#sq.asks

He’s blearily struggling through 21x43—well, okay, not true, he’s trying to summon up the courage to restart his mathematical brain—when his door slams open. 

“If you don’t turn that fucking thing off, I’m going to smash it into the fucking wall,” Max announces, and Oscar’s able to distract himself from the air raid siren by looking up at him. 

Max’s hair’s a mess and his boxers are still stained from their midnight ice cream and his beard’s just a little longer than it was yesterday—

“Oscar!”

“Fuck me,” Oscar groans, gripping his phone like that’s going to shut it up. “Yeah, you fucking cunt, I’m awake, I just don’t fucking know what 21 times 43 is, 800, fucking eight-hundred-and-forty—”

“Nine-hundred-and-three!” Max shouts, hand pressed to his ears. 

Oscar bangs it in.

“Jesus Christ,” he says into the ensuing silence.

Max huffs, tramping towards the bed. “Your room’s fucking freezing,” is all the explanation Oscar gets before an icy body slips under his duvet. 

“I need to wake up,” Oscar says, inching away from the icicles attached to Max. 

Max huffs and tugs him back, plastering himself to Oscar’s back and swinging his leg over Oscar’s. “Already you’re awake, that alarm would of course wake the dead.”

“You’re cold, you arsehole, get off me!”

Max tightens his grip. “Not until I’m warm. What time is your second alarm, I want a nap?” 

“Fuck,” Oscar says succinctly, and when he drags himself out Max lets him go. “I don’t fucking have one, I’m late, it’s not fucking fair that you don’t have work today.”

“I have work,” Max counters immediately. “I have a long day, you know this.”

Oscar’s rummaging through his chest of drawers, but he takes the time to glare over his shoulder. “Yeah, the kind of long day that involves you doing meetings in your boxers in my living room?”

“Exactly!” Max has wrapped his arms around Oscar’s pillow now, completely cocooned in his duvet. “Boring, boring meetings, at least you’re building something.”

“Fuck off!” Oscar shouts as he heads into the bathroom. Max responds with a soft snore. It's probably fake.

“Afternoon!”

“Evening?” Oscar wonders, squinting up at the pinking sky. 

“Evening,” his neighbour agrees. “Long day?”

Oscar summons up a polite smile. “Yeah.”

“I’ll let you get in, then. Everything okay with your boy?” 

“What?”

“No, I know, you’re doing well, it’s just, I heard, this morning. There was a bit of shouting, you know? Thought I should check.”

“Right,” Oscar says slowly. “Um. Sorry if you, sorry to disturb you?”

“No, no. You’re still much better than the last neighbours, don’t worry. All good at home, then?”

“Yeah,” Oscar says faintly, wondering if after nearly five years of living near London he just hasn’t come across the friendship version of your boy. “Um, no, yeah, we’re good. See you?”

“See you later!”

“Max,” Oscar starts, tossing his backpack onto the floor next to the couch.

In a meeting, Max mouths, and Oscar shuts his mouth and heads for the kitchen. It’s not like Max’s camera is on, but he looked like he was concentrating, so. 

Oscar’s halfway through airfrying one of Max’s kebabs when his phone buzzes.

Need something? Max has asked, and Oscar has to smile at his phone. It’s so Max-like to ask, actually. 

Nope. How long?

Done in 10.

Great. Oscar can get this kebab sandwich down in ten, easily, and then he can go and demand answers from Max.

“What’s wrong?” Max demands, shoving his AirPods into their case with unusual ferocity approximately half a second after signing off on his call. “Was it that bitch with the ideas again?”

Oscar doubles over laughing. “No, he was fine today,” he wheezes out, and Max grins in satisfaction.

“Good. I told you, you have to scare them or it will be always the same thing. You’re not okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You ate my kebabs.”

“Kebab,” Oscar corrects, “and I bought them. I ate my kebab.”

“Cunt,” Max says, mocking, clearly meant to be Australian, and Oscar bursts out laughing. Max grins back at him. “Why did you eat kebab?”

“Didn’t have lunch, I was busy, doesn’t matter. Hey, um. Have you spoken to my neighbour recently?”

Max starts, pink creeping across his cheeks. “Did she say something?” he demands.

“Yeah, um,” Oscar starts, only to be interrupted.

“Look, already I offered to pay her back, how was I to know that she had expensive flower plants on the wall, I was just walking with my hand on it, and I thought she was okay afterwards, I don’t know why she has to tell you now, it’s not fair.”

“That was you? You broke the creeper?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

Oscar shakes his head, biting his lip to muffle his laughter.

“Oh. But you said, you said she said this?”

“She, um.” Oscar knows he’s blushing. “She called your my boy, I figured maybe she’d said something to you, or you’d said something to her, not that you broke her fucking creeper, you blind cunt.”

“Shut up about the plant, okay? Or I will have to tell Lando about the—”

“What plant?” Oscar asks immediately, because he knows Max would do it, and he’s not having that. 

“Okay, good.” Max stretches his arms out, and oh, if he was Oscar’s boyfriend, he thinks he’d have to do something unspeakable to those shoulders. “What do you mean, she thinks I’m your boy? Like son, or boyfriend?”

“Son?” Oscar chokes out. “Jesus Christ, Max, you’re obviously older than me.”

“Yes, well, you’re going bald,” Max says bluntly, and Oscar inevitably has to poke at his hairline. “So boyfriend, then?”

