Paint the town red

Chapter XXVI

The working week passed pretty quickly, and I was looking forward to the end of each working day so that I could visit Max asap, at least for a couple of minutes, and make sure that he was getting better every day. It wasn't hard for me to go to the drugstore and buy him medicine or bring him fruit, juice, whatever he wanted, as long as he got better. It was a little difficult for Max to get used to such care, because he believed that he involuntarily obliged me to take care of him during his sickness, but I interrupted his thoughts on the spot. I've told him more than once that such behavior in situations like this becomes a manifestation of sincere care and love, but certainly not some kind of burden. At one point, I even thought it was like he and I had switched roles: usually Max is so persistent and determined, and I'll argue a little and give up, and now it's the other way around.

On Tuesday afternoon, I received a text from George, in which the guy informed me about the postponement of his return home to Saturday morning. When I asked if something had happened, my friend replied in the negative and added in the next message that he has a small work to do here. And a moment later he sent the new departure time, and I answered him with a short "Understood, ok" and returned to work.

On one of my visits to him, I finally gave him a copy of my house key along with a keychain engraved with the letter "C".

"So you don't mix the key with the others."

"I won't take it unless you have a keychain with my initials on it."

"And I've already taken care of that."

I immediately took out the key to Max's house with his initial and smiled contentedly. He took both keys and put the keychains to each other, after which he smiled and tightly clutched his key in his hand.

"I'll always carry it with me."

"Max, it's just a key..."

"No, Charlie, it's your key."

I wanted to hug and kiss him so badly, but he wouldn't let me near him because he was afraid to infect me. Even though I tried to explain to him that for so many visits I would have been sick a long time ago, but I'm healthy and well, so it's okay. But this is Max, he's stubborn as a sheep. Maybe this is one of his traits that I like so much about him?

It's funny, but do I like all the traits that seem to others... bad? Negative? But personally, I think that what is valued in love is not the ideality of each other, but uniqueness and mutual understanding. And this very uniqueness is created by all the "flaws" of the beloved, they're what make him special in the eyes of his partner. Is Max rude? Stubborn? Is there a cheeky one somewhere? Is he a provocateur in some way? But he's mine, and I love him with all his cons.

I was glad that Max was slowly returning to his former state and the disease was gradually receding. As a caring guy, I asked about his health several times a day and sent messages during work, and Esteban, whom I met about the examinations, said that I either had problems with overprotection or hypercontrol. But I'm just taking care of my lover, why the hell would they attribute mental abnormalities to me? In fact, I think I felt a special impulse to care about Max when he said that no one had ever cared about him as much as I do. But I'm kind of glad that I can be useful to him at times like this.

During all my post-work visits, I managed to tell Max about everything that was happening at work: about new cases, about Alex's transfer to the British department, about my conversations with Fred about our case. When I said that Fred was once again thinking about removing me from the case, he even hesitated. Is he now more inclined to this option? I also noticed that he was a little stressed out by the version that our killer might have personal scores with me, so he kills those who are close to me, well, or were once close. But neither I nor he could understand who I could annoy so much to resort to such drastic measures? I've said more than once that I've been doing detective work not so long ago, and I haven't had any high-profile cases. Well, until now. I had no enemies, at least none who would take revenge on me in such a cruel way.