Max decides that he needs to stay away from Barnes.

Of course, whenever they are of a normal distance from each other, he is completely good. Everything goes normal.

However, when they get too close (pretty much within a twelve inch radius) Max doesn't act normal. His heart beat picks up, his eyes are dazed, his mind goes fuzzy, and he - from what he's gathered so far - either stares at Barnes' eyes or mouth. The last two times, his mouth.

Now, that's not fucking normal.

Guys don't act like that around other guys.

Well, in his case, Barnes. He's been physically close to all of his guy friends before, usually when they are pulling some bullshit like putting him in a headlock or something. But his mind never freaks out like with Barnes.

So he concludes that he needs to keep his distance. At least two feet away.

And, for the entire school day on Friday, he does good.

So now, he is at the game.

He doesn't have Donny to talk to, because his wrist healed enough for him to play and he's back in the game, so Max is left by coach's chair with his crutches beside him and his legs lazily spread out in front of him.

Alone.

He's using Harvey's jacket as a pillow. He decides that it is pretty fucking hard to sleep in the middle of a football game, but he is going to try anyway.

With a severe hangover (seriously, he got fucking wasted) and the fact that there is no one to interrupt him except for the people in the stands and the refs, he feels he can fall asleep pretty easily

He would have, too, if not for the sudden thought.

Barnes could be watching.

Max leaps up into a seating position, his eyes wide. Why did he think that? It's exactly like last week's game. This is some bullshit. So what if Barnes may be watching him? Lauren could be watching him, literally anyone in the stands could be watching him. Barnes isn't special.

He wishes Barnes wasn't special.

Aha! See, weird thoughts again. This is why he has got to keep his distance. This. Is. Why.

Max pulls his legs up against his chest and buries his face into them.

He needs to clear his head.

Right then, Coach shows up at his chair, and sits down. He looks pretty okay, Max figures.

"Hey, coach. How's it going?" Max asks, turning to face him and criss-crossing his legs.

Coach turns to face him back. "It's going okay."

Max nods.

"You know, you don't need to ask me. You can just look at the score board."

Max shrugs. "Nah, too much effort." At least, for him. He doesn't feel like having to focus and decipher and shit. Concentrating is not his forte.

It's literally two numbers.

Whatever.

Coach rolls his eyes, leaning back and crossing his arms. "You know, managing the team without you is pretty hard. How long you gonna be in that cast?"

Max shrugs, feeling kind of guilty. It is kinda—completely—his fault that he's in a cast. "I don't know, a few more weeks?"

Coach sighs. "Damn, why did you just have to climb in those rafters?"

Max sighs. "I was high. Andy's an asshole. Enough said."

Coach lets out a few laughs. "Yeah."

Then Coach jumps up. "Oh man, I gotta get up there."

Max nods, but Coach is already making his way towards the sidelines.

Hm. Okay.

Max sighs, flopping on his back. He's really only here for Zeke, if not for him then Max would probably be back home doing his homework and being an antisocial loser.

Not that he isn't being an antisocial loser right now.

And then he gets an idea.

He could do his homework now!

Max smiles. He's so smart and successful.

He reaches for his bag and begins going through his shit, before finding his stuff. Okay, tonight he has—of course—art, because Miss Reeves obviously hates him, and history.

Max decides upon getting art out of the way. He would rather do it first so he can do all the shit on the French Revolution later. Yeah, sounds good.

Though he is practically asking to get pissed for actually doing art.

She had given them another coloring page - this one is a cat. And far more complicated than the dragon. Shit.

Okay. Cats are pretty cool. That sounds alright. He can do this.

He grabs his binder, his huge-ass bag of crayons, and the coloring page. Max takes a few deep breaths, and stares at the cat.

Alright, so from the cats that he's seen, they can be all kinds of colors.

He goes through his bag and decides that he is definitely not doing Timberwolf, and absolutely no shade of anything he thinks is green. Stupid Lauren. Stupid Barnes.