“Yeah, because someone came into my room this morning and shouted at me, I reckon she thought we were having a domestic.”

“So turn off your fucking alarm, I don’t need to hear that, you don’t need to hear that, you always wake up fine when you’re at mine.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because,” Oscar begins, except he doesn’t actually have an answer to that.

“Because?”

“Because your alarm’s worse than mine,” Oscar says immediately, even though objectively that’s untrue, for more than one reason. 

“The fuck it is. Tell you what, swap alarms tomorrow, let’s fucking see who wakes up first.”

“You’re staying tonight?” Oscar asks, inordinately pleased.

“Oh.” Max flushes pink again, harder. He lifts a hand to tuck hair behind his ear, or pretend to. “Yeah, you don’t mind?”

“No, that’s fine,” Oscar says hurriedly. “I’m not swapping alarms though, fuck that.”

“Mate, there are feathers all over your room.” Max sounds rather annoyed about this, but considering that he’s splayed across Oscar’s couch and tickling himself with one of said feathers, Oscar’s not going to take him seriously. 

“Yeah, well. It’s my room, and I think I’m moulting.” Oscar strips off his fireproof top and finally, finally gets his wings out. He thinks he might let out a moan at the sudden relief. 

“You think you’re moulting?” Max demands, standing up and crowding behind Oscar. Apparently he’s decided he’s examining Oscar’s wings. As if he knows what he’s looking for. “Mate, they look fine to me.”

Oscar sighs, turning his head to peer over his shoulder at Max. He has to bring one of his wings down to do it. “They are fine. Surely, I don’t know, Yuki must have moulted.”

“Probably?” Max looks faintly surprised by the question. Oscar tries not to be endeared and fails miserably.

“So you should know that it’s not like my wings are dying or anything? They just fall out a bit, there’re always more.”

“Oh! Like cats,” Max says in sudden understanding. There’s a sudden, ticklish presence right around Oscar’s right tufts, Max’s hand. His thumb is stroking along some of the feathers, a perfect deep pressure that Oscar sighs into. “You’re just shedding.”

“Sure,” Oscar says, sighing again as Max’s other hand starts the same motion. It takes him a solid five seconds to turn his head again and ask, “Um. What are you doing?”

“No idea. Sounds like it’s working, yeah?”

Oscar squirms away, cheeks going hot. He’s suddenly very aware that he should have pulled on a wing-proof t-shirt before letting his wings out. Now he’s kind of stuck shirtless until he pulls his wings back in. 

“Hey.” Max tugs him back by the wings, which shouldn’t be possible, except probably Oscar wasn’t really resisting. “I was just figuring it out. You can keep making those noises, okay?”

Oscar sighs again, maybe partly because Max is doing something entirely new with his thumbs. “At least talk about something?” 

Max laughs, raspy. “Just something?” 

Oscar pushes his shoulders back into Max’s hands. “Yeah,” he says, blushing again even though he knows Max knows how much he likes to hear him talk. “Just something.”

Two weeks later, Oscar’s simultaneously done with the triple header and raring to go. The car’s fast. He thinks if they nail the set-up, it’ll be front row tomorrow and podium on Sunday, however quick the Mercedes is.

He’s just going to have to fight Max for it.

Speaking of.

“Mate, which room are you?” Max demands, punching the button for their floor. Oscar gapes at him. He’s already persuaded Oscar to ditch his team and drive him back to the hotel. Now he wants to come to Oscar’s room?

“Why?”

Max scratches the back of his neck. “I have this thing,” he says, evasive but stubborn. “I’ll join you, okay? Which room?”

Oscar sighs. “Three down on the left.”

Max claps him on the back, hand roaming up to squeeze his neck and down to trace the wing-slit scars. It’s overly familiar and also kind of ridiculous that he can find them so perfectly even over Oscar’s hoodie. “Okay. I’ll be with you in a few minutes, yeah?”

Oscar doesn’t know what Max’s thing is, or what he wants to do in Oscar’s room, but he’s pretty sure it’s something to do with Oscar’s wings. Max is, putting it mildly, a little obsessed with Oscar’s wings.

He gets a t-shirt on and pops them out, doing a quick check to make sure nothing’s gone wonky. He’s not going to bother with the couch; the room’s intended for winged people, but there’s nothing more comfortable than flopping onto his stomach with his wings spread. 

He groans when the knock comes. He should have sent Max a keycard in the app. No, wait—he can still do that.

“Mate, you couldn’t just open the door?” Max complains, tramping in and kicking off his shoes. Oscar should probably turn himself around, but he can’t be bothered. He looks over his shoulder to find Max with a huge box in his arms, which he promptly dumps on the bed next to Oscar.

“What the fuck is that?”

“I told you, it’s the thing,” Max explains, opening the box to reveal a shit ton of packaged stuff. 

Well. “Explains”. 

“What fucking thing?” Oscar demands, very reasonably. There’s a diagram of wings in there somewhere. He thinks he deserves to know.

“I don’t actually know, it’s supposed to be good for after you’ve moulted. I’ve of course read the instructions already, it’s not very complicated.”

The sheer amount of stuff in the box seems to disagree. “You sure about that?” Oscar rolls onto his side, swinging up his left wing so he doesn’t squash it, and tries to examine the stuff in the box. Max gets a hand on his back and shoves him back down.

“Yes, I’m sure. Lie still, okay?”

