Notes

“Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive. ” ― H. Havelock Ellis

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He had felt small, so infinitesimally small when the lights of the old spooky castle flickered on his figure when he was walking by it, his limbs were numb and heavy. The ground beneath his feet felt unstable and he had lost his gravity many times when he stumbled across random rocks and lonely logs of trees in his way.



Max fled away, in the intoxicating state he managed to cross the Lake Lilac while holding onto the Whiskey that he stole from Campbell's cabinet with no feeling of remorse.

He was awfully drunk, his movements were slightly jerky and he walked with such intent and purpose it had sent shivers down his spine. He felt uncomfortably mushy and hot, The effects of the heavy alcohol were taking over him and he no longer cared to see were he was going as long as he could get away as far as possible from the camp.



That is until he noticed that he had accidentally reached Spooky Island.

Using a little boat that he had found near camp Campbell's territory and used to reach his final destination.



He was too fucking drunk to see where he was at this point as long as he was still alone.



A small little pang of pain overwhelmed him almost immediately when he dropped the bottle to the ground and fell on his knees, he recognized the feeling of it being guilt.



Oh, he had felt so terribly guilty tonight about everything, and it served him right.



He decided that the universe played a cruel joke on him.

He had looked up to the sky and let himself chuckle bitterly at the situation as the stars continued to laugh at his pathetic existence.



So focused on his self-hatred and his disgust with himself that he didn't notice the calling for his names until he forced himself to turn his head to the mention of the sound.





His vision was blurry and his eyes were dull and red, not sure if he was crying or just overtaken by the whiskey that he drank all to himself before the night could possibly end.

But he could still see clearly the figure of a running woman that was coming towards him, and he could still recognize the messy, bushy green pigtails that belonged to someone he knew dearly.



His heart tightened in his chest...Nikki had found him in this place.



"Max!"



She was sweaty and red, gasping for air, her Long hair a complete mess. She had obviously run after him as soon as she noticed him here. There was relief in her eyes and he could tell by his goddamn uncanny ability to tune in with her emotions that some of part of her was still fearfully glad that she had seen him now, but that overwhelmingly she could probably feel that something was wrong with him or the camp or else he wouldn't be here in the middle of the damn night and—



She was mostly scared that something happened to him...because she cared for him.



"Nikki..."



The guilt in his voice was so bland it was almost pathetic.

She ran to him and hugged him and he wished it hadn't caught him as off guard as it had.



That would have melted his empty heart if he wasn’t feeling so much self-loathing. He did not deserve someone like her, someone so caring and wonderful that would still chase after him even when he literally ditched her this morning and left her for his own worries.





He felt so ashamed, so hopeless, so filthy, for loving her and still clinging desperately to her loving embrace in his hazy state.





"Max, what the hell are you doing outside here? Is Neil back? Is that why you left the camp at this hour? Oh, Gosh Max, i'm so so sorry i had to leave without saying anything to you"





She shouldn't apologize, and he shouldn't let her speak into his shirt and look at him with such a guilty look on her face.



But he was a coward, and he couldn't bring himself to stop even when he stroked her head with a shaky hand to calm her down and let her know that she did nothing wrong compared to what he did tonight.



Even if he couldn't help himself with the heat that he felt between his thighs when he could still vividly remember the way the kid in his bed moved so lewdly against his hips in a perfect yet sinful rhythm.



"I could ask you the same thing, what were you doing in here without telling me where you were going"

He wasn't heartless, but right now he was definitely being cruel to her, emotionally pulling the strings in her heart when she already felt like she did something that she shouldn't, how low could he possibly get?



"Neil's not back yet, i thought he was with you all this time...or are you still fighting again?"

"We weren't fighting!" she protested, her fists are clutched tightly to her bosom, Max could clearly see the raw cuts and bruises on her knuckles and it all made him suddenly feel worse about himself.



"Besides, he's just mad because i wasn't watching his stupid hamster, told him it's not my fault but he didn't want to listen. I think he went to the town, i mean i'm not so sure about it but he didn't tell me anything so i just assumed he wanted to get away from me or the camp"



Max could not mistake the light change in her voice, she was hurt and ashamed, probably scared that Neil left because she had annoyed him. He could see it in her watery pink eyes the hidden worry and the fear that she tried to object. She didn't want to feel so alone so she tried to hide her vulnerability and emotional fragileness by acting tough, pretending that nothing ever mattered to her and that the fact that the only two people who she cared for in this shit of a camp left her without bothering with her at all.



She wasn't as weak as he was at all, but she looked so small in front of him right now. It didn't matter how strong she was in reality because the only thing that the man could focus on right now was the bruises beneath the band-aids on her exposed legs and the cuts on her hands.





