protect me | max

[rhys alexander greyback]

protect me from what i want

---

October 25, 2025
maxima ruqayyah greyback _

---

To say Rhys was furious was a bit of an understatement, he’d been so exposed in front of someone very important to him and even if he had a big part to play in that he was still full of rage. At the same time he felt some guilt, it was never his intention to lie to his sister and Maria had only shown that he had been the more he tried to diffuse that situation. She had gone when Rhys had glared at her to go but he knew that his own night was not finished. Looking around there were some people look at them but when Rhys looked at them and they saw the ferocity in his eyes they looked away and minded their business. Out of the Greyback siblings he was the only one that had inherited their father’s blue eyes, but they were dark right now with everything he was feeling. He took a breath and moved closer to Max, ”Is there somewhere around here we can talk?” He asked, hoping that he didn’t make too much of a mess of things. He imagined it was still quite a shock for her, it wasn’t a topic of conversation much for them—maybe Jamie would bug him now and then about his personal life but otherwise nobody brought it up.

It was a huge shift having his personal side so out in the open, he felt vulnerable and he hadn’t been able to stop all that occurring. How had the night taken such a turn and gone so wrong? First, he had arrived, expecting to stay for a short amount of time after finding Max and spending time with her when she wasn’t helping and instead, he’d run into Maria of all people. That man that had approached her, Rhys still pictured him, and he remembered his own shift in mood at his words and then confronting Maria before he even realized he was doing it. It only brought confusion to his mind, why he had reacted that way and why it even mattered. And why she hadn’t reacted worse when he had invoked his dead brother’s name. It was a mess and he wanted forget about it in a bottle of whiskey but for now he had to hope he hadn’t too much when it came to his family over this.

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

October 25, 2025

There were a million and one things that were wrong with everything that had just happened. To recapitulate the situation from Max's perspective, not only had Rhys shown up at Zombie Island with Maria—which would have been bad enough to warrant a Howler from her to her eldest half-brother if she had heard it secondhand—the two of them had been stupid enough to have gotten into a relationship of some variety, had gone to Zombie Island, and had managed to end up in a row directly in front of where Max herself had been volunteering. It was the worst of all possible outcomes, short of being directly attacked by Maria. The good news was that she had had enough sense to leave. The bad news was that Max didn't have that luxury and that Rhys was left standing there and looking like a real idiot in front of loads of people who were just trying to enjoy an October day.

Max had already expressed how confused and disgusted she was with everything that had come out in her presence. With the knowledge that Maria hadn't been kidding about her promise that she would attack her if she'd raised her wand at her, the Slytherin knew that things could have been a lot worse, but being stared at by a crowd of people—many of whom had their hands preoccupied with carving knives—wasn't exactly the most comfortable situation. The one thing that seemed to have kept them from responding was how furious Rhys himself looked from having received so much negative attention.

She had heard some of what he had been saying even prior to Maria's realization that she was standing right there, and everything that had been told to her after that point confirmed to her that, no, Maria's departure had not magically fixed everything. Instead, what it had done was leave Max, who wanted nothing at all to do with what Rhys did in his bedroom, searching for a way to find a happy medium between keeping him from absolutely losing it and talking some sense into him.

"Is there somewhere around here we can talk?” (Surprisingly, it was Rhys—not Max—who suggested that they should find somewhere more private.) With so many people around and so many student volunteers, it would be difficult to find somewhere that was entirely private. At least with her fellow students, Max thought, there was a greater likelihood that she could use her position as a prefect to her advantage in encouraging someone to leave her and her half-brother alone to have a conversation that definitely wasn't appropriate for Hogwarts.

Racking her brain for somewhere that they could go without having to walk around the entire island, Max was at a loss. It was under a week until Halloween, and there were more and more attendees eager to spend their time at the different activities that had been set up for their enjoyment. Nothing was going to guarantee them privacy, but she would have to make do with something. Quickly, she continued to think, questioning why it was that she had been put into the position of solving this. Having literally anyone else to whom she could have deferred would have made It so much easier. It would have been incredibly awkward with either Jamie or Adrian there to witness it too, but at least they would have been able to get control of the situation with strength in numbers.