Oscar takes a moment to question himself. Is he about to let his teammate use a device of unknown origin and unknown function on his newly moulted, still slightly tender wings?

Apparently the answer is yes, because when Max fits something onto his right wing, right where it meets his body, he doesn’t stop him.

“What were you saying about the front in the chicane?” Max asks, clipping more bits of what feels like some sort of silicone, maybe, onto Oscar. His fingers trail along feathers and, inexplicably, Oscar’s shoulders. “You know, this would be a lot easier without the shirt.”

Oscar turns his head to squint up at him. “How, exactly?”

Max falters, visibly, but keeps working. “Easier to get this stuff on, you know?”

Oscar’s not sure he does, but he lets it go. “It felt snappy, you know? More like it did in Spa, before we got the new wing.”

“Yeah, but you said this already in the meeting. I feel like there was something else?”

“Mmh,” Oscar agrees. “You feeling it too?”

“Yeah, it’s different—ha, there, I’m done.” Max’s hands roam, flat, down the planes of Oscar’s wings, muted by the stuff he’s attached to them. The car is forgotten. “Ready?”

“Ready for what,” Oscar demands, watching as Max pulls another box out of the big box. That one gets tossed to the floor, mostly empty. 

“This is the controller,” Max explains, pulling something out of the small box. It’s not very big, maybe a little bigger than Max’s hand, and it’s—

Oscar thinks it’s a person with wings, like a statuette, except the person is mostly buttons and the wings are, in comparison, ridiculously detailed.

They’re Red Bull blue, red and gold tinges throughout. They look a lot like Oscar’s.

“Controller for what?” 

“For the thing, of course. See, I turn it on, and then if I touch this part, you can—you feel it?”

Yeah, Oscar feels it. It feels like his wings are lighting up exactly where Max’s thumb is touching the “controller”. Max presses in, rolling his thumb, and Oscar feels it.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding furiously, and then Max touches the other wing and does something to the buttons and fuck.

He drops his face into the mattress and groans, feeling the warm pressure, the feeling of someone gently touching bigger sections of his wings than human hands could manage. 

It stops. There’s nothing left except the physical stuff on his wings. 

“Oscar? Mate, are you alive?” Max demands, and Oscar lifts his head to blink up at him. “Is something wrong? It’s not supposed to hurt, did it hurt?”

“Yeah, no, didn’t hurt,” Oscar mumbles. “It felt, um. Nice. Where the fuck did you get this thing?”

Max purses his lips, looks away, looks back. “A shop, of course.”

“You go to shops?”

Well, obviously. Oscar’s bumped into Max in the Carrefour before. He’s pretty you couldn’t find this in the wingcare aisle there.

Max scowls. “Online, then. There were some wing stuff, I was of course just going to get one of those massage brushes, but then I saw this.” He shakes the controller and Oscar braces himself, nearly expecting his wings to start flapping without his permission. “Reminded me of you, you know?”

“You were going to get a massage brush?” Oscar glances, suspiciously, at Max’s very wing-free back. “Are you hiding wings, mate?”

Max goes pink. “Obviously I’m not fucking hiding wings, why the fuck would I do that?” he snaps, despite having taken every opportunity to inform Oscar that he would hide his wings if he could. “Look, can I turn the thing on again?”

Oscar squints at it. “How does it work again? You touch the wings and it attacks mine?”

“Attacks?”

“Felt a bit like it, yeah. Gentle attacks. So?”

“Yeah, it’s of course got settings, turn up and down the speed and heat and stuff, we can play with that, but yes. I think the idea is that it’s like if someone was massaging you, but for big parts at once. I touch here, you feel it on this whole part.”

“It’s a voodoo doll,” Oscar says flatly, holding in a laugh. “You bought a fucking voodoo doll, you sick cunt.”

“It’s not voodoo,” Max defends. “Voodoo is the shit with the pins, right? Daniel of course tried it on me once, it’s bullshit.”

“What?”

“What?” Max parrots. “It didn’t work, there was just a lot of fucking smoke. I think maybe we got a little high, actually.”

“Right,” Oscar says faintly. Apparently that’s just a thing that happened. “So, because that didn’t work and this does, it’s…not voodoo?”

“Exactly. Mate, come on, I want to turn it on. You’ll like it, I promise.”

Oscar wriggles when Max runs a hand down his back. He thinks Max is right. It felt good. He also thinks that this is probably something he should try out with Artturi, not—not his teammate. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and Max laughs in delight.

“Great. One sec, I’m going to do a bit of heat, okay? Tell me if something is wrong.”

He turns it on. Oscar watches in apprehension as his thumbs inch closer to the spine of the doll. His wings seem to light up with Max’s touch, even though Max isn’t touching him. Max is sweeping his thumbs across some fucking voodoo doll and Oscar might be actually fucking dying.

“Feels nice,” he gasps out when Max asks him something. He realises how terrible it sounds a moment too late and buries his face in the mattress, whimpering.

“Hey, wait, I need to hear you,” Max says, loud in his ear. The pressure on his wings disappears. “Oscar?”

“Yeah?” Oscar mumbles, turning his head to the side to sort of look at Max. 

Max’s hand, inexplicably, pushes his hair back. “Mate, you’re really warm, is that too hot?”

“No, it’s fine,” Oscar says immediately, sure of this at least. “Why’d you stop?”

Max laughs. “Okay, okay. Let me hear you, yeah?” 

