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max doesn’t know how long he’s been awake. maybe it’s been a couple hours, maybe it’s already way past noon, who knows? all he knows is that the sun is high enough in the sky that its golden light isn’t streaming through the blinds and imprinting blindingly bright lines onto the floor anymore.
at least it’s their day off. no urgent need to be at the office today, and therefore, no case to get cracking on. he’s got all day to just stay right where he is.
sam’s been out of bed for a while now. usually, max is the first out of the two to wake up, acting as sam’s alarm clock regardless of whether or not it was time for his actual alarm clock to go off. he’s been off his game recently, though, and he knows for a fact sam has already caught on to his uncharacteristic lack of energy. he’s prodded him about it more than a few times, but max thinks that after his constant insistence that everything’s fine, he’s finally decided to leave it alone.
a gentle knock comes to the door, and max’s right ear twitches in its direction. “max?” sam’s voice comes from the other side, “i’m comin’ in.”
…or maybe he hasn’t. actually, of course he hasn’t, how stupid does max have to be to think he has? detectives don’t just leave stuff that bothers them alone—especially not his detective husband, and even more especially when it has something to do with him.
good thing max is also a detective. two can play at that game.
max figures it’s a waste of energy to try to stop him, so he instead uses said energy to think of an excuse for sam’s obvious first question as the door is opening.
“you doin’ alright, little buddy?” sam asks softly, shutting the door behind him—as if there were anyone else in this house who would hear this conversation and he wanted it to be explicitly between them. “you’ve been shut up in here for a while now.”
“‘m good, sammy,” max starts, stretching his arms and building up a fake yawn, just to end up yawning for real. “still just tired from this last week’s cases. y’know how it is.”
he swears he can see sam’s eyes narrow for just a second, before his expression is replaced with slight worry. what, is his façade failing already? did he drop the affectionate nickname too early? “right. well…to be honest with ya, i have a feeling something's up.”
well, shit. going straight into it, is he? here goes nothing, then. “yeah? how do ya figure?”
sam takes a seat near him at the edge of the bed. “well, on any normal day off, you'd be roamin’ back and forth around the house thinking up the next thing you wanna blow to bits by now. or at least looking for overly dramatized reality shows for us to heckle.”
max glances over at sam’s alarm clock for the first time today. it's past ten in the morning, which…checks out. for some reason, he hates that sam isn't wrong. “well, what if i…just didn't feel like it today?”
“in that case, i’d probably understand, were it not for the nagging at the back of my head telling me there’s something else going on here.”
“that’s just your anxiety talkin’, sam. you taken your meds today yet?”
sam’s about to nod, when he stops in the middle, his brows raised in realization. max knows that lightbulb-moment look of his anywhere. “…have you?”
…wait.
curse max’s casual concern for his husband.
“uh, hello?” he gestures to himself, doing everything in his power to keep his goddamn eyes off the nightstand drawer next to them. “haven’t eaten yet. you know that stuff makes me want to yak when i take 'em on an empty stomach.”
for a moment, max thinks he senses sam biting back a whine. “…yeah. i know.”
there’s a beat of silence between them until sam reaches for the drawer’s knob and pulls it open.
sam pauses. max braces himself.
“aha. no wonder you’ve been acting so out of it these last couple days.” sam takes the cylindrical orange container out of the compartment and brings it up to eye level to inspect it. “you already finished the whole bottle. why didn’t ya tell me?”
sam’s tone reminds max of a parent chiding their kid, and suddenly, he can’t help feeling a little small. he looks down at his hands and feels his ears bend forward just a bit—he’s lost this battle of wits by a landslide, but this time, he doesn’t really care as much as he normally would have. “...sorry, sam. it slipped my mind. we were pretty busy this week and all that, and you were clearly already stressed out, so i didn’t really wanna bother ya about it…and then i just kinda forgot.”
max half expects sam to ask him how long exactly he’s been out of meds—not that his dried trout-like memory would be of any help—but it never comes up. sam probably knows better than to ask at this point, anyway.
the sigh (of relief? disappointment?) that leaves sam is barely perceptible in the quiet of their bedroom. he pushes the drawer closed again, sticking the empty bottle into one of the pockets of his pajama pants. “that’s real saccharine of you, max, and i’m sorry if i worried you.” sam offers a soft smile, resting an affectionate hand on max’s cheek. “but let’s call for a refill later, alright? your wellbeing’s way more important to me than getting boring paperwork done or catching some crook on the loose, and frankly, i don’t really like seein’ ya so unenergetic.”
max nods, wordlessly leaning into the touch.
“in the meantime, i’d appreciate it if ya at least got up.” sam stands up, and max feels his strong hands lift him off the bed, carrying him in his arms as if he were a toddler as he takes him out of the bedroom. it’s colder without the blankets covering him, but max would be lying if he said sam wasn’t just about as warm and comfortable as the bed. “c’mon. i made us pancakes.”
max relaxes against sam, wrapping his arms around sam’s neck and resting his bordering-on-achy head on his shoulder as they make their way downstairs to the kitchen. “what kinda pancakes?” he asks.
“i tried making that one you were tellin’ me about the other day, with the chocolate spread on the inside. i don’t think i did that bad.”
max wants to cover his face and scream. god, he does not deserve this man.
he elects not to say that out loud—at least, not while sam is literally in earshot of every single breath he’s taking right now. he settles for something else, something that won’t get him (gently) scolded for being self-deprecating. “i’ll be the judge of that.”
that earns him a fond chuckle from sam, and a kiss to the side of his head—a much better outcome than a scolding. “i’m sure you will be, little pal.”