Chapter Text
Maxwell was as deep in the closet as was physically possible. Hand over his mouth to stop an unwanted sound from escaping his lips. Legs brought close to his chest, body curled up as he hid behind a gigantic, fur-lined coat so that no one would see him even if they opened the closet's door.
Sitting in that dark closet, air heavy with the smell of mothballs, Maxwell's heart thudded in his chest. He didn't want Hatwell to find him. He didn't want anyone to find him, not when Maxwell knew his eyes had to still be red from crying and his stomach was still hurting.
With Samwell and Blanewell moving out of the house to attend university, the usual balance of power between the Gotch brothers has been disturbed. Hatwell, drunk on the power of being the second oldest of the present brothers started to terrorise the rest of them under the disguise of "toughening his darling little brothers to prepare them for how cruel the world is". Roywell, despite being older than Hatwell, couldn't bother to keep an eye out for their middle brother the way Samwell used to do. New alliances and fractions emerged and all that really meant was that Maxwell - the youngest, the weakest, the pariah amongst his siblings for having dared to be grandfather's favourite - was painfully reminded of his place at the very bottom of the family's food chain.
There were cruel pranks and unkind jests on Maxwell's expanse. Playtime that was just on the wrong side of roughhousing. At least with Samwell around, there used to be rules to make sure everyone was treated fairly. Not anymore, though.
The door to the drawing room swung open and Maxwell jumped in his hiding spot. He didn't dare to breathe as quick footsteps sounded on the polished floor, realising with horror that the clicking of boots was getting close to the closet.
When the closet door opened, Maxwell squeezed his eyes shut. The air moved in front of his face as hangers with winter coats were pushed to one side.
"Maxwell?" it wasn't Hatwell.
Maxwell opened his eyes and saw Wealwell's shocked face.
Wealwell was… Wealwell. He wasn't the second youngest, so they didn't have a bond born out of being the last two to come into this world. He didn't share Maxwell's love for grandfather's stories and (unlike some of the other brothers) didn't bother to look at Maxwell with jealousy whenever Maxwell came back from an outing with grandfather, a new skyship toy model in hand. But he also didn't seem to be much like Maxwell in terms of character.
The only things Maxwell and Wealwell had in common was a name and a half that they shared and the fact that they lived in the same house. And, more importantly right now, that they were hiding from one of their brothers.
Wealwell's head turned to look towards the corridor, face paling as if he had just heard something out there. "Move!" Wealwell whisper-shouted before shutting the closet door and cramming himself next to Maxwell - two young boys sitting in the darkness of the closet, pressed side by side, the coats hanging in front of their faces feeling like monsters in the night.
The door to the drawing room opened and they heard two sets of boots, quickly followed by Hatwell's voice and Roywell's bored responses.
Hearing them, Maxwell instinctively tried to make himself even smaller, as if it was possible to merge with the wooden panel behind him. But before he could move too much and cause some noise, Wealwell's hand was grabbing his, holding it tight.
Maxwell breathed and waited, squeezing Wealwell's hand like a lifeline.
A minute passed and it seemed like Hatwell went to look for them somewhere else. And then another long moment before Wealwell let go of Maxwell's hand and moved to his knees to crawl to the closet's keyhole. Maxwell reached out for him, in an act of childish fear, not wanting to let go of the one comforting thing in this situation, but Wealwell just said, "It's okay, I just want to check if we can get out of here."
"I think he's gone. Come on, let's find somewhere safe," Wealwell whispered after a moment and took Maxwell's hand again, pulling Maxwell to follow. He stopped at every door, leaning out to check if the coast was clear before tugging Maxwell after himself. It felt very deliberate that Wealwell was always at the front, letting Maxwell hide behind him.
The words were right there, heavy on the back of Maxwell's tongue. But they had to be quiet so that Hatwell wouldn't hear them. So Maxwell swallowed them back and simply held tighter to Wealwell's hand, letting his brother lead him.
At seventeen, Maxwell already grew to be the second tallest Gotch brother. In the next few years he'll grow even more, his muscles will catch up to the rest of his body, resulting in an intimidating figure, someone able to render a man unconsious with a single punch.
Right now, though, Maxwell was seventeen. His shoulders hunched. His eyes filled with tears. His heart aching with each laboured, wheezing breath.
His granfather's hand felt so frail in between Maxwell's hands.
It was hard to look at him like that. To see this waxen face, cheeks sunken, eyes fluttering open and closed in a state of semi-consciousness. To see the figure disappearing between white, fluffy pillows and remind himself that this was Maxwell's grandfather, the same man who used to swoop him up in his arms as a greeting and provided a source of strength and comfort for Maxwell since he was a little boy. It was hard to see him like that, when Maxwell had always seen his grandfather as a statue of a man, someone who looked up at the sky with a glimmer in his eyes, corners of his lips upturned in a permanent half-smile, as if everything was always going exactly as Cadswitch had hoped it would.
