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It would be a lie to say that David hadn't given a lot of thought to Max's home life. Even before the fiasco of a Parent's Day, before Max had kicked his way into his apartment, he'd been a little wary about it. Gwen had a lot to do with that, the way she watched Max sometimes with her lip between her teeth, looking past the children as Nurf ran wild with yet another knife or Neil created a small explosion.
"You ever think that there should be a counselor here?" she asked one night. It had been a challenging day. Nearly all the days that summer had been challenging in one way or another, but it had been one of the days when the children had been particularly trying, where Harrison and Nerris nearly came to blows and Nerf found a new weapon, where Max spent the day with his hands bunched into fists in his hoodie and kept his words sharp enough to cut, watching them for some kind of reaction.
"What do you mean? We have two superb counselors!"
"Well, no, I mean..." But then someone- Max, undoubtedly, though Nikki was still in the running- set fire to half of the tents and they had to go find the fire extinguisher.
Now though, in the dark of night, alone on his couch, David wished that there was someone with more training he could talk to. Someone who would know what to do. Someone who knew how to be what Max needed.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed. David knew without looking who it was.
He kill you yet?
David smiled with difficulty, squinting against the glare of the screen in the darkness. Gwen had been texting and calling basically every day since she'd found out that Max had arrived.
Nope! :D :D :D
There was a pause then. Gwen usually worked the late night shift at her drive-thru job. Gwen said graveyard shift was the right name for it, because it made her want to either die or kill someone.
David used the break to check on Max. He'd been doing that late at night recently, during the skeleton hours of the night, when he was sure Max was asleep and wouldn't get mad about him knocking on the door.
The light from outside filtered through the window, falling over the bed. Max looked softer when his face was slack with sleep. The blankets were thrown haphazardly across the bed. Max would be furious if he knew that David had seen him wearing his Camp Campbell shirt as pajamas, but for now- for once- he just looked calm. David couldn't help but feel a grin grow across his face, seeing him. He picked up Max's teddy bear from the floor and tucked the blanket over his shoulders again.
Max shifted under the weight and David winced, bracing himself for his eyes to fly open, but Max only muttered something in his sleep and burrowed more into his pillow. His hand tugged his bear closer, and David actually felt his heart grow two sizes. His fingers itched to take a picture for Gwen, but it would eventually get back to Max, and it was better for all involved (David. It was better for David) if that didn't happen.
He was careful that the cup of water was absolutely silent as it went onto the dresser.
Looking at the cup made his smile falter, and a weight settle into his stomach. He padded back across the room and closed the door, careful to not let the latch click (the last time Max had heard David open the door, he'd thrown his math textbook at his face).
Gwen's text was lighting up his phone when he made it back to the couch.
I think the lemonade's fermented in here, give me a drinking game stat.
David's fingers hesitated over the screen. Finally, he typed out.
Do you think this is a good place for Max?
He stared at the screen, watching the message send. Gwen saw it at 12:05, and then at 12:06 his phone started buzzing the Camp Campbell theme song.
"Hold on one second," she said when he picked up, "I'm getting the biggest size cup we have of this crappy alcoholic lemonade, and you're gonna tell me everything."
So David did.
There weren't a lot of people who would stick on the phone after midnight to drink potentially alcoholic lemonade and listen to David talk. It wasn't that he hadn't met any nice people- David had met so many wonderful, amazing people, it was just that life was like camp for David. People came and stayed for a season or two and then they left, without ever seeming to stick. When Gwen had called the number he'd scribbled in the corner of her farewell card three weeks after the end of camp, he hadn't been able to believe it.
"And Max hasn't tried to smother you in your sleep or anything?" Gwen said, apropos to absolutely nothing, when David finished explaining the events of the three nights ago. He knew it didn't have anything to do with what he'd been talking about because she'd asked some variation of it every day since Max had shown up.
"Gwen!"
"Sorry, but I don't think it's as big a deal as you're making it out to be."
"Gwen, he-" He cut himself off, looking back towards the door, but it was still closed. Max was still asleep, or pretending at least. "He thought I was going to hit him!"
