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Samwell was present for every one of his brothers’ births. Sure, maybe he has no memory of being there for Blanewell or Roywell, but the fact of the matter still stands, he was there, if still a baby himself.
His mother announces her seventh and final pregnancy while he is away, halfway through his years in boarding school before university, and he just knows he won’t be home to hold his newest, youngest sibling as soon as they’re born. Unless a miracle happens with scheduling and school holidays, this will be the first sibling he won’t be there for.
As predicted, his sophomore year comes and goes, and Maxwell Gotch is born in the winter of 1353, while Samwell sends in his application to Revington University from the uncomfortable dormitory he shares with three other boys — none of whom are his baby brother.
This is his first failure towards the young Maxwell Gotch. He vows it will also be his last.
1.
Maxwell is seven years old when Mother and Father throw Samwell his graduation party.
The first Gotch son to complete his undergraduate program in business, of course the family would throw the most lavish party money could buy, stacked not only with the most expensive alcohol and hors d’oeuvres, but also with the most notable faces in the industry.
“Brother, have you really not gotten anything yet from the bar?” Blanewell asks, his breath already stinking of whatever clear alcohol he’s got clutched in his thick hand. He tugs Samwell into a one-armed hug. “It’s your party, you big grown-up, you should try and enjoy it a little.”
Samwell laughs lightly, because it’s what he’s supposed to do. He does many things because he’s supposed to do them. For one, not drinking at his own party, because he knows Blanewell and Roywell are also of age and enjoy drinking with their university friends, and someone must keep an eye on the pair of them. Lord knows their parents won’t.
There are seven Gotch children attending the bustling party, and those not of drinking age are of the age of causing much more mischief — Samwell doesn’t fully trust twelve- and thirteen-year-old Johnwell and Wealwell to keep their hands to themselves and not destroy a piece of fine art or a guest’s expensive dress or a historic carpet in the ballroom. Someone in this family needs to have all their wits about them. It might as well be him.
“I’ll grab something later,” he tells Blanewell, so as to not make him feel bad. And he may. Once all the young ones have gone to bed, Samwell may grab a glass of nice whiskey and give his girlfriend a call — pleasantly cursing her busy schedule and gall to leave him alone at such a hectic event. But that will be much later, without his family to worry about.
“Good, good,” he says, before a polished young man makes his way into Blanewell’s field of vision. “Archibald! Archie!”
“Blanewell!” the boy calls from across the ballroom. When he meets Samwell’s eyes, he quietens down and nods respectfully. “Samwell.”
Blanewell looks between Samwell and his posh university friend, like a child being made to decide between two desserts.
“Go on,” Samwell says, no ill will between them. “Have fun with your friends; I see you all the time, don’t I?”
He nods in immense thanks and snakes his way into the crowd of university gentlemen — it may be Samwell’s party, but much of the attendees come from his younger brothers’ friends. Maybe he’d made a detrimental faux pas throughout school, only showing up for classes and not turning out for social events.
He has no regrets, of course. He studied hard and it paid off, he’s set to begin a hearty new job in the city in a couple weeks. He doesn’t need a crowd of friends at his beck and call, he’s got all he needs here in this manor.
“Samwell,” a small voice calls. Maxwell, dressed to the nines in a perfectly fitted, little maroon suit, rubs his tired eyes as he tugs at Samwell’s coattails. “I’m tired.”
He scoops the small boy into his arms. Samwell isn’t the strongest of his brothers, that honor would have to go to fifteen-year-old Hatwell — who’s put on a lot of muscle for the various athletic programs he’s trying out in school this year — but he can still confidently carry the tiniest Gotch brother.
“Where are Mother and Father?” he asks. Mother likes to drink but surely she wouldn’t abandon their smallest amidst the biggest party of his young life.
“Mother is with her girl friends and Father told me to wait while he ‘talked business,’” Maxwell mimics in a stuffy voice, perfect for their father. “But it’s been hours and I’m bored.”
