Title: Cats on a hot tin roof

Show: DA
Pairing: M/A (I can't think of anything else...lol), B/Gem (readers85's idea, who obviously could!)
Rating: 15

Status: WIP

Genre: angsty romance?
Summary: that's readers85 plot bunny... and what i was able to do with it. Ben's alive, and sane. He comes back to his sister in TC. Does he get along with his twin? Will his presence interfere/change Max & Alec relationship?

Disclaimer: not mine.

Chapter 1: Brothers in Arms

It was unusual to see her sleeping. Unguarded, the emotions of a dream were playing on her face with the pale light of the moon.

She had acknowledged his presence shifting on the mattress while he crouched at the end of the bed, tucking his legs under his chin. Still, she kept on sleeping, and dreaming, undisturbed and comforted by his presence. A gift he wasn't sure to deserve... especially because he knew he had lost the right of her trust long ago. He waited just a few seconds more, soaking up all the courage she was unconsciously giving him just lying there, vulnerable and bare and trusting. Then, he quietly whispered into the night.

"I'll need your help, you know that, Maxie?"

Honestly, Max was too drowsy to fully register the meaning of his words. It was the middle of the night and for once, she was actually sleeping. Life wasn't so hectic anymore, and she had finally capitulated to her roomie's insistence (or better, to her personal pain in the ass' pushy-ness).

"'Cause even if they can't close their eyes, it doesn't mean sharks never sleep, you know?"

Alec, the jerk, had smugly advocated his duty, as her SIC, to order her to bed "to refresh their great leader's... bitchy-ness".

Therefore, it really wasn't an exaggerate reaction the shocked look on his face, when she... relented.

Without.A.Single.Hit.

"Oh man... was really that hard to shut him up?", Max muttered while heading towards the apartment she shared with Mr Annoyance, leaving in HQ a few dumbfounded trannies, an open-mouthed, cigarless-due-to-gravity Mole, and Alec, stunned beyond measure and, on the bright side, words too.

So, now she was making the most of a few hours of hard earned sleep – say that forced rest, if anybody asked her – just to be waken up in the middle of the night. Couldn't the aforementioned pain wait till morning to ask questions?

She already knew he was there. But she hadn't bothered to wake up, accustomed to his noises as she was. And really, could a guy take so many showers? And did he have to sing out loud at unlikely hours of the night? Well, seeing Alec, former perfect Manticore product, butchering oldies was... endearing. Not that she would ever admit that... but Max couldn't help the smile in her voice while she shouted "Alec, you tone-deaf freak, shut up, would you?"

Sill, that night something was off. She couldn't pinpoint it, maybe because she was truly worn-out, but a nagging feeling at the pit of her stomach pulled her towards consciousness.

While Max slowly awakened, she focused her senses on the young man in front of her, blending in the shadows. Of course, shadows simply didn't mean anything for transgenic eyes, and he stood there, in plain view, open to her perusal.

His demeanour was relaxed and collected, but his troubled stormy hazel eyes betrayed him. He was searching her face too, looking for the answer to a question he still had to utter.

And the tone of his voice, were regret shaded into hope... A familiar emotion flowed thru Max, mixed with old memories that brought undetected tears into her eyes.

Suddenly, everything fell into place. And nothing was the same again.

"Ben?" she barely recognized her own voice, turned into the frail whisper of a lost child.

"Ben?" She couldn't blink. Breath. Think. Believe. She almost couldn't feel, because the shock had burned her nerve endings like acid.

"Ben" she repeated over again. This time, the anger strained under her sheer pain was totally her own. She could cling to that. It was familiar and comforting... her better weapon against those blinding, numbing feelings he evoked.

Max gathered all her rage and thrown herself at him. But the sheet tangled in her legs and the tears blurring her vision turned her usual cat-like grace leap into a clumsy, uncoordinated dive. She landed hard on his chest, and immediately pummelled him with her fists.

All those years fighting as a human killing machine, and now she was hitting him with the same feeble force of a broken girl.

"How could you, Ben?"

It was the answer he wanted.

Ben was sprawled on her bed, her shaking body huddled against his in what really looked more like an embrace born out of desperation than anything else.

Sure, she was still hitting him... but she was actually less threatening than an ordinary 5yrs old, and the sobs trashing her, as the accusation muffled in his chest, screamed of her love and her pain.

"How could... how could you let me believe...?" "You left me alone!"

Ben held her closer at every grief-stricken question. Actually, he knew the answers to all of them... but he had one on his own. How could she still love him after what he had asked her to do?

Because even if he didn't want to admit it (didn't even want to go there), in the darkest recess of his soul he had feared to have lost his sister. For good.

And now, he was literally basking in her love.

It could seem just anger and pain, but Ben knew better. He knew that only your loved ones could make you suffer like that, mess up your life till the point you don't recognize it anymore, get you so angry that ever fiber of you body is screaming.

With her little sister still half heartedly hitting him while clinging to him for dear life, like she had no intention of letting him go, ever, Ben felt a sudden happiness wash though him... and for the first time in his life the future wasn't scary any more.