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“Fucking useless. Fucking brat!”
Max jerked awake, gasping, and scrabbled back on the mattress until his back hit the wall. This wasn’t his room. This wasn’t his house. Where in the fuck was he? Where were his parents? Wh-
Why was the bed shaking?
A sharp whistle pierced the air, and dark, fast shape rattled by. A train? The light filled his room for a split second, throwing everything into sharp white light. There was a splash of color on the wall. A stick with blue paint tapering around it. His hoodie was half falling off the edge of the bed. Mr. Honeynuts was lying next to his pillow. Someone had tied a yellow bandana around his neck.
Max sighed and let his head thump against the wall. The vibrations as the train rumbled by shook down into his bones.
“Fucking David.”
If someone had told him that a few months after camp ended he would still be seeing David every single day, he would have drowned them in the lake. But this was David’s apartment, in some shitty city a few hours away from Lake Lilac, next to railroad tracks because it was what David could afford on his shitty salary. Max had been living here for two weeks, and it was stupid of him to wake up like this and forget everything that had happened.
It was even stupider that his heart wouldn’t stop pounding. His hands kept clenching in the sheet, which was covered with cutesy woodland creatures because David was a freak of nature and even though he’d promised they would buy him better ones, they still hadn’t gone shopping yet.
Fucking useless.
Fuck this. Max threw off the sheet and kicked his hoodie under the bed. He was getting a drink of water.
The apartment was a lot smaller than Max’s house (Max’s old house. He needed to keep saying it, and maybe eventually it would sound true). Most of the rooms were open, without doors, though the bedroom Max had been using had one. It only locked on the inside.
Max ghosted past the entryway to the living room. David was sleeping on the couch until he could get a second bed, and the whistling breaths meant that he was still asleep, probably dreaming about camp adventures or some shit. Max wanted to keep it that way.
He’d been up late most nights anyway. Max could hear him through the door, talking to Gwen, or doing paperwork. Apparently having a kid in your apartment meant a lot of paperwork. There were these classes David had to take too. Max was pretty sure that if his parents had taken parenting classes, they failed hard.
The kitchen was open too, a tiny fridge in the corner, a sink, a table with one real chair and a lawn chair. Max’s lip curled a little, looking at that. If Dad saw something like that…
Dad wasn’t anywhere near here though. That was the whole point.
Back home, the fridge had a water filter built in, and an ice maker. David just had a tiny tray he kept in the freezer, and the fridge was currently stuffed with ice pops and yoghurt with candy you could mix in. David had bought them because Max said they were his favorites at home, but that was a lie. No one ever bought sugary crap like that at home, and he’d wanted to see what they tasted like. Really, they were Nikki’s favorites.
Max filled up the glass at the sink, standing on his toes. All the glasses here had paintings on them, some line of Camp Campbell merchandise that probably only David had invested in. Even a month after camp, he couldn’t escape the fucking camp, could he? It was kitschy as fuck.
“This apartment’s shit,” he muttered to no one, but he didn’t even sound convincing to himself. It was kind of nice, to stand barefoot and half asleep in a shitty apartment in the dark and be reasonably sure he wouldn’t get in trouble for it. That never would have happened back home.
Max was just starting to wonder just what would have happened back home when something rattled back by the window, whistling.
Max jumped, swearing at the train, and the glass slipped out of his hand and shattered against the floor.
“Motherfucker!”
He dropped to his knees, but the thing had completely shattered. There was water all over the floor, and broken glass, and he had to clean it up before David saw it in the morning. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice that one of the set of glasses was missing, but Max didn’t have much hope for that. Shit shit shit .
He yanked open a drawer looking for a dustpan, but the piece of shit creaked so loudly it might as well have been a scream in the silence. Max gave it up as a bad job and started picking up the bigger pieces with his hands and chucking them into the garbage.
“Motherfucking son of a whore-”
“Wha-”
A voice drifted groggily from the living room. Max bit his tongue and tried to grope quietly on the counter for paper towels.
But it was already too late; footfalls were making their way towards the kitchen.
“What in the gosh darn heck is happening-”
A click, light flooded the kitchen and Max reacted instinctively, jerking his arms over his face.
Suddenly David went very quiet and very still. Max didn’t know what that meant and he didn’t like not knowing. He kept his eyes closed.
“Sorry about your fugly cup,” Max muttered, not lowering his hands, “It was that fucking train, I’m not throwing shit around or, or stealing-”
“Max…” He didn’t know what emotion was in David’s voice either, but he didn’t want to look and find out. David took a step closer, then another, and until he was right in front of him. Max did not flinch when David touched his arm. “You’re bleeding.”
Max opened his eyes. They were in David’s tiny kitchen in his shit apartment. Red dripped between his fingers from a cut on his palm. He must have got it from the glass shards. David was holding his hand palm up, frowning down at it, but he seemed to have forgotten that Max was in trouble for the moment.
Slowly, Max lowered his other arm back down to his side.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
David had to have noticed the cup. There was broken glass and water all over the floor. Max’s hand was bleeding, for shit’s sake. But besides frowning, he wasn’t acting like it. He wasn’t even looking at the floor, just at Max’s hand. Max didn’t know what to make of it, so he didn’t fight when David pulled him over to the table, making him sit in the real chair. Then he just walked away.
Max should have just gone back to his room then. The door locked from the inside, and David wouldn’t be able to make him come back out.
Why wasn’t David mad about the cup?
Fucking brat, can’t do anything right-
Copping out wouldn’t do anything. David lived in the same house. It’s not like Max could get away from him forever. So he sat in the chair, glaring at the table, and after a while David came back with that stupid first aid kit he’d dragged all over camp.