Realistically, Samwell knows Maxwell was not left alone for hours, the party barely began three hours ago. But the thought of his baby brother being dropped off in some hallway while rowdy university boys roamed the manor has Samwell seeing red.
He takes Maxwell back into his bedroom on the other side of the manor and tosses him into bed. Samwell squishes in beside him in the annoying way that makes Max laugh and wriggle around, seeking freedom out from between the wall and his big brother.
“I take it you’re not enjoying the party, then?” he asks, once Maxwell decides halfway sprawled against his chest is the most comfortable place to lie. “I know there aren’t many kids here your age.”
“No.” Maxwell harrumphs and crosses his arms. “There aren’t many kids your age either.”
He scrunches his nose at him. “Are you calling me old?”
Maxwell laughs, surprised. “No, but you are old.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“But why aren’t your friends here?” he asks, ever painfully thoughtful. “All the grown ups only know Blanewell and Roywell.”
Samwell sighs deeply, tilting his head back on Maxwell’s Zephyr-themed pillowcases, because isn’t that the truth.
“Genevieve’s internship has her working late,” he says, but it’s just the excuse he’s given everyone this evening. At least he’s got a girlfriend, even if she’s not here. It shows he’s not a complete social pariah who wasted away his university years in the library. “And it’s a family event, I’m here spending time with my family, aren’t I?”
“Hmm,” Maxwell thinks, not fully buying it, but willing to let the white lie slide.
“How have you been?” Samwell pivots instead. “How is school?”
Maxwell groans like he couldn’t wait for someone to bring it up. “Malcolm Carmichael is the dumbest boy in the world.”
A laugh is pulled from Samwell’s chest, he was not expecting a child rivalry to be the highlight of Max’s school year. Something like a passion for art classes, like Wealwell, or a strong hatred for old Mr. Zimmerman, like Hatwell. But of course, he should’ve known Maxwell was not quite like the other boys.
“How so?” Samwell asks, a small smile still ghosting his lips as Max riles himself up just thinking about it.
“He never believes me when I know an answer to a question,” Maxwell stews. “Obviously I know the capital of Gath and how many crew members it takes to pilot a standard airship. But I could say, ‘The sky is blue,’ and he’d argue with me about it!”
“That does sound annoying,” he agrees.
Maxwell balls his fists in front of his chest. “He’ll get what’s coming to him if he keeps that up.”
This strikes Samwell as odd, and a bit violent for such a young boy, but he puts that thought aside for the moment. Max was getting into a lot of action movies lately, they may have put some strong thoughts into his head.
He lets Maxwell continue his tirade against this annoying little know-it-all until he wears himself out and falls asleep, still draped dramatically across Samwell. He’s glad to be home.
2.
Mother passes away while Hatwell is studying abroad, during his first year at Griphall University. Everything happens so terribly fast, the illness, the death, the funeral, that Hatwell is physically unable to return home in time for any of it.
“Why doesn’t Hatwell love Mother?” Maxwell says — or sobs — into the duvet of Samwell’s guest bed, the place he’d made home for the past three days without their mother.
“What?”
“Everyone else came to see her before she— before she died,” Maxwell says. His eyes are puffy from endless tears, and Samwell hopes that will go away on its own — he’s never seen so many tears in his life, and he had to share a room with Roywell for his entire childhood. “But he didn’t even come to the funeral. Why didn’t he come home?”
“There wasn’t enough time,” he says, and scoops the boy into his arms. He’s bigger now, growing more and more every day, but still small enough to be held. “We tried to get him the earliest flight over, and he still wouldn’t make it.”
Samwell stews on the fact that father could have postponed the funeral by another day to allow Hatwell more time, but chose not to. He does not tell his baby brother this information; Samwell’s gripes with their father are his own, he does not need to sway Maxwell one way or the other.
