Chapter Text
Gwen was at the tiny kitchen table, eating breakfast in her pyjamas and hopefully checking her email for responses to her ‘roommate needed’ ad. She and Cait had only been a month and a half into their lease when Cait got the news about her dad being sick and had to move home. The apartment was way too nice for Gwen to willingly give up, but also way too nice for her to afford on her own for very long. No answers yet, but she would keep her fingers crossed.
She was just finishing her corn flakes when there was a small, hesitant knock on the front door. Wondering who could be at her door at nine in the morning on a Wednesday, she padded quietly into the entryway and yawned as she undid the chain lock.
The door swung open, and she found herself looking down, into the bright blue-green eyes of a tired eleven-year-old.
There was a long pause, and then she asked, “Max? What the fuck are you doing here?”
He was staring up at her, shifting nervously from one foot to the other in the outdoor hall, looking vulnerable and frightened in a way that she hadn’t seen on him since he’d pounded on her cabin door over a year ago, shouting that David was unconscious.
“This– this was a stupid idea,” he said immediately, trying to replace the anxiety with his usual crankiness as he turned back away from the door. Despite the morning chill, he was dressed only in his usual hoodie and jeans, a ragged blue backpack hanging from his shoulders.
“Max, wait,” Gwen said quickly, realizing something was very wrong. “Come back, come inside. It’s okay.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, still clearly nervous, and she stepped back to make room for him to come through. After a moment he turned back and slipped past her, letting the bag slide from his shoulders. He clutched it in front of him as she shut the door and, on instinct, locked it again.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I–” He stopped, looked down, coughed. Hugged his bag more tightly. “I ran away.” Another long pause, and she was on the verge of asking a question – which of the hundred on her mind, she didn’t know – when he continued. “I… I remembered you mentioning to David in August that you were moving when you got back. You told him the neighbourhood and the name of the building, so I tracked you down based on that. Your name’s on the mailbox downstairs. I… didn’t know where else to go.”
Gwen ran a hand down her face. She could ask why he’d run, but she had a feeling he didn’t want to say, and she also had a feeling she already knew. She could also ask why he didn’t know where else to go, but when she thought about it, that was clear too: he’d be too quickly found if he went to a friend’s house. So what came out of her mouth was: “You don’t even live in the city, do you? How’d you get here?”
“I’m not from far,” Max answered, looking at the ground. “I took the bus. A… bunch of busses. And then I walked. It took pretty much all night to find you.”
She could feel the anxiety rising in her stomach, but she couldn’t submit to it yet. She had to deal with the basics first. “You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m not hurt,” he answered, shaking his head. He still wasn’t meeting her eye. “I’m starving though.”
“Okay. Okay. C’mere, the kitchen’s this way. I don’t have tons, but you can… help yourself, I guess. Fuck. Okay. You like your eggs scrambled, right?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, following her around the corner into her miniscule kitchen. It struck her that he hadn’t sworn even once yet, and that was maybe the strangest thing about this encounter so far.
“There’s bread in the basket over there, and butter in the fridge, if you want to make toast,” she said, pointing at the counter to her right as she dug in a cupboard for a frying pan.
She wracked her brains while she cooked his eggs. The handbook at the camp had some basic guidelines about what to do if a kid confided in the counselors about abuse, but it was just the legal stuff. What they were obligated to do. And right now, she wasn’t his counselor, so she didn’t know if even that still applied in the same way. She poured a glass of orange juice and chugged it, trying to stay calm.
Max was halfway done his toast when she dumped the eggs onto his plate. “Ketchup?” she asked.
“Nah,” he answered. Then, slowly, “You got hot sauce, though?”
“Think so.” She turned and rummaged through the condiments in her fridge, then found what she was looking for. “Here.” She sat down across from him at the little table as he shook the sauce liberally over his meal. “I guess you’re not gonna tell me what happened, huh?”
He didn’t look up, didn’t even acknowledge what she’d said. Shovelling the eggs into his mouth, it was like he hadn’t even heard her. She watched him for a moment, took in the bags under his eyes, the heavy set of his eyebrows – the way his hand shook slightly if he slowed down. The way he still clutched the backpack in his lap like he was ready to turn tail any second.
