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it’s just little things at first. details so small and insignificant that most people wouldn’t pay much mind to—and yet, geek notices all the same.
it comes out of nowhere one day in the office when they realize the grayish tint in sam's muzzle isn't just the white light of the lamp at his desk reflecting off him as he works. they glance over at max without thinking, and while it's not as obvious, geek notices the strands of silver within his white pelt. it’s bizarre to think about how time just slips away so easily, how change can take place so quietly. one minute, everything’s as it should be, and the next, it’s like tomorrow happened yesterday.
surprisingly, max is getting to be less and less energetic over the years. when he and sam first adopted geek, he somehow still had the energy of a teenager constantly hopped up on sugary drinks despite them both being well into their forties. these days, though, the lack of energy is made up for with an increase in sarcasm, jadedness, and a general cantankerousness (a word that max refuses to even think about—at least that part of him hasn’t changed). recently, he’s gotten less willing to fight sam for the phone when it rings. in fact, the two have even started to ask geek to get the phone for them instead on occasion, which has been jarring to say the least.
it's weird, but against their better judgment, geek shrugs it off. they're just getting older, is all. it's probably fine.
the time they spend with sam and max continues to be as normal as things can be with them.
even after having moved out and established a life for themself after finishing their second degree (they had some free time, not to mention the mountain of scholarships they were determined to put to good use before sam and max could do anything irresponsible with the money), there’s still something so comfortably mundane about being in the office with them. the downside is, geek picks up on the smallest things even easier than before. the slight differences in the quality of their voices, the little jabs they make at each other about them getting older, the brief, commonplace complaints they make about their own aging bodies—all of it is magnified tenfold for geek. sometimes, they curse their keen attention for detail.
“you okay, geek?”
geek snaps back to reality at the sound of sam's voice. it's nighttime, and the strain on their eyes from looking into any kind of light against the dark sky outside is evidence of that. they're sitting on the dingy old couch in the office, their laptop warming up their lap. max has his eyes on them from his desk, impatiently twiddling some kind of sharp implement in his hands, and sam has taken a pause from his work to put attention on them. “uh…yeah? why?”
“i was gonna say you look like you’re spacin’ out, but actually, you seem a little lost in thought.”
“a little?” max protests. “there’s smoke comin’ outta their ears again. you’re definitely thinkin’ about something, and you’re thinkin’ about it way too hard.”
geek shakes their head, but it comes with the afterthought that maybe it didn't come off naturally enough. “oh, it’s…nothing. i think i was just spacing out. i’m fine.”
max scoffs. “yeah, right. c’mon, geek, we weren’t your parents for this long for nothing.”
geek fights the urge to swallow. he's not wrong. if anyone would notice something up with them, it would be the (attentive, caring, loving) parents they've had for most of their life.
“i dunno, max. it is getting pretty late.” sam looks over at geek again. “you sure you don’t want to go home ahead of us and get some rest?”
geek feels themself straighten up a bit more in their seat. “you guys don’t need help with anything else tonight?”
“nah, i just got a couple more reports to get through, and you know max isn't leaving without me,” sam answers, gesturing at his partner, now using the tool in his hands to carve something else into the top of his already heavily carved-into desk.
“okay. if you insist.” geek stands from the couch, stretches, and packs up their things before approaching sam and max to give them each a parting hug. “see you guys later, then.”
“don't stay up too late,” max calls out half-jokingly as geek heads for the door.
they can't keep from fondly rolling their eyes a little. as if they're going to heed their own advice at this rate. “sure, max.”
geek closes the office door behind them, the sounds of sam and max’s muffled conversation getting farther away as they make their way out of the building and onto the lamp-lit new york streets. they go back into their own car parked behind the desoto and get ready to head back home.
maybe they’re just overthinking all of this. maybe it’s not as big an issue as they’re making it out to be.
they start the car.
sam and max are fine.
sam’s been getting more forgetful lately. somewhere in a darker corner of geek’s mind, they suspect some developing form of dementia, which is plausible considering his age and how he’s been acting recently; their heart, on the other hand, really hopes it’s nothing more than the occasional lapse of memory common in older folks. they’d like to think they hide their worry well, though—at the very least, their own parents seem to not have suspected much going on with them in terms of something weighing on their mind.
normally, they would say max is handling everything as he usually does, since he’s been pretty on top of continuing to turn sam’s own anxieties into light banter. something about his behavior’s generally been off, though. geek can’t shake the feeling that he knows something they don’t.
weeks turn into months, and their morbid suspicions only grow alongside their worries. those lapses in memory seem to show up more frequently. sam starts getting more easily upset, and frustrated, and confused—and in response, max of all people starts mellowing out and becoming the more responsible of the two. it feels wrong, and yet a logical part of geek carefully and methodically tries to accept it as a new normal at every turn. after all, what’s complaining about it going to accomplish? might as well just get used to it.
