Zeke appears in the doorway, clad in his football gear with a Wendy's bag in his hand, but he stops dead and stares between Max and Barnes.

"Uh..."

Max's eyes widen. The room goes into silence and Max doesn't know what to do so he says, "This is Barnes?"

Zeke gives him a look like he's fucking stupid while Barnes starts snickering.

Zeke looks at Lawrence on the floor in between Max and Barnes and starts laughing too. "Did you-" he sobers up, "did you really call someone over to help you take care of a kitten?"

Barnes laughs harder while Max growls and holds Lawrence to his chest. "I wanted her to explore but she kept fucking shit up!"

Zeke rolls his eyes, walking over and setting his helmet and Wendy's on the floor before sitting beside it. He stares at Lawrence. She begins rubbing her face on his arm.

"Yeah, she looks like a lot of trouble."

Max grabs her and holds her up in the crook of his neck. "She was! But then Barnes shows up and she starts acting all nice!"

Barnes laughs harder while Zeke holds out his hands for Max to put her in them. "Oh, you're wearing the gloves." Max smiles in contentment.

"If I didn't you'd freak out."

Max frowns, "Wha- fuck you. I put a lot of work into picking those out."

Zeke rolls his eyes as Max hands Lawrence over to set her on his gloved hands.

"I still can't believe you named her Lawrence."

Max throws his hands up in exasperation, "well believe it! It's a nice fucking name!"

Zeke rolls his eyes, holding her up to stare into his eyes. "She is a nice cat." He says, nodding in approval.

Then Zeke's eyes widen in wonder as he looks at both of her eyes, and then up in between Max and Barnes.

"Holy shit, her eyes look just like both of yours."

Max and Barnes look at each other and Max feels his face flush slightly and he really hopes it's not noticeable.

"No way." Max replies sarcastically.

And then Zeke starts laughing. "Look! Her left eye is golden!" He laughs harder while Max stares at her and then glares back at Zeke.

"You see- because you're blind in your left-"

"Yeah! Thanks, Zeke. I had no clue." Max crosses his arms and glares at the wall opposite him.

"How about you live a day with no depth perception or concept of colors and thick ass glasses that you can't read literally anything with."

Zeke punches him in the shoulder. "Thanks for taking all the bad genes, bro. 'preciate it."

Barnes is giving them both an amused look while Max just huffs. "Asshole." He mutters.

Zeke just hands him Lawrence and begins making his way out of the room. "Love you too~" he sings and Max knows he's probably going to get changed.

But he left the Wendy's.

Max starts laughing deviously, planning to eat all of it. Barnes is still giving him an amused look. "Watching you two bicker is worth it."

Max is slightly confused, "worth what?"

Barnes raises a brow, "Missing my date with Lauren."

Max feels guilt pang in his chest and his eyes widen. He totally forgot. "I- I'm sorry! I was just panicking and you're the only one that I know with a cat and I'm on crutches and I can't keep her occupied because I can barely move around and Zeke was at practice and Gina's at work and I've never had a cat before-"

He's cut off when Barnes places a hand over his mouth. He's giving him a small smile. "Lauren said that she could just go see the movie with another one of our friends."

Max slowly nods, though he's staring at Barnes' hand. It's very warm, different from Max's constantly cold skin."Why did you cancel, though?" Max's voice is muffled through Barnes' hands.

Barnes raises his eyebrows. "I figured you'd probably have a heart attack if I didn't."

Max furrows his brows as Barnes drops his hand. "Wha- I was just a little worried!"

Barnes snorts, "No, you were hysterical."

Max frowns, looking down at Lawrence. "I just got her, I didn't want her to get hurt." He purses his lips and shrugs.

When Max looks up he sees Barnes smiling at him. "That's adorable."

Max furrows his eyebrows. "Fuck you! That's not adorable, you wouldn't want her to get hurt either!"

Barnes rolls his eyes

Max smiles back down at Lawrence.

After that, Barnes decides that he has to leave and waves bye to Zeke on the way out.

The rest of the night goes normally. Eating Wendy's with Zeke and playing with Lawrence. The entire time Max is kinda wishing that his depth perception fucked him over and he accidentally brushed his hand against-

Max is really not gay.

-

Monday goes by in a flash, Max continuously brings up Lawrence and he's pretty sure that people are getting sick of hearing about her, but oh well. He's not.