He eventually settles on a random color and it says Purple Pizazz on the label.

Huh. Alright. Sounds cool. It looks... okay.

Max nods to himself.

He decides to start on the tail and begins doing some of the patterns. Cool. Okay. So far so good.

He hears a really loud buzz, and it causes him to fuck up.

"Ah, shit!" He assumes it's the scoreboard and throws his binder to the side, the paper floating wherever papers float.

He flops back on his back and closes his eyes. Ugh. He takes back what he said, cats aren't cool anymore.

"Dude, you good?" He feels a nudge in his foot and opens an eye.

Zeke.

Max sits up. "Yeah, I'm good. Cats are just stupid and pointless is all."

Zeke raises an eyebrow. "Dude, you've wanted a pet cat since we were like... born"

Max glares at him. "That's not important. Go away."

Zeke rolls his eyes, before picking up Max's binder and the picture of the cat. He then sets them on Max's lap, and sits across from him on the ground, taking off his helmet and setting it beside him. Max notices that he's carrying a water bottle

"Shouldn't you be playing?" Max asks, raising his eyebrows.

"It's half time." Zeke looks at Max like he's stupid.

Max shrugs, "sorry man, I was trying to color a cat."

Zeke finally looks at the picture, before snickering. "You do realize that cats aren't pink, right?"

Max frowns. "Excuse you, that's actually Purple Pizazz."

Zeke laughs harder.

Max glares at him. "You know what? If you're gonna criticize my Purple Pizazz cat then you can just go do more football."

Zeke shrugs, "okay," he states, before faking like he's gonna get up.

"Wait wait wait!" Max shouts, grabbing his arm. "Don't go, I'll be lonely again. And I need help with the cat..." Max trails off. And Zeke smirks.

"Whatever, you're lucky we still have two minutes." He sits back down and looks at the cat. "Okay, what do you want?"

Max rolls his eyes, before shoving the binder towards Zeke. "What color is cats?"

Zeke - the grammar Nazi - glares at him.

"It depends. You could probably do a black and white one if you color black over the pink."

Max frowns "No. I want to keep the Purple Pizazz. It adds character."

Zeke gives him a weird look. "Cats aren't Purple Pizazz."

"Well this one is!" Max defends, crossing his arms over his chest.

Zeke rolls his eyes, "Well if you're gonna do unnatural colors then you don't need my help." He flicks Max in the forehead and begins to walk away.

"Hey, wait! Don't leave me!" Max shouts after Zeke, waving his arms. Zeke keeps walking towards where the team is beginning to huddle up, and waves at Max over his shoulder.

Max huffs, falling back onto the ground with his arms still crossed.

What the heck? Zeke just left him hanging.

He sits back up, and stares at the cat. Purple Pizazz is a good color. Fuck Zeke's opinion.

He decides that he's gonna choose another color, and begins going through his bag again. He eventually chooses one. "Macaroni And Cheese," he states aloud to himself. Huh. This looks cool, very similar to the other color. It'll do.

Then Barnes pops into his head again.

Barnes is in the stands, you could probably find him if you really try...

Shut the fuck up! Max beats his head against his hands and sets his crayon to the side. Barnes needs to stop popping up in his mind, he has no place there. Although Max's mind is mostly empty because honestly - and he knows this - he is not the brightest crayon in the box.

Heh. Crayon.

Barnes still needs to get the hell out of his head though. Max needs to keep his distance and that means his mind too. The next few weeks he is going to keep his relations with Barnes strictly school-work-ical, and maybe let Barnes help him get around. That is all. And no allowing within the two feet radius.

Don't look in the stands, don't look in the stands...

Max looks in the stands.

Dammit.

He begins scanning and searching and he finally finds Barnes, in the upper corner of the stands, out of everyone's way. He is literally surrounded by people, and he has his legs spread out with Lauren laying in between them.

Ew.

Max quickly looks away before they catch him, and takes his Macaroni And Cheese and presses a little harder than necessary as he colors the stupid fucking Purple Pizazz cat.