The most private place that came to her mind that wasn't a toilet, as absolutely ridiculous as it might have sounded to say it out loud, was the corn maze that had been built not very far from where they were. Those in the know knew that there were actually two mazes: One of the mazes, which was probably the more interesting one, was themed as a "haunted maze", while the other maze was much more tame (and without very much to see, besides corn stalks). Knowing that the more relaxed one of the two mazes was likely to have more children in it was less of a deterrent for Max than it probably should have been at that moment, but she wasn't sure what else she was supposed to do. She breathed out, already feeling incredibly tense, and motioned for Rhys to follow her.

Not looking to see if he was actually following behind her like she had hoped that he was, Max kept on walking. If it turned out that he had chosen not to follow her, he was the grown adult who was making a fool of himself in front of a bunch of jack-o'-lanterns; she wasn't. She wasn't sure if he had much sense left, though he had hopefully realized that he wasn't out of the woods with her, either, just because his immediate problem (that was, Maria) was gone.

Continuing to walk towards the maze, Max looked to one of the students who was volunteering and was stationed outside of it. Recognizing her as one of the Ilvermorny students, she smiled. The girl, wide-eyed and freckle-faced, was younger than she was by two or three years and had always seemed fairly timid for a Gryffindor, so she was going to have to use that in her favor… in order to ask her for a little favor.

"Hey, erm… Is there anyone… in the regular maze? Like, right now?" Max checked, lowering her voice as though she were doing something far more suspicious than checking the occupancy of the maze at that very moment. She didn't want to be overheard, because she did intend to co-opt the maze for her own purposes, and she was going to have to pray that the Gryffindor girl would pick up on it.

The Gryffindor shot her a wary look. "I don't think so?" she hesitated, looking behind her in the direction of the maze as though she were able to look through its layered walls to check. Max knew that she must have known, though, because the volunteers must have had to keep track of that kind of thing. They couldn't risk actually losing anyone in the maze, especially not any small children who couldn't send red sparks from a wand or anything yet. Looking to another student working the maze for confirmation, the Gryffindor girl repeated the question that Max had just posed to her. Had anyone gone into the maze? No, said the third student to the Gryffindor, there hadn't been anyone in there; the last group had come out a few minutes before, though another group had just gone into the haunted side.

The haunted side didn't matter one bit, not for the reason why Max was there. With confirmation that there was nobody in the regular maze, then, Max focused her attention back on the Gryffindor girl. "If anyone asks you," she explained to her as casually as she could, "just… tell them someone's lost something valuable in there that can't be summoned out, so it's been shut temporarily whilst someone goes to retrieve it." It was a lie, but it was hopefully believable enough that it would give her a few minutes to sort things out with Rhys. "I've got to talk to my half-brother, and it's… sort of urgent?" she continued, not wanting the younger girl to think that she and Rhys were about to use it for a completely different purpose. "Five minutes. We'll be out. I swear." The girl could even time them, if she really wanted to do that; Max didn't care. She would take whatever worked to give them privacy.

"Uh, okay…?" The response from the Gryffindor girl wasn't a resounding yes, but it would have to make do. At least she wasn't going to argue about it or question it. They didn't need any of the teachers who were walking around to end up in the middle of the situation, either. That would have been a worse explanation.

"Cheers."

As she didn't want to give the girl time to go back on her answer, Max entered the maze as though she had planned to enter it for the fun of it, knowing that the student volunteers' eyes were on her as she left their sight. She didn't go very far away at all; it wasn't her intention to go in there and get lost, though it might have been more relaxing like that. Going too far in and not being able to find her way out didn't lend itself well to a conversation, so she took a few paces into the maze, stopped at the corner of the first turn, and waited.

rhys alexander greyback

[rhys alexander greyback]

protect me from what i want

---

October 25, 2025
maxima ruqayyah greyback

---

Rhys’ siblings were all very familiar with his temper, fortunately they had never quite been on the receiving end of it except for Adrian and that was only because he had willingly turned another student into werewolf though he had truly been incensed when he found out who it had been. Other than that Jamie had been the first to witness it during her first year and his seventh and of course she mentioned it to their siblings. As he got older, however, he’d gotten more or less a better handle of it, but they still saw it from time to time. He was sure that Max would be concerned that she would have to heal yet another broken hand from him and give him a lecture as a sister would in the process. But the only thing that had been keeping his rage in check was the regret he felt. Though if he was being honest it was more the regret of Max knowing about Maria and that they had this type of sordid affair for months now. Basically, it was tantamount to sleeping with some kind of nemesis and he’d spent all this time trying to be some model of self-control and discipline but he couldn’t say not to a half-veela who batted her eyelashes at him.

