Work Text:
Daniel always hears Max before he sees him. His bottomless backpack is a rattling, noisy siren of his arrival, overstuffed with cookies and ramen cups and textbooks, just like that chick in that anime that goes back into the past to fight demons with her boyfriend. He feels Max’s presence meander its way through the worktables in the third-year workspace, like a swan swanning through a pond of verifiable muck, before he stops right by Daniel’s table, second from the windows.
“Rough night?” Daniel asks distractedly, smearing a blob of electric green drywall paste onto his harvested plywood. He’d liberated it from the lumber place, and while it was kind of warped, it suits his purposes. He flicks his eyes up, taking in the sight of Max in his wrinkled button-down.
Max glances around at the veritable explosion around Daniel's work station before plopping down tiredly into the rescued wing back chair. He looks like he's a wretched prince sitting on a stained throne amidst the cacophony of paper scraps and crusted paintbrushes that Daniel's forgotten to soak. He digs into his backpack, unearthing his laptop to place it precariously on his knees.
“The TA for my lab is actually useless,” he grumbles. The complaint department is opening his doors early. “I don't think I'm going to pass this class if her idea of help is just peer collaboration.” He pitches his voice higher, fluttering his eyelashes in a facsimile of a vapid woman who slept her way into a teaching assistant position. “The best help you can get is from your fellow students. Toodle-loo.” He slumps further into the chair, rubbing at his face before he turns on his computer. “I'm going to fail this semester.”
Daniel shrugs, raising his hand to rake through his hair before he stops himself from coating his hair in liberal Joker green. “Then swap blocks.”
‘I can't.” Max chews on the inside of his cheek, already zoning out to his laptop screen. “This time slot is the only one that works for my schedule.” He scrabbles for a pencil and a loose napkin off of Daniel’s table. “I won't get any free time otherwise.”
“What, so you don’t just spend all of your time with me?” Daniel grins, cheeky.
“Unfortunately this is the only place not drenched in pre-midterm anxiety because you don’t even know what a midterm is,” Max says baldly, curling his fingers around his ear like he has long luscious hair before his blue eyes glaze over in a haze of whatever the fuck he’s studying. “So here I suffer.”
Daniel’s not sure if it’s a joke, but he’ll take it. He turns back to concentrate on his own work, molding the partially-dried blob of drywall paste into some swirl that hopefully resembles frosting leaves. Maybe if he layers enough crap on the plywood, he can hide the warping and it’ll look like a fucking cake on the wall when he puts it up. Maybe if he remembers before nightfall, he’ll go to the grocery store and buy piping bags with the fancy tips for the border.
They work together in an endless type of flow state, a lazy spiral of padded paint application and faint keytapping, that Daniel nearly forgets that Max is there. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. So when he resurfaces, may many hours later, Max is still there in the chair, his hand propping up his drooping head by the chin is a touch startling. His careful coif is no longer perfect, completely rumpled with a consistent rake of frustration. It's kind of adorable if there weren't Alicia's violently purple shrine of Kanye West framing Max's visage. Daniel can only summon a sub-intelligent "whatcha doing?” over the fog of his spaghettified brain.
“Math 100 assignment,” Max says absently. His eyes are slowly refocusing back into the land of the living, the glow of his laptop screen highlighting the tell-tale pattern of insomnia. His brain is clearly also canned Boyardee mush. “I am starting to think this class is actually designed to steal money from poor university students.”
“Sounds terrible. But you’re a trust fund baby.” Daniel scratches at a smear of pyrolle orange on his wrist, and it flakes. He wiggles his crusted fingers, watching as the nonsensical drywall paste turns into chunks of dust. He’s kind of lost the feeling in them, but it’ll come back.
“Too many numbers. It would be hard for you to understand.” Max's sentence structure is in the cursive form of a tease, but the tone is flatter than Daniel's abs on a good day. “And I’m not a trust fund baby. Dad just thinks that if I get a job, it’ll waste valuable study time.”
“Ergo, time is money.” The last part ends in a croak, like he’s thirteen again, and Daniel looks around for something he can drink that isn’t mixed with paint or so aged beyond belief that even the flies ignore it.
