbass opinion. She has enough dumbass opinions in her own brain about what she deserves.
Books… Books… I wish this dinky library had more gay shit, I can’t just read Blue is the Warmest Colour for the fiftieth time. Fuck it, I can always just read some pulpy sci-fi bullshit.
“Price. Lemme guess, you need a shower?”
Chloe nods as she approaches his impromptu campsite for the day, pausing to give Pompidou some scratches. “Yeah, getting pretty ripe. Even with the changes I need showers dude.”
Frank nods and motions for her to go in, “go ahead, should be some hot water.”
Chloe doesn’t even bother hiding her relief. Today is a good day. “Thanks so fucking much dude.”
The hot water lasted less than a minute, but it’s at least something. Chloe still counts herself so lucky she didn’t get far enough along to have to shave, that would have been a nightmare on drug dealer errand girl money. After a quick dry and making sure everything is back where it’s supposed to go, it’s time for Chloe to get her top-secret mission for the day. “This is an easy one Price, some new girl at Blackwell wants to try weed for the first time. I fixed that bad bearing on your board so you should be able to make it there in no time.”
Chloe nods, still basking in the power shower glow. “Sounds good, deliver weed, bring back cash, get my cut.”
Frank smiles, things going smoothly is exactly what he wants to hear. “Yup, and with any luck my supply issues will unfuck themselves and we can start making some real dough. Maybe get you some actual wheels.”
This isn’t the life she wanted or even could have predicted, but at least she’s breathing at all. She knows the odds for people like her suck for that anyways. The code name is Briard, something to do with the girl’s hair being a brown shaggy mop. The code names are dumb, she knows most of the Blackwell crowd anyways but Frank insisted on it. Weed delivery girl, here to save your boring asses from school.
She resists the urge to pull a trick as she skates into the Blackwell parking lot. This is business, not pleasure. She used to panic about David causing trouble, but then she found out he’s too chicken shit to try anything. Through the grapevine she heard that Joyce was beyond furious with him for actually forcing her out of the house and any more fucking with her will lead to a divorce. Not that the divorce would get Chloe back in that nightmare of a house without her mom smartening the fuck up. She pulls out the flip phone burner and sends Briard the usual “Here” message and waits, leaning against the far wall of the parking lot. A couple minutes later she sees the shaggy brown hair coming down the steps to the parking lot. An old memory twinges in the back of her mind and she stops leaning against the wall, concern starting to fill her thoughts. I know that hair… She struggles to put the pieces together until she sees the girl’s face. Then she knows and panic seizes her. Her eyes dart for any exit. Her breathing starts hitching and coming in ragged bursts. Out, need out, fuck the weed. She starts moving to go but it’s too late. Max Caulfield has seen her.
“Co-” the sounds slice through the air and she feels the hot knife of that fucking name about to land in her guts again that day, only for Max to stop, just kind of awkwardly staring at her.
Chloe closes her eyes before turning to face Max, trying to fight down the icy terror with deep breaths. As much as she’d missed Max, she had hoped to never face this moment, where Max would shatter their childhood together by not seeing who she was. Instead here she is, stuck in this moment as she opens her eyes and braces for the worst. “H-hey Max… Guess you’re back in town then.”
Max nods, the bewilderment on her face is not subtle at all as she watches Max’s eyes dart over her. To her relief, the younger girl is still ever the dorkasaurous. “H-hey yourself… I tried to message you on Facebook when I came back but it was deleted.”
Oh, sure. NOW you want to talk. “I, er… deleted it. Not the real me.”
Max just nods, her bewilderment fading as she tries to smile. “And who is the real you?”
Her breath catches in her throat at the question, is this real or is she still dreaming? “Chloe. I’m Chloe. I’m a girl.”
Max’s attempted smile fades into an actual one as she says the name a few times. “Chloe… Chloe… Definitely a better fit. You never were good at the whole ‘being a boy thing.’ The blue hair is also really nice.”