Max looked annoyed at his question, but she knew this island better than he did or he would have found it himself. She began walking, never turning once to look back at him and he followed. Rhys wore the same expression on his face, that he was angry and anyone that looked at him seemed to begin walking in a different direction. They stopped when Max began conversing with some younger students, they sounded American, so he assumed they were transfers and therefore probably had no idea who Fenrir Greyback was. Not that Rhys had a famous face, but just the name but he was still wary. The entire ordeal had been public which had also added to his fury, he was protective of his private life and now a rather large chunk of it was out in the open. If word got around, he knew his friends would ask about it, and then of course Jamie and possibly Adrian. He had never surmised how much Adrian had been involved in whatever drama had occurred between Maria and his sisters during the tournament and even Elias had never brought it up when they had spoken.

The past few months he had never brought up his brother to Maria, it wasn’t a topic of conversation for any reason whatsoever though he was always curious how things might have been had Elias lived and perhaps some common ground could have been found. There were a few people that were sort of included with the Greybacks, Lily because of Adrian and she was also a werewolf though they didn’t make it habit. It might have been natural to include Maria but who knew what the personality clashes might have caused. The students left at Max’s request and he wondered if this little chat of theirs would really take only five minutes. Looking at the quiet stalks of corn Rhys didn’t quite see the appeal and he’d heard of the other maze that he figured might have attracted more students. But that didn’t matter right now, the mazy being empty was to their advantage. As much as he didn’t want to he knew they had to discuss this now versus tomorrow, it was all fresh and he was worried what collateral damage he had caused.

Max went in and Rhys took a moment and took a breath, he was still fuming, and he was trying his best to push it down so he could talk normally. He walked in and they went a short distance so as to not get lost but far enough that those students couldn’t eavesdrop either and neither could anyone outside the walls of the maze, there was a turn that Max took and Rhys took the same turn a few paces later and encountered his sister looking at him. Stopping he didn’t know where to begin but seeing her disappointment and confusion at him helped with the rage he was feeling as it converted into guilt. He wasn’t supposed to cause problems for them, he was their older brother—he was supposed to support them and be there for him, so it was a unique situation in that regard. ”Max.” He began, but every word he thought of saying felt like he was just digging his grave deeper. ”I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this, but when I met her I didn’t know who she was.” That part was true, and they would have gone that way had Maria not seen the picture of Elias in his flat. ”I just—I didn’t know.” How did he explain what the situation was to Max? That it was just a physical relationship and nothing more and she was there for him when he was near a full moon, he dreaded having to go into those details—if he did at all. How did he explain this now?

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

October 25, 2025

All of this would have been made so much easier if she were capable of practicing Legilimency, Max considered, folding her arms impatiently across her chest. It sounded like a dream to her at that moment, being able to work her way like a snake through somebody else's mind to figure out what in Merlin's name was up with them. She thought that it would probably be awful ninety-nine percent of time—and she wouldn't have wanted anyone to be able to weave their way through her own head—but it would have been extraordinarily useful to her in her current predicament.

Rhys had done the bare minimum of following her into the corn maze, which was free of distractions aside from the occasional chatter outside of it. Even then, Max couldn't hear much of what was being said, so she hoped that the same principle applied to where they were just inside of the maze. She didn't think that casting a spell to muffle their conversation from the outside would do much good when they weren't actually in a closed room, and she didn't really have time to waste. No, she had promised the poor Gryffindor girl out at the front that they would only be in there, monopolizing the maze, for five minutes, which meant that time was automatically ticking.