"He thought someone was going to hit him, David," Gwen said gently, sounding more sober than she had a minute ago, "Max knows you wouldn't hurt him."
David wasn't so sure about that. He was having a hard time finding the words to describe the split-second of panic that had been on Max's face when the lights clicked on. That had been real terror, whether Gwen thought it was warranted or not.
"Let's only look at the facts for a minute, ok? You startled him, he dropped the cup. You cried, but that happens all the time so it isn't a big deal. No one got cut really badly, right?"
"Well, no," he conceded uneasily.
There was a pause. David imagined Gwen making a wild gesture, spilling lemonade all over the counter. "There you go."
But there had been the span of time between when David had guided him into the chair and when they'd spoken. Max had definitely known who was in the room with him by then. He hadn't seemed as reassured as Gwen seemed to think he would be. He hadn't put his hands down.
"Hey, this is all new to him too," Gwen pointed out, with all the wisdom a bachelors in Psych could afford her, "It's gonna be a change for both of you."
A puff of air blew out of him, and it sounded too much like a whine.
"He thought I was going to hit him," he whispered again, and that sounded more defeated than he cared to admit.
"Well I know you wouldn't. You'd walk in front of a car before you even thought about hurting Max. He'll know soon enough. You just have to give it time."
"...Ok. I can do that," David said without much feeling.
"And come over here and drink some of this lemonade. It is so good." That sounded more like Gwen. David leaned back in the lawn chair and steered the conversation towards the newest vampire romance.
//
Max thumped down the hall in the morning as David got out their cereal. His hair was bedraggled and more puffy than usual, and his sweater was on backwards. He marched straight past David and to the sink. With a damning glare, he slammed the cup in his hand into the sink.
David beamed at him.
"Good morning, Max! Did you sleep well?"
Max's eyes slid from the sink to David. Then again.
"When are you going to buy some fucking coffee?" he demanded, apparently deciding to not even bring it up, but David caught him staring a few more times throughout the day.
It started soon after that. Little things, little questions that never would have been asked before. Max hadn’t ever been restrained, there had been plenty of prodding, sarcastic questions, but now there were a lot of searching ones too.
“Why don’t you have up any pictures?”
“Huh?”
Max snapped his fingers under David’s nose.
“Pictures. Those sappy, sentimental family portraits that everyone sits through and no one likes. That seems like the kind of dumb crap you’d be into.”
It was exactly the kind of thing David would be into. In any other circumstance, he’d be delighted that Max was taking an interest in his new family.
Only talking about it involved his old one.
“We-ll, there isn’t a lot of free space in the apartment,” he said at last, “But if you wanted to take a picture, I’d be happy to do it just the two of us!”
“Fuck no, oh shit what have I unleashed?”
“Maybe we can get Gwen in on it too!” David exclaimed, stars in his eyes as he started to picture it. “We can all wear formal clothes; it’ll be so cute!”
Max looked horrified. He clapped his hands over his ears, like he was trying to keep from hearing something so stupid again.
“I regret asking anything! Just shut up, David, you’re giving me a headache!” And he slunk into his room and didn’t come out again until dinner was ready and David made it clear he wouldn’t leave the door.
The next day though, he started eyeing David again. There was a furrow between his eyebrows. Did he still have a headache? David would have to buy child-friendly aspirin the next time he went to the store.
“How come you only ever talk to Gwen on the phone?”
“What do you mean?”
Max pushed his pasta around his plate. They’d been eating a lot of pasta recently. It was cheap, and Max knew how to make it on the days that David couldn’t get back in time to make dinner. It made sense that Max would be sick of it.
“Don’t you have any other friends or something?”
None that had stuck around. People came in and out of his life, but they were transient. They never stayed.
Gwen had though, and Max was staying too. That was enough to make David smile.
“I have you!”
Max made a disgusted face and shoved his chair back from the table.
“And with that I’ve lost my appetite.”
He slammed the door to his bedroom and didn’t emerge again until school. Although David had checked on him in the middle of the night and he’d been sound asleep, he looked exhausted, tugging listlessly on the string of his hoodie.
