Adam exhales, pushing himself around awkwardly on his knee scooter, closing his eyes as Roddy bellows his name from across the house. "Coming, coming!" he calls, balancing a tray awkwardly against the handlebars as he makes his way slowly to the living room.
Taven, Bennett, and Roddy all sit side by side either next to or on the couch, watching him passively struggle his way over to him. "Here, Roddy," he says breathlessly, holding the tray while Taven grabs Roddy's plate and hands it over reverently before he and Bennett get their own. "Breakfast."
"Great! You guys have got to taste these pancakes, I don't know what he does to them, but I've never tasted anything better."
Although it's a compliment, it leaves Adam cold. He struggles again to direct the conversation to him leaving, to get the surgery he's been needing for weeks now, but Roddy waves him off, asks for orange juice, and lets the day continue on as so many have before it.
-x
It's dark, he feels each breath rattle in his chest as he struggles to free himself from the paralyzing pressure around his waist. It's after a moment that he realizes he's yelling helplessly into the void before him, gasping for air, still fighting just to get enough leverage to sit up.
"Whoa, shit, shit, Adam, ADAM, calm down, it's just me!" The voice sounds familiar, but he's still lost in the horrorscape of working through the pain, cooking and cleaning, just to run out of the few pain meds he had on him when he'd left to Roddy's, and...
"Adam, come on, you're freaking me out here," the voice continues, breaking through a little more, Adam's breathing easing into near normalcy as he tries to figure out what's happening. "That's it, there you go, just breathe... breathe in time with me, that's what they suggest doing, right?"
It's still too dark for him to see and Adam feels around blindly, finding the source of the voice and running his fingers over the facial features of the person talking soothingly to him. After weeks of Roddy's guilt trips and wheedling, it's strange, almost unfathomable, but Adam lets his touch wander, over the person's forehead, tracing the ridges of their eyebrows, down their nose, to their lips, smoothing over their jaw. More things click into place with him, and he exhales shakily. "Max."
"Yes, yeah! It's me, it's Max," the nervous babble continues. "You're ok, man. It's just... it's us, remember? You, uh, you got released from the hospital a couple days ago after your first ankle surgery." There are fingers tracing his cheeks, warm, soothing, and Max murmurs, "Can you open your eyes, Adam?"
Then Adam realizes that that's why it's still so dark. When he gingerly pries his eyes open, it's to find the room dimly lit by a lamp on its lowest setting, Max visible just enough by its glow that Adam can read the concern and fear on his face all too well. "Oh," he breathes out.
"There you are," Max says, blinking slowly as he continues to stroke Adam's face. "Fuck, man, what the hell happened? You scared me half to death there."
Adam's feeling more and more humiliated as time goes by, realizing that he'd had such an extreme nightmare that he'd woke up screaming. "Did I... Did I wake you up?" he wonders, observing the exhausted glaze to Max's eyes.
"Don't worry about that," Max says, waving it off. "What was that?"
Adam swallows. "I, uh. I had a nightmare." Max continues to stare at him in that no shit kind of way, so he gives up. Tries to explain. "I, uh. I had gone to pay a visit to Roddy-" Max scoffs a little, then holds his hands up when Adam stares at him, motioning him to continue. "He gave me one of those knee scooters. But then he said he needed my help, and um." Adam exhales, shaking his head. "He made me move furniture and mow his lawn."
Max stares at him, jaw dropping a little. "Excuse me?" he finally asks.
"And, and- every time I tried to tell him I needed to go have surgery and leave, he found something new he needed me to do. Before I woke up, he had me powerwashing slugs off of his patio!"
Max stares blankly at him. "I, uh. "
"And there was no cell service! The place was in the middle of nowhere, there was no internet, the guy didn't even have a TV!" Adam chokes out. "I couldn't contact you, I couldn't watch Dynamite or- or anything! I had no clue what was happening! And there was a giraffe there!"
"A giraffe," Max echoes, eyebrows lifting up into his hair line.
"A stuffed giraffe that The Kingdom bought for Roddy!" Adam shudders. "The things Taven did to that thing, I swear- Max-"
His agonized recollections of this nightmare finally ease to a stop as Max grips his face and presses his forehead against Adam's. "Ok, no," he says. "I don't want to hear anymore. For one thing, there's no way I'd let that trio of Bender family wanna-bes keep you from the medical treatment you needed. For another, you really had to spend all of that time with the Simp and those other two losers with no phone, TV or internet? No wonder you woke up screaming."
Adam doesn't say anything, just breathes in deeply and leans in towards Max. "Can you help me? I can't..." he mumbles, still trying to shift his weight to lay differently.
Max nods, then helps him over to lay on his side, careful not to put any pressure on his still healing ankle, propping it up carefully with pillows. "C'mere," he mumbles, laying back down next to him and directing Adam's head onto his shoulder. Running his fingers through Adam's hair, he stares up at the ceiling and reflects on what Adam's told him. "You know really, why couldn't that idiot just hire somebody? if I needed stuff done, I wouldn't force someone who needed surgery to do it. Even I'm not that much of an asshole."
Adam huffs a laugh, then wraps an arm around Max's waist. "I don't want to think about it," he mumbles, nuzzling deeper into his warmth.
"Alright," Max murmurs, resuming the slow, methodical motions of his fingers through Adam's hair. "Go back to sleep. I'll be here if you start having more whacked out nightmares about any of those three. Or their toy giraffe."
Adam groans and nudges at him again, Max chuckling.
"Ok, I'll shut up now," he murmurs. "Just sleep. Everything's fine."
Within less than a minute, Adam is deeply asleep once more and Max exhales, hoping that the nightmares stay far, far away this time.