But it was even harder to look away from him, because that meant Maxwell had to look at all of the memorabilia cluttering his grandfather's room. Countless frames holding pictures of Cadswitch shaking hands with investors or adventurers or of Cadswitch looking proud as he stood behind a much younger Maxwell, their clothes and postures almost identical. Shelves filled many trinkets brought from far away places, every one coming with a letter and a story that Cadswitch had dutifully read to young Maxwell as the boy sat on the carpet in front of the fireplace, listening with a ravenous hunger to his grandfather's words. Wooden models of skyships and submarines Cadswitch and Maxwell had built together.
It was too much. It was all too much.
"Son," Longspot's hand rested on Maxwell's shoulder. "I think it's best you go. Your grandfather needs rest."
In the future, there will be a part of Maxwell that will forever regret leaving that day. A part of him that will despise himself for taking his father's excuses in the following days and weeks, silently nodding to the explanations of why it's not the best idea for Maxwell to sit by Cadswitch. A lion share of him that will regret not pushing himself to say to his grandfather that he loved him (even though they weren't alone in the room; even though Maxwell's throat was closed so tightly with emotions that he couldn't say a word to anyone that day; even though he had told Cadswitch before).
(Did he say it? The exact words? Or was it always something one step to the left? Was it "I love you", or "I love it!" or "It's lovely" or "we all love grandfather" said to the gathering or "Love, Maxwell" written at the bottom of a page? Have he ever say it out loud to his grandfather's face? Maxwell couldn't remember.)
There will be many regrets. But right now, Maxwell was seventeen. So he just nodded at his father's words, taking refuge in having an adult tell him what to do, and pressed a feather-light kiss to the back of his grandfather's hand and he left.
"Do you have to go already?"
"We won't have access to the gym over the holiday break so there's extra practice at six. They've put the memo on the bulletin," Maxwell said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his clothes back on.
An unsatisfied hum sounded behind Maxwell. "Yeah, but it's your last year. Nobody would hold it against you if you cut yourself some slack."
Maxwell stopped buttoning his shirt and turned to look at the man still in the bed. He was two years Maxwell's junior, gray eyes, brown hair and neatly trimmed beard. He didn't look happy to see Maxwell go.
"I would," Maxwell simply said. "Hołd it against myself."
The other man rolled his eyes. "Maxwell Gotch, always so reliable," he said, then moved closer to Maxwell, letting the blanket slide down, revealing the naked body underneath. He wrapped one arm around Maxwell's torso, pressed his face into Maxwell's shoulder. "Stay with me. I'll make sure it's worth your time."
Maxwell watched the man's hand snake under the open upper part of his shirt to caress Maxwell's chest. He knew there were marks on his body that matched these hands, these fingers - bruises and scratches on Maxwell's back and legs. He knew, could have seen with his own eyes if he just turned around, that there were marks on the other man's body matching Maxwell's mouth and fingers.
Maxwell sighed.
At twenty-four, Maxwell knew what he liked. He knew he liked boxing and stories of aeronautical adventures. He didn't like most of his brothers. He liked Revington. He disliked sandwiches that had tomatoes and eggs together, although when apart both were enjoyable. He knew he liked the feeling of another man in his arms. He liked sex. He liked being challenged. He liked just a touch of roughness mixed in with respect for eachother.
He didn't like romance. He didn't do romance, the words describing the butterflies in the stomach or similar silliness never resonated with Maxwell. For a long time, Maxwell has been almost convinced that all those love stories must be fake, that it's only a world-wide delusion, a lie made up by people who wanted to believe there was something more. That nobody feels it but people are too embarrassed to admit it.
He never got it. He tried, but it never clicked the way other people described it. And it felt ungentlemanly to act like he experienced certain feelings just for the sake of fitting in.
So Maxwell took great care to be very clear about what he wanted from such arrangements. And whenever the other person started to cross the line, Maxwell spent hours double checking in his memory if he had done something that could have given them the wrong impression.
Maxwell grabbed the man by the wrist and stopped the hand that started to travel down to his navel. He knew what he would find in the other man's eyes when he turned and he wasn't looking forward to it.
It still broke his heart when he saw the man's expression fall.
(Back when he had tried to have an arrangement like this for the first time and it came to the point when more was wanted from Maxwell than he could give, Maxwell wanted so say it. To tell the man "I love you", even if coming from Maxwell in that context, they would be empty words. He wanted to do it to ease the man's pain. To erase that miserable expression from his face. But lying would be ungentlemanly, and so Maxwell couldn't bring himself to do it.)
Maxwell guided the man's hand down to the bed and gave it a single pat. "I truly wish you the best," Maxwell said, truthfully. "That's why I think I should go."
"…yeah. You should."
When doors closed behind Maxwell, he heard a loud thud of something being thrown at the wall. A boot? No. It was heavier. The hit followed by clinking noises of something scattering over the floor. An alarm clock, perhaps.
But Maxwell didn't come back to see if the man was alright. He clearly wasn't and seeing Maxwell wouldn't help him at all. So Maxwell took a breath. Put on his jacket. And walked away.