Chapter Text
Sam’s first memory is of crawling about the kitchen floor under his mother’s feet until she picks him up with a put-upon sigh and a kiss to the head.
His second is his auntie holding him in her arms, pinning bows in his fur with a conniving grin as their mother laughs heartily and takes photos.
His third, and the one that truly started his ‘life’ he thinks, is meeting Max.
Now, over the years, they’ve given various lies over how they met, some a tad more truthful than others. They’ve ranged from childhood friends to meeting in in college, to a very grandiose tale told to their daughter of being star-crossed lovers having met in space, something that always made Sam blush and fluster, and made Geek make faces at their ooey-gooeyness.
But they’ve never told the entire truth to anyone.
It was the second week of summer, when Sam usually visited his Granny Ruth. This year he was going to go to first grade, an exciting but nerve-wracking venture. He was their only-at the time-grandchild and very favored as it was. He was promised sausage balls this year, and he had been dreaming about them and wondered if he’d be made to assist in cooking again. Not that he complained too much, but cooking was a tad boring at times for an energetic not-yet-six-year-old.
He headed to the screen door as he left his scooter at the garage, having rode it down here with the weather being fair. It wasn’t the first or last time he’d be left to his own devices at times.
He opened the screen door, quickly knocking. “Granny! Granny, it’s meeee!” he squealed, hanging onto the doorknob and kicking his feet lightly. He recalls wearing an orange and white shirt with blue shorts, but there wasn’t much beyond that.
He remembers the door opening, and his grandmother shushing him quietly, a paw on his head as she led him in. “Quiet down, Sammy. We have a guest. He’s not doing too well...”
At this time, his grandfather had already passed, but he recalled that, for a time, he’d had to be quiet when his grandfather was sick in the bed. Since he had been so small, he was usually tucked in beside him, and until his passing, that was how Sam had spent most of his visits, playing a card game with him and playing with toys quietly by himself.
So, he was rather confused when his granny said they had a guest. Who could visit? His granny didn’t have anyone who would come by that he knew of.
He didn’t have time to ask, because she led him into her kitchen, where a small rabbit sat at the table, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the table with bright, unfocused golden eyes.
Granny Ruth bade him to sit in a chair near the boy who looked a little bit younger than him, and he did so, stealing glances at him as his granny gave the bunny a glass of milk and a bowl of soup, gently rubbing his back.
He didn’t move. He just sat there, staring.
Sam grew up to learn how to be particularly verbose, but as a child, he could hardly hope to be so. Instead, he twisted around in his chair, watching his granny dart around the kitchen. “Who’s he?” he whispered loudly, pointing at the very still boy. “An’ why’s he here?”
“Don’t go pointin’, Samuel, it’s rude,” she admonished, and he whined, his tail dipping down as he pouted. She nudged him back into his seat, and he perked up as she slid a plate in front of him with tiny meatballs. “...this is Maxwell. He’s...going to stay with me for a while, until some adults figure some things out. Please play nicely with him, dear heart.”
Sam didn’t understand it all, but he agreed. It was always fun to have a friend to play with!
‘Maxwell’ didn’t even make a motion that showed he heard them speaking. Instead, he leaned forward, picking up a spoon as if he was afraid it’d be snatched from him, and started to slowly sip at his soup.
Granny Ruth hovered for a bit, and then she went to wash dishes, leaving Sam to pop another meatball in his mouth, chewing slowly as he shuffled his chair closer. He held out his hand, grinning. “I-I’m Samuel! Um. Or Sammy, or Sam! It’s nice ta meet ya!”
The bunny’s eyes moved then, the golden flecks darting to the side to stare at his hand. Carefully, as if afraid Sam might bite him, he lifted his own hand, loosely gripping Sam’s paw. He didn’t say much of anything, but Sam found that he liked holding the other boy’s paw, so he shifted his hold, lacing their fingers together.
Maxwell stared down at where they were holding hands for the longest time, enough that the soup had gone cold, and the milk had gone warm, and Sam had finished his own food.
At some point, Sam knows they make it to the fluffy couch in his grandmother’s home, and Maxwell had hunkered down in his blanket, making a cocoon of it as Sam turned on Pokemon for them both to watch. He didn’t ask any questions, he just pointed out various Pokemon he liked more than the rest, and info dumped on the other boy as if his life depended on it.
Their hands never separated, and to this day, Sam could tell you the creases and scars that remained on Max’s paw from even then, how Max himself ran colder than Sam and how nice it felt to be some kind of anchor for him.
He spends the day with him, laughing at bad puns on the TV, setting up toys to create elaborate plans, and then even taking a nap with the other boy when the heat of the day crests and they’ve run out of things to do together.
Their hands never let go of one another, and Sam thought about how one day, when they were grown up like Granny Ruth, they can live in a treehouse together and eat nothing but sweets and drink grape soda for eternity.
He whispers all these little dreams to Max where they share a sleeping bag in front of a muted television that night, and for the first time that day, a smile flickers across Max’s face.
Sam and Max have always fit together, paw in paw, and Max said that in that moment, even if he didn’t really know what love was, he’s pretty sure he felt it for Sam that day.
Sam’s pretty sure he felt the same way, if you asked him.