He waits, expectant, so Oscar sort of nods in the hope that Max will turn the thing on again.

Oscar’s tried both. He’d know. Even fifteen minutes into being a dog for the first time, it’s made itself obvious. Even the feeling of the sterile, tiled floor under his paws is different.

He looks up at the clock and immediately stops what he was doing. It’s nearly an hour since the procedure started, which means they should be—

Max. Oscar can smell him on the other side of the door, and it takes no time at all for him to bound over and wait for it to swing open.

“Yeah, I heard you. Can I?” Max demands of someone, familiar, and Oscar can’t help but whine at the delay. It’s time. They promised. “Look at him, he’s waiting. I am going in.”

Oscar trots forwards the moment Max steps in, bumping delightedly against Max’s legs as the door closes again. He doesn’t stumble; he wouldn’t. He’s still stronger than Oscar is.

“Hey, boy,” Max says, grinning, hands catching Oscar’s ruff. Oscar stills naturally, looking up at Max, who looks rather different through dog eyes. 

Not that different. There’s still magic at play here, letting Oscar feel at home in his new second body, stopping him from walking into any walls or not recognising the people around him. 

“We’re good,” Max says clearly, looking away from Oscar. “The cameras go off now, yeah?”

Oscar hears a muffled confirmation. He wouldn’t really care, when they’ve already seen the last hour, Oscar’s body going through its third change.

He chose this one. He went in with his eyes open, with Carlos and Max and Charles fully behind him, with the promise of pack support. 

It means that the first person he’s seen after his shift is Max, who’s kneeling up in front of him and tugging him closer. Oscar goes willingly, letting Max bury his face in the fur of Oscar’s neck—a lot of fur, he thinks—and mark him.

“I’ll text the group, yeah?” Max pulls his phone out as he says it, turning to rest against the bulk of Oscar’s body as he types. 

All good here@Carlos do we know what dog this is

Oscar sees himself for the first time in the selfie Max sends. He’s white, and that’s about all he can say. He’s a lot smaller than he was as a werewolf, probably smaller than an ordinary wolf too, but he’s no terrier. 

He is a Great Pyrenees, Carlos replies almost instantly. And very beautiful.

“Pyrenees, huh?” Max asks, meeting Oscar’s eyes. “Maybe you are Spanish now, like Carlos, if you are a dog from the Pyrenees.”

Oscar looks at the phone again, where Max is starting to search up this dog breed that Oscar may or may not be, and whines. Max looks at him immediately, frowning. 

“Oscar?”

Oscar huffs at him, glaring at the phone in the hope that Max will get it. Pay attention to me, he demands, knowing that Max won’t hear him. 

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Max demands, so Oscar considers it. He could shift, he supposes. He’s tested it out already and he can do it just fine, but Max puts the phone away and that’s all Oscar needed. He grins at Max as best as he can, letting his tongue drop out. Max huffs too, standing up, a hand in Oscar’s fur for the balance he doesn’t need. “Really?”

Oscar tries to laugh. He doesn’t know what it comes out as in this new body, only that Max laughs too, scratching at the skin under Oscar’s fur.

“I missed—” Unusually, he stops himself, cheeks going red. Oscar tilts his head, questioning. Max tucks an imaginary lock of hair behind his ear. “I missed having you like this,” he says sincerely. “It’s good you are not just human anymore.”

Oscar thinks so too. He’d been so sure about this, even with the risks, and he doesn’t think he’s been proved wrong. He is getting a little restless, though, rather like a dog that needs to be walked. He nudges Max with his head, inquisitive and a little impatient.

“You want me to shift,” Max states. He’s already getting his clothes off, which means he’s already decided, which means talking about it is useless. Oscar decides to position himself at the door while he’s waiting, because Charles probably wouldn’t appreciate anyone outside the pack walking in on a mostly naked Max.

A soft rumble warns him that Max is fully wolf now. He’s halfway through turning when Max pounces, knocking him over. He smells so—so Max. Everything that Oscar hasn’t been able to smell since he became human again, pressing him down and sinking its teeth into him.

Oscar fights back, pitting his new strength against Max, and has it proved very thoroughly that Max is still stronger. He finds himself on his back, Max’s teeth digging into his exposed belly.

He stays very still and whines deep in his throat, giving himself over, and Max takes that as a cue to lunge up and start licking him. 

He’s very thorough, almost like a cat washing its kittens, dragging his tongue roughly over Oscar’s fur and using his paws to hold him down. Oscar hadn’t even planned to protest.

He gets a lick of his own in, something he hasn’t done since he was a wolf, and then realises that it’s something he wants to do. Max lets him roll them over, tongue hanging out in a wolfy grin, and Oscar goes to work getting his scent all over Max.

It’s only when Max’s phone vibrates that he stops to think about what Charles might think.

He fetches the phone for Max and they look at it together. It’s Charles. Max sighs, pokes pointedly at Oscar, and lays his head in his paws, eyes half-closed, the lazy alpha wolf Oscar loves.

Oscar’s laugh carries through his shift. The call rings out as he blinks to reset his eyes, and he growls wordlessly at the phone. 

Max huffs. “Yeah, okay,” Oscar mumbles, flicking it unlocked and calling Charles back, careful to keep most of his body out of frame. “Hey.”

“Oscar!” Charles shuffles behind the phone for a moment. “Wait, why are you human? Where is your dog?”

