"Barnes," Max hisses, attempting to stand up but failing horribly and being forced to stabilize himself on the edge of the seat.

Sadly, Barnes has to grab his forearm and pull him back up. Then, to make things worse, keep holding his forearm so that Max can grab his crutches without falling down again.

Wow. Embarrassing.

See, Max wouldn't mind literally anyone having to follow him around - except Barnes. Barnes is the exception. Barnes should just leave.

Max's reasoning for despising Barnes is completely logical, too. They used to beat the shit out of each other. He can't remember who started it or when or any of the details as to why they would beat the shit out of each other. He just knows that they did. They would practically do it all throughout elementary school. They were enemies all throughout elementary school.

And according to Max, they still are.

Eventually Max got put in special classes and Barnes went on to be smart and successful as fuck. Definitely future valedictorian. Class president. Never done anything illegal, and overall way too good to kick anyone's ass. (Because really, Max was usually the one that looked way worse.)

So, while Barnes moved on to become a golden child, Max was left with disabilities and drugs and skateboards and straight D's - which he is completely okay with, he gave up on being smart a while ago.

So they lost contact. Barnes is viewed as nice and successful while Max is deemed 'different' and 'no good' and 'definitely not someone you want your child around'.

To put it simply, Barnes cheated at life and Max hates him for it.

"Aw come on, Tucker. You can't still hate me?"

Max rips his arm away from Barnes' and attempts to storm out of the room. (Storming is pretty hard to do when you're on crutches and the bruising in your shoulder hasn't gotten much better).

Why does he even need a fucking escort? He's never gotten this sort of special treatment before! Then again, he's never really gotten this injured before. He's sprained a lot, broken a few ribs... and maybe his arm too? He can't remember, maybe he has gotten an escort before. His memory sucks. Too many injuries to count.

Eventually he makes it to Miss Reeves' class, Barnes behind him. As he steps in, he realizes the class is mostly full. And they are all staring at him.

"Max!" Miss Reeves jogs her way over to him, pulling him into a hug. He gives her a small smile when she pulls away, she's practically his third mother. "I have you set up right in the back."

Max nods, before hobbling his way towards the back. He hears Miss Reeves happily greeting Barnes behind him.

Stupid Barnes. He doesn't deserve her love.

Max feels very conflicted over his first period. After all, it's art. What does art consist of? Colors. What is Max? Colorblind. (He did kind of take this class purposefully though, in a random fit of anger at his bullshit eyesight, and he strongly regrets it now. The only thing good about this class is Miss Reeves.)

Sixteen years of living and he still doesn't have a full grasp on colors. They really all kinda run together in his mind.

This is actually a class he has with people that aren't in Special Ed. He isn't sure how the system works, all he knows is that in this class he feels a little bit normal.

His 'set up' is a rectangular table with two chairs at it. One on the long side, and the other right next to it on the shorter. In other words, it has him and Barnes sitting way too close for his liking.

Max decides to ignore that, he really doesn't want to be a girl about it. He moves another chair right across the one on the long side, so that he can rest his foot on it and set his crutches on his right side.

Good. Barnes is in his blind spot. He won't have to look at his ugly face. (That maybe isn't really so ugly.)

After he has gotten himself settled, he hears Barnes take a seat in the chair beside him, and he tries to ignore the strong urge to shove him off the chair and run out of the room like they're still kids.

Max may or may not hold grudges.

Though he can't remember what exactly this grudge is.

Whatever.

Miss Reeves starts talking about what they are going to be doing today, though Max tunes her out and is instead focused on the smudge in the corner of his glasses.

He takes them off, and attempts to wipe at them with the bottom of his shirt - it takes a few tries but he is eventually able to navigate through the whole thing and get them back on his face smudge-free.

However, when he looks back up a girl is handing out watercolor paper and Barnes is gone.

Max looks around and he eventually finds him getting brushes. He simply sits there watching Barnes navigate the room, getting paints and a cup of water and a few napkins.

The girl eventually comes over and gives them each a piece of paper, before continuing around the room right as Barnes arrives back at the table.

