So, of course, Nurf's camp was the next day.
"Can't we just give him a hug and tell him it'll all be okay?" David prompted Gwen as she held the clipboard in both hands and tried to pull herself together.
"God forgive me, David, you will help me put this kid through boot camp and scare him straight or my boot will go so far up your ass we'll see straight through you when I pull it out," Gwen growled, her clipboard creaking ominously in her hands, "We are contractually obligated to make this kid a functioning member of society and we will."
David wasn't entirely sure he was capable of it, especially after Max and he had practically ripped the hearts out of each other that night. Or at least, David felt like his own heart had been violently torn out and shredded into confetti at one point or another during their argument. He was sure Max had had at least a similar intensity level what with fearing for his life for at least part of the afternoon.
"You couldn't scare me straight if you devoted your whole life to it," Nurf laughed, having been somewhat patiently listening to their whole conversation, before he abruptly sobered, "In all seriousness, if I don't feel at least somewhat reformed by the end of the day, I will be contacting my parents and advising they sue."
"Noted," Gwen said curtly, before pressing her lips into a thin line and staring down David in a long, almost threatening moment of silence. She jerked her chin at him, "Man up."
David laughed nervously, "We could do a good cop, bad cop, kind of-"
"Man." She grabbed his shirt, pulling him in close, "Up."
Max cleared his throat, following that up with a casual kick to David's shin when neither of the counselors glanced down at him. He observed the hurt look that passed over David's face with a mild amount of anxious curiosity, allowing that to settle when it didn't morph into anger or anything worse than disappointment.
"Max, you should really use your words," David scolded him lightly, not having the heart for it just then to be firm.
"Uh, no, you should really use my words," Max dug his hands into his pockets, "If you want to keep the camp open, that is."
David stared down at him uncomprehendingly, then gave him half a smile, like a dog staring off into space with its mouth open, "What?" He had no energy left to understand Max's twisty mind, much less approach this upcoming camp.
"What's in it for you?" Gwen asked, clearly having the same kind of twistiness that - okay, alright, David was clearly not fully awake, on top of being emotionally exhausted. It had finally clicked. Max was offering to help.
"I want double pudding for a week - sealed cups only, no dining hall duties for a month, and -" despite the fact that he'd clearly thought these up beforehand, Max still hesitated before the last one, Gwen leaning in so hard she was close to falling over, "David's birthdate, address, and social security number."
"Done," Gwen said.
"Gwen!" David exclaimed, but both parties glared at him, startling him into dropping it. What was Max glaring about now? He looked almost embarrassed, but that didn't make much sense.
"Alright, first off, you need to be less this you," Max said, shaking away the vestiges of any vulnerability and hopping up on the table in front of David, "You need to get mad, really mad."
"Max, I'm not very good at-"
"Murderously mad," Max added, with only a hint of reluctance.
"No," David said before he could stop himself, and Max turned with a glint in his eye.
"How do you expect to get anything done with Nurf being as soft-hearted as you are? Huh? You have to get mad or you won't do anything! Do it! Get mad!" He was in David's face now, and Gwen leaned in after him.
"Yeah! You need to be a real man, David! Don't you fuck this up for me now!"
"I won't do this mad," David insisted, and Max nodded, cutting off Gwen's irritated response.
"Good job, David. You just stood up for yourself." He smirked at the surprise on both counselors' faces, "Now you need to apply the lesson. When you're running a boot camp, you can't be a doormat like you usually are. You have to face up to Nurf and never back down."
"I can't do this alone," Gwen reminded him urgently when David looked ready to waver.
That was right. People were depending on him. David stood abruptly, energy renewed from the faith of his friend and his camper, and let one fist fall into his open palm, "Let's do this."
"Okay, wait - let's approach the target," Max coached, "And open dialogue with something to put him off-balance. You need to break him down if you want to make him an obedient slave of the Man-"
Gwen cut off David's impending protest with a flat, "He means a productive member of society, David."
Max ignored this, continuing blithely, "- and to do that, you'll need to attack the bad things he's proud of, like his bullying and his mom."
"His mom ?" David echoed incredulously.
"Yeah, she's a horrible influence," Gwen nodded at Max in acknowledgement of the point. "She's always sending him new knives and letters about how she's rising to the top of her jail's hierarchy."