“Okay,” Gwen said. “You don’t have to. I’ve… wondered before.” She bit her lip hard, trying not to let him see how much she was freaking out. He’d come to her for security, so the last thing he needed was one of her panic attacks. “I’m… I’m gonna call David. Is that okay with you?”
He shrugged. “I guess,” he said slowly. “Can I have some of that juice?”
“Yeah.” She poured him a glass and then picked up her phone. She rarely ever phoned David when he was home, because the long-distance fees were brutal, but this was important.
He answered quickly. “Gwen? Is something wrong?”
“How did you know?” she asked.
“You never call me,” he answered. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t panic,” she told him, even though she knew her own voice was shaking a bit. She turned so Max couldn’t see her face. “I’m just, uh… Max is here. Like, in my apartment.”
“What?” He sounded alarmed, which she supposed was reasonable.
“He… he ran away, and he tracked me down based on some stuff he heard me tell you in the summer.” She cupped her hand around the receiver. “You know how we always wondered… I mean… he won’t tell me what happened, but it’s clear…”
“It’s gonna be okay,” David told her immediately. “Have you contacted the police?”
Apparently Max could hear the conversation, because he jumped up instantly, eyes wide. “Don’t!” he exclaimed. “I don’t want them to take me back!”
David cursed softly on the other side. “Okay. It’s fine. Don’t call them yet. We can deal with this,” he said.
“I won’t,” Gwen said, giving Max a meaningful look. He seemed to believe her, and sat back down slowly. She took the phone out of the kitchen, crossing her small living room to sit on the couch. “David, I have no idea what to do here,” she said quietly. “I’m trying to keep it together for Max, but I’m kind of freaking out.”
On the other end, she could hear David rummaging around. She pictured him digging through a closet in his apartment, which she’d never seen. “Listen,” he told her. “Last I checked, the busses from here to NYC leave a couple times a day. If you let me go now, I can probably get to you before midnight.”
“What?” she asked, taken aback. “Really?”
“I’m coming to help you,” he said reassuringly. “This is going to be fine. Do you have food? And what does he have with him? He might need clothes or toiletries. He’s not hurt, is he?”
“No, he says he’s fine,” she answered. “I don’t know what he has but I’ll check.”
“I know you’re strapped for money, so I can pay you for everything if need be,” David said. “I’ve got some cash put away. Listen, I’ve got to make some arrangements, but I’ll text you when I’m on my way, okay?”
“O-okay,” she answered, taking a deep breath and then letting it out slowly. “Okay. Thanks, David. You – you have my new address?”
“I sent you that housewarming card, remember?” he said, his voice warm.
“Right. So… I’ll see you tonight?”
“I promise,” he assured her.
“Okay.”
North of the border, David had already hauled his suitcase out of the closet and opened his laptop to pull up the bus schedules. If he got himself together fast enough, there was a bus he could take in two hours. The trip down was twelve, and then it would just be a cab ride to Gwen’s apartment building. He’d have to take an emergency leave from work, but that would be fine. The manager was a family friend. And he’d call his mother quickly, just so she knew.
Years of camping made him an efficient packer. Everything important to his life fit in a large suitcase and a sturdy backpack. Clothes, toiletries, electronics, both passports. A sandwich for the bus ride. He told his mother to take anything perishable out of his kitchen, because it might as well get eaten. And then he wrote a quick email to his superintendent, locked his apartment, and set off for the bus station.
As promised, he’d be at Gwen’s by midnight.
“Okay. David’s on his way to the bus station. Supposing there’s no trouble at the border, he should be here by late tonight,” Gwen said, looking at the text on her phone. Just knowing he was on his way calmed her down a fraction. She didn’t want to deal with this alone; she wasn’t that good at important decisions.
“Wait,” Max said, perched on the far end of her couch, still curled around his backpack like it was the only thing keeping him safe. “It’s like ten-thirty in the morning. And the border? Where’s he even coming from?”