“But Roywell was abroad, and he was even working, and he still came back,” Max says. Again, Samwell doesn’t tell him that a majority of the “work” that Father has them doing lately is just sending notices of repossession, and most of the Gotches would prefer to come home to a funeral over that kind of work. International private schools are less lax, in that regard.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” he says, though he despises the phrase. There are many things that children can understand at their age that the adults simply don’t wish to explain to them. Their father being spiteful towards the middle child, who made the unfavorable decision to travel for university, and punishing him by revoking his access to bury their late mother — that is something that a ten year old need not yet learn.
Maxwell shoves his face into a pillow, but Samwell can still hear the words: “I hate him.”
“You don’t hate him,” he says, and nudges Max’s shoulder.
“I hate him. I promise I do.”
When Hatwell finally does make it home, just a few days later, when the weekend arrives at last, he’s a mess. The entire mood of the manor is shifted, it has been tense since their mother fell ill, but it’s worse now that Hatwell’s hurt is fresh, and Father and Maxwell have had time to simmer on their disdain.
“Maxwell is taking it poorly,” Hatwell surmises aloud, as he repacks his things for the return trip back to school. It was a waste of a trip, really — there was no reprieve to be had for anyone with Hatwell returning home too late, least of all Hatwell. “I don’t think he’s said a single word to me the entire weekend.”
“He is…” Surely Hatwell would have noticed Maxwell talking to the others in the family. Truly, he’s gotten a lot closer with Wealwell this week, but is pulling away from the other boys quite a lot more. It’s been a rough week for such a young child. “He doesn’t understand why you didn’t come home, he thinks… He’s upset right now, is all.”
“You told him that I couldn’t, right?” Hatwell cools. “That you were the one that helped me book the quickest flight possible? He knows that I tried everything that I could to make it in time, right?”
“Hatwell, you know he’s going through a lot right now,” he says, trying to be the reasonable one. Always trying to be reasonable. “There’s no swaying him. He’s a young boy who just lost his mother.”
“So am I!”
Hatwell throws his suitcase to the ground and it clatters against the wood with finality. Neither of them speak for the longest moment, and tears form in Hatwell’s already-glassy eyes.
“You always take Max’s side!” Hatwell shouts, and the tears begin to fall. “He has everything, everyone right here! He got to spend time with Mother before she passed, while I was abroad, isolated from the family, all by myself. Did you know the last time I saw her was for Maxwell’s birthday?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” he says. He gathers his belongings and pushes past Samwell, into the foyer. “Have fun living in the manor for the rest of your life, playing a second father to Maxwell. At least now I know you’ll always choose him first.”
3.
“Maxwell has been suspended from school,” Father says, in lieu of hello, as Samwell picks up his office telephone.
He has to be careful not to drop the receiver from between his fingers. That cannot be right. “What?”
“I have received a message from the intermediate school, your brother has been suspended for fighting,” Father continues, a very unbothered tone about him. “I am not able to retrieve him this afternoon, so I will need you to do so.”
“What?” he repeats, still not quite understanding. His small, little brother, Maxwell, in trouble for fighting?
“Is that all you know how to say? Honestly, Samwell, I thought I raised you better,” he says. “Collect Maxwell from school right now, and let him know the trouble he will be in when he arrives at the manor.”
Before Samwell can respond with yet another dumb remark, Father hangs up, leaving him to find a way to leave the office several hours early.
The school staff has Maxwell already waiting by the curb for him, like he’s a wild animal meant to be left outside. Samwell sighs and opens the passenger door for the kid.
“What happened?” he tries his best not to sound disappointed, not to sound exactly like Father, but he’s sure it still makes its way out anyway. “You’ve gotten suspended for fighting?”
His tone absolutely comes out too gruff, because Maxwell crosses his arms and turns his cheek to look out the window. His left eye is already swollen shut. “Whatever.”
“No, I’m sorry, that came out too strong,” he dials it back as he puts the car in drive. “I want to hear what happened, I know you wouldn’t start a fight for no reason.”