"But why were you doing here stupid girl? were you trying to find the dumbass that left you? or did you want to leave the camp for a little while?"



He hated how he sounded right now, he hated the way that the green-haired counselor looked at him and he hated how terribly, disgustingly, guilty he felt at the moment. It wasn't up until now that he realized that she was clinging to his shirt again, hands gripping the material so tightly it made him feel uncomfortable when the fabric squeezed his shoulders.



"I tried to find the platypus that ate Larry, i know i should've told you about it Max but you just weren't there at the moment and i couldn't find you anywhere in the camp"



Guilty, guilty, guilty! He was so fucking guilty.

It was his fault that he left the camp when she needed him Because he didn't want to deal with her, didn't want to deal with his responsibilities that he had when he ditched it all so he could spend some fucking quality time with a the—



The boy that he had been fantasizing to get into his sheets and have his way with him.



"I know, i was actually trying to find David"



It was a half joke and half the truth, Max patted her head and stroked her cheek lovingly, but the joke felt tasteless and hollow and there was slight fear in her expression when she saw the dull look in his eyes, oblivious to the bottle on the ground beside them, she tried to slip a smile back to her lips, choosing to ignore the obvious warning.



"You spend a lot of time with him lately, i think he started to grow on you a little bit. Isn't it Cute Max? i would almost say that he has a crush on you"



No. It wasn't cute, there was nothing cute about this silly crush Davey had on him.

It was true that the kid was growing on him and it would've been adorable even if he...if he—



If it wasn't for the fact that he only wanted to touch him and do things to him that were wrong by any definition of the word. It would be sweet if he didn't think so much about how soft the child's skin was and how it almost made him cry in joy and pleasure whenever he could feel his fingers brush against the soft plumpness that belonged to Davey and how blissful it felt to rub his aching, throbbing clothed cock against his sweet rear that writhed against his body so perfectly.



It would've been sweet if he wasn't so disgusted with himself...if he was normal and not just a sick predator who wanted and desired the little boy in ways that he shouldn't.





A little noise that belonged to an animal snapped him back from his mind when he decided to look down and see a rather strange little creature that stood at his feet, digging its little claws into his shoes while it looked at him with big black eyes full of curiosity and blankness. It was small and had a brown fuzzy fur and a little yellow beak, a long tail and sharp little teeth.



A baby platypus it was.



While Max was mostly confused and rather disgusted by the view of the animal Nikki squealed hard and bent down to pick the little creature from the ground, holding the small furry animal in her hands carefully as if it was a little kitten.



"Oh my gosh, i can't believe i finally found him!" She snuggles closer to the small creature, rubbing cheek against it while the tiny animal claws at her hands to let him down, the little cuts that the animal leaves on her knuckles matched perfectly well with the rest of the bruises on her hands, Max hisses at the realization that some animal tried to injure her.



"Nikki put that thing away...it could have rabies for all you know"

"No Max, look! it's the same platypus that ate Larry, I've been looking for him all this time!"



She almost screams with happiness, there's not a single trace of sadness on her face now and Max feels the sudden urge to vomit again.

he pulls the half-empty bottle again and holds it tightly in his sweaty cold hands when Nikki wasn't paying attention to him he swallowed the bitterness again, feeling so regretful for everything and so envy that he couldn't make her happy like that tiny platypus could even as he was starting to bite Niki's fingers and she giggled at the poor attempt to hurt her.



"Let's get the fuck out of here, i don't want to spend another minute on this freaky island anymore and take that thing with you if that's what you want but don't let it get near me or the campers. Don't wanna deal with any bleeding kids tomorrow and get sued here because of you"



She eyed him carefully, she could tell that the sudden change in his mood wasn't meant to be normal. Noticing the bottle in his hand she quickly grabbed it from his hand, holding it close to her as the drunk raven was struggling to get it back for himself.



"Give it back...i'm not playing these games with you tonight"



That the words came out before he had even consciously thought of them, and perhaps he had come across in a way that was rougher than he had intended.



"No way Max i'm not gonna let you drink it all by yourself! You stole Cameron's liquor again so you might as well share some with me before we go back" She giggled, shaking off the rough insult in his voice when she swallowed the remaining of what was left in the bottle, still holding onto the platypus in her other hand that was eyeing her fully now.



Her alcohol tolerance was pretty good if the counselor had to admit, for all the night that he had spent with Nikki outside their cabins getting drunk off the bottles that they stole from the cabinet when Neil wasn't on the watch it usually took this woman to drink a full bottle just to see her lose control for a little bit, unlike him she was completely normal even with reddened cheeks and the fact that she could not stop laughing when she's really drunk.