Ugh.

He does his best not to look back up there, because for some reason any type of physical contact between Lauren and Barnes makes him want to just up and leave. Fuck football. Them touching makes him want to punch things and get stoned out of his mind.

Which probably isn't exactly good for him, but Max isn't and has never been a healthy person so whatever.

Sadly, his body does not agree with his mind as he ends up looking back up at the stands, where he sees Lauren and Barnes, still in the same position. Barnes is laughing at something another girl said while Lauren rolls her eyes.

Goddamn motherfucking hippie.

Oh well. Fuck Lauren and her stupid Screamin' Green. Stuck up bitch. Go die in a fucking tree somewhere.

Damn, Max. You need to chill.

Max shakes his head yet again, and looks down at his cat. He's about to start coloring again, but he realises that he snapped his Macaroni And Cheese in half.

Dammit.

Max sighs, setting his shit to the side and grabbing his crutches and his crayon. He makes his way over to the trash cans and throws it away.

When he turns back around, though, he does it just in time to see two football players fucking crash into the coach's chair.

And Max's stuff.

What the hell?!

They fucking crushed his cat! He can see it slightly crumpled up, with his binder off to the side.

"Ah, shit! What the hell?!" Max shouts, beginning to make his way over to his shit, as one of the players walks away. He sees the other one turn around to face him, and the only thing that tells him who it is is the number, that he has to squint at to read.

37

Zeke.

"Zeke,you asshole." Max says, making his way pretty hastily over to his shit. He sees Zeke start laughing, and Max stands in front of him and glares. "I'm gonna beat you with my crutches." Max furrows his eyebrows menacingly.

Zeke laughs harder, before sobering up and messing up Max's already messed up hair. "Sorry Maxaroo, I'm sure your cat's fine."

Max doesn't have time to tell him that his cat is definitely not fine, because he hears Coach's voice shout in his direction. "Tucker, get moving!"

Zeke nods, giving Max a pat on the back, before retreating to his team.

Max is left glaring daggers into his back. Stupid football, destroying his cat.

Max decides to call the cat Lawrence, because that name seems to just fit.

He sighs, before making his way over and kneeling on the ground. First he grabs Coach's chair and begins to set it back up where it was, and then he goes and gets Lawrence and his binder, going back to the chair and sitting beside it like he was before.

The paper has some dirt on it, and it is bent and slightly crumpled, Max does his best to smooth it out and wipe the dirt off.

Well what the fuck is he going to use to color it now?

He picks up his crayon bag - which surprisingly did not get spilled - and begins to go through it. As he is searching for whatever it is he ends up getting, for some reason his eyes - without his permission, again - trail up the bleachers, until they spot Barnes.

They aren't in the same position as before, Lauren is still sitting on his lap, but she's leaned against the fencing behind her (adjacent to the barrier on the back of the bleachers) and is actually watching the game.

She has blonde, straightened hair. She's slightly tall and is currently wearing a pair of jean shorts that go down to barely mid thigh, and a tank top with a see-through loose shirt (with fucking flowers) over it. She has a heart shaped face, and high cheekbones and nice tits and decent curves and she's fucking smart.

Needless to say, she's a catch. Max can't blame Barnes for going for her because she really is probably the best you can get - at least at this school - and Barnes has always gotten the best because he's always been the best.

Again, they really are perfect for each other. They have some shit going for them and Max has no doubt that they will be extremely successful.

He realizes that he has been staring at Lauren, and maybe even glaring a little, with his hand still stuck in his crayon bag.

Then he looks to Barnes, and notices that Barnes is staring right back at him.

Oh shit, he's been caught!

Max's eyes widen and his mouth drops open and he realizes that - oh shit - this is not part of the fucking plan.

Barnes raises an eyebrow and Max quickly snaps his head down and focuses on getting a different color.

He chooses Jealousy Green, because - even though he swore off green - he can so relate.