“I didn’t start it,” he mumbles. “But I sure as hell finished it.”
Okay, that’s a start. That’s good news. Maxwell is just getting equal punishment to the boy who caused the problem, surely.
“What happened? Who started it?”
“Rupert Carmichael,” he huffs, and something about the name scratches the surface of a memory. “He’s a fucking asshole.”
“Carmichael,” Samwell repeats. “There’s another boy in your year with that surname, isn’t there?”
Maxwell shuts his mouth so quickly his teeth clack together and his shoulders hike all the way up to his ears.
“Max?”
“Yeah… Malcolm,” he says, still looking out the window and making it really difficult for Samwell to get a read on the situation while also driving a quickly moving vehicle. “Rupert is his older brother.”
“That was the boy you had a problem with in elementary school,” he remembers. “Is the whole family a problem to you? Do I need to talk to the parents?”
“No!” It makes Maxwell look at him, though with wild, panicked eyes. His face is so bruised and beaten, Samwell feels near tears just looking at him. “No, it’ll make it worse.”
“Max, if they’re bullying you, we need to do something about it.”
He settles back into his seat, looking straight ahead instead of out the window. A step forward. That’s fine.
“Malcolm and I are… kind of friends now, I guess,” he says, overly casual. If Samwell hasn’t heard of this yet, either it’s very new, or Max is hiding something.
“That’s good,” Samwell says, with the same amount of hesitance as Max gave him. “What happened with Rupert today, then?”
Maxwell starts to clam up, and Samwell won’t force him to talk. There’s a limited amount of time between the school and the manor, and they both know it’ll be easier to speak here than inside that house.
“He was just talking shit,” he settles on. Samwell decides that critiquing his language choice is not the battle he needs to be fighting right now and skips past that.
“So you hit him?”
“Yes— Or, well, no— He started it,” he defends.
Samwell grips the steering wheel tighter. He never had to deal with fist fighting with any of his other brothers. All of them have gotten into their own verbal scuffles, but it was unseemly to turn to fisticuffs when words work just fine. They’re not barbarians.
“You know we can’t jump to violence,” he says. “We’re Gotches, we have more self-respect than that.”
“You didn’t hear what he was saying,” Maxwell mutters. Mostly to himself, Samwell supposes.
“What did he say?”
Max stiffens in his seat, not expecting to be called upon. “Nothing true, I swear.”
“And he still managed to rile you up enough to hit him?”
Frustrated, Maxwell says, “He’s just— He doesn’t like that Malcolm and I are friends. He sort of… shoved me and called me names.”
“Okay,” Samwell says, mostly reacting by not reacting. Maxwell didn’t start the fight: good. Maxwell is getting bullied by an older boy: not good. “Okay.”
They pull up to the gate before their long driveway, and Maxwell grabs Samwell’s coat sleeve with urgency. “I’m not gay.”
Samwell blinks down at him. “Okay.”
“I’m not,” he repeats, even more anxious than before. “I swear I’m not.”
“It’s not a bad thing, to be gay,” Samwell says, just to put it out there. Just in case Maxwell doesn’t know.
“I’m not, though.”
“Okay, you’re not,” he agrees, pulling the car closer to the manor. “I believe you.”
As he grabs his school bag and exits the car, he adds, “You’re not going to tell Father, right?”
Samwell shakes his head. “Father called me about you getting into the fight. From what I’m hearing, it sounds like an older boy tried picking on you and learned his lesson.”
Max grabs his sleeve once more, it’s not quite holding his hand, he’s too old for that now, but it’s close. The peaks of his knuckles are already bruising from the force; he’ll have to hide that from Father until they heal. “Thank you. Samwell.”
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, their peace ends the moment they set foot in the manor.
“The rowdy has arrived!” Johnwell says, sitting halfway up the grand staircase, just waiting for Samwell to bring Max home.