She glanced up in surprise. “Canada,” she told him.
“David’s Canadian?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “That explains… a lot.”
“He’s a dual citizen, technically,” she explained. “But most of the year he lives in Ontario near his mom. Not too far from the border. Still a long bus ride, though.”
“Huh.” Max shrugged and looked down.
Gwen watched him for a moment. Then she asked, “What do you have in the backpack, Max?”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because it’d be good to know what you brought with you before I go buy you stuff,” she said drily, raising her eyebrows.
“Oh.” He looked down at the bag, then unzipped it slowly. Gwen watched, from the distance he’d set, as he shuffled through its contents, very clearly crammed in in a hurry. “Uh… a couple shirts, some underwear, a pair of jeans, a handful of socks,” he listed as he looked. “Got my iPod and my DS and their chargers… um… I have my wallet, and my meds, and some granola bars, and a flashlight… fuck, I forgot my toothbrush.”
“I can get you a toothbrush,” she said, opening a blank note on her phone to start a shopping list. “Before I lose track, though, how long will your meds last you? If you’re running out that could be a problem.”
He peered at the bottle. “I think they just got refilled a couple weeks ago,” he said. “So like, a month and a half?”
“Okay, good.” It was kind of scary to think that far ahead, but Gwen was trying hard to be practical here. “Aside from the toothbrush, you need anything in particular in terms of toiletries? Bathroom-type stuff,” she clarified at his puzzled expression.
“I mean… I guess you have toothpaste and soap and shampoo and stuff,” he said slowly. “I don’t think there’s anything else?”
“What size are your shirts?” she asked. “I don’t get to do laundry very often so I’m gonna pick up a couple just in case.”
Max pulled one out of his bag and tossed it to her. “You don’t have to,” he said in a small voice.
“It’s okay.” She made a note of his size and carried on. “You need anything else? Any grocery requests? Let’s not get carried away, but…”
“Stronger hot sauce than whatever that was in your fridge,” he told her, and she saw a spark of the Max she was used to in his eyes for a moment. She smiled.
“You got it.” She wrote it down. “Anything else you need?”
“…Your wifi password?” he asked hesitantly. She glanced up at him, and he held up the iPod. “I wanna message Neil and Nikki. My folks have probably called theirs by now…”
“Oh,” she said. That made sense. She reached out a hand, and after a second he gave her the device. Logging him onto her wifi, she said, “No illicit downloads or using up too much bandwidth, my plan isn’t that great. And, listen…” she looked up at him again. “Be careful who you message, and don’t… tell them where you are, you know?”
“Obviously,” he said with an eyeroll, taking it back. Looking down at the screen, he added more quietly, “They… they kinda know what’s up at home. They won’t tell anyone I messaged them. I just… wanna tell them I’m okay.”
“Yeah.” Gwen glanced at the floor for a moment, then got to her feet. “I’m gonna get dressed and then go shopping. Uh, do you… want to come?”
He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure there’ll be, like, an AMBER alert or whatever by now.”
“Right.” She bit down on the long string of curses that threatened to burst forward. “Right. Okay. Be right back.” She slipped into her room and quickly shed her tank top and pyjama pants, dressing warmly for the cool autumn weather. When she came back out, she saw Max’s eyelids drooping even as he tried to type something out on the screen of his iPod.
“Hey,” she said, approaching him again. “You’ve been up all night. You wanna sleep? My bed’s real comfy,” she offered, uncharacteristically gentle. “I’ll be gone for less than an hour. There’s a Target right around the corner.”
Max looked up at her for a moment, and he had that vulnerable look again that almost scared her, it was so strange. “I… yeah, okay,” he said after a pause. He hopped off the couch, hoisted the backpack onto his shoulder, and followed her to her bedroom. He gave the room a cursory glance as he put his bag down on the corner of the mattress.
“I’ll lock the door behind me, and I’ll be as fast as I can, okay?” she told him. “You’re gonna be fine. I’m – me and David, we’re gonna make sure you’re fine.”