Oscar considers explaining that dogs can’t really answer the phone and decides it isn’t worth his time. He props the phone up against the leg of the otherwise useless hospital bed and makes sure that Max is in sight.

“Ohhh,” Charles says. “Max, you are useless.”

Max lolls his tongue out and makes no effort to reply. Oscar shifts a little closer, instinctively finding Max’s warmth. “Is Carlos there?” he asks when Charles has been silent for a few seconds.

“Oh. No, he is already driving to you. Maybe he’s in the hospital, I don’t know,” Charles says indifferently. “Are you going to show me this dog? Did you want to wait?”

Oscar looks down at Max. He only realises he’s asking for permission once he’s waited for an answer, a peaceful flick of an ear. 

Shifting is a little harder this time, so soon after the last one. It’s worth it for the impressed noise Charles makes, getting so close to the screen that all Oscar can see in it is a bit of his ear. 

“You are huge. And so fluffy, I love it.”

Oscar finds his tail wagging, delighted. He hasn’t quite got the hang of his new floppy ears yet, but he thinks they’re doing something. 

Charles laughs. “Very cute. Bye, Oscar.” He doesn’t wait for anything, just hangs up. 

Max huffs again at the phone, scent fonder than his expression. Oscar drops to the floor and crawls closer, squeezing into the gap between Max and the bed so he can lie nose-to-nose with Max. 

Max lifts his head, dwarfing Oscar, and, after a moment’s consideration, closes his jaws around Oscar’s muzzle.

There’s no point to it. Oscar knows it and he knows Max knows it, but he closes his eyes anyway. He can smell Max’s last meal, some kind of kebab. Lamb, Oscar thinks, even if he’d had a few pieces of chicken with it. 

Mostly, Oscar isn’t thinking of much at all, just letting himself revel in the rightness of it all, of being in this new body with Max in front of him, exactly the same as he’s always been.

Max lets him go with a final few aggressive licks, padding over to the door and tilting his head. Oscar follows him there, standing at his shoulder and straining to smell or hear whatever Max can.

It’s Carlos, he realises, and finds himself yipping excitedly. Max looks back at his pile of clothes, and then, obviously deciding that Carlos isn’t worth the trouble, settles down just inside the door. 

The look he gives Oscar is pretty obvious. Oscar’s going to have to find Carlos himself, shifting to human and then back again so that he can show himself off to Carlos. 

Honestly. The things he does for love.

Later, he’ll be in the same room as Max, Charles, Carlos and Lando, and they’ll all be human, Oscar tucked into Carlos’s side with half an eye on Max. They’ll scour the Wikipedia page together, double- and triple-checking that Oscar really is a Great Pyrenees, and Max will make jokes about how Oscar hates Carlos so much he chose to be French instead of Spanish, and someone else will joke about Oscar being a werewolf in sheepdog’s clothing, and Oscar will feel whole like he hasn’t since long before he was changed for the first time. 

And then the others will leave, and Oscar will get one of those rare, precious nights in Max’s nest with him and Charles, and it’ll be obvious to him that this was what he wanted all along. 

“Yeah?”

“Stop terrorising your make-up artist.”

“She isn’t scared of me,” Max protests. “Right, Chris?”

Chris ducks her head, cheeks pink as if she’s the one blush is being applied to. “No, I’m fine.”

And stop flirting with her, Oscar wants to say, but technically, it’s harmless. He would, if offered the chance, put money on Max not even realising that he is flirting. Oscar’s job does not include making Max second-guess his natural friendliness.

“I didn’t say that Chris is scared, I said stop terrorising her. Whatever you think is best, Chris.”

Chris grins at him, completely unabashed. “I’ll make your client look good, don’t worry.”

Oscar tries to smile, but his eyes are on Max’s shoulders, the sudden tightness in them. Client. 

Max doesn’t actually care. Didn’t care. As long as we are okay, he argues, what’s the problem? 

But Oscar cares, and even though Max doesn’t understand, even though he thinks it’s stupid, he’s started to react like this.

Chris’s cheeriness doesn’t fade, but she doesn’t say much more, finishing Max up and immediately disappearing.

“Don’t,” Oscar says, keeping his voice down but unable to keep his eyes away from Max.

“Osc,” Max says, standing up and nearly knocking something over. “We’re good, yeah?”

“You need to do the thing,” Oscar says faintly, because Max is almost certainly about to win a very prestigious award.

Max scowls. The make-up artist was excellent at her job, because she’s done something that highlights his scowl, too, makes it look dangerous and lovely. “I don’t give a fuck about it, you know that. Come on, you look like you swallowed a frog.”

Oscar chokes on a laugh. “Max,” he says helplessly, aching to take Max’s laughing face in his hands but very aware of the make-up. 

“Mhm?”

Oscar’s watch buzzes. “Time to go,” he says, forcing himself back to normal. “Kill it, mate.”

Max drags him in for a quick kiss. “We’ll talk later, yeah?” he says, voice rough. 

Oscar nods, watching Max clear his throat and blink hard, something heavy sinking in his stomach. He’s made Max cry, and there isn’t time for him to do anything about it. 

Max walks out, and not a single person can tell that he was fighting tears back moments ago. Oscar’s sad, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be impressed.

They don’t get to talk about it for a few days. Max is so busy, in the aftermath of the awards, and Oscar’s busy sorting him out, and they don’t get time alone even though they kind of desperately need it. 