”Who knew we had such a ruffian in our midst?” Hatwell agrees.
Maxwell has to pass by the two of them to scurry off to his room, and they don’t make it easy on him, grabbing at him as a team, like an unruly octopus teasing its prey.
“Knock it off,” Samwell chides. When Maxwell escapes to the safety of his room, he adds, “Don’t pretend you two have never been scolded in school before.”
“Scolded, yes,” Johnwell says, still all smiles. “But suspended? There’s something wrong with that boy.”
“That’s our little brother,” he says, with enough venom to make the boys hesitate in their giddy laughter. “Clearly there must be ‘something wrong’ at home, if he’s needing to act out at school. Hm?”
He follows Maxwell to his room before they can think of a proper response, but the sour looks on their faces are sufficient enough.
“Max? It’s just me,” he says, as he knocks on his door.
It’s a long moment before he hears a quiet, “You can come in,” from the other side.
He joins Maxwell on the bed, sitting gingerly on the edge this time while Maxwell curls into the wall.
“Father will have a problem with the fighting, if this happens again,” Samwell explains. “But he’ll have no problems with your sexuality.”
“I’m not gay—”
“I know, I heard you,” Samwell says calmly. “But I need you to hear that if that changes one day, if you do happen to be gay or bisexual or anything, we’re not going to love you any less. And I’ll always be here for you.”
Maxwell reluctantly nods, whatever ends the conversation soonest.
“Anyway, I had a roommate in university who’s gay,” he barrels on, earning an embarrassed groan from his little brother. “A great man, happily engaged to his long-term boyfriend, last I heard.”
4.
Samwell rushes to the back garden when he hears his brothers shouting.
It’s a far distance, from his bedroom window to the back door, so by the time he lunges outside, Maxwell has Roywell in a headlock, with a sizable bruise already forming on his delicate jaw. Both boys bicker at each other at the same time, and Samwell can’t make out either argument.
“Both of you, calm down at once,” Samwell says, in the most authoritative tone he can muster. It instantly freezes Roywell, used to being scolded, but Maxwell easily ignores him. “Maxwell!”
Samwell grabs at the arm around Roywell’s throat, trying to bodily pry his brothers apart. He manages to separate them, but it only gives an opportunity for Maxwell to rear back and strike Roywell again, this time catching him in his long nose.
“Max, stop!”
“Fucking thirty years old and still don’t know how to mind your own business,” Maxwell shouts, glaring at Roywell’s heaving form and shaking out his sore hand. Samwell wraps his arms around Max’s middle, effectively holding him back, for the moment.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong!” Maxwell continues, but Samwell thinks Roywell’s bleeding nose begs to differ.
“What is happening out here?” Samwell asks, exasperated. “Can we talk this out?”
“Not if Roywell goes to Father,” Max says. He wriggles in his hold, like he used to when he was cute and little, but now Samwell has no doubt in his mind that Maxwell will hit Roywell again if he gets free.
“Okay, he’s not going to Father, we’re all staying right here,” Samwell decides, still keeping his grip tight on Maxwell. “What’s the problem?”
Without Roywell’s face to pummel, Maxwell’s attention snaps across the garden path — his thick skull nearly crashes into Samwell’s nose with the force of it — and Samwell finally notices their guest.
A young man, in his late teens like Maxwell, stands pale and stricken with fear along the rose bushes while watching this bloody massacre unfold.
“Let me go,” Maxwell mutters, and Samwell can feel the fight leave his body.
He makes the cautious decision to let him go, but puts himself in front of Roywell, in case Maxwell needs one last shot at him. He doesn’t go for it in the slightest, instead making a beeline for the stranger near the shrubbery.
Samwell doesn’t hear what they’re saying, but Maxwell’s entire frame softens in a way he’s never seen from him before. Maxwell’s puppy dog eyes check over this boy and his usually frenetic hands twitch lamely at his sides. And everything clicks into place all at once.
