Archive of Our Own ^beta

People were always shocked to find that the reality of Max Wolfe never seemed to match their perception. And that was okay, truly, because the reality was a thing that he offered very rarely in the first place. Max had never been inclined to know and be known, at least not in the way that involved a connection of a deep and meaningful sort. Instead, he’d always been far more inclined to set forth the notion of him, the myth of Max Wolfe.

The entirety of their little group liked to play this game, spreading the word of who they were, whether it matched the actuality or not. If Obie could go to enough protests, he would no longer be rich. If Aki could say enough kind words, his father would no longer be a monster. If Audrey could ace one more test, comment on one more erudite autobiography, her home life might fade into the background of the conversation. 

After all, wasn’t who you wanted to be more important than who you already were? Wasn’t potential that thing that glittered in all that dead space on the spectrum between perception and reality? Hadn’t all of their parents slaved away day and night to craft them, their golden little children, into their image? They were not teenagers, they were not kids, they were the future. Future CEOs and lawyers and producers. And to be caught slipping, to damage that reputation, was to damage that potential, and therefore that reality. 

So what if those character traits that the rest of Max’s friends were striving to achieve kicked against their parents' wishes at every turn? Just because the end goal had changed did not mean that the structure in place had buckled. Just because Julien would rather be kind than rich did not mean that she didn’t employ every PR strategy and marketing campaign she’d grown up learning to get there.

But that was the fundamental difference between the rest of them and Max. The facade, this character that they were all striving for, was simply someone human. Someone who could just blend into the crowd of this overstuffed city that they inhabited. Someone that, in their heads, was allowed to have these very normal, very teenage problems that they all seemed to be going through every hour of the day. 

But that was not the act that Max put forward. He had never wanted to be perceived as something so pathetically mundane, because he had spent a lifetime growing up in and around theatre, where life was exaggerated to an infinite power. Every problem and quibble, every high and every low, all were taken to their extremes. And, in the end, what was left? Two corpses, holding each other in a church. Horatio, standing amidst a massacre. Oedipus, eyes bleeding and loved ones dead. Max would not be part of the wreckage. 

So instead he became something else, something more ephemeral and inhuman. A being like Max Wolfe did not need to worry about who liked or did not like him. It became easier to cease interest, and chase only the high of pleasure. To not concern himself with the silly little mortal feeling of exclusion. 

Max could not be worried about ever missing a party, because he had become the party. Not the guest of honor, and not the person who always knew where the party was located, but the very abstract noun itself. He was not a person, not a human being. He was an energy, a touchless, floating feeling that only operated on one setting. 

This was the Max Wolfe that everyone knew. This was the only one he offered to them. 

It was this creation, he feared, that was all Aki and Audrey knew.

He didn’t quite remember when it had started, but over his lifetime he had raised his guard and lowered his inhibitions. Perhaps it was only in comparison to creatures like Julien or Audrey, who seemed to be dipping a finger into the entire spectrum of human emotion all at once, but as Max’s friends had found themselves becoming more and more complex, Max had become transparent. 

He watched the way that the roster of his one-night stands’ faces began to blur; less of a person and more of an archetype. He watched the way his lazy smile became a staple and his personal life faded into the periphery. He watched the way that his friends began to react with genuine shock whenever he added anything other than a snarking remark to the conversation, and he found that it was buried in his heart like a knife. 

“Do you think we’ll ever be able to keep up with them?” Max had once snidely asked Luna from the safety of their picnic blanket as they both watched Julien and Monet pose and repose Obie’s arm on Julien’s shoulder so that it was in just the right light, chatting a mile a minute about brand deals and fashion week invite lists. 

Luna just arched a suspicious eyebrow at him, her razor-sharp eyeliner suddenly feeling like it was digging into Max’s throat. “Honey, none of us can keep up with you.”

Max had grown to like the fact that he slipped through fingers. Because, really, he had never wanted what Julien and Obie had. Not what any of his friends seemed to want, really. They were all so obsessed with being brand-friendly and people-first and convincingly human and liked. All they wanted, all any of his friends wanted, was to be liked. 

But not Max. No, Max was never human enough to be liked. All he cared about was being loved. 

There was a stranger pressed against him in a dark room, with laser lines crossing the planes of their torsos and music so loud he thought his heart might burst; and he was loved. 

Hands reached over his shoulder as he sat at a sun-drenched table, plucking a little vial of fine white powder and pausing to caress his jawline as it retracted; and he was loved. 

Hands tugged at his hair and at his wrist and at his shirt and at his knee and everywhere that a hand could reach; and he was loved. 

And when it was done, when the party was over or the partner was leaving, they took that love with them and Max was allowed to breathe again. 

It had never mattered much to him, this repulsion to the continual, the standardized, because what was there to matter? A steady hand to hold had never felt like a comfort to Max Wolfe, who was a ghost; an abstract; a specter and a spectacle all at once. A soft place to land had always felt like banking on a comedown, and who was Max if he was not constantly floating?

But oh, oh, laying there, in the mere wake of Audrey and Akeno? It was easy for Max to imagine. 

In the sun-drenched light of the new year, Max could suddenly see a world in which his feet could live on the ground. It was easy for him to picture a life that could put him with them, where they could become a we, an us. Max was so used to being a black hole, but with her on his left and him on his right, he could see a world in which he was turned into a sun, with them circling inside his gravitational pull. 

It was fun to picture, to conjure up all of the things that he’d never been willing to see himself doing before, like the exact shade of lily that he would gift Audrey for prom; a soft and pastel pink that would not only match the gentle blush of her cheeks, but the soft shade of her boyfriend’s hair. Their boyfriend’s hair. 

Max could see the future in which he sat for long hours around the edge of Coleman, watching Aki skirt over the pavement bumps and divots, flipping his board in ways Max couldn’t even begin to understand the physics of. He could picture the way that Aki would ride up to him every single time he landed a trick, eager to see if Max had seen. Of course he had. 

He could conjure the list of restaurants and cafes they’d go to, holding hands over and under the tables and not worrying about who was leering. He could prophesize the little things they would do together, not just the sweet, subtle ones, but the obnoxious ones. The annoying ones. The matching holiday sweaters, the overbearing Valentine’s gifts, the refusal for any of them to leave each other’s vicinity at a party for more than five minutes at a time. 

Max could see himself slipping into this life easily, and it worried him. It worried him a lot, actually. 

Because it was a life he was slipping into, a world in which he could be like this. Meaning that he wasn’t already, that he had not previously planned to be. 