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded and clambered onto the bed. She turned to leave as he pulled up the covers, but glanced back when she heard him say her name.
“Yeah?”
“I’m… I’m really tired, but even if I’m asleep when you come back, can you come in and tell me you’re here?” he asked, looking down at the blanket.
“Sure,” she answered, nodding. “I’ll be back before you know it. Get some rest, Max.”
Leaving her bike chained outside the store and hoping it would still be there when she came back out, Gwen grabbed a cart and did her all-time fastest department store run. She scooted through the grocery aisles, dumping things into her cart on impulse, grabbing anything she remembered Max liking at camp and making sure to find a stronger hot sauce as well. Then she found him a toothbrush and a novelty bathroom cup with his name emblazoned on the side. In the clothes section she grabbed a few shirts, plus a pack of underwear that would hopefully fit him and a pair of pyjamas as well. Thinking on her feet, she picked him up a pillow and a throw blanket as well. She didn’t really know what she was doing, but she thought maybe he’d feel a little bit more comfortable if he had something of his own that wasn’t just the bare necessities.
Thanking god for self-checkouts, she stuffed as much of her purchase as she could into the saddlebags on her bike and headed home as fast as possible. Her stomach was in knots, and she half-expected her building to be surrounded by cops when she got there, but it was just as quiet as it had been when she left. She breathed a sigh of relief when the door was locked behind her again. Glancing at the clock, she nodded. Just under an hour, as planned.
She quickly put her groceries away, then pulled the packaging and tags off of the pillow and blanket she’d bought him. Stuffing the pillow into a case, she quietly opened her bedroom door and crept in.
Max was fast asleep in her bed. That was good; he had clearly been exhausted. Gwen didn’t want to wake him, but he’d asked, so she spread the throw blanket over top of her own bedspread and then perched on the edge of the mattress next to him. “Hey,” she said softly, not sure if she should touch him. He grunted and opened his eyes slightly. “I came back, as promised.”
“Thanks, Gwen,” he mumbled, almost unintelligibly.
She nodded, putting the pillow she’d bought next to him. “This is for you.”
Eyes already closing again, Max nodded sleepily and wrapped his arms around the pillow, hugging it the same way he’d been hugging his backpack earlier.
Gwen took a moment to breathe, then got up and pulled the blinds. She shut the door behind her when she left and put away the rest of her purchases, shoving the bags into a box under the sink. Then, still working on her breathing, she sat down on the couch.
She looked at her phone for a minute, then sent David a text. He’s sleeping. I got the necessities for now. Keeping it together. See you soon.
At a loss, she turned on her TV and searched her Netflix queue for the trashiest, most distracting show she could find.
Gwen did her best to focus on the TV as much as she could and spend as little time as possible actually thinking. She texted on and off with David whenever he would reply, though he spent much of his bus ride dozing. It wasn’t like there was tons to talk about, but he was good about reassuring her when she started to get wound up.
She was three-quarters done a season of some kind of garbage South American reality series when Max emerged slowly from her bedroom. “Hey,” she said, glancing over at his tired face. “The new pillow and blanket in there are for you.”
He nodded. “Bathroom?”
“By the front door,” she told him, pointing. “You have a cup and a toothbrush in there, if you need ‘em.”
When he came back out, he hesitated by her bedroom door for a moment, then slipped back in. He returned with the pillow and blanket she’d bought him, then trudged drowsily over to the couch and curled up with them at the far end from her. “The fuck are you watching?” he asked with a frown, his crankiness dialled down considerably by fatigue.
“I don’t even know. I’ve only half been paying attention.” She glanced at the screen and realized it would be doubly confusing to him, given that it was in Spanish. “You want subtitles?”
“Whatever,” he said with a shrug. He was checking his iPod again.
“How are you feeling?” Gwen tried carefully.
“…Hungry,” he answered after a moment. Then he added, “Neil and Nikki deleted my messages so their parents wouldn’t see them.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” She bit her tongue, thinking, then said, “It’s about dinner time. You wanna check out those takeout menus on your left and I’ll order something in?”