"I'll give you an example," Max said to David, then turned back to Gwen with a sudden sneer, "I can tell you still call your mother mommy, Gwen; you've just got that spoiled, smothered look about you. Doesn't help that you're not doing anything productive with your life, but I guess Mommy's to blame for that, too, huh? What a fucking octopus she must have been to make you run all the way out to the crappiest camp this side of an active war zone just to escape her goddamn company. But you know what they say, takes a bitch to make a bitch."
She'd been a little too taken aback to respond, but the last jab seemed to hit home. Gwen abruptly came to her own defense, "What the fuck, Max-"
"Language!" David scolded both, but it was lost on them.
"Of course, Momma Bitch is probably disappointed you still haven't made anything of yourself - which is rich considering she's gotta be a stay-at-home mom, from the way you still cut the fucking crusts off your sandwiches." Eyes rolled in exasperation, "I'm fucking ten and I can eat my crusts, Gwen."
"Jesus Christ, Max, we get it-" Gwen was red in the face, fists clenched at her sides.
"No misunderstood asocial detective is coming to save you, Gwen!" Max pointed at her aggressively, brows furrowed as his volume rose, "Get your shit together!"
Finally, Gwen broke. "I just want to have his British babies!" she wept, fleeing the room. Max gestured after her in a tada gesture and bowed.
"That's how you break someone," he informed a wide-eyed David with a satisfied smugness.
"Maybe we should just set you on Nurf," David murmured, trying to take in how cruel they wanted him to act and not liking it one bit.
"Oh, get up and come on," Max commanded in the tone of a complaint, "I think it'll be easier with an authority figure."
They found Nurf giving Dolph an over-the-head wedgie by the archery range, and Max waved a hand as if to encompass the scene, "Tell him off, David. Be tough. Get mean."
"...Okay," David took a breath, as if to inflate himself, and stomped up to the two campers, "Nurf, you need to put Dolph down this instant."
"Okay," Nurf shrugged, dropping Dolph, "His time's up, anyway."
"Thank you," David said firmly, and heard the sound of flesh against flesh as Max slapped his forehead.
"Did you need something, David?" Nurf asked in a perfectly reasonable voice. "I'm kind of on bullying schedule B this week, so I need to get over to Nerris soon, to taunt her about her favorite hobbies and beloved childhood dreams."
The tone had David relaxing unthinkingly, "Oh, well I don't want to hold you up-"
"No!" Max interjected through gritted teeth, "You do!"
"-right. Nurf," David looked Nurf in his big, blue-green eyes, "When you bully people that is a very bad thing to do. It hurts their feelings and their body-"
"David, please," Max groaned.
David held up a hand because he was getting to the tough part, "-and that means you are being... not very nice. In fact, I'd say you're mean."
"Okay, that's a start," Max muttered.
"I'd go so far as to say I've never seen you even try to be nice, Nurf. And that's a waste of potential. You won't get far in life if you're always mean. No one likes mean people," David lectured, and Max looked halfway approving, but still mainly disgruntled.
"My mom did," Nurf denied calmly.
"What?" David asked, not expecting the interjection.
"Before she went to jail, my mom was always bringing home mean men," Nurf elaborated. "I haven't always been mean, David, and honestly, it's a little hurtful for you to assume so. It's not like I have a lot of positive male role models to choose from. Mom only brought back men that liked to use me as an ashtray. And when you get used as an ashtray, you start to feel like an ashtray. Act like an ashtray, you know? Something dirty, and mean. Trash. When Mom found out, she'd beat them up until they'd have to go to the hospital, and I'd have to clean up the blood until she found another one. When I tried to ask my teacher for help, they told CPS. CPS didn't look too kindly on the bad men, but they took my mom away for months. I learned from that time that reaching out for help will only lead to punishment."
"Abort mission," Max murmured, looking concerned.
David was a little pale as he approached Nurf and crouched down next to him, "Did- did you want to talk about it?"
Nurf looked up at him soulfully... then grinned and stabbed David in the hand, "Hell no, fuck the police! Freedom or death!" He ran off cackling and Max dashed over.
"Jesus," he said, looking at the blood pouring from the wound and then up at David with a sort of panicky expression. The tears streaming down David's face didn't help, "Is- what- what do I-?"
"He- he missed the tendons," David sniffled, tried to control the crying, "Like a pro. What a- what a horrible past; how could I have been so mean to him?"