“Did you say something intentionally obtuse to them?” Samwell asks Roywell, who’s still bleeding quite a bit, his silk pocket square not doing much to slow it.
From behind the pocket square, he scoffs. “Of course not, I should be offended that you even have to ask.”
“Then what happened? He attacked you out of nowhere?”
“He could’ve. He’s always been a bit too rowdy for this family.” Roywell rolls his eyes when Samwell’s frown doesn’t budge. “All I did was warn him not to be so grossly affectionate in public. These are the family gardens, after all. And Maxwell took offense for some reason.”
“Liar,” Maxwell seethes, rolling up his sleeves like he hadn’t gotten the chance to previously. The near-permanent bruises on his knuckles are bold against the unusually clean white of his sleeves. “He threatened to tell Father and get Malcolm’s Revington admission revoked!”
Samwell swivels, so his full attention turns to Roywell and his back to Maxwell, shielding the older brother from the younger. “Let’s speak later, I’ll deal with Max while he’s calm—”
“This is calm?” Roywell was away working during most of Maxwell’s brash teen years — hell, most of the Gotch brothers have moved out of the manor by now, he’s the one who keeps coming back — Samwell forgets not everyone is familiar with their littlest brother’s new demeanor.
“He’s only embarrassed,” he explains quietly, knowing Maxwell is barely a few feet away. “Let me talk to him and we’ll get this all worked out.”
Roywell hesitates, debating his options, him or their more fiery brother. “All right, if you’re sure. I trust your judgment, brother.”
“Thank you.” Samwell clasps Roywell’s shoulder in a small gesture of embrace. He takes his own pocket square and wipes the stray blood from Roywell’s lip. “Clean up a bit and I’ll be right with you, okay? And let’s not bring Father into it until we get this sorted out ourselves.”
Roywell nods stiffly and leaves the garden.
Samwell heaves a deep sigh, plasters a polite smile on his face, and turns to the two teenagers off the garden path.
“Maxwell,” he says, because he can’t figure out any other way to begin, after he just punched their brother in the face multiple times. “This must be Malcolm Carmichael, yes? I’m Samwell.”
“Yes, sir.” Malcolm lunges forward to offer his nervous hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” he says. Samwell has heard endless stories of the academic rivalries over the years, but he never imagined Malcolm as such a large man. He matches Maxwell in terms of sheer size and bulk, but seems very uninterested in getting into fights, as Max is wont to do. Seeing them together, though, he doesn’t know why he ever pictured anything different. “Maxwell, what happened?”
At just the small tinge of disappointment in his voice, Max hangs his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry,” he says. “I need to know if our brother was being homophobic and how to proceed.”
Maxwell’s head snaps up. “Oh!”
“Well?”
“Roywell… He caught us in the garden,” he says. His face goes red at the thought, and he’s more shy than Samwell’s ever seen. Malcolm, beside him, isn’t faring any better. “We weren’t doing anything wrong, just kissing, I swear!”
“It’s fine, Maxwell.” He makes a point to look at both boys with reassurance and grasp a warm hand on Max’s bicep. “I believe you. What happened next?”
“Well, Roywell didn’t like it and he said we shouldn’t be doing stuff like that in public, but we’re at home! I was just showing Malcolm the pond where Mother would throw picnics for us!”
Malcolm takes Max’s hand in his, carefully not lacing their fingers together, protecting Max’s busted knuckles.
“He said I was the one being unreasonable and he was going to tell on me to Father, but I said Father would keep Malcolm and me separated if he found out, and he’d make sure we couldn’t go to university together! And then Roywell called me rowdy and maybe then I hit him.”
“He called you… rowdy? For wanting to go to school together?” Samwell asks. He understands that Max and Malcolm may have developed a rapport for their academic rivalry, and it makes sense that they’d want to stay together for university, even if they weren’t dating. “I’m not following.”