In the morning Barnes always of course meets Lauren, and walks her to her first class. Max usually tries to ignore her but Tuesday she says something that he for some reason can't ignore.

Barnes had asked her about the movie that she had to go and see, and her response made Max real fucking confused.

"The movie was actually really good! I went to go see it with Trent, and-"

Max interrupts her, "You went to go see it with another dude?"

She seems taken aback (she's always taken aback by Max, holy shit) before answering, "Uh, yeah?"

Max is even more confused. He knows Trent. Trent is the back up wide receiver, and Max has always seen him as a stereotypical fuckboy douchebag.

Hm.

"Wait." Max stops, making them stop too, they both face him. Barnes seems kind of impatient.

"You mean to tell me, that when your boyfriend," Max puts emphasis on boyfriend, "Cancelled on you, you went to see the movie with another guy?"

Lauren frowns, before crossing her arms over her humongous tits, and saying with more defense than necessary, "Yes." She juts her chin out and tilts her head up.

He looks at Barnes, who seems indifferent to the whole situation.

Max bites the inside of his cheek and tilts his head. "Lets just take her to her class." He says, making his way towards the direction of her classroom.

They arrive and Barnes and his whore do their couple thing and eventually he and Max are sitting in art class.

Max decides to ignore the bullshit from earlier. He isn't weird for thinking that it's weird for her to go to the movies with a guy - that Barnes and Lauren don't even talk to - who is a literal fuckboy at its finest?

Or maybe Max is just looking for reasons to not like Lauren...

Seriously, Max decides to not think about it anymore. Nothing good will come of it.

"We're painting again." Max hears Barnes' voice and looks at him. He notices that Barnes has a paper plate with pools of paint on it, a cup of water, and two brushes.

"Wha- Dammit." Max mutters, frowning at the paints. He hates it when they have to deal with colors in this class. It pisses him off.

Max realizes that maybe Zeke is correct, he does get pissed off pretty easily.

...and often.

Hm.

Really, he just wants to go home. He had put Lawrence in Miss. Kennedy's care. She's an old lady that lives a few doors down. She's retired and Max doesn't know if she used to have cats or what but when he dropped Lawrence off, they immediately liked each other.

Miss Kennedy agreed to watch Lawrence while he is at school. She's pretty cool. She brings them muffins sometimes.

Barnes starts snickering and Max flips him off as he notices a canvas in front of him. "Well what are we supposed to paint..." he frowns at the canvas.

"Look at the board." He hears Barnes' voice beside him and he looks at the board. He sees a picture of a meadow and trees and he immediately recognizes most of it to be different shades of...

Green.

"Ah, what the fuck?!" Max slumps back in his chair and holds his head with his hands.

He peeks through two of his fingers to see Barnes staring at him like he has a few screws loose.

Which Max does, but that's not the point.

"Green!" Max drops his hands and points at the board. "There's a lot of green!"

Barnes starts laughing. "You learned to hate a color because my girlfriend likes it?"

Well when he puts it like that...

"N-no!" Quick, quick, what is his excuse?

"Your eyes!" Max leans forward and points at one of Barnes' eyes. "I don't like green because it is the color of your eyes and you are my arch nemesis."

Barnes is looking on at him in amusement, "You said you liked my eyes."

Oh shit. He totally did.

Well what the hell is Max supposed to say to that? He did say that he likes Barnes' eyes. That they are pretty, if he remembers correctly. Which they are, but whatever.

How exactly is he going to get out of this one?

"Well- uh..." Max seriously does not know what to say.

"You were too close to me!" Max exclaims, crossing his arms and frowning at the table.

"So?"

Max looks up to glare at Barnes.

"So I wasn't in the right state of mind!"

Barnes leans back and raises his eyebrows, "are you implying that me being too close to you puts you in a wrong state of mind?"

Max's eyes widen. Shit. He has disclosed too much. Nope, nope, nope. He is not dealing with this.

Max leans forward and picks up the brush. "Fuck you, I'm gonna paint." Max glares at the canvas.

"-and your eyes are gross. I don't like green..." he adds on.

But I like your eyes. And your lips.

And your face...

Makes shakes himself out of his stupid thoughts. Arch nemesis. Enemies. He and Barnes are supposed to fucking hate each other, they have since their childhood.