He had watched his fathers fall slowly out of love for the past three years, and he’d come to terms with the fact that it was because his dads were simply not who they were when they’d gotten married. And he’d (mostly) come to terms with the okay-ness of that. He’d mostly wrapped his head around the fact that sometimes this just happened, and sometimes people weren’t meant to be that in love forever. 

(He did not intentionally try to think about the ways he still yearned for them to fall back into step, to relearn to relove.)

This foundational shake worried him, though, because he thought of this way that his fathers no longer recognized each other, and he saw it in himself. Who would he be if he was no longer the myth of Max Wolfe, and instead tamed like a wild creature? And, perhaps more troublingly, once that veneer was stripped away, would Aki and Audrey still want what was left?

Max found himself aching over these questions, even as they both woke up and kissed him lightly. Even as they both took him by the hand and led him downstairs, where a decadent brunch was waiting. Even as they went out in the snow, huddled together, waiting for a car that would take them back to real life. And as he nodded off in the backseat, between the comfort of them, Max promised himself that this was true. 

More than anywhere else, Max belonged in Berlin. Not necessarily because there was some centrifugal force pulling him to the German city – there was, sure, but he’d always felt that draw to places even more ancient and debaucherous. Rome and Greece had been his summer plans before they’d been ripped from under him by two hands that were holding each other and not him. No, Max had always felt that he belonged in Berlin because everyone there was more like him than anyone in New York. 

Oh, sure, his friends could play pretend at being made of anything other than soft edges and yielding lines, but at the end of the day, they were all too concerned with what could end up on WhoWhatWear to really cut loose. And Max had fallen for that ruse. Max had let himself get lulled into that inclination towards mundanity, and it hadn’t fit him. He had not been made for such a life.

 No, no, he had, actually. That’s what he’d taken months to learn with Audrey and Aki, and fuck them both for not seeing it, too. He had loved. He had chosen a life that was just them. He had begged them over and over and over again to allow him to be enough. But he wasn’t. Or– or he was, but too much. Or some messy, annoying, complicated thing in between. Whatever it was, it wasn’t for them. They’d let him know that, loud and clear. In front of fucking cameras, too, as if his dad hadn’t already been through enough without him and his partners having a public breakup on the steps of the Met Gala. 

Like a proof of concept, exactly like his dads before him. Oil and water. Max had shown his soft underbelly when he’d thought it was safe, and they’d pushed him away for it. Maybe his dads had been able to work through that, but it was clear that Aki and Audrey were not interested. Two was enough, clearly. 

Well, good. Because they had told him that he was not their person and that they were not his people, so Max had gone somewhere to find someone who was. Someone who could handle too much or enough or whatever was messy and complicated and Max.

Or to get laid. He’d mostly gone to Berlin to get laid.

As Max reclined on a blanket in some rather unsexy park near the home of a friend-of-a-friend of his dad’s who was letting him housesit, flipping lazily through a script he’d nabbed off his dad’s desk and waiting for his edible to kick in, Max paused to take in the sights around him. 

Mostly black, in a way that reminded him not unsubtly of New York, but less business casual. Less career-oriented. Interested in art and rebellion and stirring shit and shamelessness. That was it. There was no fear in the way that the locals seemed to all move through their home city. Combat boots cracked the pavement and nose rings seemed to shine like headlights. 

Max had once thought of New York as a city of freedom, as the center of the universe for arts and artists and anyone who felt like making any sort of wave. But what a poor imitation it was. It touted a motto of trail blazing, but who in that little tiny world wasn’t afraid of what every other person on the street thought of them? Max had certainly fallen prey to that. 

As he pulled the script back up into his eyesight –some tediously poetic one-woman show that his dad was probably under three different NDAs over– Max began to reckon with the fact that he finally felt at home.

He didn’t know how it happened, but Zoya was the first one to see a crack in his facade. Fuck her for that, truly. He couldn’t even remember her last name. 

They were at Dumbo Hall (of course they were. Weren’t they always?) and Max was seated very pointedly across from Aki and Audrey, the latter who had her legs carelessly kicked over the former’s knees. Those legs, which Max had spent the better part of last night exploring with his tongue. Those knees, which Max knew were bruised underneath those A. Potts pants. They wouldn’t even look him in the eye. 

And yet they were the ones who’d wanted him to come. Not even wanted; begged. Begged for him to come and sit in a too-stiff chair with a too-light drink in the too-dim bar of their group’s choice. Because everything was normal, or at least had to appear so. Because not even their nearest and dearest were allowed to know, apparently. 

“Should we get more drinks?” Julien asked, chipper and oblivious as ever. As if Monet hadn’t started walking around with knives in the hopes of getting a shot at Jules’ back, or Obie wasn’t planning on spring breaking in Richmond, Virginia of all terrible places.

Julien got up, and with her went Audrey, Aki, and Luna; the last giving him a quick look of questioning before promising to bring him a Manhattan. 

Max took another sip of his cocktail. Whoever was at the bar that night must be prepping for a drought, because the lemon peel was doing more heavy lifting than the whiskey. 

With an amount of contempt he didn’t even want to admit to, he watched Audrey’s hands snake over Aki’s shoulder as she leaned an elbow on the bar. Her waterfall of blonde locks poured over her shoulder, turned gold by the mood lighting, and turned unattainable by the circumstances. Later, Max would tell her that she looked like a princess that evening, and all he wanted to do was worship her as such. Later, Max would ask Aki what they should offer up in tribute. Later, they would both accept this treatment from him. 

Max took another sip. 

“Are you okay?” A clear-cutting voice shot through his psyche like a bullet. If Max hadn’t popped a Benzo on his ride over, he’d probably have jumped out of his chair at the appearance of Zoya by his side. 

“Were you here the whole time?” Was all he asked instead. 

Her mouth puckered in annoyance, and Max was already bored. Maybe Julien delighted in bringing her little sister along, but that didn’t mean that he’d signed up to babysit. If anything, she should be up at the bar with Julien and Luna and Audrey and Aki. Audrey and Aki, who were somehow finding a way to run their hands through each other's hair without getting lost in the tangle of limbs. Had they always been this touchy, or were they just playing it up because they were afraid that people would somehow catch on to the addition of Max to their mix?

“You think they’re being weird tonight, too, right?” Zoya asked, seemingly scooching her chair closer in an effort to force the conversation back open. No matter how many times she tried to play the ‘two separate worlds’ card, these were the moments when Max could see the resemblance between her and Julien. The raw ambition and stubbornness. She wasn’t going to leave him alone. 