"Oh, god, David you were barely rude," Max complained, still pale, as he herded David to his feet, "He has way more issues than I expected, though."
"And- and such good self awareness," David managed before he began to blubber, walking blindly where Max led. They made it back to Gwen, who grimaced at the wound.
"Can you move your fingers?" Gwen asked, and David nodded with a sniffle, eyes puffy and sparkling with tears.
"I can't believe we have a camper here who's- who's being abused and we didn't notice!" David exclaimed once the situation had been explained (mainly by Max), tears falling again. "We've failed him as counselors."
"David," Gwen sighed, pulling out the bandages and beginning to wrap David's hand. "His mother doesn't abuse him, and we've got no evidence of the boyfriends, but it sounds like CPS has it under control, now. We don't even know if Nurf was telling the truth or just trying to get under your skin." She tied off the bandage, "Maybe we should take you to the hospital."
"You know we don't have insurance," David pointed out, still sniffling, "It's fine. He didn't hit anything important."
"How would you even know that?" Gwen asked, and David shrugged, not offering a real response as he wiped the last tears away, but it seemed to be a rhetorical question for Gwen. Max put his hands in his pockets uneasily; he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer, anyway.
Hastily, he changed the topic, "Okay, David, you weren't exactly mean to Nurf, but it was at least not, you know, really nice-"
"I think we need to give up on the whole just be mean thing," Gwen interrupted, "Tough doesn't have to mean being an asshole. Maybe we need to take a more psychological approach."
"What, like therapy?" Max asked, derision dripping off his words and the edge of his smirk.
"Exactly like therapy," Gwen smiled victoriously, snapping her fingers. "I've got a degree in psychology, too, so I'm not just talking out of my ass, here."
"Maybe you should take point on this one, then," David suggested, voice steadier as he pulled himself together. There was a bit of blood on his uninjured hand that he was absently... sort of stroking as he moved his fingers back and forth across the tip of his thumb as if he were pinching the blood between them. Max kind of wanted him to stop.
"Yeah," Gwen agreed slowly, gaining enthusiasm for the idea. "Yeah, I'll finally get to actually use a degree." She burst out of the building with confidence and Max hopped up onto the table next to David.
The counselor was still doing that thing with the blood and Max watched it uneasily for a few seconds while David was clearly lost in thought, before he couldn't take it anymore.
"Stop," his hands clasped around David's uninjured one in symbolic restraint, not wanting to directly touch the blood. "That's so fucking creepy, David."
"What?" David asked absently before he blinked back into awareness of the fact that yes he had been running his bloodied thumb over his fingertips as if he could roll the blood between them and winced. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry, Max. Let me just wash up."
"Yeah, do it quick," Max released his hand, shoving his own back into his pockets. "I'm pretty sure Gwen's gonna get her turn as a pin cushion when therapy time is over."
"Nurf probably won't hurt a woman." David had already puttered over to the sink. He worked on washing the blood off without getting his bandages wet as he continued, "Physically, anyway."
"David..." the usually unmovable kid sounded a little awed, and David glanced back to see a vicious smirk slice across Max's face, "Are you sexist?"
The words were said with such glee, it took David a moment to interpret them correctly.
"What - no!" After drying off, the towel he'd used was set down with a huff. "Chivalry is a part of our society, Max."
"Well, Nurf's told me himself that he's an equal opportunity bully," Max informed David in a mockingly stuffy tone, smirk widening to an all-out grin. "He tries his best not to see color, age or sex. Though he does make allowances for religion."
A light furrow of worry appeared in David's brow, though his mouth still quirked in a smile at Max's concern, "I'll see about giving Gwen some back up, then."
Max's glee faded to a pensive neutral as David gathered the portable first aid kit and a tourniquet - though David was... still pretty sure he wouldn't need them. The kid pulled his feet up onto the table, drawing his knees in towards his chest.
"Isn't Nurf a threat to the other campers?" Max asked cautiously.
A sharp glance his direction showed David wasn't entirely oblivious to the train of thought Max had reluctantly boarded, "Nurf is a camper. And a child."
"Sure," Max agreed, "but every adult was a child, once."
The words bit at something David thought had been buried with Janette, and he moved towards the door, pausing at the threshold, "Can we talk about this later, Max?"
"...Yeah." Max had practically curled up in an upright ball on the table, and now he flicked his hood up over his head, as if to hide. Taking in the nearly miserable sight, David sighed, even as a helpless half-smile tugged at his lips at Max pouting .