Max stands up, wobbling with the blood loss of staying in one position for hours. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all, and he pulls out a can from nowhere. “I meant to give it to you when you were huffing and puffing an hour ago, but you looked like you would have splatted your artwork if I surprised you.”
“You are a fuckin’ godsend, Maxy,” Daniel rasps, and he pops the tab, filling their corner with the acrid scent of lukewarm RedBull. It’s exactly what he needs. It’s bubbly and it coats his tongue in a sugary film, Daniel drinks greedily until he remembers that Max is here. He manages to stop at half, and offers it back to him.
Max shakes his head quickly, and to Daniel’s delighted amusement, he digs out an honest-to-God juice box and stabs the straw in it. He chugs it, his throat working and working until the juice box folds in on itself. He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand, and tosses it aside to join the ever-growing pile of actual trash that Daniel swears every day that he’ll clean up. “Let’s go get something to eat before my stomach dissolves itself.” He stretches out a hand and Daniel grasps it, pulling himself up. Max’s hand is hot, like he kept his palm on the fan of his laptop the entire time.
Daniel’s out and about for once, far away from his hellhole he calls a studio. The sun is shining down, his critique went well, and nobody cried this time. It could have been a near-thing, with that classmate who couldn’t come up with a worthy excuse as to why he’s pretending he’s not flubbing out a poor imitation of Matisse’s Dance, but Daniel held his tongue between his teeth and managed to hold his guffaws in until Scotty whispered to him afterwards, “Dude should keep his dayjob. Is that what it means to be an artist?” It was mean, but it was the truth. It wasn’t even a good emulation, nor was it even remotely respectful to the original work.
But that was all behind him now, his own work waiting to be graded, and he’s allowing himself the luxury of feeling UV rays fry his skin for the rest of the day before he heads to the library to check out the sole copy of Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology for his next project. The green in front of the science wing is calling his name, and he fully intends to answer the siren call.
He flops down on the cropped grass and wiggles around until the sun is beaming into the backs of his eyelids. He can already feel his skin sucking up every last bit of delicious radiation to turn him Riace bronze, and he relishes it like he’s a slug drenched in rain. Daniel’s glad he didn’t forget his extra slutty gym gear for his sesh today, so his slashed t-shirt exposes his ribs and his armpits for their turn to be baked. He doesn’t even remember the last time he experienced the sun in her full concentration, so he’s going to worship every single minute he can get.
Which, unfortunately, is barely half an hour before someone blocks his sweet, sweet sunshine. A lame chill crawls up his body at the loss. There’s no one more uncharitable than Max, so Daniel doesn’t bother opening his eyes, mentally preparing for the lecture he’s already anticipating. “Get out of my sunbeam.”
“You’re going to get skin cancer.”
Daniel can practically hear Max bristling, and he cracks a grin. “Write me a ticket, sun police.”
Max kicks at Daniel’s ankle. “I will just stand here in its way until it goes down.” It’s vaguely threatening enough to make Daniel groan and open his eyes, stretching out long and wide before he sits up, cross legged.
“Fine, you win,” Daniel grumbles. “To what I owe the pleasure of your presence to? I thought you still had a class until eight o’clock.”
Max plops down beside him, his hand shielding his face. “Someone started projectile-vomiting for some reason, so it got cut short and now I have an hour break before the next one. How did yours go?”
“All the girls oohed and ahhed over my piped roses, and the prof was actually impressed that it smelled like chocolate. Thanks for the idea, by the way. I think the cocoa powder helped with the structural integrity of the drywall paste, too.”
“Told you it’d be fun to play with the senses.” Max grins back at him with his adorably squared off teeth. “Your practice runs looked good enough to eat. Do you have a picture?”
Daniel tosses his phone at him, and Max squints, admiring the screen. “Very nice, very nice. I’m surprised that you managed to get it on the wall.”
“Scotty and Alicia, the shrine girl, helped.” Daniel lays out flat again. “We made it work.”
“God, every time I come and visit there’s a new offering in there. How are candles even allowed?”
“Honestly, I have no idea.” A comfortable silence falls between them, and Daniel’s able to fall into a drowsy sort of state before Max shifts beside him. Daniel can feel the sudden wave of agitation rolling off of him in a wave, punctuated by a sharp noise of annoyance.