“They’re always weird, you just don’t know them very well,” he said over another sip. 

“No, but Aki and Audrey. They’re being weird tonight.”

Finally, Max turned to fully face her, and he watched as she straightened up at that. Hanging out with Monet and Luna –who delighted in pretending that she was Julien’s invisible friend– must’ve set the bar below ground level for social courtesy. 

“Why do you care? Didn’t Audrey tell the school board that you were running for student government on an ‘anti-public libraries’ campaign?”

Zoya was getting better at playing their little game. The shock on her face only registered for a millisecond. “Okay, didn’t know that, but that’s ridiculous. It’s not like they’d believe her.”

Max took another sip of his martini. “She is the student body vice president. It comes with some sway.”

Zoya pursed her lips a bit, trying to parse out how much of Max’s retorts were genuine and how much was a lazy attempt at banter. Loathe as he was to admit it, but moments like these made him realize that she might even be a good actress. Emotion registered on her face quickly and vulnerably. It was a trait that would make her great for the stage. It also made her a poor opponent for Dumbo Hall verbal sparring matches. 

“Excuse me while I go sit at the big kid's table,” he sighed, not wanting to get up almost as much as he didn’t want to stay. With effort, he pushed himself off the plush chair and snatched his glass off the end table. Maybe the last sip would be stronger. 

“I don’t get why you’re pretending like you don’t like them,” Zoya said, right before he was too far away to hear an under-the-breath comment. “If you didn’t want to be here then why did you come?”

Because Audrey had batted her lovely, long lashes, and Aki had tugged gently on the cuff of Max’s sweater. Because they had promised that if he came, they’d hold hands the entire Uber back. Because Max was slowly, scarily, starting to realize he actually did like them, and he’d wanted to make them happy. Which made this the first time that he’d done something that he didn’t particularly find amusing, just for the sake of making someone else smile. And that was a harrowing thing.

“What I don’t get,” Max announced, because it was always easier to lash out than look in, “is what you’re doing here, Zoya. Why are you pretending to like any of us, because it’s definitely not because we like you. Not because we invited you. And it’s certainly not because you’re rounding out some kind of group dynamic for us.”

Zoya wrinkled her nose just the slightest bit at him, searching for some ledge in his marble facade to dig a chisel into and crack the surface. But she seemingly came up with nothing, someone bouncing once again off Max’s hard glossy armor, and gave up in favor of pulling out her phone and pretending to scroll through Instagram. 

Something pulled at Max’s chest then, some realization that she had given up the battle and therefore left Max stranded, halfway between her and the rest of the group. One side that he’d pushed away and the other side that had pushed him. At the very least, Zoya had tried to reach out and offer something that some might even count as conversation. Without her coming back for another round, Max felt untethered. 

He waited one moment more, almost hoping that she’d put down her phone again and try once more at hurling an insult his way in that upstate way of hers, but she just kept scrolling. 

“I’m going to see if the bouncer has coke,” he announced, but nobody was listening. 

They tried to give him space after the Gala.

Well, not necessarily true. Aki was tender at heart, less brutal than Audrey, and he’d tried texting Max the handful of days between the Gala and the end of the semester. Kind things, gentle things, earnest things. Things he knew were true and therefore wanted to keep at an arm's distance. 

We’re both sorry. It shouldn’t have happened that way.

I can’t speak for Audrey, but I do think about you a lot. If that means anything to you. I hope it does. 

We’ll give you all the time you need, but please just let us know you’re okay. We haven’t heard from you, and we do still care. 

Max blocked his number after that third one. If they still cared as much as Aki promised, none of them would be where they were now. They made their choice. If Max had to deal with all the shitty feelings that went with it, then so did they. 

Audrey texted him once to tell him they’d invited Zoya, Julien, and Obie to their boat trip around Europe, and asked if he still wanted to come. Max blocked her after that. It was clear that they didn’t want him there. 

The rest of the school year passed in not so much a blur as a fog. Max wasn’t there for most of it, and the parts he did attend were in his translucent form, hidden under layer and layer of drug-addled numbness. Nobody asked, so he didn’t tell. 

He and Luna stopped seeing the rest of them as often. Lulu had always been to talented for that pack, anyway, so when she called whatever agent gave her his card and she booked her first modeling gig at the tender age of 17, Max cheered while everyone else merely applauded. 

He found it easy to hold onto her coattails as she finally let herself turn into a star. Maybe easy wasn’t the right word, but natural. Julien’s rise to fame had been posed and maneuvered and debated at all hours of the day. With just him and Luna and an occasional Monet, it was less of a milestone and more of a stepping one. Treated with nonchalance and adoration at the same time. 

“Enjoy, gays,” she’d tut slyly as she carelessly dropped Simone Rocha shoes on their lunch table, perfectly visible to Julien and the rest of their old posse just across the way. For all her bitching and feuding, even Monet found it in herself to be happy for Luna, even offering to return to her position as social media manager for the new head bitch in charge. 

After the bell on the last day rang down 5th and Luna, Monet, and he had celebrated with several hours at House of Yes, they sat packed together in a car doing the rounds of dropping each of them off, saying goodbyes for what felt like the next eternity. 

Monet was summering in Italy –her parents, shocking to no one, had a fascination with the history of the largest empire in the world– and Luna was doing something of a world tour, a mix of work events and sightseeing with her new boytoy. 

“London,” Max answered after Monet asked what GDP he was intent on tanking that summer, “and then Edinburgh. Dad has a thing on West End and then is taking us to Fringe, and Pops wants to teach me something about history, or so he says.”

“Fitting,” Monet quipped as the car pulled up to her townhouse, “rainy and miserable, just like you the past few weeks.”

Monet slammed the door.

“She doesn’t mean that,” Luna placated as the car began to pull back onto the street. “She’s just being a bitch because she’s bad at saying goodbye.”

Mean it or not, it stayed with Max over the Atlantic, all the way until he and his dads landed at the modern nightmare that was Heathrow International. To be rich from theatre producing and landscaping was always to be rich with a slightly lower level of public frenzy than the likes of Roger Menzies or Davis Calloway, so the three of them made their way to where a car was waiting for them without trouble. The only major inconvenience that Max encountered was the need to pull an umbrella out between the airport doors and the car. Rainy and miserable. 

They drove in a relative silence, all evidently tired from the long plane ride where even the words of Yanagihara couldn’t keep Max enthralled through its entirety, and eager to let the jet lag put them to sleep. 