“I want it on the calendar,” Max says stubbornly, and all things considered, Oscar’s relieved. If he can fit time together on the calendar, it becomes incontrovertible. “Every day. Stop avoiding me.”

“I’m not,” Oscar says plainly. “You’re busy.”

“Yeah, because you make me do all this shit.” As if on cue, Max is pulled away to do more of this shit, and Oscar glares down at his calendar and tries to figure out where he can block some time out.

“If you think about it,” Max starts, abrupt, the moment there’s a door between them and the outside world, “it’s good. Because you are in charge of what I look like anyway, and you know what I want.”

“Mate,” Oscar huffs. “You’ve been crying because you think it’s good?” 

Max lifts a hand to scrub at eyes that have been more teary than normal, recently, and then he drops the hand and clenches it into a fist. “Crying is normal,” he says, as if he’s trying to convince himself. “Because you’re scared. I don’t like that, when we can’t do anything about it.”

This, Oscar thinks distantly, is healthy communication. That’s not what he was hoping for when he blocked this hour off, if he’s being honest. 

“Max,” he says, and tugs Max, clenched fist and all, towards the bed. “Come on, clothes off.”

Max obeys jerkily, brows knitted in some deep thought, still moments away from tears. Oscar can get him there, and it won’t take an hour.

“It’s not good,” Oscar says quietly, using the last soft hand towel on Max’s face, “because it’s going to look bad no matter what, and they’d probably be right. I’m meant to be in charge of you.”

“You are,” Max suggests, grinning in a very specific way, and Oscar digs in with his thumb. “Okay, fine. How about I am in charge of you, because I earn the money.”

“That’s also bad, yeah,” Oscar says tiredly. “And no, it doesn’t balance out.”

Max blinks up at him. Oscar waits for him to argue, but instead, he pulls himself up to sit against the headboard and says, “Come here, darling.” And when Oscar goes, sort of stunned, Max makes a combination of soothing noises and petting motions that have Oscar crying into his neck.

“Shh,” Max says, when Oscar starts to worry. “I’ll tell you when it’s five more minutes, yeah?”

Oscar’s watch would have done that anyway. Max makes him feel safer.

Max thrusts his phone at Oscar before the door’s even swung shut. He’s been waiting, Oscar realises, even though he can’t have got here more than five minutes ago.

“What?” he asks reflexively, taking the phone and reading what Max is showing him, something on Notes that’s— “Oh.”

Max marches off to the couch, sitting there stiffly, hands on his knees, while Oscar reads. We are two adults and we make decisions together and Oscar has been behind me for everything stick out to him in a stream of consciousness that’s much longer than anything Max has ever written.

He looks between Max’s phone, Max’s heart poured out for strangers to eventually see, and his, telling him that they have ninety minutes together.

He stands in front of Max, still holding his phone, and it’s very important that he meets his eyes and says, plainly, “I love you.”

Max doesn’t stand up, but his eyes widen, clearly hoping for something, and Oscar drops awkwardly into his lap and kisses the shit out of him.

“This one is broken,” he informs Oscar disapprovingly. “We should complain.”

“I’m sure George would be delighted to.” Oscar yawns, surprising himself. He didn’t think he was that hungry. “Um. Charles?”

Charles peers at him and sighs. Oscar was expecting a rejection, considering Charles’s mood, but Charles offers up his wrist. His eyes slip shut as Oscar’s fangs break his skin.

He doesn’t give Oscar long, but it’s enough. Oscar feels hazy when he’s done. “Thank you,” he says sincerely, tempted to do something stupid like kneel at Charles’s feet. 

Charles beams at him. “You are so polite,” he says happily, tangling his hands in Oscar’s hair and kissing him. “Come on. I think there must be a secret room in here, or that rack would be on this side.”

Oscar blinks at him. “A secret room?”

“Yes, an extra cellar. Maybe a dungeon!” Charles looks excited by this. Oscar, for all that he’s a vampire, is a little squeamish about it. Well. He is until he thinks about what George might do with a secret dungeon. “You can move this shelf for me, yes?”

Oscar tests it. It’s sturdy, but he’s a vampire, and he just fed. “Yep,” he agrees, squinting at the space he’s moving it into, and starts pushing. He nearly falls into a hole as he does, hanging onto the shelf by the tips of his fingers. “Um. I think you’re right about that room.”

They kneel down together, peering into the hole. Oscar can see more barrels, which means it must be the extra cellar Charles was talking about, but—

“I think it is a dungeon,” he says blankly. 

“What? What can you see?”

“Smell,” Oscar corrects. It’s faint, but— “It’s, um. Like death?”

“Oh,” Charles breathes. “Come on, we have to go down.”

“You stay here.” Charles glares. Oscar should have known better than to order him around. “Please?”

“No. But you can go first, and catch me,” Charles says with conviction. “Bye.”

Oscar does. He has to get his phone out to give Charles some light. There are barrels, and they smell like they might still be full, but there are also huge metal hoops in the wall. 

Charles meets his eyes and they both laugh. “George will love this,” he says gleefully. “Poor Max, he will probably spend half his time locked up here.” 

Oscar can’t stop grinning, not even in sympathy with Max. “Max will love this,” he points out, and Charles doesn’t deny it. “If he’s still alive.”

Charles giggles, leaning against the wall like he belongs there. “He’s fine. You can feel him, yes?”