Even when she finished his whiskey she still looked as normal as possible, throwing the empty glass bottle aside she giggled lightly at the awful strong taste and hurried to enter the boat that Max had left near the lake when he got here.



"I'm sure that by the time we get back Neil will already be there, he probably didn't go for that far unless he's already there and the campers didn't try to turn the whole camp while we were gone"



She was so sure of herself about everything, always keeping on the positive energy that she possessed that often made him question her maturity and mentality and if she was really an adult or just a child stuck inside a woman's body.



But he would like that, wouldn't he?



She sat down and tapped the spot beside her, placing the small baby animal on her thighs he watched how the animal writhed against her body as if it wasn't sure if it should leave before it's too late or stays because it fears to jump into the water. He sighed deeply, stepping into the boat as she desired and sat across her, grabbing the oars he begins almost immediately to move them both away from the spooky island's territory. The spooky castle's figure flickered as a heavy fog covered it the more they were floating away from it.



"I promise i won't tell Neil anything about that if you will tell me what happened in the camp while i was gone"





Oh so now she was blackmailing him?





Max would've laughed at her if he didn't feel like he deserved it so much now. But she was innocent, wild and crazy but not terrible enough to make him feel bad about it, not terrible like him.

She laughed at his expression, probably thinking that she had startled him for a moment.



"Chillax Max, i was just joking. I think we're both going to get schooled by him when we return, probably won't even let me keep this little one" She whispered, stroking the fuzzy head of the platypus.



He feels like he should comfort her.

It's the least he could do when all he had been doing today is to make her feel more shitty about herself.



"I know you do, you crazy bitch. But i wouldn't blame you if you were though, seems like everything i do lately is just going to turn up against me and pull a stick up my ass"



She would've laughed if she wasn't so caring and merciful to him if she didn't care so much about him and his shitty life.



"You can still tell me what happened Max, that's why i'm here. That's what friends are for and you know i will always listen to you"





She was being...so thoughtful with him, so kind and so very...wonderful.



Just like Davey was.



But the kid was just a kid, he was his kid and his little camper and no one can be compared to Davey, not even Nikki even though he loved her like crazy and would do almost anything for her.



He couldn't compare her to the little boy who he was sure that his obsession with him wasn't only getting worse but also starting to eat him up alive, he hated himself but he didn't hate his friends. He didn't hate Nikki or Neil for the crap that he has been getting himself into only to feel more miserable about himself.



And Davey was— with as much as he hated himself with a pure heart...he couldn't help but feel that coming to this place was a mistake and that he should've stayed in the camp.



Should've stayed in the cabin...



He had been so turned on.



But then he had looked back into Nikki's worried eyes, he gently smiled at her. Not looking at her directly in the eyes.



"Don't worry about' it sweetheart, let's just focus on finding our way out of here. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies"



The sun as already rising by the time they returned to the camp. It was safe to say that none of them were tired from the lack of sleep. Nikki who had her own difficulties in sleeping and Max who rarely got any good night's rest in a long time and eventually stopped caring of how he gets his breaks since he barely puts any effort in his work at day.



The effects of the hangover were starting to appear when a sharp sting of pain filled the back of his skull, he hissed at the pain and stopped for a moment, resting his body against a tree to settle down for a couple minutes. He had left Nikki to return to her own cabin, she didn't need to beg him for his permission to leave so she could take care of her new 'pet'.



It wasn't too long before he saw that the campers were already starting to get out of their tents, sleepy-eyed with toothbrushes stuck in their mouths they unwillingly left their spots to join the cafeteria hall for breakfast.

He would join them if he wasn't so stuck on his opinion to avoid eating with the kids in the camp, it would be much easy for him to avoid breakfast if he was already still too full on the liquor he had forced himself to drink last night.

The memories were still foggy and he couldn't concentrate on them when he heard in the back of his mind the familiar sound of footsteps was coming towards him.

He had recognized the red hair that fluttered in the wind when he opened one eye to see that Davey was coming to him, a giddy smile on his lips and his huge green eyes sparkle with known excitement that only a young boy like him could possess within his spirit.



"Max!"

He was so happy to see him, as always, running to him and greeting him with a hug as tight as his little arms could possibly squeeze him.

Davey's chirpy voice left Max weak at the knees and he would have been so happy to see him too if he didn't remember— What happened last night.



The counselor would've hugged him if it wasn't for the headache that was ruining everything for him right now, but he was mostly happy to feel the boy's warmth press against him again, his little arms hold onto his short so possessively that Max couldn't help but chuckle.



"Heya kiddo, what's all the rush for?"



He could've sworn he saw something twinkle in Davey's eyes and he was praying that he won't ask him about anything t