The Big Easy
It's real easy to love Max. He's a fun guy to hang out with, knows a lot of cool stuff, and you can't hang a coat off his ego. It's easy to love him, and it's just as easy to fall in love with him; his fanmail shows that. But see, this just makes it harder when he does something that's not totally nice.
He gets compared to a puppy a lot, and you know what? It's true. He has that same energy, that general air of "cute" that means he gets away with anything - and no-one sees it coming when he snaps. Kai can say whatever he likes; even Rei, when he hasn't had enough sleep. But when Max tells me I'm being stupid, or yells at me, or, when he's mad enough, blanks me completely - when Max is anything less than easy to be around, it hurts.
Loving Max - that's not the hard part. It's realising he's not perfect, that some days he does just get mad for no reason, that he doesn't always do his share of stuff and that there are times when he acts like you don't matter to him at all. And it's realising that that's okay. Sure, there are days when I don't want to be around him - but that's nothing compared to the days when I don't want to be around anyone else. It's kind of hard to remind myself of that when he's stomping around the place and won't tell me what his deal is, but it's worth remembering, especially when he gets over whatever it is and gets around to apologising.
Just giving my OTP a little airing with a drabble I wrote a few months back but just dug up this evening. I have some more stashed away involving various pairings and characters, but Takao and Max had to be the first ones up! (Besides, this one was the shortest.) Constructive criticism is, as always, very welcome, and feedback of any kind is much adored. Thank you in advance!
In other news, just when did get this nifty QuickEdit feature? Very pleased with that - the days of deleting a single comma and re-uploading are finally over! Not so keen on its unforgiving rejection of anything asterisk, though.