#caleb stone

The hardest part of making the show is the solitude.

You’d think Max would be relieved to finally get some space, some peace and quiet, and he was about some of it — having his own room made everything easier, from not accidentally waking someone up when you got up too early or went to bed too late, meant he didn’t have to jerk off in the shower or with his back against the door, yell, ‘I’m changing’ if the knob turned.

It meant he had a door, and that door would get knocked on before someone entered if it was closed. Doors are underrated — a door meant everything past it is his, meant it was his space, meant you needed permission. Oh, his mom would always say ‘don’t take anyone’s stuff without asking’, but that rule was ignored as much as any other ones, up to and including Max’s hockey gear, which he kept in the trunk after a certain point, just to make sure nobody touched it, only aired it out outside on sunny days, even though it made the entire car reek.

He’s still got a roomie on the road, that hasn’t changed, but when he’s not on the road, he has his own place. There were a couple offers to billet him, and in hindsight he should have taken someone up on it, but he thought it’d be nice, having his own space finally, thought it’d be nice to have something just for himself, something that belonged only to him, that no one could take from him.

It’s boring as fuck. 

And not just boring: the quiet unsettles him, even when he’s on the road, because Landon’s super considerate about wearing headphones and doing things quietly, and Max’s siblings...weren’t. Understatement. It leaves him feeling edgy, like something’s wrong, or some scheme’s being cooked up. Even though he knows logically that it’s just that he’s, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles away from them, his body doesn’t get the message, just yells ‘danger!’ at him every once in awhile. Not fun.

He always thought he was pretty big on like, space, and solitude, and all that, but apparently he isn’t, because space and solitude suck. Blow. All those things. He ends up calling home way too much to get updates on what all the gremlins are up to, and he knows his mom thinks it’s hilarious, but she humours him at least, well, right up until someone’s yelling in the background and then their conversation’s cut off with a ‘I gotta go, I’ll call you back’. 

She never does call back.

Max doesn’t take it personally, he knows exactly what she’s dealing with over there. She’s down one kid to take care of, but then, Max mostly took care of himself — minus hockey, but he always carpooled with a sympathetic teammate, and that was before he was billeting. He did a lot of the work too. Next man up: Max imagines Laura’s dealing with most of the monsters now. Good luck to them. Laura doesn’t take their shit like Max does.

Max checks his phone, sighs. Nothing, which was what he was actually hoping for, since it’s a day off and he wants to veg, but now that he’s gotten it he’s dissatisfied. He’s learned a lot about himself in the last year, starting with the fact he doesn’t seem to know shit about himself. He guesses introspection’s hard with a packed schedule and no place quiet enough to actually think. No time either, not when he was straining himself to make the league. It’s not that he isn’t still stretching, still reaching, he is, he knows he’s never going to stop, but he’s got more time on his hands than he ever has, and mostly it just leaves him restless.

Did Brit drop off Maddie? Max texts Caleb.

On her way if you want to come over Caleb replies, and Max rolls off the couch, feet in his shoes and out the door as he texts Omw

*

Max and Maddie arrive basically at the same time, Max strolling down the driveway as Brit and Caleb do the Maddie and Things transfer. You never realise how much stuff someone has until you’re lugging it to your ex’s. Not that Maddie doesn’t have stuff at both places, but sometimes she’s very particular, and ‘you have the exact same toy at your mom’s house’ is not convincing to a two year old throwing a tantrum. Not that anything’s convincing to a two year old throwing a tantrum except ‘you can have whatever you want, just please stop screaming’. Even that sometimes doesn’t work.

Brit raises her eyebrows at Caleb as Max walks up, a silent ‘seriously, him again?’, at least Caleb thinks. He’s lost some of his Brit fluency, and he’s sure she’d argue he had way less of it than he thought he did. 

Caleb shrugs. Brit’s got her whole family locally, and Maddie spends tons of time happily bouncing from cousin to cousin, grandparent to aunt to uncle, while Brit can go do things, or just chill in the kitchen talking to an adult. Caleb’s got the team, and Maddie’s had a few playdates with other little Sharks, but that’s it. When Caleb has Maddie, he’s just got Maddie. 

Well, and Carts, who is a godsend. Max makes Maddie a snack while Caleb unpacks all the stuff from Brit’s, transferring them to their places — blankie and stuffed elephant for bed, sloth picture book in the bedtime book pile — rereads the email Brit sent before she came: sloth book is current obsession, he will need to read it at least three times before bed, them’s the breaks — and spends a couple minutes in his room fully transforming into Dad. He was doing that before Brit dropped Maddie off, but then his mom called and interrupted the transformation. 

Dad doesn’t swear. Dad says words like ‘whoopsie’ when Maddie makes a mess and never raises his voice and lets her smush half-eaten crackers into his face. Dad and Caleb are different people; maybe if he was with her full-time that’d be different, but as it is, he needs some time to switch over.

Max doesn’t seem to need any — him and Maddie are currently sitting on the floor of the kitchen having a tea party with her snack. Max has a tiara hovering precariously over one ear and is holding his plastic tea cup with a dainty pinkie out.

“Room for one more,” Max says, and Caleb sits down on the cold tile, accepting his tea cup. No tiara for him, which is too bad.

Maddie starts climbing all over him sooner rather than later, clearly over this sitting calmly in a circle business, and Caleb grimaces when she finds the exact spot he took a puck last game. It’s her number one skill.

“Think it’s time for a game?” Max asks, levering himself up from the ground without a groan — Caleb forgets what that’s like — and Maddie pauses, attention piqued.

“Miss Maddie, what shall we do with you,” Max says, hands on his hips, and Caleb looks down at the floor to hide his smile, a smile that disappears as soon as he sees it, crumbs on the tile, along with — who knows what, that could be juice or maybe Maddie just oozes mess out of her pores. It seems as likely as anything else, especially since Caleb doesn’t think there’s any juice in the fridge that’s so violently pink.

She’s been here half an hour. The cleaner literally came this morning.

“Can you?” Caleb asks, but he doesn’t need to finish the question, because Maddie’s thoroughly taken care of — screeching happily as Max hoists her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold to take her to the living room, which has basically become Maddie’s playroom when she’s there — while Caleb dabs at the mess with paper towel, fully aware that it’s a fruitless quest, that the second he stops he’s going to find something else. Caleb thought he was messy until he had Maddie. Mom assures him he still is, but seriously, he’s got nothing on her.

When he finishes cleaning up and has a quick, quiet moment of Caleb to himself, checking the box scores and answering a text from Cap, he heads into the living room, finding two sets of butts too close to the TV, Maddie clinging to Max like a limpet.