stilljustandrew | [ainmhianverse] same as it ever was

He nods again, and turns his face away. Not before Max can see the expression on it: deep bitterness, and shame.

"That's the difference," he says, very low. "I don't ... I don't want to go back to my old master. I don't. But I don't want to stay free either."

He wraps his arms around himself again, as though against some terrible cold.

"But I have to."

Oh, Max knows that look. And he doesn't have long to wander why. Andrew... doesn't want to be free?

It's troubling. But, considering Max spent his first months in this place almost actively seeking a new vampire to fill the void of his own master, he can't say he doesn't relate at least a little to that.

"It can be really hard to be out on your own. I can't speak to your experiences, but I do know sometimes it was just easier to let my master make the choices for me. Sometimes I do still miss that."

Max wraps his arms around him too. He will be a shield against the pain if he can be.

"You don't have to do this alone."

Again that rigid stillness, resisting the embrace, trembling with the effort.

"I do, though." An agonized whisper. "I do, I have to be alone, that's the whole --"

His voice twists upward and chokes off, and for a moment there's nothing but silent struggle.

"I know you want to help, and I, I want to let you, but I know what happens, it always happens because I'm like this, I wish I weren't but I am and I can't."

Max feels the stiffness, but he doesn't let go. He will if Andrew really tries to push him off, but not before.

"What happens? Are you afraid I'm going to get hurt? I'm not afraid of that. I don't care if I do."

Andrew shakes his head, shutting his eyes again. "It's not that. Not since ... it isn't that."

He isn't trying to push Max off. He very much wants to, and he also very much wants to sink into the embrace and bury his face in Max's shoulder, and this quivering stillness is a fragile equilibrium between those two.

"It's that," he starts, without opening his eyes, and makes a tiny choked sound that might have once known some distant kinship to laughter. "You know what happens if you feed a stray dog?"

What happens to a stray dog? The question baffles Max at first. Then, a small seed of worry starts to sprout.

"If you feed it often enough, it might become dependent?"

Another headshake, small and jerky. "That's wolves. Or bears. Something wild. But a stray dog ... if you feed it once, it thinks it belongs to you now. Because --" His face twists again, as though against some terrible pain. "Because it wants so badly to belong to someone, anyone --"

"You mean... if I help you even once you'll..." Now Max goes stiff too. He doesn't pull back but he's gone so still he's almost like the undead.

How can he not help? It's so cruel. But if he does...will he accidentally do more damage? Can he take responsibility for this man? A part of him yearns to.

"We all want to belong..." Max says carefully. "Deep down."

"I'll want to." Small and miserable. "I don't even know you, and -- and even if I did it wouldn't matter, I'm bad at telling whether someone's good or evil, I couldn't tell and I wouldn't care, that's why --"

He makes a tiny leaning movement, as though to pull away from Max's arms, but there's no strength in it.

"If it were just me," he whispers, "if it were just me it wouldn't matter. But I, I'd do things, I'd do what I was told, and I could hurt people again. I could ..."

The full horror of what Andrew is saying feels like a crushing weight against Max's chest. He WILL imprint on someone. Anyone? The conviction with which the man says it leaves no room for doubt in Max's mind.

No. Oh god. There are other people here who wouldn't believe it. Or, if they did, they wouldn't understand. Or worse. Not everyone here has good intentions. Some might seen Andrew as a tool. They might use him in exactly the way he fears. It almost feels inevitable.

"Fuck..."

He lets go at that small amount of resistance. He needs to think.

He can't let that happen. He can't let someone use Andrew. He can't let the man be turned back into a slave. But the alternative... can Max do that? Can he knowingly, intentionally, make Andrew his?

"You won't be able to hide from the whole world here. You won't be able to avoid everyone..." his heart is beating in his throat.

What is the right answer?

Despite his struggle to resist the embrace, or maybe because of it, a tiny whimper sounds deep in Andrew's throat as Max lets go of him.

"I was." His voice is small and exhausted. "Avoiding everyone. Staying alone. Back at Milliways, I was -- and it's hard, it's been hard and I'm, I'm so tired and why did they bring me here, this isn't fair --"

He turns away from Max, stumbles the few steps toward the bed, sags down to sit on its edge.