“Max,” Roy asked while still glancing down at his phone, scoffing a bit at the international texting charges while trying to haggle for hypericums, “are you sure you didn’t want to reach out to any of your friends? It wouldn’t be any trouble for your dad to get an extra ticket or two.”

Max thought briefly of Luna off in Spain, connecting with roots she didn’t know she had while simultaneously hammering out a contract with Loewe. He thought of Monet, walking among the Roman senate ruins and relishing in her own brutalism. And, of course, he thought of Julien and Obie and Zoya and, inevitably, Audrey and Aki. He’d had them blocked on social media for weeks now, but if Julien was good at one thing, it was updating the world on where she was and who she was with in a reckless fashion. They were currently in Amsterdam, riding colorful bikes down cobblestone streets and happier than he’d ever seen them.

“No, it’s fine,” Max smiled, and was at least able to relish in the warmth that filled his chest when his dads both smiled back at him before taking each other’s hands, “family bonding trip is better when it’s just family.”

He hated that he indulged in these sorts of things when Luna’s with him. But, then again, what has Max Wolfe ever been if not indulgent? 

“Are you done?” Luna frowned, churning like a storm in the corner and pulling her sunglasses lower on her face like she was afraid they were going to get recognized. “I can smell the NYU freshman from three blocks away.”

“What are you so worried about?” He pouted as he moved more hangers down the rack, eyeing the garments hanging as they vied for his attention. “Nobody’s worrying about whose shopping retail right now. Everyone’s going straight to the designers to see who’s getting custom for the Met Gala.”

“Exactly,” she seethed and tried to play off the hand resting against her forehead like she wasn’t trying to hide her face, “which is where we should be. Why did you drag me to LES of all places when I could be in a private atelier?”

He snorted a bit at that, already bored of the Met Gala at age 17. “Because Bode’s had me on lock since December and you have your pick of the top designers in the world, especially after Delores-gate. Let me indulge in retail therapy.”

After a moment, he heard the click of her heels on the cement floor (honestly, how pretentious) as she came up next to him. “Retail therapy that’s necessary after a certain summit in the Hamptons?” Luna asked softly, ever-aware of keen eavesdroppers, and plucked a flowing blouse off the rack. 

“How do you know about the summit?” he asked, trying his hardest to play it cool because he was. He was cool. He was Max Wolfe and no relationship could declaw him. 

“Despite being the only one not invited, I have my ways.” At his suspicious look, she gave a dramatic eye roll and added, “and Monet’s a messy bitch.”

“That’s something anyone could have told me,” Max laughed before going back to digging through the clothes. Luna just tutted and handed him the hanger with the blouse, apparently for him and not her, before she started pulling other pieces off and passing them to him as well. 

“You’re mad at Aki and Audrey. That’s fine. Why are you shopping about it instead of talking to them?”

Max didn’t quite know how to respond to her, instead opting to examine the sweater that she’d pulled that he must have missed on his last pass through the clothes. It’s not that he was avoiding them. It’s not that he was trying to step away at all, really. He just needed time. That was it. Time to formulate a plan, time to understand where he wanted to be with them. 

“They didn’t say it back.”

Luna pulled one last shirt off the rack, and without even gesturing summoned an employee to gather the pieces she’d selected and set them aside in a fitting room. Once the poor college kid that was clearly trying very hard not to listen in on their conversation was out of earshot, Luna took off her sunglasses. 

“Neither said it?”

“No.”

“Babe.”

Luna knew better than to hug him, but it was times like these when maybe he wished she would. Sometimes even he could understand the comfort of someone taking precious time out of their life just to hold him, to let him know that everything would be alright. Sometimes even he yearned for that. 

Instead, Luna did something that was almost equivalent. She brushed a tender hand through his hair –roughing up the already purposefully debouched appearance– before guiding him tenderly towards the changing room. 

Styling was a love language she was fluent in, and Max did appreciate it; that little time he could play pretend. It reminded him of nights that he, Luna, and Julien had spent raiding his dad’s closet when they were kids, trying on anything with sequins or animal print that they could get their hands on. When they were that naive, they’d clapped with joy each time one of them dared to embark on a new garment. When they were that small, everything had felt so, so possible.

Max tried to chase that high of childlike wonder as he emerged from the changing room with each of Luna’s pulls, trying to make her laugh because somehow he’d convinced himself that she was the one that needed to feel better right now, and that by doing so he would feel better too. 

Or maybe it wasn’t to lift her spirits, maybe it was just to assuage any worry. With a smile on his face and a little flourish of his hands to accentuate the sweatervest he was trying on for no one’s amusement but her’s, Max decided that if Luna thought everything was fine then it must be. And it must be. 

It didn’t matter that Luna wasn’t buying it and Max could tell that she wasn’t. She didn’t say anything, so Max didn’t have to either.

Max was in Edinburgh when he finally spoke to them again. 

Days in Edinburgh over summer were always something that Max cherished. There was a kind of freedom he enjoyed at Fringe, with all its young and mostly middlingly-talented artists, that was hard to describe because it stayed alive with him during the daylight hours. 

His days often fell into somewhat of a routine: breakfast with his dads at the hotel or a nice cafe they found the day before, occasionally a hike with his pops if they were feeling adventurous, and always at least two shows a day with his dad. The last addendum was more of a scouting event than anything, with his dad turning to ask him after every 70-minute slot had run its course two questions: did he like it, and would it transfer well?

Beyond those handful of hours, though, Max was free. He stopped in to shows that he heard about on the walk over, he day-drank with the 20-somethings that were all looking for a dealer with something stronger but a little too professional to say so out loud, and he smiled. He really, really did. It was overcast and rainy and miserable because it was Scotland, but it was also alive. 

He felt no shame as he stumbled into the hotel suite late at night, smelling of fish and chips and shared cigarettes and so, so much whiskey, because his dads were also on vacation. He watched his dad smoke nervous cigarettes before meeting with a semi-famous friend of a friend, or his pops pour an extra glass of chardonnay when the two of them came back from their weekly date nights, and Max allowed himself to revel in the bacchanal of everything. No school, no cliques, no petty fucking high school bullshit. Just this. Just the now.

“Maxie?” his dad asked while Max was halfway into his room, planning on shucking off his stiff button-up in favor of something more noticeable. A few of the friends he’d made last year who’d returned again were planning on going clubbing and had asked him to join. As if a person– a creature like Max Wolfe needed to be asked. 