Max tried not to count the seconds in her head backwards from four minutes and fifty-nine seconds from the instant Rhys addressed her again. Luckily for him, she couldn't multitask well enough to keep track of precisely how much time they had in the maze, so it would have to fall upon the student volunteers outside to force them out once their five minutes were up. That was assuming that they were also keeping track, though Max guessed that they probably couldn't be bothered and that they, like she, were taking the five-minute frame of time that she had given them as a rough sort of guideline for how long it should have been taking. A Slytherin though she was, she wasn't going to take too much advantage of the privacy they had. She would try to keep her promise to the volunteers standing guard for them it keep it to just five minutes, but even ten minutes probably wouldn't hurt anyone. Basically, the sooner they got this over with, the better off they were going to be. They didn't have all day to do it, and Max wasn't keen on mincing her words, especially then and there.

Because all that Rhys had said to her so far was her name (in that secondary conversation, at least), Max was forced to wait while he collected his thoughts. It must have been even worse to be him, but she didn't know what he expected her to do about it. She tried not to glare daggers at him, considering that Maria had already done some pretty good damage to that effect—again, miraculously sans any bodily harm that might have been inflicted upon either of them because Max was just as guilty as Rhys was by association with him. Not that she was thrilled about being associated with him then. It was hard not to want him to just spit something out, but she also wanted a more thoughtful response and couldn't really have it both ways.

What she got out of Rhys was another apology. She didn't understand the purpose for it at first and immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was just repeating some of the same mindless crap that he had said while Maria was still around. It wasn't exactly that, though, and it was even more bizarre than Max had thought possible. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this," had been the first part, as though he would have written it in a letter and sent it to her by way of owl post at school. Max didn't think that that was likely, but she was still listening. It was the second part that really got her. That was the, "…but when I met her I didn’t know who she was," part, which smelled about as fishy as anything he could have said.

It was something that had sort of crossed her mind. Maria was a relatively common name, but it had only one meaning to her (and probably also to Jamie): "Maria" immediately evoked the image of one person, and that was of that Maria. The Maria. She had been volatile and patronizing as a student and difficult to reason with, and it appeared that some things hadn't changed one bit since they had first met. That introduction hadn't gone smoothly, with one proverbial bridge's having been charred to the ground before it had ever been built.

"I just—I didn't know," Rhys repeated for emphasis, as though that made the whole thing immediately better. Not knowing didn't really change much, since it wouldn't have taken too much effort to find out.

Plus, there was another thing that Rhys didn't seem to have kept in perspective amidst the whole fiasco: Maria was certainly closer to Max's own age than she was to Rhys's—something else that made her highly uncomfortable, knowing what she did. There were no two ways about it. She was Jamie's age; she and Elias had both been in the same year as Jamie, which was the year above Adrian. Didn't that feel a little disgusting to him? Or had he not known that one, either?

Max took in a breath and then exhaled it more sharply than she thought she was going to. She didn't know what to say in response other than turning into the human form of a Howler right in front of Rhys's eyes. She wasn't enraged as much as completely dumbfounded that anything like that had taken place—or twelve times, as Maria had told her. Maybe she was wrong… about only having allotted herself five minutes to sort her way through the past two years of her school life, everything that had happened that time period, and every reason why ignorance probably wasn't the greatest defense that Rhys could have given her.

Some of the same thoughts as she had had previously ran in her head again. Rhys and Maria were both consenting adults. Maria was gorgeous. Rhys wasn't bad to look at, himself. They were both capable of making their own decisions. Yes, they were both capable of making their own decisions. They could choose who they wanted to be with, do certain things with, whatever; they had agency and didn't need a teenager to remind them of that. Just because they could do what they wanted, though, didn't make it right or comfortable for everyone else.

The other thing that floated around Max's head was how they had met at all. Had he met her somewhere outside the United Kingdom or Ireland? On one of his Curse-Breaking expeditions? To be honest, it was probably more likely that the two of them had met at the pub or something; Max would have bet money on that. They had met somewhere—probably with alcohol involved—and had not (or could not think to have) used one modicum of sound judgment, hadn't realized that they were practically related to each other through Elias, and then just… What? They just enjoyed the mortification of it so much that they kept going and hadn't stopped? Was that what had happened? If it had happened that way, what level of masochism was that?