"I'm just, I'm so tired of being alone." No tears on his face now, but they're in the sound of his voice. "But I can't serve someone who's evil again, and ... and no one who's good would want me. Would want to own me. Or anyone."

"That's... that's no way to live." He's shaking his head. "There has to be a better way. There has to be."

Andrew's voice feels like a cleaver in Max's heart. It's slowly splitting him in half. He knows loneliness. He knows isolation. He knows it so well. But it's nothing compared to the hell Andrew has put himself through. All for a tenuous, fragile, freedom that feels worse than slavery? No, it isn't fair. It isn't fucking fair.

"I don't want to either..." Max says slowly, his voice is thick with emotion. "Because I never wanted to be anyone's master but my own. But..."

Can he do it? To save a brother? To save this man for whom he feels an indescribable connection. Can he do the wrong thing for the right reason? What if it's just long enough? Just long enough for them to ask the faeries to put it right. They can grant anything, can't they? They could fix this. But someone has to ask. Someone has to pony up the favor for it.

"I will. If it will keep you safe."

Max forces himself to walk to the bed, to stand over Andrew and look down on him. His insides feel slimy like his guts are made of slithering leaches. He forces his face into a mask of calm. But the tear that trickles down his cheek belies the truth.

"I'm not evil. And I swear to you, I'll never use you that way. I'll die first."

He wraps his arms around Andrew so tight it might almost hurt. With his hand to the back of his head, Max forces Andrew to lay it upon his shoulder.

"Be mine," Max whispers in his ear. "Rest now. Let me take care of you."

At the words I will, Andrew looks up in a combination of sickened dread and desperate, exhausted hope, both emotions naked on his face.

As Max approaches him, both the dread and the hope grow stronger, until the conflict of eager joy and terror is visible in his eyes, in his hitching breath, in his increasingly violent trembling. His mouth opens soundlessly, tries to shape a word, can't.

He goes completely rigid when Max's arms wind around him, struggling against the pressure bending his head down, in a stronger resistance than the last time -- and then gives way completely, all at once, collapsing against Max as a wrenching wail breaks free of him.

Be mine, and rest, and let me take care of you; it's what he's ached to hear for so long, and pushed away and rejected for all that time, and tried so hard to stop wanting, and failed.

Andrew clings to Max with shaking hands, as if afraid he'll be torn away, and sobs convulsively with despair and relief.

Keeping Andrew in that embrace while he fights, while he trembles, is the hardest thing Max has ever done. The look on the man's face will haunt his nightmares for all time, dread and hope, fear and joy... he is the savior bringing the apocalypse.

That one wrenching wail threatens to unmoor Max from his sanity. Is that the sound he made when he fell into his master's arms?

Now it's done. Andrew clings to him and sobs and Max's hand on his head strokes softly while he holds Andrew through the storm. The wind is howling inside Max's mind. Every fiber of his being screams that this is wrong. But he sets his jaw into a firm line of determination. He will find a way to make this right. He has a mission now. He won't fail his new...

His new Pet.

"Are you hungry?" Max whispers, once Andrew's sobs have quieted. "I could make you something?"

A deep shudder goes through him at the question, and the faintest thin whimper sounds in his throat again.

Because of course this is what comes next; of course it is. What comes first. Taking food from his new master's hand.

"Yes," he whispers into Max's shoulder, without moving. "Please."

Max hates himself for knowing just what to say. That self-loathing is only destined to grow as he continues down this path. He knows the playbook by heart. He's lived it. He hopes and prays that knowing will be enough to help him find the line between what must be done and what mustn't.

"Come with me to my room." It's the gentlest of orders, but it is still an order. There's no please. There will be no thank you.

"Come on." Max breaks the embrace, but will still take Andrew by the hand to lead him away from this room and into the Autumn wing.

Max's own room is much different than the basic one Andrew woke up in. It has a fully stocked kitchen now, complete with stove and refrigerator. From here, Max can and will make anything Andrew asks for, within reason.

"What do you like?" He asks, after he leads Andrew to a stool behind the kitchen counter that doubles as a tablespace.

"Do you want any coffee? Tea?" Max could go for some coffee, with a big shot of whiskey in it to boot.

He follows obediently, without hesitation. He doesn't gather anything to take with him; there's nothing here that's his.