"You're the one who wanted me to make sure Gwen was safe," David reminded him, getting only a grunt of acknowledgement in return. The ongoing sulk broke him enough to make him promise, "As long as I don't think it'll give you nightmares, I'll talk about whatever this is after dinner tonight, alright?"
Max peered up at him in clear consideration, and nodded.
That was enough for now. Time to back up Gwen.
.
"I feel like we've really made some progress here, Nurf," Gwen said an hour or so later, David sniffling with pride over the way the two of them had connected as they talked through Nurf's tragic and, to put it bluntly, horrifying tale of woe.
"Yeah, I see now that I need to choose for myself what I do in the future, and not let my past shape who I am today," Nurf summarized with a soft smile.
"So what are you going to do next?" Gwen prompted.
Standing with determination, Nurf met Gwen's eyes and grinned, "I'm going to give Dolph a wedgie for reminding me of my dad!"
"No!" Gwen reached after him but he was running off laughing evilly before she could make contact, and she dropped her face into her hands with a frustrated groan.
"Later, losers!" floated back on the wind.
"Alright," David straightened and clapped his hands together, ignoring the tear tracks that hadn't yet dried on his cheeks."You and Max have had your shot. I'd like to try this my way."
"David-" Gwen started but David held up a hand.
"Ah-bup-bup; I'm standing my ground on this one." David shot her a grin, "Rule one and all, right?"
"Try to get stabbed in an extremity," Gwen conceded.
It didn't take long to track down Nurf, where he was, indeed, giving Dolph a wedgie. Again.
Putting a hand on his hip, David pointed towards the ground, "Drop him."
"Not this time, loser," Nurf taunted, "I'm going off-schedule and I'm done talking with you lame-os. You'll have to make me."
That would actually be incredibly easy if David didn't mind hurting Nurf to do so. Instead, David grabbed Dolph, so he was no longer suspended by cloth alone and sliced through the offending garment with his own hunting knife.
"I'll take you into town for a replacement later," he told the sniffling kid, setting him down and giving him a gentle push to get him going. "Gwen's by the dining hall."
Dolph looked at him with watery eyes, but ran off in the suggested direction.
"Are you gonna tell me how mean I am, again?" Nurf snorted, crossing his arms over his chest.
"No, Nurf, I want to apologize for that," David sat in front of the kid, cross-legged, to show he wasn't going to approach or stop Nurf from leaving. The apology seemed to garner some sort of reaction from Nurf, because he wasn't running off, "I should never have resorted to name-calling to try to change your behavior. You've got amazing self-awareness for a kid your age, especially when it's clear you've had a tough time of it growing up." Nurf was picking his nails with a knife but hadn't left yet, so David pressed forward, "You've got a lot of potential, kiddo, and that's why it disappoints me when you express your negative feelings through violence."
"That's the only way I can show people how I'm feeling!" Nurf protested, but it lacked the heat of anger. "No one's ever listened to words."
"I will," David said, "Gwen will. I'm sure the other campers will, too. And if you're feeling something bad inside, and you don't know how to put it into words, you can always come to Gwen or me for help... or a hug. When you bully the other kids, you're just giving them the same bad feelings you're having. It doesn't get rid of what you're feeling, though, does it?" Reluctantly, Nurf shook his head. "All it does is make it stronger. The only way to fight those bad feelings is with nice ones, like pride from having helped someone, or the warmth of being with your friends."
The last suggestion may have been a misstep. Nurf wrapped his arms around himself, eyes shuttering, "No one would want to be friends with me after all this."
David scooted forward, utterly failing at making the act anything but horribly uncool, and put a hand on Nurf's shoulder with a smile, "We're friends, right?"
"You're a grown up who's paid to be nice to me," Nurf snorted, turning away.
"I- I will be your friend," a voice piped up. Dolph hadn't gone as far as they had thought, instead lingering to eavesdrop from behind the nearest cabin. He revealed himself now, hopefully, "The other campers are just mein acquaintances, und I would like a friend of mein own."
"...Do you want to suppress losers with me?" Nurf offered slowly, a hint of hope blossoming in his face. From a distance, Gwen was approaching and David nearly missed the question while he was waving her over.
Dolph's eyes sparkled with joy, "Of course!" He ran to the large boy and hugged him, "We shall be the very best of friends!"