Only seconds had passed her by, but it felt like hours to Max, who mustered up something to say while she had the opportunity to say it to Rhys's face. She sighed, blowing the air out of flared nostrils. "I'm sure she hadn't told you that she's nineteen?!" she said, emphasizing the number as much as she could. Maria was maybe twenty, if Rhys had gotten really lucky; Max didn't know her exact birthdate, but she would have been either nineteen or barely twenty, if her birthday were in the very beginning of the autumn (September or earlier in the month of October). Again, that was just two years older than the students in her year. "She's Jamie's age!" She had to make the point as clear to him as she could, and using Jamie as a frame of reference was one way—probably the most effective way—to do that. It would have been less weird if Jamie had been the one seeing Maria, though Max knew that that wouldn't have happened, even in a parallel universe. "Why didn't you stop when you'd figured out who she was?" She was Elias's cousin. That cousin. She was that Maria. What was his bloody problem?

rhys alexander greyback

[rhys alexander greyback]

protect me from what i want

---

October 25, 2025
maxima ruqayyah greyback

---

The last time that Rhys had felt this stuck in terms of being backed into a corner had been because of work. Though he wasn’t sure if the dread of possible death compared to everything that he was feeling now. Embarrassed didn’t quite cut it in this situation, it would have been horrifying enough his siblings finding out anything of his personal life in terms of who he was currently sleeping with, he’d always hoped one day that if he did find someone special he would be able to properly introduce them to Max, Jamie and Adrian and they could talk about that and not what he did in the bedroom. The problem was he had no way of explaining this off because it literally was about sex and how in the world was, he supposed to explain that to his baby sister. It wasn’t that she was naïve or didn’t know about these things, but it was his sister. The corn maze allowed them some privacy and he was sure that even shouting would have not been heard unless one was really listening for it, and it was less public than near the pumpkin carving station where he and Maria had been fighting. He’d let his temper get the best of him and he knew that though he was still upset that it had.

Max waited and looked at him with a stern expression on his face and he wondered if this was how any of his siblings felt when he had to address some issue, his sisters hadn’t really been much trouble and he’d had to be more stern with Adrian on occasion. Is this what it felt like to have eyes searing int you and waiting for an answer—an explanation? He almost wished Maria had tried to set him on fire or he’d got caught in some cross fire of a duel so he could hide at St. Mungo’s while he tried to figure this out but then again he was quick on his feet so he doubted that any spell aside from flames might have hit him. There wasn’t anything that had ever prepared him for a situation like this and he thought of the last time he’d been seriously injured on the job and almost died and would have rather been hit with that curse again. Rhys could barely convince himself with the words he was speaking, how was he supposed to convince anybody else. He’d messed up, gotten involved with someone that he shouldn’t and now it was putting cracks in relationships in his life that were incredibly valuable to him. Out of everything that he was feeling that part was the one that really hurt, his siblings were everything to him and he’d threatened that for a few (or rather many) good nights where he wasn’t alone.

Rhys could hear her exhale out of what he figured was frustration, he tended to do the same thing to help control his inferno of a temper at times. He supposed had the woman he had been sleeping with been literally anybody else this wouldn’t have been an issue. He would have been a bit annoyed about a public fight and let alone in front of his sister, but it wasn’t too big of a deal otherwise. Since Rhys had never dated much it would have been rare for one of them to approach him in such a situation, he hadn’t seriously dated in years and let alone anyone he wanted his siblings to intentionally meet. He never figured he’d find someone as Adrian had found Lily, though he never dismissed the thought completely he just didn’t hold on to it as a serious goal. Then Max brought up a point that Rhys honestly hadn’t thought about more than a few times as it hadn’t posed that big of a problem to him personally. But he didn’t answer right away, he thought about his approach here because he didn’t want to cause a further argument, but he didn’t think the age gap was too much of a problem at their current age. He had only been twenty-five since August and he’d met Maria at twenty-four. Technically.