In Max's room, he eyes the stool uncertainly, and the floor beside it, and hesitates. There's been no overt order given, and he doesn't yet know Max's body language well enough to be certain; he'll wait by the stool for a clearer instruction.

(There are two stools, is the thing. If there were only one, he would know that was for his master; as it is, he can't be sure.)

"E-either one," he says hurriedly, realizing he's been asked a direct question, "thank you, um ..."

He swallows, and asks in a very small voice: "Please, how should I address you?"

"You can take a seat on either stool," Max says once he realizes what Andrew is waiting for. He has to recall that mindset now, and how every little thing was a matter of respect and etiquette. "It doesn't matter which one, they are both the same."

Max puts a fresh filter into the coffee pot and loads it with grounds. He presses the button to start it going. Soon, the small room will be filled with the rich aroma of roasted beans.

"Call me Max."

Because he knows from experience how difficult it will be for Andrew to accept such a casual form of address for his Master, he goes on to explain, "It will be better for us both if we try to keep this new arrangement just between us. People here might not understand or approve of it. They might even try to intervene. So, I want you to always call me Max and never Master. Can you do that?"

Either stool, all right. He seats himself on one, and tries hard to squash the feeling that he'd rather be kneeling beside it.

"Yes, Max," he says at once, and adds hesitantly "... Even when no one else is around?"

"Yes. Even then. Or, if you must, you may call me Mr. Maximum." But still not Master. Never that. He doesn't think he can stomach it.

He pulls a long, and still very fresh, baguette from a bread box and starts to slice it open with a knife. His motions are practiced and fluid. Then he takes some roast beef from his refrigerator and starts to layer thin slices into a sandwich. He adds cheese and some horseradish spread. When he's done, he cuts the long sandwich in half, perfectly even, and puts them on two plates. One plate goes in front of Andrew, the other goes at the empty spot in front of the second stool.

The coffee is ready, so he pours two mugs of it and sets them out on the counter too. For now, he will resist putting anything extra in them. He needs his focus.

"Let's have lunch together and talk. I don't know much about you yet. And you don't know much about me."

He settles himself on the open stool and picks up his sandwich.

"Please eat."

(this is companionable, isn't it?)

"Thank you," Andrew whispers, and takes the sandwich in both unsteady hands, and shuts his eyes before taking a bite. It's perfect, the baguette crisp-crusted and the roast beef tender and juicy, with just the right amount of heat from the horseradish; it feels like the best thing he's ever eaten.

Two bites in, he swallows to clear his mouth and asks "What would you like to know about me?"

Andrew will have the benefit of many more delicious meals. Max will make it a mission of his to see his Pet given the best. As if that small act could somehow assuage the guilt he feels knowing what the food really represents. What it will always represent.

He remembers the first meal he ate at his master's table. After a long and dark time captive in a dungeon, eating only for nutrition with no consideration given to flavor at all (a vampire cannot taste and cannot tell if something is good or not) Max was, at last, brought to his master's table.

There, before him, were all of his favorite dishes. Purchased from the various restaurants and bakeries he had whispered of in his delirium. All of the very best was there. And when he bit into the perfectly crisp and fluffy crust of an apricot macaron, he fell to pieces and sobbed until he could hardly taste a thing past the salt of his tears and the snot leaking from his nose.

He'd broken over one bite of dessert.

Max forces himself to take a bite of his sandwich. His stomach twists in knots while he chews. So, he sets it down and focusses on talking instead.

"I want to know it all. But...start at the beginning. Where do you come from?"

The beginning. It feels like centuries ago.

"Originally, um ... Sunnydale, California. I, I grew up there."

"California. That's a long way from where I grew up." Max says thoughtfully. Sunnydale doesn't ring any bells.

"I was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. I didn't stray far from it."

He takes a slow breath and the knot in his belly loosens enough for him to try another bite of his food.

"How old are you Andrew?"

There's a long silence, and when Andrew speaks his voice is small and choked again, with the awareness of what a terrible answer it is.

"I don't know."

His face twists, and he tries again. "I, I mean I don't know exactly? I was ... I was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine when, when I first ... when I changed worlds, and I was there for maybe five or six years? And then it's been ... I think it's been a few years since then, I don't ... I don't know for sure how many."

A beat. "So I guess somewhere between thirty-five and ... and forty? I, I'm almost sure."

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