Chapter Text
Max drags a hand over his face, blinks hard. He checks the phone in his lap. 3:06. He sighs, lets his head fall back on the headrest. If he sees 3:20, he’s going home and going back to bed.
He can’t believe he’s even doing this, but if anything’s got Stella this rattled, it’s got to be serious. He’s heard of Grayfield, heard it’s more like a penitentiary than a housing facility. Jesus, Max. He’s only eighteen.
What the hell am I going to do with a pet, Stella? He’d asked over the phone, sitting up in bed.
I don’t know. But you have the cash, don’t you? Holstrom’s liquidating assets— fast. Just go get him and we’ll work the rest out later. Please. He’s so sweet, Max. And…Holstrom beats him. And worse…
In the ten years he’d known her, he’d never heard his friend sound so urgent. So here he was, an hour later, in yesterday’s clothes with a manila folder containing eighteen grand and a loaded pistol in the passenger seat.
He feels like he’s a teenager again waiting for his plug to pull up with a bag of weed. Except he’s waiting for a human being. In a CVS parking lot of all things. It’s surreal.
At 3:08 a black SUV pulls up two spots over. They don’t kill the engine, or the lights. A tinted window rolls down so Max returns the gesture. A man leans his arm on the window frame. “You Max?”
“Yes.”
The man tosses a cigarette onto the asphalt. “Hey, Max. I’m Keith. Twenty G’s?” He asks, bored.
Max tries to seem bored as well. Like he does this sort of thing all the time. “We agreed eighteen over the phone.”
Keith looks over at the SUV’s driver, swivels back to Max. “Right. Whatever. You have it?”
Max nods. “And…the boy?”
Keith chuckles like something’s funny. “Yeah.” He jerks his head toward the back. “In here.” He hops out, goes round to the side. A moment passes and he raps his knuckles on the side of Max’s truck.
“Well? You want him? I don’t have all fuckin’ evening.”
Max tucks the pistol in the waist of his pants, leaves the truck running. Keith has the backdoor open, waiting. Max follows him to look inside.
Fuck.
The boy in question is lying on the backseat, his head resting on a balled up hoodie like a pillow. He’s long-limbed but thin, knobby elbows wider than his bicep. There’s a bruise on one cheek like a shadow, yellowing on the edges. He shakes a strand of wavy hair from his eyes and blinks cautiously up at them, pushing himself up on his hands.
“Well?” Keith pulls out his cigarette pack, lights another smoke. The boy watches the lighter warily until it’s back in his pocket.
“Look worth eighteen grand to you, Max?”
The boy pales at the mention of an exchange, eyes going from one man to the other.
“Yeah.” Max clears his throat. “Yeah.”
Keith shrugs. “To each their own, I guess.”
“I need to sign something?”
Erik Holstrom’s signature is already on the document. Max reads it over quickly, signs his name next to where it says “buyer”. Keith folds the paper, puts it in his back pocket.
“Alright. Get out, kid. Sayonara. ”
The boy hesitates. He would look younger than his eighteen years but for a wary intelligence in his eyes.
“I said out,” Keith growls, grabbing the boy’s arm, dragging him out onto the pavement. The poor thing lands hard on a knee and whimpers, cringing there as if expecting a blow.
“Here,” Max says quickly, pulling the fat orange folder from his jacket, pushing it at Keith. “Take it.”
Keith grins at him around his cigarette, takes it. “I’ll assume it’s all here.”
“It is. Count it.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll hear from us if it isn’t.”
Max isn’t even listening. He’s squatting down to the boy on the pavement. He cringes away, holding his arm protectively.
“Can you stand?”
He tries, but he can barely get up off the pavement. Max scoops him up instinctively, wanting this to be over with, wanting to get out of this parking lot. The boy whimpers, holds onto him around the neck. Max uses his knee to help support the boy’s weight as he opens his door, places him in the passenger seat. He tugs the seatbelt over him, fastens it with a click.
“You alright?”
He doesn’t reply, just looks quietly terrified. Max shuts the door, rounds the front of his truck. The SUV is still sitting there, lights on. He doesn’t care. They’re done here, and he’s leaving. He reverses out of the spot, pulls out of the lot with a little screech of his truck’s tires. He finds himself watching the rearview to make sure they don’t follow.
“Hey,” he tries again. “What’s your name?”
Nothing. The hum of his truck, the heat on low, the yellow wash of streetlamps as they pass under them.
“Do you know what just happened?”
“Yes.” The boy says softly. “Yes master.”
Max’s head spins at how fast that happened. He hadn’t even gotten the poor thing home yet.
“Ah. Okay. We uh, we’ll talk about that later, it doesn’t matter. I’m taking you to my house, okay?”
As if the boy has a choice in the matter. “It’s not far, we’ll be there in ten minutes. We’ll get you something to eat, and you can get some rest. Everything’s going to look a little better in the morning. Always does. I’ll explain everything to you then, I promise.”
He glances over at the passenger seat. The boy is crying silently, palms turned up in his lap, resigned. Max feels a wave of guilt and shame, and very strongly, oddly, of protectiveness.
“Hey.” He shucks out of his jacket one arm at a time, careful not to jerk the wheel. “Here.” He drapes it over the boy. He responds by clinging to it, holding it tight to his chest and curling smaller like he can hide in it.
“I know you have absolutely no idea who the hell I am, but I want you… I want you to know that it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Those haunted eyes glance over at him, eyelashes stuck together with tears. Max glances at the road, back to the boy. He seems to be listening, at least. Disbelieving probably, but paying attention.
“Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise.”
He wants to put a hand on the boy’s knee, squeeze gently. It’s probably a bad idea, so he doesn’t. Words are working, at least he hopes. The boy blinks at him, tucking his mouth and nose under the collar of the jacket so only his eyes are showing.
Max huffs a laugh, if only of relief and absurdity. “You like that? You can keep it. It’s yours.”
He made up a spare bed fresh, but when he peeked in the room the next morning the boy was curled up in a ball asleep on top of the covers— Max’s jacket wrapped snugly around him.