“Yeah?” He called back with his hands on the doorknob, ready to separate the two of them and pick the conversation back up in a moment. 

“Have you been in contact with any of your school friends? Audrey just called, she sounded worried.”

The heart that had just been hammering so hard in Max’s chest stilled. 

“She called you?”

“Keeks texted me to ask– so when Audrey called I figured–”

“Please,” Max said, so much quieter and more fragile than he’d been just a moment ago. And he hated it. He hated that they still had this on him, that he was still this invested. That was the point of leaving them behind. That was the point of shutting himself off again. To lose whatever it was that still lived in his chest, that was trying to crawl its way up his throat. “Please don’t do that.”

He watched the journey his father went on over the course of mere moments –surprise into confusion into worry into something altogether heartbreaking– before he placed a carefully adorned hand against his chest and just gave one solemn nod. He’d been through a messy breakup that Max had been meddling with once upon a time, too. 

Max nodded stiffly, all the looseness still sapped from his body, before turning and disappearing into his room, shutting the door behind him. 

He knew why she would do that. Of course he did. Over the handful of weeks before he’d started dating them, Max had been manic in his obsession with their Instagram feeds. He’d been self-destructive with the scrutiny he’d shown each one. Where were they? Were they happy? Were they happier than they would be with him? Why wouldn’t they call him why wouldn’t they call him why wouldn’t they call him?

And then he’d snapped. He’d finally had enough of obsession with zero return on the investment of his time, and maybe a few too many negronis had brought him to that decision, but he’d made it. Which is why he hadn’t had to go through it the second time. He knew how hollowing it would feel to check in on the life he could’ve been living. 

How dare she bring his father into it, though. That was the thing that pissed him off the most. Her incessant need to bring everyone into her drama, to make sure they were also as invested as she was. Even when they weren’t. Even when it was none of their business. 

Max held onto this rage as he pulled out his phone. As he shakily pulled up her contact info and hit unblock. Just for a moment. Just for long enough to speak his mind. A thing, he realized mid-dial, that he’d never really had a chance to do.

It took three rings for her to pick up, and he could already hear the confusion in her voice.

“Max?” She sounded like fall. She sounded like long nights in the library, with a flickering little light and dust smattering in the air. She sounded like winter, like layers of fur coats and knee high socks and cozy nights by a fire. Like spring, like the fresh flowers of his pops’ garden finally revealing themselves at their full glory. Like summer, joy and recklessness and freedom. She sounded like a lifetime that Max had envisioned with her and Aki. That they’d taken back from him to have themselves. 

“Don’t call my dad,” he bit out instantly, because he was certain if she got more than one word in he’d forget why he called for. “And especially don’t call my dad about updates on me. You’re not my keeper. Mind your fucking business.”

“Nice to talk to you, too,” she grumbled, and he knew the exact pout that her lips were forming. He didn’t have to imagine the countless times he and Aki had kissed that expression away.

“It shouldn’t be nice to talk to me,” he snapped, and there was the emotion of Max. There was the quick wit and spark of life. But where was the nonchalance? Where was the lazy joy? Where had she put it? “It’s not nice to talk to you. I blocked you for a reason, Hope.”

“Hope?” She laughed, and he heard a door shut from her end. “What, I’m ‘Hope’ to you, now? Max, we’ve been friends since second grade.”

“Yeah?” and it was embarrassing, the way that he could feel tears beginning to prick at his eyes when she was clearly so uninterested, “And I told you I loved you and Aki, and you both ran back to each other before we’d even broke up.”

“Aki and I were still dating, too. We were allowed-”

“We weren’t!” He shouted, then put a hand over his mouth to quiet himself down. His dads were just a wall away. His dads, who he’d listened to have arguments in this exact same tone for months. “We weren’t. You know that. You knew that. When it was me and Aki, we weren’t. But when you two– right after I’d bared my fucking soul to you and you couldn’t even be bothered to say it back? After you’d lied?”

“Max, I don’t have time–” but the rest of her thought was cut off by a soft voice on her end. 

“Max? Are you on the phone with Max?” Oh, Aki. Max hadn’t heard his voice in so long, not even when he was casually trying to eavesdrop across the Constance courtyards. Something so soft was not meant to carry. Hearing it through the receiver sent him reeling, thinking about the last time he’d heard it, accusatory and cold and so very un-Akeno. 

“Put Aki on the phone, too,” he asked, softer than he’d been this entire call. “Audrey, go on speaker.”

There was a long moment of silence, where he was genuinely concerned that she was going to hang up on him, before he heard the telltale click of the speaker. The subtle shift in the audio quality.

“Max?” Aki asked into the phone, all the gentleness in the world poured into just one word. “Are you there?”

“Hi, Aki.” All plans were abandoned. He should’ve known, of course. They’d never once been anything else than joined at the hip. Why should they stop on his account? They hadn’t in the past. He should’ve been ready to face the both of them at once. It was his fault, really. 

“Max, we’re worried about you. Are you okay?”

He wanted… He wanted so many things. He wanted to throw his phone against the wall. He wanted to go back out, to lose himself in the crowd of artists and not be found for a week. He wanted to chew them out for thinking they were still entitled to his life when they’d chosen to leave it. He wanted to be there with them. So, so badly did he want that.

The acid tripped out on his tongue before he could even think to recall it. “What does it matter to you? Don’t you have a monogamous life of missionary sex to get back to?”

He heard Audrey scoff on the other end, pert and prim as ever, but Aki kept the judgment to himself. “The last time we didn’t hear from you for weeks on end, you started sleeping with a teacher and coming to school high.”

“And whose fault was that?” He bit out, because it was so much easier to pin all his problems on the two of them, eternal coathooks though they were. It was not his dads separating, it was not Rafa twisting him around his finger, it was not any of the thousand tiny things peeling his skin back layer by layer. It was just them. 

This time Aki did let out a small noise of disappointment. “I don’t know if that’s fair–”

“It’s not fair,” Audrey interrupted, her voice getting closer to the microphone on her phone again, “It’s not fair to–”

“No,” Max cut her off, because so what if it wasn’t fair? He wasn’t interested in being fair, “what wasn’t fair was Aki cheating and you lying about it. What wasn’t fair was you both– both harassing me for the entire month of December, promising that if things fell apart they fell apart for all of us, and then going back on it when it was no longer convenient for you. Did you care about fairness then?”

“We meant it then,” Aki promised, and the annoying thing is that he genuinely sounded like he believed it. As if past equaled present. “We just…”

“Max, we just wanted to make sure that you were okay. We still care about you, of course we do.” 