Though using Jamie to compare the age did make him cringe a little bit, well from that perspective anything looked rather terrible and he was sure his face reflected his conflicted feelings about it at that very moment. ”I know how old she is.” Rhys muttered, he couldn’t remember how it had come up but it had and yes there was a gap in their age but they were both adults after all. And to be frank, she didn’t look like an average nineteen-year-old. However, her questions and points were very specific, and he was annoyed yet a bit proud at how Max was approaching this with him. Just as he had said when they spoke last at length a couple months ago, he forgot that they weren’t first years anymore and he was being reminded yet again. Rhys still tried hard not to roll his eyes. They were adults for Merlin’s sake even if he had a sister the same age. Still he managed not to but cross his arms, he was feeling annoyed that age was suddenly as big of a deal as the fact that Maria didn’t get long at all with his sisters—his family.

But then the next question and he did cause him to pause. Rhys’ eyes diverted down to stare anywhere but Max while he tried to think of any answer for that question. Nothing he could think of to say seemed like a good answer, or it was but she might not have wanted to hear it. Even then he wasn’t sure if he should say it, he had very specific loyalties in his life even if they didn’t seem completely apparent at the moment. He paused before beginning to speak. ”You may find this hard to believe, but we get along.” His tone of voice should have made it apparent that he wasn’t talking about the physical aspect of things but everything else. ”But it never was or is going to be serious.” He added, his brows a bit furrowed with some annoyance. ”Regardless, its over now.” That part was true as he had essentially sent Maria away after she had revealed everything, though it didn’t sit well with him.

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

October 25, 2025

"I know how old she is." Rhys sounded more frustrated than before, but his voice was also more gruff than it had been. Didn't that feel—at least a little bit—to him as though he'd been shagging his sister? (Granted, Maria's personality was about as far removed from Jamie's as anyone's personality could get, but that wasn't really the point that she was trying to make…)

As much as he seemed to be trying to justify the situation, it seemed to Max that she had caught him in a bit of a mess, since the next thing that he did was look down and away from her, like a child that was being told off. "You may find this hard to believe, but we get along."

Apart from the fact that Elias had gotten along with Maria somehow, Max didn't really understand how anyone could have gotten along with her. Maria didn't appear to have any redeeming qualities other than her beauty. There were plenty of sayings about beauty on the inside and this and that, but Max simply didn't see how Maria could have been someone… likable.

"But it never was or is going to be serious," Rhys added. Merlin, Max hoped not. The only thing worse would have been if it were, though she probably would have found it more amusing than horrifying and would have been quicker to attribute it all to a love potion. "Regardless, it's over now."

Max continued to watch Rhys, in disbelief that he had told her that he'd known how old Maria was and had still gone through with it. At least they were done. "Thank Merlin," she breathed in exasperation; she wasn't exactly relieved yet. She didn't know how she could be. "But… what? Were you drunk or something?!" He didn't seem intoxicated as she was speaking to him, or it would have been even worse. "Maria's as friendly as a Nundu," which was to say not at all.

rhys alexander greyback
OOC: Feel free to write however much you want to get the word count, but I probably won't match it at this point.

[rhys alexander greyback]

protect me from what i want

---

October 25, 2025
maxima ruqayyah greyback

---

As far as Rhys was concerned Maria’s age wasn’t the real issue here, but he supposed he would be thinking the same thing if his sister Jamie had brought a prospective partner to meet them all and they were the same age as he was. Actually, he would absolutely have something to say about it so he tried to be understanding of where Max was coming from. Still, he couldn’t help but be defensive—it was true or had been true that they happened to mostly get along when they weren’t bickering or doing the other things. At first it had certainly been more physical and just overtly hostile words toward one another as they both were quick tempered and defensive but eventually a trust had grown. And even tonight, Rhys knew he had started that fight before he could control the anger that had built up out of nowhere. Normally, he was better than that, but he supposed his guard might have been down.