“What’s up?” he says, sitting up gingerly, wincing a little at the rush of blood flowing back into his limbs.
“Can I crash at your place tonight?” Max asks, stilted with an absolutely-not cute furrow in his brows. “My roommate has decided that it was okay to kick me out because he has a girl over.”
He wrinkles his even-cuter nose. Wait, cute? Daniel shakes his head to clear it. “Sure, Maxy,” he says easily. “I only have the one bed though, so it’s going to be cramped.” He’s got a tiny basement suite the size of a shoebox, but he can’t complain since it’s actually illegal and the rent is cheap. It’ll be an even tighter fit with Max in it, but Daniel knows how much of a dick George is.
Max turns pink. “I-I can just take the sofa. Or the floor.”
It’s Daniel’s turn to make a face. “I don’t have room for a couch, And there’s, like, silverfish, and they’re gross.”
Max shivers. “That is disgusting.”
“You can put up with me for a night,” Daniel coaxes. “I’ll even pay for dinner for once.” Maybe he could convince Max to get Thai instead of their usual pizza. He’s been feeling kinda greasy from all of the junk he’s been eating; some greenery would do them both some good.
“Sure you will,” Max snorts, but he looks relieved. He glances down at his watch. “I gotta get to class soon.”
“Sounds good. I can walk you.”
“Before I forget.” Max fishes out a four hundred and seventy three millimetre can of Red Bull in zero sugar. He holds it out to Daniel like an offering. “For you.”
Daniel salivates instantly like he's Pavlov's dog. “You didn't have to,” Daniel says automatically, but he takes it all the same. It's room temp, but that’s not a problem. He pops the tab, and chugs the whole thing in one go.
Max shrugs. “I'm thoughtful like that.” Daniel thinks his voice comes out cockier than he wants to sound, judging by the way Max bites down on the tulip of his bottom lip, trying not to smile. “Let’s go.”
Daniel groans, rolling onto his stomach before pushing himself up. They meander slowly towards the engineering building, when Max spots something that stops him in his tracks. “People are so immature.”
“Wha… oh.” Daniel looks around at the trees and stuff before his gaze lands on Max huffs at; a crudely spray-painted penis on the sidewalk, complete with veins and a slit and obscenely hairy balls. “Well, that’s art for ya.” He’s about to keep going, his stomach growling for a lonely salad bowl for dinner, but Max holds him back.
“The fuck?” Max jabs a scandalized finger at the drawing. “That’s vandalism, not art.”
Daniel rolls his eyes. “First of all, graffiti is still art.”
“It’s still just a fucking dick on the sidewalk, Daniel.”
“Hey!” Daniel exclaims. “It’s not just a dick on the sidewalk, okay? It’s an expression of the human psyche, of human nature. Phalluses are neat.”
“Are you serious?” Max says in disbelief. “It’s something that someone thought it would be funny to do.”
Daniel takes a deep breath. Max isn’t getting it. “Sure, it’s that, but it’s so much more, Max. Just think about dicks, just for a second.” He ignores the strangled sound that Max makes beside him. “Like, we, as humans, are obsessed with penises, but we don’t really try to render them properly. It’s a dickshaming that we can’t be like, cool about it. We use other objects to symbolize them, like obelisks or like, spears. I don’t know. The only time we make them good is when we create dildos for pleasure, but that’s for the pleasure and lust, not for the brain.”
“Daniel.” Max tugs on his sleeve, his eyes the size of saucers. “Um, I don’t need to know–”
Daniel cuts him off. “This is important, Maxy. Like, take Michaelangelo's David, for instance. It's a tiny ass dick. Micropenis level, if you shrinky-dinked him down to the average human size. Why is it so disproportionate to his male model body? And it's like, shapeless. The foreskin is all-compassing. It's like the end of a balloon animal. Like sure, he's got sculptured veins on his hands and they're mighty fine, but the penis is neglected. Hoodie-ed up in flawless foreskin. It looks like he's wearing a Spanx sock to smooth out the wrinkles of his cock.” Daniel coughs. Max is looking at him like he grew three heads. “Like, it could use some of that sweet, sweet, arterial definition. Get that blood pumping. Whereas this—” he waves at the crudely sprayed penis on the sidewalk, “—is like those weirdos that thought drawing like kindergarteners deserve to be considered as art. It's basic in the lowest form. Primal, even. Like those cave paintings in France. And it works, y'know? It's not pretending to be highbrow shit. It just… exists. Y'know?”