Well, they would see each other every once in a while and Max was always the one being all snippy and assholish to Barnes, so the hatred isn't extremely mutual. But that's not the point.

The point is that Max has always despised Barnes and so these weird thoughts are obviously the side effects of some shit that he probably took...

Yep that makes sense, that's probably it.

No it's not.

Ignore that.

Max begins aggressively dipping his paint brush in random paint and slapping it on the canvas, making the shapes that are on the board, and he knows that he is not getting the colors correct but he's pissed.

He doesn't know what colors make green or what the fuck that is in the corner of the paper or why the hell he signed up for art.

But whatever, he has his teeth gritted and his eyebrows furrowed and his eye twitching and he knows that his hand is shaking in rage.

This is some fucking bullshit.

He thinks that he's making trees, and from what he can tell he's pretty sure that the trunks are blue but oh-fucking-well. He knows that he's making the grass red because red and purple are two colors that he has a pretty firm grasp on, but he has no fucking clue how to make purple so he makes most of it red.

After a while a hand grabs his wrist and he looks up to meet those stupidly wonderful green eyes.

"What are you doing?" Barnes raises an eyebrow, and he actually looks kind of worried.

Max narrows his eyes menacingly. "I'm making a meadow."

He sees Barnes crack a smile. "It looks like someone committed genocide in your meadow."

Max can't help but to let out a small laugh, his stupid crooked smile that he can't stand appearing on his face. "Well red is my best color. So maybe someone did commit genocide in my meadow."

Barnes starts laughing. "You looked like you wanted to commit genocide while painting your meadow."

Max narrows his eyes mockingly. "Maybe I do want to commit genocide."

Barnes rolls his eyes, letting Max's hand go. "Well that's kind of alarming."

Max shrugs, "if I were to commit murder it would probably be on your cousin-fucking whore."

Max smiles even wider when he sees Barnes send him a glare that would probably make most people piss their pants and apologize but it just makes Max want to go on and see if Barnes will pin him against the wall again.

Heh. Side effects.

Barnes sighs, "Cousin fucker, really?"

Max shrugs. "Betcha it's true."

"Nah. She's only fucked one person." Barnes mutters as he half-smiles at his canvas and he continues painting.

Max's eyes widen because for some reason every time Barnes curses he finds it extremely attractive and sexy and arousing.

He doesn't even care that Barnes just hinted to the fact that he's gotten beyond second base with Lauren. He's heard Barnes curse a few times and that's great, but when he's talking about sex, well Max finds it hot as hell.

"Ahem, what... I didn't hear that." Oh, Max heard it. He just wants Barnes to curse again. Because it is very rare for Barnes the Golden Child to let any kind of profanity escape his mouth. Max knows this, everyone does.

"Nothing." Barnes shakes his head, smiling.

Dammit. At least say fuck or something.

"Uh... just... Lauren fucks her cousin. Definitely not you, not you definitely. Fuck."

C'mon, just repeat after Max.

Barnes looks up at Max, raising his eyebrows.

"Are you okay?" Barnes actually looks kind of confused.

Max just wants him to curse! Ugh.

"Just... what did I call Lauren?" Yes, please let that do it. Please.

"A... cousin fucker?"

Max's eyes go kind of lidded and he leans back in his chair, feeling very content and definitely slightly aroused. This is really not good but oh well. Nothing he ever does is good, anyway.

"A cousin- what? I didn't hear the last part."

"Are you trying to get me to curse?"

Max slowly nods his head. "Maybe. A cousin- what?"

"Why do you want me to curse?"

Max opens his eyes and leans across the table to glare at Barnes. Why does he have to be so difficult?

"A cousin- what?"

Barnes sighs, before giving in. "Fucker."

Max gets a grin on his face, laying his head on his arm and still having his eyes locked on Barnes'.

"And Lauren has only what one person?"

Barnes still seems incredibly confused. "You know, you really were not supposed to hear that."

Max shoves his finger against Barnes' lips. "Lauren has only what one person?"

Barnes furrows his eyebrows, getting impatient. "Fucked." Max drops his hand so it lays on the table. He hums and smiles, before sitting up and getting back to work. He needed to stop before Barnes caught on.

Yeah. Max is having some serious side effects.