Nurf wrapped his arms around Dolph and looked up at David with a grin, "Thank you, David; you were right! Friendship is awesome!"
David smiled back with an edge of worry as he prodded, "That's great, Nurf, but what was that about suppressing losers...?"
"I'm going to tell my mom how you've changed me for the better," Nurf swore, not addressing the question, "And I'll make all the campers be friends with us, or else."
"Us, mein friend?" Dolph's smile grew to a grin, "Thank you! You are being such a considerate friend!"
They practically skipped off into the distance as Gwen came up behind him.
"Well, Nurf's happy and we aren't getting sued," David said weakly, and was unsurprised when her hand hit him upside the back of the head.
"Good going, David." Max smirked from beside her, "How does it feel to have recreated the Axis Powers?"
"Is Nurf Italian?" Gwen asked, distracted from the ominous nature of the new friendship by this nitpicking. "I wouldn't have pegged it."
"Well, his father's listed as Adalfieri Ricci," David remarked. "Though he has his mother's last name. Nazario Nurfington, in full. It's good alliteration."
This offhand comment made Max turn on him with a surprised scowl, "What sort of paperwork do you have on us?"
"That's just the emergency contact information," Gwen replied with a dismissive wave of her hand.
"Why does David have it memorized?" Max persisted, and got a shrug from the female counselor. He turned his glare back to David.
"Any camp counselor would memorize the emergency contacts for their campers," he explained with a pat to Max's head. "What if there was an emergency?"
"Oh, yeah, so what are mine?" Max demanded, flailing half-heartedly to swat David's hand away as it retreated. His hands went to his hips, "Hmm? 'Cause I bet you my parents didn't fill that shit out."
"They're required paperwork for enrollment," David reminded him, "But, yes, your parents were so excited to enroll you, they forgot a few details. However, I filled them out with the number they called from, and the check they mailed, so you don't have to worry about any missing information."
"Well, that's a relief," Max scowled. "I was in such a fucking flutter about it."
Before it could devolve further into a one-sided argument, Gwen cut in, "Hey, Max, we still need to hold up our end of the deal, right? Why don't you come with me and I can get you that information we promised."
"What information?" David echoed, thinking back over the day as Max grudgingly followed Gwen towards the counselors' cabin. When his mind finally pinged against the right answer, he jogged after them with a worried, "Max? Gwen? You're not serious...? Gwen!"
They were. At least it distracted Max enough that David got to put off that talk the kid had wanted.
Still, the idea of what Max wanted with David's private information left the man tossing and turning all night. He was understandably jumpy the next morning, especially when, at breakfast, Max gently and carefully arranged a dead spider on top of the spork tower Neil had constructed and shot a weirdly amused look at David.
What was so funny about it?
Did it have something to do with the sporks?
The spider - what did it mean?
David almost took Gwen's head off when he heard her coming up behind him to remind him of the camp of the day.
"It's magic camp two," she sighed, not looking up from the clipboard and unaware of how close she'd been to major blunt force trauma that morning, "The boy one, this time."
"So, magic tricks," David summed up, bringing his arms down to his sides and keeping them there, "I don't know any good ones, do you?"
"I think he'll be happy if we just give him the stage for a day," Gwen replied wryly. She snagged Harrison by the collar as he passed by, "Kid, you're up. Dazzle us."
"...O-kay!" Harrison agreed, rubbing his hands together and wandering up to the stage.
"They'll probably be fine if we just leave them here," Gwen mused to herself after a few moments of watching the kids become enthralled with Harrison's tricks. Even Nerris looked grudgingly impressed, as she stood off to the side with her arms over her chest, "There's supposed to be a Bob Ross marathon... We could catch an episode."
That was incredibly tempting, but David knew now that the threat hadn't quite ended. "I'll stay here," he told her with a smile, "Could you record it for me?"
"Yeah, we've got a spare writable laserdisc hanging around somewhere," Gwen conceded, too excited to get away to care much about the issue of finding it, "You're the best, David!"
"Aww, thanks, Gwen," David beamed, but she was already walking away. He shrugged it off, and turned around just as someone tugged at his sleeve. When he saw Max at the end of it, looking miserable, he blinked, "Max, are you alright?"
"I don't think so." His voice was uncertain, his face pale, and a hand came up over his mouth, "I think I'm gonna be sick."
Before David could panic or find a bucket, Max belched out a- a dove?
