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Giggling, Prudence darts into the apartment, Jude falling in behind her, the latter still tossing snow onto the younger girl.
"Stop!" her words are proven ineffectual by her laughter as she furiously pawed the melting snow out of her long, dark hair, scattering wet droplets around her.
"But I thought you liked snow," Jude cried, his words thick and Liverpool-heavy.
"On the ground I do, not down my coat," Prudence snaps back with a broad grin. She shakes her shoulders, shrugging out of the hand-me-down parka that no longer fit over Lucy's bulging belly, tossing it haphazardly on the back of one of the kitchen chairs before skipping off to the larger room.
"Jude," she halts suddenly in the Whatever Room, Jude skidding into her heels and nearly falling over her. "Is it just me, or is it really, really cold in here?"
"No. Why?" Jude asks, puzzled, his breath fogging before him in a dense cloud of mist. "Oh."
Prudence rubs her hands up and down her arms. "This place is an icebox. Is the heat down again? I could've sworn Sadie paid the gas bill this month…"
Jude crosses to the radiator, a large, coiled mass of iron. "It's on," he reports.
"Maybe there's a window open somewhere…" Teeth chattering, Pru slips into the tiny, closetlike bathroom. The window's shut, iced over with frost.
"The window's shut in here," she hears Jude call from another room beyond her.
Reentering the Whatever Room, she notices that the door to one of the bedrooms is shut. Knocking softly on the peeling, once-yellow door, cream-colored paint flaking under the rap of her knuckles, she gets no answer. "Max?" she calls.
Jude steps up besides her. "Maybe he's at work?"
Prudence shakes her head. He doesn't usually work mornings and it's barely lunchtime. "Max?" She tries again, jiggling the knob. It turns and opens inwards. A blast of icy air slams her in the face and she has the sensation she's stepped inside one of those kitschy snow globes she had as a child. It takes a moment for her to realize that there really is snow swirling in the room and it isn't melting.
The window's thrown wide open and Max's curled up in a fetal position underneath it, stripped to nothing but his white jockey underwear, forehead touching the snow-covered floor, knees pulled to chest, flakes eddying around his half-naked body.
"Max!" Prudence flies to his side. He's too still, his fingers and toes pale blue. She reaches out, slides her hand between his throat and the rough floor. The warm, moist exhalation against her palm fills her with relief. His breathing's a bit too slow, but it's still there. She's dimly aware of Jude slamming the old, stiff casement window shut and the snow settling around them.
There are minature drifts throughout the room — on the bed, in the crevaces beneath the radiator, along the walls, against the doorframe — and she knows it'll be a mess to clean up once it melts, but all that doesn't matter. What matters is—
"Max?" Jude drops to his knees besides her. "Mate?" Pru shakes her head, signaling him to be quiet. She doesn't want to overwhelm Max if he's in that dark corner of his mind where Vietnam is all too real.
"Max?" Prudence tries again, concern bleeding into worry. She withdraws her hand and places it on his shoulder. Max flinches and she isn't sure if it's the heat of her hand or the contact itself that makes him jerk. At her squeeze, he rotates his head so he's facing them.
"P-p-Pru?" he slurs, forehead furrowing in confusion. "I-I'm c-c-c-cold. I-it's s-s-so c-cold." He pulls in tighter on himself, screws his eyes tightly shut as his teeth clatter, his frame shaking. "M-m-make i-it all g-go away." A tear slips from beneath his eyelashes, runs over the bridge of his nose, and drips to the floor where it sinks into the splintery wood.
"Okay. Okay. Alright. I'll make it go away. We're going to get you out of here and we're going to get you warm again, okay?" Prudence babbles softly to him, stroking his overgrown, chin length, honey-blond hair from his face. Even his hair feels frozen and stiff. "Jude," she turns to the Brit, her eyes huge. "Think you could get him to the Whatever Room? It'll be warmer there."
Jude nods.
"Great. I'll meet you there." Returning her attention to Max, she places a hand on his shoulder and he tenses up so bad, she's almost afraid he'll come apart right now, right here. "Max? We're going to make it better, okay? Just hold on for another minute."