That drew a laugh out of Max, something frantic and feral. He ran a roving hand over his jaw, tracing the wavering smile at the absurdity of the sentence. “Right. Of course. Of course you do. Clearly you care about me so much. Clearly I’ve been the focus of your entire year.”

“Max-” And he couldn’t even tell which one of them said it, honestly. 

“You were the first people I’ve said I love you to,” he snapped, still finding his words tumbling out faster than he could catch them. It wasn’t as if they mattered to him, anymore, anyway. He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t even in his own body, in his own hotel room. He was performing, cheating out to the audience and making sure his tears caught the spotlight. He was floating in a lonesome pool, cinematic bursts of purple and blue dripped down his cheekbones. He was a drama- a tragedy of his own creation. He could watch from a safe distance. “And you both knew that. You knew that. And you couldn’t even lie. Couldn’t even pretend that it mattered to you as much as it did to me.”

“It mattered,” they both seemed to say, twining around each other.

“It didn’t. It never did. You wanted me when it wasn’t complicated, and the second it was you went back to what was easy.”

“Max,” Aki tried again. 

“Don’t call me again. And definitely don’t call my dads again. Fuck off, both of you.”

And with a burst of something that could only be adrenaline, not bravery, Max hung up with a definitive motion, quickly blocked her number again before she could call back, and tossed his phone back on the bed. For a long time, he stood there, just gently quivering with the excess energy that was running through his system, twisting the conversation over and over in his head. 

There was something cathartic, about finally getting to yell, finally getting to say something more than just abject pain. But there was also something cold about the fact that, at the end of the day, they were still together. They were still somewhere else, holding each other tight, arguing the same points on why they were better off without him. Months had gone by, and Max was still raw as a fresh cut. 

Minutes or maybe hours or maybe seconds passed, and his dad tentatively knocked on the door before coming in and pulling Max in tight to his chest. He didn’t know when, but at some point after hanging up he’d begun to cry in earnest, begun to shed messy tears that refused to stay bound. 

“Maxie,” his dad whispered into his head, running a gentle hand through his hair the way he did the first time he’d cried over fucking Audrey Hope and Aki Menzies. “It’s okay. If there’s anything to take away from me and pops, it's that sometimes love stories need to break before they come back together.”

And that was it, the thing that sent Max over the edge. Because, well, what if he wasn’t the solution? What if he’d been the break. After all, hadn’t Audrey and Aki been the prince and princess fairy tale of their friendgroup since the second grade? Hadn’t they been star-crossed since they met? 

And what was Max? A wrench in their lives? A passing fancy that briefly tore them apart before they realized that all they really needed was each other? That they were better together, only together? 

Max had not been the great addition to their love story that they’d promised. He’s merely been an obstacle in the way. And, like a fool sick with hope and wonder at the possibilities that such a story offered, he’d fallen for it. 

“I don’t think I’m made for that sort of thing,” he choked out into his dad’s Valentino-clad shoulder, guilt swimming higher in his gut at the knowledge that he was surely ruining the crisp dry-cleaning it had just come back from, “I don’t think that’s a life for me.”

He heard his dad let out a small tut before pulling him in just a bit tighter. “What can I do to make it better?”

Max drew in a large breath, hoping that maybe the air would be enough to fill the hole that was making itself known in his chest, “I don’t know. I just… I need to be alone, I think.”

His dad hummed again, “You’ve never been to Berlin, have you?”

Max felt something out of a fairy tale as he ran out of the Metropolitan Museum. The sun had hardly even set, and he was sprinting out. He’d only been invited to a handful of afterparties – not even the high-ticket ones – and he was abandoning ship. The clock hadn’t even struck midnight. 

Paparazzi snapped pictures of him taking his leave without even waiting for a car. Surely most of them were lazy about the notion of taking pictures of a 17-year-old when figures like Rhianna and Cher were still in the building, but even more sure was the fact that some knew about Gossip Girl, knew that he was one of the people that had been fucked over right on the red carpet, and they were like vultures to the fallout. Surely, there were some middling detectives amidst them that could put two and two together, and were eager to spin a story to the tabloids within the hour.

  Menace at the Met: Teen Socialites Break Up at Biggest Party in Town.

Uncaring about the fact that he was taking a custom design into the vast mess of central park, Max ran. In whatever direction the twisting pathways took him, he ran. 

For such a nice evening, the paths were relatively barren. For such a relatively terrible night, they were still too crowded for his liking. 

It made sense that the usual midtown evening stroll crowd was either craning to catch a glimpse of the carpet through their high-rise windows or equally busy making snide comments on Twitter about how once again too many men were wearing black tuxedos. It left Max able to dodge the odd food vendor at a crossroads or a kindly old lady throwing slices of bread like frisbees into the lake to feed the ducks. Somehow, in a city so crowded, Max managed to find a bench where, with nobody else immediately in sight, he could pretend like he was the only one.

“So if it’s over –and it is over– it’s over for all three of us, right?” It wasn’t that he wanted it to be over. He didn’t. He really didn’t. But for it to not be, he needed to not be right. He needed them to prove him wrong. “All for all or none for none.”

But they hadn’t. In fact, they’d gone above and beyond expectations, and just said the very thing he’d been fearing since they’d started their little relationship. Hell, the thing he’d been afraid of since before they’d even begun.

It was his fault, really. He was just so… so fucking stupid for thinking that this would work. That they would work. That he would work. That anyone would see him raw and want him anyway.

Out of body, Max saw himself sitting alone on this park bench, eyes wet and runny and clearly not from any iota of joy or drugs or something that wasn’t quite so pathetic. It was fine, probably. Probably, there was nobody this far away from the Met that would care. Just random denizens who would take a curious glance at him and wonder why that boy in the nice suit was causing such a scene. 

Crying on the subway is for idiots, Luna had once promised him after an hour-long walk around the Jacqueline Kennedy reservoir following the announcement of his dad’s divorce. Max had been high out of his mind, and Luna had been looking for a reason to skip class. But crying on the street is for celebrities. The drama of someone you don’t know walking by in tears? All of the gratification of someone seeing you cry, none of the emotional baggage of a conversation. 

That was what Max was best at, after all. Being a brief thought and little else. 

Glancing around the park, Max took stock of the handful of people that were seeing him at this low. An elderly couple, throwing what appeared to be whole tortillas to the ducks in the pond. Some tweenage girls, throwing a sunset picnic and posing for photos to proudly display their exploits. A man on a jog, in a familiar gray hoodie that appeared to be getting closer and closer and closer and–

“Fuck my life,” Max groaned and placed his heavy head in his hands. 

