A/N
Hey, all! Hope you enjoy this- I wrote it almost immediately after watching 1x09 last night. Mainly it was inspired by the fact that maybe, MAYBE, Alek and Chloe finally have a chance! Anyways, I've noticed that so many of the fics on this page involve Alek listening from Chloe's rooftop, and I decided, why not shake things up a bit? So here it is, and I hope you enjoy. Remember to review, please!
-Iri
I DO NOT OWN THE NINE LIVES OF CHLOE KING… or Alek, for that matter. If I did… who is this Brian of whom you speak?
She didn't know at first why she'd woken. She couldn't remember what, if anything, she'd been dreaming about. Her room was quiet, the moon gleaming through the window and casting strange patterns on the walls. The house was silent, the kind of silence that can only be heard at an hour too early for listening ears.
Chloe rolled over in bed, still caught in that vaguely fuzzy state between sleep and awareness, and squinted at the clock. 2:17 AM. She sighed, resigning herself to the hopeless task of falling back into her previous comatose state, as quickly as possible. Slumping back into the sheets, she curled up on her side and pulled the thick fluffy comforter over her head. In the darkened quiet of her room, drowsiness came with surprising speed. Mmmmmm…
Then, she heard it. A noise, coming from somewhere in her room. Chloe stiffened, now fully awake as the adrenaline pumped ice-cold through her veins. Someone was in her room.
There it was again, so close, so unfamiliar and obviously not part of the usual noises of either Chloe or her mother's slumber. A sort of gasping, shortened breath. Chloe wrinkled her nose. Surely an assassin would make an effort to be quieter…?
Gingerly, making as little sound as possible, she slid back the covers, scooting on her side across the mattress. She reached for the nightstand, where she'd recently begun keeping a knife, concealed beneath a layer of Kleenex and old movie ticket stubs. But before she could slide the drawer open, she heard it again, the sound.
Freezing in place, Chloe listened, straining her ears, tapping into the Mai senses she still found so confusing. That constricted sound, almost as if someone where choking… and then it hit her with the force of a freight train barreling full speed down a hill. The noise wasn't coming from her room. It was coming from the roof, directly over her head.
Alek.
Chloe tumbled out of bed, yanked the knife from its hiding place, and jerked back the curtain to swing nimbly out the window, her only thought to join the fray, because she wasn't going to just sit in bed if there was some sort of battle going down on her own roof.
Heart pounding, Chloe swung onto the rough-shingled gable with a low thump, already shifting into a defensive crouch when something caught her eye. Or, rather, the lack of something. Namely, an attacker. Or anyone at all. The roof was empty.
"What the-" Chloe paused. She'd been so sure… Sighing at her own paranoia, she turned to go, already longing for the warmth and comfort of her favorite purple sheets. There were still a few hours before she'd have to get up for school…
Then, again, that rasping, choking sound, this time coming from directly behind her. Chloe whirled, keen eyes scanning every inch of the roofline as she took a few cautious steps forward.
And saw him.
Hidden from her sight initially by the rising slope of the roofline, he lay in an uncomfortable-looking position, lounged in the seam between gable and the slope of the porch roof. Alek.
He was on night duty, obviously. Chloe internally smacked herself for being so stupid. "Alek!" she hissed, lowering the knife. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Because I'm pretty sure that goes against everything in your job description-"
And then she broke off, brow furrowed in confusion. Because the boy laying on her roof wasn't gazing back at her with his usual impenetrable stare and cocky smirk. His eyes were close. He was asleep. And not just asleep, but also dreaming. As she drew closer, Chloe could see his eyes jumping rapidly beneath their lids. She also took in the way his fists lay clenched and white-knuckled beside him.
Not a peaceful dream, then.
"Alek?" she whispered, suddenly unsure. He didn't wake up, instead screwing his face up into what could only be described as an expression of utter devastation as yet another gasping sob ripped its way through his clenched teeth.
"Alek!" Chloe crouched beside her constant protector, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder. "Alek, wake up!"
His eyes flashed open the instant her fingers made contact with the cotton of his shirt, and he sat up abruptly, one last whimper escaping through tightened jaw. Chloe drew her hand back, startled.
Alek jerked his head around to stare at her with wild eyes, chest heaving with previously stifled breaths. His eyes locked on hers, golden brown into green.
"Hey," she whispered tentatively. "Are you okay?"
Alek didn't answer right away, still staring at her, his gaze flickering over every inch of her, from her hair, piled up before bed but now hanging half out of its neat knot, to her cutoff black sweatpant shorts, and then back up to rest on her face once more. As if he were studying her, checking her over… for what? She tried again.
"Alek?"
"You're all right," came the hoarse reply. "You're all right."
She watched in utter bewilderment as Alek passed a slightly unsteady hand over his face, then let it fall flat by his side.
"Yeah… yeah, I'm fine," she said. "Are you?"
He didn't respond, glancing down at his hands, now twisted in his lap, taking deep breaths. Trying to regain some of his control. Chloe noticed the slight tremors that racked his shoulders, the way his hair hung over his forehead in dampened spikes.
"Alek?"
He looked back at her now, face impassive once more.
"You were having a nightmare," Chloe whispered, comprehension and concern flooding her body. Alek jerked slightly, all the confirmation necessary. Chloe reached forward, took his hand tightly in her own.
"It's okay. It's gonna be okay, I promise," she murmured, willing him to stop looking away. In profile, the moonlight bleaching the golden color from his skin, she could easily pick out the tendons standing out in his jaw as he clenched his teeth together, so hard she feared they'd break. This time, she felt, rather than saw, the shiver that ran down his spine. Worry filled her.
"A- Alek, I-"
And then speaking was impossible, as she was suddenly in his arms, her face pressed tightly against his chest as he crushed her to him, his own face buried in her hair. And she could hear the barely audible whispers, his lips mere inches from her ear. "You're alive, you're alive, you're alive." Repeated over and over like a prayer. A mantra of heart-wrenching relief.
They'd stayed like that, frozen in place, for an indeterminable amount of time. The leonine young man and the gracefully beautiful girl. He, breathing her in, and then back out, his breath shuddering into her neck, arms clasped just above her shoulders. She, forehead pressed to his collarbone, arms wrapped around his waist, ear to his chest, listening to his heartbeat, now almost as familiar as her own, as it finally began to slow.
As it turns out, there was a power outage at around four that morning, resetting every electronic device for miles around the King home. It was for this reason that Meredith King overslept. Her alarm clock failed to go off at precisely six-thirty as it should have. Instead, she woke in a panic at quarter to eight, and leapt from her bed like a woman possessed. After rushing through the shower and grabbing a granola bar from the pantry, she left a hastily scribbled note on the counter and shouted her farewell up the stairs on her harried way out the door.
This was unusual, for the mother of the newly-sixteen Mai warrior not to lay eyes on her daughter before departing for work. And yet, the failure of the alarm clock was a saving grace, in a way. For if Meredith King had ascended the stairs to her daughter's bedroom and cracked open the door, she would have seen not one but two sleeping children under the covers. The first, her daughter, sprawled out on her back as usual; the second, a tall blond boy, lying half on his side, half on his back, with his cheek pillowed on the girl's ribs. A sight unlike any the girl's mother had ever seen. But she was already in the her car, pulling away from the curb and down the steep hill of the street, when the two sleeping children began to stir.
A/N
There's this awesome little button, right down there… you should press it!
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