Chloe really, really wants to cry at that, she just needs to get away. “Y-yeah, sure fucking did. I… uh…”
Max’s smile turns to ash as she looks at Chloe. “You’re pitbull?”
Stupid fucking code names. “Yeah, weed on wheels and all that garbage.”
“Chloe, why are you doing this? I expected you to be off at college or something, or being a mechanic…”
Chloe can’t even pretend to hide the bitterness in her voice. Just another wasteful queer tragedy, that’s all she is. “I would be, but shit happened Max.”
Max’s face puts her on the edge of breaking down and crying, the look of empathetic pain for her, for what she could have been. “W-what happened Chloe?”
She doesn’t have time for this, not now. The need to escape is fire in her veins. “I’ll… tell you later. My number is still the same and junk. I’ve got shit to do. I’ll come find you afterwards, okay?”
Max nods as she starts fishing out some bills, Chloe takes the money and feels dirty, so fucking dirty right now. “S-sure Chloe.”
Chloe nods, her entire body just screaming at her to leave. “Save it for later Max, I’ll show you how to use it properly.”
Max nods as she stuffs the baggy into her bag. “I’d… like that. I’m sorry Chloe.”
Chloe wants to scream at her that a sorry doesn’t fucking cover what she’s done, but she can’t. After everything, Max vanishing when Chloe needed her most isn’t even in the top five reasons Chloe is beyond fucked up. “It’s… fine Max. Welcome to the real me I fucking guess. Now I gotta go back to the boss man.”
The entire ride back her mind is just screaming like a banshee. It’s not even the usual coherent thoughts of how worthless she is, how she deserves to die in the cold and how much better off she’d be dead. This is just fire in the mind, aimless anguish and rage about shit that she can’t even try to process, doesn’t want to. Last time she tried ended with the scar on her ankle. Max was at least polite to her, most of the Blackwell shitstains are, if they want their drugs and to not have a pissed off Frank. Even fucking Nathan uses her name. What a shitpit of an existence, struggling to get people to use her fucking name like an actual real life human being. She’s not going to end it though, she promised herself a long time ago that she wouldn’t just end up some number on a fucking graph of the kids who didn’t make it. Fuck that. She’s going to live to spite every last asshole who thinks she’s a waste of space. Herself included.
“So, that new client Frank? That one friend I had that moved the fuck away.”
Frank actually looks shocked, which is something of a surprise, usually his dial is set to either angry as fuck or smug as fuck. “Well… shit Price. I had no idea; I wouldn’t have had you do that if I’d have known… Did she take it well?”
Chloe nods, easing down into the lawn chair next to him. “Y-yeah. Didn’t even fully say the wrong name, just dropped it. She got fucking cute too.”
Frank snorts, knocking back a swig of whatever piss cheap beer he managed to scrounge or steal. “I could tell you had the hots for her Price, you never shut the fuck up about her.”
Him saying out loud makes it real, and it can’t be fucking real. “There’s no fucking way Max would want someone like me.”
Frank just rolls his eyes. “If you bust out the ‘not a real woman’ shit I’m going to get really fucking mad. Chloe. You’re a fucking woman, don’t take that shit.”
All she can do is sigh. She won’t say the words bouncing around in her head because she knows Frank gets all crazy mad about it. He knows it and just shakes his head. “Get in the RV and cuddle Pompidou or something. I’ll do shit myself until you can chill.”
She nods, mumbling something about seeing Max later as she retreats into herself, sheltering from the storm in her brain as Frank puts a blanket over her and Pompidou curls up on her chest. It’s better than being alone, she knows that much.
She wakes up, rubbing her eyes. Shit… when did I pass out? Frank and Pompidou aren’t there and the sun is still up. Right, Max. She checks her phone, there’s a few texts from Max. Mostly just saying how happy she is to see her again. There’s even a screenshot showing that she updated the name in her contact list. That gets her crying again, she knows it shouldn’t, someone using her name for things shouldn’t make her cry, it should just be normal. But it’s not and she cries anyways.