If Oscar puts his mind to it, he can feel the whole coven. He could probably compel them, too. He wonders, sometimes, about George. The threads are there. They go both ways. “Yeah. I reckon they’re still scrapping.”

“Hmm.” Charles looks at him sideways, and even though his eyes aren’t quite focused on Oscar’s, it still works. His pupils are huge, and it isn’t just the dark.

“Charles,” Oscar begs. Charles slides backwards against the wall, and Oscar steps closer, following him until Charles is pinned in the corner.

“Trapped in a dungeon with a vampire,” Charles murmurs, hands on Oscar’s chest as if to protect himself. “The hole is too far for me to jump, you know. And I cannot see.”

“I’ll lift you out,” Oscar promises, and Charles grins at him. He tilts his head, just a little, and Oscar pins his hands above his head and starts to drink.

Oscar ignores George’s first compulsion. He’s still busy with Charles, not really drinking from him but still mouthing at the tiny punctures they’ve left him littered with. Charles’s reactions are what make it so special, the honest noises that Oscar’s nearly never heard before.

They don’t do this. Oscar can only hope that they will, now, in the future. It doesn’t even have to be in a dungeon. Oscar’s a reasonable man.

The second one hits harder, George putting weight and authority behind it, and Oscar stumbles to his feet. 

“Oscar,” Charles whines, eyes huge and glassy, face lax, the moment they’re fully separated. “Come back.”

Oscar can’t resist that any more than he can George. He cuts George off for the single moment he needs to kiss Charles, and then he’s back with a vengeance, his will backed up by Lando and Carlos and, half-heartedly, Max.

Oscar’s mind goes without his permission. Dimly, he registers himself extricating him from Charles’s grasp and jumping out of the dungeon, out into the cellar and then up the stairs. It’s all blurry, without thought. 

“Where’s Charles?” George asks, and Oscar hears himself answer, truthful and helpless. He can’t look away from George now, feet moving in time with his. 

He comes back to himself at the edge of the hole, George in the middle of shoving himself to his knees. 

“What do you think?” George says, and Oscar realises he’s repeating himself. “Leave him trapped there?”

“You can’t,” he says, raw. 

“Just for a few hours?” 

Oscar looks, finally, at the others, and finds them all in variously mindless states of obedience. Jesus Christ. No wonder George looks like this, drunk on power, on whatever the fuck he’s doing to all of them.

“George,” he says cautiously, “he’s human.”

“Is it a dungeon?” George asks, suddenly light. “I didn’t know there was a dungeon here.”

“Used to be.” Oscar decides as he says it that he’s going to check on Charles. George catches him as he jumps, nails digging into the flesh of Oscar’s neck, puncturing his windpipe. If Oscar was human—

He tears himself off George and drops the rest of the way down, fighting George’s control for no reason other than that he can. The others aren’t backing George anymore, they’re too far under for that. 

“Oscar,” George sing-songs, face gleaming above him, eyes more red than blue. “This isn’t like you, love.”

No, it’s not. But there’s a certain savage pleasure in this, in having Charles all to himself in this dungeon, in fighting back against George like Max does. 

“Hey.” George lands lightly next to Oscar, no longer aggressive. “Don’t you want to know what I did to Max?”

Whatever else Oscar can resist, George can still force the truth out of him. He desperately wants to know what George did. He wishes he’d been there. He nods, eyes still on George’s.

George leans in, breath warmer than Oscar’s skin, sending it tingling. “I broke his wrists,” he whispers. “One at a time, over and over, every time they healed. And he let me.”

And while Oscar’s distracted by that, he forces his control back over Oscar. 

Oscar stands frozen while George trails a finger, a claw, down his chest, splitting cloth and drawing blood. “You wouldn’t enjoy it like Max, would you? You don’t want me to hurt you. So when I let you go, you’re going to get down there and kiss my feet, and you’re going to let me do what’s best for my coven.”

He waits, damningly long beats where Oscar can’t even think of fighting him off. All he can think is that George’s speeches are awful. 

Unfrozen, he turns to look at Charles, still hazy-eyed and abnormally quiet. George catches his jaw and turns him back, chiding.

Oscar isn’t compelled anymore, not really. He could step away from George, maybe even take Charles with him.

Instead, he drops his gaze and kisses George’s boots and murmurs, “Sorry, sire,” exactly how George wants him to, and waits at George’s feet while the others drop down, Max first, then Lando and Carlos together.

They’re still George’s puppets. George is starting to tremble, maybe from effort, more likely because he’s drunk on it, on the vampires behind him and Oscar at his feet.

He’s gracious and gentle helping Oscar up, turning so that they’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder and looking down at Charles.

“Remind me, Oscar, who does Charles belong to?”

“The coven.”

“My coven.” George crouches down in front of Charles, tipping his head back to centre and pressing his bloody nail against the freshest puncture wound, the one Oscar left on his neck. “My Charles.”

“You can’t—”

"I can't?" George asks, mild.

Oscar flinches. One more misstep and he thinks George will break something, maybe multiple somethings. “I mean, um. He doesn’t have a lot of blood left. He stopped me.”

George hums. He dips his head in to kiss Charles, possessive and somehow bringing Charles out of his haze for just a moment. 

“Who said anything about drinking him?” he murmurs, and oh. Oscar feels a familiar thrill of heat when his eyes meet George’s. Behind them, three vampires come out of their trances, and George smiles.