He glanced over the arm of the sofa at a pile of papers on the narrow end table, reaching over to leaf through them for a moment. “The pizza and wings place any good?” he asked.
“Pretty decent,” she said. “I like the pizza; the wings are fine. Their barbecue sauce is pretty tasty.”
“Cool.” He picked up the menu and skimmed it for a second. “Yeah, pizza sounds good.”
She reached for her phone, pulling up the online order form. “What do you want on it?”
“I like a lot of meat.”
“Soda?”
“Uh, sure.”
She let him take control of her Netflix account and pick a movie – he went for mindless, over-the-top action, which suited them both – and they settled in for a night of distraction. Max nervously stayed out of view of the door when she opened it for the pizza delivery, and she couldn’t blame him. Half of her was amazed he was still in the apartment and hadn’t bolted entirely.
At the end of their movie he told her to go ahead and start in on the sequel, and she glanced over and saw the bags under his eyes. “You sure?” she asked. “You look like maybe you should get some more sleep.”
Max shook his head. “I’ll… I’ll stay up a bit longer.”
She watched him for a minute, wondering if she was reading him right. It was hard to believe he was really forcing himself to stay up just to see David – but then, she knew that under all his bad attitude, Max really did care for the overenthusiastic counselor. “Sure thing,” she said. “But let me know if you get too tired and wanna turn in.”
Quite honestly, she was getting tired herself, but she was also way too wired to sleep any time soon. Throughout the movie she was surreptitiously checking her phone – keeping it on her right side, where hopefully Max couldn’t see – waiting for news from David. “He’s in the city,” she told Max as their movie was ending, and she was amazed at her ability to keep her voice level and more or less casual. What she felt was a strange mixture of profound relief and mounting anxiety that, together, made her want to cry.
Gwen didn’t know what they were watching any more – something else Max had picked; her eyes had glazed over a bit and she’d retreated into her brain – when there was a knock at her door, and she tripped over herself getting up and rushing down the hall. Her hands were trembling as she undid the locks and threw open the door. “David,” she said, apparently unable to muster a more meaningful greeting.
“I’m here,” the redhead answered, letting go of his suitcase and opening his arms. Gwen hugged him with more enthusiasm than she’d ever done before, and he held her for a moment, perhaps sensing her anxiety. But then, she’d been texting him about it all day – maybe he didn’t need to sense it. Her fingers dug into the thick, soft fabric of the green sweatshirt he wore.
“Come in,” she told him, prying herself reluctantly off his neck and retreating from the door. He squeezed into her narrow entryway, hauling his luggage behind him and putting it down when he reached the living room.
“…Hi, David,” Max greeted, suddenly nervous again. He had stood up, but was now staring at his feet. Gwen’s heart broke as she watched him pull the blanket tighter around his shoulders, unable to meet David’s eye. This wasn’t the Max she knew.
David dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around Max’s shoulders without hesitation. “You’re going to be okay, Max,” he said, his voice comforting. “I’m going to do everything I possibly can. I promise, you won’t have to go home. Everything is going to be all right.”
From a few feet away, Gwen watched as Max, surprised and overwhelmed, closed his eyes against tears and buried his face in David’s shoulder. The blanket fell to the floor as Max clung to the man’s back. Gwen turned around and wiped urgently at her own eyes. She still didn’t want Max to see her cry; he didn’t need that.
Once everyone had calmed down a bit, David sat down with Max on the couch to try to talk with him. Gwen busied herself in the kitchen, boiling the kettle and preparing a few cups of tea. She knew how David took his, but she wasn’t sure Max’s preference, so she just brought the milk and sugar out with her, setting them on the cheap, wobbly coffee table in front of the couch.
David wasn’t able to coax much out of the boy, but he did convince him to open up a little about why he’d come to them. “It was partly because I figured I’d be able to find Gwen,” Max mumbled into his mug, face red and eyebrows lowered. “But also I guess because… I dunno, you guys care so fucking much. I figured she’d call you…” He coughed. “It’s… I’ve known you both for five years, and you’re… the closest thing I’ve had to real adults who give a shit about me, I guess. I don’t really… uh, trust anyone else.” He swallowed hard.