A quiet keening noise escaped Max for just a second before he gritted his teeth, "I don't know why I told you; it's not like you can do anything." His arms crossed over his midsection protectively as he continued at a miserable low, "Never mind. I just want to sit in my tent and think about something else before this traumatizes me forever."
"I could bring you to Gwen and you could watch Bob Ross with her in the counselors' cabin," David suggested gingerly, not entirely sure how to approach living doves exiting his campers. At least it probably wasn't what the irrational attackers kept warning him to beware. David somewhat doubted doves being an otherworldly evil that needed to be warded off.
"Now I feel naturally sick, too," Max moaned, and coughed out a playing card. "Don't even think about it."
"Well, we can try... ginger ale, or something," David ran a hand over Max's hair, thinking, but nope, he still didn't know what to do about... magic props? Magic props expelling themselves from Max's mouth. Maybe Harrison...? "I'll ask Harrison if he knows-"
"He's the one who did this to me!" Max exclaimed with enough venom that David actually lost his train of thought, "I don't want anything to do with that asshole."
Nerris leaned into the conversation, nodding, "I saw everything. It was definitely Harrison."
"Well, that's not a nice thing to do," David would have gone to lecture the kid, but Max sort of headbutted his leg - ah, Max leaned against him with an unhappy whine. Forcefully.
"...I'll try the ginger ale," Max muttered in a small voice.
It was more important to take care of the sick camper than to lecture the one who had somehow caused it with his tricks.
Somehow.
What would even...?
"David, ginger ale," Max demanded, not lifting his head, but groping blindly in the air in a gimme gesture, "Let's go."
Right.
"Right," David said with a cough, echoing his thoughts aloud before lifting Max from the ground and walking back to the dining hall. He tried to ignore the trail of magic props left scattered intermittently behind them as Max retched, coughed, and belched over his shoulder. It was better than getting vomit down his back, at least.
He propped the door open to listen for the other campers and sat Max down at a table. The boy hunched over in his seat, holding his stomach and his mouth as David retrieved one of a rare few cans of ginger ale from the kitchen. Pouring it into a cup at the table, he wordlessly handed it over, and Max wrinkled his nose before taking a hesitant sip.
They sat in silence for a while, as Max slowly worked through the liquid, David sitting kind of uselessly at his side. There wasn't a lot he could do except hope this settled Max's stomach some - if that even affected the... whatever this was. He ran a hand through his own hair. David wasn't used to being helpless, anymore.
Calmly, Max set down the ginger ale, turned away from the table and David, and vomited out a long, knotted scarf.
"This is not okay," Max admitted weakly. "I sort of get the whole wanting to kill someone thing, now."
"Max," David startled, but the kid waved him off.
"I mean, not really, don't get your panties-" he belched a cloud of glitter, grimaced and wiped his mouth. "Don't get your panties in a twist."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" David asked after a moment, helplessly, then winced at his own question. It was highly unlikely Max knew what he needed to stop throwing up magic props, either.
"No," Max said first, instinctively, before his face softened with uncertainty, "I mean, you can't make it stop, but-" He cut himself off with a stubborn mien to his expression. Another magical belch cleared the stubbornness clean away, and he continued unsteadily, "You could still, you know... I mean, when other kids are sick, their parents can't exactly cure them, either, but they still..." He shrugged, looked away and repeated, "You know."
David appreciated that Max apparently thought David was intelligent enough to figure that out, despite previous insults to the contrary, but Max was, unfortunately, wrong.
When he didn't do anything following this mystifying ramble of hesitation, Max's eyes began to shutter and David, panicked, grabbed the kid in a hug before he could shut down completely, "Sorry, Max, I don't get what you mean, but I do want to help, okay?" He ran a hand over Max's hair in a way that was hopefully comforting, "Can you try to explain a little... um... more simply?" It stung to admit he needed Max to explain further, but it was better to hurt his pride than to discourage Max from asking for help! The fact that Max tried at all was nothing short of a miracle.
After a beat, Max buried his face in David's vest and his arms were squeezing David's waist and David shouldn't be crying just because he'd finally done something right and Max was returning a hug.
"This is fine," Max conceded in a mutter, and David didn't care that in the next second, Max hacked up a frightened rabbit that leapt from David's lap to the floor and skittered out the half-open door because Max was hugging him.
He redoubled his grip on the kid and tried not to let the silent tears develop into a sob.
