Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Do you think they could have loved me?”

Max says it like it’s something he’s done wrong. Like it’s his fault. Like there’s something wrong with him. David wants to tell him that it isn’t, tell him that it’s harder not to love him, but he can’t find the right words. There are so many things he’d like to tell Max, shout at his parents and the kids that used to ‘gift’ him with split lips and bruised eyes.

He settles for, “They should have loved you.” 

“But they didn’t.”

“That’s not your fault.”

Max smiles. Just a little bit.

Chapter Text

Pizza is Max’s favourite food.

It tastes good, you can get it fucking everywhere, it’s warm; none of that means much as far as he’s concerned. Pizza is the best because it means that people care enough about him to get him food, to talk to him. People like him, people want him to be happy even when he’s just a dick to them for no reason (as far as they know). Pizza means that he’s happy and they’re happy and he’s got a very, very unconventional, dysfunctional sort-of-family that care about him.

And Max?

He’d do anything for them.

Chapter Text

“David! Wake up! Wake the fuck up!” Max cries, shaking the man’s shoulders, begging and pleading to deaf ears.

The blood oozing from the wound, that dagger protruding from his abdomen, isn’t that much, Max pretends. The dagger is holding the blood in place. The dagger is keeping him alive. David’s just passed out, he isn’t dead. The ambulance is going to get here any minute now, and they’re going to save him. He’s going to be back to give them another lecture about nature.

Max sits back, wiping tears from his face, as the ambulance gets here.

“I’m sorry…”

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Autumn is the worst time of year, Max decides. Autumn is when he returns to his family, who don’t give enough of a shit to hit him sometimes, leaving Camp Campbell behind. Autumn is hot one minute and freezing the next. Autumn, in certain respects, is like his family.

Spring is a good time of year. Spring is when he gets to count down the days until camp, leaving his family behind. Spring is when he looks forward to seeing his friends, hearing about what they did because their year is certainly more exciting than his.

But summer is better.

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He is eighteen and he is burning all the bridges, moving away. Leaving everyone from his former life behind, but only saying goodbye to two of them.

Max is good at finding information and all he has to do is Google their names and the state that camp’s in. David and Gwen. They’re married, which he somehow expected and didn’t.

He’s eighteen, standing on their doorstep when he decides to man the fuck up and knocks.

Gwen answers. She looks the same. There’s a baby perched on her hip and Max can’t decide who he most resembles.

“Max! Come in!”

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His parents make empty threats, words to fill the gaps when they’re too angry to properly speak, and leaving, Max assumed, was one of them.

Being driven to an aunt he’s never met by a horrendously cheerful social worker, because his parents have apparently fucked off the face of the earth, he realises that he is wrong. And it stings like a thousand grains of salt rubbed into the thousands of little wounds that hurtful words have left.

Max would take all the words in the world to have his parents back, even though he knows it’s incredibly fucked up.

Chapter Text

The first time Gwen says it, he tries to react how any disobedient kid would.

“Max, if you don’t stop being a little shit we’ll have to call your parents.”

“Whatever,” he scoffs and walks off, thankful that despite her degree she didn’t notice the odd shine in his eyes.

The second time she says it, he’s expecting it. “They don’t give a shit about me.”

And the third time, when David says it for once, is the worst.

“If you can fucking find them, come let me know.”

He cries (in his tent because he doesn’t want their pity).