David had his arm around Max’s hunched shoulders. “I’m glad you trust us, Max,” he said gently. Gwen had never seen him be so calm and so serious for this long, especially without making a fool of himself. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”
“I don’t want to be taken away,” Max said, his voice very small now. Gwen bit her lip.
“Listen, Max,” David told him. “I have a plan. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you’re safe and where you want to be. If that’s with us, then I’ll make it happen.”
The boy nodded.
Max couldn’t be persuaded to go to bed, and Gwen recognized the look of someone terrified that everything would be worse when he woke up. But he fell asleep on the end of her couch within half an hour. “We can just… we can put him in my bed,” she said quietly as David scooped the kid up. He nodded and followed her into her room, tucking the exhausted boy in gently before shutting her door.
Finally, she felt safe to fall apart a bit, to tell David how worried she was. “I have no idea what to do,” she blurted, her voice already shaking. “I mean, we always talked about how there might be something up with his parents, but I’ve– I’ve never seen him like this before. It’s so unnerving. God, David, I barely know how to take care of myself, how am I supposed to deal with this?”
David put his hands on her shoulders. “You’re not alone, Gwen, I came here to help you,” he reminded her. “I meant it when I told him I had a plan.”
Letting him lead her back into the living room, Gwen asked, “What are we going to do?”
He leaned down to his backpack and pulled out his laptop. “I’ve got a general plan, but I need to do some research. Is it okay if I use your wifi? I would have done it on the bus, but my data plan isn’t very good.”
“I… yeah, sure.” She watched him sit down next to her and log into the computer on his lap, and when he turned it towards her, she connected him to her wifi. “What are you researching?”
“I know the basics of the laws around this kind of situation,” he told her, “but I want to brush up on whatever details I can find. We have to persuade Max to talk to the police, so that we can have the AMBER alert cancelled and begin filing a report against his parents. Obviously Child Protective Services will get involved, and normally Max would then be placed in federal custody – probably a group home or something – because he doesn’t have any other family in the country. I want to be prepared and approach them with a case for you and I to take him instead, at very least in the short term.”
David was looking at his screen, three tabs already open in his browser, and she watched him for a minute, thinking. She had been about to open her mouth and challenge his assumption that she wanted to take custody of Max with him, but then she realized that she absolutely did. The idea of leaving the boy with strangers felt awful. She felt so protective of him, suddenly. She knew what shitty parents felt like – not this shitty, but still – and she wanted badly to look after him.
She began to crumple under the pressure of the situation again. How could she possibly be equipped to deal with this? Folding in on herself, she mumbled, “You seem a lot more knowledgeable on this than I am.”
“What?” he asked, glancing over at her in concern.
“I just…” She wrapped her arms around her stomach, nauseous yet again. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can contribute, here.”
He put his laptop aside and scooted closer, putting an arm around her shoulders and his other hand on her knee. “Gwen, were you listening earlier? Max said he trusts us both, not just me.” He squeezed her lightly. “He needs both of us right now.”
“It took all my self-control not to fall apart today,” she whispered. “What could he need from me when clearly you know what to do and I can barely keep my shit together?”
David drew even closer, resting his cheek against her upper arm. “Now, that’s just not fair,” he chastised gently. “You know it takes both of us to run Camp Campbell. I happen to know something about the legal side of this situation, but you know how bad I am at paperwork, right? Or how impulsive I am? How absent-minded? With something like this I need your smarts and level-headedness to balance me. We’re a good team, even Max knows that. He came to you.”
Gwen considered pointing out that Max knew how to find her, but instead she said, “You’re the one managing to stay level-headed right now.”
“Sure, for the moment,” he agreed. “I tend to do my panicking after the fact.”
She nodded absently, trying to pull herself back together. After a moment, she heard David’s stomach growl. “Are you hungry? There’s leftover pizza,” she said softly.
“That sounds great,” he admitted. “I haven’t eaten in… a while.”
