(Max’s POV)
He watched me for a while, long enough that I actually thought he might say something.
Then he turned and walked off toward the main building without a word, without the bag, like the whole exchange had simply stopped mattering to him.
I stood there a second longer than I needed to, feeling stupid for how much that quiet had cost me, then followed at a distance because we were both headed the same direction anyway.
Trade Law started ten minutes later, and I slid into my usual seat in the back corner just as the lecturer clicked her slides open.
"Today we’re discussing tariff retaliation," she said, tapping the screen behind her. "Can anyone tell me why Country A imposing tariffs on Country B doesn’t always result in a one-to-one economic loss for B?"
A hand went up near the front. "Because B can redirect trade to other partners."
"Correct, partially. Anyone want to build on that?"
I raised my hand before I’d fully decided to. "It also depends on elasticity of demand. If B’s exports are something A can’t easily replace — rare earth minerals, certain agricultural goods — the tariff hurts A’s consumers more than it hurts B’s economy."
The lecturer’s eyebrows lifted, pleased. "Exactly right. Our transfer student’s paying attention." A few heads turned toward me, most curious, one or two clearly annoyed that I’d answered correctly on my second real day. "Elasticity is the whole game in retaliation theory. If your export is inelastic, you hold the leverage, no matter how big the country threatening you actually is."
I kept my head down after that, but something in my chest sat a little lighter for the rest of the hour. It was the first time all week I’d felt like I actually belonged somewhere in that building, even if it was only because of a textbook I’d read twice on the train before we moved.
By the time the cafeteria came around, the feeling had mostly worn off.
I got my tray, found an empty table near the windows, and sat down to eat alone, which was fine, which I told myself was fine, right up until a group passed close enough behind me that I felt the air shift.
"Careful," one of them said, not quietly, "don’t sit too close, might catch whatever he’s got."
Laughter. Not loud, not dramatic — just the easy, careless kind that didn’t require anyone to actually look at me while they did it.
"Hey, human." Another voice, closer this time, a girl I didn’t recognize leaning over the back of the chair across from me just long enough to make her point. "Lost your pack, or did they never let you have one?"
I didn’t answer. I picked up my fork and kept eating, because giving them a reaction was the one thing I still had control over, and I wasn’t going to hand it over for free.
They moved on eventually. They always did, once the joke stopped being funny to make.
I finished lunch faster than I needed to and left before the tray even needed clearing, walking without much of a destination until I found myself near the sports complex, drawn by the sound of shouting and a whistle cutting through the air in short, sharp bursts.
The rink sat behind a wall of glass and chain-link, cold air already leaking out through the propped side door, and even from a distance I could see him — Lucian, pads on, jersey soaked through at the collar, cutting across the ice with a control that looked almost unfair next to everyone around him.
I stopped near the door and watched.
"Cross, weak side!" someone shouted, and the puck came skating across the ice on a pass he didn’t even seem to look for. He collected it in stride, cut hard around a defender, and two more adjusted a beat too late. He drove through the gap they left behind full speed, shoulder down, and put one of them flat on the ice into the boards without slowing at all.
"Cross!" the coach barked from the bench, half-furious, half-delighted. "Ease up, this is a scrimmage, not the finals!"
Lucian didn’t ease up. He carried it another ten feet before a second defender finally hooked his stick out from under him, both of them hitting the boards hard enough that I heard it from the doorway. He was up again before the whistle even finished blowing, gliding back into position like it had cost him nothing at all.
I watched him do it again on the next shift. And the one after that.
There was something almost hypnotic about it the total lack of hesitation in every single decision he made, like his body had never once questioned whether it could do the thing it was about to do. Nobody laughed at him out here.
Nobody called him anything except his own name, captain cross, shouted across the ice like a demand he was expected to answer, or, once, from a teammate leaning against the boards during a stoppage, simply "Cap" — like the title was as automatic as his own name.
I understood, watching him, something I hadn’t quite let myself understand before. This was the version of Lucian that made sense to everyone else. Strong. Certain. Untouchable.
The version that came home cold and silent probably felt, to him, like the only reasonable way to be when the alternative was whatever soft, breakable thing he might become without it.
Practice ended maybe forty minutes later. Players filed off the ice toward the locker rooms in loud, easy clusters, skate guards clacking against the rubber floor, and I waited near the door until I saw him come out the other side, bag over one shoulder, hair still damp under his loosened helmet strap, expression already back to the flat, unreadable thing he wore around me like armor.
He clocked me before I’d said anything.
"Why are you here." He didn’t stop walking. Didn’t look at me either, not really just a glance, quick and assessing, like I was an obstacle he hadn’t planned for.
"I want to go home with you."
That made him stop.
He turned, slow, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, like he was trying to work out whether I was being difficult on purpose.
He didn’t say anything for a second. Then he kept walking, and I fell into step beside him because he hadn’t told me not to.
I reached for the strap of his bag without really thinking about it. "Here, let me—"
He pulled it out of reach before my fingers even closed around it. "I’ve got it."
I took it anyway. Grabbed the strap and pulled it off his shoulder mid-stride, quick enough that he either had to physically stop me or let it go, and he chose, after a beat of visible irritation, to let it go. He exhaled through his nose not quite a sigh, but close enough and kept walking without commenting on it further.
We walked the rest of the way to the lot in a silence that felt different from the ones before. Less like a wall. More like something neither of us had figured out how to fill yet.
At the car, I stopped by the passenger door instead of getting in right away.
"Can I ask you something?"
He unlocked the doors with a flat click of the fob, already reaching for the handle. "You’re going to anyway."
"Why don’t you like me?"
He turned to face me properly then, over the roof of the car, and something in his expression sharpened, went colder, like I’d stepped somewhere he hadn’t invited me to stand.
"Why would I like you?"
"I mean—" I fumbled for the rest of it, suddenly less sure of the question than I’d been ten seconds ago. "We’re brothers now. I thought maybe—"
"Is that an order?. To like you?" His voice was flat, almost bored, but there was an edge underneath it, something sharp enough to draw blood if I pushed harder. "You think because our parents signed a piece of paper, I owe you something? Affection? Loyalty? Is that how you think this works?"
I didn’t have an answer for that. Not one that wouldn’t sound as small as I felt saying it.
He held my gaze for one more second, like he was waiting to see if I’d try anyway, and when I didn’t, he pulled the door open and dropped into the driver’s seat without another word.
I got in on my side. Set the hockey bag carefully between my feet, since there wasn’t room for it anywhere else.
He started the engine, and for a moment neither of us said anything at all, the question I’d asked still sitting in the air between us, unanswered and somehow louder for it.