The sigh of relief that Max breathed did bother him a bit, if it had been literally anybody else he had fought with publicly they most likely would not be having this discussion hiding in a maze. Again, he resisted the urge to roll his eyes and give his sister a look, on one end she wasn’t entirely wrong in terms of Maria’s approachability. He clenched his jaw again, nothing he said was the right answer or could be one. How much did he explain or could he explain to his youngest sister? He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, he didn’t want to talk about this anymore—he didn’t want to think about what happed over the past few hours or why it had escalated like that. He needed a drink and there were certainly none to be found in this maze.

”If I tell you—promise you I’ll never bother with her again, will you just drop it?” He spoke with a normal tone, adding a heavy sigh at the end. Rhys moved his hand back down and looked at Max, it was futile to ask her not to tell his siblings because she very well would in accordance to how they normally all communicated when it came to family issues. ”The last thing I want is for anything to come between me and you, Jamie or Adrian.” That part was very true, it didn’t matter what urges he couldn’t control if it ended up destroying his family. And at the moment he felt it was even a reasonable request of himself, it would be fine—he’d just never see her again. Should be easy.

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

October 25, 2025

Regardless of what Rhys told her, it probably wasn't going to make any difference to Max then. He had done something incredibly stupid and should have known better without its having spiralled into whatever it had just become. It seemed to have gotten into his head—finally—that maybe he needed to realize that he had messed up and needed to fix that, though, because he asked her if she would drop it if he were to promise that he would never bother with her again.

Max knew that she couldn't control what Rhys did in his free time, but anything romantic or—Merlin forbid—sexual was definitely out of the question, from her standpoint. Rhys obviously needed some self-control, because it was clear that it had lapsed somewhere, and maybe making him promise that would at least get him to stop and think about it the next time. "The last thing I want," Rhys added, "is for anything to come between me and you, Jamie or Adrian."

"Maria's trouble, Rhys." How he hadn't seen that already, there was only really one explanation. "That's all. I'm not a Legilimens, and I don't know what she really wants from you," Max added hesitantly, "but it can't be good." She had no way of knowing Maria's true motives, but she wasn't going to think for a second that they were positive.

rhys alexander greyback

[rhys alexander greyback]

protect me from what i want

---

October 25, 2025
maxima ruqayyah greyback

---

All he could feel was that judgement, that look. What was he doing? What had he gotten himself into? Why? It wasn't something he could explain, not that he would try. As he had said, it was a casual thing and it hadn't been serious. What was the harm? There were no promises, no emotional connections, he didn't owe Maria anything and she didn't owe him anything back. He was man, and she a willing woman. A woman that could match his hidden aggression like nobody else--that was why he'd gone back. It helped they inadvertently seen the pieces of each other that were cracked and chipped and incomplete--but they didn't judge. They'd understood. 

She re-affirmed what was the popular opinion about Maria. Trouble. He could see it, but in a way it still didn't make sense from him. It was or had been a mutually beneficial arrangement between them and it had been clear. But everything had gotten muddled tonight though Rhys hadn't had a chance to sort through that in his head yet. He couldn't really answer but only shake his head. "I doubt she has some grand scheme Max. Like I said, us meeting was a total accident." An incredible feat of timing really, but he remembered her reaction the following morning and that had been real. 

Rhys sighed heavily and dropped his arms from where they had been crossed across his chest and he looked at Max again, trying to take a different tone. "I don't know what else there is to talk about. We're not going to see each other again and that's it." He still felt defensive, but he knew Max was coming from a good place as much as he hated admitted he was in the wrong when it really hadn't felt like it. 

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

October 25, 2025

Max had never trusted Maria, nor was she about to just because Rhys had slept with her. Although he protested that he didn't think that she had some grand scheme in the works, that seemed precisely like a Maria thing to do. Meeting her might have ended up being a total accident on his part, but it would be a recipe for disaster if he were to allow it to continue. While she didn't know what Maria might do, she had already given Rhys as much of a warning as she could.

Whatever else he did, unfortunately, would be left up to him. As much as Rhys sighed and reiterated that nothing else would happen between them—that they wouldn't see each other ever again—Max couldn't say that she was convinced.

"Look," Max sighed in reply, glancing to the exit of the maze, "I've got volunteer stuff to do," and she had promised the girl standing out front that they would only be in there for so long. "I'll be at the pumpkins if you need me."

rhys alexander greyback
Fin?