She nodded again and hauled herself off the couch and out of David’s comforting arms to fetch the pizza she’d shoved unceremoniously into the fridge earlier that evening. “You want it heated up?”
“Cold is fine,” he called back.
She sat down next to him on the couch again, tight against his side, and as he went back to his research, she grabbed a notepad and a pen from the side table. She couldn’t help with his research, she didn’t know anything about it, but she felt like she had to do something. So she started making notes about Max’s behaviour over the last five summers, about the little things he did or said every so often that had made her and David wonder what was going on at home. None of it was significant enough to justify actually reporting, but given the current situation, it served as at least a partial record of Max’s history.
David was at the most intense and serious she’d ever seen him.
Max was fast asleep, safe in her bed.
Everything was going to be fine, she told herself firmly.
Gwen woke up slowly on the couch, no recollection of having fallen asleep to begin with. Gradually, she became aware of a pillow under her head and a knitted blanket – not hers – spread across her, tucked in under her side. She could smell coffee, and heard the toaster pop. On the coffee table in front of her, David’s laptop was open, plugged in, with his screensaver of camp photos shuffling onscreen; next to it was a notebook, filled with notes in his distinctive scrawl.
As she blinked herself awake, David himself appeared, smiling at her as he set a cup of coffee down on the corner of the table nearest her. “Hey,” he said quietly, sipping from his own mug. “Sleep okay? I’m making breakfast, I hope you don’t mind.”
She nodded drowsily as she pushed herself up. “Did you… were you up all night?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
He looked away guiltily. “I slept a lot on the bus yesterday,” he defended himself quickly. “I dozed in your armchair over there a couple times, but otherwise, yeah, I’ve been up all night.” There were slight bags under his eyes.
“David,” she said, her tone a warning. “That’s not good for you. If we’re dealing with this situation today, I really need you to be all there.”
“I’ll be fine, I promise,” he told her, heading back into her kitchen. “You have time for a shower before the food is ready, if you want.”
Gwen downed her coffee, checked her phone and was relieved to see a message from her boss assuring her that she could have the next few days off for what she had decided to call a ‘family emergency,’ and then took the shower David had suggested. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a towel on her head, taking in the smell of some very promising omelets, while David went to gently wake Max. Max seemed disoriented and stressed when he came into the kitchen, and Gwen found herself missing the normal Max in a way she didn’t know she could.
There was barely room for the three of them at the tiny table that fit so awkwardly in her tiny kitchen, but they made it work somehow. David’s cooking was excellent – he somehow included spices that Gwen hadn’t even realized she had in her kitchen – and if not for the amount of tension in the room, it could almost have been a pleasant experience, albeit a strange one.
David waited until everyone was done eating to share his plan with Max.
“Nope. Fuck this. I can’t do it. I won’t go in there,” Max was saying for the hundredth time in about an hour. Gwen and David both had their hands on his shoulders already, apparently too accustomed to his standard escape tactics. The three of them stood outside the police station nearest Gwen’s apartment.
David knelt down on one knee to be eye-to-eye with the panicking boy. “Listen, Max, we can’t get anywhere if you’re still listed as a missing child,” he pointed out. “It’ll be far easier on all three of us if we walk in there ourselves than if you’re found in our care by the police. We talked about this – I have a plan. I know what I’m doing. It’s gonna be okay.”
Max was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Cops hate brown kids,” he said quietly. “What if they don’t believe me? What if they send me back? Fuck, David, what if–”
“Everything is going to be fine,” David said again, slowly. He raised his eyebrows, squeezing Max’s shoulders tightly. “But we have to do this.”
Gwen stared down at them, biting her lip as she waited for Max’s response.
“…Okay,” Max said finally. He nodded, and David stood, taking Max’s hand. Max didn’t object; to Gwen’s surprise, she felt his sweaty fingers grasping at her own hand as well. He was terrified – she’d never seen anything like it.
Together, they walked into the precinct and approached the officer at the desk. “Excuse me,” David said politely.
The woman looked up from the paper she was writing on. “How can I help you?”