#the plot is plotting again

“He came to me, so I am of course taking care of him.” Max said defensively.

“If he’s little for so long, he should be with his mum, I think.” Vic pointed out, not unkindly.

“He came to me Vic. I can’t just ship him off– he’s expecting me to take care of him. And Grace, she is of course okay with it.”

“Yeah but… why did he come to you? Weren’t you guys broken up for so long?” she asked, it was a reasonable question and Max hated it. He hadn’t thought about the whys, not since the first week.

“What does it matter?” Max was not pouting. The look Vic gave him suggested otherwise.

“Well, for one– you forgot about this weekend. You never forget when we’re coming.”

“I had gotten sick last week and–” Max explained, he normally wouldn’t forget. Loved it when his family came to visit, but his mind had been elsewhere this week.

“When was the last time you spoke to Blue Jaye?” Vic narrowed her eyes.

“I called her for her birthday!” Max sputtered.

“That was months ago Max.”

Max didn’t like how Vic was making it seem like he was ignoring everyone. He hadn’t been.

“I’ll call her today.”

“That’s not the point, maybe.”

Max sighed into a groan and dropped his head into his palms. Mom Vic was super annoying sometimes.

Victoria took pity on him and hugged Max close, she loved her brother dearly and worried about him a lot. Especially since he and Daniel had broken up.

Max hadn’t been very open about what happened, just that it hadn’t worked out between them. Which Victoria had found odd, considering how annoying those two had been when it came to each other.

“Do you think that maybe Daniel would switch back if his soul was with his family?” she asked softly. Max made a sound of frustration.

“He came to me Vic. Of course I’m not going to ship him off to someone else because it’s hard– different. Grace says its fine, Daniel is happy.”

“This is really important to you.”

Max pressed his tongue behind his teeth. Why couldn’t Vic be happy about this for him. Couldn’t she see this was a good thing? This was his chance, his opportunity to do better than he did before.

“Daniel needs me Vic.”

She watched him for a long time and Max wondered what she saw, if she could see the horrible thing he had done.

“What really happened between you, Max?” she asked softly, as if to not spook him.

Max took a deep breath, listening out for Little Daniel’s laugh to make sure he was still ok, still having a good time.

“I didn’t see.” Max hesitated, Vic rubbed his shoulder. “I didn’t see how bad things had gotten. I didn’t pay attention. He was drowning and I didn’t see it. Of course, I was with him at home and on the plane. But I was too caught up with the title fight. He wasn’t saying anything y’know? So I of course thought everything was ok. That he was ok.”

Max took another deep breath, he’d been so stupid. So distracted.

“Then the news about his contract came out. I hadn’t known– he never told me. Of course, I don’t know how long he’d known before it came out. Too long, I think. But he never told me. And I never asked. We got into an argument– I don’t even remember what triggered it. But I got frustrated– I was angry at myself, of course. I was upset that I hadn’t known, upset that he hadn’t told me. Upset that I hadn’t noticed how sad he was always. Upset that I clearly was being a shit boyfriend. I told him- I told him that we should just break up. And he looked at me like I’d blamed Baku on him all over again and then’d just went ‘okay’.”

“Just okay?” Vic asked.

“He said of course, ‘if that’s what you want Max’. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but it was the only thing that made sense, I think. I had wanted him to push back, to fight me on it. And then he left.”

“Do you think you’re obsessing over taking care of him now to make up f–”

“I’m not obsessing. He, of course, came here– to me. I will take care of him until he is ready.”

“You’re not helping him by shirking your other responsibilities to everyone else in your life, y’know.” she said it plainly and Max wished she’d yelled at him instead. “You’re making the same mistake again, just over correcting in the other direction. You can’t do everything on your own and you can’t use this to go back in time and fix things. Back then you were focused on only driving and you missed Daniel. Now you’re focused on only Daniel and you’re missing everyone else.”

Max sighed, Vic was right. But he needed her to understand that he would do everything to make sure that Daniel knew how important he was.

“Maxshy all good?” Came a small voice to their left. They both looked over to see Little Daniel watching them with his fingers between his teeth in anxiety. Max gave Vic a last look to end the conversation before smiling over at Little Daniel and scooping him up into his arms.

“All good Daniel. Thank you for checking.” Max could still hear Older Daniel’s voice in his head at the familiar check in question.