“Goooood morning, Max! Did you sleep well?” Puffy-eyed and sleepy, Max ignored him. He scratched at his arm through the fabric of the sweater. He shuffled into the kitchen after David but didn’t do more than pick at his food. “Are you feeling alright?” Max grunted. “Max?”
“I’m fucking fine, David, relax!” He reached out for his schoolbag and his sleeve pulled up, and that’s when David saw it: red spots reaching up Max’s arms, covered with angry red scratches.
“What’s that?” Max jerked back, pulling his sleeve up, but he was too slow. David caught his wrist and peeled the cloth back down, staring.
It had been a long time since he’d seen chickenpox, but David remembered what they’d looked like on his own skin, years ago. It didn’t look so different on Max.
“Max, how long have you had these?” Max tugged his hand out of David’s hold, the small, tight frown on his face. Max had an encyclopedia of different scowls; this was the same one on the days at camp when his words cut too sharp and his hands never uncurled out of fists. “Max!”
“It’s not a big deal!” he snapped, shoving David away. He wouldn’t meet his eyes though. His red-spotted hands went back into his hoodie, shoulders curling defensively. “I have it under control, David, God! I can take care of myself!”
“Have it under control! Max, you can’t be serious! You’re all flushed-” He reached out to check his temperature.
Max flinched back. It was slight, and he tried to scowl harder to make up for it, but it lay between them in the space, silent and yet extraordinarily loud.
David bit his lip, and reached out slowly again.
Max’s face was flushed, but it wasn’t just embarrassment. He had a pretty high fever too.
“I had it under control,” he muttered sulkily as David started looking for the car keys, failing to act like he wasn’t panicking.
“It’s not your job to have it under control, it’s mine. Now come on, we need to get you to the doctor right now!”
Max’s eyes flicked from David to the keys in his hand, looking vaguely bemused.
“…Really.”
If he followed David to the car without a fight or a snide comment, David was too panicked to notice.
//
David's phone started ringing in the doctor’s office.
"If I have to hear that song one more fucking time!" Max began.
David rescued his phone before Max threw it into the fishtank. The receptionist gave them both a dirty look. Max flipped her off; David grabbed his hand and pressed it down.
Max glared at him. When David didn't release him, he made the same gesture with his other hand.
“Max, please.”
“Alright, fine, whatever.” He shrugged off David’s hand and leaned to the opposite side of the chair. He pulled out a phone- David’s phone, which he hadn’t even noticed had been taken out of his pocket, and started trying to catch pokemon. He and Gwen had been trying to one-up each other ever since Max had hijacked David’s account.
The pediatrician was a short woman with satiny dark skin, her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun. She took one look at Max and pronounced “chickenpox,” but made him sit down on the examination table while she took steps to confirm it.
“I don’t understand,” David fretted, “I thought that children have to get a vaccine now, before they go to school. I thought-”
“Well, some parents lie on the forms,” the doctor said grimly, “Now, what’s this cut on his hand?”
Max was glaring at the floor, which was his standard behavior when his parents got brought up. He looked impossibly small, with his feet dangling off the examination table, and impossibly miserable covering in red spots.
He waited until David had taken him outside to mutter, “They probably never even bothered lying. It would have been too much effort for them.”
David wanted to deny that. He wanted to deny that Max’s parents had failed to actually show up for their visitation day with him, and that they had failed to respond to any of David’s letters.
More than that, he wished that he had enough courage to tell Max about his own parents, about how the only time they’d ever encouraged him was before they realized queerness wasn’t a phase he would grow out of, how he knew what it felt like to never be able to measure up to what his parents wanted.
But in the end, he only looked over the prescription the doctor had given him for itch cream and child-friendly fever reducers, pretending he hadn’t seen her expression when she realized he didn’t have any in the house already.
“We’ll need to pick these up from the store, and then I’ll call the school so they know you won’t be coming in-”
“Sorry to be such a godawful burden!” snapped Max, slamming the car door. He pulled his hood up as far as it went, glaring out the window, where it was starting to rain.
David watched him through the rear-view mirror. The car was small, and old, like their apartment. Max had spent the last several drives slowly carving swearwords on the leather headrest of the driver’s seat.