“Figures that Campbell couldn’t even spring for basic safety,” he muttered, because Max couldn’t even shut up when he was in trouble. Fucking stupid, stupid-
Usually David would protest with some flowery shit about how wonderful Campbell was, but now he didn’t do that either. He was still frowning. Max was used to people frowning around him, so that at least should have been normal, but it didn’t look right on David’s face. He’d been giving David hell all summer, but David hadn’t ever looked like that before.
Max swallowed.
David looked ridiculous sitting in the lawn chair, his legs poking out like a spider’s, but Max didn’t feel like laughing. He was shaky, and his stomach was churning. How much more trouble would he get in if he barfed all over the table?
“Let me see your hand, Max.”
Max didn’t want to. It was starting to hurt now, bad. But David’s hands were gentle as he smeared Neosporin over the cut, then bandaged it, and if it still hurt afterwards, that was Max’s own fucking fault.
David got up then. He had to heave himself out of the lawn chair, and for a second he was looming over Max again, like (Dad) before, and Max flinched. David’s shadow hesitated over him; then he moved away. When Max looked up again David was cleaning up the mess.
Max shoved himself out of the chair, but David waved him back down.
“I can handle it.”
“It’s my damn mess, David, I can take care of myself-”
“Max.” And his voice wasn’t angry but it was…something. Something not good. “Please sit back down.”
Max sat back down because he wanted to. Not for any other reason.
It took a while for him to clean it. David had to put all the pieces in a cloth, then fish out the pieces he’d thrown out and wrap them too. Max tried not to squirm. David was already spending all his time taking fostering classes and buying him shit and now this.
“I was just getting a drink,” he muttered. His voice came out weird. “I didn’t mean to drop it, I wasn’t doing anything-”
“Here.”
One of Nikki’s ice pops was hovering in front of his face. David pressed it into his hand, against the soreness from the cuts.
“There,” he said with a wobbly smile that looked even more wrong than the frown, “Isn’t that better?”
Max held it and stared at him. David started putting the first aid kit back together.
“Max,” David said, still eerily calm. Max didn’t like it. David had never been this calm for this long before. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did, dipshit.”
“Heh.” Fake laughter didn’t suit David either. Had Max stepped into some weird twilight zone? “Fair enough. But still. Did you...” David trailed off. His hands stopped fiddling with the first aid kit. “Max, did you think I was going to hit you?”
His voice did something weird at the end, something wobbly and not-David and wrong. Max craned to look up at him. The light was still poor, but-
“David, are you- holy shit, David, are you crying?”
David made a muffled noise, pressing a hand over his mouth to stifle the noise, and he was. He was crying and trying to hide it and failing.
Max was horrified. Absolutely nothing in his life had prepared him for this.
“Stop that! I- I’m sorry about the cup, ok? I’ll buy another one, I’ll-”
“I don’t care about the cup!”
Max stared. David was crying silently, one hand over his mouth, and for the life of him Max didn’t understand what the big deal was.
“But I broke it,” he said stupidly, but from the way David’s expression crumpled behind his hand that was clearly the wrong thing to say.
“It’s just a cup, Max.”
But it wasn’t just a cup, it was buying ice pops and foster classes and a shit ton of paperwork, more paperwork than Max had ever seen in his life. And picking Max up from school, and asking about his homework, and was he really too stupid to see that Max was a fucking parasite? How Max was sucking up all of his time and energy, and he was just a fucking burden, just some useless fucking brat who was going to ruin David’s life like he had his par-
“Max, I promise I will never, never hit you.”
Max looked up. David was watching him intently, eyes still red-rimmed and teary. Max couldn’t even figure out what he was crying for. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t like they’d hit him all the time or anything. Not really. He only hadn't wanted David to think…he hadn't wanted David to think.
But David was staring at him with some stupid brand of determination all over his stupid fucking face, like he was going to die before giving up on making Max understand this, like they were standing in the rain next to a shitty bonfire, that's why I'll never stop trying. Because somebody fucking has to .
“I know that you only just got here, and it’s hard to believe me right now, but I promise and I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to believe me.”
Max leaned over. David had pulled the chairs closer together to help with the cut, and Max didn’t have to move far before he was leaning into David’s arm. It wasn’t a hug. It wasn’t anything like a hug. Not even when David shifted, and the arm disappeared and then reappeared around his shoulders.
“Yeah, ok,” he said, glaring at the ice pop, even though it wasn't. It was just a stupid thing that adults said to kids, that only stupid kids believed, and Max should know better. He did know better, which is what made it even stupider that he did believe it when David said it.
And they stayed like that, even though there was school tomorrow and David usually made a fuss about his getting a good night’s sleep, even though David had work and parenting classes and paperwork tomorrow, until the ice pop was well past melted.
Max was almost asleep when he felt David shift, then pick him up. Normally he would kick David in the stomach for even thinking about something like that, but. It was late. Maybe it wasn’t so awful, to have someone carry him to bed instead of leaving him at the table.
David tucked him in too, and Max was too close to sleep to pretend he hated it. A hand carded through his hair, and. That was nice too.
“I’ll make this work,” David said softly, and even though he thought Max was out of it, even though they were living on ramen cups and ice pops, the words sounded like a promise. “I’ll make this better.”
Max didn’t want it to be better. He liked things the way they were right now. He liked the ice pops, and the shitty apartment, and someone smearing Neosporin on his cuts. He liked not having to hide Mr. Honeynuts. He liked the hand through his hair.
When Max woke up in the morning, there was a cup of water by his bed, and yogurt with candy for breakfast.