You'd only just managed to doze off when, from somewhere on the bedside table your phone goes off at full volume, bringing an immediate, unceremonious end to the peace you'd finally found in sleep by wrenching you rather savagely back into the world of the living, the shrill jingle of the ringtone popping the happy little fantasy that had taken shape inside your head like someone had taken a pin to a balloon.
Grumbling, you push yourself into an upright position, desperately trying to cling to the dream you'd been having before you'd been jolted back into consciousness even as you reach out, searching blindly for your phone in the dark, but it has already started to fade, the details deteriorating further and further with every second that slips by until what is left of it is beyond repair, the remains nothing more than a faint, moth eaten memory of momentary bliss.
As your fingers finally find the familiar outline of your phone and close around it, you force yourself to abandon the last vestiges of the dream, knowing if you're not careful about it, you're liable to drown yourself in the fragmented remnants of the recollection and there's hardly time for that right now, if at all.
One glance at the screen proves to be more than sufficient to knock you clean out of your head, to wash away the warmth and contentment that still lingered in your chest, replacing it with a different kind of heat, this fire built not of longing and fantasies but kindled from anger and agitation, the flames of which didn't need much to catch, just a spark, courtesy of a single name.
"Can I fucking help you, Max? What is it? What is it that you could possibly need at-" you pause with a huff, craning your neck around to check the alarm clock on the bedside table, "at 2:30 in the morning? Hm?"
"I- it's- Sorry-'' the three words are stilted, almost jarring, as they stumble over one another, each more cumbersome and unwieldy than the last, all conspicuously lack something, some quality you can't quite put your finger on but whose absence is impossible to ignore.
It takes a moment, only the one, before it comes to you, the name of what's missing, of what you've become so accustomed to hearing in every sentence and every letter, down to the last syllable, that it's sudden, unforeseen absence can actually be physically felt, the pang of the loss slowly building until it's almost nauseating.
The familiarity and flippancy you'd thought you'd hate, that you could have sworn you hated, that you detested with every fiber of your being, but, as you'd only just discovered, you'd evidently learned to love at some point along the way, though when exactly that had been was entirely beyond you.
The effect is immediate, instantaneous, when, from the other end of the phone, something which you know with absolute certainty you were never supposed to have heard, that you know in your very bones the fates had never meant for a soul to hear, reaches you over the crackling connection, sounding dangerously close to a stifled, chest wracking dry sob.
You know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Max hated himself for this perceived weakness, and that he'd fought like hell to keep exactly where it was, where it had been, to smother in its infancy before it could gain prescience, neatly bottled up and squirreled away where no one would ever find it, buried in the dead of night, hidden somewhere deep in the hollow of his chest or the pit of his stomach, anywhere it would never see the light of day.
Like his father had taught him, exactly like his Pa had drilled into his head, and when that failed, beaten it into him.
Like Max had always done, like the dutiful son he'd once been, like he would never be again.
"It's okay, it's okay. Just slow down, slow down," you say softly, soothingly, with deliberate gentleness, speaking to him like you would a wounded animal that needs to be coaxed into accepting help, "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that when I answered, I'm sorry. I'd just fallen asleep and well, I'm still not particularly over everything that happened yesterday."
Not A Scratch On That Bastard
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