All the while Max is just looking around the room, clueless as to what is going on.

Barnes sits down, and Max reluctantly turns to him and asks, "What are we doing?"

Barnes raises his eyebrows, before responding. "Painting leaves."

Max does his best not to beat his head against the table. Leaves? They have to paint leaves? What colors are leaves? Green, red, yellow, orange, and brown.

He is so going to fuck this up.

Miss Reeves puts a picture of a leaf up in the very front of the room. Max has to really squint in order to see it.

He starts on it, and eventually gets to the point that he has the picture outlined in pencil, when he realizes that now he has to paint.

With colors.

It is a simple pink - no, yellow... or orange? No! The background is brown...ish. Yes! And there are traces of blue? Red? Maybe? No! That's definitely yellow right there in the middle of the...

Green?

Max gives in to his urge to beat his head against the table.

He'd only gotten as far as getting it outlined, and he is already confused.

"You okay there?" Barnes.

Stupid, stupid, Barnes.

Max lifts his head up, glowering at Barnes. "Yeah, just working a few things out."

Barnes gives him a knowing smile.

"Do you need help?"

"I'm fine, thanks!" Max bites back, though he is not expecting Barnes to nod and stand up and walk off to fuck knows where.

Whatever. Max can do this... he just needs to focus! Focus! Focus! Focus! What are we doing? We are FOCUSING!

Light pink is actually yellow, but darker pink is actually darker pink and maybe that actually is green! Maybe orange doesn't even exist! Green, blue, purple, turquoise, NONEXISTENT! Max isn't colorblind, but everyone else is!

He internally groans.

Right then, Barnes comes back, interrupting Max's hysterical rage. He has a laminated piece of paper in his hand. Upon closer inspection, Max realizes that it is a copy of the picture up on the board... in color.

Why can't they just paint everything in black and white? That would just be so much easier on Max.

Barnes leans over, which Max responds by moving a little further away. Not by much, though. If Barnes notices, he doesn't show it.

He points to the lower part of the painting, "This here, is green," Max stares on in silence, and Barnes points to a color fourth from the right. "...and it is right here in the palette."

Max gives a nod.

"Now, try painting the bottom of the leaf."

For some reason Max decides to actually listen to his childhood nemesis by beginning to paint everything that is the same color as the one fourth from the right on the palette.

He has gotten pretty far when he hears Barnes beside him, "You might want to mix these two other colors together, you know, on the paper."

See, that's where the colors get him! The shades and the mixing and the fact that he can never remember what their names are. Every time.

Max looks up and sees that he is pointing to the color third from the left. "what color is that?"

"Orange"

"And the other one?"

He points to a color to the right of it, "Yellow."

Max nods, getting to work on doing that. He can feel Barnes watching what he's doing, and he risks a glance at Barnes' paper.

He's already fucking done.

But how...

Max ignores the surge of anger within him, and the voice telling him that this whole thing is bullshit and that he should just fucking leave.

He realizes that he is pretty obviously looking at Barnes' paper, seeing as he had to turn his head more than most people, and he has been looking at it for longer than he intended to.

Barnes clears his throat.

Max immediately goes back to working on his own paper, slightly embarrassed. Stupid Barnes.

Stupid perfect Barnes and his stupid perfect painting.

"And you may want to add a lot of this color to the background" Max looks up and sees that Barnes is pointing to the first color from the right.

"That's brown"

Barnes smiles and nods.

Max rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to kick Barnes in the shin for treating him like he has legit mental issues, and dunks his brush in the brown.

The class ends a few minutes after that, and Max had barely even finished.

He can't really tell what it looks like, considering it's made entirely out of color, but he can tell that it kinda looks pretty shitty so it probably is pretty shitty.

Oh well, A for effort.

Not really, he's making a C minus in this class.

The next few classes consist mostly of Barnes being a perfect asshole and Max being a pissy, hungover asshole.

Eventually lunch rolls around and Barnes sets Max's stuff at his table, before going to go sit with his do-gooder friends. Max really hates this. Barnes doing everything makes Max feel like he owes him, and Max does not like owing people anything.