“Max, you aren’t a burden.” Max hugged his arms tighter against his body and didn’t answer him. “Everyone gets sick. It’s my responsibility to make sure that you’re taken care of.”
“Tch. Whatever.”
“It’s not-” David began, but then sighed. Taking care of Max came before everything else. They could sort it out when he felt better.
On the drive to the store, David saw Max staring at him in the rearview mirror, but every time he tried to meet his eyes Max was glowering at the rain again.
Max was moody through the shopping, and cranky through lunch and the first application of the itch cream, where he turned incandescent with anger that he couldn’t reach his own back well enough to do it himself.
“I had it under control,” he grumbled as he peeled off his hoodie and then his shirt.
On his arms, interspersed with the angry red pox marks, there were angrier dime-shaped scars. David hesitated seeing them. He’d seen them before, of course, in pictures from Max’s file, but…
“Hurry the fuck up, David, what’s wrong with you?”
With practice (David was good at doing nothing, if he hadn’t been so good at it maybe he would have noticed something was wrong sooner, maybe he could have gotten Max out faster), David swallowed down words and bile and started applying the itch cream.
//
Gwen arrived fifteen minutes late that night with Starbucks in hand and a bag slung over her shoulder.
“What’s up, bitches?”
Max glared at her. It wasn't as intimidating as his glares usually were though, because he was covered with red dots and David had wrapped him up in a cocoon of blankets. There was a thermometer sticking out of his mouth.
“The fuck you here for?” He asked around it.
“I caught a tangela on the way here,” Gwen said, shoving her phone at him, “I named him Max because his attacks suck and he's weak as hell right now.”
Max's jaw fell open with outrage. The thermometer tumbled out.
"I'm gonna name my magicarp after you, because no matter how much it trains it'll never be good for shit-"
"Thank you, Gwen, for agreeing to come by, I'll be back by 10."
"Waitaminute." Max's eyes zeroed in on David, on the hand he'd already wrapped around the door. "Where are you going?"
"I have work today.” He stopped with one foot over the threshold. Max was watching him with something close to betrayal. But then his eyes met David’s and he looked away, hurt fading into resignation. David’s grip loosened on the doorknob. “I called but I couldn’t find anyone to cover for me. Max, I-”
“You don’t have to make any fucking excuses to me,” he snapped, arms crossed in a shield over his chest, and it was a mark of how sick he was, how Max couldn’t hide how obviously miserable he was, “Just get out of here!” He eyed Gwen with prejudice. “And you can let yourself out, fuck you very much-”
Gwen slid her phone into her pocket and shoved Max’s forehead back against the couch in one movement.
“I’m here to watch you, you little shit. Lie down and shut up.”
Max was halfway through a retort before he even realized what she’d said.
“Huh?” Gwen was fiddling with her bag. Max’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “You’re…babysitting me?”
The question was for Gwen but his eyes were on David.
“I’m sorry, Max. I’ll try to find someone to cover me for tomorrow. Then I’ll have Friday and Saturday off, and I’ll be here the whole time. I promise.”
Max was still staring at him.
“I can take care of myself,” he said at last, sounding lost. More proof of Max’s sickness; he never sounded so small unless something was horribly wrong.
“You’re sick. It would be irresponsible of me to leave you-”
“It’s not a problem, kid,” Gwen interrupted, watching Max, “Neither of us mind. Now lay down; I brought books. We’re gonna go all Princess Bride on your ass. David, go to work; I’ll text you updates.”
He still didn’t want to go, but Gwen was already sitting down in his folding chair, her bag thumping onto the ground, rifling through it like he was already gone.
Max was watching her, a bewildered, lost expression on his face. He looked to David.
David tried to smile at him.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised, “I promise, Max.”
Max huffed and tried to pull the blanket around his shoulders more. “Are you still here? Beat it.”
“I’ll be back soon,” David said again. “I l-Bye.”
He hesitated outside the closed door. Through the wood, he could hear Max mutter with a touch of his old rebellion.
“I can take care of myself.”
“You don’t want to though,” Gwen said confidently, not even hesitating.
David waited for Max to loudly deny this- something to the tune of “Anything’s better than your shitty parenting” that he usually went with- but oddly enough, Max didn’t say anything on the subject.