All the death threats, all the police suspicion, all the stress - and that was just the bits Max had caused - it was all worth it. Later, when Max was feeling better, he'd finally understand the wonders of camp, he'd be smiling and having fun with his friends, he'd-
"Don't read into this, camp man; I can practically hear you breaking down with glee," Max's voice was muffled by David's vest but still cutting, nonetheless. "I'm just sick. I'm delirious. None of this can be held against me."
"Okay, Max," David sniffled, but he was still grinning.
"I'm serious; this means nothing," Max insisted, hissing slightly like an offended cat.
"Whatever you say," David managed to reply, fighting back a happy sob by biting his knuckle.
Bristling, Max intentionally directed his next magical vomit into David's lap, gasping at the end, "I hate you." David just hugged him closer and beamed.
The vomiting did not stop until late into the evening, as David had begun carting Max around on his back until Max finally gave in and fell asleep, still occasionally hiccupping glitter but unfazed by his fellow campers gamboling about him in his state of misery. Nothing had gone wrong with the other campers, so far, and David herded them into their tents before putting Max to bed with the background noise of Neil's frantic pacing.
Come to think of it, however, he hadn't seen Gwen all day. After patrolling the grounds for an hour more in search of Gwen and any threats to the camp, David wandered into the counselors' cabin, a bit worried that-
Gwen was staring at the TV with a happy, sleepy smile on her face, looking dangerously pale.
"Gwen, are you alright?" David asked, turning the TV off and crouching down in front of her in one smooth motion.
"Huh, what? Oh, I'm-" her eyes rolled up in her head as she collapsed to the ground in a dead faint, deaf to David's high-pitched squeak of her name. When she came to, David had dragged her to her bedroom and arranged her not unlike a corpse to keep her limbs on the bed. He was hovering a hand over the telephone when her eyes fluttered open.
"I'm awake," Gwen groaned, and David let his hand fall with a sigh of relief, "I don't need to go to the hospital."
"Are you sure?" he asked, even as he abandoned the phone to hover over her instead, "I know it's expensive without insurance, but I can chip in-"
"I just didn't... eat today," Gwen admitted with a flush of embarrassment, rubbing the back of her head in chagrin, "Bob Ross sucked me in with his soulful eyes and his soothing words."
"He does have soulful eyes," David conceded, some of the tension leaving his frame, "Let me go get you some water. And some soup."
"I'm not an invalid," Gwen complained, attempting to stand and get it herself. Then she realized what she was fighting and faked a headrush, sitting back down, "On the other hand... I do still feel weak."
"You just stay right there," David told her in much the same way she would address a dizzy puppy, patting her head almost condescendingly, if Gwen could believe he was really capable of that sort of emotion. It still made her hackles go up a bit. "I'll be right back."
Waiting on the microwave in the kitchen, David leaned on the counter and hoped whatever Harrison had done to Max wasn't contagious. Actually, he'd been so distracted with Max today, he hadn't even addressed Harrison's role in the whole thing. He would have to give that kid a firm talking to tomorrow about what kind of magic tricks were okay and not okay.
Beeping from the microwave had David automatically grabbing a plate and balancing the heated bowl on it in one hand as he grabbed a water glass with the other. Harrison hadn't been a problem until now - other than his ongoing feud with Nerris, he'd been a fairly well-behaved camper. For this group.
David didn't register the three figures silhouetted from the outside light of the counselors' cabin until he'd almost walked into them.
"Hello?" he said, before their posture sunk in. The three of them, two women and one man, were hunched animalistically, as if beaten down, their skin unwashed, their clothes and hair ragged... "Sugar snaps." Three at once?
David threw the bowl and glass at the leftmost threat's face and practically ran down the middle one as he bowled them over with a charge and stepped to the side. Whipping an elbow to his right, his arm impacted the third one's teeth in a moment blessed by fate and sent her stumbling over with a mangled swear.
"To be clear," he said in the moment of peace granted by him taking the initiative hard, "You're not just homeless folk looking for work?"
"Wha' the fuh," the one with fewer teeth than she'd started with spat at the ground, still bent over.
"No," said a voice from behind him, and David turned with a punch that hit nothing but air as the fourth person dodged deeper into shadow, "We're looking for the kids."
Oh, goody.
Four.
...
(Photo sourced from UnSplash https://unsplash.com/@mybbor)