“So, gang, thoughts on the house?”

“The wine, George,” Charles urges before anyone else can speak. “The wine alone is worth the price.”

“We are not gang,” is Max’s contribution. “But, of course, the mansion was nice.”

“Lando and I like it,” Carlos confirms. “It will be a nice home for all of us, I think. And the wine is excellent.”

Arthur shrugs, laughing. “I cannot deny Charles his wine.”

George looks up at Oscar. Oscar doesn’t stop petting his hair. He’s pretty sure that’s the only reason George has his head in his lap. “Yep,” he says.

George nods vaguely. “Sounds like we’re agreed. I’ll confirm the offer, with mine and Oscar’s names on the purchase.”

There’s an agreeable silence. Oscar decides he might as well break it. “There’s something weird about it, right?” he asks idly.

It’s like the air shifts. “Oh, yeah,” Max agrees seriously, “it’s fucked.” 

“Haunted,” Lando mutters, to twin nods from Charles and Arthur. “Actually freakin’ haunted.”

“I wouldn’t, maybe, have liked to go there alone,” Carlos says.

Huh. At least Oscar wasn’t imagining it. Nobody's objecting to actually buying it, though.

“Oh, I don’t know,” George says, stretching himself out. “I thought it felt quite homey.”

Oscar closes his eyes, thinks, Give me strength, and takes a deep breath for good measure. He’s learned how to do this both quickly and subtly. 

“Yes, Mr. Sainz.”

“I want to speak to Charles.” 

Entitlement, Oscar thinks. Entitlement and arrogance and not realising that today is one of those blessed but rare days that Charles would rather spit on Carlos Sainz than play tug-of-war with him. 

“He’s occupied,” Oscar says, smiling tightly, and considers the corridor. It’s alive today, busy, paralegals and trainees and NQs all with somewhere to be and something to do. “Aren’t you?”

“It’s important,” Carlos says seriously, glancing at the closed blinds of Charles’s office. “I am only asking as a courtesy. He will not mind if I go in.”

Oscar holds his gaze and, deliberately, taps the biometric lock on his desk. He doesn’t need to hear the click to know that a red light flashes on Charles’s door.

Carlos falters. “That's new, surely? Why are you allowed to lock your boss in?”

“Charles doesn’t want to be disturbed. His emails are always open.”

If Oscar was feeling really petty—or if he knew that Charles would want it—he’d set up an email filter to archive all Carlos’s emails, but he’s not. He can be professional. Charles’s anger isn’t all directed at Carlos.

He goes back to his emails until Carlos opens his mouth again. Oscar looks up, and, as if confused, says, “Bye?”

Carlos disappears at that. Oscar takes his victories where he can get them.

“Oscar?”

Oscar doesn’t bother replying over the intercom, just slips through the door and shuts it behind him, blocking out the bustle of the corridor. Charles didn’t sound good, and he doesn’t look good, either. He looks—

Oscar considers him and heads for the windows. Charles blinks at the sudden sunlight, running his hands through his hair. His eyes, Oscar notes with some concern, are bloodshot.

“Okay, that was mean,” Charles says, glare more pathetic than cutting.

“Mean,” Oscar informs him, “would be dunking your head in the sink.” He picks Charles’s bottle up—why it was on the bookshelf, Oscar doesn’t know—and hands it to him. Charles drinks thirstily, almost as if he’s never seen water before, and Oscar decides right then and there that he is never again letting Charles lick his wounds alone.

For good measure, he refills the bottle, and Charles drinks about half of that with the same enthusiasm.

“Ahhh,” he says, wiping his mouth, and Jesus Christ.

Oscar’s a professional. He will not be entrapped by his boss. He will not be seduced. He’s not Ollie Bearman, scandalously young and off in full lycra with Carlos three evenings a week.

“Food,” he says. “Sub or Indian?”

“A burger,” Charles says, just to be petty, as Oscar’d known he would. “A big one, with all the things on it.”

Oscar grins, checking his phone. “It’ll be here in ten. Long enough for you to email Wurz?”

Charles’s face falls. “You tricked me?”

Oscar, halfway through setting Charles’s favourite model Ferrari back in the window, hesitates. He turns back to Charles. “Yeah,” he says softly.

He sees Charles swallow, running his hand through his hair again, and Oscar itches to get his grooming kit. He doesn’t, though. This, holding Charles’s gaze while he works through whatever he’s thinking about, is more important.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, should I?” Charles asks, faintly smiling.

Oscar considers it. “Probably not.”

“Hmm.” Charles walks back to his desk, stiffly enough that Oscar makes a note to get him in the gym sometime this evening. He starts typing, stealing glances at a deliberately still Oscar. 

Oscar’s settled into quietly breathing and doing absolutely nothing else when Charles says, quietly inviting, “Come here.”

Oscar does. He looks at the email, reading it over conscientiously while Charles’s eyes scorch him. 

“What do you think?” Charles asks, so Oscar looks at him, heart fluttering in his ears. 

“It looks…” he hesitates, because he doesn’t remember but doesn’t want to look away, “good.”

Charles, in a single smooth, intense movement, stands up and kisses him, hands sliding into his hair, fiercely possessive.

And Oscar, who’s imagined this often enough to know how to react, kisses back just enough to satisfy them both, to have Charles pull off, and takes a step back. Charles follows him across the room to the cabinet with the grooming kit and the mirror.