“Max?” Rafa Caparos asked, slowing down to a jilted stop, taking an airpod out of his ear and keeping a heavy distance from the park bench. 

“This is just what I fucking needed,” Max sighed before reaching into his pocket for the joint he’d planted long before leaving the house, swiftly lighting it and taking a long drag. “Just when I thought this night couldn’t get any worse.”

Rafa watched him for a long, awkward moment, and Max petulantly refused to be the one to break the silence. Maybe it was childish of him but, well, he was still a child. 

He hadn’t… They hadn’t talked. Why would they, right? And it’s not even that he wanted to. He didn’t. What they’d done had been messy and bad and it had hurt him way, way more than it hadn’t. 

But he also didn’t know what to do with himself the day he’d gotten back to Constance and suddenly the Latin class was no longer being taught by one Mr. Caparos, but a Mrs. Helms instead. He hadn’t known if, after so much bullshit, the closure was worth the effort or not. 

But closure had been a thing that had been evading him easily these days. 

“You look fancy,” Rafa said, still standing on the other side of the walkway with a single airpod in his hand. 

“What are you doing on going on a run in Central Park? Don’t you live all the way in Harlem?”

A quick laugh passed over Rafa’s face. “I think that you maybe don’t really know where Harmlem is.”

Max scowled, pulling another long drag from his joint and pointedly looking away. The lack of eye contact didn’t mean he couldn’t feel the moment that Rafa softened, thought. The very second that Max could feel him choose to not be an asshole. 

“Max, what are you doing out here? Don’t all of you kids get invited to that stupid party at the Met? Shouldn’t you be spilling caviar on an Orozco with your friends?”

Again, Max felt his shoulders tighten, his breath get just that much shorter. That’s exactly what the rest of them probably were doing right now. Rubbing elbows with their favorite celebrities, celebrating a plan well executed, and savoring one of the best nights of the year. 

And Max was alone, smoking on a park bench, talking to the guy that ruined his entire fall semester. When had he become someone so boring?

“You really fucked me up this past year, you know? The amount of bullshit that you put me through, all of the lying and the games and the hiding.” Max rubbed his forehead. He could feel a headache coming on. “I was going through some shit, and you made me think that you were something stable and reliable, when you just… you weren’t. You used me.”

Rafa nodded after a moment, didn’t even bother to disagree. Max half expected him to push back against that accusation, or swear that they were both damaged, or… or something. Something to meet Max in his grief. 

“What happened wasn’t fair to you. And for what it’s worth I am sorry.”

A tear slipped out of Max’s eye and he glanced away quickly so Rafa couldn’t see. “The shit you did to me… Whatever. I thought after you I finally found some people that actually liked me for me and not just because I was some– some notch on their bedpost or whatever. But they didn’t. And, honestly, sitting here I’m starting to think that maybe nobody ever will.”

Rafa was quiet for another long moment, one of those things that Max remembered from when they orbited each other’s lives what felt like a million years ago. He had liked it a bit at first, the confidence and the stoic-ness, until it began to drive him up the wall. Until the silence ate him from the inside out.

“If you’re gonna try to impart some sage wisdom, you might as well get it over with,” Max snapped. 

Rafa nodded solemnly before putting his airpod back in. Taking another step back. “You’re worth  lot more than your relationships to other people, Max. I’m sorry if I was the one who gave you the impression that you aren’t.”

With that, he began to jog off on one of the thousand twisting paths of Central Park, disappearing over a hill after not too long. Max sat back, looking up at the skyline that was just visible through the trees, pulled his joint back to his lips, and tried to take just one moment to be himself. 

Max felt the cool bite of uneven pavement dig into his back, and took a moment to look at the stars. Cassiopeia. Orion. Andromeda. Ophiuchus. Max could taste them all on his tongue. 

Somewhere in the Mediterranean, Aki and Audrey were looking up at the same stars, and holding each other tightly. Well, screw them. They were watching up from some fantastical plush bed, not wet asphalt. They’d never been asked to leave a club before, much less literally thrown out. They’d never done anything that interesting. 

Well, they’d done him. He was interesting. Max laughed at the thought. 

With a heave, he pushed himself upright. With a searching hand, he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. With an annoyed sigh, he realized he’d lost his lighter in the club. 

This was not necessarily the lowest point he’d ever been at in his life. There had been several instances where Max had found himself pushed onto the curb after some bouncer got so sick of his wiley smile that no amount of slipped fifties would grant him reentry. It was, however, the first time that he’d been thrown out onto the streets of a foreign city, any semblance of friend or family at least a country or three away. He’d come to Berghain with a few people he’d met at Art Stalker a few days ago, but they’d almost immediately split off. 

And now, here he was, alone on the ground with a cigarette he couldn’t light. 

Max let out a laugh.

It was funny, no?

There was a crush of pavement beneath combat boots approaching that caused Max to bristle and prepare to throw another sloppy insult over his shoulder so that whoever this was left him alone, but the telltale click of a lighter opening stopped him in his tracks. 

“You must have done something pretty terrible to get thrown out of Berghain,” a gravelly voice came from above, an angel descending to earth and all that. Max just glanced up to the man, Cassiopeia and Andromeda circling his head like a halo, and Max decided that this must be fate. Why else would the universe put a tall, dark, and charming man right in his path, looming over him with threat to tip. 

“Oh, you’ll do just fine,” Max smiled saccharinely around his cigarette, because ninety percent of the reason that he’d come to Berlin was to get railed so hard that he was able to stop thinking about Audrey and Aki and love for two seconds, and judging by the way this guy’s biceps were fighting for their life to escape his button down, yeah. He would do just fine. Better, even. 

They made it two blocks before distraction. The townhouse Max was staying at was close –as he’d insisted when the stranger offered to call a car– but it was not close enough to beat the ticking time bomb of the man’s hands slowly sliding up, up, up Max’s back. Under the shirt, where he could feel the cool brass of his rings against his skin. 

Audrey and Aki didn’t wear rings, Max thought briefly as the stranger pressed a guiding palm to the small of Max’s back, promising to bring him home but steering him towards the sultry little ally instead. Audrey doesn’t like that they make holding a pen harder, and Aki gets too distracted by spinning them around his fingers. 