“Are you gonna read the stupid book or not?” He asked at last. Then, “David, go the fuck to work!”
//
David was not having a good workday. He was nervous and distracted, and he mixed up one table’s orders three times.
“I’m sorry,” he told the manager when he dropped a tray, “Max is sick.”
Sarah sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I feel the same when my kids get sick.”
It made David light up a little, to hear someone call Max his kid. Like they looked like a family from the outside.
He called home on his break. Gwen picked up the phone on the first ring.
“He’s not dead. And neither am I, though I’m sure that’s a lesser concern for you.”
“Of course I’m glad you’re both not dead. But-”
“He’s itchy. And grouchy.” There was a pause; Gwen shrugging, most likely, “We watched a movie. He ate a little. Lied about putting on the itch cream but we sorted that out. He’s out cold now.”
David didn’t have time for more before his break ran out and he had to go back to the tables, but his head wasn’t in it.
“David, go home. Take care of your kid,” Sarah said when it became clear that he wouldn’t stop making mistakes. She fished in her pocket, coming up with half her tips. “Buy him some name-brand medicine or something.”
“Thank you so much-”
“Just do your job next time you come in, deal?”
Gwen let him in before he opened the door, looking tired, but no more tired than Gwen usually looked.
“He’s been asleep since before you called,” she told him, nodding at the couch. Max was drooling onto the pillow. There were mittens duct-taped to his hands. Go the Fuck to Sleep was propped against the side of Gwen’s bag. “Little shit missed you, even if he wouldn’t own up to it.”
David couldn’t remember a time when he’d enjoyed coming home, but he could feel himself get lighter looking at Max, asleep in his house, and Gwen, leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest. This was the shape of a family, however lumpy.
“I do have one question for you.”
“Alright?”
Gwen’s eyes flicked to the sleeping figure curled under the blanket.
“He kept asking about your family.” A weight settled into David’s stomach, even as the smile froze on his face, as it always did when he had to think about his parents. Gwen knew that, it was one of the only things she left alone, and he didn’t bring up hers as well. She was solemn as she spoke now. “So why haven’t you told him about them?”
Slowly, his smile faded; David put his hands in his pocket and looked away.
“He’s got a lot going on right now. I shouldn’t complain. They weren’t- bad like his were.”
Gwen patted him on the shoulder awkwardly.
“Just because he has shitty parents doesn’t mean that you don’t,” she said, still patting, “I do too. Maybe think about talking to him about it?”
David smiled weakly. Maybe that would help. Maybe. If he could just work up the courage to open that wound.
“Want to stay over the night?”
“Nah,” she said, even though she was yawning, “I have a shift in an hour. I’ll grab some coffee on the way, since you still don’t have any here.”
“Thank you so much-”
She waved that off too.
“Eh, we’ve got to take care of the brat. He’s high maintenance and all that. Like a fancy toaster or some shit.” She glanced behind him at the kid. David elected not to comment on how her face softened, just a little. She would deny it. “That’s what parents are supposed to do. Probably.”
David couldn’t say any better than her. Neither of them had great examples to follow. But they’d fumble their way through it.
Max was still asleep on the couch when David was finished getting ready for bed. He should move him to the bed, but…
The last time David had caught Max in the kitchen, he had been scared of David leaning over him. It didn’t matter that he didn’t realize it was David. He’d been scared. David didn’t want to make him scared again. Max feeling safe was more important than being able to sleep on the couch.
So instead he brought the lawn chair out of the kitchen and fell asleep with his sandwich in his lap.
He woke up in darkness. It was the black and still of after-midnight, when nothing felt real. The yellow light of the lamp only made it more dreamlike. There was a crick in his spine and a pair of eyes watching him from a few feet away.
“The fuck are you doing?” Max rasped from the cushions.
David squirmed back into an upright position. “You’re awake! How do you feel, let me see if you have a temperature-”
Max was warm, but not dangerously so. He stared at David from under his fingers.
David got him some water anyway.
When he got back into the living room, Max was staring at the chair. David didn’t know how to interpret his expression.
“Were you just sitting in here like a creeper?” he demanded, “What’s wrong with you?”