“I think it's just Everclear-fueled graffiti, Daniel,” Max says faintly, paler than milk. “It's not deep. Please stop talking about dicks.”
Daniel steamrollers on. “But both ends of the spectrum don’t dedicate enough energy and care into the penis. It’s seriously not fair, okay? Like with all of these dick euphemisms and shit, but no one spared a moment for the frenulum, or how the wrinkles sit at the juncture of the cock and balls. Why is there so much shame in trying to make a penis more realistic? Or more prominent? Why are we trying to hide the penis, like it’s gay to render a dick the way it should look like? Or even like, more fantastical? Like, take Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party. They're all plates in the shape of vaginas, but they’re vaginas and proud of it. Some are really obvious, like the Emily Dickinson one with all the frills, like there's multiple vulvian lips. And then some are just the idea of one, the ones that just look like irises on a plate. But no one is writing epithets about schlongs. Where are the love letters to the penis? Where are the phallic-shaped series of, I dunno, vases? Why do vaginas get all the attention?”
Max cringes.
Daniel snorts. “Don’t cringe when I say vagina, Max. They’re a natural part of a woman. You came out of one.”
“I got delivered by a flying stork. You cannot convince me otherwise.”
“The bodies of men could really be more beautiful,” Daniel muses out loud, “if the old dudes could be more gay about it. They do women so well, and women do women well because they aren't repressed. Thank God we're in the twenty-first century, Max. We have the freedom to stare at the phalluses of men up close and recreate them the way they should be shown. But we don’t.”
“What.”
“Yeah. You ever seen that painting of Murat dying in his bath? Man, that shit is awkward. If Jacques-Louis was gay, which he wasn't, Murat could have been, I don't know… more gracefully depicted. It's not even a death pose! It's like he was photographed mid slump to his death and Jacques decided that was the best angle he could get while he did straight missionary stuff with his wife. He's never fucked a guy. I can tell.” Daniel taps his head. “The gaydar is never wrong.”
Max chokes. “You’re gay?” he sputters out, like a car on its last legs.
Daniel snaps out of his trance, defensive. “Yeah, and?” It comes out accusatory and brittle. He doesn’t do well with surprise assholes, and he really hopes that Max isn’t one, because he’s adorkable and the sole reason Daniel decided to fling himself in the seat beside Max in the library coffeeshop all those months ago in the world’s most awkward meet-cute.
Max sinks down into a crouch, his head buried in his hands. His voice is muffled. “Daniel, I thought you were straight.” He takes in a great heaving breath, shaking. “I have had the biggest crush on you since the salad argument. No one should put that much mustard on a salad.”
“Oh. Well, like I said, mustard’s an ingredient in dressing, so it just makes sense.” Daniel’s world spins rapidly on its axis before righting itself. “So all those Red Bulls were a courting ritual?”
“Well, I thought we would only be friends, so I thought I could just be the best possible friend that you could ever have and be satisfied that way. Yes, I plyed you with Red Bulls so you would have a reason to hang out with me. I can’t believe that I listened to your entire rant about dicks thinking it was going nowhere and then you just drop this bomb on me.”
“Right, um.” Daniel crouches down as well, reaching out to pat the small of Max’s back with a wavering hand. “Well, Maxy, can’t say I haven’t thought about your dick in detail as well. You’re always wearing these tight joggers, man, and it’s kind of like catnip to me.”
“I can’t believe we are having this conversation.” Max peeks through his fingers, his blue eyes shining with something that looks dangerously like he’s been struck. “I still have to get to class. How am I supposed to get through my insane peer-review lab when you haven’t told me that you like me too?”
Daniel pulls them both up to standing position, and gently ushers Max the extra twenty steps to his building. “I like you too, Maxy, so we can talk about it after.” He grins giddily like an idiot who’s stolen the sun. Max mirrors him. “I’ll circle back around at eight. Don’t think about dicks too much.”