With a determined bravery, Max grabbed the stranger’s hand in his own. He maintained challenging eye contact with the man –was he a man? In this light, he looked almost like a boy— and slipped one of the many, many rings off his knuckles, and onto his own instead. 

“Are you gonna give that back?” The stranger asked, an amused smile dancing on his lips. His lips, which were the kind of rosy peach hue that reminded Max of warm mornings in bed with Audrey and Aki, which made Max want to lean in so he couldn’t see them anymore. 

“Depends,” Max arched one of his perfectly crafted, cynical eyebrows, “are you gonna make me?”

A smile played once more on the stranger's lovely lips, before he took a step in and Max let him. Let him push Max up against the brick wall. Let him walk them into the ally, where only the shadows knew them. Let him touch him there and there and there and there. Let him become Max’s whole world, for that fleeting moment. 

He’d forgotten about this. The joy. The rush. He’d maybe even worried that he’d never want it again. Oh, not the exuberance of being pushed up against a wall and kissed. Of being bitten just right on his neck and knowing it would show up tomorrow. No, Max could never separate himself from his love of that simple action.

But to do so with a stranger? That, Max had once worried he’d never love again. A month ago, if you had asked Max Wolfe if he’d ever want to go to a random club and fuck someone he’d met that night, he’d tell you a hearty and truthful no. A month ago Max had been so doped up on puppy love that he’d been certain he’d never want something but deep, meaningful conversations and comfortable, familiar sex. He’d been domesticated and begun to settle into a routine. One that was ripped out from under him, and left him worried that he’d had a taste of the other side and would never be able to forget. 

But under Andromeda and Orion and Cassiopeia, Max realized that maybe this was a kind of love in it of itself. Something brief and powerful and intoxicating. Not less than. Not less important. Just different. 

The stranger pulled himself up for oxygen, breathing so heavily that his Adam’s apple danced in and out of the faint light from the street. Hypnotizing. “You’re something special, you know that?”

Something deep and shameful stirred in Max at that, something that preened at the idea of a stranger loving him briefly. Something that worried that they only thought that because they were strangers. “Obviously,” Max pulled him in for another kiss, looping the finger that he’d placed the ring on underneath the stranger’s little cluster of necklaces. “I’m also realizing I should maybe get your name before I let you into my house.”

“What, no sense of adventure?” The stranger laughed, placing a hand over Max’s and just holding it on his chest. Max could feel his heartbeat through the sheer button-up. “You first.”

Max squinted up at the stranger, his brown eyes soft and gentle, pushing against the harsh persona he was putting forwards. And it made Max want to trust. Made Max want to keep going, keep talking and listening and laughing and teasing and, and, and. 

Fun. When was the last time that he’d had fun with someone? When was the last time that Max wasn’t worried about someone else more than he was worried about himself? When had he just trusted that the other person was as happy to be there as he was? 

He was Max Wolfe. He deserved a little fun. 

“Max,” he said, jutting his chin out just a bit. Cocky, confidant, and flamboyant. A performance, maybe. But a good one. An entertaining one. 

The stranger smiled, enjoying the show. He moved just the smallest bit forward, taking up Max’s space just that much more. “Hi Max. I’m Phillip.”

Phillip slept over. He wasn’t supposed to. Or, well, had offered not to. And Max was going to let him leave. Honestly, he wanted to let him leave.

But… but he was charming. Not just charming, because Max knew a lot of charming people that didn’t make him act this stupid. He was funny, and suave, and maybe a little bit of an asshole, and maybe that was the sort of thing that Max liked. Missed. 

And he was confident. He was not fumbling, not constantly checking in with someone else to make sure they were on the same page. Not constantly reassuring Max that we’ve never done this before. Oh god, we’re so vanilla, aren’t we?

No, he was just comfortable. Just… just ready for Max. 

So he asked him to stay. 

Or, not even asked. It was more that when Phillip was putting his jeans back on, shooting a small little smile over at Max and seeming to even mean it, Max paused midway through his cigarette. Because there it was again, that thing that wasn’t just charming, funny, suave, and an asshole. Not just what he yearned to relive. There was that boyishness again. Fleeting and sparse, but there. Genuine and unabashed. And it was gone as quickly as it came, covered up once again with this character. 

And for a moment Max felt like he was looking in a mirror. Maybe not a direct one, but something just a bit warped. Max and Max Wolfe had always been two different beings, and he’d always wondered if those two truths could never live in the same body. 

With Rafa, all that Max could be was a ghost. Debaucherous and risky and smarmy and slick. There one minute, gone the next, always savored but never missed. 

With Audrey and Aki, that had disappeared. It had stayed for so long, and the thought of it being what they wanted from him had killed Max a bit more every day, and Max had become something tamer and timid and sincere. And still it wasn’t enough. 

But there, looking at that brief flit of sincerity across Phillip’s face as he straightened his hair and checked his phone, Max thought that maybe there was someone else who also enjoyed the act of playing pretend. Who might even have the same soft interior that he did. 

Maybe there was a world in which he could be both Max and Wolfe. 

“I should go,” Phillip slid back on a hip, sly smile slithering across his mouth once more. “My car’s around the corner.”

He’d turned all the way around when Max recklessly blurted out, “You don’t have to go.”

Phillip stalled, eyes trained on the door for one more exhausting moment, before he turned back around with an interested eyebrow raised. “No?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Max deflected quickly, placing the ball firmly in his court. Maybe he’d overstepped, overreached, overreacted. 

Phillip took a step closer, just one. “And what is it that you want?”

Oh god, when had someone ever bothered to actually ask Max that and mean it? 

He wanted Aki and Audrey to apologize and mean it, to realize that they’d used him when he was fun and abandoned him after he got complicated. He wanted Luna to bother to ask him the tough questions, even when he pretended like he didn’t want her to. He wanted her to follow through with her care. He wanted his dads to stay together, to prove to him that maybe there is a kind of love that isn’t temporary. He wanted the world to stop passing him around and finally give him a reason to stand still. 

Mostly, Max just wanted to feel loved, and to feel like he was worthy of that feeling. 

“I want to get to know you a bit better,” was all he said, because maybe at the end of the day, Max was still a coward. But a coward who’d taken a step, who’d open a door he usually left shut tight. A door he had all the reason in the world to lock once and for all. 

Maybe he was a fool for trusting another person even with this much after all he’d been through. 

Maybe he was willing to take that risk. 

Phillip pondered Max, reclined on a bed that wasn’t his with a cigarette burning lazily in his hand, and a small smile washed across his face. “I’ll cancel the car.”