(doesn’t really change the fact that it still doesn’t sit right with them despite all attempts to force it to.)
the new developments have been taking quite a toll on max, and it's obvious to geek as soon as they notice little things about him that hint to him being more tired in the last few months. he’s not actively showing it, no, but of course his unfortunately detail-oriented daughter was going to notice sooner or later. they’ve spent too much time around him and sam, besides—it would be weirder for them not to notice at this point.
the next time they visit the office, geek asks max to follow them into their sub-basement of solitude—despite them already having their own official space away from their parents, it continues to stand underneath the office building. even now, well past their childhood, it still feels like a safe, private space for them and them alone. however, in this case, it serves as a private place for them and max, free to talk without sam in the vicinity to overhear. that's the most important part right now, they think.
“so what’d you need me here for?” max asks as soon as the elevator opens up to the sub-basement. “ooh, are we doin’ some testing on a new thingy you’ve made? i love when the electrical currents course through my body and make me feel tingly all over.”
geek smiles and shakes their head. at least he seems as normal as he usually is. “not this time, max. i actually just…wanted to ask you something.”
he hops up onto the tall, metal stool next to geek’s desk. “ya couldn’t have asked up in the office? ya had to rip me away from the guy i've practically been conjoined with all my life?”
“yeah, sorry about that. let’s just say i only wanted to talk to you.” geek stands against the opposite end of the desk, one hand leaning against its top to keep themself upward. “i didn’t think it would be the best idea to let sam in on this conversation, is all.”
“oh. uh…are you okay?” max straightens up in his seat. the sudden shift from being excited to get shocked to being completely fatherly would have been jarring had it not caused such a warm feeling in geek as some kind of pavlovian response. “y’know, i get it if ya don’t wanna tell both of us at once. we can tell sam later if you want.”
“i appreciate that. but, actually…” geek takes a deep breath and tries to ignore their heart hammering in their chest. “is sam okay?”
max’s smile relaxes just a little bit. “i—what’re ya talking about?”
“you’ve noticed, right? we’ve had to remind him about things way more than we used to these last couple months. he’s been getting upset a lot more, and—”
“is he?”
geek raises a brow, but stays focused on the current line of questioning. “you literally told me he broke his banjo since the last time i was here. you were even showing me the broken pieces you hid away while he was out getting the desoto ready this morning. is something going on?”
“geek, he’s fine.” the response comes out a little too quickly and defensively to quell their suspicions. the growing tension in his voice doesn’t help his case, either. “don’t worry about it, okay?”
geek’s brows begin to furrow. the hell he’s fine. “how do i not worry about this? max, i’m not stupid, and i’m not a kid anymore. i—”
“ya don’t think i know that?!” max shoots up onto his feet on the stool, pointed teeth bared in rage, jabbing a finger in their direction. “‘course you’re not stupid, you’re the smartest person i know! you’re the one that always catches onto shit so quickly, so what’s goin’ on with this one?!” he settles back down onto the stool, slowly curling into himself, his breathing still heavy. his voice trembles when geek hears it again. “why do i gotta explain this to you?”
for a moment, geek lets him breathe. there's no doubt in their mind that he's been bottling this up; they don't think he would have exploded at them like this otherwise. their darker thoughts come creeping away from the corners of their mind, crawling into the light and stirring up an unpleasant feeling of anticipation and dread in their chest—but they press further. “please, just tell me what's going on,” they begin again, a gentle sort of desperation in their voice. “if something’s wrong with my dad, max, i want to know. i can handle it.”
max unburies his face from his arms and looks up at geek. there’s a wetness forming in the corners of his eyes, unwilling to spill over. save for a few rare occurrences where he couldn't hold it in, he’s always been kind of like this around geek when it comes to genuine sadness and grief outside of crocodile tears. sam’s usually the only one allowed to see him at total rock bottom, and that’s fine if that’s what max is comfortable with, but it’s not difficult for geek to see how hard it is for him to keep it together right now.
