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He's supposed to start feeling normal any day now.

At least, that's what the shrink keeps telling him. That he'll start feeling like he's leveling out, that he'll feel like he's gonna jump out of his skin a little less. At some point it got so bad that it was pretty much a daily feeling, but Max had drowned it in so much booze that he'd stopped noticing.

It's not normal, not yet. Especially because he hasn't gotten used to the idea of going to a shrink in the first place, of taking pills every day. He feels like any day now, they're gonna tell him he's supposed to be in the loony bin instead, put him in a jacket and wheel him off.

Max feels like he's going crazy when he tells his shrink this, when the guy adjusts his glasses, pauses for a moment and suggests Max find a job. Because being occupied with something might help.

Only, Max hasn't worked in months, since he took a break from McCormick's, and he sure as shit knows he can't go back there. Not just because he doesn't wanna beg Luce for his old job back, but because pouring and serving drinks seems like a bad idea.

The shrink leaves him to think about where he "wants to go from here" and says they'll talk about it next time.

He thinks about it most of the day: when he goes to the park, when he gets bored of that and decides to go grocery shopping, when he ends up making a fucking mess in the kitchen trying to make dinner just for something to do.

By the time Brian comes home, he still hasn't figured it out, but he's starting to warm up to the idea.

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For the first time in a while, his work days were more stressful than his nights at home.

Not that things were all better. Brian wasn't an idiot or a completely selfish bastard, despite public opinion. He knew it was a process. He knew there wasn't any such thing as normal or cured or afterward. You adapted, you moved on, but there were certain things you would carry with you for the rest of your fucking life. Max would carry a load of shit with him, and no amount of therapy or drugs would take any of it away.

Truthfully, Brian fucking hated therapy, hated all that touchy-feely, self-indulgent bullshit, but if it made it so Max could live with himself, Brian probably would've paid out of pocket for it for the rest of their fucking lives.

When he came home that night, after a long day in a series of long days, he was keyed up, ready for a fight or a fuck or a stiff drink or all three. He squared his shoulders, opened the door, already yanking his tie from around his neck and kicking off his shoes.

"Honey, I'm home..." He called, his own private joke, but he froze just inside the door. "Jesus," he said, tossing his briefcase and keys on the table.

"I hope you're planning on cleaning that shit up."

It's probably saying something that Max doesn't realize the extent of the mess he's made in the kitchen until Brian walks in and says something about it. At some point after deciding he was gonna make dinner in the first place, he thought it'd be a good idea to make pasta, which is a lot fucking harder than it looks.

"Uh, yeah. Shit..." Max says, giving the kitchen around him a once-over, almost as if this is the first time he's realized he's actually going to have to clean it up. "I was trying to make this spaghetti... pesto... thing."

Choking out a laugh, Brian made his way into the kitchen, brushing past Max and his mess on his way to the fridge. He grabbed a bottle of water -- Pipsyco. Don't even get him fucking started -- and cracked the lid, downing nearly half of it in three big gulps. It wasn't the straight vodka he'd been hoping for, but they'd taken all of that shit out of the house, so his options were limited.

Setting the bottle down on the counter, he leaned over Max's shoulder and looked down into the pot with an arched brow. "At least it's green." Smirking, he settled his hands on Max's hips and turned to press a kiss to Max's cheek.

"Yeah, I probably wouldn't eat it, though, if I were you." Max says, not realizing until Brian's already pulled away how much he was leaning into it. But this is normal shit. Normal shit they'd gotten away from for a while. Even if their normal didn't ever include Max trying to cook.

"And waste all that effort?" Brian faked an appalled look, reached into the drawer and pulled out a spoon. His brow arched, he dipped it into the sauce and brought it to his lips.

He was silent for a moment, his brow pinched with concentration before that seriousness cracked and he snorted out a laugh.

"Jesus."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Max laughs, because there was a point where he figured he'd fucked everything up, and had spent the past half an hour after that trying to fix it. He should have known that he wasn't cut out for this kind of stuff.

At least he can be sure he didn't somehow miss his calling in life.

Edited 2016-07-27 18:02 (UTC)

"I'll remember to trust you next time," Brian said wryly, handing Max the spoon and taking a step back. He didn't move far, his hand lingering against Max's hip.

"I'm thinking... Thai," he said, pulling out his phone and scrolling through possible takeout options.

"Nothing green," Max suggests, and he glances down at Brian's hand on his hip as he takes the spoon, but doesn't move.

Sometimes, he's still not sure why the hell Brian puts up with all of this. They're coming out of the other end of a lot of shit now, but for a while, Max had been convinced he was gonna come home to Brian telling him to get the hell out.

It's good to go back to the minor stuff.

Rattling off their usual order, Brian tossed his phone on the counter and turned to Max.

"So, where's the kid?"

Most likely, Kimmy had taken him somewhere -- if they were lucky, she'd taken the kid for the night -- but he was still obligated to at least ask.