He's barely even hungry, though he'd probably take a few fries off Zeke's plate anyway.

"Hey Max, I think I just saw something purple in the rafters," Valerie (Harvey's insane girlfriend) snickers as Max sets his crutches against the side of the table. He flips her off as he struggles to sit down.

Harvey turns to him with a stupid look on his face, "I hear you got a new friend."

For a moment Max is confused - he doesn't just make friends. He freaks people out too much for that.

Then it hits him, and his normal laid back and slightly hung over attitude goes out the window, and is replaced with anger.

"Yeah," he mutters, picking at the skin at the ends of his fingers.

Zeke shows up as he's saying that, "Yeah what?"

"I was just asking Max about his new helper buddy."

Zeke laughs, "Yeah, he has Lewis Barnes as his temporary dog for like six weeks."

Amelia looks up at this, "Oh, Lewis Barnes! He's cool! I worked with him on a chemistry project last year and he did like all the work."

Max rolls his eyes, "Of  course he did."

Discussion continues on as normal, and Max is left zoning out.

Everyone knows Barnes, and everyone likes Barnes. None of them know how much of a Hell-Spawn he is because none of them were around when they were beating the shit out of each other... Barnes was pretty much the one that always kicked his ass though, Max sorta sucks at fighting, not that he'd never admit that. Nope.

At least, not aloud.

Barnes is too perfect for anyone to ever have anything against him. He is just that kind of guy.

Well everyone thinks he's that kind of guy.

But Max knows.

Zeke nudges Max out of his stare down with the table "Hey bro, you good?"

Max nods.

Amelia leans over the table, "So Max, what do you think of Lewis?"

Max raises a brow, "What?"

Amelia starts wiggling her eyebrows.

A few months back, his asshole friends got it in their head that Max was gay when someone asked him his orientation and he said he liked dicks.

Of course, he was drunk as shit so he meant 'chicks', but nobody let him live it down.

He can hear the rest of the table laughing their asses off, while he just simply sits there giving her an unamused glare.

"Why do I even hang out with you guys?" He mutters, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes while holding his head in hopes to ward off the sudden headache he feels coming on. He really needs more aspirin.

They suddenly stop laughing, and when he opens his eyes he sees them looking at something behind him. He really doesn't want to turn around to see who it is, because he's pretty sure he already knows.

He spots his crutches being lifted off the side of the table, and he internally groans.

"You ready to go?" He hears that stupid voice from beside him.

Max turns his head to glare at him straight in the eye.

Barnes doesn't even flinch.

Asshole.

"But lunch just started! We have like..." Max takes out his watch (that he for some reason keeps in his pocket, don't ask) to check the time. "...forty three seconds left"

He can hear Zeke chuckling, and muttering "dumbass" under his breath.

Then they all get up and made their way to the trash cans with their trays, leaving Max sitting in the chair all by himself and shooting laser beams with his eyes into Zeke's back.

"Do you need help getting up?" Barnes asks from beside him.

Max directs his glare at Barnes, "No. I got it." He hisses, backing up the chair and holding onto the table.

However, the shadows failed him because he ends up backing up way too far, and when he stands up he falls against the table.

Ow.

He straightens himself up, and turns to look up at Barnes.

Look up at Barnes.

Even his height is perfect.

Max feels the strongest urge to just clock him right there in the middle of the cafeteria, but he really doesn't feel like bending down to pick up his crutches if he was to actually knock Barnes out.

Which is highly unlikely but hey, he can dream.

Damn, he is violent today.

Barnes hands him his crutches, which Max has to reach for a few times because he keeps on missing because his vision is a bitch. When he finally gets them, though, he begins to make his way to the cafeteria entrance. On his way out he sees that there has been a new table in the spot that the other one had fallen just weeks prior.

Max smiles. At least Zeke had been taking a video, and it looked cool as fuck when it snapped in half. He feels a strange sense of pride.

He and Barnes make their way into the hallway right as the bell is going off, and Max really wants the day to be over.