he swipes his arm across his twitching nose and lets out a shaky sigh as a hesitant, tired grin plays against one corner of his mouth. he almost seems bitter. he gestures wearily toward the rolling chair in front of geek’s desk, still in somewhat good condition despite years of use. “ya probably don’t need it, but…maybe you should sit down anyway.”
geek knew from the start that they wanted the sub-basement of solitude to stay as it was even before they planned on moving out. besides being a plan B in the event that their new place explodes or something, or if they just needed to work closer to sam and max for whatever reason, it just didn't feel right to completely abandon it. it’s never felt right being away from sam and max for too long, anyway. it’s probably why they’d decided to stay in new york when they were just applying for college all that time ago. it’s probably also why they still come by to see them a couple times a week, whether it’s to help them on a case or just to check on them and generally be around them.
they’ve been coming by much more often than that lately, though they've been finding themselves at sam and max's house instead of their office. considering the circumstances, geek kind of wishes they weren’t—but on the other hand, they think sam and max both really need their help these days, and they can't think of a reason not to come to their aid.
despite the constant clutter of their safe haven and the peace and quiet the space grants them, the sub-basement is colder and lonelier than normal today.
the wrench in their hand is cool against their skin as they twist a nut into place on their newest project. as soon as they know it’s on tight enough, they let out a big sigh and pick themself up from the floor. they look up at the blueprints on their monitors for the next thing they have to do, but their eyes fix onto the sketch of the final product. it looks like something out of a sci-fi film, or perhaps something from an older prediction of what would exist in the future or technology from some other planet entirely. geek still doesn’t think anyone out of the know would recognize it as a wheelchair at first glance, but given both sam and max’s approval of the design, they wouldn’t dare to change anything at this stage.
it happened when geek was visting them in their office, exactly a week ago now. they remember max being in somewhat of a sour mood that morning; something about sam being stubborn and insisting they go to work despite some minor incidents that had been happening with him all week that caused max to try convincing him to stay home, to no avail. at some point in the afternoon, sam had fallen down the stairs. all geek really remembers about that moment was being on speaker phone with a 911 operator while max panicked next to them, trying to elicit any kind of response out of sam and spurring geek and the poor operator to hurry the hell up. it wasn’t until geek and max were actually sitting in the hospital with sam, trying to pay their full attention to the doctor's final diagnosis, that something clicked in their head.
there isn’t a lot of time left. sam doesn’t have a lot of time left, and who can say how long max has? for all geek knows, those two might even go out around the same time—and then what are they going to do? even as they stand here now, in their childhood safe space, the clock is still ticking. suddenly, they can’t bring themselves to pick up the next tool they need.
they look around. there's not a single corner of the sub-basement that doesn't remind them of something. countless memories resurface of sam and max coming down to bother them, messing with their things, solving both their problems and the city's problems in the unlikeliest of ways, praising them for their repairs on the desoto or for inventions that the two seemed to find useful in ways they themself never intended or for simply being their smart daughter.
sam and max always did that, didn't they? they've always made sure geek knew how much they appreciated not just their hard work, but their presence, too. they've always been so attentive and caring and loving towards them at every turn, without fail.
suddenly, their heart takes over, and their mind finally gives up on suppressing it all. constant flows of logic that had numbed the pain and waves of raw, unbridled emotion come together so intensely into an eruption of grief, like a shaken bottle of soda blowing its cap off.
(their mind lingers on a faded memory, one that takes place in their parents’ office. they see a younger max vigorously shaking a large bottle of coke to spray out the window and soak whatever poor sap happens to be walking by their building, a maniacal yet innocent grin plastered on his face as always. to his right is a younger, more aware sam sitting at his own desk, working contentedly away at his typewriter while his little buddy keeps himself entertained. they thought it would be like that forever. all three of them did.)
a small whimper leaves geek’s lips, and their hands rush to muffle the loud sob that follows. tears stream down their face and their fingers as they sink down into the chair at their desk. it hurts so much, and they can’t figure out why. they knew what was going on from the start, they know complications like this sometimes come with aging, and they know life doesn’t last forever—and yet, none of this feels real.
knowing that sam has no choice but to spend the rest of his life deteriorating while they and max have to watch him die slowly does not feel real.
it takes a while for the tears to stop flowing. it takes even longer for their breathing to even out again—but as soon as geek is ready, they pick themself up again without hesitation and get back to work. it's already been a week, anyway; sam must be getting sick of being in bed all day. if they're going to spend their energy on anything right now, it should be helping to make the next few years easier for him.
there’s nothing else they can do.