Numb

Max & Nic ~550 words PG-13 Adult Situations, Underage, Pre-slash

“There is no us. If you get caught, it’s all on you.” Nic said.

“So what do you think?” Nic asked, looking up from the diagram of their science project that he has just spread on the library table.

“Hmmm?” Max murmured, not even looking up from the book he’s currently engrossed in. A little too engrossed, Max doesn’t read a lot and stuffy old books like the one he’s got propped up in front of him are more Nic’s domain than Max’s.

“The diagram, what do you think?”

“Huh, uh, yeah, yeah. It’s cool.”

“I might buy that if you had actually looked at it.” Nic said falling back in his chair.

“Uh, okay.” Nic, feeling more than a little irritated at his best friend who would share the grade even if Nic did all the work, leaned across the table and grabbed the spine of the book, pulling it down. It hit the top of the table with a dull thump, exposing what he had really been looking at. A glossy magazine cover with two women in lingerie on it. Nic clapped a hand over his mouth before he could gasp. He bit his lip before taking his hand away.

“Max, what are you doing?”

“Knock it off, you’re gonna get us caught!” Max hissed back, pulling the book back into place over the magazine cover.

“Us?” It was hard to yelp and whisper at the same time, but Nic thought that he managed, somehow.

“Huh?”

“There is no us. If you get caught, it’s all on you.” Nic said.

“Oh, stop being such a crumpet sucker, Nic.”

“Crumpet sucker?”

“I saw it in a cartoon.” Somehow Nic didn’t want to know.

“Can you put that thing away.”

“Could you be any more of a prude?” Max asked.

“It’s the library, there are times and places for… that—Library, Monday afternoon, when Mrs. Kitteredge is on duty is not one of them.”

“Dude.” Max folds the magazine into the book and looks at him a serious expression crossing his face and settling in like a stray cat that knew it didn’t belong there. “You need to relax, you’re going to have an ulcer by the time you’re twenty if you keep this up.”

“Oh, relax, be more like you, bring—dirty magazines—into the library?” Nic asked. “Where did you get it anyway?”

“Barry.” Barry, Max’s older brother, a boneheaded Neanderthal who was slightly more dense than an unfired brick, with only half the personality of said brick. He would kill Max if he knew that his brother had been in his stash of magazines. Their heads both snapped up as giggling approached. Through the stacks came Callie Downs, Rosanna Kirkland, Sabrina Carpenter and Rhea McKnight. All bright, pretty girls, with sparkling eyes and toothpaste ad smiles, popular, that meant that people like Max and Nic were far under their notice unless they had some sort of prank planned. So when Rhea’s attention fell on them, both he and Max scrambled out their seats, stuffing their things into their bookbags.

“Nic, Nic, wait up.” Max asked as Nic hurried toward the check-out desk.

“What?” Nic asked, slowing down for Max to catch up.

“I can’t go home like this, my mother’ll notice.” Nic had no idea what Max was talking about until he noticed how Max was twitching his thumb at the waistband of his khakis. Oh, god.

Tags: ficlet, Max/Nic, original fiction, Scar Tissue, writing exercise

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