“He said that going to an all boys school might not be good for me,” he huffs. “That it’s making me rowdy. Whatever that means.”
“Okay, I see,” he says, taking another deep breath. “While Roywell shouldn’t have called you names, you also shouldn’t have hit him.”
“But he—!”
“I know,” Samwell sighs. “But what you’ll learn as you get older is that you need to pick your battles. You can’t start fights over everything, and if you’re going to be living with Roywell for the rest of the summer, you can’t fist fight him every time he upsets you.”
“But this wasn’t just affecting me,” Maxwell says, squeezing his boyfriend’s hand. “If he tells Father, Malcolm’s academic future could be ruined, too.”
“Father’s not going to do anything.”
“You’ll talk to him?”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him, but he’s not homophobic,” Samwell explains. “He’s not going to get Malcolm kicked out of school because he finds out you’re dating. The Carmichaels are a good, educated family, he’d be happy to hear you’re together.”
Maxwell grumbles, not believing him, but that’s fine for now. Malcolm seems delighted by the praise, anyway.
“I’m going to check on Roywell, because surely his nose is broken,” Samwell says. “Then you’re going to apologize to him, because his nose is broken.”
“What? That’s his fault for talking shit about us!”
“He’ll also apologize to you for what he said. We’re family, we shouldn’t fight, physically or otherwise.”
“Fine,” he grumbles. “Always so reasonable.”
5.
“How are you doing, Max?” Samwell asks, his eyelashes still wet with drying tears. It’s the first time they’ve all been together in years, and it’s to declare bankruptcy. And of course, Father can’t keep his mouth shut and just had to call Max a rowdy to his face, again.
“How are you doing?” Maxwell asks instead. He wears white gloves and a distinguished burgundy suit, but Samwell knows it’s only to cover the constant injuries and bruises underneath.
They’re in Max’s old room, the one he hasn’t properly lived out of since he started university nearly a decade ago. He’s been splitting his time between Samwell’s place and the Revington dormitories while he keeps himself in school as long as he possibly can.
“He shouldn’t have called you that,” he says. “It’s rude and unreasonable.”
“It’s true, though,” Max says, proud and boisterous, the way he always is. “I am a rowdy, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Then I’m happy for you,” he says, but it’s hard to be happy when Max is constantly degraded on multiple fronts by this family. He’d love it if everyone could try and keep the peace for one evening, every now and again.
Maxwell hesitates. “I’m about to do something that will make you less happy, I think. It’s not very reasonable.”
“That’s okay.” Samwell sits at the edge of Maxwell’s childhood bed. It creaks ominously from disuse. “I can be reasonable enough for the both of us.”
“I can’t be a repo man. I’m not made like you, or Father, or the rest of the family,” Maxwell says, standing in front of him. He’s so tall from this angle, and Samwell can’t remember exactly when it was that Max grew up. “I can’t go and steal the MacLeods’ family farm from them — and actually, I refuse to. I won’t do it.”
“That’s okay,” Samwell says, and Max looks surprised at the very notion that someone would agree with him.
“I’m going to take the Zephyr,” Max says, like he wants Samwell to dissuade him.
“Okay.”
“And I’m bringing Wealwell with me,” he continues, expecting a challenge from Samwell that he won’t be receiving. He doesn’t know how many times he has to be on Max’s side for him to stop acting surprised about it.
“Good,” Samwell says instead. “He’s always had a traveler’s heart in him, too. It’s good the two of you will be together.”
Max finally throws himself next to Samwell on the bed, the mattress squeaks dangerously beneath them.
“You know, Wealwell’s… not my favorite brother,” he admits, like he wants Samwell to come with him on this insane quest instead.
Samwell only nods.
His work is cut out for him: two brothers, the MacLeod farm, and a giant zeppelin all unaccounted for. Which is why he must remain on the ground for this one.
He wraps his arm around his brother, and fears it may be the last time for a long time.
“He’s not my favorite brother either.”