9!!!!!!!1 with maxcar pretty please
prompt list 9. staying so often at the other's place that the neighbours are sure they're a couple, max/oscar, ~1150 words, also on ao3
Oscar hates alarms. He hates alarms, and he hates waking up, and he particularly hates his alarm app, because it makes him do fucking mental math at 7am.
It’s cruel. He should never have downloaded it, but alas.
He’s blearily struggling through 21x43—well, okay, not true, he’s trying to summon up the courage to restart his mathematical brain—when his door slams open.
“If you don’t turn that fucking thing off, I’m going to smash it into the fucking wall,” Max announces, and Oscar’s able to distract himself from the air raid siren by looking up at him.
Max’s hair’s a mess and his boxers are still stained from their midnight ice cream and his beard’s just a little longer than it was yesterday—
“Oscar!”
“Fuck me,” Oscar groans, gripping his phone like that’s going to shut it up. “Yeah, you fucking cunt, I’m awake, I just don’t fucking know what 21 times 43 is, 800, fucking eight-hundred-and-forty—”
“Nine-hundred-and-three!” Max shouts, hand pressed to his ears.
Oscar bangs it in.
“Jesus Christ,” he says into the ensuing silence.
Max huffs, tramping towards the bed. “Your room’s fucking freezing,” is all the explanation Oscar gets before an icy body slips under his duvet.
“I need to wake up,” Oscar says, inching away from the icicles attached to Max.
Max huffs and tugs him back, plastering himself to Oscar’s back and swinging his leg over Oscar’s. “Already you’re awake, that alarm would of course wake the dead.”
“You’re cold, you arsehole, get off me!”
Max tightens his grip. “Not until I’m warm. What time is your second alarm, I want a nap?”
“Fuck,” Oscar says succinctly, and when he drags himself out Max lets him go. “I don’t fucking have one, I’m late, it’s not fucking fair that you don’t have work today.”
“I have work,” Max counters immediately. “I have a long day, you know this.”
Oscar’s rummaging through his chest of drawers, but he takes the time to glare over his shoulder. “Yeah, the kind of long day that involves you doing meetings in your boxers in my living room?”
“Exactly!” Max has wrapped his arms around Oscar’s pillow now, completely cocooned in his duvet. “Boring, boring meetings, at least you’re building something.”
“Fuck off!” Oscar shouts as he heads into the bathroom. Max responds with a soft snore. It's probably fake.
“Afternoon!”
“Evening?” Oscar wonders, squinting up at the pinking sky.
“Evening,” his neighbour agrees. “Long day?”
Oscar summons up a polite smile. “Yeah.”
“I’ll let you get in, then. Everything okay with your boy?”
“What?”
“No, I know, you’re doing well, it’s just, I heard, this morning. There was a bit of shouting, you know? Thought I should check.”
“Right,” Oscar says slowly. “Um. Sorry if you, sorry to disturb you?”
“No, no. You’re still much better than the last neighbours, don’t worry. All good at home, then?”
“Yeah,” Oscar says faintly, wondering if after nearly five years of living near London he just hasn’t come across the friendship version of your boy. “Um, no, yeah, we’re good. See you?”
“See you later!”
“Max,” Oscar starts, tossing his backpack onto the floor next to the couch.
In a meeting, Max mouths, and Oscar shuts his mouth and heads for the kitchen. It’s not like Max’s camera is on, but he looked like he was concentrating, so.
Oscar’s halfway through airfrying one of Max’s kebabs when his phone buzzes.
Need something? Max has asked, and Oscar has to smile at his phone. It’s so Max-like to ask, actually.
Nope. How long?
Done in 10.
Great. Oscar can get this kebab sandwich down in ten, easily, and then he can go and demand answers from Max.
“What’s wrong?” Max demands, shoving his AirPods into their case with unusual ferocity approximately half a second after signing off on his call. “Was it that bitch with the ideas again?”
Oscar doubles over laughing. “No, he was fine today,” he wheezes out, and Max grins in satisfaction.
“Good. I told you, you have to scare them or it will be always the same thing. You’re not okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You ate my kebabs.”
“Kebab,” Oscar corrects, “and I bought them. I ate my kebab.”
“Cunt,” Max says, mocking, clearly meant to be Australian, and Oscar bursts out laughing. Max grins back at him. “Why did you eat kebab?”
“Didn’t have lunch, I was busy, doesn’t matter. Hey, um. Have you spoken to my neighbour recently?”
Max starts, pink creeping across his cheeks. “Did she say something?” he demands.
“Yeah, um,” Oscar starts, only to be interrupted.
“Look, already I offered to pay her back, how was I to know that she had expensive flower plants on the wall, I was just walking with my hand on it, and I thought she was okay afterwards, I don’t know why she has to tell you now, it’s not fair.”
“That was you? You broke the creeper?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
Oscar shakes his head, biting his lip to muffle his laughter.
“Oh. But you said, you said she said this?”
“She, um.” Oscar knows he’s blushing. “She called your my boy, I figured maybe she’d said something to you, or you’d said something to her, not that you broke her fucking creeper, you blind cunt.”
“Shut up about the plant, okay? Or I will have to tell Lando about the—”
“What plant?” Oscar asks immediately, because he knows Max would do it, and he’s not having that.
“Okay, good.” Max stretches his arms out, and oh, if he was Oscar’s boyfriend, he thinks he’d have to do something unspeakable to those shoulders. “What do you mean, she thinks I’m your boy? Like son, or boyfriend?”
“Son?” Oscar chokes out. “Jesus Christ, Max, you’re obviously older than me.”
“Yes, well, you’re going bald,” Max says bluntly, and Oscar inevitably has to poke at his hairline. “So boyfriend, then?”
“Yeah, because someone came into my room this morning and shouted at me, I reckon she thought we were having a domestic.”
“So turn off your fucking alarm, I don’t need to hear that, you don’t need to hear that, you always wake up fine when you’re at mine.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because,” Oscar begins, except he doesn’t actually have an answer to that.
“Because?”
“Because your alarm’s worse than mine,” Oscar says immediately, even though objectively that’s untrue, for more than one reason.
“The fuck it is. Tell you what, swap alarms tomorrow, let’s fucking see who wakes up first.”
“You’re staying tonight?” Oscar asks, inordinately pleased.
“Oh.” Max flushes pink again, harder. He lifts a hand to tuck hair behind his ear, or pretend to. “Yeah, you don’t mind?”
“No, that’s fine,” Oscar says hurriedly. “I’m not swapping alarms though, fuck that.”
“Okay, okay,” Max laughs, ducking his head, and huh. Oscar could do worse.