She doesn't wait to hear his answer as she flies back into the Whatever Room and opens the valve to the metal furance to full blast, the coiled pipes clanging loudly. She can hear Jude still speaking softly to Max, reassuring him, as she grabs the quilt from the bed. Curling up on the couch, she strips herself of her clothes, depositing them in a messy pile behind the couch, and pulls the blanket over her, warming it with her body heat.
Just when the room begins thaw, Jude comes out of the bedroom, cradling Max in his arms like a child, one arm hooked under his knees, the other curled around his back. Prudence swallows at how easy it looks for Jude to carry the still mostly-naked blond. Then again, despite his height and long limbs, Max is thin, much thinner than he'd been before he left for the war.
Prudence lifts the blanket invitingly, not caring about her own nudity as Jude settles Max between her legs. Instantly, Max leans against her, shoulder wedging in the space between her armpit and the sofaback, knees pulling high up against his chest. Prudence settles the blanket over them, tugging it up to Max's ears, tucking his head beneath her chin as she wraps her arms around his narrow, bony shoulders. She feels Max's arms, icy cold, snake around her waist, cinching her to him, anchoring himself.
She reaches up with one hand, strokes his overgrown chin-length hair as she rests her chin on the top of his head.
The simple motion undoes him and there's a torrent of scalding tears and stifled weeping.
"I'm all b-b-broken up in-inside," Max stutters between sobs, trembling, burying his face in the hollow between her shoulder and chin, pressing against her clavicle. He's frigid, an icicle pressed up against her. "I'm h-half the m-man I used to be." He shivers again, curls even closer against her as though he isn't practically burrowed in her already, squeezing his arms tightly around her waist, pressing up until Prudence is almost afraid they'll fall off the narrow couch. She shifts so she isn't so dangerously close to the edge of the cushion and tucks the thick, warm quilt more securely around them.
Prudence says nothing — there is nothing she can say — and cradles him. She remembers vividly the night she crawled up the fire escape and through the bathroom window and tumbled into a world where people cared and loved one another. Where everyone was accepted at face value and shit like race and sexual predilections and citizenship didn't matter.
"I'm s-sorry. 'M s-so s-sorry," Max manages between chattering teeth.
"Shhh. Don't apologize. You have nothing to be sorry for. It's all right," Prudence tells him softly, chafing his upper arms beneath the blanket with her hands, trying to rub warmth back into him. "Don't worry. I don't mind. And the house's warming up again. No harm done."
"B-but 'M d-dis-disgusting."
"Shhh. No you're not. You're amazing."
Max shudders and Prudence instinctively tightens her arms around his thin shoulders. Even though she doesn't swing his way, isn't attracted to men, she nonetheless loves him. Maybe not in the romantic way he craves, he deserves, but she still loves him wholeheartedly. She supposes she loves in much the same way she imagines Lucy loves him — platonically, as one would love a sibling. Or a cousin. How could she not? It was Max who showed her that it was okay to trust again, who cajoled her out of the closet, who noticed she was in the damn closet in the first place…
"N-nothing makes any f-fuckin' sense anymore. N-not the war, not killing, not this whole f-fuckin' c-country..." Max trails off, interrupting her thoughts, his voice giving way to a harsh cry. He's no longer shivering, only trying not to weep, his words broken up by hiccups. "I j-just want it to go all away. T-to be the way it use-used to be. I just..." Hot tears roll down his face and drips onto her bare shoulder.
"Shhh. Shhh. Shhh," Prudence shushes him gently, not releasing him, swaying back and forth in time to the cadence of her words. "It's gonna be all right. It's gonna be all right. It's gonna be all right," she croons softly, adjusting the blanket higher around his shoulders, tucking it securely around them. "This still makes sense, doesn't it? You and me, Jude and Lucy, Sadie and JoJo, this place, the baby… We still make sense don't we?" She asks him gently.
Max blinks up at her with confused, shadowed blue eyes. "Y-yeah."
"Then it's all okay. It's still good. Lots of times, I think this is the only thing that makes sense anymore. And, really, it's the only thing that needs to make any sense: Friends, Family. Love. The rest of it can just go to hell." Prudence presses her hand against his temple, guides his head back onto her shoulder, adjusts her hold, and resumes stroking his hair. Outside, the snow still falls.