David put the cup in his hands and Max transferred his look to that. David sat back in the chair.
“Max, you’re sick. I have to make sure you don’t get worse.”
Max opened his mouth to say something and then paused, looking utterly nonplussed. Closed it. Shoved the glass at him and rolled over so he was facing the back of the couch and the blanket was pulled all the way over his head.
“Whatever, you weirdo.”
David thought that was the end of it. He shrugged, pulled the lamp closer and got out the rest of the paperwork for that month. By now, he was getting the hang of it pretty well.
Only Max kept squirming, peeking at him from under the comforter with visible, increasing frustration the longer David stayed there.
“Max, I’d really like to help you be more comfortable, but I don’t know what you need.” Not just with this sickness. David wanted to help Max so much his stomach hurt, but he never seemed able to get it right. “You need to tell me.”
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded in a whine, tired and frustrated and miserable, and if his eyes hadn’t darted to the paperwork in his lap, David might have thought he only meant staying up the night. Maybe David wasn’t the only one trying to say two things at once.
Slowly, David settled the paperwork back on the floor.
“You’re my responsibility. I need to make sure you get better.”
Max made a wordless, disbelieving noise and drew away, until he was scrunched against the corner of the sofa, scratching the inside of his arm. He was still such a small child, even bundled up in the blankets.
“Sorry I’m such a huge fucking inconvenience or whatever,” he spat.
David smiled helplessly.
“You’re not a huge fucking inconvenience, Max,” he told him quietly, “In fact, I’d go so far as to say you’re not even a ‘fucking’ inconvenience!”
Max looked him up and down, searching for the lie.
“So I’m just an inconvenience?” he asked, but it came out sounding more bitter than sarcastic. Like something he’d already known, something he was used to saying. Used to hearing.
And David tried his hardest to believe the best of people, to explain why they stopped calling back, to brush off when they said rude things. But he didn’t think he would ever be able to forgive Max’s parents for putting that look of incomprehension on his face when all David was doing was being there.
Instead of saying something like that, David brushed Max’s hair out of his face. Max’s eyes tracked the movement. They were luminous in the dark, confused and fever-bright. Gwen called them cat eyes. Max was like a cat in other ways too, how he would bat David away any instant but lean into David’s palm now, when the movement could be explained away by sickness. Such a clever, hurting boy.
“Max,” he said, breaking out the itch-cream, “I am so, so happy to have you here, and be able to take care of you. I never…” the words stuck in his throat. “I don’t really have a family outside Gwen, you know. And when you came here, and we found out you could stay…I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. I can’t believe how lucky I am to that I have a chance to have you in my family now. And I’ll always been happy about it, even if I’m staying up all night to make sure you get better.”
Max watched him, looking for some sign that he was lying. David only smiled and kept spreading the cream over his arms. He had never wanted anything as badly as he wanted Gwen and Max on his couch, squabbling over video games and eyeing his breakfasts with suspicion, Max complaining as he picked him up from school, the lawn chair unfolded by the table.
“Because somebody fucking has to?” Max asked at last. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of David, searching for something.
David had been in a pair of shoes close enough to his to be able to guess what it was.
“Because I want to.”
Max stared. It couldn’t be clearer that he hadn’t expected anything of the sort. “Yeah?” And he was aiming for scornful, but his voice cracked around the word.
“Yeah.” He tapped his finger on Max’s nose. “Boop.”
A beat too late, Max scrambled to push his arms away.
“Motherfucker!” He glared at David. “Something’s deeply wrong with you. I’m going back to sleep.”
But on and off through the night, David woke up to fingers brushing his knee, Max making sure through the darkness that he was still sitting in the chair. Every time, David patted his hair before falling back asleep.
At long last, he opened his eyes to sunlight filtering through the window. There was a blanket wrapped around his shoulders haphazardly, one that he’d been sure was on the couch before, and the sound of clattering and cursing from the kitchen pinpointed where Max was.
Sarah had agreed to take his shift for the day. There was food and medicine already taken care of, and a text from Gwen saying she’d be over in the afternoon to make sure Max hadn’t killed him. He had all day to spend with his family.